Reply #170: I happen to think Dennis Kucinich's version of "Sixteen Tons" was goddamned

[saltpoint]

excellent and will mirthfully punch the lights out of anybody that says different.

Congress is a crossfire of sensibilities. The range is significant.

There are districts like John Boehner's which from the times I've driven through it looks essentially like a few exits off the interstate with the requisite businesses clogging up the exit roads. Kind of a mess, not especially attractive. Plenty of suburbs stretching for miles. I'm not sure Boehner, as wretched a tool as he certainly is, is the worst you could do from a district like that.

Next door in Indiana is Richard Lugar, U.S. Senator, long-ago Mayor of Indianapolis -- Dick Nixon's proclaimed "favorite mayor." Once every 8 or 9 years Lugar does something admirable. But my god it's a long time inbetween those admirable things. There haven't been half a dozen for the duration of his terms in the Senate. If Lugar was never as hideous as Jesse Helms, he also isn't nearly as good as Birch Bayh, with whom he served in the Senate.

Kucinich is still welcome at my house, at my table, at my funeral, at my riverboat race. I like him. I liked him as Mayor of Cleveland. Dennis is MY favorite mayor. In the Congress now, I hope he stays there and forms some alliances to get done what's in his head and his heart. It would be good for everybody.

The Wilson vote can be argued to death but against the backdrop of Kucinich's entire career, it's a speck on a very distant canvas within just a few hours of its being cast.

Dennis, you drop by tomorrow and sing "Sixteen Tons." I'll listen.