Letters to the Editor
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Will the scandal ensure a November sweep for Democrats?
What a laugh.
The Lamocrats have shown that even the Worst President in United States History isn't enough. How can this help?
The best they can hope for is making the cheating a leetle more obvious. But a sweep??? Come on.
I hope I am wrong, by the way. But please.
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who is this tipping point tipping?
Just came back this evening from hearing Brian Mann (author of Welcome to the Homeland, reviewed last week) who made the excellent point that this story may indeed have a huge effect, not by galvanizing Democrats, not even by swaying Independents, but by making the vastly important and disproportionately influential Republican base stay home.
I'm looking forward to seeing the results next month. And to doing what I can to get every Democrat I know to get out the vote.
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C'mon Salon
As has been mentioned in many of the other threads the page in question is not underage. The age of consent in DC is 16. That's why they raised the age a page can serve at. So when the horny old perverts in congress fuck em they won't be charged with statutory rape.
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Foley's Folly Will Be Remembered As the Final Call to Dems
What may finally have broken the back of Republican domination of the House, Senate and, eventually, the White House (and so remembered as the end of the self-inflicted reign of terror) will be the absolutely incredible, egregious, idiot bravado of men and women who have been led to believe they can do no wrong because there is no longer a true moral compass by which to steer. Because Republicans have accepted as "the necessary price for freedom" the relinquishment of freedoms, the throwing over of ideals and the abandonment of our very Constitution, the Party,and by extension, this administration, begins to look a lot like the last days of the Third Reich or a scene from "The Damned."
How could this not have happened? You give your people enough rope and they will most certainly hang themselves - and each other. That it had to go this way is actually tragic, and not occasion for dancing in the streets. The fiasco had to come to an end at some point, the party had to get so rough that even the oldest and most accomodating neighbors would eventually call the cops.
Now those neighbors are plenty pissed - and rightly so. Rightly because it is they who have allowed, with their idiotic party-line voting, for these people: Foley, Hastert, Libby, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, DeLay, etc. (in no particular order), countless crimes without retribution, in exchange for merely saying the same magic words over and over again, until one day the rotten pumpkin breaks open as it now has, and the crud runs out and gets on everyone. The whole gang is overcome by the stench of years of corruption, and the Republican voters, in a fit of self-loathing, are predicted to stay away from the polls - rather than do the American thing and turn out to vote for people of conscience and character, regardless of party. Because this party is over.
The really Big Question which remains is not "Will Dennis Hastert be moved and/or pressured to step down before the elections?" Rather it is "Will Democrats have the balls, when the time comes, to press forward into the vacuum left by a failed and morally bankrupt party and administration, or will they, once again, engage in a daisy chain of aimless milling about while the Great Beast that was once the Loyal Opposition take advantage of the seeming inability of the Dems to do ANYthing when the opportunity falls on top of them?".
The savior of the day is not blind luck nor the bad behavior of idiots but, as always, the failure of good men and women to do nothing. This is the "bending moment" Democrats have been praying and braying for. People acting badly is not enough. It is also required that someone act rightly. This is our razor's edge.
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The Dems still need to take out the flame throwers
Never underestimate your opponent. The Dems still need to take out the flame throwers and scorch the other side of the aisle and then plow it over with salt and lime...just like the GOPs would do in the reverse situation.
Perhaps that's an overstatement but the Dems really need to go for a full take down and not settle for a half-baked approach. The GOP have used dirty tricks since Newt the Adulterer and will continue to until they're stomped on. The dems need to be prepared for this. If they aren't, look for the GOP to pull something out of their ass in the 11th hour and rise from the political dead.
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Schaden-Foley
So, we live in a culture that is obsessed with youth and youthfulness. Our aesthetics are skewed (unnaturally, in my opinion) toward youth, to the exclusion of virtually all else. That someone abuses his station in life to engage in one-handed IMs with 17-year-old boys (they're 16 when they are actually serving as pages, so they must be older afterward) is foolish and annoying. But it is not at all surprising, and it is hardly the worst thing that Congress has done in recent memory.
The shock being manufactured all around on this infinitessimally important story is prurient in itself. It has all the prose and none of the poetry of Humbert Humbert's salivating obsession. Lolita is a Larry, and no one gets killed. Nabokov would have had a good laugh, I'll bet.
We should all take a deep breath and let the self-righteious Republicans do their own mud wrestling.
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What goes around, comes around
I hope the Republicans at least get as much grief over this Foley scandal as they dished out to Clinton over Monica. Even though it would come out of my pocketbook, (we are still paying for the blow-job investigations and will for years)at least a GOP crucifixion is a show I would voluntarily pay to watch.
I think EVERYBODY knew about Foley for years. The pages certainly did. If the Democrats can't turn Congress over on the coattails of this one, they may as well close up shop and give some other party a chance. The Whigs maybe. Ralph Nader. Elvis.
Watching the pundits is finally fun again. Best of all, Foley says he will get out of page-molestors 'rehab' the week before the midterm elections and hold a press conference about why it isn't his fault he was driven to IM sweet filthies to young men whilst waiting in boring old Congress for vote counts. Woo hoo!
Yes Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus.