The Times’ lead “analysis” story on DeBlasio alternates between wondering how liberals will deal with the inevitable disappointment of DeBlasio’s failure to live up to his “tax the rich” (gasp!) liberal reputation, and worrying that he’ll ruin New York the way liberals ruined every city back in the sixties. A taste:
His administration could be a redemptive moment for a national left whose policies were often blamed for the crumbling of urban centers in the 1960s and 1970s, yet has now started to reassert itself in smaller jurisdictions with bold new approaches on issues like income equality and poverty.
But Mr. de Blasio must also grapple with the restraints placed on local executives: He is barred from unilaterally setting income tax policy, meaning he must persuade legislators in Albany and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to approve his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. And he has never experienced the day-to-day demands and compromises of managing an enterprise anywhere near the size of the city he will now lead.
Even supporters excited about the prospect of a liberal mayoralty in New York are urging patience to the grass roots, and cautioning that the mayor will have to manage expectations of an audience to whom he promised sweeping change.
And, by the way, fuck Cornel West, who gets the last word:
“There’s got to be a connection between vision and speeches, and execution and policy,” Dr. West said. “Our beloved president — that brother gives beautiful speeches, but he is milquetoast oftentimes when it comes to execution.”
Dr. West allowed himself a laugh. “We don’t want de Blasio going down that Obama lane, or we’ll be in trouble,” he said.
The Times editor who let through “allowed himself a laugh” should be traded to the Wall Street Journal and forced to edit Peggy Noonan’s column.
Culture of Truth
Perhaps the Times could follow up with an analysis of the liberals statutes and policies Cornel West has enacted?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So basically, Shorter Times: “LIBERALS DESTROY EVERYTHING, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES NEW YORKERS”
Villago Delenda Est
Cornel West is a serious shitstain. But then again, so are the editors of Pravda on the Hudson.
P.S. Tax the utter scum that are the Sulzbergers into utter penury.
trollhattan
They’ll be placated once the new Stop-and-twerk policy is implemented.
Sly
Don’t be so hard on Cornel West. When he calls Barack Obama a mass-murdering Uncle Tom, or a global George Zimmerman in blackface, he’s only saying those things out of love.
Chris
I just love the passive-voice “were often blamed” thing that pops up all the time in the media when describing things like this. Whenever you want to voice a criticism but aren’t up to doing it yourself, just insert “some people say…” As if the media wasn’t at the forefront of the narrative that formed in the sixties and seventies in re the left and how everything was their fault.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
Ironically, comments like West’s are how guys get the reputation of living in Ivory Towers. Fuck him and sparkle pony he rode in on.
Citizen_X
Allow me to be the first (well, after Cornel West): DEBLASIO IS WORSE THAN BLOOMBERG HE SOLD US OUT!
(Note: IANANYer)
ruemara
Oh, fucking Cornel West. A professional elitist minstrel show, full of desired disparagement of actual governing liberals, self-involvement and the go-to official black person spokesman, with authentic Awful Afro™ to prove how authentically black he is, despite wealth, access to power and delusions of grandeur. Thank goddess, I have his early writings on race and culture to remind me of his prior sanity.
c u n d gulag
Edit Nooner’s columns?
There’s not enough alcohol in the world, to ease the pain of editing that ancient souse.
Besides, she’ll break his hands to get at the bottle.
shelly
Geez, forget a honeymoon period, pols these days don’t even get a honeymoon nano-second.
MattF
But… they’re concerned. And… they’re serious. And… they asked a colored guy, just to make sure. What more could you ask for?
JPL
If DeBlasio doesn’t solve the housing problem in the first thirty days, he’ll become a lame duck mayor. I didn’t watch the him take the oath, but I did find the text of his speech.
This is also from the Times coverage
TCG
I see Cornell is still angry that he didn’t get invited to the White House when he thought he should. Please Barack, just give him a call so he will shut up already.
Cassidy
Funny you say that. He sounds just like you, Cole, a couple other FPer’s, and half the commenters on a daily basis.
Marc
@TCG: Yeah, clearly he didn’t get any invites to the mayor’s swearing-in either.
Isla
Hey, fuck you too, Cassidy. Happy New Year!
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
They did. You just didn’t notice because they didn’t include an introduction to let you know what that empty space was for.
burnspbesq
@ruemara:
Cornel West’s descent into self-parody has truly been painful to watch. Democracy Matters was brilliant, but since then …
Botsplainer
One of his first real policy pronouncements was a definitive “we are shutting it down” on horse drawn carriage rides. This is allegedly a humane act done to placate hipster animal rights activists in high rises who learned everything there is to know about domesticated animals from Disney movies.
They’re eagerly networking to loving rescue farms from Williamsburg coffee shops, and will undoubtedly be heartbroken when they learn that formerly pampered, carbon friendly carriage horses die from neglect, overwork, or are sold off for meat.
I hate fucking urban hyper progressives even more than conservatards.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Countdown to Newsmax headline in the sidebar: “Prominent Ivy League Black Doctor: Obama ‘milquetoast’“
Professor
@TCG: The same goes for somebody named Tavis Smiley.
WereBear
And in the meantime, the most recent examples of egregious idiocy and lying us into war and prejudiced oppression… they’re not to be blamed at all, for anything!
Ruckus
Cassidy, who pissed in your cherrios?
And why do you keep doing it every day?
And could you maybe do it some where else? I believe we are all getting tired of the smell.
JPL
@Botsplainer: I read in the comments at the NYTimes, that the funding for the campaign to rid the city of the horses, came from developers. Hey they have to do something with the space that the stables are located on. Bloomberg had agreed to do the same thing but didn’t follow through.
also, too.. Since, everything on the internet must be true, I just accepted the explanation. ha
Cassidy
@Isla: I’m positive you’re not my type.
Cassidy
@Ruckus: No one.
I’m bored.
Nope.
Napoleon
Cornel West is an asshole.
So seriously, NYC can not enact an income tax on their own? Is it singled out in NY State for this or does that apply to any city in the state? If it is just them that is BS (even if it is everyone it is still BS, but at least its consistent BS).
agrippa
@Culture of Truth:
The NYT will be looking for a long time to find what West has done.
Harvard may be interested in the results of that search.
Botsplainer
@JPL:
The sniveling little twerp fronting the “humane” campaign would sever significant relationships between horse and owner and ignores the major role that draft animals can play in diminishing fossil fuel reliance.
In her goofy world, domestic animals would only be hugged, never used in a working role.
Baud
Hipster New York Times is disappointed in DeBlasio before it’s cool.
agrippa
Somehow I doubt that PBO has very much interest in Cornel West.
PBO does not have good reason to have any interest.
schrodinger's cat
So why does wingnuttia think that NYT is a bastion of liberalism?
watergirl
@Cassidy: I’ve been away for most of the past 6 months, and now I’m asking myself when did Cassidy get so bitter? What happened?
WereBear
Our local carriage rides got hounded out of town, because one of the animals was limping. The lady who ran them got a note from her vet, who explained the horse had arthritis and the regular exercise from the carriage rides was excellent therapy.
But that’s sense; so many of these so-called “animal advocates” have none, none whatsoever.
