OOH, Shiny!

During the last few weeks, as we've watched first Michele Bachmann anointed by the Washington punditocracy as Palin-with-a-brain, and then watch them fall in (and quickly out of) love with yet another dimwitted Texas governor in cowboy boots, it's struck me just how much this presidential race on the GOP side really IS, as Jon Stewart so accurately said last week, a race for the mayoralty of Pundittown.

It's not that the press falling in love with someone else every five minutes is anything new; we saw it in 2004 when Howard Dean made the cover of Newsweek when he was surging, and once it looked like he could actually win the thing, they covered a a rally he held after the Iowa caucuses in which he was trying to lift the spirits of his dispirited campaign workers and conveniently turned the volume down on the crowd noise to make him look like a madman. We certainly saw in in 2008, where the choice of a wife of a former president with whom their relationship was already tumultuous, and a black freshman Senator, for the Democratic nomination, had them so confounded they didn't know what to do. We also saw it when the guy they've been in love with for years, John McCain, selected an attractive bubblebrain to be the potential backup to a septuagenarian cancer survivor.

But this year the fickleness of the punditocracy has reached the point of ridiculousness, because whom they love can turn on a dime, and often on a daily basis. And this year, for some reason, they're like teenaged boys with a double standard -- they love their chosen one until he puts out (i.e. declares candidacy) and then suddenly the one they pursued for so long doesn't look so good anymre. As long as Rick Perry wasn't running, he was the Coveted One. Then after he declared, the press covered his cammpaign with the fervor of a fifteen-year-old who's still huffing the euphoria of those first few nights in the back seat of a car...until Perry offered up the equivalent of a fart during sex, and then suddenly the Pursued and Won One became just another failed candidate.

So now, as has happened before whenever the punditocracy gets restless, their attention turns to New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, which is striking only because they seem to have skipped over the logical next choice for their affections, Herman Cain, who trounced all others in the Florida straw poll last weekend. After all, if Michele Bachmann became Chuck Todd's next choice for the presidency after winning the Iowa straw poll, who shouldn't Herman Cain get some lovin' after even MORE decisively winning Florida's straw poll? Gee, I wonder why....

So off they go, chubby-chasing Chris Christie. What they forget is that as recently as June, Christie's approval rating in the state where we actually have to deal with him was just 43%:

Respondents objected to a variety of Christie’s policies, with 65% opposing his cuts in education spending, 58% opposing his removal of a surcharge on the state’s highest earners, and 51% opposing the cancellation of a planned tunnel to New York.

Christie’s favorability rating is now at 43%, while teachers, whom he tussled with on benefits and pay, are at 76%. “Teachers I know got laid off because of him,” said one respondent. “He’s not in favor of the average working person.” That view seemed pervasive: 68% believed Christie stands with the business community, while just 22% said he sides with “ordinary New Jerseyans.”

Now he's up at 54%, which these days is a perfectly fine rating, but still means that almost half the state doesn't like what he's doing. The Star-Ledger may think that Christie's tough stands with the unions accounts for his popularity, but as a denizen of New Jersey, I can tell you that the improvement in his ratings can be attributed to just six words, uttered as Hurricane Irene was approaching our coastline: "Get the hell off the beach." There isn't a person in this state who didn't applaud him for cutting right to the chase. He also gained respect from even those of us who disagree with him when he had the guts to call someone who was asking about protection from sharia law "crazy." These are Christie-the-regular-guy at his best. The problem is that the flip side of Christie-the-regular-guy is Christie-the-bully and Christie-the-hothead. Everyone seems to have forgotten that while he did a great job before and after the hurricane, he kind of HAD to, since he was off on vacation during last winter's blizzard.

Like George W. Bush, this is a guy who charges full speed ahead, certain of the correctness of every move he makes, every word that comes out of his mouth. But it's one thing to tell people who think it'd be fun to stand in the pounding surf during the hurricane not to be assholes. It's quite another when someone with a complete lack of internal word filter is handling delicate discussions with, oh, say, Pakistan.

There is video after video after video of Chris Christie saying he's not ready ot be persident. We agree. But the siren song of GOP apparatchiks who embraced the Teabag Monster and now are completely unable to control it, and the flowers-and-candy being offered by a smitten Washington punditocracy, may be impossible for him to resist. So I suspect he will run, and he'll have a joyful few first dates, until he farts. Then they'll find another girl about whom to fantasize.

Dog Training for politicians

It's been demonstrated many times that positive reinforcement is a training method that works. It works with dogs, who seek praise from the human alpha of their pack. It works with children. It works with employees, who sometimes just want to know that they aren't just drones.

So why not do it with politicians and government officials? By all means, let's show them when we disapprove, but let's also give credit where credit is due. Chris Christie is still a misogynistic bully who's going to ruin the state of New Jersey, but with conservatism being so characterized by anti-Muslim bigotry, he puts the "guts" that make a thrill go up the leg of television pundits to good use:

Good on the governor. Now....We Can Has Moar Liek This Plz?

A governor's job is not to be "fan-in-chief"

One would think that now that New York has legalized gay marriage and the world hasn't ended, New Jersey would be the next likely place for equality to take place. Unfortunately, we have a governor who thinks that just because HE is a Roman Catholic (and frankly, a church hierarchy that has harbored and protected child molesters for decades ought to have no moral authority over anything), he, not the voters, gets to decide whether everyone in the state should have this right.

What bothers me most about Chris Christie's stand is the language he used on the David Gregory Fellate the Republicans Hour on Sunday: “I’m not a fan of same-sex marriage.”

No one is asking Chris Christie to be a "fan" of same-sex marriage. No one is asking him to sit in the stands with a plate of nachos, three hot dogs, and an extra-large beer, and watch gay people get married. I would be hard-pressed to find any gays in New Jersey who would even WANT Chris Christie at their weddings -- or at their Sunday barbecues after the honeymoon, either. Gay marriage is not something you should be a "fan" of -- as if it's some kind of team game. This is about the same fundamental rights the rest of us have. If Chris Christie isn't a "fan" of same-sex marriage, then he should do the same thing as someone who isn't a "fan" of the New York Yankees does -- just ignore it.

