Left of the Dial

Rockin’ the Right—The Sequel!

So Rockin’ the Right: The Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs lit up the internets for a few days. So much so that even Pete Townshend felt compelled to chime in (and understandably so). Now the author of the original list is back for more. Kinda like Freddy or Jason.

Kinda sad, really—at least the first list had a powerful lot of truly great songs, even if few of them were truly conservative, no matter how you twisted their meaning. Most of these songs may or may not be conservative—Miller once again obstinately pretends to believe that only conservatives care about marriage and democracy, all evidence to the contrary—but the first thing that strikes you is just how many of them suck. If, that is, they even register at all.

Not all of them blow, of course. To pick one notable example, Chuck Berry’s brilliant "Back in the U.S.A." The problem with its inclusion on this list is that unlike some of the one-dimensional jingoistic tunes listed, this song’s a fully-developed piece of art. Berry seems to clearly love his country, yes, but he’s also being at least partially ironic—he’s talking about how fantastic this great nation of ours is…a nation which really wasn’t all that fantastic if you were a black man in the 1950s. At that point in time Berry was hailed as an artistic giant internationally, creator of some of the finest art American had ever produced, and quite rightly so. And yet he lived in the land of skyscrapers and hamburgers…and separate water fountains, and buses where he couldn’t sit up front. That’s the USA Berry’s so glad to be living in. It’s a country which had made him rich and famous but it was also a country where, as he sings in the song, he’s "looking hard for a drive-in." See, as a black man at the time, he couldn’t go to just any drive-in—drive-ins were plentiful at the time—but only the ones that’d be willing to serve someone with his skin color. And so once again the true meaning of the song goes right over Miller’s head (and that’s being charitable in assuming he’s simply ignorant rather than willfully misleading).

Oh, and as for the cautionary tale that is Prince’s "Little Red Corvette"—the mode of transport the Purple One is singing about, obviously, is his partner’s hoo-hoo, and he's most certainly not cautioning her against promiscuity. He's just worried that he won’t be able to keep up with her voracious sexual appetite and copious experience—but, given that it’s a Saturday night and she’s got a ton of condoms readily available, he’s more than willing to give it a stab.

Two songs later on that same album comes the song "Let’s Pretend We’re Married," which has the chorus:

Let’s pretend we’re married and go all night
There ain’t nothin’ wrong if it feel all right
I won’t stop until the mornin’ light
Let’s pretend we’re married and go all night…tonight

And that’s actually tame compared to the verses, which are tame compared to the ad-libs in the song. [I had no idea one of the things he suggests was physically possible.] So once again, the only way to shoehorn a legitimately great song onto this list is by completely divorcing its lyrics from context in order to kid yourself that it maybe kinda sorta fits the criteria. Although even there it still doesn’t work because great as it is—and it most certainly is—"Little Red Corvette" is not and never has been a staple of classic rock radio.

There’s one other alternative, I reckon, and it’s really rather an intriguing one. Perhaps Miller actually knows the song is about lurid casual sex. In which case I guess conservatives are a lot more fun than they like to pretend. I s’pose I shouldn’t be all that surprised, given how many of the most prominent conservatives have dumped their wives for younger models (cf. Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, George Allen and Newt Gingrich.).

Randy bastiches.

May 30, 2006
Encore!
50 more conservative rock songs.
By John J. Miller

My article on the 50 greatest conservative rock songs has struck a chord, so to speak. The New York Times called it "surprisingly persuasive." The Boston Herald also noticed it. In Britain, the Independent said that "Dylan will never sound the same again." Some guy named Pete Townshend posted a comment about #1 song "Won’t Get Fooled Again," and a Scottish newspaper tracked down the Proclaimers, who appear at #42, for a remark. The blogosphere has been active as well: I’ve enjoyed reading responses here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The most amusing reply appeared in several forms on left-wing blogs: Hands off my rock music, right-wing scum! This notion was expressed most succinctly by Dave Marsh, described in the Times as "the longtime rock critic and avowed lefty." He thought the list was "a desperate effort by the right to co-opt popular culture." In other words: The 62 million Americans who voted for President Bush’s reelection don’t actually participate in the creation and consumption of pop culture, but we steal it and twist it in dastardly ways.

Yawn.

Much of the commentary has focused on two basic questions, both of which I tried to address briefly in the introduction to the original article. I’ll say a few more words here:

What’s conservative? There are of course many varieties of conservatism, a term which I define broadly in the fusionist custom of NR. The original article said: "The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values." A few lefties have pointed out that they’re skeptical of government, too, especially with Republicans in power. Fair enough. I would modify this to say "skepticism of big government"—i.e., the welfare state, the nanny state, the left-wing state, etc. Also, claiming that a song is conservative certainly does not mean to suggest that the artist who wrote it or performed it is a conservative. For the most part, I interpreted the lyrics the way a New Critic would interpret a poem—i.e., by examining a text without reference to biography or historical context. I bent this rule in a few places, but only when it seemed appropriate. Rest assured, I don’t think the Sex Pistols are a conservative band—but their great rock song "Bodies" resonates with conservatives in a very particular way.

What’s a rock song? For the purposes of this list, I’ve viewed a rock song as a tune that’s already played on a "classic rock" radio station or one that might conceivably be played there. This eliminates a lot of "pop songs" that might be called conservative, such as "Love Child" by The Supremes or "Papa Don’t Preach" by Madonna . It also excludes country music, where it is of course much easier to find lyrics that express a conservative sentiment. For what it’s worth, I’d love to see someone assemble of list of the 50 best left-wing country songs.

The smartest commentary focused on the meanings of the songs themselves, and quarreling over what’s on and off the list. The most frequent type of reply, judging from the e-mails I’ve seen, proposed additional songs for the list. Suggestions such as these made the whole enterprise possible in the first place: Last fall, when I solicited nominations for great conservative rock songs, I received hundreds of thought-provoking ideas. The fact that so many people interpreted "Won’t Get Fooled Again" as fundamentally counterrevolutionary, for instance, convinced me that it ought to sit atop the list. At any rate, let me say once again to those who wrote in, back then and more recently: Thank you.

Finally, what’s a rock concert without an encore? Here are 50 more songs—a few that just barely missed making the cut for the original list, plus several others that I’ve learned about only this week. Consider them #51-100 on the list of great conservative rock songs. They appear in alphabetical order:

"Aces High," by Iron Maiden.
A tribute to the martial valor of the fighter pilots who saved Britain in 1940. On a tour in the 1980s, Iron Maiden opened concerts with a snippet from Churchill’s "Never Surrender" speech and then launched into this rocker. (My own tribute to the everlasting greatness of Iron Maiden may be read here.)

"After Forever," by Black Sabbath.
"Could it be you’re afraid of what your friends might say / If they knew you believe in God above? / They should realize before they criticize / That God is the only way to love."

"Alive," by P.O.D.
An expression of Christian faith by a super-hip band.

"Angry Young Man," by Billy Joel.
"And there’s always a place for the angry young man / With his fist in the air and his head in the sand / And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes / So he can’t understand why his heart always breaks / And his honor is pure and his courage as well / And he’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell / And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man."

"Anthem," by Rush.
Inspired by Ayn Rand. "Begging hands and bleeding hearts will / Only cry out for more."

"Back in the U.S.A.," by Chuck Berry.
A patriotic rock song: "Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway? / From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay / You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U.S.A."

"Blood from a Stone," by The Hooters.
"I’m working hard to pay the rent / And support my government / Built the highways and the railroad tracks / Now we’re not giving up ‘til they give it all back."

"Catch Me Now I’m Falling," by The Kinks.
"I remember when you were down / You would always come running to me / I never denied you and I would guide you / Through all of your difficulties / Now I’m calling all citizens from all over the world / This is Captain America calling / I bailed you out when you were down on your knees / So will you catch me now I’m falling."

"Date Rape," by Sublime.
Many liberals probably think this song blames the victim; conservatives will see it offering a bit of common sense: "The moral of the date rape story / It does not pay to be drunk and horny."

"Dedicated Follower of Fashion," by The Kinks.
A portrait of a hipster—and maybe a metaphor for liberalism: "His world is built round discoteques and parties / This pleasure-seeking individual always looks his best / cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion."

"Dirty Laundry," by Don Henley.
An anti-media tune that could have been a theme song for Dan Rather during the 2004 presidential campaign: "We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing / When it’s said and done, we haven’t told you a thing / We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry."

"Divine Wind," by Blue Oyster Cult.
Although the lyrics don’t make this clear, this song apparently was written in response to the Iranian hostage crisis. Possibly worth reviving for Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "If he really thinks we’re the devil / Then let’s send him to hell."

"Father and Son," by Cat Stevens.
"Find a girl, settle down / If you want you can marry / Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy."

"Freewill," by Rush.
"I will choose free will."

"Give It Revolution," by Suicidal Tendencies.
"The greatest weapon of the fascist / Is the tolerance of the pacifist / We’ve got to stand up and fight it."

"Get Back in Line," by The Kinks.
Anti-Big Labor: "That union man’s got such a hold over me / He’s the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve, or I eat / Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine / Then he walks right past and I know that I’ve got to get back in the line."

"Gotta Serve Somebody," by Bob Dylan.
"It may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna have to serve someone.

"Handbags & Gladrags," by Rod Stewart.
"Once you think you’re in you’re out / cause you don’t mean a single thing without / The handbags and the gladrags / That your granddad had to sweat so you could buy."

"Heresy," by Rush.
An bitter epitaph for Communism, at the end of the Cold War: "All around that dull grey world / From Moscow to Berlin / People storm the barricades / Walls go tumbling in / The counter-revolution / People smiling through their tears / Who can give them back their lives / And all those wasted years?"

"Holiday in Cambodia," by The Dead Kennedys.
The greatest anti-Pol Pot song in the history of rock: "Well you’ll work harder / With a gun in your back / For a bowl of rice a day / Slave for soldiers / Till you starve / Then your head is skewered on a stake."

"I’d Love to Change the World," by Ten Years After.
An anti-hippy classic. Many conservatives respond favorably to an ironic line in its first verse: "Tax the rich, feed the poor / Till there are no rich no more."

"In America," by The Charlie Daniels Band.
"Well the eagle’s been flying slow and the flag’s been flying low / And a lot of people are saying that America’s fixing to fall / But speaking just for me and some people from Tennessee / We got a thing or two to tell you all / This lady may have stumbled but she ain’t never fell / And if the Russians don’t believe that they can all go straight to hell / We’re gonna put her feet back on the path of righteousness / And then God bless America again."

"Jesus Is Just Alright," by The Doobie Brothers.
A counter-counterculture classic.

"Let’s Roll," by Neil Young.
The music is kind of lame, but it’s a well-intentioned post-9/11 battle cry.

"Life of a Salesman," by Yellowcard.
A deep cut from a cool band with a big future: "Father I will always be / That same boy that stood by the sea / And watched you tower over me / Now I’m older I wanna be the same as you."

"Little Red Corvette," by Prince.
A cautionary tale: "Honey you got to slow down / Little red corvette / ‘Cause if you don’t you gonna run your little red corvette right in the ground."

"The Living Years," by Mike and the Mechanics.
"Every generation / Blames the one before / And all of their frustrations / Come beating on your door."

"Miss Gradenko," by The Police.
Forbidden love in the Kremlin: "Don’t tell the director I said so / But are you safe Miss Gradenko? / We were at a policy meeting / They were planning new ways of cheating / I didn’t want to rock your boat / But you sent this dangerous note / You’ve been letting your feelings show / Are you safe Miss Gradenko?"

