Who is right on critical speech: Tucker Carlson or Dawn Fantasia?

By Rubashov 

In common with so many establishment politicians, County Commissioner Dawn Fantasia seems to believe that large parts of her public life – the life she made public – are off limits to discussion. We got a taste of this earlier today, when her campaign sent around an email that entirely evaded what the voters have a right to know. 

Commissioner Fantasia made a statement that suggests she might be open to policies that allow registered sex offenders, convicted of sex crimes against children, to be granted custody of minor children. That is why we asked her for a clarification of her statement. We even invited her to publish her clarification, unedited, on our website. 

Fantasia’s statement was made on the front page of the November 10, 2014, edition of the Star-Ledger, the largest circulation newspaper in New Jersey. In a story concerning her former husband, a schoolteacher who was convicted of a sex crime against one of his students (and “required to register as a sex offender under Megan's Law and… undergo parole supervision for life”, ibid April 18, 2008), the Star-Ledger reported: 

“Like Jim Cunneely, Dawn Cunneely [Fantasia] believes he will never commit a similar crime. She calls him a good father, and she has granted him joint custody of the children.” 

Nobody made this up. It is on the front page of the state’s largest newspaper. And we’re not discussing events that happened at the time of her husband’s arrest and trial – but rather, statements made years after, when Dawn Fantasia was pursuing political office. Further, it appears the 2014 front page story was in aid of marketing a book, written by Fantasia’s former husband. Published in 2013, it is called “Folie A Deux” and is 374 pages of public disclosure. Anyone can buy it on Amazon for $19.95. 

So far, Fantasia has refused to issue a clarification, even though, as a member of the New Jersey Legislature, she will be voting on bills that affect Megan’s Law and mandatory sentencing, and sex crimes, and child custody. And in her 780-word email earlier today, Fantasia again failed to clarify for voters her position on this matter. 

Do voters have a right to know Dawn Fantasia’s position? 

Micah Rasmussen, Director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University, provides this answer: “Voters can't make informed decisions unless they're informed. If you asked any self-respecting constituent of George Santos, they'd tell you they wish they knew then what they know now.” 

But Commissioner Fantasia’s email today takes a different path. It lays out the argument that a politician who currently holds elected public office and who is pursuing higher elected public office should not have to answer to the public.  

And why? Fantasia claims a feminist exemption. Her campaign’s 780-word email is full of emotional rhetoric and offense-taking, but short on clarity. Please Dawn, just tell us how you would vote if you were a member of the Assembly. That’s all we asked.  

The Fantasia campaign’s email is similar to political mailings sent out earlier this year, that urged voters not to read non-establishment media. This is something out of the old Soviet Union – or one of Joseph Goebbels screeds, decrying “Jewish atrocity propaganda”. Disgusting really, and an example of how over-powerful politicians think they have become. 

Dawn Fantasia is a politician. She is paid by an organization that receives millions in taxpayer funding. She is an elected official who gets paid by the taxpayer. She is seeking higher public office – and a substantial pay raise. Dawn Fantasia does not get to decide what is or isn’t journalism.  

She might think she’s a big deal, but the United States Supreme Court has over-ruled her. They have determined that blogs are indeed journalism and that bloggers are indeed journalists. The Society of Professional Journalists agrees as well. 

Last week, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he was bringing his perspective to Twitter. His short statement contained a great deal of insights, such as this one, regarding statements that run counter to those of the “official” or establishment narrative: 

“The rule of what you can’t say, defines everything. It’s filthy, really, And it’s utterly corrupting. You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true. Speech is the fundamental prerequisite for democracy. That’s why it is enshrined in the first of our constitutional amendments.” 

Carlson then goes on to point out the dearth of media platforms that stand in opposition to the establishment narrative or that present an alternative perspective. The situation is bad nationally – but even worse locally, where some counties and local governments have become transparency free zones with no external oversight. Local media simply doesn’t exist, and the situation is a great incubator of corruption.  

Dawn Fantasia is an example of how politicians become when there is no local media to scrutinize them. They become apoplectic when asked questions about statements they made to the largest newspaper in the state. 

Tucker Carlson reminds us, “Free speech is the main right that you have. Without it, you have no others.” 

As an Assemblywoman – a member of the New Jersey Legislature – Dawn Fantasia will be voting on bills that affect Megan’s Law and mandatory sentencing, and sex crimes, and child custody. Fantasia’s statement certainly suggests that she might be open to policies that allow registered sex offenders, convicted of sex crimes against children, to be granted custody of minor children. That is why we asked her for a clarification of her statement from 2014. So far, she has refused. 

Earlier today, she refused again. 

Today’s Star-Ledger editorial explains why fewer and fewer read it

By Rubashov

In its editorials, the Star-Ledger has often referred to its predicament and has sadly complained about its declining readership. At the foot of everything its editorial board writes there’s a begging bowl: “Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.”

Editorials are something the Star-Ledger gives away for free. For the rare pieces of investigative journalism or in-depth news coverage – those are behind a pay wall – you need to give them money to read it. But nobody pays for the editorials.

And why would they?

The editorial board of the Star-Ledger is entirely predictable. Its writers are close-minded and lack any intellectual curiosity at all. As writers, they appear to lack the imagination to place themselves in the shoes of someone living outside the bubble they inhabit. They think in stereotypes. And they lie.

For example, in today’s offering by the editorial board, they claim it was Fox News that “fanned this whole firestorm” about school curriculum when, in fact (and as the personal testimony of parents reveals) it was the pandemic, the mandated school closings, and the consequent distance learning that did it. Parents saw what their children were learning. It was like taking a walk through the kitchen of an unhygienic restaurant. Nobody needs the media to tell you that you shouldn’t be eating there. It’s as simple as that.

If someone wanted to create a new bar game (along the lines of Quizzo) that gave players a topic and then asked them to guess the position on it taken by the editorial board of the Star-Ledger, it would be a dud. Nobody would ever fail to guess correctly. It would get boring – just like the Star-Ledger editorials.

The Star-Ledger is so predictable that it is boring even to the partisans it is trying to impress.

People enjoy reading different angles. They like an unexpected twist. That’s what makes mysteries so popular. Can anyone imagine Tom Moran as a mystery writer? What would the characters sound like in a Julie O’Connor novel? The average reader would have it figured out by page three.

We’re not sure if reading Star-Ledger editorials is a cause of dementia, but it can’t help. Maybe they should apply a warning label?

When they make an effort to get the reader’s attention, the editorial board relies on a prodigious amount of name-calling. A week or so ago, they were calling on people to travel to Pennsylvania to fight fascism. No kidding, like ISIS asks for volunteers to travel to Syria. But even after being jabbed with this fork, 99.9 percent of their readers went back to sleep. Hey, it’s not like Tom Moran is going to be there beside you when you get to Syria, er… Pennsylvania. He was just using a word he hoped would get your attention – if only for a moment.

The tone of the editorial board is a cross between a harridan, a karen, with a bit of church lady thrown in. As a rule, unpleasant, humorless, bathed in snobbery, pickled in certainty, always in a lather over something, screeching hysterically while trying desperately to remove an item unpleasantly lodged up the bunghole, and generally unhappy with life. Today’s editorial went further. It took on airs of official superiority. The editorial wasn’t only partisan, it went further and formally aligned the newspaper with the government. Now that is like Syria! Here’s what they wrote:

“Faced with the uproar over sex education in New Jersey, in which conservative critics continue to claim the state is ‘grooming’ children and stoke fears about the standards, the chair of our Senate education committee, Vin Gopal, took the high road.”

Our boys! Our flag! Our Senate education committee! By jingo!

No, it wasn’t the “high road”. It was the partisan road. It was the road of fear. There is as much “high road” in Trenton as there is “love” in rape. Everyone – from the denizens of “Trenton” to the average voter in every town and neighborhood across New Jersey – knows this. The editorial board suggesting otherwise is an insult to its readers.

The editorial board never once noticed that the legislation being pushed by “the chair of OUR Senate education committee” – Senator Vin Gopal – is in answer to a problem created by legislation that he earlier co-sponsored. And the editorial purposely obscured the controversy by focusing on the pretty words used in the language of the curriculum standards – instead of the realities of their implementation. The realities that parents saw first-hand and reacted to.

And the editorial board never noted the lack of transparency in the way Gopal’s “transparency” legislation was rolled out. In secret. In order to suppress public comment and – especially – comments from parents. He was shocked and angry when they showed up anyway.

Throughout the editorial, the Star-Ledger folks employ language in the way Pol Pot once did. It is the language in which the reality is the opposite of the words used to describe it. The word used is “transparency” but what it describes is opaque and unclear. The Star-Ledger, in common with government news organs throughout the world, promotes the literal view as opposed to the reality. It’s not a “death camp” – it is an “employment retraining center”.

Gopal lied when he claimed that the new curriculum has “nothing to do with ideology.” It is all about ideology, which is defined as “a system of ideas and ideals.” Gopal’s political allies at interest groups like Garden State Equality push their worldview, their “system of ideas and ideals.” Some would argue that aspects of it, such as the faith-based assertion that biological science can be altered by the exercise of individual will, give it a religious orientation.

