This is just straight up fucked up:
Carly Fiorina has been accused of “ambushing” a group of children, after she ushered pre-schoolers, who were on a field trip to a botanical garden, into an anti-abortion rally in Des Moines.
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The alleged ambush occurred when Fiorina hosted a “right to life” forum at the Greater Des Moines botanical garden. Entering the rally, before a crowd of about 60 people, she directed around 15 young children towards a makeshift stage.
The problem, one parent said, was that the children’s parents had not given Fiorina permission to have their children sit with her – in front of a huge banner bearing the image of an unborn foetus – while she talked about harvesting organs from aborted babies.
“The kids went there to see the plants,” said Chris Beck, the father of four-year-old Chatham, one of the children Fiorina appeared with. “She ambushed my son’s field trip.”
Is that even legal?
WereBear
IOKIYAR.
Mmmmm… kidnapping? Child abuse? Something?
Dread
Can’t have sex ed in schools because we don’t want to expose our kids to that sort of information. Can’t let kids know that gay and transgendered people exist because how are we going to explain that to them?
But we can take your kids without your consent and plop them down as a photo op while we explain a grisly, one-sided take on abortion!
Unabogie
In her “defense” of poor little unborn “babbies” she demonstrated the reality of the right wing’s utter contempt for actual, live children.
Exhibit B: the right’s caterwauling over President Obama crying when describing the Newtown massacre.
Mike J
If she could tell the difference between humans and props she wouldn’t be a Republican.
john b
I would imagine the biggest problem with this is exposing these kids to press cameras without the parent’s consent. Who knows if one of those kids is in danger from a relative and shouldn’t have their picture plastered on a bunch of news sites.
Unabogie
@john b: Like I said, complete and utter contempt for actual living children.
Culture of Truth
They’ll just claim it was a misunderstanding and blame the school officials.
Mnemosyne
@john b:
Even beyond that, kids have privacy rights, too. A lot of parents don’t even like relatives posting pictures of their kids on Facebook without permission.
AliceBlue
As far as wingnut women go, I didn’t think I could loathe any one of them as much as Sarah Palin. Carly’s getting close.
Baud
Each one of those kids would make a better president that Carly Fiorina.
Brachiator
It’s getting to the point where a GOP candidate wakes up in the morning, and the first thing on his or her mind is, “what incredibly stupid shit can I do today?”
Paul in KY
Very definition of low-life scum: Carly Fiorina.
bobbo
Threatening and yelling at pregnant women walking into abortion clinics is legal, so can’t see why not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I seriously wonder if everything she’s been through in the last few years– humiliating public firing, traumatic health event, humiliating loss in a high profile race– haven’t unmoored our Carly a bit.
donnah
She has no shame, and no one will do a thing about it. Nor will she apologize for hijacking the kids’ field trip. She’s a sociopath.
Something like this happened to my son years ago. He was about twelve years old and I took him to see Orson Scott Card at a local bookstore. My son loved the Ender series and Card came to promote the newest one at the time.
So, surrounded by a hundred or so grade school and middle school kids, Card goes off on a rant about Government, how the Democrats were ruining our country, how we needed new leadership, etc. I didn’t know he was a Libertarian or Republican or whatever he professed to believe, but this venue was not the place for that type of diatribe. My son and I exited the event and never looked back.
I wish there was a way to shut Carly down, but no one will.
mmeep
Had my child been commandeered like that, I would have made the evening news.
Kay
Oh, God. She really doesn’t know any parents if she thought this would be okay. I just think most people would know without being told that someone would object to this.
It’s so weird how she’s become the GOP anti-abortion crusader. I wouldn’t have predicted that. I guess she got so much attention for her attacks on PP she’s just using what works.
Betty Cracker
Hardcore fetus fetishists don’t give a shit about actual living children and actively look for ways to exploit them. One time when my daughter was around three or four, we were hanging out in a park that was filled with other parents and children, and a panel truck emblazoned with gruesome aborted fetus photos pulled up. A couple of sick fucks emerged from the cab and erected placards and signs with more gross photos and anti-abortion slogans. Then one of the twisted bastards got on a PA system and started haranguing passersby and recounting tales similar to the fiction Fiorina is peddling about brain harvesting, etc. I’m pretty sure they picked that location to maximize the trauma on the nearby children. They are heinous, twisted shitheads.
Davis X. Machina
@Betty Cracker: Exactly. The anti-abortion types I know are ‘any-means-necessary’.
This is tame…
Paul in KY
Also, the chaperones should have been: No freaking way & got them the fuck outa there.
Kay
Also, look at their faces! With the exception of the one little girl in the corner they all look either miserable or bored.
Keith G
Yet another example of the GOP’s deep bench.
