Shorter Everything
1. Dennis Gabryszak is a creep who is accused of doing creepy things to at least 7 women, who have the courage to come forward and publicly air the ways in which this schmuck humiliated them. Gabryszak has not denied or otherwise addressed the allegations and is unfit for public service.
2. It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up was the lesson learned during Watergate, and on Thursday New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took 2 hours to explain how he was completely in the dark about some really despicable things that his very close advisors and confidants were doing. When his appointee to the NYNJ Port Authority, David Wildstein, resigned in December – a month ago – over September’s politically manufactured bridge debacle. For Christie to suggest that this is all news to him strains credulity. For him to suggest that he was completely in the dark about these things seems unlikely. Ultimately, if you surround yourself with petty, vindictive people, and you maintain a public demeanor that is, at times, petty and vindictive, you can hardly stand there with a straight face and claim that you are, like, totally shocked that people in your employ behaved in a petty and vindictive manner.
3. Yesterday, GOP gadfly Michael Caputo was sitting in for Tom Bauerle on WBEN, and he had legendary dirty trickster Roger Stone call in – that’s quite a get. They talked about a meeting Friday put together in an effort to convince billionaire birther Donald Trump to run for Governor of the state of New York. Stone got it exactly right – Trump doesn’t have a chance. Ultimately, New York State is as blue as it gets, and while Democrats and left independents might consider a Republican who portrays himself as a centrist who is liberal on social issues (see: Pataki), there’s no way in hell any self-respecting Democrat would support a Donald Trump for governor – not after his dramatic and absurd lurch to the very fringes of the right wing in the last few years. For all the Freudian bleating about the NY SAFE Act, the metropolitan area around the five boroughs – how did Glenn Beck phrase it? Oh yeah, “they surround you”.
4. Declared dead several years ago, it turns out that shared border management still has a pulse. Because Canadian border agents are now armed, like their American counterparts, one of the big obstacles to pre-clearing traffic on the Canadian side and eliminating the inspection booths on the American side has been eliminated. For now, it’s a pilot program and it’s only for commercial traffic, but if it’s successful there’s no reason why it couldn’t also be used for passenger vehicles, too. If that happens, all of the alarmist talk about the adverse health effects from idling traffic at a bridge crossing that has existed for 100 years can stop. I never quite understood how adding lanes to alleviate traffic congestion would aggravate health problems on the west side of Buffalo, nor did I understand why the anti-bridge rhetoric was effectively arguing for the complete removal of the bridge altogether. But hopefully the saga of the Hundredyearbridge will make a millimeter’s worth of progress.
5. If your town government decides to hold a “public hearing” about a local controversy at 4:30 pm on a weekday, and doesn’t bother to invite representatives of the locality’s regional governmental entity, then it’s safe to say that the town government isn’t interested in dealing with conflict or problems. The one-party system in the town of Clarence is not showing itself to be particularly responsive or concerned about legitimate gripes from people in the northern flood plain.
I find it interesting a public forum was scheduled to discuss Goodrich Rd, a county road, & flooding on it but my office wasn’t invited.
— Mark Poloncarz (@markpoloncarz) January 9, 2014
I’m glad media tipped us off to it, otherwise no one from my exec staff would have attended. We are there now with correct info for public.
— Mark Poloncarz (@markpoloncarz) January 9, 2014
I have been advised the hearing is being run by Clarence Supervisor Dave Hartzell, Assemblywoman Jane Corwin and Legislator Ed Rath.
— Mark Poloncarz (@markpoloncarz) January 9, 2014
Unbelievable.
6. Chris Collins (NY-27) is playing to type.
7. Subset cars:
– did you know that it is perfectly legal for any American to import any car from anywhere in the world, provided it is 25+ years old? Not only legal to import, but legal to put on the road. Here’s a cool story about a dream come true.
– I told you a few weeks ago to get yourself a set of snow tires. That’s not all. When it’s snowing and sloppery out, you should also (a) keep your washer fluid topped off; (b) keep an extra gallon of fluid in your trunk; (c) physically wipe the slop off your wipers every once in a while to keep them clean and clear; (d) take a squeegee to your front headlights at every fill-up to get the road sludge off of them and enable you to actually see at night. To that end, if your local Noco or whatever doesn’t keep a proper squeegee bucket around with some form of unfrozen cleaning solution, stop going there or complain. It is inexcusable in a cold climate.
Have a good weekend!
Also, brush off the top of your cars! I don’t need your junk blowing onto my car because you are too important to take the 2 minutes to brush off the top of your car. Clean off the plates too.
