“I said to Mike Bloomberg: The first thing I was gonna do as mayor was hold a press conference tearing out your — this is the internet, right? — tearing out your fucking bike lanes,” Weiner said. “It was a joke,” he added.
LINK: Anthony Weiner: I'm Still Seeing A Therapist
LINK: Anthony Weiner: Stop-And-Frisk Is "Racial In Nature"
LINK: Anthony Weiner: The New York Times Doesn't Want Me To Win
“They write stories about the color of my pants,” Weiner said Monday. Weiner added that not caring about The New York Times “makes them nuts.”
LINK: Related: Anthony Weiner Pulls Out F-Bombs To Rip Bike Lanes
LINK: Anthony Weiner: I'm Still Seeing A Therapist
LINK: Anthony Weiner: Stop-And-Frisk Is "Racial In Nature"
“You can do this or show videos of cats, whatever it is you do at BuzzFeed,” Weiner said Monday in response to a question about his relationship with his former roommate Daily Show host Jon Stewart.
LINK: Related: Anthony Weiner Pulls Out F-Bombs To Rip Bike Lanes
LINK: Anthony Weiner: I'm Still Seeing A Therapist
“I’m sure that Steve will get Latkes & Vodkas as part of the divorce,” Dorf says. A less-than-friendly breakup.
WASHINGTON — Rabinowitz/Dorf, the premier liberal pro-Israel communications firm in Washington, has split in two after what sources say was a contentious breakup between the two directors, Steve Rabinowitz and Matt Dorf.
"After 13 years together, the firm is breaking up and we'll be working apart from each other going forward," Rabinowitz and Dorf wrote in an email to clients and friends on Monday with "Breaking up is hard to do" in the subject line. "Matt is leaving to start his own business, West End Strategy Team, a strategic communications firm that raises public awareness, influences policy and drives social change, while Steve is returning to Rabinowitz Communications, the messaging, marketing and media firm he started nearly 20 years ago."
Rabinowitz declined to discuss Dorf's reasons for leaving, while Dorf said he wanted to start a firm with a different vision of media strategy.
"It was Matt's choice," Rabinowitz said when reached by phone on Monday evening. "Ask him. To tell you the truth, we didn't discuss it.
"I decided that what was best for me and what was best for the campaigns and clients we were working on was working in a firm that was dedicated to not only getting the great media hits, but helping out clients pick those clips to help effect the change they are trying to effect," Dorf said.
According to a source familiar with the situation, Dorf informed Rabinowitz that he was leaving on Thursday morning, "and then they started dividing staff. Don't think that you can say it was on friendly terms."
"I think it's very clear that Matt had been thinking about this for a while," the source said.
Rabinowitz acknowledged that the split was less than amicable.
"I suppose not," Rabinowitz said when asked if it could be characterized as a friendly parting of ways.
"Yeah, I can't say that that's not true," Rabinowitz said when asked if Dorf's leaving was sudden.
"I suppose it's little different from why most partnerships eventually break up," Rabinowitz said. "I don't think it's so different from a lot of business partnerships."
Dorf, whose new firm West End Strategy includes some staffers who left Rabinowitz to go with Dorf, described the situation in more positive terms.
"We've been together 13 years and decided to go in our own directions very amicably," Dorf said. "Steve and I decided that we were going to split and we told the staff on Thursday."
Dorf said that his new company, which already has office space, a website, a logo, and list of services they provide, came together only recently.
"This was all done very quickly," he said. Dorf's new firm includes six staffers, while Rabinowitz is left with two plus himself.
"They just moved into their new offices," said a source knowledgeable about the split. "They've moved into these new offices and it seemed like they're doing very well. It seemed like firm was quite successful. It's like your parents buying a new house and then getting a divorce."
The Rabinowitz/Dorf breakup also calls into question the fate of the firm's annual "Latkes & Vodkas" Hannukah party.
"I'm sure that Steve will get Latkes & Vodkas as part of the divorce," Dorf said.
Rabinowitz said he's "not going to decide right away" whether to find a new partner.
"I'm blessed to have many many folks in this town that I've done business with and I will in the future, whether or not it's as a partner remains to be seen," he said.
Dorf's name is already gone from the Rabinowitz/Dorf staff bios page as of Monday evening.
