Saturday, September 30, 2006

Republican Leaders Give Tacit OK to Congressman's Sordid Activity

September 29, 2006

Well, which is worse?

1) Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley's sordid, sleazy emails and instant messages, for which he was forced to quit, or

2) The fact that the Republican leadership, including Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, knew about Foley's activities and did nothing to stop him.

Foley, who served in the House leadership as a deputy whip, sent sexually explicit Internet messages to teenage pages. In one message Foley asked, “What ya wearing?” The teenager replied, “Tshirt and shorts,” to which Foley replied, “Love to slip them off of you.” Other messages to teenage boys were more sexually explicit.

Foley also sent emails, using his personal email account - not his Congressional, work account - to a 16 year old boy who had returned home to Louisiana after working as a page for another Congressman. Foley asked the boy to send him a picture.

Foley has refused to say if he is gay and that is his right, as is his sexual orientation. But it is an abuse of power of the worst sort to make unwanted advances toward young men working for the institution of which Foley was a member and a leader.

As for the rest of the Republican leadership, they just looked the other way. Mr. Foley reportedly sent the messages to the first page in August 2005. The boy's family contacted their congressman, Republican Rodney Alexander for whom the boy had worked. Alexander discussed the problem with Representative Thomas Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Reynolds said he told Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert about the scandal months ago. Hastert's office passed the issue along to the Clerk of the House who informed Republican Representative John Shimkus, chairman of the House Page Board. Shimkus said that he had known of the first e-mail messages in late 2005 - about one year ago, but he just accepted Foley's assurance that Foley was simply acting as a mentor. Shimkus told Foley to “be especially mindful of his conduct” with pages. Hastert says he doesn't even remember talking to Reynolds about the issue. Guess he couldn't have considered it too important.

So here you have all these Republican leaders ignoring this blatantly inappropriate activity by Foley, passing the buck, doing virtually nothing to stop him, and then making excuses when the whole thing blows up. There still has been no announcement about whether there will be an investigation or whether the Republican leadership will just continue to do nothing.

I guess I'd say Foley's activities were despicable and the Republican leadership's lack of action is appalling. You decide which is worse.

For more detail see http://www.transatlan.com/never/sept_30_2006.html

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Bush Spins Terror Report

Tuesday September 27, 2006

A National Intelligence Estimate states that terrorists "are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion." And that one of the primary causes of the increased terrorist threat is the war in Iraq which "has become a cause célèbre for jihadists". The war is a recruiting tool and training ground for new radicals. But rather than address this somber news, Bush claims the report says something far different. That his policies are successful (What??!!) The administration releases 3 pages of the 30 page report to attempt to bolster its claim that the current strategy is working. What is the current strategy? "Stay the course". That's terrific and makes me feel really good about the future. Stay the course and continue to create more, and more dispersed, terrorists - great plan. Very clever and well thought out.

I wonder what the other 27 pages say.

Bush says "Here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes." He does not address the problems discussed in the report and offers no solutions or leadership. Just attempts to turn it into a political dirty trick.

Is that leadership? Responsibility? Strategic thinking? No, no, no. This intelligence report provides futher proof that the ill conceived policy and the incredibly incompetent execution of that policy have been disasterous. Bush, a prisoner of his own stubbornness, ignorance, and arrogance offers no hope for anything better.

This is the leader the Republican party has given us. Let's remember that the next time we head to the voting booth.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Another Racist Republican Senator

Monday September 25, 2006

George Allen is a Republican U.S. Senator from Virginia. He was govenor of Virginia and is (was) a leading candidate for the Republican nomimation for President in 2008. But it looks like he is a racist - a problem endemic to the Republican Party (remember Strom Thurmond and Senator Trent Lott?) In the last few days these items have been reported:

* At a campaign rally Allen referred to a young Democratic operative of Indian-American descent as macaca and welcomed him to America. Macaca is a racist slur derived from the name of a species of monkey. Mr. Allen apologized for any offense and said he had just made the word up. Question: How do you just make up a word that is exactly like an existing word, both in meaning and pronunciation? Just a bizarre coincidence or a lie?

* During a debate with his opponent, Jim Webb, Allen denied that his mother had been raised Jewish, saying "my mother is French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. And I've been raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian." This despite the fact that his mother had publicly stated the week before that she had been raised Jewish in her native Tunisia. Just a memory lapse or a lie? Allen also said "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops." Just grossly insensitive or anti-semetic?

* As governor of Virginia, Allen signed a 'Confederate Heritage Month' proclamation while dubbing the NAACP an 'extremist group.'

* In his law office he displayed a noose hanging from a tree. No more needed on this one.

* Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor at Alabama University, claimed that in the early 1980s he heard Mr. Allen use an inflammatory epithet for African Americans.

* Dr. Ken Shelton, a former football teammate of Allen at the University of Virginia who is white, said that in college in the early 1970s Allen had used the same term often. Dr. Shelton said Allen had told him that he moved to Virginia ''because the blacks know their place."

Why vote for a racist favorite of the Republican party when you have an alternative - a decent, smart, experienced, serious Democrat, Jim Webb?