According to NORML, the following states have medical marijuana laws in place already: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. You may notice that with the exception of New Englandish states that don't even count because of all the hippies there, the list is dominated by West Coast states. What would Biggie think?

New Jersey would be a powerful step towards getting the East Coast back in the game. The WSJ says that even incoming NJ governor and rotund Republican Chris Christie says he'll support the bill if it has "enough restrictions," which we assume means that Redman can't bogart all of Chris Christie's shit. Fair enough.

Sure, if you live in New Jersey or Virginia you might've thought the gubernatorial campaigns in those two states were mostly about taxes and jobs (and weight), but that is wrong. These were shadow reelection campaigns for Barack Obama, and he lost both of them, because he is a failure.

Republican Bob McDonnell won in Virginia by a huge margin against Democrat Creigh Deeds, who was a white, conservative Democrat from southern Virginia, thus ensuring that not a single member of the coalition that won VA for Obama in 2008 would turn out to vote.

In Jersey, Republican Chris Christie squeaked by incumbent Jon Corzine. Corzine's was the campaign Obama belatedly lent his support to, once Corzine's double-digit polling deficit shrank to a couple points. This campaign was entirely about property taxes, basically, and so a Republican who campaigned entirely on cutting proptery taxes won.

Once again, gubernatorial elections have almost nothing to do with national politics. They are not House and Senate races. Meanwhile, in the nation's only two House races yesterday, Democrats won. They won handily in a California race that no one paid attention to, because a safe Democratic seat staying Democratic is not as newsworthy as a safe Republican seat that almost went to a Republican until national movement conservatives freaked out and excommunicated Dede Scozzafava from the Church of Teabagging. And then a Democrat won in New York's 23rd. He won a seat that's been a gimme for Republicans since a 1992 redistricting. (Before it was redistricted, this area of the state has been Republican since the 19th century. In 2002 the Republican ran unopposed.)

Please keep in mind that Obama picked up a new Democratic vote in the House of Representatives while you read some analysis piece on how Obama has just been crushed, politically.

As we said before, the special election in New York's 23rd was the only race yesterday that had anything to do with national politics, because movement conservatives inserted themselves into the race and promptly lost. In what could easily actually be a preview of next year's midterms, teabaggers and the conservative Club for Growth and Sarah Palin all threw their support behind a candidate they found more acceptable than the Republican, and their guy lost. As activists from out of town flooded the district, shouting nonsense about ACORN and waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags, imagining they'd already won, the Democrat turned out the vote and rode to victory on the back of union support and the president's popularity in the region.

And look at that: unions and GOTV made the difference! Hell, some of that might've won New York for Bill Thompson, even without Obama's support!

Here is the real lesson about and for Obama, though, and it touches on every single race yesterday: in 2008, Obama borrowed Howard Dean's 50-state strategy for the Democrats—open and staff DNC offices in every state to organize and run campaigns at every level—and applied it to the presidential primaries and general elections. He raised a ridiculous amount of money and compiled an amazing email list and organized a huge number of volunteers and won the presidency.

After the election, Obama turned those campaign resources into Organizing For America, "a grassroots network wielding some 13 million email addresses to mobilize former volunteers on behalf of the administration's agenda." And then they folded it into the DNC and they didn't do anything with it for months. And then it turned out that this massive organization couldn't be utilized to do much besides fundraise and canvass, and furthermore its ties to the DNC and the White House mean it can't actually be used to push progressive causes, which are the causes that this massive volunteer army cares about.

This means, basically, that the DNC has neutered Obama's progressive volunteer army and that massive volunteer army has consumed the DNC. The whole operation is now a 2012 reelection campaign already in progress, and if you are a local Democrat looking for organizing and canvassing and fundraising support of the kind Howard Dean promised to create for you back when he was in charge, you are shit out of luck.

This is the most worrying indicator for 2010. They need to fix this.

The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have nothing to do with Obama or national politics, at all, except in that Obama did not do as much campaigning and organizing in those two races as the Democratic candidates would've liked. Otherwise, they are strictly local races and the results will reflect only the material concerns of the residents of those states. Still! They have been in the news a lot, so let us talk about them.

