We haven’t had a post about the latest Matt Gaetz news — the Daily Beast got hold of his moron buddy Joel Greenberg’s confession. What’s new in the document is that after they found out that they had been having sex with a seventeen year-old girl, they did the gentlemanly thing and waited for her birthday before continuing to pay her to have sex. Also, Roger Stone set his Signal messages to auto-delete, but Greenberg took screen shots of their discussions about a pardon for Gaetz.
I don’t know about you, but looking at photos of Gaetz have always brought up a real “there’s something bad wrong with that boy” feeling for me. God knows what kind of life that seventeen year-old girl had that got her caught up with these two slimeballs.
Anyway, Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor-Greene are going on a nationwide joint appearance RINO hunt, since Gaetz’ Daddy Trump has decided that the best use of every Trumpy Republican’s time is to root out anyone who isn’t a true believer.
germy
germy
Is it Gaetz’s time in the barrel?
rp
Is that a Sharon Van Etten reference? Have you seen the Seventeen performance on Tiny Desk Concerts?
Just Chuck
Gaetz has hitched his wagon to MTG now? I guess the backhoe wasn’t digging his career’s grave fast enough. Alexa, order all the popcorn.
Baud
Chivalry is not dead!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@rp: Yep. I saw her tiny desk and probably everything else she’s got on YouTube. Have you seen Lucinda Williams’ cover of Save Yourself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZXAeT1QMY
germy
Chief Oshkosh
The full article at Daily Beast is pretty damning for Stone, Gaetz, and Greenberg. But even more astounding is that it alludes to a process whereby Trump was selling pardons. The going price was apparently $250K. What Stone’s cut was is unknown, but it would be hilarious if Trump and Stone go at each others’ throats because I’ll bet that Trump will be pissed off that Stone took any cut at all.
Jesus does not love me enough for all of that to go public.
Mike in NC
Sipping my coffee this morning, I read in the newspaper that South Carolina is bringing back the electric chair and firing squads, because there can never be enough ways to kill people. Jesus H Christ, what is wrong with the GQP?
Snarki, child of Loki
I wish the MAGAt duo luck in their “RINO hunt”, just as long as they mount literal heads on walls.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’ll admit to enjoying sex with 17 year old girls – when I was 15-18. After that, I considered them off limits, flighty and kinda clumsy (as you’d expect).
Guys like Matt strike me as incredibly juvenile, and don’t have any confidence that adult women will ignore their self-absorbed bullshit.
rp
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: No, I’ll have to watch that.
Ken
On the positive side, it keeps them away from Congress.
Jeffro
Now, now…let’s give Jesus just a little more time to love you exactly that much… =)
Selling pardons, oh my. Explain that one away, MAGAts.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
His denial of “paying for sex” amuses me, because it’s clear he finds that becoming known as humiliating.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
FTFY
Glenn has been so manic about picking fights the past two weeks that I suspect his marital bliss is soon to be upended, primarily due to his obnoxious personality and absence of character.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chief Oshkosh:
Just sayin’ what we all know.
(Edited to fix blockquote.)
Jeffro
Back to Gaetz and Greene…we Dems really do owe them a debt of gratitude.
“I’ve been stripped of all my committee assignments!” “I’m about to be indicted for sex trafficking a minor!” “Sooooo…let’s trash-talk some of our fellow Republicans…excuse me, Republicans IN NAME ONLY!”
I’m trying to think of an appropriate metaphor for the GQP, 2020-2024, and it’s something like ‘Lord of the Flies, only set on the Hindenburg‘
Ah well, at least America has an excellent center-center party to turn to for leadership and progress…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
Truthfully, there would be no shortage of drunk 25 year old staffers who would be available to him for free, at least until he exposed his personality; they’d have to be super drunk, though. Any level of sobriety, and they’d be gone before he got around to saying “what are you drinking?”
Steeplejack
Gaetz/Greenberg:
Spanky
It finally dawned on me who Mattie Gaetz reminds me of. Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, after the lobotomy.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
America needs President Biden to denounce this malarkey: “Nobody’s banning hamburgers for the Fourth of July, ya k’nookkel-heads.”
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I think he showed the nude photos to his (fellow) gross Republican colleagues to brag and gloat and raise his stature among (horrible) people and neglected to mention he was paying for it.
They probably all knew though.
germy
@Jeffro:
Dems in Disarray!
Chyron HR
But who’s going to break the news to Nestor?
smith
@Amir Khalid: I think he’d more likely say, “God love ya, man.” It’s his version of “Bless your heart.”