After signing legislation codifying equality into law.

Remind me again why we're supposed to support Democrats

Here in my little town in Outer Whitelandia, a populace that's been asleep for thirty years is finally waking up to the reality of the one-party rule that's been running the town for the last three decades. The primary intersection in town is a bottleneck every single day at rush hour. There are nights when it can take me twenty five minutes to go twenty miles, and another twenty minutes to go two. This intersection is in a residential neighborhood, but a small gas station on the corner has been grandfathered in, and there is a large catering hall on another corner, owned by a guy who has over the last decade been quietly buying up houses on the main drag and letting them fall apart. For the last five years, the first thing you see when you come into town is a house with boarded-up windows and a hole in the roof. There have been rumors that the catering hall puts up its undocumented workers in these hell houses, but they are just rumors.

Now the owner if the catering hall and the owner of the gas station have simultaneously come up with grand plans to turn the gas station into a Wawa-like convenience store/gas and diesel station complex and the dilapidated houses into a strip mall containing a CVS with a drive-thru, a hair salon, and a coffee shop -- while a quarter mile down the road, there is already a half-empty strip mall with plenty of parking on site that has a Rite-Aid, a hair salon, a Dunkin Donuts, and a bagel shop. And finally the citizenry has awakened, even though the local government refuses to allow the public to talk at the zoning board meetings that are supposed to be where people can be heard.

In 2008, the town held its first contested election in thirty years -- and the sheeple in this town voted back in the same people who had been giviing crony contracts to their friends for years. Part of the problem was that in New Jersey, we vote not office-by-office, but on a giant screen where each candidate is in a party's line. So if you tend to vote Republican, as most people in this town do, you are not going to jump around the ballot. It of course didn't help that the Democratic candidate, who had lived in town barely two years, was the brother of one of the biggest Democratic Party hacks in he state.

It's like that in Democratic Party politics. Not a month goes by when someone doesn't tell me to run for office in town, but believe me, you do not want to touch these people or play their game. Every two years, they either refuse to run a candidate to run for Congress against the odious teabagger Scott Garrett, who was a teabagger long before the Tea Party kooks even existed; or else they run a weak candidate and then refuse to support that candidate with money. The New Jersey State Democratic Party, like the natonal party has been under everyone except Howard Dean, is only interested in fighting battles it knows in advance it can win.

And so the stage is set for the travesty that happened in Trenton yesterday, where Governor Gasbag, Chris Christie, succeeded in getting bipartisan support in the state Assembly for a law to gut public worker benefits and remove their ability to collectively bargain, with the help of Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex), who had shepherded the bill through the state Senate on Monday.

Everyone knows that the state pension system is dramatically underfunded, after being stiffed for decades by governors of both parties, What most people don't understand is that the police, firefighters and teachers who receive these pensions also pay in. So when politicians decide to gut these benefits, it's money paid out to these workers that's stolen for other needs -- mostly to keep from having to raise taxes on the wealthiest people in the state.

If the Democrats on the national stage won't stand up for people who pay into Social Security and Medicare all their lives and are then told not to depend on it because they stole all the money; if Democrats won't stand up for the rights of all Americans to be the same under the law; if Democrats won't stand up for the rights of workers; then why on earth should we reward them with our votes?

We know what Republicans are -- greedy, venal, hateful, cold-hearted and devoid of empathy. Republicans will do what Republicans do. We know this. Our problem is not them; it is the Democrats -- the party that increasingly pisses down our backs and then tells us it's raining.

Not to know him is to love him

New Jersey's embarrassingly crude bully of a governor may make a thrill go up teabaggers' legs, but those of us who have had direct experience with his policies say, "Thanks but no thanks", or (dare I say it, as a horizontally-challenged person?) We Don't Want Him You Can Have Him He's Too Fat For Us. Because when you have to live in Chris Christie's world, it's not a very nice place, as Jerseyans are finding out:

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, beloved by some and despised by others for his bluntness, has a Minus 18 job approval today as speculation continues about whether Christie should run for President. 38% of NJ adults approve of the job Christie is doing, 56% disapprove.

According to this latest Eyewitness News Poll conducted by SurveyUSA exclusively for WABC-TV in New York City, NJ voters by 5:1 say Christie should not run for President.

* By 2:1, NJ voters say Christie would be a worse president than Barack Obama.
* Obama carried NJ in 2008 by 15 points. Obama's approval rating in NJ today is Plus 14 (54% approve, 40% disapprove).
* Voters split evenly on whether Christie would be better president than George W. Bush.

Christie has cut state spending on education. In those Jersey homes where a school teacher lives:

* Christie's job approval is Minus 30 (33% approve, 63% disapprove).
* 6:1 say Christie should not run for president.
* 5:2 say Christie would be a worse president than Obama.

In union households:
* Christie's job approval is Minus 36 (31% approve, 67% disapprove).
* Obama's job approval is Plus 15 (55% approve, 40% disapprove).
* 8:1 say Christie should not run for president.
* 2:1 say Christie would be a worse president than Bush.

Republicans and Conservatives have mixed feelings about whether Christie should stay focused on the Garden State or allow himself to be talked into putting both feet onto the national stage.
* Among Republicans, Christie's job approval is Plus 29. But: by 2:1, Republicans say Christie should not run for President.
* Conservatives by 2:1 and Republicans by 3:2 say Christie is qualified to be President.
* Conservatives and Republicans by 3:1 say Christie would make a better President than Obama.
* Even among the state's comparatively few Tea Party members, where Christie's approval is Plus 49, there is division: 38% say Christie should run for the White House, 39% say he should not.

