Monday, December 22, 2014 7:45:39 AM
meanwhile in Fat Fuck Farenthold fat fuck exploits:
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GOP Congressman Will Not Be Renewing Ownership Of “Blow-Me.Org”
[ http://jezebel.com/someone-registered-blow-me-org-in-the-name-of-a-gop-con-1670430009 ]
“Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Farenthold operated a computer consulting company that routinely bought domain names including the one in question. The domain name has never been used and Mr. Farenthold has no intention to renew it.”
Dec. 12, 2014
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain [with comments]; https://whoisology.com/archive_7/blow-me.org
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Congressman down in the mouth over domain name scandal
The Rachel Maddow Show
12/15/14
Rachel Maddow tip-toes around the story of an obscene domain name owned by Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold, and congressman's promise to give up ownership now that public attention has blown up the story.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/rachel-maddow/56625385#56625385 [with transcript], http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/congressman-down-in-the-mouth-over-scandal-373104707602 [with comments] [show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-december-16-2014-trms (yes, that is the correct link)]
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Blow Me
All Blow Jobs, All The Time
[ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2872222/Prankster-registers-x-rated-website-domain-married-Tea-Party-congressman-posed-pyjamas-lingerie-clad-model-campaign.html ]
Blow Me Til I Blow My Load!
http://blowme.com/
===
In a Do-Nothing Congress, Blake Farenthold is Enjoying the View
Congressman Blake Farenthold
Ari Phillips
Blake Farenthold, the tea party congressman from Corpus Christi, has settled into a routine where distraction is just part of the job.
by Ari Phillips
Published on Friday, June 20, 2014, at 11:31 CST
It’s 5:45 p.m. on a muggy, late spring Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. and Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold is making the 300-yard walk from the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill to the Capitol for a vote.
We’ve just finished a half-hour interview in a dimly lit room in a subterranean level of the club. I’d been following him on social media but wanted to go beyond the tweets to see how a tea party outsider, who’d left his comfortable life in Corpus Christi four years ago, had made the transition to incumbent lawmaker.
Farenthold was making the trek to the House to vote “yes” on House Resolution 567—”Providing for the Establishment of the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.”
“Benghazi”—as the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya have come to be known—is an almost all-consuming issue for congressional Republicans these days, and the special committee created by that legislation should keep the fires of outrage and accusation stoked at least through November.
That he’s taking a vote at all is remarkable. As of mid-June, the 113th Congress had only enacted [ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics ] 121 laws, far below the average of the last 30 years and a figure that puts this Congress on track to pass the fewest number [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/17/the-least-productive-congress-ever/ ] of bills in history.
For congressmen like Farenthold, a conservative Republican and member of the House Tea Party Caucus, lawmaking is largely a sideshow. Farenthold came in on the tea party wave of 2010, edging the Democratic incumbent by a mere 800 votes. Gerrymandering by the Texas Legislature gave him a much more Republican district to run in and he coasted in 2012 with 57 percent of the vote. This year, his Democratic opponent is not expected to pose much of a challenge.
Now in his second term serving Texas’ 27th District—a large scrap of South Texas that ranges from Farenthold’s hometown of Corpus Christi up the coast toward Houston—Farenthold has settled into a routine where distraction is just part of the job.
In four years, Farenthold has passed one bill and if he’s known outside his district—where more than one out of five lacks health insurance and 23 percent of kids live in poverty—it’s probably because Bill Maher recently made him the [sic - a] target of his “Flip a District” segment [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXo7SUy__c (next below)].
An avid user of social media, Farenthold’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Foursquare accounts chronicle the life of a tea party congressman in a do-nothing Congress. Here’s a photo of his leather loafers and the cramped seating on the plane back to Corpus Christi, where he returns almost every weekend. Here he is at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar in Fort Worth during the Texas GOP Convention. Or the China Garden Super Buffett in Corpus Christi. “Mhbvhmkkbjngrvyhc,” he inadvertently wrote on Foursquare. “Bhnhxbg*sqt.” Frequent late-night visits to bars on the campaign trail in 2010 earned him the “Crunked” and “Bender” badges on Foursquare.
But Farenthold, who co-hosted a Corpus right-wing radio show before running for Congress, loves the job.
“If you look at what I’ve done in my life it’s like God was preparing me to run for office and be a congressman but I didn’t know it,” said Farenthold. He said his work in radio taught him how to communicate with the public, his time as a lawyer how to draft legislation, and his computer consulting business how to deal with the issues of signing the front of the check rather than the back. It was less clear what his time in Congress is preparing him for.
“The line I use at home is I don’t stay up here long enough for the stupid to rub off on me,” said Farenthold, who is stout and wide chested with dark curly hair that has acquired a congressional grey wisp, during our interview in the Republican Club. “That usually gets a chuckle.”
Of course, Farenthold is hardly alone in his itinerancy. U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-San Antonio), recently lamented to the Observer [ http://www.texasobserver.org/qa-u-s-rep-joaquin-castro/ ] that he spends more time on airplanes than on the House floor. But Farenthold doesn’t complain.
“The travel was a pain in the butt until I realized this is the one time when there’s no telephone ringing,” he said. “Once I claimed the travel time as my own I can now download a movie or some TV shows to watch on my iPad. Now I actually look forward to getting on the airplane.”
Once Farenthold deplanes, there’s no shortage of demands needing attention in his district of nearly 700,000 residents. Corpus Christi is a major international trade hub, servicing the booming Eagle Ford Shale region. His district is nearly half Hispanic and the border is just a few hours’ drive. There are sensitive wetlands and polluting petrochemical refineries, not to mention persistently high pockets of poverty and the ever-present threat of hurricanes.
And then there’s getting a chuckle from constituents, another priority. Farenthold manages his own social media accounts which provide an outlet for his many humorous sallies. A recent Instagram photo shows him scowling alongside two other congressmen. The photo is captioned “#regram Not my best look but I do have cool #amigos on @HouseJudiciaryCommittee.”
