Seaside Boardwalk fire: Onlookers survey the damage as Christie meets business owners

Seaside Boardwalk fire: Onlookers survey the damage as Christie meets business owners (via NJ.com)

SEASIDE HEIGHTS—The beach is dotted with sunbathers today and the sound of barkers still fills the air along on the boardwalk between Seaside Heights and Seaside Park, where a massive fire on Thursday destroyed 50 businesses. Police, fire and construction…

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‘This was a killer’: Seaside looks to regroup after boardwalk fire; Christie touts Jersey grit

‘This was a killer’: Seaside looks to regroup after boardwalk fire; Christie touts Jersey grit (via NJ.com)

By James Queally and Mark Mueller/ The Star-Ledger Daylight revealed the panorama of devastation. Along a four-block stretch of boardwalk in one of New Jersey’s most popular summer playgrounds, almost nothing remained intact. The fire that roared…

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Arson may be to blame at Seaside Boardwalk massive fire as “suspicious” cause gets serious play by prosecutors

Arson may be to blame at Seaside Boardwalk massive fire as “suspicious” cause gets serious play by prosecutors (via The Jersey Tomato Press)

Gerard Esposito A fireman on the scene of the massive fire at the Seaside Boardwalk. Whenever there is a fire, every fire chief tells the press the thing: I can’t comment until we finish our investigation. But as the world watched in horror on Thursday…

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A Second Highlands House Collapses

49 Second Street, Highlands. Click for larger view.

For the second time in less than a month, a home being lifted above the floodplain has collapsed in the borough of Highlands.

At 9:43 this evening the Highlands Police Department received a call that the house at 49 Second Street had collapsed.

The Highlands Fire Department  and eight volunteer members of the Highlands First Aid Squad are on the scene.  There were no injuries reported.  Gas and electric utilities were shut off.  The utility companies have not been notified and neighboring homes have not been evacuated.

The home had already been lifted.  A resident on the scene told MMM that the cause of the collapse is believed to be wind.

On August 23, a house being lifted onto its temporary cribbing collapsed in the borough.  The contractor on the scene of the August

49 Second St, Highlands on July 26. Photo courtesy of Kerry McEntee Gowan via facebook

23rd incident said it was an accident.

There was no contractor on the scene in Highlands tonight.  A lawn sign for Jerome Homes House Lifting was on the Second Street property.

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US accepts UN will not back force against Syria

US accepts UN will not back force against Syria (via AFP)

The United States concedes that Russia will not allow the UN Security Council to authorize military strikes against the Syrian regime, senior White House officials said Friday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said a UN report due on…

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Rand Paul slams Booker and his ‘imaginary friend’ as he endorses Lonegan

Rand Paul slams Booker and his ‘imaginary friend’ as he endorses Lonegan (via NJ.com)

CLARK — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a leader of the tea party wing in Congress, today endorsed Republican Steve Lonegan in New Jersey’s U.S. Senate race and came out swinging against Newark Mayor Cory Booker and “his imaginary friend T-Bone.” “There’s 15…

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Christie on the boardwalk in Seaside

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Jersey Shore Events on the Weekend of September 14-15, 2013

If this great summer weather holds, it would be a great opportunity to come back to the Jersey Shore. Besides the beaches and the ocean, there are many Jersey Shore events on this upcoming weekend (Sep 14-15, 2013). First, there’s a very diversified mix of competitive events, to appeal to runners, bikers, swimmers, surfers and even more.

Belmar Pro Surf is a Pro competition, 8am-8pm between September 12-15, at the 18th Ave Beach.

Miss America returns this year to Atlantic City. Events leading up to the final Competition on Sunday at the Boardwalk Hall include 3 nights of preliminary competitions on Sep 10, 11 and 12 and the “Show Us Your Shoes Parade” on the Boardwalk on Saturday.

There are more competitions on Sunday:

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The moral of Cory Booker’s Wazn Miller story

“It’s easier to build a healthy child than to fix a broken man”
photo via facebook

Cory Booker tells the tale of Wazn Miller’s murder as a set up to an important insight the mayor says his father shared with him in the aftermath of the incident—that the elder Booker, born in 1936 to a Black single mother, in poverty in a segregated community, had a better future than Black men born in 1996 (or 2006 depending on where and when the younger Booker told the story) have before them.

The news out of Newark of 10 murders in 10 days is a testament to the truth of that insight.  The recent news of violence in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit further attests to the fact that young Black men today are more likely to end up dead or in jail than they are to become IBM executives residing in Harrington Park  and, if they know their sons, witness them graduate from the most prestigious universities in the world, become mayor of a major U.S. city or serve in the United States Senate.

Cory Booker heard that insight from his father in 2004, before he became mayor.

Yet the well intentioned policies that Booker pursued in leading the city have failed.  They failed in Newark, as they have failed in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit.  Young Black men are more likely to end up dead or in jail today than they were when Booker, and his father, were growing up.  The progress in racial equality that Booker’s father’s generation fought for, and Booker’s generation reaped the benefits of, has been replaced by a not so great society of despair.

As Booker says in his speeches, we’ve made a great deal of progress towards racial equality, that his father’s generation fought for, yet we’ve got so much further to go.  To the young Black men, and their families, in Newark, Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit, there is no where to go but failing schools, gangs, guns, death or jail.

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Cory Booker is a good story teller

In the video below of Cory Booker addressing the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in 2010, the mayor recounts how his father’s stories get better (or worse, depending on the point of the story) the more often he told them.

Good story telling to make a point, or move an audience or teach a lesson, either in a conference room, college graduation, church or family dinner table, is a trait Booker apparently inherited from his father.

At the 14 minute mark of the video, Booker tells the story of “the lowest point” of his life. Wazn Miller’s murder in 2004.

In the version of the story told at ACS, Miller doesn’t die in Booker’s arms.

Booker gave basically the same talk at NYU Law in October of 2010. In that version, Booker was present when Miller died.  He starts the Miller story at the 6:30 mark and speaks of the death at the 8 minute mark.

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