There is nothing “wrong” in holding such a view, any more than it is to hold the view that water can be turned to wine or wine to blood. It is the imposition of these views that is at issue. The demand that we all have the same views and that it is the job of government to inculcate such views to all children – regardless of what their parents and taxpayers think about it. Gopal should stop lying about it. Talk about it, don’t lie about it.

But politicians like Vin Gopal never stop lying. It is their go-to drug of choice. And everybody knows this about them. And the media won’t cover that up. They can try, but they won’t.

As liars go, Vin Gopal is a politician.

Star-Ledger editorial finally admits that parents have the right to know

By Rubashov

It took a long time, but in a Sunday editorial the editorial board of the Star-Ledger finally admitted that “parents should give input on sex ed”. The editors of the state’s largest newspaper finally embraced the democratic principle that the governed – the taxed – should have the right to know what their children are being taught and that education bureaucracies should seek and receive their consent. Basic democracy, but it sure did take a long time for them to see it.
   
Of course, they had to sour the moment. Much in the way of an abusive, egotistical husband – the editorial board gave its mea culpa only after cataloging the faults of the injured spouse: “Sure, I’ve been wrong, but she’s a… bigot. I was wrong, but she had it coming.” Name-calling has never been a good look for you.
 
The editorial board went far afield in its invective, even noting their disdain for Tucker Carlson and his red light – which was funny coming from folks who had waxed so lyrically about the joys of Newark’s “Little Theatre”. Talk about red light!  
 
The Star-Ledger editorial board is just part of a long list of politicians, interest group lobbyists, and establishment media who have for years pushed their ideas on the indoctrination of school children without the involvement of parents. In fact, there are numerous laws designed to block parents from knowing – placing the education bureaucracy between parent and child – while requiring parents to pay the highest property taxes in America to fund that education bureaucracy.
 
In a summary of changes made in the updated education standards approved by the unelected State Board of Education in June 2020, the New Jersey School Boards Association noted all the instances when the word “parents” was cut out of the new standards. For example: “Parents and guardians impact the development of their children physically, socially and emotionally” was replaced with, “Family members impact the development of their children physically, socially and emotionally.”
 
For some education bureaucrats and interest group lobbyists, “parents” evidently don’t exist – or it’s a concept they’d like to consign to the scrap heap. What they don’t want them to stop doing – whatever they choose to rename them – is paying higher and higher property taxes to fund the education bureaucracy.
 
Yesterday’s editorial marks a sea-change however, with the Star-Ledger joining such former advocates as Governor Phil Murphy and Senator Vin Gopal in questioning what they had so recently pushed. Senator Gopal co-sponsored the law that created the curriculum problem. Governor Murphy signed it. The Star-Ledger praised it. But now there is a growing recognition that they’ve screwed up in a very big way and that they need to make a course correction before it is too late. This is from yesterday’s editorial:
 
Some of the sample materials posted online as a resource for teachers and distributed to parents in Westfield were too specific, as Sen. Holly Schepisi, a Republican, pointed out. For instance: Teachers are instructed to promote a website called Amaze and its YouTube channel to kids as young as 9 for additional information on sex ed, and while some of these videos are quite good, others, like one about how watching pornography is “normal,” just aren’t something most parents want to show their fifth grader.
 
This is a change from earlier in the week, when the Star-Ledger trotted out four of the interest group lobbyists who have been brought in by politicians and education bureaucrats. It has been these outside groups who have pushed the most controversial materials and stirred the greatest concern amongst parents. At the beginning of last week they were being brought in for a fightback – now everyone is distancing themselves from them.

This is who Politico selected to provide "unbiased" coverage of education issues in New Jersey.

Apparently, Politico didn’t get the memo. Late last week, they tapped LGBTQ+ advocate Carly Sitrin (who is also their education reporter), who attempted to make the debate over curriculum a partisan issue, when it plainly isn’t. The people paying the highest property taxes in America to fund their education bureaucracy have a right to know and a say in what that money is being used for. It's not blue or red – it’s just basic democracy.

Carly Sitrin’s Politico column highlighted the fact that some Republicans are part of the problem. Her column quoted a “New Jersey GOP strategist” who appeared to accuse some elected Republicans of using “extreme right-wing buzzwords” about the curriculum issue. According to Sitrin’s column, this GOP strategist said that this didn’t “resonate with the typical New Jersey Republican voter who leans more socially moderate”.

Well, that’s not what recent polling tells us. According to a fresh poll of GOP and Undeclared voters, conducted in a Democrat-controlled congressional district at about the same time Sitrin was writing her Politico piece, voters are very engaged:

DO YOU APPROVE OR DISAPPROVE OF MANDATING THAT CHILDREN IN PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS BE TAUGHT LESSONS ABOUT GENDER IDENTITY, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, AND LGBTQ ISSUES.

APPROVE 4.0
Strongly 1.2
Somewhat 2.8
DISAPPROVE 93.8
Somewhat 2.8
Strongly 91.0
DK/REFUSED 2.2

That’s pretty lopsided. Not much room for confusion. Which might explain why so many former supporters of these curriculum mandates are having second thoughts.

Republican Holly Schepisi sets straight Dems’ misrepresentation of curriculum

By Rubashov

Senator Holly Schepisi (R-39) stepped up, did the research, and delivered a knock-out punch to the excuses and misrepresentations being peddled by Democrats like Senator Vin Gopal and their media enablers. Senator Schepisi posted this earlier today:
 
There has been a lot of back pedaling and claims over the past two weeks that the dropbox link I shared with examples of "model curriculum" for sex-ed in New Jersey would never be implemented, wasn't intended for our schools and that teachers would never be encouraged to direct children to the amaze.org website. Some people have gone so far as stating that I am providing intentional misinformation. As I believe facts matter I have tied everything together. What my research has proven is that the "model curriculum" is in fact what would have ultimately been promoted for New Jersey schools. Parents stay involved, stay aware and continue to have your voices heard.
 
Amaze.org, Advocates for Youth and Answer at Rutgers are partners with Siecus.org which is Sex Ed for Social Change. Siecus partnered with advocates for Youth and Answer to create the Future of Sex Education which focuses on institutionalizing sex education. They jointly created the updated National Sexuality Education Standards in 2020 which standards were fully adopted by the NJ State DOE at their June 3, 2020 meeting. They also jointly created the “model curriculum” including the Amaze.org videos, to go along with the updated National Sexuality Education Standards which everyone is now backing away from. As an aside, Siecus advocates that Sex Ed in the US historically is a function of middle class white supremacy.
 
The State of New Jersey on its website has a link
https://www.nj.gov/education/standards/chp/index.shtml....
 
Under this link is a link to Rutgers' Answer Group. Answer is affiliated with Rutgers and is a partner with Advocates for Youth which creates the Amaze.Org videos.
 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15546128.2022.2060888?src=
 
In a Star-Ledger op-ed published today, the Democrats trotted out four so-called “experts” to argue for the curriculum mandates that have so infuriated parents and taxpayers. Of course, they are anything but “experts”. Instead, these four are political operatives and lobbyists who earn their living pushing highly partisan policy positions that serve to deeply divide America.
 
They might sound left-of-center, but that is simply the heavy application of lipstick on a pack of porkers. These people represent the intersection of policy-for-profit and the corporate establishment.
 
Take “expert” Dan Rice, the executive director of Answer.  A fashion plate amongst the “playing at being Left” Establishment, he brags on his own LinkedIn page about “partnering with Trojan Brand condoms to develop and launch Sex, Etc. University – an online sexual health resource…” and “serving on the committees to update the National Sex Education Standards and the New Jersey Health and Physical Education standards.”
 
Wow, Trojan Brand condoms! Talk about product placement!
 
Then there’s “expert” Debra Hauser, the executive director of Advocates for Youth. She’s listed as a federal lobbyist.
 
“Expert” Elizabeth Coulter is the director of public health and policy with Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey. Her group lobbies the Legislature and promotes political candidates (with money) at elections.
 
And last, but certainly not least, is “expert” Christian Fuscarino – the executive director of Garden State Equality. His group directly profited from government, even while it lobbied politicians and handed out checks to candidates.
 
Some “experts”! More like partisan hacks who like hanging around corporate Establishment types.    

The buttheads on the Star-Ledger editorial board owe Sussex County an apology

By Rubashov

People in Sussex County have just spent most of the week without electricity, heat for warmth or washing, and hot food. They’re used to waiting for the government and government-sanctioned utilities to get around to them last. Sure they provide the drinking water to New Jersey’s cities – but that hasn’t stopped Governor Phil Murphy from wanting to turn the county into a dumping ground and cutting education funding to the county’s children.

Now the editorial board of the Newark Star-Ledger have directed their collective bungholes in the direction of Sussex County – to engage in a bit of unreserved dumping themselves. Over the weekend, the Star-Ledger let go a massive dump on folks still in the process of dealing with the damage done by that early December snowstorm.

