Photo of the Week: Jill, Yogi and Michelle

Just some kids out for the ceremonial first pitch of World Series Game One on Wednesday night.

Happy Halloween!

$6.8 Billion

The picture for the Empire State’s finances keep getting grimmer:

Gov. David Paterson told legislative leaders today that the budget deficit has now inched up to $3.2 billion, pushing the projected gap for 2010-2011 to $6.8 billion.

This will be formalized in the Budget Division’s mid-year update, to be released [today]. The last official quarterly deficit estimate from DOB in July was: $2.1 billion in 2009-10, $4.6 billion in 2010-11. Combined two-year deficit of $6.7 billion.

That means the deficit reduction plan Paterson unveiled just two weeks ago – $3 billion for the current year and $5 billion over two years – is now less sufficient to address the state’s ever-mounting problems – even if lawmakers and special interests were willing to embrace it in its entirety, which they clearly are not.

[Paterson] also reiterated his warning about the mid-December deadline for a number of big bills coming due, adding: “Anybody who tries in any way to differentiate or confuse this issue is not serving the public.”

The Ever-Growing Deficit – Liz Benjamin @ Daily News

Even Obama’s Scientists Are Radicals

Ever wanted to power New York City with environmentally friendly goo?

A new branch of the Department of Energy might want to give you a job.  It’s all part of Obama’s radical faith in science.  Actually, it’s all part of a new department within the Department of Energy (DOE): The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

The agency will fund special, alternative energy projects with the potential to fail miserably or change the face of a nation.

The acronym for this agency is Arpa-e – fitting for a quirky agency that’s full of arcane projects and is likely located in a clandestine lab under the Pentagon.

Believe it or not, the department was created by George W. Bush.  He subsequently neglected to fund it.  Now, The New York Times reports that stimulus dollars will be used to fund the office for the first time.

Last week, the US Department of Energy announced the approval of grants totaling $151 million dollars for what they called bold, new energy technology research.

Grants went to a variety of private agencies, including many educational institutions, but all will be supervised by Arpa-e.

ProPublica is tracking the stimulus, and they have a full list of grants.

These include: $4 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for “‘Direct Wafer’ technology to form high efficiency ‘monocrystalline-equivalent’ silicon wafers directly from molten silicon, with potential to halve the installed cost of solar photovoltaics”.

Kudos if  you can translate that into English.

Buzz Off, Monserrate

Maybe the goo-goos can use this to aid their cause (courtesy of the teacher’s lounge at the school we painted a couple weekends ago):

FIRE HIM NOW.

Kornacki Kracks It

The award for best post-debate analysis goes to Steve Kornacki of the NY Observer for this article: “Bloomberg Beats a Dead Horse”

The irony is that Kornacki doesn’t analyze the debate at all, specifically. No guessing which hand gesture most affected turnout (Bloomie grabbing his lapels), or what response most sent shivers through people (Thompson’s grade of D- for Bloomberg’s term as mayor). Instead, Kornacki chooses to dissect the dialogue of the campaigns, compare the reality of the ‘09 Race with what it could have been, and analyze why we’ve ended up with politics as usual.

And as usual, he’s spot on.

Bloomberg Beats a Dead Horse [New York Observer]

Politics 3.0: Some UGC On Healthcare Reform

OFA is running a video contest where you can vote user-generated videos about healthcare reform up or down to select a winner. I haven’t watched all 20, but I enjoyed this one because the grittiness reminded me of NYC:

And this one because well, it just speaks the truth:

Obama for America: Healthcare Reform Video Challenge

The Youth of New York Need YOU!

Young helping the young — that’s the theme for MYD’s community service events this quarter, and we need your help!

Here’s what’s going on:

Dinner with LGBT youth at New Alternatives

New Alternatives is a center for at-risk LGBT youth, and our service event will prepare food and serve dinner. Support New Alternatives’ guiding principles of harm reduction, youth development and empowerment. Assist young members of our community as they transition from the shelter system to a new apartment, school, or move on to whatever their next step may be.

Heather is also looking for help prepare and/or provide a presention on MYD after dinner ends. The leaders of New Alternatives are true activists. They believe in a comprehensive approach to outreach and would like us to tell their students how to become involved.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Middle Collegiate Church, 50 E 7th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenue)

Meet Heather outside the church at 5:45pm

Sign up by emailing Heather today at service [at] goMYD [dot] com

The NY-23 Petri Dish

While we are caught up with the Mayoral race here in NYC, one in which the Democratic Independent Republican candidate has personally spent more money than any other person in any other race in American history – there’s another NY race that’s getting more national attention: the congressional three way in NY-23. With Obama hovering around 50% in the US job approval polls the MSM cable news networks, tasked with bringing analysis to less than 2% of Americans, need a shiny new metric to measure the Obama administration so far. Somehow, replacing a Republican that Obama was able to woo to become his Secretary of the Army with another Republican means Obama is a steaming pile of socialist failure…

