So...I'm busy. You guys obviously want to talk. Here's another open thread.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
Attacking Free Speech
The student chapter of the International Socialist Organization at Columbia University rushed a stage where the founder of the Minutemen, Jim Gilchrist, tried to deliver a speech. The campus Republicans had asked him to speak.
The New York Sun has this to say:
"It's not that some Columbia students chose to disagree with Mr. Gilchrist — this newspaper does, too. It would have been entirely appropriate for school administrators to allow students to protest peaceably outside the lecture hall or to host a competing event. The university's willingness to allow this event to devolve into pandemonium, however, speaks volumes about its commitment to fostering open debate. The video of the event shows campus police officers — paid for by the Columbia College Republicans — standing by just feet away as students overturned tables and chairs onstage and proceeded to attack Mr. Gilchrist and his fellow Minuteman, Marvin Stewart."
How many times have conservatives decried some outrageous leftwing speaker speaking on campus? More times than I can count. But did we ever go to the extremes that the leftwing protesters do when they oppose speakers? No.
Why is it that those who yell "Free Speech" the loudest are the same ones who don't want anyone to hear the speech if they don't agree with it? This kind of behavior not only sends the wrong message to our youth about free speech, but also the wrong message about common decency.
via Human Events via Mary Katherine.
And just to emphasis the point, Ann Coulter nails it:
"But now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush's National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman's instant messages.
Let's run this past the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: The suspect sent an inappropriately friendly e-mail to a teenager -- oh also, we think he's gay. Can we spy on his instant messages? On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that any court in the nation would have said: YOU BET! Put a tail on that guy -- and a credit check, too!"
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Good Grief!
Drudge reporting:
"According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives,"
PRANK??????????
Are you a woman with an interest in politics? No bikini pics for you!
In case you missed the stir up with Michelle Malkin and some left wing blogs using a photoshopped picture of her in a bikini to make some sort of a point, The woman whose pictures they took from her site has written an excellent article about it:
"That is what we learned from conservative author Michelle Malkin last week. After she wrote a column criticizing once-wholesome singer Charlotte Church for her slide into pop star hedonism, left-wing Internet blogs discovered photographs of Malkin on spring break fourteen years ago. Accompanied by headlines like “Michelle Malkin gone wild” and “Michelle, you ignorant slut,” the blogs linked to a photo-sharing page that featured Malkin cavorting with girlfriends and posing in a string bikini.
It seemed like the perfect “gotcha” moment for the liberal blogosphere. But there was a problem: the photo page wasn’t real. I know this because most of the pictures on it belong to me.
Whoever made the photo page apparently wasn’t content to insult Malkin, an Asian woman, with racial slurs – a popular activity among her critics. Instead, they aimed to expose her as a hypocrite. Using pictures stolen from various Webshots.com accounts, including mine, the creator wrote captions to imply that I had had been a classmate of Malkin’s at Oberlin College in the early 90s – and that she was anything but a moralist back then.
By the time I discovered the hoax, liberal blogs were already hard at work smearing Malkin as a “slut,” “hussy,” and “b-tch.”
I was shocked as I scrolled through posts and reader comments about my pictures, some of them photoshopped or falsely labeled as pictures of Malkin. Racist jokes and sexual denigration were common themes."
Wonkette, a leftwing blog that started this mess refuses to answer e-mails from this author with her proof that the photo was photoshopped from her page.
The ironic thing is that the picture isn't even bad. It's just a girl posing in a bikini. Does the left believe that we women who are conservative were some sort of a Postulant growing up? Do they believe we didn't wear bikinis??
I don't know why Michelle puts up with what she does. What a creepy world we live in.
"Former Washington Post senior political writer Thomas Edsall on Bob Woodward and his new book."
Hugh Hewitt has the interview. Let's just say this former colleague doesn't find Woodward credible.
More on Bob Woodward's credibility from RCP:
Brent Scowcroft released the following statement today (View image):
"I have spoken to Bob Woodward a number of times about a variety of subjects over the years, but I did not agree to be interviewed for his latest book. Further, there are statements in the book, directly or implicitly attributed to me, that did not and never could have come from me. I never discuss any personal conversations that I may have with President George H.W. Bush, and he never discusses with me any conversations that he has with President George W. Bush."
Scowcroft's office confirmed the authenticity of the statement and said it was released earlier today to the Associated Press. Curiously, I can find no mention of it on any AP-driven news site.
via Powerline
How does this change things?
It seems the site that broke the Foley story was made up for that sole purpose:
StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle.
via NRO
And the left can just drop the "defending a pedophile" meme. It's a great word for them to throw around but it isn't what Mark Foley is. He is a scumbag, but he didn't target young children. I'm still confused about whether the young man who IM'd (the sexually explicit ones) with Foley was 18 at the time or not. Drudge still says he was, but I have seen no confirmation of that.
In fact the ones on the left can just drop the whole "defending Foley" thing at all. From the moment this story broke I have seen NOT ONE PERSON on the right defend Foley at all. What seems to be happening is what will happen from now on with the internet, and that is we aren't going to just accept a story at face value. If it smells, people will look into it because we can't trust the media.
If the boy was 18 then ABC put a false story out there which started the whole pedophile thing. Because let's just face the honest truth. If Mark Foley didn't have sex or try to solicit sex from a minor, then he becomes someone who was simply gay.
And that would not have been a story the left could have run with.
The fact of the matter is every soundbite I have heard from the Democrats have been about Hastert resigning, not what Foley did.
Finding out who ran this bogus website that broke the story will tell us much.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
A Gay Question
Ok, I know. I know. People are SICK of the Mark Foley story. But I was reading that blog that outs "closeted gay Republicans" and reading several stories where some on the left blamed Foley being in the closet for his behavior and that he was outed years ago by the Advocate, but no one ran with it. The Rogers blog outed Foley because he voted "against gay rights." I got to thinking about it. Put aside the page scandal for a moment and let's focus on the gay thing because I have a few questions.
I hate to use Foley as an example because he's a scumbag, but bear with me. First, I don't think he was closeted. Isn't closeted when you deny you are gay? Foley never denied he was gay. He only told people that it was none of their business. It seemed everyone knew anyway, but he obviously didn't want to discuss his sex life (now we can see why) but my point is why should anyone be forced to discuss their sexuality??? Because he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act? Just because someone is gay doesn't mean they march in lock step with gay activists. Even on an issue that affects them directly. Maybe Foley didn't think gays should marry. Can't he and other gays believe that if they wish??
Oh yeah, I wanted to add something. You know that all this crap we are writing about and all the details don't mean squat to the American people. They hear the buzz, the basics and that's it. So, I was getting my oil changed today and there were four men in the waiting room with me and something was mentioned on TV about Foley so I asked the guys what they knew about it (like I didn't know anything) and one guy said, "Some gay guy resigned from Congress for talking dirty on the internet with a kid." "yeah", said the another guy, "I'm telling you it's dangerous to let gays around kids. This is just proof of that." (This hasn't been exactly good PR for gays I can tell you that I heard that more than once today) So I asked them, "Was he a Democrat or Republican?" One guy said, "Hmm.... I think he was a Republican." "No" said another, "He was a Democrat." I looked at him and said, "How do you know?" And he said, "Isn't it the Democrats who are all for gay rights and all? The guy must have been a Democrat, but they are all crooks up there anyway." And everyone shook their head in agreement.
My point is that people aren't sweating the details of this and all this is really doing is making Congress look worse than it already does.
An outing of sorts.
Passionate America has done some investigative work to say the least and says he has found the young man who we have read about through the IM"s with Mark Foley.
If it is the same guy, he is Campaign Manager for Ernest Istook Oklahoma City.
