Comments on The Morning News

So what is Chevy trying to say? That the last 50 years of 'merican history was one of the not so metaphorical shit hitting the fan? (well, it did from the George Wallace WASPy bigot angle)

as if the shit isn't getting stronger... there is Bolton shooting off his cowboy diplomat mouth... if, by some act of the Devil he is being prophetic, with what troops is he talking about? Ah... the DRAFT would it be for the Korean War Part Deux?

I don't know much about Coburn or the extent of his views on this subject, and I don't think it's right that one person can hold up a piece of legislation that almost everyone else in Congress seems to support, but I do think there's something to the point that breast cancer gets a disproportionately high amount of funding compared to other types of cancer and other illnesses. Of course we should research what environmental factors are at play, but breast cancer research seems to get much more money and attention than, say, prostate cancer.

Jabba the Hastert won't resign nor should he. Democrats need him there as the poster wrestling boy of what went wrong. As such, he is the perfect replacement for Tom Delay. Republicans, in a show of unity that only politics can bring, need him there for the same reason. When they are booted out of office after this election, Hastert will resign and act as the fall guy. Republicans will then claim that they have rid themselves of corruption during the next election cycle. They will of course be lying, but that is part of politics.

Just a bit of googling brought up this piece from a few years ago.

Bush doesn't care about NK because he knows the only cities NK could bomb are his Democrat enemies' strongholds on the West Coast.

It's entirely possible that Coburn is holding up the legislation because companies that pollute the environment and/or produce toxic consumer goods don't want the environmental causes of cancer known. Conservatives frequently decry the claim that toxins cause cancer. They claim there's no proof and they're right. The government refuses to study the long-term effects of pesticides/herbicides, formaldehyde, and other shit in our environment.

Jesus Bolton, shave that moustache.

Keshmeshi, you're right that this could be his motivation. Although a lack of proof doesn't mean a lack of evidence. But putting aside his possible motivations and government/industry reluctance to fund research on environmental factors (if that's entirely true), is there another underlying issue, that funding among cancers is unequal and unfair? I think there's a strong case that it is.

Chevy totally misses the irony that, among other things, the Late Ms. Parks seemed to prefer public transportation.

'(H)e knows the only cities NK could bomb are his Democrat enemies' strongholds on the West Coast ..."

No great loss. A long-Dong missile on Pioneer Square or Cap Hill would be at least a half-vast improvement.

Woodward's Plausible 'Denial': http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

"After Baghdad fell, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who appears to be the best friend of everybody in the world, went to the White House and advised the president to fill the power vacuum immediately: The Baath Party and the military had run the country. Remove the top echelon--they have bloody hands--but keep and maintain everyone else. Tell the Iraqi military to report to their barracks, he advised, and keep the colonels on down. Have them restore order. Have Iraqi intelligence find the insurgents: "Those bad guys will know how to find bad guys." Use them, and then throw them over the side. This is advice that has the brilliance of the obvious, and not only in retrospect.

"Mr. Woodward: 'That's too Machiavellian,' someone said. The Saudi notes of the meeting indicate it was either Bush or Rice.'

"It's isn't clear if 'too Machiavellian' meant too clever by half, or too devious for good people like us. Either way it was another path not taken. The newly unemployed personnel of the old Iraqi government took to the streets, like everyone else."

Gabriel: You're right: Research into treatment and detection of breast cancer gets enormous financial support. However, research into the causes of breast cancer is chronically underfunded. People are already "aware" of breast cancer. The problem is that Congress (and mainstream breast cancer research foundations) are not funding prevention efforts.

Hastert v. Tip, via Ann Coulter

Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a "witch-hunt." He didn't whine that he was a put-upon "gay American." He didn't stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics. He didn't run for re-election. He certainly didn't claim he was "saving the Constitution." (Although his recent discovery that he has a drinking problem has a certain Democratic ring to it.)

In 1983, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds was found to have sexually propositioned House pages and actually buggered a 17-year-old male page whom he took on a trip to Portugal. The 46-year-old Studds indignantly attacked those who criticized him for what he called a "mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults."

When the House censured Studds for his sex romp with a male page, Studds — not one to be shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men — defiantly turned his back on the House during the vote. He ran for re-election and was happily returned to office five more times by liberal Democratic voters in his Martha's Vineyard district. (They really liked his campaign slogan: "It's the outfit, stupid.")

Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy referred to Studds' affair with a teenage page as "a brief consenting homosexual relationship" and denounced Studds' detractors for engaging in a "witch-hunt" against gays: "New England witch trials belong to the past, or so it is thought. This summer on Cape Cod, the reputation of Rep. Gerry Studds was burned at the stake by a large number of his constituents determined to torch the congressman for his private life."

Meanwhile, Foley is hiding in a hole someplace.

No one demanded to know why the Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, took one full decade to figure out that Studds was propositioning male pages.

Thank you Closeted Democrat,

Has anyone else noticed that it takes a major sex scandal/cover up to cause conservatives to remember anything that happened over 5 minutes ago?

You forgot to mention the part where Gerry Studds told his supporters that they'll be greeted as liberators.

Larry Beinhart analyzes this phenomenon far better than me:

"Thank God for Mark Foley.
It proves that the American people still care about something.
It happens to be penises. But still.

They care about who talks about them, who plays with them, who covers them up, who uncovers them, who covers up the uncovering of them.

I was watching CNN yesterday afternoon. It was All Penis, All the Time.

Anything else, in between penises, is just marking time. Fail to get bin Laden, who cares? Discover proof that the administration made up stories so they could have their war in Iraq, no big deal, not even news, according to the New York Times. Best estimate is that US bombs and artillery killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, it would be rude to mention it. Then there's all that money that disappeared. Paul Bremer blew through twenty billion (yes, Billion) dollars that was supposed to be held in trust for the Iraqi people and there's no records and nothing to show for it. After that was gone, the occupation authorities blew through another twenty billion that was supposed to go for the reconstruction of Iraq. Let's not ask where the money went -- no major media outlet has.

...if you have dreams of going into politics, you should be fearless. Do not fear committing war crimes. Do not fear lying about terrorist warnings. Do not fear losing billions of dollars or reconstructions that never happen. But if you have a penis -- whether you're a man or a woman -- leave your penis at home, before you venture forth to do battle in field of America's political wars."

Thanks, Closeted Democrat for the history lesson. It should remind us all of the damage the conservatives have done in and to this land of the free.

1983 was 24 years ago. Since then the Repubs have done so, so much to demonize just that very same behavior... not as rules of order for the staid halls of Congress, but as laws of the land.

In (liberal) theory, a 16 year or 17 year old (hell, it can be lower then that, why not?) should be able to decide who they have sex with, as long a mutual consent is given. In (liberal) theory, any adult should be able to have sex with whomever they want as long a consent is given.

In (conservative) theory, anyone under the age of 18 is a child, deserving the adult protection of a child. Children (people under 18) are not allowed to have sex, except with other children (people under 18). That is now the law of the land (maybe there are a few pockets left in this county where a 17 and an adult can have sex, but those are few and far between). What it was 24, 50, 100 years ago is no longer germane.

No adult has the legal protection, or right, to "cultivate" a child to have sex once they turn the magic age of 18, be it hetero or homo sex. Period. But, that cultivation is exactly what Foley did, in violation of the very laws the social conservatives enacted or helped strengthen over the last 25 years. Foley’s behavior has yet to be proven illegal, but it was immoral, by the same standards he represented as a conservative Congressman. If and when it is proven to be illegal behavior, then anyone who knew of the criminal behavior would be a criminal themselves. But, should the behavior not be proven illegal, it would still be immoral to conservative values; those conservatives who knew of the immoral behavior are immoral themselves. Period. This very discussion over the morality of laws and how the lawmakers themselves respect the spirit of laws, MUST HAPPEN. No matter how "boring" it makes the daily news seem.

Missing from that Chevy ad are the more poignant verses of Mellencamp's song.

"There's room enough here
For science to live
And there's room enough here
For religion to forgive
And try to understand
The other people of this world...

That poverty could be
Just another ugly thing
And bigotry could be
Seen only as obscene
And the ones that run this land
Will help the poor and common man"

Too bad he sold it out.

Yes,

Gawd forbid that someone had sex with someone who's over the age of consent or even sent suggestive IM's or e-mails.
If they did, then all national news and discourse must immediately cease. All 300 million of the nation's citizens must obsess over every single pixel on the computer monitor, and every seed spilled due to masturbation and one handed typing, then debate the morality of the law ad nauseum (or at least until the Rapture).

It's a National Emergency - Quick! Call CSI Washington, DC!

For Gawd's sakes, won't someone think of the children!

? "(T)hen all national news and discourse must immediately cease"?

We are gaining on Week Three of the bottom-feeding Foley frenzy, an overkill of an overblown bloated story that can only be explained this way: When the overblown bloated story about Joe Wilson & Valerie Plame was blown away as vapid & vacuous, Big Media needed to fill a big hole in a big hurry.

Bottom line. End of story. (If only.)