Archives for 2014

Haldeman: "On the investigation, the Democratic break-in thing, we’re back in the problem area because the FBI is not under control."

— billmon (@billmon1) January 10, 2014

Nixon: "When you open that scab…we just feel that this would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further…"

— billmon (@billmon1) January 10, 2014

Phone call Christie made 2 Cuomo, asking 2 call off dogs http://t.co/bIqRswkqLX is strongest evidence he was in on coverup, if not the crime

— billmon (@billmon1) January 10, 2014

Billmon’s not the only one line-by-lining Bridge-gate as the second, farcical coming of Watergate. Here’s David Simon, the man behind The Wire:

… For that kind of behavior you need someone really, really small. For the anger and argument to become that self-absorbed and infantile… You need someone who saw himself as being not only larger than the sum of his constituents, but larger than the commonweal itself. Add in the potential for actually harming innocent people — ambulances unable to reach calls, school buses unable to transport children… For this kind of petty venality, you have to look to a Huey Long or a Richard Nixon, someone for whom any fealty to democratic processes and public service no longer matters when personal ambition and aggrandizement are at stake.

If Mr. Christie didn’t order this mayhem himself, then he knew because the aides who achieved this carnage on his behalf were so successful in doing so that they could not have possibly held their silence. Not over the course of four long days of maintaining the traffic snarl in Fort Lee… The same kind of people who would embark on such an action would not be able to do anything but run right down the hall to tell the governor how they had delivered pain to his political enemy. They would then wait on their attaboy. People of that ilk live for the attaboy. Like cats with a fresh-caught mouse, they were bringing home a prize. And there’s no joy for any housecat if the prize can’t be displayed to the master of the house.

I’m sorry for Mr. Christie, who seems in his better moments to be something of a leader. But anger and argument lose all charm when they are employed for stakes so small, stupid and selfish. He knew. And he’s lying about it now.

Taegan Goddard at Political Wire points out, per the WSJ, that Christie was trying to obstruct the investigation going back to at least mid-December. Ben Smith, Koch-funded editor of Buzzfeed, sniffs the wind and publishes a post on “Why The Christie Mess Is Even Worse For Him Than It Seems“. Alex MacGillis at TNR hunts down Christie’s high school baseball coach to establish that, even then, thrown-under-the-bus aide David Wildstein was “sitting on the bench and providing the Lancers with data that helped make them one of the best teams in the state. The classic loyal geek. And decades later, he was still doing what he could behind the scenes to help the big man on campus, Chris Christie. Except it was again in Christie’s interest to look right past him…”

As the original miscreant so famously said, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”

What Did Christie Know & When Did He Know It?Post + Comments (286)