Monologue | Tuesday night on CBS: Pamela Anderson on “Dancing with the Stars.” You know who else is on “Dancing with the Stars?” Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Pam Anderson and Buzz Aldrin. Honest to God, it looks like a Republican ticket.

Monologue | Tuesday night on NBC: Happy Passover, everybody. Speaking of that, as you may have heard, Vice President Joe Biden did it again. He showed up at the White House Seder last night with a bunch of ham sandwiches.

Well, according to Newsweek, the F.B.I. now says Osama bin Laden is healthy and giving the orders once again for Al Qaeda. Today, Republicans blamed it on the new health care bill.

First Lady Michelle Obama attended the Kids’ Choice Awards over the weekend. See, I don’t think the president had ever seen that show. Like, when she got home, the president asked Michelle how it went. She said there was a lot of slime. And President Obama said, “Fox News was there?”

Best Caption:

“What is that thing, Daddy?” “It's something we used to see all the time before technology, pollution, and 'progress' went haywire. We called it a 'bird.' ”

— ­ Posted by Neil Berliner, Palm Beach, Fla.

Runners-up:

A simple misunderstanding between marketing and R&D leads to an elaborate but fairly useless method for recording tweets.

— Posted by Jesse.

I love this record … it's “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds.

— Posted by Adrian

“Free Bird”!!

— Posted by Tony P

COLUMN: When the Hurlyburly's Done

By Tobin Barnes
“Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
   
The current political scene is like something from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Soothsayers predicting dire calamity are haunting the nether regions. Talking heads have stirred the pot. Minions have flown to their assignments.
   
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
   
Some vague evil has supposedly been unleashed.
   
This realm is headed for hell in a hand-basket. No saving us now!
   
So what’s up? What’s the deal?
   
Did I miss the memo?
   
Are we entering into another World War II that we could very well lose, changing the very fabric of life itself?
   
Nope. Unless maybe someone hits the wrong button somewhere, but that’s been the situation for the last sixty years.
   
Is there going to be a civil war that could permanently divide the country into two parts if a couple of battles go the wrong way?
   
I don’t think so, even though a small number of wild-eyed “patriots” have started brandishing guns and stocking supplies in anticipation of Armageddon.
   
Are we headed for another ten-year Great Depression where starvation for hundreds of thousands of citizens becomes a distinct possibility?
   
Again, it doesn’t seem so. Economists think we’re all-too-slowly but surely rising out of our current severe recession—admittedly now dubbed the “Great Recession.”
   
But is it really “Katie bar the door”? Have the hinges of American society truly snapped?
   
Sure…okay…we made some changes to the health care system.
   
Many of those changes, looked at individually, would seem to be good things: no denial of health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, no loss of insurance because of job changes, no canceling of insurance during or after the incursion of major health expenses.
   
So what’s so evil about all those?
   
Of course, to make those good things possible, we needed to expand the insurance pool. After all, the more people insured—close to everybody under the new system—the more the above benefits will work financially. Risk needs to be expanded wider, not narrower. Any reform necessarily has to have that plank.
   
Also because of the health care changes just passed, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan entity, estimates that the Federal budget deficit will be reduced by $100 billion in ten years and one-point-trillion something in twenty years.
   
Where’s the devil in that detail?
   
Not only that, but tens of thousands of lives will be saved per year because of better pre-emptive care currently unavailable to thirty-four million uninsured people. That sounds to me like a good-old American worthwhile objective.
   
And the cause of fifty percent of our bankruptcies will also be averted because hard-working citizens will be able to get the health-care monkey off their backs.
   
The changes are big, no doubt. But they had to be. And they’re no bigger than Medicare when it was introduced. And they’re no bigger than Social Security when it came about.
   
And what percent of the population would now like to give up those two programs?
   
No, it isn’t time for hyperventilation, rabble-rousing, threats, and hyperbole. When have those things ever done any good?
   
Let calmer heads prevail.

Monologue | Tuesday night on “The Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS: You people are in such a great mood. I really appreciate it because on a day like this, it’s lousy weather. Here in New York City, it was 49 and gloomy. You know, like Glenn Beck. Read more…

Monologue | Monday night on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC: President Obama won one of the great — they’re calling it — the “great legislative victories of the last 50 years” last night. He won health care reform approval to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, or as the Republicans are calling it “Armageddon.” Read more…

COLUMN: Put Your Hands Up and Step Away from the Bag

By Tobin Barnes
We were bushwhacked, I tell you, bamboozled and flimflammed.

It was a travesty of justice! It was skyway robbery! It was....

Wait. I never really like to appear too grumpy to my readers because…because…oh, what the heck? Who am I kidding? I’m a grump, and I’m going to enjoy being grumpy today.

That’s because I’ve got a bone to pick and an axe to grind. So here goes:
 
I like being in other places, but I don’t like getting there, see.

And the means of travel that I dislike even more than flying is driving. I know, some people enjoy driving, driving, driving long miles to get somewhere. Not me. I don’t. People who enjoy long road trips have never seen the humor in the Clark Griswold character.
 
When I drive hours on end, I feel like my life is seeping out my ears.
 
But I hate flying almost as much. It’s only the lesser of the two evils because it’s quicker.
 
They used to claim that it was fun to fly. My memory doesn’t go back that far. It’s never been “fun” for me, and it’s gotten less so with each passing trip.
 
The whole process from parking fees to what to pack and what not to pack, from standing in lines to delays and cancellations, from lost luggage to being eyed and examined and suspected has all become torturous enough.
 
But on our last flight, we encountered a fresh new circle of airline hell. It’s the carry-on-baggage “sizer.”
 
And what’s that? Wait my unsuspecting little babes-in-the-woods-like-me, and you shall see.
 
They’ve been charging for non-carry-on baggage for some time now. That’s nothing new. You’ve got to roll with the punches—especially when you see them coming—because there’s going to be a lot of punches. We adjusted by packing lighter and putting everything into two carry-on bags, one for each of us.
 
We even bought two new “carry-ons” that we thought fit the bill because they were called, appropriately enough, “carry-on” baggage. Besides, they were pretty darned spiffy. We used those bags without incident on two prior trips that we had taken.
 
But then came the recent trip when we got bushwhacked by the bean counters of corporate America. The name of this so-called “discount” airline I’ll leave to your imagination. Just realize that this new contagion will probably spread to other airlines given the current culture.
 
Anyway, there we were standing in line and merrily rolling our spiffy bags up to the ticket counter when these people behind us piped up and virtually destroyed our pre-trip reverie.
 
“Maybe they’ll let your bags go through,” one of them said, “but last time they charged us for bags that size.”
 
Now what could that mean? Must be some crank. I try not to talk to strangers, or anyone else for that matter.
 
“Yeah,” said the other, apparently thinking we wanted this information, “we had to go to the toy department to get carry-ons the size they would accept.” And there they stood behind us with two little lavender jobbies like I’ve seen children traveling with.

“Can’t really get much into them,” the first one said, “but it’s better than paying extra.”
 
Sure enough, now that we looked toward the ticket counter, innocent people, like us, were trying to wedge their normal-sized carry-on bags into a ridiculously small, aluminum-barred “sizer” that in the wrong hands could be used in Satanic initiation rites.
 
The ticket agents stood patiently by as the travelers tried everything but a sledge hammer (because there weren’t any handy) to try to squeeze their bags into that measuring box.
 
You could almost see the ticket agents thinking in a snarky sort of way, “Knock yourself out, buddy, it ain’t gonna fit. Do whatever it takes to convince yourself you’re going to have to pay us more money to get on that plane.”
 
After watching a number of people go through contortions with bags smaller than ours, we faced the facts: “How much is it going to cost us?”
 
“Thirty-five dollars…each way…for each bag.” That’s right, $140 above and beyond the price of our “discount” tickets. So, yes, we had been bushwhacked, bamboozled, and flimflammed. Extortion might not be too strong a word. And why? Purely revenue.
 
When we got to our seats on the plane, most of the overhead storage bins were empty: More than enough room for our bags and those of our fellow travelers who had also been bushwhacked, bamboozled, and flimflammed.