Bay Ridge Dems: Opening New Doors in Southwest Brooklyn

Despite the recent loss of the Congressional seat held by incumbent Mike McMahon, Democrats in Brooklyn continue to be on the move.  Close to 40 people turned up to help a launch a new Democratic club, simply named Bay Ridge Democrats, formed by local activists who want to see the political process in Brooklyn become more democratic. The club is dedicated to making the Democratic party more open and inclusive. More about activism and working toward progress for all Bay Ridge residents and Brooklynites, based on democratic principles and inclusiveness and less about politics as  an “insiders-only” game.  

At a recent gathering at Longbow’s Pub and Pantry on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, many former-members of the American Heritage Democratic Organization (AHDO), the United American Democratic Organization, and other newly involved activists, joined together to compare notes on the recent election and begin to discuss next steps and strategy for building a progressive, community-based political organization in Bay Ridge.

Attendees included former State Senator now City Councilman Vincent Gentile; Joanne Seminara, 60th Assembly District Democratic Committeewoman and Community Board 10 Chair;  Steve Harrison, former City Council candidate and two-time Congressional candidate against Vito Fossella; Scott Klein, Lambda Independent Democrats treasurer, past president of the AHDO, and now president of the new Bay Ridge Democrats group, Justin Brannan, community activist and organizer, as well as many interested community members seeking to revitalize the Bay Ridge Democratic scene.

"It’s a great turnout” said Ms. Seminara.  And, indeed, the assembled participants, from elected officials like Councilman Gentile, to veteran political activists and candidates like Ms. Seminara and Mr. Harrison, to eager community members interested in getting involved who munched on snacks as they chatted  and networked, clearly pointed toward a reinvigoration of Democratic progressive politics in southwest Brooklyn. Mr. Brannan noted "Bay Ridge Democrats will be an organization where people seeking to become more engaged in local politics can come and get their feet wet - really quick.”   He continued:  “Our endorsement is actually going to mean something - we are going to roll up our sleeves and work very hard for our candidates."  

Brannan said that the Bay Ridge Democrats will be involved in every aspect of the political process, from petitions to voter registration to poll watching, but also in political activism and “raising awareness about the critical issues to our community, our city, our state and our country.”

The next meeting of the Bay Ridge Democrats will be held on Thursday, December 9, 7 PM, at Good Shepherd Church, 7240 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. Interested residents are invited to attend and see what the excitement is all about.

One thing is clear: a progressive, vocal Democratic (Big “D”) party is alive and well in Bay Ridge.

--Anthony Napoli for Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Veterans Day

Carolina Chocolate Drops

The official website here

The Limits of Online Expression: Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post

Got something to get off your chest about your boss? Recently, the Google CEO (sort of) joked about a future where young adults would have the option of obtaining a new identity/Social Security Number so that they can escape the online follies of their youth.  Although the common wisdom has it that a bit of circumspection is essential when expressing or emoting or kvetching on Facebook or your blog, clearly this is a lesson that many folks may learn too late if at all.  This can be especially perilous when it comes to bashing your employer.

Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times reports that "In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.  This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements....The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves. "


"The case involves Dawnmarie Souza, who had to prepare a response to a customer’s complaint about her work. Ms. Souza, the board said, was unhappy that her supervisor would not let a representative of the Teamsters, the union representing the company’s workers, help prepare her response."


"Ms. Souza then mocked her supervisor on Facebook, using several vulgarities to ridicule him, according to Jonathan Kreisberg, director of the board’s Hartford office, which filed the complaint. He also said she had written, “love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor” — 17 is the company’s lingo for a psychiatric patient."


"The labor board said that her comments “drew supportive responses from her co-workers” and led to further negative comments about the supervisor. Mr. Kreisberg said: “You’re allowed to talk about your supervisor with your co-workers. You’re allowed to communicate the concerns and criticisms you have. The only difference in this case is she did it on Facebook and did it on her own time and her own computer.”

