Nonfiction Books that Have Most Inspired and Influenced Me (In No Particular Order) 2

1) "Parkinson's Law" - C. Northcote Parkinson.......2) "The Prince" - Niccolo Machiavelli.......3) "Hitler's Willing Executioners" - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.......4) "The Peter Principle" - Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull.......5) "Problems of Art" - Suzanne K. Langer.......6) "Arafat's War" - Efraim Karsh.......7) "Diet for a Small Planet" - Frances Moore Lappe.

Miscellaneous 136

1) So, what "academic freedom" does a second grade reading teacher require? I mean, seriously.............2) Tenure is an untenable concept for a number of reasons. a) It insulates/protects lousy teachers, b) it often prevents good teachers from being hired long-term (this, in that a lot of colleges let people go just prior to them earning tenure), and c) any organization or business has to have the right to fire bad people OR THEY WILL PERISH.............3) Conventional wisdom is that Eleanor Powell is the greatest female tap-dancer ever. My (obviously much more unconventional) wisdom counters this by specifying, not so fast, my friend! I mean, yeah, maybe Powell was the most precise and all but Ann Miller in the late '40s and early '50s had a caliber of athleticism that few dancers of either gender has ever given us. And if you don't believe me, just check out her numbers in "Kiss Me Kate" (the "Too Darn Hot Number" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CYjE9Gv3A4) and "Deep in My Heart" (that phenomenal Charleston number - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC1UbWf_vbg&feature=fvwrel). Those just might convince you.............4) School summer vacations are an anachronism. In fact, the only reason that they existed in the first place was because families needed the children at home to help with the planting and the harvesting. There is no academic reason for them and, if anything, they're actually harmful (students forgetting a lot of what they learned the year before) to the students. BUT because the teacher unions want to retain them as a benefit to their employees, they continue....just like the damn bells.

Miscellaneous 135

1) I don't doubt for a second that other administrations have met with lobbyists "off site", at coffee shops, and other destinations. But this Obama fellow was supposed to be a different type of politician and, yes, he was supposed to have a transparent administration as well....I mean, am I the only one who's a little bit disappointed in him here (of those who voted for him, I'm saying)?............2) Government bureaucracy is inherently inefficient and self-serving. To think that we can somehow sprinkle some pixie dust on it (yet another law, yet another layer of regulation) and magically make it not so is utterly ridiculous. And, yet, that is exactly what certain people think.............3) I have a question pertaining to Harry Reid. Is Mr. Reid saying that Romney LEGALLY didn't pay any taxes for ten years, or is he saying that the dude ILLEGALLY didn't pay any taxes for ten years? 'Cause if in fact it's the latter, then the Senate Majority Leader has a moral (and possibly legal, too?) obligation to go to the I.R.S. and/or the Justice Department and provide them with this important information. He does want to do the moral thing, no?

Nonfiction Books that Have Most Inspired and Influenced Me (In No Particular Order)

1) "The True Believer" - Eric Hoffer.......2) "Escape From Freedom" - Erich Fromm.......3) "Man's Search for Meaning" - Viktor Frankl.......3) "The Book" - Alan Watts.......4) "The Nature of Prejudice" - Gordon Allport.......5) "Twilight of the Idols" - Friedrich Nietzsche.......6) "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" - David Hume.......7) "Montgomery Clift, A Biography" - Patricia Bosworth.......8) "On Liberty" - John Stuart Mill.......9) "The Sickness Unto Death" - Soren Kierkegaard.......10) "Being Nobody, Going Nowhere" - Ayya Khema.......11) "The Time Before History" - Colin Tudge.......12) "The Division of Labor in Society" - Emile Durkheim.......13) "Why I am Not a Christian" - Bertrand Russell.......14) "The Social Contract" - Jean Jacques Rousseau.......15) "The Forgotten Man" - Amity Shlaes.......16) "To Jerusalem and Back" - Saul Bellow.......17) "The Leviathan" - Thomas Hobbes.......18) "The Tao of Pooh" - Benjamin Hoff.......19) "Night" - Elie Wiesel.......20) "The Long Death, The Last Days of the Plains Indians" - Ralph K. Andrist.......21) "Irrational Man" - William Barrett.......22) "The Myth of Sisyphus" - Albert Camus.......23) "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" - Erving Goffman.......24) "Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences" - Abraham Maslow.......25) "The Crucial Decade" - Eric F. Goldman.......26) "Eating Animals" - Jonathan Safran Foer.......27) "The Two Faces of Islam" - Stephen Schwartz.......28) "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" - Max Weber.