What can I say? This is the internet age. Nothing is hidden anymore.
h/t dave
Sex
This whole thing with Foley and everyone dredging up Clinton and all the other sexual escapades of politicians got me to thinking about relationships. I was waiting for an appointment today and picked up a "Jane" magazine, which I believe is aimed at young women. There was an article on how to score free drinks from the bartender you slept with last weekend. There was a regular column that asks young women across the country where is the "craziest" place you have ever "done it." There were about 6 other articles relating to sex that had nothing to do with love.
I never allowed my daughter to read the Cosmos and Glamour magazines and this is why. What messages are being sent here? That there are no consequences for your actions.
It got me to wondering why we don't seem to focus more on our love relationships in popular culture rather than just our sexual ones.
I remember when I met one of my boyfriends in college. I was in the library and saw him across the room. Instant attraction. I was 20. I turned to a girl sitting next to me who was in my sorority and I said, 'I want to meet that guy." And she looked over at him and started to laugh. I said, "What??" She said, "That should be pretty easy to arrange. That's my brother."
So she introduced us outside. He told me later that he just thought his sister was being nice and it didn't occur to him at introductions that I liked him. He was standing by his car and I blurted out, "I like your car." Because I couldn't think of anything else to say and I didn't want him to leave. He looked at his car puzzled for a moment because it was truly a bland and nothing car and then looked at me with a huge grin on his face. He realized I liked him.
That was the start of some romance.
I can't relate to giving into any old sexual urge that hits you. Oh, I had the urges, trust me. I just chose not to act upon them. Not only because of my faith, but because the only sex talk my Dad ever gave me was basically 3 words and they stuck with me all through my dating life- "Don't be stupid." When I was 14 my Dad was concerned about the growing number of boys showing up on our doorstep. We were out on the front porch and he didn't look at me when he said it. He never said the word "sex," but we both knew what he was talking about. He said, "Don't be stupid sweetie. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose."
I heard those words in my mind more times that I care to remember. My Dad told me not to be stupid and I wasn't. And I have no regrets for not being sexually active until I was married. I don't have to remember drunken one night stands. I don't have to remember feeling used. I don't have to remember sweating over a cold sink waiting for a strip to turn blue or pink. I never had to watch a boyfriend walk away when I had his child in my womb.
No, I have no regrets.
Oh, I know the stories. I watched my girlfriends go through it. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't perfect. I was not a goody two shoes. But long before I was Catholic I avoided the mortal sins. Back then I called them the "Don't be stupid sins."
Which brings me back to Foley and Clinton. Foley can blame alcohol and Clinton can blame Monica, but what it really came down to is making a decision to do something stupid. How can men who are so smart be that stupid?
I don't believe the sexual urge overrides our common sense. People make the choice not to give in to sexual sin every day. Maybe it was the combination of power and arrogance that flip the switch to override with these men and other men like them. But people who have no power or arrogance do these things as well. So it really is all about the choice you make every single day.
Maybe instead of these sex saturated magazines and movies and TV, we should have public service announcements that say,
Don't Be Stupid
Hey, it worked for me.
Tourism gone......nuts?
Iran Opens Nuclear Sites to Foreign Tourists.
Come to Iran! Wear a burka! See the sites! Nuclear sites that is.
Very Interesting Tidbits.
From Media Blog:
"ABC reporter Brian Ross, who broke the Mark Foley story, hinted to The New York Times that his sources on the story have come from the Republican Party:
Mr. Ross dismissed suggestions by some Republicans that the news was disseminated as part of a smear campaign against Mr. Foley.
“I hate to give up sources, but to the extent that I know the political parties of any of the people who helped us, it would be the same party,” Mr. Ross said, referring to Republicans.
In this context, it's worth remembering the Rep. Rodney Alexander — who sponsored the page who received the e-mails that started all this — was a Democrat until he switched parties in 2004. What happened to his staff?"
Even more interesting from NRO:
"I do not trust Dick Morris. Period. But here's what he said on Hannity & Colmes last night, in context:
HANNITY: All right, perhaps, but we'll examine that in the next segment. But I think more importantly here there's some fundamental, I think, fairness issues here.
Everybody that I know is glad Foley is gone, but there seems to be an issue here to purposefully politicize this issue, and I find that equally repugnant to me. And, more importantly, I think this takes on a whole new dimension, and this is it, that, if in the pursuit of political power you are going to falsely accuse individuals of knowing things about horrible scandals like this, you better have evidence, because we live in America, and those American people you're describing are fair-minded.
MORRIS: And that's going to back fire.
HANNITY: And when innocent people are smeared, Dick, I've got to believe that people would tend to side with the people that are being smeared. And I see that this is happening more and more in this scandal.
MORRIS: And that's going to back fire on the Democrats by focusing on what did Hastert know, because you know that some of the Democratic congressmen knew. I had a reporter who told me today that she knows that one very prominent member of the Democratic leadership knew about this for months. And it came out through...
HANNITY: That's a big story.
MORRIS: ... a left-wing — came out — yes, but it's up to her to break it. And came...
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: But, Dick, it's the Republican leadership we're dealing with here. It's their leadership.
MORRIS: Yes. I mean, the Democratic leadership knew, was what she told me. And I think that, obviously, it came out through a liberal Web site, and obviously it was fed to ABC through one of their more liberal channels. And obviously there were Democratic fingerprints on it.
But I don't think that the public is going to care much about what Hastert knew and what the Democratic leadership knew and any of that. They are going to focus on the details of this scandal, and they'll be very glad that it came out, and they will feel that it epitomizes what's wrong with Congress.
COLMES: All right, Dick, we only have a few moments here before we have to break again. But, look, this actually appeared on a Web site, "Stop Sexual Predators." I don't know that that's a liberal Web site.
We know that the Democrat in the page program in Congress was not informed. Only the Republicans knew. To actually put any blame for this on the Democratic leadership, as if they should have done something, when it's clear the Republican leadership didn't, is really not taking responsibility where it belongs.
MORRIS: Listen, I hate to take both of you on at once, but you're both missing the point. This is not a Democratic or a Republican scandal. It's a congressional scandal."
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Well, we know one group that kept Foley's secret...
WND has this:
"A radical activist on a mission to "out" conservative homosexual lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers held on to information about Rep. Mark Foley's relationships with underage male pages, suggesting the story would break at the time of mid-term elections.
Blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit points to a campaign by two activists who had Foley on their "target list" of 20 people and shared the information with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."
More:
More than a year ago, in a March 2005 post, Rogers said he had thought hard about what kind of action to take and said that while none would be taken at the moment, "When we get closer to the mid-term elections, I am sure more will surface."
via Gateway Pundit h/t Garry
Owning a gun..not really a right.
At least according to Rosie O' Donnell on The View. Newsbusters has this:
O’Donnell: "I think the horror of imagining six to thirteen-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution style, one by one, is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws."
This quickly led to an exchange with the program’s token conservative, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, in which O’Donnell asserted that there is no right to own a gun:
Hasselbeck: "So you can’t- You can't take way the right to, to bear arms."
O’Donnell: "Well, it’s not really a right. There’s debate as to what that-"
Hasselbeck: "It is a right. It’s in our Constitution. It’s the Second Amendment."
O’Donnell: "Well, let’s talk instead of yell."
Hasselbeck: "I’m not yelling."
You should be yelling sweetie.
Show me a law that would keep dirty rotten stinkin' dirtbags from getting guns anyway on the street and I'll show you my "look 20 your whole life" face cream.
Has outlawing drugs kept criminals from getting drugs? What world do these people live in?
I just want to get this straight (pardon the pun)
Mark Foley says he is gay and that he never had sex with a minor and that he was molested by clergy as a young teen. Is He saying that being molested made him gay?
Also, Foley isn't the only one remembering molestation. The killer at the Amish school says he was a molester and was dreaming of doing it again.
I'm officially depressed.
Hastert on Rush
He isn't resigning. Good on him.
If you are innocent stand firm. Listen to the audio. Hastert explains exactly what happened. You can believe him or not. But there it is.
Move America' Forward's New Ad
website here.
I don't know. It's pretty simple without much meat. But maybe that is what non-political people respond to. I was expecting more.
Cardinal blogging!
Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, is now blogging. He is in Rome now and has awesome pictures.
How cool is that? He accepts comments too! (please, my leftie commenters, be respectful)
The Democratic Playbook
Remember in my last post how I said the Democrats were purposely trying to spin things as if there were no distinction between the non sexual e-mails that Hastert saw and the sexually explicit instant messages that he didn't?
This is from The Democratic Playbook, literally:
1. Pay no heed to the distinction between the e-mails and IMs. There's no evidence (yet) that any Republican leaders knew about Foley's cybersex IMs. There's plenty of evidence that they knew how uncomfortable the "overly friendly" e-mails made at least one page. So the Dems will press the GOP on what they knew about the former and will constantly, in their press releases, refer to the "GOP's knowledge of the sexually explicit e-mails."
I rest my case.
More on the Democrats talking points:
2. Enlarge the wedge between House leaders. The tension this weekend between Speaker Dennis Hastert and NRCC chair Tom Reynolds was thick. Dems want it to suffocate the party and throw the Republicans even further off their game.
3. Be aggressive about how Dems will -- and are -- protecting children. Dems want to keep the issue poisonous in a way that's clear and direct to middle America. (In other words: this ain't earmarks.)
Yeah, let's "keep the issue poisonous." That's the ticket. Use a scandal that both Republicans and Democrats agree on, but push it to make it "poisonous" because we can't win if we agree, right?
Ugh.
via Townhall
Monday, October 02, 2006
I am so angry
This whole Foley thing has made me so angry. Angry about many things. But when I thought about it I realized what made me angriest of all.
The entire blogopshere is just beating it's chest in indignation and anger over what Foley did. It seems writing dirty messages to a 16 year old is something we can all agree is wrong, wrong. Oh, the screaming of "child predator" and "pedophile" could be heard from one end of the blogosphere to the other.
But then I started thinking about the blogopshere's reaction to the teacher who had sex with a 14 yr old boy. Debbie Lafave. Also someone who had authority over youth and took advantage of it. But she didn't just instant message this boy with sexual suggestions. She actually seduced and had sex with him. Many times. Yet the reaction then was very different.
Oh so different.
All I read on blogs (both right and left) was how lucky this boy was. How they wished they had a teacher like that in Jr. High. About how stupid he was to have told.
And adult seduced a child, and in this case it was not only a minor, but it WAS below the age of consent. And yet the men of the net (with few exceptions) could only talk about how hot the teacher was. There was a whole lot of cyber winking and "you know what I'm, saying?" going on. Do we remember this??
Just for a taste, check out the comments here and here. (left or right, all the same)
The hypocrisy of the reaction to Foley compared to the teacher isn't all that ticks me off. I read on my libertarian blogs how awful the Foley thing is. I have news for you. If your 13, 14, 15, or 16 yr old is on the computer EVER with out you right there I guarantee he or she have read and seen MUCH MUCH worse than anything Foley wrote to that boy.
So some of you can spare me your indignation. You don't care how our children are hurt on the net by what they see or who IM's them. It's only the parents responsibility, right? I mean we all know that at least one parent is home all the time with their older kids, right?? We all know that kids never get on other children's computers where the parents don't care, right? Because it's all about free speech and the smut and porn that pops up to your 12 yr old is just a part of that, right? It's what our forefathers fought for, right?
