Christopher Buckley Endorses Obama

You know that something is seriously wrong with the Republican party when the son of William F. Buckley -- godfather of modern conservative thought, founder of National Review, and intellectual mentor to Ronald Reagan and generations of Republicans -- has decided to vote for a liberal Democrat for a President, and a black liberal Democrat at that.

Christopher Buckley has announced that he cannot support John McCain for President. He indicates that, among other things, choosing Sarah Palin as his VP shows a scary lack of judgment. Buckley believes that Obama, on the other hand, posses a "first class temperament and a first class intellect" and has reluctantly decided to jump onto the "Obama bandwagon."

This is a must read: "Sorry Dad, I'm Voting for Obama"

President Bush's Statement on the Economy

Yesterday our fearless leader told us that he and his very competent administration are doing "everything" they can (whatever that is) to fix the economy.

The stock market just suffered it's worst week ever. Literally trillions of dollars of wealth have been wiped out. Some of that includes my own, as I can personally attest after getting my various financial statements.

Right now those irascible people who stuff money in the mattress are looking a lot smarter than all these financial hotshots who told us that we had to invest, invest, invest. Oh what a tangled web they've weaved.

Fight Term Limit Changes

If you want to know how you can get involved in fighting against this high jacking of the city's term limits laws, the Working Families Party has a website giving you all of the info you need. You can find out how to petition against the changes and where there will be public forums against this.

It's Our Decision

Media City

Last night I attended a panel discussion on the upcoming election with Matt Taibbi and New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg. They provided some interesting perspectives about the fickle nature of the American electorate, how wedge issues and cynical tactics are used to scare people into voting against their interests, and how Obama is really a once in a generation, maybe a century, presidential candidate. Matt and Hendrik provided some fascinating political insights that I hadn't really considered before.

Hendrik pointed out that conservatives -- who so often think of things in black and white, right or wrong, this-side-of-the-fence-or-other terms -- have an ironically postmodernist view when it comes to reality and truth; namely, they don't believe that objective truth exists, or that reality is even real. Obviously, the awfulness and dishonesty of the Bush administrations forces them to believe this but isn't it interesting how, when its their ox that's being gored, conservatives suddenly believe in, other all things ... New Age relativism.

Matt, who I blogged about here a couple of days ago, made another interesting point about how conservatives are now more guilty of practicing identity politics than liberals. Sarah Palin is proof positive of that. She was chosen as McCain's VP merely because she's a female "hockey mom" who loves to shoot things. Her qualifications are, clearly besides the point.

You can see this panel discussion yourself -- and some of the fireworks that erupted there -- on NYCTV, Sundays at 8:30 PM. Go to the Media City website for more info.

Postscript: shortly before the panel I bumped into Matt Taibbi and told him what a big fan I am of his work. Reading his super-smart, razor-sharp prose, you'd never think that he's a really nice, modest guy in person. He shook my hand, asked me about myself, and was very cool and gracious. Matt isn't only a great writer, he seems to be a really great guy.

You can pick up his brand-new book, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, on Amazon or at major bookstores.

Matt Taibbi Nails It

Matt Taibbi is fast becoming the best political writer in America. In this week's Rolling Stone, he perfectly sums up not only what's wrong with American politics (in this case, embodied in Karl Rove) but with America itself -- and that makes our politics so vile. He writes:

"Rove is not a genius, or even very clever: He's totally and completely immoral. It doesn't take genius to claim, as Rove ludicrously did last fall, that it was the Democrats in Congress and not George W. Bush who pushed the Iraq War resolution in 2002. It doesn't take brains to compare a triple-amputee war veteran to Osama bin Laden; you just have to be a mean, rotten ..."

The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can't bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove's vision of rules, laws and "the truth" as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back."

Hear, hear.

News About New York News

In the last week there has been a quiet mini-revolution in the world of NYC newspapers.

First, The New York Sun went out of business on September 30. Never read the Sun? Never heard of it? That would make you like most New Yorkers, and that's why it's gone. It was established seven years ago as a forum for neo-conservative political thought and to challenge the "liberal media" in this town. Well, it looks like the big bad liberal media won this round, don't it? And like its other discredited patrons -- the Bush Administration and the Republican Party -- the Sun has set on neo-conservative thought. But I'm not entirely happy that the Sun is gone. It has some really great arts coverage and that will be a loss to the cultural life of this city. And it's a shame that this town that use to have so many newspapers circulating around it now has one fewer.

Second, and more importantly, the Metro section of The New York Times is no more. That's right, the newspaper of New York City no longer has a section devoted exclusively to New York City. Obviously if you read the Times on the web then you won't notice this. In fact, it's because most people read the Times on the web that the Metro section is no more. All local news is now tucked at the back of the main news section, right after international and national news. I guess it now puts us New Yorkers properly in its place -- ba dum bum.

So life goes on. Most New Yorkers won't notice or care. But these are changes for the worse in my opinion. The media landscape is changing faster than we can imagine. Sad, but not unpredictable.

Bloomberg's Case for a Third Term

Well, you know my opinion about this play for a third term.

Here's Mike's.

What's yours?

Mondel

Over the last few years, chocolate and sweets and everything yummy have become, along with cupcakes from Magnolia and Buttercup, trendy consumer items. There's the giant M&M store in Times Square, chocolate restaurants like Max Brenner's and Chocolate Bar, and fancy stores like Vosges and Dylan's Candy Bar (founded by Dylan Lauren, daughter of Ralph Lauren). All of these places are great but for my money, the best spot for chocolate and sweets in this town is a little boutique-like store called Mondel on 114th street and Broadway in Manhattan.

I've been going to Mondel for a long time and this store is over 60 years old. It's a tiny, old-fashioned place but when you walk in, the smell of quality chocolate and well-made sweets pleasures your nose and warms your senses. Behind the glass of the high counter top, they have a huge variety of truffles, cordials, marzipans, clusters, turtles -- you name it. They also have other sweets like gummie bears, Swedish fish, and jelly beans.

What makes Mondel so good is the high quality and deep, rich tastiness of their chocolates. This isn't mass-produced, assembly-line chocolate and sweets -- this is luxury quality but with a homemade taste. You can usually buy stuff in quarter pound, half pound, and whole pound bags. Yes, it costs a little more than some other places, but when the deep, rich, overwhelming excellence of their products tingles on your taste bud, you realize that it's worth every penny. Bringing someone you love or care about a bag of Mondel chocolates is an excellent, smart move since it shows that you really care about them.

Don't just take my word for how good Mondel is. Read what others, including another long time (now sadly deceased) customer named Katherine Hepburn, has to say about it:

Thank You, Kate

New York Food and Wine

nightgrapefruit

CitySearch

Never Fear, Mr NYC is Here

Been a little bit of a blogging deadbeat these last few days but life is what gets in the way of blogging sometimes. Of course that arrogantly assumes that the world has been waiting breathlessly for me to spew more nonsense into cyberspace -- I'm sure you've all gotten along just fine without it. Anyhoo, I'm back for now. Lots more nonsense to follow.

Mike's Power Grab

I like Mayor Bloomberg. He's done a good job and he's probably the right person to be at the city's helm during this financial crises. Also, I'm against term limits because I don't think it's smart to lame-duck our elected officials or deny the public the right to vote for or against whoever they want.

But ... Mike's desire to do an end-run around the voter ratified term-limits law via a City Council bill is wrong. The voters approved this law twice and it's not right for Mike and these guys to essentially veto the will of the people. It's undemocratic and it's really nothing more than a transparent power grab.

If the term limits law is abolished or amended in this way, there's no doubt that Mike will win a third term. He's popular and super-rich; as a political independent, Democrats and Republicans will have no problem voting for him. But I think that this will really damage Mike's legacy, for three reasons:

1. Mike was for term limits before he was against them. This ploy will damage his credibility and legacy, even if he wins.

2. Mike was elected as an outside the establishment reformer, more interested in serving the public good than in accumulating power. This appears more to be about him keeping power than anything else.

3. There have only be three Mayors who have served three terms -- LaGuardia, Wagner, and Koch. Like Mike, they were very popular during their first two terms. But almost all NYC political pundits agree that there third terms were largely disasters. History has a nasty way of repeating itself.

Tomorrow Mike is supposed to officially announce his intentions to seek a third term. If he gets whipped by a severe backlash, don't say that Mr NYC didn't tell ya so.

Bloomberg Expected to Seek Third Term as Mayor

Third Term No Charm, Historians Say