The Baby is here, the Baby is here! Robyn was born on March 8, 2007. She is healthy, happy, and hungry and in need of some podsafe music. Featuring:

1. Amer Diab
2. Fidget
3. The Milwalkees
4. Black Lab
5. Jonathan Coulton
6. Dark Romantics

With special thanks to Jersey Joe, the kids from Bucket, Jim from Jersey Beat, and Jason from Radio BSOTS, and Endless Shouting Matches With Myself.

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Special thanks to Jason for the rant:

It was on the cover of the March 5, 2007 issue of New York magazine that a close-up of Rudolph Giuliani's smiling face appeared. Superimposed was a one-word question: HIM? The caption read, "What America Sees In Rudy: The Weirdness of the Giuliani juggernaut." Few things infuriate me more at the moment than the idea of Rudy running as a presidential candidate. I live in Mount Vernon, New York, about a half hour train ride north from New York City. While the rest of America stands in awe of a man who put on a brave face during Gotham's darkest hour, I still live with the memories of the pre-9/11 Giuliani. And not one of them is pleasant.

It sounds like a horrible thing to say, but 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to him. He was visible when the commander-in-chief wasn't, and that alone elevated Giuliani to a status of not only New York's Mayor, but America's mayor. It is arguably the only reason why he is being looked at as a serious contender for the White House's main seat. But I remember the Rudy from September 10th, and he had a Napoleon complex like you wouldn't believe. So I suppose his current quest for the ultimate high chair shouldn't surprise me.Travel back in time with me to his handling of two incidents of police brutality that the home of the brave has largely written off. As for me, they're forever burned into my memory. February 1999: Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant, was gunned down in a hallway by four cops, shot at 41 times when they mistook his wallet for a gun. The cops were acquitted the following year. Wanna know how much some people can't stand the truth? Even the beloved "Boss" Bruce Springsteen caught it bad from New York city cops and Giuliani for daring to perform his song "American Skin" at Madison Square Garden, a song which references the Diallo incident, repeating the phrase "41 shots."

In the wake of the shooting, Giuliani ordered black talon bullets for the NYPD as a preventive measure. The bullet was known to be more lethal, to explode upon contact, and able to take down someone faster. Since a person would fall faster upon being hit by these bullets, there would be less reason to keep shooting. This was Rudy's rationale. Let's read into that a little further: it wasn't necessarily the fault of the cops for shooting at an unarmed man 41 times. If only Diallo had fallen faster,  ¦now there's an interesting spin on things. Are you starting to see why I can't allow this man to be President? This was not the first time that Giuliani would come out in strong vocal defense of his police squad. Anybody remember the name Patrick Dorismond? (You get bonus points if you do.) He was a security guard that was shot to death by plainclothes police in March of 2000, only one month after the acquittal of the four cops from the Diallo trial. Undercover cops were performing a drug crackdown and one of them approached Dorismond outside of a bar, asking to buy drugs, which he was not in possession of. Cops say he became belligerent after that, but I would too if someone assumed that I had drugs in my possession due to my race or my age. They say a detective's gun went off after Dorismond lunged for it. Eyewitnesses on the scene say differently. The end result was the same: a 26-year old unarmed brother dead at the hands of police. And he wanted to be a cop someday. Before Dorismond's body was cold, Giuliani ordered the unsealing of his juvenile records, using these to make the claim that he was "not an altar boy." This was a charge that a judge had long since dropped, occurring when Dorismond was 13 years old. Despite the fact that the detective who shot Dorismond had a blemished record, Giuliani never made mention of it, instead heaping praise upon the officer for doing his part in keeping the community safe. Beyond that, he also pointed out that Dorismond was in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend a week before the incident, building a case of what Giuliani considered to be a history of violent behavior.

With the Sean Bell shooting trial coming to a close, in which cops shot at an unarmed black man 50 times last November, killing him the night before his wedding day, the cases of Diallo and Dorismond were already weighing heavy on my mind. Talks of Rudy as national martyr and presidential hopeful aren't helping matters much. A brief side note: if you ever want to know what black life is truly worth in America, it's easy to figure out - just count the shell cases.

But back to our thug in hero's clothing. Remember me saying something earlier about his Napoleon complex? Whenever I see press photos of Rudy and Judi loving it up in front of the camera, I can't help but think of Donna Hanover, an accomplished reporter and anchorwoman, as well as Rudy's better half before Judi came on the scene. Every American that points to Giuliani as an example of a real hero may want to ask themselves something: do real heroes inform their wives that they are divorcing them via press conference? To this day, I still can't get over that. I was talking about this with my wife the other day, asking her how does someone do that? How does a man tell the mother of his children that they're getting a divorce not to her face, but by way of a press conference? Wifey didn't mince words: "He was married to a powerful woman, and that scared him to death." A valid point. Now might be a good time to recall the image of the high chair. If this is how he handled business at home (business which should have stayed behind closed doors to begin with), who's to say he won't handle domestic policy the same way in the White House? Never mind foreign policy, because the same people who gaze at him transfixed as he talks about September 11th will eventually have to acknowledge the fact that Giuliani HAS no foreign policy experience. Just memories, vivid images, pathos, speculation, and prepared chunks of patriotism to pluck at the heartstrings of middle America, ready to be spun any way he sees fit.

9/11 ultimately made him who he is now, but I would hope that between now and next November, the Giuliani from September 10th will become known to those planning to cast their votes. But seeing as how I don't trust people's better judgment, and being the occasional pessimist and part-time conspiracy theorist that I am, allow me to propose a hypothetical scenario. Should another stateside terrorist attack occur shortly before the 2008 elections, all eyes could be on one man when the smoke clears. Go ahead - guess who. Wisdom tends to go out the window when feelings are running high, and people voting with their hearts and not their heads is not unheard of. Should that happen, we are all in serious, serious trouble. Because if you think that Bush the sequel has the whole arrogant figurehead thing on lock, think again. Believe me, I know. I remember. And I'm not letting that happen to the nation at large.