I hate the winter, and I know that I should be excited about it because Pennsylvania has great winter sports opportunities.  You know what?  I still hate the winter.

See my fellow bloggers in the spring.  Off I go to hibernate.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure, it is well worth the trip and money to visit the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ.  I am a proud family explorer season pass holder, and had the opportunity to take my girlfriend shark diving for her birthday.  Their shark experience is a special activity, extra cost, that includes 30 minutes up close with sharks in their main tank and 15 minutes feeding and swimming with dozens of sting rays.  It was a very worthwhile opportunity.

The aquarium is standard, much like the Ripley’s aquariums in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  It is smaller than the National Aquarium in Baltimore, but still packed to the “gills” with interesting exhibits and tactile opportunities.  Recently, they unveiled a new wing complete with touch tanks and kid stuff.  Avoid at all costs during weekends or the summer when kids aren’t in school.  It is hell.  However, when peoples screaming spawn aren’t yahooing around the aquarium, it is peaceful and relaxing.

One of my favorite exhibits is the Powder Blue Tang column aquarium located near the stingray touch tank and the main viewing window of the ocean tank.  Watch the Tangs swim in circles around each other.  Beautiful.

I recommend a family season pass if you intend on visiting more than once per year.  Your wallet will thank you.  Plus, you get BOGO special activities and discounts.  Take a trip, worth the visit.  But remember to bring another 10 bucks for parking.  Don’t forget to swing by the USS New Jersey Battleship Museum right next door, then take the water taxi across to Penn’s Landing for some Philly cheesesteaks.

Atlantic City has changed.  The last time I was there, it catered toward older folks who still considered Dean Martin the top performer of Atlantic City.  Times have changed.  Now the focus seems to be urban music.  Some hotels have not adapted well.  In fact, all of Atlantic City still has an air of seediness…with a few exceptions.

This past weekend (August 2012) I stayed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino.  There were positive and negative issues with the hotel, but overall I would give them a 2.5 star rating.

The Golden Nugget was recently renovated, with tens of millions of dollars going into design and gentrification.  Yet it seems that the essentials were missed by the designers.  Each room is beautiful, with fantastic, world class views of the marina, Atlantic City skyline and the ocean.  I doubt that there is a bad view in the entire hotel.  Rooms are smoking and non-smoking, and the non-smoking rooms do not smell like stale smoke.  The pool is gorgeous, located on the 6th floor roof.  Plenty of servers brought drinks from the bar to guests, and the return was pretty fast.  (The pool was heated, and a bit warm on a hot day).  Also, there were 4 hot tubs and a very nice selection of lounge chairs.

The casino had enough table games and machines to keep a gambling addict happy for years.  Shops were standard, overpriced and overglitzed offerings of gaudy and silly merchandise.  Standouts, however, were the Bread and Beans quick bite cafe and the chocolate shop.  These both were affordable and convenient.

I ate at The Buffet.  Frankly, it seems as if they use it as a bastard stepchild – kind of gloomy lighting and tired looking people eating there.  However, the food was really excellent.  I had a second helping of prime rib, and the shrimp were gigantic and delicious.  The price was really fair for all the food they offered.  Plus, the dessert selections were delicious, staffed by a really happy Asian woman.  Our server was prompt and kept our drinks refilled and always had a smile.  I rate the buffet at a 3.5 / 4 stars.  Great buffet.  We also ate at the Chart House.  I really don’t need to review it – the Chart House is simply fantastic, and not eating there would be a sin.  Try the Peanut Sauce Mahi Mahi.  Delicious.

The hotel room is a different story.  Though it was modern, beautiful, comfortable and had a great view, somehow the idiots in charge of design failed to think of two critical things.  First, please consider soundproofing.  At least try to add some insulation between walls.  Even the quietest conversations were easily overheard next door and in the halls.  Even tissue paper walls would have made it quieter.  As a result of the horrible soundproofing, I was lucky enough to overhear full telephone conversations in both rooms adjacent to mine, the ding each time the elevator 10 rooms away would arrive at the floor, each drunk person who arrived on floor 21 and finally, the marathon sex of room 2106, complete with ass slapping and “baby hold me please”.  Yes, it really was a treat.  Golden Nugget – fix your sound proofing attempt, please!  Put a hole in the wall and use liberal amounts of spray in expansion foam, and your problems will be solved.

Next, the bathroom didn’t have a fan.  No fan to remove smells or conceal noises.  Yes, you know what I mean.  I had to turn on sink or shower to make the experience less traumatic for Laura.  Isn’t a fan in a bathroom considered standard?  Clearly not at the Golden Nugget.

