A Holiday For Your Ears

If I were a character in a novel, I'd most likely be Rob Fleming, the slacker-owner of a record store in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (the book was later made into a movie starring John Cusack). Rob Fleming pretty much defined his life by playlists of music. In the book he organizes his album collection, not chronologically or alphabetically, but by relationships. That's how important music is to him.

I'm not that obsessive (not anymore, really), but I do love making playlists - especially when there is a great big theme just begging for music. So here, by popular demand, is the "Brantley's Brain Christmas Playlist" for 2008. You've undoubtedly heard some of these songs before, and I can almost guarantee a couple you've not. Feel free to comment, particularly if you have a favorite that you would like to share. Happy listening:

1) "Christmas Baby" by G. Love: A great starting song. A little rock, blues and funk all mixed together in a tune that will make you want shake your moneymaker.

2) "Christmas Time" by ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra): This is just an awesome song, period. A folksy style that will actually make you want to put on a reindeer sweater. The end of the track is this young girl talking about her favorite things at Christmas, and it so reminds me of my friend Amy Lou's daughter.

3) "Nuttin' For Christmas" by Stan Freberg: Stan Freberg has been a satirical radio personality, recording artist and voice-over talent since the 1940's. This is my daughter's new fave song.

4) "Silent Night" by Angie Aparo: Aparo is a singer/songwriter from Atlanta, and I first heard of him through my sister-in-law Kathy, who is as much a music freak as I am.

5) "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by Barenaked Ladies with Sarah McLachlan: This is actually a semi-medley of two different Christmas carols, "God Rest Ye...," and "We Three Kings." According to legend, this track was recorded live backstage at a concert where the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan were performing. And they did it in one take. Is that just really good musicianship, or a Christmas miracle? You decide.

6) "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You" by Billy Squire: I am a product of 80's rock, and MTV (back when MTV was about music). It was on that once-venerated network that I first heard Billy Squire's take on Christmas. It's why Billy and I remain tight to this day.

7) "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by Bob & Doug McKenzie: Anyone over the age of forty will likely remember the days of Second City Television (it came on right after Saturday Night Live), and its regular feature, "Great White North," starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as the McKenzie brothers. To me Christmas and comedy go hand in hand, and this remains one of the best bits of the twentieth century. Take off, eh?

8) "Jingle Bells (Instrumental Version)" by The Brian Setzer Orchestra: Brian Setzer had his day in the 80's (with The Stray Cats), and in the 90's (with the resurgence of big-band swing). He's found what he's good at, and he's sticking to it. Here's a great swing version of a classic song.

9) "I Want An Alien For Christmas" by Fountains of Wayne: Long before their radio success with "Stacy's Mom," this Pop-a-riffic band from Queens, New York was crafting catchy tunes for all occasions. Here's their Christmas contribution. (I wasn't really trying to include all those words with a hard "c". It just turned out that way.)

10) "Frosty The Snowman" by Fiona Apple: When I first heard that Fiona had done a version of "Frosty," I expected it to be dark and depressing, like focusing on the fact that your best friend is about to vanish in a puddle before your eyes. Or something. But this is actually a very simple, sweet acoustic rendition, and my daughter loves it.

11) "Step Into Christmas" by Elton John: Every remaining FM radio station in the country should be compelled by law to play this song at least once during the season. Come on. You know you love it.

12) "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by Hip Heavy Lip: I have a belief that all songs created for any cartoon produced in the 60's were meant to be rock songs. This belief is well-founded thanks to Hip Heavy Lip's most-awesome take on the green meanie.

13) "Father Christmas" by The Kinks: And speaking of rock - Christmas does not officially begin at my house until I have jammed to Ray and Dave Davies' ode to working class English families. Indeed, give all the toys to the little rich boys...

14) "Snow Miser/Heat Miser" by The Miser Twins: As a kid, The Year Without A Santa Claus was one of my all-time favorite holiday specials. Though this song has been covered by everyone from Lushy to the Hellblinki Sextet, the original recording (featuring the voice of Dick Shawn as Snow Miser, and George S. Irving as Heat Miser) is still my favorite. And it's out there in the ether, if you know where to look.

15) "Maybe This Christmas" by Ron Sexsmith: Remember the dorky kid in school who you just knew was hiding some serious talent? That's Ron Sexsmith. A great singer/songwriter, as evidenced by this short but bittersweet tune.

