The Right To Bear (Stupid) Arms

In addition to giving his name to the multi-billion dollar company he founded, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently inadvertently given his name to a new line of colorful firearms decoration. A Wisconsin company that specializes in painting guns, typically camouflage for hunters, now offers a gun painting kit with our Mayor’s name on it. For less than $20, a gun owner can paint their rifle in a brick and graffiti pattern, or use a rainbow buffet of colors to paint handguns.

The company, Lauer Custom Weaponry, said through a press release that the bright colors are meant to help rescue workers and firing range operators locate guns more easily at nighttime or during bad weather etc. However, this doesn’t seem to apply to “Brooklyn Blue.” It rightfully took the mayor’s inflated rhetoric to task and made no apologies for its product line, though it couldn’t resist a shameful plug of its own merchandise in saying that if Bloomberg cared about the safety of police officers, he would mandate that their weapons be coated with products from their company.

No doubt the company is using its product name to criticize our mayor, who is notorious among firearms enthusiasts. Bloomberg’s contempt of the Second Amendment is legendary (his record on the First Amendment is not so hot, either). Bloomberg has railed for even tougher gun control measures, and even staged phony sting operations of lawful, out-of-state gun dealers.

While I count myself among the freedom-loving gun enthusiasts who find Bloomberg’s cockamamie anti-gun crusade disreputable, the company’s product line is a bad idea. Whatever serious uses there are for having guns colored in such a way is lost in the controversy of needling Bloomberg. Such loud colors are too easy a target, whether on the firing range or the more reckless shooting gallery of New York politics.

What’s Good About Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the time of year when Christians commemorate the execution of Jesus Christ. Most New Yorkers look forward to Good Friday because it often means a day off from work or school. The city’s financial markets are mercifully closed today (and will not likely see a miraculous resurrection come Monday), which means I have the day off.

Recently, Muslim groups have asked for the New York City school calendar to be amended to allow days off for Muslim students on holy days. I agree with Mayor Bloomberg in opposing this. Adding more religious holidays to a school schedule that already has days off for Christian and Jewish holidays would send us on a slippery slope to infinite sectarian squabbling. New York taxpayers already make enough allowances to religious holidays and exemptions, probably more than we should. If you want to keep your children out of school for a religious observance, fine. Don’t expect the rest of the city to put everything on hold for you. That goes for Orthodox Christians and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and any and all other superstitious kvetchers.

Infidel and heretic that I am, I spent today at home, avoiding work. Did I inadvertently participate in a religious observance? I don’t know, but it won’t keep me out of hell.

St. Patrick's Day Is For Amateur Drunks And Politicians

Another St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, and New York will be filled with amateur drunks drinking overpriced beer in crappy bars. I used to love St. Patrick’s Day, but I have yet to find something worthwhile and Irish to do on St. Patrick’s Day that you can’t do the rest of the year, other than watch or march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Maybe this year, those people who come to the city to get drunk and wear tacky green gewgaws will instead visit the Irish Hunger Memorial or the Irish Arts Center, but I wouldn’t bet a pint of Guinness on it.

This St. Patrick’s Day in New York will be different in one way: there will be fewer politicians at this year’s parade. The reason: New York’s new Governor David Paterson is being sworn in. He’s sensible enough not to flush his career down the toilet on high-priced hookers, and that’s progress here in the Empire State.

Geraldine Ferraro: (Politically In)Correct New Yorker

The latest casualty in the Clinton vs. Obama war through campaign surrogates is former New York Congresswoman and Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. She resigned from her position on the Clinton campaign after coming under fire for an assertion that Barack Obama has been helped in his primary fight, in party, by his race.

The controversy stems from an interview Ferraro gave to The Daily Breeze, a small California newspaper. It is a fairly innocuous comment, not without its own bias in favor of Hillary Clinton, but certainly not controversial to the point of deserving attack or earning apology. Ferraro last ran for office in 1998 when she ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate but found herself losing to a younger, more ambitious and less experienced rival. She has been out of office long enough to speak her mind freely, and the controversy says more about the sorry state of today’s racial politics than it does about Ferraro.