Baud
@Kay: Better than looking traumatized.
Cacti
No, it’s not legal.
Invasion of privacy by misappropriation of name or likeness.
Iowa Old Lady
@Paul in KY: I can’t imagine what the chaperones were thinking. Don’t parents sign permission slips for field trips any more? I seem to recall a generic one at the start of the year, but surely anyone responsible for little kids is leery about letting someone take their pictures or subject them to crap like this.
If someone had done that to my kid, I’d have been on the phone to the pre-school as soon as he wasn’t around.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: This is my favorite line from the article
Four year olds do not ‘chose’ much of anything beyond wearing blue socks or green ones. And the adult supervisor probably should be fired for grossly poor judgment unless Carly’s people lied to him/her about the nature of the event. And Carly should be hauled before child protective services for inappropriate conduct with children.
Keith G
@Kay: They all want to go back tho the interactive hydrologic cycle display.
eemom
I hope those parents sue the shit out of her. Hell, I’ll take the case pro bono.
trollhattan
Holy crap my spousal unit would have ripped Carly’s sick noggin right off and shoved it up that skinny arse obviously substituting for her supposed brain.
Does Trump know she’s using his slogan? Where are they taking our country from, and back to exactly where?
Did her handlers try to get the parents to sign model releases for each victim child? Would hate to see their recognizable faces appear in any campaign materials, if you know what I mean….
Mike J
@Betty Cracker: I always wanted to carry around pictures of an appendectomy in progress and asking the fetus fondlers if those should be outlawed. Just because something is unpleasant to look at doesn’t make it bad.
slag
@Betty Cracker: When I was a kid, I went to a haunted house that turned out to be run by some christian group. One of the “scary vignettes” was a girl getting an abortion. I don’t remember if it scared me or not, and I’m not sure if I even understood the point of it.
Luckily, the christians’ attempt to scar me for life failed utterly and completely. Great job, christians! Way to put those tax-exempt dollars to work!
Schlemazel
@AliceBlue:
Carly is much much worse. Palin knows she is playing a game that is making her family wealthier than anything she and Todd could ever hope to earn in legitimate work. I think her performance yesterday was evidence she is just a performance artist who is not bright enough to understand where her ‘art’ is taking the nation (not that she would care as long as she & Todd have gas for their snow machines and can drink the good stuff instead of Sam’s brand vodka.
Carly is the conniving shark, she is smart enough to understand what she is doing and connected enough to make money in a lot of other ways. For her this is ego enrichment, a bored fired failed exec looking for something to do that will make her feel important.
Cacti
Here’s what I’m wondering.
The children in this photo obviously aren’t of legal age, and couldn’t consent to having their likenesses used for a Fiorina campaign event.
Some responsible adult would have to do that for them. Who was it?
Kay
@Baud:
It’s not like you need a “sixth sense” to know conclusively and immediately that one or more parents would object. It is a no brainer. Someone on the team ‘o grifters should have stopped this before it started.
Parents have to sign a release for photos used in our school district. It comes with the numerous legal forms at the start of the year. It’s amid a freaking packet of forms.
boatboy_srq
@Unabogie:
Prezactly.
I can’t decide whether this instance is extreme, or merely typical and newsworthy only because La Carly did it. Got to wonder whether, at this late stage, it will make much difference for her with the anti-choice vote.
@Betty Cracker:
Hardcore [insert pet conservatist Reichwing cause] fetishists don’t give a sh!t about actual [impacted persons/species/systems] and actively look for ways to exploit them. It’s a predictable pattern. What makes this slightly more despicable than others is that they’re exploiting minors: if the anti-environmentalists go after fishermen in Louisiana at least the fisherfolk are presumably adults and able to decide for themselves whether they want to participate.
D58826
Playing devils advocate for a second. Even if the parents approved it was still in grossly bad taste on Carly’s part . These are four year old children not movie props.
trollhattan
@slag:
Uh, just how “realistic” was this fauxbortion? Was she at least hawt?
Mind=boggled.
dedc79
There’s at least the consolation that her candidacy (and career) are as dead as the aborted fetuses she’s always fetishizing.
goblue72
Somebody needs to attend the next Hewlett-Packard senior management retreat, at whatever golf resorts its at, and ambush them with a photo op for the AFL-CIO.
Baud
@Kay:
Exactly. It’s why I only expropriate young babies for my campaign events. Since you can’t tell one from the other, I have plausible deniability if a parent sues.