He’s also posted selfies with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and shown himself eating ice cream with fellow House Republican Darrell Issa. He’s done some entertaining Amazon.com reviews—though only one since joining Congress—including for earphones, a bartending book, a Jimmy Buffet album and a mango splitter:
“I love mangos and hate preparing them, so I figured it was worth a gamble on this. Wow! Much to my surprise it works like a charm, making slicing mangos a breeze even for breakfast at 5:00am.”
When not entertaining his followers, Farenthold’s main concern is that an “overzealous” federal government will stifle growth in his district, which is endowed with significant oil and gas deposits newly accessible through fracking in the Eagle Ford Shale. Farenthold wants to expedite the permitting of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals that would export Texas’ cheap natural gas abroad.
His district is home to one of the largest concentrations of petrochemical refineries in the nation as well as thousands of square miles of beaches, ecologically-rich estuaries and the endangered whooping crane.
Farenthold addressed environmental concerns in passing, saying “we’ve got to protect the environment and we’ve got to be safe, but let’s set the goal posts and allow the companies to meet them and not change the rules in the middle.”
He also recently signed a letter from 29 Texans in Congress to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy opposing the agency’s planned regulation of carbon dioxide from existing power plants. In the past Farenthold has called climate change a “scare tactic used by groups with a political agenda.”
Farenthold has politics in his blood but not the kind you would expect. His step-grandmother, his grandfather’s second wife, Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold, was the only women in the 1968 Texas House of Representatives and co-sponsored, with Barbara Jordan, the Equal Legal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution. She went on to run for Texas governor twice as a progressive Democrat.
Farenthold’s family on both sides has prospered in Texas for generations. His great-grandfather, Rand Morgan, made money in farming, ranching and the oil business in South Texas. According to [ http://www.rollcall.com/50richest/the-50-richest-members-of-congress-112th.html ] Roll Call, Farenthold is the 39th wealthiest member of Congress, with assets of $8.5 million. The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based research group, has estimated that if Farenthold’s family businesses and trusts are included, he’s worth about $35 million. A Corpus Christi airport terminal is named after Farenthold’s stepfather, Hayden Head, Sr., a partner at Kleberg Law Firm [ http://corpus-christi.attorneydirectorydb.org/attorneys/kleberg-law-firm-a-professional-corporation ], where Farenthold spent seven years on his path to becoming a Congressman.
In contrast, the average per capita income is about [ http://www.biggestuscities.com/demographics/tx/27th-congressional-district ] $24,000 in his district, with about 16 percent living below the poverty line.
When it comes to immigration reform, Farenthold faces quite a dilemma. As a tea partier, he must take care not to anger the anti-amnesty crowd, but he represents a district that is more than half Hispanic and sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which has effectively bottled up immigration-related legislation.
In an interview after a town hall last summer in Gonzales, Texas, Farenthold outlined his approach to negotiations. “My deal is you start as far to the right as you can get, and go to the conference committee with the Senate, and hopefully end up with something you can live with. Getting to citizenship is going to be tough, but never say never.”
He’s also talked about [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/08/12/2449661/gop-congressman-supports-legalizing-undocumented-youths/ ] a “compassionate solution” that gives undocumented youths brought to the country by their parents, or DREAMers, a pathway to citizenship while their parents get deported. But last year he voted to restart deportation of DREAMers after President Obama signed an executive order giving some undocumented youth a temporary reprieve from deportation.
With immigration reform at a congressional standstill, Farenthold’s attention on the House Judiciary Committee is fixed on a new pet project—trying to force the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious program, a federal gun-tracking effort that went awry.
Last year Farenthold joined a contingent of hardline Republicans in an effort to impeach Holder. Since then, he’s introduced legislation prohibiting federal employees found in contempt of Congress from receiving government paychecks.
Farenthold has sponsored 18 bills and has had one signed into law—the OPM IG Act [ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2860/text ], which authorizes the the inspector general in the Office of Personnel Management to use a revolving fund for audits and investigations.
In May he introduced a bill [ http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4686/text ] calling for the removal of a part of Mustang Island, a barrier island in his his district, from the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), which restricts development on protected coastal areas that serve as buffers to storms and important ecological zones. Areas in the coastal system can’t receive federally-subsidized flood insurance through the controversial National Flood Insurance Program, including Tortuga Dunes, an “ultra-luxury, master-planned community” under development on Mustang Island.
Farenthold doesn’t have a deep policy background, but he knows the ins and outs of the media. He studied Radio, Television and Film at UT-Austin in the early 1980s, during which time he was a radio DJ, and co-hosted Lago in the Morning, a conservative talk radio program in Corpus, until he began his political career.
“Working in radio taught me not to be afraid of a microphone or getting in front of the camera,” he said. “It also helped me understand how to shorten answers to where they fit into sound bites.”
He went on to say he doesn’t want to be “one of those people who die in office,” but will probably stick around for about a decade. “If you look at my history I typically last about 10 years at a job then I feel like I’ve mastered it and go on.”
Having eaten only a few bites of the popcorn he ordered, Farenthold’s communications director, who he called “the hardest working person on his staff,” told him it was time to head back to the Capitol. As we emerged into the lobby of the Republican Club, Farenthold barely broke stride shaking hands with several back-patting congressmen as he left the club for the short walk to the Capitol. After the Benghazi vote he would head back to Texas for the weekend, but only after admiring the view. D.C.’s famous cherry blossom season had recently passed, and the majestic mall was littered with wilted flower petals that tourists navigated around. At the other end, Farenthold could see the Washington Monument, recently reopened after a three-year repair job.
“There’s nothing like walking out of the Capitol and down the Capitol steps and looking at the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress,” said Farenthold. “I will stop regularly and take a picture.”
He still seems amazed to be here at all.
Copyright 2014 The Texas Observer (emphasis added)
http://www.texasobserver.org/nothing-congress-blake-farenthold-enjoying-view/ [with comments]
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GOP Rep Has Birther Brain Freeze, Can't Say Obama Was 'Legitimately' Elected President
By Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 09/21/2013 11:17 am EDT Updated: 09/22/2013 7:48 am EDT
More than two years after President Barack Obama released [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/obama-birth-certificate-r_n_854248.html ] a copy of his long-form birth certificate, one Republican congressman still appeared to have trouble affirming that his election was a legitimate one.
