Music Video Of the Week - June 12, 2026

"Another Rainy Day In New York City" by Chicago  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - May 8, 2026

"Harry Truman" by Chicago  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Democratic Convention Party

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago has been moving more or less smoothly - Monday's schedule ran behind somewhat - but it has had some memorable moments, most notably the way the Obamas filleted Trump and talked bout all the second chances Trump got that no one in the convention hall would have gotten.  (Well, of course, they're Democrats, they blow it once, they're never allowed to try again.) All in all, very impressive.

Except for the roll call of the first ballot that nominated Kamala Harris.

The roll call? What happened?

Well, the producers of the convention, who obviously learned their skills rom David Wolper or someone like that, decided to play music of every different genre associated with each state when that state's delegation was called to cast its votes and it suddenly turned into Live Aid or something . . . and when it was Georgia's turn, some rapper/DJ/whatever who was a protégé of Robin Hood and was from Atlanta before he moved to Sherwood Forest,  turned the convention into a Freaknik.

As a European trapped in an American's body, given what I know bout party congresses in the Old Country, I am consistently amazed by how Americans, in addition to worshipping God and Mammon simultaneously, mix business with pleasure so seamlessly.

Old Days and All that Jazz

That's Chicago.

The first night of the Democratic convention last night was a look back and a passing of the torch.  Hillary Clinton was there to pretty much say to voters that she warned us about Trump in 2016 (without mentioning that other who warned us about Trump In 2016 also warned us that Hillary couldn't defeat him), and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez the Killer slayed Trump with her slashing rhetoric against Trump's alliance with the wealthy and powerful (when in fact, he's neither of those things, but Republicans pretend otherwise).

President Biden's farewell address to the convention wasn't much more than a recapitulation of his record, and the most memorable moment for me was when he said how in no other country could a kid from Scranton could one day sit behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office as his country's leader.  I guess that makes sense; after all, how many countries have oval-shaped presidential or prime ministerial offices with a desk made of timbers from the H.M.S. Resolute?  (The King of England has one, but he was literally born into his job.)  And how many other world leaders would have come from Scranton?  

It was a bittersweet farewell for Biden, which brings to mind the subject of the bitter (not sweet) farewell of New Jersey's senior U.S. Senator.  Robert Menendez serves his long-awaited last day today in the Senate. His replacement, who will hold the seat until the election in November, is former gubernatorial aide George Helmy, whom Governor Phil Murphy appointed to fill out the reminder of Menendez's term.  

Music Video Of the Week - July 7, 2023

"Feelin' Stronger Every Day" by Chicago (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Lori Leadfoot

The first black female and first openly homosexual mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, known nationwide for her tough love during COVID and her spot-on Marty Feldman impersonation, lost her bid for a second term in office.  She's only the second mayor of Chicago to lose her bid for another term since 1979; the first was Jane Byrne in 1983.  Byrne and Lightfoot are Chicago's only female mayors.

It wasn't race, creed or gender that got Mayor Lightfoot booted out but the rocky four years that Chicago and other major American cities have had.  The COVID pandemic was a shock to the systems of American cities as well as to those of rural and suburban America, but the cities took it especially hard on the chin.  Tourism, business, public transit ridership, and lower-middle-class and poor urban populations all suffered acutely as a result of COVID, and while the pandemic is easing it still has left some really deep scars on the body politic.

Crime is an obvious byproduct.  Urban economies got so thoroughly disrupted that poverty rates have soared, leading to more violent criminal activity.  Chicago has always been one of the more dangerous cities in America, but the murder rate there has gone through the roof.   Mayor Lightfoot has failed to deal with crime effectively, and her tough COVID policies - like closing lakefront parks and public schools - along with suspending public transit and even raising the drawbridges on the Chicago River in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, left a bad taste in people's mouths.

