Honestly doohicky, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for posting that in a public forum. CNN has already debunked that Muslim madrassa crap. In fact you should reply to the person who sent that email to you and every other person on that list and respond with the truth.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

It's really a shame that has to be repeated & posted on JCList which in most cases is a great source for information.

Quote:

Taz - In all seriousness, one solution to your problem (and others on this board who proclaim the death of the US Dollar) would be getting a currency trading account. I use www.oanda.com - probably the best customizable currency trading platform available. So for instance if you have US Dollar assets that you're looking to protect you can use Oanda to hedge yourself versus almost any currency you want (including gold & silver).

What's more is that you'll earn continuous interest (paid daily) on whatever balance you keep in their account at fairly competitive interest rates. These interest rates usually approximate fed-funds or overnight-LIBOR. Currently Oanda offers 3.3% on USD assets. This is actually a great feature since companies like HSBC Direct or ING pay great interest rates, but you only get the interest once a month so you miss out on some valuable compounding. Furthermore, lets say you swap your USD into euros or yen or whatever you'll earn the interest rate of that currency. For instance if you put your money in south african rand you'll earn 10%/yr but will be exposed to the currency fluctuations of course.

I've traded with them for the last 4-ish years and their quite safe and have great technology, etc. If you're not using for hedging, you can speculate and get anywhere from 20-1 or 50-1 leverage on your money (if you're into that sort of thing). Of course since it's customizable you can decide exactly how much currency you want to buy and sell (i.e. use less than 1:1 leverage if you want). If you're skeptical, they allow you to deposit as little as $100, or even less i think.

Anyway, sorry to shill for Oanda, but they're a good company and it seems like it would stop you & other dollar-apocalypse people from losing sleep over your lost purchasing power. If you have a view that the dollar is collapsing - do something about it and protect yourself rather than complain about what THEY (whoever they is) are doing ...

As a side note (using gold prices right now, which will be outdated by the time you read this) you can buy gold for $900.05 and sell gold at 899.55 (i.e. 50c difference between the bid & the ask) with no commissions. Buying Gold Coins or Gold Bullion would be much more expensive...

The only downside with Oanda is their deposit options aren't very good - Check, Wire, or Paypal - so for me, that pretty much means check, because i refuse to pay the fees associated with wire transfers and paypal's 2.9% processing fee. Depositing/withdrawing with a check is free, but can take about a week to send/recieve money. I usually just deposit using a bill-pay service from my online bank.

Sorry to get off topic... Back to the housing slump discussions...

Corzine Gets Caught in Fight Between New Jersey Casinos, Horses


By Adam L. Cataldo
Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- New Jersey's horse industry is racing
for its life.

Racetrack owners say they can't survive unless they are
allowed to install video-lottery terminals or get a subsidy to
make up for not having them.

Governor Jon Corzine doesn't want to legalize the video
games outside Atlantic City because they might hurt casinos'
business. The casinos, already facing revenue losses as
neighboring states open gambling parlors, say they can't afford
to renew the $20 million subsidy they paid for four years.

More horse owners may move their operations elsewhere
unless New Jersey's four tracks find a way to fatten their
purses, which have shrunk as betting declined. The breeders and
tracks contribute $1.1 billion a year to the state economy,
according to a study by the Rutgers Equine Science Center.

``The clock is ticking,'' said Senate President Richard
Codey, a horse-racing fan. ``If they don't do anything quick,
especially with the subsidy, all hell is going to break loose.''
Eleven states already have so-called racinos, combined
racetracks and casinos. New York has eight and Pennsylvania's
sixth is opening this month.

Revenue from the video lottery terminals allows tracks to
offer bigger race purses. VLTs are similar to slot machines but
are hooked up to a central computer that randomly generates
winning numbers. Slot machines, which account for most of
Atlantic City casinos' revenues, each pick winners separately.

Corzine in Middle

Corzine said last week that his administration is
negotiating with both sides. He says he wants to help horse
racing without hurting Atlantic City, which has had a state
monopoly on casino gaming since it was legalized in 1976.

``It would be very undermining, or potentially undermining,
of what I see as a huge investment coming to Atlantic City to
make it a real destination resort and create tens of thousands
of jobs,'' Corzine, a first-term Democrat, said in an interview.

Lawmakers say New Jersey's horse industry will perish if a
solution isn't found. The tracks and breeders pay about $63
million annually in state and local taxes, according to the
Rutgers study.

Wagering on New Jersey horse races declined 25 percent to
$924 million in 2006 from 1999, according to a state-
commissioned study released last year by Christiansen Capital
Advisors, a New York gaming-research firm.

The survey showed that purses are shrinking in New Jersey
and increasing in New York and Pennsylvania, and the trend is
projected to continue. That's encouraging owners of the best
horses to leave, said Michael Harrison, president of the
Thoroughbred Breeders' Association of New Jersey.

