Blue Jersey frontpager, NJ godmother of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, Senate Majority leader, and a woman who gives Chris Christie the willies, Loretta Weinberg has a birthday today. She's 77.
LW's taking the day off from her usual Monday morning post, so instead this sweet video she made with her very sensible grandchildren, Shayna and Jonah. Here for "my adopted son Steven Goldstein" and Garden State Equality she talks with them about the day, hopefully soon, when people can marry "who they love and feel comfortable with" and the gay people in their lives who want to get married.
Birthday girl, with the beloved Shayna & Jonah:
(Disclosure: I have the honor of serving on GSE's board)
Newark West Ward councilman Ron C. Rice makes it official with the release of the video below on his website, issuing a primary challenge to Rep. Donald Payne - first African-American ever elected to Congress from New Jersey - for the seat that's been his since 1989. Payne is 77.
Our Congress is broken. We need new ideas and new leadership to finally tackle age-old problems that have persisted in our nation for far too long. I'm asking for your support. Ron C. Rice (video)
Unlike the northland's other congressional primary contest, Rothman v. Pascrell, this is not the clash of resentful equals and titans that race has apparently gelled into. This is different, the challenge of a young man making waves across generations to an older man in a 22-year incumbency. Donald Payne has a progressive voting record, Ron Rice is a progressive man. That, among other things, will make this an interesting race. Note: Rice's website still lists his as an Exploratory Committee.
Per PolitickerNJ, the widow of former congressman John Adler is set to announce she plans to take from Jon Runyan the NJ-3 congressional seat that Runyan took from John Adler. It would be good to see another Adler sweep to victory in the 3rd District, like John Adler was swept in back in 2008. It's good symmetry.
It's useful to remember that though former Eagle Jon Runyan may have won in 2010, he got the chance to challenge Adler in his first re-election as an incumbent (Shelley Adler gets that chance now with Runyan) when he may never again be as vulnerable. Plus, the district had been Republican before Adler came in on the Obama wave, and perhaps most memorably, the Adler campaign floated a fake Tea Party candidate they tried for a long time to deny. That was apparently too disreputable even for New Jersey politics. (Adler, you'll remember, died of complications of a staph infection just weeks later). Note: in an earlier version of this post I posted the wrong numbers for Runyan's victory. Hat tip ken bank for the correction.
This is a good time to take Runyan out, though Adler will haYve to move into the District to do it. Her hometown Cherry Hill was redistricted out of NJ-3 this time around. And it's useful to remember, whatever the unpleasant history of the late Congressman Adler's last campaign, as a man and as a candidate, he way outclassed Runyan. Shelley Adler, like her late husband, is an attorney. Whatever his fame on the field, Runyan was spectacularly unqualified for office when he ran (and won). It's impossible not to wish Adler well (or for that matter, any Democrat that takes Runyan on in a viable campaign). After all, Runyan's still this guy:
Responding to the apparent fact that the NJ Legislature may be finally getting its head together in treating gay couples in love with respect and recognizing their right to marry, Gov. Christie tried a headline-grabbing, but morally bankrupt dodge: He proposed a referendum, political cover for his obedient, spineless GOP legislative Muppets.
But the next day, Christie went further, and in doing so exposed both an ignorance of history, or given his intelligence, more likely a cunning attempt to twist it. He said this:
People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.
- Gov. Chris Christie, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012
Cheryl Contee said it well:(Christie's assertion is) if Southern whites in the 1940s, 50s and 60s had just been given enough time, they would have totally been down for equality with their black neighbors. They would have even voted for it themselves!
