An anonymous blogger at New York City’s Room Eight wrote some not-nice things about a political figure. The original posts are now gone, but Ben Smith outlines them:

Republican Dissident – whose blog appeared on the back pages of this site until he took it down April 15 – wrote as a harsh internal critic of the Bronx Republican Party which, in a quirk of local politics, is closely aligned with the Bronx Democratic Party. He attacked in particular Dawn Sandow, a Republican hire to the Bronx Board of Elections staff of the county party. City investigators, according to the New York Times and the New York Post, have been looking into questions of her residence and her relationship with the chairman of the Bronx Party, Jay Savino.

Republican Dissident also took issue with the district attorney himself, calling for the Bronx Republicans to run their own candidate against Johnson, a Democrat, and calling for him to be removed from an investigation of the Bronx Republican Party. “I would get another prosecutor than Bronx DA Robert Johnson, Bronx County GP always endorses him in every election he runs in,” Republican Dissident wrote.

By Buffalo standards, that’s pretty benign stuff. Nothing that any politician would get all huffy about.

But the Bronx DA issued a grand jury subpoena demanding that Room Eight reveal the name of “Republican Dissident”, as well as the identies of several anonymous commenters. In addition, the subpoena carried a caveat ordering Room Eight to not disclose the existence of the subpoena itself, under penalty of law.

From Ben Smith’s Affidavit:

I believe that there is a substantial possibility that the subpoenas that we have received represent harassment of those who criticize major figures in Bronx politics, and especially in the Republican Party, partly because it seems to be only critics whose identities are sought; partly because the District Attorney has refused to be specific about why he believes that the speakers posts reflect wrongful conduct; and partly because the subpoena was originally issued shortly after Dawn Sandow contacted Gur Tsabar to threaten prosecution because she had been criticized on Room Eight. The District Attorney has refused to be specific about why he believes that the speakers posts reflect wrongful conduct. On their face, it is difficult to conceive of how any of the criticisms posted – regardless of how tasteless – might be relevant to any grand jury investigation of alleged criminal activity.

In other words, there was no explanation given as to the supposed indictable crime the DA was allegedly investigating. It seems as if it was the political speech itself that was the subject matter of the investigation, and the Bronx DA’s office was patently abusing its subpoena power to try and expose, embarass, and punish “Republican Dissident” and commenters on Room Eight. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing such a blatant and outrageous violation of the First Amendment. Read Room Eight’s attorney’s affidavit for more detail about the DA’s position.

Ultimately, the Bronx DA withdrew the subpoenas, but Room Eight threatened to file suit if it wasn’t permitted to disclose the subpoenas’ existence on the site. The DA relented.

Blogging is no longer the unique form of expression it was four or five years ago, but there isn’t a lot of jurisprudence out there on the issue of criminal liability for blog posts and comments. Usually, cases are brought civilly for defamation. It seems like a complete overreach for the Bronx DA to have tried to chill protected political speech in this way, and there should, frankly, be an independent investigation carried out about this. Congratulations to Room Eight for standing on principle and fighting this illegal attempt to silence critics of the powerful.

This article in today’s New York Times details how Roger Ailes and FNC’s PR machine operates.

At Fox News, media relations is a kind of rolling opposition research operation intended to keep reporters in line by feeding and sometimes maiming them. Shooting the occasional messenger is baked right into the process.

While it’s certainly hardball, the only thing I can say is that I’m thoroughly impressed by its effectiveness and the fear, hatred, and respect it engenders among other members of the media.

And this similar piece at Gawker is a nice postscript.

Literally.

I absolutely love the “Cockpit Chronicles” that American Airlines First Officer Kent Wien posts for Gadling. Based out of Boston’s Logan, Wien chronicles his various whirlwind trips and the life of a commercial pilot for a major airline.

Being a travel junkie myself, I envy his ability to see the world, but don’t envy how much time he spends away from home. And be sure also to check out his Flickr stream.

