Brilliant. Let me summarize. Christie was mad at New Jersey’s Senate Democrats because they were giving his nominees a hard time, so he decided not to re-nominate one of his close friends, a Republican, yo the judicial bench.
They’re “animals” an angry Chris Christie said about the Senate Democrats, in a hastily called press conference held to explain why he was not re-nominating his friend to the bench. That press conference, where he called the Democrats “animals,” was held on August 12th.
A little after 7am on August 13th, a message was sent from Christie’s office saying, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
The head of the Senate Democrats represented Fort Lee.
We’re still in the middle of this Bridge gate controversy, but already Democrats have released their first ad.
Using Christie’s own words and tying those words into New Jersey’s Bridge-Gate scandal, Democrats manage to paint a very dark picture of what a Christie presidency could be like for this nation.
Governor Christie’s statement Thursday that he fired senior staffer Bridget Anne Kelly after being “misled” about the George Washington Bridge traffic jam has echoes of an episode when he fired his education commissioner more than three years ago.
In August 2010 Christie claimed that his education chief at the time, Bret Schundler, lied to him about a bungled application for $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds. But Schundler fiercely disputed the charge that he misled the governor and quickly showed reporters emails to prove his case.
“The governor called me a liar,” Schundler wrote in a seven-page chronology of events relating to the application. “I have no choice now but to defend my name.”
At the time, a Christie’s spokesman said Schundler was engaging in “revisionist history.”
The dispute occurred when New Jersey lost the first round of the Race to the Top contest by only three points out of 500. The failure to include budget data for 2008 and 2009 in the application cost five key points.
After losing the contest, Christie said at a Wednesday press conference that the state had provided the budget data to a panel of judges in Washington D.C. – and blasted the Obama administration’s “drones” for being too bureaucratic in their rules. But a video released by the U. S. Department of Education the next day proved Christie’s remarks to be inaccurate; the Schundler team did not have the budget data on hand.
Christie fired Schundler soon after the video came out.
Hours after his termination, Schundler showed reporters emails that he sent to the governor’s top staff before the Wednesday press conference; the emails underscored that he did not present the necessary budget numbers to the panel. Schundler told reporters that before the governor’s televised tirade, Schundler had made it “crystal clear” that he did not have the precise numbers with him for the judges’ review.
Christie told reporters back then that the takeaway from the episode was “Don’t lie to the governor.”
Schundler responded that the governor was being “dishonest.”
“The governor is embarrassed,” Schundler added at the time “He looks and blames somebody else. And it’s usually not the misstep; it’s usually the coverup that gets people in trouble.”
Schundler declined to comment Thursday. A former mayor in Jersey City, he now serves as a consultant for a charter school in the city.
A class action complaint has been filed in federal court against top government officials connected to the George Washington Bridge scandal, the Fort Lee, N.J., attorney behind the move said Thursday.
The complaint — filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey by attorney Rosemarie Arnold — takes aim at key players in the controversy, naming Republican Gov. Christie, former Christie aide Bridget Kelly, former Port Authority officials Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, the State of New Jersey, and the Port Authority as defendants.
As a class action suit, the exact number of members has not yet been determined, but according to the filing “includes any and all individuals and business owners” who were inconvenienced or hurt by the lane closures between Sept. 9 and Sept. 13. According to Arnold, the plaintiffs work or live in or near Fort Lee or New York City and are citing economic damages by the lane closures.
The complaint follows a whirlwind week for Christie, who said in a press conference Thursday that he was blindsided by a report in The Record that said that senior members of his staff were connected with the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – A 33-year-old Oklahoma man has been charged with killing his stepfather by giving him an “atomic wedgie,” that caused the victim to suffocate on his own underwear.
Brad Lee Davis was charged with murder in the death of 58-year-old Denver St. Clair in a drunken family fight at a residence just east of Oklahoma City, the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office said in an arrest affidavit obtained on Wednesday.
