As president, I will lead with moral clarity and restore America’s strength in the world and we need to quit apologizing for being America.
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) June 3, 2015
Moral clarity, and bad grammar. https://t.co/rUDwHxh4t2
— phil (@AmericanMerman) June 3, 2015
That thing when a religious right culture warrior has creepy hypotheticals that are a little TOO detailed.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) June 2, 2015
I kinda respect that Mike Huckabee follows up defending Josh Duggar by sharing his dreams of showering in a high school girls' locker room.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 3, 2015
Mike Huckabee has more issues than Vanity Fair. pic.twitter.com/VKLwPWDuj9
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) June 2, 2015
*”Tasted like chicken!”
I too wish Mike Huckabee had claimed to be transgender in high school, so he could see how he was treated by people like himself.
— John Lurie (@lurie_john) June 2, 2015
It’s an especially crowded Repub field this year; a successful Huckster has to go that extra little bit beyond to stand out among the other sideshow acts…
jl
Rih Santorum rhymes with bland decorum in the new new new GOP.
Amir Khalid
I suppose one can be glad that America’s most hypocritical Bible-thumpers will not go unrepresented in this presidential campaign cycle.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: That’s our modern GOP.
srv
Clearly, there are hard choices to make. We can have a President who knows a sexual predator, or we can have a President who is married to one.
NotMax
Huckabeean end times sign? Betty Cracker has already endured a rain of frog.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
One reason for thumping it is to make sure they grabbed the hollowed out one to have the space to shove all that sweet, sweet lucre.
Viva BrisVegas
@srv:
It’s not that hard a choice. One involves consenting adults and the other doesn’t.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Sitting at LAX waiting to get on another flight to Florida. Because it was such a last minute purchase, it was only about $200 more to fly first class, so I went for it. It’s a redeye, so I’m hoping the extra comfort will allow me to sleep for at least a little while.
mai naem mobile
I know this is not PC to say but here goes. Since Barack Obama has been president hes been called a monkey/chimp/gorilla, obviously as an insult. I’ve never watched the Duggar TV show and never paid attention to the magazine covers etc. but watching Megan Kelly tonight, Jim Bob has some very chimp like features. It’s almost impossible to miss. Also too, I thought Megan Kelly was supposed to be real hawt. Like really hawt. Consider me underwhelmed. Also also too, this was a long practiced interview.
Arclite
Those tweets are priceless. Is it that liberal political commentators are just that much smarter than their conservative counterparts, or is it that the Republicans are so dumb they make for especially easy targets?
My guess is a combination of both.
BillinGlendaleCA
@mai naem mobile:
Meh, then again, she’s not Asian.
Amir Khalid
@mai naem mobile:
Come on. Everyone in our species has chimp-like features.
Emma
@mai naem mobile: You watched that thing? Go shower hands over French milled soap and Egyptian linen towels. I promise, you’ll feel better.
So, totally awake at 3am and I come looking from friends and the first thing I see is Huckabee. You people are sick.
fuckwit
@Viva BrisVegas: There’s that “box” thing that was being discussed the other day. It’s a fundamental difference in morality in different “boxes” as it was put. The fundamentalists think that any sex outside of church-approved marriage– be it adultery, gay sex, or Santorum’s man-on-dog fantasies– is equally wrong. They don’t get the concept of individual choice or consent (which, uh, dogs can’t give, sorry Santorum). On the left, we use choice and consent as a benchmark: anything non-consensual is evil and bad, and anything consensual between competent adults is OK. It’s a totally different way of looking at life.
I wonder why they don’t get the concept of consent. Do the fundamentalists not have any concept of individual choice? Do they just surrender consent to their invisible sky buddy as soon as they are “saved” and just leave it at that? I’d seriously like to know why their brains work that way.
NotMax
School cafeteria kitchen manager fired for feeding hungry kids.
Switching gears but still school-related, this ain’t your father’s or mother’s field trip.
NotMax
Bad link. Fixed.
School cafeteria kitchen manager fired for feeding hungry kids.
Switching gears but still school-related, this ain’t your father’s or mother’s field trip.
Allan
The news just keeps getting better and better for Huckabee!
(emphasis added)
srv
@NotMax:
Just what do you want, T-bones and lobster?
