Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Photograph of Bill, Chelsea, and Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night by Carolyn Kaster/AP Yet another example of foot-in-mouth syndrome due to the hours of punditry on TV, followed by an apology and suspension! Yesterday, while referring to Chelsea Clinton's campaigning on behalf of her mother, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster commented, "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Yes, he totally said that. Or,......

Photograph of the Vote/Love stencil by dietrich on Flickr Tomorrow is the Presidential Primary, where registered Democrats and Republicans can select a presidential candidate. Polling places are open between 6AM and 9PM - you can find out where to go by checking with the Board of Elections. If you're still undecided about a candidate, we direct you to Gotham Gazette's excellent guides - Democratic Candidates on the Issues and Republican Candidate on the Issues......

Barack Obama won the South Carolina Democratic primary yesterday, taking 55% of the vote, winning by a greater margin than most pundits and recent polls had predicted. Hillary Clinton finished second with 27% and John Edwards came in third. The NY Times headline writes that he won by "forging a coalition of support among black and white voters in a contest that sets the stage for a state-by-state fight for the party’s presidential nomination."......

Governor Spitzer may have identified himself as a steamroller in his attempts to accomplish certain executive tasks, but he's got nothing on the former federal prosecutor and Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. The NY Times has a colorful profile of the the former Mayor as a man who used his offices as bludgeons, crushing anyone who crossed him. When a chauffeur called into the Mayor's weekly radio show in 1997, saying that the cops had established......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg speaking, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Governor Ed Rendell (not pictured), under Los Angeles freeways by Ann Johansson/AP It's Mike and Arnie, together again! The Time magazine co-cover pols, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, made a Los Angeles appearance with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to announce the creation of a "nonpartisan organization that will advocate for more, and smarter, federal spending on infrastructure." The Mayor and maybe......

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a campaign swing into our neighborhood yesterday, drawing a crowd of thousands to Yanitelli Center at St. Peter's College, and as well as supporters to a fund-raiser in Midtown last night. At St. Peter's, He told the audience, "I'm not running because of long-held ambitions. I'm running because of what Dr. (Martin Luther) King called the 'fierce urgency of now.'" Obama also complained about his opponents trying to......

Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent yesterday in Oklahoma, discussing the state of politics today at a bipartisan political forum at the University of Oklahoma. Bloomberg lamented the way things are going these days:Government is dysfunctional. There is no collaboration and congeniality. There is no working together. No 'let's do what's right for this country.' I think there is no accountability today. Nobody is holding themselves accountable and to the standards of what they promised when they......

Now that Hillary Clinton's campaign seems to be struggling in the wake of Change (with a capital C!), everyone's trying to figure out what her seemingly verklempt moment with a group of women at a Portsmouth, NH event means. When asked how she does it, how she gets her act together day after day on the campaign trail (the questioner mentioned how Clinton's hair always looked so coiffed), Clinton seemed to get teary as......

The most famous undeclared presidential candidate, our very own Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has weighed in about the Iowa caucus results. Okay, so Mayor Bloomberg claims he's not running for president, but when you swipe at the actual candidates, have a staff that's investigating the possibility of running a campaign, and have a billion dollars to spare... The Mayor discussed the results(he didn't mention candidates by name) during radio show on WABC (MP3). Well, sort of......

Earlier today, former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed during a rally. The Western-educated (Harvard, Oxford) Bhutto had been living in Dubai and London for eight years, but returned in October to prepare for Pakistan's national elections (to be held next month) with hopes of returning to power. However, her return parade was bombed, killing 134 people and injuring more than 400. [Her obituary in the NY Times.] U.S. politicians weighed in on......

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani spent his Christmas Eve reading Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas to children in Harlem and explaining to reporters that's he's cancer-free. Giuliani, whose flu-like symptoms (well, according to his press people) and bad headache have raised questions about the prostate cancer survivor's health, said, "I am perfectly healthy. I don't have cancer." He added that his protein levels have been fine and that the tests he took......

One of the many reasons why we're excited about the close of 2007 is the fact that Mayor Bloomberg will have to make a decision on whether or not to run for President. Because ever since speculation began about a possible Bloomberg third-party run (fueled by his leaving the Republican party for independent status), countless stories about a billion dollar presidential run have been mentioned non-stop. And his remarks during a press conference yesterday are......

When we saw today’s edition of The New York Times we did a double take since it was in black and white above the fold. The black and white fifty year old photo of presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his father gave a classic retro look to the paper, making newsstands throughout the city look like there was a bit of a time warp among the stacks of newspapers. You may remember that the......

"Sleight of hand," "litany of needless fights," "ugly racial polarization" - just some of the phrases in this week's New York magazine's cover story about Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor turned presidential candidate. Chris Smith's article serves as both refresher to New Yorkers about Giuliani's reign as mayor with some fun tidbits (did you realize that then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik commissioned 30 miniature busts of himself?) as well as a cautionary tale to non-New Yorkers.......

First, some fire fighters' unions spoke out against presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Now a police officers' union is totally anti-Rudy. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch issued a statement blaming the former mayor for not giving cops raises ("zeroes for heroes" contract) and essentially creating the recruiting/retainment problems the NYPD has. And then there's what the PBA thinks about Giuliani's 9/11 record: Giuliani has wrapped himself firmly in the cloak of 9/11 for his......

For an avowed non-presidential candidate, Mayor Bloomberg certainly gets more attention than some of the actual candidates. Newsweek devotes its cover story to "Mike" Bloomberg, "The Billion Dollar Wild Card," a reference to the billion dollars Mayor B has at his disposal, should be decide to run for president next year. That is so much more flattering than the "Lazy Like a Fox" cover Newsweek had of Fred Thompson! Newsweek editor-in-chief Jon Meacham got to......

Last night, Stephen Colbert had a reading for his book I Am America (And So Can You) that was full of fans of truthiness and enemies of bears. The Washington Square News reported that the erstwhile maybe-presidential candidate said, "It's time to impregnate this country with my mind." Unexpected, though, were probably the members of a theatrical anti-war group, Sparkle and Cybil War, who were decked out as "patriotic Texas oil baronesses with patriot......

The city remembered the sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks yesterday with a subdued ceremony. First responders, including police officers, firefighters, and EMTs, read the 2,750 victims' names throughout the morning in Zuccotti Park, near the Ground Zero. Victims' families were allowed to descend a ramp into the "Pit" amid the construction of Ground Zero, where a temporary reflecting pool was placed. Mourners placed flowers in the pool and letters on the......

The prominent Democratic party donor and California fugitive Norman Hsu's connection to New York City's New School is examined in the NY Times today. Hsu donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to national Democrats like Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to governors like Eliot Spitzer of NY and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and NYC politicians like City Council members Christine Quinn and John Liu and City Comptroller William Thompson. Hsu, who had been wanted......

Just two weeks away, the sixth anniversary of September 11 continues to be a source of controversy. Before, it was families upset over the city and state's decision to hold the ceremony at a nearby park and not at Ground Zero (a compromise was later brokered to let families visit "the Pit"). Now, it's over Rudy Giuliani's role reading the names of victims. In the past, Giuliani has participated in the event, which no one......

I Dig Doug, a new production in this year’s Fringe Festival, concerns a status-obsessed uptown debutante who decides she should so get involved in presidential politics. When the farcical story begins, the unnamed teen (Karen DiConcetto, called Girl in the program) and her equally self-absorbed friend Nicole (Rochelle Zimmerman) are coasting along on their parents’ money, only mildly concerned about their imminent college application essays – Girl is smart enough to know that if they......

Dan Rather may have retired from the CBS Evening News, but he's still breaking stories while at HDNet. On his upcoming Thursday night Dan Rather Reports, he will air an "rare sit-down interview" with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where Bloomberg makes it "categorically clear that he will not run for President of the United States, nor will he seek a Vice Presidential bid nor any cabinet position for that matter, something he's never done before." Wow,......

At a ceremony that was supposed to tout the 50 millionth call to 311, Mayor Bloomberg faced the media, who were eager to embrace the maybe-maybe not presidential candidate. Mayor Bloomberg remained steadfast in his conviction not to run for president, heartily proclaiming, "I've got the greatest job in the world," and that he would stay on as mayor for another 925 days. But, the NY Times says ahem, reporting Bloomberg aides have working......

We think we smell another presidential candidate. Or at least one who will deny it until the last possible moment! Time cover (co-)subject Mayor Bloomberg was in California yesterday to give speeches with a national-bent - all while claiming he's not running for President. His first speech was at Google headquarters in Mountain View (his engineering degree from Johns Hopkins is his "geek cred"), where he said, "The country is in trouble. I don't......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network." It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Bravo to the Daily News for pulling out the Photoshop for today's cover: Rudy Giuliani as Moses, after the presidential contender unveiled "twelve commitments to the American People" yesterday in New Hampshire. The Daily News puts them on stone tablets in a graphic. The former mayor said, “I believe America solves its problems best from strength, not weakness, and from optimism, not pessimism. My Twelve Commitments are a promise to this generation and generations to......

Today, the fourth suspect in the alleged plot to blow up a jet fuel pipeline at JFK airport and the vicinity surrendered to authorities in Trinidad. Abdel Nur is being questioned and will appear in court in the next few days. Two other suspects, Abdul Kadir and Kareem Ibrahim, were arrested in Trinidad on Saturday, while Russell Defreitas, a former air cargo worker at JFK was arrested in Brooklyn. Surveillance camera footage of Defreitas was......

As if former Mayor Rudy Giuliani were giving a perfect example of his shiny, accessible campaign demeanor, which is decidedly different from his mayoral behavior, none was better than the Tuesday confrontation between the presidential candidate and some protesters. You can see a video on WNBC 4 where a two people separately ask Giuliani why he let first responders go into the World Trade Center, if he knew that the towers would fall down. From......

Nice guys may not finish first, but it helps with voters. The NY Times' Michael Powell looks at Rudy Giuliani's evolution from mayor to presidential candidate and the shift in style he's had to take. For instance, more smiling, less snarling! Powell has been covering Giuliani for the past 15 years and includes observations about Giuliani's body language, style (no more combover!), and rhetoric. A NY Times video that has clips of Mayor Rudy......