According to the Star-Ledger, the arrest of two social outcasts – members of a biker gang – is a sign of a vast underlying social and political movement in Sussex County. The editorial board claims that in “sleepy Sussex County” there has been “a troubling uptick in hate crimes lately.”

Of course, this isn’t true. According to the official Bias Incident Report put out by the Murphy administration earlier this year – signed by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, State Police Colonel Patrick Callahan, and Civil Rights Director Rachel Apter – Sussex County experienced no increase in bias crime between 2017 and 2018 (the latest available figures). No increase… as in zero.

The same cannot be said for counties like Passaic, which experienced a 286% increase; or Union County, with a 200% increase; or Camden, with a 55% increase in bias crime; or Hudson County with its 43% increase. Of course, these are all Democrat-controlled counties, so the Star-Ledger would be hesitant to tie these genuine “up-ticks” to something like “White Extremism”. Far-better to just fashion a narrative around the arrest of a couple biker gang members in a relatively peaceful county – and then use them to characterize and smear the entire population.

The official figures – the data – reveal something else as well. Statewide, “bias crime” or “hate crime” has fallen. Since figures began in 2006, reported incidents have fallen from 825 that year to 569 incidents in 2018. Such crimes are actually quite rare – from 151 arrests in 2006, “bias crime” has fallen to just 59 arrests in 2018. Those are the official figures, direct from the Murphy administration.

In fact, the only “bias crime” evidenced by the Star-Ledger’s editorial board is the crime of bias committed by said board against the people of Sussex County.

In August of this year, NJ 101.5 went through the Murphy administration’s Bias Incident Report and listed the 49 municipalities with the worse incidence of “bias” or “hate crime”. Guess what? None of those municipalities were in Sussex County. None.

Now guess which towns were listed? Number one for “hate crime” was East Brunswick, in Middlesex County. Number two was Evesham Township, Burlington County. Woodbury (Gloucester), Hoboken (Hudson), South Brunswick (Middlesex), Cherry Hill (Camden), Fort Lee (Bergen), Princeton (Mercer), Hackensack (Bergen), Livingston (Essex), Montclair (Essex), West Orange (Essex), Jersey City (Hudson), Edison (Middlesex), and New Brunswick (Middlesex) all appear to be hotbeds of “White Extremism” if the Star-Ledger is to be believed.

Funny thing… some of these towns are the places of residence of those very same members of the Star-Ledger’s editorial board. Which means, next time they want to take a dump on somewhere, they should just step outside, pull down their drawers, and do it on their own front steps – because apparently, that’s where all the action is.

So why would the Star-Ledger just make this crap up and defame a whole county and its people? Well, we’ve been here before…

All this puts us in mind of the Great Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s. The media went crazy reporting on every salacious detail, hundreds of suspected “witches” and “cultists” were investigated while politicians and prosecutors pontificated and made their careers, dozens were arrested, many of whom were convicted and spent years in jail – before the truth pushed through to reveal that it was all just media hype. A public circus of show trials and fake stoked fear.

The New York Times covered this in one of their Retro-Report series…

Those convicted were eventually released. Instead of the media, the politicians, and prosecutors who convicted them being made to pay – the taxpayers paid out millions as some measure of restitution to the people whose lives were destroyed (for a story, a headline, a conviction). Writer Aja Romano wrote an interesting piece on the Satanic Panic a few years ago…

In 1980, a since-discredited memoir called Michelle Remembers became a scandalous bestseller based on its purported detailing of a childhood spent undergoing a wealth of shocking occult sexual abuse. Its co-authors were controversial psychologist Lawrence Pazder and his wife Michelle Smith, a former patient Pazder claimed to have regressed into childhood through hypnosis. Pazder purportedly helped Smith uncover memories of past abuse at the hands of members of the Church of Satan, which Pazder insisted was older than LaVey’s group by several centuries.

Almost from the moment of Michelle Remembers’ publication, its claims and allegations were repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. However, thanks to widespread and credulous media praise, Pazder and Smith were able to double down on their story, and Pazder became seen as an expert in the arena of what would come to be called satanic ritual abuse.

Despite the wild implausibility and unverifiable foundation of its stories of grisly abuse and sex orgies, Michelle Remembers was presented during the ’80s and early ’90s as a textbook for legal professionals and other authorities. It also spawned numerous copy-cat memoirs like 1988’s Satan’s Underground, all equally false, which embellished and mainstreamed the idea of a massive, intergenerational, clandestine satanic ritual sex abuse cult — one that could be occurring in your very own neighborhood.

“The devil worshippers could be anywhere,” writer Peter Berbergal said in summing up the zeitgeist. “They could be your next-door neighbor. They could be your child's caregiver."

The false narrative of Michelle Remembers would directly impact the nation for over a decade. Its dark occult fantasies helped to spark the rash of wildly dramatic, highly unfounded accusations of satanic ritual abuse that were attached to a string of daycare centers throughout the 1980s…

This fear would ravage communities and ruin multiple lives before it finally subsided — and lead to two of the most notorious criminal trials in US history.

…In 1980 in Bakersfield, California, social workers had been reading the just-published Michelle Remembers as part of their training when a number of children came forward to declare that they had been molested as part of a clandestine local occult sex ring. Two of the girls had been coached by a grandparent who was believed to have a history of mental illness. Over the coming months, their story of strange occult sex acts would grow more and more bizarre, as they claimed to have been hung from hooks in their family’s living room, forced to drink blood and watch ritual baby sacrifices, and much more.

Between 1984 and 1986, the investigation into these labyrinthine claims of satanic ritual abuse would send at least 26 people to jail in interrelated convictions, despite a complete lack of corroborative physical evidence for any of the claims.

Nearly all of those convictions have since been overturned, including that of a local carpenter named John Stoll, who spent 20 years of his 40-year sentence in jail. Parents Scott and Brenda Kniffen were each sentenced to 240 years in jail after their own sons were coached, through coercive investigative techniques and overeager therapists, to accuse them of child molestation. Both children later recanted and the Kniffens were released after serving 12 years in prison. As adults, several of the children involved in the trials professed to have been traumatized by their own earlier false testimony and the subsequent damage it caused.

But these children weren’t alone; the Kern County abuse case was the first, but would not be the last, to spiral hopelessly out of control.

…Among the many failed prosecutions of satanic ritual abuse in daycares was the McMartin trial, which became the largest, longest, and most expensive trial in California history. This massive investigation began in 1983, when one parent accused one of the staff members at the McMartin pre-school in Manhattan Beach, California, of abuse. During the police investigation into the abuse claims, a child-service nonprofit group known as the Children’s Institute conducted examinations of 400 children who attended the daycare. The examinations were run by a woman named Kee MacFarlane, who was an unlicensed psychotherapist.

MacFarlane had no psychological or medical training, and boasted a welding certificate as her highest academic credential; still, she and two other unqualified assistants were allowed to conduct the investigations, famously using “anatomically correct” dolls and other questionable methods of interrogation. These extremely coercive interview processes led to false memories among children, which then led to highly fantastic claims of abuse directed at even more staff members. Out of 400 children, the interviewers determined that 359 of them had been abused.

The accusations collected by the Children’s Institute resulted in a staggering 321 counts of child abuse being leveled at seven daycare staff members by 41 children. (Pazder, now considered an “expert” in satanic ritual abuse, was among the consultants in the case.) Among the litany of outlandish claims children made in the case were that daycare owners would flush them down toilets, that they had built secret underground tunnels to transport them to ritual ceremonies, that they had ritually sacrificed a baby, and that they could turn into witches and fly.

After six years of investigation and litigation of a five-year trial, the case ultimately essentially evaporated due to an utter lack of evidence. The original accusing parent in the case was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the investigative techniques used by the Children’s Institute were thoroughly discredited by the psychological community, and one by one, all charges against the daycare staffers were dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Due to the over-the-top nature of the allegations in the McMartin case, the public gradually became skeptical of claims of satanic ritual abuse. “After scouring the country, we found no evidence for large-scale cults that sexually abuse children,” Dr. Gail Goodman, a psychologist who conducted a wide-scale survey of US case workers about the hysteria, told The New York Times in 1994. What criminal allegations were made had generally come about due to a mix of mental illness, false memories implanted during therapy and witness investigations, and, most frequently, reports from people who were being influenced by histrionic media reports of satanic ritual abuse — a pattern very similar to the current outbreak of clown scares.

The writer goes on to outline a dozen or so similar prosecutions. All built on literally insane allegations. All debunked in time – but not after causing a remarkable degree of harm on those who were falsely accused.

Where were the members of the Star-Ledger editorial board in the 1980s and 90s? Maybe they were covering the Satanic Panic? Maybe they were fanning the flames of illogic and fear? Maybe they believe enough time has passed, that people have forgotten, and that maybe they’ll do it again? Let’s hope not. But then again, it’s not the 1980s… and who reads newspapers nowadays (besides the advertisers, many of whom rely on customers from… Sussex County)?

Hey Star-Ledger’s Julie O’Connor… this is who you are…

We all know who Julie O’Connor is.  She writes those lousy editorials about people when Tom Moran gets too bored to do it.  You know those editorials.  The ones that tell you more about the kind of day the writer is having than about anything actually going on in the world.

