The Arnone Report: You need to get out & vote!

“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual–or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ” – Samuel Adams

By Monmouth County Freeholder Tom Arnone

Freeholder Tom Arone

The primary election is over and I want to extend my sincerest congratulations to all the candidates that won. Now as you prepare for November, I look forward to seeing positive campaigning over the next couple of months – let’s keep the focus on the issues concerning our constituents.

Voter turnout in Monmouth County was 2.9%, based on the number of eligible voters in the county. We need to improve this number! Your vote is your voice as an American citizen – you need to show up at the polls to have that voice heard. If you are unhappy with how things are being run in your municipality, our county and throughout the state of New Jersey, it is your duty to make a difference by voting.  Our right to vote in the United States is a privilege that was granted to us hundreds of years ago by the founders of our great country.  If we do not exercise our civic duty to vote, then we fail to create a government that epitomizes the voice of the people, and therefore we will not have representatives that reflect our opinions. So each vote is important, each vote counts.

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Sanctimonious Pundits Get Christie Mocking Wrong

“I never thought I’d see so much of your anatomy” –The Camel Toe Movie

By Art Gallagher

Respected columnists on both the left and right have come to Governor Chris Christie’s defense against the viral social and new media reaction to the ridiculously embarrassing photos of Christie in a way too tight softball uniform last week.

Star Ledger sports columnist Steve Politi writes that we should give Christie credit for not being ashamed of his body and applaud him for putting on the skin tight uniform that revealed both girth and a lack thereof and getting on the field to raise money for a very good cause–the families of slain New York City police officers.  Politi noted that he was fat in high school and that he’s covered high school sports.  Therefore, he argued, we should not ridicule Christie because fat kids might stop participating in sports.

A Star Ledger editorial, presumably written by Editorial Page Editor Tom Moran who launched Christie’s YouTube career when he lectured to Governor on his manners, lectures his readers for acting like fifth graders, asks if we’d tolerate such nastiness if a female politician dressed like Christie did last week, and like Politi, asked if it would have been better if Christie had not taken the field in his tight white pants, as if Christie did not have another choice.  Moran, if he wrote the editorial, did not mention if he has ever been fat.

Ken Kurson, publisher of The Observer and a friend to many MMM regular readers, writes that he used to be fat and probably will be again while dubbing the social and new media’s reaction to the Governor’s appearance as “Disgraceful and Stupid Fat Shaming.”

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June Is a Great Month for Art Openings to the Shore—Not Just Weddings!

April W. Klimley

By April W. Klimley, Art Critic

June isn’t just for weddings, beach time or boating. The month has also brings with it a rebirth of creative energy and a potpourri of fine art openings, exhibitions, street art and murals. In fact, there’s so much to see—and so many exhibition openings— that it may be hard to decide what to see each weekend or even during the week. Let me help you decide by giving you a preview of what’s going on during the first half of the month.

This coming weekend there are two key openings taking place on the central part of the Shore. One takes place in Red Bank (June 6), the other in Shrewsbury (June 7).

Saturday June 6 head for the Art Alliance in Red Bank which is holding its final exhibit of the season—The Ebba Osborne Memorial Award Exhibition. A reception runs from 6 pmto 8 pm opening night with music and refreshments in the back room. The exhibit focuses on two themes—“Dreamy” and “Interior”—and a $100 prize will be awarded to the Best in Show. Asbury Park photographic artists Tom and Lois White are judging the exhibit. Their work will be on display in the Alliance windows.

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When you hold election and nobody comes, what does that tell about you?

By Scott St. Clair

Scott St. Clair

The 2015 New Jersey primary election came and went without me. That’s right: I didn’t vote, so sue me.

I live in the 29^th Legislative District, which hasn’t supported anyone to the right of Henry Wallace or George McGovern since the Johnson administration – the ANDREW Johnson administration – so why bother? Additionally, there were no contested races – both the Republican and Democratic legislative nomination ballots featured candidates put up by the official party organizations and nobody else.

Since the last thing in the world I want to do is to further political party stranglehold control over the nominating process in New Jersey, I elected to pass. As P.J. O’Rourke entitled one of his books, “Don’t Vote It Only Encourages the Bastards.”

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Tom Brady and Richard Nixon: Gates of a Feather

By Scott St. Clair

It’s appropriate that the kerfuffle over Tom Brady’s flabby balls had the sobriquet “gate” appended to it since it shares a striking resemblance to the original, if you will, “gatescapade” that ultimately cost Richard Nixon the White House and a strong legacy in American History.

Deflategate and Watergate are more alike than they are different.

The Indianapolis Colts were to the New England Patriots what Sen. George McGovern was to Nixon during the 1972 presidential election campaign: total, complete and utter cannon fodder.

