Hillary Clinton paid a holiday visit to the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and told them that people back home are questioning their mission and then, commenting about our chances of victory in Iraq, she said “..the outcome is not assured.” [link].

Hmm… I’ve never served in the military, but I think the troops would have felt a little better if she said something like, “The outcome will be victory” and “Your mission is a good one”. Instead, she shows up to score political points. She forgot to tell them her husband is visiting their wives while they’re over in the Middle East to help them through these difficult times.

Don’t know how many of you are following this story, but there is a distinct possibility that George Bush will not be on the presidential ballot next year in the state of Illinois. Technically, Bush will not be the nominee until after the Republican convention in September 2004. Illinois requires certification of their ballots in August 2004, and Illinois democrats are refusing republican efforts to change the law to accomodate the late convention [link]. Democrats are demanding republicans give amnesty to a bunch of democrats accused of campaign violations and also that first time voters be allowed to vote via absentee ballot instead of in person. Republicans refuse to give in to blackmail, so the dems aren’t going to cooperate.

My suggestion?? Send the NJ state supreme court to Illinois. Debbie Poritz says that all those election dates are arbitrary. August.. September.. October.., who cares, it’s most important that voters be given a choice. At least that was the case with the Torricelli-Lautenberg switcheroo in 2002, followed by “toe sucker” Joe Suliga-Nick Scutari switch this year in NJ 22nd district. In both cases, democrats were allowed to put someone on the ballot after the deadline for certifying the ballot.

There were two great college football games today, at least great for me.

1. Rutgers Beats Syracuse 24-7. A shocker!! Not that I’m a Rutgers fan, but anything that’s good for Rutgers is good for Jersey. Now let’s see if Schiano can get some of those recruits. Supposedly New Jersey has one of the best high school senior classes in the country, but most of the kids go out of state. Penn State and Notre Dame are having down years, so maybe some of the Jersey kids will stay in state. And Syracuse fans must be in shock. I think Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni will be out of a job by the end of the year.
2. R.P.I. stuns Springfield College 40-34 in the NCAA Division III playoffs!! Springfield was the top ranked team in the bracket. R.P.I now plays host to Ithaca College, which upset Montclair State. The winner goes to the Division III semi-finals. My alma mater was a football joke for decades, sort of the Northwestern of small colleges, but in the 1980’s they started fielding competitive teams and now they are a college football powerhouse. Let’s Go Red!!

Got back late last night from upstate New York. We went to my in-laws house for Thanksgiving. We’ve stayed home for Thanksgiving the past few years, but we wanted to take the baby up to see my wife’s family.

It’s about 170 miles from my house to Binghamton. I’ve found that my kids are pretty good in the car, except for the bathroom stops. My daughter had to go when we were in the middle of nowhere, about 20 miles south of Scranton. We stopped at this convenience store, which we were shocked to find out was run by the same guy who owns the Kwik-E-Mart on the Simpsons. He wouldn’t let my daughter use the bathroom unless we bought something, so we bought a pack of candy cigarettes. It’s a good thing I didn’t pick up a magazine and start reading it.

Dinner went off without a hitch, especially since I didn’t have to do anything but show up, an advantage of going someplace else for a holiday. I got to watch President Bush surprise the troops in Iraq. It was a great moment. Bush knew he’d get some heat from the democrats, but screw all of ‘em. It was the right thing to do for our soldiers.

New Jersey has lots of bears, too many given the cramped quarters of the Garden State. There’s still some wilderness left in the state, and developers in western and northern Jersey keep on knocking down trees and building homes out in bear country, giving the bears an endless supply of tasty garbage. They have lots of road kill deer to munch on. The bears have got it made in Jersey. In order to thin the bear population to a reasonable number, New Jersey has approved a bear hunt for five days next month, December 8th through the 13th, in an area bounded by route 78 and route 287. But the environmentalists and animal rights people are in an uproar and are using everything in their arsenal to stop the hunt. They haven’t had much success in NJ state courts, so they’re turning to the federal courts [ link]. Part of hunting area includes national parks and the suit claims NJ doesn’t have the legal authority to permit hunting in places like the Delaware Water Gap. Amongst the many charges, the suit alleges that the state has issued permits to convicted felons. If this hunt does go off, it’ll be lots of fun to watch the enviro-nuts running around with air horns and bells chasing away the bears and really ticking off the hunters. But my guess is McGreevey will get cold feet and cancel the hunt.

