Is it lights out for Governor Christie, the Republican Great White Hope?

This is what he said about Bridget Kelly:

Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday fired the top aide who brazenly plotted the crippling lane closures on the George Washington Bridge – insisting he was “blindsided” by the scandal but admitting that ultimately “I’m responsible.”
“I terminated her employment because she lied to me,” Christie said about Bridget Anne Kelly, 41, his former deputy chief of staff during a nearly two-hour news conference in Trenton, adding that he had no “inkling anyone on my staff could be so stupid and so deceitful.”
http://nypost.com/2014/01/09/staffers-head-rolls-as-christie-looks-to-save-neck-over-bridgegate/

She's 41, and virtually unemployable, with a tarnished reputation.
If it's a matter of money, what size would the pay-off have to be to put up with that?
Even with a sizeable pay-off, she would have sacrificed her reputation for his.
Why would she do that?

It's hard to say this, but........
Is it possible that Christie is telling the truth?

 

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Christie is now lawyering up, at taxpayer expense of course. Christie has hired one of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms to represent his administration. The way I interpret this, this law firm would also represent those Christie has fired or are otherwise implicated in this affair. Why does Christie feel the need for an outside law firm if he has nothing to hide? It’s not like the State of New Jersey doesn’t have lawyers on staff.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/16/politics/christie-bridge-scandal/

 

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19 subpoenas.
These people may have been willing to lie for Christie, but they won't all be willing to perjure themselves for him.
Perjury means jail.

If he did orchestrate it, everything will be coming out very soon.
He's toast.

However, if these 19 people exonerate him, then he's innocent of blame.

 

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A fat cat Christie supporter could sweep in and hire her in order to keep her quiet.

 

How much would a tell-all book earn her?

 

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Is this really the end!

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He could yet become the US's fattest POTUS.
(If he fails, he'll be a HIPPO NOT POTUS)

He has been subpoenaed along with many of his staff and re-election crew.
Why it was unexpected, I can't understand.

 

Taft tipped the scales at 300 lb (he even had a larger bath tub installed in the White house after getting stuck in the original.)

Christie was estimated to weight 350 earlier this year, however he had lap band surgery in June and has lost a fair amount of weight and might even already be below that 300 lb threshold. (or at least could be so by January 2017)

Of course, "fattest" is a relative term. I would consider a 300 lb 5' tall person to be "fatter" than a 5' 8'' person of the same weight. Taft was 6' 0'' and Christie is 5' 11'. So, a 300 lb Taft wouldn't be as "fat" as a 300 lb Christie in these terms, (using height-weight charts, I estimate that Christie would have to get under 294 lb to be "slimmer" than Taft).

And then there is frame size to consider. Persons even of the same height can have different sized frames, and this can amount to a 10% difference in what is considered a healthy weight.

Then again, as of late, waist size vs height has become popular in health circles in determining optimum "fitness", so maybe a comparison of this ratio between the two should be used to determine the "fattest" I'll leave it up to someone else to do this comparison for Taft/Christie.

 

For him it's just a political fight. In the end he'll have to resign. It's worse than showing his wang via his dumb phone. Americans need to do a better job vetting candidates. Make sure it's about public service. He's the kind of guy I'd like to see visit the woodshed. Pretty much a sociopath punk.

 

he can say whatever he wants on what he knew and what he didn't know but ultimately, they were his people, he's the captain of that ship and the captain, as far as I'm concerned, should always go down with the ship.

 

Unfortunately in the American system our elected officials are more motivated by money & power than by public service. That is one reason why our current political system is in dire need of reform.

 

He's toast...

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Grumpy

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Morbid Comedy?

Drudge says what many people are thinking, but in the realm of proof Christie can still escape this without prison.

Politically, though even the best-case scenario suggests his presidential ambitions are over, and his career as an elected politician is in its last chapter. I expect he'll land on his feet, with a book deal and a punditry gig, but still ....

When this scandal hit first gear, I heard about it through my ususal sources. On my side of the aisle, the first response was disbelief:

There's been a simmering controversy in New Jersey, which initially appeared a little too outlandish to take seriously. But late Friday afternoon, the story took an interesting turn ....

.... Christie's office characterized the allegation as “crazy,” which was my initial reaction, too. The governor was already cruising to an easy win, and his administration didn't have any incentive to seek retribution against anyone. Christie may be thin-skinned at times, and his most spirited backers can be overzealous, but the underlying accusation seemed to deserve little more than eye-rolling.

That said, the editorial board of the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper, published a piece that called for a broader investigation. Note, for example, that Wildstein, Christie's ally, said he closed the lanes as part of a “traffic study” that doesn't appear to exist and the Port Authority's own traffic engineers never heard of ....

.... It still seems hard to believe anyone would cause massive traffic jams as part of a petty, partisan dispute, but the questions raised thus far haven't received reasonable answers. It's a story worth keeping an eye on.

(Benen)​

And on, what a show they've put on in New Jersey. In truth, I'm striking a posture of generally wilful disbelief until the silver spike is driven through the mouth of this scandal.

"Abigail must be nailed to her coffin, with seven silver spikes; one through each, arm, hand, and knee. And let let the last of the seven be drawn through her mouth, so that she may never rise and cause evil again.

"Who will be the first?"

—King Diamond​

In the end, even if Christie has that valence of separation by which he can say his hands are still clean, his administration and office have handled this scandal so poorly that even if he can drive all the spikes, the spirit of this thing has already destroyed his White House ambitions.

