Seems that others, in this case the New York Times' Bob Hebert, are now picking up on that theme.

Sorry, you have to cut and paste the urls. I'm the least techno savvy blogger in the world. Anyway, this is a case in which I'd really hate to say I told you so -- there will be no joy in being right about this. As Hebert says, though, it's not too late to fix this mess. The issues do favor the Democrats, if only they'd get back to focusing on them, and by they I mean Senator Obama. The Clintons are going to be the Clntons, which means ruthless and flame throwing in their pursuit of power, even if that means tearing the party down to get it. It's up to Obama to do what he had been doing earlier in this incessantly long, and now boring and degrading, campaign -- rise above and challenge the electorate to go with him.

This country is at a frightening time in its history. We are legitimately bankrupt. The debt we've accrued by fighting this senseless war, coupled with disastrous, short-sighted, greed-driven economics have ensured that we're decades away from righting things without dramatic, even radical (only in the sense that they'd go so far against current thinking) changes in policy. Priorities drive policy and our priorities have been so fucked up for so long we do need real change, the kind of change that Obama talks about generally, but has been slow to articulate specifically. We were swept up in the symbolism he embodied for awhile, but now, as the veneer comes off the symbolism a little and the metaphor becomes a man, we need him to articulate a real vision for the future. To do this, he's going to have to do a better job of transcending the muck of modern day (read: Karl Rove-ish) campaign politics that the Clintons are bogging this primary down in. They fight well in the muck - Obama's got to get himself out of it and get back on message. Change and hope, change and hope. But tell us what change, and dare us to hope for it. We want to.

And while I'm thinking of it, why does George Hannitty, er Stephanopoulos, still have a job after his shameful pandering during the last debate? And while I'm still at it, why does the media treat the Pope's visit like it's some tour by the British royal family, gawking at the pomp and circumstance? Gross.

While I'm on the subject of under-appreciated talents, a few words about Adam Carolla. I've been listening to his morning show on 97.1 a lot lately. Now that the colossally unfunny Danny Bonaduce is off the show, it's really taken off. Here's a chance to see free-form, improved comedy/talk in a way that only radio can do. It's a perfect vehicle for Carolla's improvisational skills and his sidekick, Theresa Strasser is a perfect co-host, every bit as funny and sharp as Carolla. I highly recommend.

As for the Dems, this primary has jumped the shark. It's no longer interesting, exciting, illuminating or anything else. It's just a bummer now and, unfortunately, further proof of a previous piece I wrote for the Weekly about how only the Dems could blow this election. Please, Howard Dean, or whomever, do something to end this debacle as soon as possible or we might as well inaugurate John McCain now. There's nothing left now but further wreckage to the Dems chances in the general election. We're over it.

Sorry that's all I have time for. Be back soon.

I have to say, this film was a revelation. The Stones seem to have gone so far around the clock they've come back again to what they used to be — they're raging again. Everything about them in this footage seemed real — their love of music and their belief in the transgressive possibilities of rock and roll seemed all anew. What the hell was happening? At one point, in a close-up of Mick Jagger, I was sure he must have genuinely sold his soul to the devil and was the better for it. Looking like a rock and roll version of Nosferatu, Mick was sucking blood again. No longer with anything corporeal to rail against, he and the boys were fighting again. Not, this time, against an uptight establishment, against old people, like they did when they were rock and roll at its most primal, but against age itself. Against what we've become conditioned to thinking being older should mean. I felt like they were declaring, with every ounce of their still-formidable energy, that they would not go softly into the night, but would rather against its coming.

I had come to feel like Jagger embodied the worst, corporate aspects of rock, that he was about the business, and that Keith Richards was left carrying whatever soul the band might still have, but even he, it seemed, had been defeated by business of the Rolling Stones, and incredibly lucrative business that had become little more than a highly remunerative exercise in nostalgia. But seeing this, it was clear that Mick is simply a rock and roll animal. He seemed a prisoner of not just the music, but of what the Stones have symbolized — defiance. Check his blues harp playing in the cameo by Buddy Guy on "Champagne and Reefer." He's in an absolute rock 'n' roll animal zone — it's dirty, nasty and really good. And that's how he is for the entire show. As for Keith, he's simply a being from another planet. Far from a pirate or a devil, he's like an angelic, old man-boy, ageless and ancient, loving every note from every player. The most beautiful moment of all might have been his crooning of "You Got The Silver."

Some reviews have been less than kind, but I think they miss the point and have taken the easy view, the one I had during the Steel Wheels performance. This wasn't lazy or nostalgic, this was rock and roll as it should be, a rage against the machine of life that says you should be humble in the face of mortality. Humble? These guys? Hell fucking no, they seem to be saying, we're the fucking Rolling Stones. God bless them. Or, if not god, then the devil himself.

Lately, though, I've found a real solace and enjoyment in reading. So much so that I barely watch TV anymore. In the past half year I've read more than I have in a long, long time. I can't even recall all the novels I've read, but here are a few: Dirty Work by Larry Brown; Solo Faces and Light Years by James Salter, Rhythm of the Road by Allbyn Leah Hall, LA Rex by Will Beal, an LAPD cop, and most recently Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. I'm currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Each of these books has been an experience unto itself. I've lost myself, at a time when I need to, in every one. James Salter and Johnson's latest have been particular revelations. In fact, DJ's book is enough to revive one's faith in the novel as a vital form all by itself. It's sprawling, complicated, vivid and transcendent all at once. If you ever thought you had nothing left to read about our Vietnam experience, please do yourself a favor and read this book. Of course, the themes are applicable to current times.

I'm not sure what I mean by sharing this, except I'd like to know how you out there feel about such things and what you're into if you are actively engaged in this supposed anachronism. Either way, I hope you make time for it in your lives.

Listen, do anything you can to download this show. It was the funniest fucking thing I've heard on radio in ... maybe my life. Sometimes, when the right combo of people, mood, topics, riffs gets going, radio can be magic and that's what happened yesterday. It doesn't happen that often, not even on Jonesy's Jukebox, where it is more likely to happen than in other places, but where just as often the show can be almost arrogantly bland. Yesterday's show, though, was an example of how and why Jonesy's Jukebox can transcend the rest of bullshit, canned/contrived programs.

The magic came from spontaneity and a lack of self-consciousness and some amazingly hilarious riffs on There Will Be Blood sung to the tune of Anarchy In The UK and other ditties. I didn't think there could be legs left parodying that fairly ridiculous performance by Daniel Day-Lewis and the stilted dialogue that makes it so ripe to begin with, but I was wrong. New heights here. Tears of laughter type stuff.

Can anyone tell me what that means? How will those lives not be lost in vain? What of the 30,000 U.S. military men wounded, thousands upon thousands of them gruesomely? How will their sacrifice not be in vain? What of the estimated 90,000 (conservatively) Iraqi citizens who have died in this debacle. What did they die for?

In order to answer that question, you have to ask yourself another simple one, one which defies an answer: What is this war about?

Can you answer that?

Now try this: What was it ever about? What does victory or loss in this war mean?

Unfortunately, these lives Bush spoke of are dangerously close to being lost in vain. Iraq is a mess of almost irredeemable chaos and probably the best way for these soldiers' lives to not have been lost in vain would be for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the other liars who callously and arrogantly played with these lives to be held accountable for their crimes. Then, this debacle could serve as a lesson as to what should happen in a true democracy — the rule of law and truth prevails, even at the highest levels. But, lives lost in vain is what happens when you cook up an illegitimate war under illegitimate pretexts. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Haditha — these things are almost sadly inevitable when the whole thing is bound together by lies and corruption, moral and otherwise, and painted over with stubbornness and pride, with the absolute deficit of the most heroic trait a man can have: admitting a mistake and making amends.

Lives lost in vain is what happens when our elected officials and our citizens cower before bullies and demagogues. Lives lost in vain is what happens when lives are played with by those demagogues and autocrats.

So, it comes apart. Continually. You can't patch it back together with a revolving door of new generals and commanders as those bound by honesty and integrity resign in succession (U.S. Central Command commander Adm. Fallon being the latest).

Currently four cities in Iraq are at war with hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr's militiamen. This following a rise in suicide bombings over the past few days that has left scores of civilians, Iraqi soldiers and a handful of U.S. servicemen dead. The so-called Surge is, as it always has been, a smokescreen. Just like the second battle of Fallujah — remember, the one that broke the back of the insurgency?

