By Amanda Painter

On the heels of the Wyoming primary, presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are gearing up for the April 19 New York primary. While Sanders and Trump were born there and Clinton resides there now, Cruz and Kasich have no personal ties to the state; in fact Cruz — Mr. ‘New York Values Are Alienating’ — is not even campaigning in the Big Apple, choosing instead to focus his efforts on the West Coast.

Hillary, Bernie, Donald, Ted…but where’s John? (John who, you ask?) Why, John Kasich, of course — the third Republican still standing! Does anyone in New York even know anything about him?

So who’s going to take the biggest bite?

It’s not necessarily an easy call, partly due to the fact that New York has a ‘closed’ primary; meaning that anyone wishing to vote in it would have had to be registered as either a Republican or Democrat to vote in that party’s primary by this past Oct. 9. That’s more than six months, and this primary season has only gotten more and more impassioned with each month that has gone by.

NBC News says that Sanders has not fared as well as Clinton in ‘closed’ primaries:

Sanders lost all three primaries held so far this year that barred independent voters, and closed primaries dominate the final eight weeks of the primary calendar. Nine of the remaining 17 contests are closed primaries, including four out of the five biggest (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey).

In New York, tight laws and early deadlines will compound the challenge for Sanders.

There is no same-day registration in the state. Independents or members of third parties who want to vote as Democrats had to change their party registration by October 9.

And new voters — another key Sanders voting bloc — had to register by March 25, just days after the Sanders campaign deployed their first paid staffers in New York and the day before they opened their first field office there.

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Luckily for Sanders, we have the Internet — and social media has been positively manic with political rants, memes and entreaties for months. Large numbers of Millennials seem to be genuinely fired up by Sanders.

So that lack of a field office might not be as damning as it would be for older demographics — assuming, of course, that first-time voters rallying behind Bernie in New York got the memo about the March 25 deadline in time.

But another key component of these contests – especially for the Democrats, apparently — has been early voting via absentee ballot. Not all states allow this, and some have significant restrictions on it; in other states, (such as in Maine) you just have to show up at City Hall by a certain date to vote absentee prior to an election or primary/caucus.

According to Seth Abramson at The Huffington Post, New Yorkers have not done much early voting — which might not bode as well for Clinton:

New York, like eight other states that have held primaries already, allows in-person absentee voting — but, critically, few are making use of it. According to the most recent polling in the state — a poll taken between April 4th and April 7th — only 8 percent of Democrats have already voted. Yet even these figures are suspect, as a poll taken by CBS between March 29th and April 1st showed very different results: at that point, zero percent of New York Democrats had already voted (the actual number being closer to zero than to one percent). Is it possible that hundreds of thousands of Democrats voted absentee between April 1st and April 7th? Sure. Is it likely? No.

And since early voting has favored Clinton in many states where same-day voting has favored Sanders by significant margins, this brings up a question: If Clinton does not have her usual early-voting cushion in New York, is the state really hers for the taking on April 19? Or might Sanders be more of a threat than people are giving him credit for?

It’s worth noting that more delegate-rich states with restricted early voting or no early voting are still yet to come this primary season.

But let’s face it: polls don’t tell the whole story, and they can often be spun to suit a variety of views. Here’s a point made by The Washington Post:

The nature of these primary contests is necessarily deceptive, prompting us to find patterns where none exist. (Blame evolution.) Sanders won a string of contests that favored him demographically and that happened to be bunched together on the primary calendar — just as Clinton won a string of contests that favored her demographically and that happened to be bunched together on the calendar. (And, no, the South didn’t vote first intentionally to help Clinton.) It’s just that Clinton’s demographically favorable states had a lot more delegates at stake.

Here’s WashPo again, on Trump:

If Trump doesn’t hit that 50 percent mark in New York, a state where he should do well, he’s in deep trouble. He’s in trouble anyway, still having to scramble through the remaining states to hit 1,237, but if he misses the mark in the friendly turf of his home state, he’ll have to do much better in California on June 7 than he does already.

