...good idea to follow them. Doing this has become an addiction that's not wholesome, not with work coming out of my ears and not a even a cold broth made out of the shadow of a single reader.
Two other magnificent results of the near perfect presidency of George W. Bush.
Fallon gets cashiered. I think everyone can read between the lines there. War with Iran should either put McCain in office or keep Bush there.
The public finds out that Eliot Spitzer's a creep. Yet, after three days of wall-to-wall it's still about hookers and his "family." Is there no journalist who has the slightest desire to show just how much of a thug this guy was? There's a reason the guy made an enemy out of everyone he ever met and it wasn't because he was a crusader. He was more corrupt than any he perscuted. Nothing to do with prostitutes, everything to do with taking down big scores.
And ideologically he was the same kind of AIPAC, DLC, National Security State, death penalty, bullshit artist that Clinton and Obama are.
What a selection. No, let me retract that. It's a perfect tableau of three perfect American candidates. Americans will get the president they deserve. By ending up with these three they've continued Bush's presidency win, lose or draw. McCain offers a little something extra, though. A possibility of nuclear war. Otherwise, none are leaving Iraq or Afghanistan. None are discontinuing the invasive PATRIOT baloney. All offer "Jesus" instead of any sort of compassion.
Bye, now.
Kelso's Nuts love you
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18 comments:
The Nation thinks he's "pitiable" ... and wonders why "an all-too-human sin, amply predicted in early Scripture, getting all this incredible media play as some sort of shocking event?"
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/scheer
Poor, poor Eliot Spitzer. Getting such a raw deal.
Nation ought to start doing some homework. If the Nation just buys the hype, then they're useless.
sometimes i do not even need to post because you say exactly what i would have written anyway.
Currently i a embroiled in the currupt history of upstate New York.
New York politics in general
Boss Tweed ring a bell?
all of ny politics is one big cess pool -- and now david paterson has to venture into it
while spitzer is a creep, louse, hypocrite, thug, maniac, egoist, meglamaniac -- corrupt isnt something i would label. actually some (read some) of his prosecutions actually helped people -- that doesnt detract from the fact what he did was so wrong and so bad.
but it bothers me that while he is gone (and should be), vitter and craig are still there -- that doesnt sit well.
The overlooked aspect of the Spitzer story is his evident psychiatric condition. It wasn't the power that went to his head. His head was chemically unbalanced before he entered politics. A bi-polar sort of thing.
Meanwhile, Craig should have been shamed from office. But he wasn't. Meanwhile, Craig's malfeasance was minor. Embarrassing, but minor. If the court of public opinion acquits him, then he's in the clear.
Spitzer is in a different class. I'm sure he's asking himself why he lacked the sense to pay cash for his terrifically hot little strumpet. But that's the sort of flawed thinking manic-depressiveness causes.
The fat lady is warming up backstage.
Got to say that slappzie's on point here. With Spitzer it really was a combination of greed, ego, and some sort of psychological problem.
D-CAPny: You couldn't have known what was happening with NYRA and EMPIRE and all that. I was not close to Barry Schwartz but I was a nodding acquaintance of his, for example, he celebrated my and my partner's horses wins in the AFFECTIONATELY and RARE TREAT Handicaps with champagne parties. And I did get quite a bit of inside dirt on all that.
So, it was a combination of stuff: my dislike of Spitzer's politics (DLC, death penalty, etc., israel-israel-israel), his heavy-handed approach to my sector of the financial world, and what I knew was going on behind the scenes with NYRA/EMPIRE and how he really took such pleasure in doing one of his numbers on Schwartz who is really a good guy, totally has his heart in the right place and agrees with YOU poltically.
I can't think of anyone involved in racing in NY more beloved than Barry Schwartz and he made it seem like it was Barry (a fucking billionaire!) who was 10-percenting tickets. Barry wanted to keep NYRA as a public trust and Spitzer wanted to privatize it for his daddy and George Steinbrenner.
and D-CAPny we can differ on this but I think Dick Grasso was a pretty good guy, too...he was a very effective leader of the NYSE...if you want to get pissed off about compensation look at all these CEOs of companies that lose money who get sick packages.
kelso -- i agree about the CEOs -- look at Oneal and the guy from Countrywide. they should be in jail.
i dont know much about NYRA like you said or even the Grasso case (except SPitzer went too far with Grasso), but some of his cases did help people .
i think spitzer got what he deserved. but i also dont think what craig did was "minor". preaching against gays and any legislation against gays and then doing what he did aint minor.
I think there are more folks happy about Spitzers downfall than those that could possibly feel sorry for him. He was a bad guy. There were many instances in his political career where he could have cut some slack...but no, he enjoyed being an asshole. People remember he enjoyed being an asshole.
D-CapNY ... David Patterson is a New York State politician, remember, for some 20-odd years in Albany. It's what he chose to do with his life. So he's certainly not naive and I don't think you should feel sorry for, or underestimate, him in any way. He, better than anyone, knows what he's getting into, particularly given that he's a spawn of the Harlem powerbrokers, including Charlie Rangel, Percy Sutten and David Dinkens (not to mention his father, Basel Patterson).
