Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

“The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.”

“The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), “the black candidate” (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).”

“It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to ‘undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.’”

Test Your Energy IQ

“1) To save energy, many consumers are replacing existing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs. How much less electricity do CFLs use?”

“5) Geothermal power is a mostly clean alternative source. Where does it come from?”

“9) Since the late 1990s, car makers have been offering SUVs, light trucks and some fleet sedans with a “flexible-fuel” option. Flex-fuel vehicles run on a combination of gasoline and:”

Berkeley City Council to address Marines recruiting center controversy Tuesday night

“The City Council ignited a nationwide controversy two weeks ago when it voted 6-3 to send a letter to the U.S. Marines Corps telling it that it’s recruiting office at 64 Shattuck Avenue, which opened about 13 months ago, ‘is not welcome in our city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.’”

“In a statement, Houston said, ‘I cannot stand by and do nothing while the city of Berkeley declares war on the U.S. Marines Corps.’”

“Marines officials have said they don’t plan to leave Berkeley, despite the council’s vote.”

A Caribbean Corner of Brooklyn, Fighting to Survive

“After winning a one-year reprieve from their landlord — the City of New York — the market’s 13 merchants may find themselves forced out by June if the city moves forward with a plan to demolish the building and replace it with housing. Although the merchants have been offered buyouts and the option of relocating their shops to a strip of storefronts in a public housing development, they want to stay put.”

“Moore Street is one of four surviving public markets that were built during the Depression to get pushcarts off crowded and unsanitary streets. Now, the city appears to have come full circle, wanting to close Moore Street while it promotes a new generation of pushcarts that would take fresh vegetables to poor neighborhoods. The turn of events puzzled the merchants, who prided themselves on selling so many kinds of tropical fruits and roots that they put up posters detailing all the varieties.”

“Several local elected officials have offered to negotiate with the city to cover the deficit and are working to line up financing for redesign studies and business assistance that would enable the merchants to stay. This being Brooklyn, the political skirmish is suitably streetwise.”

Traffic lights have drivers playing the waiting game

“Relatively few cities in the region have state-of-the-art technology when it comes to traffic signals, according to several transportation engineers I spoke with recently. Even the city of Los Angeles — the widely acknowledged leader in advanced traffic signals — is undergoing a $150-million upgrade to its lights.”

“Out-of-whack lights are not a problem only in Southern California. The Institute of Traffic Engineers, a group based in Washington, D.C., issued a report last year that overall gave the nation a D grade when it came to synchronizing lights.”

“That’s an improvement from the D minus the nation earned in 2005.”

Bikes becoming essential piece of equipment for Tucson

“Bicycles may soon become as important as typewriters and desks as the City of Tucson launches a bike sharing program.”

“The program works like this — city workers can check out bikes and helmets at eight downtown locations and use them for work or lunch.”

“Raytheon is the first business to get on board. The missile maker is buying 19 3-speed Giant bicycles after about 20 riders gave one bike a test run starting in mid-December.”

Cops: Crack smoking driver causes multiple car crash

“A woman who had just smoked crack ran several red lights along a Miami street Sunday night before careening into an SUV and setting off crashes involving four other vehicles, police said. A total of four people were injured.”

“Two women had smoked crack in the area of North Miami Avenue and 74th Street at around 6:30 p.m., and then drove their Jeep Cherokee north along North Miami Avenue, said Miami police Sgt. Manny Gonzalez.”

Common sense finds no protection

“Adult entertainment — adult bookstore, adult motion picture theaters, establishments that display nudity for its patrons, adult paraphernalia stores, adult video stores — are considered free speech and are thus protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

“‘It is just ridiculous to pass an ordinance that could conceivably place these things next to something like a day care center,’ he said. ‘What we need is a comprehensive approach. We should be looking at the city map and trying to figure where these establishments could be appropriately located.’”

“That’s common sense, which unfortunately is not constitutionally protected.”