McCain's Yawner

Senator John McCain made one of the most boring nomination acceptance speeches I have heard in years. He spoke for nearly one hour, and the most exciting thing of the evening was the balloon drop.


He, once again, told his very compelling POW story---the same one told by Fred Thompson, and was told tonight in a brief biographical film before his speech. He was long winded, and was short on specifics. The speech was choppy, and at times, there were many in the audience who simply did not applaud.

Governor Palin's speech was much more animated and uplifting. She definately outclassed her running mate.

So, now the games begin.

Whitman's witless campaign

Kate Whitman focused her entire campaign for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 7th district on just one thing:

Tearing down Senator Leonard Lance.

It was as if the other five candidates in the race did not even exist. That was mistake number one.

Senator Lance and I do not always agree on everything politically. He will be supporting John McCain for president and I do not. He opposed Paid Family Leave and I support it. He supports extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans and I do not.

However, I can say this: He is a man of integrity. He is a true gentleman, and almost too good for New Jersey politics. The way Kate Whitman tried to tear him down said something about her leadership skills: she has none. She attacked Senator Lance for giving up his Senate Minority Leadership post to Senator Tom Kean, Jr. She even found a way to blame New Jersey's fiscal woes on Lance.

The Todds and the Lances go back generations in the Republican Party. I do not know what she was thinking, but it could not have been much. Even the Republican supporting Hunterdon County Democrat had something to say about Whitman's tactics.

CLINTON SOLIDIFIES LEADS OVER PRIMARY RIVALS

PRESIDENT BUSH’S JOB APPROVAL RATING HITS NEW LOW AT 19 PERCENT

Eagleton Poll Shows Clinton in the Lead in NJ

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has surged to a 31-point lead over her nearest rival in the upcoming New Jersey Democratic primary, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.
The statewide telephone survey, conducted Oct. 18-23, showed Clinton leading U.S. Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of 52 percent to 21 percent among voters who identified themselves as Democrats or who said they lean Democratic. Former senator John Edwards was third, with eight percent. Clinton held a 24-point lead over Obama in a previous Rutgers-Eagleton Poll in August.

Rudy Giuliani continued to lead the Republican field in New Jersey, with 54 percent of
Republican voters and those who said they lean Republican indicating they would support the
former New York City mayor in the Republican primary. U.S. Sen. John McCain trailed with 12
percent, and was the only other Republican candidate to earn double-digit support in the survey.

Giuliani’s 42-point advantage reflected a nine-point drop in his lead over McCain since the last
Rutgers-Eagleton Poll in August.

In a general election match-up between Clinton and Giuliani, voters favored Clinton by a
margin of 49 percent to 39 percent. Clinton held a narrow three-point lead over Giuliani in the
August poll. Obama and Giuliani remained in a virtual tie in the latest poll, with Giuliani holding
a slight edge at 44 percent to 41 percent, just within the margin of error for the 856 registered
voters in the survey. Giuliani held a two-point lead over Obama in the August poll.
Clinton’s lead over her rivals in the Feb. 5 Democratic primary has solidified while it has
grown. Sixty-eight percent of Clinton supporters said they are very sure of their vote, up from 51 percent in August. Forty-five percent of Giuliani supporters said they are very sure, but more than half said they might change their minds before the Republican primary, also scheduled for Feb. 5.

“Sen. Clinton continues to strengthen her position in New Jersey, with more than twothirds
of her supporters saying they plan to stick with her through the primary,” said Tim
Vercellotti, director of polling at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. “Former mayor Giuliani has
further to go in closing the sale with his supporters.”

While voters are forming their presidential preferences in the upcoming primaries, they
are also taking an increasingly negative view of the current president. Only 19 percent of
registered voters approve of the job that George W. Bush is doing as president, an all-time low for Bush in the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, and down five points from his previous all-time low in the August survey. The president’s support dropped 12 points among independent voters and five points among Republicans. Republican voters were evenly divided, 47 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving of Bush’s job performance.

A sizable portion of voters disapproving of the job the president is doing appear ready to
come back to the Republican Party, however, in support of Giuliani. In the general election
match-up against Clinton, Giuliani won support from 29 percent of voters who disapprove of the
job Bush is doing. Matched against Obama, Giuliani picked up support from 35 percent of voters
who disapprove of the president.

“The president’s poor showing in New Jersey does not necessarily translate into a drop in
support for the Republican Party,” Vercellotti said. “Giuliani appears to be capable of drawing
some of those voters back to the party.”

Both Giuliani and Clinton earned high marks from their parties’ supporters regarding
leadership qualities and electability. Two-thirds of Republicans and voters leaning Republican
rated Giuliani as the strongest leader among the top four candidates for the nomination, which
also included McCain, former U.S. senator Fred Thompson, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Sixty-nine percent said Giuliani has the best chance among the four to win the
White House in 2008.

Honesty and trustworthiness were the only candidate characteristics in which a
competitor came anywhere near Giuliani. Thirty-nine percent rated Giuliani first, and McCain
followed with 20 percent.

Clinton earned similar numbers for leadership and electability, with about two-thirds of
Democrats and those leaning Democratic choosing Clinton over Obama and Edwards as the
strongest leader and the likeliest of the three candidates to win the presidency in 2008. Voters
gave Clinton only an eight-point edge over Obama, however, on honesty and trustworthiness, 34 percent to 26 percent. Forty-four percent rated Clinton the most inspiring of the three candidates, followed by Obama with 34 percent.

Clinton’s 10-point advantage over Giuliani in the general election match-up in the latest
poll reflects a significant shift in the preferences of women since the August survey. Clinton led
Giuliani by 18 points among women in the latest poll, 52 percent to 34 percent. Clinton held only a nine-point advantage over Giuliani among women in the August poll.

Giuliani also has lost support among white voters since August, with a 17-point
advantage over Clinton dropping to a three-point edge in the latest poll. Voters ages 50 and older have shifted toward Clinton as well. While Clinton and Giuliani ran even among older voters in August, Clinton held a 10-point lead over Giuliani among voters ages 50 to 64 in the October poll, and a 15-point advantage among voters ages 65 and older. Voters who have at least some college education also moved toward Clinton, with a four-point lead for Giuliani in August transforming into a nine-point lead for Clinton in October.

“While the data show Clinton building momentum, it is still very early in the campaign,”
Vercellotti said. “With more than a year remaining until the general election, the candidates
could win and lose these voters many times over.”

What's the difference between a Republican and a Democrat?

[I am reprinting here, an excellent article by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. This illustrates the difference for me between the values of Democratic Party and Republican Party. It is very instructive.]


Conservatives Are Such Jokers

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 5, 2007,
New York Times.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick — well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage. In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren’t bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don’t think it’s a problem. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said Mr. Bush in July. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. Referring to Medicaid spending — which fails to reach many children — he declared that “when they say, well, poor children aren’t being covered in America, if that’s what you’re hearing on your TV screens, I’m telling you there’s $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that.”

It’s not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment. Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox’s affliction was obvious. And Rush Limbaugh — displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber — immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it.

“In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.” Heh-heh-heh. Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned.

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in. And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard.

On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate. So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

No Holiday From Politics as House Dems Launch Ad Blitz

The Democrats will be launching an ad blitz this July 4th weekend, attacking Repubs on a range of issues.

The key targets will be those Republican members of Congress who have been solid supporters of President Bush's failed policies in Iraq.

Well, it's about time. If you cannot muster the votes to change the President's policy, at least attack those who do. Way to go Dems.

Two Republicans — Phil English of Pennsylvania and Mike Ferguson of New Jersey — will be targeted with Web ads.

I am very glad we're starting EARLY to bring Linda Stender to represent the 7th Congressional District in Washington.

Hope-
fully, Mike is waving NJ-7th Good Bye!

Want to know who in politics in New Jersey has been eating their spinach...

... and wields a great deal of political muscle?

This morning at 10:30am on the nose, PoliticsNJ will release The List of “100 Most Powerful People in New Jersey Politics”. Prepare to have their site crash because of all the folks who will log on right at 10:30 on the dot.

The criteria for The List is kept very hush-hush. And The List is probably only important to (a) the folks at PoliticsNJ who actually make up the list, (b) the folks who actually get chosen for the List, (c) those who wish they were on the list, and (d) the folks who get to comment on The List. For the rest of New Jersey’s working class families, it’s a big yawn.

However, since I fit somewhere between between (c) and (d), I am making my predictions about The List --- the night before.