And here's the part that still has me reeling with disbelief: Just like the story of the shockwaves running through Team Romney on election night when it finally became apparent that they were going to lose, it seems almost crazy to suggest that one could reach a certain valence of politics and not know a thing or three about how these things work. Analogously, despite their performance in the Super Bowl, the Broncos don't actually suck. They are, in the end, professional athletes, and Peyton Manning, at the end of the day, is statistically the best quarterback ever. You wouldn't have known it, though, to have watched that game, except of course that it was the Super Bowl and they obviously had to do something in order to get there.

To the other, a governor's mansion is not the White House. While Christie is the latest potential presidential candidate to come from a gubernatorial office, a statewide election is not the Super Bowl of elecotral politics. Christie, widely presumed to have presidential ambitions, is also accused by critics of treating his entire career in public service as a stepping-stone garden, with each office merely fashioned into a rung on his ladder.

This wasn't the big Show. But when we look at the amateurish execution of this bridge closure—who the hell sends such blatant, uncoded messages? and via Gmail?—and now must countenance the proposition that the records for all sorts of other scandalous behavior exists? If we draw the boundary of plausible denial around Gov. Christie, there is still the fact that his administration is shot through with apparent half-witted hacks.

Garry Trudeau once did an awesome "Watergate reunion" strip for Doonesbury ("Huh?" "What?" "¿Que?") that was priceless for its mix of Mack Sennet and Laurel & Hardy. And that's the thing we never really figured out about Watergate: Why hire a bottom-shelf B&E crew?

At some point, the fact of a proverbial weak link in the chain seems self-evident. The puzzling question is who blew the QC on the final product.

The scandal itself is as stupid as could possibly be. But perhaps therein lies the germ of a moral for our story: If you're going to attempt an amateurish political stunt, hire professionals to do it.

I mean, if it was my circles elevated to a governor's office, and we got high enough or whatever to think this was a good idea, we could have done it without leaving a word on the record. Sure, it might track back to a couple of us, but the governor would be considerably more insulated. It's the same difference, to me, as contacting your dealer. You know, the blatant code, the overworked code, the no-code-at-all, or, simply, "You busy? Need a minute."

And maybe not everybody gets the kind of dealers I've worked with over the years, but, you know, just don't text your dealer and say, "Hey, man, mind if I come over and get some DRUGS?"

Who are these jokers that just submarined Chris Christie's presidential odyssey?
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "Chris Christie's traffic jam?" MSNBC. December 9, 2013. MSNBC.com. February 5, 2014. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/chris-christies-traffic-jam

 

Three out of the four of Christie's staff have announced they are taking the Fifth, (i.e. the right against self incrimination) including his former campaign manager. Kelly, another Christie aide, is refusing to turn over subpoenaed materials as well. There sure is a lot of smoke in Christie's office, too much to buy into the notion he didn't inhale as he would have us believe.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ocuments-special-counsel-Bridgegate-case.html

 

Newspaper Regrets Endorsing Christie

¿Ouch?

Tom Moran for The Star-Ledger:

During the fall campaign, the liberal TV hero Rachel Maddow ran a stinging segment ridiculing The Star-Ledger's endorsement of Gov. Chris Christie. How could we endorse him, she asked, when we criticized him so harshly in the same piece? Had we lost our minds?

Not quite. An endorsement is not a love embrace. It is a choice between two flawed human beings. And the winner is often the less bad option.

But yes, we blew this one. When the endorsement ran, I could not get a cup of coffee in the People's Republic of Montclair without my liberal friends taunting me. Back then, I pushed back.

Yes, we knew Christie was a bully. But we didn't know his crew was crazy enough to put people's lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn't know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn't know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.​

Since this whole scandal is already into the realm of the unbelievable, oh, wait, that's the point. It's really hard to take a straightforward swing at Christie on this in part because the dimensions of the scandal seem so unreal. The Star-Ledger, however, endorsed this candidate, knowing his history, but apparently shares the disbelief: "But we didn't know his crew was crazy enough to put people's lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor."

They go even farther than I do; I'm still puzzled that such a job could be worked so poorly. But I don't begrudge them the disbelief; this is insanity.
____________________

Notes:

Moran, Tom. "Chris Christie endorsement is regrettable". The Star-Ledger. February 9, 2014. Blog.NJ.com. February 9, 2014. http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2014/02/chris_christie_endorsement_is.html

 

Well if he doesn't make it as US President, I hear Toronto's looking for a new mayor...

 

Well either Christie is abusing his power or he is incompetent and out of touch, neither is good for his political aspirations.

 

Christie's still a young guy. He's toast for 2016 but he'll be elected in 2020. You heard it here first. See you in six years.

 

If he's elected in 20, then he either knocked out the Republican that won in 16, or the Republican wasn't there in 16, it was a Dem!

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So now that we have that figured out.

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I don't think Christie is guilty, due to the way he reacted to the situation on the first day. If he was guilty, he would have done what President Obama does with every scandal. He would shield and reward those who do his dirty deeds.

In a chain of command, if you order your soldiers to follow a risky order and they obey you, you will protect them for being good soldiers if the mission does not go right. This protection assures they will follow your orders in the future, since the old man is there for them. If you order someone to do a dirty deed and then scapegoat them, nobody will follow you in the future. Obama protects those who follow orders.

On the other hand, if a soldier disobeys orders and embarrasses the commander, the commander has to set an example or else lack of action will send the wrong message to all his soldiers; they can get away with acting outside the chain of command. Obama's actions are consistent with him giving the orders and then protecting his good soldiers who followed the orders. While Christie's actions are consistent with punishing insubordination.

If you look at Benghazi and the book that caused the protest, which was a fabrication, nobody got punished for that. You can't punish those who act like good soldiers and follow orders. Hilary may have followed orders too. Obama rewarded her by allowing her to distance herself.