Take A Look At The Monmouth Trump Team, Any Names Stick Out?

 

Here in New Jersey voting for the June 4th Primary has already begun. Vote-by-mail ballots were sent out weeks ago and statewide early voting started yesterday. If you're a Monmouth County Republican Primary voter this year, you get to vote for a contingency of delegates to the July 15th  Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, to support Donald Trump.

I wonder how many of the names on this listed of Republican Delegates might change their support for Donald Trump now that he's a convicted felon and once again a proven liar? Any local names stick out to you? How about Middletown's very own State Assemblyman, Gerry Scharfenberger (LD13) and his Son-in-Law, Middletown Mayor Tony Perry? 

We know that Scharfenberger has no shame and couldn't care less if Donald Trump is a convicted felon or not, Scharfenberger has no scruples, but what about Tony Perry? He's worked awfully hard the past few years to get out from underneath his father-in-laws shadow and to appear as a likable, babyface, jovial everyman, in order to appeal to as many people as possible. However, his moderate persona doesn't back up his many political extremes, which I'll be posting about in later blog posts.

Make no mistakes, Tony Perry is part of the Monmouth Trump Team. Perry should distance himself from Trump as soon as possible before the stench of a convicted felon permeates the air around him and he is unable to wash it out of his pores or cover it up with cologne. 

I want to hear Tony Perry say that he does not and will not support a convicted felon for any political office, let alone the highest office in the land, the Presidency of the United States of America!

(Slate of potential Trump delegates to the 2024 Republican Nation Convention)

    

   

Republicans Use Religion as a Political Tool

By John McCarthy
Cross posted from Huffingtonpost.com

The Republican Right has taken a break from their busy schedule of cutting services to poor people to tackle another hard hitting issue: The Democratic Platform didn't originally mention God once. Listen, I know we are working on building-up an economy and restoring a social safety net but this is important stuff. Thank God for the Republican Party! If they weren't spending their time combing through party platforms, I don't know how'd get by!

Republicans believe that life is a numbers game. We are only as religious as the amount of times we can fit God into a sentence. The bigger the American flag outside your house, the more American you are! You really want to support the troops? How about a nice yellow magnetic ribbon (Made in China) to throw on the back of your SUV? It's clear that the Republican Party focuses on quantity, not quality.

Let's dust off our Bibles and remember that as Jesus spoke to the multitudes at the Sermon on the Mount he reminded us, "Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter." That's right: Jesus didn't want us to simply write about the faith -- he wanted us to live the faith.

Republicans have been calling a lot of "Lord! Lord!" but it appears they really haven't given Christianity a shot. They've crafted a political rhetoric to take their political agenda and force-feed it to Faithful America. They do an awful lot of talking about values, God (the American one), faith, religion, big cars, guns, rugged individualism, bootstraps, righteous wars, freedom and touching stories about Sunday morning mass with their family. They'll tell you that Jesus died for America -- and ONLY America. They talk a good game, but it doesn't line up with the overarching teachings of any major religion.

The Grand Ole' Party is causing these distractions in hopes that America won't notice how different their values really are. The key to a Romney-Ryan Victory is America never finding out what they really stand for. Faithful America shows a great concern for feeding the poor, helping the unemployed, providing healthcare coverage and respecting immigrants -- all of which goes against the Romney-Ryan plan.

Republicans only listen to the faithful when it suits them politically. They'll continue to ignore the urgings of religious leaders to protect the "least of these," all while courting the faithful voter. They'll keep staging these choreographed political productions to paint the Democratic Party as anti-faith. Moral of the story: they're using religion as a political tool, and that's the real War on Religion.

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John McCarthy is Chairman of the College Democrats at The Catholic University of America and Chairman of the Keansburg Democratic Party

Mr. Romney Reinvents History

Mitt Romney and his fellow Republican's - Paul Ryan, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain and others -  attempts at reinventing history this week at the just completed 2012 Republican National Convention, were obvious and confounding to many, but their blatant attempts at rewriting the history books won't be tolerated or go uncorrected.

