The Ground Rules

If you and I are ever going to make this work (it's like I'm talking to myself in the bathroom mirror), we've got to get a few things straight:

- America's greatest composer is Duke Ellington. Don't even try to debate it. Yeah, Copland, Crumb, Bernstein, Gershwin, Ives, Sousa, Cage... whatever. Duke wins. Why're you arguing with me?

- America's worst president was George W. Bush. OK, more of a debate here, but he's certainly the worst since WWII, and I do include Nixon and Reagan.

- Macs.

- Wild salmon. Mmm....

- The biggest problem in the American political system right now is the press. We have a press that is populated by writers and media "personalities" who largely do not know what they are writing about. The press allows politicians to make lazy, ill-informed pronouncements about and decisions on policy because the members of the press are often lazy and ill-informed themselves.

Democracy is doomed unless we demand that this stop right now.

- I'm proud to be a teacher. And I mightily resent my governor's attitude toward my profession, which alternates between patronizing and contemptuous.

OK, we straight? Good, let's get going...