Good Friday morning. Another week has come and gone.
We are right at the tail end of what is known in political circles as the political “silly season,” the time when candidates and voters and campaign workers – especially campaign workers (and their long-suffering spouses and children) are just so darn DONE with the whole damn thing and the election is still a few painful and seemingly endless days away.
This year has been sillier than most, if you ask me – and not in a good way.
We’ve seen attacks on candidates and elected officials rising, the most notable of which was the recent home invasion that left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, 82, beaten and hospitalized in an attack that was apparently meant for her.
It really should come as no surprise that someone tried to hurt the House speaker.
What IS surprising is that it took this long for something like this to happen, given how many years the Republicans have been vilifying and castigating her, calling her names and making her the butt of crude jobs and memes.
No less an historical figure than Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, who himself was no stranger to attacks and threats during his time at the White House, has warned that “more people are going to get hurt” if we don’t clean up our collective act and ratchet the whole hateful rhetoric thing down a number of pegs.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to use the entirety of this post to stand on my proverbial soapbox and lecture about bad behavior. I mean, to whatever degree I have a bully pulpit, I do reserve the right to use it.
But honestly, I am just so tired and defeated by all the anger out there right now. And please do not ask me to predict the outcome of next Tuesday’s elections. I don’t know.
Really. I don’t.
Just because I spent two decades covering politics does not mean I have any more understanding or insight into its many mysteries than the next person. I just played a prognosticator on TV (sometimes).
I do maybe pay a bit more attention than the average voter. And I can pronounce “Skaneateles” correctly and maybe even find it on a map. But that’s about it.
I will be returning to my analysis roots on election night, though, by providing some color commentary for a local TV channel. (No free advertising from me here, you’ll just have to flip the channels and find me).
It will be nice to dust off the old camera-ready makeup and see if I can string some intelligent insights together without swearing. (Don’t worry, producers, if you’re reading this, I promise to keep it clean).
I am looking forward to flexing some old mental muscles…I hope there’s election night pizza, too. Things won’t be complete without it. I’ll even take the leftover rejected anchovy slices. I love anchovies. Also mushrooms, peppers, onions, and sausage. Not a big fan of pepperoni, unlike most of America. Too greasy, IMHO.
Somehow, I have spewed several hundreds words about more or less nothing this morning. I was going to wax poetic (yet again) about my undying love for peanut butter, as November is (rather inexplicably, as far as I can tell) National Peanut Butter Lovers Month. But maybe I’ll leave that for another day.
In the REAL news of the day, it’s going to be 70 degrees today. And tomorrow. And the day after that. And on Monday, too. It’s creepy and weird and oddly off putting to be able to wander around in a t-shirt. But I’m here for it. Guiltily.
In the headlines…
President Joe vowed to “free” Iran, and said that demonstrators working against the country’s government would soon succeed in freeing themselves.
More than 2,000 academics from universities across the United States have written to Biden urging him to do more to support the anti-government protesters in Iran, many of whom are coming out of Iranian universities and schools.
Biden’s student loan forgiveness program remains on hold while a federal appeals court considers a legal challenge brought by six GOP-led states.
Biden called Republican efforts to block student debt relief “hypocritical.”
The public is split over Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll, but groups that are key to Democrats’ chances in the midterm elections – Black, Latino and younger voters – strongly support the program.
Biden warned about threats to democracy should the GOP take Congress as he returned to the campaign trail to stump for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in what is poised to be one of his final western campaign stops of the midterms.
Six days after suffering a fractured skull in a vicious attack, Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been discharged from the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
“Paul remains under doctors’ care as he continues to progress on a long recovery process and convalescence,” the speaker said in a statement. “He is now home surrounded by his family who request privacy,” she said.
The search for a larger lesson in the invasion of the Pelosi home, chiefly from among the details of the accused invader’s life and social media history, has, like so many things in American life, been split by partisanship.
Midterm election spending is likely to far exceed the record set in 2018, with projections reaching past $16.7 billion.
Fueled by an expanding class of billionaires, political spending on the 2022 midterm elections will shatter records at the state and federal levels, with much from largely unregulated super PACs financed with enormous checks written mainly by GOP megadonors.
South Carolina broke its one-day early voting record for the second time on Wednesday, more than doubling the record set during the primary elections.
Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin called for a broad bipartisan deal to protect the solvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, popular programs that face serious funding issues over the next few decades.
The cost of labor rose less than expected, but low productivity helped keep the pressure on inflation in the third quarter, according to Labor Department data released yesterday.
Unit labor costs, a measure of productivity against compensation, increased 3.5% for the July-to-September period, below the 4% Dow Jones estimate and down from 8.9% in the second quarter. However, productivity rose at just a 0.3% annualized rate.
Former President Donald Trump has dropped one of his strongest hints yet that he may re-seek the White House, telling a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa, that he will “very, very, very probably do it again” in 2024.
As Trump inches closer to launching another presidential run, Justice Department officials have discussed whether his candidacy would create the need for a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations related to the former president.
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker involved in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss, is willing to give an interview to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after certain conditions are met, his lawyer said.
A New York state judge ordered an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization’s financial statements after it was alleged that the company has been vastly overstating its assets.
A tirade of a lawsuit that Trump filed against one of his chief antagonists, the New York attorney general, was hotly opposed by several of his longstanding legal advisers, who attempted an intervention hours before it was submitted to a court.
Benjamin Netanyahu won a decisive victory in the country’s fifth election in under four years, vote results showed, pulling off a political comeback by successfully uniting his right-wing and religious nationalist bloc.
Pfizer and BioNTech have launched a clinical trial on a vaccine targeting both COVID-19 and influenza, the companies announced.
According to BioNTech, the vaccine candidate is a combination of Pfizer’s flu vaccine candidate, which is in phase 3 clinical development, and the company’s bivalent omicron-specific coronavirus vaccine dose.
Even if COVID-19 is not on your mind right now, stocking up on at-home tests should be, according to experts.
The death of a 3-year-old boy following a suspected gas leak at a locked down residential compound in northwestern China has triggered a fresh wave of outrage at the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy.
A recent case-controlled study in South Africa finds that regular physical activity enhances vaccine effectiveness against Covid-19.
Emergency management consulting firm Olson Group Ltd. expects to have a final contract by the end of the week to start reviewing the impact of New York’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the next year.
New York State has begun taking applications from small businesses for a state tax credit of up to $25,000 as reimbursement for expenditures to protect employees and customers from the coronavirus.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, facing a tightening race against GOP challenger Lee Zeldin as the campaign shifts focus to crime and the economy, rallied in Manhattan with VP Kamala Harris and former Sen. Hillary Clinton. Their goal: get women to the polls.
“This election is a choice. Not just between two candidates but between two very different ideas about who we are as a state and as a country,” Clinton said.
“They don’t care about keeping you safe,” Clinton said of Republicans during the rally at Barnard College. “They want to keep you scared.”
Hochul ripped Zeldin after he declined to denounce a far-right, pro-Trump political group.
Hochul acknowledged that “there is a crime problem” in her state as the election looms less than a week away.
As the rallies swell at campaign stops around New York in the final days of the gubernatorial election, upstate voters may be up for grabs.
A family whose heavy campaign donations to Hochul have stirred controversy contributed nearly $235,000 more on Tuesday to the state Democratic Party, records show.
Hochul is ducking any chance she’ll offend voters and powerful interest groups before Election Day by delaying action on a backlog of more than 420 bills that passed the legislature earlier this year.
The Seneca Nation of Indians says Hochul is holding up a “fair” deal on gambling revenues — after putting “a gun to our head” by freezing nation bank accounts to get $418 million for a new Buffalo Bills stadium in her hometown.
New York City Democratic city councilman Robert Holden, a moderate from Glendale, Queens, slammed Hochul over the crime crisis ravaging both the city and state.
The future of New York City’s transit system, still struggling to rebound from the pandemic, could be on the line in Tuesday’s election for governor.
The Green Party says only “Orwellian” progressives would suggest that their write-in candidate for governor is drawing votes away from Hochul in her tight race against Zeldin.
