Some Numbers To Ponder

While we're waiting for the midterm elections next week, I think we should ponder the following figures.

In 2005, Bush spokesperson Karen Hughes claimed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of over 300,000 Iraqi civilians. He is now on trial for his life because of those deaths.

The British medical publication The Lancet is now reporting that the number of civilians killed in Iraq since the beginning of The Iraq War may be as many as 600,000.

When will Bush go on trial for his life? That what I want to know.

Tom Moran

Holding My Breath (and Measuring the Drapes)

I have to admit, it's been hard to think of something to post in here lately. All I can think of is waiting. Two more weeks, ten more days, one more week...

I can't wait until election day. Yet at the same time I'm dreading it.

What if Bush and Cheney and Rove figure out a way to scrape out another so-called "victory," the way they did in 2000 and 2004? What if the Democrats don't take back the Senate?

I've been predicting a political tsunami for a year and a half now, and now that it's almost here I'm worried that the levees won't break. That they'll hold. And that the Republicans will figure out a way to steal yet another election.

My reason tells me that the voters are disgusted with the criminals in Congress and the White House, and are waiting to deliver a stinging repudiation of the GOP that will render Bush and his cronies politically impotent for the next two years, until we can get a Democrat in the White House.

And at the same time I can't help but worry.

So for the next ten days or so I'll be crossing my fingers...

Tom Moran

Old and New

Last week I went to the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center to hear Katherine Lanpher read from her new book, Leap Days. It's an account of how Lanpher made a midlife transition from settled Minnesotan to fledgling New Yorker. As a native New Yorker, it was fascinating to hear the perspective of someone who came here after spending a lifetime in the Midwest. For Lanpher, everything about this city is new, whereas for someone like me, who remembers the Carnegie Hall Cinema, the Automat and Yankee Stadium when it still had pillars (and before it had George Steinbrenner), this is to a large extent a city of ghosts.

This week two more New York institutions are getting ready to disappear. On Sunday, CBGBs had its last show on the Bowery -- soon it will move to Las Vegas. And within a month or so, Tower Records will no longer exist.

I walked past both of them the other day. Although I was never an aficianado of punk rock (to put it mildly), I always liked the fact that CBGBs was close at hand. It represented something to the neighborhood -- the idea that any bunch of aspiring musicians could get up on that stage and possibly find an audience. That's what so many people come to this city to do -- to find that big break -- and CBGBs was a place where you could, if you were lucky, find it. Now that it's gone and Continental on St. Marks Place is gone as well, I don't know where aspiring rockers will play their first gig in New York. Williamsburg, maybe?

As for Tower, I can't imagine downtown without it. I spent four years in the 80s working in the same building as Tower, and I've spent more time in Tower than I have in any retail establishment in the city over the past quarter-century. After the attack on 9/11 (in which a former Tower employee and neighbor of mine, Joyce Ann Carpeneto, died), I used to joke to nervous family members that the only way the terrorists would nail me would be if they bombed Tower Records at 11:30 at night.

Now one is gone, and the other is going. And people like me, who have lived a lifetime in this city, will have two more places to add to the list of vanished New York landmarks. CBGBs and Tower Records will take their places alongside the old Penn Station, the Paramount Theater in Times Square and the beautiful Broadway theaters (the Morosco and the Helen Hayes) that were stupidly demolished to make way for the Marriott Marquis. They're building luxury housing on the Bowery near where CBGBs was, and God knows what will take the place of Tower.

But whatever it is, it just won't be the same.

Tom Moran

Joke of the Week

I really like this one...

Q: Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity get into a dick measuring contest. Why does Hannity win?

A: Coulter was too drunk to get an erection.

Tom Moran

"Hubris" is spelled B-U-S-H

Thomas DeFrank in the New York Daily News is reporting that as a result of the Republican Man-Boy Love Association scandal, President Bush's mood has "blackened."

This is my favorite part of the piece:

"Now, however, friends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within.

"He's ticked off big-time," said a well-informed source, "even if what they said was the truth.""

