Shake It Up: Anthony Weiner, the Upcoming and the Talking Dog

As a follow up to his interview with former US Congressman Anthony Weiner, NY1's political anchor Errol Louis wrote an op-ed in the NY Daily News regarding the once and possible future political candidate's prospects in the upcoming mayoral election.

While the focus remains certainly on Mr. Weiner's "truthiness"  (as Stephen Colbert might put it) in light of his fall from the political heavens, and whether he can regain the trust of New Yorkers in general and the NY Media in particular, there is no doubting that, even from the margins, Mr. Weiner would be a formidible candidate. His fiery and intensive debating style,exhibited many times on the floor of the House of Representatives, and even more so, his ability to generate creative and interesting ideas in his policy statement, suggest that even his preliminary appearance on the fringes of the hustings could have the capacity to throw the campaign wide open.

As Mr. Louis, himself one of NYC's most engaging and thoughtful political journalists and analysts, observes in his op-ed:
   "Meanwhile, Republicans inclined to gloat about the prospect of Weiner throwing the Democratic primary into
     chaos should be careful what they wish for.

    "None of them has developed the kind of policy proposals — some quixotic, others intriguing — that Weiner
      released in his 64-point “Keys to the City” paper this week.

    "Weiner’s call for stepped-up ferry service to Rockaway, Sheepshead Bay, Riverdale and Harlem is an idea that
       should have been tried long ago in our city of islands. His call to build new federally subsidized senior
       housing on hospital parking lots seems sensible. And his idea of making food stamps carry double the value
       when spent on fresh fruits and vegetables takes New York toward better health using an incentive rather than
       a punitive tax."

Clearly, what's missing from the current soft serve of Democratic and GOP Mayoral Candidates-in-a-Blender are some New Ideas and policy prescriptions that might just suggest a direction in which the post-Bloomberg NYC might move, rather than just the brewing political street fight, (mindful of the mashup of "Network" and "The Gangs of New York" in Will Ferrell and the battling news presenters in "Anchorman")..

Ironically, while it is no doubt Mr. Weiner's dramatic personal foibles and peccadilloes, compounded by his admittedly disgraceful (if perhaps adolescent) dishonesty after the fact, that would make him the easier target in this race, it could be this NYC-native's sharp intelligence and creative, fresh and interesting ideas that would throw up the mirror to the other candidates own lacks and weaknesses. In the long run, as 538's Nate Silver indicated, 100% name recognition and 15% ballot support "is an ugly poll..not an encouraging one." And, while the NBC/Marist poll gave him comparable numbers to the other candidates, maybe, like the talking dog, it is not how well the dog talks, but that, at this late point, he talks at all, and as well as the other candidates who have unbesmirched records and have been in the race all along.

Read more from Mr. Louis' article here  

Mr. Weiner's "64 Keys to the City" here  

-Anthony Napoli
Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Suddenly, Cherry Blossom Time on Waldorf

Safe as Milk: Iranian Scientist Invents 'Time Machine'

Beyond Iran's forays into nuclear energy (and presumably weaponry), scientists there also appear to be trying to develop new technologies that will perhaps help the nation to recreate lost glories of the past caliphates.

The UK Telegraph reports that Ali Razeghi, a Tehran scientist has registered "The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine" with the state-run Centre for Strategic Inventions.


The device can predict the future in a print out after taking readings from the touch of a user, he told the Fars state newsagency.

Razaeghi, 27, said the device worked by a set of complex algorithims to "predict five to eight years of the future life of any individual, with 98 percent accuracy".

As the managing director of Iran's Centre for Strategic Inventions, Razeghi is a serial inventor with 179 other inventions listed under his own name. "I have been working on this project for the last 10 years," he said.

"My invention easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you."

And, talking about safe bets, Razaeghi claims "Iran's government can predict the possibility of a military confrontation with a foreign country," or, more prosaicly, "forecast the fluctuation in the value of foreign currencies and oil prices by using his new invention."


More here

Signs of Spring: 'The Water Song'

Hot Tuna's The Water Song. Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Sammy Piazza. Spiritual. All natural. Uplifting. A classic.

Not in the News: NYC Fast Food Workers Plan April 4 Job Action Over Low Wages

Although it apparently has yet to be reported in the NYC media, the UK Guardian has reported that fast food workers acroiss the city are planing a job action to protest low wages.

"Organisers behind the protest predict that some 400 workers will walk out or stay away from their jobs across the city in a move aimed at impacting at least 70 restaurants from big chains like McDonalds, Wendy's and Burger King. The workers are calling for wages of $15 an hour and the right to organise without the threat of retaliation or intimidation. It follows a previous protest in New York last November when 200 workers went on strike."

Organizers Fast Food Forward state: " Fast Food Forward is a movement of NYC fast food workers to raise wages and gain rights at work. It is part of the national movement of low-wage workers fighting for a better future. When we make enough to live - instead of barely getting by - our community and economy benefit.

"Fast Food Forward joins the momentum of the Black Friday strikes and other low-wage worker struggles to build community engagement, hold corporations and their CEOs accountable, and to raise wages so that all Americans can prosper."

See the Fast Food Forward link here

Updates on actions on Twitter here

Getting Ready for the Season: Coney Island on My Mind

The young gal laughed as she supported her companion who grasped his chest in mock agony and semi collapse: "No more 'Shoot the Freak'! Where's my Coney Island?" he asked in exasperation.

While it's true that Coney Island is continuing its inexorable journey toward modernity and gentrification, there is a certain charm to its new look. Gone is lots of the grime and grit. (Though public restrooms can still use a major update.) Funny how in the past we mourned the disappearance of the urban funk, in fact it has finally caught up with other parts of NYC and may now once again can be compared as 'Times Square by the Sea"-- more refined and polished commercial identity for the "Coney Island brand" but what's wrong with outposts of Tom's with heavenly flapjacks on the menu or a refurbished Paul's Daughter or a gleaming new Nathan's on the Boardwalk complete with gift shop. New store fronts for all businesses and the happy renewal of the lease for Ruby's Bar. While the absence of ski ball games and the one armed bandit claw prize grabbing machines may signal a sea change perhaps if the Old Lady Fortune Teller machine was still around she might say "look to the future- the more things change the more they stay the same" for after all it is the incredible confluence of New Yorkers in all of our remarkable diversity along with visitors from around the world that make Coney Island the remarkable place that it is. Whether it is new construction at the MCU Park, the guy spending April 1 bungee jumping by the Atlantic, or the recovery work following Sandy on the Boardwalk, Coney Island's world famous boardwalk is reinventing itself, like it was only better.

Of course many citizens of Coney Island like other NYC residents are still recovering from Sandy's destructive natural force. More here http://hfny.org/hurricane/

--Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

'And Nothing Else Compares'

Traveling with our two beautiful, brilliant daughters, feeling so blessed, but struggling with next steps and college realities for "middle" class American, Brooklyn-based girls. Our other children, grown, living here and far away, as we  take our stutter steps to and fro, with our own  inevitable movement off stage and far away. This tune by Coldplay has been rattling around in my consciounesness since I heard it over 10 years ago, but now, movement, shared dreams, private myths, public secrets, it finally made so much sense, simply hit me dead on, and it takes all I have not to weep with joy and sublime sadness.
-Brooklyn Beat, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

The Boy from Weequahik: Newark Celebrates Philip Roth - and Vice Versa

The New York Times' Charles McGrath reports on the retirement of author Philip Roth following his 80th birthday and a celebration that was held for him in Newark, NJ, his home town and locale that has served as inspiration and material for his fiction.

Mr. McGrath writes: "The Irish novelist Edna O’Brien recalled her long and complicated friendship with the “scorchingly handsome” Mr. Roth, described his sometimes hermitlike work habits and ended decades of gossip and speculation by declaring that they were never lovers. The New Yorker critic Claudia Roth Pierpont touched on the role of music and of silverware in Mr. Roth’s work and spoke in some detail about the richness and lifelikeness of his female characters. She once complained to him, she recalled, about a female character who seemed too perfect, too snippy. Mr. Roth replied, “You should hear what she says about you.”

