It’s cold, dark and gloomy here in the New York City metro area, which pretty much matches my mood. Since it’s Kentucky Derby Day I thought I might just post some old Derby videos, but at the moment YouTube is offline. Naturally.

(Fortunately I’ll be spending most of the day rehearsing Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt with my community chorale. This will be our fourth rehearsal this week, which is one reason I haven’t been posting much. The performance is tomorrow. After that it’s back to regular daily blogging, I promise. But singing does cheer me up.)

Hillary Clinton is pushing her “gas tax holiday” plan for all it’s worth, convinced that Hoosiers are too stupid to realize that it’s not a serious proposal (and who’s an elitist now?). As Eugene Robinson wrote,

The House Democratic leadership opposes suspending the gas tax, so the whole thing is moot — except perhaps as a case study in political cynicism: Say any damn thing you think the voters want to hear, even if you know it’s a terrible idea and won’t happen anyway. Psssst, voters: McCain and Clinton think you’re too dumb to catch on.

Of course, Tuesday’s primaries are in states that solidly supported George Bush in 2004, so maybe they are that dumb. We’ll see.

Speaking of pain: For those of you who live with chronic pain, I have a three-part series about pain, suffering and Buddhism posted at the other blog. Posts are:

Pain and Suffering
Suffering and Attachment
Pain and Buddhism