So if you are going to get mad and disgusted at Foley, get mad at the hundreds of thousands of porn and smut sites that target our kids everyday. One click and they are there. One innocent looking ad or pop up and our kids are THERE, seeing and reading far worse things than Foley every thought about.
Today, I am just sick and mad at the world.
Let's keep the Foley scandal honest
Good grief, it's one thing for the blogosphere to run with distortions, but quite another for the mainsteam media to do so regarding what Republican leaders knew about Congressman Mark Foley. Many of you may have been hearing that Republican leaders knew of e-mails between a former 16 yr old male page and Foley. They did, but it wasn't the sick instant messages that you have seen on the news of late. The Democrats only want you to think they were the same.
The e-mails sent in the fall of 2005 were initiated by the former page, Foley asks the former page how he is after Katrina (the boy was from Louisiana) and Foley asked for a photo. That was it. No sexual discussion occurred. These were the e-mails made known to Speaker Hastert. The former page contacted the St. Petersburg Times with an exchange of emails between himself and Congressman Foley. The editor said they never ran the story. They assigned 2 reporters. They interviewed several pages and spoke with the page of the e-mails mentioned above and he said that the asking for the photo had made him uncomfortable, but that was as far as they got. No other page they interviewed spoke to them about anything Foley had done inappropriate.
Now, if reporters had investigated and found nothing, don't you think it was probably the same with Speaker Hasert? If you click on the link below you will read how the Republican leadership acted on the innocuous e-mails. It was clearly acted upon by many. The Clerk of the House asked the family to see the e-mails and they assured the Clerk that it was not sexual in nature. The family did not want this incident to be made public either. The leadership still immediately spoke with Foley who denied anything inappropriate and was told by the Clerk to cease e-mails with the young page and Foley agreed.
Let's be clear. Speaker Hastert has stated that he never saw or knew of any sexual explicit instant messages between Foley and any pages.
The Democrats would love for this to be some sort of a coverup, but it simply isn't and it is unfair and demeaning to Speaker Hastert to keep mixing up the facts here to make it seem as if Hastert had seen the sexual instant messages when in fact it was the innocuous e-mails. I can't imagine what Hastert was expected to do with such little evidence.
What Foley did was sick and unacceptable and he is gone. That's what Republicans do with sexual immorality, we kick them out. Other politicans who are sexually immoral are luckier, like Bill Clinton, Gerry Studds, Barney Frank, and Ted Kennedy, they are Democrats.
The Democrats know that a sexual scandal, no matter how sick, is the responsibililty of the adult involved. They know that that would not be enough to change the course of the Nov. elections. But if they can paint the leadership as covering this up, then they can win more seats.
It is almost as dispicable as what Foley did. But I am not surprised.
source: American Thinker
crossposted at TexasSparkle
Update: The Gay Patriot wonders if the Democrats set Foley up and exposes leftwing sites that declared Foley gay in 2004 and were angry that he was a Republican and vowed to take him down. Notice that the "slur" was not that he was a pedophile, but that he was gay and Republican. Foley has no one but himself to blame here of course, but it is interesting how gay bashing is ok as long as you are a Democrat.
Back at Bill
Did any of you see Fox News Sunday yesterday with Chris Wallace? He showed that part of the clip in his interview with Bill Clinton where Clinton gets in his face and with a big smirk and asks Chris if he ever asked the Bush administration if they were soft on terror before 9-11? Remember that part? Bill looks so self satisfied that he "got" Chris Wallace.
Well, Wallace said he looked through his interviews and then showed 3 or 4 clips where he did exactly that. On Rumsfeld he was especially harsh and asked directly if the Bush administration ignored terrorism before 9-11.
