To readers who are concerned (there’s been some grumbling in the comment threads) I’ve strayed a bit from the usual musical diet of blues and quirky 60s rock, we’ll get back to that sort of thing directly. And I know Roxy Music is not to everyone’s taste, but I gotta say, this band and the rest of the “British Underground” was an important psychological salve to Boomers navigating the mid-to-late-70s bridge from the death of classic rock and Prog to the advent of New Wave and punk, when for a moment it looked like Disco would conquer the world and extinguish all faith in human progress.

Here are some midday news/views items “For Your Pleasure:”

* So much for “getting over” Mississippi: Erick Erickson very agitated about evidence Senate leadership indirectly funded attack ads on Chris McDaniel.

* In generational data, Tom Edsall sees coming “Democratic schism.” Interesting, but I’m not that persuaded; more about that later.

* At The Upshot, Margot Sanger-Katz looks at declining health care spending trend and concludes nobody knows what’s going on.

* At MoJo Chris Mooney discusses study claiming ideological differences significantly rooted in “physiology and genetics.”

* At TNR, Carter Price takes on the conservative argument that marriage is the solution to poverty.

And in sorta non-political news:

* Rupert Murdoch making a bid to acquire Time Warner.

As we break for lunch, here’s my personal favorite Roxy Music song: “Mother of Pearl,” performed after a band introduction.

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Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.