16) "Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)" by The Decemberists: If you call your band The Decemberists, it's sort of expected that you'll have to record a Christmas song at some point. This one has a country-twang to it, along with a tinge of the tragi-comic. Funny and sad, like when a clown takes a great pratfall, but accidentally breaks his neck.

17) "Some Day At Christmas" by Jack Johnson: If I ever meet Jack Johnson in person, I'm going to armbar him, just for being so ridiculously talented, and making it look so easy. Thematically, you could compare this song to John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War Is Over), except that Johnson here employs his usual laid-back, beach music style. Good stuff.

18) "Santa Claus and His Old Lady" by Cheech and Chong: When I was a kid growing up near Houston, the rock station 101 KLOL used to play this bit at least three times a day during the season. It's as funny to me now as it was then. "Recession, repression, it's all the same thing, Man."

19) " The Christmas Song/Linus and Lucy" by The Vince Guaraldi Trio ( from A Charlie Brown Christmas): This is still the music that defines Christmas for my generation.

20) " Bizarre Christmas Incident" by Ben Folds Five: This track, while not safe for the kiddies, is still a keeper. Ben Folds is another guy I'd like to beat up. Musically gifted and funny? I'd kill for that combo.

So there you have it. A very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and remember to turn it up. Way up.

Spreading The Truth (Even If It Hurts)

So, a lot of my more Republican-leaning friends have of late been throwing around the words "spread the wealth." This is a mocking reference to a comment that Senator Obama made to the now infamous Joe The Plumber. My inbox has been flooded with emails about how Obama is going to rob us all of our hard-earned tax dollars, and give them to drug dealers and prostitutes. And probably terrorists.

As a side note, this seems, to me, what has taken the place of genuine political discourse where I live: dozens of forwarded emails that mock or make misleading or outright false statements about the other guy. Of all of my friends (and I'm happy to say I have many), I am currently engaged in an authentic exchange of ideas with exactly one person. One. The rest of my friends are too busy posting the latest attack ads on their Facebook pages to have any kind of debate about - God forbid! - the issues.

But back to the topic at hand. If any of my friends are genuinely concerned that Senator Obama's tax policy is going to take more of their money away to give it to the enemies of America, I must first congratulate you. I didn't think I was friends with anybody who made a quarter-million dollars a year. The next thing I'd like to know is if I could borrow some money. And yes, those of my (beloved) friends who make that kind of dough will receive a slight tax increase. For those of you who make less than a quarter-million a year - but are still feeling righteously indignant on behalf of the rich - I'd like to spread a little truth about another kind of wealth-spreading that is taking place right now - and you are paying for it, no matter what tax bracket you're in.

Remember the massive, tax-payer financed, 700 billion-dollar bailout of the financial sector that Treasury Secretary Paulsen got pushed through Congress recently? Yeah, I know: I forgot about it, too, especially when the price of gas dropped below 2.50 a gallon. But it came crashing back into my consciousness this week when I heard journalist Bill Moyers describe the deal this way: "There are so many loopholes in the restrictions on [executive] compensation, you could fly a fleet of Gulfstream corporate jets right through them."

To wit: since fiscal 2004, the "Golden Five" of Wall Street - Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Behr Sterns, and Lehman Brothers - have lost a combined 83 billion dollars in stock market value. But - and this is where you "spread the wealth" guys need to pay attention - these same companies reported employee compensation of approximately 239 billion dollars. In other words, the architects of this financial house of cards that has now come crashing down around the ears of everyday Americans - the people most directly responsible for this disaster paid themselves almost three dollars for every dollar they lost.

If you're not screaming "WTF?!?" right now, you should be.

Here's something else to consider: the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a thirty-nation body, recently published its 2008 report. In the section on "Global Gaps Between Rich and Poor" the report stated, "Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poor income groups behind. This has happened in many countries. But nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States." According to the OECD report, the U.S. ranks fourth in highest inequality in incomes. We got beat only by Mexico, Turkey, and Portugal.

