Anatomy of a Media Fabricated News Story – Gannett Style

By Tom DeSeno

This morning (March 2^nd 2016) people in the shore area in the central part of New Jersey woke up to an editorial in the Asbury Park Press, the only daily newspaper that serves two large counties, viciously attacking Governor Christie and demanding his resignation.

“Wow” the people of Monmouth and Ocean counties must have thought.   “This editorial staff must have really put a great deal of independent thought into this, to be this hard on the Governor,” they must have thought.

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A Pussy Riot in Asbury Park

By Tom DeSeno

A friend once told me that he snot-chuckles like a 14 year old boy whenever he hears the name of the Russian female protest collective Pussy Riot.   That’s culturally understandable.

Don’t mistake though the seriousness of these women and the issues that surround them.  They are making a fascinating imprint on modern politics, power and protest.

On February 24 the House of Independents, Asbury Park’s new venue that is giving that City the artistic aesthetic it always pretended to have, is presenting “A Conversation with Pussy Riot:  Hosted by John Cameron Mitchell.”

To get a proper perspective of Pussy Riot, you have to realign your point of view from American to Russian when dealing with political terms.  It also helps to look at what they aren’t as much as what they are.

They aren’t a band, at least not in the traditional sense.   There’s music, but it’s not their focus.  It’s not even good music, probably by their own intention.  The music is beside the point of their varied socio-political messages.

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Islamic Company Selling “Sharia-Compliant Mortgages” Controls Asbury Park, NJ’s Boardwalk

By Tommy DeSeno

Sheikh Usmani

With ISIS committing terrorism on 4 continents, and President Obama importing refugees from their home territory, now is a bad time to offer interest-free Sharia Law mortgages in America, but that’s exactly what one company is doing.

The beach town of Asbury Park, New Jersey has undergone a slow-grinding redevelopment for the better part of 30 years.   Bereft of money in 2007, the City sold millions of dollars worth of storied boardwalk buildings including Convention Hall to a private company – Madison Marquette.  Madison Marquette also owns concert venues near the boardwalk like the famed Stone Pony.  They are positioned in expensive retail properties across America in California, Ohio, Washington DC, Florida and more.

What few know is that Madison Marquette is owned by an Islamic company rooted in the Middle East; a company whose other subsidiary specializes in “Sharia Law Compliance” and lures Sharia-following Muslims to 23 states with interest-free home mortgages.

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Year in review: February 2015

Fire fighter Pat Breen and Freeholder Lillian Burry inspect the devastation in Ocean Grove. Feb 7, 2015. Photo by Bob Burlew

Fort Monmouth was designated as an Ebola quarantine site.

Mater Dei Prep was slated to close.  The community raised $1 million to save the school.

While in New Hampshire, Governor Chris Christie criticized Governor Maggie Hassan for appearing to be more focused on running for her next job than on governing the state she was elected to lead.

Christine Giordano Hanlon was nominated to replace M.Claire French as Monmouth County Clerk.

Locals remembered Brian Williams’ early exaggerations.

A fire destroyed four businesses and seven apartments in Ocean Grove.

In reaction to 50 Shades of Grey, Tommy DeSeno wrote that sex is the same for everyone, like eating, and that we shouldn’t talk about it so much.

Belmar’s Home By Summer campaign raised $50K in two weeks to assist the last two borough residents who were displaced by Hurricane Sandy get back into their homes.

The year in review: 2015

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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 Tapped to Captain the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders

By Tommy DeSeno

So that’s why he wanted to lose all that weight.

Since we have nothing better to do here in New Jersey, for instance, trying to stop Atlantic City from crumbling into the water, or hoping that Trenton does, let’s wring our collective hands over the Governor cheering for the Giants’ divisional rival while bromance hugging Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. I’m a Jets fan. If it weren’t for this distraction I’d be scouting the Pop Warner leagues to find my team a better coach than the one we just fired.

Governor Christie has really bad optics by publicly wearing Texas spurs. Why? Because Football ain’t baseball, that’s why. Politicians can only lose more votes in the football world than they can gain. Everybody knows that.

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2014 Predictions

Happy New Year MMM readers!  2014 has been a great year so far!

Here’s what we expect in the year ahead.

Senator Cory Booker will narrowly defeat Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick in the U.S. Senate election.  Bramnick will be the instant front runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the 2016 special election.

Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik will be a speaker at numerous Democratic Clubs throughout New Jersey and will establish himself as a major fundraiser for Democratic candidates on the municipal and county levels.  Hornik will proclaim that the only thing he is running for is reelection as Marlboro’s mayor in 2015.

The 11 incumbent New Jersey Congressmen running for reelection will win. The Republican nominee in the third congressional district seat currently held by Congressman Jon Runyon, who is not seeking a third term, will be elected.  Tommy DeSeno will write a column complaining about gerrymandered districts.

Senate President Steve Sweeney will keep picking on Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr. 

Governor Chris Christie will have more public appearances in Iowa, South Carolina, Texas and Florida, combined, than he will have Town Hall Meetings in New Jersey.