Full article here

NY TIMES: Changing Assessment of Treatment of Jews in Italy During 1930s, 40s

Paul Vitello reports in the New York Times on new scholarship and research which suggests deeper complexities, conflicts and truths in the experience of Italian Jews during the Fascist era:


"The new findings contradict the conventional belief that Italians began to enforce anti-Semitic laws only after German troops occupied the country in 1943, and then reluctantly. In a spate of studies, many of them based on a little-publicized Italian government report commissioned in 1999, researchers have uncovered a vast wartime record detailing a systematic disenfranchisement of Italy’s Jews, beginning in the summer of 1938, shortly before the Kristallnacht attacks in November. ...

After the war, encouraged in part by Italy’s American occupiers, Italians embraced a spirit of national reconciliation that “allowed the construction of a sanitized collective memory,” said Alessandro Cassin, the publishing director of the Centro Primo Levi, a research institute in Manhattan that promotes the study of Italian Jewish history, and that organized the panel discussion.

Michele Sarfatti, the author of several books on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism, said a higher portion of Italy’s Jews survived the war than their counterparts in most other European countries."


But Italian culpability for the persecution of Jews remains relatively unknown, and largely unacknowledged by Italians, Professor Pavan said. “People were made destitute, people were turned into ghostly nonentities in their own country,” she said. “This is also true.”


Full article here

Genova, Mussolini saluta romanamente dal podio allestito in piazza della Vittoria, 14 maggio 1938,

"L'immagine del Duce", Sergio Luzzatto, Editori Riuniti, pag. 191

Comic Visions: King Con at the Brooklyn Lyceum

Brooklyn, with our engaging mish-mosh of old and new, greenery and urbanity, natives and newbies, corporate aspirations and bohemians, and wannnabes of all stripes, can seem surreal and post-modern enough in the 21st century. But now, the Borough of Bars and Churches is being scrutinized and explained by a new generation of artists and writers who expose Brooklyn -- and their own personal experiences in it-- to the Large Hadron Collider of their imaginations, and somehow it comes out through the other end of the black hole  of their artistic visions transmogrified as a cartoon universe, brilliant, hip, philosophical, and, sometimes, even funny.

The King Con festival at the Brooklyn Lyceum, with panels beginning this evening and continuing through Sunday, smacks right up against the NYC Marathon this weekend, but it promises to be an interesting and entertaining mix of Brooklyn-centered or Brooklyn-themed comic art, discussions and home grown creativity.

Scheduled panels begin tonight. Sessions throughout King Con include X-Men luminary Chris Claremont,  Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel (the cartoonist for Ames' HBO show Bored to Death, and a model for Ray played by Zach Galifianakis), R. Sikoryak, Collaboration Counseling (writers and artists/cartoonists sort it all out), Atlantic Yards, Cartoons, and the Changing Face of Brooklyn and much much more. Tickets: $10 for the weekend, $7 per day (some panels extra), a Brooklyn bargain for comic aficionados. Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Avenue (Union & President Streets)... Details here

Among my personal faves - R. Sikoryak, who has created work for the New Yorker, Nickolodeon and Raw Visions, among many other venues, with his cool, smartass sensibility, impeccably illustrated, as with the examples below:

Above: R. Sikoryak, website here 

King Con main site here

Where Do We Go From Here?

I remember in the aftermath of the Ronald Reagan victory in 1980, I think I slept for 24 hours. I had been working on the campaign of the Citizens Party, with biologist Barry Commoner as presidential candidate. As I recall someone saying, you couldn't go wrong with a party that has "zen" and "art" in it.  Well, go wrong we did, or so it seemed at the time. And, while it may not have been a "World Gone Wrong," things had clearly changed. Yesterday's election wasn't quite that, with 1.5 out of 3 branches of government still under the control of the Democrats, but it is a clear message that there is an uncertainty and a restlessness abroad in the land. And, while there are no quick fixes, it would appear that things are at least at the phase of a "moral equivalency" of war (or invasion by Martians), with severe economic dangers and terrorism, that would encourage leaders of both parties to try to work together to come up with solutions. Politics in a democracy, after all, being the art of compromise and horse trading.

