Today, a tale of three cities, first from DC:  How goes the Memorandum of Understanding between the USA and Iran?  Some Republican anguish from Time Magazine. ....many Republicans are more nervous than relieved over the deal. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades." Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said of the deal: “If this is true, Iran wins.”   Former MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene was perhaps the most Trumpian in her reaction, echoing the President’s criticism of Obama’s deal more than a decade ago.   “$300 BILLION DOLLARS TO IRAN??!!! Trump agreed to give Iran $300 BILLION dollars for reconstruction cost after Trump bombed Iran. Are you kidding me? What an embarrassment! Americans are getting screwed again!!” she wrote on X .  In New York City, the Knicks got a ticker-tape parade . Can you remember back to 1973?  The USA finally got kicked out of Vietn...

But I'll start with the New York Knicks.  According to the New York Times , the Knicks gave their city something new, IMPOSSIBLE JOY .   It is different because New York’s mass unifying events tend to imply unbearable tragedy: 9/11, Sandy, Covid. Their best player, Jalen Brunson, was small (for basketball), underestimated (by his last team), conditioned (by his father, a former Knick) to know that winning here would mean more than winning anywhere else. This place has cheated bankruptcy, built (and rebuilt) towers, raised Jay-Z and J. Lo and J-Seinfeld. It has been told to drop dead and refused. It has elected a billionaire and a socialist and a Bill de Blasio. It has processed Donald Trump as a 20-something curiosity, a chattering pooh-bah, a steak salesman, a defendant and a president whose attendance in Game 3 had Knicks maniacs of all political persuasions wondering about an executive curse. Then from Sports Illustrated : Some of the greatest athletes in sports history hav...