Your Bridgewater, Russian and Scooby Doo [?] news Roundup

Last night we took our youngest to see a stage production of Scooby Doo at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, courtesy of our sister who booked the show. Afterwords we got to meet the characters backstage. Which was cool. The show is out of Canada, and we suggested that a big rig should have motored across the stage. [Hey, not funny-Ed]

So a controversial police incident happened in our hometown. NJ.com reports: 'The response by two police officers to a fight on Saturday at the Bridgewater Commons Mall is under an internal police investigation after video of the altercation shows the officers pinning a Black teenager to the ground and handcuffing him, while the white teen involved in the fight was allowed to sit on a couch.' 

The incident was known around town for a few days before making the news. In 17 years, we've had half a dozen interactions with the Bridgewater PD, including one where they intervened in a dispute with a neighbor that nearly came to blows (asshole, no one likes that guy). In all those incidents, the Bridgewater Police have been nothing but professional and polite and helpful. 'Talk to me, sir. tell me what's happening.' Wait for facts, which NJ.com does a great job of reporting. Here's the fight.

PJ O'Rourke died yesterday at the age of 74, which almost seems young these days, no? He once wrote that 2020 was his 'approximate checkout date.' PJ nailed that one. Thirty years ago this summer we saw a book with a man on the cover wearing a tuxedo jacket and Desert Storm camo pants. We bought Give War a Chance and changed the way we saw the world. We'll have more to say on PJ O'Rourke in a few days. 

Zerohedge says, 'Echoing a false allegation we have repeatedly heard before, early on Tuesday the Associated Press (of "how Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis" fame) writes that "U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence." Well, now we've done it - we've angered the CIA.' 

Join the club, pal. Zerohedge goes on to note that the Soviet, sorry Russian Strategic Culture foundation writes an occasional guest post for them. Cool. One of our articles ended up on the RSV website. The AP once did a hit piece on Inforos that quoted one of our articles without attribution, our own 'Chaos in the Blue Cities.'  Pricks. They could have contacted us for comment, but no. That's journalism 101. We learned that the first writing for our college newspaper. Try it some time, Eric Tucker.

The More we Post...

...the quicker we get to our 5000th post. This is post 4780. 

News and New Jersey notes.

Gab's Andrew Torba reports that GETTR (in the news again because Joe Rogan fled there) is built on Amazon Web Services. Are the people running GETTR out of their mother loving minds? Parler used AWS and got nuked for their trouble. We watched Gab get bounced by its registrar and at least one hosting company until Torba built his own servers. Now he's got his own ap, search engine and payment processor. Torba is building a parallel economy. Viva Gab! Viva Torba. 

Russia Today reports widespread violence in Kazakhstan: 'Kazakhstan’s authorities have imposed a state of emergency across the country in an attempt to get a grip on a deteriorating security situation, after widespread demonstrations were sparked by a gas price hike.' That seems to happen a lot around Russia's near aboard no? Funny that. Maybe we're just getting paranoid. [Getting?-Ed] Feel free to insert a Borat joke. 

Good and more of this please. The Times of Israel reports, 'A Tel Aviv court on Wednesday sentenced a man to one year in prison for his involvement in a mob attack on an Arab motorist during a spasm of communal violence last year. Lahav Nagauker, who was 20 at the time, was convicted of incitement to violence and racism as part of a plea deal that resulted in lighter charges. His sentencing was the first in the incident that took place last May, when a mob yanked Saeed Mousa from his car and proceeded to beat him in an assault that left him motionless and bloodied on the ground, and seriously injured.' Don't act like Palestinians. 

NJ.com reports on Covid in New Jersey: 'New Jersey on Wednesday reported another 58 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and a new one-day record of 31,391 confirmed positive cases, while the number of coronavirus patients across the state’s increasingly stressed hospitals have now surpassed 5,400 — the most in more than 20 months. The state’s seven-day average for new confirmed positive tests increased to 26,862, up 85% from a week ago and nearly nine times higher than a month ago.'

Here in Bridgewater the girls are doing half days this week, but everything the district says hints that we're going all virtual next week. There's a (virtual) schoolboard meeting tonight. We're making the girls read a little extra but that's it. Is our belief that all the extra learning we forced on them during the spring of 2020 did no good at all.

We're staying away from the gym for a few weeks. We may or may not go for a walk later. Wonder if we'd pass anyone wearing a mask outdoors. Loser. 

Below, an ESPN/ New Jersey Devil's commercial. Unlike the old New Jersey Nets, the Devils have a dedicated fan base around here. This always was a hockey region. It supports three teams:

Writing and Election Notes

We had a great hour on the treadmill yesterday and our knee feels fine. 

Yesterday we worked on the Aussie F-111 scenes in The Final Storm and things are coming along slowly. But we have an almost-rough draft ready and it occurs to us that there are two aerial attacks scenes to write. 

Writing the above we realized we have to re-write the SAS attack scene. If reader(s) can't figure out where they're headed they haven't been paying much attention. If a West German teenager can do it, why not the SAS? The MS already approaches 60,000 words. This is gonna be a big one. 

As noted previously, November is get The Great Nuclear War of 1975 ready for formatting month. We started a trio of scenes about a pair of officers from Looking Glass writing a report on the nuclear war. This will be the readership's lone window into the events of those 48 hours. The 3rd scene will be 75's epilogue and we know the last line. 

