A 21 Year Old Man Calculates How Many 12 Year Olds He Can Beat Up At Once

This guy isn't kidding. He's got it down to extrapolations.

Proverb

The axe forgets, but not the tree.

--An African Proverb

What's With The Knife?

Or rather, the lack of one. I'm speaking of Chinese restaurants, even the ones that serve Mexican fast food (like Fresco Tortilla). Now, I'm a big fan of Chinese food. I essentially subsisted on it in my 20's. A place called Hunan Wok/Jimmy's Place on 25th and 3rd got the bulk of my business back then; like most places in New York, it is now long gone. Fresco Tortilla on 35th and 3rd got a large chunk of my business for a while as well. The chicken combination plate was both tasty and reasonably priced. But like all Chinese-run restaurants, a disturbing phenomenon reared its head: the lack of a knife with your meal.

I've queried several people about this knife thing. One friend of mine said that using a knife at the table is considered bad manners by the Chinese. I once cornered a Chinese gal not too long ago and asked her about this; she said that the "bad manners" thing was bogus. She said it just isn't a custom that they have. Well of course it isn't; their custom doesn't include a fork, either. But if you're going to give a fork with every meal, why not a knife? And why a spoon, but no knife?

I don't think this question rises to the level of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound", but it still seems to be a question without a definitive answer.

The mystery continues....

When A Band Saves Your Life (continued)

More than Quadrophenia, Rush's Signals spoke to me in a way that few other albums had. If lyrically Quadrophenia evoked adolescent feelings using Jimmy the Mod in place of Pete himself, then Signals, specifically "Subdivisions", placed no such fictional character as the go-between. "Subdivisions" came out at a time when I was very aware of the music around me, so its "newness" meant that it was mine. It was my story, these were my feelings, even though they were articulated by master lyricist/drummer Neil Peart, not I. Where Quadrophenia fails to connect and "Subdivisions" doesn't is that Quad was written from an inherently English, working-class sensibility. "Subdivisions" was written from the same socio-economic, suburban experience that I had as an American kid stuck in the alienating sprawl of post-war suburbia. (Note: Neil Peart is Canadian; he grew up in the Toronto suburbs. That said, the geographic layout of Toronto isn't terribly different than, say, Long Island.) It was the bourgoise, suburban experience, down to the letter:

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Couldn't have put it better myself. The song goes on to touch on sentiments every kid feels:

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

No wonder so many Dungeons and Dragons dorks are into this band. I wasn't one of them (a D&D dork), mind, but we still all flipped out over this song. Again, friends that are my contemporaries, as well as younger friends of mine, have expressed the much needed vote of solidarity that this tune provided them, thus giving them the sustenance to deal with the insecure teen years. I mean, if Peart went through this, and Peart rocks, it'll all wind up okay in the end, right? Guess so....

I leave you with the rest of "Subdivisions" below, and thank God that someone understood when it mattered most:

Subdivisions ---In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions ---In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

When A Band Saves Your Life

In March of 2000, I found myself going to Budapest, Hungary (of all places) with my sister and a few of her co-workers from the airline she works for. It was a five day jaunt, so we had to squeeze as much sightseeing in as we could. We consequently took the "red-eye" back from Budapest to JFK on day five. I got into my apartment about 7:00 am, took a shower, suited up, and scampered off to work, with only the minimal sleep I got on the plane the night before to sustain me. It mattered not. After work, for some strange reason, I decided to walk down 7th Avenue. (It was not my normal route home.) There, on the MSG marquee: The Who, tonight, Madison Square Garden. Times were financially lush for me back then, so I went in to the box office in the Garden. "I'll take the best seat in the house!" I declared, full of bravado. "That'll be $185, sir." Hmmm....I settled for the second best seat in the house, for a mere $85. It was a great seat nonetheless. The concert, needless to say, was great. The Who rocked, and it still stands out as one of the best concerts I've ever seen. (I saw them on the '89 "Tommy" tour, but it was more like a big-band revue than The Who themselves.) The memory of that 2000 show has improved over time for me, as it was the swan song of John Entwistle, who was perhaps the greatest rock bassist to ever live. (Never mind "perhaps"....)

But that isn't really the purpose of the post. What was exceptionally poignant about that concert was something that Pete Townshend said prior to doing an acoustic version of "Drowned". He said something to the effect that subsequent to the release of Quadrophenia, many people had come up to him over the years to thank him for, in essence, saving their lives. He mentioned something to the effect that a whole generation of kids in the 60's and early 70's had just "evaporated" (his word). Those were crazy days, no doubt, with pervasive substance abuse. It was inevitable that the "turn on, tune in, and drop out" generation would have a great deal of casualties. But Pete inferred something to the effect that many of them expressed the sentiment that Quadrophenia saved them from the abyss. He seemed very surprised about this, mind. But given the subject matter of Quadrophenia, it makes perfect sense that it would.

