News Item: IRS Targets Groups With “Patriot” In Their Name

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Rain didn’t keep Cinderella away from the 58th annual Drama Desk Awards, at Town Hall in New York on Sunday evening. Laura Osnes, who won Outstanding Actress in a Musical for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” looked the part in a gold dress with spike heel sandals to match. What, no glass slippers? “I’m Laura,” she quipped. “Cinderella wears the glass slippers . . . and besides, it’s raining!”

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When a forgotten star from Hollywood’s Golden Age died recently it brought back the story of her long-ago professional competition with a more famous contemporary who died many years ago. Now that both stars are gone, if you’ve ever imagined what it would be like as a famous Hollywood movie star, which one would you choose to be?

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I’ve been wondering what makes some disorders sexy and worth confessing while other remain embarrassing and permanently in the closet.  It’s ok to be bulimic, for example, even though that conjures up horrible images and smells but you won’t hear Christine Quinn come out about her hemorrhoids or bunions.  All sorts of addictions are “in” -  drugs, alcohol, sex, compulsive shopping - even shoplifting, but ulcers, diabetes, psoriasis, emphysema, gum disease, irritable bowel syndrome - you can’t find any public figure admitting to one of those.

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     In January of 2011, Delta Airlines announced its support of Saudi Arabian Airline’s application to join its Sky Team global airline alliance.  Delta’s vice-president had this to say:  “We are honored that Saudi Arabian (airline) has chosen to link its future growth and success with Delta and our SkyTeam partners.”   We should remember that word “honored” in light of Delta enforcing the rules that pertain to the Saudi Airline and Kingdom:  No Jew can enter Saudi Arabia.  This means that no Jew can board a plane on American soil headed for Saudi Arabia.  Let’s be more specific:  no American Jew can board an American Delta plane on American soil that is jointly operated by Saudi Air.  When pressed on this disgraceful practice, Delta blames it on the Saudis, saying that they (Delta) are merely following the dictates of the country of destination.  We should keep in mind that Delta voluntarily entered into this partnership with eyes wide open regarding Saudi policies and mouths watering for the increased income that 35 additional Middle Eastern destinations would provide.

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The multi-talented Sam Harris has had quite a ride since winning Star Search in its first season to his two nights performing at 54 Below in NYC earlier this week. The singer/songwriter is sensational!  He kicked the show off with a strong U2 and Sondheim medley including “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “I’m Still Here” with his own special lyrics backed by his musical director Todd Schroeder on piano. Schroeder showed off his jazz skills with Jimi Hendrix’ “Red House Blues.”

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In his influential book, A Checklist Manifesto, Dr. Atul Gawande describes how simple checklists can revolutionize medicine. The use of hospital checklists has already produced significant benefits including fewer surgical mishaps, and lower infection and hospital complication rates. Most checklists are simple and easy to understand, so outside review organizations have embraced them in the practice of medicine.

