Aquarian Weekly
11/9/16

FINAL THOUGHTS ON ELECTION 2016
Rogues, Insults, Sexual Assault, FBI Investigations & Treason

There are a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle who are celebrating the end to this tumultuously outrageous bedlam that has been the 2016 presidential campaign. I am not one of them. In fact, I am bummed. Truly and completely.

For a political junkie, and someone who has either obsessed over and/or covered these things for decades, the past 19 months have been a glorious ride. The very core of our nation’s grand experiment has been revealed and it is all the things it should be – ugly, petty, furious, passionate, covered in bullshit and innuendo and propped up by shameless greed and the kind of illusions and denial that make this nation the finest example of the human condition known to civilization.

No matter what you say about or think of Citizen Donald J. Trump, he has revealed us. Since the first horde of European land-grabbers stormed the Eastern shores of what would come to be known as North America under the flimsy guise of religious freedom, no one, at least in my lifetime, has embodied our spirit more. What beats inside us is the essence of horror. Its black, soulless innards transformed a minor colonial invasion into a world power, and it bubbles inside the very foundation of a Trump candidacy. He is our Columbus, our John Smith, our genocide and our Manifest Destiny. He is confederacy and Oklahoma City.

And no matter where you fall on the side of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she has revealed our system as a gorging monolith of corruption and hubris. She has shown us, well, Wikileaks, the Russian government and the NY Times has shown us that there are indeed two Americas, and a great many of us are not privy to the more affluent, powerful and sustainable one. The one we inhabit has never known a candidate. This candidate does not exist on this side of the tracks. We are led to believe it does, but it is a fantasy and we live in that fantasy as any J.R. Tolkien character.

It is this ghastly kind of pure, honest beauty that I will miss when everything more or less settles back in and the money takes over and the machine of government grinds again undeterred by what transpired here.

But this has been some ride, huh?

Right now we choose the leader of the free world from a sexual predator with a shadowy business past and the most incoherent ideology possible and a lifer politician with more secrets and shenanigans up her sleeve than even the most rancid of her kind. There have been worse candidates, only, I dare say, no more blatantly flawed ones on Election Day.

It is hard to believe that Madam Shoo-In has survived two FBI probes, possible treasonous secret servers that could well have compromised national security and a weird conflict of interest between her state department and a private multi-million dollar foundation in her name. Then again, her opponent has bragged about and been accused of sexual assault over a dozen times, has treasonous ties to the Russian government that has hacked into our political system, not to mention openly questioning the structural integrity of our democracy while simultaneously undermining a crucial strategic battle conducted in Iraq led by U.S. troops by erroneously pointing out the country he hopes to lead is losing and stupid and wrong.

All the while the Democratic National Committee systemically swayed the primary vote away from what they deemed an unelectable elderly socialist Jew, leading to the firing of its chairman and formidable accusations of rigging. The Trump campaign has fired two of its managers, one for assaulting a woman reporter and the other for his ties to the aforementioned hostile Russian despot that the candidate not only heralds but repeatedly denies national security findings of wrongdoing in influencing the election in his favor.

Trump says Clinton is being secretive, but, despite telling us how much of an economic wizard he is, refuses to release his tax returns. Clinton accuses Trump of being unfit for the presidency, when she could easily be impeached within her first 100 days. Trump calls Clinton corrupt, while he is being sued for two wildly fraudulent “foundations” and some sham university that have all been run like a racketeering mob front. Meanwhile Clinton, whose cash-rich machine hammers her opponent relentlessly in a phalanx of TV ads painting Trump as a negative hate monger. Trump calls Clinton a liar, when nearly everything he says is at best an unintelligible falsehood and worse still, blatant lies.

It is this ghastly kind of pure, honest beauty that I will miss when everything more or less settles back in and the money takes over and the machine of government grinds again undeterred by what transpired here.

Former Democratic Bill Clinton has called his party’s Affordable Care Act “the craziest thing” and one-third of the Republican Party, including many of its most powerful players, has called Trump everything from a con artist to a mentally unstable megalomaniac.

The press had gone off the rails. Cable news networks have turned into de facto fronts for both campaigns – MSNBC airs stories on whatever Clinton needs to win, as in lately the barrage of anti-African American concerns about voter suppression and the dismissal of Black Lives Matters by Trump, and FOX News continues to be an absolute joke with one of its night-time hosts directly advising the Trump behind the scenes while transforming an hour of news time every evening into infomercials. CNN has gone complete nuts hiring former aides to both campaigns and putting half-mad debris you’ve never heard of to literally scream at each other about jailing opponents and having the others deported.