* Among Independents, Obama's job approval is Plus 7, Christie's is Minus 11.
* Among Moderates, Obama's job approval is Plus 28, Christie is Minus 23.
* Among lower-income voters, Christie is Minus 32. Among upper income voters Christie is Minus 5.

Now if he wants to be Governor of Iowa, THAT we'd support.

UPDATE: Here's Chris Christie's kind of leadership:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he won’t criticize the state’s Democratic U.S. senators for a lack of federal funding for a vital bridge repair. Nope, that just wouldn’t be fair.

“I feel badly about it,” the Republican governor said Thursday, reflecting on the lack of federal funding to replace the aging Portal Bridge, ”because I wish they would have been more powerful and more successful in being able to get more resources for New Jersey, but obviously they failed in that regard.”

Christie said he was sure New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez did the “best they could” to secure federal money to pay for the train passage over the Hackensack River, which needs a $750 million replacement.

The state will benefit from a $2 billion federal injection announced earlier this week into high-speed rail projects, which includes nearly $800 million along in the corridor connecting Boston and Washington through New York.


But, as the Journal reported earlier this week, the bridge was not funded in part because U.S. officials were reluctant to start another major project with Christie after he killed a trans-Hudson rail tunnel that was partially federally funded, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bully and bluster has consequences, as Mr. Christie is just now starting to find out.

Because all you need to be is a spoiled, whiny five-year-old to be governor of New Jersey

Sometimes the snark just writes itself:

A New Jersey boy who cried on a YouTube clip that he’s too small to be governor was all smiles as Gov. Chris Christie made him honorary chief executive.

Christie signed a proclamation Wednesday making 5-year-old Jesse Koczon, of Old Bridge, honorary governor for the day and his fraternal twin brother, Brandon, honorary lieutenant governor.

The boys, dressed in collared shirt, ties and trousers, appeared at a news conference with their parents, Jon and Dawn Koczon, Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

Christie, who has four children in elementary through high school, said he “related as a father,” when he saw the video clip of the boy crying.

On the video, Jesse’s mother asks him why he’s upset. Jesse replies, “Cause everyone tells me I’m too small to be the governor of New Jersey.”

Christie responded on Twitter: “Don’t worry Jesse, people gave plenty of reasons why I couldn’t be governor, though being too small wasn’t one of them.”

Christie said Jesse may be a natural for the state’s top job.

Especially now that Chris Christie has demonstrated that throwing a tantrum when you don't get your own way is the most important qualification.

But lies are part of the IOKIYAR rule

When you're a Republican, you can lie with impunity and the media will continue to applaud. As long as you're emphatic about what you say, and you say it with macho pride, the manly-men of the media and the Republican Party will call you "a strong leader":

New Jersey’s public-sector unions routinely pressure the State Legislature to give them what they fail to win in contract talks. Most government workers pay nothing for health insurance. Concessions by school employees would have prevented any cuts in school programs last year.

Statements like those are at the core of Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign to cut state spending by getting tougher on unions. They are not, however, accurate.

In fact, on the occasions when the Legislature granted the unions new benefits, it was for pensions, which were not subject to collective bargaining — and it has not happened in eight years. In reality, state employees have paid 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health insurance since 2007, in addition to co-payments and deductibles, and since last spring, many local government workers, including teachers, do as well. The few dozen school districts where employees agreed to concessions last year still saw layoffs and cuts in academic programs.

“Clearly there has been a pattern of the governor playing fast and loose with the details,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But so far, he’s been adept at getting the public to believe what he says.”

Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office in January 2010, would hardly be the first politician to indulge in hyperbole or gloss over facts. But his misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker who gives straight answers to hard questions, especially about budgets and labor relations. Candor is central to Mr. Christie’s appeal, and a review of his public statements over the past year shows some of them do not hold up to scrutiny.

[snip]

Misstatements have been central to Mr. Christie’s worst public stumbles — about how the state managed to miss out on a $400 million education grant last year, for example, and whether he was in touch enough while he was in Florida during the blizzard in December — and his rare admissions that he was wrong. But Peter J. Woolley, a politics professor and polling director at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said there had been no sign, so far, that these issues had much effect on the governor’s political standing.

“People prefer directness to detail,” Professor Woolley said. “People know it’s not unusual for politicians to take the shortcut in public debate, that they’re not academics who are going to qualify everything.”

It's one thing to take shortcuts. It's one thing to try to explain things in a way someone who can't handle a more complex concept than 2 + 2 can understand. But it's another to outright lie and call it "straight talk" as long as it's done emphatically. This is what got us into an expensive, intractable and unnecessary war in Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. This is what Bernie Madoff did when he convinced people that his 18% returns when the markets were flailing around were real. Just because you say something loudly doesn't make it true. And it's high time the media started doing their homework instead of this worship of "straight talk" that isn't straight at all.

New Jersey's Thug-In-Chief

This is the guy Republicans and the media are in mad love with.

Get Christie Love. (Please.)

The Washington gasbag circuit has been all but fellating New Jersey governor Chris Christie on national television ever since the horizontally-challenged bully was elected and immediately set the stage for guys like Scott Walker by deciding that the state's entire problem was caused by the New Jersey Education Association. The insiders are desperately looking for a non-crazy Republican to prop up for the 2012 race, and the pickings are pretty lean. The GOP loves its authoritarian daddy figures even more than it loves its aging high school mean girls, and for sheer Because-I-Said-So bombast, nobody beats Chris Christie.

Today's New York Times focuses on the GOP flavor-of-the-month, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and gets past the bombast to the actual record:

Yet his agenda of balancing the budget, rescuing a pension fund that could go broke within a decade and curtailing rising property taxes — the holy grail of politics in his heavily suburban state — is far from achieved. And he still could face the wrath of voters who discover that the costs of government have merely been shifted onto their local tax bills.