Election Day!

In New Jersey, The latest poll shows Murphy beating Jack 50-42, which sounds about right, give or take. A solid win but no landslide. 

We have schoolboard elections here in Bridgewater. The Bridgewater Breeze published this handy election guide. This blog endorses Richard Myers and anyone who isn't Stacey Friedlander for school board. Myers once complemented our hat (you know which one) outside of a school function. Friedlander is the kind of annoying busy body who will correct anything one posts on local FB groups. 

Moving down south, the last poll we saw on Virginia had Glen Youngkin up 3 points. Political prognosticators have moved Virginia to 'lean GOP'. Can the VA GOP stop the steal this time? We shall see. This blog does not expect to know who won on election night.

Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner's ex wife and Hillary!'s long time PA/lover, is back in the news. The Hill reports, 'When asked on NBC’s “Today” if she would ever run for office, Abedin cited television producer Shonda Rhimes, telling host Savannah Guthrie, “This is my year of saying yes. I’m not saying no to anything.'

Long ago we predicted Huma would run for office.

Huma should run for her husband's old congressional seat.

Think about it. For starters she's got the Islamist vote sown up. She'll also has the self loathing Jew vote locked away. The careerist gals of her district will looooove this.

Think of the media bio: put upon, wronged woman runs for office. How many of the harpies reading the teleprompter at WCBS, WNBC and WABC have the same bio? I bet its most of them. The press is going to looooove this story. It writes itself, no? Lord knows these people can't do any writing themselves.

She'll win.

From there the options just open up. Independent congressmuslim. Permanent seat in Congress held as personal property ala Adam Clayton Powell or Charles Rangel or stepping stone to higher office. Two branches there, either mayor of NYC (oh there's a story) or US Senate. The later is a race to see who can get in position to replace Chuck Schummer, our own Huma or Web Hubell's daughter Chelsea.

 

12/27/19 in New Jersey

A story begins, 'A Bridgewater man....' 

'[I can't believe it's not about you-Ed]

Anyway:

BRIDGEWATER, NJ - A Bridgewater man was arrested in connection with an attempted bank robbery in Bridgewater and a robbery in Somerville Monday, according to Somerset County Prosecutor Michael Robertson. Douglas Conroy, 60, was charged with first degree robbery, third degree theft and third degree attempted theft. According to Robertson, Bridgewater Township Police responded to a 911 call Monday reporting an attempted bank robbery at the Provident Bank, on Union Avenue. Officers said that at about 11:59 a.m., Conroy entered the bank and ordered a female teller to fill a white colored plastic bag with money.

We know where that is. First the shots fired incident a mile from us now this. A decade ago we had an FBI shootout at a local bank, which was so cool. And you people thought Bridgewater was quiet.

12/3/19 in New Jersey

At the intersection of Garretson and Country Club, this happened about happened a mile from our house:

A suspect was in custody after police asked residents to seek shelter as officers responded to a reported gunman in a Bridgewater neighborhood Monday night, officials said.

“Thanks to the outstanding work of Bridgewater police and law enforcement, he was taken into custody without injury,” Bridgewater Mayor Dan Hayes told NJ Advance Media Monday night.

We heard the sirens and our phone lit up as people texted this to each other:

Avoid Country Club Rd between US 22 and Garretson Rd. Reported man with a gun. https://t.co/FIWwYBdSpr

— Bridgewater Police (@BridgewaterPD) December 2, 2019

Will's Election Night Wrap

Horrible GOP candidate in our mother's ancestral homeland, the great state of Kentucky, battles Dem to standstill, acts like Democart and has not yet coneded race. Good. GOP romps in rest of state. Check out the new AG, yo.

GOP wins governor's race in the land of our grandmother's birth, the great state of Mississippi.

Virginia becomes New York on the Chesapeake. Stop saying Virginia is in play. Virginia is not in play.

Meanwhile, here in Bridgewater:

BRIDGEWATER, NJ - Republicans Matthew Moench, Michael Kirsh and Timothy Ring were declared the winners for mayor and council, respectively, according to the unofficial results from Bridgewater Township. Moench received 6,382 votes, to 4,411 votes for Democratic challenger Jeffrey Brookner and 242 votes for Libertarian challenger Gregg Mele.

Tell me again how the GOP has a suburb problem.

6-5-19 in New Jersey

We had party primaries in New Jersey yesterday for state assembly, sheriff and mayor.

This included the GOP primary for our own mayoral election.

There was plenty of electioneering in Bridgewater with weekly and then daily campaign flyers coming in the mail. We received personal, hand signed letters of endorsement from prominent private citizens, retired army colonels and the like.

We've met both candidates.

We voted for incumbent Dan Hayes, mostly becuase we couldn't think of a reason not to vote for him. Challenger Mathew Moench won:

BRIDGEWATER, NJ - Council president Matthew Moench took the win in the Republican primary election for mayor Tuesday, defeating incumbent Mayor Dan Hayes to run for the position in November's general election, according to the unofficial results from Bridgewater Township.

Moench received a total of 2,761 votes, to Hayes's 1,600.

This blog congratulates Mathew Moench and wishes him luck in the general election.

Bridgewater will remain is a quiet little suburban town.