New Jersey has banned smoking in all indoor public places, including bars, but has exempted casino gaming areas from the ban.

Personally, I don’t believe that any government, city, state or federal, should have the right to tell a bar, restaurant or office-based business owner whether he can or cannot allow smoking in his establishment or office complex.

It is, after all, the owner’s business. He or she owns or leases the property and as such has the right to determine such issues. People who do not like cigarette smoke are not forced to hang around or seek employment on the premises. They can frequent or work at places where non-smoking or anti-smoking proprieters do not allow tobacco use on the property.

The self righteous proponents of government imposed smoking bans claim that they have the health interests of non-smoking employees at heart. Balderdash! They are merely grinding an axe and using state governments as their conduits. The vast majority of the bars and restaurants I’ve frequented over the last few decades have had one thing in common: all, or nearly all of the employees were smokers. This means that in most cases, these smoking nazis are getting legislation enacted that “protects” these employees without their consent.

That said, I especially take umbrage with the government passing double standard laws that tilt the proverbial playing field rather than keeping it level.

Having worked in the gaming industry in Nevada, I’ve seen a few examples of what happens when people aren’t permitted to smoke, drink and gamble at the same time — it costs a casino some serious money.

The Jersey casinos pay a lot of taxes and their owners contribute big bucks to political campaign funds.

So the casinos are exempt from the same no-smoking law that will be enforced against smaller businesses like bars and restaurants.

For Angeloni, owner of Angeloni’s II, an Italian restaurant two blocks off the casino strip, the casino exemption is a matter of dollars and cents. Customers won’t be able to smoke at his tables or bar, but they will be at the city’s dozen casinos.

“It’s going to kill me, I know it is,” Angeloni said Wednesday. “Do you know how many conventioneers eat here and come out to the bar to smoke afterward? You can kiss them goodbye, now. They won’t even leave the casino.”

Seeing many mom & pop businesses disappearing as giant chains emerge, concerns that can afford to charge less for products while providing more selection has always depressed me. No one can replace the local family-run butcher shop, for example. However, that’s the marketplace, it’s capitalism at work, and it occurs on a legal, level private sector playing field.

By exempting the casinos, which serve food and beverages in vast quantities at all hours, cheaper than the smaller bars and restaurants can afford to charge and often comped, the Jersey gubmint is in fact stacking the deck against these little guys and therefore interfering with the local marketplace.

In short, they’ve both infringed on the rights of business owners like so many other states have, and sabotaged the food and beverage competition for casinos whose actual specialty product is gambling.

If you’re going to pass a law, it needs to apply to everybody, not just those who generate less tax revenue, employ less people and make smaller campaign contributions.

While I’m a hard core advocate of states’ rights, I think this one should rightly be taken to a higher court by the small business owners who stand to lose a lot of money, if not their very businesses, by this inequity in the new New Jersey state law.

Mark Steyn has offered up another of his on-point analyses, this one titled Ham handed Dems didn’t lay a glove on Alito. It doesn’t bide well for the immediate future of the Democratic party in terms of “looking good for the next elections.”

I find it, as grave somber Senate Democrats like to say, “troubling.” Indeed, I find it not just “troubling” but sad that a party once so good at “the politics of personal destruction” has got so bad at it. The last time they had a Supreme Court nominee to hang upside down in the Democrat bondage dungeon was the John Roberts hearings. And at least, when hatchet man Chuck Schumer professed himself “troubled” by the “fullness” of John Roberts’ “heart,” the crack oppo-research guys had uncovered an “inappropriate” use of the word “amigo” by Roberts back in the early ’80s.

But, with Sam Alito the worst they come could up with was that he might have been around some other guy who might have used the word “amigo.” Not back in the early ’80s, but in the early ’70s.

Mr. Steyn writes of the dog-and-pony show in which the older Democrats dance, looking extremely foolish, to the idiotic tunes of far left organizations like MoveOn.org in order to continue to enjoy the filthy lucre campaign backing these concerns cough up.

He calls it “dancing for dollars,” LOL.

…In the Democratic Party, the old lions are now led by the grassroots donkeys, and, like some moth-eaten circus act, Ted and Pat Leahy and Dianne Feinstein are obliged to jump through ever more ludicrous hoops for the gratification of the base.

Read on.

