Fat man, small person

[Junior]

http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html?mobile=1&ic=1&iphone=1

 

Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock.

The messages are replete with references and insults to Fort Lee’s mayor, who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election and they chronicle how local officials tried to reach the Port Authority in a vain effort to eliminate the paralyzing gridlock that overwhelmed his town of 35,000, which sits in the shadow of the bridge, the world’s busiest.

The documents obtained by The Record raise serious doubts about months of claims by the Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor’s top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough’s access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta—a notion that Christie has publicly denied.

 

 

 

That might put a damper on his presidential plans.

[carlfense]

Good lord . . . how petty can he be? Punishing the residents of a town because their mayor didn't endorse him?

 

Stupid.

[StPaulHusker]

Could have been worse. He could have eaten all of their food.

[Conga3]

That might put a damper on his presidential plans.

 

Thank God.

 

---

 

Has anyone heard if criminal charges could be brought against him?

 

I'd have to think it'd be illegal to use Port Authority resources this way and since it's a joint New York/New Jersey organization it'd fall onto the FBI/Attorney General Holder to investigate/prosecute.

 

It might be hard to convict and it might not be Christie who technically did something illegal...I dunno.

 

Hmmm?

[StPaulHusker]

He's a politician. Nothing ever happens to them.

[Conga3]

He's a politician. Nothing ever happens to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_James

 

18 months in jail.

[rawhide]

Kinda like usin' the IRS ??

[Junior]

Kinda like usin' the IRS ??

 

Yea, like that. If that had happened. But it didn't. So... not like that at all.

[rawhide]

But how do you know Christie knew anything about it.

 

Obama doesn't know anything of substance. Line in the sand. You can keep your insurance. blah, blah you know.

he flops on the deck like a freakin' tuna. Like any other politician that gets caught saying or doing the wrong thing.

 

And of course you're saying the IRS didn't target conservative groups??

[Junior]

But how do you know Christie knew anything about it.

 

Obama doesn't know anything of substance. Line in the sand. You can keep your insurance. blah, blah you know.

he flops on the deck like a freakin' tuna. Like any other politician that gets caught saying or doing the wrong thing.

 

Wait, I thought you were talking about the IRS "scandal". Now it's Obamacare? Quick!! Change the subject to something that might stick.... BENGHAZI!! AHHHH!

 

On the IRS "scandal", read:

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/08/how_the_media_outrageously_blew_the_irs_scandal_a_full_accounting/

 

The first few days of the IRS scandal that would consume Washington for weeks went like this: Conservatives were indignant, the media was outraged, the president had to respond, his allies turned on him … and only then, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released the actual report that had sparked the whole controversy — in that order. It’s a fitting microcosm of the entire saga, which has gone from legacy-tarnishing catastrophe to historical footnote in the intervening six weeks, and a textbook example of how the scandal narrative can dominate Washington and cable news even when there is no actual scandal.

While the initial reports about the IRS targeting looked pretty bad, suggesting that agents singled out tax-exempt applications for Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, the media badly bungled the controversy when supposedly sober journalists like Bob Woodward and Chuck Todd jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst from day one. Instead of doing more reporting to discover the true nature and context of the IRS targeting, or at least waiting for their colleagues to do some, the supposedly liberal mainstream press let their eagerness to show they could be just as tough on a Democratic White House as a Republican one get ahead of the facts. We expect politicians to stretch reality to fit a narrative, but the press should be better.

 

And they would have gotten away with it, too, had their narrative had the benefit of being true. But now, almost two months later, we know that in fact the IRS targeted lots of different kinds of groups, not just conservative ones; that the only organizations whose tax-exempt statuses were actually denied were progressive ones; that many of the targeted conservative groups legitimately crossed the line; that the IG’s report was limited to only Tea Party groups at congressional Republicans’ request; and that the White House was in no way involved in the targeting and didn’t even know about it until shortly before the public did.

 

But you know, don't let facts get in the way of a good witch hunt. Darrel Issa sure didn't.

[Conga3]

The IRS thing is still under investigation, isn't it?

 

That doesn't mean anything except we don't know if the IRS was used as a political tool by outside influence - or simply failed internally to not be stupid.

[Junior]

The IRS thing is still under investigation, isn't it?

 

That doesn't mean anything except we don't know if the IRS was used as a political tool by outside influence - or simply failed internally to not be stupid.

 

 

But the the GOP really lost its media buy-in when Issa refused to release the full transcript of his interviews with IRS agents. Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of Issa’s oversight committee, released the transcripts himself, which revealed that a self-described conservative Republican ordered the targeting. Matthews concluded the scandal was nothing more than people trying to do their jobs and screwing up (something many of us were saying from day one). Todd said Republicans were “overplaying their hand” and that it was “a bureaucratic scandal,” not a political one.

 

In the beginning, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted, “The idea then was to create an atmosphere of scandal, in hopes of getting the press to place each and every new fact about the unfolding stories into that framework, with no sense of balance or perspective about how significant each new piece of information really was. That worked for a time, but GOP scandal overreach really did produce a media backlash of sorts.”

[Junior]

And of course you're saying the IRS didn't target conservative groups??

 

Yea, pretty much didn't happen.

 

http://thehill.com/b...y-groups-at-gop

 

The Treasury inspector general (IG) whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans.

 

A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.”

 

The inspector general’s audit found that groups seeking tax-exempt status with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their name did receive extra attention from the IRS, with some facing years of delay and inappropriate questions from the agency.

 

But top congressional Democrats have wielded new information from the IRS this week that liberal groups were also flagged for extra attention on the sorts of “be on the lookout” lists (BOLOs) that also tripped up conservative groups.

 

EDIT: In fact, if anything about the IRS "scandal" is actually scandalous, it would be the way Issa has tried to manufacture a scandal by selectively ordering a report to show only facts that he wanted to show, then wasted countless tax dollars holding hearings about this manufactured scandal, and refused to release the transcripts of those hearings to the public.

[StPaulHusker]

My comment about a politician getting away with crime was a joke. Sorry I got everyone mad each other. Group hug?

[carlfense]

EDIT: In fact, if anything about the IRS "scandal" is actually scandalous, it would be the way Issa has tried to manufacture a scandal by selectively ordering a report to show only facts that he wanted to show, then wasted countless tax dollars holding hearings about this manufactured scandal, and refused to release the transcripts of those hearings to the public.

Yeah . . . you'd think that they'd catch on . . .