Well you know it's a shame and a pity

The Rising Son Records account (Arlo Guthrie?) on Facebook posted this photo and said, in the first person, that in September of 2013, "As I watched the clouds go by before the Harvest Moon, I caught one I liked... I called this 'Witch Moon'. [...] People are starting to learn about the 66 years of failed US policy against Cuba. People are learning about the trade restrictions that prevent medicine, food, and fuel from getting to the island. People are learning about the starvation, pain, disease, and death that come from these policies. And people are also beginning to notice that Cubans across the political spectrum want something different than what the US provides!"

He's not the only one who's saying so. "We're Tired of Marco Rubio Speaking for Us: A New Cuban-American Movement: What we share is the belief that the future of Cuba should be left to Cubans on the island to decide without US interference and meddling. [...] Like many Cuban Americans growing up in Florida, I was taught countless criticisms and failures of the government of Cuba by family members. But my proudly capitalist father also raised his children to lobby against the US embargo on Cuba."

And here's a little something I didn't know: "Exclusive: Cuba Is Prepared to Offer Compensation to Americans Who Lost Property in the 1959 Revolution: Cuba is willing to put the 'lump sum' compensation measure on the table in talks with the U.S., a Cuban official told Drop Site." The interesting thing about this is it's not a new offer, but a second chance for the US to take the deal: "After the revolution, Cuba negotiated lump sum compensation agreements with countries such as Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France, but the United States refused to participate, planning to overthrow Fidel Castro's government instead. '[Cuba made] lump sum agreements with the six governments whose property was nationalized in Cuba, all of them had compensation schemes, all of them were compensated with the exception of the U.S.,' said Cossio."

"'Serious Threat to the First Amendment' as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge: 'A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protest,' one legal advocate said. The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to 'antifa,' which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups. A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent."

And speaking of stifling dissent, "Trump's FCC Chair Threatens to Pull Broadcast Licenses Over Negative Iran War Coverage: 'Brendan Carr is threatening the media to cover the war the way the Trump regime wants. It's one of the most anti-American messages ever posted by a government official,' one news network said. In a move one administration critic described as 'fragrantly unconstitutional,' Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr wrote a post on social media on Saturday that appeared to threaten the broadcast license of any media outlet that reported information concerning President Donald Trump's war on Iran that the president did not like." Is Matt Taibbi on this story?

Robert Kuttner on "Elizabeth Warren's Amazingly Progressive Housing Bill" and how she's been getting things passed by enlisting Republican help. It's actually pretty impressive. But one fly in the ointment was a little performance by a guy who looks set to be Chuck Schumer's successor, with "Brian Schatz's Signals of Comfort With Big Money: The Hawaii senator and heir apparent to Chuck Schumer attacked a bipartisan housing bill without trying to fix it, merely to show support for private equity." This is a worrying sign, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the Senate who is lined up to replace the current leadership with anything to offer to those of us who want substantive change. Bizarrely, the part of the bill he was objecting to was something Trump himself had insisted on as the price of his signature, and it was a restriction on private equity purchasers—something you'd expect Trump to oppose and Democrats to be the biggest supporters of. Luckily, he doesn't seem to have done any harm this time, but that's not always the case. "Some Democrats are upset about this attack on a bill that had near-universal support and see it as part of a pattern. One former top-level Hill staffer told the Prospect: 'In some circles, to 'Schatz' something is starting to be used as a verb, by which I mean undermining bills that take on corporate power, pretending to be motivated by progressive concerns, when it is transparent to everyone involved that he is just trying to build chits with powerful industries.'"

"'Now We Know Why Trump Fired the Inspector General at Social Security,' Says Watchdog Group: New revelations show an IG report about wait times for people seeking help or services was altered after it was submitted to the administration. [...] Altman then argued that the attack on inspectors general was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle government transparency all together. 'Inspectors general are the American peoples' eyes and ears in these agencies,' said Altman. 'The Trump administration is undermining that oversight at every turn. Under this administration, the IG has no ability to conduct independent oversight. There is no meaningful check on the Trump administration's Social Security sabotage.'" I think that was obvious from the first—I mean, why else would you just fire all those IGs?

I keep forgetting that Dday and Stoller have a podcast called Organized Money, which I should have reminded you of, too. Things are interesting again in the Ticket Master/Live Nation case, and they had some fun telling us about it in "Robbing Them Blind, Baby: The Live Nation Case".

So, the cops who raided Afroman's house, kicked down his door and terrified his kids, were all upset when he made videos about it and sued him for defamation. The jury didn't buy it and the whole thing entertained the hell out of the internet. ImNotALawyerBut recapped the trial in about half an hour on YouTube.

"Trump State Dept. Accused of 'Largest Fee Fraud in History' of US Immigration System: An immigration researcher at the Cato Institute found that the Trump administration is 'raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to.' [...] A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests."

