misanthrope

Proof of Beagle Supremacy

2009-12-23T12:50:00.002-05:00

As any beagle owner knows, beagles are the world's greatest escape artists.

Mitch Daniels Talks Common Sense

2009-09-06T12:39:00.003-04:00

Excellent Op-Ed by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels about the coming disaster for high tax and spend states like New York, New Jersey and everybody's favorite basket case California.

Daniels has said he is not interested in a Presidential run, but Democrats would be wise to keep an eye on him and stop spending so much time going after Palin and Gingrich.

Question of the Day

2009-08-29T17:54:00.002-04:00

Does anybody really think Doonesbury is funny or clever?

Gary Trudeau gave a very funny, memorable speech at Class Day the year I graduated, but I can honestly say I haven't the faintest idea why Doonesbury is popular or famous.

Jeebus

2009-08-26T14:34:00.003-04:00

Trying to organize music for the wedding reception. I am blown away by the rates some of these wedding bands are asking for 4 hours of work.

I'm tempted to go the DJ route, but there is certainly something about live music that is more energetic and fun.

Priceless Moments

2009-08-23T15:32:00.003-04:00

Scottish Lass and her mum are out at the beach with me and the beagles. She's in New York for a week to help with wedding planning, but they are taking a break to relax out here for a couple of days.

So we began talking about the service and the music we will have at the church. Now, two types of music that completely rock me to my core are hymns and bagpipes. There are a few hymns (e.g., "Eternal Father") that I simply cannot get through without tears welling up. That's because some of my most powerful musical memories are sitting in the enormous sanctuary of St. Thomas Church (where the ceremony will be) and listening to the earth-shattering organ and the high-floating voices of the Choir. I am certain that my love of harmony and counterpoint comes from those experiences. When the great organ moves the harmony under the melody, I am rocked to my core. When the choir sings the descant, I am frozen with joy.

So I was playing my favorite hymn, "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," an old tune beautifully harmonized by Ralph Vaughn Williams, for Scottish Lass and she agreed that it was beautiful. I couldn't respond, because I already had tears in my eyes.

A few minutes later, SL's mum and I were looking at You Tube to go through potential tunes for our piper (a university friend of SL's dad) to pipe us out of the church. Even though it wasn't appropriate for our situation, she asked to look up "Highland Cathedral." Oddly, this is a tune that was written for bagpipes by two German musicians, but it has quickly become beloved in Scotland and has been proposed as a possible Scottish national anthem. That would be even more bizarre if it happened because it would mean that both the English and Scottish national anthems would have been composed by Germans. Then again, the Windsors are all Germans anyway, so maybe it makes sense.

Well, within about thirty seconds all three of us were looking at each other, unable to speak, with tears in our eyes. I can understand why mum was so choked up. Although they moved to Australia over twenty years ago, they are still deeply Scottish and the words to the tune must be heartbreaking:

There is a land far from this distant shore
Where heather grows and Highland eagles soar
There is a land that will live ever more
Deep in my Heart, my Bonnie Scotland

I don't think I will ever forget the moment.

Late Summer Humor

2009-08-19T11:25:00.002-04:00

The Obama Administration is now blaming the GOP for the fact that their health care "plan" (if you can describe five separate and contradictory bills as a plan) is going down in flames. That's rich.

If you have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a massive majority in the House and a President who, we are told, is massively popular, the idea that the minority party is blocking your bill is pretty hilarious.

The reason this has been a debacle is the same problem I have been pointing out here since Obama was elected (and before). He's never run anything. He has no plan and no strategy. He has outsourced bill writing and policy detail to Congress and, as a result, he doesn't even know what he is out on the trail selling. He has mistaken his personal popularity (which is pretty much gone now - he has the worst approval rating at this stage of any modern president) for political power. His single tactic, claiming he won and everybody should shut up, is not only ineffective, it makes him look small.

Despite the caricature of Reagan as some kind of idiotic oaf, Obama would do well to have a look at the way he organized his first year in office. You can disagree with his policies, but Reagan and his team showed up with a well-defined legislative plan and, more imptortanly, clear and concise points to make in the public debates. The White House was in control of both the message and the political process, presumably because Reagan had some actual executive experience as governor of California. Obama controls neither now.

What is depressing is that there are a number of steps that could be taken to improve our coverage and care that do not include creating an giant, expensive government health care program. Just try finding health insurance with high deductibles and limited or no coverage for regular office visits. For the young and healthy, this would be the most logical plan, but you can't get it due to our Byzantine insurance regulations. I know because I've tried to find it for me and my employees. The lack of such an option is a big reason why so many of the uninsured are uninsured by choice. I have several friends who would rather roll the dice than pay an absurd premium just to have $15 office visits when they don't need to see a doctor at all in most years.

If Obama were smart, he would go for the low-hanging fruit, claim (rightly) credit for reform and build to bigger things. But somehow he has conceived that everything he does must be massive, complete and executed in his first year. It's a strategy that is killing him and a primary reason why he is about to sink below 50% approval after having been in office for less than 8 months.

Thanks, Les

2009-08-13T13:03:00.002-04:00

Les Paul has died.

Here's a big thank you from the Misanthrope.

Wedding Planning

2009-08-06T12:17:00.004-04:00

SL has been a dynamo on the wedding planning. We are lucky to have a friend of SL's father who will be our piper.

All of which reminds me that bagpipes are pretty much the coolest instrument ever invented.

On a side note, planning the music for the ceremony reminds me to implement what I think should be a Constitutional amendment banning Pachelbel's Canon and Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" from all weddings.

The Rumors Are True

2009-07-23T16:53:00.001-04:00

The Misanthrope is marrying the Scottish Lass this November in NYC.

Silence of the Lambs - The Musical

2009-07-06T12:52:00.003-04:00

The Lego musical of Silence of the Lambs.

Genius.

Getting It Right

2009-07-06T08:45:00.003-04:00

So, last Wednesday the Misanthrope took his ES-175 and his Pod X3 Live and went off to Smoke & Mirrors to play on a track by House of Blondes.

I've really come to enjoy working as session guy on recordings for other people. A few weeks before, I was over with George Vitray working on the Via Skyway recording and it was one of those great nights where you just click into a groove with the work quickly and get a ton of ideas down. That night, we ended up laying down some cool guitar parts on 4 tracks in just over 5 hours as the stars aligned and George and I found agreement very fast. It was immensely satisfying.

The House of Blondes session was also very satisfying, but it was different kind of work altogether. Whereas with Via Skyway, George had left big blanks for a guitar-based sound to the tunes, the HoB was, in a certain sense, almost complete when I got there. The basics of the song, acoustic guitar, bass, voice, were all there already. There was no need for complicated guitar arrangements and certainly no place for soloing. The song was a delicate, longing, tragic song and John Blonde was already delivering it with the vocals.

When I got to the studio, I told John that the only thing I was hearing was some kind of atmospheric sound in the background, not any obvious guitar playing. He agreed and we thus launched into a four hour odyssey looking, first, for the right sound and, second, for the right way to fit that sound into the song.

Coincidentally, the last time I played on a House of Blondes tune, "Glow Brighter," I ended up suggesting a similar background atmospheric sound that I had stumbled upon because I had been paying a slide solo. (The sound is created by putting the slide on the 12th fret and then picking behind the slide, on the side of the fretboard. This creates a shimmering, floating harmonic that can be "wiggled" by gently moving the slide in a vibrato.)

Finding the sound was fairly easy. I used a mixture of Fuzz Pi, Phaser and Analog Delay with feedback turned all the way up to get a floating, grinding sound. The challenge was (a) getting that grinding sound to grind in rhythm with the track and (b) play the sound so that the chords just appeared, as opposed to bursting out and sounding like a guitar.

George was the key man on (a) as we used the tap function on the delay to get me into synch. That moved us forward quite a bit. I stumbled on the answer to (b) by accident during a take. I had been playing on the downbeat and the chord would ring out on the two. When I waited and played on the two, and the chord popped up on the three, the whole thing fell into place. It is funny to think how playing a part that is incredibly simple can turn into such a challenge because you need to learn to control a crazy new sound you have created with effects.

At any rate, we got there and I thought it was pretty cool. Chrispy, John and George all have excellent ears. More importantly, all of us were in agreement that the best way to try an idea is just to try it. I think we've all been in situation where an idea is suggested and then minutes are wasted debating it. With the four of us that night, we just tried everything that was suggested and it helped us get to the goal line.

It was a very cool night. I can't wait to hear the final result.

Yes!

2009-07-01T10:32:00.002-04:00

A new hedge fund has named itself after "5:15," the song from Quadrophenia.

(Insert joke here about "Won't Get Fooled Again.")

Well, That Didn't Take Long

2009-06-28T21:16:00.003-04:00

White House is now backing away from Obama's campaign pledge not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000 a year. (BTW, just like I said they would.)

What makes it so fantastic is that Axelrod is talking about taxing health benefits, which is something that, you guessed it, Obama was berating McCain for suggesting during the campaign. He even produced commercials slamming McCain for this idea.

Really, it beggars belief that anybody believes a word that Obama says.

Losing the Germans

2009-06-25T10:39:00.002-04:00

Germany. Scene of Obama's "citizens of the world" speech last summer. Land of Obama popularity.

Not so much anymore.

I was quite surprised by this article. Although I agree with the points it makes about Obama's fiscal insanity, I was shocked that the mood had turned so fast on him in Germany.

Heckuva Job, Barry - Part IV

2009-06-10T13:39:00.001-04:00

Do I sound like a broken record? Yes.

Is that because other countries keep acting rationally and diversifying away from Treasuries and dollar-denominated debt?

Yes.

Wow.

2009-06-09T07:16:00.004-04:00

Update: Here's the link that didn't publish. Rasmussen poll showing that Republicans are now more trusted on the economy than Democrats. Considering the disgusting spendfest that the Republicans engaged in until 2006, I'm shocked that they have been rehabilitated so fast. Like I said, "Wow."

I was even more stunned when I saw that Republicans have pulled even with Democrats on the generic Congressional ballot poll. Considering the hole the Republicans dug themselves, this is a remarkable development. It also seems clear that Republicans are going to take back the statehouse in New Jersey and Virginia this year.

The cycles turn very fast.

Hecukva Job, Barry - Part III

2009-06-08T12:26:00.002-04:00

Once again, the Chinese are showing that they are not fools when it comes to buying U.S. debt. As I have been saying over and over and over, if our creditors stop allowing us to use our currency to borrow for the massive Obama deficits, we are in for a world of hurt. The fact that this shot across our bow comes only a week after Geithner was laughed at in Beijing for suggesting that China's dollar-denominated assets were safe should give us all pause.

In related news, Obama is out talking about how he is going to ramp up the stimulus spending to create 600,000 jobs. Let's leave aside the fact that those will necessarily be short-term jobs. What I cannot understand is why this is only happening now when we were told in February that Congress needed to pass the stimulus package without reading it because action was needed then. But Obama had to make some kind of announcement because unemployment is already rocketing past the worst case assumptions for his budget plan (and, incidentally, the bank stress tests), all of which makes even more massive deficits than projected more likely. Remember that this is the Obama who was calling for a "net spending cut" in the campaign.

Of course, this doesn't even include the trillion or so dollars we will need for the new healthcare plan. How will that be financed? Most likely through a VAT, which is nothing more than a stealth tax increase on the middle class. And the concept of taxing health care benefits is now popping up, something that Obama categorically dismissed in the campaign. But hey, why criticize the guy for doing the exact opposite of almost everything he said in the campaign?

It's going to be an interesting summer.

Heckuva Job, Barry: Part II

2009-05-27T21:52:00.003-04:00

Congratulations! $1.2T in "quantitative easing" from the Fed has bought us an exciting two months of cheap mortgages rates.

Sadly, that all ended today as the bond market woke up and smacked old "It's Not My Fault, Bush Made Me Do It, Did I Mention I Don't Look Like Other Presidents?" Obama in the face.

I cannot emphasize the recklessness of Obama's policies enough. The Chinese are already stockpiling commodities because they don't want to keep buying U.S. Treasuries when Obama is borrowing $0.50 of every dollar he spends. That's why Tiny Tim Geithner is on his way to China to smooth the waters.

People, this is madness and it is becoming clearer and clearer how it's going to end.

If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

Heckuva Job, Barry

2009-05-13T12:15:00.003-04:00

Well, it looks like our friends in the international finance community are starting to wake up to the fact that Obama and Tiny Tim Geithner are planning to inflate their way out of the fiscal insanity they are planning. Let me suggest that Obama is going to have a wee problem funding his insane budget deficits (which are already built on crazy assumptions for Q3 and Q4 growth) if we don't have access to the printing press.

