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“Let me begin by thanking God for Katherine Harris,” wrote Jim Hightower on Pulse of the Twin Cities. “She is such a picture-perfect example of ultra-right-wing looniness, theocratic hubris, raw Republican partisanship and big-money political corruption that she serves as a sort of burning bush, warning us never to let such people gain high office.”
Republicans have been trying to shift blame in the Foley scandal by pointing to former Rep. Gerry Studds, a Democrat who had an affair with a congressional page, but who did not resign after he was censured by the Democratic-controlled House — and in fact went on to be reelected five times after the affair was disclosed.
Today, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, a Republican, pleaded guilty to bribery and other charges, and although he has resigned, he has not given up his seat and will remain in office until January. O! The hypocrisy:
Congressman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty today to corruption charges arising from the influence-peddling investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first elected official caught up in a scandal that may damage his party’s chances in next month’s midterm elections.
Ney emerged from a month in alcohol rehabilitation to appear in federal court in Washington, where he admitted he performed official acts in Congress for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and skybox sports tickets.
Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the center of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison on March 29, after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that required him to provide evidence about members of Congress.
Ney also admitted to taking thousands of dollars in gambling chips from an international businessman who sought his help with the U.S. State Department.
House Republican leaders immediately vowed to expel Ney in a post-election session if he has not resigned by then
Then-U.S. Rep. Mark Foley complained in an e-mail to Gov. Jeb Bush in 2004 that he was being ignored by President Bush on his trips to Florida after several hurricanes.
“I know it is nothing you have done,” Jeb assured Foley.…Foley complained that U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam accompanied President Bush on a visit into Putnam’s central Florida congressional district and noted that state Rep. Joe Negron was on another trip.
“I can’t quite figure what I have done, but this is a continuing pattern of slights,” Foley complained in a Sept. 29, 2004, e-mail to the governor, obtained by The Palm Beach Post in a public records request.
“Sorry to trouble you . . . and I wouldn’t if this wasn’t so frequent,” Foley wrote. “Have I done something to offend the White House? I am always getting the shaft.”
The governor responded less than three hours later that he thought it was because the president was spending a lot of time in debate preparation in his 2004 re-election campaign.
“I know it is nothing you have done,” he assured Foley.
First it was ABC/Disney trashing Democratic officials including former Pres. Bill Clinton and Sec. of State Madeline Albright in The Path to 9/11. Now NBC has jumped on the GOP bandwagon by giving Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a free five-minute national advertisement for his reelection campaign on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
It is clear that NBC, which is owned by defense contractor General Electric, never planned to give equal time to Schwarzenegger’s Democratic opponent, State Treasurer Phil Angelides — and continues to have no plans to do so in the future.
Angelides, the California Democratic Party and its allies are outraged:
Leno has so far declined to extend an invitation to Democrat Phil Angelides. A spokesman for Angelides, the state’s Treasurer, said that move violates federal rules that generally require broadcast outlets to give opposing candidates equal time.
“The governor has spent $35 million in launching negative attack ads against Phil Angelides, and now NBC is just giving him further free time on national network TV to campaign,” the spokesman, Brian Brokaw, told Reuters.
Rallying to Angelides’ cause in Washington, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat, lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, saying that an exclusive appearance by the governor on Leno’s show would “constitute a clear violation of the equal time rule.”
A Los Angeles Times editorial this morning says the governor’s appearance may not have broken fairness laws but it was nonetheless fundamentally unfair, especially because the governor took a political swipe at his opponent:
llegal or not, Schwarzenegger’s appearance was clearly inappropriate. Leno at one point asked his friend the governor about the attack ads from Angelides that have sought to tie Schwarzenegger to President Bush, who is deeply unpopular in California. “To link me to George Bush is like linking me to an Oscar,” Schwarzenegger replied.
And:
Booking guests on shows like Leno’s is all about timing; celebrities appear when they want to promote their newest movie or album, not necessarily when Leno’s schedulers want them. The problem is, Schwarzenegger still acts like a movie star rather than a public official, and NBC still treats him that way.
There’s no reason he couldn’t have been booked after the election rather than before. But just as he made the TV circuit when he wanted to promote his latest “Terminator” movie, now he’s doing it to promote himself as governor. Yet different rules apply.
