This from Liz Benjamin:

Jack Uldrich, chairman of the Minnesota Independence Party, has issued a formal call for the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent mayor to "give serious consideration" to a White House run.

"The two-party system has catastrophically failed America," Uldrich said. "America needs a serious, credible independent to right our sinking ship and get it back on track to a prosperous future.

"There is no one better positioned than Mayor Bloomberg to accept the mantle of this immense challenge."

To which i have to add a wake-up call: Bloomberg spent $102,000,000 of his own money to become chief realtor mayor of New York City. That's $175.00 a vote.

What does it translates to? Obama won with 65,182,692. If you consider that number for a minute, not the total of people who actually voted, then that would make Bloomberg's cost for running for president a staggering $11 406 971 100. Yes, that's $11 BILLION right there.

Blommberg didn't win because of his leadership. He bought himself a voting field devoid of any real opponents. And even the guy that was supposed to not even come close to beating him, didn't play his losing card the way he should have.
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As Joy, Jacob and I strolled along Union Street, we noticed that even in the middle of winter (Feb. 20, 2010) the Gowanus Canal stank. And when we neared it, this is what we saw.

Photos by Joy Romanski

View from Union St. Bridge over the Gowanus:

Closeup 1:

Closeup 2:

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Have you read Team Obama's proposal for health care reform? If you haven't, I suggest you do so immediately. Right on Page 3 of the PDF is what prompted me to write this blog post:

Invest in Community Health Centers. Community health centers play a critical role in providing quality care in underserved areas. About 1,250 centers provide care to 20 million people, with an emphasis on preventive and primary care. The Senate bill increases funding to these centers for services by $7 billion and for construction by $1.5 billion over 5 years. The House bill provides $12 billion over the same 5 years. Bridging the difference, the President’s Proposal invests $11 billion in these centers.

Those who know me personally, know the history of chronic illnesses and allergies that afflict my family. And they know that for a good 5-6 years we had to do without health insurance. Had it not been for Dr. Robert Schiller and the staff at Institute for Family Health (Sydney Hillman Framily Practice), we would have been in deep financial shit.

Our family doctor is not only the head of Family Health at Beth Israel Hospital. He is also a renowned homeopath with a vast knowledge and respect for non-allopathic (aka alternative) medicines. Every single MD in the practice is known for attacking allergies, chronic illnesses, addictions, AIDS & STDs using a mixture of western and alternative medicines. Why? Because it ultimately reduces costs.
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Helen Sears has switched sides.

Just six months ago, Helen Sears was fighting to hold on to her City Council seat in Jackson Heights, Queens. She hadn't done much over the past eight years, and had voted to give herself a shot at a third term. Still, the Queens County Democratic machine, which was going to back Daniel Dromm for the seat before term limits were extended, now switched to longtime machine member Sears. (It's possible that they went so far as to make some sort of deal with Alfonso Quiroz, who had planned to run but dropped out suddenly and endorsed Sears. So far, there doesn't seem to be any payoff for Quiroz, however, despite several opportunities, so that possibility is in doubt.) Dromm got the active backing of the Working Families Party, and the fight was on.

Dromm won. Sears lost.

Now Hiram Monserrate has been expelled from the state Senate and a special election has been called for March 16. The Democratic machine (along with a lot of non-machine aligned people) is backing Assembly member José Peralta. Peralta is not completely clean (there are some pretty bad campaign finance violations), but he's about 99 44/100% better than Monserrate.

Meanwhile, Sears has turned against the party that used to back her. She has gotten the Republican line.

Why? Read on...  read more »

The long saga of IND emulating the political machine they claim to oppose reached something of a conclusion last night.

The evening began with an excellent discussion of healthcare reform by Congressman Anthony Weiner. That part of the evening was fairly sparsely attended, but did involve some great discussion. Weiner, though I have disagreed with him at times in the past, is an amazing champion of healthcare reform and I wish we had Congress full of Anthony Weiners right about now because then we'd have real healthcare reform.  read more »