He also acknowledges his scandals haven’t helped her professionally. “I feel that what I have done has hurt her,” says Weiner.
Kathy Willens / AP
Anthony Weiner suggested Monday night that his wife, Huma Abedin, would play a role in Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign — and insisted she has stayed actively involved in his own.
Weiner said in a BuzzFeed Brews interview that Abedin is still helping "every day" with his New York City mayoral bid, which is slipping to rock-bottom poll numbers amid still fresh revelations about his extramarital relationships online.
Since Weiner launched his political comeback in late May, Abedin has played a crucial role in the campaign: she hosted a "Women for Anthony" event and made personal fundraising calls to Clinton contacts to help her husband's effort.
But after it was discovered last month that Weiner continued "sexting" until the summer of last year, Abedin has stayed off the campaign trail and reportedly taken an extended "vacation" from her post on Clinton's "transition team."
Weiner, though, said Abedin is "helping out every day" with the campaign.
Asked whether his scandals have hurt her role in Clinton world, Weiner said, "I feel that what I have done has hurt her. Hurt her professionally, hurt her personally."
"She's gotten roughed up," he said.
Asked to respond to a New York Times report alleging that another Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, was heavily involved in the campaign to protect both Abedin and their mutual boss, Weiner described Reines's role as "none."
Weiner also said the last time he spoke to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have both stayed out of the New York City mayoral race, was "months ago."
"I have given wide berth to my colleagues in public life because I know I have a lot to prove to them as well," he said.
When asked whether he knew what Abedin's role on Hillary Clinton's possible presidential campaign would be in 2016, Weiner said only, "I do. I'm not telling you."
LINK: Related: Anthony Weiner Stays Defiant, Blasts News Media And Critics
In a BuzzFeed Brews interview, the mayoral candidate knocks The New York Times , makes fun of BuzzFeed, and pledges victory.
Former U.S. congressman from New York and current democratic candidate for New York City Mayor Anthony Weiner speaks at the BuzzFeed Brews interview series in New York.
Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed
His poll numbers have plummeted, and his campaign donations have dwindled, but in a wide-ranging interview Monday night, Anthony Weiner appeared defiant, hopeful, and even a bit annoyed by the suggestion that he could possibly lose the New York City mayoral race this fall.
"Coverage has been fairly brutal," Weiner said during a BuzzFeed Brews interview in New York.
The former congressman's campaign, once leading the Democratic field, is still in a tailspin over the revelation last month that Weiner continued extramarital online relationships until the summer of last year. Weiner repeated his vow to stay in the race, despite wide-sweeping calls for his withdrawal. A poll released Monday morning even found that 77% of registered Democrats have an unfavorable opinion of the candidate.
"I'm gonna fight, I'm gonna stand up strong," Weiner said. "I've shown that I don't back down very easily."
On the topic of the scandal, Weiner blamed himself for the controversy that has ousted his campaign from the top of the polls. "I did these things. No one did this to me. I did them," he said, adding that he sees a therapist whenever he can escape the demands of the campaign trail.
Weiner maintained that he would climb back to first place in the polls — he is now in fourth, behind City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, former Comptroller Bill Thompson, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — and would this time next year "of course" be living in Gracie Mansion.
In response to questions about how his campaign has been covered in the local press, Weiner bemoaned the lack of substance in news stories — he joked that this outlet, for example, just shows "videos of cats" or "whatever it is you do at BuzzFeed," he said.
But Weiner zeroed in particularly on The New York Times, whose editorial board has written harshly about his campaign. "Their heads are exploding over the idea [of me becoming mayor]," he said, claiming the paper "never" liked him. Weiner added that he wouldn't be able to pick Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, "out of a lineup."
"The problem is I don't have fealty to them," he said. "It makes them nuts."
LINK: Anthony Weiner: Huma Will Play Role In Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign
Despite an eleventh-hour spate of negative press coverage, the Newark mayor heads to a likely primary victory Tuesday, with his image largely unscathed. Booker even previews support from his future colleagues in Washington.
Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
The weekend before the biggest election of his life, Cory Booker had problems: His digital media company was the subject of two critical articles in The New York Times; his personal finances were under scrutiny; and the Republican he'd be facing in the general was on the warpath before polls had even opened for the primary.
But Booker, who leads his three Democratic opponents by a 40-point spread in most surveys, brushed aside his critics in the days and hours leading up to Tuesday's primary in the special election to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg.
