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I first met Wayne Barrett 30 years ago at the old Varick Street headquarters of the NYC Board of Elections during my first NYC political campaign, trying to sell him on a southern Brooklyn insurgent trying to make a campaign issue out of Westway.
He told me that that was Joe Conasan’s department.
Some smart folks have emailed me some observations concerning my recent piece on Orthodox Jewish voting behavior. Here are some highlights
1) Assemblyman Peter Abbate, who in the past has used his Orthodox Jewish Election Districts as a bulwark against his often more conservative Italian-American constituents, lost his Orthodox areas this year for the first time
We always knew there was never really a Democratic Majority in the NYS Senate, just four (or more) factions in uneasy alliance. Dean Skelos' Minority always controlled more votes in the Senate than anyone else.
Everyone's in a tizzy because the Jews found gas; haven't they ever been to Sammy's? Big Gas Find Sparks a Frenzy in Israel – WSJ.com
Some thought on President Katzir’s conviction:
Cleaning my desk at the end of the year, I found one unfinished story in the pile of numbers I analyzed from November’s elections. I’m not sure anyone cares anymore, even though there are a few lessons to be learned here, so I post it mostly for the record.
RESHMA SAUJANI: Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
OK, she didn’t say that, Joni Mitchell did, but she might as well have. In fact, it would be an improvement over what she did say.
GATE (2/24/10): One may well argue that David Greenfield would be just as subservient to [his benefactors such as Vito Lopez and the Mayor]…I’m not sure the accusation is true. The truth is that Greenfield appears to be one ballsy son of a bitch.
To paraphrase Churchill, we have reached here, if not the beginning of the end, then at least the end of the beginning.
I speak here of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reign as America’s prince of the ideology that dare not speak its name–hence it’s faux name, “No Labels.”
Maybe it has no label because, upon inspection, the package is empty.
The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, of all people, has written an angry piece making the case against clemency for Jonathan Pollard.
MARTY PERETZ?!? If as ardent and angry a Zionist as Marty Peretz opposes clemency for Pollard, it is hard for anyone to his left to disagree, especially when so much of what he says echoes my own feelings.
And, yet…
This list of the year’s worst anti-Semitic slurs is worth a read, but with items 9 & 10, we really get into the arguable realm.
9. Though Christina Patterson is a bit patronizing towards Hasidim I've heard Jews, many of them Orthodox, make almost everyone of these complaints.
Back when Domestic Partner was pregnant, she and her sister were standing on a train and could not get a seat. Several Hasidic men were absorbed in their religious reading, pretending not to notice.