I am sure the folks on The List will include Gov. Jon Corzine [duh], and the former [and possibly future] Acting Governor/Senate President Richard Codey [double 'duh'] ---they certainly deserve it. Also, our two Senators Lautenberg and Menendez wield a great deal of power. Democratic Congressmen Holt, Pallone, and Andrews should find their way somewhere there. And perhaps Loretta Weinberg, Susan Bass Levin, Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman and retired NJ Supreme Court Chief Justice Deborah Poritz.

Also, my guess given the state of the Repubs these days nationally, fewer Repubs will be on the list this year statewide. Undoubtedly, Chris Christie [United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey] and Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance will make the list. Where on the list, who knows ---but I predict that Christie will place higher than Lance. Christie is the clear choice [if he so chooses] to challenge Gov. Corzine in 2009, while Sen. Lance will be challenged by Tom Kean, Jr. for the Senate Minority Leadership post. Maybe Jr. will be in the top 100, but he won’t be higher than 50. As far as Mayors go, look for Cory Booker of Newark and Jun Choi of Edison.

There will be a smattering of hired guns here and there in the top 25 ---the usual suspects including Dale Florio, Brad Brewster, Judy Shaw, Hazel Gluck on the Repub side. On the Dem side, certainly Karen Kominsky and Paul Matacera.

There will be some non-governmental players in the top 100, too. In spite of their racist frat-boy antics, Craig Carton and Ray Rossi of 101.5 may be in the top 100. Their show reaches so far and wide, and they have such a powerful drive time listening public, that they wield enormous influence.

It’s a more sure thing than a blackjack bet at any Trump Casino that Juan Melli of BlueJersey.com [named Politician of the Year for 2006 by PoliticsNJ] will be in the top 20, if not the Top 10.

Other non-elected players in the top 100 will be Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality [who engineered the civil unions in to law, and vows marriage equality to follow within two years]; and Bill Dressel of the NJ State League of Municipalities for his no-nonsense common sense approach advocacy for NJ’s 566 towns.

Who won’t make The List? Well, me, for one. I am fairly certain of that, but who knows.

Also, Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow and Raritan Twp Committeewoman Chris Harcar for their Sunday night fisticuffs. Assemblyman Mike Doherty’s name will be missing--- hard to put someone on The List who does not believe in evolution or global warming or stem cell research.

But the most glaring omission from The List ---and perhaps really the most powerful entity in all of New Jersey --- is the New Jersey voting public. After all, without the voting public, no one on The List would need to be on the Any List at all. And they are no dummies.

New Jersey and Stem Cell Research: Perfect Together.

New Jersey and Stem Cell Research are Perfect Together. But no thanks to Assemblyman Mike Doherty.

According to the Star-Ledger today, "New Jersey's drive to become a center for stem cell research advanced on two fronts yesterday: The state authorized $9.1 million to launch construction of a stem cell research lab and lawmakers agreed to ask voters to approve $450 million to bankroll research grants.”

However, Republican Assemblyman Mike Doherty voted to oppose the plan.

This is a man who questions the existence of global warming. He says that it “does not matter” if we believe in the science of evolution or creationism. It is disturbing that we have a representative in Trenton who does not believe in science.

In the past, folks such as Doherty would have been considered harmless crackpots who sometimes wrote letters to local newspapers or stood on street corners shouting at passersby that the world was ending next Thursday. But today, the Republicans nominate him to run for Assembly, and the folks in Warren and Hunterdon Counties actually elect him to represent our interests in Trenton. Yes, I am proud to say this is one of the people representing me in the state legislature.

NJ can be and should be a leader in the effort to make the benefits of stem cell research a reality. The economic benefits for New Jersey are many, too many to list here. The possible medical benefits of stem cell research are also too many to list here, but can be found on the website of Dr. Fred Ferrari, a local Republican and a stem cell research activist. Yes, folks, there are some thinking Republicans out there.

However, Mike Doherty is not one of them.

“Last Republican Standing”: The new reality show

Apparently, we don’t have the only Republican representatives who are slapping each other around. Guess what?

They do it in Alabama, too.

Could this be the start of a national trend? Is New Jersey at the forefront of the new cool thing?

