drsmooth wrote:oh, and Coburn just made some kind of announcement he'll leave his seat 2 years before his term's up. Has prostate cancer.

Well, I'm sure he'll be replaced by someone reasonable and genuinely committed to restoring the traditional comity of the Senate. Like Oklahoma's other senator.

Seriously, I'm sorry to see Coburn leave the body. No doubt he is far to the right, and he sometimes would bend facts to ideology, but on balance he was a lot more principled, rational and actually committed to legislating than most in that caucus.

This looks pretty interesting.

I remember there being a school of thought that Romney could possibly "break through" by being more forthcoming about his faith and personal life. I kind of doubt it--I think the haughty rich jerk on display was representative, if not the full picture--and maybe more to the point, he might have had that GHWB/Gore trait (I guess in political terms it's a "problem," but I wouldn't put it that way in human terms) of just not being willing to represent his full self in an authentic way for the cameras.

dajafi wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I'm into the retributive aspects of capitol punishment

You joke, but pretty much this is the only way to rationalize it--as a societal statement on the horrible act committed.

Folks here have hit all the big points in the debate on the anti side, other than the really disturbing questions around application by race and the prospect of executing someone who didn't actually commit the crime. There's nothing efficient or effective about state executions; it's all judgment and revenge. For many Americans I suspect that's just fine, and their big grievances are with the process-based delays and expenses.

Edit: I should note that I'm not absolutely unsympathetic to this view. Were it up to me, I'd leave death an option for cases where there was overwhelming evidence, no repentence, no appeal for clemency from any corner and affirmation up and down the system--think Jeffrey Dahmer. I see no reason why we should pay to incarcerate proven monsters. This is hopefully not more than a once a decade proposition, but still.

I've gone 180 on capital punishment. I'm all for the law'n'order thing and real consequences tied to criminal behavior - but indeed the death penalty is about vengeance. And we're better as a society to move beyond that, especially when you consider the possibility that it could be the wrong guy. I'm not religious at all, but I'm comfortable with "Vengeance is God's." We have no business determining who lives and who dies.

jerseyhoya wrote:Being president seems to age these people 10 years a term, and I think as the country has gotten larger, the media environment more intense, etc. the job has gotten even more taxing. Our last few presidents have been relatively young, healthy looking folks at the start, and look beaten up when it's over.

I don't think it's the media as much as the alien reptilian implants that have taken over their bodies.

td11 wrote:http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mayor-christie-camp-held-sandy-money-hostage

Ouch. If it's true, he's surely done. People had empathy for those stuck in traffic on the bridge. They'll be pissed if he messed with relief aid for political ends and some group of rich guys.

Also, everyone hated that "stronger than the storm" song.

If the governor or anyone in the administration is threatening to withhold deserved Sandy redevelopment dollars over a development project to help some connected law firm that would be disappointing and probably criminal. But I mean, jeez, there's so much crap going on here, and Zimmer's story is really problematic.

Hoboken saw a lot of flooding during Sandy, but it didn't experience the level of damage or lasting devastation that other parts of the state got. If I'm reading the MSNBC thing correctly, the town asked for about $100 mil from a series of programs that have a total of $2 bil in aid to disburse statewide. Not really sure how much she was expecting to get. And this post from a state blog contends not all of the money has been given out yet, many other town requests are also in limbo, and also suggests some of the grants (including ones Zimmer talked about) are under the purview of individual counties while others are taking a very long time for the NJEDA to review, in part because the way the federal government is releasing the money is slow. I guess Hoboken's requests being in limbo aren't necessarily inconsistent with Zimmer's story (push through the development and we'll help you get these through), but the presentation that they've received so little money so far makes Hoboken at all unique or shows it is being punished is misleading.

If the money is able to be parceled out without objective standards according to political loyalty or making developers happy, that's an even bigger problem or scandal than the specific instance of supposed threats, as it's what makes the threats possible and will lead to more systemic problems. If the grants are being reviewed and allocated by objective standards based on damage from the storm, it makes it a lot harder to buy Zimmer's complaints. It'd be nice if the NYT or Washington Post did a story examining that angle rather than another piece on what this means for Christie's standing among major GOP donors, but that would require more effort than dialing a few sources in the Rolodex so I'm not holding my breath. Or maybe they already have done a story on how the local, state and federal governments are deciding to disburse the money, and my googling was insufficient for the task.

