Memnison Journal

There are two standards of behaviour: theirs and everyone elses:

1998: Republicans were aghast at Clinton’s behavior, with many saying it showed he had lied and abused his power. “It’s vile,” said Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach. “It’s more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.”

2006, yesterday: According to Hastert, liberals want to take “the 130 most treacherous people, probably in the world…and release them out in the public eventually.”

This is cued back the fact that the complaints about Foley from the kid came in last year - and that various people in the leadership (including the Speaker, Majority Leader and the congressman in charge of pages) knew about it a year to six months ago - and they did nothing. Didn’t seriously look into it. Didn’t remove Foley as the chairman of a Committtee that was in oversight of legislation on children being sexually exploited by predators. Would have continued to do nothing until the whole thing blew up in the press. And never told the Democrats at all, including the Democratic congressman who was also involved in page oversight.

The Clerk of the House (also responsible for the pages) who did know about Foley resigned when the leadership decided not to follow up further on this last spring.

NYT, today: {Foley} spoke vehemently about the need to protect children from pedophiles. “We track library books better than we do sexual predators,” he said, arguing the need for the Children’s Safety Act, passed by the House in 2005.

ABC NEWS: (instant messages from Foley to the kid)

MaF54: What are ya wearing?
Teen: Tshirt and shorts
MaF54: Love to slip them off of ya.

The Mark Foley as Kinko the Congressman story just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  In a sense, like with the NIE, I’m not surprised that it happened; I’m surprised that it ever came out into the open.

The main element in all of this that burns brightly is that there is a Separate Reality here.  It is something that transcends simple hypocracy and goes on through corruption and greed; it is the idea that if you wish hard enough, a new reality will dawn.  A reality where fatcats and pols live happily after on the public spoils, and no one will ever know.  A reality that becons with a siren song of glory and a fantasy of doing great things, and never allowing for mistakes, never taking a second thought on your errors or incompetencies.

For many politicians, this is a factor of their egos and their drive to power; some need the cash and the luxuries.  And their only concern for their constituents is to keep them well enough greased in goodies from the cornocoupia of the public treasury that real interruptions of their power don’t happen.

This is not a thing that is unique to any one party.  Democrats in the United States have had their big city machines, like that of Boss Tweed, that rolled in the juice, and Republicans have had the spoils of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to feed their gluttonies.

And in all of this, the question of capabilities and public good don’t really enter in as a factor.  You pay off the lesser people in the group by giving them their benefits.  You protect and lie for each other.  The lesser swear fealty for the greater, and the greater find them jobs and sinecures.  And the greater pursue greater power without limit or greater returns.

You can put a good-looking idiot in charge, as the GOP did in 1920, and the Cabinet officers proceed to loot the country or do as they like without regard to morality, justice or the public good.

I’ve seen it all.  If I’d had my druthers, Lyndon Johnson would have been found guilty in the Reynolds case and removed from office.  I supported the removals of Clinton and Nixon.  And right now, I support the house-cleaning of the GOP leadership in the House, and would love to see Dick Cheney and George W. Bush retired out to their fortress of solitude.  Not in 2008, but tomorrow or the next day.

What the revelations of the new Woodward book (which I’m planning to get today) are telling me are enough to add a lot more dots onto the picture I already had of a Bush-Cheney- Rumsfeld-Rice setup that is dangerously incompetent and strongly stuck in their own reality.  What the relevations of the Foley as Kinko-the-Congressman story are telling me is that the Congressional leadership is willing to not just rip us off and sell us down the river, but expose kids knowingly to danger and simply not care because it’s One of Their Own.

And in all these cases, if they lie convincingly enough, maybe they’ll get past it.   More coming.

The chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, GOP congressman Mark Foley, has just resigned after being caught trying to seduce a House male page via AOL e-mails. This follows a number of other leaders in the GOP fight to Protect Our Kids who are busy trying to pull the kids under the table and go at it.

