It seems to always come down to toilets for some people.
People like Assemblyman Wannabe senator Mike Doherty (R-Knuckledragger) and Asw Alison Litell McHose (R-Crazytown) who today announced their intention to introduce a bill requiring the Legislature to inform parents of school children who visit the State House of the Legislature's Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy.
Yeah. So the NJ Law Against Discrimination has been amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression - ooooh I'm getting vewy scawd! - in employment, housing, insurance, and (wait for it ....) public accomodations. And that follows the NJ Superior Court Appellate Division, to whit:
It is incomprehensible to us that our Legislature... would condone discrimination against men or women who seek to change their anatomical sex because they suffer from a gender identity disorder.
I don't know how even the most throwback of our legislators could argue that people shouldn't have employment opportunity, or be able to buy a house, or insurance. It's not defensible. So, they don't even go there. They go for what they think will light up parents by playing to their worst fear that something will happen to their little kids: Trouble in the bathroom. Bad people near little Ali or Mikey's pee pee. When all else fails, try to equate people with child-molesters.
I bring this matter to your attention because the Legislature often plays host to busloads of very young school girls who have a need, as children do, to use our toilet facilities.
Boom. There it is! Now, standing aside for the moment - and um, really, really far away from - Doherty's and McHose's fascination with the bathroom, let's take a moment and talk about what our children actually have to fear when they get on that yellow school bus and take a field trip to watch how a bill becomes law.
Jump with me, and I'll show you what your kids really have to fear when they visit the State House:
It wouldn't be Spring in New Jersey without three things: a struggling Yankees team, a budget crisis, and the local right wing showing just how crazy and irrational they are about gay people.
At a news conference earlier this week, wingers from far and wide gathered to attack same-sex families and disparage the overwhelming evidence that says civil unions hurt these families. Reporters from NJ 101.5 were on hand and reported on the conference.
NJCPPM says it is defending "traditional values" and is pushing for a ballot question in next year's election asking voters if they would like the constitution to state in law that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Members say they'll accept whatever the public decides. NJCPPM chief John Tomicki says he's not asking for the ballot question this year because his group doesn't want the issue to interfere with the gubernatorial election."
Jim White with the Knights of Columbus is a NJCPPM associate. He says, "Never until now has anyone thought that marriage should be between the people of the same sex. Frankly, the government does not have the right to meddle with marriage." He adds, "It's also a well-know fact that the homosexual lifestyle or homosexual practice is very unhealthy. Government should discourage it and not elevate it to a level by calling it marriage. In an age where we worry about people being overweight and going after them and the government interfering in that, what is the government doing promoting a lifestyle that is inherently unhealthy?"
In other words, giving gay and lesbian families equal rights is like encouraging obesity, say the New Jersey anti-gay activists. One can only wonder if marriage equality would involve as many bags of Cheetos as obesity presumably does.
As laughable as that statement is, it also shows us something. The right wing's ever-shifting arguments against marriage equality in New Jersey are becoming more and more desperate. The wingers know marriage equality will soon be the law of the land here in Jersey, and they're afraid.
In the meantime, help yourself to some Cheetos (and take the poll below).
Promoted by Jason Springer: Well it didn't take Christie long to break that promise.
... then Christie would never have gotten his ridiculous heroic image in the first place.
The Star Ledger does some real reporting, catching Christie in a lie about campaign donations:
Christopher Christie is attending a campaign fundraiser hosted by a lawyer whose firm got a lucrative no-bid contract when the Republican gubernatorial candidate was U.S. attorney.
Christie was scheduled to be at the $500-per-plate Morristown fundraiser today, a week after saying he'd reject all future donations from lawyers to whom he gave monitoring contracts.
Seriously, where was the critical reporting on Christie before? Weird.
Calling a donor group that supports pro-choice Republican women a "radical pro-abortion group," Assemblyman Michael Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) called on his primary opponent, state Sen. Marcia Karrow (R-Hunterdon), to return donations from the fund.
Batspit right wing Republicans have a weird concept of what "radical" is. Supporting the right of women to have a legal medical procedure is radical. The American Civil Liberties Union, which exists to defend people's Constitutional rights, is radical. Main stream environmental scientists who warn that humans could suffer if we don't stop spewing C02 in the air are radical.
Apparently right wingers like Doherty think that "radical" is supporting the laws of the United States of America and trying to keep people from suffering environmental catastrophe.
