► Show Top 10 Hot Links

Posts Tagged ‘Chris Christie’

“TrafficGate” Isn’t The Reason Why I’ll Not Vote For Chris Christie, Chris Christie Is That Reason All Unto Himself

by Flyovercountry ( 154 Comments › )
Filed under Elections 2016, Progressives, Republican Party at January 16th, 2014 - 7:00 am

We’ve indeed reached a strange and perilous time in our national identity my friends. Let me say up front, I look forward to seeing many of you in the Marxist reeducation camps. The fervent believers out there who agree with the brave march towards our Socialist Worker’s Paradise, I bid you to enjoy your food pellets, those wonderful messages that the chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams per week from 30, and your never ending war with East Asia.

I could not help but notice that Chris Christie has been accused of purposefully undertaking the single worst act of malfeasance imaginable in the realm of political crime, causing a traffic jam. While I do not ever agree with causing political opponents harm with the full weight and power of one’s political office, let’s place this particular crime in its full context. This bit of nontroversy received generous, nonstop, trumpeted distribution by our main stream media. MSNBC even went the extra mile to give it a full one hour special, in which the entire six seconds worth of actual news about a stolen email in which an aid kinda sorta alluded to possible contemplation of using road construction to bully a political adversary. No where has the aid been shown to have received instruction or permission from anyone else for this heinous act, which has now by the way been given a death toll, something usually reserved for reporting on war or natural disaster.

Now for just a half second’s perspective on this. Anyone who has driven across Pennsylvania can see half of the State’s highways are experiencing traffic disruption, with absolutely zero evidence that any work is being performed, or even being contemplated, complete with those wonderful signs that the whole freaking mess is courtesy of Barack Obama’s Stimulus Program. The answer is yes by the way, the Bamster’s name actually appears on those signs. Now, we’re just getting warmed up in the whole perspective game, so bear with me a little bit.

Let’s just take a little trip down memory lane for a peek into some of the Obama Administration’s shenanigans, which by the way in total, has to date not yet received the same amount of media attention that some lane closures along the New York, New Jersey border has been the beneficiary of. (It’s right about now that the more astute among you might ask, is this the first time in all of recorded history that there has been lane closures in and around the New York, North Jersey area?) Our President has illegally purchased high powered weapons and gifted them to Mexican Drug Lords so that they would be used in high profile crimes. His hope was that the violent crime wave that he fueled would sway public opinion in favor of his abrogation plans for our Second Amendment. In that particular scandal, Two American law enforcement officers sacrificed their lives, all for the political agenda of our 44th President. Eric Holder, our top law enforcement officer, is still ignoring a Contempt of Congress order, for his perjurious statements regarding this scandal. Barack Obama, our President, was implicated in the sale of his Senate Seat using former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as a conduit. He fired US Inspector General’s, any of them who had made inquiries into ACORN, even before the O’Keefe videos, (and weren’t those fun,) broke on the Breitbart website. He ordered the arrest of a private citizen, Nakoula, B. Nakoula, for exercising his First Amendment rights by making an anti-Islamic movie. He did this for the sole purpose of deflecting attention from the root cause of the Benghazi incident, his disastrously naive foreign policy, rooted by the way in the preposterous notion that he had eradicated Al Queda. This represented a dark and evil first for our nation, Mr. Nakoula was our very first political prisoner. That little fact can not be stated loudly enough. During this same incident by the way, he managed to hack into the private computer of a CBS reporter, Sharyl Atkinson, and sent his top advisers to any available camera and or microphone with the explicit instructions to lie about the truth of what happened on that night and what his involvement in that incident happened to be.

