Jersey blogger Suzette writes about one of the more stressful moments in life, a trip to the New Jersey DMV [link]. Suzette is trying to figure out the point system that you have to follow to get a drivers license renewed in New Jersey. I’ve seen a chart of the point system, and I think it’s easier to explain Schrodinger’s equation (you engineering majors out there know what I mean).

New Jersey tightened up the requirements for drivers licenses after it was discovered that some of the 9/11 hijackers were able to fraudulently obtain NJ drivers licenses. Now, you need to show up at the DMV with a bunch of documents. You need six points, and each piece of identification is worth from one to four points, and you need to have identification from more than one category. You can’t just show up with six things that are worth one point each, you need at least one four point item, and Suzette is stuck on that one. Good luck. I’m not due to renew until next year, so perhaps I should start looking for my passport now.

Golan Cipel’s decision to pass up on a lawsuit against soon to be ex-NJ governor Jim McGreevey is certainly puzzling to me and a bit of a surprise [link]. As a matter of fact, I am at a total loss for words. I can only guess that he got a serious case of cold feet, perhaps thinking that the years of potential litigation would not be worth the potential payoff which he may have realized would not be in the millions.

I still think someone pushed Cipel into threatening the governor. Who could it be?? The list of people who are pissed off at McGreevey would look like one of those carpets they roll down the aisle at a wedding. This is definitely payback, and payback is a bitch.

I tend to think Cipel didn’t know what he was getting himself into. If he really wanted money, he would have hired a better attorney. Lowy seemed to be in over his head with the group of hired guns McGreevey had on his side.

So does Cipel fade into obscurity, perhaps the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question in 10 or 20 years?? I think he’ll try to cash in on his 15 minutes of fame perhaps with a book and/or talk show tour. After that, I don’t know.

I didn’t watch the MTV Video Music Awards, so I missed Alex and Vanessa Kerry speaking to the crowd, reminding them to vote and also to vote for their father. The crowd went ballistic, booing the two fair maidens. Curtis Sliwa played a tape on WABC radio this morning. That sounded pretty bad, but then I watched the video over at The Daily Recycler and it was even worse than I thought. The Kerrys must think that the Swift Boat Vets bought up all seats at the MTV show. Unfortunately for them, it was mostly a young, urban crowd.

Hopefully the musicians on the Kerry concert tour in October will get a similar response when they start to inject politics into their concerts. “Just shut up and sing”. By the way, if Kerry continues to sink in the polls, something tells me that concert tour will look more like a funeral procession than a victory tour.

The democrat columnists are starting to circle the wagons around John Kerry, and unfortunately for JFK they’re aiming their gunfire inwards. Ultra-liberal William Raspberry in today’s Washington Post wonders if the “Anybody But Bush” vote is enough to elect Kerry. Bill’s answer: I doubt it. Raspberry really rips into Kerry for the flip flopping on Iraq and he finishes the article by saying either Kerry has idiots for advisors or that his lack of clear policy positions shows him to be “..weak on leadership”. Ouch.

Bill Greider’s article at The Nation, Damaged Goods shows how out of touch with mainstream America the far left Michael Moore wing of the democrat party is. Check out this line from the article: “…Kerry has also acquired an unusual asset–the neutrality of the major media. After playing compliant lapdog for the Warrior in Chief, the New York Times and Washington Post are now creating distance from their former hero…” The NY Times?!?! Compliant lapdog?!?! Greider is also upset that Kerry is not attacking Bush personally. I guess calling Bush a deserter is not personal enough for the left wing Kool-Aid drinkers. Grieder then finishes the article by speculating that Bush may bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities right before the election to scare the public into voting for him. Grieder probably would have written some more, but the attendants showed up to put on his straight jacket and carry him back to his padded cell.

Hey, didn’t we just celebrate Memorial Day?? I can’t believe that summer is over and next week is back to school for the kids. The last week of summer is usually a weird week at work. Lots of people at my site are out on vacation and many people I usually deal with on the phone are out. My company is foreign owned, and Europe basically shuts down in August.

We did our two week long trips in June and July. I took two days vacation last week, going to the Land of Make Believe on Wednesday and down the shore to Island Beach State Park on Thursday. The weather was OK, not too hot. There was a lot of seaweed washing up on the beach in the afternoon which sort of grossed out the kids. We played some games and the kids did the sand play stuff. See picture below of Liliana, Daniel, our next door neighbor and Allison. I may go to a barbeque on Sunday this weekend, but otherwise nothing major is planned.