How am I not going to miss this?

I’ll trade this in for threats to shut down the government over some nonsense you can barely pinpoint and veiled attempts to curry the favor of the Latino vote with bad plans on overhauling immigration?

Could we just let both of these lunatics lead us into the 21st century?

Please.

We promise to eat our vegetables, burn our books, salute some cloth and continue to believe we have a damn say in any of it.

But please don’t let this end.

Please.

Aquarian Weekly
11/2/16

REALITY CHECK

James Campion

SCOTT GARRETT’S INTIMIDATION MACHINE VERSUS ME
Humorless NJ Congressman Sics Local Police on Lil’ Ol’ Journalist

After last week’s column, the Scott Garrett campaign has waged war on the Reality Check News & Information Desk.

Its candidate, a humorless shit-heel, has not only ducked my challenge to a fair fight, he has stooped to having his surrogates contact the poor, overworked Newton Police Department, so they can take valuable protect-and-serve time leaning on me. To be fair, the cops were only doing their due-diligence and I do not blame them. In fact, I know they would never say it, in order to appear objective, but I got the distinct feeling from the conversation that they thought the entire ordeal shear madness.

And so, for the record, since this pussy is shaking in his booties and considers my good work “harassment’, I hereby humbly rescind my challenge.

I am sorry Little Scotty. I promise to no longer “harass” you in print or on the phone or in emails or any other place journalism is practiced. You get a free ride to ply your bigotry unhindered.

However, this space shall not now or ever be intimidated by the likes of you or anyone in this government.

As stated last week, pal; you are messing with the wrong scribe.

First off, it would seem the congressman of New Jersey’s Fifth District, my district, is not only a shameless bigot, but he is unfamiliar with satire, which seems odd for someone so rich in characteristics to satirize. He also displays a complete misunderstanding of the concept of the First Amendment. I would venture to say from his actions this week that he is a vehement opponent of this nation’s most sacred rights granted to us by the creator God and the United States Constitution.

To wit: After my selfless volunteering in print last week to administer Mr. Garrett’s long-overdue ass kicking, I took it upon myself to follow up with several emails to his campaign office in Newton, New Jersey. Since the challenge was done with tongue firmly set in cheek – as if I have to make mention of that after nearly two decades of this – I thought it incumbent on me to seek comment from the candidate.

Journalism 101.

Come on.

Alas, there was no comment forthcoming, so I let it go until the piece hit the streets and speak for itself.

If you have not read SCOTT GARRETT NEEDS AN ASS KICKING, I suggest you do so, and unless your brain is made of guacamole, under five years-old, unfamiliar with the English language as a form of communication, or Scott Garrett, then maybe it offends or even shocks you. For the rest of us, it is business as usual here at The Desk; where our souls are hearty and voices lift us higher against the injustices of blah-blah-blah, bullshit-bullshit-bullshit.

Listen, whatever nonsense was in that column, it was written about a public figure, a political public figure who by the way is MY congressman and I presume wants MY vote. And, for that matter, one who has been in this arena for many years. How he has gotten this far with this thin a skin is anybody’s guess, but I think I might be right to question his ability to handle the rigors of this gig or really any gig in the public arena if he cannot take some ribbing from an alt-weekly columnist.

This is especially galling when said columnist not only reached out to confront his subject of derision – unlike most gutless swine who display their rage at rallies by shouting out horrible shit or making signs with horrible shit to lift in crowds or whip off tweets and blogs under assumed names. I am indeed willing to face the music any time any place. Not to mention my putting all of my vitriol under my byline, posted forthwith with pride as a member in good standing of the Fourth Estate. And, to be fair, I do print here monthly the most heinous attacks on my personage in Reader Responses without fail.

Consistency and guts, Mr. Garrett, this is how we do things here in the Fifth District.

Whiners need not apply.

And even if any of what I wrote last week was remotely serious, I was challenging to fight this idiot, not break into his house and beat him senseless. All he had to do is decline. To me. Directly. Like a man. Hiding behind “harassment” and wasting the police’s time trying to frighten me is as petty a response as possible.

How he has gotten this far with this thin a skin is anybody’s guess…

At least in the late ‘90s when I went toe-to-toe with Rage Against the Machine those bastards had the guts to hit me straight on. It would be an honor to go another ten rounds with them right now.