Anna Little will seek the Republican nomination for Congress in the 6th district, hoping for a third shot at Congressman Frank Pallone.  Little will lose at the Monmouth and Middlesex nominating conventions and wage a primary. The Bayshore Tea Party Group will sit out the 6th district primary, citing their commitment to Dr. Alieta Eck’s campaign in the 12th district.  Eck will be unopposed for the 12th district nomination to take on Congressman Rush Holt.

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Asbury Park needs media attention, U.S. Attorney’s assistance

By Tommy DeSeno

What helps a city fight crime? Media attention. Crime fighters don’t wish to be seen losing in the media.

Asbury Park’s gun crimes and murders get less television attention than other cities because it’s small and far from New York and Philadelphia. News 12 has to cover the state. The responsibility for keeping attention on unsolved murders in Asbury Park falls then on the Asbury Park Press.

Regarding Asbury Park killings, we’ve seen the Monmouth County prosecutor blame the city police, the county prosecutor make no progress himself and everyone blame the City Council. It was announced last week that state troopers will patrol the city, but car patrols lend themselves mostly to traffic tickets.

Left out of the conversation thus far is a very important crime fighter — U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman. He is a well-schooled, honorable lawyer who has spent his career fighting crime, including a concentration on illegal narcotics, the antecedent problem that leads to gangs and murder.

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie built a legacy of putting corrupt politicians in jail. Former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani prosecuted organized crime. Fishman can have a more honorable distinction than both of them — saving young lives and removing fear from a community.

Nationwide, the U.S. Attorney’s office has a nearly $2 billion budget, and New Jersey’s district is the fifth largest in America, with 145 lawyers and support staff. Fishman has resources. More importantly, he wields an effective crime-fighting law: The Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations statute (RICO).

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Obama Girl Redux and The Hipster President Turns Square

By Tommy DeSeno

Oh my.

As if President Obama didn’t have enough trouble this week with all the news about how he has lost the youth vote. Wait until the cool kids get a load of this.

It seems our government ran a contest for young people to submit videos to HHS to convince other young people to buy into Obamacare. Populist propaganda. Amateur government porn.

It was called the “Healthy Young America Video Contest” and the winners were announced on the White House website Tuesday.  The overall winner was submitted by a lovely girl named Erin McDonald.

The name of her video to convince young people to buy an Obamacare policy……… is………wait for it……….drum roll……….I’m not kidding about this………..

FORGET ABOUT THE PRICE TAG

If a Freudian slip could have a Freudian slip it wouldn’t be as revealing as the White House telling young people to not look at the cost. Or the rest of us for that matter.

If Democrats could have a theme song to capture the spirit of their utopian lust, the winner in the “Fiscal Irresponsibility” category would be a song called “Forget About The Price Tag.”  It’s so pre-Presidential Barack Obama rhetoric. It harkens back to his promise of a single payer healthcare system. It unfortunately portends the same for your future.

And it’s real. It seems too perfect a desperate blunder, but I’m not making this up. It’s real. The White House has endorsed a song about ObamaCare called “Forget About The Price Tag.”  Pinch me. Or shoot me. I haven’t decided yet.

Now for the video. This is no hip “Obama Girl” tune. This is bad. It’s corny. It’s Rebecca Black “Friday” bad.

Before I show it to you, will someone please contact his young lady, Erin McDonald, and ask her to reorganize that one corner of her bedroom?  It drove me insane the entire video (but thankfully distracted me from the lyrics).

With apologies to all of you, I give you the new descriptor, sound-bite, slogan, bumper sticker cum personality disorder of the Obama administration – Forget About The Price Tag:

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Tell Me Why I Should Bother Voting In A Gerrymandered District

By Tommy DeSeno

I think I need a political intervention.   I’m apathetic. I can’t find a reason to vote next year in the midterm congressional races.  Upon self-reflection I can’t decide if I’m enlightened or jaded.  Or both.   I just know I no longer care to cast a ballot.

I grew up schooled with the same civic lessons as the rest of America.  Served to me in full measure was that good government is  the result of the patriotic duty of voting and I swallowed it all.

I have been voting for more than 30 years and don’t recall having ever missed an opportunity to vote for a congressman.

Yet I’ve come to realize that I’ve been denied the opportunity to ever vote for a congressman.

Like elsewhere, the year after the census New Jersey gets redistricted.   Some connected political sorts from both parties negotiate in a hotel and as best I can tell, decide how the parties will split the state’s congressional delegation for the next 10 years.   Following that, the rest of us dutifully vote and pretend like it matters, doing nothing more than adding a façade of legitimacy to the literal backroom deal of the redistricting committee.

I lived for many years in what is now New Jersey’s 6th Congressional District (the number of the district has changed but the same suspect remains at-large).

The Congressman in NJ 6 is Democrat Frank Pallone, Jr.   Pallone serves many Monmouth County residents.  On the County level, Monmouth has been overwhelmingly a Republican county for decades.  Pallone represents  28 Monmouth County towns and 9 from Middlesex County.  However, Frank’s district has in it tentacles that grab certain neighborhoods (not even whole towns) from two other counties that are Democrat strongholds (and you can guess why).

In doing so the 6^th district lumps together sleepy little shore towns in one county with industrial settings in another, creating a varied constituency where the people have little in common.

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