Governor Chris Christie Defending Democracy, No Matter What the Cost

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found himself caught between a rock and hard place recently, on the death of Senator Lautenberg, a liberal who served as a senator from 1982 to 2013 barring a two year break from 2001 to 2003. 

Frank Lautenberg was a real man of the people; gutsy and principled, he made an enemy of Richard Nixon in 1972 when he donated $90,000 to George McGovern’s campaign for president. He fought for his seat against some pretty powerful people, and often came in from behind to win. He was pro-choice, pro-environment, in favor of gun control, same –sex marriage. He played a big part in raising the minimum drinking age and banning smoking on planes. He was one of those politicians who loved his job and who wasn’t in it for power. 

When he died, Christie had to choose between filling the seat with someone of his own choice, or calling a special election a few months ahead of the national gubanatorial elections.

Most opinion seems to agree that Christie has his sights on being the Republican nominee for president and that his strongest argument will be that he was elected and re-elected governor in a blue state. He’ll be running against Democrat Barbara Buono who currently doesn’t appear to have much of a chance against him. He’s a popular guy.

But if he nominated a senator now, New Jersey voters would be voting for a Senator in November. So Cory Booker, a Democrat, would then be on the same ballot as Christie. And he’s a very popular guy too, but with Democrats, who are likely to come out in droves to vote for him. And then also vote for Buono. In a state that is a Democratic stronghold that’s a big risk for Christie and clearly he decided not to take it. Whether it was his primary motivation for choosing a re-election for the Senate seat before the November gubanatorial elections or not is hard to say.

What is clear is that his choice cost the taxpayer in the region of $24 million. He didn’t help his case when he snapped at a reporter accusing him of wasting taxpayers’ money “I don't know what the cost is and I frankly don’t care".  

This from a Republican who, just over a week before, had vetoed a proposal to establish early voting - and he knew what that cost was. It was $25 million. He also cut $8.6 million from college subsidies, $12 million from hospital charity care and $10 million from children’s after-school programs in poor areas. It’s hard to understand how he could have rationalized that as caring about the electorate. 

He, however, insists that all he cares about now is that New Jersey voters get to choose who they want for senator as quickly as possible, and that he will not allow party politics to override democracy.

That may be his primary motivation. It’s impossible to say. But actions have a way of speaking  louder than words. He also said that you can’t put a price on democracy. But you can put a price on a poor person’s health and education and child care. 

As to winning the Republican presidential nomination, would he give up on his values and shift with the wind like Mitt did? Time will tell. 

Right now he’s governor and has the right to do what he did. He still has to nominate somebody for the Senate seat until October. So far he’s been mum on that. 

Scott Prouty, the Hero Who Saved America and the World from Mitt Romney

Michael Moore called Scott Prouty a hero who deserves a medal, for exposing the nasty underbelly of Mitt Romney. Prouty’s response was that heroes go into burning buildings. He didn’t see himself as a hero, just a person who released a video that needed to be released. But it turns out he is a hero. 

Some time before, he heard a crash one day and went running towards the scene of the accident. A car was slowly sinking into a canal. A couple of guys had tried to save her – one had broken his hand punching out the passenger window – but they couldn’t get her out of the safety belt and the car was sinking fast. They gave up on her, thought she was dead.

But Prouty, running towards the scene, called his friend and said “bring a knife”. His friend did and Prouty dove in and managed to unlock the door. He had to surface and go down again a number of times. He said it was dark and murky, being swamp water, but he managed to cut the woman free from the seat belt and bring her up. Her body was limp but he remembers kind of smiling and knowing somehow that it was going to be okay, she was going to live. 

And she did. And if you think that’s heroic, consider this: the cops arrived but they didn’t go in because the area adjoins the Everglades and the canal the woman had driven into leads into its swamps, so the chances of meeting an alligator were high. Scott Prouty knew that but he saved her anyway.

Sometime later, after he’d recorded Mitt Romney talking about the 47% of allegedly worthless Americans, when Prouty was about to release the video, a friend said it was either incredibly stupid of him or incredibly brave. “Last time I did something incredibly stupid or incredibly brave it was the proudest moment of my life,” said Prouty. Now he’s got two moments in his life that he can be proud of. 

