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Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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The revolution will be supervised.

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So many bastards, so little time.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Lady Mayor on the TV

Lady Mayor on the TV

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Haley Barbour continues the Republican outreach to women:

Barbour, a mentor of Christie’s, was asked in an interview with CNN if the accusation hinted at the type of culture within the Christie administration.

“No, I’ll tell you what it gives me concern about, that the news media is willing to leap at any farfetched story with the basis in fact is unbelievable,” Barbour said in an interview with CNN on Monday. “This is a lady mayor who asked for $127 million of hazard mitigation money from the governor to give that to her from the federal money. When the state was only receiving in its entirety $300 million.”

The more time that bloated, white, old, male, sexist Haley Barbour spends mansplaining why we shouldn’t be listening to Mayor Zimmer, the better. Here are the facts, by the way:

At the same time as the alleged overtures, Christie’s office was doling out millions of dollars in hurricane recovery money. Hoboken, which was almost 80 percent flooded by the storm, requested $100 million in hazard mitigation money from Christie, but Zimmer said she received only $142,000.

That figure varied widely from the $70 million in federal money Christie’s office said yesterday had been promised to Hoboken, and it was not immediately clear how much total Sandy relief had flowed to Hoboken to date, how much might be coming in the future, and from where.

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike G

    the news media is willing to leap at any farfetched story with the basis in fact

    Boss Hogg Barbour is right on that point, Exhibit A being that CNN give him a platform to pitch his desperate snake oil.

  3. 3.

    Aji

    @Violet: Yeah. Mayoress, as it were. Or maybe Mayorette. He’d probably like that better.

    All you Joisey folks: Time to demand a full written accounting of ALL Sandy funds – receipts and disbursals alike. I’m guessing you’ll find some really interesting stuff there.

  4. 4.

    Anoniminous

    Allow me to translate “Lady mayor” into the vernacular:

    “GIRL COOTIES! GIRL COOTIES! GIRL COOTIES!”

    [This has been a Public Service Announcement from Anoniminous. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.]

  5. 5.

    Baud

    This is a lady mayor who asked for $127 million of hazard mitigation money

    Probably wants to spend it on shoes.

  6. 6.

    EriktheRed

    @Anoniminous:

    No, I’d say a better translation would be, “Person with lady-parts who is doing something somewhere other than her proper place, which is in the kitchen makin’ vittles for her man”.

  7. 7.

    Hal

    Lady Mayor, Lady Sovereign, Lady Mastermind. All less legit female archetypes of their male templates.

  9. 9.

    catclub

    “that the news media is willing to leap at any farfetched story with the basis in fact is unbelievable”

    benghazi, solyndra, Fast and furious, menendez and hookers

    What am I missing.

  10. 10.

    MikeJ

    @Mike G: In the words of Homer Simpson, “facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.”

  13. 13.

    Violet

    @Alison: She needs a badass soundtrack to go with it, too. Like when she enters a room, soundtrack plays, voiceover says: “Lady Mayor in the house!”

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Haley Barbour continues the Republican outreach to women:

    Another guy who is in need of some hot harpoon action.

  16. 16.

    Punchy

    This is a lady mayor who asked for $127 million of hazard mitigation money

    “Hazard mitigation” translates to “cooking” and “cleaning” in lady-speak.

    /fat white politician

  17. 17.

    EconWatcher

    My guess is, if they start digging heavily into disbursement of Sandy funds, some members of both parties in New Jersey are going to jail. It’s not hard to predict what happens when you inject massive disaster funds into a shady political system for rapid disbursement.

    Chris Christie will very likely be fitted for some XXXXXL prison stripes. Let’s have a fair and thorough investigation and let the chips fall where they may.

  19. 19.

    Bill Arnold

    @Violet:

    She’s not a real mayor, she’s only a Lady Mayor. Little woman playing at being mayor.

    S. Palin was a lady mayor.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    Not sure Lady Mayor Zimmer is going to be the one in dire straits.

    Yes. Bring on an investigation of disbursement of Hurricane Sandy money.

  25. 25.

    scav

    The problem with this Sandy ¢a$h is that it’s easy to map and it’s easy to overlay in both space and time with actions by politicians. easy to map need and impact left by the storm and judge mis-match too. Avoid footprints is the usual rule, but this could have them. And it ties up neatly with The Big Man himself getting all close and bipartisan with elements that rabid elements of the base didn’t like. So, as fast as some defend, others will be reminded of why they disliked the man in the first place. What a grand little soap to watch unfold.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    I keep hearing different numbers from R Christie supporters in NJ. They keep saying that the state of NJ had $300M in Sandy aid to dole out, but received $14B or so in requests.
    So if Hoboken actually requested $100M+ from the state of NJ that was one third of the pool of funds.

