Same-Sex Marriage passes NJ Senate Vote: Governor Fuckface says "I'll Veto it"

Yesterday...a NJ Senate committee voted 8-4 (strictly across party lines), to pass a Same-Sex Marriage bill in New Jersey.
Source

This being New Jersey....I wouldn't start planning your trip just yet. Keep in mind...the State Senator behind the push, D-Steve Sweeney abstained from voting in the 2009 committee meeting. Not only that....but that same day Governor Chris "Fat Satan" Christie said he will veto the bill as soon as it hit his desk. To make matters worse....and showing that prominent Republicans have no fucking idea how civil rights work....Christie said he advocates a voter referendum instead of a Senate bill:
Source

To further boil your blood.....in addition to The Governor & Senate Republicans wanting us to have to VOTE on civil rights:

by the way...here's Senator Bateman's website in case you want to let him know how you feel



.....opponents of the move were citing bible references, of all things, as reason NOT to pass the bill:

As much as a love my home state of New Jersey......it very often makes me sick.

We can add "same sex" to the long list of unions that this douche hates.

HO-LEE SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!

NJ Governor Chris Christie:

Source

That's our Governor. Suggesting that Southern blacks would have rather left their civil rights up to.........wait for it.......a VOTE....in an effort to defend his stance against legislating Same Sex unions in favor of putting it to a voter referendum.

He does this shit days after nominating a gay black man to the state supreme court. I just don't get him.

They're closely linked. Red meat to the base following a "bold" move to garner moderate support.

Guess he doesn't really understand why we needed the Voting Rights Act, huh?

Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, issues Christie a smack down.

here here!! *applauds*

It makes for a nice soundbyte...but fuck Cory Booker too. He's a Christie boy....just like Steve Sweeney. Booker takes his marching orders from George Norcross.

So, an Essex County democrat mayor takes his marching orders from a Camden County democratic power broker and--despite that conflict--both he and the democrat Senate President are Christie's "boys"?

Ohhhhhkay.

Sweeney cares less about being in either Norcross or Christie's pocket than he does about positioning himself to run for governor soon and Booker was pretty much just out to get every dime in state aid he could to turn Newark around. I don't see either of them as any kinda above-the-fray champions of all that's right and good, but pretending they're both just in the pockets of alternatively the south Jersey powerbroker and the Republican governor is the extreme opposite and just as myopic.

So, you're saying we need to change our state motto to "Our politicians stink worse Exit 11 on the Turnpike".

The Garden State... We Grow Smokestacks!

Do you FOLLOW NJ politics?

If you're a Democrat in NJ...you either kiss Norcross' ring, or you're no longer a democrat in NJ.

Both Sweeney and Booker have buddied up to Christie for the scraps off his table.

Booker is lockstep in line with Christie's position on private charter schools....and Sweeney..a democrat as WELL as a union man was the major force behind the legislation that fucked NJ's unions.

No, not at all. Not even a little bit. I've only worked for consultants to municipal, county, and state level agencies in New Jersey for the last half decade. Why would I follow politics?

Norcross is a fundraiser, his power base is Camden County and he works his magic by funding campaigns, both during his time as state party chair and as private citizen Norcross. I'm well aware he has influence that extends all the way up to Essex County, but he doesn't have a complete lock on Democratic politics in NJ and Booker did a lot of out of state fundraising. Saying he's in Norcross' pocket is a gross exaggeration. Particularly considering his relationship with Christie.

First of all, the scraps off his table are from the governor's table, it isn't like they're trying to jump ship to the Republican party, they're looking to secure aid and get legislation passed. I wouldn't defend Sweeny's record, because he's trying to play both sides to position himself for governor when Christie's gone, but that's a lot different--again--from saying he's in Christie's pocket or Christie's boy or whatever else.

Booker's trying to fix a fundamentally broken and utterly fucked public school system in a city that spent a generation under one of the most corrupt city mayors and state senators in the country. I'm really not wild about Christie, but his fights with school unions have much more to do with strictly budgetary issues, he isn't fighting the same sort of semi-covert war on unions that Scott Walker is, or on public services that my governor is. And Sweeney had enough pull with the unions to actually move them away from a reflexive all out war, no-negotiations stance, again, I don't think he's doing it because he's some great hero or bold public servant, he's doing it because he wants to be in Drumthwacket one day. Moreover, when the teacher's union lost their fight it rattled the Norcross powerbase a lot more than you're really addressing.

I'm most certainly not cheering on Christie or Sweeny, or even, really, Booker (but I give him more benefit of the doubt), they're all professional politicians and as such not to be trusted. My point about your comment was that it's basically just bitching about a bunch of politicians without really looking closer at what's going on, and then lumping them all in together. Saying Sweeney and Booker are both Christie's boys while simultaneously saying they're all in Norcross' pocket anyway isn't even consistent. Norcross and Christie aren't friends.

You can drop the sarcasm....I really don't know you well enough to have read your resume.