Scott Prouty Filmed the 47% Video that Lost Romney the Election

Before the last US Presidential elections, I knew Romney was a fraud, but he fine-tuned his public persona quite well, and became the man who loved his wife and children and cared about everybody, so long as he knew he was in the eye of the media. It was horribly frustrating to watch. Of course he couldn’t completely control his runaway mouth, but such was the fear of Obama that Romney’s supporters forgave him every time.

They would have sold their soul for a Republican President. In the end they were rescued from that dire predicament by Romney himself who revealed his real absence of humanity and the elitism that forms the foundation of his true personality, and by the man who recorded him.

His name is Scott Prouty, a bartender at that fateful fundraising dinner. Recently he was interviewed on NBC and Huffpost Live, and anybody who can get their hands on him is clamoring for an interview. Anybody except Fox News.

“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he takes his drink” said Prouty (Huffpost Live). Normally, people say thanks and acknowledge the bartender. Romney took his drink and turned away without a hint of a thank you. To him the bartender was just a servant. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who, at a fundraiser at a private home, came into the kitchen to thank all the staff, one of whom was Prouty. He was very moved, and his experience of Clinton  helped inspire him to release the video.

On the Republican night in question, Romney sat down and demanded that the food be brought immediately, because he was late. “I’d never do that,” said Scott, “even if I was the guest of honor. I’d never walk into a house and say ‘where’s the food? Come on, bring it, bring it’.” (Huffpost Live)

He decided to record Romney. None of the staff had been told they couldn’t record the event, so he didn’t hide the camera; he set it up on the bar in full sight. The media weren’t invited, but I guess it didn’t cross Romney’s mind that the waiting staff might be smart enough to fill the gap. I also guess Romney didn’t care enough about the 47% to worry about what would happen if they heard what he had to say. Which says it all, really.

Prouty obviously had a job to do but he was also there as a voter. He wanted to hear what Romney had to say and expected him to address everybody in the room. But it was as if for Romney, the staff didn’t exist. He didn’t include them; he didn’t see them as individuals and he didn’t care about them as voters. What a person instinctively does tells the truth of them, so his bit about the 47% of Americans being lazy, unwilling to do anything with their lives, wanting bailouts, was just affirmation.

Scott Prouty is a down-to-earth, straightforward guy with a sense of decency and his own dignity.  He said he released the video because most Americans couldn’t afford to pay $50,000 to know what Romney really thought. “It’s a shame”, said Prouty, “you would wish they [politicians] would say the same things in public as they say in private. Maybe they do but clearly he didn’t.” (Huffpost Live)

What Romney said was so “diametrically opposed to what he was saying in public” that Prouty couldn’t bear to let him get away with it. He spliced the video and the first release was only a piece. It was “sort of a dry run”. He wanted to get a feel for how it landed. And people saw and heard what he did; the hypocrisy. YouTube shut down that first partial video, entitled “Romney exposed”, as did some other places he put it up on. 

But a Tumblr user noticed a second video and contacted Huffington Post reporter Brad Shannon, and Prouty had media traction. His original intention had been to start a conversation but he ended up helping to change the direction of a Presidential election, because after this, Romney didn’t have a chance.

Social media makes it possible for an ordinary guy to affect the course of history. “[It’s] a great equalizer. If you have a good message, a strong message, an important message and you are persistent enough you can share it with lots and lots of people.” Prouty added that he was very grateful to all the ordinary people who retweeted his message very persistently, even before the media found it. “[Social media] lets you get around the media filter...This was going out no matter what, and if the media ended up picking it up, that was great.” (Huffpost Live)

YouTube didn’t give Prouty any reasons for shutting his video down, which leaves room for speculation. But in any case, they couldn’t stop this one. Kudos to Scott Prouty. His twitter account is @scottprouty.

Pope Benedict XVI Quits and Leaves a Shameful Legacy

So Pope Benedict XVI quit. While I was watching the video of his speech the thought running through my head was, I wonder how much his attire for the event cost. I have no good opinion of popes in general. I think the concept that the man and the men who vote him in are somehow sacrosanct and channeling the word of God, is ludicrous. 