Link here

Peace and Rockets: President Obama's Visit to Israel

“I recognize that there are those who are not simply skeptical about peace, but question its underlying premise, and that’s a part of democracy and the discourse between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in the speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, which was televised live. “But it is important to be open and honest with one another. Politically, given the strong bipartisan support for Israel in America, the easiest thing for me to do would be to put this issue aside and express unconditional support for whatever Israel decides to do.”


"And as the president of a country that you can count on as your greatest friend -- (applause) -- I am confident that you can help us find the promise in the days that lie ahead. And as a man who’s been inspired in my own life by that timeless calling within the Jewish experience -- “tikkun olam” -- (applause) -- I am hopeful that we can draw upon what’s best in ourselves to meet the challenges that will come, to win the battles for peace in the wake of so much war and to do the work of repairing this world." (Applause.)


"That’s your job. That’s my job. That’s the task of all of us. "

Transcript of President Barack Obama's speech in Israel here

On the Trail of the Higgs Boson

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"New results indicate that particle discovered at CERN is a Higgs boson."

ScienceDaily, 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2013.

At the Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles.

It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time.


Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties. For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its parity -- a measure of how its mirror image behaves -- should be positive. CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is." said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela.

Full article from Science Daily here

Et tu, Francesco?

Well, from the Borgias on down, the Catholic Church, as an institution with government, finances and secrets, has been nothing if not pragmatic.

The publication Business Insider appears to bear this out in an article by Geoffrey Ingersoll. While Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio appears to be a sincere, humble, scholarly Jesuit, at the same time, his role as a leader of the Church during the era of the Argentinian military junta of the 1970s, may give one pause and bring Pope Francis's "honeymoon" to a quick end. Perhaps as part of his humility, we will hear him address this issue in the coming weeks. Perhaps, for the reportedly media shy, contemplative, humble scholar and servant of G-d, assuming this role at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, with all its challenges and problems, and needs for reform, will serve as a form of penance and absolution. But whether the conservative Argentine will even see the need to address this potentially dark bit of personal and Argentine history remains to be seen.
--Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

From the Business Insider by Geoffrey Ingersoll:

Bergoglio Has Ties To A Dark Period For The Catholic Church

New Pope Francis isn't a Hitler Youth like the last guy, but he has his own troubled history. Francis I along with the whole Argentine Catholic Church have faced criticism for their silence or complicity during the post-1976 military dictatorship — a failure for which the Church apologized in 2012.

Known as the Dirty War, this period saw a brutal battle between the ruling military elite and leftist guerrilla fighters, in which up to 30,000 Argentines were "disappeared" and others were raped or killed.

Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky chronicled how the Church and Bergoglio were involved in this dark era. As described by Hugh O'Shaughnessy of The Guardian in 2011:

Verbitsky] recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.

Bergoglio contended to writer Sergio Rubin that he hid these people to keep them from the violent military junta, not the Human Rights Commission — even as his Jesuit order and Church leaders publicly endorsed the dictatorship.

He later said the endorsement was one of political pragmatism, which is understandable in the face of certain death, if not exactly righteous, according to the AP.

Read more here

"Habemus Papam": Francis, Vicar of Rome

Quiet thunder in Argentina: as early as 2005 Jose Maria Poirer in the UK Catholic Herald was prognosticating the eventual election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis, vicar of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church:

"What a surprise: it turns out that the main opponent to the unstoppable Joseph Ratzinger in the April conclave was none other than the severe, shy figure of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. The revelation comes in the “secret diary” of one of their colleagues in the Casa Santa Marta – a cardinal’s account of the election published recently in an Italian magazine.

"The spotlight the news has placed on Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio – whether or not it is true – will be agony for this notoriously media-shy Jesuit, whose face will have gone even redder with the speculation by vaticanisti that Bergoglio should now be seen as the leading contender to replace Benedict XVI when his time comes: the first Jesuit, and the first Latin American, in Church history to occupy the See of St Peter.s. The revelation comes in the “secret diary” of one of their colleagues in the Casa Santa Marta – a cardinal’s account of the election published recently in an Italian magazine.

