The Dangerous Idiocy of Glenn Beck

Anyone who's taken a class in logic or has a firm grasp on the reasoning process can see, after five minutes of watching Glenn Beck, that he has no fucking clue how to construct an argument. It's a shame, considering that arguing his "case" is his very profession. Worse still that millions of people follow his flawed lines of reasoning into believing lies.

What's important to follow are not the lines of reasoning, which never really connect in a logical way, but the false conclusions. He's not looking at a problem and following reason to conclusions; he's coming up with conclusions and fashioning a line of associative thought back to the original problem.

It's selectively picking out certain bits of information and ignoring others in order to make the process fit the desired result, much like the way Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration selectively chose certain bits of intelligence in order to make the argument for going to war with Iraq.

Of course, Beck's goal is not to prove his argument. It's to incite dormant prejudicial passions, get the dwindling Republican base riled up and angry at the changes taking place in this country.

The Sunday Times Week in Review section has an article examining the line between political anger and violence. Check out this quote:

The Fox News host Glenn Beck, a galvanizing figure for the Tea Party protesters, might have offered the most inventive explanation for the isolated instances of violence when he said on his radio program that the Democrats were inciting protesters by walking through their ranks on the way to the Capitol. "I can guarantee you they walked out and said,'What the hell do you have to do to these people to get them to kill us?' I swear to you!"

Breaking that statement down here would be a waste of time. Besides, Jon Stewart does a much better job of lampooing Beck in the clip below. But take a hard look at conclusion Beck is trying to convey: should someone murder a Democrat Congressman, it would be ok because the Democrats are essentially asking for it.

That's the conclusion. There's no argument at all. The phrase "I can guarantee you," we all know, is usually stated by someone trying to prove a proposition without a shred of proof, while "I swear to you" is what you hear from used car dealers unwilling to extend a guarantee.

Below is one of the funniest stand-up impersonations Stewart has done on the Daily Show. Anyone who hasn't seen Glenn Beck can learn all they need to know from the clip.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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To be fair, even FixNews anchors can't help but mock Beck:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Moment of Zen - Glenn Beck Cries
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Wade Redden Needs to Go, and Other Complaints About the Rangers

Yes, the Rangers beat the Devils last night in exciting fashion, tying the game with 17 seconds left and winning in a shootoout, keeping their playoff hopes alive. But even if they make the playoffs there is little evidence they can beat anybody but the Devils. When the season is over the Rangers are going to have to look long and hard at their personnel and make some moves to improve the team. It's not too late this season, however, to set some changes in motion.

Defense

The real issue on this team is not the lack of scoring by forwards, but the overall play of the defenseman. Stahl and Girardi have been solid all season. They don't score a lot of points (24 for Stahl, 21 for Girardi) but they know how to move the puck in the offensive zone, when to pinch in, and how to get the puck to the front of the net. And they are the two best defensive stoppers the Rangers have, always out there against the opposition's top line.

Last season I seriously considered constructing an effigy of Michal Rozsival and burning it at a stake of hockey sticks right outside the Nathan's on the corner of 32nd and 7th avenue, across from the Garden. It seemed that every third game he would shit the bed and make some bonehead play that cost the Rangers a win. This season he still makes a bad play here or there, has a game where he's a moment late in recognizing plays and pucks bounce past him while manning the point, but overall his play and effort have been much more tolerable. In fact, there are games when he looks like an above average player, when you see why the front office gave him a 4-year $20 million contract. Well, maybe I shouldn't go that far.

Michael Del Zotto, despite his offensive and passing skill, has a -22 plus/minus this season, the worst on the team. Considering he gets a lot of power play time, this is particularly bad. However, the kid's a rookie, has showed enormous offensive potential, and he always plays hard, even if he has seemed to tire and become mistake-prone of late. Along with Matt Gilroy, who has had a quietly solid season (plus/minus of 0), Del Zotto can only get better.

Wade Redden, on the other hand, has no excuses. He needs to be benched to set an example. Normally I think it's counter-productive to bench a guy after he makes a bad play or takes an idiotic penalty, as Tortorella has done is this season with Avery, Del Zotto, Lisin, Voros, Kotalik, and Rozsival. But nothing else has worked with Redden, so I say sit him down for a while.

After all, a player with Redden's salary ($8 million a year, when all is said and done, 2nd highest on the team) is expected to be a top performer.

From 2001-2009, Redden averaged about sixty points a season. This season? Fourteen. He has the worst shooting percentage on the team, and is 606th in the league in that category. That's right, 606th. Rarely does he manage to get the puck to the net; invariably his shots are blocked by an opponent long before they come close to opposing goaltenders. Two goals and twelve assists out of the second highest paid player on the team is an abomination of Carl Pavano proportions.

The fact that he struggles to get pucks to the net is indicative of a larger problem with Redden: he never seems to exert any extra effort; he plays the game as if he were going through the motions, just to receive that undeservedly large paycheck. Not only does he not score, he doesn't block shots, he doesn't skate hard, and he never puts big hits on opposing players. A hockey fan seeing the Rangers for the first time would watch a game and assume that Redden was nothing but a mediocre fill-in occupying a spot because someone better was injured. He does just enough to get by, and nothing more. The Rangers should do whatever they can to drop Redden and give his money to Callahan, Anisimov, who not only play better defensively, but actually contribute to the offense. The problem, of course, is that no team is going to want to pick up Redden at his unbelievable salary. $6.5 million of cap space for 15 points a season? No, thank you.