The dark truth of this abominable war lurks behind these periodic smoke screens: there can't be a victory or even a good end to a war for which there never was a true or valid point to begin with.

I reserve most of my outrage over this for the spineless Democrats we elected in 2006 to end this terrible nonsense. The Bush administration are simply morally bankrupt criminals. The Democrats are something worse altogether: cowards.

Indeed, let's not let the lives of these brave men and women be lost in vain.

I hope whoever wins the Democratic nomination, and, please God, wins the presidential race, finds a place for Richardson high up in the cabinet. Secretary of State, or even Veep would be nice.

What I'm shocked and awed about is how brave Obama's speech was. While distancing himself from the more incendiary incantations of the right Rev., he didn't back down a bit and said he'd no sooner disown his pastor than he would his sometimes bigoted, white grandmother. Then he went on to give one of the most engaging, heartfelt, rational and learned speeches about the real issues of race I've ever heard. There was no grandstanding or demagoguery, but calm and considerate truth. It was the ballsiest display by a politician I've seen in my lifetime and if you take the time to really listen to this speech, you'll learn more about the real burdens of our racist past and present than you ever had before (my post of last night touches on many of the themes Obama addressed in his speech:)

Obama made a big gamble with this speech. He trusted you to be able to accept a black man who isn't going to assuage your secret fears and prejudices, but will trust you enough to handle the truth. You liked him when you felt there was enough cream in his coffee. Now that you know he's not only beautiful, but black, too, how do you feel?

Here it is for those of you who missed it.

This furor over Reverend Wright's remarks is flat-out bullshit. Leaving aside for a minute my personal feelings that organized religion, and especially those of the Christian variety, is inherently a fucked up crap fest, ask yourself what black man or woman with a brain wouldn't be aggrieved, pissed and on the verge of insanity? For some reason, though, we don't grant the justifications for that anger, which are prima facie and as real as death, but expect blacks to heal the wounds of our collective guilt and are offended when they don't politely accept the burden. No, of course, I'm not talking about you specifically, but, yes, I am talking about us.

It's not true that we're in a post-racial society or era. We might be getting there slowly, slowly, but we can't be until stories like Barack Obama's are not so incredibly remarkable. No group --no matter how you want to blather about your great grandaddies coming over here with nothing, etc., etc., blah, fucking blah -- came here the way African Americans did. Their history here is entirely distinct and entirely a bloody, blight of shame on us. But it isn't their history. It's our history and we have to stop trying to deny the truth behind the words of people like Reverend Wright. No other group has been so systematically degraded and deprived of the basic rights of and access to our society (um, like family, property, community, equality before the law, capital, education...but I repeat myself). And while the achievements of black Americans in this culture actually defy all odds considering, it's more a credit to them than to a narrative we can collectively lay claim to. Would that it were different. But it isn't and history can't be shed in a minute or a year or a campaign and can't be revised because we wish it to be so or because we say it is so. It just is. And it can only be made, not remade, by creating new history and new narratives and if that process has begun, it's only just and barely begun.

Not to mention where was all the outrage when born-again Christians preachers, mostly white, were calling HIV God's revenge on gays, or were saying Bill Clinton was Satan and the UN was the devil's workshop and the End Times were nigh and that 9/11 was payback for our permissive, liberal society and was heralding The End, Hallelujah. I didn't hear your outrage then. Funny how righteous and clear it is now over this tempest in a teapot.

Now, of course, with the good Reverend, you have your excuse and you won't be satisfied until Obama can step-n-fetch-it to your satisfaction, 'til he's satisfactorily broken.

And when that happens, will we then be post racial?

Watch Barack Obama's March 18 speech here.

Now, they've all but done it. And by they, I mean the Clintons. Hillary and Bill and their no-low-is-too-low-to-go in order to get what they want posture is sucking the lifeblood out of this potentially historic moment. When they're done, quite possibly the only historic thing about the next president will be his age. Congrats, Bill, Hillary and Clinton bagman, Terry McAuliffe, you've devised the perfect strategy to wreck the Dems at a time when more folks had become energized -- and I do mean had because you can feel the the energy and optimism (call the combination hope if you want) sapping every time the Clintons suck it dry with their cynicism. Remember these are the guys who won the White House in '92 by selling the soul of the Democratic party, turning it into the empty compassionate conservatism that now passes for liberal: tastes great, less filling.

