I Refuse To Accept "The Way Things Are" In New Jersey

I'm mad as hell.  For once, Governor Corzine is actually trying to do something to really fix a significant problem in New Jersey, and the public employees union is taking him to court to prevent it from happening.  

Let's start with the basics, as we always do and always should.

Unions in the United States at one time had a just and rightful place in the bargaining process between employers and employees - it happened occasionally that employers would overstep their bounds and take actions that would be critically detrimental to the health and well-being of their employees, and unions helped the individual workers from being overrun and run roughshod over.  Then a funny thing happened - given that power of bargaining, the unions ran with it, to the ends of the earth.  They became institutionalized in certain areas thanks to the Wagner Act, a law designed to step in and force employers to accept bargaining from unions instead of simply hiring a new workforce when their existing one presented "demands" and threatened to walk out.  They forced employers to give into almost anything they could come up with, to the point of forcing employers into bankruptcy just to pay for their new "benefits" they were supposedly owed.  

Let's get one thing straight right now: the only reason unions obtained any sort of control was the Great Depression.  Unions came in and initially were able to help their members keep their jobs - but the employers didn't have the opportunity to just walk away from the bargaining table and find some new workers, because once the unions got their members back to work, they raised the bar for removing people from their positions and made it damn near impossible for employers to remove lazy and unproductive workers from the environment or move more productive workers into new areas.  Put simply, unions knocked industry to the ground and sat on it until they got what they wanted, and threatened like that, industry went along to ensure its own immediate or short-term survival.  

It gets better.  Seeing the control they could obtain over private-sector positions, unions began creeping into the public sector, supposedly to help police, firemen, road workers, secretaries and any other people employed by government at any level.  That's led to a number of bad things, like the current fiscal crisis faced by many transit agencies across the country - fares keep going up but service gets cut back further and further because the money has to pay for contracts negotiated by the thugs in these unions.  

Let me take a moment here and tell you: both my father and my father in law are involved in unions - my father is a member of the nursing union and my father in law is a member of the railroad worker's union.  I won't go further with details because I'd rather not disclose private details, but suffice to say, I've benefitted from union negotiations myself, as the son of a union worker and as the son-in-law of a union worker.  That being said, I believe unions should be de-institutionalized, and that all existing union members ought to be able to cast secret ballots determining whether they want to remain as members of the union or to have their workplace union dismantled and removed.  The Wagner Act was made for a different time and place, where America was facing different challenges, brought on by socialist policies and heavy-handed government regulation.  Pull it out, and let the people decide what they want.  

Bring back the free market.  

Transportation 2: Electric Boogaloo

This image infuriates me every time I look at it. It was created using Google Earth and Windows Vista's Snipping Tool (very handy).

The red line is NJ Transit's rail operations in New Jersey. To the north is the Northeast Corridor line, operating from Trenton to New York City. To the south is the Atlantic City line, operating from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station to Atlantic City. The squiggly line connecting them is the RiverLINE, a diesel-powered light rail service operating from Trenton to Camden along the Delaware River and operating along existing and operational freight rail lines. The portion of red line off to the right is the North Jersey Coast Line, provided here for reference as to NJ Transit's service footprint in NJ, ending in Bay Head and heading north to connect with the Northeast Corridor tracks just before Elizabeth and providing service into New York City.

The green line is the existing rail service between Camden and Trenton operating in Pennsylvania. This is controlled by Amtrak and leased to SEPTA (South-Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, for those not in "Teh Know") and NJ Transit for commuter rail operations. North of 30th Street Station, Amtrak operates the Northeast Regional (local), Acela (express), and on weekends, ACES (Atlantic City Express Service, stopping only at NYC, Newark and Atlantic City), while SEPTA operates the R7 and R3 services connecting daily commuters with Trenton and West Trenton, respectively (don't be fooled - the two cities are miles apart). To the south of 30th Street Station, the green line is simply the Atlantic City line. Amtrak used to operate daily service to Atlantic City but discontinued this when it was apparent that no one was actually using it on a daily basis (the ACES service is funded exclusively by the casinos in AC, operated with NJ Transit and Amtrak equipment, and tickets are exclusively distributed by Amtrak).

The yellow lines are simply geographic borders that I couldn't turn off in Google Earth, and the light blueish lines are county borders in NJ.

Now let's see... what could all those black lines all over the place be? Take a second and look at all of them.

Those are the rail lines crawling throughout South Jersey. Some are used as freight rail, some are abandoned, some have the last trains that used them still sitting there derelict, housing vagrants, all manner of wildlife, causing damage to surrounding environs and posing health and safety risks for area children, who are extremely likely to curiously play on or around these monoliths to times past, when rail service was privately operated and sprawled everywhere but now sit neglected.