Schlemazel
@donnah:
Sorry for your son, it is well known in SF circles that Card is an inflamed boil on the buttocks of humanity, but there was no reason you should know that. I probably would have spoken up but given that he tends to attract loons like him it might not have been safe.
boatboy_srq
@Kay:
You’re assuming that anyone on the team’o’grifters either possesses sufficient neurons to make that connection, or isn’t so thoroughly
brainwashedpersuaded in the Rightness of The Cause to be insensitive to the damage being done.goblue72
@Betty Cracker: I’ve seen those Anti-Abortion Trucks driving around before. Still cannot fathom how someone turns into a such a sick, twisted soul to drive around terrorizing people like that.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
She’s a Republican in a Red State, what kind of question is that?
boatboy_srq
@D58826: HP employees were props for Carly’s other public appearances, and they were adults. You’re assuming the woman has any respect for anyone.
trollhattan
@D58826:
Being near the capitol I see kids of all ages used as poli-props, none more amazing than the Mormon caravans that magically appeared to discharge kids dressed in matching outfits (discrete groups 9 months apart ala the Osmonds) all lining up to get their “Yes on Proposition 8!” signs, then march to the west steps for the speechifying. Weirdest trip for coffee ever.
Baud
@goblue72:
You do NOT want to confuse them for food trucks.
Awkward.
Sad_Dem
@Cacti: Agreed. The parents of those kids have cause to sue Carly Fiorina, and I hope they do so.
Patricia Kayden
The Rightwing has truly become unhinged. Didn’t think it could get worse than the Clown Car parade in 2012 but Republicans have beat themselves this time around. Fiorina is a failed candidate and I doubt she’s even being considered as VP material by Trump or Cruz.
Using kids for your political campaign is just pathetic.
goblue72
@Baud: Barf. Thanks for spoiling my urge to grab a chorizo burrito for lunch. Now I’m gonna have to go grab a salad instead.
Seriously reconsidering my vote for you.
boatboy_srq
@D58826: Something tells me that “adult supervisor” will be disinvited from arranging field trips for a while. And chances are that outraged parents will be going after the school in general and that “adult supervisor” in particular rather than after La Carly.
jl
Botany is a commie plot. Linnaeus was a commie Swede. This children needed to be saved.
I guess the only good side to this mess is that one-by-one, each possible GOP candidate has been building up a track record of what arrogant exploitative lawless jackasses they are. Anyone of them would be disaster as president, the only question is how big the disaster would be. The more they do this, the less chance they have of winning any election where the majority of people who turn out are marginally sane.
I'll be Frank
@Mike J: I came to make sure this point had been made.
Baud
@goblue72:
Your arteries will vote for me, however.
NonyNony
@AliceBlue: I actually dislike Fiorina far, far more than I ever could Sarah Palin.
For starters, Palin didn’t fire 30,000 people from good paying jobs and destroy a company for no good reason. In comparison, Palin grifts money from right-wingers that would probably be giving it to Ted Cruz or someone else who could do more damage with it. That already puts Fiorina into deeply negative territory in the compare-and-contrast territory right out of the gate and actually puts bonus points into Palin’s column as far as I’m concerned.
Palin does what she does ’cause she wants to live the modern American Dream – do what you love and get paid for it. She loves doing nothing and she wants to get paid for it. I have no idea why Fiorina does what she does – she seems to be almost like a cartoon supervillain who is evil for the sake of acquiring power and just to be evil. I have some respect for Palin, even if I’d prefer to never hear from her again. I have no respect for Fiorina who should do the world a favor and go slink off into retirement and never be heard from again.
D58826
@trollhattan: If the parents give permission to have their kid used as a prop, then it’s on the parents. Doesn’t seem like that happened here.
@boatboy_srq: No I’m not assuming she gives a flying fig for any one but herself. She has proven that over and over again
Iowa Old Lady
@boatboy_srq: The school and chaperones were responsible for those kids’ well-being on this trip. Carly is despicable but they failed in their responsibility. I can’t imagine the fallout back at the pre-school
Baud
@NonyNony: Palin isn’t as sinister as Fiorina.
West of the Cascades
@AliceBlue:
I loathe Fiorina far more — in her brief stint as Alaska’s governor, Palin did relatively little that directly harmed people and actually signed a bill in 2007 that put a steep and progressive tax on oil production to fund the state budget. Since she quit as governor, her grift has pretty much only hurt the griftees, who sort of know what they’re buying. Fiorina hurt hundreds of thousands of HP employees by her bungling as CEO, and she flat out lies more than Palin does (or at least it seems that way in Fiorina’s baseless screeds against Planned Parenthood).
waysel
@Mike J: Yep.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: My Boxer and 1/2 Boxer dogs would make better Presidents than Carly (or most other Clown Car candidates).
RareSanity
Is it even possible for her to not get sued over this?
Short of parents just not pursuing it legally, I mean is their any kind of “public space” law that applies to minors, that would make this anything close to legal?
Kay
@Baud:
It isn’t the “suing”. It’s the absolute fury of parents that you should fear.
