Chris Christie demonstrating once again why he will NEVER be the Republican presidential candidate.

Wow, what a dick!

Here is how Raw Story covered this exchange:

A New Jersey activist and Hurricane Sandy survivor filmed during a confrontation with Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Wednesday accused his administration of short-changing a $1.1 billion federal relief package meant to help residents. 

“Only 20 percent of those dollars have gotten to the people,” James Keady told MSNBC host Chris Hayes. “Of the $1.1 billion, $219 million has gone out. That means that the governor and his staff in Trenton are sitting on $800 million.” 

According to Keady’s advocacy group, Finish The Job, Christie’s administration has mismanaged the Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) while boasting about its success in the public eye. 

“Photo ops, Christie, President Obama, everybody walking on the beach, kumbaya, giving the hugs,” he said. 

Keady faced off with Christie as the governor gave a speech in Belmar commemorating two years since the hurricane devastated New Jersey. Video of the encounter shows Keady standing in front of Christie bearing a sign saying, “Get Sandy families back in their homes,” prompting Christie to berate him from the stage. 

“I’m glad you had your day to show off, but we’re the ones who are here to actually do the work,” Christie told him. “So turn around and get your 15 minutes of fame and then maybe take your jacket off and roll up your sleeves and do something for the people of this state.”

By the way it seems that in a contest as to who has rolled up their sleeves and done something for the people of this state, that this James Keady guy is miles ahead of Chris Christie: 

“When the hurricane happened, I actually took a month off from work, dropped everything and volunteered to help clean out peoples’ homes,” James Keady told MSNBC host Chris Hayes. “It actually reached the point within a day or two [that] the borough gave me a borough dump truck running all the clean-up crews all over town.”

You know there has always been this criticism of President Obama that he is a little TOO cool, and does not express his emotion enough for people to relate to him.

But I do not think for a second that that means they would rather replace him with a wannabe "Sopranos" stand in wielding a temper that would make Joe Pesci say "Hey calm the fuck down."

Christie is angry man with virtually no filter. That might play in New Jersey but would do him no favors in the national arena.

After all what's he gonna do, leave a panda head in China Premier Li Keqiang's bed?

Hoboken Mayor claims that Chris Christie held Sandy relief funds hostage to pressure her to sign on to a development deal. And the hits keep on coming!

Chris Christie with Mayor Zimmer in the background.

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

Last weekend, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer (D-NJ) told WNYC that the unfolding Bridgegate scandal made her wonder if Governor Chris Christie’s administration had denied her city Hurricane Sandy relief funds as payback for her refusal to endorse Christie’s reelection. On Saturday morning’s Up with Steve Kornacki, Mayor Zimmer revealed that Christie Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno explicitly connected Hoboken’s Sandy relief to a different motive. 

In the days following Hurricane Sandy, Hoboken was one of those places that made it into every network’s video package of hard-hit areas, as thousands of people remained trapped by flood waters for days. Since then, Governor Christie waged, and won, a hard-fought battle to secure federal relief for the state, but in light of the Bridgegate revelations, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer wondered if her city was shortchanged when it came time to dole out those dollars simply because she wished to remain neutral in the gubernatorial election. Now, she says the motive was a redevelopment deal, and the payback scheme was much more explicit. 

In his opening segment, Kornacki ran down a complicated history of area politics, but the nuts of the story are that the Christie administration was pushing hard for a development project that Mayor Zimmer and the Hoboken planning board had slowed down, and after almost all of the city’s Hurricane Sandy relief requests were denied, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno told Mayor Zimmer that in order to get the Sandy relief funds flowing, she needed to move the development project along. 

According to an entry in Zimmer’s personal diary, Guadagno pulled her aside after a political event in Hoboken, “and says I need to move ahead with the Rockefeller project. The word is you’re against it and you need to move it forward or we’re not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right. These things should not be connected but they are. If you tell anyone I said that, I will deny it.”

