Isiah Thomas On The Difference Between Figurative And Literal

Get a hold of yourself, man, it’s just a dumb game:

His back to the wall, his personal space consumed by cameras and microphones, Isiah Thomas breathed deep and dutifully navigated a dozen questions over 11 minutes Tuesday afternoon.

. . .

“We’ve got to win our fans back,” Thomas said, vowing that the Knicks were up to the challenge.

“To me, it’s win or die,” he said. “And I literally mean death. I don’t mean walk away. I mean death. That’s how I approach it. And we got a job to do here, we’re going to get it done. I’m confident we got the right players, I’m confident we got the right people, and we’ll dig our way out of this.”

Aggravated Assault, Arson, Burglary, Grand Theft, Treason, Racketeering, Robbery, Murder, Rape, Kidnapping And . . . Noose Displaying

No, seriously, a felony:

Council members will gather at City Hall today to call on the State Assembly to pass a law that would make the displaying of a noose a felony. “Right now if you hung a noose at City Hall trying to intimidate people, it’s not a crime,” Council Member Robert Jackson, who co-chairs the Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian caucus, said yesterday. “Considering that we live in New York City, the most diverse city in the world, we’re sending a message that we’re not going to tolerate hate or threats like that.”

Bait With A Really Stank Piece Of Bait Then Switch To A Less-Stank Piece Of Bait

And for some, the end of ever taking a cab home:

The chairman of the state commission studying ways to reduce traffic in Manhattan is increasingly pushing a measure certain to prompt opposition in the rest of the city: charging tolls on the four East River Bridges.

“I’ve made it pretty clear that I think the bridge tolls proposals might be part of a solution that this commission’s going to look at before it’s over,” said Marc V. Shaw, the commission chairman, after a meeting of the panel on Monday.

Tolls on the bridges would most likely be presented as part of a scaled-back version of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s original congestion pricing plan.

. . .

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Shaw, a real estate executive and a former first deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, said tolling the bridges was appealing partly because, like the mayor’s proposal, it could both discourage people from driving into Manhattan and raise substantial revenue.

The mayor estimated that his congestion-pricing plan would raise $380 million a year in revenues, after subtracting the cost of operating the system. Research material provided to commission members this week suggests that East River Bridge tolls could result in gross revenues of $500 million, although Mr. Shaw said the estimate could be revised before next Monday, when the commission is scheduled to discuss the bridge tolls.

The bridge tolls are projected to cause a 5.8 percent drop in traffic, and the mayor’s congestion pricing plan would cut traffic by an estimated 6.3 percent. Mr. Shaw said that a revised plan could include an alternate way to raise revenues on travel within the congestion zone, such as through a surcharge on taxi trips.

A public official who helped develop the mayor’s congestion plan questioned the wisdom of trading it for something equally controversial.

“I feel like its Groundhog Day,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak for the administration and asked not to be named. “We’re back to where we were during the Koch years. Is that sort of the death knell for congestion pricing?”

The City Finds $2.1 Billion For A Train Stop At That Convention Center But Can’t Figure Out How To Provide Working Elevators At Bronx Family Court*

Sure, the project is a lot less “sexy” but it at least provides some useful purpose:

There are many longstanding, seemingly intractable shortcomings in the city’s family court system that might delay a parent in getting a child back from foster care: unprepared lawyers, overcrowded dockets and long waiting lists for drug treatment and mental health services.

But Bronx Family Court has added a new obstacle: broken elevators.

For about a year, the elevators at the courthouse have been a disaster, people who work there say. Breakdowns have long been routine. This year, repair work has only added to the problem.

Lines to use a working elevator can stretch around the corner. People sometimes wait for hours to get to hearings, which are held on the seventh and eighth floors. Frequently, hearings have to be postponed because clients and witnesses cannot get to them.

“It’s absolutely an outrage,” says Ava Gutfriend, a lawyer who often represents parents in child welfare cases. “But in the Bronx it happens all the time.”

In some cases, warrants have even been issued for people who are downstairs waiting for an elevator; judges know only that they are not in the courtroom, said Bill Nicholas, the assistant attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s office at the court.

. . .

In a city full of aging towers, many people view elevator breakdowns as a common annoyance of life. But the scale of the waiting at Bronx Family Court, which often extends to an hour or more, is beyond what most New Yorkers face. And the potential loss is not simply that of time wasted, but of the quality of justice that is dispensed. Consider the case of a client of Ms. Gutfriend’s who was scheduled for a hearing in mid-November to determine whether she could get her daughter back from foster care, where the child had been for 10 months.

The hearing was set for 10 a.m., Ms. Gutfriend recalled, but it was a day when only two of the four elevators in the building were working. The lines to get on the elevator and up to the hearing rooms stretched back two city blocks. Her client phoned upstairs to let her know she was stuck in the line, but was not able to get upstairs in time.

The judge agreed to call the hearing again an hour later, but the client was still in line. So the judge, who had something like 70 other cases to try that day, rescheduled the no-shows for the next available date. For this mother, the next chance to plead her case and get her child back was in January.

*I don’t care if it’s a reductionist apples-oranges argument — this is horrifying.

Besides, “First Girlfriend” Just Sounds Lame

In our haste, we neglected one of the more obvious obstacles:

For all of his billions, Mayor Michael Bloomberg lacks one thing all the current presidential candidates proudly display: a spouse.

The country has not elected a bachelor president since 1884, when Grover Cleveland won the White House despite newspapers huffing that “a man who will not marry a woman and take care of her has no right to be a president.”

Singles haven’t had much luck getting nominated either. The last unwed candidate chosen by a major party was Adlai Stevenson, the divorced Democrat who lost to Republican Dwight Eisenhower twice in the 1950s.

Bloomberg, 65, has a companion of seven years, Diana Taylor, and essentially lives with her. Their arrangement and his star-studded past love life would present him with new political territory to navigate if he runs.