There are unwritten rules, lines one doesn’t cross. Most people know them. “Norms”, even :)
Mike J
@jl: Binomial nomenclature? That’s the sort of smut they’re teaching the children?
NonyNony
@West of the Cascades:
To be mildly fair – Palin’s rants have very little content to them, so there’s less opportunity for lies.
Eh, forget it. I don’t want to be fair. Fiorina is awful and given a choice between her and Sarah Palin I’d pick Palin every time. If it were down to the two of them for president I’d cast my vote for Palin (and then probably walk out into the sea weeping for my country…)
Baud
@Kay: Sorry, but fury don’t mean squat to a Republican unless it costs them money or votes.
trollhattan
@D58826:
Oh, completely agree about Carly’s vile stunt. It’s just weird to see parents complicit in having their kids act as prompts, including pulling them from school to boot. The first Tea Party tax day protest, which was pretty Yuge, likewise featured lots of little kids. Shittiest county fair, ever.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m surprised because I thought she was the savvy businesswoman Republican. There are too many of them. I can’t follow the minor characters.
America doesn’t have time for this ego-fest. Can we get some efficiency?
Amir Khalid
I saw at TPM (or somewhere) a clip of Fiorina being interviewed about her comments on Bill and Hill’s marriage.The question being put to Fiorina was, for some reason, not “Why is that any of your business?” but “Do you think they have a real marriage?” She kept repeating a non-answer: “They’ve been married a long time.” Even if she did manage to plant in people’s heads the idea that Bill and Hill are just faking their marriage, which I doubt, the greater impression Fiorina left was of that creepy rictus she thinks is a smile. It does not look like the smile on a real person’s face. She is not a person with a gift for faking sincerity.
D58826
@West of the Cascades: I would disagree about this. To the extent that Palin legitimized the fact free rage at your enemies type of politics in 2008 she helped pave the way for Trump/Cruz and the rest of the clown car. While she has only picked the pockets of her gullible followers in a financial sense she has helped push our political system in an ugly direction that threatens us all. At some point in a democracy people have to be willing to compromise. The Palin//Trump/Cruz my way or the highway approach is not compatible with our system and will only end badly.
kindness
I saw this one this morning and my thought was what parent/pre-school rep that was with the kids on this field trip allowed this? I would think they would have immediately objected and dragged the kids off.
jl
@Mike J: Polyploidy!? That way lies polymorphous perversity and orgies.
The children, think of the children! Carly did her best to save them.
SatanicPanic
@Dread: even Republican women appear to have trouble understanding consent
Gin & Tonic
Hold on, doesn’t the Grauniad, which has actual lawyers and shit, also know better? That photo Cole put at the top, with the circle and arrow, on the Grauniad’s website identifies the kid in the circle by name and age. His dad is quoted in the article, but did *he* sign a model release for the kid?
D58826
@trollhattan: I think it also depends on the age of the kids. What might be acceptable for middle/high school kids would not be appropriate for preschoolers.
Amir Khalid
@Kay: @Kay:
“Savvy businesswoman” is not the reputation Fiorina has in business and IT industry circles.
Baud
@Kay: Maybe she figures she’s gone as far as she can with the businessleader persona, and feels that her future with Greater Wingnuttia is in moral scolding. She does have the aptitude for it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: And word salad is yummy.
scav
Brain-dead staff too for using the phase the children choosing to attend, not only because they’re not really of an age to choose to do so in their own right, but also becuase they’re being used as props in a campaign to take away choice over their medical care and actions by actual adult women. So are actual adult women even less able to chose than toddlers? Double hairball silly staff-people. Speaks to the quality of the campaign and that CEO whizkid supposedly at the head of it.
tom
Seems to me there’s a lawsuit coming her way. If she used this for any sort of fundraising/ads then shouldn’t these kids be considered paid actors which would require contracts, parental permission and actually being paid?
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Kind of random, but some people were asking yesterday about the fact that the Tamir Rice grand jury apparently didn’t even vote on whether to indict the cop? I don’t know if you have any insight or information about that.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: It’s now news. Maybe different standard?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Fiorina is the “Savvy Businesswoman Republican” the way they put a tinfoil suit on a doll and call it “Astronaut Barbie.” IOW, yet more conservative cosplay.
boatboy_srq
@D58826: Well that’s what devil’s advocacy will get you. The sad(dest) part of this whole unwholesome incident is that any parents upset by this gross misuse of their offspring will take it out on the school and the “adult supervisor”, and not on Reichwingers in general and La Carly in particular at the ballot box.