Google searches for abandoned trains in New Jersey or perusing any Weird NJ magazine or related website often turns up pictures of these things. It's disgusting - anyone who claims to value transit in NJ at all should be appalled that the state has thus far ignored these lines and let the possibility for expansion simply die.

Here is another shot from Google Earth, this time showing simply the transit options SEPTA, with all its problems, has provided, compared to the transit options NJ Transit has provided to South Jersey residents. Pretty stark picture, eh? All of those rail lines, everything NJ Transit has done, has thus far centered on New York or Newark, and has ignored South Jersey and left it to rot. It's not that the freight companies aren't willing to work with them - far from it, they're very happy to work with commuter rail systems, as evidenced by the RiverLINE, which must shut down service at 10 PM and start up at 5 AM because it shares rails with CSX, a freight railroad. The expansion of the Newark Light Rail from Branch Brook Park Station to Grove Street Station in Bloomfield is owned by Norfolk Southern (as are the tracks which make up the other future expansion on the table, found at http://expandncs.blogspot.com). And again, portions of the expansion plan for the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail are currently freight rail lines in use - and I could go on and on with examples of how freight and passenger rail can share lines without any trouble, and still we have wasted rails all over South Jersey.

So really, the question now becomes: what excuse have you, NJ Transit, to not provide service?

Transportation In New Jersey

I've had it up to here with people claiming that the only thing New Jersey needs to solve ALL of its transportation problems is the ARC (Access to the Region's Core) Project.  It is ONE solution amidst a growing number of major problems with transportation in NJ.  

Today I'm pissed off at this moron in the Asbury Park Press claiming that special HOV / single user lanes will somehow solve major congestion issues on the Parkway in the shore areas.  

Let's give some of these things a background, because while transit news and information happens to be one of my hobbies (distilled to me by my incredibly smart, wise, funny and talented uncle, Tim), it certainly isn't the case for the majority of people.  

Currently, if you want to get to New York from most points in New Jersey, you have two options: car (NJ Turnpike, Garden State Parkway) or train (NJ Transit, PATH).  Driving is just fine for some people, but others can't afford the high tolls for the bridges and tunnels, and many can't afford parking in NYC on a consistent basis.  For those people outside the Newark/Jersey City area, the PATH is a partial option - as long as you can find your way to Newark or Jersey City first.  South of the Raritan Tolls, the Parkway has express lanes and local lanes going north and south until exit 105, for Tinton Falls and Long Branch.  The local lanes are three lanes wide and the express lanes are two lanes wide, with almost no stops in between.  After 105, the Parkway is two to three lanes wide on the north and south ends.  It's relatively the same north of the Raritan tolls, with the exception of areas around toll plazas, where lanes suddenly balloon from two to three, up to ten to twelve and then back down.  Yeah it's a frickin nightmare for casual drivers, and the third circle of hell for commuters.  

OK so people coming from South Jersey and Northern-er Jersey can drive straight into the city, park and go to work, or get to Newark, pay for cheap parking and take the PATH, or just take the NJ Transit train closest to them to either New York and be done with it, or Newark or Hoboken and transfer from one of those stops to the PATH into New York.  Fine, great, problem solved.  

Except it isn't.  NJ finally decided it was a good idea to try and fix the problem with traffic jams on the GSP, so they floated a lot of proposals on how to fix it.  HOV lanes, single-driver fees, higher tolls, expanded mass transit, and expansion of the GSP lanes were all fielded.  Only the last two options were actually seriously considered, thanks to NY's horrendous experience on the LIE (if you've ever driven on that road, at any point in the day, you know exactly what I mean.  The second you start with the HOV lanes, you get traffic jams and a freaking solid lane wide open begging for use) and the fact that NJ drivers were probably going to riot if the tolls went up any more.  In addition, NJ Transit's system, while well-put-together and decent for a thirty-year-old system (NJ Transit was formed in the early eighties from the remnants of the major railroads that had passed through NJ, including the Penn Central which makes up today's Northeast Corridor line that passes through New York and New Jersey and gives name to Newark and New York City's major railroad stations), has been showing its age for a while and has had difficulty scaling to meet the increased demand for commuters, the majority of whom are going back and forth to New York, and to a lesser extent Philadelphia, every day.  