Just Chuck
@Jeffro:
Never gonna happen. They’ll just gish-gallop you with unrelated bullshit until you get tired and walk away. There’s no point in trying to convince a cultist.
raven
@Spanky: I’m sure you remember Randall’s quote to the shrink. I’ll leave most of it out. “She was 15 going on 35 Doc and she told me she was 18. . . “
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
They absolutely knew, and let it go.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
If I was his fiance and he had nude pictures I’d worry that he’s the kind of person who shows them to other people. Because he is. We all know that now.
Just appalling. That alone should get him kicked from Congress.
raven
@Kay: He could be the head of the RNC!
Amir Khalid
@smith:
I know; but just once, I’d like to hear Joe Biden talk like Moe Howard.
Heidi Mom
Re “something bad wrong with that boy”: The “young mobster” look doesn’t help.
patrick II
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
There is a wonderful Filipina singer named Morissette Amon who does an incredible and joyful at home zoom version of Fly Like a Bird. I recommend it highly.
Kay
@raven:
I think they split into two large factions. Which is great. For us :)
germy
Here’s something from last month:
Anomalous Cowherd
OK, I know I’m a terrible person, but whenever I look at a picture of Matt Gaetz what stands out for me is his philtrum. I don’t know if it’s FAS or inbreeding or what, but that boy appears to have something deeply wrong with him. (I am not any sort of expert on this – it’s just a gut feeling.)
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yeah but narcissistic dumbasses like Gaetz need adulation and he’ll only get that if he pays for it. He’s too selfish, stupid and unimaginative to earn it honestly.
Baud
@Kay:
Racists and child molesters?
MomSense
@Anomalous Cowherd:
I’ve wondered the same thing.
Jeffro
When Kevin McCarthy finally goes to Gaetz and says, “Matt, you’ve got to resign before they kick you out” and Gaetz goes “NO!”…that’s when the real fun begins. Well, for Liz Cheney, anyway…
MomSense
@Kay:
Wonder if he showed nude photos of the underage girl to his colleagues.
citizen dave
“but looking at photos of Gaetz have always brought up a real “there’s something bad wrong with that boy” feeling for me”
Piling on…his hair makes him look like the Big Boy restaurant mascot (Azar’s where I grew up; Frisch’s near me; I think it’s Bob’s out west):
He also seems like he should have been a character in Mike Judge’s show King of the Hill. The neighborhood pervert everyone knows to stay away from; the one crazier than even Boomhauer.
Other MJS
@Amir Khalid:
Seems feasible to me; “knucklehead” is a close cousin to “malarkey”.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chief Oshkosh:
The leaks we’ve gotten so far suggest ‘all of it’. The people around Trump weren’t collecting bribes for him to give pardons. They were collecting bribes for them to plead their case to the vain, whiny asshole who was feeling depressed and insecure and pardon power was the only thing that made him feel strong or loved. This is classic weak king courtier shit, like all the stories of factions dirtying each other up for Trump’s four years, leaking stories to the press, and trying to ensure that they were the only people whispering into His Majesty, King Cognitive Decline’s ear. When the guy in charge believes the last thing he heard, the person who decides what he hears is actually in charge.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Jeffro: MAGAT response: But what about Bill Clinton?
SiubhanDuinne
@Anomalous Cowherd:
I suppose it’s too much to hope for, that this could be a rotating tag.
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bluegirlfromwyo:
Ah, you’ve been listening to them, then. Yes, that has been their response.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Frankensteinbeck: Nope. Haven’t been listening to them. Their whataboutism is as predictable as the sunrise.
catclub
I am not so sure. I don’t think he ever said it to trump.
Kay
@Baud:
Which reminds me. I told my son he has to provide proof he’s vaccinated for college and asked him what his anti-vaxxer classmates would do. He said, earnestly, “don’t worry about it- there’s not a lot of overlap there”.
Oh, the truth telling of children. I will miss it.
different-church-lady
@catclub: He did say, “Will you shut up, man?”
Tony Jay
It must be that time of year for ‘out of their depth but too dense with the curd of privilege to know it’ boy-men of the conservative kind, because over here on Airstrip One and Three-Quarters lard-arsed foreign intelligence asset and all-round solipsistic deadweight Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has had another entry added to his list of self-inflicted woes due to the timely revelation that his private mobile phone number has been known to all and sundry for the last fifteen years.
Granted, it’s probably been saved to favourites by half of the kebab shops, spank palaces and Bargain Booze outlets in the Central London area, but security know-it-alls contacted by the suddenly Johnson-hostile Press have been gently insinuating that certain foreign powers with an interest in gathering leverage over rising political turds might – just might – have been able to exploit Johnson’s lack of basic common-sense to access his messages, listen in on his phone-calls or, oh, I don’t know, just to pull a random possibility out of the aetheric medium maybe blackmail him into being (even more of) a treasonous sac of well-fermented bile willing to sell his country out to anyone if it would save his mottled hide.
You can tell it’s pretty serious because the non-entity running the Home Office has hastened to the radio to scold the media for threatening national security (because there’s no way any foreign intelligence service or criminal network would possibly have noticed Johnson advertising his phone number online for the last 15 years if they hadn’t just been told about it) while insisting that the Great British Public are as uninterested in this scandal as they are in every other scandal currently scrolling endlessly across the pages of their tabloid/broadsheet/newsfeed of choice.
Poor Flobalob*, you’d almost think certain ‘friends’ of his wanted him out of the way so that they can get planning the next redecoration of Downing Street.
*This is sarcasm. He’s not poor and I feel only joy at his pain.
germy
That’s gotta be expensive.
My
Attorney
Got
Alan (Dershowitz)
different-church-lady
@Tony Jay: That was well under 3000 words. Are you feeling okay?
Mike in NC
@Anomalous Cowherd: Inbreeding in the Florida Panhandle? Yeah, that could be the case.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Tony Jay:
So the UK press is finally turning on Johnson? Good
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
Every. Fucking. Thing. Possible. or Even. Impossible.
Kattails
@Baud: Well except they told her how bad it would be if someone found out and how it would hurt the innocents who were paying her for sex, and got her to apologize. FFFS.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
Wonder if she’s an ex-fiancé yet?
Steeplejack (phone)
zhena gogolia
@Spanky:
Oh, that’s cruel.
Brantl
@Mike in NC: They’re dicks, plainly & simply.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think that video may have been doctored.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I’m sure if Dems had just not used such scary, elitist words like “POC” and “transphobia”, that transphobic WV bill banning trans women from participating in school sports never would’ve been signed
Steeplejack (phone)
@Baud:
?
zhena gogolia
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I agreed with you about the “faculty lounge” thread, BTW.
mrmoshpotato
Yes.
Tony Jay
@different-church-lady:
I’m aware I’ve let you down, but in my defence I’m trying to remember that less is sometimes more.
That’s a lie. I was just in a hurry. A Mister Gaetz was calling on another line asking if I had a number for a “Semor Cornholio”. Very weird.
germy
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Glenn has plenty of character. Not one micron of it is good but still, he has plenty.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: OMG! Genius!
patrick II
@Mike in NC:
Keepin people obedient under an unjust, undemocratic government is an important state function. Extreme punishment is all of a piece with a violent police force.
Tony Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
On the one had, yes, it’s good to see the dam break on all the crap they’ve been covering up to protect him.
On the other hand, if they’re going for him now it’s only because their owners have agreed on a replacement who will be even worse.
These are Tories we’re talking about, there is no ‘better’, there’s only a different way of being awful.
BruceFromOhio
@Jeffro:
In Russian, with badly-worded subtitles.
Gravenstone
@MomSense: Sure, let’s add some trafficking in child porn charges to the rest of shit heading his way.
Cacti
Matt Gaetz always gave me the vibe of the frat bro who would always bring the roofies to the party.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
There’s something approaching perfection here
Roger Moore
@Chief Oshkosh:
No. It alludes to a process whereby Stone was selling pardons. Whether he actually had enough pull with Trump to pull it off, or if he was just grifting and couldn’t deliver is another question.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Let’s be honest.
How else could he get any?
If he didn’t pay.
What other possible incentive could there be?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A lot of the younger Republicans have that vibe to them. That “punchable face” thing, you want to throw things and hit them with a stick to drive to away before they murder some small child.
Chief Oshkosh
@Gravenstone: Yep. And that is exactly what it was. On the House floor, no less.
And not a peep from a single GOPer, even the ones who hate him.
Evil, evil, evil.
Ruckus
@Baud:
It doesn’t appear they split along those lines. At least legally…..
JaySinWA
@Jeffro:
Hey what have you got against free markets as God wrote in Article II of the Constitution?
