January was a bleak month for the music industry, with sales well below the previous year, but at least there's a new Shins record. And fans were so eager to own it (and slap it onto their iPods), an unusually high percentage bought the downloadable version in lieu of the plastic one. Read more at the Bit Player blog.

Miami and Las Vegas, the nation's ultimate playgrounds, are putting on competing sports events/parties in coming weeks, with the Super Bowl in Miami this Sunday and the NBA All-Star game coming to  Las Vegas later in the month.

The All-Star game, the first time it's held in a city without an NBA franchise, is a huge get for Sin City.   With its convention business, Vegas has become the preeminent showcase for almost any industry you can think of, but the sports world has been leery of the town because leagues don't want to acknowledge that some people actually bet -- they'd be shocked, shocked, you understand -- on the games.

Credit the NBA for getting over this excessive, and somewhat hypocritical (given that gamblers fuel some of the sports' popularity), prudishness.  I am not saying the leagues need to embrace gambling.  But Las Vegas is a major city in its own right, a thriving entertainment venue which needn't be shunned on moral grounds.

That said, those NBA players better behave while they are in town!   

A couple of years ago, if anybody had suggested that fighting global  warming and increasing taxpayer spending on foreign aid programs would soon become bipartisan issues with widespread agreement from both right and left, it would have provoked lots of giggles and maybe some heart attacks on the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Yet the lion and the lamb are lying down together, and it's not even the apocalypse. Republicans and Democrats are working together on bills to impose cap-and-trade systems and looking at other approaches to climate change, while senators as far right as Kansas' Sam Brownback and as far left as California's Barbara Boxer are in total agreement about the need to boost spending on Third World development programs like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and President Bush's anti-AIDS initiative.

On the latter front, the most encouraging news to date was today's passage by the House of a $463.5-billion spending bill that surpasses the wildest dreams of development advocates. It provides $4.5 billion to fight developing-world diseases, a $1.3-billion increase over last year's level. This will be enough to scale up many highly successful programs and will likely save thousands of lives, while improving health standards to give indigent people in Africa and elsewhere at least a fighting chance to get out of poverty (it's pretty hard to be a productive worker when you've got AIDS or malaria).

So many attaboys are deserved on this one that they can't be listed, but deserving of special praise are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who fought hard to win the aid increase, and Reps. Barbara Lee (a Democrat from Oakland) and Christopher Shays (a Republican from Connecticut), who authored a letter signed by 92 members of Congress of both parties urging the funding boost. A similar letter, authored by Democrat Richard Durbin of Illinois and Republican Brownback, has also made its way through the Senate, raising hopes that the disease spending will make it through both houses. A guy could get used to this bipartisanship thing.

OK, let’s try this again.  I think I have the hang of it now.  Here’s what I meant to write in the “Modest Proposal” column that originally ran in the Sunday Current section on Jan. 21:

Where can President Bush find 21,500 more troops to send to Iraq?  Here are two ideas.

1/ “Draft the newspaper editors, they seem to have all the answers!”  OK,  this one isn’t my idea, for obvious reasons.  I stole it from an e-mail from someone in my previously suggested group, the Vietnam vets.  However, as much as many readers expressed a preference for this option, I gotta tell you: Unless we’re going to challenge the insurgents to a game of winner-take-all Scrabble, I don’t like our odds with this bunch.

2/ “Draft the draft dodgers.”  Now, this one came in a letter to the editor.  This option has a strong following among readers.  However, I think many of the draft dodgers went on to become lawyers, or president (no, not Bush, the guy before him.)  But it might work. They’d get over there, file a bunch of class-action lawsuits against the insurgents, drag them into court, and pretty soon two things would happen:  the insurgent suicide bombers would start killing just themselves, and we’d win the war, plus get a huge financial settlement.  Of course, only 25 cents of every dollar would go to taxpayers.
(Legal disclaimer: The above Point No. 2 is fiction; any resemblance to any real person or event is purely unintentional.  The author makes no claims as to its authenticity.  The author also refuses to take responsibility for any hurt feelings by any person who believes said paragraph refers to him/her, and refuses to accept any e-mail, letters, etc., using foul language to describe said author and what he wrote.)
That’s it for now. And to all the readers who wrote, pro and con, on my actual “Modest Proposal,” it’s been an experience.  What did my e-mails tell me? 
Well:

1/ The troops didn’t “lose” the Vietnam War.  Plenty of culprits were suggested, but space doesn’t permit.

