An Open Letter To Michael Bloomberg

Good Morning, Mr. Mayor.

I know you have a lot on your plate, that the world is an absolute mess right now, but I want to focus your attention somewhere that desperately needs your attention, one that normally takes almost no thought from the mayor of a city as large as New York City.

The running of the New York City Marathon.

Now Mr. Mayor,  I know you don’t normally read any of my articles, being a busy man and all, so you probably don’t know that I am runner and a regular one.  An all weather runner.  I run in every type of weather.  I also know that you don’t know that I am a  lifelong resident of Staten Island.

For most of my life I lived on the north shore, but I moved out of there after 35 years in 2002 and moved to Dongan Hills, where I lived for a few years before re-settling in Castleton corners, where I have been since 2005.

Enough of the background, let’s move to the foreground.

On October 29th one of the largest storms to ever strike land in the northeast, and certainly the biggest in my 45 years, struck us.  All of us.  New Jersey was crushed, as was the city. It dropped several feet of snow in the Appalachian mountains in West Virginia.  Hell it caused 20 foot surges in the great lakes.  Needless to say you also know about the billions of dollars in damage it did, and the number of dead.

And yet you want to have this marathon run through New York City, our city, now.

Yesterday, Mr. Mayor, yesterday the bodies of two small children who were pulled by the storm out of their mothers arms were found. Half of the city’s dead from this storm come from my island. Do I have to make the point that I have family members who live in that area still?  They’re OK thankfully, but plenty of other people aren’t, and there are tens of thousands without power, both on Staten Island and the rest of the city.

Generators are in Central park for the marathon that could be used to help people who are in dire need, who have lost everything, that could be used to power neighborhoods that need that help.  And yes there is a massive effort to help everyone, but can you say you are doing everything you can when generators that could help people in need are used for recreation?  Need I remind you that running is recreation, and that recreation comes third at best in times of need like these?

You say the race wont pull resources away from recovery efforts yet we know and we see with our own eyes that this is simply untrue.  I know that there are many people working on trying to fix things, I have eyes, I see them.  But when I see the people of Breezy Point and Midland Beach and South Beach who have been so harshly put upon by pitiless nature suffer so and efforts that could be made are quite simply not being made, I get angry.  And I am not alone.  There are hundreds of thousands of us, millions of us who don’t want to see this race happen, because it is simply not appropriate.  There is talk around the neighborhood and on facebook of simply walking en masse up to the start line and blocking the start line.

I’m sure your security people have already appraised you about that situation by now.

Idle threat?  Perhaps, but if you have angered these people, these working class Americans who voted for you that much where they are talking like that, it means that it is time you paid attention to us.  It is time to listen to the people and not dictate your will to them, Mr. Mayor. You are not our ruler, you are a temporary administrator. nothing more.  Don’t forget that.

Mr. Mayor I cannot find a single instance of any one city ever deciding to hold a race of any type 6 days after a hurricane made landfall and devastated the area.  We should continue this trend.  Want to run the marathon in December? If those who do the job of search and recovery are finished looking for the bodies of residents of this great city I am all for it.   Wanna make it a big running party on New Years eve?  That sounds like fun!  Might even do that myself!

But now?

No.

Mr. Mayor, please postpone the New York City Marathon. It’s the right thing to do.

Signed,

Michael Walsh

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That’s it from here, America.  Talk to you later.

News Commentary

Pic of the day, part i: Elastic, by Umberto Boccioni

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In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

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News commentary:

I believe that the events of last evening in Aurora, Colorado are the result of a person breaking under some massive weight that only he could feel. No one wakes up one day and decides that they are “The Joker”, buys guns, places bombs all over his home, and kills random strangers.

I think the events of last evening in Aurora, Colorado are the result of living in a world where comic book heroes are taken seriously when they shouldn’t be. You know what I mean. We’ve all had that conversation with people talking about characters in movies and tv shows as if they are real. I’ve often wondered how out of touch you can get, how far from reality you can get when you immerse yourself in modern culture. Apparently very far.

