Yeah, I should be happy. Two things that I wanted to happen so much that I was afraid to say that I wanted them to happen—the collapse of the Republican attempt to repeal ObamaCare and the victory of presumptive senator Roy “Super Bigot” Moore1 in the Alabama Republican primary—have happened. But I’m still not happy,…
Author: Alan Vanneman
#Indefensible? Sure, but that’s why I love her!
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wants tax cuts for the rich so he can afford his wife. Afterwords However, it is totally not true that Steve said “Only morons pay the estate tax.” That was chief White House economic adviser Gary Cohn.
Ricardo Descalzo plays Crumb—“ Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik”, an homage to Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”
Spanish pianist Ricardo Descalzo plays “Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik”, a nine-part suite/“rumination” by George Crumb, giving a nod to both Monk’s title and Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” Crumb is 1 of 21 contemporary composers commissioned by Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli to write variations on “Round Midnight”. The nine parts are titled Nocturnal theme, Charade, Premonition,…
Trollin’ Donald
The President of the United States is getting in a pissing match with the National Football League? And he’s cracking down on, you know, foreigners? Possible subtext: Please ignore the fact that I’m totally screwing up both health care and tax reform and God knows what else, not to mention all that Russia shit. Did…
Mitch McConnell’s pathetic ego versus Donald Trump’s pathetic ego
In the annals of ignominious pusillanimity1, few events gleam with a more sickly hue than the recent spat between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump over who was “more” responsible for the “not repeal and not replace” ObamaCare debacle a few months back. It’s only “fitting”, I suppose, that Donnie was “right”:…
Thank you again, John McCain!
Every Republican with a conscience—that is to say, all seven of them—must be down on their knees thanking John McCain for putting what is very probably the last, or at least penultimate, nail in the coffin of the Republican’s grotesque “ZombieCare” bill, so named because the only people who would benefit from its enactment are…
Don Mock—“Round Midnight”
From the VeoJam website. Visit Mock’s site as well.
Two or three, or four, or more things I hate about Harvard
The hits just keep coming, don’t they? This piece is a bit of a recapitulation—aka I’ve been lying down on the job—but Harvard, fair Harvard, whom I’ve booted around before in the past two weeks with no mean gusto—is back in the news, and not in a good way. First, and most ghastly, is the…
Ramesh Ponnuru, defending Trump’s UN speech, lays an inverted curate’s egg
What is a curate’s egg? Webster’s Third International defines it thusly: “something with both good and bad parts or qualities [so called from a cartoon in the weekly Punch depicting a curate who was given a stale egg by his bishop and declared that parts of it were excellent]”. So what is an inverted curate’s…
Alas, Poor Hillary!
Only in America (probably) could a woman running for office who received 2.7 million more votes than her opponent be reviled and ridiculed as a “loser”. Yet such is the hard fate of the hard to love Hillary Rodham Clinton. If I were really mean, I would say that Hillary can’t stop stepping on her…