well, sarah and i spent the weekend down at grandma and grandpa’s.

and i got to hear my niece hailey playing flute.

i was actually quite impressed.

sadly, though, my sister – hailey’s mother – has yet, for some unknown reason, failed to turn her on to someone who no doubt would become her musical idol were she to invest a few minutes and take in the brilliance of the following youtube clips.

so, hailey, i have the supreme honor of presenting to you mr. ian anderson and his multitudinous and voluminous talents.

the first video is a fairly recent clip showing ian the elder statesman playing a couple of tunes with an orchestra at a Christmas gathering three years ago.

the second is ian in his prime – as much a showman and entertainer as a breathy flautist. here he is doing the ian-flute-solo thing before 40- or 50- or 60- or 70,000 tull fans at tampa stadium. make sure you watch the whole thing.

and, finally, a clip from the msg dvd i mentioned a few posts back. this is ‘the middle part’ of ‘thick as a brick’ – and you should log onto amazon immediately after watching these clips to order a copy of both the taab CD and the msg dvd.

(using kelly’s credit card, of course…)

oh, and tell your momma two things: one, i haven’t bought the msg dvd yet; and, two, my birthday is in six weeks.

enjoy.

review of october 7th ian anderson / tull lite show in chicago here…

a thought or six about the recent elections. this week was…

(a) a strong victory for republicans…
…or maybe against democrats;
…or perhaps against whomever is in charge;
…or possibly against politics as usual;
…or for talk radio;
…or for vocal bloggers like this one and this one;
…or maybe for the i-got-mine-you-get-yours way of selfish living;
…or against health-care reform;
…or against any belief that independents really are;
…or perhaps for politicians in politics who can convince people that they are fimrly against politics as usual even though they’ve been the usual politicians for years before this political election;

(b) proof that if you scream loud enough;
…and are bitter enough;
…and find ‘facts’ that aren’t necessarily true, but just true enough;
…and appeal to white voters enough;
…and twist reality enough;
…and avoid the real root causes of problems enough;
…and scream against top-down socialism, and say nothing of bottom up socialism (ie, the obviously increasing wage gap of the past decade), enough;
…you can win elections.

(c) evidence that those in power become complacent, and need to wake up to the power held by the slew of vitiriolic, name-calling, know-it-all talk radio brats, especially when coupled with the army of similarly narrow-minded screamers in the blogosphere;

(d) educational, at least to the extent that a just-elected President should try to focus on one or two important issues, and not try to be everything to everyone;

(e) a reminder that people have extremely limited memories, and can be convinced – or convince themselves – of even the most naive beliefs, such as the belief that someone holding the steering wheel for a few months is responsible for a world-wide calamity that happened long before his watch;

(f) a notice to the democrats: you better not sit comfortably on last year’s victories.

small mind, big head

i went ahead and bought glenn beck’s book, “arguing with idiots: how to stop small minds and big government”. so far, i have listened to a half-hour or so of it. quite entertaining, as i expected, since he’s an entertainer, regardless of the prophet-like status that others give him and all the other endlessly opinionating hosts on talk radio and tv.

now, i must say that he makes some good points – he just doesn’t make them very well, at least according to my endlessly opinionating blog on wordpress.com.

capitalism was the subject of the initial section that i read listened to. of course, he never defines what his idea of ‘capitalism’ is. and though he never says so outright, by ‘capitalism’ he no doubt means ‘unregulated capitalism’, ie, that any government involvement should be frowned upon.

and, of course, that the rich should be allowed to continue increasing the gap between themselves and the poor – as they have the last decade.

and that tax cuts should continue since they obviously make the economy stronger, as bush’s tax cuts did the past decade, as proven by the fact that, at the end of his administration…

… the world economy went into the toilet.

wait … beck doesn’t mention that…

anyway, according to glenn, any government involvement in business is bad, and it has always been bad. while he may dance around it a little, what he really is saying is that the only government involvement that he deems required/ allowed/ legislated is that of which he approves.

now, here’s something that sounds like an arrogant, grossly-overstated, hyperbolic, completely-biased – ie, something that sean hannity might say, were he on the real right side of the argument – comment: every paragraph – if not every sentence – has an immediate, logical, rational argument that invalidates it. seriously. i was listening to the book on my ipod, piling some dead limbs in the area next to the field by my house – talking out loud as i usually do – and EVERY argument he raises falls into one of several categories:

a) a mistruth, shaded with humor;
b) a contradiction, shaded with humor;
c) a false – or overly narrow – conclusion from the evidence presented, shaded with humor;
d) a conclusion which has implications he avoids admitting (like, for example, christians don’t recognize they do with their belief in an eternal, burning hell holding billions of people), shaded with humor;
e) the presentation of an a priori idea he wants to get across with punctuated examples as justification (which any student of logic knows can never prove a point).

oh yeah, and shaded with humor.

‘c’mon, mike – you can’t be serious.’

i am completely serious. i even wrestled with doing a line-by-line critique here.

but here’s the thing: my criticism is not so much a jab at glenn as it is a jab at glenn’s listeners and, unfortunately, believers in the snake oil he sells. and, more importantly, it’s a criticism of anyone who argues his position has all the answers.

the answer, as always, lies in the middle of the extremes.

in one section, he argues that amtrak and the postal service are perfect examples of why government should never be involved in setting profits or prices. of course, he never mentions the public service commissions that need to be in place to ensure that localities have regulated power and water.

his argument is that it’s greed, not capitalism, that is the culprit. he cites enron as a perfect poster-boy for unfettered greed and how it gives capitalism a bad name.

yes, enron.