Anne Laurie
@fuckwit:
One reason cults are attractive — and the Duggar brand of “Christianity” is a cult, by all standards — is that making choices is hard, and defending those choices can be even harder. Once a person has given their consent over to Sky-God/Daddy-Jim-Bob, the burden of choice is relieved; one merely accepts the decree of SG/DJB, who will have a diktat for every purpose, from the proper number of toilet paper squares per bathroom visit to the proper mate for his children/followers… and the sexual behavior appropriate within such matings, of course.
Of course Jim-Bob’s unfortunate offspring, sinner and sinned-against, didn’t even have the comfort of knowing about choices, since they’ve grown up within the cult. And all they can see now, as the cold winds of reality blow down the frail walls of their citadel, is that they’re being ordered (by strangers! vulgar not-believer strangers!) to flex “choice” muscles that they’ve never been required to use or even to believe they had. Even the sexually abused daughters feel like they’re being cruelly treated by a bunch of unGodly outsiders, who don’t understand how they (have been taught to) feel!
Aleta
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): glad you will be comfortable and can stretch out on your flight. Take care of yourself when you can.
opiejeanne
@Allan: Huck PAC. That just sounds so wrong.
seaboogie
@Anne Laurie: What blows my mind about this whole story is that the Duggar parents are upset about the invasion of their son, the molester’s, right to privacy and take great umbrage at that. Never mind that their minor daughters also had a right to not be molested. And never mind that they are raking in the $$$ by publicizing their “wholesome family lifestyle” on a teevee show, thereby violating their childrens’ right to privacy. Add their anti LGBT agenda because the Duggars say the “pervs” prey on children, when they have a hetero son who is doing exactly that.
Huckabee is a total creep and a stellar hypocrite amongst the white guys preaching family values while they have their own “wanting to shower with the girls” comments, and brush aside the dog-torturing and killing offspring. But you know, Barack and Michelle let the kids listen to Beyonce, so they are bad.
As much as I want to run away and hide from all of this hideous info, I am not. Last night I responded to my stupid, narcissistic, child-abandoning mother’s post on fb. Of all the the things that she would ever decide to post (because she never does), it was one of Michelle Obama holding up the “Bring our girls home” paper, photoshopped to read “If we get 1,000,000 likes, Barack will resign”, linked via Conservative Comic.
So lady-who-gave-birth-to-me-and-not-much-more is now unfriended and blocked on fb. Moreover, if she pre-decedes me and leaves me even a nickel, I am totally donating everything she gives me to the Southern Poverty Law Center, just so she can get some exercise in her grave.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I hope this visit doesn’t stress you out too much and you are able to help your mother and niece. I hope your brother has an easy time. {{{hug}}}.
Once on a flight to Miami, N was able to upgrade my ticket to 1st class. The extra room was great.
Aleta
@fuckwit: Interesting, what you say. My impression is they don’t just surrender and live happily ever after. Seems more like the struggle between one’s will and surrendering to the Big L is a daily endeavor that (maybe) they relish or at least see as a work they have chosen. And stories of how, as soon as they just surrendered to the L’s will, everything turned out great are part of normal conversation. But, I don’t mean to explain away the sadists who are say they are compelled to ‘break the will’ of a child as part of the L’s work. They are criminals. I got no real idea, but the little I’ve seen of the mother of the Duggar group gives me that uneasy feeling of a broken child or abused person who is trying hard to match up conflicting realities. But I got nothing actual to say. Except I would like her to protect her kids instead of the Empire.
opiejeanne
@Anne Laurie: The burden of choice; that’s an excellent phrase and describes my reaction to some friends from our church who decided they didn’t feel saved in the mainstream Protestant denomination because it didn’t tell them what to think about such things as evolution and abortion, as well as the knowledge that the church not only didn’t condemn these things but that most of the other members had grappled with these things and come to a personal decision.
So they went and joined a very strict Fundie congregation of Assembly of God, one that often held bonfires to burn books and popular records and even children’s toys. I don’t know if all AoG churches hold with this because they seem to be individual personality-driven churches, but they sure as shooting’ were told what to think and exactly what to believe, and they stopped talking to the rest of us not long after.
NotMax
@srv
Tain’t funny, McGee.
/Molly
opiejeanne
Mnemosyne: Have a safe flight and I hope you’re able to help your niece and your mom.
Citizen Alan
@fuckwit:
For the husbands. I imagine most fundamentalists still hold to the belief that there’s no such thing as marital rape. IOW, any woman who gets married has thereafter permanently consented to sex at any time the husband wants it.
