This makes me want to vomit:
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a veteran lawmaker who was once the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Friday.
Mr. Clyburn made the case that Mr. Cuomo was the right candidate to help Democrats fend off the ill effects of President Trump’s second term, when Mr. Trump is “challenging the pillars of our democracy.”
“The mayor of New York is uniquely positioned to play an important role in the future of the national Democratic Party,” Mr. Clyburn said in a statement, adding that Mr. Cuomo had the “experiences, credentials and character to not just serve New York, but also help save the nation.”
We’re never going to get rid of this man, Cuomo, are we? My god how must women feel about him. I wish he would not have endorsed him.
Sure Lurkalot
Sex pest, acceptable. Socialist, nah.
Loquacious Scribble
“He might be a habitual sexual predator but he is OUR habitual sexual predator” is a take you could I suppose.
ArchTeryx
The fundamental problem with New York politics is the very same thing that makes it an indigo blue state. All the power centers in NYS are in The City, i.e., New York City. If you have a power base there, then you’re going to win whatever statewide election you are a part of. Cultivating that power base in The City is what Cuomo spent a good part of his life doing, and so did Chuck Schumer. So for all the sturm und drang about displacing the crook and the jellyfish, long as they have City money and are connected to the City machine, they have fantastic odds in any primary. The City easily outvotes the rest of the state, so you get what the City wants, not what the rest of the state wants.
The double-edged sword of living in a blue state whose main urban area, and nothing else, is what makes it blue. A lot of what the rest of the state wants are fascists, bar none. And since Trump is showing the way, I expect the next Republican to get in as governor to simply fire half the state workforce, unions and contracts be damned. Compared to that, we prefer even a hostile like Cuomo!
oldster
He’s got the experiences, credentials, and character to serve as a minor henchman in a remake of “Scarface” starring ugly people.
Pure thug. Kept New York State in a condition of permanent stasis by helping the Republicans in the legislature so that he would never have to sign a bill that reflected the will of the Democratic majority in NYS — that way, he could keep alive his ambitions for national office. He has never cared about the good of the people or the will of the people — just his own ambition. And with that character, he’s going to protect us from Trump? They’re two peas in a pod.
Suzanne
If you ever wondered about how this country considers women, the fact that Andrew Cuomo is about to return to political life should answer this question for you.
And before anyone makes a comment: this isn’t a binary choice.
trollhattan
Have lost all hope understanding NY City politics (I suppose state as well) and their choice of mayors is always greatly suspect. But the side hustle of rehabbing Cuomo is another level entirely.
Stop trying to make fetch happen!
Unrelated, what’s Farsi for “This aggression will not stand, man”?
NB 60% enrichment can never be used for “peaceful” applications.
Bupalos
With the disclaimer that I think like most here that Biden was a spectacularly effective president from a strict legislative/governance kind of analysis…. I think Jim Clayburn has as much of our current disaster on his hands as anyone on this side of the aisle. Like so much of the power structure of this party, the man is simply stuck in a different era.
Bupalos
You can’t really deploy this for things that are actually very likely to happen.
ArchTeryx
@oldster: The one thing about Cuomo is that he HATES Donald Trump. He remembers, very well, that Trump left the entire City to die during the early stages of COVID, actively cheering for as many deaths as possible. He stole most of the PPE that was bound for the City, and Jared Kushner was sure to stop in and show his whole ass to the entire city as they died by the thousand. Cuomo may be a Republican economically, but he has zero sympathy with Trump and Miller’s Kulturkampf.
Proof: When Jeff Sessions (remember that asshole?) threatened to march federal troops in to shut down our medical pot dispensaries, Cuomo promptly announced that the state police would guard each and every dispensary (you could count them on two hands) personally. Sessions backed down. He was told, in no uncertain terms, do not fuck with the money.
Baud
I love how actual voters are treated as NPCs in our discourse.
zhena gogolia
@Bupalos: FFS
trollhattan
So this happened. Will they comply?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Bupalos: the gerontocracy of the Dems appears unfortunately not limited to the whipeople.
zhena gogolia
Let’s make sure to blame a Black man for everything.
Oh, and let’s throw in some ageism!
Bupalos
@ArchTeryx: There isn’t any state that is “blue” for any other reason than it’s ratio of urban to rural residents. NYC is hardly the only blue stronghold in NY.
This comment got me thinking, I wonder if you could “gerrymander” states like MO or SC or even Ohio to be blue if you could move the border 5 miles and move split cities into one state.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yeah — how is a South Carolina politician somehow responsible for Cuomo’s popularity?
zhena gogolia
I will say, having spent a couple of days in NYC, their TV ads for this primary are the worst!!!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Or his opponents’ unpopularity (assuming the outcome that OP assumes).
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@ArchTeryx: yeah but how many Republican Never-Trumpers eventually decided not to stand up to Trump no matter what they’d said earlier? That’ll be Cuomo.
my only hope is that Brad Landers draws off enough Cuomo votes to create a run-off after ranked choice voting fails to provide a clear winner.
ArchTeryx
@Bupalos: It’s the only one that makes any difference in state politics. Not all blue states are so extreme in having a single power center, in fact, many have multiple urban power centers. My home state, Illinois, was one of them, though. Chicago dominated the *entire* rest of the state’s politics, period, except at the local level.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: “how must women feel about him”
They must feel about him the same way they felt about the rapist as they voted for him for POTUS.
Baud
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
There’s no run off in ranked choice. Unless you just mean later rounds of counting.
ArchTeryx
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Because, much as I hate to defend that scumbag, Cuomo wasn’t a Republican Never-Trumper. He was a Democrat completely in thrall to Wall Street money (like most statewide candidates are here). Very big difference. Means if you fuck with the money, he WILL launch into action. Letting New York City die from out of control COVID was fucking with the money. So would letting the Gestapo bring the City to a halt. He may hate state workers and labor and not give a shit about the poor, but he also isn’t a fascist.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Baud: that is what I mean, sorry to be unclear, just edited my comment.
There are lots of candidates on the ballot.
AM in NC
@Sure Lurkalot: yep. Nailed it on the first try.
women are just not worth fighting for.
dmsilev
Why is Clyburn weighing in on this at all? It’s not like he’s an NY Rep or anything like that. Relatedly, is anyone in NYC likely to care?
Baud
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Gotcha. I said in the earlier thread, a dark horse winner might be the best outcome at this point.
zhena gogolia
@AM in NC: There are a lot of women in NYC. Presumably a lot of them account for Cuomo’s lead.
trollhattan
@ArchTeryx: CuomoTime during the red hot phase of covid was great teevee. He succinctly and correctly bored into the myriad reasons for lockdown and other pandemic policies, batting away the endless “But whaddabout mah freedoms?” questions with “Because people are dying.”
It was tonic in anxious times.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Same reason Bernie endorsed Mamdani.
Captain C
@zhena gogolia: They’re all over the Mets games and I find them quite annoying.
PsiFighter37
I think Jim Clyburn is overestimating the clout his endorsement has. New York City won’t give two shits about what a South Carolina congressman who has basically played footsie with the South Carolina GOP to preserve his gerrymandered district has to say. The hagiography about the 2020 primaries has gone to his head.
That said, I do think that Cuomo is (very unfortunately) likely to win. I need to early vote this weekend, but I think my top 3 are Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, and Adrienne Adams. Not exactly Murderer’s Row out there, but at least Lander would be boring and likely focus on what city residents care about, instead of being performative (like Mamdani and Juumaane Williams are / would be) or beholden to embedded vested interests (like Cuomo will certainly be). I am ranking neither Mamdani or Cuomo, and if neither of them wins, it will (likely) be a victory for all of NYC.
Bupalos
@ArchTeryx: I see what you’re saying, I dunno though, I think plenty of blue votes in NYS come from Buffalo and Syracuse and Rochester and the like. It’s a pretty dense state generally, other than “upstate.” I’d have to think Seattle is a relatively more disproportionate in WA politics than NYC is in NY. Maybe Portland in OR. Maybe even Atlanta in GA? I’m not sure it’s such a huge outlier.
AWOL
@zhena gogolia: You’re so off the mark it’s disgusting.
Cuomo’s a racist, rapist, and sociopath.
Matilda Cuoma was mobbed up.
Any Black man who endorses him is not a man. He’s a rape and racism enabler. He’s a regressive. And who the fuck wants another 67-year-old Dem imposing his rancid will on the next generation of Dem candidates??? Are you nuts???