Who won’t be helping Trump in his bid for New York delegates? Two of his three oldest kids. That’s right: siblings Ivanka and Eric Trump are not registered as Republicans, and missed that October deadline to switch their party affiliation. As The New York Post reports, Trump claimed ignorance on behalf of Eric and Ivanka:

“No. They had a long time to register and they were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn’t, they didn’t register in time,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “So they feel very, very guilty.”

“But it’s fine. I understand that. I think they have to register a year in advance and they didn’t. So Eric and Ivanka, I guess, won’t be voting.”

Trump joked: “Yes. No more allowance.”

So: Cruz fled to Cali; Kasich is… I have no clue about Kasich, I admit. I don’t even know what his platform is, but I cannot imagine it’s more terrifying than Cruz’s. If it were, he’d be a frontrunner in this Race for America’s Shadow Side that seems to be playing out among the Republicans.

Clinton had this bit of insight to offer New Yorkers this past weekend:

“I not only love New York and am incredibly grateful every day that I had the honor of being your senator, but I actually think New York values are really good for America.”

Which is great, but when you get former president and humanitarian icon Jimmy Carter publicly criticizing your tenure as Secretary of State — “When Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State, she took very little action to bring about peace. It was only John Kerry’s coming into office that reinitiated all these very important and crucial issues.” — you might want to try a little harder. (Of course, that’s not all Clinton has said to New Yorkers, but still: you can do better than riffing off of Ted Cruz, Hillary!)

Meanwhile, Sanders the non-religious Jew is heading to the Vatican to give a speech about the economy. Sure, he may have solicited for his invitation to visit Pope Francis. But he also had this to say, according to Democracy Now!:

You know, it goes without saying that I have my strong disagreements with certain aspects of what the church stands for, but he [Pope Francis] has been out there talking about the need for a moral economy — a moral economy — an economy in which we have the moral responsibility to pay attention to what he calls “the dispossessed.”

Now, are “the dispossessed” of New York hearing this? And more importantly: Did they register to Vote Democrat by the Oct. 9 deadline? We’ll find out on April 19.

Eric has just finished recording the 2016-17 Aries birthday reading, and it’s now available for instant access. This reading has something to offer if you have Aries prominent anywhere in your astrology, such as a Moon, Ascendant, Saturn or Chiron placement. It also makes an extra-special gift for the Aries you love.

The reading contains two audio sessions and a third on video, each about 30 minutes. It covers all the themes about which Eric has recently written, such as Uranus-Eris and Mars retrograde, and your relationship to personhood, identity and technology.

Here is a complimentary audio sample for you to mingle your mind & senses. If you like what you hear, you may get the full reading here.

And here is another:

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I digress from writing on national politics and the heat of the primary races to talk about matters close to home.

It was our last dress rehearsal for my recent show at Southside Theater in San Francisco’s Fort Mason. As we were putting costumes and cast refreshments away, I got a phone call from my downstairs neighbor, Brandon. His voice was quaking.

Brandon is a young, bright African-American scholar who is an assistant professor in queer literature at UC Berkeley. He was one of the first people I met when I moved into the apartment above him in our sunny duplex Edwardian home in the Elmwood District. Elmwood is an affluent neighborhood on the border between North Oakland and South Berkeley. It’s close to College Avenue and the Rockridge District. Elmwood is the district you want to live in due to its close proximity to BART (public transportation), grocery stores and trendy shops.

Grad students like Brandon flock here because it’s quiet. It’s a neighborhood of older African-American homeowners, young white professionals and their families, and students transitioning from grad school into the workplace.

Brandon and I adopted each other. Both my niece and nephew have moved on to their jobs and are building their adult lives. I have become Brandon’s surrogate mom, and have gotten to know his other roommates well. I’ve taught Brandon how to cook oxtails and paella, and we’ve baked apple pies together. Always making a bit too much for myself — I found Brandon and his roommates a welcome audience for my cooking and companionship. I think they like the steadying influence of a strong maternal energy nearby. My place is another home for them. They are good kids who I feel safe with knowing they’re around.