One reporter suggests that, unlike House speaker Newt Gingrich, who sorely vexed Bill Clinton during his administration, but who came up with a solid set of ideas and proposals that the GOP published in the TV Guide, the current Speaker-in-Waiting, John Boehner, who replaces Nancy Pelosi, is cut from another cloth. He may be less of an idea guy, less of a player, and more content with being a back-bencher who lobs grenades at Quarterback Obama as the QB dodges 16 shells from a thirty-ought six.  Article here

And what about the Tea Partiers. Sure, things are bad, but they are bad for all of us as Americans (well, except for the FreedomWorks-connected billionaire conservatives like the Koch brothers who secretly fund the tea parties). Why do they attack Mr. Obama so viciously when he is basically a sincere, self-made guy from modest circumstances, who put himself through school with college loans?  Even after President Bush became president in 2000, many Democrats were willing to give him a chance, until it was proven that his bipartisan overtures were so much malarky. Here, it seems that, while his administration may be weak on communicating its progress, and has made missteps, from the outset there was little agreement that 44 is our president and we all should support him. He took shots from the GOP from the very beginning. What could be behind that?  Article here

Still, President Obama, has culpability in the Current Situation. For his second chapter, What Should Barack Do? article here

As Bob Marley wrote:

Oh, it's a disgrace

To see the human-race
In a rat race, rat race!
You got the horse race;
You got the dog race;
You got the human-race;
But this is a rat race, rat race

CODA: Tempest in a Gimlet Glass - Spike's Brooklyn Mixology Invites Flack

"And little John Barleycorn Carrie Nation/
proved the strongest one at last"
-English traditional song

Even after the thrashing that the Brooklyn Blogfest took last spring, in making what appeared to be a gentle, sponsorship deal with Absolut Vodka, featuring their new beveragatudinal collaboration with Spike Lee, Absolut Brooklyn, the distiller's foray into Brooklyn branding (or brandy) continues to generate controversy.

The NY Daily News, via the New York Observer, reports that:
Some Bed-Stuy residents are apparently not pleased about being inundated with ads for Spike Lee's Absolut Vodka collaboration, the Daily News reports. The New York-based Children's Aid Society counted 56 ads featuring the modified bottle in the neighborhood.

"You're not supposed to be promoting stuff like that in areas that can barely afford food," said one teen who participated in the counting.

"If you haven't seen it, the bottle is extremely Lee'd-out. It features a Brownstone stoop, and the little medallion near the top of the bottle has been modified to include glasses and a baseball cap. It is infused with apples and ginger, traditional neighborhood flavors, as every Brooklynite knows."

DITHOB Note: actually, the apple appears to be for "The Big Apple"; however, ginger ale is reportedly a flavo fave of the director. Of course, from a marketing perspective, ginger also offers nice, West Indian-Brooklyn grace notes and resonations.

"Mr. Lee had no comment for the paper. Last month, Page Six reported that his wife Tonya Lewis Lee joked that she was hesitant to be photographed near a bottle of Belvedere, given her husband's partnership with the competitor."

Daily News: More of Coney Island Boardwalks Replaced by Concrete?

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature:

Writing in The NY Daily News, Erica Durkin reports: "The iconic 42-block Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island may be headed for a makeover as a concrete-slabbed walkway, city officials said. Outraged residents hissed and shouted at Parks Department officials who presented a $7.4 million project to rebuild a five-block chunk of the fabled stretch with concrete.

City officials indicated at a local meeting they were thinking about redoing most of the rest of the stretch the same way.


"It is a boardwalk! It is not a sidewalk!" shouted Brighton Beach resident Ida Sanoff at the Community Board 13 meeting Wednesday night. "It looks like crap. ... You're looking for the cheap way out and the easy way out. Not acceptable!"

City officials hope to eventually rehab the whole beatup walkway and are leaning toward using concrete everywhere except the Coney Island amusement area, which already got a wood makeover."