To be certain Garrett understood my aim here, I called his campaign offices, a public establishment, mind you, in Newton, NJ this week to formally make my plea. NOT a private residence, like my home, which the Garrett Campaign calls incessantly without retribution. Until last week, of course. During said phone call, I cordially offered to have the congressman pick the arena – a school gymnasium, open field or a back alley – for our controlled and officiated donnybrook. I also offered to have Channel 12 televise it and sell tickets to give the proceeds to Gay Rights or Planned Parenthood.

But Garrett chose to call the cops and threatened to press charges for “harassment”.

One phone call to make a simple request of my representative is harassment now?

May I offer; this is what is wrong with this country and its congress, with its 12 percent approval ratings. Can’t one man challenge the other to bare-knuckled justice anymore? What manner of man not only ducks this, but then sics the police on another?

Come on, man. Grow a pair and get a joke.

Maybe it’s time to get back into the reality of the private sector, sir.

Yeah, I think that’s it.

Hope these sinking poll numbers are correct.

Time to go, Scott Garrett.

You can’t handle this.

Aquarian Weekly .
10/26/16

REALITY CHECK

James Campion

SCOTT GARRETT NEEDS AN ASS KICKING
I Volunteer

I normally do not write about local politics in this space, despite the fact that this publication is printed in New Jersey and is sold around the tri-state area. Ironically, the few times I have delved into the Garden State weeds it has been picked up nationally. My rocky but ongoing association with the Huffington Post is a prime example. It began many years ago after I basically framed the entire state as a quagmire of Mob corruption. They loved this and begged me to blog and then kicked me out after my now infamous Ted Kennedy eulogy. Then asked me back when I berated them for ignoring the Trump campaign as “entertainment”. But, to say the very least, the whole “Mob corruption” meme did not go over well at the Jon Corzine offices, where I routinely received death threats, and subsequently had some knuckle-dragger who drives fat-ass Chris Christie around throw the butt-end of an Italian bread at my head.

So, to spend a thousand or so words on my local congressman is something of its own story.

Okay, full disclosure; I want to find Scott Garrett, Republican from the 5th District, my district, and beat him senseless with my phone; the same phone robo-called three times a week by his boil-wretched offices to either invite me to listen to some insipid digital town hall or to come out and vote for his pitiful ass. I would not care at this point if Garrett supported every single bizarre, radical, far outside the bounds of human decency issue I hold dear. He dares to call my house, in the evening, when I am hanging with my daughter and blasting the Ramones. Thus, he needs a beating and I need to give him one.

Then, for reasons only known to my caffeine abuse, I really fucked up and Googled this cretin.

Now, I do not believe most of the articles I’ve found on Garrett in the “lame-stream media”, but to be brutally honest, I find myself just southwest of horrified that this bald turd has represented anything to do with me, even if it is ancillary political nonsense.

First off, Garrett, it turns out, is a friggin’ world-class, Grade-A bigot. He is proudly anti-gay, steeped in religious falderal. He reeks of hatred. It steams from his pores like cat piss in the sun and it has apparently gotten so bad the boatload of Wall St. money that has kept this parasite sucking on the public teat since 2003 has run for cover. Most notably, the powerful PNC and UBS banks have sacked him with extreme prejudice.

In the wake of this moolah exodus, Garrett received $145,000 of campaign cash from some shadow fascist organization called The Campaign for American Principles or The Ass-Face Butt Plugs For Jesus, which have been running ads in support of Garrett. According to NJ.com, the group’s founder and head Ass-Face, the pride of Princeton University, Robert George (never trust a man with two first names) has allegedly said he hoped the super PAC would pressure candidates to “come down on the side of religious liberty, of the sanctity of human life, of marriage as the conjugal union of husband.”

My wife is always telling me we are a stone’s throw from Bum-Fuck, but this is ridiculous.

What year is this and where do I live?

I did not set up camp less than 35 miles from Manhattan to have William Jennings Bryan conducting Scopes Trials under my nose.

All this research on Garrett further revealed a Politico report I missed last year where he told fellow Republicans in a closed-door meeting that he wouldn’t pay his dues to the National Republican Congressional Committee because the organization supported gay candidates.

