When Mitt Romney Came to Town
I’m sure the Obama team and national Democrats would all like to thank Newt Gingrich-friendly SuperPAC “Winning Our Future” for producing this Mitt Romney hit piece for them.
http://youtu.be/_evS-T-c35M
Author: buffalopundit
How Not to Run a Sting
In order to prove the need for a voter ID poll tax, and to prove how easy it is for someone to procure and cast a false ballot, the kid who took ACORN down based on fabrications sent some people to New Hampshire to…well, to procure and cast false ballots.
The problem is that it’s a state and federal crime to do just that, and a pretty severe one at that – a felony. And it’s not a sting – it’s the commission of the crime itself; they didn’t catch people falsifying ballots or conspiring to falsify ballots – they actually did it.
“In either case, if they were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law,” Schultz said. “So right off the bat, what they did violated the law.”
Election law expert Rick Hasen, who writes the Election Law Blog, joked in an email to TPM that O’Keefe’s team should “next show how easy it is to rob a bank with a plastic gun.”
“Who in their right mind would risk a felony conviction for this? And who would be able to do this in large enough numbers to (1) affect the outcome of the election and (2) remain undetected?” Hasen wrote.
Of course, there was a spate of “Future O’Keefe Stings” on Twitter such as:
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/TheDarklady/status/157252524464816128″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/157246918513274880″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/MotherJones/status/157244859663654912″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/d_pardee/status/157224694762831872″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/fbihop/status/157223680294928384″]
The Schadenfreude over this kid’s ham-handed efforts to promote conservative causes and embarrass liberals is awesome. I look forward to his next effort to re-create what he did with ACORN, but the problem is it’ll never happen because everyone knows he’s a fraud with zero credibility.
How Not to Run a Business
No surprise, the owners of Valenti’s are embroiled in a bitter landlord/tenant dispute with Budwey’s. No surprise, it’s over unpaid rent and whether the rent is triple net or not.
The saga of the Iron Chef has reached Lifetime Movie of the Week proportions. It’s also fodder for discussion on Chowhound.
Collins and His Car
The best thing about being rid of Chris Collins in elected office is that his daily fits of pique are now just comical. Collins is a millionaire – he can very well pay to remove county equipment from his personal car, but he amazingly demands the county pay for it. The equipment – lights and a radio that Collins had installed because he chose to do so – belongs to the county, and Collins can either have the county remove it for him or he can remove it himself. But because emergency services is now run by a guy he fired, he doesn’t want them touching his car.
The county never should have, however, withheld Collins’ paycheck – it’s against the law to do that, and it’s right that this was undone. So, the ball is in Collins’ court. He can take his car to a mechanic, park in a handicapped spot, and have it removed himself at his own expense. He can ask the county to pay for the removal, or he can perhaps write it off as a business expense, like he does the mileage he so proudly proclaims he never asked the county to reimburse.
Wolf Blitzer’s Book Report
Isn’t Wolf Blitzer’s from WNY? Isn’t he one of the few locals who went on to become a media giant?
If so, why is he busy penning facile book reports about how nice it is that people are willing to run for king of the free world?
From the rarely-situational Situation Room, Wolf hopes you have as much fun reading his 5th grade essay as he did writing it!
Rom-nomi-nee
After yesterday’s New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney is all but guaranteed to be the Republican presidential nominee.
The parallels to 1996 here are hard to ignore; a somewhat weakened chief executive, reeling from bad poll numbers and movement conservatives in the ascendency, a deeply flawed Republican nominee, and a short Texan with a loud, unconventional, populist platform running a likely third party bid, siphoning off conservative votes.
It looks good for President Obama, who has his own problems with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. (Yes, this puts the lie to the whole notion of Obama’s “radical socialism” – a charge none of the Republican candidates would dare repeat to his face).
Gingrich and Santorum went nowhere in New Hampshire, for various reasons. Gingrich is too broken a human, and Santorum is out in left field on social issues. Huntsman’s best chance was in New Hampshire, and he blew it – he’s done. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum’s last chance is South Carolina; if they can’t convince Bible-belt social conservatives to come out for them over Paul or Romney, it’s over. The analysis from Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight was, as always, most informative.
In his second out of 50 likely victory speeches, Romney assailed President Obama for “apologizing” for America. This is, of course, patently false, and a lie that will come back to haunt Romney. Was Obama apologizing for America when he ordered that Osama bin Laden be shot through the head? Was he apologizing for America when he refused to aid North Africa’s dictators against popular uprising? Was he apologizing for America when he passed the Affordable Care Act, with the promise of affordable health insurance for all? Here’s a list of Obama’s accomplishments, wherein he apologized for no one.
The “apologizing for America” crack is popular with ignorants and cretins, and is code for “socialist“, “Kenyan/Indonesian”, “where’s the birth certificate”, and “black guy”. Romney, whose religious views are sometimes fodder for mocking and dismissal, especially from the evangelicals he so needs, is treading on thin ice. Criticizing Obama for his policies is one thing, but this “apologizing” crack is a racist, xenophobic dog whistle.
