LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ran virtually unopposed for his second term and still only got 55 percent of the vote. Between a sex scandal involving a member of the press - to wide reports of his all around hesitancy to do actual work - he's not well liked in Los Angeles. In fact, just the most basic tiny improvements to the city like planting a million trees or making a major thoroughfare a one-way during rush hour have failed during his tenure. Politically it's the end for Mayor V, he's not going to run for higher office. He's done.

So now as he's really accomplished little in his two terms to help a city whose unemployment is 12.2 percent - whose crumbling infrastructure is highlighted in car commercials as an obstacle course - Villaraigosa's next move is to give the boot to Occupy LA.

From local NBC4:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office will reportedly give Los Angeles occupiers a 72-hour window to close the City Hall lawn encampment as early as Monday.

Deputy Mayor Matt Szabo told Occupy L.A. representatives during an early afternoon meeting that the city would officially declare the 1.2-acre park surrounding City Hall closed sometime next week, according to National Lawyers Guild attorney Jim Lafferty.

The LA City Council unanimously passed a resolution in favor of Occupy LA. This week, it leaked that the Mayor's office has been trying to buy off the protesters with office space and farm land. So they first went for appeasement and because the protesters are not going away - it's time to change tactics.

Here's the thing: Occupy LA and City Hall are a few blocks from Skid Row - where tens of thousands of people have been sleeping in tents for decades on the streets. And somehow the mayor - a Democrat - whose managed to do little (and little right) is going to split hairs and try to kick out protesters angry about extreme wealth inequality?

This is what you call Tony's golden touch and it's about to meet Occupy. This will go well.

Few Americans Familiar with More than Four of Ten Commandments

Swift Reports

While the Ten Commandments are increasingly popular in both text and tablet form, a new poll has found that few Americans are familiar with more than four of them. The Biblical bans on murder, theft, and adultery ranked highest among adults surveyed, while only a handful were familiar with Commandments prohibiting graven images and false witness.

Activist judges found to be least familiar with Commandments...read on

via That Colored Fellas : By La Shawn Barberella

The execution of this poor woman by ‘activist judges’, abortion-on-demand crazed lesbos at Planned Parenthood and Black Liberals who hate me but still read my blog, has now increased demand from the cable networks for my on-air insight and analysis! Such a reflection of my increasing popularity has forced me to hire the veteran publicist/media advisor Bumble Ward, who also represents the famous Director Tim Burton.

With my many appearances on MSNBC’s Connected Coast To Coast, I can now tell you my dear readers that CNN is now the only anti-American cable news network left! read on

Watch What You Say

Via Avedon Carol, here's a creepy story of a blogger who got turned into the FBI by a reader and was visited by the Secret Service.

A WRITER on popular blog-site LiveJournal has posted of her nightmare ordeal with the US Secret Service, an event spurred by a posting she made to her blog criticising George Bush prior to the Presidential Election earlier this week.
Whilst the offending post has been removed - to spare other users further Federal interference, according to author 'anniesj' - you can see her account of events in full, which has been left as a word to the wise.

The post in question is gone, so I have no way of evaluating what it said. However, this combined with the fun story we heard the other day about the romance novelist who got her computer and books confiscated because she was researching terrorism in Cambodia, I think it's safe to say that four more years with a Justice Department that considers torture justified is not exactly comforting to those of us who write mean things about Republicans or use red flagged research terms on the internet.

Mandate Indeed

Geez. The way these conservatives talk, you'd think they won by 30 points instead of 3.

Even Bush himself has been telling the press that he has "the people at my back" (or is that backside?) -- in the process of making clear to everyone considering crossing those bridges they say they're building what the reality is: It's "my way or the highway."

But the entire press corps has bought into the myth of Bush's "mandate." Indeed, it's all any of them can seem to talk about.

Now, just as an experiment, I went back and checked, because I thought I remembered that Bill Clinton cleaned Bob Dole's clock in 1996 by a substanitally wider margin. Sure enough, the final figures were:

Bill Clinton 47,402,357 49%
Bob Dole 39,198,755 41%

Ross Perot 8,085,402 8%

In other words, Clinton won by a margin of of 8 percent of the popular vote -- 8.2 million.
Did the "liberal media" declare that Clinton had a clear mandate from the people?

Well, no.

The mainstream press instead proclaimed that Clinton had been given "a message, not a mandate".

Racism stands tall!