“People have heard the tough talk, but they haven’t felt the full effect of what he’s done,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “That may happen in the next year. And voters tell us that if their property taxes don’t go down, they will hold him responsible.”

In his first year, Governor Christie closed a yawning budget deficit that he estimated at almost $11 billion, though in part by skipping a $3 billion payment to the pension system. At $29.4 billion, spending is down more than $5 billion from its peak two years earlier.

In proposing his budget on Tuesday, the governor is expected to call for more cuts to close another huge deficit. With major union contracts set to expire in June, he is calling for a wage freeze, which polls show the public supports.

But the state will still be deeply in debt, and facing a growing shortfall in its pension fund — $54 billion and counting — that helped spur a downgrade of the state’s bonds.

[snip]

Mr. Christie’s record has not been unblemished. He botched an application for $400 million in federal education money at a time when he was cutting twice that amount.

And in December, Mr. Christie was at Disney World during a blizzard that paralyzed the state. He refused to apologize, saying he had kept in touch with the acting governor, Mr. Sweeney — but Mr. Sweeney said they never spoke.

Yet such gaffes have not transcended the state’s borders, while Mr. Christie’s YouTube rants against teachers and their union leaders have become widespread. Mr. Christie is less popular in New Jersey than with national Republicans: polls show that only about 50 percent of residents approve of his performance.

Where his poll numbers head now may depend on whether Mr. Christie can begin to show success in solving seemingly intractable problems like high property taxes before voters start to hold him responsible.

“When you cut billions of dollars from local government, you can’t turn around and say ‘It’s the mayor’s fault’ — you’re the one who did it,” Mr. Sweeney said. “In Chris Christie’s New Jersey, class sizes are going up, and crime is going through the roof in our inner cities. Eventually, people are going to realize, ‘I’m paying a lot more now, and I have a lot less.’ The people have not realized it yet. But he’s the governor, and the music’s going to stop.”

The question is what this state will look like by the time he gets done with it, and people realize that the reason for a good chunk of his spending cuts is that he has continued the noble tradition started by that OTHER Christie, Christine Todd Whitman, of stiffing the state pension fund for other purposes. In Whitman's case it was for income tax cuts, from which the pension fund has never recovered, and in Christie's case it's for cooking the books.

Last week I hired an appraiser for the purpose of a property tax appeal. The value of my house has dropped over $100,000 since the last town revaluation in 2005. I'm not upset about that; after all, in no sane universe is a dormered Cape Cod with a 1970's kitchen and an original black-and-mint-green 1950's bathroom worth almost a half-million dollars. But the taxes on my little POS in one of the less prestigious towns in the county are upwards of $8000 a year -- and that's lower than many surrounding towns, where taxes on a house like mine can run into the five figures. This is just insane, and it's going to get even MORE insane when the full brunt of Christie's budgets start to hit municipalities. Because anyone familiar with local governments in New Jersey knows that no matter what the political affiliation of those running the town, it's all about cronyism, patronage, and no-bid contracts.

My town, which saw the first contested election in thirty years back in 2009, proceeded to elect the same people who had been on the council for that whole time -- and is now outraged that they're doing exactly what they've done for decades -- spend like drunken sailors, hire their friends for no-show municipal jobs, and give contracts to their friends. One councilman is attempting to have himself also named the town attorney so that he can get taxpayer-paid health insurance for his family. The school district is about to spend $3 million on enhancements to the high school football field. When you shift expenses and taxes to towns, and these towns elect corrupt people because there are no options on the ballot, you aren't addressing the biggest problem about which people complain.

If you read the comments section in this article, you'll see that all the Christie Love is coming from outside of New Jersey. Here, where we're actually SEEING what these policies do, it's a different story:

The people in my very Republican town are furious with him for what he is doing to our school district. He decided that he had to reduce the state funding of education, but rather than deciding on a district-by-district basis what cuts should be made, he simply chopped the state funds provided to districts across the board as a fixed percentage of their general operating budgets. This reduction did not take into account whether districts had been spending way below the state average per pupil or way above. My district had always managed its finances well and spent well under the average, while maintaining an exceptionally high-quality program. For that we were rewarded by having 82% of our already small state funding yanked from us. To add to the problem, he also reduced the amount by which local taxes could be raised. There is no way to make up the shortfall, and we are now being forced to make very painful program cuts.

What I would have wanted from this governor would have been a far more nuanced approach to the education cuts. He is, however, all about bluster and bullying, but deep thought about the fairness and impact of his actions escapes him. He is like a blindfolded man with a chainsaw who is trying to trim the shrubs - loud, unseeing, dangerous, and indiscriminate.

I'll close with the words of one of those demonized state workers, who nails it on where residents SHOULD be pointing their fingers:

I am a NJ state worker and have been for more than 25 years. I have consistently cared about my work and about doing a good job. I have never lost sight of the fact that as a public sector worker I am responsible to my fellow citizens and to the consumers of my agency's services. I am at this moment in time solidly middle class and do not live lavishly in any way.

I am watching with alarm what's going on in our country, something that's been going on for a while now, and that's the systematic turning of people's minds against workers like me, as if our salaries will destroy our neighbors' futures. This is the result of a frighteningly effective information campaign launched against public sector workers in every state in the union, so successful that it has caused people to totally forget about who the real destroyers are -- the bankers who, through a diabolical criminal conspiracy, took the hundreds of billions of dollars out of all of our pockets and laughed as they did it, and laughed as they gave themselves bonuses to celebrate their success.

Folks, it's not your own working neighbors who have set about dismantling the security that was once inherent in our way of life -- go see the film "Inside Job" and read Matt Taibbi's article in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. There are obscenely wealthy criminals out there who deserve prosecution (although there are perhaps no prosecutors left who can or will take them on), but your neighbors who pay taxes and mortgages, and who shop in local stores and dine at local restaurants and get their cars repaired in local garages -- your neighbors are not the problem. Please seriously consider rejecting the manipulations of the politicians who are doing the work of the wealthy ones who don't want you to notice that they took all the money away from all of us.