"Nearly One-Third Of Gen Z Men Think Wives Should Obey Their Husbands, New Global Study Finds: The study revealed new details about how young men view gender, marriage and relationships in contrast to their Boomer counterparts. [...] This is in stark contrast to Baby Boomer men (born between 1945 and 1965), who agreed with those same statements at just 13% and 17%, respectively. Despite women overall giving drastically different responses to the same questions, Gen Z women were still more likely than their Boomer counterparts to say a woman should always obey her husband, with 18% of Gen Z women answering yes, compared to only 6% of Boomer women."

I thought the first sentence of this article in The New Republic was a bit disturbing, and it kept doing that. "Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren't Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats too want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn't what it was in 1992. The center-left group Third Way held a conference last week where moderate Democratic strategists and politicians blasted progressive ideas and the party's left wing. Third Way and other centrist Democratic groups espouse positions such as opposing Medicare for All and wealth taxes. In Washington, the idea that these groups speak for moderates across the country is never questioned. But now, some evidence is emerging that suggests Democratic voters who describe themselves as moderate are in a different place. They want Democrats to push harder to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations and don't think the party is overly liberal on issues such as abortion and transgender rights." I mean, seriously, everyone knows Third Way is right-wing, not "center-left". They vote with Republicans. They slam Democrats and echo right-wing talking points you can easily get from Fox or Newsmax. And it was never, ever "moderate" by any reasonable definition of the word to oppose positions held by more than half the country and support positions held by only 3.8%. Come to think of it, the title of the article is pretty disturbing, too. Third Way was always "moderate" in the same way that the Nazis were "socialist" and Grapenuts are made of grapes and nuts. It's a lot of counterproductive rhetoric but at least they admit that "moderates" who disagree with Third Way can win elections.

The much more reliable American Prospect tells it straight, except that they neglected to put "moderates" in the scare-quotes they deserve. "Centrists: Better Things Aren't Possible: Third Way's strategy session for Democratic moderates lacked any vision other than a hatred for progressives. A group of Democratic Party moderates gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, last Sunday and Monday for an event organized by Third Way, an influential group in the party's moderate wing. The event, entitled 'Winning the Middle,' brought together elected officials, prominent pundits, data gurus, communication savants, and industry figures with one goal in mind: how to block a progressive from winning the party's nomination for president in 2028. The event's speakers celebrated their claim that a similar conference hosted by Third Way in the same location back in 2019 helped power Joe Biden—whom they touted as 'the most conservative Democrat in the 2020 field'—to the White House, recalling that South Carolina served as both the last refuge of and launching pad for the then-former vice president's flailing presidential campaign. With Democratic popularity at an all-time low, Third Way's event hoped to galvanize a moderate resurgence and stave off any potential progressive insurgency. What is immediately apparent watching the event is a total lack of any positive vision. Rather than propose a worked-out centrist platform, or even suggest opposition to the Trump administration, the event largely defined itself in opposition to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party."

"The Democratic Party Has Made a Religion of Curated Facts: Centrist Democrats claim to be the bearers of hard facts, dismissing leftist dissent as emotional and naive. But their 'facts' are often a mishmash of consultant data, selectively interpreted focus groups, and big donor priorities. [...] But a closer look at this dynamic reveals less about the Left's naivete and more about the modern Democratic Party's criteria for deciding who's worth listening to. As Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin argue in their book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, establishing the 'matter of fact' is a long and combative process. Facts aren't discovered but are materialized, and this process of materialization is never neutral. It involves technological systems, information networks, and assumptions about power and authority. And for the Democrats, it almost always involves consultants, donors, and focus groups — to the exclusion of other data sources."

"Iranian Officials Say They Have Been Ignoring Witkoff's Private Requests to Talk: Trump's special envoy has been texting Iran's foreign minister asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long-term deterrence. President Donald Trump has been leading a double life in prosecuting his war against Iran. In public, he regularly boasts that Iran's military might has been decimated, its leadership killed off, and that the few officials remaining alive in Tehran are begging him to talk. 'They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly,' Trump said Sunday night. 'We're talking to them. But I don't think they're ready, but they're getting pretty close.' Behind the scenes, it is the Trump administration that has been asking for talks. Two Iranian officials told Drop Site that Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff personally sent messages to officials in Tehran, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, last week exploring possibilities for resuming negotiations. Iran has not replied to Witkoff. The Iranian officials told Drop Site that Iran has also received messages from the White House via third countries."