Progressive Rankings:
1. Mamdani
2. Lander
3. ADRIENNE Adams
4. Stringer
5. Myrie
Do not rank Cuomo. That is how admirable Black man Eric Adams got in and fucked us
ETA: Fucking Cuomo also wants to hire 5000 more police thugs to eat our resources and kill our Black men. We need social workers, not militia thugs in uniforms. And ageism? Come KILLED the elderly during Covid.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
Yeah, like “actual voters” live in a vacuum, all “normies”, do not see or hear news feeds, completely unshaped by the opinions of others? Those voters?
ArchTeryx
@trollhattan: He figured out early what most successful politicians do: When you see a parade forming, run to the head of it, shove the drum major out of the way ala Animal House, and pretend he was leading it all along.
But he was the only one that actually had the guts to do it. Schumer was, as always, MIA.
Baud
As I speculated in the morning thread, I wonder how much of this is Clyburn pushing back against the people on the left who have been critical of him lately.
As opposed to actually caring about Cuomo.
PsiFighter37
@ArchTeryx: It does not matter. Andrew Cuomo also spent most of his governorship actively shitting on NYC (and de Blasio in particular) out of pure spite. If the shoe is on the other foot, Hochul (or whomever is governor) is going to spite NYC purely for the sake of making Cuomo miserable. They will actively want to see him (and by extension, NYC) fail.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
The only voters we have.
VFX Lurker
New York polls say his chief opponent polls poorly with women. So, perhaps sex pest Cuomo is the least-offensive candidate to NYC women in this specific election.
Glory b
Huh? Have some of us conveniently forgotten that both time Trump ran he won a majority of white women, more the second time, I believe.
Clearly, not as many women think badly of these kind of men as believed.
PsiFighter37
@AWOL: DO NOT RANK MAMDANI
He is a younger thirtysomething who has accomplished NOTHING in politics. Why the hell do people think someone like him is accomplished enough to get anything done in a place like New York City? I am more qualified to run the city than he is.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: We may have to dissolve the people and elect another.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
I’ll get the acid.
Steve LaBonne
@PsiFighter37: Because De Blasio worked out so well amirite
frosty
I haven’t made it past the title yet, wondering if I want to see what’s got John’s hackles up … oh hell, of course I do.
ETA Yeah, what a stupid move by Clyburn. But the news could have been worse based on the title.
Fuck, it could always be worse, amirite?
Bupalos
@zhena gogolia: I mean, I know there’s a big “Biden worked out just great” kind of feeling here. I don’t have that. Clyburn made Biden. Like, he’s practically the entire reason Biden became president. I’d at this point prefer the alternate timeline where we had tried something else. Not that that would be some slam dunk.
PsiFighter37
@Steve LaBonne: He wasn’t great either. NYC has had an incredibly strong run of shitty mayors. The fact that NYC Democrats could not field a candidate who could beat Mike Bloomberg, an openly out-of-touch billionaire who went to Bermuda every weekend, not once, not twice, but three times, suggests that our party’s bench in this city is actually pretty shitty. de Blasio – lazy as hell – and Adams – also lazy as hell, plus corrupt as hell and actually lives in New Jersey – speaks to this. That is what machine politics gets you.
VFX Lurker
@AWOL: I normally pie people without saying a word, but I’ll make an exception for you and your vile comment about Black men who dare to disagree with you.
zhena gogolia
@PsiFighter37: It’s depressing.
PsiFighter37
@Bupalos: This idea that ‘Clyburn made Biden’ is ridiculous. Biden would have won the SC primary without his explicit support, and Democratic voters nationally started making practical choices on Super Tuesday afterwards.
Again – overrated politician hagiography. Same thing goes for Biden himself, who was yesterday’s news before Obama resurrected him.
Mai Naem mobile
I’m hoping with the lICE arrest Lander ends up winning. He really impressed him with his actions during the arrest. No getting upset or losing his cool. Just repeatedly asking for the warrant. I don’t think Cuomo or Mamdani would have reacted that way.
ArchTeryx
@Bupalos: VOTES come from these smaller cities, but money and connections all come from The City. If you have the City’s voters tied up, you have the state tied up, period. Ignore the City’s voters and you will get trashed in the election, even if you are a Democrat. Upstate HAS tried repeatedly to defeat Cuomo in primaries, and failed utterly. NYC was more than enough to put him over the top every time.
AWOL
@PsiFighter37: If that’s your take, fine. Just please—don’t rank Cuomo or any of the other regressives or Israel shills in the mix.
I already voted and have zero regrets. I finally had the chance to vote for a progressive. I’ll take it when I can.
Lander’s a fine choice, has experience, seems to have some cojones. Nice guy, too.
frosty
That’s every blue state, except for the ones that have two big urban areas: LA and SF, Philly and PGH, Baltimore and DC burbs, for example. The rest of the rural, exurban R voters get outvoted by the populated areas. That’s the way it goes.
Then there’s Montana, Wyoming, the South, where the urban areas are just a little to small…
Suzanne
@Mai Naem mobile: I don’t know enough about all the other candidates, but multiple people whose political judgment I trust believe that Lander is the best choice. I share your hope that his arrest is an impetus for more voters to look at him favorably.
HeleninEire
@Suzanne: There was a post on the neighborhood Facebook (I am in Queens) that actually said “We need to vote for Cuomo because we need to protect our daughters from Mamdani.”
I didn’t even respond. Just blocked that asshole.
I just can’t.
I dropped my ballot on Monday. And I DID NOT rank Cuomo.
1. Mamdani
2. Lander
3. Springer
4. NOT CUOMO
5. NOT CUOMO
Professor Bigfoot
Why should anyone in NYC care?
AWOL
@VFX Lurker: There was no vile comment. If you perceived it to be so, perhaps you should engage in a reading-comprehension class. I’ll pie you. Have a good life.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud: No surprise that Bernie the socialist endorsed a socialist candidate but it’s a big slate and if Mr Clayburn felt it necessary to endorse, he could have picked someone not credibly accused by a dozen women of sexual harassment in the workplace.
But instead it’s better to say, well, if Cuomo is ahead, must be women don’t mind sex pests as leaders? Maybe let’s look up to leaders that believe some actions and “character flaws” are disqualifying.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Kind of makes me wonder how things would be right now if Lander had been the leading choice of progressives rather than Mamdani.
All speculative, obviously.
Bupalos
@dmsilev: I’m going to say yes, maybe particularly in NYC, because of the nature of machine politics and the degree to which NYC is characterized by them. Clyburn is a major player in the national D machine, and there are tons of people in the NYC D machine that look upward and outward.
Endorsements matter in machine politics. Up and down the line.
Steve LaBonne
@PsiFighter37: De Blasio was supposedly the progressive insurgent.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
I don’t like Clyburn’s decision, but the criticism that he’s from out of state is a lame one.
Suzanne
@HeleninEire: That’s fucking bonkers.
RaflW
Democrats taking a lot of money from Wall Street has been corrosive to the values of the Party. I don’t know what got transmitted to Clyburn to get this endorsement, but it’s awful.
And having and 84 year old tell us that a 60-something, disgraced and unrepentant sex pest is “the future of the Democratic Party” is extremely grim and disheartening.
hrprogressive
When I say stuff like “The Old Guard Dems Need to Go”, I include Clyburn in this.
I’m sorry, this kind of shit should not be acceptable in halfway to 2026.
Harrison Wesley
I don’t like much of anything I’ve heard about Cuomo. I also believe Rep Clyburn knows more about politics than I ever will. Not going to second-guess his endorsement.
Bupalos
@PsiFighter37: Clyburn was going to endorse, and I think whoever he endorsed was going to probably win and at least stay very much viable after S2, and the mechanics of the following states would have been different.
Now, Clyburn may have made his endorsement already thinking about outcomes and how his endorsement would appear maximally potent in mind, and I don’t mean he simply decided the issue. But endorsing someone else… I don’t think Biden likely wins out. No.
This isn’t really an outlying position. I think it’s generally consensus that in context this was the most impactful endorsement in recent US political history. I’ll retract “made.” Barack Obama “made” Biden’s second act. Clyburn resurrected that second act.
