Annual Fall Gala Fundraiser for the Morris Democratic Committee.
Come join the Democrats for dinner, speeches, and a big celebration.
Buffet Dinner $100.00 per person. Couples $175.00. Senior, student rate $75.00.
To Benefit The FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties
www.foodbankmoc.org
Most needed items are:
Ready-to-eat canned meals
Canned Meat
Canned Tuna
Canned Fruits
Canned Vegetables
Instant Potatoes
Canned and Dry Soup
Peanut Butter & Jelly
Canned Pork and Beans
Canned Juices
Sip-size Juices
Hot and Cold Cereal
Pasta & Sauces
Nonperishable milk
For every $5 donated, the FoodBank can distribute $25 worth of food for needy families
Hunger Facts:
Did You Know that:
? Over 100,000 people in Monmouth and Ocean Counties live on incomes that place them
at risk of going hungry?
? Out of every four people that receive emergency food is a child?
? Last year, the FoodBank provided 3.9 million pounds of food to people in need through
over 200 pantries, soup kitchens and other food programs in our two counties.
Before the Professor and Maryann got their due in the Gilligan's Island theme song, they were known collectively as "the rest." And that's about how some of NJ's House races, and the Senate race, must have felt this year.
With the Obama campaign sucking up so much of the oxygen (and money, and energy, and ultimately the very PA-bound volunteers themselves), most of what was left over was focused on the "hot" races in NJ-3, NJ-5, and NJ-7. Like so often in the past, if you weren't running in one of the hot races, then you found yourself with scant attention being paid to your campaign.
In the case of Senator Lautenberg, and our 7 Democratic House incumbents, no news was good news. New Jersey's voters delivered a solid double-digit win to its senior Senator, and sent the Magnificent 7 back to Washington with an average margin of victory of over 40%. But for Congressional Challengers in NJ-2, NJ-4, and NJ-11, it was a different story altogether.
We look at each of these races in more detail below the fold.
Many people projected that Somerset County and the NJ7 would go blue as part of the Obama wave. It didn't happen...not even close. Why? How did the Freeholder and NJ7 campaigns go so wrong? Or is this "As Good As It Gets?"
In Republican Counties (see useful table below the fold to see where your county sits in the rank), I think there has been too much focus on county-wide, Legislative, and Congressional campaigns. These county and regional campaigns just don't seem to be winable...not yet. I feel that the focus should be on municipal success. We need to build strong Democratic Municipal Committees (DMCs). Strong DMCs can do grassroots education to make voters understand the importance of local, county, and congressional government positions. And a strong DMC is vital for building the resumes and experience of candidates at the higher levels. We need to crawl before we can walk.
Use this handy-dandy form to post your winners in the NJ races. Winner gets $7 in monopoly money from the old set in their closest. Mine are after the jump.
Tom Wyka always tells everyone that will listen, how he was inspired by the late Senator Paul Wellstone. A graduate of Camp Wellstone, Tom is following in the foot steps of many a great progressive democrats, wishing to run a people powered campaign, a campaign that values boots on the ground over Washington DC consultants and big time media buys. In spite of soliciting small donations from average voters, and not big donars, Wyka for Congress has raised enough money for TV and radio.
Heres the ad that has been playing in NJ-11 this week.
I am asking you to take Election Day off from work and come to Somerset County to make this election as painful as possible for the Republican bosses. We can win this county for Barack Obama and put some serious dents in the Republican hold here.
Just last month Somerset's registration advantage moved from the GOP to the Democrats, we have awesome candidates for Freeholder in Doug Singleterry and Cecilia Xie Birge, have four different Congressional races (Pallone, Holt, Wyka and Stender), and candidates running in just about every town. This is an opportunity we haven't seen in a long time, and we need your help to make it happen.
We will be working out of Bridgewater (Martinsville), Hillsborough, Montgomery and maybe one other town but our goal is to reach every single district in the county at least once. We need you to give us a few hours to make this happen.
This is an amazing opportunity to put NJ7 in the Democrats' pocket, elect Democratic Freeholders in Somerset for the first time since 1979, take some of the wind out of Rodney Frelinghuysen, and win control of at least four towns.
We need challengers at the polls, van drivers for our volunteers, people to go door-to-door to our voters reminding them to get to the polls, and others to staff the staging areas. Anyone 16 years or older can volunteer on election day and make a real difference.
