Here’s some teanderthal political prowess:
A Mississippi political blogger has been arrested for allegedly sneaking into the nursing home where Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife resides and taking her picture for an online video, the Clarion-Ledger reported Saturday.
The blogger, Clayton Thomas Kelly, 28, was charged with exploitation of a vulnerable adult. The video, described as a “hit piece” to the newspaper by its sources, was allegedly critical of Cochran (R-MS) and supportive of his GOP primary challenger, State Sen. Chris McDaniel.
It was posted on April 26 and included a picture of Rose Cochran, who suffers from dementia and moved into the nursing home in 2000. It has since been taken down, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
Kelly has some vague association with the McDaniel campaign, since they were apparently tipped off about the break-in before it became public.
I have no idea what the pictures look like, but I have a pretty clear memory of what end-stage dementia looks like from visiting my hometown nursing home as a kid, and it’s pretty awful. How someone could think that these photos would elicit any response other than being completely repelled by the lack of humanity of the person who published them is beyond my understanding.
One thing I do understand is that a small number of ignorant and retrograde morons were idolized and fêted by right-wing media, as well as the establishment of the Republican Party, no matter that most of them hold views that are repellent to the majority of Americans. So don’t tread on “Constitutional Clayton” while he’s snapping pictures of a helpless old woman curled up in a fetal position. He’s part of the new Republican base.
Lee Rudolph
I suppose there’ll be an effort to portray this as a false-flag operation funded by Soros, or something.
MomSense
Republican base is base.
Baud
Silly blogger. You can only do that after you’re elected into office.
beltane
Hillary Clinton must have done this to deflect attention away from Benghazi.
kbuttle
The Tea Party: turning winnable races unwinnable since 2012.
Dolly Llama
I imagine this is what he thought he was working on. A “he’s traveling all over the place with this so-called ‘aide’ while his poor wife is laid up in a vegetative state” piece. This guy has shit and fell back in it on this, but I imagine that was the angle he was pursuing. As far as the alleged involvement of the McDaniel campaign, he didn’t really have much of a shot before this, did he?
Joseph Nobles
If Kelly had dressed as a pimp, he’d be on Fox News now.
gf120581
@Dolly Llama: Actually, he did. McDaniel was considered a serious challenger to Cochran, who’s been looked on as the potential Dick Lugar of this cycle. (It’s why the Democrats have a serious challenger in former Rep. Travis Childers on hand to take advantage.) Whether that remains the case now is another story.
McDaniel is a real piece of work, though.
WereBear
Considering how huge the country is, and how many people are in it, I guess the upside is that Tea Partyism is a great technique for exposing the dregs among us.
c u n d gulag
Another James O’Keefe protégé?
This is classic Nixonian/Roveian rat-fucking.
You can smell the Rattus norvegicus motion-lotion, if you dare get close enough.
No thanks.
I’ll stay here, and smell the flower’s blossoming outside.
feebog
No moral compass or values. This is the same type of person who would cheer at a debate when a candidate suggests that we should just let poor people die rather than taking them to an emergency room.
the Conster
This Clayton POS looks like the Jim Carrey Dumber character. What a maroon, and the whole stinking bunch of these cracker wingnuts need to all DIAF.
Baud
@Joseph Nobles:
And if he had done that to a Democrat.
Schlemizel
As I said in the previous thread – It is my fervent hope that these assholes turn they shit cannons against each other. Stunts like this will not be forgotten or forgiven. If they devolve (it is possible for these people to devolve?) into more sniping maybe the decent people can win more elections and might just be able to stave off the end times the bagger/Ranoid/Koch Whore triumvirate are insisting be forced on us.
Joseph Nobles
@Baud: RINO, same diff.
Belafon
OT: Reading the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup at Daily Kos, and the diarist wrote this:
We have to figure out a way to have everyone calling this “Cleek’s Law”.
aimai
@MomSense: Perfect.
aimai
@WereBear: So: ratpaper?
WereBear
Seconded.
What use is “support” when it is simply pithed frog reflex?
