Everybody Loves a Good (2010) List

2010 is about to end and so it is time to take stock of the year and everything that happened in it... wait, what's that? You mean, people have already been doing that for a whole month?

Yes, that's right. Yahoo started doing their 2010 Year in Review on DECEMBER 1. I guess they figured that since all the relevant music albums had been released, all the award nominations had been made (the Oscar noms won't come until January), well, nobody's going to do anything in December so we're good. Does pop culture take December off? Apparently, most people who write these things up must believe this. Hence you get the celebrity obituary lists that stop right at the beginning of December… apparently because they just couldn’t take the time to add to it when someone passed this month. Good thing Leslie Nielsen died right before December 1, he might have been left off all of the celebrity deaths lists otherwise and we may have forgotten he was no longer with us. Give me a break. I wait until the last possible moment because I understand that popular culture never lets up, not even for the holidays, so if something noteworthy happened this month, you can rest assured that I included it in here.

On a side note, I really hope people don't start writing up their year in reviews for actual news that early. Otherwise, I’ll bet people who have the assignment of writing “year in review” stories probably got pissed off every time the lame duck Congress passed something last week. “Aw CRAP, I gotta go back and edit AGAIN!”

In my current home city of Philadelphia, the early part of 2010 was dominated by the word "snowpocalypse". 2 feet here, 2 feet there, a record snowfall that placed Philly in the unusual position of being in the top 5 snowiest U.S. cities last winter. Lately, Mayor Nutter has been thrown under the snowplow for his response to last weekend's snowstorm, but I thought he did a good job with the snow last winter, and that should be a good endorsement coming from a native of Syracuse. Much of the year was also dominated by the misuse of another recently-minted term: "flash mob". In other cities, flash mobs are fun word-of-mouth happenings where unaware shoppers suddenly are confronted with a group of people doing the Hammer dance or singing Mariah Carey Christmas songs. In Philadelphia, flash mobs are groups of urban youths trashing shopping districts. The paranoia got so bad at one point that on a Friday night in April, police were put on alert of "suspicious crowds" gathering near the Temple campus... it was college students who were out celebrating the first warm weekend of the year.

Back in Syracuse, construction finished in Armory Square... and although nothing happened at Carousel Mall, the deal reached between Citigroup and Destiny ensures that at least the mall expansion will finish. Look for more legal shenanigans in 2011 when Mayor Miner tells Bob Congel that he now owes property taxes because "phase 2" is unlikely. SU basketball went to #1 in the country and the citizenry dreamed of a second national championship. Then they lost right away and lost again in the Sweet 16... and people were calling for Jim Boeheim's head. SU football finally returned to winning ways, starting 7-3 and ensuring the first winning season in 9 years and first bowl bid in 6 years, and the citizenry dreamed of a national ranking and a Big East Championship and BCS bid. Then they lost their last 2 games... and people were calling for Doug Marrone's head.

But hey, we've all gotta complain about something, right? And so it is in that spirit that I present my annual list of the goods and bads, the ups and downs, and the just plain WTF moments that make up the year that was:

Dumb Lawsuit of the Year: A Florida resident filed for an order of protection against Tim Tebow (yeah, the Heisman Trophy winner and current Broncos QB) stating that he was getting attacked by Tebow fans after he criticized the quarterback. I realize Tebow's fans put him up on the sort of pedestal that might suggest he is a God-like figure ordering his followers to retribution, but really we're dealing with someone who is completely Four Loko. Perhaps a better suit would be for a restraining order against football commentators telling us how awesome Tebow is. And while you're at it, could you stop ESPN from doing one-hour specials every time Coach K at Duke passes someone on the all-time basketball coaching wins list?
Honorable Mention (because not technically a lawsuit): NOW tried to shut down several Hooters locations because, the group claimed, a Hooters is not a “restaurant” but a “sexual entertainment” establishment, and therefore in violation of state laws preventing minors from being allowed in such places. It’s stunts like this that give legitimate feminism a bad name.

Dumb PETA Protest of the Year: After having to cancel a 4th of July fireworks show due to limited finances, PETA asked Jersey City to ban all future fireworks displays because they cause animals to panic. They said a laser show would be safer... of course as soon as a wayward hawk gets hit with one of the laser lights and flies into a brick wall, they'll want to ban that too...

