Monday, January 28, 2013

A Full of Platitudes, Lefty Lesbian is the Frontrunner in the NYC Mayoral Race

New York Magazine has an 8-page profile on Christine Quinn and the only thing that's clear about her positions is that she is pro-neighborhood, whatever that means, and that:
[S]he vigorously defend[s] her record: “Productive, practical, pragmatic, and progressive.” She cited pro-tenant, environmental, living-­wage, pro-immigration, and pro-choice legislation that the City Council has passed in her seven years as speaker[...]  Earlier this month, she gave a “vision” speech for improving New York schools, advertised by her office as a major address. It was generally received as long on platitudes, short on ambition—the most memorable proposal being about replacing textbooks with tablets—and as simultaneously condemning yet basically endorsing Bloomberg’s more controversial education policies.
The latest poll numbers show Quinn as the early frontrunner, with huge campaign fund raising abilities. WNYC reports:
 A new Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday shows that Quinn continues to lead the pack of likely Democratic candidates in the September primary and has a huge name recognition advantage over Joe Lhota, the former MTA chairman who said he'll file to run as a Republican this week. 
In the new poll, 35 percent of Democratic voters said they backed Quinn, which is more than 20 percent ahead of her closest competitor. And that's been stable — she's had a big lead among registered Democrats in polls since last spring, and she's built on it by just a few points in this latest poll. And Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, former Comptroller Bill Thompson and Comptroller John Liu are about even, with around 10 percent each.[...]Christine Quinn had already raised the maximum of what she can spend in a primary campaign, so the pace of her fundraising slowed somewhat in this filing period. Still, she raised more than $450,000 in the last six months, while spending just over $150,000, largely on campaign and fundraising consultants. In all, she has raised more than $6 million, with the help of $2.5 million collected from 149 fundraising bundlers, and is eligible for more $3.5 million in public matching funds so far.
Which brings us to Kim Catullo and her view on being NYC's First Lady. NY Mag reports:
Catullo is a reluctant political spouse. “I’ve tried to talk her out of it,” she told me regarding Quinn’s mayoral run. “But I realize the significance of it on so many levels if she wins, and that’s the only thing that gets me past it: the impact it could have on women. And New Yorkers. And gays!” I mentioned the tantalizing notion that, should Quinn prevail, the mayor and the First Lady will both be lesbians. Catullo looked like she was going to throw up. “My heart is literally racing,” she said. Then Quinn pointed out that almost everyone who is running is married. “We haven’t had a married mayor in twelve years, which means we haven’t had a first spouse, regardless of sexual orientation, in twelve years.” All the blood had drained from Catullo’s face.
And so it seems, the big question in the coming mayoral election (November) may be: Will the city end up with a lesbian or heterosexual First Lady?

Is it any wonder that Murray Rothbard loved to follow insane NYC politics? In 1993, he wrote:
New York is of course a famously left-wing city, and has therefore, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, been going down the tubes for decades[...] 
Meanwhile, since substantive issues are scarce, the big battle between [David] Dinkins and Rudi [Giuliani] during June has been over semantics. Our age is all too often a battle over the politics of language, and its Political Correctness, and the big issue now is what term to use in referring to the Crown Heights riot of blacks against Jews in the late summer of 1992. Jews call it a "pogrom," and then raise the question why Mayor Dinkins stood idly by while a pogrom raged in Brooklyn. Giuliani has now taken up the cry, and denounces the "pogrom" at every opportunity, especially when addressing Jewish groups. Dinkins, on the contrary, denies it was a "pogrom," a term, he says, that only refers to assaults against Jews organized by the government (as in Czarist Russia). Dinkins therefore maintains it was only a "riot." From a strictly linguistic viewpoint, Dinkins is probably right, but of course his position opens him up to the well-known charge of "insensitivity" to Jewish concerns, and, of course, always peeping just beneath the surface, to Hitler and the Holocaust. One Jewish reply on the linguistic front is that Crown Heights riot was a "de facto-pogrom," whatever that may be. 
Talk of politics as the triumph of symbolism over substance!

6 comments:

  1. question; why does any outfit that depends on teacher unions support giving out tablets to school kids?

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  2. It is an utter shame that Rothbard is not around to bitingly comment on today's shenanigans at the city, state, national, and international levels.

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  3. It could hardly get any worse than Bloomberg.

    Although that's what most of us also said about Bush.

    As far as her being a lesbian goes, who gives a #&%( ?
    The only thing that matters is what stupid policies she has up her sleeve.

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    Replies
    1. As far as her being a lesbian goes, who gives a #&%( ?

      _________________________________

      Well yea, for us libertarians we view it as a "ok and?.." But if she becomes the Dem nominee you can bet your ass the Christian Right will make it all about her being a lesbian and other bullshit.

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    2. And what do we think logically follows "ssm"? Couldn't be pedophilia, could it?
      Why not? Particularly in light of the arguments or lack thereof for "ssm"?

      Ohyeah, that's right, freedom. Freedom for "ssm" but not for those who disagree with it and find it repulsive.

      But then it's not freedom.
      Now that we got that straightened out.
      People can do what they want to do, but that means those who don't want to go along with the charade don't have to.

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  4. Ilana Mercer has an appropriate name for the faux libertarians like NY Cynic, ahe calls them Lefty Libertarians. IOWs not libertarian but some strange repulsive form of leftism.

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