At the Atlantic Antic nine year old Dybbuk asked "who was that guy who was pretending to like you."
"That was Bill DeBlasio; he's next in line to the Mayor. Aren't you impressed?"
"Of course I'm impressed–he's the tallest man in the world. He's awesome."
The Times profiles Christine Quinn's apartment and her thoughts thereupon.
Thankfully, we will probably never see a similar piece with Bill Thompson opining upon where and why he got his new credenza. Christine Quinn’s Newlywed Nest www.nytimes.com
So humiliatingly punked (the word he’d use) in his race for Congress, Chuckles Barron manages to grasp a small victory from the ashes of defeat in his home base by managing to hold his wife’s Assembly seat (with 55%) and her Democratic District Leadership (with less than a majority) and take one for himself (with a formidable but not overwhelming 60%) and sees this as a mandate for seeking citywide office.
To paraphrase Boss Jim Gettys, this man is going need more than one lesson and he's gonna get it too.
Who does he think he is, Reshma Saujani?
But the depths of this man's hubristic psychosis go far far deeper. Take these quotes:
1) "So, we’re going to build on that momentum, keep building the Freedom Party, keep building our movement."
Yes, your first act upon taking a position of leadership with the Democratic Party is to declare your intent to build a different party at its expense.
2) The reason for the race: "Brooklyn is the most populous borough, 2.5 million people. There’s about 800,000 blacks, about 500,000 Latinos, about 260,000 Asians. About 1.5 million are people of color and about 900,000 whites, and yet, the people of color, we have no power positions, none. Not the mayor, not the speaker of the city, we don’t have in Brooklyn–we don’t have the borough presidency, we don’t have the county leader…I just think that, unless we get the positions and have the right people in those positions…we’re dealing with a borough that’s suffering from high rates of foreclosures, unemployment, the poverty rate in a lot of our community is extremely high, the crime rate is high in our communities.”
Beautiful Chuck, by running you'll ensure that the only viable African American candidate in the Public Advocate race (Tish James) loses. Charles Barron ‘Considering’ Run For Public Advocate politicker.com
About a year ago, I suggested that Democrat In Name Only District Leader (as he was then) Mike Geller might be more comfortable in a different Party, and that this move would also be a comfort to the Democrats.
In a landslide, the voters of his District agreed, and now, apparently, so does Geller. Ex-pol wants to create a new political party www.brooklyndaily.com
Friendly advice
When addressing a "reform" club, do not say:
"you say patronage like its a bad thing"
Instead say "The people elect Democrats and then they expect our Democratic policies to be implemented. In order to do that we need people in government positions who share our Democratic philosophy. You may call that patronage; I call it democracy."
They will still think you're a hack, but at least now they'll have to do some thinking.
But, if they respond by getting obnoxious, you can always ask the guy in the club who works for a Citywide elected how it was he got his job.
Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein: You should open up a tutoring service helping machine Dems ingratiate themselves with the reform groups. Twitter / joshingnyc: Seddio to Cbid VP: "you say … twitter.com
Chutzpah Award: Gary Tilzer
Tilzer complaining about a Times story on Grace and Jimmy Meng: " The NYT Reporters Left Out or Did Not Know That Levenson Worked for Jimmy Meng and Was Let Go – Hardly an Unbiased Observer . . . "
Gate comment: Perhaps someone has the standing to make this complaint, but certainly not Tilzer, another political consultant who has a similar work history with the Meng family and fails to disclose it. True News: True News Wednesday Update truenewsfromchangenyc.blogspot.com
Hikind's opponent demands he pledge to serve out his term.
My position is that it would be an improvement if he didn't. Let's Talk Dogri (straightforward)!!!: Hikind's Opponent Demands Retirement Plan Pledge www.jacobkornbluh.com
Dershowitz: George Bush who loved Israel brought us into war with Iraq, which has been the worst thing that could possibly have ever happened to Israel. It deflects attention from Iran. So good intentions don't make good policy. I think that the Obama policy (on the Middle East), though far from perfect and I have been critical of some aspects of it, is far better than the policy of the predecessor administration. And I'm not looking for love. I'm looking for effective, smart leadership that will help lead toward a good peace and I think the likelihood of that coming from an Obama administration is higher than from a Republican administration. The Obama-meter, Dersh edition www.politico.com
A mohel opines on the religious necessity of direct mouth to wound oral suction in ritual circumcisions and finds it lacking. The Jewish Week www.thejewishweek.com
Mark Lilla: Whenever conservatives talk to me about Barack Obama, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. But what exactly? The anger, the suspicion, the freestyle fantasizing have no perceptible object in the space-time continuum that centrist Democrats like me inhabit. What are we missing? Seen from our perspective, the country elected a moderate and cautious straight shooter committed to getting things right and giving the United States its self-respect back after the Bush-Cheney years. Unlike the crybabies at MSNBC and Harper’s Magazine, we never bought into the campaign’s hollow “hope and change” rhetoric, so aren’t crushed that, well, life got in the way. At most we hoped for a sensible health care program to end the scandal of America’s uninsured…We liked him for his political liberalism and instinctual conservatism. And we still like him.
My thoughts exactly; I also like his description of Richard Nixon as the vanguard for the proletarian revolution. ‘I Am the Change’ by Charles R. Kesler www.nytimes.com
J Scum Spermond as the Father of Modern ConservaJism?
David Oshinsky: "What Thurmond offered Republicans, Crespino argues, was not just a strategy to attract disaffected white Democrats, but also a business-friendly, union-free, well-armed, white-dominated vision of the future. Strom Thurmond — not Goldwater, not Reagan — was America’s first true Sun Belt conservative.
It’s an intriguing thesis taken a bit too far. Most of the evidence comes from a string of Thurmond speeches showing that he framed his vision before it became common fare. What’s missing is evidence that anyone of importance was aware of, much less energized by, what he said."
GATEMOUTH (1/11/10): Incidentally, and I think, not coincidentally, if we extract the explicit race baiting from the Party Platform, most of the rest of Thurmond’s Kampf could easily be adopted by today’s Tea Bag Republicans, which constitute almost all of the party as it currently functions in its efforts to create paralysis and ignorance reaction. ‘Strom Thurmond’s America’ by Joseph Crespino www.nytimes.com
In spite of myself, and possibly because it ended in a cross-cultural epiphany involving the transformative powers of used vinyl, I enjoyed Michael Chabon's remarkably counterintuitive essay in which he convincingly explained why the aftermath of the OJ verdict made him feel guilty. O.J. Simpson, Racial Utopia and the Moment That Inspired My Novel www.nytimes.com
A new blog for those amused by Brooklyn Republican infighting The Brooklyn Independent GOP Fountainhead galewynmassey.blogspot.com