My final problem with the hotel was the parking deck.  It was cramped.  Spots were really small.  Plus, in addition to paying over $480 for two nights, they insult guests with a $5 parking fee.  Really??  If you are part of their players club, you are exempt.  Yet visitors get rocked another 5 dollars.  That was insulting.

Overall, the facility was nice, but like so many Atlantic City and Vegas niceties, they are only skin deep.  Best bet?  Visit the Buffet – that’s a winner, and not even a gamble.

Dorney Park is a major attraction here in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  However, it is also a danger to the hundreds of pedestrians who try to run across it during the dark hours after the park closes – and also during broad daylight.  As Pennsylvania roads attest, deer and other animals adorn our highways as roadkill.  How long until Hamilton Boulevard becomes a slaughterhouse for park visitors?

Many Dorney visitors are attracted to businesses on the south side of Hamilton Boulevard.  These include the ever popular summer destination Ice Cream World, Perkin’s Restaurant and the various hotels that provide accommodation to visitors from out of town.  As a result, hundreds of visitors cross Hamilton Boulevard – with no crosswalks to guide their travels – and are nearly hit each year.  This is a clear danger to visitors, and an unnecessary one at that.

What is it going to take to bring South Whitehall Township (jurisdiction of Dorney Park) and Cedar Fair (owner of Dorney Park) together to build a proper pedestrian bridge over the Boulevard?  I propose that Dorney Park and South Whitehall Township collaborate on a bridge, sooner rather than later.  One life is not worth the money spent to protect our visitors and motorists.  Let’s get together and build that bridge – it is a necessary expense. 

America has an immigration problem. In short, the problem isn’t Mexicans. The problem is two-fold; cost and complication. The Statue of Liberty has a tablet, upon which is written:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

However, when you determine the cost to immigrate to the U.S., the poor cannot afford the price!

Perhaps you believe that illegal aliens are just trying to sneak in because they are lazy and don’t feel like filing the legal paperwork to be naturalized. Perhaps you think that they are all criminals. But before you decide, have you looked at any Immigration paperwork? Check out the link:http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=db029c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=db029c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

Yup, the link is as complicated as the forms and fees. I will be presenting a number of blogs on solutions to our immigration problem.  Like the ideas?  Hate them?  Comment!  Also, present your own ideas!

So, it’s election time again, and time for candidates to pander to the masses with cliches about being tough on crime, and of course, make absurd statements to prove their toughness.  Bullshit.

I received a mailing from Judge Orie Melvin for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  One phrase on her advertisement struck me as so awful that I cannot in good conscience vote for her.  “Fighting Criminals…protecting our Families”.  Judge, in case no one informed you during your legal career, the role of the judge is NOT to fight criminals.  That is why we have the police departments.  Your sole job as a judge is to be an impartial advocate for justice, to be the trier of LAW in court, and provide the means for justice to be accomplished.  Your advertisement shows that you believe yourself to be an advocate instead of an impartial proponent of justice.

Justice is blindfolded for a reason, Your Honor.  Perhaps you need to return to the roots of our system before tying to pander your way into the highest court of our Commonwealth.

I am a Right-Wing Extremist. Do not doubt my resolve. I am dangerous, I am volatile, I am a threat. At least that is what the Obama Administration would say about me.
The truth? I vote Republican, attend Catholic services and am a practicing Catholic. I am pro-life, not just because the Church tells me I should be, but because science itself testifies to when life begins. I support other Republican causes such as free market solutions to problems, reforming the IRS, supporting and equipping a strong military, limited government and minimal government intrusion in our daily lives. I believe that the Constitution should be understood as the Founders intended, yet one can only do that if they read The Federalist Papers and writings of the Founders. I believe that the average citizen of the US has devolved into a state of “pop-culture emulation”, and is incapable of making a reasonable choice unless instructed to by the media or their favorite idiot celebrity. (Remember, celebrities are paid to recite words written by others, nothing more or nothing less). So, according to Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, that makes me dangerous and a right wing extremist.

I am also dangerous because I am educated and I vote. I oppose the nationalization of the auto industry. I oppose bailouts of companies with taxpayer money. I don’t believe that the US is causing climate change anymore than I believe that being bad prevents Santa Claus from bringing me toys on Christmas Eve. I believe that ACES, the Waxman-Markey Bill is a crime against our middle class. I believe that Obamacare, the latest in a line of bad health care issues, is simply a closeted version of state sponsored genocide against the elderly (most of whom vote against Obama and liberal policies).

Yes, the truth is, because I can vote and I am educated, I am very dangerous.

Hmmm….so our president believes that Cambridge Police acted stupidly, then admits that he doesn’t have all the facts in the case.

