Album sales experienced their worst week ever in August. The music industry blames their customers. Their customers blame the music industry. As I write @ the American Spectator, years of pushing horrible music on the public has resulted in terrible consequences for the recording industry.

James Lee took as his religion a novel in which Ismael the Gorilla communicates to humans through telepathy. Too bad the environmentally-conscious gorilla couldn't tell the hostage-taker to duck before police snipers killed him at the Discovery Channel's headquarters. Lee posted an eleven point manifesto aimed at the Discovery Channel that could have been boiled down to one point: "stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants." Indeed, as anyone who has heard The Bloodhound Gang's classic "Bad Touch" can tell you, the Discovery Channel has prompted the reproductive activities of countless humans. Alas, Lee would have had more success bringing his demands to one of the many cable channels launched by Ted Turner, who awarded a $500,000 prize to the author whose book inspired this lunatic.

Four reformers met under a bramble bush. They were all agreed the world must be changed. "We must abolish property," said one.
"We must abolish marriage," said the second.
"We must abolish God," said the third.
"I wish we could abolish work," said the fourth.
"Do not let us get beyond practical politics," said the first. "The first thing is to reduce men to a common level."
"The first thing," said the second, "is to give freedom to the sexes."
"The first thing," said the third, "is to find out how to do it."
"The first step," said the first, "is to abolish the Bible."
"The first thing," said the second, "is to abolish the laws."
"The first thing," said the third, "is to abolish mankind."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Four Reformers," 1896

The headline is that Republicans hold a 10-point advantage on Gallup's sample congressional ballot. That's the largest lead the GOP has held over Democrats in the history of the poll. More ominous for Democrats is the 25-point "enthusiasm gap" Republicans hold over them. Comparisons fly between 2010 and 1994. They may turn out to be apt. A big difference is that few people expected Republicans to capture both houses of Congress in 1994. There is an expectation of big gains in 2010. The silver lining on this cloud for Democrats is that big gains by Republicans that nevertheless fail to meet the Everest-like expectations will be seen as a blow to the GOP faithful.

Not drinking alcohol can kill you. Your friends have been telling you this for years. Now science weighs in: teetotalers die earlier than heavy drinkers. Blackberry brandy and Mad Dog 20/20 are the right medicine for longevity. There's a reason drinkers toast to good health before imbibing.

Saul Alinsky's methods have impressed Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and, strangest of all, numerous tea party activists. Nearly four decades after his death, the community organizer is hotter than ever--despite the fact that nobody really knows what a community organizer does. Read my column @ Human Events to discover why the Rules for Radicals author didn't follow any rules.

Rolling Stone has released its top ten Beatles songs. If I release my top ten favorites, the tomorrow me will have a violent argument with the today me. To avert that ugly scene, here are the ten coolest Beatles songs--not the best, the coolest.

10. Good Night The payoff for listening to Revolution 9.
9. Anytime At All John's rock voice is unbeatable.
8. I've Got a Feeling The Beatles can mumble their lyrics and you'll still like it.
7. I've Just Seen a Face Speed metal by acoustic guitars.
6. It's All Too Much The most psychedelic Beatles song.
5. I'm So Tired You'd be tired too after listening to the Maharishi all day.
4. Tomorrow Never Knows Did you know Ringo plays the drums well?
3. You Know My Name (Look the Number) Listen for Brian Jones on sax.
2. Long Long Long This song absolutely gives me the creeps.
1. Rain A Beatles B-side is better than your average band's best A-side.

Got a top ten list? Ten best? Ten coolest? A top five list even? Let's see it in the comments section.

The Boston Globe has run a series of articles on the Gloucester quarries, carved-out rock filled with fresh water in the seaside town north of Boston. The article dubs the Gloucester quarries a "local secret" revealed to the world through the internet. It wasn't much of a secret when I was a kid; and I wasn't much of a local; and I had never heard of the internet. When the mercury rose above 85, I would occasionally make the trek north to the quarries. This mainly happened in my junior and senior years of high school, i.e., when I had friends who drove cars. The cliff featured in a picture on the Globe's site is one I have jumped off many times--never head first. I recall one unfortunate girl making the leap with her arms spread. She emerged from the water with bruises from wrist to shoulder. Sometimes more perilous than the 40-foot leap was the barefoot climb back up. The gist of the article is that out-of-towners have ruined the quarries for the locals. Technology, the Globe quoted one man, "gave all the people from out of town a chance to ruin it. The quarries used to be clean and safe. Now parents don't want their kids there because of the chance of violence or legal issues caused by the tourists." And "there is a lot more litter." The quarries I leaped into twenty or so years ago featured an oversized van, presumably helped off the cliff somehow by troubled teenagers, deep underwater that was clearly visable to swimmers. Swimming while drinking was practically obligatory. The place was littered with beer bottles and cans. Occasionally, there were fistfights. These things happen in unpoliced areas deep in the woods. That they happen now is a pleasent throwback to a more anarchic era when teenagers lived rather than lived vicariously through reality television and social networking. Despite protestations that the Gloucester pits have gone to the pits, it is clear that the quarries have not changed much. Society, on the other hand, has changed quite a bit.

For Democrats up for reelection this fall, there's no time like the past. Don't talk about Barack Obama. Talk about George Bush. Don't address concerns about building a mosque at Ground Zero. Dismiss the objections as "McCarthyism." Opponents of gay marriage? They're the same people who unleashed dogs and fire hoses upon black people in the South. That's the Hot Tub Time Machine School of American Politics, which I dissect in my column @ Human Events.

