Quotes of the Morning: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

“Michael Leavitt, President Bush's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, may have to cut billions of dollars from the government's mammoth health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled to pare the budget deficit.”
-Associated Press, December 14, 2004

“'At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'
'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.
'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?'
'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, 'I wish I could say they were not.'
'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.
'Both very busy, sir.'
'Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'”
-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol


“A few to follow-up the story earlier in the week of the man nominated to take the Homeland Security job.. (who took his name out of the running for ‘personal reasons’)”.
-Skippy

“A homeless woman lying on the ramp of an upper East Side parking garage was crushed to death early yesterday when she was run over by a mammoth sport utility vehicle, police said.
The driver, real estate executive Anthony Bergamo, told investigators he did not see the woman from his driver's seat.
Bergamo was driving a 5,770-pound Ford Expedition.
Medics pronounced the unidentified woman dead at the scene.
An autopsy determined that she died of crushing injuries to her chest, said a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner.
The death was ruled accidental and Bergamo, 54, who manages the Milford Plaza hotel in Times Square for its owner, real estate magnate Howard Milstein, was not charged.”
-New York Daily News, September 16, 2000

“Police commissioner at the time? Bernard Kerik.”
-Skippy

“Rescue workers were combing through the World Trade Center rubble around the clock when Mr. Kerik called Anthony Bergamo, a well-connected vice chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police buff, and asked for help finding a place for the workers to rest during breaks, the executive said.
The family owned Liberty View, a 28-story yellow brick tower two blocks southwest of the trade center at the corner of West Street and Third Place.
According to the executive, who knows Mr. Bergamo, the vice chairman arranged for Mr. Kerik to have the use of an apartment there. Several apartments in the buildings had been used by rescue workers on breaks, and by Red Cross staff who were treating them, in the months after 9/11, according to a real estate executive.
-New York Times, December 15, 2004

“After the cleanup had settled into a routine that fall, the executive said, Mr. Kerik, who was still police commissioner, asked to rent the two-bedroom apartment for his own use. During his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an extramarital affair there, according to someone who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the relationship. Ms. Regan published his best-selling autobiography in 2001.”
-New York Times, December 15, 2004

“See, 9/11 changed everything.. He turned down the job though because of the nanny. A nanny whose name we do not know, and whose country of origin we are unaware of since the earlier reports of her has been stated to be incorrect. Surely, this would be the issue that Kerik would want to push people towards, right? It’s the least incriminating thing he did.”
-Skippy

“The White House has been unwilling to discuss any specifics of the nanny herself, including whether anyone in the administration had asked Mr. Kerik for details about her identity, status or nationality. Answers were not forthcoming from Mr. Kerik's camp, either. ‘We are not going to discuss the nanny any further,’ said Christopher Rising, general counsel at Giuliani-Kerik L.L.C., who is acting as a spokesman for Mr. Kerik.
Among the unanswered questions are where she came from, and even whether she was actually working in the country illegally when Mr. Kerik said she served as a housekeeper and nanny for his two small daughters. In a statement last Friday announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Kerik said he had ‘uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status’ of someone who worked for him.”
-New York Times, December 16, 2004

“So there is actually no proof that the nanny existed. Charming. While vetting the guy they managed to find out that his maid, of whom there is no record and who theoretically left the country a month or two back, was an illegal immigrant and that he had forgotten to pay any taxes for her, but they couldn’t find the news articles dating back a few years about Kerik’s involvement with mob figures and his widely reported financial issues. And the same people that vetted him are the people we’ll have looking into the Abu Ghraib scandal. I am filled with confidence.”
-Skippy