Zionists steal fresh air, kill Michael Jackson

The best way to deal with idiots is to make fun of them.

Apparently some moonbats showed up to protest an exhibition of The Dead Sea Scrolls at an Ontario museum, so these guys decided to make fun of the nutcases.

The Anti-Zionists would probably say, "the Zionists would steal all the fresh air if they only could!" And Michael Jackson was a nasty little anti-Semite himself.



H/t-The Texas Scribbler.

Wynton Marsalis swings Happy Birthday

Wynton proves anything can be made to swing- by a talented enough player, that is.

Wynton is such a controversial figure. I know all sorts of jazz fans who don't like his playing...not "soulful" enough, however they define that. The great thing about jazz, though, is that so many different kinds of playing "work"-no, Wynton doesn't sound like Lee Morgan, to name one especially soulful trumpeter. So what?

And I suppose Wynton's gift for self-promotion rankles some. He's the only jazz guy you see promoting various (non-musical) products in ads, he's the media's go-to guy for commentary on jazz, he was heavily featured on Ken Burns' "Jazz" series, both as commentator and player. he wears really nice guys and is obviously wealthy. Some people can't abide others' success, I suppose. And the trumpet-playing community, especially with the lack of work today, is intensely competitive, and notoriously vicious towards their own.

"Fly Me to the Moon"; JFK "High Hopes"-Sinatra

Dedicated to the Apollo 11 astro-nauts, as Frank says it. As he noted, he'd played the Moon a couple nights before Messrs Armstrong, Collins, etc. got there- the Sands (ba dum dum!) at the Sea of Tranquility, I think.

Frank, as you probably know, was instrumental in electing JFK, whose pledge was redeemed that July 1969 day.

H/t-Irish Elk.


And here's Frank's JFK High Hopes-funny, as much of a Sinatra fan as I am I'd never heard this before. Corny as hell, but fun.




Google Moon has all the Moon landing sites.

A detailed look at Pedro Martinez

The newest Phillie!

I'm psyched, though I know (of course, of course) he may pitch 1/3 of inning and blow his arm out forever. The guy is 37 years old, hasn't had a good year (in both performance and durability) since 2005, and was just league average in 130-some innings in '06.

What the hell-a guy can dream, can't he?


All these figures are via Baseball-Reference.

Pedro has pitched 2782 2/3 innings over 17 seasons. He has 214 wins, with an insane winning percentage of .684. He's been selected for eight All-Star Games.

His "most similar pitcher" is, interestingly enough, Bosox co-hero of the 2004 Series, Curt Schilling. Nevertheless, Curt's career is not really Pedro's equal. similarities notwithstanding.

He's won three Cy Youngs, 2 in the AL, one in the NL, with Montreal.

He's led his league in ERA five times, in strikeouts three times, in wins once, and like his supposed doppelganger Schilling led the league in K/BB ratio a bunch of times, namely four.


All this while handling a relatively light workload because of his slight (listed at 5'11, 170) frame.

And Pedro's been, I suppose, adequately compensated for his striking success, with $146,259,585 coming his way through last year.

Sotomayor's going to be a hell of a Justice

For one thing, she doesn't buy into Obama's "empathy" crapola. Here's her exchange on the subject with Sen. Jon Kyl:

Kyl: "Let me ask you about what the president said--and . . . whether you agree with him. He used two different analogies. He talked once about the 25 miles--the first 25 miles of a 26-mile marathon.

"And then he also said, in 95% of the cases, the law will give you the answer, and the last 5% legal process will not lead you to the rule of decision. The critical ingredient in those cases is supplied by what is in the judge's heart. Do you agree with him that the law only takes you the first 25 miles of the marathon and that that last mile has to be decided by what's in the judge's heart?"


Sotomayor: "No, sir. That's--I don't--I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. He has to explain what he meant by judging. I can only explain what I think judges should do, which is judges can't rely on what's in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the laws. The job of a judge is to apply the law. And so it's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law. The judge applies the law to the facts before that judge..."

Thereby proving, at the very least, that Sotomayor is far more qualified than the "former law professor" who selected her. The empathy argument is particularly inappropriate for appellate judges, who don't have the parties in question in front of them, and can't, presumably, read minds at that remove.


UPDATE: Ann Althouse thinks Sotomayor is merely imitating John Roberts's stance-or pose-in his confirmation hearings. Bad acting, or lying? Neither?


FURTHER UPDATE: Sonia tells us more about her philosophy:

"I would like to take this opportunity to clear up any lingering questions, and reassure the American public I will bring to the Supreme Court a jurisprudence borne of the intellect of Louis Brandeis, along with the spicy salsa rhythms of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz. ¡Azucar! ¡Arriba!...

"To the casual observer, it probably seems absurd to have greasy Italian 'goodfellas' like Justices Alito and Scalia working inside the legal system, but if we give them a chance they may eventually break the code of Omerta and finally turn state's evidence against their Cosa Nostra bosses..."

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

Just finished this "Southern Gothic" novel.

