Party of Family Values: Foley Resigns

[sjmom2329]

<p>

@kluge

It’s just that it wouldn’t make any sense for you to spend it on a highway in Fresno, or research into sickle cell anemia, or any of a million other things that may not touch your life personally, but which need to be paid for anyway.

The last time I checked, Republicans didn’t have any problem paying taxes for things like roads and research. It’s just that I don’t want to give any elected official a blank check. Clearly, the federal government should collect taxes and fund projects for the public good. But, even though the current administration is not as fiscally conservative as I’d like, Republicans are still more likely to cut taxes where possible. When was the last time a Democrat returned taxpayer money?</p>

<p>In Massachusetts, there was a vote to reduce the tax rate to 5%, but only the Republican candidate has promised to do so. None of the Democratic candidates could even agree to do what the voters mandated.</p>

<p>

Today, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey called on the House of Representatives to honor the will of the voters and immediately roll back the state income tax to 5 percent. In 2000, Massachusetts voters went to the ballot and by a 2-1 margin demanded an end to the “temporary” income tax that has been in place since 1989. </p>

<p>Since 2002, Massachusetts taxpayers have sent $2 billion more to Beacon Hill than they would have had they paid at the 5 percent rate. Tom Reilly and Chris Gabrieli supported the higher tax rate but are now claiming to support the rollback because they are candidates for governor. Deval Patrick is the only Democrat in the race not to change his position on the rollback; he opposes tax relief and wants to increase taxes and state spending.

<a href=“http://www.healeycommittee.com/entries/2006/04/healey_and_hillman_call_for_ta.html[/url]”>http://www.healeycommittee.com/entries/2006/04/healey_and_hillman_call_for_ta.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[SuNa]

<p>Republicans cut taxes on the rich, borrow money and run up the deficit. I like balanced budgets even if it means more taxes.</p>

[conyat]

<p>“If Foley had been able to be a gay man in that world he put himself in, I wonder if all this would have happened”</p>

<p>My guess is, yes. This kind of behavior isn’t really about sex; it’s about power and control. No one really has to hide being hetero in our culture…and there isn’t exactly a scarcity of hetero people preying on children and teenagers.</p>

[TheDad]

<p>When was the last time the federal budget had a surplus that resulted in the deficit diminishing?</p>

<p>ZM, you PM box is full.</p>

[TheDad]

<p>Another conspiracy theory destroyed, another line of defense shattered. Fall back, fall back. Form up hollow square, eyes front…and ignore the stench behind you that you’re defending.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/100506/news2.html[/url]”>http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/100506/news2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

Longtime Republican was source of e-mails</p>

<p>By Alexander Bolton</p>

<p>The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.</p>

<p>That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.</p>

<p>The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.</p>

<p>But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.

</p>

<p>More at the link. </p>

<p>Okay, Bush defenders and GOP robots: put your heads together and come up with another Dem-trashing theory but do it quickly before that line of defense is overrun.</p>

[browninfall]

<p>Daddy</p>

<p>Come on, this one is too easy. Mike Rogers is the source. He said prior to the 2004 election that President Bush was getting the internment camps ready in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. Now you may believe that President Bush was doing that, but most of us realize that you have to be a Michael Moore moonbat to think so.</p>

<p>You want to believe him, go ahead. I prefer to wait to hear from someone who’s playing with 52 cards.</p>

[Strick11]

<p>Sorry, I’ve missed a lot of posts while I went to my son’s football game. Forgive me if I don’t try to catch up. Lots of stuff going on, though.</p>

<p>kludge, you seem convinced that the blog StopSexPredators is real. There are at least two bloggers, one of whom I trust implicitly, who point out major discrepancies in the posts there. As if it were all just a set up. Which, given the blog was created in July, suggests that someone knew what was going on since at least then.</p>

<p>One has major issues with the fact that this blog basically hit the jackpot on post 6. And the first 5 posts seem, well, like they were cobbled out of wikipedia. Sort of the way a kid plagerizes a paper out of the encyclopedia.</p>

<p>The other takes issue with the way that first the interns found this unknown, no hit blog that’s not linked to by any other internet site. Then the Daily Kos picked up on the story from this same unknown, no hit blog unlinked blog in about 12 minutes. And the poster with the amazing vanishing insight. That one’s cute. Oh, and then ABC got their scoop, too. Excellent coordination and connections for such a new blog. Sort of like the blog itself was irrelevant to what was happening.</p>