Police arrested Davis on Tuesday. The affidavit said he “grabbed St. Clair’s underwear and gave him an ‘atomic wedgie.’ Davis allegedly pulled the elastic waistband of St. Clair’s underwear over his head and around his neck.”
Oklahoma Medical Examiner spokeswoman Amy Elliott said the cause of death was asphyxiation and blunt force trauma.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff Deputy Travis Palmer said Davis and St. Clair were drinking beer on the night of December 21 at the older man’s residence when St. Clair began speaking ill about his wife, who is Davis’ mother.
Investigators said St. Clair’s elastic waistband was stretched over his head and that it left ligature marks around his neck. Blood splatter was also found in the kitchen, the living room and on the living room ceiling.
Davis was being held in Pottawatomie County without bond. His lawyer was not immediately available for comment.
The problem for Christie and his “office” is not that they would be perceived to be using the office of governor as petty personal fiefdom. The problem for Christie and his “office” is this.
Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations – including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious – due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough’s EMS department.
The woman later died, borough records show.
And this.
“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel.
Endangering the public safety as “payback” for a member of the opposing party not sufficiently cowing to you would seem to be beyond what a non-sociopath would consider to be reasonable policy.
In a statement released on Thursday, former NBA player and current BFF to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un, Dennis Rodman apologized for the freak show performance he displayed in an interview with CNN.
“I want to first apologise to Kenneth Bae’s family. I embarrassed a lot of people. “I’m very sorry. At this point I should know better than to make political statements. I’m truly sorry.”
Rodman blamed his outburst on drinking, stating that some of the other players he brought to North Korea were feeling pressure from back home and were preparing to leave.
In the game they played against North Korea on Wednesday, Rodman played the first half of the game, changed, then watched the rest of the game with his new best friend, Kim.
First, Republicans had to teach their members how to talk to women. Seems the knuckle – draggers needed some help in that department.
Now, after voting to deny unemployment insurance to the unemployed, another memo has surfaced. This time, Republicans are trying to teach their members how to appear as if they care about the unemployed.
Of course, this too is all a sham intended to fool the American people into thinking Republicans care. But they are not fooling anybody, except the sad folks who watch Fox News.
In the memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, House Republicans are urged to be empathetic toward the unemployed and understand how unemployment is a “personal crisis” for individuals and families. The memo also asks Republicans to reiterate that the House will give “proper consideration” to an extension of long-term insurance as long as Democrats are willing to support spending or regulatory reforms.
A bipartisan Senate bill that would extend benefits for the long-term unemployed cleared a procedural hurdle Tuesday, with six Republicans joining Democrats to vote for it. But the bill faces an uncertain future in the upper chamber, where it will have to clear another 60-vote hurdle before moving to a final vote.
Chris Hayes invited Fort Lee’s Mayor, Mark Sokolich on his show tonight, to get a first hand feel of what his response is to members of Christie’s office shutting lanes to the Washington Bridge, in an apparent retaliatory move against him. So passionate was the mayor, that he openly declared that one of Christie’s main man at the center of the controversy “deserves an ass kicking!”
Christie is denying that he ever knew that his staff did this, feigning outrage at the mere thought of any kind of political retribution, tactics that the governor has perfected during his term in office. The episode shows an atmosphere of thuggery that’s ugly even by New Jersey standards, and its pettiness is surpassed only by how truly unnecessary it was. Christie was going to win the election by a large margin whether the mayor endorsed him or not, but I guess that didn’t matter. Even if we buy the governor’s denials, the atmosphere he’s created in Trenton is more noxious than any SuperFund site. And the Star-Ledger has it exactly right: this is Nixonian and the governor will pay a steep price for it with no EZPass rebate.
We are still at the beginning stage of this investigation and there will probably be more damaging revelations, but my sense is that this by itself will not end any chances Christie has for a national run in 2016 if he was not directly involved. That should either come out or his loyal staff will take the fall for him. Stay tuned.
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