The runoff election resulting from the free-for-all mayoral vote this past Tuesday could present something tasting even worse - a taste suggesting what you'd get by sprinkling Frango chocolates atop a deep-dish cheese pizza.  The runoff will pit two Democrats between each other, and they both agree on crime being a proem, but hat have radically different solutions for how to lower it.  Black progressive Brandon Johnson vows to tackle poverty and unemployment to get to the root causes of crime and once advocated defunding the police as "a political goal," while his opponent, former Chicago schools superintendent Paul Vallas, who is white, would rather defend the police than defund it and vows to get tough on crime as mayor.

This could be the most disruptive and most racially charged mayoral race in the Windy City since black Democrat Harold Washington and white Republican Bernard Epton faced off against each other in 1983, (Washington was elected.)

Oh dear . . .   

Black Days In July

Not Detroit in 1967, as Gordon Lightfoot called it, but Portland, Oregon in 2020.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently sent special agents to "protect" federal offices and property in Portland against racial-justice activists whose demonstrations have mostly been peaceful.  The agents have been anything but that, arresting and detaining protesters with brute force.  Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Governor Kate Brown have been demanding that the feds pull their special forces out of the city, but Trump - wanting to burnish his "law and order" credentials with his base in advance of the presidential election- has obviously chosen to ignore their requests.  The acting Homeland Security Secretary - whoever that is - has said that state and local leaders have no right to tell DHS how to do its job.

It doesn't matter that Oregon - like every other Pacific Coast state except Alaska is solidly Democratic . . . except that Trump wants to demonstrate that he can lay down the law where Democratic governors appear to be - appear to be, that's the big disclaimer - unwilling or unable to.  That is the entire point.  Somehow, I don't think demonstrations outside U.S. Government buildings Dallas or Nashville would get the same heavy-handed response from the feds, because local officeholders sympathetic to Trump wouldn't need them.  And now he plans to send DHS agents to other Democratic-run cities; he's already announced plans to send DHS agents to Chicago.  And in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot (who has nothing to do with Gordon Lightfoot) has suddenly decided to cooperate with the federal government, apparently being under the misconception that she can prevent tit from acting out its worst excesses.

Black days in July . . . Rose City madness . . . Remember in November.      

Music Video Of the Week - July 3, 2020

"Saturday In the Park" by Chicago  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Statues and Names

You knew this was going to happen.

With the drive to remove Confederate monuments in the South in full force, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is calling for the statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle to be removed.  The argument goes, after all, that Columbus was a genocidal maniac who exterminated indigenous tribes in the Caribbean and introduced slavery to the New World.  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has acknowledged that the possible removal of the statue is under consideration, leading Italian-Americans to rally in favor of keeping the Columbus statue there, saying that Columbus had flaws like anyone else and that he represents the presence of Italians in the New World.  (De Blasio, of course, is Italian-American.)

This is just the sort of Pandora's box that many liberals feared would be opened if the monument issue were taken any further than removing statues of the leaders of the Confederacy - the so-called "slippery slope."  The statue of Columbus, erected in 1892 to honor the four hundredth anniversary of his arrival in the New World, was placed there with funds raised by Italian-American groups to celebrate their heritage.  The culture wars are being fought on battle lines drawn along ethnic groups . . . the Italians versus the Puerto Ricans, almost like something out of West Side Story.  Mark-Viverito, a Puerto Rican of partial Italian origin, will probably end up hating . . . herself.

Columbus Circle itself could easily be renamed if the statue comes down.  In Chicago, Columbus Park may not be renamed, but James Dukes, the pastor of the Liberation Christian Center Church on the South Side, is calling for the removal of a statue of George Washington near Washington Park and the renaming of Washington Park, as well as the renaming of nearby Jackson Park, because Washington and Andrew Jackson were slave owners. He proposed that the parks could keep their names, but in honor of other people similarly named - the late Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who lived in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s.  If naming Jackson Park after a living person named Jackson is a problem, Jackson Park could be named after another one of Dukes' suggestions - Michael Jackson.

What?

