Arkansas Blog

Yes, the American tradition on making problems like this go away is to have a few heads roll. Sounds like the Republicans are calling for Hastert's head, and they want it sooner rather than later.

Hang in there Denny. We're all with you. He he he.

Isn't covering this kind of thing up a felony? I want to see some Repugnant congressmen doing the perp walk.

Hastert, the gift that keeps on giving.

Stay the course
Don't "cut and run" Denny, instead of 20 seats, we'll glady take the 50 that your failed leadership, and coverup will bring us. And with any luck, we'll take the Senate by a seat or two.

And I'll parrot DBI from yesterday. When we take over the House - the people's House - the Democrats better start dismantling the damage done by our Imperial Leader and give us back our pride, dignity, international respect and country.

This will be real interesting to watch. Speaker Bastert is one of the inner circle. He's no minor party hack that can be severed like a bad arm. He's a very useful arm to the powers of evil in DC.

He is busy doing DeLay's work while DeLay is in limbo. Bastert couldn't find his way to the boy's room if DeLay wasn't whispering in his ear. Bastert is Lenny to DeLay's George in the new play Of Mice and Men and Republicans.......and Boys.

I predict we'll have to squirt him out of his office with a fire hose as if he was a Negra back in 1960s Birmingham. Nixon resigned......the big pussy! Won't see any of that resignin for the good of the country out of these folks. Speaker Bastert will hang on for all he's worth.

Of course he could have a fall down accident or get poked by a poison tipped umbrella while waiting at a bus stop. But a group like this cannot be shamed out of office. They'll hold on like a snapping turtle and say.....doesn't Speaker Bastert look like a turtle anyway. Time for the angry townspeople with torches.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1543199,00.html

Keep hanging in there Big Boy.

Dear Rickey,

Thousands of you signed our petition calling on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to bring the House back into session to deal with the latest ethics mess.

The disturbing scandal involving former Representative Mark Foley and young House pages raises serious questions about the way the House leadership handled this matter. Even though there have been new revelations in the scandal, today the House Ethics Committee met in secret and made another "We're investigating ourselves" announcement. But Congress has proven that it cannot police itself.

We have to keep pushing. Sign the petition, and put pressure on the Speaker to act.

http://www.commoncause.org/EnoughIsEnough

We're asking Speaker Hastert to bring the House back in session to do the following:

Hold a public hearing to disclose all information in Members' possession about the handling of sexually-explicit emails by Foley to former and current House pages.
Establish an outside ethics commission to provide ethics oversight and enforcement of a body that has proven now beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is incapable of policing itself.
Please sign our petition to Speaker Hastert.

http://www.commoncause.org/EnoughIsEnough

We need thousands of Americans to tell the Speaker to bring the House back to Washington. Please tell your friends and family to sign the petition.

Thank you for all your support.

Chellie Pingree
President

P.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) today publicly announced that he, too, believes Congress should have an independent ethics commission. "If it wasn't clear after months of inaction by the Ethics Committee in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, it should now be readily apparent that Congress is utterly incapable of investigating itself." Please help us by signing our petition to Speaker Hastert.

PS, sorry I've not posted in a While MAX, i've been real busy being worked up for a Lymphoma DX andmy First CEMO treatments ,its Stage one ,remission rate 90 % so( I'LL
ll live to see another BLOG Headline !!!!!!
Rick L Ramsey .
Little Rock Ark Blogger

Yes he should stay. He does, after all, represent current Republican values. Let every American gaze on that precious mug as they head to vote.

PS, sorry I've not posted in a While MAX, i've been real busy being worked up for a Lymphoma DX andmy First CEMO treatments ,its Stage one ,remission rate 90 % so( I'LL
ll live to see another BLOG Headline !!!!!!
Rick L Ramsey .
Little Rock Ark Blogger
Posted by: RLR

Hang in there Rick. You'll live to see a lot more than that. A whole lot more.

Let's just hope we can see some silver lining soon in these dark clouds the Republicans have conjured up over our heads the last few years.

Yes, indeed, I blame the Republicans for most of our troubles, not Osama. If he's still alive, he's sitting in his cozy cave laughing at us over here running around like chickens saying the sky is falling over one morning's work a few years ago.

