Jesse Benton must be a Democratic plant:
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) re-election campaign manager Jesse Benton told a local Louisville, Ky. news outlet that he “could see hurt” in the Senate minority leader’s eyes over the aide’s recently reported remarks about reluctantly serving in that position.
Tune in tomorrow when Benton recalls how Mitch wept after acknowledging his impotence:
“‘I’ll never have an erection again,’ Mitch said with the tears streaming down his cheeks,” Benton recalled in an interview with a Lexington newspaper. “After he had dried his tears with one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs he has custom made at an exclusive Washington boutique, I handed him a new pair of pink panties, his favorite pair, with the lacy frills, because he had soiled his last one due his fecal incontinence,” Benton added, noting that Mitch refuses to wear the Depends he recommended because they don’t come in pretty colors.
This guy is just toxic.
Villago Delenda Est
The guy was instrumental in getting the vile spawn of Ron Paul elected to the Senate.
So of course he’s toxic.
shortstop
Hilarious. I love this: “[McConnell] believes in what we’re building here and he believes in me.” It’s so hard these days to find a good, submissive candidate who pays obeisance to his campaign manager instead of the other way around, but Benton has done it — he’s that good.
aimai
Well, Josh Marshall’s “Bitch Slap Theory of Politics” proves diagnostic once again. Call a politician anything from crook to lush to pervert but don’t call him weak.
Hunter Gathers
There’s nothing more pathetic than an old white man trying desperately to hang on to the title of ‘most despised pol in DC’.
4tehlulz
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Now excuse me while I cash out my 401K because Mitch needs to crash the economy to look strong.
Yatsuno
Benton is a plant all right, but unfortunately he smells of True Belieber in the Aqua Buddha.
NonyNony
No, he’s a Tea Party True Believer that Mitch McConnell recruited because McConnell mistakenly thinks the Democrats are his biggest enemies.
Benton is likely rat-fucking McConnell in order to get him tossed in the primary and the Tea Party candidate into play.
What’s funny is that, from a money perspective, this would probably be the best thing to happen for the national GOP. If McConnell is in, the NRSCC and other groups will be spending HUGE MONEY to help McConnell beat Grimes (because Grimes will be bringing in HUGE MONEY to unseat McConnell). If McConnell gets knocked out by a Tea Part challenger, the NRSCC and other groups can dial back their support and and spread their challenges out more, hoping that even if the TP candidate pulls a Christine O’Donnell they can salvage it by knocking out a Dem in another vulnerable seat.
I’m actually kind of hoping for a McConnell victory here after a severe wounding by the Tea Party brigade in the primary. Then either he loses to the Dem (best result) or he’s weakened as the Senate Majority Leader even more than he already is (consolation prize). But either way, the Republicans have to spend huge amounts of money in Kentucky for what should be a relatively safe seat for themselves (win-win!)
The Moar You Know
Mitch the Bitch.
He’s finally getting some of that hot sub action he’s always wanted.
UncommonSense
How can McConnell endure this? Is that he that hollow? Is he no more than a man-shaped shadow? Surely nothing, not even re-election, is worth this kind of degradation.
Steeplejack
(Off-Topic Belated) DVR Alert
Sorry, no open thread in sight.
I just noticed that TCM is doing Catherine Deneuve today. Some highlights (all times EDT):
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Not at all; he’s clearly worried about the primary. Hiring a Teabagger to run his campaign is an attempt to get somebody who knows how to win over the Tea Party. He just didn’t think far enough ahead to consider that he might be inviting Judas to dinner.
Violet
On the Tea Party craziness scale, just how crazy is Mitch’s Tea Party primary opponent? Is he on the Christine O’Donnell side of the scale, where he’ll lose in the general? Or is he more in the crazy but somehow plausible-as-a-Senator-from-Kentucky, so he’ll win like Rand Paul did?
PeakVT
mistermix should have saved this title for a post on Cory Booooker.
rikyrah
Obama Is Giving Up Some Executive Power, and He’ll Still Get No Credit
by Michael Tomasky Aug 12, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
Obama’s NSA proposals may not have been broad and sweeping, but when was the last time any president gave up power when he didn’t absolutely have to? Not since the presidency became imperial, says Michael Tomasky.
……………..