NJ Transit just recently upgraded its fleet with double-decker cars from Canada's Bombardier, Inc., and is working with Amtrak and the Port Authority to upgrade many area railroad bridges from one or two tracks to five to eight tracks (They have to work with Amtrak because technically Amtrak owns the actual tracks into New York, as well as the inbound and outbound tunnels connecting New York with New Jersey).  At the moment, NJ Transit and Amtrak share the length of track between New York Penn Station and Trenton's Transit Center (Amtrak shares the tracks from there with SEPTA), and if a train wants to go to New York, it absolutely must use those tracks.  All trains going to New York, every single one of them, must use those tracks.  While PATH uses a separate system entirely and passes under the Hudson River further south, this doesn't help those people who want to just take the train straight into the city without transferring at all.  It also means that if something happens in one of the tunnels, ALL of the trains are stuck using the other one until things are back to normal.  This happens rather frequently - a train, either an Amtrak or NJ Transit train, will get stuck in the tunnel and either need to be towed out or need to be serviced, but in the interim everything is backed up and no one is able to get to where they need to go.  

Enter the ARC project. The central idea is to drill two new tunnels to supplement the two existing tunnels into New York, and to have these tunnels go under the existing Penn Station, expanding capacity and making longer, more frequent trains a reality (in addition to connecting service with the PATH and with fourteen subway lines (A, C, E, 1, 2, 3, B, F, D, V, N, R, Q, W) instead of the current situation which forces commuters up to street level before they can catch those last eight subway lines over a block away).  In addition, the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack, connecting Kearny and Secaucus, will be expanded from two tracks to eight tracks (three south of the current bridge, and three north of it), and the rail lines around Secaucus Junction will be reconfigured so that trains can more easily turn around at Secaucus and head back to New York (very helpful during rush hour) or head off to other tracks that would not normally be possible, such as trains from New York heading to Hoboken or trains from Port Jervis and Spring Valley going to New York (not currently possible, requires changing trains at Secaucus).  

It's a great idea but it's not the only thing that NJ can do to fix its traffic problems.  Expanding the GSP where it's obviously bottlenecking is the best idea - upgrading the transit system is a great start but like it or not, NJ is a state of drivers and drivers actually like their cars.  Taxing the crap out of them doesn't stop them from driving any more than it stops smokers from smoking.  It's a bullshit theory lauded by some idiot who apparently gets paid to sit around and make stupid ideas, because the article I've linked above is full of stupid ideas like "induced demand" - the haughty-man's way of saying, "If you build it, they will come".  Well of course they'll come, genius.  Summer weekend traffic isn't going away any time soon - it's a fact of life in New Jersey.  Rush-hour traffic on the other hand is something we can work with.  HOT/HOV lanes aren't any more of a solution than building more road - in fact they'll work against you because you'll be stuck with a billion drivers paying the higher fee and STILL getting a traffic jam.  There's no way to stop that except to build more, newer roads and expand the ones we already have.  

And what the hell are you babbling about sprawl for?  As if it's a bad thing!!  Having MORE people living in their own homes is a good thing, jackass - not everyone wants to live in an apartment forever and ride their bike to work and be all green and shit.  You sir, FAIL.  Just because you don't like suburbanites and kiddies and soccer moms and schools and lots of people doesn't mean they're inherently bad!  And don't even start with me on overpopulation, because that's exactly the next step for you dolts.  "WAAAAAA people are everywhere we're gonna run out of resources WAAAAAA!!!!!" I challenge anyone with even the slightest hint of a brain in their head who thinks this is the case to A) stop bitching and pull your head out of Algore's ass, and B) go into true Southern New Jersey or true Northern New Jersey, just as an example, and see how long you can drive on non-highways without seeing other people.  The further out you go, the longer it takes to find people - just a matter of fact.  Even in NEW JERSEY, the most densely populated state in the union, you have VAST, WIDE OPEN SPACES.  And with those spaces you have the possibility of new homes for people, and new businesses and new spurs to the economy.  Every family in New Jersey could have ten kids  and we'd still have plenty of space!  As for resources, cut back on that bullshit about global warming or climate change or damn it's getting hot in here or whatever you want to call it and stop limiting private industry.  People will conserve their resources on their own, they don't need Big Daddy Government to do it for them.  

And as for expanded mass transit?  Absolutely!  Let the rest of the state enjoy what Northern and small portions of Central and Southern New Jersey enjoy now, a damned fine rail system!  Expand it! I want trains from Cape May to New Hope, from Cherry Hill to Wall!  I don't care if it's light or heavy rail, I want more trains!  There's abandoned rails all over the state, and if we don't act now, the greenies are going to turn them into friggin "rail trails" for biking and hiking, because you know, we don't have enough of that already!!  Stop pulling up these rails!! STOP, DAMNIT!!  Put trains on them, expand service to all corners of the state!  If you REALLY want people to use mass transit, then make it an OPTION FOR THEM!!! South Jersey residents, all they have are the PATCO Speedline, the RiverLINE and the Atlantic City Line, which are both useless unless you're going to either Philly or AC, and let's face it - people want MORE OPTIONS.  They want to be able to hop on ONE train and take that train to Cape May or to Wildwood or to Delran or Glouscter or Glassboro or Howell or Toms River or any other place in New Jersey. 

