(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

So, anyway, here's the deal, in the interest of full disclosure: I went over to City Hall and voted for Bernie Sanders Friday morning.

As it happens, the Commonwealth (God save it!) has contested primaries in both parties on Tuesday for the first time since god was a boy, so my vote counted a little more than it usually does. Why I made the decision I did comes down to the simple fact that I believe that the movement exemplified by the Sanders campaign—which had its roots in so many different places, from Occupy to the campaign to elect Senator Professor Warren—is an important one, not least because it is a hedge against forgetting what happened to the country in 2008—and, more important, what might have happened in 2008 and 2009 had the country not had the good sense to elect this president. Previous recent economic crises—from the S&L scandals to the Wall Street scandals that helped make Rudy Giuliani a household name—all disappeared down the memory hole so completely that, when the million-megaton shitbomb hit eight years ago, the initial shock almost paralyzed the entire government. American corporations steal. Big American corporations steal big. This is a lesson we have to keep learning, over and over again. When Sanders says that the business model on Wall Street is fraud, he's not saying anything new, and he's not saying anything that should be a surprise.

There is no question in my mind that, without Bernie Sanders and the forces behind him, Hillary Rodham Clinton is not talking like a Wall Street reformer, not bragging about how she's going to go after the shadow banking community, and probably not being as vocal a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement as she has been. I don't really care if it's genuine or if it's expedient; I'm fond of quoting Drew Pearson's fictional 's insight that, in a democracy, the right things always get done for the wrong reasons. The point is that she has to be kept to these positions even after she gets the nomination—and I think she is going to be the nominee—and the more states Sanders wins, and the more votes he piles up, and the more delegates come to Philadelphia pledged to support him, then the more tightly she can be fastened to the positions she adopted to beat him. So those are only a couple of reasons why I went to City Hall Friday morning and voted for Bernie Sanders. Your mileage may vary. And I do not intend to enter into the ongoing food fight between the supporters of the two Democratic candidates. Not with the incredible collection of dingbats laying wood to each other on the other side.

Also, being able to vote before breakfast, and with consummate ease, is something that millions of people around the world—and, increasingly, thousands of people in this country—do not get to do, and it can make your entire morning.

From the Magical, Mystical, Musical Land Of Oz: Blog musical archivist Bill Osment reminds us that Friday was the birthday shared by two true American heroes. On February 26, 1932, J.R. Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas. Four years earlier to the day, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Antoine Dominque Domino, Jr. blessed us with his arrival. I'll just leave this here for Fats, and I'll just leave this here for Johnny, and I'll just make the point that there never has been a colder, more badass line written in any song than, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

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I don't know what to make of the Academy Awards this year, except for the obviously disgraceful demographic makeup of the nominees. I haven't seen The Revenant, but I can't remember the last time I so didn't want to see a film that so many other people love. (Innaritu suckered me in for the staggering boredom fest that was Birdman, so I don't trust him as far as I can throw a grizzly bear with half of DiCaprio in his mouth.) I liked Bridge of Spies for its craftsmanship, and for the great Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel. I think it would have been a killer nominee in 1965. My admiration for Rylance's work in that film complicates matters for me because I'm really hoping that they honor Mark Ruffalo's performance as my old pal Mike Rezendes in Spotlight, for which I'm rooting generally. (Marty Baron, now running The Washington Post, wrote a charming, self-deprecating reminiscence of how Liev Schreiber worked to portray him. Editors can write. Who knew?) A lot of my friends are really hoping that Mad Max: Fury Road cleans up just to knock over the entire applecart. I don't intend to see that until the Republican primary season is over so that the film doesn't suffer from the comparison.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "St. Louis Blues" (Alberta Hunter): Yeah, I still pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's the real skinny on the incident portrayed in Bridge of Spies, including Ike explaining why he'd been lying his ass off for years. (Ike says secrecy is a "fee-tish" in the Soviet Union. If there was anyone in history who could not be expected to pronounce that word correctly, it's Ike, unless Kay Summersby has a diary nobody's yet found, anyway.) History is so cool.

You may have missed it, but Whitey Bulger got into a little trouble down in the federal pen in Florida where he's living out his days. Let us just say that you have to hand it to him, OK? And that it's doubtful either Scorsese or Johnny Depp will be making another film about this particular episode in his career. And that's all I have to say about that.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Here we describe the pathology of a specimen of the theropod dinosaur Dilophosaurus wetherilli with eight afflicted bones of the pectoral girdle and forelimb. On its left side the animal has a fractured scapula and radius and large fibriscesses in the ulna and the proximal thumb phalanx. On its right side the animal has abnormal torsion of the humeral shaft, bony tumors on the radius, a truncated distal articular surface of metacarpal III, and angular deformities of the first phalanx of the third finger. Healing and remodeling indicates that the animal survived for months and possibly years after its ailments began, but its right third finger was permanently deformed and lacked the capability of flexion.

And, upon examining the specimen, a group of NFL team physicians pronounced Dilophosaurus "probable" for next week's game against the Packers.

I'm off to Chattanooga, whence I can cover the campaigns in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia ahead of SooperDooper Tuesday. (I likely also will be making a second pilgrimage to Snodgrass Ridge in honor of my running mate, Bateman, and George Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga.) Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, or I'm sending a bear to eat you so you can win an Oscar next year.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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