I've got nothing against rich people. Believe me, I wish I knew more rich people. How do people become rich? In most of the world's developing economies, the answer is corruption. We have corruption in the U.S. too, but we also have a free press, and a constitutional right to point our fingers at corruption and cry "Foul!" But most importantly, what we have in the United States is a flawed but historically successful system of governance and economics that allows anyone the opportunity to become wealthy. You will not find that kind of opportunity anywhere else on the planet. But what seems to be happening - at least where I live - is that the more money people earn in this unique system that provides them the chance to do so, the less they want to give back to that system. The richer people around me become, the more indignant they become at the prospect of paying back into the system that created the circumstances for them to get that wealthy.

I have a good friend - a perfectly rational fellow - who recently posted this remark on his Facebook page: "I believe the government is not entitled to my money." I wondered if he could be right, so I went straight to the source. According to the United States Constitution, Section 8, Clause 1:"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." So clearly, the government does have the right. By agreeing to participate in a democratic republic, we all implicitly agree that we will pay back into the system that, faulted and flawed though it is, is singularly unique in that it provides any participant a chance to create wealth.

I don't particularly enjoy paying taxes. And I most definitely desire that my taxes should be spent more wisely than they have been. But to those who truly believe that they should not pay proportionately back into the system that, unique among nations, has allowed them to prosper, I'd like to harken you back to the days of the American Revolution. The mantra back then was, "No taxation without representation." So, I'd like to suggest a new American Order; one in which you do not pay any taxes, let alone proportionate to your wealth. But going back over the Constitution (Section 8), there are some things in this new America that we will have to do without: a standing army (Clause 12); commerce with any nation outside the United States (Clause 3); a postal system, or roads (Clause 7); the courts (Clause 9); the police (Clause 16); or the rule of law (Clause 18).

If that sounds like an America you can get behind, then form a political group and go for it. After all, you live in a country that affords you the freedom to do so.

It's worth noting that the Preamble to the Constitution mentions providing for "the common defence," and promoting "the general Welfare" of the United States. That means everybody, from the Wall Street wizard to the lady who cleans his office. Somewhere along the way, we as a nation forgot that the next line in the Preamble says, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

It's Posterity. Not Prosperity.

Welcome to Fantasy Island!

WIth all apologies to Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize, I would like to posit the following:

If you really believe that, regardless of who wins the election, you won't be paying more in taxes in the next four to eight years, you are living on Fantasy Island.

Senator Obama says he wants to offer additional tax cuts to Middle-American families. That sounds good. Senator McCain says he won't raise anybody's taxes. That sounds good too, especially if you're rich. But both these ideas fly in the face of the new American Reality: two wars and a devastating financial crisis, that no American (yet) has been asked to pay for.

In World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked every American, of every stripe, to contribute to the war effort. People were encouraged to buy war bonds. Taxes were raised on luxury items, like tobacco and alcohol and stockings. People salvaged their tin cans and old tires. They worked extra jobs in the wartime economy. Everyday Americans sacrificed; every American felt the cost of waging war.

Let me ask you a hypothetical. Let's say that on September 12, 2001, President Bush had gone before the country and said the following:

"My fellow Americans, in light of the unprecedented attacks on our homeland, the Congress and I have agreed to declare a global war on terror. It is not just our military, but all Americans who must join in this fight. That is why I have asked the Congress to enact immediate legislation that will impose a one dollar Patriot Tax on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country. And every American will have the pride and privilege of knowing that, every time they fill up at the pump, they are directly contributing to victory in the War on Terror."

Would you - Republican or Democrat - have been on board with that? My answer is, yes.

What would a one dollar a gallon Patriot Tax have done? Let's think it through. The obvious is that gas at the pumps would have gone up by a dollar a gallon. People would have started looking for ways to drive less: public transport, carpooling, etc. I think we can all agree that less driving would have meant less carbon emissions, which is good for the planet - and your lungs.

But what else might have happened? The obvious consequence of decreased driving is decreased demand for gas, which means decreased demand for crude oil. The most obvious consequence of a decreased demand for crude would be that petro-dictatorships like Saudi Arabia (who, by the way, gave us 18 of the 19 September 11 hijackers), would have had to seriously reconsider their pricing, which would likely have led to a decrease in the price per barrel of crude - which would have meant a decrease in the price of gas at the pumps, even with the Patriot Tax.

And most importantly, the U.S. government would have instantly had billions of dollars at it's disposal to fund the War on Terror. And we the citizens would have been doing our part.