When Ray Bradbury was a boy, a magician informed him that he would live forever. This Sunday America's most popular and prolific short story writer turns 90--old by human standards, just getting started by the standards of immortals. When Bradbury was young, he cared too much about what critics thought of him, seeking to erase the pulp origins of his stories, running from the sci-fi label, and writing a few tales that flattered the political leanings of the literati. Now that he is an old man (by mortal standards), he could not care any less what anyone thinks of him. Read my celebration of Bradbury's birthday @ the American Spectator.

I didn't need a massive FBI file to convince me that Howard Zinn was a Communist. The massive tome he wrote was fairly persuasive on that point. For those who remain unconvinced, why would numerous unconnected people tell the FBI that Howard Zinn, then an unknown, was a member of the Communist Party? Read my piece @ City Journal that posits that like Zinn's A People's History of the United States, his '50s responses to questions from the FBI just don't add up.

According to a new Time magazine poll, 1 in 4 Americans believe that the president is a Muslim. The number is so suspicious that even Time's headline strangely refers to a Pew poll on the same subject rather than its own. It suffices to say, a sizable portion of the nation thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim. The president might help himself in this regard by lifting his prohibition on Christmas gifts to his children or showing up at church once a month. Alas, we all remember how regular church attendance worked out for Obama the last time around. With that in mind, I'd like to poll the 24 percent of respondents who believe Obama the first Islamic president (second if you buy into the rumors of Chester Arthur changing his name to Kareem Abdul Jabaar): Do they believe that he belonged to a racist church at the same time he secretly attended a mosque?

The last American combat troops have purportedly left Iraq. There are 50,000 or so American servicemen still there. It's a weird paradox of American politics that the president who sends troops to war sees his popularity skyrocket while the president who brings them home sees his popularity decline. The war's launch was greeted with delusions of making over the Middle East in America's image. The war's conclusion is generally recognized as a prelude to something bad up ahead for Iraq. Our hopes for Iraq blinded us to the dangers for America in going. Our fears for Iraq blind us to the benefits for America in leaving.

The 1980s had a good 1990s and a better 2000s. More than two decades after its demise, the 1980s are more popular than ever. The decade lives in that Madness song on your iPod, during incessant cable-television airings of Sixteen Candles, and on eBay through a constant auction Atari 2600s. And it lives in Rob Sheffield's "Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut." Read my review @ The American Spectator.

I recently discovered my $29.99 monthly fee for Direct TV inflated to $60 a month. You've got to pay attention to those asterisks when you initially order I guess is the lesson. I negotiated them down to $39.99 and gave serious thought to killing my television again. But that box is addictive in a Pringles kind of way: once you start you can't stop; once you stop you don't want to start again.

The $39.99 package stripped me of a few familiar haunts I visit along my journey on the dial (only nobody uses a dial anymore). It replaced them with programming I never received in the original package. I get Logos, the gay channel (other than MTV and Bravo), but not Noggin, the little children's channel. I get Oxygen, the bitter woman channel, but not Spike, the left-side of the bell curve man channel. I have a multitude of shopping channels but no money to buy their cubic zirconia. If you are into religion, Direct TV has them all. It's strange that for the longest time Direct TV withheld Versus from me, but it always provided me a cornucopia of the most obscure religious sects.

"More channels/worse programming" is the great paradox of our age. When there were just three channels, you could watch The Twilight Zone, or Dragnet, or All in the Family. Now we have The Real Housewives of New Jersey (as if I don't encounter enough unpleasant people away from the television) and Most Shocking, a made-for-television ripoff of Faces of Death. It's indecent, yes. But worst of all it is a complete waste of time.

I want shows about serial killers and volcanoes and outer space. Any contest involving men beating each other up, I want to watch. A little science fiction would be nice. Is it too much to ask for a music channel to airs videos? But instead of all this, I get numerous Spanish-language stations, interchangable channels obsessed with reality television, and celebrity news on various networks purporting to be straight "news" networks. Bruce Springsteen is a prophet for having written "57 channels and nuthin' on." He just forgot to add a zero at the end of that number.

This brings me to my plea: the world needs a la carte cable now. If you can order HBO or bypass ordering it, why can't you create a personalized list of cable channels? Why can't I order VH1 Classic and not MTV2? A&E and not TruTV? Spike and not Lifetime? SyFy and not the E! Channel?

A la carte cable would be as revolutionary in encouraging freedom of choice as the remote control or cable television itself. Ironically, the cable companies are now playing the obstructionist role that the broadcast networks once played towards them. True competition isn't letting a thousand guys make the team and then vie for the starting job; true competition involves allowing the coaches to make cuts. Letting the viewer decide which channels make his team, and which ones deserve to get cut, will inevitably force channels to raise their game. Currently, not the best programming but the programming with a corporate affiliation with the cable or satellite provider stands the best chance of ending up among your viewing choices. That makes sense from the provider's point of view; it doesn't make sense from the customer's point of view. The customer is always right--except when a paternalistic corporation tells him he isn't.

Such an enlightened method of ordering cable television would not only expand consumer choice, but it would more accurately match price with product. Within the totality of my monthly bill, I currently pay for numerous channels I don't watch. Cable a la carte would ensure that you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. It would also eliminate the charlie foxtrot that flipping the channels has become. Since when did we need a guide to channel surf? And if the cable or satellite company wishes to tack on all those horrible channels that pay them to air their content, then I would gladly accept them as part of the deal.

Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall. I am telling GE, Comcast, Time Warner, and Dish Network: unbundle that bundle. Don't be so presumptuous to order your customers dinner from your menu. Let us choose our own food.

People try out all sorts of ridiculous theories: Communism, New Coke, and the Jamaican bobsled team are a few that come to mind. But the institutional inertia holding down a good notion seems immovable. Some ideas contain too much sense to be allowed to become reality.