Obviously I have never been a fan of Obama, but the budgets he is proposing, the incredible amount of borrowing they will require and the very real chance the the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating are beyond even my worst nightmares for him. And that's just the normal Federal budget. The endless string of guarantees he is issuing to all sectors of the economy are a recipe for disaster.

His nonsense about "inheriting" this mess can only go so far. The financial crisis pre-dates him, but the decision to have the Federal government backstop everything in sight while spending like Eliot Spitzer at a whorehouse on Easter Sunday is all his and it is mind-boggling.

Heckuva job, Barry.

By Golly...

2009-05-04T11:00:00.003-04:00

...it's almost as if the Chinese have figured out that he only way out of Obama's insane deficit spending is to completely devalue the dollar and crush the holders of Treasuries.

I still continue to be entertained by the Obama supporters who somehow see no problem with racking up record deficits and piling on a load of debt that will burden us for generations (or at least until we inflate ourselves out of it, which is what will likely be Obama's plan). This country needs some fiscal sanity and Obama and the Congress have moved us so far from fiscal sanity that we should all be deeply concerned. And, no, you cannot argue against this by pointing at Bush. His spending plans angered many conservatives (including me), but they are nothing compared to what Obama is proposing.

It's truly scary.

UPDATE: Good Op-Ed on our inflationary future from yesterday's New York Times.

Following Up

2009-04-30T14:14:00.003-04:00

Master of Muppets.

Best comment: "Yea, this video is an insult to Animal...he's a million times better than Lars Ulrich.

Wow.

2009-04-28T23:46:00.006-04:00

From the Wall Street Journal article on Obama's big investigation into Monday's boneheaded photo shoot over New York harbor:

Despite the cost of an Air Force One flight, both White House and Air Force officials said the flyover also served as a routine training mission, allowing the 747's pilots to log sufficient flight hours.

"The crew on these aircraft have to maintain their proficiency," said Gary Strasburg, an Air Force spokesman.

Wow. I mean, just, wow.

That has to be the most ridiculous justification I can imagine for this stupid stunt. I cannot even begin to think what proficiency requirements call for dicking around in a 747 at 1,500 feet over New York harbor. There are certainly none that I have seen.

I fly through that airspace all the time (with a clearance from Newark Tower) and you just never see big jets at that altitude in that area. This is the kind of thing that PR hacks throw out because they know that very few people know enough to challenge them. I am flabbergasted.

Passed Down Through The Years

2009-04-28T10:16:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, I saw a documentary called "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills." It was a pretty frightening documentary about the prosecution of three teenagers for the grisly murders of three small children in West Memphis, Arkansas. It was made for HBO in 1996, but if you haven't seen it, I recommend it.

One of the central issues in the film and the trial is the fact that the three boys love Metallica and were generally somewhat alienated teenage boys. They wore a lot of black t-shirts and jeans and one of them sported a black trench coat, although the events in the film pre-date the Columbine Massacre so there was no baggage attached to that item of clothing yet. The soundtrack to the film features two Metallica songs, "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" and "Orion."

I confess I have never listened to Metallica. I remember my cousin Mike wearing a Master of Puppets t-shirt at Thanksgiving in 1987, which caused some consternation among the adults. After college, I remember the video on MTV for "One," but I was not a big fan of thrash and I remember being pretty annoyed by "Nothing Else Matters" and "Enter Sandman" playing every ten seconds a few years later.

At any rate, I decided to check out Master of Puppets after seeing the film and I've got to say it's a great record, particularly "Battery" and "Disposable Heroes." So, I've been listening to it quite a bit on my runs. (This year's planned event is a marathon, Philly or New York, something I've been meaning to scratch of the "To Do" list for years now.)

Kirk Hammett's guitar playing has some very impressive moments on the record, although I confess that I find most metal solos pretty boring. Still, he manages to put some fresh ideas into his playing and there was a moment in "Welcome Home (Sanatarium)" that brought huge smile to my face. It's impossible to know, but I am virtually certain that Hammett is quoting the end of Steve Hackett's guitar solo from "The Knife" on Genesis Live. The quote happens at 2:25 of the Metallica song.

I recognize the phrase because (a) I always thought it was a very cool lick and (b) I quoted it myself on the Moneyshot song "Bliss" in 2000. If I'm right, I think it's hilarious that this thing pops up in the most unusual places. I'd love to ask Kirk Hammett if that's where he got the lick.

Swine Flu - What You Can Do To Stay Safe

2009-04-27T18:06:00.004-04:00

From reader Grubzilla:

1) Wash your hands frequently

2) If you feel sick, work from home and talk to a doctor

3) Don't let your kids do this until the outbreak is over:

Play safe and stay safe.

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-04-22T13:14:00.003-04:00

Fell off the radar for a while there in a flurry of activity and some travel. I had been hoping to post on some of the things I'd been doing, but it's started to pile up so much that I don't know if I'm going to be able to do a post for everything. So, here's the summary of Misanthropic activity

1) Trip to Chicago - Went there for a friend's 40th birthday and I was just blown away. Chicago is an amazing city with an incredible architectural heritage. I spent a blissful (if cold) Sunday afternoon walking around and enjoying the magnificent early skyscrapers. A truly remarkable place and, being a native New Yorker, I am a world-class snob when it comes to cities. Not too many memories of the evenings there, however, as the weekend was incredibly gin-soaked.

2) Trip to New Orleans - More a of mixed feeling towards NOLA. The French Quarter is just a horrific frat-boy cesspit and if I never have to spend any time there again I will not be sad. That being said, the warehouse district had some insanely good restaurants and our Saturday afternoon in a beer garden in the Garden District with a table covered with newspaper and freshly cooked crawdads was probably the highlight of 2009 so far. Also, casinos are consistently the most depressing places I have ever been.

3) Jazz - Lost a little steam on the jazz guitar front as work got very busy, but suddenly regained the desire in the last few weeks and had a simultaneous breakthrough. I had been frustrated that it was all sounding a bit "Ramada Inn Lounge," but my teacher gave me some great harmonic tools and things have started to get better. Also, I've come to realize that my tastes in jazz fall more on the Bill Evans side of the line (if there is one). Jazz is kind of like a mash-up between the swing and soul of the blues and the complexity and harmonic breadth of modern classical music. The blues never really moved me, but the gorgeous, harmonically rich playing of guys like Evans really reaches me. Also, I've discovered how much I love Thelonious Monk. The poor Scottish Lass is getting tired of hearing me whistle his tunes all day. If any bassists, drummers or piano players are interested in getting together to explore some standards, give me a shout.

4) Trip to North Carolina - I went to visit my older, nicer brother (ONB) and my awesome nephews. I flew myself down and back, which was an adventure. On the trip down, I climbed into the clouds about 30 seconds after takeoff and didn't see anything but grey for four hours until I descended into the Salisbury airport. ONB and I took the two oldest nephews to Raleigh to see their first NHL hockey game and, much more importantly, their first New York Rangers game. It was pretty weird watching professional hockey in North Carolina. The fans were incredibly quiet throughout. I tried to get things going by screaming "Potvin Sucks!" a few times, but the only people who got riled up were fellow New Yorkers. I refrained from "Buy a Porsche Hextall" out of respect for the little ones. On the drive to and from the arena, we listened to Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin on my oldest nephew's iPod. The torch is passed and the cycle begins anew. Also, the fingers on my left hand almost went numb from playing Rock Band for hours.

On the way back, I had a somewhat frightening but also educational experience. It was the day after a huge storm had moved through the mid-Atlantic states. I was flying northeast, towards Richmond, at 7,000 feet. I started to notice that I was pitching the plane up and losing airspeed to maintain altitude. Soon, I was adding power and was pitching up nearly 10 degrees just to hold altitude. I was considering declaring an emergency and finding a nearby airport at which to land because I was convinced that I was on the cusp of engine failure. It was then that I heard pilots around the region reporting to ATC that they were experiencing significant downdrafts and having the same problems maintaining altitude. The was an enormous low over New Jersey and it was sucking all the air around it into the center, like a drain. At Richmond, I was at the edge of it. This continued for a while, but it eventually stopped around Delaware. On the flip side, I would sometimes experience huge updrafts that had me 4 degrees nose down with the power reduced and still doing 170 knots of groundspeed (incredible for a Cessna 182). It was a hairy trip. Around Cape May, ATC forced me to descend (I was on an IFR flight plan) and I flew the last hour of the trip at 5,000 - right in the middle of a craptacular layer of clouds. I love flying, but I was getting tossed around in there and I couldn't wait to get on the ground. When I got home, I poured myself a generous martini...at 11:45 in the morning.

4) Obama/Geithner/Etc. - Don't even get me started. Just have a look at this (from noted right-wing nutjob front The Washington Post) and tell me that you think this a "New Era of Responsibility." I'm sure our kids will thank us for the unbelievable level of debt Obama intends to saddle them with. Hopey Changemas! Also, is it just me or can you almost hear Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad chortling silently as they listen to Obama play nice and expect them to give him something for it. Welcome Back, Carter. [BONUS: Can you really believe that the Swine Flu has returned for the Second Coming of Carter? It's just too wonderful a coincidence to go unremarked.]

5) MagDog - The chemo was not working, so it was looking like the time had come for the last ditch approach - radiation. We went to the vet and they did a scan to see what they could do. The problem with radiation is, of course, the damage to surrounding tissue. Things are more precise these days, but the larger the tumor, the greater the potential for damage. So, it was looking bleak and I was getting prepared for the worst. The vet suggested a surgery to debulk the tumor would increase the chances at efficient tumor kill from radiation and also reduce the exposure of healthy tissue to side effect. After consultation, the surgeon told me that they could do a minimally invasive procedure to remove some of the tumor, although there appeared to be parts of the tumor that were not treatable with surgery. We went forward. In an amazing turn of events, the surgeon reported that when she got into the chest cavity, the tumor was only attached to the pericardium by a tiny, 1 cm stalk. As a result, we was able to simply cut it off at the base and remove 95% of the mass. This isn't a cure, by any stretch, but it does greatly improve the odds for successful radiation treatment. Keep your fingers crossed that we can drive that final bit into remission. Thankfully, MagDog is otherwise totally healthy with perfectly normal heart and lung function.

6) Summer - I'm planning to decamp to the beach for the summer starting just before Memorial Day.

7) Netflix recommendations:

a) Summer Heights High - Dark humor like the UK version of The Office. Helps to have a woman who lived in Australia for 10 years at your side when watching for some translation

b) The Staircase - Documentary on a North Carolina murder trial. It will shake you.

c) Murder on a Sunday Morning - Documentary on a Florida murder trial. Also riveting.

8) My Bizarre Obsession with Ghost Hunters - On the fateful weekend when Scottish Lass broke her ankle, she and I were sitting in the hotel room and we stumbled upon a very creepy show about a group of "paranormal" investigators at an abandoned mining camp in the West. We thought this was "Ghost Hunters" and it scared the bejesus out of us, so we put some Ghost Hunters DVDs in our Netflix queue. It turns out that the show we saw was something different (it was actually "Ghost Adventures") because it was nothing like the Sci-Fi Network show, but that didn't stop me from developing a slightly deranged love of Ghost Hunters. Now, I should be clear that (a) I think the show is just entertainment although (b) I did have an apartment in New York years back that seemed to have a ghost. What I love about the show, however, is the incredible earnestness with which the TAPS team says things like, "One of the theories is that an entity, when it wants to manifest, has to draw energy from the surrounding atmosphere." Ah yes. I believe that theory came out of the pioneering work of Max Planck? Or was it Rutherford at Cambridge? So much science.

And that's the appeal of the show. The team, to their credit, does tend to find perfectly natural explanations for all manner of phenomena. But their skepticism founders when they start talking about "science." They use some of the equipment and terminology of science, but they have no idea what most of it means or what it is used for. It reminds me of the opening allegory in "After Virtue," by Alisdair MacIntyre, where he posits a post-science world where men are trying to re-create science without fully understanding the original meaning and intent of the terms. And yet, I cannot stop watching the show. Scottish Lass is getting concerned because I spend so much time laughing at the "reasoning" in Ghost Hunters, but the show is both so good-natured and hilariously earnest that I have come to feel real affection for the guys on the team. (Not Brian, though, he's just a jerk.)

So, that's the update.

More Signs of the Apocalypse

2009-03-06T11:33:00.002-05:00

Once again, Krugman and I are of the same mind.

I think it is high time that Obama got rid of Geithner. He has lost all credibility and is rapidly becoming a liability. The markets are not reacting to things that happened under Bush. Obama is providing no clear view of what he plans to do about the financial crisis and that is panicking investors. Geithner is making it worse with his dithering. And the Obama budgets are offering eye-popping deficits and debt.

This needs to be addressed immediately.

