Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

T R E 4 5 O N

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

When I was faster i was always behind.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Books are my comfort food!

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

You are here: Home / If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds

If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds

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I’ll tell you why Christie will never be president: he won’t be able to convince most voters that he wasn’t in on the bridge closures (or other related corrupt stuff). The end.

Who knows if he’ll continue as governor or face criminal charges. Doesn’t matter. In the court of public opinion, he’s convicted, or will be soon anyway.

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    Too bad this didn’t come out in December. Then we could talk about Christie being visited by the Ghosts of Gramps McCain Campaigns.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    The relentlessly hyped pageantry of the pre-Olympics just makes me tired and, if possible, more cynical.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    If nothing else, there’s a certain schadenfreude about ruining Christie’s “host of the Superbowl” weekend.

  8. 8.

    max

    I’ve seen many friends rise and fall over two decades. They remain my friends whether they are in the White House or jail.

    One doubts this, but even if it were true it’s a fascinating picture of the persistence of incompetence of our charming elites.

    I’ll tell you why Christie will never be president: he won’t be able to convince most voters that he wasn’t in on the bridge closures (or other related corrupt stuff). The end.

    Well, he was never going to go anywhere anyways, but now everyone knows he’s not going anywhere. Hopefully Wildstein will hurry up and finish him off and then everyone will stop talking about him.

    max
    [‘Kinda like how Guilani is mostly gone.’]

  9. 9.

    beltane

    Joe Scarborough really is pitiful. He sounds like the mother of a convicted felon with his “My boy! My boy! But he’s such a good boy to his mamma” wailing.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Near, far, wherever you are
    I believe that the heart does go on
    Once more you open the door
    And you’re here in my heart
    And my heart will go on and on

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    This was also hilariously inevitable:

    Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, charged last week with campaign fraud, insinuated Friday in an interview that he might have been targeted because of a film he directed that was unflattering to President Barack Obama.

    […]

    “I went into Obama’s world and into Obama’s mind,” D’Souza said. “We advanced a thesis that here is a traumatized and messed-up guy who is haunted by the dreams of his father.”

    “Whether this is a kind of payback remains to be seen.”

    Yes, that wily and nasty Obama used his Jedi Mind Tricks on D’Souza to force him to money-launder donations to a candidate. Is there no end to Obama’s perfidy?

  12. 12.

    c u n d gulag

    Who, outside of the DC Village MSM Zombies, still watches Cup O’ Schmoe’s morning drive-time New-Zoo Bozo Review?

    If only we could harness all of that smugness, arrogance, stupidity, ignorance, and insidery-goodness, we could get off of our dependence on fossil fuels!!!!!

  13. 13.

    monkeyfister

    My reply to Joe Scar: @JoeNBC While your hugging your criminal friends, tell us about that dead girl in your office, again, former Senator Scarborough.

  14. 14.

    Ben Franklin

    I’m looking forward to the scrutiny and layer-peeling of Walker, the GWHope.

    The debates should send cheezy popcorn futures fibrillating.

  16. 16.

    reflectionephemeral

    I think Christie’s chances in the GOP primary have been greatly diminished– a guy who’s been caught on film hugging the president could only win a GOP primary if he had Fox and the big donors on board beforehand, like Bush (’00) and Romney did. But now his overall numbers are plummeting, so there’s less reason for them to pre-select him.

    To be fair, though, if he does get through, he’ll have at least a so-so shot in the general. (Presuming no indictments or whatever). Chuck Lane is right that “confusion = Christie win”. And his job is to generate confusion about public affairs.

    (Incidentally, one recent study found a reason for optimism for Christie: “Being an asshole enhances your social status at the expense of your victim.”)

  17. 17.

    Helen

    Is he calling his MSNBC colleagues Rachael Maddow and Steve Kornacki a hysterical lynch mob? Please, please, please Rachael; call him out on that.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    Once again we have a demonstration of the textbook theory of cognitive dissonance, with social norms and social forces trumping mere facts. Facts, shmacts.

  22. 22.

    max

    @reflectionephemeral: Chuck Lane is right that “confusion = Christie win”.

    Except they’re not confused.

    Chris Christie Booed at Times Square Super Bowl Rally:

    New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal today followed him all the way across the George Washington Bridge and into New York City.

    At a Times Square Super Bowl hand-off ceremony, where Mr. Christie was passing the figurative baton to Arizona’s governor, who will host the game next year, Mr. Christie was booed both when he was introduced and as he addressed the sports fans gathered.

    “We hate traffic! We hate traffic!” a heckler chanted in the back of the crowd.

    “Boooooo!” someone else yelled.

    max
    [‘That roadkill is starting to stink.’]

