Wiener's

Freudian copy editing lapse?

My aunt, who I think of as LB's older spirit-twin, had some intense anti-Quinn rant the last time I saw her and is pro De Blasio. I guess this comment isn't actually a value-add.

Whom, you fuckfaces.

Locally, we just elected a new mayor. I guess the general election is still to come, but the outcome isn't in doubt.

I find De Blasio's strong commitment to end the use of horse drawn carriage's in central park pretty odd, and suggesting possibly misplaced priorities. On the other hand, he makes the right noises here.

4: Don't be so quick, Moby. I think this guy has a solid chance. I'm waiting for the "Prep up Pittsburgh" campaign.

We just had a very nice outcome in our mayoral race, by the way.

6: I saw him just the other day. He was jaywalking.

7: But nobody voted. Your turnout was worse than ours and ours was horrible.

Are they still all committed to tearing out the bike lanes?

7: I don't really know anything about your mayoral race, except that I was pro-Garcetti because k-sky. But I have today seen the race characterized as "Garcetti, opposed by unions and women's groups, wins LA mayor race." And now I am confused.

10: The guy who won our race has been a big bike-lane booster.

LB, the best resource for local NYC politics IMO is WNYC's Brian Lehrer. I have been planning to catch up for awhile now....

9 -- True. Our guy won a decisive victory with under 200,000 (out of about 350,00 total) in a city of 3.8 million. Something like 11% of his votes were probably secured by a regular commenter here, though.

11 -- Garcetti was the more progressive candidate, both in style and substance, but the other candidate (who was also a totally fine competent liberal democrat, it was actually a pretty good selection) was a woman backed by the powerful local utility union, which has somehow positioned itself into being a kiss-of-death endorser.

The real problem is that the LA mayor, whoever he or she is, just doesn't have enough power, but that's another issue.

5: Eh, that's not a hot button issue for me either way (that is, I don't have strong feelings about it, given the very small number of animals we're actually talking about, but I'm not worried about someone having strong feelings). I'm not a focused animal-rights/welfare person, but those are some ratty, sad-looking horses, and I don't think there's much value in continuing to allow the carriages.

Misplaced priorities is like crowding out for me -- I'm not going to be worried that someone's overenthusiastic about what seems to me an unimportant issue, unless you can identify a causal connection between that and neglect of something more important.

My sources who care about NYC politics are lining up behind de Blasio (some rather actively). And he seems to be getting the Union endorsements.

8: Jaywalking is both an honorable local tradition and good practice for the inevitable meltdown of society.

I find De Blasio's strong commitment to end the use of horse drawn carriage's in central park pretty odd,

Is he Vinz Clortho? Because then there's the whole perishing in flames bit.

"Wait for the sign. And then all prisoners will be released!"

13: Buck occasionally gets mistaken for him in the corner bodega -- he lives a block away from us. No actual resemblance, beyond being bald goateed white guys.

Actually listening to him on the radio -- eh. It's not that it's not sort of generally informative, but I never seem to pick up much in the way that lets me effectively distinguish between the candidates. But I don't put in enough time; I hate having to get information other than as text.

I am comforted that Halford's aunt and Stormcrow's sources are with me in supporting DeBlasio.

Good results in both the Pittsburgh and Harrisburg mayoral primaries. In Harrisburg I think if the only way to take a break from incompetents for a while is to elect someone whose credentials are "I am a successful businessman", a guy who runs a used book store is probably the best case scenario. He bought the plurality of the big Larry McMurtry town-wide book sale!

And in a moment of synchronicity, Laura from 11D just linked to this NYT thing listing and summarizing the candidates.

What I know about Bill de Blasio is mostly about his wife.

(Quick google) Huh, ex-lesbian? I really haven't been paying attention.

23 -- huh. I hadn't realized that there was a credible Republican chance this round, or that owning Gristedes could make you a billionaire. Also absolutely everyone's home costs a fortune.

Wait, is your reason for not voting for Weiner really that you've seen pictures of his junk? Or that you think he'll lose because everyone primarily associates him with having seen pictures of his junk?

everyone primarily associates him with having seen pictures of his junk

I was going to propose that that wouldn't be a problem after September, but I suppose everyone generally associates him with those pictures too.

