I’m stunned by the hung jury in the case of the cop accused of raping a then-14-year-old. The issue seems to hinge on consent and deception. As I understand it, a minor cannot legally consent: Sex with a minor is always rape. Should it be regarded as such if the minor lies? If a minor cannot legally consent, I’m not sure she can legally be responsible for a lie of consent. Further — come on! — how incompetent is a cop who believes a lying minor? He must be some poor judge of character. Cops think everyone who talks them is a liar. Unless there’s something in it for him.
Sadly, another public servant — this one a fireman — is accused of the same jaw-droppingly dim judgment. Or, simply, raping and lying about it.
And now, a 24-year-old frat “boy” serially rapes under-aged girls and videotapes it for the added pleasure. Drunkenness negates consent, if there was any and if any of his victims was old enough to legally consent sober. His parents must be proud, if the news has reached their cellblocks.
Ours is a sick society unable to restrain its own evil. You fear terrorists? There are three — just the smallest sampling. mjh
Buh-bye, Karl!
Karl der Grosse has left the White House for the last time. The man who “architected” a generation of Republican power (hah!) and handed Bush the huge political capital he claimed after 2004 just rode off into the sunset. Mission accomplished.
No doubt he’ll be back as Bush’s last nominee to the Supreme Court. Gotta finish stacking the deck to protect Duhbya and Dick from all the shit that’s coming down in the next decade.
It’s disheartening to hear that Rove’s departure may strengthen Cheney’s hand, as if that were actually possible. With luck, an emboldened Cheney will reel out just enough rope for his own hanging. (Note to the Fatherland Defenders: I’m being purely metaphorical. I wish Dick and Duhbya long lives full of regrets.) mjh
PS: If you think I hate Rove — well, you’re right, but see what conservative godfather Dick Viguerie has to say about Karl.
Richard Viguerie on Karl Rove’s Resignation:
Good News for Conservatives
(Manassas, Virginia) The following is a statement from Richard A. Viguerie, author of Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006), on the resignation of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove:
“Karl Rove’s departure from the White House is good news for conservatives. We may—may—have a more conservative Bush presidency with Rove back in Texas. [mjh: Shudder. Be afraid, be very afraid.]
“As President Bush’s chief political advisor, Karl Rove was a master in the care and feeding of conservative leaders, keeping them mostly silent as the Republican Party moved Left during the Bush presidency. [mjh: ROFLOL.]
“He used the usual carrot and stick to do this. The carrot was access to the White House—and conservative leaders proved just as vulnerable as others to the lure of a photo op with the President, lunch in the West Wing, or a returned phone call from Karl Rove. The stick was fear—speak out, and not only will you lose any hope of access, you will be branded as an extremist, or someone who’s helping the Democrats by speaking out. [mjh: Fear? I thought that was the heart of the Republican worldview — live in fear at all times.]
“Using both carrot and stick, Karl Rove was able to silence or get the support of most conservative leaders as President Bush and congressional Republicans greatly expanded the size and reach of the federal government, including (but certainly not limited to)…
* No Child Left Behind
* McCain-Feingold
* Prescription drug benefits
* Nation-building on a scale never attempted before
* Farm subsidies
* Steel tariffs
* Massive federal deficits
“Yes, Karl Rove was a political genius—he was, after all, the successful architect of Bush’s election in 2000 and reelection in 2004. But as the President’s chief policy advisor, Rove was the architect of George W. Bush’s betrayal of the conservative cause.
“Karl Rove’s biggest failure was to leave the White House without achieving his stated goal of establishing the Republicans as America’s permanent governing party. To even mention that today—after the 2006 elections, President Bush’s plummeting poll numbers, and the GOP’s bleak prospects for 2008—brings embarrassment or laughter, depending on your political viewpoint. No wonder Karl Rove wants to forget about those boasts.
“Rove failed in that goal primarily because he attempted to advance the Republican Party by using raw, naked political power and bribing voters. He copied the Democrats and was more successful than them—for a while. But then conservatives and independents caught on to his game. We started rebelling, first over Harriet Miers and most recently over the amnesty bill. Meanwhile, the Republican Party had lost its “brand” as the party of small government.
How do we recover from the Rove Era? We have to reject the bribing of voters and instead build on President Reagan’s legacy. We must re-establish the conservative movement (and the Republican Party, if it wishes to survive) as the movement and party of ideas, empowering people instead of government, and with a strong national defense but no more nation-building.
“Bush’s brain” will soon be gone. Let’s hope that wiser counsel prevails in the White House in the future, but let’s not depend on that. We conservatives have work to do.” [mjh: Shudder. Be afraid, be very afraid.]
–30–
NOTE to EDITORS: Richard A. Viguerie pioneered ideological and political direct mail and has been called “the funding father of the conservative movement” for his role in helping build dozens of conservative organizations. He is the author of Conservatives Betrayed–How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).
I hope Dick Viguerie joins other conservatives in calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. mjh
PPS: Please (re-)read my Left Undone, a series of four blog entries. If it seems over-the-top, consider the genre and the time — right after Karl declared a generation of Republican power was at hand.
This Week’s WTF?!
ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
Abortion Is Worse Than Dogfighting
…
So now we’re having a catatonic fit because people fight dogs? You gotta be kidding? Wanna know why were getting our fannies handed to us in Iraq and everywhere else for that matter? Wanna know why everyone on earth hates us. Because we put dogs, minnows and owls ahead of people. You shoot an owl in New Mexico and you’ll spend many moons in the local hoosegow. You murder a baby and you get another cruise to the Bahamas.
