I could give a two hoots and a square turd about Mark Foley. I’m only excited about his stupidity because it could help the weasly Democrats beat the scurvy Republicans in November.
Foley's stupidity breaks right along the fault-line of the GOP. The Republicans are an uneasy alliance between social conservatives (the Evangelical Crazies) and economic conservatives (our country-club millionaires). The rich monied dudes have seduced the Evangelicals to be their useful idiots by promising them to do something about abortion and gay marriage. But of course the economic conservatives only do everything for themselves, i.e. cut taxes for the rich, but do absolutely nothing about abortion and gay marriage except blah-blah it at election time. All talk, no walk, but enough talk to con the family values crowd.
Now Foley happens, and whereas the rich-dude Senate leadership were happy to let him get away with it, the social conservatives are in a goddam uproar. It looks like the stumblebum GOP have fallen on yet another sword of their own making. Maybe their useful idiot social conservatives will stay home and not vote in November. The Evangelical Crazies represent 40% of GOP voters, so they could make a big difference.
Mind you, I do I feel sorry for Mark Foley. All he did was write dirty IMs to young men whom it would be perfectly legal for him to fuck, because they were above the age of consent. It’s not that he committed a crime.
But it’s interesting to see how he’s trying to weasel out of his stupidity, besides of course doing the honorable thing and resigning. He checked himself into a facility for alcoholics – in other words, he’s saying he did what he did because he’s an alcoholic; he’s a poor little victim himself. Then he lets it be known that he was molested by a priest when he was a teen, so it’s really all the priest’s fault.
He’s one screwed-up individual, especially because he was always on a crusade to protect kids from sexual predators. It’s called reaction formation, I think, when you project your own sinful desires out on others. He’s like some character from The Crucible—in a long line of hysterical family values propagators, who are themselves family values traducers, like the Evangelical preachers who get caught with prostitutes et al. Sometimes I wonder if the homophobia of the Evangelicals is a projection of the fact that deep inside, they know they are latent boyfuckers. What drives them to such an extreme form of intolerant, fundamentalist religiosity anyway?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Karl Rove
I think this piece should be required reading. It shows the following:
1) The Left and Democrats have no ideas to run on. Why elect them in November? Because Mark Foley is sick. That's their platform.
2) This is why universal suffrage is a bad idea. People like this shouldn't be allowed to vote. It's not the I question Adam's patriotism, I question his loyalty and intelligence. I question his ability for thoughtful civic participation.
2 - Nancy
Loyalty to what? Corruption & incompetence? Lying & war? Cronyism & special interests? Because that's what 'loyalty' to this current Bush administration is, plain and simple: loyalty to an untenable, mounting pile of lies, corruption, and more corruption. As for intelligence, at least Adam and others like him have the intelligence to question authority instead of swallowing BushCo's scum whole like some Bush-lovers do. That kind of loyalty & 'intelligence' that is unquestioning is no sort of loyalty or intelligence at all; it's the worst sort of mindless, sectarian partisanship, devoid of judgement, thought, or ethical values; it's the same sort of sheepism Hitler depended on to build the Nazi party & take over in 1938, and to KEEP him in power for the next 6 years. Sounds familiar? It should, because similar crimes are happening here and now, at the instigation of BushCo. There are now even letters to the Ed. in the WP, and other media, speculating on Bush setting himself up as dictator in the near future, with the support of the GOP rubber stamp criminal congress.
IF the Dems manage to win, I personally hope they have enough clout that they can take every person in this vile administration, starting with Bush, frog march them over to the mall, and hang them high on the trees with their own guts for treason and all their other crimes. And congress along with them.
3 - Adam Ash
Nancy, woot!
You go, girl.
That last sentenced of yours is a doozy of supremely deft and dastardly mischief-making.
Ohmigod, I enjoyed that.
4 - Nancy
Adam, that's no news: I've been advocating wholesale slaughter of congress and the administration (preferably by drawing & quartering) for months now. I think if we sell tickets we can also clear the national debt.
5 - Nancy
We could even build up a surplus by selling slots to be hangman on ebay. Starting bid, say, $10,000 for a freshman congressman; starting bid $10mil for Bush or Cheney...?
6 - JustOneMan
This issue illustrates the Deumbocrats and the left anti-gay bias.....rather than blame the Christian Right and conservatives for queer bashing...you guys are doing a great job...
Here shes goes again revealing herself
7 - Karl Rove
Loyalty to America.
You're all traitors and should be expelled from this country.
Let's just pick up guns and start this civil war already.
8 - dee
Yeah I'm in - Revolution #2. I will lead us into battle.