Amateur Hour at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

2009-03-05T19:04:00.003-05:00

The nation is facing a severe economic crisis and the Treasury Department is still not staffed properly. The markets are delivering a massive vote of no confidence in Geithner and he continues to function with a skeleton crew. Today, Geithner's choice for his top deputy withdrew from consideration for the job. The Obama Administration is far, far behind previous administrations in getting Cabinet members appointed and confirmed and getting key departments staffed and operated and it is preventing the proper functioning of those departments. It is unclear why Obama is proving so inept at getting people into place, but Geithner is never going to regain the trust of the markets if he doesn't have access to a staff adequate to the task at hand.

A Colossal Waste

2009-02-23T17:30:00.002-05:00

Hard to disagree with this take on the ridiculous stimulus package that was shoved down the throats of the American taxpayer in what has to be one of the most disgraceful moments in Congressional history. How the largest spending bill in American history was passed without a single member of Congress even having a chance to read it will either be an embarrassing history lesson or the first chapter in a very dark story about the way Obama runs his administration.

Subway Symphonies

2009-02-21T13:55:00.002-05:00

A fascinating article in the Times today about the way that certain cars on certain subway lines make a series of pitches as they are leaving the station that happen to match the opening of the melody for "Somewhere" from West Side Story. I had noticed the pitches before, but had never tied them to the song until I read the article.

This kind of thing seems to happen a lot in New York. In the basement of my building, near the laundry rooms, there is some kind of pump or burner or other machine that happens to create a sound that is an almost perfect reproduction of the end of "Randy Described Eternity" from the Built to Spill record Perfect From Now On. There's also an ATM near me that appears to play the first three notes of the "Eroica" symphony when dispensing cash (I even checked and it is not just the right intervals, but the right pitches.)

Bessie Is Rolling In Her Grave

2009-02-20T11:10:00.003-05:00

Saab, which is owned by General Motors, filed for bankruptcy today. From what I gather, the brand is unlikely to survive as a stand-alone company and the prospects for a sale are not bright in the midst of the current recession. It's a shame because GM took a great, slightly kooky brand and essentially ran it into the ground.

My first car was a maroon 1986 Saab 900. I bought it in 1998 from a friend of a friend. Having lived in New York my whole life, I had never really needed a car. In fact, looking back, I'm not exactly sure what it was that spurred me to buy one at that time.

I got a very good deal. The former owner was the only owner and he had kept good care of the car. Well, except for one strange quirk. He used to park the car on the street and wanted to make it less attractive to thieves. So every few days he poured a bucket of dirty dishwater on the hood. I'm not making this up. The result was that the car had a decent finish (for a 12 year old car) everywhere except for the hood, which looked dreadful. But the car was cheap and ran great. Most importanly, it had a sweet Blaupunkt stereo system with a 10 CD changer.

When I bought the car, I had never driven a manual transmission before. I think I got about halfway across East 66th Street before I realized I had the hand brake on. My heart rate would shoot up every time I had to start from a dead stop, which was about every 15 seconds in New York traffic. This was par for the course for me, however. The first time I ever drove a car, it was in New York and I pulled out into traffic on Fifth Avenue and 54th Street. Talk about being thrown into the deep end.

Over time, I learned the ways of manual transmission. About five days after I bought the car, I drove two friends from England up to Ithaca to visit our friend Pete. I may never live down that journey. On the way up, I had no idea that you had to downshift when going up hills. I remember thinking, "Crap, this car sucks! It has no power!" All the while, my friends were chuckling away. This was also the genesis of the car's name, Bessie. As we were going up hills, I would pat the dashboard and say, Come on, Bessie. You can do it."

That trip also introduced me to hill starts, which are basically every start in Ithaca. There is a stretch of road just outside Ithaca that, I am sure, still has an enormous black skid mark from my panicked attempt to prevent the car from backsliding. I don't think my friends stopped laughing for the next five years about that one.

Eventually, I mastered the art of driving a stick shift and put miles and miles on the car. I learned a lot of lessons. For one thing, any time you drive into a garage for a repair, it's going to be a couple hundred bucks minimum. I learned to do the alternate side parking shuffle on Bank Street, a ritual that has to be observed to be believed by non-New Yorkers. I park in a garage now, but I still crack up when I see all those drivers sitting in their cars at, say, 11:05, waiting for the street cleaner to come by so they can reclaim their coveted parking spot.

So many memories. Driving people and gear through an ice storm to a gig on Staten Island. In fact, that drive is where I first got to know Stink Rock well.

As time went on, I got a little more flush and decided to look into buying a new car. I had loved Saabs because of their kooky styling, which was unlike anything else on the road. Sadly, GM had bought Saab and changed the styling in, I think, 1993. I didn't love it, but I went into a dealership to ask the guy about a new 900. Amazingly, he talked me out of buying! Apparently, when GM bought the brand, they stopped using the original engines, which are legendary for their longevity, and plugged in a bunch of GM parts. The salesman told me I probably had a better engine in my 1986 than I would get in a brand new 900. When a car salesman is trying to talk you out of something that puts money in his pocket, you listen.

Bessie met her end on September 11, 2001. She was parked on a little alleyway off of Warren Street that I had discovered had no parking regulations at all. (Gansevoort Street used to be like that too, which is hard to imagine now that the Meatpacking district has become so gentrified and crowded.) I had just moved from the old apartment, on Warren, two blocks north of the World Trade Center, to a new apartment at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, two blocks south of the World Trade Center. When the towers came down, they covered everything. Bessie was not actually damaged, but the City decided that any cars within a certain area were too contaminated with asbestos and other toxic materials to release. So they moved her to Fresh Kills where she was crushed. I still have the photo they gave me of her when they brought the bag with the contents of the glove compartment and trunk.

She was a great car. In fact, she was so well known in the neighborhood, that I would sometimes find little pieces of paper saying things like, "Hi Bessie!" tucked under the windshield wiper. So the story of Saab's possible demise took me back to a very different time, when I used my little junker car to drive equipment to gigs and to see friends and was exhilarated to have the freedom of my own wheels for the first time in my life.

Ugh

2009-02-18T15:49:00.002-05:00

Poor Scottish Lass. She just got back from the doctor and it is a hairline fracture of the ankle and a torn ligament. She won't be able to walk for a month. What a pain. I feel terrible for her.

Tentative Praise for Obama

2009-02-17T19:23:00.003-05:00

Obama appears to be moving towards the "Swedish" model in response to the banking crisis - nationalize the banks, wipe out the shareholders, write down the crappy assets and then relaunch.

If he goes this route, I will be very impressed and will be the first to praise him. He understands that we need to take the pain on these banks. Equity holders should be wiped out. That's the risk of equity and these banks are insolvent. Debtholders should be crammed down. That's the risk of debt. Above all, the government must stop feeding capital into these banks piecemeal.

Good for him. He seems to recognize the nightmare that Japan created by propping up banks that were effectively dead.

This makes his approach to the stimulus package even more bizarre. Japan, which just announced a massive drop in GDP, is the poster child for government "stimulus" spending that achieved nothing. I just wish he had taken that lesson to heart as well.

The Creepy Foresight of John McCain

2009-02-17T16:29:00.003-05:00

John McCain was not my ideal candidate, as I've said many times here. For one thing, I think he missed his shot in 2000 and was too old and too tired to make an effective play in 2008. The age concerns around a McCain Presidency were legitimate. I used to joke here that one of the reasons I liked McCain was that he was slightly crazy, which would be a deterrent against aggression from other countries - they'd never know what would set off his crazy Vietnam flashbacks and launch the nukes.

And I also found McCain's "maverick" schtick to be a bit tiresome at times. While I think he had a far more legitimate claim to actual bipartisan achievement than Barack Obama, McCain also had a tendency to overplay the role in a way that seemed more about gratifying his ego than achieving something concrete.

That being said, there were a couple of things that McCain hit on during the campaign that have turned out to be remarkably prescient.

When McCain called for the resignation of SEC chief Chris Cox after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, he was lambasted for what was perceived as a political stunt. The thing is, McCain was dead on. As the Madoff scandal has shown, the SEC was horribly inept in doing its job. The testimony of Harry Markopolos last week was a devastating indictment of an agency that was accomplishing almost nothing under Cox's reign (which started in August 2005). The SEC was rotting under his watch. We just didn't know quite how bad it was until Madoff.

The other item that McCain had dead right was the evil of earmarks. Obama dismissed this in debates as a small component of the budget. He had to take this position because he had taken home quite a lot for Illinois in earmarks. The "tiny percentage" argument de-fanged McCain and made him seem like he was focusing on small potatoes. The problem is, McCain was right. The direct spending on earmarks themselves was never an enormous number, even though it was certainly substantial enough that voters should have been angry about the waste. The evil of earmarks is that they are essentially a way for legislators to bribe each other into voting for even bigger bills using taxpayer money. There is no greater example of this than the extraordinary process that Pelosi and Reid (and, through a default on any leadership, Obama) used to ram through the largest spending bill in American history with no review and only the bare minimum of debate. The genius of the Pelosi/Reid process was to essentially make the entire bill a gigantic earmark. Why waste time negotiating with individuals and supporting earmarks to push the thing through? Just throw every pet project under the sun into the mix and you save time. After 6 years of overspending under Republicans and 2 years of overspending under Democrats, we cannot afford the boondoggle that Obama signed today. But the problem of earmarks, derided by Obama in the election, greased the wheels to make it happen.

McCain was dead right about that.

What a Weekend

2009-02-17T10:16:00.003-05:00

I had planned a nice ski weekend at Mt. Snow with the Scottish Lass for both Valentine's Day and her birthday. Neither of us like Valentine's Day much, but her birthday is the day before, so we tend to do a combined celebration. I made reservations at the main lodge with a ski-in/ski-out room and lift tickets for the three days.

The drive up was a snap. We made it in just over four hours and arrived at about 11:30. The room was very nice, literally right next to the main summit lift. And it had a gas-powered fireplace that was very warm and lit up at the flick of a switch. We were exhausted but very pleased and then proceeded to scare the liver out of ourselves by watching part of an episode of "Ghost Hunters." As we were going to sleep, I turned to Scottish Lass and said, "Don't worry. Why would you think anything evil or supernatural would happen in a snowbound hotel in the mountains?"

I'm not a skier. I've probably skied a total of ten times in my life and I don't think I had skied before this weekend since 2002. So I was actually a little nervous as we reached the summit. Thankfully, it worked out fine. I remembered how to cut and turn and after a couple of quick runs on the easy trails, we started on the blue/intermediate runs. Things were going splendidly. The sky was crystal clear and it was in the high 20s on the mountain. There was a little bit of ice, but generally the conditions were good and the slopes were not as crowded as one might expect for a long holiday weekend.

Unfortunately, at about 2:30 that first afternoon, things started to turn for the worse. We were skiing down a trail called Big Dipper which had some significant ice and some bare spots. I had gotten ahead of SL and so I stopped at the next big drop to wait. When I saw her coming, I turned and chatted to a couple that had just stopped near me. It was then that I heard a panicked yelp. SL was down and not moving. I took off my skis and walked back up the mountain to her and she was clearly in pain. Her left ski had caught an edge and the binding had not released, twisting her left ankle violently.

We called the ski patrol and they put her in the stretcher-sled and took her down the mountain. I was very relieved when they showed up because she had started to shiver severely. When we reached the First Aid station at the base and got her boot off, it was clear that she hadn't broken anything. The best guess is she had hyperextended some ligaments or possibly had a small tear. She couldn't walk on the foot, so I gave her a piggyback ride back to the hotel room.

And that's pretty much where we stayed for the next two days. She had been hoping that she would wake up the next day and feel better, but I knew that she was done skiing for the weekend.

Using the hotel wheelchair, I was able to get her out to the car for a very nice drive around the nearby Vermont villages on Sunday, but since we couldn't actually get out and walk around, it was somewhat frustrating. It's truly remarkable how drastically things change when you have an injury like this. Just getting from the bed to the bathroom was a chore for her. I felt awful for her because I am imagine she is feeling very frustrated at her lack of mobility. Last week I had that horrible stomach virus for two days and I was going crazy because I couldn't get out of bed.

We're back in NYC now and she has crutches, so her mobility is increased. She is going to the doctor today for a full exam, but I suspect that this injury is going to take a long time to heal.

Now that we are settled and the initial injury has passed, I have to look back at one moment and laugh. The Scottish Lass is, obviously, British and her reaction to the injury and the pain reminded me of nothing so much as the scene in European Vacation where Eric Idle is mauled on his bike and keeps apologizing and saying that there is nothing wrong at all. She may not be English, but the general reaction was very similar. We were sitting on the side of a cold mountain and she couldn't move her leg and yet she kept saying she was fine and that she was sorry that she had fallen. When I first tried to summon the ski patrol, she tried to stop me and tell me that she would be fine. It was obviously serious at the time, but, looking back, it was such a hilariously British moment. I half expected her to say to the ski patrol, "I'm really sorry that I fell on your mountain."