Save for a spate of unfavorable press this past week, Booker has been able to skate, nearly unchallenged, through the 10-week summer sprint. His rivals — Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver and Reps. Frank Pallone and Rush Holt — barely criticized Booker's campaign throughout the race. The two congressmen, thought to have the best chance of putting a dent in Booker's wide lead, each released two half-baked negative advertisements, and neither did much to damage the frontrunner. Holt, in a television spot that hit airwaves last week, said Booker "is no progressive," while Pallone released a web ad suggesting a chauffeur drove Booker around in a limo. "Jersey needs a senator who drives a Chevy," Pallone said. "Let the other guys take the limo."
Booker, with a clear path to victory in his first federal election, continued this past weekend to campaign unscathed through the final period of the primary, acting as if the slew of recent critical coverage — particularly of Waywire, the video aggregation website he co-founded last year — was of no consequence.
"I am exhausted. I passed exhaustion somewhere, but I'm having a good time," he said before a rally in Hackensack in an interview on his campaign bus, which is painted with a picture of Booker's face and a quote that reads, "When you bring people together to focus on our problems, even the most difficult things become possible."
"There's been hundreds of stories written about it," said Booker in response to a question about Waywire, which according to the Times is struggling despite investments from big-name Booker allies like Oprah Winfrey and Google's Eric Schmidt. "So, it's not necessarily new news. I've gotten a lot of encouragement from people who have said, 'You believed in an idea. You got a company off the ground,'" he said. "It's actually doing really well."
Booker denied reports that the company's "attempts to sell or merge intensified this summer" amid disappointing performance and the realization that its well-known founder would be moving on to Washington, D.C.
"That's just patently wrong," he said. "You're always entertaining people who say, 'Hey, we're interested in your company — come and talk with us.' So absolutely not. In fact, if anything, we're continuing to draw financing for the company."
"They were drawing their information from unnamed sources," he added. "And I've said, should I be elected to the United States Senate, I'll lift the bar, we'll go above and beyond what's required by the Senate by stepping off the board and putting the holdings in a blind trust."
Booker argued that his connection to Waywire, in which he has valued his holding at $1 million to $5 million, would only help him in the Senate. "This is a guy who's gonna go to Washington who actually has some business experience," he said, pausing before adding a requisite clarification: "...should I win."
In interviews and in campaign stops across the state, Booker often slips in such modest asides — that he'll go to Washington "should I win," or be a U.S. senator "God willing" — but his campaign has a feeling of inevitability around it that even his opponents acknowledge. Booker, for his part, already has plans to make his mark in the upper chamber from "day one."
"I want to be a different kind of senator," he said at a town hall with female voters in Teaneck Saturday afternoon. "On day one, November 17, if I should wake up in the morning and be a United States senator, I want to take all these things and just push change in our state," he said.
Booker promised statewide reforms that go beyond the traditional scope of a senator's responsibilities in Washington, citing as one example an incentivized tip line he created in Newark to help make arrests for unlicensed gun owners. "That has led to getting hundreds of guns off our streets," he said.
"There are things I can start doing right away," he told BuzzFeed. "I understand that in Washington it takes a while, in the same way that, in being mayor, we couldn't get the first new hotel off the ground in the first year — it took time to put everything in place. So I hope to move quickly, and right away I plan on talking to leaders all across the state in bringing innovations from Newark."
Booker, in fact, said he's already started forming working relationships with his future colleagues in the Senate. Some senators' names, he teased, would even show up on his next campaign filing.
"I think the next disclosure will show if or if not some senators actually contributed to our campaign," he said. "Look at our next filing to see if possibly some senators have contributed."
"I have people who I legitimately consider friends there," he added. "Should I make it past the primary, I will talk more abundantly about that."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said he fully expects Booker to join him in Washington later this year. Asked in an interview with PBS about the dearth of African-American Democrats in the Senate, Reid said simply, "Well, just hold your breath, Cory Booker's on his way from New Jersey. That'll happen in October."
But for now, Booker isn't indulging Reid or the polls or the fact that his colleagues in the primary have all but surrendered Tuesday's fight: "I don't want to get ahead of myself," he said.
Blood on the stairs?
The White House, so hip.
The Portuguese water dog is reported to be on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, with the rest of the Obama family.