And now even monuments for Civil War Union generals are under scrutiny, such as the General Grant National Memorial - Grant's Tomb - in New York (and it's under scrutiny by the city, not the National Park Service that operates it) because Ulysses S. Grant is alleged to have been anti-Semitic, a canard that has since been disproved.  So, eh, how are you gong to take down a mausoleum?  And is Chicago going to rename Grant Park while we're at it?

Uh, yeah, this is what Steve Bannon wants.  More identity politics.  There are a great number of reasons to take down Confederate statues, and there may be good reasons to remove Columbus statues, but there is no reason to take down a statue of George Washington, the Father of Our Country and the man who got the Republic up and running, or renaming a park named for him.  Andrew Jackson is a more complicated figure, having driven Indians from their lands and having settled quarrels with duels but also having peacefully settled the question of the sanctity of the Union in the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and having expanded the democratic franchise, albeit selectively, beyond wealthy property owners.  And he defended New Orleans from the British.  Although Jackson didn't give the vote to women and to freemen of color, that would have been too radical for anyone to propose in the 1830s, and many upper-class Americans of Jackson's day found his advocacy for enfranchising the common man radical enough.

We can't really judge historical figures by the standards of our time.  Someone who doesn't seem enlightened now probably was for his or her own time.  In the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln believed that the black man was a human being, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and had the right to be a free laborer instead of laboring for free - all radical statements in 1850s Illinois.  But his ambivalence toward black political rights - an ambivalence he had largely disavowed by the time of his assassination - was in keeping with the attitudes of the times.

Be that as it may, someone torched a Lincoln bust in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood recently - twice.  

Above is the Lincoln bust at 69th Street and Wolcott Avenue, which has since been removed to protect it from further vandalism at the behest of Raymond Lopez, a Chicago alderman, after it was vandalized.  The photo below from 2015 shows it before it was vandalized.

This is all getting crazy.

However, I would not be against other efforts to cleanse public parks and streets of the memories of history's more unsavory figures.  Like the statue in Philadelphia of Frank Rizzo, the racist mayor of the city in the 1970s.  And, back in June 2017, some Chicago kids petitioned the city to rename Douglas Park, named for Stephen Douglas, the nineteenth-century U.S. Senator from Illinois and would-be President, for Frederick Douglass by simply adding an "s" to the name . . . because Stephen Douglas championed slavery.  And he did.  While Douglas was consistent in his position that permitting or prohibiting slavery in a state or territory was for the people of said state or territory to decide - he supported the decision of the people of Kansas to ban slavery against the wishes of his own Democratic Party - he was by no means opposed to slavery itself.  He happened to own a plantation in Mississippi.  And it would also do Chicago good to remove the Balbo Monument on Lake Shore Drive and also rename Balbo Avenue, which honor Italo Balbo, an Italian aviator and military leader who flew a plane from Rome to Chicago in 1933 for Chicago's centennial celebrations.  General Balbo was in fact a minion of Benito Mussolini and a proud fascist.

Awk-ward!

Face it, Italo Balbo is heralded in Chicago simply for flying there from Rome and not crashing.

Anyway, Chicago is not about to rename Washington Park or Jackson Park.  Grant's Tomb in New York is safe.  And a lot of people are tired of hearing about the statue and name controversies that have gone beyond the Confederate monuments - which, again, should be removed, as they honor participants in an armed insurrection against the government - and want to hear more about jobs and the economy. And if the left gets bogged down in controversies over honors for Washington, Lincoln and, say, John F. Kennedy (why not change the name of New York's international airport back to Idlewild, since Kennedy was a grotesque philanderer who lied about his health?), it's never going to connect with voters' biggest concerns.

Me, I'd be happy if they just rename places for things instead of people, because if you name anything for anyone, you're going to offend someone for one reason or another.  Look, London has squares and circles, or "circuses," named for other places in England (Leicester Square, Oxford Circus), so why not name places in Manhattan after other places in New York State?  They could have Albany Square, Rochester Square, and in place of Columbus, Buffalo Circle!  Yeah, put a statue of a bison in the middle of it!

