Deadman's blog

This Is Birdemic!! (Mega Shark who???)

Deadman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:06:33 +0000

Ok, I know its been along time since I posted, but this should more than make up for it. You're welcome ...

Amazon caves to Macmillan

Deadman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:48:21 +0000

Just read that Amazon has decided to give in to publisher Macmillan's demand that the online bookseller sell its books under an agency model for the price the publisher sets (which for the new books that make up most of the market will be 30-50 percent higher than the $10 Amazon currently charges).

For a few days, Amazon tried to play tough by removing Macmillan's books - both physical and digital - from its inventory (tho the titles were still available from third parties). But that didn't last long and the company has put a statement on its Web site that it "will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books."

To be honest, Amazon's decision to cave was a no-brainer. By showing some defiance, Amazon was able to get press to show that they were trying to be an advocate for the consumer, and now if the price changes stick and other publishers even adopt a similar strategy, Amazon could actually make money on its e-book sales as opposed to the losses it currently incurs when selling new titles at the $9.99 price point. The decision by Apple to agree to the higher price points for its imminent iPad tablet made it even tougher for Amazon to play tough.

Of course, Macmillan's decision is a complete joke. The idea that digital books - which have a near-zero marginal cost of production (printing, transportation and distribution costs are all basically de minimus) - should cost the same as a printed copy is laughable. i don't think other publishers will play along here, but even if they do, the higher prices will only lead to people buying fewer books or pirating more content.

When will old school, offline companies learn the lessons of recent history? Book publishers - which in the end are mere middlemen - should be trying to do whatever they can to embrace and encourage legal consumption of their content in the new medium and not go down the same path as the music industry.

I have no doubt that the wholesale cost of e-books will eventually be cheaper than their physical counterparts. And over time, more and more authors will take advantage of the opportunity to go direct (Amazon offers authors a 70% split on titles sold without a publisher), bypassing the middlemen completely.

For the truth of the matter is, neither Macmillan nor Amazon will in the long-run be able to set what they think the ultimate fair price of a book should be. Assuming competition is allowed to flourish and regulation remains minimal, the market will be the decider.

And trust me, the market - and time - is on the consumer's side.

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2009 MOFT of the Year: Mrs. Deadman (of course!)

Deadman — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:19:07 +0000

It's been a long time since I've done one of these, but it's that time of year when I must bestow the coveted My One Favorite Thing award of 2009. Last year, you may recall, Cottonelle Wet Wipes Toilet Paper won the 2008 MOFT, just edging out Barack Obama.

This year, there are so many worthy candidates. Certainly Obama was in the running again, as his January inauguration provided one of the more stirring moments of the year. But while infinitely better than what we had at this time last year, the Prez has been just a bit disappointing to me, so he'll have to settle with his consolation Nobel.

Other early notable contenders for the 2009 MOFT included Reddi-Wip, the Oster Electric Wine Opener, Scramble (a perennial favorite), Phil Ivey, the St. Louis Cardinals, Dexter, our housekeeper Gloria, and Ingrid Michaelson. Meanwhile, a number of late dark-horse candidates in recent months have emerged, including the Wii (finally got one and it rocks), Modern Family, fantasy football, and even in the last couple of days, this hilarious, mind-fu** of a video.

But in the end, to be honest, it really was no contest. By far, My One Favorite Thing of 2009 is my brand shiny new wife! (She may in fact be even better than the Wet Wipes!)

For those of you don't know, I married the now Mrs. Deadman on Halloween in Saratoga Springs, NY. It was quite a lovely and fun event if I do say so myself, with almost all of our closest family and friends in attendance.

While I so far am very glad I took the plunge, overcoming the commitment phobia that's plagued me my entire life, i do have a couple regrets from that weekend. One is the DJ, who sucked so hard I am surprised there was any air left in the reception hall (she will certainly be a top contender if I get around to doing My One Least Favorite Thing of 2009 sometime next week).

Another thing I regret was not taking the time sometime during the night to give this little speech about my new wife. It was something I planned on doing, just like the Mrs. and I both planned on taking a brief moment to thank a bunch of people, but we wanted to try and spread out the speeches and toasts and let people eat and have fun, and then it just never seemed like the right time.

It really is amazing how crazy weddings are when you're one of the key participants. The night just flies by, and you really feel like you have no control over anything. (Apparently, it wasn't just the wedding night that didn't go exactly as planned - Sorry Genghis!). No matter how many people warn you to try and appreciate the moment and be truly present, it's basically impossible. You feel more like a character in a movie than a real live human being making perhaps the most important decision of your life.

