Ride on! (Paul Steely White)

Maybe it was just the shortest route home.

Over the weekend, Chuck Schumer was spotted in the most unlikely place one might expect him, even though it is right outside his door. Senator Schumer has generally eschewed the controversial Prospect Park West bike lane, which his wife, former Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall, vociferously opposes in lawsuits and op-eds. An avid cyclist, the state's senior senator has neither supported nor opposed the lane. Perhaps he is now voting with his feet?

Bike advocate extraordinaire Paul Steely White, head of Transportation Alternatives, saw the senator coming at him on the bike lane this weekend and knew there was but one thing to do—take a picture and post it online. Mr. White told us that he never intended this to be a sensational moment, though.

"To me it wasn’t a ‘gotcha’ moment at all," he wrote in an email. "It was more a validation of my ideal Chuck Schumer, the one who supports biking and transit."

It's true, Mr. Schumer has been a fierce advocate of projects ranging from Moynihan Station to the recent reinstatement of the commute tax credit, and he has opposed the crummy transportation bills to come out of both houses of Congress this year.

That said, on this one tiny nine-tenths-of-a-mile bike path, he remains mum. A spokesman for Senator Schumer declined to comment on the sighting.

Just one more hit, and we're ready to face the world!

As people who have personally experimented with the AeroShot, the breathable caffeine inhalers (to varied degrees of success), we have our own opinions of its relative safety as the latest club drug. Just like we have our own opinion on Senator Charles "Kill all the Fun Things" Schumer, who this weekend teamed up with the F.D.A. to launch a full-scale investigation into the safety of the Breathable Food product.

But now that this ball is in motion, AeroShot's founder Tom Hadfield is agreeing to comply with the government examination of his product.

From a press release today:

"We will cooperate fully with the FDA's review to address the issues raised by Sen. Schumer and are confident that it will conclude that Aeroshot is a safe, effective product that complies with FDA regulations."

-Tom Hadfield, CEO Breathable Foods

Hey, if 5-hour ENERGY Shots are now an acceptable substitute for coffee, why not its breathable equivalent?

WARNING: Do not try this at home.

New York Senator Charles Schumer and the Food and Drug Administration have officially teamed up to declare open war on the consumer's right to induce heart palpitations via inhalable caffeine. The Senator announced Sunday that the F.D.A. has begun the process of determining whether caffeine inhalers are a legal and safe dietary supplement and not simply a new kind of "club drug." The senator warned that snorting products like the Aeroshot, which the Observer covered in depth, may be "dangerous, particularly to a 12-year-old." Sen. Schumer noted the products do not list an age limit for use and are "certainly dangerous when used in combination with alcohol."

[NY1.com]

WARNING: Do not try this at home.

Politicians can be such buzz-kills. First they petition to take the malt beverage/overly caffeinated Sparks off the shelves, then Four Loko, and now Senator Chuck Schumer is trying to get the FDA to review AeroShot Pure Energy "a breathable caffeine product," in light of possible safety concerns.

But how bad can inhaler full with 100 mgs of calorie-and-sugar-free caffeine actually be? After distributing the product to four members of The Observer's staff, we tipped our heads back and took one for the team to find out.

The results?

Currently, two of our four test subjects (including this post's author) are having mild panic attacks. "I feel like I just inhaled lime-flavored Adderall," said one participant. "Is my throat swelling up? I feel like my throat is swelling up." They immediately left the vicinity and haven't been back since. Another lab rat kept pumping more than one "shot" of the spray into his mouth, because "he wasn't getting anything." Three minutes later, soft giggles could be heard from his corner of the office.

"Please put up that clip of Jessie Spano," he said. We knew exactly which one he was talking about.

The third member of our experiment pumped his shot, made a face, and went back to writing a post...hold on...okay, now he's on CBS News' website. Now he's checking his email. Before that he was on Twitter, we think.

As for ourselves, we seem to have had the worst physical reaction to the latest attempt to appeal to club kids who are allergic to cocaine. We put the innocuous piece of plastic in our mouth and sucked; the next thing we knew, the world was spinning and it felt like tiny shards of asbestos were filling our lungs.

"Water!" we sputtered. We sprinted to the middle of the room and dry-heaved a bit until a coworker brought over some Poland Spring. Then we sprinted to the other side of the room. Then we sprinted back, cocked our head, and tried to determine whether or not we were having a heart attack.

(By the way, the third coworker is now looking at some weird audio visualization. What are those things called? Not sound waves, but they kind of look like EKG screens? We think he might be editing a song he just made.* Now he's reading his email again.)

"I wish I hadn't had coffee right before taking this," the giggling coworker gasped, before reaching for more coffee.

Five minutes later, two participants had come down from their high, one had left the building, and we were left writing this post about AeroShot Pure Energy, which we just noticed came with the most amazing cover letter ever:

"It all started with a bet. (Editor's note: Never a good sign for your non-FDA approved drug.) The concept for this revolutionary new product was developed by David Edwards, Harvard professor and leader of ArtScience Labs, a network of culture labs. While having lunch with his friend Chief Thierry Marx at Marx's restaurant, he began discussing ideas for a collaborative experiment for his cultural design center, Le Laboratoire. He asked Thierry if he thought it would be interesting to breathe food; Chef's eyes lit up, but he doubted it would work. The bet was on..."

It took us two and a half minutes to transcribe that paragraph. We're starting to crash, and feel a dull headache coming on. Incredibly, we are considering of reaching for another "shot" to boost us back up.