In my last Vines column (see # 10-09), I told you that I had inside info, which stated that upon finding out Eliot Spitzer’s team had tagged him for the Lieutenant-governor slot, David Paterson said: “they surely haven’t vetted me for this job”. And now Paterson goes up on a local radio station and directly corroborates said info. This had been a news item on the blogs (see Elizabeth Benjamin’s blog) last week. I hereby reiterate what I wrote in a column recently, calling for mainstream media (and alternative mediums too) to do a better job vetting candidates before elections are held; this is a responsibility placed squarely on the shoulders of the fourth and fifth estates (non-identical twins). And by fifth estate, I refer to all the alternative mediums that have sprung up with all the technological advancements in communications, since the founding fathers ratified the constitution (and the fourth estate). For example: the internet, twittering, blogging, texting and the like, can now be considered the fifth estate.  read more »

February 12th is also Abraham Lincoln's birthday. In fact, Lincoln and Darwin were born the same day of the same year. I want to focus on Lincoln in this article. Recently I was, coincidentally, reading some old reference books I have and some things about the Civil War struck me. First off, one thing is clear: Abraham Lincoln, though a great man in his own right, would have been a minor figure in history and a minor, probably one-term, President had it not been for the Civil War. By seceding, the Southern States catapulted Lincoln into history. Lincoln won below 40% of the popular vote. Lincoln's Republican Party won a majority in neither House of Congress. According to The Presidents, edited by Henry Graff, Stephen Douglas felt that had the Southern States not seceded, Lincoln would have been powerless:

...an object of pity and commiseration rather than of fear and apprehension by a brave and chivalrous people.

But that is not what happened. The South DID secede and this gave Lincoln the opportunity to be a great figure in history. And Lincoln certainly rose to the occasion.

The claim that secession had nothing to do with slavery is bunk, mere revisionism by the losing side that didn't want to be tarred forever for defending slavery. Southern secession was EXPLICITLY (though not necessarily exclusively) about slavery. The North did not fight primarily over the issue of slavery, but over preservation of the Union. But for the South, preservation, and even expansion, of slavery was the prime issue for at least 2 decades before the Civil War, and was the main reason explicitly stated for secession. In fact, the issue of slavery almost led to secession more than once before South Carolina finally made good on the constant Southern threat. Slavery was the issue that dominated American politics. Perhaps the South and individual Southerners had reasons other than JUST slavery for fighting. But the single issue that led to secession was slavery. Period. Any other claims are false.  read more »

Every year on Darwin's birthday, I like to repost/update my essay explaining evolution and the evidence for it. Darwin's theory of evolution has been one of the most robust theories in science. With some modifications, it is still the basis of our understanding of most of biology. Every Feb 12th (Darwin's Birthday) I post an article or series of articles discussing evolution and the evidence for Darwin's theory.

Darwin's theory grew out of an era when a considerable amount of careful observation from around the world was beginning to be formulated into careful scientific ideas. Not all ideas from this era were equally scientific, nor equally valid. Charles Darwin's theory was formulated based on a huge amount of observation both personally made by Darwin and made by correspondents he wrote to from all over the world. It took many years for Darwin to put his ideas into words and his book, Origin of Species, spends a great deal of time addressing criticisms of the theory of Evolution. When Darwin formulated his theory, the Mendelian rules of genetics were unknown, and DNA wasn't even conceived of. So, in essence, the mechanisms and rules that govern evolution were unknown. Darwin defined the patterns of how living things changed and competed, and it was only later that those mechanisms were discovered, giving the statistical and molecular context for Darwin's theory. Those later discoveries have only strengthened Darwin's theory, never contradicting his ideas.  read more »

Believe me when I say I didn’t want to touch Kevin Parker -as the subject of one of my columns- again. I have taken enough flack over the years for writing the truths about him and his anger-management issues. So I was quite happy as time went by, to see my columns vindicated time after time, by Mr. Parker’s own public behavior(s); while continuing to sit on information I have been privy to about his private bad behaviors for some time now. Information I have chosen not to release, since no matter what others may think, this isn’t personal on my part. I just strongly believe that electeds should be held to a higher standard of behavior (both private and public), given that they are role models for our youth; and also given that we have chosen them to represent the best in all of us, at one of the highest levels of government: the legislature.  read more »

City Council member Larry Seabrook has been indicted in the continuing probe into the slush fund scandal.

The 13-count indictment charges Seabrook with soliciting and accepting bribes, extortion, money laundering, and funneling tax money into phony nonprofits that existed only to benefit him and some of his relatives. In addition, there are a number of unnamed "Seabrook associates" who allegedly helped carry out his schemes.