Maybe this can be a new reality show. “Last Republican Standing”:

We put 16 Republican elected officials in a House [or Senate], and they battle it out by slapping each other in the face, punching each other in the nose, groin kicking, back-stabbing, or whatever. Each week another one of them gets indicted, sentenced, loses in a primary, or resigns from office. Until only one of them is ready to run for President.

That would be the “Last Republican Standing”.

We need to call Mark Burnett (producer of 'Survivor)' or Jay Mohr, the host and executive producer of Last Comic Standing, and set up a pitch meeting.

Could be huge by '08.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

A quote from perhaps the last really good Republican president. The general who won WWII [along with Private First Class Bernie Novick, of course] said some really smart things about the military industrial complex, and about “values”.

And ‘core values’ is what the national Republican Party is so bereft of these days. Here’s an example:

I ran in to Henry Kuhl, Hunterdon County Republican Chairman tonight at a local event on Main Street in Flemington. I asked him who he thought would win the Republican nomination for president. “Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani will be the next president of the United States. And Fred Thompson will be the Vice president.”

Interesting, I thought.

“Do you really think the Christian Conservatives in the South will vote for a pro-choice, pro-gay liberal Italian Catholic from New York? Someone who has been divorced and dressed in drag kissing Donald Trump?” I inquired. “Those southern primaries will be tough for him in your Party.”

“Well, you don’t understand something. The Republicans want to win.”
Thanks for the news flash, Henry.

“So, the Christian right-wing Republicans in the south want to win so badly, that they are willing to give up their core values and support Giuliani ---someone who shares so little with them politically?” Of course, this is assuming that someone like Giuliani, who also supports President Bush on the Iraqi War can win, period.

A resident who was standing with us then asked him about the Harcar-Karrow incident. Henry looked flummoxed at both questions, but continued. “I need to get to a meeting. And I am not going to say anything bad about anyone. I am a positive person who says positive things.”

Huh? Sounds pretty valueless to me.

I still think that any Democrat in this race can take on any Republican and win. Those are my values, and I am sticking to them.

Sunday Night World Wide Republican Wrestling

"In this corner, the former three time Raritan Township Committee woman, former Hunterdon County Freeholder, and current junior Assemblywoman representing Hunterdon and Warren Counties, please welcome, Marcia 'I Hate The Highlands Act' Karrow!"

"And in this corner, the former Mayor of Raritan Township, current Raritan Township Committee woman, please welcome Chris 'I am the only Republican Committee member ever to have voted for a Democrat for Mayor in Raritan' Harcar."

Sunday night fights:

That's what happened at the Kuhl Corporation last week in a 'scuffle' between Assemblywoman Marica Karrow and her former running mate and fellow Raritan Township Committeewoman, Chris Harcar.

Harcar went to the Kuhl headquarters [the family business of Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl] to join in the phone banking for the primary. According to newspaper sources, Karrow ripped a phone script out of Harcar's hands, and expressed her desire to have Harcar leave the premises. The police were called in to break up the fight. More tax dollars well spent by Republicans, I guess.

Anyway, Karrow claims that Harcar was "intoxicated". Harcar claims that Karrow used "her body" to push her down, breaking her arm in the process.

Either way, each now has a lawyer and the incident was reported to the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office. Prosecutor Pat Barnes told the press he was looking in to the matter. So, what will happen now? It's anyone's guess.

"Will Karrow win in Court? Will Harcar file charges? Will Henry Kuhl ever pay off his $50 bet to me for the 2005 Gov race?"

Tune in next week, same Repub-time, same Repub-station!

"First things first, but not necessarily in that order." Doctor Who

I love walking around on Main Street in Flemington. You run into the most knowledgeable Republican people there:

“Leonard doesn't speak up enough for the Republican Party”, said a local Republican in Hunterdon County of Minority Leader Leonard Lance, ---a local Republican who shall remain nameless. “That’s why he will be challenged for his leadership position in the Senate by Tom Kean, Jr.”

Let’s just say that my Republican source was a former leader of the Hunterdon Republican County Committee, who knows how to come clean when it comes to washing dirty laundry of politics.

So, Jr., fresh off his defeat last year in the US Senate race, and facing a very active opponent in Gina Genovese, former Mayor of Long Hill Township in Morris County is already planning to challenge Senator Leonard Lance to be the Minority Leader in the Senate. My advice to Mr. Kean: Put first things first.