Yeah, they'll sell the naming rights to squares and circles first.  My least favorite  Manhattan place names are the names for squares honoring newspapers, one of which folded decades ago.  "Times Square."  "Herald Square."  Do you realize how ridiculous those sound?

Rahm On (Version Two)

Rahm Emanuel made it, despite residency issues and some tough resistance from political opponents, to the mayoralty of Chicago. He'll have a tough act to follow; Richard M. Daley was probably one of the best mayors the city has ever had, even better than his father. I was in Chicago in 1994, when the younger Daley had been mayor for five years, and much of the downtown was very active, the neighborhoods were quite vibrant, and the transit system was first rate. From school reform to sustainable energy policies, Daley knows how to make a city work for these times.

He also knows when it's time to leave, as he seems to be losing his touch - what with the rise in gun violence on the South Side, among other issues. Anyway, he never wanted to be mayor of Chicago for life, like his dad was. Emanuel, who will be the city's first Jewish mayor, will take over in May. Too bad he has to wait so long, because he's probably itching to get down to business now. Emanuel is almost something of a metrosexual for his reported predilection for yoga, his ballet studies with the Joffrey company as a young man, his liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence, and his slim, trim frame - an anti-Daley, if you will.

Just remember, though - Now you're messin' with a sonabitch! Emanuel's contemporary exterior fools no one. He can be tough, profane, and combative - and he is, on a regular basis. Although former "West Wing" producer Lawrence O'Donnell has denied it, Emanuel is widely believed to be the inspiration for the character of Josh Lyman. In times like these, this is the sort of politician Chicago needs to run the place.

Rahm On

I'm going to miss Richard M. Daley. I'll be sad to see him step down as mayor of the great city of Chicago in the spring. He did a pretty good job running a big American city at a time when big American cities have been barely getting along. I was in Chicago in the fall of 1994, and I found myself enjoying my time in a highly efficient city - not to mention a friendly one. Its parks were first-rate, and its public transportation was highly reliable, in no small part to Mayor Daley's aggressive and bold leadership. But with his wife now battling cancer and the city's murder rate spiraling out of control, Daley obviously knows when to quit.

It now looks like that Chicago - a city whose politics are not for the faint of heart - could get as its next mayor a heartless bastard even by Windy City standards. White House Chief of Staff and longtime Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel, known for his own blend of aggressiveness and boldness, is possibly eyeing a 2011 run to succeed Mayor Daley, but his mean temperament and his bare-knuckles style might be a little over the top. Nevertheless, many liberals - that is, many liberals who aren't Chicagoans - are eager to see him run, not because they think he'd be a good mayor for Chicago but because they want him out of the White House. They blame Emanuel for selling out on the public option to get health care reform passed, and they are angry at his disparaging attitude towards the liberal base of the Democratic party, including some expletive-laden names he's called them. Emanuel's supporters - yes, he has some - will insist that he has compromised on key issues such as health care and clean energy to get something passed on the idea that part of what you want is better than nothing. But his arrogance, abrasiveness, and hotheadedness - Emanuel was the inspiration for the feisty deputy White House chief of staff Josh Lyman on NBC's "The West Wing" - have rubbed the wrong way with Democrats who see their (and President Obama's) poll numbers slipping and believe Emanuel's departure is an important step in getting their groove back.

What for a mayor would Emanuel make? I don't know if a guy like him is necessarily whom you ant dealing with city services, but he's certainly someone I'd want to tackle violent crime.

Nolympics

The unthinkable happened yesterday when Chicago, a heavy favorite to win the 2016 Olympics, was eliminated from contention. And, in an even greater embarrassment for President Obama after he tried to close the sale at the International Olympic Committee's meeting in Copenhagen to decide the site for the 2016 Games, Chicago was eliminated on the first ballot.

Republicans chided the President before the vote was taken, insisting that he had far more important things to worry about, like the economy, health care, and Iran, than getting the Olympics for his adoptive hometown. After the 2016 Olympics were given to Rio de Janeiro, Obama was gracious in defeat, but Newt Gingrich and Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele scolded Obama for wasting his political capital on such a trivial issue. The was pretty much what I expected from the President's detractors.