Full NY Daily News article here

Thinking Our Way Out of Disaster: The Watchman's Rattle

The Watchman's Rattle by Rebecca Costa suggests that the only way to move civilization out of what appears to be its current decline is clear thinking. Rebecca Costa is a sociobiologist and evocative speaker whose unique expertise is to spot and explain emerging trends in relationship to human evolution, global markets, and new technologies. She lives on the central coast of California.

The book offers insights into the importance of, well, insight--- how the human mind can be overwhelmed in attempting to create solutions to the multitude of large scale and complex problems that we currently face.  that we're stuck is the first step towards getting out. With lessons from history, she demonstrates why it can be so difficult for humans to think our way out of complex problems, and more importantly, how we can nurture the kind of insight that will bring us forward.

In his foreword to the book, eminent sociobiologist E.O. Wilson says "I am on the side of Rebecca Costa. Let us become realists-in-search-of-a-solution rather than doomsayers."

In an interview in the Harvard Crimson, Ms. Costa states: "The first third of my book is looking back into past history to see what happened to the people before the cataclysmic events occurred that caused them to collapse. I go into the history of the Mayans, the Romans, the Egyptians and the Khmer, and it turns out that there are two signs that begin to occur very early on prior to the collapse, several generations beforehand. That is, that they become gridlocked, unable to solve their problems, as the problems are getting worse and worse, until eventually, one of them can’t be stopped. The second thing that happens is, when the facts become too complicated, when the problems exceed the cognitive capabilities that we as a biological organism have evolved to that point… We substitute beliefs for facts. There’s an abandonment of rational problem-solving that goes on…and that leads to collapse."


That sounds like grim news, indeed. So, if our problems exceed our cognitive abilities, how can we fix those problems?

Ms. Costa: "We have two things, in my view, available that ancient civilizations did not have. One: we have models for high failure rates, for situations when no amount of due diligence will allow you to pick the solutions that will work from the solutions that won’t work. The easiest one to grasp is venture capitalism. Venture capitalists are experts at failure. They’re not really experts at success. For every 100 companies they invest in, 80 are going to be average or fail. 20 percent are going to be so spectacular that it diminishes the failure.


"The second thing is brain fitness and neurological tools… We have discovered by looking at images of the brain that every now and again, a little portion of the brain called the ACC [anterior cingulate cortex] lights up like a Christmas tree, and we suddenly have what scientists are calling an “insight.” It turns out all human beings—this is not nurture, this is nature—have these spontaneous ‘a-ha!’ moments where they make connections of data in their head and they solve an elegant and really complicated problem. This seems to be a method of problem-solving that is suited to high levels of complexity that exceed left and right problem-solving abilities that we have evolved."


So, that said, how do we maximize our use of insight?

Costa: "What we need to do is develop insight on demand… But because we can’t evolve on demand, that’s why mitigation is so important. When you know that you’re up against complexity that exceeds what the human brain has evolved to be able to handle, then you can mitigate, but you must also do everything possible to catch the brain up to complexity."

Excerpt from "The Watchman's Rattle" here

In an article online, Ms. Costa addresses the complex issues that we currently face during these "Oppositional times" :

"It must be obvious that we live in oppositional times.


"No matter what candidate, ballot measure, idea or program we put on the table, those who will oppose it always far outnumber those who are willing to advocate. It isn’t even a close call.


"If you doubt me, just listen to any radio talk show that encourages its listeners to phone in, or read the Sunday letters to the editor. By an overwhelming majority, we oppose. In fact, so much so that it’s easy to see why we have become gridlocked in the nation’s capital. If we oppose every solution, then how can we progress – the last time I checked, pervasive opposition was the same as gridlock.

"For example, take increasing our troops in Afghanistan, illegal immigration, healthcare, social security, epidemics of autism and depression, climate change and offshore drilling regulation. Opposition everywhere. It doesn’t matter which side we take, we don’t like what has been proposed, though we don’t really have any solutions either.


"What causes a society to mistake opposition for advocacy? What makes us passionate about what we are against? Become our greatest obstacles toward progress?