HeleninEire
@PsiFighter37: We have had an absolute asshole running the city for the last 4 years, and you know what? NYC is fine. It sort of runs itself. I know. I work for the city and for an agency that, theoretically, should have been impacted by a former cop. Nope, we’re grand.
trollhattan
@Steve LaBonne:
I understand he’s still quite tall.
DFH
No explanation for this endorsement by Clyburn, so I have to assume it’s a transaction. What was traded, who knows.
Bupalos
@Mai Naem mobile: Well, OK. I just don’t think it’s that unique. I’m sure an even larger relative percent of money and power in WA politics comes from SEATAC.
tobie
@Mai Naem mobile: i agree completely. Maybe Lander will be the second choice of enough voters to sail through
Kathryn Garcia almost managed this.
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan:
Yeah, and as I recall that was preceded by his doing some MAJOR fuckups re Covid, and everyone just forgot about the resulting deaths and swooned all over him. “Cuomosexuals.” My mind was boggled.
Jay
@trollhattan:
You need 80% enrichment for a bomb. And that’s a WWII bomb. 90% or more for a compact Variable Yield Bomb. You also need to have plutonium, which Iran does not have and under the JPCOA, modified their only Heavy Water Reactor, under IAEC inspection, so that it cannot be used to make plutonium.
Arak was never completed, never made operational but Israel bombed it to rubble a couple in the last few days.
60% is fuel for fast breeder reactors for electrical power, and to create various isotopes for medical treatments and medical research.
Under the JPCOA, Iran enriched fuel to 3%, then sent it under contract to France or ruZZia where it was refined to 60% and formed into fuel rods for use in Iran’s breeder reactors, at the cost of Iran of tens of billion dollars a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium
In theory, anything over 20% can be used to make a bomb, but it is highly impractical and nobody has done it, until you get to 80%, as the yield of the bomb at 20% = the implosion explosives. So with a 20% core, even with a plutonium pit, to make a 20 kiloton nuke, the implosion sphere would have to be composed of 20 kilotons of CB or PBX explosives. Because the implosion needs to be focused on concentrating the uranium, that means the outer container has to withstand a 20 kiloton conventional explosion to create a reaction that produces a 20 kiloton nuclear explosion.
When Ontario shut down their only fast breeder reactor, Canada had to buy medical isotopes from France and Poland. So yes, in Canada, much of your chemotherapy comes from France or Poland at significant cost.
Captain C
@Baud: I’ll get the Grateful Dead bootlegs!
Bupalos
I actually think Mamdani is exactly the kind of politician we need. I expect he’ll channel some of the Trump “they’re out to get me” stuff, which I’m not excited about. But above all we need some candidates that are like “this isn’t about me, this is about a particular policy slate and specific things you want.”
Like free busses and public utility grocery stores… might work out or might not if it’s badly done. But it’s actually engaging the public in democracy. This would on it’s own be huge.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: Proceeded I think. But I didn’t necessarily follow the tick-tock as I was too busy hoping my wife didn’t die.
She didn’t. Just had her biology permanently rearranged.
HeleninEire
@Bupalos: I like the idea of free public transportation. But free busses in NYC will be a problem. It will push people off the subway. The busses are already overcrowded, and the subway is BY FAR the easiest and fastest way to get around.
Sure Lurkalot
@lowtechcyclist: Made nursing and care facilities take Covid patients. Unrepentant and unapologetic about those deaths just like he is towards the women on the receiving end of his unwanted advances. But not disqualifying as being a newbie socialist!
https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-andrew-cuomo-held-publicly-accountable-for-nursing-home-disaster-by-covid-select/
suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot: I noted at the time, and it is still true…. our healthcare system leaves no other options than to send patients who can’t go home to long term care facilities. So I won’t fault him for that.
I fault him for being a disgusting pig to the women who work under him, for being corrupt as fuck.
JCJ
@Captain C: I bet! Last night I watched Game 6 of the NBA Finals on a flight from Salt Lake City to Milwaukee. It was the New York City station so I saw ads against Cuomo and against Mamdami (sp?)
trollhattan
@Jay: IIUC 60% is effectively “plausible deniability” while holding back from the final enrichment step for arming weapons, which is Iran’s play here. Once it’s decided to take that step it can occur quickly (provided a GBU hasn’t introduced itself into your enrichment facility).
At least that’s how BBC framed it the other night.
tam1MI
This is your friendly reminder that Al Franken was run out of the Senate and his political career destroyed for being accused of actions that are not even close to what Cuomo did.
The Dems have become the Seinfeld party. They stand for nothing.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
If memory serves me right, when the hospitals started getting overwhelmed, he moved covid patients to old age homes.
Harrison Wesley
@Bupalos: Free public transit? I already got that. In Manatee County, Florida – one of the Trumpiest places in America.
HeleninEire
Here’s what’s gonna be interesting. Assume that Cuomo loses. What are the Dems and the Dem money (and I include Bloomberg in that) that are backing Cuomo gonna do?
Jay
@suzanne:
The thing is, he could have sent non-covid patients to Old Age Homes, freeing up the bed space in Hospitals, which have more trained staff and experience with communicable disease protocols, than Old Age Homes.
While at the time, we did not know that covid was airborne and persistent, we did know it was communicable.
Baud
@HeleninEire:
I suppose that depends on who wins on our side and on the Republican sidez and whether an independent can still enter the general election.
Harrison Wesley
@Jay: I remember that, too. And I think he tried to cover up what the real effect was. So, no, not the 100-percent Covid hero.
HeleninEire
@Harrison Wesley: Ireland has it for anyone 66 years and older. Throughout the entire country. ALL public transportation. When you turn 66 you get a new PPS card (same as an SS card, except it’s plastic) and you use it on all public transportation.
suzanne
@Jay:
No, he couldn’t have done that. If patients are sick enough to need acute or intensive care, they can’t be transferred to a sub-acute facility.
HeleninEire
@Baud: I think that Adams is running as an independent. Oh God, no.
prostratedragon
Sure wouldn’t want Cuomo if I still lived there, but can’t really say beyond that.
Regarding De Blasio, he never seemed to me to find his footing after this incident early in his term, which was repeated to his face soon after. At the time, I thought of his then-teenager son, who is Black. I’ll bet DeB did too.
ema
The city needs a competent bureaucrat with minimal/moderate delusions of grandeur to run it. So: Lander, Adams, Stringer [end of ranking].
laura
Sweet disco Jesus! Listen to Black Voters!11! They are the most pragmatic and will brook no truck with socialism or antisemitism. If you’ve got a shitter account or use nitter as I do to lurk, please see tify330 (a Brooklyn raised bringer of facts and receipts) for a cogent explanation that should Mamdani be elected, we can forget about the midterms because republicans will scare monger from now until 2028. It is a calculated and pragmatic move. The base would rather tolerate a rat-faced shite bag and gain control of the House and possible Senate seats than to take a flyer and loss Black, Jewish and Hispanic voters. Seriously, what is the issue with the refusal to listen to the wisdom of the lived experience of the most solid part of the democratic party?
Professor Bigfoot
@Harrison Wesley: You are not allowed to give a Democrat any benefit of the doubt.
Especially not any Black Democrat.
Jay
@trollhattan:
Did you know that one CANDU Reactor model can run on just uranium rich dirt?
There are a bunch of different reactor types, each needs a different enrichment level of fuel. Fast breeders need 60%. Heavy Water’s can handle 40%, Water Cores can get by with 20%.
In the Soviet Union and Europe, most reactors are fast breeders.
In North America, other than the CANDU’s, most are Water Cores.
Iran, because under the Shah and the US assistance, Iran went with fast breeders.
PS. Any country with a nuclear reactor, even a research one, is a threshold nuclear power. Yes, were they to choose to do so, the University of British Columbia Nuclear Medicine lab, in 6 months, could become a Nuclear Power, kinda, they would have to team up with Engineering for a delivery device and that’s never going to happen. They can’t even get together at Pub Night.
kindness
Please foirgive me but Clyborn isn’t speaking truth to power. Cuomo’s entire operation entails a Democrat siding with Republicans in a divided setting making sure no liberal Democratic programs ever be enacted. Who doesn’t remember that?
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Professor Bigfoot: Mamdani seems to be shaping up to be another David Hogg situation, in that he’ll likely end up being a bullet we’ll wish we had dodged when the chance was there…like with Tulsi Gabbard and John Fetterman.
Professor Bigfoot
@Interesting Name Goes Here: I understand that he advocated for people NOT to vote for MVP.