He reeks of hatred. It steams from his pores like cat piss in the sun…

Processing this, I decided the best recourse to my bubbling hate and rage was to drive up to the end of the main Compound here at the Clemens Estate and publicly urinate on his campaign signs, before kicking them onto Route 23. Sipping Hendricks and drawing on a fine Cuban, I watched as pick-up trucks driven likely by his toothless constituency ran over them. It was a good day. And I plan on doing it again, if any of his zombie-eyed goose-steppers set foot near our Free Thinking country hamlet again.

But, if that wasn’t alarming enough, I made the mistake of driving past a giant billboard on Route 17 near Mahwah last week, which heralds in ten-foot letters that this brainless shit-stain is the only NJ representative to vote against banning federal spending for national cemeteries flying the confederate flag.

I Googled that.

Guess what?

Bald Turd strikes again.

Why would Garrett do that? He claims free speech. And no more sympathetic ear can he find for that, but I ask again, why would he do it? And why would anyone in this state not named Goober, Bookie or Weenie vote for this creep?

Is there a groundswell for treasonous fans of slavery in NJ? And if so, why wasn’t I notified?

Not since the Hitler Youth Camps were kicked out of Sussex County in the early-1940s has a more embarrassing level of misbegotten bottom-feeders been better represented in Washington D.C.

I have no idea who Garrett’s Democratic opponent is, or what he stands for, and it is very possible I disagree with most of if not all of it, but Josh Gottheimer is human, which is more than can be said of my new sworn enemy.

And as far as I can tell, he does not need an ass-kicking. Scott Garrett does.

I would like to administer it.

Fists at dawn, Garrett. You and me. No NRA. No Wall St. geeks. No RNC slugs.

You and me.

**Warning to all future candidates of District 5; you had better be careful whom you interrupt at home whilst they are hanging with their daughter and listening to the Ramones.

I thank you for your support.

Aquarian Weekly
10/19/16

AFTER TRUMP
What Will Be Left of the Republican Party When Trump Loses?

Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!

Series of Donald Trump Tweets – 10/11/16

The end game for Citizen Donald J. Trump has begun in earnest, and it is ugly, spiteful and completely nuts, but do not be fooled; it is not without method.

As covered nearly two months ago here (LAST GASP FOR CITIZEN TRUMP), the hiring of Breitbart CEO Stephen Bannon meant that soon there would be blood. And after a short dip in the polls for Hillary Clinton in September, followed swiftly by inarguably the worst debate performance ever, its gory aftermath, and now the subsequent complete and total implosion of his supposed campaign, the time has come.

Trump has, in his words, “taken off the shackles”, going nuclear on every corner of the American body politic, from its standing institutions, its constitutional structure, the national press, of course the Democratic Party, the Clintons, and now even fellow Republicans, specifically Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

After the historic mass exodus of prominent Republicans fighting for their down-ballot lives on October 7 (the day of the “grab her pussy” video release) Trump, egged on by Bannon, whose entire alt-right operation has had a hard-on to destroy the current GOP establishment since 2010, has unleashed the exit strategy – blame, pillory and deflect. There will be no losing; only victimization from the elites who have stolen his prize.

Of course, this is all well and good for the Breitbart brand, the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh’s drug dealers, and Jerry Falwell jr’s hooker habit, but where do Republicans go once the insurgency of the Citizen Trump movement shifts from a cult of personality to the core of its ideology?

It needs to be pointed out that for all its blessed wackiness (thank you, Donald, from the bottom of this mostly bored political junky’s heart for stumbling in and entertaining the hell out of all of us), this is indeed a movement. It is real and it is relatively strong, about 33 to 40 percent, and maybe a little more had the candidate not been a stark, raving, crazy man, who is likely a sexual predator.

Still, there is a groundswell for what Trump represents. And as pointed out in this space since September of 2015, the candidate was only part of the story; a story the press rightfully leapt on as ratings gold and Trump exploited in his most media savvy machinations, but one that was merely a sidelight. The other, more lasting story is the fact that the system is fucked and rigged and skewered away from the ordinary citizen and run by lifers who could not give half a shit about what your needs are. People with money and influence make things move, while you get all riled up every four years and cast your little vote and bitch and moan. But it is a charade. The real shifts in the body politic come from time and culture exploited by those who make a living doing this shit.

And while Trump has further exploited issues that aren’t really monumental – illegal immigration, law and order, and some weird things about Muslims, there are real, pressing issues with trade deals and the death of manufacturing, ignoring the failures of 9/11, the Iraq War, and even the Benghazi affair, which the alt-right blew by failing to ask the key question, distracted as they were by trying to bring President Obama in 2012 and then Clinton down before the 2016 election season: Why was there a secret CIA operation being conducted in a U.S. Embassy situated in a war zone and was that mission to arm potential enemies of the United States?

