Turn out the lights
    (Duh! Duh!)
Turn out the lights
    (Duh! Duh!)
Turn out the liiiiiiiights!
    (Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh! Duh!)

Well, that’s it for a Midtown Mall icon.  Who could have believed that Record Theater had been there 45 years?  Who could have believed Midtown Mall was there 45 years?

Even if the quality of the selection and the store’s facade had worn down considerably in recent years, it was always a place worth stopping by whenever I had occasion to go into Midtown.  Here again is a classic example of the importance of Midtown as a community center and shopping plaza writ in a small hand:

Record Theatre closes downtown after 45 years || Democrat & Chronicle: Business

Michelle Zingo of Rochester called the news “extremely depressing.”

The 29-year-old was shopping at the Record Theatre on Friday morning. Zingo said she could always find new and used rock and R& B compact disks at a good price.

Jerry Benjamin also praised Record Theatre’s prices and selection. Benjamin, 34, had shopped at the store since 1991, buying R&B CDs and audio tapes. “I’m going to miss this store,” he said. “Now, I’m going to have to go farther out to the malls.”

Jeff Adams, the owner of Jeff’s Books and the Village Yarn Shop in Midtown, said the store would be missed.

Adams, who was in Record Theatre browsing through CDs, said: “It certainly is unfortunate, not only for the mall but for the people who shop here.”

There are precious few reasons to shop at the mall these days, and despite this, it’s obvious that people still do.  Rather than making alternate plans to attract suburbanites back into the mall, perhaps it is time we contemplated the reason that there are those who remain.

When most of us think of most malls, we tend to think of them as locations of choice; sometimes, people even draw certain conclusions about you if you shop at Eastview over Greece-Town Mall.  The portion of Midtown’s clientele that chooses to shop there for such reasons has long-since gone away, and what remains are people who work in the area, live in the area or for one reason or another find that Midtown is the easier option on the rare occasion that it fulfills a need.

In short, it is a community center of sorts, even if (or perhaps because) no one planned for it to be.

Technorati Tags: Midtown, Record Theater, Economy

powered by performancing firefox

I’m almost completely speechless.  If Chuck Hagel isn’t a man deserving of an “Exit Strategy,” I don’t know who is:

Think Progress » Hagel: White House Originally Wanted 2002 Iraq War Resolution to Cover Entire Middle East

In an interview in GQ Magazine, Hagel reveals that the Bush administration tried to get Congress to approve military action anywhere in the Middle East — not just in Iraq — in the fall of 2002. At the time, Hagel says, the Bush administration presented Congress with a resolution that would have authorized the use of force anywhere in the region

Read the whole thing on Think Progress before continuing, it’s really short and fact-filled.  Crazy, no?  And here’s the piece de resistance:

Hagel: Still More:

Asked about his vote in support of the final Iraq war resolution, Hagel told GQ, “Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.”

So, let me get this straight. 

1. The White House had balls enough to present a resolution before Congress stating that they had unlimited power to go to war with anyone in the region.
2. Knowing this was their ambition, you went ahead and rewrote the resolution to strip it of that language, only letting the rest of us in on the big joke just now.
3. You voted for this resolution knowing full-well their intention to widen the war if possible
4. Now, you say regret the vote.

You regret the vote? Where the hell do you get off saying something like that to us now, like that’s going to make anything better?  Anyone at all other than the three of you (Hagel, Joe Biden and Dick Lugar) can say they regret their votes and only seem foolish.  Your freinds and you are as morally culpable for the Iraq War and anything else that comes next as anyone sitting in the White House.

Joe Biden is dead to me.  Any other Democratic candidate I can either support or at least shut my mouth about.  But Joe Biden, that bastard that has continually shown up on news program after news program, acting like some “loyal opposition” politician, citing a need for oversight, all the while knowing that the president had a lot more on his plate than Iraq and telling no one. . . .  I will work my utmost to discredit him as a candidate.  I plead with any other bloggers who read this and care at all about justice for the folly of Iraq to do the same.  Google-bomb Joe Biden!

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, Iraq, Iran, President Bush

powered by performancing firefox

Well, I gotta say, I’m pretty impressed with City’s new website:

Rochester City Newspaper

Gone are the sour strains of the 90’s, and the new site has a much more comfortable look and feel with a lot of great features.  For example, check out the beautiful events calendar they’ve got!  Better yet, they allow people to submit their own events to the calendar. 

Of course, no modern site would be complete without a feed or three, and City appears to have gotten this figured out.  We shall see: the D&C has a feed, but it’s a once-a-day publication, at best, which is totally unreliable.