Well, it looks like the easy race expected for 17th District Democratic Assemblymen Chivukula and Egan just got easier. GOP opponent Skip House just announced in the Home News Tribune Letters section that he isn't going to campaign anymore. Why? Because of an unscientific poll on the web site of a local daily newspaper.
Assembly candidate disappointed in voters
Benjamin Franklin's comment questioning if the people would be able to keep a republic was on my mind when I became a Republican candidate for the Assembly in the 17th District.
The Community Voices "Speak Up!" question on initiative and referendum raised my hopes that there would be an outpouring of interest in voters making their own laws. There hasn't been, and it is the issue I'm running on.
Subsequently, I'll not campaign actively anymore. Most people seem to prefer the status quo of high taxes, offset by politicians' irrational promises of greater benefits at no cost. Good luck with that pipe dream!
Matthew "Skip" House
Waaaaaahhhhhhhhh. Some random people who went to a web page and clicked a button don't support my issues, so instead of working to convince them I'm going to put my tail between my legs and go home.
The saddest thing is the only way he could get his race resignation in the paper was in the Letters section. Seriously, no one cared.
The Jersey GOP is collapsing right in front of our eyes.
From the editorial page of the Home News Tribune, here is one of the Republican dead-enders who still thinks Cheney is a good man, Saddam attacked the Twin Towers and that the Trilateral Commission is hiding the WMD in Syria:
Democrats, Osama on the same page
After listening to Osama bin Laden's latest taped message, I recall hearing that same message some time before today. It finally dawned on me that, except for the call to convert to Islam, the liberal Democrats have been saying the exact same things as bin Laden regarding the war in Iraq and our war against terror.
The similarity is chilling!
Frank J. Wodzinski ELIZABETH
That's the whole letter.
Senate Republicans and, unfortunately, a number of Senate Democrats were freaked out when MoveOn ran an ad asking if General Petreus "Betray(ed) Us" but there will be no comment about this kind of letter to the editor, or the scores of times certain Republican members of Congress called anyone who opposed the Iraq war "traitors."
The State Education Commissioner has announced that Jersey City schools are doing just fine - sort of. After almost twenty years of being run by state appointed leadership, the Jersey City school system is passing in two out of five areas. Only here could a sixty percent failure rate be seen as praise-worthy. Incredibly, "instruction and programming" - translated as "actually educating your kids" - not only received a failing mark, but the lowest mark of all areas
How do Jersey City's public officials react to this? Prince Charlie Epps says he is "ecstatic" about this "historic moment". Court Jester Jerry Healy practically broke his arm patting Prince Charlie on the back. What the hell am I missing out on? Since when does a 40% success rate call for such celebration? The schools exist to educate kids, not to provide jobs for Prince Charlie and his Court.
Donald Cresitello doesn't deserve to be a Democrat. This isn't about the idiotic speech he gave at the pro-racist rally in Morristown:
When he took the stage, the mayor, who is seeking to deputize local police officers as federal immigration agents, condemned his opponents for stalling his efforts.
"How dare they, how dare they question my right as mayor of this community to move this program forward?" he asked.
Then, as counter-protesters began chanting loudly, "Shame, shame, shame on you!" in an effort to drown the mayor out, Cresitello retaliated with a warning.
"To the Communists across the street, and the Marxists, we know your motives, and we will not continue to let you go forward with your intent to take over our country," he said.
That's pretty stupid. I won't even go into the obvious lack of academic skills the Mayor displays there, but the real shame - the real reason why Donald Cresitello doesn't deserve to be a Democrat - lies with who he is willing to share the stage with. It lies with the groups he lends credibility to when he opens his ill-informed, uneducated, moronic pie-hole.
You have to admit that Jerramiah Healy gave it his best shot. His legal team talked smack about the unmittigated gall of actually bringing in eye-witnesses. He told his drunken remembrancesside of the story of how the officers used unnecessary forceused racial epithetsdid their job.
And the court has found the Mayor guilty as charged, despite the Mayor's wife mouthing off under her breath (maybe someone needs to explain to her that she could be charged with contempt for such nonsense).
Still, Healy can't believe that he was targeted as a black mana victim of racial profilinghis "good name" didn't get him offeveryone knows this is exactly in character for him he is being held to the same standard of conduct as non-mayors - he plans to extend his ability to embarrass Jersey City by appealing his conviction.
Rudy Guiliani, New Jersey's leading Republican candidate for President with both party leaders and primary voters, recently decided to throw up the old canard that only Republicans can keep our country safe from terrorists.