There go Chris Christie's presidential aspirations

Chris Christie has of late become the latest target of Republican man-love over at the sausagefest that is Morning Schmoe. I suppose that in an era where a screeching lunatic like Michele Bachmann is a potential presidential candidate, your garden-variety bully who declares war on teachers, plans to replace state toll collectors contractors making ten bucks an hour with no overtime, and relishes the prospect of inflicting pain on all New Jerseyans EXCEPT the wealthiest, who won't have to pay another penny in taxes, no matter how many people get thrown out on the street or die from lack of health care for the indigent, would look like a Republican demigod.

But I think he may have blown his chances with this one:

Last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) announced seven judgeship appointments to the New Jersey Superior Court, including the appointment of Sohail Mohammed to serve on the court in Passaic County. Mohammed is an immigration lawyer in Clifton, NJ who notably defended many Muslims caught up in post-Sept. 11 dragnets, in which the Department of Justice quickly and secretly arrested hundreds of Muslims in the wake of the attacks. Often, the false pretense of an immigration violation was used to hold these men for many months, even though a vast majority of them had no connection to terrorism whatsoever.

Several prominent anti-Muslim voices on the right have reacted with characteristic vitriol to the elevation of a Muslim in the U.S. justice system, calling Mohammed “the enemy” and accusing Christie of turning New Jersey into a “Sharia State.

This is actually one of the few things Christie has done that shows something other than knee-jerk Republican idiocy. Mohammed has been an intermediary between law enforcement and the state's growing population. More visionary stuff like this and less "Fuck the Poor and Middle Class" policy, and I might even give him kudos.

Hey, Governor Christie, meet your re-election opponent

While Chris Christie, the latest Republican rising star who makes a thrill go up Joe Scarborough's leg, got outta Dodge and took his kids to Disney World when the snowflakes from the Sunday blizzard were already falling, here's what another New Jersey pol was doing:

And if Christie thinks that this video is not going to be in heavy rotation when Christie runs for re-election, or even if he decides for President, guess again. Ditto for Mike Bloomberg -- another would-be Savior of Our Great Nation.

Now we know why Chris Christie has declared war on the teachers' unions

It's because he's an uneducated, willfully-ignorant moron and wants a state of people just like himself:

Gov. Chris Christie says he's skeptical that humans are responsible for global warming.

The governor, a new darling of the Republican Party, made the remark at a town hall meeting he hosted in Toms River Tuesday afternoon.

Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he's seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn't been proven one way or another.

Christie says "more science" is needed to convince him.

And speaking of Republican hero Chris Christie...

Another Republican hypocrite perfectly happy to take government money for his own benefit:

Gov. Christie, while serving as U.S. attorney, billed taxpayers for luxury hotels on trips and routinely failed to follow federal travel regulations, according to a report released Monday.

The report, released by the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general, found that while many U.S. attorneys and their subordinates approved their own travel and expenses, the vast majority complied with the approved government lodging rate.

However, the investigation found, "a small number of U.S. attorneys routinely exceeded the government rate, by large amounts, with insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification."

The report does not name any individuals, but the Associated Press identified Christie as "U.S. Attorney C" in the report, based on a comparison of details in the report and public records of Christie's travel expenses released under the Freedom of Information Act during his campaign for governor.

Christie, who spent recent weeks campaigning for fellow Republicans across the country and has been hailed by conservatives as a possible candidate for national office, declined Monday to respond to the report. His communications office referred reporters to comments he made in 2009, when the campaign of his opponent, then-Gov. Jon S. Corzine, obtained Christie's travel documents.

Christie said at the time that he stayed in more expensive hotels only when cheaper ones were not available.

Christie served as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey from 2002 to 2008. As a candidate for governor and in his first year as governor, he has called for spending cuts and more ethical behavior from public officials.

[snip]

During one stay in Washington, for example, Christie stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel at a cost of $475 per night, more than double the government rate of $233 per night, justifying the cost by explaining that he was scheduled to speak at the hotel early in the morning.

The report also took note of Christie's reimbursements for transportation to and from airports. In Boston, for example, to travel a distance of four miles, he arranged for car service that cost $236 round-trip, instead of a taxi. And in London, car service between the airport and a hotel cost taxpayers $562 for a round trip.

Christie declined to be interviewed by the Inspector General's Office, but provided a letter stating that he was unable to provide "any other specific information" to supplement the travel documentation.

"Most of the justification memoranda that we found simply stated that the government rate was unavailable, but provided no substantiation for this claim," the report says. "In four cases, there was no justification memorandum at all."

Somehow I don't think I should hold my breath waiting for Joe Scarborough to ask Christie about the hypocrisy of rhetoric against government spending while using expense accounts to stay at a level of luxury he couldn't afford otherwise.

I just got back from a conference. Because I combined the trip with a visit to family, I paid my own baggage check fees (because I took a bigger suitcase for 5 days than I would have for just the three), even though I got a free ride to the conference hotel. It isn't because I didn't have documentation, it's because the baggage check for the larger suitcase was for my own purposes. And this is a corporate expense account, not a government one. Now why is it that a liberal pagan like me has a sense of ethics about these things when it's a corporation's money, but the voceriferously devote Catholic and conservative Chris Christie doesn't when it is the taxpayers' money?

It's people like you what causes unrest

New Jersey's thuginator, Chris Christie, he of the jihad against teacher and public employee unions, he of continuing to stiff the state pension fund, he whose policies are going to give New Jersey taxpayers one wallop of an increase in their property taxes as municipalities scramble to make up the revenue, he who these days makes a thrill go up Joe Scarborough's leg, went to California to stump for billionaire Meg Whitman, and hilarity ensued which showed Christie for the thug that he is, as Ed Schultz noted last week:

If you saw Bill Maher on Friday night, you saw him allow Andrew Breitbart to filibuster the entire show, leaving the great Seth MacFarlane doing nothing but sipping out of his Real Time mug and grinning like a cheshire cat. And this is how Republicans operate. They filibuster, they shout, but if you dare to use their own tactics back at them, they say it's YOU who are the problem.

