Winning the War One New Slogan at a Time.

Credit goes to GSD at Firedoglake for the title. And to quote Christy Hardin Smith,

As for George Bush, well he'd like you to forget that the buck stops anywhere near him ever. ThinkProgress has put together a great clip compendium from the Bush Administration statements this past weekend and from this morning (from Dan Bartlett's truthiness appearance on CBS) that the Bush Administration has "never been a stay the course strategy." HA!

Sheesh. I predict that the word "benchmarks" will be the next term the administration will proclaim it never said. I don't know what it means when an administration is so self-delusional, but it can't be good.

I was thinking of commenting on Rush Limbaugh's commentary on Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease but I want to keep my dinner down.

Don't Know If There Are Any Dots To Connect But...

... here's some dates/places where a few characters in the Mark Foley saga have spent time at lobbyist expense from January 2000 through December 2005 (courtesy of American Public Media).

• J. Dennis Hastert
  • Ted Van Der Meid
  • Scott Palmer
  • Michael Stokke
  • Ron Bonjean
• John Shimkus
• Thomas Reynolds
• Rodney Alexander
  • Royal Alexander
• Mark Foley
  • Kirk Fordham
• Jim Kolbe

If you click on the link for the sponsor of any given junket, you can see which Congresscritters/staffers were in attendence. I'm thinking certain topics may have come up in the hotel lounge...

I Wish I Was Making This Up

From Firedoglake

Rush Limbaugh re-victimized Mark Foley's teenage victim today by using his name publicly, as did Matt Drudge. (Both Roger Simon and InstaCracker made sure the identity was widely disseminated by linking to the no-name wingnut blogger to whom the original dirty work was tasked.) Because it's not enough that their leaders are beating off online during national security votes, or that the GOP spent years covering the whole thing up — no, no they must do their part to harass, bully and intimidate anyone who threatens their authoritarian cult, even the young victims of sexual predators. Especially if there might be other kids thinking of stepping forward with similar stories (as three more now have). It's the manly thing to do, after all.

Listen to this on an empty stomach. (via Crooks and Liars).

Yeah, these brainiac high school juniors from politically connected Republican families are now being portrayed as a bunch of sleaze bags who "egged on" a 50-something Congressman. If I was the parent of a page (or former page) I'd be even more pissed than I already am. These Republican apologists simply have no shame. The pages will probably end up not mentioning their Congressional Page service on their resumes simply to avoid being asked a lot of stupid questions by moronic dittoheads. Disgusting isn't a strong enough word. Puketastic comes closer.

Drudge on Foley: Blame the Victims - Not the Louse in the House

This may be an all time low for Republican apologists. Crooks and Liars has the audio of Matt Drudge saying this:

And if anything, these kids are less innocent — these 16 and 17 year-old beasts…and I've seen what they're doing on YouTube and I've seen what they're doing all over the internet — oh yeah — you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on! The kids are trying to get this out of him. We haven't got the whole story on this.

Well, I happen to have a son who is a high school sophomore who would be eligible to be a Congressional page next year. To get an idea of what one of these "beasts" look like, you can check out the next to last photo on this page. I'm sure his parents appreciated Mr. Drudge's characterization of Congressional pages. Sheesh. How low can you go?

Update: According to Wikipedia, I learned tonight that lice are also known as "fly babies". Seems like a good term for Boehner, Hastert, et al.

Speaking of Hastert, Glenn Greenwald is now reporting...

Drudge just put up a screaming headline, complete with the whole melodramatic multi-color siren bit, which reads:


WASHINGTON TIMES ON TUESDAY WILL CALL FOR SPEAKER HASTERT'S RESIGNATION, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING... 'House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once' -- Washington Times, October 3, 2006...


If Drudge (who last night was blaming the 16-year-old pages for Foley's conduct) and The Washington Times are now on the "Fire Hastert" train, it's hard to see him lasting more than a week. I actually think the best thing that could happen for Republicans would be for Hastert to resign sooner rather than later, although they then would be faced with the very serious problem that the next in line, Rep. Boehner, is quite implicated in all of this also. It seems like a safe bet that while the top level of the GOP House leadership is focused on saving themselves, the next level down is focused on which new jobs will be up for grabs.

Har tip to my wife for coming up withe the "louse in the house" phrase earlier this evening. We hereby place it in the public domain (assuming it's even necessary) if anyone has any reservations about reusing it.