Smart PETA Protest Response of the Year: Dodge responded to PETA’s protest of the use of a monkey in one of their commercialsby switching to an “invisible monkey”. Way to tell them, "Protest this!" Knowing PETA, I'm shocked that they didn't.

You Probably Missed This One: Rep. Barney Frank, after telling anyone who saw the Fannie/Freddie collapse coming to cool it because nothing was going to happen (oh and he just happened to be accepting more campaign cash from Fannie and Freddie than any other Congressman), all of a sudden this summer recommended that Fannie and Freddie be abolished and replaced by a fully-government-run entity. Wow, way to propose a federal power grab AND cover your tracks at the same time...

Worst New Political Trend of 2010: Vilifying appellate judges when they make controversial rulings. First, we had the Right trying to “out” Vaughn Walker when he ruled against Prop 8 (after all, only a gay judge would rule for gay rights), most recently we had the Left attacking Henry Hudson when he ruled the health care mandate unconstitutional. I don’t care what interest group he is tied to, read the damn ruling. There is no precedent for such a ruling, that is what an appellate judge is SUPPOSED to do. You want precedent, wait for it to reach the SCOTUS. The way things are going, soon any time a federal judge makes a ruling on something, we’ll immediately hear, “Well in (such-and-such year), he/she voted for a Republican (or Democrat), so he/she can’t possibly be impartial…”

Avril Lavigne v. The Rubinoos Moment of the Year: Lady Antebellum’s smash “Need You Now”… sounds a little too much like “Eye in the Sky” by Alan Parsons Project, only without the really cool opening part that gets used for NBA team introductions. Honorable Mention: Michael Jackson’s posthumous ripoff of Hootie & the Blowfish’s “Hold My Hand”.

Enough Already: Please, no more car commercials with hockey goalies (past or present) telling me that I will “save”. Nothing worse than a bad pun repeated AD NAUSEUM.

Best Commercial: The Kia ad with the gangsta rappin’ hamsters. I mean it's hamsters rapping!
Honorable Mention: Alec Baldwin did a series of ads for Wegmans after he told David Letterman that his mother couldn't live without the place (and really, who can?) They shot the ads at the Wegmans where his mother shops... in Fairmount, NY. Oh by the way, that's the Wegmans I've gone to since I was a kid. Yeah, I geeked out a little over that...

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Jerry: You may recall my entry from a few months ago about the so-called “performance tax” being proposed for radio and how it is not only NOT a tax but how it has been spun out of control by people with an agenda. When the NAB reached a compromise in October that would pretty much give radio all it wanted while still accepting that they have to pay the royalties that stations in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY EXCEPT IRAN have to pay, the usual suspect Jerry Del Colliano continued to maintain that it was a tax, that it will go up, and that the music industry is out to destroy radio. The only problem is that to see this spin in more detail, you now have to SUBSCRIBE to his site. Using your logic, Jerry, wouldn’t that mean that you just imposed a TAX on your readers? But I guess bloggers have to make money too… just like musicians do… Anyway, the deal fell apart, which means we may well see this issue continue to be slugged out in 2011.

Most Overplayed Song: “Kings and Queens” by 30 Seconds to Mars. Not necessarily the most played song, but this was the song that was put in seemingly EVERY OTHER commercial and new TV show in 2010, which is the easiest way to win this honor. Also, 30 Seconds to Mars is an overrated band that sounds like every other hard rock band, with a "lead singer" who can’t sing and is only popular because he was “Jordan Catalano” on “My So-Called Life”.

Who We Will Talk About in Music in 2011: The Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Nicki Minaj, Lady GaGa, Foo Fighters, Beck, Blink 182, No Doubt... in a lot of ways it'll be the return of the 90s, and why not, we've reached the 20-year mark so it's time for the pop culture recycling treatment.

Who Should Just Go Away in 2011: Ke$ha, Willow Smith, Justin Bieber, bands that cannot think of anything to write songs about besides sex and drugs (and the radio programmers who love said bands), and anyone who thinks that Kings of Leon is turning into the new Nickelback.

Predictions I Was Right On This Year: I knew Drake was only going to continue getting bigger in 2010. I said Syracuse football could finish 7-5 (although I was conservative and said 6-6 was more likely, but I'll take this one). I called the last "Shrek" movie decimating "MacGruber" at the box office, but anyone with half a brain could have called that. I said Wade Phillips would get whacked in Dallas, although I didn't think it would happen so early in the season. And oh yeah, the NFC West is definitely still the Worst Division in Football.

