MARC SHORT:
Now Chuck, let me first that say I have a nine-year-old daughter as you know, and I think that the notion of innocent, defenseless children being molested is one of the most painful thoughts a parent can have. And I think that there’s a special place in hell for those who actually perpetrate these crimes, and I think Roy Moore has to do more explaining than he has done so far. But I think we here in Washington have to be careful as well in this. Roy Moore is somebody who graduated from West Point, he served our country in Vietnam, he’s been elected multiple times statewide in Alabama. The people in Alabama know Roy Moore better than we do here in DC, and I think we have to be very cautious, as Senator Toomey said of allegations that are 40 years old that arise a month before election day.
Now Chuck, let me first that say I have a nine-year-old daughter as you know, and I think that the notion of innocent, defenseless children being molested is one of the most painful thoughts a parent can have. And I think that there’s a special place in hell for those who actually perpetrate these crimes, and I think Roy Moore has to do more explaining than he has done so far. But I think we here in Washington have to be careful as well in this. Roy Moore is somebody who graduated from West Point, he served our country in Vietnam, he’s been elected multiple times statewide in Alabama. The people in Alabama know Roy Moore better than we do here in DC, and I think we have to be very cautious, as Senator Toomey said of allegations that are 40 years old that arise a month before election day.
*****
DC- the swamp the *resident beebles on about draining even as he introduces new species into its fetid soup- will be the very last place to change:
The sexual-harassment revolution is coming more slowly to Washington. Even the four female lawmakers who recently told the Associated Press of sexual harassment they faced from their male co-workers didn’t feel comfortable sharing the names of their harassers. “I’m not sure women in D.C. would be rewarded for their bravery [if they came forward], it’s just a different business,” Ellen says. “The thing about this town is that everyone is connected. The people who get ahead keep the peace and angle everything to their advantage.”
Add to that the tribal nature of politics: Most aides are terrified of doing anything that might bring bad press for their boss, or their side. “There’s an anti-snitch sorta thing — you don’t air your dirty laundry,” says Anne Gregory Teicher, a Democratic campaign manager. “It gives the other side power.”
And it doesn’t stop when the campaign is over. “Staffers are told from day one that they do not talk to press, full stop,” says Travis Moore, a former legislative director for the now-retired representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. As a Waxman aide, he says, “I spoke to a reporter once, on background, and I was incredibly nervous going into it … people are socialized not to ever talk about what’s wrong in the institution because it could reflect poorly on their member of Congress. There’s a culture that doesn’t accept criticism unless you’re talking about partisanship. It’s really bad for the institution.”
Add to that the tribal nature of politics: Most aides are terrified of doing anything that might bring bad press for their boss, or their side. “There’s an anti-snitch sorta thing — you don’t air your dirty laundry,” says Anne Gregory Teicher, a Democratic campaign manager. “It gives the other side power.”
And it doesn’t stop when the campaign is over. “Staffers are told from day one that they do not talk to press, full stop,” says Travis Moore, a former legislative director for the now-retired representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. As a Waxman aide, he says, “I spoke to a reporter once, on background, and I was incredibly nervous going into it … people are socialized not to ever talk about what’s wrong in the institution because it could reflect poorly on their member of Congress. There’s a culture that doesn’t accept criticism unless you’re talking about partisanship. It’s really bad for the institution.”
Despite this Breitbart headline the other day-
Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama, was banned from a mall in the early 1980s after he repeatedly attempted to pick up teenage girls, former mall employees and local police told The New Yorker. Other locals also told AL.com that Moore was known for prowling the mall. Moore, whom five women have accused of making advances on them or molesting them when they were teenagers, allegedly had a reputation for hanging around the Gadsden Mall, in Gadsden, Alabama, in pursuit of high school-age girls. One former mall employee told The New Yorker that a security guard asked mall employees to be on the lookout for Moore, who was “banned from the mall.” Blake Usry, who was a teenager in town at the time, told AL.com Moore was known to "flirt with all the young girls," and would hang out at the mall on weekends "like the kids did." Other locals told AL.com that Moore's penchant for flirting with teens was common knowledge in town. One former waitress told AL.com that Moore made young waitresses uncomfortable by staring at them, then becoming rude if they did not "give him an opening." A police officer, one of two who spoke with The New Yorker, said that “general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates” and that Moore may not have received an official ban but was a persona non grata at the mall and had been “run off” from “a number of stores.