I’m sure I don’t get as many hate comments as Kitty at Kitty Litter or Pat at Kerry Haters, but now that DynamoBuzz is getting more traffic, the trolls are not far behind.

This guy really did not like my Michael Moore/Bruce Springsteen Photoshop picture: Wow, you’re a moron - I was just looking for the story on Dave Matthews tour bus and found this garbage. I hope he was just referring to the overall right wing commentary at DynamoBuzz and not to my “Born to Run” artwork which I consider to be a damn masterpiece. You should have seen some of the titles I was thinking of using. Hey, y’all come back now, ya hear??

I’m looking around for good photoblogs with unfiltered photos of the left wing whackos protesting the Republican convention in NYC. Blogs of War has a photo of Michael Moore, Danny Glover and Jesse Jackson. Gee, I guess Bush is really in trouble now. Slant Point is one of the officially sanction RNC bloggers, and he’s got some more shots, but there a bit dull. The Picture Pages at Ken Wheaton Photos is better, with particularly funny captions. I like the shot of a very serious looking protestor being interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Hey, you moron, you’re talking to a hand puppet!! Where are the lesbian nuns on motorcycles?? And jokes about “Bush” and women’s private parts?? What a bunch of unimaginative, boring protestors.

I’ll be checking in on RNC Bloggers, the gathering place for all the bloggers covering the convention.

Bob Ingle writes in today’s Gannett Papers that soon to be acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey needs to clean house immediately [link]. Ingle notes that though Codey will assume the governor’s job on November 15th, all of McGreevey’s political appointees will still be in power. I believe McGreevey’s immediate staff all quit, but Trenton is loaded with patronage jobs, and given McGreevey’s “skill” at political appointees, the odds are that a big chunk of these appointees are useless political hacks. Ingle notes that Golan Cipel got a political job for his cousin, and he’s still on the payroll. Fire’em all, Richard.

Three important “gaps” for the upcoming presidential election:

• The Gender Gap: The media makes a big deal about the gender gap, always pointing out the republicans don’t do as well among women voters. If I was a reporter, I’d turn it around ask democrats how come they don’t do well with male voters. Republicans always win the male vote. The gender gap is over rated.
• The Religion Gap: This is legitimate and becoming a serious problem for the democrats. World Magazine Blog has a post, The secularist party, which notes that the democrats are increasingly becoming the party of the non-religious. Almost 20% of the democrat party rejects religion. Many of these democrats are not just non-religious, they are anti-religious bigots, hating the catholic church for it’s rigid teachings on homosexuality and abortion, and castigating christians as ignorant rednecks. The article notes that for democrats to win, they need to capture a big chunk of the catholic vote along with solid majorities of the black vote. Many black voters are religious, pro-life and anti-gay marriage. The democrats are walking a tight rope on this one, and I think they’re blowing it.
• The Celebrity Gap: Yes, most celebrities are left wing bleeding heart liberal democrats, but the republicans have their share of celebrities, and I’m not just talking country music stars. As this article speculates, Adam Sandler, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, Mandy Moore, Ricky Schroder, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Angie Harmon may all be closet republicans. This is so scandalous in Hollywood that “Details” magazine is planning to “out” them in the September edition.

The Top 10 science fiction movies ever, as selected by a panel of experts at UK’s Guardian newspaper:

1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Star Wars
4. Alien
5. Solaris
6. Terminator
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still
8. War of the Worlds
9. The Matrix
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

True story: my wife and I met in college back in 1982, and the first movie I ever took her to was Blade Runner. She hated the movie, but we got married anyway.

It’s funny how a movie can get bad reviews when it’s first released, but later on the same movie can be considered a classic. The critics hated “Blade Runner” when it was first released, and I think it did lousy at the box office. Two other movies of that era, “Scarface” and “Apocalypse Now”, also were considered bombs by the critics at the time, but now these same flicks are considered masterpieces of modern cinema. Go figure.