Clinton is no longer employing the kitchen-sink strategy; she's employing the crapper strategy -- take it all and turn it to shit. Currently, taking a page out of Lee Atwater's and Karl Rove's book, it's the shit of race baiting. Congratulations, Hill, you've managed to bring race back into the middle or a contest involving a woman and a black man that had for a minute looked like it would transcend racism. But the Clinton's started playing with the race card, like fire, back in South Carolina when Big Bill began tickling this country's latent, racial nerve-endings (It wasn't evoking Jesse Jackson; it was the condescension with which Bill evoked him) and continued to do so in Ohio and Texas (What fool, you want a black man answering your crisis call at 3 a.m.?). In the process, he once again fulfilled what Black America, for good reason, has come to expect of powerful, supposedly liberal white folks-- use them and lose them.

Blacks had as much to do with Bill getting in office as anything. And the Clintons are doing everything they can to use Obama's blackness against him. The latest outrage is Clinton campaign operative Geraldine Ferraro, she of the '84 Mondale-Ferraro ticket, saying that Obama is only in the position he's in because he's black. Good work, assholes. You just lost, even if you win. Especially if you win.

Not only is it outrageous and absurd (if there's any segment of our society that is not afforded its share of privileges, it's black men) and not only does it fly in the face of the Obama's objective success (you don't finish top at Harvard Law because you're black), it's so cynical it's lethal. It's the kind of gutter politics that turns people off, that smears the whole thing, that deflates what was once elevating, that takes the wind out of the sails, that makes you think "fuck it, this sucks." I quit.

And that's exactly what the Clinton's want. They want you to go home. They want this movement to be deflated. They are getting beaten badly up there where the air is fresh and hopeful, they want to bring this back down to where it's stale and suffocating. In the process, they are tearing up the party, the millions of newly registered Democrats, and the hope that something transformative, transcendent can happen, because Hillary, despite being the first serious female contender for president, hasn't yet proved she's transcendent. No, instead, she's proved she's a Clinton. She's not going to quit, so don't you.

Look, I get the inherent contradiction in Mr. Clean, who investigated a high-end prostitution ring or two in his day, getting busted for spending thousands of dollars for the company of well-appointed call girls. Worse, call girls whom he allegedly paid to cross state lines to provide their services, a violation of a 1910 law prohibiting transporting prostitutes across state lines. And now that he's probably finished, the robber-barons he went after while serving as state attorney general in Manhattan couldn't be happier. Nor could blowhards like New York state republican leader James Tedisco. One measure of basic intelligence is the ability to hold contrary ideas in your head without losing your mud. In this case, that would mean grasping that Spitzer could be a well-intended, well meaning anti-corruption reformer who believes in equality before the law no matter how rich you are, but could also be a flawed, fallible man, like you, capable of mistakes. Without being able to perform those mental gymnastics we tend to throw out the metaphorical baby with the bath water.

I'm not sure who Client 9 really is. Crusaders are always worthy of skepticism and Spitzer was a righteous, some would say self-righteous, crusader who didn't seem to have a lot of forgiveness in him, though some would say he had plenty of vindictiveness. He sure fucked himself and the weirdness of it all, getting nabbed by doing the things he used to nab people for doing, and by leaving the trails he used to catch people with, suggests some Shakespearean torment or at least Freudian psychology...Or, maybe a cigar was just a cigar in this case.

Why, as with drugs, prostitution is illegal, I have no idea (just look at the horrible state of anarchy, chaos and deprivation in Holland!). I'm not saying prostitution is a victimless crime -- the women employed in the industry are there for a variety of reasons that span the gamut from relatively benign to incredibly dark. But wouldn't decriminalization, as it would with drugs, take a lot of the criminality and worse-case scenarios out of the equation?

But it remains against the law and Spitzer definitely seems to have broken the law, and proved either hypocritical or truly impulse-control-deprived. But for Chrissakes, don't we have something better to do than devote federal resources to breaking up $4000-a-shot call girl rings? Maybe the lesson for Client 9 is that what comes around goes around. It's just a shame that in this country what goes around so much is a waste of time and talent.

