Author: Gatemouth

Californication

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Back in the 1970s, Jerry Brown swept to power in California with a new-agey challenge to traditional Democratic liberalism that repackaged fiscal moderation with environmentalism and some “small is beautiful” rhetoric, and then sold it as innovative, even radical change.

San Francisco punk rockers The Dead Kennedys saw right through the malarkey, but overreacted with a song called “California Uber Alles.”

Then came 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, and suddenly the DK’s realized they made a slight error in the object of their fury. They took the tune and chorus, but added new lyrics about President Bonzo and called the re-written song “We’ve got a Bigger Problem Now.“

So Little Time, So Many More Worthless Endorsements

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Queens Borough President: Helen Marshall. In late October or early November of 2001, our City still reeling from the horrors of 9/11, at a time when my work assignments were expanded to include attending meetings on rebuilding Lower Manhattan both physically and emotionally, and putting on rubber gloves everyday to inspect the mail for suspicious packages before it was opened (a task which at least once led to a visit to our office by men wearing protective space suits), I accompanied a date on a evening of Musical Comedy held at a Bulgarian restaurant in Sunnyside. It was there I first encountered Borough President Marshall’s main opponent, Marc Leavitt, whose performance as a roadshow version of Mark Russell I was attending.

Although the smoked fish platter was excellent, the evening would not have been worth it, even if I had gotten laid. It was not the lameness of Mr. Leavitt’s attempts at levity I most strenuously objected to (although, make no mistake about it; I objected on those grounds as well), but rather his attempts at political commentary.

The World Beyond the 39th Councilmanic

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I wanted to write more about endorsements, but time is getting short and family obligations intruded. Paradoxically, this led to a far longer Rock piece than I intended to write, as I just extracted it from a chapter of my unfinished book.

As such, I probably will not have the chance to write a real endorsements piece. The following are being attached for the benefit of those who’ve insisted. If I get a chance, I might explicate and/or expand, but don’t count on it.

Mayor: Bill Thompson: The only one who even has a theoretical shot of giving Bloomberg a challenge. If I wanted to cast a vote for a nut who’s willing to say whatever comes to his mind–not the worst choice in some City Council races (Remember, I endorsed Rock); I’d vote for Reverend Billy, not Tony Avella.

Comptroller. David Yassky: Davis Weprin reminds me of Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy;” he is a parochial outer-borough pol, utterly lacking in vision, who promises to restore the model of Abe Beame; anyway, voting for him is just postponing the unenviable to the runoff, and why bother, for someone so lacking in inspiration? Melinda Katz owes her career to Alan Hevesi, Hank Morris, Ray Harding & Jack “Mod Squad” Chartier; the idea of her being Comptroller would be like putting Michael Jackson in charge of a Day Care Center. That leaves, John Liu (who started the campaign running for something else) and David Yassky; both slick articles who put escape hatches in every sentence. There is one difference, however; Yassky is the only candidate who has not ruled out taking a hard look at the impending meltdown of our public employee pension system. Given that he eats dinner every night with the Executive Director of the watchdog Citizen’s Budget Commission, and appears to be genuinely smitten with her (perhaps more so than even with himself), this is probably a credible promise. This job needs someone with a genuine touch of fiscal conservatism, and Yassky seems the only one who can offer it.

The Adventues of Rocky and Gatewinkel (or When Gatemouth Met Hackshaw)

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“Now Get on outta here, because I gotta get back to this screenplay. It’s about a pair of tough talking 1970s cops who don't take nuthin' from nobody. I call it ‘Hackshaw and Gatemouth.’ Kinda like ‘Starsky and Hutch,’ but with less sex.” –Long Forgotten Room 8 Video Blogger Adam Green

It did not start out well between me and with Rock.

Rock had introduced himself to the New York blogocracy in fall 05 with an incredibly pompous post on a thread on the Politicker, the New York Observer’s Ben Smith edited political blog, which, at the time was like Rick’s in Casablanca, the place where everybody goes.