Predictions I Totally Blew: Well the Black Eyed Peas and Shinedown obviously didn't go away, I changed my mind about Lady GaGa around the time of the meat dress so I don't feel bad that she didn't go away. I wanted the Mets to finish at .500, they didn't. In case you're wondering, that's my same prediction for next year. I said the Eagles would finish 8-8 but nobody foresaw what Michael Vick would do when he was given the chance over Kevin Kolb. Oh, and I said the Nats would be a Wild-Card contender once Strasburg came up and the Braves would finish in last place. Oops.

Best New Album I Got This Year: Well, I'm a dirt-poor doctoral student so there aren't many to choose from, but I believe the best decision I made music-wise this year was to plunk down for The Scarlet Ending's album, "Ghosts". This is what we should hear more of on the radio, rather than the aforementioned hard rock bands that only sing about "I Hate You But The Sex Is Good So Let's Get Drunk And Watch Porn Stars Dancing".

And Finally: We're already getting inundated with promos for New Year's events that make use of the date being 1-1-11. It's not quite the same numerical serendipity that occurs with a same number day-month-year thing like 11-11-11, but we only get to mark these things a limited number of times in the early part of a century, so go with it. More importantly, it reflects the fact that a new year means a new start, and let's face it, 2010 wasn't the greatest of years, so Happy 1-1-11 to 1... I mean one, and all...

What's Wrong With Common Sense?

You may have missed this in the run-up to Christmas the last couple weeks, but a new political movement has started in the United States. This isn't like the Tea Party or MoveOn or anything like that. It's called No Labels, and they actually want to FIX the hyperpartisan attack nature of our politics instead of adding to it.

They believe that we should not be looked at as labels like "conservative", "liberal", or "moderate", but as people with ideas that should be judged on their merits. When we disagree, we should do so with mutual respect. We should use (*gasp*) common sense and shared purpose to solve our problems. In other words, what Habermas calls "deliberative democracy".

Not surprisingly, something that is as sensible as this was immediately attacked by both the Right and the Left. In his continuing attempts to marginalize moderates so that they cannot have any say in the political process, Rush Limbaugh has taken to claiming that those who would join No Labels don't believe in anything and don't know what anything means because "they don't use labels". Just more nonsense that goes along with the thinking that if you do not subscribe to one of the two primary ideological patterns in America, you don't have "core values" or "real beliefs". The problem with this, of course, is most Americans don't adhere exclusively to one of those two patterns. People who believe in gay rights also believe in small government, people who believe in fiscal restraint also think marijuana should be legalized, or think that we should pull out of Afghanistan. But such people get condemned as RINOs or DINOs and get run out of office in favor of polarizing candidates who then go to Washington and spend more time attacking the other party than they do solving problems.

Columnist George Will, whom I actually have (or had) a great deal of respect for, put out a nonsensical column recently where he tried to compare No Labels to the recent federal ruling that declared the insurance mandate in the new health care law unconstitutional. He called the group's premise "preposterous" and said the presence of a middle that doesn't feel that anyone represents them is only "supposed". If that's the case, then why does our hyperpartisan Congress consistently get approval ratings in the TEENS? He also states that being against political retribution means that voters should not defeat candidates with whom they disagree. That's not political retribution AT ALL. Political retribution is when a Bob Bennett or a Mike Castle or a Lisa Murkowski gets a right-wing primary opponent bankrolled to the nines by interest groups because they dared to vote with the Democrats on something. And when that happens it is usually because it wasn't necessarily the voters who disagreed with them, it was the national party. THAT is political retribution, or as departing Senator Arlen Specter put more eloquently, "political cannibalism". In the case of Murkowski, she got the last laugh when the voters showed that they disagreed with political retribution.

