I knew things had gone nuts in NH, but apparently the Speaker and the NH House Majority Leader have completely lost their shit. Yesterday, the Speaker:
Demonstrators interrupted budget discussion in the New Hampshire House, leading to a clearing of the public gallery, officials said.
House Speaker William O’Brien put the House in recess and ordered the gallery cleared as protesters shouted, “Don’t harass the middle class,” the Concord (N.H.) Monitor reported.
Asked what he thought as state troopers escorted people from the gallery, O’Brien said, “I think thugs will not rule New Hampshire, that’s what I think.”
Hundreds of people gathered outside the State House Thursday to protest a proposed state budget that would constrain collective bargaining and cut funding for nearly all state services, the newspaper said.
So there is the speaker calling teachers, firefighters, and police “thugs.” Today, House Majority Leader and complete meathead DJ Bettencourt decided to one-up his colleague:
House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt this morning wrote on his Facebook page that Catholic Bishop John McCormack is a “pedophile pimp” with “absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.”
McCormack spoke yesterday at a State House rally where thousands of demonstrators criticized the state budget proposed by the House of Representatives. McCormack criticized the budget for failing to protect people in need and called caring for the poor “the fundamental requirement of our religious heritage.”
This morning, Bettencourt posted on his personal Facebook page: “Bishop John McCormick (sic) of the Catholic Diocese of NH told the crowd, ‘It’s a moral concern (because) the vulnerable take priority in our society.’ Would the Bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the “vulnerable”? This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a rain coat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.”
So who exactly is voting for these wingnuts other than PJ O’Rourke? Is this really what the future looks like under teabagger rule?
Awesome.
jibeaux
Well, assuming that the sitting bishop is not a convicted “pedophile pimp”, I hope he files a defamation suit.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
No, it’s what the present looks like under teabagger rule. I imagine a future of continued and/or expanded teabagger rule would be considerably worse.
.
Failure, Inc.
Well, I’m wrong again. It does seem that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in this fine nation of ours.
I’m no fan of the Catholic church or of their dismal track record with kids, but jeez…a little much? Maybe?
Bullsmith
Republicans clearly won’t be happy till they’ve pissed off everyone. It has become their driving passion.
russell
live free or die, bitches
me
My first thought was “pissing off catholics can’t be good for his electoral future” but then I realized if there is one group that excels at cognitive dissonance, it’s catholics.
singfoom
I like how civil disobedience = thugs.
I thought thugs had to beat people up to be thugs.
Like a mobster boss. A mobster boss has thugs to go beat people up and “take care” of them.
Shouting is thuggery?
Also, “pedophile pimp”? To me that indicates a pimp that pimps out pedophiles, which is damn strange, but everyone has their kinks, I guess….
Failure, Inc.
@jibeaux: Given America’s incredibly liberal laws regarding what and how “libel” can be prosecuted, not to mention the even higher standard set for public figures (the bishop is one) he doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning such a suit. Pardon my terminology.
I refer you to Larry Flynt’s epic win over Jerry Falwell for a very similar case.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
Ah, those wacky Republicans. Every time I think that they’ve pulled out all the stops on the Krazy Klown Machine they pull out some more.
Failure, Inc.
It’s a middle finger being thrust in front of a human face, forever.
Chyron HR
Well, now we know what magic phrase you need to use if you want banner ads for “The Borgias”, starring Jeremy Irons.
Mark S.
It is? I’m not enjoying it a whole lot.
Pliny
Well, to be fair, Bishop John McCormack did cover up the actions of at least one serial child rapist, so it’s not like the insult came out of nowhere.
Svensker
@singfoom:
Disagreeing with a Reichwinger is thuggery.
“Pedophile pimp”? Really? Wow.
Gus
Catholics will still be duty bound to vote for them, though, ’cause they’re pro-life (though not pro-thug life).
Mark S.
@jibeaux:
Oops.
theturtlemoves
So, any chance of William Donahue denouncing this horrible affront to the Catholic Church or is it ok to insult bishops if they aren’t sufficiently conservative? Yeah, that’s what I figured.
Sasha
@Failure, Inc.:
[hat tip]
Excellent allusion! :)
Redshirt
Anyone got a roster of new Teabaggin’ Governors? They’re wreaking havoc across the land and I’m not sure the scope of the carnage is apparent.
BGinCHI
@Mark S.: You can kill the messenger, for all I care, but not the message.
