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Roger Simon posts on the ludicrous de Blasio inauguration.
Back when I was a kid, I used to think Republicans were the party of the rich — white guys who belonged to country clubs and drove Fleetwoods. Of course, that was long before I heard of the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison — white guys who fly Gulf Streams and have mansions in Gstaad. (Well, Buffett lives a little more circumspectly.) Or went to work in Hollywood, land of Jeff Katzenberg, David Geffen, Oprah Winfrey, etc. There’s rich and then there’s REALLY RICH, if you know what I mean. And a fair number, maybe the majority, of the latter are Democrats and profess to be liberals or progressives or something. (And there’s Fidel Castro, who is evidently a billionaire, and professes to be a communist.)
These days, when everybody’s insurance agent or accountant drives around in a Mercedes because interest rates are so low and why not, when it comes to true conspicuous consumption, when it comes to really being the true modern plutocrats, the Democrats are now the party of the rich — Sheldon Adelson excepted, of course.
So when I watched the broadcast of the inauguration of New York City’s new mayor Bill de Blasio with all the talk of income equality and two New Yorks blablabla, all I could do is snort — that is after checking out the cut of the expensive topcoats on De Blasio and Bill Clinton. Good schmeck, I believe they used to call it in the Garment District.
But whatever they called it, the entire event, including Harry Belafonte’s comments straight out of the Third International, smacked or schmecked of high comedy. Income inequality — my fat fanny! These guys (and girls) can’t be serious. …
Similar thoughts from Seth Mandel.
While it’s tempting for politicians to interpret an election victory as a mandate that aligns with their personal priorities over those of the electorate, the disconnect is especially glaring in the case of Bill de Blasio. The new mayor of New York City was sworn in yesterday in a downright bizarre spectacle. During a procession of speeches, the New York City of 2013-14 was notably absent to make room for the New York City of the progressives’ fevered imaginations, completely at odds with how New Yorkers generally view their home.
A majority of black and Hispanic New Yorkers believe race relations in their city are “generally good.” Yet the chaplain who gave yesterday’s invocation claimed the city was a “plantation.” New York has seen a steady drop in the murder rate–to historic lows, in fact–for over a decade at the same time as its incarceration rate has plummeted. Yet de Blasio’s inauguration featured a speech by Harry Belafonte in which the crowd was treated to his false depiction of the city: “While it is encouraging to know that the statistics have indicated a recent drop in our city’s murder rate, New York alarmingly plays a tragic role in the fact that our nation has the largest prison population in the world.”
But demonstrably false progressive propaganda on race and crime are just the opening acts. The main event, of course, is income inequality. …
City Journal has more.
Ahistorical anger and slow-witted oafishness were front and center on the steps of City Hall New Year’s Day, as Mayor Bill de Blasio took his ceremonial oath of office. There was significant irony, too, even if it wasn’t quite so obvious.
Harry Belafonte’s bitterness; a black pastor’s fantastical ramblings on race relations; Public Advocate Letitia James’s embarrassing presentation of Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child from Brooklyn; the seething dismissal of Mike Bloomberg and his real accomplishments—they’re all part of the Inauguration Day record now, and there’s not much new to be said about them.
Except perhaps for this: if nothing else, New Yorkers got a glimpse of how leaders of the de Blasio coalition really think. By and large, they are new to the big tent; before de Blasio’s ascension, nobody cared what they thought about anything, and so it never occurred to them to hold their tongues. Certainly they didn’t Wednesday, and the new mayor’s implicit acceptance of the ugliness was sad and ominous. The speakers represent a large part of the de Blasio base, and his refusal to admonish them sent an unhappy message of its own: stand by for more. …
John Fund says even the NY Times had trouble stomaching the leftist blech.
Bill de Blasio’s inauguration as New York mayor is already in the history books as perhaps the rudest transfer of power for a major U.S. political office anyone can remember. A parade of speakers trashed outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg and delivered doses of divisive racial rhetoric.
It was all too much for even the New York Times’ editorial board, which has swooned over all things de Blasio for months. In the Times’ editorial today it praised de Blasio for articulating an “ambitious, admirable agenda” at his inauguration. But it then laced into the speakers he allowed to share the podium with him for a series of “backward-looking speeches both graceless and smug.” It singled out Letitia James, the new public advocate, who “made a prop of a 12-year-old girl named Dasani, who had to hold the Bible and Ms. James’ hand as . . . Ms. James turned her into Exhibit A of an Inauguration Day prosecution: the People v. Mayor Bloomberg.”
The Times also zinged other speakers for “pointless and tacky haranguing,” especially radical activist Harry Belafonte for making the “utterly bogus claim” that New York’s prison population was growing and its justice system was “deeply Dickensian.” …
And a card carrying left media type, Peter Beinart says all this is making the Dems the party of John Edwards. It’s quite something when someone like Beinart is making fun of these folks.
In his inaugural address Wednesday, incoming New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to establish an intellectual pedigree for his focus on economic inequality. He invoked Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Smith, Frances Perkins, Fiorello La Guardia, Jacob Riis, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, and Harry Belafonte. It reminded me of when Democrats, eager to prove their national-security bona fides, tell audiences they hail from the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. As if there wasn’t some other Democrat after Kennedy who dabbled at war and peace, some guy from Texas.
De Blasio’s speech was a bit like that. He left out the politician who more than any other kindled the Democrats’ renewed interest in economic inequality because that politician has been airbrushed from Democratic Party history. His name is John Edwards.
Edwards, of course, was not the first national politician to decry the gap between rich and poor. …
… Now, of course, in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren, and Pope Francis, economic inequality has become motherhood and apple pie for Democrats. Obama will reportedly make it a centerpiece of his final years in office. Meanwhile, John Edwards, having endured more public disgrace than any recent American politician not named Anthony Weiner, has launched a small plaintiff’s law firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. He recently told The News & Observer that he hopes “to give regular people who have been treated unfairly a chance against really powerful opponents and well-funded opponents.” Some things never change.
Jennifer Rubin has 2014 predictions.
There will be no final deal with Iran in six months.
Sen. Max Baucus’s early retirement will not secure his Montana Senate seat for Democrats.
Republicans will win a Senate seat in either New Hampshire, Iowa or Michigan.
Republican governors in Florida and Pennsylvania will lose reelection bids.
The president’s State of the Union address will be too long, partisan and boring, prompting calls to go back to submitting the SOTU in writing only. …
The cartoonists have fun with the globalony touring ship stuck in Antarctic ice. The US Coast Guard is sending the Polar Star to break the two ships out.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) has requested the US Coast Guard’s Polar Star icebreaker to assist the vessels MV Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long which are beset by ice in CommonwealthBay.
The US Coast Guard has accepted this request and will make Polar Star available to assist.
The Polar Star has been en route to Antarctica since 3 December, 2013 – weeks prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice in CommonwealthBay. The intended mission of the Polar Star is to clear a navigable shipping channel in McMurdo Sound to the National Science Foundation’s Scientific Research Station. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel and other goods to the station. The Polar Star will go on to undertake its mission once the search and rescue incident is resolved. …