Here's a very good New York Times Op-Ed that addresses a few examples of what transpired over the 3 days in Tampa :

Mitt Romney wrapped the most important speech of his life, for Thursday night’s session of his convention, around an extraordinary reinvention of history — that his party rallied behind President Obama when he won in 2008, hoping that he would succeed. “That president was not the choice of our party,” he said. “We are a good and generous people who are united by so much more than divides us.”

The truth, rarely heard this week in Tampa, Fla., is that the Republicans charted a course of denial and obstruction from the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, determined to deny him a second term by denying him any achievement, no matter the cost to the economy or American security — even if it meant holding the nation’s credit rating hostage to a narrow partisan agenda.

Mr. Romney’s big speech, delivered in a treacly tone with a strange misty smile on his face suggesting he was always about to burst into tears, was of a piece with the rest of the convention. Republicans have offered precious little of substance but a lot of bromides (“A free world is a more peaceful world!”) meant to convey profundity and take passive-aggressive digs at President Obama. But no subjects have received less attention, or been treated with less honesty, than foreign affairs and national security — and Mr. Romney’s banal speech was no exception.

It’s easy to understand why the Republicans have steered clear of these areas. While President Obama is vulnerable on some domestic issues, the Republicans have no purchase on foreign and security policy. In a television interview on Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, could not name an area in which Mr. Obama had failed on foreign policy.

For decades, the Republicans were able to present themselves as the tougher party on foreign and military policy. Mr. Obama has robbed them of that by being aggressive on counterterrorism and by flexing military and diplomatic muscle repeatedly and effectively.

Mitt Romney has tried to sound tough, but it’s hard to see how he would act differently from Mr. Obama except in ways that are scary — like attacking Iran, or overspending on defense in ways that would not provide extra safety but would hurt the economy.

Before Thursday night, the big foreign policy speeches were delivered by Senator John McCain and Ms. Rice. Mr. McCain was specific on one thing: Mr. Obama’s plan to start pulling out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014 is too rapid. While he does not speak for Mr. Romney, his other ideas were unnerving, like suggesting that the United States should intervene in Syria.

Mr. Romney reportedly considered Ms. Rice as a running mate, and she seems to have real influence. But Ms. Rice is a reminder of the colossal errors and deceptions of George W. Bush’s administration. She was a central player in the decision to invade Iraq and the peddling of fantasies about weapons of mass destruction. She barely mentioned Iraq in her speech and spoke not at all about Afghanistan. She was particularly ludicrous when she talked about keeping America strong at home so it could be strong globally, since she was part of the team that fought two wars off the books and entirely on borrowed money.

Ms. Rice said the United States has lost its “exceptionalism,” but she never gave the slightest clue what she meant by that — a return to President Bush’s policy of preventive and unnecessary war?

She and Mr. McCain both invoked the idea of “peace through strength,” but one of the few concrete proposals Mr. Romney has made — spending 4 percent of G.D.P. on defense — would weaken the economy severely. Mr. McCain was not telling the truth when he said Mr. Obama wants to cut another $500 billion from military spending. That amount was imposed by the Republicans as part of the extortion they demanded to raise the debt ceiling.

Ms. Rice said American allies need to know where the United States stands and that alliances are vitally important. But the truth is that Mr. Obama has repaired those alliances and restored allies’ confidence in America’s position after Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice spent years tearing them apart and ruining America’s reputation in the world.

The one alliance on which there is real debate between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama is with Israel. But it is not, as Mr. Romney and his supporters want Americans to believe, about whether Mr. Obama is a supporter of Israel. Every modern president has been, including Mr. Obama. Apart from outsourcing his policy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements, it’s not clear what Mr. Romney would do differently.

But after watching the Republicans for three days in Florida, that comes as no surprise.

The GOP Finally Starts Getting Their Facts Straight

Chris Christie 2012 RNC: There is no ‘New Jersey comeback’

Before tuning in to  Governor Chris Christie's keynote address at the Republican National Convention, here is a little something that you should keep in while watching. 

The follow op-ed was written by State Senator Barbara Buono and appears online at Politico.com

By Barbara Buono

Many tennis buffs probably remember the early ‘90s Andre Agassi camera ads, with the slogan “Image is everything.”

