Free Republic

Who could have predicted that electing a Dinkins aide whose only calling card was viral videos made by his obnoxious son and junkie daughter running on a 70s platform of class warfare, racial tensions and empowering criminals would backfire?

Bill de Blasio has added two Muslim holidays to the school calendar, but isn’t on board with adding the Hindu festival of Diwali. As usual, this isn’t about diversity, it’s about Muslim Privilege. A spokesman for the Indian community appealed to the mayor to recognize the Hindu holiday.“We are disappointed. We’ve been trying for a long time … It’s very important for the community,” said Dr. Shashi Shah of the Association of Indians in America.But he said he’d move forward with closing schools for Lunar New Year and for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Muslim holy days.“It is complicated in...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is going against the grain yet again. The newly elected mayor says that he will not take part in this year’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade because organizers won’t allow participants to carry gay pride signs, CBS New York reports.

Bill de Blasio is now visibly annoyed at the constant blizzards bombarding New York.Speaking at a press conference this morning, the new mayor repeatedly sighed and expressed his exasperation at Mother Nature, which is set to deliver the fourth significant snowstorm of his tenure later today, with yet more bad weather forecast for later week.“The snowstorm situation is reaaaally getting a little too common,” began Mr. de Blasio as he began update on tonight’s approaching storm.“So,” he added, pausing for a breath, “let’s talk about tonight!”“The next snowstorm,” he continued, again pausing a beat, “will start roughly … between 12...

The first fumble of Super Bowl Sunday belonged to Mayor Bill de Blasio — who dropped the Staten Island Zoo’s groundhog early Sunday morning. De Blasio was trying to handle Staten Island Chuck when the anxious animal squirmed right out of the mayor’s hands and fell on his noggin. “Next year they’ll need a net,” said Ann Jackman, who was at the park with her 14-year-old daughter. “Look how tall he is. Can you imagine falling from that height?”

As his first month as police commissioner under Mayor de Blasio winds down, Bill Bratton is already facing some sobering news — a 33 percent spike in murders across the city. According to the latest statistics released Tuesday, there have been 28 homicides so far this year compared to 21 in the same ­period last year. That puts the city on course for at least one murder a day.

Wait till De Blasio stooge Carmen Farina gets around to really trashing Stuyvesant. There clearly isn’t enough diversity there. But you have to start small. A popular gifted program will get the axe after Ditmas Park school officials chose diversity over exclusivity.Citing a lack of diversity, PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald informed parents in a letter that the Students of Academic Rigor and two other in-house programs would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners.“Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in,” McDonald told parents If McDonald...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Mayor Bill de Blasio may have harshly criticized New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his administration’s recent “bridgegate” scandal, but for one night, at least, it was all water under the bridge.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio may receive the kind of press attention most politicians would kill for, but on Monday he played the supplicant. He traveled to Albany, New York’s capital, to plead for the state government to pass a budget that would permit him to impose the tax plan that was the centerpiece of his campaign. His chief argument is that he needs the tax in order to raise enough money to pay for universal pre-kindergarten. His secondary argument is that he is not asking for a statewide tax, but merely a tax over the same voters who...

New York Governor Cuomo has demanded that those he disagrees with leave New York. New York City Mayor DeBlasio endorses Cuomo's statement "100%". At a memorial after the shooting of Gabby Giffords, Judge Roll, and other bystanders, Obama gave a speech in which he said: And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face...

One week ago today, Governor Cuomo railed against what he called “extreme conservatives” who are “pro-life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay.” He said such persons “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio said he agrees with Cuomo’s comments “100 percent.” He explained, “I interpret his [Cuomo's] remarks to say that an extremist attitude that continues the reality of violence in our communities or an extremist attitude that denies the rights of women, does not represent the views of the people of New York State.” deblasoThe spin won’t work. Who...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a heartfelt speech praising Israel at a private gala event hosted by AIPAC at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan Thursday night, the local website Capital New York reported. According to an edited audio recording obtained by the site (below), de Blasio said that "part of his job description is to defend Israel" and that it is "elemental to being an American...

