Pictured: seven young white men in “Team Mitch” T-shirts, gathered round a distressed looking cardboard @AOC, groping and kissing her. The caption, “break me off a piece of that.”
Future federal judges of America. pic.twitter.com/t877J7Pcye
— feminist next door (@emrazz) August 5, 2019
Another stellar moment for Moscow Mitch and his adoring fans.
rikyrah
This is who they are ??
rikyrah
skeptical brotha ? (@skepticalbrotha) Tweeted:
I’m pleased that Trump’s crude racism has driven scores of Republicans from the party, but the Nixon/Reagan tape should prove the facade was never real. As long as Republicans were able 2 subtly race-bait & blatantly stoke homophobia they were fine w/ it. That gives me pause. https://twitter.com/skepticalbrotha/status/1158690659081105408?s=17
Baud
Are we still doing economically anxious? But they sure look like they are.
Chyron HR
“Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and deplorable folks. I don’t agree, because I’ve been there.” – Bernard “Bernie” Sanders
aarrgghh
so in just one week, the senate majority leader has cultivated treason, #MoscowMitch, death squads, #MassacreMitch, and rape gangs, #MitchTheMolester.
(#ButHerEmails!)
Another Scott
Young American men, especially in peer groups, too often do stupid things. Film at 11.
If I were interested, I’d be more interested in:
1) Who made the cutout and why was it there? (Some 50 year old political consultant?)
2) Who is taking the picture and why? (One of the kids, or some 50 year old political consultant?)
3) Were the kids egged on to ham it up (it’s staged)?
4) Why and where was the originally picture posted? (Some ‘college Republican’ site? Mitch’s site? Some state GOP site? Some kid’s site?)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
They have really low standards for behavior so the people who work for them meet just that standard and whine a lot when they’re expected to meet a higher standard.
They can’t be bad at the top and good in the middle and bottom. It just doesn’t work like that. They’re kidding themselves. The whole organization will (and is) dropping like a stone. It is just the funniest thing to me that conservatives, people who spent my adult lifetime scolding others about personal behavior, have turned “acting like assholes” into a godammned banner they march under. They admire this.
Chyron HR
@Another Scott:
Staged? As opposed to the “kids” randomly seeing a cardboard cutout of AOC and being overwhelmed with a spontaneous desire to sexually assault it?
rikyrah
Complete TRUTH ??
David D’Ag – NRA Sponsors Terrorism (@jackjonesbabe) Tweeted:
I judge everybody by their 2016 vote. I will forever. https://twitter.com/jackjonesbabe/status/1158582884564967424?s=17
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Another Scott: That tweet will zoom all over the net, and it won’t be the political consultant whose reputation is harmed. I’m resisting retweeting it, but I want to slap them all silly and put them on a no-hire list so no woman has to work with them.
Kay
@Chyron HR:
Are they even “kids”? The one on the left doesn’t look like a kid. Maybe this is the definition of “kids” we use for the grown-ass Trump children. People under…50.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Ditto.
Baud
@Chyron HR:
Oh, like that’s never happened to you. Glass houses, my friend.
Kay
It’s not the reporters fault- someone said this about Trump- but can we please stop it? Stop excusing him. No explanation for his actions are necessary. He says it, he wears it. No continued assumption he does or doesn’t “realize” things. The whole country is engaged in this ridiculous hope that this is “teachable moment” for the President. He’s not 6 years old.
Baud
@Kay:
The reporter chose to tweet it.
stinger
Ironically, she looks real and alive and they look like cardboard cutouts.
hueyplong
@rikyrah: Oh, hell yes.
I want them whining for the rest of their lives that their 2016 vote was a youthful indiscretion so as to be relieved of the public shunning. Relief that never comes.
Former consultants and employees living in South America under assumed names.
That kind of thing.
Mary G
I tweeted Mitch to thank him for this group of Bart Kavanaugh Jrs and the fake graveyard with tombstones for Amy McGrath and Merrick Garland. It just adds to the number of women who are disgusted and voting against Repulsive Republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: They look like HS Seniors to me. Old enough to know better but young enough not to care.
marklar
Future “Federal judges” or “Feral judges”? (given who is being confirmed, a distinction without a difference).
OzarkHillbilly
Quite the graph via Kevin Drum. What’s left to be said? Trade wars are easy to win?
Steeplejack (phone)
I hope every one of those little fuckers gets identified and has this follow them everywhere for years.
Booger
@marklar: This will certainly lead to 30-50 feral judges attacking my children in the yard!!
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: China’s betting they can keep up their self-damaging behavior longer than the US can. And I’m not sure they’re wrong.
In some ways it’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the US strategy of forcing the USSR into an arms spending race. (Well, I say “strategy”, but I have doubts it was intentional.)
Steeplejack (phone)
@Another Scott:
Good questions. Let’s identify the instigators as well.
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Have their lives ruined because of one picture?
I say “Sure!” Per Scott’s questions above, I’m guessing more will come out about how this picture came to be, and it will make everyone involved look bad.
GregB
FDRFM: Future Date Rapists For Mitch.
Betty Cracker
@hueyplong: If the country ever comes to its senses, people who voted for Trump will probably lie about it in the future. Not the hardcore MAGA-chuds maybe, but the Republicans who tell themselves they voted for Trump because babies, judges and tax cuts. Many years ago, I read about some research outfit that polled people who had voted in the 1960 election. (This was after Kennedy was assassinated and Nixon disgraced, IIRC.) The retrospective poll indicated a Kennedy landslide, whereas that election was a squeaker. Who knows. Maybe they’ll even believe it themselves.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
“The Russians changed my vote!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: After Nixon trounced McGovern and then was disgraced, there were tons of bumper stickers reading “Don’t blame me. I voted Democratic.”
That bumper sticker is one you could leave on forever.
hueyplong
@Betty Cracker: You are probably right. They have a demonstrated ability to believe some outlandish things.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: It wasn’t. The Brezhnev buildup started in the 70s before Reagan followed suit. If anything, the USSR did it to themselves and the US was the party that responded.
geg6
@rikyrah:
Oh, so much this!
@Steeplejack (phone):
And this, too.
Chyron HR
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Sadly the current variant is “Don’t blame me, it’s Hillary’s fault!”
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Polls after an election usually show a far higher margin for the winner than the election did. Who knows how much of that is lying/delusion and how much is reluctance to respond if you supported the loser. Probably some of both.
MattF
@Another Scott: Broadly agree. The boys are acting out their fear of women— and it looks like they have good reasons to be frightened. I’d be more concerned with the adults who are using these fears.
Baud
It’s kind of like how everyone alive in 1969 was at Woodstock.
Victor Matheson
@Betty Cracker: @Betty Cracker: To be fair, poll people in 20 years about who they voted for in 2016 and the results will be super heavy Hillary simply because lots of the Trump voters will be dead of old age while the Hillary supporters will still be kicking.
bemused
@rikyrah:
I have since Nov 2016 and doubt I will ever forgive any trump voter no matter how contrite now.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: I wasn’t. At Woodstock, that is. But I read about it in the papers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: My parents wouldn’t let me go because they thought that 11 year olds shouldn’t be hitchhiking halfway across the country to join into a drug fueled, free love, music festival.
I still haven’t forgiven them.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ha! If they could see you now.
Baud
@Victor Matheson:
Fixed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bemused: I’m with you. We had a friend stay overnight this weekend. She voted for Clinton, but her brother and SIL hated HRC and voted Trump. They’re apparently willing to vote for Biden this time, but can’t go farther than that. Our friend takes long cruises with them. I don’t know how she manages.
hueyplong
@MattF: This is the opposite of old school pin-up stuff. This is creepy faux physical contact with a female of which they strongly disapprove.
The idea that like-minded people are doing the opposite of keeping this particular quiet part quiet is really disturbing. It’s like the GOP has made a rape list of the type that h.s. killer made and she’s at the top of the list.
This is where we are after 30 months of a Trump presidency.
Betty Cracker
@Victor Matheson: Good point. I assume that dynamic was operative in the 1960 race too.
rikyrah
White nationalist domestic terror reaches crisis point for U.S.
Rachel Maddow looks at the threat of white nationalist domestic terrorism as recognized by federal authorities and embodied in the gun massacre in El Paso, with politically emboldened adherents who have the capability and willingness to murder Americans for their cause.
bemused
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
When it’s “conservative” family or friends that wisely don’t talk politics with the liberals in their lives but I suspect may have voted for trump, I decided I don’t want to know. It’s the only way for me to stay on good terms with them. I just hope they are feeling embarrassed and conned. If any of them foolishly decide to defend trump and trumpism to me at this point, all bets are off.
rikyrah
Trump ignores elephant in the room: his own racist rhetoric
Nicolle Wallace, Brian Williams, and Rachel Maddow discuss how Donald Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants overlaps with the racist screed published by the white nationalist gunman who opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I coulda been a contender!