  25. 25.

    waspuppet

    I’m not in denial. But I’m also not joining a hysterical lynch mob. I’ll wait for all the evidence to come in.

    If only Joe Scarborough, Mark Halperin and Charles Lane were members of a profession where you go out and get the evidence.

    In the immortal words of Atrios, what do these guys even THINK their jobs are?

    I must say though, the reactions from these bootlickers (and they don’t even work for FOX) is evidence for why I don’t understand the hubbub this morning. Christie SHOULD resign, and he SHOULD be finished as a 2016 candidate, but as a practical matter I don’t see how this affects him at all.

  27. 27.

    Citizen_X

    @monkeyfister: I was gonna say, “Hey, they’re my friends whether they are in the White House or jail. It’s not like Christie had a dead intern found in his office or something!”

  28. 28.

    reflectionephemeral

    @KG:

    may still have the big donors because they aren’t going to want a true believer socon, or Newt

    That’s entirely fair. I think it’s more likely that they hang back, and open the door for someone like Portman, or Walker, or Mitch Daniels, or Paul Ryan or whoever. But yeah, your scenario remains plausible.

  29. 29.

    Kathleen

    @Hill Dweller: The bigger question is when will we all apologize to Christie for doubting his inalienable right as a Republican to be not held accountable for anything. Now, if Christie were a Democrat…..

  30. 30.

    beltane

    @max:

    “We hate traffic! We hate traffic!” a heckler chanted in the back of the crowd

    It’s as simple as that. Where Chuck Lane sees confusion, the average person sees a big, mean bully who caused the mother of all traffic jams just because he could.

  31. 31.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Makes me wonder what pitiful specimen they’ll end up sending out to the podium to take the nomination. They’re in such sad shape that over on TPM, some Republican operative said that big donors are telling him that they hope Rmoney will run again. It’s hard to believe that could be true, but the mere fact that somebody could say this and there’s even a shred of a chance that it could be true shows how sad their field of clowns is.

  32. 32.

    Jibeaux

    I never thought he was super-viable for his Jerseyness alone. He just looks like a guy who fights every minute he’s not wearing a gold chain or calling someone “sweetheart.”

  38. 38.

    reflectionephemeral

    @max: Yep, Bridgeghazi definitely hurts Christie, in the short term and over the long haul.

    But, if he does become the GOP nominee, it will quite literally be the job of folks like Charles Lane to sew confusion about Christie’s responsibility for the climate & specific decision to shut down the bridge.

    For folks like Lane, politics is part of the entertainment industry– caring or talking too much about policy is gauche. The presidential election is their biggest ratings-getter.

    Is someone like Lane going to write, “man, this GOP has pretty much no coherent policies, and to the extent it does, they’re counterproductive, nonsensical, and/or massively unpopular”? Of course not. Not in his job description. He’ll talk about how “Christie has overcome obstacles– critics would claim that some of them are of his own making. Regardless, he has reemerged as a powerful, energetic figure on the national stage.”

  39. 39.

    Mandalay

    @monkeyfister:

    While your hugging your criminal friends, tell us about that dead girl in your office

    There’s so much legitimate stuff to skewer Scarborough for. Why are you crawling around in the sewer?

    former Senator Scarborough

    We are pretty dumb in Florida, but we were never that dumb.

  40. 40.

    bemused

    Of course Joe would stick up for a fellow bully. No doubt Joe wishes he dared to be as bold as Christie and scream at teachers too.

  41. 41.

    scav

    I’m not in denial. But I’m also not joining a hysterical lynch mob. I’ll wait for all the evidence to come in.

    Hemlines are below the knee this year and speculation is passé. Birth certificates continue to be worn long, it goes without saying.

  42. 42.

    Mandalay

    They remain my friends whether they are in the White House or jail.

    O/T, but Scarborough raises an interesting issue there. That sounds so noble, and I’ve never has a friend go to jail, but I can imagine scenarios where the friendship could cease immediately, depending on the crime.

    And even if Christie avoids jail, would Scarborough truly still call him “a friend” if it turns out that Christie blatantly lied during his two hour pity party, and has shamelessly used Scarborough as a patsy?

    Many parents stand by their kids no matter what shit comes down, but friendships not so much.

  43. 43.

    PIGL

    @Joe “The Intern-Stangler” Scarborough: Sir, I think you have a problem with your brain being missing.

    Such sad dweebishness I may never have seen, and I hope never to see again.

  44. 44.

