This ridiculous State Senator doesn’t even know how to resign intelligently. Kintner, who has represented southeastern Nebraska’s District 2 in the Nebraska Legislature since 2012, found a way to leave office almost as embarrassingly as the way he occupied it, which is impressive.
Where do Republicans find these people, and why does anyone vote for them?
In June of 2015, Kintner attacked the Nebraska Legislature’s attempted repeal of the death penalty by posting graphic photos of a beheaded woman on his Facebook account. Let me tell you, this is one classy guy. His constituents didn’t discover quite how classy, however, until later in 2015. Then it was revealed that Kintner and a woman he met on Facebook had engaged in cyber-sex over Skype a year earlier, while the Senator was in a Massachusetts hotel. (This detail kept him from being indicted in Nebraska.) The episode constituted a misuse of a state-owned computer, but there were other problems with it, including the fact that Kintner and a woman engaged in cyber-sex (don’t make me explain it to you) over Skype, which makes what Anthony Weiner does look restrained.
Immediately after the session, the woman tried to blackmail Kintner, threatening to post the video to YouTube and share it with Kintner’s colleagues, including the governor. She reportedly has connections to an Ivory Coast crime syndicate, and demanded $4,500 from Kintner. Later, she contacted another State senator, offering to sell the video. That senator’s response was apparently, “No thanks, and by the way, ICK.”
Kintner rejected calls for his resignation from the legislature following the incident, after paying a $1,000 fine for misuse of public resources as part of a settlement with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. “I fully understand the gravity of my action and how it reflects upon the fact that I carry the title and responsibility of a state senator. I have taken personal responsibility for my action. I have apologized to God, to my wife, to you and to my constituents,” he wrote in a letter to his fellow lawmakers. At least part of that apology seems less than sincere, however. When demands for his resignation or impeachment continued, Kintner asked, “What standard are all 49 senators held to that I violated and embarrassed this institution? I would love to know.”
If we really have to explain that to you, Senator, it’s not worth our time.
Then, suddenly, Kintner resigned yesterday. Not over his Skyped masturbation, mind you; no, he resigned because the criticism he received for giving a sexist tweet his endorsement by re-tweeting it was just too, too unfair. The re-tweeted tweet, by talk-show host Larry Elder, mocked demonstrators at last weekend’s women’s march by suggesting that they weren’t attractive enough to be sexually assaulted.
This sparked new calls for Kintner’s resignation, so Kintner quit, not in shame, but in disgust.
He began by saying “You won’t have Bill Kintner to kick around anymore.” Imagine: Kintner intentionally invoked this infamous Richard Nixon quote, which everyone thought ended his career in 1962 and is one of the most petty, self-pitying and petulant statements ever made by a national political figure. This is like a politician starting a press conference by saying, “I did not have sex with that woman!”
What an idiot.
Later, in an interview following his resignation, Kintner said in part,
“I certainly have regrets. A lot of things I can do better. A lot of things I can say better. And that’s life….Everything you say can and will be used against you, and every time you make a mistake they’re going to beat the living tar out of you. They’re going to pick you up and whack you on the head. They’re going to take it for all the political gain they can get. It’s a blood sport game and that’s why people don’t like politics.”
No, Bill people don’t like politics because there are too many slime-balls like you involved in it, and they embarrass their constituents, party and government while blaming everybody else.
This is a wonderful example of someone doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and in so doing, proving why it’s the right thing. If Kintner really believed that he is being unfairly maligned, he had a duty to keep serving the district that elected him, and to finish the job they elected him to do. “Politics ain’t beanbag,” and putting up with partisan attacks is part of the profession. In mild defense of Kintner, his female colleagues who claimed that Elder’s tweet threatened the safety of women were unfair at best and hysterical at worst. It was a tasteless joke that elected officials shouldn’t be associated with, that’s all. No elected official should have to resign over a joke like that; an apology should be sufficient. Elected officials should have to resign when they set themselves up for blackmail by masturbating over Skype using a state-owned computer.
Never mind, though: Kintner’s judgment and values are so skewed and juvenile that it’s too much to expect consistency or a sense of proportion from him. He’s quitting because he thinks he’s too good for politics, and everyone is mean to him.
Fine.
The main thing is, he’s gone, and that’s good for Nebraska.
_____________________________
Pointer: Fred
Sources; NY Daily News, Omaha.com, 1011
Ethics Alarms 
Sad. Ashamed to say I’m a Republican, now. Flip side, I’m seriously glad I’m not from Nebraska.
Dragin…for me, a twist.
Sad. Ashamed to say I’m from Nebraska, now. Flip side, I’m seriously glad I’m not a Republican.
People like Kintner need to split off from the GOP and start the Deplorable Party. it’s not really much worse a name than “The Know-Nothing Party.” Daniel Webster ran for President under its banner in 1852. Then again, it did kill him…
Sadly, Nebraska was also the source of another semi-famed political dumb utterance.
Remember Senator Roman Hruska? He was accused of being ‘mediocre.’ His timeless response: “There’s a lot of mediocre people out there, and they deserve representation too.”
On the plus side: Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett are both Cornhuskers.
Charles, my niece is in a graduate program in Nebraska. Her accounts, perhaps exaggerated–I HOPE so, regarding her harassment on campus—including by a professor!–on the basis of her gender and political views curled my skull, my hair being unavailable. I still can’t quite believe a whole university would be that openly biased and bigoted, or that this could be typical of the state culture, as she believes.
I can assure you it didn’t used to be that way. My grandparents and parents grew up in, embodied, and respected a classic midwest culture of respect, humility, hard work, and generosity of spirit.