For some reason, I have a stronger attachment to the music of my early to mid teens than any music I've subsequently come to like thereafter. I can only attribute this to the fact that one's teen years are the most dramatic, confusing, and emotional times in one's life. Drug experimentation, sexual experimentation (usually with one's self, unfortunately), and identity experimentation come part and parcel with that stage. And it was pretty jarring. Pimples, rejection from females, and competition to get into the "in" crowd all made for a less than fun experience. In essence, the normal suburban teenage story.

When a band that you know and love puts out an album like Quadrophenia, it helps salve the transition from childhood to adulthood. Sure you felt shitty and rejected, but so did Pete! And it was all right there in black and white, the lyrics superimposed over a picture of Jimmy the Mod and his scooter. I've spoken to several Who fans, from my brother to friends of mine that are my junior. They all swear Quadrophenia is the seminal Who album. I never really thought that it was, as great as it was, but I think I understand why so many Who fans have such strong feelings about it. Because to every insecure, suburban kid, Jimmy the Mod was them. Pete Townshend has said in interviews that Jimmy the Mod was modeled after a character called Irish Jack, who was a follower of The Who in the early days. I don't believe him. Pete was Jimmy...and Jimmy was every insecure, teenage kid who ever yearned to be the leader of the "in" crowd (the face), hated being an insignificant follower (ticket), and got thrown away by the girl he was in love with ("the girl I used to love, lives in this yellow house, yesterday she passed me by, she don't wanna know me now!") But Pete made it through, and as a result, let it be known that he suffered as much as every pimply, adolescent dork at the age of fifteen or sixteen. As a result of Quadrophenia, it didn't seem to be so bad after all to be a "ticket". The pimply, adolescent, dork with the big nose went on to conquer the world. And that made it all seem alright.

Howard Dean

By and large I've avoided getting into overtly political topics on this blog. The way I feel about it is that there are more than enough blogs out there covering politics full-time. I could add my two-cents to the discourse, but I'd inevitably be regurgitating that which has already been written about time and again throughout the internet and/or the print press. So I refrain. That said, I'm going to just this once break my personal promise and talk about Howard Dean.

Last week, on Arriana Huffington's laughable Huffington Post, Norman Mailer postulated that the Newsweek's apocryphal Qu'ran flushing story was actually planted by "black ops" people within the Pentagon to discredit the mainstream media. Somehow, I doubt the veracity of the charge. However, if Mailer had speculated that Howard Dean was in fact a double agent for the GOP, he might have a bit more evidence to back it up.

Since assuming the helm of the DNC, Dean has come up with such gems as "...this is a war between good and evil. And we're the good", and that he "hates Republicans and everything they stand for". Now, this is all fair game, this rhetoric. But I have to wonder if it is doing the Democrats any favors. Clearly rhetorical political bomb-throwing is an old and beloved sport in American politics. John Adams once called Alexander Hamilton "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler" (he was, but it still wasn't a very nice way to phrase it), but to my mind, I would think it would be a lot wiser for a man of Dean's stature to take the high road and let his minions speak in this manner. Dean's problem is simple: he speaks the same way in public as he does in private. For a guy like Michael Moore, it is understandable. Moore isn't running for office, and he gives his minions what they want: red meat. Dean, on the other hand, has a completely different position to fill politically. He's supposed to raise money for the DNC (rumor has it he's doing an abysmal job), expand the political base nationally (kind of hard to see him doing that, considering he's pissing off more people than he's attracting), and he's supposed to eloquently represent the Democratic Party on the talk show and political speech circuit. He's blowing all three, and the Democrats know it. How else can one explain Dean getting smacked down by none other than Rep. Barney Frank, the man who could be the most far-left wing congressman in the House? Frank rightly admonished Dean for saying that Speaker of the House Tom Delay should be arrested and thrown in jail immediately. Delay might or might not be guilty of the ethics violations for which he is being investigated, but as Frank rightly pointed out, he's been convicted of nothing, much less charged. Constrast Dean's statement last year when he was running for president and said in regards to Osama bin Laden, "I have this old fashioned notion that somebody is innocent until proven guilty". Hmmm...trial by jury for Osama, but no due process for Tom Delay.