I wrote a few weeks back about cell phones and my general dislike for them [link]. I don’t own one, though I did buy one for my wife two years ago as a Christmas present. Tech Central Station has an anti-cell phone piece called Beyond Cell Phone Etiquette that’s really good. The author laments about how taking a long train ride or bus trip or even waiting on line at the post office is now ruined by what he calls a cancer: cell phones!! This guy really hates the cell phone rings and tones and how they “..send a shockwave of minor panic throughout the public locale”. He has ten rules of etiquette for using cell phones in public that make sense to me. Unfortunately, the people who need to read them are those louts who are always talking on their phones or allowing them to go off in church or at a concert.

The lame duck session of the New Jersey legislature is considering a bill that will expand the right to sue for injuries from auto accidents. Details at the Asbury Park Press. Over 90% of NJ drivers take the verbal threshold option on their auto insurance. By agreeing not to sue for minor injuries, drivers get a discount. However, this means fewer lawsuits.

I haven’t heard too much protesting from NJ drivers about the verbal threshold. I know it works for me. But I guess lawyers are having trouble affording the new Lexus SUV and the condos down the shore, so the law being debated in the NJ legislature will eliminate the verbal threshold option as we know it. Higher auto insurance rates for you and me and more money for trial lawyers who will then pass along a share of the windfall to McGreevey and his democrat buddies. This is similar to the way Paulie Walnuts passes along a cut of his earnings to mob boss Tony Soprano. The difference is organized crime has a bit more honor and scrupples than the trial lawyer-democrat party tag team.

Many thanks to OverLawyered.com for a link back to DynamoBuzz after I complimented them for their great work on covering the abuses of the legal system. I called them a “hidden gem” of the internet. I didn’t mean to imply that no one every heard of Overlawyerd. Amongst bloggers, they are very well known. Overlawyered is #201 over at The Truth Laid Bear, qualifying as a “Large Mammal” on the Ecosystem food chain. Overlawyered deserves to be in the top 100, at least in the “Mortal Humans” category.

It’s bad enough that the lame duck session of the New Jersey legislature will most likely approve a huge gas tax increase and also give trial lawyers a gift by making it easier to sue for pain and suffering in auto accidents. The lame ducks are also debating passing a bill that will create a committee to study the death penalty in New Jersey to see if it is being used properly [link]. The bill included a moratorium on the death penalty in New Jersey, but it was removed from the final bill in order to get more votes.

Forget about the commision, I can save you the money. Here’s my report on the death penalty in New Jersey. It’s a joke!!! New Jersey has had a death penalty on the books for over twenty years, but due to the left-wing activist NJ State Supreme Court, we have never actually been able to execute anybody. Twenty years — zero executions!!! Between the endless appeals and the NJ supremes, inmates on death row are more likely to die of old age than face the needle. The only death row inmate to get his just rewards was Robert “Mudman” Simon, who was beaten to death by another death row inmate, Ambrose Harris, in 1999.

There’s actually an organization supporting a Death Penalty Moratorium in New Jersey. You can take a rest guys, you won.

I’m not a big fan of spam, but I don’t think I’d get so upset about it that I would threaten to maim and even kill employees of a company sending out the unwanted e-mails. But that’s what this programmer from Sunnyvale, California did. Amongst other things, he threatened via e-mail to stick an ice-pick into someone’s ear, threatened them with anthrax and threatened to shoot them in the spine. The local cops told him to stop, but he kept sending the threatening e-mails until he was arrested by the FBI. He told the feds that he is a testicular cancer survivor and the spam e-mails about penile enlargement were frustrating. He’s now facing up to five years in prison.