*****
In a Winthrop University poll, 46% of white Southerners feel themselves under attack, mostly, it seems, by common sense:
They also don’t think of Southerners as racists – only 15% said yes. A fourth of black respondents said they think of Southerners as racists.
Southerners said the most important problem facing our country is racism.
And everyone seems to agree that an essential tenet of liberty is to be able to freely denigate others:
Respondents seem frustrated that “political correctness” threatens the liberty of Americans to speak their minds. Around two-thirds of residents said they agreed or strongly agreed.
And 30 percent of all respondents in the poll agreed when asked if America needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage.
...But the election of President Stupid one year ago made the lives and strategies of every thug and parasite in American politics orders of magnitude more complicated, because the plan was that Hillary Clinton would win, take on the sins of the political world, and every wingnut meatbag and Both Siderist con man would grow vastly richer thereby.
Under President Hillary the Right would continue being free from any pretense of doing the one thing they loathe above all else: governing. They could gleefully go right on to doing the only things they knows how to do: obstruct, lie, witch-hunt, lie, sabotage and lie...and blame President Hillary every time they broke the government or burned something down.
Under President Hillary Fox News would continue to make enormous profits being the only thing it knows how to be -- a 24/7 Impeach The Kenyan Usurper The Castrating Bitch freakshow.
Under President Hillary Both Siderists could go right on inventing imaginary fences to straddle and then blaming Both Sides every time the Right burned something down.
And under President Hillary, America's precious Independents, Steiniacs, and every other species of Purity Angel could rely on political herd immunity get Hillary elected so that they wouldn't have to personally soil their dainty souls by voting for anyone who was not 110% perfect. They could go right on telling themselves that Emails were just as awful as Pussy Grabbing Racism and that it really didn't matter who won because that teddible, teddible K'rupt Duopoly was the real problem.
They would be free, free, free to go right on being Righteous and Unsullied because they would never have to actually live under the rule of Il Douche.
Never need to lose sleep, or fight their way through panic attacks and crying jags because their children were about to be stripped of their health insurance.
But there is no President Hillary. And there never will be. And now, nearly a year into the catastrophic maladministration of President Stupid, one might think that the derelicts and mountebanks and cretins and dupes of Both Siderism could finally be pried loose of their repulsive creed.
However Both Siderists love their Both Siderism like a glutton loves his lunch. And so despite having to change the patter and the pacing of their lying to keep up with the bullet-train of flagrant, flaming bullshit and profoundly evil policies that issue from the Republican White House and Republican Congress every day, the cast of this confederacy of liars and the lies they tell remains completely unaltered by events.
Under President Hillary the Right would continue being free from any pretense of doing the one thing they loathe above all else: governing. They could gleefully go right on to doing the only things they knows how to do: obstruct, lie, witch-hunt, lie, sabotage and lie...and blame President Hillary every time they broke the government or burned something down.
Under President Hillary Fox News would continue to make enormous profits being the only thing it knows how to be -- a 24/7 Impeach The Kenyan Usurper The Castrating Bitch freakshow.
Under President Hillary Both Siderists could go right on inventing imaginary fences to straddle and then blaming Both Sides every time the Right burned something down.
And under President Hillary, America's precious Independents, Steiniacs, and every other species of Purity Angel could rely on political herd immunity get Hillary elected so that they wouldn't have to personally soil their dainty souls by voting for anyone who was not 110% perfect. They could go right on telling themselves that Emails were just as awful as Pussy Grabbing Racism and that it really didn't matter who won because that teddible, teddible K'rupt Duopoly was the real problem.
They would be free, free, free to go right on being Righteous and Unsullied because they would never have to actually live under the rule of Il Douche.
Never need to lose sleep, or fight their way through panic attacks and crying jags because their children were about to be stripped of their health insurance.