Spanky
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s like Wile R. Coyote got another box from Acme and Dershowitz pops out.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
Thank you, I appreciate that. I have plenty of online friends that I know that identify themselves using terms like “non-binary”, “neurodivergent”, and I’m still trying to figure out if I’m heterosexual or a heteromantic-demisexual (a form of asexual)
This is a discussion that was near and dear to me and I felt like myself and people like me were being blamed for Dems’ poor recent electoral showings simply because we use “scary” words to describe ourselves that might drive away voters.
When I first learned about “POC” it didn’t scare me. It made perfect sense as a replacement for “minorities” when describing non-white people. Community of color ain’t that much different from “black/brown neighborhood”
I completely understand the point that we need to speak as plainly as possible to voters, but if something as relatively anodyne as “POC” and corporate pushes to be more inclusive scares them, I question how gettable they were in the first place
Chief Oshkosh
@Roger Moore: Potaytoes, potahtoes… Here’s hoping Trump totally loses it very publicly if he finds out he was totally cut out of the action.
Benw
Update on wife’s status: she’s currently getting her ass kicked by Moderna #2. Tail should be out soon
Ruckus
@Brantl:
I guess it’s possible they are dicks but it does seem to me that they’d have to rise several steps to arrive at dick. That’s almost too common for them. Although I have no idea what that term might be…
OK dicks it is then.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
And then take them all himself?
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Well, he has a character, at any rate…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Why does Rudy’s Borat II scene come to mind with that Gaetz endorsement?
karen marie
Anyone have a theory as to why the specific charges haven’t been announced?
different-church-lady
@SiubhanDuinne: More like the even horizon of a black hole: once crossed, no crime can escape its gravitational pull.
Ken
There’s a link where you can nominate it, throwing it into the
poolocean for John to review.germy
So Gaetz is going on tour with Marjorie Taylor Greene? Traveling together in close quarters?
How soon before they start bumping uglies?
smith
@karen marie: Most likely he’s being charged with molesting his own children. I can’t think of any other reason they’d be so coy, unless it’s to protect the victims.
debbie
@Kay:
To be crude: Why? It’s not like he jacked off on her blue dress…
germy
And this was 2018!
different-church-lady
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I certainly don’t feel like that is the case. But I also don’t think that’s what the thread was about. It was more about how individuals have individual preferences for how they identify, which can be very ambiguous and fluid, and perhaps in the end not that vital to them. But institutions feel the need to come up with far more codified descriptors, attempt to draw hard lines of violation, and impose those rules from above.
But perhaps that thread was about a lot of things, and I’m only looking at one angle.
Leto
@Benw: Avalune and I got our second dose of Moderna about 45 mins ago. Can’t wait for what the next few days will bring us!
Leto
@germy: she’s about 30 years over his limit.
Just One More Canuck
@BruceFromOhio: with the same production values as the Russian version of Lord of the Rings
hueyplong
@germy: Yikes. I can almost hear Marlin Perkins narrating that.
The Mugster
Gravenstone
@germy: As I asked yesterday, I wonder if Gaetz is familiar with the joys of tantric sex?
hedgehog mobile
@germy: You owe me a tanker of brain bleach for that. ?
Ken
@Baud: More like Satanic evil and Chthuluic evil.
Ken
@Tony Jay: Maybe it’s just me, but is the half-life of Tory PMs getting shorter?
craigie
@Anomalous Cowherd:
So that’s what that’s called!
Benw
@Leto: WOOT! She got hers in the AM, felt fine during the day, and was definitely woozy by bedtime.
trollhattan
@germy:
She’s a little, uh, mature for him, yes?
But she could let him polish her guns.
JoyceH
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I consider myself a tolerant liberal, but what irks me about the ‘correct’ terminology is that it keeps changing, and then people still using the last correct term are considered to be in the wrong and probably with evil intent.
And I find the ‘of’ construction simply baffling. Can someone who knows explain to me where that came from? It sounds weird because it’s not used in other contexts – I’m not a person of weight, for example. It sounds to me as if ‘people of color’ is just a clumsy workaround to keep from saying ‘colored people’, because we already used that term four or five terminology changes ago.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So Duggar’s issue is child porn. I’m shocked.
MagdaInBlack
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Me too > Not. I predicted that last night. Ugh.
Nice Marmot
@Spanky: A favourite line about Gaetz: the ‘dad has a dealership’ vibe is strong with this one.
