Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

The New York Times looks at the reason you won’t be able to afford your apartment next year.

…according to city figures, a significant number of youngish artists, musicians, restaurateurs and designers are leaving New York City and heading down the turnpike for the same reasons they once moved to Brooklyn from Manhattan.

“We got priced out of Manhattan, and we moved to Brooklyn,” said John Schmersal, 32, of the three-member band Enon; two of them migrated here in January. “Then we got priced out of Brooklyn. Now we’re in Philadelphia.”

What sort of a loser Philadelphia blogger would I be if I failed to ever even mention the Terrell Owens saga? I’m not sure, but this is about all the mention it’s going to get. I really just haven’t found a way to give a fuck though - dear lord believe me - I’ve tried. He’s a little nuts and his nuts are well salted to be sure, but whatever. While I do have interest in income equality as a goal, I don’t really care about the money football players make. They generate an incredible amount of income for extraordinarily lucrative organizations, so I’m all for them getting a big cut. Beyond the economics, Owens’ routine has been weird, to the extreme, and likely self destructive, but such is life. Even multi-millionaires are entitled to be head cases. He reminds me a little of some people I’ve known in my life, none of whom were ever at ease or at all together, so I suppose I wish him well. Unless, of course, he fucks up this season and the Eagles don’t make it to Detroit - then he’s a fucking shithead who deserves to live out his days as the slot receiver on the Cleveland Browns making the veteran minimum.

Speaking of football, if you are a football freak and you don’t know about Football Outsiders, it’s time for you to have a visit. While the statistical analysis can be a little much sometimes, it’s always accurate, always demanding, and always makes the game more interesting. Football Outsiders takes you inside the game in a way that you can’t find anywhere else. This off-season was particularly strong in that they featured a number of articles on different defensive and offensive sets such as the I formation and man coverage, exploring them more deeply than you’ll likely see anywhere.

I’m on a medication that is supposed to make cigarettes taste very bad to me. It’s working, cigarettes taste really awful right now. Sadly, everything else does too, including even the tastiest of beers. Not quite as bad as the cigarettes of course, but bad nonetheless. Small price to pay, I suppose.

Nothing political tonight. Even junkies need a break from time to time.

My wife would like to add that she doesn’t wish T.O. the best. Far from it - she’s seething over this mess. She also mentioned that the Eagles got over the NFC Championship hurtle and to the Super Bowel with Owens out of the picture. One astute young woman if you ask me.

I became just a little more anonymous a few days ago. After dealing with some weirdness over the last week or so, I decided that it would be best if I payed some extra money and made the rowhouselogic domain registration anonymous. Until now, anybody who was interested could do a query on the domain and learn my home address and phone number. Living in a big city, I don’t really care about that sort of thing. I have nuts walking down my street all day, and a determined internet freak seeking me out isn’t all that much of a concern. Nevertheless, certain things have convinced me that I should pull back a bit. I’m not the only one who lives here, and my advocacy for a particular point of view shouldn’t effect anyone other than myself. That said, I hate doing something overtly political and not being very transparent. That’s why I avoided absolute anonymity when I began this site. Anyway, I’m sure this is nothing anybody will care about, but I wanted to be as clear as I could, which isn’t very clear at all, about this change.

I was watching a funny episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, named Gee Whiz, the other night. In the episode Meatwad is impregnated via Immaculate Conception when he sees the image of Ted Nugget, who he thinks is Jesus, on a billboard. As it turns out, he wasn’t pregnant at all, but instead filled with a horde of spider eggs which, at the end of the show, hatch and explode out of his stomach. The explosion starts as a leak of noxious green gas and ends with the demonic spiders flying through the air, dripping with ooze.

Something about the Think Progress article detailing the potential involvement of 21 administration officials in the Plame leak got me thinking about that episode. I wonder why?

I’m a fan of Chris Bowers and I’m very impressed by the report that he and Matt Stoller produced entitled The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere which you can read here. One thing I’m curious about is how many of my readers have ever heard of the sites Grassroots PA or Keystone Politics. The Philadelphia portion of the report expresses some concern about these sites, but in my time as a Philadelphia blogger, I must admit to never having heard of them before today. I say this as a person who has had at least a little interaction with a good number of the active political bloggers in Philadelphia as well as at least a little of the local political community. I’m curious about my own disconnect and I’m curious about the notion that these two sites are very important, or a threat to the Democratic party in Pennsylvania. Is anybody actually reading these sites? Please let me know if you are or if you have any insight.

Herbert:

Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam’s book “The Best and the Brightest,” Senator John McCain said:

“It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay.”