But the race is also getting legitimate attention for the way various conservative types have tripped over themselves to support the third party candidate over the Republican. People like Bobby Jindal hopeful Tim Pawlenty, Father Coughlin hopeful Glenn Beck, Ronald Reagan hopeful Fred Thompson, and Dan Quayle hopeful Sarah Palin have all weighed in on behalf of Doug Hoffman, the local proxy for the national conservative “grassroots” (as long as local means not actually living in NY-23). No offense to Democratic candidate Bill Owens, who MYD co-hosted a fundraiser for last week, but the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava – aside from having the most vowel lover support – also had a really good shot to win. She’s got legislative experience, moderate viewpoints on social issues, and is running for a seat previously held by a similarly aligned Republican. But Hoffman lines up better on the “real” issues NY-23, and thus America, and thus FREEDOM, apparently face: gay marriage, ACORN, and being able to obtain Beck’s teary enthusiasm. In addition Hoffman declares in the self-introduction on his website:

In 1980, I helped Lake Placid with our Olympics when the US beat the Russians in hockey – the same year Reagan was elected. It’s time to send Washington a new message now.

New indeed. Perhaps the race in NY-20, which Democrat Scott Murphy won (in what at the time was of course a referendum on Obama’s first 70 days) was too early in the metamorphosis of the GOTP (T for Tea) for a more interesting conservative candidate to fringe into – but I agree with the sometimes shrewd Newt Gingrich in that if Hoffman wins it won’t be penicillin for the Republican Party’s woes:

this idea that we’re suddenly going to establish litmus tests, and all across the country, we’re going to purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent — that guarantees Obama’s reelection.

I think only a major scandal could possibly fire Obama in 2012, and I am not concerned with the impending 2010 races because I don’t think the Democrats will lose either majority, but the GOTP tacking to the right in a place like NY-23, even if Hoffman really does win the actual votes, just shows that the Republican Party is falling deeper into their ideological sinkhole. And to that I say: shine on you crazy conservative diamonds.

Then again according to the overly forthcoming barber who cut my hair last week I shouldn’t waste my time worrying, because apparently the world’s going to end in 2012… Maybe because Obama really is the Communist Hitler Anti-Christ Chipmunk.

I just hope I’ll be left behind to see how that all goes down…

Gingrich: NY-23 ‘purge’ ‘guarantees Obama’s reelection’ (Ben Smith @ Politico)

$85 Million in Ads Not Enough for Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg (or as we sometimes like to call him, Mayor Bloombucks) has already shelled out a record-breaking $85 Million of his own money to be on TV everywhere, every minute until the election, even after a study came out awhile back saying voters’ opinions of him go down after advertising overload.

Of course the Mayor should be at a big Yankees playoff game, and of course he should congratulate the team, but he probably shouldn’t hang around in front of the cameras for hours. As Fox Sports interviewed the Yankees players, managers and executives after the big win, Mayor Bloombucks kept hanging around the podium, and wouldn’t leave.

City Room, the NY politics blog at The New York Times, put a great spin on this one:

Top 10 Reasons Why Mayor Bloomberg Wouldn’t Leave the Podium

10. Rudy would have stepped up to replace him.
9. As Letterman might say, the podium was kinda high off the ground for a guy that short.
8. Someone has to represent the Red Sox, er, I mean the Mets, er, I mean City Hall.
7. If the cracked stadium ramps gave way, this was the safest place to be.
6. Free Champagne? Somewhere there’s gotta be free hot dogs.
5. He had to stay for all nine innings; no way he leaves now.
4. A showing of solidarity with the biggest payroll in baseball.
3. Just bursting for the opportunity to show a national audience how well he speaks Spanish.
2. It’s great to be with a wiener.
1. It’s not often the mayor gets TV face time that he doesn’t have to pay for.

The Mayor Who Wouldn’t Leave [NY Times City Room]

Young Gets It Done: Michael Fujinaka

But Michael Fujinaka is different. The second-year UCSD School of Medicine student spends his free time developing applications for iPhones. His first effort — an app called iMurmur that helps medical staffers learn how to detect troubling heartbeats — has become a big success.

Within a couple of days of its July 14 launch, the software shot to No. 2 on the list of best-selling medical apps on iTunes, the online store operated by iPhone maker Apple. It has remained in the top five ever since.

Two 25-year olds in graduate school at UC San Diego, Michael Fujinaka and Alan Gardner, developed this application on a whim, not expecting it to have 10,000 downloads in only a few months.

We know young people all over the world are making change, but it’s not often that I get to feature an old friend who taught me how to skateboard in my freshman year of college. Congrats on your success Fuj!

He Makes an App, and Medical World Listens [San Diego Union-Tribune]

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