Gubernatorial Debate: Murphy laughs about violence against women.

By Rubashov

There is a disturbing intensity about Phil Murphy -- and it’s something his campaign team evidently approves of and draws upon. In his recent attack ad on GOP opponent Jack Ciattarelli, his team selected a clip of a wildly gesticulating Murphy waving his arms up and down in the manner Fidel Castro. Disturbed as much as it is disturbing?

At last evening’s debate, Phil Murphy didn’t appear to listen to or consider the questions posed to him. At no point could you catch the wheels turning in the back of his brain somewhere. Instead, Murphy rabbited back his replies with all the thoughtfulness of a child repeating his catechism. Murphy exists not so much in a world of ideas as in one of certainties, which become more certain the more often repeated. This he did, stopping only to relish the “sacredness” of certain words. For example, Murphy genuflects before the phrase “Planned Parenthood” the way another Murphy, a generation or so ago, might have before the phrase “Virgin Mother.”

He seems genuinely beyond discussing anything with. A post-rational politician who is pursuing his own way into “heaven” – trying to be his version of “good” and unable to imagine any other versions. In short, an invincibly intolerant man.

Then there is Phil Murphy’s pride. He seems incapable of apology – even of acknowledging his own humanity. Phil Murphy does nothing wrong. There is no fault he needs to acknowledge. No wrong done that he needs to apologize for. It is always someone else’s fault or responsibility. To disagree with him is existential, to “go backwards” as he tells it. Murphy accuses others of inciting “them against us” divisiveness while he speaks incessantly about people based on the color of their skin or who they have sex with. Did he even once refer to the human whole – to people – as opposed to “black and brown” people or “LGBTQ plus” people or "white" oppressors???

A man, so lacking in original thought, unable to discuss ideas, hangs desperately on to the life preserver of mantra. A strange, distant man – ultimately tragic in his isolation.

That’s why Phil Murphy makes such callous gaffs – like treating the rape of one of his own staffers as if it were a systems flaw to be corrected with the right amount of training or the right number of female appointments (and then patting himself on the back for “getting it right”). His comments concerning the horrendous crimes faced by women realtors – sneering, dismissive, mocking – were particularly telling. Here is Murphy:

“He (Ciattarelli) supports concealed carry… for certain professions like that really dangerous one, realtors…”

The Democrats in the audience hooted very loudly and laughed with Murphy.

Well, Governor (and all your laughing supporters) please consider this video:

Play those screams, Governor. Hear her tell about how she feared she would be raped, Governor. Then tell us, Governor, if this is a laughing matter.

And here are a few headlines for you to consider before your next bout of laughter:

Attacks on Real Estate Agents Are Increasing Every Day
09/09/2019
“In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 real estate professionals died while on the job in 2017.”

The Concerning Rise of Real Estate Agent Attacks
03/02/2019
“Experts on real estate safety agree that the reason so many real estate agents are attacked is because their job requires them to be alone with random members of the public. Unlike customer service jobs that typically include working with coworkers, many real estate agents work alone. They also make scheduled appointments to show homes and advertise when they will be having open houses, so it is easy for a potential attacker to ascertain a real estate agent’s whereabouts.”

Trend of Violence Against Women Real Estate Agents
04/04/2020
“It’s no secret that real estate agents do fear for their personal safety. According to a 2018 Inman survey, 41% of women surveyed said it was a major concern.”

How a Real Estate Agent Survived Attack By Man She Was Showing a Home to
02/12/2015
"And finally I said, we really need to go. So, we started out the door, and I reached down to pick up the lock box. That's when he struck me over the head."

Broker beware: From robbery to assault, realty agents face big risks
12/02/2017
“…in May, while showing a client a vacant property in Avondale, Figueroa heard footsteps and conversation on the second floor. She believes it was a drug deal. All she knows for sure is that a man began running down the stairs toward where she was standing.”

Should Realtors Wear Body Cameras?
03/01/2018
“An Elizabeth City real estate agent found herself in a scary and dangerous situation while showing a rental property this March. A man pretending to be working with a group of investors ended up touching the agent several times and refusing to let her leave the property once he had her inside.”