This post tracked back to this one here, and it insinuates that I, as an Obama supporter, am somehow going against Obama’s call to hope, etc. because I have mocked some of Hillary’s supporters.

Barack Obama will have won this primary battle by the end of the week. He will have won it fair & square. He will have won through hard work and a novel grassroots campaign/funding strategy. He will have won despite the fact that Clinton had lined up institutional Democratic support for her campaign throughout the country. He will have won despite the fact that the Clinton camp played junior Karl Rove since about South Carolina in an effort first to derail him, and later to try and render him damaged goods so that, should he lose, they can say, “We told you so.” She was inevitable. Then came Iowa.

As an Obama supporter, Clinton’s behavior, and the behavior of many of her supporters, has grown more and more disturbing to me over the past few months. I think that what she’s doing is harmful to the party and the nominee the party selected over her.

Your post reads:

Ah…the audacity of hope…yes we can…a vision that all will share in the American Dream…along the way…it is okay to mock people…a true message of hope…we can bring people together and recognize that what unites us is greater than what divides us…yes we can.

Far be it from me to tell you what to write on your own site, but can we Fisk it? Yes, we can.

Setting aside the overuse of ellipses and the incomplete sentences, it’s intellectually dishonest and hypocritical. It’s not OK to mock the likes of this woman? On top of that, in the next line of your post you say, “but the things I have read on these internets from Obamatons pushing hate against her supporters is irony at its purest.”

Obamaton?!

Re-education camp? Obamenema?

Obamatabs?

Those sound pretty “mocking” and “hateful”. You think I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. That’s fine, and you can post all day and all night about it. But don’t let’s play make-believe about how above the fray you are, and how shocked - SHOCKED! you are. Just keep on posting about how the party is a “sham” despite the fact that it had the guts to undergo something rather unpleasant this past weekend transparently on live TV. Despite the fact that it’s winning federal-level elections in traditionally safe Republican strongholds.

When I insinuated that the Ron Paul people were cultists, they merely confirmed the point by spamming my site with hundreds of insane rants. I use my site to support my candidate, as I have done throughout the existence of this site. Furthermore, when my candidate’s opponent and her supporters behave like imbeciles, I’m going to post about it if I feel like it, regardless of your delicate sensibilities. Because that, too, is something I’ve done since ‘03.

Don’t get all self-righteous about mockery and hatred when you spread it around yourself.

All Things Jennifer has the Artpark summertime Tuesday free concert lineup. Evidently, reality TV star Bret Michaels is scheduled to play, as is ex-Doobie Brother castrato Michael McDonald. She also posted a list of ten things Hillary Clinton could have done instead with the $6.4 million she loaned her campaign.

Buffalo Buffet round-tabled the offerings at Ming Cafe.

Two things from Buffalo Ideas: can government utilize Toyota’s innovation approach? Because our taxes here sure mirror Toyota’s “innovative approach” to options packages. Also, he links to the coolest blog I’ve seen in a long time because I’m a geography nerd - Atlas of Strange Maps.

Buffaloroots is always worth a read because, well, it’s well-written.

Kelly - he loves the memes! He lists 100 pet peeves. One of them:

49. Driving pet peeve: I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating that the act of stopping behind a vehicle that is itself stopping at a Stop sign does not count as you stopping at the stop sign.

Well, you did stop didn’t you?

EAL explains how her blog, “Gardening while Intoxicated” got its name.

Jen is blogging from a “go-live” of some software in Philadelphia. She might get drunk and curse, though. So, cave lector.

Congratulations to Derek Punaro on his promotion.

Buffalo Expat posts about the devastation in Burma from a recent cyclone.

Craig at Buffalog posts about Gundersen and thinks a gas tax holiday is a good idea.