Disappearing Horses

Joe Jennings of Monmouth County said 25 of the 150 mares he
bred last year were moved to Pennsylvania.

``If the breeding industry dies in New Jersey, there is no
hope for the racing industry,'' Jennings said.

The casinos say they shouldn't have to continue subsidizing
horse racing.

``For them to blame us for their failure is ridiculous,''
said Joseph Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New
Jersey. ``Even if that were the case, so what? Is Smith Corona
looking for a subsidy from IBM?''

Legislation to place 5,000 video-lottery terminals at the
Meadowlands racetrack in East Rutherford failed in 2005, opposed
by casino owners including Caesars Entertainment Inc. and Trump
Entertainment Resorts Inc.

State Senator Paul Sarlo introduced the measure again last
month and asked the casino group to drop its objections.

``New Jersey needs to develop a united front to preserve
all elements of our gaming industry,'' wrote Sarlo, a Democrat
whose district includes the Meadowlands Racetrack. The others
are Monmouth Park Racetrack, Freehold Raceway and Atlantic City
Race Course.

Corzine Turnabout

Corzine advocated video-lottery terminals in his budget
address a year ago, saying they could raise money to help fix
the state's finances. That was before the Christiansen report
found that the machines would hurt casinos.

Atlantic City casinos' revenue declined last year for the
first time, to $4.92 billion, which they blame on competition
from other states and restrictions on smoking.

The casinos purchase $2.2 billion of goods and services in
the state each year and generate $1.1 billion of state tax
revenue annually, according to the industry group.

The industry has made $12 billion of capital investment
since its inception, and $10 billion more is planned, Corbo
said. Those projects could be scaled back or canceled if video-
lottery machines take away business, he said.

``Installing VLTs at the racetracks would make us seriously
reconsider any further investment in Atlantic City,'' said
Thomas Hickey, a spokesman for Trump Entertainment, which owns
three casinos there. ``The potential exists for it to have a
negative impact on our market.''

--With reporting by Terrence Dopp in Trenton. Editors: Stacie
Servetah, Brenda Batten

To contact the reporter on this story:
Adam L. Cataldo in New York at +1-212-617-5227 or
acataldo@bloomberg.net.

"A gun, a 30-inch sword, and 130 bags of cocaine"

This could be the best headline ever...

There must be some ridiculous incentives there for them to have sold 90%, because there are a few units on realtor.com for resale that are about $50k to $100k less than what they wanted when i went for an "open house" (i.e. the open house that they have every weekend).

Ted Kennedy endorsement story & link to speech:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22873162/


Barack Obama Speech (not sure why MSNBC cut them up this way - probably to show extra advertisements):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22882938#22882938

Hell of a speech by Ted Kennedy - I saw some clips but I'm waiting for youtube to get it so i can listen to the whole thing.

Anyway, it's not just the Kennedy's endorsing obama, here is a (partial) list of those supporting him in red/purple states:

Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona
Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia;
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri
Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota

Hopefully he'll endorse Obama - the man needs all the help he can get from the Clinton attack machine.

Getting back to the original topic of this discussion - I too have had no luck posting anything to their forums. Everything I post to their real estate forums gets removed. Things which to me seems totally reasonable and not out to smear any particular development gets taken down. The only things that remains are glowing reviews of condo projects & other developments.

I would call it a total sham of free speech but then again it's a website owned by someone and therefore i guess they have the right to heavily edit any content that shows up on it, but they certainly shouldn't try to pass it off as a free-forum of information which it certainly is not.

Oh well, all the more reason to post here...

Most profound movie of all time?? Not so much....

Fist 3 minutes, thought i was supposed to be stoned in order to "get it". Turns out the director or whatever just has a flair for overly trippy music...

Part 1 - about how Christianity is just based on the same foundations as ancient egyptian religions & pagan religions. Am not a theologian so i have no idea if any of this is true.

Part 2 - about how 9/11 was masterminded by the US government and other assorted 9/11 conspiracies.

Part 3 - about how central banks are causing a death spiral of debt, etc etc. Margin Loans are evil, etc. Then moves into a somewhat muddled critique of mass media.

And then to top it all off, the documentarian suggests the end-goal of the "monied interests" is to eventually combine all sovereign nations into one world government and have all money on an implanted chip in your body. If you get out of line, the government will shut of all access to money (and i assume by extension, your very identity). Seems to be implied that the chip will also be equipped w/ GPS and there will be this huge human "grid"

Don't waste your time unless you're a big fan of 9/11 conspiracy films or just conspiracy in general. The movie doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

Final analysis: 1h55m of my life that i want back, luckily i was playing on-line poker at the same time, so it wasn't a total waste...

