Click here for the cost of the war so far from costofwar.comCatalystBlogging from "The City of Evil", Ithaca, NY "Radical Activist U", Oberlin, OH

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Posts starting March 14 2006:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy Hastert Says He May Have Been Told 7:56PM EST Saturday, 9/30/2006 [link to this item]

Incumbent Rep. Thomas Reynolds, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is in a dead heat with Democratic challenger, John Davis, for the House seat from New York's 26th District. When New York Democrats began, today, to hammer away at him for having kept Mark Foley's "overly-friendly" 2005 e-mails to a 16 year old House page under his hat, he could not afford to remain silent. He had told someone, he replied:
...he told Speaker Dennis Hastert months ago about concerns that a fellow GOP lawmaker had sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.
Hastert, who has repeatedly said that he was never personally informed of the matter, has now begun to equivocate:

Hastert said he does not remember talking to Reynolds about the Foley e-mails, but did not dispute Reynolds' account.

"While the speaker does not explicitly recall this conversation, he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution," Hastert's aides said in a preliminary report on the matter issued Saturday.

It remains to be seen what the effects upon Reynolds's House race and Dennis Hastert's Speakership will be. The only thing that is certain is that the revelations and answers of "[does] not dispute" (or worse) relating to the Mark Foley scandal will continue for some time to come.

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy Congressional Leadership Knew 2:11PM EST Saturday, 9/30/2006 [link to this item]

The revelations are coming in almost by the minute. John Shimkus, R-Ill., has found himself in the difficult position of having to admit that he did not think it necessary to inform the lone Democrat on the House Page Board of the allegation that former Congressman Mark Foley had acted inappropriately towards a House page.

According to Talking Points Memo (and others):

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) interviewed Foley last year about some of the contacts with the page. The House clerk, who is also a member of the Board, was also present. Speaker Hastert's office was informed of the interview, but according to GOP leadership sources who spoke to Roll Call, Hastert himself was not informed.

Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), the only Democrat on the Board, was not informed of the interview, according to Roll Call.

To this point, the following Republicans are reported definitely to have had some knowledge of allegations against Foley for as much as a year:
Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Reps. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), as well as a senior aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl.
Speaker Hastert has been defending to all sides against reports that he had personally been informed by Boehner.

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy Mark Foley the Day After 12:20PM EST Saturday, 9/30/2006 [link to this item]

Local Palm Beach County coverage of the Mark Foley scandal is strangely ahead of much of the national media. While many (if not most) national venues have chosen to report the story as a matter of the mildly troubling e-mails Foley sent to one Louisiana page, at least two local news affiliates reported, last night, having possession of many more e-mails to many more Capitol pages. The e-mails, it is said, by both affiliates, are too sexually explicit to be read over the air.

This morning, a Palm Beach Post story has stated outright that unidentified sources, in Washington, have spilled the beans:

The situation grew worse for Foley on Friday when ABC News received copies of AOL instant messages between Foley and another teenage boy.

Foley's language with the boy is extremely sexually explicit. At one point in the conversation the boy says he will "brb (be right back), my mother is yelling."

Congressional staff members who asked not to be identified said it was widely known among Hill staffers and some House leaders that Foley had been engaging in inappropriate conduct and language with young aides.

One highly placed staff member said Foley's abrupt resignation may have been demanded by Republican leaders who have been aware for some time about allegations of inappropriate behavior.

The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives strategically gaveled the present session to a close, a week early, in order to get its people out of Washington, where they are easy targets for the national media, and into their districts where local media are less likely to ask probing questions about the scandal. The move also forestalls any ethics investigation until after the election.

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy Foley Resigns, Much More to Come 12:06AM EST Saturday, 9/30/2006 [link to this item]

Prior to this point, I have been quiet about the expectations of some that the Democrats will capture either House of Congress in the November elections. The numbers only seemed to add up to reduced...
 [Click here for the rest of this post] 
-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Ben Regenspan Guessing game 5:11PM EST Thursday, 9/21/2006 [link to this item]

When Victor Davis Hanson says that:
Suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices are the terrorism of choice in both theaters [Iraq and Afghanistan]. In some weeks, more are killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And al-Qaida, unlike the American media, sees both as integrated jihadist struggles against the infidel.
Is he trying to argue that:
  1. Bush made many strategic blunders in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and this will negatively affect the GOP's chances in the upcoming midterms.
  2. Throughout the course of the Iraq conflict, the US has neglected its previous commitments to Afghanistan, recently to such an extent that a major Democratic contender could mistakenly believe that "we’re not involved in" that country.
  3. That our coalition's failure to instill order in Afghanistan proves that multilateralism works just as poorly or worse than unilateralism; approval of Bush and GOP candidates will go up as more and more people notice that the administration-led plan to invade Afghanistan was no more succesful than its Iraq plan.
If you picked #3, you know that these guys can spin anything:
Soon, however, they [the Democrats] may awake to discover that while they snoozed before the finish line, George W. Bush hunkered down in his tough shell, kept his slow legs moving, and inched them out.

The president has had a rough year since his reelection. But the furor is now subsiding, and once again, turtle-like, his poll numbers are creeping forward...