I'm not "just bitching about a bunch of politicians without really looking closer at what's going on". I follow NJ politics pretty closely. Booker and Christie's friendship is pretty well-documented. source

Norcross and Christie may not be social friends...but their mutual benefit is met on more than one front. Norcross is aggressively for Christie's school reforms including vouchers. And lookie-lookie....seems Cory Booker is pretty keen on the ideas as well. source

Sweeney's sweeping pension & benefit reforms? Who was the man pulling the strings? George Norcross. source

Which overweight governor has made it his mission to attack public unions in New Jersey? Republican Chris Christie. Which Democratic State Senate Leader was behind those reforms? Steve Sweeney (We're not even getting INTO Sheila Oliver yet). Who is Steve Sweeney's self-admitted long time friend? Power Broker George Norcross. The same George Norcross who runs an insurance company...who stands to benefit financially from public health benefit reforms.

Calling George Norcross a "fundraiser" is like calling Tony Sporano a "waste management executive". It's disingenuous to the point of laughable.

Then maybe the smart thing to do wasn't to assume I don't know what I'm talking about and not act like a condescending prick.

Reconcile this from your own link to the New York Times:

And the video upthread with your statement that:

Your source details how Booker was such a "boy" of Christie that, despite supporting Corzine in the '09 election, Christie felt comfortable enough asking him "not to lie" about him. Yeah, he's really bending over him by agreeing not to spread falsehoods about him.

Yeah, and Booker's been for school reforms since he was a council person and no one knew he was (and the Democrat party was offering him no support because he was going after Sharpe James). So's Democrat Steven Fulop, the next (likely) Mayor of Jersey City, who won his council seat despite all the efforts of the Hudson County Democratic Party, as are hundreds of urban Democratic mayors and council people across the country, because their constituents don't want to wait a generation while we try to address the endemic issues facing the US education system for their kids to get a halfway decent educations.

Again, from your own link:

Yeah, Norcross--not at all surprisingly--tried to get language inserted into a bill that would generate more business for his private interests. But it didn't work. The Democrats who crossed party lines did it because there, unfortunately, isn't a better alternative. Christie inherited a $1B hole from Corzine and New Jersey already has some of the highest state and county taxes in the country, including two of the five counties that have the highest property taxes in the country. At a guess, you and I both would have rather seen a dedicated millionaire's tax than a cut to public worker benefits, but the reality is the state needs both to balance the budget and Christie pushed for the later and vetoed the former. Again, I'm not a fan of Christie by any stretch, but pretending that the unions in NJ are the same as the unions in Wisconsin and that Christie is just another Scott Walker isn't exactly truthful. If you want to actually have an intelligent and respectful conversation about school choice, we could have that conversation, if you want to pretend that every one who supports it does so only because George Norcross can profit off of it or Christ Christie can win elections form it I'm not in the mood to entertain that kind of stupidity.

Yeah, Steve Sweeney's from Gloucester, right next door to Norcross, whose his godfather. Cory Booker is in Essex fucking County and ran against Newark's entrenched mayor who had the support of Norcross, the county party, and McGreevy in '04. The machinery mostly stayed out of the '06 race because they knew indictments were coming down and Booker, again, was mostly funded by out-of-state money. Do you really want to bring Sheila Oliver into it, the assembly speaker with such a chummy relationship with Christie last year she said he was "mentally deranged"? You buy Christie's story that he saved her job?

Calling George Norcross a "fundraiser" is like calling Tony Sporano a "waste management executive". It's disingenuous to the point of laughable.


Yeah, because I only called him a fundraiser after referring to him as a powerbroker six or eight times. Pretending I wrote him off as an unimportant figure isn't laughably disingenuous, it's insultingly obtuse.

oh boy. its turning into one of THOSE threads.

If:

is your criteria for "condescending prick".....toughen the fuck up, Mr. " I've only worked for consultants to municipal, county, and state level agencies in New Jersey for the last half decade."

... you mean the kind where a condescending prick calls other guys condescending pricks? I'm afraid so. I'm not sure anyone in any arena of politics would approve of a consultant who uses these choices of vocabulary in debate

In that case, here's a box of kittens.

The thing I'm most dumbfounded about.....is the almost universal belief held by people against same-sex marriage that civil rights should be voted on.

Couple that with their fear of "re-defining" marriage. Who fuckin' defined it in the first place?

White Christian males. The same people who define EVERYTHING that matters*.

*

The Chris Christies of the country must have an inkling that in 20 years time the history books will remember them as being the people that tried to hold up progress and who were against equality for all.

Its kind of like being against women's suffrage back in the day. I mean they had to have known that sooner or later they would get the right to vote and then you just look like a total ass.

I don't think that at all. I think that they are jelly-spined, change-with-the-wind politicians who will readily bend to the will of the masses they represent.

I think people like Chris Christie are popular because the average American is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging boob

I find it hard to grasp why some people give a shit about what other folks do in their bedrooms. Whatever happened to the good old tradition of minding one's own business?

I think that people need to just chill out and just say the following to themselves, "If people are gay or straight what is that to me? If people who are gay want to get married what is that to me? Its their life not my life. Therefore, its not my problem. If God doesn't like it, I am confident that He is far more qualified than me to sort them out come Judgement Day."