Restaurant searches, upcoming events, the new site has (almost) the works.  Certainly, it is an unquestionable acknowledgment of the Web 2.0 strategy which has thusfar gone either ignored or patronized by other large media outlets in the city (see above).

Harumph.  That was supposed to have been DFE’s niche.  Well, it appears I’ve moved too late on my ideas for DFE and my work is now really cut out for me.  I’ve got some ground to make up, here.  Ironically, today is the day I had set aside to work on some of these projects.  How’s that for a kick in the pants?

Technorati Tags: Rochester, Rochester City News, Journalism, Web 2.0

powered by performancing firefox

Rolling Stone, more than any other publication, seems hell-bent on making Al Gore the next Democratic candidate for the presidency.  You hear a lot about Obama, of course as much as you can stomach about Hillary ~ heck, once in a while, you even hear about John Edwards or Tom Vilsak ~ but nowhere except Rolling Stone do you get this much about Al Gore as the next president:

Rolling Stone : Why Gore Should Run — And How He Can Win

A stiff Vice President campaigns on his administration’s legacy of unprecedented prosperity. Looks terrible on TV. Bows out, following a disputed vote count. Then, two terms later, with no incumbent in the race, he re-enters the fray. Promises to change the course of a disastrous war founded on lies. And charges to victory. I’m referring, of course, to the 1968 campaign of Richard Milhous Nixon. But four decades later, history has a chance to repeat itself for Albert Arnold Gore.

They don’t stop waxing poetic there, either.  And when I say “poetic,” I mean the type of lyrical statistics the stuff of which makes NFL highlight reels possible:

Rolling Stone : Why Gore Should Run — Page 3

If Gore does decide to run, there is no question that his entry into the race would instantly reshuffle the deck. . . He would also have history on his side: Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, both of whom won the popular vote but lost the presidency, reached the White House on their next tries.

Can’t you just see Al Gore, football tucked neatly at his side, chin-strap slack bobbing on the side of his helmet in super-slow motion, muscles flexing and relaxing in rhythm, arms pumping, moving down the sideline with seeming unstoppable power towards the goal line?  Oh, wait.  That’s Lynn Swan I’m seeing. . . .

Anywho. . .

All this lyricism seems to suggest a burning desire among liberals and Democrats to lance the boil of “Triangulation” and over-cautiousness that has been an aching sore in the back-sides of so many of us for so long.  Check out the interesting commenting conversation (and I say that not because I took part) over at RochesterTurning.com about Hillary.  We all love Exile, but he’s dying to make a point that has anything to do with anything other than Hillary’s prevarication and hedging.  Rottenchester is having none of it.  Great back and forth here.

But there always seems to be, in any discussion of Al Gore, a burning need for release in the words of those urging him to run.  If he did run, I’d certainly be happy, but there seems to be an over-wrought sense of deliverance in his supposed candidacy.  A romantic vision of salvation to which no one will ever live up.

I’m once again drawn to an image: citizens of Jerusalem chasing a man named Brian around, worshiping his shoe.

Rolling Stone : Why Gore Should Run — Page 1

Look at what Gore has been up to lately, and it’s hard to escape the impression that, on some level, he is already running for president. Over the past few months he has made high-profile appearances on the Today show, the Tonight Show and Oprah, and he displayed his trademark deadpan humor in a stint on Saturday Night Live. “He’s keeping himself viable by keeping himself in the public eye,” says Donna Brazile, who served as Gore’s campaign manager in 2000.

OK, the man’s said flat-out “no” on any number of occasions, but it *seems* like he’s running for president.  Uh-huh.  Read the above text as though you’re John Cleese narrating a Monty Python bit.  It’s impossible to escape the impression that, on some level, this is absurd.

Good evening. Last week we learned how to saw a lady in half. This week we’re going to learn how to saw a lady into three bits and dispose of the body…

I’m all for Al Gore running.  I’m all for anyone who can broaden the dialogue and offer new conversations about all the many things our country needs to deal with which are not being addressed by this current administration.  But really, people: keep it in perspective.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, Democrats, President, 2008

powered by performancing firefox

I noticed a link at the bottom of RochesterTurning.com that says “Googlebomb McCain.” The idea, spawned on MyDD, is that John McCain is getting way too much good press and none of the bad. I tend to agree by and large, so I looked something up.

Hang on to your hats, folks, but WikiPedia doesn’t list anything about John McCain’s career prior to the Presidential primaries of 2000! Zero, ziltch, nada! And believe me, there’s reason to mention his name from days gone by. You wanna taste? Here you go:

John McCain: Are His Backers Out of Prison?