@Iowa Old Lady: Agreed, which in a way makes it worse. La Carly can skate on her despicable stunt, and the chaperone will get almost certainly canned for not being quick enough on the uptake to stop this single incident. Never mind the grief the school itself is likely to face for this. (Speaking in a vacuum with no access to the chaperone’s prior deeds, but if this was one incident then (likely) drastic action by the school seems unmerited).
catbirdman
“Jake,” she said, “may I just say …”
“Jake,” she said. “Jake …”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/gop-debate-carly-fiorina-2016-i-buried-a-child-213306
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: I’d certainly vote for your boxer dogs over Fiorina, and they could round out their cabinet with MY boxer dogs plus my hens, thus forming a much more intelligent and compassionate administration than Fiorina would put together.
boatboy_srq
@Kay:
She probably knows lots of parents; but their kids are all raised by the nannies.
D58826
@boatboy_srq: Unmerited but the school has to kind a scapegoat and the supervisor is it.
MazeDancer
Morally bankrupt. Repulsive. And completely illegal.
You want to put a child in front of a camera, especially for promotional purposes, you need a signed release from the parent or guardian. If you’re a non-profit, you give them a dollar as “compensation”, they sign the release, you own whatever usage rights you asked them to agree to give for whatever period of time the release states.
All responsible non-profits and corporations make sure that any use of a child’s face has air-tight releases with full disclosure in them because using kids exploitatively is a sure road to unredeemably bad PR. And lawsuits.
The parents can all sue Carly. And the school. And, possibly, the botanical garden. They can all seek damages. They can all scream bloody murder. But that costs money. And damages hard to prove. And would take plenty of volunteer lawyers. But it’s Iowa, and everyone is nice. If it were NYC, Carly would have already done her perp walk.
Every one of those kids had a permission slip to go on the field trip. It may or may not have had some kind of chaperone not responsible for everything kind of clause. But those chaperones may bear the brunt of the wrath. And rightly so. Even though Carly should be completely ruined because of this.
scav
And an OT Huzzah for cops actually getting bounced for their misdeeds 263 bounces worth.
ETA
Also giggling a bit about the comment implying Iowa is simply rife with nannies raising children. Or, most of the planet, actually.
Brachiator
@Kay:
You can write this with (presumably) a straight face when Trump, first among egos, is the leading GOP contender?
Fie, madam. Fie, I say.
Egofest? My God, we’ve got Ego-pallooza. Ego-chella 2016. Land of a Thousand Egos. Ego-tastica.
Iowa Old Lady
@D58826: You’re more forgiving toward the school than I am. Unless someone put a gun to chaperones’ heads, they could have taken those kids out of there at any time. The best I can think of them is that they thought leaving the kids would be less traumatic than removing them. But if I entrust my small child to someone else, they better protect them better than that.
Schlemazel
I am not going to read the story but do we know that she actually hijacked this group? Could they have been brought by their handlers at their parents request? IA has its fair share of fetus fetishists and maybe these kids came from them?
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
And, in the incredibly unlikely (ok, nearly impossible) event that this fascist asshole got the Republican nomination, the floor on her share of the general election vote would be about 45% of the electorate. Scores of millions of our fellow citizens.
boatboy_srq
@scav:
Actually, to appeal to the antichoice crowd, that’s very astute phrasing. Only foeti have no choice: once you’re breathing on your own then agency is yours. This undergirds their opposition to childcare, Head Start and just about every other benefit they want to cut: if the kids want better food/care/education they can go find those things (or at least squall to Mommy, who can find them for the kiddies).
Mike J
@D58826:
It’s not scapegoating. Whoever was supposed to be supervising that field tripe SHOULD be in deep shit. They were there to protect those children and failed in a major way. That doesn’t let Fiorina off the hook, but I would be demanding blood from the school district.
goblue72
@Kay: Maybe its time to merge the iCarly campaign into the TRUMP! campaign. Would be right up Fiorina’s alley.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom: I’ll help. If someone had used my (hypothetical, for which the entire universe is no doubt grateful) kid for a photo op, I’d need counsel before it got to the time to sue. If you know what I mean.
boatboy_srq
@D58826: Oh, granted. Just disappointing that the real culprit skates (again).
Mike J
@Mike J: Field tripe? Grrr. Wish I could edit.
Schlemazel
@Brachiator:
I thought the klown kar was an id fest, now I learn it is an ego fest. What will Freud say?
One thing we know for sure it sure as hell is not a superego fest. There is not a single one of them that demonstrates any of those traits.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. If it’s an investigative grand jury it’s supposed to be secret, so the prosecutor’s hinting that it’s investigative so therefore no vote doesn’t seem right.
I will say this. Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra is great. They have a very good lawyer. I’ve met him probably three times over the years – he does election law, so civil rights. Election law is process-heavy and nit-picky in the extreme. If there was a problem with that GJ process he would be the one to hire. He’s really bright and dogged.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
At least one parent quoted in the story said that he did NOT give permission for this. So the school is in trouble.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
After what she did to the once-great company that was H-P? As the saying goes: “boo-fucking-hoo.”