Are open houses too dangerous to justify?
11/13/2019
“Jen Geisinger was holding an open house alone about a decade ago when she heard what sounded like someone rummaging through the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet…”

The Disturbing Reality of Real Estate Murders
04/15/2019
“According to Psychology Today, real estate professionals face a significant risk when they show homes to strangers. Every meeting with a client means trusting somebody new… Sarah Anne Walker’s body was found in a model home by a couple coming to view it. She’d been beaten, stabbed, bitten, and robbed of her jewelry. Police arrested Kosoul Chanthakoummane for Sarah’s murder thanks to DNA-related discoveries. He’d seemingly been targeting real estate agents he could rob.”

“She’d been beaten, stabbed, bitten, and robbed… and then murdered.”

Imagine if it was someone you knew? A neighbor perhaps? Or a family member?

Still laughing?

This is what happens when a politician stops listening and becomes too certain of his or her own bullshit. Because thinking you are “good” when you are just a fallen human fool like the rest of us is bullshit. It allows you to the laugh at the plight of people who don’t have 24-hour armed security, like Phil Murphy has. Who have to go out and maybe not come back just to put food on the table – something Phil Murphy doesn’t need to worry about.

It comes from an over-abundance of Pride. And a lack of empathy for others who don’t share your good fortune. And a lack of tolerance for those whose perception of the world was shaped differently from yours.

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Democrats make it legal to knowingly infect someone with AIDS.

By Rubashov

The Democrat who runs the Senate Health Committee is Joe Vitale. Next Tuesday, March 9th, he will be introducing new legislation – Senate Bill 3492 – which repeals the law criminalizing the “act of a person knowing they are infected with venereal disease or HIV, committing sexual penetration without informed consent of other person.”

Vitale’s committee, officially the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, will be taking testimony on S-3492 at 1pm on the 9th.

Due to the public health emergency, the State House Annex remains closed to visitors. The public may not attend the meeting in person, but may view and participate in the meeting via the New Jersey Legislature home page: https://www.njleg.state.nj.us

The Committee will take oral testimony by phone and video. If you are interested in registering your position with the Committee, please fill out the Registration Form located on the New Jersey Legislature Home Page under the applicable Committee heading.

For those individuals who wish to testify, please check the box "Do you wish to testify?" on the Registration Form. Instructions for testifying before the Committee will be forwarded to you after you submit your registration form.

The form must be submitted by 3:00 PM on March 8, 2021.

The public may also submit written testimony electronically in lieu of oral testimony. Written testimony will be included in the Committee record and distributed to all the Committee members. Written testimony should be submitted to OLSAideSHH@njleg.org.

Democrats always claim to follow “the science” when, in fact, they merely use science when it fits their agenda. That’s why the loud insistence that we follow “the science” tapers off when the discussion turns to transgender activism and the science of chromosomes. It seems that, ideologically, “the science” and science are two different things.

President Joe Biden tells us that we should wear a mask to protect others, while Democrat Joe Vitale says it’s okay to skip the condom and forget to tell your partner that you’ll be leaving them with a “gift” that they, in turn, can pass along to some other unsuspecting victim.

As Chairman of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, Joe Vitale has been anything but a gentleman – or even a human being – when lording over his committee.  We vividly remember him in committee arguing with a citizen over Senate Bill 1195 – then legislation, now law – which allows people to alter their birth certificates to whatever gender they wish, without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery.  Yes, in New Jersey, people with penises can legally be women and people with vaginas can legally be men.  Science anyone?
 
Senator Vitale, was the main sponsor of Senate Bill 1195 and his exchange with this citizen exercising the right to speak before the New Jersey Legislature was anything but respectful.  There was something of the sociopath in the Senator's behavior -- one moment he was dripping sensitivity, only to turn vicious the next.  There's no remorse – he doesn't appear to care how he treats people who don't agree right down the line with him.  Does he lack a conscience?  We wonder. 
 