Beyond the specifics on the grants front, Zimmer said eight days ago she hoped the reason Hoboken wasn't having trouble getting Sandy relief money wasn't revenge for her not endorsing Christie. So I guess over the course of the past week she remembered what happened eight months ago and decided that was the real reason?

Her "diary entries" from May talking about how disappointed she is in Christie for being cut from the same corrupt cloth predate two tweets from August where she declared "@govchristie He has done a great job for NJ & Hoboken. We have a non-partisan mayoral election on Nov 5th." and "To be clear I am very glad Governor Christie has been our Gov. I am not endorsing bc of Hob's non-partisan mayoral race." I guess to believe her story she would say she was blowing smoke then for political reasons and is telling the truth now?

She has a couple of diary entries. The accused have categorically denied what she said. The accusations deserves to be examined (though hopefully not by Wisnewski or Weinberg), and more broadly how the state is disbursing the Sandy money should be looked at by the press and independent government agencies. But goodness there are a lot of people anxious to buy every word of what Zimmer is selling when there are big disconnects in her tale. Plus her coming forward is a no lose proposition that she might think will boost her town's chances at getting grants or boost her personal standing within state Dem circles. The most personally hurtful part of all of this for me is Eli endorsed and did a fundraiser for Zimmer.

Wildstein is looking for immunity to testify about the bridge closing stuff. I'm ready for him or Kelly or whomever to explain what happened and why one way or the other, so Christie's presidential hopes either die or are largely cleared because this NJ Democrat makes wild accusations and has them reliably broadcast by MSNBC so they get murmured about in the national media thing is getting old.

Zimmer's diary pages will probably end up being analyzed by a crime lab, I guess the FBI lab. They'll be able to tell if they were written in May 2013, or more recently. If they were written in May, the Christie administration is in very deep trouble.

logos wrote:Zimmer's diary pages will probably end up being analyzed by a crime lab, I guess the FBI lab. They'll be able to tell if they were written in May 2013, or more recently. If they were written in May, the Christie administration is in very deep trouble.

Eh, it would show she's not just making it up now, but it's still her word about the content of the conversations against the word of the other two people. There'd still need to be another piece to corroborate her story - some bureaucrat saying Hoboken's grants were handled differently, internal emails discussing the matter, one of the people she claimed was listening to the second person make the threat while they were miked, etc. If her story is true, you'd expect they'd be able to find that.

There's nothing wrong with the administration telling a mayor they support a development project, and encouraging her to support the project. If you drill down past all the lines Kornacki and Zimmer are trying to draw, the study was conducted by a well respected third party, so backing its conclusions wasn't exactly a far fetched stance to take. The LG could've talked to Zimmer about the administration thinking the project was important and worthy of backing at the event about Sandy recovery, and Zimmer could've just taken it, rightly or wrongly, as an implied threat. I'm done calling anything too dumb to be true because it looks like whatever happened in Bridgegate is going to end up falling under than banner, but ‘If you tell anyone I said it, I will deny it’ is the sort of thing I would write in my diary to make my day sound more interesting than it was if I was a grownup human being who kept a diary. Or the topic might not have come up at all.

If this sordid tale is true, at least they're doing political scandals the proper way this time by informing the person you're supposedly threatening/punishing in an unverifiable fashion that they're being punished, what they're being punished for, and how they can end the punishment in a way that is beneficial to everyone involved except taxpayers. Jon Stewart will be happy.

I think you're right that some of Zimmer's story sounds like it was made up by a bad writer. The line you mention sounds made up and it matches the melodramatic style in the lines about Christie letting her down. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised if she embellished. Someone should call her on the lie detector thing. It would sure help Christie if she turns out to be lying and he can prove it. He could then paint all the other allegations as part of some grand attempt to take him down.

