American Politics Thread 2014

Ryan/Palin ticket

*masturbates*

god why are you not permabanned

that would be blasphemy!

oh, you were talking to waterface, nvrmind

paul ryan has a good shot imho

― lag∞n

agree w/ this, dude is positioning for sure

the party loves him too, they totally lost their shit over him at the convention

plus those sad sad eyes, who can resist

gop loves guns and w/ paul ryan the gunshow is always in town

hey, you ladies get your tickets?

Josh Barro:

How did Christie not know? There were 117 days between when the Bridgegate story broke and when the governor learned that one of his Deputy Chiefs of Staff, Bridget Kelly, had called for the lane closures. One of his close confidants whom he just selected to run the New Jersey Republican Party, Bill Stepien, is also implicated. Despite the fact that increasing national attention was being paid to this story through the fall, Christie — who has a background as an aggressive prosecutor! — had no idea some of his closest allies were involved. Why was he so oblivious? Christie has been reduced to insisting that his staff has been out to control and lying to him about what they're doing. That's not an ideal talking point to have to lean on.

Why would Christie's appointees have thought this was a good idea? Politicians survive scandals of staff misbehavior all the time. But in this instance, the misbehavior was conducted on Christie's behalf, in order to execute a political strategy to benefit the governor. How did Christie create a culture in which his appointees in his administration and at the Port Authority would get together and assume this was something the governor would want them to do?

It begins:

KJL: What was your impression of Christie’s press conference?

HEWITT: That was one of the most fascinating, indeed riveting two hours in recent American political history. The comparisons to Nixon’s Checkers speech will arrive soon, and of course already have arrived vis-a-vis President Obama’s standard duck-cover-filibuster pressers. Authentic, transparent, unscripted and sincere. Very powerful.

lol yes the "Authentic, transparent, unscripted and sincere" Checkers speech

yeah christie didnt even use a teleprompter. white house or bust.

wait, the checkers speech was good? i thought it was considered despicable and self pitying, but i wasn't there... xpost

hewitt is amazing

"Nixon's speech was seen or heard by about 60 million Americans, including the largest television audience to that time, and led to an outpouring of public support. A huge majority of the millions of telegrams and phone calls received by the RNC and other political offices supported Nixon. He was retained on the ticket, which then swept to victory weeks later in November 1952. The Checkers speech was an early example of a politician using television to appeal directly to the electorate, but has since sometimes been mocked or denigrated. Checkers speech has come more generally to mean any emotional speech by a politician."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_speech

the Checkers speech was "good" in the sense that it rescued Nixon's political career

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M

and he managed to trick Ike into releasing HIS tax records, which resulted in Ike thinking Nixon was an untrustworthy louse

Ike was a little slow on the uptake there

man I don't know how Nixon comes off to people who didn't grow up on that shit but it's just SO fucking riveting to me, watching him in all his pathology

yep, easily the president with the most entertainment value, dude is just endlessly fascinating

yeah -- nixon is so deeply messed up and conflicted and sad and weird that he makes most of the nuts who came after him look downright boring by comparison. even oliver stone couldn't find very much interesting stuff going in in bush's head.

"in" Bush's head

with Nixon it's the self-pity, cold command, meanness, blubbering, inability to imagine life in anything but in campaign mode, and genuine intelligence that fascinate me, which is why no movie's ever nailed him.

reese witherspoon in 'election' comes closest.

thx now hearing Nixon saying "Fuck me Mr. McAllister"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRZvlZZ0DY

^^ lousy fucking actor

delivered as if he's just noticed an old friend from Japan

Tracy Flick: You might think it upset me that Paul Metzler had decided to run against me, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was no competition for me, it was like apples and oranges. I had to work a little harder, that's all. You see, I believe in the voters. They understand that elections aren't just popularity contests. They know this country was built by people just like me who work very hard and don't have everything handed to them on a silver spoon. Not like some rich kids who everybody likes because their fathers own Metzler Cement and give them trucks on their 16th birthday and throw them big parties all the time. No, they don't ever have to work for anything. They think they can just, all of a sudden, one day out of the blue, waltz right in with no qualifications whatsoever and try to take away what other people have worked for VERY, VERY hard for their entire lives! No, didn't bother me at all!

^^ unmistakable from a Nixon-written caption about the California governor's race.

*indistinguishable, that is

man I don't know how Nixon comes off to people who didn't grow up on that shit but it's just SO fucking riveting to me, watching him in all his pathology

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, January 9, 2014 5:15 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every time just... this guy was president?

“David and I were not friends in high school,” he said. “I was class president and an athlete. I don’t know what David was doing at that time.”

lol what a total douche

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/01/contrite-christie-one-story-away-from-oblivion.html

Christie is totally flunking gym now....

Interesting.. some of these people are keeping quiet now, but I wonder if they can be 'persuaded' to come out with their version of events during the primaries/general, if not sooner.

Maddow promoted alt theory that traffic gate was aimed at dem senate prez seems as likely as mayor theory.

it seems very unlikely that somethings not gonna come out show christie knew something about this before yesterday

even if he didnt order it its been in the news for a few months now hes got to have uncovered something before yesterday, i guess he didnt really have any other choice, but he set himself up

but hey he answered reporters questions for 2 hours yesterday so he is absolved of any wrongdoing.

Authentic, transparent, unscripted and sincere. Very powerful.

very talking
much press confernce

pizza

fat

cone on his head

every time just... this guy was president?

this excellent if hard to watch documentary sorta catalogues how incredible it is: he'd been around for a long time. he'd already done plenty of stuff that you'd think would permanently rule him out. instead he got elected twice.

x-post
And now Politico suddenly cares about Christie's past:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/15-chris-christie-controversies-you-missed-101999_Page2.html

15 Chris Christie Controversies You Missed

The GWB scandal wasn’t the governor’s first dip in hot water.

By OLIVIA NUZZI

January 09, 2014

this excellent if hard to watch documentary sorta catalogues how incredible it is: he'd been around for a long time. he'd already done plenty of stuff that you'd think would permanently rule him out. instead he got elected twice.

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, January 10, 2014 11:38 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool ill check that out, he is pretty magical

Rachel Maddow's theory about Christie.

n 2010, Christie took the unprecedented step of refusing to reappoint a New Jersey Supreme Court justice for another term, which set off the New Jersey Democrats, who got back at Christie by shooting down all the other Supreme Court justice nominees he put forward. So when a Republican member of the New Jersey Supreme Court came up for reappointment last year, NJ Senate Democrats promised to make it a brutal fight, so Christie decided to stop the reappointment. He was furious at Senate Democrats, and held a press conference getting really angry with them. That press conference, expressing much anger with Senate Democrats, was held on August 12, 2013, a day before the Bridgegate e-mail was sent. And Fort Lee, the town that got backed up, is part of the legislative district represented by Loretta Weinberg. The leader of the Senate Democrats.

She also sez the installation of a new speaker with no history of animus towards Christie suggests he was hoping to run the clock.

first time I've seen a 2-page news spread inside the NY Times with the blurb heading in the top corner "CLOSED LANES."