What has happened to the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy? Isn’t Jimmy Carter a born again Christian?
I can’t imagine the delegates in Charlotte knew what they were voting for last night. Like ObamaCare, they had to pass it to find out what was in it.
Senator Dick Durbin went on the offensive with FoxNews’s Bret Baier over the omission of “God” and “Jerusalem” rather than simply answer the question:
“God is not a franchise of the Republican Party.” This is the first time I’ve ever heard God referred to as a “franchise.”
New York Senator Chuck Schumer could not explan why “Jerusalem” was taken out of the platform. He said he does not know President Obama’s postion on Jerusalem. Charlie Rose is not buying what Schumer is selling:
Newark Mayor Cory Booker was co-chair of the platform committee. I sent him a tweet asking why “God” and “Jerusalem” were taken out of the platform. Hopefully Booker will be more forth coming than Durbin and Schumer.
A Quinnipiac poll released this morning indicates that Governor Christie’s approval numbers remain strong among New Jersey voters…53% approve of his performance compared to 42% that do not….and that Christie would have been reelected if Newark Mayor Cory Booker was his Democratic opponent and the gubernatorial election was held last week when the poll was taken.
That’s good news for Christie, the NJ GOP and New Jersey taxpayers. Yet, in their write up of the poll, Quinnipiac did their best to spin the poll as a negative for Christie and the lazy main stream media is so far following that lead.
While 58 percent of New Jersey voters watched Gov. Christopher Christie’ keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, only 22 percent of voters say it makes them think more favorably of the governor, whose 53 – 42 percent job approval rating is barely changed, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
…..
“If Gov. Christopher Christie’s speech marked the opening of a 2016 presidential campaign he might want to try again. People who like the governor liked the speech; those who don’t didn’t. The net result – zero,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1560 registered voters from August 27-September 2. Christie delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention late in the evening on August 28. The Bobcats pollsters didn’t start asking about Christie’s speech until the third day of the seven day poll.
While showing their own biases, the Bobcats purported to measure New Jersey voters’ prejudices regarding offices seekers’ gender, race, creed, sexual orientation and waste line.
The numbers say that New Jersey is accepting of most. In the poll that has a margin of error of +/- 2.5%, 3% said they would be less inclined to vote for a female candidate while 10% would be more likely to vote for a female. 4% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who was African-American and 1% would be less likely to do so. 11% would be less likely to vote for a homosexual and 1% would be more likely.
Atheists and Muslims did not fare as well. 39% would be less likely to vote for an atheist, 1% would be more likely.
15% said they would be less likely to vote for an obese candidate, 1% would be more likely to vote for the big boned.
Does this mean that we should adjust Governor Chirstie’s numbers? Would his numbers be 14% higher if he was svelte? No, it doesn’t mean that. It means that this poll is seriously flawed. It reveals more about the pollsters than it does about those being surveyed.
Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon called for fiscal accountability in Newark this week. You wouldn’t have known that unless you read The Star Ledger. The Asbury Park Press, the newspaper/pay site that covers O’Scanlon’s Monmouth County district missed it.
At issue is the $24 million in state aid that Newark is “due” this year, after the state taxpayers kicked in $32 million to Newark’s budget last year, in the face of blatant waste on the part of Mayor Cory Booker and the city council.
Booker squandered $3.7 million in legal and consulting fees in a fight with the New Jersey Devils hockey team over revenue sharing. Booker lost the fight, which even The Star Ledger says was a waste and should have been settled, and vowed to spend more—O’Scanlon says $1 million more, The Ledger says $100 thousand more—in appealing the ruling that favored The Devils. As the ruling stands, Newark owes the Devils $600 thousand.
Newark’s city council is disgrace. A “gaggle of blowhards,” Ledger editor Tom Moran calls them, who “awards itself the highest salaries in the state, along with a free car.” Newark’s city council is paid six times more than Jersey City’s city council, according to Moran. $3.45 million in salaries paid to the Newark city council in 2011.
Also at issue is that the overpaid council has yet to pass their budget that was due in February. Yet, they want the $24 million from Jersey taxpayers.
According to The Ledger, O’Scanlon said,
“Cory Booker is fighting an expensive personal vendetta with one hand while he has the other hand out expecting state aid”
and
“As the ranking Republican member of the Assembly Budget Committee, I cannot, in good conscience, imagine handing Newark another $24 million when the mayor is continuing to rack up legal fees and costs for litigation that could have been settled months ago,” O’Scanlon said. “The state should not be in the habit of bailing out towns and cities that are unwilling to help themselves.”