In the macro-political realm, there are different levels of rhetoric that one can get away with depending on which position you inhabit. Rep. Bacchus (R-Ala.) can call Bill Maher a "traitor" for inferring that the armed services of this country are inhabited by the dumbest members of our society; his chances of paying for it at the polls are small, and if anything, he might manage to up his positives. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) can grab a bullhorn and cheer on throngs of rioters/constituents during the Los Angeles riots and she'll never have to worry about losing her seat. Conversely, for a US Senator to say or do such things would probably lead to political destruction. The rhetoric should be cooler, or at least behind closed doors, when you're a national figure. Sen. Harry Reid might whine about Bush's judicial nominees as "radical right wing extremists", but this is pretty tame in comparison. Reid knows there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. As Dean is probably more well known than most of the US Senators in his own party, and particularly since his pronouncements are more widely distributed, he should really put a cap on it. He's doing his party irreparable damage. It would help the Democrats if they could filter him somehow, but I doubt that is do-able.

Somewhere throughout all of this, Karl Rove is smiling.

On Invoking The Founding Fathers

After reading three biographies in the last four months on Washington, Adams, and Hamilton respectively, I've found yet another annoying modern-day phrase that gets bandied about on a regular basis but yet has no real meaning. That phrase is, "The Founding Fathers never intended..." or some such silly boilerplate cant. I've heard it from the Left and from the Right, but mostly from the former. Going forward, if someone uses this phrase in my presence, I shall asking them which specific Founding Father(s) they're referring to, and to reference one or all of them to bolster their point. I don't anticipate I'll get a good response, but it matters not.

The point is this: the Founding Fathers didn't agree on a whole lot. Jefferson was an unapologetic slaveholder, Washington was (in the end) an apologetic slaveholder, Adams was a vehement abolitionist, as was Hamilton. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a bicameral legislature and were diametrically opposed to federalism, preferring decentralized government, with state laws overriding federal. Washington, Hamilton, and Adams were rock-ribbed federalists. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a central bank, which was Hamilton's pride and joy. Adams and Washington abhored the idea of political parties, whereas Hamilton and particularly Jefferson were shrewd political operators and as partisan in the modern sense of the word as one could be. Jefferson was a dyed-in-the-wool Francophile who loved the idea of the French Revolution, his enthusiasm growing for it with every radical turn. Adams loathed it, and publicly stated that he "knew not what to think of 30 million atheists". And on and on and on....

The Founding Fathers were as nasty, contentious, back-stabbing, duplicitious, disagreeable, and as polemicized as at any time in subsequent American history. That they came to any kind of compromise on anything is a miracle in and of itself, for there were a good many of them that had no interest in even scrapping the Articles of Confederation (Jefferson being one of them) for the Constitution. Pieces of the Constitution have been scrapped, replaced, and rewritten several times. (Legislatively, believe it or not!) The original manner of presidential election gave the first runner-up the Vice Presidency. (Needless to say, that didn't work out too well...) So, the manner in which government is run is constantly tinkered with, formerly unknown procedures are employed in obstructionist manners, and so it goes. So the next time you hear some Capitol Hill hack blather about how a particular method employed by the opposition party is inconsistent with the intentions of the Founding Fathers, just remember: they don't know what the heck they're talking about. The idea that the Founding Fathers were all in harmony, that their views were wholly consistent, and that there might be a political stance out there that is contrary to their vision on a whole is ridiculous. They were barely on the same page, so how can one political viewpoint be consistent with their worldview when the Founding Fathers barely agreed on anything?

Cuba Libre!

Democracy fever is spreading....this time in Cuba. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution expressing solidarity with the nascent democratic movement in Cuba. For the record, the following House Democrats voted against it: Charles Rangel, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Cynthia McKinney, Pete Stark....and thirteen others. Quoth ol' Chollie, "[I voted against it because our government] refuse to give the [Cuban] government the respect that it deserves.”

Let it never be said that these people are advocates of democracy. They're hucksters, frauds, and apologists for murderers. That they're all Democrats shows just how far the once great party has sunk. If there's a despot out there who hates America, he can always count on the support of the aforementioned jack-asses.

Oh....Do Shut Up!

Chris Martin, mopey singer for the mopey band Coldplay, has stated that he's a "slave" to the corporate world, particularly to EMI. This coming from a guy who named his kid "Apple".

Well dude, you know what to do. Give up all your worldly possessions and take a vow of poverty. The rest of us folks, particularly those that are involved in music, would give our eye-teeth to be able to make the kind of living you make. Sure, you have to produce for your record label. Welcome to the real world, dipshit.

Will the sanctimony of these celebrity morons ever cease? Are they so devoid of what goes on "on the ground" that they could honestly, and without any restraint on their hyperbole, make that case that "shareholders are evil" and that they're "corporate slaves"?

