Posts from — September 2006

The now disgraced Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL-16) has been hoist by his own petard as he was a sponsor of the law that could result in up to 10 years in a Federal prison and inclusion on the sexual predators list. He will be forever [i.e. this election cycle] linked to the 2006 Congressional page sex scandal, so named to avoid confusion with the bipartisan 1983 Congressional page sex scandal [they had to go back to 1973 to make it bipartisan, but that’s Republicans].

I would note that the pages in the 1983 scandal were both 17 and neither complained, while one of the 16-year-olds in this scandal was clearly upset by Mr. Foley’s actions. It hasn’t been made very clear by the reporting, but there is more than one page involved if you can stand to read through the e-mails and IMs.

A common refrain heard is clearly stated in general terms by Christy Hardin Smith, and in more specific terms by Hastert constituents Karen and Michael: more concern was shown for the Republican Party than the high school students involved.

The Pensacola Beach Blog noted that buried in the messages is a references to a campaign event in Pensacola, which would mean that Foley continued long after he said he would stop.

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Lisa at All Hat and No Cattle has a great graphic in this weekend’s edition from the Democratic Underground site. It features the James Madison quote: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

Earlier Jams at Poor Mouth wrote about the death of Iva Toguri, a Japanese American woman who was trapped in Japan at the start of World War II and worked on Japanese radio. Even though she was cleared of wrongdoing by the American occupation forces, when she returned to the US she was tried and convicted of helping the enemy by a corrupt legal process at the urging of Walter Winchell, the “Greatest Generation’s” version of Rush Limbaugh.

Everyone should be aware of the Japanese internment camps in World War II, so none of what is going on is new; every generation seems hell-bent on making the same stupid mistakes of earlier generations. We never seem to learn.

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I threw up a last minute post on testosterone poisoning which reminded Karen at Peripetia of an earlier post on the Shrubbery’s use of testosterone in his exercise regime which resulted in her new post: Brain Death Silence.

The process is similar to Alzheimer’s and produces mood swings. No doubt the apologists will use this to excuse his abuses. We have a complete copy of King George, including the madness.

The Pensacola Beach Blog wants to give Bill Nelson the benefit of doubt. That’s his opinion and I understand his reasoning.

I’m not going to do anything to help Katherine Harris, and certainly wouldn’t vote for her even to stop waterboarding, but I can’t vote for Nelson. I have already said I wouldn’t vote for him because of the Bankruptcy Law and his votes on judicial nominees, so his support of torture and a pardon for the Shrubbery’s criminal activities, is just further confirmation of my opinion that Bill Nelson doesn’t deserve to be receiving a tax funded pay check.

You could read the Mark Foley Wikipedia entry or the CNN story, but Google’s sponsered link, Block Sexual Predators at www.mysafekeeper.com, provides the gist.

He was in the Republican leadership, came to Congress as part of Newt’s gang in 1994, was involved with the 2000 election in Florida, and is the lowest form of slime. While you are innocent until proven guilty, his IMs to a teenager are a conviction looking for a trial.

I would advise the former Congressman to look for a Federal deal, because he does not want to end up in a Florida state prison.

Under Florida law his name stays on the ballot, but the party can designate another candidate. You have to put your mark on his name, but the votes go to the designated Republican.

I think the Republicans just lost a “safe” seat.

Update: If things keep going like this, the Democrats might have a majority before the election. This is the fourth Republican to fall in the House.

Update 2: TBogg noticed before me.

The Cat Who …

Koko would kick Mrs. Murphy’s butt.

[Editor: Ringo really needs to expand her reading list.]

Friday Ark

Lisa English is back with a new Ruminate This and is properly annoyed.

Mad Kane has a new address, but has preserved her old version for posterity.

The good Roger Ailes, Elayne, and Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway are all in various stages of recovery from illness.

Maru has added Divageek and Lilith to WTF is it now?

Scaramouche has lost an old friend named Roxiblu.

TBogg had a water heater act like a Corps of Engineer’s levee on the bottom floors of his house.

The monitor on “my absolutely necessary, have to use it today to get a project out this afternoon” computer decided it didn’t want to continue to shine on the world this morning.

And the Congress of the United States has decided to return citizen rights to the level available before William of Normandy crossed the English Channel.

Feminists have been saying it for years: Too much testosterone kills brain cells.

Dr. Cole of Informed Comment notes:

Bush told Wolf Blitzer he thought Iraq was a comma. But Iraq is very clearly an exclamation point. Now you know why the whole policy has been wrong. Bush has been trying to close off a dependent clause, not realizing he was forcefully making a declarative statement.

Watertiger of Dependable Renegade mentions George Allen’s new nickname: Sen. Macacawitz

The first incident is the Shrubbery using crypto-Christian in public. The sense of the “comma” is that we shouldn’t judge his Iraq policy at this point because we don’t know the outcome. The “comma” is from “don’t use a period where G-d put a comma”, but reality and long experience tells us that it is no longer a question of whether the Iraq situation will end well or badly, but of how badly it will end.

The second is an example of a different religious group, Jews. If you aren’t familiar with Jews you won’t understand the significance of the ending.

These were insiders talking among themselves not being understood by outsiders, but the next example is an outsider attempting a joke about Islam.

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Tristero at Hullabaloo makes the point that torture should be opposed because it is morally wrong. It doesn’t make any difference if it works or not, it is wrong.

I don’t disagree, but as a former military interrogator and law enforcement interviewer, I would like to go on record as stating: it doesn’t work.

A point most people miss in the classic “good cop/bad cop” routine, is that the “good cop” is the successful interviewer. The purpose of the “bad cop” is to speed up the connection between the suspect and the interviewer. You don’t need the “bad cop”, it just speeds things up with a certain type of person. There is a danger if the routine is tried with the wrong person it will blow up the process.

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Maru of WTF is it now? noted that our idiot Secretary of Defense is in talks with MONTENEGRO about sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan!?

At this point I could take a cheap shot and say: I met the army of Montenegro once – he was working as a bartender in Germany.

The newly independent Republika Crna Gora has the total population of the city of Baltimore. It does have a military, 6,500 people that is a remnant of the break up with Serbia, but the government wants to reduce that number to a 2,500 man all-volunteer force, and end conscription.

Who’s next on his list: Liechtenstein, San Marino, Andorra, Monaco?

Maybe he should try the Duchy of Grand Fenwick or the Kingdom of Lancre? There was a lot of bother the last time the army of Grand Fenwick left home, and I’m not sure that Nanny Ogg would approve of Shawn going to foreign parts, but Rummy is apparently desperate enough to ask.

I guess he had to scratch the Swiss Guard off his list after the Pope’s speech. They certainly would have added some color to Afghanistan.

This is like the invasion of Grenada with all of the police forces from Caribbean nations taking part to lend the operation an international flavor.

Keith Olbermann has again committed journalism in the first degree: A textbook definition of cowardice. [transcript]

Via Watertiger at Dependable Renegade the video is up at Crooks and Liars.

Remind me again who was selected to sit in the chair of the news organization that Edward R. Murrow built?

Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t seem to be able to design a shift schedule that would work for a fast food restaurant:

The 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division was extended in order to allow its replacement unit, the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, a minimum 12 months between overseas tours, the official said. The 3rd Infantry has already served two tours in Iraq, including the initial invasion of the country in March 2003.

Nor can he create a working budget to cover the costs of the Pentagon, as reported in this NPR story, Pentagon Asks for $25 Billion for War Equipment.

Actually it is Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, a man called out of retirement to fill the job by Rumsfeld, who is asking for the money to repair and replace Army equipment that has been chewed by by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The General has five depots filled with broken equipment, but he doesn’t have the money to make the necessary repairs.

There are no unknowns, and no surprises in these problems. These are very basic elements in military planning and a lot of people have been doing this for decades, until Rumsfeld decided that he was the only person in the universe who knew how to run the Department of Defense.

Rumsfeld doesn’t know how to do his job; it’s that simple.

Recently it has been reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr are both members of the Twelver sect of Shi’ia. They are among the group with the most extreme view of the role of the Mahdi, also called the Twelfth Imam.

First of all the fact that Muqtada called his militia “the Mahdi Army”, should have been a clue to people who know anything about Islam, and, as Ahmadinejad is known to be an ultra conservative Shi’ia, it should have been assumed that he would belong to the “Twelvers”.

They are the Shi’ia equivalents of evangelical Christians who buy the “Left Behind” books, as they all believe that “judgment is nigh.”

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