Obama streaker can't get naked for two years

Remember Juan Rodriguez? He's the 24-year-old Staten Island resident who harassed the President of the United States in his birthday suit with the intention of winning $1 million.

Well, Rodriguez got naked, but didn't get (all) the money, and now he's on probation leaving him unable to get naked in public for at least two years without facing stiff legal penalties. Rodriguez was sentenced on three misdemeanor counts in a Philadelphia court on Friday. At the trial he revealed why Philadelphia was his premiere destination for nude streaking.

"Philadelphia has a history of streaking," Rodriguez said. "I didn't pick Philadelphia out of the hat."

A 'history of streaking?' Genius. He's only set to received about $100,000 of his precious bounty. That should be enough for the unemployed father of three to support his family for about 18 months. Then he could wait six months and streak again. Go for the gold, young man. Go for the gold.

Boro Pres drop F-bomb

We haven't had much time to post lately but it came to our attention that some people haven't seen this clip and we decided to share it.

It's Borough President James Molinaro doing what he does best - mainly embarrassing himself with his mouth. He apparently was unaware he was on live television and was in the midst of performing his elected duty of cursing someone out. It's not quite the profanity-laced tirade of James Oddo (Google it) but the incident does at least solidify the perception of the Island as a bunch of clueless rubes.

Well done Mr. Boro President!

Grimm start for local congressman

We weren't big fans of Mike Grimm on the campaign trail, but he is our congressman now and we'd like him to function like a nominally cogent human politician. So far - and, it's only been like 2 weeks - Grimm has stumbled over himself a few times.

It started with Grimm's reaction to the failed assassination attempt on Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Grimm's solution was to arm members of Congress so next time, more people get shot.

But when "two dozen" protestors gathered outside his office Monday to protest the attempt to repeal health care reform, Grimm responded like a seasoned amateur.

Grimm called the demonstration “nothing more than political grandstanding.”

Mr. Grimm, this is not a campaign, these are your constituents now, you have to at least pretend to listen to them. And, we are not sure if you know this but not that many people out here even give a shit about you or what you do. You should be grateful that "two dozen" people know what your name is.

Congressman McMahon, the person he has replaced, faced a lot of criticism and prostests from people like the Tea Party. But as hard as they worked to block his reelection, he never dismissed them and what they did as "political grandstanding."

That's two strikes on our count, Mr. Grimm. And if you don't come up with any solutions (see health care) but continue your tactics of obstruction you've got a real painful two years ahead of you.

The elusive local angle on Arizona

By now, every publication and their great-grandmothers have spoken on the horrible tragedy in Arizona, where a lone gunman without a coherent motivation mowed down 13 people during an informal congressional meet-and-greet outside a Safeway in Tucson, killing 6 including a 9-year-old newly elected student council member.

To give the story a local marinade our trusted newspaper posted a piece that includes a statement from the Staten Island Tea Party, and gently dissects their reaction to the tragedy. The question we have is: why?

The local chapter of the Tea Party has nothing to do with Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, or this Salvia-addled lunatic in Tucson. It seems the local Tea Partiers don't even have much in common with the Tucson Tea Party, which is much more concerned with issues such as illegal immigration.

For instance: after the shooting, the Tucson Tea Party has obsessed over any perceived incremental attempt to limit their access to high capacity clips, weapons, bullets, ammo, guns, guns, guns.... Second Amendment "remedies" so to speak. We do not believe this is a specific priority of the local Tea Party, but then again, maybe some one should have asked them.

Instead of focusing on an actual issue - ANY issue - the news cycle quickly devolved into partisan talking points about who is to blame and if all the "heated rhetoric" was responsible for the atrocity. Again, not helping anybody. If we want that argument, we can get it on cable news, talk radio, blogs, NY Post...

By the way, the Democratic "spokesman" also made haphazard connections and allegations in this piece. Just balls of obfuscation.

How could a local news outlet have handled this more effectively? Well, how about asking local political activists whether they align themselves with the so-called "heated rhetoric." And not just mamma grizzly Sarah Palin - whose coded ramblings are not fueling anything except a reality TV career - but people like Sharron Angle, who made the inflammatory statement about "Second Amendment remedies."Or what about newly-elected Congressman Allen West, a man whose chief of staff defiantly declared "if ballots don't work, bullets will?"(This individual has since been "replaced.")

Keep your pants on, Staten Island

It comes only once a year. Today is the day when dozens of 20-somethings engage is the dumb, pointless stunt of riding the NYC subway with no pants on. Why do they do this? Because it's 'sooo crazy and hilarious, man' - right?

This idiotic "participatory event" is organized the attention-seeking group Improv Everywhere and you can find very detailed instructions on how exactly to ride the subway without pants on their Web site. Because that needs explaining.

Here is a sample:

You can wear fun underwear if you like, but nothing that screams out, “I wore this because I’m doing a silly stunt.”

Unsurprisingly Staten Island is left off the day's itinerary, probably because we don't have a subway. But if anyone finds someone riding Staten Island Railway in the tighty whiteys please take a picture.

Local man Googles 'how to kill my mistress'

Rosario DiGirolamo pleaded guilty this week to the murder and dismemberment of his girlfriend, Amy Giordano, after investigators found the incriminating evidence in an old Google search.

Amy's body disappeared back in 2007 when the New Jersey man murdered her in a Hightstown, NJ apartment then stuffed her torso into a suitcase before dumping it into the swamp of Clay Pit Ponds in the Charleston section of Staten Island.

DiGirolamo, who had been married to another woman, was reportedly unable to keep up with both families and decided to dispose of one of them. He left their 11-month-old son behind in the parking lot of a Delaware hospital with a note attached.

The note had insinuated it was the mother who abandoned the child.

The evidence that led to DiGirolamo's confession was a Google search executed just days before the killing: "lethal karate blows to the back of the head."

His defense lawyer had maintained the man's innocence up until the discovery of this search on his laptop.

New Year's Ferry Fight

The Staten Island Ferry is such a romantic night time ride, especially on the holidays when everyone is in a thankful, giving mood, love is in the air.... hey, wait there's a fight!

Did a Democratic operative hack into local Tea Party Web site?

There was a story that came to light Monday about the local Tea Party stepping up into the political realm of Staten Island by infiltrating the Republican County Committee which selects the nominees for GOP ballot line - or something like that.

The move is kind of a no-brainer. The group is just a bunch of disgruntled Republicans anyways, so why not try to replace the current GOPers in power?

Of course they will get a shit ton of resistance from the Island's establishment - but hey, screw them, right? What have they done for us lately?

However, there was one interesting, overlooked nugget buried in the report by New York Observer's David Freedlander, who seems like a real awesome dude.

Here is the excerpt, referring to an e-mail note that the Tea Party was preparing to send out to it's 2,000 (yeah, right) members:

The note has not yet been sent out to Tea Party members. It was discovered on the group's website by John F. Lavelle, an active local Democrat and son of a longtime Democratic  power broker. He told The Politicker that he found the page by signing in as an administrator and taking a guess as to what the website's password was.

His first, and correct guess, was "Constitution."

Sounds like amateur hour espionage to us. Weird though that the Tea Party hasn't responded to this blatant form of thievery from an Island Democratic operative. Aren't these the same people who compared President Obama's new health care overhaul to white "slavery" - really. They do have a tendency to bloviate a bit.

Then the Advance ran a story also, without mentioning the whole Lavelle/hacking pseudo-scandal. But wait there's more: