Typhoon Haiyan: Day 17

By Ernesto Cullari

Janine Cinseruli and Kimberly Perkins of Seagrass Restaurant, 68 Main Ave in Ocean Grove, are sponsoring a benefit dinner on behalf of Street Kids Philippine Missions on Wednesday December 4^th at 6pm. Tickets are $50 each, cocktail hour is from 6pm to 7pm. Act now, there are only 35 more dinner reservations left. Artist Roddy Wildeman has donated a magnificent piece for auction that was inspired and constructed from debris and found wood following Hurricane Sandy. To register for the dinner Online add Ernesto Cullari on Facebook.

We all remember what it was like to live through Hurricane Sandy and the days that followed without heat or electricity. The long lines for gas and food were humbling. My friends and I would boil water and pour it in with cold bath water whenever any of us needed to wash up. We wandered about in the dark with flashlights and battery operated radios. Hot coffee and cooked food was truly splendid. We helped each other by using Facebook to figure out which stations had gasoline or who needed clothing. We rescued each other.

A year later many of you are still recovering from construction or dealing with insurance companies that don’t want to honor their obligations to you. Now take everything you experienced, every hardship and every setback and put yourself in the position of someone living in the Third world, a place like the Philippines. The islands are so vast and numerous, it could take many years before their government reaches them with significant help. By then it will be too late.

I went 10 days without electricity following Hurricane Sandy. What takes 10 days here could realistically take 6 months where my mother is in the Philippines. My mother Lee who operates Street Kids Philippine Missions, an orphanage filled with 27 children and teens in Bohol, has estimated that it could take 6 months for electricity to be restored to their part of the island.

My mother reports that lines for clean drinking water, a badly needed necessity, are 3 hours long. “Everything is 3 times as expensive now because all the store operators must use gas or diesel generators to keep the refrigerators and lights on,” she said. They must wash their clothes by hand and hope that their clothing can manage to dry before becoming mildewy from the Philippine’s intensely humid climate.

In spite of their hardships and the devastation that surrounds them, my step dad Matt writes with joy and optimism:

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Knowing where the money goes

For too many of us in New Jersey, it is not hard to imagine what life is like after a catastrophic storm.  We just have to remember what we were doing one year ago.

We also know the difference between charitable acts and contributions that met immediate needs and those that meet long term recovery needs.  Some of us will never forget the kindness and generosity we gave or received immediately after Sandy;  meals, supplies, shelter, a shower, a place to charge a cell phone, cleaning out a destroyed home.  Some of us are still filling out forms in the hopes of getting needed long term recovery aid.

As we confront, or deflect, the images coming from the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, we are fortunate to have a way to contribute that will make an immediate impact to the survival of 27 orphans.

Street Kids Philippine Missions is a orphanage with 501 C tax status run by our friend Ernesto Cullari’s mother, Lee.  Lee and her husband Matthew founded the orphanage in February or 2010 in Bohol.  They started caring for 6 children.  Now they are raising 27 children.   In 2012, Lee and Matthew cared for the children with a budget of $2000.00 per month. Amazing.

Today, in the aftermath of Haiyan, they need food, clean water and clothes and power. They are purifying their water with chemical tablets.

StreetKidsPM is hoping to raise $30,000 to recover from Haiyan. $1,111 per child.  They need water purification equipment, generators, food and clothing.

Please make a one time contribution, or enroll to make  monthly contributions to StreetKidsPM here.

Also, Cullari is holding a fundraiser on Wednesday December 4th from 6PM till 9PM at SeaGrass Restaurant in Occean Grove.  Tickets to the fundraiser are only $50 and can be purchased here.

For questions or to make offline reservations to the fundraiser, call Ernesto at 732-504-4506.

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Jersey Mom versus Philippine Typhoon Haiyan

By Ernesto Cullari

Would you risk your life for strangers? My mother Dalisay Dwinells (everyone calls her Lee) has faced death numerous times over the last several years, while serving impoverished children at orphanages in some of the world’s most dangerous places. When she volunteered at Rancho 3M in Guadalupe, Mexico, her and her husband faced the threat of abduction by drug cartels that regularly kidnapped, tortured and murdered American citizens for profit.

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To Live and Die In Asbury Park (Part Two)

By Ernesto Cullari (originally published in triCityNews)

There have been seventeen victims of shootings this year in Asbury Park and five murders. According to some reports we are on track to match violence levels not seen in 20 years. People on both sides of the train tracks are scared.

I’ve read many opinions about how to stop the violence among our youth in Asbury Park and in other cities, where poverty is an issue and most of the solutions focus on more government and more police intervention.

It isn’t government intervention or the threat of jail time that makes a person stop in the moment of anger and refrain from pulling a trigger. Laws don’t prevent kids from joining gangs. Government programs won’t stop a 14-year-old boy from engaging in unprotected premarital sex with a young girl his age and the government certainly won’t raise their child; The government doesn’t teach our youth about the value of human life; but parents do, good role models do too and the Bible does, as well.