But the truth is, we just should have done what we had planned. It was our wedding and our party, and we just should have found time to thank the people who helped make it all happen, and I should have delivered my little ode to Mrs. Deadman (which to be fair I had thrown together very quickly the week before.)

I guess instead, I will have to settle with posting it here and hoping people read it. So without further ado, here it is:

I just want to say a few words about my beautiful, brand-spanking new wife. Keri and I had our first date 2 years, 2 months, and 2 weeks ago from this very day. And I knew very early on, I had stumbled upon something special.

In fact, I remember one day, no more than a couple of months into our relationship, getting ready with Keri to go out and I found myself just staring at her for a few moments before eventually blurting out 'How in the world did I get so lucky to have found you?"

"No seriously," I asked, "how in the world have you stayed single long enough so that I could find you?!?"

I mean, here was this incredibly smart, extremely sexy and cool girl. Sensitive and sweet - with just enough spice and even a touch of the occasional vinegar to keep things interesting. Pretty and funny - not only appreciating my own sense of humor, which is tough enough, but also constantly making me laugh. And it all came bundled in this one little enticing skinny package!

So of course i thought there had to be a catch.

Now it turns out there was no catch, but as I said, this was very early on, so my question might have been a bit naive.

Because the truth is, it's just that relationships are hard, very hard - and I think people in general - and especially as we get older - are too quick to throw our hands up in the air and throw in the towel when things get a little tough and the inevitable concerns arise. It's so easy to just give up and move on.

But I think it's OK when two people in a relationship sometimes have differences of opinions, competing philosophies. It's healthy. Would be boring otherwise. It's when we accept and maybe even embrace the differences that we grow as people and couples.

And there is no doubt I have learned so much from Keri over the past two years, especially about how to live a good life and be a better person. And honestly, it would have been impossible to move on because even during tougher times, there were certain things about Keri that stuck with me.

Like how genuinely scared and concerned she looked when she came to visit me in the ER after I had a little heart scare, tears welling in her eyes as I was hooked up with all these wires (probably worrying what the hell she was getting into).

Or like how she is with our dog, Oliver, the love and affection she showers on him - and this was most certainly not a dog person when we first met.

Or how she makes me laugh by breaking out into one of her silly godawful dances, such as the infamous one-legged south-facing boogie (which perhaps if you're lucky enough, she'll share with you tonight).

Or how warm she is with all of my family and friends, who will invariably come up to me after meeting her and warn me, "Don't you dare F this up, Darren!!"

It was just always so easy to envision Keri as my wife because she is exactly what i've always pictured when I thought about my life in this stage.

And the more I think about my original question - "How in the world did you stay single long enough so that I could find you? - the more I wonder if the answer is not just that relationships are hard, but that perhaps, this is the only way it could have possibly been.

That it, and us, and today were always going to be. Had to be.

And I am just so happy and thankful right now, so excited about our future ... and I love you very, very much!

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Tiger Chasing Tail Just Par for the Course

Deadman — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:19:08 +0000

I'm shocked by this whole Tiger Woods scandal. Not by Tiger's behavior, of course, but by the silence that seems to be accompanying it, at least in my circle of friends on Facebook.

I really expected to be bombarded today with status updates addressing the emerging Tiger Woods scandal. I expected them to be mainly from women expressing some degree of disappointment or outrage. Instead, I only saw one status update that fit the bill.

Maybe my Facebook friends just aren't indicative of society at large, but to me, this lack of response is a much bigger shock than anything that's happened in TigerWorld over the past week.

I mean, let's be real, on the surface, this is a fascinating story - on a 1-10 scale rating the salaciousness of celebrity scandals, this rates an 11 at least. This is Eliot Spitzer, plus Kobe Bryant, plus Nick Hogan, plus Hugh Grant, all thrown into one juicy mixing pot.

You've got your billionaire sports hero, a rare breed of athlete at the top of his game, one of if not the best in his sport ever, beloved by millions and the beneficiary of a squeaky clean public image. You've got your super hot chick for a wife, a couple of cute kids, and a seemingly perfect life.

And in the space of a week's time, it's all come crashing down, literally, with a late-night car accident that allegedly followed a particularly intense marital dispute, which allegedly followed a series of affairs Tiger has had with one or more women (The specifics are still annoyingly vague, but Tiger has admitted to 'transgressions' on his Web site - note the plural use of the word).

