Justice Kagan's first vote is against an execution - INJECTION MAY BE UNSAFE!??! - "Quick Watson, the needle"

I'm worried that my rat killer will be unsafe for the rats. Curiouser and curiouser!

Justice Elena Kagan: Kagan's first vote is against an execution - latimes.com

The newest member of the Supreme Court is in the minority in backing a stay of execution over questions about the safety of a drug to be used in a lethal injection. Shortly after the stay was overturned Tuesday, Arizona executed Jeffrey Landrigan.

Washington…Justice Elena Kagan cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday, joining the liberals in dissent when the high court cleared the way for the execution of an Arizona murderer.

The 5-4 ruling overturned orders by a federal judge in Phoenixand the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had stopped the execution by lethal injection of Jeffrey Landrigan.

His lawyers, in a last-ditch appeal, had raised questions about one of the drugs used in the execution. Since the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental had suspended production, Arizona officials said they had obtained a supply of the drug from a British company.

A judge had put the execution on hold because she said she was "left to speculate" whether this drug was safe for its intended use.

But state lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court Tuesday, which lifted the judge's order.

"There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe," the justices said, and "speculation cannot substitute for evidence that the use of the drug is 'sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering'."

The high court used those words two years ago in a decision that upheld the use of lethal injections.

Tuesday's night's one-paragraph order was unsigned, but it spoke for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Four others said they disagreed and said would have preserved the stay. They were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan.

Landrigan was convicted of murder in 1989. He was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening shortly after the court's order was handed down. Witnesses reported Landrigan appeared to die quietly and with no apparent sign of pain.

Last month, the high court had been asked to stop Virginia's execution of Teresa Lewis, but refused. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented and said they would have granted her appeal.

Go to Paterson, NJ, to see the Pascrell legacy! If you believe we're in a mess, then vote for Roland Straten - NorthJersey.com

Bill Pascrell has used "government as the answer" to leave a wake of blight in Paterson, New Jersey and the Country!

Letter to the editor: If you believe we're in a mess, then vote for Roland Straten - NorthJersey.com

Letter to the editor: If you believe we're in a mess, then vote for Roland Straten

Thursday, October 21, 2010
LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY OCTOBER 21, 2010, 1:26 AM

THE MONTCLAIR TIMES

If you believe we're in a mess, then vote for Roland Straten

What facts were you looking at when you termed Bill Pascrell a "moderate" who "reaches out to Republicans" when endorsing his reelection to Congress, rather than supporting his challenger, Montclair resident Roland Straten? Either you were uninformed, or you chose to keep readers ignorant of Pascrell's actual voting record. Please allow me to fill in the blanks so that readers can make a truly informed judgment about Pascrell.

Pascrell voted for government-controlled health care, which cut $475 billion from Medicare; for the failed $814 billion stimulus that, we were assured, would keep unemployment below 8 percent (it's running closer to 10 percent) and for "cap and trade," which would restrict and heavily tax our energy use.

Pascrell voted for the 2010 financial reform regulation, which added layers of new bureaucratic burdens on small businesses while neglecting to address the two institutions at the root of our economic dysfunction, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Pascrell voted to provide taxpayer funding for community-organizing group ACORN, even after undercover reporters exposed ACORN workers giving tax avoidance advice and support for a prostitution "business" being staffed with underage illegal immigrant girls.

Pascrell voted to send troops into harm's way in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Once in harm's way, Pascrell voted against funding those troops.

Pascrell voted with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Party leadership on every key vote, marching in lockstep as they've spent and borrowed our country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Readers approving of Bill Pascrell's record should follow The Montclair Times' endorsement of him. If not, then I urge them to reject Pascrell and elect businessman and engineer Roland Straten. With Roland's help, Congress can begin reversing its disastrous course.

John Van Wagner

Montclair

Hear Hear!

Why not just throw $9.7 million in the River? Newark officials break ground on 'The Waterfront' recreational facility

Here is another government Press Release printed by the Star Ledger.

The sidebar tells the real story of local waste on boondoggles and graft.

Newark officials break ground on 'The Waterfront' recreational facility | NJ.com

October 26, 2010

David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger

NEWARK — It is being billed as the Chelsea Piers of Newark.

Rock climbing walls, boxing rings, a soccer field and a golf simulator are among the features of "The Waterfront," a 26,000-square-foot recreational facility being built just off Route 21 and a block west of the Passaic River in Newark’s North Ward. Elected officials and Newark Housing Authority executives broke ground today on the site, touting the center as a long-awaited boon to the area.

"If I had $100 for every time somebody told me... it’s not going to happen, I’d be a wealthy man," said housing authority director Keith Kinard. "It’s happening as we speak."

The authority is the developer and owner of the $9.7 million facility, scheduled to open in November 2011. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development kicked in $7 million for the project through a Hope 6 grant, and another $2.7 million was provided by a federal community development block grant, officials said.

"Today, through this very important project, the NHA demonstrated our commitment to building communities that work," said Modia Butler, the authority’s chairman and Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s chief of staff.