Careful With That Axe Eugene

2009-02-13T10:24:00.002-05:00

Although I would guess that the chances are still pretty high that the horrible, misguided "stimulus" bill will still pass, the voting math in the Senate just got more complicated with Gregg's withdrawal. It would appear from his withdrawal statement that Gregg is not a supporter of the bill, so he is not likely to vote for it. Ted Kennedy is apparently returning to Florida and will not be present to vote. That means that Reid only has 60 votes with the three Republicans he has managed to swing over to his side and all three of them have said that they do not want to be casting the deciding vote. Could one of them waver and drop their support? Possibly, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.

If this were to happen, however, the Republicans could put themselves into a very sticky predicament. On the one hand, they would have stopped an absolutely awful bill from being pushed through Congress in a very unorthodox and secretive way. The blow to Obama would be immense (albeit self-inflicted) and certainly politically satisfying, but the politically satisfying is often bad politics. That's because, on the other hand, Republicans would now be stuck with the label of having obstructed "action." The President has made a cartoon of the opposition, pretending that Republicans just want a lot of tax cuts and never want to spend a dime and that plays well in many places. If the Republicans just stop the bill and do nothing, they will have won the battle, but lost the war.

The key would be to offer up a realistic alternative and try to start picking off Blue Dog Democrats. That would be an enormous coup. I think the best alternative would be the introduction of a much, much smaller spending bill with all of the cash being deployed in 2009. Such a bill could also include a short-term tax break, such as the payroll tax holiday, that has broad support. The longer-term spending and infrastructure projects would then go through the normal appropriations process where the Republicans would be well-advised to make some compromises and support a few projects that they might not agree with ideologically, but which will attract some Democratic supporters.

I find the whole scenario very unlikely, but if the Republicans do get into a position to block this train wreck of a bill, they are in serious danger of overplaying what is currently a winning hand.

The Time Has Come

2009-02-13T00:09:00.001-05:00

Mick Shrimpton for Commerce Secretary.

Obama and Transparency

2009-02-12T10:13:00.003-05:00

Does the fact that Obama pre-selected his questioners before his "press conference" give his supporters any pause at all? Without wandering too far into the fever swamps, isn't there something a little disconcerting about a President who is essentially staging press conferences with no chance for open questioning by reporters?

The Stimulus and the Damage Done

2009-02-12T09:37:00.004-05:00

The handling of the so-called "stimulus" package has been a debacle since day one. Instead of a thoughtful debate about a spending package that might have positive effects on the economy (I'll play along with the idea that this is possible, for the moment), Pelosi drew up an unholy mishmash of a Democratic wish list with a number of blatant payoffs to Democratic support groups. I wouldn't expect much more from Pelosi, who is quite possibly the worst Speaker of the House in modern political history. What was shocking was the passive approach taken by Obama to this disaster of a bill. At a time when I would have expected candidate Obama to say, "Let's take the time to do something thoughtful and intelligent," he switched gears completely and became Doomsayer-in-Chief to support a bill he took almost no role in crafting. The man who promised voters in the debates that all of his new spending plans would not increase the deficit, who promised voters that he would scrub each new spending bill "line by line" to make sure it had no waste, is about to run the largest government deficit since World War II and he has been in office less than a month. On top of that, he scared our largest trading partners by allowing a "Buy American" provision in the early drafts of the bill that sparked serious warnings of a disastrous trade war. Perhaps Obama should familiarize himself with the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff for some historical context.

Obama was supposed to be the anti-Bush. He was supposed to be intellectual, dispassionate and reflective. I would have expected that Obama to have slowed down Pelosi and her crazy bill, perhaps splitting it into a smaller, directed short-term stimulus package that was more defensible as real stimulus and a larger appropriations bill that would be passed through the normal legislative route. If he had taken control and done that, he would have scored a major political coup. I think he missed a potential for a defining moment in his Presidency. What he offered up instead was a feckless performance, some disgraceful scare-mongering worthy of Bush and a lot of silly straw man arguments.

Republicans were not arguing that tax cuts solve everything and it was disappointing to see Obama lie about this in making his case. What most were arguing was that this spending package is too large and involves too many items that are unlikely to be spent in any time to have an effect on the current recession. Why not create a smaller emergency spending bill as a stimulus and then move some of the other proposals, such as infrastructure repair, through the normal appropriations process? There is no question that the Republicans tarnished their ability to argue against spending during the early Bush years, but that doesn't mean that it is now a good idea to spend the government into virtual bankruptcy.

Obama still enjoys high approval ratings that will likely last for a while longer. He burned a little of his political capital supporting this bill, but he has a lot to spare and he won't be hurt by this misstep until the effects of this insane debt festival start coming due. And they will come due. At some point, the only way to get out of this debt mess will be to inflate our way out and that is going to be an incredibly ugly sight.

Congressional Democrats, on the other hand, have hurt themselves badly. In the Rasmussen generic congressional poll, where Democrats have been beating the Republicans like rented mules for years now, Republicans trail Democrats by only one point. It's still a long way from the midterm elections, but there are some other signs that the Democrats are setting themselves up for an epic fail at the Congressional level. Chris Dodd's once-safe Senate seat, for example, is starting to look decidedly shaky over his stonewalling on his sweet mortgage deal with Countrywide. But above all, Pelosi and Reid have handed the Republicans an enormous stick with which to beat them.

Bush is no longer the President. The Democrats cannot blame him for everything anymore, especially given that they have controlled Congress since 2006. And it astounds me to hear defenses of the stimulus on the basis that Bush was so terrible. I wasn't aware that the answer to an 8 year spree of spending beyond our means and loading ourselves with debt was to spend even more beyond our means and load ourselves with even more debt.

I Was Driving UGNAUGHT

2009-02-07T20:32:00.003-05:00

Spotted today on way home from Smoke & Mirrors

By The Way...

2009-02-04T18:06:00.002-05:00

...whatever happened to Obama's tax cuts for 95% of Americans?

NOTE: A couple of people have given me the "give Obama a break, he's been in office for two weeks" response to this. Well, duh. My comment is not about his lack of speed in offering up a tax break for 95% of Americans. The comment was meant to point out that with the level of spending in this stimulus bill that Obama is pushing so hard down the throats of the American taxpayer with a bunch of scary speeches, he is going to create a debt hole so huge for this country that there is no way anybody's taxes are going down. Of course, some of us pointed out during the election that it is simply not possible to eat your cake and have it too. Obama claimed that his massive spending proposals (which, by the way, would have to be on top of this boondoggle) and his supposed tax cut wouldn't drive up the deficit. Well, Obama is now pushing a spending bill that the CBO thinks is so ill-advised and so bad that it will negatively affect the growth of the American economy for at least a decade.

So, guess what? There is no tax cut on the way for 95% of Americans.

Does Anybody Remember Laughter?

2009-02-03T12:12:00.001-05:00

Anybody here remember how a few short months ago the fact that Joe the Plumber had some tax issues was sufficient to completely undermine his entire credibility in the eyes of all?

Good times. Good times.

Seriously, You Have To Be F****G Kidding Me

2009-02-03T10:49:00.002-05:00

ANOTHER Obama appointee is withdrawing for failure to pay taxes????

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that it is outrageous that these jerks feel entitled to simply not pay their taxes. What does this say about Obama? The man made a big, big deal about his ethics and the way he was going to clean up the mess in Washington, but does he have anybody who can properly vet his appointments? Richardson? Geithner? Daschle? Can Obama even manage to pick somebody who doesn't have severe ethics problems?? And the best part is that Nancy Killefer was supposed to be the "performance czar" who made sure that the government was efficiency. Of course, it's a joke that a management consultant from McKinsey would actually improve anything, but at least he could find somebody honest enough to pay their taxes.

I figured Obama would run into some problems at some point, but this, combined with a pork-laden "stimulus" bill hated by the majority of the country, is a pretty spectacular flameout after two weeks in office.

Mark This Date

2009-02-03T09:21:00.003-05:00

For on this date, I say something I rarely say.

Hooray for the New York Times. Today they called for Tom Daschle to withdraw his name from consideration as Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Daschle is an absolute train wreck of a nomination. Does anybody really believe he didn't realize that a car service he used 80% of the time for personal use was a taxable benefit? Or that he just innocently overstated his charitable contributions and "misplaced" the proof? Or that he claimed deductions for contributions to groups that did not qualify?

That's just the tip of the iceberg. More worrying is the fact that Daschle has effectively been an unregistered lobbyist for the past four years. He's not an attorney, so what was he doing at a law firm that does legal work and lobbying? Given the number of exceptions to his "no lobbyist" rule, you have to wonder if Obama really does understand that you can't just run a government on symbolic gestures. It doesn't mean anything if you ban lobbyists and then make a billion exceptions.

Daschle must withdraw or Obama's credibility will be taking a serious hit.

For Pete's Sake

2009-01-30T21:25:00.001-05:00

Does Obama actually have anybody at all vetting his nominees for Cabinet positions???

First Richardson. Then Geithner. Now this?

Come on.

Oh Sure, Lisa, The Same Wonderful, Magical Animal

2009-01-29T09:16:00.002-05:00

Pop quiz:

Which of these has more pork?

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

I Think The Word They Are Looking For Is "Default"

2009-01-28T09:58:00.002-05:00

California defaults on its tax rebates. It's going to be ugly watching it the state go down in flames because pretty soon nobody is going to lend it any money.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

2009-01-24T13:59:00.002-05:00

President Obama demonstrates his skill at reaching across the aisle and making allies in order to get his legislative agenda passed. While this may be emotionally satisfying for Obama fans, it is just plain stupid politics. Obama has no experience running anything where the entire staff is not on his side. I fear we are in for some learning-on-the-job episodes in the next few months.

One of the things I cannot stand about Obama is his constant insistence that any disagreements are just "petty partisan politics." Perhaps as he grows a little into his new role and gains some maturity, he might begin to apprehend that some disagreements are based on serious differences of opinion. It's not petty partisan politics that is leading many to look at his proposed "stimulus" and argue that it is not set up to stimulate much of anything.

What's frustrating is that I agree with Obama that there needs to be an investment in upgrading certain portions of our infrastructure. The problem, at the moment, is that the country is broke and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest that these programs will stimulate economic growth.

Thankfully, there will be no lobbyists in his Administration. Oh, except or his pick for the Number 2 slot at Defense.

This is going to be a long year.

Bad Girl, No Pony

2009-01-21T21:54:00.001-05:00

Thank God.

No Wonder People Hate Jazz Geeks

2009-01-21T18:13:00.004-05:00

So, I've been moving forward with the jazz studies and I am pleased to say that I have gotten some nice rewards from it already. I'm not actually a tremendous fan of jazz, but I really like the complex harmonic explorations and I've been enjoying learning some of the extremely creative ways that jazz composers and improvisers have spiced up simple diatonic chords over the years.

Having reached a point where I feel like I am starting to "get it" as far as improvisation and chord soloing, I decided to backfill a bit by reading a book called "The Jazz Theory Book" by Mark Levine. A lot of the early sections cover areas (scales, modes, chord construction) I've known about for years, but it's been interesting to hear the way jazz musicians took us from I-vi-ii-V to I-VI-ii-V. What has been especially entertaining, however, has been reading about the ludicrously self-righteous debates that went on over theory during the bebop era. A sample of the silliness:

Before the bebop era, most jazz musicians played the 4th of the major chord as a passing note only. Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonius Monk, and other pioneers of bebop often raised the 4th...in their improvising, chord voicings, and original tunes. It's hard to believe now, but the raised 4th was a very controversial note during the 1940s. People actually wrote letters to Down Beat magazine about it, saying things like "the beboppers are ruining our music" and "jazz is dead."

That's right. People were arguing whether or not it was okay to play, for example, an F# over a Cmaj7 chord. This is the kind of preciousness that spurs three-state killing sprees.

I have now seen the intellectual grandfathers of the current crop of sanctimonious "indie-hipster-music-geeks."

In their honor, I am going to play #11 all night over every major chord.

Fuckers.

Silverchair Hanson

2009-01-13T15:55:00.002-05:00

The Misanthrope saw his older, nicer brother this weekend. Let's call him "Fill."

At any rate, Fill was in town as he was interviewing for a job in Delaware (Motto: "We Know It Seems Weird But, Yes, We WERE A Slave State") and figured that he would swing through the Big Apple. It's the 300th anniversary of our high school, so Fill also went to homecoming to pick up a medal for...um...winning the "Best Senior Athlete" trophy 25 years ago. I'm not sure what the whole thing was all about either, but my brother still takes great pleasure in knowing that John McEnroe, who was a few years ahead of my brother at the school, didn't win it.