Usually, in these kinds of situations, the outrage you hear from America's peanut galleries is deafening - which to my ears resembles the sound of thousands of glass houses falling down as judgmental people throw their sad, schadenfreude-filled stones.

But maybe, just maybe, we're starting to learn that perfection is a myth, and idol worship a waste of time. That no matter how superhuman Tiger is on the golf course, that off of it, he is just like the rest of us, utterly flawed and remarkably human. Monogamy may or may not be the most moral path for humans, but it certainly is not the natural path. In my opinion, it would be more shocking if Tiger actually hewed to his carefully constructed image and didn't succumb to the temptations that must surround him at every corner.

Is Tiger a hypocrite because he actively helped cultivate that sparkling family man image? Of course.

Should his behavior in anyway take away from his accomplishments on the golf course? Of course not.

Does Tiger really have a right to expect privacy at this time when he has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from regular folk who bought into the Tiger mystique? That's a much tougher question to answer. Tiger made the vast majority of his fortune off the golf course, selling not just his athletic prowess but a story and image that he was incapable of living up to. If he wishes to keep raking in the sponsorship millions, he may have some 'splainin to do.

But it's also past time we question why we fall for these obviously man-made mythologies in the first place. For now, I'm considering the relative silence on this issue a small sign of progress.

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Ennui's a bitch ... and then you blog

Deadman — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:53:48 +0000

With a couple of exceptions, I've been gone from dagblog for several months. I've rarely posted. I've barely commented. Heck, I've even stopped visiting the site on a regular basis.

I have a number of legitimate excuses - and some not-so legitimate excuses - for my time away. I did a lot of wedding planning. I picked up online poker again. I broke a wrist. I got married and had a minimoon. I fell behind work at my paying day job. Fantasy football started.

But mainly, my prolonged absence boils down to something much simpler, and in many ways, much more disturbing: I stopped caring.

I don't know if it's a case of issue fatigue or too much self-absorption, but I found myself getting increasingly uninterested with the world at large. Iranian election fraud? Hmm ... Health care reform and town hall madness? Whatever. New Palin book? Of course. 10% unemployment? Them's the breaks.

Lots of things going on right now that should have my hackles raised, my blood boiling, and my fingers typing in a mad blogger's rage. But instead, all I feel is complacency and blahness. It's not just dagblog.com I'm avoiding - it's basically all news. The one event I got most excited about this week was Adam Lambert's blatant display of homosexuality on the American Music Awards.

I'm trying to figure out why this is. My best guess is that the biggest news items of the day seem so familiar. The issues may be new - health care reform and Afghanistan strategizing, for instance - but the underlying themes - nasty partisanship and silly wars - seem so depressingly repetitive. I guess in some ways I feel cheated out of that change I thought I had voted for last year.

I'm not blaming Obama, of course, for my hacklelessness. I'm blaming myself for getting seduced by high and ultimately unreasonable expectations. Believing in change is a fool's game. We are who we are - as people, and as a society.

It may not sound like it, but I'm pretty content personally. Sure, I wish I was doing something more fulfilling in my life (and is it cool for me to cop to both a healthy amount of excitement over Genghis' new book deal and also a wee bit of envy??) but still, its Thanksgiving weekend, and I have a lot to be thankful for. Good friends, a decent-paying gig and a cool boss, lots of loving family members, a nice apartment, a winning fantasy football team, two new video game machines (wedding gifts that we still haven't played yet - talk about complacency!) and especially a lovely brand-shiny-new wife.

So I figure this is as good as time as any to try and get back in the blogging groove. My Muse isn't back yet really, but sometimes I guess you gotta force it. After all, being productive in life is mostly about establishing - or re-establishing - habits.

Now how about that Dubai debt crisis? That's some crazy shit, huh? ... Sigh, this will take some time. Ennui's a bitch.

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I'm back ... and the Bear will be joining me shortly

Deadman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:23:26 +0000

OK, I know I've been a bad, bad, bad dagblogger for quite some time, but seeing as I'm getting married in less than four weeks, I'm giving myself a pass. (Today's key word: ELOPE!!!)

I'll be back more regularly by the end of the year, but for now, I just wanted to give you a ballsy prediction:

The market is nearing a significant short-term top. Nailing the exact timing is always difficult, but I expect we'll be significantly lower by the end of the year, and certainly by the end of the first quarter of next year, I expect we will see market averages at least 15-20% lower than we have now.

