The parallels between Chris Christie and Barack Obama

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obama-christie

I am not really a big fan of Chris Christie. In his speech at the Republican National Convention he spent far more time talking about himself than he did trying to boost Mitt Romney. I find him narcissistic, arrogant, aloof, selfish and brimming with hubris.

Just like Barack Obama.

When you think about it, the parallels between these two are truly impressive and it goes well beyond personality. To wit:

I didn’t know

Christie is accused of closing lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in retribution for the mayor of Fort Lee not supporting Christie’s re-election.

Christie claimed ignorance of the actions.

In its place Thursday was an apologetic and contrite Christie trying to control an unfolding political scandal that has upended his administration over news one of his top aides and a political ally targeted a mayor with a scheme to tie up traffic in his town as punishment for not supporting their boss for re-election.

“I am who I am, but I am not a bully,” Christie said during a nearly two-hour press conference where he distanced himself from the actions, saying “I knew nothing about this” and he had “nothing to hide.”

Obama said he didn’t know about the IRS targeting conservative groups.

White House officials were notified of a Treasury Department inspector general report on the IRS but elected not to tell President Obama about it.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough and other senior officials knew of the general nature of the report but decided to keep the president in the dark about the report’s finding that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny.

Punish your enemies

Christie is accused of using the lane closures as political punishment.

The controversy erupted with the release on Wednesday of emails showing Christie’s aide and allies appearing to plan lane closings in what critics said was a bid to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, at the New Jersey end of the bridge, because he had declined to endorse Christie’s re-election effort.

Obama used the sequester to punish his “enemies.”

In other words, Obama is done trying to work with Republicans in 2013 and 2014. He is abandoning any real effort for bipartisan immigration, gun, or energy reform. The bulk of his effort will now be devoted to eliminating all Republican power in Washington.

And Obama’s first step in that campaign will be to maximize the amount of pain the sequester inflicts on the American people. ABC News reports: “Now that the sequester has gone into effect — bringing on the spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never happen — the president is in the awkward place of rooting for it be felt as he and his administration has predicted.”

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.

An email proves it:

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

Use of private emails

Christie’s staff used private emails to communicate state business

Personal emails at the center of the brewing scandal for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may have remained secret, had the public and press relied solely on the state’s open records law.

Emails disclosed this past week show a top Christie aide asking the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to shut down three lanes on the busy George Washington Bridge, resulting in major backups for days last September. Those emails were leaked to reporters last week, even though one newspaper requested them nearly a month ago, only to be told they didn’t exist.

Former EPA head Lisa Jackson used private emails to avoid scrutiny.

Jackson’s use of the secret “Richard Windsor” account riled transparency advocates and Republican investigators in Congress, who worried such practices skirted FOIA regulations.

But the new evidence suggests that Jackson used a third, private email address.

“There’s no ambiguity here,” said CEI senior fellow Chris Horner, who first discovered Jackson’s secret email account. “This reflects a clear intention to violate law and policy.”

So has Kathleen Sibelius.

He’s either clueless or a liar

A New Jersey democrat says Christie is either clueless or is a liar

The man who led an investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane closures said on Wednesday that recently published emails proved that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) either did not know what was going on in his own office or was lying to the public.

Barack Obama is also either clueless or is a liar

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said he believed it was “inconceivable” that President Obama did not learn sooner about the Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting of Tea Party groups.

“It’s pretty inconceivable to me that the president wouldn’t know,” Boehner told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren. “I’m just putting myself in his shoes. I deal with my senior staff every day. And if the White House had known about this, which now it appears they’ve known about it for about a year, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t have come up in some conversation.” …

Boehner said top officials may have “attempted to insulate the president from this news.”

“But with as many people that were involved in the audit, the number of people involved in the investigation, somebody — and the number of people in the White House that knew — it really is inconceivable that he wouldn’t have known about it,” he added.

“There’s two possibilities,” Wisniewski said. “Either he doesn’t know what’s going on in his front office or that there’s lying going on.”

In retrospect, Christie’s hugging Obama does make some kind of sense. It’s like Christie hugging himself and the same is true for Obama. They share personality traits and political actions. They’re both bullies.

