Red Guy in a Blue State

More Blue Village Blues

I have blogged previously on the blunders of the mayor of my fine municipality. Now, he has announced his resignation.

At tonight's board meeting, Ossining Mayor Eugene Napolitano announced that he will be stepping down as Ossining's Mayor, a year and a half after taking the post.

Napolitano was elected Mayor in 2004 after years of serving on the board as a trustee.  His term was supposed to end at the end of this year.

The Mayor cited "Personal reasons" for his decision to a shocked audience.  Later, he said, "It was a whole bunch of things.  At some point I had to get back to my life and my family."

The Mayor said he came to the decision about a week ago.

Earlier this year, the Mayor was criticized for selling his home to a company that will be turning the house into a group home for mentally challenged adults.

The Mayor has since moved to a temporary residence at Eagle Bay in Ossining.  He said tonight that he will spend more time at a home he owns in South Carolina.

A few observations:

• "It was a whole bunch of things." How articulate.
• The "more time for the family" card is best pulled when one is resigning from at least a full time position. The Mayor of Ossining is a $12,000 per year part time position. How hard could it have been to stick it out until December? He had already been a trustee for 10 years, so it's not like this was a new development in his lifestyle.
• Part time status aside, a guy who is elected mayor has promises to keep, as well as policies and decisions to answer for. You can't offer a "no mas" without a plausible reason. We really have no idea what other shoe is about to drop, or if the mayor is pre-emptively exiting to avoid a brewing scandal. There were only 6 months left in the term. 'Fess up.
• How nice to hear that Napolitano has a 2nd home in South Carolina. Don't all Con-Ed workers?

The (part time) village board has embraced an unpopular condominium development to be built on the banks of the Hudson on land donated to "the People of the Village of Ossining." This will obscure the river view of some, but kill forever any better ideas that might have come up for the area. This is to say nothing of the fact that land donated to "the people of the village" isn't something the government ought to seize and sell to private developers. That such a decision rests on such a flighty group of five and not on a more reliable measure of the people's will is just one reason the mayor should be more accountable than a perfunctory throwing in of the towel. Something is rotten here.

Cynthia McKinney

I haven't read much about Congresswoman McKinney's incident with the Capitol police, but I certainly hope that opinion doesn't fall along party lines. Ms. McKinney was not wearing her credentials, which essentially are the free pass given to members of congress so that they can bypass regular security. The cop had a job to do, and anyone- anyone- who is stopped by a cop needs to stop, shut up, and listen before they do anything. That goes for a guy being pulled over on the highway right up to the halls of the Capitol. It is intellectually lazy to cite race in this case.

Indian Point

It is no secret that Indian Point, the nuclear power plant in Buchanan, NY is located in a bad place, namely a county of one million people and in the northern region of a 20+ million person metropolitan area. It is no secret that it is slowly leaking radioactive water into the environment. It is also no secret that many people want it closed. Since I have grown attached to being alive, I'd be just fine with the thing gone, all things being equal. However, I'm a little spoiled. You see, I like having electricity.

Among the most vocal critics of our poor exit strategy in Iraq are people who have no exit strategy for alternative energy sources to Indian Point, which makes it's closure, in my view, a pipe dream. I asked an advocate today what Plan B would be for energy, and he admitted that there really isn't a magic bullet, which I suppose is the polite way of shrugging his shoulders. I'm all for conservation, reducing waste, consumption, and streamlining distribution. However, those things don't produce a watt of juice to power my computers, copiers, fax, or phone. We could all have airtight houses with R-120 insulation ratings and furnaces that are so efficient that they recycle newspaper into Jello, but the fact remains that electrical use will always rise due to technology, not fall.

If you are uncomfortable with being within 50 miles of nuclear fission I can relate. It is one town away from me. But if you want to remove our power source and have no other feasible means of producing clean energy, I think you'll lose my support.

On the President's Iraq Speech

Howard Dean has a quote out there saying that "nobody is pro-abortion." The implication is that even pro-choice folks don't high five each other when an expectant mother kills her baby. That's a clever way of putting it, but I think the converse is true as well, which is that pro life does not mean anti-mother. But the very fact that I am addressing this means that I am playing Howard Dean's game on his field with his ball (that sounds awkward). Dean dictates the dialog.

I think it is fair to say that nobody, not even the hardest core conservative, wants war. Nobody is "pro-war." I dislike fighting. However, if you break into my house, I have a Louisville Slugger with your name on it. It must have been Ground Hog day yesterday, because the president emerged for his annual press conference and actually spoke with the press on the war. He even had a little give and take with Helen Thomas, who could not mask her lack of objectivity.

Here's what frustrates me about this man: the 2nd most dangerous place in the world is that space between a prominent democrat and a microphone when the opportunity to slam the administration's management of the war presents itself. They are engaging a full court press to dictate the public perception of how things are going over there, which isn't looking so good. You can't address the media once a year and expect to counter that kind of effort. Only history will dictate whether this was a good move or bad move, folks. In the meantime, Bush is allowing himself to be slaughtered and making a disgraceful effort to direct where the conversation goes. It's his vision; we aren't mind readers. George, meet mic. Mic, George.

Blue Village Blues

What do you get when you have a place with relatively low property values and higher tax rates? I'll tell you: a prime target for non profit group homes to come and set up shop because the property is cheaper and the property tax is a non-issue. This has been going on in our municipality since they put the original group home here on the banks of the Hudson River in 1828. As soon as these places arrive the neighbors circle the wagons for obvious reasons. Some of it is simply fear of the unknown, but I can tell you as a father and homeowner that when you get a new neighbor and they put up a swing set and playhouse that it gives you a certain peace of mind that a chain-smoking, sullen group of middle aged men muttering to themselves in lawn chairs does not.

