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.

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"?

Absolute shocker tonight as the special election in MS-01, one of the reddest districts on the map, has been won by Democrat Travis Childers. Russert, Matthews, Olbermann, and even Huckabee all agree: this is very, very bad news for the GOP.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Both Darth Cheney (Russert's words) and Mike Huckabee campaigned for Childers' opponent. Maybe it's not a good idea to have the least popular guy in America promoting you. Just a thought.

The Democrats are now 3-for-3 in these red district special elections: Along with Childers' win tonight, Bill Foster took Denny Hastert's old IL seat, and Dan Cazayoux took the solidly red 6th district in LA.

Another bit of good news comes out of Nebraska tonight, where true Democrat Scott Kleeb beat out fake Democrat Tony Raimondo by a wide margin for the right to take a run at Chuck Hagel's open seat. Congrats, Scott.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Where better to get reasonable analysis of the Veep sweepstakes than the GOP Propaganda office...er, FOXNews? As far as FOXNews is concerned (okay, to be fair, pretty much everyone else too), the race is over and now it is time for Obama to pick his running mate. Of course, the FOX punditocracy would love for it to be Hillary Clinton, because they can just recycle the same smears she's been vetted, and doubly beneficial it gives them a continued outlet to get their Bubba-hate on. Even the token "voice of reason," Juan Williams, says that the biggest negative of picking Hillary is not the strained relationship between the two rivals, but the out-of-control Bill.

Kristol: I think Bill Clinton-I've thought about this-I assume is intrigued by a Obama/Clinton ticket about a week ago. I think Bill Clinton is probably the showstopper there though. It's just too complicated. She can't even control him when she's running for President, how could she...how could Obama control him if she's on the ticket as the VP nominee? It think it's just too...the addition of him to her and all that baggage is just too much.

Williams: So I think it would unify the party, I think these are two candidates that are very popular with Democrats across the board and the downside is what Bill said, that Bill Clinton would be in the mix and Barack Obama would have to be watching his back all the time, because you don't know what these people are up to-they're trying to overshadow you, that will be a problem.

For added fun, the Washingtonian expands the guessing game to suggest who might be on an Obama Cabinet.

The last I heard, the right was feeling quite pleased with itself because there was some evidence to suggest the traffic for the top liberal blogs was trending down, while the traffic for the top conservative blogs was trending up. This item, relying on SiteMeter data from the end of December, argued, “It has long been understood that the largest liberal blogs have generally produced more web traffic than the largest conservative blogs.... After surveying the traffic stats of many major political blogs, I found that web traffic for several major liberal blogs either declined sharply or stayed the same while major conservative blogs saw a sharp increase in traffic.”

Now, apparently, the right is prepared to argue the opposite — liberal blogs are more popular — but with a rationalization to explain the phenomenon.

Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online — though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.”

I’m not quite sure how best to respond to something like this — it’s unusually unhinged, even by the standards of the far-right blogosphere — though I think Matt Stoller is on the right track by relying on simple mockery: “Now, being a doctor who performs abortions is in fact a job, so one might find conflicting narratives in Erick’s quote. And if the way to use the internet well politically is to up the number of abortions, then the GOP is kind of fu**ed.”

Notice the nearly three-to-one margin:

"Who do you want to see take the lead role in setting policy for the country: George W. Bush or the Congress?" asks NBC/WSJ. The answer is congress by a 62 to 21 margin. One more reason to think that the weakness and conflict-aversion of the congressional Democrats is a bigger source of their low approval ratings than is any alleged overreaching. The President is very unpopular and people are apparently desperate for Congress to play a bigger role.

Get to work.

Via The Huffington Post:

At least four major firms have pulled advertising from Michael Savage's nationally syndicated radio show following a campaign highlighting his inflammatory rhetoric. One other company, Geico insurance, is expected to follow suit.

The campaign, launched recently by Brave New Films, generated thousands of calls urging advertisers on the Savage Nation show to sever financial ties to the widely popular (and frequently offensive) talk host.

"We are thrilled at the amazing response of the true patriots all over the blogsphere who responded to our NOSAVAGE campaign," Robert Greenwald, head of the film company, said in a statement. "People have called and emailed and the responsible sponsors have responded by pulling their ads and asking that their ads not be on this racist and hateful show." Read on...

The Weiner Man is just one in a huge gaggle of right wing nut jobs on the radio, but his brand of hate stands alone. The poor guy was canned last year by his management agency for attacking Melissa Etheridge and lesbians and now the schmuck is finally being dumped by some of his biggest sponsors. Kudos to Brave New Films and everyone who has spoken out against this cretin.

Randy Newman -- A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

Rolling Stone Magazine named Newman's song the 2nd Best Song of 2007

Now in my 40s, I cheerfully cede my need to stay on top of popular music to my children and their generation. So I've never heard of M.I.A., whom Rolling Stone has placed on the top of their list of Top 50 Albums of 2007. However, I did love The White Stripes (#17), Youssou N'Dour (#30) and Maroon 5 (#32), so at least I knew a few on the list.

What music stood out to you last year?