Too bad the guy Christie was bullying turns out to be a wealthy guy who believes (like Seth MacFarlane) that he doesn't really need a tax cut.

I never thought that Monty Python's "Fish License" sketch would start to resemble political discourse in this country:

This is what happens when you put Republicans in charge

Today New Jersey, tomorrow the nation.

Yesterday I wrote about Chris Christie's "The Dog Peed On My Homework" tactic in blaming Barack Obama for his own administration's failure to provide the correct information in applying for $400 million in money for education reforms. He painted the screwup as one of Washington bureaucrats being unwilling to make a phone call.

As it turned out, not only did said Washington bureaucrats ask for the missing information, but there's video to prove it here and here.

And here Christie was basking in the warm glow of being metaphorically fellated by Joe 'n' Mika the other morning and press coverage like this. He's even been mentioned as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012, which would almost be worth it to watch the double standard of the media in obsessing about Christie's girth compared to their relentless coverage of Bill Clinton's.

And now this.

So today Christie did what all good thugs do -- he pushed his loyal servant under the bus by jettisoning his Education Commissioner, Bret Schundler -- another formerly-fellated Republican who was touted as a GOP messiah not so long ago. Schunder is a particularly interesting case to me, because I remember when he was Gary Hart's Union County campaign manager in 1984. I remember because I volunteered for Hart's campaign and Schundler invited me to run to be a delegate -- something I had to decline because of my $12,500 salary which paid for my apartment and commuting into Manhattan every day. Then I turn around, and suddenly Schundler is a conservative Republican.

Chris Christie apparently hasn't learned anything about the price of lying from Schundler's experience. After a failed run for governor in 2001, he tried again in 2005, and got caught right before the primary using a photoshopped image of himself in a photo actually taken at a 2004 Howard Dean rally in a campaign ad. Schundler lost the primary to Doug Forrester, and that was the end of Bret Schundler, rising star. He floated the trial balloon last year of running for mayor again at the scene of his former glory, but Schundler's time had come and gone, and he cited financial reasons for dropping out.

So now Schundler is out of a job, reduced to asking to be fired so he can collect unemployment -- something that ordinary working people don't get when they are fired for cause. So here is Bret Schundler, conservative Republican, who went from Gary Hart supporter to a lucrative position on Wall Street, begging for what the Great Minds of His Party regard as something akin to welfare. Schundler says he needs the money because he has a kid about to start college and a mortgage. I guess he's shilling for Sharron Angle and the rest of the Republicans who seem to think Americans are getting rich on unemployment. The top rate for unemployment compensation in New Jersey is $560/week, which may sound like a lot if you are in Alabama or North Dakota, but in New Jersey, it is not going to pay for a mortgage payment, property taxes, and put a kid through college. So one has to wonder what Schundler did with all the money he made at Salomon Brothers after his foray into Democratic politics in 1984.

So it's all here -- Republican politics in a nutshell -- incompetence, thuggery, lies, and hypocrisy. And Americans are going to put these people in charge of the entire country again?

Hey Chris Christie -- you fucked up! Admit it!

As my state of residence reels from the draconian cuts ordered by our Bully-in-Chief, Chris Christie, it seems that a fuckup on the part of the office of former GOP Wonderboy Bret Schundler has cost us $400 million in education funding:

After making a high-profile bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education reform money, New Jersey fell three points short of receiving "Race to the Top" funding, in part because of an error by the Christie administration in the state’s application, records obtained by The Star-Ledger show.

One five-point question on the application asked for budget information comparing the 2008 and 2009 school years. However, the state submitted information comparing the current year to 2011.

That mistake cost the state 4.8 points. The state lost points in other areas as well, the records show.

In the end, New Jersey received 437.8 out of a possible 500 points, placing it 11th in the competition, just behind Ohio, which received $400 million and was the last state to receive funding. The winners of the $4.35 billion competition were announced today in Washington, D.C.

"New Jersey did not supply the 2008-2009 data as required and therefore forfeits the points," said the report from one of the federal reviewers scoring the competition.

But is either Chris Christie or Bret Schundler accepting responsibility for the error? Are they acknowledging that "The Buck Stops Here"? Hardly. In true Republican fashion, it's not the fault of those who submitted the application. No, it's Barack Obama's fault:

Gov. Chris Christie this morning acknowledged the state made a clerical error that blew its chance at winning $400 million in federal money for schools, but he blamed Obama administration bureaucrats for not giving New Jersey a chance to correct the mistake.

“This is the stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government and crazy about Washington,” Christie said at a news conference after an unrelated bill signing.

Christie slapped two thick three-ringed binders on the podium containing more than 1,000 pages of the state's “Race to the Top” application and appendices, noting that just one piece of paper contained the error.

“The first part of it is the mistake of putting the wrong piece of paper in," Christie said. "It drives people crazy and, believe me, I’m not thrilled about it. But the second part is, does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number.”

[snip]

“That’s the stuff the Obama administration should answer for. Are you guys just down there checking boxes like mindless drones, or are you thinking?” said Christie. “When the president comes back to New Jersey, he’s going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he’s depriving them of $400 million that this application earned.”