Dr. Squid
@theturtlemoves: Actually, Bill Donahue finds it to be OK to insult bishops of the insulter is sufficiently conservative.
lamh34
@Chyron HR: Not for nothing, but I’ve seen previews for this show. I love Jeremy Irons. Makes tempted to get Showtime~
GregB
NH is still 25% Catholic. Checking the NH blogs and newspapers, it seems that there are still a lot of Republican Catholics who are pretty riled up about this.
The NH GOP is kicking the firefighters and the cops in the teeth too.
That is a big chunk of their base. The NH House is committing political suicide but they are taking the rest of the state with them.
NH still has a Democratic Governor in John Lynch, and he’ll veto some of this nutty stuff but the GOP has huge majorities in the House and Senate and could override.
However if the loony toons keep thumbing everyone in the eye, the middling GOP-ers may start to go wobbly.
Sasha
Not if they’re sufficiently dickish. (Though admittedly, some Catholics have higher dickishness tolerance than others.)
Does anyone have any idea if the dick in question worked with or courted the Arch-Bishop before this in order to win the Catholic vote?
PurpleGirl
In other places, specially NYS, I’m willing to call Andrew Cuomo a teabagger or at least an DINO. NY has an on-time budget this year (signed just on the cusp of the required deadline) but the near future will feature job cuts in school districts, the closing of some prisons (3,700 bed), and attacks on the unionized state workers. He is looking for changes in collective bargaining, pensions, health care, the whole nine yards. Cuomo also refused to consider extending a tax surcharge on millionaires.
(Yes, I voted for him under the duress of his opponent being Palladino.)
Villago Delenda Est
When William O’Brien calls people “thugs” he’s projecting.
Big time.
joe from Lowell
@Failure, Inc.:
Only a little. John McCormick is one of the genuine baddies in this story.
@Gus:
Gee, thanks, but you know what? I think we’ll go ahead and keep voting for Democrats in higher numbers than the general population, like we have for years, asshole.
joe from Lowell
@GregB:
Online voices aren’t a terribly accurate reflection of how the larger group to which they belong thinks.
Think about Obama’s poll numbers among liberals vs. what you saw self-proclaimed liberals say about him online over the past year.
James Hare
I don’t understand the fascination with the word “thug” in conservative circles. Is that word more emotionally fraught for the old? Is it another young bucks with their t-bones thing?
geg6
Well, as far as I’m concerned, the entire Catholic hierarchy should be prosecuted under RICO and left to rot. So calling the Archbishop names is fine with me.
But it’s probably not so fine to do if you’re and elected official whose electorate includes a huge chunk of Catholics. And calling cops and teachers and firefighters thugs is not so smart, either.
GregB
@joe from Lowell:
Knowing that most of the time I read comments at the Union Leader there is a over representation of wingnuts.
Also tapping in to 35 years of political observations in my home state.
This will be very damaging to this shit heel.
I also in no way support McCormack’s behavior in the past and think it needs to be looked in to.
Villago Delenda Est
@geg6:
They’re not called teatards for nothing, ya know.
deankeyton
Err….well….
He was pretty much the point man for covering up all the abusers in Boston for over a decade.
singfoom
@James Hare: I think it’s something like that. I think it’s a tone problem. You see, when Republicans and/or Conservatives yell and scream and froth at the mouth, that’s freedom talking. That’s freedom yelling and screaming.
When we liberals or progressives yell, we’re being thugs. We’re supposed to argue quietly and politely….or we’re thugs…
I think they’re also working the old “union thugs” mobster comparison…
GregB
@James Hare:
Thugs, aren’t they the guys who run around brandishing guns with a perverse pride and threaten to kill everyone who disagrees with them?
Projection on parade.
James Hare
I just see “thugs” used a great deal in sports comment threads to describe players and fans. I don’t even understand why calling someone a “thug” is supposed to be some big insult. So they’re violent and seek dominance. Doesn’t that describe most of the “successful” people in our country?
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
I think you’re thinking of this.
Zifnab
This close to Massachusetts and they want to piss away the Catholic vote? I say go for it.
Shooting people who disagree with you is in the Constitution, dontchaknow.
Joey Maloney
Catholic Bishop John McCormack is a “pedophile pimp” with “absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.”
Fair enough, actually.
Teatards vs. Catholic Church, is one of those matchups where I root for injuries.
