No blogging for me tonight. I’m going to the thee-ah-tah.

In the week or so since the election, the rat bastards in Trenton have shown the agenda that they played close to the vest until the election was over, lest they arouse the sleeping electorate, which, once properly informed just might have sent their miserable asses packing.

Since the election we have been treated to the following:

1.The Death Penalty. Just a few days after the general election in the state, the average newspaper-reading Joe in Jersey learned that the [democrat] Assembly will vote on doing away with New Jersey’s death penalty. Sure, if you’re a political junkie who is seriously plugged in to what is going on in Trenton on any given day, you might have seen this coming, but for those who get their news from the newspapers and the television, this was quite a shocker.

As a practical matter, the legislative rescission of the death penalty is irrelevant, because New Jersey hasn’t executed anyone since 1963, nine years before then-existing death penalty laws were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

In 1982, New Jersey reinstated the death penalty by revising its statute to pass muster under the 1972 United States Supreme Court decision. The Legislature probably should not have wasted its time fixing the statute, because the New Jersey Supreme Court has never missed an opportunity to read the law in a manner that would keep the most brutal murderers (often of police officers) alive. Now, we have a Governor who has opposed the death penalty for many years and continues to do so.

As such, the death penalty in New Jersey is toast and it will become so while the voters sit home and watch Oprah.

2. The Stem Cell Baloney. I wrote about it here. The incumbents figured that their Stem Cell Bond Referendum (authorizing $450 million in yet more borrowing) would pass. After all, the sheeple in New Jersey hadn’t said “No” to a bond issue in some 17 years. Well, as we know, the bond issue was flatly rejected by the thirty percent of voters who bothered to show up at the polls. Only after the election did we learn that the $450 million was really intended to pay the expenses of running the FOUR stem cell research facilities that the state had already planned to build with $270 million more in borrowed money that the voters didn’t get to vote on.

Look, if voters nixed $450 million in borrowing, they sure as shit would have nixed an honestly worded referendum that would have sought authorization to borrow $720 million ($450 million + $270 million=$720 million).

It now appears that at least three of the facilities may not be built, due to the lack of funds to run them. The fourth facility will likely be built, using the excess from the $270 million to run the facility. “Excess?” Please. Not in Jersey. Ever.

3. The Sale/Lease of the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike. Governor Corzine has been hinting at this “Asset Monetization Plan” for months, but he and his cronies in the legislature made sure to keep it relatively quiet until after the election. Now, he and they are ready to rock. Under this “plan” the state would sell or lease our main highways to a third party (although the type of third party remains a mystery) for a large chunk of front money, which will be used to “reduce the cost of debt service” (a fancy way of saying “reduce the interest the state has to pay on previously BORROWED money), and presumably reap the benefits from increased tolls (I think, anyway).

The Governor is so enamored of this “plan” that he is “prepared to lose his job” getting it passed. (Check out the comments to the linked post to see how this horseshit is being received).

I have done my damndest to understand how this “plan” will work to the advantage of New Jersey’s citizens, but for the life of me, I don’t see it. That’s largely because the Governor has not shared any of the details of his “plan.” I urge Jersey peeps to check out THIS SITE for more information on this subject, and if you can make sense of how the “plan” will benefit the citizens of Jersey, please let me know. Seriously.

While each of the foregoing schemes is enough to make one’s hair hurt, what really frosts my stindeens is the calculated effort on the part of the incumbents to wait until after the election was over to pull this crap. (Notably, I didn’t hear incumbent Republicans squawking about any of this prior to the election.) No, the incumbent rats in Trenton knew goddamned well that these issues would have caught the attention of the electorate and that electorate would have demanded that they take *gasp* a position on these very issues.

Of course we all know that having to take a position on a hot issue is absolutely toxic to political rats.

Seeing as how I sat down in this chair with absolutely nothing to say, I thought I would allow five or ten minutes for some free-ranging nonsense.

Hannah Montana? WTF? (The “W” stands for “What?” and for “Who?”) Never heard of her and, all of a sudden, I feel like the only person on earth who doesn’t know who Hannah Montana is. She must be a big deal, because a woman is trying to drum up interest in filing a class action lawsuit against anyone who had anything to do with ticket sales to Hannah Montana’s concerts. The good news is that I know that she is not related to Dax.

I heard on the news this morning that the Port Authority (a government eitity comprised of peeps from New York and New Jersey to handle stuff like bridges, tunnels, airports and other “interstate” things) has decided to raise the tolls on the tunnels and bridges that connect New Jersey and New York City from six bucks to eight bucks. That’s a thirty-three percent increase. Don’t you wish you were the government? If you decided you needed more money to get along, you could just give yourself a thirty-three percent raise.

When I was a boy, I was a voracious reader of “Superman” comic books. Even before the era of politically correctness, Superman, who could have destroyed the entire planet in a heartbeat, didn’t kill bad guys. Instead, he would fling them into the Phantom Zone, which was a place in another dimension filled with the shitballs of the world and from which they could never, ever return to earth. I sure wish there was such a thing as the Phantom Zone. OJ, Jane Fonda, Hillary, Bill, Al Sharpton and a host of others come immediately to mind. Hell, if I didn’t allow myself so little time to write this, I could probably come up with a Phantom Zone List that would rival the Manhattan Phone Directory in size.

This morning on the way to work, I passed a 1951 Pontiac sedan in perfect condition. I had an uncle who had one of those. Sweet. The one I saw is probably worth a bundle now.

Time’s up.

Note: I had to add on a couple minutes to dig out some links. You’re farookin’ welcome.

