That moment when the GOP has drifted so far rightward that Sarah Palin seems like the reasonable one. https://t.co/qsCHPMJhBn
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 4, 2020
Among a bunch of professional grifters, James ‘JO’Ke’ O’Keefe takes the biscuit:
On Thursday evening, the New York Young Republican Club held its 108th annual gala, in person.
It did not feature Sarah Palin, who had been booked for the event but canceled because of concerns about flying to the New York area from Alaska in the middle of a pandemic, according to someone familiar with her thinking…
[W]hen Ms. Palin canceled, Mr. Wax quickly found a replacement: Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally of President Trump who, in the early days of the pandemic, wore a gas mask on the floor of Congress as he prepared to vote on coronavirus relief legislation…
Source just sent me this invite from the event which names the venue: Maritime Parc in Jersey City.
If true, would put to rest the mystery that @danarubinstein reported on earlier tonight: https://t.co/TG03X3nf0v pic.twitter.com/nlA0X5AKvd
— Nick Garber (@nick_garber) December 4, 2020
The event’s other headline speaker was James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who runs the New York-based Project Veritas. He also declined to confirm his attendance.
At first, Project Veritas’s communications director, Neil McCabe, said that Mr. O’Keefe was unavailable for comment and that “his schedule is private.”
Afterward, Mr. O’Keefe called and offered a New York Times reporter the opportunity to spy on The Times for Project Veritas.
“We’d love to give you one of our hidden cameras, and maybe you could speak with Mr. Baquet,” he said, referring to Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor. (The reporter declined.)…
By Thursday night… A New York City Patch reporter tweeted an image of an invitation for the gala, featuring the venue’s name and the guests of honor, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. O’Keefe, who both appeared at the event…
Uh oh. The Rona got loose pic.twitter.com/QSc2dZcs0F
— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) December 4, 2020
I’ll just add that I hope none of the catering staff or other involuntary participants at this event caught anything, not even an STD.
Changing the marginal hospitalized patient as beds get scarce
danielx
I’d swear that’s a Hunter S. Thompson line. Very appropriate anyway…
ETA: Erik Prince in this country? Thought he’d relocated to Dubai for fear of legal entanglements.
Omnes Omnibus
I’ve said before that I want all of these people to be shunned by respectable society. This looks like these fuckers know they would be. A first step….
laura
Hell is that party.
Old School
There are times that I see photos of people gathering in large groups and wonder if I’m being unnecessarily cautious. My in-laws all gathered together for Thanksgiving and we were the only family unit that didn’t join in.
Then I see that even Sarah Palin understands the importance of social distancing during a pandemic and realize, no, these people are idiots.
germy
Shalimar
So O’Keefe’s standard business operation is asking strangers to commit felonies. How is this jackass not already in prison?
Mister Papercut
I’m in the Pfizer trial, and I will physically fight every last one of these fuckmooks if they have the galactic temerity to line up for the vaccine. This is not what I put my body on the line for.
germy
germy
Kathleen
Scum Also Rises is brilliant, AL. I love your posts and appreciate all the work and analysis you do.
eclare
@Old School: I had Thanksgiving alone. Six households in my family got together. I guess I’ll know in a week or so if I was too cautious. Luckily no one put a guilt trip on me.
Tony Jay
So… does Matt Gaetz always look like someone sewed a rubik’s cube inside the head of a Quagmire doll or is he just on a seriously wacky cocktail of meth and sedatives in those pics?
SFAW
@germy:
The tweet quinn attached starts out with “Eat shit Antifa.” Is it bad of me to wish that Gaetz and O’Keefe contract COVID, and are triaged out of receiving care because “sorry, there are rational Americans that we need to save before we can consider saving you morons/assholes”?
germy
“Once all the old boomers die out, everything will be fine. Demographics…” etc.
schrodingers_cat
OT good news from India. BJP lost a legislative council seat in its stronghold of Nagpur where the Sangh is headquartered. They lost 4 out of the 6 seats for which the elections were held.