Upon departure from Fort Lauderdale Saturday at 3:00 p.m.:

Upon arrival in the Buffalo area at 5:30 p.m.:

We spent most of our time down in Southern Florida, but did relent and take the kids to Disney on Wednesday. We stayed overnight at a Radisson in Lake Buena Vista. After checking out, I went to retrieve the rental (Dodge Grand Caravan base model through Thrifty - there were 6 of us - which was ok, but a touch underpowered for a 6-cylinder, and managed only 20 MPG). Parked next to me was a Ford Taurus with three bumper stickers; two enjoining the reader to join the taxpayer revolution, and one for Free NY. That was random.

I watched only some local Florida news and had generally zero internet access while down there, which was fine by me. I’ll note that what passes for a newscast on Miami’s Channel 7 makes any one of Buffalo’s local newscasts seem like the BBC by comparison. I have no idea what’s been going on locally, nor do I really care.

I’d like to wholeheartedly thank Paul Wolf, Chris Smith, and Dr. Kevin Hardwick for babysitting the blog and keeping it fresh all week.

I saw more Bentleys down in South Florida than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I kept thinking to myself that each one costs more than 99% of the homes in Western New York. The traffic is bustling, construction cranes are everywhere, shopping is world-class, and South Beach has managed to do the whole architectural tourism thing without apology or excuse.

South Florida is no shangri-la, and I wouldn’t want to live there unless I was stinking filthy rich, but upon return to Buffalo I realize we have become collectively quite content in our perpetual mediocrity. While I was away, ArtVoice held its “Best of” party. Someone texted me that I did not win this year as “best blogger”. That’s fine. I purposefully did not campaign for anyone to vote for me in that category. I’m past the point where I crave that sort of approval. Buffalo Rising’s Newell Nussbaumer won, and congratulations to him. He writes his pieces there at least daily, and they serve their purpose. The SMS also mentioned that he won “best cheerleader” for Buffalo.

Which got me thinking.

Cheerleader.

We spend a lot of time patting Buffalo on the back for its two steps forward that are inevitably met with that step back. Should every neighborhood have an Elmwood Strip? Maybe. But Elmwood is successful by Buffalo standards.

Glaeser received his greatest applause when he stated “Population growth is not the right measure for success. the right measure is how well a city is delivering basic services and providing a quality of life.”

The quality of life here is great, but let’s face it and admit that part of what makes life here good is its slow pace, bereft of urgency or hustle. You know what? A little hustle never killed anyone. Are basic services being delivered well? Adequately? Considering their cost? Buffalo and her people need to be shaken out of their complacency and bullshit excuses.

Will our population ever grow again? Maybe, maybe not. But why wouldn’t we at least consider taking the steps needed to enable that to happen. Not through our sprawl-without-growth, Titanic deck-chair rearrangement. Through structural changes addressing the size and cost of government, eliminating redundancies, lowering taxes, easing regulations, and otherwise making this place not just a great place to live, work and raise a family, but also an attractive place to move to.

We get mediocrity because we expect mediocrity. And vice-versa. It’s a vicious, nasty spiral. Who’s out there who is willing to not only do some thinking about our problems, but implement solutions to them?

Our rust-belt problems of depopulation aren’t unique to us, and frankly the fact that we continue to talk about it underscores the fact that we’re just stumbling through our decline. Why care when it’s easier to just up and move?

Consider Eastern Germany. On the flight back from Florida, I read this article about the formerly bustling state of Saxony-Anhalt, which is part of what was once East Germany:

City planners, normally keen to promote the building of homes, factories and roads, are responding to a double demographic crisis: the collapse of communist-era industry, which sent workers, especially young women, fleeing westwards; and a sharp decline in the birth rate.

Saxony-Anhalt, cradle of the Reformation and of East Germany’s chemical industry, lost a fifth of its 2.9m people in the 16 years after Germany’s unification in 1990. By 2025 it expects to lose nearly half a million more. In Köthen, where Johann Sebastian Bach composed the Brandenburg Concertos, so many young workers have left that “the population pyramid has become a mushroom”, says Ina Rauer of the town’s building department.