Get it together, guys!  Come on now!  

I Gave Up Facebook, Not The Internet, So Here's What I Think About Our Situation

In a previous post, I discussed what I thought could be done to try and keep the budget from going too far.  Among the things I pointed out at the time were the similarities between computing resources and budget resources; namely, that over time, things creep in which we don't necessarily need and which invariably bog down and grind to a halt our other resources.  With computers, this results in a fairly bad user experience, which requires a lot of time and effort to fix, and if fixed improperly leaves open the door to more and more problems.  With our government, national budget and national resources the situation is practically the same.  We have had almost fifty years of socialist programs that have led almost two generations to believe that they are owed an upbringing by their government, we have had a budget which is overstuffed with programs that have such wonderful intentions but such horrendously destructive results, and billions of gallons of oil, millions of acres of useable woodland, and hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds and capable manpower squandered on such laughable prospects as global warming/climate change when they could be building more and better nuclear/coal/antimatter (wheeeee that would be awesome!) power plants all over our nation.  

I don't need an advanced degree, or anything more than simple math, to tell me that more people taking more pieces of the pie leaves less pie for me.  Mmm pie.  The significant problem, the core of it, is control.  People want to control their own destinies, but other people want to control other people's destinies.  What?  Individuals have the will and the ability to do what they want, when they want it, and would love nothing more than to do it without other individuals having a say in how they do it.  Think about it for just a second.  As a kid, there's nothing more irritating than having your parents order you to go with them to look at houses when really you wanted to spend the weekend riding your bike all over the damned neighborhood.  Yes, we all know it's better to go look at houses, because your parents love and care for you, and want you to tell them what you think of that nice white house two towns over because even though it's a benevolent dictatorship, you'll have to live under that roof too and if you can see something that they might miss, they want to know about it.  Plus, it's better for them to find the crap you'll complain about now (like the place with the one shower for eight or nine people or the place with the basement that reminds you of that ghost story you read last week, the one that made you almost crap yourself, or the place with the one room that looked like it belonged to that liver-eating guy from the X-Files first season) rather than dive into the purchase and have to deal with a bad attitude and misbehavior later on.  Yes it's better for you, but being a kid, you just want to use your free time towards your own ends, like riding through that cemetary and pissing off the caretaker with the black van just because you could, or just relaxing with some mind-blowing 8-bit/16-bit video games.  

The point is, even though you'd be doing what's best for you by going with your folks, you want to go do what you think is the best use of your time.  Now substitute "government" for "your folks," "your money" for "your time," and toss in edicts that have the force of law, and you've got a better idea of what's going on.  

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A note about Nadya Suleman.  

Because you know I had to say something about this.  

I don't usually condone the use of IVF because very frequently the eggs and sperm are pared down to one egg and one sperm, and the remainders are, for those who can't afford storage, destroyed.  Doesn't sound too bad except that those are potential human beings - destroyed = killed.  

That being said, for the few who are ready to accept however many children come into the world as a result of either IVF or natural conception, I gladly and happily endorse, encourage and embrace their actions.  To accept such a bountiful and wonderful gift from God despite the hardships one may face takes a courage and a resolve few have ever matched.  Nadya absolutely deserves praise and encouragement for these actions.  

Would I have gone the same route as her, and taken all of this on outside the bonds of marriage, and fitfully declared to the world that I would, that I could, do this alone?  Absolutely not.  There is not a chance in hell that I would've even dared to try something like this on my own.  That's one of the reasons for marriage - to provide support in every form, to mitigate the impact of the crap God chooses to throw at us and to help us come out of it better.  Doing something like IVF while wildly proclaiming self-reliance and independence reeks of either stupidity or severe mental issues.  

All of that taken into consideration, the media has taken this whole situation WAAAAAAY too far.  When you have Entertainment Tonight going on about the 911 calls she's made (none of which have resulted in child services or any other authority showing up at her door), you know things are out of control.  People need to leave this woman alone and let her find her own way out of this situation - rather than coming up with more ways to smear her for having multiple kids.  Really, all she needed was a tsk tsk from her parents - not months of hounding by every media outlet and left-wing anti-life butch-to-the-extreme feminist nutjobs haranguing her for all of her faults.  

Temperence, people.  

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I gave up Facebook for Lent, as I'm sure you saw from the title.  

I left the notifications RSS feed in my Google Reader, so every time you tag me I see it - I just don't respond.  Why did I do this?  Isn't that cheating?  