Obviously Chris Christie has never had to fill out a job application, or a grant application, or any other paperwork that gets fed into a giant maw of bureaucracy. When dealing with a large number of submissions, both government agencies AND corporations require absolute adherence to instructions. You don't get a pass because the dog peed on your application, or you got a flat tire, or any other lameass excuse. Do clerical mistakes help organizations evaluating funding applications of ANY kind weed out for elimination those that have them? Absolutely. But this is nothing new, and it's no Great Conspiracy by Barack Obama to deprive New Jersey of much-needed funding. It's just how these things work. At one point years ago I helped pack copies of a federal grant application into a cardboard box for shipping, knowing full well that for a variety of reasons having to do with the content, preparation, and finishing of the application, we were not going to get the grant. I turned out to be right, and I'm sure that the problems I saw with it had at least something to do with it.

The Republican Party likes to paint itself as the party of grownups, but let a Republican fuck up, and it's always point-the-finger-elsewhere time. Chris Christie's Education Department fucked up. It may have been an honest mistake. But it's a mistake just the same, and a costly one. An adult would stand up before the citizenry of his state and acknowledge that. But Chris Christie is not an adult. He is a schoolyard bully who just got tripped up by the dweeby kid whose lunch money he steals every day. And he doesn't like it one bit.

Fortunately, a press that has been in love with him since his inauguration isn't buying it.

Meanwhile, a state Senate that's been bullied around by this pantload since the beginning of the year wants to know what happened, whether this fuckup was somehow deliberate -- a way to keep money from flowing into New Jersey's education coffers so that Christie could continue his full-scale assault on the teachers' union:

Questions have been piling up all day, not the least of which is this: Is this incompetence on the part of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler's office - either by an individual or individuals, or as a culture of the way his office works? Or, did Governor Christie's administration treat this program and its opportunities as a political football, punting because they didn't get everything they wanted, throwing the game? Did they give this effort their best, or send in people with poor qualifications in leading public schooling?

Date and time has not yet been set but the hearing will be via the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Christie administration officials who will be called to appear before the panel include Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.

This isn't just conspiracy theorizing. Apparently there was an earlier draft, that Bret Schundler had in his possession, that had the correct information. So the question of whether the Christie Administration deliberately sabotaged the state's chance of obtaining funding that would water down his fatwa against the NJEA is a valid one.

Here's what "shared sacrifice" looks like in New Jersey

Now that New Jersey is becoming a Republican paradise, the rest of the country might want to see what the "shared sacrifice" that Governor Chris Christie promised looks like:

Here are the facts: The 16,000 families in New Jersey earning more than $1 millon will get an average tax break of $40,000 apiece under this budget. At the same time, a single mom working for minimum wage will pay $300 more in state taxes.

The biggest cuts in this budget are painful but unavoidable. That includes the deep cuts in aid to schools and towns, and in property tax rebates. His single biggest move was to short the pension fund by $3 billion. Together, those moves account for the bulk of the governor’s spending reductions.

Did you get that? 16,000 of the wealthiest families -- not business, but FAMILIES -- in the state will have $40,000 more in their pockets, while a minimum wage worker gets a $300 tax INCREASE. I guess this is shared sacrifice because the wealthiest families aren't going to get $100,000 more in their pockets.

And note that Christie is shorting the pension fund again. The state pension fund is the single biggest source of the state's fiscal problems, largely because of policies instituted by that OTHER Christie, Christine Todd Whitman, former darling of the Republican Party.

Bob Herbert, New York Times, February 22, 1995:

Now many of the gains made over a quarter of a century are in danger of slipping away because the current Governor, Christine Todd Whitman, has chosen to finance her political ambitions with a popular buy-now, pay-later economic policy that will place a financial stranglehold on future generations of New Jerseyans.

This is best illustrated by Mrs. Whitman's decision to withhold billions of dollars that should be going into the public employee pension funds over the next few years, and using the bulk of that money to balance the state budget. Then, with an audacity that dazzles her supporters and even draws grudging admiration from opponents, Mrs. Whitman smiles and characterizes the withheld funds as savings.

Of course, they are not "savings" -- not in any sense of the word. The pension obligations at some point will come due and future generations will have to meet them.

Not only will the money have to be made up, but future taxpayers will be deprived of the income that the money -- if properly invested now -- would be expected to generate.

Mrs. Whitman's pension maneuvers have not gotten a lot of publicity -- in part because the eyes of reporters and readers alike tend to glaze over when confronted with complex budget details. The changes that she has made have been drastic. According to the New Jersey Education Association, which has filed suit against the state, the employer contributions to the pension system this year will be as much as 96 percent below the amounts contributed in the early 1990's.

By all accounts, the employer contributions have been reduced by nearly $1 billion a year. The Whitman administration insists that this is not a problem. Needless to say, others disagree.

"There is no question but that this is creating future debt," said Richard C. Leone, a former New Jersey State Treasurer who is now the president of the Twentieth Century Fund. "This is just another way of getting around the balanced-budget requirement, a kind of deficit spending. It is the sort of thing that comes back to haunt you."

Until the changes adopted by Mrs. Whitman, New Jersey had been very conservative in its approach to its pension obligations. For example, the state had started to pre-fund the health care benefits of its retirees, building up reserves against post-retirement liabilities. As one state official said: "That was prudent. Health-care costs are a big problem."

Prudent or not, Mrs. Whitman scrapped the pre-funding. She used the reserves that had already built up to help balance her budget. For Christine Todd Whitman, the pension funds have become a budget-balancing machine.

In other words, Chris Christie is doing exactly what Whitman suggested he do in a recent op-ed in the Hackensack, NJ Record: running the state exactly as she did.

Take my governor...please

Here in New Jersey, in a state that becomes more unlivable by the day, and more impossible to escape, in a town with a corrupt and entrenched Republican government which operates with no transparency and no responsibility, we have in Trenton a man who has inspired one of the most nauseating images you will ever conjure:

"Is it wrong to love another man?" Limbaugh asked. "Because I love Chris Christie."

