I’ve gone headfirst into RSS.

First off, I found out that I do have an RSS feed. b2 installs three RSS feeds. This one is RSS version 0.92 and this one is RDF, which I think is RSS version 2.0. I put links on the bottom of left bar, beneath the DynamoBlogRoll.

I also downloaded an RSS aggregator, Headline Viewer that runs from Windows which I just started using a few hours ago. It’s a 4MB download, freeware and easy to install. It installs pre-configured with 812 feeds, of which about 700 appear to be sources I really don’t care about (Women’s News?? LeftWatch.com??) I’ll clean up the directory as I get time. The reader has a Windows explorer type list on the left with feeds sorted by category. You click on a source and the reader gets the RSS feed from the site. You can browse the headlines and short summary from each site, and double clicking on a story opens up Internet Explorer with the story you want. Cool!!

A New Jersey Appeals court approved the state formula for supplying aid to the 30 special needs districts (Abbott districts) for this school year. [link] The Abbott districts are crying that this formula will short change them to the tune of $125 million.

This is a win for the NJ taxpayers. Unfortunately, the Abbott districts will appeal to the NJ supreme court. Uh,oh. Once Debbie Poritz is done with this one, something tells me the Abbott districts will get the extra $125 million, plus she’ll kick in a little extra. This is why the NJ constitution must be amended.

I added two more pictures to the baby blog. My daughter Liliana is just passed 5 months old now. She’s doing really well. March will be an eventfull month. She’ll be 6 months old on March 18th, plus she’ll start eating solid food, plus I’m betting that she’ll be crawling.

In an effort to avoid raising sales taxes or income taxes, NJ governor Jim McGreevey had to get creative to find extra money to increase spending as much as he has proposed in the latest budget [link]. Cigarette taxes go up again, cell phone users pay an extra 90 cents a month, people registering a new car must pay for four years of registrations at once, real estate transfer fees go up on any house selling for more than $150,000 which in a high price state like New Jersey is just about every sale. A $5 surcharge on hospital outpatient visits. A $200 surcharge will hit drivers convicted of unsafe driving, which happens to 200,000 motorists every year. The state treasury will take gift cards and gift certificates unused for three years. Taxes that were scheduled to expire will now continue on infinitum. And now there’s a $1 surcharge on new tire purchases!! I’m assuming that’s per tire.

And then there’s the $1.5 billion dollar loan to balance this years budget. As always, the democrats play the old, “Oh, yeah, you guys did it too!!” game when republicans point out the stupidity of borrowing money to be paid back over the next few years to pay todays bills. And so goes the political games here in New Jersey.

What will the voters do?? In California, the voters recalled their governor after disgust with the way things were going in their state. Here in Jersey, see this quote “We’ve increased the cigarette tax twice already, and we never heard a peep about it from the voters,” an adviser asserted.”

People in sports hate being called “quitters”. Well, calling Glen Sather a quitter is too kind, in my opinion. He came to the NY Rangers hockey team as a savior but he hasn’t done squat. Today he announced he was giving up the NY Rangers coaching job and concentrating on being general manager. One of the reasons he gave at his press conference was “The chanting at the Garden was distracting to the players, they seemed to get uptight“. Uptight?? How about embarassed, or humiliated ??

In a league where it’s real hard not to make the playoffs, the Rangers haven’t made the big show for seven years now. I see teams like the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had the second worst record in the league in 2000-2001 now challenging for first overall in the Eastern Conference. Meanwhile, the Rangers with the highest payroll in hockey are sucking wind. Messier … you’re out of here!! Kovalev … hit the road!! Nedved … take your Sports Illustrated swimsuit model girlfriend and go back to Pittsburgh!! Lindros .. find another hobby!!

Well, at least spring training has started, and I can follow baseball. Let’s go Mets.

While driving into work this morning, I heard Jim McGreevey’s radio advertisement for the new and improved Department of Motor Vehicles. First off, it’s not the DMV anymore, now it’s the MVC (Motor Vehicle Commission). That was a smart idea to rename the agency. My guess is that if you hooked up electrodes to a New Jersey driver, stood behind him and whispered the letters “DMV”, their heartbeat would increase, their blood pressure would rise, their shoulders and neck muscles would tense up and they’d grimace. It’s reflex.

The new improved MVC has weekend hours. That’s a plus. I’ve always believed service industries should have some weekend hours.