In an interview [ http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch-goper-cant-bring-himself-say ] on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) got into a heated discussion with host Chris Matthews about whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was eligible to be president.
Matthews explained how he has contended in the past that because Cruz has an American-born mother [ http://www.mofopolitics.com/2013/08/20/chris-matthews-ted-cruz-is-a-natural-born-citizen/ ], he is eligible to run for president. When that question was put to Farenthold, his answer shifted back to Obama.
(Watch the exchange above, beginning at the 3:37 mark)
“Listen, we’ve had this discussion on President Obama," Farenthold said.
"Is this too complicated?" Matthews asked. "We're talking about Cruz. Stick to the point, congressman."
"He’s as eligible as Obama is," Farenthold said.
Perplexed by that answer, Matthews sparred with Farenthold for another two minutes on the Obama issue, leading to this request.
“Can you repeat after me: he was legitimately elected president," Matthews said.
“President Obama was elected president," Farenthold replied.
“Legitimately,” Matthews said.
“The people elected him! Yes!" Farenthold exclaimed.
So he was a natural born-citizen," Matthews pressed.
"I didn't make that judgment when he was brought in," Farenthold said.
"Well, everybody watching knows what you’re doing," Matthews concluded. "You’re dodge balling.”
Copyright ©2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/21/blake-farenthold-obama_n_3967771.html [with the original video of the Hardball segment from MSNBC (at http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch-goper-cant-bring-himself-say ) embedded (the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47NVAFy4wg {with comments}, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3gBvewT4yo {with comments} and, from Fat Fuck Farenthold hisself minus the first c. 2 minutes before he comes on, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwADsQGljK8 {with comments}), and (over 6,000) comments]
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DREAMer, Advocates Meet with Rep. Blake Farenthold
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by AmericasVoiceTV [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTEoGepz7V1o0kUORqhkpjw / http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericasVoiceTV , http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericasVoiceTV/videos ]
8/8/2013 in Corpus Christi, TX.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiGpiq_hls [no comments yet]
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Rep. Blake Farenthold: Gonzales Town Hall Meeting
Published on Aug 11, 2014 by Gonzales Inquirer [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZkA6MtaJ7wrAln1-A62BUA / http://www.youtube.com/user/GonzalesInquirerTV , http://www.youtube.com/user/GonzalesInquirerTV/videos ]
The entire program from Aug. 7 at Gonzales City Hall by Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas' 27th congressional district.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX418libAh4 [with comment]
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Ex-spokeswoman sues Blake Farenthold, alleges discrimination
AP Photo
By John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman
12/16/14 6:23 PM EST
Texas GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold is being sued by his former spokeswoman over allegations of gender discrimination and that he created a hostile work environment and improperly fired her after she complained.
Lauren Greene, Farenthold’s communications director until July, claims another Farenthold aide said the lawmaker had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene.
Greene — who says Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” — says Farenthold told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”
Greene filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia last week. The lawsuit was first disclosed by the National Law Journal.
Farenthold, first elected to Congress as part of the GOP wave of 2010, has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.
But Greene’s complaint paints a picture of a junior lawmaker seemingly out of control and protected by his staff from getting into any trouble publicly.
“Farenthold regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘red head patrol to keep him out of trouble,’” Greene’s complaint alleges. “On one occasion, prior to February 2014, during a staff meeting at which [Greene] was in attendance, Farenthold disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for a ‘threesome.’”
According to Greene, Bob Haueter, Farenthold’s chief of staff, “belittled” her and shut her out of senior staff meetings.
“On June 10, 2014, in response to Haueter’s complaint about [Greene’s] shirt … which Haueter claimed was transparent and showed [Greene’s] nipples, Farenthold told [another woman staffer] that [Greene] could show her nipples whenever she wanted to,” Greene’s complaint asserts.
Greene said Farenthold avoided meeting one-on-one with her, and she also felt awkward about meeting with Farenthold.
When Greene complained to Farenthold directly in June about her problems with Haueter, she was “marginalized and undermined” by the Texas Republican, and then fired several weeks later, Greene said.
As required by the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, Greene sought mediation with Farenthold’s office before filing her lawsuit.
Greene started in Farenthold’s office in January 2013, according to LegiStorm, a service that tracks congressional employees. Greene also worked for former Oklahoma Republican Rep. John Sullivan between September 2009 and January 2013.
Kurt Bardella, a Republican spokesman hired by Farenthold to deal with the Greene case, said that the Texas Republican had done nothing wrong and would respond to all of Greene’s allegations.
“As is the case with any pending legal situation, the Congressman cannot comment on the specifics of the complaint, however, it goes without saying that both the Congressman and the members of his staff who are included in this complaint have a very different view of the allegations than Ms. Greene,” Bardella said in a statement.
”For the record, the Office did not and does not discriminate based on sex or any other unlawful factor. The Congressman is eager to respond to Ms. Greene’s allegations through the appropriate legal process and is confident that once all of the facts are revealed, he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
© 2014 POLITICO LLC (emphasis added)
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/blake-farenthold-lawsuit-discrimination-113620.html [with comments]
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Malaka Of The Week: Blake Farenthold
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) participates in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Benghazi on May 8, 2013.
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/16/blake-farenthold-sexual-harassment_n_6337146.html ]
By Adrastos
Dec 18 2014
The voters have elected bros to Congress before and they will do so again in the future. We’ve even had a bro for President. I think you know who I’m talking about. The voters of the 27th district of Texas have topped everyone by electing the bro-est bro to ever walk the halls of Congress: Blake Farenthold. One might even call him a dudebro, and that is why he is malaka of the week.
It’s been a tough week for Malaka Dudebro. We learned that in his days as a tech bro, he owned a rather colorful domain name: Blow-Me.org. Did I say during his time as a tech bro? He’s owned it continuously since 1996 according to a piece by Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain (blurbed, first item this post)]. A spokesbro for Malaka Dudebro had this to say about that:
“Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Farenthold operated a computer consulting company that routinely bought domain names including the one in question. The domain name has never been used and Mr. Farenthold has no intention to renew it.”
