Domenic Recchia, go home.

Brooklyn City Councilman Domenic Recchia has been making the rounds on Staten Island in recent weeks. Some speculated that the Daily News Knucklehead award winner( http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2006/12/26/2006-12-26_how_stupid_can...) was visiting the forgotten borough because he was seeking citywide office. Others correctly speculated that he was contemplating running a primary against Steve Harrison for the right to attempt to unseat Vito Fossella, New York City’s only Republican member of Congress, who represents all of Staten Island and a portion of Brooklyn. Crain’s and the Staten Island Advance confirmed his potentially disastrous for those wanting to Veto Vito, ambitions.

Brooklyn attorney Harrison ran a gallant campaign last year, losing by a smaller percentage of the vote than any of Fossella’s opponents since he supplanted the Molinari dynasty in 1997. Harrison accomplished this despite being out spent 12-1 by Fossella, largely because people like Recchia, who represents a tiny portion of the Congressional District in the Council, did squat for Steve.

Harrison has not formally announced his repeat candidacy yet, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’s likely to run based on his ubiquitous presence on Staten Island since the election. He also couldn’t announce because of party chair John Lavelle’s death and three first quarter 2007 special elections in Staten Island.

I received a request from Internet radio provider Pandora to contact my Congressman before tomorrow's Congressional hearing concerning royalty payment schedules for web based stations. I didn't recall ever giving them my street address, but they somehow knew that unfortunately Vito Fossella is my Congressperson.

I wrote back that any requests to Vito from me would go deaf ears considering I spent most of my 2006 waking hours trying to cause him to be unemployed.

Unlike terrestrial radio, which pays fairly small fees to music copyright licensing companies such as ASCAP and BMI, Internet stations are charged ridiculously high per song rates by Sound Exchange which receives royalty payments for artists and the major record labels.

The new fee schedule will essentially kill web based music radio by making the cost of playing music prohibitive.

I rarely listen to terrestrial commercial music radio anymore because the playlists are repetitive or just outright suck.

Pandora is an interesting service. You can give them an artist or a song and they will put together a compatible playlist.

I put together a station based on the 70s Genesis song, "Supper's Ready". Tonight's Supper's Ready radio station music selections included Genesis, YES, Phish, Procol Harum and Jethro Tull.

Freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy issued the following response to Bush's attempt to dig America deeper into the Iraq quagmire:

Today, Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8th District), former U.S. Army Captain and Iraq war veteran, issued the following statement in response to President Bush's call for more troops in Iraq:

"What we need is a surge in diplomacy, not an escalation in forces," said Congressman Patrick Murphy. "I side with military experts like General Colin Powell and General Abizaid who say we need a political solution, not a military escalation. I know from experience that our current course is terribly misguided. We need a timeline to bring our troops home so that Iraqis come off the sidelines and fight for their own country."

"It's time that Iraqis stood up for Iraq, so we can bring our heroes home and focus our efforts on protecting America and capturing and killing Osama bin Laden," added Murphy.

Prior to being elected to Congress, Murphy served as a Captain in the U.S. Army as part of the 82nd Airborne Division in Bosnia and Iraq. He is the first and only Iraq war veteran to serve in Congress. He is a former West Point professor and criminal prosecutor.

My wife and I, thanks to a cancelled political meeting and an already arranged babysitter, recently had a chance to be by ourselves without kids for a couple of hours. This is so rare these days!

We were discussing my article on European headscarf bans and started discussing xenophobe Republican Virgil Goode's fear of incoming Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison's wanting to swear his oath of office on a Q'ran. Honestly, I think Ellison's use of a Q'ran once owned by Thomas Jefferson is about the most American of acts one can imagine, embracing both our tradition and our diversity. But Virgil Goode seems terrified of Muslims.

My wife then shifted the discussion to just what would WE swear our oath of office on. She suggested Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. For me it would have to be something more appropriate. I guess if it was school board, I'd swear on my copy of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. If it was another position I'd probably choose the appropriate doncument like the city charter for City Council or state or Federal constitution for those governing bodies.

This one comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

On January 3, the Union of Concerned Scientists released Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil uses Big Tobacco Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science. The report documents how ExxonMobil has underwritten one of the most successful disinformation campaigns since the tobacco industry’s 40-year effort to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking. In recent years, ExxonMobil provided close to $16 million in funding to 40 groups that question the urgency of global warming. This web of organizations disseminates the views of a dwindling group of climate change contrarians. Through this sophisticated effort, ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about even the most indisputable scientific evidence on global warming. Disturbingly, ExxonMobil has drawn on the same tactics, and even some of the same organizations and people as Big Tobacco.

The report also reveals how ExxonMobil’s extraordinary influence over key officials in the White House and Congress has fueled the disinformation campaign and helped to forestall federal action to reduce U.S. global warming emissions. As the new Congress convenes in 2007, it’s time to tell our senators and representatives to reject ExxonMobil’s misleading campaign.

How can people rationalize keeping in office a wife-beater and tool of the evangelical dominionist movement? What is wrong with the Democratic party in New York that finds it acceptable to live the lie of a blue state when in fact, suburban and exurban New York is one of the most conservative voting blocks in the eastern seaboard?

Massa concedes, calls to congratulate Kuhl
Star-Gazette
November 15, 2006

Corning — Democratic congressional candidate Eric Massa called U.S. Rep. John R. Kuhl Jr. today to congratulate the congressman on his election victory, finally conceding more than a week after Election Day.

Massa had previously refused to concede, but “now that the vast majority of the votes have been re-canvassed and the counting of the absentee ballots is well under way,” he said in a statement on his Web site, “the voters have spoken and their voices have been heard.”