DOES ANYONE EDIT NEWSDAY?

Why Graham Will Win It (Jimmy Breslin, May 20, 2003, NY Newsday)

They put a drama about Hitler on CBS television, which was the idea of some complete fruitcake, and look what happens.

I am getting dressed to go to the Harvard Club to hear Sen. Bob Graham early Monday and here is Michael Bloomberg, the mayor, talking on TV about a police raid by a full dozen cops who threw in a grenade and handcuffed to death a 57-year-old working woman. Here is what Bloomberg says:

"The Police Department's motives are something that nobody should question."

How do you like him? How do you like the country he imagines he's in? The woman, Alberta Spruill, was dressing for a day of her 29th year of work. A dozen cops using some homeless bum as a stool pigeon come busting into the apartment of this black working woman, a church woman. They put handcuffs on her and frightened her to death.

When was the last time the cops broke into a white apartment?

That woman died because of her color and these 12 cops. If Bloomberg doesn't want to question the cops, then a federal grand jury should.

Bloomberg might figure out that he is the mayor of the city and not the mayor of the police.

After watching this, I went to the Harvard Club on West 44th Street, where Graham was making his first of several appearances around town. He runs for the Democratic nomination for president. I make him the favorite because I make him the favorite. The figures show that Bush lost the last election by 500,000 votes to Al Gore, the one worst stiff the Democrats could find. If you looked at Graham yesterday you saw an authentic candidate. [...]

At the Harvard Club yesterday, Graham spoke to a full room. A lot of the questions were about health issues. We must write about this later, and in careful detail. The first thing I noticed is that he happened to be sane. If you see this Bush in a crazed pose on an aircraft carrier, or Rumsfeld imitating a savage, Graham gets a vote by standing there as a reasonable, rational politician.

He said one of his issues is electability. "To win, a candidate has to be a centrist and have executive experience. Four of the last five presidents were governors. I was governor of Florida for eight years."

I despise centrists. I don't trust anybody south of Newark, N.J. And I know that another four years of these Bush people will put you in more oppression than ever seen and catastrophic violence abroad. Graham is my choice.

Graham was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and they put out a large report on the World Trade Center bombing. The administration hasn't declassified it for the public. They read 150 pages a month. "They don't want to release it," Graham said. "I use the word coverup."

He said he voted against the war in Iraq because it was going to distract us from the true danger, terrorists. He said that Saddam had limited ability to hurt us. There were no weapons of mass destruction. What we did was placate Syria because they had a vote on the UN Security Council. And Syria has conventions of terrorists.

"Let's focus on terrorist organizations. There are 100,000 terrorists. We can stand up to them. We stood up against far more Russians.

"Walls and security, a fortress America, would make this a different country."

He then went out into the bright sunshine and heavy New York traffic.

This column is so incoherent even Jayson Blair wouldn't plagiarize it. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 21, 2003 11:00 PM