However, I won’t be convinced that the new improved MVC is truly new and improved until Agnes retires. You all know Agnes. She’s worked at every DMV office I ever visited. She’s the woman in her late 50’s wearing a solid color sweater and sitting at the information desk when you walk in. You have to tell her what you want to get done that day, and she’ll slide forms across the desk towards you and say “Go to window 8″. If you ask her what time it is, she’ll say “Go to window 8″. If she likes you, she’ll stamp your check with a “DMV” ink stamp so that you don’t have to fill out the “Pay to” line on the check. If she doesn’t like you, she will not make eye contact with you and you then walk sheepishly towards the table to fill out the forms. Then when you get to window 8, sometimes Agnes is there. You give her the forms and she’ll tell you to wait for your name to be called. Then Agnes will call your name (along with 10 or 15 other names) and she’ll tell you to go to window 6 to pay. Fortunately for me, I’m a hockey player so I can always get to window 6 before everyone else. Sometime Agnes is also at window 6. When you finally get your paperwork and receipt, you are so excited to be done that you turn and head for the exit while looking down at your paperwork. Agnes is sitting at the information desk, but don’t expect to hear “Thanks for coming” as you walk out the door.

On the DVD for Disney’s latest movie “The Lion King 1-1/2″, there’s an interactive game based on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” called “Who Wants to be King of the Jungle”. Meredith Viera is the host along with cartoon contestants. As Meredith explains the rules to the cartoon characters, one of them says “The rules are taking longer than the game — I’m not from New Jersey, I got it, I got it. Let’s play!”

Disney would never make an ethnic joke, but they feel it’s OK to make fun of us inbred Jersey folk. This article says a spokesman for governor McGreevey responded to Disney, saying that Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse would never make such a joke at the expense of New Jersey.

Jim Mcgreevey has just submitted the NJ state budget for FY 2005. After months of warning about huge deficits and a dreadful economy in NJ, McGreevey submits a budget with spending showing a 7% increase over 2004 and lots of additional revenue from higher sales tax revenue (+5.5%), corporate tax revenue (+6.5%) and income tax revenue (+8.3%) thanks to the “booming economy”.

It was a good try at lowering expectations, but it didn’t work. There’s stuff in the budget to get everyone ticked off. Republicans claim the increases in aid to schools and towns won’t be enough to provide much property tax relief. McGreevey raises the cigarette tax again and also jacks up surcharges on “bad drivers”. McGreevey’s definition of a bad driver is someone found guilty of a single offense of “unsafe driving” which happens to about 200,000 Jersey drivers a year. They’ll pay a $200 surcharge. The cigarette money and the surcharges will be used to finance $1.5 billion dollars in borrowing for this year’s budget. Oh, and part of the huge corporate tax increase McGreevey passed in 2002 was supposed to expire after two years. But as we all know, there’s no such thing as a temporary tax. The governor will propose that the tax hikes be extended. The biggest winner is DYFS who will get more money to hire more social workers.

If republicans wanted to, they could claim the $1.5 billion dollars of borrowed money is illegal, since the NJ constitution says the voters must approve all bonds. However, Christie Whitman did the same thing while she was in office and only a handful of our state representatives complained.

And for good measure, McGreevey found $6.5 million dollars lying around to fund an embryonic stem cell research institute at Rutgers University. After all the protests last month from religious and right to life groups concerning the “clone and kill” bill, McGreevey decides to rub their noses in it even further by handing out money so UMDNJ can hire lots of research scientists. Yes, it’s a brave new world.

John Kerry is already complaining about republican attacks on his record. NOTE TO JOHN: Right now some of the more vicious commentary about your candidacy is coming from the left.

First up is Alexander Cockburn, internationally known liberal author and columnist whose work has been published at all the major news papers and he’s got a column at The Nation. Within a week, Cockburn has lit into Kerry twice.

His column from February 18th is titled “ON NOT BELIEVING IN JOHN KERRY“. Cockburn calls the democrats hypocrites for being the anti-war party until this year when their candidate has more military experience. He acuses Kerry of having no senate record of achievements and “reverse charisma”. He also rips into the Heinz Foundation, Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s charity organization for having Ken Lay on its board. Oh yeah, he also notes “…Teresa’s evident disquiet whenever her husband comes within touching range” something I have also noticed. This article is actually pretty funny.

Then Cockburn posts on his own website, Counterpunch.Org an article stating that Kerry has already peaked and it’s all down hill from here. Cockburn rips him for voting for tax cuts, NAFTA, Clinton’s welfare reform, the Iraq war and the Patriot Act and also for having on his staff some very distasteful people from the Clinton administration.