This is really outrageous — and if anger over NBC’s move continues to agitate — and energize — Democrats and independents in California, it just might backfire on the governor and his cronies at NBC like Jay Leno.
On Oct. 5, we reported about the list of closeted gay Republicans that is being circulated in political media circles. It is likely that the names will be made public before the election this year. This could do permanent damage to the Republican anti-gay agenda, which has been one of its most reliable tools for getting out the votes of the Christian right:
The importance of FoleyGate is that it shines a spotlight on the simple reality that the party with the loudest anti-gay voices is also the party that’s filled with gays on every level, from staff member to Congressman to, as rumored, chairman of the party itself.
For over a dozen years now Republicans have presented themselves to America as the party of ethics, morality and family values. They’ve spent incalculable time, money and political currency trying to pass discriminatory legislation–on both the federal and state levels–against gays. They’ve told us that straight is right and gay is wrong. That straight is Republican, and gay is a by-product of the loosey-goosey amoral Democratic Party. Those days are over.
The Foley scandal has proven to America that gay life is just as much a part of Republican life as it is in liberal circles. The only difference is that among conservatives it’s more closeted and repressed. And that fact gave Republicans a false justification to spew their hypocritical venom towards gays and make them the scapegoats for everything wrong with the fabric of American society. Their overall message? That being gay is a liberal problem, not a conservative one. Well, guess again. Foley, his former chief of staff Kirk Fordham, former House Clerk and Hastert appointee Jeff Trandahl (at the center of the Foley page scandal) and Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona are openly gay. There are rumors about Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), RNC Chair Ken Mehlman and others as well. The true long-term significance of FoleyGate is that it proves to Mr. and Mrs. Joe America that the elephant is just as gay as his donkey colleague.
GOP Rep. Chris Shays, who is in the fight of his life to save his seat in liberal Connecticut, proved his Republican bona fides this week by comparing the Foley scandal and its cover-up by his party’s leaders in the House with the drowning accident caused by Sen. Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick 37 years ago:
When the congressional page scandal broke last month, Democrats across the country saw a chance to lambaste Republican leadership – including [Shays’ Democratic opponent] Diane Farrell, who called on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to step down.
But when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy came to Connecticut last week to help her campaign, Rep. Christopher Shays hit back.
“I know the speaker didn’t go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day,” said Shays, R-4th District, referring to the 1969 incident in which the Massachusetts Democrat drove a car that plunged into the water and a young campaign worker died.
“Dennis Hastert didn’t kill anybody,” he added.
Over the past two weeks, as a bizarre defense of the actions of Rep. Mark Foley’s predatory emails to House pages, Republicans have been bringing up the tragedy involving the young senator and the woman who drowned, Mary Jo Kopechne.
It’s too bad that Democrats don’t think like Republicans, or they would counter by reminding Republicans that First Lady Laura Bush also killed someone in her youth.
On Sept. 21, Raw Story reported that Karl Rove was telling conservative groups that he had a surprise scheduled for the last two weeks of October that would turn the midterms in the Republicans’ favor.
Now, as mid-October approaches, we have to assume that Rove’s other shoe will drop within a week or so.
We have already seen how suddenly the narrative can change in an election. Eight days after the Raw Story report, Rove found the shoe on the other foot, for once, when an unnamed Republican operative outed GOP Rep. Mark Foley as chickenhawk who had been stalking Capitol Hill page boys for years. And worse, GOP leaders, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, Majority Leader John Boehner and others, have known about Foley’s predatory ways for months and years, and have been covering it up to keep Foley’s seat in GOP hands. The scandal has had Republicans on the defensive and off-message for two weeks.
There may be more surprises coming in the Foley case — a wholesale outing of all the GOP staffers and elected officials on Capitol Hill has been threatened, for example. But it is just as likely that the story will fade, or be trumped by bigger news. (When was the last time the word “macaca” was in the news?)
What is Rove’s October surprise? As early as Sept. 8, we suggested that the Bush team could have captured or killed Osama bin Laden recently, and have been waiting to reveal this news closer to the election. Others, including BuzzFlash, had similar thoughts.