But there is no President Hillary. And there never will be. And now, nearly a year into the catastrophic maladministration of President Stupid, one might think that the derelicts and mountebanks and cretins and dupes of Both Siderism could finally be pried loose of their repulsive creed.
However Both Siderists love their Both Siderism like a glutton loves his lunch. And so despite having to change the patter and the pacing of their lying to keep up with the bullet-train of flagrant, flaming bullshit and profoundly evil policies that issue from the Republican White House and Republican Congress every day, the cast of this confederacy of liars and the lies they tell remains completely unaltered by events.
*****
As fresh hells go, surely one of the hottest is to that occupied by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, whose deal with the devil is that he can hold office for life as long as he satisfies one of the most racist Republican electorates in the nation. So far he has struggled, manfully, to live up to the bargain. On Face The Nation Sunday:
Scott said, “Well, certainly the allegations are very, very strong, denial was not as strong as the allegations. I think if the allegations are true, there’s no doubt that he should step aside and not for the party, but for the American people. We have to find a way to restore trust and confidence in our elected officials, in our government. and this goes in the wrong direction.”
He added, “There’s no doubt that the case is compelling. The judge and the jury, in this case, will be the people of Alabama, voters of Alabama. they will have an opportunity to weigh in very clearly and decisively and very shortly.”
He added, “There’s no doubt that the case is compelling. The judge and the jury, in this case, will be the people of Alabama, voters of Alabama. they will have an opportunity to weigh in very clearly and decisively and very shortly.”
*****
MOTUS, as is well-known, craves respect as a democratically-elected dictator rather than just a democratically-elected dick. Among the more dangerous- and yet risible- beaux ideals of his lusts is the mass-murderer of the Philippines, who knows better than most how to play Tillerson’s Moron:
President Rodrigo Duterte crooned a hit Filipino love song at a dinner in Manila for leaders from across Asia, explaining later that it was “on the orders of Donald Trump”.
The US president and Duterte were among 19 leaders at a gala in the Philippines capital on Sunday before the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit. At one point Duterte took the microphone to sing Ikaw (You), in a duet with local pop diva Pilita Corrales. One of the song’s verses, translated from Filipino, begins: “You are the light in my world, a half of this heart of mine.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I sang uninvited, upon the orders of the commander-in-chief of the United States,” Duterte said later, according to the ABS-CBN news channel.
The US president and Duterte were among 19 leaders at a gala in the Philippines capital on Sunday before the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit. At one point Duterte took the microphone to sing Ikaw (You), in a duet with local pop diva Pilita Corrales. One of the song’s verses, translated from Filipino, begins: “You are the light in my world, a half of this heart of mine.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I sang uninvited, upon the orders of the commander-in-chief of the United States,” Duterte said later, according to the ABS-CBN news channel.
*****
Meantime, the Governing Majorities in Washington obsess, with Gollum-like focus, on their precious, Donor Class Tax Reform, while America burns:
Equifax CEO to Congress: Not Sure We Are Encrypting Data
Interim chief should have asked his staff ‘the day he took over,’ analyst says
*****
And Republicans, having long since embraced Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s theory of defining deviancy down, are busily cranking out new Radical Positions to make the old ones seem mainstream. North Carolina’s congresscritters are always at the ramparts:
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the GOP's latest pet project: The Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would effectively ban the procedure after a fetus has a detectable heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. If passed, it would basically criminalize abortion at six weeks—which, according to bill sponsor U.S. Representative Steve King of Iowa, is pretty much the point.
"If the heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected," King said during the hearing's opening statements. He also brought along a sonogram machine, and narrated the sounds of a fetus's heartbeat for dramatic flair.
The bill has 169 cosponsors to date—all Republican, save for one Dem from Minnesota—including nine of the ten House Republicans from North Carolina (we're going to assume Virginia Foxx missed the memo).
"If the heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected," King said during the hearing's opening statements. He also brought along a sonogram machine, and narrated the sounds of a fetus's heartbeat for dramatic flair.
The bill has 169 cosponsors to date—all Republican, save for one Dem from Minnesota—including nine of the ten House Republicans from North Carolina (we're going to assume Virginia Foxx missed the memo).
*****
Of course they’re better alternated with pearl onions (“the onion” of the holidays):
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