Barack Obama has repeatedly taken executive fiat to the next level, completely dictating new law and bypassing the checks and balances proscribed by our national charter. He has shirked his constitutional duty as President by selecting previously enacted and signed legislation to not enforce, all based upon his personal whim. This unprecedented power grab by the way is something that every Democrat and his brother had accused previous GOP Chief Executives of undertaking, even though there was zero evidence that this was the case. In the case of Barack Obama, there’s not only the evidence available to prove this, he’s openly bragging about it in his speeches now. Bill Clinton acted as an agent for the current President to offer Joe Sestak a bribe to stay out of the Pennsylvania Senatorial election in 2010. The last time I checked, bribery was a felony, punishable by several years in a federal penitentiary. He violated the war powers act in Libya. He waged a war without congressional approval, and what’s worse, he didn’t even bother with reporting to congressional oversight once the generous 60 day window had passed. He ignored the specific restraints of the U.S. Constitution as well, which specifically states that only our Congress can authorize a declaration of war. He dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia for voter intimidation, after the prosecution had overwhelmingly proved its case and a guilty verdict had been returned. He continued to pour money into the Solyndra debacle, even after it was made painfully clear that no amount of government largess would save the company. All this by the way so that he could hold his green energy speech from a still opened facility, rather than from one that would have been vacated a couple of weeks prior to his appearance touting that company’s success. Several members of his Administration have been found to have violated the Hatch Act, which prevents government officials from making political endorsements while performing their specific duties related to their positions. Several Government agencies have been caught throwing themselves lavish parties on the tax payers dime, during by the way one of the truly severe recessions experienced since WWII. One of those agencies was the GSA, a part of our bureaucracy tasked with identifying government waste and abuse. Let’s not forget the Pigford Scandal, one that has Barack Obama’s actual fingerprints on it. $50 Billion of tax payers money has been fraudulently disbursed to any Black person who merely claims that they had attempted to farm, whether or not they’d actually ever even seen a farm, as a part of the alleged abuse of the USDA, accused of not purchasing sufficient crops and livestock from Black owned farms in several Southern States. The illicit payments had two effects. One, it was a direct rip off of the taxpayers, as most of the money went to people who were never farmers, nor even dreamed of being farmers, and two, it diluted the payments to those who actually were farmers in the South and may have actually been injured by the USDA. (The case never went to trial, so we’ll never know if our government was guilty or innocent.) This by the way was why Andrew Breitbart was looking into the activities of Shirley Sherrod when that whole kerfuffle blew up.

Kathleen Sebelius has been caught blackmailing several insurance industry executives as a part of the new Obamacare Law, using threatened enforcement of the law as a means to secure political contributions. Eric Holder signed a search warrant to investigate a journalist working for Fox News, James Rosen. In the warrant, Holder went to the lengths of naming Rosen to be a co-conspirator in a case that saw information which proved malfeasance on the part of the Obama Administration leaked to the press. It was also learned as a part of the Rosen investigation, several AP reporters were also targeted and spied upon by the Obama Administration. The President used the IRS to target and harass political adversaries during both the 2010 Midterms and the 2012 Presidential Election. Donors to GOP candidates were audited at a rate that precludes random activity, and conservative PACs were effectively shut down. One of his top IRS appointees, Lois Lerner, actually invoked her Fifth Amendment Rights in lieu of giving testimony.

This last one was made even more troubling this week as the FBI has officially stated that there’s nothing to see here, even though the context of invoking Fifth Amendment rights in lieu of testimony is in itself a declaration that at some level, a crime had in fact been committed. Perhaps this has more to do with a puzzling statement made by the FBI last week, in which the once formidable investigative agency declared that law enforcement was no longer their mission. Apparently you see, in the age of Obama, NASA is no longer a space agency, it is a Muslim Outreach Agency, and the FBI is no longer a crime fighting agency, it is now another spy organization. All of this has happened with nary a peep from our supposedly independent free press.

Don’t take this as a defense of Chris Christie, we’ll get to him soon enough. I just wanted to highlight the collective insanity of our nation, so easily manipulated by the hypocrites feeding us our news. While Chris Christie’s possible, and by the way no where near even connected to it yet, behavior of purposefully slowing down traffic in the jurisdiction of a political foe may rise to the level of creepy, it pales in comparison to the malevolence of the man who should be the most accountable person in our nation. Nobody died because of Richard Nixon’s crimes, which by the way wouldn’t even register as noticeable in today’s world. Barack Obama’s foray into felonious behavior can be directly linked to at least six deaths, all of whom died solely for his political convenience.

Here is why I will not vote for Chris Christie. This particular photograph is from the Sunday prior to the 2012 Election. Bear in mind, before you say what’s wrong with him looking out for his state and his constituents, that the Governor of New York, who experienced the very same hurricane, had the good sense to tell the President, don’t come. “We don’t need the hassle of a Presidential visit on top of all of the other problems that we’re experiencing right now.” I have no time for a turn cloak who purposefully sabotaged the efforts of someone who befriended him and actually gave him a keynote position in his nominating Suarez.