Nah.  It's really really easy to ignore Facebook when I don't have it open all the time and when I've disconnected it from all of my other online presences.  It's harder to stay off of it when the notifications are there, taunting me and telling me that someone superpoked me (and only me).  I'm doing this for the challenge, not so I can avoid being stalked or something.  

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I've created a second blog, one solely focused on the Newark Light Rail expansion you're all sick of hearing about.  

http://expandncs.blogspot.com

That site will cover all updates and such, along with the Facebook group (which I don't have the link for and won't put up here because it'd require me to log into Facebook), and it also has a link to the Google Docs version of the proposal.  

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That's all for now.  =)

wants you to check out Palinmania! www.palinmania.com We'll be liveblogging tonight's debate!

One Day

I woke up later than normal.  It was a Tuesday morning, and I had a College English II class at 10.  Bridget, however, had things to do on campus, and Danielle needed to be at her on-campus job, so unless I wanted to use the Newark Light Rail and the 31 bus to get to school, I was getting up and going with them.  

I got my shower, I got dressed, and hurried down the stairs and out the door to jump into Bridget's car.  The drive over was as it always was - happy and pleasant, chit-chat about nothing in particular, jokes about Danielle's spaziness, with background music provided by The Scarlet Pimpernel and Godspell (sing-a-longs were quite frequent, especially with Godspell - "OH BLESS THE LORD MY SOUL!!!").  

Danielle went her separate way, and Bridget and I went over to the Pirate's Cove, the campus coffee bar and secondary social center (main one was the Caf, downstairs from the Cove - however, it was also rather cold down there, and the Cove at least had heaters venting onto the tables).  Bridget sat down with me at the table closest to the side entrance and proceeded to break out the books.  I stepped away to get us both hazelnut cappucinos (sp?) at the coffee bar and came back and started up my laptop.  By now it was about 9 AM and various friends had started to congregate around us, including Bridget's best friend Steph Johnson.  Steph started up her laptop and both of us noticed something on the Drudge Report about a small plane crashing into the World Trade Center.  I didn't really think anything of this, mainly because just a week before I'd read somewhere about a plane or a dirgible crashing into the Empire State Building and that being the reason the docks on the top of it were no longer used.  It was, as far as we could see at the moment, just another piece of news out of The City that didn't affect us Jersey folk in the least.  

That's when Adam Budeshiem, a senior and the man I credit with giving me the swift kick in my ass that I needed to stop screwing around and start taking my scholastic career seriously, IMed us and asked us to try to get to another website, and it was extremely slow, on both our machines.  Network traffic, it seemed, was at a standstill.  As Steph needed to take care of a registration problem (she was trying to get into another class with Bridget, I believe), she asked Bridget if she wanted to take a walk over to Bayley Hall, across the campus.  Bridget was reading, and since the computer wasn't working, it seemed, I said I'd go.  

We took the walk over to Bayley and I remember there was something markedly different about the center of the campus that day.  There weren't any folks going back and forth to classes or the Caf, which was odd for that hour of the morning - most people, like me, had realized after the first semester that 9 AM class was always a bad idea, so they opted for the 10 AM class this time around and spent that extra hour, bleary-eyed and zombie-like, staggering from their cars or dorm rooms and getting as much coffee as their weary bodies could tolerate (20 oz styrofoam cups with ten sugars and whole milk, wow I hated my body..).  

It's not often that you can pinpoint the moment your world changes, nor is it often that you remember certain moments with HD-quality, 100,000 megapixel resolution.  The moment I said goodbye to my friend Brian Logan as I got into the car and headed up to Newark as our family followed my dad's job north, the moment I held my driver's license in my hand for the first time and realized what great freedom I had now, the moment I read my letter of acceptance to Seton Hall the day before my eighteenth birthday, the moment I looked into my wife's eyes for the first time, the moment we said "I do.", the moment the doctor told us we were going to have a baby, the moment I held Little Jimmy in my arms for the first time and realized how real fatherhood was... these are the moments I remember like that.  And walking into Bayley is, unfortunately, one of those moments.  

Bayley is the administrative hub of Seton Hall - any financial decisions, registration issues, et cetera get handled there.  It's also the starting point for the orientation tours and as such had been outfitted with several TVs, usually tuned to an orientation-only channel, but hooked into the campus' DirecTV system.  This morning, each and every one of the TVs had been changed to WNBC, channel 4, and local meteorologist Janice Huff was calling in from her home in New Jersey, relaying what she was seeing to Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, Ann Curry and Al Roker (having worked for so long at 30 Rock, I can tell you that unless you are on the 46, 47, or 51 floors, you really couldn't see anything going on downtown).   The cameras usually positioned at the Lincoln Tunnel were turned downtown, as were many other cameras I would imagine, and Chopper 4, in the middle of a report on the Turnpike and so in a perfect position to capture history, had been turned towards Lower Manhattan and was watching while the debate raged as to whether this was simply an accident, since people had been reporting seeing a plane, but most had misidentified it as a Cessna.  

It was watching, as were all the employees, students and administrators, when the second plane hit.  I watched it turn its wings slightly downward and level off as it slammed through the building.  And everything stopped.  For a moment, no one spoke.  No one said a word, made a move.  The raw impact of what had just occured smashed through our brains with the impact of an atomic bomb.  Everyone knew now that this wasn't an accident.  The debate ended, everyone blinked for a second and started to look around.  We awoke as though it had all been a dream, a terrible nightmare, but only a look at the television could shake us from that.  Steph and I headed back to the Cove and told Bridget what happened.  Others had gathered near our table and were finding out around the same time we had found out.  The Internet, despite hiccups, was continuing to provide information to the campus about the situation.  Not knowing what else to do, and being only the second week of the semester, I decided to go to class.  Bridget, having left her laptop at home, went with Steph to the nearest computer lab, in the Arts & Sciences building.  

My class was in the basement of what was then known as Kozlowski Hall but is currently called Jubilee Hall because Seton Hall is afraid of associations with people who are accused of things.  I got there with about five minutes to spare, and tried to focus on getting into the appropriate frame of mind for class.  Push it out, James.  Leave that gruesome image behind - there isn't anything you can do about it, so just try to focus on your work right now.  Ten minutes after class was to have started, the professor popped her head in and asked us, "Are you seriously unaware of what's happened?  Please, go home!  There's no reason for you to be here today."  I grabbed my bag, stood and went to find Bridget and Danielle.  

I managed to track them down in the computer lab and it was at that point that we all heard, at the same time, about the attacks in Washington.  Well, yes there was only one attack that day, but you must understand that the amount of confusion and speculation was unbelieveable.  People were saying that a bomb had hit the Capitol building, that a nuke had been set off in New York City, that we were at war with some other unnamed nation.  We knew very few pieces of information, considering cell phones weren't working and IM seemed to be the unshakable juggernaut of communication.  We also heard that the planes had been international flights, but there weren't many other reliable facts at that point - and we were more concerned immediately because Maryann, at the time living in the same neighborhood as the rest of the family, had managed to tell everyone that her husband Brendan was on an international flight and had been scheduled to arrive early in the morning on a trip back from Ireland.  We found out later that his flight had simply been redirected to Newfoundland when all flights were grounded and that he was perfectly fine, but it only added to our fear and sadness to know that he might be among those victims across the Hudson.  We wanted to go home but other reports indicated that roads were clogged with people trying to get away, as fast as they could, from New York.  

I remember wanting to help out with whatever I could, and not knowing what else to do, heading over to Corrigan Hall, center of Seton Hall's IT department and for a while my workplace.  At this point it was almost noon, so I asked if anyone needed help manning the phones or the computer labs, and I was told initially yes, but when I tried to leave my gear in the office, I was told that the campus was being shut down for the rest of the day, and classes, from initial reports were being cancelled for the remainder of the week.  

I wandered over towards the Cove again, and while I was out on the campus green I noticed what looked like a 747 being escorted by two small jets and I realized how quiet the sky was.  People outside the Newark/New York area might not realize this completely, but when you live near several of the busiest airports in the nation, you get used to hearing the sounds of planes overhead constantly.  It's such an ingrained part of living here that no one really ever stops to say "oh there goes a plane.." - but when you have two hours go by and only one plane flies overhead, that's when you realize how bad things are.  I wandered down to the freshman dormitory, Boland Hall, and walked into the basement lounge just as one of the towers collapsed on live television.  I couldn't sit there.  I got up and left.  I wandered across campus to the upperclassmen dorm, Xavier Hall, and took the elevator to the seventh and highest floor.  A crowd had gathered near the only public window facing Manhattan and had watched the first tower fall.  I must state now that I'm not sure how much time passed while I wandered - I know that it had to have been a lot, because when I got to the window, I watched with others gathered there as the second tower fell and sent a massive plume of dust, dirt, smoke and debris into the air.

The remaining community, those who had opted to stay behind or who had nowhere else to go, had gathered on the center of the campus green with the campus priest community and were expecting some form of support and news.  Msgr. Robert Sheeran, a man whom I believe doesn't belong leading a major Catholic university, at that point helped unify the Seton Hall community and led a prayer for solace and peace, not tempered by any political or other leanings, and advised the gathered crowd that yes, the campus was closed, effective immediately, and that classes were cancelled for the remainder of the week, and advised anyone who was able to do so to return home for the moment, as there was nothing else to be done.  We took up the offer and decided, traffic jams or no, we needed to get home.  