Julie O’Connor is part of the problem in corporate journalism today.  Here a colleague of Julie O’Connor is examined rather closely by a panel of the non-corporate/ non-neo-con Honest Left – on the Jimmy Dore show.  Enjoy…

Received opinion… (aka corporate opinion)

Amazing isn’t it?

If only the Star-Ledger had the moral mettle of the Atlantic City Press.

Once upon a time in America… newspapers provided a safe space for the exchange of ideas.  They kept the drama in check, maintained a rational balance, and never let their emotions get the better of them.

You need only read an editorial written by the Star-Ledger’s Julie O’Connor to know that those days are long gone.  Today’s media is all wrapped up in the moment and very, very emotional about it.  There is no civil exchange of ideas, just the daily line that the Establishment media is right… and the average working man and woman is wrong.  And if you disagree with them, they call you a “racist”. 

Once upon a time in America… newspapers didn’t tip their hand as to whose side they were on.  You couldn’t tell if they were leaning Democrat or Republican – and they tried not to give it away until their endorsement a few days before an election.  Now there’s no hiding who they support and what they are.  As the Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran wrote last year:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”

With a “core mission” like that, it sounds like the Star-Ledger needs to register itself as a political action committee.

Of course, there are still a few – very few – old style newspapers.  About the same time the Star-Ledger was publishing its “core mission”, the Atlantic City Press wrote: “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Once upon a time in America… colleges and universities were safe spaces for the exchange of ideas.  Freedom of thought and of speech was respected – even when disagreed with. 

Now look at them.  They threaten those they disagree with and – if they show up anyway – they get violent.  Who would have believed that students would one day get violent over the idea of being exposed to a different point of view?  The parallel to another time, and other students, is an exact one.  And that ended in book burning.

Recently a Sussex County Democrat wrote:   "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."  He went on to explain that Fox News should be banned because, in his view, it was “propaganda”.  The idea that this Democrat is aligned with an institution of higher learning – in this case the Sussex County Community College – is chilling. 

The safe space for civil discourse, the safe space for the exchange of ideas, is fast disappearing.  And when society’s “betters” behave irresponsibly – equating words with violence – what do we expect from the “unhinged” elements of society?  Who is teaching society how to hold a civil, rational discussion with someone with whom they disagree?

Instead, by equating words with violence, the editors, reporters, faculty, and administrators are telling society that they engage in violence (with words) and so it is okay for others to engage in violence (on their terms).

The problem with writers like Julie O’Connor, Tom Moran, Matt Arco, and Matt Friedman is their lack of humility and lack of intellectual curiosity.  Their moral certainty has closed the book on considering any viewpoint but their own.  They are good… everybody else is evil.  That makes for a pretty darn predictable writing style.  Pretty darn boring. 

There has been a lot of social change in America.  O’Connor-Moran-Arco-Freidman and the like are in a rush to make everyone conform to those changes.  They believe it to be a moral imperative that any diversity of opinion be labeled and then stamped out.  But they are acting out at a very dangerous time in the world. 

Democracy defeated the older models of totalitarianism because it produced both freedom and prosperity.  Totalitarianism failed to produce either freedom or prosperity.  Now there is a new model of totalitarianism – Chinese fascism – that is quite good at lifting people out of poverty and making them prosperous.  Prosperous… but not free. 

If we lose our safe spaces for civil, rational discussion.  If we lose the ability to exchange ideas.  If we convince our people that they must be “protected” from the freedoms in Bill of Rights – from being exposed to speech they disagree with, from the right to self-defense.  What will we be left with?  Will we embrace the Chinese model if it ensures prosperity and protects us from the “threat” of freedom?

We have been warned before about the inorganic imposition of new cultural ideas on society.  We have been warned about what happens when you are not patient, by that old-fashioned liberal, Mrs. Lillian Smith.  A Southern writer, she was a pioneer in the battle to end segregation. We recommend her book, The Winner Names the Age.  In it, you will find this passage she wrote when she accepted the Charles S. Johnson Award for her work:

“It is his millions of relationships that will give man his humanity… It is not our ideological rights that are important but the quality of our relationships with each other, with all men, with knowledge and art and God that count.

The civil rights movement has done a magnificent job but it is now faced with the ancient choice between good and evil, between love for all men and lust for a group’s power.”

“Every group on earth that has put ideology before human relations has failed; always disaster and bitterness and bloodshed have come.  This movement, too, may fail.  If it does, it will be because it aroused in men more hate than love, more concern for their own group than for all people, more lust for power than compassion for human need.”

“We must avoid the trap of totalism which lures a man into thinking there is only one way, one answer, one option, and that others must be forced into this One Way, and forced into it Now.”

Why is a journalist on a sexual-identity “power” list?

Some people still subscribe to newspapers in the hope of providing themselves with basic information on the current events of the day.  And once upon a time, newspapers did just that.  Older journalists worked very hard to keep their personal opinions, emotions, feelings, and biases away from their job of reporting the news. 

Not anymore.  Now newspaper reporters publicly celebrate their biases – flaunt them – and, as a result, journalism as a career is on life support. 

Readers today expect reportage to be grossly untrue and biased and they are guided accordingly.  More and more, newspapers bore voters.  Most voters can tell you today how the newspapers will report on each and every debate next year between Donald Trump and whoever the Democrat candidate is.  You could place a bet on it if anyone would take a bet on it but nobody will because everybody knows.  So very predictable.

What happened to intellectual curiosity?  Back during the day before yesterday, a reporter approached a story with an open, interested mind – excited by the prospects of where the story might take it.  Not today.  Now it is “time to make the donuts” – the work of drudgery – a fine cabinetmaker reduced to nailing together crates.  Reporters have everything arranged in advance.  The story is written before they write it.  There are those with the white hats and them with the black – with 95 percent of the story slanted against the designated “baddies” and praising the “goodies” – and 5 percent reserved for a “response” from the “baddies” (which, in the course of a conversation with the reporter, is often turned into the worst bit).  Journalism today is like writing while sleepwalking.  A fiction produced through automatic writing.   

Many reporters – the Star-Ledger’s Jonathan Salant comes to mind – cannot get their brains out of their comfortable suburban surroundings, the cozy press club, the shared prejudices and opinions.  Never meeting another soul who is unlike them, they cannot imagine any way but their own.  A machine stuck at one speed, one function, doing the same thing, grinding on until it burns out. 

Then there are the activists.  These are the so-called journalists who think it cool to show that they are compromised from the start, their minds made up.  The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran laid in out last year when he wrote:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”  Sounds more like the “core mission” of a political operation than of journalism.

Of course, there still are some genuine journalists out there.  A month before Moran wrote that stunning admission, the Atlantic City Press published an editorial which included these reassuring lines:  “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  

People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Which brings us to Matt Arco of… you guessed it, the Star-Ledger.  Why is Matt Arco number 34 on a list of 100 “LGBT Power” brokers?  Why is that kind of self-defining celebrity necessary for a journalist?  We thought he was covering the news, and here he is a power broker making the news.  What is a journalist doing cheek-by-jowl on a list of politicians, lobbyists, and political operatives?  

And why is he described as a “voice” when he should be a conduit of information, which is the heart and soul of journalism.  Is anyone really looking for another celebrity “voice” shouting to be heard, telling us their feelings, thoughts, opinions – or do we want to be informed about what’s really going on?  The title “political reporter” shouldn’t be meant literally. 

How can a journalist who allows himself to be placed on a celebrity “power” list be taken seriously?  As one of the top named members of a political identity group, how can we expect Matt Arco to fairly and honestly cover stories concerning religious groups with theological traditions that don’t line up with the policy agenda of his political identity group?  Groups such as Biblical Christians, Torah Jews, and adherent Muslims. 

How can Matt Arco be expected to fairly and honestly cover a candidate or  political organization whose positions or platform is not in agreement with the positions and platform of his political identity group – of which he is the 34th most powerful operative in the state?  Having Matt Arco cover the Republican Party is like sending Ann Coulter to cover the Democrats.  It’s not fair or honest.

Why are Democrats silent when religious freedom is attacked by their Party?

Laura Berman Fortgang is a Democrat Assembly candidate in LD26.  She has more to lose than most when it comes to protecting religious freedom.

In addition to having a business as a professional “life coach,” a Bergen Record (NorthJersey.com) story from July 2016 reports:

Laura Berman Fortgang, a resident of Verona for almost 21 years, dreamt of taking her musical theater skills to Broadway and being an actor, but when she was unconvinced she would make it to the big time, she transferred her skills to another career path: life coaching… Berman Fortgang decided she wanted to do more for the community and for herself, so she got ordained in 2006 at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City.”

The One Spirit Interfaith Seminary states that it “inspires passionate, caring individuals and communities to live engaged lives of authenticity, celebration, compassionate service, and integrity.”  The Seminary promises “inclusivity” that with “respect, and open-mindedness of the Interspiritual perspective, we honor individuality, diversity, the wholeness of the human experience (both darkness and light) and the universal expressed through all authentic wisdom paths and traditions.”