"The answer lies in a pattern of human behavior that is as old as the organism itself.

"When the complexity of the problems we must solve exceeds the cognitive abilities we have evolved to that point in time, we reach an impasse. In a nutshell, human beings cannot progress any further than evolution will allow. We simply do not have the biological capacity to understand and solve every problem we face, despite having the biological imperative to continue progressing. So what do we do? History shows that we begin substituting unproven beliefs for facts and rational thinking. Over time, irrational beliefs find their way into public policy and once this occurs, great civilizations begin to decline.


"If that sounds like a mouthful, then just take a look at where we are today. Climate change? We can’t even agree on whether it’s a real problem or not. How about healthcare reform? First we pass a complicated initiative that few people can understand and now we want to stop it because it is imperfect. Never mind the reality that there will never be a perfect initiative.


"But perfect or imperfect, don’t we need to do something? Venture capitalists seem to do well even with an 80% failure rate. In a business where no amount of due diligence in the world will lead to perfection, venture capitalists know that the impact of a few wins is enough to dwarf the losses.


"We now find ourselves facing the same realities that venture capitalists face everyday. When it becomes impossible to pick the winning solutions from the losers, we have to accept imperfection and waste. That’s just the way it goes, lest we oppose everything and progress stops. Imagine a venture capitalist that opposed every investment opportunity that came across the desk because they had a better than 80% chance of being wrong – how long would they stay in business?


"It can be demonstrated that over time, the human brain – which requires millions of years to evolve new capabilities – begins to lag behind, and it becomes unable to separate solutions that will work from those that will fail. Take the recent Gulf oil spill as an example. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men believed dropping a concrete box on top of the hole was our best option. Three weeks later we discovered that wasn’t going to work. Then we tried drilling through the side of the main pipe to siphon off pressure and oil, and two weeks later we discovered that wasn’t going to work either. Fortunately, our third try hit pay dirt: the static kill method. But what if that had been solution number 86? What would the fragile southern and eastern seaboard look like today as currents swept the oil this way and that?


"But the key to mounting multiple solutions in tandem is advocacy, optimism and a realistic assessment of our odds of calling it right. And in an oppositional society where organizations such as the Tea Party movement, moveon.org, Democrats and Republicans have raised opposition to a fine art, what chance do we have of resuming progress? How can we move ahead?"

From the article by Ms. Costa on "The Oppositional Society."

"Interesting stuff, but does it offer real solutions ?"  I think the author would point at the previous line as the sort of oppositional thinking, the challenge of any actual plans, policy or actions, as hopeless, with a response that is negative and which could only serve to continue to push society and our future into the spin cycle, with little hope or direction. In short, chances of progress very dim indeed. We need to TRY SOMETHING -- and maybe more than one thing at once, instead of just arguing back and forth, endlessly criticizing ideas and proposals, with no alternative proposed.  Insight, ideas, and action could lead to real progress for some of the most critical problems and issues that we face. And that is the true north to which "The Watchman's Rattle" urges that we move.

For more on the book and the author: http://www.rebeccacosta.com/.

Nostalgia for the Future: Book? Check! Library card? Check! Checkout Desk? Nope – Self Check!

As a Brooklyn native, I am a sucker for how some terribly familiar things in our communities change and how they remain the same. A few years back, I literally got all misty at the reopening of the new Brooklyn Museum lobby space, in all its contemporary beauty. I remembered walking to the Museum since I was a kid, pushing open the heavy entrance doors, and exploring the mysteries of ancient Egypt and the delight of artistic discovery. It was still the fantastic Brooklyn Museum, but had also morphed into a modern, welcoming and amazingly creative public space, with fountains, post-modern entrance, and outdoor public spaces.

I had the similar vibe visiting the newly renovated digs of the Kings Highway Brooklyn Public Library branch at Ocean Avenue. Not so much the library itself, although it has a bright and open feel. I don't think I had visited this branch before.* But when I had picked up a book (Lincoln as Writer) and looked around for the check out desk. There wasn’t one. There was a table at which sat two librarians and the security officer. I sheepishly asked “How do you check out?” The branch security officer smiled and said “you need to use the scanner!” clearly relishing the opportunity to teach an old dog a new trick.