If you don’t clean off your rear plate, a car with blue lights might be attracted to you.
And don’t forget your rear lights. Not much good signaling your turns (you all do this too, every single time, yes?) if the cars behind you can’t see the signals through the four inches of frozen snow that cover the signals.
Well, Obama learned about various scandals by “Seeing it on the news” (NSA) or elsewhere “in the media” Would it be safe to say underlings did things he had no knowledge of? Or is he just a dumb as Christie, which automatically qualifies him to be President. Not that I’d vote for him, he’s a RINO.
Let’s engage here.
Do you think the NSA revelations constitute a “scandal”? Do you expect the President to be informed about the drilled-down details of every federal program and process? Do you equate the operation of the federal government, which has global reach and responsibility – including all of its various and sundry law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operations – with the running of New Jersey’s bridges and tunnels?
Hank may be thinking of the IRS persecution of conservative groups. Of course, in that case the Director Douglas Shulman is on the WH visitor list 157 times, and IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram, head of the tax-exempt division, made another 155 visits to meet with a White House official with whom she exchanged confidential taxpayer information. Later, Barry claimed ignorance, and appointed Ingram as director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office. Logs of the visits were recently taken down by the WH, on grounds of “The Shutdown”.
I am pleased that you conservatives are now calling the president “Barry”, rather than “B. Hussein”. Seems more respectful. It might even be “Mr. President” by the time he is through!
Actually, he went by Barry Soetoro at Columbia and Harvard.
“Mr. President” would be a stretch for the Chicago community organizer who has diminished the office as much as he has.
http://tinyurl.com/l5b2wrz
Lol, come on.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/studentid.asp
The NSA revelations are much worse than a “scandal” and causes much more harm.
Alan, if you feel that the fact that the National Security Agency activity in the personal lives of innocent citizens was not known by the President isn’t scandalous, there simply isn’t anything to engage about. “If he didn’t know, he should have.” I said the same thing about Arms to Iran to support the contras. I’m sure you feel that Reagan not knowing about that was a scandal, but you don’t see it when it’s your guy in the chair.
Christie backed himself into a corner with no way out once some of his underlings start talking, it is only a matter of time.
“If that happens, all of the alarmist talk about the adverse health
effects from idling traffic at a bridge crossing that has existed for
100 years can stop.”
It’s not alarmist — it’s residents organizing to protect themselves from environmental racism and class-based abuse inflicted on them by people who live far away. The claims made by residents are backed by actual science, unlike those made by people like Sam Hoyt, who claims to just intuitively know that the bridge plans would improve air quality in the area. And the fact that the bridge has existed for a long time does nothing to negate the validity of the claims being made today.
Other than that, great sentence!
Google “coming to the nuisance”.
Wow, you’ve blown my mind. Here I thought environmental racism was a thing, but it turns out that poor people and people of color are just making a free decision to locate near diesel exhaust and such, while richer and whiter people just happen to choose leafier environs. What are the poors thinking?
Why don’t they move? I’m not rich, although I am white but if I lived somewhere that was detrimental to my family’s health, I’d move.
Colin, you’ve forgotten that everyone has perfect information and mobility, including those four-year-olds whose parents own or rent near the Peace Bridge. If Peewee is developing asthma, why then, he should pack up and move to Clarence.
I Googled it and it sounds like bullshit. Under that doctrine you can have an area of houses…kind of like todays “residential” zoning. Along comes a guy and puts in a pig feeder lot. With “coming to the nuisance” he goes right ahead, puts in the pig sty, creates a tremendous stink for everybody and now the homeowners have to take him to court to get rid of the pig sty.
So how does this work with the bridge and the diesel fumes? Do we get rid of the diesel fumes or do we get rid of the neighborhood? Can you imagine the courts handling this?
I’m confused as to what your trying to say here Alan.
To Mark Poloncarz – sorry your feelings are hurt. Maybe they wanted it to be a productive meeting.
They wanted a poorly attended meeting.
Not sure if its’a ll that much of a “get” these days. Seems Caputo has a lot more relevance in current events than Stone does these days.
The Goodrich and Wolcott Rd area was a problem long before developers came to town. Speaking of one party town. I was on fultonhistory.com looking up my grand aunt Kate’s name and found her running for tax collector as a Dem. The last paragraph regarding the caucus reads, “Clarence, one of the county’s few remaining Republican strongholds. has not had a Democratic officeholder for the past twenty years. Supervisor Lapp has served’ In that
capacity for the fifteen years past.”