We recall the way in which Vitale utterly dismissed the reputation of a scholar whose words were entered into the record by the citizen.  Senator Vitale appeared to have no intellectual curiosity at all.  Here is that exchange:
 
The Senator:  "...You are citing some medical director, obviously he's a former medical director, probably for good reason."
 
The Citizen:  "Because he retired."
 
The Senator:  "Um, right, good thing."
 
Now someone with Vitale’s level of certainty must have some credentials to back up such a coarse dismissal.  So, we wondered if the Senator was a doctor or a professor, after all, he is the Chairman of the committee through which passes all health care legislation in New Jersey.  We looked up his biography and found out that he managed to make it through the 12th grade.  Yep, born in 1954, went from high school to the family business, drifted into the muck of Woodbridge politics, became one of the boys, was selected by the boys as their Senator when Jim McGreevey ran for Governor.
 
And what about that "medical director" the one the Senator said was "obviously... a former medical director, probably for good reason" and that it was a "good thing" he was no longer working?
 
Well, that guy was born in 1931 and is a psychiatrist, researcher, and educator.  He is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author, co-author, or editor of seven books within his field.  He was the son of a high school teacher and a homemaker.  He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and from Harvard Medical School in 1956.  He was accepted into the neurology and neuropathology residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied for three years under the chief of the Neurology Department. 

From Massachusetts General, he went to the Institute of Psychiatry in London (where he studied under Sir Aubrey Lewis and was supervised by James Gibbons and Gerald Russell). Following London, he went to the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.  He has held various academic and administrative positions, including, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College (where he founded the Bourne Behavioral Research Laboratory), Clinical Director and Director of Residency Education at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Westchester Division and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oregon. 

From 1975 until 2001, he was the Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins University.  At the same time, he was psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His own research has focused on the neuroscientific foundations of motivated behaviors, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, and neuropsychiatry.  During the 1960s, he co-authored papers on hydrocephalus, depression and suicide, and amygdaloid stimulation. 

In 1975, he co-authored a paper entitled "Mini-Mental State: A Practical Method for Grading the Cognitive State of Patients for the Clinician." This paper details the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE), an exam consisting of just eleven questions, that quickly and accurately assesses patients for signs of dementia and other states of cognitive impairment. It is one of the most widely used tests in the mental health field.  In 1979, in his capacity as chair of the Department of Psychiatry, he ended gender assignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  In 1983, he co-authored The Perspectives of Psychiatry, which presents the Johns Hopkins approach to psychiatry.

The book "seeks to systematically apply the best work of behaviorists, psychotherapists, social scientists and other specialists long viewed as at odds with each other."  A second edition was published in 1998.  He also treated author Tom Wolfe for depression suffered following coronary bypass surgery. Wolfe dedicated his 1998 novel, A Man in Full to him, "whose brilliance, comradeship and unfailing kindness saved the day." He is a registered Democrat who describes himself as a "political liberal".
 
And you Senator... you made it through the 12th grade.
 
Maybe read one of the guy's books before dismissing him out of hand?  Or don't. Perhaps this is why health care is what it is in New Jersey?  Maybe New Jersey is in the shapSee it is in because of the lack of humility and unwillingness to learn exhibited by politicians who set policies – guys like Joseph Vitale.  Maybe a Committee Chairman too stupid to learn does result in substandard government and people being made to suffer? 
 
Given the greater threat to women posed by the heterosexual transmission of HIV/ AIDS from male to female partners, we hope Senator Vitale keeps an open mind at next week’s hearing.  Maybe learn something? 

 

“Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.”
Confucius

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website.  Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions.  To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

From Katie Brennan to at-risk children: Why are the Democrats ignoring Rape?

Does it seem like the administration of Governor Phil Murphy and his allies in the Democrat-controlled Legislature care more about keeping up appearances than they do about addressing actual sexual assaults against women and children? As the unresolved crime against former Democratic Party staffer Katie Brennan made clear – Murphy’s Democrats will close ranks (even against one of their own) if it threatens to tarnish their image or expose them for who they are.

Katie Brennan was one of several women who said that a top Murphy political operative had sexually assaulted them. The Murphy administration’s response was to try to cover it up and to intimidate whistleblowers who came forward.