On Oct. 15, 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act, otherwise known as “Garn-St Germain,” after the principal Congressional sponsors. As a direct result of this disastrous deregulation legislation, within the span of a decade, a small tightly organized network of financial pirates�many with close ties to the Meyer Lansky National Crime Syndicate�would pull off the biggest heist in American history. . . . To untangle the S&L carnage, the Federal government created the Reconstruction Trust Corporation (RTC) and eventually shelled out $200-250 billion in taxpayers’ money, to avert an even deeper collapse of the U.S. real estate and banking sectors.

A handful of the crooks�including Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Charles Keating�were imprisoned for their roles in the looting scheme. Briefly, a few members of Congress were spotlighted and slapped on the wrists for their own profiteering and coverup efforts. But the full extent of this criminal looting of America was barely known, and today is largely forgotten. The biggest political beneficiary of the public’s amnesia is John McCain. With the exception of Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s (D-Conn.) own ties to hedge fund bandit Michael Steinhardt, no American politician is as beholden to organized crime as the senior Senator from Arizona and would-be 2004 “Bull Moose” spoiler candidate for the Presidency.

And nary a mention in WikiPedia or the media in years. I seem to recall some minor mention of it a few years ago on Meet the Press, but come on! If you want direct answers to direct questions, you damned-sure know Tim Russert ain’t the man for the job.

So, since ~ as I recently discussed on RT ~ the Dems aren’t going to have the sack of nuts to go after McCain on this, should he win the nomination, perhaps it is our turn to do so?

I’d not thought to bother complaining about this bit because it was so completely vacuous.  However, if your blog is dedicated to environmental concerns, well then I guess you just have to hold your nose and comment on it:

GroovyGreen.com - Start Today :: Save Tomorrow : Blog Archive : Bush: 20% Reduction Of Fossil Fuel Use Within Next 10 Years

Anyways, Bush dedicated slightly more time in his speech to the environment than last year. In 2006, we were told we were addicted to oil, but found the administration quickly backing off foreign-oil import curbs the next day. Now, we hear tonight that Bush is calling for Americans to reduce consumption of petroleum by 20% in the next 10 years. Is anyone else laughing? Supposedly, Americans will do this with alternative fuels, plug-in hybrids, and higher MPG standards. Interesting note: Hydrogen seems to have dropped off the list. Another interesting note, Bush actually mentioned “Climate Change” and “Serious Problem” in the same sentence! “And they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.” The times, they are a changing!

This one’s a great read and spot-on commentary.  You’ve gotta hand it to Bush: he said more and meant less this year than any year previous.  That’s a hellified accomplishment, folks, don’t deny it.  I guess it’s no fun to give this speech if you can’t glare at the Dems or stick your jaw out at them when the Republicans cheer.  Golly, what a shame.

Technorati Tags: State of the Union, SOTU, Bush, Environment

powered by performancing firefox

First of all, let me just say that I remember rushing upstairs to type out all my notes for SOTUs past. This time, I watched for the sake of saying I did, skipped the Democratic response altogether, blogged about a totally unrelated topic, and went to sleep. That about sums up my enthusiasm for the event.

In fact, I actually pined for a good purple thumb or two. Or Tom DeLay to scowl at. I dunno. The Republicans just seem so boring these days. . . . .

But there were a couple of things last night worth mentioning, so I’ll do that.

For example, how about that health care initiative? In order to make health insurance more affordable to low-income households, George Bush proposes a tax credit for people who are spending money on health insurance. This is one of those proposals that makes you go, “hey! That’s a pretty good. . . no. . no, no, wait. Nope. That’s fuckin’ stupid.”

First of all, tax credits mean very little to the unemployed or underemployed. It’s fine for the middle-to-lower income folks, but even then, the numbers aren’t going to be all that impressive. In fact, as a piece de resistance to show just how truly out of touch he and his administration are to the plight of non-millionaires while simultaneously blowing smoke up their collective ass about what a great tax credit he’s giving them, Dubya cites the tax benefits for people with an income of $60,000.

Dude. Who the hell makes $60,000 a year and doesn’t have frickin health insurance?!?!?!?!? What the hell? Does Dubya really think Walmart pays it’s stock clerks that much?

Moreover, when I think of national health care plans, I don’t typically think in terms of handouts for health insurance companies, but that is precisely what this is. I mean, what he’s really saying is, “We’re going to give the insurance industry billions of extra dollars by disguising it as a tax break for you po folk who spend it all on health insurance. Oh yeah, and let’s balance that budget while we’re at it. What the hell.”

