<p>You lquoted my intro to the NYT piece: “Some work for gay-bashing congressman but the congressman themselves are aware of the aides’ orientation and accept it - weird!”</p>
<p>and said: "I wish people would stop falling for the big lie that being against gay marriage = gay bashing. "</p>
<p>The congressmen who hired the gay aides aren’t described in the article as against gay marriage, but as against gays themselves: one congressman boss regularly referred to gays as “sodomites.”</p>
<p>The CNN-Money article I linked earlier discusses more than one way to deal with Social Security deficits. Withholding even more of our tax dollars isn’t the only answer. As for the Clinton years, I believe many experts attribute that surplus to the stock market bubble and tech high-flyers of the 1990’s.</p>
<p>Kluge, he who first uses “uh” is usually the loser in these online exchanges. It just makes you look like one of those teenagers you aspire to be above.</p>
<p>I hope that some day you will tire of Being Hit on the Head Lessons…and just open your little mind to a few golden shafts of light. Anyway, here’s the Congressional Budget Office assessment, which is what anyone who knows anything about federal spending uses to monitor the budget, since 1974. The extract bears careful reading (addressing this to those other than Kluge, who won’t bother), but all the data follows, including the conclusion that there was a projected deficit for fiscal 2000, just as there had been actual deficits in prior years. And that all “surpluses” were projections…guestimates…for the out years.</p>
<p>This gem at the end of the abstract is particularly pertinent:
Uh…I think that’s the pre-9/11 Clinton administration they’re talking about. I wonder if that Clinton-controlled OMB report you cited might just have been thrown out there …in order to help AlGore get elected. Naaaah. </p>
<p>DRJ4’s 2003 Chart from the (Republican-controlled) House: <a href=“http://www.house.gov/budget/msrslide4bgt071703.pdf[/url]”>http://www.house.gov/budget/msrslide4bgt071703.pdf</a>
While I have to admit that there’ a bad, bad part of me that wants to draw Driver out to continue to explain to us all how there actually wasn’t a budget surplus during the Clinton Administration, I kind of doubt that there’s anyone - even the most blog-impacted righties here on CC - who are similarly afflicted with that particular delusion. So, to get back on topic: who are the Republicans blaming for l’affaire Foley today?</p>
<p>I personally find it ironic that the party that had the hullabulu of the year making Clinton out to be morally bankrupt for having relations with a legal (though mentally, eh?) woman call the Democrats big meanies for using the Foley incident for all it’s worth. Oral sex with consenting adults= impeachment, but making lewd advances on young kids = a quiet, firm talk behind closed doors and a friendly election? Please. </p>
<p>Foley needs to stop blaming everyone and everything else for his problems and step up and take responsibility. He sent some flirtacious emails to an technically legal page. He didn’t propose a gettogether at a motel, he didn’t have cybersex with him, honestly with some good spin control he could have survived this almost ok (I’m not saying he’s not a perv, because he is). Insted he’s standing a corner wailing about how all the big kids are picking on him. As is the rest of his party. Grow up and take it like a man, seriously</p>
<p>fap: Dornan is a jerk, as everyone knows. Naturally they would use him as an example, hoping readers will conclude that all Republicans are like that (as some readers seem to have done). :)</p>
<p>HH: I certainly agree with you that it would be wrong to conclude that most Republicans hate homosexuals. Perhaps even most Republicans are tolerant. But one reason I could never be a Republican is that it shelters bigots. It has become a home to the gay haters. I don’t think there is a Democratic member of Congress that calls homosexuals names. But the Republican party looks the other way (to capture votes) instead of challenging bigotry.</p>
<p>What is the point of your comment #1089? You might as well call the Republican leadership the equivalent of Nazis or KKKlansmen and, in fact, you did in substance if not by name.</p>
<p>Well, logo–
probably some pretty shady characters! I just have a special resentment in my heart for the people who hold back history via intolerance. Demos may be drunks or womanizers or (like Rostenkoski) steal postage stamps. But they generally don’t campaign to hate and deny rights to people as a group. </p>
<p>Again, most Republicans don’t. But they manage to hold their noses and let the stink of bigotry in their midst.</p>
<p>I could cite examples of Democrats who make racist statements that are tolerated by the Democratic Party but that doesn’t mean the Party itself has institutionalized bigotry. When you engage in rhetoric like your last comments, you make it much more difficult to recognize real institutionalized bigotry such as existed under the Nazis and other evil regimes.</p>
<p>A gay ex-GOP staffer would lay the party’s bigotry at the door of the President instead of the party itself. A quote from the Newsweek story about GOP gays:</p>
<p>““So, despite the president saying “be respectful” about the marriage debate, it doesn’t mean a damn. He knowingly unleashed these ugly, mean-spirited homophobic forces within elements of the national Republican Party. Worse, he resurrected the now uncontrollable theocratic armies of religiously intolerant political “bullies” (to quote ex-Majority Leader Dick Armey) which the president proudly, and in the tradition of his father, had once muzzled when he launched his compassionate conservatism platform in 2000. The responsibility for any bull’s-eye on gays and lesbians today falls very near the doorstep of the president.””</p>
<p>In addition, there is evidence on this very thread that rebuts your insistence that Democrats are loyal advocates for gays. David Corn, a staunch defender of the Democratic Party, publicly embraced a gay witch hunt … but only if the targets are gay Republicans. Targeting people solely because they are conservative gays is the heighth of bigotry but it is Democrats - not Republicans - who are engineering this hateful railroad.</p>
<p>DRJ, with all due respect, it is the way far left “progressives” who are anti-Israel, not mainstream Democrats. The Democratic Underground and Kos are filled with such people, but they do not in any way represent the mainstream Democratic party interests. Cynthia McKinney was not re-elected, nor will other Democratic candidates who share her views, as Jews have traditionally (although not exclusively) been strong Dem supporters. </p>
<p>Even Democrats who are considered “left” by DNC standards, like Russ Feingold, are very pro-Israel. They continue to be 100% opposed to Bush’s “strategy” in Iraq, or the administration’s foreign policy blunders in general, but are, and have always been, supportive of a strong Israel.</p>
<p>Farawayplaces,
Just because someone thinks that homosexual practices are wrong doesn’t mean that he hates those who commit them. You can think that a persons actions are wrong without hating them, can’t you? I know from reading the playbook that you’re supposed to vilify those who disagree with you to try to make them look bad, or better yet, accuse them of having latent homosexual tendencies, but that’s nothing more than dishonest rhetoric.</p>
<p>It just boggles my mind that anyone can be judge and jury and “think homosexual practices are wrong.” Wow. What if you had a child who was a homosexual–methinks like my neighbor, you would have a “battlefield conversion.”</p>
<p>What does it satisfy in people to moralize and judge like that? Why scold and frown upon activity that doesn’t hurt anyone? </p>
<p>And of course, as the Newsweek article says, Bush’s sudden desire to pursue the anti-gay marriage amendment was no more than a venal attempt to satisfy the right wing bigots whom his party shelters because it needs the vote. Meanwhile, health care and education are not addressed.</p>
<p>My point is, of course, that there are probably bigots and hypocrites in both parties. But <em>as a party</em> the Dems do not pursue a “witch hunt” agenda–which is all the marriage amendment was about–just reminding people how awful gays are and how <em>different</em> they are from us. Encouraging people to think that they are a threat to our way of life!</p>
<p>If I had a child who practiced homosexuality I would still love him, but it wouldn’t make me see the behavior any differently. If my child were cheating on tests or robbing banks it wouldn’t make me change my opinion of that behavior either.</p>
<p>Is there nothing that you consider to be wrong, farawayplaces? If so, what gives you the right to make such a decision?</p>
<p>I also think that it is wrong of people to try to muzzle the voices of former homosexuals and those who have helped them come out of that lifestyle and thereby keep helpful information from those who might benefit from it.</p>
<p>The marriage amendment was in response to those who were trying to foist homosexual marriage on the country.</p>