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: Correct spelling & grammar. Also, sometimes facts are printed. HIPPIES!
trollhattan
@Napoleon:
IIUC (from 3k miles distant) NYC already has a city income tax.
https://www.nfc.usda.gov/publications/Tax_Formulas/State_City_County/taxny-c.html
Whether they’re free to modify it at will I have no idea. [Insert comment re. bla bla something about driving the needed talent away from Wall Street as req.]
Yatsuno
@Botsplainer: So I suppose the next step is to end the NYPD mounted police program right? And will no one think of the poor canines forced to do grungy police work? I swear animal rights people haven’t a lick of sense when it comes to the relationships animals and humans actually have.
schrodinger's cat
Happy 2014 from my overlords!
Cassidy
@watergirl: I’m not bitter. I just stopped giving a fuck about some of the dainty feelings of some people around here. Most of our FPer’s have fallen down the rabbit hole of writing about how their entitled, suburban feelings are hurt and the purity contingent has latched on to it. I’ve got no interest in coddling those people.
aimai
@ruemara: What do you think happened? Is it the rage of having Obama bust through all the garbage and rhetoric and actually get elected? I’m not so much gobsmacked by the spite Professor West is showing–you saw the same thing from Obama’s Minister, after all–but its just so…cheesy? Is that the word? So unbecoming. Its obvious that West would be singing Obama’s praises if he had gotten enough dinner party invitations to the White House.
Nicole
Seeing as how most of those carriage horses are retired standardbreds (trotters and pacers) from the racetrack, or out-of-state farm horses that got too old for the extremely hard work that is being a horse on an Amish farm, the well-meaning alleged animal lovers in NYC won’t give a shit. The fact that these horses will likely be sold to slaughter or die of neglect won’t be their problem, since they won’t have to see it. Out of sight, out of mind.
I have a friend who is vehemently opposed to the carriage horses. I asked her what should be done with them all, seeing as how they become carriage horses when they get too old to do their original job, and she said, “Let them go live in a field!” I said, “What field? Where?” and she just stared blankly at me. I just want to bang my head against a wall sometimes.
Patrick
What a stupid thing to say! Unlike Clinton who couldn’t even get a vote on health care reform, Obama got the damn thing passed. He saved GM. He got bin Laden etc etc
Maybe West should check the facts next time before uttering complete nonsense.
Botsplainer
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m eagerly awaiting the pure progressive pivot from freeing the carriage horses to freeing Mumia, or making symbolic votes to say that Navy ships aren’t welcome in New York Harbor (which should be shut down anyway because dirty industry, Gaia hurt and tools of patriarchy).
aimai
@Napoleon: Maybe they could try something like an old fashioned “window tax” on the square footage of apartments? A yacht tax won’t work. How about a “view tax?”
Baud
Hmm. I can’t wait till 2044 when the Republicans will finally have a chance to redeem their philosophy after the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush.
Oh wait…
MomSense
Whenever Cornel West says “dear brother” it is just like when John McCain says “my friend”. They are about to say something decidedly not endearing or friendly.
Bill Arnold
@Napoleon:
NYC already has a city income tax, and has had it for a log time. It’s changes to existing taxes and new taxes that may (depending on the type of tax) require approval from the state, which often interferes. The state got rid of a commuter tax, for example. (Though it applied to regions that in fact had little commuting to NYC so it was overly aggressive.)
Here’s a recent law review article about the subject (that I have not read).
And an article from the early 2000s that is more readable.
Botsplainer
@Nicole:
But they mean so well, and they all cried when they saw War Horse! You can’t hold them morally responsible for the consequences of their impassioned advocacy. They couldn’t have known that the guy who had a grandma who died leaving a field in New Jersey was broke and couldn’t afford hay, vet bills or a ferrier.
JPL
@ruemara: Facts do have a liberal bias. The article about the outpost in Benghazi caused Conservatives to have a fit. Issa has been on a witch hunt and MSM, let his spout his lies.
If the conservatives had read the article, they would realize that the State Department did not look good.
nancy graham
@watergirl: I have been wondering the same thing. What happened to the Cassidy who was here in the beginning. I haven’t been following his metamorphosis closely, but it seems to me, it started in a thread about pit bulls after Tunch’s demise. The thread got pretty vitriolic.
TCG
@agrippa: I loved when Al Sharpton pointed out to West that unlike him, Obama had spent a significant amount of his life working with and on behalf of poor, inner city black people. He said it right to West’s face and it shut him right the fuck up.
Cornell West, Kanye West and Allen West. What is is about black men with the last name West being total blowhard assholes?
Nicole
@WereBear:
For all their devotion to the cause, I think a lot of them actually have very limited real-world experience with animals, especially working ones.
Napoleon
@Bill Arnold:
I figured they had an existing income tax and that it would apply to a change in the tax and that is what they were talking about.
schrodinger's cat
Mediawatchcat has a serious question
Liberty60
@Nicole:
Y’know, THAT field, in the farm upstate where old dogs get to go and live out their senior years.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@ruemara: Oh hell yeah…
“I’s so authentic I lets my Astrofro nap the f*ck up – ON PURPOSE!”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Nicole:
I remember seeing an episode of “It’s Me or the Dog” with a woman who claimed to be experienced with Weimaraner rescue but had NO IDEA that they are very high-energy dogs who need a lot of exercise. She thought they were mellow because they’re big dogs.
waspuppet
@Chris: Coupla weeks ago Candy Crowley said that the administration could get an uptick if “stories of people who have been helped by Obamacare get out there.”
If only Candy Crowley knew someone with a TV show …
P.S.:
Funny how that’s never an issue when some America-hating right-wing bidnessman gets elected to office …
Botsplainer
@Nicole:
Ah, so you’ve met my assistant, a Manhattan vegan who insists that she’s positive that carriage rides are cruel, and they need to be in fields.
Sweet girl and a hard worker, but clueless on the concept of working animals.
schrodinger's cat
@TCG: You can add Tavis Smiley to that list, even though his name is not West.
watergirl
@Cassidy: I appreciate the reply. There do seem to be a lot fewer threads than there were before. I have wondered about that. But I’ve been on this blog for enough years that I’ve seen phases come and go, so I’m not too concerned.
The folks I really admire are the commenters who can take an open thread and post something that gets the whole thread going on that topic, like BGinCHI who asked for suggestions related to a course he was teaching and the most interesting conversation about books ensued.
Baud
I can’t believe DeBlasio started out his term talking about horses. That woukd be like Obama starting out his inaugural talking about the redesign of the $100 bill. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Cassidy
@watergirl: Oh yeah, there are still some great people here.
Botsplainer
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Reminds me of pit bull rescue people, who think you can take a mistreated fighting pit and turn it nice with love. Ironically, it’s usually not the ring dogs or maltreated dogs that eat a toddler’s face off – those assholes know better than to mix kids with those shitty animals. It’s the ones that get rescued that cause trouble, because the well-meaning are clueless.
Scott S.
Come on, give West a break — it’s hard for black Republicans to find a good, unique hook to set yourself apart from everyone else…
Nicole
@Botsplainer:
Or that the no-kill shelter they supported was already stuffed to the gills with too many animals. Sigh. Problem is, we have more domesticated animals than we have homes and jobs for. So now my city looks to eliminate one of the industries that actually makes use of unwanted animals. I have no doubt being a carriage horse is boring work, but better boredom than neglect.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Random Rose Parade note: I’m not sure how I feel about having a wedding ceremony as part of the parade, but the grooms were pretty adorable.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
It is a weird issue to blow political capital on. It makes him look silly, and when he gets into some tough things, he’ll be remembered as the dumbass who went after carriage horses and will get promptly ignored.
ruemara
@aimai: I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t have an ego like that and can’t understand it at all. What I most dislike is how he is so willing to parade himself around and be a token “unhappy with Obama official black person of note” as long as there’s a camera, or a writer there to make sure he is seen.
