Just Who Is Advising Carl Paladino

Carl Paladino can't seem to avoid a controversy and it's little wonder given who is advising him.

One of his advisers is Roger Stone, who is now being investigated for tax evasion. The IRS has filed a $400,000 lien for unpaid taxes.

Stone is likely to be thrown under the bus, particularly when he didn't come to Paladino's rescue over his anti-gay remarks over the weekend. Stone is also working with former madam Kristen Davis (whose prostitutes were among those who took down Elliot Spitzer).

As for the now-infamous anti-gay speech, who exactly wrote it? Well, it would appear to be Yehuda Levin, a rabbi of a small Orthodox Jewish congregation in Brooklyn that is little more than a minyan in size. He was claiming that members of Levin's congregation had inserted the line into his speech. Problem is that the speech as he prepared it (even excluding the line cited elsewhere) was still quite hurtful and treated gays as second class citizens.

Levin also happens to be a whole lot more conservative than many other rabbis in the Orthodox community and was hoping to set up an Orthodox tea party. Peas of a pod.

And ultimately it was up to Paladino to say what he did - and he didn't have a problem with the overall anti-gay tone of the speech. That's despite the fact that New York City is home to one of the nation's biggest gay communities and a rash of anti-gay attacks in the area.

UPDATE:
Staten Island Democrats had their way with Paladino's statements. This one is particularly apt:

“The NY Post’s cartoon today captured Paladino’s hypocrisy in its fullest,” Savino said. “For a man who has two families to be talking about lessons for children is ludicrous. After the election I am going to buy him a mirror so he can look at himself. Paladino takes his daughter on a trip to Italy with his girlfriend and then he wants to talk about exposing daughters to dysfunctional situations.” [emphasis added]

Indeed.

Don't tell me about family values and dysfunctional family situations when you're involved in adultery and fathering a child out of wedlock. While it's nice to be caring for that child and providing support, Paladino's actions show that he isn't one to talk about family values and what a responsible person would do.