First thought-I would never have read this if I'd known it was an Oprah's Book Club Selection. I never willingly submit to mass tastes (oh, all right, I'm a huge Beatles' fan), but I would've looked askance at Oprah's nod-she of the Eckhart Tolle endorsement and similar fluff.

Second thought-But this is s reasonably good book. Yes, it's 150 pages worth of ideas in a 307-page package, and yes, Flannery O'Connor did Southern Gothic immeasurably better-but to say author Carson McCullers is no O'Connor isn't saying much. Who is?


THIALH, written during the Depression, does feature its share of freaks, like many of O'Connor works-such as two male deaf-mutes in a love affair, doomed by one of the mutes' kleptomania; a middle-aged, perfume-wearing male cafe owner who yearns after a teenaged female customer; a dirty, dazed, violent radical who hopes to find a receptive world for his ideas; and a black radical doctor who is perpetually angry at his simple but mostly happy children, from whom is estranged. The doctor named one of his sons "Karl Marx." For the most part bad things happen to this cast of reasonably decent, if often socially marginal people.

And yes, I took on this book, with so many other books awaiting me, because I thought it would be "like" O'Connor's work. As is probably obvious this book is more about radical politics than religion, though O'Connor's "Christ-haunted South" does reveal itself a few times, such as during conflicts between the cultured, apparently agnostic black doctor, who thinks Marx has supplanted Christ, and his unsophisticated, believing daughter. The (false) choice between striving for justice on this world and waiting for it in the next is set up by the two, in often moving fashion. There is also a fundamentalist preacher, who, like some of his type, doesn't always recognize that the "right words" must be matched with the right actions.


The book mentions, more than once, Gastonia, NC, which I found interesting because I have family there. Gastonia used to be an important mill town, and was mentioned in the book, I imagine, because of the violent, and pivotal, Loray Mill strike of 1929, which ultimately resulted in the death of Gastonia's police chief and a female striker. The strike helped to set back union organizing in the South for generations.

It's amusing that the white radical issues a manifesto on "The Affinity between Fascism and Our Democracy"-shades of Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism."



There is a movie based on McCullers' work, with Alan Arkin and Sondra Locke. I've never seen it but it has a good rating from IMDB voters.

Stan Kenton-"Minor Booze"

For those who think Stan Kenton couldn't swing, this track might change a few minds. Stan, especially when in his Innovations in Modern Music mode, often wasn't trying to swing. Here his band does so mightily.

Phillies add Pedro Martinez

This is exciting news, to me at least.

Likely Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez (his numbers with the Red Sox in the late '90's to early 2000's are ridiculous) is a Phillie!

And he's a Phil for the low, low price of $1 million plus $1.5 mill more in incentives.


It really is a low, low price, if Pedro's got enough left to be even a league-average pitcher. This isn't like so many other mid-year deals where a contending team gives up prospects to a fading team to get a mediocre starter-Pedro may well be just okay at this point, but the Phils gave up no players. It's a good risk.

Leading Phils' blogger Beerleaguer's take:

"Critics of the move say he's no better than a fifth starter and scoff at the commitment, even if they did get him from the clearance rack. I'm of the mind that adding Pedro is a big deal, and that the lines between the top and bottom of the Phillies rotation are blurred. The team leader in wins, Jamie Moyer, has a 5.99 ERA and has surrendered 21 home runs. I'm not exactly worried about where Pedro falls into place. The bar isn't set especially high and they can afford to experiment with the final spot...."

UPDATE: Pedro hasn't pitched in one of these for a while (maybe next year?!), although he used to be a staple: Tuesday's All-Star Game ratings were below last year's, but higher than other recent years.

Jesuitical joshing

Sure, the Catholic Church is no longer the Whore of Babylon, now that a certain type of Catholic bashing is out of favor (for the most part), but as Dan Brown would have you know, a lot of the orders and practices of the Church are still awfully suspicious. For example, you just can't trust those Jesuits, who have a slickly veiled conspiracy going about starting an even slicker conspiracy, as Matthew at The Shrine of the Holy Whapping informs us:

"..[T]he core of the true secret Jesuit conspiracy is, at its heart, a vast, concerted effort to spread rumors of a secret Jesuit conspiracy...."

Or how 'bout the Sisters of Life:

"Obviously, the new ninjas of the Church. They're young, fit, can rollerblade silently and swiftly, and I bet you could fit a sawed-off shotgun under one of those habits. Death on wheels."

Or Anglican Use Parishes:

"Under the Church of Our Lady of the Atonement is a secret vault stuffed with documents proving Cranmer was really Shakespeare, Shakespeare was really Bacon, Bacon was really Queen Elizabeth I, and Miguel de Cervantes was two Iranian women and a midget under a large trenchcoat."

H/t-Cacciaguida.

The graph that dare not speak its name

The extent of Antarctic sea ice keeps increasing.

You will see this noted in the major media when--the entire Southern Hemisphere freezes over, maybe. It's just not "newsworthy"-i.e., it doesn't fit the accepted narrative, which always focuses on the decline in sea ice at the other end of the globe.