That’s very responsible. Of course, Congressman Dudebro was first elected in 2010. He’s obviously too busy to deal with ephemera such as Blow-Me.Org as you can see from the picture below:
Farenthold is the bro on the right in the duck jammies. The mere sight of him makes me want to duck and cover. The pajama party pictures were published in October, 2010 [ http://gawker.com/5665630/politician-stands-next-to-a-lingerie-model-while-wearing-duckie-pajamas ], which means that he was elected in a broslide. Actually, it was very close but I suspect that the bros of his district saw that picture and decided to elect one of their own even if he has an eerie resemblance to dorky cherub Thurman Merman of Bad Santa fame:
Congressman Dudebro may *look* like the advent calendar loving, sandwich obsessed Thurman Merman, but he’s pure Willie T. Stokes underneath that bro-fro:
Now that I’ve riffed on duck pajamas, Blow-Me.org, and Bad Santa, it’s time to discuss Malaka Dudebro’s *real* problem. He’s being sued by a former staffer for sexual harrassment and general swinish and sexist conduct. Since this is a family blog (cue spit take) I’ll post an epic quote from a story by TPM’s Daniel Strauss ["Lawsuit: GOP Rep. Who Registered Blow-Me.org Had 'Wet Dreams' About Staffer", http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/blake-farenthold-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-lauren-greene (with a Scribd of Greene's complaint, http://www.scribd.com/doc/250383090/Farenthold-Complaint-20141212 , embedded)]:
A former staffer with Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) is suing the congressman’s office over an alleged hostile work environment and sexual harassment, including that the congressman communicated he was having “wet dreams” about the staffer and insinuated that she had semen on her skirt.
The allegations come from Lauren Greene, a former communications staffer for Farenthold who started in his office as New Media Director and eventually served in the role of communications director, according to the National Law Journal [ http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202679199549/Fired-Hill-Aide-Sues-Over-Gender-Discrimination-Hostile-Workplace ] on Tuesday evening, which broke the news.
Greene alleges that Farenthold, a congressman who made headlines [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain (again, blurbed, first item this post)] earlier this week for being listed as the registrant for the URL blow-me.org in 1999 —only recently releasing it, made a number of attempts to gauge whether she was interested in having sex with him. The complaint filed by Greene alleges that Farenthold told Greene that he was estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years. It also said that he suggested that something on her skirt looked like semen.
“On one specific occasion, Farenthold told Greene that she had something on her skirt and that he hoped his comment wouldn’t be taken for sexual harassment,” the complaint said. “A reasonable person would infer that Farenthold was joking that she had semen on her skirt.”
The suit also alleges that staffers felt Farenthold flirted too much and when they joined him on Capitol Hill functions they joked that they were on “red head patrol” to make sure Farenthold didn’t do anything untoward. Farenthold also once said during a staff meeting that a female lobbyist propositioned him to have a “threesome” once.
Most of the attention in the lawsuit has fallen on another staffer relaying allegedly relaying comments from Farenthold to Greene where he said that he had “wet dreams” and sexual fantasies about her. Farenthold, according to the lawsuit, knew those comments would reach Greene.
Farenthold’s “wet dream” remark takes us into the realm of literal malakatude and is, quite frankly, gross. I’m surprised that he didn’t suggest that Ms. Greene do a video for Girls Gone Wild or some such shit. It’s so disgusting that I’ll even pass on making any Monica Lewinsky dress jokes.
Prior to Ms. Greene’s law suit, Farenthold was your common garden variety teabagger. He’s dabbled in birtherism, speculated about impeachment, and voted against the interests of the people in his district. Now he’s become an embarassment to his caucus and a full blown bro-saster. Of course, the country is full of bros like Farenthold; oafish toads who mistakenly think they’re irresistible to women. I guess he took Henry Kissinger’s aphorism “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” too literally and that is why Blake Farenthold is malaka of the week.
Copyright 2014 First Draft
http://first-draft.com/2014/12/18/malaka-of-the-week-blake-farenthold/ [with comments]; the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyWU-0ppug0 [with comments]
===
Sen. Feinstein’s tweets from the trenches
December 11, 2014
[...]
Drone roundup
At a congressional hearing Wednesday, one congressman revealed what he’s asking Santa for this year: Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) wants his very own drone.
“I’ve got a quadcopter on my Christmas list, as I suspect quite a few people do,” Farenthold told Peggy Gilligan, the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for aviation safety.
These aerial robots are used primarily to take photos from above. Commercially sold “unmanned aerial vehicles” are increasingly popular — you can buy one online for as little as $32 or as much as $900 — but the FAA has been slow to develop regulations to ensure they are operated safely. Our colleague Craig Whitlock, who covered the House Transportation and Infrastructure hearing on commercial drone security, wrote that there is concern the small devices could hit a plane, causing an accident.
The FAA, which has imposed some prohibitions while it works on broader regulations, is finding it difficult to regulate drone use.
In other drone news, a New York reporter probably wishes there were tighter regulations. Chain restaurant TGI Fridays had the inspired idea to fly a drone with a mistletoe around its restaurant in Brooklyn to encourage patrons to kiss. Which was all sweet and nice until the drone lost control and hit a Brooklyn Daily photographer, slicing her nose and chin.
According to the newspaper, the drone operator was unfazed. “If people get hurt, they’re going to come regardless. People get hurt in airplanes, they still fly,” David Quiones said. “There is a risk involved — anything flying, there is risk.”
But seriously, congressman, if you get your Christmas wish, be careful.
[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-feinsteins-tweets-from-the-trenches/2014/12/11/a174e2a0-817c-11e4-8882-03cf08410beb_story.html [with comments]
===
previously in Fat Fuck Farenthold fat fuck exploits -- in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=61783951 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64315009 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69762251 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83040600 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88119136 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90208952 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90952762 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92717848 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94660180 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96164815 and preceding (and any future following)
and for that matter:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90420191 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104317832 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108430653 and preceding and following
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GOP Congressman Will Not Be Renewing Ownership Of “Blow-Me.Org”
[ http://jezebel.com/someone-registered-blow-me-org-in-the-name-of-a-gop-con-1670430009 ]
“Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Farenthold operated a computer consulting company that routinely bought domain names including the one in question. The domain name has never been used and Mr. Farenthold has no intention to renew it.”
