Blue Monday Reads

Hello from the depths of Mardi Gras and the despair of the press coverage of the US Presidential Primary.

“Planet earth is Blue and there’s nothing I can do.”

I never really understood the double entrendre enveloping that lyric when I was a a preteen first turning into a Bowie Fan.  I grok it now.

That’s a view of New Orleans there on the left today!  It was taken from space by US Astronaut Terry W. Virts who posted it to his Twitter page a few days ago.  He had a simple message for us: “Good night #NewOrleans. Bonsoir La Nouvelle-Orléans”.  

I thought I’d also treat you to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield singing Bowie’s Space Oddity from the International Space Station. He’s got a great voice and some interesting change in lyrics.  I’m not sure how he got the guitar up there but watching it float around is a trip.   Stick around to watch his collaboration with Barenaked Ladies and some high school kids from 2013. It’s so kewl!!!

I’m not sure why–of all the Bowie songs out there–this song is haunting me.  It’s not really bothering me that I feel compelled to sit at the Steinway and grab a guitar for it then arrange away.  It’s sort’ve a life time hazard of being a musician with me that melodies grab me and hold tight. So, I’m passing my brain Tweak on to you, lucky you!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apemYk2oz7M

Now for more earthly matters…

I’m really trying to understand wtf is going on with the media and the Democratic primary.  Maybe they’re tired of Republican crazy and want to create some lunacy among the Democrats.  Maybe, they’ve just got caught up in the mythos of a great outsider still itching to take down the Clintons.  It’s just early and getting old already.

Glenn Thrush of Politico has interviewed President Obama and the dissection has begun. 

Barack Obama, that prematurely gray elder statesman, is laboring mightily to remain neutral during Hillary Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, the state that cemented his political legend and secured his path to the presidency.

But in a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatably pragmatic demands of a presidency he likens to the world’s most challenging walk-and-chew-gum exercise.

“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.

Iowa isn’t just a state on the map for Obama. It’s the birthplace of his hope-and-change phenomenon, “the most satisfying political period in my career,” he says — “what politics should be” — and a bittersweet reminder of how far from the garden he’s gotten after seven bruising years in the White House.

So, from Thrush’s vantage point, Clinton seems the obvious Obama follow-up.  There also these overall daunting poll numbers when you look beyond the February openers.  What’s with the conversation on a Bernie Bump? 

natesilver: FWIW, our FiveThirtyEight national polling average (which we’re not publishing yet — stay tuned) has Clinton up 22 percentage points. Although that was before the Monmouth poll released today, which might tighten things a bit. But somewhere in the high teens or perhaps low 20s nationally is where the race seems to be. By contrast, our averaging method would have had Clinton up by 25 points at the end of December.

So that suggests some tightening, but not as much as the media narrative — which is pretty blatantly cherry-picking which polls it emphasizes — seems to imply.

From there, I’m seeing some other headlines which I don’t quite grok.

From  BC News: First Read: Get Ready for a Long Fight for the Democratic Nod.  It’s Chuck Todd so be forewarned because as you know the Republicans are rooting for Bernie big time.  The weird thing is the fine print doesn’t connect with that clickbait headline.  But, FYI there is this which is factual and remember, we’re always around to Live Blogs Debates and Townhalls.

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley participate at a CNN forum at Drake University in Des Moines, IA beginning at 9:00 pm ET… Clinton holds three earlier events in Iowa, hitting Waukee, Knoxville, and Oskaloosa… Sanders, meanwhile, stumps in Iowa Falls, Ames, and Grinnell… Donald Trump holds a rally in Farmington, NH at 7:00 pm ET… Ted Cruz spends his day in Iowa… So does Marco Rubio… Chris Christie is in New Hampshire… Ben Carson hits the Hawkeye State… And John Kasich is in New Hampshire.

Countdown to Iowa: 7 days

Countdown to New Hampshire: 15 days

I’m really looking forward to hearing this debate because Bernie isn’t standing up well to media scrutiny and I’m denying to hear a response to this: “Sanders: Clinton is running a ‘desperate’ campaign that lacks excitement.”

Asked about his comments last spring that he had no intention of playing the role of spoiler or weakening Clinton’s standing in the general election, Sanders turned the question on its head.

“That’s a two-way question, isn’t it?” he said. “When Hillary Clinton’s hit man is throwing garbage at the media, she is in a sense making it harder for me to win the general election.

“Our campaign is not going to simply sit back and accept all of these attacks,” Sanders added. “We are going to win this thing.”

In another sign of growing confidence, Sanders has stepped up his talk of the general election. “I would very much look forward to a race against Donald Trump,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” In speeches at his rallies, he sprinkles in previews of “a Sanders administration.”

Over the course of The Post interview, Sanders said Clinton was running a “desperate” campaign incapable of generating the kind of excitement his has. He raised questions about her motives and character. He said he expects Clinton and her campaign to “throw the kitchen sink” at him in the coming week in what he described as a craven attempt to avoid an embarrassing loss in Iowa.

Sanders questioned Clinton’s association with David Brock, the head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, whom Sanders called a “hit man.”

Even more bizarre is this comment: “Sanders says the flak he’s getting from Clinton reminds him of what Obama got in 2008.”  Is this Sanders way of warming up to black folks?

“We get attacked about five times a day,” Sanders told a crowd of about 700 people here. “But it really reminds me very much of what happened here in Iowa eight years ago. Remember that? Eight years ago, Obama was being attacked for everything. He was unrealistic. His ideas were pie-in-the sky. He did not have the experience that was needed. You know what? People of Iowa saw through those attacks then, and they’re going to see through those attacks again.”

This must be the Clinton speech that gave Bernie the heebie jeebies.

It was the most forceful and direct contrast Clinton has drawn with Sanders yet, a speech that underscored the increasing urgency and acrimony of the race. From health care to foreign policy, Clinton repeatedly referenced Sanders by name and questioned whether his ideas could ever become reality.

“I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in the real world,” Clinton said. “I care about making a real difference in your life and that gets to the choice you have to make in this caucus.”

Clinton acknowledged that while she and Sanders “share many of the same goals” they have “different records and different ideas on how to drive progress.”

The former secretary of state used a Teleprompter to deliver her remarks to hundreds of supporters on the campus of Simpson College. The speech, one adviser said, was designed to “shake some sense into Iowans” and escalate the experience argument she has been making against Sanders with limited success.

“Senator Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, but when he does it raises concerns,” Clinton said. “Sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought it through.”

Clinton’s campaign had multiple cameras here and plan to turn part of the speech into an ad, according to aides.

If that’s what Bernie and his groupies feel is an attack then consider me a warrior princess.  I feel the same way.

So, that’s my venture into Spaciness today.

What’s on you reading and blogging list?