Joe Lhota Shows Once Again Why He Will Not Be Mayor Of NYC

The Daily News has a story about two kittens on the B/Q train line who wandered onto the tracks and had to be saved.

The subway lines were shut down in order to save the two male kittens.

GOP mayoral candidate and former MTA chairman Joe Lhota said the subways should not have been shut down in order to save the kittens:

Mayoral hopeful Joe Lhota would have let curiosity — or a racing subway — kill the kittens.

As frisky felines Arthur and August recuperated Friday from peril on an open-air stretch of the B and Q lines near Church Ave. in Brooklyn, the former MTA chairman on Friday said he would’ve saved straphangers from agitation before he saved the kittens from danger.

“It’s not up to the mayor, it’s a decision of the MTA, but Joe does not think it’s appropriate to shut down an entire train line for an extended period for this purpose,” said his spokeswoman, Jessica Proud.

Train service was suspended Thursday — twice — to rescue the kitties from their catastrophic choice of city housing near the electrified third rail.

A first effort to catch the cats, after transit workers discovered them around 11 a.m., failed despite a service shutdown of about two hours. Later, after the 8-week-old kittens became an Internet sensation, another rescue was mounted around rush hour, and a pair of cops and an MTA worker collared the cuddly duo in about 15 minutes.

The DN went with a horrific front cover for Lhota, with the headline DIE, KITTIES, DIE! scrawled across the front page with three accompanying photos - two of the cute cats, one of the not-cute-at-all Lhota.

This is an unforced error by Lhota, although it's not one I expect will hurt him in the GOP primary race - his competition is simply too second rate for that to happen.

But this DIE, KITTIES, DIE! headline will follow him into the general election where a competent Democratic opponent will take that story and combine it with the story of Lhota challenging a 77 year old man to a fistfight last year at an MTA board meeting and the video tape of Lhota cursing at a reporter and pushing him when he was back in the Giuliani administration in the 90's in an ad called "LHOTA: JUST LIKE GIULIANI, ONLY CREEPIER or something along those lines.

Lhota's temperament will be an issue in the general election and, barring something awful happening (like in 2001), I do not think Lhota will be able to overcome that fatal flaw of his.

The fact is, Lhota's an ass and unlike Bloomberg, who can at least hide that part of his personality at times, Lhota seems unable or unwilling to hide it at all.

If Lhota faces de Blasio in a general, you can bet the strategically savvy de Blasio campaign will exploit Lhota's temperament.

Even Quinn would actually seem warm, cuddly and sympathetic against a jerk like Lhota.

Only Thompson would have a hard time exploiting Lhota's temperament in a general election matchup, although that's mostly because Thompson is an inept candidate running a campaign that can't shoot straight.

Thompson did luck out in one respect with this Lhota story.

It came on the same day as the Times A1 expose on Thompson's crookedness as comptroller and will take some of the steam out of that story.

As for Lhota, you can bet this will come back to haunt him.

Politicker: Lhota Calls Bloomberg Education Results "Incredible"

Bizarre speech from former Giuliani budget director Joe Lhota:

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota heaped praise on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education legacy in a speech this morning, commending the current mayor for achieving “incredible” results, and admonishing his Democratic rivals for failing to give him equal praise.

Mr. Lhota pointed to a smattering of improvements on state tests, as well as the city’s jump in graduation rates–which actually dipped slightly this year.

“I believe these results are incredible,” said the former deputy mayor, speaking at an Association for a Better New York breakfast at the New York Hilton Hotel in what was billed as the first major policy speech of his campaign. Coincidentally, the remarks came a day after the city’s powerful teachers’ union endorsed former Comptroller Bill Thompon, who has promised to roll back many of Mr. Bloomberg’s most controversial policies.

But Mr. Lhota criticized the union’s the influence, and argued that when crime dropped under his old boss Rudy Giuliani, electeds fell “all over themselves to join in taking credit.” Today, he said, Mr. Bloomberg has been forced to stand alone, without the support of the Democrats vying to succeed him, or the teachers’ union.

“I look at the great success of the Bloomberg administration with the education system in our City and I ask, ‘Where are the other elected officials?  What are they saying? Where is the support of these officials for the achievements of Mayor Bloomberg. Why aren’t they rallying around him?’” he said.

“The answer is: They are afraid.”

Unlike the Democrats running, he said, “I will not pander to the union. I am willing to cooperate with the UFT, but labor should not expect me to give them a backrub in an election year like so many other candidates.”

Nothing incredible about Bloomberg's education policies or achievements.

Everybody knows the test scores plummeted to earth a few years ago when the state revealed Richard Mills and his merry Regents (including Merryl Tisch) were inflating the test scores like the real estate market circa 2006.

Everybody knows the graduation rates are horse@#$%, artificially inflated by credit recovery programs that had students reading Spiderman comic books, watching Spiderman movies and comparing the two for semester credit.

Everybody knows that the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students is as large now as when Bloomberg and Klein first took over the school system.

Everybody knows these things - except for Joe Lhota, who apparently does not know these things.

But what can you expect from a guy who challenged a 77 year old man to a fist fight at an MTA board meeting? 

This is not exactly a rational or sane man we're dealing with here.

Lucky for us he has little chance to become mayor.