Category: News and Opinion

In describing his history of violence, especially, but not exclusively against women, Congressional candidate and Hip-Hop Philosopher Kevin Powell has called himself a “recovering misogynist” and compares himself to "a recovering alcoholic or a crack fiend who has righted her or his ways," warning that "I can lapse at any time."

But Powell also notes his efforts to cure himself of this illness, citing 20 years of therapy. In a recent open letter to his opponent, Congressman Ed Towns, Powell notes:

“I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, to a young single Black mother, who was never married to my father. Indeed, my father so emotionally devastated my mother by his irresponsibility, absence, and neglect, that my mother turned that hurt on me, her only child. Yes, like many young people in your district, Mr. Towns, I was a victim of all manner of violence as a child, including physical and mental abuse. I strongly recommend that you Google my poem 'Son2Mother’ to get the full picture of what an inner city child like me, born on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, had to live through in terms of violence and low self-esteem, and feelings of worthlessness.“

I wonder if anyone besides myself reading about John McCain’s meeting with the Dalai Lama was remaindered of the following quote from Bill Murray’s in “Caddyshack”?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080487/quotes

Carl Spackler: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

Hillary Clinton has been somewhat scarce since the end of the democratic presidential primary, and that’s expected, I guess. After all, she had a hard fought primary and a tough and emotional loss. As an ex-candidate who lost, I can vouch for the sense of let down and failure after a political race. It“aint” easy folks. It can be very deflating. It’s like “Preparation-H” for one’s ego and self esteem. People who are courageous enough to run for public office need to be commended and applauded, more so than ridiculed. Most people underestimate how tough it is to run for public office.

During the past week, Kevin Powell’s supporters have been up on the blogs trying to discredit me, after I publicly and openly announced that I was an advisor to the Ed Towns re-election campaign. And believe me when I say that I am playing a minor role in this regard. Bill Lynch and Associates are running this campaign folks; all the congressman did was ask me as an old political acquaintance/friend to help out a lil bit. I consented for many reasons that I may eventually share. As I have said many times before: I like Ed on a personal level; he has always treated me well. We kid around a lot but it’s with respect and camaraderie.

 “I also want to say very directly for the British people why this matters so much directly to Britain.

First, let us not forget that the attacks of September 11 represented the worst terrorist outrage against British citizens in our history. The murder of British citizens, whether it happens overseas or not, is an attack upon Britain.

As I said in a recent column, I am leaning towards supporting Comptroller Bill Thompson in next year’s mayoral race; but until I fully make that decision I will write some more speculative columns on who will be our next mayor. Some of these columns may even piss off one or two of my political friends; so what’s new/lol. 

At this point in time -and with a little over a year to go before the mayoral primary- there are six significant potential candidates for the democratic primary. These are: Congressman Anthony Weiner, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Councilmember Tony Avella, Public Advocate Betsy Gautbaum, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Although I think this group is a decent one -as developing fields go- I think there is one person not on this list, who could win the primary, or at least get into a runoff. That person is our Attorney General: Andrew Cuomo. 

There are 62 senators in Albany. At times it feels like many of them have been there since John Hancock disfigured the Declaration of Independence document; the overwhelming majority of them have never authored a single piece of legislation in all that time, so their embellished signatures have never been needed. But this isn’t aberrational, because many former senators who have now moved on to bigger things never authored legislation either. For example Marty Markowitz -the current boro prez of Brooklyn and possible mayoral candidate- spent about 20 years in Albany, and didn’t get a single piece of legislation that he authored pass that body. Thus yesterday’s passage makes Kevin Parker a legislative genius. 

You can easily recognize an election year once your July conversations with elected officials get strained, agitated, feisty, confrontational or curt. This year is no different. Earlier this week I had a conversation with NYC councilmember Dr. Kendall Stewart -something that isn’t abnormal for me- and after a few minutes, I asked him about the story I wrote a few weeks ago (“Congressman Ed Towns calls for Immigration Commission”), that exclusively appeared on both Room Eight New York Politics and the Daily Gotham blogs.  Now do note that Stewart is relatively dispassionate, he is not the most emotional person in the world, in fact he could be rather stoic somewhat. But when the conversation turned to “immigration” he sounded quite emotional.