Tonal Crow
I’m investing in pitchfork manufacturers and hound breeders. The peasants, they canna take it much more.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh God, Republicans vs. Catholics. I’m rooting for injuries.
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead: Isn’t it time for “Polish the Guillotines” to chime in?
GregB
This could be the new Canuck Letter controversy.
Social outcast
He’s kind of right about McCormack. Not the kind of guy I’d want representing me in a moral crusade for justice.
Joey Maloney
@Just Some Fuckhead: Jinx, you owe me a Koch!
Kilkee
According to the article Bettencourt is 27. What sort of party has a 27-year old Majority Leader? And anyway, nice long career down the drain.
Tonal Crow
@PurpleGirl: Closing prisons sounds like a great step forward to me. We should release everyone convicted of a nonviolent drug offense, which is about half of federal prisoners and about 20% of state prisoners. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Jails . Then we could close plenty of prisons.
theturtlemoves
I’ve frankly been amazed that the Catholic / Evangelical marriage of convenience has lasted this long. I remember in college having a guy in my dorm ask me if us Catholics really worshiped the Virgin Mary as an idol and other such Satanic stuff. Fundamentalists, as far as I remember, consider the CC to be the Whore of Babylon. But, I’m as lapsed as you could be at this point, so I’m with the hoping for injuries brigade myself.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tonal Crow: Who dat?
joe from Lowell
@James Hare:
A Google Images Search on the word THUG.
Notice anything?
Just Some Fuckhead
@joe from Lowell:
They’re all union workers?
(Who else would be able to afford all that jewelry?)
GregB
@joe from Lowell:
The sheriff is a N(clang)!
kansi
@joe from Lowell: OMG!
Cam
I just find it unbelievably offensive to hear teachers, social workers, firefighters and police dismissed as “union thugs.” This Ted Rall cartoon posted by Annie Laurie a couple of weeks ago is spot on: https://balloon-juice.com/2011/03/16/wednesday-evening-open-thread-2/
MikeF
Bettencourt couldn’t be more wrong on the policy issue at stake, but he could hardly be more right about John McCormack.
shortstop
McCormack’s choice to reassign known abusers is hideous and inexcusable.
Something tells me this is the first time Bettencourt has spoken out against the epidemic of priestly abuse.
Our enemies’ enemies are still our enemies.
Bob L
So the Enemies list now includes
police
firefighters
teachers
Non-whites
Women
Catholics
Muslims
Atheists
Young people
Old people (the House is after the AARP too)
so what is left for the GOP?
shortstop
@James Hare: “Thug” has become unsecret code for “union member” on the right. It’s pretty consistently used to describe people who dig collective bargaining. Casting union members as lawless, threatening goons helps the middle class continue to energetically vote against its own interests.
Dick “Silent Majority [for law ‘n’ order] Nixon really isn’t dead, and nothing has really changed.
Mike in NC
@James Hare:
Most likely. It’s sort of like in the old Warsaw Pact days when anybody the Commies were down on in Eastern Europe or the USSR could be dismissed as a “hooligan”.
Cermet
I hate thugs more than the average person but “Demonstrators interrupted budget discussion in the New Hampshire House (from) the public gallery, officials said.”
Sorry, but this is wrong – the time to stop these actions was at the ballet box but interrupting the vote in the seat of government is wrong. What they did – the thugs, this time -was proper.
When thugs – the real ones – attacked the people counting votes in the Bush vs. Gore election of 2000 when the inferior court with a majority of asswipes overthrow our democracy, that was terribly wrong and those pigs (the fake justices, too)should have been removed with force by the military since they swore an oath to defend the constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic.
You can’t accept one and not the other… ok, my last example is far more extreme (and hence, the media didn’t care) than what the thugs did in Hew Hampshire.
Cermet
@Bob L: The answer to that is so simple: The top 1% that own all real power, the congress, inferior court, and is backed by all power of the police, and socalled Justice dept, really.
Mojotron
McCormack was right to criticize the budget as well as with his comments about religion and poverty, and DJ Bettencourt was right that he should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a rain coat over his head in disgrace.
JGabriel
Cermet:
Of course you can. You just say, “If that’s the rules they’re playing by, then we’re gonna play by them too. No more fighting with one arm tied behind our back, while they kick us in the balls and stab us from behind in the kidney. If they bring a gun to the fight, we bring one too.”
