Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful

Kind Treatment Blues - Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe

1931

A beautifully fragile blues cut

The Sundowners - Always You (1967)

5/18/26.

I was bummed out the other day when my neighbor dropped this bombshell: the Bottom of the Hill was closing. This longtime music venue in San Francisco first opened in 1991 and I've been lucky enough to catch many shows there over the years (The Clean and Richard Davies stick out as most memorable).

I went inside to look at the calendar of shows, and saw that Ted Leo & The Pharmacists would be doing a 3 night string of shows from July 9th to July 11th. Leo said that the venue contacted him about doing some shows in honor of their imminent closure. The show on the 9th will feature "The Tyranny of Distance", the 10th "Hearts of Oak" and the 11th "Shake the Sheets". I love these albums. Each is essential, each has its own sound, each is perfect (at least to me).

Once I saw the shows, I went on a Ted Leo/Pharmacists binge, which eventually took me to Bandcamp, where I found this digital single. Yes, this kind of breaks a rule of mine - there is no physical copy of this particular release, but there are tons of physical releases from Leo. He is currently touring with Gang of Four, and states that might explain how these songs are more in the "post-punk" realm. I think they're squarely in the Ted Leo realm, with a dash of Gang of Four (and maybe Green Day?).

Trump surrenders to Iran.

June 16, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Trump is failing and desperate. He continues to hide the text of the peace deal because it is so favorable to Iran that the press must be preconditioned by a week of lies before being allowed to see the terms of Trump’s surrender. Trump’s failure in Iran and on the economy, immigration, the Epstein files, the slush fund, IRS immunity, DOGE cuts, measles epidemics, AI data centers, and Billion Dollar Ballroom all matter—because they will produce a wave election in November. And a wave election is a strong defense to Trump’s efforts to cheat. See Concluding Thoughts for more.

Meanwhile, the strategy of hiding the agreement is not working. The reviews are in—and they are not good. When the Editorial Boards of the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal agree that Trump “lost” the war or has “retreated from Iran,” you know things are bad. But the truth is a lot worse than bad reviews. The alleged deal appears to be dissolving before the formal signing ceremony on Friday in Switzerland.

As to the bad reviews—which will be the judgment of history--see The NYTimes Editorial Board, President Trump Lost This War (Gift article.)

The Board wrote, in part,

The preliminary deal ending President Trump’s four-month war with Iran is welcome but brings with it hard truths. Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake starting this war. . . . Since the war began, he has said the United States would achieve “total and complete victory” and that Iran must agree to “unconditional surrender.” He suggested that regime change would occur. He said that Iran would be permitted “no enrichment” of uranium and that “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried” near-bomb-grade nuclear material that it already holds. None of this appears to be true.

See also WSJ Editorial Board, Trump Stages an Iran Retreat.

Per the WSJ Editorial Board,

But there’s no denying that Mr. Trump is retreating from his main goals as political pressure has built at home and finishing the job requires greater military risk. Despite Israel’s urging, he never authorized a mission to seize Iran’s enriched uranium. He never tried to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force. [¶] The full memorandum of understanding text hasn’t been released, and Mr. Trump says some of it is “a little conceptual.” Which is the problem. It would defer most matters of the nuclear program to 60 more days of talks, with oil and other sanctions relief along the way in exchange for diplomatic progress.

Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, argues that the entire deal is an attempt to create the illusion of a nuclear agreement:

The structure of the deal seems mostly aimed at creating the illusion that some nuclear agreement, albeit not quite finalized, is part of it, and thus Trump got some real win that is just a bit over the horizon . . .

As noted above, the alleged deal is unraveling even before the formal signing ceremony on Friday. Just three examples,

Iran says it won’t charge “tolls” but it will charge “fees” for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. See NYTimes, Iran Says Strait of Hormuz Won’t Have ‘Tolls’ but It Will Have ‘Fees’. Per the Times, “Charging a toll is illegal under international law, but some fees are allowed for services. It is not clear what services Iran would provide, but there were no fees charged before the war.”

Israel will not remove troops from Lebanon. Iran asserts that the ceasefire extends to Lebanon. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told Israeli citizens on Monday that Israel will not withdraw from Lebanon. See NYTimes, Netanyahu Says Israel Will Keep Forces in Lebanon, Despite U.S.-Iran Deal. “Foreshadowing potential trouble for the peace deal, he said he had no intention of withdrawing his forces from neighboring Lebanon—a key demand of the Iranians during negotiations with the United States. Israeli soldiers there are fighting Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran.”

CIA Director tells Trump that Iran has no intention of ending nuclear program. A key premise of the still-secret agreement is that Iran will negotiate a deal to end its nuclear enrichment program, presumably within the 60 days of the extended ceasefire. But US intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran has no intention of negotiating a deal to end its nuclear enrichment program. See Axios, Iran’s intentions on deal doubted by CIA director, sources say.

Per Axios,

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told President Trump and other senior officials that intelligence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raised serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal, according to three sources familiar with those discussions.