The roads were surprisingly empty, though we were not on major roads and took back roads home in the event that we were wrong.  Driving on roads paralleling the Garden State Parkway, we realized that this major artery, normally full of traffic, was empty.  There was no one on that road, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.  We got home and managed to get the facts sorted out, and let the pain of what had occured seep in.  

I don't remember much else from that day, thankfully it's mostly greyed out in my head, but I know that that's the day that the defense of this nation and all she stood for began to matter to me.  I took comfort in the fact that whomever these evil men had been that had committed murder on such a scale, they were dead and could do no more against us, and their compatriots were easy to identify and target.  And they had jumped into America's sights with both feet. 

God help them, and God bless America.

Obamatons - Fun to play with!

From: <> 

Hi JAmes,

Thanks for the button [McCain/Palin button I sent out Friday on Facebook] ...nice try. One of the things I LOVE about America is that we can have different viewpoints yet still respect one another!!! I was a Hill supporter til the end. After watching O' BAma speak last night, I was convinced he was for me. Of course having Joe on the ticket really helps as he is brilliant and a Catholic. As for Palin on your ticket, I am not impressed. If McCain croaks, I do not want a women with NO EXPERIENCE whatsoever to be my prez. It is insulting to me as a woman that he picked a woman that started out as a beauty queen. That is insulting to all women. Why didn't he pick Kaye B Huchinson from Texas....as least she is smart. SOOOOOOOOO. I am NOT impressed at all and O' Bama/Biden will get my vote.

 

James Riley

August 29 at 2:45pm

I love America! BARACK AMERICA! The man who can defend us from evil demon children coming out of the womb! The man who can make sure all of our money gets funneled to the right lobbyist or fatcat! BARACK AMERICA! The only one who can save us from ourselves! BARACK AMERICA! And his sidekick, Joe "I'm always wrong on foreign policy AND a Washington insider" Biden! BARACK AMERICA! Defending us from Hillary Clinton, the discoverer of the VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY! 

Seriously, though... Palin hasn't had to resort to petty BS to get any office - she relied on her wits and her experience to get where she is. Barack, well, pretty much ruined the lives of Jack Ryan and his wife, Star Trek: Voyager star Jeri "Seven of Nine" Ryan with the crap he went through to get into office. Oh, and that whole "I launched my career in the house of a terrorist who likes the idea of killing Americans to achieve his aims" thing - yeah let's just sweep that one under the rug. 

The man has one goal, which he's been screaming from the rafters: introduction of the redistribution of wealth on a scale unknown to mankind. The man is a Marxist and wants to bring America to its knees. 

I have my own problems with John McCain, but at least he's picked someone that has their head on straight. She's a mother of five kids, one of whom is fighting for our freedoms in Iraq and the youngest of whom has Downs Syndrome. The kind of strength of character, the absolute will to go ahead with pregnancy despite such news tells me all I need to know about this woman. It tells me that when there are hard choices and difficult decisions to make, she'll guide us on the right path. It tells me that she is not concerned with what some pollster might say, and that when she says she is going to do something, by hell it's going to happen no matter what. 

I can't be more proud to be an American, especially now.

 

<> 

August 29 at 3:03pm

Let's see where this takes us from McCain who in his own words said he doesn't know that much about the economy. The man who will NEVER get us out of Iraq even if THEY want us out (and now even GWB is setting a timetable). The man is a War mongrel and will have us at war with Iran in a heartbeat. He also wants to bring back the draft, which I am for. The campaign that is run by lobbyists, that is Mc Cain. The man who left his ailing wife for an heiress, now That is family values!!! As for Palin, isn't she under investigation now also..........what a way to start a campaign....Let's go.

As my dear friend Timothy J Russert used to say, "What a Country"!!!! I am so PROUD to be a Democrat. The Republican men I know here are livid he picked her. They wanted Romney. He may get some women to vote for her, but he is going to loose men now!!!! What does that wind bag, El Rushbo have to say about her?????e

 

James Riley

August 30 at 8:46am

Apologies for the late response - yesterday was just a tad bit crazy. That being said:

1. McCain doesn't need to be an expert on the economy - he just needs to choose the right advisers to assist him in making sound economic decisions. 

2. A) McCain, if elected, will bring the troops home when the security of this country from forces who would take advantage of the precarious situation in Iraq can be guaranteed primarily by the citizens and residents of Iraq. We are already very close to that goal, as al-Qaeda has shot themselves in the foot and bolted for Iran and Afghanistan. Just this weekend a young woman who had been ready to follow their bidding and become a suicide bomber turned herself in - this is a strong indication that we are getting through to the people of Iraq and that they are willing and able to accept and embrace a free and secure nation on their own very soon. B) Dubya hasn't set a timetable - I love my friends at NBC but they like to make up news to suit their particular viewpoints. 