Citizen Alan
Also, that first Huckabee tweet is amazing in its incoherence. It reads like something Sarah Palin would have tweeted.
Aleta
@opiejeanne: wow. Burn children’s toys. Witch trials come to mind.
“Stopped talking to us not long after” — That one sentence is as chilling as can be.
Ramalama
@NotMax: I’m not surprised because this country has always been cruel to poor people, but it still sucks to hear about them, the mean people.
Aleta
@seaboogie: really , my sympathies. They talk about mourning the death of a loved one, but there is also a horrible grief that comes from what you describe, and myself I have no idea how to get over it.
Ramalama
Also thanks @Anne Laurie for posting the tweets esp from John Lurie! Big fan of his Lounge Lizards music. I had no idea he had a twitter account … till now.
Ramalama
@Anne Laurie: Actually, my father gave us a 3-square toilet paper rule when we were kids, but that was because we’d tie a square still attached to the roll, put it in our pants, pull our pants up, and then walk through the house with the roll unravelling behind us. Like a cape. A toilet paper cape.
opiejeanne
@Aleta: They got the kids to throw their stuffed E.T. dolls on the bonfire, with the explanation that anything in pop culture is bad that distracts us from God or the kids from their parents.
opiejeanne
@Ramalama: Ha! That’s hilarious the first time it happens, not so much the sixth time.
piratedan
@Anne Laurie: ding ding ding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and naturally the laws that their fellow citizens insist upon shouldn’t be applicable to them because their Christians and God has already forgiven them and Josh….
Three crimes here….
Josh for molesting not just one sister, but 4 of them and a family friend….
Mom and Dad for hushing it up when it came to light
the local authorities for going along and letting them do so
Plus, these guys are incredulous that they think that the rest of us should even be concerned because this is a private matter. Then the sheer nauseating audacity of someone like Kelly to advocate for them brings the application of Cleek’s Law to a shinning pinnacle of derp.
If these sanctimonious fucks ever meet the New Testament Jeebus, I think that they might just be found wanting.
Anne Laurie
@seaboogie: I actually listened to the whole Duggar interview, since I ran into at the Daily Beast. It’s even worse than you think — basically, the Duggars (well, Jim-Bob) is heinously offended that we unbelievers dare to have incorrect opinions about his family, which he owns, and his decisions, which Jeebus has sanctioned, personally, take his word for that.
Megan Kelly did an amazing prosecutorial job, to be honest; she kept leading the two parents, step by step, into explaining a stew of narcissism/dishonesty/skirting-the-law-at-best behavior that would’ve gotten the kids yanked out of that compound even in a Arkansan courtroom. When Josh first came to his loving parents, “tears in his eyes”, their immediate mutual thought was: Oh horrors, this reflects badly on us as parents! Once they cross-examined him about details — “it wasn’t really rape, just touching, that’s not so bad; the girls didn’t even understand what had happened; when we quizzed them, they said they didn’t even remember the incidents” — their primary inclination was to make sure the girls never said anything, not even to each other, much less an adult outside the cult, because that would “devalue their Christian forgiveness”. They put more “safeguards” in place (boys no longer allowed to babysit, girls warned never to let “anybody but Daddy” hold them) and watched Josh “like a hawk”… which didn’t keep him from coming back to them, a year later, and confessing he’d done “improper touching” again. To at least two more girls… one of them not a family member (i.e., someone who might speak up).
That’s when they started investigating “treatment options” for Josh, but none of them seemed to have a very high success rate, and even the most “Christian” seemed a little too public for such pious believers as the Duggar parents. So they “took a certain amount of time to examine our hearts with Jesus” (and let the statutes of limitations run) before hauling young Josh down to the “nearest police station to our house”, where Jim-Bob “just happened to know most of the officers pretty well, from my time running a towing business”… and, who could have imagined, the guy they decided to confide in just happened to have his own ugly secrets (those kiddy-porn indictments). But he gave Josh a very stern warning! And told them they were completely off the hook! — because parents aren’t “required reporters” under local law; Jim-Bob repeated that factoid several times.
So, now, between Jeebus and the expiration of those statutory limits, Jim-Bob believes the real criminals are those people who “illegally gave out” Josh’s juvenile records “to a tabloid!!!“ (one of the tabloids to whom the Duggars have happily sold interviews in the past). Will no one think of the children!?!