RIP: "Country Joe McDonald, Woodstock star and anti-war singer, dies aged 84: 'Country Joe' McDonald, a hippy rock star of the 1960s whose protest track 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag' rebuked the Vietnam war and became a highlight of the Woodstock music festival, died on Sunday. He was 84. McDonald died in Berkeley, California. His death from complications of Parkinson's disease was reported by Kathy McDonald, his wife of 43 years, in a statement issued by his publicist." Country Joe McDonald roped me into the first poker game I ever played for money. Peter Albin staked me 50 cents and when I won they all looked at me. I loved his music. He even had a fun website. And it was cool when he turned up on the TV show of Tales of the City. I think I've posted "Couleen Ann" (Country Joe and the All-Star Band) before, but one of my favorites from Joe was "Janis".

RIP: "Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. [...] 'We lived through this, but this was our daily lives,' he told The Associated Press in a 2021 interview. 'When you think about it, we weren't trying to make history or trying to rewrite history. We were responding to the problems of the particular time.'"

"AI autocomplete doesn't just change how you write. It changes how you think: AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users' beliefs [...] Across all the different topics in the survey, participants who saw the AI autocomplete prompts reported attitudes that were more in line with the AI's position—including people who didn't use the AI's suggested text at all. Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI."

In 1994, Mike Godwin discussed and reflected on creating Godwin's Law.

"Two Missing Episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan Found" — That still isn't all of them, but apparently it's enough to put something on iPlayer at Easter.

Read Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" for free on the internet.

Country Joe & The Fish, "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine"

It was a time when strangers were welcome here

Alison McGhee posted this photo to go with an essay on Facebook* about the occupation of Minneapolis. The essay was fine, but she's no slouch as a photographer, either.

You already know what Trump's State of the Union message contained (lies), but what drove Cory Robin crazy was the Democratic response: "I spent yesterday tearing my hair out over the Democrats' response to Trump's State of the Union Address. I could say a lot about their choice of respondent and the substance of the response. But I want to focus only on style, rhetoric. Long story, short: I was appalled. I don't think I've ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words, each of which seems genetically engineered to make any sentient being stop paying attention. Reading this speech, that is the only conclusion I can come to: that its sole and entire purpose is to make people stop paying attention. Again, forget substance, forget ideology, forget what the Democratic Party is, just focus on the style, the words, the impact on you, the listener, the reader. I'll dwell on just a few moments (which seemed like more than moments) in the speech, a few passages that do the opposite of what a passage is supposed to do—that is, get you from one place to the next."

Scahill and Hussain at Drop Site News, "As Trump Launches 'Massive' Regime Change War, Iran Strikes Back at U.S. Bases and Vows Not to Capitulate: Diplomacy was weaponized as an 'instrument of deception,' an Iranian official tells Drop Site. Tehran promises to inflict losses on the U.S. At approximately 9:40 a.m. local time in Iran, President Donald Trump launched what he bluntly characterized as a regime change war aimed at eliminating the Iranian leadership, destroying the country's missile system and naval forces, and calling on Iranians to rise up and seize control in the aftermath of the attacks. The bombing campaign was initiated by Israel but Trump's statement announcing U.S. involvement made clear the stakes to Iranians: 'Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,' Trump said in a taped statement on Truth Social soon after Operation Epic Fury began. 'This will be probably your only chance for generations.' In what has now become a signature component of Trump's approach to Iran, the U.S. constructed a false veneer of continuing diplomatic negotiations, only to turn around and launch a major attack."

And for some quick history, Jean-Luc Szpakowski on "What happened in the Iran demonstrations." You will not be surprised to learn that the US and Mossad all played their role.

Don Moynihan, "Trump's weak justifications for attacking Iran: Why is American attacking Iran? It helps to have a coherent reason, to justify to the American public the costs in money and blood, to allies about the potential long-term risks, and to Iranians about the future of their country. After 9/11 there was broad support for invading Afghanistan because the country hosted the attack's mastermind. In 2003 there was less support for what turned out to be the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't, but Saddam stuck a belligerent tone and kicked weapons inspectors out. In 2026…Iran was at the negotiating table and we invaded…for reasons." But it's pretty clear that, Pete Kegsmith to the contrary, we did start this war, because we let Israel push us into it. But why?

"AIPAC Coordinates Donors in Illinois House Primaries: Three Democratic candidates are benefiting from dark-money super PACs, and they share hundreds of donors who have previously given to AIPAC and its subsidiaries. With Israel's reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement."

At Columbia, ICE impersonated police officers and claimed to be searching for a missing child as a ruse to invade a college dorm and kidnapped a student. Mamdani picked up the phone and got Trump to release her.

"'Great villains': Law firms that 'groveled' to Trump scorched as revenge bid dropped: President Donald Trump's Justice Department backed down on Monday on a huge monthslong legal battle, no longer defending a series of executive orders that attacked prominent law firms that represented anti-Trump clients in the past. It's a huge victory for the rule of law, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace — but also a huge black eye for the law firms that made deals with Trump to avoid similar regulatory action against them."

