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Time for some TRAFFIC!

Unabogie said:
For the uninitiated, The George Washington Bridge was inexplicably closed down for four days after the mayor of Fort Lee declined to endorse Christie.Traffic was a mess. Some emails have now emerged that shows the Christie people knew it was a mess and did it on purpose.
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I don't think Christie is innocent in this and it will probably come out soon. On the other hand, he could never have won the presidential race in 2016 anyway. Currently, no top Republican can win.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
:id:


It's not just some employee in the rank and file, it's the deputy aide to Christie. Ie, second in command in his office. And much as Christie downplayed these relationships today, his downplaying is not credible.

Supposedly the guy Christie knew in high school and appointed to a top job was only an acquaintance he never spoke to. Yet the guy was willing to risk his job and reputation, not to mention the legal risks with no more than an email request? And his reply: no questions, just, sure, I know what to do?

It's not ideology blinders here reading the tea leaves, it's ideology blinders needed to believe the tap dance.
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Christie may be disingenuous in distancing himself from senior people on his staff, but I believe him when he says he personally was blindsided by this. Otherwise he would have gotten out in front of it yesterday, instead of today when he already had a full-blown disaster on his hands.
 
barehl said:
I don't think Christie is innocent in this and it will probably come out soon. On the other hand, he could never have won the presidential race in 2016 anyway. Currently, no top Republican can win.
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What will make this interesting for political observers, and no doubt even more challenging to the GOP, is that there will be a feeding frenzy from the right-wing to go after Christie for this. And he is perceived as the most moderate of Republican presidential contenders; it will simply play up the narrative that the GOP is a party at war with itself.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
but I believe him when he says he personally was blindsided by this.
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No, it was payback by Christie over the Helen Hoen nomination. He's known about it since August 12.

Otherwise he would have gotten out in front of it yesterday, instead of today when he already had a full-blown disaster on his hands.
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Not true. Christie has been trying to put out this fire since September. His problem is that he kept saying that he wasn't involved with a "traffic study" so now he has no choice but to claim he knew nothing about it. He is too dumb to realize that his only two options are: A. He is a liar. B. He is incompetent. A few scapegoats aren't going to help.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
Christie may be disingenuous in distancing himself from senior people on his staff, but I believe him when he says he personally was blindsided by this. Otherwise he would have gotten out in front of it yesterday, instead of today when he already had a full-blown disaster on his hands.
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This has been going on for four months. He has done nothing but snicker and stonewall. He has not investigated the trail of authority for the closing. Now he has no interest in knowing Bridget Kelly's reasons for somehow single-handedly closing the busiest bridge in the country or world, just angry and sad that she lied?

He has had the right to look at anyone's emails he wants to for over 100 days. Now he has them thrown at him and he is blindsided? Well yes, but just in that he was surprised to get caught.
 
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Olowkow said:
This has been going on for four months. He has done nothing but snicker and stonewall. He has not investigated the trail of authority for the closing. Now he has no interest in knowing Bridget Kelly's reasons for somehow single-handedly closing the busiest bridge in the country or world, just angry and sad that she lied?

He has had the right to look at anyone's emails he wants to for over 100 days. Now he has them thrown at him and he is blindsided? Well yes, but just in that he was surprised to get caught.
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I'm all for the entertainment value of this, as I've never been a Christie fan, but let's stop saying that the bridge was closed. The busiest feeder routes to the bridge were jammed up (worse than their usual one hour rush hour delays), but the bridge didn't get closed down. As a strategic move, it did just what they knew it would do... it backed up traffic on all the major thoroughfares in the area and played havoc with people's schedules. But the bridge was never closed.
 
While I don't have much love for Christie (even though he's among the best of the possible GOP candidates), this is still a tad overblown. The top dog doesn't do his own dirty work and it is quite likely he stays ignorant of it in the name of plausible deniability, just for this sort of instance. Incompetent? If this incident was the only way to judge that I'd say that it isn't worth any hand-wringing over. Politicians have henchmen. What a shock. He's still a bully though.
 
MattusMaximus said:
And he is perceived as the most moderate of Republican presidential contenders; it will simply play up the narrative that the GOP is a party at war with itself.
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Moderate? Maybe you meant to say that he is only extremely far right instead of psychotically far right?

He vetoed a raise in minimum wage to $8.50/hr.
He opposed raising taxes for millionaires.
He is pro-life and cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
He vetoed gay marriage and tried to stop the court from allowing it.
He claims no link between global warming and hurricane Sandy.
He is so opposed to any gun control that he even blocked a ban that he had asked for.
He vetoed a bill to set up a state insurance exchange.
He underfunded public schools, attacked teachers, pushed for private school vouchers and more charter schools.