Way back in March, on the day after the stock market bottomed, I wrote a piece predicting the rally could have legs. Now before I go patting myself on the back too hard, I must admit I've been surprised by how long the rally has lasted and how ferocious it's been. But I suppose that's the kind of combustible response you get when you combine a recovery from a near-death economic experience with trillions of dollars in government stimulus and bailouts and near-zero interest rates.

So why do I now believe the party is about to end? Well, for several reasons. First, my prediction is obviously influenced by my overall negative view of our economy. Employment is still ugly, consumer debt levels are still too high, the dollar is getting perilously weak while commodities like oil and gold are rising on an almost-daily basis. To stimulate the economy, we've pursued short-term measures like foreclosure relief, tax credits, and Cash for Clunkers, which have done little to resolve the structural imbalances in this country. The only thing we've really accomplished is burdening future generations of Americans with crushing levels of national debt. We may in fact see decent GDP growth for the next few quarters but that's only because the comparisons will be so weak.

The overall bullish reaction to this better-than-expected - but still rather grim - drumbeat of news we're getting is another reason I'm worried the good times are about to end. Take today for instance. Retail sales rose 0.1 percent for the month of September, according to a survey.

This is the first sequential rise in sales in over a year, and apparently a cause for massive celebration according to the chief economist of the group that led the survey. "Let the retail recovery begin," said Michael P. Niemira of the clearly unbiased International Council of Shopping Centers. "This is the start of a better performance and better fundamentals."

Hogwash. With unofficial unemployment rates still in the teens and rising, I guarantee you this holiday season - and many holiday seasons to come - will be a big disappointment.

Speaking of unemployment, by the way, the market is also cheering the fact that the Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits fell to 521,000 last week, the lowest level since January and, yes, 'better-than-expected.' Meanwhile, this still means that more than a half-million Americans lost their jobs, above the rate where overall unemployment would start falling.

i wouldn't say the pundits and experts are universally bullish - which would be the ultimate contrarian indicator - as I do still see some skepticism out there, but I believe investor complacency is rising to dangerous levels while most of them try desperately to chase the market.

The final reason for my growing bearishness is more technical, but basically comes down to the fact that many of the stocks I look at are now approaching their 2008 highs. This is a little inside baseball, but basically it's often the case that old highs for a stock end up being significant resistance points as investors who bought at those levels look to get out close to even. You see these 'double tops' often when looking at stock charts.

Since I believe that very little has been done to fix the economy structurally, I feel that 2008 levels will serve as a high watermark for the market for years to come.

Now don't get me wrong. We've done a few good things to justify these higher prices. Inventories have been drastically reduced. Many companies have cut costs and yet kept efficiency and productivity levels high. The emerging markets like China and Brazil have shown a great deal of resiliency. And certainly the prospect for a total economic collapse - which seemed almost inevitable at the height of the panic - now appears very remote, at least for the foreseeable future.

But mostly what we've done is comparable to giving a sick, lethargic, malnourished patient a shitload of sugar and then celebrating the fact he seems more energetic. The sugar high crash is coming and it won't be pretty.

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Questions: The Wedding Edition

Deadman — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:19:25 +0000

Oh man. I used to love weddings. I really did. I thought they were fun affairs where you got to see family and friends, drink and dance, and just have a good ole time. Plus, when I was single, I almost always got lucky at weddings - something in the air lends itself to sex and romance I guess.

So i always thought I wanted a big wedding because then it's all the good things about weddings but you're the center of attention and getting all the gifts!! What's not to love?

Of course, now that I'm knee deep in planning my own wedding, I understand. They are awful, awful things. My family and my family-to-be are doing more than fair share in helping to plan and pay for the wedding (big shout-out to the parent-in-laws to be here!) and still the list of things to do and pay for is just about endless. Is it too late now to elope???

Anyway, in the spirit of wedding frustration, I present this edition of questions. Now in some of these, I'm appealing for advice, so please help a brother out.

1) Playlist

2) Best Thing/Worst Thing

3) Ideal Size

4) Ideal Type

5) Wedding Vets: Advice?

6) Fu-- Tradition

7) The Food

8) Ethnicity Rocks

9) Groomsmen Gift

10) A or B

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MOFT: Episode 18 (Monk)

Deadman — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:39:54 +0000

I have to apologize for my prolonged posting absence, but things have been getting hectic. And with several trips upcoming, including two jaunts to Vegas (one my bachelor party!!), a pre-wedding party in my hometown St. Louis, a wedding (with still a millions things that need to be done), a minimoon, and various other things happening all in the next couple of months, I have a feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better.

