If the TV is on, I switch to "Jeopardy". If Iit was on CNN and I don't find the remote in time, I am in danger of throwing something at the TV, which would be a shame because I spent $2K on it (to see mostly lousy programs in HD). Lou Dobbs, among all the other gasbags, seems to irritate me the most,and I have no idea why.

Another favorite is Bill Bennett, who inspired me to pen the following verses a few years ago (and for which I am grateful to him):

William Bennett,The Bookie of Virtue*

[from the AP dispatch, May 2,2003:

“Casino documents show Bennett is a ‘preferred customer’ in at least four venues in Atlantic City and Las Vegas...His favorite games: video poker and slot machines. He has a revolving line of credit of at least $200,000 at each casino...”]

The man who sold a million books has bucks and bucks to spare.

He taught us all what Virtue is and really didn’t care

When at the Trump Casino by the boardwalk of great fame

He’d dropped a ton, while having lots of fun in Virtue’s game.

Ah, virtue! How thy name is praised and honored in the breach

And how I love to hear Bill Bennett bloviate and preach

And take the money when his tomes are selling really well

And hand it to a one-armed bandit wired for sound in hell.**

Now, Bill, I heard you say that you can easily afford

Your losses when you pull the lever. Really? Praise the Lord!

Miraculous indeed that what’s a vice that all should dread

Becomes, if you have scratch enough, a harmless prank instead.

I grant that I’m not famous for my wisdom or my looks

But there are things a person knows without expensive books :

So if I had such money I would have sufficient wit

To find some use more virtuous than slot-machines for it,

Like AIDS research, or homes for battered women, or good schools

Where all of us were firmly taught that all must honor rules,

Including you, the Virtue Czar, but who am I to say?

I guess I’m just not smart enough to live Bill Bennett’s way.

* Credit to Joshua Green of Washington Monthly.

** To this musician's ear, the sound made by hundreds of electronic slot machines in one big room is one that Dante would not have dared imagine...I do not exaggerate when I say that that very sound drove me out of Las Vegas early with several days left on my hotel package, never to return. (Why would I want to see a half-sized Eiffel Tower when I can spend less money and see the real one, plus a lot of other nifty things?)

where someone will answer some simple questions that I have been asking for months on threads like this, with no response.

If you believe that human life begins at conception, on what do you base that belief? Is there Scriptural support for it? (If so, what is it and where is it?)

Is it philosophical? Is it based on scientific evidence? If so, what is that evidence?

If you believe that abortion is murder, so you agree that is should be punished as murder usually is? That is, should both the doctor and the woman who solicits his/her services be punished by life in prison or execution? If not, why not?

It seems to me that most of difficulty hangs on this question: when does a fetus become a human being?

More complicated is the question of when is it moral to sacrifice one life in order to save another...but without some agreement on the former question I think it is impossible to discuss the latter.

If one wants to discuss, that is, and not rant. That's another question entirely.

according to Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society. You say that "conservatives have worried that anyone left of Dwight Eisenhower was a Comintern stooge", but Welch wrote (I quote from memory after decades, but it is a truly memorable phrase) that Ike was "a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy". Maybe because he decided to put the kibosh on Joe McCarthy after the latter attacked Gen. Marshall, Ike's idol and "rabbi". But more on account of fluoridation in the drinking water (I kid you not...the gag in Dr. Strangelove was not entirely a gag!).

You'd think that a political commentator would understand something about politics. Which is that it is the art of the possible, that there are three branches of government, that Senators and Representatives have to answer to their own constituents, and that changing the course of an ocean liner is quite different than cornering a sports-car.

It's one thing to point out that we haven't got what we need yet and to keep the pressure from the left on, but quite another to whine and throw tantrums because one man (not a Messiah, not ein fuhrer, not a magician, stage or otherwise) however powerful hasn't made everything right in 4 months. If the employment numbers are really improved by the end of this year and if reform of health care is moving, if the wind-down in Iraq is on schedule and especially if Rush's head is exploding every other day, I will be more satisfied than I have been since...well, since I began to vote in 1960.

If you live in the real world, you accept that the best deal you can get usually leaves everyone partially pleased and partially unhappy. Deal with it.

I thought I had seen enough wingnuttery to be unshockable, but Drake comparing Tiller to Hitler (with higher marks for the latter) made me gasp out loud.