Via instagram.com
“I don’t trust the president not to use that as an excuse to do things such as slash the military or to take it out of the hive of people who are receiving social security. This is a very political president.”
Louisiana Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy said Monday that President Obama would use efforts to defund ObamaCare in the upcoming vote to fund the government as an excuse to slash the military and take social security away from seniors. Cassidy was speaking at a Metairie, Louisiana town hall event Monday organized by his Senate campaign according to a video posted on YouTube and online descriptions of the event from Cassidy's website.
"Put it this way, it's gonna be hard, we may not be able to do it, but we need to stop ObamaCare however we can," Cassidy said. "Now, I'll tell you, there's some people who say let's roll that funding mechanism into the entire government. I don't trust the president not to use that as an excuse to do things such as slash the military or to take it out of the hive of people who are receiving social security. This is a very political president."
"If the law had that effect, you can't support that," Cassidy continued. "We can not not support our troops. We can not fulfill our obligations to senior citizens who have paid into funds. On the other hand, if we can have a funding bill that doesn't impact those, absolutely. Believe me, I have been working. I think I've voted 40 times to get rid of it. Been working on alternatives, trying to come up with proposals, that don't just oppose ObamaCare, but propose replacements so that the patient is in the power not a Washington D.C. bureaucrat."
Cassidy is challenging Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in the 2014 election.
The full YouTube video has been posted below. It is several of the question-and-answer section and runs several minutes.
An open letter to Anthony Weiner.
Yesterday evening, in a candid interview with BuzzFeed's editor in chief, Ben Smith, New York "mayoral" candidate "Anthony Weiner" condescendingly suggested in no uncertain terms that cat videos were ephemeral, unimportant, and forgettable. AND I QUOTE: "You can do this," said Mr. Weiner, "or show videos of cats," (sarcastically!) "or whatever it is you do at BuzzFeed."
Well, sir. Obviously, you have never seen this "video of a cat," or whatever, in which two cats play patty cake with each other.
Via youtube.com
Yes, Mr. Weiner, the cats play patty cake with each other. But you probably never even bothered to click play, otherwise you would have known that. I take it that you also missed that infinitely brief but briefly infinite moment last year when a cat pushed a small cart across the world's stage and the universe almost shattered.
According to a tweet from San Diego Republican Party executive director Francis Barraza. Barraza also tweeted that her server said it was a “corporate” decision for “every location,” according to a server. A call to her office said she was out to lunch, presumably, at Hooters. An email to Hooter’s spokesperson was not immediately returned.
Francis Barraza tweet / Via Twitter: @FrancisBarraza
Matt Awbrey Tweet / Via Twitter: @Mattable
Stephen Puetz Tweet / Via Twitter: @stephenpuetz
Anthony Weiner, New York mayoral candidate, sat down with BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith to talk about the race, his sexting scandal, and cats.
Via Erin Chack / BuzzFeed
Via Erin Chack / BuzzFeed
Via Erin Chack / BuzzFeed
Via Erin Chack / BuzzFeed
The Newark mayor wins the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s special election. In his victory speech, Booker promises to work outside party lines: “I won’t care about red or blue,” he says. [Updated]
Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker addresses a gathering after winning the Democratic primary election for the seat vacated by the late U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.
AP / Mel Evans
NEWARK — Cory Booker is well on his way to becoming New Jersey's next senator.
Less than an hour after polls closed across the state Tuesday night, the Associated Press called the New Jersey special election primary for Booker, with just 7% of precincts reporting their results. Booker, as of 10:20 p.m., led his primary rivals with 61% and more than 190,455 votes, surpassing turnout estimates.
The victory in the New Jersey special election primary — Booker's first statewide electoral contest — makes him a virtual lock for the U.S. Senate seat once occupied by the late Frank Lautenberg. He will face Tea Party candidate Steve Lonegan, who won the Republican nomination against Dr. Alieta Eck by a wide margin.
Because of the off-month election date and rainy weather, Booker said Tuesday afternoon he was feeling "absolutely cautious" about whether voters would turnout to the polls.
At a rally here in New Jersey's largest city, the hip-hop artist Q-Tip read aloud the results to a crowd of about 800 supporters and campaign volunteers outside the Prudential Center. "We may say goodbye to a man, but hello to a senator," said Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest fame. From the stage, the back wall of which was draped with an outsize American flag, Q-Tip declared that regardless of the general election that lies ahead, Booker would be New Jersey's "new senator."
