Right Wing Hypocrites

[larry]

The Foley issue is showing

[sirs]

That accusation has been debunked so many times, it demonstrates the sheer desperation of the left, to keep trolling it   

[larry]

oops, hit the touch pad by accident. What I want to point out is the double standard of right wing politics. Foley, is doing everything he can to make amends. He resigned, He did not deny the charges made against him. He is seeking medical and psychiatric help. But, that is not enough for the right wing, they want to crucify Foley, they want to make a burnt offering to their god. No forgiveness here folks. What if, a 16 year old page murdered someone, would the right put him on trial as a child or an adult? It is very clear that the politicians in Washington, D.C. cannot make up their mind who is an adult and who is not an adult. Foley is not a pedophile and the page is not a child, but the right wing are hard line moralist who make a party out of throwing stones and burning people at the stake.

[sirs]

[Plane]

oops, hit the touch pad by accident. What I want to point out is the double standard of right wing politics. Foley, is doing everything he can to make amends. He resigned, He did not deny the charges made against him. He is seeking medical and psychiatric help. But, that is not enough for the right wing, they want to crucify Foley, they want to make a burnt offering to their god. No forgiveness here folks. What if, a 16 year old page murdered someone, would the right put him on trial as a child or an adult? It is very clear that the politicians in Washington, D.C. cannot make up their mind who is an adult and who is not an adult. Foley is not a pedophile and the page is not a child, but the right wing are hard line moralist who make a party out of throwing stones and burning people at the stake.

So you haven't seen the circleing of wagons?

[larry]

Of course they are circling the wagons in Washington. but that is only part of the reaction.

[BT]

Larry i believe you have it backwards. The dems are pushing this story as hard as they can in hopes of bringing down others besides Foley. What is interesting is Hastert is catching hell for treating Foley as a human being.

And you and i both know that isn't all coming from the right.

[larry]

BT, The list of right wing democrats is almost as long as the list of right wing republicans.

[BT]

I find it hard to believe that you think Brass, Knute, Mikey and Lanya are right wing democrats.

Good try, but no sale.

[larry]

I find it hard to believe that you think Brass, Knute, Mikey and Lanya are right wing democrats.

Good try, but no sale.
------------------------------

I did not make any such statement. I was refering to Washington, D.C. and the twom houses of the Holy.

[sirs]

BT, The list of right wing democrats is almost as long as the list of right wing republicans.

A few quick comparisons to Democratic sex scandals at a beginning point:

     # The 1994 indictment of Rep. Mel Reynolds on teen-sex/child porn charges (total: three stories): ABC, zero. CBS, one evening anchor brief, one morning anchor brief. NBC, one evening story.

     # The 1995 conviction of Rep. Mel Reynolds on all 12 counts against him, including witness tampering (total: 16 stories): ABC, one. CBS, one evening anchor brief, three morning briefs, and a full morning story. NBC, one evening anchor brief, six morning anchor briefs, a morning story, and two morning interview segments.

     # The 1994 sexual harassment filed by Paula Jones against President Clinton, first week (total: 29 stories): ABC, five evening stories and four morning stories; CBS, one evening story, four morning stories; NBC, one evening story, 14 morning stories.

     # The 1999 Dateline NBC interview with Juanita Broaddrick, charging Bill Clinton raped her in April 1978 (total, five stories, two mentions): ABC, two brief morning mentions. CBS, one Saturday night story, one minute and 51 seconds long. NBC, even though it did the Broaddrick interview, zero evening news stories, three full morning stories and an anchor brief.

    If it isn't obvious, none of these stories was accompanied by resignation talk.

[sirs]

Larry i believe you have it backwards. The dems are pushing this story as hard as they can in hopes of bringing down others besides Foley.

Couric Makes Sure Page Scandal 'Is Not
Going Away'; Jobs Buried

     Friday's CBS Evening News led again with the Foley/page scandal, even though the two stories aired offered virtually no fresh information, as anchor Katie Couric justified the news judgment by declaring the issue is "still the talk of the town," "is not going away" and "is overshadowing every other election issue for the moment" -- all self-fulfilling assessments sustained by the decisions of Couric and her media colleagues. Couric then moved on to Republican Senator John Warner's warning that Iraq is drifting "side-wise," a comment trumpeted by Brian Williams at the start of the NBC Nightly News, which also led with the page scandal: "When a key Republican Senator comes home from Iraq and says the U.S. has to re-think its strategy, is this a new turning point?"

     Buried: The drop in the unemployment rate. ABC's World News, which unlike CBS and NBC, led with something other than the Foley fallout (the fire at a chemical plant in North Carolina), ignored it. CBS Evening News viewers only heard of the positive trend from a clip of President Bush in the middle of Gloria Borger's lead story on how the parties are reacting to the Foley matter: "Today we got more good news: National unemployment rate is down to 4.6 percent." Only NBC offered an actual news report, 20 seconds in length, on the latest numbers.

     And yes, Warner said "side-wise." I presume he meant "sideways."

     The MRC's Brad Wilmouth reviewed the newscasts to track how each treated the unemployment news.

     The brief October 6 NBC Nightly News item on unemployment, as read by Brian Williams:
     "News on the economy and job front tonight, it's a bit of a mixed picture. While the U.S. job market grew by only 51,000 jobs across the whole country last month, the previous two months were revised upward, and the unemployment rate did tick down a notch to 4.6 percent."

     Katie Couric teased the October 6 CBS Evening News: "Tonight, the Foley factor. The man who's not running is suddenly becoming a big issue in race after race in the battle for Congress."
    
