Good Old New Jersey Corruption

If you consider willful ignorance to be logic then yes I suppose you are approaching them logically.

Clearly the "facts" you like are more logical than the "facts" you don't.

A thread about Chris Christie, a Republican, is flipped to become a thread about Obama. Where oh where have I seen this before?

Time for some traffic problems in this thread.

Deflection is the greatest power of the conservative as it points out the flaws of others to temporarily allow them to bolster their arguments about the flaws that were pointed out.

Romney is losing the election because of his policies...deflect to Benghazi (which had JUST happened, and was still under investigation). Then, never elaborate on said policies.still lose election, still deflect to Benghazi as the budget is still not being worked on. Budget crisis, deflect to "Obamacare".

budget crisis: fire all congressmen, or cut their pay, and benefits until they actually do some work.

Hey, idea, why not both Republicans AND Democrats stfu, find a way to work together and get this ***sorted out? Instead of pointing fingers, they should be figuring out a means to solve the debt that we've sunk into thanks to both Democrats AND Republicans, because last I checked Obama hasn't helped, Bush hasn't helped, hell NO ONE has helped, the US has become so corrupted on both sides of the political spectrum, the only people with any sense of legitimate integrity and interest of their people are the independents or utilitarians, but do you see them getting elected? Nope, because Democrats and Republicans can afford enormous campaign budgets and out advertise any independent who doesn't have the finances to back up their campaign.

Oh boo hoo, they made a comment about Obama, oh boo hoo, they made a comment about Bush. Big deal, when the government shut down, they still got their paychecks, whenever my job temporarily shuts down, I lose my pay. Here's an idea, if the politics don't wanna work together, send them home and let them see how the working class gets by when they don't have a main source of income coming in.

I'll take the bait:

It's has nothing to do with ignorance, I've done a fair amount of research on Benghazi, and done some mild on the IRS thing, still nothing screams "scandal."

Let's start with the IRS thing, regardless of the political party, if the IRS sees a bunch of groups requesting tax except status under a very popular subject that's rather new, of course they're going to look at them to prevent fraud. It's really that simple. I have yet to see evidence to the contrary.

Benghazi: I don't want to get hardcore into this here, but it's typically bad policy to second guess international relations.

To tell you the truth: I wouldn't have sent troops in, even if I had some within 15 minutes. Not with as little information as was available at the time. Even later, when they knew what was going on, the damage was already done, it would have been foolish, and needlessly risking more lives, not to mention stressing international tensions.

The whole "more troops" request thing: where would the money have came from?

I'm not a democrat by any stretch and yet I can recognize that your statements are full of inaccurate statements. First off: the budget has improved during the Obama administration. The biggest chunk of our debt is due to Bush, on multiple levels. Obama has wasted a good bit of money on the DHS and NSA, more than Bush did, but aside from that, it's been a lot better.

They're both fascist *** though.

also, implied conservative is explicitly Republican or Democrat.

If you're still under the impression that both sides were responsible for the government shutdown, you weren't actually paying attention. Many people from both sides are hopelessly out of touch with reality and almost all, if not all, of the representatives are balls deep in moneyed interests, but the problem with the 'both sides are bad' mentality is that it lacks any definite accountability. Why should any elected individual or groups be concerned with their reputation when they know any backlash will be ascribed to government as a whole rather than themselves (not to imply such system-wide grievances don't exist)?

TLDR: The only thing you're pointing out is your general lack of political awareness (really, you think that congressional salaries are their main source of income?). The 'Both sides are equally bad' shtick is misinformed and intellectually lazy and that really tickles my mittens!

The amount of quotes in this thread is too damn high. Also

the brain washing machine is well oiled & running out here in SD. I was picking up my children from school the other day, & there was an old lady idling down the road, so naturally I thanked Obama. my daughter starts telling me about how Obama is bad, I looked down & said "that's a bunch of nonsense" (she's 12) she then proceeds to tell me he caused the shutdown. so I had to rattle off a huge spiel about how he was just an idealist who got whacked in the face with reality, he's been a fair / mediocre president, & that she needed to speak with her father before repeating nonsense she heard elsewhere.

(I voted for Gary Johnson)

Keeps sounding better and better!!!!

Mmmm...I had a similar talk when towing the nephew (soon to be seven) along with the sweetman and the hubby to our pitiful excuse for a zoo this Fall.

I had to go with the "You shouldn't judge a person by what others say about them, and you're too young to be concerned with this anyway," spiel.

/console

(Texas BTW.)

If investigations reveal Christie had nothing to do with this, for sure, this only helps Christie in 2016 / 2020. If they don't reveal anything, or obviously that he had something to do with this, then he loses less than he stands to win anyways.

/2 cents

The other day my wife came home ranting about "Obamacare". I looked her straight in the eyes and said "If you have researched the subject, I'll let you rant endlessly, but don't repeat some moronic talking points to me, lol"

Apparently the Feds are investigating how the sandy relief funds were used by Christie. Looking bad.

I sincerely hope he wasn't stupid enough to use them for anything personal after the public focus those funds got.

I doubt he did honestly, it's turning into a witch hunt now, they can't tie him to anything. It's just going to be a few weeks of bad PR, the tea party will draw it out as long as they can and then crawl back in their hole.

how funny is it that his own party is attacking him for being slightly moderate?

The Republican Party has been losing its mind by trying to weed out the moderates (read: its only electable officials) for several years now. It stopped being funny a long time ago when it became apparent that people would continue to vote for the party in spite of its schizophrenia.

I can understand going after pro-choice or pro-equality officials, but Christie tows the Red line in many categories. I guess gun-control is a bit of a deal-breaker for the hardcore libertarian and TP guys.

Truly, the 2nd amendment is the only one that matters most of the time.

Eh... I see exactly what you mean about the Second Amendment, but I'd prefer to live in a world where it wanes in relevance. I'm not even convinced that the threat of armed uprising has ever altered policy decisions in government, at least not above the municipal level. It would take some remarkable abuses to get a considerable minority of Americans to take up arms against our own military and I really doubt we're anywhere near that point.

It's an obnoxious truism that every generation is convinced they're the worst and most corrupt. I'm hoping that changes with my generation and we continue to blame the Boomers for all the crap they've pulled.

until our military is outsourced, it is compromised of americans at the moment...

The question is.... If every generation thinks they are the most corrupt, is their perception worsening or is the corruption worsening... Of course it's also possible it's simply a function of more accessible information.

I think the premise of your question is flawed. If every generation condemns itself, that implies that neither perception nor corruption have changed because the judgment remains constant. Which was rather the point I was making.

Pretty much any scandal you care to dredge up out of today's news, I could conceivably find a nearly identical event going back through the full annals of recorded history. It's just a shame we lost so much of Greek and Roman literature because their governmental systems were so much like ours (for obvious reasons: we copied them) that we could easily have the same stories from over 2000 years ago.

The face may change, but the beast remains the same: human. Some little snot in Christie's staff causing a traffic jam and possibly one or two collateral deaths isn't even a blip in the scheme of things. If anything, if something that incidental has far-reaching consequences, that would be proof that we're getting better (which I suppose would support a failure of perception?). For all that it is trite and sensationalistic, our 24-hour-instant-news cycle does seem to force more accountability. Then again, we have a budget crisis every year exactly because politicians want to take up as much time as possible in that self-same news cycle, so I can't decide if it is good, bad, or neutral.

On the topic of accountability, aside from the obvious Madeoff's and Enron exec's, who is actually ever held to a real accountability?

Cost thousands their jobs, pay a fine. Kill hundreds by skimping on medicines, 90 days suspended and some community service.

criminals?

*edit*

poor ones, obviously

Don't forget about minorities!