27: Not so much the literal pictures, but that whole thing made me think of him as screwy. Having an affair? Depending on the circumstances, I wouldn't give a damn. Sending explicit pictures to someone he was in a close personal relationship with? Not importantly different from having an affair. Sending identifiable explicit (semi-explicit? The only one I actually remember seeing was a clothed bulge) pictures to people he was acquainted with only through social media? It's not the moral wrongness of it all (although I do think there was some question about whether the intended recipients were expecting the pictures, which makes it creepy) as the total lack of caution.

The dude is an internet-savvy grownup politician and he doesn't know better than to be sending identifiable pictures of himself to strangers? I worry about his decision-making process.

If I were substantively in love with him as a politician, this wouldn't be determinative, but I'm not.

Weiner is also a little bitch about wanting to rip out bike lanes.

30: I am still curious, though, if any of them are not little bitches on that score. Have any of the candidates come out in support of keeping them or adding more? Kinda sounds like the pandering play is to be agin' 'em.

De Blasio, on a quick google, has been mixed to negative -- for them in principle, but with a lot of concerns about sensitivity to neighborhoods and so on and so forth. It's going to be confusing because they're so heavily Bloomberg-associated, so Democratic candidates are likely to be more anti than they would have been otherwise.

Speaking of little bitches and cycling. (Via metafilter)

I would definitely vote Wiener -- if he won it would be an important step in the complete elimination of shame. Now that the Internet and universal surveillance have destroyed personal privacy, the only way to go is total cultural acceptance of everybody's weird private shit.

I'm perfectly happy that tweeting pictures of your crotch to strangers is not widely accepted.

29.last: It's funny, prior to the whole showing-your-junk episode, I had had a quite positive impression of Weiner as a politician: he frequently appeared as spokesperson for the liberal Dem position on matters (much as Chuck Schumer does now), and he was clear and firm and articulate, didn't back down, and was, importantly, intelligent about it, not just mouthing talking points.

I know nothing about the NYC mayoral race, but wouldn't a big question be whether the candidates have executive experience? Or seem like they can fill that role? We've been hearing a lot -- in the general wind -- about how a gubernatorial or mayoral position calls for skills that don't come easy.

I haven't looked at the information source JM points to in 13, but I recall that the last time local NYC politics came up, the Working Families party was nominated as a good source.

36.1: I agree with you in terms of tone -- he was often good as a forthright anti-Republican voice in Washington. Within the Democratic spectrum, though, and I'd have to look up details to remind myself of the specifics, my sense is that's he's pretty conservative/"business friendly" in a way that I'm not crazy about.

38: Okay, good point. I'd check with the Working Families party, though it's possibly kind of early for them to have formed an opinion as yet.

Weiner did used to be a good mouthpiece to counter whatever Republican bullshit was in circulation at the time. But he also said some hateful things about Palestine.

Not that NYC-Palestine relations are particularly important, but its hard for me to put trust in a politician who can't see - or refuses to see - the nuance of situation like that.

40: I'd say Weiner is out on that basis, then, if nothing else.

38: That's my memory as well.

40. 41: But in the context of the NYC mayor race, that's a relatively harmless pander.

43: It marks him as an asshole. I don't vote for assholes.

Which, admittedly, tends to limit my options.

Same here, I vote for the meat that surrounds the asshole.

You could make turducken with a hot dog in the middle.

In 2004, I vowed to carry a permanent grudge against Weiner for his behavior during the whole "Columbia University is a hostile place for Jewish students" furor. He ran to a microphone with great gusto to demand the university fire people and do this and that--before anyone at the university had had an opportunity to see the film making all the allegations. It was a transparently self-serving display of outrage!

If his own idiocy has humbled him since then...good.

33: Surprisingly good article, although I'm obviously biased in favor of the bikers. I like one underplayed statistic buried at the bottom of the drab sidebar:

An observational study, conducted in London and published in 2007, stated that about 60% of cyclists jumped red lights, as opposed to about 30% of motorists

I'll admit that's the traffic law I break most often, but I'm amazed and perversely reassured that bikers are only twice as likely to do it as cars. I might have made a rough estimate of 10 times as likely.

48: 30% of motorists sounds extremely high.

49: dunno, people ease forward a lot. I assume they aren't counting cars that stop in the crosswalk or over the line, because then it would be way higher.

Maybe "jumped" is too vague. Does it mean to go through an intersection when the light is solidly red, or start creeping into the intersection in anticipation that the light is about to change, or enter the intersection when the light is yellow and turning red, or all of them, or what?

Regardless, I agree that it's a bad sign about road safety in general, but it makes me feel less guilty about my biking habits to know that I'm only twice as bad as a hypothetical driver would be.

Yeah, if "jumped" means "drove through a red light as if it wasn't there", 30% of drivers seems way high (and 60% of cyclists sounds about right).

That article makes a few good points-- I commute by bike 2-3x weekly.

I don't blow through red lights, but I will come to a full stop and then treat them like stop signs, cross traffic permitting. Possibly pisses some drivers off, maybe I should just wait if there's a car next to me. Weaving through traffic is obnoxious, I don't. Peds are a tough call-- safest is to assume that all will behave like toddlers. basically slow to a crawl to pass, but christ.

The article makes the good point that aside from perceived rudeness on the part of cyclists, being stuck in traffic pisses drivers off. One civility gesture I read about and have started doing is to wave to peds who make room after passing them, an acknowledgement of shared humanity or whatever.

I don't run reds. I will start going before it turns if I have it timed, but I try not to be in the intersection proper (past the crosswalk, etc) before it's green. Sometimes I will go at a light that has a four way walk as part of the cycle if that seems likely to be safest, but I'll ride walking pace until I'm through.

I definitely see more cars easing into the intersection/stopping past the line/pushing a yellow/making an illegal right on red, but those are all legally running a red.

I have to teach a seven-year-old boy to ride a bike in the next couple of weeks. He'll be O.K. at the peddling and I know you can't beat his sense of entitlement.

What will he be peddling?

Are rights on red illegal in Boston generally? They are in NYC, but I thought they were okay where not specifically prohibited most places.

WalMart's finest 20".

57: They are mostly legal here. Not like it would stop anyone (present company excepted) if they were illegal.

57: they are legal unless specifically prohibited. All of them in Cambridge are specifically prohibited.

Does somebody's cousin own a sign factory?

The reds I run are in situations like this one, where there's simply no crossing traffic (cars can be merging into my lane from the left, but it's pointless to stop for them, since I'm going to be on their right anyway, and in any case I watch for them). Then there are situations like this one, where the traffic light is purely to enforce a mass pedestrian crossing; I'll always slow way down, and if there's nobody around, I'll cruise right through, but I'll stop and wait until the mass of pedestrians are through if there are any (but will go before it turns green if the pedestrians are through).

History's greatest monster? Maybe!

Riders on the sidewalk enrage me. I'm not entirely sure why they bother me so much, since if they're going slowly, they take up less space than someone walking their bike would, but there it is.

Oh, the second link should have gone here.

Oh, I expect to crawl on sidewalks-- I'm talking about trail pedestrians, who are either having a lovely conversation or walking their dogs, leash takes up the sidewalk or lunging happy animal. The people are surprised at the interrupting bell, and either do not move, or wander from left to right uncertain what to do.

61: state law got passed; Cambridge thought state law was stupid; Cambridge did what it could to make state law not true within its borders. A couple of other towns did the same thing.

I'm not entirely sure why they bother me so much, since if they're going slowly, they take up less space than someone walking their bike would, but there it is.

Um. Back when I was bike commuting (yeah, not for the last year), I had a literally one block stretch at the end where I could either go several blocks out of my way, or ride on a crowded sidewalk, and I did ride (literally at a slow walking speed -- like, putting my feet down frequently) because it was crowded enough that taking up the extra space seemed wrong. That was okay, right?

64: Bikers yell at me, "On your right!" and I'm always just stuck standing still trying to remember which side is my right.

They should almost never yell that -- they should be passing on your left. Which means that you generally dodge to your right, toward the edge of the pavement.

I've always wanted to shout back "Stage right or house right."

a su izquierdo! No pasaran a derecha!

67: I still have to do the thing where I recall which hand I write with and figure it out from there. How this is not completely automatic after 40+ years is beyond me.

71. Me too, I think mild dyslexia. I have trouble with mirror-image letters if I am sleepy.

My mother taught me to look for the freckle in the middle of the back of my right hand, but now I'm old, and it's hard to pick out the freckle amid all the strange discolorations that have appeared on the backs of both my hands.

71: If someone has something on the left side of their face, I always point to the left side of my face to show them. Then they think that I'm talking about the right side of their face.

62: Do you bike at those specific intersections, or are those just examples? Because I'd be really nervous about biking where there are trolley tracks and getting my tires stuck in the track. A friend of mine just got a concussion that way a couple days ago.

These stop lights are particularly easy to ignore. Sure, pedestrians are crossing there at some times of the day, but morning rush hour isn't one of those times.

There are three times I'll bike on the sidewalk: at intersections when I want to turn left and there's no better way to do it; when I'm going up a hill so steep that I'd worry about wobbling into a car passing me; and sometimes when traffic is really backed up so much that I make much better time, but the sidewalk is much more clear.

73: Just remember that the thumb and forefinger of your left had make a capital 'L' while the thumb and forefinger of the your right hand make a capital 'L' only if you have dyslexia.

Also remember if you have dyslexia.

76: Or if you're looking at your palms, as opposed to the backs of your hands.

I have ɐıxǝpsʎl. I think. Something like that.

That was okay, right?

Yeah, I'm a total hypocrite, too, because I use the sidewalk every damn time right here in order to save myself two blocks of pointless riding to enter the Trader Joe's parking lot.

It's actually pretty clear that my resentment of those I see as biking irresponsibly on the sidewalk is largely driven by a deep need to distance myself from them--"oh, no, my sidewalk biking isn't like that, it's for good reasons."

Do you bike at those specific intersections, or are those just examples? Because I'd be really nervous about biking where there are trolley tracks and getting my tires stuck in the track. A friend of mine just got a concussion that way a couple days ago.

I bike at those specific intersections, along the street with the trolley tracks. They scare me a bit, but I'm almost always either in the right-hand lane, where the tracks aren't, or crossing them at pretty close to a 90-degree angle.

How did you do 79? Entities, or Unicode controls?

Comment 69 is my favorite comment in a long time.

82: Nothing so involved, www.fliptext.org. I assume they just have a character mapping table.

29

Not so much the literal pictures, but that whole thing made me think of him as screwy. ...

No grudge because you initially believed his (implausible) denials?

When somebody says "left" or "right", and I have to make a snap judgment about which direction that is, I get it correct a good 40% of the time.

11: I understand the confusion. Garcetti was supported by CA-NOW, which wrote an amazing endorsement acknowledging how an activist man can be a stronger feminist ally than a hesitant, by-the-books woman.

He was also supported by many unions, mostly the private-sector, immigrant-driven groups that he'd (and in a few cases I'm proud of, I) had worked with on policies that strengthened their hands vis-a-vis private employers (big box legislations, career ladder training).

However, once he got targeted by the union at the DWP, he fought back hard. The race got ugly. I'm glad it's over.

Most importantly, check him out kissing my daughter on the front page of the L.A. Times. (Screenshot if you missed it..)

I suppose it will come as no surprise that most people whom I hear or overhear in the financial/legal sectors (i) think Bloomberg is four-and-twenty cats' pajamas full of bees' knees and (ii) expect the next mayor of NYC to be an utter disaster.

85: Well, it's hard to pick apart. My belief was based on the idea that it was an implausible thing for an ordinarily functional person to have done. So differentiating between pique that I was wrong, and a reasoned judgment that I wasn't wrong about the implausiblity, I was just wrong that he was ordinarily functional, is hard from my perspective.

87: Cute baby. Check to be sure he didn't get any of her brain.

88: These people are also convinced that Joe Lhota would make a good mayor, which is all kinds of crazy.

DeBlasio is by far the most reliably progressive of the candidates (and will definitely have my vote in the primary), but that would show more in his refusal to trim in how he governs than in announced positions on most of the issues given the primary electorate, which is why he's reduced to differentiating himself with things like the carriage horses. I will say that I was reasonably impressed in my dealings with Quinn when I worked for the city, but she hitched her wagon to Bloomberg for whatever electoral benefit it was supposed to provide, and now she's appropriately suffering the consequences.

89

Well, it's hard to pick apart. My belief was based on the idea that it was an implausible thing for an ordinarily functional person to have done. ...

More so than getting a blow job from an intern in the White House?

87.last as imagined by one Mineshaft commenter at the other place.

Ha!

Next, have them replace the mayor-elect and leave the baby.

92: Dude, JFK had sex with Marilyn Monroe on the Oval Office desk. Politicians expect to get away with all kinds of things in private -- an assumption that was true for a long, long time.

Also, the only reason that Kennedy screwing Monroe in the Oval Office or Clinton getting a BJ there affects their effectiveness at their jobs is that people obsess about it. In fact the President could have sex with a different dead badger every day during his term and it would affect his ability to chair meetings, negotiate with foreign powers, make decisions and give speeches not one iota. If people realised that.

What 96 and 97 said. It's not the gravity of the offense or anything -- to the extent it's all consensual I don't care at all. It's the level of caution involved. Sane people can reasonably hope to get away with screwing around. I can't see how anyone sane could have thought sending out obscene pictures to distant acquaintances wasn't going to end up badly.