Friction point: Ratcliffe isn’t the only skeptic in Trump’s top team. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have both expressed concerns and raised questions about the deal in internal discussions, while Vice President Vance and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner advocated for it, according to two of the sources.

With each passing day, it is becoming clearer that Trump’s illegal war against Iran was a debacle of historic proportions. He alienated allies, emboldened enemies, and hurt the reputation of the US military by demonstrating that a small, determined country can outlast billions of dollars of missiles and bombs.

That is the worst possible outcome of Trump’s misadventure—the war to distract from the Epstein files resulted in an ignominious defeat for Trump, a reputational injury to the US military, a blow to the US economy, and tens of thousands of civilians killed and millions displaced.

NYTimes report on administration consideration of suspending writ of habeas corpus and invocation of Insurrection Act

The New York Times has published an article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about the administration’s consideration of (1) the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus as it relates to immigrants; and (2) invocation of the Insurrection Act. See NYTimes, Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right. (Gift article, accessible to all.)

The push to suspend the writ of habeas corpus came from Stephen Miller. The opposition to the effort came from an “arch-conservative” lawyer in the Office of the President who highlighted the fundamental nature of the right, which pre-dates the Constitution. In short, the writ of habeas corpus ensures that any person imprisoned has the right to judicial review of the legality of the imprisonment. It has been suspended only four times in our nation’s history—three times during foreign wars and once during the Civil War.

Discussions to invoke the Insurrection Act also came from Stephen Miller, with support from Vice President JD Vance.

The article is filled with details about the discussions, some of which took place in the Situation Room. The details are so specific that members of the administration are concerned that someone in Trump’s inner circle is electronically recording conversations in the Situation Room—the most secure, private room in the White House. The possibility of a “political mole” in Trump’s inner circle has sent the White House into a tizzy.

But that’s not the point. The point is that what finally stopped the idea of suspending the writ of habeas corpus and invoking the Insurrection Act was the administration’s fear of public backlash.

Per Haberman and Swan,

Under immense public pressure, the administration would subsequently take a different course of action. The most vocal immigration hard-liner, Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection commander-at-large, was removed from his post, and the administration held back on ICE pushes in cities in the weeks after Mr. Pretti’s death.

There it is: “Under immense public pressure.” That is what stopped the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the invocation of the Insurrection Act: The power of the people protesting on streets and overpasses, in town squares and in front of field offices of members of Congress.

It is the most important phrase in a 77-paragraph article, and it appears as an introductory clause in paragraph 76. It could have—should have—been in the headline: Public Pressure Stops Insurrection Act and Suspension of Writ of Habeas Corpus.

The grassroots resistance will never receive its due. But we aren’t in this effort for the recognition or thanks. We are doing it to protect our democracy. Time and again, the grassroots resistance has saved democracy. We will do so again in 2026 and 2028.

Concluding Thoughts

A section of Rachel Maddow’s program on Monday is mandatory watching. Her guest was election law attorney Marc Elias, and the subject was a tabletop exercise by Senate Democrats that simulated the worst election-suppression scenarios Trump might employ in November 2026. Usually, such reports descend into a catalog of horribles, ending with a vague suggestion that Trump is unstoppable.

Not so with this program. To the great credit of Rachel Maddow and Marc Elias, they talked about the “worst” that Trump might do—federal troops in the streets, the FBI seizing ballot boxes—and then discussed whether Democrats are prepared to deal with those scenarios. See Rachel Maddow Show, 6/15/2025.

What follows—especially the comments by Marc Elias—is confidence-inspiring. He outlines steps being taken by elected officials and voting rights groups to prepare for Trump’s efforts to steal the elections in 2026. He says that we are prepared on the legal front.

Rachel then asks, “And what is the role of Americans? Can they do anything?” Marc Elias says they can ensure they are ready to vote, educate themselves about the threats posed by Trump, and be prepared to take to the streets en masse to defend the election results, if need be. Which is exactly right.

The fever-dream of JD Vance and Stephen Miller about invoking the Insurrection Act presumes that the American people will cower and retreat in the face of armed thugs. Did Miller and Vance see what happened in Minneapolis? What part of ICE getting their ***** kicked by citizens with cellphones and whistles did they miss?

I would add to Marc Elias’s outstanding list of what we must do to protect elections the following: Win by overwhelming margins, which eliminates the opportunity to challenge the results in elections decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes.

We have already forgotten that prior to the November 2025 off-year elections, Trump was claiming that the elections were “rigged.” See this November 2025 alert (i.e., a year ago) from Democracy Docket, Trump Pushes Baseless Claims of ‘Rigged’ California Election, Promises ‘Criminal Review’ of Mail Ballots.

But immediately after the polls closed for the November 2025 elections, Trump stopped talking about rigged elections and claimed instead, “Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown, were the two reasons that republicans lost elections tonight.” [All caps omitted.]

Large winning margins are a strong defense against Trump’s attempts to cheat. The good news is that almost everything Trump is doing is motivating voters to turn out in massive numbers in November.

june 15

1967

june 15

1999

“The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.”