After posting my piece on Foley yesterday, I settled back into my recliner to watch a little college football and rest my still sick and weary bones, fighting a chest cold that is hanging on more fiercely than the unhinged left hangs on to the fantasy that Bush stole Ohio in 2004. I was prepared to relax for the rest of the day, napping in between the day games and night games, secure in the knowledge that Saturday’s on the blog are usually quiet and nothing of great import would occur.
What I was not prepared for was the mind boggling assault from lefty commenters that, at various times accused me of 1) supporting pedophilia; 2) defending Foley; 3) trying to “sweep the scandal under the rug;” 4) blaming Democrats for the scandal; 5) apologizing for the GOP leadership who were “obviously” covering up the scandal.
It was that last point that set me off. It appears to me that our friends on the left were guilty of a kind of intellectual flabbiness we’ve become all too familiar with over the last few years. Wild exaggerations, jumping to conclusions, practicing 20/20 hindsight, twisting what people say and write in the most grotesque ways imaginable, and getting the facts of the story so laughably wrong one wonders what matchbook cover school they attended to learn how to read.
From their point of view, it was “obvious” that the GOP leadership, when presented with emails from Foley to a former page and which were examined and evaluated by several newspapers, knew that Foley was an internet stalker of young boys and should have taken action. This despite the fact that those emails were so innocuous that the aforementioned newspapers – including the St. Petersburg Times – saw nothing improper in their content. The Editor for the Times issued a statement in which he said:
There was nothing overtly sexual in the emails, but we assigned two reporters to find out more. We found the Louisiana page and talked with him.He told us Foley’s request for a photo made him uncomfortable so he never responded, but both he and his parents made clear we could not use his name if we wrote a story. We also found another page who was willing to go on the record, but his experience with Foley was different. He said Foley did send a few emails but never said anything in them that he found inappropriate. We tried to find other pages but had no luck. We spoke with Rep. Alexander, who said the boy’s family didn’t want it pursued, and Foley, who insisted he was merely trying to be friendly and never wanted to make the page uncomfortable.So, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn’t go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today’s paper, our policy is that we don’t make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn’t meet our standard for publication. Evidently, other news organizations felt the same way.
So what all my commenters were skewering Republicans for – not censuring Foley and having him thrown in jail – was exactly what several media outlets had decided as well; while inappropriate, there was nothing in those particular emails to that particular page that warranted any other action than what they ended up taking; telling Foley to leave the kid alone.
Now I know the left don’t do nuance but later, as other GOP leaders became aware of the emails and inquired about them, the parents refused permission to have their child’s privacy violated any more. The leadership should certainly be taken to task for being uninformed on this issue – Reynolds and Shimkus are fools not to have told Boehner and Hastert right away – but it appears to be a question of incompetence and not a cover-up.
None of this has anything to do with the dirty IM’s that were released by ABC on Friday. These are two separate and distinct issues – something that the dim bulbs among my commenters have just not been able to wrap their infantile brains around. They believe that since Hastert et al knew about the one incident that they “obviously” (there’s that word again) knew about the others. This flies against the facts as we know them now.
If, as I eventually tired of repeating, it turns out that Hastert and Co. knew of the dirty IM’s THEN OF COURSE THEY SHOULD ALL RESIGN OR BE KICKED OUT AND PROBABLY PROSECUTED FOR OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE.
Similarly, if Democrats knew of the dirty IM’s months ago and were sitting on them in order to release them when they would do maximum political damage, they too should resign and be prosecuted for obstruction.
I don’t imagine any of this will make a difference to those who have the reading comprehension of a Llama or the cognitive skills of a Tapir. They will continue accusing me of excusing this or trying to hide that or maybe of being a pedophile myself. All they’re doing of course is showing how truly clueless they are.
At least when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, she could be reasonably certain that the creatures she met were blessed with some kind of intelligence. Visiting this blog yesterday and reading the comments from leftist twits, I envy Alice her advantage in that regard.
9:42 am
Illustrated: Zawahiri v. Democratic talking points
The Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri is regarded as an ideological founder of al-Qaeda and carries a $25 million US bounty on his head. No word on bounties for other Democratic thought-leaders…
9:44 am
What on earth did those poor animals do to be compared to dim-ocrats? If the libs were holding out on the dirty IM’s are there not more serious charges than obstruction?
10:52 am
Here is a little nuance that you left out of your post:
“Besides the leaders, other lawmakers and Congressional officers who served on the board that oversaw the page program were aware of the e-mail messages, though the Democratic lawmaker who serves on the board, Representative Dale E. Kildee of Michigan, said Saturday that he had never been informed.” NYT
I’m sure you can explain how this little fact is meaningless.
11:05 am
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5907
11:17 am
Ha! I laughed out loud when I read “the reading comprehension of a Llama or the cognitive skills of a Tapir.” That’s a brilliant analogy for the mind, or should I say the lack of mind, of a leftist.
However, you’re mistaken on Alice’s expectations of the creatures she encountered in Wonderland, Mr. Moran. She might have been reasonably certain they were blessed with some kind of intelligence before she met them. But after meeting the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, she was rather quickly disabused of that notion.
Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece is actually a study in logic and language. Every encounter Alice has with a creature in Wonderland is a logic puzzle that turns on language. Thus, when Humpty Dumpty says, in a rather scornful tone, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Alice responds, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” To which Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is which is to be master—that’s all.”