YES Spirit I agree and thanks for your words and thoughts , here what i think of the whole silly RNC mess !

Well, it looks like the RNC is rolling out their new slogans for the mid-terms.

If you haven't noticed then listen carefully, and you will hear Republicans just keep repeating them and hammering them home.

AND here they are courtesy of the RNC:

"I can't recall!"

"I haven't read that report..."

"I swear I thought he was eighteen."

ROFLMAO.....

Weyrich, Robertson used Foley scandal to spread falsehood about gay men

http://mediamatters.org/items/200610050009?src=item200610050009

On the October 4 edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, conservative commentator and chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation Paul Weyrich baselessly claimed that "the real problem" with the Republicans' handling of the scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) is that "Congressman Mark Foley was a homosexual" and "homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex." Similarly, as the People for the American Way weblog Right Wing Watch has noted, on the October 5 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson claimed that Republicans should respond to the Foley scandal by saying, "Well, this man's gay, he does what gay people do, and so don't worry about it."

As Media Matters for America documented when Family Research Council (FRC) president Tony Perkins made a similar claim while discussing the Foley scandal, studies that link homosexuality and child sex abuse are flawed and have been thoroughly debunked by numerous experts.

In addition to being a columnist for Town Hall, Weyrich formerly hosted American Investigator, a cable television program produced by Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation.

From the October 5 edition of CBN's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: The news is the Republicans have formed a circular firing squad, and they're firing away. It's just insane, this atavistic spirit to find blame just before an election. They'd be better to say, "Well, this man's gay, he does what gay people do, and so don't worry about it." I don't know what else to do. Or they can say. "We abhor this kind of conduct, but it's one person." And certainly, the Christian people -- the church people -- understand forgiveness, they understand sin, and this isn't going to, quote, turn off a lot of voters because of that. But the more they make out of it and the more they begin to have recriminations, the worse it's going to be for them, it seems like to me. But anyhow, I don't run the congressional leadership in Washington. They have their own agenda.

From the October 4 broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered:

WEYRICH: Here is the real problem. It has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex. The idea that he should be continued -- or should have been continued as chairman of the Committee on Missing and Exploited Children is, you know, given their knowledge of that, is just outrageous.

NORRIS: Now before we go on, I think I can say, Mr. Weyrich, that there are quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.

WEYRICH: Well, I don't care whether they take exception to it. It happens to be true. I mean --

NORRIS: That is your opinion.

WEYRICH: Well, it's not my opinion. It's the opinion of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with them.

Contact:
Pat Robertson
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Paul M. Weyrich
Contact:
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Christian Broadcasting Network
Contact:
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I believe I heard Denny Hastert say on the radio that he "is taking responsibility" for this issue. Something about the buck stopping here.

This is only lip-service. It's no different than bush saying he "takes responsibility" for the failures in the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Someone help me here: What does it mean to "take responsibility"? Is that another way of saying "deflect blame and supplant accountability"?

Excellent point hugh. All my life when I screwed up I got some brand of clobbered. We ain't seen any clobbering since Bush-Cheney slithered into the White House.

Look at L. Paul Bremmer, he loses 9 BILLION dollars in Iraq and gets a damn medal for it. Heck of a job Brownie was asked to leave to protect the real villain, the ghoulish looking Michael Chertoff. Scooter lost his job, so we're led to believe. No one punished for any wrong doing or incompetence and we've had 6 long years of both.

Speaker Bastert will get blown in the wind for a while and nothing will happen. Bush isn't going to punish him, DeLay needs his tubby remote control robot in the House to do his dirty work. So.....in the end...taking responsibility in the Bush administration means nothing. Our only hope is that by staying Speaker Bastert will cost the Republicans many seats in the House and Senate as more and more Americans figure out the fish is rotting from the head and they've been sold a bill of goods.

If you can't bring yourself to vote Democratic next month, do the next best thing and stay home on election day.