So, that was Pee-Wee Dubya’s Big Idea of the Day. That’s what he came up with. The rest was beyond fluff. It was fluff girls for the Dems, just to take the bite out of their response (which, as I say, was pointless to watch. Dubya’s going to play nice, the Dems need to play nice, so this one’s effectively self-cancelling from the get-go.). And of course, there is always the laundry list of shit presidents want but won’t get. Seriously, the SOTU begins to take on the shape of a child’s note to Santa by the mid-point in most any president’s second term.

Immigration reform, are you daft? Social Security reform, you’re on that one again, are ye? Medicare reform, laddie? Aren’t you the one what bolloxed that bit up in the first place, mate?

Gonzo is at it again.  Read the following article and then come back when you’re done.  It’s OK, I’ll wait:

Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus | BaltimoreChronicle.com

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

I think someone better check the fine print on that supposed law degree of his.  We may find that there is a copyright label from Hasbro.  I have elsewhere commented on this same subject, but shall reiterate again in the vain hope that Gonzales might be reading. . . .

Mr. Gonzo is quite correct on at least one level: the Constitution of the United States does not, in fact, grant the right of Habeus Corpus.  It does indeed only proscribe circumstances under which that right may be suspended.  But neither does the Constitution grant a right to Free Speech, to peaceable assembly, nor any other right that we as Americans enjoy.  The Constitution merely states that “Congress shall pass no law restricting the right to free speech,” and so on.

That a layman on the street would miss this subtle point would be entirely understandable, if lamentable.  That a sitting United States Attorney General misses it is not only unfathomable, it’s dangerous.

The Constitution is predicated on the notions, already spelled out in the Declaration of Independence (and elsewhere):

Declaration of Independence : Indiana Law

. . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, . . .

This meaning: the rights of men are preconditions of birth, not the grants of a state.  The Constitution is, therefore, an entirely subtractive document.  It assumes that our rights already exist and seeks only to spell out the rights which are *not* granted to our leaders.  This is a seemingly subtle ~ but substantial ~ shift in logic from what many of us assume.  The Administration further confuses this fact when it reads into the Article II rights of the presidency items for which there is no language, as I have outlined briefly before.

The Constitution takes as, well, “self-evident,” that the rights of men cannot be removed.  In fact, much of the Constitution was written by men who assumed that they need not be spelled out in any document at all, particularly.  That last bit was a major argument in the writing of the Constitution and led to the later adoption of the Bill of Rights over the objections of many.  Among the detractors were men like Alexander Hamilton believed that spelling those rights out was superfluous and moreover dangerous.

Why dangerous?  Because law is a double-edged sword, sometimes.  If the language used in law to describe those rights was too vague in one fashion or too specific in another fashion, someone (like, oh, let’s say, a Texas lawyer named Alberto Gonzales) would use the letter of the law to attempt to constrain the very rights it was designed to uphold.  It now seems as though Hamilton’s great fear is in the midst of being realized as I type.

**  As a side note, let me point out that the single greatest failure of
almost any attempt at creating democracy elsewhere in the world where
that attempt has failed, no less the attempt to create democracy in
Iraq, is that the framers of those Constitutions invariably miss this
point also.  That, and the insistence on putting short term goals such as oil rights into what should be a transcendent document.  **

I still have not made my mind up whether Alberto Gonzales and the lawyers of his ilk are fools or villains, but regardless they have no business running the legal affairs of a dignified country.  Certainly not the United States.

Technorati Tags: Constitution, Gonzales, habeas corpus

powered by performancing firefox

If you’re inclined to go find out what’s going on, the “charette” is still happening until 5:30pm today. I was there about the time when it first got started, and spent some time milling around like everyone else and checking out all the different tables.

My impression of the event? Well, certainly well-intentioned, but perhaps an event planner might have helped. I am glad the city decided to allow people to voice their opinions on the new plans for the city, but it could probably have been done more effectively next time. For one, this meeting was largely about civic planning and architecture, two things most of us know little to nothing about in practical terms. Having said that, it is tough to know exactly what they were looking for us to say and what would be the most helpful to them, and that was reflected in the aimless meandering of the attending citizens. We want to help, but what to suggest? Most of us lack even the basic vocabulary, even if we know what we like without knowing the names.

A better plan might have been to have had an MC of sorts on a small amp speaking about what is going on and what they want to accomplish, encouraging people to come talk to the planners. Not someone blasting out the rest of the conversation, but actively drawing people into the conversation and adding “conversation starters” to help the flow be more constructive. Perhaps better and more compelling signage might have been a bonus.