But there was one pope who captured my imagination. He didn’t really want to be pope but he accepted the role and then not only wasn’t anybody’s pawn, but had ideas of his own. Albino Luciani, later to become Pope John Paul I, was born on 17 October 1912 in the Veneto Province of Northern Italy. He believed that the church should be a spiritual haven for people, that it should not be a wealthy organization and that priests, bishops and popes should be spiritual leaders. Strange concepts admittedly. 

When Pope Paul VI died, those supremely spiritual creatures the Cardinals huddled together to choose the next pope and after the 4th ballot the result was none other than our humble fellow Luciani who was by then pretty high up the Roman ladder. Rumor has it that the Cardinals were initially split down the middle between two candidates, neither of whom was Luciani.

Ultra conservatives wanted Giuseppe Siri who preferred a conservative interpretation, and even a reversal, of Vatican II reforms. Sounds like the GOP and their man Mitt. Then Ryan. Then Rubio. But I digress. Slightly more moderates wanted the more liberal Giovanni Benelli but he was opposed because he was too autocratic. It didn’t sound like much of choice. More rumor has it that Siri actually won the 3rd ballot and was somehow persuaded to not accept it. Of course we’ll never know, because those Cardinals vote from an enclave – which admits no outsiders. So that God can talk to them more clearly no doubt.

What we do know is that somehow a majority eventually managed to agree on Luciano. David Yallop, the author of In God’s Name wrote that Luciano was initially hesitant, and didn’t want to be Pope. But he allowed himself to be persuaded and from that point on acted with confidence and resolve. He refused the thousand-year-old tradition of the Coronation Ceremony and had an inauguration mass instead. He also refused to wear the papal tiara. 

He was an intelligent, heartfelt and friendly man, and one who connected with the masses. According to Yallop he immediately set about routing out corruption in the Vatican, particularly with regard to Mafia connections and fraudulent finances, and was very vocal in his protest against the massive wealth that the Catholic Church had and wasn’t using to alleviate poverty. He also wanted to remove the ecclesiastical ban on birth control. Within 33 days he was dead. I always thought the CIA had excellent cover-up skills, but they have nothing on the Vatican, if Yallop is correct. 

Since we all know now how good they were at covering up for pedophile priests, chances are that Yallop was on to something. The Vatican first stated that Pope John Paul I was found with a book in his hand by his private secretary at about 6:30 in the morning when he went to look for the Pope who hadn’t shown up at the morning chapel service. This was an outright lie, as the Pope had been discovered at 4:30 am by the nun who had woken him up at that time with coffee for 20 years.

The Vatican also said the bedside light was on, which conflicted with Vatican police testimony, and that the cause of death was a heart attack. They later added weight to that by saying that he had been very ill and had suffered from heart disease all his life. He hadn’t been ill at all – he was in fact a very healthy man who took medication for low blood pressure and nothing in his medical history ever showed any reference to a bad heart.

Sources within the Vatican told Yallop that John Paul was clutching a sheath of papers when he died, and not a book. His personal effects – including the low blood pressure medication - were removed and they were never seen again. Within hours there was not a trace of Pope John Paul I in the papal chambers. Embalmers were called in at 5 am. Another unusually hasty move.

John Paul’s body began to be embalmed twelve hours later. When accusations of poisoning emerged, the Vatican refused to conduct an autopsy, stating that autopsies on popes were forbidden, which was another lie. Popes Pius VIII and Clement XIV had both been autopsied. The Italian press went beserk.

David Yallop presented some incredibly convincing and in-depth evidence to support his claim that Pope John Paul I was murdered, and sheer logic says that indeed he was, given what he stood for and what he was intending to do. But nobody could hold the Vatican responsible as they are a law unto themselves and they allowed possible murder to be gotten away with. 

Just as they allowed so many bishops to get away with shunting pedophile priests around from parish to parish to avoid prosecution. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, I guess. Pope Benedict XVI had plenty of opportunities to put a stop to the rot. He did nothing and I think he leaves nothing but a shameful legacy. And so long as the Vatican continues to lie and cover up its crimes it makes a mockery of the position of Pope and of everything that the Catholic Church allegedly stands for. Spiritual? It’s not the word I would use.