The cities of the east no longer imagine they can avoid demographic decline. Instead they seek to manage its consequences, and a few are inventing ways to shrink gracefully. Saxony-Anhalt, which suffered an acute shortage of apartments in communist times, has now destroyed some 45,000 homes with federal help.

Sounds pretty familiar, hm? If your population is down to 75,000…

“We can’t pay for infrastructure for 100,000 people,” he says.

Urban attrition is frightening those left behind, bringing the threat of blight and crime. Eastern cities are courting industry, but capital is footloose and productive new factories employ hundreds rather than the thousands who once manned East Germany’s behemoths. “It’s not clear what the recipe for success is,” says Hans-Joachim Bürkner of Potsdam University.

In Buffalo, we talk of green jobs and the fact that we have loads of fresh water, we don’t think outside the box at all. Where is the charitable foundation that will put up a million dollar X-prize to someone who comes up with a way to return prosperity, if not population, to WNY? In Germany, meanwhile…

That may account for the spirit of zany experimentalism that prevails in cities such as Dessau and Köthen. Under the motto “city islands”, Dessau is nudging life and commerce towards “core areas”, which means making a verdant city (which is already three-quarters parkland) even greener.

Traces of Dessau’s busier past—a disused tower for smoking sausages or a dairy’s chimney now occupied by storks—are being preserved. Parts of the void are being parcelled into “claims” of 400 square metres, which citizens can use free of charge for projects such as growing biomass for fuel. “Where buildings fall, gardens rise,” a hopeful billboard claims.

…and…

Dessau and Köthen are drawing inspiration from the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) 2010, a project dreamt up at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, which occupies the building where Walter Gropius and friends helped pioneer the stark geometrical Bauhaus style in the 1920s.

Such “building exhibitions” are a German tradition, held when social and economic change demands new ways of using space. Omar Akbar, the Bauhaus’s director, sees IBA 2010 as a “laboratory” for coping with demographic decline that will one day afflict other cities in the industrialised world. He says the aim is to shape the process of urban contraction, rather than “merely let it happen”.

But IBA 2010 does not just bring cities extra fame and money (around €150m or $235m, largely from the federal and state governments). Its organisers also want to cultivate intangible qualities, like greater public involvement and a sense of distinctive identity for each community.

We need less cheerleadership and more leadership. The US could and should be doing something similar to this initiative to come up with ways to address urban shrinking. If the US won’t, then Buffalo and other Great Lakes cities should.

Mike Hudson responded in comments to my earlier, Kunzian, jab at his weekly column.

thanks for the traffic alan! i think i got two clicks already!

…

by the way, i didn’t call obama “uppity,” hardly mentioned clinton at all, merely stated that irish, italians and jews have been voting their own for years so why shouldn’t blacks too? and, after pennsylvania, i’ll hold you to the importance you place on the popular vote, alan.

the column was not directed towards obama, who i will vote for if he makes it to the general election, or to his black supporters. it was directed against upscale white suburban twits whose support he would be better off without. you know who you are.

and as for mike, who wants to use a column item about eigth street i wrote two weeks ago to brand me some kind of racist, that’s my neighborhood, buster, and if you want a second opinion you ought to ask (the overwhelmingly black and decent) members of the block club who will tell you the same thing.

So, Mr. Hudson is a kind of free-tabloid, latter-day version of Tom Wolfe, providing biting commentary on white elites pandering to radical revolutionaries. Only with crappier suits.

Let’s begin with the article itself, which claims that Obama has built a unique coalition of:

poor, inner-city blacks and well-to-do white suburban liberals who fled the cities in order to get away from the poor inner-city blacks.

Taken within the context of the entire rest of the piece, Hudson is basically saying that black people are, by definition, poor inner-city denizens. The premise, evidently, is that there are no poor rural black people supporting Obama in places like Mississippi or Georgia. Nor must there by any middle or upper-middle class black people supporting - well, anyone.