A Partial Rundown of My Many "Conservative" Positions

1) Am in favor of raising revenues as part of an overall deficit reduction package.......2) Am in favor of a progressive taxation system.......3) Spoke out in favor of extending unemployment benefits.......4) Spoke out in favor of a negative income tax.......5) Am strongly in favor of campaign finance reform (even to the point of publicly financing elections).......6) Am pro-choice.......7) Am pro- gays in the military.......8) Am pro-gay-marriage.......9) Was against both of the Iraq Wars.......10) Strongly opposed nation-building in Afghanistan.......11) Strongly opposed President Obama's surge in Afghanistan.......12) Am in favor of universal health-care coverage (through health savings accounts, subsidies, health boards, and catastrophic coverage).......13) Supported both of the President's (Obama) appointments to the Supreme Court.......14) Am strongly opposed to corporate welfare and crony capitalism.......15) Am in favor of lowering the limit on mortgage interest deductions.......16) Am in favor of doing away with the special consideration for capital gains (a possible caveat being that I would index it for inflation).......17) Am willing to consider breaking up some of the bigger banks in order to spread out the risk.......18) Am in favor of raising the cap on Social Security payroll deductions (no, not eliminating it like the progressives want to do but raising it $5-10,000).......19) Am in favor of funding for Planned Parenthood.......20) Am in favor of the assault weapons ban and doing away with the gun-show loophole and cop-killer bullets.......21) Am in favor of reducing military spending and closing unnecessary foreign military bases.......22) Am in favor of Medicare negotiating directly with the pharmaceutical companies.......23) Was against the impeachment of Bill Clinton (a censure I could have lived with).......24) Am against wire-tapping, water-boarding, and rendition (as opposed to Mr. Obama who still utilizes 1 and 3).......25) Was initially against the drone attacks in Northern Pakistan.......26) Consider Alan Greenspan to be the worst FED chairman in U.S. history.......27) My two favorite Presidents are Kennedy and Truman - both Democrats.......28) Could in fact live with the individual mandate as long as it applied to EVERYBODY (zero waivers - either everybody's in or nobody's in).......29) Haven't voted Republican for President since 1988 (identical to Jon Stewart).......30) Was in favor of the mosque being built near ground zero.............................................................................................Now, do I also have some ACTUAL conservative views? Of course I frigging do!! Everybody does (save, of course, for the idiots, psychotics, and true believers of the world). But to say that I'm a hard-core conservative of some sort is totally absurd.

Medicine isn't Supposed to Taste Good

We don't have a shortage of jobs in this country. We have a shortage of skilled workers. There are literally THOUSANDS of employers out there who are looking to fill positions AND THEY CANNOT FIND THE PEOPLE. And, while, yes, some of theses jobs in fact do require a four-year college degree (physical therapy, biochemical engineering, robotics, various IT positions including cyber security, etc.), it certainly isn't exclusively the case. I cite specifically here such areas as welding, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, mechanical, and chemical technology, practical nursing, medical assisting, truck-driving (yes, truck-driving) advanced manufacturing, etc.. Somehow, someway, we have to be able to educate our electorate to fill these jobs or we are effed - big time.

Miscellaneous 134

1) To all of those folks who say that the Bush administration failed to connect the dots and prevent 9/11 (and I'm not necessarily saying that I disagree with them, mind you), I really have to ask them. Is it also not possible that the Obama administration failed to connect the dots and prevent the Fort Hood massacre at the hands of that Major Hassan (the fact that there were a fair number of tea leaves there as well, begging to be read, etc.)?............2) Here's a fact that just totally blew me away. The British invasion act with the most appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" wasn't the Beatles, or the Stones, or the Animals, or Herman's Hermits. The British invasion act with the most appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" was the Dave Clark Five. Yeah, that's right, folks. Those sons of bitches made a grand total of 18 appearances and pretty much blew the roof off the joint every time (the loudest and rowdiest of the British bands at that time save for possibly The Who). It's kind of too bad that we don't seem to remember them all that much (they eventually did make the Rock and Roll hall of Fame in 2008).............3) My opinion of George W. Bush and the second Iraq War is EXACTLY THE SAME as that of President Obama and John Kerry. a) It was a mistake for the dude to invade Iraq. b) The Iraq War was hugely mismanaged. And c) the whole thing falls considerably short of a war crime. If I'm an apologist for George W. Bush, it seems that I'm in pretty damned distinguished company.