Recently there have been a slew of commercials for Joe Vas who's running to fill that congressional seat.  His ads paint him to be the underdog so I wanted to see who the presumed frontrunner was in this race.  After a laborious search of the internets, I found that Albio Sires is the establishment candidate.  He's gotten the endorsements of:
- Governor Corzine,
- Essex-West Hudson Central Labor Council,
- New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters,
- New Jersey State Association of Pipe Trades,
- Hudson County Puerto Rican Leaders,
- Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Wilfredo Caraballo,
- Essex County Democrats,
- Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage,
- Union County Democrats,
- The Communications Workers of America,
- The NJ Firemen's Mutual Benevolent Association,
- Hudson County Democrats,
you get the picture....

The problem lies beneath...

I happened to tune into 20/20 tonight, just in time to catch John Stossel on his latest "give me a break" tirade.  This time, he's vilifying the people who are anti-Wal-Mart.  He began by interviewing Ted Turner (I didn't catch most of that, just the tail end).  I've transcribed some of it below (and have left out the interview portions with "experts" claiming such things as "Wal-Mart's low prices amount to a wage increase to all Americans that shop there"):

French President Jacques Chirac is said to be considering sending a military contingent to Iraq as part of a U.N. force once sovereignty is returned to Iraqis.

Le Monde newspaper quotes a top advisor to Mr. Chirac, whom it did not name, as saying that if the United Nations were to ask NATO to send a multinational force to help stabilize Iraq, France could take part. [snip]

AP: Dean Was Warned on Lax Vt. Security
Sat Jan 3, 6:25 PM ET
By JOHN SOLOMON and DAVID GRAM, Associated Press Writers

Presidential hopeful Howard Dean, who accuses President Bush of being weak on homeland security, was warned repeatedly as Vermont governor about security lapses at his state's nuclear power plant and was told the state was ill-prepared for a disaster at its most attractive terrorist target.

The warnings, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press, began in 1991 when a group of students were brought into a secure area of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant without proper screening. On at least two occasions, a gun or mock terrorists passed undetected into the plant during security tests.

During Dean's final year in office in 2002, an audit concluded that despite a decade of repeated warnings of poor safety at Vermont Yankee, Dean's administration was poorly prepared for a nuclear disaster.

"[Representative] Dick Gephardt's very good, but he's not in[to] foreign relations," Senator John F. Kerry's wife said in an interview amid a tour of Latino shops and restaurants. "And General Clark certainly knows how to make war very well -- he's brilliant -- but he's not a diplomat."

As for Dean, who leads her husband by a double-digit margin in early-voting New Hampshire, Heinz Kerry credited the former Vermont governor with the "smart move" of beginning his own campaign TV ads last summer, but added, "Having said that, it's one thing to be appealing; it's another thing to govern."

"I think John, having come from abroad as I did, that John is the one candidate . . . that tomorrow could go to the well of the United Nations and stand there and have the trust and respect of other nations because of his work, because of his knack for diplomacy, and because he understands conflict and prevention," she said.

Clark said last week he could not change his schedule and would attend the fund-raiser in New York, where he is expected to raise $1.5 million. But the fund-raiser has been switched to Dec. 10, the day after the debate in Manchester, N.H.

"Our New York supporters wanted to do everything they could to support General Clark and make sure he could attend the debate," Clark spokesman Bill Buck said Wednesday.