Betty Cracker
Rest in peace, Toni Morrison.
rikyrah
Trump has yet to speak out against radicalism he inspires
Evidence suggests white supremacists and white nationalists in the United States are taking inspiration from Donald Trump, which gives him the power to potentially turn them away from violent acts. Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counter i
rikyrah
BREAKING NEWS: Acclaimed author and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison dies aged 88
Richard Guhl
Imagine a cutout of Melania and six brown or black-skinned college guys gesturing like this.
Heads would explode for days on Faux News.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Love. It’s not blind but it is forgiving.
rikyrah
Political movement grows against inert, NRA-beholden legislators
Despite overwhelming support among Americans (and even among gun owners) for new gun safetly legislation like background checks, many members of Congress are more concerned with their NRA rating, and some are protected by Mitch McConnell from ever having to face the question in the form of a vote. Senator Chris Murphy and Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, talk about the growing political movement to take action on gun violence by voting out members of Congress who continue have no response to repeated, horrific gun massacres.
rikyrah
FBI approach to racist domestic terror questioned after shooting
While the threat of white nationalist domestic terror is, by the FBI’s own assessment, significant, whether the FBI is treating it with the same seriousness and resources as foreign terrorism is being questioned in the wake of the El Paso shooting. Nicholas Rasmussen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joshua Geltzer, former DOJ official, and Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the NSC discuss.
rikyrah
Trump anti-immigrant language taints outreach to El Paso
Rep. Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, Texas, talks about the accountability and contrition Donald Trump should show about his own hurtful language toward immigrants before he addresses the anguished community in El Paso about the domestic terror attack they have suffered.
rikyrah
The problem with Trump’s pitch to African-American voters
08/06/19 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
When Donald Trump sat down with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan earlier this year, the “Face the Nation” host asked for the president’s reactions to public attitudes on race. Specifically, Brennan reminded Trump that most Americans oppose his handling of race issues, and even some of his allies have acknowledged the president’s problems with race.
Trump responded by repeatedly pointing to the unemployment rate. He genuinely seemed to believe that low unemployment was evidence of sound leadership on race – which wasn’t just wrong, it also reflected the perspective of someone who hasn’t given the issue nearly enough thought.
He still hasn’t. This morning, Trump turned to Twitter to insist he’s “the least racist person.” To support the absurd assertion, the Republican once again pointed to the unemployment rate in minority communities – a jobless rate that was already falling long before Trump took office.
It’s against this backdrop that Politico had an interesting report over the weekend, noting that Trump and his team hope to “shave just a few percentage points off Democrats’ overwhelming support among black voters” through a specific strategy.
The idea, apparently, is for Team Trump to effectively tell African-American voters, “If you overlook Trump’s racism, his record toward the African-American community is pretty great.”
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I keep wondering if this much ballyhooed Trump 2020 outreach to black people and women is serious or a sick joke. I guess it’s both. It’s serious in that Trump’s campaign people — even dim bulbs like Kushner — realize winning reelection involves addition rather than subtraction. But it’s a sick joke at the same time because there’s not enough lipstick in the world for that pig. Maybe it’s a cynical attempt to keep idiot waverers and embarrassed Republicans on board: “See, he’s doing outreach to black people and women, what more do those people want?”
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: He’s trying to buy black votes with “economic opportunity”.
Searcher
PR must be a headache when so many of your supporters are as terrible as you.
(You know, if you cared about your public image.)
bluefoot
@Another Scott: Wow, we’re going “boys will be boys” this?
ThresherK
@rikyrah: Tangent on your linked material: Per Jay Rosen, whom I trust, Brian Williams is nothing but a load on this subject (and others).
https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1158547644786106379 (and other tweets by Rosen over the last few days)
Barbara
@Kay: Someone posted a link to this comment at Crooked Timber, which I have abridged, and it explains a lot about what is happening:
Let us imagine the reaction if a group of young black men (or really, even young white men who are politically liberal) stood around a picture of Hope Hicks (or some other pretty female conservative icon), doing the same thing. It would be disgust at their low morals, etc. The whole concept of IOKIYAR is that they are not bound by laws that they use with practically fatal force to restrain the actions of others. What you are seeing with Evangelicals is an exhibition of this principle in the starkest form possible — people who have spent their entire lives trying to regulate the sexual conduct of people, especially women, getting down on their knees and worshipping a man whose entire self-image depends on grabbing female privates and bragging about it. All the pretty and profound words in the Bible won’t save their tribal instincts from being exposed. How much do you want to bet that the guys in this picture go to church faithfully every Sunday?
