Why was he so intent on getting to the Capitol?

Another mass shooting. This one in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Mark Sumner gives the basics for Daily Kos, though one can get details from any news outlet. All I’ll say is shooting people at a Fourth of July parade is another way for the gun crowd to say to the rest of us: No place is safe. The fifth hearing of the January 6th Committee was almost two weeks ago. My discussion of it got left behind as I wrote about other things. So I’m not going to discuss it in detail. It’s old news, though I still want to mention it. Brandi Buchman of Kos liveblogged it, with part 1 here and part 2 here. The big thing from this hearing was the pressure the nasty guy applied to the Department of Justice and now they all threatened to resign of he installed Jeffrey Clark as AG. Sumner reported that the members of the committee have been receiving threats of violence. They’ve added security details for the members. Threats to the members were similar to threats to the various people who thwarted the nasty guy’s plans with the difference they weren’t offered protection. Sumner also discussed the fifth hearing in detail. Buchman’s summary of the day included how much pressure the nasty guy was placing on the DOJ and how many participants asked the nasty guy for a pardon – which means they knew what they were doing was criminal. Buchman also wrote about the important points: The nasty guy tried to corrupt the Department of Justice. And there was a scheme to submit fake slates of electors. Buchman also liveblogged the sixth hearing. The two parts are here and here. This the hearing featuring Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Her first big bit of testimony was the nasty guy wanting to remove the metal detectors from his morning speech at the Ellipse because he knew attendees would be armed yet they would not be aiming at him. Her second was that the nasty guy tried to grab the steering wheel when the Secret Service refused to take him to the Capitol to lead the assault in person. Here’s Sumner’s summary of the day. And here’s his discussion of the steering-wheel grabbing scene. The obvious reason for not going to the Capitol is because it wasn’t a secure location. That’s the reason the Secret Service gave. The other big reason, understood by the White House staff, was if the nasty guy was seen at the Capitol it would be obvious he ordered the attack. With him back at the White House there was still a small bit of deniability. Charles Fishman tweeted more about about the steering-wheel grabbing incident. Carl Bernstein, who helped unravel Watergate, asked an important question:

Why was Donald Trump so intent on getting to the Capitol? Why did he want to be there with all those armed people?

Fishman gave the reason that the nasty guy knew the vice nasty wasn’t going to interfere with the vote counting so he was going to do it himself. Another bit from the testimony wasn’t good for Meadows. It showed he was indifferent to violence. Of course, after Cassidy Hutchinson testified there were a lot of voices who tried to discredit her. That’s a sign of how potent her testimony was. Joan McCarter of Kos discussed some of these attacks. She also warned DC media that an anonymous source is not the same as testimony under oath, so stop with the both-sides nonsense. She also noted the discrediting attacks are all about little details and nothing about refuting the case being built. So don’t fall for that either. It has also been a while since I’ve written about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most of the daily updates on Kos add nothing new, so I have only a few posts to discuss. Kos of Kos reported that with the new long range artillery Ukraine has gotten from NATO Russian supply depots and command centers way behind the front are no longer safe from attack. There are a lot of videos of these types of places going boom. On Saturday, June 25 Kos reported that the inevitable happened – Ukraine pulled out of Severodonetsk. This was one of two cities in the Luhansk region still controlled by Ukraine. There wasn’t a lot of military importance, but a lot that’s symbolic. On Wednesday the 29th Kos reported that Turkey has removed its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO. It looks like Turkey extracted the concessions it wanted. These are things like stopping support of the PKK, the party in Turkey working for Kurdish independence and perhaps being violent about it. Putin had said he started this war because NATO is too close. Well, now NATO will be closer. Also, NATO’s rapid reaction force is being increased ten times and much of the increase will be based in the Baltic countries and other places along eastern Europe. NATO even closer. Snake Island is in the Black Sea a ways off Ukraine’s coast. Russia captured it early in the war. And now Ukraine has reclaimed it. Tyler Rogoway, creator of The War Zone, tweeted:

That the Russian military & its much-touted Black Sea Fleet couldn't secure an island 170 miles from its homeport from a war-torn adversary with fixed-wing combat aircraft numbering in the dozens & no real operable Navy is an absolute stunning failure of massive proportions.

On Saturday, July 2 Sumner reported that Ukraine has been keeping quiet about their advances in the Kherson area, though on that day they started revealing a little bit. Ukraine is doing just fine making advances into Russian held territory. However, the important news is of Lysychansk. This is the city on the bluff above Severodonetsk, a great place to defend and to shoot artillery from. Alas, Ukraine has withdrawn from Lysychansk, and only a week after it left Severodonetsk. Again, there isn’t a whole lot of strategic value, but from Putin’s view a lot of propaganda value. When I taught music theory at the college level and in Detroit most of my students were black. In my third or fourth year there one student asked why I don’t have examples of music by black composers of classical music. My answer was mostly I didn’t know their music well enough to use them in teaching (note to self: about time I learned). Another part was the black composers I did know were from the 20th century and didn’t write the kind of music that matched the topics I was teaching. Since then I’ve heard a lot more about Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, sometimes known as the Black Mozart. His physical prowess was the stuff of legends (fencing was just one of his skills) and his musical skills were right up there too. His star is shining brighter these days and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has recently played a work or two. But beyond him I (and many others in the classical music world) could not name a black composer active before 1900. Dartagnan of the Kos community introduced me to Vincente Lusitano. He was born about 1520 of a Portuguese father and African mother. In 1551 he traveled to Rome and wrote some mighty fine Renaissance style music. Alas, his ancestry contributed to him not being well known through history. Dartagnan included a 12 minute video of one of his pieces. Quite beautiful.