The Macho Response: Dennis Hopper (RIP)

May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010:

"I've always been political, but I haven't always been a Republican. I was with Martin Luther King [and] at the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley. I was a hippie. I was probably as Left as you could get without being a Communist.

I read too much Thomas Jefferson and decided that every 25 years you needed to have a change if you're really going to have a republic, and the Democrats had been in power too long.

The idea of changing the Congress, changing the Senate, getting the Democrats out, getting the Republicans in, also the idea of having less government -- which didn't seem to work out.

The idea of less government, more individual freedom, is something that I liked. I started believing it. So I started voting. I voted that time for Reagan, and I've voted on the straight Republican ticket ever since. I don't go to meetings, I don't go to things. I just go to the polls and do it. I think I just made the natural curve. You've got to start one place and go all the way around.

The controversy about me, I don't think it's going to stop me. However, a lot of people treat me differently, and they do bring it up. I'll be at a dinner party, and somebody will say, 'Well, you couldn't be thinking that ...' And then you realize that everybody at the table is looking at you, and they're like, 'You're kidding! You're not really for Bush.' And it goes around the table."

Hat Tip: Ace of Spades HQ

The Macho Response: Dick Cheney

"I think it would be a mistake for us to moderate. This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'"

-- Dick Cheney, not exactly falling under the spell of "Hope and Change", even for Politico.com.

Unbelievable: Jam Master Jay Is (Still) Dead

"As the backbone of seminal trio Run-DMC, Jay revolutionized the role of the hip hop DJ.

He took a somewhat static position and turned it into a dynamic force of music. Jay was at once composer, choreographer, producer and band leader. Perhaps what resonated most with me was Jay's reverence for the medium.

He approached the turntable in the spirit of a musical instrument; his deft cuts on countless records were the perfect compliment to the unexampled rhyme styles of DJ Run and DMC.

They were records that changed everything."

-- Michael Cusenza, in a Birthday appreciation for the late Jason William Mizell - whose killer is running free - somewhere near New York's Daily News.