Celeste Katz looks at the Mayoral field and asks "Then the question becomes how does each candidate make a case to bear the party standard…where does Thompson fit in?"
Category: News and Opinion
6,100 Teachers. Looks like Bloomberg wasn’t bluffing, but will the Council stand up to him?
|Historically, layoffs are often threatened as a budgetary bargaining chip.
In other words, the mayor basically yells what amounts to “fire” in a crowded theater, and more often than not, the money surfaces from the State or Washington, and the bad news is avoided. (layoffs in this case)
However this time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not bluffing, and for the first time since the 1970’s, public school teachers are looking at pick slips. A loss of 6,166 teachers, including an anticipated 4,100 layoffs.
The Gateway (Mott The Hoople Edition)
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In the attached article, we learn that while Tony Kushner thinks that Israel should never have been created, he's now willing to concede them their coninued existence.
Admittedly, this is also the position of Richard Cohen, who I like, but when Cohen says he supports Israel's right to exist, he doesn’t wink.
Dybbuk’s Complaint (and Rock’s)
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It was Monday Night, and Domestic Partner had commandeered the TV away from eight year old Dybbuk, as she sometimes did, to watch an important news story.
But this night was different from all other nights. She was taking no chances about anyone spoiling this story for her.
Instead of MSNBC, we were watching CNN.
Dybbuk was already displeased, but he then threw us for loop.
“He was a bad guy, but no one should be killed. I am not happy when anyone is killed.”
The Gateway (Animal Crackers Edition) [The Latest OBL Jokes, Plus a Few Items in Questionable Taste]
|The North Atlantic Economic Union
|Jeremy Rifkin in his book the European Dream points out the differences between the European and American Dreams. Unknown to many Americans is the fact that Europe has more population and an equal GNP when compared to the U.S. Meanwhile on the other side of the globe China is coming into its own as an economic superpower threatening both European and American supremacy.
The Birth of the Future
|Jeremy Rifkin in the European Dream takes off with the premise that Europe is leaving behind American supremacy and Western Ideology embracing instead universal human rights and nature thus creating a new history.
The Unsaid in the Mayor’s Budget
|So NYC public school spending is proposed to increase by $1 billion next year in the Mayor’s budget, while what we get in exchange goes down. Expect the propagandists at the UFT to ignore the former publicly (while it will be high fives all around privately), but for no one else to acknowledge the two facts together and attempt to explain them either.
Also unquestioned — how city existing employees and retirees “earned” the retroactive pension enhancements their unions got in political deals in Albany and City Hall over the past 16 years, and why future employees are worth so much less that their pensions should be much worse than the existing workers were promised to begin with. After all, who would ask those questions? Do younger generations only deserve less in public employment, or in general, and why and according to whom?
The Gateway (Paint Me Black Edition)
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Query: Is Gatemouth a "Postmodern" or a "Solid Liberal'
Funny thing is, I took the quiz and I'm a “New Coalition Democrat” (Code Word for Affluent African American)
SURREAL.
|It was one of those defining moments predictable in near every US presidential debate. The moment when a speaker steps out of the crease so to speak, and hits for the boundary (cricket talk). Usually, these moments appear when caution is thrown to the wind; and they often give a deeper insight into a candidate’s true feelings and character. But sometimes these moments are scripted. Sometimes they are exquisitely calculated: especially when the candidate is as cunning and cerebral as Barack Obama. One of these moments came during the last presidential debate-cycle. I remember it well.