More Newark news:

• Newark officials break ground on 'The Waterfront' recreational facility

• Newark Ironbound former industrial site is transformed with new preschool, apartments

• County freeholders approve Newark plan to sell 17 city buildings

• PSE&G unveils project to install solar panels at 5 Newark schools

• Contractor pleads guilty to working for ex-UMDNJ official in exchange for contracts

The facility is just opposite the Riverside Villa — also known as the Grafton Avenue projects — roughly 200 units of public housing. Elected officials from Newark said the creation of facilities like the Waterfront have been foremost on area voters’ minds for years.

"One of the things we heard consistently is that ‘We want more recreational facilities,’ " said North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos.

"Slowly, our residents who live in public housing are getting the respect and dignity they deserve," said Booker.

The center will require membership, but officials today could not say how much that would cost or if there would be discounts for Newarkers. Multiple community groups, such as the Just One Soccer League, are expected to use the facility to run programs for seniors and children in the area.

Aside from the exercise facilities, the Waterfront will feature a video game design laboratory, a recording studio a dance floor and a function room.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez — who local officials said was instrumental in securing federal money for the project — painted the Waterfront as a much-needed alternative to street life.

"At the end of the day, I think about how many lives in the center will be transformed," Menendez said.

A major sports complex opened in Elizabeth 10 years ago and was touted as a similar destination spot to the Waterfront. It folded roughly five years later because of financial problems.

According to Menendez, since the Waterfront is federally funded, it will not be geared as much towards profit as towards service to the community. "This isn’t about making money," the senator said. "It’s about transforming lives."

Call Me Senator 'Punchy' Boxer

Call Me Senator on Vimeo

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

Joe Biden, like most Dems, believes “Every single great idea that marked the 21st century, 20th century and 19th century required government

Here is what Biden, Obama, All the Democrats, and Half the Republicans Think: Government is the wellspring of all things. We live by the grace of Big Government.

This is the crux of what Biden said and really believes:

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

It was also plagued with Government graft and corruption!

I didn't know Fulton, Edison, Ford, the Wright Brothers, Hewlett, Packard, Goddard, Jobs, Wozniak... all worked for and got their ideas from the government.

VPOTUS Joe Biden: Dems Will "Keep The Senate And Win The House"

BY CELESTE KATZ-- October 26, 2010

Sorry for the delay -- had my hands a bit full with the meltdown at the NYC Board of Elections -- but here is the pool report filed by Newsday's Reid Epstein on Vice President Joe Biden's fundraising visit to Manhattan today:

VPOTUS spoke Tuesday in a wood-paneled second-floor bar at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South at a fundraiser for incumbent Democratic NY-1 Rep. Tim Bishop.

Wearing a blue suit and a bluer tie, VPOTUS reminded the 70 people who paid a minimum of $1,000 to hear VPOTUS's remarks and eat a menu of cold-cut sandwiches, salad and coffee that the nation’s economic malaise is the fault of the Bush Administration and is improving under Democratic stewardship.

“We’ve done a lot in the last 20 months,” VPOTUS said. “The economy has grown four quarters in a row, not what it needs to, but it’s growing, it’s not shrinking. Just since January, 860,000 private sector jobs, not nearly enough. But guess what? That’s more jobs than were created in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration. That’s factual.” [What are you smoking?]

VPOTUS did not mention Bishop’s Republican opponent, businessman Randy Altschuler, by name, but predicted the federal government will grind to a halt if the House or Senate fall under GOP control. He predicted Democrats would “keep the Senate and win the House.”

“This is a real important election,” he said. “It’s more important than the one that got Barack and me elected, it literally is. Because there at least we would have continued to drift another four years, which would be bad. Now at least we’ve stopped the drift and are starting to head in the right direction. If we lose in the House or the Senate, we’re now in a position where we are in a stalemate and this thing is just going to go in reverse and our most powerful weapon will be a veto pen, and that’s bad.”

Read on...

VPOTUS, who stood next to Bishop and grasped the four-term Democrat’s shoulder at several points during his remarks, waded into the audience as he discussed the nation’s need to compete with education and infrastructure investments made by nations like China and India, and Republican opposition to such spending.

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”[How does Biden know this?]

Bishop, who represents the East End of Long Island, touted VPOTUS as “an adopted son of Southampton” - Bishop’s hometown - who spent time this summer at a home to which Bishop, as a teenager, delivered groceries.

VPOTUS replied: “When I die, I want to be reborn in Southampton… You’re the only Democrat I know in Southampton, well, that’s not quite true.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/10/vpotus-joe-biden-dems-will-kee.html#ixzz13WQS0KjA

22 Countries Less Corrupt Than The US

This study has several variables, but most of the world is corrupt. We ride a crooked road.

22 Countries Less Corrupt Than The US | The Daily Feed | Minyanville.com

Here is the partial list, and link to the study:

By Cory Bortnicker October 26, 2010

Transparency International has just released its much anticipated Corruption Perceptions Index 2010.

The good news? The report looks really awesome—cool use of maps, colors, and infographics.

The bad news? Their findings.

“Nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (very clean) to 0 (highly corrupt). These results indicate a serious corruption problem.”

And just to get our collective bloods-a-boilin’, here’s a list of the 22 countries that scored better than the US.

Now all we have to do is nudge our politicians through various financial and personal blackmails into falsifying a few documents that will give us license to blow these sumsofbitches off the map.

1) Denmark – 9.3, 2) New Zealand – 9.3, 3) Singapore – 9.3, 4) Finland – 9.3, 5) Sweden – 9.2, 6) Canada – 8.9, 7) Netherlands – 8.8, 8) Australia 8.7, 9) Switzerland – 8.7, 10) Norway - 8.6, 11) Iceland- 8.5, 12) Luxembourg – 8.5, 13) Hong Kong – 8.4, 14) Ireland – 8.0, 15) Austria – 7.9, 16) Germany – 7.9, 17) Barbados – 7.8, 18) Japan – 7.8, 19) Quatar – 7.7, 20) United Kingdom – 7.6, 21) Chile – 7.2, 22) Belgium – 7.1, 23) United States – 7.1
Click here for the full document.

NJ Turnpike employees to lose some perks - Why not just open the toll roads as Freeways since 89% of the tolls go to getting more tolls!

Just taking away Free Toll Privileges, is that all?

Of coarse turning the toll roads into free roads, paid by the current gas tax (a user tax), never seems to occur to the inbred bureaucratic and political mind!

NJ Turnpike employees to lose some perks; officials vote today - NorthJersey.com

Posted on Wed, Oct. 27, 2010

New Jersey moving to privatize road-toll collections

By Paul Nussbaum

Inquirer Staff Writer

New Jersey is moving to replace public toll collectors with private collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway.

The state plans to seek bids by December from private operators to collect highway tolls, state Transportation Commissioner James Simpson said Tuesday.

The state currently employs 309 full-time collectors on the turnpike and 174 on the parkway, according to turnpike spokesman Tom Feeney. The top salary for turnpike collectors is $65,760 a year, while parkway collectors get $64,573, he said.

In another move to save money, turnpike commissioners voted Tuesday to eliminate free passage for toll-road employees who commute to work on the two pay roads, effective Jan. 1. The toll roads have about 1,900 employees.

The commissioners also voted to do away with other perquisites for the highways' 132 nonunion workers, including longevity pay, separation bonuses, and payouts for unused vacation and sick days.

On the state's other pay road, the Atlantic City Expressway, human collectors are expected to be replaced with all-electronic toll collection by Memorial Day, officials said last month.

The elimination and outsourcing of toll collecting by humans is part of a broad effort by the Christie administration to cut costs on the pay roads.

The state could save as much as $43 million a year by allowing companies to collect tolls, according to a report by a Christie task force in July.

And Simpson, who also chairs the Turnpike Authority, said Tuesday that other tasks, such as guard-rail repair and highway maintenance, also were being considered for privatization.

Fran Ehret, president of International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers Local 194, called the outsourcing plan "terrible." The union represents about 1,200 turnpike workers, including collectors, maintenance workers, technicians, and office employees.

"We have a lot of middle-class, hardworking employees here," Ehret said. "When so many people are out of work, the idea of putting more people out of jobs is horrible. We're very disappointed that they're trying to do this."

Charles Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, also criticized the effort.

"New Jersey has been down the privatization road in the past, and it has been a troubling one, filled with no-bid contracts for the politically connected, an increase in costs to taxpayers, a lack of accountability to government agencies, and squandering of resources," Wowkanech said.

Many turnpike workers attended Tuesday's meeting of the turnpike commissioners in Woodbridge to protest the plans.

Privately hired toll collectors are paid much less than unionized collectors. For example, weekend and holiday toll collectors at Delaware River Port Authority bridges - hired through contractor PRWT Services Inc. - are paid $10 an hour, with no benefits.

The DRPA's union collectors, who do the work on weekdays, earn $46,176 a year, more than double the private wage.

The vote to eliminate free passage for commuting employees followed similar moves at agencies such as the DRPA. Free E-ZPass transponders for employees of the turnpike and Garden State Parkway cost the agency about $430,000 a year in lost tolls, auditors said earlier this month.

The other actions by the turnpike commissioners Tuesday included elimination of future "longevity" pay increases for veteran nonunion employees. Those increases had been 4 percent for employees with 10 years on the job, 6 percent for workers employed 15 years, and 7 percent for those with 30 years on the job.

The commissioners also voted to eliminate other perks for nonunion workers, including annual payments for unused sick or vacation days and "separation bonuses" that paid about $600 for each year of employment to retiring employees with at least 10 years of service. Those changes will take effect Nov. 15.

Similar changes to union employees' contracts will be sought as those contracts expire next year, Simpson said.

An audit of the toll roads released this month said the Turnpike Authority squandered tens of millions of dollars on bonuses, sick-leave and vacation payouts, free rides for employees, a poorly managed health-care plan, and over-payments to outside lawyers.

