There is a special place in Hell for the scum of the earth. I was prompted to put up a quick post about this because of the horrendous story that I just saw on FOXNews.com regarding a 7-month-old child being shot and killed at point-blank range.

This is the most disturbing thing that I’ve read in a month at least. There is indeed a special place in Hell for the foul human beings who committed such a heinous act. This is disgusting and I pray that these bastards are caught and treated with the respect that they deserve - none.

For those of you who are looking for stories about good people doing good things, look no further than Joel Parry of West Long Branch. Last week, a local paper called the Atlanticville published an article detailing the selfless work that Parry is doing at two local cemeteries.

I strongly encourage you all to click the link above and read the article. In short, Parry volunteers his time and much physical effort to restoring two local cemeteries that were overgrown and unkempt. The article talks about how no one really knows whose responsibility it was to maintain these final resting places, but Parry took on the job without thinking twice.

And what a job he has done. He’s pulled out debris, empty bottles of alcohol, even a mattress! What I find to be most inspiring about Parry’s efforts is that he intends to care for the neglected headstones. From the article:

“First, I want to finish getting everything cleaned, then I plan on remounting and resetting the headstones, and then I will wash all the headstones once everything else is in place,” he said.

Who does this on his own time and with no provocation or connection to the cemeteries? A good guy, that’s who.

This town, state, and nation need more good men committing random acts of selflessness like Joel Parry in West Long Branch.

Last week’s Republican Presidential debate and the entrance of Fred Thompson into the race seems to have reshaped the landscape for the nomination, or at least that’s what the latest CBS/New York Times polling data suggests. I don’t think that the hard liberal bend on both of these entities plays into these particular numbers, so no feedback about that please. Additionally, those of you who know me know that I am 110% against these “scientific” polls because the truth is that there’s nothing scientific about them. That’s a handy little diddy I picked up in graduate school…of course the professor disagreed, but he had his ideology to push, too!

In any event, the news reports about McCain having a good debate are right on the money. The CBS poll shows him up a few points to 18% of Republican primary voters. This may seem like a small drop in the bucket compared to the front-runners, but for McCain, this is big news. He almost doubled his support by going back to what brought him to the Presidential dance in 2000 - straight talk about every issue. It’s a nice change from some of the blabbering that you can hear in primary debates.

On the other hand, Romney came in at just 14% support, which is not par for this course. Usually, Romney gets a few more percentage points on his side after each debate because he has what some people call the “Presidential look,” whatever that means.

The biggest news in the CBS poll is Thompson jumping to 22% of the primary voters supporting his bid for the Presidency. This is huge because Giuliani is only at 27% in this poll. The difference between these two numbers will likely fall in the “scientific” margin of error (don’t even get me started). Huckabee doesn’t register on the CBS poll, which is a shame because if you look at RealClearPolitics.com’s averages over time you see that he has enjoyed a burst of support in the last few months going from 0% to 4.5%.

That’s huge for Huckabee, though it won’t get him the nomination. At this point, it’s way too early to call a clear winner on the Republican side of race. For example, the Rasmussen poll shows Thompson is actually in the lead in this race.

Even though the game was on too late for my liking, I watched the whole Giants game last night. The Giants looked good, but the Cowboys looked better. Not too bad of a game for Eli, though I still think he doesn’t have “it” - whatever “it” is these days. He did show some leadership potential, though, and I credit him for those qualities.

All in all, the team played well. A few mistakes here and there, but that’s to be expected (come on, it’s the Giants - we can’t expect perfection!). If they play a little bit better each week, then I think we have a great second half of the season ahead of us, but that remains to be seen.

One of the downers yesterday had to do with Tiki Barber, though. As one of my roommates said last night, the man really just talks too much shit on the Giants. Last night on Sports Final with Mike Francesca (who ought to be ashamed of the what he said about the Jets fans yesterday), Tiki blatantly stated that he’s employed by Dick Ebersol and that he’s using this controversy to launch himself from football into his next career.

That may fly in other sports and other professions, but it’s not going to work in football. Here’s hoping that the Giants get a little bit better each week and that Tiki learns some couth (some in his new profession might call it gravitas) and stops bashing the Giants.

Like you needed anyone to tell you that Osama bin Laden is a complete jerk, but I figured it was an apt headline. Did you hear what this slimy rat said in his latest video?

“The second solution is from your side. I invite you to embrace Islam.”