Last night, Ilya Kovalchuk of the Devils scored the first goal of the game off a rebound that landed directly on Redden's stick. Redden first failed to cover Kovalchuk as he entered the zone (there was no one else for Redden to cover), then let him steal the puck right off his stick five feet from the net.

In the second period another Devil stole the puck off his stick right in front of the net, though Lundquist was able to stop that attempt. Then in the third period, the Devils scored their third goal because Redden was too slow to come off the bench on a line change. As Jamie Langenbrunner entered the zone along the right wing, Redden came across the ice from the bench and didn't even make an effort to slide or get in Langenbrunner's way; he simply waved his stick in Langenbrunner's general direction from ten feet away like an old man waving a cane at a passing car. I imagine Redden sounded like an elderly invalid as he feebly reached toward the Devil. It looked terrible, as if Redden had already given up.

When you consider that this man is making eight million a year, you begin to understand some of the problems Tortorella has in motivating his players to bring their A game every night. Redden is the most veteran defenseman on the team, he's making the most money, and yet he never displays heart or extra effort. The one time this season he did show some gumption, when he threw off his gloves and fought an opposing player, the Rangers subsequently went on their longest winning streak of the season. It was as if his teammates said to each other, hey, even Redden is starting to care, let's do this....but the effort was short-lived.

Offense

A major problem with the Rangers is that they only have three true right wings, and one of those, Lisin, is frequently a healthy scratch. The other two right wingers, Gaborik and Callahan, are the Rangers best overall players and goal scorers.

I frequently hear broadcast teams state that the Rangers lack centers. The New York Times makes this claim again today. However, look at their roster, and the fact is that they have too many natural centers: Jokkinen, Prospal, Dubinsky, Drury, Anisimov, Christensen, Boyle, are all every day players. That's seven out of twelve available forward spots. Prospal may also be considered a left winger, but he started out the year centering on Gaborik's line.

Maybe balancing out our wings and centerman will help John Tortorella maintain consistent forward lineups throughout the season. The Rangers have not gone three straight games with the same starting lines. They have trouble scoring in one game and the following day the lines have been changed. All this constant moving around has to be hindering the players' ability to gel as a unit.
Tortorella would better serve his players by being less reactionary and allowing his forwards to play with the same line mates for a week or two.

Here's how I would set the forward lines in the short time left this season:

1. Prospal-Dubinsky-Gaborik . Christensen is the more highly skilled puck handler but Dubinsky can protect Gaborik with his bruising play, and he's had the experience of playing with Jagr when he was the Rangers' top goal scorer. Both Dubinsky and Prospal can take face-offs. Doobs started the year on this top line but was moved when his goal total waned. They should go back to this original thought. Dubinsky and Callahan are the future of this team and they really need to have one or the other on the ice as much as possible. 73 goals on this line (Gabby has 36).

2. Christensen-Jokkinen-Callahan

Callahan is a high energy hitter and scorer. Christensen shoots left, can skate with Callahan, and has great hands. Jokkinen is a play-maker who doesn't skate or shoot as hard as he used to, but give him these two and he won't have to. Callahan, currently nursing a hip injury, will fight when he has to. 38 goals on this line.

3. Avery-Anisimov-Drury

Drury and Anisimov are both great defending centers with good hands and better shots. All three can skate and score. Avery is the bruiser here and plays the deep ball threat as Anisimov and Drury defend. There are 35 goals on this line. If anything, this is the line you would have to worry about most, since their combined plus/minus is -16. But this is primarily because both Drury and Anisimov play on the penalty kill.

4. Prust-Boyle-Shelley

Prust and Shelley are both fighters with a head on their shoulders. Prust and Boyle are excellent forecheckers who can keep the puck in the opponents end of the ice and create opportunities for Gabby or Callahan to come in off the bench and score a quick one. This line has a combined plus/minus of +4. They're not scoring goals (6), but they're not giving them up either. If you bring in Lisin for Shelley you make it 12 goals and the plus/minus barely changes (0).

If I were going to make some on the fly changes, it would be along the left wing side of the roster. You could easily move Christensen up to the top line and bring Dubinsky down to the second if you wanted better hands on the top line, or move Avery up to the top and Doobs to the third if you want more scoring on the third line.

Broken Bells on Letterman

James Mercer of the Shins and Danger Mouse have formed a new group, Broken Bells. The album came out yesterday, and is available here.

They performed last night on Letterman.

Not Such a Wonderful Life

Mark Linkous, aka Sparklehorse, commited suicide this weekend. The man had great talent for creating melancholy alt-blues songs that were at the same moment delicate, mysterious and folksy. If you've never heard anything by Sparklehorse imagine the slow melodies of Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star mixing with the reverberating soothe of Portishead, the intimate resignation blues of Tom Waits. The mood is dark, but earnest. Think Sea Changes Beck.

Back in 2002 a friend gave me "It's a Wonderful Life," Sparklehorse's fourth release. I remember finding the album artwork fascinating, in a romantically understated way, and combined with the "lo-fi, decaying, Waitsian-music-box gloom" of the songs, it reminded me of something I could imagine listening to while spending an emotionally raw night in an old Victorian castle, with candles and tapestries and shadows on the move. But I couldn't get into it. The album was too slow for my taste. It's the kind of thing you listen to when depressed and looking to steep yourself further into self-pity.

Even then, however, he had good taste in collaborators: Waits, Nina Persson, and PJ Harvey all sing on the album.

His most recent work, a collaboration with Danger Mouse called "Dark Night of the Soul", has been making its way around the internet for months, though the creators had been in a battle with EMI over its release. "Dark Night" features performances by The Shins, Julian Casablancas, Black Francis, The Flaming Lips, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega, and more, and is now expected to be released this summer.