ENRON?!?!?

while enron is certainly a picture of greed’s evils, it is also most certainly an argument for how government regulation should play a part in setting limits and implementing auditing processes where needed. of course, when you have no regulation, and something like enron happens, on top of worldcom, on top of andersen, you wind up with reactionary policies like sarbanes-oxley… and, oddly enough, the blame for that over-regulation lays squarely at the feet of the no-regulation crowd, because when you don’t have ANY regulation, you generally wind up with TOO MUCH regulation when all is said and done.

like the basis for real estate’s worth (location, location, location) beck’s argument during the first hour or so i’ve listened to is that (a) government is bad; (b) government is bad; and, (c) government is bad. if not that, it’s ‘let the private sector be – it can take care of what it needs to because it “answers to shareholders”‘. if only. unless by shareholders he means huge investment firms and poorly regulated banks. it has been a LONG time since public companies answered to ANYONE like an individual shareholder.

he offers lots of contradictions. if they truly go unnoticed by the beck-worshippers, it makes me think even less of their logical faculties. (and i already score them pretty darn low.) for instance, in one breath he argues that people are good and they come together in times of emergencies, ie, we don’t need government stepping in like fema did in the wake of katrina. why? because people who were in prison, and dead, and buying porn took money from fema.

in other words, his argument is:

(a) people are good, and will come to another’s aid; and,
(b) people are bad, and will take everything they can get.

i’d put money on the latter. fema money, anyway…

(now, the proper conclusion beck should make is that we truly don’t need the response fema delivered, not that we don’t need fema…)

he makes one argument that’s interesting, how a minimum-wage worker in the fifties, holding one summer job, could buy one or two of the latest-and-greatest consumer appliances of his day, but the same worker in the 21st century could buy a computer, a dvd player, an ipod, a microwave, etc etc etc. – basically an endless list of toys. his argument, of course, is that capitalism, left to run its own course, will make products better, cheaper and faster (as my daddy used to say in relation to the work he did).

now, capitalism is responsible for some of these technical achievements. as someone who has been in the field of technology for thirty years, and watched closely how things have changed in that period, it’s been remarkable what’s been accomplished.

but ‘unfettered capitalism’ isn’t the only conclusion to be drawn. further, this isn’t – directly – the only point he wants his statement to make. as much as it pains us to admit it, the ability to produce most of those high-tech goods in a better, and cheaper, and faster way is really the success of the…

…japanese.

and if you think japan is a bastion of ‘unfettered capitalism’, you are ridiculously naive. japan has, in effect, a ruling class of people that owns the bulk of the japanese people as serfs in their kingdom. it’s a place, truly, where the rich get richer.

gasp! what does that sound like, glenn? america? the circles you run it? the ones who really prosper in america these days?

say it ain’t so.

but his point is also an indirect jab at people who want to raise the minimum wage. “hey – they can buy all they want! they don’t need more money…”

never mind the racist implications there.

and, in implying that it’s wrong and ineffectual to give everyone $50,000, he avoids putting real names and faces on the statement. why not say, “my friend, john – who has profited immensely from tax cuts aimed at the wealthy, and who got his cut off the top before he and those like him plunged the world into financial chaos, and who, because he’s white, can still get credit to fund further endeavors, and who owns a fantastic mansion because he was able to get a nice mortgage – john just doesn’t feel he should have to give part of all that excess to people struggling to get by.”

of course, what’s worse is that, underneath it all, he’s really saying that it’s ineffectual because those at the bottom end, even if they are given $50,000, will blow it and mismanage it and, because of their inherent lack of motiviation and inability to be successful, fritter it away until they are back where they started.

all of the ‘government is bad – capitalism can do things by itself’ folks who may appear to be making a straightforward, understandable argument are really being quite selective in the ‘truth’ they want you to believe. what they conventiently ignore is that the people driving capitalism were likely educated in GOVERNMENT schools, drive to work on GOVERNMENT-built roads, drive with GOVERNMENT-issued drivers licenses, feel safe because of GOVERNMENT-employed policemen, share 3-martini lunches and non-lethal food because of GOVERNMENT regulations issued and enforced by the fda, are able to sue everyone and their brother because of GOVERNMENT-run courts and justices, are able to do business because of GOVERNMENT-provided exchanges…

… need i go on?

so there. that’s beck’s book.

at least the first part of the first chapter. i’ll likely continue reading it.

for entertainment purposes.

but nothing else.

here’s my first attempt at rap (and last,too, i think…). i wrote this in the late 80s. i volunteered to be united way captain for the company i was working at – basically hand out forms, nag people to give, say ‘thank you’ to those that do, and give a face saying ‘you greedy sob’ to those that don’t. anyway, we had a speaker from one of the local charities come talk to a large group of people in our auditorium, and this was played over the sound system as the first part of the ’show’. i instructed everyone how to say ‘huh!’ at my direction at the appropriate times. they did well.

(for those too young to remember, see this link for the bakker reference and this one – the note for 1987 – for oral roberts…)

the united way rap