She and Bob Palmer (who destroyed, or helped destroy, DEC) can burn in Hell, as far as I’m concerned. Evil mofos, the both of ’em.
boatboy_srq
@slag: The problem with Xtian “scared straight” anti-pagan Hallowe’en stunts like that is the same problem with their education: it’s the stuff the adults are scared of that drives the content.
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
I thought it’s the Superego that’s the opposite of the Id, not the ego. (Of course, being a scurvy engineer, I probably have no idea what I’m talking about.)
scav
@boatboy_srq: You’re on the planet with a nanny-saturated Iowa. And I’m not sure why preaching in jargon to the choir is going to fix the situation, let alone appeal to the non-choir, so I’m still not impressed with the staff. Jargon-switching and being aware of the context of speach would seem to be the superior option.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Thanks! It does seem that something hinky is going on, so I’m glad it sounds like the family has a top lawyer who will stick with it.
Gravenstone
So where were the pre-school’s teachers and other chaperons? Why did none of them intervene to prevent this bullshit? Or failing to prevent it, not step in once it became clear what was going on and hustle the kids out before they could be used as props in Fiorina’s little psychodrama?
SFAW
@boatboy_srq:
No, no – the RNC-approved solution is: “be born to wealthy parents.”
Soylent Green
I’m guessing the kids were handed over to Fiorina by their chaperone because she is likely an anti-abortion zealot herself but is either too dim a bulb to understand her liability or thought she was taking one for the team.
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne:
UGH!, Thanks. I have been having a lot of trouble this election cycle, it just isn’t fun any more. Any time I think I can’t hate one of these unrelenting bastards any more they dig to a new low. They scraped through the bottom of the barrel in ’08 and are well into the muck beneath it.
Why can’t we have a meteor? Damn it, we earned a big one. Why won’t it come? maybe just a small one in Cleveland this summer
Howlin Wolfe
@WereBear: It’s tort time! false imprisonment!
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
its been 40 years so I may be fuzzy but the ID is the babyish, ‘I want what I want and I want it NOW!’. The superego is the refined, well behaved part that practices the things it was taught about humanity and sharing etc. the ego is sort of the go-between.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I’m glad for them.
Dennis
A key fact is left out of the story: did the adult supervisors of this field trip approve of this? These kids weren’t just wandering around the botanical garden like free range chickens. I suspect the adult supervisors cooperated in the stunt. Did they have parental approval? If not, then stuff should hit the fan. It sounds as though at least one parent didn’t know.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW: I don’t feel sorry for her in the least. I question her stability.
I had the same thought
The Golux
@AliceBlue:
Along with @West of the Cascades, i find Carly easily more loathsome than the Quittah from Wasilla. The latter is white trash, and the drivel that she farts out of her mouth is what you would expect, and at least she says things that she thinks are true. Carly knows full well that every word she has said about Planned Parenthood is bullshit, and she doesn’t care if it will raise her profile in the clown car. She’s much more evil.
Origuy
There’s a Planned Parenthood center under construction in DC. Although it’s not open yet, protesters are targeting the charter school across the street, scaring the kids. The school closed today and tomorrow because of the protests.
The school has filed a lawsuit against some of the most aggressive protesters.
jl
@Iowa Old Lady: Unless someone in the preschool is working for Fiorina. The story gives very little information about how the kids ended up at the rally. From what I can tell, it was not even at the botanical garden. Seriously wrong BS happened.
But if the preschool or some of the chaperones were not complicit, I’d like to know how much coercion was applied by the Fiornia campaign.
The increasingly lawless and arbitrary thugishness of the GOP is something that concerns. me. Some campaign security hijack them? Threaten to bring in the cops? I’d like to know about that.
WJS
In Carly’s world, this didn’t happen. There was no event. No pictures were taken or produced. She remembers it differently from you. And she certainly didn’t know that there would be children rolling around at her feet. And even if there were, this didn’t happen. Shut up.
jl
@WJS: Someone should ask Fiorina if it’s OK for her to harvest the brains of preschoolers… FOR PROFIT!
rdldot
I don’t understand why the Botanical Garden allowed her to have a rally there to begin with. I worked at a Bot Garden and we would never have allowed anything so far removed from the purpose of the place to be held there.
slag
@boatboy_srq: Ironically, the tableau did a better job at illustrating the point that childbirth as a whole is scary and filled with peril. Which, to me, is a very pro-choice perspective. The last thing you want in a scary, perilous situation is fewer options for managing it.
gelfling545
Most schools have very strict policies on photographing students and how photos may be used. There are all kinds or reasons why parents would not want their kids’ location publicized. Parents may opt out entirely or restrict usage. I am amazed that this could happen. It is extremely irresponsible.
