According to the Atlanta JC (can’t find the full name of the publication and can’t be bothered to spend more than a minute looking for it), sales of recliners has increased during these tough economic times.

In addition to an aging, widening population and the increasing popularity of giant televisions, analysts believe that the recession itself is partly responsible for the rise in recliner sales (emphasis mine):

Sales of reclining chairs are getting a lift from the growing popularity of high-tech TVs, home theater equipment and video games, as well as an aging population that is less active. Even the recession, which forced many Americans to cancel vacation plans, seemed to have help sales of the comfy lounge chairs.

I realize that Americans are vacationing at home rather than Disneyland these days, but part of me giggles at the idea that some Americans might be celebrating their unemployment by treating themselves to a Laz-E Boy.

Honestly, I figured it was just a matter of time before violence broke out at one of the health care town hall meetings, but I didn’t realize it would be so stuperb.

The story comes from the Kansas City Star, but to avoid having the AP go apeshit on me for pasting its text here, I’ll paraphrase:

The Scene

A St Louis health care town hall meeting, organized by the Tea Part Coalition.

The Incident

A lot of he says, she says, but the end result is that a fight breaks out and a conservative man, Kenneth Gladney, is injured. He says the Service Employees International Union started the fight; they say he did.

The Aftermath: Hilarity Ensues

The unfortunate Mr Gladney, in addition to being beaten up, is also recently unemployed and has lost his health care coverage. Therefore, he will accept donations from the general public to help cover his medical costs.

(Insert joke here)

Hearing this just made my heart sink. It’s a horrible mischaracterization of what happened to Matthew Shepard, who was selected, tortured, left for dead, and yes, robbed, because he was gay.

Congresswoman Foxx was arguing against a hate crime bill when she went off the deep end. Sure, the bill bears Matthew’s name, so evidently she wanted to clarify her thoughts on the case itself, but what in the hell was she thinking? How does this explanation even help her case? What does it have to do with hate crime legislation? Was she hoping to prove that crimes against gays just don’t happen, thus negating the need for a hate crime law?

I’m not hugely in favor of hate crime laws, but this seems like just about the weakest argument one could make against it - not to mention that it’s horribly ignorant and hurtful.

I read that Matthew Shepard’s mom was present when Congresswoman Foxx made these remarks. I can only imagine how much that hurt her to hear them.

This sort of irks me (emphasis mine):

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

What?!

This is really unfortunate wording. It implies that in order to determine whether Obama is popular, we have to throw out African American opinions to find out what real public opinion is.

In fact, I’m having a hard time finding a way to interpret this that isn’t troubling.

Sure, I’m willing to accept that a large percentage of African Americans support the President (and people can debate the reasons for this on their own time; I don’t care to address this). But how does that make him “seem” more popular than he “actually” is? This boggles me.

I’ve listened to Ed Schultz on Sirius for a few years now, and though he’s a little bit shouty, I thought he provided some good analysis leading up to the election and afterward, with a notable exception (in my opinion) of his dogmatic party line defense for bailing out the Big 3 automakers. Over the years, Big Eddie seemed to get even bigger - or at least, the ego part of him did. He got a fancy sound setup, and started charging for premium access to his website, We Got Ed. He’s made a ton of TV appearances, on Fox and MSNBC and probably others, and I figured it was a matter of time before he got his own show.

Well, it happened. The Ed Show premiered on MSNBC this week, and wow does he have a lot of work to do. It was a bit of a train wreck, in my opinion…at least the first half was. His opening monologue, “Op Ed” (heh heh, get it? Ed?) was ostensibly about health care, but more closely resembled a stream of consciousness attempt to explain his whole being in 2 minutes.  Pace yourself, Eddie - it’s an hour-long show. There were other, smaller problems, like not knowing which camera to shout look at, but I’m confident he can work those out in time.

What he really needs to do is to stop hollering and sounding accusatory. I like his (apparent) catch phrase, “We can do better than that”, but the way it’s delivered seems a bit off putting, and might alienate his audience a bit if it’s not already familiar with his personality - or maybe even if it is. On the radio, it’s easy enough to believe that he’s just a big guy with a big voice, but on camera it’s pretty apparent that he’s one pissed off dude. If his speaking style is intended to get people riled up and ready for action, I’m not sure it worked. His fast, loud talking and his skipping around made me feel nervous, or that he was.

He also needs to organize his thoughts, and structure his pieces more carefully.  Since he takes caller opinions on his radio show, and that determines to a certain degree the direction of the show, Ed’s probably gotten used to jumping around from topic to topic. But on a TV show like his, where it’s just him and the camera most of the time, he needs to calm down a bit and deliver a thought from beginning to end (says the girl without her own TV show).

We’ll see if he can pull it together over the coming weeks. I’m sure Jon Stewart and Glenn Beck didn’t show up perfectly camera-ready right out of the box.  He’s got generally okay analysis and passion - just needs to stop shouting it at us.