Conclusion: If this is this the baseline reaction to an "inhalable" drug--and how good can this stuff be for your lungs, though according to it's press release it doesn't go into your lungs, but your digestive tract, which is weird because we couldn't stop coughing-- without combining it with alcohol, we shudder to think of pumped-up 21 year-olds grabbing this thing after tequila shots and sucking them down like asthmatics at the end of a marathon.

For once, we agree with the government and Chuck Schumer trying to dictate our freedom of choice. This shit should not be legal.

*We were just informed that our coworker was actually recording an "audio file," not editing a dubstep remix. Also, his mouth is numb and he seems kind of mad at us.

"Americans benefit from free trade," said Chocola in a press release this morning. "It forces companies to innovate and compete leading to greater variety, lower prices, and better quality goods and services."

Club for Growth, which advocates and promotes free-market principles, has a long history of denouncing politicians who the group believes are not fiscally conservative enough. (The Club recently declared Donald Trump the "King of Protectionism" in response to his call for a 25 percent tax on Chinese imports.)

Schumer has been outspoken lately in his criticism of China's economic policies following a trip to Beijing earlier this month; and yesterday he declared his intention to unveil "a bunch of legislation" that would encourage the country to play nice with the U.S. by accelerating the appreciation of the yuan.

In the past, Schumer tried to take similar legislative action when he sought to impose a tariff on Chinese imports, which the Club for Growth calls "protectionist."

"Chuck Schumer likes to talk about how he's looking out for the middle class," said Chocola. "But he wants to hit Americans in all income brackets with a massive new sales tax on the goods they buy every day."

UPDATE: A Schumer spokesman emailed a response from the senator. "It is a betrayal of free-trade principles to let China continue taking unfair advantage of the rest of the world's economies. Every major American company that I met with in China told me that China does not trade fairly and their protectionism against foreign firms is getting worse. There is no bigger step we can take to promote U.S. job creation, particularly in the manufacturing sector, than to confront China's currency manipulation and I intend to do just that." 

"We talked about currency, we met with the American Chamber of Commerce," said the senator, offering one example. "They're afraid to speak out publicly, but when they met with us privately, every one of them had a complaint."

Schumer has been an outspoken critic of several Chinese policies, which he believes gives the country an unfair advantage in the international market. During his trip, which included nine of his fellow senators, Schumer criticized China's financial leaders for refusing to accelerate the appreciation of the yuan. The senator also said today that the country's current economic arrangement with the United States is unfair.

"Major, major [U.S.] companies are not allowed to sell goods in China. We allow China to sell goods here," he said. "They do not reciprocate."

Schumer said that he plans to take steps to deal with the situation through legislative action, following similar recent comments by Harry Reid.

"I have a whole bunch of legislation that I will be announcing on currency and other issues to deal with the fact that China doesn't treat us fairly," he said.

"Donald's from Brooklyn," Schumer explained. (But wait, isn't he from Queens?)

"I used to see his father driving the Cadillac that said 'FT' down Ocean Parkway when I was playing on the street," Schumer reminisced. (Trump's father was named Fred Christ Trump.) "So I'm not going to be critical of Donald Trump. All I say is, as a Democrat, the more Republicans in the primary, the merrier."

Of course, Trump has also donated money to Schumer's campaigns over the years. When asked if he thought that Trump would run, the senator kept mum.

"You'll have to ask him," he said.

House Speaker John Boehner was in his Ohio district yesterday, and told ABC News "I don't think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances, but for small, independent, oil and gas producers, if they didn't have this, there'd be even less exploration in America than there is today."

Today Senator Chuck Schumer -- a key figure in shaping the Democrats policy and messaging -- latched onto part of Boehner's statement, and tried to drive a wedge between Boehner and his Republican conference. 

Schumer, in a public statement, said he's glad that "gas hitting four dollars per gallon seems to have finally caused Speaker Boehner to see the light on the insanity of providing subsidies to profit-soaked big oil companies."

Schumer added:

Senate Republican leaders should follow his example, and stop their senseless filibusters against attempts to repeal these giveaways. At a time when we have a record deficit, it makes no sense to keep rewarding oil companies for socking it to consumers at the pump.  These subsidies are a relic of a time when oil was $17 per barrel and oil companies needed incentives to drill.  That time has long since ended.

Schumer is, of course, dutifully ignoring Boehner's spokesman, who is now fighting to put his boss' comments into context.

Update: "I was heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry," Obama wrote in a letter to legislative leaders, which was just released by the White House.

Here are the numbers:

Andrew Cuomo: 64-16 percent, last month, 56-15 percent.

Dem: 66-15 percent

GOP: 58-18 percent

Independent: 66-15 percent

Upstate: 62-16 percent

NYC: 66-14 percent

Suburbs: 64-19 percent

Union Household: 57-21 percent

Public School Parents: 61-20 percent

Overall "higher than the governors in any state polled by Quinnipiac University so far this year."

Obama: 54-42 percent

Chris Christie: 52-40 percent

Gillibrand: 49-26 percent; las month was 54-20 percent.

Schumer: 55-32 percent; last month was 60-26 percent.

Some highlights:

An unintentionally funny moment, during Chuck Schumer's remarks. After acknowledging some guests in the audience, he said, "I think I'm the third longest member - third longest?" and then corrected himself. "Third-longest serving member."

He went on to say, "CBID has been a great voice of conscious conscience for a very long time."

Rep. Weiner told the crowd "We should, in some degree, embrace this fight. This is an opportunity for us to explain to a whole generation of Americans some things that maybe they took for granted. This is an opportunity to decide once again how we define ourselves as Democrats and what makes us Democrats and not Republicans. We should embrace this fight, bring it on, and lean into it."

"Nothing troubles me more," said State Senator Eric Adams, "than we passed the budget in Albany without getting the millionaire's tax. That should not have happened."