Mike Lupica, former sports columnist turned novelist turned kid writer turned social commentarian, explains in three short lines why New Jersey's favorite step son is a weenie:
If Rudy Giuliani is right, and only Republicans can keep us safe, I've got a question:
Who had the White House on September 11, 2001?
And, oh by the way, which party had Gracie Mansion the same day?
It really didn't take that many words to make the point, did it?
But Lupica could also have asked who was the New York Governor, what caucus chose the Senate Majority Leader, and what caucus chose the Speaker of the House.
This week's flooding provides a window into the relative effectiveness of Congressman Mike Ferguson to advocate and deliver for the people of New Jersey's 7th Congressional District.
The year before Ferguson took office Hurricane Floyd hit our state, and towns like Bound Brook and Manville were devastated, with water rising to third stories of buildings and not falling for days. Other towns like North Plainfield - where I served as a Councilman at the time - had six feet of water rushing through the town. I know because I was one of the volunteers pulling people out of their cars to safety that day.
Now, in Mike Ferguson's seventh year as our DC Representative we have seen another flood provide the same kind of destruction. Added to the 1996 flooding of downtown Bound Brook that is three devastating floods in just over a decade.
I looked at the pictures of boats floating past second floor windows in downtown Bound Brook and thought it was 1999 all over again. The personal and business destruction is horrific, and the worst part is that it should be wholly unnecessary had our federal representatives come through with the funding we need to fix these flooding issues.
Since 1975 the Green Brook Flood Control Project has been studying and planning to make major engineering changes to the Raritan River and its tributaries to increase flow and retention, reducing the chance that such flooding can occur again. But all we have to date is a bridge and two levies, and the Army Corps of engineers estimates it will take $430 million in today's money to finish the deal.
You would think that after Floyd there would have been a major effort to fund this project, to get it going as fast as possible to protect the residents and business owners along this flood path. You would think that there would be some urgency to the work to protect our residents from continued natural disasters.
Mike Ferguson was first elected in 2000, along with a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House. His colleague, Rodney Frelinghuysen on the neighboring 11th district, was on the House Appropriations committee. Ferguson himself was being groomed by Tom DeLay in a leadership position as minority whip, the Texas House wheeler and dealer who could get anything done.
Add to this the fact that under Republican leadership earmarked funding for districts increased from about 1,000 a year in 1996 to 14,000 in 2005. Some of these earmarks were incredible, including $454 million for a bridge in Alaska that would have served just a few thousand people.
It's an ideal environment for a Representative to represent the needs of his district. His party in control, friendly with leadership, delegation member on the Appropriations committee money handed out hand over fist, and a real desperate need for completion of a project that would affect hundreds of thousands of people. It would take a pretty high level of incompetence to blow this one.
So what did Mike Ferguson get us for the Green Brook Flood Control Project? An average of less than $5 million a year, and some press releases and photo opportunities for the Congressman to show he cares.
At that rate, the project would take 86 years to completely fund, not including inflation and cost overruns.
My nomination for tosser of the day is Mary Scolavino of Bridgewater, NJ, who had this piece of brilliance published in the Courier News today:
I am not proud of the fact that New Jersey has become only the third state in the country to allow same-sex civil unions. We have seen what has happened to our country since abortion was made legal: It has torn our country apart, not to mention the killings of millions of unborn babies. It has opened the door for the devaluation of any human life.
Pornography, sexual promiscuity and children being physically and sexually abused is rampant. Now gays and lesbians are trying to force us to accept their lifestyle by using the law so as to justify their lifestyle.
Trying to make a law to fit a crime does not make it right or good. God did not create Adam and Adam; there was a reason he created Eve, not 2,000 years later for some people to decide he was wrong, using the excuse he made us like this.
If our society accepts this, we are becoming lower than the animal kingdom. Even the animal kingdom has to be male and female. If our country is to be saved, it is about time for good people to voice their objections to this travesty. There are still millions of good people in the world, and it is time we hear their voices before everything this country was built on when it was founded will be lost.
MARY A. SCOLAVINO Bridgewater
If this were satire, an effort to collect all the misinformed asshattery on the anti-marriage equality front, then maybe this would be genius. It's possible that in one version of reality Mary Scolavino is actually a humorist of Twainian proportions.
But in the reality I'm forced to live in Mary really buys into this stuff, and is so buried up to her scalp in crap that she confuses the timing of Jesus Christ's life with Adam and Eve's creation. And this is in Bridgewater, an upper middle class, highly educated community in New Jersey.