That point is no less relevant now. The administration is not willing to commit to an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents in Iraq, and is equally unwilling to reverse course and bring the troops home. Most Americans are abandoning the idea that the war can be “won.” Polls are showing that they’re tired of the conflict and its relentlessly mounting toll. It’s hard to imagine that the population at large will be willing to sacrifice thousands of additional American lives over several more years in pursuit of goals that remain as murky as ever.

…

The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there’s no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country.

The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.

I hate to blockquote and extract from this one as it deprives it of its power. Please do go read the whole thing.

A few hundred people will read this post. A tiny fraction of those people will download the tune I’m offering. A tiny fraction more will understand that what they are listening to is a revolution. I won’t go into details, as I doubt I’ll be able to convince any. The musician in question is pianist John Taylor and the album is Rosslyn. In my mind, Taylor’s musical conception is a revolution in serious American art music, though he is an Englishman. His music is the future and, I hope, the shape of jazz to come. His harmonic concepts and use of melodic development, are alone enough to give him the status of giant. His intensely creative and tasteful use of metric modulation in their employ, puts him on a whole new playing field and pushes the envelope of the jazz idiom. Taylor is a revolutionary in the mold of fellow pianist Bill Evans, in that the casual listener will never know that what they are hearing is a bold and dynamic step into the future. Subtle revolution is never an easy sell.

The tune is Irving Berlin’s How Deep the Ocean as performed by The John Taylor Trio. The personnel are John Taylor on piano, Marc Johnson on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Please do have a listen and consider buying John Taylor’s album Rosslyn. Play it for your kids and support the revolution and the revolutionaries. Download here.

Postscript: I wrote some of this in November of last year and recycled tonight. So sorry to repeat - I know it’s in bad form.

“Reach out to local bloggers”

~Atrios, advising congressional candidates.

No, I’m not encouraging anybody to reach out to me, because I’m not going to provide a great deal of help, no matter how much I’d like to. Nevertheless, what Atrios says is correct. A concentrated swarm of local bloggers committed to a candidate can make a real, if very small, difference. From my own experience with that sort of thing, I’ve found that a gaggle of local bloggers provides the local media with an angle to cover a race they otherwise might have ignored. For the time being, and for reasons unknown, the media is very interested in blogs. While that interest lasts, and it won’t last long, we need to exploit it. Additionally, the audience for a small time local blogger is inevitably a group of very hard core political junkies who, if convinced, can provide some of the enthusiastic legwork an upstart campaign very desperately needs.

“His show is an obscenity”

~Cindy Sheehan on Bill O’Reilly

If you’d like to hear it, Joe Trippi has posted the audio from a blogger conference call conducted with Cindy Sheehan earlier today. While I was invited, I wasn’t able to listen in live. For some background on Cindy Sheehan, have a look at this post by Will Bunch and this one by Shakespeare’s Sister. Matt, who did participate, has a rundown on the call which is well worth a read. Go have a look. Albert also has a nice post about the confernce call which is also well worth a read.

Matt asks a very good question about this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 - Armed men entered Baghdad’s municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city’s mayor and installed a member of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite militia.

In light of some recent events, this passage from the Iliad seems more appropriate than it did last week.

But the son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he was still in a rage. “Wine-bibber,� he cried, “with the face of a dog and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath- nay, by this my sceptre which shalt sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains- for the axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven- so surely and solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help them, and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered insult to the bravest of the Achaeans.�

Since I don’t have any free minutes I’ll spare you my giggling school girl routine, but the news that a newly discovered tape of Monk and Coltrane performing at the Five Spot in 1957 is about to be released by Blue Note is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. It even has Nutty (giggle)! I used to have a tape of the other live performance Dan discusses, and the quality is as bad as he says, though I would say that it’s listenable and useful to the learning musician, even if you may require a little, er, help getting in the right head.

In the comments on his post, Dan mentions the Miles Davis Live in Stockholm recording. I’ve got the recording of So What from the first set of Live in Stockholm here, if you’re interested in downloading it.

The lengths some Democrats will go to in their never ending effort to lose every election are truly stunning. Perhaps we should all just get the words “America Hater” tattooed on our foreheads and call it a day. Maybe then those mean Republicans will be nice to us.

This article in the New York Times about succession plans for ABC’s evening broadcast made me a little sad. Something about the idea of Charlie Gibson seceding Peter Jennings feels very wrong. I keep thinking about some episode from the Daily Show about a year ago where Jon Stewart is deriding Gibson over his probing questions of contestants from the Bachelor. Maybe I’m a snob, but that particular move would seem like a real step down. Once you’ve promoted the most super duper rose ceremony ever, and with a straight face, do you really deserve a promotion?

