Five Greatest Cities In The United States

This is my current list of the Five Greatest/Favorite Cities In The United States. In order. As with all of my lists here, I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Let's debate!

1. Seattle.
2. New York City.
3. Austin.
4. SF/Berkeley-Oakland.
5. Los Angeles.

Five greatest cities not in the United States:

1. Bucerias, Nayarit, Mexico.
2. Rome.
3. Madrid.
4. Chora Sfokya, Crete, Greece.
5. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

---o0o---

Kerry endorses Obama (which may be enough to drop him another five points)

I wonder if you can decline endorsements from a fellow Senator? Why didn't Kerry just give him the kiss of death ("it was you, Fredo.")?

---o0o---

New Hampshire wrap-up & the necessity of telephoning the voters

Coming home from Boston tonight on Alaska Airlines Flight 15, I bumped into Ralph Munro, our long-time Washington State Secretary of State (he retired in 2000). He was in the seat behind me (yes, coach!) and had been in New Hampshire the last week or so doing "grunt work" for the McCain campaign...grunt work being working the telephones. I have done the telephone thing for various candidates and for school levy elections. It is indeed grunt work...grueling, often unrewarding, and difficult. You get a lot of hostility and a lot of hangups. But the conventional wisdom says it's important work, and no matter how digital and internet- and media-based campaigns become, campaigns still rely on phone banks to turn the voters out.

Good on you Ralph...nice meeting you.

---o0o---

Video: The Beatles perform She Loves You In Manchester in 1963

I will never forget the night when I was ten years old and The Beatles played this song on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was one of those extremely rare times when you think "nothing will be quite the same after this." And, for me at least, things never were. It led to a lifetime addiction, and their music and the people they inspired and competed with, and the next generation (now two generations!) took what they did, honored what they did, rebelled against what they did, and formed a soundtrack for a lifetime. I mean, yeah, I often cut away to other musical pleasures in the jazz, country, blues, bluegrass, classical modes. . . but The Beatles are the absolute Gold Standard. From them I learned about melody, sitars, flutes, strings, harmony, rhythm, ballads, suites, bridges, Aeolian cadences. . .you name it. For me, the music all springs from John Paul George and Ringo; even Beethoven!


---o0o---

Audio Lost and found: some great downloadable MP3s from the great WFMU Blog

I love strange old audio ephemera, from the hundreds of Jean Shepherd shows I have to recordings of chatter on shortwave, the famous Buddy Rich rant tapes, and the "shut up and play" compilation of rock and rollers freaking out on stage and ripping into their audiences (Doiurtney Love, Mike Love, Elvis, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, etc.). A great source all of this is the WFMU radio site that often releases free weird recordings that have slipped into the pulic doman.

WFMU's beware of the blog is a great web site and they always have lot of goodies for downloading. You should visit once in a while... in the meantime, here are three gems I recently found there that you can download.




1) How Do I learn. A collection of 6 MP3s from a collection of old educational film strips. Check out the cut "Who's afraid?" . . .it is genuinely spooky.



2) Flying Saucers Unlimited. This record is probably the score for Frank Stranges UFO documentary Phenomena 7.7. Pretty cool. The Reverend Strange is unquestionably way way out there.



3) Sound off Saxons! This is amazing. "Created as a keepsake for the 1965 graduating class of North High School in Torrance, CA, this album takes you through the school and introduces you to the multiple characters and events there — all with the corniest, dated humor you can imagine."

This is a wonderful slice of a world that has long since disappeared. It was already gone by the time I graduated from high school.
---o0o---

Senators McCain and Clinton win in New Hampshire: stayin' alive

I am in Boston tonight, about 30 miles from ground zero in New Hampshire. I am glad to see that both Senators Clinton and McCain won their respective races tonight. Not that I am particularly in favor of either of them becoming President, but because I think they help keep the race honest.

Just last summer I and nearly everyone else had written off McCain...his campaign was in shambles. . .people were quitting, and the money was drying up. Has he cleaned up his act, or is he lucky to have Huck and Giuliani and Romney dicing each other up, and is able to sneak into the breach?