The more exciting part of the weekend was the transfer of my old Rickenbacker 330 to Fill for transportation down to North Carolina. I am loaning this cherished piece of Moneyshot history to my 12 year old nephew. Fill has three sons and the eldest two are just at the age where they are starting to get into rock. The middle boy is already playing drums, having received a starter kit this Christmas. The oldest now has an electric guitar. I'm just waiting for the youngest to be big enough to hold the bass and they will be ready for Uncle D-Funk (their name for me) to teach them side one of 2112.

Oh yeah!!!

Now THAT Is A Friend

2008-12-19T15:14:00.002-05:00

I'm out at the beach with Scottish Lass attempting to get over the cold that everybody in the country seems to have gotten this week. A few minutes ago, there was a knock at the door and a delivery man holding two bags.

It was a Christmas gift from my good friend Grubzilla, who sent me a metric fuckton of my favorite gin in the world, Hendricks. Grubzilla rules!

More Proof of Neurological Damage from Viral Infection

2008-12-16T16:37:00.002-05:00

The Misanthrope has had a fairly stressful last few weeks and he has responded in his usual style - by getting very sick. I put up a fight yesterday to keep working, but by the end of the day I was done in by a sore throat, fever, aches, chills and some pretty evil congestion in my chest. Making matters worse, sleep was nearly impossible as I would wake up every time I (a) swallowed or (b) turned over. So today was spent mostly asleep in a bundle of warm blankets.

At any rate, I rebounded this afternoon and was trying to get some work done when I was overcome by a desire so evil, so inexplicable, so taboo that I shudder to disclose it on this blog. For, you see, about midway through the afternoon I became obsessed with the desire to listen to It's Hard, the last album released by The Who in their Kenney Jones configuration. For years, I have echoed Roger Daltrey's comment that this should be called the "contractual obligation album" as it was pretty much delivered only because the band owed Warner Brothers another record.

The desire grew out of a bizarre dream I had in my feverish sleep. I had placed an ad on Craigslist to start a Who cover band that would only play material from the two Kenney Jones albums (Face Dances and It's Hard). We were holding auditions, but the horn section hadn't learned any of their parts...wait. Maybe that last part actually happened to me.

At any rate, I gave the record a spin today and confirmed my diagnosis of neurological damage from viral infection. For the first time in my life, I listened and thought, "There's a great record in here, struggling to break out from horrible drumming and terrible production choices."

If anybody needs me, I'll be checking myself into the psych ward at Bellevue tonight.

Puppies...Is There Anything They Can't Do?

2008-12-08T14:37:00.001-05:00

Puppies save small child from freezing to death.

The Best and the Brightest

2008-12-08T09:34:00.003-05:00

I'm not usually a fan of Frank Rich, who really should have stayed in the Arts section of the paper. In today's Times, however, he has a long Op-Ed that really strikes at the the heart of my concern over Obama and his coming Administration. In a nutshell, Rich reminds readers that David Halberstam was not being complimentary when he described the brilliant young minds that got us into Vietnam as "The Best and the Brightest." It's very appealing to imagine an Administration filled with wunderkinder, but sometimes these very bright folks lack the wisdom that comes with real experience.

That's always been my gripe with Obama. No question he is a bright guy (although I doubt he is any brighter than any number of people I know and I don't want them to be President either). But he's never run anything and he has no record on which we can judge his wisdom or lack thereof. Just being bright is not enough.

People made much of the fact that Abraham Lincoln was similarly inexperienced when he became President in a time of national crisis. What most people forget is that Lincoln's first few years in office were almost unmitigated disasters. The much-vaunted Team of Rivals was mostly a Team of Annoying, Back-stabbing Distractions that ate up much of Abe's time. His management of the Civil War was horrible and Union armies were getting their asses kicked all over the place as Lincoln dithered with a succession of generals who did nothing but bring disaster. It was not until Vicksburg and Gettysburg that Union fortunes began to change. And if Sherman had not delivered Atlanta in 1864, it seems pretty certain that Lincoln would have been a one-termer.

Revenge of the Nerds

2008-12-05T10:15:00.002-05:00

Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay for copyright infringement.

Frankly, I can't stand either of them. Satriani is among the biggest offenders from the Guitar for Practicing Musician wank culture of the 1980s and Coldplay writes songs that are so dull they make me want to go on a three state killing spree.

Still, I just love the idea of Chris Martin secretly listening to Satriani somewhere, probably on a cassette in his old car.

This Is Awesome

2008-12-01T20:20:00.001-05:00

You Tube finds its purpose.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome

2008-11-20T14:17:00.005-05:00

One common affliction in guitarists is the belief that he or she desperately needs some new piece of gear. The new gear is obsessed over and lusted after for months. Then, the guitarist breaks down and buys the equipment only to discover that they are the same guitarist they were before.

The Misanthrope is no stranger to this disease and his growing collection of guitars is a testament to his weakness.

This time it was the Gibson ES-175. As a young player, I had always thought of true hollow body guitars as nerdy, dorky instruments. Even though one of my favorite players, Steve Howe (pictured here on their 1973 World Tour) played an ES-175 for most of his career with Yes, I still never had much interest in them.

As I got older, I moved from solid body guitars into my first ES-335, which is just a fantastic sounding guitar. I've played it almost exclusively for the last 5 years and it is set up to my exact tastes. Still, I felt no urge to take the next step and go for a full hollow body.

When I started listening to a lot of jazz players like Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Herb Ellis, Tal Farlow, I really started to appreciate the deeper tone that they were getting from their instruments. At the same time, my ears have, frankly, gotten a bit tired of the sharper sounds that can come from an electric guitar.

So, I started looking at hollow body electrics. I didn't like a lot of the body styles I saw, like the Gibson L-5, but I found myself coming back again and again to the ES-175. Today, my new ES-175 arrived. I ended up getting the Steve Howe Custom Shop model, mostly because 2008 Custom Shop instruments have their frets done by an incredible machine called a Plek and also because I liked the tobacco sunburst finish on it more than the vintage sunburst that they offer with the standard ES-175. It's got some different things on it to replicate Howe's guitar, but it is overall very beautiful. And I got it brand new for a huge, huge discount from list and retail by searching on eBay, the world's greatest guitar shop.

When I plugged it in, it was, hands down, the most beautiful sounding electric guitar I have ever played. If only I had know when I was younger! The tone is just what I was looking for all these years. Deep and mellow but still clear and ringing. With just a touch of overdrive on the amp, the bridge pickup sings. Amazing.

I'm going to spend a little time with it, experimenting with different string gauges, before I take it in for a do-over by my guitar guy at Peekamoose. I'd like to put .013s on it or maybe even heavier. I can't imagine what the tone will be like with that much string pushing air.

But, of course, I am still the same player I was yesterday and I still can't play jazz properly.

Black Watch

2008-11-20T11:32:00.002-05:00

ScottishFest '08 continued last night as Scottish Lass, Scottish Dad and I went to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn to see "Black Watch." The show is a production of the two year old National Theatre of Scotland (Motto - "Hae a wee dram and a drama, ye crabbit get") and it is simply one of the best things I've seen in the theater in New York. It is the story of the Royal Highland Regiment, known as the Black Watch because of its dark tartan and its mission to "watch" the Highlands, and its final mission as an independent regiment in Iraq.

The acting is superb. In fact, it is so seamless that I kept forgetting that these weren't real veterans on stage. The direction and music took full advantage of the possibilities of live theater. And the story itself was moving without being maudlin or polemical. Scottish Dad, not the type to display emotion openly, was clearly a little snuffled up at the end when the bagpipes started. (I can't blame him. Bagpipes, like church organs, go right to my heart and make me weepy almost instantly.)

The show is on until December 21st, so if you can swing a ticket do not fail to go and see it.

WHAT THE $^&%*(??????!!?!?

2008-11-14T15:40:00.001-05:00

Check out this story from Nebraska.

No, I'm sad to say it is not a hoax.

Guns Are Just Tools - Unfortunately, So Are Investment Bankers

2008-11-14T14:54:00.003-05:00

A lot of friends have been asking me to explain what is going on in the financial markets lately. It's not an easy subject to condense, but this article by Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker, is a pretty good summary of the way that Wall Street built the bomb that destroyed it. The subject is mostly restricted to Wall Street and the way that repackaged subprime loans spiraled out of control, but it is a great read and well worth the investment.

One thing you have to bear in mind is that until the 1980s, most investment banks on Wall Street were private partnerships. That constrained the amount of capital they could put to work, but it also meant that each partner was taking financial risk with every strategy they pursued. After they all went public, that risk was borne by public shareholders, leading to a pretty significant shift in risk appetite at the management level.

When I worked at Goldman, Sachs in the early 1990s, it was still a private partnership. I will never forget one of the partners saying to me, "I lie awake at night and think, 'Some 27 year old is betting 10 times my net worth on some strategy I don't fully understand. It's terrifying." That fear disappears when the company is owned by public shareholders. It's the not the root cause of everything, but it is symptomatic of recent Wall Street, where so many were paid so much and yet took so little personal risk. It's recipe for disaster.

Armistice Day

2008-11-11T10:39:00.002-05:00

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, which ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. The Great War, the war to end war, is better understood by another name by which it was called at the time - The Meat Grinder. Although the gruesome effects of modern weaponry had been seen as early as the American Civil War, the Great War brought insane body counts and casualties to a peak never before seen in human history and, God willing, unlikely to be seen ever again. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 resulted in 1.5 million casualties over four months.

Veteran's Day, which is today, commemorates the end of that war. For many years after the war, in many of the countries that had sacrificed entire generations to the Meat Grinder, everything stopped at 11 AM on November 11th each year as a memorial.

In the U.S., Veteran's Day has been largely supplanted by Memorial Day as the primary military holiday, but it is still a Federal holiday and older Americans will remember the symbolism of the 11th hour.

My father's step-father lied about his age in 1917 and joined the U.S. Expeditionary Force to fight in France in the last year of the war. When I began to study history, I tried to ask him about his time in battle, but he would only give me one answer, "That was a long time ago kid." He was gassed at one point and described to my father the sight of the low cloud of mustard poison creeping across the field in the late evening light. Ninety years later, one of the companies I work with in my professional life is working on a potential treatment for mustard gas exposure in a terror attack. Amazing to think about.

At any rate, take a few seconds today to listen to this recording (link to the clip is at the end of the article )of a battle in the last days of the war. Chilling stuff.

Potvin Sucks

2008-11-07T10:22:00.003-05:00

The Scottish Parents are in New York for three weeks on an extended holiday. As Scottish Lass and I were discussing last night, it's hard to have her parents in Australia as any visit has to be quite long to make the 24 hour flight in each direction worth it. One great thing about her parents is that they are obsessed with New York and love it, so having such a long stay to wander around is a real treat.

Last night, Scottish Dad and I went to the Garden to see the Rangers beat the Lightning, 5-2. We were joined by my own Dad. Now, bear in mind that Scottish Dad has a thick Glaswegian accent and can sometimes be difficult to understand. And my own father has a fairly noticeable New York accent. It's not quite Goodfellas, but let's just say that the words with a pronounced "r" sound at the end are few and far between. This made for a fascinating listening experience as Scotsman and New York got on like a house on fire. It kind of sounded like this:

Scottish Dad: AYE MGHRMGN AYE MGMRH AYE URGHG

Cavalier Dad: Dollah Yawk Dollah Yawk Dollah Yawk

Scottish Dad, a former hockey player, got a solid NHL experience. We got a decent fight about 5 minutes into the first period, a hat trick out of Chris Drury and an even better fight in the third started by Tampa Bay's goalie.

And, of course, Scottish Dad got to hear the immortal chant, "Potvin Sucks." Hearing this over the course of the night reminded me of the days when my Dad would take my brother and me to Ranger games as kids. He had a connection that sometimes got us great seats (back then, the red seats) and sometimes got us nosebleeds (the blue seats). I think I learned more about swearing in the blue seats than I learned anywhere else in my childhood. And I will never forget the enormous open air urinal that was 32nd Street between 6th and 7th after every game. Literally hundreds of people would just wander into an abandoned lot and deposit the remains of their watered-down, overpriced Budweiser.

So I have to admit that I got a little nostalgic as I watched my Dad, now approaching 80, get himself up and down the stairs to his seat. He's got some knee problems now and his gait is much slower; certainly slower than his high school days, when he was called "The Gazelle" as part of his New York City champion high school soccer team. I also look at his hands, now starting to curl a bit from rheumatoid arthritis, and remember how comforting they were when I was a kid.

