Love is Just a Four-Letter Word

Hot news and political takes, and music today from Pete Townshend, Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, and J.J. Cale. And Sinead O'Connor today.

Weak at midweek, Democrats consider pressuring Biden to withhold new military aid package for Israel for weapons, then let it go (as usual). The great Steve Brodner at his Substack:

News & Politics

The Onion: “Israel Returns Occupied Territories To Palestinians After Running Out Of Targets To Hit In Gaza.”

Andy Borowitz: Trump Claims Arizona Audit Uncovered Widespread Math. “It’s unfair and, quite frankly, a disgrace,” the former President said.

Jimmy Kimmel on Rudy’s son running for governor of NY: “Andrew Giuliani, if you don’t know much about him, he is a former professional golfer, which is good. That way, when he gets the lowest number of votes he’ll think he won.”

Trump as in Chump: The New York attorney general's office said last night it has informed the Trump Organization that its investigation into the company "is no longer purely civil in nature," and is now also a criminal one.

Axios scoop: “Federal prosecutors are investigating what they say was a massive scheme to illegally back Sen. Susan Collins' 2020 re-election bid. A recently unsealed search warrant shows the FBI believes that a Hawaii defense contractor executive illegally funneled $150,000 to a pro-Collins super PAC and reimbursed family members’ donations to Collins’ campaign.”

A new book on the 2020 campaign by The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, Battle for the Soul, offers new details on the angry response by the Bidens to Kamala Harris’s attack on him in that early debate suggesting he may be racist (because of his former stance on busing). Jill Biden allegedly told Harris directly: “Go fuck yourself.”

Humanitarian disaster, via NY Times: “The nine-day battle between Hamas militants and the Israeli military has damaged 17 hospitals and clinics. Destroyed sewage systems sent fetid wastewater through the streets. A desalination plant providing water to 250,000 people is offline. The only laboratory in Gaza that processes coronavirus tests was damaged by an Israeli airstrike.” The Times has created a day-by-day reconstruction of the violence with maps, death tolls and satellite images.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib confronted Biden on Tuesday on the tarmac when he arrived in Michigan to tour an auto plant over his support for Israel, urging him to stop enabling a government committing crimes against Gazans and do more to protect Palestinian lives and human rights. Human Rights Watch, which had long avoided the term, now describes Israel as an apartheid state.

New Morning Consult poll shows big shift among Dems in view of two sides, with 12% more sympathetic toward the Israelis—but 18% are more sympathetic toward the Palestinians with the rest evenly split. A majority of Republican voters (51%) are more sympathetic toward the Israelis, while only 3% are more sympathetic toward the Palestinians.

Whole Lotto Life: Vaccinations have surged in Ohio, after the state announced its "Vax-a-Million" lottery.

Mask, or don’t tell? The CDC absurdity in full view:

In the U.S., an honor code is the latest phase of the pandemic after the federal government said vaccinated Americans could take off masks. Tori Saylor, an immuno-compromised resident of Kalamazoo, Mich., greeted the guidance with a sentiment shared by many Americans: “Am I to trust these people, having never met them?”

Indeed, Dr. Fauci said today the foolish CDC mask guidance is being “misinterpreted” by many. He also said Americans will likely need a COVID vaccine booster: "I think we will almost certainly require a booster sometime within a year or so, after getting the primary [shot], because the durability of protection against coronaviruses is generally not lifelong.”

In closely-watched Pennsylvania primaries, Philly D.A. Larry Krasner won his tough race, and Ed Gainey seems poised to become the first black mayor of Pittsburgh.

Climate change is forcing the National Park Service to decide which species and landscapes to save — and which to let slip away.

Weed, like to join you: Residents of Weed, CA., an old lumber town, used to wince about all the pot jokes. Now they’ve embraced the new “grow” economy.

Headline of the Day, from Vanity Fair: “Former Child Star Ricky Schroder Harangues Costco Employee Over Masks.”

Remember Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who became wingnut celebrities last year after they pointed guns at BLM protesters in St. Louis? Mark on Tucker Carlson’s show last night announced a bid for Missouri's open Senate seat.

Graphic below from Axios shows reds dots indicating where Confederate monuments remain—with the few grey dots showing ones removed.

Music

Joan Baez is finally a Kennedy Center honoree this year—airing on June 6—so Wash Post does a full profile, right down to she “dated Steve Jobs.” But also:

“She got bigger than folk singers ever get. She didn’t come across with a lot of ego,” says Roger McGuinn, founder of the Byrds, who first heard Baez as a teenager in the Cambridge coffeehouses near Harvard. “She looked like a hippie before there were hippies. And she’s a great guitarist.”

“You want to try harmonizing with Bob Dylan?” asks David Crosby. “She’s a good, deep-in-the-groove folk singer. She didn’t try to be a pop star. She was beautiful and dignified and smart and funny and curious and intelligent and courageous. All the good stuff, man. I was madly in love with her.”

“She certainly paid a price for her politics,” Paul Simon says. “It’s taken all this time for her to get the Kennedy Center Honor…. She was a symbol. She was mocked. She was looked upon by a lot of people as a prototypical liberal and bleeding heart.”

So here is her late'-60s version of Dylan’s greatest unreleased song, “Love Is Just a Four-letter Word” and then, below that, just a few years back, with Jackson Browne on his “Before the Deluge.” It was Jackson who inducted her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.

Born on this date in 1945: Pete Townshend. Who? Pete Townshend. Perhaps you’ve never heard his early (historic) demo for “My Generation,” below. Or perhaps you prefer the “Teenage Wasteland” or “Baba O’Riley” cuts for his aborted “Lifehouse.”

Nothing Compares: NY Times feature today on Sinead O’Connor tied to her new memoir, Rememberings. “It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl,” she told our reporter from a tiny village on an Irish mountaintop. Among the belongings in her sparse cottage are deliberately uncomfortable chairs, “because I don’t like people staying long,” she said. Photo of her today:

Song Pick of the Day

The only 1970s album that I “wore out” its vinyl grooves was J.J. Cale’s debut album, Naturally. I was not alone, though it was far from a bestseller. Almost every cut, from blues to roots rock, was a classic, from the then-unfamiliar “Magnolia” to the Clapton-covered “After Midnight.” Download it and see. What a guitarist—at least the most brilliantly relaxed ever.

J.J. trucked along for decades, got periodic boosts from Clapton, but could not match that maiden effort. He later explained: “The first album was a collection of tunes I’d been working on for about 32 years. It was a collection that refined everything that had come out of me and weeded out all the bad ideas I’d had over 20 years. But, when it was successful, the record company wanted the next album in six months. The management was – you know, hey, John, why don’t you make another record? And I go, oh, ain’t nobody wants to hear -- You know, I’ve already did – I have a hard time with not trying to imitate myself.” Here, from that first album, an extended, very J.J., live version from his own neck of the woods, Tulsa, of “Call Me the Breeze.”

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.