New Jersey: Incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is a very rich former Goldman Sachs executive. Despite that, he was a pretty good liberal Senator, for a couple years (he voted against the war!). But then, like a moron, he decided to govern the ungovernable state of New Jersey. He was promptly met with a government shutdown and huge budget problems and a populace that enjoyed the various programs the government provided but did not want to pay so many taxes all the time, or at all. And so he has had to cut spending, which makes everyone mad, and raise some taxes, which made everyone mad.

So waddling in comes Republican Chris "The Big Man" Christie, who has a brilliant plan: he will cut taxes! And cut wasteful government spending! Sounds wonderful! Christie was initially kicking Corzine's ass in the polls, and Democrats wrote off Corzine. But Corzine, who is very rich, remember, launched a hilariously negative ad campaign against Christie. Now, because Christie is fat and also because he's refused to give any details at all on what he would do as governor besides "not be Jon Corzine" (but mostly because he is fat), he is neck-and-neck with Corzine.

That tie is also thanks to this guy named Steve Chris Daggett, who is running as an independent, which means "the guy you vote for if you hate Corzine but don't want to vote for a fat Republican." Daggett is running on a platform of cutting everyone's property taxes, which is always a wonderful idea.

This one is a toss-up.

Now: do you see anything in that summary about Barack Obama's approval ratings, or health care reform's popularity, or Nancy Pelosi? No, you don't. This has nothing to do with anything besides the terribleness of New Jersey's government and populace.

Virginia Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms, which is nuts, but it keeps things interesting. So there is Republican Robert F. McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. But stupid Deeds is a rural southern Virginia Democrat, not one of the rich suburban northern liberal Virginians, so he is not really exciting those Obama voters! Or black voters! So the coalitions that helped Obama win Virginia will probably not be turning out for Deeds. McDonnell is a tremendous asshole but this race is his to lose. Once again: this has nothing to do with national politics, except that people who vote on national issues don't usually turn out for off-year races.

New York's 23rd Congressional District This one is wonderful. Barack Obama appointed a Republican congressman from a safe Republican upstate New York seat to be the Secretary of the Army. The local Republicans decided to nominate a local Republican assemblywoman to take his place. But!!! While she is a Regular New York State Republican, she is also pro-abortion and pro-gays. So, hah, the complete lunatics who run the national Republican party, with blogs and TV shows and so on, went nuts and decided to throw their support behind the Conservative Party candidate.

New York's Conservative Party was invented to police the local Republicans, who have a tendency to be more liberal than Republicans elsewhere, because they want to get elected. It was also invented so that William Buckley could run for mayor on a "John Lindsay sucks and I am so awesome" platform. (Fun fact: Buckley supported congestion pricing! And also police brutality. He was always big on police brutality.)

So! The regular "moderate" Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was called all sorts of names by the internet, and every Republican who endorsed her, like Newt Gingrich, got called even more names, by the internet. The Club For Growth then organized the grassroots conservative campaign for the Conservative Party candidate, some guy named Hoffman who does not actually live in the district and who is also not very smart. Sarah Palin's Facebook page sealed the deal, and suddenly every Republican who wants movement approval and money had to endorse Hoffman. Scozzafava finally quit the race (though she remains on the ballot) and, hilariously, endorsed the Democrat.

Hoffman will probably pull this one off. Frank Rich thinks this is a good thing, because the Republicans are forcing out even more of their electable moderates, and making the party more extreme and more white. Josh Marshall seems to concur, comparing it to when Rush Limbaugh was making everyone apologize to him a while back.

And, ok guys, it is maybe beneficial to the Democrats for the Republicans to become even less inclusive and even less able to adapt to the new America and all that.

But honestly, because of our intractable and entrenched two-party system, all this really means is that the next time the Republicans take back control of any portion of the government they will be even more destructive and evil than they were before.

There is one last race you should keep an eye on, though:

Queens NYC City Council District 19 This race to represent Bayside pits Democrat Kevin Kim, who'd be the first Korean-American elected to the New York city council, against Republican Dan Halloran, who is a pagan lord who worships ancient Norse gods.