I’m not sure if that’s actually the case, but it would explain a lot.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Professor Bigfoot: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and everything I’m seeing is thick enough to induce coughing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
To be fair Mr. Clyburn Como was pretty good at pissing of Trump the last time around (along with most of New York)
Glory b
@laura: Yep, tify330 was right about Fetterman too.
I think a lot of juicers don’t realize how INCENSED(!!) a lot of black voters still are with the abandon Biden/Harris/Uncommitted movement.
Especially older black voters and female black voters. They/we haven’t forgotten the levels of disrespect a lot of those in the movement showed her. They also note that many of them said that they would tank her chances but now claim their movement was too small and insignificant to have done anything, now that we see the horrors of the Trump administration.
Clyburn has a long civil rights history and was active during the Orangeburg Massacre, which predated Kent State. He was the first black (fill in the blank) in SC, and helped a lot of people, many of whom moved to NY during the Black Migration.
I’ll finally note that black people are nowhere near as generationally divided as white people. We all grew up with parents that warned us we weren’t like our “little white friends” and that generally, white people weren’t to be trusted.
Clyburn isn’t the otherwise unknown quantity that white people might think and a lot of black voters still feel the sting of Kamala’s defeat.
That so many white lefties (who we aren’t generally enamored with) and “Abandon” supporters have kind of ignored us is still a problem.
Anyway
Current mayor Eric Adams or is there another Adams in the race? I thought the incumbent was awful.
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m a registered Democrat. My application to be a registered Black was turned down. I blame DEI.
Omnes Omnibus
This thread is doing great. I am sure it will only get better. I don’t live in NYC, so my opinion means fuck all on this. The same is true for most of the people commenting.
Glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: He was part of it.
Professor Bigfoot
@laura:
It is very difficult for American white people to accept that they might have something to learn from Black people.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tom Q
@PsiFighter37:
I voted the same top 3 as you, though with numbers 2 and 3 in reverse order. Hoping for some miracle finish, with this RCV doing what it’s supposed to do, selecting the most broadly acceptable candidate, rather than — as polls suggest — the two I can’t stand blocking out everyone else.
PsiFighter37
@HeleninEire: That’s not the same as making real progress. Having a corrupt mayor who loves to party isn’t helpful.
Jay
@suzanne:
The severe Covid patients were in ICU’s.
The mild/moderate Covid patients were in segregated wards.
People with broken limbs, operations, etc were in other wards.
When the hospitals were running out of beds, he sent the barely ambulatory Covid patients, not the people intubated or in oxygen tents, the hacking, coughing, sneezing Covid patients to the Old Age Homes.
That’s not how you do triage in an epidemic.
You send the healthy but injured to the empty beds in lesser facilities, not the superspreaders.
He mandated a “quick fix” overriding the medical advise he was given, then when the chickens came home to roost, tried to cover it up.
I started wearing a mask, (N95) daily at work, out in public, on transit, Jan.27, 2020, when the first case in BC was confirmed.
Professor Bigfoot
@Glory b: Welp, there it is. Cuomo might be a piece of shit but he didn’t tell us to not vote for the Vice President.
That’s a grudge I plan to be buried with.
brantl
@trollhattan: Why not?
PsiFighter37
@laura: The polls show Cuomo running away with the Black vote. So this may be one time to NOT simply heed that axiom.
The Audacity of Krope
It’s okay to stereotype if we think it’s a compliment, right? Asking for a fellow BJ nym…
Tom Q
@PsiFighter37:
To say nothing of the fact some of his proposals (Free buses — drastically reducing available NYC budget — and city-run grocery stores) are in crazypants territory.
brantl
@zhena gogolia: I don’t blame him for everything, but I certainly blame him for endorsing this unpolished turd.
PsiFighter37
@Anyway: the City Council Speaker is Adrienne Adams, no relation. She is my (very weak) #3 ranking. Done virtually nothing I am aware of to distinguish herself, outside of not being openly corrupt or pliant to Eric Adams.
Omnes Omnibus
@Glory b: As far as the dump Biden/abandon Harris stuff goes, I think people underestimate how much residual anger there is among a significant part of the Party.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: It’s not a stereotype, it’s the result of only having had access to the vote since 1964.
It is a duty, to Black voters, to be informed and to vote.
I’m sorry most white people aren’t like that.
Old Man Shadow
I think most voters see the name and think of Mario or think “Oh, I fucking know that name…I guess I’ll vote for him” and call it a fucking day.
I would honestly doubt more than 20% of people who plan to vote know that Cuomo is a sexual harasser and probably only half of them care.
I think extrapolating anything more than name recognition wins elections is unwise.
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: Residual?
ESPECIALLY given what we’ve dealt with since January 20th… we got damn good reason to be pissed AF.
Omnes Omnibus
@Professor Bigfoot: I am from the Upper Midwest. We have been known to understate things.
PsiFighter37
@Tom Q: Given the city’s recent electoral history, I do not have a lot of hope. But any of these candidates can beat Curtis Silwa and Eric Adams without really trying, so you end up with the ridiculous leftwards pandering.
I ran into Jenifer Rajkumar, who is running against Juumaane Williams for Public Advocate, on the Upper West Side yesterday. I absolutely despise Williams, who is as dialed out and useless a public servant as there is; the man is collecting his cool six-figure salary and not doing anything. But she is not great either – very opportunistic, lied about Williams’s record (I went home and looked up some of her claims afterwards), wears a tight-fitting red dress everywhere to clearly grab attention…yuck. I honestly might not cranky anyone for public advocate because the only choice besides those two is AOC’s last primary opponent, and those are almost always former Republicans who think there’s a ‘moderate’ lane against her.
The Audacity of Krope
So there are no black socialists? There are no black anti-Semites? And anti-Semitism isn’t just a shield Islamophobes are holding up?
Even if true, the referenced commenter would still have been dealing in stereotypes. And I’m pretty sure those assertions are not true.
Also I don’t see what being a socialist has to do with being uninformed.
suzanne
@Jay: The vast majority of US hospitals don’t have “segregated wards”. They have units, and they’re separated by care level, not diagnosis, with only a few exceptions. Very few hospital rooms are negative pressure, meaning appropriate for infectious disease. And, again, federal and state regulation prevents sending patients who need acute or intensive care to sub-acute facilities.
The governor has nothing to do with hospital triage. The US healthcare system simply had no capacity to deal with Covid. That’s not a failure of the governor.
PsiFighter37
@Omnes Omnibus: There is a reason that Democratic Party approval is low – it’s because Democrats (like myself) hate the party right now. The fact that nobody in Congressional leadership can call out preemptive military action in the Mideast is literally reliving things 20+ years ago, except it’s a lot stupider and Dubya was way more popular than Trump.
Professor Bigfoot
You know what? Nevermind. I have better things to do with my time.
RevRick
Having grown up in the NYC metropolitan area I have always been bemused by its politics. My memory stretches back to Robert Wagner, who seemed to be Robert Moses’ enabler. He was followed by John Lindsay, who ran as a liberal Republican and then flipped to Democratic. He was followed by the unfortunate Abe Beame, of “Ford to City: Drop Dead” fame. Then came Ed Koch, who campaigned on tough on crime, and single term David Dinkins, New York’s first Black mayor. Then came Rudy Guiliani, who rode the long-term nationwide decline in violent crime to become “America’s mayor.” Mike Bloomberg bought the office for three terms, boosted by the continued decline in crime and the infusion of revenue from a booming Wall Street. And now one termers, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams. None of them were exactly powerhouses of change. Instead they rode the inherent dynamism or weaknesses of NYC itself to their position or downfall.
From what I can tell about NYC politics, its residents do not care one ounce about causes or issues. They only care about crime, grime, and snow removal. Period. That’s what they hire their mayors for. The city will take care of itself.
And that’s largely been true since the Dutch West Indies company saw the enormous potential of the island of Manhattan.
Sure Lurkalot
@Professor Bigfoot:
Hmmm, for me, it’s his position as a senior member of the Democratic Party and a respected voice in Congress that bums me out about endorsing the sex pest.
A behind the scenes calculation or deal on some super secret insider information (isn’t that what blew up this blog last summer?) doesn’t ameliorate my disappointment, ditto for any leader who lets me down. I’ve got 2 lily white senators I feel the exact same way about.