There was no way in hell Brady and his Pats were going to lose to the Colts, who more or less sat out the game anyway, in the same way that it was a foregone conclusion that McGovern would get annihilated by Nixon, New York Times film critic Pauline Kael’s reputed aphorism about knowing only one person who voted for him notwithstanding.

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Anti-suicide fence planned for GWB by 2024. Why isn’t there one already?

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Don’t sell the nursing homes until these questions are answered

By Art Gallagher

This evening at the Monmouth County Agriculture Building, the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders will listen to a report on the state of the county owned care centers/nursing homes. Following that report, the are very likely vote to move forward in the process of selling or privatizing the facilities.

There have been compelling arguments made on both sides of the issue. There has also been emotion driven demagoguery on both sides of the issue. What may have been missing, so far, is a dispassionate analysis. There are those of both sides of the issue who have been fighting for their intended outcome based on ideological, emotional, and political concerns.   Ideology, emotion and politics are all appropriate factors.  However, those drivers should be informed by a dispassionate analysis of all the facts and options. Any official who casts a vote on the future of the care centers based solely on ideology, emotion, politics or personal preference is guilty of malpractice.

I respectively ask all five of my friends on the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders to consider the answers to the following questions before making a final decision on the future of the John L. Montgomery and Geraldine Thompson care centers.

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50 Shades of Useless Sociology

By Tom DeSeno

“It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.” –Graham Greene

50 Shades of Grey: never has a book caused so many random acts of sociology, with people exclaiming what the book “says about women” or “means for society.” A Google search will turn up varied exclamations that the book is the apocalyptic forbearer of all things pro-feminist, anti-feminist, or pro and anti-capitalist. It also apparently has implications for class warfare, abuse, romance and the death of chivalry. Good grief. Despite my promise not to join this collection of chaos by opinion, I suspect I will.

My intent is only to state that the desire and act of sex itself is fraught with simplicity. There is no great mystery to it, only a juvenile fascination with the subject by artists. That cloak of mystification is buttoned tighter by the faux-Freudian analysis of people who will find “deeper meaning” in any thing, or any act, when, in reality, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

When I mention the simplicity of sex, I carve out first “romance” and all the emotional baggage that comes from coupling (or, since it’s the 21st century, tripling and quadrupling). I leave for another day the religious determination that sex is for procreation, as even Catholics will admit (since the Vatican promotes the rhythm method), that sometimes sex serves other purposes, like stress relief. I write here only of people who are secure in their partnering.

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Christie’s Transportation Commissioner’s inane op-ed illustrates why we went broke in the first place

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

The logic behind a guy seeking the GOP nomination for president appointing a former Torricelli/McGreevey bureaucrat to a critical cabinet post still eludes me, Save Jerseyans.

But here we are. We’re saddled with Jamie Fox now. And this is how he’s spending his time: advocating for a punishing increase in the one tax in New Jersey that isn’t suckily high (the gas tax) and, this past Sunday, penning a guest op-ed in theStar-Ledger claiming that New Jersey’s per-mile road maintenance isn’t nearly as expensive as claimed by gas tax hike opponents.

For starters, he complains that the study treats multiple lane highways like single-lane ones. Moreover, “New Jersey gives out nearly $330 million a year in local transportation aid to counties and municipalities. This helps local government take care of local roads without having to raise property taxes,” Commissioner Fox explains. “The Reason Foundation counts the spending we give to local government but doesn’t count all the miles of local roads that are repaired or built. Therefore, states with greater jurisdiction over local infrastructure fare better in the analysis as those centerline miles are credited to the state.”

You can find a copy of the eye-opening study here.

My #1 problem with Fox’s logic? Divide the number by the actual average number of lanes and New Jersey’s road costs are STILL the highest in the nation. By a mile. Many times over.

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Christianity, The Crusades, and the President

By Joe Schilp

Crosses lining the American Cemetery at Normandy

This past week, during the National Prayer Breakfast, Barack Obama made absolutely offensive remarks that seemed to justify the barbaric acts of the Islamic Jihadist terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who have beheaded and burned alive prisoners from all over the world, by comparing ISIS’s form of Jihad to Christian behavior during the Crusades.  The remarks to which I am referring:

“lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

While I’ve read extensively about our nation’s history, slavery, and the Reconstruction, I can’t recall where anyone justified slavery in the name of Christ.  In fact, American slavery is rooted in African slavery, which had been practiced in Africa for centuries before Europeans were even aware of it.  And European involvement in slavery began when Islamic Jihadists invaded Europe and enslaved Christians just prior to the Crusades.  Further, slavery is still practiced today in Africa and much of slavery’s history in eastern Africa is centered around Islam, but this president speaks solely to divide America, facts be damned.

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