The NY Post cover from yesterday...

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Neil Young plays "Leave The Driving To Us" with lyrics

This song is one of my favorites from Neil's magnificent album (and movie!) "Greendale."



Leave The Driving To Us
Music and Lyrics by Neil Young

out on the old coast highway
flyin' through the night
jed got stopped by the CHP
for speedin' and no brake lights

rolled down the drivers window
slipped his gun down under the seat
glove box full of cocaine
trunk was full of weed

"driver's license and registration,"
said the officer with his flashlight
searchin' around the floor of the car
smellin' like somethin' ain't right

jed's life flashed before him
like a black and white super 8
he heard the sound of the future
on a scratchy old 78

nothin' was still, all was movin'
when the flashlight found the gun
then jed pulled the trigger
in a split second tragic blunder

"makes you think about livin'
and what life has to tell,"
said jed to grandpa
from inside his cell

camouflage hung in his closet
guns all over the wall
plans for buildings and engineers
and a book with no numbers at all

the whole town was stunned
they closed the coast highway for 12 hours
no one could believe it
jed was one of ours

meanwhile across the ocean
living in the internet
is the cause of an explosion
no one has heard yet

but there's no need to worry
there's no reason to fuss
just go on about your work now
and leave the driving to us

and we'll be watching you
no matter what you do
and you can do your part
by watching others too

grandpa put down the paper
staring in disbelief
jed had always been good to him
and never gave him any grief

"the moral of this story
is try not to get too old
the more time you spend on earth
the more you see unfold

and as an afterthought
this must to be told
some people have taken pure bullshit
and turned it into gold"
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List of some of my favorite poets and their books

I know I've left out some key poets and poems, but that is the problem with lists!

William Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience; America, A Prophecy; Jerusalem; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

James Dickey - Falling and other poems; Selected Poems; Buckdancer's Choice

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Poetry is the shadow
cast by our streetlight
imagination
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christopher Smart - Jubilate Agno

Lord Byron - Don Juan

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - A Coney Island of the Mind; Populist Manifesto; The secret meaning of things; Northwest ecolog; Starting from San Francisco

Mark Strand - Darker, Reasons for Moving, Stories of our Lives

Charles Bukowski - Screams from the Balcony; Crucifix in a deathhand; Burning in water, drowning in flame; The days run away like wild horses

Pablo Neruda - Selected poems; 20 love poems; Book of questions; Residence on earth

John Ashberry - Collected poems (1956-87); Note from the air

Elizabeth Bishop - The Collected Poems; Geography III

William Shakespeare - The Sonnets

William Butler Yeats - Collected Poems. I am partial to his later poems, but he didn't write many bad ones.

Allen Ginsberg -Howl; Kaddish; The Fall of America; Reality Sandwiches

John Berryman - The Dream Songs

Anne Sexton - The Awful Rowing Toward God; Transformations; To Bedlam And Partway Back; Collected Poems

William Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads; Recollections of Early Childhood; The Prelude

Frank O'Hara - Selected Poems; Meditations in an emergency; Lunch Poems

Ted Berrigan - The Sonnets; Selected Poems; Many Happy Returns

Sylvia Plath - Ariel; The Colossus; Crossing The Water; Collected Poems

James Wright - The Branch Will Not Break; Shall we gather at the river; Collected poems; Saint Judas

Carl Sandburg - The people, yes; Chicago Poems; Slabs of the sunburnt west;

T.S. Eliot - Collected Poems (as long as they include The Waste Land, J. Alfred Prufrock, Four Quartets, and Burnt Norton)

Robert Lowell - Life studies; For the union dead; The Notebook; Lord Weary's Castle; Collected Poems

Ezra Pound - The Cantos

Arthur Rimbaud - Illuminations; A season in hell

Garcia Federico Lorca - Poet in New York; Selected poems

Nikos Kazantzakis - The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. I'd always liked this work, but renewed by acquaintance after last summer, when I was in Greece, and had a poetry reading in a bookstore and they had me read several long passages from this book--because they wanted to hear what it sounded like in English. They liked it.

Emily Dickinson - Collected Poems. In my booklet, she was the first great American poet, and right at the top of the rockpile for all time.

e.e. cummings - Selected or Collected Poems.

Wallace Stevens - Collected Poems; The Emperor of Ice Cream; Harmonium. Who'd have thought an insurance executive could write such beautiful, moving, dense, lyrical poems?

William Carlos Williams - Collected Shorter Poems; Paterson; Imaginations; Pictures from Breughel and other poems; Asphodel: That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems

Theodore Roethke - Collected Poems.

Robert Hershon - The German Lunatic; Into a punchline; The Public Hug: New and Selected Poems

Gregory Corso - The Vestal Lady on Brattle; Gasoline; Elegiac Feelings American

Kenneth Koch - Collected Poems

Jack Kerouac - Scattered Poems; Book of Blues; Mexico City Blues

Richard Hugo - Collected Poems; The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir
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See also, A List Of Lists On All This Is that
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Victory! The tally as of midnight, Pacific Standard Time

By Pablo Fanque,

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

The raw tally: Obama: 58,581,942; McCain: 52,925,833; House of Representatives: Democrats up 12; U.S. Senate: up 5.

Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States Tuesday night, kicking off an all-new chapter in America's history as the first African-American to hold the world's most important job. You know, in the brilliant Warren Beatty film, Bulworth, Bulworth explains that the country needs to begin a proactive racial deconstruction program, "I mean if everybody starts f***ing everybody, pretty soon we'll all be the same color." We haven't quite gotten there, but tonight we got started.

Barack Obama is not just an African-American, he is a half-white, half-black man, who was raised off shore, born of a Kansas woman and a Muslim Kenyan father. There's just a little bit of all of us in Obama. Tonight we took the big leap toward that deconstruction. It was moving to see African-Americans, white men and women, Asians, and Hispanics celebrating and weeping over someone who has taken down the last barrier brick by brick.

When I was 15 years old in 1968, not all black Americans were even allowed to vote until the the Voting Rights Act passed. It took 40 more years to finally propel an African-American into the White House.

And even the Republicans seemed to hop on the bandwagon in the end. John McCain made a most gracious concession speech and let his supporters know the country had done the Right Thing. A close friend of mine--a diehard Christian Conservative/longtime Bush supporter said to me "He's our President now. I can't wait to see what he makes happen."

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,'' Obama told 120,000 people gathered for a victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park.

The Illinois senator ends his long 21-month journey with a stunning electoral victory that bumped the Democrats' majority in Congress and marked the end of Republican dominance and malfeasance in Washington.

Obama crossed the threshold of 270 electoral votes early last night when television networks projected him winning the state of California (in Washington, we like to think it was us). As I write this, at midnight, he had at least 338 electoral votes to McCain's 145, according to the Associated Press and television network projections. Six states were still unclear.

His victory, along with Democratic gains in congressional contests, puts Democrats in firm control of the federal government for the first time since the early 1990s. And, baby, "we're not going to rock the boat. We're going to tip it over."

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Victory: One President, 35 Senate Seats, 435 House, 11 Governor seats up for grabs

[from yesterday's Drudge Report]


John, John






Click to enlarge President-elect Obama




Victory: One President, 35 Senate Seats, 435 House, 11 Governor seats up for grabs. Just how many seats will we take?


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POTUS 39 - President James Earl Carter - Not As Bad A President As You Have Been Led To Believe, But Rather A Victim Of Circumstance

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I remember how proud I was of Jimmy Carter, that Tuesday in November, 1976, when he stomped President Gerald R. Ford. It was my second Presidential election, and my first election had been a disaster, for me, and for the country.

With Ford's departure, the White House would finally be swept clean of the detritus of Dick Nixon. President Carter was my kind of people. Even among hillbillies, there are a few who rise above their mean beginnings. Of course, his brother Billy Carter was more my kind of people with his constant beer infusions, improvident talk, and public urination.

It didn't take long before things didn't go so well for President Carter, even though he would eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize. The last year of his admininstration was scarred by the Iranians holding a large number of Americans hostage. They would not be freed until the moment Dutch Reagan took the oath of office. Runaway inflation didn't help his election either. Since his forced retirement, the former President has worked tirelessly for various causes, most notably Habitat For Humanity.

He is the only person to be sworn in as president using his nickname. President Carter was also the first president born in a hospital. Jimmy Carter caused quite a stir when he said he had lusted many times in his heart after seeing pictures of women such as those in Playboy magazine. He instituted the first live televised phone-in broadcast from the White House in March 1977. He also began regular Saturday morning radio addresses to the American public.
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"Because the night belongs to us"

Today. . .this night, does belong to us, as Patty Smith and The Boss wrote decades ago.



After two long years of campaigning, we sit now in the eye of the hurricane, waiting for the next wave of the storm to hit. I've irritated most of my friends over the last couple months, when I wrote saying "be aware of the bear," that we had won nothing yet, that Democrats, had a pathetic record of closing the sale, and this time was no different.

McCain was actually a real threat. The gut-wrenching list of Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry give one pause.

But, alas, we've done it.
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The Palin Phone Call Prank

An Associated Press article came out yesterday, with a transcript of much of the prank phone call to Sarah Palin from a Quebec radio station's "President Nicolas Sarkozy of France." Jump here to read the article. It's pretty good.

click to enlarge the Governor

"Palin praises Sarkozy throughout the call and also mentions his wife, Carla, a model-turned-songwriter.

"You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife," Palin says. "Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of
yours."

The Sarkozy impersonator tells Palin his wife is "so hot in bed" and then informs her that Bruni has written a song for her about Joe the Plumber entitled "Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne" - which translates as "lipstick on a pig."

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Poem: a pod of sea lions

I hear a pod of sea lions barking
Down the hill at Golden Gardens
And I wonder what brings them in tonight.

Is it a run of chum or tuna
Sneaking through Puget Sound,
And the glutted sea lions

Crawl on the sand and rocks
To take a break between feeding?
Is a cranky fisherman

In a smoke-belching motor ketch on Elliott Bay
Taking pot shots at the bandits
For eating fish he thinks are rightfully his?