This is like the Rs losing Gingrich’s seat.
Punchy
There’s something about that Gaetz photo…is his head really that large? It looks…..absolutely ginormous. Must be photo perspective or something, right? Or is his noggin that Frankenstein-ish?
I did not know Natty Lite had such growth effects.
germy
@Tony Jay:
zhena gogolia
@eclare:
You weren’t too cautious. It doesn’t matter if none of them get sick. You did the right thing, not just for yourself, but for health-care workers and essential workers.
SFAW
@Shalimar:
Shill Barr’s DOJ.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
I was thinking more of a Landru vibe, but without the intelligence behind the eyes.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: That’s an insult to Butthead.
sudden_eyes
@Tony Jay: Yes.
eclare
@zhena gogolia: True. Some of those health care workers are going to have PTSD for decades. I feel so bad for them.
hells littlest angel
May they stay forever young.
Tony Jay
@germy:
Surely they mean Beavis? He’s got the ‘Cornholio’ expression down to a T.
ETA – It’s possible I’m overthinking this while waiting to go home, but I’m not ruling out experimental hybridisation surgery carried out at the whim of a crazyballs GOP megadonor because, hey, a guy’s gotta get on the Wingnut gravy-train somehow.
germy
germy
Punchy
@germy: Bah Gawd that’s a great comparison. Even the fucked up smile is on-target. So then who’s his Beavis?
Gin & Tonic
Where’s Gaetz’ “son”? What was his name, Nelson? Nestor?
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: That would result in an interesting encounter with the Secret Service.
danielx
Speaking of pardons…..
Fear And Loathing In Limbo: The Scum Also Rises
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
It’s a strong look. Kind of “My Poppa founded the third largest used car showroom within 15 miles of downtown Greenhill, Idaho” and “The last face you’ll ever see if you accept that offer of a lift after a Trump Rally.”
germy
@Punchy:
Trey Gowdy?
germy
@Tony Jay:
It’s the most “boss’s son” face I’ve ever seen.
Ruckus
@germy:
Oliver – No he is not becoming butthead. The operative words you are looking for are – HE IS BUTTHEAD.
germy
always be nice to the photographer:
Tony Jay
@germy:
Damned straight. Can you imagine seeing that mug on a promotional ad and thinking “Yes, you speak for me, man who looks like William Devine made sexy-time with a shoebox”?
The Thin Black Duke
I see dead people.
eclare
@germy: OMG! Brilliant!
trollhattan
@Shalimar:
I’m struck by O’Keefe being elevated to headline status above even a sitting congressman. It’s Gaetz of the evidently zeppelin-sized head, but still. This is like giving top billing in a movie to “Guy who says ‘boobies.'”
Ruckus
@danielx:
Started reading without looking who was the author. Almost made it to the end of the first sentence when I said Hunter wrote this. Of course I checked and yep. HT hisself. I really, really see that you didn’t want Hunter to not like you and be near a typewriter…..
realbtl
@danielx: It is, 10-4-74.
raven
I just shot the shit (across the street) with a guy who runs a wildlife removal company. Dude thinks it’s all bullshit, everyone he knows that got it recovered quickly and he ain’t wearing no fuckin mask.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Consider this; It’s not impossible that a some of these “Best and the Brightest of the Republican Future” will get infected at parties like this, be asympatic because of their age and end up infecting and killing what ever crazy old billionaire loon who is funding them.
West of the Rockies
@Tony Jay:
He certainly has an enormous head, figuratively and literally.
NeenerNeener
@SFAW: Gaetz supposedly already had covid. Is he still contagious? Enquiring minds want to know.