Old Man Shadow
Does that even matter anymore? Or are we at the place where we support worse and worse scumbags because “at least they ain’t the other team”?
I don’t know… genuinely asking.
HeleninEire
@PsiFighter37: But Cuomo will work AGAINST the city. He haaaates us.
tam1MI
@laura: The are other names on the ballot besides the Uncommitted Asshole and the sexual predator. It’s not like they are the only choices.
HeleninEire
@Tom Q: Disagree. See me @92. I lived in Dublin for almost 3 years and I paid almost the exact same amount in taxes (about 30% of my income) as I do in NYC.
brantl
@Bupalos: you’re really stretching it
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: Prof, I think you’ve got yourself a BJ rotating tag.,…
Interesting Name Goes Here
@tam1MI: But who knows about them?
Exactly.
Sherrilyn Ifill points this out here.
The whole thing is turning into leftists once again going “Stand back, we’re about to do something stupid.”
Jay
@Tom Q:
Not really. We have a bunch of non-profit Grocery Coop’s here. Like Costco, there is a membership fee, but it’s way cheaper than Costco. Prices are much cheaper than the Chains, but selection is more granola, (they assume you are going to cook), they pay Staff a living wage, ($27.84 here), make rent, make a slight profit which they donate, and are a critical source of supply for Food Banks. They are small though.
A few years ago, BC Transit did a study on making Transit “free”. The study found that the effect of free ridership and the costs to the Transit system and other costs was a null. Basically, free transit in BC would take cars off the road. Cars off the road would significantly reduce commute times and road wear, and increase mobility. It would even significantly decrease the need for road and bridge expansion.
Unfortunately, the money to run Transit and the roadways, comes out of many different pockets, all though, in the end, it’s all the same pocket. It’s kinda like everybody having a fixed budget for Tootsie Rolls, and another for Netflix, and not being able to transfer money between them.
So basically, the cost of making Transit free, here, could be paid for by the cost savings for Municipalities, the Province and the Federal Government, not having the same costs maintaining or expanding the road networks.
HeleninEire
@HeleninEire: And…I had free healthcare.
Cat Radio
I haven’t yet read the comments, but my take is that we have bigger fish to fry.
PS I don’t mean to dismiss the real threats to society, especially those who fear the knock on the door. It’s real. It’s scary. I have no advice, but to keep yourselves focused on bringing air in to your lungs. It does help
ema
@Anyway:
Speaker Adams, not (eww) Mayor Adams.
Tom Q
@RevRick: Um…DeBlasion was not a 1-termer. He was elected twice by wide margins. You may not like him or things he did, but he was by any normal standard a popular mayor.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I seem to recall everyone screaming at the Dems for being nice guys and “not war time consigliere” and wanting an asshole who would get dirty with Trump.
Jay
@suzanne:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19_nursing_home_scandal
AM in NC
@zhena gogolia: Misogyny is embraced by women too. Women don’t matter, even to many other women.
gene108
@PsiFighter37:
I’ll always love Bloomberg for being the first mayor in the country to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.
The Audacity of Krope
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If having our “team” win matters more than what the teammates we chose plan to do upon winning, we won nothing.
Fight, yes; but fight for something, not just to fight.
PsiFighter37
@gene108: One of the good things he did. No doubt about it.
Socolofi
Just a comment from the far end of the country, but with a daughter who is about to move to NYC (and may be able to vote for Mayor):
People in general will vote for/against results over values. Ideally, they can vote for someone who shares their values AND delivers results they want. But when it comes to someone who doesn’t deliver what they want, but shares their values, vs someone who does deliver what they want and doesn’t share their values, they’ll go with delivery.
Trump is a key example here. Republicans used to be the Family Values party. Not even mentioned anymore. They used to be the Global Trade is Good party. Again, not even mentioned.
Cuomo is kinda the same but more on our side. Done a bunch of shit Dems didn’t like, but has done a bunch of stuff Dems did – especially in NYC. Feels to me to win in NYC, you gotta carry the WASP vote, the Wall Street vote, the Black vote, the Jewish vote, and Women’s vote. Seems to me he’s doing enough with all those groups, and the most damning is, “Asshole, but OUR kind of asshole.”
Dems could use another brawler against Trump. Yeah, would be great if he wasn’t handsy, but I think we also learned our lesson with Franken who wasn’t even close.
suzanne
@Jay: Yes, I know. I absolutely fault him for undercounting deaths. I noted only that, in the American healthcare system, sending patients with Covid to long-term care facilities was essentially the only option. (I will note that I’ve spent the last decade of my career working with healthcare facilities, so I’ve been in probably 300 hospitals and I’m intimately acquainted with the regulations under which they operate.)
PatD
Say whatever else you want about about Clyburn but there’s just no defense for his endorsing someone as ethically and morally challenged as Cuomo. Maybe voters just don’t care about that shit anymore… which is fine except that we spent the last decade, more or less, making those claims about Trump. At the end of the day, maybe that’s why so many people who should know better voted for Trump anyway. We’re more like them than we think.
Glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: Same.
Dumbest protest movement in modern history.
brantl
@Professor Bigfoot: can we start burying you now?
Asking for a friend.
gene108
@RaflW:
When the town Wall Street is in is represented by Democrats, it’s the job of those Democrats to look after the interests of their constituents, which in NYC includes people who work on Wall Street, fintech, etc.
We’d be a lot better off, if Congress people focused on their districts interest than this Gingrich-doctrine nationalize Congressional politics.
RevRick
@Tom Q: I stand corrected on de Blasio electoral success. But he, like three of his predecessors, got high on his own supply and ran for President! I don’t know what his accomplishments were, but I feel no animosity towards him.
My point was that mayors get elected for the sole purpose of running an effective city government. All their positions and stances are, in the end, irrelevant to the vast majority of residents.
laura
@Glory b: I was that “little white friend” and I did not recognize the role my privilege played in my self-justification for presuming radical progressive change was easily achieved. I am not and have not been that person for a long time. I can point to college history classes in 1994 and 95 taught by Dr. Shirley Weber (California’s current Secretary of State, and overseeing our elections) as the beginning point of my recognizing that beating republicans and their always shitty, almost always hurtful policies requires coalition building, and that when you under bus a coalition partner, you sow distrust and you lose. I know what I stand for and where, and amongst whom I stand with.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
Amen.
The Audacity of Krope
@Glory b: I disagreed with the abstainers in November but I’ve come around by now. Honestly, the last 23 years of votes I’ve provided Democratic candidates for federal office feels like a horrendous mistake.
zhena gogolia
@laura: Me too.
A Librarian
Weighing in here as a resident of NYC: the Mamdani supporters I know — even though they support him and hope he wins — have accepted that if he does win the primary, then either Cuomo will run as an independent or Adams will begin a massive rehabilitation campaign, and thus Mamdani will likely lose the general.
However, those of us who work for the city fully expect that if Cuomo wins, there will be hell to pay for the municipal labor unions, as Cuomo’s general M.O. as governor indicates that he has no love for any of us. Unlike Cuomo’s time in Albany, however, the City Council may actually serve as a check on his power, and may override any potential veto he threatens — so some of the most harmful (to social services and other programs) actions may be constrained.
If there is anything else to know about NYC politics, it’s this: if you expect a worse outcome, you likely won’t be disappointed. And at this point, a serial sexual harasser who ran Albany like it was his personal fiefdom, who was directly responsible for — among other things — firing the one person who had the best chance at actually fixing some of the issues with NYC public transit, may actually be our next Mayor.
It is to laugh.
Jay
@suzanne:
I understand that you are in many regards, and “expert” on the US Hospital situation.
Here in BC, we sent the non- ambulatory patients, (broken limbs, recent surgeries, dialysis, chemo, etc) to Long Term Care facilities, not the Covid patients. We moved Triage and Emergency care into tents in the parking lots.
In early covid, I had a work place head injury. Under workplace rules, I had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. I had to supply my own bandages, because the Corporate first aid kit was garbage. Our first aid attendant was freaking out because she had nothing to stop the bleeding, but pressure. I got her to give me a couple of the blue shop paper towels. Past experience says they soak up the blood and don’t stick to any clotting.
Asked her to go get my pack and cell phone. She came back with both and I pulled out the right bandage for my head wound and she applied it. ( about the only thing i don’t have in my pack, that I carry every where, is a defibrillator).
So, anyways, 2 hours later, ambulance team shows up.