@Botsplainer: There’s a lot of surface passing for depth of knowledge when you’re a pro left type. Unfortunately, it does real left policies a lot of harm. These horses have a much easier life than farm work and are very well taken care of. I fear we have seen de Blasio’s first official pander to the base. Hopefully, he’ll correct this.
aimai
@MomSense: I grasp the history of the “my brother” construct but Professor West really needs to drop the fucking affectation already. Its positively creepy when he applies it to the President of the United States. Especially when its used so condescendingly and always to impeach him for not being “brother” enough.
gogol's wife
@Botsplainer:
You guys are depressing me with this stuff about the carriage horses. How sad.
Cornel West is an idiot.
aimai
@ruemara: I don’t see why you think that the anti-carriage horse people are “pro left.” One can be a vegan and a peta person and be a lunatic (and one probably is) but not have the slightest interest in or alliance with the left in any meaningful sense.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Fuck all the dudefros.
Botsplainer
@ruemara:
Hopefully, he’ll figure out how fucking useless and clueless they actually are before turning into Dennis Kucinich.
rikyrah
comments about Obamacare and real life repercussions from a commenter:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/1/1/11103/97638#7
Baud
@aimai:
The idea that we should care about animal welfare — like the idea that we should care about human welfare — is properly associated with the left, even if that concern is misplaced in a particular situation.
aimai
@Baud: I don’t even think thats true, historically. And it certainly doesn’t convert all sentimental animal rights activists into being “pro left” in any political sense. They may be single issue voters and activists who have no interest in the rest of a left agenda. In fact, I would bet you anything that most are and that their politics, such as they are, are mostly expressive and circle around issues of consumption and (perhaps peripherally) ecology rather than production or civil rights or labor.
WereBear
Being against cruelty to animals should be a no-brainer like being against baby cruelty. But decided “all the animals should be set free” is a literal no-brainer because these are how the animals earn their keep, either pulling a carriage or providing companionship.
I never see them raising money for transition camps to move cats back to the Middle Eastern desert or turning domestic turkeys back into the wily wild bird. I wonder why.
Robert Sneddon
Working horses in cities have a hard short life in the main. The carriage operators may be using up older animals for a year or two before they go to the knackers after air pollution or accidents (slips and falls or collisions with traffic) do them in. The air quality in cities is a lot better today but a cabman’s horse in London a century ago had a working life of two years or so and that would have been quite a young horse bred for the job rather than a semi-retired riding horse if what someone in an earlier comment said is true.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Baud:
Leave it to liberals to try to get animals on welfare too.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Botsplainer: I have a tough time seeing urban carriage rides as any sort of contributor to reducing fossil fuel dependence, since they are almost entirely a form of entertainment rather than transportation. If they are eliminated they won’t be replaced by cars so much as they will be replaced by a couple of drinks at a bar or going to a movie.
The animal rights activists are annoying and wrong. The reason to get rid of carriage rides is because they screw up traffic on downtown streets as well as leaving piles of horse manure around town.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
Liberals really need to be pointing out that the problems with Obamacare are heavily REGIONAL. If you live in a blue state like California or New York that made a lot of preparations for their marketplaces, you do really well. If you live in a state like Texas or Mississippi that decided to actively fuck over their citizens, you’re not going to have as easy of a time.
Look at Wisconsin and Minnesota. Minnesota’s exchanges are working great and people are saving a lot of money. Wisconsin, not so much. And why? Because Wisconsin Republicans made an active decision to tell their citizens to fuck off. Period.
Nicole
@Botsplainer:
Eh, while you and I are clearly on the same page in most ways regarding domesticated animals, I think this is a generalization. Depends on the dog, regardless of breed. I have a pit, not because I intended to adopt one, but because I went to the shelter, said I had a three-year-old child and needed a dog that was safe with small kids and she’d tested great with people of all ages. And she is incredibly safe with kids and has actually won over a few who were scared of dogs because she’s so human-submissive.
That said, she’s not great with other dogs- she doesn’t start fights, but if another dog does something aggressive, she doesn’t back down. She’s never bitten another dog (she’s got great bite inhibition), but dog owners who have seen a dog fight know how awful they look and sound, even though it’s seldom a dog actually bites another one. So I don’t try to force her to socialize. And I work with her every single day of her life, to keep her brain occupied and make sure she gets exercise.
But I know a pit bull-Weimeraner mix who is incredibly social, and I know a Golden Retriever whose owners who had to resort to a shock collar to get him to stop biting people (he would initiate as a means of getting attention). Animals are individuals, and while certain behaviors are more common to some breeds than others, temperament is an individual thing. Pits aren’t the right breed for everyone (and one of the worst things about breed bans is it makes the breed that much more attractive to people who shouldn’t be owning dogs of any kind), but I like a dog that thrives on daily training, and we can only have one animal in our apartment anyway, so the lack of sociability with other dogs isn’t an issue. And she’s safe around our kid, and puts up with a lot more mauling from him than my childhood beloved mini Schnauzer ever would have. Not because she’s a pit or any other breed, but because she is who she is.
I think there are a lot of well-meaning rescue people and animal lovers who don’t really stop to look at the effort that goes into actual animal care (meaning pet ownership, working animals, all of it). We tried to go through a rescue group initially for a dog, and I found them incredibly frustrating- I got rejected from one because my father gave away two cats, to permanent homes, I should add, in the 1980s. I’m sure this group meant well, too, but they gave up the chance to get a good home for a dog because they didn’t think we were a perfect home.
And that’s the thing that makes me so mad with the horse carriage thing. No, the stables aren’t stud farm bastions of beauty. But they’re safe. And no, the streets are not sodded with grass and the days are long. But the horses wear heavy shoes to protect their feet and they don’t go out if it’s over 90 degrees. Most importantly, these are individual horses, bred and trained to pull something heavy behind them, who are getting a few more years of life in a relatively safe, humane job, where they are guaranteed a certain level of care (and a minimum of five weeks’ break from the work every year). It’s not a bad solution for a number of unwanted, older horses.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Dudefros. Heh. And accurate too.
Jeremy
First of all liberal politicians had very little to do with the decay of the cities in the 60’s and 70’s. The rise and expansion of the suburbs and the introduction of hardcore drugs is what hurt many cities in America. And we now live in an era where cities are on the rise. Most of the job growth takes place in the cities and surrounding areas, cities like New York City are safer now than at any time in it’s past, and young people are moving to urban areas in droves. The majority of cities are run by democrats/ liberal politicians and so far things are looking pretty good.
WereBear
Can’t he recognize this for the stupid it is?
What if they hired the homeless to do the carriages? That would shut up the PETA idiots, wouldn’t it?
Would help if it was lighter… like rickshaws!