2/ You can’t make light of Agent Orange and/or post-traumatic stress syndrome, even if it's just part of  work of satire.

3/ Opinion was pretty evenly split on the Harleys and the teeth.  Some proudly ride Harleys, some don’t; some have their teeth, some – like me – don’t. 

4/ 40 years later, most vets don’t much care for tired old stereotypes.  And you know what -- who can blame them?

But, I met some folks I never would have otherwise, and we had some healthy exchanges, and I think I may even have persuaded a few that I am not, in the words of the e-mail from a priest in St. Louis, “a jackass.”

My final thought?  As long as Americans preserve the ability to write what they think, say what they think, and honestly and openly debate what is written and said, without resorting to the brutal tactics of those who want to destroy us, America will be just fine.

The Federal Trade Commission wrote the final chapter in the Sony BMG rootkit saga today, announcing that the record company had agreed to a set of rules for copy-protected music CDs. With any luck, the FTC will also have closed the book on the music industry's efforts to fight piracy by treating CD buyers as if they were all lawbreakers in waiting. Read more on this topic at the Bit Player blog.

La Opinión leads today's edition with a look at L.A.'s declining glitter—signaled most recently by the city's placement at Number 15 worldwide on the none-too-widely known Anholt City Brands Index. Nationally, the City of the Angels distantly trails New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Even humble Toronto, a city best known for the fact that Angelenos believe it looks enough like New York to sub for the Big Apple on movie shoots, edges out L.A.

You might say that being number 15 on the planet isn't too bad, but Index master Simon Anholt tells the paper that L.A.'s problem is perceptual: When it makes national news, the topics generally seem to be gangs, pollution, or crime. (And wildfires, Simon, don't forget the wildfires!) There's some space given to the glamour of Hollywood and the idea that being a draw for immigrants is a sign of a healthy city (Fire away!), but the Anholt index, which is actually pretty interesting, assesses the city's "brand," and as Anholt notes, "There aren't many positive stories about Los Angeles." (A wiseacre might note that Hollywood is one of the reasons for the lack of positive stories.)

Every two-bit berg in the country has a legion of boosters, and perceptual issues are often an inverse measure of how much you'd actually want to live in a city. I've never met such a group of civic patriots as Philadelphians, whose hometown continued to lose population throughout the nineties renaissance of American cities. Conversely, though you don't hear much about it anymore, there was a time when you could measure New York's pre-eminence by the amount of time New Yorkers spent running the place down. Perception schmerception. Even Hobokenite Frank Sinatra finally admitted that L.A. was his lady.

Add Terry McAuliffe's book "What a Party!" to the pantheon of great Washington memoirs.   I opened up the book at random to page 128 of the former Democratic National Committee chairman's book, "without question the most successful fund-raiser in political history" according to the book jacket.   And I read (you may want to put on some rousing patriotic tunes in the background):

Two and a half weeks later a small group organized a surprise fortieth birthday party for me at the Hay-Adams with the President, my mother and father, my family, and a small group of small friends...The dinner at the Hay-Adams was a fun, small family affair, and they really surprised me.  After it was over, someone suggested we go over to the Mayflower and have a drink at the bar.  We got over there and the place was rocking with about five hundred people there to celebrate my birthday with me, my second surprise of the night.  The Vice President flew through a snowstorm to make the party and he grabbed the mike and he and Tony Coelho led the crowd in singing "happy Birthday" to me.

Wow!  They really really like their chief fund-raiser, those crazy pols! 

And lest you think such stirring prose is McAuliffe's alone, I should hasten to add that his book is co-authored by Steve Kettman, a writer who also collaborated with Jose Canseco on his book "Juiced."

Downtown blogger Don Garza takes a series of pictures at the intersection of Skid Row's 6th and San Pedro and finds ... not much!

