um.. yikes.
Yesterday an Investigative Committee from the Missouri House issued a report on the Missouri governor’s violent sexual relationship with his married hairdresser (Greitens, of course, is also married), and it is HORRIFYING.Read more at https://wonkette.com/632476/now-is-t...ccGpZzJiY1L.99
holy moly.
made the London Review of Books:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n10/deborah-friedell/diaryConsider Eric Greitens, a former Rhodes scholar who ‘spent almost all of his school breaks working in refugee camps’. Later, while in the Navy Seals, he decided to redecorate the office cubicle he inherited, replacing ‘pictures of near-naked women on Harleys’ with quotations from Churchill, Patton and Thucydides.
When Sheena asked me to suggest potential reviewers for Eric’s memoir, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy Seal, I sent names and addresses. In the first four years after their wedding, if his name came up, I’d say: ‘At least he’s a Democrat.’ We all knew he would eventually run for office: why else had they moved to his home state? I had almost stopped thinking about him when he published an article on FoxNews.com in the summer of 2015 with the headline ‘Former Navy Seal: Why I am no longer a Democrat’, a prelude to his running for governor.
To secure the Republican nomination, Eric first had to see off all the Missouri state representatives – ‘crooked career politicians’, he called them – who had been waiting, some of them for their entire careers, for Jay Nixon to stand down. They tried to persuade the party faithful that Eric wasn’t nearly as conservative as he pretended. Then Eric released an ad:
He didn’t have to explain why he thought Obama was the worst president maybe ever. To his base, it was self-evident. This was all happening while Trump was running for president, and sometimes it seemed as though the two men shared the same campaign. Rather than drain the swamp, Eric swore to ‘blow up’ Jefferson City, the state capital, while also promising – presumably this would happen first – to throw out all the lobbyists, ‘even if in sight of the statue of Thomas Jefferson I have to throw you down the steps of the Capitol myself.’I knew that career politicians would lie about me. But Obama supporter? That’s not just false it’s offensive. So let me be clear, and I’ll say this slowly, so even the career politicians can understand. Barack Obama is the worst president of my lifetime, maybe ever. I’m Eric Greitens, I’m pro-life, pro-gun, conservative to the core.
Eric was raising millions of dollars without, it seemed, having to stoop to ask. One of the political action committees that spent more than $2 million to support him was Seals for Truth; Eric claimed that this was being run by his fellow Navy Seals, although its lone donor was an en y called the American Policy Coalition Inc. – a non-profit that exists in name only, and was incorporated by a lawyer who has also helped the Koch brothers, Republican billionaires, funnel money to their favourite candidates. Meanwhile, actual Navy Seals put a video on YouTube criticising Eric for exaggerating his service: he’d completed Seal training, but had never actually served in a Seal platoon.
In his inaugural address, Eric spoke about government being ‘the wrong place to look if you’re seeking compassion. Caring comes from individual people.’ It was time for Missourians to start doing more for themselves. The ‘most important anti-crime programme ever known is a dad playing ball with his son’.
Eric had changed the gun policy at the statehouse – any visitor or employee could now bring in a concealed firearm. He went to Washington to meet with Mike Pence, to Israel to meet with Netanyahu. He overturned a by-law forbidding landlords and employers to discriminate against women who used birth control. He lowered the minimum wage in St Louis. There was only a single abortion clinic in the state, and Eric tried to regulate it out of existence. He slashed funding for the state’s public universities, including the one at which Sheena taught. He signed a bill that made it almost impossible for anyone to sue successfully for racial discrimination. The NAACP warned black people to ‘exercise extreme caution’ before entering Missouri, the first time they’d ever issued a travel warning for a specific state. Eric was now often referred to as Mike Pence’s favourite governor, very likely his future running mate, or his pick for vice-president if Trump didn’t complete his term.
In January, Eric delivered the annual ‘state of the state’ address in Jefferson City. He promised to continue cutting taxes and to repeal regulations. He thanked his kindergarten teacher for being in the room, and thanked Sheena for her great work helping Missouri children in foster care. At Christmas, she had decorated the governor’s mansion with gold stars, each one representing a child in the system. I didn’t watch the speech at the time, and when I watch it now I’m not sure whether it’s only because I know what’s going to happen later that night – Eric knew the story was about to break – that I think he appears less commanding than usual.
A woman – her name protected – had been Eric’s hairdresser. She said that during the campaign, when Sheena was out of town, she’d gone to the basement of his house, where he kept his exercise equipment: Eric had offered to teach her ‘how to do a proper pull up’. Instead, he had tied her up, blindfolded her, pulled off her clothes and taken her photograph with his phone. She had been sobbing when he put his penis in her mouth. Eric told her that if she told anyone, he’d send the photograph of her ‘everywhere’. He has said that there was ‘no blackmail, there was no violence, there was no threat of violence’. He claims they had a consensual sexual affair, which he calls a ‘personal mistake’.
Eric was indicted for ‘criminal invasion of privacy’. The Missouri Republican Party issued a statement accusing the St Louis prosecutor who brought the charges, a black woman, of being a puppet of George Soros: the governor was the victim of a liberal globalist conspiracy. ‘Missourians should see this for what it is: a political hit job.
Two months later, Eric was indicted on another felony charge: he’s accused of having stolen lists from the Mission Continues containing the names and addresses of everyone who had donated more than $1000 to the charity, to use for his own campaign fundraising purposes. It’s not nearly as sensational as the rape allegation – Missourians, inevitably, are calling that ‘Fifty Shades of Greitens’ – but there’s an overwhelming paper trail, and it’s probably the easier case for prosecutors to make. A special session of the state legislature will consider whether to proceed with an impeachment trial.
Misery. What a hole state.
strong Night of Long Knives vibes
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