I Am Suspending My Campaign

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I'm announcing this morning that I am suspending my campaign. Not that I was running for office, or supporting any particular candidate during this Primary season. Instead, my campaign was to help generate some sort of rational, informed dialogue about politics, but it has become clear to me now that this is no longer possible.

So it's back to sports, drugs, and rock and roll, with a very occasional helping of political circus.  (Note: you can continue to raise money for my PAC.)

And as The Band and I are fond of saying: "Look out, Cleveland!"

Loft Living In Lower Manhattan, Before Gentrification

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You may never have heard of James Wolcott, but the boy sure can write. Especially about New York in the CBGB days of the 1970s. It's a good analog to HBO's "Vinyl".

 "Loft living then wasn’t the luxury alternative that it later became with the rise of SoHo and gentrification with a vengeance in Tribeca and beyond, as lofts became synonymous with airy storage units of flooding sunlight, gleaming bowling-alley hardwood floors, and quirkily amusing, slayingly chic art pieces chosen and arranged just so as tribal taste trophies, a photo layout of a setup perfect to raise a super-race of test-tube babies. Loft living in the mid-seventies was still in its pioneer post-factory, rat-haven phase, the elevators lowering and lifting like a large, groaning apprehension (as if operated by Marley’s chain-hanging ghost from A Christmas Carol), the thick-piped plumbing still in its early Soviet phase, these industrial garrets too hot in summer, too cold in winter, but spacious enough to carry a bowling-alley echo.”

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Excerpt From: James Wolcott's “Lucking Out.” Doubleday, 2011-10-25. iBooks.

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Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/XA4lz.l

Last Night's Democrat Debate

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I thought that this was a defining moment, in terms of personality and leadership style, during last night's debate (from The New York Times):

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 Asked whether she would fire the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to remedy water problems in Flint, Mrs. Clinton gave a nearly 200-word response emphasizing the need for a full investigation to “determine who knew what, when.” Mr. Sanders’ 16-word response drew enormous applause: “President Sanders would fire anybody who knew about what was happening and did not act appropriately.”