It should be noted that Mayor Zimmer was considered a "Christie Democrat." In other words she was a political ally, and one who could be relied on to work in a non-partisan manner with him in the past.

So for her to WRITE IN HER DIARY that she was troubled and upset about what was taking place, is huge.

Because unless the Christie camp really wants to suggest that this former friend of the administration foresaw this crisis and made a diary entry so as to help with the piling on, it would seem to indicate a truthful account of an administration that bullied those who interfered with their agenda, and even withheld humanitarian aide from its constituents, as a form of punishment.

You know I think it took fewer hits to bring down Godzilla than Christie is getting nailed with right about now.

Rand Paul upset that people are prioritizing receiving help after the devastating Hurricane Sandy, over buying bullets to kill more people overseas. Yeah, what's WITH those people?

Courtesy of Slate:  

Over the weekend I tried to ask and answer a few questions about the debate Chris Christie started with libertarians. By attacking that "strain" in the GOP, and by challenging anyone who disagrees with current American foreign policy to come and meet a 9/11 widow. After I wrote it, Sen. Rand Paul punched back with proud disdain for Christie. 

"The people who want to criticize me and call me names, they are precisely the same people who are unwilling to cut the spending. They are "Gimme, gimme, gimme all my Sandy money now." Those are the people who are bankrupting the government and not allowing enough money be left over for national defense."

Seriously this guy, THIS guy is going to "save" the Republican party?

Yeah well he just lost the vote of EVERY citizen who watched Sandy destroy New Jersey and the tornadoes devastate Oklahoma on television.

This is exactly the kind of opponent that the Democrats want the Republicans to send up against Hillary in 2016.

What an asshole!

President Obama and Governor Chris Christie back together again.

Oh look Christie even dressed up like the President. How cute.

Courtesy of New Jersey.com:  

President Barack Obama has returned to the Jersey Shore. More than six months after touring the area with Gov. Chris Christie in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's destruction, Obama and Christie are surveying the Shore's recovery. 

The president landed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst at 11:08 a.m. 

After a few hours with the governor, Obama began speaking at Convention Hall in Asbury Park around 1:25 p.m.

You know I'm not really a big fan of Christie's, and I hope that if he decided to run in 2016 that Hillary crushes him like a bug, but still it is nice to see at least ONE Republican who likes to be photographed with the President.

Besides I KNOW that it drives the Right Wing crazy, and that Wallas puts a smile on my face.

(H/T to the Obama Diary for the video.)

Update: It looks like New Jersey had Obama fever today.

Yeah NO wonder Christie stayed close to him all day long!

The heavyweight VS the sob sister. Chris Christie pummels John Boehner over failure to vote on Hurricane Sandy relief package.

Courtesy of Politicker: 

“Thirty-one days for Andrew victims. Seventeen days for victims of Gustav and Ike. Ten days for victims of Katrina,” Mr. Christie said, ticking off how long it took for Congress to pass relief after other natural disasters. “For the victims of Sandy in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, there’s been sixty-six days and the wait continues. There’s only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims: the House Majority and their speaker, John Boehner….Last night, politics was placed before our oath to serve our citizens. For me, it was disappointing and disgusting to watch.” 

Mr. Christie, a Republican like Mr. Boehner, went on to describe the House’s GOP majority as “selfish” and “toxic.” 

“It just could not overcome the toxic, internal politics of the House Majority,” Mr. Christie said of the bill. “Americans are tired of the palace intrigue and political partisanship of this Congress, which places one-upmanship ahead of the lives of the citizens who sent these people to Washington D.C. in the first place. New Jerseyans and New Yorkers are tired of being treated like second-class citizens. New York deserves better than the selfishness we saw on display last night. New Jersey deserves better than the duplicity we saw last night. America deserves better than yet another example of a government that has forgotten who they are there to serve and why. Sixty-six days and counting. Shame on you. Shame on Congress. “ 

Asked afterwards if he understood why the vote had been canceled, Mr. Christie said he was left completely in the dark. 

“I was given no explanation,” he said. “I was called at 11:20 last night by Leader Cantor and was told that he was told authority for the vote was pulled by the Speaker. Our delegation asked for a meeting with the Speaker at the time; they were refused. I called the Speaker four times last night after 11:20 and he did not take my calls….There’s no reason for me to believe anything they tell me, because they’ve been telling me stuff for weeks. And they didn’t deliver.”

"I called the Speaker four times last night after 11:20 and he did not take my calls." God I love it when Republicans fight!

And the thing is that Christie is dead right here.  Boehner exhausted himself pushing through the fiscal cliff bill, and left nothing in the tank to deal with this very necessary relief bill, and now he is paying for it big time.

Right now on the news is a parade of House members from New York and New Jersey ripping into Boehner's barely breathing corpse. They are going to strip him to the bone by the end of business today.

Anybody want to take bets on Boehner's chances of hanging onto his job as Speaker?

Yeah neither does this guy.

By the way, you just KNOW that right now President Obama is sitting in the Hawaiian sun with the biggest damn grin on his face that you have ever seen. He has GOT to be loving this!

Chris Christie on SNL last night. No, I mean the REAL Chris Christie.

Not bad, He delivered his lines well, was self-effacing, and did not embarrass himself or his constituents.

With this appearance it looks like we can DEFINITELY put Christie in the binder full of Republicans running for president in 2016.

But hopefully this won't discourage Sarah Palin. I mean how hard would it be to out debate Chris Christie? (Oh please, oh please, oh please!)

President Obama returns to devastation left in wake of Sandy in order to console victims and view progress of the cleanup.

President Obama consoles parents of children killed in storm.

Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune:

President Barack Obama consoled grieving victims of Superstorm Sandy on the ground and surveyed disaster zones from the air on Thursday, visiting parts of New York City still struggling to recover 17 days after the storm devastated the U.S. Northeast. 

Wearing a wind breaker and sturdy shoes, the president walked through destroyed sections of the borough of Staten Island, hugging and chatting with people whose lives were shattered when Sandy slammed ashore on October 29, bringing a record storm surge and killing more than 120 people. 

During his FIRST visit to the areas devastated by this incredible storm, the President was criticized for using it as a photo-op for political gain. Well now the election is over, and here the President is again, doing the job he was elected to do.

Clearly it was NEVER about the photo-op, it was about helping people in need.

I am sure that Mitt Romney probably has the help that FEMA provided these devastated people on his list of things the President GAVE voters in order to buy their support.

By the way you can watch the President's statement by clicking here.

Poll numbers reveal that Americans were quite impressed with President Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy. Take that Fox News!

In what should come as little surprise to most of you, and despite what that batshit crazy person from the dead lake said yesterday, polls indicate that President Obama is getting a lot of credit for how well he handled the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Courtesy of TPM:  

A number of new polls have shown that the American public has positive views of President Obama's response to the damage along the eastern seaboard caused by Hurricane Sandy. 

A UPI poll released Saturday showed 77 percent of Americans had a positive take on Obama's response to the storm and an additional 65 percent thought "the destructive storm and its aftermath gave the president a chance to connect better with voters," the news service wrote. An ABC News/Washington Post national tracking poll released on Wednesday of last week also found 78 percent of likely voters had a positive view of the president's efforts. A pair of swing state polls released Saturday from NBC/Marist showed the same thing -- 70 percent of likely voters in Florida and 73 percent of likely voters in Ohio approved of the response. 

Apparently most Americans do not agree that the President simply showed up for a "photo op." They saw a President taking his job very seriously and getting things done as quickly as humanly possible.

As a matter of fact some in the Republican party have seen the writing on the wall and are already positioning themselves to credit Obama's inevitable win to the Hurricane, so as not to blame their candidate or their policies.

