LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

NYS election officials are as inept or corrupt as the rest of the state bureaucracy. That's the kindest way I can frame this story. It looks like "clerical error" is the current excuse for corrupt bureaucrats. In NYC, it was warring factions of the Democratic party practicing their "dark arts" against each other, with Clinton being more powerful on her home turf, of course. Still, this is pretty blatant stuff, and if it is just "clerical error," the statewide returns need to be examined for similar "errors." That probably won't happen, but this story exposes one of the dirtiest political operations in the free world. ( link ) Barack Obama 's primary-night results were strikingly underrecorded in several districts around the city - in some cases leaving him with zero votes when, in fact, he had pulled in hundreds, the Board of Elections said yesterday. Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Har...

Spitzer gets "profiled" by both The New Yorker , and Vanity Fair . According to PAGE SIX , neither is a flattering profile. My buddy jJack Midnight asked me back in July: " why I should care about local politics in New York ?" My reply was that he was a rising Democratic star, who was about to fall. And fall he has. That two "dyed-in-the-wool" liberal magazines will feature him, in a critical light, at the same time, says it all. He should never have made a problem for Hillary. I'd like to think that my reporting of Spitzer's excesses helped, but this level of media influence is uniquely Clintonian. The "long knives" are coming out. Readers of LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI will be familiar with all of the dirt on Spitzer, of course. I'm just glad to see the "progressive intellectual" media agree with a position I've been advocating for months. A final thought: "Don't put a fork in Spitzer; he's not done yet!...

No one can dispute the lack of reporting on improvements in the Iraqi front of the war. Here are three (make that four) stories that haven't seen much exposure, but they are far from the only ones. Let's start with the number of US casualties dropping greatly in the last months. This excerpt is from Special Report, with Britt Hume : Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz spoke Sunday with Post reporter Robin Wright and CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr about why the media paid so little attention to the shrinking casualty numbers coming out of Iraq. Kurtz asked Wright if the story should have received more play. She responded - "Not necessarily. The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend - and it's not even sure that it is a trend yet... The numbers themselves are tricky." Starr said she needed more than one month's numbers before she "gets too excited" about the subject. But when Kurtz asked if an increase in casualty figures would ...

"I'm innocent, I'm VERY innocent"... So said Isaiah Thomas, after he, James Dolan, and MSG were found guilty of sexual harassment of Anucha Browne Sanders in the workplace. The trial featured depositions of Mr. Thomas saying that a Black man calling a Black woman "bitch" was not as offensive as a White man doing the same thing, and another MSG executive saying that the "N" word is okay for executives to use to co-workers. You won't find any record of that in a Google search, but I saw it myself, in the early part of the trial. Why is race relevant to a sexual harassment trial? Good question, but maybe Mr. Thomas answered it. If he sees a difference in the meaning of the word "bitch," directed at a Black woman, from White and Black men, it seems to support the case that he is insensitive to women's perceptions, which is a prerequisite of this kind of harassment. As a man, I can say that I've seen this type of man before, and th...

Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a Conservative Republican, has contibuted immensely to a national debate that has not yet begun, in earnest. What about bisexuals? If gays have the right to same sex marriage, what about people who want to have a partner of each sex? Even if gay marriage is codified into law, these people will be condemned to finding sex in rest rooms, or other places, outside of their legal marriage vow. Why must a man or woman be restricted to one spouse? Men are allowed multiple wives in many cultures, but have never been allowed to have husbands. Women have never had the right to marry other women, either. Should we accept multiple marriages, if it allows same sex marriage as well? Where does the gay community come down on these issues that Sen. Craig's predicament raises? As I said above, this debate has not yet begun, and with good reason. We're not ready for it, but it's a debate that will be had, eventually. Bisexual rights will not be ignored, after the ...

NYS Governor Eliot Spitzer has gotten embroiled in a scandal that may cripple, if not take down his administration. In a previous article , I cited the NY Post's PAGE SIX gossip column, regarding NYS Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno's accusation of "pay to play" press coverage by the Albany Times Union, which included this interesting tidbit: The liberal-oriented paper has whacked Bruno for years, and the pol claims it's because he's a Republican. On Sunday, the Times Union had a story alleging he improperly used a state- owned helicopter to fly to Manhattan for politically-connected events - a claim Bruno denies. It turned out that Sen. Bruno attended official business, as well as political functions, on all of his closely-documented trips, which makes them acceptable under state law. While investigating Sen, Bruno, it came to light that his NY State Trooper security detail was instructed to document his movements in greater detail than any other state offici...

I co-owned, with one of my best friends, a 5,000 sq. ft. nightclub called The Main St. Cafe, for a year and a half. During that time, we had some classic rock acts play there, usually for around two thousand bucks a performance. We had Rick Derringer, Dave Mason, and Billy Preston, to name the biggest acts we could book. Okay, they were "B" list "over the hill" acts, even back in 1992. The point of this post is that some weeks before Billy Preston played, we were solicited for ads by Newsday, the largest Long Island newspaper. We regularly ran ads in the "free" Long Island "bar" newspapers, and were familiar with the fact that if you don't buy ads, you don't get stories about your club. We had no idea about "negative press." We didn't buy any ads in Newsday. A funny thing happened, a few days before the show. Newsday ran an article, on page 92, titled "Billy Preston is Back, Let Him Be." After more than 10 paragra...

I was going to write about the latest Ann Coulter "kerfluffle" with Edwards, but I caught the Democratic debate on PBS, and wrote some contemporaneous thoughts. I'm bundling them into a post, so forgive the disjointed nature of the commentary. I want to get back to analyzing Ms. Coulter's latest column. The debate was held at Howard University, a historically Black college. Tavis Smiley was the moderator, and he did a good job of it. The format was three questioners, with one minute responses from each candidate, with Tavis having discretion to alter the format. When introducing the candidates, several people in the crowd shouted "Obama!" Several of the candidates cited Obama as an example of the "progress made" by Blacks in the US, during the debate. Candidates who used the word "Black": Biden and Mike Gravel, who actually said "Black African Americans." It should be a minor thing, but there are many who dislike the word "...

Well, whaddaya know? Bloomberg has quit the Republican party. What does this mean? It means that he wants to run for president, with somewhat more credibility than Ross Perot had in '92. The question is "who will he hurt more," the Repuplican or Democrat candidate? The answer is that he will hurt the Democrat more, unless the Republican candidate is Rudy Giuliani. Rudy is the only candidate who is truly vulnerable to Bloomberg's "moderate" Republican image, which was a sham from the start, to be honest. Rudy's support with moderates rests on his stance on abortion and gay rights, and Bloomberg is his equal on these issues to most "moderates," of either party. Plus, Bloomberg doesn't have to win, to defeat Rudy. He just has to siphon off enough votes as an "independent" to give Hillary, or any Dem that doesn't self-destruct a victory. Where Perot peeled off votes from GHW Bush's conservative base, or a part of it, Bloomy co...