Zuckerman Unbound (A Story With An O. Henry Twist)

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The fact that my house, practically on the shores of the Gowanus Canal, shares a councilman with Greenpoint is not, in and of itself, proof that the lines for Brooklyn City Council districts are preposterous. Districts have to end somewhere and, even under the fairest of plans, some neighborhood is going to get split in a manner which will seem unfair to those so victimized.

That being said the lines are ridiculous. Given the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and geography, it is not per se preposterous that Park Slope would share a Councilman with Borough Park, or Brooklyn Heights with Greenpoint.

Endorsements: A Modified General Fatwa

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Much has been written by more knowledgeable writers about the efforts of the Working Families Party to game the campaign finance laws for fun and profit, in an effort to win friends and influence people and policy.

As I’ve noted previously, the WFP’s shenanagins, whether barely legal, or transgressive of the applicable statutes, assault the intent of campaign finance laws in at least three distinct ways. They allow candidates to elude both the contribution and spending limits embodied in the law; they transform any attempt at transparency into an unventilated hookah bar; and they potentially abuse taxpayer dollars by perhaps allowing candidates to undeservedly access matching funds.

Less is written about the Party’s efforts to game the system at the other end.

Hot Pants (They Got To Say What Is Not To Get What They Want)

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Is it just me, or is does the Working Families Party (WFP) only endorse candidates whose pants are on fire?

This may be appropriate for a political institution whose departing treasurer, when called upon to explain his exit (amidst accusations of violating campaign finance laws and very conveniently missing two filing deadlines), took the press equivalent of the Fifth Amendment and referred all questions to his attorney.

A similar reluctance to give a straight answer extends to its candidates.

Take This Tablet (and somebody is mourning)

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When one sticks ones neck out, and says the candidate has no clothes, vindication is very sweet. 

TABLET MAGAZINE: “The editor of Der Blatt, Alexander Deutsch, told Tablet—via our columnist Eddy Portnoy, a professor of Yiddish at Rutgers University—that, after being contacted by Lander’s Satmar-community liaison Rabbi Yitzhok Fleischer, he “received copy for a paid advertisement and put it in just like any other ad.” Fleischer, he said, “bought the advertisement in the name of the Lander campaign,” and thus Der Blatt sent the campaign a bill (which is now around the internet).”

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/15436/did-nyc-candidate-publish-anti-gay-ad-to-attract-satmars/print/

The Toeivah Continues: Brad Lander icht Nisht a Mensch (aka Lander Slanders)

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ONLY THE BLOG KNOWS BROOKLYN: ‘Sadly, it seems pretty clear that someone associated with one of the other campaigns or some kind of political entity is working pretty hard to attack Brad Lander (candidate for City Council in the 39th district) with a wild and crazy fake ad in a Yiddish newspaper..”

Bolstered by the Times endorsement and still considered the likely victor in the race for City Council , candidate Brad Lander’s campaign has gone on the offensive, in every meaning of the word, trying to make lemons into lemonade by turning their campaign’s darkest moment into his purported victim-hood at the hands of an evil and shadowy conspiracy which took out an ad in a Yiddish language paper in which Lander is portrayed as the one candidate committed to fighting the dreaded scourge of fellatio (usually translated as “toeivah,” which literally mean abomination, but not really if one is doing it correctly).

Please disregard

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Please Disregard.

This space was previously used to solicit a copy of recording of Saturday night's Dov Hikind radio program to check out whether an email report of the show's contents was accurate. When soliciting the info, I posted my own suspicions that the assertions made within were unlikely to be true.

When someone provided the recording (a link of which is here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/cwel4v), I took the solicitation down.

A bout of insomnia has caused me to listen to the contents; as I suspected, the veracity of the allegations in the email ranged from arguable to unveriable, although this may because I was half asleep. However, everyone I've sent the recording to who listened and emailed back agreed with my conclusion.  

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