But that's not the point (though it should be for somebody -- can't we do something to clean this shit up? I mean, it's why people come to LA). The point is, I met a friend for brunch afterwards at Casa Del Mar...wait that's not the point either. The point is, while we were lounging at the beach in the early afternoon, she asked me what song I'd be if I were a song. For some reason, I said "She's The One" from Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run album.

I thought about why I said that for a minute, and I realized the song had all the elements in it one would like to think of as being a soundtrack to one's life. It's starts out with a mysterious and sexy echo-chambered piano intro which seems to foretell of excitement and drama, like delicate fingertips gently tickling your spine. Then, the vocals come in over the piano, sounding kind of like Elvis might if he wore a leather jacket (for real) and hung out on the boardwalk drinking beers and acting tough. Nothing but piano and a few well placed, stripped-down E and A chords for the entire first verse:

With her killer graces and her secret places that no boy can fill
With her hands on her hips, oh, and that smile on her lips because she knows that it kills me
With her soft French cream, standing in that doorway like a dream, I wish she'd just leave me alone
Because French cream won't soften them boots and French kisses will not break that heart of stone
With her long hair falling and her eyes that shine like a midnight sun
Whoa-oh, she's the one
She's the one

In the second verse, the song breaks into a kind of funked up, Bo Diddley beat with the vocals in the background sounding like a half-desperate superhero, on fire and befuddled about what vexes him -- not sure what to do in the face of such power, but going in there anyway.

That Thunder in your heart
At night when you're kneeling in the dark
It says you're never gonna leave her

By the time it ends, it's all howls and grunts and power-chord guitar slashes and saxophone wails....Oooooooh, she's the one... tightly wound, ready-to-break, almost out of control. Caught somewhere between punk and funk; defiant, demanding, vulnerable and pleading.

It's fucking sexy. Make what you want of Bruce Springsteen, and I have to say I don't make a lot of him these days, but he sure as hell nailed it with the Born To Run album. And it's the songs you don't hear so much about that make it truly great -- whether it's flame-throwers like "Night", passion plays like "She's The One" or epics like "Backstreets", which is probably the best song on the record (yes, better than "Born To Run" or "Thunder Road"), or the proto-Tom Waits "Meeting Across The River" the record is defined by its unabashed passion and romance. Not like flowers romance, but like booming, big-idea, fuck-you-and-everybody-else-saying-no, or you can't, type of romance. Youthful romance, but not naive youthful romance, more like the kind that gives you the energy and balls to say this is likely to all fuck up, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. The kind you have not before you know better, but before knowing better stops you. Some damn good shit, and I highly recommend it if you want to feel alive, which means feeling possibility.

After you're done with that, check out The Wild The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, which is where a lot of the ideas and characters that come of age in Born To Run start feeling their oats. Forget being a soundtrack, the two records make one hell of a screenplay.

Only the great thing about this one is that it's up to you how it finishes.

I started thinking about Swayze's career. He's made some iconic films -- Dirty Dancing, Ghost, and even Roadhouse and Point Break. A lot of them have been sort of B-grade, but they've hung around in the pop culture ether, become points of reference. There's even a comedic parody play that did well in New York and is now showing here, still I believe, that is an homage to Point Break.

When Dirty Dancing came out, I was dating a woman who related closely to the lead character, Baby, played by Jennifer Grey. She was young, beautiful, Jewish and stepping out. In some ways, I was her bad boy, as Johnny Castle was to Baby. I was a hard-ish living Irish boy from the, relatively speaking, wrong side of the tracks. Only the roles were kind of reversed. She taught me much more than I taught her. I was more of the naif.

When we broke up, I went into my Roadhouse stage, spending a lot of time in, relatively speaking, roughneck bars and getting in my share of scraps. A few years after Point Break came out, I first moved to Los Angeles. Sometime after that, following some moving around, I came back and stayed and took up surfing, something like Johnny Utah did. I had been into snowboarding prior to that and related to the adrenaline-rush ethos of that film.

It would be a stretch to say I had my Ghost era, but, suffice to say, I can relate. All those films have iconic moments in them that have become cultural touchstones. For this, Swayze, who might not be the world's greatest actor, but certainly found a way to be relatable in all his roles, can be proud. These are the ways pop stars become part of our social fabric. And Swayze certainly did. Whatever happens, he lived a life.

Here's wishing him and his family the best.