When I got a call from Brandon at 10:30 pm on a Thursday night, my heart tightened. The quivering in his voice asking me “if I knew what happened” filled my heart with a faint feeling of dread. I sat down on the steps outside the theater, girding myself to listen.

“I was in the bathroom, and I heard a pounding on the door. Then a crashing of glass from the front door. I could hear a group of people breaking into the house. I thought, ‘they’re breaking in and they’re going to kill me.’ I locked the bathroom door and crawled out the window to escape. Luckily I found the pipes running down the side of the building that gave me some footing. I held onto them as long as I could, then fell onto the easement.”

He continued, a tremble in his voice. “There were eight police in the house, they found me and pinned me down with a foot on my back. I could not move. I had to keep breathing to stay calm, as my parents instructed me to do. Two had clubs and another a gun pointed at me. I thought I was going to die right then and there.”

The police asked him about a former roommate whose girlfriend was implicated in a sting operation aimed towards a third — an illicit dealer in pot. Just before they left, they finally gave Brandon the warrant. Knowing both of those young women, I couldn’t imagine how this could get so far and go so violently.

When I got home, I invited Brandon up to my place, which was untouched thanks to his clearing me from having any knowledge of the alleged “illegal” activity. I had no idea what was going on. I took out two shot glasses and my three-quarters full bottle of gold tequila and we sat down to debrief.

He seemed calmer, and I was glad that I was there. It took three tequila shots to get him to completely relax and able to get to sleep. It took two shots for me to calm down myself. He recounted everything that happened, and with his literary mind the description was harrowing.

Face down on the ground, he was surrounded by cops who — with just the right amount of hair-trigger motivation and the thrill of a “collar” from a big bust — could have ended his life right then and there. Neighbors who we all knew were watching. And apparently the police were watching this house — our house — for months.

Fortunately one of our neighbors — the owner of the apartment building next door — called our landlady to tell her what was going on. She came in due time, attesting to Brandon’s legal tenancy, thus corroborating his story. Being a smart lady from Boston and a former head of the building inspection department, she started assessing the damage caused to her property, mulling the bill she would present to the city, and perhaps other actions stemming from racially motivated police brutality.

Brandon experienced what happened to professor Henry Louis Gates in 2009 while trying to enter his own home in Boston: harassment by police. Thank God it did not escalate to where he could have been dead due to a series of blunders caused by utter stupidity, hot-headed thinking, the adrenaline-driven rush of having so much weaponry at your fingertips, and an alarming willingness to jump on anything and anyone suspicious. Particularly if that someone is black.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

It was another moment in time for Black Lives Matter and it happened at my home. My heart still aches because of it. But it reminded me of how important it is to be open to your neighbors, to establish community and care about what happens to you and around you.

Talking over the fence with the apartment owner next door, I thanked him for giving our landlady the heads up. I promised him that if I see similar bullshit happening to him next door that we’d be just as aware and involved as he was for Brandon.

The downstairs front door is still boarded up and our landlady is putting time into the carpentry repairs for damage that a gang of eight police officers can inflict on a home.

This weekend, I’ve set aside some time to make dinner for Brandon and two of his other roommates. It’s been my promise to him long before the police break-in. I’m going to put every last bit of love that I can into this meal, making it something to enjoy, savor and remember, hopefully blotting out the stain of violence that disrupted our lives last month. Time is precious. So is life and living it. For some of us in this country, the wolves so often meander too close to home.

The infamous Piacenza Bronzelebar, or Thema Gutsy, which contains the key to the universe, was discovered by the eminent research astrologer and translator Robert Blackschmidt. It is a diagram of a sheep’s liver and contains the key to the universe. Someone tell Hawking.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Astrology aficionados around the globe expressed shock and concern after several senior members of the profession disavowed the ancient starcraft in favor of haruspicy, or divination with the entrails of animals.

All you need to know.