I'm on the good guys side of course the liberals.
9 - Ben
Barney Frank didn't destory the Dems
10 - Dave Nalle
Damn, Adam. What the hell are you doing writing something coherent and sensible like this. Now you're confusing me.
I don't think serious devastation of the GOP would be such a bad thing here at an interim election. The party clearly needs a kick in the nuts, and if the result were a sundering of the religious right (smaller than the 40% you suggest) from the sensible people in the party - who are not just the millionaires, but also the principled philosophical conservatives and libertarians - then the result would likely be a better party and one which could be more effective in the long run.
Dave
11 - Matthew T. Sussman
Adam, I'm sensing a pattern throughout your articles. I haven't quite nailed down what it is, but give me a few more weeks and I'll get back to you.
12 - Nancy
Dave, I'd like to see them get the crap kicked out of them, too, to give them the impetus & honor they had back in the days of Nixon when they had the gumption & honesty to clean their own house of trash. No more, alas. They've become the party synonymous with corruption & special interests. Why that doesn't drive the average Republican screaming in rage I can't guess, unless the A.R. is also inured to corruption in his own party these days. I'm just an EX-GOP, and it infuriates ME to watch the party go down in slime like this, hijacked by Cheney & Rove, & headed by bloody Bush.
13 - brad schader
Great piece except Foley is not in the Senate, he is in the House. Florida Senators are Nelson and Martinez.
14 - handyguy
I more or less agree with Adam's assessment of Foley himself, but cheering on the Democrats' blatantly insincere use of this opportune scandal to score points in the election is also rather screwed-up, not to mention unsavory.
I'm no fan of Dennis Hastert, but if he goes down over this after surviving all the much worse things he, DeLay, et al have done in the last decade...well, call it poetic justice if you like, but at what cost?
And the whole sorry scandal gives new opportunities for entirely too many people, both in the media and the general public, to trot out their prejudices: that being gay, instant-message pederast fantasies, and genuine pedophilia are really all the same thing, or close enough that 'decent folk' need not make the distinction. And that makes this 49-year-old gay man mighty uncomfortable.
15 - Nancy
From the 'talk-back line' commentary on local radio that I've heard so far, the reaction is less because Foley is gay, and far more fixed on the various congressional ramifications of it. However, as the story has progressed, a lot of people, including me, are disgusted by his apparent attempt to paint himself as some poor little victim of alcoholism, priest abuse, and - what next, his mother spanked him as a kid? Sorry, I don't buy it. He'd do better to take it "like a man" as it were, instead of a whiner. As for the GOP leadership, I hope they all get indicted & end up in jail: they obviously are lying about what they knew and when they knew it. I wish I were physically able to just smack every single one of them hard across their lying mouths. They add insult to injury to the public in trying to fob off their roles in this & pretend to be shocked - shocked - and disgusted. Fucking hypocrites.
16 - Jon Sobel
Their tax breaks for the rich, I think, is (sic) not about greed - it's about the poor being their enemy, and this is their way of kicking the asses of the poor.
That's an interesting thought. Since the GOP has long since traded in its (in my opinion) misguided, but debatable, capitalistic platform for one based on social intolerance, jingoistic bile, and warmongering, it makes a scary sort of sense. It's natural for those in power to resent the poor - they're a reminder that all is not well in the Kingdom, and for that the King must be partially at fault. When you've failed someone, you often end up resenting them. The next step is to punish them.
17 - Arch Conservative
Yes and it's also completely logical for the poor and lower class to represent those with more wealth as it reminds them of thier own shortcomings and failures
18 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
If there are elections in November, I think i is a reasonable assumption that the Democrats will get control of one chamber of congress..
Adam may get his wish.
19 - Jon Sobel
Arch, have you ever heard the term non sequitur? 'Cause you're really a master of the technique.
20 - JustOneMan
ABC Busted in lie!!!
A posting of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has apparently exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser...
ABC RELEASED TRANSCRIPT OF CHAT BETWEEN FOLEY AND A MAN WHO WAS 18 AT THE TIME OF THE INSTANT MESSAGE EXCHANGE.... NETWORK GAVE IMPRESSION MESSAGE WAS TO 'UNDER AGE' TEEN... DEVELOPING...
21 - Jet in Columbus
Speaker Dennis Hastert's political support showed signs of cracking on Wednesday as Republicans fled an election-year scandal spawned by steamy computer messages from disgraced Rep. Mark Foley to teenage male pages.
At the same time, a congressional aide said in an Associated Press interview he first warned Hastert's aides more than three years ago that Foley's behavior toward pages was worrisome. That was long before GOP leaders acknowledged hearing of it.