"The new senator is way ahead," he said, intermittently reading out election results from his iPhone as new information became available.
Booker addressed the crowd at 10 p.m. in a victory speech that promised a focus in the Senate on raising the minimum wage, supporting equal pay legislation for women, and making marriage equality "the law of this state, and our nation."
"I will not rely on convention," Booker said. "If you want somebody in Washington who simply plays by the same old rules, you should find someone else."
"I won't care about red or blue. I won't care about an insider's game," he added. "I will care about you. I will care about results for all the people in New Jersey."
Booker, repeating one of his favorite lines from the campaign trail, vowed "not to talk about problems, but to run toward them."
In a statement released by the Democratic National Committee, Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz welcomed Booker's victory. "Tonight, voters in New Jersey have chosen as the Democratic nominee someone who has shown he's not afraid of challenges," she said. "He's shown he can get things done in Newark and this fall voters in New Jersey will send him to Washington to get things done in the Senate."
The general election is scheduled for Oct. 16. According to recent polling, Booker leads Lonegan in a head-to-head match-up by an average of 20 points. The Republican nominee in the race, who was the former mayor of Bogota, has already drawn heat in the race for a racially charged tweet his campaign published and then deleted about Booker.
In an interview with BuzzFeed Saturday, Booker said should he become the nominee, he would urge Lonegan to abstain from what he called "divisive rhetoric."
"New Jersey needs a senator who will unite people, who's going to elevate communities, and that's really what I'm hoping to see," Booker said. "I'm pretty confident that's what New Jersey wants, and frankly that's what our nation needs — not people who are going to be divisive with our rhetoric."
He affirmed the sentiment in his speech Tuesday night. "He puts out his fists, I'm gonna extend a hand," said Booker. "He wants to be a flamethrower, I'm gonna be a bridge builder."
This article has been updated to include comments from Booker's speech, and reflect up-to-date election results and a more accurate crowd count.
Q-Tip DJs the election party for Newark mayor Cory Booker, who secured the Democratic nomination in the New Jersey special senate election Tuesday night.
Ruby Cramer / BuzzFeed
The FBI tracked Antiwar.com. Raimondo sued to find out why.
WASHINGTON — In a time marked by high-profile conflicts between journalists and the government, one such story has gone largely unnoticed: the lawsuit brought by longtime libertarian writer Justin Raimondo against the FBI for its surveillance of him and his site in the mid-2000s.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Raimondo sued the FBI in May of this year to obtain the full documents relating to a proposed investigation of him and his site, Antiwar, on suspicion of his being a foreign agent. The FBI has so far resisted releasing the full documents, and Raimondo says he doesn't expect they will. But the suit, which enters its next phase at the end of the month, raises questions about what kind of protections small ideological outfits can expect — especially ones that are known for being controversial and conspiratorial, like Antiwar — in an age when even the New York Times and the Associated Press can't avoid becoming entangled in a tug-of-war with the government over the course of their work.
"If it could happen to us, first they came for Antiwar.com, who's next?" Raimondo said in a phone interview from his home in northern California. "Why are they watching us? Is this their job?"
Raimondo first learned of the FBI's interest in him in 2011. Someone he didn't know filed a Freedom of Information Act request on a different topic and received FBI documents from 2004 that included a section that requested an investigation into Raimondo and his co-editor Eric Garris and posted them online. A reader alerted the Antiwar.com team to the documents.
The document relates to Raimondo's controversial writings about 9/11, specifically stories he did about the "dancing Israelis" conspiracy theory that developed in the aftermath of the attacks. It states that a person under investigation after the attacks had visited Antiwar.com.
"The whole point of the memo is to link us to a foreign person," Raimondo said. "They were justifying a closer look at Antiwar.com and me and Eric specifically."
"It's clear to me at least if you read the document that the 'foreign power' they accuse us of being agents of is .. Al Qaeda," Raimondo added in an email. "Elsewhere in the memo the author refers to intelligence gathered under FISA court authority to link us to an ongoing terrorism investigation -- some alleged terrorist _visited our web site_!"