As the Tribune first pointed out, Halloran is "First Atheling," or prince, of a Germanic neo-heathenist "theod" or tribe. State records show that he incorporated the group in 2002 with the official name of "New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief."

Colloquially, Halloran's followers refer to their tribe as "New Normandy," with a territory that incorporates New York City and parts of New Jersey (some of Halloran's Pennsylvania tribesmen recently broke away — with his blessing — to form their own group, which they call "Arfstoll Thjod").

Obviously there's nothing wrong with being a modern pagan (except that it is dumb), but this particular branch of paganism has been quite popular with white supremacists. Not that this guy his a White Supremacist! Like many Pagans, he may just enjoy playing dress-up.

We even got a tipster email about it from someone at the Post!

The New York Post is reporting that an assistant deputy director of NJ Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign was arrested last night after cops found ecstasy tablets wrapped and ready to be sold in his car.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/corzine_campaign_staffer_arrested_90W38gZ0Z0ZRfYDxgrAh3N

And that link from the Post now leads to a blank page. Same with WABC. Someone grabbed the Post report, which read like this:

Jason Shih, 25, was pulled over by East Rutherford cops at about 11:30 p.m. last night because he was talking on his cell phone on Route 17, said Lt. Chris Conforti of the East Rutherford police. Officers wound up finding 19 "blue star" ecstasy tablets in Shih's car, each wrapped in its own little plastic bag. Shih — who was stopped within 100 feet of Becton Regional High School — also had had "several hundred" empty plastic bags in his car, Conforti said. Shih told police he worked for Corzine's campaign, and had several campaign-related items in his car, police said. Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said Shih is not on the payroll of the campaign or the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, and that the campaign doesn't know who he is.

That was at 2:30 PM, and the article's timestamp said that it was posted at 9:53 AM and updated at 12:53 AM, most likely with the Corzine staff denial that this guy had anything to do with them. So...what happened? One of three things. Conspiracy Theories, go!

1. Shih was planted by opposition to get busted by cops, to try and move bad press for Corzine. They only hosed the Post and one TV station. Weak.

2. The Corzine campaign actually knows this clown and there's a massive cover-up. Yeah, because a relatively high-ranking deputy working for Corzine's driving around Jersey today with a grip of Blue Star E instead of working at the campaign headquarters. This is about as likely as ecstasy becoming hip again is.

3. Some B & T ravebro was like, Brah. I work fah Jahn Cahrzine! And then the Corzine campaign got pissed, and called up these outlets, who then either removed the story because they didn't want to be on the bad side of the future Governor of New Jersey, or they're going to run a new story tomorrow about how this dumbass used a dumb excuse to not get out of a drug arrest, which you just know the Post can't wait to do. As far as the bust, the cops either saw what an assclown this guy was in plain sight, or they just don't give a shit who you work for in Dirty Jerz. You cross Johnny Law, it's oveh. And now you know. Also, 20 of Shih's "boys" in Jerz are gonna be so totally bummed, brah. They were gonna get the E and take it with their honeys and now they're gonna have to just drink a bunch of Patron, bro. Patron? PATRON!!!

This is very strange. Smith threw to correspondent Shannon Bream, who conducted a live interview with GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie in New Jersey. She asked Christie some fairly innocuous questions, and when she tossed back to Smith, he asked, "When will you be interviewing Jon Corzine?"—the governor of New Jersey and Christie's Democratic opponent. Grimacing, Bream replied, "We have multiple requests, and when it comes through, we'll let you know."

Then Smith went off the reservation: "Wow. I didn't know that was about to happen. My apologies for the lack of balance there. If I had had control, it wouldn't have happened."

We're not really sure what Smith is so exercised about. It's certainly not unheard of for news organizations to interview one political candidate without immediately turning to his opponent for a response, so for him to decide at that moment that an interview with Christie was unbalanced enough to merit an apology—as opposed to, say, everything that's ever been on Fox News, ever—is very strange.

Before throwing to Bream, Smith actually did get a little unbalanced himself, remarking off the cuff that it looked like, according to polls, Corzine is going to win. He may have been apologizing for that remark, although that doesn't explain how things would be different if he had "had control." The funny thing is, while Smith was offering his analysis of polls showing Christie dead in the water, this is what his graphic said: "NJ GOV CANDIDATES LOCKED IN DEAD HEAT."