How many of you remember celebrating Thanksgiving in grammar school? You’d recreate the first Thanksgiving dinner with pilgrims and Indians. You’d make those big hats and big belt buckles and shoe buckles. Well, a grammar school in Skokie, Illinois, has banned pilgrims and Indians from the annual Thanksgiving pageant held at the school so as not to offend anyone. First graders were told the night before the pageant to leave the costumes home and come in regular clothes. Instead of recreating the first Thanksgiving, the principal invited a member of a local Indian tribe to the “party” and had him lecture the students about Indian traditions. Oops, “native American” traditions.

This starts the annual holiday battle against Christmas and Thanksgiving by the politcally correct crowd. If anyone really studied the history of Thanksgiving Day holiday in the United States, they’ll learn it is thoroughly influenced by religion. Read George Washington’s proclamation for the first Thanksgiving holiday in 1789 creating “ … a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Or Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation establishing the holiday in 1863: “ … to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens“. I bet this isn’t the history that’s taught in public schools.

Whatever happened to Steve Burns?? Steve was the host of the old “Blue’s Clues” kids TV show. He was famous for acting goofy and wearing a green and blue stripped shirt with khaki’s. It was a big story a year or two ago when he left the show and was replaced by his “brother”.

Well, Steve Burns has his own website and weblog with photos of the new Steve. He’s also a musician with an album, “Songs for Dustmites”. You can listen to a few tracks on the website.

Doctors in New Jersey are furious at the NJ democrat party. Actually, another name for the NJ democrat party is “The Party to Advance the Interests of Trial Lawyers”. You remember the numerous doctor’s strikes earlier this year to raise support for a law that would reform malpractice lawsuits in NJ. And doctors went door to door to campagin against democrats and donated mega bucks to republicans. The tactics didn’t work, the democrats won a bunch of seats a few weeks back. And as this link from Overlawyered.com notes, the democrats will now try to stick it to the doctors in retaliation for their role in the campaign. It would be easy for republicans to do things like this to unions and minorities, since they vicously oppose the GOP and spend millions of dollars running against republican interests. But the media screams bloody murder if the republicans try it, while democrat efforts to punish doctors for exercising their right to free speech is greated with a “Ho, hum, that’s politics” refrain.

If you’ve never checked out Overlawyered.com, you are missing out on one of the hidden gems of the Internet. It’s one of the first weblogs I ever read and it’s chock full of information about our legal system run amok. Even though I’m an engineer, I’ve always had an interest in our legal system, and like many I feel it is corrupted to favor big monied interests and the politicians who support them. The blog is written by Walter Olson, who’s written many books about this topic. The blog has gotten so big that Olson will occasionally have guest posters.

I haven’t done too much French bashing in the last few months, but no time is as good a time as the present. Found this Complete Military History of France at albinosheep.com via a link from Assymetrical Information. A particularly funny line is about French involvement in our Revolutionary War:  “…the Second Rule of French Warfare; France only wins when America does most of the fighting.”

I’ve read lots of bad reviews about the new “Cat in the Hat” movie. Seems like it wasn’t a good idea to try to make another Dr. Seuss book into a movie after Jim Carey’s performance in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

Interesting article over at The Corner on National Review Online concerning the hidden meanings and morals in many Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss was a guy named Theodore Geisel, who was quite a prolific author and artist. During WWII, Geisel was an editorial cartoonist who drew cartoons about Hitler, Stalin and the Japanese. His work was highlighted in a book “Dr. Seuss Goes to War”. Geisel was very liberal, almost a socialist, and many of his stories did question authority.

If you thought “Green Eggs and Ham” and “Horton Hears a Who” were just well writen children’s stories, think again. The article puts forth the point that “The Cat in the Hat” is a subversive book suggesting that kids revolt against authority. “Yertle the Tertle” is also anti-authoritarian and “The Lorax” is a tree-hugging environmentalist tale.