Will tied this (awkwardly) to Judge Hudson's ruling by wondering how a "nonpartisan" discussion about such matters as those he ruled upon would take place. Uhhh, isn't a judge (especially a federal judge) SUPPOSED TO BE NONPARTISAN? The fact that we increasingly doubt this in the years since Bush v. Gore shakes the very foundation of our judicial system. If we believe that all of our judges have a partisan bias, then how are we supposed to abide by their rulings? Federal judges are supposed to have a "nonpartisan" position. To state otherwise and still think you believe in the Constitution ignores the warnings of one of its signers, our first president, George Washington:

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

However, I do believe that parties have their place if used properly to answer those popular ends, and so does No Labels. They are Republicans, Democrats and Independents who don't believe in tossing aside party affiliation but rather believe in not using those labels as reasons to go into attack mode. In a nation where we are increasingly divided into two camps (whether we want to be or not), where these two camps go to their own kind of media and even if they are misinformed, they won't believe the facts when told they are wrong, where Ted Koppel can criticize such media for demonstrating bias and disregard of substantive news and the response by many practitioners of journalism is to start wondering aloud why there should even BE objectivity anymore, where we can't even agree on the same prime-time TV shows... John Edwards may have been right when he said we have "Two Americas" today, only it's increasingly becoming the Right's America and the Left's America. And again, so many of us in the middle don't want to live in either... we want to live in the America where we actually work together.

For George Will to refer to an attempt to trade this in for one of understanding as "mush" is to fall into the same childish mentality that makes up our politics today. Keith Olbermann had similar thoughts, also finding that those of us in the center are nothing more than "wolves in sheep's clothing", we're actually conservatives pretending to moderate... whereas Limbaugh thinks we are liberals pretending to be moderates. See, either we don't exist at all (but instead are actually with the enemy) or we're "mush". But people like John Avlon, one of the co-founders of No Labels, knows the reality and why it bothers the Limbaughs and Olbermanns of the world. They fear what they don't understand, and mostly they fear that they will be outnumbered and themselves marginalized. Which I certainly hope.

Therefore, I am making my first public appeal in the over 10 years and 310 entries of this blog that you check out the No Labels website, learn about them, decide whether or not you agree with them, and if you do agree, join us. We saw what happened when people of both parties come together to actually solve problems in the last few days. We saw a major victory for gay rights (human rights, really) with the repeal of "Don't Ask/Don't Tell", and we saw a major treaty with Russia ratified. We also saw a clunky, awkward tax cut compromise that will put us right back in the same conundrum 2 years from now, but perhaps that will be an opportunity for a more sensible solution. As 2010 ends and the Republicans preparing to take over the House are sharpening their knives for combat with the Democratic Senate and Harry "I Don't Make Deals" Reid, maybe it's not so far-fetched to think that we could do things better with just a little common sense.

The Destiny-Citigroup Settlement (Cute Animated Version)

Sometimes, you just have to say what you're feeling through cute animated woodland creatures... who drop the occasional F-bomb. This is my take on Average Syracusan's reaction to the settlement that will allow the Carousel Mall expansion to FINALLY be finished.

This is a (Greatest) Hit Piece

Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, we had our annual raft of greatest hits albums from various artists. Since we have just started a new decade, this year and next year really belong to getting the greatest hits albums out for many of the top acts of the 2000s who may not have a future in the musical landscape of the 2010s. We saw that in 2000-2001, when we had greatest hits collections from the likes of Barenaked Ladies, Collective Soul, and Green Day, although in the last case they reinvented themselves and became one of those core bands of rock that is unlikely to diminish in popularity any time soon. This time around, it is Jay-Z, Pink, and Nelly Furtado who recently put out greatest hits albums.

And Dane Cook. I'm not sure why. With Dane Cook, you either really like him or really hate him. On the one hand, he has found a way to make a successful business model in an age where stand-up comedians aren't the massive stars that they were in the heyday of George Carlin, Bill Cosby, and Bob Newhart, or even more recently with Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, or the Blue Collar guys. On the other hand, his schtick is pretty much one-dimensional, other comedians hate him, and his live specials make me nauseous with their quick cuts and spinning camera angles.

We need rules for greatest hits albums. First of all, Dane Cook, you don't get a greatest hits album. You are a stand-up comedian, therefore you have no "hits". Again, this isn't the days where a stand-up COULD put out a comedy album and either make the Billboard charts with one of their routines (like Cosby or Cheech & Chong) or win album of the year Grammys (like Newhart). Also, they did occasional songs (Cheech & Chong had "Basketball Jones", Cosby remade Stevie Wonder's "Uptight") so it kinda made sense to act like a musical artist in that case. With Dane Cook, it would make just as much sense if I recorded an album where I read my favorite entries of this blog and called it "This Just In's Greatest Hits". So rule #1: No stand-up comedians unless you do music.

