I’ve been a bit preoccupied recently.

I am not performing due diligence in updating my local news website
because I am physically just not quite up to it. It even has been quite
difficult to pull my thoughts together to write a column.

To those who may have been counting on me for coverage of something important, I apologize. I’m doing my best to recuperate as quickly as possible.

And, so here I sit on a holiday weekend, when one of the presidential
candidates thumbs his nose at me.

Gov. Chris Christie, according to nj.com, has no plans to pay for security protection during his campaign. He’s going to continue doing what he’s been doing all along — he’s going to let us pay for it.

Christie was quoted as saying the New Jersey State Police will continue to provide a protection detail got him wherever he goes, whether he likes it or not.

So he won’t be picking up that expense and paying for it from his campaign funds, as most other candidates seem to be doing.

I wanted to like Christie at some point. Hell, I want to like everyone in the beginning. I never start out disliking anyone. You pretty much have to DO something stupid or dishonest or evil or criminal or hateful or whatever for me to start disliking you. Unfortunately, it usually continues to roll downhill from there.

So, in the beginning I wanted to like Christie. He seemed tough, hard-core, no frills. But soon he demonstrated that what he was, deep-down inside, is a thug, (Oh, darn! I forgot! Are we no longer allowed to use
that word? Sure, it’s a great word. I’ll use it.)

He’s a bully. He likes to throw his weight around, and that is not a weight joke, it’s a politics joke. He wins power, he throws it around. He never uses it with finesse. He uses it as a club.

He shouts down citizens who try to speak at town meetings just because he can. He tries to chase regular guys who challenge him on the boardwalk.

And why can he do these things? Well, because he has stern-faced state troopers in suits who are there to make sure he doesn’t get into physical trouble.

The ones that you and I apparently are going to continue paying for are paying for, even as he traipses all around the country, outside of New Jersey, hoping to become president.