But yesterday, closer to home, Cory Booker set the Governor straight, and it's a thing of beauty:
On the Christmas Day airing of Meet the Press this morning, host David Gregory and NBC's Tom Brokaw laid out - as others have - the new primary rules, deep GOP dissatisfaction with the current field, and the will of establishment Republicans that could lead to a brokered convention and the emergence of Chris Christie as GOP nominee. New York Times' columnist, Tom Friedman, sitting next to him, nodding. Watch:
Now they're calling Hunterdon the new face of food stamps. Hunterdon, where the median household income is $98,000 a year, just saw a spike in food stamp usage in 3 years of 514%. Flemington, my town, is the county seat, a small town with more empty storefronts than it used to have and its anchor, the historic Union Hotel, shuttered. People who live in Flemington generally make considerably less than those in the surrounding burbs of Raritan Twp and Readington. But this has always been a middle-class town.
CNN just came to town to interview people at the Flemington Food Pantry, which has also seen a surge in use, and in usefulness. It's a wake-up call, for anybody still needing one, of what's happening to the middle-class. For some people suddenly unable to make it, it's bewildering, they're not prepared, and they never thought they'd "be there". To be sure, the numbers here started out low. And there are places in New Jersey where poverty is more deeply settled, where people have been struggling for years, for so long that some of the rest of us have forgotten to think much about that. This is what OWS has been about - and Occupy Trenton, and Newark. The census now tells us about half of us are low-income or living in poverty now, a statistic still sinking in, for me. But not for everybody.
Gov. Christie was on Morning Joe today. He got more air time than Mitt Romney, also on, was given. Here's both videos, and a little of what Christie talked about:
Take a damned breath: (3:55 mark) talking national politics, overtalking co-host Mika Brzezinski (like everybody there does). She gets him back, questioning his certainty on Romney.
Mitt Romney is going to be at the Parsippany Hilton tomorrow night, sharing a stage with his #1 stand-in, Chris Christie. Got $500? That'll get you in. They'll rake in big bucks; $500 gets you in the door, max out to Romney and get your picture taken with him and the big guy.
Romney should have been able to shut down all or most of the competition by now. But so far, he's been uninspiring enough that Republicans keep looking past him to ... anybody else, including some pretty unstable characters. If you wonder what it will look like Monday night when Mitt walks on a stage with Christie, well, you may have already seen it.
Saturday Night Live cold open:
Can't scrub the 30-second ad. Practice making elephant noises.
Brian Williams can't even say the word "billion" without wincing. And Corzine, on camera as he testified this morning to answer a subpoena from the House Agriculture Committee, looks awful.
He did not take the Fifth, which many expected he would. Instead, he apologized for the impact the disappearance of $1.2 Billion will have on the farmers and other MF Global clients whose money was required to be segregated from the company's, but was apparently co-mingled. And NBC reported it all as another risky behavior of Corzine's, like riding in a car without a seat belt. Rough stuff. And going to get rougher.
So, Christie got mic-checked last night stumping for Romney in Iowa. The first thing you notice is that it takes Christie, whose public appearances in NJ are tightly orchestrated showcases, a full minute-and-a-half to get his audience back after Occupy takes the focus from the big man with the microphone (standing in for the dull presidential hopeful who wasn't there).
And that's after the very large man in the checked shirt jumps past Christie and hovers over the women Occupiers on the stage behind Christie.
So, it's weird to see Christie lose his room, maybe lose his shit a little bit, and take so long to get it back. When he does, it's stupid Joisey jokes and hack comedian Please remember to tip your waiters and waitresses lines.
The other day, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown took to the Senate floor to point out the difference between Christian teaching as he understands it and what is being practiced in the governors office of his own state (that's Gov. John Kasich) and in Trenton (Christie) and Wisconsin (Scott Walker).
We actually picked up the video from a scandalized (presumably) right-winger, who thinks Brown is "slandering the religious faith" of those men. Actually he's discussing what that faith actually teaches.
Brown talks about the Rerum Novarum, the words of Pope Leo XIII in 1891. This is Catholic social teaching at its most fundamental, the foundation of doctrine developed by the Catholic Church over decades on matters of poverty, wealth, economics, social organization and the state. It was no wild-eyed lefty document; it abhorred communism (but also unrestricted capitalism) and supported the right to private property. But it also talked about how the free market cannot escape moral responsibility:
Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.