  28. 28.

    Ash Can

    I’d love to see Boss Hogg’s remarks spur Rinse Priebus to get up in front of some microphones and spout pieties about being really sincere about reaching out to women and minorities, and this time we really mean it, because it’s just so flat-out hilarious when he does that shit. However, it’s pretty obvious he does it only when he wants to direct some “outreach” budget cash into someone’s pockets, so unless someone’s vacation or redecoration plans happen to coincide with this, we won’t hear boo out of him.

  29. 29.

    EconWatcher

    @The Ancient Randonneur:

    I always assumed that there had to be substantial graft in disbursement of Katrina funds and, to be honest, Obama stimulus funds too (even though the President himself is an honest man). Partly from my experiences doing white-collar criminal defense, I just don’t think you can dispense money on such a massive scale without some substantial fraud, especially if you’re in a hurry.

    I suspect that if DOJ had more funding for non-terrorism work, we would have seen more action in this area. How many contractors are kicking it back in the Carribean for the rest of their lives based on graft? An army of them, I’d bet.

  31. 31.

    Violet

    All these little tidbits about Christie keep coming out:

    In Chris Christie’s first successful campaign for public office, he sat down next to his wife and baby, looked into a camera and told voters something that wasn’t true.

    It was 1994, and Christie was a 31-year-old lawyer running for the county board in suburban Morris County, N.J. He was making a television ad, saying to the camera that his opponents were “being investigated by the Morris County prosecutor.”

    Actually, they weren’t. But Christie’s inaccurate ad ran more than 400 times on cable TV before the June GOP primary. He won.

    …

    That 1994 race was New Jersey’s introduction to the brash and confident Christie, whose hardball tactics have repeatedly surprised people — even in a state that thinks it invented hardball.

    But in Morris County back then, people thought Christie had learned the downside of playing so rough: That ad helped get him into his first elected office but then helped get him out of it. He was sued for defamation, required to apologize and then defeated at the polls after just one term.

    They thought he learned his lesson. How quaint.

  32. 32.

    Suffern ACE

    @Corner Stone: I think the key there is the word “hazardous”. $300m is barely enough to rebuild the boardwalks and amusement piers. Those sound like a specific type of fund, that is probably low because the federal government will pay for that work. Hoboken is a mostly gentrified former manufacturing zone. Who knows what came up when the water came in.

  33. 33.

    scav

    @Corner Stone: Piffle. One comparison to be made is the proportion of what was asked for or needed to what was to received. Of course nobody is going to get all they ask for. Disingenuous little blighters, they know that hasn’t been addressed yet but can very well be. Or, they could be merely terminally stupid or mendacious, depending. Inclusive or, I’ll be generous.

  34. 34.

    Patrick

    And what’s Barbour’s take on the bridge scandal? Is that all made up, too?

    Once is nothing, twice is twice…

  36. 36.

    Corner Stone

    Hmmm:
    A state web site that tracks the distribution of Sandy aid shows that Hoboken received a $200,000 post-storm planning grant in October out of a $1.8 billion pot of money controlled by the state. Hoboken also received a $142,000 state energy resilience grant.

    Superstorm Sandy recovery money

    So it just seems the defenders are lying. Or at charitable best, being disingenuous.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    I’m devious, so I was hoping she had a recording or something and she would let them all make lying asses of themselves and then produce it.

    That would be great, and fun for all of America. Real America. Not Morning Joe-type people :)

    Who wouldn’t love that?

  39. 39.

    MCA1

    @Corner Stone: Or, viewed in proper context, approximately 0.7% of the overall requests, coming from a town with approximately 0.6% of the state’s residents (and a far greater percentage of those in flooded towns). That doesn’t even merit a batting of the eye. The fact that actual funds received from the federal government was far, far less than the aggregate of requested funds from local governments (and, undoubtedly, far less than what was actually needed, regardless of any possible overly zealous requests) doesn’t have any bearing on this.

    The more relevant math would be comparing the $150k or so that Hoboken actually got compared to everyone else. That’s .05% of the $300M the state had to dole out. So, yeah, Hoboken got fucked.

  40. 40.

    Glocksman

    @EconWatcher:

    Now let’s be fair to Governor Christie.
    As a ‘plus sized’* person myself, I’d say he’s no more than a 3XL, or maybe a 4 if the cut is tight. :)

    *Used to be 365 lbs, now 240~ and holding.

  41. 41.

    EconWatcher

    @Glocksman:

    Congratulations! That’s an amazing accomplishment.

    I trimmed 30 lbs myself last year. I found jumping on the scales twice a day to make an enormous difference. I’d pick up a snack, think about what it might do to the dial, and put it down again.

    I meant no disrespect to anyone other than Gov. Christie.