While I applaud Chris Christie’s effort and success in taking on the corrupt and powerful public unions of his state, he is no conservative. His positions on the Second Amendment are something that I would hate to see in the White House. He is a big government nanny state Republican, with the same exact Northern Liberal cred as we’ve seen all to much of recently from the party purportedly on the political right. He will oppose the bulk of the free market principles that are so vitally important to the future success of our nation, (this by the way is my personal pet issue.) He will oppose free trade, and turn the other way in terms of preventing illegal immigration. (Notice those of you about to explode, I emboldened the word illegal, as in legal immigration is something that I believe we should encourage.)

Once again, the Trifecta crew gets it right. Give a listen if you’d like.

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.

Karl Rove: still an establishment idiot.

by Phantom Ace ( 1 Comment › )
Filed under Progressives, Republican Party, Special Report at January 13th, 2014 - 2:33 pm

Guest Blogger: Doriangrey


In typical Karl Rove fashion, Karl over reaches to understand conservatives response to “Bridgegate”.

Karl Rove: Christie’s handling of this Bridgegate thing could give him “street cred” with tea partiers

“Mr. Rove has grown so controversial among some conservatives,” the NYT wrote recently, citing GOP sources, “that candidates worry that donors will not contribute to a super PAC if it is connected to [Rove’s group American] Crossroads.” You trust a guy in that position, whose personal brand is now sufficiently toxic among righties that it can alter fundraising battle plans, to have a sharp read into the thinking of tea partiers, don’t you?

On the other hand, he’s not totally wrong. I noticed over the weekend how conservative media, including columnists, are starting to pay attention to the amount of coverage Bridgegate got in its first flush versus the coverage Obama’s IRS scandal received initially. No less a tea partier than Palin, while noting that what Christie’s team did is “atrocious,” was quick to add that his sins pale next to O’s. That’s the key to damage control for him on the right: Play up every available contrast with Obama, from the gravity of Obama’s misdeeds to the partisan skew in media coverage to the quick action he took to punish the guilty staffers versus Obama’s reluctance to fire anyone. He’s past the point of earning any “street cred” with conservatives but pointing out their common enemies on the left will naturally make some people on the right more reluctant to use Bridgegate against him.

Problem is, he can’t follow that strategy yet. It’s still too early, and the scandal too shady, for Christie to shift into victim mode now. Case in point:

New documents related to a traffic jam planned by a member of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) staff show for the first time how furiously Christie’s lieutenants inside the Port Authority worked to orchestrate a coverup after traffic mayhem engulfed Fort Lee last year.

Inside the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Christie’s top appointees neglected furious complaints from Fort Lee’s police chief as well as from angry rush-hour commuters. One woman called asking why the agency was “playing God with people’s jobs.”

The Republican governor’s appointees instructed subordinates to stonewall reporters who were asking questions. They even ordered up an actual “traffic study” to chronicle the impact and examine whether closing the lanes permanently might improve traffic flow. The study’s conclusion: “TBD.”

Let’s not be confused or deceived about Karl Rove. Rove is a moderate pragmatist. He is utterly and completely ruthless in achieving his end goal. His end goal is Republican majority of the government by way of statistical analysis to achieve a straight forward numerical superiority. Rove is not a conservative and conservative values do not concern him in the slightest, he is a moderate, middle of the road, Republican. The candidates that he chooses to back (with the exception of those who are TEA Party candidates which he won’t back for any reason anywhere) are those whom the polling indicates have the greatest probability of getting elected. There is of course more to it than straight poll results, he also calculates potential political support and campaign funding raising capabilities into his equations. But there it is right there in a nutshell, Rove is a by the book numbers guy.

Because he is not a Conservative, he doesn’t understand (nor does he care to) the conservative position on most issues. Karl Rove, like 90+ percent of all professional politicians considers pretty much everything to be negotiable. I won’t say that Rove is entirely without principals, morals, or ethic’s. It would on the other hand be fair to say that his moral’s, ethic’s and principals are not the same as the average conservative, nor are they as nonnegotiable as the average conservatives. This is why Rove has such problems with the conservative community. Most conservatives see Rove as untrustworthy, devious, and backstabbing, but worst of all, of being a liberal Rockefeller Republican Establishment enforcer.

What Karl Rove (and Hot Air’s Allahpundit) do not, and probably never will understand is that Chris Christie is never going to gain any TEA Party street cred. Sarah Palin did not come out in support of Christie, not even a little bit. What she did, was to point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Fifth Column Treasonous Media regarding the amount of coverage given to “Bridgegate” and to subtly reprove those on the right who were allowing themselves to be used and manipulated by both the Fifth Column Treasonous Media and the Clinton machine. Chris Christie is an obstacle to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential ambitions (As perceived by the Clinton machine). Nothing more and nothing less. The whole “Bridgegate” scandal, nothing less than a campaign to leverage Christie out of Hillary’s way.

