Random Politics & Religion #11

And then they look at the insecure asshat who ran against her and remember why. They didn't want him to have the "launch all the nukes" button.

Yeah, sure. Let's give the Muslims even more reason to hate and want to bomb us out of existence. That worked so great in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I haven't followed a lot of fox news, but Lester Holt has been a registered Republican since 2003.

Holt also let Trump completely ignore the rules on countless occasions instead of moderating like he was there to do, but I guess that fact doesn't align with fox's story.

With that mindset of yours, you're just giving posters even less reason to bother reading your posts KN.

The year is 2024 after the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11 hits another American city...American wonders why they elected a woman to lead the country...

Wonders why you see Hillary as a two term president?
Your Democrat is showing. Yuk yuk yuk

If you think Bernie is independent I got some ocean front property to sell you in Kansas...

Maybe Fone's resigned to the fact Trump's doomed the GOP and there'll never be another republican president again?

I would be interested to see the list of questions that were supposed to be asked, I'm sure ita a fair list. But when the candidates spend 10 minutes on each topic, and its only a 90 minute debate, that is going to cross off a huge chunk of that list. Immigration wasn't brought up at all, nor was healthcare. Trump cries about the questions he got, but he also dodged a bullet by not having to talk about Mexico paying for a border wall, or his maternity leave plan that for some reason completely excludes fathers, or the recent allegations against the Trump Foundation, or the Trump U scam. Of course you won't hear about that on Fox News.

I an interesting turn of events the traditionally conservative editorial board of the Arizona Republic endorsed Clinton. That's the first time they've endorsed a Democrat since 1890 they were founded.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2016/09/27/hillary-clinton-endorsement/91198668/

NEWARK — Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was told about the George Washington Bridge lane closings — and that they were done to punish a mayor who had declined to endorse him for re-election — during a Sept. 11 memorial service two days after they began, a former ally who orchestrated the scheme testified in federal court here on Tuesday.

Mr. Christie, the witness recalled, laughed at the news.

The closings of the access lanes in September 2013 continued for two more days, creating a catastrophic traffic jam that created gridlock for emergency vehicles, school buses and commuters in Fort Lee, N.J.

But Mr. Christie made no effort to reopen the lanes and end the gridlock.

Instead, his former ally said, the governor was clearly delighted and seemed to savor the scheme. And after learning that the Fort Lee mayor’s persistent and urgent calls for help were being ignored, Mr. Christie said in a sarcastic tone, “I imagine he wouldn’t get his calls returned.”

The former ally, David Wildstein, who has pleaded guilty to being the culprit behind the lane closings, testified as prosecutors showed a series of photographs of him, Mr. Christie and Bill Baroni, then the governor’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge, at a service in Lower Manhattan on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The photos showed the three men in a loose huddle outside the governor’s official vehicle on a dirt roadway between the Sept. 11 memorial and the World Trade Center construction site.

Mr. Christie, who has previously said he did not recall the conversation, appears engaged and animated, looking directly into Mr. Baroni’s eyes, raising his eyebrows and laughing in some of the frames and reaching out to touch the other men’s arms.

“We were all very relaxed,” Mr. Wildstein testified.

“Were you and Mr. Baroni bragging?” asked Lee Cortes, an assistant United States attorney.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage

Witness Details Origins of Bridge Plot and Links Scheme to Christie Aides SEPT. 26, 2016
Bridge Case Culprit Says Christie and Ex-Aides Used Port Authority as ‘Goody Bag’ SEPT. 23, 2016
Chris Christie Protected Culprit in Bridge Lane Closings, Agency Head Testifies SEPT. 22, 2016
Port Authority Chief Testifies Christie Ally Pressured Him to Reclose Lanes to Bridge SEPT. 21, 2016
Fort Lee Officials Recall Chaos and Turmoil as Lanes to Bridge Were Closed SEPT. 20, 2016

Recent Comments
CHallMD 7 minutes ago

Abject liar. Why does he remain a public figure?
Bob Kramer 7 minutes ago

Yet he is still managing Trump's transition team. Is it me or has the country gone completely mad?
Kareena 7 minutes ago

Christie, another big mouth lying egomaniac.

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“Very much so,” Mr. Wildstein said. “This was our one constituent. I was pleasing my one constituent. I was rather happy that he was happy.”

Mr. Wildstein’s testimony narrating the set of photographs was the first detailed accounting of how the governor learned about the closings — which would ultimately become a scandal damaging his presidential ambitions.

Mr. Christie is not charged in the case. Prosecutors have declined to explain their decisions on whom to charge, but the United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, has said that simply knowing is not a federal crime. He noted that when Ms. Kelly and Mr. Baroni were charged that there were unindicted co-conspirators, but said his office had brought only charges it believed it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Mr. Baroni began, Mr. Wildstein testified on Tuesday, by telling Mr. Christie in a sardonic tone that there was a “tremendous amount of traffic” in Fort Lee and told Mr. Christie, a Republican, he would be “very pleased to know” that the mayor, a Democrat, was “very frustrated,” Mr. Wildstein testified.