This from Politico:

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign," Rove told the Washington Post on Friday. "When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his advantage.” 

He characterized the stutter as a "subtle disadvantage" but said the storm has had a significant impact on the race. 

"It’s the October surprise. For once, the October surprise was a real surprise," he told the Post. Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to George W. Bush, said the president "has temporarily been a bipartisan figure this week. He has been the Comforter-in-Chief and that helps."

Of course that ignores the poll numbers which have been heading in Obama's favor long before the storm hit and the early voting numbers which have also been favoring the incumbent in key swing states.

But blaming the storm gives the Republicans an out to that they don't have to honestly address how out of touch they are with the American people.

Sounds good to me.  That way they will continue to be vulnerable for many elections to come.

As President Obama attends to the suffering of those devastated by Hurricane Sandy, Sarah Palin decides it is the appropriate time to go on the attack.

Click constipated expression to play video.

I am actually only going to be able to post about a portion of this vicious attack on our President as he reaches out to assist Americans in dire need. The absolutely disgusting things said about Obama during these six minutes made it almost impossible for me to unclench my fists long enough to type out a response.

And before I start let me just say, "Fuck Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin!" There I feel a little better now.

This middle school nastiness starts off with Hannity playing clips of the President, and the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, followed by totally ludicrous and false charges that the President is treating this as nothing more than a "photo op" for political purposes.

At one point Hannity actually criticizes the President for the fact that FOUR DAYS after this storm, which flooded miles of tunnels and literally caused the Con-Ed power station to explode into a fireball, there are still places without power. Seriously?

He also claims that you can't see any FEMA help anywhere.

Yeah anywhere on Fox News that is! If you turn to other ACTUAL news stations you can see trucks arriving and people being helped all over the place.

Then he asks the worst Governor in Alaska history to take her shot as well and this was her incredibly disgusting and hypocritical response:

"So he got his photo ops out of that, unfortunately, because then he got to jet off, and you know here he goes again to party in Vegas with Jay Z, and..uh..quite unfortunate because, as you say Sean, people are truly suffering, and this isn't a time for politics, and I think that it's quite a shame that President Obama chose to seize THE opportunity, along with the complicit lapdogs in the media to make it a political statement."

Hang on I have to bang my head for a second.

Okay, back now. Let's see where do I even start?

For one thing right now the President is being lauded by virtually EVERYBODY who does not get their news solely from Fox for his quick and competent response to this disaster. For another thing, what kind of moron would ask freaking SARAH PALIN to weigh in on the appropriate response to a weather disaster that endangers human life?

Perhaps Hannity does not remember Emmonak? Or perhaps even more likely, Fox News never reported on what happened in that Alaskan community almost four years ago now on Sarah Palin's watch.

Here let me remind everybody.

In 2009 when the village of Emmonak, and other surrounding villages, found themselves without heating oil for their houses and on the verge of starvation, an Emmonak elder, Nick Tucker, reached out to Sarah Palin repeatedly for help.

When he received no answer he went public and had a letter published in the Bristol Bay Times outlining the dire nature of their situation. Four days later, after being publicly embarrassed by the Alaska bloggers and progressive community, she finally issued a less than satisfying response.

And then it was actually a whole month later, after the crisis had virtually ended, that she herself went out into the rural villages to hand out cookies as part of a photo op with Franklin Graham.

The kicker here is that Palin took her cookies and supplies to Russian Mission, which was NOT one the villages that had been asking for help. This forced Nick Tucker to travel all the way to Russian Mission to finally tell his governor face to face how much his people had been suffering.

Palin of course snubbed him and never did anything to address his concerns.

So essentially she "got her photo op" and then "jetted off."

And THIS is who Fox News brings in to criticize the President's response to this incredible catastrophe in the nation's largest community?