Now, I do admit that the 21st Legislative District, which covers parts of Union, Morris, Somerset and Essex Counties, is a fairly Republican district by and by. And Jr. does have the edge there. But, Gina is no slouch, either.

She is a Democrat, elected in a predominately Republican town. She was one of the first [if not the first] openly gay Mayors in New Jersey. She is very progressive, in a part of New Jersey that is rapidly becoming more and more progressive itself.

She has run a tennis instruction camp for more than a quarter of a century in Morris County, and has lots of name recognition. And she will have much support from the Morris County Democrats [fresh off their great win in the Morris Township special election], the gay and lesbian community in NJ, and volunteers from New Jersey for Democracy. And of course, the New Jersey State Democratic Committee is likely to make her race a priority ---- seeing that her opponent is Kean, Jr.
So, Tom, before you plan to take on Senator Lance, you’ve got to get by Gina first. And, that, ain't gonna be easy.

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

Recently in my hometown of Flemington, a Republican member of the Borough Council, called for clean and ethical campaigns in the coming fall elections. Great idea, I thought. Ironic, though, when called for by the Republican Party.

The Councilmember stated [in the May 17th Hunterdon County Democrat newspaper] that he would like to see the Council draft a resolution in support of ethical campaigning; that the Council ban taking campaign money from “state organizations, county organizations or even private organizations because that money comes with strings attached.” While I agree with the sentiment he expressed, I was wondering if he understood the irony: The irony, of course, was that it was his Republican Party that had acted in the fall elections in the manner he found so offensive. It was his Party that made allegations of corruption that they knew were not true when they said it, said it anyway, and the newspapers declared were not true, also. His Party, not the Democratic Party.

It was his Party which took substantial cash from a local attorney, and then rewarded him with a job as the Flemington Public Defender, and a place in the New Jersey pension system----those were the "strings attached”.

It was his Republican Party that over the years rewarded a local business owner with an economic development consultant contract worth close to $80,000 in return for her support in recent elections. More strings attached.

It was his Party which engaged in the campaign that the Courier News called the “nastiest ever” in Flemington ---- using Karl Rovian-type baseless personal attacks on the integrity and veracity of his Party’s Democratic opponents.

And it was his Party’s candidate who refused to sign an ethical campaign pledge in the February 2006 special election. His Party spent thousands more than the Democratic Party candidates, and moved political campaign cash around from the County Clerk’s campaign to the local Flemington campaign.

So, I think the answer to his concerns are, first, cleaning up the mess in his own Republican Party, and then see what the Borough Council can do. Such is the irony.

In the last quarter century, the American voting public has seen a disturbing trend take place: An alarming decrease in the percentage of those who are registered to vote going to the polls on Election Day. According to David Wallechinsky in Parade Magazine, "One of the more shocking statistics also relates to elections. In a recent survey of the percentage of voting-age citizens who actually cast a ballot in their country’s elections, the United States ranked only 139th out of the 172 nations that held elections." There is an equally alarming increase in the negative tone of campaigning and 'politics of personal destruction' in federal, state and especially in local campaigns. Such was the type of campaign conducted by his Party in Flemington.

I truly believe that in order to change this, we must begin locally at the grass roots level---within each political party.

Basic retail politics in local elections in Flemington used to be the traditional knocking on your neighbor's door, handing out flyers with good ideas for your community, and attending coffee gatherings in the local church or temple meeting room or school community room.

Unfortunately, this has been replaced by the same kind of negative tone and broad-based personal attacks that is typical of the 'Karl Rove/Swiftboat’ variety of campaigning in national elections. And that is not good. There are several things that residents can do right away:

Demand debates by local candidates, sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Letters to the Editor of the local community newspaper requesting in depth coverage of the local race and debate. A voluntary 'Truth in Campaigning' state-wide statute or local ordinance. Fair campaign practices. A "Clean Campaign Pledge" signed by the candidates. For some really great ideas, see an article by Seton Hall Law School Prof. Paula A. Franzese, the Chair of the New Jersey State Ethics Commission, at: http://www.cleancampaigns.net/3.html

Your elected officials, your local newspaper, and your neighbors can all be persuaded to do the right thing---and require the highest standards in New Jersey for clean political campaigns in local elections.