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What a tragedy that someone as intelligent in some areas as British physicist Stephen Hawking, can be so stupid or weak in others.
In what is unfortunately a big win for the forces fighting to destroy the Jewish state, Hawking capitulated to the demands of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement and cancelled his plans to attend a major international conference in Israel in June. He apparently cited “his belief that he should respect a Palestinian call to boycott contacts with Israeli academics,” the Associated Press story notes.
Boycotting academics because one has a quarrel with their government is as ugly and unfair as boycotting athletes for the same reason – it’s bullying; it’s blaming individuals for the policies of their government. It’s wrong. Particularly in a free country where the government is not overseeing the academics or the athletes. Academia, like athletics, is supposed to be above the political fray, but, of course, the refusal of the International Olympic Committee to hold a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes murdered during the Munich games proves otherwise, so, this should not be such a surprise, I guess.
Rumors flew for hours the other day when the story broke in the notoriously anti-Semitic British rag The Guardian.
He was boycotting, then he cancelled for health reasons, then he was boycotting again.
The AP headline read “Stephen Hawking backs boycott of Israeli academics.”
Wow.
What a fine plan, to boycott one of the world’s most academically productive countries, where things are developed to better mankind all day long, in favor of the folks whose biggest claim to fame is the suicide bomber.
What kind of a moron is this guy, to lend his name to such an effort?
I will never be able to see him in the same light, again. And, hopefully, his stock in the academic world will suffer a fate similar to that of former movie great Mel Gibson, whose star has faded to the point that people think first of his anti-Semitic leanings rather than his latest film, when his name comes up.
My question to Mr. Hawking would be, was he unaware of the Israel/Palestinian conflict when he first agreed to attend this conference? Did this decades-old conflict come as news to him, so that rather than just not attend if he sides with the Islamists over the Jews, he had to hand the anti-Semitic anti-Israel forces a publicity coup? Does he not recognize the repugnant nature of depriving the world of what could be gained by including Israeli academics – arguably among the world’s most accomplished – in favor of an ill-conceived movement that threatens the entire region and the world?
The A.P. story says that “the University of Cambridge released a statement Wednesday indicating that Hawking had told the Israelis last week that he would not be attending ‘based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott.’”
University officials said they had “previously understood” that Hawking’s decision was based solely on health concerns, but were later informed otherwise by Hawking’s office.
No one said so, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the good professor had received threats against himself or his loved ones that helped him reach his decision.
In any case, his decision is the wrong one, and the respect I had for the man before this has vanished like the morning fog. I hope I’m not the only one feeling this way, and that Mr. Hawking soon comes to understand the breadth of the wrongness of his decision and his handling of the matter.

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Thought ObamaCare was an unaffordable and an unsustainable entitlement that hasn’t even kicked in yet? You haven’t seen anything yet…for behold amnesty for illegal aliens, which makes socialized medicine look like a walk in the budget park.

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The New York cabaret community turned out at Birdland, Saturday afternoon, to celebrate their special affection for our four-legged pals at a benefit for Zani’s Furry Friends, an animal rescue organization, with a special show, “Love Makes The World Go ‘Round.”  The nearly two hour show kicked off with song and dance man Lee Roy Reams doing a terrific high energy “Before The Parade Passes By.” He was so terrific that the shows co-host, Eric Michael Gillett, later urged: “Lee Roy, I’ll pinch you if you sing some more.”

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Having long been a political junkie and covering that “biz” in Washington DC for most of my career, I’ve transitioned to NYC where Cabaret and Broadway is my bailiwick. So it seems apropos to take a closer look at an actor who combines the two in one role.