I’ve been keeping really busy for the last several days working on the house I closed on exactly ten days ago and moved into four days later. I mean, I’m transforming this wonderful red brick ranch style house into my permanent home and, being only a semi-patient man, I am doing so at what some might call an accellerated pace.

Jeff has the living and dining room floors about 1/3 done, laying new oak floors in their stead, then he’ll be doing the den. In less than twelve hours, carpeting people will be here to lay 122 square yards of exactly what I want and the next day, DirecTV will be doing a lot of installation work here. Furniture will begin flowing in on Tuesday. So a lot’s going down on my modest 1/3 acre of the planet.

Modest, sure, but at least I have six big trees on my property, and coming from a city/apartment kind of background, that’s a major detail!

But that’s not what I’m posting about, it’s partially a valid excuse as to why I’m still in this scarce posting period but mostly about still another reason I miss the 1960s and 1970s so much.

Early last week I ordered the entire DVD collection of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. They arrived two days ago, and I’ve been watching them almost whenever I’m not doing things to the house.

They are male tuxedoed and formal womened groups of top stars of every ilk sitting along a daiz, taking turns giving good natured, super-funny insults to whoever the man or woman of the week happened to be. They were televised.

What I love about them is that most of the toasters and toastees were friends and acquaintances from that era’s Hollywood and ‘Vegas crowds and they were completely confident that they could go as low, as funny or as irreverent as they wished, political correctness{the dreaded “PC”} not an issue.

No one entertained any fear of being sued for their comments at the roasts, which believe you me could be rather extreme, they knew it was all in fun.

We’re talking the likes of Dean Martin(of course), Milton Berle, Ruth Buzzi, Nipsy Russell, Don Rickles, George Burns, Rich Little, Flip Wilson, Foster Brooks, Lucille Ball, LaWanda Page, Jimmy Walker, Phyllis Diller, Jack Benny and so many other comedians of yore who, without using a single profanity, could get as adult as you dare while uttering nothing that a child could be “enlightened” by and behysterically funny utterly hilarious to where your most recent sip of coffee or other beverage spews across the room before you have the opportunity to swallow it and your sides ache from your hard, uncontrollable laughter.

The atmosphere was patriotic, none of the leftist entertainment industry output we encounter today. When those people went wrong, they did so big time.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts really bring me back to a time when things were much more clean and honest in the entertainment industry, before they brought on the Marxism and PC many of their number had once privately embraced, to today’s extremes.

Today’s comedy isn’t nearly as original and is, in many cases, too PC, but unfortunately too many of today’s young people don’t even know that, because while it’s out there, they need to give it a chance.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts are so completely, awesomely hilarious to watch without all the PC baggage and otherwise lawsuit-motivated sensitivity that they easily bring back a more pleasant era that existed before the liberals in America decided that it was time to separate Americans from one another by emphasizing their differences and controlling their use of the English language and its vocabulary.

Young people who were born within the last quarter century have absolutely no idea how funny those Rat Pack era comics could be, they need to go here ASAP and get a clue.

The recently released video message from al Qaeda’s number two leader is part of a pattern that signals a countdown to a major terrorist attack within the next 30 days, warns a Washington D.C.-based analyst.

The theory, based on a pattern observed after previous terrorist attacks had occured, is that…

…it is not the content of the video that is a sign of a possible imminent strike, said terrorism expert Christopher L. Brown. Instead, it is the timing of the video that is consistent with previous patterns. Brown, a researcher with a Washington think tank, has briefed members of Congress and senior administration officials on key threats, and he has prepared testimony and briefing materials for officials at the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, National Security Council and the White House.

The pattern Brown observed is that each Zawahiri video appears to be part of a pair, with the second video followed by a significant attack within 30 days, outside of the major combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The videos released on Sept. 9 and Nov. 9, 2004, were the first “set” and were followed by the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, bombings on Dec. 6, 2004. The second “set” of videos was released Feb. 20 and June 26, 2005, followed by the July 7 London bombings. A third set of videos was released Aug. 4 and Sept 1, 2005, followed by the bombings in Bali, Indonesia, on Oct. 1, 2005.

It’s all here.

Columnist Diana West has written an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel

…in just about every account of your American trip — biggish news in Europe — it is prominently mentioned that Guantanamo Bay is prominently high on your list of, well, prominent concerns. Trouble spots. Global things you lose sleep over.

