Month: October 2006

Aravosis Responds to Charges He Leaked Foley Emails

Jon Ponder

In their attempt to blame the Foley sex scandal on the left, one of the key fallacious tales the rightwing is spinning is that a liberal gay blogger held Foley’s inappropriate emails for two years, waiting to release them just prior to the midterm elections. Today we learned that their prime suspect was Americablog’s John Aravosis:

Well, the latest rumor in far-right-land is that I personally am responsible for the downfall of the entire GOP House leadership (funny, I thought that was Markos’ job). I understand my good buddy Sean Hannity just mentioned me on his show regarding the rumor. And since I’ve gotten a few emails from you guys asking about this, I figured it was worth setting the record straight.

[…]

BREAKING: Did Foley Show Up Drunk at Pages’ Dorm?

Jon Ponder

Breaking news on MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough show just now: Mike Viqueira of NBC News says that the House GOP leaders had a crisis conference call yesterday to deal with apparently credible stories that Mark Foley arrived at the male page’s dorm on Capitol Hill in a very drunken state one night and had to be escorted away by congressional security. The date of the alleged incident and other details are unclear.

MSNBC: ‘Hastert Will Be Gone This Time Next Week’

Jon Ponder

MSNBC’s David Schuster reported on Countdown with Keith Olbermann just now that sources among the House Republicans say that House Speaker Dennis Hastert will resign soon, and definitely within a week.

This morning we reported a rumor from D.C. that Hastert would be out by Friday.

We also noted earlier today that if he goes, Hastert will be the third (and a half) speaker in a row to leave office involuntarily.

The Last Three (and a Half) Speakers of the House Have Left Office Involuntarily

Jon Ponder

If House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) resigns over his mishandling of the Foley sex scandal, he will become the fourth speaker in a row to leave office inauspiciously:

  • Jim Wright, D-Texas, took the gavel in 1985 and was forced out by a bogus scandal cooked up by GOP Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia and others involving proceeds from a book Wright wrote.
  • Tom Foley (no relation to Mark), D-Washington, lost the speakership when he failed to be re-elected during the GOP landslide of 1994. (After his loss, voters in his district suffered buyers remorse, saying they assumed their congressman would remain speaker, no matter who he was.)
  • Newt Gingrich was tossed out by his party after it was revealed that during the time that the GOP was excoriating Pres. Clinton over his affair with a staffer, Speaker Gingrich was … having an affair with a staffer.
  • Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana, was about to pick up the gavel from Gingrich when Larry Flynt let the world know that he had kinky photos of Livingston at orgies. Livingston resigned from Congress and opened a lobbying firm.

Come on, Denny. We’re on a roll here…

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The biggest need, the most urgent problem of each individual, of each person, is to understand life in its uni-total, integral form, because only in that way will we be in a condition to satisfactorily resolve our intimate problems. Our technical progress is fantastic, but it has only caused to augment our aggressive power to destruct each other, and everywhere terror, hunger, ignorance and sickness reign. No profession, no technology can ever give us that that is called plenitude, true happiness. In life, each one of us suffers intensely in his job, his profession, in his routinery way of life; and possessions and occupations become instruments of envy, gossip, hate and bitterness.

— Association of Gnostic Anthropology, Lesson No. 6: “The Human Machine & the Pluralized I”

Poll: Dems Lead in 11 of 15 Key Congressional Races

Buck Banks

Minority retort: With the Republicans acting more and more like a circular firing squad over the Foley Fiasco and George Bush’s approval rating dropping back below 40 percent, the Dems are looking stronger in the midterms according to a Reuters/Zogby survey released today. The poll found that Democrats lead in 11 of 15 races for Republican incumbent congressional seats.

The Democratic edge includes leads in three of five open seats where well-known Republicans are on the way out – some to seek higher office and some because of scandal. The race for the Illinois seat occupied by GOP icon Henry Hyde, who is retiring after 22 years in the House, is led by Democrat Tammy Duckworth, who holds a 43 percent to 38 percent lead over Republican Peter Roskar.

‘The formula for Democratic victory: in each case where Democrats lead, the candidates are winning near or above 80% of their own party vote and they are leading among independents.’
— Pollster John Zogby

The series of telephone polls were conducted Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, and included at least 500 interviews in each of the 15 congressional districts tested. Each district poll carries a margin of error of +/– 4.5 percentage points.

The Republican is losing in the race to hold the Ohio seat held by Republican Bob Ney, the high-profile, once-powerful committee chairman who abandoned his reelection bid after recently pleading guilty to accepting money and gifts in an influence-peddling scandal. In that race, Democrat Zack Space leads Republican Joy Padgett, 45 percent to 36 percent. Padgett faces tough sledding in a state where the GOP has dominated for more than a decade but which has fallen on hard times because of scandals, including the Ney affair and another involving the administration of Gov. Bob Taft.

In Connecticut, moderate Republican Christopher Shays, who has worked hard to distance himself from the White House and the unpopular war in Iraq, still faces an uphill reelection battle. Right now, he trails Democratic challenger Diane Ferrell, 46 percent to 41 percent. Another 11 percent said they are unsure for whom to vote in that race.

