One of the attempts to try to explain Kathy Hochul’s upset win appeared on theatlantic.com and was written by Chris Good, who is identified as an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes for the Politics channel and who previously reported and blogged for The Hill newspaper.

In 1970, a redistricting, and a potential race against a popular member of the local football team, led Richard “Max” McCarthy, a smart and plucky Congressman from the Buffalo suburbs (who'd won his already marginal seat in the 64 Johnson landsiide), to embark upon a kamikazee run for the US Senate.

During that race, during which, in order to dramatize our environmental problems (and attract some publicity), McCarthy went scuba-diving into the Hudson and took a balloon ride in Central Park.

The New York Times reports today that experts are baffled that index crimes remain low across the country despite dire economic times. They might also have been baffled that crime soared in the 1960s and early 1970s despite good economic times. The explanation is obvious — generational values. There was a crime generation just as there was a welfare generation, and a divorce and single parenthood generation. It’s the same generation. And now they are on to something else.

The crime index measure street crimes. These are disproportionately committed by young, poor men, often minority men. What the crime experts are forgetting is that as Generation Greed has aged, the surge in street crime by the poor has been replaced by a surge in white collar crime by the non-poor, and lesser victimizations that are not strictly illegal in a "beyond a reasonable doubt" sense but merely immoral. Most of the poor minority men of Generation Greed are getting too old to rob and rape and kill and burgle. The better off members of that Generation are now running our public and private institutions. Which is why we are rotting toward an institutional collapse.  Because while we had a 30 year crackdown on street crimes, some would say an excessive crackdown, there is nothing of the sort going on with regard to our institutions. This is what happens when crime moves up the social ladder. A lot of it isn’t even illegal. No "broken windows" theory applied.

Gatemouth endorses Hochul!

What else did you expect?

Thank you Jack Davis for finally serving a useful purpose.

Although Jack Davis may be a less credible source than my Schnauzer, Cerberus, this story has the ring of truth.

Last week, President Barack Obama made an unexpected call, which seems to have surprised many in both Israel and the USA.  Relative to the Arab-Israeli impasse, he bluntly and sensibly stated the obvious: it is in Israel’s long-term interest to give back seized-lands, as an opening gesture or kick-off point to reinstalling peace talks with the Palestinians. Of course, those whose interests are way above and beyond peace jumped him like he was being blasphemous. Many of them deliberately ignored some of the specific caveats in his speech: like “agreeable land-swaps”.

The way to fail as Governor, in a situation where certain powerful interests have irrevocably taken more and more and left others with less and less, is to take a deal for a symbolic victory early in one’s term, allow those powerful interests to claim they have sacrificed, and then have ordinary people realize by the end of one’s term that they are worse off than before. The way to succeed, of course, is to play the same game of having the powerful interests pretend they have sacrificed, but defer the consequences into farther off in the future. Such a symbolic but empty victory is being offered to Andrew Cuomo right now. After all, like Bloomberg, Giuliani, Pataki and Spitzer — and Lindsay and Rockefeller — he wants to be President, right? A little symbolic victory with cost deferred could really help, as all those “Presidents” showed, even if the eventual cost is devastating for all the people who don’t matter and younger generations.

Domestic Partner: Gatemouth, have you finished the speech about your dad yet? Please, please, please don’t tell me you are writing another column!

In writing a speech for my father’s 80^th birthday party being held tonight in Asbury Park, I am reminded of the triumphant one I gave at his 60^th which included a not only recitation from Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” but these stirring words:

Of course Obama is anti-Israel; his position is one held by some hateful anti-Zionists as Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.

Today, State Senator Marty Golden, the Bay Ridge bloviator, demonstrated both his own heartlessness, and his lack of concern for the US Constitution, by introducing a bill which would have New York State stop extending full faith and credit to fully legal out of state marriages involving couples of the same sex.

For all the reasons I previously cited, this was no surprise.