Some crazy kid lashes out at the world, arbitrarily at complete strangers, and leaves blood, death, pain and tears in his wake. I really do not know what to believe. I want to point a finger of blame at someone. At him obviously, but also at society, at the larger causes for this behavior, which happens every once in a while, enough where you have to think this is more than just some crazy guy. This is a sick society, twisted enough to create numbers of people like this, who just snap and take out people for no sane reason.

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And now for something completely different:

Iran hates Israel. In other news, the sky is blue…

But seriously, over the last 6 months, according to the NYPD, Iran and Hezbollah are behind a number of attempted terrorist attacks, and at least one successful one. A separate list created by federal authorities is by and large the same as the NYPD list. The bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria was apparently the work of either Hezbollah or Iran, and is considered a relatively sophisticated.

The Iranians are obviously dismissing the statements as both unfounded and politically motivated by Israel. Hezbollah says it has not carried out bombings against Israelis outside of Lebanon, and have not done any even within Lebanon since 2000.

The spokesman for Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu says that the number of attempts is more than twice that number. Twenty. Not the nine that U.S officials are pointing to.

…

So when exactly did the NYPD become an international police force, that it is now monitoring the movements of Hezbollah for Israel? I can understand them monitoring things to protect New Yorkers. I can see them monitoring some international movements as they affect New York and it’s safety.

When did we become Israel’s police force? The number of attempted terrorist attacks by Hezbollah and Iran the NYPD(9) have listed are different from the Israeli governments(20) numbers. Seeing how the NYPD is as far away as they are from the places that are affected, it makes me wonder about that vast discrepancy. It also makes me wonder how effective they can be at counter terrorism, given that discrepancy.

It makes me wonder if I am wasting my money paying taxes into a system that allows our police to not do their jobs well, or properly, and still get paid for it with my tax dollars. Let the Feds, who do this shit, do it. Keep the NYPD in NY. Plain and simple, they aren’t keeping us safe when they aren’t home to keep us safe.

Not that they are even very good at that. They’re good at giving tickets. They’re good at beating up protesters who happen to have a point. Keeping us safe? How many crimes happened in New York last month? Last year? Wanna run that by me again?

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Just saying…

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Pic of the day, part ii: Charge of the Lancers, by Umberto Boccioni

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I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy.
I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create…

Erich Fromm, Credo (1965)

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That’s it from here, America. G’night.

Vox Populi

There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them; and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.

Benjamin N. Cardoza

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The focus is a little sharper, the look a little more tense, the feel a little more on edge.

Life is better when it’s like that.

That’s how it feels today, that’s how it feels lately.

Things are picking up, and that is a beautiful thing.

Not personally mind you.  I’m still broke, still don’t have enough money to buy an extra bag of cheezy poofs, but I don’t mind that, really.  Been there so long, been broke so long I forgot what it feels like to have.

So, when I see thousands come out to decry the conditions of the poor, of the vast majority of the populace of the earth, at the very doorstep of the rich who flaunt their excesses in our faces, I am moved.

My mind sings with joy at the prospect.  My heart leaps when it sees people say  “We have had enough”  because they are saying what I have been saying here in my own inimitable way for the better part of 4 years.

You, wall street, you moneyed interests, have acted with impunity for too long.

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Viddy of the day:  “Something has started”  Michael Moore on Occupy Wall St. protests that could spark movement.

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You have paid us less than we deserve.

You have asked us to be happy with less, as you took more.

Our 401k’s have dwindled to nothing in the light of your excess.

Our health has diminished because we work so hard for less and less every year, and on top of it, you make us feel as if you are doing us a favor by paying us what you do.

Your wild unbalanced actions with derivatives and such nearly destroyed our economy.  And who has had to pay for it?