98

... It's the level of caution involved. Sane people can reasonably hope to get away with screwing around. I can't see how anyone sane could have thought sending out obscene pictures to distant acquaintances wasn't going to end up badly.

Well Weiner actually got in trouble because he accidently sent a tweet to everyone instead of just his intended recipient which seems like the sort of mistake anybody could make. Weiner's behavior was riskier because he was a high level politician but so was Clinton's. Kennedy is a somewhat different story because the press was less intrusive at that time.

It's also, for me at least, harder to understand. What's the upside to sending obscene pictures to distance acquaintances? Somebody who can't possibly touch you will look at your balls. Win?

100

... What's the upside to sending obscene pictures to distance acquaintances? ...

This isn't exactly my area of expertise but aren't you hoping for similar pictures in return?

the only reason that Kennedy screwing Monroe in the Oval Office or Clinton getting a BJ there affects their effectiveness at their jobs is that people obsess about it. In fact the President could have sex with a different dead badger every day during his term and it would affect his ability to chair meetings, negotiate with foreign powers, make decisions and give speeches not one iota. If people realised that.

Amen.

This discussion comes up in custody cases frequently. "[The other parent] cheated on me!! So I get full custody."

I'm reliably informed by country music that being cheated upon gives you the right to destroy his truck.

Are country music lyrics more violent now? I do not listen to it much on the radio. But it seems like every other song I hear on country radio is about a woman killing a cheating/abusive man.

I have no idea. I only recently learned that "Put Another Log on the Fire" was supposed to satirical.

In some ways, thinking strangers are interested in unsolicited photos of your penis is a subspecies of the mental illness that you need to have to be a politician in the first place (the world needs to see me in office! it's good for the world!). I think sometimes people underestimate how nuts and mentally weird it is to be a politician.

What's the upside to sending obscene pictures to distance acquaintances? Somebody who can't possibly touch you will look at your balls. Win?

The world is full of dudes who get off on just knowing that someone has looked at their junk.

I bet there's some honeypot email account out there that solicits cock shots and returns automated replies like "Its sooo big. Hey, what's your bank account number?"

"I am crown princess of Nigeria and I need a big penis to smuggle $30 million of gold to American."

96: Politicians expect to get away with all kinds of things in private

What about that whole Petticoat Affair business though? Not exactly analogous, because of lack of incriminating electronic evidence, but you would think an astute observer would take it to heart.

Not that he got away with it, but I think Profumo had the best incentive.

The world is full of dudes who get off on just knowing that someone has looked at their junk.

I'd kind of prefer not to vote for those guys (or women what am I saying forget this parenthesis ever existed) for mayor, though -- or at least not know that particular bit about the candidates.

110: Well he would, wouldn't he?

112: Nice.

IIRC, while the broadcast tweet actually broke the Wiener story, one of the recipients of privately sent pictures was already in contact with the media -- it would have come out anyway in a short time.

113: I think I was actually being Standpipey and can't believe I wasn't pwned, but I figured Moby is bigger on jokes than metajokes and I should say it anyway.

People's private lives have zero bearing on their political positions. (There are so many generous, compassionate people that I know with hideous politics, that that's basically become my mantra of how to stay sane.) But it cuts both ways - hideous private lives with generous, compassionate political positions. (I just don't know any of those people.)

115: Please be more Standpipey. I don't get 112.

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What is this "benzo hangover" people speak of? The world continuing to seem tolerable for an hour after you wake up?
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117: It's the most famous quote to come out of the Profumo affair, probably without any other competition.

Quote of note: em>Ms. Quinn, who often publicly pokes fun at her own brassiness, is fully aware of her aggressive tendencies, once bragging in an interview that she could "open up the bitch tap and let the water run."

I once saw Rice Davies in a production of Tom Stoppard's Dirty Linen. She played her younger self tolerably competently.

119: That is great. I'd forgotten that quote.

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I basically can't even read this article because the nostalgia hits me so hard.

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"Put Another Log on the Fire"

This phrase is too strongly associated in my head with David Bowie for me to remember it's the name of some other song.

One of the more amusing items from Weiner's getting into the race is the allegation that he timed it late at night to screw the tabloids.

Weiner might have managed to escape nasty newspaper covers on his first official day of campaigning, but our source said they expect the city's tabloids to unleash plenty more R-rated puns in future coverage of his run.

"Don't worry, we still have tons of weiner jokes," they said.