In 1996, while on tour opening for Radiohead, Linkous got so wasted on booze and anti-depressants that he passed out in an awkward position on top of his legs for fourteen hours; the resulting damage caused him to spend the next six months in a wheelchair. Then this final act was the inevitable culmination of yet another cliched rock n'roll suicide, I guess. Or maybe it was just another lonely man giving up.

In an age where you can remake your life in infinite ways, I can't imagine why all these talented musicians keep killing themselves just as they are on the cusp of musical immortality (see Jeff Buckley, Shannon Hoon, Elliott Smith) but it sucks, and it's stupid. I hate to be so judgmental, but most people go through their entire lives without finding a way to creatively express their vision and pain and yet these men, who had found their outlet, managed to squander their talent, the life given to them, and the millions of admirers who appreciated their work no matter how sad and dark it became. To be fair, Buckley drowned accidentally, and Hoon died of an accidental overdose, but both knew the danger in those final risky leaps they took, and they took them anyway.

If you want to know a little more about Sparklehorse, check out this early article.

Here's the best song off the soon-to-be released"Dark Night of the Soul":

Next is the title track off his 2001 album. Beware: this is one of those choruses that will stick in your head for a few days.

Also, please note that both these videos are fan created. It's the best I could find.

Jim Bunning Feels Under-Appreciated

Cantankerous old coffin-dodger Jim Bunning finally relented late Tuesday night. In the end, he got what he wanted: an amendment to the emergency funding bill that stipulates the bill will not add to the deficit. The cost of this amendment may not be much for Bunning. Yes, Democrats and the press vilified him for five days and made him out to be a dangerously callous old buffoon; and certainly these events will, for the rest of his life, overshadow his distinguished career as a hall-of-fame pitcher. Bunning doesn't care about that crap. When a man's had enough, he's had enough. For years he remained quiet while fellow Republicans expanded the budget and deficit to record proportions and conducted hundred-billion-dollar wars off the books. But he can't take this nonsense anymore.

As a ballplayer Bunning famously had issues with the managerial style of Gene Mauch, his skipper with the Phillies. Mauch liked to call pitches from the dugout during important situations, and this drove Bunning mad. Bunning liked to shake off the catcher and throw the pitch he wanted. While an admirable display of confidence for a young pitcher, this same type of attitude is frowned upon in the Republican party.

The cost of Bunning's stubborness to his party cannot be overstated. Republicans were riding the momentum of special election wins and popular discontent against Democrats and the President, and then Bunning starts ignoring signals and tossing hanging curves to Democratic hitters.

Why Gentle Jim, why do this now?

The short answer is that he has no one to please anymore. After twenty-five years in politics, the road had ended for Bunning. His approval rating had become dismal; his fundraising virtually non-existent; and both the state and national Republican party, including Mitch McConnell, had decided by March 2009 to elbow him out of his Senate seat. This, for a man Time Magazine described so lovingly:

During the [2006] campaign the famously irascible Hall of Fame pitcher had endured repeated questions about his age and even his mental stability, and had stood by while supporters called his opponent limp-wristed. Always prone to outlandish statements, Bunning himself made news when he said his opponent Daniel Mongiardo, then a state senator and now a lieutenant governor expected to run for the seat in 2010, looked like "one of Saddam Hussein's sons." In 2006, TIME named Bunning one of America's worst senators.

In the last week Bunning, in addition to holding up the unemployment bill, has told a fellow Senator "tough shit", bitched on the Senate record about missing a college basketball game (even as he was blocking that unemployment and medicaire bill), and flipped-off a team of ABC reporters who confronted him outside a Senate elevator.

Now groups are putting together petitions to get him kicked out of the hall of fame.

Here's a man whose top three contributor groups are health professionals, the insurance industry, and securities and investment. In other words, health care and wall street. His top individual contributors are Fidelity Investments, NorPAC (a pro-Israel group) and Brown-Forman (a Kentucky-based booze company that owns Jack Daniels). His fundraising dinners must be a real hootenanny.

One of the ironies here is that, per-capita, Kentucky ranks 44th state when it comes to contributing to federal tax revenue. The average Kentuckian contributes $5400 in taxes to the federal government. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the average citizen contributes $14,000. For every dollar that Kentucky contributes to the federal government, it gets back $1.45 in expenditures, making it one of the federal government's biggest beneficiaries. Meanwhile New Jersey gets the least for its money: 55 cents for every dollar it contributes to the federal coffers.

But never mind all that. The bottom line is that Bunning is not running for re-election this year, he feels he's been shunned by his constituents and his party, and he just doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, never has.

Upon election to the Hall of Fame in 1996, Bunning set up the non-profit Bunning Foundation. In the first twelve years, the foundation collected $504,000. Of that total, Bunning took $180,000 in salary. How much went to local (mostly church) charities? $136,000. As the president of the American Institute for Philanthropy put it, that doesn't look good: "The IRS doesn't want people to just set up their weekend hobbies as nonprofit foundations so they can take advantage of the tax-protection rules."

Gentle Jim gives not a fuck. He deserved that money. He was the one signing all those autographs. The pain in his wrist alone was worth at least ten thousand.

It took them 25 years to put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. This, for a guy who ranked second all-time in strikeouts when he retired in 1971, who threw a no-no against the Red Sox in '58 and a Father's Day perfect game against the lovable loser Mets in '64. It was the first perfect game the National League had seen in 84 years, for crying out loud. A seven-time all-star, 225 wins, it took him twenty-five years to get in the hall. Can you imagine that? What kind of unappreciative idiots do they have voting, anyway?