The aide, Kirk Fordham, said he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" at the time.
The claim drew a swift, unequivocal denial from Hastert's chief of staff. "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen," Scott Palmer said through a spokesman.
Half a continent away, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, third-ranking leader, pointedly told reporters he would have handled the matter differently than Hastert, had he known of it.
"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is, You have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of," said Blunt, who was acting majority leader at the time Hastert was told of overly friendly e-mails from Foley to one page. "You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to."
Rep. Ron Lewis of Kentucky, in a tougher-than-expected re-election race, abruptly canceled an invitation for Hastert to join him at a fundraiser next week.
"I'm taking the speaker's words at face value," Lewis told the AP. "I have no reason to doubt him. But until this is cleared up, I want to know the facts. If anyone in our leadership has done anything wrong, then I will be the first in line to condemn it."
Ron Bonjean, Hastert's spokesman, said the entire issue had been referred to the House ethics committee. "We fully expect that the bipartisan panel will do what it needs to do to investigate this mater and protect the integrity of the House," he added.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi went one step further, issuing a statement saying that Hastert and the rest of the GOP leadership should be "immediately questioned under oath...."
"The children, their parents, the public, and our colleagues deserve answers and those who covered up Mark Foley's behavior must be held accountable," she said.
Foley, 52, a Florida Republican, resigned last Friday after he was confronted with sexually explicit electronic messages he had sent teenage male pages. He has since entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility at an undisclosed location. Through his lawyer, he has said he is gay but denied having had any sexual contact with minors.
His abrupt departure left behind a sex scandal that has shaken Republican confidence - and poll numbers - little more than a month before elections at which their control of the House will be tested.
It also plunged Hastert and others into an intensive effort to grapple with conflicting claims about what senior lawmakers knew, when they learned and what they did about it.
State and federal investigators swung into action.
The Justice Department ordered House officials to "preserve all records" related to Foley's electronic correspondence with teenagers, and one law enforcement official said FBI agents have begun interviewing participants in the House page program. It was not clear whether those questioned were current or former pages, or both.
The request for record preservation is often followed by search warrants and subpoenas, and signal that investigators are moving closer to a criminal investigation.
The request was aimed at averting a conflict with the House similar to a standoff in May when FBI agents raided Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson's office seeking information in a bribery investigation.
Separately, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has begun a preliminary inquiry.
Hastert was at home in Illinois during the day as he struggled with the first major cracks in his political support from fellow Republicans.
His office heatedly denied any suggestion that he intended to resign as speaker.
"When Republicans keep the majority this November, the speaker will run again and serve his full term should his colleagues choose to elect him," Bonjean said.
But the comments by Fordham, who resigned during the day, coupled with the remarks by Blunt and Lewis' action, suggested Hastert's plans might face a challenge. The speaker is elected by the full House, but he essentially serves at the please of the members of the rank and file of the majority party.
In this case, that's the Republicans, who already had been struggling to retain their majority in adverse political circumstances and now must contend with the questions about Hastert's actions.
Even a Republican from Hastert's home state of Illinois expressed reservations about asking the speaker for campaign help.
"We still take the position that we want all the facts," said Ryan McLaughlin, a sopkesman for state Sen. Peter Roskam, who is running for an open seat now in Republican hands.
Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Lara Jakes Jordan and Laurie Kellman in Washington; Marus Kabel in Springfield, Mo., and Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press
22 - JP
This is PERFECT for the "Party of Personal Responsibility," seeing one of their own go into "therapy" and blame Democrats, the Clergyman and others. Thank GOD he's for PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, or else we might say he's passing blame and playing the victim.
23 - Nancy
Jet, you know I like you very, very much, but I have to second the request that you not copy the entire text of an article into your blog entry. Just link it, please. Thanks.
24 - Dave Nalle
BTW, the source for the research which produced the information about ABC misrepresenting the age of the page is identified on Newsbusters.
It's also identified elsewhere. It seems ABC slipped up on their website and accidentally provided enough information to identify the page Foley was chatting with, who it turns out was 18 at the time, not 16 and is now 21.
Dave
25 - Maurice
I really get sick of hearing that the rich get tax breaks. Here is the fed tax table:
$24804 10%
$73,710 15%
$137,488 25%
$211,744 28%
$372,190 33%
$infinity 35%
Please read it and do some math. And don't give me any bullshit about write offs. I have had years that I made so much money I was not able to claim my home mortgage interest deduction. As you go up the scale you lose more and more deductions.
And yes I hope we get a change also. Are the new crooks going to be better than the old crooks?