Old News is Good News

Roger Simon has a nice opinion piece in The Politico today.

One of Hillary's main claims in this primary process has been that she's 'vetted' and that any attacks on her would, at best, be just a rehashing of old news.

This is mostly true, but its relevance might be underestimated according to Simon.

"That's old news" has been a refrain we've been hearing from the trailer trash twosome since the early 90s when it came to allegations of public and private immorality on their part.

Furthermore, even if the story is old, that doesn't mean that it still has no juice.

He refers back to Willie Horton as a good example of this. Lee Atwater was not exactly the first person to ever be aware of this situation.

Recall what makes the story of Lazarus to titilating...

Elvis Costello Performs Veronica

I've never taken too deep a dive into Elvis Costello's catalog, but I always like what I hear.

Veronica was a song he had a while back that got mildly high positioning on the charts for a brief time.

I found this clip of him performing it in the Warner Brothers parking lot, for employees, in 1989.

Enjoy!

Take Me To Your Leader

I'm still working through my fascination with others' fascination with candidate Obama. The energy I see in his crowds continues to blow my mind.

In my travels, I came across an interesting little write-up (which draws on an even more interesting linked article about "undecided" voters...something that infuriates me to absolutely no end and I'll have to post on later) on what the Junior Senator from IL is up to.

They argue that Democrats, for years, have run on the issues (John Kerry is a classic example of someone who tried to explain to people why he should be President) while Republicans have made it their habit to run national campaigns based on the personality of the candidate and generalities (God, Mom and Apple Pie sorts of things).

Obama might be the culmination of Democratic lessons-learned over these last 20-some years and coming back with a vengeance. He's tapping into our emotions while prior candidates only tried to appeal to our brains.

He also starts to touch on how this can be a dangerous thing when the wrong hands are running the show, something I've openly worried about here.

It's one of the more appealing explanations/arguments I've read on this so far and it's well-worth the 5-minute scan if you can.

Random Thoughts on Why I Might Vote Barack

Burning off some music for the day (Cheap Trick in 1979 at the Int'l Amphitheatre and John Lee Hooker, 1990 at the Chicago Blues Fest) and thought I'd jot down some randomness here before heading out and trying to icepick my way to the street.

As all of us have read, and some found out, the fortune-cookie definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

What's the worst thing that can happen with my voting Obama? He doesn't strike me as some kind of imperial president and I can't see the wisdom in voting for one more person who runs on the same old lines their research says will help them win.

Obviously they can't use, "Vote Barack...Why the Hell Not?" (in part because I think that was Kinky Friedman's slogan) but you get my drift.

The other reason I might vote for him, at least in the primary, has to do with living in Cleveland.

Ohio is shaping up to quite possibly be Hillary's last stand.

Since 1991, I've been listening to this insufferable wench lecture, scold, lie to, whine and pander to the American people. Can you imagine how good it will make me feel, for the rest of my life, that I may have cast a vote that helped seal her fate as a failed presidential candidate forever?

Now I feel better...

Arnold Gets Married!

Courtesy of Perez, of course!

clipped from perezhilton.com Just Married Don't you love crazy people??? Diff'rent Strokes alum Gary Coleman has married some loser by the name of Shannon Price. He's 40. She's 22. It gets better! The pair have only known each other just over FIVE MONTHS. And it gets even better still!!!! Gary tells Inside Edition that this is his first-time-ever romantic relationship. "I never got the opportunity to be romantic or feel romantic with anyone," he says. "I wasn't saving myself, she just happened to be the one." As for the 18 years between them, "I don't have issues with age, I have issues with intelligence," says Coleman. "She's more intelligent than I am, and that's what matters to me." "We may go a week and not speak to each other," he says, while she claims, "He lets his anger conquer him sometimes. … He throws things around, and sometimes he throws it in my direction." This is a reality TV show waiting to happen!

Obama Makes a Serious Move to the "Right"

Wow, I just read an article in Politico over lunch (a nice Reuben sandwich, if you must know) about Barack Obama and education that kind of floored me.

He's talking openly about wanting to explore charter schools and some kind of merit pay for teachers.

For a Democratic Presidential candidate, by my recollection, this is kind of a big deal. He's just taking a wiz right on the third rail for the NEA and other "education" groups.

Personally I've always been a little offended by their strong aversion to trying things like paying for performance, but what do I know...Teachers must be the only people in the world who believe that their on-the-job performace is imperfectly measured. The rest of us dolts just create widgets and get payed exactly accurately for what we do.

This can be seen as nothing but a serious move for those disenchanted GOP voters who have been hearing about this Barack guy and just need a good reason to go over and vote for him.

If nothing else, cheers to Obama for what could be the play of the month!