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There was this article in the Associated Press this week that, with a seemingly simple tale, really tells the whole story of the Israel Palestinian conflict.
It was titled, Disabled Gaza baby lives in Israel hospital, and it described the life of Palestinian toddler Mohammed al-Farra, who has never lived anywhere but “the yellow-painted children’s ward in Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital.”
Because he was born with a rare genetic disease, the baby’s hands and feet had to be amputated, so his parents abandoned him. The Palestinian government won’t pay for his care, so the 3 ½-year-old lives in the hospital with his grandfather.
“There’s no care for this child in Gaza, there’s no home in Gaza where he can live,” said the grandfather, Hamouda al-Farra. “He can’t open anything by himself; he can’t eat or take down his pants. His life is zero without help.”
So, where is this child – a product of the people bent on the destruction of the Jewish state and the extermination of its people – being cared for? In Israel, naturally, by Israeli medical personnel.
This seems to me to say everything one needs to know about who each side of this conflict is.
But, there’s more.
The story goes on to explain that “Mohammed’s plight is an extreme example of the harsh treatment some families mete to the disabled, particularly in the more tribal-dominated corners of the Gaza Strip… and it also demonstrates a costly legacy of Gaza’s strongly patriarchal culture that prods women into first-cousin marriages and allows polygamy, while rendering mothers powerless over their children’s fate.”
So, what we see illustrated here is that the Palestinians have some very serious cultural issues that, if not corrected, doom them, and therefore their neighbors, to a terrible future, and that the Israelis possess all the compassion and humanity in the equation.
The story says that “Mohammed was rushed to Israel as a newborn for emergency treatment” because “his genetic disorder left him with a weakened immune system, crippling his bowels, and an infection destroyed his hands and feet, requiring them to be amputated.”
His mother was forced to abandon him, the story says because her “husband, ashamed of their son, threatened to take a second wife if she didn’t leave the baby and return to their home in the southern Gaza Strip,” where “polygamy is permitted but isn’t common.”
Incest, sexual slavery, no women’s rights, no compassion or mechanism for caring for the disabled, appear to be just the tip of this group’s cultural/societal deficiencies.
“In deeply patriarchal parts of Gaza — not in all the territory — men believe they have ‘first rights’ to wed their female cousins, even above the women’s own wishes,” the story says. “Parents approve the partnerships because it strengthens family bonds and ensures inheritances don’t leave the tribe.” It goes on to say, “Repeated generations of cousin marriages complicate blood ties.”
One doctor at the child’s hospital said “one third of patients in his department are Palestinians and most have genetic diseases that were the result of close-relation marriages.”
Then, having corrupted the gene pool and produced these disabled children, the children “are often stigmatized,” the story says. “Some families hide the children, fearing they won’t be able to marry off their able-bodied children if the community knows of their less-abled siblings. And they are seen as burdens in the impoverished territory.”
The article says nearly 11 percent of Gaza’s Palestinian Arabs “suffer some kind of disability that affects their mental health, eyesight, hearing or mobility,” and that “two thirds of young disabled Gazans are illiterate and some 40 percent were never sent to school, suggesting either their parents kept them home or did not have the means to educate them.” Over 90 percent of the disabled are unemployed, the story said.
What a set-up.
So, while these in-breeding parents (or others of their in-bred clan members) plot ways to damage or destroy Israel, this little boy’s grandfather stays with him in this Israeli hospital as his Israeli doctors raise funds to cover his bills.
The story notes that inside this hospital in Israel – a country the Islamist propaganda machine is convincing an anti-Semitic-leaning world is an anti-Muslim apartheid state – “patients and medics chatted in Hebrew and Arabic. Women in Muslim headscarves strolled in a corridor. An Orthodox Jewish woman affectionately patted Mohammed on his head. She nodded kindly at (his grandfather)…. as doctors’ fundraising has covered Mohammed’s years of treatment and one donor provided $28,000 for Mohammed’s prosthetics.”
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is supposed to fund transfers to Israeli hospitals, but stopped covering Mohammed’s bills six months after he arrived, an increasingly common practice, according to the story.
It seems like just one more way the Palestinians are using the Jews’ compassion and expertise against them, in the same way the 9/11 terrorists used the U.S.’s freedom of movement against it.
The grandfather, who is only 55, says he’s caring for the child to save his daughter’s marriage, as “a good deed,” but wants his life back.
He said wished he could find a foster home or caregiver for Mohammed.
“He needs many things in his life,” he said, “He needs a home.”
I would bet money that offers of that very thing have poured in since that story ran, and I would bet they came from the Jewish and not the Arab side of the Gaza border.

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More bad jobs numbers. CNBC reports today: “The gloomy news continued for jobs as ADP reported Wednesday that private companies created just 119,000 new positions in April. That was well below expectations and confirmation that the labor market is slowing heading into late spring and early summer. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected the ADP report to show the private sector created 150,000 jobs in April.” This comes just two days before the government releases its numbers for April. Doesn’t look good. Unexpectedly!