On a not entirely different note, I wanted to point you to this nice juxtaposition by Karl on Philly Future.

If you are curious about the rather strange post I had up last night, Chris Bowers has some additional information on potential issues with PoliticsPA. The story is murky and I’ll admit to not being able to make heads or tails of the whole mess.

One interesting point Chris makes is that we should probably consider building an alternative resource for the local liberal movement. While there are a number of news agitators out there, and a number of them do cover Pennsylvania and Southeastern Pennsylvania, none quite fit the purely political niche filled by PoliticsPA. Looking over the site, I think building an alternative probably wouldn’t require a great deal of time or resources. A couple of very part time volunteers to cull all of the local papers (including the very small ones) for political headlines and opinion pieces would probably fill the bill. The infrastructure would be cheaper than dirt. Hell, I’d even donate the bandwidth if need be.

…you shoud listen.

From one high school dropout to another, you’ll be missed Peter. Peter Jennings died today at age 67.

It’s odd the connections one makes to people you don’t know and never will, but one of the connections I made in my own life was to Peter Jennings. My mother and grandmother were both quick to remind me, at a certain point in time, that not finishing high school didn’t mean as much as I thought. They both used Jennings as an example. I’ve used that example myself, in my own mind, on a number of occasions. We’re not as large a demographic as some, but it was always nice to be so well represented. Regardless of your circumstances, it’s heartening to see people with a similar background do well.

Take a few days off, watch a little baseball, wake up after a long afternoon nap on a Sunday and find out that you got linked to by one of your favorite sites. Not because of anything good you did, mind you, but because you got taken in. Typical. Go ahead and read the two stories to find out what sort of fool I am (here and here). I’m taking the precaution of pulling the link to PoliticsPA until I get a better handle on what’s going on, not that I’m worried anybody has ever clicked on it until now. The story, or a least my part in it, isn’t quite as self serving as it looks in the linked pieces, but that’s besides the point.

I do tend to be less cautious with the blogroll than I am with any other portion of this site. With the stories I promote or write about, I try to do the minimum of research to verify the information contained within is credible. Occasionally I post something I have questions about, but I try to make that clear within the text of the post. I probably don’t make the caveats in as clear a manner as I ought to, so that’s definitely something I should work on in the future. With the blogroll, however, I tend to look at the site and see if it’s something I find interesting, informative and credible. If I see something I think my readers will find interesting I link to it. While most of the sites I link to are to the left of center, I’m not necessarily on the same page they are on ideologically, nor do I always agree with all of their stories. Not that it matters, but I would like to note that I’ve never linked to a site because they link to mine or because I’m trolling for traffic. That sort of thing is fine, but it’s just not my style.

On occasion the owner of another site will notice that I’ve linked to their site and write me a thank you email promising a reciprocal link. Each time I’ve received one of those emails, I respond by writing that they should only link to this site if they like it and find it worthwhile. Some of them have taken my advice and decided against the link. That’s fine with me and I’m not offended in the least. I’m not in this for personal acclamation.

I found the link I got from PoliticsPA (the site in question) peculiar because it uses my last name (Baldwin), but not the name of the site. While I’ve never tried for anonymity here, I’ve only used my last name on the site once, and that was after the both Technorati and PoliticsPA started linking to me by my full name. The other odd thing about it was that somebody from that site very badly wanted me to know that they had linked to me by clicking on the link several times a day. While this is standard promotional practice for small time operations (like low traffic blogs), it seemed odd that anybody from what seems like a professional website would care that I know they exist. Rowhouse Logic isn’t exactly a Mecca of internet traffic after all. When they asked me for a link, I did a quick review of the stories on the site and most were links to stories and editorials in local papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News - it seemed above board. I should have checked harder and that’s my mistake.

Some time this week, I’ll send the PoliticsPA editor who contacted me an email asking for some clarification. I do hope to get some. If I’m satisfied with the answers and it jives with what I’m able to find out on my own, I’ll republish the link. Until then, I’m taking a little more time off as I’m feeling a little more than a litte foolish. Actualy, I feel as though I’ve just received a swift kick in the groin.

Update: Albert has a nice wrap-up of this whole mess as does Swing State Project.

This paragraph, however, fits something quite well.

But the son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he was still in a rage. “Wine-bibber,” he cried, “with the face of a dog and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath- nay, by this my sceptre which shalt sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains- for the axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven- so surely and solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help them, and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered insult to the bravest of the Achaeans.”

-Homer

…you should listen.