Does anyone catch the irony here? An unnamed source is telling a reporter about how "ticked off" the president is that people are being unnamed sources for reporters, even though these sources are telling the truth.

Kinda symbolic of what's going on in the Bush White House at the moment, don't you think?

Here's my second favorite part of the piece:

"Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington's legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.

"He's remarkably optimistic," a Bush insider said. "Like Ronald Reagan, he has a gift for looking beyond the morass in front of him and sticking to his goals, even if it's not popular.""

Two points to be made here:

1) Another symbol of the utter incompetence of George W. Bush: this man, arguably the worst president in our history, is comparing himself to George Washington. Does anything better encapsulate the raw hubris of the man, which has led to some of the most disastrous years in our country's history?

2) This ties in with what I said before. Bush can't stand people around him being unnamed sources, unless of course they're licking his ass in Macy's window by comparing him to Ronald Reagan.

Pitiful. Just pitiful.

Tom Moran

Fire the Boss

The word is that, after the Yankees were humiliatingly defeated in the first round of the playoffs, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner wants to get rid of the team's manager, Joe Torre.

This is pretty typical behavior on the part of Steinbrenner who, although he has behaved himself in the past decade, has had a habit of taking his frustrations out on his managers when he doesn't get what he wants. This goes all the way back to the 70s and 80s, when he embarrassed Yogi Berra by canning him at the beginning of a season, not to mention his cringe-inducing on-again, off-again dysfunctional managerial dance with the hapless Billy Martin.

The Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2000, when they beat the Mets. Is that Torre's fault?

I don't think it is.

George Steinbrenner has a habit of spending too much money for players who are past their prime, and then complaining about it. Instead of getting a young pitching staff and bringing up players through their farm system, the Yankees have had a habit of mortgaging their future for short-term results -- and then not getting them. That's not Torre's fault. A manager can only work with what he's given to work with. The fact that the Yankees have underachieved in the past few years can be laid at the feet of Steinbrenner himself and his GM, Brian Cashman. Firing Torre won't help matters at all.

So Steinbrenner, with the highest payroll on baseball, might just have to watch the Mets play in the World Series. Being a longtime Mets fan, I kind of like that. It's too bad the Boss can't fire himself -- he might be able to improve the team that way.

Tom Moran

Blowing Up in His Face

According to news reports (I got it from the New York Times) North Korea has made a nuclear test. The Russians claim its force is between 5 and 15 kilotons and the United States Geological Survey detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula.

President Bush is not happy about this. Nor should he be.

Kim Jong-Il is one step closer to the bomb, and there's nothing this country can do about it. President Bush is impotent in the face of a nuclear North Korea.

And you know what? It's his fault.

It was Bush who stopped the process of engagement with North Korea that the Clinton Adminstration began and that his own Secretary of State advised him to continue. It was Bush who labeled North Korea part of the so-called "Axis of Evil" and then went on to invade a sovereign nation that had no aggressive intentions towards us.

By invading Iraq, Bush sent a clear message to both Iran and North Korea: If you want to keep from being invaded by the United States, do anything you can to procure nuclear weapons as fast as you can. Can you really blame them for heeding this message? What leader, however deranged, would want his country to resemble the slaughterhouse that Iraq is today because of us?

And what exactly can we do about this situation? Nothing. Sanctions would be a joke. Kim Jong-Il has shown that he could care less if his people starve to death by the millions, so why should he give a shit about sanctions? And there is no military option. Our 37,000 troops in South Korea would be trampled over by North Korea's 1,000,000-man army as they swarmed their way to Seoul, which is less than 40 miles from the DMZ.

So we're stuck. Kim Jong-Il either has the bomb or will have it shortly, and there's nothing we can do about it. Thanks to George W. Bush.

Tom Moran

The Party's Over?

Consider the following lubricious quote from televangelist Pat Robertson on former Congressman Mark Foley's penchant for pages:

"Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do."

Let's just ponder that remark for a second, shall we?