David Dayen finds "The Quintessential Epstein Files Email: Jeffrey Epstein and his friends standing up for Mary Jo White against Elizabeth Warren tells you everything about the class war at the heart of the files. On June 5, 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, then a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins but just one year removed from her stint as White House counsel for Barack Obama, emailed her good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler, who was once under consideration to become Obama's attorney general, wrote, 'I am working on a PR strategy for MJ White v. Elizabeth Warren.' Epstein responded, 'Good[.] mj is good.' And Ruemmler followed on in a response, 'Yes, and EW is the worst.' This is the perfect Jeffrey Epstein email, with as much explanatory power about this man, and more important the world he associated with and cultivated, than anything to do with child sex abuse. It shows that there is in fact an Epstein class, which not only believes in their own personal impunity, but seeks to protect their fellow travelers as well. And that ultimately lines up with a political and economic vision that favors corporate domination over the public interest. But you have to unravel all the backstory to best understand it."

RIP: "Neil Sedaka, a Pop Hitmaker Across Two Eras, Dead at 86: The songwriter and performer broke through with early Sixties hits like 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,' then mounted a Seventies comeback with 'Laughter In the Rain' [...] Alongside his neighbor and longtime songwriting partner, Howard Greenfield, Sedaka set up shop at the famous Brill Building and helped define the pop style that emerged from the New York City hit factory. Their success with songs like 'Stupid Cupid' for Connie Francis helped Sedaka secure a record deal of his own. He notched his first Top 10 hit in 1959 with 'Oh! Carol,' then followed it up with notable tunes like 'Stairway to Heaven' (not that one), 'Calendar Girl,' 'Little Devil,' and 'Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.' The run culminated in 1962 when 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do' went to Number One, and 'Next Door to an Angel' peaked at Number Five." I've always been a sucker for doo-wops, and these songs were always such fun.

RIP: "Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95." Yes, he was great in a lot of things, but lets's not forget his genre credit for The Twilight Zone, and most of all, that moment, early in his career, but at the end of the film, when Scout Finch looks up and sees him in the shadow behind the door, and their faces change in one of the finest acting duets on film, with virtually no dialogue. (In the book, Boo Radley had one short line of dialogue, though he is a huge, invisible presence from the beginning. That line was cut from the movie, to no ill effect.)

RIP: "Blues Icon John Hammond Dies At 83 [...] With more than six decades devoted to the blues, Hammond stood as one of the music's most committed and enduring champions. [...] For generations of artists and listeners, John Hammond represented a living bridge to the roots of American blues. His dedication preserved a lineage that might otherwise have faded from mainstream view. He is survived by his wife Marla. His recordings remain a testament to a life spent in service of the blues."

"Newspapers Did Not Kill Themselves: New docs say Jeffrey Epstein collaborated with the Russian mob to loot the New York Daily News, then tried to help Mort Zuckerman discard it when reporting became inconvenient. Almost nobody noticed earlier this month when the New York Daily News announced what felt like a 500th round of layoffs. Not long ago, the venerable working-class tabloid behind “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” would have been the ideal outlet for demystifying the prodigious evils of the Uptown Epstein network for outer-borough New Yorkers who elected Zohran Mamdani. But the latest iteration of “New York's Hometown Newspaper” has all of four reporters covering national news."

"A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured: ICE doesn't share its violent incidents with the public. So here's our list. The Trump regime's deportation monomania has left far more people dead and wounded than it wants you to know. Agents' public executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have rightly drawn widespread fury, heartbreak, and action. And they are just two of the many more agents have murdered or caused to die in the field since January 2025. Even more people have died in immigration prison. And as for the people federal agents have merely injured? An official count doesn't exist. There is no doubt that the regime is working overtime to hide the full scope of the terror campaign spreading across our country. The Prospect launched this tracker to do our part to stop them from getting away with it. We are collecting data to bring the real harm into sharper focus and to counterbalance the mainstream media's sanitation of what we would call “pogroms” if they were happening in any other country. "

"Phil Ochs' Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today: Fifty years after his death, the protest singer's music is more relevant than ever. [...] 2026 marks half a century since Ochs' death, yet his lyrics are more relevant now than perhaps even he could have imagined. Ochs' career achievements, by any reasonable measure, were substantial—he wrote hundreds of songs, recorded seven albums for two major record labels, consistently sold out Carnegie Hall and other medium-sized concert venues, successfully organized several large-scale rallies, and always provoked an enthusiastic response from crowds at the countless political events at which he performed." Since I went to a lot of those rallies I saw him many times, and always loved him, so I was glad to see this appreciation of work that, yes, still resonates with me.

Neil Sedaka dedicated "The Immigrant" to John Lennon, but hearing it now makes me cry.