In his June 10 letter, "Supreme Court is Jersey's shame," Michael Patrick Carroll bemoaned that Stuart Rabner had previously been passed over for a Superior Court judgeship "because of his race, religion and sex" and had been victimized "when government ignores the unequivocal constitutional language forbidding discrimination."
Carroll's praiseworthy words do not match his actions as a legislator and are blatantly disingenuous. Witness his voting record on employment discrimination in New Jersey. As one of only five Assembly members who voted against A930/S362, legislation amending the law against discrimination to include "gender identity or expression," which becomes law today, his stated concerns about discrimination are obviously specious. Common-sense conservative? Give me a break! Shame on Carroll.
While DBK discussed where the science is, I want to make another point about Assemblyman Carroll's post about global warming, where he gives "credit where same is due," however backhanded it may be.
So, when one confronts an intellectually honest argument which actually arrives at a totally unexpected - that is to say, correct - conclusion, on an otherwise usually hysterical blog, one must bestow credit where same is due.
.....
Among the global warming solutions the [Blue Jersey] contributor advances: nuclear power.
(!) Wow. Who would have suspected that?
Kudos to the author. As a general rule, self-appointed "environmentalists" tend to oppose nuclear power based upon wholly speculative possibilities of harm. (Those harms are not impossible, but if the risks associated with global warming are considered essentially certain, same must be considered against the purely hypothetical risks associated with building more nukes). To discover common sense in a wholly unanticipated location is truly refreshing.... [Emphasis added]
Well, contrary to what Carroll writes, advocating nuclear energy is not a completely novel idea for enviromentalists. It's been an active discussion that came to a boil last year, prodded by people like Patrick Moore. And you'd be surprised at the number of liberals working to expand nuclear energy -- not "nukes" -- to growing Eastern countries like India to prevent them from becoming addicted to MidEast oil.
So, no, discussing nuclear energy is not liberal heresy. Maybe Carroll didn't notice the conservationist debate on energy is changing because he's too busy whining about what he thinks they believe. Carroll is incredibly disrespectful of those he disagrees with, even when he agrees with them.
The credit Carroll extends to "the suddenly sensible left" is incredibly condescending and meanspirited. He opens the post trying to discredit Blue Jersey as a place for "bloviating," anger, and intellectual dishonesty -- the very "invective" that he simultaneously decries.
It's terribly insulting to me and others who foster and actually allow a discussion on our site. Carroll says Blue Jersey's diarists "rarely even so much as acknowledge the humanity of their adversaries." This is simply not true. I'll disagree with policies or political tactics, but I've never called someone a Nazi -- perhaps the most degrading comparison -- like Carroll has.
Carroll whines like a baby about other people and then indulges himself in insulting others. Watch him cry now that I'm lashing out at him for a post in which he agrees with us -- like I should thank him for a compliment after he punches me in the face.
Mostly, they're up to bloviating, at best, or, more often, committing the electronic equivalent of bellowing. They rarely even so much as acknowledge the humanity of their adversaries, let alone that dissent from their leftist orthodoxy might, conceivably, be based upon serious thought. I sometimes wonder: where is the leftist George Will or Bill Buckley, an erudite, competent writer who skewers his adversary with logic rather than invective?
Now, as a rule, I -- unlike Carroll -- try to stay away from personally insulting someone I disagree with, though I can't help it if my disagreement is what a person takes offense to.
Now, back to Carroll's question. He asked, "where is the leftist George Will or Bill Buckley, an erudite, competent writer who skewers his adversary with logic rather than invective?"
Oh, yes. Buckley. Rick Perlstein recently highlighted some of his "logic rather than invective."
This logic followed William F. Buckley, who, in a July 20, 1967 column titled "KING-SIZED RIOT IN NEWARK," imagined the dialogue between a rioter and a magistrate:
"You do realize that there are laws against burning down delicatessen stores? Especially when the manager and his wife are still inside the store?"
"Laws Schmaws. Have you never heard of civil disobedience? Have you never heard of Martin Luther King?"
Nope, no invective there.
I'll get to the rest of what he said about climate change and nuclear power later. For now, can someone ask his nanny to put him down for a nap in his glass nursery?
Cheers from your northern neighbor. With campaigns sparse this coming year, I might be looking to cross the border and help out with some Northern New Jersey state races. In particular, I'm curious to see if there will be any viable challenges to the Republicans in Districts 25, 26, 39, and 40 (the four closes to my home in Orange County). Have there been any announced challengers yet? If so (even if not), who of the incumbents are most vulnerable?
But you get the point; [Blue Jersey is] long on insult, short on analysis. One's opponents are never merely wrong, you understand; they're "evil", "practically salivat(ing) at the idea of revenge killings". They're "slime". Our commentator engages in some psychobabble pseudo-analysis, averring that people who happen to disagree with him have "... this need to over-compensate for something" or are "insecure with (themselves)". Glad that's clear.
NJ Governors boast a long tradition of high-handedness, arrogance, imperiousness, or simply outright contempt for the Legislature. But today's gubernatorial performance set a new record for insult, whether intended or incidental.
Place your bets now on whose incivility blowhard Carroll will whine about next week.
For a site founded by a guy PNJ labels as "summa smart", many of the posts are magna cum dumb.
Why no comments allowed on the "blog", Mike?
(Assemblyman Carroll is a member of the Knights of Columbus. I wonder what they think about his long tirade in support of state-sponsored murder in our name.)
No longer able to scare his consitutuents into opposing life-saving research, and afraid that his base won't turn out for Forrester, Assemblyman Michael Carroll (R-Morris Twp) has resorted to new lows. While his anti-cure stance is par for the course for anyone trying to win over the extremist radical vote, Carroll goes a bit farther than most. In a recent email to campaign supporters, he not only scares his audience with absurd made up procedures, he also blatantly lies:
Advocates of stem cell research, unhappy with being restricted simply to embryonic stem cells, now propose to use FETAL stem cells. Securing those cells requires pregnancy. This means deliberately cloning human beings, implanting the eggs in a woman, and starting a pregnancy. Perhaps immediately before birth, the pregnancy would be (VERY CAREFULLY) aborted and the child's parts harvested for use by its adult clone.
Scary, right? It's called "fetal farming." Most European nations ban it; even that noble body of enlightened wisdom-- the United Nations-- proposes a similar ban. In only one state is it specifically legal:
Unfortunately, you're standing in it.
New Jersey enjoys the dubious honor of leading the nation in cloning research.
