Tag Archives: Gov Christie

Common Courtesy

One of the things I dislike about the Internet is the way it wears away at common courtesy. Some people in their comments  — blogs, product reviews, movie reviews —  just blast away, saying whatever they feel like saying, as rudely and bluntly as it comes out and who cares about the consequences!

One thing that I find especially irritating is when I post something political and people who have never commented before, whom I don’t know, suddenly appear with their negative comments about how wrong I am to have posted such a thing!  Sometimes their remarks do have something to do with what I said. Other times it’s some variant of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I have only to mention the subject in question and here comes the trashing. I wonder how they even found my post and have to conclude they are searching for particular subject matter. So they can go and pounce on some hapless blogger with their negative opinions.

WordPress allows me to moderate comments by first time commenters, and in general I don’t like to censor negative comments out of hand, so unless it’s really obvious they were just trolling for the subject, I approve them. That happened today regarding my Gov Christie post yesterday. Instead of acknowledging the courage and integrity the governor exhibited in the clip I showed, the commenter was on a mission to set me straight on my foolish claim that Christie was conservative. After I thanked him for the comment and noted that I’d not heard about the accusations he’d made, he proceeded to flood my blog with comment after comment on how Not-Conservative Christie supports cap and trade, amnesty and Obamacare, with plenty of links to support his assertions.

Well, fine. I didn’t know Christie supported those things, and a cursory investigation by means of Google indicates that he does indeed, at least to some degree. I don’t support cap and trade, amnesty or Obamacare but does that mean that I cannot applaud courage and common sense when I see it?  Good heavens, Christie’s the governor of Blue Blue Blue state New Jersey. I can hardly believe he’s even there. I doubt he could have been elected there if he were Ronald Reagan. And in any case, he IS a fiscal conservative, and I have watched him stand up to snarky reporters and angry teachers union activists with a backbone I’ve seen few others display. I admire that.

Still, seeing as the commenter was apparently from New Jersey, I can  also sympathize with his frustration. My senator, after all, is John McCain, Mr. I-was-a-Maverick-before-I-wasn’t-a-Maverick, who is also for cap and trade, amnesty, TARP and I can’t recall on Obamacare. I did not vote for him in the primary. I will in the general election, however, (holding my nose)  because his Democratic opponent will not bother to even  pretend  he’s conservative.  The bottom line is very, very few of our elected representatives fulfill all our criteria for Conservatism. And most of them cave immediately when pressured by the media or the unions. And probably by the DC social/political life, as well.

Besides that, Writing From the Edge 2 isn’t meant to be a political blog. I post about politics from time to time, because there are things I find interesting or admirable or exceptional, sometimes ironic, sometimes goofy, sometimes surprising or outrageous or even ominous. But I’m not into political activism and I’m not interested in getting into arguments with people who don’t like what I post, nor sponsoring political discussions in the comments section. There are many other blogs out there who welcome all that, but I just don’t have the time or emotional energy to do so.

In fact, I should be in bed right now. I did 4 hours of writing work today and hoped to get up early to do 4 more hours tomorrow. So I guess I’ll post this thing and stop second-guessing myself. If readers decide that’s it, they can’t read my blog any more because I censor comments I don’t like… so be it.

NJ Governor Chris Christie

I am sooo impressed by this guy, Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, and have been for some time. Not only is he articulate and conservative, but he has courage and integrity and shows incredible leadership. Every time I hear him, my admiration increases.

In the video below, he responds to a reporter’s question about whether or not he’s going to fire the person responsible for a clerical error that caused the state to forfeit several hundreds of millions of federal education dollars. Some Obama administration bureaucrat denied the request because the wrong sheet of numbers was turned in amongst the mass of application documents. Conservative pundits are already wondering… is this because of “mindless worker-bee syndrome” or is it more insidious — punishment to Christie for being of the wrong party and for balancing the NJ state budget.

It’s not a long video, but the very best part, I think, is at the end, so watch it all the way through!