Rule #2: You have to have put out enough albums to merit having enough hits to put out a Greatest Hits album. There are plenty of examples of bands who put out such albums after they were well on the downside of their careers (or in some cases, long since broken up), and the band/artist had only 1-2 ACTUAL hit songs, but they're betting you'll plunk down for the whole CD just to get that song. Well, we know that won't fly anymore in this age of downloading. So I'm speaking more in terms of Ms. Furtado here. As far as I know, you've put out 3 albums (3 in English, anyway). Unless you had more hit songs in your native Canada that we don't know about (which may well be the case), you haven't had enough hits to merit a full Greatest Hits album. I'll save all of you music-lovers the trouble... you want a "Greatest Hits" album from Nelly Furtado? Buy "Loose". Download "I'm Like a Bird" on iTunes. You're set.

Rule #3: Don't be cheeky and call your album "Greatest Hits, Volume 1", especially if you're one of those bands that is about to jump the musical shark. Just put the thing out and hope and pray that you have a way to make it long enough to put out a "Volume 2" and THEN you can use that for the 2nd hits compilation. Van Halen is the most notorious violator of this rule. They put out a "Greatest Hits: Volume 1" under the pretension that Diamond Dave was rejoining the band. Then they kicked him out again, hired Gary Cherone, and imploded. Not to mention that a one-disc compilation didn't do them justice. They should have put out 2 companion CDs, one with all of Dave's hits and the other with all the "Van Hagar" hits, then those of us who only favored one lead singer over the other could have been satisfied. Instead, when I listen to that CD, I listen to all the Dave songs, then "Dreams" (one of the few Sammy songs I liked), then I skip to the tracks Dave recorded with them in '96. Kinda feel cheated.

Rule #4: Speaking of new tracks... the add-on tracks that get put on a greatest hits album just to squeeze out another radio single are usually a pretty good indicator of how much steam you have left as a band/artist with the listening public. Exhibit A: the Foo Fighters put their greatest hits package out last year, and "Wheels" was a genuine hit. They're good to go, and they have a new album out next year that I am very much looking forward to. Exhibit B: R.E.M. 2003's "Bad Day" was a stiff. The downward trend of their career since reflects that. Again, Green Day managed to buck this trend. The add-ons from their 2001 greatest hits album flopped, but then they did "American Idiot", and the rest is history.

In most cases, however, bands seem to know just when to cash out and release the greatest hits album, or at least their management does. For proof, look no further than some of the bands I've mentioned, and how many more hits they managed after putting out the greatest hits album. Barenaked Ladies: one song that reached #82 on the pop chart. Collective Soul: 2 more rock hits and a handful of "Adult Top 40" hits. R.E.M.: One hit. There are numerous other examples.

Now there are other artists who have put out hits compilations and may have a shot at a 2nd. Pearl Jam comes to mind. Jay-Z has actually put out greatest hits albums in other countries previous to this year's, his first in the States. And of course there are bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, and Blink-182, who put out greatest hits albums as "farewells" and have since reformed. Only time will tell if their restarts will last long enough, although STP's new album is quite good and I think "Your Decision" may be the best song AIC has ever done (or at least even with "Nutshell").

Few artists stick around long enough to put out more than one greatest hits album while they're still relevant. Elton John and Billy Joel managed to put out 3 (and I don't count all these stupid compilations they keep putting together for Billy Joel, that's why I said "while they're still relevant"... and apparently Billy doesn't like them either). The Eagles managed 2. U2 has put out 2, and may get to a 3rd. Queen put out 2 ("Greatest Hits 3" doesn't count, it was another of these silly money-grab ideas that surely had Freddie spinning in his grave). The Rolling Stones have put out all kinds, under different auspices. The key is knowing exactly when to drop the greatest hits album, with the promise that there is more new material coming. It takes incredible savvy, but it can be done. Let's check back in 10 years and see how the crop of this year and next year do.

I'm Not Getting Older, I'm Getting Sillier

I recently turned another year older, and I am noticing a change in the way my birthday is being treated by people around me. Aside from the multitude of birthday greetings pouring in from friends online, when I speak to people in person, they now start to say "Congratulations" as much as they say "Happy Birthday". And when I think about it, that may be appropriate. It may be better to tell me "Congratulations"... and in, "Congratulations, you survived another year."