<p>You can find the story at the blog I trust implicitly and visit daily is here: <a href=“http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/10/i_smell_a_rat.html[/url]”>http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/10/i_smell_a_rat.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Lots of inconsistencies with the story ID there.</p>

<p>The other blog, whose story appears to be the kind of thing you can check for yourself, is here: <a href=“http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/10/the-bogus-blog-behind-foleys-fall.php[/url]”>http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/10/the-bogus-blog-behind-foleys-fall.php&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Sorry, I don’t know these guys. Man, they rip this faux blog to pieces.</p>

<p>BTW, itsn’t it odd how ABC accidently revealed that the page who got the really terrible IMs was 18 at the time. ABC says that there were more before he turned 18. Haven’t shared the ones he got earlier yet though, not that I know of.</p>

<p>Of course the weirdest thing of all is what we’re being told about Congressman Gerry Studds (no, that has to be made up), who had sex with a male underage page in 1983. Democrat, Massachusetts. He was reprimanded, but the vote to censure him failed when 79 Democrats voted against it. That’s just a reprimand for having sex, no censure, no resignation, no threat of criminal charges. The man continued serving in Congress until 1996.</p>

<p>No double standard on this, is there. However you complain about how slowly the Republicans reacted, at least they pretended to try.</p>

<p>As for the staffer going to Hasert’s staff in 2004, with what evidence? I haven’t see the details. Did they contain enough that they discussed it with Hasert or were they more things like the relatively ambiguous emails that never rose to that level?</p>

[Strick11]

<p>I see that ABC has posted a pdf (typed in Word?) of a couple IMs between their now identified page and Foley that took place a couple of weeks before the page turned 18. Some IMs were even earlier it appears now.</p>

[DRJ4]

<p>Just curious. Does [The</a> List](<a href=“http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/10/the_list_of_gay.php]The”>http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/10/the_list_of_gay.php) remind anyone of McCarthyism?</p>

[DRJ4]

<p>Several familiar names appear in this July 2004 version of The List in which alleged gays who opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment were targeted for “outing”:

@Outed Hill staffer condemns campaign

</p>

<p>The voicemail came on a Thursday afternoon, in between busy committee meetings and at the end of a hectic week for Senate staffer Jonathan Tolman. It was a confusing message — the demands vague, the voice unidentified and unrecognizable. The call had asked for “some updates” for an article involving Tolman, the staffer recalled, and left a number. Tolman simply assumed the caller wanted a revised version of a report on environmental policies he authored while working for a downtown Washington thinktank. As it turned out, that wasn’t the article in question. Tolman, a senior aide for the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, chaired by conservative Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, was about to become the first Capitol Hill staffer publicly outed through a campaign led by two activists. </p>

<hr>

<p>Tolman said he questioned the morality of the outing campaign. “The agenda behind this outing seems to be kind of fascist. It says to me: Because you don’t subscribe to our personal idea, because you don’t choose to push sexual politics over environmental, we’re going to punish you. “The senator knows I’m gay and it’s not changing his position and he’s not firing me. So my question to them is: Are you going to let it drop?” </p>

<p>Not likely, say Mike Rogers and John Aravosis, the two men loosely heading an ongoing outing campaign on the Hill. </p>

<hr>

<p>In addition to Tolman, Rogers and Aravosis, working in tandem but not together, claimed in the last week to have outed via the Web Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida.</p>

<hr>

<p>Despite Foley’s FMA opposition, Aravosis purported to out Foley as well, taking him to task for supporting President Bush, who endorsed the measure late last winter. Labeling Foley as “our latest closeted gay hypocrite,” Aravosis said Foley made the list for putting politics ahead of his own community by “whoring for an anti-gay president.” Rumors that Foley is gay had long circulated within the Beltway, and local newspapers in South Florida — including the Express Gay News and an alternative newsweekly — cited his long-term relationship with a Palm Beach physician.</p>

<p>Foley responded to the reports by initiating a telephone press conference among non-gay Florida media and called discussion about his sexual orientation “revolting.” He declined at that time to answer questions about his sexual orientation and subsequently abandoned his bid for the Senate, citing concerns over his father’s health. </p>

<p>Aravosis said he obtained the latest information about the five-term congressman from Foley’s former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham. Fordham, who is gay, headed up fund-raising efforts for Foley’s aborted Senate campaign and is now the finance director for one of the remaining GOP primary candidates in that race: Mel Martinez, George W. Bush’s former Housing & Urban Development secretary. Martinez has come out in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

<a href=“http://www.expressgaynews.com/2004/7-9/news/national/outed.cfm[/url]”>http://www.expressgaynews.com/2004/7-9/news/national/outed.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Dadguy]