Poverty. Fairness. Equality. Egalitarianism. This is the bible Sen. Brown wants to remind our governor about; as he targets workers on behalf of the wealthy. Increasingly, particularly in Christie role as Mitt Romney's traveling pitbull, you will see our booming governor as the hero of the wealthy against the rest of us, and model for lesser GOP leaders. Brown nails the tensions Christie should be feeling, but probably is not. Watch:
So, someone has gone to the trouble of constructing a pretty good replica of The Honeymooners set, and videoed a little domestic comedy of about 10 minutes: The Goveymooners, starring Chris Christie (not really), Nancy Pelosi as his wife (deeply unsettling for both of them, I'd think), and their upstairs tenement neighbors, Mike Bloomberg and his wife (again, so impossible) NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
The two ladies are tricksters one step ahead of their husbands, and Christie is the odd man out - on marriage equality. and Christie is as always the odd man out on marriage equality. The big guy does a pretty a good Jackie Gleason. Coptergate and Disneygate come up. And then there's a last minute visit from Jim McGreevey. And karma, er, Carmen.
Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make this. I don't know who. Enjoy.
I don't know which is more upsetting: a NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife that's a tool of the NRA? Or the nine Democrats in the State House who (perhaps unwittingly?) enable such a crazy arrangement.
This is Scott Olsen. Marine. Iraq War veteran. Shot in the head by a police projectile in a raid of Occupy Oakland, California authorized by the city's mayor.
The raid, chaotic and harsh, was almost immediately televised via live stream to Occupy cities around the world, and later seen on commercial television. I posted the video below. The mayor authorized the crackdown, in which Marine Olsen was injured, and then she left town. She denies her men used rubber bullets or flashbang grenades. But his injury is consistent with a head injury caused by a projectile known less lethal bullets, which are used by police in riot guns used to disperse crowds.
Olsen has had brain surgery. He can move, and he can write, but he still cannot speak. He was wearing a Veterans for Peace shirt when the insult came to his brain on the streets of Oakland. Veterans for Peace.
There is something wrong here.
I started off writing a post about how it's easier and more emotionally satisfying to wave the flag on exactly two days a year - Veterans Day and Memorial Day - and think of vets for about 12 minutes and be done. I mean no disrespect to local observances of those events; I attend my local events every year, and my town's events mean a great deal to their organizers and to me. But the diary I started off writing was about how we don't listen to vets enough. My best day in Washington D.C. is going to the WWII memorial, scouting around for really old guys, and asking them questions. Ditto, the Vietnam Memorial there, and some of my best conversations have started off having to listen, again, to why Jane Fonda's a commie. If you can get past that, it is an enriching and illuminating conversation to listen to men and women tell you about their lives, and experiences. So different from those of us who never signed up, never got drafted.
There isn't any better use for my tax dollars than to provide every advantage and leg up for people who helped build the country we now know. And that means paying quicker attention to medical needs specific to the wars we've sent them to - Agent Orange and its destruction to the bodies of Vietnam vets. Loneliness in WWII and Korea vets whose friends are gone. Head injuries, mental stress, and suicide risk for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
But we're not listening hard enough to our Scott Olsens, either. Or to people like Marine Sergeant Shamar who confronted NYPD officers at Occupy Wall Street, and now is calling for former Marines to don civilian uniform and join the Occupy protests as OccupyMARINES
Bill Orr just wrote about the gathering that will bring together Occupy Wall Street participants with those at Occupy Trenton, vets and peace activists. It's where Scott Olsen would be today if he was well. He'd be wearing that Veterans for Peace shirt.
From the Bergen County Democrats, and challenger John Hogan's campaign to challenge Republican Bergen Clerk Lisa Randall. Have to say, this inside-baseball version of the Democrats' complaint that Randall goofs off on the public's time in her $140,000/year job isn't likely to be seen by too many voters. But if the Bergen Dems can get this version, below in front of enough voters it might get interesting.
