I could not help feeling sorry for New York Governor Paterson last year. All he wanted to do was announce that progress was being made on a bill to extend health care benefits to people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. But Republican Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Democrat Sheldon Silver couldn’t stop getting their little digs in at each other so that Paterson ended up with his head in his hands. I thought he was going to cry. And that is just politics as usual. It could have been much worse. Everybody involved could have been Republicans.
Pardon my gloating, but these pompous Republican pols were supposed to be taking over the entire world because they were morally superior to us “common folk”, i.e. those who did not believe that humanity began at the instant of conception, who did not want the government to protect us from “gay” marriage, and who had the temerity to ask questions of the Republican leadership about the war and the law. And now we have word that our Republican overlords have been ripped off to the tune of at least $725,000 by one of their own, Christopher Ward, Treasurer for the National Republican Campaign Committee. So I guess it is true; there is no honor amongst thieves.
Mr. Ward had the power to wire transfer money from half a dozen RNC accounts without having to seek clearance from anybody. Thanks to this Gruppenführer management style so favored by Bush, over the last five years the GOP has been paying for renovations to and making mortgage payments on Mr. Ward’s Bethesda, Maryland home. I’ll bet it’s a really nice house, too. According to one of the Republican investigators, “He (Ward) doesn’t appear to have undertaken a particularly clever fraud,” which raises the question of just how clever you have to be to pull one over on the current generation of GOP leadership. And after they got ripped off, these brainiacs had to shell out another half a million dollars to investigate the theft of the first three quarters of a million, and fork over another three hundred thousand to fix their broken accounting systems. The only thing worse for them than getting robbed was finding out they had been robbed. According to Rep. Tom Cole, Republican from Oklahoma, “We got dealt a bad hand.” God, don’t these guys ever accept personal responsibility for anything?
In fact things may be far worse than that. The investigators had to admit under questioning by reporters that there were some accounts and documentation that they didn’t have access to. It must have been some investigation. Good God, is there anybody high up at the GOP who is not a crook or an idiot, or both? And, I might also begin to wonder, are any of these morally pure GOP leaders actually hetrosexuals?
I ask this second question because the list of Gay-Old-Party members who made their living by gay baiting goes back at least as far as Roy Cohen, Joe McCarthy’s "gay" attack dog. There was the Reverend Ted Haggard, leader of the homophobic National Association of Evangelicals who was forced to first declare, “I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man from Denver”, and was then forced to admit that, yes, actually he had. Then there was Bob Allen, a Florida state Representative and State Chairman of John McCain’s Presidential campaign, until last year when he was forced to resign after offering a cop twenty bucks to accept oral sex from the Represenative. More recently there was Congressman Mark “The Page Boy” Foley, and Senator Larry “Mr. Wide Stance” Craig, and Washington State Republican Representative Richard Curtis, who was busted for soliciting a gay prostitute. And now we have Mr. Glenn Murphy Jr., who last year at this time ran the Clark County Kentucky Republican Committee and was head of the Young Republican National Federation. Then last July, at about 6:40 am, Glenn was displaying passionate affection to a 22 year old man who was sleeping in the bottom bunk bed after a late night party at Glenn’s house. The application of unsought attention awoke and inspired the young recipient to debunk him self and, two days later, to secretly record Glenn’s confession and apology. What do you say in a situation like that? “I should have never given up smoking?” Or perhaps you could try and blame it on your sinus medication, or perhaps it was a desperate an attempt to save the young man from one of those dangerous four hour erections we hear so much about.
And this is the second time Glenn got “up” early with a younger man. He did it at least once before in 1998. This time Glenn Murphy took a plea deal, and will be sentenced on June 30, 2008. He negotiated two years with four suspended. But I wonder if any of these Republicans will ever serve any time for hypocrisy. It appears to me that homophobia and homosexuality have a very similar genetic element, the primary difference being that you usually have no choice about being gay, but hating gays is all about choice.
