UPDATE BELOW on continue reading
I just can't help but feel that even though I DO NOT believe that Mr. Hastert is engaged in a cover up, and even though it s probably a fact of law that the moron pervert Foley did not break the law, since the age of consent in DC is 16, that the errors of poor judgement exhibited by Hastert in at least not stripping Foley of all committee responsibility (which is his right to do) ..says more about the republican leadership than all the baloney going on in the media / election frenzy of progressive lunatics. Hastert knew enough to have executed a zero tolerance policy on congressmen making clearly inappropriate contact with 16-17 year olds, regardless of sex. I can only imagine what I would have said or done as the dad of a son or daughter so contacted, IRREGARDLESS of the gay thing.The democrats meanwhile had better shut up. Not because the repblicans are no worse, but because they are no better.
Stupidity has no party
Lack of self control has no party
Predatory sexual conduct has no party
Apparently, neither do I have one.
The repubs may have just proven they are too incompetent to make leadership decisions of consequence in congress, in the aggregate, but the democrats have already proven they are worse.
Do I have to quote C3PO?
Continue reading "Sorry, I just can't help it...blame the Lott's and the Thurmond's ..but" »
4 comments:
Hastert knew enough to have executed a zero tolerance policy on congressmen making clearly inappropriate contact with 16-17 year olds, regardless of sex.
Perhaps Hastert is too decent of man to begin witch hunts on one item of slightly awkward nonsense. Perhaps, a zero tolerance policy really amounts to nothing much beyond witch hunts. Perhaps, the overwhelming percentage of 16 and 17 year olds sneer at a man or woman in their fifties making advances towards them. Of course, Foley is pathetic to have done what he did, but were his "victims" in any way injured? I doubt it. And I just ask people who think I'm wrong to ride a middle school bus for an hour and remember the facts of what it is to be a teenager. (And middle school students are much younger than 16!) There is no mentally competent teenager of age 16 or 17 in America (and probably the entire world) who is naive. I remember the frequent sexual advances from old men when I was 18. It was just a nuisance, but not the worse nuisance I faced. I'm sure that the advances would have come earlier, if I hadn't lived in rural isolation, where my greatest sexual problem was my occassional attraction to the goats. Luckily the goats weren't predatory.
If we have to condemn anyone, let it be Foley the person who actually acted inappropriately. Hastert really is a decent man from everything I've read of him, and I hate these attack on him.
There is no room for stupid error with the stakes around us.
Foley could have been quietly removed from every single committee.
He would have retired, I assure you.
Hastert would have acted correctly.
Ethically, AND in pointing the direction for how a public servant behaves, and in what is expected from other public servants.
It's nice but irrelevant if Hastert is a decent man.
Gimme Ernest J King in tight times .. the personification of a son of a bitch, but one who understood the stakes, the games, the real costs and the path.
What do you think happens when you retire someone because of one questionable instance? It's a world as evil as the Islam as we fight. At age 26, a 17 year old heterosexual boy kissed me with tongue action in sadness of our parting--a kiss that he initiated. We were taking fifty mile bike rides almost daily. What does zero tolerance mean for me? Does it make any sense?
I think it is about time to stop replacing sexual scandel with politics. The Republicans probably didn't do as well as they could have in the 1998 election because of Clinton sex scandel fatigue, and I think quite rightly so. I also don't want to see Republicans blow their majority in the House by attacking Hastert. Let's consider instead his sensible political ideas.
I just remembered that Hastert was a high school wrestling coach--a plum ephebophile job if there ever was one. Perhaps zero tolerance means excluding people like him.
Who cares if this was gay or not? That's THEIR biz.
People are not sending their kids to congress as pages (and minors) to be preyed on by sexual predators at the top of the political and economic pyramid. People are not voting republicans in with the thought somewhere in the back of their minds that their little girl might get the treatment from a long term congressman, who would then get kind treatment from the leadership for doing so when exposed.
Hastert didn't have to move to expel Foley, just strip him of responsibility. That's acting for zero tolerance. It would have been proper. Hastert was not acting the way a LEADER acts (IMHO). The leader sets the tune. That tune was that clearly improper contact between congressmen and pages of any sex was uncomfortable, not unacceptable. This not some small business in Bozeman, it's the spotlights.
That CHARACTER issue for the speaker of the house is a political issue. He accepted the behavior in the 'innocent' emails? No business endeavor I ever worked with or lead would ever have countenanced contact of that nature from a a senior executive to an intern or page level employee. Acceptance of that WILL lead to abuse.
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