The liberal Rockefeller Republican Establishment would love a candidate like Christie or Jeb Bush. It is their belief that moderate (read establishment elitist’s here) have the greatest mathematical probability of winning. Their calculations are predicated on name recognition, establishment political support and fund raising capabilities. They are counting on party loyalty to force the conservative base to pull the lever for their chosen candidate rather than the conservative base actually liking or wanting whomever they chose. This is exactly why their candidates continue to fall short on election day, because unlike the Democrats, who obediently pull the lever for whomever the Democrat establishment tell them to, a significant percentage of the Republican conservative base will not vote for a candidate just because that candidate is a registered Republican.

Karl Rove and his ilk maintain, that what they erroneously believe to be a negligibly small percentage of Conservative Republicans in the Republican base who will not vote for candidates that they do not like, will be canceled out by the number of independents attracted by their liberal moderate establishment candidates. So far, this has not proven to be the case, nor is their any indication that it will become the case any time in the future. If anything the number of individuals self identifying as independents appears to be growing as record numbers of conservative republicans desert the Republican Party because they feel betrayed and abused by the GOP Establishment.

Chris Christie may be a near perfect Establishment candidate, but he is nearly universally despised among conservatives and especially among TEA Party conservatives. Christie is never going to gain any TEA Party street cred or support, TEA Party conservatives simply are not going to hold their noses and vote for him. If the GOP establishment insists on running Christie or Jeb Bush or any other liberal Rockefeller Establishment elitist, then the Democrat candidate is all but assured victory. This is the GOP establishments blind spot, like the Democrats, they believe that leadership of the GOP is their divine right, it is a “Right” they would rather see the Republican Party burned to the ground, rather than surrender.

More importantly, as one looks at the record number of conservative republicans fleeing the Republican Party and identifying as Independents, it is exactly what the self anointed elitist Republican aristocracy is in fact achieving, the destruction of the Republican Party, not simply from within, but from the leadership down. News Flash to the Karl Roves, the John Boehnor’s, the Mitch McConnell’s and all the other asshole Establishment self anointed elitist Republican aristocracy, the base of the Republican Party is not loyal to the party, but to the principals, moral’s and ethic’s that supposedly the Republican Party endorses. This is why the base isn’t supporting you, this is why we are deserting you, because we are not as stupid as you think we are, we know that you are lying to us, that you are only paying lip service to sharing our principals, ethic’s and morals.

(Cross Posted @ The Wilderness of Mirrors)

Would you rather win with Chris Christie or lose with Ted Cruz?

by Mojambo ( 350 Comments › )
Filed under Barry Goldwater, Conservatism, Elections, Elections 2016, Hillary Clinton, Libertarianism, Mitt Romney, Politics, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, Tea Parties, The Political Right at November 12th, 2013 - 2:00 pm

There is an element on the Right obsessed by purity that is more than happy to lose elections if they lose with the right candidate. Losing is for losers and just like there are no moral victories in the NFL (sorry to tell you that Jerry Jones)  there are no moral victories in politics. For those of you threatening to “sit it out” in 2016 if you do not get your perfect candidate remember this – people who are on the Right who think differently than you do are also capable of sitting it out too if the wrong guy or woman is the nominee. If the  choice is between Hillary Clinton (or Elizabeth Warren) and Chris Christie  I am on the fat mans bandwagon.

by Bernard Goldberg

Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny.  They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, “The Elephant in the Room.”  Get it?  Elephant.  Christie.  Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time’s executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way:   “Well, he’s obviously a big guy.  He’s obviously a big Republican.  But he’s also done a really huge thing here this week.”

The “huge thing” wasn’t only winning re-election as New Jersey’s governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state – not just to his conservative base.

But, hey, no harm no foul.  Time isn’t even a newsmagazine anymore.  It became a liberal journal of opinion a long time ago.  So you can just hear those wild and crazy journalists at Time sitting around the conference room table giggling about how they’d get away with their fat joke because, well, in the world of politics,  the word “elephant” isn’t a synonym with “fatso.”

But do you think the gang at Time would ever say Barack Obama is a “dark horse.”  In the world of politics “dark” doesn’t mean “black,” right?

Time’s cover doesn’t necessarily mean that Chris Christie is the GOP frontrunner for 2016.  It’s way too early for that.  But it does help make him the flavor of the month.  […….]

