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Spring Lake, Clinton and Lambertville (NJ) Voted Among the Top Budget-Friendly Honeymoon Destinations in America

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photo by ArtChick Photography https://artchickphotography.com/

  • New Jersey destinations voted among newlyweds’ favorites.
  • Cedar Key in Florida emerged as the top honeymoon destination for couples on a budget. 
  • Infographic showing the top 150 under-the-radar and inexpensive honeymoon destinations.

Ridgewood NJ, as the wedding bells start ringing across the country, the euphoria of newlywed bliss is closely shadowed by the daunting expenses that weddings and honeymoons entail. Living the high life in 2023 isn’t exactly a cakewalk, with that pesky thing we call inflation still sticking around and most couples starting their wedded adventure with a ‘something borrowed’ bank balance. Given that the average honeymoon cost in the U.S. hovers around $4,500, it’s no surprise that the astute couples of today want to make every cent count, without compromising on an unforgettable experience.

Continue reading Spring Lake, Clinton and Lambertville (NJ) Voted Among the Top Budget-Friendly Honeymoon Destinations in America

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FBI profiler that caught UnaBomber Ted Kaczynski Calls “Pipe Bombs” a False Flag

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Jim Fitzgerald, the FBI profiler that caught UnaBomber Ted Kaczynski told Martha MacCallum that the pipe bombs could be a False Flag by the Democrats 2 weeks before this important election as a real possibility.

Continue reading FBI profiler that caught UnaBomber Ted Kaczynski Calls “Pipe Bombs” a False Flag

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The real winner of the presidential election in N.J.? Apathy

VOTE_theridgewoodblog

By Erin Petenko | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on February 25, 2017 at 7:15 AM

In New Jersey, something beat both Trump and Clinton in the 2016 election: voter apathy.

Nearly 2.2 million New Jersey residents were eligible to vote but didn’t turn out, edging out the 2.1 million votes for Hillary Clinton, according to data from the New Jersey Division of Elections and the United States Elections Project.

https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2017/02/the_real_winner_of_the_presidential_election_in_nj_apathy.html

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Clinton, Trump clash in fiery first debate

Lincoln&Douglas

Jennie Matthew, with Andrew Beatty in Washington•September 27, 2016

Hempstead (United States) (AFP) – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump traded insults and sparred over temperament, stamina and judgment, in a fiery US presidential debate that often saw the Republican on the back foot.

With six weeks until election day and polls showing a virtual dead heat, the Democrat Clinton on Monday repeatedly questioned her rival’s fitness to serve in the Oval Office.

Before an anticipated television audience of up to 100 million, Clinton painted the celebrity real estate mogul as fatally out of touch and willing to say “crazy things” to get elected.

“You live in your own reality” said the 68-year old Democrat, accusing Trump of launching his political career on the “racist lie” that Barack Obama is not American.

As Clinton projected steady experience, casting herself as the voice of reason, Trump played the populist bruiser, pitching to frustrated blue-collar voters fed up with politicians and wanting change.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-trump-kick-off-high-stakes-debate-014123715.html

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Trump Plays the Role of President in Louisiana

Louisiana flooding

GOP nominee tours disaster area while Obama, Clinton won’t be parted from politics and rest

by Keith Koffler | Updated 19 Aug 2016 at 2:28 PM

In a brilliant maneuver perfectly timed to complement his campaign revamp, Republican nominee Donald Trump today landed in Louisiana to witness first-hand the devastation wrought by flooding not seen there since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Trump’s arrival on the scene helps him on a number of levels. Most importantly, it provides a dramatic contrast to Hillary Clinton and President Obama, both of whom have neglected to visit a region where more than a dozen have died and tens of thousands have been forced out of their homes.

https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/trump-takes-role-president-hard-hit-louisiana/

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What have Bush, Clinton learned from voters’ attraction to the outsiders?

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By Dan Balz Chief correspondent September 5 at 11:32 AM

At the beginning of this year, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania sponsored a focus group in the Denver suburbs composed of a dozen adults — Republicans, Democrats and independents. Looking back almost nine months later, the two-hour discussion proved to be a prescient guide to the surprising politics of 2015.

For any conventional politician paying attention, what was said there should have been unnerving. The name Donald Trump was never mentioned, nor was that of Ben Carson or Bernie Sanders. But the sentiments expressed that evening help explain why those three candidates are in the forefront of the political conversation on this Labor Day weekend.