Ehret said her union, the largest of 10 that represent turnpike workers, had tried without success to meet with Christie to discuss his efforts to cut jobs and expenses on the toll roads.

"We're anxious to work this out if we can," she said Tuesday.

He Said Bender Over

The Bender Is Over - Ramesh Ponnuru & Rich Lowry - National Review Online

OCTOBER 25, 2010

RAMESH PONNURU & RICH LOWRY

Whatever happens on Election Day, the heroic phase of Obama’s presidency is over. It is over not simply because he will spend the rest of his term playing defense rather than conquering new ground for liberalism. It is over because the assumptions that underlay that first phase of his presidency have already been discredited.

Cast your mind back to December 2008. Democrats had just won their second back-to-back blowout election. President Obama had won the highest percentage of the vote of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and the highest for a non-incumbent Democrat since 1932. The 2008 election, just like those earlier ones, had produced a Congress firmly controlled by the president’s allies. It was the most liberal configuration of power Washington, D.C., had seen since at least 1965–66.

The trends seemed to be Democrats’ friends. A rising nonwhite population; an increasingly unchurched youth; a growing tendency of college-educated voters to back Democrats: If demography was destiny, the Republicans’ fate looked bleak. To add to conservatives’ misery, the country was in the midst of a financial crisis widely blamed on deregulation.

The new majority was led, finally, by a president with immense popularity and political talent. Obama inspired an enthusiasm not seen for a new president since John F. Kennedy — or maybe even Andrew Jackson. He was smart, cool, a gifted orator and a canny strategist. Republicans counseled one another not to criticize him by name.

The liberal journalist Peter Beinart noted that for decades Democratic leaders had treated the American public’s latent conservatism as a sleeping bear: The chief imperative was to avoid sudden moves that would rouse it. But the Reagan era was now over, and Democrats no longer needed to live in fear. That’s what Obama’s “yes we can” slogan meant to liberals: Yes we can move past both conservatism and Clintonian triangulation. Liberalism was living in its favored political tense: the future perfect.

Democrats could look at the political landscape with confidence, assured of three things. The country had decisively rejected conservatism and moved leftward. The idea of small government had been discredited by the financial crisis. And the president’s persuasive powers could get the Democrats through any remaining difficulties.

Now those assumptions lie in tatters. Republicans are unified and enthusiastic, independents favor government retrenchment, and Democrats have been reduced to scolding their base to stop whining and vote.

It was a misunderstanding of their previous success that brought them to this pass. Democrats couldn’t have had better conditions for electing a president in late 2008 if James Carville and Paul Begala had designed them in a laboratory. A party occupying the White House must above all fear unpopular wars and recessions, and the Republicans were beset with both. On top of the Iraq War and the recession that had officially begun in December 2007 came the financial crisis of September 2008. Bush’s team had once hoped to get his approval rating back up near 50 percent in 2008. A month before the election, it stood at 50 percent of 50 — an astonishing 25 percent in the Gallup poll.

The GOP tide from earlier in the decade had receded so far that it could barely be seen from shore. In mid-November 2004, 50 percent of people (including so-called leaners) identified themselves as Republicans, 43 percent as Democrats. In mid-November 2008, Republicans had only 37 percent to the Democrats’ 55 percent. The GOP’s prior dominance had been reversed, and then some. At the beginning of 2006, Democrats and Republicans were even in terms of their favorability ratings, at just under 50. Then Republicans began a rapid retreat. By November 2008, according to Gallup, only 34 percent of people rated them favorably.

Yet neither the Democratic ascendancy nor the Republican humiliation meant the country had made a fundamental shift to the left. People had fired Tom DeLay’s congressional majority and quit on President Bush, but they had not become latter-day McGovernites. In fact, the opposite. A July 2009 Gallup report noted that by a 2–1 margin, people said their views had become more conservative in recent years.

Republicans, independents, and even Democrats had all moved to the right, although Democrats just barely so (34 percent had become more conservative, 40 percent hadn’t changed, and 23 percent had become more liberal). Gallup noted that “the results are conspicuously incongruous with the results of the 2008 elections.” Incongruous, indeed.

As memories of Bush began to fade and as Obama started to govern against the American grain, the rightward drift in public opinion continued. Gallup detected a snap-back in conservative attitudes across the board within a year of Bush’s leaving office. Fifty-three percent of Americans wanted government to promote traditional values — “a return to the prevailing view from 1993 through 2004.” Half of Americans wanted less immigration — “a return to the attitudes that prevailed in the first few years after 9/11.” Fifty-one percent of Americans called themselves pro-life — “a significant shift from a year ago.”

As of June 2010, Gallup had 42 percent of the public identifying themselves as conservatives, with 35 percent calling themselves moderates and 20 percent liberals. Over the last 18 years, moderates have generally outnumbered conservatives. In 2008, conservatives and moderates were tied at 37 percent. Since then, the number of conservatives has gone up and of moderates and liberals gone down. If the current number holds, the percentage of conservatives will be higher than in any other year since Gallup began asking the question in 1992.

Even the great Baker Street detective himself might have been puzzled at the dog that didn’t bark in American politics: the crisis of confidence in capitalism that was supposed to follow on the heels of the financial crisis. It was reasonable to expect that conservatives would spend a decade trying to explain why an economic explosion that included blatantly reckless behavior on Wall Street didn’t discredit free-market ideas. But they won the debate before it even got started — perhaps because people understood that the housing bubble was a society-wide mania, perhaps because the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in helping stoke the bubble was so obvious, perhaps because Washington, through TARP and other bailouts, took partial ownership of the crisis immediately, perhaps because people are mature enough to understand that no system is perfect.

Regardless, the mood that everyone expected would be favorable to 1930s-style activism turned out to be more favorable to government retrenchment. According to Gallup, as early as the fall of 2009, 57 percent of Americans said government was trying to do too many things best left to the private sector. More Americans said there is too much business regulation (45 percent) than too little (24 percent), the worst showing for regulation ever in a Gallup survey. Obama would have to build his new New Deal on the foundation of a quasi-Reaganite public.

This national disposition belied the self-deluding premises of Obama’s boosters, who mixed the Kool-Aid and threw it back in big sugary gulps. Some observers suggested that the Republicans were dwindling into a conservative southern rump party with no appeal beyond their partisan and geographic base. In a book titled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation, James Carville predicted, well, you can probably guess. It was a poor man’s version of Arthur Schlesinger’s cyclical theory of American politics, ridiculously extrapolating from 2008 to the next four decades of our political life. Oddly enough, one of the few threats to Democratic generational dominance that Carville identified was hubris. He apparently never considered that his own fulsome projection might contribute to this very vice.

Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times wrote a more sophisticated version of Carville’s triumphalism, first in an essay in The New Republic and then in a short book, respectively titled “Conservatism Is Dead” and The Death of Conservatism. Tanenhaus violated a first principle of the undertaker’s art, which is to make sure one’s subject really is good and dead. (George Washington, who had a morbid fear of being prematurely pronounced dead and buried alive, would have given Tanenhaus a wide berth.)

At bottom, Tanenhaus was making a high-toned case for his favored version of conservatism, an idiosyncratic Burkeanism that celebrates Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton as true conservatives. If he had left it at that, he wouldn’t have risked almost-instant obsolescence. Instead, he made grand pronouncements based on a passing political mood one month after Obama had been inaugurated.

Tanenhaus perfectly reflected the conventional wisdom — and all the assumptions of liberal grandiosity — as of the February 2009 publication date of his article. Obama was “push[ing] boldly ahead, apparently with public support.” There was “almost universal agreement” that a new New Deal or Great Society was advisable. Thus, conservative “movement doctrine [had] not only been defeated but discredited.” After Clinton was elected, Republicans successfully opposed his stimulus program because they then “held the ideological advantage.” No more. “Today,” Tanenhaus wrote, “such a stratagem seems unthinkable.”

The book, published in the fall of 2009, went further. Conservatives were “clenched in the rigor mortis of a defunct ideology,” oblivious to the new realities “even as free-market gurus conceded the federal government must seize command of a ravaged economy.” They were left with only two choices: “shine in [the] reflected radiance” of ascendant liberalism, “or spin futilely on their unlit fringe orb.”

In the book, Tanenhaus penned a long passage on the importance of political consensus and deference to public opinion, which liberals supposedly understand in a way conservatives, consumed by ideological orthodoxy, don’t. He rapped Republicans for opposing Obama’s stimulus — the precise stratagem he had deemed “unthinkable” a few months earlier in his article.

He scolded Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich for their early opposition to Obama’s agenda. “The politics of consensus,” Tanenhaus wrote, “would have required Krauthammer and Gingrich to acknowledge an inescapable fact: the public favored Obama’s proposals.” (Before too long, that fact was eminently escapable.) According to Tanenhaus, Burkean modesty now decisively belonged to the party of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama, famous for its ideological temperance and fine-tuned sense of the contours of American public opinion. “Liberals, after a long period in the wilderness,” he wrote, “now seem to understand that American politics is a replenishing exercise in adjustment and accommodation.” Uh-huh.

Perhaps Tanenhaus shouldn’t be judged too harshly for imbibing the liberal presumption that characterized the aftermath of 2008. He and many others mistook goodwill toward a new president taking office during a crisis for the public’s assent to Obama liberalism. But what Obama was really being granted two years ago was an opportunity, an opportunity to be reasonable and effective. He hasn’t excelled at either.

It has become clear over the last two years that — whatever the struggles of its main electoral vehicle, the Republican party — demography has not yet buried American conservatism, which still has a great reservoir of strength in the attitudes of the public. That doesn’t guarantee it victory, and neither does it relieve it of the responsibility to persuade people and constantly refresh itself — to think and act anew, in Lincoln’s phrase. But for American conservatism to die would require a spectacular act of political suicide, especially during a period of liberal overreaching born of arrogance, misapprehension, and wishful thinking.