The other aspect of the Trump fallout will be how the party deals with the obligatory accusing of its establishment – the aforementioned Ryan, RNC chairman Reince Priebus, and the host of gratuitous and hypocritical hacks that only jumped ship once the candidate began sinking in the polls – for the defeat. That’s coming. Believe it.

..but where do Republicans go once the insurgency of the Citizen Trump movement shifts from a cult of personality to the core of its ideology?

Well, if the somewhat lukewarm to outright revolt from establishment/elite Republicans and their media outlets after the Access Hollywood tape that put the Trump campaign on life support is any indication, it will be away from a base-oriented struggle to a more of a centrist/electable national party. This means a revision of the post-mortem conducted by the RNC after its 2012 defeat; a renewed outreach to minorities, a serious contemplation to engage in a comprehensive immigration plan, a rejection of science-deniers and a more flexible embrace of environmental issues, most notably the existence of climate change and how decades of pollution has altered it, and a kibosh on religious cultural nonsense like an attack on Planned Parenthood and marriage equality.

But what of the 35 to 40 percent who wants closed borders, no international free trade, extreme vetting, zero environmental regulations, the eradication of Planned Parenthood, and a modern police state? Who “deals” with them?

Speaker Paul Ryan’s feckless teeter-totter “support” of the party’s ticket is a grand example of the difficulty in walking this tightrope. It ended up the following Monday teetering out of the Trump business, thus abandoning a third of his party, which has given Bannon the hammer he needs in Trump to make it personal and thus blood sport. Trump has already added to these diatribes dressed up as stump speeches that there is a “sinister deal between the Democrats and Ryan” to demolish the movement. The collateral damage of which will be on VP Mike Pence, the heretofore “values candidate”, whom I assume has designs on remaining a viable cog in the party machine once this doomed run is over. Where does he end up in all this?

No matter the size and scope of Trump’s defeat in a few weeks, the party will have to “deal” with his constituency, which is real and unflinching and now really, really pissed that it has been set adrift by the keepers of the GOP keys; and if the Breitbart conspiracy model is any hint, it is going to believe it was duped and ripped off and ready to make mincemeat out of anything that reflects a non-Trump world view.

Aquarian Weekly
10/5/16

REALITY CHECK

James Campion

THE JOKE’S OVER
Donald J. Trump – Myth Buster Busted

The concept of the Donald J. Trump run for presidency remains the same today as it did the day before his epic fail during the first of the scheduled three presidential debates this past week: He is still the political grenade that has been celebrated in this space since last September when it became almost certain that he would have an impact on the 2016 race. His candidacy is still very much needed to shake the foundation of an irritatingly stagnant, systemically biased, and mostly broken political landscape that allows for creatures like Trump to emerge. But after what I witnessed for over 90 minutes on September 26, the idea that somehow this outsider business mogul cum reality TV star could actually be a viable chief executive of the largest economy and most powerful military on planet earth is kaput.

I am writing this for my well-informed, educated, and politically savvy friends, family and colleagues, who are Trump supporters, who have made salient arguments for his candidacy for months now. Those who are not the deplorable; you know, racist goobers, who think the Chinese, Mexicans and Muslims are stealing their jobs and their country is ruined by darkies and think pinching women’s asses and calling someone a Negro is their God-given right and that gays are going to hell and that the gun is a proper substitute for their penises can stop reading now – if, in fact, you do read.

Those 90 minutes in front of a record 84 million viewers has eradicated any and all plausible reasons why Trump could govern anything at any time with even the remotest efficiency, never mind be president. And this does not mean he is disqualified. Not as long as our list of presidents include Andrew Jackson or James Buchanan or Richard Nixon, but as debates will do, and should do, the veil as been lifted on this particular canard.

This was the political equivalent of Milli Vanilli.

Anyone under 40 please Google that.

The emperor was stark naked.

There was no beef.

Al Capone’s vault was empty.

Remember when Trump said he had proof Barack Obama was not an American citizen, and then he didn’t have anything? This was that. Remember when Trump said his casino would change the economic landscape of Atlantic City, and it didn’t, and then he closed it? This was that. Remember when Trump said the USFL would be the prominent professional football sports league in America and it was soooo not? This was…you get it.