There is a major difference. Christie is a Republican and Obama is a democrat. The press bends over backward to protect Obama but Christie’s “bridgegate” became a feeding frenzy for a lapdog press starved for GOP scandal. The networks have given Christie’s spectacle 17 times more coverage already than they have offered for Obama’s abuse of the IRS.

Once an Obama sycophant, always an Obama sycophant.

Some believe that Christie’s road to the White House is washed out, others are not so sure, thinking Christie can recover as long as no new damaging information surfaces. We shall see. Obama won’t face the same scrutiny.

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I cannot believe merely lying about the bridge incident would be a disqualifying mark against Christie when Obama got elected after everybody KNEW he did pot and cocaine, he lied about how he would finance his campaign, sat in a ”church” where God was told to ”damn America,” was endorsed by the American Communist Party and so many other, worse things.

@Nanny G: Yes Nanny, but Obama was immunized, he’s a Dimocrat. It’s okay for them to damn America, lie to the press, do pot and Coke. The press won’t touch that. But if a Republican sneezes……watch out….

FUS-FAT UGLY AND VERY STUPID
Simple!
He is not presidential material

I am not a Christie fan. That said, a couple of things come to mind about this “faux scandal”.
First would be motivation; why would any rational person think the mayor of Ft. Lee, a democrat, would support Gov. Christie, a republican, in an election?
Second, what average citizen would believe the mayor of Ft. Lee would have anything at all to do with a supposed traffic survey on the George Washington bridge?
I watched quite a bit of the press conference, and I don’t think he lied about not knowing. He didn’t look like he was trying to hide anything, he took quick action after ascertaining the available facts. He also didn’t leave himself an out should something come up to indicate he either had knowledge or ordered the survey. He isn’t that stupid, if he did have any involvement he would have found a way to leave an “out” for himself. He was quick to terminate the employee left that was involved, if he acted like Obama he would have promoted her to buy her silence.
So I give him a pass in my book on this one. But he’s still a liberal.

Isn’t it interesting in the attention that Bridgegate is getting. But this is not the first “Bridgegate” scandal this nation has ever heard of, so let’s compare the two, shall we?

2013: Staff members of Governor Christie (R-NJ) close down a bridge creating traffic jams. U.S. Attorney opens class action law suit to represent those who might have been inconvenienced by the traffic jam. FBI sends task force to investigate traffic jam scandal at the Governor’s office. Lame stream media spend hours reporting on Bridgegate, while basically ignoring other scandals involving national politicians.

1969: Drunken U.S. senator drives off bridge putting vehicle in high water creek. Senator leaves scene of the accident, returns to his hotel room, takes shower and goes to bed. Next day, calls lawyer who then contacts police department. Next appearance made by the U.S. Senator shows him wearing a neck brace. There was no wrongful death case opened by any U.S. attorney (or any judicial agency) and no FBI investigation.

Yeah, we’ve been through Bridgegate before. Watch how the two politicians involved in these scandals are handled differently by the press.

@retire05: Well, I hope it gets Tubby out of the race. He’s just a northeastern Liberal wearing a Republican coat for the election. We don’t need him, his policies, or his brand of politics.

@Redteam:

Jeb Bush is not, I repeat, NOT a conservative.

Not only does he support amnesty for illegals, along with basically borders wide open, he supports Common Core, an educational disaster.
His son is running for state office in Texas. Most people are asking “Why?” Why isn’t the Bush Baby running in his home state of Florida? Why Texas? I don’t know anyone who intends to vote for him. We are just as sick of the Bush’s as anyone else. Time for them to move on. Camelot has ended. Time for Crawford to join it in the history books.

@Scott in Oklahoma, #4:

First would be motivation; why would any rational person think the mayor of Ft. Lee, a democrat, would support Gov. Christie, a republican, in an election?

No one would. Hence, Rachel Maddow’s theory that the actual issue was the rancorous battle between New Jersey legislature democrats and the Christie administration concerning the governor’s refusal to make permanent the appointment of a sitting and well-qualified New Jersey Supreme Court judge. That move by Christie was both controversial and totally unprecedented in New Jersey history. The resulting battle rapidly escalated. Maddow’s theory is that the political retaliation wasn’t against Fort Lee’s mayor—which makes no sense at all—but against the then current leader of New Jersey democrats, who is from Fort Lee.