After a brief lesson on the all-too-familiar concept of identity politics, Hudson goes after his pet peeve, limousine liberals.

The term “limousine liberal” is always a handy epithet to hurl when one supposes he has the moral high ground. If class struggle is your thing, then go for it. But the revolution is not coming, and if it does, it will be televised.

On Fox News.

Interestingly, and bringing it back to the presidential race, the term “limousine liberal” is now most often used by the right as an epithet against the left. Now, Mike, I thought you were a good anarcho-socialist who lives amongst decent black people, and I therefore figured that your anachronistic epithets towards me would be more current. I mean, they used that one against Lindsay in the 60s. It’s 2008. “Limousine liberal” is now thrown around by the likes of Limbaugh and Krauthammer. And Ostrowski, evidently.

On top of that, I’ve only ridden in a limousine I think 3 times in my entire life.

Although Hudson says the piece was more about ridiculing Obama’s white supporters (which is sort of sickening in itself), he does indeed decry the fact that Obama has mucked it up for Hillary:

Over the past six months, these vermin have combined to turn what was a certain Democratic victory in November into a question mark. The party itself is so badly fractured that the likelihood of everyone forgetting about what was said and done in time to unite against John McCain seems remote.

That’s the Obama coalition and, except for the black people, I don’t think I want any part of it. It’s about enough to make me support McCain myself, as a matter of fact.

There are loads of examples of very heated primary campaigns resulting in the ultimate uniting of the party behind the ultimate nominee, and there’s no question that will happen this year. In fact, Obama and Clinton are in headlines daily, getting their messages out there, while McCain is an afterthought deep in the national section of the paper. And to think all those disingenuous white people have the nerve to support Obama. Hypocrites! [/sarcasm].

Hudson’s allusion to a 40+ year-old short story where the protagonist is alleged to be prejudiced towards black people, instead of against is something I’m not comprehending.

I have my reasons for supporting Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, and the word “black” or “African-American” or whatever the fuck people would like to pin as my motive for said support is not even remotely on the list.

Perhaps I am rather shallow, easily swayed by a good speech and gullible in matters politic. Perhaps I am foolish to believe that a candidate might be able to transcend decades’ worth of idiotic political, racial, and gender cleaves to bring the country together after 8+ years of division so that we work together for a common good.

Perhaps I am naive not to support the wife of the former president, a woman who is despised by half, and adored by the other half. Perhaps she is whom I should support, lest I have too-cool-for-the-room tabloid publishers accuse me of being a reverse-racist hipster tool.

Luckily for everyone, I suppose, I trust Hudson’s judgment as little as he trusts mine. I value his opinion as little as he values mine. Because, as the old adage goes, opinions are, indeed, like assholes.

The moment someone touts his competence to bear witness to the plight of black people because he lives near black people, and that black people “love him”, it’s game over. Unless, of course, that person is, himself, black. Mike, last I checked, you’re as white as I am.

But back to the issue at hand. This blog began as a paean to a Presidential candidate from 2004. It has morphed into the garbage it is today because I like to write things about things that I find interesting. However, I have been finding political candidates who inspire me, or anger me, and I then write down what I think about all that. It’s what I’ve done time and time again for the past 4+ years.

Hudson continues:

[Obama’s] supporters have pointed to his opposition to the war in Iraq back when it started in 2003 as evidence of his great wisdom. I opposed it too, wrote a bunch of columns about it and everything, but I wouldn’t vote for me for president. Opposing a war, or anything bad, when you’re not in a position to do anything about it really doesn’t amount to much.

Hillary Clinton was in a position to do something about it. FAIL.

Anyway, last Tuesday, after weeks of indignantly demanding that Hillary Clinton do the right thing and drop out of the race, the Obama cultists were shocked and stunned when she beat their man like a rug in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.