I invite you to take my foot up your ass you stupid punk. We don’t play that game in America - we don’t play the game where a crazy mad man tells us that we have to believe in a certain concept of God and in a certain prophet as the Messiah and that unless we believe in those certain thoughts, then we’re doomed.

You may be able to get away with that crap over there in your caves with your brainwashed masses, but we have freedom and equality over in the States. And I know that this is what you don’t like about America, but that’s too damn bad.

Stay in your hole and keep your mouth shut.

Admittedly, I did not watch the VMAs because, frankly, who gives a shit? However, since I knew that Britney would be performing and that she has had a rocky last few months, I had to hit YouTube this morning to see what all of the bad reviews were about.

Okay, some comments about Britney’s performance. Her lip syncing was way off to the point where she was channeling Ashley Simpson. Not good. Not good at all. Much of the mass media picked up on that fact on their morning shows today. Fine, put that to bed. The girl is a wreck and she’s trying to pull it back together - fixing that slow lip syncing is a goal that she can set for herself in the next few months.

There were some comments about her lethargic movements on stage. I’ll agree that some of her movements were slow and seemed heavily choreographed. I’m not going to count this against her, though.

The comments that I found most distasteful against Britney were the comments that she is out of shape and was showing too much skin. While there is some small degree of truth to this statement, it’s completely out of line in America 2007. Go to any junior high school or high school and take a look at the girls. You have fat girls wearing belly shirts where their belly actually hangs out of the shirt. It’s disgusting. Britney has another 5 or 10 pounds to lose (even though she looks good as she is right now). Many of today’s young girls, though, make fools of themselves by letting their guts swing free in the wind.

The media should go after those girls, not the easy target of Britney Spears.

All in all, she performed pretty well for someone who is supposed to be on her last legs. I think with a few months of getting herself together, she’ll be back in somewhat of a decent performing mode. But with Britney…who knows?

Each of the candidates running for President has skeletons in their closet that would probably turn off the majority of the American public if they were to be let out. Thus, none of them obviously want any dirty laundry to be aired during the Presidential campaign. Aside from skeletons in the closet, there are really very few personal characteristics that separate one generic candidate from another.

That is, unless you are completely negative like Senator Joe Biden. I say this as a guy who thinks that Joe Biden, even though he is on the far left fringe of the Democratic Party, isn’t that bad of a Senator. But his remarks regarding General David Petraeus’ assessment of the Iraq Conflict show why he cannot be President in the United States of America.

In short, he completely bashed the report and called it “dead flat wrong.” Now, I have no inside knowledge of what goes on in Iraq other than all of the negative reports that I see on the boob tube. However, I do know a little something about logic. I know that since I am NOT in the ground in Iraq, I really have to listen to those who are on the ground to know what is happening. I know that a few months ago, the Democrats went absolutely insane over the situation in Iraq and demanded a new course. From that demand came General Patraeus - a man supported by both the Republicans and the Democrats.

And now we have General Patraeus’ report submitted to Congress and Joe Biden has decided that it is a piece of garbage and wrong? What gives Senator Biden the knowledge to refute the General’s report? Who has been in Iraq more? Who has talked to more soldiers? Who gets weekly, daily, even hourly reports on the situation in Iraq?

Simple logic tells us that even though a majority of the American people do not like the fact that we are still in Iraq, it does not mean that good news being reported about the situation is false. If Senator Biden thinks that anything good coming out of Iraq is a lie, then there is no way that we can trust him to be our President. In fact, if he’s that negative about such a major foreign policy issue, then he really ought to drop out of the race right now.

Like this wasn’t the biggest, most predictable political move in the last few months! Former Senator turned actor Fred Thompson has officially entered the Presidential race for the Republican party. Thompson entered the race from the set of The Tonight Show in what has to be a nod to the successful Gubernatorial campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger (launched from the very same seat).

Whether that was Thompson’s purpose of announcing or not, I hope that a new person in these debates can help liven things up a bit. Frankly, the best parts of the Republican debates so far have been watching the candidates beat up Ron Paul and watching Ron Paul fire back with solid Constitutional fundamentals. You have to hand it to Paul with what he’s doing. We all know that Paul is a Libertarian at heart and that the Libertarian Party is too small to get any major media coverage. By running as a Republican, Ron Paul is bringing his ideological base to the forefront of many post-debate discussions. Frankly, it’s genius.