But that only happened in my Made Up America. What really happened was, the President told us to go shopping. He implied that our patriotic duty was to buy more stuff. He never gave us the chance to be patriotic, because he thought we couldn't hack it. Or worse, that we might do it, but then decide not to elect him to a second term. Then - as if one war wasn't enough - he started a second one. He made several attempts to tie this second war in Iraq to the War on Terror, but the only people who still believe that are the people who don't read newspapers or have any interest in fact. And we haven't been asked to pay for that war, either.

Now we have the worst financial crisis this country has seen since the black days of 1929. There's your trifecta.

I told you all that to tell you this: unless you jumped up or down a tax bracket in the last eight years, you're paying the same amount in taxes that you did on September 10, 2001. Even then, this government was operating in a deficit, because the Bush administration had cleared out a 160 billion dollar surplus - some to lower and middle income families, but mostly to the richest one to two percent of the population who didn't need it. Now add two wars, and one financial meltdown. But we're still paying the same amount of taxes we did before any of that went down. Are you smellin' what I'm steppin' in?

In all kinds of ways, Americans are paying the price for consistently living beyond our means. The bills are coming due, and we can pay the bills one of two ways. The government - Republican or Democratic - can raise our taxes. All Americans can finally start to feel the cost of war, and the cost of buying more than we could afford, which hopefully would lead to a new wave of fiscal responsibility, and less appetite for nation-building. Or, we can put the bill off a little longer by borrowing more money - say, from China.

The problem is, China now owns Fantasy Island.

Green Or Else

Let me give you a hypothetical.

Let's say 98 doctors tell you that your child is sick. Very sick, in fact. And these 98 doctors also tell you that there are some very specific medicines that you need to give your child right now, or your choice will be whether your child's health becomes grave, or catastrophic.

Now let's say there are two doctors who tell you that your child isn't sick at all, that what she's going through is just a phase. These doctors tell you there is really no need to change anything in your child's life, and that pretty soon she'll be just fine.

Now, I probably don't need to ask, but I'm going to: which group of doctors would you be inclined to believe?

Duh.

So, let's bring the hypothetical into the real world. It's not your child that's sick. It's your planet. And the days of anybody making a serious argument against the reality of global climate change is over. No serious scientist in the world denies that global warming - and the potentially disastrous consequences for all of us - is real, is bad, and is accelerating in large part because of human activity.

Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of foreign policy at Johns Hopkins Univerisity has said, "People do not change because you tell them there is a better option. They change only after they themselves realize that there is no other option." Whether you like it or not, it's time to jump off the denial train. Global climate change is no longer a left-leaning, tree-hugging, Birkenstocks-wearing conversation over free- trade coffee. It's a national security issue. It's going to affect our energy future, our foreign policy future, and most definitely our economic future.

If you're really interested in how climate change, the energy crisis, and bio-diversity loss are all interconnected (and if, like me, you don't have a PhD in anything), let me recommend Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Pulitzer-winning author Tom Friedman. He does a very decent job of outlining the issues, how we got to where we are, what we need to do about it, and explaining the science that backs it all up.

Or, for you more nerdish, geek-out science types, zip on over to the website for the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change. This is the actual science, and it's worth looking over.

I saw this t-shirt the other day, a plain white job with three little words on the front:

green or else.

Those are pretty much the options.

Really?

On Monday, President Bush said, “Americans are watching to see if Democrats and Republicans, the Congress and the White House, can come together to solve this problem with the urgency it warrants. The whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets.” He was referring to a proposed plan to use 700 billion dollars of taxpayer's money to attempt to bail out the imploding financial sector of the nation's economy.

And yes. I said 700 billion. With a b. And I said taxpayer's money. As in, yours and mine.

Really? Really?

There is no question that Congress and the White House need to come up with some kind of plan to, at the very least, staunch the massive bleeding that is happening right this minute in the financial sector. But to "act quickly" on an untested plan that involves so much of American's tax dollars could, from a domestic standpoint, land us in the kind of mess America is currently in on the foreign front. I am referring, of course, to Iraq - another of the President's untested plans that was acted quickly upon, with no regard to the future, that has cost Americans billions more of their tax dollars.