I get the feeling Kelly (who’s not so dumb as her Fox News status might lead you to believe) doesn’t think this is gonna blow over… I wouldn’t put much hope in the purported TLC “spinoff series” switching cameras to the older now-adult girls getting on the air. Unless it’s a documentary version of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt…
Major Major Major Major
Is it possible to get kicked in the pancreas? Asking for my pancreas.
seaboogie
@Aleta: Down with that, sister. I lost my husband (not such a good marriage) and two lovers in less than two years, and that is not what I discuss in therapy. The deaths were a simple grief, the mom one, much less so.
seaboogie
@Anne Laurie: I despair. All of the moralizing of the projecting pervy white males, while they defend the killing of young, unarmed black men. It is to weep.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Kelly always struck me as capable. But whether for money, fame, or ideology, she has been at Fox for a long time.
Russ
Pope Francis has a Masters Degree in Science. Rick has never heard of Wiki.
MattF
I’d make a distinction between the Bible-thumpers (Jindal, Santorum, and maybe Cruz) and the Reality Show Caucus (Trump, Palin, and maybe Huckablee). Similar constituencies, but not identical.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes. It’s commonly referred to as the “bread basket” right square in the middle of your tummy, under your breastbone.
boatboy_srq
@opiejeanne: I’m still fascinated that the beneficiaries of the Reformation, which was predicated on everyone’s right to decide how to interpret Scripture for himself (sadly, in 1517, it really was only himself) and to disagree with the Church hierarchy over doctrine, are still willing to embrace a religious practice which actively tells them what to believe.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: You’re always trying to find the positive!
Paul in KY
@seaboogie: Sorry your mother is that way. Hope you get some dough from her.
Paul in KY
@opiejeanne: Probably no great loss there.
Chris
@seaboogie:
It’s absolutely bog-standard conservative morality. Not much different from being outraged at the intrusion onto a slave owner’s plantation and the proper role of states, as opposed to the rights of the actual human being being enslaved; or being outraged at the intrusion onto a business owner’s property rights to run his company as he sees fit rather than his employees’ rights to be treated like human beings; or being outraged at any kind of child abuse laws because they intrude on the patriarch’s status in the family, which as they understand it should be close to a medieval baron’s rights over his land and serfs.
Conservatism is the belief in the divine right of every petty tyrant, from the zillionaire ruling over thousands of employees to the redneck father ruling over a wife and a handful of kids.
J R in WV
The young Duggars are poster children for abused children. If it is true that “Quiverfull” teaches children to obey before they even know how to talk, then the adult Duggars are poster material for how to abuse children.
Obviously Huckabee is also a pervert if he sees nothing wrong with how the Duggars operate, and still wishes to shower with little girls, seeing nothing wrong with such an admission of perversion.
One thing that might get some of those folks off the hook – over in Kentucky they have a pretty good incidence of CJD (aka spongiform encephalopathy) from eating squirrel brains in a game stew. Bergoo is what they call it, famous staple of country food in that country.
So if Huckabee is telling the truth about eating a lot of squirrel he may have mental problems from the prions in his stew. We know he has the mental problems, the question is if there is an easy answer to how he got those problems.
It could just be that he’s an evil person, which I believe you mostly get taught from other evil people in your life. And of course, the slave states had so much evil to pour all around everyone, and still have an excess, obviously, to pour on the adults and the little children.
The Duggar owner, tow truck operator and petty tyrant Jim-Bob, and self-admitted pervert, got his excess portion of evil by assiduously searching out any little dab of extra just lying around, and stealing it for himself. So now he has extra to use on training his kids to be stooges for religious perverts. And for sexing his wife over and over when she obviously needs a break from being awash in pregnancy hormones.
She is as much a victim of the cult as the little girls are, and the little boys. Honestly, Josh was a victim in the beginning, but by now he has learned that he can do nearly anything he wants to to any less-powerful female who falls under his temporary control. That’s the end of victim-hood, and the beginning of being an evil person, right there. Just like Daddy, right?
Don’t let anyone but Daddy hold you! Don’t let anyone but Daddy… touch you… there’s some good teaching, that is. It’s gonna be hard to pick the victims and the defendants out of this crowd!
mr_gravity
@opiejeanne: Phuck Hack? Does that sound better?
sm*t cl*de
I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s moral clarity.