     Couric then led her newscast: "Hi, everyone. Well, tonight it's still the talk of the town. Election day is about a month away now and Republicans are worried about the fallout from the Foley page scandal. It is not going away. It's been one week now since the story broke and Congressman Mark Foley resigned and since then it's been one revelation after another with more e-mails, hand wringing and finger pointing -- all as Republicans and Democrats are battling for control of Congress. So is this Washington scandal reverberating outside the beltway? We asked two of our correspondents to take the temperature, beginning tonight with Gloria Borger."

     Borger's story looked at how the parties are reacting to the scandal, highlighted by New Jersey Republican Senate candidate Tom Kean's call for the resignation of House Speaker Denny Hastert. She also included the above-quoted soundbite of Bush, the only mention of the falling unemployment rate, to illustrate how Republicans are trying to get back to their issues: "Today we got more good news: National unemployment rate is down to 4.6 percent."

     After Borger, Couric went to reporter Lee Cowan for the opinions of people in Columbus, Ohio.

     Couric then highlighted some more bad news for Republicans:
     "This scandal is overshadowing every other election issue for the moment, but Iraq is still a big issue for the Republicans and now a leading member of the party may have made it even bigger. Jim Axelrod has that story. Jim?"

     Jim Axelrod: "Katie, the Foley scandal would be big enough if that were the only issue facing Republicans, but it's not. A usually strong ally of the President on the war in Iraq is now wavering. It's been one of the bloodiest periods in the entire Iraq war, with 35 American troops killed in the last ten days. And now Senator John Warner, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is just back from Iraq with a sobering warning."
     Senator John Warner: "It seems to me that the situation is simply drifting side-wise."
     Axelrod: "Warner's a long-time supporter of the war, a former Secretary of the Navy and a loyal Republican."
     Warner: "In two or three months if this thing hasn't come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function, I think it's a responsibility of our government internally to determine is there a change of course that we should take?"
     Axelrod: "I ran the 'drifting side-wise' comment by a senior White House official and he said, given the way things have been going in Iraq lately, he hardly considers that to be deep criticism. Katie?"

Foley Story Count, Week One: 103 Stories
on ABC, CBS and NBC

     The MRC's Rich Noyes has calculated the number of Mark Foley/Will Hastert Quit? stories for Week One of the scandal on ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs, from last Friday night, September 29, through Friday morning, October 6. So for evening shows, it's Friday to Thursday. For morning shows, it's Saturday through Friday. (One or two evening stories and a smattering of morning stories are brief anchor updates.) The number's a little shocking: 103 stories. It breaks down like this:

     -- ABC: Good Morning America, 23 stories; World News, 15 stories

     -- CBS: The Early Show, 17 stories; Evening News, 11 stories

     -- NBC: Today, 24 stories; Nightly News, 13 stories

     Total morning shows: 64 stories

     Total evening news 39 stories

     Grand total: 103 stories.


Time and Newsweek Match TV With Partisan
Foley Scandal Covers

     In case you thought the Foley story was wrapping up on Friday, be warned that both Time and Newsweek weren't buying that. They wanted a chance to build its place in history/Republican infamy. Both covers are quite transparently partisan for the politically sensitive time of the season.

     Time has a huge black and white picture of an elephant's butt, with the words: "What a mess...Why a tawdry Washington sex scandal may spell the end of the Republican revolution." See: www.time.com

     Time has been rooting for the end of the Republican revolution since they suggested it was in danger of killing off the "human species" back in the first month of the new GOP-majority congress in 1995. Check: www.mrc.org

     Newsweek's cover has a huge picture of Foley and the words "Off Message," and the "O" is a computer "emoticon." Cute touch. But Newsweek is very much on-message this week: they want the Democrats to win both houses. Newsweek has two Web exclusives from gay pols: Democrat Barney Frank explains how the "closet" is somewhat responsible for his and Foley's scandals: www.msnbc.msn.com

     And gay Republican Brian O'Leary Bennett clucks over how "our party has a history of scapegoating gays and lesbians at the first sign of election trouble." See: www.msnbc.msn.com

     There's Newsweek's idea of balance: a gay Democrat and a gay Republican lashing out at social conservatives.


http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2006/cyb20061009.asp#1
    

[Lanya]

A couple of polls for you:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/09/opinion/polls/main2074116.shtml

CBS Poll shows:GOP Put Politics Over Safety
Most Respondents Think GOP Leaders Knew About Foley's Sexually Explicit E-Mails To Teens


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/us/politics/10pollcnd.html?_r=5&hp&ex=1160452800&en=ee2a28bd80e049d0&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slog&oref=login

Seventy-nine percent of respondents said House Republican leaders were more concerned about their political standing than about the safety of teenage Congressional pages. About half of respondents said that the House Republican leadership had handled the Foley case improperly, compared with 27 percent who said they approved of how it was handled; 46 percent of respondents said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert should step down. And Americans — including women and suburbanites — are more likely to say that Democrats, and not Republicans, share their moral values.

[sirs]

And as we all know, polls are simply a snapshot in time of what some people think or simply feel.  Much of it driven by the 24/7 mainscream media pushing the Foley non-story, while buring the more important issues, such as Iraq, North Korea, & the Economy.

[BT]

A couple of polls for you

I don't believe anyone has claimed that the big noise machine is not effective, at least temporarily.

But the fact is until Foley is charged with an actual crime the best you have is he ws run out of town for legislating while gay. And i don't think you really want that on your resume.