• Not a big turnout for the March on Trenton rally [link]. As I said below, I had already promised to take the kids down the shore for that day, and it was a splendid day at Island Beach State Park, though there was a lot of seaweed washing up on the shore later in the afternoon.
• McGreevey will apparently be spending his last few weeks doing mostly harmless stuff, but he hasn’t given up on the stupid constitutional convention on property taxes. He signed a law that allowed for the creation of a task force to study the issue, and most of the task force members have been named. The chairman will be a Rutgers prof whose specialty is apparently “labor issues”. Also appointed by McGreevey was a lawyer who represents labor union AFSCME in dealings with the state. That doesn’t sound too good for the taxpayers if you ask me. There will be at least four NJ legislators on this task force. If instead of being on this committee those four guys actually did their jobs in Trenton, we wouldn’t need a constitutional convention.
• Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has a piece called Golan Cipel — A Day at the Office. Yes, in an administration of some awful appointments, Cipel could be the worst. As always, check in at Parkway Rest Stop and The Bad Hair Blog for the latest McGreevey commentary. They both have written a bit about the lawsuit to force an early election. I think this is the legal equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
• I had read that the deadline for a civil lawsuit was August 16th. Apparently that was the day Cipel resigned from his cushy state job, but he was still on the payroll for two more weeks. Therefore the deadline is actually this coming Monday, August 30th. Cipel’s attorney says he only wants McGreevey to apologize. I’m not a lawyer, but I think a McGreevey apology would be exhibit A in a civil lawsuit. Don’t expect McGreevey to give Allen Lowy so much as the time of day.
• The Trentonian has a round-up of the McGreevey/gay jokes from late night TV. Leterman has this one, wondering aloud “…whether it was too early to hit on Mrs. McGreevey”. Well, at least they’re not telling toxic waste jokes anymore.
• The Princeton University school newspaper, the Hilltop, is still spouting the line that the McGreevey scandal is about his personal sex life [link]. Yes, just because you go to Princeton doesn’t mean you’re automatically intelligent. Apparently they have their share of dimwits.

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie has done a much better job than his predecessors Marc Racicot and Bill Nicholson. The Burlington County Courier Post has a good article about Gillespie. He’s a Jersey guy, born and raised in Pemberton. He started in politics working for the other guys. He was an aide to a demcrat representative from Florida before he switched party affiliation to the GOP. Let’s hope his legacy is more like former RNC chairman Lee Atwater than some of the other less successful chairman.

As I’m sure John Kerry knows, Vietnam vets as a whole have a high rate of alcohol and drug problems, marriage difficulties and health problems. Now it appears that Kerry is sanctioning an attack on the Swift Boat Vets by digging up dirt on their past and leaking it to the media. This is straight from the Clinton playbook, but Kerry doesn’t have the Clinton “aw shucks” set of brass balls to pull it off without it backfiring at him. In a shot across the bow at the Swift Boat vets (hey, that’s a Navy term!!) the first veteran to be attacked appears to be James Zumwalt, son of famed admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Kerry’s attack dogs have leaked details of an apparent suicide attempt via prescription drugs. Keep it up, John, see how many more veterans you can piss off.

Sign #1: Whining. See below.

Sign #2: You challenge Bush to weekly debates as John Kerry just did today. In my many years of following politics, the losing candidate always demands debates, while the winning candidate tries to keep them to a minimum.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Kerry will say “The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day”. This line is on the tombstone of many losers. When he says it, you’ll know that Bush has the election in the bag.

The LA Times has a poll today showing Bush leading Kerry by 3 points, 49 to 46 percent [link]. That’s without Ralph Nader. Most of the recent polls show it dead even or Kerry by one points [link].

Bush has the convention coming up next week. Even a tiny bounce will put him up in all the polls on Labor Day. That’s a key date, because historically whoever is leading on Labor Day wins the race. I think the only exception was 1980, when Reagan pulled it out over Carter. Bush is no Carter, and more importantly, Kerry is no Reagan.

Everything favors Bush right now. He’s got the power of incumbency. The economy is doing OK, not great but no Great Depression. Iraq is still an issue, but it’s been an issue all year, and I don’t see anything over the next two+ months that would be worse than what’s happened so far. The debates are still on the agenda, but Bush did well against Gore four years ago, so what makes you think Kerry will do better?? Three one-hour events with the arrogant, stiff Kerry trying to score cheap points with sound bites will turn off the voters.

