The competition for Most Horrible Congressman King is fierce, but @congpeteking came to play. Watch your back @SteveKingIA. I mean, you watch it anyway because brown people might be sneaking up, but watch it MORE.https://t.co/cUu1X3HZug
— ShutItAllDownHat (@Popehat) December 29, 2018
As a fellow member of the Irish-American community, I apologize for this… person.
You can be sure young Peter was taught to despise the cruel Brits and effete WASPS who hand-waved Irish suffering because “Those people don’t really care about their children — that’s why they have so many, so carelessly.”
We were not supposed to think “I can hardly wait to oppress other people the same way”… but then, in those days decent Irish-Americans didn’t become Republicans, either.
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what an asshole! If it wasn’t for that phrase, I would be speechless now.
Mike in NC
I grew up in an Irish/Italian-American neighborhood in Boston. Probably mostly Trumpists these days.
Raoul
“Pro-life”, the marketing slogan that launched a thousand rancid, immoral political careers.
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. They were painfully aware that the WASPs hated them and they were social justice warriors because they understood that an attack on one was an attack on all (the exception being my Jewish neighbors whom the catholics despised)
Today those folks are heavily GOP because they believe they are now “white enough”.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
I’d forgotten all about Peter King. I didn’t even know he was still in office. “Only” two children, eh? Oh, and gotta love that dig at African-Americans. Because “housing projects” is totally a dig at African-Americans.
Fuck that asshole. Fuck him with a rusty-chainsaw.
sukabi
He’s right that it’s remarkable that only 2 kids have died in ICE custody, since they are being kept in conditions not unlike a refrigerator, conditions that ICE has set and maintains. Conditions that are inhumane.
That is not what King meant of course.
Gozer
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: He deserves the double roasting.
Llelldorin
Is there a Gaelic equivalent of “a shanda fur die goyim”?
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
Because I am a cynic, I’m assuming that these are the 2 kids that we know of. When you have kids getting disappeared into the foster care system, who knows what happened to them?
Anne Laurie
@Llelldorin:
If I knew it, I’d have used it! But when I was growing up in the Bronx, even my lace-curtain anchor-baby Irish Nana used “A shonda for the goyim” as her go-to insult — she knew it was ‘Jewish’, but it’s what *every* New Yorker said.
patrick II
I am of Irish descent also, and I have just been ashamed of O’Reilly, Pete King, Hannity…to many to name. It seems to me that if you are a member of an oppressed group (not just Irish by the way) when you find yourself on the next rung up on the ladder you either pull it up after you in an attempt to be on the winning side and never on the losing side again, or remember what it is like and work so it doesn’t happen to other people. Most Irish I know are pretty much one way or the other without much middle ground. Of course I guess that could be said for the entire population these days.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: I know. This entire thing is sickening.
The D’s had better set investigations into ICE / BP treatment of immigrants and tracking down what’s happened to the disappeared kids.
John Revolta
This fucking guy. This is the guy New Yorkers are talking about when they say “Loong IIIIIIsland” and their lips curl up. He’s been an embarrassment to me* for what, 30 years? He started out by making a hero out of himself to the Armchair IRA by collecting and sending money (i.e. guns) over to Ireland, although he’s pro-gun control………over here. Then he took over the horrible Al D’Amato’s seat in Congress. And there he squats, 20 years later.
I’m surprised he still gets elected. LI has changed a lot but not his district, I guess.
*And what I’m getting at here is that yeah, it’s getting harder to feel proud of the roots anymore when so many of “my people” have gone full “I Got Mine Fuck You”. We were maybe never paragons of racial tolerance but at least we knew who the Republicans were, and what they stood for.
Martin
Another Irish NYer here, and yeah, sorry all. But, that said, there’s really no contest for the worst King. Pete’s gonna have to up his game here.
patrick II
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not just children dying…
And that was just NYC which holds a small percentage of children that have been taken from their parents.
Burnspbesq
Are we sure Peter King isn’t an Ulster Protestant? He’s more DUP than the actual DUP.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
@patrick II:
I can’t remember where exactly, but I saw an interesting Twitter thread within the last few days talking about the relationship between Jewish Americans and African Americans. Short version was, Jews were the second-to-last group that was allowed to purchase property, so they ended up being the sellers willing to break redlining and sell their homes to Black families, but also as landlords to Black families, with both the good and the bad that goes along with that.
Mnemosyne
@patrick II:
There are always a lot of stories in popular culture about abused kids who are adopted by loving foster families, but almost none about kids from loving homes who end up in the foster system. That’s because (a) it’s pretty rare for that to happen unless both parents die in an accident or something and (b) a kid who gets ripped away from loving parents is REALLY FUCKING TRAUMATIZED by that experience and will not have a good outcome with foster parents.
I’m guessing that even experienced foster parents who have custody of these kids are at something of a loss for how to deal with them, because their trauma comes from being forced to live with the foster parents, not from anything their own parents did. The mere experience of being in the foster home is the trauma, and the foster parents are participating in hurting that child whether they like it or not. I would honestly hate to be one of those foster parents, because I’m sure they know that, as well-meaning as they may be, they are the cause of the child’s issues.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne:
No, the admin policies and the situation it put them in is the cause. The foster parents are powerless to reverse those facts and left with the impossible task of trying to hold the pieces together.
OzarkHillbilly
patrick II
@OzarkHillbilly:
The thing about Pelosi is she can count. When she thinks progressive legislation can pass, she will get it passed.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh, to live in a country I could take pride in:
JR
I am certain that we haven’t heard the worst of what is happening with ICE.
FlyingToaster
@Mike in NC: Unlikely. Unless they moved to Boxborough, Tyngsboro, or Mashpee.
Even our PITA conservative Dem Steve Lynch (MA-8) finds this shit reprehensible.
Mind you, we have our Trumpistas everywhere (I’m looking two doors up the hill and scowling), but they get no quarter from the rest of us. She got told flat out to wear headphones rather than blast her RW radio out the window; one of the neighbors (the hispanic family with small kids) called the cops on her. She was appalled to hear me comparing childrearing strategies with a black neighbor across the street; I said, “Look, we all came outta Olduvai Gorge, didn’t we?”.
MA has gone solidly blue only because of right-wing overreach. A large number of Massholes are racist AF; but nowadays nearly as many are getting right in their faces and shouting them down.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Another thing with my name on it! Score!”
He probably didn’t mean it that way, but it’s still best that he never, never be allowed to tour the CDC labs. “The Trump plague….”
gogiggs
So his position is that since the number of people our system actively kills is fewer than the number of people our system passively lets die, it’s all good? Because that seems like that’s his position but I don’t want to believe a person with that opinion is allowed to walk the streets, much less serve in Congress and go on TV.
Uncle Cosmo
@Schlemazel: Italoamericano (cento per cento) here to report that a Jewish friend remarked to me recently, Remember the days before we were white?
I’m not old enough, I replied, & neither are you – but our dads sure as hell did.
TBH something that disturbs me whenever anyone left-of-center starts gloating over the changing demographics that are spozeta lock in a Democratic majority: A fair chunk of Hispanics are sufficiently melanin-deficient & Falangist-Catholic to get their Acceptably White ticket punched for admission to the Far Wrong – the same way we paesanos were “godfathered” into the GOP. Court these folks & take nada for granted!
Uncle Cosmo
WTF AM I IN “MODERATION” FOR???
Mnemosyne
@Uncle Cosmo:
You know what you did. ??
mapaghimagsik
Its been said before, but it bears repeating.
Christ, what an asshole