I was mildly interested in Coldplay a few years back; they're not terribly innovative, but they have a nominal sense of atmosphere and melody. But that's about where it ends. What they really need is a good drummer; but more than that, they need their idiotic, self-righteous singer to shut the f..ck up and stop embarrassing himself. If being a millionaire rock star and husband to Gwyneth Paltrow renders you a "slave", what does that make the rest of us? Better yet, what does that make Christian and anamist Sudanese, or any other people that are subject to real chattel slavery?

A sense of proportion would do this guy some good. That, and a prescription of what Pete Townshend once said a drugged-up and passed out Keith Moon needed: a custard enema and a punch in the stomach.

The Huffington Post Blows

Much has been made of Arianna Huffington's new website, the Huffington Post. I fail to see why. The writers on there are either a.) celebrities devoid of an original thought who merely regurgitate the same boiler-plate crapola in print that they piously ejaculate on shows like Bill Maher's OR b.) they're opinion editorial writers who already have ample opportunity to voice their opinions in other venues. Either way, it's a bust.

I fail to understand the concept behind this website. Is it to give a voice to the...uh....those that already have a voice? Really....does Norman Mailer really need to have yet another forum to spout his moon-bat theories about how, say, the Pentagon set Michael Isikoff up with a false story about the Qu'ran flushing incident so that they could slam the press yet again? Does Jim Lampley really need a forum to write about how spitting mad he is about the vote to remove filibusters? These people already have a forum. They're on television, in newspapers, and are the subject of glowing profile pieces in many a publication from here to California. The whole point of the internet, the blogosphere if you will, is to give a voice to people such as myself. I'm not a published writer (unless you count writing for my college newspaper), but I'd like to think I can write. If people come across this site and care to contribute some feedback, great. Maybe they'll walk away knowing something they didn't know before. On a macro scale, I can without a doubt say that I never would've come across writers like Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, or even the sometimes insightful but normally hysterical Andrew Sullivan. The blogosphere has allowed writers, some of them not professional ones but merely citizen-journalists, to publish, to contribute to the macro-discourse. On occasion, they not only report otherwise unknown news, but actually to become the news. Consider that it was a blogger by the name of "Buckethead" that was the catalyst for taking Dan Rather and CBS News down for their character assassination attempt on President Bush. That's powerful....and the people now have it. (Much to the chagrin of the established media, who hate the blogosphere.)

When a media establishment personality su

A Life Playing Music

I've been pretty fortunate that for the last twenty four years I've been involved with playing music. I can't really imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't picked up a bass when I was 11 years of age. (It wasn't really a bass, mind. It was a piece of shit Japanese guitar that my brother re-strung with Ernie Ball bass strings. But...at least it sounded like a bass!) A fairly large chunk of my circle of friends, now more than ever, are a direct result of my involvement in music. As the trite advertising slogan says, "It's the gift that keeps on giving!" (Ugh....)

I took up bass at the behest of my guitar-playing brother, who said to me at the time, "Take up bass, you'll always have a gig." He was right. My addendum to that is not only that bass players are hard to find, but good bass players are even harder to find. At the time when I took up the instrument, my hometown on Long Island was rife with guitar players. Everyone played guitar. It's not that there wasn't anyone who played bass, it was that for every ten to fifteen guitar players, there was maybe one bass player in the bunch. And it was questionable whether they were good or not. Coming from a pretty musical family with two musically accomplished older siblings, it was a pretty natural progression for me to follow in their footsteps. My mother also played piano, albeit in a halting manner that had more to do with a lack of practice than a lack of talent, and my father was a jazz drummer at one point in his life who still strummed on the guitar and sang from time to time when he came home from a hard day's work in the ad industry. (One of my more distinct childhood memories was listening to him play the harmonica 'round the campfire. A family friend once came camping with us with his son and dog in tow. His poodle Sammy would yelp interminably at the sound of the harmonica. I don't recall it stopping my father from playing.)

And so here it is, two and a half decades later, and I'm still playing bass in clubs, still spending too much money on instruments and gear, still practicing bass (and now, due to unforseen utilitarian circumstances, 12-string guitar and bass pedals), and still meeting people, befriending people, and having more laughs and good discussions with everyone and anyone involved in music in some way. There was a gap between the time I graduated college and started playing in a group again (which spanned about eight or nine years) where I did nothing musically. No gigs at all, no participation in groups, etc. Actually, I did one gig as a favor to someone, but that was it. But I barely picked up any instrument for a long time. Looking back now, it was probably the most unhappy, barren time of my life. Conversely, I've been heavily involved in musical composition, recording, gigging, and just plain playing for the last five years. There have been several highs and lows life-wise in that time period, and I can't imagine how low the lows would've been had it not been for playing music during the low moments, those inevitable ruts that everyone goes through, but very few know how to get out of. A few times I almost "took the left ramp" in adolescence; music brought me back. In the end, what a tremendously fortuitous phenomenon it was and is that I happened to be born into a musical family, managed to become a competent musician, and managed to meet the people that I now know and can call friends as a result of my participation in the "song of life". Even the non-musician friends that I've made are a direct result of some form of mutual musical appreciation. Now what would really be cool is if I could make a buck doing it. (Don't all chuckle at once.)

