Dennis Hastert: Scumbag whose sex crimes won’t even be punished properly. Still the biggest loser of the day.
Party which insists that it embodies “family values”: once again shown to be rotten to the core, because all of these separate instances show that those who trumpet the superiority of heterosexual marriage the loudest, end up believing in it the least. Similar in how those who rally the Christian right in order to get into office probably can’t quote the ten commandments.
OP perhaps overreaches.
Those who insist the OP has overreached, overreach themselves.
I join the fray, and I’m sure that means I lose points too.
You were the one who decided to make a thread. You were the one who decided you had something to say, and then bother to post something utterly devoid of content except for some tribalistic bullshit and strawmen. You could’ve made a good OP, something worth reading, but you chose not to.
You were engaging in pure, stupid, boring tribalism. Just because other posters have come in and made the case you should’ve made in the first place doesn’t make what you did not only utterly worthless, but damaging to your own cause.
Deflect what, you fucking moron? My entire participation in this thread has been to attack the OP. How can I possibly deflect from my main point by reiterating my main point?
What, do you think I’m pro-molestation? I’m as anti-republican as anyone on this board.
You prove my point but you’re too dumb to see it. I attack your post as pure tribalism, so you assume “oh he must be on the other side and engaging in tribalism right back at me” because your tiny fucking mind is so boxed into that dichotomy that you lack the ability to see it any other way.
Yes, yes yes, we get it. You don’t like the form and content and structure of the OP, and would MUCH rather talk about that than the fact that Hastert is a molester of 14 year old boys, while he purports to be a “Family values upstanding Republican”, and criticizes anyone who does not hold up his (fake) values.
You are showing that you are pro-deflection. “Look away - don’t talk about the perv. Talk about the form of the OP instead!”
Haha, I’m pro-deflection? On every topic? That’s my moral position? “Hey, how do you like your eggs?” “I don’t like the way you phrased that. I’m not going to answer you”
Also, I didn’t discourge anyone from talking about it. I just said you wrote a really shitty OP with a horrible title that suggests you wanted to gleefully gloat over molestation because it scored some points for your tribe.
Is it the title or the actual post that you have your shorts all in a knot about? Because the very first line of the OP is “Yet another family values Republican.” Bolding mine. “Yet another.”
Which relates to what I just said in #22: “But if there’s a systematic pattern of a particular party having more than its share of immoral reprobates, and furthermore if that happens to be the party that bills itself as the champion of morality and family values, then one might get the impression that there is something about that party that attracts cynical, unprincipled opportunists.”
We all agree that molesting kids is bad, right? Not molesting kids is not a “family values” position. It’s an everyone position. So being pro-family values and molesting kids doesn’t make you a hypocrite, it just makes you a child molesting scumbag.
Now - being anti-gay is different. Being gay is not inherently harmful. Being against gay people living their lives in peace is bigoted and shitty. So people who make a big deal about trying to persecute gays ending up being gay themselves is rather noteworthy and hypocritical.
“Family values guy gets remarried 4 times” is a much more hypocritical position than “family values molests a kid”
Or, to put it another way, imagine if we were talking about violent stranger rape rather than molestation. Would you call a guy who was pro family values but raped people a hypocrite? No, because it’s not like the family values agenda has a monopoly on the anti-rape platform. He’s just a criminal.
Furthermore, yes, the title is incredibly shitty. Imagine if you read a title that said “A scummy child-molesting Democrat, what a shock”, your first reaction would be “what the fuck bullshit political jab is that?” Or do you think democrats are pro-molestation, and only family values republicans are anti-molestation, so it doesn’t have the same “gotcha ya” power?
If he wanted to pit Hastert, he could’ve said so. He didn’t want to. He wanted to pit “a republican”, he wanted to say “HAHAHA ONE OF THE OTHER SIDE’S GUYS GOT CAUGHT MOLESTING KIDS!!! +1 FOR MY SIDE!!!” and it’s pathetc.
Yeah no. I don’t know what your family was like but not molesting children was and is certainly a value in my family.
I’m not going to surrender the term ‘family values’ to be exclusively used by those that have intentionally tried to brand their perverted version of ‘family values’ as superior to the rest of ours. They are actively trying to exclude families who do have values from our society. It is incredibly hypocritical when those who have put themselves on a pedestal, above other families who have done nothing wrong, to be found doing things no family with any values would be found doing.
You might want to carefully rethink that idiotic statement.
You can start that process by asking yourself whether “family values” includes any sort of position regarding the well-being of children. Children, in case you might not be aware, are frequently found in families. You can usually pick them out because they’re the smaller ones*.
I get your simplistic point. It’s just that a pattern of moral and criminal transgressions that occurs more frequently in one party than in another is a fact worthy of note, and the additional fact that said party is the one that is particularly sanctimonious about morality and family values is just additionally and richly ironic. I’m pretty sure that most of us got that from the OP. You and perhaps a few others did not. Oh, well.
In some families, they’re not only small, but also malnourished and lacking medical care. These families usually live in states where the “family values” party is in charge.
I find it somewhat odd that no one points out that Hasert was doing these boys a favor by blowing them. After all, if he were a hot older female teacher, there would be a chorus of “whats wrong with that.”
Well you see I went and checked. Based on year book photos from when Hastert was a gym coach he wasn’t very attractive then either, so he was definitely in the wrong.
I agree. I think what SB should be saying is that “hypocrite” is not really informative here, since anyone in Congress being caught doing anything illegal can be called a hypocrite. So, yeah, of course he’s a hypocrite. Does that make it any worse than if any other Congresscritter had done the same thing?
Hastert was happy to engage in tribalism when it suited him. He codified it and gave it a name, The Hastert Rule. And enough of his fellow congressmen saw a benefit to it and elected him Speaker. Lots of people voluntarily, happily, joined Hastert’s tribe. If that same tribalism now means they’re associated with a child molester they have themselves to blame.
Ugh yourself. The GOP spent millions of dollars hoping to embarrass the Clintons, got nowhere, then doubled-down spending millions more to go after marital infidelities. (Since infidelity isn’t a crime, they were hoping for something tangential, e.g. Monica cleaning off semen with taxpayer-purchased tissue. :p) They forced Clinton to testify (dragging him away from an important anti-terrorism meeting IIRC) and, when Clinton wanted to spare his wife’s feelings about an infidelity, nailed him for perjury (apparently over a disagreement about the meaning of “is.” :smack: )
Sometimes a pipe really is a pipe. Sometimes a meme, even when slightly misstated, really does tell the story.
But please do feel free to join Esquire Bricker in legal semantics if that’s what floats your boat. I’m sure the Esquire is more comfortable condemning the impeached Clinton, while absolving Hastert of his statute-expired rapes.
I wouldn’t argue with any of that, except maybe the “spare his wife” part. Otherwise, that’s not a bad summary of what happened. As opposed to:
And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But there’s no point in arguing with someone who is convinced it’s OK to twist the truth to suit his own purpose. The Republicans made asses of themselves going after Clinton. They played vicious, partisan politics. And they got hammered in the polls for doing so. But they didn’t impeach Clinton for a blowjob, no matter how many times you, or others, say it.
Sorry, but the folks playing semantics are the one changing the actual words on the impeachment papers to something that’s not there.
What?