I Should Know Better By Now...

...than to predict the end of the Clinton campaign, but this Times splash this morning by Patrick Healy claims that there's a whole lotta worrying going on in Camp Clinton.

While conventional wisdom is that the Clintons won't quit easily, one has to wonder if she's starting to sound Rudy-esque in tying all her hopes to the Super Tuesday II, on March 4, when Ohio and Texas vote.

There seems to be too many plausible losses in between for her to keep the money flowing in.

The Modern Conservative Movement

I'm kind of liking this posting of cool editorial cartoons.

So much, in fact, that I may just do it again.

Mike Lester, Rome News-Tribune, Rome, GA

Does Barack Have the Mo'?

Yes, another cheesy tie-in, early on this morning of the Potomac Primary. In truth, I've been wanting to post something from the late Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown for some time, but just didn't come across anything that fit into this well-oiled machine to my liking.

But here's a late-era cover of Got my Mojo Workin'. I believe it was filmed over in Germany somewhere, but I could be a continent or two off on that.

Don't Cry, My Love. God Will Look After Us.

Along with, "this really pisses me off," "This is one of my favorite songs by..." must be one of my most thought and blogged phrases.

But when it comes to Bob Dylan's Romance in Durango, I'll have to throw it down again.

It always produces some kind of physiological reaction in me when I hear it and I don't know why. I got it first on some kind of compilation I picked up in college and this live cut is from the magnificent Rolling Thunder days.

Enjoy!



"Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and my cape,
Me and Magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape.

Sold my guitar to the baker's son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide,
But I can get another one
And I'll play for Magdalena as we ride.

No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango.
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango.

Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people
Hoofbeats like castanets on stone.
At night I dream of bells in the village steeple
Then I see the bloody face of Ramon.

Was it me that shot him down in the cantina
Was it my hand that held the gun?
Come, let us fly, my Magdalena
The dogs are barking and what's done is done.

No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango.
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango.

At the corrida we'll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone.
We'll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon.

Then the padre will recite the prayers of old
In the little church this side of town.
I will wear new boots and an earring of gold
You'll shine with diamonds in your wedding gown.

The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun.
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian.

No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango.
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango.

Was that the thunder that I heard?
My head is vibrating, I feel a sharp pain
Come sit by me, don't say a word
Oh, can it be that I am slain?

Quick, Magdalena, take my gun
Look up in the hills, that flash of light.
Aim well my little one
We may not make it through the night.

No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango.
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango"

Sometimes It's Not Worth it Trying to Come Up With a Clever Caption

The Broads at Work Will Love This One

Click to increase size.

Why Are We Fighting?

Note to self...when having a big rock concert, inviting the HAMC to do security could lead to undesirable consequences.

This is one of the most famous pieces of rock history ever put to video and you can see why.

This cut of Sympathy for the Devil is from the famous Gimme Shelter movie about the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in 1969.

I used to live a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from there in beautiful Pleasanton, CA...where it's a hell of a lot warmer than the balmy minus-14 degree windchill I woke up to today in Cleveland!

Follow the wiki-link to the Pleasanton entry and check out the picture of the interesting traffic lights they have out there. It's definitely something unique!

Who's Your Messiah Now?

This Obama as Messiah thing seems to be quite the phenomenon. If anything, I'm late to the game!

There's at least one nice-looking site out there dedicated to the proposition that he is, in fact, the savior.

They have plenty of convincing pictures, too. These people are much more passionate than anyone I ever saw at St. Joseph's Church.

This is How the HuffPo Chose to Visually Explain the Shakeup in Hillaryland

I find it just as interesting as they do...

Matt Taibbi Calls the Dems to Task

Over the last year or so, I've really started to enjoy Matt Taibbi's writing in Rolling Stone. Over the summer, I read a book he wrote about the 2004 campaign and he seems to be the closest thing to a HST fix I'll get this season.

Anyway, this week, he calls Congressional Democrats out on their cynical behavior since the 2006 election.

Anyone who even remotely paid attention to that campaign knows that the Democrats had a strategy (orchestrated primarily by now-Madame Speaker and former Clintonista, Rahm Emanuel) to promise some progress on getting out of Iraq. That's not debatable and at the time they were making the claims, they had access to enough intelligence to know that it was either not feasible or wise.

So they haven't done shit for all you saps who voted for them. Rather, they're now talking about how they have to wait until after the next election, when perhaps a more reasonable President is in office.

That's basically the article in a nutshell and I could not agree more. But I'd actually take the argument a bit further.

While Hillary and Barack have rightly noted that presumable GOP nominee McCain has stated that we could have some presence in Iraq for 100 years (not unlike our continuing presence in, say, West Germany or South Korea), at least the old coot is being honest with you.