MomSense
@Benw:
☹️
geg6
@karen marie:
Fucker must be molesting the passel of kids he’s got. That stupid girl that married him must be even more stupid than I thought.
Ken
You make a natural, beautiful process sound like the chestburster scene.
cain
@germy:
Neither of them are the other’s type. Too old.
Benw
@MomSense: thanks
@Ken: LOL
Tony Jay
@Ken:
Brexit broke everything. We’re not the same country we were five years ago. It’s all falling apart at an increasing rate even though the Infotainers are desperately trying to normalise the mayhem their various shades of misinformation fostered.
cope
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Maybe Gaetz and Josh Duggar can be cell buddies.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JoyceH:
It doesn’t “keep changing”. When were terms like African-American introduced? 30-35 years ago?
And I don’t think badly of anyone who still uses “black” for example
J R in WV
@karen marie:
Here’s a theory:
Because whatever they are, it’s SO BAD that merely mentioning them in public will destroy his career as a money-grubbing minister of some patriarchal church. The mere accusation, as it were.
Even without being convicted!
That bad…
Mike in NC
Wife subscribes to People magazine and they used to always run stories about the creepy Duggar clan.
Chief Oshkosh
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The perspective maybe depends on age. If you’ve lived long enough to experience several changes in anything, then it can seem like it’s “always changing” – regardless of topic.
JCJ
@Mike in NC:
I like the meme “Vagina – It Is Not a Clown Car”
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/01/the-record-for-the-most-babies-born-to-one-woman-is-69/vagina-clown-car/
SWMBO
@germy:
Any bets on whether they slip each other a roofie?
dave319
@Ken: Isn’t she too old for him? Asking for a friend
Hob
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not only are you right about that, but the specific usage “people of color” is now at least THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OLD. I can mildly identify with thinking things like “why is there a different term than there used to be” or “this phrasing could be considered slightly illogical if you look at it from such-and-such angle”, because I am both middle-aged and a compulsive nitpicker, but to go on complaining along those lines in a public forum in this day and age is not just mildly pointless, it’s actively obnoxious Archie Bunker type behavior that lefties really should not indulge in. I get that it may not be coming from bad intentions but still, just freaking take a hint and let people use the terms they want to use for their damn selves. Absolutely no one picked pasty white me to be the judge of ethnic terminology, or to decide when it ought to be nailed down for all time and immune from change, and the fact that I could go out and find some non-white people who don’t bother to use that term means absolutely nothing.
I’ll go a bit further and say that people complaining about how “Latinx” is some fancy-schmancy college-professor term that no one uses in real life should consider stepping back and shutting up and waiting to see how it plays out. They may well be right that this coinage is not a keeper and won’t catch on, but 1. the origin of the usage was among Latin-American activists and academics and students(*), and 2. every politically-oriented change in language goes through a phase of being primarily used by progressive-minded activists and academics and students before it’s a commonly used thing. Same deal with “African-American”: if that hadn’t caught on, something else would have, no harm no foul… but white people in the ’80s who insisted on complaining that “we don’t need a new term, now no one will be allowed to say ‘Black’ any more, it’s not logical because Africa isn’t a country”, etc. etc., would have been just as silly whether it had caught on or not. (And as you pointed out, “Black” has not magically gone away.)
(* If only I had a dollar for every time someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about tries to convince me that “only silly white people use ‘Latinx’, it’s the kind of thing only white people who don’t understand Spanish would ever say!”… I would split those dollars with the Latinx students who first introduced me to that word, and we’d all have enough for a few drinks. Is it widely or universally used, no. Do those friends get mad if someone instead says “Latine” or “Latin-American” or “Hispanic” or uses something more specific to one group like “Chicano”— also no. Is it a thing that only makes sense in English, of course, that’s the point. I really hope in a few years people will get over this one way or another, it is such a fake “controversy”. And to anyone who feels like saying “But I don’t know how to pronounce it”, you are on the Internet right now, look it the fuck up.)
J R in WV
Molesting his sisters… what a great Christian, huh? Then grew up to molest his own kids, instead of protecting them from harm~!!~
Going to burn forever if his beliefs come true for him. Some days I hope there is a Hell for those monsters. Certainly no forgiveness in his future!
Many years ago I had to sit on a Grand Jury that heard a case against a guy who had video of his own daughter, age in the low single digits, being raped. Many different instances over years. We were handed a pack of printouts from the videos the state police found.
I could only stand to see a very few of those images — repulsive in the extreme. We handed up an indictment on that monster unanimously in mere moments.