Thought I would check memorandum one last time before going to bed, and I found this gem. Captain Ed, in a long post about the investigation into the alleged corruption of Ted Stevens, comes to the conclusion that the Feds probably will be able to make a case against the Alaskan Senator, and then closes his post with this thing of beauty:
Regardless of whether the FBI can prove corruption, these cases demonstrate clearly that pork corrodes the process of government. When our elected representatives place themselves in positions to have themselves or their families directly benefit from their legislative activities, it becomes a gross conflict of interest. That’s true whether the Senator is Ted Stevens or Harry Reid. The porkers put their own pecuniary interests ahead of the fiscal responsibilities of the nation, and the only productivity we get is in the industry of rationalization.
In case you are wondering, the number of times Harry Reid’s name appeared in the article Ed used as his source is approximately ZERO. The sad thing is he probably doesn’t even realize he is being hacktacular.
Ned R.
The comments kinda say a lot in turn. (Though frankly the two that worry me the most are from the Alaskan and the Yukonian going on about how wonderful Stevens is and how we have it all wrong down here. I guess being non-contiguous means laws mutate.)
Elvis Elvisberg
John Solomon, then of the AP, once pointed out that Reid had been lobbied by people and then voted against the legislation they favored. TPM covered that pretty well.
The story was eviscerated, as you can see at that link. Solomon soon thereafter left the AP… for the Washington Post.
So, it’s all taken as gospel by Captain Ed. Why bother with facts, when you’ve got a tribe to be part of.
ConservativelyLiberal
It is that knee-jerk reaction to somehow tie a Democrat into every Republican scandal. It is the ‘They did it too!’ cry, the last resort of someone who does not have a leg to stand on. By now, it is like sneezing for them.
Sen. Stevens quip about ‘paying all of the bills that were presented to me’ is going to come back and bite him in the ass.
Time to hold another bar-b-que and house raising party!
Cinderella Ferret
Boo hoo! Those big meanies in the FBI keep catching our guys stealing shit. Boo hoo! Why don’t they go catch some of those other guys and leave us alone. Boo hoo. It’s not fair they keep catching our guys. Boo hoo hoo.
Boo fucking hoo, indeed. Life has got to suck when your flag lapel pin can’t be traded in for a get out of jail free card. Unless, of course, you work for the Cheney Confederate Shooters Club.
p mac
Harry Reid was a poor choice. If he’d picked Jack Murtha, I would agree with him some more. I have no idea if Murtha is quite so quid-pro-quo as Stevens, but he sure does bring home the bacon: $2 billion in pork for his district is a lot of pigfat.
r€nato
*yawn*
another day, another Gooper exposed as a closeted gay.
Really, this just isn’t news anymore, is it?
r€nato
will the last Republican out of the closet, please turn off the light? Thank you.
Sometimes it seems like Republicans are on a campaign to render The Onion obsolete.
r€nato
oh by the way (sorry about spamming the comments, can’t resist)… Rep. Curtis declared on Monday…
…wait for it…
“I have not had sex with a guy!”
That’s it. We now have to come up with a way for normal, hetero men to affirm that they are not sexually interested in other men. Republicans have made the phrase, “I’m not gay!” meaningless.
More here (it’s a great tale!)
r€nato
…of course, no GOP gay sex scandal would be complete without the following:
JR
Hey, he’s on your blogroll. Might be time to move him down a few sections…
r€nato
troll-repellant: this is why we laugh at/mock these closeted jerks. It’s OK to be gay, but don’t deny gays equal rights when, you know, you’re one of them.
ConservativelyLiberal
r€nato, my wife and I are from Spokane (and still travel there as we grew up there and our families live there). If he went to where I think he did (East Sprague, also known as the ‘red light district’), it is a particularly sleazy part of town. There would be no excuse for him to be anywhere near that area unless he had ‘business’ there.
They just went through the Mayor Jim West and his scandal (another gay denial by a right wing nut who attacked gays), who passed away before anything was resolved. Spokane (pronounced spo-can) is a conservative town suffering from big town blues. We had to get out of the place as my wife and I could not stand it anymore.
Nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there (again).
laneman
Republicans have made the phrase, “I’m not gay!” meaningless.
But, they just have a wide stance. Right, right?
p mac
I give props to Curtis. He stood up a blackmailer. I don’t care if he had sex with another man, though he sure as hell shouldn’t be having unprotected sex with prostitutes. That’s _really_ unfair to his wife.
I _do_ care if he busts some scumbag blackmailer–good for him; he shouldn’t be taking flak for that.
jake
And for this stunning demonstration of hackitude, Capt. Ed deserves a ticket on the Hugh Hewitt “I’m Super!” Cruise.