For the last eight years, this president has demonstrated his leadership style by acting quickly - instead of acting wisely. Though it is now common knowledge that President Bush was looking for a reason to invade Iraq as early as January 2000, the plan for the actual invasion was hastily concocted, with virtually no strategy for how to handle the power vacuum that would inevitably be left by Saddam Hussein's removal. And there was certainly no thought to the consequences of removing the lid off decades of sectarian discontent that had always been boiling just beneath the surface in Iraq. And while the addition of thousands more American troops did succeed in reducing the near-anarchy of the last two years (all the while increasing the amount that we are paying for the war), no real progress has been made by the Iraqis to create a sustainable government. And why should they, as long as America continues to foot the bill?

Now the administration is using the bully pulpit to tell Americans that they need to demand that Congress "act quickly" to bail out a financial sector that has been left to write its own rules (and change them, when they want to) since the days of Ronald Reagan. They want to apply a tourniquet, when what may be needed is a radical surgery - followed by a slow, painful recovery.

Moving The Goal Posts

So, evidently, what I meant by posting every week was, "posting every other year."

Did I actually say in my very first post of my very first blog that I have a lot to say? Because evidently, I'm not saying it here. There's been an Olympiad since my last post. A whole Olympiad.

Alright, I'm going to try and get better. Really. There's a lot going on right now. Two wars, a financial crisis, an energy crisis, a presidential election - and my 42nd birthday right around the corner. If I can't find something to say about all of that, then it's time to cut my losses and start a lavender farm.

I have no idea why I just said that last bit.

Aging, Religion, and Politics

I am officially in Middle Age.

What's strange is that 40 doesn't seem all that different from my 30s. Oh, sure, I've lost a lot of my flexibility. And gained a few inches around my mid-section. And this isolated patch of solid grey showed up on the side of my head over night. Oh, and I usually have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom now. Never had to do that before.

Come to think of it, 40 is a LOT different than my 30s.

I'm not saying it's all bad. The life experience that I've racked up to this point (i.e., the really really stupid things I've done that I have hopefully learned from) has put me in a place of relative peace and contentment that, quite honestly, I never believed possible when I was half this age. There is definitely something to be said for getting the ignorance and stupidity of youth behind one in order to really begin enjoying what you have in life, as opposed to grousing about what you imagine you lack.

You know what else has put me in this really healthy place? God. Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was to find out that, not only did I believe in God, I desperately needed Him to straighten out the mess I'd made of my life.

See, for most of my years, I sort of considered myself an armchair intellectual. I never went to college, but I'd feel pretty confident in making a friendly wager with any of my friends or family who did attend university that I have, in my life, read at least twice as many books as they have. (No, I've never read texts on advanced calculus, or quantum physics, or cluster statistics. Those books aren't for reading; they're for making your head explode.) I've studied or perused most of the giant European, Greek, and Asian philosophers. U.S. and World history. Hundreds of novels, short stories, and books of poetry. I am so up on current events that my wife doesn't watch the news anymore. She just asks me what's going on.

It's not that I never believed in God. I simply didn't think about Him. How could I? I was too busy making myself feel superior to so many of my friends who didn't read, didn't educate themselves, didn't stay informed. Besides, how could I possibly believe in God AND be a supporter of National Public Radio?

Like many folks (I suspect), my relationship to God was that of a wayward teenager to a father: I never really gave Him a lot of thought, until I needed Him to post my bail. Then I thought about Him a lot. Here's a snapshot of my inner monolgue when my life finally came apart and I was thinking about God:

"Oh, man, I am so screwed." "How come He waited for all THIS crap to happen?" "Okay, so I'll say I'm sorry, ask for forgiveness, blah blah blah..." "There's no way He'll forgive me for this." "Oh please oh please oh please oh please just fix this for me, okay?"

See? I really was like a randy teen, hoping beyond hope that Dad would roll out of bed at 3AM to come get me out of the slam.

I didn't really understand my relationship with God until I became a parent. And in the second between my daughter coming out into the world and being placed in my arms, I understood my relationship with God absolutely. I get it now. Which is both enlightening and terrifying - since I know what kind of kid I've been to my Father. Oy.

I know this post was titled Aging, Religion and Politics, but I've got a house to pick up. Family is coming in from out of town, and even family should not be subjected to my dirt...

LB