Biffster’s World

How much worse can things get for House Republicans right now? Mark Foley’s predilection for little boys would’ve seemed to have been a catastrophe. But instead, Foley’s pediophilia is just the tip of the iceberg. The Republican cover-up is turning out to be the true catastrophe for the House Republicans. One which they aren’t going to recover from.

So just how bad is it? It looks like the coverup has been going on for three years:

At the same time, a congressional aide said in an Associated Press
interview he first warned Hastert’s aides more than three years ago
that Foley’s behavior toward pages was troublesome. That was long
before GOP leaders acknowledged learning of the problem.

The aide, Kirk Fordham, said he had “more than one conversation with
senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives
asking them to intervene” several years ago.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s staff immediately said this was false, of course. Hastert is fighting for his political life here, trying to deny that there was any type of cover-up. But with every passing day, new information is released which points to a massive cover-up. And House Republicans are starting to realize that Hastert’s ship is sinking:

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, third-ranking leader, pointedly told reporters he would
have handled the matter differently than the speaker, had he known of
it.

“I think I could have given some good advice here, which is, You
have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think
of,” said Blunt, a member of the leadership. “You absolutely can’t
decide not to look into activities because one individual’s parents
don’t want you to.”

Republican Rep. Ron Lewis of Kentucky, in a tougher-than-expected re-election race, abruptly
canceled an invitation for Hastert to join him at a fundraiser next
week.

“I’m taking the speaker’s words at face value,” Lewis told the AP.
“I have no reason to doubt him. But until this is cleared up, I want to
know the facts. If anyone in our leadership has done anything wrong,
then I will be the first in line to condemn it.”

I think it is safe to say that Hastert is not going to survive the scandal. It’s also a fair bet that at least a few incumbent Republicans will lose their seats because of this. November’s election was already looking promising for Democrats. Now, it looks like a sure thing that the Dems will take control of the House.

(All quotes from Yahoo! News)

After the disgusting behavior during the “debate” about illegal immigration during the special session here in Colorado, I was inspired to write the following letter to my local Representative, Ted Harvey:

Mr. Harvey,

As a resident in your district, I am shocked and embarrassed at your statements about illegal immigration. Your statement about Mexican gangas was bad enough. And your defense that you were just repeating something out of a newspaper article is not really a defense. Repeating a racist statement that someone else made doesn’t make it less racist. I would like to know what that article said, actually. But I digress.

The statement that specifically made me write this letter is the following: “This session has to do with protecting the citizens of Colorado from having to subsidize illegal immigrants no matter where they’re from. By throwing out those words and accusations, they’re shutting down a debate on a serious public safety concern.” This is an amazing distortion of what’s happening. Colorado citizens aren’t “subsidizing illegal immigrants” because most illegal immigrants don’t use public services. Why would they, when this puts them at risk of being discovered and deported? This phrase that you use is a red herring, meant to distract us from the real goals of your immigration stance.

Granted, I have no idea why you are so anti-immigrant. If you truly wanted to reduce the number of illegal immigrants coming into this country, then you would back bills that punish businesses for hiring undocumented workers. People come to this nation for one reason: jobs. If business stop hiring undocumented workers, then the illegal immigration issue would be resolved. No jobs = no undocumented workers.

But for some reason, you don’t want to do this. Could it be that you don’t want to lose your “Guardian of Small Business” accolades? Instead, you seem to advocate punishing those who came here in search of a job, to what end? Are you planning on putting 11 million people in prison? Deporting 11 million people? What would this do to our economy? And more to the point, what would keep more people coming in to fill the jobs that those who are being deported are leaving empty?

As a constituent, I ask that you abandon this extremist approach to illegal immigration and join a course of action that can actually make positive changes, instead of villifying a group of people.

—
Michael Fierro
Littleton, CO

Harvey is a really vile toad of a Representative. He prides himself on being a complete neandrathal regarding reproductive rights and women’s privacy. He also seems to have at least racist tendencies. I think he truly believes that Mexicans are all unlawful punks who can’t wait to get to America to join street gangs and terrorist cells. That he was voted into office is scary; that he was voted into office by my neighbors is even scarier.

How many different ways do I love Howard Dean? I dunno if I can list them all. But let me try starting with this quote:

Dean said in Wednesday’s speech that Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is “going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris, who didn’t understand that it is ethically improper to be the chairman of a campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia and she is not Stalin.”

Now really, who can argue with that? Harris did act much in the same manner that Stalin would have concerning “elections.” Rigged election? Check. Make yourself the person in charge of said election so it’ll never be questioned? Check.

Of course, Harris’s camp whined about Dean’s statement:

In a statement Thursday, Harris’ campaign said Dean’s comments comparing her to a communist dictator responsible for millions of deaths “reflect a lack of understanding and basic decency.”

Which is the equivalent of saying, “MOMMY! Howie was mean to me!”

(Source: TheDenverChannel.com)

This is absolutely disgusting, assuming that the report is accurate. According to Boston.com, a report by “Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee, women are being given false, alarmist information regarding abortion risks. From the article:

Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the country, instructs its affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn’t.

“I know the report is wanting to say that it’s conclusive, but it isn’t,” Ford said.

