As you know, it is customary for the party in power to lose a large number of seats in the midterms. As I write, at 1:33 am, John Fetterman was elected to the Senate. Maggie Hassan was re-elected to the Senate in New Hampshire. Mark Kelly was leading in Arizona. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker were in a virtual tie in Georgia. The loss of seats by Democrats in the House appeared to be minimal. Control of both houses of Congress was unresolved.

There was no red wave.

Trump’s only big winner was J.D. Vance in Ohio, who beat the far better qualified Tim Ryan. Trump does not have a winning touch, and DeSanctimonious is planning to take him down.

Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Colorado Congresswoman, was apparently defeated. As was election denier Kari Lake in Arizona.

The fabulous Katie Porter, Congresswoman from California, was re-elected, as was Michigan Governor…

“The danger of enjoying jazz is the possibility of letting ourselves slide into the assumption that we understand it. To do so would make no more sense than believing that, say, an enjoyment of listening to records automatically transmits an understanding of record players. One look at such a machine’s inner workings would disabuse most of us of that notion, just as one look at a map of the universe of jazz would disabuse us of the notion that we understand that music in all the varieties into which it has evolved. But a jazz map that extensive hasn’t been easy to come by until this month, when design studio Dorothy put on sale their Jazz Love Blueprint. Measuring 80 centimeters by 60 centimeters (roughly two and half by two feet), the Jazz Love Blueprint visually celebrates ‘over 1,000 musicians, artists, songwriters and producers who have been pivotal to…

The 1% understand very well that the Republican Party is dedicated, first and foremost, to cutting the taxes of the rich. How else to explain the billionaires who don’t like Trump but spent millions on candidates who repeated The Former Guy’s Big Lie?

Of course, they want low taxes. But they have another goal: School choice. Somehow these billionaires became convinced that charters and vouchers are superior to public schools, and they want to make sure that those in public office agree with them, regardless of ample evidence that school choice has proven to be a failure over the past three decades.

Maggie Severns reports at GRID:

Some of the biggest Republican megadonors don’t support former president Donald Trump — but have wound up supporting his candidates.

Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel and currently the third-biggest donor to the 2022 midterms, is a business leader and…

“In 1960, photojournalist Ormond Gigli assembled 43 women, dressed them in refined, colorful garb, and situated them in 41 windows across the facade of the classic New York City brownstones. Years later, the image ended up being his most famous artwork. Back in the day, Gigli found himself working out of a studio on East 58th Street in the heart of Manhattan. Across the street stood a series of townhouses, set for demolition. Intent on capturing the beauty of the buildings before it was gone for good, the artist set to work on crafting the perfect image to memorialize the neighborhood he had come to love so well. He hadn’t the money to pay for professional models – or an access to a budget for a picture that had no sponsorship. So, he contacted the foreman of the building and convinced him to clear a 2-hour period of time for…

The following was included in an email edition I receive of the NY Times “The Morning.” The reporter, Claire Moses, was interviewing Astead Herndon, a political reporter who has been covering this election cycle. Following are (a portion of) his comments in response to Claire’s questions.

I live in Europe, where many people are only now starting to tune into the midterms. How would you explain to them, and others who need a refresher, why this election matters?

If the Republicans take back the House, it would change the scope of U.S. policy. We know they’d try to stop President Biden’s agenda. A Republican House would hurt Biden’s ability to respond to domestic challenges on his terms, like inflation, and to global crises — Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, has signaled that Republicans might stop approving aid for Ukraine.

We’ve also seen a global rise in fears of democratic…

Good Morning!

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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.

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“What explains poetry is that life is hard
But better than the alternatives …”
 — Alicia Ostriker, from ‘Daffodils’

“I’m a great believer in poetry out
of the classroom, in public places,
on subways, trains, on cocktail
napkins. I’d rather have my poems
on the subway than around the
seminar table at an MFA program.”
— Billy Collins

“Nobody interested in comics can pass through Amsterdam without visiting Lambiek. Having opened in 1968 as the third comic-book shop in human history, it now survives as the oldest one still in existence. But even those without a trip to the Netherlands lined up can easily marvel at one of Lambiek’s major claims to fame: the Comiclopedia, ‘an illustrated compendium of over 14,000 comic artists from around the world.’ Displaying the same kind of prescience that inspired him to open his store ahead of the comic-industry boom, Lambiek’s founder Kees Kousemaker launched this online encyclopedia in 1999, more than a year before Wikipedia first went live. The video above offers a brief illustrated history of the Comiclopedia, but the project’s ambition comes across just as clearly in alphabetically organized index pages. American comic-book icons like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby get extensive entries, of course, but so…

“… Over the course of his career he figured out a way to make the city’s architecture fit the human scale he favored. Faced with the same choice, [Rudy] Burckhardt’s wife of 40 years, the painter Yvonne Jacquette, opted to focus on the city’s skyscrapers. Opening Friday, ‘Picturing New York: The Art of Yvonne Jacquette and Rudy Burckhardt’ displays photographs by Burckhardt, who died at 85 in 1999, alongside paintings by Ms. Jacquette, 20 years his junior, who is still working. Burckhardt’s black-and-white photographs approach the city from several angles, descending from rooftops to street level and even into the subways. Ms. Jacquette’s paintings peer down into the canyons between high-rises. This pair of shows does not establish either artist as an unjustly overlooked talent, but it reveals the competing visions of the city behind a romantic and creative partnership. … A large percentage of the Burckhardt photographs on view…

“When Dexter Gordon recorded ‘GO’ for Blue Note Records on August 27, 1962, jazz was
moving in many different directions. Tenor/soprano saxophonist John Coltrane and trumpeter Miles Davis were leading the modal explosion, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman and pianist Cecil Taylor were exploring the possibilities of dissonant free jazz, and the soul-jazz organists of Philadelphia favored a funky, groove-oriented mixture of jazz and R&B. Gordon, however, remained a committed hard bopper, although ‘GO’was by no means a carbon copy of the tenor saxophonist’s 1940s and 1950s output. ‘GO’ came at a time when Gordon was enjoying a renaissance despite his well-publicized battles with heroin addiction and periods of incarceration during the 1950s. Although Gordon was among the most influential bop saxophonists of the 1940s, he recorded only sporadically
during the following decade. Gordon, in fact, was on parole from California’s Chino Prison
when, in 1960, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley…

Like Robert Hubbell, I have been perplexed about the statements on news stories that police are trying to identify the motive of the man who broke into the Pelosi home, shouting “Where’s Nancy?” and attacked her husband.

Rightwing media and prominent figures such as Don Trump Jr. have spread lies (amplified by Elon Musk), but the law authorities know what happened and they are charging the assailant with a long list of felonies.

I’m not putting the quote into italics so that you can see Hubbell’s use of italics.

Hubbell writes:

The attempted assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi has struck at the heart of America’s political dysfunction and mass delusion. Major media outlets are going out of their way to caution that “the assailant’s motives are unknown” and limiting their description of what occurred to “an attack on Paul Pelosi” without acknowledging that the intended target was…