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It doesn’t take a law degree to see what was behind our state’s archaic rape laws, now that it’s been brought into sharp relief by the recent case of Julio Morales.
Associated Press reports that Morales was initially convicted of impersonating the boyfriend of an 18-year-old woman so he could have sex with her while she slept. The woman filed rape charges after realizing the man in her bed wasn’t her boyfriend, the story notes.
Being a contemporary jury, living in today’s world and recognizing the equal rights of people of both genders, the rapist was convicted of the crime.
However, California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction in January, citing an 1870s state law that says perpetrators in such cases can only be guilty if the victim is married and the assailant pretends to be the spouse, according to the story.
Wow. I can’t believe such a law is still on the books.
But, I understand there are a slew of laws throughout the United States that are so outdated that they recall a different world or, in some cases, maybe an alternative universe.
For instance, in Missouri, it’s illegal to drive with an uncaged bear and in Maine, it’s illegal to keep your Christmas lights up after Jan. 14, according to various websites.
Those sites say that in Connecticut, it’s illegal to walk across a street on your hands while in Ohio, it’s illegal to get a fish drunk. Here, in California, women can’t legally drive in a housecoat and no vehicle without a driver may exceed 60 miles per hour.
It boggles the mind to imagine the circumstances that triggered the adoption of these laws.
Clearly, this impersonating a spouse law is left over from the days when sexually active unmarried women were damaged goods.
This law is more about property rights than human rights.
So, I certainly hope SB59, a bill introduced by Democratic Sen. Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa, which fixes this outdated statute, passes the Assembly as it recently did the Senate, 37-0. If it fails, take down the names of those that voted “no” and remember them at election time.

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Where, oh where, is James Clapper?

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The new Barbara Cook is more “torchy,” and unfortunately “Sondheim-less.”  The legendary Broadway soprano’s voice is still crystal clear and her phrasing near perfect in her show at 54 Below in NYC.  Almost no one performs a song better than Cook despite the fact that she sang seated in a chair since her painful knees and back limited her from standing on stage. “I can’t walk very well,” she quipped after being helped on stage. “But I don’t feel 85; it’s a number.” This magnificent, courageous and resilient performer doesn’t look her age either. Her face was glowing with her expressive eyes and warm smile. Her strong passion to communicate a song and to go deep in her work is as apparent as ever. Although she can no longer reach the high notes of my longtime Cook favorite, “Ice Cream,” her current selections are ones she does well, and she does reach some high notes albeit in a lower key in the optimistic “Here’s To Life.”

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     So the Tsarnaeva bombers’ mother had shoplifted $1600 worth of clothing from Lord & Taylor a year before her “alienated” sons decided to integrate into American society by maiming and killing as many innocent people as their nail-studded bombs could reach.  Fleeing to Russia rather than face a penalty for her crime, the head-scarved matriarch now denies that her boys did anything wrong and wails about coming to America to begin with.  Zubeidat wonders what she was seeking here - protection for her boys and obviously some capitalist clothing - a la Ninotchka with her silk stockings.  Not for her the sturdy burlaps of Dagestan or the coarse wools of Chechnya - the lady yearned for the frivolous fare of America’s designer shops and off she went to steal some -  Allah be praised.

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Tamarlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar came to the United States when they were boys, refugees from Russia. This country took their family in, gave them asylum, educated them, offered them every opportunity, and, according to the Boston Herald, provided them with taxpayer-funded welfare benefits. Of course we did. Here’s how The Herald reported it:

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     Germain, a disaffected French teacher, exasperated by his dull students who not only can’t write but seemingly can’t experience anything loftier in their spare time than pizza and t.v. discovers a genuinely talented and sensitive young man in his class.  Claude submits a story about his gaining entry to the home of his classmate and friend Rapha who has everything that Claude lacks - a two-parent family, a lovely house and a sensual mother who becomes the lure that beckons Claude to keep coming back and continue his serial tale.  Germain shares each episode with his wife, a frustrated gallerista who also becomes intrigued by the inherent voyeurism and sexuality of the boy’s story.  This leads to numerous complications as Claude becomes more daring and aggressive in his desire to insinuate himself into the lives of his chosen prey.  With each submitted chapter, Germain similarly becomes more addicted to the tale and more reckless in his desire to please the student who has threatened to stop writing.

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Immediately after the bombings of the London subway system in July 2005, British law enforcement authorities suspected a second bombing wave was coming. They suspected right. When they moved in to the area where the second wave suspects were thought to be hiding, the terrorists came running out with their hands up. They shouted, “We have rights! We have rights!”

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All during shootout number two with Boston bombing suspect number two on Friday night, I was hoping he would not be taken alive.  But the worst case scenario prevailed, and now that he has been captured the liberal coddling will begin.

