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T-Mobile continues its viral “Life is for Sharing” dance & sing-a-long campaign (in the UK), with a flash mob event held today in Trafalgar Square.
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And yes, I do sometimes wish I could just hop on the Tube and go to Trafalgar Square at any given moment.
Yesterday I got into a Twitter argument with Roaring Republican over the illegal immigration and the meaning of malum in se / malum prohibitum, an argument that Jim Milles had originally posited.
During it, RR made a snarky remark and I shot back that he forgot to add a bunch of useless hashtags – his buddies on #TCOT wouldn’t see what a wit he was. He retorted that conservatives “know how to use social networks“.
Perhaps.
But hashtags don’t win elections. Ask #Tedisco in #NY20.
Oh, and #tcot apparently lasted all of less than 100 days. Epic fail.
Exactly twenty years ago – April 30, 1989, I met the love of my life.
Well, “met” isn’t totally accurate.
On the evening of the 29th, I was working as an usher at the Nickelodeon at BU, and that cute redhead from Russian class who also worked as a cashier was at the theater with her friend, watching the 1989 movie about the Profumo Affair, “Scandal”. We got comp tickets at any Loews Theater in Boston.
We had been in the same Russian class a few times, where I was the obnoxious guy who’d leave Ms. Katz’s class early on Wednesdays to play in a band during Free Speech hour at Marsh Plaza. She had gotten a job at the Nickelodeon, usually working the concession stand, which I wouldn’t do because of my innate hatred of even the most basic, computer-assisted mathematics. We had talked and flirted before, but hadn’t really gotten to know each other beyond that.
Exactly 20 years ago today, I gave her a silly birthday card that involved a Disney character “slipping a Mickey” to another. She thought it was hilarious, and we met up after the show. I remember there was this other guy who was interested in her, and the three of us went back to her single on Bay State Road, and he had bought her some sort of elaborate birthday present and generally refused to leave. As did I. He ultimately took off.
We kissed. It was magical. We still do, and it still is. Continue reading
The County Legislature’s Community Enrichment Committee met today, where County Executive Chris Collins and his commissioner, Holly Sinnott, were not treated to a particularly warm and cozy set of questions. The meeting ran an hour longer than scheduled.
At one point during the meeting a question was raised about 2009 arts/cultural contracts with the county that Collins’ office had sent to the county comptroller’s office for checks to be issued. The comptroller’s office had received one such item, received very late in the day yesterday. It was for the BPO in the amount of $407,000. If the check was not issued by tomorrow, the BPO would not make payroll.
And they say government or the arts has no stimulative effect on the economy.
Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, has discovered the source of swine flu.
Bachmann, speaking on Pajamas TV, noted: “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
Apart from the fact that the 70’s outbreak happened under Republican President Gerald Ford, she’s got a point, there!
Batavia’s own hyperlocal news site turns one on Friday, and they’re having a party. Cheers, Howard.
While national Republicans who don’t pay a lick of attention to state politics had the straight-faced hilarity to refer to former Assembly Minority Leader and hack extraordinaire Jim Tedisco as a true conservative and sitting statesman, people in the actual district saw right through who he was and what he was.
And Albany hasn’t had a “true conservative” ever. It’s not that kind of place.
Roatti at the Albany Project argues that, for whatever else it was, Tedisco’s loss was also a repudiation of Albany itself. Specifically, three reasons are given, not least of which was Tedisco’s sense of entitlement.
It was also Tedisco’s inability to take a clear stand on the issues. This was never better demonstrated than by Tedisco’s waffling fiasco on the Stimulus Bill. Not being one of the 3 men in the room all those years meant Tedisco never really had to think or make decisions about policy. Sure, he had a lot of general stances that were required to make him acceptable to the Republican primary electorate, all that matters when districts are gerrymandered to the point of making the general election theoretically uncompetitive. But keeping up-to-date on current events and the ramifications of policies just isn’t required in Albany if your name isn’t Sheldon Silver, David Paterson, or Malcolm Smith. In that light, Tedisco’s Stimulus PR failure makes a lot more sense.
And finally, it was Tedisco’s lack of real connection to the voters in his district. Aside from his obvious situation of not living in the district, he ran a terrible campaign and couldn’t find a salient issue to run on. I attribute this to plain old political atrophy. Being in Albany so long since his first election in 1983 in his gerrymandered Assembly district and all the benefits of being an Albany incumbent had guaranteed him re-election over the last 26 years. Essentially all he really had to do to keep his seat was not get caught with a “live boy or a dead girl,” as they say. He just didn’t understand that he needed to earn the House seat because he never had to earn any of his Assembly elections since 1983.
If the national Republican party is going to remain willfully ignorant of the ins and outs of Albany politics, then bully for my side. When you boil things right down, though, there’s nothing about Albany that’s normal or desireable from either a procedural or substantive standpoint. To say we’re all ill-served is an understatement. Three men in a room is no way to govern a state. Three men from the 5 boroughs in a room is no way to govern anything north of Dutchess and west of Orange counties.
Now imagine the national Republicans putting up Dale Volker to run against Brian Higgins, and imagine them saying he’s a true conservative and a sitting statesman. Yeah, it’s that silly. #rebuild #tcot #sgp #andallthatotherbullshityouguysthinkwillhelpyouwin.
Daily Commentary and Links
29 AprTags: commentary, links, tweets, Twitter Updates