So Andy resigned (yay) and the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in the Senate (yay).
Regarding Andy, here’s a couple of paragraphs from New York’s Justin Miller:
The report also revealed for the first time allegations by a state trooper that Cuomo ran his hands over her body after picking her out of the ranks to serve on his protective detail.
Cuomo summarized his defense against the complaints as a matter of personal ignorance regarding supposedly changing mores involving the treatment of women. “I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” he said. “There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”
He seriously thought groping a state trooper used to be normal? Well, truth to tell, it probably was, but not for a long time. See Andrew Prokop at Vox on why Cuomo resigned and Trump didn’t.
After the report’s release, leading Democrats said Cuomo had to go. New York’s entire Democratic congressional delegation called on him to resign, as did national Democratic leaders like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Longtime allies in state politics abandoned him too, from unions to state legislature power brokers. A majority of legislators in the state assembly went on record supporting his impeachment. Voters rejected him too — a Quinnipiac poll found that 70 percent of New York voters wanted Cuomo to quit.
The writing on the wall became clear — he couldn’t win. Furthermore, a conviction in his impeachment trial could have banned him from holding state office in the future. So now, he hopes, he will avoid that trial altogether.
And look for Bill DeBlasio to be very cheerful. Oh, and Trump didn’t resign because Republicans didn’t pressure him to, says Prokop. In case you wondered.
Regarding the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Paul Waldman explains why nineteen Republicans (although not all of the Republicans who had negotiated the thing) voted for the bill. In brief, some Republicans really want big infrastructure projects in their states to get funded. And a few aren’t afraid of being bipartisan. Plus this:
The key GOP constituency — big business — wants this bill. Republicans may feed their base a steady diet of manufactured culture-war controversies, but when it comes time to write laws, few things matter more to them than the opinions of the business interests that fund their campaigns.
Those interests are now eager for the government to spend on the infrastructure on which they depend, which is why this bill is backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as many influential CEOs. Those aren’t people Republicans say no to very often.
It still needs to go to the House, where its fate is tied to the reconciliation bill. See German Lopez at Vox for how that’s likely to go. It could all blow up, but it might not.
In other news — Dominion Voting Systems is suing OAN, Newsmax, and the former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne for $1.6 billion in lost profit and business value. Heh.
Anti-vaccine protesters tried to storm the BBC’s offices. But they had the wrong address. It comforts me that we don’t have all the dim bulbs
.
For the record as I predicted Jerry Moran of Kansas was in the Republican group for a bipartisan bill but I predicted he would fake to the middle and then swerve back right. He did. The local news announced last night that Moran would not vote for the "bipartisan" bill which he initially promoted. Same Moran, different day.
Those demonstrators went to the former Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush, which closed in 2012.
Fittingly perhaps, it's where Fawlty Towers was filmed.
Hahaha, perfect metaphor.
I hope Andy's not surprised that when push came to shove, everyone decided on neither of the two, but on a third option: Throw Randy Andy under the nearest bus!
On his way up, instead of making friends via the old fashioned hand-shake, he instead relied on the far less welcome twisting of the arm.
And Randy Andy's been dislocating shoulders for 30+ years.
No one in NY much likes him anymore.
Progressives/liberals like me despise him. And we've despised him since he was young. Why? Because unlike his father, Mario, who went into politics to help people, Andy went into politics for Andy. He loves power. And no one who loves power should ever be allowed to get anywhere near it.
IMO: Randy Andy is a notch below tRUMP. If tRUMP is a narcissistic psychopath, then Andy's a narcissistic sociopath.
Andrew Cuomo has no place to go. Nothing to do.
You did it to yourself, Andrew.
Now live with it.
From what I've seen, it rarely turns out well for children of well respected politicians going into the family business. They might have the political chops but almost never the convictions and respect earned by their famous parent. It's too similar to the hereditary aristocracies our founders ran away from in Europe.
Dominion Voting Systems is rapidly becoming my favorite corporation!
Bleed 'em, DomVotSys!
Bleed 'em dry!!!!!
MWAH-HA-HAAAA!!!!!!!!
*sigh* I wasn't crazy about Andy but he did a nice counterpoint to Trump in the early days of the pandemic. Gulag pointed out, "Andy went into politics for Andy. He loves power." I haven't been close enough to NY politics to have an opinion, but that sounds like a fair assessment. And remarkably like the governor of my state, Florida.
DeSantis made a crude calculation. If/when there is a vaccine, cover the elderly and then stand up for "freedom." DeSantis bet that the infection rate might go high but the fatalities would be the statistic he'd tout as proof of his genius. SeSantis seeks out every culture war issue he can to stoke the base.
Problem: the Delta variant isn't just spreading faster, it's attacking a younger demographic. Pediatric ICUs are filling up and some kids aren't making it. In the same time frame, DeSantis is threatening to cut off the pay of Florida School Board Members who defy his ban on mask mandates in K-12.
How bad is Florida? Daily infections 28K and climbing, Deaths hop around from 100+ to over 200 daily. The key metric is hospitalizations. Highest ever over 15K today. Remember Italy? The bubble burst when there wasn't enough "beds." A misnomer because there is a limited number of medical professionals. An overflow could be brought in to set up emergency hospitals with medical staff by the National Guard. BUT, DeSantis will have to declare an emergency and request help from Biden.
DeSantis plans to be the Trump surrogate if Trump doesn't run in 2024. If Biden bails DeSantis out of a crisis DeSantis created, it will play very badly. So DeSantis will kill off a few thousand GOP Floridians before he will ask for help. At some point, it's gonna become known and accepted – all the victims (except the kids) are Trump/DeSantis fans who paid with their lives.
Billboard: Best Friends Keep Each Others Secrets – paid for by Ron Be Gone.