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     In Thomas Friedman’s op ed on the Boston marathon massacre (Bring On the Next Marathon, NYT  4/17),  the boldface caption insists “We’re just not afraid anymore.”  Perhaps this is true for a traveling journalist who doesn’t use the subway daily or who isn’t forced to spend all his days in the 9/11 city of New York, but for most thinking people who work and live here, there is a great deal to fear.  We live in a porous society where criminals roam free yet politicians complain about the “discriminatory” stop and frisk policies of the police, even though they have successfully reduced crime precisely in the neighborhoods that most affect the complaining minorities and their liberal champions.  If you ride the subways, you know how many passengers wear enormous back-packs, large enough to conceal an arsenal of weapons.  These are allowed to be carried into movie theaters, playgrounds, parks, sports arenas, shopping centers, department stores and restaurants with no security checks whatsoever.   On the national front, immigration policies are more concerned with politically correct equality than with the reality of which groups are fomenting most of the terror around the world today.  Our northern and southern borders are infiltrated daily by undocumented people slipping in beyond the government’s surveillance or control.

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At the conclusion of World War II, as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower surveyed the evidence of the carnage in Europe, he ordered photos taken and a permanent record made because he predicted that one day there would be those who would try to say it never happened.
And he was right.
Despite the existence of overwhelming documentation and even the first-hand accounts of still living survivors and witnesses, there are those who seek to deny the Holocaust and in so doing, blame the victims and set the stage for a repeat performance.
These things are happening worldwide in ever-increasing numbers.
The Simon Wiesenthal center reports that “Vicious attacks on the memory of the Holocaust from denial, to distortion, to revisionism are erupting in countries around the world.”
They note, for instance, “the senior Egyptian official in charge of appointing editors of all state-run Egyptian newspapers declares, ‘The myth of the Holocaust is an industry that America invented.’”
It also notes that, “led by Iran’s government, Iranian media, schools, books, speeches and religious teachers deny the Holocaust ever happened while threatening to finish Hitler’s genocidal vision against the Jewish state.”
In its attempt to prime the Iranian people for its plan to commit genocide in their name, that government “uses Holocaust denial as part of its… propaganda assault on Israel, labeling the Jewish people as serial liars and criminals, and depicting the Jewish State as a cancer,” the center notes.
And, unfortunately, this is not limited to the Arab world, unless you consider the parts of Europe being overtaken by Islamists as part of the Arab world, as the Islamists surely do.
The center reports that the UK’s Sunday London Times editors “published a cartoon on Holocaust Memorial Day depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall cemented with the blood and bodies of Palestinian men, women and children,” and in Lithuania, “authorities are whitewashing their own nation’s Nazi collaborators while claiming Nazi crimes should be commemorated along with the victims of communism among whom were those who aided and abetted Nazi Germany.”
An extremist parliamentarian in a far-right Hungarian political party calls for the government to create a list of Jews in that country who pose threats to national security, “eerily reminiscent of Nazi policies during the 1940s,” center officials point out.
And this stuff isn’t contained only to Europe and the Arab world. Just this week, the Associated Press reported on a New York high school English teacher who was suspended after school officials learned she had assigned her students a project to make persuasive arguments proving Jews are evil. The idea, the story says, is that the students were to research Nazi propaganda and “assume their teacher was a Nazi government official who had to be convinced of their loyalty.”
The assignment was brought to administrators’ attention by one student’s parent, the story says, adding that some students refused to write the assignment.
Like the case earlier this year in which a Manhattan teacher caused controversy by assigning fourth-graders math homework involving scenarios about killing and whipping slaves, this teacher’s assignment, which told students they “must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich,” just can’t be what it sounds like, it seems to me.
How stupid would a public school teacher have to be to out themselves as so hopeless a racist/anti-Semite as these assignments would imply, especially if they really were. Such people tend to sneak their poison into their lessons more stealthily than this. But, maybe the sensitivity training the latter case provoked will help. It couldn’t hurt. That kind of stuff can turn into the kind of stuff being experienced in much of the rest of the world, if left unchecked.