I remembered one game when I was very young, maybe 8. The Rangers were playing the St. Louis Blues and we had great seats behind the bench. Between periods, my Dad walked us up to the glass as the teams were filing back in from the locker room. Suddenly, one of the St. Louis players said to me, "Hey kid, you want a hockey stick?" Then he handed me a stick he had broken at the end of the previous period. I was excited, to say the least. We got back to our seats and the game began again. I think it was a playoff game or a late-season game to determine if the Rangers made the playoffs. The Garden was packed and rowdy. At some point, the Rangers scored a goal and the entire arena went apeshit. I was still small and the noise scared the hell of me. I started to cry. (Give me a break, I was tiny.) At any rate, my Dad put his big hands on my shoulders and I felt totally safe in the midst of the screaming crowd.

Dads are awesome. Call yours today and tell him you love him.

This Is Going To Kill New York

2008-11-06T12:19:00.002-05:00

Bloomberg is being honest about his plans to raise taxes in New York City. I admire the fact that Bloomberg is not sugar-coating the situation and that he is taking action now.

Unfortunately, the proposed increase in the income tax will absolutely destroy this city. I already have the pleasure of paying an additional 3.7% on top of my nearly 6.85% New York State tax just for the pleasure of living in a city with horrible public schools, decaying roads and insane cost of living.

Few people love New York more than I do. It's my birthplace and my home and I get a little crazy if I am away from it for too long. But if the income tax goes up here and Obama raises my federal taxes and my payroll taxes, I am really going to be forced to leave the city and possibly the state. The most realistic possibility is New Hampshire, where there is no income tax but where I can get to Boston and New York with relative ease.

I have long defended New York's insane costs as the price of the city's amazing vibrancy, but I think we have reached the tipping point when I am paying over 11% of my income just to be here. I wish I were just speaking hyperbolically, but I'm afraid that I have already started to look into where I would move. It's just too much after a while.

Hilarious

2008-11-05T10:51:00.002-05:00

Now that Obama has been elected, the Iraqis are saying, "Please don't withdraw too fast, Mr. Obama!"

During the campaign, I had to endure many Obama supporters telling me that the Iraqis wanted us out as soon as possible and Obama would withdraw immediately. When I told them that was not at all what opinion polls showed about the Iraqi attitude, that they wanted to be independent but they knew that they needed the U.S. presence for security, they scoffed.

You can't make this stuff up.

Congratulations to Obama

2008-11-04T21:37:00.003-05:00

With Ohio gone, there is no real chance for McCain, so Obama is President. Congrats to him for running a brilliant campaign.

I do believe that the voters have made a grave error in choosing such an unknown, inexperienced man to be President, but now we get to find out what he is going to do. According to what his supporters have told me, the world will now start loving America, all of our mortgages will be paid and we will be sharing the wealth.

To Quote Obama...

2008-10-29T17:31:00.002-04:00

...this is not the Led Zeppelin I thought I knew.

I think we can agree that Page and John Paul Jones with Bonham's son and some replacement singer is not the same as "Led Zeppelin." I'm kind of surprised because Led Zeppelin must surely go down as one of the best managed, if not THE best managed, bands of the 1970s. They didn't get screwed by the record company. They didn't stupidly sign away their publishing. They didn't put out crappy filler albums or novelty singles that diluted their brand. When Bonham died, the shut it down and managed their legacy with care. (Unlike, say, The Who, a band whose stature was badly, badly tarnished by poor management and endless efforts to cash in on the back catalogue.)

So what the hell is Jimmy smoking?

Some Good News

2008-10-29T11:31:00.003-04:00

I haven't written about Satan P. Cancerbeagle, aka "Maggie," in quite some time, so here's an update.

First of all, Maggie's 7th birthday was on Saturday. I confess I didn't have much hope in the spring that she would live to see that milestone. I was, however, completely wrong.

The tumor was mostly stable during the summer and the only bad effects were caused by the immunosuppression from the chemo. We adjusted the regimen and she has done very well.

Three weeks ago, we tried a new chemo drug, an mTor inhibitor, and the results came this morning at Maggie's echocardiagram. For the first time ever, parts of the tumor have actually shrunk. It's an amazing result because saromas are extremely difficult to shrink with chemo.

More importantly, Maggie has been totally normal. We were out on the beach on Sunday afternoon and she was tearing up and down the sand at full speed. Aside from the hair loss on her snout, you'd be hard pressed to imagine that anything was wrong with her.

I don't want to get too excited because, realistically, chemo rarely kills sarcomas entirely, but we have gotten nearly a year of very high quality life so far and I am thankful.

New Line of Work

2008-10-29T01:03:00.002-04:00

Pure Tone, Pure Desmond

2008-10-24T20:00:00.003-04:00

I've been enjoying a record called "Pure Desmond" for the last few days. It's a recording from 1975 with Paul Desmond (alto sax) and a Canadian guitarist named Ed Bickert.

The album was recommended to me because Bickert plays a Telecaster, which is, to say the least, a pretty rare guitar to find in jazz. I had mentioned to a jazz fiend that the Telecaster seems to be an odd choice for jazz because it is known for its trebly, biting bridge pickup. Boy, did I underestimate what that little guitar can do! I urge any fans of the venerable Tele to listen to this record to hear what it is capable of in a jazz setting. Bickert's tone is just amazing. When he is holding down the chords, his guitar is so rich and majestic, it sounds like there is also a keyboard player behind him. In fact, his chord playing is more out of a keyboard player's playbook than a guitarist. Absolutely amazing stuff on a record that is all about tone.

Another revelation (to me, at least) is Paul Desmond's tone. Desmond is probably most famous for playing sax in Dave Brubeck's band for years and for playing the famous sax lines on "Take Five," a tune he also wrote. One of my big blocks with jazz has always been that I really dislike the sound of most brass. Always have. And that's like trying to enjoy rock when you don't like the guitar. But Desmond's sound is more like an oboe, which happens to be one of my favorite instruments. So listening to this is a joy. And Desmond's spare phrasing and fluid style are also a joy.

Definitely a recommended disc. Go check it out.

Hugo's Problems

2008-10-24T10:10:00.004-04:00

Oil drops below $65 a barrel, even after a 1.5MM barrel/day cut by OPEC. I expect it to drop further.

Whom does this hurt? Everybody's favorite jerk, Huge Chavez. It will be interesting to watch him keep his grip on power when he cannot count on high oil prices to pay for his bread and circuses approach to government. I'd say it's 50/50 he's thrown out within 18 months.

The Mystery

2008-10-20T12:50:00.002-04:00

Somebody needs to explain to me why Colin Powell is a figure afforded such respect. He did a good job running the Gulf War, but since then I can't really point to anything impressive in his record. What's more, he was at the helm of State during the disastrous first Bush term and he was the one making the case that there were WMDs in Iraq. So, help me out here, why are so many on the left excited about this guy?

I'm sure he's a decent fellow, but I cannot for the life of me understand the political respect he gets.

When Worlds Collide

2008-10-16T01:13:00.002-04:00

In my haste last night, I forgot to list one of the other highlights of the trip. That was when we passed by "Squirelly's Pizza" just outside Shreveport, Louisiana.

There were so many things wrong with that place it's hard to begin, but here's a short list:

1) Pizza in rural Louisiana

2) Pizza made in a doublewide trailer that also serves as the dining room

3) The large Stars & Bars that was flying just next to the entrance

4) The word "Squirrel" in the name of any food business

Still, I hear the "Meat Lover's Surprise" is fantastic.

By the way, if you are ever looking for a vintage car to rehab, I recommend trawling the backroads of Latex (that's Louisiana - Texas). Almost every other house had two or three El Caminos or old Plymouths mouldering in the front yard.

I'm Back

2008-10-15T00:49:00.002-04:00

I feel like I've been in Outer Mongolia for the last week, but the super-duper cross country trip is now complete. I touched down in Linden, New Jersey tonight at about 6:50 PM after a 3 hour and 20 minute flight from Salisbury, North Carolina. All told, I logged about 19 hours of flying time over the past six days and got my skinny white ass from New York to Shreveport, Louisiana and back all in one piece.

Highlights from the trip:

1) Hanging out with my nephews and playing Rock Band...and getting schooled by the oldest on "Won't Get Fooled Again" of all songs.

2) A pretty cool instrument approach into Salisbury, North Carolina in very low clouds. There's truly nothing like seeing the runway end lights after you pop out of the clouds.

3) Staying up until 3:30 AM playing blackjack in some godforsaken casino in Shreveport.

4) Visiting Lead Belly's grave site outside Mooringsport, LA at the suggestion of my friend Glen. Pictures to come soon.

5) Waffle House

6) Seeing the Shenandoah Valley from 7,000 feet from end to end

7) Seeing the Mississippi as it bends around Vicksburg from 6,000 feet.

8) Figuring out that a visit to Tony Alva in Hotlanta is pretty doable in the plane.

I realized very quickly that I need one of these for such long trips. Luckily, I discovered that the good folks at Gatorade make a generic version.

I'm pretty beat, but pretty much anything under 3 hours now seems like nothing in the plane.

Still, I want a faster plane.

If You Are Not Busy Tomorrow

2008-10-08T18:56:00.002-04:00

Last week I was out walking Wallace P. Sweetbeagle and Satan P. Cancerbeagle in the wee hours when I noticed a large white van on Jane Street with "www.lennonmurdertruth.com" painted on the sides and back. There were a bunch of photocopies of what looked like a 1980s fanzine stuck under the windshield wipers, so I took one.

It's been quite a while since I've seen a photocopy of newpaper articles and typewritten text glued on a page. At any rate, the author believes that Stephen King killed John Lennon under orders from Ronald W. Reagan and Richard M. Nixon. This seems like a plausible theory.

If you agree, he will be holding a protest outside the ABC television offices on the Upper West Side tomorrow from 9 AM to 7 PM.

I, on the other hand, will be flying to North Carolina to visit my brother and nephews. From there I will continue on to Shreveport, Lousiana to visit a friend for the weekend. At 2,300 miles roundtrip, it will be the farthest I have flown the Fanta Plane. There's a huge cold front that is just passing through my route of flight, bringing showers and instrument conditions, but the upside is that there is an enormous high pressure system behind it. That means that Friday's leg to Shreveport will be in sunny, clear skies.

A Difference Emerges

2008-10-07T22:21:00.002-04:00

After the mess of the earlier debate, I have to say there is no question that McCain mops the floor with Obama when it comes to foreign policy. McCain is clear, he knows his subject and he indicates that he has a plan. Obama is just all over the shop and his rhetoric, particularly over Pakistan, is just bush league and naive.

And he has the weirdest habit of saying that he "put out a statement" as if it indicates that he took action of some kind. In fact, that might be the metaphor for Obama's whole political career. No actual legislation or governance, just a bunch of statements he put out.

This round goes to McCain, no question.

Pouring a "light" bourbon number four now.

Oh Come ON

2008-10-07T22:04:00.002-04:00

Obama claimed that he is cutting more in spending than he is proposing in increases. I'm sorry, but there is just no way that is true. No way. I'm sure the Obama campaign will issue some press release "proving" that it is true, but only in the most lawyerly sense, but it's just nonsense.

Oh, by the way, Obama is going to respond to the economic crisis by expanding the Peace Corps?? WTF?

Then again, McCain may have totally undercut his message of spending control with that insane proposal to buy non-performing mortgages.

I am into my third bourbon. No matter who wins, it's going to be a rough four years.

I Am So Depressed

2008-10-07T21:40:00.002-04:00

The bullshit is flying thick and fast here.

What on earth is McCain talking about with a program to have the Treasury buy non-performing mortgages?? I get the general idea, but he talks about the subject as if the problem is that home values are dropping. What does that have to do with your ability to pay your mortgage? It has nothing to do with it. It's just a more palatable way of saying we are going to bail out a bunch of jackasses who borrowed too much.

My head almost exploded when he said that.

And are we really supposed to believe the new, improved Obama the Budget Hawk?? Where did this come from? Obama promises to review the Federal Budget line by line. Does he mention that the President has no Line Item Veto? And that the Democrats opposed such a veto power consistently? And we are supposed to believe that spending is going to be constrained with Obama, Reid and Pelosi in control?

Augh.

I really just hate them both now. Neither of them has a clue.

Oooh, Pander Fest!

2008-10-07T21:24:00.001-04:00

I am going to vote for the candidate who promises me a free iPhone and a $1,000 check.

Seriously, this debate has turned depressing very fast.

Yes, It Can Get Worse

2008-10-06T14:37:00.002-04:00

Pretty crazy day on Wall Street. Can it get worse?

Yes. There is going to be a very large wave of hedge fund failures off of this and when those guys need to start winding down, the selling could get intense. The fact is that there are just too many hedge funds and they can't all beat the market. Too many of them have been taking on more risk than they admit in an attempt to generate excess return. Their world is crumbling.