Nicole
@Robert Sneddon:
Respectfully disagree. I saw several of the same carriage horses at Central Park over several years. Likewise the mounted police units keep their horses for a long time. The carriage horses also aren’t riding horses; they’re retired trotters and Amish farm horses, because teaching a horse to pull something behind it takes awhile, even for breeds bred to it. Occasionally the riding stables in the NY area would get a former trotter as a mount, and it was always hit-or-miss if they could be trained to be a riding horse. Totally different skill set for the animal.
satby
@rikyrah: I posted that Booman on my FB wall earlier today and my own resident troll came out to tell me that HIPAA prevented insurance comapnies “from cancelling policies” since 1997. Aside from the inability to keep track of recent current events (wasn’t the cancellation of policies big news just weeks ago?) she’s always offended when i call her a tea-partier. But the only cites I saw for her claim were from Freeperville and the Moonie Times.
Edited to add: I met her through animal rescue and she’s as bizzaro politically as they come. Can’t really tell, but starting to suspect a LaRouchie.
Helen
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
This. I live in NYC and the entire block of 59th street south of Central Park, one of the most beautiful parts of the city, STINKS to high heaven. There are piles of horse shit in Central Park. As far as I am concerned, this is reason enough to get rid of the carriages.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Wingnuttia thinks that any media source that was in operation before the reign of Ronaldus Magnus the Great is, by definition, “liberal”.
? Martin
@WereBear:
You’re missing the master plan. The rich are given the option of either paying the higher income tax or pulling the carriages. Which to choose, which to choose…
Botsplainer
@Nicole:
Your impression matches mine. Here in Louisville, you can actually take a carriage point to point. It has to be a specifically designated stop, but tourists like it; it helps with restaurant variety and isn’t as boring as a cab. Those horses are long with their drivers, and share stables with the mounted cops.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Nicole:
This turned out to be the ironic reason why the TV show “Luck” got shut down by HBO after several horses died in the course of the filming: they were using retired racehorses, but the horses had been bred and trained to race, so when they staged a “race” for the cameras, the horses went all out, just like they did at the peaks of their careers. But their bodies couldn’t handle the rigors of racing anymore, and several of them died, so the show was (rightly) shut down.
Animals that have been successfully trained to do a job will want to continue doing it. We can debate the ethics of training animals in the first place, but there’s a different set of ethics that come into play once the animal has been trained.
@Helen:
Wouldn’t the better solution be to make the carriage companies responsible for cleaning up after their animals? I’m kind of surprised that’s not already in place.
Botsplainer
@Helen:
Are they not using poop baskets?
satby
@Botsplainer: Yeah, what’s up with that? In Chicago the carriage horses all wear poop-catcher bags, it’s pretty effective.
Botsplainer
Here’s the poop catching product.
http://m.bunbag.com
karen
A 25 year old terminally ill Italian woman made a facebook post about how grateful she was that animal research helped her survive another year and how she would have died at nine years old without that research. She has four rare genetic pulmonary diseases that make breathing tubes and experimental drugs. That post triggered hateful comments from European animal rights activists.
Article is here
Comments like: “If you had died as a child, no one would have given a damn.”
I believe in animal rights to a point, where I don’t want them to suffer needlessly. But if it means a human being can live? The human wins.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
white flight was the fault of the “national left” ?
Helen
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): @Botsplainer:
I do not know what regulations are in place. If there are regs to handle this problem, they are not adhering to them. There are shit piles everywhere on Central Park South.
askew
@Baud:
Yeah, it seems really tone deaf. It reminds me of the time that Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins criticized Clinton during the Oscars for not saving the spotted owl or some nonsense. What a waste of a platform. It makes liberals look silly.
Elmo
Unlike nearly every hipster trust fund PETA type in NYC, I have actually rescued real live horses. Horses more than 100lbs underweight. Horses with every rib showing. Horses whose teeth had never been floated, because their owners didn’t know it was necessary or couldn’t afford it, so the horse was slowly starving to death even though it was eating a bale of hay every week.
Nobody who has ever rescued real horses would consider taking a horse out of a safe working home where it’s well-fed with regular vet care. There are just too many damn horses starving.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@askew: But it did set Letterman up for a great intro for them the next year: “Hang on to your hats, I’m sure they’re pissed off about something. Oh, kids….”
Botsplainer
@Helen:
Then that may be a better answer than simply shutting down a winning tourist dollar draw.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cassidy:
You’re just trying to piss eemom off, aren’t you?
Botsplainer
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Yes, because race mixing.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
If they hadn’t given Those People civil rights, there wouldn’t have been inner-city riots and white people wouldn’t have been forced to move to the suburbs. It’s all very simple.
/wingnut, but I seriously have heard this claim from allegedly rational people
askew
@Botsplainer:
That would be a huge wasted opportunity if he turns into Kucinich.
It’s interesting I read a diary at Daily Kos about his inauguration and how Bill Clinton was speaking up about income inequality and how it shows the Clintons understand the shift in the Democratic Party and we will soon finally have a progressive president.
It seemed to me that Bill Clinton was praising Bloomberg and spent most of his time talking about Hillary, himself and Bloomberg instead of DeBlasio. But, Bill bugs the crap out of me so what do I know?
It will be fun to watch the progressive purists who have calling Obama a sellout since 2009 twist themselves into pretzels selling us the progressive Clintons that is for sure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@askew: If Hillary goes for it, I’m gonna start reading Eschaton threads again to watch the PUMAs and the Naderites turn on each other.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
Your last graph actually sounds a lot like being me and getting older. I’ve been well trained to work with my hands, back(to a degree, not a bricklayer) and my head. None of these work as well as they did 20-30 years ago but they still are usable. Letting me use them a while longer, seeing as how my retirement is going to be sitting somewhere looking (hopefully) at 4 walls, is a good thing.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s awesome. The only thing I remember about Letterman’s Oscar hosting gig is that Uma, Oprah bit.
Almost as much fun as watching the Edwards and Hillary fans fighting in 2007 at Daily Kos. The only time they agreed was when they called Obama a joke who would be out by Iowa.
Baud
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Yes, but don’t worry, the Roberts court will fix all that!
West of the Rockies
@karen: I hear you, Karen… Testing on animal subjects has produced life-saving medicines and treatments that save human and animal lives. I don’t support testing on animals for new shampoos and such. And if computer-based testing methods are as or more effective than tests on live animals, by all means, we should use them! I can’t imagine personally conducting painful/disfiguring tests on animals, so maybe I am hypocritical in that I endorse someone else doing such work.
But it strikes me as being sort of akin to energy resources that have drawbacks. It is clear that big oil is tremendously polluting and is a diminishing resource to boot. Wind turbines are clean but DO cause lots of deaths to migratory birds. So, yes, there is a drawback to using such a resource. We have to balance the pros and cons. Sometimes to do a great right, one must do a little wrong….
Roger Moore
@waspuppet:
Which is basically true of anyone who gets elected mayor, governor, or president for the first time. People aren’t born with experience. They have to get it along the way, and the only way to do so is to try things they’ve never done before.
aimai
@Elmo: The recession has meant that tons of horses are being abandoned–precisely those that didn’t bring in an income to their owners. I saw an article about this a few years ago. People abandoned their horses like they abandoned their dogs and cats because they just couldn’t afford them anymore. There are lots of animals that need rescuing, those that have jobs and homes aren’t at the top of the list.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Just the way I’ve always chortled when righty sources assume being the CEO of something prepares you for governance.