A review of its offerings includes a section titled, Wicca: Rediscovering the Magic of Life on a Sacred Planet. 

Shamanic Wicca is a deeply transformative spiritual practice that unlocks the divine magic residing within each of us, encouraging us to question, explore, and discover our place and purpose in the holy web of life. This is a universal and urgent calling that humanity must answer now… Without a guru, text, or prophet, Wicca is a path of personal revelation that can be integrated into other spiritual or religious paths, though it may challenge certain elements of other traditions – like the subjugation of women and the Earth and suppression of the Feminine Divine. Modern Wiccan Cosmology is derived from experience as the Earth reveals itself as embodied divinity, spiritual guide, and teacher.

On the faculty of the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary is Phyllis Curott, described as “one of America’s first public Wiccan High Priestesses, an activist attorney and author” and the founder of  “Faith in Women and the first shamanic Wiccan tradition, the Temple of Ara, in 1985.”   

People of the Book – Biblical Christians, Torah Jews, and adherent Muslims – are under attack by the Democrat Party and its media allies.  On Wednesday, a Christian pastor was viciously attacked in a Star-Ledger (NJ.com) editorial and in a political hit piece, on a blog, orchestrated by state Democrats.  The pastor was mocked for his beliefs.  His “crime” – going to the aid of people in difficulty when asked to do so.

Instead of remaining silent, shouldn’t Democrats like Laura Berman Fortgang step up and tell her political party to back-off?  After all, she isn’t just ordained in her religion, she is also a candidate for political office.

The same Bill of Rights that allows Laura Berman Fortgang to practice her beliefs, should protect Christian pastors as well.  And yet faith is under attack in the legislature and the courts every day, with the Democrats and their media allies appearing to endorse some while set on destroying others.   

The time is now for Candidate Fortgang.  Call New Jersey Democrat Chairman John Currie and tell him to back off and back his media stooges off…

609-392-3367

Pastor Phil Rizzo: The Christian the Democrats want you to Hate…

And Julie O’Connor, and the Star-Ledger, and Matt Friedman, and assorted other politicos and hacks too.  Hate is their game…

Why is the media shilling for “designated terrorist group” CAIR?

715 residents of New Jersey died on September 11, 2001.  For most, it was a horrific death.  Perhaps Politico’s Matt Friedman has forgotten, or the Bergen Record’s Hannan Adely is too young, or the Star-Ledger’s Rob Jennings just doesn’t care.  We all know Julie O’Connor’s problem… staring in the mirror too long making sure her tin halo is just so politically correct that she forgets all but her own self-image.

For much of the past two weeks, elements of the media have appeared obsessed by the fact that a local party chairman in Sussex County had “re-tweeted” some “tweeter trains” that contained images or language some “might” consider “offensive”.  Of course, the term “offensive” is very subjective. 

The Star-Ledger does not find the burning of the American flag to be offensive – at least to the point that they have never, to our knowledge, called for the resignation of any public or party official who supported the burning of the American flag.  It seems burning the American flag does not rise to the level of “re-tweeting” a “tweet” – such is the mindset of the Star-Ledger.

Apparently dipping a Christian cross into a jar of urine, and calling it art, also does not register as “offensive” in the subjective reasoning of the media.  But a “re-tweet” containing a negative comment about a Muslim congresswoman – who even fellow Democrats acknowledge is anti-Semitic – that apparently merits two weeks of continuous commentary.  It is a funny old world we live in.

As part of the “re-tweets” story, the media has approvingly published statements made by the New Jersey chapter of CAIR, which is short for Council on American-Islamic Relations.  CAIR put out a statement that labeled these “re-tweets” as “anti-Muslim” and “Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic” and called for the resignation of the local party chairman.

It appears that the media deliberately suppressed something very important about CAIR.  Something most readers would want to know… 

CAIR has been designated a “terrorist organization” by one of America’s closest Islamic allies in the Middle East.  That’s right… a “terrorist organization”.  Don’t you deserve to know that?

It wouldn’t take much effort for a journalist to find out.  Even one of today’s journalists.  Wikipedia explains that CAIR is “a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. It is headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., with regional offices nationwide.”  Wikipedia goes on to note:

Critics of CAIR have accused it of pursuing an Islamist agenda[5][6][7] and have claimed that the group is connected to Hamas[8] and the Muslim Brotherhood,[9][7] claims which CAIR has rejected and described as an Islamophobic smear campaign.[10] Due to apparent ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the government of the United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR as a terrorist organization.[11]

A “terrorist organization”?  That is a very serious matter.

Hamas?  So much has been written about this group’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  So much written about its violence and terrorism, attacks on civilians, on women and children, the murder of Islamic rivals, the use of civilians as human shields, and the conscription of children as soldiers… that you would think even people as thick as Matt Friedman and Rob Jennings would have it together enough to work up a line or two about it. 

Hamas, together with several charities it runs,[438] has been designated by several governments and some academics as a terrorist organization. Others regard Hamas as a complex organization with terrorism as only one component.[439][440] Israel outlawed Hamas in September 1989[441] The United States followed suit in 1995, as did Canada in November 2002.[442] The European Union outlawed Hamas's military wing in 2001 and included Hamas in its list of terrorist organizations in 2003,[443] …Egypt,[448] Saudi Arabia,[449] Japan,[450] New Zealand,[451] Australia and the United Kingdom[452] have designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist organization.[453] The organization is banned in Jordan.[454] (Wikipedia)

Imagine being connected to an organization where “terrorism” was a “component”?  And imagine the media ignoring it? 

The Muslim Brotherhood?  Quite a few nations have designated that a   “terrorist organization” as well, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia… these are all Islamic nations and all strong American allies. 

We have offered CAIR the use of these pages to explain how it came to be designated a “terrorist organization” by one of America’s Islamic allies.   

What is most alarming about this story is the media’s apparent focus… on “re-tweets” while a designated “terrorist organization” feeds a willing media its statements, judging what is or isn’t “offensive”, calling on “offenders” to resign, and generally behaving as if it has the moral high ground.  Is the media lazy or culpable? 

If culpable. If the media really does believe in suppressing the truth about CAIR, then no sane person should ever cooperate in helping them do their job again. Walk away. Ignore their phone calls, texts, and emails. Don’t help them write if they won’t be honest about CAIR. Starve them of content. And let their advertisers know what they are up to. They’ll go away soon enough.

Regina Egea: Why can’t NJ do what Massachusetts did?

Regina Egea is one of the smartest thinkers on public policy in New Jersey.  An M.B.A., former AT&T executive, state Treasury Department official, and Governor’s Chief of Staff – Egea also served in local government as a Deputy Mayor and School Board Member.  As President of the Garden State Initiative, she is collecting the data, studying the issues, and coming up with solutions to New Jersey’s most pressing fiscal concerns.

For New Jersey Republicans, she’s a breath of fresh air in a political culture too often dominated by stale thinking.  If the NJGOP wants to seriously contest for power again, it will be folks like Regina Egea who will provide the policy prescriptions that will inform the narrative on why Republicans should be elected.

Egea recently wrote:  “It is clear that we are at our ‘fork in the road’ in New Jersey and there’s a clear path to improve our economy. Massachusetts decided a generation ago to shed its ‘Taxachussetts’ label and cut its taxes by 25% between 1977 and 2014 while growing its economy and maintaining a public school system at the top of national rankings at a lower cost per pupil than New Jersey… we need leadership now willing to make the necessary reforms to reduce spending in Trenton and throughout New Jersey governments before ‘it’s over.’”

Below are excerpts from Regina Egea’s op-ed published yesterday in the Star-Ledger and on NJ.com:

“New Jersey… is losing income tax revenue. Using 2015-16 IRS data, the Bank of America analysis indicates that high tax states – such as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California – are currently experiencing a net loss of high income earners (defined by the Internal Revenue Service). Florida, which has no state income tax, experienced a net gain of over $17 billion in income between 2015 and 2016… In this same time period, New Jersey experienced a loss of approximately $3 billion.”

“The research firm Wealth X reported New Jersey lost 5,700 people with liquid assets between $1 million-$30 million in 2018 – and that’s before the implications of the state and local tax (SALT) cap on federal taxes have truly been felt.”

“The Bank of America also references a February TheHill.com article citing U.S. Census data that states growing in population are usually ‘the same states with lower tax and regulatory burdens, lower government debt and greater transparency and accountability for government spending.’”

“Ironically, New Jersey is turning being home to a relatively high number of ‘millionaires’ into a strategic vulnerability. The top 2 percent of all N.J. income tax filers (who make more than $500,000 per year) account for over 40 percent of all income tax revenue to the state. Since close to 40 percent of state revenues are from personal income taxes, that means more than a third of all state revenues come from the top 1 percent of residents. Increasing dependence on revenue from this group exacerbates our vulnerability. An individual loss in this income category reverberates throughout the state.”

