Brooklyn is a long way from the ancient holy lands of the Bible, but Middle East politics impact our borough directly like nowhere else in the USA.

When a tightly organized group of people takes control of an electoral process it becomes a political machine: eight Brooklyn Supreme Court Justices are being investigated for bribery and nepotism.

From now on it is axiomatic that anyone willing and able to spend an obscene amount of their own money to run for any public office, in this case an estimated $50 or $60 million to be Mayor of NYC, is a serious candidate, no matter how loopy they may be in any other aspect of their lives.

Democracy is stressful; vote for the wrong candidate and you own a piece of responsibility for whatever instability and dysfunction results. And it is hard to tell the difference between the warped personality, driven to compete at politics out of some pathology like deep feelings of inadequacy, and the natural-born apparatchik you may think you are getting.

The office of Borough President is the brass ring of Brooklyn politics, the top of the borough’s political food chain.

Continuity is the rule in politics; when you win a seat of power you hold on to it as long as you can. And it has been a relatively easy game to win for incumbent politicians since they have at least two clear advantages come election time.

For years the New York City schools have been a political dog-pit where angry parents, desperate teachers, Kafkaesque bureaucrats, and entry level spokespeople from the city’s various ethnic-political alliances engaged in a particularly ugly form of gridlock.

There is good news for New York football fans this season; you regular Joes...