Going from massive ass-kissing and people having to do what you say to handling legislatures… it’s exactly the same!
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
amen
the problem with the ACA originates with the evil ass GOP Governors that:
Refused to expand Medicaid
Refused to set up state exchanges
Who the hell thought that the federal government would have to be responsible for exchanges for half the states of this country?
Come on, now.
Roger Moore
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
And, FWIW, New York is probably the best large city in the country in terms of fossil fuel dependence for transportation because it relies so heavily on public transportation. Heck, it’s not even clear how good a job those carriage horses are doing at reducing fossil fuel dependence, since their feed is not produced locally and has to be trucked into the city.
Betty Cracker
@askew: One of the reasons I supported Obama over Clinton in the 2008 primaries was because I thought Obama was the more committed of the two to progressive policies. HRC could be just as liberal or even more so if the political climate favors it.
But in the face of a mid-term result like 2010, I think she would have made a rightish turn. Bill certainly would have (and did in his time). That’s why Obama was the correct choice. The Clintons are weather vanes.
jayjaybear
I read that last sentence as “forced to eat Peggy Noonan’s shit” at first. At least it would taste faintly of gin.
gian
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I caught part of the channel 5 feed. speaking of rescues and working animals. they had a “rescued” dog on the float.
dog named Daniel. he was put in a chamber to be executed with about a dozen other dogs, they all died, he lived, somehow.
named Daniel out of the lion’s den story…
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Exactly.
I believe we can add Kentucky to the list of states where the ACA is working properly. The governor said yes, we will make this work. And it does.
Some times people do get what they vote/pay for.
elmo
@aimai:
Exactly. And horses cost a boatload more than dogs to feed and care for. Even in the height of spring and summer, even on good pasture, horses need their diets supplemented to a certain extent. In winter, they have to eat hay – there is no grass. Now find good hay – sometimes it just isn’t available. And all the time, they need expensive vet care and farrier care. I always kept my horses barefoot, so no cost of shoes, but the farrier still has to.come trim. Teeth need to be floated, which is not cheap.
And all of this is besides the cost of the land itself – most people don’t have acres of decent fenced pasture. Or a barn.
Horses are expensive as hell, and many is the unfortunate animal that’s simply been left in a field to starve when the grass runs out.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
The Clintons are weather vanes.
Best description I’ve ever heard. Explains exactly why I didn’t/don’t want her.
askew
@Betty Cracker:
Weather vanes is the perfect term for them. I just don’t want to sit through another 8 years of school uniforms, flag burning amendments, and welfare reform just to get some half-assed liberal bills like DADT. Seems like a wasted opportunity, but I am not sure that Hillary has it in her to be bold. She wasn’t bold during the 2008 campaign and her entire Senate career amounted to her naming a few post offices and that is it.
But, it sure looks like she is running and that’s going to be our nominee.
ruemara
@aimai: I give them that appellation because they are. Not professionally left as in pundits, but they view themselves as very left and anti-establishment, preventing the man from abusing the defenseless. They’re very caught up in their leftism and as a veteran of watching the stupid at a local political level and having seen people pour out of the woodwork to prevent the city from cutting down trees that had overgrown, torn up sidewalks and was creating a hazard for pedestrians and making streets impassable for the disabled-I reserve the right to have disdain for their ignorance being used to create public policy.
Jeremy
@askew: That’s why no one should listen to the emos and daily kos people who say they supported this President from the beginning when the majority of them never did. They only jumped on the bandwagon when President Obama started winning during the primaries. These people are not the base of the democratic party.
Ruckus
@askew:
I had a snarky comment but decided to go straight for once.
Clinton has had years to change, to show us she is a liberal, not a centrist
politicianweather vane(thanks, Betty!). I’ve never seen any sign of that happening.Marc
@TCG: Please, please tell me you have a link to that.
Jeremy
@askew: I do think that Hillary will be better than Bill if she becomes the next president.
It really doesn’t matter how bold she will be if the GOP controls the house of reps. for a long time. The next democratic president won’t be able to do a lot until the current dynamics change.
Roger Moore
It seems to me that people like Cornel West are the left’s equivalent of the Sarah Palin grifter class. They primarily sit on the sidelines and complain about everyone else instead of trying to accomplish anything themselves. When the other guys are in charge, they’re going to complain mostly about them, but they’re more than happy to slag their “own” side if that will get more attention. They don’t really care that they’re counterproductive; their primary interest is in attracting attention to themselves rather than advancing their nominal agenda.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Cheap sop to his Lena Dunham fans and their fellow hipsters. It’s concrete “one of us” proof for a tiny but vocal bloc, and the other 99% of NYC mostly don’t give a fvck one way or the other.
As someone who was born in Manhattan, grew up in the Bronx (during the John Vliet Lindsay era), and got outa there as soon as I legally could, I’m taking this as a sign DeBlasio understands that, starting tomorrow morning, it’s all downhill for him with the hipsterati. Which is probably a good thing for his own emotional health, and hopefully for the city as well…
Anne Laurie
@Nicole: Thank you for saying all this!
LAC
@aimai: Cornel West is what liberal white figures like Bill Mahr think a black man should be like: angry, afro out to there, always taking it to the man. “Three the Hard Way” black with a tweed jacket. And ole Cornell keeps giving them what they want – it pays the bills.
“weather vanes” – brilliant!
DTOzone
@Betty Cracker:
Obama also made a rightish turn.
Because that is what you do in that situation.
He snapped back left in 2012.
West of the Rockies
@Roger Moore: It’s gratifying to me, I must say, to read everyone’s opinions about Cornel West. I have felt for a long time that the guy is overly-elevated in terms of his contributions. I think I first became aware of him back when he was maybe on the old Firing Line show (with the long late William F. Buckley, for you youngsters who don’t recall the program). The Palin analogy is interesting, too. I agree that he is essentially a grifter, a professional-class observer and pundit who is great at complaining and not great at doing.
Hal
I have no problem with Cornell West criticizing Obama or anyone else, but he seems to do so based on some perceived personal slight. Sharpton, Obama, Melissa Harris-Perry. Dude seems to be building a list of enemies for whom he claims did not live up to some public perceived promise, but in reality he has some personal beef with them he attempts to pass off as genuine concern. He must also know he is the go to “look! Even blackity black Cornell West doesn’t like Obama, so….” for both the right and the left, and I suspect he loves that role.
DTOzone
@Botsplainer:
Not effectively.
Patrick
@askew:
Don’t forget her vote in favor of the Iraq war. She had a chance to be bold, but failed miserably.
Nicole
@Anne Laurie: You’re kind. :) It sounds like the balloon-juice community has a pretty good grasp on animal welfare issues (especially that the real issue is too many animals with no place to go). This discussion has inspired me to write a letter to Di Blasio about the carriage issue.
Mike in NC
As soon as the polls closed on election day the wingers were saying that DeBlasio would be a total failure because he’d drive out the job creators with high taxes and burdensome regulations. Seems we’ve heard that tune before, like every time some Republican opens their mouth.
Nicole
@DTOzone:
Heh. This reminds me of, of all things, Princess Daisy, which I read when I was 12 or 13. There’s a line in it where the future boyfriend of the heroine goes on a riding lesson (for which he is woefully ill suited) and thinks to himself that horse shit is the best smelling shit he’d ever encountered. People either think it’s okay or hate it. I never minded smelling it on my walks to work.
