The Morning Briefing - August 17, 2015
STATEWIDE - We're having a heat wave, so let's talk about snow. The latest edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac comes out this week and has chilly predictions for New Jersey. We may again face mountains of snow and subzero cold. The Almanac's forecasts are based on its founder's secret formula, which date to the 1790s, and uses a mix of solar cycles, climatology and meteorology. Other than a few Almanac employees, this formula is a mystery. It's kept in an old black tin box in a safe at the Almanac's offices. Modern-day meteorologists, with their newfangled gizmos and whiz-bang computers, dismiss the Almanac's folksy prediction. But its loyal readers still swear by it, or at it.
JERSEY CITY - Beg bugs have gotten a change of venue from municipal court where an infestation was discovered last week. The Jersey Journal says the court is now free of the blood-sucking parasites and back to being a special place where justice is delivered to bored, out-of-towners who battle grinding traffic on narrow roads, miraculously find a parking space near the courthouse, and just want to write a check for whatever infraction of which they are accused, after sputtering: "Yes, your honor." That's because no one wants to make a second visit to the Jersey City Municipal Court: Bed bugs or not.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL - OK, enough already. Conservative Republicans across America should stop messing with pollsters by blindly voicing their support for Donald Trump, no matter what he says or does. It's time for voters to let those hard-working survey takers do their job and offer up a name of a rational-thinking candidate. With the latest Fox News poll somehow showing Trump at 25 percent, it is obvious no one is taking these polls seriously. Meanwhile, no matter how legitimate a candidate Gov. Chris Christie appears to be, he can't crack 3 percent of support among this wacky base, which is obviously snickering through the pollster's questionnaire.
SOUTH ORANGE - There's sure to be plenty of Band-Aids and Bengay on hand as 80 of the top men's tennis players in the world - ages 75 to 84 - take to the grass courts in the village today. But you can bet that any of the guys competing in the "USTA National Men's 75 & 80 Grass Court Championships" could run us ragged on the courts until we are sagging, wheezing and begging for mercy.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
WASHINGTON D.C. - Our nation's capital is sinking to new levels. No, seriously. New research from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Vermont shows land around the Chesapeake Bay, including D.C., will sink six inches or more over the next century. Imagine the havoc on underground utility lines, water and sewer mains, and building foundations. The reason? During our last ice age, a ginormous sheet of ice pushed up the land under the Chesapeake Bay area. When the sheet melted 20,000 years ago, the land began settling and still is, causing rising water levels and D.C. to sink. You can bet Congress will be reluctant to get its feet wet on the issue.
CHAMBERSBURG, PA. - Red-faced officials are reversing their anti-penny policy after this small central Pennsylvania borough made national news for refusing to take 2,500 pennies as payment for a local handyman's $25 parking fine. Officials told their local paper, The Public Opinion, that "public uproar" shamed them into abandoning a policy that they based on an archaic federal rule, which says pennies and nickels are not legal tender for debts greater than 25 cents. To prove their sincerity, borough officials also plan to buy a new change-counting machine.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 1903 that Joseph Pulitzer handed $1 million to Columbia University and, thus, we now have the "Pulitzer Prize."
WORD OF THE DAY
Yarborough - noun
Definition: A hand of cards, with none containing a card above a nine
Example: "Another damn Yarborough?? I'm going home, fellas."