As for Hillary, she made an amazing comeback overnight--only yesterday she was running at least 7-10% behind Obama. Did this mini-comeback spring from the piling on from the press over the last two days, and a public reaction? Or were the press, pundits, and pollsters just wrong? I don't know, but I want her to remain in the race to keep Edwards and Obama honest. Even if Obama is destined to be the nominee, I'd like to see him go through a grueling primary season just to toughen up for the general election. He has had a tendency to pull back when attacked. . .and the attacks he's suffered from the Dems will look like creampuffs when the Republicans start lobbing anti-personnel bombs. I think it's important for Barack to learn to play hardball. Early on he showed signs of being gun-shy. He has to be able to do more than just make great speeches and talk about change. He's not alone of course...in the debate last weekend, the Democrats on stage mentioned change 61 times. And the G.O.P. candidates used the word 30 times.



That's some margin of error in that poll!
---o0o---

The Press and Mass Hysteria: :::::How far will we descend?:::Watching Senator Clinton's transit and eclipse as the men sweep out the female interloper

click Hillary posing with the ambassador from Trunobulax, to enlarge...

If you follow the Democratic Presidential nomination, you may have seen the swell of articles in the 'papers, Websites/blogs/and news sites, predicting the demise of Hillary Clinton. All of a sudden, the press have descended like the pack of jackals they are (and God bless them BTW). Now her star is falling, and it's open season.

You may have noticed I love politics. . .and hardball, and if you're in the game you have to be able to pitch and hit the hardballs. Beginning with the withdrawal of Senator Joe Biden from the race (really, the only person I could wholeheartedly get behind), I have become extremely dejected. Today, the Drudge Report and other media outlets focused on Hillary's "emotional" statement yesterday: "Senator Hillary Clinton got emotional and had tears in her eyes as she spoke with voters about how hard it is to balance a busy campaign life and her passion for the country's future." Got emotional!? If she had been angry, of course, it would not have been characterized as emotional, but reported something like "Hillary Clinton gives spiritied response to heckler." On the Drudge report main page alone today, these articles all appeared. . .none of which portray Sen. Clinton or her campaign in a favorable light:

HILLARY UNLOADS: YOU'RE NO MARTIN LUTHER KING
HILLARY TEARS IN EYES...
'IT'S NOT EASY'
...VIDEO...
Rivals React...
VIDEO: BILL SAYS HE CAN'T MAKE HILLARY 'YOUNGER, TALLER, MALE'...
...Answers call from wife during speech: 'I love you!'
FLASH: RASMUSSEN South Carolina: Obama 42% Clinton 30%...
NEW HAMPSHIRE 2008...
DIXVILLE NOTCH: First votes counted; Clinton gets none...
WASH POST HILLARY VIDEO: 'FIRED UP AND READY TO BORE'...
VIDEO: 'Iron My Shirt!': Screaming Men Disrupt Clinton Event...
MAG: Clinton campaign faces a 'cash crunch'...
TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGN...
'She did not work this hard to get out after one state! All this talk is nonsense'...
Clinton Fires Back: Obama, Edwards Given 'Free Ride'...

Man, oh man, oh man, oh man. I have read Matt Drudge for years and am able to read him with a good filter. But this is just depressing. Everyone is unloading on Senator Clinton. Yeah, she may have "asked for it" (another allusion that used to be used to explain away rape), and that's life when you're the front runner. Well, she isn't the front runner anymore. And it feels like people are taking advantage of the situation. Now that she's down, it's time to give her a curb stomp. And yet today, her campaign, and perhaps the Senator herself have begun playing the race card: "HILLARY UNLOADS: YOU'RE NO MARTIN LUTHER KING." I thought ganging up on Hillary was depressing. But her campaign's apparent reaction is even more depressing. . .if it can be tracked backed to her strategists. I guess it probably can.

Today, in Dover, Francine Torge, a former John Edwards supporter, said while introducing Mrs. Clinton: “Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually” passed the civil rights legislation. So now, the Senator's camp is playing the race card? This is even more depressing than the rest of the news! And to boot, they toss in the assassination card.

Quoting from the New York Times politics blog:

"Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have been in a running feud arising from her suggestion at Saturday’s debate that he was raising “false hope.”

"Mr. Obama responded that Mr. Kennedy did not decide going to the moon was a false hope and that Martin Luther King, Jr. did not see ending segregation as such.

