Archive for September 12th, 2013

More schadenfreude!

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

I can’t help it. I’m enjoying this too much.

Anthony D. Weiner, the digital Lothario who called himself the “imperfect messenger” of the mayoral race, mustered a measly 5 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Eliot Spitzer, a former governor and noted patron of prostitutes, lost his comptroller bid to a journeyman politician whom he outspent two to one.

Hey, remember when folks were saying this was Weiner’s comeback?

“It turns out sexual misconduct is a fast track to a concession speech,” Sonia Ossorio, president of the local branch of the National Organization for Women, wrote in a triumphant note on Wednesday morning. “Voters will reject candidates who fail to treat women with respect and dignity.”

We can hope.

Other New Yorkers, who watched with dismay when Mark Sanford, the philandering former South Carolina governor, won a Congressional seat this year, seized on the primary results from Tuesday to indulge in a more time-honored city tradition: feeling superior to the rest of the country.

“time-honored city tradition”. There’s really nothing I can say here, is there?

Mr. Spitzer lost by a small margin, receiving nearly half of the votes cast, and about half of voters had a favorable impression of him, according to exit poll results. Mr. Weiner performed far worse, placing fifth in the primary, and about three of every four voters said they had an unfavorable view of him.

I wonder if this is a rejection of the nanny state exemplified by Bloomberg.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily that all of a sudden New Yorkers are these chaste moral beings that can’t deal with scandals,” Dr. Greer said. “The larger story is we were looking for a new day, a new day post-Bloomberg, post-drama, post-scandal and embarrassment for the city and state of New York.”

Note the paper of record’s use of “post-Bloomberg” there, too. Interesting.

(Edited to add: More on the “Bloomberg backlash” theme by way of Insta.)

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Noted.

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

I owe Lawrence $5.

Oh, well, there’s always next year.

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Random notes: September 12, 2013.

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

Two games in, and we have our first head coach firing of the college football season: Doug Williams is out at Grambling. The team lost the first two games of this season, and was 1-10 last season (0-9 in conference).

The Chicago City Council voted to do away with the city’s gun registry.

The change, which the Council made reluctantly, comes as Chicago is trying to control a rash of gun violence that drew national attention when the city’s homicide count surpassed 500 last year. The Chicago Police Department has cited gang activity and a flow of firearms from suburbs and from across the Indiana border into the city, which continues to pursue more aggressive gun restrictions.

Or, as Iowahawk once noted, Chicago blames their violence problem on other states…that don’t have a violence problem. (I can’t find his exact quote. By the way, Twitter’s search features stink.)

Criminal experts say the gun registry database in Chicago, which contains more than 8,000 gun owners and about 22,000 firearms, has helped the police better understand the movement of weapons in the city as they put in place new law enforcement strategies. Adam Collins, a spokesman for the Police Department, said in a statement that officers would be able to use a new online database of permit holders maintained by the Illinois State Police under the law.
“There’s no scenario where this makes the jobs of police easier,” said Jen Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, about having to repeal the registry.

Of course, because Chicago’s criminal class is composed of law-abiding permit holding individuals who register their illegally possessed guns.

Speaking of sad pandas:

While some voters in the two districts groused about the flood of donations Mr. Bloomberg and outside groups made in the recall campaigns, analysts in Colorado said the election results were shaped by an eruption of local discontent from voters who say their leaders are ignoring the concerns of gun owners and abandoning Colorado’s rural, libertarian roots.

Kind of interesting that the paper of record mentions Bloomberg specifically, and not the NRA.

Ms. Giron’s loss raised far more red flags for Democrats. She represented a district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by two to one, and she won her seat in 2010 by 10 percentage points. But on Tuesday, voters lined up against her, 56 percent to 44 percent.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

And among the many things Mexico needs: strict machete control.

Four men hacked a state legislator to death with machetes and wounded a journalist who was apparently talking to him on the side of a highway Wednesday in the western Mexico state of Michoacan.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Guns, Law, Politics, Schadenfreude, Sports | 1 Comment »