I am amazed that there is no one there at all . but it did rain. [...]

Just a few months ago, the southeast corner of 6th and San Pedro streets was a drug bazaar nestled amid cardboard boxes, tarps and tents.

LA's Homeless Blog's Joel John Roberts questions the accuracy of having homeless people counting the number of homeless people:

So will the number counting be effective? Especially, after spending over $800,000? I wrote an op-ed piece two years, after the first homeless count. I called it a Homeless Numbers Game. Because the reality is, the politics with these numbers is extraordinary.

So the question of whether homeless people will effectively count homeless people is actually moot. The question to really ask is this... Since the final tally will be simply an estimate, will city and county officials decide L.A. is getting better (less homeless), getting worse (more homeless), or just more of the same? It's a highly political decision.

BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow posts excerpts and an illustration from Disney's 1943 employee manual.

UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman, a drug policy specialist, writes:

There's now good scientific support for the claim that psilocybin, the active agent in "magic" mushrooms, has a better-than-even chance of generating a full-blown mystical experience in properly selected and prepared subjects.

Animal Services chief Ed Boks drops some science about feral cats:

Feral cats, which are wild animals, typically live in colonies of six to twenty cats. You often never see all the cats in a colony and it is easy to underestimate the size of a feral cat problem in a neighborhood. When individuals or authorities try to catch cats for extermination this heightens the biological stress on the colony.

This stress triggers two survival mechanisms causing the cats to 1) over breed, and 2) over produce. That is, rather than having one litter per year of two to three kittens, a stressed female could have two or three litters per year of six to nine kittens each.

City Council President Eric Garcetti posts his annual State of Hollywood address.

LAist's Tony Pierce interviews Sarah from Brentwood, more famously known as the Bears fan who sold herself on EBay to get a Super Bowl ticket, and who as a result received four free tickets from Axe Body Spray, invited two girlfriends, and is now taking auditions for a male date:

About how many emails have you gotten from eligible men looking to be your date?
Um...probably about 200 so far.

Losanjealous identifies (and photographs) Pico Blvd.'s "Naked People Store District."

Blogging.la's Lucinda Michele, on assignment from the local art mag Coagula, discusses art "with one of the premier donors and patrons on the art scene" ... a man perhaps better known for portraying a Vulcan named Spock.

Martini Republic's Joseph Mailander takes a swipe at the Grand Avenue project:

The idea that whatever becomes of the north end of Grand Avenue—the street for LA's own bridge-and-tunnel crowd, where suburbanites can feel comfortable and safe at concerts and museums--will much impact all of downtown is about as silly a notion as the idea that going to a restaurant on PCH impacts the surf and sand and cliffs and bluffs on either side of it. It's not mere boosterism to say that downtown LA is more interesting than the people who dismiss it realize. And it is something far more insipid than boosterism to think that Grand Avenue--a shiny, silly project, controlled by a man who has made two fortunes by appeasing the minds of suburbanites--will have much impact on downtowners at all, beyond their occasional visits, which may even be as infrequent as the visits by the suburbanites themselves.

Just when you think you know Opinion L.A.'s beat, here's evidence that even the muse Terpsichore falls within our purview. This week's featured reader response is a dissent from an L.A. Times dance review:

Dear Editor,

After reading through Lewis Segal's critique of the incredible Terracotta Warriors performance at the Kodak Theatre,  (Sat. Jan. 27 edition L.A. Times) I feel compelled to reply.

This is the 2nd production I have seen by this incredible company of Dr. Dennis Law, author, producer.     It featured 80 performers,  350 costumes,  and was indeed an historical account of what may have happened  over 2000 years ago.   The audience loved it.   How is it that Mr. Segal is so narrow minded that he criticizes that it does not fit the stereotype Broadway show (of which I have seen almost all)  with plot and character development?   And why does he say it needs to be more poignant with political crossover for today's age?  (As an intelligent audience,  we could figure that out easily.)

