SD 33: Spare yourself the worry about who’s under indictment; if Pedro Espada is currently free from such worries, it is only a matter of time before he faces them again. It can be argued, in fact, that the legal process is the only option which may improve the quality of this district’s representation. Meanwhile, it is clear that, while incumbent Efrain Gonzalez sometimes rents himself to Republicans, his opponent, Former Senator Espada, is capable of selling himself to them outright; he‘s done so before…Hold your nose and vote for Gonzalez. -- Gatemouth (9/8/08)

After weeks of reading of the internal divisions of the NY State Senate Dems, we find tonight they are still divided. This time, the important question is whether it is Malcolm Smith or John Sampson who deserves the title “King of Pyrrhus.”

Once more such victory and we are undone.

Truly Barnum was right, though in this case, the winner of the Linda Lovelace award is Dean “The Dog” Skelos, who spent a month tying New York’ State government in knots for the sole purpose of helping Pedro “The Perro” Espada to leverage his position within the Democratic Conference.

And now, Pedro won’t even kiss Dean afterwards. Given the source, maybe Skelos should just count his blessings (he’s already miscounted his votes).

Espada is now the Majority Leader, whatever that means (Smith, is President Pro Tempore and Sampson Conference Leader) and though the Majority Leader’s Counsel will now apparently be Tom Golisano’s butt-boy, Eerie Steve from Erie, it is the Senate Democratic Conference who are the Pigeons, and the people of New York who are getting Buffaloed.

We are now back to where we were a month ago, only worse, with the Senate Democratic Conference still held hostage by a group of degenerate madmen who are now more powerful than ever. At any point, any one member can pull the plug, while those members of the Conference who actually are committed to some form of improvement for State Government are forced to pray for indictments and convictions of their colleagues, whether they’ve actually violated the penal code or not.

Under such circumstances, the only sane solution was sharing power--and each side agreed to do so; the only problem was that each side agreed to share power with Pedro Espada rather than each other.  

Pedro Espada leading the Majority. To say the tale is wagging the dog would be a felicitous choice of words, given the meaning of Skelos in Greek, but for two reasons.

The first is that Skelos and his Republican colleagues are no longer being wagged, though everyone else still is.

More importantly, to say the "tail" is wagging the dog is actually a couple of inches off.

The dog is being wagged by what excretes from the orifice just below the tail.