"I had written about that particular subject, and, in the process, had uncovered an FBI 'terrorist watch' list posted on the web sites of two European banks, simply by Googling one of the names on that list. This was, in short, public information, but it raised the FBI's hackles, as you can see in the memo, and he eventually comes to the conclusion that we're could be 'agents of a foreign power,'" Raimondo said
Raimondo acknowledged that his views, especially about Sept. 11, may have attracted the FBI's attention in the first place. His book The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, which argues that Israel had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks but did not inform the United States, came out the year before the FBI memo proposing an investigation was written.
"I was all over this story," Raimondo said of the Israel connection theory.
The lawsuit was filed in May in the U.S. District Court in Northern California.
"So the status is that we filed in May and we have gotten an answer from the government," said Julia Mass, one of the ACLU lawyers handling the case. "The answer doesn't really say anything."
Mass said the plaintiffs will know soon whether they will receive any documents.
"We have a status conference set with the court at the end of August," she said. The expectation is that we will figure out a schedule on which to receive the documents that we've sought."
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on the case.
"As you may know the FBI cannot comment on matters pending litigation," said FBI spokesman Christopher Allen. "We also cannot comment or provide additional information beyond what was processed via FOIA."
Raimondo said he isn't sure when the surveillance began or stopped, or if it did stop.
"That was 2004," he said. "Did they actually do the investigation? Are they still doing the investigation?"
The goal is to "see hopefully to some degree the extent to which there was followup on the recommendation that an investigation be opened," Mass said, and to make the point that "the freedom of the press is as important for Antiwar.com as it is for the Associated Press or the New York Times because part of the democratic process and particularly the way political speech happens today is that it's really important for all voices to be heard and for all speakers to be free."
In the meantime, Raimondo says Antiwar's donor base is drying up.
"Our donations are cut by about over 30 percent," he said. "Some of that could be the recession but it's been pretty radical. You have no idea how many people said, you know what, I would give money but I don't want to be identified with Antiwar.com."
Raimondo said he wasn't surprised that the case has received so little mainstream attention.
"Prior to the Snowden thing all kinds of people have been spied on and nobody made that big of a deal about it," Raimondo said. "And of course it's us, so it's not like we're James Risen or anybody from Fox News."
After a debate with other mayoral candidates, Weiner walked back statements implying he knew intimate details about Hillary Clinton’s widely speculated presidential run. “I have no insights into 2016,” he said.
Seth Wenig / AP
Just hours after a new poll named Bill de Blasio the frontrunner of the New York City mayoral race and Anthony Weiner well behind in fourth, the top five Democratic candidates squared off in the race's first official debate.
In the debate were de Blasio, Weiner, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Comptroller John Liu, and former Comptroller Bill Thompson.
The candidates rolled through their talking points. De Blasio touted himself as the true progressive candidate, Christine Quinn pointed to legislation she passed as the City Council's speaker, Weiner positioned himself as the outsider who doesn't need endorsements to win, Liu and Thompson championed successes as handlers of the city's pension fund.
But it was after the debate where news was made. Weiner was asked by a reporter to revisit the comments he made the night before to BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief Ben Smith at an event in New York City. Weiner had said he knew what his wife Huma Abedin's roll in Hillary Clinton's widely speculated — but unconfirmed — 2016 presidential run would be.
Weiner tried to play it off as a joke.
"I have no insights into 2016," he told reporters after the debate. "I'm struggling right here with 2013."
The Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday showed de Blasio leading the way with 30% support. Quinn trailed in second with 24%, then Thompson nearby with 22%. Weiner, who at one point led the polls, now lags behind at 10 percent.
Weiner's first words of the debate were "I've made mistakes," possibly preparing himself for personal attacks from his opponents.
But the candidates, even when provoked by the moderator, for the most part steered clear of attacking Weiner's character. Some said he should quit the race, but others said they wanted to focus on issues. When asked about Weiner's conduct, former city Comptroller Bill Thompson dismissed the question entirely. "That's not why I'm here tonight," he said. John Liu, the current comptroller, also didn't want to talk about Weiner. "Please don't ask me any more questions about him," he told the moderator.
Instead, it was Quinn who received the brunt of direct attacks from the candidates, mostly over allowing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to serve an unprecedented third term in City Hall.
"You can't just say whenever the going gets tough you are gonna fold and let someone else take over," Weiner said.