"Mother Russia," by Iron Maiden.
A song from the close of the Cold War—a bit too optimistic, it now appears, but a tune with its heart in the right place: "Mother Russia / Dance of the tsars / Hold up your heads / Be proud of what you are / Now it has come / Freedom at last / Turning the tides of history / And your past."

"M.T.A.," by The Kingston Trio.
Against "a burdensome tax on the population in the form of a subway fare increase."

"My Back Pages," by Bob Dylan ; (and covered by The Byrds).
The futility of protest: "In soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand / At the mongrel dogs who teach / Fearing not that I’d become my enemy / In the instant that I preach."

"Old Time Rock & Roll," by Bob Seger.
"Say I’m old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill / Today music ain’t got the same soul."

"Old World," by The Modern Lovers.
"I see the ‘50’s apartment house / It’s bleak in the 1970s sun / But I still love the ‘50’s / And I still love the old world."

"Only a Lad," by Oingo Boingo.
A dispatch from the excuse factory: "Only a lad / You really can’t blame him / Only a lad / Society made him / Only a lad / He’s our responsibility / Only a lad / He really couldn’t help it / Only a lad / He didn’t want to do it / Only a lad / He’s underprivileged and abused."

"The Other Side of Summer," by Elvis Costello.
"Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’? / A poor little schoolboy who said ‘we don’t need no lessons’?"

"The Playboy Mansion," by U2.
Not a place worth visiting: "Then will there be no time for sorrow / Then will there be no time for shame / Then will there be now time for shame / Then will there be now time for pain."

"Red Army Blues," by The Waterboys.
"Dressed in stripes and tatters / In a gulag left to die / All because comrade Stalin was scared that /We’d become too westernized."

"Red Skies," by The Fixx.
Not a sailor’s delight. The words are vague, but it doesn’t take an English Ph.D. to tease out a Cold War metaphor.

"Rock a Bye Bye," by Extreme.
A sad, pro-life ballad: "If you could only hear / The silent screams / When you wake them up / From their dreams."

"Shattered," by The Rolling Stones.
A harrowing portrait of New York City, left in "tatters," before the Giuliani renaissance: "Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots!"

"Silent Scream," by Slayer.
Could this be the world’s only pro-life death-metal song? "Bury the unwanted child / Beaten and torn / Sacrifice the unborn / Shattered, adolescent / Bearer of no name / Restrained, insane games / Suffer the children condemned."

"Silent Running," by Mike and the Mechanics.
Pro-gun, pro-faith, and pro-freedom: "There’s a gun and ammunition / Just inside the doorway / Use it only in emergency / Better you should pray to God / The father and the spirit / Will guide you and protect from up here."

"Simple Man," by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
"Mama told me when I was young ... / Take your time, don’t live too fast / Troubles will come and they will pass / Go find a woman and you’ll find love / And don’t forget son / There is someone up above."

"Something for Nothing," by Rush.
Another libertarian rocker: "You don’t get something for nothing / You don’t get freedom for free."

"Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)," by Cracker.
"What the world needs now / Is another folk singer / Like I need a hole in my head."

"This Night Has Opened My Eyes," by The Smiths.
The lyrics may hold several meanings, but many pro-lifers read them as a haunting ballad in the aftermath of abortion or infanticide: "A shoeless child on a swing / Reminds you of your own again."

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds.
Originally written by Pete Seeger and sometimes interpreted as anti-war, the words are taken from Ecclesiastes and announce that to everything there is a season, including "A time to cast away stones / A time to gather stones together" and "A time of war, a time of peace / A time of love, a time of hate / A time you may embrace / A time to refrain from embracing."

"VOA," by Sammy Hagar.
"You in the Middle East, you be on your toes / We’re bound to strike, everybody knows / Just tell your friends, the USSR / We’re gonna, we’re gonna crash that party, ‘cause they’ve gone too far, yeah!"

"Yakety Yak," by The Coasters.
"Just tell your hoodlum friends outside / You ain’t got time to take a ride / Yakety yak, don’t talk back."

"You Never Can Tell," by Chuck Berry.
Pro-marriage: "‘C’est la vie,’ say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell."

And, one more, coming in at #101:

"Faithfully," by Journey.
This ballad, by my generation’s favorite guilty-pleasure band, isn’t exclusively conservative—it could appeal to anybody who misses someone. But a soldier in Iraq emailed to say it should be on the NR list: "A song about staying true to your spouse regardless of where you are and what you are doing is definitely supportive of traditional marriage and commitment." I can’t resist. So here it is.

— John J. Miller is national political reporter for National Review and the author, most recently, of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

© National Review Online 2006-2007.

Even Worse than Worse than Prog

So a while back I admitted that I couldn’t help myself—I really dig prog.

This is not prog.

In fact, this manages to take the very worst of prog and somehow make it even worse—no mean feat.

I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced any piece of music which was less rock and roll than this. Pat Boone covering Ozzy was more rock and roll.

It is so tasteless, so over-the-top, so just plain hideous that it actually sorta manages to break on through and come full circle and in its sheer ridiculousness captures some tiny bit of the rock and roll spirit, if none of its sound or anarchy. And what the hell, it’s not like the original band was devoid of ridiculousness, not by a very, very, very long shot.

Besides, they’re just kids and they look really happy to be doing this. And they obviously worked like hell. Props to them, I say. [And a few of the girls are really cute. I mean, you know, not nearly a Top Management level of cuteness, but then who is?]

So well done, kiddies. It looked like you had fun. I hope so. I hope all that hard work paid off for you.

But please please please. Stay away from Bruce and Nirvana.

But maybe Radiohead would work next year. That I could see.

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...am born agaiiiiiiiiiiiin!" [clap!]

Pete Townshend Responds!

So I got more’n a few hits on the Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs of All Time piece.

Much ado was particularly made, understandably, here and elsewhere around the internets, of the Number One song.

So much so that the writer himself felt compelled to weigh in.

Therefore, without any further additional ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present, Peter Townshend:

27 May 2006
Won't Get Judged Again

Won't Get Fooled Again has been listed in the UK Independent Newspaper as the number one song with - as I understand it - the political message most often misunderstood - in this case the message is said to be 'conservative', a word that may mean different things in the UK and USA.

Of course the song has no party-allied political message at all. It is not precisely a song that decries revolution - it suggests that we will indeed fight in the streets - but that revolution, like all action can have results we cannot predict. Don't expect to see what you expect to see. Expect nothing and you might gain everything.

The song was meant to let politicians and revolutionaries alike know that what lay in the centre of my life was not for sale, and could not be co-opted into any obvious cause.

This was everything to do with what I believe to be the power of music and congregation and nothing to do with what any individual might do to use the language of modern rock and pop to express their privately held views. I suppose the 'universal' themes behind rock, that I have always espoused, can emerge over time looking vacuous, unspecific, vague and dilletantish. But despite its looseness, and its decadence, rock has lasted a lifetime, and still seems to prevail as the impudent portal for the naive complaints of the hopeful young.

From 1971 - when I wrote Won't Get Fooled Again - to 1985, there was a transition in me from refusal to be co-opted by activists, to a refusal to be judged by people I found jaded and compliant in Thatcher's Britain. Peter Gabriel and I spoke often on the phone about work we were doing with David Astor, Neville Vincent, Donald Woods and Lord Goodman to raise money to help spring Nelson Mandela from gaol in South Africa. We realized quickly that what we were doing was buying guns for the ANC, an organisation that some on the far right believed were no better than the IRA. Nelson was sprung, so everything turned out well. But when in the mid-nineties, one of the very last IRA bombs went off in a theatre in London close to where my musical of Tommy was about to open, I decided my karma had come around full circle.

Not all action to change the world has to be trumpeted from the rooftops by Bono editing the Independent newspaper (though it was a fantastic and audacious stunt equal to Lord Matthew Evans giving me an editorial chair at Faber and Faber in 1985), or from the scaffolding of a rock festival. Roger Daltrey does indeed play rock 'n' roll with Richard "Dirty" Desmond (who owns some big newspapers among other things), but he himself gets down and dirty visiting hospitals where the teenage cancer victims for whom they raise money struggle to survive. He holds them, laughs with them, and gives them hope. This is One-to-One stuff of the kind that I find I am incapable. I can meet and speak with survivors of sexual abuse, drug abuse and the victims of all kinds of domestic violence, but I have what I now know is a quite common problem with those who might suddenly die on me in a hospital, clinic or hospice.

I am just a song-writer. The actions I carry out are my own, and are usually private until some digger-after-dirt questions my methods. What I write is interpreted, first of all by Roger Daltrey. Won't Get Fooled Again - then - was a song that pleaded '….leave me alone with my family to live my life, so I can work for change in my own way….'. But when Roger Daltrey screamed as though his heart was being torn out in the closing moments of the song, it became something more to so many people. And I must live with that. In the film Summer of Sam the song is used to portray white-boy 'street' idiocy; a kind of fascist absurdity, men swinging their arms over air-guitars and smashing up furniture. Spike Lee told my manager that '…he deeply understood Who music….'. What he understood was what he himself - like so many others - had made it. He saw an outrage and frustration, even a judgment or empty indictment in the song that wasn't there. What is there is a prayer.

H/T: Really Small Fish

Memorial Day

I hope you and yours all have a good one.

The Defense Department last week identified the following American military personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq or who died at a U.S. hospital of their injuries:

David R. Christoff Jr., 25, of Rossford, Ohio; sergeant, Marine Corps. Christoff was one of two Marines killed Monday when a roadside bomb exploded near them while on patrol in Iraq's Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Lee Hamilton Deal, 23, of West Monroe, La.; petty officer third class, Navy. Deal was killed in combat May 17 while serving with the Marine Corps' Regimental Combat Team 5, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was permanently assigned to the 2nd Marine Division Fleet, Marine Force Atlantic at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Steven W. Freund, 20, of Pittsburgh; private first class, Marine Corps. Freund was one of two Marines killed Tuesday when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

Michael L. Hermanson, 21, of Fargo, N.D.; specialist, Army National Guard. Hermanson was killed Tuesday when his mine-protected vehicle was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade and then came under small-arms fire while his unit was on patrol to clear roadside bombs near Balad, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 164th Engineer Battalion, Army National Guard in Minot, N.D.

William J. Leusink, 21, of Maurice, Iowa; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Leusink was one of two Marines killed Monday when a roadside bomb exploded near them while on patrol in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Christian Longsworth, 26, of Newark, N.J.; staff sergeant, Army. Longsworth was killed May 19 when his convoy was attacked with small-arms fire in central Afghanistan's Oruzgan province. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Kevin A. Lucas, 20, of Greensboro, N.C.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Lucas was killed in combat Friday in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Caleb A. Lufkin, 24, of Knoxville, Ill.; private first class, Army. Lufkin died during surgery Thursday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to treat injuries he suffered May 4 when a roadside bomb exploded near his mine-protected vehicle in Baghdad. Two other soldiers also were killed. He was assigned to the 5th Engineer Battalion at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.

Robert G. Posivio III, 22, of Sherburn, Minn.; private first class, Marine Corps. Posivio was one of two Marines killed Tuesday when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

Benito A. Ramirez, 21, of Edinburg, Texas; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Ramirez was killed May 21 when a roadside bomb exploded near him in Iraq's Al Anbar province. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

No More Pow!