It’s not hard to compare this to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has let it be known that he hopes to “change people’s image of our state” when he delivers the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. If he can do that, he maintains, he’ll “have accomplished a heck of a lot.”

(Barbara Buono)

Unfortunately for New Jersey residents, image won’t address ballooning unemployment, an anemic economy and a stagnant revenue outlook.

Tuesday night, many Americans are due to get their first taste of the carefully constructed Christie image — a brash, tough-talking fiscal conservative who thinks his leadership, economic policies and tax cuts should serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

As always, he will be entertaining – he isn’t called “Gov. YouTube” for nothing. The problem is that this carefully constructed image is based on exaggerations, at best, and falsehoods, at worst.

Christie claims to have put New Jersey on a sound fiscal path — cutting spending, holding the line on property taxes, fighting off tax increases, investing in education and laying the foundation for the “Jersey Comeback.”

That is the image you can expect to see brandished on televisions Tuesday night.

Here is the reality:

New Jersey ranked 47th in economic growth in 2010 and 2011, and our economy shrink by 0.5 percent last year. There are 175,000 fewer jobs in New Jersey today than in December 2007, before the recession started. New Jersey lost 12,000 jobs in July alone, the highest job loss of any state in the nation.

Meanwhile, property taxes for the average New Jersey family were at a 20 percent net increase during his first two years in office, up from $6,244 to $7,519.

To be fair, Christie, like President Barack Obama and all the governors elected from 2008 to 2010, inherited an economy crippled by the Great Recession.

The question to ask however, is: What has Christie done as governor to fix it? And are his policies a model for “America’s Comeback Team,” as the presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney seems to think? Or a prescription to avoid?

On taking office, Christie cut state aid for education by $1.1 billion, slashed property tax relief for senior citizens and cut government worker pensions — breaking campaign promises in all three cases, as The Star-Ledger, the state’s largest newspaper, recently reported.

In addition, Christie’s personal and political ideology has cost New Jersey billions of dollars in federal aid for education, transportation and women’s health funding.

It gets worse.

Poll after poll shows that New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes are residents’ No. 1 concern. So what does Christie propose? Offering a 10 percent across-the-board income tax cut that would give millionaires a $7,625 break, while a family making $50,000 a year would save just $80.

Sound familiar?

To prove that New Jersey can afford a big tax cut, Christie put out a budget that projects that the state will take in 7.3 percent more revenue this fiscal year – a wildly optimistic figure that represents the nation’s highest anticipated growth rate.

When a highly-respected, veteran budget expert for the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services questioned those numbers, Christie did what he always does: He went on YouTube and attacked Legislative Budget and Finance Officer David Rosen as the “Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers.”

Meanwhile, state tax collections came in below Christie’s rosy-colored predictions in March, April, May and July. We know the June numbers were down anywhere from $250 million to $540 million. But we can’t be sure how much because Christie is violating his own executive order on “fiscal transparency” by refusing to release the June numbers.

So far, unfortunately, it’s “Dr. Kevorkian” and not “Gov. YouTube” who has been right about the revenues. Being honest about the numbers would undermine the “Endless Summer” tour that Christie has embarked on to demand that New Jersey’s Democratic legislature approve an immediate tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest – regardless of whether the state can afford it.

You won’t hear about any of this Tuesday night, when Christie joyously proclaims that his policies should serve as a model for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket — and the nation.

But an interesting thing happened on the way to Tampa – Christie admitted there won’t be any mention of the “Jersey Comeback” in his keynote.

Perhaps he’s finally reached a moment of enlightenment? Perhaps, like Agassi, he’s finally realized that to truly achieve greatness, you have to let go of the notion that image is everything and accept reality.

Sincerely,


Barbara Buono
Senator, 18th Legislative District

Republican Medicare Beneficiaries Slam ‘Government Care’

Think Progress-The Wonk Room

Last Wednesday, the Associated Press “interviewed a handful of retiree delegates to the Republican convention to sample their views on health care and other issues that most concern them.” Ironically, while all of the interviewees registered their dismay for so-called government health care, all relied on government-funded Medicare, Medicaid or Veterans Health Care to cover their health care costs:

- Peggy Lambert, a member of RNC’s platform committee, is a Medicare beneficiary:

- On health care reform: “I’m not sure I know what the solution is. I just know what the problem is…It’s a terrifying experience to know that you have no coverage, and you limit your trips to the doctor, and there’s just so many things you can cut back on.”

- Frmr. Montana Gov. Tim Babcock benefits “from free prescriptions he’s entitled to as a World War II veteran”:

- On health care reform: “It’s an emotional thing that the Democrats like to build up, that everybody doesn’t have health care. I think I was about 40 years old before I realized there was such a thing as health insurance, and I got along all right.”

- John Ortega of Bettendorf, Iowa is a 67-year-old Army veteran who “receives Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Administration insurance”:

- On health care reform: “I think small or regular business can handle that better than the government can.”

This phenomena is not uncommon. As the Wonk Room pointed out, while the 2008 Republican platform states that “Republicans support the private practice of medicine and oppose socialized medicine in the form of a government- run universal health care system,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) himself is a beneficiary of government administered care.

As a 72 year-old war veteran senator, McCain benefits from The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, in which “the Government pays 72 percent of the average premium toward the total cost of the your premium,” and is potentially eligible for the government administered Medicare program and the Veterans Health Care administration, “the largest integrated health system in the United States.”

Hypocritical in their argument, some Republicans do have a single message: do as we say, not as we do.

Obama goes toe to toe with O'Reilly during interview

With all of the interest surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin at this weeks Republican National Convention, how many of you saw Bill O'Reilly's interview with Barack Obama the last night?

In Part 1 of the interview broadcast last night, O'Reilly was as interested in hearing his own exhortations as Obama's answers, the Fox talker harangued Obama over an array of foreign policy issues, all of which Obama answered decisively and with conviction.

New segments of the interview, conducted Thursday in York, Pa., will air Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on The O'Reilly Factor.

The Words They Used

The New York Times has an interesting analysis on the words that speakers used at the two political conventions to show the themes that the parties had highlighted. Republican speakers talked about reform and character far more frequently than the Democrats. And Republicans were more likely to talk about businesses and taxes, while Democrats were more likely to mention jobs or the economy.

The Republican Priorities: What The GOP Focused On (And Ignored) During The Convention

Now that the Republican National Convention is over it has become quite evident to me that the McCain campaign had done everything in it's power to try and distant it's self form the Bush administration. President Bush spoke only briefly via satellite and Dick Cheney wasn't anywhere near Minnesota, his name wasn't even mention by any one of the speakers that addresses the convention.

Instead of ideas on how to lead the Country into the future all we heard were ideas from the past, no new ideas about the economy, healthcare, social security or energy. All we heard about was the same old, tired and failed policies of the last 8 years.

War and terrorism, with little mention of diplomacy was the main message people have walked away from this convention with.

ThinkProgress.org has put together an analysis based on the prepared remarks (a total of 38,055 words) of the convention speakers, looking at how many times Republicans said various words. A glimpse at conservatives’ priorities:

Bush Administration
Bush: 1
Cheney: 0
Gonzales: 0
Rumsfeld: 0
National Security
War/Wars: 38
Surge: 14
Nuclear Weapons: 4
Diplomat(ic)/Diplomacy: 3
Torture (McCain’s): 3
Guantanamo: 1
Osama Bin Laden: 1
Afghanistan: 0
Torture (not McCain’s): 0

Economy
Jobs: 36
Economy: 27
Middle Class: 2
Housing: 1
Social Security: 1
Unemployment: 1

Other
POW: 14
Maverick: 11
Hockey Mom: 5
Tyrannosaurus: 1
Elvis: 1

Health Care
Health Care: 26
Medicare: 1
Medicaid: 1
Environment/Energy
Drill/Drilling: 18
Nuclear (Power): 10
Clean Coal: 7
Environment: 7
Gustav: 6
Climate Change: 1
Global Warming: 1
Green Economy: 1
Katrina: 0

Science
Technology: 13
Internet: 1
Science: 1

Civil Rights
Immigration: 5
Gay/Gays: 0