Sure enough, a table held several scanners. It is much easier than checking out yourself at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Basically, you put the book down on the scanner. When prompted, you remove that, and then you put your BPL library card on the scanner. It records the book and issues a receipt. That’s it!

“This is the sixth branch using the new technology, and the Fort Hamilton Branch will be the eighth when it reopens following renovations,” said Malika Granville, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library. In addition to Kings Highway, Highlawn was the first branch, it was renovated with “Self-check machines” in 2006. After its successful piloting at Highlawn, it expanded to other branches, including Mapleton, Canarsie, Macon, Bay Ridge, and Mill Basin. Ms. Granville also confirmed that the Park Slope branch will be outfitted with the new check out technology after it reopens. (The Park Slope branch closed in the fall of 2009, with a projected two year renovation period.)
Despite the complications experienced by some agencies with the introduction of new technologies the Board of Election's new e-voting system comes to mind), the Brooklyn Public Library reports that the piloted program so far has been a great success. And the staff members at the branches, as always, make an art of serving the customer (or patrons, which I recall was the BPL euphemism for cardholding library members) -- another great thing that has never changed.
The new self-check technology system is funded with a combination of State and City capital dollars. BPL anticipates that the new system, manufactured by the 3M Company, will be rolled out to all branches in approximately two years.

*I guess can list on 10 fingers the BPL branches which I've visited:

• Central - bGrand Army Plaza - one of my first jobs; where I worked as a high school kid in the what was then the audio visual department with Mr. Ken Axthelm and Joe Schera. I lived in Windsor Terrace, so walking to and visiting the Central Branch in all of its wonder, was an intrinsic part of my education.
• Park Slope Branch -Again, in walking distance as a kid. A cozy, somewhat gothic feeling branch. Currently under renovation.
• Windsor Terrace - Walking distance, although smaller, but always a fun destination.
• Clinton Hill - When we lived in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill; I remember the Harvest Festival and Book Sale at this branch just around this time of the year.
• Mapleton - When I worked in Staten Island, this became a frequent stop on my way home from work.
• Midwood - Our current local branch.
• Cortelyou - Nearby, but not as convenient to us as Midwood.
• Fort Hamilton - Occasional visits. Currently under renovation. Originally scheduled for spring 2010 reopening, additional construction requirements have delayed the reopening.
• Pacific and Brooklyn Heights - Both are near my office, and near our previous home in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, but I don't get out to visit them often enough.

Thanks to Malika L. Granville, Marketing & Communications Associate at BPL.

Waiting for the Gubernator -- New York State's 2010 Debate for Governor

Gubernatorial: Latin gubernator: governor, steersman, from gubernare, to govern

First Known Use: 1734

Well that was really interesting. As one pollster observed, if the Lincoln-Douglas Debates were at one end of some kind of spectrum for oratory and political history, last night was clearly at the other end, way way down yonder. It certainly didn't disappoint.

Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, who will happily preside at weddings between same sex couples, "if you want to marry a shoe -- I'll marry you" was surprisingly amusing, charming, and as valid in his message and presentation as any tea party candidate-  here

Kristin Davis of the Anti-Prohibition Party, a former madam who wants to legalize prostitution, answered a question on taxes by saying "Businesses will leave this state quicker than Carl Paladino at a gay bar." She compared her former business to the MTA, with the only difference being hers had one set of books, was always on time, and kept the customers happy.


Leave it to Charles Barron, the only other Democrat on the podium, as a candidate for the Freedom Party, who pounded away at front runner Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Warren Redlich, Libertarian Party candidate seemed well versed with his party's platform and policy prescriptions.

That Mr. Paladino, the GOP candidate for the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Thomas Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt, George Pataki, Malcom Wilson, could fair so poorly in this debate, after kicking up so much dust since winning the primary, was a fascinating turnabout, and a damn shame for the GOP which should be engaged in some very serious soul searching.