This explanation would make perfect sense, particularly considering the timing of events. Even so, it doesn’t argue one way or the other on the central question about whether Christie knew what his staffers were up to.

@Greg: Retaliation against democrats makes no sense at all Greg, but then again, that’s no surprise coming from Maddow. And it isn’t likely that a governor would order a traffic study; he may ask a question about traffic, but people at a much lower level of responsibility take care of those details. It isn’t likely he would know about it at all, only the results of a survey.

@Scott in Oklahoma, #9:

Frequently retaliation isn’t rational behavior. Often it’s anger-driven and counter-productive. That doesn’t keep people with power from engaging in such petty behavior when they believe they can get away with it. To say it makes perfect sense is only to say that it is fully understandable in that context.

All Maddow is doing is suggesting a motive that’s far more likely than getting back at a mayor for not doing something that no one would have expected him to do in the first place. She hasn’t suggested retaliation was ordered by Christie. I think he’s a lot smarter than that. That’s not necessarily true of everyone on his staff.

@retire05:

Jeb Bush is not, I repeat, NOT a conservative.

True, I’m well aware of it. I’ve said that he is for open borders, wants to get all his wives illegal alien kinfolks up here to get on welfare.

@Greg:

Frequently retaliation isn’t rational behavior. Often it’s anger-driven and counter-productive.

But………not O’s followers, oh no.

All Maddow is doing is suggesting a motive that’s far more likely

That wouldn’t be ‘suggesting’ Greg, it would be wild ass guessing. No, wait…..MadCow! It’s an illness…..

The bridge closing occurred around 12 hours after Christie popped his cork in front of live news cameras and called New Jersey democrats “animals” . It’s not much of a stretch to think that this comment might have emboldened certain officials to take action on their own.

@Greg:

and called New Jersey democrats “animals”

I’m surprised he couldn’t think of something more appropriate to call them. Must not be quick on his feet.

And the only rational, intelligent, thought out comments on this thread come from Greg. Did anyone even bother to click the link he provided? Your egos are too attached to your misguided opinions.

@*********: says the cowardly lefty who won’t even post a screen name…

@Scott in Oklahoma: Yeah, like “Scott in Oklahoma” really identifies you. You’re quite the comic.

BIG DEAL TO INCRIMINATE CHRISTY,
BUT INCRIMINATE THE IRS, THEY DESERVE ALL THE RAPT OF JUSTICE,
FOR HAVING CONSTANTLY HARASS AND TORMENT THE GOOD TEAPARTY FAMILLY,
AND TORMENTING SARAH PALIN’S FATHER WHO HAS NOTHING TO HIDE,
AND QUESTIONING THE DONORS TO MITT ROMNEY, AS IF THEY DID NOT HAVE ANY RIGHTS, AND BEN CARSON ALSO WAS TARGET AND DID NOT LIKE THEIR QUESTIONING,
AND WHO ELSE MANY MORE, AS IN 2009 THEY CAUSE ONE RANCHER TO LOOSE HIS LAND,
AND WHAT ABOUT THAT ONE SELLING NEWS PAPERS BEING TARGET AND IT END UP LOOSING HIS WIFE AND KIDS, WITH HIM DESPERATE ACTION TO DISAPEAR NEVER TO RETURN,
THAT IS ONLY A FEW STORIES OF IRS CRUELTY WITHOUT LIMIT, NO DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN TORMENTED,
THERE’S THE PROOF, TO SAVE OBAMA ELECTION,
IRS ARE CRIMINALS, THEY WENT TOO FAR,
AND GOT CAUGHT,
THEY MUST BE ALL REPLACE, TOO BAD FOR THE INNOCENT, BUT IT MUST BE CLOSE,
IF THERE IS JUSTICE

@*********:

in Oklahoma: Yeah, like “Scott in Oklahoma” really identifies you. You’re quite the comic.

I’ll bet Scott comes closer to describing him than ‘all stars’ do you.