This was not a surprise; it was pretty well known that Seabrook was under intense scrutiny throughout the past couple of years, and that an indictment would probably be handed down early this year. What remains to be seen is how many (if any) of the charges will stick.

Meanwhile, there is little chance that the City Council will take action against Seabrook unless he is convicted. That is not only standard practice, but also proper; a person is supposed to be presumed innocent, and no matter how serious the charges Seabrook deserves that same presumption.

Seems like the Republican National Committee is disguising a fundraising letter as a Census form! I got this email from Congressman Loebsack of Iowa:

I was very disappointed when I heard from concerned citizens in the 2nd District that Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, has sent a fundraising appeal into our district that looks like an official Census document. This fundraising letter even calls itself a 'Census survey' and asks people to pay for the cost of processing the census form.

The Census is vital for our communities because an accurate count helps ensure that Iowans get adequate funding for schools, roads, and hospitals. It is also critical for flood recovery, and helping our disaster stricken neighbors.

Please look for your official Census in the mail over the next few months. It will not ask for party affiliation or for money.

That the RNC would target our district shows just how determined they are to take back the House. Please stay vigilant and please be in contact if you see any further attempts to mislead our community: info_at_loebsackforcongress.org.  read more »

The way mainstream media operates, you will usually find that after the “big” story dies down -and after the flaming headlines have simmered- there is little follow up to the initial newsworthy event. So lately, you will hardly find coverage from the aftermath of the latest cataclysm to affect the Caribbean nation of Haiti. And yet for the millions of Haitians affected by the disastrous earthquake 12thJanuary, 2010, life must go on. And life for most Haitians continue to be challenging -even more so than it was before the earthquake hit. For Caribbean-Americans like me, it is really nice to see that many members of the New York city council are still finding ways to help the Haitian community at large.  read more »

Lately there has been some controversy swirling around the decisions of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, relative to proposed school closings all over the city. If memory serves me right some players in this brouhaha have even gone to court to stop some (or all) of the proposed closings. I am told that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has opposed some (if not all) of these closings -at least in principle. But then the teachers union is usually an adversary of the chancellor’s office in an almost perfunctory manner, so this isn’t surprising. Now, let me preface this column by stating this: there are surely schools which should be closed -given years upon years of delivering poor quality education to its students; so I am not one trying to look over the shoulders of Department of Education (DOE) officials on the ground. Let’s be clear about that from Jump Street.  read more »

I missed this earlier. One more blow against the Wall Street and Corruption candidate Harold Ford, jr:

One of Culture Kitchen's regular bloggers is Leo Igwe, a Humanist living in Nigeria and fighting against religious extremism. Most recently he has been campaigning against child abuse by an extremist Christian sect in Nigeria and this has gotten him attacked by a mob and harassed by police. The extremist Christian sect sued Leo and several other child rights activists in Nigeria.

Today we hear from Leo that a judge has dropped all of the fictitious charges against him. Here's a press release from Leo:

February 4 2010

Helen Ukpbabio: Court Strikes out Case against Child Rights Campaigners

Today the Federal High Court in Calabar struck out the case brought against me and other child rights campaigners including the government of Akwa Ibom state by Helen Ukpabio and other members of the Liberty Gospel Church. In November Helen and some of her church members went to court seeking to enforce their rights to believe in God, Satan and witchcraft. They claimed that the seminars and conferences organised in Nigeria by the Nigerian Humanist Movement and other child rights groups to tackle witchcraft related abuses infringed on their rights to spread the gospel. They asked the court to order us to pay them two hundred billion naira(I.3 billion dollars) as damages for unlawful and unconstitutional infringement of their rights.

For the second time, Helen and her lawyers were not in court. So the lawyer leading the defence team, Barrister Madaki asked the court to strike out the case due lack of diligent prosecution. And the court granted his request.

The striking out of this case is a welcome development. It is a victory for justice, human rights and the rule of law in Nigeria. This decision by the court is a vindication of the child rights campaigners and the great work they are doing rescuing and saving the lives of children abused and abandoned in the name of witchcraft in Nigeria. It is a clear evidence that Helen Ukpabio and her church members have no case.

They instituted this court action to stop their arrest and prosecution for the attack of July 29 in Calabar.

Nigerian Humanist Movement and its partner groups will continue to work and campaign to eradicate all forms of human rights abuses in the name of witchcraft.

Leo Igwe, Ibadan, Nigeria  read more »