The Gateway (Beware of the All-Stars Project Edition)

Warning: The Fulani/Nappie "All Stars Project" is now raising money for their child abusing, anti-Semitic, theatre of cruelty programs via telephone solicitations.

The proper response is to describe to the phone solicitor exactly the level of scum they are raising money for and then scream "Fuck You Motherfucker" loudly enough to impact their hearing before slamming down the phone even louder.

 

 

 

Daily News: Overall, allowing the GOP to keep a seat at the table will avert the frightening prospect of Albany becoming an entirely one-party town.

A one-party town? Frightening?

I count at least two distinct parties with wildly different agendas: the Silver Dems and the Cuomo Dems.

Add a fractionalized and factionalized Democratic Senate (in the event they'd actually managed to unite) holding power by a small margin over a united GOP, and the idea of some sort of undemocratic one party dictatorship seems a remote possibility indeed, even if, suddenly, one party could finally be held accountable because they were supposedly in charge.

Truth be told, what the Daily News really fears is democracy.  http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/dean-jeff-show-article-1.1214254#ixzz2EH1OR5pI

 

 

 

Funniest Line of the Bloodless Coup:

Liz Krueger: The Republicans created and caused a coup which really caused all the dysfunction. Those players are gone: Carl Kruger, Pedro Espada, Hiram Monserrate. Who's back in charge, it appears, are the same players who were in charge then: Tom Libous and Dean Skelos, Malcolm Smith and Jeff Klein. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2012/12/6785071/isnt-going-work-party-senate-democrats-cuomo-grinch

I'm linking this because comparing Malcolm Smith to Spiderman is at least half correct. http://www.cityandstateny.com/winners-and-losers-dec-7-2012/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=FIRST+READ&utm_campaign=First+Read

 

Can anyone imagine Ebenezer Lopez doing this?  http://politicker.com/2012/12/brooklyns-democratic-boss-is-having-a-300000-christmas-extravaganza/

 

 

Story I wish I had caught:

Russ Gallo's successful effort at circulating an Independence Party petition for Assembly was the deadliest petard hoisted at his Assembly campaign.  http://galewynmassey.blogspot.com/2012/12/flawed-strategy-by-gop-team-of-gallo.html

Never a dull moment in any race with Ola Alabi as a contestant; the first post about her Council candidacy in any citywide blog and she's already mixing it up in the comments section.

It might be fun to see her in the Council. http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/blogs/insider/2012/12/race-for-tish-james-seat-heats-up/#more-1821

 

 

Christie Goes to the White House Goes to the White House and Booker says he may require hospitalization.

Coincidence?

The man who made Alvin Greene look palatable departs. http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/demint-exits-stage-right.html

I don't understand why running Ashley Judd against Mitch McConnell is a bad idea. Of course, she can't win, but who can? Will they run? Why risk an Alvin Greene winning the primary, when you can have someone who will raise their own money and make him spend some? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/ashley-judd-senate-candidate-kentucky_n_2247381.html

Dumb as a Post Award: Bobby Jindal's proposal to deal with "The Fiscal Cliff" (a Balanced Budget Amendment) would double its negative impact.  http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/12/bobby-jindal-unclear-on-what-fiscal-cliff-is.html

My heart goes out to Fran Streich, widow of the late Jon Kest who's had the worst year sequence of events to plague a wife and mother since Ellen Meyers (widow of Judge Gus Reichbach and mother of Hope).

What follows is meant as criticism of the press (and, to a lesser extent of certain political people), and not of Mr. Kest.     

I do not mean here to dis Mr. Kest, who was the only person I did not know sitting at the table during one of New York City’s most notorious NYC political meetings of the century so far, but this incident, is largely (though not purposely) responsible for the Mayor we have today, and has twice since then been used by opposing political campaigns to destroy its opposition, the last time only three years ago.

The incident involved the printing and distribution by the Green campaign and its associates of literature which tied Green’s primary opponent, Freddy Ferrer, to Al Sharpton.

Mr. Kest was at the meeting, which took place at Nick’s Lobster House in southern Brooklyn. The literature was then printed and distributed out of the Working Families Party Office, then located at 30 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, probably without the candidate’s knowledge. The distribution of the literature was coordinated by Mr. Kest, who was on leave of absence from his position with the Working Families Party (WFP) to serve as Green’s Field Director.  

The operation’s successful deployment and the post-primary outrage in its aftermath may be the single largest reason why Mark Green is now regarded as a political joke.

I myself always regarded the outrage over this incident as overblown and have explained why in voluminous detail. If Mr. Green deserved punishment, he got it in 2001. Part of the reason he got the punishment was because of his refusal to publicly fire the malefactors, including Mr. Kest (In true WFP fashion, though Kest had shifted payrolls, he had never left the office).

As I noted, in my link above, Andrew Cuomo used the incident against Mr. Green in his 2006 race for State Attorney General.

By 2009, eight years had passed, but Bill DeBlasio’s surrogates again made it an issue against Mr. Green in their race for Public Advocate.

One of my favorite parts of this story, which I relay in the link just above, is  that two of Mr. DeBlasio’s prime surrogates in disseminating this message, Yvette and Una Clarke, were Green’s loudest defenders in the black community at the time of the incident.  

My other favorite part is that Mr. DeBlasio’s campaign against Mr. Green was largely run out of ACORN’s office, and important parts of the operation were run by ACORN, and that that office and those operations were being run by Mr. Kest.

So, in other words, eight years later, Mark Green was still being punished for not firing Jon Kest by a campaign in which Mr. Kest was playing a central role.

None of us want to be judged by the worst and most notorious moment of our lives, and by all accounts Mr. Kest was a good guy with his heart in the right place. It would be as nearly as unfair to judge him by the Nick’s Lobster incident as it would be to judge Mr. Green that way.

I bring the matter up because obits on political blogs are supposed to mention the highlights and lowlights of the subject’s life. Surely, the Nick’s lobster incident generated Mr. Kest more ink than any other moment of his life, before or since, but I’ve been though nearly every City-wide political blog and there’s been no mention of it in any of the memorials.

Surely, it will not be ignored if and when Mr. Green dies, even though, of the two, it was Mr. Kest and not Mr. Green who has been proven to have knowledge of the incident before it occurred.  

I was hoping that, even in passing, there would be some honest blogger out there who would at least mention Mr. Kest’s role in 2001 Green campaign.

I really hate that it had to be me.

I hope Mr. Kest’s memory is a blessing to those who knew and/or loved him; but I also hope my colleagues in the NYC blogging world had a memory which was less selective. http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2012/12/ny-labor-political-communities-mourn-longtime-brooklyn-activist-jon-kest-57