HorsesAss.Org

Not since the 1919 Black Sox have we seen a more determined effort to throw a game than that of the current Republican leadership. The Keystone Cops routine performed by Hastert, Reynolds and Shimkus seems designed to exacerbate and extend the Foley scandal as much and as long as possible, while the stupidly self-destructive deflections of White House Press Secretary Tony “Naughty Emails” Snow and GOP surrogate blowhard Matt Drudge (blaming Foley’s downfall on “these 16 and 17 year-old beasts”) couldn’t have been more outrageously scripted by the satirical mind of Jesus’ General.

If the GOP wants to ensure a Democratic sweep in November, this is exactly how to do it.

Yet apparently, political ambition knows no bounds, for even in the midst of this unrelenting firestorm, the title of Republican Idiot King continues to draw stiff competition, most notably today from outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a man who has made a hobby of repeatedly dashing his presidential hopes on the rocks of his own political mediocrity.

Speaking at a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan, Frist warned that the Taliban guerrillas will never be defeated militarily, arguing that “you need to bring them into a more transparent type of government.”

“Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer,” Frist said. “Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn’t sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere.”

That’s the Republicans for you: the party of cut-and-run.

It is quite possible that Frist’s assessment is basically correct — that at this point in the conflict, after the Taliban has been allowed to regroup and rearm while President Bush committed our forces to his personal grudge with Saddam Hussein — that a military solution is no longer feasible in Afghanistan… if it ever was. But that’s besides the point.

The point is that the GOP’s number one man in the Senate could possibly be so stunningly, politically tone deaf.

With the leaked National Intelligence Estimate report suggesting that our war in Iraq has only increased the terrorist threat, and with Watergate “hero” Bob Woodward making headlines by finally joining sixty percent of his fellow Americans in understanding the Bush administration to be delusional, disorganized and fundamentally dishonest, this is exactly the wrong time for “Leader” Frist to tell the American people that the greatest military power in the history of the world cannot defeat the ragged extremists who harbored our al-Qaeda attackers.

Unless, of course, your goal is to convince the American people that the Republican Party is simply incapable of leading: incapable of winning the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, incapable of fighting the war on terror… even incapable of what should be the relatively routine task of protecting House pages from being groped by a congressman in a Capitol Hill restroom.

It is hard to believe that this is in fact the Republican leadership’s goal… that the people who have “led” our nation for the past six years really want to lose the November election. But the alternative explanation is even more disturbing.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a link on Rep. Dave Reichert’s official website of him and Honeywell CEO Dave Cote gladhanding it with disgraced Rep. Mark Foley of Florida. But I was kinda busy, and thought I’d wait until today to post on it.

http://www.house.gov/reichert/photogallery/Honeywell.CEO.shtml

But, oh no… when I went back to the link today, the page was gone!

For some strange reason, the Reichert camp would apparently prefer that the public not see photos of the smiling congressman rubbing shoulders with a respected colleague known pedophile. Hmm. I wonder why?

Good thing then that Reichert’s staff is about as competent as the House Republican leadership, for while they deleted the index page they forgot to delete the actual JPEGs from their server. Fortunately, I still had the URLs cached in my browser, so here for the public record are links (here and here) to the two pictures Reichert doesn’t want the public to see.

Or, if you want to save time, here’s the moneyshot:

UPDATE:
Apparently, it wasn’t just the URLs that were stored in my browser’s cache, but the JPEGs themselves. So my apologies to Rep. Reichert’s staff — you did a great job of scrubbing the congressman’s website of these embarrassing photos. You just did it about 12 hours too late.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded the photos to my server (here and here) for your viewing pleasure.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
An enterprising commenter offers the Google cache of Rep. Reichert’s deleted web page.

Oy.