“Now we’re at New Jersey’s ‘Fork in the Road.’ An example of one alternate path is just up I-95 in Massachusetts, where the highest marginal personal income tax rate is just 5 percent, compared to New Jersey where the rate is 10.75 percent (third-highest in the nation). Our second highest in the nation corporate income tax rate of 11.5 percent will inevitably lead to market share loss to not just Massachusetts’ 8 percent rate but other attractive states like North Carolina’s 2.5 percent rate, which helped to lure Honeywell from New Jersey.”

“Massachusetts solidly outflanks the Garden State when it comes to property taxes ($37 versus $51 per $1,000 of personal income) as well as the size of public workforces: theirs is 8 percent smaller than New Jersey.  And Massachusetts, whose annual K-12 education performance closely rivals New Jersey’s, spends nearly 20 percent less on a per pupil basis.”

To read Regina Egea’s entire op-ed, click the link below:

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/04/nj-is-at-a-fork-in-the-road-policy-group-says-its-time-to-take-the-less-taxing-path.html

For more information on the Garden State Initiative, explore their website:

https://www.gardenstateinitiative.org/

Why did Peg Schaffer lie to defend Phil Murphy?

Is it just us or does Somerset County Democrat Chairlady Peg Schaffer remind one of an overly operatic tryout for a role as one of the Valkyries?

Does that make Governor Phil Murphy war-father???

But why does she need to lie?

There is this anti-truth line that woke members of this new Democrat Party take nowadays.  Let someone, anyone, make a point about illegal immigration – and these anti-truth Democrats simply drop the “illegal” and falsely claim that it is an attack on all immigrants. 

And it goes beyond illegal immigration to crime in general.  These new Democrats take the case of a Shawn Custis and turn comments on his illegality into a “racially based” attack.  You say you don’t know Mr. Custis?  Well you can catch some of his work here...

Peg Schaffer’s fellow Democrats have a new demographic to practice their identity politics on... convicted criminals.  That's right.  The Democrat Party in New Jersey wants to give convicted criminals – including those behind bars – the power to vote.

That’s right, they want to give electoral power to murderers, rapists, robbers, and such.  And we all know what happens when a politician smells a vote.  They're going to give something away to get it.  Laws are going to get progressively weaker and weaker.  Especially when the Star-Ledger reports that there are 100,000 criminal votes to be had in New Jersey.  That many votes could easily swing a statewide election and a large prison population would certainly shift the balance in a legislative seat or two.

Imagine Shawn Custis as a prison ward leader, lobbying the Democrat-majority Legislature, organizing a petition drive (doubtless with the help of Action Together and the Women's March) to get Governor Goldman-Sachs 2.0 and Tammy Jane Fonda to sign into law a community release program that gets him out of doors again... Coming to an average door in an average community like yours. Yep, it’s going to be a Mad Max kind of world.

What makes these new Democrats so different from good old-fashioned Democrats is that these new ideologues can’t get past the “identity” stuff.  Their judgments are never about the criminality – whether we are talking illegal immigration or Shawn Custis… the illegal part gets taken away.

About the only thing these new Democrats do believe is criminal is having the wrong political opinions.  Express the “wrong” point-of-view and they will bully, and threat-face, and generally behave like an outraged Valkyrie.  And just as “identity” makes all the difference in the world as to whether a crime is a crime, or not, “identity” also governs whether a thought is a crime, or not.  There are some people who can never be right, just as there are some who can never be wrong.

This is the lens through which we can view Peg Schaffer’s attack yesterday on a Republican Freeholder who used the word “illegal” to describe undocumented immigrants who are resident in the United States in violation of federal law.  Yes, that pretty much can be described as illegal.  But in Peg Schaffer’s warped world, she finds fault with the describer, not the act.

It makes no difference that anybody who can read knows that Democrat Governor Phil Murphy is spending millions in taxpayers’ money on special programs targeted to illegal immigrants, Murphy brags about it!  And it makes no difference that flooding the job market in New Jersey with thousands of new off-the-books, “gray economy” workers will undermine any increase in the minimum wage and further distress the labor market for the working poor.

And it makes no difference that illegal immigrant labor provides for rich professionals just as surely as it destroys the prospects of labor trade unions.  No difference that the gray economy creates a near-slave class trapped by low cost wages, working for a “liberal” suburban bourgeoisie that wants the sweat of its fellow man at the cheapest possible rate. No difference that the cost to property taxpayers to provide a safety net for this gray economy has given New Jersey the highest property taxes and the highest rates of foreclosure in America.  No difference that poverty and child hunger are the legacies of these  woke policies that are designed to allow greedy suburban liberals the chance to feel-good about themselves… simply by voting Democrat.  It’s a great scam to pretend to care for people who you want around only because you can pay them less than you would your working class neighbor – and keep your money in your pockets.

If new Democrats like Peg Schaffer really cared, they would demand open borders both ways.  They would demand an end to international immigration laws that block Americans from moving elsewhere – instead of supporting a one-way open border policy designed to send a never-ending flow of cheap, near-slave labor to undercut the working class, the trade union movement, leaving minimum wage increases meaningless.  But Peg Schaffer doesn’t really care, does she?  These new Democrats are anti-truth.  It is all a scam, a means to muzzle an opponent with a different point of view.  A hectoring Valkyrie.

Trenton Democrats need to call out Bryan Miller’s racist image

This is Bryan Miller.  He advocates for taking away the means of self-defense for working class single moms in cities like Paterson, Newark, and Camden. 

Even the Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran now understands that the police have no legal responsibility to protect each and every individual in America.  In a Republic, that job is left up to its citizens.  YOU CANNOT SUE THE GOVERNMENT WHEN IT FAILS TO PROTECT YOU.  That is established legal precedent. 

So disarming single moms in towns like Paterson, Newark, and Camden… or anywhere else in New Jersey for that matter… is an open invitation to rape and murder for any thug passing by.

But that’s not enough for Bryan Miller.  He wants to use racist images like the one above to scare groups like Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign into taking away the rights of single moms and other at-risk people to get the training and equipment to defend themselves against violent criminals determined to harm them and their children. 

This is an old and sad story in America.  Gun control laws were first used to disarm black people so that they couldn’t defend themselves against groups like the racist KKK.  Racist appeals to support these laws were made to upper middle class women like those who make up Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign today. 

Along with disarming black people and taking away their right to self-defense, came something called the “poll tax” which served to take away black people’s participation in public life.  Now the Trenton Democrats – led by Governor Phil “coddler of rapists” Murphy – have come up with a way to do both in a single piece of legislation that raises the permit fee to own the means of self-protection from $5 to $300. 

These Democrats are filthy racists and they need to be opposed.

No hard-working single mom should have to live in fear just because she can’t afford to live where the politicians live.  Fear of rape and other forms of violence shouldn’t be the penalty for not having enough money to raise your kids in a town like all those Moms Demand Action and Brady Campaign folks come from.

Unless Murphy and the Trenton Democrats are willing to pay to post a full-time police officer on every street in every at-risk community, raising the cost by which women and other at-risk people can get the training and equipment to protect their bodies and lives is morally wrong and should be opposed by all right-thinking people.

Tom Moran’s propaganda or the A.C. Press’ journalism?

The showdown over the future of journalism is happening right here in New Jersey.  It’s between the editors of the Atlantic City Press and Tom Moran (and his acolytes) at the Star-Ledger (and elsewhere).

In October, the Atlantic City Press published an editorial which included these very remarkable lines:  “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  News gathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

“Altering their content to support (a) judgment”?  Isn’t that what Jonathan Salant (pronounced S’lant) does every day?  Isn’t his tongue so far up Editor Tom Moran’s perspective that it functions as a redundant tongue for Moran?  Repetition, repetition, repetition… via Salanted coverage and outrageously partisan editorials… isn’t that what political propaganda is all about?

But don’t take our word for it.  Here is Star-Ledger Editor Tom Moran himself, in his own words, in an editorial published just yesterday:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”

Well shit, if swaying voters is your “core mission” shouldn’t you register as a political action committee?  Afterall, the Star-Ledger is owned by some of the richest people in America – real 1 percenter scum – who have left no stone unturned in their relentless screwing over of working class union members and their families.  If they are going to exist with their “core mission” to influence elections, shouldn’t there be some transparency?  Or are we just going to let them operate in darkness – to use their billions and their paid whore mouthpieces like Tom Moran and Jonathan S’lant to keep screwing over working people and working class families?

Labor unions need to account for how their money is spent.  So do political campaigns and lobbyists and special interests groups.  So why not billionaire newspaper publishers whose “core mission” is helping voters decide which lever to pull? 

What makes it worse is that the rich pricks who own these newspapers are subsidized with taxpayers’ money.  They used their power and influence to lobby for a law that forces municipalities to buy advertisements in newspapers that could run for free on their own municipal websites.  This not only vastly expands their carbon footprint, and with it the threat to environmental sustainability, but it turns beautiful green forests into shitty pulp factories.  End the taxpayers’ subsidy unless the newspapers institute some transparency!

Now for some thoughts on the conduct of the campaign season that will come to a close on Tuesday.

