The Brooklyn Papers has an interesting revelation that one of the people leading the pro-Ratner counter rally to Community opposition to Ratner's Atlantic Yards is an admitted pimp:

One of Bruce Ratner’s boosters at the pro–Atlantic Yards rally on Saturday is a former strip club manager who used to arrange for dancers to have sex with NBA stars.

The Atlantic Yards supporter, Thomas “Ziggy” Sicignano, who now runs Brooklyn U.S.A., a youth basketball program in Park Slope, said that Ratner’s foundation gave his organization $10,000 in 2005.

That donation came four years after his stunning courtroom admission that he prostituted strippers to attract NBA stars to the Gold Club in Atlanta.

This comes as no surprise. After all, the counter-rally wasn't a community based rally, but were getting paid to be there. And many people suddenly become Ratner supporters after getting paid money by him. Sicignano had his price. Vito Lopez had his price. Ratner's whole scheme is about buying favors, so he and a pimp would get along just fine.

I have voted Republican. Once, I think. Just once. I have voted Green. Once...maybe twice.

The vast majority of the time I vote, donate, agitate and work for the Democratic Party with varying degrees of pride, enthusiasm and, occasionally, holding my nose.

The Democratic Party Machine in Brooklyn, led by Vito Lopez, pretty much makes you hold your nose because there is always a stench of sleaze around them. There are debates as to whether they are an improvement over the previous incarnation of the Brooklyn Machine, the one whose former head is now deservedly in jail. Well, if you have to debate whether they are better than someone who is jailed for corruption, you know you are in trouble.

One of the most disgusting tactics the Republicans have used is exploiting the 9/11 attacks for their own gains. As my wife (when she was 8 months pregnant) yelled at Republican delegates to the Republican Convention in 2004, "Shame on you for turning our tragedy into a photo op." The delegates were none too pleased being chased down the street by a very pregnant woman accusing them of exploiting our tragedy.

Well, as I reported yesterday, Rudy Giuliani (the man despised by the firefighters who were the TRUE heroes of 9/11) is the latest Republican to use this disgusting tactic. Not only was Giuliani's claim that only a Republican can prevent a terrorist attack a disgusting exploitation of a national tragedy, but it is demonstrably wrong. Clinton's administration prevented the millenium attacks. He also warned the nation that al-Qaeda was going to attack. Bush's administration ignored the warnings and the 9/11 attacks happened on HIS watch. Giuliani is wrong.

Howard Dean is taking him on and I think it is particularly important for NYC to reject "anti-firefighter" Giuliani's exploitation of the attacks on our city. This is Howard Dean's message and call to action:

Rudy Giuliani has just shown that he is as much a lying fearmonger as Karl Rove or any other Bush administration toady. From Politico:

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

Ummmm...let's review some history, Rudy. Ronald Reagan and the elected Bush both SUPPORTED the Muslim fanatics that evolved into al-Qaeda. Bill Clinton is the one who first recognized them as a threat and tried to get them. The attack he ordered after the bombing of the USS Coles hit the location where bin Laden had JUST LEFT. The Clinton administration PREVENTED the millenium attacks. Clinton was so focused on getting al-Qaeda that the Republicans called him "obsessed" with al-Qaeda and he TOLD Bush that al-Qaeda would be the number one focus of Bush's administration.

Doubt the headline's premise? Check out this YouTube of audio from the Rush Limbaugh show, featuring a rendition of

Barack

Negro

by an Al Sharpton impersonator.

Hello, Federal Communications Commission?

Remember, as you pay those state and local taxes, Ratner thanks you: (from DDDB)

And remember...the taxpayer funded gift of Atlantic Yards is only the beginning of what the state and city can do for the man with no business plan. Ratner has already been promised more land with minimal review. How much with the NEXT corrupt Ratner deal cost us?

Ask Ratner's three stooges:

It looks like the Congressional Black Caucus is making the mistake that the Nevada Democratic Party decided not to make: teaming up with Fox News.

When we discussed the Nevada situation, I focused on Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly's advocacy of terrorism, anti-Smitism and hate speech. Well, let me remind you that there are more reasons the Democrats should just say, "HELL NO" to Fox. From Color of Change.org:

# Commenting on Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, featured guest Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved."

# Jesse Lee Peterson, a regular guest who is Black said: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan, Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas... if a white man started a white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down America."

# Erik Rush, another Black guest, labeled Sen. Obama's church as cultish and separatist for espousing values of black unity and black empowerment (Fox regularly selects Black guests it knows will undermine Black causes). Rush said he replaced the word "black" with "white" in the church's mission statement and "Suddenly, I was looking at this really scary doctrine. You know, it was something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren church… I would go beyond saying they're Afrocentric. They're African centric. They refer to themselves as an African people and that somewhat disturbs me from the viewpoint of well, do they consider themselves Americans? Do they consider themselves Christians?"

Ok, here we go: The New York Times reports that Rudy Giuliani, lately running for President, was briefed about the mob ties of his freshly nominated police commissioner-to-be, Bernie Kerik.

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Kerik, if your memory isn't serving, is the sleaze who carried on an affair with Judith Regan in an apartment set aside for rescue workers overlooking Ground Zero. She later resigned as publisher of her eponymous imprint after making one anti-Semitic remark too many while trying to publish O.J. Simpson's If I did it memoir.

But back to Rudy Giuliani, Saint. Let's just say this: if you're told that the guy you're nominating for police commissioner has mob ties, you have several courses of action. None of these include forgetting about that little piece of information; that is, if you even extend him the benefit of the doubt on forgetting it while under oath in the first place. People forget dinner reservations, not being told that their nominee for police commissioner has mob ties.

The New York State Capital is synonymous with sleazy politics, lackluster political operators, inside deals, cronyism, the quick, greasy handshake between legislator and lobbyist. Albany itself can seem like nothing other than a theme park of hackery.

That seems to be changing.

Republicans in the Senate are flexing their flab and threatening to derail the governor's budget. Sheldon Silver says there will be no government shutdown.

A government shutdown? They're even talking about the possibility? How, how... Federal of them. There are actually substantial issues being discussed, it appears, issues of actual relevance - witness Governor Spitzer's pledge to safeguard abortion rights in this state if the Roberts Court decides to slice up a woman's right to choose. Meanwhile, the departments of the state government are being filled up with bright young things from all over the country. The new Attorney General seems to be in earnest about rooting out the endemic, leaden, systemic corruption of the place.

This is the short version; the long version is on my blog under the same title:

It looks like Alberto Gonzales won’t be Attorney General much longer. In addition, there will be considerable pressure put on George W. Bush to fire his long-time friend and top political advisor Karl Rove. And it’s all over some lies that these guys told over the perfectly legal, if politically unsavory, firing of seven federal attorneys.

The problem is, these two people should never have been in power in the first place. What’s worse, there are plenty of good reasons for getting rid of them, but those reasons didn’t seem to get headlines. It’s worse because we desperately need to stop pretending that the politically unsavory is more important than the downright un-American.

Both Rove and Gonzales have committed horrible acts that render them unfit for their jobs. But since opposition leaders didn’t bother to expose their actions as truly despicable, disgusting, and opposed to all that is good in America, Rove and Gonzales got away with it.

Until now … at least.

Karl Rove’s litany of sleaze is well documented. He planted a bug in his own campaign office, then claimed the Democrats had done it. He mastered the art of “push-polling” to discredit both Ann Richards and John McCain. He began giving Robert Novak (Valerie Plame’s “outer”) phony stories 15 years ago. He’s probably connected with various groups who have committed serious election fraud over the past several years.