<p>FS, I think you are on to something there. But I think there might be a purge of gays within the GOP on Capitol Hill.</p>

<p>I think the Speaker should just try to do the best mea culpa with the most sincerity he can fake. It may be saitisfying to pin down the source of the IMs and play a round of “who knew what when” but it’s Foley’s actions that resonate. The GOP needs to shorten the news cycle on this. Just own up to what you have to and then keep mum. “I’ve said all there is to say on the matter”</p>

[kluge]

<p>Strick, I agree. The Stopsexpredators blog certainly seems suspicious. I think you should stay on it, and encourage the bloggers you follow to focus on that and dig as deep as possible. For as long as possible. Even though nothing really substantive came up on that blog - it never posted the IM’s which ABC still seems to have been the first media outlet to have seen - only good can come of bringing it up as often as possible. Honestly!</p>

[mini]

<p>“I think the Speaker should just try to do the best mea culpa with the most sincerity he can fake.”</p>

<p>I still have yet to confirm information that Hastert is gay. The Democrats seem to be particularly tightlipped about this, perhaps holding it for a surprise later in the month. Soros may have had an investigator tailing the Speaker for the past 18 months. We do know Hastert had private closed-door meetings with gay members of the PFV, and what took place at those meeting has never been revealed. Like Foley before last week, the Speaker has never confirmed his sexual orientation. Perhaps after the first leg of the Foley scandal begins to wind down, we’ll know more.</p>

<p>Or perhaps not.</p>

[Dadguy]

<p>No, I mean he should say that he is sorry that these issue with Foley werem’t addressed sooner and that he is taking steps to rectify the situation. Something like that. The sooner he does that, the better chance of shortening the news cycle on this.</p>

[Strick11]

<p>Sorry, kludge, a blog created by people who seemed to have learned their propaganda skills from Hezbollah isn’t much interest to me.</p>

<p>I just dropped by to say something in response to something someone said earlier, though. I seem to recall someone claiming this was not about being gay, it was about pedophilia.</p>

<p>I was just reading something I normally wouldn’t admit to and generally avoid, but it answered that nagging doubt I’ve had about part of this from the beginning. You see, the author made the very logical point that Foley can’t really be considered a pedophile. He’s most certainly not, as at least one Democrat running for office claimed in an ad created with unseemly speed after the news, a child molester.</p>

<p>The basic argument is pretty simple. Someone who has sex with a 16 or 17 year old, has commited pedophilia, they’ve commited statuory rape. It’s a quibble, they’re both disgusting and against the law, but pedophilia has a much stronger negative connotation. It’s the kind of thing you claim against someone when you’re deliberately trying to smear them as deeply as you can. You know what I mean. The really dirty political trick, thing.</p>

<p>Anyway, the law recognizes that teen agers are still not able to make adult decisions regarding sex, but views sex with them very differently than the way it views true pedophilia. Not that I’ve seen any evidence that Foley had sex with any page, of course.</p>

<p>To paraphrase the author I was reading, if you found Britney Spears attractive at 17 in that Catholic school girl outfit in the “…Baby One More Time” video, you need to exercise the strictest self control, but you don’t need to check yourself into a clinic.</p>

<p>If this argument, this statement of fact really, doesn’t help you, it helps me. I was troubled by the continued, unfair conflagration of gayness with pedophilia. This false accusation of pedophilia against a gay man just adds fuel to that unfortunately fire.</p>

[mini]

<p>“No, I mean he should say that he is sorry that these issue with Foley werem’t addressed sooner and that he is taking steps to rectify the situation. Something like that. The sooner he does that, the better chance of shortening the news cycle on this.”</p>

<p>Not if there is more yet to come out. ;)</p>

[zoosermom]

<p>TheDad, I’ve cleaned out my PM box.</p>

<p>I have to say that the outing of the young man’s name made me really uncomfortable. I’m still turning that over in my head, but I think that was icky by the blogger and negligent by ABC.</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>yes it was</p>

<p>and Foley, and Hastert, and Alexander, and Reynolds…they are negligent as well</p>

[barrons]

<p>Well, it seems that the main victim was of legal age at the time.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.drudgereport.com/flashmfa.htm[/url]”>http://www.drudgereport.com/flashmfa.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[citygirlsmom]

<p>guess that makes it all okay then, huh barrons…</p>

<p>from Drudge</p>

<p>"A network source explains, messages with the young man and disgraced former Congressman Foley took place before and after the 18th birthday. "</p>