The two major parties have starkly different ideas on how to conduct a political campaign.  The Democrats are all about the grassroots.  They raise money from their grassroots.  They make use of their grassroots base and their allies to prepare the ground, soften up their opponents, and inform their candidates.  You see it in these debates, with the Democrat candidates constantly referencing some conversation or concern with a real or mythical human being in the district

Most insiders don’t get what’s happening here because they are creatures of Trenton or Washington or politics – but it skews the outsider perspective into one where the battles appear to be between “a representative  of the government” (call him the Sheriff of Nottingham) and “a movement or collective of people” who are speaking through this individual who appears to be on their side and fighting for them (call him Robin Hood).  It is moving under the surface and goes beyond the traditional ideas of scoring debate points, which most pundits seem to focus on. 

The Democrats have the advantage here because they still have a grassroots that they have a relationship with and can work with and that depends on and works with them.  Because of their symbiotic relationship, the Democrats’ grassroots is well-funded enough to produce a harvest of volunteers, money, and votes for regular Democrat candidates.  Yes, there is a tinge of radicalism to much of this grassroots, but they appear to understand when to tone it down or keep it underground.  That’ probably because they are helped in their financing by the regular Democrats.

Republicans have largely decommissioned their grassroots in the Garden State, with campaigns becoming smaller and smaller “entrepreneurial” enterprises outside state and county party organizations.  The answer to everything is some new service or technology offered by some for-profit wunderkind.  The idea of motivating people with a message, of reaching out to one’s natural allies and of making them a part of a mission is utterly superfluous to this style of campaigning.  

And so, in keeping with this, Democrat candidates talk about the people they have met and what they have learned from them, while Republicans land the punches rehearsed in barren settings, devoid of anyone not political.  If the Democrats are real.  If the stories are not make believe.  If there is a depth of humanity to back each one up… look out on election day.

Finally, the talking heads who bracket these televised debates – both Democrats and Republicans – appear to forget that the same audience viewing the debate, is viewing them.  Cut the gentlemanly bullshit and get to work.  Rip the opponent worse than your candidate did (hey, your name isn’t on the ballot).  It’s the same damned debate, the same viewers, you are just a different means to deliver the message and continue the fight.  So get in the killer point that your candidate forgot.  Be a good wing man.  Shoot the bastard down.

Besides, nobody wants to see a self-reverential daisy chain of colorless “experts” or “professionals”.  Get into the mud and fight!

Tom Moran shits the bed again. NJ.com editorial goes nuts with the name-calling (again).

By Rubashov

At what point did Star-Ledger/NJ.com editor Tom Moran go from a somewhat reasonable – albeit excruciatingly liberal – man of journalism, to New Jersey’s own Julius Streicher, throwing invective and hate at anyone who doesn’t see the world through the increasingly dark and confused lens he does.  Like Streicher, who edited a newspaper called “The Attacker,” Moran discards journalism and adopts a political role as the state’s leading propagandist for what has come to be known as “The Resistance.”

Of course, what he is “resisting” is the outcome (under long established rules) of a national election in the world’s foremost democracy.  Moran and his movement are not only threats to the political and economic stability of United States, but of the World.  It takes humility to live in a democracy, to preserve a Republic.  But Moran and his movement place their will above all else – and if their will should triumph, all future elections would be fought after the fact, regardless of outcome, endlessly, the way they are fighting this one.

To Moran and his movement, we are in year three of the 2016 presidential election.  This election will not be over until they get their way.  Only then will they permit us to move on to the next election. 

But who is this movement?  They are the permanent Establishment Party of government.  That’s what they would be called if they were honest about it.  In Mexico, where honesty rates higher than in Washington, DC, the longtime ruling political party calls itself the Partido Revolucionario Institucional – the Institutional Revolutionary Party.  They held power for 71 uninterrupted years – until the corruption and economic decline got so bad that voters, in their pain, sought other answers (both good and bad).  Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, like Ralph Nader and Ron Paul before them, are symptoms of a corrupt institutional party producing more pain than benefits. 

Tom Moran is a chief propagandist for global corporatists, like those who publish his newspaper, and for all those who are made comfortable and secure by government and the largesse of the taxpayers.  These include the crony capitalists, pay-to-play government vendors, the Wall Street operators (like Moran’s heroes Jon Corzine and Phil Murphy), and the legions of lobbyists and senior bureaucrats who might as well be interchangeable.  It includes too, those well-off academics, like Brigid Harrison of Montclair State University.  A failed Democrat candidate, Harrison was provided a second life as an Establishment propagandist whose work has been pushed as required reading.    

The permanent Establishment Party straddles both established political parties in America – where our political choices are limited to faux chocolate and faux vanilla – and where propagandists like Tom Moran direct members of the working class to battle each other over race, ethnicity, and gender.  Using the last, they are now in the process of endlessly expanding the opportunities for internal division amongst the 99 percent. 

Candidates like Mikie Sherrill are the face of this “Resistance” to working class pain – to those same voters who bet on Barack Obama to rescue them in 2008, and who, in their pain, reached for Donald Trump in 2016.  A wealthy, expensively trained, representative of the Elite – whose career path was to “check the boxes” on the way to being given “power” as a safe pair-of-hands for those who actually wield it.

The means to Sherrill’s rise to celebrity are notorious.  Along with her Antifa-inspired thugs, she stalked and hounded the aged Congressman and Vietnam War Vet, Rodney Frelinghuysen.  They spat insults at him and lied about his record – acting as if this most bi-partisan and gentlemanly of public servants was akin to David Duke.  In this, they are not so different from Tom Moran and the NJ.com editorial board who over the weekend used words like “fraud” and “fanatical” to describe those who oppose their nurtured-by-hand celebrity, Mikie Sherrill.  If anything, they are using others as a mirror to reflect back what they see in themselves… frauds and fanatics.

Over the next two weeks and beyond – until they get their way and the result from the 2016 presidential election that they believe they are entitled to – Tom Moran and company will continue to behave the way they have been, calling names, spitting hatred, urinating down their own trousers.  They are like beings possessed, confirmed in their certainties, their righteousness and indignation.  They can not think outside of it… just ask Jonathan Salant. 

Is the Star-Ledger’s Jon Salant a handjob? He re-wrote a hit piece for Menendez using old news.

There is a lot of real news floating around out there.  Certainly enough to prevent a writer from needing to plagiarize an early hit piece by the Menendez campaign for reuse as “fresh” news three weeks out from an election.  If the headline reads like the title of an attack piece put out by Menendez – that’s because it is: 

“Hugin says he's a different kind of Republican, but his campaign donations show otherwise.”

Breaking news… Republican Bob Hugin donates to the campaigns of (wait for it)… Republicans!!!  No shit. 

And this differs from (name ANY partisan candidate for office – Democrat or Republican) how?   

As evidence for his screwy contention, Jonathan Salant actually attacks Republican Bob Hugin and HIS WIFE for failing to support a Democrat Senator from Washington State.  Salant claims the Senator is bi-partisan… the record shows that she is the 5th most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.  Maybe we should just change Jonathan’s name from “Salant” to “Slant”.  What a pissbrain!

(Speaking of wives, as they have now been made fair game by Jonathan Slant, old Mrs. Slant is a kind of lobbyist/crony capitalist out on the hunt for taxpayer dollars for “deserving” corporations.  Yep, you can’t make this shit up.)

Salant’s hit on Hugin was all addressed earlier this year in a series of campaign attacks against Hugin by the Menendez campaign.  It is now being repackaged by the Star-Ledger and Salant in order to give it an “objective” slant – three weeks out from Election Day.  Salant’s goal is simple:  He wants to influence those women who have been turned off by Menendez’s trafficking of Eastern European women for his pal’s sexual purposes or the Obama Justice Department’s allegations about sex with underaged girls in the Caribbean.  Salant wants them to put that aside and pull the Big “D” lever (as they used to say).

Jonathan Salant wants reform Democrats to forget what kind of corrupt POS Bob Menendez really is.  Salant wants them to forget the bank scams and the Medicare fraud and stare straight ahead while they yank that Big “D”.  And the best he can come up with is that Bob Hugin is… a Republican. 

And that’s a big deal to a religionist like Jonathan Salant, who sincerely believes that being a Republican is a kind of original sin.  Salant, as his writing shows, will not be comfortable until the last of these venomous creatures is driven from the public square.

Every candidate gets stuck in the ass by the media.  It happens.  But there’s a difference between getting stuck by what was once a generally “uninvolved” or “non-partisan” press and getting stuck by a partisan writer like Jonathan Salant.  Salant is the kind of guy who will stick a candidate in the ass and not have the common courtesy to give him a reach around.  It’s an act of violence with him… and he’s going to make sure there’s nothing in it for the object of his attentions.

Cory Booker hearing Jonathan Salant’s confession.

That is our critique on the writing of Jonathan Salant.  We acknowledge that he is a “writer” of some standing and craft.  We dispute the title “journalist” being applied to him, because he has ventured so far from it.  Others may disagree… particularly the more “clubbable” members of the Establishment.  Nevertheless, these are our opinions.  If Jonathan Salant would like to dispute them on these pages, we will gladly publish what he writes, UNEDITED, which is a courtesy the corporate arse-lickers who run the Star-Ledger would NEVER extend to anyone with whom they disagreed.