New Jersey has a massive budget deficit that recent governors have been unable and unwilling to address. This deficit is largely attributable to Christine Todd Whitman, she of the "Sure the air at Ground Zero is just fine, now get back to work" declarations following the 9/11 attacks. With tax cuts paid for by deferred pension fund payments and other budget tricks, Whitman was for a time the darling of the Republicans, but lately is seen more often penning narcissistic screeds on the pages of the Bergen Record, defending her record and insisting that Christie should govern just the way she did.

Give Chris Christie credit for at least trying to do something about the state's budget problems, but he's trying to do it entirely on the backs of the teacher's union while a temporary tax hike on people making over $400,000 a year that expired last December is not going to be renewed.

In my regional school district (which encompasses two twons), the budget passed by eight votes. I'm kind of glad it passed, if only because Christie had told voters to refuse these school budgets. I'm told by our local gadfly that children were told to go home and tell their parents that if they don't vote for the budget, their kids will be bussed to other school districts. Given that we are surrounded on all sides by more affluent towns, I can't imagine what kind of race panic set in, unless these parents decided that the kids would be bussed to Paterson. So I expect my taxes to go up about $400/year, and that's just the schools.

The kicker is that Christie ran on a platform of "New Jersey's property taxes are too high".

As people start to realize what Christie's budget cuts actually mean for them, his approval has dropped 9 points as of the end of March, and the latest Survey USA poll has him at 33% approval.

When people who believed his property tax promise get their property tax bills this year, I expect them to drop further. A state that believed Christine Whitman's "free lunch" doctrine is not going to take kindly to the kind of tax hikes that their towns are going to enact, no matter how much they might enjoy watching unions twist in the wind.

I'd be more likely to say that the unions need to sacrifice too if Christie weren't trying to balance the budget on the backs of everyone BUT the state's wealthiest residents.

So of course the fact that he's becoming more loathed by the day has made Chris Christie the Republican Party's latest darling:

On Thursday, George Will described Christie, New Jersey's new chief executive, as "the nation's most interesting governor." Fred Barnes, in the latest Weekly Standard, devoted 1,741 words to him. And in the Wall Street Journal last week, columnist William McGurn praised Christie for "offering the voters a dose of Reagan Republicanism -- with a Jersey twist." And then there's Rush Limbaugh, who recently treated his listeners to a dramatic reading of Christie's budget address to the state Legislature.

[snip]

Christie's war on Trenton's status quo comes as the national GOP is faced with an unusual leadership void. Sure, the party is positioned to do well -- maybe very well -- in November's election, but they will owe those gains to the rotten economy, the abundance of low-hanging fruit (Democrats who sneaked into office in the tidal waves of 2006 and 2008), and the buyer's remorse nature of midterm elections. Those variables will be either absent or muted by 2012. To have any hopes of winning then -- and into the future -- the GOP will need what it now lacks: a leader who can give it direction.

Right now, the party has three "front-runners" for its '12 presidential nomination: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. As Ed Kilgore noted here last week, they all come with serious liabilities -- both in terms of the GOP primary campaign and the general election. More depressing for the GOP, though, is the stable of potential dark horses. That Haley Barbour is now attracting serious presidential buzz tells you about all you need to know.

Viewed in this context, the conservative press' adulation of Christie takes on new significance. The GOP  is essentially holding an open casting call for a new leader right now. The 2012 field really is wide open. Could Christie be the dark horse the right has been looking for?

On the surface, it's a far-fetched notion. He's only been on the job for a few months. He's practically unknown nationally and hasn't been hitting the rubber chicken circuit in Iowa and South Carolina. Nor does he have a substantial donor network. And he's a bit ... um ... corpulent -- not exactly the president out of central casting. 

But it's also not impossible to see an opening for him. Just consider his dark horse competition. In the last few months, the names of Marco Rubio, Scott Brown and Mitch Daniels have been floated -- would Christie really be any more of a long shot than any of them? As his recent media coverage shows, his story is a compelling one for conservatives: a "real" Republican who won in a deeply blue state and didn't back down after taking office.

His stint as U.S. attorney, a post he held for seven years before running for governor, could be an asset too. Christie, who won the job by raising massive sums for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign, milked the post for all of its P.R. worth, targeting political corruption and stinging one crooked pol after another. There are some serious questions about the degree to which politics intruded on his work as U.S. attorney, but New Jersey's electorate didn't really care. His boasts of putting more than 100 corrupt politicians behind bars were good enough for them. A national GOP audience wouldn't be much different.

Plus, unlike most Republicans who win in blue states, he hasn't saddled himself with cultural views that are at odds with the GOP base. Kean, who governed New Jersey from 1982 to 1990, could have been George H.W. Bush's running mate in 1988, but his abortion views disqualified him. Whitman might have claimed the No. 2 slot on Bob Dole's 1996 ticket (whatever that was worth) had she been antiabortion. At least on paper, Chris Christie's profile is quite appealing to the national GOP base.

And if it's a question of ambition, Christie, a one-time student body president at the University of Delaware, probably has it. He's been eyeing the political big-time for years, something I learned all the way back in November 2002, when I was covering politics in New Jersey and writing about potential candidates for the 2005 gubernatorial race. Christie, then finishing his first year as U.S. attorney, was an unknown commodity. But as I was preparing the story, I got a call from one of his friends, politely (but insistently) pointing me to a recent article in another publication that had listed Christie as a future gubernatorial contender. The wheels were already in motion.

Is it likely Christie will seek the GOP nod in '12? Not at all. He'd have to start traveling and raising money almost immediately if he wants to, but he's just months into his first term as governor. The timing just doesn’t work right now. So he'll probably content himself with staying put and attracting more national attention, hoping instead for a spot on the ultimate nominee's V.P. list. And if '12 brings another GOP defeat, he'd then have the option of running for president in 2016. But who knows?

A bully of a governor with a 33% approval rating. So now the Republican Party has two of them. Maybe Christie will quit too so he can compete with Sarah Palin. After all, Limbaugh loves him, and there's no accounting for taste when it comes to Republican sexual fantasies about potential presidential candidates.