Let me ask you something …
• With the election tighter than a Kardashian’s pedal-pushers, how d’ya feel, knowing the next president of the United States will be determined by that tiny percentage of still-undecideds who, according to poll after poll, are either disinterested in, or just plain ignorant of, the candidates’ positions, issues, etc. (thank you, Electoral College!)?
• That governor who seems satisfied with one delay after another in deciding the natural gas drilling question (how’s about a study to assess the impact of the previous study, OK?), might he be the same governor who refused to even hear that it would take weeks to repair roads chewed apart by Hurricane Irene?
• Tell me, if Mitt Romney were the offender, do you think that PBS’ Sesame Workshop and NBC News would be so low-key in their “demands” that the Obama campaign cease and desist in its use of Big Bird and White House Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, respectively, in its television spots?
• Was it not a thing of beauty, that statement from Andrew Cuomo upon hearing that Pedro Espada, who accused the guv of political treachery in the criminal case against him, was caving in, Cuomo saying he would happily give Espada the last word just so long as it was “Guilty”?
• Now that Derek Jeter has unloaded his NYC bachelor pad for $15.5M, any chance that the future Hall of Famer left behind any of those “goodie bags” loaded with Yankees souvenirs, including an official, Jeter-autographed baseball, bags that he gave to female visitors who would spend some time there?
• Need further evidence of bias after a local TV reporter does a story on Monday’s demonstration in favor of natural gas drilling and 80 percent of her opus is devoted to those who oppose it — one short pro-drilling sound bite followed by four anti-bites — and that’s supposed to be good, responsible reporting?
• Forget instant replay; how about guide dogs for the umps who blew that call at second base in Game 2 of the ALCS, helping the Tigers to a pivotal win over the Yankees — the pinstripers down two at home — and the sight-challenged genius who got it all wrong in Game 2 of the NLCS, gifting the Giants over the Cards.
• In the wake of a New York Post “exclusive” claiming state lawmakers put in for $165-per-diems even when they are NOT in Albany, wouldn’t we be better off if we paid them the cash for staying away?
• Was I the only one afraid to turn the channel to check on the Yankees’ score during the veep debate, fearful that, when I turned back, Joe Biden would be laughing derisively at me for even the momentary diversion?
• Could someone tell that young, local TV reporter that Pedro Espada never was “one of the most powerful members of the Legislature,” the weasel’s only whiff of power coming in that embarrassing, unholy alliance with the Republicans, followed by his extortion of a meaningless leadership post from fellow Democrats?
• How much of this political correctness can we suffer: A self-published Canadian author comes up with a sanitized version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” in which all references to Santa’s pipe are obliterated (I’m canceling my subscription to the Troy Sentinel newspaper, which first anonymously published the classic poem in 1823)?
• Ever notice how flummoxed all those sports types — athletes and commentators alike — get when choosing the correct grammatical case for pronouns, so they always choose the subjective or the nominative as in “the catcher tossed the ball to I” because they remember being scolded as kids for too often incorrectly using the objective “me?”
• With pols fighting over the fate of Albany’s are-we-there-yet? convention center, and with Albany County’s brilliant, proposed 9 percent tax hike, and with the convention center authority having quietly amassed a $2 million kitty from the bed tax, think the pols might be tempted by that “kitty” that’s meant to help pay for the convention complex?
John McLoughlin is a freelance columnist and a veteran Capital Region journalist now at NewsChannel13. Opinions expressed in his column are his own and not necessarily the newspaper’s. Reach him at [email protected]
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