For someone who is such a stickler for facts and accuracy, you may want to revisit the Texas results. They’re still being tallied, and by today’s math, Obama has 98 Texas delegates, and Clinton has 95. My math tells me Obama’s winning Texas. But I’m a rich white kid, so what the hell do I know?

In six weeks she will do the same thing to him in Pennsylvania, and thus will have beaten him in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Nevada and most of the other key Democratic and swing states, while he will have won caucuses for the most part in states like Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and North Dakota, where his “O-Mentum” isn’t likely to prevail against John McCain or any Republican in November.

Perhaps not, but what evidence is there to conclude that Ohio or New York or California would not vote for Obama if he is the nominee come November? None whatsoever. Hudson’s talking out his ass.

I realize Hudson is the coolest, if not the smartest, hep cat in the room at any given time, but this blog doesn’t pretend or boast to be anything except for my opinions about things. I realize full well that I’m the dumbest limousine liberal white boy on the planet. Hudson is free to ascribe to me whatever motives he’d like.

So, to Hudson’s point, if you think I’m supporting Obama because he’s black, and because I’m overwhelmed with white guilt about the black plight because I live in a nice neighborhood that is diverse only in terms of the European and Asian countries represented therein, you are welcome to it.

But you would be wrong. And then maybe give Geraldine Ferraro a call. She holds some similarly anachronistic opinions you might find more palatable. She also agrees with you, being one of Clinton’s top surrogates and higher-profile supporters.

Who knew “feisty” and “rant” could be used in the same sentence as “gardening”? Congratulations to the ranters for these kudos.

Three things:

1. Congratulations to the Geek family for the announcement of kid number two.

2. Congratulations to the Punaro family for the announcement of kid number one.

3. Geek has a post up soliciting your Buffalo story:

If you left, why did you leave?

Are you planning to move home or have you already taken the plunge? If so, why?

Did you move away and close the book on a future in Buffalo? If so, why?

If you are here and thinking of leaving, why?

If you never lived here before, why did you move here?

In August 2005, I posted this story, which explained in detail why I moved to Western New York. Here it is again, updated for 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

Two things have come up recently that amount to a regional (writ large) attempt at networking people and groups throughout the Great Lakes.

GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange) appears to be celebrating and linking up non-profit groups throughout the region in an attempt to get them to cooperate and collaborate, and also to set up new funding sources for them. Locally, groups like the Coalition for Economic Justice, PUSH, and Literacy Volunteers have been selected as being worthy of GLUE’s attention. On the about page, it’s described thusly:

GLUE Co-Founders Sarah Szurpicki (Harvard 03) and Abby Wilson (Columbia 02) are young urbanists who recently returned to their respective hometowns: Detroit and Pittsburgh. They developed the concept for the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE) during the summer of 2007, as an outgrowth of comparative conversations about their experiences coming home to similarly challenged post-industrial cities. Between them, they have run political campaigns, traveled to five continents, written over a million dollars worth of successful grant proposals, and performed on half a dozen stages. Prior to moving back to Detroit, Sarah, who will supervise GLUE networks in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, served as the Director of Finance and Operations to the Harlem Success Academy Charter School in New York, where she oversaw the operational startup of the new school. Abby, supervisor of GLUE networks in Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, most recently managed the successful Pittsburgh City Council campaign of Patrick Dowd, a progressive school board member, over an entrenched incumbent.

GLUE was formally endorsed by the Brookings Institution’s Great Lakes Economic Initiative in the fall of 2007.

I think it’s high time that rustbelt cities recognized and tried to learn from each other’s experiences in order that this post-industrial, economically stagnant region might work its way back to viability, if not growth.

But it strikes me that there’s something missing from the GLUE project. Private enterprise. I’m not talking about the traditional Andy-Rudnick-Partnership type businesses. I’m talking about young entrepreneurs who have opened up small businesses in these cities. These are the economic engines of the future, the employers of tomorrow. The GMs and Fords and Bethlehem Steels are either gone or a shadow of their former selves. The region runs thanks mostly to small businesses that offer a needed service at a competitive price. They are just as worthy of celebration and greater-regional networking as are non-profits.