The line between the supposedly good "multilateral" war in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and the bad "unilateral" one that ousted Saddam is blurring. Suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices are the terrorism of choice...

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Gilbert Wesley Purdy The Mystery of Low Wage Growth. 8:52PM EST Tuesday, 8/8/2006 [link to this item]

Business Week's Michael Mandel obviously read Catalyzer's The Little Guy Gets His and decided to grace the world of business journalism with some real facts on the subject of wages. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I mean, who can prove that he didn't read it?

Anyway, in today's world economics is politics. For BW to show a bit of honesty during a key Congressional election year, in the face of the home team's ridiculous claims that wages have gone up, is encouraging, even if it's much too easy to blame the facts exclusively on globalization.

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy 9:01PM EST Sunday, 7/30/2006 [link to this item]

The Little Guy Gets His:

Great economic news from the Bush Administration or more lame spin?

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy Another Election Approacheth 8:30PM EST Saturday, 7/15/2006 [link to this item]

Manufacturing Consent:

Some thoughts on the Administrations most recent "wonderful news" about the budget deficit. Is it really so wonderful? If not, why the hoopla?

-GWP | Comments | Topic:

Ben Regenspan 7:56PM EST Saturday, 5/13/2006 [link to this item]

Dear loyal and multitudinous readers: I have not abandoned Catalyst, I swear. Finals are coming up here, and real life is pretty intense. But I'm going to be interning in DC this summer and will hopefully have all sorts of wild and exciting stories (or not) to tell.

Stay tuned, or don't.

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Ben Regenspan Even better than Dukakis' tank photo-op 7:33PM EST Tuesday, 4/4/2006 [link to this item]

On the off chance you haven't seen it yet, here's The Right Brothers' "Bush Was Right" video, presented without further comment:

And yes, rightwing bloggers are linking to it like crazy. If you'd like to contribute to the Brothers' efforts to get their very subtle song played on MTV's Total Request Live, you can donate here.

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Ben Regenspan 12:20PM EST Monday, 4/3/2006 [link to this item]

Greg Saunders has a good point:
Has anyone bothered to point out that the righteous rage on the right over the flying of the Mexican flag by some attendees at the pro-immigration protests is coming from the same people who defended the confederate flag as a source of “southern pride” (as opposed to the rallying symbol for slave-owners and their defenders)?
Update: That George W. Bush, the Mexican-flag-waving traitor! It's safe to assume he's a regular La Voz de Aztlan reader.

Can't wait to see Novak et al.'s "It's OK, he was just pandering" defense...

-Ben | Comments | Topic:

Ben Regenspan A fuzzy situation 1:50AM EST Sunday, 4/2/2006 [link to this item]

Posting's been just a little bit light around here lately, so it makes sense to start things back up with one of those obligatory links to an article everyone's already seen (Catalyst's specialty). The obligatory link: Murray Waas' rundown on the Plame affair and damage control following Bush's SOTU aluminum tubes claim, about which, according to Waas:
  • Bush "had been specifically advised...might not be true" in advance of the speech.
  • "Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community".
  • "The President's Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes."
  • "[T]he president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts."
  • Rove was very concerned, re: Bush's re-election prospects.
But don't go using the "L" word, to the extent that anything is new here it certainly doesn't contradict David Brooks' immemorable words back in 2003:
There are a couple of things that the president said which were not true -- the Niger case. But it's not as if they lied about it. The intelligence you get out in any situation is fuzzy...

They said lots and lots of things which turned out to be 100 percent wrong. Now are they liars? No. They interpreted a fuzzy situation in different ways.

Yes, all things considered it remains safe to say that Bush "interpreted a fuzzy situation in different ways." Still technically true, still unbearably asinine-sounding. Just don't let anyone tell you that it wouldn't make a good bumper sticker, because it does.

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Ben Regenspan 12:14AM EST Monday, 3/20/2006 [link to this item]

But who will Michelle Malkin root for?:
A Dutch multicultural group is organizing a soccer tournament between gays and Muslims, hoping to counter what a study published on Thursday said was a rising tide of fear among gays.

[...] An organizer of the group, Suzanne Ijsselmuiden, said she hoped the competition will "help ease these tensions so that people can openly talk about homosexuality."

Gay Muslims can take their choice of teams, she said. "People can have many identities."

(via FAGAT)

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Ben Regenspan 1:43AM EST Wednesday, 3/15/2006 [link to this item]

Damn that profit motive!: Over at The Corner, Michael Ledeen is complaining that a Barnes & Noble a reader stopped at carries all Marx and no Jefferson: "You know, Marx is often requested by college students, but they never ask for Jefferson," the customer service lady explained to the reader, who naturally speculates that the Fortune 500-traded corporation must be making "pro per" stocking decisions in favor of communist writings.

"It seems that political correctness has reached new lows in the People's Republic of New Jersey," says Ledeen.

-Ben | Comments | Topics: ,

Ben Regenspan Regular Mohammed cartoon 4:43PM EST Tuesday, 3/14/2006 [link to this item]

Cartoon entitled "Arab Run Ports", from MSNBC.com:

(via Dennis the Peasant)

Untitled cartoon from Al-Watan (Qatar), via the ADL:

-Ben | Comments | Topic:

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