Thanks to a quirk of history, the East River bridges to Manhattan aren't tolled, nor are the outbound Hudson tunnels -- you can drive from Long Island to New Jersey for free if you go through Manhattan. Go around Manhattan, however, and you'll hit tolls of up to $13. The system gives drivers a financial incentive to drive straight through the most crowded, most congested patch of land in the country.

With gas taxes, we make the same mistake: We artificially depress the price of fuel so that the least efficient way to get somewhere -- in this case, a private car -- is also sometimes the cheapest.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has given us an opportunity to discuss this absurdity. On Tuesday, the New York Times revealed the true reason he killed plans for a new rail tunnel from New York to New Jersey. Yes, he was genuflecting before Tea Party deficit hawks, but, said the paper, the decision was actually "more about avoiding the need to raise the state’s gasoline tax."

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Canceling the long-planned Access to the Region's Core rail tunnel project was likely the most high-profile decision Christie made in his first months as governor of New Jersey. The press generally treated it as a tough-but-necessary decision from a no-nonsense politician who was getting serious about the budget. It was actually just an incredibly short-sighted way of getting around a promise not to raise New Jersey's (very low) gas tax. And Christie lied about the reason he canceled the project, according to a study from the Government Accountability Office.

The New York Times has the details of the report today, and in classic Times fashion it is repeatedly calling Christie a liar without using the word. Instead, Christie "exaggerated" and "misstated" his rationales for canceling the project.

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Is he, for instance, refreshingly authentic or just downright offensive? Is he regular-guy fat or too obese to be president? Is he a rare moderate Republican who is at least willing to discuss legalizing gay marriage or is he a standard GOP bigot who is deftly maneuvering to prevent such legalization?

How you answer all of these questions is a matter of political identity -- your answers all but determine where you fall on the larger political map, and in the process, highlight your assumptions about a whole host of issues.

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His body language, tone and diminishing use of "sweetheart" -- not to mention the "oooh" of the crowd -- made me hear it as a blow-job joke, but I didn't exactly trust my interpretation, seeing I hear sexual double-entendres everywhere. Some cleaner-minded commentators have picked up on it too, though: XX Factor's Torie Bosch called it an "oral sex joke" that was "flagrantly demeaning, even misogynistic." Slate's David Weigel, who was present at the event, writes, "I can honestly say that the fellatial joke didn't occur to me at all … it sounded like the 'something' was just the Occupy movement, as in 'you're gonna go down.'" In this case, it seems hindsight was … X-rated: Weigel ends his blog post with, "But now that I think about it ... ."

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Filing deadlines for key early primaries are a few weeks away and the first contests are just a couple months away, meaning that Christie would have had almost no time to build a national fundraising network and a state-by-state campaign infrastructure from scratch. And there would have been all of that uncomfortable scrutiny from conservative opinion leaders -- not to mention his opponents -- over his secret liberal past, particularly on immigration. Plus, he would have been risking everything he has in New Jersey, with a losing national campaign (one that he would have embarked on after a year's worth of adamant, over-the-top denials) making his path to reelection as governor in 2013 even more iffy than it already is.

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Christie said Tuesday he felt an obligation to reconsider his repeated statements he would not make a White House run. Party leaders in recent weeks have lobbied him to re-evaluate that position and he spent the weekend considering a late entry into the field.

He says he wants to remain governor of New Jersey -- but isn't ruling out a future White House run.

If he had run, he would have faced a challenge to quickly assemble a campaign just three months before voting begins.

The blunt governor also told his constituents: "whether you like it or not, you're stuck with me."

His decision means that three months before voting is set to begin, the Republican race remains focused on two men -- former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

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"It's more serious now," Richard Codey, who served as acting governor from 2004 to 2006, said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon. "Definitely. No question about it."

A story in Thursday's New York Post -- written by Josh Margolin, a former Star-Ledger political reporter who is well-connected to Christie World -- claims that urgent pleas from Republican luminaries have helped convince him to rethink his long-standing opposition to running.

Among New Jersey politicos, Codey said, the sense is that "it's more likely that he'd run today as opposed to two weeks ago. When you've got Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and all those Republican bigwigs calling you, saying you've got to do it for the party, you've got to do it for the country -- it's intoxicating. A lot of people would get drunk off that."

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Now Romney's being taunted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who left the door open to entering the 2012 race at his Reagan Presidential Library address on Tuesday night. But Sarah Palin took to Fox the very same night to insist she still might run too. The comparison should wake Christie up to the fact that his public drama is getting close to seeming self-indulgent, not statesmanlike – even a little Palin-like, as the former Alaska governor milks questions about her intent to run for dollars and glory. Christie has to make a decision and stop flirting.

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They will not officially announce the date until Friday, but the Florida House Speaker has said on the record that they are picking January 31. Florida didn't want to allow some other state to supplant its status as fifth in the nation, so they'll just move up to first, knowing the traditional first four will be forced to move their dates to accommodate Florida. (Georgia, in particular, is playing chicken with Florida, waiting for them to decide on a date so he can schedule Georgia's primary for right before.)