Now I just saw over at the Village Voice an article from Sydney Schanberg. Sydney was a top NY Times writer during the Vietnam era who was portrayed by Sam Waterston in the 1984 movie “The Killing Fields. Sydney’s article is titled “When John Kerry’s Courage Went M.I.A.“. In the early 1990’s Kerry chaired a Senate subcommittee on POW/MIA issues from the Vietnam war. Schanberg claims Kerry shredded documents and destroyed evidence because he wanted to normalize relations with Vietnam and all this MIA stuff was the main obstacle. He says the Kerry committee was a sham and gives plenty of examples of how Kerry ignored eye witness accounts, intercepted communicatiosns and other evidence of US soldiers left behind in Vietnam. He says Kerry staffers worked with Dept of Defense officials and North Vietnamese representatives before they testified for his committee so that they could best present their case. The article has a caricature of Kerry shoveling dirt onto a grave with a tombstone bearing the POW/MIA emblem.

And if you really want to read some nasty anti-Kerry stuff, check out the comments over at DailyKos.com, a big time liberal blog. This is going to be some election.

I just noticed that I got two big time links back to DynamoBuzz.

The Jersey Side blog at NJ.com linked to the DynamoBuzz post about the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders spending money like drunken sailors on leave. John Shabe liked the $26 omelet.

And in a shocker, BuzzMachine also linked to the same story. BuzzMachine is hosted by Jeff Jarvis who is truly blog royalty!! BuzzMachine is #43 at the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem with over five hundred blogs linking to him, making BuzzMachine a Playful Primate (DynamoBuzz only qualifies as a Slimy Mollusc).

The title of the post at BuzzMachine is Hyperlocal and it discusses a few NJ blogs he found via the weblogs page at NJ.com. Jeff lives in New Jersey and hosts a far ranging blog covering politics and entertainment. Jeff’s bio is really impressive. He was been a TV critic, writing for TV Guide and People magazine, the NY Daily News and the SF Examiner and he founded the Entertainment Weekly magazine.

It’s always good to get noticed by other bloggers, and it gives me the incentive to keep churning out the good stuff.

I’m having trouble keeping up on all the blogs and the news and still trying to write insiteful funny stuff at DynamoBuzz. I read about 10 to 20 blogs a day, plus all the major news sites and major NJ media sites. Wired.com goes into detail about RSS readers and news aggregators. RSS stands for “RDF site summary”. It’s a compound acroynm because RDF stands for “Resource Description Framework”. I guess calling it RDFSS was too long. RSS is an XML-based format that summarizes the headlines from a blog or news site (called “feeds”) that are then read by the news aggregator, allowing a user to browse through the latest posts from multiple sources. You can find a simple aggregator at RootBlog.

I use b2 blogging software which I think has RSS features, I just haven’t turned it on. Even if you don’t publish your own RSS feed, there are services that will “scrape” your site, which means they will read your home page and extract the headlines.

Once I get the photoblog and hockey pages up and running (trust me, I’m this close!) I’ll look into RSS.

Why are we taking tax money and giving it to the casino industry to build more casinos?? That’s whats going to happen with some of the money New Jersey got by raising taxes on casinos in last year’s budget [link]. Out of all the industries in New Jersey, why give $60 million to the casino industry?? I think they’ll build casinos even if they don’t get the money. It just seems like a poor waste of tax money when there are other New Jersey industries are hurting.

I was listening to the Matt Drudge radio show on WABC last night while driving home from Mennen Arena. I’ve never really listened to his show, but I’ve got to admit he’s pretty funny. He was taking shots at the whole “Sex and the City” finale hype on HBO. He was contrasting that with the other big entertainment event of the week, the debut of Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ”.

I’ve never watched “Sex and the City”. It always appeared to be a chick show. Given that I like shot’em up movies, a show about a bunch of vain women in NYC never excited me. It seems like whenever I was channel surfing and stopped at “Sex in the City”, it was always (1) the four women eating lunch at some kind of fancy restaurant or (2) the Kim Catrall character was engaged in a certain type of sex act (think Bill Clinton).

Now that HBO is done with this, they can get onto more serious entertainment. Like “The Sopranos” final season which debuts next month.

Bob Ingle notes that if Kerry beats Bush in November, he’ll replace U.S. attorney Chris Christie. This will leave Christie without a job, but then he’ll have time to run for NJ governor. Interesting.

Ingle also beats the drums for U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, who has still not given a flat out denial that he will mount a primary challenge McGreevey next year. Ingle even gives out Andrews e-mail address if you’re interested in giving him your opinion.