Apart from that, it was definitely interesting. I’ve got a few pictures of the event on Flickr.com, you can check them out on the little badge along the center-right column of this blog. The city is being divided, for the sake of focus, into five districts, a map of which can be viewed here. The idea is for people to begin thinking of the various areas of downtown as contiguous wholes, rather than the somewhat distant islands they sometimes seem. One region covers the “Center City” area (sounds like someone’s been in Philadelphia), one that focuses on Main Street where it bisects the Inner Loop, one that focuses on that part of Downtown between Main Street and Corn Hill, another that encompasses the East End part of Downtown and a northern section including St. Paul and North Avenue areas.

» Continue Reading…

Linked through from Political Animal, Abu Aardvark has some interesting and disconcerting observations about what’s going on inside of Egypt.  I’ve highlighted some of the same passages as Kevin Drum did, with some differences as well.

If we can take Egypt as a bell-weather for the rest of Sunni Arabia (which is most of the Middle East), things are looking mighty bellicose on a number of fronts.  It is impossible to tell what any of this means, and when taken all at once, perhaps there is a conspiratorial tone to what we’re hearing that is more an artifact of presentation than reality.  Still, just so you’ve read it (Emphasis mine):

Abu Aardvark: Reflections on Egypt

. . . everyone here seems keenly aware that the United States has backed off of democracy promotion. When Condi Rice came through the country without meeting any civil society leaders or mentioning democracy at all, really, it capped off an already widespread perception that the US no longer cares to promote democracy in Egypt: “the government knows it, the people know it, and the activists know it,” as one person put it to me, and everybody is adjusting their behavior accordingly.

. . . the government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood (a predominantly Sunni para-political, non-state organization, Ed.) is exceptionally intense, with unprecedented pressure on individual members (or suspected members). Not just people going to jail, but businesses closed and merchandise seized, students prevented from sitting exams, and other escalating repression. There’s a huge amount of anti-MB material flooding the press, including in the leading independent paper al-Masri al-Youm.

. . . anti-Shia stuff is really spreading rapidly, and seems to have the Egyptian government’s approval (at a minimum). Sensational-looking books about the Shia are all over the bookstands, along with stories in the tabloids and scare-mongering editorials. Even in al-Masri al-Yom, op-eds in recent days have (for instance) attacked Bush’s plan for Iraq because it would empower the Shia, who would abolish all forms of Arab identity and seek to unify with Iran.

. . . Why all this anti-Shia discourse now? One popular theory is that the Egyptian government, backed by the US, wants to prepare the ground for confrontation with Iran. By this theory, the government is stoking hatred of the Shia as a pre-emptive move to shape the political space in such a way as to make it hard for Iran to appeal to Egyptian (and Arab) public opinion in the event of a war - and to prevent a repeat of anything like the outpouring of popular support for Hassan Nasrullah last summer. One problem with this theory is that mobilizing anti-Shia anger against Iran simultaneously complicates attempts by the government to support American goals of strengthening a Shia government in Iraq - an irony of which at least some officials seem painfully aware. Another school of thought points to the Iraq war, and especially the Saddam execution video, as fueling anger against the Shia, independently of anything the government is doing. Whatever the case, I’ve seen a lot more anti-Shia discourse than I expected or have ever seen before, and it alarms me.

And, in more entertaining news:

. . .one of the main bookstores in central Cairo is prominently featuring posters for an instant book declaring that “Saddam was not executed” - it was all an American hoax. The guy who hanged was actually one of Saddam’s doubles - the author compares a bunch of pictures of Saddam in power with pictures from the trial and execution, and declares that they are obviously not the same man. It’s a nutty book in every sense of the word… I don’t know how many people (besides me) have bought it, but I saw the poster in a few places.

Cracking down on Sunni and Shia at the same time?  Well, they’re nothing if not versitile.  My guess is that the Muslim Brotherhood represents a genuine political threat to a kingdom that may have half-heartedly moved a little too close to democratic reforms for comfort, whereas scoring points against Shia is a fairly typical easy-friends political clout-getter for something else.  Shia are the minority among Middle Eastern Muslims, and picking on minorities is pretty popular everywhere in the world, even here.  Perhaps they’re right, and this is a prelude to a US-led invasion of Iran.  Even if there is no such thing, though, the time may come soon when Middle East governments will need to become much more actively involved in Iraq.  Perhaps the Egyptian government has just chosen a side.

Technorati Tags: Egypt, Middle East

powered by performancing firefox