Good shit, man.

Classic Porno-Boy Quote

Me: Dude...you really shouldn't party so much. It's not good for you.

Porno: Yeah...but there's really nothing else to do in New York....

100 Greatest Americans In History?

The following is a list of the Discovery Channel's "100 Greatest Americans In History":

The Top 100 Nominees Abraham Lincoln Albert Einstein Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Hamilton Amelia Earhart Andrew Carnegie Arnold Schwarzenegger Audie Murphy Babe Ruth Barack Obama Barbara Bush Benjamin Franklin Bill Clinton Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.) Bill Gates Billy Graham Bob Hope Brett Favre Carl Sagan Cesar Chavez Charles Lindbergh Christopher Reeve Chuck Yeager Clint Eastwood Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice Donald Trump Dwight D. Eisenhower Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) Ellen DeGeneres Elvis Presley Frank Sinatra Franklin D. Roosevelt Frederick Douglass George H. W. Bush George W. Bush George Lucas George Patton George Washington George Washington Carver Harriet Ross Tubman Harry Truman Helen Keller Henry Ford Hillary Rodham Clinton Howard Hughes Hugh Hefner Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson) Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jesse Owens Jimmy Carter Jimmy Stewart John Edwards John Glenn John F. Kennedy John Wayne Johnny Carson (John William Carson) Jonas Edward Salk Joseph Smith Jr. Katharine Hepburn Lance Armstrong Laura Bush Lucille Ball Lyndon B. Johnson Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) Marilyn Monroe Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) Martha Stewart Martin Luther King Jr. Maya Angelou Mel Gibson Michael Jackson Michael Jordan Michael Moore Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) Neil Alden Armstrong Nikola Tesla Oprah Winfrey Pat Tillman Dr. Phil McGraw Ray Charles Richard Nixon Robert Kennedy Ronald Reagan Rosa Parks Rudolph W. Giuliani Rush Limbaugh Sam Walton Steve Jobs Steven Spielberg Susan B. Anthony Theodore Roosevelt Thomas Edison Thomas Jefferson Tiger Woods Tom Cruise Tom Hanks Walt Disney Wrights Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright)

I'm really nonplussed by some of the nominees. Barack Obama? I can see if he were the first black senator in American history, but he's not. He's the fifth; the first was Hiram Revels in 1870, from Mississippi. So how could a newly elected senator, who happens to be black, wind up on the list of "100 Greatest Americans"? I'm at a loss. And not to pick on Democrats too much, but why John Edwards? What has been his single, defining "Great American" moment? And Dr. Phil? Anyway, here's my list of those (in my opinion) who have zero reasons to be on the list of "100 Great Americans":

Barack Obama-Already discussed.
Barbara Bush-For what?
Brett Favre-Was he any better than Staubach or Bradshaw?
Madonna-For turning a whole generation on girls in the 80's into sluts? (Well, maybe she does deserve it then.)
Dr. Phil-I'm at a loss...
Laura Bush-Nice lady, but again...for what?
Tom Cruise-Movie star, yes. But no Oscars to speak of, so I'm still trying to figure out what makes him a "Great American". I think he's an underrated actor and he takes chances, but....that hardly makes him a "Great American".
John Edwards-Jeez, I might've even been able to let John Kerry pass through without questioning, but John Edwards? Other than having nice hair and a boyish face, I still can't figure out what makes him qualified. If being good looking and insipid were a criteria, I can think of many others that have had more impact....like, say, Fabio.

Consider, I didn't even zero in on that master of agit-prop, Michael Moore. He's far from a "Great American", as his every fiber is devoted to undermining the United States, but I have to give it to him in this regard: he's the most successful documentarian/propogandist in history. And though Bill Clinton showed himself to be more style than substance (and thus accomplished virtually nothing legislatively during his eight years in office), I'm willing to grant him "Great American" status, if only because he came from humble beginnings and was a tremendous over-achiever. I'm even willing to grant Hillary her due, as she was/is the first First Lady every to ascend to the Senate, and potentially (God help us) to the Presidency. I'm still on the fence as far as Nixon is concerned; was opening up China a good thing? His management of the economy was awful and was about as socialistic as one can get this side of FDR. But he was a president and, like Clinton, came from humble beginnings, so I'll let him pass.