They are a bit overworked, ( no kidding). They are surprised that we are all masked, (mask requirements came out 2 months later, but I know a guy in Wuhan, so).
I get transported to the front door of the hospital. Ambulance team leaves, ER nurse comes out, takes my temp, asks me some questions, ( already had a pulse/oxy at home, readings every am, and temp, readings every pm).
Separate team takes me into the ER, they had set up a new ER. Left, suspected covid, right, just some moron injured on the job, or recording a you tube video.
I get my stiches, my concussion eval, walk out, T picks me up.
When the wards here got overwhelmed by covid patients, everybody else who needed “bed care”, got moved out with screening to any other available facilities or even makeshift facilities. Covid was isolated. At the peak of Omnicom 50% of the wards at Royal Columbian were strictly covid. Non covid patients were went to Eagle Ridge, suspected covid patients at Eagle Ridge were sent to Royal Columbian.
“We” didn’t know much about covid, but we knew it was highly communicable, so we segregated as best as we could.
Professor Bigfoot
@brantl: You can try.
But as I say to the white supremacists, are you also ready to die in the attempt?
Baud
@A Librarian:
I’m surprised NY allows primary losers to run as independents.
Glory b
@The Audacity of Krope: AND my votes are cast happily, because I don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good and, as a black woman, I know the alternative, as we see know, is horrible.
97% of us can’t be wrong.
What was so wrong with Obama?
What was so wrong with Hillary?
What was so wrong with Biden?
What was so wrong with Harris?
TONYG
@ArchTeryx: That corresponds to my experience. About a decade ago I had a job at an IBM office in “upstate New York”. (In reality it was only about 30 miles north of New York City but, yeah, it was another world.). My esteemed co-workers were big-time NRA gun-humpers. I thought of them as northern rednecks. Once you get out of the city itself (even to the neighboring county in Long Island) things get very fascist very fast. And, of course, most of the NYPD officers live outside of the city.
Glory b
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely.
The Audacity of Krope
I liked all of them in the moment. Trouble is that a lot the less principled stances they made around immigration and Israel policy and other items that I put up with because there was supposedly no better alternative are really coming to bite the whole world in the ass right now.
Supporting Democrats who refuse to oppose genocide just because they won the primary means building a Democratic party that is objectively pro-genocide.
Another Scott
Although I lived on Long Island for a few years as a tiny tot (and went to the World’s Fair!), I haven’t kept up with NY politics very much. I’ve (very slowly) learned not to tell people how they should feel about any particular Democratic candidate.
My bottom line is –
1) The GQP is run by monsters who are actively trying to destroy our government, our social safety net, our commonweal, our civic institutions, our schools, and our scientific infrastructure. As long as that is the case, we need to do whatever we can to keep them in the minority for a very, very long time to fix the damage they have done and are continuing to do.
2) Every election is different, and every election is important. Cuomo isn’t going to win in Berkeley, and the ghost of Paul Wellstone isn’t going to win in NYC. I think it’s important that our candidates find ways to win votes as Democrats even if they’re not as liberal as I think they should be. “Just win, baby!”
3) The GQP will run against NYC no matter who wins. That should be very low on the list of concerns.
4) Candidates have to find ways to get more votes than the other guys. Sometimes it sucks, but there is no alternative. Similarly, something something good and hard. Voters have a responsibility to turn out and do what they can to keep the monsters out of office. If some candidate in NYC cannot defeat Cuomo in the primary, then that’s their failure and that’s a problem. Similarly, if voters decide to let themselves be bamboozled by a pig in a poke or a crook or an incompetent, then that’s their failure and that’s a problem. But we still have to keep the GQP monsters out of office because they are demonstrably much worse.
(Yeah, kinda wordy.)
Here’s hoping that the voters of NYC pick the best candidate, and whoever that is grows into the job and shows competence and respect to the people of the city.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Jay:
The “Little Boy” bomb used to destroy Hiroshima had no plutonium. It was made with 64 kilograms of U-235 without any plutonium whatsoever.
The design was considered so reliable its makers did not test it like they did the plutonium-based bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.
cmorenc
@oldster:
The difference between Cuomo and Trump is that Trump is more malevolently competent at being corrupt and incompetent than Cuomo is.
Eduardo
@The Audacity of Krope:
I know we may be talking about very different things when we say “being a socialist” but still you made me laugh.
Another Scott
@Bupalos: St. Bernard (42) was ahead of Joe Biden (23) before South Carolina.
Yeah, No, I don’t think things would have worked out better with St. Bernard at the top of the ticket.
YMMV.
Best wishes,
Scott.
The Audacity of Krope
Any moderately close observer of US politics can tell you that virtually anyone means something very different by “being a socialist” than an actual socialist would mean by saying that.
suzanne
@Jay:
In the U.S., if a person needs acute care of any type (chemo is usually outpatient), the hospital cannot simply legally discharge them to sub-acute care. Long-term care facilities don’t have the same level of staffing or the physical infrastructure to support acute care.
Lots of people were positive for Covid but didn’t need acute care. It would have been preferred to send those people home, but if they didn’t have family who could support them, or home health care couldn’t be provided (because we have shortages of that, too), then nursing/long-term care facilities are the only option. Once you are a legal inpatient of a hospital, they cannot simply transfer you somewhere else.
The American healthcare system was in no way ready for a pandemic, and it still is not.
David Collier-Brown
@Jay:
Ontario is trying what I think is a high-risk, high-cost experiment. They are trying small modular reactors, which require enriched uranium. From the ‘States, as we don’t do high enrichment.
Of course, it follows that they will be completely dependent on Mr Trump releasing fuel, if they are to go forward.
I speculate the “inducements” from the SMR folks won’t be sufficient, under the circumstances.
Darkrose
@Socolofi:
…am I hallucinating? Did no one else see the part where Cuomo resigned as governor because of multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment? Surely someone else here remembers the report that eviscerated his handling of the pandemic, and found he was responsible for many deaths due to forcing nursing homes to admit patients with active COVID?
FTFNYT had a huge editorial demanding Cuomo resign. Now, of course, they’re tacitly supporting him because Mamdani is SCARY MUSLIM EEEEK! Clyburn endorsing him is disappointing, but who cares what a dude from South Carolina has to say? Hell, I probably know as much, if not more, about New York City politics just from osmosis, and I sure as fuck am not going to weigh in. Again: Cuomo resigned in disgrace. He should be in jail, not elected to any office ever again.
Jay
@Geminid:
Little Boy was 4,400kg.
Fat Man was 4,600 kg with twice the power due to the plutonium core.
B-61’s are 324kg and exceed Little Boy and Fat Man.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, nor does the University of BC, or Blue Cross.
Anyway
@PsiFighter37: thanks!
suzanne
@Another Scott:
I will note that there is a vast chasm between “not as liberal as I would like” and “found to be a serial sexual harasser of women for years”.
I’ll also repeatedly point out that there are more good choices than Cuomo and Mamdani.
Soprano2
@Baud: I’m not sure how much New Yorkers will care about an endorsement from a rep from South Carolina. I agree it’s far from over. It is disgusting how some in the old guard want to bring Cuomo back. It shows how they really feel about women and sexual harassment.
David Collier-Brown
@suzanne: My hospital in Toronto quick threw up plaster walls where the air circulation systems allowed.
Anyway
@ema: phew! Thanks!
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Not blaming him for anything but poor judgment. Do you think it’s good to “rehabilitate” Cuomo? Clyburn didn’t have to say anything.
Geminid
@Jay: Now it seems like you are saying that while Little Boy did not have any plutonium, it really wasn’t that good a bomb. That may be true in the abstract.
And you can assert that “Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program,” but if their’s isn’t one, it’s got to be the most costly and extensive imitation of a nuclear weapons program ever seen.
And by the way: the Arak nuclear reactor was not “bombed into rubble.” There’s a big hole punched into the containment dome, but the rest is still standing. Other people see the same pictures you do.
Ed.I realize the last is a minor point but– exaggeration in one part of an argument tends to undercut the rest of it.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@The Audacity of Krope: It occurs to me that if a lot of so-called progressives thought further ahead than The Moment, a lot of stuff we’re dealing with now could have been avoided.
As it is now, those of us who think further ahead now have to wait and see what Moment arises that’ll finally convince these people to consider something other than their own egos. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be catastrophic and completely avoidable, and will have the knock-on effect of destroying any support for whatever cause just happened to capture their attention…In The Moment, of course.