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    @MCA1: Well, if NJ got $1.8B in funds, why do they keep saying $300M ? Isn’t that an easily disprovable talking point? I have not yet been able to categorize what the $300M bucket actually refers to. Someone is telling them to say it, because I’ve heard it at least 4 times now.

  44. 44.

    Glocksman

    @EconWatcher:

    I didn’t think you meant any.
    Let’s just not make the SOB any bigger than he is. :)

    All kidding aside, most of the morbidly obese people I know (myself included at one time), have been that way since childhood.
    From the pictures I’ve seen Christie packed on over 150 lbs after he left College.

    What in the hell brought that kind of weight gain on, I wonder.

  46. 46.

    rikyrah

    CNN host defends Christie’s Sandy shakedown to Hoboken Mayor: Winner gets ‘the spoils’

    By David Edwards
    Sunday, January 19, 2014 12:15 EST

    CNN host Candy Crowley on Sunday defended Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) administration after the mayor of Hoboken claimed that the governor refused to approve Hurricane Sandy relief funds unless she supported a real estate project.

    MSNBC broke the news on Saturday that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer had revealed that the governor’s office warned her in May that she would not get $127 million in hurricane relief funds until she approved a project that allowed the Rockefeller Group to receive millions in tax incentives to redevelop parts of Hoboken.

    On Sunday, nearly every question CNN’s Crowley asked Zimmer seemed to voice the concerns of the governor’s office.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/19/cnn-host-defends-christies-sandy-shakedown-to-hoboken-mayor-winner-gets-the-spoils/

  48. 48.

    Patrick

    @Kay:

    They would just claim it is a fake. The truth really doesn’t matter to people like Christie, Mika, Barbour and what have you. We saw it with Mika who only seemed to have a problem with the timing. She had no curiosity as to why Hoboken got so little funds.

  49. 49.

    Patrick

    @rikyrah:

    “Winner gets the spoils”. And there you have it. So according to CNN, Obama who won the last election could just move all US military bases and federal jobs from red states to blue states. After all, CNN agrees that winner gets the spoils.

    How dumb do you have to be? So, according to CNN, the mayor should have let the Governor decide what Hoboken should have for redevelopment in their own fricking city? Goodness, that channel is getting dumber and dumber.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Patrick:

    Well, it would matter a lot to the US attorney. Let’s not give “Mika” anymore power than she has.

    I actually do think people would love it. It’s a great underdog story. I listened to her interview and she said they were “mic’ed up” when the other Christie official put the squeeze on, so I was hoping there was tape somewhere.

    When Christie lied about Race to the Top funds, the US DOE had taped the session, and that’s how he got caught. He then did the exact same thing he’s doing here. He said his ed director had lied TO HIM and fired the guy.

    They were embarrassed that they screwed up the application for the funds, hence the CYA lie and the firing. They screwed up the application for the funds because they alienated and enraged everyone in the state who knew about federal ed funds, and how to get them.

    This is a pattern.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Patrick:

    Read this Patrick, and see if it sounds like the current situation:

    In August 2010 Christie claimed that his education chief at the time, Bret Schundler, lied to him about a bungled application for $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds. But Schundler fiercely disputed the charge that he misled the governor and quickly showed reporters emails to prove his case.
    “The governor called me a liar,” Schundler wrote in a seven-page chronology of events relating to the application. “I have no choice now but to defend my name.”
    At the time, a Christie’s spokesman said Schundler was engaging in “revisionist history.”
    The dispute occurred when New Jersey lost the first round of the Race to the Top contest by only three points out of 500. The failure to include budget data for 2008 and 2009 in the application cost five key points.
    After losing the contest, Christie said at a Wednesday press conference that the state had provided the budget data to a panel of judges in Washington D.C. – and blasted the Obama administration’s “drones” for being too bureaucratic in their rules. But a video released by the U. S. Department of Education the next day proved Christie’s remarks to be inaccurate; the Schundler team did not have the budget data on hand.
    Christie fired Schundler soon after the video came out.

    What are the odds this happens twice? Why does everyone lie to Chris Christie?

  53. 53.

    bemused

    If I didn’t know Barbour said “this is a lady mayor” and I was asked to describe the politician most likely to say this, I would immediately think old, white, conservative male. They are completely predictable.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    But the brazenness was there, already, in 2010. He knew Schundler had told him the truth. He knew they screwed up the application. Not only did he not admit all that, he came out ranting about government “drones” in the Obama Administration and accused someone else of lying. And there were emails!

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    I found myself trying to recall the name of the “lady” deputy chief of staff, and couldn’t. Then I tried to think of the name of the mayor of Fort Lee.

    If the story keeps going as it has been, no one person coming forward with stories about what Christie has done to them should be on the hot seat for all that long.

    Kind of like the steady trickle of announcements of people endorsing Obama in 2008.

  56. 56.

    Violet

    @WaterGirl:

    I found myself trying to recall the name of the “lady” deputy chief of staff, and couldn’t. Then I tried to think of the name of the mayor of Fort Lee.

    Bridget Anne Kelly. Mark Sokolich.

    I’ve been spending way too much time following this stuff since I’ve been sick.

  58. 58.

    Gene108

    @MCA1:

    Hoboken was one of the hardest hit areas in NJ. When the storm surge from the Hudson River was flooding lower Manhattan you do realize towns on the opposite bank, like Hoboken, got hammered with the same storm surge.

    Where I live, near Phily, was not impacted much at all. Very little flooding, only a few neighborhoods lost power and our gas stations were up and running like nothing happened.

    So despite Hoboken only having 0.06% of the NJ’s population it suffered a lot more damage than a similar area in SW NJ and needed more aid to recover.

    In short, your analysis is deeply flawed.

  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Corner Stone:

    I believe those are the official Chris Christie labels for those two.

    It really is a shame that Sokolich is a Croat, not a Serb, but you know THOSE people, they all look alike.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    And the stories just keep coming:

    Three years ago, a plan to make Carl Lewis a “youth fitness ambassador” for New Jersey was scrapped by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration when the Olympic track and field star decided to run for state Senate as a Democrat, Lewis said today.
    Now, with the George Washington Bridge scandal raging, the nine-time Olympic gold medalist says he sees a “strong parallel” between his own interaction with Christie and what happened in Fort Lee, and that Christie is an “insecure person.”
    “I felt like he was trying to intimidate me, absolutely. But I definitely didn’t feel intimidated,” Lewis, who recently moved to Houston, said in a phone interview.
    Added Lewis: “It’s interesting, everyone calling him a bully. I don’t really see him as a bully. I see it more as someone who’s insecure, and he’s governor now and has got the power.”

  61. 61.

    Kay

    Another liar. Everyone lies but Chris Christie.

    At the time, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak acknowledged the governor talked with Lewis but denied he attempted to dissuade him from running. “Absolutely, positively not. And anybody who says otherwise is lying,” Drewniak told The Star-Ledger, though he did say Christie told Lewis “Well, I have to support my friend of 20 years.” Referring to the fitness ambassador position, Drewniak said “I don’t think Mr. Lewis is going to be running for office and doing this.”

  64. 64.

    Violet

    @Kay: It’s completely obvious that Christie is insecure. Most bullies are, which is why they fold and cry when someone stands up to them.

  66. 66.

    MCA1

    @Gene108: Ummm, yeah. Read closer, please. I was trying to refute some nebulous R talking point about Hoboken having asked for a ridiculous amount of money, which apparently is meant to impeach the mayor of said town in her accusation of Christie playing quid pro quo with the federal money. In doing so, I made the point that, given the numbers Corner Stone had supplied, Hoboken applied for a percentage of the aggregate amount of aid applied for that was roughly commensurate with its percentage of the state population. I also noted (if you’d read carefully) that, in reality, Hoboken’s proportionate share of NJ citizens who were actually negatively impacted by Sandy was significantly higher than its percentage of the state population at large. The implicit underlying message being that if anything, Hoboken probably asked for less money than one would have expected from a similarly impacted town of its size. I then rounded up by saying Hoboken clearly got a raw deal here at the hands of Christie and his mob. What’s “deeply flawed” there?

  67. 67.

    Patrick

    @Kay:

    Somebody should Mika and MSNBC about this. Although I get the sense that she didn’t care about the truth since she has become a personal friend of the Christie’s.

  69. 69.

    Aji

    Just want to point out Li’l Haley’s Freudian slip here:

    “No, I’ll tell you what it gives me concern about, that the news media is willing to leap at any farfetched story with the basis in fact is unbelievable . . . [emphasis mine].”

    Ya know, if I were interviewing him (or better yet, had the little fucker under oath), I would’ve taken that and made him eat it. I know what he meant, but it’s not what he said, and I would’ve pummeled him with his own screw-up until he screamed for mercy.

  70. 70.

    sherparick

    Paul Krugman also links to this story by Dan Aubrey and the 11 months he spent in hell because he said something that Kim Guadagano could not stand. http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php?option=com_us1more&Itemid=6&key=01-15-14guadagno

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/20/1271106/-2nd-Horrifying-Tale-of-Abuse-of-Powerr-by-Christie-s-Lt-Go-Kim-Guadagno

    When you read the two stories together first, in a swearing contest betwein Lt. Gov. Guadagono and Mayor Zimmer, Mayor Zimmer is far more credible. Second, one has to thank God or the FSM for looking out for this country and causing this little fandango to prevent this crew from grabbing the White House and all that NSA data.

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