Perhaps those voters (mainly sportswriters) had his "famously irascible" demeanor in mind. Or maybe Bunning couldn't escape the ghost of 1964.

With eleven games left in the '64 season, the Phillies, with Gene Mauch at the helm and Bunning as the ace, had a 6.5 game lead on the Reds and Cardinals. A week later, after losing seven in a row, they were out of first place for good. The Phillies lost ten out of their last eleven games that year and the Cardinals wound up going to the World Series and beating the Yankees four games to three. Gene Mauch was blamed for overusing Bunning and fellow pitcher Chris Short down the stretch. They wore down and couldn't perform when it counted most.

While Bunning spent that off-season answering questions about his stamina and reliving one of the worst losing streaks in major league history, Cardinals fireballer Bob Gibson (seen below with Joe Torre at spring training in '62) spent his winter enjoying his ring, bonus, and World Series MVP trophy. The next year, it would be Sandy Koufax enjoying those honors. Bunning would never make it to the World Series.

Can it be that Bunning has been angry since 1964?

The resentment will only intensify as his last year in office winds down. What does he have to lose? Come January 2011 he'll take a position on the board of Brown-Forman, sign some baseballs, make appearances at conservative conferences, and spend mornings shooting defenseless animals on his ranch in Kentucky.

Of course, the political life may have one last bitter pill for Bunning to swallow. Though he's given the finger to both friends and enemies, Gentle Jim is now being fashioned into a poster child for both parties to exploit.

For ideological Republicans, he represents that slowly dying breed of fiscal conservative willing to make hard choices and suffer the public's disapproval."The buck$ $top here!" the poster will say, above a photo of Bunning scowling, palm stiff-armed out toward the foreground where a collection of tiny bohemians in suits with bugged-out eyes and hanging tongues carry heaps of green bills labeled "tax dollars".

However, for those Republicans less inclined to be ideological 8 months before coming up for re-election, he is a steaming pile of dog shit they want to avoid at all costs. Anti-incumbent fever permeates the halls of Congress like the flu through a day-care center. No one wants to upset the angry unemployed people who have plenty of time to make it to the polls on election day.

For Democrats he represents the unashamed contempt Republicans have for the less fortunate, specifically the millions affected by job loss and the economic recession. "What does Jim Bunning care about more?" the poster might say. "Struggling Americans or a college basketball game?"

College basketball game, of course. And if you don't like it, Gentle Jim has two words for you: "Tough shit".

Across the Universe

The Demise of a Sun-Like Star. Source: Hubblesite.org

Politics is a favorite subject of mine. It's a tough topic for me to avoid, since there is so much injustice and misinformation out there, so much evil shit happening right under our noses. The public is ill-informed, unaware, or willfully ignorant of how lives are affected by the unchecked reckless greed and lust for power that corrodes our political system. With the Supreme Court recently deciding to lift the limits on corporate campaign expenditures, it's going to get worse; one can only hope that the buying and selling of government positions will become so blatant that the public finally recognizes what's been going on for decades, becomes nauseous and outraged and demands new laws, new representation.

Whether it was manipulation or outright collusion, the banking giants (whose actions helped to precipitate the current recession) were able to skip the line and get what they needed out of the government in order to continue reaping astronomical profits, while middle and working class Americans were left waiting at the back of on line, empty-handed. Combine this with the anti-government fervor that usually accompanies economic downturns, and trust in government is at an all-time low. Of course, the disconnect between the mood on main street and the mood inside the Capitol bubble is so nearly complete that it's taken weeks of very public scoldings by the President to shake the Democrats out of their lethargic ineffectiveness. There is no waking up the Republicans. Their behavior is so erratic that they cannot pretend to have a plan; if they have an agenda, it's to cause confusion and to disrupt government business in order to make the President look ineffective.

It's with this frustrating nonsense in mind that I look for mindful diversions. A great one I've recently found is hubblesite.org.

Here's a tiny preview of what you can find at Hubblesite:

Turbulent Gases in the Omega/Swan Nebula

Source: Hubblesite.org

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared Light

Source: Hubblesite.org

Light Echoes From a Star

Source: Hubblesite.org

The Surface of Jupiter

Source: Hubblesite.org

After looking at the vast beauty of celestial interplay, it's hard not to feel foolish for giving politics so much of my attention. There are individuals around us trying hard to figure out the secrets of the universe, who are looking backward into time in order to predict how the future will unfold, while others are examining the very nature of time and space. A man sits quietly in his home contemplating the nature of existence, trying to attain enlightment, while a group of men and women brainstorm over how to create an oxygen-rich atmosphere on Mars. Meanwhile, the rest of us call each other names and wrestle over money.

Check out these image tours. They help explain what it is you're seeing in these incredible captures of outer space.

The Health Care Trap

It has taken a mild recession to waken people to the fact that there is something deeply wrong with how the business of our government is being conducted. Populist sentiment runs high and strong. Part of the reason is that our elected officials have shown themselves to be far more capable in assisting the wealthy and powerful than in helping the less fortunate. Part of it is the normal noise of the party out of power. Part is the frustration of those, like myself, who helped sweep the Democrats and Barack Obama into office with our votes and our campaigning, who spent time and money and emotional energy hoping they could turn this country around, only to see them squander the opportunity given to them. There is no doubt that things are better since Bush left (could they have gotten any worse?), and they're better than they'd be if John McCain, and Sarah Palin, were in the White House. And I think that throughout it all, with the mess he inherited, President Obama has been more than capable. He hasn't been great, but it's early. They say he took his eye off the ball a bit chasing health care but I think it was shrewd to go after it as soon as possible and to shift the public focus toward a benevolent development, which is what universal health care would be for most Americans. As long as the economy is in better shape, and the Republicans continue to trot out the likes of Sarah Palin, the President should win a second term.

