Author: Gatemouth

Taxman

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Full disclosure demands that I admit the following: I have been a friendly, but not familiar acquaintance of Councilman Michael McMahon’s brother, Tom, for about 25 years. Despite this, Councilman McMahon was not my preferred candidate in his 2001 race for City Council (that would have been John Del Giorno). However, in late 2002, my family moved to an apartment on Tom McMahon’s block and during one winter snowstorm, Tom leant me his snow shovel so I could dig out my car. Therefore, I am not without personal bias concerning the McMahon clan, including the Councilman, who’ve I’ve met twice, once in 2003 and once recently, for a combined period of about ten minutes.

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (Corrected and Revised)

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"[Congressional candidate Steve] Harrison also questions [City Councilman Michael] McMahon's position on the Iraq war: Was McMahon for it before he was against it?

Harrison was irked in particular by a line in the city delegation's endorsement of McMahon [for Congress in the 13th CD] last week that said McMahon "will play an important role in bringing our troops home from Iraq."
 
‘I will not let that statement stand,’ Harrison told us. ‘Mike clearly endorsed the war.’

As evidence, Harrison points to the fact that McMahon was one of 17 Council members who voted against a 2003 resolution, which passed the Council, opposing any U.S. attack on Iraq until all diplomatic avenues were exhausted.
 
‘To me, this is somebody who is pandering,’ Harrison said. ‘The question is where he really stands. We won't know until he gets to Washington.’

Insane/Fine Goal (AKA Tutti Fruiti)

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“The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.”
-New York Times Editorial 6/20/08

WRONG!

Michael Kinsley’s famous rule that “the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal“, now has “Gatemouth’s converse“: “the ideal imperfectly replicated in a reform may be preferable to the status quo (or status quo ante), but it is not to be mistaken for the ideal itself.”

Coincidence?

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“A north country state senator has apparently opted to stand for re-election rather than accept an offer to run a state authority.

Reliable sources say Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, D-Cape Vincent, was offered and turned down the chairmanship of the New York Power Authority.

Neither Mr. Aubertine nor a spokesman from the governor's office returned phone calls seeking comment by Friday evening.

OY-BOMB-WITLESS

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"A longshot local candidate in New York, who is trying to unseat the state's Assembly Speaker in lower Manhattan, gets in on the action." (From Ben's Politico Blog)

Just to put things in perspective here, in the 64th Assembly District, where Newell is running, Hillary Clinton received 61% of the vote in her primary against Senator Obama.

While the 64th AD does contain most of Battery Park City, and some pieces of Soho, Little Italy and the East Village (though the East Village portion is predominately senior citizens living in Mitchell-Lamas developments and public housing), the district is dominated by the Lower East Side and Chinatown. And make no mistake about it; the district's Lower East Side portion almost entirely consists of a wall of housing developments full of middle and lower class Latinos, Asians, Orthodox Jews and senior citizens. Once the district gets north of Delancey Street, it carefully winds its way to take in whatever similar developments it can, while carefully avoiding picking up too many young hipsters.

The Farmhands and the Cowgirls Should be Friends (A PLEA FOR PARTY UNITY with a Soundtrack by Rogers and Hammerstein)

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Will Barack Obama please have the Democratic Party Rules Committee restore the four piddling delegates it took away from Hillary in Michigan? 

I know winning these delegates was an important victory for him, because after all, without them it would have taken an additional three and one half minutes to clinch the party’s nomination. Nonetheless, I implore him to forgo this ill-gotten gain so that those Hillary supporters who refuse to wake up and smell the coffee (I myself am fully caffeinated, and these days I take my coffee like my new candidate: not too light, and not too sweet) will have one less inconsequential complaint to whine about.