So there's that. And then there is this. Move America Forward isn't letting Clinton get away with trying to re-write history either. The Washington Times has this:
"If you think former President Bill Clinton has been in a sour mood, what with all the finger-pointing of late surrounding his administration's reaction (or lack thereof) to global terrorism, wait until he sees three television ads that will start airing in the coming days. The group Move America Forward, based in Sacramento, Calif., says it's had enough of Mr. Clinton and his loyal lieutenants trying to "rewrite history" about the war on terrorism and goes so far as to call the former commander in chief "shameless."
This ad will join two other ads on the war on terrorism. It's seems to be a way to tell "the rest of the story" that the media is not telling.
I can't wait for Clinton's reaction to it. Oh boy.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
"Pay attention to the better angels of our nature"
Hugh Hewitt has the best view of this whole Mark Foley scandal.
It's excellent.
"All of us have an appetite for sin. Part of the human drama and every life's challenge is to manage those appetites, to control them and vanquish them. It's something that most of us get much better at with age, which is why our truly hideous deeds are usually confined to our youths.
Politicians are often figures with outsized supplies of vanity and pride. It's not surprising considering how they give into these sins that they have appetites for other sins that are greater than the normal man's, and that they also grant those appetites more license than the normal man does."
Hugh chronicles a few well known politicians who have given in to their appetite for sin and he makes a bigger point. The Democrats misjudge the American people who will see Foley as a Republican scandal:
"His party identification will be a non-factor. He will be just another politician who indulged his appetites for sin without any apparent regard for the import of his job or the hundreds of thousands of people that he represented."
As Hugh points out:
"Normal people aren't like this. Most people don't closely identify with either party and they view political obsessives the same way they view avid stamp collectors or grown-ups who play with model trains. In other words, they view political junkies as freaks. Perhaps benign freaks, but freaks nonetheless."
So we, who are "the freaks" need to chill out on not just stories like these, but all the stories where the blogopshere goes crazy with stupid details, misinterpretations, and distortions.
Hugh ends with this truth:
"We all walk a tightrope trying to pay more attention to the better angels of our nature than the devils on our shoulder. When someone else fails, we might criticize him and his actions but we also think to ourselves, "There but for the grace of God go I."
Which is why Gerry Studds and Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy were re-elected. Especially when it comes to sexual sin, people don't want to judge because they themselves might be judged and found wanting.
That's what I believe anyway.
Someone please tell me.....
Why, in the Democrat"s view, what Mark Foley did was worse than what Gerry Studds did?
Gerry Studds actually had sexual relations with a minor who was a page.
Because Gerry Studds basically said "forget you" to those who judged him and went on to be re-elected five more times.
Now, I realize why Republicans wouldn't stand for Foley, but why did Democrats stand for Studds?
Anyone?
via Ace
The left side of smear and hate.
It's what they do best.
If you can't win in debate, just smear the the one who can.
What scum they are.
Should McCain be watching his back?
Times Online says yes.
Do I love his stand on the issues? Yes. But can he beat Hillary? I don't think so.
Because Mitt Romney is like me. He is a hard right religious fanatic that would take us back to segregation and back alley abortions. Oh...you didn't know that about me? Well, it's not true of course, but that is how the left sees me. And that is the brush they will paint Mitt with as well. And he is just a bit too perfect looking. He almost looks like a televangelist.
What I am saying is this. I love Romney on the issues. If I thought he could beat Hillary I'd be for him, but HE CAN'T. This is the same country that elected Bill Clinton twice and then George Bush twice. The issues don't matter as much as the perception of the person. Hillary has spent her time in Congress being Miss. Moderate. They can't touch her there, even on the issues. Mitt has spent his time in service being true to what he believes in, which is conservative values. The snarling monster of the left will eat him alive.
But they won't eat McCain alive. McCain knows what it is like to fight a snarling monster. He's an expert at it. And he knows how to fight Hillary, a wolf in sheep's clothing. The one who beats Hillary is the one who knows what it is like to go up against what is wrong and valueless and win.
McCain knows.
That's all I am saying.
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