| Prepared Remarks for Bloomberg's State of the City Address
"Thank you, Helen, and good afternoon. It's great to be in Queens. Home of Louis Armstrong, Simon & Garfunkel, and the great Count Basie, who wrote my entrance music today 'One O'Clock Jump.' I'm especially glad to be here at the brand-new public pool and ice rink in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. I was hoping to ride in on a Zamboni but I couldn't get it through the Midtown Tunnel. "Speaker Quinn and members of the City Council, Comptroller Thompson, Public Advocate Gotbaum, Borough Presidents, Mayors Dinkins and Koch. I want to welcome you and all our distinguished guests here today. And I'd like to start by introducing you to some guests of my own. Five special families: the Ramns, who came to New York from Colombia 20 years ago; the Chens, originally from Ningbo, China; the Snreenivasans, originally from Madras, India; the Bias family, who moved here in 1953 from South Carolina; and finally, the Farruggios, who came from Sicily, and are here today with the newest member of their family Sienna born just two weeks ago.
Archives: October 2006
Criticizing Vonage feels like kicking a dog. Yet, what else am I supposed to do looking at the Web-calling outfit's third-quarter results? The company's churn is up, customer acquisition costs are up, lifetime value per supbscriber is down. That's very troubling. Google Gobbles JotSpot Posted by: Rob Hof on October 31, Categories: Google, Power of Us, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0, Wiki, software as service, startups Search giant Google has bought yet another hot startup that had hoped to be one of the next big things (and no doubt still does). JotSpot, the company started three... Oracle Drops the Bomb on Red Hat Posted by: Steve Hamm on October 25, Categories: open source software Red Hat's stock took a pounding earlier this year when Oracle CEO Larry Ellison suggested that he might buy a Linux company and compete with the No.
The ‘War on Terror’ Licenses a New Stupidity in Geopolitics
The latter may have cut a dash in the subsidy swamp of Sarajevo, but in Afghanistan he would have been a boy on a man's errand. Karzai knows well that his fate lies not with the patronising platitudes of western proconsuls but in the hard graft of provincial warlords, drug gangsters and Taliban go-betweens. These go-betweens have had their status massively boosted by the war on terror. Bush's demand in 2001 that Musharraf "join the war" sent Pakistani forces into the border territories, breaking old treaties and driving the Pashtun tribes into the eager arms of Taliban leaders. This undoubtedly saved Osama bin Laden's skin from the fury of the northern Tajiks, committed to avenge his murder of their leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Musharraf, at America's bidding and with $10bn of American money, has done what even his craziest predecessors avoided, and recklessly set the Pashtun on the warpath - increasingly in thrall to a revived al-Qaida.
WBKO Weather
With the millions of vehicles that travel that highway from Chicago to Mobile on a single day…shouldn't every living thing next to it be dead? And that includes the hundreds of thousands of cows that add their methane to the mix. Just sayin'. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what reaction my latest global warming post was going to bring. Somehow, my little ol' blog made it clear across the Northern Hemisphere – from California to Canada to the United States Senate! I sometimes forget how quick blogs are picked up and read, especially if it deals with such a (ehm) hot topic as global warming. Most of the replies from the hometowns we cover in South Central Kentucky were supportive and very much appreciated. But the replies I received from other parts of the country were more ferocious – attacking not only what I had written but attacking many of you with the stereotypical “people from the backwoods of Kentucky" label.
What Became of the Bush Bi-Partisanship?
Even before 9/11 transformed him into a war President, even before the decision to strike against Saddam made him look like a “war criminal" to the loony left, Bush had secured the sort of implacable enmity that made bi-partisanship not only unattainable but unthinkable. Ironically, Ronald Reagan – with a much stronger and clearer ideological commitment – managed to work with Democrats far more effectively(despite a Republican Senate for six of his eight White House years, Reagan faced a hefty Democratic House majority throughout his presidency). I would submit that circumstances, as much as personality or policy, contributed to both Reagan's success and the frequent failure of Bush at reaching across party lines for support. In many ways, Bush never managed to overcome the fiery resentment associated with the allegedly “stolen election" of 2000.
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