    Keith P

    @dmsilev: Yep, the last thing I could stomach is having to live through “Mitt saved the Olympics” getting rehashed as “Chris Christie saved Superb Owl XLVIII”

  46. 46.

    sm*t cl*de

    It’s a weird situation you have there, where a journalamalist can boast of his close friendship and unshakable bias towards one of the politicians he interviews, as if this proves his integrity.
    It’s as if announcing which team you have joined is a way of establishing your impartiality

  48. 48.

    rikyrah

    Michael Tomasky: Revenge of the Nerd: Wildstein Rats Out the Boss

    Remember what Chris Christie said about David Wildstein in his endless Jan. 9 press conference? No? This:

    It is true that I met David in 1977 in high school. He’s a year older than me. David and I were not friends in high school. We were not even acquaintances in high school…We didn’t travel in the same circles in high school. You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don’t know what David was doing during that period of time.

    I remember hearing those sentences and thinking gee, that’s not very nice–and not very smart. What if Wildstein is sitting on some goods? Is he going to be happy being dismissed as too geeky for Christie to waste his time on back in high school?

    Apparently he’s not…..

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/31/revenge-of-the-nerd-wildstein-rats-out-the-boss.html

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    Friday, Jan 31, 2014 03:25 PM CST
    GOP’s Obamacare fiction series: Latest horror story a creation from start to finish
    Republicans keep coming up with flimsy Obamacare horror stories, because they created the “victims”
    Brian Beutler

    A lot of people have made a lot of relevant points about “Bette” — whose Obamacare “horror story” figured prominently in the official GOP response to the State of the Union address delivered by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash: Greg Sargent notes that Bette’s story reflects the GOP’s reluctance to help constituents navigate the law, even if it means making their lives worse; Steve Benen adds that it’s a sad comment on the GOP’s Obamacare “train wreck” narrative that they have such a hard time finding horror stories that stand up to scrutiny.

    These are related observations and both very true. But I think I’d take each of them one step further.

    For one thing, I don’t think the epidemic of bunk Obamacare horror stories necessarily speaks to the law’s success so much as it reveals the bad-faith nature of Republican opposition — and this very opposition has in turn fed the stream of bogus horror stories that Republicans are systematically promulgating.

    Basically, Republicans have spent the last four months soliciting angry submissions from constituents, and based on the way they’ve brandished these “horror stories” it seems as if a large percentage of them have come from people whose insurance policies were canceled before January 1, and were then defaulted by their carriers into more expensive plans. Just like Bette.

    Republicans have generated a tremendous amount of publicity for putative victims, but it’s important to note that their messaging strategy is incompatible with responsible constituent service, and bound to generate a ton of false positives. It’s hard to create the impression of widespread dissatisfaction with the law if you interrogate every complaint to see if it holds up, and then weed out the people who are mistakenly disgruntled by pointing them in the right direction. Particularly after December 1, when Healthcare.gov started working more or less as intended. If that’s what Republicans were doing, they wouldn’t be consistently flagging stories that tumble like Jenga blocks upon the mildest expert prodding, because there’d be many fewer stories to begin with.

    http://www.salon.com/2014/01/31/gops_obamacare_fiction_series_latest_horror_story_a_creation_from_start_to_finish/

  50. 50.

    Fair Economist

    @waspuppet:

    If only Joe Scarborough, Mark Halperin and Charles Lane were members of a profession where you go out and get the evidence.

    In the immortal words of Atrios, what do these guys even THINK their jobs are?

    They know exactly what their jobs are. Their job is to trick the public into supporting their paymasters. They most definitely don’t get paid to pass along honest information; even a little bit of that would get them sent to no-man’s-land with David Frum and Bruce Bartlett.

  54. 54.

    RaflW

    @sm*t cl*de:

    It’s as if announcing which team you have joined is a way of establishing your impartiality

    Perhaps football would be more interesting if the commentators on the TeeVee rooted for one team?
    “Oh, no! Seahawks for the touchdown! How will our friends the Bronco’s recover?!?”

    Yes, Morning Blow is that much of an ass.

  55. 55.

    PIGL

    @PIGL: I retract my unfounded accusation that former representaive Scarborough personally strangled the young woman who was found dead in his office after reportedly fainting and knocking herself on the head. As with legitimate yet timely resignations to spend more time with the family, such tragic accidents happen all the time, certainly with much greater frequency than do unheard of events like powerful men taking sexual advantage of their more attractive young female minions. Cause that certainly never happens except in fairy tales.

  57. 57.

    sm*t cl*de

    tell us about that dead girl in your office
    Scarborough reckons that live interns are a legitimate issue to raise in the event of a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, so it seems fair enough to ask him about a dead one.

  59. 59.

    Lee Rudolph

    @raven: That’s an interesting point. Is it more insulting to call a man an (ex-)Senator incorrectly, or call him an (ex-)Representative correctly?

    Sort of academic when the man’s a Republican, of course.

  60. 60.

    Mike in NC

    Scarborough probably had set his sights on being Chief of Staff to Preznit Christie, and Halperin was auditioning for the Press Secretary job.

