Barber’s longtime agent Mark Lepselter thinks that the media should lay
off their new colleague. “Half the people that throw darts couldn’t
take it themselves,” he said.

Unlike his predecessors, the loquacious Barber made his private
thoughts about his former team very public. He wrote that Giants head
coach Tom Coughlin took the joy out of football. He disparaged quarterback Eli Manning’s leadership abilities.
Then he sat back and watched his draconian former coach with his
comical quarterback win Super Bowl XLII.  According to the New York
tabloids, the dramatic turn of events has left Barber with egg on his face.

Barber’s perceived humiliation has fueled speculation that the Today Show
host is pondering a comeback. Tampa Bay reportedly had interest in
Barber last fall, and Tiki to Tampa makes sense given the Buccaneers’
questions at tailback and the presence of Tiki’s twin brother Ronde, a
veteran Bucs defender.

But Barber’s agent says there is no truth to the Barber family football
reunion. “That’s a fantastic rumor, but there is just no truth to it.”
Lepselter said. “I don’t think Tiki has touched a weight in a year.”

Fans and the media have been so quick to turn on a player perceived to
have thrown his teammates under the bus, the fact that Tiki was
absolutely right about the faults of the 2006 Giants has been
completely overlooked.

There have been so many stories about Tom Coughlin’s new attitude
and approach that you’d think Mitt Romney coached the Giants. The
Coughlin that Tiki knew was told by new general manager Jerry Reese to
lighten up or lose his job, just weeks after Barber retired rather than
face another year of Coughlin’s soul crushing practice schedule.

Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning threw only one interception in the playoffs,
a shocking turnaround for a quarterback who led the league in
interceptions during the regular season. Manning’s transition from
disinterested dauphin to ice-blooded assassin was not complete until
David Tyree caught a football with his head.  

The coach and quarterback who are taking a victory lap through the
Tri-State area are simply better at their jobs than they where when
Barber took off his pads for the last time. The improvements that
helped the Giants win the Super Bowl were not evident a year ago, to
Tiki or anyone else.

As an analyst and studio host, Barber still has a lot to learn. But as
an athlete Barber had a lot left in the tank when he retired after the
2006 season. Starting all 16 games for the second consecutive year,
Barber finished with 1662 yards rushing, and over 2000 all purpose
yard. He carried a 2006 Giant team with a suspect passing game and an
injury riddled defense all the way to the playoffs.
Despite the obvious tread still left on his tires, Barber has committed
himself to learning his new position as thoroughly as he mastered his old one.

“Tiki is fully entrenched in the media business,” Lepselter said.

Retiring when he did, Barber joined a growing list of running backs
–football’s most punishing position – to leave the game on their own
terms, and with their own knee cartilage. Robert Smith, the Minnesota
Vikings all time leading rusher, left the game at 28, right
after his 2000 Vikings were vaporized, 41-0, by Tiki’s Giants in the
NFC Championship game. Hall of Famer Barry Sanders retired at 30, a
year or a year and half away from breaking the NFL’s all time rushing
record. Dissatisfaction with their organizations contributed to both
Smith and Sanders’ early exits, but both men also walk without a limp.

Barber is understandably burned by the criticism he has received from
Giants fans. Always undersized for his position, Barber is used to
taking a clean shot, then getting up and going back to work.

“It speaks to Tiki’s intestinal fortitude to just go on with his life,” Lepselter said.

Opinions about Bloomberg’s electoral viability of are like, well, let’s just say everybody has them, including us.
But the whole discussion of a possible third candidate gets my inner
electoral college geek all hot and bothered. If you play around with
the Electoral College map long enough (and you can play around with it
to your hearts content over at www.270towin.com) you will soon run up
against a Constitutionally inescapable fact. If no candidate receives
at least 270 electoral votes – a majority of the electoral college –
then the United States House of Representatives selects the President,
while the U.S. Senate selects the Vice President. Ready for a little
election break-down? Let’s go.

It has happened before, in 1876 Ruther B. Hayes lost the popular vote and the electoral college, but was installed by Congress after he agreed to prematurely end Reconstruction. Martin Van Buren, the first President from New York, also ascended to the oval office by the grace of Congress.

Ostensibly throwing the race into the House would kill Bloomberg’s Presidential hopes, regardless of his share of the poplar vote. One expects Democrats who are in control of the House would select the Democratic nominee for President.