Did anyone say about Bill Clinton, "Well, this man's straight. He does what straight people do"? Somehow I don't remember anyone claiming, in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, that Bill Clinton's behavior was somehow emblematic of what heterosexual males do as a rule -- so why should a different standard apply to Foley? Because he's gay?

I think a number of Republicans would say yes to that admittedly rhetorical question. According to a rambling piece in the upcoming Time magazine [full disclosure: my former employers] by Karen Tumulty, the GOP and conservative gays have had an uneasy alliance as long as the latter, well, knew their place.

Tumulty's piece in Time says:

"In many ways, that story line is the product of the strains within the party over homosexuality. It's a tension nearly as deep and tortured as those the Democrats grappled with over race a half-century ago, when they tried—unsuccessfully—to keep an uneasy coalition of Southern segregationists and Northern civil rights advocates from tearing their party apart. Even though many of the G.O.P.'s policies have been hostile to gay rights, its leaders have long followed a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy with what pretty much everyone in Washington knows is a sizable number of closeted Republicans among members of Congress, upper-level staff and top party operatives. Says Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans: "There are a lot of gay Republicans who are working behind the scenes to advance the priorities of this party."

Until now, Republicans were able to manage the conflict. And they managed it by ignoring it. That even became part of an electoral strategy dating back to the 2000 election that suggested there was nothing to be gained by moderation. In a memo he wrote to Karl Rove, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd estimated that truly independent voters had fallen to a mere sliver of the electorate. There were, Dowd concluded, not enough percentage points in being "a uniter, not a divider." The key to winning in a polarized country was mobilizing the conservative base. That year, Bush refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, choosing instead to see a handpicked group of gay Republicans, but only after the party's nomination was secured. In 2004, even as Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary was a potential symbol of the party's openheartedness, Republicans put anti-gay-marriage measures on 11 state ballots to drive voter turnout.

But the Foley scandal is making it difficult for the party to look the other way. [...] The resignations of Foley and Fordham sparked fears that other gay Republicans would also soon be forced out of both their closets and their jobs. "Kirk is the fall guy," says gay-rights activist Hilary Rosen. "It's going to be open season on gay Republicans. It's the right wing's perfect storm. They never wanted gays in their party anyway.""

If the GOP has no place for homosexuals and lesbians in their ranks, then where are they going to go? Back into the closet? I suppose it's possible, but I doubt it. I think it's far more likely that they'll end up going where the conservative Southerners like Strom Thurmond went after the passage of the Civil Rights bill in 1964 -- right into the arms of the opposition party.

Andrew Sullivan in his blog quotes David Link from the Boston Globe as saying that "Like the Catholic Church, the Republican Party in Washington guarantees its own future calamities in its enduring and steadfast habit of pretending that, unlike heterosexuality, homosexuality can be either denied or suppressed." I think that what it guarantees is a mass stampede of all but the most closeted gays from the Republicans to the Democrats.

While I don't really know whether L'Affaire Folie will have the effect of causing gay Republicans to defect en masse to the Democratic Party, it probably should. Because at this point anyone who's both gay and still a Republican should probably have their head examined.

Tom Moran

The Republican Man-Boy Love Association

Don't you love all this blaming that's going on?

Every Republican on Capitol Hill has a different explanation for the fact that Rep. Mark ("Me So Horny") Foley was being outed as a serial creep at this time -- and of course all these explanations involve Democrats. Except for Matt Drudge, who thinks it was all a prank gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Meanwhile, Denny ("The Buck Stops Here Until I Pass it to Someone Else") Hastert is clinging to power in the pathetic hope that toughing it out will somehow keep the GOP from losing control of Congress in a month.

Well, guess what, Denny? I think that ship has sailed.

John Podhoretz, in a risible column for the New York Post, posits that the entire "L'Affaire Folie" is the work of a "sleazy, scuzzy, unprincipled and entirely Machiavellian Democratic political operative." Who shall remain nameless, of course.

These people just can't admit that they fucked up, can they?

Now, while I would love to think that some Machiavellian Democrat helped orchestrate this entire fiasco for the Republicans without anyone figuring out who was behind it, I find that entire scenario a little too Oliver Stone-esque to hold water. The fact is that the GOP knew about this for a long time, did nothing, and now it's blowing up in their faces.

And they deserve it. This scandal is the perfect symbol for the Republicans and their use and abuse of power. More than scamming Native Americans, more than trips to Scotland to play golf on the taxpayers' dime, more than The K Street Project, this just gets to the GOP right where they live -- their so-called family values.

Republicans say they're for the protecting of children on the one hand, and they shield pedophiles on the other.

Doesn't get better than that.

Tom Moran

Sentence of the Week

I haven't run a sentence of the week in a while, because I only like to run one when I find a real lapidary gem.

Well folks, I've found one today.

It's from the editorial page of the paper I used to read (and even appeared in) when I was a college student in the early 1980s -- The Capital from Annapolis, Md.:

There's really no way that even the Republican Party's image-making geniuses can make people feel good about a 52-year-old man discussing masturbatory techniques with a male teenager via instant message.

I think that just about says it all -- don't you?

Tom Moran

Un-Marked Karr

John Mark Karr is now a free man.

Karr, 41, is the delusional pervy nutcase who won international notoriety when he claimed to be responsible for the death of JonBenet Ramsey ten years ago. This bought him a ticket from Thailand, where he lived at the time and was arrested, to the States, but ultimately he was cleared of the charges.

He was then sent to California to face child pornography charges, but Judge Rene Chouteau ordered him released after prosecutors, according to media reports, acknowledged that they didn't have enough evidence to make their case.

What I want to know is: what the hell does this guy do now?

He has international fame as one of the ickiest guys on the planet -- how is he going to get a job? Who would hire him? Would you?

I mean, former GOP Congressman Mark Foley could always make a living in gay porn once he gets out of rehab, but an accused pedophile who falsely confessed to an infamous child murder would seem to be beyond the pale entirely. Returning to the teaching profession would seem to be a non-starter, and what else can he do? Would you buy a triple latte from this man?

I hope the media keeps up with this guy's story, because I think that what happens to him from now on might be as interesting if not more so than what has gone before.

Tom Moran

The End of Denny?

It's starting to seem like House Speaker Denny Hastert has one foot on a banana peel and the other on a roller skate.

Hastert's statements of last week regarding serial creep former Congressman Mark Foley are being revealed as the bald-faced lies they probably were. It now seems obvious that Hastert knew all about Foley's obsession with congressional pages for years, and chose to do nothing rather than jeopardize a safe congressional seat.

The AP is reporting today that senior congressional aide named Kirk Fordham told Speaker Hastert three years ago about Foley's problem with teenage pages. Hastert and others have made conflicting statements about when they first heard about this situation, but if Fordham's statement is true, and the speaker sat on this information for three years, then Hastert is toast. I'm starting to wonder whether he can last out the week.

On the other hand, John Hawkins in Human Events Online defends Denny Hastert's handling (if that's what you want to call it) of L'Affaire Foley (or L'Affaire Folie, if you want to be cute about it):

"Look at the situation he was put in back in 2005. He has someone come to him with slightly creepy, inappropriate e-mails from a congressman to a page. But the e-mails weren’t sexual, weren’t illegal, weren’t an ethics breach, and Foley didn't ask for a meeting with the page.

So, what is Hastert supposed to do about this other than have Foley told not to contact the page in question any more? Could he contact the Capitol Hill Police? Well, again, the emails weren't criminal. Could he refer the matter to the ethics committee? Why? There was no ethical breach. There have been suggestions that Hastert should have started an investigation into Foley's sex life, but that's ridiculous given what he had to work with. If you're going to start peering through someone's files, listening in on his phone calls, and asking dozens of people questions like, "Has Mark Foley ever touched you or made inappropriate sexual advances," then you better have more evidence than an e-mail asking a page for a picture."

Of course, Hawkins is apparently not considering the possibility that Hastert knew about this two years before 2005. It'll be interesting to see what he says, if anything, when he finds out.