It's the Democratic majority in Congress that will fall before the President will. It won't happen this year, because the Dems have too large a majority in both houses and the one constant over the life of our Congress in the last 50 years is that the odds are stacked in favor of incumbents. Count on Republicans taking at least one house, if not both, in 2012.

It may be better that way. Having seen all the possible combinations of power available in a two-party system (you don't need a statistician to figure them out), it seems that the worst of all worlds is for either party to hold the presidency and both houses of Congress. The Republican majority of 2000-2006 fell in line behind nearly everything George W. Bush introduced, even when it included expanding the size and budget of the federal government, infringing on constitutional rights, fiscal irresponsibility, etc. The Democrats, meanwhile, have dithered and quibbled over health care, banking reform, and anything else meaningful to their constituents, all while having a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate, a 35 seat majority in the House, and control of the executive branch. The Democrats are either ineffectual, or just as tied to corporate interests as the Republicans. My guess is that it's a little of both.

There are some honest characters on Capitol Hill, no doubt, but it's hard to find them in a crowd so littered with Willie Starks.

Voters are rightfully disgusted with the way Congress has behaved over the past year. Instead of enacting effective legislation, they seem to be running perpetual re-election campaigns. Recently Evan Bayh, a popular Democratic Senator from Indiana, in announcing he would not seek another term, cited the never-ending campaign atmosphere as one of the reasons Congress is in terrible shape. Maybe he is simply reading the writing on the wall. A recent NYT/CBS news poll found that only 8% of respondents think their representatives in Washington deserve re-election.

As weak as congressional Dems have been in battling the Republican noise machine, President Obama has been doing his best to dispel the notion that Democrats are weak on foreign policy. He's taken to challenging China by hosting the Dalai Lama at the White House this week(though there was no photo-op) and selling billions in arms to Taiwan. He has increased troop presence in Afghanistan and managed to capture a number of Taliban leaders He's even been tough with opposition leaders at home, challenging them to debates and open forums to discuss differences over policy, especially health care. He scolded the Supreme Court for allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections, and in the same State of the Union speech told Republicans that if they're going to stall legislation out of spite, he would make sure the public understood how their stalling tactics have affected them.

The GOP is so wary of debating Obama that paranoia is leading them to call the health care forum a "set-up" House Minority Leader John Boehner: "I want to have this bipartisan conversation, but I want it to be productive and I want it to be real. I don't want to walk into some trap."

One can easily see how this might work. Everyone sits down, the GOP on one side of the table and the Dems on the other. Notes are consulted, water is poured into glasses. Pleasantries are exchanged, and there is the usual posturing and grandstanding, after all there are cameras in the room broadcasting these deliberations to voters and capturing these moments for posterity. These are your tax dollars hard at work.

About two hours in, when pretty much everyone but network producers have stopped watching, the GOP signals that there is no chance they are going to agree with anything President Obama introduces. The President, expecting this, but truly savoring the moment, takes control of the conversation, and delivers some final words of warning to the GOP.

The GOP is non-plussed. For every hour they fight health care reform, the health insurance industry donates a million to the GOP's campaign coffers. Papa's getting paid, you see. How many donations do you think Obama's receiving from uninsured poor people? Not many.

Convinced the GOP has settled on an obstructionist strategy, the President places his right hand under the table. A particularly vigiliant congressional aide sees what is happening and screams as she dives forward toward the table to protect the man she loves, sleeps with, and works for. "Nnnnnooooooo!!!!"

Two secret service agents run forward to block the way to the President. The aide is too late. To the cameras surrounding the table it appears that the entire Republican delegation has fallen off their chairs onto the floor. There is a moment of confusion. Then another scream, from the same woman, who is now grabbing onto the edge of the floor to keep from dropping into the viper/piranha water pit thirty feet below her dangling panty-hosed feet. There are muffled cries from inside the pit, as the predators below eat their own. It is hardly good eating; never have these piranhas feasted on animals so full of shit.

The remainder of the Republican aides stay in the seats against the wall, not willing to risk their own demise to save their fellow aide. In fact, they have already started cursing their former employers, and circumstances which now force them to find another job, and in such an awful market! Just when it appears the tartish aide will share her lover's fate, a figure appears over her, clad in thousand dollar loafers. It is Rahm Emanual. "HELP ME!" the girl shrieks. With a Cheshire grin Emanual kicks the aide in the face and sends her reeling into the trap below.

The Republicans know better than to fall into such a trap.

Chelsea Dagger

A Valentine's Day special for all the young lovers out there.

It's One Life, It's This Life, It's Beautiful

This sister duo is my favorite act out of Sweden since Nicolai Dunger. Love everything about this song: the guitar, the harmony, the bold lyrics, the Elliott Smith-ish piano change, the ethereal vocals.

"Hard Believer" is off First Aid Kit's debut album, The Big Black & the Blue, released here in the states on January 26, 2010.

They do a mean cover of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song"; you must also check out "Ghost Town" off that debut album.

Subtle Sarah

"How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya?"

That's the sound bite Sarah Palin, speaking at the Tea Party Convention this past weekend, wanted news networks to broadcast across the nation. Mission accomplished.

Zinger!!! Finger pistols and a wink.

Watching the clip on FoxNews, George W. Bush, sitting on a couch somewhere in Texas, halfway through a bag of Rold Golds, turned to Laura in disbelief. "That bitch stole my style!." Laura could only shake her head.