…There was no mortal threat to his presidency here. Yet even so, he took a
couple steps away from the imperial presidency. I think that’s the
first time since the presidency became imperial—after World War II, more
or less—such a thing has happened. And Obama was, as he claimed Friday,
headed down this course before the Snowden leaks. Those began on June
5. But on May 23, he gave a speech at the National Defense University in which he foreshadowed the moves he just announced. Combine all this with John Kerry’s recent announcement that we have a plan for ending drone strikes in Pakistan, and you might have thought liberals would be cheering.
I suppose some liberals are. I am. But not civil libertarians. With
them, it’s all or nothing. If you’re not signed on to the whole program,
you might as well be Joe McCarthy. Environmentalists and tax reformers
and campaigners for the poor and those fighting for greater consumer
protections and even civil rights advocates understand that the
political process is about compromise and getting what you can, and they
acknowledge that there are such things in this world as competing
compelling interests. But you are well advised not to try to mention
such things to a civil libertarian.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/obama-is-giving-up-some-executive-power-and-he-ll-still-get-no-credit.html
Botsplainer
I’m still proud of the day I called Mitch a “Howdy Doody looking motherfucker” at his car trunk after a party meeting when he was county executive.
soonergrunt
@mistermix, top:
“This guy is just toxic.”
Benton or McConnell? They deserve each other.
srv
Nothing like Texas’ Empire of Dirt:
Keep voting Republican, fracking that gas well and praying to God. That’s a sure win answer.
Belafon
@rikyrah: Did you see where the judge announced that the NYPD was violating people rights with stop and frisk. There was much cheering on the left, except when some of them read the decision and noticed that she’s not abolishing the practice, but is putting a lawyer in charge of the NYPD until they come up with a good plan for fixing the practice of using race as the only criteria for stopping a person.
MikeJ
@Steeplejack: You just missed Mississippi Mermaid. I love that movie.
handsmile
@Steeplejack:
Ah, but you missed “Le Petit Poucet” (2001) at 6:00am in which the divine Deneuve plays la reine in a French adaptation of Tom Thumb (and be grateful if you did). Of course it was followed by “Repulsion,” a rather peculiar choice for morning fare (however fine a film).
Otherwise, superb selections throughout the day and night, though the most treacly of the lot at the prime evening viewing hour. C’est dommage.
MikeJ
@handsmile: Le Petit Poucet was a strange choice. Deneuve is only in the movie for about five minutes at the end.
Roger Moore
@srv:
It sounds as if the bigger problem is that they’ve been tapping their aquifer at an unsustainable rate for decades, and now they’re finally getting to the bottom of it. The fracking is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
WereBear
I’d just had a discussion with someone who was claiming that Texas, with no income tax and few regulations, was the right idea.
I brought up the fact that in Socialist NY, my friends with handicapped children get some help with rehab and support, while in Texas, such folks are left on the side of the road. He ignored this, because “I don’t have any handicapped children.”
Too stupid to figure out that bad things can happen to anyone, anytime. See how far that extra take-home goes when you need help… or run out of water.
NonyNony
@Roger Moore:
I agree. But this suggests that he still thinks that Tea Partiers can be his allies and friends. This is where he is wrong. They can never be his allies – they hate him more than any Democrat could possibly hate him.
Fort Geek
@Botsplainer: It’d be so awesome if that’s followed him all this time…drunken fits on weekends, crying into his Cosmo glass and whining, “He called me a Howdy Doody lookin’ motherfuckerrrrr…waaaahhhhhhhhhh!”
Shygetz
Did you catch that? If/when McConnell fires his ass, it will be because McConnell is a “lesser man”. It’s like a doomsday bitchslap weapon.
handsmile
@MikeJ:
Ah, so you had the plaisir as well. And when you consider all that could be selected from her filmography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Deneuve
SectionH
@NonyNony:
No they don’t.
— ex-Kentuckian
Steeplejack
@handsmile:
No, I saw that Le Petit Poucet was on, just gave it a (well deserved) miss. But I didn’t realize it was Deneuve day until this morning.
Frankensteinbeck
@NonyNony:
I, uh… I hate him quite a lot. I would vote for a Tea Partier before I vote for him. Tea Partiers are dumb as rocks. McConnell is intelligent, scheming evil. The GOP doesn’t have much of that left, and I’d like to get rid of the remains.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
That was on a week or two ago in the Truffaut fest.