  61. 61.

    Mr Blifil

    So…the entire New Jersey Legislature is a “lynch mob?” Set aside the racial insensitivity inherent in such a comment: what are the Legislature supposed to do? The Governor himself said he had a “rogue political operation” running within his administration. That’s the BEST story he can come up with in his effort to distance himself from liability. If the Governor of a state admits to “rogue political” players making key decisions in matters of the state, it would be dereliction of duty in the highest order to go on as business as usual. Nobody told David Wildstein to plead the 5th. Nobody told Bill Stepian to plead the 5th. Nobody told Kevin O’Dowd to hang around and wait for his confirmation hearings to address the subject, rather than forthrightly stepping forward and sharing exactly what he knew and when he knew it. LYNCH MOB? How fucking insulting can he get?

  62. 62.

    p

    i don’t understand why anyone listens to joe scarborough…he’s michelle bachmann and sarah palin…with male credentials.

  63. 63.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Mandalay:

    There’s so much legitimate stuff to skewer Scarborough for. Why are you crawling around in the sewer?

    The fucking Republicans call Teddy Kennedy a murderer to this day over a car wreck in which a campaign worker died. They called him that the day he was buried. I’m supposed to give JoScar a pass? Please.

  66. 66.

    JGabriel

    DougJ @ Top:

    I’ll tell you why Christie will never be president: he won’t be able to convince most voters that he wasn’t in on the bridge closures (or other related corrupt stuff). The end.

    I don’t know, DougJ. Reagan starred in Bedtime for Bonzo, which must rank high on the scale of sins against the world, yet Americans still voted for him anyway.

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mandalay:

    Because the death of Lori Klausutis has never been adequately explained. Unlike the entire Sandra Levy bruhaha.

    But then again, IOKIYAR, isn’t it?

  68. 68.

    Ripley

    I’ve seen many interns rise and fall over two decades. They remain my interns whether they are in the morgue or in the grave.

  70. 70.

    SRW1

    So from now on, anytime Joe The Scar will defend Corpus Christie on his show, MSNBC will flash a note stating ‘Joe Scarborough, personal friend of Gov. Christie’, am I right?

  72. 72.

    mclaren

    They remain my friends whether they’re in the White House or jail.

    In the case of Republicans, this conjunction is not an exclusive or.

  73. 73.

    4jkb4ia

    Christie won’t be president because what he had going for him with Republican primary voters was glamour. Any of the more recent Tea Party sprigs can supply that easily.
    There’s a long way to go in this investigation. Whether or not you trust DOJ to do a full investigation, we have already ascertained that Christie was surrounded by and trusted a group of petty thugs. Karl Rove at least had a veneer of sophistication and governing was not really in his job description. (Classic scene in one of the Bush expose books where Rove is in a policy discussion and he nods proudly at Bush, saying, “Stick to principle.” I want to say The Price of Loyalty was the book in question.)

  74. 74.

    4jkb4ia

    I think I broke down when Kathy G. blogrolled this place, although alicublog was also there. Mark Kleiman also having it on the blogroll may have been the last straw. SPORADIC is still a very good word, though.

    @Corner Stone:
    This is where NYT as primary news source really works. The whole last week has been blanketed with Super Bowl coverage and there has maybe been one Sochi story a day.

  75. 75.

    low-tech cyclist

    There have been zillions of examples, in recent years, of how out of touch with America our pundit class is.

    But their reaction to the Christie scandals is in a class by itself.

    Even if we’d never found a ‘smoking gun’ in Watergate 40 years ago, the takeaway was still that (a) a group of henchmen like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mitchell, Stans, etc. didn’t just form around Nixon by accident, and (b) when someone is working overtime to keep the truth from coming out, chances are it’s because the truth would do them in.

    Same thing here. Christie collected this group around him because they’d do the sorts of things for him that he couldn’t do himself. And it’s totally consistent with everything else we know about the man.

    America has already figured out that Christie is a bullying asshole who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House, and is ready to move on. Meanwhile, the Halperins and Scarboroughs of the world are doing their best to try to keep him in the game.

  76. 76.

    fourmorewars

    When a media member says something like that ‘confusion’ line, aren’t they admitting that they don’t know how to do their own jobs? Aren’t journalist sort of supposed to take pride in their ability to wade into the thick of it and help their audience, um, y’know, understand?

  77. 77.

    Rick Taylor

    @dmsilev:

    Yes, that wily and nasty Obama used his Jedi Mind Tricks on D’Souza to force him to money-launder donations to a candidate. Is there no end to Obama’s perfidy?

    Considering how Obama’s enemies have a habit of spectacularly imploding, I could almost believe it.

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