Trump pretty much wraps up the Republican nomination and the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House gets fifteen months in prison. It must be time to write a few “Democrats in disarray” columns.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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My hope was for fifteen years, but my expectation was zero. So this is an okay compromise, I guess.=
Aw, just a wheelchair, Dennis? No oxygen mask or neck brace?
Hastert should spend the rest of his miserable life in prison, the sick fuck.
Are you sure that happened? No mention of Hastert at National Review or RedState.
Non-stop news coverage (TV & radio) in the Chicago area.
Surprise was Tom Cross’ younger brother coming forward and saying Hastert molested him in High School. Makes me wonder if T. Cross knew it and that’s why he became Hastert’s protege.
Just love these sanctimonious S.O.B.’s. Vocal opposition to gay marriage between adults, but humping your underage students is OK.
A well deserved but sad end for him.
I don’t find it sad. I find it utterly maddening. Nothing sad about it, except for his victims.
I agree. I just read Julie Bosman’s (NYT’s Midwest correspondent) Twitter feed of the sentencing, and you could tell the judge was rather angry thathe was not able to sentence HAster as he would have wished.
“Judge’s final words before exiting: “This is a horrible case.. horrible for our country. I hope I never have to see a case like this again.”“
The judge called him a ‘serial child molester’ several times.
It’s not just the serial child molestation, as heinous and despicable that is. Hastert also broke several other laws, including banking laws.
But hey – he’s a WHITE MALE who is well connected and has powerful pals, and golly gee whiz, he said “sorry.”
So 15 pathetic months in some Club Fed slammer, and then he goes on 2 whole big years of probation and has to pay a giant wrist-tapping $250k into a crime victims fund.
Yeah right: one rule for rich WHITE MALES and totally different rules for the rest of us serfs, especially for those serfs exhibiting the vast great crimes of existing as black males.
Got it.
Screw Hastert. What a disgusting loathsome awful nasty black-hearted specimen. And voila, folks: he was only a few heartbeats away from being POTUS. And numerous of his well-connected GOP pals wrote letters praising this asshole.
Hooray for American Exceptionalism and the GOP.
Hey look over there!!! Clinton got a blow job from a consenting adult!!!!
“But hey – he’s a WHITE MALE who is well connected and has powerful pals, “
That well connected thingy is what protects him.
he couldn’t be convicted of the molestation because of the statute of limitations that’s why this was pretty much the most he could get
he was only charged with the banking crimes
Oh. Thanks. I forgot about that. And yes, the judge apparently did make him admit that he molested those boys. I guess that’s the most the judge could do under the circumstances, so I am somewhat mollified (at least in terms of what the judge did).
Ugh.
Please contain the white hate. Would it be OK if it was a black High school and a black teacher?
I don’t think the comment had anything to do with white hate but more to do with the very privileged position white males have in our country.
If the races were different it’s unlikely he would have gotten away with it as long as he did.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/congressman-defends-hastert
“I don’t know anything about the people who have come forward,” former Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) told BuzzFeed in an interview. “I know somebody was trying to extort him for money and instead of punishing that person, why I guess they’ve been given immunity so they can cook up some phony crime of structuring and go after Denny Hastert and try and hurt his reputation and everything. That bothers me.”
Doolittle and former Republican Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL) told BuzzFeed that they still supported Hastert even as Ewing told the news organization that he thought the 15-month sentence the judge handed down was appropriate. As Buzzfeed reported, they and other lawmakers had written letters ahead of the sentencing defending him and highlighting his leadership in the House
IOKIYRAR
Can you imagine the apocalyptic Category 5, Fujita 6, 10 on the Richter scale howling shitstorm that would be happening in the media if this had been a prominent former Democratic congressman?
“Liberal Media” my shiny metal ass!
GOPers still whine about Clinton’s blow job from a consenting adult. So yeah, go figure.
IOKIYAR, though. Always. No matter what.
Democratic congressman
Speaker of the house Third in line for the presidency !!!
You forgot to mention Cruz about to select Fiorina as his imaginary running mate.
This is just bizarre. Inexplicable. When people mention living in a bubble and such, you think no way it can be that bad. Everyone has the whole world at their fingertips. But in what world is Fiorina popular enough to pick as a VP? Not even republicans like her!
From the other side….what is Fiorina doing?
It’s all cretins, all the time in the GOP.
.
My sense is Ted felt he needed some big splash to wash from the news the fact that he lost big last night. He’s holding on by his fingertips. Everyone agrees that if he loses Indiana it’s over. Last night and this morning the narrative was that he’s already lost. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
But it sure is funny. What next, an imaginary cabinet?
Is this unique? Surely, some non-incumbent Presidential candidate at some point in the past (after enactment of the 12th Amendment) named a VP running mate before securing the nomination of a political party. In more recent times the VP choice was always part of the national convention (plenty of back-room horse trading over it). WJC named Gore as his running mate a week before the 1992 national convention, but can’t recall if that was unique and set a new precedent that other presumptive nominees have since followed.
Yea Regan and lost to Ford
Thanks — but wasn’t that going into the convention and after the primaries were over? A ploy to woo delegates, and checking on this I see that the Reagan delegates pushed a rule change that would have required Ford to name his VP before the vote on the nomination (and was defeated).
I don’t understand this at all. Does she have some secret reserve of support in Indiana? California?
Fiorina’s alleged to have ladyparts.
One of Cruz’s PACs gave one of LieCarly’s PAC $500k
– http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-did-ted-cruzs-pac-give-half-a-million-to-carly-fiorinas/ –
The rumor mill says Cruz did this bc LieCarly could nastily snarl bs about Clinton without being called on for being sexist. Makes as much sense as anything else, as Fiorina is horrible, did a lousy job attempting to run for Senator from CA, and has crashed and burned at least 2 businesses.
But I guess Fiorina has the RMoney cred of pink slipping tens of thousands US jobs while sashaying off with millions for herself. Seems to be “the thing” to do amongst GOPer pols. It also worked so well for RMoney… uh, wait….
Plus it also worked so well for McCain to have a ladyparts VP… uh, wait…
like, whatever.
2 more disgusting specimens is hard to imagine. Ergo, a certain portion of the GOP base is going to be thrilled with this news (not snark).
Yep, the Cruz campaign’s claim will be that because Fiorina is a woman, she will be able to get away with the most heinous attacks on Clinton without being accused of sexism.
It’s boneheaded campaign strategy like that which rocketed Carly to the top during her POTUS campaign.
Oh, and about that sexism thing:
Carly is plenty sexist.
He’s battling Trump for who can do and/or say the most inexplicable things. Fiorina was probably the only one he could find that said yes to this stunt. Of course, Fiorina was probably the only one that could make the stunt another negative for him.
Cruz’s reputation as a smart and cunning weasel has evaporated under the glare of his unreasonable ambition.
If Cruz was really smart he would settled for being Iago instead of going for the top job.
Probably his second choice since Hastert didn’t get the suspended sentence that he sought (and a string of high powered Republicans advocated).
He didn’t even get 4 MONTHS PER KNOWN VICTIM.
NOT.EVEN.4.MONTHS.
Statute of limitations. Sentence was for conspiracy to evade banking regulations, probably a misdemeanor.
That’s ridiculous. He’s getting sentenced for setting up a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.
WTF? link?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/us/the-case-against-dennis-hastert.html
Just because the GOP is in disarray, and is about to nominate fatally flawed Presidential candidate, does not negate the fact that the Democratic Party is doing the exact same thing.
Given how common “Democrats in disarray” is a theme here, I think a cut and paste job is possible.
A diary explaining how Hillery Clinton used her witchcraft to force Hastert to be a money launderer is needed. We must not allow the neoliberals a victory.
.
Did Hillary do that witchcraft thing before or after she and Bill ritually murdered Vincent Foster? By the way, I’m pretty sure she teaches a course in Advanced Dark Magic in a basement room at the DNC in Washington DC. I’m just not sure whether that class comes before or after the brainwashing and the Two Minutes Hate.
I didn’t mean to rate your comment. My intent was to rate the comment that preceded yours by Voice in the Wilderness. My mistake.
Long live the king:
And the Bushes are finished too.
Well that’s decidedly odd, as I keep hearing Trump bellow about increasing the military and making the military sound again and giving the military more money. So, what gives?
Yeah, he says he’ll make our allies pay for stuff. Well, ok, I guess (although they are already paying for some stuff, but I digress).
But so much of what Trump bellows is about funneling even more money to the military. So saying that his supporters are tired of military actions is, uh, odd? And doesn’t seem accurate.
But whadda I know. Ugh. The whole thing just stinks.
“So saying that his supporters are tired of military actions is, uh, odd?” I’m guessing this is a reference to Trump’s unequivocal and sensational assertion, in a live Republican presidential debate, that the Iraq war was a huge mistake premised on lies. Along with Trump’s equally consistent theme that politics is ‘rigged’ by corrupt idiots in Washington this is more than ‘odd’, it is Right-wing apostasy. Or was. Not any longer, apparently.
I agree that it is somewhat refreshing that Trump is on the verge of gaining the GOP POTUS nomination despite his past comments about W. Bush’s terrible Iraq adventure.
Unfortunately, today’s foreign policy speech dropped that rhetorical attack naming Bush & Co. Instead, it was mostly a standard “Obama and Clinton are destroying the military by shrinking the Defense budget” attack by a Republican politician. Here’s the transcript:
http://time.com/4309786/read-donald-trumps-america-first-foreign-policy-speech/
Trump would tear up the Iran nuclear deal and set us on a quick path to war. His dark statement about ISIS sounds pretty damn genocidal to me. His foreign, domestic, trade and energy policies would destabilize almost the entire world. And he want a massive increase in DoD funding.
So Trump will not be running to anybody’s left on these issues in the general election. Other than a unconventional past rhetorical position or two, positions he appears to be dropping so he can increase his consolidation of the Republican vote, Donald’s a militarist kook even more awful than most Republican politicians.
Can you imagine him trying to defend these incoherent, historically flawed policies during the general election? During the debates?
Retrospectively, I think the evidence shows that Trump dissed W. Bush in a couple of last year’s debates in order to humiliate Jeb. As we remember, Donald was into that sort of thing.
The point being that the Republican party foreign policy of two decades, the interventionist, democracy-exporting exploitive neo-conservatism of both Bushes has been smothered with a pillow. That it stands to be replaced by an ‘America-first’ narcissist with the instincts and temperament of Mussolini is not in dispute.
I upgraded your comment, but would like to add the caveat that Trump’s policy views are so poorly developed, and his need to have staffers who would help him work with Congress, the Defense and State Departments, leaders of nations around the world, and the American public would be so acute, that I have no idea where his foreign and military policies would land if we were to be so unfortunate to have a President Trump. I could easily see him executing neoconservative policies overseas; he’s just so unreliable.
Regardless of that, it is meaningful that Trump has run a winning GOP POTUS campaign which has included a rejection of nation-building through murdering Arabs and Persians. He sure does want to oppress Muslims, though, and there would be some genocide in the Middle East.
Thanks. Yes, Trump is the embodiment of the law of unintended consequences but his rejection of non-conservative principles, while probably unintentional, seems grounded. I’m probably more interested in charting the Republican party’s distress than Trump’s ascendancy; though my son constantly warns me that the consternation of my enemies pales in comparison to the threat presented by a Trump victory. So I have to agree with that too.
“and that the business community is politically homeless.”” Until next January when they will have a home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. Trump’s candidacy has showed that the cadre of genuine social conservatives is smaller than long assumed (1), that grass-roots Republican support for large military commitments in the Middle East has withered (2), and that the business community is politically homeless (3).
And that most evangelicals are not all that evangelical. They just hate hippies.
But then, don’t we all?
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I’m betting he dies on prison. Didn’t he just have a stroke?
Only time can tell us if reported serious health problems for someone under indictment are real or a ploy to avoid prison.
OT:
Wow…
Just Wow.
…………………..
Oklahoma court: oral sex is not rape if victim is unconscious from drinking
The ruling sparked outrage among critics who argue the judicial system engaged in victim-blaming and upholding outdated notions about rape and sexual assault
An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.
The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state’s criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape.
But legal experts and victims’ advocates said they viewed the ruling as a sign of something larger: the troubling gaps that still exist between the nation’s patchwork of laws and evolving ideas about rape and consent.
“Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
— Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the Stanford Daily, on Sen. Ted Cruz.