MIGHT AS WELL GO WITH THE FLOW: FOLEY, FOLEY, FOLEY

I know you don't know anyone but me who's lived in Afghanistan, one of the most exotic places on earth. And we have young Americans being killed over there and we're losing a war there. I thought about the story I wrote for two days. But all anyone wants to talk about is Foley and the cover-up. The day the cover-up broke Jane linked to 79 stories on DWT mentioning Foley over the last year; there are a lot more now. My natural tendency is to move on. But a few things keep me on the story: it's all anyone wants to read about-- scary considering the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate proving Bush and his crew systematically lied to us for years about Iraq-- as well as Woodward's shocking book and the individual campaigns in 400-plus House districts, etc. Another is that we're trying to raise the money to put our "Have You Had Enough?" radio spots on the air and every time I write another piece about the Foley cover-up, people contribute. That's a huge incentive. (An aside: I just heard from someone in Oregon that Carol Voisin's campaign against her extreme right wing rubber stamp opponent, Gary Walden, is making their own TV spots to run with our song.) And then there's my old boss Abby at KSAN. I'll never forget her warning to the djs that by the time we were absolutely sick of a song, having played it so many times, that that was the very first time anyone in our audience had actually caught it. For us it was the end; for them it was the beginning. Yesterday Fox "News" ran pictures of Foley several times saying he was a Democrat. The kind of low-information viewers of Fox, rubes who believe it when their pastor tells them that you go to hell if you vote for a Democrat, will either believe it or get confused and think: "A pox on both their houses; politicians of both parties are perverts." That's part of the GOP strategy.


The GOP have a strategy? Oh yes. And it goes beyond just throwing Foley (or even Hastert) to the dogs. First and foremost, they want to make absolutely certain-- and their mass media allies are helping them here-- that this is strictly about The Internets and all them new fangled tubes. No one is talking about what Foley was actually up to: grooming young boys for the future, groping young boys, bring them over for alcohol and sex parties, sleeping with them; all this stuff is in the e-mails and IMs. That is stuff the Republican Party would not soon recover from in terms of their jittery churchy base.

Already today endangered GOP Congressman Tom Reynolds fired Kirk Fordham, his closeted gay Chief of Staff-- who he had lent back to Foley to help engineer the cover-up when this thing started breaking. The Republicans hope to use the gay schnooks among them as scapegoats-- and there are plenty to use. But, in the end, the guilty parties are Hastert, Reynolds, Boehner, Shimcus, probably DeLay (but who cares?) and, most important, the pervasive Republican Culture of Corruption that makes these people think they can get away with anything. But the GOP will do their best (worst) to turn this into an anti-gay jihad. It's already started out on the fringes of the Jesus Camp Republican mob.


This scandal-- as well as the unmasking of Bush as a serial liar-- has sent Republican chances of holding on to power in Congress into an unprecedented downward spiral. I've been predicting all along that the Democrats would pick up between 30 and 50 House seats. The 50 number is looking more and more realistic by the day.

The religionist part of the coalition is trying to save the day by turning the scandal and cover-up into an anti-gay thing and blame it on... Democrats for being tolerant. The fake pastors employed by the GOP to confuse Christians have been busy as little beavers this week. "Homosexuality, like abortion and contraception, denigrates the intrinsic dignity of and respect for human life... Foley's actions were that of homosexual predator, not a pedophile. Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children. This creates a cycle of violence and disordered behavior that creates future generations of abusers and predators," brays Jason Jones of Human Life International, a Republican front group.

Meanwhile, on October 3 Wayne Madsen reports that among the Republicans who knew Foley had an active hankering for young males and covered for him anyway was none other than the First-Brother, eager to protect Republican seats in November (instead of children whose parents entrusted the government to protect).

And it isn't only Madsen that has been reporting some bizarre goings-on among Republicans trying to protect their electoral asses instead of the young boys'. Republican propagandist Robert Novak reported this morning that even after House GOP leaders knew that Foley had been writing sexual e-mails to teenage boy pages, they were still urging him to run for re-election. "A member of the House leadership told me that Foley, under continuous political pressure because of his sexual orientation, was considering not seeking a seventh term this year but that Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), talked him into running." I wonder if Reynolds will run in 2008 and try to get his seat back.


UPDATE: HASTERT IS DEAD MEAT

The most blatantly and aggressively homophobic member of the House Republican leadership team, Roy Blunt, has launched a campaign to throw Hastert under the bus and replace him with... Roy Blunt. Blunt, who had earlier this year thrown an hysterical temper tantrum when Hastert tried to appoint another Republican closet case to take over for DeLay (David Dreier, who no one has ever accused of being a child predator, just a self-loathing homosexual Republican), is trying to round up the votes he needs to catapult over Boehner. Boehner had beaten him for the Majority Leader job and is next in line but has been tarred by the Foley scandal as well. Meanwhile the new MSNBC poll is asking Should Dennis Hastert Resign?. I don't know if Blunt is just clogging the Internet tubes with his votes but last time I looked 68% said he should resign. 18% didn't agree. One of that 18% is Pus Limbaugh, who says it was all a set-up; totally lost his mind that one.

Longtime Hastert ally and bumbling somewhat senile idiot, Ray LaHood (R-IL), didn't do his pal Hastert any good today on CNN, admitting that it's "obvious" congressmen can't be trusted around 16 year old pages!

But the worst news of all came just a few minutes ago when Tom Reynold's now fired (and now out of the closet) chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, admits that he personally told Hastert that Foley was up to no good. Let's see... Hastert denied remembering that Boehner and Reynolds each told him on different occasions... I bet he won't remember that Fordham told him too!