Tony Jay
@West of the Rockies:
Indeed. He looks like a funeral home test dummy.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
In a very British sense I suspect – rough trade party with rent boys and a drug induced death….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: Heh. Colin Jost (who could be Matt Gaetz’s brother) titled his book A Very Punchable Face, and one of the opening sentences is, “I know, I look like I’m about to ask if you even know who my father is”
West of the Rockies
@Kathleen:
I second that. Anna’s posts are always a fun cornucopia of informative, humorous, sometimes snarky, sometimes moving bits.
catclub
The actual Federal government – my employer- tells me that if I travel more than 75 miles away from my homebase, I have to quarantine for 14 days before I can go into my office. [I am actually working from home, so I do not go in, but if I did…]
Naturally this is crazy, because all areas I could go to are no worse than where I am, but still.
Captain C
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If they think they’re in the will, that sort of thing may be a feature, not a bug.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@raven: I can sort of see why if he is doing a physical job like that. I had to load several pallets at work this week and ended up hyperventilating because of my mask.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@raven:
You should show him the videos of covid hospitals in Italy from last spring
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Captain C: Yes, what would be their mindset, wouldn’t it? Of course it would be all to typical of their thinking they would find out crazy billionaire got scammed by his’ lawyers when he wrote the will.
So much winning on the Right.
Kathleen
@Tony Jay: It depends on the mood of its operating system
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Omnes Omnibus: He’d better hope they get to him before Dr. Jill Biden does. There won’t be enough left to pick up with a sponge.
raven
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Nah, he’s bein a dick.
Steeplejack (phone)
@danielx:
Erik Prince was last year.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): If someone thinks that way, showing him videos from Italy isn’t going to change his mind.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@raven: I suppose he’s to many to wear things like gloves when he is handling random wild animals, or wear a mask when he goes into some animal nest?
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@hells littlest angel: As in, die young?
Please, come sit six feet from me.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, I guess not. It was shocking when I first saw them so I naturally assumed
MJS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Colin Jost is, in my view, a handsome guy. Matt Gaetz is most decidedly not, so if they could be brothers, then one of those two brothers got all the good genes. Also, Matt Gaetz will never, ever attract anyone nearly as attractive as Scarlett Johanssen, who I believe is now married to Jost.
West of the Rockies
Those are some skeezy, self-satisfied people in the above photos. Male and female alike, they look creepy and emotionally diseased.
West of the Rockies
Sarah P and Todd divorced. Is she late-texting Glen Rice, “You up?”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Nice. Hopefully, the tide of right wing populism is fading everywhere.
Bex
@Punchy: Trey Gowdy.
Ken
To which the best reply (assuming you can get away with it) is, “No, but I know who the man married to your mother is.”
(Stolen from the punchline of an old joke about a computer. “Your mother’s husband is at home. Your father is fishing in Canada.”)
Bex
@germy: Beat me to it. Great minds…
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Right wing populism is not that popular. BJP’s vote share was about 35% nationally in the last general election with allies it was 45%. However they yield far more power than their numbers warrant. One reason being that the opposition (65%) is divided. Whenever they manage to come together BJP eats dust but they don’t always manage that feat.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Same as here, except our divisions are all within one party.
The Moar You Know
@Shalimar: Charles Manson got the death penalty for it and never even so much as punched a man his entire life.
I will never understand why O’Keefe is not awaiting an appointment with an executioner.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They are not even close!
Heywood J.
I assume the centerpiece of the party involved Gaetz pulling up a stool to read Masque of the Red Death in a Goodnight Moon voice to the gaggle of drunks and dullards.
Rooting for karma on this one.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: But we manage to come together more often than the disparate parties in India manage to. So having more parties is not necessarily the answer.
Another thing that has worked to BJP’s advantage is that while the opposition parties have managed to forge alliances at the state level so far they haven’t managed to do so at the national level effectively. Also the media is firmly in the BJP corner as are 90% of the upper castes.
geg6
Looks like Gaetz’s head is elongated due to the amount of time he spends with it shoved up his rectum.
Just One More Canuck
@Tony Jay: ye
eta -note to self – read the comments first
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Wingnut Fiction Fever Dream continues,…
Deep in the Obama complex under Washington DC, Barrack Hussein Obama compliplates the monitors before in that black way that threatens the virtue of overweight, middle age white women nation wide.
“Mr President” One of his aids said “Trump is now threatening Marshall Law.”
Obama blackly arched one eyebrow “Don’t you mean Martial Law?”
“No Mr President, Marshall Law Trump wants order the military to make Ted Nugent the Secretary of Elections and hold a redo election. Nuget will dictate the rules while doing guitar solos”
Obama waves his hand in black dismissiveness, showing the same contempt he shows Western Culture “Trump is a fool, Hillary won this battle for control of the military with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of the 90’s”
Obama thinks a moment, thinking black thoughts would scare any white American if they knew them “No, better yet, singal George Taki it’s time activate his Brussels cell to start this force gay conversions. The first target will be that Hungarian politician Jozsef Szajer,…”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Now I’m curious whether parliamentary systems have any ideological bias. Liberals tend to support them because they believe it would give them more power. I don’t know if that’s true.
Bill Arnold
@Mister Papercut:
Worse than that. Some of them will argue that because they are psychopaths who have proven to all that they engage willingly in reckless endangerment of others, or are unable to stop themselves from engaging in reckless endangerment of others, they are proven to be more like to be superspreaders, and should therefor have priority to get the vaccine. It’s just science!
(mumble mumble something about vasectomies or tube tying, but that would be wrong.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Not necessarily. I mean Bibi and Modi are two examples to the contrary.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: For example I could totally see the Red Rose brigade support an R government from the outside. Their tacit alliance would become explicit.
Gary K
They should have met at Prince Prospero’s crenellated abbey.
glory b
@Tony Jay: Yep, I’m wondering why I never noticed his Frankenstein head before,
So if it looks like the mean girls’ table is resurrected, I’m in.
glory b
@germy: The boomers thought that about the WWII generation too, they thought of themselves as the “Peace and Love” generation.
Don’t ever wait for the previous generation to die off, These things don’t change.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@eclare: You did the smart thing, but it’s hard to keep holding the line when you don’t have others around you to support you. I have several neighbors who all buck one another up when it gets hard to keep following the guidelines.
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He had a really good interview with Howard Stern, anyone who has the Sirius app should listen.
The again, I am partial to his interviews, Terry Gross of Fresh Air (yes, npr don’t judge me) said in her view he is the best interviewer working today, I agree with her. He does a TON of research, and asks the question I always want to know, “How much do you make/How much are you worth?”
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Yesterday Dave Weigel tweeted that he thinks Fox and other right wing media outlets should have Brieanna Joy Grey, Nina Turner, Ryan Grim and company to offer a lefty critique of the upcoming Biden administration.
He said that because MSNBC and others on our side had the Lincoln Project people on, it’s a “turnabout is fair play” thing.
People tweeted that it isn’t, the Lincoln Project members were previously very mainstream republicans, but the Rose Brigade were almost all out of the mainstream of the democratic party, if they were in it at all.
Now waiting to see if he gets a slot on Chris Hayes “All In” to explain further…
Kathleen
@West of the Rockies They make me physically ill.
Kathleen
@Baud: That is intentional if you’re referring to Dems.
Kathleen
@glory b: Dave would squeal with delight at the prospect of pitching this idea to Bernie’s co host.
MCA1
These f’ing people. We created a bomb composed of the most selfish, inconsiderate, entitled, impatient populace the universe has ever known, and then lit the fuse by tasking a man whose narcissism is universe-expanding to take the lead on a deadly pandemic.
I’m flabbergasted, daily, that the response to the complete lack of a national plan to control the spread of this disease, and to have a cohesive, consistent set of procedures to manage resumption of normalcy in our economy, hasn’t been massive collective outrage at the Executive Branch of the federal government. Instead it’s: I’m done with this now because it’s been a long time and I want to go to parties again, and I probably won’t get that sick so I’ve convinced myself the whole thing’s mostly bullshit because I don’t personally know anyone who’s died and so the rules don’t apply to me. You suckers can stay home and be bored. I’m gonna take my kids to the hockey tournament across state lines this weekend and drink beers in a small hotel room with other people while cackling about these restrictions cramping my childrens’ social development, then not tell the school and put them back in the classroom because I’m too important to have to keep them at home for two weeks and take responsibility for my actions or recognize their potential impact on others. Also, you can pry my 35-person Thanksgiving get together turkey out of my cold, dead hands.