Here are a few of my "Great Americans", more qualified than the names I culled from the list:

U.S. Grant-The only Union general that ever assumed command of the Army of the Potomac who was both aggressive and competent. Terrible president, but great general. His terms of surrender to Robert E. Lee at Appomatox Court House were so generous and fair that they averted what could've been a long, protracted guerrilla war that would've cost hundreds of thousands of more lives.

Harry Truman-Ended the war with Japan, the GI Bill, the GI Loan, the Fair Deal, the Truman Doctrine of containment, just for starters.

Paul Volcker/Alan Greenspan-Volcker shifted Federal Reserve policy in regards to inflation from control of money supply to use of interest rates, and subsequently choked off double digit inflation (11% at its peak). Inflation hasn't been a problem since (knock wood), and the republic, which was dangerously close to economic ruin, was saved. Greenspan employed interest rates as an inflation fighter as well, and managed the economy so well that the years from '94-'00 saw unprecedented economic growth. He also saved the markets both after the '87 crash and 9/11 with timely Fed actions.

Orson Welles-In one fell swoop, single-handedly re-invented American cinema with "Citizen Kane". From camera angles to plot-lines to methods of acting, Welles upped the ante. Filmmaking was never the same.

J.P. Morgan-Essentially WAS the Federal Reserve before there even was a Federal Reserve. Saved the American economic system in 1907 during the Knickerbocker Trust collapse. Rallied every financial titan in America to back the banks and the markets with their capital, and did what even the United States Treasury was unable to do: bail out the system. A giant of industry and finance. Without him, the US might not have made it.

Compare these figures with the ones I culled from the list, and you tell me who belongs and who doesn't.

Buchanan, Bush, and Yalta

I don't subscribe to the paleo-conservative ideology of Pat Buchanan, but it is awfully hard to claim that the man doesn't have an impeccable sense of history. He is provocative and insightful, and in his latest column on the Yalta Agreement and its impact on history, he had this to say:

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?

In 1938, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain refused. In 1939, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Poland. Chamberlain agreed. At the end of the war Churchill wanted and got, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in Stalin's empire.

How, then, can men proclaim Churchill "Man of the Century"?

I'm a big Churchill fan, so I can answer this question very simply: by the end of WWII, Great Britain was virtually bankrupt, and was in no condition to bargain or barter. Additionally, only a quarter of the land forces in Western Europe were British or Canadian; the Americans made up the bulk of the fighting force. Clearly then, the sell-out (and ultimate responsibility) of Eastern and Central Europe rests squarely on Roosevelt's shoulders. (And I'm a Roosevelt fan as well.) Such is what happens when the forces of freedom do not stand up to tyranny. Roosevelt had the strong hand against Stalin, but due to misinformation, or more aptly termed disinformation (conveyed to him in no small manner by convicted Soviet spy and Undersecretary of State Alger Hiss), Roosevent gave Stalin free reign in Central and Eastern Europe, naively believing that Stalin would allow democratic elections in those eleven republics. It wasn't until 1989 that the Berlin Wall, and subsequently the entire bloc, crumbled....hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of deaths later. But Buchanan raises an interesting point. Why would Great Britain and France go to war on behalf of Poland in 1939, only to turn around a scant six years later and hand it over to an even more lethal viper in the person of Stalin? Buchanan is right to ask this question, and if this was the goal all along, why bother fighting the war to begin with?

The Yalta Agreement has been revisited recently as a result of President Bush's apology to the formerly Eastern Bloc states whilst in Riga, Latvia. Roosevelt defenders (read: lefties) like Joe Conason have gone nuts over Bush's apology and claim that the President was out of line. I fail to see how. This is what the President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia had to say:

On May the 8th, Latvia will join Europe in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. However, unlike the case in Western Europe, the fall of the hated Nazi German empire did not result in my country's liberation. Instead, the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were subject to another brutal occupation by another foreign, totalitarian empire, that of the Soviet Union.

This is what Bush said a few days after in Riga:

As we mark a victory of six days ago -- six decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox. For much of Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end oppression. The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.

Tough stuff, but if Bush was wrong, how does one jive his wrong-headedness with the comments made made by the Latvian president?

60 years after the fact, the controversial Yalta Agreement has been re-opened for examination. Putin isn't happy, nor are American liberals. But the fact that Roosevelt agreed to let Stalin take over all of Central and Eastern Europe, not to mention the Japanese Sakhalin Islands, with nary a complaint or an objection, has to counted against the man historically. Subjecting tens of millions of people to Stalinist tyranny after liberating them (in part) from Hitlerite tyranny cannot be considered a positive part of the Roosevelt legacy.

An Observation...

"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."

--Albert Einstein

VE Day

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities in Europe during the Second World War. It bears remembrance, both in the interest of seeing how far we've come, and how far we have to go.

Why History Matters

Reverence for those who came before us ensures humility about our own limitations. It restores confidence that far worse crises than our own -- slavery, the great flu epidemic, or World War II -- were endured with far less resources.

By pondering those now dead, we create a certain pact: We, too, will do our part for another generation not yet born to enjoy the same privilege of America, which at such great cost was given to us by others whom we have now all but forgotten.

--Victor Davis Hanson

Read the entire article here.

666....No Longer The Number Of The Beast

So says this article from the London Independent. The implications of this discovery are far and wide, not the least of which start with Damien: The Omen, Iron Maiden's classic "666...The Number of the Beast", thousands upon thousands of people who have "666" tattooed to their bodies, and who knows who else.

Then again, maybe pop culture will just override this new discovery and continue to refer to 666 as The Number of the Beast, even when it really isn't anymore. The best analogy I can draw is Bunker Hill in Boston. It's actually Breed's Hill, but no one really cared enough to correct the factually inaccurate name for the hill in which the eponymous battle was fought on.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, carries the area code 616, the newly discovered "real" number of the beast. No word yet on how these good people feel about it.

Irritating "In" Phrase: Chilling Effect

"Chilling Effect" is one of the more widely used phrases these days, mostly utilized by the Left. Everything is "chilling". The latest event that had a "chilling effect" was two weeks ago when 10,000 felons-at-large were rounded up. So "chilling" was this event that members of the Left caterwauled every chance they got about how "chilling" it was. Ugh.

Let me emphatically state. This phrase is irritating, boilerplate, and overused. It's a failure of hyperbole on a massive scale. It scares no one, save the people who have screamed about "chilling effects" for the last five years. One wonders, given all these "chilling effects" their effects on freedom of speech, how these people are able to scream about "chilling effects" after all these years, time and again? At what point will these people cease being "chilled" and actually go into a state of hypothermia?

Not anytime soon, I would imagine. They're too damn overheated to begin with.

Founding Fathers

I've been on a bit of a tear the last six to eight months when it comes to books. Thus far, I've managed to read biographies of Mozart, George Washington, John Adams, and a book by Rush drummer Neil Peart. I'm currently reading Richard Brookhiser's tome on Alexander Hamilton, which clocks in at a paltry 217 pages. (Chances are I'll be reading the Thurow biography on Hamilton after I'm done with the Brookhiser one. That one clocks in at a more respectable 600 plus pages.) I'm also almost done with How To Think Like Da Vinci, a kind of self-help book that has some useful stuff on how to stretch one's mind and what-not. (I typically like to read something light after finishing something heavy, which thus explains the Peart and Da Vinci books being sandwiched in with the textually heavier aforementioned bios.) So the last six or so months have seen some intellectual growth, and it has been fun.

Anyway, back to the Founding Fathers. I've keyed in on a couple of key concepts regarding the Founding Fathers that I hadn't known previously. Among them are:

-Thomas Jefferson was a duplicitious, two-faced jerk-off. Despite his obvious brilliance (as demonstrated within the text of the Declaration of Independence), Jefferson was prone to flights of weirdness. (Example: Whilst writing the Declaration of Independence, he tried to insert a passage that blamed the immoral concept of slavery on George III. John Adams, his good friend at that time, thought Jefferson slightly barmy.) He also ghostwrote editorials in the Philadelphia Aurora (a prominent newspaper of the time) that viciously attacked Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and of all people, George Washington. Jefferson so alienated Washington by accusing Washington of being a senile stooge and doltish victim of Hamiltonian machinations that Washington, who once considered him a surrogate son, cut off all relations with him. Jefferson also secretly employed newsmen James Callendar and Benjamin Franklin Bache, and fed them rumors and innuendos to damage his political opponents. This ugly behavior of Jefferson's is a running theme through both the Adams and Washington biographies. I anticipate that the theme will continue through the Hamilton biography as well, as of all the political enemies Jefferson ever had or made, Hamilton was by far the man most hated by Jefferson. (And vice versa.)

-It was John Adams, more than any other Founding Father, that managed to keep the Continental Army afloat through his diplomacy, which resulted in much needed financial loans, specifically from the Dutch. (Who'd have thought?)

-John Adams, a man of high education but not substantial wealth, died with assets totalling $100,000. (Adams never employed slaves to till the land of his farm, preferring to use hired hands as well as employing himself in the endeavor.) This is quite a substantial sum to have in the early 1800's. Conversely Jefferson, who employed slaves (and unlike Washington, never had the historical foresight to set them free on his death), died with debts exceeding $100,000. Adams lived in typical New England yankee fashion: mindful of his money and simple in his tastes. Jefferson lived like a European dandy: overly expensive wines, overly large residence, addicted to material finery. But in the end, the irony of it all was that the man who employed slave labor died in substantial debt, and the man who was fundamentally opposed to it and never employed slave labor died with a substantial estate. And we all know the historical judgement of those who engaged in the slave labor trade.