Senator Feingold: (read it all)
We can and must fight terrorism aggressively without compromising fundamental American values. We must remember what the Army Judge Advocate General told me at a Judiciary Committee hearing this summer: that the United States should set an example for the world, and that we must carefully consider the effect on the way our own soldiers will be treated.

Mr. President, in closing let me do something I don’t do very often – and that is quote John Ashcroft. According to the New York Times, at a private meeting of high-level officials in 2003 about the military commission structure, then-Attorney General Ashcroft said: “Timothy McVeigh was one of the worst killers in U.S. history. But at least we had fair procedures for him.” How sad that this Congress would seek to pass legislation about which the same cannot be said. 

Speeches from Senators Obama and Clinton on the bill.  A part of it below from Clinton:

 How would General Washington treat these men? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Washington’s Crossing,” thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors.” There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered. Countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor. Starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.

The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn’t that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it’s easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners: “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“

Sen. Trent Lott, today, after a meeting with Bush.

Woodward on upcoming 60 minutes:

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. “It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That’s more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” says Woodward.

Woodward reported for two years and interviewed more than 200 people, including top officials in the Bush administration, to learn these and other revelations that he makes in his latest book, State of Denial… 

MOTHER:
My son was not a comma. He had a wife and a son and parents who loved him.

Parenting: it’s not for everyone.  Having been through the mill of effort to have a kid, then to adopt one, and ending up with one that has taken us on some turns we never would expect, I can safely say that I have no interest in trying to convert someone else to the wonders of parenting.

A friend of ours that we run into on the train sometimes looked me in the eye and said she would never want to have been in our present situation with the twins; too much trouble.  Well, all parenting is like that.  You have tolerances that others do not, skills that others may not, and things that you simply would never deal with.  We ended up with a child that fit - from her needs, our skills, and so on.  With someone else, she well may have been a serious PITA.

Case in point: never have a situation where you and your partner have radically different ideas about the concept of parenting.  It’s right up there with ‘I can reform him’ or ‘I can adopt quadruplets’.  You. Are. Out. Of. Your. Freaking. Mind.
Case in point: a couple we knew were interested in kids, but only if they didn’t have to go through too much trouble and ick stuff.  Honey, kids can be no end of trouble and ick stuff.

Case in point: various women who become baby machines because the babies are so pwecious, but have no concept of what to do with little kids or desire to do much with them.  A child, if done right, is a freakin’ time sink.  Play ‘Cats in the Cradle’ a thousand times until it sinks in.

Case in point: your six year old daughter finds that sleeping between mom and dad is the center of the universe, and will try anything she can manage to crawl in in the middle of the night, and then proceed to toss around in bed so much that you think there’s a dog fight with two debarked dogs right beside you.  Of course, when you first wake up in the morning, and see that lovable sweetly sleeping face right beside yours, you melt and you want to hold that moment to your heart forever.

Rumsfeld is in Montenegro today to see if he can get troops out of them for Iraq or Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia, Montenegro has only about 700,000 people, and about 2,600 troops.

Math: the USA has just shy of 300 million people. A little less than 2 million people in the military anywhere, and around 700,000 actives in the Army and Marines. 1 out of 420ish people in the US are soldiers.  The Montenegro ratio is 1 to 270 or so.

Penis hotpot restaurants in China, breakup services, Moonie Catholic archbishop, and so on.

…with, as always, many thanks to Laurel.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS: this just isn’t grabbing me; Susan is interested, my MIL is dubious but will wait and see a couple before deciding. I may do so, with great dubiousness. I just don’t get the hook. Callista Flockhart never did anything for me, I loved Tom Skerritt, but they offed him, and Sally Field has an interesting role, but - the dramatic stuff on this just wasn’t a grabber.

KIDNAPPED: Interesting, and it gave me a medium grab. I remember seeing CIDER HOUSE RULES and being blown away by Delroy Lindo, who is waaay good here, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Timothy Hutton in anything, and he looks like he’ll be perfect for the part, and the other actors and situations look interesting. The ‘private retriever’ and his assistant look cool. Of course, Daddy has a whole bunch of Deep Dark Secrets. It’s obvious to me that the point of this kidnapping is *not* money. It’s to hose Daddy and Mommy for something. And I love the byplay between the FBI old phart and the ‘private retriever’.

Nice note with the bilingual kids. French and Spanish?

JERICHO: This looks awesome. Gerald McRaney is the only one I recognize, but the cast looks good, and I’ve always been a sucker for after-everything-goes-blooey SF stuff. The first episode looks interesting, and I want to hear more about the black dude.

HEROES: Well, it caught my interest, all right, though I have no idea what the heck they are going to do with this.  I love the nerdy Japanese teleporter, am totally mystified by the mirror person (Mr Hyde, I presume?), can’t tell if this is some sort of SCANNERS deal mixed with WILD CARDS, or what.  And the flying brother totally surprised me.

MEN IN TREES: Interesting for a one-year series, but I can’t see dragging this one on.  Too lightweight a premise.
Older Shows:

CRIMINAL MINDS: Good, we got past the icky cliffhanger.  The mother passing it down (possibly) to the son, though - that’s some hard bananas.

ER: Me, I think she did the right thing in shooting him.  He was like the freaking Evil Energizer Bunny.

As many predicted, McCain and the others have decided to kiss the ring and return to the fold; the ‘compromise’ over torture basicially says: the President can do what he likes, and the torturers have immunity under the law.  Great system, eh wot?
Between that and McCain’s comment that er, Falwell was jes’ funnin’ around when he mixed Hillary and Satan in the same line, my absolute decision is that McCain has decided that he’ll kiss whatever he has to to get the GOP nomination in 2008.

I’ve been wondering about some of the weirdities in the polls, and this item seems to bring the point home on it; there seems to be a double set of results.  Part of this is, IMHO, in the sampling models, and the percentages set in those for Republicans and Democrats.  I’m beginning to think that there’s oversampling, on the Republican side.

As a employee of the federal government, I note that the Congress hasn’t bothered to put together a budget and pass it.  All sorts of goofy bills to outlaw this or that conservative bugaboo, but not to pay us. Hastert and Frist want to send people home early to spend more time campaigning to save a GOP majority, but other people don’t think that’s such a hot idea and are trying to block it.

We live in a pretty solidly Republican area, and yes, I intend to hold my nose and vote for every Democrat I can find to Turn The Rascals Out.   I have a new local Democrat to write in for any seat I think needs opposition.  Yes, all of the above is somewhat futile, but that’s never stopped me before in politics.

For those in the know about the Secret Project: I’m getting an interesting proposition of a three-way switcheroo, but there’s many a slip, etc.  More when I know something more concrete. 

And for those not in the know: none of the above is even remotely sexual in nature.  Really.

Susan has to go to meet with the state people in remote/suburban Columbus in mid-October, and she’s proposing that I come along.  Of course, a trip to Ohio (yes, I’m paying for myself, but the office picks up her tab) is something I’m always keen to do.  While it would be nice to have the trip be Just Us for a change (the reason I’m up writing this is because Cyclone Meredith jumped in our bed and proceeded to turn into a sleeping whirling dervish), the chances of Both Of Us leaving the house for four days without Mere are nil.  I’m hoping to swing through Toledo on the way out, and see Kurt and John at a minimum.

This will mean that I have to Find Things To Do for Mere during the day; we’ll be way over on the far east side of Columbus, near the state Department of Agriculture offices.   There’s at least two sets of old pals there (who are likely to read this), and I’m sure they’ll have some ideas.  Susan says that we can’t go to the zoo without her….

If I had plenty of time, I’d drag Mere over to a couple of my favorite bookstores in Columbus, or over to Yellow Springs.  I adore Yellow Springs; I’d move there in a heartbeat if I could.