Comments on We've Only Just Begun...

LYLAP (Love Ya Like a Page)!

What Did They KNOW?

And WHEN did they KNOW it?

And WHAT did they DO?

And WHAT did they NOT DO?

Looks pretty bad.

Yep, and closer investigation will only reveal more, more, and worse...

Now THIS is what I call an October Surprise! For once, it's a happy one. Nice to see someone playing hard ball for our side...holding onto these for a year and then springing them on us a month before the elections! Genius!

I'm guessing this will have no effect by November, unfortunately. Republicans are not going to vote Dem en masse because of this. Did Catholics all fall from grace because of all those scandals the past three years? No, they're still battling the same-sex marrage law in Massachusetts to this day.

The righties love this - it's distracting us from the war, from the Woodward book, from the torture bill, the NIE report, etc. It's allowing them to scare the red states by equating homosexuality with pedophilia, and they get to mention past sex scandals and blame Clinton.

October surprise is right. Mark Foley's a GOP hero.

Just another reason to hate the Gays, self-identified or not. It may be salacious, and I, too, wait with breathless anticipation for the Republicans to continue to self-destruct. However, when I stop to think about the consequences of this story for my day-to-day existence as a self-identified, out-of-the-closet gay, I feel nauseous. Back to explaining how not all gay men are pedophilic, deviant, immoral, lying, cheating, disease-ridden, abominations.

Oh Please. I'm as gay as the day is long, and I have no qualms whatsoever about how this will "affect" me. Because I realize it's not about me.

We've had gay scandals before, and there will certainly be gay scandals in the future, and - news flash - there will always be people who hate homos, and this will be another reason to hate homos.

But I think most people out there understand that what makes this icky is that this is about a 53 year old closeted man and a 16 year old boy.

Grow up and grow a pair. I don't have to "explain" myself to anyone. If they don't like me, that's their tough luck.

Don't get excited David. matthew fisher wilder is right, this won't change a F-in thing. I'm sorry to be such a pessimist, but nothing will sway enough voters to make a little voter machine hacking all that needs to be done to keep power.

hack back

Has anyone noticed that with Foley in rehab, Proud Gay Republican has not been posting?

Like Dan said below - the way the scandal has been treated up to this point is exactly the way the far right thinks it should have been. I'd be willing to bet that a huge portion of the most rabid far-right voters have their own personal demons that they keep repressed most of the time, and don't have the guts to even openly think about. They live by rigid rules to avoid confronting the vile, socially unacceptable parts of their humanity, thinking they are too weak to actually deal with them. They like hardcore social conservatives because they believe that you have to live by rules and traditions, and considering other ways of doing things is just opening up a crazy dangerous can of worms. They'll be outwardly horrified at Foley's actions, but inwardly, perhaps unconsciously, sympathetic toward his failure to completely suppress his desires, and impressed by how he will own up to his slippage of willpower and how he will work to fix it. If Foley had instead sought out a consensual sexual role-playing community to deal with his desires, then... back to the whole can of worms thing. The fact that the Republican party worked to cover up his transgressions is damning, but again, that unconscious sympathy - I don't think this is going to change anything. I can just hear the conversations now... while someone next door to me was cracking up this past weekend about how Foley was on the committee on pedophilia or whatever, somewhere on the Eastside someone was saying, "it's wrong what the Repbublicans did, but still, those Democrats..."

Republicans will not start voting for Democrats because of this - if they did, we'd win every seat this year. They'll just not vote at all, which will get us something like 35 seats this year.

Darling Catalina, perhaps I can come and live in your bubble with you, where no on. You have actually made my point. This isn't a GAY scandal at all, but people will believe it is a gay scandal and will extrapolate from there. This is a scandal about hypocrisy, power, abuse of power, sexual domination, lies and cover-ups, lack of leadership, morality, popular culture, tyrannical majorities, and a million other things. That it involves man-on-man action is merely a distraction from all that is wrong with our government, our culture, our society.

But, when discussed in public, it will be about the Gays and refusing to discuss it is like not voting.

The pedophilia scandal did have an effect on the Catholic Church. Donations plummeted. People were simply not as willing to plunk down their hard earned money to compensate the victims of the priests the Church had covered up for. We can hope for a similar withdrawal of support for the GOP.

You guys can talk about this all you want.

This is what's scaring the shit out of me...

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/ap/2006/10/02/asia/AS_GEN_Afghanistan_Frist.php

Yes, Frist is basically handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban.

Osama must be really proud.

Oh look, Matthew. Condi is bringing in the Saudis to Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in Jeddah October 2, 2006. Rice said on Monday she plans to ask Saudi Arabia to do more to help stabilize Iraq , encouraging it to influence Iraqi Sunnis to become more involved in the political process. -Reuters

SB, Dearest, I don't live in a bubble - and while I mostly agree with you about the nature of the scandal, I accept that this is ALSO a case of a closet queen trying to pick up teenage boys. I don't approve of it, but I'm a realist, and I know that it sometimes happens. Just as suburban dads sometimes end up screwing the babysitter, and school teachers sometimes have affairs with their students.

And I get up every morning, go downtown, do my work, go about my life. No paranoia, no need to feel like a victim, no feeling like I need to explain that I'm not a pedophile, because I'm not.

If you want to make this about how people view you, that's your business. But it's not mine.

My dear Catalina, I don't know if you're projecting or just over-reaching. This isn't paranoia, I don't feel victimized, and I don't think this is all about me. In fact, my concern is quite obviously about how this jackass' behavior reflects on gays and lesbians as a community. I can assure you that in red America, there are people sitting around saying, "What do you expect, he's a dirty fag." The propensity in this great Nation will be to overlook the real scandal, to chalk this up to deviance, to equate this behavior and scandal to all gays and lesbians, and to remember only the M4M element when it comes time to consider amending constitutions or, in this state, repealing DOMAs or granting civil unions.

But, you're right. If you choose not to see the connection to or potential impact of this drama on your life in downtown Seattle and environs (which is, despite your protestations, a very blue and rainbow colored bubble), good for you. Ignorance is bliss!

we got rid of habeas what?

we got rid of habeas what?
It's one of them gay STDs. Good riddance!