We're starting to suspect that Smith has been given the go ahead to become the in-house leftie at Fox News, and that his ever-more-frequent outbursts are encouraged by Roger Ailes to provide cover to the whole organization, not to mention generate the sort of drama that gets written about on blogs.

Corzine trails Chris "Fatty-Boom-Batty" Christie by only one point according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, thanks in large part to recent revelations of various small-potato Christie scandals and also the fact that Christie is very, very fat. (Also there is an independent candidate who is pulling in the "hate Corzine but can't vote Republican" portion of the electorate.)

So here comes Obama! Even though many people in New Jersey think Obama is actually literally Satan incarnate, he still might help energize Democrats. Not as much as, like, Springsteen would, but maybe enough to beat a fat guy across the finish line.

Obama will be in Hackensack on October 21, and he might even go back to New Jersey some other time before the election if things go well, or if Corzine pulls ahead in the polls.

Basically the FBI equipped a real estate developer named Solomon Dwek with a recording device and set him loose on the swamp of kickback schemes, mob payoffs, and money-grubbing pols that is New Jersey, where you have bribe someone to get your driver license. Dwek—whom the Wall Street Journal has identified as the unnamed "cooperating witness" whose testimony the indictment relies on—was charged with defrauding a bank of $25 million in 2006. He apparently turned snitch rather than fact jail and suckered half of the state's political class into doing business with him on behalf of the feds.

In doing so, he (allegedly):

• Paid $25,000 in cash bribes to Peter Cammarano, a city councilman who just got elected mayor of Hoboken on July 1. Dwek paid $10,000 of that last Thursday. "In return," according to a press release from the office of the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, "Cammarano [said he] would sponsor zoning changes and push through building plans for [a] high-rise development in Hoboken.
• Paid New Jersey Assembleyman L. Harvey Smith $15,000 in bribes "to help get approvals from high-level state agency officials for building projects."
• Paid Daniel Van Pelt, a New Jersey Assemblyman, a $10,000 bribe.
• Paid Dennis Elwell, mayor of Secaucus, a $10,000 cash bribe.
• Paid Anthony Suarez, mayor of Ridgefield a "$10,000 corrupt cash payment for his legal defense fund."

There's so, so much more. The press release announcing the arrests [pdf] is 12 pages. Aside from reeling in greedy politicians, Dwek also set his sites on a vast money-laundering ring centered among New Jersey's Syrian Jewish community and run by delightfully named rabbis, who used their synagogues and affiliated charities to clean up dirty money. Dwek approached them and told them he was "involved in illegal businesses and bank frauds," according to the release, and "was in bankruptcy and was attempting to conceal cash and assets." So Rabbi Saul Kassin of Sharee Zion in Brooklyn, Rabbi Edmund Nahum of Deal Synagogue in Deal, N.J., Rabbi Eli Ben Haim of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal, N.J., and Rabbi Mordchai Fish of Congregation Sheves Achim in Brooklyn all happily accomodated him, laundering more than $3 million over two years. They would take a check from Dwek, written to their synagogues or associated charities, and pay him back—less a 10 percent cut—in cash from Israel or Switzerland that they kept in a network of "cash houses" throughout Brooklyn.

Dwek is an Orthodox Jew; it's unlikely he could have penetrated the ring otherwise. For a look at the Syrian Jewish community's xenophobic ways, check out this New York Time Magazine piece on the Brooklyn enclave, which excommunicates any member who marries outside of the tribe—including gentiles who convert to Judaism. Rabbi Kassin, who was arrested today, cut off his own daughter for marrying a non-Jew. After 25 years, she made contact with the family, and they told her she was welcome back, but without her husband and kids.

Lastly—and it's not clear from the release how this relates to the money-laundering and corruption investigations—Dwek somehow hooked up with Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn man who offered to sell him a human kidney for $160,000. According to Talking Points Memo, which has been poring over the indictment, "Rosembaum explained the process of finding a donor in Israel and stated that "[t]here are people over there hunting . . . One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear all the time." We think a good sun-dried tomato shmear goes nicely with a kidney.

All of these people are going to roll over on everybody else, and the New York and New Jersey state legislatures are going to be completely emptied out within a week.

An interesting/funny/depressing/oh-God-when-will-this-stop bit of news from this whole thing? The guy trying to sell the damn fucktape was none other than "26-year-old" Stephen Zalewski, the fellow from the show who was only dating Staub for the, to quote mighty Teresa, "blow jobs."

A reader, who doubtless considers himself a man of wealth and taste, asks the WSJ:

Should I wear the collar of my leather jacket or blazer turned up? It seems a little pretentious, but women I know say that it looks more stylish that way. What do you think?

You've come to the right place, S.G. of Philadelphia. If there's one entity qualified to weigh in on Murray Hill collar-poppin trends, it's the jewel in News Corp's business publishing crown. The definitive answer:

So guys, there's nothing foppish about turning up the collar on leather jackets, coats and some shirts. Check yourself out in the mirror from all angles to experiment with ways to pop up that collar ever so slightly, so that it looks stylish and not too studied.

There you have it: study yourself closely in the mirror, so you don't look studied. Also it "minimizes jowls." Perfect for Rupert Murdoch. [WSJ]

Hunter, longtime mistress to former non-embarrassment John Edwards, was cashing monthly $15,000 from Baron in the good old days, keeping her quiet and comfortable in Santa Barbara. Now, the Enquirer reports that the money's dried up and Hunter and her 10-month-old child—probably Edwards' love-child—are shacking up with a friend in lovely South Orange.

Meanwhile, John Edwards is just staying home, not doing much, and not really expecting any calls from the Obama transition team.

Just think: Kushner's investors thought their money was tucked securely into the rock-solid real estate market when really a tiny sliver of it was being sacrificed in a media bonfire so the Observer could investigate exactly why and how Park Slope moms would like to fuck Don Draper.

If that's somehow "wrong" in this topsy-turvy world then we don't want to be right. Honestly, the money probably fell out of Charles' pockets during a walk through the offices or something. When you buy a building numbered "666 5th Street," strange things are bound to happen!

"We've dealt with this man before," the source added. "He's never peed on anybody, but he gets really belligerent and drunk."

On Sunday, Lipski announced that he was never, ever going to drink, again. He is a Jersey City politician, of course, so if he actually does stop being a drunk mook he'll probably lose reelection.

The elder Maltese and his wife Kathleen were reported missing on October 17th, and they were found today in a park two miles from the mobile home where they lived. The two killers had been living on an inflatable mattress on floor of the victims' trailer home. The bodies were dumped into the shallow grave.

The Star Ledger characterized the alleged mastermind:

Maltese was a South Brunswick High School dropout who moved around regularly and had a tough time holding a job, working brief stints at places including a liquor store, a Best Buy and a PetSmart, friends said.

"He was never really steady anywhere," said Chris Schneider, 18, a friend of the suspects who lives in a nearby trailer. "A 'drifter' would be the way to describe him. He lived house to house, job to job."

Details coming out from the close knit mobile home community had the murderous couple smiling and drinking in the mobile home in the days after the disappearance. They also used the dead couple's credit card. Not to inject any levity into what is obviously a very troubling set of circumstances, but we hope this teaches Dexter that killers are terrible family men. Our condolences to the other family members of the victims.

Man Is Charged With Killing And Burying Parents [The Star Ledger]

Boomp3.com

Despite crafting an elaborate plan involving a system of rope lines, helicopters and intensive flash photography, Suri Cruise was unable to make a clean getaway from parent Katie Holmes in New York on Tuesday night. Suri admitted that she failed to account for one thing: her mother's sunglasses. Cruise said, "I always forget about her sunglasses. I thought maybe for once she would be a normal person and not wear them since you know, it's night. Nope, mommy wanted to pretend she was a rock star yet again." Cruise place a share of the blame on the actors she hired for the failed attempt on Tuesday night. Cruise added, "You get what you pay for when you use Craigslist. I was paying in pizza rolls and I got a bunch of dudes from New Jersey." Cruise still remains optimistic and plans on making another getaway in the near future, perhaps during a snowstorm.

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.