I don't see anyone on the horizon in either party worth voting for. Does anyone else?
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I agree she is dead on, but that doesn't mean she isn't biased in how she presents the story. It only shows up every once and a while to the point that it bugs me.
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I agree she is dead on, but that doesn't mean she isn't biased in how she presents the story. It only shows up every once and a while to the point that it bugs me.
I agree. Bill O'Reilly is often dead on too. But when he's off spewing right wing Crap he's grading too. Both of them get this annoying self righteousness whilst ignoring reality that gates on me. Maddow doesn't do it as often, mind you, but she's still annoying
I agree. Bill O'Reilly is often dead on too. But when he's off spewing right wing Crap he's grading too. Both of them get this annoying self righteousness whilst ignoring reality that gates on me. Maddow doesn't do it as often, mind you, but she's still annoying
They should have kids!
__________________
"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
I agree. Bill O'Reilly is often dead on too. But when he's off spewing right wing Crap he's grading too. Both of them get this annoying self righteousness whilst ignoring reality that gates on me. Maddow doesn't do it as often, mind you, but she's still annoying
I think this comparison is terrible. One of them reports serious news and the other does segments on the war on Christmas as a self proclaimed entertainment editorialist.
Criticize her style if you want, and I am likely to agree with you, but this just looks like an awful attempt to fence sit.
Maybe though the analogy serves to illuminate the inability to find a relevant comparison to a journalist in 'conservative' media.
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Boy, not only has Christie blown his opportunity to be the GOP frontrunner, his immediate political future might be in jeopardy.
Quote:
In an exclusive interview with msnbc’s Steve Kornacki, Mayor Zimmer claimed that two senior members of Christie’s team informed her that relief money for Hoboken would be held up unless she approved a redevelopment project backed by the governor. She singled out New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner, as the officials who delivered the alleged ultimatum.
“The bottom line is, it’s not fair for the governor to hold Sandy funds hostage for the City of Hoboken because he wants me to give back to one private developer,” she said Saturday. “I know it’s very complicated for the public to really understand all of this, but I have a legal obligation to follow the law, to bring balanced development to Hoboken.”
(CNN) -- In another controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Sunday that Christie directly ordered the withholding of Superstorm Sandy recovery funds unless she backed a redevelopment plan he favored.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Zimmer said she was told by a member of Christie's administration that Sandy relief funds hinged on her support for a real estate development project and that the directive was coming directly from Christie.
"She said that to me -- is that this is a direct message from the Governor," Zimmer said, referring to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who Zimmer said approached her in a parking lot in May to deliver the message.
It's "stunning" and "outrageous," but true, the Hoboken mayor told CNN's Candy Crowley. "I stand by my word."
Later in the day, she released a statement saying that she had met with the U.S. Attorney's Office for several hours at its request and provided the office with her journal and other documents.
"As they pursue this investigation, I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project," she said.
Zimmer said the Christie administration wanted her to approve a project by The Rockefeller Group, a real estate developer with ties to Christie's administration.
When asked by CNN to respond to Zimmer's accusation that Christie had a direct hand in the threat, Christie spokesman Colin Reed refused to address it and instead referred to a previous statement, which said Zimmer's allegations that relief funds were withheld is based on partisan politics.
The allegations come as other controversies revolve around Christie's administration. In one, evidence mounts showing that Christie aides were involved in tying up traffic in a town at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in what may have been an act of political retribution against another mayor. In another, the Christie administration hired a firm for post-Sandy tourism ads that cost nearly twice as much as the next highest proposal.
This is the first time Christie has been directly connected to the controversy.
The embattled governor and his administration were already facing multiple investigations over the politically vindictive George Washington Bridge traffic debacle last September as he was breezing to his landslide reelection. But Kornacki, 34, managed to increase Christie’s troubles significantly on Saturday with a blockbuster interview featuring Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, a Democrat who, until now, anyway, had been a conspicuous cheerleader of the Republican governor.
On Kornacki’s show, Zimmer accused Christie and his minions of refusing to release millions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy recovery aid to her flood-ravaged city on the banks of the Hudson River unless she fast-tracked approval and lucrative tax breaks for the construction project of a supremely well-connected real estate developer. She offered to take a lie detector test and testify under oath.
“I wasn’t sure how much play it would get, but I knew it would cause a stir when I walked in Saturday morning to do the show,” Kornacki said about Zimmer’s allegations, which were supported by emails from lobbyists and New Jersey state officials and other apparently corroborative documents, including the mayor’s messily scribbled private diary. “I wasn’t sure how big it would be. I figured it would have an impact. It was a bigger impact than I expected.”
Kornacki’s scoop--obtained with help of New Jersey sources dating back to his years as a Hoboken resident and reporter for a political web site owned, serendipitously, by future Christie Port Authority appointee and bridge scandal principal David Wildstein--turned out to be explosive. It was front-paged in Monday’s New York Times and the mayor, after repeating her allegations Sunday on CNN, doubled down by telling her story to the U.S. Attorney in Newark.
Along with the bridge incident, it’s another active criminal investigation for federal prosecutors, and could potentially derail not only Christie’s governorship and his chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association, but also his plans to run for president in 2016.
Team Christie has reacted with a ferocity reserved for the deadliest of threats, impugning the “partisan” motives of Mayor Zimmer and MSNBC, denying her allegations about a quid pro quo, and trotting out Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno--whom Zimmer identified in her diary and television appearances as the official who took her aside and strong-armed her in a Hoboken parking lot last May--to essentially call Zimmer a damned liar. This, in a press conference Monday at which Guadagno looked like she was making a hostage video and declined to take questions.
“From the personal standpoint, the weird thing about all this is that I know so many of the players in this story so personally from my New Jersey days,” said Kornacki, who toiled for Wildstein’s web site, a precursor to PolitickerNJ, in the early 2000s. “This story is national in scope but involves relationships in Jersey that go back ten, twelve years. ‘Weird’ is one word to describe it. Professionally, it’s right-place, right-time.”
Despite his Rolodex of Jersey connections, Kornacki didn’t know Zimmer. “I might have met her covering politics, but if I did I don’t remember,” he said. He first heard about her problems with the Christie administration early last week and made an appointment to see her in Hoboken, where she confirmed what he’d been hearing and offered up her documents.
The mayor dispatched an aide to take Kornacki on a tour of the proposed construction site in a warehouse district in the north part of town, where the Rockefeller Group, the venerable developer that built Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, had purchased four acres and wanted substantial tax breaks to erect an office tower. The developer is represented by the powerful law firm of Christie ally David Samson, who also figures prominently in the GW Bridge traffic jam scandal as Christie’s hand-picked chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
I haven't been keeping up with this story, as it has moved into parts of US political system that I know almost nothing about. I have no idea how big/serious this really is, my guess is not very. Thought it was a somewhat interesting story anyway.
Also; American politics happens increasingly in bizarro land.
The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way. Eight Republicans in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates introduced legislation Thursday that would deny the electronic spy agency “material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts.
The bill would deprive NSA facilities water and electricity carried over public utilities, ban the use of NSA-derived evidence in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research.
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The proposal is the latest in a series of state bills aiming to cut off the NSA one jurisdiction at a time for allegedly ignoring the Fourth Amendment with its dragnet collection of phone and Internet records.
...
The Arizona bill has been the most successful to date, winning 4-2 approval by the state Senate Government and Environment Committee on Feb. 3.
I'll also add this, as it's somewhat related.
(Even though it's important to realize that these two stories speak of different metadata.)
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
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Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.
Death by metadata. Welcome to a cyberpunk world
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edit - having just read it again, it is all about preventing discrimination, against xtians, discriminating against homosexuals.
What a stupid place.
Quote:
Rep. Charles Macheers, R-Shawnee, said on the House floor that his bill prevents discrimination.
“Discrimination is horrible. It’s hurtful … It has no place in civilized society, and that’s precisely why we’re moving this bill,” he said. “There have been times throughout history where people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs because they were unpopular. This bill provides a shield of protection for that.”
If the mid-west Christian establishment didn't get to freely discriminate they'd only be able to fill about a half years worth of sermons. Pastors would be out of work when the economy is already poor! People wouldn't have anywhere to go on Sundays and moral decay would occur followed shortly after by uncontrolled looting! etc etc etc
There was a sign on a church billboard the other week that said "What we now call a choice is actually a sin" Hmmmm I wonder whatever they could be talking about.
btw the same church a year ago had a sign that said "Forgiveness is swallowing when you want to spit" which is just all sorts of unintentional awesomeness.
Last edited by ernie; 02-12-2014 at 02:59 PM.
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Not wanting to play second-fiddle to Kansas, Republicans in Tennessee are also attempting to pass legislation that would make it legal to discriminate against LGBT people.
(1) No person or religious or denominational organization shall be
required to perform any of the following actions related to, or related to the
celebration of, any civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized
by this state, if doing so would violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the
person or religious or denominational organization regarding sex or gender:
(A) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities,
goods, or privileges;
(B) Provide counseling, adoption, foster care, or other social
services;
(C) Provide employment or employment benefits; or
(D) Solemnize a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not
recognized by this state
