Our publisher, Neil Fabricant, frequently travels to Amsterdam. Actually, he’s there right now, and he reports that compared to New York, Amsterdam is a cesspool of sanity and tolerance. It’s not a surprise, then that Amsterdam ranks 13 in the Quality of Living Global City Rankings (New York ranks 49).
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Neil Fabricant, our publisher, passed along the following David Copperfield post, with this comment: “Amazing!!! Please Post it right away.”

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The second selection is from the 1996 Heineken Puerto Rican Jazz Festival — in honor of soon-to-be Justice Sonia Sotomayor who faced down Michael Bloomberg’s Republican thugs while he pandered to New York’s Hispanic citizens — We got your number Mike.

Sorry, it’s Saturday night. Let’s just enjoy the music.

See the second selection here.

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The gridlock is broken. The money and raw political sewerage are once again flowing freely down the Hudson. The stench is overpowering. Here are some choice excerpts from a recent senate Democratic press conference as reported in the Village Voice.

Malcolm Smith: “Has the road been a little bumpy with some twists and turns? No question about it…but Democrats have come together.”

When a politician uses the rhetorical device of asking and answering his own questions, put on the hip boots.
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Much thanks to the Liberal Curmudgeon for finding this gem!

We have had sixteen long years of Republican rule in New York City. Rudy Giuliani’s contempt for civil liberties and the gleeful abandon with which he stoked racial fires are the lasting images of the Giuliani years. The police officer who sodomized Abner Louima with a broomstick, the undercover police gangs who gunned down innocent black citizens and were praised by Giuliani are indelible memories for many New Yorkers. The officer who was said to have announced to his victim that “It’s Giuliani time” never said it — but neither did Gerald Ford say “Drop Dead” to New York. Both remarks captured essential truths.

Rudy Crew, a former New York City school chancellor whom Giuliani forced out, expressed what many New Yorkers felt when he remarked, “There’s something very deeply pathological about Rudy’s humanity; he was barren, completely emotionally barren, on the issue of race.”

Michael Bloomberg’s bland and bloodless public persona has created the false impression that he is less angry, more judicious than his predecessor. Maybe so, but like Crew, those who have been the target of Bloomberg’s anger think otherwise. Take a look.