The Bachelor and the Sweaty-Soxers


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From the New York Times:

Foley resigned abruptly after being confronted with a series of sexually explicit Internet messages he is reported to have sent to under-age Congressional pages…According to ABC, he exchanged instant messages with the pages using his initials and year of birth: “MAF54...[The page]told ABC News that people in the program had warned his class [of Congressional pages] to watch out for Mr. Foley.


Cardinal Hastert?

From the Washington Post:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert. It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took.

The frankest and most interesting coverage can be found at the gay/political site AmericaBlog.
Here's ABC's report.

Modified Images: AmericaBlog.com, C-SPAN, House.gov, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 7:01 AM 0 comments

 
They Call Him Flipper...


flipper.wav

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a new video highlighting Bush-Republican Geoff Davis' many flip-flops.

Modified Image: House.gov, WarnerBros
- posted by Sean @ 10:37 AM 0 comments

 
As The Flop Flips...


Though there has been a slight nip in the air, Geoff Davis is now wearing flip-flops as he claims, amid closer public scrutiny, to be for a position he was against after he was originally for it…
Sound semi-familiar?
Those with weak inner ears might want to pop a Dramamine.
Keeping an ear toward popular patriotic sentiments, the one-term Bush Republican had claimed, in a franked midsummer mailing among other things, to have written key language in a 2007 defense reauthorization bill that would have capped interest rates on predatory loans to members of the military at 36%.
But, as revealed in a September 19 editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader and a September 20th post on ThinkProgress.org, aides to Davis have been forced by publicity and a revealing commercial by his opponent Ken Lucas to admit that the extreme right wing politician accepted an $11, 450 contribution and consulted on the legislation with one of his top financial donors, CNG Financial of Mason, Ohio, owners of Check n’ Go, a predatory money lending chain normally clustered in inner cities and around military bases.
Shortly after this consultation, Davis took his check ‘n went forward with new plans to completely flip the meaning of the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act (PDF) by eliminating the very interest rate caps intended to protect financially strapped servicemen and women.
And, now, baked by the cleansing rays of sunlight, the increasingly truthified Mr. Davis now says he’s for a position he was for before he was against it.
According to Bob Doyle, a campaign advisor for Democrat Ken Lucas, the new Davis position is “Washington legislative double talk…from the beginning he wanted to stop the cap…when it came out in the media and he was under pressure, Davis started doing something else…[it’s] a political scandal because it revealed that Davis lined up against the troops.”
Look for Davis, with the quick cash and assistance of his cronies, to further wrap himself in a scoundrel’s last refuge.

Modified Image: House.gov, FritzPhoto.com
- posted by Sean @ 3:21 PM 0 comments

 
Macac-ish?


Yesterday, I briefly mentioned the White Men Only spot currently being run by the Republican candidate for the Kentucky 4th District Congressional seat.
Aside from the people in the commercial being exclusively older men, city mayors and Caucasian, BluegrassReport.com discovered that the first gentleman in the commercial, David Wallace, is actually Geoff Davis’ personal attorney and not, as presented, an average citizen.
While Mr. Wallace might be an actual Democrat he obviously has a financial interest in Mr. Davis’ success that should have been disclosed in the television commercial.
The BluegrassReport.com also, in the same post, published an excerpt from a December 2003 article in the Kentucky Post by political reporter Pat Crowley.
The report appears in the artwork atop this posting and confirms Mr. Wallace’s relationship to the local Bush-Republican candidate.

YouTube.com now has two Lucas commercials, one is what's called an image spot and the other is the predatory military loans commercial mentioned yesterday.

Images: BluegrassReport.com, YouTube.com
- posted by Sean @ 6:56 AM 0 comments

 
Of Armor & Fear...

So pronounced was the power of a tired media cliché observed in the Washington Post this morning, I felt subtly compelled to say the 4th Kentucky Congressional race between Ken Lucas and Geoff Davis is “casting a wide net” over local broadcast and cable commercial time availabilities.
Of course, adopting another flea-bitten favorite, I could also say the local political TV season is “in full swing”.
But, I won't.