Here’s a letter my boy Gorf just wrote to the New York Times:

Pow! Zap! Stop the cliché headlines! What is it that brings out the circa 1966 sound effects in the headlines of articles about comics and graphic novels in the New York Times, and every other newspaper in the country for that matter? I wouldn’t demean the word offensive by applying it here, but at the very least it’s banal and it’s certainly trite. Contemporary comic books are, to cite your May 28 Arts & Leisure article, diverse: they are the award winning Maus, they are the new Batgirl and Black Panther, and they are the source material for the critically acclaimed—and charts dominating—"Spider-Man" "X-Men" and "Batman Begins" films. How does this reality jibe with your page 1 "Inside" preview headline "Pow! Zap!"? As an editor of Batman comics for the better part of a decade, I love Adam West more than anyone, but please, leave him in the Sixties. Pow! Zap! headlines do not reflect the contemporary illustrated storytelling artform of comics and graphic novels, only ignorance.

Jordan B. Gorfinkel
University Heights, OH

I remember being annoyed by this headline tendency twenty years ago now. There’re few if any who love the old Adam West show more than I, but even twenty years ago I thought, come on, guys, give it a rest—it’s been twenty years already. And here we are, another twenty down the road and they’re still doing it. It’s not just that it’s damn lazy—although it’s certainly that—or that it’s that it’s incongruous to be talking about how comics have grown up and then using these juvenile headlines. It’s that, as Gorf says, the same kind of headline even gets used in an article discussing the Pulitzer Prize winning comic "Maus," which deals with the Holocaust.

Time to retire this cliché. There are still plenty of others out there for writers to choose from—as anyone who read Left of the Dial knows all too well.

Tony Blankley: Lying Liar Lies

I’ve watched a lot of talking heads and, unlike actual politicians, I’ve often seen them spin, sometimes furiously, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one simply out and out lie.

But on the McLaughlin Group just now, Tony Blankley said three times, laughing each time, "Al Gore invented the internet."

Much as I disagree vehemently with Blankley on most topics—although tonight I thought he was absolutely dead-on with one comment, although for the life of me I can’t remember what it was right now—at least I think he’s essentially honest if, you know, foundationally incorrect.

But he’s far too intelligent and learned to think for a moment that Gore ever actually claimed he invented the internet. Al Gore never said he did. And while many people repeat the falsehood without knowing the truth, Blankley is way too tuned in for ignorance to be a valid excuse in his case. He had to know what he was saying was false, which means he was simply repeating the lie for a political end.

The history of the whole smear can be found right here. The long and short of it is, Gore was perhaps sloppy in the way he phrased the claim, but he corrected it within literally seconds, in his very next sentence, and even so, the arguably sloppy phrasing still was far from incorrect, much less untrue.

I often somewhat facetiously thank Al Gore for inventing the internets, trusting that most of my regular readers will know I’m being tongue-in-cheek. But just to be crystal-clear: Al Gore never claimed he invented the internet. And if anyone ever says he did, that person is either ignorant or lying.

And now you know.

Stupid Question

So you remember back in school when the teacher would often say that there’s no such thing as a stupid question? And then the class cut-up would say that there are only stupid answers? And sometimes someone would add that there are only stupid questioners.

Well, I hesitate to bring up this question since so few others seem to raising it, and I figger there must be a reason for that. But…well…

This week Vice President Dick Cheney said that those who are advocating "a sudden withdrawal from Iraq are counseling the very kind of retreat that Osama bin Laden has been predicting and counting on."

And we, of course, have a new tape from bin Laden.

Well, my stupid question is this: how does Cheney have the guts to say anything at all about bin Laden, much less use the threat of him to criticize others?

It's been 1716 days since Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda cohorts knocked down the World Trade Center and set the Pentagon on fire.

It's been 1710 days since President George W. Bush said we’d get Osama in Laden "dead or alive."

Over 1700 days. And counting.

And yet he’s still out there.

He’s still alive.

He’s still sending messages, taunting us.

Over 1700 days. And counting.

Of all the people in the entire world spectacularly unqualified to use Osama bin Laden as a means to keep his critics quiet, to quell dissent, Dick Cheney is behind only George W. Bush—ahead of even Donald Rumsfeld. In the entire world. If it is possible to blame anyone for bin Laden still being free out there, he’s one of the two people due the blame.

So. My stupid question isn’t: why is Osama bin Laden still out there, able to taunt us like this?

My stupid question is: why isn’t that the very first question the president and vice president are asked every single day?

A follow-up: why do we, the American people, allow this?

But Then, When Am I Ever?

Here’s the first single off the only country album Top Management has ever asked me to buy her.

Shooting Myself in the Foot

So to speak.

Just got back from the doctor’s office. When the good doctor wrapped me up on Friday he said he wanted me back today for an x-ray; normally, I’d have had one right then but their tech was out for the day.

So we called today to verify that for an x-ray you don’t get an appointment, you just walk in. And, yeah, they said, sure, come in any time before 3:00.

So I went right over. And they told me to take a seat. And I did. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

And even with good reading material—the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly which features a cover article on what might happen nationally should Roe v. Wade get overturned (they seem to think it’s likely to make pretty much everyone everywhere on the political spectrum pretty unhappy, but especially the GOP and the pro-life movement in general)—half an hour in a doctor’s waiting room innit the best place to hang out. Especially because, you know, there are a lot of sick people there. And if you’re not when you go in, well, there’s a fine chance you will be when you come out. And that doesn’t make me happy.

So after half an hour, one of the receptionists comes over to tell me that the x-ray tech, whom I’d seen walk by twice, had gotten slammed with a whole bunch of x-rays she had to take right before I walked in. When pressed slightly, she hedges and allows as how it might have been only one or two. And that the second one might have just been called in ahead of me just a minute ago.

So. Half an hour to do one or maybe two x-rays and now there’s another one she hasn’t even started on.

I left, telling her that if my foot still hurt in a week, maybe I’d come back. She managed to look both understanding and shocked, which was kinda interesting intellectually.

Don’t get me wrong, we could not love this place any more. They’re awesome folks, from the support staff to the nurses and doctors, and they’ve been absolutely wonderful to us. For that matter, I really like this x-ray technician, even if I’m kinda weirded out by the fact that I’m on a first-name basis with the x-ray tech at our doctor’s office. [The fact that the office manager looks just like Meredith Baxter Birney doesn’t hurt. At all.]

But, you know, I’m paying them. They work for me. And I’m so damn sick of my employees—my doctors, my attorney and so on—making me wait. Dammit, that’s not the way it should work. They’re not supposed to call the shots (so to speak). I am.

So I walked out. And they won’t get my (and the insurance company’s) money. Will they miss it? I doubt it. Will I suffer because it turns out I need surgery but now I won’t know that for sure? Possibly. Is this stupid and pointless? Probably. But then so’s much of what I do and/or post on Left of the Dial.

And, seriously, I’m just so damn tired of having to wait even when I get to my appointment on time, or being told I don’t even need an appointment and then when I get there having to wait half an hour before even being told it’s going to be a long wait.

So I make my little stand (off-balance, of course, because I can’t really put weight on my left foot) even though I’m the only one who’ll feel the effect and it’s counterproductive but I still do it because there’s no real alternative except to give in and that’s just being an enabler and tacitly encouraging this negative behavior so pervasive in the entire industry, amongst other places.

And so I tilt, both literally and metaphorically.

But I only pay metaphorically.

Still More Fun with Film Manipulation

So I’ve already posted twice similar items—you can find ‘em here and here. As before, I think this can be viewed as both simple comedy and legitimate art and raises, I think, questions about the intrinsic nature of film manipulation, in both senses.

This one may in some ways be the best. On the other hand, it’s the first one to cheat, by importing a tiny snippet of dialogue from another film. Given how brilliantly it’s done, however, I’m not inclined to quibble. Besides, I’m afraid I’ll be smote if I do.

[H/T: The Miles List and The Llamabutchers ]

Rockin' the Right

—Updated below—

I’m pretty amazed by this list. A large percentage are seventh-rate bands at their very best—I mean, Rush? The Scorpions? After the Fire? After the freakin’ Fire?!

Then there are some of the worst things the major artists in question ever released: I mean, yeah, okay, Bob Dylan obviously is likely to deserve a place on any list of the 50 Greatest Songs of Anything…but "Neighborhood Bully?" It’s not that the song doesn’t fit the stated criteria of the list…other than the fact that the song blows. And presumably a prime criterion for inclusion in this list is that a song isn’t supposed to suck. Which brings us to The Eagles, a band which manages to be both major and second- or third-rate at the same time, and whose reunion tune on here, "Get Over It," manages to be both lousy and hypocritical, considering that they are without question the whiniest major band ever.

Miller also desperately twists the meanings of some of these songs, so that "My City Was Gone," a song decrying the desecration of nature for another parking lot, is somehow seen as being more likely to come from the rightwing. Because, you know, major developers are so well known to be of the liberal ilk. It’s hard to believe this would have ever been considered for the list were it not for the fact that it’s the intro music to massive hypocrite and admitted drug-addicted felon Rush Limbaugh. But what, then, can explain the inclusion of "I Fought the Law"—a great song, to be sure, but its presence here is baffling, unless it’s meant as a cautionary tale? Or when he cherrypicks the lyrics to "Small Town," leaving out the next two lines which would destroy his point: "I can be myself in this small town/The people let me be just who I wanna be." Wow, sounds like a paean to diversity to me. [In fact, it sounds like San Francisco.]

Even Blue Öyster Cult’s "Godzilla" gets twisted (and how can you twist that?!: "History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men." Right. Remember how Godzilla was created in the first damn place? By the folly of nuclear weapons! My goodness, how terrifically rightwing a POV. But at least I’m glad to note that Miller and the National Review seem to be onboard with the incredible dangers of global warning. I’ll alert Al Gore immediately.

Then there’s what can only be assumed to be either willful misreadings or abject stupidity on Miller’s part. As he admits, "yeah, okay, CCR’s ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’ was a protest against Vietnam, but it might not be a whole-hearted endorsement of liberal policies either!" Ooooookay.

And "Wake Up, Little Susie" somehow represents a time when social pressures in high school were different? For pete’s sake, it’s about teenage kids having sex—how is that different from today? Not to mention he overlooks a key facet of the song: they didn’t really fall asleep at the drive-in because the movie was so boring. That’s not why they’re so late getting home. Hellooooo...

There are so many, many other stupidities which could be pointed out, but I’ll let you have the fun of discovering them on your own—it’s not difficult, but it is amusing, or perhaps infuriating, depending upon your mood. I mean, even the intro fudges the facts—yes, Johnny Cash said that, and he was also dead-set against the war in Vietnam and the death penalty. Not to mention that folks songs have always been political, for centuries. To deny that facet of them is to deny folk songs a central tenet of their very nature, which is to deny their validity entirely.

Just one last thing: the riff in "Taxman" was not played by Paul McCartney, the frenetic solo was. That famous "guitar riff" is actually a bass riff, and is played by George Harrison. In fact, there is no guitar riff until the last verse, at which point the guitar merely imitates what the bass has been doing all along.

Maroon.

Rockin’ the Right
by JOHN J. MILLER of National Review

On first glance, rock 'n' roll music isn't very conservative. It doesn't fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either. Neil Young has a new song called "Let's Impeach the President." Last year, the Rolling Stones made news with "Sweet Neo Con," another anti-Bush ditty. For conservatives who enjoy rock, it isn't hard to agree with the opinion Johnny Cash expressed in "The One on the Right Is on the Left": "Don't go mixin' politics with the folk songs of our land / Just work on harmony and diction / Play your banjo well / And if you have political convictions, keep them to yourself." In other words: Shut up and sing.

But some rock songs really are conservative -- and there are more of them than you might think. Last year, I asked readers of National Review Online to nominate conservative rock songs. Hundreds of suggestions poured in. I've sifted through them all, downloaded scores of mp3s, and puzzled over a lot of lyrics. What follows is a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs of all time, as determined by me and a few others. The result is of course arbitrary, though we did apply a handful of criteria.

What makes a great conservative rock song? The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values. And, to be sure, it must be a great rock song. We're biased in favor of songs that are already popular, but have tossed in a few little-known gems. In several cases, the musicians are outspoken liberals. Others are notorious libertines. For the purposes of this list, however, we don't hold any of this against them. Finally, it would have been easy to include half a dozen songs by both the Kinks and Rush, but we've made an effort to cast a wide net. Who ever said diversity isn't a conservative principle?

So here are NR’s top 50 conservative rock songs of all time. Go ahead and quibble with the rankings, complain about what we put on, and send us outraged letters and e-mails about what we left off. In the end, though, we hope you’ll admit that it’s a pretty cool playlist for your iPod.

1. "Won’t Get Fooled Again," by The Who.
The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off na?ve idealism once and for all. "There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss." The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.

2. "Taxman," by The Beatles.
A George Harrison masterpiece with a famous guitar riff (which was actually played by Paul McCartney): "If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet." The song closes with a humorous jab at death taxes: "Now my advice for those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes."

3. "Sympathy for the Devil," by The Rolling Stones.
Don’t be misled by the title; this song is The Screwtape Letters of rock. The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism — he will try to make you think that "every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints." What’s more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism: "I stuck around St. Petersburg / When I saw it was a time for a change / Killed the czar and his ministers / Anastasia screamed in vain."

4. "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
A tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: "A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow."

5. "Wouldn’t It Be Nice," by The Beach Boys.
Pro-abstinence and pro-marriage: "Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true / Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do / We could be married / And then we’d be happy."

6. "Gloria," by U2.
Just because a rock song is about faith doesn’t mean that it’s conservative. But what about a rock song that’s about faith and whose chorus is in Latin? That’s beautifully reactionary: "Gloria / In te domine / Gloria / Exultate."

7. "Revolution," by The Beatles.
"You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We all want to change the world . . . Don’t you know you can count me out?" What’s more, Communism isn’t even cool: "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow." (Someone tell the Che Guevara crowd.)

8. "Bodies," by The Sex Pistols.
Violent and vulgar, but also a searing anti-abortion anthem by the quintessential punk band: "It’s not an animal / It’s an abortion."

9. "Don’t Tread on Me," by Metallica.
A head-banging tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength, written in response to the first Gulf War: "So be it / Threaten no more / To secure peace is to prepare for war."

10. "20th Century Man," by The Kinks.
"You keep all your smart modern writers / Give me William Shakespeare / You keep all your smart modern painters / I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, and Gainsborough. . . . I was born in a welfare state / Ruled by bureaucracy / Controlled by civil servants / And people dressed in grey / Got no privacy got no liberty / ’Cause the 20th-century people / Took it all away from me."

11. "The Trees," by Rush.
Before there was Rush Limbaugh, there was Rush, a Canadian band whose lyrics are often libertarian. What happens in a forest when equal rights become equal outcomes? "The trees are all kept equal / By hatchet, axe, and saw."

12. "Neighborhood Bully," by Bob Dylan.
A pro-Israel song released in 1983, two years after the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, this ironic number could be a theme song for the Bush Doctrine: "He destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad / The bombs were meant for him / He was supposed to feel bad / He’s the neighborhood bully."

13. "My City Was Gone," by The Pretenders.
Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh’s radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change: "I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride."

14. "Right Here, Right Now," by Jesus Jones.
The words are vague, but they’re also about the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War: "I was alive and I waited for this. . . . Watching the world wake up from history."

15. "I Fought the Law," by The Crickets.
The original law-and-order classic, made famous in 1965 by The Bobby Fuller Four and covered by just about everyone since then.

16. "Get Over It," by The Eagles.
Against the culture of grievance: "The big, bad world doesn’t owe you a thing." There’s also this nice line: "I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass."

17. "Stay Together for the Kids," by Blink 182.
A eulogy for family values by an alt-rock band whose members were raised in a generation without enough of them: "So here’s your holiday / Hope you enjoy it this time / You gave it all away. . . . It’s not right."

18. "Cult of Personality," by Living Colour.
A hard-rocking critique of state power, whacking Mussolini, Stalin, and even JFK: "I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three / I’m the cult of personality."

19. "Kicks," by Paul Revere and the Raiders.
An anti-drug song that is also anti-utopian: "Well, you think you’re gonna find yourself a little piece of paradise / But it ain’t happened yet, so girl you better think twice."

20. "Rock the Casbah," by The Clash.
After 9/11, American radio stations were urged not to play this 1982 song, one of the biggest hits by a seminal punk band, because it was seen as too provocative. Meanwhile, British Forces Broadcasting Service (the radio station for British troops serving in Iraq) has said that this is one of its most requested tunes.

21. "Heroes," by David Bowie.
A Cold War love song about a man and a woman divided by the Berlin Wall. No moral equivalence here: "I can remember / Standing / By the wall / And the guns / Shot above our heads / And we kissed / As though nothing could fall / And the shame / Was on the other side / Oh we can beat them / For ever and ever."

22. "Red Barchetta," by Rush.
In a time of "the Motor Law," presumably legislated by green extremists, the singer describes family reunion and the thrill of driving a fast car — an act that is his "weekly crime."

23. "Brick," by Ben Folds Five.
Written from the perspective of a man who takes his young girlfriend to an abortion clinic, this song describes the emotional scars of "reproductive freedom": "Now she’s feeling more alone / Than she ever has before. . . . As weeks went by / It showed that she was not fine."

24. "Der Kommissar," by After the Fire.
On the misery of East German life: "Don’t turn around, uh-oh / Der Kommissar’s in town, uh-oh / He’s got the power / And you’re so weak / And your frustration / Will not let you speak." Also a hit song for Falco, who wrote it.

25. "The Battle of Evermore," by Led Zeppelin.
The lyrics are straight out of Robert Plant’s Middle Earth period — there are lines about "ring wraiths" and "magic runes" — but for a song released in 1971, it’s hard to miss the Cold War metaphor: "The tyrant’s face is red."

26. "Capitalism," by Oingo Boingo.
"There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism / There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise. . . . You’re just a middle class, socialist brat / From a suburban family and you never really had to work."

27. "Obvious Song," by Joe Jackson.
For property rights and economic development, and against liberal hypocrisy: "There was a man in the jungle / Trying to make ends meet / Found himself one day with an axe in his hand / When a voice said ‘Buddy can you spare that tree / We gotta save the world — starting with your land’ / It was a rock ’n’ roll millionaire from the USA / Doing three to the gallon in a big white car / And he sang and he sang ’til he polluted the air / And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar."

28. "Janie’s Got a Gun," by Aerosmith.
How the right to bear arms can protect women from sexual predators: "What did her daddy do? / It’s Janie’s last I.O.U. / She had to take him down easy / And put a bullet in his brain / She said ’cause nobody believes me / The man was such a sleaze / He ain’t never gonna be the same."

29. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Iron Maiden.
A heavy-metal classic inspired by a literary classic. How many other rock songs quote directly from Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

30. "You Can’t Be Too Strong," by Graham Parker.
Although it’s not explicitly pro-life, this tune describes the horror of abortion with bracing honesty: "Did they tear it out with talons of steel, and give you a shot so that you wouldn’t feel?"

31. "Small Town," by John Mellencamp.
A Burkean rocker: "No, I cannot forget where it is that I come from / I cannot forget the people who love me."

32. "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," by The Georgia Satellites.
An outstanding vocal performance, with lyrics that affirm old-time sexual mores: "She said no huggy, no kissy until I get a wedding vow."

33. "You Can’t Always Get What You Want," by The Rolling Stones.
You can "[go] down to the demonstration" and vent your frustration, but you must understand that there’s no such thing as a perfect society — there are merely decent and free ones.

34. "Godzilla," by Blue Öyster Cult.
A 1977 classic about a big green monster — and more: "History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men."

35. "Who’ll Stop the Rain," by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Written as an anti–Vietnam War song, this tune nevertheless is pessimistic about activism and takes a dim view of both Communism and liberalism: "Five-year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains . . ."

36. "Government Cheese," by The Rainmakers.
A protest song against the welfare state by a Kansas City band that deserved more success than it got. The first line: "Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows."

37. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," by The Band.
Despite its sins, the American South always has been about more than racism — this song captures its pride and tradition.

38. "I Can’t Drive 55," by Sammy Hagar.
A rocker’s objection to the nanny state. (See also Hagar’s pro-America song "VOA.")

39. "Property Line," by The Marshall Tucker Band.
The secret to happiness, according to these southern-rock heavyweights, is life, liberty, and property: "Well my idea of a good time / Is walkin’ my property line / And knowin’ the mud on my boots is mine."

40. "Wake Up Little Susie," by The Everly Brothers.
A smash hit in 1957, back when high-school social pressures were rather different from what they have become: "We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot."

41. "The Icicle Melts," by The Cranberries.
A pro-life tune sung by Irish warbler Dolores O’Riordan: "I don’t know what’s happening to people today / When a child, he was taken away . . . ’Cause nine months is too long."

42. "Everybody’s a Victim," by The Proclaimers.
Best known for their smash hit "I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)," this Scottish band also recorded a catchy song about the problem of suspending moral judgment: "It doesn’t matter what I do / You have to say it’s all right . . . Everybody’s a victim / We’re becoming like the USA."

43. "Wonderful," by Everclear.
A child’s take on divorce: "I don’t wanna hear you say / That I will understand someday / No, no, no, no / I don’t wanna hear you say / You both have grown in a different way / No, no, no, no / I don’t wanna meet your friends / And I don’t wanna start over again / I just want my life to be the same / Just like it used to be."

44. "Two Sisters," by The Kinks.
Why the "drudgery of being wed" is more rewarding than bohemian life.

45. "Taxman, Mr. Thief," by Cheap Trick.
An anti-tax protest song: "You work hard, you went hungry / Now the taxman is out to get you. . . . He hates you, he loves money."

46. "Wind of Change," by The Scorpions.
A German hard-rock group’s optimistic power ballad about the end of the Cold War and national reunification: "The world is closing in / Did you ever think / That we could be so close, like brothers / The future’s in the air / I can feel it everywhere / Blowing with the wind of change."

47. "One," by Creed.
Against racial preferences: "Society blind by color / Why hold down one to raise another / Discrimination now on both sides / Seeds of hate blossom further."

48. "Why Don’t You Get a Job," by The Offspring.
The lyrics aren’t exactly Shakespearean, but they’re refreshingly blunt and they capture a motive force behind welfare reform.

49. "Abortion," by Kid Rock.
A plaintive song sung by a man who confronts his unborn child’s abortion: "I know your brothers and your sister and your mother too / Man I wish you could see them too."

50. "Stand By Your Man," by Tammy Wynette.
Hillary trashed it — isn’t that enough? If you’re worried that Wynette’s original is too country, then check out the cover version by Motörhead.

UPDATE: It occurred to me after I originally posted this piece that I’d missed two of the most obvious problems with the list—well, besides how stupid most of it is.

1) It assumes, bizarrely, that only conservatives weren’t big fans of communism and/or the Berlin Wall and

B) many of the songs are on here purely because they advocate getting and/or staying married. As though divorce is purely a liberal thang.

I guess that’s news to Ronald Reagan.
And Rudy Giuliani.
And John McCain.
And George Allen.
And Newt Gingrich.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton was pilloried for "standing by her man" through all his mortifying peccadilloes (mortifying because the Supreme Court absurdly ruled that it was only meet and just that their dirty laundry be aired posthaste and the mainstream media insisted upon airing said dirty laundry continuously for years and are positively all hot and bothered again at the prospect of being able to start right back up—but discussing actual presidential lawbreaking involving unconstitutional activities? Oh, heavens to mergatroid, we can’t have that…).

So, to recap:
When liberals divorce? Evil.
When liberals remain married? Evil, or at least conniving.
When conservatives get divorced? [Crickets chirping, and then] Look! Osama bin Laden!

UPDATE II: Well, give him this—he’s persistent. (Incorrigible may be a better description, except that it has at least slightly fond connotations.)

Miller loved the brouhaha he started with his first ridiculous list, so like a boxer who doesn’t realize he’s already got brain damage, he’s back for more.

Impressively, it may be even worse than last time, hard as that is to believe.

Toe What?

Updated below.

Yeah, I know that’s a stupid name. I don’t care. (And I’m not even going to say anything about being a heel or having no sole.)

So I think I may have broken my toe tonight. I’d just finished brushing The Bean’s teeth and I was rushing out of the bathroom to do whatever was next on my list of Things to Do in Order to Get the Chillens to Bed. And I guess I was rushing a little too fast. And I misjudged where the wall ended. And I kicked the doorjamb. Hard. Very, very hard.

My momentum kept carrying my body forward even though my pinky toe was still back in the bathroom. I heard a very loud something. Kind of a pop or a snap. Like maybe I’d just cracked my toe’s knuckle. Very, very violently. Or maybe just plain broken my toe.

It was loud. I was thinking how loud it was when I realized I’d also yelled really, really loudly almost immediately afterward. And then I looked up to see Max and The Rose rush into view.

I was temporarily confused about why they’d grown to be seventeen feet tall in the previous minutes, because I was looking straight ahead, right at their knees. And then I realized I was, in fact, on the floor in the hall.

That’s when the pain decided to make an appearance.

It actually wasn’t all that bad. At first. It felt more like I’d whacked my toe’s funny bone, sorta. So I stood up. And looked down to see if I was bleeding.

I was not. But my toe was no longer pointing where it was supposed to be pointing.

Rather than being nestled up against the toe next to it, the way the pinky toe on my right foot was, my left pinky toe was defiantly keeping a fair bit of distance from its nearest neighbor. If it was supposed to be pointing due north, it was currently in sorta north-northwesterly direction.

Amazing what a difference a few degrees can make.

I assured the girls I was fine—one of my rare lies; I am many things but even in the best of circumstances I’m not fine—and hopped downstairs.

The hopping wasn’t really necessary, since it really didn’t hurt, not even as much as the little bit at first. But it was kinda sick to look at. Toes aren’t really all that attractive, even on as stunning a specimen as myself. And that’s when they’re where they’re supposed to be.

Top Management took a look at the toe and went pale. Well, okay, actually, she’s always pale. After sprinting up our hill during a heat wave she’s pale. I’ve heard her complexion described as "fishbelly white." I think of it as luminous. And since she actually glows in the dark ever so slightly, it’s not inappropriate (as compared to most of the things I think).

She immediately decided it needed to be taped. I, ever practical, decided what it needed was to be completely ignored. No taping it, no discussing it, no even looking at it. In fact, as I glanced down at it, I decided No Looking was the very first order of business. Ugh.

To prove that it was fine, I took a step.

And almost fell.

At some point in the previous few minutes, the pain that had made an early cameo upstairs had decided to reprise its role and was now ad-libbing a whole lot of extra dialogue.

It must have been good stuff, too, because I started laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing, actually, which started to freak Top Management out. Which must made me laugh more. Which freaked her out more. Which made me laugh more.

And unlike my usual self, I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I didn’t want her to be freaked out. I just couldn’t stop laughing. The pain was not only considerable, it was really funny. That the pain was here because I’d kicked a wall really hard in my haste to get on the with the night just made it all the funnier. I could be either furious with myself—my normal response to my hourly stupiditity—or I could laugh.

But even that’s giving too much credit to the laughter. There was no thought process involved. Every time I twitched my foot, pain erupted and I laughed. I think I may have gone a bit insane ever so temporarily.

So while I take a half-dozen Advils, Top Management goes in search of cloth tape to secure the toeular premises. But she can’t find any. So she calls up neighbor Jenn, who’s a trainer by…uh…training, and who’s broken a toe or two in her time, including at least one of her own. She said the doctor used scotch tape and cotton balls to make—seriously, these were the words I heard—"a toe sandwich." Apparently, the scotch tape actually fits better’n the real cloth stuff.

So Top Management gets the scotch tape and the cotton balls and sets about making a toe sando. I’m not happy about this, because I really, really, really can’t see how she’s going to be able to do this without so much as looking at the toe, and obviously touching it is out of the question.

She does not agree.

Chef Top Management starts to work her magic. And impossibly wonderful as she is, even she can’t help but hurt me. And not in a good way. At all. But very much in a way that starts me laughing again.

So she’s wrapping and she’s padding and she pushing and prodding ever so gently and she realizes the cotton ball is sticking up about an inch past the ends of my toes, which makes ‘em look like they’re in an old black and white film and they’ve got a toothache.

So she calls The Rose and says she needs some scissors. Pleased to be of assistance to the madman she previously called her father, she brings them carefully but quickly.

"What do you need them for?" she asks.

"Mom’s going to have to cut off the toe," I say matter-of-factly.

She gasps. Top Management glares and pokes my foot. The poke lands five deliberate inches away from the toe, but I scream anyway, just in case, which makes me start laughing again. Top Management assures The Rose that Daddy was just trying to be funny, as usual, and that as usual it was very much in vain.

So Top Management starts to trim the excess cotton and the moment the scissors touch the cotton I scream again, which makes her jump back about four feet. I laugh some more. I think delirium had gotten a pretty good hold on me. Yes, all from a toe which may—or then again, may not—be broken. Yes, I’m a major wimp of almost unprecedented proportions. On the other hand, it hurt.

So then The Rose asks if she should go get a sock. I explain that, no, it’s best to leave the foot uncovered. "Because," I explain, "we need to be able to see if the toe turns black and then falls off."

Top Management pokes my foot again. This time the poke lands not quite as far away from the toe as before.

So I reluctantly look down at my foot. Top Management has done as good a job as one can when one’s job is wrapping two toes together with scotch tape, with a cotton ball between them. It looks like the kind of art project I might have cobbled together when I was in second grade. If, you know, I went to a school full of cannibals.

I decided to test her handiwork footiwork, so I stood up. And the pain had apparently taken my stillness for a sign of defeat and had entirely taken over the place.

It had hurt before. This was unbelievable.

But it got better after a while. Just had to work the kinks out a bit. One of the biggest kinks was when I was done reading to The Boy and it was time for me to kiss him and quietly leave his room for a few minutes, so let him get a bit sleepy before I came back for a few seconds. But there must be something about watching Daddy hop out of the room that chases the sleep right away. He thought that was just a riot. And if he were able to sit up by himself, I’m pretty sure he’d have joined me in hopping.

For want of a toe, sleep was lost.

So that’s where I is now. Except that as I adjusted my position just now, I accidentally caressed the desk leg in what might have been thought a rather loving manner just now. Tonight? Yeah, not so much.

So I’m off to bed. We’ll see how the night goes. I’m anticipating waking up in excruciating pain. Feh. Nothing unusual there. This time, however, it won’t be mental anguish brought on by knowing that, for reasons unfathomable, Barry Bonds is still allowed to play baseball and elected officials are meeting in closets, scheming to amend the constitution of the United States of America in secret. No, if I do this time it’ll be because my widdle toe hurts.

There are worse things.

***

UPDATE: There are few things more satisfying for a storyteller than getting a big reaction from a listener.

Except when that listener is your doctor. And he’s horrified by what you’re saying.

That’s not so good.

So Top Management forced me to go to the doctor this morning. I found it extremely embarrassing to be in the waiting room with bare foot, featuring the Incredible Inedible Cannibal Toe Sandwich/Grade School Art Project.

So they take me back after not too terribly long a wait—just long enough for one of my co-waitees to sneeze two dozen times—and the nurse unwraps Top Management’s toe sando, complimenting her mightily on the wrapping job. Unlike when I normally unwrap a sandwich, however, this time it hurt. (At least, I assume it doesn’t, but never having been a sandwich before, I reckon I wouldn’t know for sure.) A lot. So of course I giggled. Which didn’t seem to faze the nurse. I get the impression she’s seen quite a bit.

So the doctor comes in and asks me to tell him the story. And when I get to the part about the toe staying in the bathroom while the rest of me went out in the hall he yelled, "Oh!" and closed his eyes and turned away. And then his hands clenched involuntarily and he shivered.

Which was really rather unsettling.

So then he compares my left foot and my right foot and while the left looks much, much better than it did last night—and not just because I was now able to look at it directly, rather than through squinted eyes—the pinky toe still wasn’t snuggled up against the ring toe the way it had been for most of its life.

So he pokes and prods all over my foot ever so gently—causing me, of course, to giggle, which seems to disconcert him slightly more than it did the nurse—always asking me if this hurts, well, then, how about this and whenever I tell him it doesn’t he says, good, good, oh that’s good, oh that’s excellent, that’s really great news.

"So," I say. "Is it just a sprain then?"

He looks surprised. "Oh no," he replies. "It’s a break. You really did quite a job on it. It’s going to take at least six weeks to heal, and it’s going to hurt like this for at least two more weeks."

Then he wraps me up like Lon Cheney Jr in The Mummy and gets me one of them big Shaquille O’Neil-looking sandal/shoes folks wear in situations like mine and tells me I’ll be wearing this non-stop for the next ten days or more.

But no drugs. Just Advil, although four or five at a time will be fine.

Oh, and he wants me back on Monday to have it x-rayed. Just to make sure I’m not going to need surgery, maybe have a pin placed in it.

That stopped the laughter but right quick.

He wanted to watch me walk with my Shaq shoe, just to make sure it fit okay. As I gingerly stepped on it, he winced. "Ooh," he said, turning his head as though he could barely bear to watch. "My toes are clenching in sympathy." I thought it rude to point out that his toes could clench.

[Not really—this guy’s the bee’s knees.]

So I drove home and walked in and the four most gorgeous girls in the world turned to look at me with big concerned eyes, then stared down at my Shaq shoe.

"Daddy," The Bean asked. "Why are you wearing that? Is your toe all better?"

"Sure is," I said happily. "They had to cut it off, but at least I’ve got nine healthy toes left. That’s why I’m wearing this shoe, until the nub heals all the way."

At least The Boy thought it was funny.

But not as funny as this.

Ha! Reason # 1725917 and counting.

Clarabell and the Captain

You know, I could have sworn I remembered watching this show. Since it went off the air eight years afore I was born, I reckon that’s not terribly likely. Did I see it in repeats? Why can I still sing the theme song?

Reincarnation?

I’m the reincarnation of a kid who watched Howdy Doody. How freakin’ sad is that?

And more stuff I never knew about Captain Kangaroo. Life continues to surprise.

Lew Anderson, 84, Clarabell the Clown and a Bandleader, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
May 17, 2006

Lew Anderson, whose considerable success as a musician, arranger and bandleader paled before the celebrity he achieved as Clarabell the Clown, Howdy Doody's sidekick on one of television's first children's shows, died on Sunday in Hawthorne, N.Y.

He was 84, but always felt he was around 25, his son Christopher said. His father died of complications of prostate cancer, he added.

"Well, his feet are big, his tummy's stout, but we could never do without," Buffalo Bob Smith and the Kids of the Peanut Gallery sang in appreciation of his character, in a baggy, striped costume, who communicated by honking a horn for yes and no, Harpo Marx style.

Other times, Clarabell the Clown made his feelings known by spraying Buffalo Bob with seltzer, or playing a trick on him that everybody but Bob figured out immediately.

Before there was Big Bird, Barney or SpongeBob, there was Howdy Doody and his friends in Doodyville. Baby boomers grew up with "The Howdy Doody Show," which began in December 1947 at a time when only 20,000 homes in the country had television sets. It was the first network weekday children's show, the first to last more than 1,000 episodes and NBC's first regularly scheduled show to be broadcast in color.

When it ended on Sept. 24, 1960, after 2,243 episodes, it was Clarabell who had the show's last words. Since until then he had only honked, they were also his first words.

The camera moved in for a close-up of Mr. Anderson, who had a visible tear in his eye. A drum roll grew louder and then died. With quivering lips, Clarabell whispered, "Goodbye, kids."

When Lewis Burr Anderson was born on May 7, 1922, in Kirkman, Iowa, nobody envisioned he would become a clownish celebrity. He was not the first Clarabell: that was Bob Keeshan, later known as Captain Kangaroo. He was not even the second Clarabell. That was Bobby Nicholson, who went on to play J. Cornelius Cobb on the show.

What seems certain is that Mr. Anderson was Clarabell for an overwhelming majority of "Howdy Doody" shows from 1954 to 1960. In the opinion of Buffalo Bob Smith, who originated and starred in the show, he was also by far the best, according to Mr. Smith's memoir.

Mr. Anderson's father was a railroad telegrapher. He began playing his sister's clarinet when she tired of it, and soon had his own band. He attended junior college in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Drake University in Des Moines. He enlisted in the Navy during World War II and started a band between battles in the Pacific theater.

After leaving the service, toured the Midwest with bands, honing his talent for arranging and composing music. In the late 1940's, he joined the Honey Dreamers, a singing group that appeared on radio and early television shows like "The Ed Sullivan Show." The group appeared on a musical variety television show Mr. Smith produced for NBC.

When the Clarabell part opened up on Mr. Smith's other show, "Howdy Doody," Mr. Smith and the other producers asked Mr. Anderson if he could juggle. "No." Dance? "No." Magic tricks? "No." What can you do? "Nothing."

"Perfect, you start tomorrow," Mr. Smith said.

At first, Mr. Anderson saw Clarabell simply as a job paying more than $400 a week. Then, he began to be mobbed at personal appearances, and his fame lasted decades after the last broadcast. Mr. Anderson later profited from writing advertising jingles, but live music remained his passion. He formed his All-American Big Band, expert musicians from recording studios and Broadway shows, playing a book of 300 songs, a quarter of which he wrote himself. The band plans to play its regular gig this Friday at the Birdland jazz club in Manhattan.

In 1990 John S. Wilson wrote in The New York Times, "Mr. Anderson's band is not merely recalling the days of great swing bands; it is doing so with freshness, polish and originality."

Mr. Anderson, who lived in South Salem, N.Y., is survived by his wife, Peggy; his sons Christopher, of Ridgefield, Conn., and Lewis Jr., of Providence, R.I.; and five grandchildren.

In 1987 Mr. Smith recalled the day Clarabell said goodbye. Unlike the first broadcasts, which were live, it had been taped earlier. When it was broadcast, he watched it with his family. "I looked at my son and he was crying," Mr. Smith said. "I looked at my wife and she was crying. I went straight to the country club where I played golf and shot the worst round of my life."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Up Against a Wall

Wow. Senator Elizabeth Dole and the RNC has been trying to raise money for the November elections by warning that if Democrats regain control of either the house of representatives or the senate they’ll hold investigations. I find that an odd strategy, basically admitting that there’s stuff to investigate and that it’ll be bad for conservatives if the truth comes out, but whatever. I also don’t recall her hubband thinking investigations were such bad things when he was senate majority leader and they were investigating whether Clinton had conspired to have Socks the Cat neutered or whatever. Then again, back then Hillary thought there was a vast right-wing conspiracy (she was right, there was), whereas nowadays she just sucks up to them as hard as she possibly. So, you know, whatevah.

But—and if you haven’t heard this, I think you’ll find it very interesting, I truly do—Liddy’s also been warning that Democrats will impeach the president. With his approval rating in the 20s, a mere four points higher than Trick Dick Nixon’s was the day before he resigned, I’m not sure why she thinks that’s such a selling point, but again I say, whatevah.

So, no, here’s the interesting bit: the latest folks to talk about impeachment? The far right-wing.

I kid you not. Hot but heinous hatemeister Michele Malkin has been talking about this the past few days. They say President George W. Bush has failed in his constitutional obligations by failing to protect our borders.

I’m not exactly a fan of GW’s—which may come as a shock to regular Left of the Dial readers—but this seems a bit bizarre. The illegal immigration problem is a serious one, but it’s not more serious than it was a month ago or two years ago. Why the sudden urgency?

There are a lot of theories on why the sudden urgency, but I won’t get into those now. And as I said before, I have a lot of thoughts on the situation but don’t know anywhere near enough to really put them out there yet, if ever.

Except for this: when head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was asked a year ago about putting the National Guard on the border, he said it would be prohibitively expensive and ineffective and an all-around bad idea. Now, of course, that’s what we’re doing.

Why, five years after 9/11 do we need the National Guard to protect our borders? Why don’t we have enough border guards already? Perhaps because instead of the 10,000 that were requested, the latest budget the president signed only had money for a little over two hundred. I kid you not. But then today he signed a $70 billion dollar tax break, most of which will go to millionaires. And the record deficits just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger...

I swear, it’s like a parody sometimes. Or an imitation of our credit cards.

Okay, I hate to bring this up—I do—but there’s one other thing before I go: our border with Canada is something like three times as long as our border with Mexico and the only terrorist we know we stopped from entering the country with the intent to blow us up came from that northern border, yet all the clamoring is about the southern one, the southern one, the southern one. I wish I didn’t think so, but I can’t help it: I don’t think that’s just national security concerns talking.

Here’s an editorial from World Net Daily. I used to think of WND as being a really religious news site. Obviously not. At least, I sure hope it’s not. "Dear Jorge"? And we should be looking to the Nazis for tips on the current situation? Let me put it this way: if you click through to the link and look at his picture, you’ll have a pretty good idea where he’s coming from.

Against a fence
By Vox Day
Monday, May 15, 2006

Dear Jorge plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security – resources which will never materialize – in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America's wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

In fact, the hysterical response to the post-rally enforcement rumors tends to indicate that the mere announcement of a massive deportation program would probably cause a third of that 12 million to depart for points south within a week.

The complete absurdity of stating that enforcement of the national immigration laws is unrealistic, while simultaneously insisting that reshaping the entire Dar-al Islam to the liking of the World Demokratic Revolutionists is perfectly feasible, should be obvious. Dear Jorge's deceits are not only transparent, they are downright insulting to anyone capable of considering two concepts at the same time.

Unlike the Libertarian Party, I do not subscribe to a two-way open-borders policy, for reasons I explained previously. I do, however, believe that the chief hallmark of a free society is the freedom to leave it, as evidenced by the "no exit" policies so often adopted by socialist and other totalitarian governments.

The problem with a fence is that it works both ways. As it stands today, the only government agency that objects to an American leaving the country is the Internal Revenue Service, which weirdly attempts to claim income tax for up to 10 years after an American leaves the country and his citizenship behind. This is mostly because apart from the farsighted Fred Reed, few Americans now wish to leave what is still a wealthy and relatively free country.

But that may not always be the case, especially given the increasing probability that the Lizard Queen will be squatting on the Cherry Blossom Throne three years from now. And a government that believes the importation of low-skill, low-income Mexicans is necessary is not one that is likely to smile benevolently upon the departure of high-skill, high-income Americans.

Dialectic has long been the political elite's favored means of manipulating public opinion. They push and the people pull. Action-reaction-synthesis. In this case, the action is government-abetted illegal immigration, the reaction is the massive outcry for a fence and the synthesis is a self-imprisoned people.

A fence is not necessary, for there are other means of efficiently resolving the problem without resorting to such an obviously dangerous measure. Instant deportation policies, employer fines and bounty programs combined with the denial of all social services to non-citizens would suffice to settle the matter without the need to imprison the American citizenry. As the Minutemen have proven, again, unleashing the power of motivated private citizens is far more efficient than relying on government bureaucrats.

Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992. Visit his Web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

UPDATE: If you click through to the link, you'll still be able to notice the coiffery of Vox but you’ll no longer be able to "enjoy" his Nazi admiration in person, so to speak, because he appears to have just cut that bit out of his piece, several days after it was first published.

So. Not only does he seem to have—and, yes, I’ll say it—some clearly racist leanings (opinions which I find even more abhorrent than usual given that his bio specifically states that he’s a Christian, and I tend to hold us to higher standards), but then he doesn’t even have the courage of his hideously misplaced convictions.

But he doesn't disavow them. He doesn't say he made a mistake in writing that or clarify what his real beliefs are. He simply cuts them out, tries to hide them.

This guy is sorta the worst of all worlds.

Affirmative Action

Watched the series finale of The West Wing last night. Damn. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. Sniff.

And then this morning reality once more mirrors fiction. Turns out President Bush’s own body man, his own Charlie Young, is leaving the White House to go back to school.

Also like Charlie, President Bush’s personal aide, Austinite Blake Gottesman, once dated a First Daughter, in this case the luscious lush known as Jenna Bush. (That’s the blonde one.)

[Tiny and inconsequential spoiler alert.]

Unlike Charlie, young Gottesman isn’t attending Georgetown Law, but instead is going to be attending Harvard Business School.

Also unlike Charlie, not-really-all-that-young Gottesman (he’s 26), never actually graduated college, having only attended world-famous Claremont McKenna College for one year. [Snarkily says the guy who attended—and failed out of—a college that doesn’t even exist any more.]

And yet somehow, amazingly enough, our friend Gottesman got into Harvard Business School.

Huh. I mean…that’s just weird, innit?

I’d always thought Harvard Business School was, you know, considered fairly prestigious. As in one of the very finest schools in the entire world. I wouldn’t have thought they’d so much as glance at a guy who’d never even finished college.

Oh, but wait a second…it occurs to me that there’s a couple famous folks what gradumacated from there. Let me check…yes indeedy, it seems that President George W. Bush himself is an alumnus!

Well, now. What are the damn odds?

Remember: affirmative action is bad, verging on evil. When, that is, it helps out, you know…people of color. When it helps otherwise unqualified fabulously rich white guys and their pals, though, well, that’s just doing things the way God intended.

Reason #1725894 Why I Love My Wife

So I open up a new Google page, as I do several dozen times a day, and I’m suddenly surprised to see that where it would normally say

Web Images Groups Directory

it now says

Web Images Gwoups Diwectowy

and where it would normally say

Google Search I'm Feeling Lucky

it now says

Google Seawch I'm Feewing Wucky

and where it would normally say

Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools

it now says

Advanced Seawch Pweferwences Wanguage Toows

because, you see, she’s changed the default language from "English" to "Elmer Fudd."

