Author: Trish

Hastert Calls on Jeb to Clean House of Ill Repute

Trish

What’s he smokin’? House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) sent a letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley. Foley resigned after apologizing for the pain he caused to House pages from across the country.

See if you can follow Hastert’s reasoning on why this is a Florida matter:

“These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge…”

As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that you direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated Florida law.

These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge, reportedly were sent sometime in 2003. In one of these messages, Mr. Foley stated that he was in Pensacola.

“These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge…” As far as I’m aware, I wasn’t aware.

K. Anyway:

These sexually explicit communications warrant a criminal referral. In so doing, it is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now.

Therefore, I also request that the Department undertake an investigation into who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement. I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, or anyone outside the Congress.

Your attention to this serious matter is appreciated. I am also sending to the U.S. Department of Justice a request to investigate whether or not any federal laws were violated by Mr. Foley or anyone else with respect to this matter.

So is Denny trying to say that he isn’t responsible because he doesn’t know Florida law? News flash for you, Hastert: what Foley apologized for is illegal everywhere, not just in Florida. Try another dodge — this one isn’t working.

No word yet on Jeb’s response.

This Just In: Foley Resigns After Approaching Underage Male Intern

Trish

Just this morning, I was thinking there was nothing to the story circulating around Florida of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Palm Beach) being improper toward a male teenaged former page in email.

And when I’m wrong, I’m wrong big.

ABC is reporting Foley just resigned.

Here’s the background:

The boy served as a page to a Louisiana congressman last year and came to know Foley, 52. He sent the congressman a thank-you note when his term as a page ended. After the boy returned to his home in Louisiana, Foley used his personal e-mail account to correspond with the teen.

Under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, Foley made repeated references to sexual organs and acts

In the exchange, Foley asked the boy about weathering Hurricane Katrina and wrote, “send me an e-mail pic of you.” In another e-mail, Foley told the boy he was on a break from Congress and was in Florida. He asked the boy, “how old are you now?”

The boy forwarded excerpts from the e-mails to congressional staffers and said, “Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out.”

The boy, who is not being identified because of his age, told the St. Petersburg Times in an interview last November, when the Times first learned of the e-mails, that he cut off correspondence with Foley.

“I thought it was very inappropriate,” the boy told the Times. “After the one about the picture, I decided to stop e-mailing him back.”

…ABC News reported that Foley’s office said he routinely asked interns and job applicants for photographs. But when the Times asked Foley about the e-mails nearly a year ago, he did not mention that practice. He said he was merely trying to be friendly and did not mean to make the boy uncomfortable.

Foley has had e-mail exchanges with at least one other former page who told the Times he was surprised to get an e-mail from a congressman.

So check this out:

Saying he was “deeply sorry,” Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress today, hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former male pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

In a statement, Foley said, “I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”

Did you get that? The chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children?! Man, those Republicans are sick puppies.

Update: Here’s some of the text of the emails/instant messages. Maf54 is Marky Mark.

Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.
…
Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.
…
Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

Is It Me, Or…?

Trish

…Every time you hear Bush say he’d rather fight them “over there” than here, do you cringe at the effect these words must have on every Iraqi who hears them? I mean let’s just come right out and say to these people who have lost thousands of friends and family members — not to mention life as they knew it — that it’s better to destroy their lives and their country than ours. Jeez.

…Does it seem like there are a lot more books exposing the dirty workings of the Bush administration than any other, including Nixon’s and Clinton’s? Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t publish a new tome. Do you, like me, suspect that people are writing books instead of news stories because news stories get no play?

…Do you have trouble finding the patriotism in boycotting Citgo, which employs 4,000 Americans, because it’s owned by Venezuela? “Yeah, we’ll show those Bush-hatin’ commies. We’ll buy more oil from the Middle East. ‘Cause they love us over there!”

Ecuadoran Presidential Candidate Rafael Correa Clears Up Meaning of Chavez’ Comments

Trish

“Whoops, did Chavez say Bush was like the devil? Well, that’s kind of insulting. Let me just clarify that, because I wouldn’t want the devil’s feelings to be hurt.”*

“Calling Bush the devil is offending the devil”

“Calling Bush the devil is offending the devil,” Correa said. He said that “the devil is evil, but intelligent.”

“I believe Bush is a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage,” Correa said. He later said the statement was a personal opinion.

*Paraphrasing Correa there, kids.

Rumsfeld in 2003: I’ll Fire the Next Guy Who Asks About a Post-War Plan

Trish

A string of retired military officers took the stand at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearings to enumerate all the ways Donald Rumsfeld sucks.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically”

“I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,” retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said…

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ….”

Well yeah, but except for that —

“Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making,” he added…

[Retired Col. Paul X.] Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a “serious moral failure on the part of our leadership.”