Isn’t that typical Obama? Let’s see, what other areas of his job does this apply to as well?

Mr. Obama is trying to inflict health care on all of us without all the facts about costs and ramifications.

Mr. Obama pushed the Climate Change bill through Congress without any real evidence of global warming or how this bill will raise energy costs on Americans.

Mr. Obama is closing Guantanamo Bay without all the facts about the terrorists or all the facts as to where they will go when the prison closes.

Mr. Obama pushed through two stimulus plans without all the facts as to how that money will be spent and how it will impact the economy.

Mr. Obama is trying to push another stimulus package without all the facts how the others impacted our recession.

Mr. President, when do you EVER have the facts?

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Boris Kodjoe owns a mansion in Atlanta. But when he goes to answer his door, the black actor knows what it’s like to be an outcast.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested last week on a charge of disorderly conduct.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested last week on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Click to view previous image
“When I’m opening the door of my own house, someone will ask me where the man of the house is, implying that I’m staff,” said Kodjoe, best known for starring in Showtime’s “Soul Food.”

It’s a feeling some African-Americans say is all too common, even to this day in America: No matter your status or prominence in society, you’re still typecast. That’s why the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s most prominent African-American scholars, has stirred outrage and debate.

Jelani Cobb, an author and professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says it’s troubling on many levels when “one of the most recognizable African-Americans in the country can be arrested in his own home and have to justify being in his own home.” Video Watch arrest of a Harvard scholar »

“It’s really kind of unfathomable,” Cobb said. “If it can happen to him, yeah, it can happen to any of us.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Jimi Izrael. “If a mild-mannered, bespectacled Ivy League professor who walks with a cane can be pulled from his own home and arrested on a minor charge, the rest of us don’t stand a chance,” Izrael wrote Tuesday on The Root, an online magazine with commentary from a variety of black perspectives that’s co-founded by Gates.

“We all fit a description. We are all suspects.”

In an interview with The Root, Gates said he was outraged by the incident and hopes to use the experience as a teaching tool, including a possible PBS special on racial profiling.

“I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race,” Gates said. “And I’m deeply resolved to do and say the right things so that this cannot happen again.” Voices of black America: What it’s like being black in America
‘Moment of Truth-Black in America 2’
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will join the countdown to Black in America 2, in his first TV interview since his run-in with police at his home.
Gates was arrested last Thursday in broad daylight at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for disorderly conduct — what the arresting officer described as “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.” The charge was dropped Tuesday on the recommendation of police, and the city of Cambridge issued a statement calling the incident “regrettable and unfortunate.”

Gates had just returned from a trip to China when a police officer responded to a call about a potential break-in at his home that was phoned in by a white woman. According to the police report, Gates was in the foyer when the officer arrived.

The officer asked Gates to “step out onto the porch and speak with me,” the report says. “[Gates] replied, ‘No, I will not.’ He then demanded to know who I was. I told him that I was ‘Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police’ and that I was ‘investigating a report of a break in progress’ at the residence.

“While I was making this statement, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed, ‘Why, because I’m a black man in America?’ ” Have race relations improved since the election of President Barack Obama?

According to the report, Gates initially refused to show the officer his identification, instead asking for the officer’s ID. But Gates eventually did show the officer his identification that included his home address.

“The police report says I was engaged in loud and tumultuous behavior. That’s a joke,” Gates told The Root. “It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, ‘What is your name, and what is your badge number?’ and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, ‘You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer.'”

Known as Skip by friends and colleagues, Gates is the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, and an acclaimed PBS documentarian.

While Gates’ arrest lit up talk radio and blogs, it prompted others to defend the police against charges of racial profiling.

“I’d be glad if somebody called the police if somebody was breaking into my house,” neighbor Michael Schaffer told CNN affiliate WHDH.

For others, the incident symbolized something more. Seeing the police mugshot of Gates brought some African-Americans to near tears.

Kim Coleman, a Washington radio host, cultural commentator and blogger, said she grew numb when she saw the mugshot.

“I was not prepared for that,” she said. “To see one of my heroes in a mugshot was not something that I was expecting. … It just tells me we’re not in a post-racial society.”

She said there’s a reason why you don’t hear about prominent white people arrested in their homes: “because it doesn’t happen.”

It’s time for America to have a long overdue national conversation about race, Coleman said. “When are we going to have that,” she said. “When are we really going to sit down and strip down and say, ‘This is what I feel about you and this is what you feel about me. Now, how are we going to get over that?’ ”

Rebecca Walker, an award-winning author, said the arrest was devastating to scholars, writers, and artists “who work so hard to keep a free flow of information.”