Did Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from some government handbook handed down from Valerie Jarrett and Kathleen Sebelius when he faced down both the rising influence of the Black Panthers and social oppressors or did he quote from scripture? If we’re going to rely simply on more government programs, more police and new political initiatives to fix the rising tide of violence in our communities then we’ve failed before we’ve begun. If Christianity, shared in the public square, changed the world then its message certainly can help change the course of our societal problems now. To think otherwise is to ignore the last 2013 years of Western history.

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TO LIVE AND DIE IN ASBURY PARK … (Part One)

By Ernesto Cullari

Hardly a night goes by where I don’t hear the rumbling and winding of accelerated engines of police cars and their blaring sirens soaring up Cookman Ave, from the oceanfront toward the downtown area. I often wonder what tragic ending waits at the other end, where the fury of lights and sirens finally come to a crescendo. I was recently enjoying a beer and pizza with my brother at Johnny Mac’s one Friday night, when police cars from every direction converged on the West Side. I paused a moment to acknowledge that such a police response likely meant that someone’s son, someone’s grandson, someone’s brother was laying in a pool of his own blood, as a street that he once played on became the street that he would die upon.

The Asbury Park Sun reports that it was 20-year-old Tyrell Howard that was fatally killed that night. My heart, like your heart, breaks for him and his family. Too many kids are killing other kids in Asbury Park and in cities like ours and neither our families nor our communities are equipped with the proper means to slow the tide of death.

Unless we are willing to change what we demand from parents, unless we alter who educates and how we educate our children, unless we change how we police our neighborhoods and until we change who it is that we accept as role models for our children, we might as well accept that a certain percentage of our boys will simply die too young. At a time when many are about to throw their hands up in the air in defeat, I say it is a time to confront the violence within our community head on.

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Pallone’s Family Values

By Art Gallagher

Frank Pallone has been my congressman for almost twenty years.   Through ten election cycles, I don’t recall Pallone ever promoting himself as a family man.  I didn’t even know he was married (to a woman) until 2010 when, during Anna Little’s first campaign against him, triCityNews columnist Ernesto Cullari revealed that Pallone’s wife, Sarah had secured a six figure job in the Environmental Protection Agency.

So I was surprised to find the above Pallone family portrait on Frank’s Senate campaign website and facebook page.  In his video ad, Typical Jersey Story, Frank looks into the camera and says, “Sarah and I have three teenagers, which means that things are a little crazy at home, most of the time.”  Frank’s facebook introduction starts,”Husband, Father, Democrat, Public Servant.  Frank Pallone, Jr. has been fighting for the people of this state for over 2 decades.”

After wondering why Pallone’s eldest daughter isn’t squinting, the next question to occur to me upon seeing the portrait was, “Why after almost three decades of keeping his family life private, is Pallone trotting his family out on the campaign trail?”

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Our Tiananmen Square

By: Ernesto Cullari

The Communist Party in China used tanks and violent force upon its own people to eliminate political dissent. Barack Obama and the IRS in a highly organized manner used the full might of the Federal Government in collusion with a harassment campaign waged by Left-wing organizations to accomplish the same chilling ends here in America.

Are we Americans worthy of the freedoms that we enjoy? If so, then explain why you aren’t angry at the blatant and well documented lawlessness of the Obama administration and with the IRS that he so maliciously used to intimidate his opponents, dating as far back as 2008?

There are many of you reading this column that are elected officials. You swore an oath to protect the Constitution. Whether you are a local official, a state official or representing us in Congress, you should be storming Capitol Hill or the State House in Trenton, demanding to know how such gross abuses of power, never seen before in America, will be punished. Students of history will quickly recognize that such tactics have been used in China, as well as in Nazi Germany to successfully crush political opposition.

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Anna Little, David Corsi won’t be Tea Party candidates in GOP Primary

Photo credit: genehoyas.com

Since they formed in 2009, the Bayshore Tea Party Group has supported three campaigns that have defeated the Monmouth County Republican Organization in primaries.

Former Highlands Mayor Anna Little won the 6th Congressional District nomination twice.  In 2010 Little defeated the MCRO’s endorsed candidate Diane Gooch.  In 2012 Little defeated newcomer Ernesto Cullari.  Cullari had won the Monmouth Republican organization’s endorsement. Little won the Middlesex County Republican Organization’s endorsement and won the primary handily in both counties.  Little went on to lose twice to incumbent Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone.

Oceanport real estate executive David Corsi beat Princeton venture capitalist Scott Sipprelle in Monmouth County during the 2010 primary for the 12 Congressional District nomination.  Sipprelle prevailed on the strength of his support in the Middlesex and Mercer portions of the district.  Sipprelle lost to incumbent Democratic Congressman Rush Holt.

Both Little and Corsi were supported by BTPG’s grassroots activists.

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Does Pallone have the fortitude to run for U.S. Senate?

Now that Newark Mayor Cory Booker has taken himself out the the gubernatorial race, everyone expects him to run for Frank Lautenberg’s U. S. Senate seat in 2014.    A recent poll indicated that Booker would easily beat Lautenberg in a Democratic primary should the 88 year old senator make another run.