This is, with due respect, bizarre. Iran is going nuclear, Europe is going Islamic, Russia is going off the reservation, China is a fearsome thing, and your big concern is sending what is called a “clear message” to Mr. Bush about Guantanamo Bay, the tropical jail where the United States keeps jihadis on ice — and keeps the rest of the world safer as a result. But that’s not what you say. “An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term,” you told the German news magazine Der Spiegel this week. “Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners.”

I have a suggestion: How about if we ship all these guys — unflushed Korans and all — to Germany? Maybe “72 Virgins” Airlines would cut us a deal. Then you — Germany — can parole them to Lebanon.

That, of course, is just what you did just before Christmas with Muhammad Ali Hammadi, the convicted Hezbollah killer of Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem. In case you didn’t know, Mr. Stethem is one of our American heroes, a courageous young Navy diver who became an early casualty of the war on Islamic terror. In 1985, at age 23, he was beaten to an unrecognizable pulp by Hammadi and his gang, shot through the head and dumped onto a Beirut runway during the Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

Great article, read on…

So we have Merkel on hand to tell us what to do with the terrorists we have in captivity. It’s pretty sad that the western Euros haven’t yet gotten the message that they are no longer credible enough to tell the United States what to do or how to do it. Their economies are in bad shape and are only worsening, their honesty and dependability as allies have come up wanting between their dubious collective support in the Global War On Terror and the Oil-For-Food scandal and it now seems as though Germany’s been performing the “kiss of shame”, big time, on the Islamofascists in an attempt to get the terrorists to leave them alone.

Fat chance. To al-Qaeda and their colleagues, an infidel is an infidel, period.

“Back off and let men marry men, women marry women, and totally legalize abortion. In three generations, there will be no Democrats!!!”

First, whether or not I believe in outsourcing is irrelevant, because it is the right of any private businessman or company to follow the marketplace in pursuit of cheaper labor, less expensive materials or products that can make him or them more competitive.

That said, one would think that these firms could be just a bit more discerning when it comes to outsourcing technical support.

Most tech support for computer users comes out of Bangalore, though some firms, such as Dell and DirecWay, offer U.S. based tech support for corporate or other business accounts. Of course, it’s more expensive — that is, you pay for the luxury of speaking to a fellow American, and recent experience has taught me that it’s worth the money.

I had DirecWay come out on Friday and install a satellite dish for broadband access, and set up the modem. Signal strength was good and things seemed to be working when the two installers left, but shortly thereafter problems began, worse than those I’ve blogged about at some hotels I’ve stayed at.

I dealt with at least five different Bangalorians in trying to solve my access problem, all in vain.

See, I knew exactly what the problem was, I just didn’t know how to fix it. I attempted to explain it to each of them, and there was always the same result: I got myself walked through menus from one end of the universe to the other and back, keyed in scores of numbers and each time, in the end, the person I was talking to assured me my problem was solved, thanked me for calling in a way that sounded like my call was the high point of his very existence, hung up and went back to his bowl of curry.

And my problem remained.

Calling for about the sixth time, I was told by a woman that since I have a business account, I have “special” U.S. based tech support.

Yay!

I was connected with a fellow gringo in south Florida, where DirecWay keeps ‘em, had my problem solved and was off the phone in about ten minutes, as opposed to the fruitless half hour to an hour sessions with the Bangalorians.

What’s happening is plain to see: In order to maximize the savings they get from outsourcing, they go for the least qualified, “I need a job, any one will do” people they can find, the only prerequisite apparently being that they can speak somebody’s version of “passable English” — then they give them problem solving guides to a limited number of “most common problems”.

So you call up Tech Support and some guy with an Indian accent and an American nic greets you. The problem you need solved isn’t included among his computerized flash cards. Even if it was, it might not matter because he has no idea what you’re talking about, anyway.

He doesn’t tell you this, of course, instead he simply ignores what little he understands of what you’re telling him and steers you through a bunch of menus that are totally irrelevant to your problem, but fine for the problems of others that appear on one of the flash cards.

He wastes a whole bunch of your valuable time and solves nothing.

Inflicting such crappy customer service on consumers is not a marketing technique I’ve ever heard of, and is surely not any way to command a loyal customer base.

Maybe these companies need to try getting less Bangalore for the buck.