Michael Jackson: anti-Semite

Let's not turn this guy into a saint just yet.

Jackson, more than once, issued slurs against Jewish people.

Here's a phone message from Jackson in 2005, that was aired on Good Morning America:

"They suck - they're like leeches. I'm so tired of it. They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars, and everything, end up with, penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

Here Jackson was, apparently, blaming "the Jews", rather than his own lavish spending habits, for his financial woes.

One of Jackson's lawyers said the conversation "was recorded without permission." No denial, in other words.



And then, of course, there was Jackson's 1995 song "They Don't Care About Us", which included this deathless prose:

"Jew me/Sue me/Everybody do me/Kick me/Kike me"

No wonder Nancy Pelosi is shying away from a resolution honoring the bigot.

The President prevaricates

Two things are driving me absolutely nuts. And yes, I know that the 53% of the population that voted Hopey/Changey last November doesn't like hearing this stuff, but while I'm focusing less on political stuff now, I still retain the right to rant every now and then.

One is the utter inability of the Philadelphia Inquirer, that exemplar of liberal media bias, to publish without a smiling photo of the President on the front page. There he is today, celebrating the global warming "deal" (non-binding) to assail the global economy even more than his tax and spending policies have done/will do, by restricting CO2 emissions. Which emissions, of course, aren't pollution in any sense of the word, but rather very effective plant food.

I guess this shouldn't bother me much, though- the Inky could be out of business any day now.


The second thing that's driving me nuts is how much Obama has lied about that he gets away with. When do you see him challenged on his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making $250,000? He might as well have said "read my lips", as the pledge was repeated ad nauseum. But he's already broken it with his tobacco tax hike, which is as regressive a tax boost as anything yet thought of. And there's plenty more to come.

Not so surprising then, that Obama's approval rating is now just 51%, the lowest ever, and his strongly disaprove number is 38%, his highest ever, as measured by Rasmussen. Either people had a lousy Fourth of July weekend or the fact that Obama's economic policies aren't working is really starting to sink in. No wonder they're talking about a second stimulus package, which I assume would entail simply handing each paycheck directly to Tim Geithner, or his representative.

Backrow Politics-Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band; Give it One-Maynard Ferguson

Now that Rene's Apple has purged all the politics (ha!) here's a great tune, Backrow Politics (the trumpets are in the back of a big band, or a classical orchestra, for that matter) by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, probably the best big jazz group out there today. Super-tight playing by Bob Summers, Wayne Bergeron, Willie Bario, and Dan Savon. Bergeron is on lead; they all solo as well, with Summers really delivering the goods. What a blast (no pun intended.)


UPDATE: Here's the original article when it comes to trumpet section features-Maynard Ferguson's Give It One. This speeded-up version is about as subtle as a Joe Frazier upper-cut, but it's exciting as hell nonetheless. Dig Peter Erskine on drums. The soprano sax solo is by Mike Migliore (I think.) This tune was MF's opener for years, and I heard it more than a few times.

The White vs. the Red

I'm pretty close to finishing The Last Plantagenets, an engrossing look at English kings of the 14th and 15th Centuries, and The War of The Roses.

Engrossing it is, though the author, Thomas Costain, does have his annoying biases-he's very pro-Protestant (or, I should say, pro-proto Protestants-i.e., John Wyclif's Lollards) , and he doesn't much admire Kings who'd rather have made peace with France, like Richard II, than smite them. It's true that the English people at that time mostly felt the same way.

But Costain does correct the historical "record", as largely passed down through Shakespeare, about, for example, Richard III, who was NOT a hunchback, and not a bad guy, either. He didn't murder his nephews, who were in truth more rightfully heirs to the throne than he himself was.

Gilligan never does get off the island

If aliens are monitoring our TV programs, this is what they're seeing-it varies by distance, of course.

Sudden thought-would Ginger still be hot after she's red-shifted?


H/t-Reality Carnival.

Copland on the prairie

Hoedown from Rodeo from Eleanor Stewart on Vimeo.

Aaron Copland's Rodeo, with a most unique set of "dancers." Very cool.


H/t-Don McClane.

Fred Astaire > Michael Jackson

Let's get serious, folks. I'm hearing some talk on the nets about how Michael Jackson was the "greatest dancer ever." Yes, MJ could move.

But this is akin to the claiming that Michael Jordan was "the greatest basketball player ever", or, even sillier, "the greatest athlete ever." There's just a little lack of perspective here, as in, the world didn't begin when you personally became aware of it. There's such a thing as history.

In fact, ballet choreographer George Balanchine called Astaire "the greatest dancer in the world . . . the most innovative, the most elegant dancer..."

Fred was often the most fun to watch when he didn't have a partner. In this scene from Royal Wedding, Fred invents brilliant ways to use inanimate partners to fool around with. Fred's in a gym, having a blast with a hat stand, bowling pins, weights, and more. Great music, too.

What fun-this is that wonderful intersection between pop culture and elite talent that I've called High Pop, for want of a better name. It's a world Astaire, Sinatra, and just a few others occupied.