I was back two years ago for the first time in ages, and I now believe that your niece is probably right. Things have changed – a lot. And not for the better.
There are explanations, to be sure, but they don’t amount to excuses.
Considering where the best and the brightest have gotten us maybe we should try a little mediocre representation.
That was basically Roman’s argument. It’s also essentially the argument of a lot of Trump voters.
Pre-cisely.
You have my sympathy…on both counts.
“It’s only about sex”
“Everybody does it”
“It’s a private matter”
“If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find”
while the American electorate as a whole would accept these defenses, that does not mean these should fly with the voters of Nebraska District 2.
Really the guy is demonstrably dumber than a fence post and should have never been in public office. On the other hand statements above have been supported by Democrats since Mr Clinton’s demonstration of gutter morals. It ain’t determined by politics at all.
“Really the guy is demonstrably dumber than a fence post and should have never been in public office. ”
uhhhmmm… have you ever listened to Joe Biden? Just sayin’
Agree that it is on both sides of politics, too.
Jack, Apropos of nothing, NPR’s 8 am morning newscast featured a gaffe in which they began by saying “President Obama signed an executive order …” instead of Trump, regarding the wall with Mexico. I tried to record it, but the newscast has since been replaced and the first story is completely different. It made my whole morning, nonetheless.
-Neil
It’s like me usually taking about two months to get the new year right…
Well one positive thing about Nebraska is that “About Schmidt” was filmed there. I’ve never been there but I have a strong feeling that the film captured the culture pretty well.
While I am glad to see one fewer corrupt heterosexual (and, apparently, if he can be believed, God-fearing) white man representing people in Nebraska and the Republican party, I am still a bit anxious for Nebraskans. I can’t stop doubting that anyone less corrupt is going to fill Kintner’s state senate seat, no matter their god, their party, their gender, or their sex drive.
“If I were a betting man,” as my father used to say, I would wager that there likely were signs of Kintner’s true character in evidence long before he ever ran for public office, had anyone bothered to really check out his past conduct. During more than forty years of involvement in local political campaigns (city, county, state legislature races), I can recall numerous prospective candidates who, had they not been carefully and thoroughly vetted, would surely have proven to become an eventual embarrassment to party and community. I know of a few successful candidates who fit in this category and got selected and elected despite their obvious character issues, and I check the news daily with great anticipation that they will be found out and hounded from office (or defeated by better people) before they do more serious damage to the offices they hold and the political process. That people (individuals and parties) so willingly and wholeheartedly endorse, support, elect and defend candidates of proven poor character (and all that goes with it) is one of the enduring disappointments of my participation in politics. It is the primary reason I have withdrawn from political campaigning in my retirement years to focus on other aspects of community life. I am not yet at the point of despair, but I’m headed in that direction.
This guy, Palladino in New Jersey, Alan Grayson in Florida and many many others, including some guy who owns hotels and casinos whose name I can’t quite come up with right now, all are in that category. Having fought all through the Clinton years over the “It’s not character, its the economy, stupid!” defenders of Bill, I feel that I am winning the battle but losing the war. Character should have disqualified Kintner, just as it should have disqualified Hillary Clinton and..TRUMP! That’s his name! But the public continues to be deluded into thinking that it’s safe and responsible to vote for someone untrustworthy as long as their policy positions sound right. Polls show that a large percentage of Trump voters find him unsavory in many ways, but voted for him anyway. I suspecty I will be proven right, and them wrong. As for those screaming about Trump now, they brought him to power by pushing an absurd “It’s not lies, corruption, greed and hypocrisy, it’s the vagina, stupid!” I have no sympathy for them at all, but unfortunately, we are all in the same boat.
“But the public continues to be deluded into thinking that it’s safe and responsible to vote for someone untrustworthy as long as their policy positions sound right…”
Any time we have a POTUS candidate with qualifications and character, he (or she, or it) seems to get destroyed by the process long before the primaries are over… does this mean we cannot elect such a person? The the process precludes such a person?
Or are the decent folks unwilling to endure the process in order to serve?
Slick, it has long been my contention that the people smart enough to be President are also smart enough not to run. Just for fun, imagine a President, conservative, who has the big brass ones of a DJT, but the smarts to filter and regulate what he said and how he said it. For the record, I think Twitter is the greatest weapon possible against a biased, slanted, prejudiced COMMITTED LEFT press. Letting DJT use it is like putting a loaded revolver in the hands of a 6 year old child.
“Or are the decent folks unwilling to endure the process in order to serve?”
Nail on the head, in many cases. I would add “and unwilling to subject their loved ones and friends to the incivilities of modern political campaigning.”
I have read through the comments and didn’t see this yet so I’ll comment on it. But it seems that Kintner is repeating the common misconception that rape is about sex. I know its not, and I can’t help but feel that I’m just a tiny island out in a sea of stupidity. If all those Social Justice Warriors™ could just focus on that, and make educating everyone about that aspect, it would do a lot for their cause.
Rape is about control, not sex. I am with you, Mike.
The traditional use in war was to break the conquered and mingle the gene pool in favor of the victors. (I understand it was actually worse for the boys in ancient times, as many did not survive the experience)
Yes, control, that is what I meant to say in my original post, but my irritation with Social Justice Warriors must have caused it to slip my mind. I’m sure they hit me with a 2 by 4. Yes, control is about power, and for them the power is pleasure. No one seems to get it. All sexual criminal acts, are about that. Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and most of course, pedophilia. It is the reason many women are the victims of sexual crimes. They don’t even know what to look out for, so they are caught off guard when it occurs.