Okay yeah, I'm only 32, I'm not getting old or anything, but being in graduate school, each year does seem to become more and more of an ordeal. Grad school may not be the only cause of this. There's also the fact that I live in Philadelphia, around constant sources of stress. Things like idiot drivers, psychotic cabbies, traffic jams that appear out of nowhere for no good reason... I don't drive much because I can take mass transit, but it feels like when I do drive, I am taking my life into my hands, because some wackjob may try to take my back end off because I decided to parallel park somewhere, or I may have to slash across three lanes of traffic to reach an offramp because nobody will let me move over gradually.

I also live around Phillies fans, so I have to put up with sudden irrational delusions of grandeur such as we saw yesterday when they signed Cliff Lee. Yes, I get it, they have 4 really good starting pitchers now in Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, and Lee. But don't you think it might be a LITTLE premature to start planning the victory parade down Broad Street for next October? Considering the Phillies had 3 of those 4 "aces" last year and didn't get out of the NLCS. Considering the team that beat them, the San Francisco Giants, then beat Lee twice in the World Series en route to winning it all. Considering that the Giants return all those pitchers that befuddled the Philly bats, and the Phillies have not replaced (and won't replace) Jayson Werth in the lineup.

I give you two things to chew on, Philly Phan. The 1971 Orioles, lauded as the only team in the modern era of baseball with 4 20-game winners... LOST the World Series. In fact, of the 24 teams to have 3 20-game winners in a season, only 5 won a world title. Pitching, despite what you may think, is NOT everything. And the other thing to consider, Philadelphia... the 2001-2008 Yankees. Lots of dollars spent, lots of expectations of rings, ZERO world titles. And the fact that so many Phillies fans are acting more and more like Yankees fans in expecting trophies to just be handed to them for spending the dough will make me laugh THAT much louder if they fail again in 2011. Of course, it will be done in private, lest that become something that endangers my health.

Which brings me back to the whole "getting older" thing. Clearly, I'm not 100% fit as a fiddle anymore. Working out causes occasional muscle strains, eating certain things causes occasional trips to the medicine cabinet, but I do my best to stay healthy... most of the time. Consider that we as adults spend the whole year being healthy, and then we celebrate the accomplishment of making it through another year... with cheese fries, greasy 7-11 pizza, and later, copious amounts of alcohol. Or a variation thereof, I'm just giving you the Philly version. Your toxin-filled celebration may vary.

If anything, I take solace in the fact that even as I advance through my 30s, I resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that deep down inside, I will always be 13 years old. Consider the fact that I spent a good portion of the night before my birthday laughing at a video of an iguana farting in a bathtub. Then I tweeted the video. And my favorite radio podcast continues to play the sound from the video... so I'm still laughing at it right now. As long as there are farting iguanas, I will remain an eternal teenager. Clearly the qualifications for that have changed since the glory days of Dick Clark...

Perhaps I am growing to accept that I have earned the right to be silly. Based on the fact that my older relatives are quite silly themselves, I think it's my obligation to be an adult when it suits me, and to be a teenager... pretty much the rest of the time. I think being increasingly silly will balance out the fact that I am sure that in the years and decades to come I will become increasingly curmudgeonly. So, my readers (all 4 of you) have that to look forward to...

Pay a Little Now or a Lot Later

Thanks to yet another move by the Republicans to firmly reinforce their status as the Party of No, the extension of the Bush tax cuts is finally being worked on this weekend. The GOP declared that they would not allow anything else to be voted on until these were resolved, so that means no overturning of "Don't Ask/Don't Tell", no voting on the Dream Act, maybe even no vote on the New START treaty with Russia. Instead, we have been treated to another dose of Grade A political theater.

Oh sure, there are apparent bipartisan negotiations going on over the tax cuts since the so-called "Slurpee Summit" at the White House, but while this is happening, Democrats apparently are ignoring these negotiations and trying to get their plan to pass. The Democrat plan allows the tax cuts on those earning below $250,000 to continue, while in effect raising taxes on those who make more than that amount. This once again pits the middle class against not only the wealthy but the small business owners who will get hurt by such a tax increase as well. Vice-President Biden declared that the continuing iffy economic news was a sign that only the middle class tax cuts should be extended, signaling a disconnect in the White House about whether or not these bipartisan negotiations are also just for show.