That hasn’t stopped Congressman Frank Pallone from calling Democratic County Chairs to remind them that he is still interested in the Senate seat he has long coveted but never had the guts to fight for.

Pallone best shot at becoming a Senator came and went in 2002 when he declined Governor Jim McGreevey’s offer to replace the disgraced Senator Robert Torricelli on the ballot against Doug Forrester.   McGreevey brought Frank Lautenberg out of retirement and got the State Supreme Court to rewrite New Jersey’s election law so the switch could be made after the statutory deadline.  The polls showing Forrester beating Toricelli scared Pallone off from giving up a easy victory in CD-6 in favor of his dream job in the Senate.

Lautenberg went on to clobber Forrester in 2002 and was elected again in 2008. 

Pallone was passed over for the Senate in 2006 when Governor Jon Corzine chose Bob Menendez to replace him in the Senate.  Menendez won his own term that November and was reelected last month.  He is on the verge of becoming the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Pallone clearly wants to be a Senator, but his history indicates that he doesn’t have the fortitude to risk his cushy lifestyle as a congressman in order to fight for his dream.  I hope he grows a pair and goes for it, because the race to replace him in the 6th Congressional District would be great for blog traffic.

WHO WOULD RUN FOR PALLONE’S CD-6 SEAT IF IT WAS VACANT? 

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Righteous Anger

By Ernesto Cullari

I wonder what we are made of. What sort of lot are we? Last week the Seattle Sea Hawks scored a contested victory over the Green Bay Packers. The game was decided when temporary refs erroneously deliberated a final second play that many observers and fans say stole victory from the hands of the Packers. There was outrage among sports commentators as well as with the players and the fans alike. Before the owners and refs came to an agreement, the players talked of a walk out, the media unceasingly broadcast slow-motion instant replays and there were even reports of Twitter chat inciting violence against the commissioner.

In other news, an American Ambassador was ripped from a sovereign US embassy in Benghazi, Libya by Al Qaeda terrorists on the 11^th anniversary of September 11th; he was raped, he was tortured, he was murdered; secret intelligence documents were stolen from him, with the names of Libyans aiding America and not an ounce of righteous anger from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or the Obama Administration condemning either the riots or Al Qaeda’s role. In fact, speaking before the UN, Obama chastised those that would criticize Islam.

For that matter, there’s not an indication of indignation from either Congressman Frank Pallone or from Senator Bob Menendez, despite the fact that Al Qaeda has claimed the lives of numerous people from our local community. The attack on our embassy was yet another act of war on the American people. History has proven that ignoring Al Qaeda incites and emboldens them. Al Qaeda is the perpetrator in Benghazi and yet this President and NJ’s elected representatives refuse to acknowledge the uncontestable fact that Al Qaeda remains a viable threat to us despite Bin Laden’s death. In fact, Obama rejects this reality and the Democratic leadership remains unwilling to hold him accountable.

Nonetheless, the facts are irrefutable. Not only did multiple foreign news sources, from the UK, Israel and Middle Eastern news outlets report that the US had advance warning of the attacks against US embassies, but the personal journal of murdered ambassador J. Christopher Stevens indicates that he was aware that he was the target of a terrorist hit squad and that he feared for his safety and the safety of his fellow Americans. CNN, the source of the contents of Steven’s journal also reports that the Ambassador feared, “a rise in Islamic extremism and al Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya”.

Nonetheless in an alternate reality propped up by our media and the complicit Democratic Party, appearing before the UN Assembly last week, Obama characterized violence in the Middle East as nothing more than “a bump in the road”. And despite reams of definitive evidence that indicates that the attack in Libya was a coordinated terrorist attack by Al Qaeda extremists, Obama has advanced a lie for three weeks, asserting that the violence in Libya was in response to an anti-Islam video on YouTube made by an insensitive American.

Standing before the nations of the world Obama said, “a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well…”

Just like the football game last Monday night, where there was concrete evidence for the world to see, there is an abundance of irrefutable evidence detailing what happened leading up to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens abduction and murder. Moreover, President Obama has neglected his duties as Commander In Chief, attending only 38% of his President’s Daily Brief (PDB). Since JFK, every president has attended nearly every PDB, with the exception of Obama. Had he kept his oath to defend our nation he would have fortified our embassies, instead of disarming them with rubber bullets, as has been widely reported by men in the field. America must confront terrorists with force not speeches.

But Obama will not see that justice is done, because to him nothing but a “bump in the road” has occurred. Certainly nothing happened, which would require a military response. But what is most troubling is that too few of us will do anything about it either. If public anger changed the NFL, how much more so could it reform failed foreign policy and revitalize a weakened national security.

What I fear is that we will complain about football, we will complain about our government, but too many of us will sit idly by while Americans are slaughtered in the name of Allah, in the name of YouTube or in the name of apathy and we will not raise our voices in protest, because where there is no righteousness there can be no righteous anger. Is this who we really are?

–Ernesto Cullari is a former Republican Candidate for US Congress

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