(Author’s Note: This is a long, rambling, almost random set of musings on some of the comedies of two of the greatest dramatists in western letters. As it turns out, I have heavily leavened my own “thoughts” with long quotations from both authors, which may strike some readers as excessive. Well, if you don’t like…
Geoffrey Keezer Trio—“Brilliant Corners”
Definitely been neglecting the jazz thing, but now I’m back, with a couple of months of videos featuring performances of Thelonious Monk’s famously challenging “Brilliant Corners”. Geoffrey Keezer with Benjamin Shepherd, bass, and Christian Euman, drums. Recorded live at Sam First, Los Angeles, CA on June 17, 2018. Posted by Geoffrey Keezer.
The Afghan War Was So Bad, It’s Giving Mindless Interventionism A Bad Name! Go Figure!
Is Satan breaking out his ice skates? He damn well ought to be, because David “Never Met a War I Didn’t Want Someone Else to Fight” Ignatius is—wait for it—admitting that he was—wait for it, goddamn it, wait for it!—wrong about U.S. intervention in Afghanistan! The structure of the Kabul government has been rotting from…
Uncle Joe or Uncle Fuck-Up? Biden blows it big time. Again.
I desperately want Joe Biden to succeed as president, if only because of the alternative. But I’m starting to wonder if Uncle Joe wants it. His record for the past month or so has been abysmal. First there was the monumental bungling of the eviction relief issue, sourly and accurately summed up by David Von…
Shorter Kevin Drum: The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage? Fox News!
Okay, I just saved you about 4,000 words, the approximate length of El Kevbo’s recent meganalysis of the American mood, appearing in Mother Jones, The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage, which has been getting some semi-approving nods around the internet. “I’ve been spending considerable time digging into the source of our collective rage,” Kevie…
Yo, Anne Applebaum! Cut Henry Ford some slack! Not a lot of slack, you understand—just a little slack. In fact, just a very little slack
. Over at the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum has a long though I would say probably not definitive piece on the undeniably repulsive Mypillow guy, Mike Liddell, citing, among other things, some historical precedents regarding the damage Mike might do: Wacky though it seems for a businessman to invest so much in a conspiracy theory, there…
Rocket Man!
If you don’t mind—and even if you do—I’m going to take a brief victory lap for pointing out, waaaay ahead of the curve, that the ever-burgeoning billionaire obsession with space travel was really all about the dicks from the get-go, as the recent launch of Jeff Bezos’s all-mighty “Flying Phallus” so amply represents. Jeff, or…
Yo, Glenn Kessler! Three Pinocchios for Hakeem Jeffries? Then how about Four Pinocchios for you!
Okay, this one is verging on a golden oldie, because I am, you know, very lazy, but a week or two back Glenn Kessler, the WashPost’s “Fact Checker” really got my eminently gettable goat with this post The zombie claim that the 2017 tax cut gave ‘83 percent’ to the top 1 percent. Glenn appears…
A Cheer for Elizabeth Warren
Damn straight! My gal Lizzie, whom I confess has received more thumbs down than thumbs up from me in the past, holds the sad distinction of being the only Democrat—and thus of course the only member—of the Senate Armed Services Committee not to vote to boost the Biden administration’s already massively bloated defense budget from…
Daniel Larison reads the Washington Post editorial page so I don’t have to. Fred Kaplan has to ask, what’s it all about, anyway?
And thank God that Dan does read the Post for me, because if I did have to read it myself I’d have the shakes even worse than I’ve got ‘em now. In his excellent substack site Eunomia, Dan alerted me to the Post’s most recent eruption, taking them to task in his post China Hawks…