This mirrors what is going on nationally in the liberal media, where NBC was caught trying to cover-up the sexual assault and exploitation of women by a critter named Harvey Weinstein – a top Democrat donor and “friend of Hillary”. The work done by investigative journalist Ronan Farrow to expose this corporate media cover-up has been impressive…

This is journalism today. So it’s not just the boys at InsiderNJ or Julie O’Connor and Jonathan Salant at the Star-Ledger – corporations owned by rich benefactors who are in the “news” business because it serves as a public relations tool for their other enterprises. Journalism is very sick, maybe on life-support, and unless measures are taken to ethically correct its degradation, it may well perish.

Journalists like Ronan Farrow, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Douglas Murray, and Ross Douthat offer a way forward. But will the corporations who own the media follow?

Meanwhile the Murphy administration and the Murphy Democrats are getting away with ignoring sexual assaults on women and children.

Murphy’s Sanctuary State scheme – a major campaign promise he made to secure far-Left votes – is allowing accused rapists and child predators to be released back into the community. And when asked to come before the people who pay his salary – Murphy has refused, ignoring all requests to explain whether his Sanctuary State scheme was created with law enforcement goals or was it simply a matter of politics.

It is noteworthy that while the European Union and the British government are in frantic negotiations aimed at maintaining border-security cooperation between all levels of law enforcement – Governor Murphy and his Democrat allies have willfully destroyed such cooperation, creating a safe-haven for criminals not seen since Post-World War Two Argentina. As the United Nations reminds us, un-policed porous borders are an enhancement to the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation, the illegal importation of narcotics and opioids, and the trafficking of illegal firearms.

And on top of all of this, now the Murphy Democrats are blocking legislation that will protect at-risk children from being raped.

The Democrat leadership is holding up legislation designed to protect children from sexual assault at state supervised health care facilities. These are the same politicians who are pouring money into the campaigns of Democrat Assembly candidates Bruce Land and Matthew Milam in District 1, Gina LaPlaca and Mark Natale in District 8, Lisa Mandelblatt and Stacey Gunderman in District 21, Lisa Bhimani and Darcy Draeger in District 25, Christine Clarke and Laura Fortgang in District 26, and Deana Lykins in District 24.

The legislation would require psychiatric health care facilities to provide 24-hour-a-day monitoring of children under their supervision and was proposed following documented horrific sex attacks on children. So why is there no action after 18 months?

Why are children being exposed to violent sexual assault by the Democrats?

Because the Murphy administration doesn’t like the bill, that’s why. And the Democrats – dependent on assorted Murphy donors for their campaign cash – do what they’re told.

Would the legislation have a better chance of passing if the vulnerable children who are exposed to rape were to renounce their citizenship and apply for Sanctuary Status? But hey, shouldn’t health care facilities under the supervision of the state be sanctuaries free from fear of violent sexual assault anyway? We are talking children here.

Republican Assemblyman Hal Wirths (R-24) has championed the victims of the Murphy administration’s lack of action. Wirths was quoted in a New Jersey Herald article:

“This is a parent’s worst nightmare. What this family has had to endure is horrendous. We urgently need to address these facilities’ inadequate supervision policies through legislation by requiring them to properly supervise and protect children who are in their care due to psychiatric crises. More children are put at risk every day that this legislation remains at a standstill.”

In response, the Democrats trotted out Joann Downey, who sounded decidedly less enthused about helping protect children at risk of sexual assault. She told the New Jersey Herald:

“As chair of the Assembly Committee on Human Services, it’s my first priority to make sure that the vulnerable families, children and communities of New Jersey are well cared for and supported in their times of need… I appreciate Assemblyman Wirths’ interest in our state’s psychiatric facilities and look forward to reviewing this legislation as we develop the Committee’s agenda for the coming months.”

In other words… screw you and the kids and their parents. We’ll get around to it when Boss Murphy tells us we can. Real scumbags.

Meanwhile the question remains: How many kids were sexually assaulted over the last 18 months while the Democrats have been waiting for permission to advance the bill? How many more will be raped while their parents wait for action from the Democrats?