It is going to be very, very ugly soon.

Asleep at the Switch

2008-10-03T13:45:00.004-04:00

The general consensus on the debate last night was that Palin cleared the lowered bar of expectations and, therefore, generated more political value than Biden.

I don't love the way Sarah Palin talks. She was talking too fast and often got ahead of herself, leading to some extremely tortured syntax. I don't think she is a dumb woman and I think her record in Alaska shows she is a skilled politician and can work the process. That being said, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that she has not been engaged in national and international issues long enough to have a fully-developed worldview. She is a quick study and I was surprised at some of the details she came up with, but we have to be realistic. She is absorbing a lot, but that is not the same as having been focused on these issues long enough to have a coherent, well thought-out point of view. In this respect, I do wish that she had been Governor for a bit longer. So, at its core, you have to take it on faith that she will bring the same skills to the issues of the country as a whole that she brought to Alaska. That's not a terribly compelling argument, but I think this image that she is some kind of blithering idiot is ridiculous. She's also a weird contrast with Obama. She actually has a record of governing but little engagement with national issues. Obama has no record of governing, but he is clearly very intelligent and has been engaged with national issues. They both have a big hole in their arguments.

On the other hand, I am absolutely dumbfounded as to how Joe Biden continues to get such a free pass from the media. As I said below, he is very smooth and articulate and it is pleasing to listen to, especially when compared with the halting speech pattern from Palin.

But, my GOD, the guy just makes things up out of whole cloth and nobody says a word.

There was the usual political bloviating, like his reference to the people at Katie's restaurant in Wilmington, where the regular folk can be found. Sadly, Katie's has, apparently been closed for almost two decades. I don't begrudge him the bullshit populism, but, Joe, come on, at least reference something that existed some time recently.

That's just bad political style. His policy comments were more bizarre and more fabricated.

For example, his comment that we spend more in a month in Iraq than we have spent in Afghanistan in seven years. My ears perked up when I heard this because it sounds incredibly damning, even taking into account that Afghanistan is a more international conflict. The problem is, it is totally untrue. In fact, he is off by a couple of orders of magnitude. Now, seriously, can you imagine the derision that Palin would have had rained down on her for saying such a thing. How can the press not call him on such an outright falsehood?

And for a guy who is a 36 year Senator and a lawyer, he sure needs to re-read the Constitution. Virtually everything he asserted last night about what the Constitution says about the office of the VP is wrong. And his point, which was to bash the Cheney's interpretation of the role of the VP, didn't even make sense.

But the absolute jaw-dropper was his comment about how the U.S. and France chased Hezbollah out of Lebanon. And that Obama, who had been a Senator for about three days when this happened, had called for sending NATO troops in to fill the power vacuum. Can somebody tell me in what version of reality any of this actually happened?? It will certainly come as news to Hezbollah's leaders. His defenders are saying that he meant Syria, but the problem is that it still doesn't make any of this true. And are we now meant to understand that the candidates who feel we are overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan were in favor of opening up another conflict in the Middle East by sending in NATO (which, we all know, means US) troops? Especially from Obama, who couldn't even bother to call his Senate subcommittee, which has oversight over NATO, into session once in his less than one term as Senator?

How does he get away with this? I was listening to the debate in the kitchen when he shoveled this out and I actually ran into the living room to make sure I was still watching the actual debate.

Will the media call him on this? Nope. In fact, I have been reading about Biden's "mastery of the facts" all day.

Please.

Gotta Say

2008-10-02T21:21:00.002-04:00

Of all the candidates, the one whose speech pattern doesn't drive me crazy is Joe Biden. I don't agree with everything he's saying in the debate and he's peddling some pretty specious arguments, but I can stand to listen him talk. I honesty can't stand listening to the other three.

I have a weird soft spot for Biden. I don't think he should be VP (or, God forbid, President), but he's probably a pretty decent guy and he manages to talk in more than soundbites. Sure, that leads him into some goofy monologues, but there is a weird charm to him. Of all of them, he's the one I am sure would be the most fun to just get shitfaced drunk with at some dive bar.

If McCain Knows What's Good for Him

2008-09-30T11:37:00.002-04:00

There is a huge opportunity waiting out there for the smart candidate. Obama is in the lucky position of having Pelosi, who must now surely ranks as the worst Speaker of the House in American history, do his dirty work for him by making it seem as if the Republicans, the minority party, somehow spiked the bailout. Pelosi doesn't have the strength to get her majority party into line to pass the bill? She's just so mind-bogglingly incompetent that it is hard to believe she is a national figure. She's basically the Bush of the Congress, even though he has a higher approval rating.

McCain could really regain some of the momentum in this race if he stepped up with an easy-to-understand emergency plan of his own and then guided it through the House and Senate. If he did it right, he would expose Obama as the do-nothing he really is. Doing it right would be to offer a simple, 4 or 5 point plan that gave a little to all side, Wall Street and Main Street. If he came up with the plan that passed, he would win the election in a walk. If he doesn't, I'd say Obama is 80% likely to be the next President.

Will McCain grab this last opportunity to save his candidacy? I don't know, but if he continues to allow Pelosi to play games he is going to drown with this millstone around his neck.

Debate

2008-09-26T21:28:00.003-04:00

You guys enjoying this "foreign policy" debate?

Right now Obama is talking about bringing high-speed Internet to rural communities. Huh?

The weirdest thing about this debate is the way both of these guys talk. They are both Senators and it sounds like this is a debate for a Senate seat. It's on both sides, but it is a curious feature.

Rat. Bar. Pellet. Pain.

2008-09-26T11:13:00.004-04:00

Last night I went to see a triple bill of Meat Puppets, Dinosaur, Jr. and Built to Spill at Terminal 5. I was really only going for the latter two bands, but I decided to check out the Meat Puppets set as I was not familiar. They were okay, but not particularly memorable. No offense intended to anybody who was a fan in their heyday. I can see how it would have been fun when you were 19, but the music isn't interesting enough to hold up.

I've seen Dinosaur, Jr. a few times now and I cannot understand why I keep making the mistake of getting up close to the stage in front of J. Mascis without earplugs. His rig last night was three Marshall stacks (i.e., three 4 x 12 cabs) and a small Fender pointed directly at him. It's not a rhetorical question when I ask how he can possibly have any hearing left after playing 4 feet in front of that set up night after night. I really don't understand how he can continue to hear with that much abuse. I was probably about 15 feet away from the setup and my ears are still in pain this morning. It's not just the loudness, it's the fullness of the sound. I suspect he has each stack working a different frequency range (high, low, mid) so he can really tweak the sound. The result is the kind of guitar sound that makes you weep, but it also causes permanent hearing loss. If I go again tonight, I will be watching from the back of the hall with earplugs.

Dinosaur, Jr. are specialists at those kind of triumphal loud guitar moments that make your chest feel like it is filled with helium and the Mascis guitar sound is a major component. I have to say that he was not on last night as far as soloing was concerned. Maybe it's because I've been listening to so many jazz guitarists lately, where a tight rhythmic sense is essential to playing good lines, but I was really disappointed in how sloppy Mascis' playing was. It was almost as if there were no drums. He's always been a bit of a college rock Dickie Betts to my ears, but once he ventures out of smooth, straight eighth note patterns his sense of rhythm gets awfully shaky. Maybe he was just having a bad night, but every triplet was too fast and every trill was unstable. Weird, because I'd always enjoyed his playing.

After that sonic assault, Built to Spill hit the stage to play Perfect from Now On which is something of a masterpiece. After the massive loudness of Dino, it was hard for BtS to establish a lower level for their intricate arrangements. Unfortunately, the sound was a mess for the first two or three songs, which is a shame because the first two songs on the record are absolutely fantastic. And the long breaks to tune between songs were pretty annoying and broke up the pacing of the set. What is it with these guys? I like to make sure that I am in tune, but I don't understand what is wrong with their gear if they are getting so far out of tune after one song that they need five minutes to tune up again. It was very frustrating as there was a lot of waffling about on stage when the show should have moved forward. On this front, the whole indie rock amateur hour aesthetic really gets on your nerves. After the first song, one of the guitarists broke a string. Instead of just switching to a back-up guitar, he started to fix it one stage while we all sat there bored. Halfway through this, he decided to get his back-up. I mean, you guys are supposedly professionals. Have a clue. This isn't playing in a basement in Idaho.

Ultimately, the sound got better and the band slotted into a groove with shorter breaks between songs. By the encore, they had achieved some really gorgeous sounds and the audience of hard core fans was entranced in a beam of very positive energy.

Sadly, the band then squandered that moment with an excruciatingly long noise jam at the end where members of the Meat Puppets came on stage to swap instruments and join in the mayhem. It's the kind of thing that probably seemed fun to the band, but after the beautiful songs that had come before, it was like stepping out into a cold winter day after having been sitting by the fireplace with a whiskey for an hour. In a word, it sucked. I really don't know why they did it.

Goldman Sachs Does Biotech-Style Financing

2008-09-24T12:26:00.003-04:00

The deal that Warren Buffet struck with my old employer, Goldman, Sachs & Co made a lot of old biotech hands like me break out into a knowing grin. Buffet just did a $5BB deal with the cream of the crop of Wall Street firms on terms that would normally only be found in a PIPE (private investment in public equity) in a crappy small-cap biotechnology firm.

For his $5BB, Buffet got a perpetual preferred stock with a 10% yield and 100% 5-year warrant coverage with an exercise price that was already in the money by over $10/share. On a Black-Scholes valuation basis, that warrant alone is worth between $1.5BB and $2BB. It's an incredibly rich deal. In fact, I know a lot of small biotech companies with less than two years of cash burn who would have balked at such terms in recent months.

Of course, the brilliance of Buffet's move is that he knows his investment is going to be protected by the U.S. Treasury with Paulson at the tiller.

When Goldman Sachs does financings on worse terms than a sub-$250MM market cap, money-losing, cash-burning, high-risk biotech would accept, you know that things are really bad down there.

I'm still shaking my head in disbelief.

Built to Spill/Dinosaur Jr.

2008-09-24T11:45:00.002-04:00

The Misanthrope has an extra ticket for tomorrow night's show at Terminal 5. BtS will be playing their album "Perfect From Now On" in its entirety.

Send me a comment or email if you are interested in the extra ticket.

You've Got To Love Him

2008-09-23T20:05:00.002-04:00

I actually kind of like Joe Biden. He's a little like a slightly crazy uncle who is not terribly bright but has convinced himself he is a genius.

Joe's latest hit is his contention that FDR got on television right after the Crash and soothed the shattered nerves of the country.

This one follows hard upon other hits like "Hillary would have been a better choice," "my helicopter was forced down over Afghanistan and "We should never have run that ad claiming McCain couldn't use a computer."

Just love this guy. Can you imagine the coverage if either Palin or McCain had said anything so stupid?

This Is About Right

2008-09-23T12:58:00.001-04:00

Brilliant.

Random Musings on a Sunny Sunday

2008-09-21T13:54:00.002-04:00

1) I had planned to go flying today, but the U.N. General Assembly is in town starting tomorrow so the FAA has put up all kinds of temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) around Manhattan. I was doing my best to interpret them this morning when I just said, "Screw this." If you want to know why dealing with the FAA is so maddening, try to decipher the text of the NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that lays out the TFR.

2) The crisis on Wall Street has barely begun to filter through the system. I would expect a large number of hedge funds to go under in the next few weeks. Some of these guys are holding ridiculous exposure in derivatives and they are going to get killed when the mark-to-market accounting they are required to use starts to spiral down. I can't say that I feel bad for any of them.

3) I've gotten fat and it is disturbing.

4) Spent part of the week down in DC at a joint FDA/NiH conference on treatment for Acute Radiation Syndrome (i.e., getting nuked). I really enjoyed the level and tenor of the discussion between the scientists. While there are some egos, the whole thing is a pleasure to watch. It's really amazing how much work goes into even the most basic questions in research. I listened to one woman discuss the measurement of water consumption by mice when the water had antibiotics in it. You'd be amazed at how much work they had to do just to ensure that it was not affecting their experiments. Amazing stuff.

5) Haven't played guitar much lately, but finally started to break through on the jazz stuff. The key was finding a player who thinks in the way I think. Turns out that guy is Joe Pass. He does a lot of solo arrangements of jazz standards, so I bought a book of transcriptions. Working through them slowly, I could finally see the whole picture as he was playing bass, harmony and melody. It's the same approach as classical guitar, so it all clicked for me. I continue to be awed by jazz players, but I am starting to see where some of the basics are coming from.

6) Seriously, I need to lose some weight. Those martinis are starting to add up.