While Iowa Republican Jim Nussle appears to be leaving his seat in safe GOP hands as he departs to run for governor, the same cannot be said for the Republican House seat of Bob Beauprez, who is leaving Washington to run for governor of Colorado. In that suburban Denver district, Democrat Ed Perlmutter leads Republican Rick O’Donnell, 45 percent to 34 percent.

The Democratic edge is such that their candidates lead in seven of the nine House districts that contain Republican advantages in party identification. In the other six House races included in the Reuters/Zogby package of surveys, Democrats lead in four.

In other reliably GOP districts where incumbent Republicans are running for re-election, the Reuters/Zogby package of polling shows that this year they are trailing significantly. In usually conservative Indiana, Republican incumbent Mike Sodrel trails Democratic challenger Baron Hill, 46 percent to 38 percent. Just 39 percent said Sodrel deserves to be re-elected, while 45 percent in Indiana’s 9th District said it is time for someone new. In Indiana’s 2nd District, another Republican faces serious trouble: Incumbent Chris Chocola trails Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly, 49 percent to 39 percent.

The situation is much the same in the mountains of western North Carolina, where Republican-leaning voters in the 11th District give Democratic challenger Heath Shuler a 51 percent to 40 percent edge over eight-term incumbent Charles Taylor. Two years ago, Taylor won reelection with 55 percent of the vote.

Blame Game: During the Katrina Disaster, Republicans Chastised Critics for ‘Playing Blame Game’ But Now They’re Blaming Everyone for the Foley Sex Scandal But Themselves

Jon Ponder
All of this fingerpointing ultimately leads to one conclusion: The Republicans are guilty, guilty, guilty.

In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster last summer, one of the Republicans’ more successful tactics for deflecting responsibility for their own incompetence was to label any criticism as an attempt to “play the blame game.”

Hold fire until later, they said, scolding Democrats and the media — there would come a time for assigning blame but right now there are more pressing concerns, such as getting help to victims in the Gulf Coast. (Never mind that most of the victims were suffering because of the government’s failure to provide help early on.)

And, predictably, the time for assigning blame never really came. Despite a few hearings in Congress, Pres. Bush and his team escaped having to take full responsibility for the lives lost and property destroyed due to their disastrous response.

Today, in the wake of the Foley sex scandal, the GOP is fully engaged in playing the blame game. Here is just a partial list of who they are blaming for GOP Rep. Mark Foley’s X-rated emails to 16 year old boys:

  • Gay people: Possibly the most outrageous claim is that the House leaders were reticent to go after the very closeted Rep. Foley’s behavior because they feared being labeled “gay bashers.” This is laughable since gay bashing is what Republicans do. Laws designed to discriminate against gay people are principal planks in the Republican Party platform. In fact, Pres. Bush would likely have lost the 2004 elections if his political team hadn’t seen to it that there was a gay-bashing initiative on the ballot in Ohio that year.
  • Democrats and the media: Rush Limbaugh and others have blamed Democrats for holding Foley’s emails and releasing them five weeks before the election as a coordinated scheme to topple Republican control of the House. The problem with this scenario is that Brian Ross at ABC, who broke the story last week, says his source in the House was a Republican.
  • Each other: In a sure sign of disarray, both Majority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Tom Reynolds, chair of the NRCC, are blaming Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Why is the conservative ideology such a sham? One of the Republican Party’s talking points about itself is that it is the party that advocates taking personal responsibility. But they never do. Whatever goes wrong is always someone else’s fault — meaning the “liberal” media and the Democrats, of course.

As any parent could immediately discern from this playground squabbling, all of this fingerpointing ultimately leads to one conclusion: They are guilty, guilty, guilty.

Schwarzenegger Snubs Bush during President’s California Fundraisers

Jon Ponder
“President Bush is coming out here not to help California, but to do fundraising in California, so there’s no reason for me to meet with him.”
— Gov. Schwarzenegger

President Bush is in California to raise money for Republican House candidates like the ultra anti-environmentalist Rep. Rich Pombo and Rep. John Doolittle, who has been closely associated with GOP scandal figure Jack Abramoff . But one Republican who will not be photographed with the president is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:

By [Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phi] Angelides’ account, the governor is trying to hide his allegiance to President Bush and the national Republican Party’s agenda in order to get reelected in a Democratic-leaning state. He said Schwarzenegger was “scurrying to get away, out of the camera shot” as Bush visited California on Tuesday to raise money for Republicans in Los Angeles and the Central Valley.

Schwarzenegger, however, said it was more important to campaign for the bipartisan ballot measures than to meet with Bush.

“President Bush is coming out here not to help California, but to do fundraising in California, so there’s no reason for me to meet with him,” Schwarzenegger told reporters in Beverly Hills after a breakfast fundraiser for the bond campaign.

Rumor in the Capitol: Hastert to Resign on Friday

Jon Ponder

A little bird flew in over the transom here at the Pensito Review electronic garrett with this bit of news from the capitol:

Hastert to resign as Speaker on Friday, according to a Capitol Hill lobbyist I know…

Also, my source claims that Boehner will take over for Hastert. Some GOP consultants from Ohio tell me that Boehner is a corruption scandal waiting to happen. They can’t believe that he’s survived this long without one as Majority Leader.

I have also heard that Rep. Henry Hyde, the elderly infamous adulterer, would step in as speaker, which makes no sense since Hyde has retired. Iraq war hero Tammy Duckworth is vying for his open seat.