Incidentally, politickernj.com: it's Democratic Party, not Democrat Party and Democratic challenger, not Democrat challenger. I'm sure that wasn't intentional, but it makes you look a little more GOP than you probably want people to think you are. Just saying.
Yesterday, we saw the results of a statewide poll that by overwhelming numbers New Jerseyans support the Jersey participants of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philly. Both OWS, the granddaddy of the now worldwide Occupy phenomenon and its Philadelphia counterpart have been going on for weeks. But so too has Occupy Trenton, with just a fraction of the participants of both those cities or of Occupy Albany in the capitol city of our neighboring state.
But the Trenton occupiers have also been maintaining a round-the-clock presence at the World War II Memorial across West State Street from the NJ State House. And their right to be there, to exercise their right of free speech there, is at the center of a court case (which we covered here and here) the ACLU has taken on their behalf.
We may hear Judge Mary Jacobson's ruling as early as today. Meanwhile, here's a 10-min. video I shot in the early evening light on the day Occupy Trenton went to court. I'm not our best videographer, but you'll hear from all three lawyers, Bennet Zurofsky, David Perry Davis and ACLU-NJ legal director Ed Barocas, and some of the Trenton occupiers.
Like any free speech case, though the numbers are smaller at Occupy Trenton, the implications of the State's effort to shut them down, are much, much larger. We'll bring you the Judge's decision soon as we hear.
UPDATE: We know a little more now about how this video was compiled. Senator Lautenberg with his staff took the initiative, in recognition of National Bullying Prevention Month, which is October. To accommodate busy schedules, blocks of time over two weeks were reserved at the Capitol Visitor Center Recording Studio, with invitations to members of NJ's congressional delegation to record. There are a few faces missing - it would be even better with Reps. Andrews, Garrett, Frelinghuysen, Pallone and Smith. And we must point out that Lance & LoBiondo voted NO on DADT repeal, as Runyan might have but he wasn't sworn in yet. But the effort, and especially Senator Lautenberg's initiative, are much appreciated.
BTW - I'm told this is the first-ever It Gets Better video that includes elected Republicans.
The New Jersey suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi and other other young gay people prompted the It Gets Better Project, a labor of love from columnist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller. The project took off like wildfire; over the last year celebrities, sports teams, and ordinary people have turned their webcams on themselves to give encouragement to teens and kids of a welcoming future for themselves. And those videos, some of them simple and low-tech, made by ordinary people, are bouncing all over the internet.
Last month, an upstate New York 14-year-old named Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself outside his house. A smart kid, with supportive parents, and friends who cared about him. A kid whose NY state senator had led other Republicans to reverse course and help pass marriage equality in New York State, in part after Jamey's hero Lady Gaga had asked her Buffalo audience to ask him to. Jamey's last message was a thank you to Lady Gaga for her message of self-worth to gay kids. And Jamey had himself just months earlier made an 'It Gets Better' video to give confidence to other kids. Jamey himself died last month, after a particularly rough bout of online bullying.
Proof if ever there was any that there's work still to be done. This is the 'It Gets Better' video that's going to the press later today, with our thanks to Senator Frank Lautenberg's office for the advance heads-up:
Last month, Rush Holt cross-posted at Blue Jersey an in-depth article he did advocating for federal investment in research and development. Read Dueling Visions for Science.
Now, we have video of the scientist congressman talking with Rachel Maddow about what the military has achieved, even in unexpected areas like breast cancer, ovarian and prostate cancer research.
Holt comes in at the 5:17 mark, but it's worth watching Maddow's opening to see the scary-cool thing the Roomba people make for the military, and the difference between what's new in the kind of new car you can get soon vs, the kind of new car the Army gets. And aircraft the size of bugs.
What's new in military whizbang vastly outstrips what private industry has done. You're paying for it; it's public investment. The question is, can we learn anything from the way investment in R & D has fueled the leaps forward in military equipment innovation? And are there jobs in that?
Yeah, there's an ad I can't scrub. Sorry. Calculate digits of pi in your head. Or plan dinner.