But it is not that simple. The twelfth amendment specifies that each “state” shall have one vote for President in the House. This means that all the New York Congressmen put together have just as much voting authority as the solitary Represnetative from Delaware. The key numbers become the partisan numbers in each individual state, not the overall balance of power between Republicans and Democrats in the House.

Thanks to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the Democrats have a majority of congressmen in precisely 25 states. The Republicans control 23 states, with two states, Kansas and Mississippi, split evenly down the middle. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the two people who could decide the 2008 Presidential election. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, and Dennis Moore of Kansas. Both Taylor and Moore are conservative “blue dog” (http://www.house.gov/ross/BlueDogs ) democrats.

Should Republicans induce a stalemate in the House by flipping two conservative Democrats, the next Constitutional provision for electing the President is … managed anarchy. The House must come to a decision on the President, there is no other option, turning the Constitution into the NHL playoffs where the teams keep skating until somebody scores a goal.

Faced with a deadlocked Congress and a nation already incensed that their popular vote didn’t matter, that is the time when politicians usually rush to compromise. With Democratic Representatives unwilling to move towards the Republican nominee and vice versa, could that be the point where an independent candidate rises to the forefront as a compromise candidate allowing both sides to save face? They say a good compromise is one where neither side is happy.

And then for Vice President, the U.S. Senate gets involved …

On its face, a candidate releasing a DVD about themselves a month before the first primary is hardly surprising. If this were an Italian going to Palermo, nobody would pay it much note. However, you might have heard that Mr. Obama is African American. And that Kenya is a country populated largely by black people. So I expect this will touch off another round of “Obama and the black vote” debates. Critics will say he’s not doing enough, or doing too much, sometimes in the very same article.

New York City Councilman Charles Barron has already said the only relevant thing about Obama’s race: “He said he supports the black community. He said he’s been black all his life.”

Presidential candidates sometimes release holiday DVDs. People who have been black all their life sometimes have family and ancestry that can be traced back to places Kenya. If you are black and running for president, sometimes you come up with this.  It’s as American as apple pie.

Mistake number one: Cowardice.  The moment Eliot Spitzer started taking heat, his fellow Democrats ran for cover like Sir Robin in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.  Of course, if Democrats are folding under pressure from opinion polls, you can bet Hillary Clinton is somewhere out front, method-acting as a pretzel. 
FYI, there are Republicans out there that still, against all manner of
fact and logic, support the war in Iraq. The concept of a fire line was
invented by Republicans.  Democrats?  We like water.

Democrats should have supported the most powerful liberal governor in
the country. Eight years of George W. Bush has left the country on
bended knee, begging for somebody to stand up to the Republican party.
Whether you agree with the plan or not, Spitzer came to this debate
ready to fight. His fellow Democrats came ready to run, ready to
equivocate. Democrats were afraid of the issue. Not only did they lose,
but they managed to alienate every possible constituency in the
process: soccer moms, legal immigrants, die hard liberals, social
conservatives, everyone. You know why? Because cowards never win.

Mistake number two: Compromise.  Once Spitzer compromised to a three-tier system, the proposal was dead in the water.
The compromise was a signal to opponents that they could stop the
proposal, and wound Eliot Spitzer in the process.  Spitzer’s poll
number are now at historic lows,
which means more to his enemies that the specifics of any particular
proposal. His agenda is stalled and despite winning just a year ago
with 69 percent of the vote, he has no mandate. Thanks Mr. Compromise.

But the compromise plan was not just a strategic mistake. Americans,
even New York-Americans, say they want their leaders to compromise, but
time and time again we vote for the most stubborn politician in the
bunch. You can talk about George W. Bush, you can talk about Theodore
Roosevelt, but America consistently votes for men and women who stand
their ground. Compromise is what intelligent people do, it helps you
govern effectively.  But we don’t vote for intelligent people who can
govern effectively, we vote for the guy with the biggest testicles.

Mistake number three: Ceding the Debate.  As usual, Democrats
accepted the premise of various questions that made no logical sense.
Democrats should never have answered “does the plan pose a threat to
national security” question.  They should have stayed on message and
said, “I think the war in Iraq poses the greatest threat to national
security” or “National security has nothing to do with the
documentation of those who use our roadways” or “Damn it Jim, I’m a
doctor not a terrorist.”  I mean, a guy who was on the 9/11 commission supports this plan.