Dan Balz is Chief Correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s National Editor, Political Editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent.View Archive

The participants made it clear that they were fed up with politics as usual. They were harsh in their judgments about most traditional politicians, the political establishment and the way Washington works. They had no particular appetite for a clash-of-dynasties presidential campaign pitting a Bush against a Clinton.

They were especially critical in their assessments of Jeb Bush. They were tepid toward Hillary Rodham Clinton, although judgments fell more predictably along partisan lines. The participants longed for someone who seemed different and who they believed understood their lives. The name Elizabeth Warren, the populist senator from Massachusetts, sparked positive comments, even from some of the Republicans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-have-bush-clinton-learned-from-voters-attraction-to-the-outsiders/2015/09/05/3500ba66-532e-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html

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Sanders Surges, Clinton Sags in U.S. Favorability

Bernie Sanders

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, N.J. — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ favorable rating among Americans has doubled since Gallup’s initial reading in March, rising to 24% from 12% as he has become better known. Hillary Clinton’s rating has slipped to 43% from 48% in April. At the same time, Clinton’s unfavorable rating increased to 46%, tilting her image negative and producing her worst net favorable score since December 2007.

Sanders’ increased favorability reflects the broader increase in the public’s familiarity with him since March. Overall, 44% of Americans are able to rate him today, up from 24% in March. Not only has the percentage viewing him favorably increased, but also the percentage viewing him unfavorably has risen, up eight percentage points to 20%.

Clinton’s Inauspicious Rivals

Clinton maintains a higher absolute favorable rating from Americans than any of her official rivals for the 2016 Democratic nomination. In contrast to the relative prominence of numerous candidates on the Republican side, she remains the only Democratic candidate known well enough by a majority of Americans for them to rate her, which helps Clinton maintain a higher overall favorable score.

Sanders is still an unknown to a majority of Americans, with just 44% able to rate him compared with Clinton’s 89%. Total familiarity drops still further among the other three announced Democratic candidates: to 23% for former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb at 23%, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at 22% and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee at 17%. With slightly more Americans viewing each of these candidates unfavorably than favorably, their favorable scores reach no more than 11%.

https://www.gallup.com/poll/184346/sanders-surges-clinton-sags-favorability.aspx

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Why Hillary Can’t Run on Her State Department Record

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848 JUN 3, 2015 12:19 PM EDT
By Josh Rogin

Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of state became a hot-button issue this week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Bloomberg Television that the Barack Obama administration’s failed “reset” policy with Moscow was her “invention.”

Here’s why it matters: Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, gave an interview to Bloomberg View’s Al Hunt in April in which he said holding up the “major accomplishments” from her State Department tenure would be a centerpiece of her campaign. Podesta may want to reconsider that plan. Running on Clinton’s signature diplomatic initiatives is fraught with risks because, on closer inspection, most that he mentioned don’t hold up to scrutiny.

“She put together that sanctions package that’s led to at least the possibility of having a deal on the Iran nuclear program,” Podesta told Hunt in the interview, which was aired on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show. “That took very careful and longtime careful diplomacy.”

In fact, the State Department under Clinton vigorously opposed almost all of the Iran sanctions passed by Congress while she was in office. Top officials, including  Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, openly advocated against many bills, including the sanctions on Iran’s central bank, which dealt the true crippling blow to the Tehran regime. The Senate passed that bill 100-0 and Obama reluctantly signed them into law. The State Department did implement them, but was criticized by lawmakers and advocacy groups for using waivers in the law to exempt several countries, including China and our allies Japan and South Korea.

Clinton can also expect to be pressed during the campaign over her involvement in the secret negotiations that led to the controversial Iran nuclear negotiations now nearing completion. Her deputy, William Burns, and her top foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, heldmonths of clandestine meetings with Iranian officials to set up the talks. In the run-up to her campaign announcement, Clinton wascautiously supportive of the nuclear talks; leaving herself some wiggle room by saying she won’t render a final judgment until the deal is done.

Podesta then went on to say that Clinton “restored America’s place in the world, which had been very badly battered through the previous administration.”

While it’s true that global opinion of the U.S. soared when Barack Obama was first elected president, during Clinton’s State Department tenure of 2009 to 2013 there was no measurable upswing in foreigners’ views of America, according to the Pew Research Center’s polling on global attitudes. In most major countries, approval of the U.S. actually went down by the time Clinton left office, including by 11 percentage points in each of France, Germany and the U.K.