Also, check out the Rust Belt Bloggers network, of which I’m a member. They’re planning on holding a summit in Erie sometime in the Summer.

New World Records moved from its Elmwood location six months ago to a shopping center at the corner of Delaware and Hertel. It has now announced that it’s going out of business. While this is a shame, it’s hardly unexpected.

There are two “hyperlocal” good-news sites out there in Buffaloland, and they both discuss the possible reasons for New World’s demise.

On the one hand, Buffalo Rising’s Newell Nussbaumer discusses the matter with WBFO’s Mark Scott. Newell asserts that New World was doomed to failure once it left the more walkable Elmwood Avenue for its pedestrian-free final location. He refers to New World as an “institution” on Elmwood, and that it should have stayed there by sheer virtue of that fact.

That’s missing the point. New World didn’t move from Elmwood on a whim; it moved because it wasn’t selling enough merchandise on Elmwood to justify its continuing presence there. The move was a hail-Mary, and it didn’t work. The rents on Elmwood are becoming rather high, and the number of empty storefronts is growing. There’s an unsustainable disconnect there.

Why didn’t they sell enough merchandise? My guess is that people can now take or buy whatever music - from Top 40 to classical to ultra-obscure Indie - online in an a la carte basis. Like a song? 99 cent download - you can even sample the rest of the album to see if any other songs are worth buying. There’s no way CDs can compete with that.

Then we turn to Block Club, which produces a wonderfully designed magazine, and has a website that doesn’t get hardly the discussions that Buffalo Rising sees. But to me, the most attractive thing about Block Club is the fact that its “hyperlocal” focus extends beyond the limits of the city, and it highlights not only good city news, but good suburban news, too.

There’s nothing wrong with promoting why the City is great, but there’s nothing wrong with promoting why the suburbs are great (or, in WNYMedia’s case, what’s wrong with them, too). To try and attract people to move to Buffalo and completely ignore extraurban things that are fun to do even for city dwellers misses half the story - things like sledding at Chestnut Ridge, Vidler’s in East Aurora, Old Home Days in Williamsville, the Christmas / Pumpkin park in Clarence, the locks in Lockport, Old Fort Niagara, Niagara Falls, Delaware Ave. in Kenmore, and yes - even the malls.

Block Club recognizes that the city and suburbs are intertwined and dependent on each other for better or for worse. That reflects how I see things.

So, we turn to Block Club’s post about New World Records. Why are they going out of business?

The music industry, they shrugged at every chance, it’s just not keeping up…

…In any case, I’ll miss New World….yet again. It’s always been fun heading in and checking out new indie tunes I’m supposed to be listening to religiously while pretending to not know who they are in the first place, then get mad at everyone once they get big and proclaim I knew them before they sold out. You just can’t do that at Best Buy.

Good stuff. Go check out their website.

If you’re running Mac OSX, and if you’re a blogger or otherwise deal with images on a regular basis, do yourself a favor and download the free beta of Plasq’s Skitch.

I have never found anything quite as easy for capturing, manipulating, editing, captioning, and uploading images. Pre-Skitch, I’d have to involve Grab, change the resulting tiff to a jpg via Preview, make changes via Photoshop, and upload via Flickr or Wordpress.

With Skitch, I can drag an image into the program, make changes in a few seconds, and hit a button to upload it to flickr or Skitch’s own hosting. What took 5-10 minutes now takes 60 seconds.

I was all set to do an analysis of the 100+ replies to my post about a single-digit Texas Republican who is the focal point of a supposed “revolution”.

But reading through it, I found it to be a boring re-hash, so instead I’ll re-post what I said on Derek Punaro’s blog.