“National security” does not mean “whatever Republicans think will help
them win elections.”  Is there any liberal left that can articulate
this fact?

The next false choice Democrats idiotically accepted were the people
running around saying the plan will allow illegal immigrants to
purchase guns, if they lie about citizenship.
Breaking news people: You can get a gun in this country if you lie!
FYI, you can also get a gun in this country if you: live in Texas and
are all the way out of your mother’s womb; have an Internet connection;
have $10 and know a guy named Pooky.

Compromise, cowardice and ceding a debate, these have been the markers
of the Democratic party for far too long. Terrorism and gun ownership
have nothing to do with immigration. But, once again, Democrats
couldn’t help themselves from acting like Democrats. They employed the
classic donkey strategy, “My tail fell off … again.”

The critics are right insofar as the club does not have an African-American or Latino member. However criticizing current and former members of the Harmonie Club based on one indisputable fact is intellectually soft. The Harmonie Club is a historically Jewish club started by Jews who were not allowed to join all-white social clubs. Jews were being discriminated against, so they started their own thing.  That sounds like a triumph over discrimination rather than part of a racial problem.

Now that Jewish members of the Harmonie Club can gain access to all manner of exclusive social groups, does that mean they should ditch their all-Jewish club and join up with the very organizations that discriminated against them until approximately five minutes ago?

Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell has made a big deal about the club’s “discriminatory membership policies.”.  Club members predictably claim that they are open to ethnic diversity in their club. Who knows if they’re racially tolerant  They can’t prove that they’re open to other ethnicities because, far as anyone can tell, there just aren’t a whole lot of other minorities dying to be a part of a Jewish club. Interpreting the lack of African-American or Latino members as indicative of nothing more than a lack of African-American or Latino interest, also has the virtue of making sense.

Even if we ignore Ockham’s Razor and label the Harmonie Club a racist venture, so what? We have to balance the public interest in making an organization or institution open to all against the private interest of exclusivity, elitism,and generally feeling like you’re better than everybody else. If the Harmonie Club admits only Jewish people, that hurts me as an African American how exactly? Could a Jewish friend of mine go to the Harmonie Club and make a contact that leads to a job that I couldn’t get because I was excluded? Sure, it could happen.  In related news, I’ve never been denied an opportunity because of my religion.

I don’t take offense every time somebody receives a benefit that I do not. I take offense when I am denied a benefit to which I am entitled. A bunch of rich Jewish guys sitting around talking about whatever rich people talk about might be discriminatory, but there’s no harm. No harm, no foul.

Well, Marx was wrong but be thankful: The ability of low paid, ill-treated workers to collectively organize and fight against their employers strengthens our system, even when it leads to high prices, poor service and an inefficient distribution of human resources across the marketplace.

And so, for the greater good of all labor organizations, I politely ask the Taxi Worker’s Alliance to please go away and never, ever, come back.

A labor strike is fundamentally a bluff, and NYC called the TWA’s bluff months ago. This week’s "taxi strike" was the equivalent of going all in when your opponent has you beat on the board. Most people didn’t even know there was a strike on Monday until they hopped into a (readily available) cab and found out that the contingency price gouging plan was back in effect.

All labor is hurt when one union grossly misuses the power to strike and is utterly ineffective in the process. The striking workers accomplished nothing yesterday, other than ensuring a higher payday for the many drivers that did show up for work.

This is nothing new. Taxi drivers have been losing battles with the City for nearly a decade in this city.  Remember when Giuliani – the Stalin of crushing low income dissent in the marketplace – threatened reprisals if they walked out, and then sent in the police to break them when cabbies did protest in 1998?

Taxi drivers will keep getting stomped on until their labor leaders come up with better strategies than one day strikes that nobody knows or cares about.  The TWA needs to take a lesson from the Broadway stagehands. If they strike, they’ll do it at Christmas and bring the entire industry to a halt. Right now, the TWA is part of the problem for taxi drivers, and their bungling makes it that much harder for other labor organization to fight City Hall.

Boring.

Come on people, take a stand! Tell the City that the subway is great because it’s fast and cheap and more reliable than any other transit option.  Or tell the MTA to get its act together because the subway is overcrowded, boiling hot and makes you question whether or not “soap” is an invention of your dreams. Whatever you think, please remove the fence wedged between your cheeks and voice an opinion.

