How Chris Christie Could Use the NSA Playbook

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Conor Friedersdorf has written a tongue-in-cheek article in The Atlantic advising New Jersey Governor Chris Christie how he can use the NSA playbook to successfully defend himself of the charges that a senior member of his staff was involved in shutting down George Washington Bridge traffic, a stunt meant to punish the mayor of an affected town for opposing his reelection. Christie's NSA-inspired explanation would include the following points: There are almost 9 million people in New Jersey, and only one was targeted for retribution, an impressively tiny error rate lower than .001 percent; The bridge closure was vital to national security because [redacted]; Since the George Washington Bridge is a potential terrorist target, everything that may or may not have happened near it is a state secret; Going after a political rival is wrong but it's important to put this event in context; Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich was the only target of non-compliant behavior. No other Fort Lee resident was ever targeted for retribution, and any delays that any Fort Lee resident experienced were totally inadvertent and incidental; Finally a panel will be formed to figure out how to restore the public's faith in Chris Christie. "To some readers, these talking points may seem absurd or deliberately misleading," concludes Friedersdorf, "but there isn't any denying that so far they're working okay for the NSA.""

Comments

beacon of freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

it is really telling that the public official closed the bridge illegally and nobody is sitting in jail for this.

Re:beacon of freedom

[ebno-10db]

It is really telling that your entire list refers to a certain Democratic president, and mixes in things that (in your opinion) are bad policy. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about corruption in government, and then there are partisan shills. By acting as the latter, you demonstrate that you have no real concern about the former.

Re:beacon of freedom

[cold fjord]

By labeling that poster a "shill" you are obviously attempting to delegitimize the criticism over policy matters. Should we likewise label you a "shill" acting in defense of the administration or its policies? Apparently nobody here can hold an opinion without being a "shill." That does get to be tedious.

Re:beacon of freedom

[_KiTA_]

It is really telling that the ATF gave over 2500 guns to Mexican drug cartels, and no one from the ATF, DOJ, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the IRS targeted political opponents during an election year, and no one from the IRS, DOT, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that Obama campaign donors at Solyndra got $500,000,000 of tax payer money, promptly went bankrupt, and no one from the DOE is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the Fed prints $75,000,000,000 a month, totaling over $4,000,000,000,000 in the last 5 years, and no one from the fed is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the president himself breaks the PPACA on a daily basis by announcing parts he will be temporarily or permanently not enforcing, and he's not sitting in jail.

Wow, that's a fun list. I count 3... 4? outright lies, 4 completely made up scandals, 1 thing taken completely out of context, several words that don't mean what you think they mean, and a complete lack of understanding as to how civics works.

It's always fun to debunk these kinds of lists, because I always learn something new, usually something that makes me proud of what our country is doing.

The only sad thing is that it takes me hours and the people posting them will either blindly ad hominem them ("YOU LINKED DAILYKOS THAT MEANS YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD~!~!"), call me a "liberal commy fagg 'MERICA hater", or ignore me and go right back to posting about how Obama was raised by Karl Marx on the Socialist Moonbase on the dark side of Mars or something. Or go back to quoting from the sites those guys run. Same difference, really.

Anyway, lets go!

1. Fast and Furious was made up. The entire thing was based on one right wing ATF source, who was discovered to be lying. It has been debunked so often that even the actual GOP doesn't mention it, only ultra-far right idiots in the Tea Party talk about it nowadays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/irs-scandal-democratic-acorn_n_3785717.html

2. Ditto for the IRS scandal, which was also made up. Darrel Issa asked the investigator to ignore the fact that the IRS was looking at all groups claiming to be charities, as they are REQUIRED TO DO BY LAW, and merely provide him talking points on Republican ones. The real scandal? The IRS failed to notice 10 out of 11 of the Koch brothers fake charities were fake charities. You'll note that Issa doesn't even bother talking about this one anymore, he's too busy trying to use Benghazi to kneecap President Hilary Clinton before her 2016 victory.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/26/1219172/-Here-s-how-Darrell-Issa-manufactured-the-IRS-scandal

3. Solyndra's loan was one of Bush's projects, not Obama's, and there's a HUGE difference between George Kaiser (a billionaire who raised a whopping 50-100k for Obama) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (a charity he started). There's a whole boatload more of made up crap about Solyndra, it's a very transparent manufactured scandal to try and drive us away from Solar and Wind technologies -- because oil will never run out or anything. I'll just leave this link as an exercise to the reader:
http://ourfuture.org/20120926/the-phony-solyndra-solar-scandal

4. Literally not true. The "Fed prints $75,000,000,000" is such a common meme that there are so many Tea Party sites shatting it out that it's hard to discover it's source. Took a while, but I found it - The fed is buying back a bunch of T-Bonds and Mortgage Bonds at the rate of 75 billion a month as part of the stimulus package, but that's not "printing money." The Feds have a FAQ entry up on it here, for those who don't roll

Re:beacon of freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the OP comments, but I like to read rebuttals.

I read the one about fast and furious that you said was completely made up (Over 200 dead Mexicans disagree), so I followed you link, even though it was Huff Post. I figured the Huff Post would have a link to where the information that it was fake would be. It didn't even MENTION Fast and Furious.