If you can give us one, two, three, four or eight hours on election day, please give me a call at (908) 561-6387 or e-mail me at nathanrudy@gmail.com .
If you can't come to Somerset, please be sure to volunteer in your home town or county. The more workers we have the more votes we'll get!
Turns out Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen is too chicken to let people video his debate against Tom Wyka. Of course, given what happens when Republican House members talk on tape that's probably a good political strategy for him.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by election year politics don't miss this opportunity to laugh it all off and raise money to send Tom to the House of Representatives!
TomObamaRama will bring together some of your favorite progressive political comics in a hilarious night of election year comedy. Headliners Joey Novick (HBO, Showtime) brings his unique New Jersey home town brand of humor and Sam Greenfield (CNN, Huffington Post) brings the funny from across the Hudson River.
STARRING: Joey Novick & Sam Greenfield
HOSTED by Kevin O'Driscoll
WITH SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Alex Adams as Rudy Giuliani
SPECIAL INVITED GUESTS: Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio and Pope Benedict XVI
Heres chance for everyone to show some Wyka love next Wednesday, come on over to Livingston, bring your video camera because heres a rare chance to get Rodney on video.
Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 8pm
Livingston Senior/Community Center
204 Hillside Avenue, Livingston
"People who paid into the Social Security system depend on that system," Frelinghuysen said, adding that he wants both houses of Congress to work in a bipartisan way when addressing the crisis that funding for both entitlement programs might face a decade from now.
"I think there's a need for a bipartisan commission in both of these area," he said.
Does this mean he's not going to be pushing those private accounts still unless the commission backs him up? According to the Washington Post:
Rodney Frelinghuysen has voted with a majority of his Republican colleagues 87.8% of the time during the current Congress. This percentage does not include votes in which Frelinghuysen did not vote.
Frelinghuysen described the recently approved credit package in excess of $800 billion "the start of a very long process. Just because we gave power to (Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson ... doesn't mean we're out of the woods."
The congressman again called for a bipartisan solution, saying that Congress should work toward for both reviving and stabilizing the economy while improving consumer confidence.
I guess even the reporter picked up on the word game, but Rodney wasn't done:
Frelinghuysen, during his summation, stuck to his bipartisan theme in promoting the need for the nation to become independent of foreign oil, and to emerge from the current economic stagnation.
"We don't need members of Congress to poison the atmosphere as we're trying to calm the atmosphere (for) true financial progress," he said.
So to recap, we need to talk about very bi-partisan, while not voting in a bi-partisan manner except for when it comes to replacing him with that partisan Tom Wyka to actually fix the mess that Rodney has helped create.
It could happen to you, even if you have health insurance. Illness and medical bills are the major cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. Although we have 47 million uninsured people, most of the 2 million people per year affected by medical bankruptcy had health insurance when they first got sick. But they weren't really protected, because of exclusions, high deductibles, and copays. Or they lost their insurance when they could no longer work. At the same time, businesses and local governments are struggling to pay the high premiums for their employees' benefits.
When you buy private insurance, about 30% of your premium goes to overhead: dividends for the investors, the high salaries of their officers, and a bureaucracy that picks your doctor for you and tries to find ways to avoid paying for your care. In contrast, Medicare's overhead is only 3%. How could a government program be so efficient? Well, Social Security's overhead is only 1%. No private pension plan can compare to that!
In this video, Tom emphasizes the plight of so many Americans, many of them close friends and aquiantances, who struggle with the high cost of healthcare in our country. These are real people. They could be your friends, relatives, neighbors or their children. Many of us could be one severe illness away from the same situation.
It doesn't have to be this way. No one in any other industrialized country has this problem. What you have to do is elect people to House of Representatives and the Senate and the White House who will solve this problem. It comes down to you. Please go to www.tomwyka.com to see how you can help.
On Monday, July 14, President George W. Bush lifted his father’s ban on drilling for oil and gas off the East and West Coast and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. But before anyone can drill there, Congress would have to lift its own ban. The President said that “Now the ball is squarely in Congress’s Court.” However, the President knows full well that lifting this ban will do nothing to solve our current problems. The Energy Information Administration estimates that drilling in those areas won’t affect oil production and thus oil prices before the year 2030. In addition, oil companies already have 68 million acres under government leases that they can currently drill, and exploration ships are booked solid for the next five years.