…Batiste, Eaton and Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq…

[Batiste] said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

4,000 Troops are Being Extended

And speaking of the Bush administration’s flawed plan for Iraq, it looks like 4,000 troops scheduled to come home aren’t. Someone leaked the crappy news to the press.

The Army has extended the combat tours of about 4,000 soldiers who would otherwise be returning home, a defense official said Monday.

The 1st Brigade of 1st Armored Division, which is operating in the vicinity of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, will be kept in place for several weeks beyond their scheduled departure…

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

Until sectarian violence spiked early this year, Bush administration officials had voiced hopes that this election year would see significant U.S. troop reductions in what has become a widely unpopular war.

The British Have Saved Our Asses Again

One of the S-K-Ps from the Afghanistan prison right under our noses last year was killed by troops from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment.

[Omar] Farouq was one of four al Qaeda suspects who broke out of the prison in Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, in July 2005.

It was an embarrassing incident for the U.S. military, and the Pentagon waited until November to confirm that the man had escaped. The delay in releasing his name upset Indonesia, which had arrested Farouq in 2002 and then turned him over to the United States — which then shipped him to Afghanistan.

After escaping, the al Qaeda leader and the three others had managed to evade a massive manhunt. They later appeared in a video sent to the Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya and boasted of their feat.

Did Osama Die Like a Martian?

Trish

If it’s true that Osama bin Laden died of a “waterborne illness” last month, as is looking fairly credible, I can’t help but think of the ending to War of the Worlds. Remember how humans weren’t saved from the Martians by firepower or strategy, but by disease microbes?

If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians — DEAD! — slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.

Gives me goosebumps, or makes me laugh bitterly, or both. If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

We’ve been playing Whack-a-Mole for five years now, as the Bush administration identifies an endless stream of second-in-commands. We are usually introduced to them as they are captured or killed, but in a few weeks or months, new ones with similar names replace them. And none of it brings us any closer to some kind of ending in this fight.

So if bin Laden is dead, has in fact been dead for awhile now, then why are still at it? All along, we have accepted the Bush-given view that if we just kill all the “evil-doers,” especially the leaders, the problem’s solved. Could it be maybe, just maybe, the solution was never extermination? As George Lakoff and Evan Frisch pointed out in a brilliant Buzzflash guest contribution, declaring war on terror[ists] was a dumb strategy.

To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.

The more Americans kill and terrorize Muslims, the more we recruit Muslims to become terrorists and fight against us.

The war in Iraq was over in 2003 when the US forces defeated Saddam’s army. Then the American occupation began…

If bin Laden is dead, I can’t wait to hear what our new goal is morphed into by the folks who are profiting from all this carnage. But rest assured, a new one there will be. The question is, will we keep accepting it?

New Study Says Drinking is Fast Track to Wealth

Trish

I’m just saying: A new study shows drinkers earn more than the George Bushes of the world, and laws aimed to make it harder to drink are a solution in search of a problem.

San Jose State University’s Reason Foundation makes the case.

Men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers

Drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more money at their jobs than nondrinkers and men who drink socially, visiting a bar at least once a month, bring home an additional 7 percent in pay, according to a new Reason Foundation report by economists Bethany Peters, Ph.D., and Edward Stringham, Ph.D.

“Social drinking builds social capital,” said Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University. “Social drinkers are networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their Blackberries that result in bigger paychecks.”

The study finds that men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers.

Damn! Think I’ll crack open a cold one before I read on.

The study, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Labor Research, suggests that the growing wave of anti-alcohol legislation at state and local levels will have harmful effects on local economies and individual finances. Efforts to impose massive tax increases on alcohol, to restrict alcohol sales through zoning laws, and prohibit alcohol advertisements have all been stepped up in recent years.

“We’re quick to ban beer at sports stadiums and festivals. The legal blood alcohol level is dropping everywhere, and we’re barraged with overhyped warnings about binge and underage drinking,” Stringham said. “Instead of fear mongering we should step back and acknowledge the proven health and economic benefits that come with the responsible use of alcohol.”

Ain’t that the truth? Just last night, I responsibly consumed several units of Blue Moon with a coworker, and while I haven’t seen an immediate increase in my earnings yet, I am confident that with just a few more pitchers, I can prove Dr. Stringham correct.

Ted Turner: Iraq One of the Dumbest Moves in History

Trish

Ted Turner has to be regretting that $1 billion gift to the U.N. a few years ago, since it’s pretty much all going to problems created by George W. Bush. He told Reuters how he really feels about the U.S. invading Iraq.

“It will go down in history, it is already being seen in history, as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody. A couple of others that come to mind were the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia,” Turner told the forum.

“It literally broke my heart. You don’t start wars just because you don’t like somebody. … I wouldn’t even start a war with Rupert Murdoch,” Turner said, referring to his onetime cable network rival.

One of the dumbest moves? Well, why not? After all, it was conceived by hands-down the dumbest president.