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Mrs. Clinton said when asked about Mr. Obama’s rejoinder by Fox’s Major Garrett after her speech in Dover. “It took a president to get it done.”

"The Obama campaign declined to comment on either of those remarks."

This has become so disheartening that I have thought of abandoning politics here altogether, skipping the caucus, and maybe even not bothering to vote. That won't happen, but I am sitting here utterly dejected tonight. This has not been a good week. It's rare when I get the blues, but these past few days have trying. A co-worker committed suicide, and now it feels like the political party I have worked for since I doorbelled for Sen. George McGovern in Oregon in 1972 is also committing suicide.

I can live with whoever we finally nominate. I will work for and send money to whoever we nominate, but tonight, I'm not feeling the love; I'm not feeling the passion; what I am feeling is down down down. You may have correctly apprehended that I am a glass half-full person. Tonight I am down to the corners.

The corners is about as obscure a reference as you could possibly find. It isn't even Google-able. Let me explain. Hobos often collected old (capped) liquor bottles. If you hold a lighter to an empty bottle of vodka, gin, bourbon, etc., the residual liquor, say, half an ounce or so, will slowly collect in a corner at the bottom of the bottle. If you have enough bottles, you may even get a buzz. So far this campaign has transmogrified me from a relentless optimist of the glass half-full school to searching for corners.
---o0o---

Drudge Report predicts Hillary exit, stage left

Senator Hillary Clinton: relegated to the shadows?

According to the Drudge Report, tomorrow's likely double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a collapse in national polls and a probable drastic fund-raising slowdown are pushing Hillary Clinton to pull out of the race.

"Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?! 'She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be out." "Her money is going to dry up," Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.

"Key players in Clinton's inner circle are said to be split. James Carville is urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state. "She did not work this hard to get out after one state! All this talk is nonsense," said one top adviser. But others close to the former first lady now see no possible road to victory, sources claim. "

Take it for what it's worth. Matt Drudge is often right on the money. On the other hand, he has also had headlines about the John Edward's love-child, and an unnamed Obama scandal, neither of which actually materialized. Neither of those two bogus stories were ever retracted or corrected.


---o0o---

Please Please Me Video: One of the great early Beatles' tunes

And then Paul McCartney repspectably covered the old tune on a recent DVD:


---o0o---

The India Traffic cam video

I have to thank Dean Ericksen's blog for posting this one. At first, it looked like, yeah, an Asian city's traffic cam. As I watched it twice, I realized, no, what this is is a schematic animation of my brain in action. This is exactly what it feels like--for better or worse--in my head.


---o0o---

Huckabee & Obama take the Iowa contest

click the winners to enlarge

Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama took the Republican and Democratic caucus votes in Iowa on Wednesday, and in the Democratic race, left Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd on the sidelines, as they dropped out of the race. Mitt Romney is sweating. Hillary Clinton "the electable one" is really sweating. John Edwards feels OK. He survived another day. Rudy? McCain? Richardson? The rest of the pack? Hanging on by their fingernails, or mired in the back where they've always been...

---o0o---

Political hero Joe Biden throws in the towel; hold your nose and stand behind Edwards or Obama

click to enlarge Senator Joe Biden

Senator Joe Biden was right. A campaign video:



Sadly, but unfortunately wisely, Senator Biden announced following the Iowa caucuses that he was abandoning his run for the Presidency. I had always hoped that Senators Edwards, Clinton, and Obama would decimate each other and that the populace would race to embrace Smilin' Joe in the breach. It became clear last night that was not going to happen, and the Senator decided to shut down his shoestring operation.

Senator Biden went his own way this time around, and often during the debates, the other candidates would admit "Joe is right," or "Joe Biden said it best," or "As Joe pointed out." The Senator brought great ideas and candor to the race, and he would have brought those same ideas and values to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Fortunately, we still have Joe to kick around. He is, after all, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (one of the most important committees in Congress).

Joe Biden's concession/withdrawal speech from YouTube:



Like Mario Cuomo of years past, this was a guy I really wanted to be my President. Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, I held my nose and mailed in the check or doorbelled for. . .I could get behind Joe. But that was not to be.
---o0o---