And his gain (albeit on the back of Spitzer's fall) will probably (I hope) turn into a huge plus for New York.
we all agree to one degree about Spitzer. So how come no one in the media including Fox which is reflexively anti-Democratic is going into anything but the sex thing?
So how come no one in the media including Fox which is reflexively anti-Democratic is going into anything but the sex thing?
kelso you know better than anyone else that sex sells, complex political maneuverings dont
AXN: You're right as usual. David Patterson is a PRO. He's been marinating in this since he was born. His father was also a PRO. Was super-tight with one of the real good guys of NY in the 1960s, Arthur Goldberg. I remember thinking when I voted for Suozzi that I wished it was David Patterson who was running for mayor.
What has made David Patterson so effective as State Senate Minority leader has been exactly "the partisan politics of yesteryear." It is too stupid and too American for words that what's happening in New York State is conflated with Obama's candidacy. David Patterson and Barack Obama are as different as an apple and a violin. Obama and Spitzer, however, are a closer match.
Patterson gets along with Joe Bruno so well because Bruno knows exactly where Patterson stands and vice versa and they and Shelly Silver have an interest in keeping things running smoothly. New York governors have never traditionally been ambitious reformers. They have been tough when necessary and diplomatic when necessary but always attuned to whether the gears were meshing or grinding.
This state-car business is a perfect example. Patterson's car is fucked up and he's got to get somewhere and Bruno calls him up and says "Christ, David you've got vision problems you don't need to worry about getting around. Take my state-car and driver if you need them."
Does that mean that either Patterson or Bruno are part of some "new post-racial, post-partisan" politics? Hardly, both are advocates for their electorate. Both disagree on almost everything but both have an interest in getting along and doing the state's business.
Every NY governor since I've been aware of things, Rockefeller, Wilson, Carey, Cuomo, and Pataki did this kind of thing easily. Spitzer was the only one who didn't get it. Or maybe he got it all too well and loved hurting people rather than dealing with them and HIS "post-partisan" thing was horrible.
The media made Dinkins into some sort of a joke because of the Giulinni worship, but everything Dinkin's has said about how NY works has been insigntful. If you look back at the record he was a pretty good mayor and one little fracas away from being an historical one. The tennis center and the drop in crime are but two of his accomplisments. He only lost small the 2nd time. If Giuliani hadn't incited a police riot, Dinkins might have won in 1993.
And he's spoken knowledgably about the history of the state and the Patterson family.
D-CAPny: You don't say!
Dinkins? Crime drop? Were we living in the same city?
2,240 murders in 1991. Daytime gunpoint robberies at Bryant Park. Tent cities in Tompkins Square Park, along the West Side highway and at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. Underground communities in unused subway and rail tunnels.
The Second Avenue F-train subway station was Woodstock without music. Squeegee guys at intersections all over the city. Menacing panhandlers scaring money out of intimidated subway riders. Black neighborhoods so overtaken by violence that it took Giuliani, Bratton and Kelly to send in cops like an occupying army to stop the steady slaughter. East New York -- the 75th precinct -- was truly a shooting gallery, and kept upping the record for most murderous precinct in the city -- till Dinkins left office.
All that charming city history aside, it's clear to me that Paterson's administration will suffer from creeping corruption.
He is limited by his blindness. His blindness forces him to depend on his gatekeepers. He will never know when they are lied to, or when they begin lying to him, when they obscure important matters, or when they keep important matters and people from him.
Unless he makes much of the state's business a public affair, making watchdogs out of the citizens, he's positioned to get fleeced.
He may well run against Bloomberg in the next election, and if that happens, he'll likely lose to Bloomberg.
Not engaging you in this argument, Slappzie. You see it one way. I see it the other. No convincing either way. Best compromise I can offer you is that economic circumstances made GWHB a hard-luck loser to Clinton and Dinkins a hard-luck loser to Giuliani.
If that doesn't work for you, fine.
But I'm not arguing any points. We have our sides, that's all. You were taught to fear crime and I was taught to fear the law. That's in the blood.
kelso, that's quite an image that emerges when you say I was taught to fear crime while you were taught to fear the law.
Based on your view, do you think NY City, or any place you choose, would be safer if there were no police? No law?
What's your experience with crime and the law?
Moreover, by suggesting that I fear crime, you are, in my view, suggesting street crime. Not the Wall Street stuff of Eliot Spitzer's dreams. I'm looking at things from that angle.
I said that I was going to leave it there and there's where I'm leaving it. I'm not giving any details about anything and I don't want to start a debate with you that would require us writing 10 books each and resolve nothing.
This is a blood thing, not an intellectual thing. Spitzer is a perfect example of why the drug dealer is not necessarily your enemy and the prosecutor is not necessarily your friend.
It depends on the environment in which you grew up.
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