Stevens is going to get hosed more times than a cabin boy on the USS Hewitt. But since Ed has already established that DEMOCRATS R WORSE he and the other fringe righties will be secure in the knowledge that this is just another example of how Democrats control THE MAN, and THE MAN is out get THEM and HAND AMERICA over to the COMMIEISLAHOMOFASCISTS! Stevens will become another martyr in the struggle of good v. evil and everyone gets to feel that much more paranoid, persecuted and above all worthy of persecution because sometimes they suspect no one gives a fuck and that makes them feel inadequate.
I swear, all it would take to make these yahoos into fringe lefties is a simple substitution of pot brownies for Cheetos.
Walker
Not to overly defend the Captain, there is an issue he may be alluding to. There is evidence that Reid’s refusal to honor Dodd’s hold on the telecom immunity bill has something to do with the amount of money Reid receives from AT&T. I don’t think that this is anywhere close to the Steven’s scandal, but it may be what the Captain is referring to.
maxbaer (not the original)
Propaganda is another thing that corrodes the process of government. And that’s true whether it’s Captain Ed or Pravda.
Punchy
How does this fit a grown man, especially one big enough to be a firefighter? Do they sell lingerie in XXL sizes, and if so…..uh…..hmmmmm…..WHY?
Cyrus
Indeed. And there’s further troll repellent available. From the article itself:
Curtis went to the police to accuse this Castagna guy of extortion. In response, Castagna argues that the sex was consensual, albeit recompensed. (Curtis also apparently lied to reporters about the details of the incident.) Even if we’re going to be charitable to Curtis — Castagna apparently has a criminal history, after all — a legislator supposedly being the victim of extortion is newsworthy. More likely, though, because Curtis felt the need to lie about what happened and he’s a Republican, he tried very clumsily to cover up his habit of gay sex by accusing someone else of a crime. Classy, and highly mockable.
Davebo
Well shouldn’t we wait until Reid actually refuses to honor the hold before castigating him for it?
Jeff
Is he talking about the same Harry Reid?
Zifnab
Not really, no.
That said, I would like to know what “refuses to honor the hold” would entail. So far, I haven’t seen the bill come up for a vote, so Dodd hasn’t had to filibuster. But as I understand it, a “hold” is basically just a threat to filibuster. So I guess if Dodd never opens the phone book, either Reid “honored the hold” or its all a moot point anyway. And we can only really determine that after the fact. So feel free to rip Reid a new one in the meantime.
Dennis-SGMM
I was surprised that Bush, while hammering the Democrats for wasting time on investigations, didn’t likewise pound the FBI for wasting time investigating Republicans at the expense of catching terrorists. Don’t they know that there’s an election coming up?
Bush’s actual diatribe was reminiscent of those motorists who tell the cop who’s ticketing them to “go out and catch some real criminals.”
Bob In Pacifica
p mac, the problem isn’t that he had sex with a man, or that he reported an extortion attempt.
The PROBLEMS are, first, that he is a hypocrite, having gay sex in private and then voting against laws that would grant equality to gays in law and publicly attacking gays; second, that he puts himself into a position of being blackmailed, which makes him an easy mark to be controlled by the unscrupulous.
The Other Steve
The article makes it sound like Curtis was another victim of the Gay Mafia trying to shake him down for cash.
The Other Steve
As for Captain Ed.
The wonderful thing about Republican smears is that they never die.
Everybody knows that Roosevelt caused WWII by not warning Pearl Harbor they were going to be attacked, right?
That was a GOP smear. Never panned out, but now it’s conventional wisdom.
Heywood Jablomy
Notice how they always say ‘I am not gay’ rather than, say, ‘I am not a pervert.’ In Dickheadia it’s worse to be ‘gay’ than a freaking-sicko bathroom-riverdancing cross-dressing industrial-strength perv. GOP talking point of day: Repeat ‘I am not a gay IslamoFascict illegal alien’ all day on Fox News.
These people are unmoored.
r€nato
Ken Mehlman is also Not Gay.
RSA
“Well, sure I may have put on women’s clothes, red stockings, and a black sequined lingerie top, and I may have had sex with another man in a porn shop, but that’s all just sinful behavior; I’m not gay.”
Zifnab
These people will say and believe anything. It’s tragically comic.
Jake
A-fucking-men.
(Oh, you know what I mean.)
laneman
I think that g’eh is now the proper pronunciation as coined by Michael Demmons because he gets the QotY tiara
jcricket
I think this just proves the Republican’s point that TEH GAY is contagious and we have to re-double our efforts to protect the children ™, lest they catch it.
jcricket
Of course they are. Michael Moore is a islamo-fascist-loving liberal (and fat and hairy). Who wouldn’t want to be un-moored.
bago
Oh snap. And I say that in reference to the Sicko ad that’s been running non-stop.