Digital Brainwaves

New York City 058
Originally uploaded by Pauley2483.

My photos from my first ever trip to New York City are now live on Flickr. Go have a look!

Interesting article in today’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. With New York’s US senator Hillary Clinton soon to depart the race for president, Clinton supporters who don’t care for Barack Obama and John McCain’s appeal to some independant voters, the state of New York could be in play for the first time since Ronald Reagan won the state (and all the others, too, save for Minnesota) in 1984.

UPDATE: The article also points out that this could all go out the window if Clinton becomes Obama’s running mate. Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal why he shouldn’t pick her: “She doesn’t turn the page. She is the page.”

I either randomly stumbled across it in an article someplace (if I did, I didn’t save the link), or someone mentioned it in conversation recently, but I remembered the other day that I’ve blogged about man due to be sworn in as the next Governor of New York tomorrow, David Paterson, before. He had the wacky idea at the time to try to legislate that cops should, when things get dicey enough to require use of arms, get fancy and shoot to wound rather than shoot to kill.

Hopefully he’s got that idea shook out of his head.

That was fast:

“At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

The stereotypical complaint is that FOX News Channel and its website, FOXNews.com, are politically biased to the right. Which is a reasonable comment, especially considering how far to the left most every other news outlet is; even being a little bit to the right of center is drastic, relative to everyone else.

But even FOXNews.com doesn’t mention that resigning New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat until the 19th paragraph of this story.

If he were a Republican, you know it’d be the first word in anyone else’s article copy.

EDIT: I initially identified the article as being from FOX News, however it now shows as credited to the Associated Press; I don’t know whether it changed or I misread it. Now I’m less surprised that it’s so far down the article; in fact, I’m almost surprised the party affiliation was mentioned at all.

That Governor Spitzer may have been caught up in a prostitution sting…

…or this rather silly-looking picture from his abrupt press conference this afternoon?

(AP photo, retrieved from FOXNews.com)

This should make it, *ahem* interesting to be a New Yorker for the next few months, if not longer: Governor Eliot Spitzer, in advance of a suddenly-scheduled announcement for later this afternoon, has allegedly admitted to his staff his involvement in a high-priced prostitution ring.

If the allegations prove true, it comes as rather interesting and hypocritical for this to be coming from the former state attorney general who has, from the article, “built his political legacy on rooting out corruption.” As I’m typing this, the radio is reporting Spitzer may possibly resign.

For the record, I voted for the other guy.

Eliot Spitzer appears to have seen the light.

Call me pessimistic, though, but I wager it was only somewhat for the right reasons.

I’ve written before about the New York governor’s plans to issue driver licenses to illegal aliens, referring to it at the time as “so unbelievably stupid of an idea that it’s almost beyond words.”

Spitzer intends, according to his spokeswoman, Christine Anderson, to drop this license plan in an announcement later today.

There were a lot of reasons to drop the plan, and many of them were really good. For one, a Siena College poll put statewide opposition to the plan at 72%. Oh, and there’s the little tidbit about the whole plan being illegal under current state law (New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law, Title 5, Article 19, Section 502 – yes, I looked it up ):

In addition, the commissioner also shall require that the applicant provide his or her social security number and provide space on the application so that the applicant may register in the New York state organ and tissue donor registry under section forty-three hundred ten of the public health law.

(Emphasis mine)

I’m not sure either of those were the key thing that got him to reconsider the plan.

No, I strongly suspect that the proverbial straw for the camel’s back was the one-two punch from the Siena link above that, for the first time since February 2005 (when Spitzer was still New York’s Attorney General), his Siena poll unfavorable rating has exceeded his favorable rating (41% favorable, 46% unfavorable), and only 25% of those polled would plan to vote him in for a second term.

It’s amazing what one can do when threatened with one’s job.