JFC on a popsicle stick, even WITH people wearing masks and limiting social contact by 90% we’ve still had 300,000 people die. One out of every 1,000 people in the state of South Dakota have died of COVID in the last TEN WEEKS. But goddammit we have to have college sports! I despair sometimes at our decadence. And I rage at the ghastly injustice to those of us who’ve sacrificed in small and large ways for damned near a year now, when it should have been weeks, while these fucking scofflaws run around getting on planes and surreptitiously holding indoor weddings with hundreds of people. We’ve all just given up, just like our president. It’s a pathetic indictment of where we are as a polity and a society.
Tony Jay
@glory b:
A better person would say it’s not mean, it’s observational.
That’s sooooo not me, though.
schrodingers_cat
@glory b: Welcome back! We are not mean, we are honest.
moops
@germy: You come running up to the President while he is being inaugurated and you will be in a hospital within the hour. Unless you look “foreign” in which case you will die right there.
Geminid
@Baud: I don’t think parliamentary systems have a bias towards liberalism, but some liberals do have a bias towards parliamentary systems. This summer a certain Congresswoman from the Bronx mused that if we had a parliamentary system, she and people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema might not be in the same party, and that might be a good thing. Later she pointed to the formation of a Spanish government by a left and a center left party as proof of concept. She did not mention that this government was only formed after two elections, and was still an unstable minority government. I have a friend in Atlanta who takes an intellectual approach to politics, and once described a rational system with left, center-left, center-right, and right wing parties. But as long as we decide district and state elections by whoever gets 50% +1, (or sometimes a large plurality), the two standing coalitions that are the Democratic and Republican Parties will dominate. And looking at nations with parliamentary systems, I think ours is not so bad.
KenK
So, if it’s not a Hasidic wedding it’s a YR soiree. Jesus Jumping Christ…
Ruckus
@Punchy:
Air pressure will do that. He sure doesn’t have anything else in there.
Ruckus
@geg6:
Maybe it all stays in that massive, empty shell….
IOW he and his head are full of shit. Certainly explains why everything that comes out of his mouth is shit.
KenK
@germy: @26 This didn’t take long…
https://twitter.com/GovMurphy/status/1334922944158593027?s=20
KenK
It’s also possible that Gaetz is related to UofGA basketball coach Tom “The Forehead” Crean.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fgeorgiadogs.com%2Fimages%2F2018%2F3%2F20%2Fcrean_tom_hs_.jpg%3Fwidth%3D300&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fgeorgiadogs.com%2Fsports%2Fmens-basketball%2Froster%2Fcoaches%2Ftom-crean%2F2668&tbnid=qY7Evsxc5V9FMM&vet=12ahUKEwiEk97roLXtAhWWWN8KHeFDCe8QMygDegUIARCqAQ..i&docid=a8SgoLQzFAdqUM&w=300&h=400&q=tom%20crean%20basketball&ved=2ahUKEwiEk97roLXtAhWWWN8KHeFDCe8QMygDegUIARCqAQ
Gomer's Pile
The scum never misses an opportunity to cut the line…
Republican leaders at Minnesota Capitol see Legislature as vaccine priority – StarTribune.com
“Republican leaders of the Minnesota Legislature suggested Friday that state lawmakers and the staff who work for them should be among the early recipients of a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available.
“I’m encouraging the vaccines, as one of the priority groups after elderly and some of our front-line workers, that we think about the people that have to be essential at the Capitol,” Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, said at a forum with other legislative leaders.
With a new legislative session starting on Jan. 5, statehouse denizens should be a priority so they can return to in-person work at the State Capitol, Gazelka said at the forum hosted by Fluence Media.”
Because
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others