Democrat Ken Lucas and Bush-Republican Geoff Davis

The Republican candidate and current freshman representative, unrepentant and still flush with ill-gotten booty, has, with that booty, professionally wrapped himself in the once proven Bushian pastiche of bunting, soldiers and born-again reform Democrats.
In a spot that aired heavily last week but that does not, tellingly, appear on the candidate’s webpage, Mr. Davis claims to have personally spoken to a young soldier who called his office and expressed his concern over a lack of armor protection.
Davis further claims that he acquired the armor in short order and ends the commercial with a wife saying Davis’ actions saved her husband’s life.
Thanks to a commenter on the BluegrassReport.com and an archived Kentucky Post story at the site, one can get a sense of how egregious this commercial was from this transcript of the radio version:

GEOFF DAVIS: I'm Geoff Davis and I approve this message.
(Melodramatic orchestral music starts)

MAN'S VOICE: Two weeks before I deployed to Iraq, I learned that my team and I would not have the armored vehicles that we needed. I called Congressman Geoff Davis. He took a personal interest and was determined to get us the armored vehicles we needed. By the time we arrived in Iraq there were new armored vehicles waiting for us. (Music turns ominous) Seven days later, we were hit by a roadside bomb.

WOMAN'S VOICE: I get a phonecall at 6:20 in the morning and all I hear is, "Babe... (in a choked voice) I got hit... really bad." And then the phone died. I just was thinking, "God, I don't care (sobbing) what's happened to him just bring him back."

MAN'S VOICE: Without that armor, there's no doubt we'd have all been dead.

WOMAN'S VOICE: If Geoff Davis hadn't stepped up and worked hard and made that happen, I might be sitting here right now with two children and no father and no best friend.

ANNOUNCER: Paid for by Geoff Davis for Congress.

Old Geoff’s got the fear down to a fair-thee-well, no?
The stark raving terror abates a tad with Davis’ laughable all male and all-Caucasian Democrats for Davis commercial that is available, for now, on the candidate’s webpage.
Shades of macaca!
Suffice it to say that one of the elected characters in the Davis spot presides over a city locals' call “The City of Empty Buildings” after years of developer booms without, it seems, a market for such development.


The Democratic candidate, four term congressional veteran Ken Lucas, is hitting hard in his commercial at his opponent’s manufactured patriotism.
The Lucas spot examines the Bush Republican’s recent acceptance of an $11, 450 contribution from executives of a national payday lender and his even more recent about face on the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act (PDF), which would cap interest rates on predatory pay day loans at a still very high 36% and is, astonishingly, a bill Mr. Davis sponsored.
According to the Center for Responsible Lending, “at deployment time, when military families are faced with extra expenses at home and abroad, they may be more vulnerable to the promise of quick cash from payday lenders.”
More real than a TV commercial, I’m hearing that parents and families of Kentucky National Guard units, scheduled for deployment before the holidays, were called over the last two weeks and invited to a meeting with military officials.
Families were told, in this call from a military official, that they would be given a list of items they “might want to provide to insure their son’s return” and that personal armor would be among those items.
The meeting, scheduled for this past Wednesday in central Kentucky, was cancelled at the last minute.
Families were told a list of these items would be mailed to them, a list that will most likely be mailed at taxpayer expense.
Will the full compliment of military-approved personal body armor be on this list?
Will use of this armor exclude these soldiers from military insurance guarantees?
Will local military families face this considerable expense if they elect “to insure their son’s return”?
A few seconds of Googling shows that a Level IIIA armored vest, the best chest protection, costs $821.
That large numbers of military families are still facing this Hobson’s choice is most clearly observed with this Ebay listing of body armor.
At this stage of the local TV war, Mr. Lucas is on the side of the angels.
Unfortunately Mr. Davis, who has yet to return his $41,000 of tainted Delay/Abramoff and Randy Cunningham money, is still flush with NRCC and predatory lender cash.
If you are planning to Vote for Change, please consider a contribution to the Ken Lucas campaign.

Images: GeoffDavisForCongress.com, WeNeedKenLucas.com
- posted by Sean @ 3:19 PM 0 comments