Latest blame-dodging tactic in Foley scandal is 'appalling, disgusting and pure McCarthyism'

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force calls upon Democrats, Republicans and straight allies to stand up for gay Americans

"The GOP has only one response when it's in trouble -- 'blame the gays.'"
- Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force today condemned emerging attempts to shift responsibility for the Foley scandal by blaming gay Republican congressional staffers for supposedly covering up prior reports of predatory behavior by former Rep. Mark Foley. Discussions of a supposed network of closeted gay Republicans working on Capitol Hill have swept the blogs and been raised on MSNBC and CBS. There are allegations, for example, that gay former Foley aide Kirk Fordham, the recently resigned chief of staff for Tom Reynolds (R-NY), worked to play down complaints about Foley's behavior. Fordham has said that more than three years ago he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

Statement from Matt Foreman, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

"The GOP has only one response when it's in trouble - 'blame the gays.' First, they floated the excuse that past complaints about Foley weren't pursued because Republicans didn't want to look like they were 'gay bashing.' Then, they dispatched henchmen like Tony Perkins and Pat Buchanan to offer the blood libel that gay men are prone to pedophilia. Now - in another signal of desperation - it is clear they plan to poison the debate further with allusions to a shadowy network of closeted gay Republicans who closed ranks to protect Foley.

"The parallels to McCarthyism are chilling. Here it is gays, not communists, 'operating at the highest levels of government.'

"There is no doubt that allegations of Foley's misconduct were brought directly to the attention of the Republican leadership of the House. They chose to look the other way. They alone are to blame.

"While many Democrats may be taking real pleasure in watching the GOP twist and turn, it's long past time for them -- and other leaders -- to denounce these shameful, gay-baiting, responsibility-evading tactics."

What the media are saying:

From an Oct. 5 New York Times editorial titled "Real Scandals, and Fake Ones":
"Conservative politicians frequently try to score political points by railing against homosexuality . there's reason to worry that the scandal could tempt Republican politicians and their defenders to try to turn it into an anti-gay witch hunt in the Capitol."

From an Oct. 4 CBS/AP report:
"CBS News has learned that several other top Republican staffers who handled the Foley matter are also gay. Their role in this controversy has caused a firestorm among GOP conservatives, who charge that a group of high-level gay Republican staffers were protecting a gay Republican congressman, reports CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger."

From the davidcorn.com blog:
"There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it 'The List.' It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay. On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a 'network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice.' The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List - drawn up by gay politicos - is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network."

From an Oct. 5 posting on The Corner, a nationalreview.com blog:
MCCORNTHYISM [John Podhoretz]
David Corn, 2006: "[The list] includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications-[and] (if it's acucurate [sic]) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas."

Joseph McCarthy, 1950: "A list of 205 people...who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department."

Since the GOP has had the majority in the House, Majority Leader Newt Gingrich had to resign as did Bob Livingston and now perhaps Dennis Hastert.

But who's counting?

And I am hearing reports tonight that Foley's behavior goes back 10 or more years.
More and more former pages are coming forward, along with a police report showing him driving drunk.....

What laughing joke this is. To see the repugs last gasp to hold onto power. This is so fun to watch as the repugs turn on each other!

And what about FOX news running the Foley story one day this week and superimposing on the screen their graphics referring to Foley as a "Democrat from Florida"...?

Talk about about bottom-feeding scavengers. FOX news is a total abomination...nowhere do they ever approach being a verfiable legitimate news organization. They are more in the category of being Jerry Falwell's newsgathering propaganda mouthpiece.

Majority Leader Newt Gingrich had to resign as did Bob Livingston and now perhaps Dennis Hastert. But who's counting? - Posted by: Rasputin
********
Counting might be a good idea. Seems like the Republican screw-ups have a history of resigning. How many Democrat screw-ups have resigned?

It's all in the degree of screwing up, Donnie, me boy. Mr. Nixon was lucky enough to have resignation be his only punishment and then Ford gave him a pardon to make sure Dickie was warm and safe.

I don't think George W. Bush and Dick W. Cheney will be so lucky. A real test of their popularity would be to turn them lose in a neutral place such as Kansas and see how long they last. Sometimes a nation's love can hurt and I predict if they escape prison time, both men will go bankrupt hiring enough security to keep themselves safe the rest of their miserable lives.

Won't see either of them flying around the world raising money for AIDS. They'll never know the joys of walking out to their own mailbox. And Don, I'll make you a deal. If you'll walk George and Dick up the steps, I'll walk Ted Kennedy up the steps and we'll hang them all right here at Judge Parker's gallows. Is it a deal?