Romney also made the choice quite clear – do you vote for the President who wants to create jobs, or the candidate who likes to fire people?
ID-Nay
As futile as it may have been, this simple act by new County Executive Poloncarz – a no vote on the county IDA, which is quick to hand out free money to its good friends for upscale housing – is ground-shaking.
For all the Republicans’ talk about how awful it is to redistribute wealth, they’re completely fine with it when the redistribution is going their way.
The jig is up.
Canalside & a Sense of Tacky Place
Both Chris and I have written extensively over the past several years about what’s going on at the Inner Harbor. (Unfortunately, links will have to wait).
In late 2010, the planning for Canalside was co-opted by a crowdsourcing process that provided all of the ills of central planning with none of the decision-making efficiency. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a facile “placemaking” exercise by uncredentialed huckster Fred Kent of the Partnership for Public Spaces, the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation retained consultants to help flesh out the historical/cultural aspects of the Canalside project.
While the district had historically been a wetter, be-bricked version of Mos Eisley, the “history” that will be reproduced at Canalside was always going to be sanitized through contemporary biases. While Chris and I advocated for the notion of giving people things to do and see, we were vilified for our suburban-colored glasses and our cultural, architectural, and artistic ignorance.
We merely traded a political planning elite for a cultural planning elite.
And the cultural elite’s Cultural Masterplan is out & embedded below.
Initially, Canalside will feature a Children’s Museum, which will fill a gaping hole in our city – one that Explore & More temporarily filled by bringing certain exhibits to a tent at Canalside during the temperate months. It was like the #Occupy version of a children’s museum. But another feature is something Mark Goldman personally lobbied for incessantly – a “solar powered carousel”, and an interpretive “how Buffalo fed America” look back at the times before the St. Lawrence Seaway and interstate network.
When it comes to the historical significance of the canal terminus, there’s a fine line between education and nostalgia porn.
Longer term, the plan is in deep Niagara Falls fail territory with a “4D theater production” depicting a balloon ride, which will “immerse visitors in a ‘you are there’ journey, with 4D effects such as falling snow, wind gusts, rumbling seats, scents, surround sound…” The cost of re-making the “MOM” ride at Massachusetts’ Jordan’s Furniture and the 4D rides in the Falls will be $25 million, plus operating costs of about $1.3 – 1.7 million per year.
$25 million to take something that was supposed to be “authentic” and give one a “sense of place” and turn it into sideshow tack and a snack shack. This entire placemaking exercise has been an absolute crock of crowdsourcing nonsense that has let dozens of unelected people with tiny constituencies promote their personal biases and prejudices in the name of the entire community.
They sold us on “authentic”, and “lighter, quicker, cheaper”. We’re getting fake, phony tack. Where’s the sense of place?
Does this follow the 2004 Master Plan?
Authenticity?
Sense of Place if Buffalo is Jurassic Park
CanalSide Cultural Masterplan Final Reporthttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/77359065/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-aea7ew89n7p041wenyq
A presentation to accompany the report is here:
Cultural Master Plan Presentationhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/77667232/content?start_page=1&view_mode=slideshow&access_key=key-27543cixlwh0p7901zam(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();
On a side note, renderings of a summertime and wintertime Aud block at Canalside look quite inviting. Let’s stick to this:
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Insanity Debate
I managed to watch about 30 – 45 minutes’ worth of the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire this weekend. That was all I could stomach.
When Newt Gingrich began complaining about the “war on Christianity” being waged by the Obama administration, I tweeted this:
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/155844160631484416″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/155844805086285824″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/155846063910166528″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/155846917195177985″]
…and turned on Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. I found it to be more intellectually honest and stimulating than the ignorance slapstick that ABC was airing.
A 3 1/2 Okun Review
Janice Okun dined at the somewhat newly reconstituted Rue Franklin, and reviews it here. For the second time in as many weeks, she did not give a half-star. This is a peculiar change from the norm.
What we do learn from her review of this venerable French restaurant is the following:
1. Her dessert was “nonthreatening”. That seems to be the underlying theme for most Okun reviews; one might describe it as, “almost totally subliminal”.
2. Lighting is important to a restaurant’s ambiance. Who knew?
3. The portions were to her liking; i.e., large.
4. Although this is a French place with traditional French dishes such as seared foie gras, Ragôut of veal sweetbreads with white wine, mushrooms, tomato and tarragon, poule au pot, and a braised short rib specialty of Gascony, she ordered two benign salmon dishes.
5. As usual, there is less information about dishes’ flavor than there is about ambiance, lighting, and the fact that Okun knows the waiter’s name.
As such, I give this review three and a half okuns. In keeping with the Gusto’s restaurant reviews, I will give no background on how the okuns are awarded.