Peter Beinart has a characteristically excellent post in Jewish Currents, Antisemitic Zionists Aren’t a Contradiction in Terms, explaining why, both historically and today, many anti-Semites around the world praise and admire Israel—because they want their countries to be as ethnically “pure” as they imagine Israel to be, and because they wish “their” Jews would get…
The Gratitude Trio—“Monk’s Dream”
Dawn Clement, piano, Chuck Deardorf, bass, and Matt Wilson, drums. Posted by KNKX Public Radio
Can Nancy Drew crack this case? I’ll bet you $23.80 she can!
If you’re half as desperate for “escape” as I am, you’ll welcome the opportunity to take a 4-hour B-movie bath, courtesy of YouTube, in Nancy Drew, Detective (shown above), Nancy Drew, Reporter, Nancy Drew, Trouble-Shooter, and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, a sometimes delightful and often at least satisfying mini-series of sorts cranked out…
Political Notes from All Over
“Anyone but Joe,” anyone? Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Spending the last few weeks laughing at the Republicans over their self-inflicted imbroglio/embroilment trying to elect a speaker for the House of Representatives was a treat. Well, now it’s our turn to suffer, as Uncle Joe’s Corvette winter plus the upcoming Hunter Biden follies, which…
Shorter Yuval Levin: Just because the Republican Party’s right wing is acting like a bunch of nihilistic idiots doesn’t prove that they are a bunch of nihilistic idiots. At least, I hope it doesn’t.
Yeah, philosophical gent that he is, ole Yuval likes to take the long perspective on things, and after some hemming and hawing about what’s been going on in the House of Representatives, comes up with this conclusion: Even if the spoils of the speaker fight [i.e., the “reforms’ demanded by the far right] aren’t transformative,…
King Joe? Dictator Joe? Well, maybe. Sort of. We’ll just have to see how this plays out.
Regardless of how the current hullabaloo/Mexican standoff in the House is resolved, whether Kevin McCarthy gets the job, or some other poor emasculated schmuck takes over—a schmuckless schmuck, as it were—the odds are approximately a million to one that the House of Representatives will be all but ungovernable in 2023. Specifically, I think the Republicans…
Shorter India: “The United States of ‘America’? Isn’t that one of those little western countries?”
That’s the perspective from New Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai, as reported by NYT guy Roger Cohen in his long post, Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World, suggesting that the Biden administration’s moralizing attempt to turn the current world situation into Cold War II isn’t playing too well beyond the Atlantic community of nations, almost…
The History of Jazz Bass (in 15 Choruses)
Jazz bassist Paul Thompson, aka pdbass, salutes by imitation 15 legendary jazz bassists, over a century of pizzo n’ arco, starting with Pops Foster and concluding with Christian McBride. If these are merely names to you, well, it’s time you got yourself educated.
Carmen McRae—“Monk’s Dream”
Actually a Monk three-in-one from the incomparable Carmen: Monk’s Dream/Ugly Beauty/Rhythm A Ning. Filmed in New York back in 1990. No information on her rhythm boys. Posted by atube亨
Hypocrisy is the homage that Ross Douthat pays to virtue
If, as increasingly appears to be the case, Donald Trump’s wild career will end, not with a bang but a whimper, then, sighs NYT opinionist Ross Douthat, more in sorrow than in anger, there will not be any accountability for Trump’s soft enablers within the Republican Party. There was a certain political accountability when the…