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It’s a family affair at the Café Carlyle  where John Pizzarelli’s quartet, which includes his younger brother Martin on bass, share the stage with their legendary dad, Bucky Pizzarelli, 87, on guitar.  The show really is about the exemplary father-son relationship. But there were three generations of Pizzarellis at the show including John’s wife, Jessica Molaskey, who frequently performs with the quartet and Bucky’s granddaughter who called the chords out for him.

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     There was a time, before the sixties, when the function of a university was to act in loco parentis, offering guidance, direction and discipline to students seeking to benefit from older, wiser minds.  After that decade’s watershed capitulation of authority by administrators and faculty empowered to know better, nothing has been quite the same.  The latest kerfuffle to illustrate this abandonment of reason is the one currently unfolding at Cardozo Law School.  The editors of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution have chosen Jimmy Carter as the recipient of their International Advocate of Peace Award.  This has angered many people, especially alumni, since Cardozo is a part of Yeshiva University, a school singularly dedicated to the support and well-being of Israel.  Jimmy Carter, a long-time beneficiary of Saudi Arabia’s payroll, has been unsurprisingly and selectively critical of Israel, characterizing its policies towards Palestinians as apartheid.

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Brothers Larry, Rudy and Steve Gatlin brought their rich country harmony to 54 Below in NYC for a single powerful performance Saturday evening thanks to the silver fox of cabaret, Jamie De Roy, who introduced them to the stylish venue.  The Gatlin Brothers with their own guitars were backed up by Steve Smith on guitar and Shannon Ford on drums. Larry spoke the truth when he joked, “Only 80 minutes–it’s impossible to sing all the wonderful songs I’ve written.”

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In a stunning move, the Associated Press (AP) capitulated to pressures by Islamist group CAIR to drop the use of the term “Islamist” when describing self-declared Islamist militants and movements. 

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The relationship between God and politics may be an age old question, but when I first met David Kuo in 2008 our conversation was not the usual small talk.  At the time, Kuo, author and former White House official, talked passionately about his controversial best-seller, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.”

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Lee Roy Reams, 70, is truly an-fashioned song and dance man.  He put on a terrific one night show that flowed well at 54 Below, the former famed Studio 54 in NYC earlier this week performing selections from some of his Broadway shows including Hello, Dolly, 42^nd Street, Sweet Charity and La Cage Aux Folles. Reams’ opening with an uptune, “Lullaby of Broadway,” was strong and set the pace for an entertaining evening. His musical numbers were interspersed with amusing and candid Broadway anecdotes.

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There are two big problems with Robert Redford’s new film about the 60’s Weathermen who became fugitives from justice.  The first is the casting of himself as someone just three decades removed from that period of time;  sadly, Redford has aged quickly and badly and looks every minute of his actual late 70’s which would have made him a student activist in his mid 40’s.  Even Brendan Gleeson, never a matinee idol, would have been a more logical choice for the main character of Nick Sloan, a man with an assumed identity, a career as a lawyer in Albany and a pressing responsibility as a recent widower who is now the sole parent of an 11 year old daughter.  Since there are far too many close-ups of the strawberry-blonde septuagenarian, we can’t escape the essential hole in the story - how to believe that grandpa was just a young idealist (or radical ideologue) only thirty years before.

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What better way to close out New York’s cabaret month than the career launch of a shining new star. Eva Kantor, 27, already a magnificent vocalist, made her first solo cabaret debut with “The Way I Am” Easter weekend at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in NYC. Not only is Kantor a tremendous talent, she is the real deal – she almost looks too young and innocent for cabaret – and is surrounded by a supportive and accomplished team. The show is directed by her vocal coach, Eric Michael Gillett. Don Rebic, her pianist and musical director has worked with Peggy Lee and Lainie Kazan; bassist Dick Sarpola has performed with Tony Bennett and Barbara Cook; her husband Jonathan Kantor, whom she met on a blind date, plays tenor sax and clarinet as well as being a composer and arranger.

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Jews save wounded Syrians.

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CBS News is out with a new poll today, and it’s a doozy. Hey Washington politicians, from President Obama to the rank-and-file in Congress: you may want to run for your lives. By growing numbers, the American people are thoroughly disgusted with you.

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