JustRuss
@AliceBlue:
Carly by a landslide. Sarah at least believes a good portion of the gibberish she spouts, and she managed to get a sports complex built in Wasilla. Carly’s a cynical, chronic liar who leaves a path of destruction wherever she goes.
the Conster
She was probably wondering if afterwards she could skin them and make a coat of them, assuming that, like her, the parents wouldn’t miss them and their utility to her otherwise was done.
I think it was a Vanity Fair article that quoted her ex-husband as saying when she first announced, that of all the clowns in the Republican clown car, she was the biggest clown. He would know. She looks like a raptor, and I simply find her revolting in every possible way.
Calouste
@Kay: Along those lines, the British public was aware for years that the News of the World was hacking the voicemail of celebrities and royalty, including Prince Charles. Once they learned that the News of the World also hacked the voicemail of a missing, later found dead, schoolgirl, the paper shut down within two weeks.
I won’t mind *spit*Fiorina’s*spit* campaign be shut down within two weeks, but I doubt it will survive after New Hampshire anyway.
bystander
@Culture of Truth:
…and the teachers’ union. Mustn’t pass up the opportunity to diss teachers.
jl
@rdldot: @rdldot: Thanks. I guess the rally was on the grounds of the Botanical garden. I got it confused with another rally described further on in the story.
I guess rules of who can use these kinds of public spaces vary from pace to place.
Sad_Dem
@Soylent Green:
That only works if you’re a Reagan or Bush.
Calouste
@JustRuss: Palin is a million-dollar-grafter. Fiorina has already grifted more out of HP than Palin will grift in a lifetime, and if she were to become president, she would make Marcos, Mobuto, Mugabe, and that sort of folks look like Little Leaguers.
Kay
@Calouste:
Exactly. I just think most people know that there are different rules for children and most people don’t have to be told and stay on the right side of the big, glaring “off limits” zone that surrounds them.
My husband says we wouldn’t need so many regulations if we didn’t have so many Republicans. They seem to require rules, codes, direction at every turn.
Lord Baldrick
Failurina is running for the VP slot as the anti-Hillary.
She won’t get it unless The Man From Calgary is the nominee and he wants a running mate even more loathsome than he is.
Elizabelle
Seeing those young kids, I just think Newtown.
And how Republicans prevented any gun safety measures ensuing from that slaughter.
bemused
@jl:
I read the father said the childcare provider told him of their encounter with Carly but no information of dad’s reaction to the person in charge. Kay is right that it really is a no-brainer that an alarm signal would go off in any adult with sense. Carly is a very creepy woman, reminds me of a couple of bullying, mean as hell female teachers from my school days. fwiw, According to Carly’s ex, her friends never lasted very long. Carly would dump them when they weren’t of any use to her anymore.
Time for another Carly sneering meltdown when she gets hounded for this.
charon
Simple, clear-cut demonstration of the obvious:
Ms. Fiorina is simply an outright sociopath.
JDM
She’s a sociopath. As this is one of the requirements for the GOP nomination, she’s just showing she has what it takes.
bemused
@Kay:
I have to laugh when average Joe Republicans whine about regulations as if the GOP has their best interests in mind.
boatboy_srq
@scav: Not disagreeing with you. Just pointing out that “choice” is something living breathing humans have (except when the choice is to have the baby or not), so the kids (being presumably human) would “choose” (where the foeti can’t). That’s their idea of choice, and in that sense the kids being present were choosing to do so. It doesn’t make it any less despicable to us, but the dogwhistle is audible to them.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Only because we would all drop dead of The Cute.
sukabi
@WereBear: child endangerment, unlawful detention, interfering with parental rights.
Kay
@Keith G:
Hah! Truthfully the only thing I liked about field trips was the bus ride and that the lunch was often different. They could have taken me anywhere- drive around in circles, ideally.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sad_Dem:
I hope so too. “Disgraceful” doesn’t begin to cover this kind of behavior. Carly is pure unadulterated scum.
scav
@boatboy_srq: So, no matter where you’re dragged or end up, that’s your choice in their world. Misstep off a building and one chooses to fall, can’t blame it on those gravity angels tugging on you. Dog-whistle logic is as saladly and logic-free as the pure-salad free-floating sound-bite speeches of wasillalia.
mark
Her campaign slogan should be changed to the more correct Conservative Underdog Nazi Twat.
Kay
Presidential candidates as teenagers. Hillary Clinton is with the Honor Society.
Of course. :)
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
That interview, or one remarkably like it, was on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC show about a week ago. And you’re right, even though Carly repeatedly evaded Tweety’s question, it was the wrong question!!