We got a wakeup call about oil back in 1973, with the Arab Oil Embargo. We hit the snooze alarm again after the 1979 energy crisis. Starting in late 1978, a strike in the Iranian oilfields nearly shut off Iran’s oil production. Although other OPEC countries increased their production, the world’s output of oil decreased by about 4% in the short run. I remember the resulting gasoline shortages very clearly. I was a young teenager then, and I made some money selling newspapers at the end of my block to the people waiting in line for gasoline, at a station about half a mile away. We knew then that even a small decrease in oil supply could cause major problems. Yet what is our government doing while our gasoline prices are soaring? President Bush and our current incumbent Congressman, Rodney Frelinghuysen, opposed efforts to shift tax incentives from big oil companies to efficiency and clean energy technologies, such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. If alternatives are the future, why propose an oil-based solution that will not show any results for years?
Since the beginning of the oil business, the “problem” that the oil companies nearly always faced was overproduction. The big oil fields were discovered early, and it was all too easy to pump too much of that oil too fast. The resulting “oil gluts” would drop prices very low. But conditions have changed recently. There’s still lots of oil, but what’s left is harder and more expensive to produce. As a result, oil production hasn’t increased lately, despite the record prices. And it’s likely production levels can’t increase. Even Saudi Arabia might be able to produce only 10.4 million barrels per day on a sustained basis, and might not be able to produce more than 12 million barrels per day in emergencies. This is far less than recent optimistic estimates. When you combine stagnant supplies with rising world demand, you get today’s skyrocketing prices.
Currently, the rise in gasoline prices is causing real hardship for people throughout the country. We need Congress to do something that will make a difference now. For example, the American Trucking Associations want the national speed limit to be reduced to 65 mph. We also need more funding for public transit, which is having a huge growth in ridership. We also need to plan for the future. Back in 2006, I called for a new “Manhattan Project”—but this time to develop ways to conserve energy and harness alternative sources of energy. During his last few terms in office, your current Congressman has been too busy supporting the Bush administration and the oil industry’s profit margins to do much about these issues. Don’t you think it’s time for a change?
OK, now that FEC reports are out it's time to check out how we are doing in Republican held and open seats. Essentially the six seats with incumbent Democrats are pretty much safe, so these are the places where we might be playing.
The middle column shows where we are doing better than the Republican. You expect that Dems would do well in NJ1 (see notes below about what a joke NJ1 is), but we are winning the money game in NJ3 and NJ7 as well -- overwhelmingly.
Cand.
2Q$
CoH
Adv
Cand.
2Q$
CoH
Andrews (NJ1)
$72,240
$15,611
Glading (NJ1)
TBA
TBA
Kurkowski (NJ2)
$172,772
$89,773
LoBiondo (NJ2)
$205,422
$1,491,954
Adler (NJ3)
$738,683
$1,463,747
Myers (NJ3)
$241,762
$155,406
Zeitz (NJ4)
$114,053
$124,535
Smith (NJ4)
$143,300
$503,944
Shulman (NJ5)
$234,249
$258,381
Garret (NJ5)
$293,963
$649,003
Stender (NJ7)
$494,265
$1,100,000
Lance (NJ7)
$191,107
$80,792
Wyka (NJ11)
$11,112
$15,540
Hot Rod (NJ11)
$121,330
$717,893
One source of mystery is Dale Glading, who is running in NJ1 against the alleged candidate Camille Andrews (whose fundraising once again demonstrates she is not a real candidate).
A search for Glading, Republican, NJ, House on FEC.gov produces no results for contributions or disbursements of any kind. No July Quarterly report has been filed, but at the least as of primary day Glading had raised no money.
That means, as near as I can tell, there are no real candidates running in NJ1. Sheesh.
Update: This is updated to include the pre-primary filing numbers. The CoH numbers were accurate last night, but after the comments it was updated to include the whole quarter.
You've no doubt taken Huntsu's Senate Primary Poll already. But what about the other races playing out in tomorrow's supposed-to-be-irrelevant June Primary? Here's a place to share your thoughts, comments and predictions about some of those other primaries happening tomorrow.
Congressional Primaries
Contested Democratic primaries in the 1st, 5th and 11th Congressional Districts, plus Republican primaries in the 3rd and 7th promise to provide more primary-night intrigue than I can lately remember.
On the Democratic side, there are some pretty strong favorites going in, though I think the results will be closer than expected in all three places. On the Republican side, I think that Kelly is going to pull it out in the 3rd, and (I hope I'm wrong) that Kate Whitman is going to steal home in the 7th.