Some things, however, Palin would rather not have the world see.

Her palms, for instance.

Apparently Palin wrote crib notes on her palm for the appearance at the Tea Party Convention. There is video of her looking down to refer to it, and of her lifting her open palm toward the camera(to swear on the bible, I'm guessing), unwittingly broadcasting to the entire nation the talking points she apparently lacked the mental capacity to remember: "Energy, Budget Cuts, Tax, Lift American Spirits".

How mind-blowingly disturbing is this, that someone with presidential aspirations uses the methods of a middle school cheat to remember talking points? For crying out loud she only has four or five talking points to begin with! I can only imagine what she'd write on her hand before meeting China's Foreign Minister: "Free Trade-Bad Milk-Checkers-Opium"

Couldn't she have thought of the acronym BELT? (Budget-Energy-Lift-Taxes) It would have been a perfect sound bite for them, "This country needs to lift its BELT and buck up" or something to that effect.

Instead, to be caught looking at her hand, then to raise her left hand in full view of everyone? This is sophomoric stuff. It puts on full display how very unprepared she is for anything but adulation and fame. This, after mocking President Obama in the very same speech for using a teleprompter.

What may be the scariest and most doltish aspect of this, is that if you look at the hand closely, she has "budget cuts" written down, then crossed out the word "budget" and underneath inserted the word "tax". Is this woman so dumb and unprepared that she can't even get a cheat sheet correct?

Del Zotto hit on Kovalchuk

The Rangers finally won a game Saturday, beating the Devils 3-1. Henrik Lundquist had an incredible game, stopping 41 out of 42 shots.

Best moment? With the Rangers up 3-0, Ilya Kovalchuk, the superstar winger the Devils acquired this week, crashed the net with Patrick Elias in tow, only to have Rangers rookie Michael del Zotto flatten him for the effort.

Del Zotto is a good offensive player, an exceptional passer, but this is what I want to see out of the Ranger defenseman:

Who's monitoring the comments over at the NYT?

After reading a recent New York Times article about online insults, I came across the following post in the comments section:

"You haven’t lived until you get a state certified psycho stalker who spends money to get a personal profile of your history including trivial things like your arrests, court appearances, driving convictions etc;
That not being enough the stalker also calls all over your home town to find out what he can about you and then threatens to put it all on the internet.
Then of course, having a huge obsession that consists mainly of you he finds out your cell number and posts it on the internet with out right warnings that there is much more inside information to come.
Yes, internet threats of blackmail
He also publicly claims to have had sex with your 83 year old sister and your 109 year old mother.
With nothing to do but live off his ancestor’s money while sitting at his computer in your former hometown and causing trouble between life long friends at the daily newspaper, he then follows you all over the internet and even invades the New York newspapers including the Times City Room Blog with nasty inuendoes and veiled threats that the commentator takes as friendly, cute little barbs and publishes them with glee.
All of this of course gets picked up by MSN Search and Google and is printed under the headline consisting of your very respectable real name, all the while he’s using multiple phony names that are changed as quickly as he’s being shut out of bloggin those particular sites.
Oh, yes;
And I know that I’m giving the obsessed fat unattractive troll fuel for the fire but, I must add that he goes even further by posting his disjointed meaningless off the subject messages under your real name as if it were you who had the stupidity to have such crazy thoughts.
All of the above added to the fact that he blames you for being a “free loader” who spends all your time on the internet and gives nothing to the world around you.
Does that sound familier?
Of course it DEW.
As he’s publicly accusing you of being all the things that he is, and even he must realize that amid his schizophrenic rantings to the world at large.
They say, “Nothing has the fury of a women scorned,” however, when rebuked an ugly troll in every sense of the word doesn’t give up very lightly either.
“Take a minus and turn it into a plus,” is my philosophy so, therein lies the plot for my yet untitled next mystery novel. See you at the movies!"

I think someone's in love.

Jon Stewart Visits Papa Bear at the Federation Of Xenophobes studio.

Jon Stewart was a guest on the O'Reilly Factor this week. It's been a long time since I've watched more than 30 seconds of Bill O'Reilly so it was particularly amusing to see how he's slipped so cleanly into the role of the nasty old codger everyone loves to hate. I guess his personality was always there, he just needed his body to catch up.

There were various moments of amusement.

At one point, after Stewart comments that he'd like to see the federal gov't use it's regulatory power to protect citizens, keep lead out of toys, etc, O'Reilly says:

"That's really smart analysis. You know a lot of people don't think you're smart. Did your writers come up with that?" You can tell O'Reilly had been waiting to say this. That's really smart analysis. You know, a lot of people don't think you're smart. In two sentences O'Reilly goes from naked condescension to whining like a jealous eight year old girl. You know, a lot of people don't think you're that pretty.

When O'Reilly attempts to patronize Stewart again moments later, Stewart quickly retorts: "By the way: did you notice that I used the work ilk?"

I love the little hidden smirk on Stewart when O'Reilly later says, "Come on Stewart, wise up man,". You can see he is trying to restrain himself from laughing. It's almost like a wink to his audience, can you believe this guy? This is just seconds before O'Reilly disparages the entire nation of Pakistan with an awful impression that sounds more like an Indian Mr. Magoo than any Pakistani I've ever met. Was he just trying to be funny with Stewart there in his studio? Or is this how O'Reilly's normal behavior? (Sorry, but the O'Reilly Factor conflicts with the Daily Show at 11 pm, and at 8pm...it conflicts with everything else.)