But, among this crew, (which included Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins who sounded like he was a Cajun, although he attended Dartmouth and lives in Syracuse and Vermont), Andrew  Cuomo without a doubt was able to present himself, despite his current elected position as Attorney General, as an outsider to the Albany legislative and executive bodies, who is willing to fight and make the hard choices that are required to address, at least in part, some of the crises the State faces. He looked and sounded, in fact, Gubernatorial. Let's hope we won't get fooled again.

A Nice thumb-nail wrap-up of the players here at the Salon.com War Room -- here

First as Comedy, Next as Tragedy, Third as....Disaster?

David Rothkopf writing at NPR argues quite effectively that to grasp Washington, DC right now, watch 30 Rock:

"Perhaps the greatest howler of them all from my point of view comes in Peter Baker's excellent profile of Barack Obama in this Sunday's New York Times's Magazine. In this thoughtful, exceptionally well-written and reported piece, Baker portrays a reflective president contemplating his political fortunes on the eve of what could be a pretty rough midterm election. In one particularly pivotal paragraph, he writes:


"Most of all, (Obama) has learned that, for all his anti-Washington rhetoric, he has to play by Washington rules if he wants to win in Washington. It is not enough to be supremely sure that he is right if no one else agrees with him. "Given how much stuff was coming at us," Obama told me, "we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion."


When did Tina Fey have the time to write this while preparing for that live shoot of her show? What wry hilarity. They spent too much time trying to get the policy right rather than getting the politics right? Really? Sorry, I must have been watching another channel. It seems to me that every single move of this administration from the size and shape of the stimulus to the switch from Iraq to Afghanistan, from avoiding what really needed to be done on health care to avoiding doing anything meaningful on climate change, from taking the stands he did on financial reform and sidestepping the issues he wanted to avoid on the same, were all based on political factors. The president deserves considerable credit for all he has accomplished — but let's please try for a trifle more honesty and self-awareness. Let's stop trying to sell what Bo left in the Rose Garden as a bowl of pudding, please."

Full article by Mr. Rothkopf here.
 
Peter Baker's article in the New York Times magaine on "The Education of a President" here
 
Also, importantly, in my opinion, Frank Rich's take on the "Rage That Won't End on Election Day":
 
"It’s no better now. In a cover article last month, Barton Gellman wrote in Time that the magazine’s six-month investigation found that “the threat level against the president and other government targets” is at its highest since the antigovernment frenzy that preceded Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.


"While Obama-hatred remains a staple of the right, the ebbing of his political clout may have diminished him as a catchall for America’s roiling, inchoate rage. The president is no longer the sole personification of evil. For those who see government as Public Enemy No. 1, other targets will do, potentially some as remote from Washington as Oklahoma City."

More here

Friday Lunchtime Ramble: Steel-Grey Waters and Brooklyn Bridge Park Starts to Take Shape

Friday Groove: When the Cold Wind Comes, I Go Where the Dahlias Bloom

Donald Fagen performing "Florida Room" an awesome, jazz tinged composition from his second solo album, Kamakyriad, in June 2010 while receiving an award for jazz composition from ASCAP. Getting in the Friday groove....

Florida Room by Donald Fagen

Start on Key Plantain

Walk a tropical mile
You'll see a house
In the Spanish style
There's a room in back
With a view of the sea
Where she sits and dreams
Does she dream of me


When summer's gone
I get ready
To make that Carribee run
I've got to have
Some time in the sun

Chorus:
When the cold wind comes
I go where the dahlias bloom
I keep drifting back
To your Florida room

She's dressed too warm
For this latitude
We go out to lunch
With some Jamaican dude
Then the sunshower breaks
We come in out of the rain
But in her Florida room
There's a hurricane

While the city freezes over
We'll be strollin' down the shore
Can she bring me back
To life once more

Chorus


When summer's gone
I get ready
To make that Carribee run
I've got to have
Some time in the sun

Chorus