Meanwhile, in New Jersey, GOP Gov. Chris Christie is convinced that Bridgegate is over and that it will have no effect on his future political career, "zero", because "I didn't do anything". That was Wednesday. Today he's dealing with his former campaign manager confirming Christie knew about the lane closings well in advance.
Gov. Chris Christie’s former campaign manager says he told the governor about plans to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge in December, contradicting Christie’s claims he had no prior knowledge.
Bill Stepien, who lost his job in the scandal, contends he told Christie about the GWB traffic plans on Dec. 12, a day before the governor told reporters his staff didn’t know about them. Christie issued a public apology on Jan. 9, claiming he was lied to by members of his staff on the controversy. Stepien’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, blasted an internal investigation the governor ordered that concluded Stepien had misled Christie about the politically motivated September closures.
Oops.
So he lied to reporters, lied to his staff, lied to New Jersey, and lied to America. Any wonder that Christie's 2016 prospects are fading fast? He's in fifth place now, behind Mike Huckabee of all people.
That bridge is collapsing. Fast.
What else would expect from an old school shyster pornographer? Hookers
ReplyDeleteand blow don't pay for themselves, and a quarter billion dollars of
Silicon Valley billionaire cash doesn't go as far as it used to.
But,
as the hysterical ninnies keep squealing, it's not about what an
asshole Glenn Greenwald is. No, it's about what an incompetent
non-journalist he is despite/because of his years blogging and making
the shouty face on the Twittertwat machine. A competent journalist
would have dug into story after Snowden dumped all the documents into
his lap, researched the communications and national security aspects
that he so obviously has yet to comprehend, and released a series of
logically coherent and impeccably sourced articles that would have
compelled the American People to rise up and demand reforms from their
Congress.
Instead we got a relentless dribble of sensationalist
overstatements that flattered the paranoid preconceptions of the
pissypants left but failed to stand up to the least bit of critical
scrutiny. Normal America rightly concluded "what the hell is this
crap?" and went back to watching Duck Tragedy or whatever passes for
entertainment these days, leaving those of us who have been praying for a
quarter century for the political will to enact necessary, balanced,
and effective reforms of the national security state to wail and gnash
our teeth with anguish over the squandering of another generation of
effort.
If I could punch one dirty hippie in the throat and leave
him with a message to pass on to the others, it would be "We live in a
National Security State not a National Surveillance State: big
difference, learn to appreciate important subtleties."
Republican shit does not even float.
ReplyDeleteBreaking News: Marcy Wheeler is out at The/Intercept, no juicy details about why.
ReplyDeleteAs near as I can tell, we live in a National Surveillance State: one where the government watches, but is too buried in data to take effective action. When we start seeing arrests of the folks who hacked the Target point-of-sale machines, or the folks who install ransom-ware malware on people's computers, I'll start believing in a National "Security" State.
ReplyDeleteShow trials of low-level folks who were tricked by agents provocateur into committing crimes doesn't make me feel very secure. It feels more like the security folks are generating easy arrests to boost their popularity while ignoring real threats (because fighting real threats would take significant resources).
We see this in the "War on Drugs" - low-level folks on the edges of the trade are targeted, kingpins (especially those cooperating with the CIA on occasion) are left alone.
Now that is interesting: what I gather from your comment is that we
ReplyDeleteappear to be using the same words in completely different ways, kind of
like the old self-image vice self-esteem controversy.
My beef is with the paranoiacs who fantasize that the NSA hacks into
hundreds of millions of unoffending computers in order to watch random
people masturbate. Their policy prescriptions, in so far as they have
any, are totally at odds with the legitimate need to protect our
communications infrastructure from the serious and on-going attacks by
foreign (and domestic, for that matter) organizations. A concerted
effort on the part of the NSA to catch the Target gang would have the
squealers taking up arms to shoot people over the outrage to our civil
liberties.
The War on (some classes of) Drugs (used by
some classes of people) is an ongoing disaster that needs to be shut
down yesterday, for a whole bunch of very good reasons. And the CIA
should be chained in the basement and never let out; I would prefer to
kill it, but the undead can never die. But this conflation of the NSA
with the CIA with the DEA with the FBI drives me to distraction, for if
we do not aim our fire at the proper targets then we are certain to fail
disastrously in our efforts at reform.
I was so glad to hear this. She may be insane on some subjects but she's way too good for GG and Omidyar.
ReplyDeleteFancy meeting you here - I do admire your work.
ReplyDeleteYou've been all over some of my favorite lurking places for years, Horace, so back at you.
ReplyDelete