My first instinct is to think that if this is the level of intelligence we're fighting then we have to win. Then I realized that we can't win because the argument has nothing to do with intelligent discourse, but with how much bullshot the bigots and haters of this country can trick people like Mary into swallowing. And people like Mary prefer the taste of bullshit to the truth.
Congressman Mike Ferguson (R) was a prime sponsor of the Medicare Part D prescription benefit which most folks find too expensive, confusing and problematic. It's so bad that the Weekly Standard, the weekly magazine of the conservative movement, notes (12/19/06) that few Republican members of Congress are willing to stand up and say that the program is a success. Few, that is, except Ferguson.
One exception is Rep. Mike Ferguson, the New Jersey Republican serving on the House Energy and Commerce committee. Ferguson recently lost his mother to multiple myeloma, but not before Celegene's Revlimid allowed her three more years of life. For him, the issue is passionately personal: "Price controls of any sort not only hurt seniors," he says. "They hurt our children and grandchildren who suffer with Parkinson's, cancer and juvenile diabetes."
This is disingenuous on more than one level. The first is that Ferguson's mother passed away more than three years ago, well before Medicare Part D took effect. The second is that his family makes more than enough money to pay for any prescriptions they needed, so much that Mike and each of his siblings was given a million dollars on their 30th birthday. Medicare is for families that need help more than for wealthy families like Ferguson's. I sympathize very much for the loss he suffered -- my mother passed away very young as well, and even after 13 years it is still painful -- but see no need to play on the voters' sympathies like he is doing.
The connection Ferguson and the writer make is that the incoming Democratic majority is likely to change Medicare Part D to allow the federal government to negotiate prices for the prescription drugs it purchases, bringing the cost of the program down and potentially expanding it for less money. The Veterans administration already negotiates prices for the drugs it purchases for retired soldiers, and nothing bad has happened. Any business that planned to purchase billions of dollars of a product would surely seek to find stability for the product it buys, but Ferguson seems to think this is "price controls."
It's not. Price controls are when the government tells a business or industry that it can only charge a certain price for certain products. The drug industry is free to charge whatever it wants on the open market no matter how the federal government negotiates its own prices. That is not price control for the industry, but cost controls for a purchaser.
The final and saddest comment is that Ferguson would pretend that negotiating costs with the industry will somehow stifle research and hurt "children and grandchildren who suffer with Parkinson's, cancer and juvenile diabetes."
Ferguson is a leading opponent of embryonic stem cell research, a promising new field that has specifically been mentioned in curing Parkinson's, cancer and juvenile diabetes. He is so vehemently opposed that he refused to meet with a 13 year old constituent with juvenile diabetes last year because she wanted to discuss stem cell research and told the mother of a paralyzed boy that her son would never walk and she should just admit it.
So Ferguson opposes spending federal money to find cures for these diseases, but suggests that the federal government negotiating prices for the drugs it buys will somehow halt research.
Here's a nice letter to the editor in today's Express Time (PA):
Arab enemies cheer for Democratic win
Ayatollah Khamenei, Moqtada al-Sadr and the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq have all celebrated Americans voting Democrats to power in Congress. Now what does that tell you, America?
Nicholas Romano Pen Argyl, PA
It tells me nothing, because I don't give a damn what they think. I don't cast my ballot worrying how they will react, but in how my country can best deal with the problems facing it.
If we, like Mr. Ramano, made all our foreign policy decisions based on how our enemies would feel we'd be in deep doo doo.
UPDATE II: Apparently Ferguson is getting a little gun shy on his little tour of the district, and was too scared to show up at the Scotchwood Diner as scheduled today. He was supposed to show up at the diner around the corner from Linda Stender's office, but after we've been posting these pics of his pathetic rallies all day and the Stender people were there he sped right on by.
UPDATE: Ferguson's visit to Cranford was the same -- few people other than the staffers. And we've got the Cranford pics!
Last week in NJ7 there was a debate between incumbent Mike Ferguson (R) and Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D), and the crowd was manifestly pro-Stender by the end of the debate. Ferguson's people tried to play this off as Stender's campaign "coaching" the crowd, but the fact was that it was an open room and Stender got her supporters out. Mike didn't, and we suggested at the time that it was because he didn't have that many serious supporters to come out and back him.
Now we have more evidence. Earlier today we got ahold of Ferguson's weekend schedule for his "bus tour" and sent it out to our list and put it on Dump Mike, Daily Kos and Blue Jersey. We asked folks to go out to these "rallies" and get us photographic evidence of the incredible support Ferguson enjoys in the district.
