Weekend Funnies: The Foley-Mania Edition

They're still trying to blame this on the Democrats. Accounta-what-ity?

The stubborness and stupidity of Speaker Hastert and all his Republican apologists is a Democratic strategist's dream come true. Keep digging that hole, folks. It's a self-defeating strategy that's worked so well in the Iraq war and will no doubt be equally successful here.

Money quote from Glenn Greenwald sums up why this story is having an impact:

This scandal is like the Cliffs' Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM'd with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on.

There has been a virtual carousel -- as there always is -- of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working.

What he said.

UPDATE: New revelations in the L.A. Times about Foley's behavior, including a sexual encounter with a former page, and that he had been keeping tabs on gay pages for possible later relations.

[Related/recommended reading:
-Salon: Open the closets on Capitol Hill
-Glenn Greenwald: Increasing Desperation
-Andrew Sullivan: One Foley Point]