The Audacity of Krope
But “just win, baby…” 👊👊🍆
Glory b
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, we see now what happens when we don’t.
Do you find our current situation preferable?
Palestinians in Palestine wanted Harris to win, by the way.
It seems like the “disappointing” centrists were more aligned with their desires than the lefties were.
Another Scott
@suzanne: Understood.
As I say, I don’t live in NYC and have not studied the candidates enough to know how I would rank them. Cuomo would almost certainly not be in my rankings, and I’m suspicious of folks who are smooth talkers and know how to punch my buttons but have no actual relevant elected experience and have not demonstrated competence in making tough choices where there are no good options. But come November, I would vote for the Democrat – whoever it is.
Made me look.
AG Letitia James has a web page with all the evidence in the independent Cuomo sexual harassment investigation. It made me curious to see if she has endorsed anyone.
She ranked Lander #2.
FB link – She has Adrienne Adams as #1 and Mamdani as #3
Here’s hoping New Yorkers make a sensible choice.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
The Audacity of Krope
@Glory b: Those disappointing centrists voted for every penny now being used to murder and displace an entire nation. They have been for decades. And they’re fully onboard with defaming supporters of human rights as anti-Semitic.
You’re also missing the part where I’ve been voting for Democrats this whole time. I’m now coming to regret it. What was supposedly harm mitigation failed and is now looking a lot more like playing with your food.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@The Audacity of Krope: If you think what Biden and Harris were doing…you know what, never mind. You run with that. Should last about as long as it takes for the leopard to turn your way.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
If I were to guess the reasoning, I would wager that known quantities that are most likely to tell Trump to go fuck himself going to get priority. However terrible they may otherwise be.
And sadly, that is a concern. A sizeable amount of governors could wind up, like much of the courts, serving as the last line of defense.
The Audacity of Krope
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Turning away from the Democrats doesn’t mean I like that other set of monsters now. I refuse to support monstrous shit regardless of partisan label. Democrats’ performative regret about the murderous, colonialist foreign policy they’ve always pursued is blatantly phony.
ETA: And sometimes they can’t even be assed to perform phony regret.
Jay
@Geminid:
The core, is where the reactor core was. It will never be rebuilt. It could not refine plutonium.
No plutonium, no feasible nuke.
I had some test and calibration equipment that ran on 60% uranium.
I am not a nuclear weapons power.
Azhrie139
@Darkrose: Sorry dems need to line up for the oligarch’s candidate of choice
Azhrie139
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: That’s funny because I would say historically the oligarch’s candidate of choice ends up being more fascist collaborationist than resistent because they always can be bought.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@The Audacity of Krope: You may not like them, but it certainly sounds like you don’t have a problem with them, considering how eager you are to do their work for them.
Right now, the only performative shit going on is coming from the right wing, white people, and people who desperately think they’re white. Which are you?
Omnes Omnibus
@The Audacity of Krope: Somehow, I get the feeling that you are doing what you did in 2017.
ExPatExDem
I notice nobody ever went out of their way to rehabilitate Al Franken, whose misdeeds were FAR less grave than those of Cuomo.
O. Felix Culpa
@Interesting Name Goes Here: I vote for Door #2, with added male factor. That’s one of the few categories that can indulge in purity pony games and fancy themselves still safe.
Socolofi
@Darkrose: apparently New Yorkers are a very forgiving group. I mean, I get it… half of them root for the Jets.
YY_Sima Qian
@The Audacity of Krope: The lesson here is don’t put politicians on pedestals, & give them only limited benefit of doubt. They asked for & fought tooth & nail to be in the position they are in, they have to do their job.
Geminid
@Jay: No, you are not a nuclear power. But you do not have several hundred pounds of 60% enriched U-235 like Iran does. They can be a nuclear power if they want to be.
I have always been struck by the lengths people will go to in denying the obvious weapons potential of Iran’s nuclear program. Now, I make no assumptions about you, but I get the sense that a lot of these folks are leaving something unsaid; as in, “Iran is not trying to acquire nuclear weapons…but if they got one, that might not be such a bad thing, and might even be a good thing.”
I’ve seen plenty of people say they wish Iran did have nuclear weapons, the idea being that Israel has them and that needs to be balanced.
This is arguably a tenable position, but it’s a lot more tenable if one lives 5,000 or 7,000 miles from the Middle East, as do many of the North American proponents of an Iranian nuclear bomb. People living in say, Cyprus or the UAE might see this prospect differently.
columbusqueen
@Interesting Name Goes Here: No kidding.
ExPatExDem
I also note that Sen. Gillibrand, who boldly led the charge to free our nation from the menace of Al Franken can’t bring herself to speak against Cuomo for NYC Mayor.
The NY Dem political elite are a garbage barge.
The Audacity of Krope
@Interesting Name Goes Here: So deciding not to blindly support a party that broadly disagrees with me on major human rights issues helps a different party that agrees with the former mentioned party on these same human rights issues. Even though both these parties trot out the same disingenuous arguments, as I mentioned above, I’m the one helping the bad guys, who are only one of those parties. Got it.
The good things Democrats might be for don’t wipe out their support for violence in the name of spreading our values, whatever those are, abroad. I also strongly suspect that the demographic composition of these nations we invade/outsource violence against has a lot to do with Democrats not standing up for their human rights. The religious bigotry is real.
Shit, a vote hasn’t even been cast yet. All I’m threatening to do is uphold a standard.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: People in the ME region live w/ Israeli nukes, people in S. Asia live w/ Indian & Pakistani nukes, & people in E. Asia live w/ North Korean nukes. The Gulf States has in the past couple of years made it clear, through their efforts at détente, that they are prepared to live w/ Iran as a nuclear threshold state (even as Iran surged is centrifuge capacity & enrichment level), & sought to manage the Iranian threat by bringing it into the regional fold. The Biden & even Trump 47 Administration have been content to let those efforts play out. Bibi just short circuited that regional process.
Other than Israel & the U.S., everyone else treat Iran as a cynical, aggressive, but ultimately self-interested & rational actor, not millenarians insistent on committing murder-suicide against Israel. Iran could have chosen the North Korean path of committing to gaining nukes come what may, to secure its regime. It has not. It played the dangerous game of coming close to the line to gain leveraged, but no intelligence agency (other than Israeli) has assessed that Iran has made the decision to actually acquire nukes.
Now, the world will look at the disparate circumstances of Iraq/Libya/Iran/Ukraine versus North Korea/Israel/Pakistan, & conclude getting nukes is indeed the only sure safe guard for national sovereignty against attack by great or regional powers.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@The Audacity of Krope: Yes, the same standard that has led to virulent racists in charge of the government and people in this country being hunted down, kidnapped, and shipped off to other countries in the name of racism and bigotry, as well as politicians being murdered and the same people, who you don’t like but have no problem parroting their lies, demonizing those who have been killed.
Wonderful standard you have there.
Jay
@Geminid:
I had 60 kilos, roughly 133 lbs of 60% of enriched uranium.
We used it to find micro fractures in cast metal
Bibi has claimed, with no other support, from anybody, that Iran is 6 months away from having a nuke. Since 1995.
30 years. no nuke.
Funny that.
YY_Sima Qian
@The Audacity of Krope: Still have to vote for the party that will do the least harm I. The general, abstaining is not an option.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: I believe in 2017 I mostly vanished. You must be thinking of the year before.
And, no, this is quite different. Then I lashed out with extensive personal attacks and lied about my intention not to vote for Hillary Clinton in response to a pattern of grotesque guilt by association and strawman argumentation engaged by what might be best described as a dominant clique functioning here at the time.
Here no election is imminent. I have no problem with anyone. I’m not getting personal. I’m seeing the consequences of compromising on global human rights to hopefully maybe make my life a little better. All that compromise didn’t convince anyone. The compromise position just became the new supposed left extreme and the middle moved right Now our own rights are being shredded and there’s no one even available to speak on behalf of humane international policy.
Geminid
@Jay: Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu has been crying wolf for 30 years. This provides people another excuse to dodge the question of whether Iran has the potential to build a nuclear weapon in 2025.
The Audacity of Krope
@Geminid: A question comes to my mind is that after Iran engaged in a good faith negotiation with our country agreeing to ongoing oversight in order to access specifically peaceful applications of nuclear power and then immediately having it thrown in their face by the successor administration; how is it in any way our country’s place to come in, bombs first, saying we think you might have a bomb any day now?