Bill O'Reilly has the race sensibility of Michael Scott:

Fitting in line with his inner young woman, it becomes apparent halfway through the interview that what O'Reilly seeks more than anything is adulation. Stewart flatters him, calls him "The most reasonable voice on Fox," and his tone completely changes. So now we know: he just wants to be adored. Isn't that cute.

Of course, Stewart is only setting him up. Being the most reasonable voice on Fox, he says, "Is like being the thinnest kid at fat camp."

Suddenly there is loathing in O'Reilly's eyes.

Here are the clips:

Part I

Part II

Part III

P.S. Kudos to Dennis Miller for giving what sounds like an honest assessment of Stewart and his talent, although in order to compensate he flatters O'Reilly to the point of nauseousness. Miller is another guy I haven't heard from in a while, ever since he came out of the conservative closet in the fall of 2001. He looks like hell. The dark side has not been kind to him.

Wu-Tang and the Beatles

If you're a fan of Danger Mouse's Grey Album, which deftly mashed tracks from the Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z's The Black Album, you may want to check out Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers, which, as the title suggests, mixes the musical stylings of the Wu-Tang Clan with those of the fab four. The download is free after a simple email signup.

Producer Tom Caruana, who lives in the UK, doesn't relegate himself to just two albums; instead he picks and chooses from their entire catalogs, solo efforts included. There are some highlights: "Uzi (Pinky Ring)", using samples from "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", and "Getting Better"; "Might Healthy" features Ghostface lyrics over a sample from "My Love Don't Give Me Presents". ODB sings the chorus from "Love Me Do" in one of the skits, possibly what sparked Caruana to make the album in the first place.

For someone whose interest in Wu-Tang waned after the first round of solo efforts (Tical, Liquid Swords, ODB's Return to the 36 Chambers) this is a nice introduction to some of the lyrical efforts I missed over the years. For all fans of Wu-Tang, it is definitely worth a listen, though it's certainly not as accomplished and polished as the Grey Album. Danger Mouse's treatment of "Allure" and "December 4th" far surpass anything you'll find here. But hey, it's free.

Here's to you, J. D. Salinger

I was never one of those surly malcontents who walked high school halls with a blood red copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" conspicuously peeking out a back pocket. For a while, as an adolescent, it remained one of those books my mother forbade me to read, along with Tropic of Cancer, The World According to Garp, The Fountainhead, and Lady Chatterly's Lover. I was not permanently banned until adulthood, or anything so strictly official; I simply remember wanting to read them at some point of my childhood and being told I was too young. In the homes of aunts and uncles and my parents' friends, I'd find Stephen King sprawled out on a couch, James Joyce lying on the floor, with tassled bookmarks, underlined sentences, notes in the margins. I'd try to get them home without my parents knowing.

When guests arrived in our home for the first time, inevitably they would gravitate toward the bookcase, where an ornately bound copy of Lady's Chatterly's Lover rested between copies of Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tolstoy's War and Peace. They were all part of a set, different colors with the same design. It was a rare guest who didn't feel the need to say the title outloud, "Lady Chatterly's Lover", usually with a hint of amusement or surprise. "Oh, it's one of my favorites," my mother would reply, and there would be a shared look, a conversation tucked inside a glance and a smile.

For a long time this bookshelf occupied a unique place in my imagination, one of those trees in the wilderness whose fruit look so exotic and flavorful. One day I'd reach up there to pluck the wrong book, and soon some part of my innocence would be lost, never found again. To make matters worse, in some subconscious way I associated Lady Chatterly with Lady Godiva, a tale which involved a naked woman riding on a horse in public, and a man punished for watching.

Bother an adult enough and inevitably they'll drop decorum simply to get you to shut up. Eventually I learned there was sex in the book. "Your mother probably doesn't want you learning about sex." This explained why she didn't want me reading it, though it created even an even bigger question: How had it come to pass that my mother's favorite book was about sex?

I looked through these books, especially Lady Chatterly, whenever I had the chance. Around ten or eleven years old, acting as if I were reading someone's diary, I'd sneak the book into my bedroom, flip through the pages, not even sure what I was looking for. And I wouldn't find anything worthy of all the hubbub. The Fountainhead and Garp, after all, are both over seven hundred pages long; Lady Chatterly's Lover is written in a style and language that is hard for a young kid to enjoy, too many turns to the dictionary for meaning, too long-winded; and I could never get my hand on anything by Henry Miller.

Instead I read a lot of mystery. An early love of Hitchcock movies led me to the "Three Investigators" series, written by Robert Arthur. Hitchcock would appear in the stories as the wise old authority figure, helping out the young investigators when matters became too serious for kids to handle, and even sending them out to do mischief on his behalf. (I went to Amazon looking for these books, and new, unused copies go anywhere from $88 to $600 a piece, though there are used copies for much less.)

I spent a month with Sherlock Holmes, the entire collection read at night in the hours before sleeping. That led me to Agatha Christie, Poe. Soon it was spy novels: Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, John le Carre.

Sophomore year I was walking out of English class when I overheard the instructor and a student discussing the meaning of a Pink Floyd song, "Comfortably Numb." The band had recently shot an updated video of the song and it was playing a lot on MTV (back when MTV actually showed music videos). I was friendly with the student, named Bill, a tall kid who always wore tie-dyes and his blond hair a little long (I recognize now that he was almost certainly a pothead, but at the time I would have associated his personal style with the type of music he listened to). Our instructor had an Irish last name, and physically resembled Mark Twain, down to the overgrown mustache.

Interested to hear what they had to say, I asked for their interpretation of the meaning behind the song title. Bill looked annoyed and the teacher shrugged his shoulders as if to suggest he couldn't explain it me, I either understood or I did not. After an uncomfortable silence, Bill continued the conversation as if I'd never said anything. The teacher went along.