Dec. 12, 2014
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain [with comments]; https://whoisology.com/archive_7/blow-me.org
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Congressman down in the mouth over domain name scandal
The Rachel Maddow Show
12/15/14
Rachel Maddow tip-toes around the story of an obscene domain name owned by Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold, and congressman's promise to give up ownership now that public attention has blown up the story.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/rachel-maddow/56625385#56625385 [with transcript], http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/congressman-down-in-the-mouth-over-scandal-373104707602 [with comments] [show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-december-16-2014-trms (yes, that is the correct link)]
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Blow Me
All Blow Jobs, All The Time
[ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2872222/Prankster-registers-x-rated-website-domain-married-Tea-Party-congressman-posed-pyjamas-lingerie-clad-model-campaign.html ]
Blow Me Til I Blow My Load!
http://blowme.com/
===
In a Do-Nothing Congress, Blake Farenthold is Enjoying the View
Congressman Blake Farenthold
Ari Phillips
Blake Farenthold, the tea party congressman from Corpus Christi, has settled into a routine where distraction is just part of the job.
by Ari Phillips
Published on Friday, June 20, 2014, at 11:31 CST
It’s 5:45 p.m. on a muggy, late spring Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. and Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold is making the 300-yard walk from the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill to the Capitol for a vote.
We’ve just finished a half-hour interview in a dimly lit room in a subterranean level of the club. I’d been following him on social media but wanted to go beyond the tweets to see how a tea party outsider, who’d left his comfortable life in Corpus Christi four years ago, had made the transition to incumbent lawmaker.
Farenthold was making the trek to the House to vote “yes” on House Resolution 567—”Providing for the Establishment of the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.”
“Benghazi”—as the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya have come to be known—is an almost all-consuming issue for congressional Republicans these days, and the special committee created by that legislation should keep the fires of outrage and accusation stoked at least through November.
That he’s taking a vote at all is remarkable. As of mid-June, the 113th Congress had only enacted [ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics ] 121 laws, far below the average of the last 30 years and a figure that puts this Congress on track to pass the fewest number [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/17/the-least-productive-congress-ever/ ] of bills in history.
For congressmen like Farenthold, a conservative Republican and member of the House Tea Party Caucus, lawmaking is largely a sideshow. Farenthold came in on the tea party wave of 2010, edging the Democratic incumbent by a mere 800 votes. Gerrymandering by the Texas Legislature gave him a much more Republican district to run in and he coasted in 2012 with 57 percent of the vote. This year, his Democratic opponent is not expected to pose much of a challenge.
Now in his second term serving Texas’ 27th District—a large scrap of South Texas that ranges from Farenthold’s hometown of Corpus Christi up the coast toward Houston—Farenthold has settled into a routine where distraction is just part of the job.
In four years, Farenthold has passed one bill and if he’s known outside his district—where more than one out of five lacks health insurance and 23 percent of kids live in poverty—it’s probably because Bill Maher recently made him the [sic - a] target of his “Flip a District” segment [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXo7SUy__c (next below)].
Farenthold’s other notable turn in the national spotlight: When he first ran for office in 2010, a photo surfaced of the future congressman wearing ducky pajamas and grinning ear to ear with his arm draped around a buxom woman [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republican-contender-dons-duckie-pajamas-parties-with-scantily-clad-women (with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCHyIqhxxVM , next below, embedded)].
He’s also flirted with “birther-ism” [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/spokeswoman-won-t-say-if-rep-farenthold-is-a-birther ]—the notion that President Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen—and called for Obama’s impeachment [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-we-have-the-votes-in-the-house-to-impeach-obama-video ].
An avid user of social media, Farenthold’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Foursquare accounts chronicle the life of a tea party congressman in a do-nothing Congress. Here’s a photo of his leather loafers and the cramped seating on the plane back to Corpus Christi, where he returns almost every weekend. Here he is at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar in Fort Worth during the Texas GOP Convention. Or the China Garden Super Buffett in Corpus Christi. “Mhbvhmkkbjngrvyhc,” he inadvertently wrote on Foursquare. “Bhnhxbg*sqt.” Frequent late-night visits to bars on the campaign trail in 2010 earned him the “Crunked” and “Bender” badges on Foursquare.
But Farenthold, who co-hosted a Corpus right-wing radio show before running for Congress, loves the job.
“If you look at what I’ve done in my life it’s like God was preparing me to run for office and be a congressman but I didn’t know it,” said Farenthold. He said his work in radio taught him how to communicate with the public, his time as a lawyer how to draft legislation, and his computer consulting business how to deal with the issues of signing the front of the check rather than the back. It was less clear what his time in Congress is preparing him for.
“The line I use at home is I don’t stay up here long enough for the stupid to rub off on me,” said Farenthold, who is stout and wide chested with dark curly hair that has acquired a congressional grey wisp, during our interview in the Republican Club. “That usually gets a chuckle.”
Of course, Farenthold is hardly alone in his itinerancy. U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-San Antonio), recently lamented to the Observer [ http://www.texasobserver.org/qa-u-s-rep-joaquin-castro/ ] that he spends more time on airplanes than on the House floor. But Farenthold doesn’t complain.
“The travel was a pain in the butt until I realized this is the one time when there’s no telephone ringing,” he said. “Once I claimed the travel time as my own I can now download a movie or some TV shows to watch on my iPad. Now I actually look forward to getting on the airplane.”
Once Farenthold deplanes, there’s no shortage of demands needing attention in his district of nearly 700,000 residents. Corpus Christi is a major international trade hub, servicing the booming Eagle Ford Shale region. His district is nearly half Hispanic and the border is just a few hours’ drive. There are sensitive wetlands and polluting petrochemical refineries, not to mention persistently high pockets of poverty and the ever-present threat of hurricanes.
And then there’s getting a chuckle from constituents, another priority. Farenthold manages his own social media accounts which provide an outlet for his many humorous sallies. A recent Instagram photo shows him scowling alongside two other congressmen. The photo is captioned “#regram Not my best look but I do have cool #amigos on @HouseJudiciaryCommittee.”
