Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !

Home Front: Culture Wars

Illegals OK'd to drive in N.Y.

2007-10-21

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's order to grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens in New York has enraged voters and Republican officials. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has started a major political fight over immigration by ordering state officials to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens, prompting at least one county legislature to defy the executive order and pushing toward a showdown in court. The embattled governor's order has drawn some acerbic commentary, including a cartoon showing Osama bin Laden as a New York City taxi driver. After spending months trying to deflect charges that he used state police to target the Republican leader of the state Senate, Mr. Spitzer appears eager for a fight over this contentious issue. "The rabid right that wants to pile on and use this to demagogue the issue will not carry the day in New York state," he said recently. "Those who view this as a political issue once again are taking the state in the wrong direction." As opposed to Elliott who views this as ... a political issue. The driver's license issue has once again put the governor at odds with New Yorkers. When New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who inJune abandoned the Republican Party, criticized the order recently, the Democratic governor shot back that the mayor was "dead wrong, factually wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong." Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani joined the list of opponents this week. "Governor Spitzer should not give licenses to illegals," he told the Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday. "It doesn't make sense." Perhaps Elliott could explain why this makes sense? The issue heated up late last week, when the Monroe County legislature defied the governor and ordered its county clerk to require anyone seeking a driver's license to provide a valid Social Security number. The decision runs counter to Mr. Spitzer's order, in which illegal aliens with valid foreign passports would be eligible to obtain a state driver's license. Again, Mr. Spitzer was defiant: "I hate to say it — the clerks have to enforce it," he said. "The clerks who issue driver's licenses are agents of the state. They do not make state law on this. State government does." In another move, 29 clerks, all but one a Republican, voted to oppose the plan, with 13 vowing to directly disobey the governor, even if ordered to comply. The clerks said their offices would be hard-pressed to determine the legality of applicants.

Link

Home Front: Politix

'Mean Mr. Giuliani' Would Bring Toughness to Washington

2007-02-21

by Deroy Murdock In Wednesday’s National Review Online, Evans & Novak reporter David Freddoso hammers former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as a man with a mean streak. Freddoso’s piece recalls some of Giuliani’s more colorful moments in office including his once saying, “If you tell me off, I tell you off -- that’s my personality.” Freddoso repeats the often-stated myth that Giuliani was hated by the end of his term, until the September 11 terrorist attack rehabilitated his supposedly tattered reputation and rocketed him to global fame and acclaim. On the contrary, a key survey showed that New Yorkers regarded Giuliani very highly less than a month before al-Qaeda agents demolished the Twin Towers. An August 5-12, 2001 poll by the New York Times -- perhaps Giuliani’s most bitter critic during his eight-year administration -- showed that among 1,353 New Yorkers surveyed, Giuliani was very popular and widely credited for having rescued Gotham from the flames in which he found it in 1994. As Adam Nagourney and Marjorie Connelly reported that August 15: Only 25 percent said they believed that the city would become a worse place to live in the next 10 to 15 years, the lowest percentage since The Times first asked the question 28 years ago. Eight years ago, before Mr. Giuliani was elected, half of city residents were pessimistic about the long-term course of the city. And 4 in 10 said Mr. Giuliani's policies had a lot to do with the improvements. Overall, 55 percent said they approved of the job he was doing, compared with 30 percent who disapproved. So, the man who the conventional wisdom still says would have vanished into a rain of rotten tomatoes had September 11 not occurred, in fact, enjoyed a 55 percent approval rating one month before al-Qaeda struck. Naturally, The West 43rd Street Gazette entombed news of Giuliani’s popularity in paragraph 30 of Nagourney and Connelley’s story -- the very last paragraph. Freddoso does concede that, “Maybe a hard, mean man was what New York City needed after decades of feel-good, politically correct thinking had made the place unlivable and nearly ungovernable.” This is one reason why Giuliani is exactly the presidential candidate around whom conservatives and libertarians immediately should coalesce.

Link

Home Front

Ground Zero Diary

2001-09-29

C. J. CHIVERS NY Times In the hours after the twin towers came down, as Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani began imposing a media blackout at the rubble, hundreds, then thousands, of people converged at ground zero. They were a mismatched mass of motives and skills: police officers, firefighters, part-time soldiers, bureaucrats, dog handlers, contractors, military veterans, staffs from emergency rooms, civilian survivors still coated with stinging ash, chaplains, massage artists, utility workers, misfits and thieves. Stepping from the confusion and wreckage around them, they bonded on a first-name basis and strung together the tens of thousands of small deeds that transformed the nightmarish bedlam into a new city within the old. To spend 12 days among them — 6 as a volunteer digging and lugging trash, 6 more as a reporter covering the National Guard — was to be privy to a universe more bizarre and more ordinary than the vignettes that found their way out. The inhabitants of ground zero ate together in abandoned restaurants and beside piles of putrid garbage, they fell asleep together wherever they could, they sobbed and prayed together and, as they became familiar with Lower Manhattan's emerging new landscape, they shared directions to working phones and bathrooms that were not splattered with vomit. Already there were pockets of grief. In a market near the command post, doctors had gone through, seeking supplies. Bereaved firefighters followed, looking for beer. Three of them gathered in the dancing shadows, their faces alternately orange and black, and began the first of the wakes. They had been off duty when the planes struck and had dashed from private lives to rubble, stopping at firehouses along the way and grabbing anything that had been left behind. They wore other men's gear. One had boots several sizes too big. Another was in street shoes. Their fire companies had been devastated. They could find no one familiar to report to and little equipment to use. They drank beer and watched the Deutsche Bank building burn. "I think all my guys are dead," one said. Another firefighter, reclining in a puddle, said he had approached a Special Operation Command chief who seemed to be in charge. He didn't recognize the man. "I looked him over and was like, `Who the hell are you?' " he said. "He looked me back and said, `I'm the SOC chief. I'm the only SOC chief left.' " Already there were pockets of rage. Al Sapienza, the actor who played the gangster Mikey Palmice on "The Sopranos," had pedaled to ground zero on his bicycle. Now he took a brief break from hauling body bags. "Anyone," Mr. Sapienza said, "who would use the name of God" — he paused — "to kill innocent women and children" — he paused — "does not deserve to live among us in a world of laws and just people."

Link

Home Front

Bitching about Bush

2001-09-15

By Jennifer Harper THE WASHINGTON TIMES Petty press habits persist, despite the national crisis. Even on the national day of mourning, some journalists continued their sniping at President Bush, judging him primarily by the style rather than the content of his message. "Bush has yet to find a note of eloquence in his own voice. He is, in fact, distrustful of it, and went for Texas plain talk, rhetoric as flat as the prairie and as blunt as a Clint Eastwood soliloquy," wrote Newsweek's Howard Fineman, later noting, "he did not look larger than life at his Oval Office desk, or even particularly comfortable there, and he cited Psalms without the kind of emotional resonance voter-viewers have come to expect from an Empathizer in Chief." The Los Angeles Times' Howard Rosenberg called Mr. Bush stiff and boyish, writing that "Bush has lacked size in front of the camera when he should have been commanding and filling the screen with a formidable presence even his body language is troubling." Mr. Rosenberg suggested the president should instead function as a "national anchorman." Heaven forbid. The last thing we need at this moment is slick ooze on camera. We need terse, straightforward messages from our leader, and Mr. Bush has delivered them. America, apparently, is listening. Mr. Bush's public approval rating skyrocketed into the high 90s yesterday. The critics persist, though, predicting that the approval surge is temporary and that Mr. Bush will fade in the long haul. This is mighty impatient analysis. At this juncture, the president's primary duty is toward the business of the White House rather than the image of the office, and the needs of the press. Mr. Bush has maintained a laudable presence, offering an average five statements a day, plus heartfelt messages at the Washington National Cathedral and the New York attack site yesterday. Some critics claimed New York Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had a more "presidential" presence. Reassurance had come from them, "but not from Bush," stated a Newsday editorial, which asked "Where's W?"

Link

Home Front

Rudy to Saudi prince: Keep your damn check

2001-10-11

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said today that New York City would not accept a $10 million charitable donation from a wealthy prince from Saudi Arabia who criticized the American government's policies in the Middle East. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud was one of many foreign visitors who have gone with the mayor to ground zero at the destroyed World Trade Center since the terrorist attacks last month. The prince, who is also the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company, attended a memorial service at the site today, where he handed the mayor a check for $10 million for the Twin Towers Fund, one of various charity funds set up to benefit survivors of the attack. Mr. Giuliani initially accepted the check, as he has several times from government and private industry leaders. Along with it was a letter from the prince, in which he expressed his condolences for "the loss of life that the City of New York has suffered." The letter added, "I would also like to condemn all forms of terrorism and in doing so I am reiterating Saudi Arabia's strong stance against these tragic and horrendous acts." What the letter did not say was what a press release attached to a copy of the letter did: "However, at times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance towards the Palestinian cause." The press release attributed the statement to the prince. "'Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek,' Prince Alwaleed stressed," the release read. The mayor, who had been told of the press release just moments before his daily briefing but after receiving the check, was visibly annoyed by it. "I entirely reject that statement," he said. "That's totally contrary to what I said at the United Nations," he added, referring to his address to the international body last Monday. "There is no moral equivalent for this act," the mayor said. "There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people. And to suggest that there's a justification for it only invites this happening in the future. It is highly irresponsible and very, very dangerous." The mayor added that he might consult with the State Department before deciding what to do with the check; an hour later, his press office released a statement attributed to the mayor that the check would not be accepted. Rudy's got guts. Prince Alwaleed lacks tact.

Link

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-5 More