Sure, he’ll never get the nomination and he’s not even going to rise up the rankings, but he is exposing a point of view that you would normally not hear on a Republican dais.

Anyway, Thompson is now in the race and he’s got some decent videos up on his election website (Fred08.com). You may want to check out the video on federalism - it’s a quick, great perspective on how this country’s government was originally structured.

I wonder if anyone will come out of the woodwork for the Democrats now. Al Gore has had his name thrown around as has Wesley Clark, but I doubt either will run. Anyone know of anyone else that may come out for the Democrats?

And what about the 3rd Parties? What role will they play in the coming election? It’s going to be great political theater to watch!

The last week of August was my vacation and it was a good vacation. I got a bigger bed, my Mother and I adopted a pug from the local shelter, and I got a lot of cleaning and de-cluttering accomplished. I also had some rest and relaxation, had my truck breakdown and wipe out my bank account (again), and was able to sign a few new contracts for Usable Web Solutions, LLC, but those are different posts!

Anyway, as I was cleaning up my room and my apartment I realized that not only did I have a large number of crappy DVDs (Navarro, Van Brunt, Booey, Surfer Jay, and pretty much everyone else that has seen my collection up front will rejoice at those words), but I also had a bunch of PlayStation 2 games that were literally collecting dust. Folks, I’m talking about games that I once bought because they looked like they were fun - and then never played them once. Some games never made it out of the box! Likewise with the DVD movies. I once purchased Suburban Commando just to piss off a roommate that I was living with! Of course, this helps to explain why I had a 200+ DVD collection, but also why I had a ton of crappy movies.

So I decided to bring some of these video games and crappy DVDs to GameStop and trade them in for store credit. Remember, I have a Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo DS Lite and I need games for these systems! I put together 12 PlayStation 2 discs and 18 DVDs and brought them over to the local GameStop.

Guess how much I was credited for these discs.

$200?

$150?

$100?

Nope.

Fifty bucks. I was credited fifty bucks for 30 items, more than half of which were video games. Talk about getting the shaft! Three of four of those DVDs would cost $50 combined! Yeah, I was hot after that, but I looked at it this way. I never played these video games and I never watched these DVDs so what was the purpose in keeping them and letting them collect dust? That would be a huge waste of space.

So I took my shafting from GameStop and hopefully I’ve learned to not spend money on excess video games and excess DVDs. The truth is that if you’re not dying to see a movie or play a specific game, then you probably don’t need to spend money on another game or movie just to fill the void.

After getting $50 for my troubles, consider this a lesson learned the hard way!

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Monmouth University, a group of students and I led a public relations battle against Ocean Township and their excessive abuse of our civil rights as residents of the town. Police officers routinely opened our front door at all hours of the day and night and walked through our house “just to see what’s going on.”

We had police officers come to our house with two or three cars during the prime party hours on the weekend and tell us to keep the noise down. When we invited them into our house to see the 3 guys who were hanging out playing Tiger Woods Golf on PlayStation 2, the cops would put their tails between their legs and tell us that they had better not have to come back. Yeah right. And we had better not have to get the FBI to investigate that police station (again). Oh yeah - we had the FBI investigating Ocean Township well before the township’s corrupt Mayor, Terrance Weldon, was indicted.

I am only bringing all of this up because of the recent corruption talk in New Jersey…and because the story hit recently that Ocean Township is considering suing their corrupt former Mayor:

The township is weighing the option of suing former Mayor Terrance D. Weldon for violating his oath of office in accepting $64,000 in bribes from developers.

“We actually have a firm that has approached us about litigation and we are considering that,” Mayor William F. Larkin said at a Township Council meeting Wednesday night. “There is actually a firm that wants to represent us without cost.”

That was from the Asbury Park Press. I feel compelled to bring this stuff up because seven and eight years ago a bunch of college students and I SAW the corruption, we lived through the corruption, and (most importantly) we publicly called these administrators out on their corrupt ways. And what did we get in return? A group of local residents and activist-for-the-sake-of-being-activist students who condemned us for using the word “corrupt.”

Bullshit on them. We were right. The Mayor of the town has been indicted and in his wake the Police Chief left his post and the housing inspector left, too (among other officials). All of these folks were in on the crap going on in Ocean Township and we saw it all before anyone else would believe it. Now we’ve been proven correct.

I want my apology!