Local Races
And, don't forget about the local races happening here, there and around, like the BCDO showdown with the Real Bergen Democrats, and even a hard-fought mayoral primary in Washington Township (yes, that Washington Township).
How do you think tomorrow will shape up down-ballot? And, tell us what other local races you have your eyes on.
"How do you ask a man...to be the last man... to die for a lie?"
Those were the famous words of the young John Kerry before the Fulbright Committee in 1971.
The question is as relevant today as it was then.
Harry Hager is the only Congressional candidate (Democrat, 11th CD) who is astute enough and -- frankly, PO-ed enough -- to make the point.
Lies have been told, to justify the war. The lies continue to this very day.
They are willful.
Rodney Frelinghuysen knows full well -- or else he's amnesiac -- that this war cannot be won.
Why can it not be won? It should be obvious, but let me spell it out.
We send hundreds of men with guns, big guns, and big trucks and heavy armor into a country where they do not speak the language and have maybe a crash course in the culture.
They take over the roads, they shoot the place up just to make an impression; they are foul-mouthed and disrespectful to the citizens including their women.
We get only one chance in life to make a bad impression.
Almost immediately they have lost any hope of gaining the trust of the locals.
Almost immediately they have lost any cooperation and hope of so-called "actionable intelligence" to find the bad guys.
But they have to do something, so they interrogate people, treat them badly, run around, knocking down doors in the middle of the night.
It takes very little time before they have created more enemies than were there when they came in.
Pretty soon, they are in a cycle: more bad guys, more casualties, more frustrating interrogations, more abusive treatment, more bad guys.
Rodney knows this. He was in Vietnam -- where we saw it every day.
Still he repeats the militarist rhetoric. It's bred in the bone of these old-line families, the McCains and Frelinghuysens, the families who gave their all to fight the cold war.
They still don't get it that a guerilla war -- asymmetric warfare -- cannot be won by brute force.
Moreover, in Iraq and Afghanistan we are surrounded and out-numbered.
The borders are open to unlimited numbers of suicidal maniacs. The Madrassas produce thousands of them. They are waiting line to go out and kill Americans. We have no idea who or where they are. They refuse to wear uniforms. They look just like any other citizen, but they are waiting and watching.
Which goes to another reason why we cannot win: the element of surprise.
According to our own military doctrine -- which goes back to Clausewitz 150 years ago -- the element of surprise today lies entirely with the bad guys. They have a thousand eyes, watching us, they know our every move.
We barely know who they are, much less what they are up to.
As much as Custer at Little Bighorn, Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan are surrounded and out-numbered.
We are always on the defensive, surprised by every IED, every suicide bomber.
Then, throw in the endemic corruption in a society that has never known the rule of law. Throw in the Sunni-Shia fanaticism.
You have a witch's brew of an unwinnable war.
Rodney knows all of this. We should not have to spell it out.
Yet people die every day -- because of Rodney's lies.
"Cut and run," how many times did we hear that from Frelinghuysen? '"Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."
Now, he can't spin those lies any more, so he goes back to "...playing politics with our veterans."
He's the one who is playing politics. He's playing politics with people's lives.
He knows full well -- or else he's amnesiac, willfully -- that this war cannot be won.
If we win the primary on June 3rd, we will raise the money, and we will bring Rodney down.
If we win the primary, we will reach out to Congressional leaders like John Kerry, Jim Webb, Jack Murtha, Joe Sestak, and Patrick Murphy -- all either Vietnam or Iraq war veterans -- who would love to see Frelinghuysen defeated.
And they would welcome more anti-war veterans in Congress.
With the grace of God, and a press corps using their God-given native intelligence, we will bring this terrible man down.
Willful lies. The Banality of Evil. Did you guys ever hear of Hannah Arendt?
Six months ago Republicans held a registration advantage over Democrats in 6 of the state's 13 Congressional districts. Today, they lead in just two.
Over half a million voters registered as Democrats since late 2007. The 512,508 newly-registered Democrats represents a 48% increase in registered Democrats in New Jersey. In 2007, 24.9% of registered voters were declared Democrats while 19.3% were Republicans. Today, 35.8% are Democrats and 22.2% are Republicans. Unaffiliated and other voters dropped from 54.2% to 42%.