I don't think Mr. Segal realizes what Dr. Law is trying to accomplish in his 7 magnificent productions.  Why can't we see a lavish production, learn some history, and just be entertained?   Why can't there be 23 scenes with warriors,  or dancers?  And the two 6 year old little boys he said "distracted"  from the "plot"    instead,  added a great deal of audience interest.

Doesn't Mr. Segal remember the Siegfield Follies during the depression years?   Those performances were much less "historical"   and had no "serious message"  to communicate, yet were much needed and appreciated by audiences everywhere.

The Terracotta Warriors was magnificently presented,  and should be seen by all.  (There is a wide range of ticket prices).  The  only thing the Kodak Theatre should have provided is screens with the English Dubbing of the plot about 10 feet higher, so all could see.  The production company should have a special musical sound to alert the audience to look at the screen to read the plot as it developed. )

Hopefully, more of these productions will come to the Los Angeles area, and other reviewers will be more open-minded, thus encouraging, rather than discouraging,  people to attend.

Sincerely,

Carole Rubottom
Music Education Consultant

Presidential wannabes from Alaska to Connecticut are testing a new campaign theorem: All politics is social.

Following the trail blazed by Howard Dean in 2003, at least five of the nine would-be Democratic nominees are incorporating MySpace, Facebook (registration required) and other social networks into their campaigns. In fact, many are taking a shotgun approach to the Internet, posting links to an array of sites in the hope of spreading buzz about their candidate to the far corners of the World Wide Web, if not the world itself.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's site, for instance, directs visitors to the candidate's pages on four social networks, including MySpace, where they can find snapshots of more than 480 of his "friends," and Zanby, where there can join any of 58 support groups scattered around the country. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, in addition to lining up friends on MySpace and Facebook, is trying to create a conversation of sorts through videos posted on YouTube (no takers so far). And former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, who has racked up a party-leading 10,000 MySpace "friends," is deploying a customized social network, dubbed OneCorps, to mobilize supporters behind a series of projects in their communities.

The nine Republicans in the race are taking a more buttoned-down approach. Their sites include no links to social networks, viral video outlets or other sites outside the candidate's control. Instead, they focus on the meat and potatoes of campaigning - raising money and manpower - while posting little beyond a biography, some position statements, snippets of news coverage and maybe a video of their candidate in action.  (Other sites include Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo's -- not to be confused with the tomtancredo.com site controlled by some anti-Tancredo types -- and Texas Rep. Ron Paul's, which is still under construction. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore doesn't appear to have an official site yet, just an unofficial one.)

That's not surprising, given the GOP's knack for campaign discipline. When candidates embrace sites such as MySpace and YouTube, they sacrifice some discipline and control in exchange for energy, creativity and a powerful network to distribute their message for free. The obvious risk is that someone in the loose-knit confederation will do something intemperate or offensive that embarrasses the candidate. That's what happened to Democrat John Kerry in 2004 when one of the interest groups supporting him, MoveOn.org, briefly showcased a volunteer's ad that likened President Bush to Hitler.

Perhaps that's why the Democrats' best-known candidates - Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and Joe Biden of Delaware, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio - are avoiding social networks and using more conventional online tools to recruit supporters and dollars. Clinton, for instance, has invited the public to post blog entries on her site, and she's done three short question-and-answer sessions online. But these interactions, like everything else on the site, are carefully managed by the campaign.

Still, in the era of YouTube and cellphone video, candidates have less control over their image and message than ever before. And for underdog candidates, every bit of help counts - especially when it's free. By setting up shop on MySpace, YouTube and other popular Web outlets, candidates may extend their reach beyond political junkies into, well, Internet junkies. And as Arizona Sen. John McCain and Dean showed in 2000 and 2004, when networks of supporters spread online, millions of dollars follow.

Of course, neither man won his party's nomination, let alone the presidency. Meanwhile, other candidates - most notably former Virginia Sen. George Allen - have demonstrated the ability of user-generated, viral video to undermine their campaigns. Over the next year and a half, we'll see whether the Internet's social tools can make a candidate as well as it can break one.

Below is a sample of the Democrats' activity on YouTube. Like Clinton and Obama, the Republican candidates host their own videos; click here to check out former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's collection, which is powered by PermissionTV.