Republican week in review, pt. 2

Senate Majority leader Bill Frist recently made a statement where he completely repudiated our only popularly accepted rationale for being at war. Frist "called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government." No, you read that correctly. Despite all the badmouthing Frist and the rest of the ruling cabal have thrown the Taliban's way since 9/11 (and for good reason, I might add reluctantly), now the leader of the Republican Party in Congress wants to turn back the clock and put Osama bin Laden's former sole political allies back into power. Nice. I guess we're all supposed to forget that little fact, huh? Let alone the Taliban's horridly antediluvian social policies and human rights record . . .
The sad unfortunate fact is that Frist and anyone else who believes this to be a good idea is working in a Cold War mindset, where the US plays kingmaker all over the globe in an effort to promote stability at all costs. In this equation, massive civil repression = a good thing, as long as the Commies, er, the terrorists/drug lords/forces of evil don't "win". You see, only by creating a stable government in Afghanistan, regardless of how or by whom that stability is maintained, can our military withdraw without "losing" another "war". Heaven forbid we invade a sovereign nation, screw up their political system, economy, physical infrastructure, and societal norms and then leave things worse than they were before, right? Oh, wait, make that two sovereign nations. And counting. Nice going, Republican policymakers!

Republican week in review, pt. 1

It's been quite a week for the ruling junta. First, Republican Congressman Mark Foley was forced to resign when he was (finally) discovered to have propositioned boys via email and instant message. What? You didn't hear about this? Gee, maybe that's because the supposedly liberal mainstream press has been trying to bury it. The LA Times put its first 3 articles (from 9/29, 9/30, and 10/01) covering a sex scandal concerning a federal government official on pages A15, A12, and A20, with the 3rd article even quoting National Republican Committee Chairman Carl Forti's talking point that the Democratic Party was playing this story up for political gain! Because, of course, protecting minors from sexual predators is the sole purview of the Republicans, right? Oh yeah, except for the fact that the co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children Caucus was none other than Foley himself. This little tidbit of irony didn't even make it into these 3 articles, oddly enough, although Foley's membership on both the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Entertainment Industry Task Force was prominently mentioned in the very first article (which was all of 391 words.) That Foley's actions were made illegal by legislation written by his own committee simply adds to the irony level.
The bigger issue here is not that Foley's a perv, though (although that's pretty bad as it is); it's that the Republican leadership knew all about his penchant for teenaged boys years ago, yet did nothing about it. The cover-up of an illegal action is, of course, a felony, but who out there wants to bet that the Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (who was among the first people to be notified about Foley's predilection for preying on pages) doesn't even resign his position as Speaker, let alone his Congressional seat, let further alone spend a night in prison? As we've seen, the higher up you go in this criminal conspiracy to defraud the public and destroy the nation we call the Republican Party, the less the chances are for noble, or even legal, ethical, or moral behavior.
The final irony is that by Florida election law (yikes!), it is too late for Foley's name to be taken off the November ballot, even though a replacement (Joe Negron) has been legally named to run in his stead. Therefore, anyone wishing to vote for the Republican Party candidate literally has to cast his/her ballot for a disgraced sexual predator, if not an actual molester. Should be no problem for Florida Republicans . . .
Next up: Senate Majority Leader Frist calls for the Taliban to be put back in power. No. Really.