Here’s a shameless advertisement (sorry, fellow WoC’ers…).

I’m a fan of all kinds of music – as long as it’s interesting and well-performed. I’m a big fan (disclosure: also a board member) of the Long Beach Opera, a regional avant-garde company that has done some incredible work in the last few years.

This year, they are putting on a “chamber Ring” – as in “Wagner’s Ring” not “the-VCR-that-kills-people-Ring.” This is the Birmingham Opera version, and it’s ten hours over two days (as opposed to fifteen hours over five days).

I’ve been to some rehearsals, and it looks and sounds damn cool. Our Siegmund stood in for Placido Domingo in the L.A. Opera’s Parsifal a few weeks ago, and got some great reviews.

It’s a full weekend of music – an immersion in fantasy – and you can read about it (and, more important, order tickets) at the LBO website.

A few things you ought to read while you’re recovering this morning.

Patterico has his magisterial year-end conservative critique of the Los Angeles Times up. You should read it.

As a non-right winger (I know, you’re shocked) I support virtually every point he makes. Why, you ask? because people are smart enough to see empty shilling for what it is, and the Times cheapens liberal positions and makes them less credible through its empty shilling.

It also ossifies liberalism and keeps it from changing to meet new social and political realities – thus weakening it further and making for an inflexible, unimaginative liberalism which has a harder and harder time being competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

The Times isn’t alone in this.

Over at MyDD, Matt Stoller is waxing wroth at Barack Obama for being sensible and smart.Obama said:

“I do agree that the Democrats have been intellectually lazy in failing to take the core ideals of the Democratic Party and adapting them to circumstances,” he says.

He says the Democrats should “take it big instead of making it small” as they speak about globalization, the need for a tough foreign policy and the importance of faith and family.

“It’s not just a matter of sticking in a quote from the Bible into a stock speech,” he says.

And was quoted in an Illinois paper as saying:

“I do agree that the Democrats have been intellectually lazy in failing to take the core ideals of the Democratic Party and adapting them to circumstances. … It’s not just a matter of sticking in a quote from the Bible into a stock speech.”

And Stoller then blogs:

Barack Obama is one of the true progressives in the Senate. His voting record, and his political priorities – Avian Flu and Genocide – suggest that he knows we’re all in it together.

So why does he have to reinforce right-wing ideas?

To Stoller – and the Times, it would appear – any statements that don’t lay rose petals on the path of the current Democratic Party are right wing talking points, heresy, and anathema.

Suicidal lemmings, meet the cliff.

It’s an election year, and while it’s possible that sense and sensibility will break out in the Democratic Party in the next ten months, if I had to make a prediction I’d say that we’ll get smacked in November, and can only hope that leads to people like Stoller looking at Obama and saying “OK, now I get it.”

Kind of the way one wakes up on Jan 1 with a hangover and a sour stomach and resolves to party a little less aggressively next year…

And I hope that for each of us it will be a good one.

I’m not sure why, but this New Years feels like the moment when you’re suspended over a long drop on a roller coaster – like things are going to suddenly accelerate.

Here’s hoping it’s all in a good direction!