The House Democrats passed the middle-class only plan on mostly partisan lines, then the Senate promptly came up 7 votes short of being able to bring the plan to a vote. Now the Democrats are left with two options, if they really want to just say the hell with bipartisanship (as they have done time and again the last 2 years): they can either REALLY make the GOP angry, declare reconciliation, and pass the House bill with 51 votes... or they can take their ball and go home, declaring the 111th Congress over and in so doing, let all of the tax cuts expire come January 1.

Now I'm normally all for hashing things out, negotiating, and reaching a fair compromise, but this is not the time for that. I'm going to come off looking like a tax-and-spend liberal here, but I'm truly not. I'm going to press my case for true fiscal responsibility... by stating once again that ALL of the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire.

The all-too-sobering report from the bipartisan debt commission is the reason. This may be news to some of you, but we currently have a staggering national debt of $14 TRILLION. We are going to have yet another vote next year about raising the debt ceiling so that we can avoid a default, and rumor has it that the new Tea Party congressmen may try to block the raise from passing. But back to this debt commission report: they have declared that what we need to do is drastically cut spending, including military spending (as I have advocated), raise the Social Security retirement age, raise taxes in non-harmful ways (like gasoline taxes... let's face it, gas prices are already rising due to the Fed's monetary policy, what's another 15 cents a gallon at this point), and fix our bloated entitlement programs. The recommendations have actually earned the support of a majority of the key panel of congressional co-chairmen, but only 11 out of 18, and 14 votes were needed to advance the recommendations to a full House-Senate vote.

And since the recommendations actually managed to make fiscal watchdogs out of a majority of these key politicians, the Left was bound to come out swinging against it. Most notably, that waste of a Nobel Economics Prize, Paul Krugman, who still seems to believe that because the debt ranks low on Americans' list of important issues, we can continue making a run at becoming the next Greece or Ireland. Not surprisingly, he blasted the calls for cuts in spending, before the full recommendations were even released. He couldn't wait to tell America that the solution is not balancing the books and avoiding the issues that plague the entire Eurozone right now, the solution is to continue to run up the debt, pass the debt ceiling measures, and (apparently) pray that China needs the jobs that our companies provide so much that they don't say the hell with us and stop buying our debt. He pretty much claimed that this was not a bipartisan debt commission at all, and that the Dems on the panel may as well be DINOs (Democrats In Name Only), when he proclaimed that the bipartisan compromise was between "the center-right and the hard right".

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was right when she said there are two different conversations going on right now. You have the debt commission and others fretting about the size and unsustainability of our debt and the draconian measures that need to be taken to fix everything... and on the other side you have the Congress debating whether to add $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, or $4 trillion. Interestingly enough, when Marcus said that on "This Week", Krugman had no response. Interesting... so he's for playing politics over debt measures? Actually, that wouldn't surprise me, based on the fact that he couldn't care less about the mounting size of the debt.

I'm not the only Republican calling for the end of the Bush tax cuts on everyone, by the way. David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan (who, need I remind you, raised income taxes at one point in his presidency), is also for this method of helping to cut down our debt. I understand that in most circumstances, tax cuts lead to higher tax revenues. This is indeed true, but you have to wait a few years for that to come about. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time. So I would recommend that in addition to the deficit commission's recommendations, we have to all deal with higher income taxes for a while until we balance our books. If we continue to watch this debt blimp up, we will eventually have no choice but to raise taxes even higher, crippling our economy (if you don't believe me, look at Ireland and Greece right now).

Nobody wants to believe what is happening, and there are too many political points to be gained, so we get the same old rhetoric from Democrats (raise taxes but leave spending as is... or raise it) and Republicans (cut spending - but only a tiny bit... and definitely not defense -and cut taxes) alike. We have a generation of Baby Boomers (and the Gen-Xers who followed them) who have always had everything handed to them or consumed in excess. They have never had to endure real sacrifice. In this sense, the Tea Partiers are not unlike the people in France who were rioting over the retirement age being raised to (*gasp*) 62. Well, it's time for them to pay the piper. The rest of us will have to pay as well; if anything, it might reinforce the trend in younger generations toward saving more and being more fiscally conscious.

We have two options: feel a little pain now or a lot of pain later. There are no other options. Let all of the tax cuts expire.