A poll conducted in 33 countries by the BBC World Service just after Clinton stepped down as secretary found that overall world opinion of the U.S. by 2013 was the lowest since the presidency of George W. Bush. If Clinton wants to run on having polished America’s image abroad, she’ll be hard pressed to come up with data to back it up.

“She engineered the so-called ‘pivot to Asia,’ ” Podesta continued. “Her first trip was to China.”

Clinton did lead parts of what the White House now calls the “rebalance” to Asia, but as Governor Scott Walker, a top Republican contender, pointed out last week, that policy has fallen well short of expectations.  With China building fake islands around the South China Sea and threatening to enforce an air-exclusion zone in the area, the pivot policy now looks inadequate.

Along with Treasury Department officials, Clinton initiated a newstrategic dialogue with China, but after several high-level summits, the effort has produced few if any tangible results. The State Department did succeed in creating an opening with Myanmar, an effort led by her top Asia official, Kurt Campbell. Unfortunately, the military junta has not eased up its brutal persecution of Muslim minorities, leading to a vast refugee crisis in Southeast Asia, and political reform has now slowed to a crawl.

“She put some new issues on the table for American diplomacy,” Podesta went on, “including internet freedom, the importance of women’s rights as human rights, of LGBT rights as human rights, as part of our diplomatic package, which I think restored values to the way America projects its power around the world.”

This is hard to square with the fact that, in her first visit to China, Clinton insisted that human rights advocacy “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.” Clinton’s State Department repeatedly waived lawsthat would have cut aid to countries guilty of gross human rights violations, such as Egypt. This record won’t be helped by Clinton’s family foundation having taken millions of dollars from foreign governments that systematically abuse their citizens and deny basic liberties to women.

https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-03/why-hillary-can-t-run-on-her-state-department-record

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Jeb/Hillary 2016? Don’t Look Now…

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Jeb/Hillary 2016?  Don’t Look Now…

Should Jeb Bush Switch Parties?

from the spectator.org https://spectator.org/articles/61273/should-jeb-bush-switch-parties

Listening to all the stories about Jeb Bush and his angst over the conservative base of the Republican Party, the question occurred: Why doesn’t Jeb ease his conscience and his donors’ wallets and just switch parties? Go now, become a Democrat — and then form an alliance with the wife of the man the Bushes affectionately call their “brother from another mother.” That being the woman George W. Bush has dubbed as being “like my sister-in-law” — Hillary Clinton.

After all, the Bush/Clinton alliance has already been on display, as I unknowingly noted in this column when Governor Bush presented former-Secretary Clinton with the Constitution Center’s “Liberty Medal” last year. As Breitbart reported at the time:

“‘Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy,’ said Bush, the Republican former Governor of Florida, son of a former president and brother of another. ‘These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year’s Liberty Medal.’

“The news launched the latest rash of Clinton-Bush stories, the current crop focusing on the assumed presidential candidacies of the latest son of former President George H.W. Bush to seek the White House, this time against the wife of former President Bill Clinton. (Both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton, it must be noted, are former chairs of the Constitution Center — the job now held by Jeb Bush.)

“These stories missed the point of what appears to really be going on with the Liberty Medal.”

The point that I went on to make was that the Liberty Medal had become the highest award for service to the Ruling Class. No one identified with the conservative movement has ever received the award and presumably ever will. On the other hand, the 2006 award was presented jointly to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, with other recipients including Mikhail Gorbachev (2008), Jimmy Carter (1990) and Colin Powell (1992). Ronald Reagan? Margaret Thatcher? William F. Buckley, Jr.? Not on your life.

This added to another column I hadwritten on Jeb Bush’s fixation with re-writing the history of the Reagan-Bush era. Governor Bush was the subject of this 2012 New York Times storyheadlined “Jeb Bush Questions G.O.P.’s Shift to the Right,” which began this way:

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said his father, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan would find themselves out of step with today’s Republican Party because of its strict adherence to ideology and the intensity of modern partisan warfare.

So there we go. Jeb Bush wants to be on an anti-conservative ticket in 2016. What better way to do that than pair up with the woman who famously took out after “the vast right-wing conspiracy”? A simple Clinton-Bush family conclave to decide who takes second spot and voila! Jeb makes the switch and they’re off and running! Best of all? Goldman Sachs will be so relieved not to have to do everything twice.

So let me chip in with a couple slogan ideas.

Hillary and Jeb: The Ruling Class for 2016

Or:

Prepare to Be Ruled: Clinton/Bush Forever

Chelsea and George P. are doubtless taking notes.