As I wrote before, it contains my all-time favorite ludicrous McGuffin setup: Belmondo’s character has been corresponding with a mail-order bride, but when Deneuve shows up she looks nothing like the woman whose pictures Belmondo has been getting. She says, “Are you disappointed?”
WTF?! It’s Catherine freaking Deneuve. “Why, yes, I’m going to sit down and write a very pointed letter to the company about this gross misrepresentation.” Sheesh.
ETA: I know people in movies are more beautiful than people in real life, but sometimes the filmmakers really have to bend the space/time continuum for the sake of the plot. Think about it: “They worried that I would be disappointed because I got Catherine Deneuve as my mail-order bride.”
srv
@WereBear:
Oh, he has handicapped kids. They’ll figure that out whenever they try to leave the state.
drkrick
@UncommonSense:I’m guessing you haven’t spent a lot of time around politicians.
Frankensteinbeck
@UncommonSense:
He is a hugely bloated ego used to a life of aristocracy where he gets to freely exercise his hate by stomping on the weak and poor. On the one hand, he would blow dead goats to keep things that way. On the other, he must be choking on his own venomous bile at this humiliation. It’s bad enough that he hasn’t been able to get that disrespectful negro out of the White House.
@Violet:
So far, Rand Paul is the only Senator to pull off that trick. When his reelection comes around they will burn him alive for betraying them, too. They WANT morons to represent them.
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, in most places you either have enough water and always will, or never had enough water. The aquifer is an unusual situation where the water was limited and temporary, and those states had better hope the government steps in soon.
feebog
Loved this little bit from the linky:
I guess it’s not a secret that the lesser Paul has big ambitions, but this is a little early to let that particular cat out of the bag.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
Reg: If you want to join the People’s Front of Judea, you have to really hate the Romans.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh yeah, how much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right, you’re in.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
And it’s sometimes tricky for people to deal with this because they’re used to shallow water aquifers that recharge within a human lifetime. Deep aquifers like the ones under the plains are different; they’re so huge it takes a long time to deplete them, but once they’re gone it will take generations, if ever, for them to refill. They’ve built their lives around treating a non-renewable resource like a renewable one, and now it’s running out. I guess the rest of us are either going to have to get used to the same idea about hydrocarbons or work really hard at switching to renewable power.
NonyNony
@feebog:
I’m fairly certain that cat escaped from the bag around the time Aqua Buddha announced that he was running for Senator.
I actually fully expect him to run in 2016, because he’s taking over the Paul for President Grifting Inc. business from his father. Ah the family business being handed over from father to son – brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?
And since Rand Paul has three kids, I’m sure that he’ll be making sure that the family business is productive for the next generation to take over.
fuckwit
Keep fucking that chicken.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Fine, how’s this?
MCCONNELL. Hangin’s too good for him. BURNIN’s too good for him. He should be torn into itty-bitty pieces and BURIED ALIVE!
@NonyNony:
I swear I get the impression he thinks he can win. He is a serious grifter with no principles, but they fall for their own con frequently.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon:
When they start stopping limos on Wall Street and rousting out the white suit and tie wearing occupants of said limos and frisking them, the policy will have been equalized.
Not going to happen.
...now I try to be amused
@Hunter Gathers:
Well, the alternative is becoming the most despised ex-pol from DC.
Paul in KY
I guess he’s trying to fix it so that if any legitimate fancy-dancy stuff comes out about the Senatortise, people will just think it was this article/interview & dismiss it out-of-hand.
Could be a cagey play here & if I’m right, means there must be some stuff like that about the Mitchster that he’s afraid would damage the candidate.
Fred
@SectionH: You underestimate Tea-bagger capacity for hate. They hate for breakfast. It is their reason to breath.
SinnedBackwards
@Fred: I suppose the question becomes whether stupid hate and informed hate are measurably equivalent. I suspect it is a sufficiently differentiable circumstance to at least be arguable.
I still vote in Kentucky and I hate him with the hate of hopeful passionate intensity.
Probably not commensurable with Teahadistas.
I Heart Breitbartbees
There’s a question that has been sadly ignored in this thread: How have increased sales of Orville Redenbacher’s affected ConAgra’s stock prices as a result of this internecine warfare in Kenfucky?