Two reasons my posting has been somewhat sporadic the last few days is that I’ve just bought a house and have been addressing a barrage of moving and logistics issues, and the loss of posts when trying to publish via the less-than-adequate access provider outsourced by the hotel I’ve been staying in for the last month while finding, buying and equipping the house.

There’s a long way to go before all my plans for making it a home reach fruition and today is going to be a busy one as well, but the satellite broadband is up and I’m moving in today, so by tonight or tomorrow I should be back to posting.

In the meantime, I will leave you with an enlightened and encouraging analysis of the year ahead for Iraq by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

Identity theft and credit card fraud are criminal issues today that need to be addressed as a priority not only by the very firms that allow these crimes to be perpetrated upon their customers, but by the gubmint — we’re not talking micromanagement here, we’re talking protecting the public.

Auto mechanic and father of three Joe Shmoe of Kalamazoo, Michigan shouldn’t have to worry that swiping his bank card at an ATM for forty bucks’ worth of spending money might provide some sleazeball with enough data to clean out his checking account. He also shouldn’t have to fear that the sweet young thing at the local Tasty Freeze may be swiping his card through her own device to steal his financial data.

But it happens.

The reason that the Fed hasn’t addressed this issue is that they are tied up with such Democrat issues as the Bush use of the NSA to protect our country against future terrorist attacks and the BS racist recriminations attached to Hurricane Katrina, pure Democrat political bullshit interfering with issues of legitimate concern.

Once a hot-button item, data and identity theft protection has stalled in Congress, a research analyst said Thursday, pushed aside by bigger political fish, ranging from Iraq and Hurricane Katrina to domestic spying and Supreme Court nominees.

Despite a year’s worth of highly publicized security breaches and a lot of talk in Congress this summer on ways to protect consumers, there’s been too little done to protect U.S. consumers’ data, said Gartner research director Avivah Litan.

“It’s business as usual,” she said, citing two recent breaches — one involving a lost backup tape with data on two million mortgage holders, another related to credit card fraud at gas pumps — as evidence. “Not enough has changed. Data protection has moved up the priority list, but not nearly enough.”

Meanwhile, Americans are being ripped off in significant numbers, for all their savings.

Chalk one up for the left, their strategies of obstruction are paying off, while they tie Congress up with “racist” hurricanes and their opposition to our having liberated the people of Iraq, identity theft lies in the “unattended” category.

In an effort to increase the already accellerating violence between Iraqi insurgents and the terrorists from outside Iraq who are fighting the new government, Iraqi and coalition forces, U.S. officials over there are engaging in dialogue with Iraqi guerilla leaders.

U.S. officials have been talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift between homegrown insurgents and radical groups such as Al Qaeda, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Citing a Western diplomat, an Iraqi political leader and an Iraqi insurgent leader, the Times said that the talks were also aimed at drawing the local leaders into the political process.

According to interviews with insurgents and both U.S. and Iraqi officials, clashes between Iraqi groups and al Qaeda have broken out in several cities across the Sunni Triangle and they appear to have intensified in recent months, the Times said.

It seems like al-Qaeda’s popularity has waned quite a bit, there, in all likelihood because the Iraqi rebels, Baathists for the most part, are fighting mainly to regain the stature they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, perhaps with a small side order of statesmanly impulses.

As such, they see, as most of their fellow countrymen do, that the new Iraq with all its freedoms is far preferable to the Iraq that the Islamofascists of al-Qaeda would embrace if they had any say in the governing of the land of Scheherazade.

And they want that as badly as they want the pox.

What our folks over there are doing by stirring the pot is a smart move — with the Iraqi rebels, our own forces and Iraqi troops all ranged against them, we’ll get rid of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq that much more quickly and…

Insurgents told the newspaper that there is widespread hatred for al Qaeda among ordinary Iraqis. Abu Amin, an insurgent leader in Yusefiya and a former captain in the Iraqi Army, told the Times the Americans were especially interested in securing help against al Qaeda, about whom they asked many questions: “Do you have a relationship with? Can you help us attack al Qaeda? Can you uproot al Qaeda from Iraq?”

…with any luck, finally convince the insurgents to give the new government a try. What they don’t seem to have yet grasped is that the prime reason they have a minority representing them in the government is because they are a minority in Iraq — their previous power existed at the pleasure of a dictator who is no longer running the country, and now the majority rules, but in a democracy they have the right of dialogue and debate that, approached with reason, can do more to improve their lot than any number of weapons, threats and bombings.