WereBear
@aimai: I love it! Or… ShitMust Test.
jonas
Maybe they were going to make hay over the fact that she was in a nursing facility and almost certainly on Medicaid, or something. Goddamn mooching dementia lady.
jonas
@gf120581: I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a freakin’ Republican from freakin’ Mississippi can actually be challenged from the right by anyone who’s not literally wearing a swastika armband. But I haven’t seen *all* the photos of this McDaniel character yet.
Chris
@Belafon:
I vaguely remember a line from Hannah Arendt to the effect that there was a class of antisemites in early 20th century Europe that didn’t hate “semites” so much as “the philosemitism of the liberals,” e.g. the fact that the liberal class apparently was too solicitous to Jews.
I remember reading that and thinking it sounded a hell of a lot like some of our conservatives. If libz like it, we hates it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
I’m positive that many
Girondistsmainstream Republicans have already begun rushing to condemn Kelly’s actions. I just haven’t heard about it because I don’t watch the news.aimai
@WereBear: Very good.
RepubAnon
@c u n d gulag: The Republicans lionized James O’Keefe for this type of behavior – and are shocked, SHOCKED, that others seek to imitate him.
Once Republicans held up someone like James O’Keefe as a hero for propaganda purposes, they lost the right to to do anything other than hang their collective heads in shame when others start imitating his tactics.
MomSense
@aimai: @WereBear:
Sooo good!
MattF
This isn’t even ‘libtards are for it, so we’re against it’. It’s just an excuse for sadistic voyerism. Even in Mississippi.
aimai
@MattF: The guy is quite the kook. I took a look at his rather badly written blog and he’s a genuine nutcase.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@RepubAnon:
Any Republican who hangs his or her head in shame over the transgressions of the TP shall immediately be known as a RINO and primaried at the first opportunity.
schrodinger's cat
Copied from the last thread:
India Update elebenty:
I met with my non godbothering relatives, in the suburbs of Mumbai this afternoon. There was booze, good food and great company and an excellent time was had by all. There is a lot of new infrastructure development, I took some pictures and no I was not driving.
Joel
I’m glad that there’s some line of decency that Mississippi republicans won’t cross, because apparently chilling with white supremacists ain’t it.
Mandalay
More wingnuttery from a wacko running for office in Arizona:
Guns don’t kill people. Democrats kill people.
chopper
hey, it’s not like these choads think the old woman has a right to privacy. They’re probably still trying to figure out exactly what it is they did wrong.
geg6
I doubly detest this subhuman. First for victimizing this poor woman. And second for making me sympathize with Thad Cochran even for a minute or two.
gene108
@jonas:
Republicans in Congress, unfortunately for them, sometimes have to vote in favor of Democratic policies or cannot obstruct everything Democrats do. For example, the Senator presiding as the President Pro-Temp (a Democrat naturally, because Democrats are in the majority) of the Senate declares “is there a motion to begin floor speeches for the day” and Sen. Cochran does not object. He is in effect “supporting a Democrat Senate proposal” in the mind of wingers.
This is as far as I can tell how you can challenge these guys from the right.
A base hyped up on all rage all the time has lost their grasp on how government is supposed* to work. They just want to achieve a very vague goal of “taking America back” or some ideological idea that is more grounded in faith than facts and so they can move their rage against any incumbent Republican, because they have so poorly defined their goals.
* The word is Compromise. The Founders built a government, where opposing sides need to compromise to get anything done. The Constitution (they claim to love) is nothing but a bunch of compromises between various interests.
beltane
@Mandalay: I don’t understand what Kiehne is trying to accomplish here. If Democrats are as badass as he claims, wouldn’t that make his audience of crazy people more likely to vote for them and not him?
mai naem
This was on the AP hourly news yesterday. I tried looking it up some more last night. I don’t get it. Why did this idiot do it? To show that Cochran’s old? That Cochran’s “abandoned” his wife in a nursing home? I don’t get it.
scav
seem to be a lot of candidates that really believe in and are really, really counting on the votes of those hundreds of millions of ‘mercans that entirely cried off assembling in DC at the last minute because of the weather or something equally valid.
