Legal humor here “Can’t we come up with something with a little more depth than ‘Rough day at the office, hunbun?’“ “You should have heard the crowd when I ran him over. Like I’m the bad guy!” “I get to keep the swords! Can you beat it? That’s my reward! I get to keep the…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Hank Jones, Joe Lovano: “Monk’s Mood”
Wonderful shots of Grand Old Man Hank. Posted by vpro vrije geluiden
Truck drivers wanted! Must be willing to work for less than they’re worth!
America needs truck drivers! We’re about 25,000 short right now, and we’ll need hundreds of thousands of them in the future, according to Bloomberg Business. But where are they? Well, they’re all over the place, but they aren’t willing to spend their lives on the road working for about $38,000 a year. If that’s the…
The Republican Civil Wars
Over at Reason, Matt Welch is keeping watch over the continuing Republican kerfuffle/steel cage death match being waged by the Trumpians and the Republican Establishment. Matt found a particularly piquant angle, noting the rage with which the National Review has been treating Trump in recent days, after, well, after saying what great ideas he has…
Why did the Roman Empire fall? The horse!
A few months ago, I ran a seven-part collection of near-random ruminations on Edward Gibbon’s monumental The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, not quite a book report, since I only read about two thirds of Gibbon’s work. Gibbon is famous/infamous for summing up his account of the D&F with the sentence “I have…
Thelonious Monk— “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are”
https://youtu.be/CTijrDIU-m4 Why not hear from the man himself? Thelonious in Japan, 1963, with Charlie Rouse on sax, Frank Dunlop on drums, and Butch Warren on bass. Fuzzy picture, excellent sound, and excellent band. The elaborately phonetic spelling of “Bolivar Blues,” presumably some sort of in-joke, refers to the Bolivar Hotel in New York, sometime home…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “Don’t be cute, Hälfgaard! This damn well does violate my ‘no pussies’ rule and you damn well know it!” “Because Hrolf the Wrathful don’t stop for kitty litter, that’s why!” “That’s not your pet, Hälfgaard! That’s my lunch!” “I don’t know which is gayer, Hälfgaard, your papoose or you!” “I hope it…
The Republican Party earned Donald Trump
Starting with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Republican Party became the Irresponsible Party. Republicans in and out of government laid siege to the Clinton presidency, pursuing him with an endless series of shamelessly partisan investigations, law suits, and court decisions, finally impeaching him for lying about cheating on his wife, after having…
Bombs away? Please, far away!
Remember the B-1 bomber? It was, well, a disaster. President Carter cancelled it, on the rather sensible grounds that ICBMs had made manned bombers obsolete. But Ronald Reagan never let a little thing like obsolescence stand in the way of spending money, as long as it was for something cool, like a useless long-range bomber,…
If Tom Friedman wrote a prescient column and no one read it, did it make a sound?
Yes, you read that right. Tom “Falling Tree” Friedman wrote a prescient column, and you can read it right here. Tom points out that greatest source of terrorism in the Middle East is not Iran, not ISIS, not al Qaeda, but our most beloved buddies, the Saudis. I agree with Tom 100% on this one,…