Dog poop, on the other hand, makes me want to vomit, and yet I dutifully scoop it up after our pooch every day. The things we do for love.
Betty Cracker
@DTOzone: How so? I think he’s been incredibly consistent. Any proposals he made that could be remotely classified as rightish (such as talk about a grand bargain) were things he’d already endorsed.
Hob
Not that it’ll make a difference to anyone, but my sister was a carriage driver for about a year and a half (at a time when it was the only work she could get) and was pretty unhappy about the living conditions of the animals. She is one of the hardest-headed non-bullshit lefties you’ll ever meet, has worked on farms for half her adult life, and could only be called a “hipster” if that means “someone who knows how to look really good in thrift store clothes”, so I find the reflexive “ha ha PETA hipsters” crap I’m seeing here pretty stupid.
I realize “what do you do with the horses who already have this job” is still a valid question, but that’s not a good argument for continuing to put more horses in this job.
Marc
@Roger Moore:
Never seen that expressed so succinctly or accurately. Thanks.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Botsplainer:
I was wondering the same thing.
I mean, if Charleston SC can enforce clean-up regulations, why can’t NYC?
You can’t walk along a carriage route in Charleston without seeing their system in action.
The Charleston tour guides will happily tell you their horse’s life history. I’ve been in the barns twice when I was on that horse’s last tour of the day. This isn’t Black Beauty.
Nicole
@Hob: Interesting. Where and when was she a driver, and what, specifically, did she find troubling? I’m not being sarcastic; I’m genuinely curious.
Keep in mind, the horses being put in the job are being put there because it’s all they have left to do. The alternative for most of them is the knacker’s or being left in a field to starve. I think the issue then becomes is slaughter more humane than carriage work? Which is a legitimate question. (Since I assume we all agree starving in a field is not preferable)
MoeizW
All the bile in this thread for Cornel West is fucking amazing; is there anything the President has ever done wrong? And if so, is anyone black allowed to speak on it?
Also amazing: the requirement that you must first “contribute and enact” policies before commenting on elected officials (coming from BJ commenters!)
Chyron HR
@MoeizW:
Oh, has Cornel West joined Mr. Greenwald in the pantheon of political pundits who may NEVER BE CRITICIZED UNDER PENALTY OF WHINING? We weren’t aware, sorry.
trollhattan
The weathervane line has already been used with reference to a much slipperier politician.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/28/huntsman_romney_a_perfectly_lubricated_weather_vane.html
Hob
@Nicole: It’s been a long time, I don’t remember what she said specifically & it would take me a while to get a comment from her. I realize that may sound like a cop-out, but I felt like I had to say something since the consensus here seemed to be that no one could possibly have a bad opinion of the carriage industry except airheads who don’t know anything about it.
MoeizW
@Chyron HR: Anyone can be criticized…except the President?
Hal
@MoeizW:
No, and no one on this blog has ever criticized Obama for anything. Don’t mistake a dislike that some folks here have for West as some kind of anointing of sainthood on the President. I like the guy a lot but still think he’s done his share of wrong. I also happen to find Cornell West a grating attention whore with an ax to grind, but that really is just me.
Ruckus
@MoeizW:
There are plenty of commenters here who have negative comments about President Obama. Substantive comments. Cornell West’s comments are not substantive. They are vindictive and petty and mostly bullshit. There is a difference. And when someone here does the same thing they get called out on it.
Need some cheese?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Nicole: Maybe look around here – http://www.banhdc.org/ They address many of the arguments presented here (“what will happen to the horses?”).
Discussions that degenerate (or start) with little more than saying the other side is stupid aren’t very productive. There are many good reasons not to have horse-drawn carriages on NYC streets.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Botsplainer
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Free Mumia, man.
Patrick
@MoeizW:
Of course he can be criticized. But when it is fact-less criticism, then the person (in this case West) deserves to be criticized. Or are we not allowed to criticize West?
debbie
@aimai:
I generally listen to Smiley/West while driving home from work on Friday nights. It seems to me like they’re pissed Obama hasn’t acted unilaterally and made black issues his top priority. They hated it when Bush acted unilaterally, but they’re just as angry that Obama hasn’t done the very same thing. I’ve yet to hear anyone call them on that b.s.
rikyrah
@Ruckus:
said it before and will continue to say it…
The DNC needs to be making ads with nothing but working class/poor White people that now have healthcare in Kentucky.
Nothing but White folks..
and the end of the ad should say..
They Have healthcare…why shouldn’t you….
the only difference between you and them…
is that their Governor is a Democrat.
You want healthcare – talk to the Republican Governor that doesn’t think enough of you to help you get the bridge to healthcare.
All day long…
this kind of ad plays well on tv and the radio.
MoeizW
@Hal: ‘attention whore with an ax to grind’ pretty much sums up every pundit ever. From the 20 or so comments here mentioning Cornel’s race, I think there might be, ahem, a darker reason why he getting singled out.
@Ruckus: Which comments were ‘mostly bullshit’ and which one’s weren’t? Since you can declare that most of his criticisms were petty, can I declare your criticism of him as petty?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MoeizW: The only thing more predictable than the shuffling minstrel show put on by the likes of a Cornel West is the defense of said minstrel.
MoeizW
@Patrick: “milquetoast oftentimes when it comes to execution” seems pretty fact-based to me…
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@debbie: Good point, but they’re not the only ones who expected him to do so…
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@rikyrah: You should hire yourself out – that’s damned good!
MoeizW
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I think we’re about a 100 comments in before the ‘predictable defense’ kicked in – I think its pretty predictable that purported blacks on the Internet will close ranks around the President for any perceived slight.
Ruckus
@MoeizW:
You can do anything you want but I was actually pointing out that it’s your criticisms that are petty and bullshit.
BTW I notice that your nym could be broken down to Moe iz W. Not code is it?
LAC
@MoeizW: It is also amazing that any criticism of the president, especially when it is based on some magical sparkle pony analysis or “what? there are three branches of government? You mean he can’t wave a wand?” style of criticism is considered “fair” and above board.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I looked at the website (briefly) and I don’t find their arguments very convincing. Studies from the 1980s about the effects of air pollution on the horses? Can we get some updated studies, maybe? And the traffic congestion arguments don’t make much sense in light of NYC’s efforts to build new “bike boulevards” and other pedestrian areas that are closed to car traffic. Should those be re-opened to car traffic because of traffic congestion?
And, yes, anyone who uses the “it’s a remnant of the 19th century!” argument automatically loses points with me, especially when they use circuses as an example. That’s straight out of the PETA playbook and, as many people know, PETA would rather euthanize domestic animals than figure out ways for humans and animals to work together.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MoeizW: You must be new to make that claim about those who have spoken on “Brother West” here. Clearly you don’t know who you’re talking about.
MoeizW
@Ruckus:
Somehow I gathered this was about Cornell, not me. BTW No code, my first name is Moeiz, last name’s initial is W.
@LAC: Which branch is responsible for picking Treasury sec, positions on the the Economic councils, and SS policy. I haven’t kept track on all of Cornel’s criticisms on domestic policy, but I know he’s lambasted the President on these issues and rightly so.
MoeizW
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I’ll admit, I don’t usually wade in the comments of every thread – in this case, I’m just talking about this thread in particular and I was really disappointed about how quickly it devolved into talking about Cornel’s hair and him being a minstrel.
gene108
@askew:
How was going with the status quo better for homosexuals in the military?
For whatever reason a lot of folks hate DADT, but I want to know what a better alternative would have been?
Unlike in 2010, there was a lot of push back from the military establishment about doing anything other than keeping the 100% ban on gays in the military in place.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@DTOzone:
Oh really?
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Lots of people think that a president is or should be an elected dictator. They don’t like the fact that democracy – especially as it is set up in the US – is necessarily messy and imperfect.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MoeizW: Personal expressions of hairstyle aside, I know a way he can avoid being called a minstrel, and it’s all on him.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: it was a different time; you’re right about that. I voted for Clinton twice, but stuff like the repeal of Glass-Steagel, NAFTA, “ending welfare as we know it,” etc., drove me batshit.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Fair enough. As we know, true believers get the press.
Be that as it may, they do address things like what will happen to the horses:
Horses move in and out of the trade. Saying “they have to work or they will go to the dogfood plant” doesn’t seem to recognize that reality. Is public listing of the new buyers the answer? Dunno.
Looking around Central Park South (e.g. W 59th St) with Google Maps shows lots and lots of carriages and lots and lots of traffic. It’s not a good combination.
DeBlasio deciding to end the business seems sensible to me (without even considering the allegations of animal abuse, etc.). Of course, it’s not just his decision – there will likely be legal challenges if the City Council does pass a bill to end the practice.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
LAC
@MoeizW: You haven’t kept up on things and yet you know Cornell West is right? Really? Amazing…for someone who thinks that “purported blacks” are closing ranks and it is all about Cornell’s afro, you really are not making much of a counter argument. And what exactly about the president’s cabinet choices bother you? Or is it just following the West model of analysis of plucking shit out of the air to play the blacker than thou game?
agrippa
@TCG:
got it in one
Patrick
@MoeizW:
OK -So both you and West enjoy criticizing our President without any facts. ACA – how did Clinton do on healthcare reform? Where is bin Laden these days? Is GM bankrupt yet?
People like you seem to want a 100% perfect President, which any rational person knows is impossible when we have the idiots in Congress.
Patrick
@MoeizW:
So let me get this straight; you are accusing the Obama supporters of being racists against African-Americans. You do realize President Obama is an African-American, right?
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I really wonder how much better the Clinton Presidency would’ve been, if the World Wide Web existed in his first term and was what it has become, when it was launched basically around the time he was running for re-election.
For example, “Haircut Gate”, actually did not cauase any flights to be delayed, but George Stephanopoulos got grilled grilled about it the next day at his daily press conference.
Obama can swat aside the stupid stuff, like spending $100 gazillion dollars on a trip to NYC to catch a Broadway play, on his wedding anniversary, because he can directly communicate to the people via the White House Website and Twitter, in a way President Clinton never could.
If President Clinton didn’t have to waste the better part of his first term dealing with crap like Whitewater, the “scandal” over firing the White House Travel office, “Haircut gate”, the “murder” of Vince Foster and others, who knows if he could’ve given healthcare reform another shot.
I think President Clinton really wanted to debunk the Reagan theme of “government is the problem”, which is why he made FEMA functional for the first time in its history, for example, pushed to get the budget balanced and other things that would generally be signs of good governance.
Unfortunately the media was more interested in rumor mongering than actual reporting of what was going on in the world, so a lot of Americans decided Clinton was the most corrupt President evah based on things tangentially related to what he actually did on the job. Real time that could’ve been spent on dealing with real issues was devoted to responding to scurrilous allegation after scurrilous allegation.
I don’t think the repeal of Glass-Steagal is as big of an issue as the Commodity and Futures Modernization Act of 2000 in setting the stage for the 2008 financial meltdown.
This was the biggest mistake in the Clinton Administration.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I penned a long reply to you that is in moderation. Please help.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, too: as a white woman, I have no opinion of Dr. West’s personal appearance, but I’m quite comfortable saying that it’s a dick move for him to use DeBlasio as an excuse to criticize Obama, particularly since West did it before DeBlasio was even sworn in as mayor. And, yes, it does distinctly remind me of all of the purported lefties who declared Obama a failure as of November 5, 2008.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: Hmmm. I’m not as convinced as you are that Clinton wanted to counter the “government is the problem” meme. It seems like the whole purpose of the DLC was to put a Dem spin on that very notion.
That said, Clinton wasn’t a bad president; thanks in part to assholes like me (I was one of the idiots who voted for Nader in 2000) we got the chance to see what a truly bad president looks like.
Clinton wasn’t lefty enough to suit me. Neither is Obama — a politician lefty enough to suit me couldn’t get elected in the US. But I think Obama’s political instincts are further to the left than Bill Clinton’s were.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I was far less politically engaged in the 90s than I am now, but even I recognized Bubba’s “The era… of big government… is over!” as a silly moment. Maybe because even back when I watched the Sunday Shows and read Friedman and thought myself quite Serious, I was reading Molly Ivins. He also pissed me off with the throw away line about “I think I raised your taxes too much too” line. That said, I liked him a lot more as President than as ex-President. The other day I was reading an (disappointing) Elizabeth Drew piece on health care at NYRB, and skimmed through the comments, and I was surprised at at the strong strain of Clinton-ism in the comments, “we would’ve been better off with Hillary!”> I like Hillary better than Bill, and I’ll support her if she wins the ’16 nomination, but I’m utterly mystified by this delusions that the Clintons were such powerhouses, and no one seems to have bought in to that revisionism more than Bubba Jeff. He’s become almost like McCain in the self regard for the Elder Statesman he sees in the mirror.
Patricia Kayden
“Dr. West allowed himself a laugh.”
I always allow myself to laugh whenever I read anything about Dr. West. His beef with President Obama is ever so personal.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/17/cornel-west-obama-cussed-me-out-for-attacking-his-policies/
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, I’ve never been able to take West’s criticisms of Obama seriously since reading that either. Sniveling over the unfairness of a mere porter getting inaugural tix instead of his own elitist self was pretty telling too. What a phony.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: Thank you for that, I’ve been meaning to look for this:
Two things: 1) Cornell West thinks he delivered Iowa to Obama?
2) the reeking condescension he attributes to his mother (stand up guy) puts a new light on the whole “dear brother” schtick
Ladybug
@gene108:
Interesting food for thought. Yes, the www, facebook, twitter gives a president unprecedented access to his constituents and supporters. On the other hand, with the explosion of cable news stations (during Clinton’s first term, IIRC, the only cable news station was CNN) and the internet, it also seems that stories that might have received a quick treatment on the nightly news can manifest for longer on the internet.
So with your example of the Clinton haircut, I see your point, but at the same time, I can also see a scenario where, if they had the internet back then, this haircutgate also taking a life on it’s own on the forums and blogospheres and cable news shows.
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: Wow, not a fan of West anyway, but I will never look at him the same after reading that article. Ugh.