I think the closest you could get to anything moderate would be his support for a bill that makes it illegal to give medication to minors that makes them throw up or attach electrodes to their genitals as part of a gay conversion therapy.
 
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Charlie Wilkes said:
Christie may be disingenuous in distancing himself from senior people on his staff, but I believe him when he says he personally was blindsided by this. Otherwise he would have gotten out in front of it yesterday, instead of today when he already had a full-blown disaster on his hands.
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I wouldn't use the word, "blindsided". I agree that when he told the news media the traffic cone joke it suggested he was uninformed about the actual plot.

But there are other issues here besides, "I didn't know". For one, the culture in the office coming from the top had to include one of petty retribution for this to have been conceived. Two, that culture had to have extended to the Port office which carried it out. Three, that one could get this kind of action with a single email suggests a pattern. Four, throwing everyone else under the bus so you can make a clean getaway doesn't scream, "I'm an ethical guy". And five, failing to drop the 'maybe it was a study' is just not credible, not even maybe sort of.

Christie very carefully sidestepped motive for rather obvious reasons.
 
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Tricky said:
While I don't have much love for Christie (even though he's among the best of the possible GOP candidates), this is still a tad overblown. The top dog doesn't do his own dirty work and it is quite likely he stays ignorant of it in the name of plausible deniability, just for this sort of instance. Incompetent? If this incident was the only way to judge that I'd say that it isn't worth any hand-wringing over. Politicians have henchmen. What a shock. He's still a bully though.
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Henchmen? Dirty work? For what end?

The only end here was petty. Petty retribution, not cover up, not voter caging, nothing but petty revenge.
 
Olowkow said:
This has been going on for four months. He has done nothing but snicker and stonewall. He has not investigated the trail of authority for the closing. Now he has no interest in knowing Bridget Kelly's reasons for somehow single-handedly closing the busiest bridge in the country or world, just angry and sad that she lied?

He has had the right to look at anyone's emails he wants to for over 100 days. Now he has them thrown at him and he is blindsided? Well yes, but just in that he was surprised to get caught.
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Perhaps he could have investigated, but he believed what his people were telling him and didn't see the need. I think he assumed this road closing was done for a legitimate reason and had no idea his people orchestrated it as a political vendetta. He would have been more prepared if he had known that. He wouldn't have made the flippant comments that now haunt him, and he would have gotten a statement out much sooner when this started to blow up.

It may be fair to say that this is the result of a cynical and vindictive culture he nurtured within his administration, however.
 
barehl said:
Moderate? Maybe you meant to say that he is only extremely far right instead of psychotically far right?
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I said "most moderate", which is kind of like saying "least crazy"; it's sad to see that the Republican party has come to this.
 
Olowkow said:
My reading is that bridge-gate was very likely a lot like the Watergate burglary. Christie may not in fact have been informed that the bridge was closed as a dirty trick. Nixon probably did not order that particular break-in, but he made it well known that he wanted dirty tricks to be part of his ongoing campaign to defeat any possible "enemy" that would speak ill of him. I imagine that both also told staff that they didn't want to know any details so that they could have plausible deniability.
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One other parallel: Both won landslide elections against their opponents, and hardly needed to resort to "dirty tricks" in the first place.

They were just thin-skinned, and would not let any slight go unnoticed or unpaid-for as a matter of principle.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
Perhaps he could have investigated, but he believed what his people were telling him and didn't see the need. I think he assumed this road closing was done for a legitimate reason and had no idea his people orchestrated it as a political vendetta. He would have been more prepared if he had known that. He wouldn't have made the flippant comments that now haunt him, and he would have gotten a statement out much sooner when this started to blow up.

It may be fair to say that this is the result of a cynical and vindictive culture he nurtured within his administration, however.
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This theory [that he believed his people] is attractive, but has some holes that would need to be plugged with new information. First, the fakery of the supposed traffic study is plainly obvious to any casual observer for the following reasons (just for starters): a) The executive director the PA and the executive responsible for traffic studies testified before the NJ legislature that there was no traffic study; b) Two of Christie's top political appointees to the PA resigned within a few days of each other while this story was unfolding in the press.

It is absolutely incredible to think that Christie would not be aware of the content of these legislative hearings and not conclude that the traffic study that his own appointee alibied himself with before resigning has absolutely no credibility. Furthermore, why wouldn't his understanding of the reasons, whatever it was, as to why his two appointees were abruptly resigning, not have compelled him to take this seriously enough to do a more substantial investigation than to tell his staff they had one hour to fess up or he would assume it's all good.

In short, his blather about traffic studies, and everything else that hinges on it, is blatantly ridiculous. He would have to be stupid to actually believe it.

 
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The election is a long ways away. If he was directly involved, it's over for him. No stone will be left unturned to find if he was involved. If he wasn't, it won't have an impact despite the "liar or incompetent" claim.
 
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