As far as serious Christmas songs go I never tire of them. They are the best Christmas songs. An example is one you wrote about last year, Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas.”

As the song ended and Frampton’s guitar reached its climax the jock, who was really jazzed, yelled over the top of the record, “And to think his mother wanted him to play the saxophone!!!”

The kind of thing you never forget….

I actually preferred GOS’ “Get Down” to “Clair,” though I can take either one much more than “AAN.” (So conflicted on that one that I can’t bear to spell it out ….)

I like Rod’s version of Angel; you’re right, it is “a convincing simulation of an R&B ballad”, even if it is a cover of a Hendrix song.

Oh, and Clair is a lovely little song.

I don’t recall whether or not that particular blizzard hit Wisconsin. It was a Nor’easter and I was still living in Northern NY state at the time. iirc recall Boston and Manhattan got pummeled by that one as well.

I’m undecided on the surge. I believe a surge in Afghanistan could have worked had it been executed at the right time. I’m just not sure the decision for that surge has been made in a timely enough manner for a surge to still be effective.

The surge in Iraq worked, but it was still a mistake in that it should have happened much much sooner than it did. The surge should have occurred at the fall of Baghdad to quell the insurgency before it had a chance to take as strong a hold as it did. If Bush had ordered a surge instead of grandstanding on an aircraft carrier and declaring the war over, I think we very likely either would be completely out of Iraq now or would have a substantially smaller presence there by now. Also if the surge had been ordered at the right time it would not have had to have been such a large troop commitment. If you quell an insurgency when they’re small and weak it takes substantially less manpower than a surge ordered when the insurgency has taken root and you’re battling a stronger enemy.

Given the human rights violations of Saddam Hussein, I’m reluctant to say that the Iraq War in and of itself was a mistake. The reasons given by Bush were wrong, I’ll concede that in a heartbeat. And the war itself was mishandled, I’ll concede that as well.

Time and history will be the ultimate judges of the success or failure of both the Obama presidency (I voted for him too btw) and our war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

BHO is a moderate and perhaps more like Bill Clinton than anything else. Like you, I just thought he might see things more clearly and not be quite as much of a people pleaser. This is what annoys me, particularly on the health care issue.

Much more than Afgh, I was annoyed by his promise to get us out of Iraq and then simply reclassifying combat troops as “advisors” ….ah, yeah — “You know, we only went into Vietnam as advisors. Last week, we dropped over 40,000 tons of advice”. If we’re really out by the end of 2011 I’ll be extremely surprised.

This kind of weather separates the stations still committed to real localism from those whose idea of localism is running more PSAs while their “local” news is gathered and read from a studio 500 miles away. The latter sort of stations can fake it most of the year, but not this week.