“It’s true that in the golden age of horary astrology, the mid-1600s, some people might have chosen to have a chart cast, whilst in the next stall you might have asked the same question to someone reading chicken guts,” said Cornelius Geoffrey II of Scotland, a former astrologer. “You might call that the marketplace of ideas. Well, it is back.”

Websites, apps, conferences, a book and even a magazine, The Prairie Haruspicer, have all sprung up the past few weeks, causing a surge in the economy and setting the astrological profession on its ear as thousands of obsessive fans stampeded over to the hot new corner of both cyberspace and meatspace.

“When I found out my Sun sign was wrong, I lost all faith in astrology and everything,” said one seeker. “This is real. At least I know chicken livers exist. And they would have no reason to lie.”

Neil DeGrasse Tyson celebrated the news on his Twitter feed, tweeting, “See! See! See!”

Tyson then burst onto the set as a guest of Larry Wiltmore on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, interrupting a program while it was in progress, previewing the act he’s going to take on the Chitlin Circuit.

However, he said during the more serious part of the interview that he had learned much as a child secretly studying guts, but he later was afraid that other scientists would ridicule him if they knew.

Discussion of the new trend in divination started with civilized, humble roots on Reddit, yet matters rapidly degenerated to a Subreddit called L’Abbatoir, where things got grisly fast. Protests erupted in Asheville, North Carolina, after a butcher there was caught giving readings to customers informing them that they were soon destined to meet him at the local Motel 6.

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A message from Sarah Taylor: “Sorry about the delay with this week’s reading, which has been due to illness and an unexpected trip to the hospital (not mine, and things are on the mend now). I’ll be publishing the tarot reading tomorrow, Tuesday, in time for Wednesday’s lunar eclipse.  ~ Sarah.”

In the fall of the 2008 US Presidential election campaign, some of our European friends emailed to ask if they should come to California to help do phone banking for Obama.

It was an amazing and touching communication to receive, and so much in the spirit of Jimmy Carter’s global democracy project, which monitors freely held elections in countries around the world. After eight years of Cheney-Bush, the rest of the world — not only the US — needed change. They helped so that we could do the right thing and kick out the neo-conservatives who ruined the country and de-stabilized the world.

Therefore, in 2016 I politely ask that if you are interested in saving America from itself, can you come over and do this again? I am sure there are a lot of sensible Americans willing to put you up, in thanks for the help. Me included.

I am not certain that we are capable of having a reasonable debate in 2016 as to who will replace President Obama and sit in the catbird’s seat of the free world. Not while the center-left and far-left of this country are in a raging battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, and the far-right is battling to sell the soul of the entire nation to the devil.

I’d say we’ve qualified as bat shit crazy right now, before the nominees are even selected. Even reporters from Breitbart.com — a conservative news website — are being attacked at Trump rallies. In Chicago, protesters forced the Trump campaign to cancel its event. At a Trump rally in Kansas, a young Muslim student was assaulted by Trump supporters.

We are not helped by the fact that Trump’s chief rival, Ted Cruz, is only slightly less worse. Although his rallies lack the Nazi book-burning fervor of Trump’s, Ted Cruz is the 21st century’s Tomas de Torquemada. A real Bible-thumping Dominionist. And he is so despised by his own party that some of his Senate Republican colleagues stated off the record they would vote for Clinton if Cruz was the nominee.

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Once the primary process is done and the nominees from both parties are clearly identified, the steep path towards the convention and the general election will be fraught. How do you reason on political issues when your opposition is willing to come at you with pepper spray, racist taunts or a pair of fists?

This seems more like the 1816 general election instead of 2016, and with more advanced crowd control and surveillance devices. And I think the 1816 election — still so close to the Era of the Enlightenment — was far more civilized, or so history books claim.

But what this plea for help really is about is a call for us to remember what we’re doing, as we look through the lens of history. What are we becoming in this phase of our development? How do we respond to our country’s social and economic crisis, as well as the crisis in our relationship with the rest of the world? How did we lose our way, and when will we find our way back?

If you have any thoughts on getting us out of the dark woods we find ourselves in, please write, email or give us a call.