One thing I still amazingly always find time for, however, is television. Fortunately, it's the summer so the Tivo is rather sparse, but one of my favorite shows - Monk - recently started airing new episodes. Alas, it is the final season for the underappreciated comedic detective series on USA Network, which wins the latest My One Favorite Thing of the Week award. I encourage everyone to check out the last few shows on Friday night 9/8c

The strong character ensemble team is easily the best thing about Monk. Tony Shalhoub has received well-deserved accolades, including a couple of Emmys I believe, for his performance as the title character - the lovable, OCD-afflicted, genius detective Adrian Monk. Monk, who was kicked off the San Francisco police force after suffering from mental illness when his wife was killed in a car bomb, is afraid of just about everything. And somehow Shalhoub has managed to keep all of Monk's numerous tics and neuroses from getting stale and annoying over the years. Along with Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, Shalhoub has created one of the two most memorable TV personalities of the past decade.

But truthfully, the rest of the Monk cast is just as strong, each of the main actors creating endearing, funny characters who play off of Monk's oddities extremely well. The only other performer you'll probably recognize is Ted Levine, Monk's former boss Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, as he was Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. He's terrific, gruff and perpetually exasperated with the antics of Monk and his own hilariously inept underling Lieutenant Randy Disher.

But my favorite non-Monk actor is probably Traylor Howard, who plays Monk's assistant Natalie Teeger. She is tough but caring, patient but strong-willed, and she gives as good as she takes. And even more impressively, I honestly first hated her when she came on the show because she replaced a character I thought was awesome, Monk's original assistant Sharona.

Now I don't want to oversell the show. The writing is pretty good, but the plots usually aren't much to speak of, and you'll probably figure out most of the 'mysteries' (many of them taken from recent headlines) long before Monk finally solves the case near the end of the show. I'm sure fans of shows like Columbo and Murder She Wrote will often feel a strong case of deja vu.

But still, it's top-notch entertainment, and I'm sure going to miss Monk and the gang when they disappear from the airwaves for good next month.

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Obama Disappoints Again ... Health Care Reform Likely to Lose its Public Option

Deadman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:16:47 +0000

Boy, what a disappointment.

According to published reports, the Obama administration is willing to give up a plan to create a government-run health insurance company - the so-called 'public option' - in order to get some sort of reform passed. Instead, they are now touting the creation of cooperative health insurance agencies, which would be non-profit and owned by their members.

Now I don't want to overstate the letdown I feel. If this is the only way some health care reform can get done, then fine. Something needs to be done, and the political realities on the ground are obviously quite tricky when you have a slim majority in Congress and combative elements even within your own party with the barking Blue Dog Democrats.

And unlike with getting pregnant, it is possible to get 'a little reform' when it comes to health care. I'll be relatively pleased if a bill passes that takes active measures to limit cost inflation by reducing waste and fraud or increasing efficiencies in the system AND includes regulations forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they get sick.

But I wonder how many other compromises will find its way into the legislation before it reaches the President's desk. Already, DF pointed out a blog post that indicated the administration agreed to some fairly serious concessions to the pharma industry in order to get it to agree to close the Medicare doughnut hole in prescription coverage.

When it comes to this nation's health care system, the patient is very sick and needs a very strong prescription. A placebo won't do. If and when this plan finally passes, will it have any teeth in it?

Or will it just be another example in a growing list of measures that Obama has either avoided pursuing or gotten implemented only after being strongly watered down. A stimulus bill was passed, but only after its size had been slashed, and several of the more left-leaning initiatives removed. An effort to end military tribunals was abandoned. Energy reform and cap-and-trade (an interesting idea that will likely do far too little to reduce global warming) linger in legislative limbo. Meanwhile, Obama has been silent on immigration reform, avoids changing don't-ask-don't-tell, and decides to fight the release of torture photos.

The area where Obama has had his biggest successes has been in the economic arena, yet many of the initiatives there - such as forcing GM into bankruptcy and doling out hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money to banks and Wall Street institutions - hardly qualify as furthering the liberal agenda.

Why are liberals so friggin afraid of their own ideology? Can you imagine the Bush administration hemming and hawing the way Obama's team has? They wanted tax cuts, they got it done. They wanted authorization to go to war with Iraq, they got it done. They wanted the Patriot Act passed, they got it done.

Granted, there's very little on a political level that I want Obama to emulate from the Bush team. As someone who finds strict, unwavering adherence to an ideology a bit disturbing, I like the fact that Obama is open to compromise. Often, many of the most successful initiatives a president will accomplish come by reaching across the aisle in areas not normally associated with their side's ideology (like Clinton's welfare reform or Bush's AIDS relief work).

