So we’ve got some ballot questions to vote on tomorrow and I thought I’d give you my view on them. Here’s the short answer: “no.”
Here’s basically what they are:
— Permanently dedicate all money earned from last year’s sales tax increase to property tax
relief.
This is amazingly insane, and yet so typical of how our government ‘works.’ People scream they want lower property taxes, so does Trenton do what you or I would do: spend less? Heck no! They make a new tax and take that money and give it to folks as a ‘property tax rebate’. As a bonus they’ve created a new bureaucracy to collect and distribute this, so spending and government obligations rise which means…they need more taxes. You really have to admire the creative genius at work here. “No.”
— Approve borrowing $450 million for stem cell research.
This might in theory be a good idea, and I’m certainly not opposed to government underwriting scientific research but the priority right now is to reduce government spending. This is more debt that we need to pay off, so No.
— Approve borrowing $200 million for open space preservation.
“No” for the reasons above.
— Revise language outlining when voting rights can be denied by deleting from the state Constitution the phrase “idiot or insane person” and replacing it with the phrase “person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.”
I don’t know, there’s something that warms my heart about having that language in our state Constitution; perhaps therein lies our new motto: “New Jersey, where idiots can’t vote but they can be elected!”
I say “No” to this as well. “Idiot” has a precise medical definition, and while the PC crowd may find it offensive it does clearly denote those poor folks who lack the mental horsepower to make basic decisions for themselves, and sorry, but they should not be allowed to make decisions for the rest of us. The same with insane. This would create a huge backlog in the court systems as well, it seems to me, for these competency adjudication hearings that need not take place and necessitate the creation of a whole new bureaucracy to manage them. So “No.”
So that’s my stand and I’m sticking to it.
…and soul: the only thing that covers this year is a quote from the Japanese groundskeepers in “Major League”.
“They shitty.”
“Thank you VERY much!!”
He thinks it’s quite natty.
So buy the place and have room to spare.
Previous tenant’s houseplants not included.
Well, I got one for ya that’s turn your stomach to gouda grits. There’s this:
…and then’s there’s THIS.
…TMZ first reported Brit earns an average of $737,868 per month.
Well, we were all on the edge of our seats about this, especially given a Certain Person’s* disappearance of late, but rest assured: according to (and I kid you not) KENS-TV
SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found during the summer in southern Texas is not the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra. It’s just a plain old coyote.
Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night they had identified the hairless doglike creature.
KENS-TV of San Antonio provided a tissue sample from the animal for testing.
“The DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote,” biologist Mike Forstner said in a statement. “This is probably the answer a lot of folks thought might be the outcome. I, myself, really thought it was a domestic dog, but the Cuero Chupacabra is a Texas Coyote.”
Stay tuned for any more breaking announcements on this story.
*The Certain Person’s name has been changed to protect the innocent friendly.
Thanks for all the lives you saved
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night.
Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.
Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said.
Oh, and MSNBC? You can kiss my ass for this headline:
Paul Tibbets, WWII commander of infamous B-29, requested no headstone
The Enola Gay was not “infamous,” with the implication that it did something wrong. She was justifiably famous and honored for her role in bringing the most horrific war in history to a close.
Read the transcript of your “Today” interview this morning
On the offensive after 18 months of relative silence following the breakup of her marriage to Sir Paul McCartney, Heather Mills said in an exclusive interview Thursday that the union broke up in part over the ex-Beatle’s refusal to spend more of his fortune on charity.
“I’m not perfect. There’s lots of things in our marriage that I could have done different,” Mills told co-host Matt Lauer via satellite from London.
But, the former model said, the biggest source of contention in the marriage was over what to do with McCartney’s estimated $1.6-billion nest egg and power as a darling of the British people.
“How can anybody have that kind of money and not do more for charity?” she asked. “That’s what we argued about all the time.”
Lemme give you a little clueski, Heather: it ain’t your money. If Sir Paul wanted to convert his $1.6 billion into one dollar bills and sit atop them like Smaug the Dragon he can. It’s his dough and he made every penny of it, while you contributed, I’m thinking, oh, zero.
But you’re the victim.
“I pleaded with him for 18 months,” she said. “I said, ‘You’ve never had any bad press. How do you think Beatrice is going to feel about this when she’s 12 or 13, reading that you allowed this to continue? How do you think she’s going to feel about that?’”
It’s not hard to see why he hasn’t had bad press and you have.
…vibrator.
…And no wonder, other scientists say. Dr. Rubin, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is reporting that in mice, a simple treatment that does not involve drugs appears to be directing cells to turn into bone instead of fat.
All he does is put mice on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it. The mice stand there for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. Afterward, they have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform — and correspondingly more bone.
You don’t even have to shake that thang anymore. It does it for you. And I’m sure it plugs into the wall, so no more environmentally unfriendly batteries.
Bingley’s Energizer days are over.
So the poor widdle petulant babies at State, who seem to think that it is they who are in charge of US foreign policy as opposed to our elected officials, don’t like their potential new assignment?
WASHINGTON – Several hundred U.S. diplomats vented anger and frustration Wednesday about the State Department’s decision to force foreign service officers to take jobs in Iraq, with some likening it to a “potential death sentence.”
In a contentious hour-long “town hall meeting” called to explain the step, these workers peppered the official who signed the order with often hostile complaints about the largest diplomatic call-up since Vietnam. Announced last week, it will require some diplomats — under threat of dismissal — to serve at the embassy in Baghdad and in so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams in outlying provinces.
The solution is very simple, and it is one that those of us in the private sector are quite familiar with: if you don’t want to do what your employer requires, you find a new job. Their job is to support and staff embassies, and be the everyday public face of the US abroad. So instead of working on “White Papers” go, you know, do it.
Or find another job.
Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
November 5, 2007 6:56 am | 
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