Pardon my gloating, but these pompous Republican pols were supposed to be taking over the entire world because they were morally superior to us “common folk”, i.e. those who did not believe that humanity began at the instant of conception, who did not want the government to protect us from “gay” marriage, and who had the temerity to ask questions of the Republican leadership about the war and the law. And now we have word that our Republican overlords have been ripped off to the tune of at least $725,000 by one of their own, Christopher Ward, Treasurer for the National Republican Campaign Committee. So I guess it is true; there is no honor amongst thieves.Mr. Ward had the power to wire transfer money from half a dozen RNC accounts without having to seek clearance from anybody. Thanks to this Gruppenführer management style so favored by Bush, over the last five years the GOP has been paying for renovations to and making mortgage payments on Mr. Ward’s Bethesda, Maryland home. I’ll bet it’s a really nice house, too. According to one of the Republican investigators, “He (Ward) doesn’t appear to have undertaken a particularly clever fraud,” which raises the question of just how clever you have to be to pull one over on the current generation of GOP leadership. And after they got ripped off, these brainiacs had to shell out another half a million dollars to investigate the theft of the first three quarters of a million, and fork over another three hundred thousand to fix their broken accounting systems. The only thing worse for them than getting robbed was finding out they had been robbed. According to Rep. Tom Cole, Republican from Oklahoma, “We got dealt a bad hand.” God, don’t these guys ever accept personal responsibility for anything?In fact things may be far worse than that. The investigators had to admit under questioning by reporters that there were some accounts and documentation that they didn’t have access to. It must have been some investigation. Good God, is there anybody high up at the GOP who is not a crook or an idiot, or both? And, I might also begin to wonder, are any of these morally pure GOP leaders actually hetrosexuals?I ask this second question because the list of Gay-Old-Party members who made their living by gay baiting goes back at least as far as Roy Cohen, Joe McCarthy’s "gay" attack dog. There was the Reverend Ted Haggard, leader of the homophobic National Association of Evangelicals who was forced to first declare, “I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man from Denver”, and was then forced to admit that, yes, actually he had. Then there was Bob Allen, a Florida state Representative and State Chairman of John McCain’s Presidential campaign, until last year when he was forced to resign after offering a cop twenty bucks to accept oral sex from the Represenative. More recently there was Congressman Mark “The Page Boy” Foley, and Senator Larry “Mr. Wide Stance” Craig, and Washington State Republican Representative Richard Curtis, who was busted for soliciting a gay prostitute. And now we have Mr. Glenn Murphy Jr., who last year at this time ran the Clark County Kentucky Republican Committee and was head of the Young Republican National Federation. Then last July, at about 6:40 am, Glenn was displaying passionate affection to a 22 year old man who was sleeping in the bottom bunk bed after a late night party at Glenn’s house. The application of unsought attention awoke and inspired the young recipient to debunk him self and, two days later, to secretly record Glenn’s confession and apology. What do you say in a situation like that? “I should have never given up smoking?” Or perhaps you could try and blame it on your sinus medication, or perhaps it was a desperate an attempt to save the young man from one of those dangerous four hour erections we hear so much about.And this is the second time Glenn got “up” early with a younger man. He did it at least once before in 1998. This time Glenn Murphy took a plea deal, and will be sentenced on June 30, 2008. He negotiated two years with four suspended. But I wonder if any of these Republicans will ever serve any time for hypocrisy. It appears to me that homophobia and homosexuality have a very similar genetic element, the primary difference being that you usually have no choice about being gay, but hating gays is all about choice.And what could be the ultimate irony of this vile period in Republican Party history, if the evanglicals should abandon the GOP this fall, as all indications are that they will, it will represent the maturation of Karl Roves' wedge politcs. It leaves behind a ravaged and hollow Republican Party, having alienated all sides of the political debate. And the only core of support the GOP can count on will be those who have persisted in supporting the Republicans even while the Republicans were denouncing and demonizing them; homosexuals.
Irony can be such a bitch, can't he?
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