Senator Bob Menendez appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last night to discuss the State of the Union and the state of play going forward. Rachel started asking him about a memo regarding driving a wedge between the tea party movement and Republican party.
He said it's a question of whose side you are on. He talked about the GOP sitting on their hands over the bank fee, contributions in elections and regulatory reform. He said they don't stand with the average citizen. Rachel questioned about Blue Dog defections sapping the strength of the argument, but Menendez said that he suspects these are issues that the Blue Dogs will have to be on board with. I'd say that remains to be seen. Menendez says this election needs to be a contrast. You need to define yourself, define your opponent and give the voters a choice. He then talked about strategies for both the primary and general. You can see for yourself:
There has been plenty of lobbying over the climate change legislation moving through the Congress, but not all of it is above board and legitimate apparently. Congressman Pallone joined Rachel Maddow to discuss forged letters that members of Congress have received from a coal front group that apparently stole letterhead form constituent groups and submitted them as supposed legitimate letters from constituents. The Congressman thinks the forged letters to members of Congress are a form of fraud that should be investigated by law enforcement. Pallone also talked about why Mountaintop mining, which the coal industry is pushing, is a disaster in his mind:In his closing, Pallone said he doesn't know what form the bill will take, but that he believes Cap and Trade will pass the Senate. It will be taken up in September and October.
I understand that the organizers consider this a non-partisan movement opposed to government spending. But anyone reading the national group's Website sees all sorts of pro-Republican goals. There is talk, for instance, about opposing health care reform, illegal immigration and even commentary on union elections.
Steve Lonegan is scheduled to speak in Morristown. It doesn't get more partisan than that.
So far we have members of the Assembly and Gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan publicly participating. According to his press release, Lonegan will be teabagging in four locations. I haven't seen whether Chris Christie or any of the GOP Congress members will be teabagging with their friends. If you find out about GOP teabagging in your neighborhood, let us know in the comments.
Apparently members of Congress have been tea bagged for weeks, as conservatives have been mailing teabags to their Congressional offices. But now the right is ready to step it up a level, because nothing says making a difference like tea bagging parties.
Rachel Maddow and Anna Marie Cox actually managed to say teabagging 44 times in this segment discussing the parties across the country:
Here is a list of NJ teabag parties. In Piscataway, they will be teabagging in Johnson Park. Or you could teabag in Hackensack. Beck O'Scanlon and Cassagrande will teabag at a party they host in Freehold Twp.
To make ends meet, Forte spun one night a week at the Manhattan nightclub Veruka, as a celebrity DJ. It was there, one Thursday in 2000, that Forte met a bald-headed thirty-five-year-old drug dealer named Chris Thompson. A native of Jamaica, Thompson needed some new, reliable couriers, preferably female, to handle what he called "stuff." John Forte knew many females.
Alerted by a tipster at a local hotel, police in Harlingen, Texas, stopped two of those young women on July 12th, 2000, as they made their way back to New York. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Houston opened their suitcases and discovered thirty eight-by-ten freezer packs filled with a bluish-green liquid -- liquid cocaine, a form of the drug favored in the trade because it is difficult for both dogs and X-ray machines to detect.
The DEA made a deal with the couriers, who called Forte in New York. "Put the ice cream in the tub," he said, and told them to fly to Newark International Airport. Cell-phone records show twenty-two calls between Thompson and Forte that day. Agents arrested Forte the next morning at Newark, after he dropped the "ice cream"-filled cases into the trunk of a taxi.
Forte always maintained that he thought it was cash, but the fact remains that he was convicted for the cocaine rap. As our readers pointed out in the thread earlier, not everyone would get this treatment. It's gotta be good to know people so that your time served could be halved after having 31 pounds of liquid cocaine. I know I didn't go to the right schools and I don't think my friends would be too helpful, so I better steer clear of those suitcases.
Cory Booker was on the Rachel Maddow show again last night, this time with guest host Arianna Huffington to talk about the current economic situation and some of the struggles facing our cities:
