I worry for democracy when people begin ceasing to care how power is gained. And no, I’m not talking about republicans.

The Mark Foley scandal is horrible, the Iraq occupation is horrific, the denial of our basic liberties is despicable and the slow movement towards fascism is deplorable. But what does it all matter if the underlying ideology that supports all this isn’t brought into public awareness and criticised?

What does it mean when democrats are incapable of winning the minds of the public on the basis of their ideas and instead must wait till republicans so screw up and the public simply considers the other choice as being “can’t do much worse”? 

Focusing on gaining “control” of congress by any means necessary is exactly the type of thinking that democrats ascribe to the republicans and yet they do it themselves. Is it any wonder that the two parties are considered by many to be two sides of the same coin?

THIS is a lousy way to win back the House? Why?

Today, I watched Fox/Pravda until my stomach turned.  They were CLEARLY trying on a “news” format to try to position it that the Republicans weren’t in the hole they are in, that the Democrats were too shrill on Foleygate, and it was nothing but the usual Fox propaganda.

Then, on CNN, Cong. Patrick McHenry (the opposite of Patrick Henry) was asked by Wolf Blitzer if he had ANY proof of the allegations he was tossing around, that the Dems knew about Foley and waited to use it on the GOP. McHenry responded “Do you have any proof they DIDN’T?”

Nope. I also don’t have any proof that a giant invisible Snoopy float isn’t magically affecting the Brazilian sugar crop.

Only a Hondo or a Big Al would buy into such a stupid (and despicable) argument.  Charlie Wrangel was chuckling trying to keep from leaping TOO quick to land a sleep-inducing hay-maker!

Even that spineless, ball-less shill Blitzer is finally growing a set.  As the GOP comes up with wilder and wilder ways to try to spin this Foley mess, it’s becoming TRULY bizarre.  Where is the Congressman who will stand up and say “Hey, we screwed up BIG time.  We’ll get rid of our leaders who didn’t do the right thing, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”  Dead silence.

All the Dems need is a TV ad that says: “Had enough yet?”

The Foley scandel is now being used as a distraction from the real issues.
War, Constitutional Rights, and fiscal responsability.

This election hasn’t turned yet.
A formidable opponent has not yet been defeated.
Don’t count your chickens, guard the henhouse….

First of The Bill of Rights:  “Congress [and the Executive & Judicial
Branches] shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion…”  But George W. Bush, America’s first religious, aka
Republican, Party & all other “wolves in sheepskin” who cluelessly
wish to theocratize/annihilate our Democracy _ “the last best hope
of earth” - are both ignorant & contmptuous of this foremost
guarantee of freedom of conscience.  While exploiting “the opium
of the people” they also destroy moral values, science, reason,
common sense and what was once America’s world respect &
proud heritage.  “The first requisite of the happiness of the
people is the abolition of religion” (from a 19th c. descendant of a
a long line of rabbis; and 21st c. America surely needs his advice).

George Orwell did the definitive take on all this puritanical sexual repression crap in his novel 1984. In one scene he has Julia, Winston Smith’s paramour, describe “sex gone sour,” the bottled up natural joy that Big Brother forces underground so that all the frustration results in fuming fascists “waving flags and marching up and down.”

Religious puritanical sexual repression has created more perverts than tolerance and openness ever have or ever will. “Values America” has once again become a sick adolescent joke. Too bad for all the dead and maimed Iraqis, Afghans, and American GIs. Letting these corrupt Republican creeps into power has to rank as the stupidest thing Americans have ever done.

Yes, we the people didn’t invent this Foley folly, it was handed to us.  And it’s not our fault that what he did just happens to evoke universal outrage.  And yes they can blame everything on us liberals and even claim that it was our loosy-goosy society that made them do it, Foley his child molesting and Hastert & accomplices their subsequent cover-up.  None of their shananigans will work, though.  Not this time.  That’s because we’re down to what’s fundamental now, and what could be more fundamental than the protection of one’s child from sexual predators.  It’s a survival thing, no doubt.   

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I fully agree, they are power-mad and they have a program.  The problem is that the program is for them, not for the country or the American people.
For those who imagine the world if filled with “loving mommies and daddies, they had better take a good look into the eyes of Bush and Cheney—remember Putin?  Behind those Republican eyeballs are dollar bills, huge stacks of dollar bills, tax-free, customs free, and morality free.

I don’t care WHAT it takes to get these bastards out of power.

They have totally corrupted our government, poisoned our environment, sold our economic power abroad, reintroduced racism as a political concept, and voted to end our sacred liberties.

If it takes a sex scandal to anger the voters enough to get rid of them, so be it.

Is it as important as the PROOF that Rice lied under oath? Or that Mad King George ignored and DESTROYED anyone who showed up with facts that proved the Iraq invasion was unjustified and doomed to failure? Or that George Allen was and still is a racist and deserves to be tossed from the Senate? Or that for the FIRST time more of our money is going off-shore to pay off interest than is coming in from foreign investments? Or that 800 years of Habeas Corpus has been abandoned to the discretionary judgement of Mad King George and his band of Merrie Fascists?

No, it is NOT as important as all that.  But if it’s the match that starts the fire that cleanses us of all this filth, I’m all for it!

It reveals, as Ellen says, the pure, total and perfect corruption of the ruling Republicans.  Power comes first, last, always.

OK, it IS more important than whether or not Roger Clemens and Andy Petite used steroids or not.