Blue 7th member Steve J. went to what was billed as a "Rally in Roselle Park" at 11 a.m. this morning and got some great pics. They are after the jump, but essentially they show that all of four Ferguson supporters were waiting to greet his bus, and about a dozen staff from the campaign rolled off the bus. The paid employees of the campaign far outnumbers the grassroots supporters for Ferguson. Anyway, here are the pics, which you can click to see the larger images in all their glory.
Here is the crowd of four supporters waiting for Mike Ferguson's bus to arrive. Steve J. wrote, "I had a hard time hiding in the huge crowd."
Tom Kean Jr. wants you to think Bob Menendez is corrupt. Junior wants it so badly that he is willing to lie, spin, exaggerate, cajole, selectively edit and whisper innuendo to get you to believe it.
But the truth is Tom Kean Jr. is full of shit.
This is a guy I actually used to like. Personally. We weren't friends who spent the holidays together or anything, but we definitely were glad to see each other at various political and social events. All in all, he was someone who I might have considered voting for if the Democrat was a complete putz.
At the time I did not realize Tom Kean Jr. was the complete putz. If I see him at an event now I will probably be polite but look for a quick escape. Anyone else to talk to other than Junior.
The following clip is just one half of Mike Ferguson's opening statement from Sunday's debate. Every example of his "accomplishments" was intended to inflate or exaggerate his support for the district.
Last week a letter to the editor ran from a 14 year old girl named Lindsey Rosenthal from Belle Mead. Lindsey has juvenile diabetes, and tried to talk with Mike Ferguson about supporting embryonic stem cell research to find a cure. Ferguson's staff would not let her, saying that "we cannot even discuss this issue with him because it is against 'pro life.'"
That's right. He refused to talk with a 14 year old girl about finding a cure for her lifelong disease. Well, Lindsey recorded a radio ad for Linda Stender, and you can listen to it right now.
After you listen, remember that Ferguson is the same man who told Tricia Riccio that her paralyzed son would never walk again and refused to discuss embryonic stem cell research with her as well. This race is about a lot of things, but one of the biggest is that Mike Ferguson wants to prevent Lindsey Rosenthal and Carl Riccio from receiving cures to their ailments because of a theory. When we vote him out, we bring these two young people hope and maybe a cure.
And after you get sufficiently steamed about this, be sure to donate as much as you can to Linda Stender so she can run this ad on the radio as many times as possible between now and election day. She needs your help today, tomorrow and next week.
If you don't have the money to give -- and many of us don't -- please call Linda's office at 908-322-1996 and sign up to volunteer for an afternoon. They're paying $125 if you work the weekend before election day and on election day itself, and there's plenty work for volunteers before that!
And be sure to contribute if you can. $5 means a lot when a thousand people give it. We've got 1450 people on our mailing list, and all of you at Blue Jersey and other blogs. Just a little from everyone is that many more times the ad from Lindsey can run.
Tom Kean Jr. has repeatedly and viciously attacked Bob Menendez for "enriching himself" with his position in the House of Representatives. How did Menendez do it?
A real estate agent rented Menendez's childhood home to a non-profit community group from Hudson County at slightly below average market rate. Menendez later assisted the non-profit in obtaining federal funds to open up a health center for poor and uninsured Hudson County residents. The community group continued to rent the property from Menendez, and stayed in the property even after Menendez sold it.
Really. That's the whole story. There's really nothing else to it.
Yet Junior is running ads on TV and radio claiming that this is proof Menendez is corrupt, and Junior is outraged! Outraged, I say!
"A company headed by President Bush's brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.
"With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush's company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally.
"At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers." (LA Times)
Start being outraged by this, Junior, and we'll maybe buy your outrage that Bob Menendez is helping the poor get health care.
You know, I've been getting more and more encouraged by the Linda Stender campaign against Mike Ferguson for the 7th District Congressional seat over the past month. Stender's put out some more aggressive mail pieces and a better TV ad campaign, and she's raised a ton of money.
Add in the independent poll putting the race at two points, and I almost got positive about this race.
But then State Senator Joe Kyrillos went on Gabe Pressman's show this weekend and totally deflated my balloon. He has convinced me that the people of the 7th District would never vote against Mike Ferguson for one very simple reason:
And they're going to return him [Ferguson to the Congress]. They are scared that Charlie Rangel--who just sat in this chair--might be the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That's what really scares the people of Mike Ferguson's district.
In all seriousness, if that's the best they can do then they are in serious shit.
