Some heads will have to roll. Whether or not Christie knew about this will be difficult to prove. But the glee in the emails about the closures is deplorable.

Until I see something tying Chris Christie himself to the lane closures (not his 'office') it's all ado about nothing. Likely it was an overzealous staffer thinking she was doing her boss a solid.

Like the people in the PA that he forced to resign, he'll do the right thing and fire this woman as well.

That's what leaders do.

On the other hand, all the Christie haters better not get too gleeful about this, since Fulop's decision to blockade the trucks coming from the Port Authority ship terminal for 'safety reasons', while in a dispute over $400 million he says the PA owes Jersey City, appears eerily similar, causing similar traffic jams. Except that Fulop is tied directly to that himself. If the drive-by media is getting their panties all moist over Christie and cone-gate, then this would warrant similar attention, no?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-sh ... t-christie-bridge-scandal

I'm excited!!

TRENTON ? Gov. Chris Christie's deputy chief of staff had advance knowledge of a plan to shut down local access lanes to the George Washington in September, and was aware that the closures would snarl traffic on Fort Lee streets, according to documents obtained by The Star-Ledger.

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," read an email message from the deputy, Bridget Anne Kelly, dated Aug. 13, nearly a month before the Sept. 9-13 closures, which snarled traffic and sparked a scandal that has drawn national attention.

The email was sent to David Wildstein, the former official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who gave the direct order to the bridge manager close the lanes. Wildstein sent the 7:34 a.m. email using his personal Gmail account, to Kelly's personal Yahoo account.

Evidence of advance knowledge of the closures by one of Christie's close staffers comes despite repeated assertions by the governor that he had nothing to do with the unannounced closures. The governor has also dismissed a legislative investigation into whether the closures were politically motivated as an attempt by Democrats to score their own political points.

Read More:NJ

Here's a link to the emails themselves. Interesting reading. http://dng.northjersey.com/media_serv ... b/port_authority_2014.pdf

Intriguing: I notice that David Wildstein emailed Bridget Anne Kelly on Sept. 7 to say, "I will call you Monday AM to let you know how Fort Lee goes." She responded, "Great. I called you yesterday to talk PATH."

I would really like to know what they were discussing re: the PATH. Could be perfectly innocent, of course.

The fact that the people he really punished were the residents of New Jersey is pretty disgusting. This petty act gridlocked Emergency vehicles and put people's lives in danger. It's one thing to punish a political foe but punishing your constituents? Major #OOPS# up.

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IKR when I read the story I literally LOL he is the biggest..... Lets see how he spins this.

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Indeed. Wow! I'm looking forward to seeing Christie take a fall on this.

I guess I posted to the wrong thread, but I'll say it again - it's always the denials/lies/coverup that brings these guys down. This never should have become anything near the story it has. This isn't going away.

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wow.

Emails Tie Top Christie Aide to Lane Closings, Despite Denials

A series of newly released emails shows that Gov. Chris Christie?s office was closely involved with the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey in September and that officials closed the lanes in what appeared to be retribution against the mayor whose town was gridlocked as a result.

Click link to read more.

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Well then you'll love this:

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/sermons/sotomayorsermon.html

Jeez, that website makes Maplewoodonline.com seem, well, almost sane!

Hey, check out what I posted on Democratic Underground shortly before being booted off the site for.not being Democrat enough: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022629098

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You're right, I'm wrong. I'm quite upset over what Governor Barbara Buono and her second in command/union organizer will do in their first term.


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You know what I mean. You're living in a liberal world and you don't want to admit it. We're winning!

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Er... You do realize that Bush resurrected the Persian Empire by freeing the shi'ites in Iraq? And that now the Saudis are playing catch-up by backing al Qaeda in Iraq which is now fighting in Syria on our side? I guess it's not a tangled web if you boil it all down to a cartoon.

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Single payer has what to do with us having a bi-racial POTUS, or any of the other things you said?

Luckily I can afford concierge type healthcare, so I get same day doctor visits on the rare occasion when I need them.

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Says you. Let's watch.

Would you like to go back to the days when rivers were horribly poluted, a black man dreaming of being a Senator or Governor or President of the United States was a joke, gay men were arrested by the police and had their lives ruined, women lived to berth babies and please men and little more, no prosecution for bankers defrauding the public? (OK, forget the last one. That was silly.)

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Of course. But Syria and the pink line, the nukes in Iran (that even Menendez is ragging on Obama about!), the Egypt situation, his apologies are much worse for our standing in that part of the world.

Single payer will never fly, and while I can't predict what will happen to Obama's 'signature' accomplishment I can absolutely stand behind my statement that

the rich will be able to afford the best healthcare regardless. Like the rich do from over the globe, they all come here for treatment.

Do we think Michael Moore will wait in line in a clinic? I don't. The limousine liberals who want to tell us how to live still take their limo's, their private planes regardless.

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How has it turned out? He's certainly killed a few people with Hellfire missiles. Does that not please you?

For you, Monroe:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/ ... tml?hp=&rref=opinion&_r=0

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Obamacare We
Deserve

By MICHAEL MOORE
December 31, 2013

TODAY marks the beginning of
health care coverage under the
Affordable Care Act?s new insurance
exchanges, for which two million
Americans have signed up. Now that
the individual mandate is officially
here, let me begin with an admission:
Obamacare is awful.