Had Ferraro been an Obama supporter and not a Clinton supporter, we likely never would have heard of these remarks unless we perchance came across the interview and read it. But Ferraro is a Clinton supporter and was a member of her financing committee, and the Obama campaign trounced on her words. To believe the Obama devotees, a liberal Democrat who has supported every racial polemic of the American liberal left is a mean-spirited old coot trying to demean a fellow Democrat because of his race. It’s a preposterous proposal.

And Obama’s campaign doesn’t need these kinds of tactics. Obama has a broad base of support among Democratic voters anyway. Trying to depict a lifelong liberal like Geraldine Ferraro as a racist will only hurt them among the white, working-class voters that they theoretically want to win over from Clinton’s camp. Which makes me think that perhaps this was a Clinton tactic all along: was Ferraro sent to make those comments on purpose with the idea to get the Obama camp to pull another race card? I wouldn’t put anything past New York’s junior Senator.

It’s a sad day when Pat Buchanan is offering Democrats more sage analysis of their primary season then their own leaders, but everyone wanting to deny that the vote has and will likely continue to break along racial lines in diverse states is blind to the facts.

I Have Wet My Pants

The pants I wore when I met my mother and stepfather for lunch today are thoroughly soaked through. No, I did not forget myself and wet my pants in a pathetic display of infantile relief; I am simply a victim of today’s weather.

New York City was pounded by rain last night and today. In addition to the regular troubles of precipitation, the urban dweller contends with having to walk more frequently in a downpour than their suburban or rural counterparts, who more frequently bear the brunt of having to drive in the rain.

City pedestrians must be on the lookout for giant puddles, the umbrellas of fellow pedestrians, rain that is blown sideways by the wind, and, the dreaded puddle splashes by passing automobiles. I am glad to say I artfully dodged most of these obstacles, but have little to show for it in the way of dry articles of clothing. Wind-blown rain is the culprit of most of my unwanted moistness; and there is little that even the most astute New Yorker can do to avoid that.

It was perfect weather for staying indoors, watching DVDs, and catching up on work that’s been piling up. I’m sorry to say my progress in rainy day activities has been lacking.

But I did manage to walk into the Bronx and back in order to take Metro North trains to Yonkers for lunch with my mother et al. and back. That is the extent of my adventures today. I wouldn’t count on much more going out of doors tomorrow either.

In The Midst Of A Dry Month

This is not a dry month in terms of precipitation. In fact, March in New York started with a wet snow storm that had the face-wincing annoyance of rain with all the sidewalk slippery benefits of snow.

This is a dry month, or dry month and a half, for me. I decided in early February to not drink until St. Patrick’s Day. So far I’ve been doing well. I had a beer with friends on February 1 but since then I haven’t had any alcoholic beverages.

To be honest, as much as I enjoy drinking, I don’t really miss it. I still hang out with friends and go to and play punk rock shows, I’m saving a lot of money and I feel better the next day. I was able to drive people home from a show a few weeks ago because I wasn’t drinking and no one else had to worry about who was going to drive. The problem was solved.

I only hope I can continue to cut back. I tend to drink too much at times to the point of blacking out big portions of an evening. If this can teach me moderation, I’ll be happy, and hopefully have more money.

Please don’t think I’m going to become some kind of Alcoholics Anonymous member or Straight Edge devotee. No way. Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult for people who want to replace their dependency on alcohol with a dependency on other people. There’s nothing dignified about being ensnared in a religious organization that doesn’t have the balls to call itself a religious organization. And as for the Straight Edge scene: I’m not cutting out all alcohol, and if I was, I don’t see adopting an identity over not drinking alcohol any more sensible than adopting an identity over not eating anchovies.

Either way, I’ll still see you at the bar, but I may be sober for the evening.