There, he suggested that I was engaging in “character assassination” of Ron Paul. Here, he wrote this comment:

This is such old news already. Paul has not ducked the issue at all, he’s addressed it directly. If the worst thing they can come up with again Ron Paul is attributing some bad writings to him, which there is no way of proving that he actually did write, that’s fine by me. Show me a video clip or a transcript of any of his public appearances where he says something similar that would corroborate that he wrote any of that stuff.

The question is a faulty one. I’m not going to do the George W. Bush thing and, as Bush did to Putin, “look into his heart”. My problem has to do with a political individual who is one of two things (or both):

1. Too negligent and lazy to permit those newsletters to be released under his name, and by extension too negligent and lazy (at best) to permit friends of his to write them in the first place; and

2. So hungry for power that he’ll sink down to the gutter to get there. The context of those newsletters was the late 80s and early 90s, and from what I remember of those times - particularly the Clinton times - was that xenophobia and racism and conspiracy theories would really resonate with a particular type of voter. Paul went after them.

To say he’s addressed this issue head-on is like saying Clinton was forthright and fully disclosed the Lewinski scandal.

So, I don’t care if he’s great or shit as a person. He is, based on what he had done, and his present-day non-denial denials of what he had done - shit as a politician.

Given 95% of the comments left on my site in response to *gasp* a post citing two articles about Paul, I am pretty confident in my belief that the Ron Paul revolution is a borderline cult of personality that would make L Ron Hubbard proud. I’m an insignificant blogger posting an insignificant post about an insignificant candidate, yet I get 100+ comments in 24 hours, almost exclusively from first-timers who ironically talk about a “concerted effort” to “smear” their beloved Leader Ron Paul. I wonder if they see the irony there.

This exchange between Glenn Greenwald and CNN’s John King reminded me of this exchange between me and channel 4’s Alysha Palumbo.

HT to Rochester Turning

Assembly minority leader (i.e., A Schenectady Republican in King Shelly’s Court) James Tedisco has a blog.

Perhaps it might provide a bit of insight into the sausage factory we have in Albany. But somehow, I doubt it.

Via In Java, Literally, I find this surreal story where Fox News reports (you decide) that Paul Begala is joining the Clinton campaign. Begala emails the Fox News “reporter” to tell him it’s not true, and he’s being fed bad information. Fox’s Major Garrett will “take it under advisement”. Hacks.

Buffalo Blood Donor thinks that Bush’s last-minute, legacy-conscious attempt at mideast peace is unlikely to succeed.

LC Scotty on the New Hampshire debates. What I want to know is who that reporter was who was doing the Facebook stuff.

If you haven’t already, check out WNY Rants!

I once plugged “White Castle” into my TomTom GPS device and followed it to the one closest to Buffalo - about 200 miles to a relatively nasty part of Cleveland.

If Food Network wanted a younger, hipper audience, they should have hired Anthony Bourdain. Now, the Travel Channel’s got him in one of the most fascinating shows on TV - Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations - and he makes the occasional appearance on Bravo’s Top Chef.

Via All things Jennifer: I can’t imagine a more uncomfortable situation.

Not too surprisingly we find that Ron Paul either has some very ugly opinions about people, or else he’s too negligent to stop blatantly bigoted material from being released under his name some 15-20 years ago. Examples:

An October 1990 edition of the [Ron Paul] Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” would be better alternatives–and says, “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

and

The June 1990 issue of the [Ron Paul] Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

He’s also a conspiracy theorist (Trilateral Commission!!!), praised that 90’s phenomenon - militias, and calls Israel a “national socialist state”. So, yeah - he’s a kook, and tried to advance his political career by wallowing in pig’s shit. Either way, he couldn’t pull double digits in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire. So, where’s the Paulista juggernaut?

Indian automaker Tata has released a $2,500 car for the developing world. 30 HP, 54 MPG, seats five.

John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, is blogging his campaign. It’s better than that sounds. Go check it out.