Praying to Joe Pesci (for G.C.)

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

153

= the number of days until November 4, 2008, a.k.a. Election Day.

Though the map looks favorable right now, 153 days is an eternity in electoral politics.

And while McCain was considered too "centrist" by many radically regressive Republicans and neo-cons, it must be emphasized that, per Matt Taibbi:

McCain may be even more crazy than the Republican mainstream on the issue that matters most of all: the war in Iraq and war in general. My guess is that Republican voters are not going to mind that McCain's candidacy might drive a stake through the heart of the weenie fascism of Rush and Hannity, once they figure out that the candidate is a solid bet to deliver them World War III. And that should scare the shit out of us all.

Yes, we should be scared. And no, we can never underestimate American bloodlust. But I may be naive enough to think that McCain can't win on Iraq (or Iran), and he knows it. His strategy will emphasize his experience (quantity-over-quality, of course) and his "straight-talking maverick" persona to convince "his friends" that, policy details aside, he's the type of all-white all-right guy you can trust.

However:

This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It will take time, money and hard work, but McCain must be defeated.

Let's go to work, people. The clock is ticking.

In The Gap (for R.R.)

1925-2008

My art is about paying attention – about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

John Cage:

Having made the empty canvases (R.R.: A canvas is never empty), Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts. Gifts, unexpected and unnecessary, are ways of saying Yes to how it is, a holiday.

To Whom It May Concern:
The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

It's Time To Go pt. 2

We're Walkin' - Yes Indeed...

It's that time of the year once again for Kath & I to participate in the Y-ME Race to Empower.
Please consider making a donation to support our team!

It's Time To Go

If you're nice, maybe President Obama will make you Ambassador to Bosnia.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers asks this trick question:

I have a simple question: why is it that the Democratic nomination was decided tonight? What happened tonight that hadn't happened before?

Why a trick question?

The reason is simple: the established media was never covering the Democratic nomination campaign. They were, instead, covering some form of kabuki theater where reality is ignored and liberals are ritually gutted on the public stage for the pleasure of elite, rich, white, male pundits everywhere.

The Quiet Revolutionary (for J.G.)

a postscript to the excerpt I posted here about Jimmy Giuffre:

Our longest run of work was a European tour of close to three weeks; I think the approval we found there caused the music to advance considerably. Shortly after our return to New York, we began a residency in a coffee house on Bleecker Street, playing for whatever money was collected at the door. We disbanded on a night we each made 35 cents.

--Steve Swallow, in the liner notes of the CD reissue of Free Fall.

Why Bother

Michael Pollan, in "The Green Issue" of the NYT Magazine:

The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant. Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions — carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for. *** Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will. *** The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn’t involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards.

He suggests we should grow "some — even just a little" of our own food.

Anyone know where I can get a pizza tree?

ps - Pollan's "Unhappy Meals" (now expanded into a book) is a must-read; more here.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.
--Cree Indian Proverb

Mor[e]on Media Make-Believe

"Story behind the story: The Clinton myth" [via DHinMI at Kos]:

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet. * * * In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics. * * * One reason is fear of embarrassment. * * *

One important, if subliminal, reason is self-interest. Reporters and editors love a close race — it’s more fun and it’s good for business.

Abracadabra REDUX

One more time:

Yet the mainstream media continues to promote Clinton's strategy of coup-by-superdelegate.

Even the lefty media can't quite get it right: The Nation begins an otherwise spot-on editorial with this erroneous statement:

Hillary Clinton's commanding Democratic primary victories in Ohio and Rhode Island and her narrow win in Texas....

(sigh)

Mainstream Values

While a prominent Democratic politician gets caught with his pants down, we must once again ask this question:

The man in the White House invades a nation that didn't threaten us, kills 4,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, destabilizes an entire region and it was all based on blatant lies and he gets to stay in office, while Spitzer wanted to have sex, admittedly in an unthinking way, and he has to resign?

Abracadabra: Loss = Win

From: Jason Guthartz
To: New York Times
Subject: correction to "Obama Wins Wyoming Caucuses"

I am writing to correct the second sentence in the above-referenced article, published on March 9, 2008:
"The [Wyoming] victory, while in a state with only 18 delegates, was welcome news for the Obama campaign as it sought to blunt any advantage Mrs. Clinton might gain from her victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday."

This statement regarding Clinton's "victory" in Texas is inaccurate. While Clinton won more delegates from the Texas primaries, neither candidate can be said to have won Texas, since -- as the Times' own "Election Guide" shows -- the state's caucus results are not final. Indeed, most informed opinion expects Obama's gain in delegates from the caucuses will give him the overall delegate "win" in Texas.

The Times is not alone in conjuring up a Texas "win" for Clinton:

Clinton scored campaign saving victories in Ohio and Texas last Tuesday after 11 straight losses to Obama.

To recap:

Last Tuesday night, mainstream media bandied about the story that Hillary Clinton had won Texas; but it wasn’t true. Responsible journalism would have necessitated qualifying the Texas call, given the partial results of Tuesday night; but they didn’t. Texas has a two step contest- a primary and a caucus- much like a few other states. And now the Texas democrats have given a preliminary account of both the primary and caucus results, which shows that overall: Obama won at least three more delegates than she did. And also, that he won at least 100,000 more votes when both contests are combined. She won the primary in the day and he won the caucus in the night. This is a fact, and yet mainstream media perpetuates the myth that Hillary won Texas. What could be their motivation here?