Newark Mayor Cory Booker caused a stir on NBC’s Meet The Press yesterday morning by defending private equity firms, Mitt Romney’s role at Bain Capital and calling the negative ads coming from both Romney and Obama supporters “nauseating.”
Booker, who made headlines last month when he ran into a burning house to save the lives of his neighbors, was calling for a higher level of political discourse, urging both campaigns to lift the country by focusing on the big issues rather than getting bogged down in the small minded attacks.
During his Meet The Press appearance, Booker said he was on the phone with the White House often and that he was a surrogate for the President’s campaign.
There must of been some high level phone calls to the Mayor after the NBC appearance. Probably from Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffe handlers. A few hours after Bookers remarks threatened politics are we know it, the Mayor took to YouTube to restore normalcy.
The heat coming from Washington must of been hotter than the fire the Mayor ran into. It became a threat to the fire in his belly.
Thank God no one died in the fire that Newark Mayor Cory Booker ran into last night. There is no doubt in my mind, nor apparently in Booker’s based upon his remarks this morning, that Devine Intervention was a play.
God was looking out for Booker and for his neighbor who was trapped in the fire. He was looking out for Booker’s security detail. For their lives, their families and their careers.
Had Booker perished in the fire last night, it wouldn’t be long before his security detail was scape goated by the press and/or by ambitious politicians looking to fill the void.
Heroism in the face of grave danger is by its nature reckless. Thank God tragedy was averted in Newark last night.
In the unlikely event that any of the challenges to Barack Obama’s candidacy for a second term makes it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and succeeds, then what?
Before the case even got that far, would Judges and Justices appointed by Obama be eligible to hear and rule on the issue? Can you imagine Hannity or Limbaugh if they do rule? Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann (if he gets a job) if they don’t?
If Obama is ruled ineligible to serve as President of the United States, is he immediately removed from office? If so, who becomes President? If Obama’s 2008 election was invalid, it seems that Joe Biden’s election as Vice President would also be invalid. Next in line would be House Speaker John Boehner.
If John Boehner assumes the presidency, would the GOP nominate him as the 2012 candidate? Boehner isn’t ready to retire. Why would he want to give up the Speakership in order to be President for a few months. Would Boehner appoint Mitt Romney as Vice President? Would the Senate confirm Romney? Would Romney accept the job?
Would Boehner pardon Obama?
Who do the Democrats nominate for President? Biden? The party never warmed to him as a presidential candidate in his multiple tries. Hillary Clinton? John Kerry? Al Gore? Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? Keith Ellison (a real American Muslim)? Cory Booker? Dennis Kucinich?
What happens to all the laws, executive orders and appointments that Obama signed? Is ObamaCare the law? Are Sonya Sotomayor and Eleana Kagan Supreme Court Justices? Did Sandra Fluke really need all of that birth control?
Obama hasn’t signed a budget sinced he’s been President, but is the debt ceiling valid? Is all of that debt backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America?
Would Obama owe the U.S. Treasury his salary, rent on the White House? Would he have to reimburse the Treasury for his security and vacations? Does he has to reimburse all his donors from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns?
I can understand why Judges would look for procedural or jurisdictional grounds not to hear such a case.
What would be better for the country? To pursue the issues raised by the Objectors or look the other way?
The big story in yesterday’s Asbury Park Press was the political spat between southern Jersey lawmakers and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg over the proposed Rutgers-Rowan merger. Large photos of State Senate President Sweeney and Lautenberg covered most of the front page.
In case you haven’t been following, Governor Chris Christie has proposed reorganizing Rutgers, Rowan and the University of Medicine and Dentistry. Rutgers-Camden would become part of Rowan. Rowan would get a medical school associated with George Norcross Univeristy Cooper University Hospital. Robert Wood Johnson Hospital would become part of a medical school at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and it will be a while before there are more UMDNJ indictments.
MMM hasn’t been following it all that much. Our young legal eagle friends at Save Jersey don’t like it because they think it will devalue their law degrees if they apply to a firm that doesn’t know the difference between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark. And then there’s the two idiots who don’t like the deal…that former Navy SEAL that ran for Assembly who got into it with Christie at a Town Hall meeting and Lautenberg.