Trump not only shat all over that stage that night, he illustrated in every possible way everything the well-informed and politically savvy opponents of his candidacy have argued against him. He could not have been more ill-prepared, unhinged and clueless. Worst still, he showed no signs of being able to defend himself or launch a cogent or even coherent argument against a vulnerable opponent. To wit: When accused of not paying taxes, he agreed with this sentiment, and then said he was smart to do so, pretty much mocking the rest of the tax-paying nation and in turn dismissing the most fundamental aspect of our democracy; you know, the taxation/representation bit.

But perhaps his greatest crime, besides being woefully unaware of the activity and assignment that he was presented months ago, he failed to broach many of his most ardent points for his being there in the first place; building a wall at the southern border of the nation, for one glaring example.

There were moments when Trump looked and sounded like he was either drugged or had just woken from a grandpa nap. And although there were reports for weeks that he was arrogantly unmotivated to prepare for the thing (his campaign said he was “the Babe Ruth of debaters”, that is if it is the ten hot dogs and sixteen beers before the first inning Ruth we’re talking about) and had never actually debated anyone (fourteen people speaking for two minutes and standing around for fifteen minutes while other people talk is a showcase, not a debate), this was as if he was shocked to be there and asked questions.

Sure, everyone expected Trump to blurt out the most blatant misinformation possible, like ISIS being in 30 countries, and the crime rate in NYC being up, or not admitting to his own quotes about climate change or supporting the war in Iraq. And, of course, he would insult women, misunderstand the plight of inner city black youth, break records for non sequiturs, do the pout thing, and exhale “Wrong!” at every turn. But his repeated defense of unconstitutional laws, excusing Russia (AGAIN, what’s the deal with that?) against evidence that the country has been hacking into his opponent’s servers, and an alarming confusion on how the nation’s nuclear triad works is beyond inexcusable.

The great negotiator and winner of all mano-a-mano tests got schooled. Badly.

But none of that really matters for those of us who see Trump as a symbol and not a legitimate candidate. Who didn’t think Hillary Clinton wasn’t going to beat him in a debate; a woman who over prepares for everything and has the minutest detail of every morsel of minutia that passes her desk? However, with her penchant for condescension and unable to connect to non-politicos and the usual creepy Clintonian stuff that gets in the way, this observer was sure it would be a beating, but not the annihilation we witnessed.

Here is where the joke is truly over for Donald Trump; your candidate is supposed to be tough (he was steamrolled) excellent at one-and-one negations wherein he dominates and makes people pay for walls and restructure trade deals and cower from his mighty presence (he lost every tussle that night save for four minutes on trades deals and that was a layup). Trump was so utterly subjugated by his opponent there were times I felt sorry for him. Then he got angry and started referencing Rosie O’Donnell, his 10 year-old kid, and a 400 pound hacker. The great negotiator and winner of all mano-a-mano tests got schooled. Badly.

The entire “Believe me” and “I got this” and “I’m the only one who can fix this” shtick was turned into a gooey mess of nonsense.

This was the most important chance yet in this election season for your candidate to at least display the very tenets of his purpose for running as “a movement” – he “wins”, “all the time”, and “big league”. He lost, severely and embarrassingly; looking petty, and stupid and overwhelmed. He became the caricature of his worst personality traits and proved the fears people who do not like him and are afraid of him have; a guy who woke up six days ago – not fourteen months ago – and decided he’ll try this president thing.

It would be as if Clinton showed up that night with a phone in her hand told people to give her a minute while she checks her private server for classified info she can send to her friends, who helped her cover-up the Benghazi attacks and then shifted their money over to a secret slush fund through the Clinton Foundation.

Trump may be an effective tool to mock the system, show Obama and Clinton and the progressive left that this country is not changing for the worse, and he may say things you think and appear like he could be an entirely new and effective president in an age when trust in politicians and their institutions are at a new low, but Donald J. Trump as a serious candidate for president is a joke and that particular joke is over.

Aquarian Weekly
9/28/16

TIME FOR CHRIS CHRISTIE TO GO TO JAIL
Obstruction of Justice, Perjury, Abuse of Power

Time for our governor to go to jail.

He won’t.
But he should.

It is apparent now, as the so-called “Bridgegate” trial begins, that for whatever the motives, or who may have been directly responsible for, and what eventually resulted from the fallout of the illegal George Washington Bridge closing of September 9 through September 13, 2013, the governor of New Jersey knew about it. Whether he cultivated it through a general atmosphere of tactical, systemic bullying or a direct edict, or whether he heard a joke about it in his Trenton offices or maybe knew the next day or even two weeks afterwards, Chris Christie, in fact, knew.