Let me just state again, for the record, "Fuck Sean Hannity and fuck Sarah Palin."

P.S. By the way, speaking of political opportunism, our friend Geoffrey Dunn has a great piece up over at HuffPo on Palin's last minute donation to Mitt Romney's failed campaign for the presidency.

You know I was actually thinking that perhaps Mitt Romney was a more horrible example of a human being than was Sarah Palin, but this interview reminded me that perhaps NOBODY will ever be able to take that title away from her. Nasty, nasty woman!

After two days off the air Jon Stewart finally gets opportunity to weigh in on Hurricane Sandy. And Chris Christie's amazing epiphany.

Click image to watch video

"Yeah I guess he found that fucking light switch huh?"

By the way I could watch this lady all damn day long.

Everything about this terrible storm sucked except for watching her in action.

Ladies and Gentleman allow me to introduce my President and yours, Barack "Together we can do anything" Obama.

I don't really think I have to add anything.

THAT is who Mitt Romney is running against, and that help he is offering this devastated woman is what Romney wants to privatize.

I believe the appropriate word here is "checkmate."

Trying to turn a natural disaster to political advantage, the naked opportunism of the Romney/Ryan campaign.

I am beyond certain that the Romney/Ryan campaign is completely panic stricken by the fact that hurricane Sandy has, unfortunately for many, provided the necessity for the President to do his job, under the watchful gaze of the American voters. So while the President is proving to the voters why he IS the man they want in catastrophic times, Romney is left to jump up and down in the hopes of catching a reporter's attention.

I guess in the face of such a situation it can be expected that the campaign might become somewhat desperate, but seriously, this is just fucking pathetic!

Take Romney's campaign stop Storm Relief Event in Ohio yesterday:  

But even as Romney, clad in blue jeans and rolled-up sleeves, hustled around his area of the gym, shaking hands, thanking supporters, and stacking cases of bottled water on top of each other, signs of stagecraft remained. 

As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan T-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, "You need a donation to get in line!" 

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, "What if we dropped off our donations up front?" 

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. "Just grab something," he said. 

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their "donations" to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest "Thank you."

Not only THAT but many of the donations the supporters seemingly provided were not even something that that they themselves brought. This from the Atlantic Wire:

Mitt Romney was really concerned that his "Storm Relief Event" in Kettering, Ohio yesterday would look like a dud, so he and his team stocked their donation tables with $5,000 worth of supplies at Walmart. 

And as completely fake as THAT event was his running mate's event in Wisconsin was no less phony.

It was the second of Paul Ryan's photo ops in his home state today where the campaign made a show of helping storm victims however they could. At the first stop in La Crosse, the vice presidential nominee thanked supporters for coming, shaking hands with some standing in front of an American flag, where minutes before, aides arranged boxes of Cheerios and cans of corn in perfect order. 

In Hudson, the packing was proceeding too quickly, and the supporters wearing red "Team Wisconsin" t-shirts were given the order to slow down and then to stop to be sure there were still goods to be packed when Ryan entered. 

One by one the boxes were filled and loaded into a waiting U-Haul, and then they stopped to wait for the candidate. 

"Thanks a lot, thanks for doing all this," Ryan said to the supporters when he arrived. 

As Ryan walked back through the office to the motorcade volunteers finished packing the supplies, which are being driven to a Red Cross facility in New Jersey. 

As supporters walked out the door they were handed a flier about the GOP's election night party.

This of course should come as no surprise to many of us as Paul Ryan has a history of staging phony, self serving, and completely unhelpful photo ops.

Seriously this just makes me sick to my stomach. Especially since this the campaign of a man who calls federal spending on disaster relief "immoral,"

My personal opinion is that these sad attempts to appear presidential will not fool the majority of the voters, who are probably right now just waiting for their opportunity to vote THIS man back into office.

H/T to Democratic Underground

You know, the guy who trudges through sheets of pouring rain to return to his job of helping the American people, instead of staging a photo op PRETENDING to help the American people.