"Anthony Weiner is in no position to comment on my position or anyone else's," Quinn responded. She added that the candidates were attacking her directly because they didn't want to look at their own records. She was the only candidate to directly use Weiner's sexting history against him during the debate.
Weiner's scandal isn't the only one in the race. Two of City Comptroller John Liu's former campaign staffers were convicted of fraud in may for funneling straw donations to the campaign. Though Liu wasn't implicated in the scandal, it led the campaign finance board to deny his campaign millions of dollars in matching funds. When questioned about it Liu said he'd moved passed it and would continue to speak directly to voters in their communities.
"I'm very proud of the ethical standards I've held up in my office," he said. "At the end of the day, they can keep their money because my campaign is not about the money."
Though contentious, the debate was also substantive. Candidates outlined their positions on everything from negotiating union contracts to fixing the city's economy. Also discussed was the NYPD's implementation of stop-and-frisk, which was ruled unconstitutional this week by a federal judge. Quinn was asked directly why she didn't challenge the program for the majority of her eight years as speaker.
"When I'm mayor, unconstitutional stops will end," she said. She added that next week the City Council will override Bloomberg's veto of a bill to create an inspector general to oversee the NYPD and its use of stop-and-frisk. The judge who had ruled the policy unconstitutional ordered a federal monitor for the department.
The debate did end on a lighter note. The moderator asked the candidates to tell voters something about themselves they didn't already know. Former Comptroller Bill Thompson said he's very competitive in sports, Quinn said she's not a natural redhead. De Blasio lamented that though he went to high school with Patrick Ewing, he wasn't the one who ended up in the NBA.
Weiner's admission?
"After midnight on Monday nights I play ice hockey," Weiner said. "I'm probably the only 130-pound Jewish kid in the city that does that."
J.M. Berger, an analyst and consultant on al-Qaeda and extremist groups as well as author of the book Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam , successfully launched an effort to troll jihadists who were using a hashtag to solicit media tips on Twitter.
“Private assurances” were given to the International Olympic Committee ahead of the 1936 Olympics in Germany. “Purely domestic questions.”
WASHINGTON — Prominent out gay figures, from Harvey Fierstein to Stephen Fry, have led very public calls for action from the International Olympic Committee or their own respective national Olympic teams in response to the anti-LGBT laws being implemented in Russia, where the Winter Games are slated to take place in 2014.
Both men invoked the specter of the 1936 Games in Germany under Adolf Hitler's rule, a blight on Olympic history which Fry said "provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad."
Neither man compared the Russian treatment of gays to the Nazi Holocaust. For the International Olympic Committee, however, there is a historic parallel: In the the year before Germany hosted the 1936 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee faced questions from reporters and calls for boycotts.
While the Holocaust that Hitler's Nazi regime went on to commit went far beyond any of the laws in effect at the time of the 1936 Olympics, it is the IOC's response to the questions raised about the laws in effect at the time that is notable in light of the comparisons being made.
American activists at the time were calling on the country to boycott the Olympics because of Germany's treatment of Jewish people, as detailed in an article in The New York Times on Nov. 7, 1935.
The German government gave the IOC "private assurances" about the treatment of people attending the Olympics, however, and the IOC distanced itself from German policies as "purely domestic questions."
The calls for boycotts were dismissed, and the Games went ahead as planned.
The Olympic Committee regularly avoids getting involved in domestic human rights issues, most recently around the 2008 Olympics China, when the BBC reported that "China's human rights record has been under scrutiny ever since Beijing was awarded the Olympics in 2001, and the IOC pledged to monitor the situation."
The Olympic Games went ahead as planned.
In the "Final Report of the IOC Coordination Commission" for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a 55-page report, it simply stated, "To those who have criticised the IOC on human rights issues, one can argue that the Games have elevated international dialogue on such issues among governments, world leaders, politicians, NGOs and pressure groups."
In its recommendations for future Olympics, incidentally, the IOC report noted, "It is important ... that the Games remain relevant to the different audiences, but in particular to young people, and that all Games organisers proactively monitor and anticipate the wider trends and shifts that will affect societies in the future."
Piper Kerman wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about keeping women in the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, close to their families. Most of New England’s senators signed on to a letter to keep the women there.
Ah, the Midwest.
BuzzFeed
Here is how the 79-year-old, six-term senator owns that parade year after year. (Other politicians, take note.)
BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed
