Sunday Music: Cold Cold Heart

This may date back to 1950, in the prehistoric days of television. But, still, this is wonderful. The singer needs no introduction.

69th Street Key Food Delayed

I called Key Food and they said that the 69th Street location is now scheduled to open in January 2009.

I am back from sunny Israel and will resume blogging soon.

Tonight, I expect to write on the major cuts in subway and bus service --the elimination of the W train and X27 and X28 buses, and the elimination of M train service to west Brooklyn, and how this will impact Bay Ridge and surrounding neighborhoods.

Hi from Tel Aviv, Israel

Alec Baldwin said he'd leave the country if Bush was elected, but he wasn't man enough to do it

I said that I would leave the country if Obama was elected, and I have just backed it up. I flew to Tel Aviv Friday night, and am now in a small hotel on Allenby Street in town.

Now, it is possible that I will return to Brooklyn some day (perhaps a week from now) but for now, I'm going to hang out in and near Tel Aviv.

I'm very tired, so that's it for now. I bid you adieu from my exile!!

Election Day In Bay Ridge and across America

The lines at Bay Ridges' P.S. 102 were longer than normal, but manageable. I had the great fortune of not having to wait in line at all. No lines at the 83 Election District as oft 715 am.
(click photo to enlarge)







This is one year I'll be swimming against the tide. The Republicans made an immense error by not choosing John McCain in 2000. Eight years later, the country is set to make the same mistake. A fake reformer will be chosen over a real reformer.





Finally, a long line at a Wall Street Manhattan polling station at 830 am.

Don't forget to go to Starbucks today. If you tell them you voted, you get a free cup of coffee!

The Audacity of Hope : Can John McCain Win After All?

Yes We Can!

Why McCain? John McCain Returns to Hanoi (1985)

John McCain has always served his country.

After five years of torture in Vietnam, he had the strength of character to leave it all behind him. He was instrumental in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Vietnam. He could have stopped it by lifting a finger.

I respect John McCain more than any living American politician.

This Tuesday, you will have the opportunity to vote for this man for president. Please take advantage of that opportunity.

Do the right thing, Bay Ridge. Vote McCain!

Most of NYC votes Democrat reflexively, without much thought. Bay Ridge has often been, along with Staten Island, a light in a sea of knee-jerk Democrats. We often --not always, but often --vote Republican. I hope that's the case this year.

The 2008 election takes place under brutal economic conditions. People are scared, and they have every right to be scared. They hold GW Bush to be largely responsible for the bad economy, and some have turned against McCain as he is from the same Republican Party. This is unsound thinking.

Bush - and nearly all the free spending Republican Congress - deserve great blame for the economic crisis. But so does the Democratic Congressional delegation, which spent and spent and protected Fannie Mae and in many cases accepted their money.

Alan Greenspan deserves blame too-- he served under both President GW Bush and under President Clinton, and had the same economic policies throughout the entire period.

The blame for the wreck belongs to both major parties.

There is only one reformer in this race, and he is John McCain. He sounded the alarm on Fannie Mae in 2006"

McCain has spent his entire career attacking the role of money in politics- Obama first said that he would accept public financing, then he went back on his word, possibly destroying that system. McCain kept his word- he said that he would take public financing. Which has left him outgunned by an Obama who has accepted a torrent of money from all kinds of people.

McCain served his country with great honor in Vietnam for over five years. When faced with an easy way out of the Hanoi Hilton ( which I have visited ), he chose the hard but correct path. Compare this to the career of the community organizer who took money from a man in Bill Ayers, a man who tried to kill NY police officers and US military men and who said he wasn't sorry about it one bit. Of course, Obama didn't know who Ayers or Dorhn were. He knew how to collect Ayers' money, he knew how to get to the living room in Ayers' house but this graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law didn't know nothin about Ayers' past. Obama, you're a liar.

Obama's plans to increase taxes are the worst possible tactic in dealing with a recession. McCain is a " JFK Democrat " who knows that the way to get the economy going is to lower taxes strategically--not to soak the so-called rich in order to give welfare checks to those who do not pay federal income taxes at present.

The issue of taxes is especially important in tax burdened New York City. People here pay very high Federal, State and Local taxes plus Social Security taxes as it is. We make more money than those in other parts of the US, but we also have higher costs for most things. Any New Yorker with a job who votes for Obama or the Democrats is voting against the interests of their own families.

The choice this year could not be clearer. You can vote for a cipher with bad friends, one who conceals much about his past, or you can vote for a man with a long history as a political and economic reformer.

New York will vote Democrat, but I hope that Bay Ridge and the rest of America does the right thing and votes for John McCain.

John McCain. Best for Bay Ridge. Best for America.

The Phantom approves of this mesage.