Again and again during the Obama presidency, liberals have assumed that the public either sided with them or could be persuaded to do so — and again and again their hopes have been dashed. Congressional Democrats expected the stimulus to become more popular as grateful communities received federal money and as the economy improved. Instead it became so unpopular that Democrats in 2010 avoided the word “stimulus” as much as possible.

Another early sign that the Democrats had miscalculated came in the form of the first election results of the Obama years. In Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, Republicans won elections with overwhelming support among those voters not tied to either party. All three were states that Obama had carried in 2008. The South, to which so many Democrats and media sages had consigned the Republicans, had evidently expanded.

Democrats thought that health care would be a winning issue for them — and at the start of the Obama presidency not a few Republicans agreed. As public opposition began to mount in the summer of 2009, liberals were not fazed. They blamed the commotion on an extremist fringe and claimed that as the debate progressed the public would come to like what they styled “reform.” That didn’t happen either.

Throughout the debate liberals insisted (as they continue to insist) that the individual elements of the health-care bill are popular. Some of them are, and so is the goal of expanding coverage. But raising taxes, cutting Medicare Advantage, raising premiums, forcing people out of their health-insurance arrangements, requiring everyone to buy an insurance policy to Washington’s liking: None of this is popular, and the public was not willing to pay these costs for the elements of the plan that sounded nice.

So the Democrats’ fallback position became that the public would like the legislation once it was enacted and the ugly process that led to it was forgotten. The legislation included early “deliverables” — benefits that would come into effect quickly and, they hoped, defuse opposition, such as checks to the elderly and protections for people with preexisting conditions.

The dominant health-care stories of the summer and fall have been very different. Premiums are up, insurers are dropping coverage for Medicare Advantage recipients, companies are abandoning their workers’ coverage — and the voters, particularly the elderly, are unmollified. Pollster.com’s average of polls shows opposition to the health-care law to be rising still.

The president’s oratorical powers have proved unavailing to the Democrats. He talked, and talked, and talked about health care, but the public did not come around. In September 2009, he made a heavily publicized address to a joint session of Congress making the case for his bill. Look at a graph of public attitudes about the issue and you won’t be able to tell when he spoke. Indeed, there is no topic on which Obama has moved public opinion in his favor during his presidency. He has chiefly persuaded Americans that he talks too much.

Democrats assumed that Republicans would pay a political price for attempting to obstruct their agenda. For a year and a half they devoted much of their communications apparatus to purveying the message that Republicans were “the party of no” — a label some Republicans feared would stick to them. Republican prospects have improved as that accusation has been spread, which is why the slogan has been heard less and less as the election has neared.

Many journalists have noted, with puzzlement, that Democrats have rarely demonstrated so much legislative productivity and yet have rarely stood lower in public esteem. Yet there is no paradox here: The public dislikes their legislative output and wishes there had been less of it. Voters may disdain partisanship, but that does not mean they wanted the parties to cooperate on Obama’s terms — which is to say, on liberal legislation.

The latest Democratic message — as of press time anyway; desperation is breeding rapid change in this department — is that Republicans are planning either to bring back Bush’s policies or to impose something more extreme. The anti-Bush message does not appear to be taking. (Neither does the anti-extremist message, except in a few races.) Democrats hoped that bad memories of Bush would help them for at least as long as bad memories of Jimmy Carter had helped the Republicans. The parallel was mistaken. The public in the late 1970s had turned on liberalism. Today’s public had merely turned on Bush.

The president, never shy about praising himself, told a group of Democratic congressmen that they would avoid the fate of their predecessors in the 1994 elections because this time they had him on their side. One of those congressmen, Marion Berry of Arkansas, promptly announced he would not seek reelection. In the summer of 2010 Obama warned Republicans that they had forgotten that he was “pretty good at politicking.” As the election draws near, polls suggest that a connection with Obama hurts rather than helps Democrats in tight races, and so those Democrats are for the most part avoiding him.

The president’s political talents have increasingly been called into question. Even his liberal admirers have begun to worry that his cool expresses detachment. Mark Halperin of Time, a reliable barometer of conventional wisdom, says, “Most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.”

We do not yet know whether Republicans will win statewide races in such heretofore blue states as California, Washington, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We do know that they have mounted competitive races, and this fact alone must come as a shock to anyone who still adheres to the conventional wisdom of December 2008.

Even now some liberals cannot accept that their dream palace is moving into foreclosure. They insist that the Democrats would be faring better if they had governed in an even more liberal manner. The polls, meanwhile, show that the percentage of Americans who consider Obama too liberal has steadily climbed during his presidency — and now constitutes a near-majority.

The key mistake that Obama and his allies made in 2008 was one that political movements find hard to avoid: making too much of favorable election results. It seems clear enough with hindsight that the elections of 2006 and 2008 were rejections of a group of Republicans and their approach to governance. Elections almost always produce negative mandates: The electorate’s instructions rarely consist of more than the admonition not to be like the losing party. That’s a lesson that Republicans should take to heart, lest they repeat the errors of the Democrats they seem poised to vanquish.

— Rich Lowry is editor-in-chief and Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor of National Review. This article originally appeared in the November 1, 2010, print issue.

