Author: Gatemouth

Tom Friedman: The Times’s Robert Mackey reported that in Tehran “chants of ‘Death to America’ ” at rallies for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week were answered by chants of “Death to the Taliban — in Kabul and Tehran” at a rally for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

Encouraging, yes. And to some extent, a message to the skeptics (myself, to some extent, included) that the Cairo speech, warts and all, may pay real dividends.

This week in Time, another Peter Beinart Democrat (Peter Beinart), also expressed his approval of the new direction in Mid East politics (which, in regard to Israeli settlements, isn‘t really new–it‘s been the same since 1967).

As was once again proven this week, there is nothing more destructive to the New York State political process than a billionaire scorned. In fact, this may be the single best argument for Mike Bloomberg’s re-election.

In 1989, for reasons too petty to be worth discussing, Al D’Amato filled his billionaire buddy Ron Lauder’s head full of visions of dancing sugarplums, and convinced him to run for Mayor, the better to sabotage the hopes of his former protégé, Rudy Giuliani, who had shown him insufficiently gratitude and fealty.

Lauder, not realizing his own campaign was a sick joke, got his clocked cleaned, and went into shock. Finally realizing his political career was dead, Lauder undertook Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, but never got beyond anger, which he decided to visit upon the entire New York City political establishment, by finally hiring some competent people and putting on the ballot and passing an initiative instituting term limits for City offices, thereby putting an end date to Rudy’s term in public office before it had even started.

In a piece I posted yesterday, I outlined the sad facts of life for the State Senate Democrats, as well as for all New Yorkers, who are facing the prospect of Pedro Espada one heartbeat away from the Governorship.

Efforts for the Democrats to hang onto the 32 votes needed to pass legislation in the State Senate appear to be doomed. At best, the Democrats still have a shot at winning back the vote of Hiram Monserrate. If the Democrats can both win back Monserrate, and obtain a ruling voiding Monday’s vote changing the Senate Leadership, then the leadership of the Senate, and the concomitant control over office space, lulus, leadership positions and other internal resources will remain in their hands, although, without 32 votes, they will still lose their power to pass legislation. 

Paul Newell thinks the only sane person in Albany may be Sheldon Silver. And this frightens him.

On his Facebook Page 6/9/09

On 10/22/2007 I posted a piece called The Joe Bruno Democrats, for which I took a lot of abuse at the time. In part, I made the following observations, which were adapted from remarks I first posted in a thread on another blog back in May 2007:

The Senate Republican majority is doomed in the long-term unless they find a way to corral some non-Republicans into either switching parties or voting with them to organize. This has now been their long-range strategy for many years. They find "Democrats In Name Only" and run them in prohibitively Democratic districts, so they can hold them in reserve in case the Dems ever take the majority.

In my two previous pieces detailing the intrigues afoot in the New York State Senate, I was puzzled by the vehemence of the State Senate Democrats in mindlessly and repeatedly chanting their mantra insisting that the Republican attempt to stage a coup had failed, because the vote had been illegal.

What if it were true? Unless one could manage to come up with 32 votes, the Republicans would eventually take over anyway.

As the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon used to say, nobody asked me but…

Immediately after posting my piece yesterday concerning the antics of  Pedro “The Mamaroneck Bomber”  Espada and Hiram "The Sultan of Swat Monserrate", collectively known as "The Aztec Two-Step", I was besieged with email, most of which came from Republicans calling me an anti-Latino bigot, and the balance of which came from fellow Democrats, telling me I was “not being helpful.”

There was a Party Line, and the Party Line was that this was a “Failed-Attempted-Coup.“

Well, despite the best efforts of Malcolm Smith to bring about Republican control of the State Senate sooner, it took Republican an entire six months to get the deed done, courtesy of their signing the team of Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, who shall from now on be referred to in this department as the “Aztec Two-Step.”

It was an astonishing display of "Brown Power." Indeed, when it comes to role models in leading a legislature, each Party Leader in the NYS Senate has a Brown as his avatar. In Dean Skelos' case, it is Willie (who pulled off the same maneuver in California only about a dozen or so times), in Malcolm's case, Gordon. 

The Gate/Domestic Partner clan solemnly remembered Memorial Day by helping six-year old Dybbuk construct a diorama memorializing his early childhood walk to the Kane Street Synagogue pre-school, and then drinking far too much at a barbeque attended mostly by natives and foreign stock from Poland, Israel, Sweden, Japan, Korea and Arizona, thrown by the family of Dybbuk‘s fiancé (yes, it is an arranged marriage; Dybbuk arranged it himself.

Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND), the local political Club in my area, is currently forming a circular firing squad as it puts itself into civil war footing. At the center of the war is a gregarious but somewhat annoying man I’ve rarely found common cause with who has sometimes behaved despicably, and yet, I find myself feeling that he’s being treated unfairly.

I’m talking about the self-proclaimed Mayor of Carroll Gardens, the Merry Mortician himself, one Salvatore “Buddy” Scotto.

Yesterday, a writer at Daily Gotham who I regard as an ally in this battle made a comment about Buddy which compared him and his followers to the Soprano Family.

Does Mole333 even know that Buddy Scotto stood up against organized crime in Carroll Gardens at a time when doing so was an invitation to a premature funeral (which probably would have been the first mob-related funeral in the Scotto firm’s history–the Wise Guys mostly use Raccuglia, sometimes Cusimano or Guido, but never Scotto), and that Buddy has had, at least once, to go into exile for his efforts?