And the Swift Boat thing has reduced the Kerry campaign to whining. America hates whining, especially in its leaders. Kerry even had to send Max Cleland to Crawford for a photo-op. It appears that Kerry is not ready for prime time, and the voters are starting to see it.

Moveon.Org, ACT, Michael Moore and George Soros must be fuming right now. They’ve unloaded millions of dollars in garbage on the president, and nothing is sticking. The voters have heard nothing but that crap for the last 6 months, and Bush is still leading or tied in the polls. Most people who aren’t Bush fans don’t think he’s Hitler. My gut feeling is middle America is repulsed by these left wing bottom feeders. I can see this upcoming victory concert tour being dominated by Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Moore type commentary. If it gets really bad in the polls, my guess is they start turning on Kerry.

Of course, things can change. But right now, August 26th, the fat lady is clearing her throat and getting ready to sing.

In a preview of the upcoming Kerry/MoveOn.Org concert tour in October, the Dave Matthews Band tour bus dumped 800 pounds of liquid human waste from their toilets off a bridge on the Chicago River and onto a passing tour boat containing around 100 tourists [link]. The Dave Matthews Band is one of the headline acts of the upcoming Bush hatefest tour. The band is being sued by the state of Illinois for violating state water pollution and public nuisance laws. Water pollution?? I thought democrats were against that??

• Jim McGreevey was interviewed by the FBI as part of the investigation into the alleged blackmail attempt by Golan Cipel [link]. McGreevey is supposed to be the victim here, yet he has his high priced lawyer, Bill Lawler, present during the interview. How many crime victims do you know will pay to have a lawyer present when they are talking to the authorities?? Not too many.
• Looks like Jon Corzine is giving up trying to get McGreevey to leave office early. In a speech to a bunch of trade unionists in Atlantic City [link], Corzine said he was prepared to serve if the governor stepped down, but McGreevey “thoughtfully” explained to him that it was in the best interests of the state if he stays. Corzine fell for that line of bull.
• Tom Baldwin at the Gannett Papers wonders if McGreevey will be spending the extra days in office shredding documents [link]. McGreevey mouthpiece Micah Rasmussen said McGreevey will will follow the rules for preserving documents as prescribed by the NJ Department of State. Of course, when reporters asked to see a copy of the rules, the requests were denied.

A few weeks back in Louisiana, a democrat member of the House of Representatives, Rodney Alexander, switched from the democrat party to the republican party. The switch came after the deadline for putting candidates on the ballot, thereby denying the democrats a chance to nominate someone to run against Alexander. Well, the democrats sued, and a judge has allowed the democrats to field a candidate anyway. [link].

The judge ruled that the effect of the late switch was “..to subvert a fair and honest election process for his own personal gain. His actions were marked by a total disregard for the electorate.” Subvert the election process?? Personal gain?? Total disregard for the electorate?? Sounds like Jim McGreevey.

One of my favorite bloggers is Michelle at A Small Victory, so I was sad to see this announcement that she was going on hiatus at A Small Victory. No more blogging until “..October, maybe November. Maybe forever.”

Blogger burnout?? Taking a break from all the politics over the next two months?? Perhaps Michelle is going the Wonkette route and heading onto bigger blogging and/or media challenges?? I hope so.

Though she says she’s not posting at A Small Victory, she does say she will be posting at her “new” blog, Popped Culture. There’s only one post, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album. The first CD I ever bought was “Dark Side of the Moon”. I bought it in 1988 while I was living in California. I bought a used copy at a store in Long Beach. The second CD I ever bought was AC/DC “Back in Black”.

I’m taking the rest of the week off for some end of the summer vacation trips. Tomorrow we’re going up to The Land of Make Believe, out in Hope NJ, exit 12 on route 80. We went last year for the first time. I thought the rides were a bit cheap but the water park part of the park was good. My kids liked everything and they’ve been talking about it all summer. Thursday we’re going down to Island Beach State Park (which means I’ll be missing The March on Trenton, a McGreevey-Must-Go protest apparently organized by NJ GOP leader Joe Kyrillos. Sorry, Fausta, bad timing.) Not sure yet about Friday, perhaps TurtleBack Zoo in West Orange. Next week is a rough week at work, didn’t feel too good taking days off then.

And then, that’s it, back to school for the kids. I’ve heard as you get older the summers go faster. I must be nearing senior citizen status because I remember Memorial Day like it was last week.