Owners of Star-Ledger/ NJ.com employ demeaning “hate font”

Advance Media is the union-busting, job-killing, working-class-family destroying private company that owns Conde Nast and a basket of newspapers that include the Star-Ledger and websites like NJ.com.  It’s the company that employs the writers that fill the pages of newspapers like the Star-Ledger.  These writers earn a fraction of what journalists once made but they are afraid to organize to stand up to the billionaires who own the Advance Media.  Conde Nast is their flagship enterprise.

What’s up with the stylized fonts?  Are the owners of the Star-Ledger and NJ.com employing racist “hate font”?   

Haven’t they argued that this kind of font is demeaning and an attempt to stereotype fellow human beings?

They don’t use Fraktur to sell Germany do they?  How about Cyrillic to sell Russia? 

And this private company is making lots and lots of money doing this.  Should they be monetizing stereotypes by using “hate font”?

Perhaps someone at Advance Media can explain?  Is this a job for Project Veritas or just some enterprising young maker of documentary shorts? 

Stay tuned…

Oh, by the way, seemingly right-on and woke Democrats have been using “hate font” too and have been doing so for years.   

You know who you are.

Get ready to be embarrassed.

Are all Hollywood “makers of our culture” rapists and molesters?

Liberal Hollywood runs on money.  The “art” of imagining what will hook both investors and consumers.  Hollywood is what makes our culture – has made our culture – for nearly a century.  This November we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of the what was built on hard work and “manifest destiny” and the beginning of the culture of modern make-believe. 

It is no surprise that Hollywood is liberal.  That the “entertainment” industry and its media sidekicks are the Democrat Party’s most consistent donors. 

From that perfectly “sincere” smile to his well-manicured toenails, Senator Cory Booker is a media darling.  Hollywood sees nothing wrong in the importation of women (“for a friend”) or in exchanging luxuries for “help” (“for a friend”)… and so Hollywood sees nothing wrong with Senator Bob Menendez.

And Hollywood just adores that weasel class of ex-bureaucrats with Hollywood manufactured “back stories” who now menace New Jersey’s voters… Andy “winner of the hot cross bun, with bar” Kim, Tommy (him pretty) Malinowski, and Mikie Sherrill.  BTW, “Mikie” is Hollywood for “Rebecca Michelle”.  Aside from the ubiquitous “AKAs” employed by the criminal class, apparently the two careers for which a change of name is accepted practice are Hollywood and politics. 

Among the latest Hollywood icons felled by the #MeToo movement is one of its prominent feminist leaders (who is alleged to have seduced a teenaged boy).  No, it wasn’t her student and she isn’t a member of the NEA. 

Then there are the two LGBT activists who drugged and raped another man.  Prior to this they were famous for having been “married” by no less than far-Left U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  According to the New York media, the rape was “violent”.  One of those names came up as a contributor to our old pal Andy Kim, a candidate for Congress in South Jersey.  You need to check it out Andy and make sure it’s not the guy accused of rape.  See buddy, we’re giving you a heads-up (that’s the kind of sob’s we are). 

We kid with Andy about him winning the “hot cross bun, with bar” because he got a civilian award from a famous general.  No, it wasn’t as important an award as the one the general’s mistress got… or as big a deal as the one the general gave to his other gal pal.  But hey, that shit probably wasn’t worth it anyway, so we’re just happy you got your handshake and photograph.  It’s all cool.

As the list of fat donors to the Democrat Party and its candidates felled by the #MeToo movement has rotted and eaten through the Democrats’ hegemony in Hollywood, their sidekicks in the media have largely looked the other way.  The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran has, once again yesterday, used his newspaper’s editorial pages as an in-kind contribution to Democrats on the ballot this year. 

“Impeach, condemn, then execute” seems to be Tom Moran’s and the Star-Ledger’s message – for both the President and congressional Republicans – but that’s not how it used to be.  We remember finding stuff like this in the Ledger…

“Kenneth Starr, meat-ax in hand, is entering the critical and, let's hope, final stages of his rugged surgery to transform Bill Clinton's image from cut-up to criminal. He must also change the country's mind-set from so-what shrugs to gasps of begone. It may take some doing.”

“Most members of Congress from New Jersey would like to hear more facts and less speculation in judging the allegations facing President Clinton, but U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said he's heard enough. Lautenberg, the state's senior Democrat, said he was satisfied with Clinton's denials… ‘I believe him,’ he said.”

Ah, now that was journalism.  Not what you get today…

“Dramatic, split-screen findings of criminality by President Trump's ex-lawyer and his former campaign chair this week… Both will probably go to prison, and testimony also implicates Trump in a serious crime… two women who said they had affairs with Trump… it's a felony, a final insult from a man who rose to power on a promise to drain the swamp, but instead gave it over to even bigger gang of grifters, including himself.”

“Robert Mueller, whose job it is to sort through all this stink, is pursuing his own investigation of potential collusion by the Trump administration in Russia's hacking of our 2016 election… But if the president committed election fraud, it rises to the level of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ and is therefore an impeachable offense.”

“Once again, the focus turns to our own squirming GOP representatives, and we hear crickets. None would say on Wednesday what they will do to ensure that Congress investigates this; not even two newcomers running for office… Not only have they done absolutely nothing to curb Trump's swampy behavior, as he brazenly profits off his public office and invites serious conflicts of interest; all five -- including three seeking re-election -- helped to cover up any crimes…”

Wow… Trump is a criminal, all Republicans are criminals… even the ones not yet in office!

This is certainly a change in tune for a newspaper that defended Hillary Clinton’s monetization of the Office of the Secretary of State, or that never asked how Bill Clinton, who entered national office a rather economically challenged man, left office decidedly well-off and who has gone on to amass a fortune worth more than $100 million.  Grifters?  Conflicts of interest?  Crickets, Mr. Moran… crickets?

In fairness to Tom Moran, this editorial came out after a particularly eventful lunch (one with which his very white gut couldn’t cope) leading to a three hour long stream of consciousness, during which his screed was composed.  In future, remember this, and don’t fault the man.  Fault his bowels.

To close on an up-note, the Star-Ledger suggested we look to the leadership of the great and the good… that godfather of a family of saints – priests even – the incorruptible Pascrells.  So what did godfather, Congressman Bill Pascrell, have to tell us about President Trump?  That his family was part of the swamp?  Too close to bad people?  Conflicted?  A crook?  “I’m the face of Democrat Party reform,” says the godfather.  Indeed.  A monograph is long overdue, charting that family’s financial progress, as godfather made his way up the greasy pole of political advancement.  The face of sweetness and light.  Indeed.

We appreciated him more when he was a little less full of shit, considering the fate of President Clinton…

“Democrat Bill Pascrell Jr. said Clinton's admissions were ‘painful to all of us,’ and added he hoped ‘we can soon put this behind us.’  But he said he could not second guess what Starr would eventually report to Congress. ‘I'll keep an open mind if I'm called to make a decision in my official capacity.’”

Yes, “an open mind” – good idea.  You do that.  Keep an open mind.

Democrat candidate cries “bullying” … wants to sue.

Like the snowflake who wanted to be a Marine but refused to go through boot camp, a Democrat candidate in New Jersey is threatening to sue his GOP opponent because he believes the Republicans are “calling him names”.  This is funny as hell, coming from a candidate of a party that calls someone a “Nazi” or a “racist” nearly every day. 

A Democrat on the Little Egg Harbor Township Committee is claiming “verbal assault… slanders… harassment” and that “the damages to my political career are impossible to repair.”  Read the full story here: 

https://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2018/08/local_official_threatens_1m_lawsuit_for_being_call.html

It is kind of scary, because this Democrat Party candidate wants power but he is not willing to subject himself to the public commentary that goes with power.  He just wants to be able to screw with other peoples’ lives – raise their taxes, pass their laws, regulate them, tell them what they can or cannot do – but if someone grumbles about it, he’ll sue them too (and watch out… he’ll want to use your tax dollars to smash any negative comments about what he does).  He claims that it is a case of “bullying” but we think it is one of handjobbery. 

Even privates get to call generals names behind their backs.  Griping is a tradition in the military.

You have to wonder about the condition of American manhood when one of our nation’s two great political parties offers up specimens like this.  And it’s not only the wanker from Egg Harbor.  Take a look at congressional candidates Andy Kim and Tom Malinowski.  Andy actually pouts when anyone doubts the line of bullshit he serves up daily.  Kim is quite the acrobat – while insisting that he opposes war, he claims he personally ran the war in Afghanistan.  And Tommy (him pretty) Malinowski pissed and moaned to the Star-Ledger no less, demanding that they defend him from the “lies” being told by those meanie Republicans. 

Are you on the receiving end of any of his missives?  Malinowski’s fundraising requests combine a breathless urgency and gentle reassurance not unlike that employed by sex workers… “you can do it, that’s okay, just… make that contribution… yes, $200 is better… that’s it…”  Heck, you get a rash just reading his stuff.

If this is America closing in on the first quarter of the new century… what will be left of it at the last quarter?