NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s premiere on the national stage is not going so well.
I was joined on this week’s BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio by Bryan Murphy, the former employee of David Wildstein, Christie’s Port Authority appointee and old high school chum who gave the order to shut down the George Washington Bridge access lanes from Fort Lee, NJ in the still-expanding “BridgeGate” scandal.
Murphy worked as the Managing Editor of Wildstein’s PoliticsNJ.com website some years ago and is now an Asst. Professor at Baruch College. Along with another former Wildstein employee, MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, Murphy posited over the weekend that a “billion dollar development” adjacent to the GWB access lanes in Fort Lee — a development that has been fought over for at least four decades, but is being finalized now — could very well be at the heart of this scandal.
We discussed that, the scandal’s effects on Christie’s 2016 hopes, and what lies ahead as the investigations and subpoenas continue to peel back the rotten onion.
Then I was joined live from West Virginia by my friend Bob Kincaid of Head-On Radio for the latest on the ground in Freedom Industries’ toxic chemical spill which has poisoned the drinking water for hundreds of thousands there — and is now heading down river towards Ohio. Bob has been fighting the coal industry for years in WV and offers key insights that only an on-the-ground WV native can…and in the way that only Bob can!
Plus, the 9 completely unverifiable touch-screen votes that will determine which party controls the Virginia state Senate, Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report and much more…
Christie met with Wildstein and Baroni on 9/11/13 — the third day of the GWB lane closure.
Lanes closed on a bridge, conjecture from the left wing nuts at MSNBC, and its all wrapped up nice and neat for the “fiercely independent” Brad. You’ve lost whatever credibility you ever had IMO. Because…..
NSA/IRS/ATF/DOJ etc. run amok and all it takes is the same MSNBC nuts to make excuses and again, its all wrapped up nice and neat for the “fiercely independent” Brad. Isn’t it funny how you can magically detect which scandals are real and which are fake simply based on the scandalous ones political affiliation?
My opinion is that if Christy is involved in this then he should pay the price.
I wish you had the same integrity when it comes to the actions of Obama.
I know I know… “butbutbut Obama said the scandals were FAKE!!”
Been waiting for fact-free “WingNutSteve” to finally weigh in on BridgeGate.
Why am I not surprised that, despite the number of times his bogus Benghazi rants have been demolished, he would fall back on something as lame as “butbutbut Obama said the scandals were FAKE!!”
If Nixon, GWB and Christie were tainted by Watergate, WMD and BridgeGate, surely it’s only fair that wingnuts be permitted to hang Benghazi ’round Obama’s neck like a burning tire, even if there’s no evidence to support that faux scandal.
Bad enough Bridget Kelly’s “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” Email drew comparisons to Tony Soprano. Now we find Christie hiring former federal prosecutor, Randy Mastro, who, according to the L.A. Times “specializes in organized crime cases.”
The Times, which previously reported that a U.S. “Senate panel said the Port Authority had come up with ‘zero evidence’ to support the claim by Christie appointees that the lane changes were about a traffic study,” revealed that Christie’s retention of Mastro occurred after Reid Schar, a former assistant U.S. attorney, was picked to serve as special counsel to the NJ Assembly Committee investigating BridgeGate. Schar served as the lead prosecutor of former IL Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat.
The NJ Assembly Committee has subpoened 20 witnesses, including Christie.
It is also of interest that Christie sought to divert focus from BridgeGate to his actions in response to Superstorm Sandy. The “inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Monday it would audit how Christie’s office spent $25 million in Superstorm Sandy recovery funds,” according to the L.A. Times.
I must have missed the reflexive making of excuses for Obama around here. What I’ve seen is actual independent investigation followed by praise or criticism, depending on the results of the investigation.
Let’s go through the list. NSA. All I’ve seen is condemnation of Obama’s continuation and expansion of Bush’s unconstitutional spying on us, along with praise for Ed Snowden and the journalists who have brought us the stories about the documents he took from the NSA.
IRS. In the words of my homeboys Click and Clack, boooogus. Rep. Issa asked for an investigation of how tea critters ONLY were treated because looking at the truth would have messed up the desired rightwing storyline. The IRS gave groups of all political stripes extra scrutiny, as it should have done, because you have to choose between tax exemption and backing political candidates.
ATF. I don’t remember seeing much about that one around here because that’s not really a subject we talk about. It’s Brad’s blog, after all, so he gets to write about what interests him. Get your own blog, and you get the same privilege. In any event, as near as I have been able to tell, that was a GWBush Administration production that was hunky-dory until January 20, 2009, and was additionally complicated by state gun laws (states rights! states rights! until it’s inconvenient).
DOJ. I have no idea what this is supposed to refer to. What I’ve seen around here is condemnation of the failure to prosecute Bush Administration war criminals and the people who tanked the world economy, not to mention the failure to replace corrupt US Attorneys appointed by the Bush Administration and refusal to acknowledge the gross miscarriage of justice in the politically-motivated prosecution of Don Siegelman. About the only praise of the DOJ I’ve seen has to do with efforts to uphold the Voting Rights Act.
What, no Benghaziiiiiiiii?! http://tinyurl.com/nwgv9c9
WingnutSteve returns @ 2!
And by “conjecture from the left wing nuts at MSNBC”, you mean reporting on actual, independently verifiable documentation revealing the wide conspiracy in the Christie Administration, as reported by everyone, including (long before most) the “left wing nuts” at the Wall Street Journal?! Okey-dokey then. You and Reality see each other much these days, Steve?
“CambridgeKnitter” did a fair enough job responding to that, so I won’t bother to repeat her work, other than to add that, while we’ve offered cautiously optimistic and faint “praise of the DOJ…efforts to uphold the Voting Rights Act” (as she cited in her response), that has largely been only after the SCOTUS ripped the VRA’s heart out. For the bulk of the 4 years prior we’ve been rather uncompromisingly vicious in our condemnation of Holder and the DoJ’s disastrous failure to bring Section 2 cases in state after state after state. (As well as a long host of other DoJ failures, which she noted.) Guess Steve was busy being bedazzled by con-men like Breitbart, Issa and the Fox “News” dupes for the bulk of those years.
“Excuses” for what??
Or, on their actual independently verifiable documentation? There’s really nothing “magical” about it. But why pick nits? Who needs actual documented facts? Benghazi and stuff!!!
Okay. As I’ve asked many times, which “actions” are you concerned about? In the past, you’ve come back with little more than Benhgazi! and IRS! and ACORN! and Fast & Furious!, all of which I’ve detailed (many times) as pretend scandals, seeing as how there is absolutely no independently verifiable documentation to prove the contrary. But, if you’ve got some secret documents on those or any other “actions” by Obama that you feel needs investigation and reporting, I’m sure you’ll share them. Which is to say, you won’t, because you jumped over the wingnut loon cliff years ago, sadly.
Actually, Obama, to his eternal shame, said (foolishly, as we’ve also documented here), that a number of those pretend scandals were not fake, as in ACORN and IRS and Shirley Sherrod. In each case, you may remember (or conveniently forget), we were highly critical of him for doing so, well before almost everyone else also bothered to actually examine the independently verifiable evidence to determine that, yes, they were pretend scandals.
Anyway, as always, great to see from ya again, Steve! Hope all is well and that you do not fall prey to any of Obamacare’s Death Panels or Legalized Beheadings!
Oh, one more point I forgot to mention to my friend WingnutSteve, who said @2:
The point I mean to, but forgot to make previously: Apparently you didn’t actually bother to listen to the show on which you are commenting here. You probably should have. It might have stopped you from sounding quite as foolish. I say might , because where there’s a will, you’ll find the way, Steve-o!