This election is far from over, and Pres. Bush and his cohorts are desperate. Their entire agenda — not to mention their freedom from investigation, perhaps indictment and even impeachment — rests on a Republican victory on Nov. 7.
They will do anything to win.
“I have never heard of a candidate taking money out of a campaign coffer like it’s an ATM. It absolutely boggles my mind,” said former Harris campaign manager Jim Dornan. “This is a woman who has completely lost touch with reality. You don’t take your campaign contributors’ money, whether it’s yours or not, and spend it to renovate your house. This is absolutely insane.”
Underqualified and underwhelming: Charlie Crist and Jim Davis may not be the most flamboyant candidates for Florida’s governor — okay, they aren’t even mildly interesting — but until today I didn’t know how totally unprepared they are to govern our state. Their financials were published today, and what they reveal about these guys is disturbing.
They’re both losers, at least by most financial measures. Maybe that’s why they’re running for a job that pays $132,000 a year with free room and board at the guv’s mansion in Tallahassee.
Crist, 50, has never bought a house. He’s a renter. He’s never run a business. He’s divorced with no kids and until five years ago never held a job that paid more than about $40,000 a year. He has a net worth of $423,000, including about $185,000 for retirement, $97,000 in an investment account and $16,000 in cash. He gave $1,000 to charities last year, most of it to his church. He keeps his investments in a Fidelity Fund to avoid any conflicts of interest. His 74-year-old father is his financial advisor, and Crist earns about 5 percent per year on his investments.
There has been some speculation on this Web site in the past regarding whether Crist is gay. According to the article I read, he supposedly has a girlfriend with whom he vacations occasionally. Sure, okay, I’ll buy that. But then when one finds out what he drives, one starts to wonder all over again: a 1997 Jaguar XK8 convertible, bought used, and a leased yellow 2006 Mustang convertible. Hmmmmm.
Davis, 48, is the bigger loser, however. He supports a wife and two teenage sons on his $159,000 congressional salary, so he would actually take a pay cut to be governor, though I guess he’d make it up in food and housing costs. His net worth is $405,000. The family’s major asset is their home, which was purchased in 1989 for $152,500 and is now assessed at $421,871 because of rising property values. There is a $63,000 mortgage.
Davis paid $26,920 in income taxes and declared he had given $4,170 to charity last year. He owns no stocks or bonds, and has not enrolled his sons — in 1oth and ninth grade — in Florida’s prepaid college program, so he hasn’t saved anything for their education. Davis drives a three-year-old Ford Taurus and sleeps in the spare bedroom of his sister’s Georgetown home when the House is in session.
These guys do share one thing in common — they’re basically career politicians who have few, if any, accomplishments outside their political work, and virtually none in their careers. Neither has ever run a business or managed a complex land transaction. At least Jeb Bush was a millionaire developer before he won the governorship. Not that that’s such a good thing, but at least the guy had some experience managing people and swinging real estate deals.
Other examples of governors with little or no practical governing experience — fake wrestler Jesse Ventura and muscle-bound action figure Arnold Schwarzenegger come to mind. And look what those guys have done for for Minnesota and California, respectively.
Gone are the days of Lawton “He-Coon” Chiles, a man of conviction who really cared about Florida and its people, and who actually governed the state pretty well, even as it slid toward a Republican majority. Now, the choice is between a couple of empty-suit politicos with crappy taste in automobiles.
Oh well, throw a dart and let’s get on with the election.
Congressional perks: Actually, it goes well beyong perks. It’s a wonder more of these sleazeballs aren’t caught doing bad things. But then again, as you’ll see in this list from Smart Money, members of Congress can get away with all kinds of things you and I would be sent up the river to the big house for:
1. “I can’t lose.”
2. “I’m above the law.”
3. “Read the bills I vote on? Who’s got that kind of time?”
4. “Congress is just a stepping stone to big money — in lobbying.”
5. “My health care benefits are way better than yours…”
6. “…and so is my pension.”
7. “I enjoy great perks and gifts, and it’s all legal.”
8. “I simply can’t be fired.”
9. “Lobbyists love me because I deliver the goods.”
10. “Rules are meant to be broken.”
There ought to be a law, but then again, these are the folks who make the laws. Read the whole article and all the depressing supporting evidence for this top-10 of what’s wrong with the legislative branch of our government here.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