He’s also posted selfies with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and shown himself eating ice cream with fellow House Republican Darrell Issa. He’s done some entertaining Amazon.com reviews—though only one since joining Congress—including for earphones, a bartending book, a Jimmy Buffet album and a mango splitter:
“I love mangos and hate preparing them, so I figured it was worth a gamble on this. Wow! Much to my surprise it works like a charm, making slicing mangos a breeze even for breakfast at 5:00am.”
When not entertaining his followers, Farenthold’s main concern is that an “overzealous” federal government will stifle growth in his district, which is endowed with significant oil and gas deposits newly accessible through fracking in the Eagle Ford Shale. Farenthold wants to expedite the permitting of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals that would export Texas’ cheap natural gas abroad.
His district is home to one of the largest concentrations of petrochemical refineries in the nation as well as thousands of square miles of beaches, ecologically-rich estuaries and the endangered whooping crane.
Farenthold addressed environmental concerns in passing, saying “we’ve got to protect the environment and we’ve got to be safe, but let’s set the goal posts and allow the companies to meet them and not change the rules in the middle.”
He also recently signed a letter from 29 Texans in Congress to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy opposing the agency’s planned regulation of carbon dioxide from existing power plants. In the past Farenthold has called climate change a “scare tactic used by groups with a political agenda.”
Farenthold has politics in his blood but not the kind you would expect. His step-grandmother, his grandfather’s second wife, Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold, was the only women in the 1968 Texas House of Representatives and co-sponsored, with Barbara Jordan, the Equal Legal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution. She went on to run for Texas governor twice as a progressive Democrat.
Farenthold’s family on both sides has prospered in Texas for generations. His great-grandfather, Rand Morgan, made money in farming, ranching and the oil business in South Texas. According to [ http://www.rollcall.com/50richest/the-50-richest-members-of-congress-112th.html ] Roll Call, Farenthold is the 39th wealthiest member of Congress, with assets of $8.5 million. The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based research group, has estimated that if Farenthold’s family businesses and trusts are included, he’s worth about $35 million. A Corpus Christi airport terminal is named after Farenthold’s stepfather, Hayden Head, Sr., a partner at Kleberg Law Firm [ http://corpus-christi.attorneydirectorydb.org/attorneys/kleberg-law-firm-a-professional-corporation ], where Farenthold spent seven years on his path to becoming a Congressman.
In contrast, the average per capita income is about [ http://www.biggestuscities.com/demographics/tx/27th-congressional-district ] $24,000 in his district, with about 16 percent living below the poverty line.
When it comes to immigration reform, Farenthold faces quite a dilemma. As a tea partier, he must take care not to anger the anti-amnesty crowd, but he represents a district that is more than half Hispanic and sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which has effectively bottled up immigration-related legislation.
In an interview after a town hall last summer in Gonzales, Texas, Farenthold outlined his approach to negotiations. “My deal is you start as far to the right as you can get, and go to the conference committee with the Senate, and hopefully end up with something you can live with. Getting to citizenship is going to be tough, but never say never.”
He’s also talked about [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/08/12/2449661/gop-congressman-supports-legalizing-undocumented-youths/ ] a “compassionate solution” that gives undocumented youths brought to the country by their parents, or DREAMers, a pathway to citizenship while their parents get deported. But last year he voted to restart deportation of DREAMers after President Obama signed an executive order giving some undocumented youth a temporary reprieve from deportation.
With immigration reform at a congressional standstill, Farenthold’s attention on the House Judiciary Committee is fixed on a new pet project—trying to force the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious program, a federal gun-tracking effort that went awry.
Last year Farenthold joined a contingent of hardline Republicans in an effort to impeach Holder. Since then, he’s introduced legislation prohibiting federal employees found in contempt of Congress from receiving government paychecks.
Farenthold has sponsored 18 bills and has had one signed into law—the OPM IG Act [ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2860/text ], which authorizes the the inspector general in the Office of Personnel Management to use a revolving fund for audits and investigations.
In May he introduced a bill [ http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4686/text ] calling for the removal of a part of Mustang Island, a barrier island in his his district, from the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), which restricts development on protected coastal areas that serve as buffers to storms and important ecological zones. Areas in the coastal system can’t receive federally-subsidized flood insurance through the controversial National Flood Insurance Program, including Tortuga Dunes, an “ultra-luxury, master-planned community” under development on Mustang Island.
Farenthold doesn’t have a deep policy background, but he knows the ins and outs of the media. He studied Radio, Television and Film at UT-Austin in the early 1980s, during which time he was a radio DJ, and co-hosted Lago in the Morning, a conservative talk radio program in Corpus, until he began his political career.
“Working in radio taught me not to be afraid of a microphone or getting in front of the camera,” he said. “It also helped me understand how to shorten answers to where they fit into sound bites.”
He went on to say he doesn’t want to be “one of those people who die in office,” but will probably stick around for about a decade. “If you look at my history I typically last about 10 years at a job then I feel like I’ve mastered it and go on.”
Having eaten only a few bites of the popcorn he ordered, Farenthold’s communications director, who he called “the hardest working person on his staff,” told him it was time to head back to the Capitol. As we emerged into the lobby of the Republican Club, Farenthold barely broke stride shaking hands with several back-patting congressmen as he left the club for the short walk to the Capitol. After the Benghazi vote he would head back to Texas for the weekend, but only after admiring the view. D.C.’s famous cherry blossom season had recently passed, and the majestic mall was littered with wilted flower petals that tourists navigated around. At the other end, Farenthold could see the Washington Monument, recently reopened after a three-year repair job.
“There’s nothing like walking out of the Capitol and down the Capitol steps and looking at the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress,” said Farenthold. “I will stop regularly and take a picture.”
He still seems amazed to be here at all.
Copyright 2014 The Texas Observer (emphasis added)
http://www.texasobserver.org/nothing-congress-blake-farenthold-enjoying-view/ [with comments]
===
GOP Rep Has Birther Brain Freeze, Can't Say Obama Was 'Legitimately' Elected President
By Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 09/21/2013 11:17 am EDT Updated: 09/22/2013 7:48 am EDT
More than two years after President Barack Obama released [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/obama-birth-certificate-r_n_854248.html ] a copy of his long-form birth certificate, one Republican congressman still appeared to have trouble affirming that his election was a legitimate one.
In an interview [ http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch-goper-cant-bring-himself-say ] on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) got into a heated discussion with host Chris Matthews about whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was eligible to be president.
Matthews explained how he has contended in the past that because Cruz has an American-born mother [ http://www.mofopolitics.com/2013/08/20/chris-matthews-ted-cruz-is-a-natural-born-citizen/ ], he is eligible to run for president. When that question was put to Farenthold, his answer shifted back to Obama.
(Watch the exchange above, beginning at the 3:37 mark)
“Listen, we’ve had this discussion on President Obama," Farenthold said.
"Is this too complicated?" Matthews asked. "We're talking about Cruz. Stick to the point, congressman."
"He’s as eligible as Obama is," Farenthold said.
Perplexed by that answer, Matthews sparred with Farenthold for another two minutes on the Obama issue, leading to this request.
“Can you repeat after me: he was legitimately elected president," Matthews said.
“President Obama was elected president," Farenthold replied.
“Legitimately,” Matthews said.
“The people elected him! Yes!" Farenthold exclaimed.
So he was a natural born-citizen," Matthews pressed.
"I didn't make that judgment when he was brought in," Farenthold said.
"Well, everybody watching knows what you’re doing," Matthews concluded. "You’re dodge balling.”
Copyright ©2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/21/blake-farenthold-obama_n_3967771.html [with the original video of the Hardball segment from MSNBC (at http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch-goper-cant-bring-himself-say ) embedded (the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47NVAFy4wg {with comments}, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3gBvewT4yo {with comments} and, from Fat Fuck Farenthold hisself minus the first c. 2 minutes before he comes on, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwADsQGljK8 {with comments}), and (over 6,000) comments]
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DREAMer, Advocates Meet with Rep. Blake Farenthold
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by AmericasVoiceTV [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTEoGepz7V1o0kUORqhkpjw / http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericasVoiceTV , http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericasVoiceTV/videos ]
8/8/2013 in Corpus Christi, TX.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqiGpiq_hls [no comments yet]
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Rep. Blake Farenthold: Gonzales Town Hall Meeting
Published on Aug 11, 2014 by Gonzales Inquirer [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZkA6MtaJ7wrAln1-A62BUA / http://www.youtube.com/user/GonzalesInquirerTV , http://www.youtube.com/user/GonzalesInquirerTV/videos ]
The entire program from Aug. 7 at Gonzales City Hall by Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas' 27th congressional district.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX418libAh4 [with comment]
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Ex-spokeswoman sues Blake Farenthold, alleges discrimination
AP Photo
By John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman
12/16/14 6:23 PM EST
Texas GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold is being sued by his former spokeswoman over allegations of gender discrimination and that he created a hostile work environment and improperly fired her after she complained.
Lauren Greene, Farenthold’s communications director until July, claims another Farenthold aide said the lawmaker had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene.
Greene — who says Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” — says Farenthold told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”
Greene filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia last week. The lawsuit was first disclosed by the National Law Journal.
Farenthold, first elected to Congress as part of the GOP wave of 2010, has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.
But Greene’s complaint paints a picture of a junior lawmaker seemingly out of control and protected by his staff from getting into any trouble publicly.
“Farenthold regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘red head patrol to keep him out of trouble,’” Greene’s complaint alleges. “On one occasion, prior to February 2014, during a staff meeting at which [Greene] was in attendance, Farenthold disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for a ‘threesome.’”
According to Greene, Bob Haueter, Farenthold’s chief of staff, “belittled” her and shut her out of senior staff meetings.
“On June 10, 2014, in response to Haueter’s complaint about [Greene’s] shirt … which Haueter claimed was transparent and showed [Greene’s] nipples, Farenthold told [another woman staffer] that [Greene] could show her nipples whenever she wanted to,” Greene’s complaint asserts.
Greene said Farenthold avoided meeting one-on-one with her, and she also felt awkward about meeting with Farenthold.
When Greene complained to Farenthold directly in June about her problems with Haueter, she was “marginalized and undermined” by the Texas Republican, and then fired several weeks later, Greene said.
As required by the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, Greene sought mediation with Farenthold’s office before filing her lawsuit.
Greene started in Farenthold’s office in January 2013, according to LegiStorm, a service that tracks congressional employees. Greene also worked for former Oklahoma Republican Rep. John Sullivan between September 2009 and January 2013.
Kurt Bardella, a Republican spokesman hired by Farenthold to deal with the Greene case, said that the Texas Republican had done nothing wrong and would respond to all of Greene’s allegations.
“As is the case with any pending legal situation, the Congressman cannot comment on the specifics of the complaint, however, it goes without saying that both the Congressman and the members of his staff who are included in this complaint have a very different view of the allegations than Ms. Greene,” Bardella said in a statement.
”For the record, the Office did not and does not discriminate based on sex or any other unlawful factor. The Congressman is eager to respond to Ms. Greene’s allegations through the appropriate legal process and is confident that once all of the facts are revealed, he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
© 2014 POLITICO LLC (emphasis added)
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/blake-farenthold-lawsuit-discrimination-113620.html [with comments]
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Malaka Of The Week: Blake Farenthold
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) participates in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Benghazi on May 8, 2013.
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/16/blake-farenthold-sexual-harassment_n_6337146.html ]
By Adrastos
Dec 18 2014
The voters have elected bros to Congress before and they will do so again in the future. We’ve even had a bro for President. I think you know who I’m talking about. The voters of the 27th district of Texas have topped everyone by electing the bro-est bro to ever walk the halls of Congress: Blake Farenthold. One might even call him a dudebro, and that is why he is malaka of the week.
It’s been a tough week for Malaka Dudebro. We learned that in his days as a tech bro, he owned a rather colorful domain name: Blow-Me.org. Did I say during his time as a tech bro? He’s owned it continuously since 1996 according to a piece by Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain (blurbed, first item this post)]. A spokesbro for Malaka Dudebro had this to say about that:
“Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Farenthold operated a computer consulting company that routinely bought domain names including the one in question. The domain name has never been used and Mr. Farenthold has no intention to renew it.”
That’s very responsible. Of course, Congressman Dudebro was first elected in 2010. He’s obviously too busy to deal with ephemera such as Blow-Me.Org as you can see from the picture below:
Farenthold is the bro on the right in the duck jammies. The mere sight of him makes me want to duck and cover. The pajama party pictures were published in October, 2010 [ http://gawker.com/5665630/politician-stands-next-to-a-lingerie-model-while-wearing-duckie-pajamas ], which means that he was elected in a broslide. Actually, it was very close but I suspect that the bros of his district saw that picture and decided to elect one of their own even if he has an eerie resemblance to dorky cherub Thurman Merman of Bad Santa fame:
Congressman Dudebro may *look* like the advent calendar loving, sandwich obsessed Thurman Merman, but he’s pure Willie T. Stokes underneath that bro-fro:
Now that I’ve riffed on duck pajamas, Blow-Me.org, and Bad Santa, it’s time to discuss Malaka Dudebro’s *real* problem. He’s being sued by a former staffer for sexual harrassment and general swinish and sexist conduct. Since this is a family blog (cue spit take) I’ll post an epic quote from a story by TPM’s Daniel Strauss ["Lawsuit: GOP Rep. Who Registered Blow-Me.org Had 'Wet Dreams' About Staffer", http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/blake-farenthold-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-lauren-greene (with a Scribd of Greene's complaint, http://www.scribd.com/doc/250383090/Farenthold-Complaint-20141212 , embedded)]:
A former staffer with Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) is suing the congressman’s office over an alleged hostile work environment and sexual harassment, including that the congressman communicated he was having “wet dreams” about the staffer and insinuated that she had semen on her skirt.
The allegations come from Lauren Greene, a former communications staffer for Farenthold who started in his office as New Media Director and eventually served in the role of communications director, according to the National Law Journal [ http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202679199549/Fired-Hill-Aide-Sues-Over-Gender-Discrimination-Hostile-Workplace ] on Tuesday evening, which broke the news.
Greene alleges that Farenthold, a congressman who made headlines [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/blow-me-domain (again, blurbed, first item this post)] earlier this week for being listed as the registrant for the URL blow-me.org in 1999 —only recently releasing it, made a number of attempts to gauge whether she was interested in having sex with him. The complaint filed by Greene alleges that Farenthold told Greene that he was estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years. It also said that he suggested that something on her skirt looked like semen.
“On one specific occasion, Farenthold told Greene that she had something on her skirt and that he hoped his comment wouldn’t be taken for sexual harassment,” the complaint said. “A reasonable person would infer that Farenthold was joking that she had semen on her skirt.”
The suit also alleges that staffers felt Farenthold flirted too much and when they joined him on Capitol Hill functions they joked that they were on “red head patrol” to make sure Farenthold didn’t do anything untoward. Farenthold also once said during a staff meeting that a female lobbyist propositioned him to have a “threesome” once.
Most of the attention in the lawsuit has fallen on another staffer relaying allegedly relaying comments from Farenthold to Greene where he said that he had “wet dreams” and sexual fantasies about her. Farenthold, according to the lawsuit, knew those comments would reach Greene.
Farenthold’s “wet dream” remark takes us into the realm of literal malakatude and is, quite frankly, gross. I’m surprised that he didn’t suggest that Ms. Greene do a video for Girls Gone Wild or some such shit. It’s so disgusting that I’ll even pass on making any Monica Lewinsky dress jokes.
Prior to Ms. Greene’s law suit, Farenthold was your common garden variety teabagger. He’s dabbled in birtherism, speculated about impeachment, and voted against the interests of the people in his district. Now he’s become an embarassment to his caucus and a full blown bro-saster. Of course, the country is full of bros like Farenthold; oafish toads who mistakenly think they’re irresistible to women. I guess he took Henry Kissinger’s aphorism “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” too literally and that is why Blake Farenthold is malaka of the week.
Copyright 2014 First Draft
http://first-draft.com/2014/12/18/malaka-of-the-week-blake-farenthold/ [with comments]; the YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyWU-0ppug0 [with comments]
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Sen. Feinstein’s tweets from the trenches
December 11, 2014
[...]
Drone roundup
At a congressional hearing Wednesday, one congressman revealed what he’s asking Santa for this year: Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) wants his very own drone.
“I’ve got a quadcopter on my Christmas list, as I suspect quite a few people do,” Farenthold told Peggy Gilligan, the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for aviation safety.
These aerial robots are used primarily to take photos from above. Commercially sold “unmanned aerial vehicles” are increasingly popular — you can buy one online for as little as $32 or as much as $900 — but the FAA has been slow to develop regulations to ensure they are operated safely. Our colleague Craig Whitlock, who covered the House Transportation and Infrastructure hearing on commercial drone security, wrote that there is concern the small devices could hit a plane, causing an accident.
The FAA, which has imposed some prohibitions while it works on broader regulations, is finding it difficult to regulate drone use.
In other drone news, a New York reporter probably wishes there were tighter regulations. Chain restaurant TGI Fridays had the inspired idea to fly a drone with a mistletoe around its restaurant in Brooklyn to encourage patrons to kiss. Which was all sweet and nice until the drone lost control and hit a Brooklyn Daily photographer, slicing her nose and chin.
According to the newspaper, the drone operator was unfazed. “If people get hurt, they’re going to come regardless. People get hurt in airplanes, they still fly,” David Quiones said. “There is a risk involved — anything flying, there is risk.”
But seriously, congressman, if you get your Christmas wish, be careful.
[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-feinsteins-tweets-from-the-trenches/2014/12/11/a174e2a0-817c-11e4-8882-03cf08410beb_story.html [with comments]
===
previously in Fat Fuck Farenthold fat fuck exploits -- in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=61783951 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64315009 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69762251 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83040600 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88119136 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90208952 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90952762 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92717848 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94660180 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96164815 and preceding (and any future following)
and for that matter:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90420191 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104317832 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108430653 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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