…
JAY TURNER
Albuquerque
http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/letters/586070opinion08-14-07.htm
Rank
It turns out I’m not alone in my obsession with the Amazon Rank of my book. It’s a “known problem,” which sounds like something Rumsfeld would say — wasn’t it great to see him on Capitol Hill the other day, as uncooperative and unclear as ever? — but is actually a technical phrase. Anyway, I check “my” rank far too often. (I also try hard to think of it as “my book’s rank,” not my own personal rank.)
Recently, Amazon added several sub-ranks, or ranks within categories as opposed to the original rank among all books. While this gives me more to obsess over, it also may be fairer to compare my book to other computer books than to Harry Potter and Kurt Vonnegut. This new sub-ranking also reveals the problem of automated categorization. My book is doing well in the NT category, which is a surprise since it has nothing to do with NT. Of course, neither do books on CSS, which often show up in the same categories as my book. Oh, well, all numbers are equal. mjh
http://www.mjhinton.com/vista/
The Highs and the Lows of Rankings on Amazon – New York Times, By LYNDON STAMBLER
Forget writer’s block — many authors put their manuscripts aside because they cannot stop checking their rankings.
“There really should be a 12-step program,” said Harry Kirchner, a senior national accounts manager with Ingram Publisher Services, a book distributor that counts Amazon as a customer.
This Week’s WTF?!
ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
Liberals Playing Politics With American Soldiers
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS and their liberal main stream media outlets— NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC— love the Iraq body count of our good, brave and courageous men and women in uniform, who have freed 50 million people from the clutches of evil.
They pretend to be aghast at the death and dying of our soldiers, over 3,600 since the beginning of hostilities. The soldiers are personalized, individualized and minutely scrutinized and then splashed across the printed and electronic media as political points to gain votes by the insensitive liberals.
This is a macabre endeavor. Let’s put this into perspective. If the liberal Democrats and liberal main stream media are really concerned about death and dying of Americans, why don’t they give the same treatment to drunken-driving deaths (over 17,000 per year), murder victims (over 18,000 per year) or abortion of embryonic children (over 260,000 per year by Planned Parenthood alone)?
Why, because it does not fit their gruesome agenda. Wake up America. Don’t let the psycho-constipated ideas of the liberal Democrats and the liberal media suck you in. Think!
In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Our good soldiers are maintaining our freedom and securing Iraq’s freedom.
The liberal Democrats and liberal media want to stand by and do nothing!
JOHN MOSMAN
Albuquerque
http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/letters/584248opinion08-07-07.htm
Sarcasm doesn’t carry well in print. (It is also wise to remember sarcasm is always lost on some people, and it angers others, of course.) I’m hoping John Mosman is being sarcastic in his statements that “liberal Democrats” and our minions in the press (what we call “the corporate media” and hardly view as friends) are somehow happy over the worst foreign policy debacle of the last 50 years. This is the most nauseating of the conservative bile: “liberals” (sneer it) want failure and suffering in Iraq because — somehow — we see it benefiting our cause. This LIE must be countered every time it is uttered. Nothing in and about Iraq is benefiting anyone but arms dealers and undertakers.
As for the strawman of all those other “worse” causes of death: many people are as torn up about those as Iraq. However, none of those deaths can be laid at the feet of one man. None of those deaths can be blamed on the actions of a handful of horribly-misguided neoconmen. That’s what earns extraordinary outrage: We NEVER should have entered Iraq in the first place and every single death has been unnecessary. mjh
No Diversity
Bush Down to His Base of Support, By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today’s Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly. …
The only subgroups where a majority of people give Bush the nod are Republicans (67 percent), conservatives (53 percent) and white evangelicals who attend religious services at least once a week (56 percent).
These are the same three subsets of voters who support Bush on Iraq.
White evangelicals as an entire bloc – regardless of how often they report going to church – have been a reliable support group for Bush since he first set foot in the Oval Office.
When the Progressives Left the Republican Party
The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media
It was on this day in 1912 that Teddy Roosevelt was nominated by the Progressive Party to run for President, an election that went on to define the Republican Party for the rest of the 20th Century.
Republicans had dominated politics ever since the Civil War. A Republican had been in the White House for 44 of the previous 52 years. They were the party of civil rights and, under the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican Party became the party of environmental conservation, antitrust laws, and consumer protection.
Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most popular presidents in history, the youngest too. He was 42 when he took office. He was the first president to ride in an automobile and in an airplane, and the first to visit a foreign country while in office. He was a naturalist. He was an author of history. He published almost 50 books (books by this author).
After he’d served two terms, he announced that he would not seek a third term. He handpicked his successor, William Howard Taft, and then went off on an African safari. But when he got back, Teddy Roosevelt found that Taft had moved away from progressive principles and aligned himself with the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
Teddy Roosevelt ran against Taft in the primaries, won the primary in Taft’s home state of Ohio, but eventually it was party insiders who picked the nominee, and they gave it to Taft. And so Roosevelt called for the creation of a new progressive party and accepted its nomination on this day in 1912. It was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party because Roosevelt said, “I am as strong as a bull moose, and you can use me to the limit.”
He was in a three-way race with Taft and Woodrow Wilson, campaigning on a platform that called for income taxes, inheritance taxes, the eight-hour workday, and voting rights for women. He drew huge crowds wherever he went. In Milwaukee, October 14, 1912, on the way to give his speech, he was shot by a man six feet away, the bullet deflected by the speech in his pocket, along with a metal eyeglasses case. Roosevelt went on to give the speech, but Woodrow Wilson won the election. Despite Roosevelt making the best showing of any third party candidate in American history. He came in second.
And one of the results of his Progressive Party campaign was splitting the Republican Party between conservatives and progressives, and the progressives have never been in charge since.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/08/06/#tuesday
It was on this day in 1974 that Richard M. Nixon resigned the office of the presidency, the first American president in history to do so. His policies as president had been rather liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. He eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs and tried to create a national health insurance system.