“So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it.” – Aaron Copland

This is a good time to listen to music, the unfamiliar as well as old favorites. Here’s a song I’m listening to as I write on my blog. Gary Clark Jr. is the singer. I wasn’t familiar with him until I saw him live at the Mountain Jam summer concert a few years ago. He and the late Tom Petty closed out the day and no one was disappointed. Especially me, but that is another story.

In this moment the task of progressive minded people isn’t to litigate and re-litigate the past positions of Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. What’s foremost — especially with Trump recklessly and dangerously mismanaging a pandemic and imploding economy — is that we think outside the box, that we grasp the strategic and tactical policies and issues that will activate and unite a sprawling and diverse coalition for the election battle this fall.

In other words, big tent thinking, a search for common ground. utmost flexibility, and practical action are in order.

In a conference call to governors a few days ago, Trump, it is reported, said that he was prepared to be a backup to their efforts to mitigate the health care crisis. In the conversation that followed, Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, replied that they didn’t need a backup. What they needed, he said, is a Tom Brady. Last night Trump attacked Inslee as well as some other governors.

I was watching the docu-series of Hillary Clinton and couldn’t help but regret once again and in a way I couldn’t have anticipated before that she isn’t in the White House at this moment.

These White House briefings at the time when nightly news would broadcast is at once a vanity project, a steady stream of lies, an occasion to beat up on the media (which plays well with his base), and, above all, an attempt to dominate the news. I hope they reconsider their decision to cover these spectacles. Shut it down!