Us.  Food costs more.  Gas costs more. Medicine costs more.  Everything costs more. All of it thanks to your lavish stupidity, or evil, one is as good as the other, the end result being what it is.

You have taken our democratic processes from us, with lobbyists and with money we could not hope to match in our wildest dreams, and bought representatives, Senators, Governors, and Presidents.

With all that said, What do we want?

Freedom from the evils of a market unrestrained, the wrongs of unregulated greed and wanton gluttony that has poisoned the entire nation.

The right to work for a wage that can enable us to live a life that is better than those who came before us, like every generation that came before, and that was to be ours as well, until you ripped it from our hands.

Protection from the predations of millionaires and billionaires who buy government officials the way we buy food, and peddle influence with money that flows like an avalanche coming down a mountain, irresistible, crushing us where we live.

You have taken too much.  We want it back.  We want our nation and our future back.

And we want it now.

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That’s it from here, America. G’night.

Manhattan Sucks

I moved to New York City for my health.  I’m paranoid, and it was the only place where my fears were justified.

Anita Weiss

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Today was my first day back on the Temp job in Manhattan since being laid off in June.  It was the first time since then that I have had to go to Manhattan, and I have to tell you, all you Manhattan loving people.

You are a bunch of morons.  Rubbing my face in a thorn bush sounds like a more enjoyable thing to do than travelling to Manhattan.  The place sucks.  It absolutely sucks. 

 There is garbage everywhere.  The people are obnoxious, rude, and stupid.  There are people who look and smell like monkeys with glandular imbalances and hormonal defects, and those are the executives who run the friggin place.  They are ugly, even the pretty ones are ugly, and they smell funny.  The place smells funny.  The WHOLE place smells funny.  Not one inch of the place has anything nice in it.

OK… I take that back.  Madison Square Garden during a Rangers game is nice. 

Central park is kinda sorta nice, it’d be nicer if it had about a million less people in it.  And less asphalt trails.  It might then resemble an actual park.

I think they have A nice book store. 

One.  And it isn’t a big chain store either, as I recall.

Back to the rant.

There are people who live there who talk of living in apartments the size of shoe-boxes that cost $3000 a month and up, and they speak like they are proud of living like fucking rats like that, and paying through the nose to do it! 

The subways are jammed all the damn time. You may hear people talk from time to time about the Subway system, tell you how good it is.  Bullshit.  Anyone with three working brain cells would tell you that being stuck in a subway car with 200 of the smelliest people on earth, who seem to want to make sure you smell them by shoving their armpits in random strangers faces, and then looking at them funny is good needs to be neutered, because people that stupid should not be allowed to breed.

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There is a new billboard up in  Times Square.   It keeps an up to the minute count of gun crimes in New York.  Some goofball is going to shoot someone just to see the numbers move.

David Letterman

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If it wasn’t for the Rangers and Knicks giving occasional hope to the locals, the place would have been burned down years ago. Hyperbole, yes, but MY hyperbole, and dammit I like it.

Some people say that it’s gotten nice and clean, but those are just tourists in touristy places, complaining about someplace they never knew, or thought they did, but didn’t.  More hyperbole.  Gotta problem with that?

Still, with all that said, I want to go back.  Why? Well first off, I am barking mad, much like most people whose lives are touched by that evil fucking place.  The place makes you crazy.  

Second, It doesn’t pay enough to work on Staten Island, and anywhere that isn’t Manhattan is too far to commute and doesn’t pay enough. You can’t pay for an apartment and bills and all that this shitty planet makes necessary on the money you would make working at Dunkin Fuckin Donuts.  

Third, I have met a lot of good people who feel the same way I do working there.  No one I have ever liked lives there, but plenty of good people work there.

Yes I know 9/11 is coming up.  Those asshole terrorists blew up our World Trade Center.  Killed my friends, and thousands of others to boot.  That doesn’t mean I have to love the place.  Manhattan was a shit hole before 9/11 and it still is a shit hole.  If I wasn’t anchored to this area because of debt and poverty, I would have left years ago.  If I hit the lottery I am out. 

Life must be better in Colorado.   Or Northern Canada.  Or Sweden.  Or Mars.

Imagine the joy of not just trying to find a full time job in a place I love so much, but a career!

JOY!  Luckily for me I get to work my frustrations out with a hammer and other such joyful tools, or I would be REALLY unhappy!

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G’night America!

Plain And Simple

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others

Thomas Jefferson

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I disliked the fact that there is a mosque being built in Downtown Manhattan in New York City, only a few blocks from the WTC.  It annoyed me.  I thought New York City should have done something about this a long time ago, used eminent domain to take the site, if it were possible.

But the time for that is passed.  The Muslims who want to build a community center, and a mosque, own the building and the land, and have everything they need to begin working to make it what they want it to be.

It is their land.  Let them do as they wish with it.  We are, were, and until recently I thought we always would be, a religiously tolerant people.  Jews living next to Catholics living next to Baptists living next to Atheists living next to that guy no one is sure what the hell he was praying to besides that bottle of gin, and everybody got along.

No more.  We  have allowed the traumatic events of 9/11 to shape our identity in such a way as it distorts our basic national character, and it has changed some of us from the good people we were to…I am not even sure how to characterize it… manic xenophobic neurotics is about the closest I can come to what it looks and sounds like. 

This nation was built on a tradition of Religious tolerance.  We have in our great history a great many high minded religious leaders who helped lead this country from Lyman Beecher to Joseph Smith to Martin Luther King Jr., and I for one am proud that all these great and good people are part of our legacy as a nation.

To allow a mosque there is, though I think it shows remarkably bad judgment on the part of New York City, IS acceptable insofar as it is their land.  In this country you have the right to pray to god in whatever way you so choose, whatever god that you so choose.  They own the land.  Let them be.  If you really are a christian and it feels like a slap in the face, you can turn the other cheek, much though it may pain you to do it.  God is good, he will guide you and I, one and all to the righteous path.  And that path is not the warpath. 

As a matter of fact, go there.  Talk to them, see what they are like.  Test your own ideas about what these people are like with your own eyes and ears and mind. Show that you are a strong brave proud American, and look the people you judge  in the eye, and judge them not for what you think they are, but for what they actually are.

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Viddy of the day: President Obama talking about the building of a mosque in Lower Manhattan. Note the words “Ground Zero is Indeed Hallowed ground”  Note he did NOT say anything about specifically condoning or approving of the action. Not that his political enemies would admit the truth of that, even after looking at the viddy.  Hate blinds where truth sheds no light.

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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Thomas Jefferson

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I have to talk about the President here for a minute though, in regards to this.  He said, quoting a CNN report:

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,”

This has been blown out of proportion by his political enemies into “HE’S DEFENDING MUSLIMS, SEE, I KNEW HE WAS ONE OF THEM.” or some such twaddle.

Which, if you actually paid attention to what he said, is a gigantic steaming pile of bullshit.  He even added to his statement today, adding that he wasn’t speaking to the wisdom of the actual project.

Now, if you want to believe that he is a secret Muslim, what the hell ever that is, you do that stupid bullshit.  If you want to think that this proves that he is anti-American, you do that stupid bullshit.  This is America, we have freedom of speech, yes and we have freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, all that goodness.

We also have freedom of religion, which is what he defended in his statements, and if you don’t like it, fine.  Change it, if you can. If you can get that past all the other people of all those other religions who don’t want to live in fear of being ”done unto” just to suit your religious zealot/fascist ideas of what you think America should be.

We, the sane people of this country, will tuck that thought away, and put it right along side the silly crap about altering the 14th Amendment, the marriage equality amendment, the privatization of Social Security horse manure and the flag burning amendment you crazed semi-simian Lunatics wanted to pass. 

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Guten Nacht, America, I’ll write to you again tomorrow.