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

I'm already tired of the lines of attack being taken by the campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders against each other. I am particularly nettled by the salvos from the Church of the Savvy as regards the possibility of Sanders being able to do everything he wants to do as president. Unreasonable aspiration is not necessarily a bad thing, and it sure beats all hell out of a long slog through a campaign based on pragmatism. ("The election is not about ideology. It's about competence."—President Michael Dukakis, 1988.) So, rather than join in the general slanging match, I thought I'd concentrate on an issue for a moment.

Last fall, under pressure from the port side of her party, and especially from representatives of various minority communities, Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed to stop taking campaign contributions from executives of the private prison industry. This was six months after she'd called for criminal justice reform, and also, it was after she already had received almost $134,000 from lobbying firms with ties to the private prison industry. As it happens, the chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, the mysteriously still-employed Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is still joined at the hip of the private prison industry, which is yet another reason to replace her with Jennifer Granholm, like, yesterday.

This is very simple. You cannot be for comprehensive criminal justice reform if you are going to indulge an industry that makes it more profitable to lock people up than it is not to do so. You cannot be for comprehensive criminal justice reform and accept the existence of private prisons as the industry is currently constituted. For my money, you can't be a Democrat, let alone a progressive, if you even mildly support either one of those things. Now let's all yell about socialism again.

From the Magical, Mystical, Musical Land Of Oz: Official Blog Musical Archivist Bill Osment sends along some video of the Fabs back in the day, as well as some nostalgic moments for all you longtime fans of Dane Tempest and the Atoms. I got a kick out of Lennon's 'jacking the guy's pint.

In our look at the mudpie thrown at He, Trump by National Review, we neglected to highlight the contribution of Thomas Sowell, whose little red wagon lost a couple of wheels decades ago.

No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008. Elections, however, have far more lasting and far more serious—or even grim—consequences than emotional venting. The actual track record of crowd pleasers, whether Juan Perón in Argentina, Obama in America, or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing.

Yes, expanding healthcare and invading Poland, virtually the same thing. Wake up, sheeple! Gawd, these really are the fcking mole people.

I have decided that I like the idea of bringing The X-Files back now that I know Chris Carter actually is at the helm. I hope he does an episode in which two inches of snow turns everyone in our nation's capital into a screaming zombie army. When does everyone start cutting up goats in Lafayette Park to sacrifice to the weather gods? Get a grip, people.

Politics in Vietnam, a country currently undergoing some deep political temblors, took a turn for the worse. The sacred turtle died.

The turtle, known as Cu Rua, or Great-Grandfather Turtle, weighed an estimated 360 pounds and was believed to have died of natural causes. His precise age was unknown. It would be difficult to overstate his spiritual and cultural significance in this deeply superstitious and Confucian country, where the news of the turtle's demise prompted an outpouring of sadness and hand-wringing. And its timing, as a Communist Party congress opened to choose Vietnam's top leaders for the next five years, was widely interpreted as a bad omen for both the party and the nation. "People say the turtle's death is bad luck, and a way for the gods to show that something's about to happen," said Nguyen Thien Hung, the caretaker of the Vu Thach Buddhist temple, which lies a few steps from the lake.

Sure, go ahead and laugh at how people fetishize strange objects. But have you heard Republicans talk about the Keystone pipeline? Same thing.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "The Clams And I" (Dirty Bourbon River Show): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans. In addition, when I first moved to Boston in 1979, and I didn't have any money and I didn't know anybody, I spent a lot of Saturday nights listening to the late Mai Cramer's "Blues After Hours" on WGBH radio. The only thing I've found that's close is the Friday afternoon Blues Breakdown with Valerie (The Problem Child) Kaprczak on the mighty, mighty 'OZ. Blog sez check it out.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's a snowmageddon in Washington from 1949. "The Capitol building Washington turns into a Christmas cake…" Pip-pip, old sock. Your turn to shovel.

It is not Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning this weekend. It is Tom Brady vs. the Denver defense and it is Peyton Manning against the onset of arthritis. Elsewhere, I am really going to get a bang out of the game if there's a blizzard in Charlotte for the Panthers and Cardinals. I have both feet on the Cam Newton bandwagon these days, but a snow bowl in the Carolinas is not something anyone game-plans for.

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

Dracoraptors are believed to have lived about 200 million years ago, and are likely distant relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex, according to study published in the journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday. The Dracoraptor's bones were discovered on a beach in Wales by two fossil-hunting brothers in 2014. A year later a University of Portsmouth student found a fossilized foot in the same location, according to a statement from the University of Portsmouth. Researchers asked the brothers who first discovered the fossils, Rob and Nick Hanigan, to name the dinosaur. "We invited Rob and Nick to name this beautiful little dinosaur, and they suggested 'Dracoraptor' after draco meaning dragon, the national symbol of Wales, and raptor meaning thief or plunderer," David M. Martill, researcher on the study.

How can it be a Welsh dinosaur with no L's or W's in its name? Also, rumor has it that it became extinct because it was always being outsmarted by the female Hermionesaurus.

It's off to Ioway on Monday for extreme Caucasian Caucus blogging from then until the show moves on. Can't never tell what might happen out there among the children of the corn. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, or I'm going to let Ted Cruz win. Swear to god, I am.

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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