Embarrassed, I walked out, surprised and a little hurt. I cursed the two of them. They made me look stupid. How could I have allowed that to happen? I went over what I should have said, would have said if I'd only been thinking more clearly. Better yet, if I had done some research I wouldn't have to ask, and then I wouldn't look so ignorant.

I started reading everything I wasn't supposed to. Now, keep in mind this was 1989. Had I been born in the last thirty years, I would have simply used the internet to search for Pink Floyd songs, lyrics, went to the comfortably numb Wikipedia page, followed a trail that started with simple search terms and led to some understanding that would make me more comfortable in conversation should the subject ever come up again. But I was born in 1974. The internet didn't become worth the effort until the late 1990s. So I went to the library.

I had already tackled "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", a book frequently grouped with "Catcher in the Rye". My ancestors were mostly Irish Catholics, so some of the dialogue sounded familiar and the underlying themes, however much I misinterpreted them, struck a chord. I was glad to be spared a Catholic school experience. My mother, and most of her sisters, were not so lucky. In fact, until they moved to Florida, my grandmother sang at Saints Cyril's, a parish near their home in Deer Park, while my grandfather carried around a collection contraption that looked liked a snake charmer's basket tied to the end of a broomstick. The fact that my grandfather grew up using broomsticks as stickball bats on the streets of hell's kitchen, only to later use them for collecting coins and dollar bills for the church, told me all I needed to know about religion.

It's very likely one of my ancestors experienced a life similar to the one Joyce created with his character Stephen Dadelus.

Holden Caufield? Not so much.

A number of things have always bothered me about Salinger's stories. Few, if any, of his stories have clear resolutions. Some critics have described this as evidence of a "zen" sensibility, but to me it feels like a deliberate attempt to leave the reader feeling uneasy, unresolved. You wind up thinking about the story more than you would if there were a clean, inevitable ending. Near the end of "Seymour: An Introduction", the narrator explains: "Fundamentally, my mind has always balked at any type of ending. How many stories have I torn up since I was a boy simply because they had what that old Chekhov-baiting Somerset Maugham calls a Beginning, a Middle, and an End?"

The effect of this on me was that I'd finish a story unsatisfied, thinking: What exactly was that character's problem? (They all have problems.) What was so significant, for example, about Eloise (in "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut) setting her daughter's eyeglasses face down on the bedside table, "too full of purpose to feel pain"?

In Salinger's world human beings are distant, self-involved, megalomaniacal, cunning, depressive. The weight of circumstance frequently hangs upon them like self-imposed chains, dragging them into psychological ditches. The reader senses a vast emptiness in the world his characters inhabit, and that which is not emptiness is mostly shit. Everyone's first and primary concern when dealing with others is how to use each other to selfish advantage. Displays of affection inevitably have ulterior motives. It is a decidedly un-romantic view of existence. One story that comes to mind is "Just Before the War with the Eskimos". This is how the story begins:

Five straight Saturday mornings, Ginnie Mannox had played tennis at the East Side Courts with Selena Graff, a classmate at Miss Basehoar's. Ginnie openly considered Selena the biggest drip at Miss Basehoar's-a school ostensibly abounding with fair-sized drips-but at the same time she had never known anyone like Selena for bringing fresh cans of tennis balls. Selena's father made them or something.

Perhaps the most lasting effect Salinger's work had on me was making me appreciate my own life, my own humble beginnings. How could I not, after seeing how cunning, prejudiced, uncaring and lonely the privileged children of the elite seemed to be? We were working class, struggled sometimes, but we loved and respected each other. We said what was on our minds, and confronted each other. If we suffered, we suffered together.

In Salinger's world, even the enlightened don't give a f*ck. Take "Teddy", a story about a ten year old boy so precociously wise it frightens adults. Teddy is able to transcend his body through meditation and see his own death before it happens, yet he lets himself be killed so he can be on his way toward spiritual advancement, or so it seems.

How about remaining in this world to guide others? Teddy's never had any use for emotions, or logic; his parents don't understand what love is. He explains that being born in America is akin to karmic punishment for a transgression he made in this last life, that it's no place for a spiritual person. In his notebook he writes that he will either die that very day, or maybe Valentine's Day six years later. He then tells a stranger that there's an imminent chance his sister will push him into an empty swimming pool and kill him. Doesn't he feel bad that his parents will suffer upon hearing of his death? How about his six year old sister, who doesn't like Teddy but doesn't necessarily want to harm him, much less kill him. How is she to cope with such a mistake for the rest of her life? Teddy's answer: when they themselves die they'll realize how silly it was to feel such emotions. Minutes later he leads himself to the edge of the pool.

These are characters, however, and just because I don't like them personally does not mean I fail to appreciate how well written Salinger's stories can be, how it stirred my emotions in uncomfortable ways and left me wondering after meaning, how realistic the dialogue seemed. Motives are strong with Salinger characters, and the motives of his characters are frequently at odds with each other. The manipulations ring true. In the end, however, readers are left with the sense that there is no apparent purpose to existence, and therefore there's just no point to getting excited over anything, since it will all eventually crumble over time. An existentialist view, really, one that's not exactly conducive to love and the enjoyment of life. I would much rather be a romantic.

For someone who seemed to have such a dire view of existence, Mr. Salinger certainly hung on to that existence for quite some time. After 91 years of life on this planet, the last fifty or so hidden away in Cornish, NH, he passed away Wednesday. Let's hope that he found some peace. Not that he would have thought it was of any consequence to the rest of us.