Here, Humpty Dumpty takes the point of view of a nominalist—the view that universal terms do not refer to objective existences but are nothing more than verbal utterances. This is a view that Carroll actually held himself, as he explains in his book Symbolic Logic: “I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, “Let it be understood that by the word ‘black’ I shall always mean ‘white’, and that by the word ‘white’ I shall always mean ‘black’,” I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I may think it.”
Thankfully, Carroll’s position did not win out in the long run. For if we are to communicate accurately we have an obligation to avoid the practice of giving private meanings to commonly used words. If we do not, then communication is impossible. We must pay our words extra, otherwise they are the stuff propaganda is made of. Thus, we do have an obligation to past usage. So, in a sense, words are our masters; if they are not, we cannot communicate. But in another sense we are the masters of words. For if we were not, there would be no such thing as poetry.
This goes to the heart of the debate over intentionalism you have alluded to in the past. And you’re right, the left doesn’t do nuance—they simply intend to be the masters or propagandists of all. Of course, when they fall like Humpty Dumpty, and they will, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put them back together again.
In Wonderland, Alice has to keep her wits about her, because nothing is as it seems. She has to carefully analyze everything said to her and use logic to arrive at the truth. In this sense, she is much like you. And the blogosphere becomes a lot like Rick Moran in Wonderland.
11:34 am
[...] Rightwing Nuthouse [...]
11:54 am
Here’s a specific point in the emails from 2005. The boy says:
He doesn’t know which way to think, and his friends aren’t sure either. Like the St. Pete Times there just wasn’t enough “there” there.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of the typical Liberal tendency to make one’s decision based on raw emotion. In this case the emotion “LET’S SCREW THE REPUBLICANS!â€
Mark Foley is obviously a troubled man who was following the classic stalker’s profile. What do you call the people that knew the path he was following and kept it quit for an October Surprise? What do you call people that mat have risked a child being sexually assaulted for the simple reason of wanting “their side†to win?
In this case I call them Democrats, CREW and the Left Wing Smear Machine.
12:16 pm
This would be less troubling for me if the House Leadership had not already tried to shield a democratic member from investigation: Rep. Jefferson (D-LA). I do not like Congress thinking it is above the law, should impede the law and in anyway try to circumvent the law of the land. This tiny House of Representatives is far too cozy for my liking, and is not doing a job of actually understanding their role in the Federal system. The House of Representatives was never made to be efficient, smooth operating, shielding its members from investigation and, generally, thinking of themselves first and the Nation second. That goes for Democrats, too.
It is disingenuous of any Democrat to point their finger at the House Leadership when it has done as much and more to shield one of their members from investigation. And it continues to push that case up the Court system even after losing the first round. That said it is better than the give everything away Senate that not only wanted “amnesty” for illegals, but wanted to give gifts and presents and then tell the Executive what to do in Foreign Policy. Both are over-reaches of power and need to be seriously addressed before they get the bright idea that they really should be running everything.
1:01 pm
Rick,
It appears that Democrats would have wanted the Republican leadership to waterboard Foley. An immediate inquisition should have been undertaken. Terrorists be dammed! A Republican is always held in the greatest suspicion! Why, Senator Dodd compared the Republican leadership to the Catholic Church in handling this matter.
I’m very happy that Democrats have now come to the Republican side, 16 year olds are children! Will this mean they will support parental notification for abortions? Advocate lessor smut on TV and in our schools. Will access to porn sites at the library be discontinued? Will condoms on cucumbers be a thing of the past. I was so pleased to see our grandmother, Congresswoman Harmon, talk about these “at risk” children. Gone will be the days of adolescents finding their sexuality, they will now be called boys and girls in need of adult supervision.
2:27 pm
It’s so much more effective when you srew tehm with the truth.
Foley’s a creep and the leadership didn’t do enough to find out how much of one.
Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of the attentions of one of these predators, and that would include me, could see from the so-called innocuos email he was hitting on this kid.
And if they were so sure it was not a problem, why not inform the Democratic member of the oversight group. No, they instead informed the National Republican committee. So Ken (I’m not gay) Mehlman has some explaining to do as well.
Heh.
3:01 pm
Yeah, after all Mr. Borden did buy that ax that dear Lizzie used. Of course, even with that minimal amount of information the Democrats could have launched an effective campaign to get Foley yanked. But isn’t it so much better to wait until 40 days before an election?
If the the St. Petersburg Times, hardly “Faux News”, didn’t think there was anything that could be persued what makes anyone think that the Republican Causuc could do something? Now, whomever had the IM’s in their possesion sometime in July (or sooner) could have done something. And should of.
3:58 pm
You poor, poor thing. All you did was try to argue that the repubs having a barely legal loving closeted gay cyberpredator revealed as a member of their leadership proves dems are weak on defense. How could anyone misinterpret that.
Poor dear.
5:08 am
Yeah, those emails were hardly damning. And while suggestive, they weren’t exactly hard evidence. Still, you’d think they might have maybe asked around with the other pages. Seems like that might have been a prudent thing to do. Might also have been wise to hold a page committee meeting, so there’d be no hint of coverup in the worst case. Frankly, it just didn’t look good. And the media has a big tasty bone to chew on now.