Mr. Christie joked about Mr. Wildstein’s role, he testified, using the name Mr. Wildstein had used in his past life as an anonymous political blogger, Wally Edge. “Mr. Baroni said to Governor Christie that I was monitoring the traffic, I was watching over everything,” he recalled. “Governor Christie said in the sarcastic tone of the conversation, ‘Well, I’m sure Mr. Edge would not be involved in anything that’s political.’”

Mr. Wildstein testified that Mr. Christie had not known about the lane closings before they happened. But the governor did know that the mayor, Mark Sokolich, had fallen out of favor with the Christie team for refusing to endorse him despite nearly three years of wooing with gifts and favors from the administration.

And Mr. Christie did not signal disapproval.

“From this conversation, were you concerned about continuing the lane reduction?” the prosecutor, Mr. Cortes asked.

“No, not at all,” Mr. Wildstein said.

Beginning with a marathon news conference in January 2014 after the lane closing scheme had become public, Mr. Christie has insisted that he had nothing to do with planning or executing the shutdown of two of the three access lanes from Fort Lee to the bridge, the world’s busiest.

At an event in Trenton on Tuesday, he denied Mr. Wildstein’s allegations that he knew about the closings as they were happening.

“All kinds of stuff is going on up in a courtroom in Newark,” Mr. Christie said. “I want to be really clear: I have not and will not say anything different than I’ve been saying since January 2014. No matter what is said up there, I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments.”

But here, where Mr. Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, are on trial in United States District Court on charges including fraud and conspiracy, prosecutors and defense lawyers alike have said Mr. Christie understood what was going on while the lanes were closed.

Mr. Wildstein testified that he and Mr. Baroni had looked forward to telling the governor, seeing it as “a curtain call.”

Ms. Kelly, he said, had told him, “The governor is going to love this.”

“I remember the quote,” Mr. Wildstein added. “‘The governor is going to love this.’”

Mr. Wildstein also named other members of Mr. Christie’s inner circle who he said had known well before it became public that the lane closings had been intended as retaliation against the mayor.

Among them was a confidant of the governor’s, David Samson, then the chairman of the Port Authority. He came later to the conversation at the Sept. 11 memorial, according to the testimony and photographs presented in court.

As he did, Mr. Samson told Mr. Christie that another Democratic mayor, Steven Fulop of Jersey City, was pressing him to meet to discuss Port Authority business, Mr. Wildstein recalled.

But the Christie administration was mad at Mayor Fulop as well, for not endorsing the governor. The governor, Mr. Wildstein said, had previously ordered his administration to cancel a day’s worth of meetings intended to help introduce the mayor to administration officials who could help him.

“Governor Christie said no, no meetings with Mayor Fulop,” Mr. Wildstein testified. “He’s not getting any responses from the administration, just like Mayor Sokolich wasn’t.”

Two days later, Mr. Wildstein testified, Mr. Samson reassured Mr. Baroni that he would help “retaliate” against a New York official who had ordered the lanes reopened.

Two months later, when Mr. Christie had won re-election but reporters were continuing to pose questions about the lane closings, Mr. Wildstein met with Michael DuHaime, the governor’s political strategist.

Mr. Wildstein testified that he told Mr. DuHaime that he had directed the scheme, and that Mr. Baroni was involved, along with Ms. Kelly and Bill Stepien, the governor’s campaign manager. He also told Mr. DuHaime that he had told Mr. Christie about it on Sept. 11. “I told him that we had discussed it with Governor Christie and that Governor Christie seemed to be enjoying it,” Mr. Wildstein testified.

“Mr. DuHaime was upset with me,” he added. “He thought this had been a very bad idea.” He recalled Mr. DuHaime’s saying, “I wish you had spoken with me; I would have told you not to do it.” Mr. Wildstein said he told Mr. DuHaime that he was willing to resign “so the story might go away” and others would not get in trouble.

“Mr. DuHaime did not think the story would reach that level,” Mr. Wildstein testified. “He did not think the story would go as bad as it did.”

Let's talk about the questions that did get asked.

Trump's birther. (who cares?)
Trump's "support" on Iraq war. (who cares?)
Trump's 1973 policies on African American tenants (god damn that's old, and people defend Clinton for being anti-gay up until 2012, then "miraculously" changing her mind when it benefits her the most)
Trump's tax returns (news flash: You can't figure out net worth from tax returns, or how much a person owes to who, or any business practices, domestic or foreign. All you see are how much a person made in the year in question and how much they donated. That's it.)

Vs.

Clinton's email question (which was brought up by Trump, not Holt. It probably wouldn't even have been brought up at all if it wasn't for Trump).

Yeah, real important topics effecting the nation.

Sure, we got a little insight on foreign policy, maybe some domestic policies, but that's pretty much it. Economic plans were thrown to the wayside for "gotcha" questions that Holt was emphasizing over real issues and topics for debate.

He blew a lot of time airing his racism, actually. I'd be surprised if the blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and LBGTQ folks don't all band together and throw their complete support behind Clinton.

And yet Trump himself spent a lot of time talking about each one of those topics, over 6 mins on his pride in the role of his racist birther movement. He could have dismissed all of those and moved on almost immediately.

So, are you admitting that Clinton was not given the same level of scrutiny as Trump in terms of questions regarding personal dealings and sayings that could sink their candidacy?

She wasn't even given the deplorables question, and that's about as recent as it could be. Nor was she given any attention towards her health, which is an important issue regarding her ability to be President.