The fucking gall, the unmitigated chutpah, the sheer impudence, the brazen fucking balls, the…. I’m out.
Jay
@Geminid:
I have the potential to build a nuclear weapon in 2025.
Kinda tempted.
It’s just one 25 megaton bomb, so no biggie.
If I add our other branches, it’s 57.
Retail repair facilities as the new Nuclear Power.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, the US. hasn’t come in yet. It looks like a 50-50 proposition to me right now. But various OSINT accounts keep reporting the ongoing US military buildup in the area, so for all I know the decision to attack has already been made.
One sad thing about this “crisis” is how it overshadows the situation in Gaza. Turkiye’s President and Foreign Minister try to keep people’s attention focused on Gaza despite the Israeli/Iranian war, but so far they’re fighting a losing battle.
The Audacity of Krope
History already suggested Gaza would, again, become back of mind with the general public for one reason or another before any sort of positive resolution was achieved.The broad US polity can’t seem to sustain attention on a particular issue long term absent constant salacious revelations. The revelations, of course, don’t have to reveal anything true or be anything more than a basis for insinuation, of course, see Hillary’s emails.
For my part, I never forgot about Gaza. But I never knew more I could do than read up on Congressional candidates’ positions during primaries and hope for the best.
Last open primary I voted in the rights for Palestine candidate came 3rd to the perfunctory support for Israel candidate (2nd) and the explicitly Islamophobic candidate, the winner.
PJ
@Steve LaBonne:
I know this will be a controversial opinion with the Cat People, but I am voting for dogs to take our place.
PJ
@Bupalos: So, as with 2024, in 2020 you’d go with Trump again.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Azhrie139: Based on prior clashes, (i.e. Cuomo vs. Jeff Sessions, for example) dude doesn’t seem to like outside influences trying to tell him how to run things.
Which could make him look potentially useful to people who endorsed him.
PJ
@Mai Naem mobile:
Lander was my council member and he was always completely disingenuous with me. I do not trust him one bit. He’s a more savvy Bill DeBlasio (whose place he took on the City Council.) He will do whatever REBNY wants him to do and whatever he thinks will play well on TV. Are the rest any better? Cuomo is awful, Mandani just says whatever bullshit he thinks will get him elected (and which, as Mayor, he will have no power to enact). The choices are not good, but I’m going with Zellnor Myrie and Adrienne Adams.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: Again, I took most of 2017 off posting. I couldn’t deal with it. You’re talking about 2016. That was the election year. And, no, I explained how these are very different situations.
The fact that then it was personal, now it’s not and that then I was being insincere, now I’m not are both pretty huge differences.
Right now, in this moment, you’re kinda doing what you did in 2016.
PJ
@Bupalos:
Mamdani has no authority to order “free buses” (MTA is controlled by the state), and even if he did, all it would do is push riders from the subways onto buses, and he has no way to come up with the money to pay for it. City owned grocery stores would just be flushing money down the toilet (the City can’t even maintain the NYCHA houses). A better use of resources would be for the city to incentivize companies that actually know how to sell groceries.
PJ
@HeleninEire: Low income NYC residents receive 50% off MTA fares, as do seniors. https://access.nyc.gov/programs/
Lyrebird
@trollhattan: oh thank you for posting this! Which isn’t to say I have any idea how hard it’s going to be to get them to comply, but oh this is good news in a dark time.
@zhena gogolia: indeed.
Lyrebird
Right now is very scary, but there are WAY MORE Dems in Congress specifically putting legislation forward to block that and going out to view ICE facilities than there were then. There was Rep. Barbara Lee, only.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: Have you considered checking out the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter? I’m serious. I don’t really share their political stance, but I credit them for steering clear of the cynicism and accelerationism I see in other portions of the “Left.”You might meet some like-minded people to work with. They’re into community action projects.
And you haven’t changed your nym for a while. Maybe you’ll rebrand as “Komrade Krope.”
New Lines Magazine had a good article about the DSA a few weeks ago. I’ll link to it again sometime, but its also easy look up- “New Lines Magazine DSA” should do it.
New Lines Magazine is a good resource generally. Editor Hassan I. Hassan puts up good articles on a wide range topics, with especially good coverage of the Middle East including the Gaza war.
jonas
Andrew Cuomo is the Gavin Newsom of Anthony Weiners.
PJ
@PJ:
Mamdani also praised Trump for his “limitless imagination” (which is just refusing to obey the law.) We can do without that kind of imagination in NYC.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
“How can Republicans keep voting for that serial creep and blatantly corrupt asshole in the Oval Office?”
say people supporting Cuomo, unironically.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: the reality of systemic racism and unequal educational and economic opportunities means black voters as a group are at a disadvantage in terms of measured levels of political policy information.
The strongest realignments Trump has managed since showing up in 2016 are pulling Hispanic and white men from not voting to R, and black men from voting D to voting R. The relative decline in educational attainment among all men tracks with the increasing R alignment of all men.
Bupalos
@PJ: all good questions and I am not an expert. I am reacting to the idea of a candidate having a policy slate and energizing people on issues of policy. I think that’s actually more important right now than particular policy outcomes. Cuomo is essentially the opposite of that. His platform is going to be “I’ll make decisions, you won’t have to worry about it. Just like it always was and is and will be.”
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: this was baked in most concretely by the failure to back Ukraine. Iran will be a more ambiguous case, though I don’t disagree this will also weight more on the side of proliferation.
Geminid
@Bupalos: I think you are looking at this through a national poltical lens. New York City voters do not have that luxury. They have to decide who can best run their city. Particular policy outcomes will be more important to them than they are to you; they have to live with them.
YY_Sima Qian
So the E3 demands to Iran mirror that of the U.S.’: zero enrichment, caps on the ballistic missile program, reduce support to regional Allie’s & provide, & humanitarian concerns/human rights.
The 1st is what stalled the U.S.-Iranian negotiations to begin w/. Iran might just agree to reduced support to regional proxies & other destabilization efforts, now widely seen as a waste of resources that proved to be of little value during the theocratic regime’s moment of greatest peril. Even if Iran agreed to zero enrichment, I can’t see how Iran would agree to cap its conventional missile program, seeing that it is Iran’s main recourse to impose cost on Israel’s militarism, especially in the absence of a nuclear deterrent. Asking the regime to make concessions on human rights while being pummeled from the sky will be interpreted as regime change in disguise.
I’ve commented before, it is quite understandable that the Europeans want to squeeze Iran as hard as possible as payback for Iran selling drones to Russian to pummel Ukraine. However, the 1st/2nd/3rd order effects of pushing Iran into the corner will be decidedly detrimental for the EU. Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz & striking the oil/gas infrastructure of the Gulf States (& have its own infrastructure struck in retaliation) will cause the price of oil & gas to spike & lead to a bad recession, when the EU economies are already weak & when high energy costs are already rendering European industries less competitive vis-a-vis the U.S. & the PRC.
Weakening of EU economies means less resources to support Ukraine, for rearmament against Russia, & greater vulnerability to take over by the domestic reactionaries. Meanwhile, high oil/gas prices, & taking some of its most significant competitors offline, will be a huge boon to Russia. Oil & gas exports to the PRC & India will be far less discounted, to start.
tam1MI
She did worse than that, she outright ENDORSED him.
YY_Sima Qian
@Lyrebird: Agree that there are a lot more prominent Dem Reps & Senators unequivocally warning against US joining the war this time around, precisely w/ the Iraq War in mind. They could use some leadership from Schumer & Jeffries here, though, especially on the topic of potentially circumventing Congress to wage war.
PJ
@Bupalos: Particular policy outcomes, and whether a candidate can actually deliver them are, I believe, what people vote for in elections. If candidates are merely symbols for who knows what, why should anyone vote for them?
Liminal Owl
@Sure Lurkalot: Is the choice being seen as “sex pest vs socialist” or “sex pest vs Muslim”? I would not be surprised if the calculation is that Mamdani would lose all the Jewish voters. (I like the other socialist better, but the polls I’ve seen showed Mamdani way ahead of him.) FWIW, if that’s the calculation I think it’s mistaken but not entirely, based on comments I’m seeing in hyper-local media.
Liminal Owl
@Liminal Owl: (longer edition of comment disappeared, will try in another thread later)