This is the complete opposite of what Christie has told investigators and the public for two years over several press conferences, TV appearances, and ass-kissing Trump-fests. We call this in the biz “obstruction of justice” with a possible dollop of perjury thrown in for good measure. It also implicates him for the first time in a court of law for what the Port Authority deemed a “threat to public safety”.

Seems as if Christie’s own quote of “abject stupidity” by his staff now falls squarely in his ample lap – where it rests nestled next to his boyhood friend, a squirrely little shit named David Wildstein, one of the most notorious political attack dogs on the always rancid Jersey circuit. Wildstein has sung his song to the prosecution and will soon drive the stake in Christie’s back and bury the governor of New Jersey.

Of course, Wildstein, who has already pled guilty to federal crimes, is fingering everyone in sight for immunity from his years of malfeasance in service to Christie’s political fortunes. The investigation has revealed that the governor routinely referred to his personal Igor (a man he told reporters he “barely knew”) as “The Cleaner”, or “Winston Wolf”, the mob cover-master played by Harvey Keitel in Quentin Tarantino’s masterwork, Pulp Fiction. Michael Baldassare, the lawyer for defendants Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly, who are also taking the fall for these half-assed shenanigans to allegedly punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for failing to endorse Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election, called Wildstein “a miserable prick” in court in a torrent of abuse aimed at throwing the blame upwards.

And the only further up the prick you can go is Christ Christie.

Now, like the recent pass the FBI gave Hillary Clinton’s national security clusterfuck, the prosecution has left Christie out of legal harm’s way for now, concentrating on his surrogates, Baroni and Kelly, and using Wildstein to lay the hammer down. No one in Christie’s administration thought his old high school buddy would sell them out, but once “a miserable prick” always a “a miserable prick”, and now the boot-kicking shoe is on the other foot and it is aimed at the Sunday spread over at Drumthwacket, where the noose tightens.

Amid prosecutor Vikas Khanna’s opening argument this past week was the following; “The evidence will show that Baroni and Wildstein were so committed to their plan to punish Mayor Sokolich that during those precious moments they had alone with the governor, they bragged about the fact that there were traffic problems in Fort Lee, and Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned.”

A video from this moment exists; showing Christie and his boys laughing and whooping it up like something out of The Sopranos. Good times.

And here we are only a couple of years later, and one is likely going to jail, and other may send the governor into impeachment hearings.

Now the boot-kicking shoe is on the other foot and it is aimed at the Sunday spread over at Drumthwacket

According to Middlesex Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the leader of the N.J. Legislature’s 2014 investigation of the bridge scandal, there has already been “serious discussions” on proceeding on such a measure due to “a confluence of individuals who are all saying the governor wasn’t telling the truth.”

Of course this is unlikely to happen for one clear political motivation; Chris Christie is a doomed man, anyway. His approval ratings hover around George W. Bush-like 26 percent and his lapdog obedience to the Trump campaign (the GOP presidential candidate is far below his national average in this state and some 15 points behind Clinton) has made him look desperate and silly. Moreover, Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey Kim Guadagno is far more popular and would give the Republicans the only chance to retain the seat of executive power in next year’s election.

In other words, business as usual in the Garden State, where politics is akin to blood sport played by bottom-feeders.

The chief bottom-feeder is the governor and he should go to jail for it.

But he will not.

And he will not be impeached.

And if by some miracle Donald J. Trump should find himself president, Christie will likely become Attorney General of the United States.

And judging from the rogue’s gallery that has held that position over the past forty years, it is fitting.

Aquarian Weekly
9/14/16

THE GARY JOHNSON FACTOR
Libertarian Candidate’s Mighty Wrench

Full disclosure: I voted for Gary Johnson, 2016 libertarian presidential candidate, in 2012, and I will likely do it again. This is not stirring news for those familiar with this space, as stated before, since 1980, my first year of voting at 18, I have only cast a ballot for a major party candidate twice; 2000, for George W. Bush, as an anti-Gore vote, and 2008 for President Obama, because of generational affinity. But this is not a column about why anyone else should vote for Johnson or to endorse him. This is to point out that he is affecting the landscape of this election unlike anyone since Ross Perot in 1992 and again in 1996.

This has less to do with Gary Johnson than his two national party candidates.