By the way, she mentioned being on mic during one of the conversations in question. Maybe someone should go back through the old tapes.

probably others in line behind Zimmer, eager to get to the mike, so I'm not sure the details are ultimately likely to be that important

The ACA doomsday news seems to have died down, so thought I would share this anecdotal "horror story" from the mean streets of socialistic Dayton OH:

Columbus Biz Insider wrote:Small employers shouldn’t take Obamacare decisions lightly, CBF panelists say (Carrie Ghose, Columbus [OH] Biz Insider, 1/16/14)

CareSource, the state’s largest managed-care company for people on Medicaid, did not target the small-business market when it started selling direct individual health coverage under the federal insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. And yet, even though the Dayton nonprofit does not sell group plans, small businesses have been a surprising source of customers, said Scott Streator, CareSource vice president over the marketplace products.....

CareSource has signed up about 11,000 individuals for plans taking effect this month and in February – double what it projected at this point – despite the troubles with the healthcare.gov website, Streator said.

“Our leads are coming from small business,” he said.

drsmooth wrote:The ACA doomsday news seems to have died down

Personally, I'm waiting for the cost data. The news that only 24% of signups were ages 18-35, instead of the expected 38%, is not meaningful in isolation. It's only meaningful insofar as the impact on cost.

Ryan Lizza ‏@RyanLizza
Curious. Hoboken mayor's journal seems to *start* w/CC allegation: "Maybe it's time to get back to journal writing." http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/19/politics/ ... index.html

Still could be true I guess, but it seems to me the main reason you would start writing a diary by hand rather than on the computer is if you want to make it more difficult to tell how old the entries are. logos mentioned the FBI could tell how old the writing is, but I wouldn't know that, and that would seem to be more inexact than a computer even at best. Also the allegation itself is written all weirdly in the margin. I dunno.

yeah "i dunno" has been my reaction to this Hoboken stuff so far, too. seems kinda weak, tbh

We're not yet even tip of the iceberg on ObamaCare. Mrs. TP (physician assistant) reports that every one she knows - nurses, PAs, docs, admins - hate ObamaCare. Not only for its bureaucracy, but because it compels them to meter out cheap and ineffective treatment before they can get to procedures they know to be effective. It's bipartisan disdain. You know who loves ACA, for now? Hopsitals. They cannot turn away anyone from the emergency room, but now they can greet you in the waiting room with an iPad, where you can sign up for ObamaCare BEFORE getting treated. Insurer has no ability to turn you down - so they get stuck with the bills -sometimes thousands of dollars - and will get little or no premium for it. Do the math - this money is not gonna come out of the pockets of Daddy Warbucks. As expected, young healthy people (as well as old infertile people) have little interest in buying expensive health care insurance that covers services (mandatory) that they will never need, like maternity. ACA ignores everything we know about human and market behaviors. And it is hard to imagine that its architects could have been ignorant of this. When it fails, I know what their "solution" will be.

hospitals were already applying for anyone that came in for medicaid, and we would already foot the bill of their bills (which were 4x those of those with insurance). also, are they applying for retro or what? if they get enrolled, their insurance starts after their date of enrollment, not before. you dont get to 'wait' until you 'need' it. one of the reasons for the mandate was this very instance.

also, initial enrollment is of course different, and of course a hospital would be interested in getting someone coverage who doesn't have it, for multiple reasons, some profit and some because then they have access to multiple medical things that may help them. also, there are several things involved with medicare that have now disincentivized re-hospitalization.

the problem before was that no one was signing up. now it's that people are signing up, and we don't like them. soon, what will it be? the coverage networks are narrow. yeah, welcome to insurance.

I don't whether or not Mayor Zimmer is telling the truth but the timing is very curious. What bothers me more about this new story is the connection between the PA, Samson's law firm, the Rockefeller Group and the firm that did the redevelopment study. This is the level of corruption that would make Mr. Stewart smile.

Yeh, something stinks about that relationship with Rockefeller, but I'll need to see more evidence before I believe her story. And I agree that it's written weird. I've never seen a diary that wasn't relatively neat. It was like she was using one page for each sentence and things were scribbled out all over the place. Of course, it's possible that it happened and she was like, "Oh shit, I better document this, if for no other reason than to make sure people know I didn't agree to anything."

I'm still hoping someone is looking through the tapes. She said the mic was on.