Here’s a list of languages you can set your Google default to:

* Afrikaans * Albanian * Amharic * Arabic * Armenian * Azerbaijani * Basque * Belarusian * Bengali * Bihari * Bork, bork, bork! * Bosnian * Breton * Bulgarian * Cambodian * Catalan * Chinese (Simplified) * Chinese (Traditional) * Corsican * Croatian * Czech * Danish * Dutch * Elmer Fudd * English * Esperanto * Estonian * Faroese * Filipino * Finnish * French * Frisian * Galician * Georgian * German * Greek * Guarani * Gujarati * Hacker * Hebrew * Hindi * Hungarian * Icelandic * Indonesian * Interlingua * Irish * Italian * Japanese * Javanese * Kannada * Kazakh * Klingon * Korean * Kurdish * Kyrgyz * Laothian * Latin * Latvian * Lingala * Lithuanian * Macedonian * Malay * Malayalam * Maltese * Marathi * Mongolian * Nepali * Norwegian * Norwegian (Nynorsk) * Occitan * Oriya * Pashto * Persian * Pig Latin * Polish * Portuguese (Brazil) * Portuguese (Portugal) * Punjabi * Quechua * Romanian * Romansh * Russian * Scots Gaelic * Serbian * Serbo-Croatian * Sesotho * Shona * Sindhi * Sinhalese * Slovak * Slovenian * Somali * Spanish * Sundanese * Swahili * Swedish * Tajik * Tamil * Tatar * Telugu * Thai * Tigrinya * Tonga * Turkish * Turkmen * Twi * Uighur * Ukrainian * Urdu * Uzbek * Vietnamese * Welsh * Xhosa * Yiddish * Yoruba * Zulu

And out of all those, my wife chose "Elmer Fudd."

When I came back a few hours later, where it would normally have said

Web Images Groups Directory

it now said

Daqmey pat naghmey beQ ghommey mem

and where it would normally say

Google Search I'm Feeling Lucky

it now says

GoogleDaq yInej jISuDrup

and where it would normally say

Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools

it now says

nejwI' 'Itlh De' DamaSbogh Hol SeHlaw

because, of course, she had changed it to Klingon.

I laughed like hell. ‘Cuz the thing is, neither of us even like Star Trek all that much. Which just shows how perfect she is for me. Because we both thought that hysterical, for no particularly good reason. But we both did. And she knew we would.

I just love her so much.

Happy’s Mother Day, girl of my dreams.

God Bless America

I know, I probably should have saved this for the Fourth of July, but I couldn’t help—who could possibly wait when such glories are to be shared?

Put very simply, you are not as good an American as this guy.

And to my many readers from the UK and Canada and Australia and France and Germany and Japan and Korea (South only, to the best of my knowledge) and Lithuania (!) and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia—I gotta admit, I’m a little disturbed by how popular I am in Riyadh, although the many hits I get from Kuala Lumpur’s pretty groovy—and Egypt and Norway and Turkey—lots o’ hits from Istanbul (not Constantinople)—and so on and so forth, well…this guy is a better citizen than you are too. I’m sorry, no offense, but it’s true.

Or if not, feel free to prove it with a show of devotion equal to this fella’s.

I look forward to the proof. Go ahead, bridgekeeper, do your worst.

The Pizzly Grolar

Some of you may have already known about this. Being bereft of cable, however, I still get most of my news by Pony Express.

As though we didn’t have enough to worry about, what with Iraq falling apart, plans to hasten the end of the world by nuking Iran, Big Brother listening in on our every phone call and reading our emails (hey, I didn’t ask for all those Viagra ads to be sent to me! Although, actually, the breast enhancement spam? Yeah, actually, I did request some of those. What can I say? I’ve always been self-conscious about my lack of impressive accoutrements; it’s a societal thang), and the likelihood that your ISP will shake you down to ensure you get your recommended daily dose of Left of the Dial, now this:

The Grizzly-polar bear hybrid was a hybrid animal discovered on Banks Island, Northwest Territories, Canada, reportedly in April 2006.

The bear was shot by an American hunter. Later, officials took interest in the creature after noticing it had thick, creamy white fur, typical of polar bears, as well as long claws; a humped back; a shallow face; and brown patches around its eyes, nose, back, and one foot, which are all traits of grizzly bears.

A DNA test confirmed that it was a hybrid. It is currently the first documented case in the wild, though it was known that this hybrid was possible and other ursid hybrids have been reported in the past.

The media has refer to this animal as Pizzly, Grolar Bear, Grolar and Polargrizz; however, there is no general consensus on the use of any one of these terms.

Okay, I can’t help it. I’m simultaneously somewhat horrified and reluctantly amused that we discovered this rare new beast because someone shot it.

Personally, I like "pizzly" best, and "grolar" is good too, but why stop there? "Polzzly" certainly has potential—it's really fun to say: go ahead, try it out—and "grizzlar?" "Grizzlar" is good. "Grizzlar" is really good. Maybe sounds too much like a bargain-basement steak joint, but is that so inappropriate?

They Can Hear ALL of Us Now

I had a cute kid story I was going to post today.

Then I saw this:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Once upon a time Americans would get upset about this sorta stuff. Once upon a time Americans believed that Big Brother Big Government was not the most desirable thing in the world. Once upon a time Americans believed in the Constitution.

If there’s one thing Americans do believe in still (and good for them), it’s lawsuits. And it seems that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth (but not Qwest) broke the law by turning over their customers’ records in this way.

Sue ‘em. Sue ‘em until they weep blood.

Wiretapping without a court order? Whatevah. Suing for ginormous amounts of money? Now that’s the American way.

Some Words I Cannot Spell

I’m sure there are many, many others. Perhaps I'll update this occa oca ocass once in a while.

Accuses
Acquaintance
Barrels
Noticeably
Management
Occasion
Occasions
Occasionally
Publicly
Sacrifice

Thank God four spellchek. I don’t no what I’d due without it.

No HUD Love

I have to admit, I would not have thought this was legal:

HUD secretary's blunt warning
Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush
by Christine Perez Staff Writer
Dallas Business Journal - May 5, 2006

Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That's the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.

Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said canceling a government contract due to political views "is not a door you want to open."

"Whether or not it's legal, it certainly draws your judgment and the judgment of your office into question," Jillson said. "It's just not the tone you want to set."

© American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.

I mean, Secretary Jackson admits the guy had done great work and put together a terrific proposal, but he got the contract pulled just before completion because of his political views.

Wow. Can we deny worthy applicants contracts—funded by all taxpayers, regardless of ideology—based upon their religion too? How’s about which sports team they do, or do not, like?

That’s really messed up. If that’s legal—and I seriously doubt it—it shouldn’t be. This is shameful.

Tchaikovsky

So on my Shostakovich list a few months ago, a discussion started regarding how the most common transliteration of Tchaikovsky’s name came about since, after all, the initial "T" is silent.

The official Library of Congress transliteration is Chaikovskii. Some Russian speakers on the list disagreed with that—not with the fact, but with that being the most accurate transliteration—as Cajkovskij would be more appropriate. Although even that’s not really right because it’s missing the hacek—the little "v" or, basically, a little "seagull," if you will, atop the "C"—it needs but which for some odd reason Microsoft Word doesn’t have a key for. I mean, surely that’s one of the most frequently used keys?

Perhaps not.

None of which, of course, answers the question: where did that "T" come from? And has anyone seen the bridge? (Where’s that confounded bridge?)

So. Why the T at the beginning?

Because, apparently, French was the foreign language of choice for edumocated Russians at the time. French and Russian, of course, don’t share the same alphabet, French using the Latin alphabet and Russian the Cyrillic. So when writing about one of Russia’s top composers in French, they had to invent a way to translate his name, not having access to the groovy history books, much less Google or wikipedia, we gots. God bless the internets. And thank you, Al Gore.

But French doesn’t have a "ch" sound, as "ch" in French is pronounced (roughly) like the "sh" in "ship." So Russians added a "T" to the beginning of the name.

There weren’t all that many English speakers at the time who were fluent in Russian—as opposed to the forty-seven there are nowadays—so they simply adopted the French spelling. And, voilá, we get our not so handy-dandy "Tchaikovsky."

And there you go.

Why do I bring this up? Two reasons:

1) I thought it was interesting and anything that I find interesting is de facto going to be interesting to everyone else. I mean, duh.
B) Pal Karen had a somewhat embarraskin’ run-in of sorts with ol’ Mister Tchaikovsky today.

Seems one of her students was doing a presentation on the composer but had a peck of trouble pronouncing the name. So Karen gamely leapt into the fray to help. At which point her students, en masse, burst out laughing.

Karen couldn’t figure out what was so funny. All she did was say "Tchaikovsky."

Unfortunately, what the class of eighteen typical teenagers heard her say was "Jack-Off-Ski."

Hence the hilarity.

[Full disclosure: I’m giggling a bit as I type this, and I’ve already told the story four times today. You can take the boy out of high school…]

Not understanding the reaction, Karen tried to straighten out any confusion with a spot of further elucidation. Alas, ignorant of the source of hysteria, her choice of work was less than stellar and did nothing to help the situation—quite the opposite, in fact.

"You know," she said, "The Nutcracker?"

You can imagine how that one went over.

Poor Karen. But after all, as I said to Top Management later, his first name was Peter.

"It’s Hard Work"

"I mean, it’s…it’s hard."

Bush's best moment in office? Reeling in big perch
Sun May 7, 2006

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

May I suggest, if that’s really his happiest moment, he start trying different things?

Alternately, of course, he could just give up the job. [But make sure Darth Cheney quits first.]

Comments

By the by, it’s come to my attention that some of you long-time Left of the Dial readers are apparently unaware that it’s possible to leave comments after a post. I say this not to get more comments—some folks just wanna read, and that’s absolutely fine—but because you might be interested in what others have said in response.

Additionally, I often post follow-ups to my own posts in the comments section, if I’ve discovered additional information or [what I consider] a funny little side-story or whatever.

After each post there’s a little link you can click to read and/or leave comments. Also, in the sidebar there’s a list of the most recent comments.

And finally, as with all such joints, the Undisputed Master and Damn-Near Infallible Dictator of This Here Site [that’s me, aka Party of the First Part, except when he’s actually Party of the Second Part or The Defendant] does not necessary endorse or agree with any of the comments posted, even when he’s the one posting them.

Just so’s you know.

U.S. Marines go hungry

I fully admit, I’m not much of a military expert. But this…this just somehow doesn’t seem quite right to me. What am I missing?

We can’t feed our own troops? We can’t feed our own troops?!

Why do Americans put up with this?

U.S. Marines go hungry
By BOB KERR
The Providence Journal
MAY 2, 2006

The Iraq war has been the war fought on the cheap _ not enough body armor, not enough armor on vehicles, not enough night vision equipment.

It has been the war in which packages from back home have had to fill some crucial needs.

Now, we have chow call at the Greenwood Credit Union in Warwick, R.I. It's the latest in home-front intervention. It's partially in response to the unthinkable image of U.S. Marines approaching Iraqi citizens and asking for food because they do not have enough.

There's a big barrel in the lobby of the credit union on Post Road in Warwick. It's decorated with ribbons and it's there because Karen Boucher-Andoscia's son, Nick Andoscia, called and asked his mother to send food.