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No. 1: "Short of suicide, I don't really know what I'd have to do to convince you people that I'm not running. I'm not running."

No. 2: "And so my answer to you is that I thank you for what you're saying and I take it in and I'm listening to every word that you're saying it, and I feel it too."

No. 1 was uttered in the New Jersey State House last November, one of Christie's adamantly colorful denials that he might seek the presidency in 2012. No. 2 is from Tuesday night, after he delivered an address on national policy at the Reagan Library (!) and a woman in the crowd literally begged him to run for president. In other words, Christie used to be far, far more eager to swat down presidential chatter than he now seems to be.

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"Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed... He is an extraordinary American who is an outstanding lawyer and played an integral role in the post-Sept. 11. period in building bridges between the Muslim American community in this state and law enforcement," Christie told reporters.

When asked about fears that Mohammed could bring Sharia Law into his practice, Christie (who is known for his combative interchanges with reporters) snapped back:

"Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all, it’s crazy!"

Watch a clip of the press conference below:

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Christie's deputy chief of staff, Maria Comella, tells reporters that Christie walked into Somerset Medical Center around 10:30 a.m. He was headed to a bill signing when he began to feel unwell and was driven there by his security detail.

Comella says an EKG, blood work and chest X-ray are normal.

Comella says the governor plans to speak to the media when he leaves the hospital.

His wife, who is at his side, plans to attend their son's baseball game later Thursday.

The 48-year-old governor, who uses an inhaler for asthma, was driven to the hospital by his state police security detail out of an "abundance of caution," said Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak. All indications are the governor will be OK, Drewniak said.

Maria Comella, Christie's deputy chief of staff, told The Associated Press that Christie is "fine and in charge." Close friend and adviser Bill Palatucci said Christie was "getting tests and working from the hospital."

Friends said his wife, Mary Pat, was at his side. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno was in her office at the Statehouse.

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When the Democratic-controlled New Jersey state Legislature approved Chris Christie's plan to radically reduce benefits and bargaining rights for public employees last week, we pointed out that all of the Democratic "yes" votes could be tied to Democratic bosses with whom Christie began cultivating alliances years ago. Democratic legislators with links to these bosses all supported Christie's plan; every other Democrat in Trenton didn't.

Monday night brought a vivid example of what such loyalty to the governor can translate into for these bosses.

In a late-night session, the state Senate fell one vote short of blocking Christie's plan to sell the state's public television station -- NJN -- to New York's WNET. That was the transaction's final hurdle, and NJN's entire staff is now set to be pink-slipped.

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On Thursday, Chris Christie scored by far his most significant victory yet in his war with public employee unions, when the New Jersey Assembly ratified a plan that radically restructures pension and healthcare benefits. In fact, it may be the most significant victory that any governor in the country has scored against public workers.

The legislation raises contribution levels and retirement ages and suspends cost of living increases for pensions. It also bans collective bargaining over healthcare for four years. All told, it will save the state an estimated $120 billion over the next 30 years, at a cost of thousands of dollars a year in additional expenses for the average public employee.

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The incident -- which, the Star-Ledger points out, involves a helicopter that cost taxpayers $12.5 million -- occurred on the same day a group of Iowa Republicans came to New Jersey to visit Christie and try to persuade him to run for president. The paper reports:

Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field.

And to top it off:

Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

The exact time line of where Christie was hurrying from -- whether it was that meeting with the Iowans -- is not clear. His office has defended the use of the helicopter "as the schedule demands." But all of this seems particularly tone-deaf for a politician who has made fiscal responsibility and budget cutting his signature issues.

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New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday he will withdrawal his state’s membership from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) by the end of the year.

"It’s a failure," said Christie. "RGGI has not changed behavior and it does not reduce emissions."

The goal of RGGI — a ten-state cap and trade program — is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2018.

That's from a Daily Caller piece today about Christie, who, while he insists he's not running for president, clearly has national ambitions.

Christie's shifting position on the regional cap-and-trade initiative parallels Mitt Romney's journey on the same program.

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Oh, Ailes is also unhappy about the fact that no one wants to vote for any of the various clowns he hired to be pundits. He keeps begging New Jersey governor Chris Christie to run for president, but Chris Christie is too busy being surprisingly unpopular at home. And according to one unnamed person, Ailes thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot.

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So why hedge? Well, someday -- maybe someday soon -- he may want the support of Kansas Republicans. And sometimes, successful Republican politicians begin debasing themselves to win the votes of far-right rubes well before they begin forming exploratory committees.

Here are some signs that your formerly rational Republican governor (or former governor, or mayor, or representative) might be planning a presidential run:

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But is it really a fantasy?

I've written before about the dearth of white knight possibilities for the GOP. (And the term "white knight" does not apply to Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee (and Sarah Palin, for that matter), who are keeping their distance from the race for right now, and may all end up entering; even accounting for their potential presence, the yearning that York describes endures.) The disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008 took rising Republican stars out of the game and prevented the party from installing promising talent in Senate and gubernatorial posts, from which national campaigns are most frequently launched. But while the Republicans' national bench certainly is thin, it's not empty.

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