If not for the idiot SEAL and the idiot U. S. Senator nobody from New Jersey who isn’t directly affected by the merger would know about it, except for news junkies like us.
Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging the proposed merger is improper and copied U.S. Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Paul “New Jersey is not corrupt” Fishman, thereby implying that the merger is criminal.
Having already used “idiot” and “numb-nuts” with great fanfare, Christie’s team dubbed Lautenberg’s letter as “outrageous,” “uninformed,” and “bizarre.”
None of that was front page newsworthy. It took Norcross and Sweeney launching Sweeney’s 2014 campaign for Launtenberg’s job to make the front page of the APP.
Wednesday morning Sweeney emailed a scathing open letter attacking Lautenberg for opposing the merger and for his failure as a U.S. Senator to bring home Washington money for New Jersey’s higher education institutions. Several other south Jersey lawmakers, including two Republicans, signed with letter with Sweeney. Norcross later sent a statement calling Lautenberg a “great Senator for north Jersey” who has failed southern New Jersey to the same email list.
The Sweeney/Norcross statements are not really about the Rutger-Rowan merger. The real message is that Lautenberg’s career is coming to an end. That message has been confirmed by the silence of Democratic leaders who have staid out of this fight. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Assembly Speaker Sheilia Oliver, Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have all been silent. No one is backing up Lautenberg.
The message to Lautenberg…prepare for retirement… just don’t quit and let Christie appoint your replacement. The message to Democratic donors…don’t give to Lautenberg’s 2014 reelection campaign.
So, the point of the last 460 words is that The Asbury Park Press made the 2014 race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate front page news yesterday. That wouldn’t be so bad if there were not a U.S. Senate election between two relatively unknown candidates, U.S. Senator Bob Mendendez and State Senator Joe Kyrillos this year.
The Asbury Park Press editorial board is doing such a good job covering Monmouth and Ocean Counties that they’ve decided to expand their coverage north to Essex County.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker had a sit down with the APP editorial board yesterday. It was a nice interview judging from the write-up; Booker agrees with Governor Christie’s proposed public education reforms. He disagrees with Christie’s restructuring of higher education. He differs with Christie on gay marriage and diet. He thinks the Governor is a good guy. As is usually the case, no news was broken by The Asbury Park Press.
Gannett’s Middlesex/Somerset publication ran the same article and included a video on MyCentralJersey.com
This from Central Jersey’s supposed major news source that didn’t know that a new Monmouth County freeholder was elected in January until they read about it here and on Patch.com.
Monmouth County had 53 mayors. Ocean County has 33. Has the editorial board ever sat down with one of them?
Gannett is apparently surrendering the local news market to the Patches. Maybe as they change their business model they plan to merge all of the New Jersey publications and and put out a statewide edition of USA Today. To bad for them that NJTV already took the name NJ Today.
Newark must be booming. After all, Mayor Cory Booker has enough time on his hands to get involved down here in Monmouth County. Why else would the Mayor of the largest city in the state get involved in legislative races outside his district?
Newark is once again mire in scandal. As Booker’s former Deputy Mayor faces corruption charges for allegedly fixing government contracts in return for political contributions, democrat legislative candidates in Monmouth County are bringing Booker to town. Let’s hope it’s to raise money and not to offer suggestions on responsible leadership and fiscal policy.
Today, in the midst of a financial environment that has everyone else in the state tightening their belts, Booker scored an additional $32 million in emergency aid to Newark. Add that to the more than $91 million Newark has already received. Monmouth County’s aid was less than $79 million total this year. In other words, Newark will receive about $44 million more than all of Monmouth County combined. Instead of throwing fundraisers for Monmouth County legislative candidates, Booker should be sending thank you notes to every taxpayer in the state.
In the past, Booker has been pounded for spending alarming amounts of money on both federal and state lobbyists. Newark is still in fiscal turmoil. An ethics scandal that alleges that political contributions and cronyism influenced contracts in the city won’t go away. Newark alone gets more money than every municipality in Monmouth County combined. I guess that makes Cory Booker a hell of a fundraiser. But there have to be better leaders that Monmouth County dems can look to. There must be men and women in the democrat party who offer a better example than Booker.
Oh yeah, he shoveled snow after the blizzard. Booker hasn’t been able to dig Newark out of corruption and debt, but he sure can shovel. Maybe that’s why Monmouth County dems are bringing him down – to help with the shoveling.