Were you just posting random links hoping people wouldn't follow them? It talked about the IRS scadal, and I've read the DNC talking points on that and they are all lies. No right wing group got tax exempt status for over 2 year, a process that is not to take longer than 90 days. Because of that many donors could not donate until they got the status. I've yet to find a source to debunk that bit of fact.

So I stopped following your talking points because they appear to be just made up with random links.

Re: beacon of freedom

[JWW]

Your point for 4 is no better than what was originally stated. It's still very bad monetary policy.

And for 5 you're the one spreading bullshit. The republicans have been unable to pass anything to actually get in the way of Obamacare. Sure republican governors have opted out of building exchanges but the law gave then that choice. What the law didn't do was allow insurance to be sold across state lines, which would have only required a federal exchange. It was a colossal miss by the law. Oh and the gp post is correct Obama's constant executive changing of the law is sure as hell completely illegal.

Re:beacon of freedom

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

1. Fast and Furious was made up. The entire thing was based on one right wing ATF source, who was discovered to be lying. It has been debunked so often that even the actual GOP doesn't mention it, only ultra-far right idiots in the Tea Party talk about it nowadays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/irs-scandal-democratic-acorn_n_3785717.html

That link is to a completely unrelated story about the IRS. I was hoping you had some proof, because that was the first time I've heard that Fast and Furious was all bullshit. So I searched the same website for more info and didn't find anything to support your claim. What I did find was an article from july 2013 talking about two more deaths in mexico linked to those guns - not something I'd expect to see from "huffpo" if the scandal had been debunked.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/06/fast-and-furious-gun_n_3554854.html

Re:beacon of freedom

[guises]

He's a shill because he's phrasing his criticism of the president (in the middle of a conversation about the governor of New Jersey) in a way that implies neutrality. He claims to be talking about corruption in government, and yet for some reason every one of his examples (other than "the fed") is either related to the president or is claimed to relate to the president. Again, in a conversation that has nothing to do with the president.

The reason he ignored GP's comments is because it's been done to death. Anyone reading this who doesn't know the reasoning behind each of those is blinded by partisanship.

Briefly though, because the Solyndra BS pisses me off more than any of the others:

I would fucking *love it* if the federal government would start making solar panels and selling them to people directly, but certain agitators would start screaming about socialism if the money isn't given to private interests instead. When you give money to to private companies there's always the chance that they'll go bankrupt. That's how it works. If you look at the whole program, rather than just at Solyndra, most of the companies did fine - a better success rate than most programs like this one.

Alternate reason for closing the bridge

[plasticquart]

... a stunt meant to punish the mayor of an affected town for opposing his reelection.

It is now suspected that this might not be the motivation for the bridge closure.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maddow-nj-bridge-scandal-was-political-revenge-but-maybe-not-for-the-reason-you-think%E2%80%A6/

Re:Alternate reason for closing the bridge

[Anonymous Coward]

From your link:

In 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.

If you want to know a child, look at his friends..

[Proudrooster]

So by looking a Chris Christie's friends what can we determine from him? All of his friends seem to be petty, vindictive, bullies. Then when things go bad, it is every man for themselves which shows a lack of loyalty since everyone except Christie has had to resign. It won't be long until one of his friends turns on him, but then it will be an all out character assassination against that old friend.

This little stunt happened on the first day of school, messing with kids and communities on a stressful first day, the people of NY & NJ, interstate commerce, and possible security and emergency services.

Some of the friends are going to need a timeout, where big people go for timeout. A little jail time.

Re:Not news for nerds

[Capt.Albatross]

This should be posted on a political forum. Maybe slashdot could create a second site for stories like this.

I think you have misunderstood the target of the referenced article. It is not actually about New Jersey politics, it is about the weakness of the NSA's justifications for its recently-revealed actions. Those actions seem to have attracted a lot of interest on slashdot.

Actaully Fox News is.

[Anonymous Coward]

When Rupert Murdoch and couple of other billionaires started their own network in the 1980s and Fox News in the 1990s, they intentionally wanted the network to be on the right side of the political spectrum because they felt that part of the US market was being under served by other news outlets. After all, Regan was big then, the DEmocrats still had a strangle hold on Congress and the Conservatives had non outlet that catered to them.

Flash forward 25 years and the country as a whole has moved more to the right. So, hows does Fox News differentiate itself now?

By being so wacky right wing that they have become a parody of themselves. Colbert is making a real nice living by just accentuating some of the rhetoric - not adding too much to it, BTW.

That's how ridiculous they have become.

When I see commentators and anchors talk out of their ass; like blaming the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 on the financial meltdown; which it turns out it had nothing - zero - contribution to the financial meltdown.

Fox News narrative is now scaring old white people. My doctors office has it on (all those old white people live it) and the BS that comes out of those people's mouths makes me wonder how these people can keep a straight face - actually I can - they millions of dollars a year to read the BS the Fox writers come up with.

Also, notice how all the "anchors" are pretty MILFs with short skirts and hooker/stripper heels?

All of the women on Fox News look like strippers.

Infotainment, baby! with shitty half truths and lies.

And parroting what they see on that shitty lying network. I've actually talked to people who were convinced that we the US will become just like Greece and they put their life savings into Gold - when it was pushing $2,000 an ounce (it since has fallen 40%). Guess where they got that idea from?