Author: Gatemouth

OBAMA (5/17/09): What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website — an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person, he supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words." Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn't change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that — when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe — that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

GATEMOUTH (2/7/09): The New Tolerant Tolerance, evokes…Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. To cultural conservatives who might otherwise be disposed to our message, we offer R-E-S-P-E-C-T….R-E-S-P-E-C-T means not automatically using the word “bigot” to describe those who have sincere difference of opinion based upon faith, unless and until they have behaved like swine. It means embracing them for the common humanity we share and searching for some common ground.

Domestic Partner: I am getting tired of everyone asking what it is I could possibly see in Gatemouth. His athletic physique? His sweet disposition? His good manners and sense of fashion? His tolerance for the failings of others?

Since the answer is not immediately apparent, everyone jumps to the same conclusion, but sad to say, they are wrong; being one is not the same as having one.

But please, do not think that I am with Gatemouth because of a mental deficiency; there are other reasons as well. Though I may be appear to be a simple agrarian working on my second graduate degree, I assure you that I am not a country pumpkin; I am witty and irrelevant. Yes, English is not my first language, only my fifth, but do not underestimate me . While it is true that I am beautiful and stylish, I am also very smart. I do have my reasons, even if I’ve long ago forgotten them. Besides, Gatemouth is a person of unparalleled generosity–when he has an opinion, he always makes sure to share it with everyone.

“If I have to bring Carter with me — to an event, to City Hall for an emergency session — do I have to think twice about being accused of using him as a political prop, or do I decide to take whatever comes because I need to do what's best for my kid? Do I heed the advice of political consultants who tell me I should mention being a mother as much as possible? Having conceived through in vitro fertilization, do I answer personal questions from reporters who ask about Carter's parentage? Regardless of whether I answer or choose not to, I run the risk of having my answer become politicized.” –City Councilwoman Melinda Katz in the Huffington Post.

This year’s race for City Comptroller, like those held in the past, features a groups of candidates virtually no one cares about flailing about desperately for attention. Each of the Comptroller candidates has at least one notable quality which separates them from the rest.

TOM HAGEN: Senator Cauly apologized for not coming personally — he said you'd understand.

             — The Consiglieri reporting (to the protagonist of Rudy Giuliani's favorite film) a dear friend's expedient absence from a wedding.

Congratulations are in order to Jon Cooper, the Majority Leader of the Legislature of Suffolk County, New York, upon his marriage in Connecticut to his longtime companion, Robert Cooper. Under normal circumstances, this would be the most interesting political story in the Style Section of this week’s Sunday New York Times, and certainly, it is the most interesting one which has come out of the closet. But this week’s Style Section also takes note of a another Connecticut same-sex wedding of two New Yorkers, the coverage of which fails to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

JIM “GATEMOUTH” GARRISON (played by his look-a-like, Kevin Costner):  A career speaks a thousand words. Yet sometimes the truth is too simple for some… Arlen Specter thinks he had an open and shut case: a career built on a stubborn dedication to principle over party – but in reality, it is a case of dedication to the principal over party and principles. But, something happened that made that case virtually impossible to prove: the actual trajectory of Specter’s career. The time frame of 45 years since Specter entered politics leaves no possibility of some higher set of values. We are expected to believe that Arlen Specter’s life in politics is like a single bullet which accounts for all the phases of his career. Rather than admit to evidence of this inconsistency, or investigate further, the Press chooses to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counsellor, turned jaded elderly Senator, Arlen Specter. One of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people, we've come to know it as the "Magic Bullet" theory.

The Magic Bullet called young Arlen Specter had Democratic politics and a legal resume so impressive that Bobby Kennedy asked him to work in the Justice Department on his own pet project, the Jimmy Hoffa investigation, but Specter demurred saying he "wanted to get to Washington on my own steam…not as someone’s bureaucrat." Eventually becoming a top assistant to the Philadelphia DA, the Magic Bullet took a detour to go to Washington as someone else’s bureaucrat, creating from whole cloth the Warren Report’s “Single Bullet Theory” of the JFK assassination.

Back in September 2006, I published an analysis of the Republican primary in the 24^th Senate District, which said, in part:

“The retiring incumbent is named John Marchi, and he was a giant. Marchi was elected to the Senate in 1956, before most of us were born; he was the Republican mayoral candidate in 1969 (beating a sitting Mayor in the primary), and again in 1973. In the late seventies, as the Chair of the Senate’s Finance Committee, he helped save the City from bankruptcy. Although I'm pro-choice, I admire Marchi as practically the only genuine right-to-lifer in the NYS legislature: he opposes both abortion AND capital punishment (hardly a popular stance on his island, and one which nearly lost him re-election in 1978). Whether you agree with him or not (and I don't), his opposition to the McBride Principles was courageous in an area with so many Irish-Americans, especially since it conveyed him no political advantage whatsoever. The same holds true with his public pronouncements against the Italian-American Civil Rights League for its mob connections. Once the Island spread into a second seat, Marchi was always generously helpful to whichever Democrat represented the North Shore, and Marchi usually had the decency to distance himself from the worst of the mobsters (some in every sense of the word) running the local Republican Party.”

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL: Yesterday, Gov. Paterson forced the topic onto the agenda by introducing a gay marriage bill and calling for speedy consideration by the Legislature. "This is a civil rights issue, and civil rights don't wait," said Paterson, flanked by Mayor Bloomberg and other political leaders.

Agree with Paterson or not, this is clearly an issue that deserves proper attention by the Legislature. This must be the time that the Legislature breaks with its secretive, boss-ruled way of doing business.

“The blame for this disaster lies with state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who lacked the vision and leadership to usher a viable rescue plan through his house.

The blame lies with Brooklyn Sen. Carl Kruger, who led the charge against tolling the East River and Harlem River bridges as a crucial source of funding.

When this department last looked in upon Jonathan Tasini, he had just lost a Democratic Primary campaign for US Senate run on the premise that Hillary Clinton was insufficiently liberal (and that Ned Lamont was barely an improvement). As I’d predicted back then, the punch line of his joke of a crusade was that Tasini ended up getting most of his votes from right wing reactionaries.

As someone who’s done more than his share of grousing about the Albany Bi-Partisan Iron Triangle (see also here, here,here, and here, for starters), I should be glad that any NYC daily is at long last taking an interest in a town where they haven’t managed decent day to day coverage for my entire adult lifetime, but today’s Daily News’ “State of Shame” is really a title better applied to the organ which published it, as well as to its competitors in mediocrity (in fairness, I should note that, as inadequate as the News' Albany coverage is, it does a decent job on its blog).