**SNIP** “The people who are pushing this are from the Working Families Party. De Blasio is married to them.” The Cuomo ally noted the WFP is basically run by the most leftist leaders in the labor movement — the Transport Workers Union, the Communication Workers of America and United Federation of Teachers, among others. **SNIP De Blasio and his allies show no sign of backing down. A labor-backed “UPK coalition” met Friday and vowed to continue a campaign to push the mayor’s tax-the-rich initiative in open defiance of the governor, who opposes it.

A few random news items from around the country: •Dinesh D’Souza, a prominent conservative filmmaker, was indicted for allegedly violating federal campaign-finance laws. The indictment was “the result of a routine review by the FBI of campaign filings with the FEC by various candidates after the 2012 election for United States senator in New York,” said a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office. Routine. A Google search for “liberal filmmaker indicted” did not turn up any liberal filmmakers who have been indicted. •James O’Keefe, a conservative maker of provocative films, said the New York State Department of Labor had taken...

New York City mayors excel at banning everything from salt to carriages, but they are not very good at cleaning up the streets after a snowstorm. There are two ways of looking at any major city; as a mechanical problem of buildings, streets and sewers whose infrastructures need to be maintained or as a social problem of misbehaving people. The mayors of the mechanical problem understand that they need to clean the streets, but the mayors of the social problem think that they have to fix the people. Mayor Bloomberg flubbed the snow challenge badly. Instead of preparing road salt,...

On the looming battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.Just over two years after the inception of Occupy Wall Street, and one year after the corporate media wrote it off as dead, an unabashed progressive, Bill de Blasio, took the movement’s rhetoric and mobilized the 99 percent to give him a landslide victory over four decades of class war against poor and working New Yorkers. Mayor de Blasio’s progressive campaign rhetoric could have come from the Occupy movement’s “human microphone,” and no amount of Koch brothers funded attack ads could derail the zeitgeist that drove de Blasio and a...

As a mainstreamed reverend enjoys access at City Hall, community leaders recognize change; but some still nurse grudges.Two decades ago, Rev. Al Sharpton was the ultimate civic iconoclast, speaking what he called truth to power, organizing rallies and attacking the establishment on behalf of the oppressed. Today, he’s under fire for being too mainstream. Last summer, another prominent black voice, Cornell West, attacked the National Action Network founder in a radio interview as a too-complacent “house negro” of Barack Obama’s “plantation,” failing to hold the president accountable for drone strikes or talk about “Wall Street criminality.” And as he emerges...

The UES wasn’t the only area in Manhattan that wasn’t plowed; in fact, as of 4:00 p.m. yesterday, it is KNOWN that most of the area shown in red in the following map was NOT plowed – not even once: http://project.wnyc.org/election2013/ The traffic on all major avenues in the red area was pretty much at standstill. Now, in fairness, I don’t know if all of the areas in green was plowed but someone ought to know. If the UES wasn’t plowed when, for instance, the UWS was, it’d seem that Kaiser Wilhelm II wasn’t going after just the 1 percenters...

RUSH: De Blasio, already the rich on the Upper East Side are claiming that de Blasio's not plowing their streets to get even with them for being rich. And de Blasio is saying no, no, no, no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I hate you -- and I do -- it has nothing to do with that. It is that our snowplow GPS was tuned to CNN for the Fareed Zakaria show and missed the Upper East Side. We didn't get there. It was just a GPS problem. But it wasn't the fact that I hate...

Twenty one days into his administration New York City Mayor, Bill De Blasio, is already making Mike Bloomberg look good. And, let’s face it, when someone makes Bloomy look like a model of fairness and honesty, things are clearly pretty bad. In fact, this occurred so quickly after De Blasio’s inauguration, I’m beginning to think Bloomberg might have mastered a win for De Blasio in a last-ditch effort to procure a positive legacy for himself after he left office. While Chris Christie faces criticism for his office closing a few lanes on the George Washington Bridge, the New York City...