Besides, he’s a favorite of liberal journalists, not only because he’s got a big mouth which makes for some interesting quotes, but also because he’s not the most conservative Republican out there.  For the same reasons they despise Ted Cruz, they adore Chris Christie.  For now.

But if he becomes a serious threat to one of their all-time favs, Hillary Clinton, the so-called mainstream media will turn on Christie with a vengeance.  They hated Goldwater and Reagan while they were alive, painting them as crazy right-wing ideologues.  When they were dead, they became good conservatives – to contrast them with every other conservative who was still breathing.

It’s a good bet Christie will run.  And if he does, he’s charismatic enough to cause the Democrats some sleepless nights.  But Christie’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.

Christie can win in a deep blue state like New Jersey because he’s not a hard right Tea Party type.  That means he can win the support of women and minorities – crucial to winning a nationwide election.  But the hard right sees him as the latest incarnation of John McCain and Mitt Romney – two moderates who lost.

Chris Christie can attract moderates and independents that would give him a shot in swing states that Republicans must win to take the White House.  He could win Florida and Ohio and North Carolina and Colorado and New Hampshire, and maybe even Iowa and New Mexico.  But he might not be able to win his party’s nomination because it’s conservatives who make up the majority of primary voters, and they – at least as of now – don’t want a Chris Christie.  They want a Ted Cruz or a Rand Paul or some other candidate who can’t win a national election despite what they think.

What the hard right needs to understand is that if they really want change, first they have to win elections.  I know it sounds obvious, but it’s one of those obvious facts the Tea Party never seemed able to grasp.  They picked a bad candidate in Nevada a few years back when a good candidate might have defeated Harry Reid.  And they picked a candidate in Delaware who had to go on TV and tell everyone that she’s not a witch.  She also lost.   [……]

The Tea Party folks are very proud of the fact that they stand on principle.  Bulletin:  so do less hardline Republicans.  But the hard right calls everyone to the left of Ted Cruz a RINO, a Republican in name only.  The Tea Party won’t like this, but the real RINOs are the Tea Party people.  They’ve been very clear that their allegiance is to pure conservatism, not to the Republican Party.  Yes, my right wing friends, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and the others on the far right are the real RINOs.

Because I want Republicans to win, let me offer two pieces of advice.  The first to Chris Christie:

Don’t pick a fight with your own base, the conservatives who at the moment don’t really like you.  As Ross Douthat puts in his New York Times column: “As a would-be nominee, you have to woo base voters, not run against them, and make them feel respected even when they disagree with you.  This doesn’t mean muzzling yourself, or pandering to every right-wing interest group.  

[…….]

In other words, fight the temptation to go along with liberal journalists who believe the GOP is a party of right-wing morons.  Don’t get drawn in by their phony admiration for you.

The second piece of advice is for the Tea Party and other purists on the right.  If it looks like Chris Christie can win, jump on his bandwagon.  Give him your support.  And do you best to be passionate about it. If you don’t, you’ll have up to eight years of Mrs. Clinton.  No matter how you feel about Christie, he’s a lot better than another liberal Democrat, right?

The answer to that last question is obviously yes.  But true believers sometimes don’t think rationally.  I’m cautiously optimistic that Chris Christie could win in 2016 (although cautiously hopeful may come closer to my real feelings).  But I’m pessimistic about his chances of winning the support of his own party.  Fundamentalists – political, religious or any other kind – don’t like to bend.  Sometimes I think they’d rather lose than compromise.  Rush Limbaugh, after all, can barely get the word “compromise” out of his mouth without gagging.  To him, compromise is caving in.  He’s a lot like Barrack Obama in that respect.

And so the real elephants in the room are those purist conservatives who will have to decide how badly they want to win.  It’s still early, but I fear too many of them would rather lose with Ted Cruz than win with Chris Christie.

Read the rest– Be honest: Would you rather win with Chris Christie or lose with Ted Cruz?

 

2013 Election Open Thread

by Phantom Ace ( 76 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Election 2013, Progressives, Republican Party, The Political Right at November 5th, 2013 - 7:19 pm

Billdeblasio

This thread is an open to discuss the elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City. If polls hold, The Democrats are set to pick up the Governorship in New jersey with the corrupt Terry McAuliffe. In the New York Mayoral Race, Marxist Democrat Bill de Blasio is set to win. Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the Corpulent Guido is poised for a big re-election win.

An interesting note, take a look at the colors in the Bill de Blasio poster. He has the Old colors of the Soviet Flag. Coincidence, I think not!