Famously, or infamously, if you happen to be a fan of George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole, Perot unquestionably skewed the numbers that eventually elected William Jefferson Clinton twice with less than 50 percent of the national vote. The independent candidate in ’92 received nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, an unprecedented number, which was a reflection of his polling 39 percent that summer before he ceremoniously quit the race under some cloud of paranoia and fear of the Clinton Machine. In 1996, as a Green Party candidate, he garnered a still impressive 8.4 percent of the vote. In neither election did Perot, a fiscally conservative, anti-government business man, (sound familiar?) nab a single electoral vote, but he certainly pulled enough from the Republican candidate to usher in two Clinton administrations.

Gary Johnson is not playing on that kind of lofty pedestal… yet. Right now, depending on the poll, the libertarian is hovering around eight to nine percent of the popular vote. In some states, however, much more important than this popular vote nonsense (ask Al Gore about that), he is gobbling up 12 to 15 to even 18 percent. Most of that, it appears, is Bernie Sanders cast-offs and some conservatives either in the brushed-aside Ted Cruz camp or those distrustful of a Republican candidate who a mere two years ago was giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to his opponent and the foundation he now gratuitously attacks as corrupt.

What is not up for debate is Johnson’s effect on a pretty sizable percentage of normally Democratic voters; young people to be exact. While Clinton has cornered the market on minorities and women, she is woefully behind in a key demographic of the famed Obama Coalition that helped elect him twice in overwhelming electoral victories. This youth voting block potentially makes up 31 percent of the electorate, but historically, including in 2012, only 46 percent manage to actually vote. Millennials are the worst culprits of this. They have voted less than any previous generation; however a huge portion of them voted for Bernie Sanders and are showing no signs of voting for either major party candidate.

Although a July poll (before either candidate’s conventions goofed up the polling) showed Madam Shoo-In ahead among under-30 voters by 35 points, she is now around 20 percent. But the same polling indicated that Gary Johnson was pulling in a third of the youth vote, mostly under 20 – the “legalize pot, stay out of stupid wars I might have to fight in, and what’s with all the gay bashing and anti-pro choice shit?” vote). This is slightly less now, but still impressive. It should be pointed out – and to be fair there was no viable third-party candidate either time – Obama dominated the youth vote by twice as much as his Democratic successor.

Any way you slice it, Gary Johnson is a factor in 2016, which is why he should be allowed to debate on September 26, something, not ironically or coincidentally Bernie Sanders has fully endorsed.

This is important because this is the only voting block Clinton has left to exploit. The Never Trump Republican movement, many of whom, as mentioned above, are either trying to run a Mormon third-party guy, escaping to Johnson, or writing in Wendell Willkie, has peaked. The fact that Trump is only holding three-quarters of his own party, where the last GOP nominee, (who you might have heard, did not win) had 96 percent is as alarming as it will get.

What is not up for debate is Johnson’s effect on a pretty sizable percentage of normally Democratic voters; young people to be exact.

Polls that have tightened in late August/early September have mostly done so in a wave of anti-Clinton sentiment, as discussed last week, due to new evidence of shenanigans over at the Clinton Foundation, the State Department, Big Bill’s secret hideaway bungalow, and other unexplained phenomenon, while Trump’s immovable ceiling has remained between 42 and 44 percent at its peak and in the high 30s when he has Twitter wars with celebrities and says U.S. generals suck and for some interesting reason begins hinting at things he “feels” during highly classified pre-election briefings.

Speaking of faux pas, and a rather enormous one, this week Gary Johnson did not know what the hell, never mind where, Aleppo, Syria was. This is in the wake, mind you, of the usual media deluge of coverage of a refugee crisis that has been plastered all over the news and the Internet for months, and more recently this week. For informed voters and news-nuts and the media brethren, this glaring fuck-up far outweighs an obviously overwhelmed simpleton vice president in 2008, who knew less about anything than probably anyone running for elected office, trying to name something she reads. And that is saying quite a bit.

But you know what? This is not going to matter to most of Johnson’s libertarian voters, namely me, who wish they didn’t know what Aleppo or any festering boil in the Middle East was. In fact, this is the final charm of Gary Johnson, who, now that Trump has announced he wants annex Iraq in perpetuity to pillage oil from a sovereign nation that we’ve pummeled into ally status, is not interested in the least in what is going on anywhere but here.

Although, Jill Stein is looking awfully good right now.

Wait, goddamn it! Did she just get arrested?

Screw it.

Kanye West 2020!

Wait…