Because otherwise the rules of this beauty contest are getting very very bizarre.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Mandalay:
Is anyone surprised by Kiehne’s statement? This is just a logical extension of Republicans’ rewriting of history aided by Fox News designating Republican miscreants as Democrats. A few cycles of the Wingnut Wurlitzer and “Democrats are the mass shooters” will become gospel truth for conservatives in general and Teahadist Republican politicians in particular.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@mai naem:
Apparently people allied with McDaniel are trying to gin up a story about Cochran having an affair on the public dime via his travel. Showing that his wife is incapacitated is probably part of that.
And despicable.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
They don’t even need that. Every Republican in congress is guilty of not evicting Obama from office. This makes every single one either weak or a traitor in the eyes of their primary voting base.
Belafon
@Belafon:
For any of you with a Daily Kos account, I have created a diary, Cleek’s Law. This will also be useful since it still hasn’t made it into BJ’s dictionary even though it’s referenced everywhere on the site.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Frankensteinbeck:
This.The infected base is furious that the Ni-clang! is still in office and anyone who hasn’t brought articles of impeachment is obviously a RINO and must therefore be replaced. That the architects of this weekend’s fail parade included Boehner, Cantor and Ryan in the same enemies list with POTUS, Biden, Pelosi, etc. is proof positive that that the Teahadis regard anyone even a millimeter less zealous than they as an enemy.
scav
@scav: Should say candidate supporters, I guess. But then, the whole out-sourced, un-sourced, non-organized, bag yer own, let’s have a candidate campaign method seems to be popular, The ability to disassociate oneself from efforts that go seriously wrong is apparently seen as a feature (Look Ma! No blood on my hands! Who needs handlebars!!!!!). Also, cheap and come with that trendy “populist” smell? But, must admit to constantly be surprised on the bloody downside by how unintelligent and unself-aware people can be. They really believe everyone thinks exactly like they do and their advertising “outreach” shows it.
Villago Delenda Est
@jonas: Swastikas are so déclassé in the South. Now, if he was wearing a white pointed hood, that’s perfectly acceptable.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Nice way to tell the FP crowd to stop being so lazy and update the BJ dictionary!
Chris
@Mandalay:
Ah, the Democrats. Those terrifying sissies, those dangerous wimps, those savage scaredy-cats who are too broad-minded to take their own side in a quarrel, and also will beat you to death in the gutter like the thugs they are if you give them a chance. How do they do it?
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Obama needs to get his thin black ass in gear and get those FEMA camps up and running for these seditious maggots.
Chris
@gene108:
Also why “founder intent” is such a bullshit concept from head to toe. Which founder’s intent?
wenchacha
If this dude was caught sneaking into a building where he didn’t belong, why would anyone bother with police? Just shoot him dead.
Ash Can
Kelly fucked up by just putting the vid online. If he had taken it to Breitbart News and given them the exclusive, they’d be paying all his legal bills for him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
The magic of Hollywood special effects brought to the real world.
These people buy into fantasy all the time. Obama is simultaneously an example of the unworthy and incompetent getting ahead via affirmative action and an evil genius who blocks the GOP at every turn.
He’s the black Ronald Reagan…that’s what he is!
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris: Well, we know the religious test clause in Article VI had a specific intent by Madison.
It really is a shame it blatantly gets in the way of Fundigelical myths about the origin of the Constitution.
gbear
@Belafon: Can’t believe they don’t have Cleek’s Law in the Lexicon. I hope they add Galtamont too..
@Mandalay: I made the mistake of looking at the comments at that article and now I want to slit my wrists.
Citizen Alan
For what it’s worth, I find it difficult to believe that the McDaniel campaign was actually involved in this. I mean, they’re stupid, but they’re not THAT stupid. Anyone with even one functioning brain cell should have realized that this would have generated enormous sympathy for Cochran.
smith
@Belafon: Interesting that the Dkos front page right now has a post on ratfucking primaries that emphasizes applying Cleek’s Law to get the weaker Repug candidate nominated:
Belafon
@gbear:
Maybe we should start a White House petition.