Or did they just stop for the night
En route From Vancouver Island
And discover a banquet all around them?
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POTUS 38 - President Gerald R. Ford: "Pardon me!"

Click to enlarge. A picture I have always found kind of moving. I believe it was taken at the Clinton Library opening. It captures the essence of both these Presidents. Ford had to be 90 years old when this was taken.


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President Gerald R. Ford was another short-time President, serving the remainder of President Nixon's term when he was run from office in disgrace. He was the first person appointed as vice-president under the terms of the 25th Amendment, and became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974.

Gerald Ford is also the first President I ever saw in person. He came to Swedish Hospital/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, where I was an orderly. The next day in San Francisco, the first assassination attempt on him occurred.

Ford was the fifth POTUS never to have been elected to the position, and the only one who won any national election. He was also the longest-lived president in U.S. history, until he died at the age of 93, less than two years ago.

When Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned following a scandal (well, actually, charges of money laundry and tax evasion), Ford was vaulted from Congress into the Vice-presidency, and soon, the Oval Office itself. He was Vice President less than a year in the Watergate-scandal rocked White House. In his short time as President, he was the victim of two assassination attempts. Interestingly, Ford was also a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the JFK assassination. Not only was he a member, but he also leaked information to the FBI of the internal workings of the Commission.

There are many reasons why he lost the '76 election to POTUS 39, James Earl Carter; chief among them was the divisive pardon he granted to the former president for all crimes and misdemeanors committed while he was in office.

My favorite photo of Gerald Ford was taken the night he lost the election to Jimmy Carter. He was in the White House with his good friend Joe Garagiola, who is clearly anguished, while Ford looks almost sanguine.


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See also: "Gerald Ford heads of for the nineteenth hole" on All This Is That.
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POTUS 36 - President Lyndon B. Johnson, originator of The Johnson Treatment

click to enlarge LBJ

I've written many times about Lyndon Johnson, the civil rights hero, and Lyndon Johnson, the paranoid and bellicose monster. When I did my series on Heroes And Villains, I considered using a picture of him as both the hero and the villain. I don't subscribe to the theory he was one of the JFK assassination conspirators (if there was indeed a conspiracy to begin with).

LBJ had a unique style of coercion and persuasion. It is known as the Johnson Treatment. Check out this link for dozens of photos and stories on The Treatment:

Some of my favorite political books have been Lyndon Johnson biographies and studies. Recently, the movie Fog of War was an fascinating rehash of LBJ, the unwitting inheritor of an unwinnable (as he seemed to know from the get-go) war.

If you get a chance, the LBJ museum in Austin, TX, is worth an afternoon visit.

If you want to hear an audio tape of LBJ in action jump here.

Earlier articles on LBJ appearing on All This Is That:

The Johnson Treatment
LBJ and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King meet up
LBJ howls like a dog
Another good LBJ photo
And another. . .
One of the heroes and villains paintings
LBJ In A Characteristic Pose
Running Mates: Senators Lyndon Johnson And JFK
The Johnson Treatment, Part 6: The Hump and Senator Russell get the treatment
The Johnson Treatment, Part 5: Senator Richard Russell (Dem., Georgia) Undergoes The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment, Part 4: President Johnson Gives The Treatment To Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas
The Johnson Treatment, Part 3: LBJ Gives Eartha Kitt The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment
He's Not Close Enough To Give Him The Johnson Treatment, But LBJ Appears To Be Answering A Pointed Question From Dan Rather
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POTUS 37 - President Richard M. Nixon, or, Tricky Dick And The Comedy Of Errors

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When I lived in NYC, we used to visit The Ex-President's house (All This Is That, December 8, 2004).

President Nixon was actually the last of the liberal Republican presidents--social spending was at an all-time high under The Nixon Administration. The country, however, seemed to visibly crumble under the domestic spying, break-ins, misinformation campaigns, Kent State, prosecution of the Chicago 7, massive anti-war demonstrations, the bombing of Cambodia, hardhats and Hell's Angels attacking peace marchers. . .and all the other outrages committed and encouraged by Nixon's henchmen, a band of misanthropic thugs. President Nixon's long smoldering resentments, doubts about his own self-worth, and his paranoia about The Kennedys would eventually sink his presidency.

The war against North Vietnam raged on with increased troop levels, saturation bombing, napalm napalm napalm, and massive body counts. The body count became a feature of every nightly news broadcast. On the plus side of the ledger, President Nixon reached out to both Russia and China, and set the stage for the later upheavals in Russia, up to and including the fall of communism. He opened China up to diplomacy and trade and sat with Mao Zedong.

After resigning in disgrace in August, 1974, Nixon hid out in California a couple of years, and then moved to NYC. He went on to write numerous books on foreign policy, and unofficially (with no public fanfare) advise every President until the day he died.

If you want a fascinating read on Richard Nixon, check out Chris Matthew's book Kennedy And Nixon. I've read many books about Richard Nixon, and I probably enjoyed this one the most. But the Watergate Transcripts, and the Woodward Bernstein books are also excellent, as is the great Hunter Thompson book, Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail 1972.
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