-On the subject of slavery: There's been a campaign of sorts the last few years to depict the slavery issue as one of secondary importance from the time of independence through the Civil War. Primary source material on the issue points out that this charge is a lie. It is fairly obvious that those who seek to depict the United States as a "wicked" nation have sought to paint all of its leaders as callous, racist, and either unaware or apathetic about the plight of African slaves within the United States. This concept couldn't be further from the truth. In both the Washington and Adams biographies, slavery is a running theme throughout, and primary source material shines light on how both Washington, Adams, and Hamilton felt about this immoral horror. Given that the United States was a much more Christian nation then than it is now, there was an audibly loud revulsion throughout the land concerning the institution of slavery, not only because its existence was in direct conflict with the underlying principles of the Revolution ("We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, et al."), but more because it was considered a grave and horrible sin. Even Jefferson, an owner of more than 200 slaves, wrote to Adams that "[slavery] was an immoral, depraved necessity". Adams would call slavery a "foul contagion in the human character", and that "negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude". Enough said.

Anyway, those are the key themes I've come across in these bios about the Founding Fathers. When I'm done with Hamilton, I might have to hold my nose and read one on Jefferson. In the interest of fairness, I probably should find out his side of the story, no?

It's All How You Finish The Game

The ignominious exit of Dan Rather a couple of months ago got me thinking. By all accounts Rather was an intrepid newsman and certainly one of the best in the history of television news. But here he is now, the object of derision. Granted, Rather had it coming. When you attempt to depose a president with damning evidence, you better make damn sure that evidence is airtight, iron-clad, and waterproof. As we now know, it was none of the above. If anything, that evidence was embarrassingly flimsy, and made Rather look like a buffoon. And so, in one fell swoop, Dan Rather's reputation, built over forty plus years, was destroyed. And it wasn't unwarranted. But again, what happens in the previous eight innings is secondary to what happens in the ninth. And in the ninth inning of his professional career, Rather screwed the pooch. Oh well.

Throughout life one goes through times of triumph and times of defeat. The famous among us have that win/loss record magnified in a very public way. Frank Sinatra, having enjoyed tremendous success during WWII, spent the post war-years on his gluteus maximus. He didn't start making it again until the mid-50's, and had to beg for his role as Maggio in "From Here To Eternity". (Contrary to legend, this drama was not accurately portrayed in "The Godfather", and Frank's real story, unlike Johnny Fontaine's, did not involve a decapitated horse.) Had Frank "checked out" at that point (he allegedly attempted suicide when Ava Gardiner ran off with another man on him), he would've been another sad footnote in history. But Frank went on to much bigger fame and fortune in the next few decades, and finished his life and career on a high note. Joe Torre is another example. With a managerial record of less than .500 prior to joining the Yankees, Torre is now considered one of the finest managers the Yankees have ever had. It is not an outrageous comparison to compare Torre to Joe McCarthy, Miller Huggins, or even Casey Stengal. But what if Torre never got hired by the Yankees for the '96 season? He would've gone down as one of the more unsuccessful managers in major league history. Again, it's all how you wind up at the end.

Probably the all-time comeback story has got to be Winston Churchill. In the 1930's, Churchill was so far out of favor that even though he was one of the most prominent politicians of his day and his party had the majority in the House of Commons, Churchill couldn't even score a low-level cabinet post. Prior to his exile, he caused a deep recession within the British economy as Chancellor of the Exchequer by insisting that the pound sterling be backed by the gold standard, violently suppressed coal miner's strike in Wales as Home Secretary, and was blamed for the disasterous Dardanelles offensive at Gallipoli during the First World War. Throughout the 30's, Churchill repeatedly warned of German re-armament and the war-like posture of Nazi Germany. It was not until he was proven correct that he was brought back into power, first as First Sea Lord, and then when Chamberlain resigned, as Prime Minister. By the time he assumed the Prime Ministership, he was already well into his 70's.


And so it goes. No matter how much good you might've done in your lifetime, no matter how much money or fame was attained, if it all comes crashing down, that's how you'll be remembered. However, if one still has the opportunity to pick up the pieces and make a successful recovery, that's how one is remembered. Dan Rather has run out of opportunities to redeem himself. Joe Torre got an opportunity to redeem himself, and made himself greater than anyone could've imagined. In the end, it's all what you do in the ninth inning.