D58826
@Iowa Old Lady: I’m not letting the school of the hook, I’m just saying that they will find the least powerful person to blame this all on and that is the chaperon. And speaking of the chaperon, we haven’t heard his/her side of the story. Maybe they are anti-abortion as been suggested above and maybe they were lied to by Carly’s people. Maybe the chaperon was a person good with kids but not particularly world wise and was just taken advantage of. By the time they realized what was happening it was to late and might have been more upsetting to the kids to make a scene. So maybe we should just put a hold on that order of tar and feathers.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
You needed to live closer to a cool urban area. The trips to the Museum of Science and Industry or the Art Institute of Chicago were highlights of our year.
The bus trip down to Springfield to visit the state capital, not so much.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Au contraire. It is a perfect typo.
Boatboy_srq
@scav: you’re getting it…
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
We used to call it “The Museum of Science and Interesting.” Did they still have the coal mine when you were there? Or the walk-through model of the human heart? Loved that place!!
Just Some Fuckhead
We gotta stop babying the kids. It’s time they found out they survived The Harvesting: OrganDome in order to live in this hell on earth. Hopefully she smeared their faces with menstrual blood before killing the weak ones.
Calouste
@trollhattan:
Back to terrorist attacks killing more than 3000 people on US soil, hundreds of thousands of foreigners and thousands of US soldiers being killed in trillion dollar wars, a great recession, the near collapse of the financial system, mass layoffs, falling real estate values, in other words the good old days of George W. Bush.
Of course, wanting to take thing back to the way they were before is pretty much the textbook definition of “reactionary”.
jl
@Calouste: And higher rates of abortion. Don’t forget that.
Unless someone wants to count any kind of contraception as abortion. But saying that out loud would hurt election chances.
scav
@Boatboy_srq: No, I had that cold, I was just dubious about it’s value in the circumstances wherein the campaign found itself.
J R in WV
@boatboy_srq:
These aren’t just minors, who are either under 18 or 21. These are tiny kids, Pre-School kids, Pre-K, with no idea what Snarly Fiorino (love that nym! thanks!) is talking about. Thank FSM the images are behind them.
Parents should do whatever it takes to yank this bitch back into the real world, where you don’t mess with other peoples’ kids. Got to be illegal child abuse, exploitation of these little children. Take her to the cleaners!!
In Iowa, I suppose it isn’t impossible that all the parents of all these little kids are Republicans planning to vote for Snarly, but that would be so sad. Child abuse itself, really…
J R in WV
@SFAW:
Really, I agree wholeheartedly. But also, Ken Olsen, CEO of DEC, was accurately quoted as saying “Who would want a computer at home?”
Now we know the answer is everyone. His inability to think that way is at least part of what killed DEC off. I have no doubt that he thought selling smaller, cheaper computers was likely to kill DEC’s profits on VAX clusters. After all, they did, eventually.
Now we know that VAX clusters would make great web servers, DB servers, etc. But all Ken Olsen could see was microcomputers on desktops killing off office mini-computers with dumb terminals, which was part of DEC’s bread and butter.
On the other hand, Snarly Fiorino killed both Compaq and H-P. Almost all by herself.
Mike J
@J R in WV: She is the most Reagan-esque candidate, having sold products to Iran when it was illegal to do so.
Seth Owen
@boatboy_srq:
Yeah, it’s the school that is in trouble, not Carly. She’s just an ass for doing it.
Lois Radford
No, it is not legal. In a time when children are stalked by abusive ex-parents, posting their faces on the internet like this is illegal and dangerous. If she didn’t have written permission from the legal guardians of these children to post their pictures in public, she is (or should be) in trouble. Of course, the fact she may have exposed one or more of these kids to a dangerous predator would not concern her in the least.
BruceFromOhio
The labels on the packaging fit the contents. Why is anyone surprised by this? Any conservative outsider leader would not think twice about using your children to fulfill obscene personal goals. It’s part of the package.
AxelFoley
@Paul in KY:
Exactly. Why the hell did they let this crazy broad kidnap those kids?
These parents need to sue iCarly’s campaign.
dianne
It reminds of when we lived in the south. Whte? Then you must be one of us. Sooner or later, the inside voice is spoken outside. Their insulated little bubble never considers that all may not agree. Someone highjacked the field trip – maybe a parent, maybe a school official, who knows, but they never even thought that anyone would care. I hope someone sues any and all involved. That is the only way this kind of stuff will stop. Money is all they understand.
sharl
This account will not come as a surprise to those who follow veteran political analyst The Dig, e.g., CARL DIGGLER EXCLUSIVE: Carly Fiorina Taunts & Terrorizes Me in New Hampshire.