That is the dirty little secret many
liberals have avoided saying out loud
for fear of aiding the president?s
enemies, at a time when the ideal of
universal health care needed all the
support it could get. Unfortunately,
this meant that instead of blaming
companies like Novartis, which
charges leukemia patients $90,000
annually for the drug Gleevec, or
health insurance chief executives like
Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth
Group, who made nearly $102
million in 2009, for the sky-high price
of American health care, the
president?s Democratic supporters
bought into the myth that it was all
those people going to get free
colonoscopies and chemotherapy for
the fun of it.

I believe Obamacare?s rocky start ?clueless planning, a lousy website,
insurance companies raising rates,
and the president?s telling people
they could keep their coverage when,
in fact, not all could ? is a result of
one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care
Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan
implemented by a president who
knew in his heart that a single-payer,
Medicare-for-all model was the true
way to go. When right-wing critics
?expose? the fact that President
Obama endorsed a single-payer
system before 2004, they?re actually
telling the truth.

What we now call Obamacare was
conceived at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative think
tank, and birthed in Massachusetts
by Mitt Romney, then the governor.
The president took Romneycare, a
program designed to keep the private
insurance industry intact, and just
improved some of its provisions. In
effect, the president was simply
trying to put lipstick on the dog in the
carrier on top of Mitt Romney?s car.
And we knew it.

By 2017, we will be funneling over
$100 billion annually to private
insurance companies. You can be
sure they?ll use some of that to try to
privatize Medicare.

For many people, the ?affordable?
part of the Affordable Care Act risks
being a cruel joke. The cheapest plan
available to a 60-year-old couple
making $65,000 a year in Hartford,
Conn., will cost $11,800 in annual
premiums. And their deductible will
be $12,600. If both become seriously
ill, they might have to pay almost
$25,000 in a single year. (Pre-Obamacare, they could have bought
insurance that was cheaper but much
worse, potentially with unlimited
out-of-pocket costs.)

And yet ? I would be remiss if I
didn?t say this ? Obamacare is a
godsend. My friend Donna Smith,
who was forced to move into her
daughter?s spare room at age 52
because health problems bankrupted
her and her husband, Larry, now has
cancer again. As she undergoes
treatment, at least she won?t be in
terror of losing coverage and
becoming uninsurable. Under
Obamacare, her premium has been
cut in half, to $456 per month.

Let?s not take a victory lap yet, but
build on what there is to get what we
deserve: universal quality health
care.

Those who live in red states need the
benefit of Medicaid expansion. It
may have seemed like smart politics
in the short term for Republican
governors to grab the opportunity
offered by the Supreme Court rulings
that made Medicaid expansion
optional for states, but it was long-term stupid: If those 20 states hold
out, they will eventually lose an
estimated total of $20 billion in
federal funds per year ? money that
would be going to hospitals and
treatment.

In blue states, let?s lobby for a public
option on the insurance exchange ?a health plan run by the state
government, rather than a private
insurer. In Massachusetts, State
Senator James B. Eldridge is trying to
pass a law that would set one up.
Some counties in California are also
trying it. Montana came up with
another creative solution. Gov. Brian
Schweitzer, a Democrat who just
completed two terms, set up several
health clinics to treat state workers,
with no co-pays and no deductibles.
The doctors there are salaried
employees of the state of Montana;
their only goal is their patients?
health. (If this sounds too much like
big government to you, you might
like to know that Google, Cisco and
Pepsi do exactly the same.)

All eyes are on Vermont?s plan for a
single-payer system, starting in 2017.
If it flies, it will change everything,
with many states sure to follow suit
by setting up their own versions.
That?s why corporate money will
soon flood into Vermont to crush it.
The legislators who?ll go to the mat
for this will need all the support they
can get: If you live east of the
Mississippi, look up the bus schedule
to Montpelier.

So let?s get started. Obamacare can?t
be fixed by its namesake. It?s up to us
to make it happen.

wishful, I agree-but that was exactly what Obama said his new Arabist policies would be, and look how that has turned out.

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If the Times article correctly assessed the situation on the ground, I don't think it will make a difference or matter. Our 'old school' diplomatic structure (make friends/allies, support the enemies of our enemies, etc.) doesn't seem a good match for running tribal warfare all the time...

I think the new president is going to have to really think outside of the box, and put our diplomatic strategy on an entirely new footing.

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Actually, Pebble - I think the issue linking Benghazi and NJ traffic is the legitimate question of how these events reflect on the character of future presidential aspirants, if they were involved. I'm convinced there was no cover-up in Benghazi, but if this is the type of diplomatic strategy Hillary Clinton is the architect of, what does that say about her fitness to manage it on a larger scale?

And I agree, Pebble, that shutting down a road is petty - abd I would disagree with Monroe that Christie's role has been satisfactorily established - and certainly FDR and LBJ were not above vindictive behavior to their polical enemies, but if Christie had a bigger role in this does it risk casting excessive doubt on his fitness?

Personally, I'm hoping for more candidates to consider who don't bring quite so much baggage me to sort out...

You want me to stop reading the Huffington Post?

But feel free to answer my question.

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Jesus, man. You really do need to read more than one source for your information. Radical Islam hates EVERYONE. They don't trust ANY leader of ANY state that isn't radical Islsm. (By the way, we helped create them to defeat the USSR in Afghanistan. (But you new that of course.)

Who do you think radical Islam, Putin, Syria, the mullahs, and other loonies and miscreants would like least in the White House among those three?

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What fills me with dread is this




against this




and not this:




I've long decided that American politics is little more than a football game. We know who the losers are.

But the bright side is that Vermont opted for a single payer health care system. So good things CAN happen.