An upstate police chief publicly pleaded with Hochul to “show us some support in law enforcement” by toughening New York’s bail law in the wake of Buffalo mom Keaira Bennefield’s shocking murder.
The ex-police chief in Rochester, La’Ron Singletary, who lost his job over Daniel Prude’s death, has focused on public safety in his bid to unseat the incumbent Democrat, Rep. Joseph Morelle.
An outside elections spending group recently paid $160,000 for a television ad attacking Round Lake Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, a Democrat facing a tough challenge from Republican David Catalfamo. The groups has ties to his wife, Jessica.
New York City plans to open a third emergency relief shelter for migrants at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, Mayor Eric Adams announced.
Adams tried to laugh off a question about opening up his tent city to scores of Senegalese migrants — and dodged another about what his administration was doing to confirm they are all seeking asylum.
Eric Adams and his top counsel announced a fellowship to bring in private lawyers to fill vacant legal jobs at city agencies. But critics say it’s just one small fix that won’t address the “mass exodus” of lawyers in recent months.
Immigration courts in New York State already had a backlog of 180,000 cases, before 21,000 new migrants arrived this summer.
The commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings, Eric Ulrich, resigned a day after being questioned by prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office who are investigating him for possible organized crime ties and illegal gambling.
Ulrich, 37, a former member of the City Council, submitted his resignation in order to not be a “distracting” element for the Adams administration, the mayor told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Queens.
After a pandemic limitation last year, the NYC marathon expects 50,000 runners this weekend, and soon, a new leader will take over Road Runners, which organizes the race.
The Brooklyn Nets are suspending Kyrie Irving for at least five games without pay, saying they were dismayed by his failure to “unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs.”
The Nets point guard finally released an apology for retweeting an anti-Semitic movie via his Instagram account, though he did continue to say he agrees with some of the points made in the film.
A 33-year-old man was found dead inside the walk-in freezer of a Brooklyn bakery that has supplied a variety of baked goods to national supermarket chains, including Costco, Sam’s Club and Kroger, the police said.
The last remaining defendants in a once-sprawling opioid trial in New York have settled, agreeing to pay over half a billion dollars for their role in fueling the opioid crisis, the state attorney general announced.
A once-popular local bakery chain that ran out of dough nearly a decade ago is returning. Crumbs Bake Shop, the Upper West Side-born enterprise credited for the gourmet cupcake trend nearly 20 years ago, is back in business.
Construction of the first segment of the multi-use Adirondack Rail Trail path has been started between Tupper Lake and Lake Placid in the state’s North Country region.
It may be in the 60s with highs in the 70s predicted for the Capital Region this weekend, but winter is creeping into the Adirondack High Peaks as two hikers found out the hard way in recent days.
Lawmakers pledged to seek reforms in response to a Hearst Newspapers investigation into the use of restraint and seclusion in schools, including crafting new state legislation, pushing for federal standards and boosting training and mental health resources.
While polio is circulating in New York for the first time in decades, hundreds of private K-12 schools continue to flout the state’s immunization requirements, a Times Union analysis of state data shows.
As 2022 winds down, WAMC’s board is preparing to boost the base salary of its president and CEO, Alan Chartock, by more than $100,000 — a raise that would bring his base compensation to roughly $350,000 a year.
A 19-year-old student was stabbed in a parking lot at Hudson Valley Community College during a domestic dispute, police said.
The Dutchess County Board of Elections and its GOP commissioner are being accused of violating a new state law by denying students at Poughkeepsie’s Vassar College a polling place on campus, according to a petition filed in state Supreme Court.
Justin Verlander overcame an early jolt to grit out the World Series win that long eluded him, rookie Jeremy Peña hit a go-ahead home run and the Houston Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies 3-2 last night to head home with a 3-2 lead.
Elon Musk will begin laying off Twitter employees today, according to a companywide email, culling the social media service’s 7,500-person work force a little over a week after completing his blockbuster buyout.
The company didn’t spell out the extent of the cuts. Twitter had more than 7,500 employees at the start of this year, according to a regulatory filing.
Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt, parents of the late Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Moab City Police Department (MCPD) claiming that its officers were negligent and “did not fully investigate” threats prior to her murder.