MattF
@Chris: Yeah, that’s the whole ‘Obambi’ thing– terrifying and wimpy at the same time.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: “Where are the white women at?”
jl
@Schlemizel:
” It is my fervent hope that these assholes turn they shit cannons against each other. ”
They do turn their shit cannons against each other and have done so for years. This vile stunt was played into a sleazy and dishonest McDaniel’s primary campaign against GOPer Tad Cochran in the primary. McDaniel has been publicizing stuff about big gummint spending and Congressional travel junkets by Cochran that is really meant to suggest Cochran had an extra-marital affair.McDaniel is a vile chickenshit.
A lot of similarities to the Rove primary sleaze campaign against daddy wargrumps McCain suggesting he ‘had’ a ‘black baby’ (wink wink nudge nudge). Total BS.
This sleazy BS runs through the modern GOP, and is standard operating procedure. This is in some sense a ‘both sides do it’ issue in some misleading sense, but it is solidly a first not a last recourse, and very solid SOP in the GOP, since they have no policies that they can be honest about with the public In many parts of the country, the bigoted and ignorant white folk are so tribal, so gullible, so sadly simple in the head, they swallow it whole and wait eagerly for more. It works in the primary and general elections in too many places in the U.S.
More here:
This Is a Hot One
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-a-hot-one
Frankensteinbeck
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Even zeal is not enough. All of their conservative heroes failed, and were dropped. Even the most zealous have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to prove they’re conservative enough. It can be done, sure, but every candidate is starting at a severe disadvantage because they failed. Why do you think Mitch, the Republican’s Republican, has a challenger? Because he said he’d make Obama a one term president, and Obama won reelection. After that it’s just picking excuses that make him a RINO. Purity tests always give the results the tester wants.
SatanicPanic
Reading Eric Foner’s Reconstruction 1863-1877 and just happened on this passage this morning:
He’s talking about 1870, but he could be talking about 2014.
Chris
@MattF:
And the 2000s version: “those Muslims are a pushover, it’ll be a cakewalk, in fact, Mission Accomplished, but they’re also a terrifying conspiracy about to impose Sharia Law on all of us if you don’t approve of this bill approving torture and this other bill approving warrantless wiretapping.”
And the 1990s version: “the UN is too inefficient and silly and multilateral to be trusted with anything, but it’s also a terrifying New World Order conspiracy that’s going to enslave us all with the Mark of the Beast.”
And the 1980s version: “communism is horribly inefficient, it can’t get anything right, it’ll never work, but the Soviet Army, heck, the Nicaraguan Army are the most terrifying military juggernaut that ever existed, and it will surely overrun us all and rule the world unless you approve the development of Expensive Weapons System E534BX22…”
jl
@Chris: And wrt to Cold War BS, there was also the nonsense contradiction over democracy. Democracy was the best and strongest system where governments could take strong sustained action because they had the support of the people, who appreciated all the economic benefits, freedom and having a voice in government. But they were weak weak because the people were spoiled and pampered because of the social benefits, and governments couldn’t do anything because those spoiled rotten people were fickle, and could vote governments in an out of office, and couldn’t commit themselves to long bloody wars because it was scary and inconvenient.
The ignorant and dimwitted ass and tendentious propagandist David Brooks sang that song a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to gin up a confrontation with Russia over the mess in Ukraine.
gene108
@MattF:
To be fair to Bambi, he did grow up to be a bad-ass tough mofo buck.
EDIT: I can see why folks would be scared of Bambi.
Roger Moore
@Citizen Alan:
What does that have to do with teabaggers?
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
It’s really not that contradictory. Dumb, but not contradictory. You’re just not thinking about it in a Real Merkin way. ‘Americans are the greatest people on Earth, stronger and nobler and better in every way than everyone else. The inferior peoples are jealous of our greatness and want to drag us down to their level. They can’t win in a straight fight because we’re so manly, and they’re too cowardly to try it. Instead they rely on cheap, dirty tricks like infiltrating our government, which is how a coward fights.’ There are mild variations. During the Cold War the more paranoid Americans did not consider Russia weak. ‘Obama is lazy (being black, after all) and had to be put in the presidency by a liberal system that’s coddling blacks and destroying America, and now he’s doing the weak and childish thing of abusing powers he didn’t earn rather than Leading.’ If you accept their premise that real Strength is posturing and bullying the weak, it also helps make this all more consistent.
EDIT – @jl:
I think the key there is the missing sentence ‘Of course, democracy only works if white people run it.’
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think you’re putting too much thought into this. The basic truth is that Obama, Muslims, the UN, the Soviet Union, etc. are evil, so any bad thing you say about them must be true. It doesn’t matter if those things are contradictory.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: This. Everything is evidence to a conspiracy theorist.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Okay, basically true, but there’s a gut level ‘You won? You must be cheating!’ logic, like with a whiny kindergartener. They wrap their emotions around that.
gene108
@jl:
All the GOP dirty tricks, I think, can be traced back to “Tricky” Dick Nixon. What upset the Nixonites, who continued to infest the Reagan, Bush, Sr and especially Bush, Jr. White Houses was not that the burglary at the Watergate hotel was wrong – because all is fair in love and war – but that Nixon got hung out to dry because of it and subsequent revelations about abuses of power.
My only hope is the folks Nixon surrounded himself with were/are smarter than the knuckle-draggers in the modern GOP and those guys are either too dead or too old to wield power any longer.
I think the Christie “bridgegate” scandal as a sign of hope that the current crop of GOP knuckle-draggers are both not bright enough to cover their tracks, like the Nixonites learned to do by the time Bush, Jr. came to office and none of them had the chance to learn about dirty tricks from the master, “Tricky” Dick Nixon.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
Not only is everything evidence but the more outlandish a thing that can in some tenuous way be attached to the theory the more it must be plausible.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
Which is yet another reason why Madison’s insistence on the “no religious test” clause in Article VI was so wise.
These guys knew all about “purity tests” for ideologies.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
There was a time when the thought was that only Anglo-Saxons could have a working democracy…the French, the Germans, the rest of those wogs past Calais just can’t do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: Godzilla wasn’t much afeared of him.
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: Shit, the science editor of TIME magazine still thinks that.
ETA- might be the former editor, I don’t follow scientific racists as closely as I could
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
The new Republican base is the mainstream Republican base, both of which are pretty much identical to the old Republican base – they’re all mostly the same people, just driven to greater extremes of rage, outrage, and crazy over the past two decades by Fox News and the rest of the conservative media.
Morzer
Anyone else enjoyed John Oliver’s attack ad against Mitch McConnell for Alison Lundergan Grimes?
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/05/warning-you-cannot-un-see-john-olivers-anti-mitch-mcconnell-old-white-dick-commercial/?utm_source=rss
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
No. Democracy only works when we get our way. As long as they win, they’re happy. If the Democrats win but engage in the kind of “compromise” that results in the Republicans getting everything they want, democracy is OK. It’s only when the Democrats win and think that gives them the right to enact their agenda that there’s a problem.
ETA: Shorter: Elections have consequences: the Republicans get what they want.
jl
@Roger Moore: If white people run the democracy and they don’t do what we want, then there is a reason found to explain why they are not really white people. Or more commonly, some sinister outside influence (communism or bad oligarchs, as opposed to our good oligarchs) has thwarted the will of the people and something must be done to save their democracy (Cuba is a good example).
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Frankensteinbeck:
And it’s good news for John McCain.
JoyceH
This story is just jaw-dropping to me. In what version of reality does taking and publicizing a picture of a candidate’s disabled wife help his opponent? And – the clown posted the photo online? Did he not KNOW that what he had done was illegal?!
Villago Delenda Est
@JoyceH:
Well, that is a strong possibility, of course. Then again, he may have known but did not care. Extremism in the defense of White Supremacy is no vice, you know.
Which is why I think Sherman pussyfooted in Georgia.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Upon reflection, I agree with this.
@Roger Moore:
I’m not actually sure. Carter, Clinton and Obama are all ridiculously moderate (Clinton especially), and they’re utterly loathed by the Republican base as socialist extremists. Granted, no Democratic president will ever compromise to the point of giving them every thing they want, so it’s a hypothetical, but it doesn’t seem to me that giving in to Republicans puts them in any less of a frenzy. They just go barking mad whenever they’re out of power.
Citizen_X
The good news: this is illegal in Mississippi.
The Other Chuck
@SatanicPanic: That’s shocking and incredible … you mean to tell me there’s still a TIME Magazine?
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mcdanial-cochran-voicemail-slander