Backstretch Betting Proposed for N.J. - State may try new way to bet on horses to help tracks

Imagine English Style 'Bookies' at the track. There could be commodities exchange style wagering on the nearly immediate future of the galloping and trotting goods in the backstretch. What more could wagerers ask, immediate bets and odds with fast results. [Mrdr]

N.J. may try new way to bet on horses to help tracks - NorthJersey.com

October 24, 2010

BY JOHN BRENNAN

THE RECORD

Imagine being able to bet on a horse race even while the horses are on the backstretch — or being able to wager on a photo finish while it's being reviewed.

FILE PHOTO

Can a new way of betting save horse racing in N.J.

Such options already exist in Europe, and some of them may be coming to New Jersey next year. State officials aren't quite ready to make the full leap, but facing the potential collapse of its horse racing industry, New Jersey is likely to become the first state to take a dramatic step in that direction.

The new form of betting is called "exchange wagering," which is appropriate, because the concept is reminiscent of the stock market — with many bettors acting like traders.

Among at least a half-dozen initiatives being discussed in Trenton as ways to save the horse racing industry, exchange wagering may generate the least controversy. In fact, the measure passed the Assembly by a 78-0 vote in July and now awaits a hearing by a state Senate committee.

The chairman of that committee, Sen. James Whelan, D-Atlantic, said Friday that while he is "not exactly sure how it all works, if it is something that can help the tracks, I am prepared to support it." That could mean that New Jersey will offer exchange wagering by mid-2011 — a year before California is expected to introduce the same form of betting at its tracks.

New type of betting

The differences between parimutuel betting and exchange wagering being proposed for New Jersey:

Parimutuel betting

All bets are pooled to create odds on each horse

Odds keep changing as more money is being bet

Bets are that a specific horse will win

Exchange wagering

One bettor paired with another with opposing opinion at those odds

Odds fixed at moment wager is made

Bets are that a specific horse will win OR will not win

Rescue Plan

Exchange wagering is just one of the proposals on the table as Governor Christie and leading state Democrats try to revive the state’s horse racing industry and expand gambling options. Others include:

* Turn The Meadowlands Racetrack harness season into an "elite" meet, with a greatly reduced schedule but much higher purses, as was done this summer with thoroughbred racing at Monmouth Park.

* Revamp off-track wagering laws to enable construction of betting parlors in five to 10 more towns statewide.

* Enhance current breeding development programs to encourage horse breeders to stay in New Jersey.

"This seems like the one option that we all agree on," said Assemblywoman Connie Wagner, D-Paramus, who sponsored the Assembly bill. "I would hope that this is the easy part, and we would like to see it available next racing season."

'Silver lining'

Betfair executive Stephen Burn, whose British company is considered the front-runner to run exchange wagering in New Jersey, told state lawmakers at a gaming summit last month that exchange betting "isn't a silver bullet for New Jersey, but it is a silver lining."

The details are still being worked out, but thoroughbred horse-racing lobbyist Barbara DeMarco said that initially the state likely would offer only win-place- or-show exchange betting.

In parimutuel betting, the standard wagering form at U.S. tracks, bettors compete in a pool against all other bettors, and the odds change, minute by minute, depending on how much money is wagered on each horse up to the start of a race.

But with exchange wagering, one person — the "backer" — seeks to wager a certain amount on a horse winning and seeks someone willing to wager the same amount that the horse will not win the race, called a "lay" bet. Computer technology allows the first bettor to instantly check the "market" to find out if a match exists in the electronic marketplace. Thus, it's no wonder Betfair calls itself "the eBay of betting."

DeMarco and Wagner both said the motivation for adding a new form of betting is to attract a fresh audience to a sport that lost $20 million at the tracks in 2009.

"I don't think a lot of younger people are even aware of horse racing here," Wagner said.

DeMarco said that the exchange wagering model attracts "a demographic under age 50, which is one that we haven't really been able to get interested in our industry." Burn said 10 years of experience with exchange wagering in Britain has shown that "the demographic we attract is massively younger than we see bet on traditional horse racing."

Exchange wagers can be made at the tracks, by phone or on the Internet — the same options available to traditional horse players.

Betfair increased its presence in the United States last year by spending $50 million to acquire TVG, a horse racing television station that shows races nationwide. U.S. horse racing groups also have met with Betfair to discuss adding exchange wagering at tracks, and Betfair reportedly spent a six-figure amount to gain title sponsorship to the $750,000 United Nations Stakes, a major turf race held at Monmouth Park in July.

There have been isolated incidents in Britain of horse owners betting against their own horses. DeMarco said she thinks this can be avoided by "hiring the right vendor, because some have better integrity systems than others." The vendor — whether Betfair or another entity — probably would receive about 5 percent of a winner's bet, with another not-yet-determined sliver removed to supplement horse racing purses. The rest of the money would be deposited in the winner's online account, while a withdrawal would be made from the loser's account.