“It seems eerily ironic Mr. Gates was returning from China, where surveillance is so high and freedom of speech and ideas so curtailed,” Walker said. “To see the mugshot of Skip was a blow to all of us who feel some sense of safety based on our work to try to mend all of these broken fences in America — to make ourselves into people who refuse to be limited by race and class and gender and everything else.”

“To end up, at the end of the day, treated like a criminal, unjustly stripped of our accomplishments and contributions even if only for a moment, is profoundly disturbing. We must ask ourselves what it means, and to allow ourselves to face various scenarios regarding power and freedom and how these will intersect in the coming years.”

Last week, President Obama spoke at the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, saying that while minorities have made great strides “the pain of discrimination is still felt in America.”

“Even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks — we know that too many barriers still remain,” the president said.

Kodjoe, the actor, said Obama “has affected a change in people’s consciousness regarding such issues as racism and prejudice.” But he said the arrest of Gates underscores that there’s more work ahead.

“I think we’re moving in the right direction. But no doubt, there still is a lot of work to be done,” Kodjoe said. “It’s not just a problem here. It’s a problem worldwide. Racism is universal.”

Gates said he has a newfound understanding of exactly what that means. “There’s been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama,” he told The Root. “But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

RESPONSE:

Hold on a minute. Someone reported a break in, police responded, an unidentified man answered the door, became verbally abusive, refused to show ID, yet the POLICE were wrong?
I don’t know how this pathetic professor brought race into this issue, unless of course he is the racist. It seems race was his problem, not the responding officer who is REQUIRED by department policy to CONFIRM the ID of the homeowner. If the officer didn’t follow policy, he would have been liable for any damage or stolen goods at the professor’s house and potentially lost his job.
When a person pursues racial issues for too long, as a W.E.B. DuBois professor would, their entire world view becomes racecentric. I believe that the professor should step outside his racial worldview long enough to understand that the officer was doing his best to protect the professor’s property.

A simple, “Here is my ID officer – I am the homeowner” would have sufficed. In order to confirm that he truly is the homeowner, the officer will obviously have follow up questions. Our professor friend immediately played the race card, and for some reason is being treated like a hero.

I for one am tired of the race card. During the last election, 95% of black Americans voted for Obama. This shows very clearly that race was the motivating factor. Yet, there is no clear racial factor for whites voting for McCain. Where is the racism? When this professor was questioned by the police officer, his immediate cry was about being a “black man in America”. Yet the officer was never accused of making any racial comments, and in fact only arrested the professor following his refusal to fully cooperate. There is racism in America. On the white end, it is mostly limited to rednecks who can’t admit the Civil War is over. They hide under sheets or behind pathetic swastika tattoos. However, it is clearer to me every day that the real racism lives in the hearts of minorities who apply a racial world view to their everyday lives. Why are segregated organizations that base their membership in race still allowed in this nation? I don’t mean all white golf clubs or white only social groups. I mean groups like The Congressional Black Caucus, or Black Student Unions on the campus of most colleges and universities. Why is racism tolerated in ANY form in our nation?
If we are to make any gains in race relations in this nation, it is time to let color go away. Questions regarding race should be eliminated on all government forms, job applications, and any other official or quasi official form. Organizations that require a certain race to qualify for membership should be deemed illegal and discriminatory. Scholarships that base their endorsement upon race, not merit, should be eliminated. If equality is what minorities want, equality is what they should get.

As Theodore Roosevelt believed, when you hyphenate American you denigrate us all. Perhaps that is the racial history you should begin to study, professor. In the meantime, perhaps your next step should be to apologize to the officer who was just trying to protect your property and do his job.

Regardless of one comment by a Republican, the health bill as it stands is flawed. MoveOn is too liberal to admit that even Obama didn’t intend the Frankenstein monster that health care reform has become.

Applying failed California policies to the Federal Government will lead to the same result: failure on a massive scale and higher taxes. Even the OMB auditor stated this fact. Now Blue Dog Democrats are revolting against the plan due to the same problem.

The solution? Not the MoveOn plan of simply rubber stamping the President and using an internet bully pulpit to motivate the “sheeple” incapable of thinking independently. Obama must stand up to his own party and remove the fraud that is currently being debated in Congress. A simple program to reduce the cost of health care and increase availability would be to cap malpractice suit payments by applying a potential earnings standard. That would lower malpractice insurance, allowing fairer and more affordable prices to be charged in the health care market.

In the meantime, I would love to see MoveOn MoveOver a bit away from the fringe left. Start looking at the realities of important legislation, not just the politics. Cap and Trade was a joke. This health care plan isn’t even funny. And MoveOn? You have become as pathetic as David Letterman’s apologies.