Nothing could have prepared me for the glee and the jubilation right-wing commentators and activists displayed upon hearing the news, even as Chicagoans were crestfallen. Rush Limbaugh was ecstatic, saying it proved that Obama's charm offensive was just plain offensive, and his ego got the beating it deserved. And he was kind in comparison to Glenn Beck, who giggled at the news, calling the defeat "sweet." Members of the pro-business group Americans For Prosperity applauded and laughed, and the offices of the Weekly Standard burst out into cheers.

Uh, they do realize the United States lost their chance to host another summer Olympiad, right?

The American right displayed its true colors by pouring salt into Obama's wounds on this issue. They were happy to see the country shamed and humiliated merely to score political points and bolster their efforts to weaken a President they wish to see fail, so they can return to power and finished the job of impoverishing the middle class and leaving them with no recourse for the injustices committed against them. If they were as patriotic as they claim to be, they would have supported Chicago's Olympic bid. If they thought Obama's bid was a waste of political prestige, they could have found a way to express it without taking glee in a loss for the country, as Gingrich did. Oh my God, it's come to this - Limbaugh, Beck, and noted Twinkie Michelle Malkin actually having me defend Gingrich!

Of course, if Obama hadn't gone to Copenhagen to make his case, he would have been blasted by the right for not making a personal appeal to the IOC. The only favorable outcome for Obama was for Chicago to actually get the Olympics - which was, we now know, not going to happen.

What caused Chicago to lose? Well, as well-versed in politics as Chicagoans are, the Brazilians were able to outmaneuver them. As I've been led to understand, Chicago went in with half as many committed votes as they thought they had, and the Brazilians managed to sway enough votes to eliminate Chicago - its closest competitor - as quickly as possible, knowing Tokyo could not put up a strong challenge on the next ballot. Then, when it came down to Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, it didn't take much persuasion to point out the no South American city has ever hosted an Olympiad before. By then, it was all over but the shouting - the shouting from jubilant Brazilians and jubilant radio reactionaries.

One conservative who must have been disappointed in the loss was former President George Walker Bush, who also lobbied for Chicago in the waning days of his administration.

Chicago hopes to try again for 2020, but here's some 2020 vision for you: New York, its bid for 2012 derailed by anti-Americanism over the Iraq War, chose to move on and not try again. As to the possibility of lingering anti-Americanism derailing Chicago's bid, it could be that many International Olympic Committee officials view Americans as arrogant morons, even though President Obama is neither, but if you ask me, the anti-Americanism came from the arrogant morons in question, after the bid failed.

Obama will hopefully learn how nasty his enemies are and learn how to fight back, because if he thinks the right is vicious now, wait until the health care reform bill takes final shape. As for Chicago, they're probably better off, even though it would have been nice to see a real American city (Los Angeles and Atlanta are not cities, they're freeway interchanges!) host the summer Olympics for a change. They've been spared logistical nightmares, awful traffic tie-ups, and exorbitant costs.

Plus, there's also the police department's crowd-control record to consider.

The world is watching. :-O

(Note: I kid the city of Chicago! I love this city! I was there in 1994 for a vacation. The video accompanying this post is only a joke!)

What You Talkin' About, Willis?

The London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings has taken over multiple floors of the Sears Tower for $14.50 a square foot for five hundred of its employees and will rename the Western hemisphere's tallest building after itself.

Mayor Richard M. Daley pointed out that Sears, which built the 110-story skyscraper, moved out a long time ago, but the fact that the new business taking over the tower is from out of town, unlike Sears, Roebuck and Company (now based outside the city in suburban Hoffman Estates) doesn't sit well with Chicagoans. After all, Macy's took over Marshall Field's. But Chicago should at least be happy that their icon of architectural height is still standing.

Some cities, like New York, can't make such a claim.

The Willis Tower was the world's tallest building until a twin-towered skyscraper, a single building at ground level, opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1996.