PPCLI
@rikyrah: And naturally the press never pushes back on this “Low Black unemployment” line. From the depth of the Bush recession until the end of Obama’s second term, black unemployment dropped in the ballpark of 10%. Then after Trump came in, it continued to drop, by around 1%.
Trump is like a garbage time basketball player who comes in in the 30 seconds of a game where his team has just tied the record for points in a game, hits one free throw, and spends the rest of his life proclaiming (seriously, not jokingly) that he broke the record for points in a game. No sportswriter would treat that with anything but derision, but our political journalists pass on the announcements without comment.
PAM Dirac
@Barbara:
For me IOKIYAR never quite captured it because it suggests that there was an actual evaluation against some standard that was happening. As your quote points out, it is not a conclusion, but a definition that they are the good guys. They want the privilege to define reality and it is up to their inferiors to deal with any problems that causes.
SRW1
@rikyrah:
All they are looking for is a few bodies, cause campaign background photos.
Ella in New Mexico
@Betty Cracker:
Not saying I disagree with the idea that people are going to try and hide the fact they voted for this bastard.
But thanks to the Electoral College, winning the popular vote nationally doesn’t always add up to what it should add up to: how many of the people in those states that went for Nixon by the hair-squeaking majority needed to win n the EC could have voted for Kennedy in vain? The difference between 49.9 and 50.1 might be a handful of voters but it determines the winner-and half the voters lost their voice.
Another Scott
@bluefoot: I said it was stupid. I’m not excusing it. I mainly hope that it becomes a learning experience for them, and others, that objectifying people that you disagree with (or are afraid of) isn’t an acceptable way to live your life.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
It doesn’t seem likely to win Trump much support from that quarter, I have to agree. Kanye strikes me as a pretty extreme outlier.
azelie
@Betty Cracker:
My husband’s dissertation involved a series of polls in which people were asked if they planned to vote and then after the election asked whether they voted. He went to the registar’s office in the relevant counties to verify whether the respondents actually voted (I think he probably asked who they voted for as well). You can’t find out who people voted for, but you can find out whether they voted. It is definitely the case that people who didn’t vote will tell pollsters that they did, and I think it’s fairly common for some significant number of people who voted for the candidate who lost to report that they voted for the candidate who won. There are people who give the answers that they think are socially desirable. In this case, we have to hope that in a few years, the socially desirable answer will be to say that you voted for Clinton in 2016.
misterpuff
This just confirms that the KovKathKids were no aberration, at least in Kentucky.
Hope these displays bite all of them in the ass when they go looking for their “Godgiven” careers.
dnfree
@Baud: I was 23, married, and supporting my husband in graduate school. (If you remember the statistics, in the late 1960s men got married at 23 on average, women at 21.) The whole Woodstock thing looked like a cluster**** from the get-go–poorly organized and likely to be chaotic. I always thought that the people who went were likely the same people who had time to spend the summer of 1967 just hanging out in San Francisco.
PaulWartenberg
@Baud:
Well, I wasn’t even born for Woodstock, I arrived nine months later.
…
…
relax, my parents were vacationing in the Mediterranean back when it happened (well, mom was vacationing, dad was serving on a carrier fleet).
PaulWartenberg
@Betty Cracker:
I am still 90 percent sure I voted for Al Gore.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: I can’t imagine that this approach is a winner.
J R in WV
@PaulWartenberg:
I’m 100% sure. I always vote [save for one school bond election we were out of town for, and which passed, they always do here!] and I never vote for a Republican. Sometimes this makes for hard work, Supreme Court judge races are “non-partisan” so you have to research their legal careers to determine which is which party.
enplaned
@Baud: Never seen a more obvious group of Backpfeifengesichts (German word meaning “face in need of a punch” – gotta love German…)
White, well-fed, rich, entitled… Just as you’d expect.
Another Scott
DailyKos has more, including AOC’s response (from yesterday).
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
Incels all.