Nick's a Marine corporal. He was in Afghanistan last year, where there was enough to eat. He's in Iraq now even though his enlistment was up last year.

He's one of those Marines who can't walk away. His unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marines, was headed for Iraq and he just couldn't head for civilian life while those he had served with were heading to their second war.

"He extended," says Karen. "He told me, 'I really have to go. I can't let my guys go alone.'

There are a lot of stories like that. We don't hear them much. They're kind of personal.

So Nick Andoscia went to Iraq. And hunger soon followed.

"I got a letter," says Karen. "And he had called me before that. He said, 'Send lots of tuna.' "

Nick told his mother that he and the men in his unit were all about 10 pounds lighter in their first few weeks in Iraq. They were pulling 22-hour patrol shifts. They were getting two meals a day and they were not meals to remember.

"He told me the two meals just weren't cutting it. He said the Iraqi food was usually better. They were going to the Iraqis and basically saying, 'feed me.' "

Karen started packing in that wartime tradition as old as mothers and sons. She packed a lot of the packaged tuna, not the canned.

She happened to mention her hungry son to people she works with at Greenwood Credit Union, where she is a teller and has worked for 30 years.

Pounds and pounds of food started showing up amid the daily business of loans and deposits and withdrawals. Marianne Barao, the branch manager, said it could be done, the credit union could become the place where people help feed hungry Marines who are risking their lives on a skimpy diet.

"We sent out 51 pounds this week," says Karen. "There are customers coming in saying, 'What do you need?' "

The credit union is paying the cost of packing and shipping.

Any packaged food is welcome. So are baby wipes because showers are even rarer than a full meal. And foot powder.

Nick Andoscia, who is 22, is due to come home later this year. He wants to study criminal justice, his mother says, then go to work for a fire or police department.

But for the next few months he will be on patrol in western Iraq, dealing with the heat and the dirt and the danger.

The last thing he should have to worry about is an empty stomach. The last thing he should have to do is approach Iraqis and ask for food.

You have to wonder what the gracious hosts must think when a fighting man from the richest country on earth comes to their door in search of something to eat.

(Bob Kerr is a columnist for The Providence Journal. E-mail bkerr(at)projo.com.)

Carhive

Okay, these photos totally wig me out. The whole concept is so straight outta a sci-fi flick.

Technology, man. I think I’m at slightly more tech-savvy than the average bear (although probably not the average llama or the average pastafarian piratefish), but there are times I feel like the tribe from that old Saturday Night Live skit:

"It is a good idea. But it is a new idea. Therefore we fear it. Therefore we shall reject it."

Zap!

So I’ve got a whole bunch o’ kids. In fact, me and Top Management have so many that they’ve actually got a designation. You know how groups of animals have official collective names? You know, a gaggle of geese, a parliament of owls, a party of rainbow fish, a bind of salmon, and so on? Well, we’ve got a mess of kids.

I’ve trademarked that, incidentally, so please feel free to use it. But you need to send me a quarter each and every time you do. I accept PayPal. And, of course, cash. Lots and lots of cash.

[Bloggeriffic aside: know what the collective noun for butterflies is? A rabble. A rabble of butterflies. Is there a less appropriate collective noun? Or is there even more about butterfly behavior of which I’m ignant? Are butterflies infamous hooligans in the insect world? Are they notorious for rousing?]

Anyhoo, one of the nice things about having a mess of kids (I get to use that for free and, yes, that’s just one more of the many reasons to wish you were me) is that while you need a whole bunch o’ bikes (and, by the by, an army of ants is also sometimes referred to as a bike of ants, I kid you not), if you space your kids out just right, you only need one of each size.

Now for any of you what don’t got a mess of kids or haven’t had little ‘uns in a bit, you might not know—I didn’t until necessity forced me to learn—but bikes now come in a plethora of sizes. In my day there was really only two sizes: the one you started on, which was too big, and then the ten-speed. That was it. But they had banana seats, which were the best for ridiculously dangerous jumps.

Nowadays, though, there’s a veritable cornucopia of bike sizes. Because that way, of course, they can sell more bikes. They start ‘em mighty small these days, with four inch wheels so your fetus can get a head-start.

Okay, I exaggerate. But only slightly. The bike The Bean first learned on has, I believe, nine inch wheels. Which are really, really small. But as the biggest moves up a size, which happens with alarming frequency, then each kid down the line moves up a size.

Well, The Bean has now moved up twice since that small size. The most recent move came just a few days ago.

She wasn’t completely ready to move up a size but needs must. In this case, the need came along because her back tire was flat. And since it would go flat again five minutes after it was pumped up, my engineer’s mind finally figured out that there must be a hole in it somewhere. My detective’s mind noted that the tread on the back tire was almost completely worn away. My eidetic mind recalled that none of the girls stop smoothly if they can possibly manage to skid. And my accountant’s mind wondered if it would make more sense to put some scotch tape on the tire or actually get it fixed.

But then my junkman’s mind recalled that Brother John had given us a bike a few years back when his youngest had outgrown it.

My thrifty mind danced a little jig. A cheap one.

So I got the inherited bike down from the hook in the garage, pumped up the tires, lowered the seat and helped The Bean master this larger machine. Which took a few trips across the cul-de-sac. But within ten minutes she was riding better than ever—the larger tires allowed her to pedal uphill much more smoothly.

One problem: the back tire apparently has a hole in it. I could tell because it would go flat about an hour after I’d pumped it up.

But still. An hour. That’s doable, at least in the short term. I need to go into town to get it fixed, obviously, but sometimes weeks’ll go by without a trip into town. A tire which has to be pumped up every five minutes? No can do. Every hour? Hassle, but a bearable hassle, for a while, at least.

Now, an interesting thing about this bike is that it’s purple with bright orange handgrips and a bright orange seat. Which isn’t particularly notable. Except that pretty much all their other bikes had, of course, been pink.

This color change appears at first to be a much bigger hurdle than the size.

But it’s The Bean and she’s tough. She notes that "it really does look awful boy-ie," but allows that it’s not a deal breaker.

So I’m pumping the tire up yesterday—of course—and The Bean is walking around to put her waterbottle in the built-in holder (said holder being a major point in the new bike’s favor as far as The Bean is concerned). But she misjudges and bumps into the front wheel, which gives way slightly but not completely and she topples right over on top of the bike, smacking her face into one of the pedals. Which not only leaves a dent but, to add insult to injury, doesn’t even draw blood, meaning no chance for a band-aid, which of course allows everyone to admire your grievous injury. But does make her howl. And how.

So I hug her and after half a minute the tears taper off and she generously wipes her nose on my shirt and then says, "Okay, I’m ready now." And she grabs the bike and wheels it across the yard and out to the cul-de-sac. And on she climbs, her tippy-toes just touching the street before she pushes off and goes sailing on her way, not defying gravity but harnessing it, showing it who’s boss.

Ultimately, of course, it is. As it shows a few times.

The Bean goes up to the top of our slanted cul-de-sac and then goes zipping down at a speed which is truly, no kidding, terrifying for a parent to observe. I mean, I’d be scared if I watched nearly-eleven-years-old Max go that fast. My five-year-old? Fugghedaboutit. I think I peed myself a little.

And, sure enough, at the very bottom of the cul-de-sac, when she’s going the absolute fastest, there’s a grinding noise and I see her bobble a bit. My heart stops.

But she’s just fine and zipping back up and my heart begins to beat again. And then she’s zooming back down. And then there’s that grinding noise and I see her bobble a bit and my heart stops once more.

I work in a visual medium. So when I see my kid speeding down the street and start to lose control, I can’t help it—bad, bad images pop into my mind. I don’t want them to, but I have no power over such things. They’re just there suddenly. It’s not pleasant.

But this time, in addition to the Wes Craven slideshow in my head, I also realize the problem developing between The Bean, the bike and the pavement. And after some quick self-inflicted CPR to jumpstart the ol’ ticker, I call her to a halt—she skids to a stop, of course—and explain that she’s gotta stop pedaling when she’s at the very nadir of her route as that makes her pedal scrape the road, throwing off her balance. She’s interested by this information and agrees to take it under consideration. It’ll mean she can’t go quite as fast, so there’s a clear downside to it, which must be weighed against the increased possibility of turning into road pizza.

So she goes for another quick spin, this time sans constant pedaling and comes speeding up to me and screeches to a skidding stop and grins a billion dollar smile. Clouds suddenly give way, the sun shines down, a choir of heavenly angels break into "Louie Louie." It’s a good moment.

"You like your new bike, don’t you?" I ask in that way parents have of stating the completely obvious.

"Uh-huh," she agrees, patting the bike fondly. "Zap’s a good boy."

"Zap?" I ask. "Is that its name?"

"Uh-huh," she says again. "Because he’s so zappy."

And off she zaps.

Above and Beyond the Law

A very small excerpt from a very large and very important story that broke this weekend:

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office
By Charlie Savage

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

But the president doesn’t get to make those calls. The Supreme Court does. That’s how our Constitution works.

Apparently, however, that’s not how his Constitution works.

So now, at long last, we all know why President George W. Bush has not vetoed a single bill his entire time in office. Because he doesn’t need to. He can sign everything into law. And then he can pick and choose which laws apply to him and which don’t.

There’s only one problem with that.

That’s not being president.

That’s being king.

And realizing that doesn’t make you a liberal.
And it doesn’t make you a conservative.
And it doesn’t make you a libertarian.
And it doesn’t make you a Democrat.
And it doesn’t make you a Republican.

It makes you an American.

Pay Up...or Else

So yesterday on Meet the Press, the guests were:

Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman
American Petroleum Institute President & CEO Red Cavaney
CNBC’s Jim Cramer
Assistant Democratic Leader Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and
NBC Global Energy Analyst Daniel Yergin, author of the Pulitzer-winning book, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power."

Tim Russert, to his credit, asked the panel a very basic question: if oil prices are so high, why did Exxon/Mobil post a record profit this quarter?

The Secretary of Energy looked like Tim had just vomited onto the table. "Because," he explained, looking exasperated to be spending his Sunday morning this way, "supply and demand."

But, Timmy persisted, at some point someone at the companies had to decide to raise the price even higher than they had been, otherwise profits would have stayed the same.

They went around the table then and every one of them, except Senator Durbin, explained vehemently that record profits for the big petroleum companies were completely unavoidable and not a choice any of the companies had made—they had absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever—and that every one of the companies were pumping every drop of oil they could.

A few minutes later, when Russert brought up the idea of a windfall profit tax, every one of the guests, except Durbin again, vehemently explained that windfall profit taxes never, ever work and that when they were last tried, thirty years ago, production fell and that, undoubtedly, the same thing would happen again.

So. In other words, we're being held hostage and/or blackmailed.

I couldn't believe it. It was one of the most astonishing things I'd ever heard said on network television. Basically, I guess I'm just that unused to such complete honesty from Washington officials.

Here's what it comes down to: if we rescind the two billion dollars ($2,000,000,000) in tax breaks we gave the oil companies a couple years back and/or institute a new one-time windfall profits tax, the companies will simply stop pumping as much, so the prices and their profits will stay the same or go higher.

So says United States Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and American Petroleum Institute President & CEO Red Cavaney.

Screw you, American public. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. We control the oil.

Well, at least we know President George W. Bush’s economic advisor Laurence Lindsey was right back in 2002 and oil prices'll drop once we've kicked Saddam's ass. And then when we nuke Iran in just a bit, we'll be looking at a buck a gallon, I bet.