NOTE TO NEW JERSEYANS: Next time you look at your property tax bill, remember this story from the Asbury Park Press. The Monmouth County Board of Freeholders, county employees and commissioners spent almost half a million dollars last year on travel, conventions and out of town meals. They don’t even know the exact total from 2003 because not all the travel expense reports have been submitted yet. One of these “travelers” submitted a $183 bar bill, though he ended up paying for it himself. Another submitted a breakfast receipt for a $26 omelet. There’s more in the article. The county has spent $2 million the last four years on travel and conventions, a small part of their $416 million (!!) annual county budget.

The yidish have a word “chutzpah” that means a few different things depending on the context, but it can mean brazenness, gall, shameless audacity. In spanish, you would say someone has “cajones” instead of “chutzpah”. I mention chutzpah in terms of the presidential election and John Kerry and this Vietnam service thing.

At MSNBC today, Kerry takes on Bush with some of the most incredible statements, in particular:

“..John Kerry accused President Bush on Saturday of using surrogates to attack his military service in Vietnam and his subsequent activism against that war”  Excuse me, didn’t Kerry use Terry MacAuliffe, Roger Moore and the liberal media to attack Bush for being “AWOL” and a “deserter”?? Kerry also says, “..it has been hard to believe that you would choose to reopen these wounds for your personal political gain. But, that is what you have chosen to do.”  What?!?! Kerry and the democrats have been raising the issue, not Bush. This is “chutzpah”.

Later in the article, it notes that Kerry made some of these attacks with ex-Georgia senator Max Cleland at his side. Cleland lost both legs and and arm in Vietnam. He also lost his senate seat in 2002 to a republican. An urban myth amongst democrats is that the republicans attacked Clelands patriotism. Actually, republicans attacked his voting record, which looked a lot like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry’s voting records. That’s not the way to run for state wide office in the south. Cleland took a shot at the republican who beat him in 2002, Saxby Chambliss, making note that Chambliss got a medical excuse from Vietnam service.

It’s obvious Kerry’s strategy is to deflect questions about his liberal voting record and his anti-war Jane-Fonda-loving-days by acting all offended, mentioning his Vietnam service and having Cleland appear with him as many times as possible. If anything the democrats made an error bringing this up in February instead of October. I think the public is tiring of this debate. But Kerry won’t let it die.

NJ governor Jim McGreevey is upset at President Bush’s most recent budget which cuts about $17 million dollars from shore replenishment plans for the NJ shore [link]. McGreevey even sent Bush a letter. New Jersey will always lose these funding battles in Congress because we’re stupid enough to have two liberal democrats in the senate when republicans control the senate, the house of representatives and the White House. And given the fact that Gore beat Bush by almost 20% in NJ in 2000 and Bush is probably not going to win NJ in 2004, he can safely tell McGreevey to kiss off. Maybe McGreevey can send Frank Lautenberg to the White House to lobby for more money?? If there was truly justice in the world, Bush would make him wait at the front gate for a few hours.

Well, McGreevey endorsed Howard Dean for president, so when Dean wins the election in November …. oh, wait, Dean is already history. You lose again, Jim.

I like the shore just as much as everyone else, but perhaps NJ should be responsible for the NJ shore??

Outsourcing is the latest and greatest evil threat to American workers. But how about when outsourcing benefits the United States?? European airplane manufacturer Airbus will be buying more parts from the United States in the next few years due to the weak dollar compared to the Euro [link]. Airbus is also going the Wal-Mart route with it’s suppliers, demanding price reductions if you want to do business with Airbus. This may force French suppliers to shift business to U.S. subsidiaries.

I don’t think there’s a funnier writer on the internet than Mark Steyn. He lives in New Hampshire but I believe he’s from Canada and writes for the Canadian and English papers. His latest piece on the Conan O’Brien and French Canadian controversy is a riot [link]. Steyn makes a good point about ethnic humor, “..and if you can’t share a joke, it’s hard to have a shared culture. That’s why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium.” He warns that the U.S. is rapidly becoming like that. Imagine a white comedian making jokes about mexican-americans.

Steyn’s website can be found here.

Robert at Garden State blog notes how local TV and radio media people mispronounce the name of New Jersey towns [link] in particular saying “sa-CAW-cus” instead of “SEE-cau-cus”. I remember as a kid watching TV with my mom and whenever the news people would say “sa-CAW-cus”, we’d yell out in unison “SEE-cau-cus!!”

Robert lists a few other NJ towns and gives the “local” pronounciation. I would add Rutherford which is usually pronounced on TV with a soft “th” sound while locals say it with a hard “th”. Totowa and Haledon are also frequently mispronounced. And we all know that “SEE-cau-cus” is out on “rout” 3, the correct NJ pronounciation of Route 3.