Update: Oreo, Dog Thrown Off Building, Was Euthanized
People Wait For Tomorrow's UWS Apple Store Opening
Cheap Chicken Wing Deal Ruined by Gunslinging Teens
FIT Students Busted For Drug Dealing Get Probation
Your Elevator Safety Week Guide: Dancing, "Rapping" Cat
The words were flying between Governor Eliot Spitzer and State Senator Majority Leader Joseph Bruno yesterday, when the two had a crazy fight. Highlights:
- Bruno yelling, "I'm not going to be bullied, I'm not going to be steamrolled."Both Bruno's and Spitzer's confirmed the fight, which also included Bruno lashing out when Spitzer told him to "get serious" about the budget (Spitzer is making big cuts, Bruno and Silver wants to add more funding). The Post says lots of swears were used and that one of Spitzer's secretaries ran out of the room!
- Spitzer yelling, "I'm the governor and I'm not going to be insulted."
- Sources say Bruno said, Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens; is “so far up (the governor’s a**) he can’t see." (Bruno may have also included Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver with Smith in Spitzer's a**.)
The fight may have stemmed from Bruno's criticism of Spitzer during a radio show, where the former boxer said (mockingly?), "Gov. Spitzer walks on water, Gov. Spitzer is infallible, Gov. Spitzer can't do anything wrong. Gov. Spitzer is the reincarnation of everything that is good and holy and Bruno is evil." Damn! And to quote a commenter on the Times Union's Capitol Confidential blog says, "Jeez guys, if you’re going to scream at each other, do it in public - we paid for this show."
And the short-lived truce where Spitzer and the hospital workers union, SEIU 1199, would stop running the ads (you know which ones we're talking about) was called off, as the union's ads slamming Spitzer for the hospital cuts were back on the air.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Fight, fight, fight! Fight, fight, fight!
The Spitzer and Bruno shoooooow!!!
I agree! But ?I would prefer to see them fight in a "Greek-themed" Arena like that movie "Gladiator" with Russel Crowe . That would be a fight for the ages !
Perhaps they should shchedule a time at the Weehawken Dueling Grounds.
Go Eliot! Steamroll that piece of shit Bruno right into the dirt! That's what we elected you for.
I agree with Spud. Spitzer needs to kick some serious a** in Albany. That's what we hired him for.
Hey Bruno: STFU!
100% agreed... take down sheldon silver too while your at it spitzer!
The real tragedy is that voters might fail to realize the hospital fight is being waged not by workers but by two millionares defending their greed-inflated salaries from Spitzer's reforms. Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, was the man with the money behind the recently-pulled ads, who got the attention he wanted and is now sending workers to the front like so many puppets. Ask yourself: How often do real workers with a grievance have the money to blitzkrieg a newly appointed governor with TV ads? Why has it taken so little time to move from silence toward Pataki, a corrupt governor who hired his own nephew to rebuild the Javits Center and helped destroy affordable housing in New York, to outrage toward the first pro-worker reformist we've had as governor since Cuomo? Where were the ads for the American Airlines workers cheated out of their retirement? The answer: nowhere, because the real poor can't afford them. When have you ever seen such a well-orchestrated campaign emerge so quickly against an actual threat to wages and patients' rights? Never, because real workers are caught scrambling for their pittance. And why would workers not have arisen against Pataki before Spitzer? Could it be that the wealthy are once again spinning negative publicity to further their own incredibly selfish ends? It's time to realize that the anti-Spitzer campaign is yet another case of anti-progressive sabotage, a way to counteract the effects of a free election. The real motive is to keep Spitzer from redirecting money away from wealthy bosses and toward better patient care, and perhaps to stop the man we elected from doing precisely what we elected him to do.