I got behind in my reading as usual, but I managed to read three books in January.

"Golf in the Kingdom" by Michael Murphy
"Mystic River" by Dennis Lehane
"James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl (picked this book up at a garage sale and it looked like a fun short read, besides loved the movie version!)

For February my reading list books are:

"A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley
"Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie
"Silas Mariner" by George Eliot

And if I'm lucky I'll get through Poet and Peasant through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables of Luke by Kenneth E. Bailey. The writing is very dry and it's hard to get through.

"Kenneth Bailey draws on more than twenty years of experience with Middle Eastern peasant culture in his study of the literary structure and cultural milieu of sixteen of Jesus' most significant parables as they are recorded in Luke. "

I think the conservative movement became so popular because it appeals to people's common sense. I made myself listen to Rush Limbaugh, and I mean really listen. I wanted to find out why this guy is so popular.

Rush appeals most of the time to common sense. I found myself listening, and if I wasn't really thinking too much about what he was really saying and taking his ideas to their logical conclusion, and agreeing with him.

He appeals to your common sense, if you don't think too deeply about what he's saying. He's funny, he's witty, he has funny nicknames for people, he's entertaining, and most of all he doesn't make you feel stupid when he talks to you.

Democrats do something different. They don't appeal to common sense, they take the moral high ground. I go to church every Sunday and listen to sermons, and sometimes I have to tell you most democrats sound like they're preaching to me.

And I'm like, wait a minute, if I want to be preached to about doing the right thing I go to my church. That's what a church sermon is about. So when I hear a preachy type speech coming out of a politician's mouth, it kind of annoys me.

I don't know. Maybe they're trying to imitate Martin Luther King Jr, but the guy was not a politician. Dr. King was a baptist preacher. If they wanted to really emulate Dr. King, politicians who preach should become preachers and should stay out of politics.

Plus, taking the moral high ground is dicey. Not to mention, it sounds so fake coming out of the mouth of somebody who is not a preacher, minister or priest.

Maybe I'm biased because I go to church and I get preached to every Sunday, and perhaps they're trying to appeal to people who don't do the church thing. But if the demos appealed to people's common sense more, I think they'd find that they will appeal to more people.

I go to church and all, but most of the time common sense trumps morality every time.

Interesting essay from Robert B. Reich in the NY Times on the Democractic party, The Dead Center.

I don't buy into Howard Dean's populist rhetoric, so for me there's no reform movement. Whatever happened to Bill Clinton's democratic rhetoric? I loved his stuff.

My college alma mater makes the NY Times for sports, Grinnell's Unusual Style Leads Nation in Scoring.