3) I think the word you are looking for is "monger" and I doubt that very much - I'm sure he wants to end this just as badly as everyone else involved, not the least because he knows the horrors of war first hand (unlike certain half-term Senators with plenty of experience as unpaid "community activists"). Consequently, because he knows how important a war is, and because he knows, as a soldier, that victory is not something to be claimed lightly, and because he understands that in order to remain the greatest, most free nation on the planet that we need to claim a definitive victory in this instance, he will not back down from this war. And if, sometime in the future, that means going after Achmedenijad, then that's what it means. 

4) As for the draft, I'm not sure I recall John McCain ever, in this campaign, actively endorsing the draft for this time and place. I do recall he made an offhand comment about how it was a good idea at the time during WWII, since our armed forces at the time required an intensive and rapid buildup to take on what was at the time the greatest threat to the free world. I personally think it outlived its usefulness and was thankfully taken down after Vietnam, but as for reinstituting it, I think that would be a very bad idea - our armed forces are experiencing very high influxes of volunteers who want to be there and who have a desire to do their absolute best while they are there; taking that away will quickly reduce the effectiveness and morale of our armed forces. 

5) McCain may have dealt with lobbyists as a senator, and some may have appeared to be less than ethical, but very early on in the campaign an investigation proved that this was quite incorrect and the man was cleared of any and all wrongdoing. Obama, on the other hand, has very questionable friends: the previously mentioned admitted and self-declared terrorist Mr. Ayers and his wife; Mr. Tony Rezko, a convicted felon who embezzled funds meant to keep his tenants warm (yes, Rezko's tenants actually froze the whole winter because the heat had been turned off - mind you this was all within Obama's district as a state senator at the time, so he had the power and the means to fix this and did NOTHING), Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man whose infamous line "No No No, not God BLESS America, GOD DAMN AMERICA" says all we need to hear about his beliefs and his feelings, and whose beliefs Obama had to have been aware of, having attended his church for over twenty years and having had his marriage conducted and his children baptised there; Rev. Michael Phleger, a radical Catholic priest who associated with Obama in his role as a community activist and whose beliefs were most certainly not in line with the Catholic Church, having advocated socialism and having mocked HRC and I believe (I may be wrong on this one, I'm still waking up) called for her to go back to the kitchen and stay out of the race. On McCain's side, we have one Baptist minister who had made some offhand comments about what he thought McCain believed, and a radio host who mocked Obama's middle name and was practically immediately shown the door by McCain. Rather than Obama's weeks-long waits to throw his prior associates under the bus, McCain tackled it head-on within 24 hours. 

6) Yes, he cheated on his wife and yes, he divorced and remarried. He also has admitted that it was wrong of him to do that, which is an order of magnitude greater of a response than other politicians who have been involved in the same form of scandal. He is human, he isn't perfect, but he's willing to admit when he's wrong and that means more than empty excuses and begging forgiveness. 

7) Palin is under investigation because her sister's ex-husband, who had tazered her nephew (at his request, but still..) and done various other things which would put someone, in my book at least, under the category of "asshat", was removed from employment with the state troopers and decided that it was a conspiracy against him. The state senator leading the investigation, a solid Democrat (remember: she soundly routed the Democrats when she came into office) has made it clear that subpoenas are absolutely not necessary because the governor has made all resources, records, and personnel available for the investigation. Since the investigation just started, we do not know how far it will get but I can tell you: actions such as that do not point to a guilty governor. 

8) The men you know are obviously not informed and rather sexist, if you ask me. Romney was vetted in the primary and lost. In addition, McCain happens to have a strong and stubborn sense of personal honor, honor which Romney quite obviously violated on a number of occasions and which immediately disqualified him from the VP slot. Whomever he loses as a vote simply because he chose a woman ought to be ashamed of themselves. I say this now equally of Palin and Geraldine Ferraro, whom I disagree strongly with but who was equally qualified for the VP slot when she was nominated: if you choose not to vote for them strictly based on gender, you are selling short not only the candidates, but every woman everywhere who has made a decision to stand up and live and work equally to their male counterparts and independently of any assistance. 

9) I'm honestly not sure what Rush has to say about her: I don't have the opportunity to listen to him while I'm at work, but he's got transcripts on his site so it's quite easy to figure out what he thinks of McCain's choice. Knowing what I do of Rush's beliefs in the situation I think he would approve (have a child inside right now who is in the middle of tearing apart the living room and don't have the time to check his site to be sure).

No response yet!  And this person's current status?  "... is passionate about .. politics!" [gender removed to anonymize]  

(PS: does anyone else notice any glaring differences between the messages?)