Not for amateurs

Jay Privman, a national correspondent for The Daily Racing Form, said that some racetrack officials fear that the lower takeout offered by exchange wagering could cannibalize some parimutuel wagering, which is more profitable for the track. He also said that the complexity of this new form of betting means that "it's probably not something that an amateur should just wade into, if they don't really know the horses."

Britons, meanwhile, have become accustomed to betting on almost any sport, including American baseball, football, golf and even mixed martial arts. On Ladbrokes, a prominent British bookmaker, one can even bet "over" or "under" whether Republicans will possess more than 50 seats in the U.S. Senate after the November elections.

Bringing exchange wagering to New Jersey doesn't automatically mean a major expansion of gambling, however — it's simply another way to bet on a horse race.

Still, some legislators are seeking to add more gambling options, especially sports betting at Atlantic City casinos — with some politicians, including Whelan, even willing to allow the state's racetracks to offer such betting. That initiative, however, is more controversial.

Wagner and state Sen. Bob Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, both said they appreciate concerns of constituents about any new forms of gambling.

"I generally have not been supportive of sports betting and taking advantage of human weaknesses to raise revenues," Gordon said. "And we'd have to have controls in place to prevent underage gambling."

Still, Gordon said exchange wagering "does not seem to be that controversial."

Jon F. Hanson, who in July authored a report for Governor Christie about horse racing and Atlantic City casinos that even Democratic critics have said has jump-started attempts to save those industries, said that he has not been hearing opposition to exchange wagering.

"If it's permitted under the law and it can help the horse racing industry, then it might well happen," Hanson said.

E-mail: brennan@northjersey.com Blog: northjersey.com/brennanTwitter: @BergenBrennan

NJ: More school districts recognize Muslim holidays, but not Columbus Day

NJ: More school districts recognize Muslim holidays « Creeping Sharia

October 23, 2010 by creeping

via More NJ school districts recognize Muslim holidays – NorthJersey.com.

…New Jersey school districts are reconsidering their holiday calendars in light of a booming Muslim population. Clifton isn’t one of them, even though officials report a 20 percent absenteeism rate on Muslim holidays.

“We have 67 different languages spoken in Clifton homes and we have many different ethnic groups,” said James Daly, president of Clifton’s Board of Education. The idea of giving off for Muslim holidays has never been raised, he said. “Once you start making accommodations for one group, where do you draw the line?“

Yet, many New Jersey districts have for years closed schools for Muslim holidays, including Paterson, Atlantic City, Trenton, Cliffside Park, Piscataway, Prospect Park, Plainfield and Irvington. South Brunswick schools, with a Muslim student population of 20 percent, added the religion’s holidays to its calendar this year for the first time.

Hala Fahmy is a teacher’s aide at School 1 in Prospect Park, one of many districts in New Jersey that close for Muslim holidays.

“We looked at the diversity of the community and felt it was the right thing to do,” said Matthew Speesler, South Brunswick school board president.

Teaneck will consider many requests from the community to give the days off because of its considerable Muslim population, the district said.

And a newly elected Muslim mayor.

Federal and state law protects students who miss school for religious observances, such as Good Friday, Yom Kippur, and the Hindu holiday Ganesha Chaturthi by considering them excused absences. The list of excused religious holidays published by the state Department of Education has swelled to 134, encompassing about a dozen religions — including the Wicca observance of Lammas. The list also includes Eid al-Fitr, which this year fell on Sept. 10, and Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice, observed this year on Nov. 16.

Amid changing demographics, experts say more schools are giving all students the day off for those holidays, although there are no statistics that track the number.

Unprompted by parents, Prospect Park schools began closing for the two major Muslim holidays five years ago, a gesture for which “the Muslim students were very appreciative,” said Superintendent James Barriale. It eased frustration for the students and teachers who ordinarily would miss instruction to take days off for the holiday, he said.

Unprompted? Someone prompted it, a little due diligence would likely debunk this conveniently left out detail. And just a few paragraphs below we are told of “advocates” (terror-linked advocates like CAIR?) are urging parents to shake down school districts for Muslim holidays.

In Clifton, some residents still are steaming that Columbus Day is not observed in the school calendar.

“We have to start concentrating more on our American holidays,” said David D’Arco, president of the Passaic/Clifton chapter of UNICO, an Italian-American organization. “If religious holidays have to take a hit, then so be it. We’re losing our national identity.”

D’Arco strongly advocates for Columbus Day as a school holiday, arguing that all Americans, including immigrants, should celebrate the explorer popularly credited with discovering America.

But the impetus to persuade more districts to close schools on Muslim holidays seems just as strong. Advocates urge parents throughout North Jersey to pressure school districts to recognize their holidays so that students don’t have to take time from school in order to observe their religions.

Saima Waheed of Teaneck, whose 4-year-old son, Esahm, attends pre-K at Teaneck’s Bryant School, said she wishes Teaneck schools would recognize the Muslim holidays. “There are a lot of Muslims all over America and our holidays should be universally accepted the way Christmas is,” she said. “This is like our Christmas.”

Universally accepted. That is, afterall, the goal of Islam – to be universally accepted the world over – ruled by Islamic sharia law, and spread by jihad if necessary.