I was looking at The Billboard Hot 50 top songs and was surprised to see how many singles are out “featuring” somebody else. Four of the top five singles are “Baby Boy”, Beyonce Knowles Featuring Sean Paul, “Stand Up”, Ludacris Featuring Shawnna, “Holidae In”, Chingy Featuring Ludacris & Snoop Dogg and “The Way You Move”, OutKast Featuring Sleepy Brown. There are three more “featuring” tunes in Billboard top 10. I don’t know how many of these are also on albums. There’s a theory that albums are dying out, and the single is making a comeback. It may be due to the internet and mp3’s, but it may also be due to the high price for CD’s.

You can check Billboard’s site and find the list of the top songs from past years. Check out the top 25 singles from 1988. No rap music, but lots of pop metal like Bon Jovi, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen and Cinderella in the top 20. Number 1 was “Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley” by Will To Power. Very forgetable. Yuck.

The Asbury Park Press used to have a reputation as being a liberal paper, but it looks like they’ve shifted away from the looney left. This editorial, “McGreevey fails business test” is so anti-McGreevey it could have been written by me. A quote:

The editorial bashes the state for corruption, bloated state government, high auto insurance and high property taxes. And there’s the talked about “millionaire’s tax” that actually will hit any family with a gross income of $400,000. The article doesn’t mention the hostile regulatory environment for manufacturers. Democrats have a name for companies that actually manufacture stuff, they’re called “polluters”. Other than trial lawyers, I can’t think of a business that would be excited about opening up shop in Jersey.

My son went to a bowling birthday party last week, and now wants to go bowling every day. I haven’t gone in years, but I said I’d take him and his sister. We went to Strike N’ Spare Lanes in Green Brook. Well, I didn’t realize how many years it’s been, because I was shocked when I saw the prices. I rented shoes for my two kids and me, plus we played two games. The games were $4.25 per game per person (6x$4.25) and the shoe rental was $3.50 each. You’re talking $36.00 for bowling. I remember 75 cents a game and shoe rentals were about the same. But that was probably 25 years ago.

Considering how long it’s been since I bowled, I did pretty good. I was never a great bowler, so I didn’t have too much skill to lose. I bowled a 112 and a 134. My kids wanted the bumpers put up which block the gutters, but I only used it once, on my second roll. Otherwise I was hitting the head pin. Even with the bumpers, my daughter managed to put two balls into the gutter. She almost rolled one into the lane next to us. She’s dangerous.

For a Sunday afternoon, the place was packed. They have 48 lanes and it looked like there was at least one league playing. If they want to go again, I’ll shop around to see if I can find a place that’s cheaper.

This site was off line for a while, but I just checked and they’re back. The site is NJDiners.com and it has lots of stuff about New Jersey diners, stuff like pictures, interviews and links.

My two favorite diners from my youth were the Point Diner in Fairview and the Coach House in North Bergen. I’ve traveled around the U.S., and most of the country doesn’t have diners like we have in Jersey. Yeah, they’ve got roadside restaurants that are open 24 hours, but they’re still not diners. We’ve got the neon lights and counters and jukeboxes. NJ diners also have sugar in those big glass dispensers, “BAKING DONE ON THE PREMISES”, mints in a bowl with a spoon, “STEAKS AND CHOPS”, placemats with the menu on them. Too bad alot of them are closing.

I was just about to sit down for a dinner of fried grasshoppers with lemon when I read this article in the Home News warning people to stay away from Mexican grasshoppers due to possible lead poisoning. Health authorities have found Mexican grasshoppers with 60 times the maximum lead dosage a person can safely consume. Darn. Grasshoppers are high in protein and low in carbs, making them a perfect meal for those on those high protein, low carb diets.

I guess in the Oaxaca state of Mexico, they eat lots of grasshoppers, also called chapulines. Many of the Mexicans in NJ are from Oaxaca and they brought their eating habits with them. The reporter visited 10 bodegas in New Brunswick but couldn’t find grasshoppers. Maybe if you said a secret password the store owner would take you to a back room where the grasshoppers are kept. Good grasshopper goes for $60 a pound in the U.S. The article says Mexicans sometimes substitute grasshoppers for meat in tacos and burritos. Othertimes, they are coated with garlic, lemon or chili powder and fried. The article has a grasshopper recipe if you’re interested.