Nicole
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I spent some time on the site, but the piece on “What Will Happen to the Horses?” was not reassuring as it basically said, “Some people have said to us they’re interested in taking some of the horses.” Which doesn’t mean anything, nor does it address the issue of the fact that these horses are already coming from jobs they can no longer do. In addition, in reporting the death of a carriage horse in 2011, they quote an ASPCA vet who was later suspended without pay by the ASPCA for clarifying her remarks later (the site did not, as best I can tell, include her clarified remarks), probably as she went on record to say she was pressured by her higher-ups to make the cause of death sound as bad as possible for the carriage industry.
There is a real argument to be had on whether it’s better they be slaughtered in their youth or their old age, depending on how you feel about euthanizing unwanted animals, but that likely depends on how humane you think carriage work is.
On the bright side, in looking for a NYTimes article I remembered from 2004 on one of the carriage horses I knew, Romeo, I tracked him down via the Carriage Horse Facts FB page- there was a post on him from February, with a picture of him in his stall at his retirement home. He worked as a carriage horse for about 15 years, after 4 years as a trotter at the racetrack.
Here’s the 2004 article about him. I remember I was really excited to see it because I regularly stopped to pet him on my way home from work back then. According to the article, he was 15 then, so he’s in his 20s now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/nyregion/neighborhood-report-central-park-far-cheers-belmont-gentle-survivor-plies-his.html?n=Top%2FNews%2FScience%2FTopics%2FAnimals
DTOzone
@Betty Cracker:
He’s more consistent that I expected, but the fiscal cliff negotiations and his punting on tax cuts for the wealthy both showed a slight right turn after 2010.
Like I said, I think 2012 swing him and the electorate back to the left because I don’t think people truly understood what they were voting for in 2010.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Nicole: Thanks. There’s a 2011 Times story about the carriage horses that has a picture of Romeo on the left.
There are strong feelings on both sides, and a not insignificant amount of money is involved. Given the way even the clearest stories can be garbled by the press, I dunno who has the stronger case about the treatment / mistreatment of the horses. But they don’t belong working on city streets in a modern city with cars, trucks, buses, cement mixers, and everything else. If they were restricted to the interior of Central Park (to roads without traffic), and there were enough inspectors, etc., to make sure they were well cared for, I, personally, would have less issue with them remaining. For whatever reason, they’re not.
My main reason for posting was simply as a counterpoint to some (Hi Botsplainer) who say that those wanting to end the carriage rides are self-evidently stupid cranks. They may overstate their case, but if you believe the Times link above, there’s a bit of that (and worse) on both sides.
My $0.02, FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gzoref
“There’s got to be a connection between vision and speeches, and execution and policy,” Dr. West said. “Our beloved president — that brother gives beautiful speeches, but he is milquetoast oftentimes when it comes to execution.”
Say what you will about Cornel West as a person, but I find his above statement to be correct. In fact, I think it’s almost perfectly correct.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gzoref:
Present your examples. INORITE is not actually an argument.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Still not quite a slam dunk for me on either side, though. Frankly, it sounds like the agencies in charge are tired of having to regulate the business and just want it to go away. Me, I’m enough of an old Democrat that I think the answer is to add an inspection fee to the price and use that money to hire more inspectors. And, frankly, the involvement of developers who have an eye on the land currently being used for stables doesn’t make me feel too good about a ban.
I was going to ask if the fact that at least 12 bicyclists (and many more pedestrians) were killed in New York City last year means that bicycles (and walking) should be banned, but unfortunately I think we’ve seen this year that a lot of people would say that bicycles shouldn’t be allowed on city streets and it should be all about cars cars cars.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Too many bicyclists are being killed and injured by cars – no doubt. DC has had more than its share – e.g. http://mvjantzen.com/tools/stats/ It’s only going to get worse unless something is done.
What?
Ideally, one would have fewer cars on the roads. Phasing in congestion taxes (ala London), having better bike lanes with more substantial separation between bikes and traffic, and having more cops on the street at intersections to prevent bikes from ignoring lights and cars from ignoring bikes, would all help. Having substantially car-free cities isn’t practical without a different infrastructure to get goods in and out. Even before that, mass transit improvements are vital to substantially reduce the number of cars on the road. All of that will cost money.
There are many good reasons to encourage bikes in cities – more efficient use of city streets, exercise, reduced pollution, etc. There aren’t corresponding good reasons to continue to have horse-drawn carriages on city streets. IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Then you’re an infantile simpleton with no understanding of political history of how our government works.
Would you like a cookie?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
To expand a little:
For many bicyclists, Amsterdam is held up as the gold standard of bicycle cities — something like 50 percent of commuting in Amsterdam is done by bike. They also have horse-drawn carriage tours, but notice the difference between that picture of NYC and this one in Amsterdam — the horse carriages in Amsterdam are on streets that are closed to cars, which makes it safer and less stressful for everyone.
IMO, the base of the problem in NYC is that in the US, our streets are designed solely for cars, and everyone else has to squeeze in as best we can. Not surprisingly, this means it sucks for everyone, including car drivers.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a serious streets usage problem in NYC that is in no way going to be solved by removing horses from the mix, and it worries me that the answer is always to remove the thing that’s inconveniencing the cars than to really think about streets usage and having complete streets rather than mini-highways running through densely populated areas.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Sorry, forgot a link: “complete streets” is an actual urban design concept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_streets
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Good linky. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Really?
JWR
Heard a local ABC news clip earlier today about DeBlasio and how he’s taking over from Michael Bloomberg, under whom business thrived. Which makes perfect sense, considering that “real” liberals like DeBlasio are so opposed to anything which will grow business period. It was just odd how ingrown right-wing talking points debase the national conversation at every level.
JWR
@Patricia Kayden: Thanks for that link. West has grown quite irritating during the Obama era, especially considering his exceptional work during the Reagan, Clinton and Bush eras. Maybe he just spends too much time with his other Brothers, Tavis Smiley and Larry Mantle? (Larry Mantle is a local NPR talk jock who, like Smiley and West, just love yukking it up with CBS political analyst Frank Luntz.)
Cervantes
@JWR: For my money, Cornel West has been pretty irritating in all eras.
Nicole
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I saw that 2011 story! I was very excited to see Romeo. He wasn’t the prettiest horse, but oh, was he a sweetheart.
I disagree. Horses are domesticated, not wild, animals; they can go anywhere mankind can go. They’ve carried men onto battlefields and across the country. Life in a city is noisy, yes, but they adjust, just as people and dogs and any other creatures that make this their home do. They may be prey animals, but they, like dogs and humans, are individuals and the prey response varies from horse to horse. Many, many horses are more relaxed about city life than the humans around them. I learned to ride in NYC, and the horses all had to carry a rider through the city streets to get to the various parks. And neither horns nor passing cars, nor traffic jams bothered them. Horses like what’s familiar, and five days a week on city streets becomes very familiar.
I have a horse who I bought from a Queens stable that closed, and he lives at my uncle’s out in PA. I brought my dog to my uncle’s, she caught sight of my horse and lost her mind barking. She’s got a very loud bark. My horse didn’t blink. After years of being a NYC trail horse, and having unleashed dogs run right under his legs, he wasn’t about to be startled by some medium-sized pooch on a leash. Heh.
Agree a hundred percent on more regulation and inspection, but then I support that on most any issue where health of a living creature is concerned.
This has been a great thread; one of my favorite to read, ever!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Nicole: Thanks for your posts. It’s nice to have additional light on the subject.
Cheers,
Scott.