I talked to a longtime friend of mine who is a registered independent. You know the kind that is like Bill O’Reilly. Although he actually believes that he is independent. He is a smart, free thinker and will weigh the issues and the man before he casts his vote. A very noble and smart position to have. He has an IQ of above 140, has a lovely wife and two beautiful girls and in the last ten years became a very active Catholic. We had a lot of fun debating the issues from time to time in this presidential election. He called me today very happy with the outcome. Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said that had not John Kerry won the black vote by such a huge margin, George Bush would have won the popular vote by a landslide. I asked him if he thought that blacks were Americans? He said of course. Then I said what is your point? Well he said "80 % of all people in prison are black, they have five children with different women, and will always vote Democrat because of the entitlement programs. I said that sounds awfully racist to me. "No I'm not", he said. "I'm just being honest"

Jerry Wexler, RIP: I'm proud and grateful that Jerry was a friend of mine, beginning the day in 1975 he called me, out of the blue, and said, "I like the way you sing. Let's make a record." I couldn't have been more surprised and thrilled if I'd received a phone call from God. I'd grown up listening to Jerry Wexler-produced records. He's one of the reasons I'm a musician. He took me to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and we did an album for Warner Brothers. Being around Jerry was a constant joy. He was a walking encyclopedia of popular American music, especially R&B and jazz. Aside from his important contributions as a genuine musical pioneer, and his unique talents as a producer, he was a wonderful raconteur, a man of exquisite taste, a tough businessman, but a gentleman, and a soft touch for musicians.

I could ask him something like, "tell me about Solomon Burke..." and he'd do an hour of lively, informative and often hilarious commentary on that subject and related topics, one story sparking another. I spent countless hours with him in New York before and after our project, in Alabama while we were recording, and on many occasions in the succeeding 30 years, pestering him to talk about his life in music, which he was always happy to do. I learned a lot. About his experiences with everyone from Ray Charles, to Willie Nelson, to Wilson Pickett, to Aretha Franklin, to Bob Dylan, and on and on. The last time I spoke with him several weeks ago, I opened the conversation by asking how he was doing. "How the hell you think I'm doing," he replied..."I'm 91...!!" What an honor it was for me to have had the opportunity to work with Jerry Wexler. I lost a friend. American music lost one of the greats.

Thought Theater: Compare & Contrast: Family Values and the 2008 election

Frameshop: What America needs to hear about Jerome Corsi, and the denialists riding the slime machine.

Pam's House Blend: Do your homework or Teach might pop a cap in your ass.

The Big Picture: Financial Innovation

If you're into this, the RBC committee will be meeting in the morning to render a decision on how they to treat both Michigan and Florida. We all know by now that they both were stripped of 100% of their delegates for moving up their primary to an earlier date. Here's some info on what's happening. Here's the DNC Statement on RBC Meeting from Yahoo.

"The analysis maintains that the RBC did have proper authority and jurisdiction in imposing the 100% sanction. The RBC had wide latitude in that decision.

"The document also examines the 50% automatic sanction and how to implement such a sanction: Under this scenario, one option would be to reduce the total number of delegates by half; the second option for consideration by the RBC would be to reduce the delegation's votes by half, so that each delegate gets a half vote.

I'm not a rules guy myself. The reason I received from the DNC for their decision of stripping away 100% from both states instead of the usual 50% was to send a message to any other state considering trying to circumvent the process. In my opinion, if they had left it at 5o%, there would have been primaries there and we wouldn't be having this discussion now or the big Saturday meeting. Anyway, they are both important states to the general election.

And I feel especially bad for Florida because it was the Republican legislature that forced the move instead of the Democratic party. I mean, it's Florida after all. There's a very popular Republican Governor running the show and we all know what can happen there after the 2000 debacle.

Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and Harry Reid have made it clear that they want the SD's to declare ASAP. Do you think they will flood in after the primaries have finally concluded? It's being covered by cable TV with all the talking heads out to play starting at 9 am EST. I hope I haven't confused anyone on this and I got it right. Please be kind in the comment section.

Update: Watching some of the meeting today, I forgot to mention how passionate MI is over this issue and how frustrated the voters have been. Are you tired of Iowa and NH setting the agenda and almost always picking the nominees?

(h/t Chris)

Well, given that Malkin and LGF are getting their collective knickers in a bunch over Rachael Ray wearing a fringed scarf in a recent ad for Dunkin' Donuts, shall we hear calls from them to boycott the McCain campaign, as it is quite clear from these photos that McCain's daughter and blog-mistress is showing her sympathy for them "terrists" and Ay-rabs like that them Yasser Arafat?

And as C&Ler Sean points out, the "Keffiyeh is also called a Shemagh and is used by almost every military force in the Middle East right now. You can buy it at most Army-Navy stores and is very popular amongst British, Australian, and US troops. It is not only used by the troops to help cover their mouths and faces during sand storms, but worn as a scarf to prevent suburn along the back of their necks during the day."

So what say you, Charles Johnson and Jesse, er...Michelle Malkin? Will you accuse the troops of sympathizing with the enemy and "mainstreaming terrorism"?