In fact the President is doing such an impressive job of attacking this terrible situation, and keeping politics out of it, that he even made a believer out of this guy.

Courtesy of the New York Times

 Let's see the Romney/Ryan campaign compete with that!

Update: Here is another picture of our President giving to those who are hurting in ways that others simply cannot do.

Photo courtesy of the Obama Diary

Here was Bill Maher's Twitter response to Sandy.

Scientists say #HurricaneSandy likely linked to record ArcticSea loss this yr but fuck them they're just scientists what does the bible say?
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 30, 2012

Of course as you all probably heard, some Fundamentalist moron already tried to blame it on "teh gays."

Somewhere AL Gore is walking around mumbling, "I tried to tell them, I even made a movie, but would they listen? NO!"

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gushes over President Obama's hands on approach to dealing with storm devastation. Update!

Come on! You just KNOW that somewhere Mitt Romney is banging his perfectly coiffed head against the wall.

I understand that in a desperate attempt to appear that he is helping with the relief effort Romney will be holding a "storm relief event" with, get this, race car driver Richard Petty and country music singer Randy Owen. Isn't Ohio one of the few states in the north east NOT affected directly by Sandy?

God this is just getting pathetic.

Update: Oops I stand corrected, it looks like Sandy has now started to impact Ohio and over 250,000 people are without power and hundreds of schools are closed. Hmm, I wonder if Romney will still show up or run for safety?

Update 2: Today Christie is no less impressed by President Obama, and seems substantially UNIMPRESSED by Romney's efforts to campaign during this tragedy.

This from Raw Story:

 “The president was great last night,” Christie continued. “He said he would get it done. At 2 a.m., I got a call from FEMA to answer a couple of final questions and then he signed the declaration this morning. So I have to give the president great credit. He’s been on the phone with me three times in the last 24 hours. He’s been very attentive, and anything that I’ve asked for, he’s gotten to me. So, I thank the president publicly for that. He’s done — as far as I’m concerned — a great job for New Jersey.” 

Fox News co-host Steve Doocy wondered when Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was going to get some of the same benefits from the hurricane with a photo op in disaster-stricken New Jersey towns. 

“Over the last couple of months, you have appeared throughout the country, Governor, on behalf of Mitt Romney,” Doocy remarked to Christie. “[W]e hear that perhaps Mr. Romney may do some storm-related events. Is there any possibility that Gov. Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you?” 

“I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” Christie replied, immediately shutting down the idea. “I’ve got a job to do here in New Jersey that’s much bigger than presidential politics and I could [sic] care less about any of that stuff.” 

“I have a job to do,” he added. “I’ve got 2.4 million people out of power, I’ve got devastation on the shore, I’ve got floods in the northern part of my state. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics then you don’t know me.” 

Oh damn! That's going to lave a mark!

Update 3: Apparently the Romney Ohio "Storm Relief Event" is going on now, and though they were informed that the Red Cross would NOT accept donations that were brought to the event, the campaign is indeed accepting donations on their behalf.

By the way the quick name change for this event did not happen soon enough to affect the already printed press badges.

 "Victory Rally?" What victory is the Romney campaign celebrating? President Obama's?

Reporter Jackie Kucinich tweeted that during this bizarre gathering there was a Romney/Ryan campaign video playing on a giant screen. Gee I wonder how THAT will provide "relief" for the victims of hurricane Sandy?

The size difference between last year's Hurricane Irene and this year's Frankenstorm Sandy.

Can you say "Holy Shit?"

Here is a picture that Lawrence O'Donnell tweeted of 6th Avenue in New York.

Yes you read that right, New York!

Anybody ever see the movie "28 Days Later?"

Currently all kinds of blogs and sites are going down due to the storm. It is one of the few times weather wise that I am very glad to be way up here in Alaska.

Please be safe my friends.