But look, the folks on the other side had their chance. They messed up, and Americans voted for change. Not just change in process - in how things got done in Washington - but change in policy, too.

Troubling public opinion polls and frequent displays of hostilities at town hall meetings shouldn't matter much if you think the results of policy change will be ultimately be successful. If the economy rebounds, if people feel they have better, more secure health care coverage, the votes will come around.

Democrats now control both houses of Congress. There's no justification for deadlock or watered-down, half-assed measures.

For at least the next three years (well, at least until 2010 if you're worried about the midterms), the Left has been given the opportunity to lead this country. It's time they do just that.

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Twist and Shout: Why the Politics of Rage Makes Me Want to Cry

Deadman — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:40:05 +0000

"...it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"

I was livid when I first saw video from the health care town hall meeting that took place last week in my hometown St. Louis. I had already seen enough similar footage from other cities, but the fact that these were in some ways 'my folk' infuriated me.

Ignorant rednecks, I thought, the whole lot of them.

Judging by their age and apparent socioeconomic status (yes, I was stereotyping), I couldn't help but figure that many of these folks were already receiving a substantial amount of government-financed health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. I was convinced many of them were either paid shills of the health-care industry or just sheep lathered up into an unthinking rage by the reactionary talking heads that now populate the airwaves.

These people are the ones who have been chewed up, spit on and totally ignored for years. They have seen their jobs shipped overseas, their communities neglected. They may have a right to be angry but they should be venting their rage at the fat cats on Wall Street, who plundered and pillaged this country for a decade and then received trillions of dollars of our money, bailed out of the damage caused by their own incompetency and malfeasance.

But instead, of all issues, the thing that finally tipped these people over the boiling point was the prospect of trying to find a better way to provide health care for all of our fellow citizens, of trying to fix a broken system that eats up way too much of our GDP, that doesn't work nearly as well as it does in other less resource-rich countries, and threatens to topple our nation's already creaky balance sheet.

Fucking uncaring, unthinking, rude, selfish idiots. That was what I thought of these people.

But now I realize that by thinking this way, I was engaging in their game, letting my emotions get the best of me. I was demonizing them just as they were demonizing Obama and The Other that frightens them so much.

Because here's the truth: I have bought into The Politics of Anger. How could I not? It is now in full force. Everywhere. We should just call it ImPolitics.

We can't have a rational debate anymore about anything without feeling the anger, letting it seep into our thoughts and words to the point where we no longer are listening to each other but shouting at each other. And when the issue at stake is something as important and as personal as health care, the tempers run even higher and hotter.

And while the extreme right may practice this form of politics with much more enthusiasm and effectiveness than most, they don't have a monopoly on it.

Admit it, you think the religious right are a bunch of hypocritical assholes. You thought Bush and Cheney were evil. You've compared them to Hitler and the Nazis once or twice, at least in your thoughts. And this was before they abused the power of their office, led us into a war on false pretenses, and took away a number of our personal liberties. Perhaps you felt this way as soon as the 2000 election, which you are convinced they stole in part by using their mob tactics in Florida (some of those scenes in the election offices in Miami-Dade County certainly do have an eerie resemblance to the rage we're seeing now).

I'd like to think I'm better. I have a sensitive soul and an open mind, after all. I appreciate fine art and literature and film and music. I can appreciate nuance, see things in colors other than black and white. I am enlightened. I know and appreciate how precious and short life is, and how we too often get distracted by issues that don't truly matter. For whatever we may think lies beyond, if anything, we should at least agree that we would make our temporal lives a lot more pleasant if we tried to understand the common humanity that links us all, binds us to the same shared fate.

But then I see the terrifying rage at these meetings, and it makes me wonder.

I know it's the insult of the day to throw out the term Hitler and raise the specter of Nazism whenever you disagree with your opponent. Both sides do it, and the inappropriateness of the metaphor has rendered it all but impotent.

But I wonder if the rage you see at these meetings doesn't indeed spring from the same place that led us to a world where such a thing as the Holocaust - and all the other holocausts, the Rwandas, the Cambodias, the Bosnias, the Darfurs, etc. etc. - became possible, perhaps even inevitable. That perhaps the rage at these meetings, and the rage that rises in me as I watch, is the true realization of the common humanity of which I speak, and of which binds us to the same shared fate.

And then my rage dissipates, and is instead replaced by a deep sadness. It is much less fulfilling. I hope it is just as inappropriate.

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