The screenwriters have been on strike for a couple weeks, and now it appears that some news writers may also strike. Hell, even the Broadway stagehands have walked off the job, thereby screwing the peeps, especially tourists, who bought show tickets months ago and flew the family into New York to see “Jersey Boys.”

I thinking that maybe bloggers ought to consider going on strike too. After all, we write stuff, don’t we?

Here are some suggested demands (A strike isn’t worth beans without demands):

1. Hours. The hours are terrible. Many bloggers write into the wee hours of the morning, often after having worked all day and dealt with a full plate of Life 101. Some write early in the morning or in small bits at permitted times during the day. This saps our spirit and our creativity. We should demand regular and civilized hours!

2. Working Conditions. Have you ever seen photos of the squalor in which some bloggers write? Empty soda/beer cans, fast food, candy and snack wrappers, papers strewn all over the place and overloaded ash trays. Bloggers are hassled by pets, spouses and kids. You know damned well what I mean. “When are you going to get away from that damned computer? Blah blah blah.” We should demand a clean and tidy place to blog, free from disturbances of any kind.

3. More Recognition. Face it. Ninety percent of the people in the United States don’t know what a blog is and don’t care to know what a blog is. Of the ten percent who know what a blog is, 90% don’t read or give two shits about blogs. We could all be “contendas.” We should demand recognition and respect, dammit (Think Fredo in “Godfather II”).

4. Spam. Who among us hasn’t been tortured from time to time by the dreaded, lower-than-pond-scum spammer? Why should we tolerate this? We have our goddamned rights. It’s time we should demand that spammers be summarily executed.

5. Compensation. The pay really stinks. In fact, it stinks so bad that illegal immigrants want no part of the gig. We should demand a regular infusion of a bunch of moolah as compensation for our daily pearls of wisdom.

I know you’re thinking, ”Yo, Jimbo, I agree that we ought to demand all these things, but to whom should we make our demands?”

DUH!! I can’t believe you’d have to ask. Obviously, George Bush. He’s responsible for hurricanes, hiccups, carbuncles, war, traffic jams, airplane crashes, body odor, famine, pestilence, death, destruction and most forms of tooth decay.

I SAY WE STRIKE!!!

Remember just last week when New Jersey’s voters defeated a bond issue that would have permitted the nearly-bankrupt state to borrow $450 million for stem cell research? Surely you remember it. It was in all the papers.

Paul Mulshine reports in his article entitled “Stem Cell Switcheroo” that, despite strong voter opposition, the Governor and the State Legislature intend to go ahead with the construction of stem cell research facilities at a cost of $270 million. How can this be? The voters vote against this just last week?

Turns out, we’ve been had yet again.

Paul Mulshine states:

Wasn’t the vote Tuesday a simple, yes-or-no question on whether the stem-cell institute should be built? Nope. When you read the fine print [***] on that ballot measure, you find that it was not designed to raise money for the construction. The borrowing was for the institute’s operating expenses over the next 10 years.

The $270 million for construction is slated to come out of a different bonding measure, one that you never got to vote on. The Corzine administration plans to pay for the buildings with so-called “contract debt,” debt cleverly structured in such a way that it does not need voter approval.

Well, isn’t that just terrific. It turns out that when the majority of voters voted NO on that question, they were only voting on borrowing money to cover the expenses of funding research projects at research facilities that were going to be built anyway with $270 million of borrowed money – money that was borrowed without having to seek voter approval.

Of course, this begs the question of just how the research will be funded in these spiffy new stem cell research buildings. Hang on to your wallet!

Just one more reason for people to vote with their feet to escape this political hell hole.

*** Here is the exact wording of the ballot measure:

Shall the “New Jersey Stem Cell Research Bond Act,” which authorizes the State to issue bonds in the amount of $450 million for grants to fund “stem cell research projects,” as defined in the act, at institutions of higher education and other entities in the State conducting scientific and medical research, and providing the ways and means to pay the interest on the debt and also to pay and discharge the principal thereof, provided that recurring revenues of the State are certified by the State Treasurer to be available in an amount equal to the sum necessary to satisfy the annual debt service obligations related to such bonds, be approved?

The whole thing makes me sick.

Veterans all have stories to tell, ranging the absolutely horrifying to the downright hilarious. If a vet wants to tell you a story, do the vet a favor and listen. You may learn something about the vet, something about history that often goes unwritten, and you may even learn something about yourself.

I wish all my brothers and sisters who’ve worn the uniform a Happy Veterans Day.

via C&S

For this, I blame Hillary and Nancy Pelosi, who shit this place up with some regularity.

Check out this post, which details the efforts of young men, described as being “Middle Eastern,” trying to purchase school buses in various U.S. cities. In each instance, they were turned down. In addition, Federal Officials alerted schools in six states that a computer disc was discovered in Iraq that contained photos, floor plans and other information about their schools.

Connect the dots.

Given that the attempts to buy the school busses took place in 2006, I like to think that this was one of the terrorist plots that was quietly thwarted by the government. However, I know that these folks are determined and very patient. After all, they have been at it for a thousand years or so.

It scares the hell out of me to think that one of these days they’ll succeed.

School buses.

Floor plans of schools.

Think about that.

Via Fausta

I found this at the Wiseass Jooette’s Site, and this confirms that, despite what those of you with southern ears may hear, she (with her ass built too close to the ground) and I don’t talk the same.

I took a similar quiz a while back here, and the results came out the same. That pretty much closes the case.

No wonder they look at me funny in Tennessee and Georgia when I say, “Yo! Haya dooin’?”