Paul is making some of the best points in this campaign. Aside from his natural appeal of being the only republican that is anti-war, he is the ONLY one talking about fiscal and more importantly monetary responsibility. I don't think he has a chance in hell, but at least he's getting a platform to air his viewpoints, and it's quite clear from the money he's raising that he has struck a chord with people and speaks for many of the libertarian causes that so often get neglected.

It's really quite telling that he's raised way more money that "mainstream" candidates like Huckabee, McCain, and Thompson.

Can you imagine if Paul ends up running on the libertarian platform and Bloomberg ends up running as an independent? Those two plus the repub & dem nominee - I think chris matthews & all the other pundit's heads might explode...

Regarding Experience, one of the best arguments (used by Obama on the stump & elsewhere) is the following: No one had more experience than Dick Cheney & Donald Rumsfeld and we see where that got us. How much experience one has is the wrong question - How much *judgement* they have, is the right question, and he's certainly been right on quite a few things - most notably Iraq. Hillary unfortunately does not have him hands down on that one...

And it's not like the guy just graduated from law school - he's been a law professor at U. of Chicago, community organizer, state senator, and US senator.

But anyway, just wanted to throw in my 2 cents...

Dude, that sucks!

I don't have a story that comes close to that, but i can relate to the "Jersey City parking systems don't 'talk' to one another". I live on essex st. which has residents only parking and yet i've gotten like 4 tickets in the last 2 years despite the fact that we had to register the car with the parking authority. you would think that once they typed a license plate # into their ticket machine it would say, "oh wait, i recognize this license plate..."

I mean that is of course after they ignore the multiple stickers on the back of your car....

Quote:

It's good that you like it - i'll never know whether i will like it because they won't let us even look at the miniature scale model of the planned development... pretty lame if you ask me.

1. I love the slowsky's - I sometimes rewind my DVR to see their ads - yes i know, quite lame but for some reason i find them hilarious...

2. I hate the fact that at the bottom of the Comcast programming guide there is advertising that i'm guessing about 3 people out of however many million subscribers they have, have EVER clicked on - and 2 of those clicks were probably accidental.

Me and my wife went to liberty harbor north this weekend and tried to take a look at pricing, availability, etc and were pretty much turned away because we didn't have an appointment. Looking into the room beyond the receptionist we saw a model of what LHN would look like in the future, we asked if we could take a look... NO - must have an appointment. Can someone talk to us now... NO - must have an appointment.

I guess units must be flying out the door b/c usually if you have people asking to see/potentially buy a unit, you don't turn them away. But what do i know about selling real estate...

I love the idea of fighting it in theory, however in my experience fighting tickets in other counties is that it takes a long time to stand in line, speak to the prosecutor, and even then you only have a 50-50 chance of not succeeding & having court fees on top of that (maybe not in hudson county, I'm not sure...).

On top of that, you have to ask what your time is worth. If you have alot of spare time, go for it.

I think JC Parking authority routinely gives out bogus tickets because they know that people rarely will fight them. Good luck if you do fight it!

This is somewhat disturbing...

WCBSTV.com (CBS2) reports that a Jersey City woman made a shocking discovery
on her lawn this morning when she noticed a military rocket launcher lying in
the grass. Niranjana Besai was leaving her house, located at 88 Nelson Street,
to go to work just after 8 this morning when she spotted the launcher on her
front lawn. She immediately called police. Sources tell CBS 2 HD that the
missile launcher appears similar to the kind that is capable of taking down an
aircraft and that Besai's house is located along flight path for Newark
Liberty International Airport. Besai's neighbor, Joe Quinn, saw her pointing
at the equipment from her front porch. When he walked over to see what the
fuss was, he was just as shocked to see the six-foot-long weapon. "It looked
like a bazooka," he told CBS 2 HD. Quinn says he originally thought the
launcher was just a pipe, but after noticing it had a picture of a soldier on
it, he realized it looked similar to a missile launcher he'd seen on
television. Jersey City Police removed the launcher, and the incident is now
being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and The Federal Bureau of
Investigation. Jersey City Police could not confirm whether it was actually operable.

I can't seem to find any, but check out what i found when i was searching for it - this gem....

http://www.jcedc.org/howwallstreetwestwaswon.html

That's actually a fairly accurate rendering of the current GS building.

Also i like the caption under the light rail picture: "...Magic Carpet made of steel"

Saw this article on Bloomberg. The address 50 Hudson in the article points to either that parking lot across from Liberty Towers (near the Khov development) or that lot right next to the GS building (with the fence around it that i think is being used as a parking lot).

Anyway, here is the article:

By David M. Levitt
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to
build the first new office tower on the Jersey City, New Jersey,
waterfront since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a $560 million
building to rise 500 feet alongside its existing office.

The Jersey City Municipal Council is scheduled to vote
tomorrow on a $2 million a year tax incentive for Goldman, the
world's biggest securities firm, said Al Cameron, deputy director
of the city's housing, economic development and commerce
department.

``Once this project starts, it'll be watched by developers,''
said Stephen Jenco, northern New Jersey client services manager
for Grubb & Ellis Co., a commercial brokerage. ``With rents in
midtown practically triple what we see on the waterfront, it will
be interesting to see the level of demand there for back office
space or for possible relocations out of Manhattan.''

Before the terror attack and reversals in the financial
industry brought building starts to a halt, Jersey City was the
principal supplier of new offices to the New York region, with 32
towers comprising 17.2 million square feet built between 1980 and
2004. The building boom included Goldman's 30 Hudson St. office,
New Jersey's tallest skyscraper at 780 feet.

Office rents around Goldman's downtown Manhattan headquarters
average $59 a square foot and are expected to rise, while Jersey
City waterfront rents average $33, according to New York-based
broker Grubb & Ellis Co. Jersey City, a short ride from Wall
Street on the PATH commuter trains already has offices for other
banks including Merrill Lynch & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Finishing Off Tower

Jersey City officials said that Goldman is now finishing off
the interiors of the top 10 floors of the existing tower, which
were unused and left unfinished when the tower was completed in
2004. Goldman spokesman Peter Rose did not return calls seeking
confirmation.

The new Goldman building would rise at 50 Hudson St., the
second of three parcels the company owns at the former Colgate-
Palmolive soap and perfume plant on the once-industrial
waterfront.

Jersey City planners approved that plan in September. Now,
the City Council will vote on Goldman's request for a multimillion
dollar tax break, after the bank said the tower will bring the
town 3,158 construction jobs and 3,496 permanent jobs.

``Their presence in Jersey City not only attracts other
financial corporations to locate here, but also serves as an
impetus for new housing development,'' Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah
Healy, who supports the tax breaks, said in a statement.

The Jersey City buildings will be a short ferry ride across
the Hudson from Goldman's headquarters tower now rising in lower
Manhattan's Battery Park City, and due to be completed in 2009,
said Peter Rose, a company spokesman.

Rose declined to say when Goldman intends to start
construction on the tower at 50 Hudson St. The application for the
tax incentive gives a projected start date of January 2009.

Goldman has chosen to build its own buildings rather than
rent, because ``our preference is to be the sole tenant in
buildings we occupy,'' Rose said, and to control enough property
to be able to grow comfortably.

``This is a firm that had about 9,000 people'' in 1997, and
now ``has approximately 28,000 worldwide,'' he said. ``When you
grow like that, you have to think long-term in terms of your space
needs.''

Merrill Lynch, the world's third largest securities firm, has
been looking at moving some offices to the Jersey City waterfront,
when the lease on its lower Manhattan headquarters expires in
2013, people familiar with its situation have said.

Saw this on bloomberg news:
By Terrence Dopp
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Illinois Senator Barack Obama's run for the Democratic presidential nomination was endorsed by the mayors of New Jersey's two largest cities, his campaign said.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Jerramiah Healy, mayor of Jersey City, announced the endorsements today in Teterboro, New Jersey, during an event to promote Obama's plan to provide more affordable housing for low-income families. Obama is scheduled to hold a town hall-style meeting in Trenton at 3:30 p.m.

``Barack Obama has a substantive approach to our enduring national challenges,'' Booker, a black Rhodes scholar who won election last year with financial backing from Wall Street and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, said in a statement. ``I believe he is committed to expanding access to economic abundance and opportunity.''

Obama and fellow U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a statistical tie among voters in a Rasmussen poll released today. Obama trails the former first lady 33 percent to 35 percent in the tally of 789 likely Democratic voters, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

Former U.S. Senator John Edwards was third among Democratic primary voters in the Rasmussen poll, with 14 percent, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson received 3 percent support.

Exactly what i was thinking.  The fact that they've installed that "Do Not Enter" sign and painted the road makes it appear permanent.  And the main reason it annoys me is all the Newport Mall traffic & occaisionally Tunnel traffic too....

Just wondering if any JC insiders knew what the hell they were/are thinking...

Thx

 

I may be the only person who cares about this... but I have to see if anyone knows anything about this.

I've only lived in Jersey City for about 3 years, but I have to assume that at one point in the not-so-distant past, Washington St. used to go through the entirety of downtown Jersey City/Newport.

Now, if you are driving down Washington Street from Paulus Hook towards Newport, you can't go past Montgomery Street, you have to drive up to marin and then cut back down to washington somewhere along the way. Does anyone know if there are any plans to open this up to two-way traffic? I can't stand the current traffic pattern...

I assume this is construction related, but it annoys the hell out of me...