I Didn't Win, Did I?

I don't know, maybe you did, Freddy. With the latest returns just in, it seems the man from the Bronx is hovering around the 40% mark, which means maybe he won. This means two things: 1) Al Sharpton has proved that the media has all along underestimated the minority...um, I'm sorry, whites are the minority now (right?)...the media has underestimated the votes cast by people of color, the majority. 2) Despite failing to post anything in the "issues" page of his website, Dave Galarza's candidacy drew unexpectedly high numbers in Sunset Park, pushing Freddy over the top.

By the way, did anybody see Gifford Miller's concession speech? It's kind of tough for me to recall the last time I saw a televised concession speech from someone who got NINE PERCENT OF THE VOTE. La Laura agrees that the Giffer turned most people off by prefacing everything he said by touting his record as activist City Council speaker. I'm amazed that he was actually a Silk Stocking District guy; I couldn't tell what kind of hose he was wearing.

Wait a minute, this just in...After counting all 372 votes, it's been determined that Freddy is .05% short of avoiding the runoff. Anthony Weiner, whose mom was a public school teacher and who made his way into politics by sewing himself into Chuck Schumer's pants, is promising to continue his "worker's rights" campaign into an October tussle with Freddy Quixote. Weiner, who is a bachelor, was convincing when he sort of hit on C. Virginia Fields at the end of the News Channel 4 debate. Sure, he looked more impressive than Freddy in the debates, but he is no match for El Boricua Maravilloso's undeniable charisma.

What does it all matter anyway? John Roberts is sure to get passed through despite a few supposedly skeptical Democratic senators. I kind of feel bad for the guy: He looks like Tom Hanks with stomach cramps and he was so misunderstood about that ruling he was involved in about the Operation Rescue thing. I mean the law, especially as practiced here in Americuh, is clear, according to Johnny, that the right to abortion is not restricted to gender. Or at least that's what he told Dianne Feinstein.

FEINSTEIN: In Bray, you argued on behalf of the government as deputy solicitor general that the right to have an abortion is not specific to one gender.
Specifically, your brief stated, quote, Unlike the condition of being pregnant, the right to have an abortion is not a fact that is specific to one gender, end quote.
In your oral argument you went on to make this point by comparing Operation Rescue's attempts to prevent a woman from exercising her privacy right to make decisions about her pregnancy to an ecologist's efforts to block an Indian tribe from using their exclusive fishing rights.v Do you think that's an appropriate analogy?
ROBERTS: Well, Senator, it was a position and an argument that the administration made that was accepted by the Supreme Court by a vote of 6-3. The underlying point was that under the statute at issue in Bray, the Ku Klux Klan Act, required under the Supreme Court's precedent that people engaged in the challenged activity must be motivated by a discriminatory animus. Obviously, under the Ku Klux Klan Act, the classic case, racial hostility. And the issue was: Are people opposed -- in the Bray case -- opposed to abortion opposed to women?
And the determination of the court was that, no, that there are people who are opposed to abortion and that does not constitute opposition or discriminatory animus against women and, therefore, that the Ku Klux Klan Act didn't apply.
Many other provisions obviously apply in a case of abortion protester violence, including state law and other provisions of federal law, but the Supreme Court concluded 6-3 that there is no discriminatory animus based on opposition to abortion.

Which is a little like saying the cops who shot Abner Louima thought he was reaching for his gun. But now we're back to Freddy again. He's like one of those annoying people in your life who somehow get you to keep thinking about them and bringing them up in conversation much more than they deserve. Kind of the anti-pink elephant in the room.

It seems like the overwhelming majority of us know what's going on but we are too powerless to make ourselves heard. Horrendous stuff like this keeps popping up. Check out this super-disturbing story about retinal scans and getting through airport security cooked up by Court TV founder Steven Brill. So I leave you with this link provided by the intrepid Sarah Ferguson in this week's Alternative Piece of Crap. It's a Zogby Poll that, last August found that Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act). N'Orleans levees perhaps bombed? A stretch. But the no-bid Haliburton contracts to reconstruct is the verifiable truth. Never has this shit been so transparent. Just gotta be patient to let it all sink in, right?