Tom Moran

Things Can Change in Three Years

"Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice. […]

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission."

George W. Bush
June 26, 2003

Tom Moran

Thanks to Molly Ivins for pointing out this passage. I've quoted more of it than she has.

Denny Should Go

Does the Washington Times read this blog?

Okay, I'm being facetious, but only a little. Because it was only a few days ago that I wrote in this blog about House Speaker Denny Hastert's "handling" of Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior with Congressional pages that:

"House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) not only knew about it but lied about it -- first saying that he only found out about it last week, then, according to the Washington Post account, changed his story and admitted that he'd know about Congressman Foley's fondness for ephebes for months. Will Denny Hastert take Congressman Foley's lead and resign for lying about this issue?"

Now the Washington Times is writing in its editorial page that:

"On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hastert insisted that he learned of the most flagrant instant-message exchange from 2003 only last Friday, when it was reported by ABC News. This is irrelevant. The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator -- and, incredibly, the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children -- could be prowling the halls of Congress. The matter wasn't pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all. Moreover, all available evidence suggests that the Republican leadership did not share anything related to this matter with any Democrat."

They follow from these facts that:

"House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance."

So far so good -- as hard as it might be to believe, the Times and I are in perfect agreement on this issue. Who knew?

Now why is this important? Okay, it's a tacky scandal, but does it have a larger significance beyond the sad story of one creepy Congressman?

Well, yes it does. It has a symbolic significance. Speaker Hastert's behavior and the way he helped cover up this scandal and enable Rep. Foley's behavior is symbolic of the corrupt way Republicans do things in this Congress. Of the way that they put politics (in this case, trying to save a safe congressional seat in Florida) above principle (in this case, protecting children). Nothing could better point up the utter hypocrisy of Republicans pretending to be exemplars of moral values when all they care about is power than this shabby little scandal.

And coming as it does one month before the midterm election, it couldn't come at a more opportune time.

Tom Moran

Thanks to Robert A. George of Ragged Thots for bringing the Washington Times editorial to my attention.

Do I Make You Horny?

You have to admit, for a blogger like me the story of Rep. Mark Foley's resignation from Congress is like Christmas arriving a few months early. But it's not the facts themselves, as intriguing as they are, that is, or at least should be, the main focus of our attention. It's the atmosphere around them.

Let me explain what I mean.

The facts: Rep. Foley (R-FL) is, according to press accounts, a closeted gay man whose colleagues knew all about both his sexual orientation and his preference for page boys. His tastes in this matter were so well known, according to a Washington Post story, that congressional pages used to warn each other about him. This suggests that it was hardly a secret that Rep. Foley lusted after teenage boys. To be fair to the former Congressman, who has resigned his office in the fact of this scandal, it has not been alleged that he did anything more with the pages than send them some slightly tacky e-mails. If he had any physical contact with any of them, or had actual sex with any of them, it has not been made public.

What impresses me about the whole thing is the rank hypocrisy of the Republicans. Just think back almost a decade to the Clinton scandal, and how high and mighty the GOP members of Congress was over Clinton's consensual relationship with a 21-year-old woman. They were outraged enough at his conduct to impeach him. And yet here they were harboring a man who could arguably be considered a pedophile, and they did nothing.

House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) not only knew about it but lied about it -- first saying that he only found out about it last week, then, according to the Washington Post account, changed his story and admitted that he'd know about Congressman Foley's fondness for ephebes for months. Will Denny Hastert take Congressman Foley's lead and resign for lying about this issue?

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are doing the predictable moralistic bloviating about Rep. Foley and his depraved tastes, but you've got to wonder. If Republicans didn't have their heads completely up their ass on the subject of homosexuality, would this sad incident have happened? If Rep. Foley had been able to meet some guy his own age and settle down and get married (you know, the way that Republicans are pushing a Constitutional amendment to prevent), would he have been trolling for high school-aged pages?

Maybe he would have anyway: you never know. But just a few weeks ahead of a midterm election, it's nice to have a reminder of what hypocrites the Republicans in Congress can be.

Tom Moran