.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Bob L:
The ones who matter to them, the rich.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joey Maloney:
It’s the interesting thing about the “Religious Right”, that while the Protestant Evangelical/Fundamentalists find allies in Conservative Catholics with regard to the repression of females seeking the same sexual license as men (aka by demanding forced pregnancy…no abortions for you, or contraception, under any circumstances), the underlying hatred of the vile Papist is just under the surface, waiting to erupt.
They’re united, sort of, in their mutual hatred of “Secular Humanists” (aka the Reality Based Community), but there are always the old bigotries bubbling on the stove, which demonstrate should they ever win “final victory” over those fucking Enlightenment followers, they’ll quickly be at each others throats over obscure theological differences that the Universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass about.
burnspbesq
@Failure, Inc.:
I’m as sensitive to anti-Catholic bigotry as the next Catholic, but it has to be said that the clerical sex abuse scandals have seriously eroded the Church’s ability to be taken seriously when it speaks on topics of morality.
shortstop
@Villago Delenda Est: All of that may be true, but Bettencourt is RC and delivered a touching follow-up (hand on chest Tootsie-style) in which he vowed that as a Catholic he is not just deeply but very personally offended. Je ne retract rien!
Which makes me more interested than ever to discover whether he’s previously spoken out against McCormack and his ilk’s abuses.
As for McCormack, could the church be any more tone-deaf? Could no one see that this horrible old betrayer of every parent’s most basic trust should not be doing this today? Or was this someone’s typically hamhanded effort to rehabilitate this asshole’s image?
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq:
This. They need to come clean, make it public, root it out and start over. And stop wearing dresses and chanting in a dead language. It’s the 21st fucking century.
Wolfdaughter
@Cermet:
Do you have any information that they were in anyway physically violent? If not, they are exercising their right to free speech. Also, from what I understand, the Republican governors ran on promises to create jobs as well as their usual social hot button issues. They did not run on union-busting platforms, although people who’ve watched them over the years, such as myself, aren’t terribly surprised.
You might also consider that the people in the galleries at the NH Lege may NOT have voted for the governor, in any case.
But saying that you cannot express your opinion forcefully but peacefully in almost any environment, but may only express your opinion through the ballot box, well, you’re on the wrong side of the Constitution here, plus people need to be able to call the attention of others to wrong actions.
jibeaux
@Mark S.:
Okay, but “pedophile pimp” doesn’t seem to accurately describe that criticism. Not that I’m entirely sure what a pedophile pimp does…
GregB
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Best LOL of the day.
Petorado
Miraculous things, ad hominems — they work. So many people on this thread are discussing the damage to reputation, but have we taken our eye off the ball, as Mr. Bettancourt fervently hopes, and lost the message? The Bishop appears to be a real sh*t, but was his message inaccurate?
Bishop McCormack deserve no “get out of burning in hell for eternity” card from the pope, but he was spot on in his observation. Failing to protect people in need and called caring for the poor being “the fundamental requirement of our religious heritage,” is an absolutely correct statement.
Let’s not lose sight of the real issue being the charge lobbed at the legislative teabaggers of harassing the middle class. McCormack deserves no free pass, but let’s vilify the true villains of the moment in NH as they justly deserve.
Barry
@James Hare: “I don’t understand the fascination with the word “thug” in conservative circles. Is that word more emotionally fraught for the old? Is it another young bucks with their t-bones thing?”
There’s an iron law of the right in this country – they will never accuse the left of doing something, unless the right is already doing it 10x as much.
Remember Rove’s big lie theory? If you’re a draft dodging wh*reson against a decorated combat vet, call him a coward.
(it also helps if you have a bunch of Vietnam vets who are fine with insulting a Democratic Vietnam vet).
Barry
What this incident proves to me is just how tied in with Big Money the GOP is. They’ve benefited immensely over the past 30-odd years from their ties to the Catholic Church, but are willing to publicly insult even their leaders the second that f*cking the poor (and working class, and middle class) is on the line.
Persia
@Mark S.: Yeah, the NH Republicans are assholes, but he’s kind of right there. Pretty disgusting that he only complains about those priests when somebody calls him out on cutting aid to the homeless, unemployed, and mentally ill though.
polyorchnid octopunch
@shortstop: You haven’t considered the possibility that he was chosen as the spokesman specifically to undermine the position he’s advocating.
Paul in KY
A ‘thug’ was originally a devotee of the ‘Thuggee’ cult of Kali worshippers in 19th century India. They were known for using knotted cords to strangle people.