Tag: Caroline Kennedy

Categories
Uncategorized

Your Friday Updates

Kirstin gets the nod, California gets the weed, but not everybody’s happy in today’s DFE News Update:

  • Xerox is the breaking news of the day for Rochester, as it’s earnings report gives some indication why it’s laying off workers: they broke even on earnings this quarter, down from 41 cents per share this time last year. Breaking even is good when you’re a kid paying bills, but it’s bad when you’re a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded international corporation.
  • A happy switch from eight years of one reality, President Barack Obama (fuckin’ LOVE writing that) affirms a woman’s right to choose as both a woman’s right and a family’s right to privacy on the anniversary of the Roe decision. Protesters on the lawn don’t get their traditional phone call from the president anymore. Shucks, I guess they’ll just have to freeze.
  • Kirstie Gets the Nod!!! Yes, our long statewide nightmare is over, with frickin Patterson finally getting off his ass and picking someone. I’ll probably comment on this more later, with perhaps a roundup of reaction.
  • From the “Obvious But Worth Noting” department, experts predict as much as a 9 percent shrinking of the wireless market in the next year. Duh. It’s a recession.
  • I commented yesterday about Obama’s decision to shut down Gitmo, asserting that a test of that decision would not be long coming. It took one day, actually. A freed Saudi has now become a leader in the al-Qaeda military machine. Joy.
  • Finally, happy news from California: pot crops are abundant this year. As I pointed out in a comment on TPMCafe, Obama could do this country a world of good by just legalizing it, already. Ease our suffering in this time of economic, military and environmental troubles.
Categories
Uncategorized

Friday or Saturday

Governor Patterson was interviewed – lamentably – by Andrea Mitchell at the inauguration just now. He’s trying to be as circumspect as possible, but Mitchell just sort of assumes that Caroline Kennedy is the choice. I don’t think it is, based on his bob and weave.

But he did say Thursday or Friday will be the day for the announcement.

Categories
Uncategorized

Patterson Changing His Mind About the Senate Seat?

Channel 8 is reporting that Governor Patterson will likely delay his appointment of a new Senator to replace Hillary Clinton, citing for a second time the “new thinking” Patterson is presumably in the throws of. Does this mean the end of the Kennedy appointment? Let’s freakin’ hope so.

Categories
Uncategorized

w00t! Kennedy’s Support Dries Up

I’m not sure that our opinion matters much at this point, but maybe it does. If so, Caroline Kennedy has a real problem in New York State in her bid to become our state’s second Senator. Talking Points Memo’s Election Central is reporting today that her 21 point lead has ablated into a 20 crater favouring Andrew Cuomo, who lets face it is a much better choice in the first place.

I’d like to think that our opinion on the subject matters to our representatives in Albany, but that’s never been much of a sure thing. And by the way, last night was the first time I got to hear CK actually speak in front of a camera. I’ve been inclined to believe that the whole, “you know” thing was just more media drama, but oh, my achin’ back. I stand corrected.

Categories
Uncategorized

Texas Kingmakers in the New York Humpty-Bumpty

Exile over at TAP links to an article wherein Texas Senator John Cornyn states that he’s supporting or at least endorsing the idea of NY Representative King running for Hillary’s Senate seat in 2010. This begins the race among Republicans to try to, as I said in the comments of Exile’s post, “de-pants a Kennedy.”

Count on 2010 being a very, very hot race.

Of course, as Exile sez: “If the NRSC backs Peter King in a Republican primary, I’ll seriously consider sending them a check.” I gotta agree, King would make a Republican nominee somewhere between the haplessness of a Mitt Romney and the loving grace of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. But don’t count him out if he’s got NRSC money behind him.

Categories
Uncategorized

I Guess a Rochester Tribute Isn’t Good Enough?

H/t to Rachael Barnhart of 13WHAM. From the “Entirely too sensitive” files:

When Ms. Kennedy visited the Democratic headquarters in Rochester recently, local officials ushered her eagerly into a conference area known as the Kennedy Room, decorated with pictures of her father, her mother, her younger brother, and Ms. Kennedy herself as a little girl. Ms. Kennedy, while polite, did not appear particularly moved.

“She never responded to the pictures,” recalled Robert Duffy, the mayor of Rochester and the meeting’s host. “She looked and perhaps nodded. She never said a word about it.”

Call me nutty, but does this not strike you as a remarkably strident observation of a potential Senator by the Mayor of Rochester? Does Ol’ Duff know something we don’t, or does he not care?

Categories
Uncategorized

Oh, Hum? Interesting Articles on a Sunday

Just because I haven’t been posting to the blog and just because there are an abundance of interesting articles out there for a Sunday morning, I decided to do a quick bit of news link blogging for your reading pleasure.

It seems that the low price of gasoline we have right now is sparking some more discussion about raising the gas tax as much as a dollar or more. As much as it’s fairly proven that higher gas prices did indeed cause Americans to curb their gas consumption and even buy hybrid cars, I think this is bad for an entirely different reason. That reason is that such a high tax on gasoline would inevitably make gas tax policy the fail-safe topic of Republican discourse for years to come, even more so than the Great Society policies which have an immediate positive impact on lower-wage voters that make up their base.

And one can hardly speak of gasoline these days without invoking the familiar of Sarah Palin. On that topic, she’s busy once again keeping herself in the spotlight by attacking journalism and making an ass out of herself. Sily Old Governor Grand-MILF! Everybody knows that you can’t attack the media when they’re attacking you.

But there’s another story that may keep her in the news, this one about her (allegedly) drug-dealing in-laws, the Johnson family. It seems that there are investigators and police union people now starting to grumble about political interference in the investigation of Sherry Johnson – mother of Levi, who begat Li’l Redneck, Bristol Palin’s child. Johnson was eventually caught in possession of a Crystal Meth lab. Given Palin’s history, I think we can all safely say that allegations of political interference are just plain crazy-talk.

Meanwhile, Exile on Erickson St has an interesting post up about the political machinations surrounding one highly-unpopular Governor Patterson and the appointment of a new Senator to hill Hillary Clinton’s seat for New York. It seems rather obvious that CK endorsed Obama specifically to make enough of a name for herself to get some juice in New York politics, one way or the other.

But I’m not sure I agree with Rotten in the comments section that putting her into the Senate seat will almost guarantee a Republican in that seat come the next election. That’s one option. The other option is to trade a junior Senator with lots of power for a junior Senator with really only the appearance of power but lots of money and rich friends that will make her a permanent fixture – to our enduring distress – for years to come. If you think Senator Clinton accomplished jack-shit in the Senate (and let’s face it, she did that and less), just wait for Senator Kennedy of New York.