It seems to me that the mainstream media, having generated the conventional wisdom that they themselves have "taken it easy" on Obama, now feel obliged to prove themselves "fair and balanced" by conjuring up a false "Clinton comeback" narrative. As if this primary contest weren't dramatic enough.

Markos Moulitsas brings us back to reality:

As Clinton gears up her efforts for coup by super delegate, threatening civil war within the party, it bears noting that in her best week of the campaign since her New Hampshire victory, she actually lost ground in the race.

[It was] a +6 delegate week for Obama officially, +7 unofficially.

Keep one eye on the math, the other on the shenanigans. (see prior warning)

UPDATE by Markos:

My list was incomplete. ...officially, Obama has a 13-delegate advantage for the week even before Mississippi votes tomorrow. Throw in the unpledged delegate in Wyoming who will certainly be an Obama delegate, and unofficially, Obama notched a 14-delegate gain in this "week from hell" for him. ...

A few more "bad" weeks like this and he'll have the nomination nicely sewed up.

In any case, we need to work for every vote in the upcoming contests.

On Its Ear

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson on The Machinery of Hope:

...the Obama campaign has succeeded not by attracting starry-eyed followers who place their faith in hope but by motivating committed activists who are answering a call to national service. They're pouring their lifeblood into this campaign, not because they are in thrall to a cult of personality but because they're invested in the idea that politics matter, and that their participation can turn the current political system on its ear.

In reality, it already has. "We're seeing the last time a top-down campaign has a chance to win it," says [Joe] Trippi. "There won't be another campaign that makes the same mistake the Clintons made of being dependent on big donors and insiders. It's not going to work ever again."

Taibbi on "McCain Resurrected"

a new classic on the "wounded, crusading Ahab"

and something new from Robert Greenwald:

AGS @ HPAC

come on down:

TalkingPoint: Anti Gravity Surprise

6pm Monday, March 3rd at the Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S. Cornell Avenue
Muller Meeting Room
http://www.hydeparkart.org

TalkingPoint is a free monthly Monday evening series in which Chicago-based cultural producers share their ideas as a starting point for conversation in an intimate setting.

Since 2001, public art group Anti Gravity Surprise has addressed the concept of world peace in 9/11-themed multimedia project Gathering Motion; mounted a full eight-hour day of art and discussion about work with Second Shift; and hosted $election community art events to engage voters.

Co-founders Kathleen Duffy and Jennifer Karmin will speak about their collaborative approach and ongoing work Tell Us What You Think, an evolving public art project that will be distributed as a free workbook.

http://www.antigravitysurprise.org

Come down to the Hyde Park Art Center for a chance to listen, discuss, and learn. Food and drink provided.

The Sound of Fresh Chicken (for T.M.)

Miles on the August 1969 Bitches Brew sessions:

I had told Teo Macero, who was producing the record, to just let the tapes run and get everything we played, told him to get everything and not to be coming in interrupting, asking questions. "Just stay in the booth and worry about getting down the sound," is what I told him. And he did, didn't fuck with us once and got down everything, got it down real good.

p.s.:

"You got to get the chicken... you ain't gettin' the chicken."
-- Miles Davis to Lenny White, during the 1969 Bitches Brew sessions

"Bitches Brew is not a frozen chicken."
-- Wayne Shorter, 1999

UPDATE:

Phoneathon '08

Phoneathon '08 starts tonight: Call 847-491-WNUR and show your appreciation for quality noncommercial radio.

There are lots of great Jazz Show premiums, including the autographed Braxton Iridium box shown above.

(If you want a T-shirt to complement the box, you might ask if they still have any shirts left from 2000.)

Hillary the Hypocrite

let the flip-flopping begin:

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said the delegates should make their decision based on who they thought would be the stronger candidate and president. Mr. Obama argues that they should follow the will of the Democratic Party as expressed in the primary and caucuses — meaning the candidate with the most delegates from the voting.

more flopping:

Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.

The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged'' delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.

But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.

Hillary on "the Will of the People"

my first DKos diary:

If Obama ends up with more pledged delegates when all the primary/caucus votes are counted (incl. any possible do-over of Florida & Michigan), will Clinton respect the will of the people and concede, or will she allow superdelegates to hand her the nomination?

Sen. Clinton should remember her own comments from 2000:

"I have thought about this for a long time," Mrs. Clinton said at a rally in an airport hangar in Syracuse. "I've always thought we had outlived the need for an Electoral College, and now that I am going to the Senate, I am going to try to do what I can to make clear that the popular vote, the will of the people, should be followed."
***
She said she wanted "to be on the side of the democratic process working," and so would support the effort to establish direct presidential elections.
***
"I believe strongly that in a democracy we should respect the will of the people."

Suuu-perb Tuesday

Impressive.

An interesting aspect of the results is the disparity in "big" victories, i.e., states won with 60% or more of the popular vote:

OBAMA:
Alaska - 75%
Colorado - 67%
Georgia - 66%
Idaho - 80%
Illinois - 64%
Kansas - 74%
Minnesota - 67%
North Dakota - 61%

CLINTON:
Arkansas - 69%

One of the better summaries:

As with every campaign, we have to deal with the reality of where things stand today. But, sometimes it does help to take a step back. Obama was practically unknown as a serious contender a year ago. He was running against the vaunted, inevitable Clinton machine. Last year, it was the conventional wisdom, we all agreed, that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee and the race would be wrapped up on Super Tuesday. That didn't happen. Her aura of invincibility is gone. Her inevitability is gone.

Much left to do.