"The spotlight the news has placed on Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio – whether or not it is true – will be agony for this notoriously media-shy Jesuit, whose face will have gone even redder with the speculation by vaticanisti that Bergoglio should now be seen as the leading contender to replace Benedict XVI when his time comes: the first Jesuit, and the first Latin American, in Church history to occupy the See of St Peter."

Full story from the Catholic Herald that originally appeared in the publication on October 7, 2005

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/2013/03/13/quiet-thunder-in-argentina/

"Extra Omnes": Vatican Conclave Begins

"Extra Omnes!" Ralph Kramden, iconic NYC bus driver could not have said it any better. "Everybody out!" With those words, the conversation and social discourse among all Cardinals, irrespective of age, comes to an end and the Cardinals younger than 80 who are deemed part of the 115 Cardinal electors go into Sacred Lockdown in the equally iconic Capella Sistina at the Vatican to make their choice.

The Boys in the Back Room speak, compare notes, and vote. We wait for the smoke. Black - Back to the drawing board. White- "Habemus papam."

As the BBC reported:

"After 10 general congregations open to all cardinals, regardless of age - at which 160 cardinals spoke of the issues facing the Church and the qualities needed by its next leader - no clear frontrunner has emerged.


"Last time around there was a man of stature, three or four times that of any other cardinal," French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin told reporters.

"That is not the case this time around. Therefore, the choice has to be made among one, two, three, four... a dozen candidates.

"We still don't really know anything. We will have to wait for the results of the first ballot."  New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan told his priests there was hope that a new Pope could be chosen by Thursday.

"Candidates named as contenders include Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, Brazil's Odilo Scherer, and Cardinal Dolan himself - though he told one interviewer anyone who thought he was in with a chance might be "smoking [something funny]". Full article here

The Boys in the Back Room speak, compare notes, and vote. We wait for the smoke. Black - Back to the drawing board. White- "Habemus papam."

The View from Over There: Pravda - "U.S. System Grows Necrophiliac Psychopaths"

"American reality today looks worse than darkest Hollywood movies" writes Vitaly Salnick in the Russian daily PRAVDA.

"Something wrong has been happening in the U.S. during the recent years. Children in schools are massively fed with a drug that has been used in psychiatric hospitals and is classified as amphetamine. At least 6 million U.S. students take Ritalin and a similar drug, Dexedrine. The drugs are used against the so-called hyper-activity."

"Many experts have repeatedly pointed out the fact that these drugs, also called children's cocaine, lead to unprovoked violence and mass shootings in American schools.


"Yet, the smart U.S. government turns American students into pharmacological zombies, trying to take guns away from adults, referring to the crimes committed by young psychopaths. To give you an idea of ​​the extent of such policies, we would like to note that the production of amphetamine-type drugs in the country has been growing exponentially. In addition, Americans consume large quantities of chemical food, which is also a part of the pharmacological industry. Natural food in the U.S. is very difficult to buy. The agency, which directly deals with the issues of changes among the population, is called the Food and Drug Administration, which obviously means that food and drug is one and the same thing."

"To crown it all, there are practically no mental health services provided to the population in America. They have been replaced with ambulatory narcotization. In 1955, there were 559,000 patients in state-funded psychiatric hospitals per 165 million people. Nowadays, their number has dropped to less than 50,000 per 300 million people. It is believed in America that about 20 percent of U.S. prison inmates are mentally ill. However, they will not be sent to "yellow houses", as they serve as a valuable labor resource in the American prison economy..."


The full article in Pravda appears here

MIKE 'SODAMAYOR': Judge Foils Bloomberg's Big Drink Ban

Good intentions aside, Mayor Mike "SODAMAYOR" Bloomberg's plan to ban large sugary beverages was overturned by a New York State Judge.

Wall Street Journal reports the judge stated that: "The city is "enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations," New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling decided Monday."


"The regulations are "fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences," the judge wrote. "The simple reading of the rule leads to the earlier acknowledged uneven enforcement even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole….the loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the state purpose of the rule."

"Under the first-of-its-kind prohibition approved by the city Board of Health last year, establishments from restaurants to mobile food carts would have been prohibited from selling sugary drinks larger than 16 oz. After a three-month grace period, the city would have started fining violators $200 per sale.

Details here