Thanks to the surge in partisan affiliation, Democrats now hold a partisan registration advantage in four additional Congressional districts that were previously dominated by Republicans: NJ-2 (LoBiondo (R)), NJ-3 (Saxton (R)), NJ-4 (Smith (R)), NJ-7 (Ferguson (R)). That advantage will be incredibly helpful for GOTV efforts, especially in the very competitive 3rd and 7th districts.
The greatest gains for Democrats came in NJ-3, NJ-4, NJ-11 and NJ-12 which each saw Democratic registration increase by over 60%. Republicans now hold a partisan registration advantage in just two districts: NJ-5 (Garrett (R)) and NJ-11 (Frelinghuysen (R)). In the 5th, the Republican registration advantage dropped from about 51,000 to 31,000 and in the 11th it dropped from about 66,000 to 46,000.
"This is more than a trend, it's a remarkable increase in Democratic voters that will have a lasting impact," said Democratc State Committee chairman Joe Cryan. "The people can't wait to bring the Bush era to an end and the best way to do that is to elect Democrats. It's not enough that the Bush Administration is coming to a close, the voters are rejecting everything with the Republican brand name."
Republican registration increased by a more modest 18% which means the partisan advantage for Democrats more than doubled from 240,089 to 600,723.
Last election cycle the status quo in Long Branch was shaken up when Brian Unger, former Democratic party activist, environmental advocate, and former candidate for state senate, defeated the hand picked candidate of longtime mayor Adam "I love eminent domain" Schneider. Unger has been shaking up the city establishment pushing to stop eminent domain abuse, open the schneider administration to more transparancy and accountability, stop the privatization of public beachfront property, and turn municipal government back to putting the people first. You folks at BLue Jersey should notice what's going on in Long Branch, where beating back conflict of interest-riddled local government is working. Unger has been bold, courageous, and thoughtful in challenging the Schneider regime and his rubber stamp council to put true democratic values first. This is the start of a real grassroots change in the city which has motivated and emboldened voters across the region.
St. Gregory's Episcopal Church here in Parsippany holds a "Films for Thought" series about once a month. At the Church last November, my wife and I finally got a chance to see "An Inconvenient Truth", after a long, busy campaign season. It was funny how most of the folks I associated with throughout the campaign, including my campaign manager, had seen the movie, and being a candidate - there was no time to even absorb a good book or even an article, let alone a good movie. In fact, Al Gore was sort of a bookend to my campaign in a sense as my first attempt to reach a group of potential supporters was to stand outside the Drew University field house with a few loyal helpers and pass out fliers about my campaign. That night at Drew - I only caught a few minutes of the tail end of his lecture - so it was great to finally see all the content so many months later.
"Films for Thought" includes a discussion by a panel of subject matter experts after the film (in that particular case only one could make it - Rich Hoffman, a local environmental scientist). When the discussion got around to possible political action/activism, Rich prefaced his comment - "Well - you're not going to see much change in the government unless we get publicly financed campaigns". My wife and I have to look at each other and chuckled loudly since it was a central theme of my campaign.
Why is it that most progressives I talk to see this as the lynch-pin of solving so much of what's wrong with government?
Voters in New Jersey's 11th congressional district need to read up on the person representing them in Washington. Rodney Frelinghuysen, someone who touts his moderate credentials, has gone off the deep end.
"Colleges and universities must do more to contain their costs, including those related to health care, insurance, and administrative and academic salaries," Frelinghuysen said. "Clearly, more must be done to address the cost crisis for those students entering college now and in the years to come."
What does Frelinghuysen mean when he says "contain the costs?"
Maybe he means cutting $12 billion in federal student-loan programs, which Rod and House Republicans did last February -- the day after they gave President Bush a standing ovation when he demanded permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. That day, they also cut from other public services like Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, and more -- all in the name of containing costs.
Frelinghuysen ended up voting for the massively popular bill, as he saw that every NJ member besides Garrett voted for it (Retire Garrett will cover his votes later this week).
But his words and his prior votes beg the question, 'What does Rod Frelinghuysen know about containing costs?' He's been in Congress for 7 terms -- years that have seen a surplus deflate into a deficit. He's cut aid for the aging and widowed. He's made it harder for working families to send their kids to college. All to give the wealthy some taxes cuts and allow the President to spend hundreds of billions (likely trillions) on a war with no oversight.
Frelinghuysen has no right to lecture anyone on containing costs.