Good Site

2008-09-15T18:33:00.004-04:00

For those of you who dig polling data and Monte Carlo simulations, FiveThirtyEight.com is the place to check out. They update their simulations of the Electoral College daily with new data from statewide polls. With Ohio and Virginia moving into the "McCain column and Pennsylvania starting to wobble, the map is starting to look like 2004 redux.

The Great Gig in the Sky

2008-09-15T12:44:00.001-04:00

Richard Wright of Pink Floyd has died at the age of 65.

What He Said

2008-09-12T13:39:00.003-04:00

Gerard Baker gets it right in today's Times (London).

An interesting side note. The other day I was over at the Obama campaign website looking through some of his positions. I scrolled through line after line of things Obama says he is going to do. At the bottom of the page was a section headed "Obama's Record." This is supposed to be the section of the web page where he shows that his record supports his ability to get these things done.

There were only 3 or 4 bullet points and some of them were references to legislation that passed the Senate unanimously and was not authored by Obama. What does that tell you?

Like Clockwork

2008-09-12T10:07:00.003-04:00

Obama gives in to the myth.

There is certainly nothing wrong with pointing out that McCain has been in Washington for a long time and this undermines his claim to the "change" mantle. And McCain has not made this easier by courting the right-wing side of the Republicans in this election cycle so as to secure the nomination. I liked the 2000 McCain a lot more. (Also, this opens the door to point out that Joe Biden has been in Washington since 1972, when Keith Moon was still alive.)

But making fun of the fact that he doesn't use email? Weak. This supposedly "new" and more "aggressive" approach looks more like a blindfolded Obama flailing at the Republican pinata. I really do not think the McCain=Bush approach is the right one for Obama's campaign. He was at his best when he was talking about how powerful he is as an agent for change. When he was positioning himself to rise above the fray, he seemed strong and in control. When he attacks he seems off-balance and defensive.

The problem is that his BIG IMPORTANT SPEECH schtick is too stale to deploy again.

He's in a pickle.

UPDATE: Jake Tapper at ABC's The Note makes the same observation. (I love "Barack 'Isotoner' Obama." Priceless.)

History Repeats

2008-09-10T16:41:00.002-04:00

Here we go again.

I was sifting through a raft of articles today about how the Obama campaign is, among other things, taking on water, on its heels, like a tech stock bubble that has burst, etc., etc. This is the result, according to the pundits, of the electrifying choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP. While this is partially true, it is not the real problem.

The real problem, as I have discussed here before, is that Obama is falling into the trap of believing of one the Democratic Party's most enduring and cherished myths about its miserable record in winning Presidential elections. That myth goes something like this: The reason we never win the Presidency despite the fact that our ideas are so powerful and good is that we don't play as dirty or fight as hard as the Republicans (bonus portion: because we are so noble that we won't do that).

Barack, buddy, don't fall into this trap. For one thing, it's just not true. You know it and I know it. Democrats play hardball just as much as Republicans. Politics is a tough business and anybody who is honest knows that elections are won by swaying the opinions of masses of voters who are not reading your position papers. So, please, just drop this silly notion.

The reason it is killing you is because your attempts to sound tough and fight back are drawing you into the biggest rope-a-dope this election season. It's making you sound angry and confused and it is making you spend wayyyyyy too much time going after the VP pick on the Republican ticket. You sound like Palin got in your head and rattled your cage but you are running against McCain.

(Side note: You need to drop the McCain=Bush thing. It just isn't working and running against Bush is a terrible strategy. Running against somebody who isn't in the race is always a bad strategy.)

I was thinking about Bill Clinton. Remember him? The Democrat who won twice? His brilliance was in playing just as dirty as the next guy, but always showing up with a smile on his face and his charm on full. THAT is how you fight in a political campaign. You can pick up some tips on this by watching Sarah Palin. She's able to stick the knife in you and wriggle it around because she's smiling the whole time. It makes it seem like she's saying, "Barack Obama? Ha! Come on. Why would he worry me?"

By contrast, Barack, you sound like you are on the floor having a tantrum and screaming, "Why are they being so mean!!"

Shift gears. Don't be Dukakis (too many to count)/Gore (Mr. Sigh)/Kerry (They're SwiftBoating ME!). Those guys lost.

That being said, there is some hilarity in watching Obama flail about for a way to attack Palin and/or get back on message. If he's elected, I hope he does a better job dealing with actual dangerous people, like Putin.

This Is The Issue

2008-09-10T10:52:00.003-04:00

Federal Spending. It has been out of control over the last 8 years. The first six of those are the result of Republican malfeasance and absolute piggery. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not fared any better, despite their promises.

There is no bigger issue for me than this out of control spending. As a taxpayer, I am appalled at the amount of money I am giving to the Federal government to waste on pet projects that have absolutely no place being funded anywhere other than the state level.

Whoever is the next Presdient needs to take on this issue first and foremost. It is a rot that is destroying the government.

Wooing Women

2008-09-09T14:37:00.003-04:00

Been doing a bit of reading about the impact of Palin on women voters in the campaign. Obviously she has had a significant impact on the polls, closing quite a bit of the woman voter gap between McCain and Obama. And the GOP base is now enthusiastic about McCain, somebody for whom they had not previously had much in the way of affection. Many of them looked upon a McCain loss in 08 as positive thing for the party, forcing it into the wilderness for some purification. Palin changes that dynamic substantially.

One argument that seems to be making the rounds is that Palin doesn't pick off Hillary voters because she is far more conservative than Hillary. On its face, it sounds compelling and there is no doubt that hardcore Hillaryites are never going to vote for a Republican, pro-life NRA member. But my sense from the polls is that Hillary had a lot of support from center-right women who were energized at the prospect of her becoming the first female President, just as many people will vote for Obama just because he is the first African-American president regardless of his politics. They may have made up a small proportion of the 18 million who voted for her in the primaries, but I suspect that they are a more substantial percentage of the general electorate. It's those voters who are likely to migrate to a McCain-Palin ticket. Even a minority of these voters significantly changes the race. What's more, women vote. They actually show up on Election Day, middle-aged, middle class women in particular. Since this election is really going to boil down to get out the vote, they are a big asset.

Chapter Five, in Which Misanthrope Gets His Oats

2008-09-07T12:35:00.004-04:00

The Misanthrope has been emailing with a good friend who is a huge Obama supporter for the past few days. He is a very intelligent guy and he made a reasonable case for why he is supporting Obama. We've actually been talking about Obama for a long time. Before he declared his candidacy, I was more neutral on him and thought that he could be an interesting choice if he just paid his dues and ran for, say, Governor of Illinois before going after the Oval Office. Imagine if Obama were running with a record as Governor that he could point to. It would make him unbeatable (assuming it was a good record, of course).

As I have gotten to know Obama more, I have been far less neutral on him and I really do not want him to be President. That being said, my irritation with him has subsided substantially now that the ridiculous Messiah act has finally started to wane.

Unfortunately, what is left in its place is an Obama who is getting suckered into a horrible rope-a-dope by the Republicans. He is responding to the electric Palin effect in a very short-sighted way. Why on earth is the top of the Democratic ticket spending any time at all attacking the bottom of the Republican ticket? He should just ignore her and stay on his own message. Attacking her just makes it look like the race is Obama-Palin and all that does is diminish him.

What's more, Obama is showing his inexperience badly at this stage. The interview in the link above is a case in point. Don't get on the political talk shows and start talking about how you wish you had said something different a month ago. It looks weak. And the line about considering joining the military? Come on, Barack. We all know politicians pander, but good ones are not so ham-fisted about it. The fact is you didn't join the military, so just move on and go to places where you are stronger.

Another bizarre strategic blunder is sending out Hillary Clinton to attack Palin. All that does is remind people that you probably could have sewn this thing up if you had picked her, but you went with Joe Biden because you were insecure about your foreign policy experience. I still cannot understand the Biden choice. All it does is imply weakness for Obama, both in foreign policy and with white working class voters. If Obama loses, this will be high on the list of bad choices. And the notion that Biden, the 36-year Senator, is going to appeal to Joe Six-pack over Palin is looking awfully weak now.

I think we are starting to see the soft underbelly of Obama the Candidate; the man is very, very thin-skinned. Steve Schmidt in the McCain campaign has managed to get deep inside Obama's head and Obama is starting to flail. On Friday, Obama was at a fundraiser at Bon Jovi's house in New Jersey and he blustered that he would not be "bullied." This is the kind of talk that gets donors fired up, but it is also the kind of talk that telegraphs "we are on the defensive" and Obama is at his best when he is on offense.

As a side note, the Bon Jovi fund raiser also highlights one of the big downsides to Obama's reversal on accepting public campaign funds. He is going to have to take time off from campaigning to raise money during the final stretch. McCain is done with that and the RNC coffers are full, especially as the Palin pick has electrified a base that had not previous donated much. There will be no money gap. Obama made a bad choice on that front. He gained nothing and handed his opponents a charge that he goes back on his word. A bad decision driven by hubris.

The race is very close and the result will come down to ground organization in battleground states. Obama is way ahead on this front and that is a tribute to some very smart strategic thinking early on. Until Palin, McCain was probably stuffed on that front as the base was not very enthusiastic. Palin changes that and, what's more, the excitement over her pick will still be fresh on Election Day. Obamania, by contrast, has been going for a long time and, people being people, they tend to get a little bored.

It's going to be a very interesting two months.

Links We Didn't Bother to Follow

2008-09-05T00:44:00.002-04:00

From Drudge: "Obama-backer Annette Bening pillories Palin."

First Impression

2008-08-29T14:07:00.002-04:00

Wow, this woman is good. She sounds fresh and doesn't come across as fake. Her folksy talk is actually folksy, not a bullshit put on like it is with Hillary.

The speech was brilliant. She digs at Obama by saying she never planned to run for this office. She then lists her actual achievements, which is something Obama never does because he can't. She hits what will surely be the major themes of the GE for McCain and she can point to things she has actually done.

She will absolutely destroy Biden.

Some Thoughts on Palin

2008-08-29T11:35:00.003-04:00

1) Obama opened the door to this choice by going with Biden. Once McCain knew that Obama had gone with a safe Washington insider over Hillary, he knew he had the opportunity to take the risk on Palin.

2) Unlike Obama's choice of Biden, McCain's choice of Palin doesn't point out any weakness that McCain needs to shore up. Sure, there is the age issue, but that pales in comparison to "I've got absolutely no foreign policy experience, so I need to get somebody who covers me."

3) There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign, but the real problem is spending. The number one issue for me is the amount of ludicrous spending increases under Bush. McCain has long been an opponent, even at the cost of popularity with colleagues in the Senate, of out of control spending. Palin has the same missionary zeal about cutting pork. She's the female John Kasich! Neither Obama or Biden have anything to point to on this issue. McCain has his record and Palin has hers. This is a major advantage and one they should hammer home for the next two months. Not only is it good sense, it will appeal to the party base who have been appalled at the Republican pigfest in Congress.

4) Biden will have to tread lightly in the debates. He's such an unbelievable pompous blowhard that he will almost certainly fall into the trap of looking like he is being a jerk to a woman. That being said, I am concerned that Palin could be weak in the debates. Then again, there is only one VP debate and it is not as well watched as the three Presidential debates.

5) This may not prove anything, but take a moment to compare and contrast the running of the VP rollout for Obama and McCain. Obama put on that silly striptease for weeks on end. Then the name just leaked out anyway on the Friday before the announcement. The famous text message plan was a disaster - most people got theirs in the middle of the night after Biden's name had already leaked anyway. And ultimately, the pick was Biden, a boring white guy who has been a Washington insider since the Nixon Administration.

By contrast, McCain kept a tight lid on the choice, prevented it from leaking during Obama's speech to avoid looking like an asshole and managed to throw everybody off completely so that Palin, who is an exciting choice anyway, was a complete surprise. The Democrats don't even have her name on their "The Next Cheney" website (hat-tip - Jim Geraghty). That's a pretty phenomenal job of blind-siding the opposition. Does this prove anything? Maybe, maybe not. The contrast is pretty stark though.

Ever since Obama's Europe trip, the McCain campaign has been run brilliantly. They took Obama's greatest strength, his celebrity, and hung it around his neck like an albatross. They hammered him relentlessly about his lack of experience. Obama took the bait and changed his game from the soaring speeches to the pedestrian effort from last night. He got so concerned that he was exposed on experience that he chose Biden over Hillary, pissing off a great many and making all of us wonder just how smart he could be. JFK and Reagan had the good sense to name their biggest opponents as their VPs and it worked. It's the winning strategy. Obama whiffed on that.

Palin is still an unknown quantity. She could turn out to be a superstar or she could turn into a Dan Quayle gaffe-o-matic. For now, though, McCain has just crushed Obama.