Say what you will about the so-called warmongers on the right. They'll tell you that they intend to blow the balls off of any towelhead that gets in their way and, darnit, they go out and try do it no matter what.

A good portion of the national Democrats, though, have co-opted the anti-war position because it's politically expedient and gives them more window dressing with which to attack the GOP when they have no intent on spending any of their political capital to make good on their promises.

It's at least debatable which position is worse.

Editorial Cartoon of the Day

By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake City Tribune

Hey, Honey. Need a Date?

One of the funnier moments of the Democratic race started this week when MSNBC's David Shuster characterized Chelesea's lobbying of superdelegates as Hillary's campaign "pimping" her out.

I happened to be listening to MSNBC while making dinner when this all went down and found it to be mildly chuckle-worthy, but nothing all that agregious.

Naive, exaggerated, disingenuous, self-righteous indignation enters on stage left.

The fit the Hillary campaign is throwing about in response to Shuster's (who has been suspended by the network) remarks, including calls for his dismissal and threats to boycott any future MSNBC-sponsored debates, makes one wonder if they were surprised to find gambling going on in Vegas a few weeks back.

While I had my share of issues with the first Clinton co-Presidency, the one thing I always admired about them was that they carefully avoided using the then-girl, Chelsea, as a campaign prop. She's now a grown-up and taking an active role in the campaign.

It's great that she's decided to do so, but with this role should come two things. First, she's been notoriously off-limits to the press. While there's certainly no law that says she has to speak to them, it would be a little bit more responsible of her to do so.

Second, and with the premise that the pimp line was out of line, the campaign needs to develop a little bit of a thicker skin about her. With all the embarrassment her skirt-chasing daddy and enabling mommy caused the country, they would be wise to stop lecturing the rest of us how to treat women with respect.

My only question is whether the campaign immediately removed all GE-made light bulbs from their offices.

Recorded Just About 38 Years Ago?

It's still hard to believe this tape is so old.

In one of their magnificent performances at the defunct Fillmore East in February 1970, Jerry and the boys perform Wake Up, Little Susie.

I was going to put up Simon and Garfunkel's version from the famed Concert in Central Park because it's cleaner and more popular, but this one has kind of a charmingly rough edge to it as well as a little higher ranking on the novelty scale.

I'll get some other S&G in the coming week, perhaps. I have a sweet show they did at Miami University in November of 1969 that I've been listening to this week.

Those Foxy Freudian Slips!

Look In My Eyes. What Do You See?

So on Super Tuesday, I stayed up until California was called (around midnight, ET, if memory serves), which means I was awake for the Obama 'victory' speech.

I've seen his stump speech so many times I could probably recite the core part of it back to you, so I was watching he and his crowd more closely than what he was saying the other night and I have to admit I got chills up my spine...but not the good kind.

As I've observed here and to friends, there's just something different about Obama. There's an energy he's tapping into that others are not. He's taking this to a plane I really haven't seen another politician do since I've been a grown-up.

You see, I'm always leery of people who can convince others to do things they might not otherwise do. This is not always a bad trait. In practice, this makes a good leader, but, dammit, it's spooky, too. While I can sometimes teeter on the edge of sounding paranoid, a quick refresher course on the Milgram Experiments might help the reader see where I'm coming from.

Further, it's no accident that "Obama and messianic" returns entirely different kinds of results on Google than "Hillary Clinton and messianic" does. For once, I'm with Chris Matthews who also said that the most noteworthy line of his Tuesday speech was, "We are the people we've been waiting for."

Not your run of the mill "elect me!" line.

(I'm also on the campaign's email list and got one last night with that line as the subject, so the campaign clearly sees some sort of value in this kind of imagery.)

Now I don't believe for a second that Barack Obama is up to no good and will lead people into acting in a collectively evil fashion. Perhaps it's quite the opposite and he's a force for good like we have not seen in some of our lifetimes. I'm in no way drawing a moral equivalence between him and some of the hideous leaders this world has seen.

My only real observation here is that it's just a little scary how such a simple overall message he brings

1) We need "change"
2) We need healthcare
3) I was against the Iraq war from Day 1

can whip people up into such a frenzy. I appreciate that candidates have to boil their message down in an effort to bring people into a campaign, but I don't think the above is an unfair characterization of his core justification for office.

Of particular interest to me, in his mesmerizing speech the other night, is the woman over BO's left shoulder. Keep an eye on her. She's so enthralled with every word that comes out of his mouth and acts as if it's all so enlightening. This is weird, of course, because if she's a true believer, she's heard this speech a dozen times. If this is the first time she's heard it, why was she placed right in the middle of the money shot?

Why, indeed...
Obama's Super Tuesday "Victory" Speech, Part 1

Obama's Super Tuesday "Victory" Speech, Part 2

CNN-Inspired Political Cartoon?

I'm kind of tired from last night's adventures...collecting my thoughts on it, which I am sure you are both anxiously awaiting...more later or tomorrow. But this cracked me up, thanks CF..

Hillary the Ball Buster

I know I've posted on this before, but it still cracks me up. Plus, this doll does not mean that all women are man-hating bitches, bent on manipulating the planet to their personal advantage...only Hillary!

clipped from bigheaddc.com Tuesday February 5th, 2008 2:25 PM by BHDC Staff Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Robin Morgan Feminist On HRC Nutcracker: “If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged — and they would not be selling it in airports.”

It's a Thin Line Between Clever and Stupid

I post these silly news event tie-in songs with full knowledge that not much separates me from the brainiac who came up with the idea to promote Rock-tober on radio stations.

That said, it amuses me and that's pretty much my threshold around here.

Looking at the polling out in the Golden State, there's simply no doubt that Barack is at least narrowing the gap. Some of the polls that are coagulated on Pollster.com actually show him in the lead. It could be a late night out here and I'm as excited as I've ever been about an election night.

The best thing I could think of, as we perhaps watch The Big Enchilada go over to Barack, was Billy Joel's timeless Say Goodbye to Hollywood....in honor of the Junior Senator from New York.

My (First?) Cheapshot of Super Duper Tuesday

Sieg Heil!

Now For Something A Little Lighter...

If Only This Headline Were True in the Literal and Permanent Sense

my little homage to Perez....

Blogger Appears to Be Phucking Around With Photos

All my image files hosted by blogger appear to be down. I've done a little bit of research and while it's not all Blogger sites, I'm by no means the only one.

Hopefully this isn't some sort of fraternity prank or something where the boys from Redmond poured Aunt Jemima syrup all over Google's servers!

Stay tuned....

Addendum>>> Actually, this is quite amusing. I mean it's a temporary pain, but I'm pretty confident that Google didn't lose all my stuff, and even if they did, I'm not paying a dime for it. But when you read some of the frantic posts people are putting up, you'd think this was as important as the cancellation of Gilmore Girls!

Update on Monday Morning>> Problem appears to be fixed...duh.

More Douchebaggery from Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum, who may be using his religiosity to overcompensate for being a closeted fag, is now making robocalls on the part of Mitt Romney.

Clearly not a good sign for Team Mitt, they're pulling out an old card that they think will get them a few points on their fall down Mount Sinai...stopping just shy of saying that McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton left him a nut, unfit to serve.

Hope the good lord appreciates your efforts, Mitt and Rick.

This is Really Effin' Cool

I came across something yesterday that was really nifty.

While I have to figure out a little bit about their methodology in placing people on the political spectrum, it's nonetheless a nice application.

PresidentialWatch08 charts out the political blogosphere both in terms of political leanings and as a social web map, so you can see who links to who.

This is very cool stuff, indeed!

Barack's Fine, Fine Bootay

From frequent contributer, Cody, who attended the rally up at the Target Center in the hipper of the Twin Cities yesterday. The real question is whether they stopped at Gluek's afterwards...

How Can You Tell Chris Matthews Is Getting Ready to Say Something Really Obnoxious?

His lips start moving.

Oldest joke in the book aside, liberal outfit Media Matters for America has started up a little Matthews Monitor page.

Much of this undoubtedly comes as a result of the blond one's blunt assessment/criticism of Hillary Clinton during the campaign season.

I halfway tune in to Matthews when I get home from work most days.

I don't hang on every word and appreciate that he has the same trait that our family Airedale, Jack, had when I was growing up (he liked to hear himself bark). But he has good guests and is reliably entertaining.

He also does seem to carry a lot more clout than his ratings would suggest he should. This, in turn, is a trait he seems to share with other current and former MSNBC hosts like Don Imus.

Funny Photoshop

The Graying of the Hillary Campaign

I just woke up from a wonderfully-restful nap and turned on a Hillary event from Los Angeles.

Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Maxine "Too Shrill" Waters were up there telling the crowd that they should look around at the attendees and dignitaries on the stage as an indication of the groundswell of support for Hillary Clinton. We were also reminded about how Hillary will bring "change" to Washington.

No sooner did the words leave her precious lips than former California governor and power wizard Gray Davis joined the Algonquin Roundtable.

You're kinda sending the voter some mixed messages, there, Hill...

The Most Important News of the Day...From Fox

A. Yes, this is a legit story and pretty much deserves top billing.

B. The brown people are out to get you.

C. The liberals are out to get you.

D. Competitors to Newscorp are out to get you.