Several hundred activists gathered at Columbus Circle Thursday night to start the battle to over-ride the veto by President Bush of the expanded State-Children's Health Insurance Program. The rally, one of 250 nationwide, was organized by Moveon.org-Political Action with significant help from SEIU Local 1199 and and Unite-Here. (You can see some photos of the rally here .)

NYS Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried told the crowd about how newly insured children he had met had averted life threatening medical problems because of the availability of health care. 1199 Organizer Andy King set the crowd chanting for health care and cheering his promise that the union would work with us until the veto is overturned.

How can people rationalize keeping in office a wife-beater and tool of the evangelical dominionist movement? What is wrong with the Democratic party in New York that finds it acceptable to live the lie of a blue state when in fact, suburban and exurban New York is one of the most conservative voting blocks in the eastern seaboard?

Massa concedes, calls to congratulate Kuhl
Star-Gazette
November 15, 2006

Corning — Democratic congressional candidate Eric Massa called U.S. Rep. John R. Kuhl Jr. today to congratulate the congressman on his election victory, finally conceding more than a week after Election Day.

Massa had previously refused to concede, but “now that the vast majority of the votes have been re-canvassed and the counting of the absentee ballots is well under way,” he said in a statement on his Web site, “the voters have spoken and their voices have been heard.”