Given the emotion behind the issue, local government has made efforts to reign in the frequency of "group home surprise" being served in local neighborhoods. Of course, these efforts are only as good as the corrupt whores in government allow, as evidenced by the recent revelation that our mayor himself has agreed to sell his home to a group home interest, quite quietly until he was found out. This isn't the first controversy in local government, but it is the most blatant, and an ethics board has been called for to oversee these rascals, who are incidentally all Democrats.

Village board members say they support the concept of an Ethics Board. [Mayor] Napolitano has recused himself from the group-home deliberations and said he could not turn down a legitimate offer from a buyer.

He could not turn down the offer? Balderdash. There is no law that compels one to sell one's home for any offer, except for the law of self interest. This stinks to high Heaven, because the guy was certainly targeted by the agency; they could not have randomly picked him out, and there is nothing about his house that is particularly conducive to being a group home. There was, however, something about his complicity that made him a good prospect. They didn't buy his house. They bought him. And after he sat in my living room 15 months ago spouting lofty things to get my vote, I find him a less desirable neighbor than whoever it is he's selling out to.

The Vice President's Unfortunate Shot

It is always sad to see a Vice President of the United States embarrass himself. I'm not referring to Cheney's hunting accident. I'm talking about Al Gore's disgraceful rant before the Jiddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia yesterday, where the following is reported:

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Let's forget for a moment that many on the left decry the war in Iraq by trying to shoehorn administration's close ties to the Saudis into an accusation of hypocrisy. Gore certainly no longer has that well to draw from with his last quote. No, what I find so sad is how Gore plays up to whatever crowd he's speaking with to advance his own partisan politics.  He can't even show a fig leaf of support for national unity at a time of war when he's in the middle of people who are looking for reasons to hate us.

The media is largely ignoring this story. Dick Cheney accidentally fires some buckshot into a friend and it is big news everywhere, micro-analyzed like a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Gore fires a torpedo across the bow of his country and it doesn't even make the NY Times. I shouldn't be surprised; the Times is ruthless in their hatred of Bush and they'll manipulate the coverage to that end. One of the few papers to run the story, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has Gore's screed as the most emailed and most printed article, even ahead of Buckshotgate. So much for it not being newsworthy. Al Gore- what a disgrace.

Fooled Again?

I have blogged previously on how some on the far left not only refuse to acknowledge any liberal bias in the media, but assert that the press is actually a propaganda mouthpiece for neo-conservative corporate interests. Their rationale is typically that the press won't pick up on their pet issue, such as the Downing Street memo, the K Street Project, or, in the case of the latest email I have gotten, the alleged theft of the 2004 presidential election.

Some guy named Crispin Miller has authored a book entitled "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)" The media is suppressing the book, so claims my friend who made me hip to this, and the only review is on the Baltimore Chronicle's website by an attorney named William Betz. From his review:

Miller hits the nail on the head in describing how Bush supporters, in this instance, and right-wing activists in general, are able to perpetuate their "dirty tricks" and how they are able to justify their activities in their own minds. The key is projection. Like lawless psychotics throughout history, the Busheviks and Republican evil-doers are able to persuade themselves that they are only doing what their opponents always do, are planning to do this time, and will or would do in the future if they, the defenders of liberty, let down their guard. They are right and their opponents are wrong. They are, they truly believe, motivated by higher values, and their opponents, conversely, are motivated by selfish interests. The Bushevik true believers "project" onto anyone who disagrees with them the same qualities and motivations that they themselves possess. Therefore, if the Busheviks are inclined to steal elections or manipulate the vote counts, or suppress the vote, or engage in any kind of election mischief, their justification is that they are only doing what their opponents do--or would do, if they could get away with it. This is the essential justification in the minds of the people who are coldbloodedly destroying this country--to save it.

Now, I know that Christopher Hitchens authored something in Vanity Fair about irregularities in Ohio, and that some hack in Florida claimed the election was stolen, but it seems to me that if there was anything to this, the Maureen Dowds and Paul Krugmans of the world would have tap danced all over it ages ago.

Much of what I've read about the alleged 2004 election theft (like from Greg Palast) centers around Ohio, and how 150,000 votes were somehow switched/disqualified to steal that state's electoral votes and hand the victory to the Republicans. Interestingly, even if this were the case, the complaining parties must really love the Electoral College all of a sudden because Bush was still over 3 million votes ahead of Kerry. I thought they believed the guy who got the most popular votes deserved to win, or is that just if he's a Democrat? I wish they'd make up their minds.

At the end of the day, I am certain there were shenanigans on both sides. I am also certain that if the media is ignoring this guy's book, it has more to do with veracity issues than the absurd notion of a right-leaning agenda.

Pillow Talk

John Kerry is calling on the Democrats to filibuster Sam Alito's Supreme Court nomination. I have a theory that this move is not the result of prudent political advice from an inner circle of expert advisers, but rather acquiescence to Theresa's hen pecking. That can certainly account for the poor timing and strategy.

Sympathy?

I am as hopeful as any for a peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. What has figured prominently is the idea that a silent majority of Palestinians abhor terrorism and simply want peace, making them sympathetic figures. But now, these people have given Hamas a victory in the election. Am I to believe that the Palestinians who want peace through diplomatic channels are in the minority? What message does that send to the rest of the world?

If Chris Matthews Said It...

My first reaction to bin Laden's taped message yesterday was how much he sounded like Howard Dean. I then decided not to write that, because it would have been too predictable a thing to come from a guy who is right of center on the issue. However, none other than super-lefty Chris Matthews made virtually the same observation, except the name he used was Michael Moore. Same difference.