None of the pregnancy centers the committee staff called was identified, and it could not be determined if any were linked to Care Net, which has helped about a quarter of the nation’s pregnancy centers begin operations.

One pregnancy center told a congressional aide the risk of cancer after an abortion could be 80 percent higher, the report noted. Ford said she doubted a pregnancy center would go that far, but the Web site for a pregnancy center in Albuquerque says the risk for cancer after an abortion is 50 percent or greater.

In February 2003, a National Cancer Institute workshop concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. [Emphasis mine]

How disgusting is this? Are anti-choice groups really so desparate that they would flat-out like to a woman, trying to both scare her and not give her the information she needs to make an informed decision? How can one justify this? It’s a horrible practice, and a horrible thing to do to someone who is trying to face one of the hardest decisions of her life.

If you have to lie to someone to justify your beliefs, then your beliefs are probably wrong.

I was planning on writing a massive rant on how horrible Bush’s veto of the stem cell research bill was, ’til I saw this Daily Show clip where Jon Stewart skewers this much better than I ever could. So I’ll just link to that here instead:

I still don’t understand how Bush can handle his own hipocracy. And the next time that someone says that an embry is a “human life,” I think I am gonna scream. I also want to know why it is better that excess embryos from fertility clinics are destroyed rather than used for research that could save millions of lives…

You knew this had to show up on YouTube eventually, right?

Okay, try and stay with me on this one. In a June 14th hearing of the House Subcomittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, Congressman Joe Pitts, a Pennsylvanian Republican, made the following horrific statement:

During the subcommittee’s period of opening remarks on June 14th, Pitts said, “It’s safe to say that a wealthy kid from the suburbs can play ‘Grand Theft Auto’ without turning to a life of crime, but a poor kid who lives in a neighborhood where people really do shoot cops and steal cars and deal drugs might not be so fortunate. There’s almost certainly a child somewhere in the America who is going to be hurt by this game. Maybe his dad is in jail or his big brother is already down on the corner dealing drugs.”

Jon Stewart rightly flamed Pitts on The Daily Show, referring to Pitts and other House Republican wackos as “insane jackasses.” Pitts decided that, instead of apologizing for his horrifyingly prejudiced statement, he would attack The Daily Show, saying that his statement was portrayed inaccurately. How the above quote can be portrayed inaccurately, I don’t know. And reading the release from the Pitts camp doesn’t make it much clearer. As near as I can tell, Pitts is basically saying, “Don’t pay attention to the words that I actually said. What I realy meant was…” Which IMHO is the cowards way out. Why not just admit, “Yes, I made a horrible remark, and I apologize for it?”

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens decided to prove to the entire world just how little he knows about the internet while he tried to justify his vote against a net neutrality bill:

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Senator, my I suggest that you know what the hell you are talking about before you talk about it on the Senate floor? Pretty much everything that Stevens said was gibberish. It seems to me that Senator Stevens was purchased lock, stock and barrel by someone in the telecom industry, but whoever bought his vote didn’t do a very good job giving him talking points to use. Instead, Stevens simply sounded like an ignorant fool.

Unfortunately, the fate of the internet is in the hands of a moron.

Anyone who seriously thinks that Bob Beauprez would be a good governor for the state of Colorad really, really needs to read DenverPost.com’s profile of Bob Beauprez. Anyone who isn’t scared away by the following passage needs to re-evaluate their priorities:

A devout Catholic who says he has been visited by his late father’s spirit, Beauprez says he is guided in politics by his faith and his dad’s example. He speaks as though it’s his destiny to succeed Republican Bill Owens as governor and cast his own shadow of decency throughout Colorado.”It’s sort of an unspoken thing. People need better role models in public life. I didn’t think Ozzie and Harriet were so bad,” he says.

But ask what Beauprez plans to do as governor, and his answer is less than specific.

“I don’t blame people for being cynical about what this (governorship) will look like,” he says. “I guess people won’t know … until after the fact.”

So Beauprez feels that he is entitled to be the governor. So much so that he doesn’t even need to tell us just how he’ll go about running the state if he is elected. We’re just supposed to elect him because he listens to ghosts and is a Republican, apparently. What the hell is wrong with this guy?

For all my fellow Coloradoans, please do the right thing and vote Bill Ritter into office in a landslide. Ritter is intelligent, dedicated, forthcoming, open about his plans and his beliefs. He is a very strong candidate for governorship. Beauprez? Well, to be semi-polite about this, lemme just say that it might be best for everyone if Beauprez’s political career is over and Bob finds other things to preoccupy himself with.

Vote for Bill Ritter!

There’s another one down, as 9White House press secretary Scott McClellan is out!

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday he is resigning, continuing a shakeup in President Bush’s administration.Appearing with Bush on the White House South Lawn just before the president boarded a helicopter at the start a trip to Alabama, McClellan, who has parried especially fiercefully with reporters on Iraq and on intelligence issues, told Bush: “I have given it my all sir and I have given you my all sir, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary.”

I wonder if Scott will be able to sleep a little easier at night, now that he doesn’t have to get up in the morning and blatantly lie to the country…