Cs are for suburbanites. Cs are for sun addled Californians.  In NYC, we are supposed have real, strong opinions about the institutions that shape our lives.

And I don’t want to hear people with basic high school math skills that surpass my own tell me that when half the people vote "A" and the other half vote "F" then the average result is C. If the 4 Train riders can’t come to a general consensus on their shared experience, then they all fail the test of paying attention to what’s going down about them.

Here’s your chance to tell the MTA which lines are good and which lines are inhumane. If all we can come up with is “whatever,” then I don’t see how we can credibly carp about being shoved off the rush hour 7 Train again. Subway riders unite!

If Assemblyman Joseph Lentol has his way, hanging a noose in public will be another offense under New York’s Hate Crimes Act.  According to Lentol, “Displaying a noose can have very real emotional effect on people. The law should recognize that this is, without question, a hate crime and protect people from it.”

Do we really need the law to protect people from “very real” emotional effects?  Sticks, stones and being dropped from a 15-foot tree branch with a rope tied around my neck—these are the insults that I wish legal protection from.  The law is a poor protector against name-calling and historic symbolism.  Legislating against specific forms of hateful expression  does nothing to address the underlying causes of hate, and at best just encourages fear-mongers to come up with ever more creative ways to say “boo.”

Take a look at the actual hate crime laws already on the books in New York.  Every single offense specified—crimes like: rape, assault, kidnapping and general harassment—is already against the law.  The hate crimes act simply makes it much worse if you commit those crimes because of hate.

Minority groups face “very real” social and economic discrimination—far more damaging than hurt feelings.  If the Assembly wants to help, shouldn’t they address the idiotic prohibition on gay marriage, the incarceration of a generation of African-American men for recreational marijuana use or, at the very least, introduce the NYPD to the concept of restraint? 

Lynchings still happen, they just no longer involve a noose. Representatives should address real acts of discrimination, not symbols and speech.

Freston, former CEO of Viacom, received an $84.5 million severance package when Sumner Redstone showed him the door less than a year into his tenure as head of the company.  Mr. Freston’s obscene wealth generated from his spectacular corporate failure did not prevent the Court from awarding him approximately $22,000 NYC tax dollars.

The ostensibly noble law in play here states that New York City must pay the private school tuition of disabled children when the public school system cannot provide for the child’s needs.  No exception exists for people who have enough money to purchase their very own school, much less for the many wealthy Manhattanites that can easily afford any private school tuition.  Once again, the American legal system fails to take account of basic common sense, while judges remain purposefully blind to exigent circumstances.

The City did have one defense to Freston’s bald attempt to take money that he did not need.  The law requires parents to give the public school system a chance to provide necessary services before the City will pay for private education.  Freston most certainly did not give NYC public schools such an opportunity.  In fact Freston’s child was enrolled in private school before he was diagnosed with a disability.

I said diagnosed with a disability, which should alert you to the fact that we are not talking about a kid with no eyes or a really bad lisp.  Freston’s child was diagnosed with (wait for it) ADD.  I don’t mean to downplay epidemic of ADD that has swept through our country, or trivialize the debilitating consequences of having the attention span of a poodle.  I’m just saying that of all the disabilities in the world, the kid had ADD.

A man with $84.5 million successfully forced New York City to send his kid to private school for free because the kid “caught” ADD sometime after he went off to private school.  Please excuse me while I vomit.

Despite these efforts, it turns out that 9-11 is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Giuliani for President.  Another candidate with New York ties running for president has also thrown her hat into the race for 9/11 supremacy.  Hillary Clinton released a new campaign ad that’s in black and white (the official color of 9/11) and shows the senatorwalking through the wreckage in the trademarked 9/11 facemask that we now know should have been given to somebody who was actually working that day.

Where is this latest passion play airing?  New Hampshire and Iowa of course, two states that have been attacked by approximately 0 terrorists. Can’t you just see the small town Iowan voter saying, “You know mother, I thought Giuliani was the only person who knew the exact location of Ground Zero, but watching this Clinton ad, I see that I was wrong.” 

Well now we all know that Hillary Clinton cares about 9/11.  And so does Rudy Giuliani.  Everybody on the same page now? Who cares about 9/11 the most?  That would be the person who has done the most to rebuild Ground Zero back up to new glory.  That’s why I’ll be voting for, uhh… Hey, look at the monkey!