I’ll write more on this later — much more — but I just wanted to go out on a limb and say that if the GOP was not guaranteed of losing control of the House of Representatives before Rep. Mark Foley’s sudden resignation, the scandal erupting in the wake of his departure will almost certainly seal the deal. This scandal is big. Big, big, BIG. The repercussions will be felt nationally… and by that I of course mean locally.

As Josh Marshall has already pointed out over on Talking Points Memo, the Page Boy Scandal has effectively “decapitated” the House Republican leadership.

What do I mean by decapitated? […] Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is in a tight race for reelection and he’s chairman of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign committee. He’s in charge of the effort to keep the majority.

What’s the number one thing on his mind right now? I doubt it’s the NRCC or even his race for reelection. I think Reynolds is, to put it mildly, distracted right now.

How about Denny Hastert and John Boehner? I don’t see them going on shows or making any public appearances for a while. They’ll get asked awkward and possibly unanswerable questions about Foleygate. I’d say they’re out of commission for fundraisers too.

And pretty much any campaign joust or jab at the Democrats from one of these guys, on whatever issue, will be instantly transformed into some sex-with-pages snark. “How can we trust them to protect America when they can’t even protect the summer interns on Capitol Hill.”

[…]

The simple fact is that to the extant campaigning determines the outcomes of elections, the race goes to the side that can remain on the offensive most consistently and define the national debate on its own terms. Foleygate has made it very hard for the leaders of the House GOP to go on the offensive on anything relevant to the election. For political purposes they’re basically out of commission. And they’ve given Democratic challengers in every district around the country a slew of questions with which to pummel GOP incumbents or any Republican, for that matter, who puts his head up on television. This is in the context of an election that was already going very badly for House Republicans. Foleygate has now made them all but politically defenseless in the final stretch of the campaign. And that is a very big deal.

It certainly is.

And as always… it’s the coverup, stupid.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be speaking at Town Hall tomorrow night, and afterwards she’s going to stop by Drinking Liberally and join us on our weekly podcast. We’ll save her a seat next to Congressman Jay Inslee, who will also be joining us for the evening.

Wow. What a jam-packed evening. First, Cindy Sheehan at Town Hall (Tues., Oct. 3, 7:30 PM… tickets only $5 bucks,) then Sheehan and Inslee at Drinking Liberally (8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.) Hope to see you all there.

If the current House Page Scandal isn’t enough to convince you that the GOP leadership values its own political fortunes over the welfare of the nation (let alone the youth placed directly in their charge,) take a look at this article in today’s Washington Post about how our legislative agenda was gerrymandered in the interests of vulnerable incumbents just weeks before the November election.

The effort to achieve such successes went to extraordinary lengths last week, even almost bringing down a major defense policy bill. House and Senate negotiators nearly failed to reach agreement on the defense bill, not because of issues such as the prohibition on torture that held up the bill last year, but because of an issue that had nothing to do with national defense — a measure to clamp down on illegal immigrant gangs.

During a rare news conference, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) publicly challenged Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), saying he would not bring the defense policy bill to the House floor without the gang provision. Asked why Hastert had singled out the gang measure for his stand, one senior House leadership aide pointed to the person standing next to the speaker: freshman Rep. David G. Reichert (R-Wash.), the provision’s author, who is running neck-and-neck with Microsoft executive Darcy Burner.

In the end, Hastert relented, but he offered Reichert a promise to be used on the campaign trail. The gang measure will be one of the first revisited when Congress returns after the election.

Yeah, that’s right. Reichert is so vulnerable that he and Hastert were willing to hold hostage a major defense policy bill in a cynical effort to throw Reichert a campaign bone. Nice priorities.

Of course, the uncomfortably well-biceped Reichert didn’t even have the political muscle to get the bone he so desperately needed, and Hastert doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of delivering on his promise. Regardless of Reichert’s reelection prospects (getting dimmer every day,) Hastert will be out of the Speaker’s chair by the start of the new session, if not the end of the month… and that’s a prediction I invite the folks at (u)SP to tease me about come January.

The Seattle Times David Postman gets invited to all the most exclusive events.

McGavick held a press conference this morning at his Seattle headquarters. It was attended by me and a camera operator from KIRO TV.

Man… you can just feel the buzz building up around the McGavick campaign, huh? A reporter and a cameraman.

Of course, reading Postman’s blog, Mike?™ was probably better off not getting too much coverage. According to McGavick:

“This will be a Congress that will be well-known for it’s failure to make progress and the rank partisanship that it displayed. I mean, we went from having a member of Congress sent to jail, a member of Congress found with bags of money frozen in the freezer, to a congressman now sending X-rated messages to pages, all in one congress.

“And I think the American people have to be saying to themselves, ‘What in the heck is going on back there?'”

And, um… McGavick thinks the American people’s answer to his question is going to be to send even more Republicans to Congress?

“What in the heck is going on back there?” The Republicans are unfit to lead, that’s what. And if McGavick wants to make that his new campaign theme, he should invite me to his press conferences — I’ll be more than glad to give him all the coverage he wants.

It sure is tempting to pour through the numbers from last week’s primary for tell-tale signs of what’s to come in November’s general, but as others have pointed out, past primaries have not proven to be predictive, and it’s impossible to compare our new pick-a-party primary with results from previous open ballots.

But Jim Camden makes some interesting observations in today’s Spokesman-Review by not just exploring the vote totals in Spokane County, but by also looking at the undervotes… those ballots in which voters do not mark any preference in a particular race.

Undervotes are the reason that vote totals for different contests in the same city, county or legislative district don’t match, because nobody ever gets through an election without somebody refusing to vote for him. In most elections, the farther down the ballot one goes, the more likely for casual voters to say, “Forget it!” and stop marking the ballot.

But not in this year’s Spokane County’s Republican primary.

The race with the fewest GOP undervotes was the sheriff’s primary between Ozzie Knezovich and Cal Walker. Of the 56,510 voters who marked a Republican ballot, only 1,794, or 3 percent, left the sheriff’s race blank.

That’s pretty amazing, considering it was second from the bottom of the partisan ballot. By comparison, one voter in 10 didn’t mark a choice in the U.S. Senate race at the top of the ballot featuring Mike McGavick and five other choices, and one in six didn’t fill in the circle for the next race, Cathy McMorris’ uncontested House primary.

Comparing the House primary, which was about average for undervotes, to the sheriff’s primary, there was a steady drop-off in votes throughout the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley and heavy drop-offs in a few traditionally Democratic precincts and in the rural southern precincts of the county. In only a few isolated precincts were there more undervotes in the House race than the sheriff’s race.

OK, so the sheriff’s primary was one of the hottest in the county

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Whatever you do, don’t tune in to “The David Goldstein Show” tonight on 710-KIRO… because I won’t be on. However, feel free tune in to KIRO for the Seahawks game and post-game coverage.

It’s a shame really. There is so much to talk about.

I just had my home heating oil tank topped off with 242 gallons of B30 biodiesel. With the recent pre-election plunge in oil prices, it ended up costing me a few pennies a gallon more than regular oil, but it’s worth the small premium to cut emissions and shift some of my energy consumption to renewable fuels. (For most of the past year, biodiesel has actually been cheaper.)

I know that’s not much of a personal sacrifice, but it’s a start. If you’re interested in shifting to biodiesel, check out Laurelhurst Oil. They also deliver B99, but considering how little oil I use (I last filled my tank in December of 2004) I couldn’t financially justify the $285.00 to put a compatible pump on my furnace. Perhaps when my finances improve.

On Thursday afternoon I put a challenge to my readers: I asked for 34 new donors to Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark via my Act Blue page by the end of quarter fundraising deadline midnight tonight.

I’m pleased to report that we surpassed that target in slightly less than 48 hours.

Over the past two days 35 of you generously donated $3,746, bringing HA’s total since March to an amazing 201 donors and $14,122.38. To put that in perspective, the folks at ActBlue suggest that over the course of a year, a typical blog might expect to raise about one dollar per average daily visit. Together, we’ve already raised over six times that. Wow.

Of course, just because we’ve met our target doesn’t mean we have to stop giving. Right now we’re less than $878.00 shy of the $15,000 mark, and it would be awfully gratifying to reach that plateau by midnight. So to those of you who haven’t yet given, I ask that you please give now. And to those of you who have already given, I thank you so much for your generosity and support.

UPDATE:
Final tally: 204 donors for a total of $14,352.38 raised thus far. Thank you all.

In his new book, “State of Denial,” Bob Woodward describes a White House in disarray, and a deteriorating war in Iraq that is going much worse than the Bush Administration portrays it. But there was also this tidbit I found interesting:

The book also reported that then-CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, grew so concerned about a possible al-Qaida attack in summer 2001 that they abruptly decided to drive straight to the White House to get high-level attention.

Tenet called Rice, then the national-security adviser, from his car to ask to see her in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression.

But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported. Rice, they believed, did not feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for a policy review.

Never before as an administration been so wrong on so many things with such devastating consequences. This is what comes from governing on belief rather than knowledge.

Tonight, KIRO-TV reported on the unfortunate predicament of community of retired ministers, missionaries and lay people who Pastor Joe Fuiten is seeking to evict from the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. This is a story I first broke a couple weeks ago, but have reluctantly sat on since… not because I don’t want to stick it to Pastor Fuiten, but because the residents asked me to hold my fire so that they would have the opportunity to work out a mutually acceptable lease. I even had the residents scheduled to come on KIRO radio with me, but cancelled their appearance after Fuiten’s attorney requested a truce.

Twice the residents extended the deadline, and twice Pastor Fuiten refused to negotiate in good faith. And so today the media truce was canceled, leaving me free to post.

Indeed, rather than negotiating a fair lease, Pastor Fuiten spent much of the past few weeks intimidating and disparaging the residents, threatening a local community newspaper with a libel suit, and personally telling one retired minister that his neighbors were conspiring with “Christian-hating Jews and homosexuals.” (I suppose he was referring to me.)

Of course, Pastor Fuiten has a documented history of duplicity and hate speech. As I’ve previously written, Pastor Fuiten was not only one of the most vocal backers of Referendum 65’s failed effort to repeal our state’s gay civil right’s legislation, he knowingly lied about R-65 to his parishioners. So it comes as no surprise that Pastor Fuiten and his spokespeople would lie about the lease dispute at Cedar Springs.

On KIRO-TV, Fuiten representative Ben Waggoner tried to deflect attention from the Pastor’s role in the controversy, claiming that he was “just one board member” out of many. But that’s not how Pastor Fuiten described his takeover of the camp in a sermon delivered at his local mega-church, the Cedar Park Assembly of God:

One of these days I hope to get in some fields on our north property and to develop the ballfields we already have into first-rate, all-weather surfaced fields. That will take a pile of money, but I personally think it is money well spent.

We are going to get a chance to do some of this work up in the Lake Stevens area. We were looking for land up there, and had found some which we pictured for you in the bulletin, when we were approached by Cedar Springs Camp about hooking up with them on their 153 acre campground just a mile down the road from where we wanted to buy. We have come to an agreement with them. Our board will become the official board of the camp. With that change, we will continue to strengthen the camping program while at the same time accommodating the development of day camps, youth sports, a school, our existing church and more.

And one of the ways he’s going to accommodate all that development is apparently by kicking retirees out of their houses.

I’ll have much more on this story as court documents are filed and become public record… unless of course, Pastor Fuiten changes his mind and chooses to do the right thing. I also intend to delve deeply into Pastor Fuiten’s close relationship with Mike McGavick, on whose exploratory committee he served, and for whom he continues to be a close advisor.

Sound like a threat? Damn right. And don’t think I don’t have the goods to carry it out.

Yesterday I challenged you, my readers, to help me reach a target of 34 new donors to Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark via my Act Blue page by midnight Saturday, and the response so far has been both astounding and disappointing. Astounding, because in the past 24 hours we have raised an additional $2,865.00. Disappointing, because that money has come from only thirteen of you.

I’m now 21 donors shy of my goal of 200, with less than a day and a half to go, and all I’m asking from you is as little as $5.00 if that’s all you can afford. Every new donation is a sign of grassroots support, and helps the candidates raise money and attract independent expenditures during the crucial last weeks of the campaign. I wish money didn’t play such a crucial role in politics, but it does. So if you care about helping the Democrats take control of the House and bring accountability back to the other Washington, then please give now.

Thank you all for your tremendous support.

Sen. Maria Cantwell was one of 34 US Senators to vote against a detainee bill that suspends habeas corpus and grants President Bush the power to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions as he sees fit. Here is her statement on her vote:

“We must win the war on terrorism by being smarter and tougher, and by passing legislation that makes our troops more secure. I believe the bill passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month met this test. The legislation voted on tonight still has critical flaws.

“The legislation voted on by the full Senate will permit the Bush Administration to undermine the Geneva Conventions, broadly expand the definition of enemy combatants, allow for coerced and secret evidence and abandon habeus corpus. For more than three years, our ability to try terrorists has been hampered by the Administration’s refusal to abide by U.S. law. The provisions in this legislation may be once again deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, only further delaying our goal of bringing the terrorists to justice.

“Short-term political goals should never come ahead of America’s long-term success in the war on terror.”

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Mike McGavick says he would have voted for the bill:

“Very simply, this legislation is a necessary piece of the long term struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. Our security depends on our military and intelligence communities possessing intelligence gathering tools, and we are in need of a system to try our terrorist enemies.”

On both moral and pragmatic grounds, Sen. Cantwell defends the basic right to habeas corpus, and opposes the use of torture. McGavick disagrees.

Sometimes, politicians are faced with simple choices. And sometimes, so are voters.

Looks like the Democrats just picked up a House seat:

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

Hmm. Not exactly the kind of behavior one expects from the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. In the words of, um… Rep. Mark Foley:

“For too long our nation has tracked library books better than it has sex offenders. That day is coming to an end,”

It certainly is.

It is unclear whether Florida law allows the GOP to replace Foley on the ballot. In any case, Democratic challenger Tim Mahoney has been running a credible campaign in a district that tilts Republican, but not irreversibly. Thus I think you’d have to say that FL-16 has instantly shifted from a longshot, to a near certain Democratic pick-up.

UPDATE:
“I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent,” Rep. Foley said in a statement.

Hmm. Well, if he really is “deeply sorry,” I’ve got a suggestion for how he can show it.

Rep. Foley is currently sitting on a $2.8 million war chest, much of it left over from a dashed US Senate bid. Typically, that money might go to the NRCC’s campaign coffers, to help elect other Republicans.

But if Rep. Foley really wants to show some contrition, he should donate it all to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

We all have personal failings of one sort or another. At least this way Rep. Foley might achieve some good out of his. So send him an email and encourage Rep. Foley to do the right thing. For the kids.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
ABC News has released a transcript of Rep. Foley’s instant messaging log. Oh my. Shades of Jim West.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
It turns out that the Republican House leadership knew almost a year ago that Foley was having sex talk with underage pages, and yet they let him remain as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen’s parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, “We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem,” a reference to the House’s Republican leaders.

Um… when we talk about the lack of oversight in Congress, this is the type of shit we’re referring to. The GOP leadership has totally lost its compass.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
This has just become a HUGE scandal. Expect to see calls for Speaker Hastert’s resignation. This is inexcusable.