I'd say it's a little more than that. Mark Foley [R-FL] is a scumbag pig and resigning his congressional seat should be the least of his worries.
In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.
He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children. "They're sick people; they need mental health counseling," Foley said.
I agree with Foley. People that use the internet to exploit children are sick and do need mental health counseling. Man, I love it when my favorite childhood quip can be used. Takes one to know one, you sick fu*k. [I just added that last part.]
Boohoo. The GOP might lose this seat. GOOD. Next time you find out you have a pedophilic predator in your ranks, dump him immediately. The Majority leadership in the House knew this guy was a piece of shit last November. I have no sympathy with people that enable the exploitation of children. Screw you.
I demand that the proper use of the term traitor be reinstated in blogging. I'm so absolutely sick of the words traitor, treason and Benedict Arnold. I'm about one false charge of traitor short of going postal. I swear to the Almighty, if another person falsely launches a libelous assault on someone else with any those terms, I will cut their balls off. Not literally, of course. The sting will still feel the same I assure you.
trea·son
n.
1. Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
2. A betrayal of trust or confidence.
trai‧tor
noun
1. a person who betrays another, a cause, or any trust.
2. a person who commits treason by betraying his or her country.
No place in there does it say you are a traitor for not ass kissing your country's Allies. Not for hating your country's Allies, either. I think Stalin was a piece of shit. I think Communism blows and I despise that ideology with every fiber of my soul.
I am not a traitor to the country of my birth, the country that I love because I HATE Stalin's rotted corpse. I don't give a flying fig that he was on our side during WWII. That choice wasn't made because Stalin was our sovereign. He wasn't a member of our government. The U.S. used him like a $2 whore and when we were done, we all hoped he dropped dead.
If you don't like our Allies, you are a traitor now?
What bullshit is this? I know this is the new millennium but that doesn't mean some bloggers get to revise definitions to fit their closed-minded "liberal" bent.
Not agreeing with your world view doesn't make me wrong. It means we disagree. It also means your hand is going to be very, very sore...
Oops, I meant hands, not hand, from all that back tracking and re-clarification of your position till your baseless attacks start sounding reasonable.
Slate's server is wonky at the moment so I can't link directly to Mickey Kaus most recent characterization of the Senate Majority Leader. I found it on PowerLine though.
In any case, I have nothing to add except that THIS guy is probably not impressed:
First came the hard-learned lesson that e-mail can be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Now blogs — basically, continuous public Internet journals — are emerging as fair game in civil disputes, criminal cases, and government investigations, where they are used as evidence with growing frequency.
In March, a Plymouth doctor's blog was cited as proof that he continued to harass a female patient who had secured restraining orders against him. In April, a Maine man was sued for allegedly posting defamatory blog entries in which he criticized an advertising agency's work for the state tourism office. And in a high-profile national case, Apple Computer filed a lawsuit seeking the identities of people who allegedly leaked information about new Apple products to several bloggers.
``Blogs raise the same danger that e-mail raised a long time ago, which is that the informal aspects of them make people feel less cautious when they're writing," said Brigitte M. Duffy, a Boston employment lawyer who represents companies that have searched blogs to investigate allegations made by employees. ``But blogs present an even bigger risk because they're accessible to so many more people and they're so much more searchable."
As a result, ``there's an increasing risk that the government, when it's pursuing a criminal case, is likely to use the Internet as a way of collecting information about defendants," she said.
Blogs are also being cited in a growing number of civil cases, most commonly claims alleging libel, defamation, or invasion of privacy.
Well, I have no problem with anything I've said publicly. I'm not a liar and I try really hard to infuse humor to take the sting out of my more inflammatory writings. I'm pretty sure I could withstand the witness stand.
Nobody does it better than Dean. The post itself is a stretch but the insults dealt in the comment section. Whoa!
Dean attacks Malkin without providing examples of her misdeed and then wants her mea culpa. If I were Malkin, I'd just give him the finger and move on. I don't take kindly to suggestions from people that make demands and get hysterical when asked to back up their crapola with examples of fact...
I wonder if this post makes me a lying traitor too!
That was the title and that title was the only thing people seemed to focus on. Nobody really cared what was in it, only that it gave us somewhere to target our anger. We couldn't really do much to the culprits since the actual doer's were dead. We need to blame someone. Anyone. We don't care if it makes sense or not. Our pain needed an outlet and those 7 words provided people with a huge target. Before I continue there is something I wish to make clear. I am going to do my best to write this without any Republican slant. I'm writing this as an American, not a Republican and it is my hope that you read it as an American first and a partisan second. Will my partisanship slip through? Probably but I'm trying hard not to let it take over.
I want to focus on that PDB and the importance of it. The importance? None. It didn't give a time, a date, a specific target or even the certainty of the weapon. Yeah, it mentioned hijacked planes. But that really isn't news. Hijacking planes is a first guess when it comes to terrorists. They are always going after planes. So, nothing really new in that PDB except the title. No, I'm wrong. They used that title in a PDB given to Clinton in 1998. So, that wasn't exactly news.
Here is a link to the PDB I will quote some of the report to make my points. I was asked by a commenter if I could provide any information on what was done during the first 8 months of the Bush Administration to go after terrorists and Bin Laden. I can. It's in the report.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks
with explosives.
70 full field investigations isn't exactly nothing. During the Wallace/Clinton throwdown, Bill Clinton told Chris Wallace that "he had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban and launch a full-scale search for Usama bin Laden after the attack on the USS Cole in 2000".
"Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA effort to get bin Laden, is telling a different story. Scheuer says in The New York Daily News that plans for an invasion were never presented or discussed in his presence. And he says the only order he received following the attack on the Cole was to come up with a target list for air strikes. He also says Mr. Clinton had 10 chances to kill or capture bin Laden before 9/11, but the president did not use the information he was given."
Is that true? I have no idea but I'd like to believe Clinton. Until I'm offered proof beyond he said/she said I'll give the benefit of any doubt to Clinton. Earlier I mentioned that Clinton was informed, just as Bush was, that Bin Laden wanted to strike in the U.S. (sorry Hillary). Like I said, in this post I'm giving both Presidents my full faith. From the PDB given to Bush in 2001, we see lots of information dating back to 1997. I'm assuming that information is why the PDB was being referred to as historical data rather than any new information. Because of this I'm taking it one step further and placing all the knowledge that pre-dated Bush's taking office in Clinton's brain. I do this because Clinton has repeatedly stated that he was obsessed with getting Bin Laden. I choose not to doubt him. Here is the historical information from the PDB that I believe was known to Clinton based on his own words and deeds.
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."
After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted text] service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted text] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.
Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa'ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
That's a lot of pertainent stuff. Note the dates. With all that available to Clinton, he was still unable to get Bin Laden. Do I blame Clinton for failing to get Bin Laden? No. Clinton was President not an undercover Special OPs dude with magic powers. Do I blame Clinton or even Bush for 9/11? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as laying the blame for Pearl Harbor on FDR. The blame ultimately lies with Bin Laden. Were there intel failures? Yes. There will always be failures because humans aren't perfect.
Could 9/11 have been prevented? I doubt it. The only way we could've even attempted to stop 9/11 would have been if the Bush Administration had all the information necessary. Date, time, targets and method. Without that, do you honestly believe ANY President could have stopped 9/11?
It would have been hard enough to prevent it if they had all of that. If Bush came on T.V. and said he had information in his PDB that an attack was coming and measures needed to be taken to prevent the attack. Will you sit there at your computer and tell me that Americans would have sat back and said nothing about a loss of liberties? We know that killing Bin Laden before 9/11 would have been sweet but it would have stopped nothing.
So Bush gets a PDB in August that states Bin Laden determined to strike in US. The PDB gave him nothing beyond some background info on Bin Laden and information that the FBI is conducting 70 different investigations. What exactly do you think Bush could've done? We know that there were failures in communication between the CIA and FBI. That isn't something that started in 2001.
Let us say that Bush was told that the World Trade Center was going to be attacked on 9/11 by arab terrorists using hijacked airplanes. The only way to have stopped 9/11 would have been to do racial profiling, start searching people at airports and detaining all people here on visas. Would we have put up with that before any attack was actually witnessed on our soil? Would the ACLU have gone crazy suing everyone for this attack on our liberties?
5 years ago we watched the horror of 9/11. We were shocked and devastated. We wanted heads and when we didn't get them we naturally blamed our government.
5 years later, after have seen the devastation, we are pissed that we can't take hair gel on airplanes. Everytime a terror alert happens, Democrats accuse the Republicans of fear mongering. This is AFTER we watched 9/11 unfold on T.V..
What do you truly believe Bush could've done with the info contained in that PDB, that Clinton didn't already do?
I haven't read the infamous NIE that was partly declassified today mainly because I have a life. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Hugh Hewitt is correct and
Nothing in it supports the Pelosi-Dean-Reid-Murtha Democrats' demand to cut-and-run from Iraq. Just the opposite in fact...
Remember when anything the National Enquirer printed was automatically thought to be sensationalist garbage? My wife is fond of saying that the Enquirer has been sued so many times that they have an army of lawyers who make darn sure that what they print is defensible.
It's to the point that I would sooner believe anything I read in the National Enquirer than in the once-prestigious, now slime-soaked rags of record.
I just rewatched the Clinton interview and one thing kept nagging at me. The claim that Clinton left behind the great Dick Clarke and Bush demoted him. Kinda insinuating that it was a blunder on Bush's part and that is why Bush failed to get Bin Laden in those important first 8 months of his presidency.
Read Clarke's book was Clinton's mantra through most of the interview. Did anyone read Clarke's book? I must admit that I didn't. I wasn't really impressed with Richard Clarke knowledge/job on terrorism since he was still, in fact, the Counterterrorism Czar when 9/11 happened. That's not exactly resume building, if you catch my drift. I know Clarke worked for lots of past administrations but when your job is "counter terrorism czar" and two giant buildings get hit by commercial airplanes and come crashing down in Manhattan that isn't something that screams promotion.
Not getting promoted is not the same as being demoted. Clinton said Clarke was demoted. Uh, not so. He quit after not getting the deputy director of homeland security gig. For as much as people disparage her, at least, Monica went that extra mile when she worked at the White House. Talk about deserving a promotion...
One year after the White Sox won the World Series, they are done with 6 games left in the Regular Season.
What makes this sting even worse is, this year is the first time two teams from the AL Central made the playoffs. Neither of the teams are the White Sox.
The Minnesota Twins & the Detroit Tigers are in, the Chicago White Sox are out.
Its a great day to be a baseball fan in Detroit!
Sorry. I know most of you only care about schooling people with your knowledge of Politics and World Affairs. So this is for you.
A friend of mine –he's a Colombian politician in a small town- receives frequent death threats. Last year he denounced the paramilitaries for skimming a percentage off public contracts, and there’s a strong chance that he'll now be murdered (they've already tried once). He thinks they might try to abduct him.
I'm going to order him a copy of On Becoming Fearless by Arianna Huffington, in the hope that it will inspire him as much as it has inspired American women. It isn't easy being a multi-millionaire in California, and Arianna has shown real courage in standing up against the detentions and disappearances that go on in Beverly Hills, not to mention the gossip columnists, intimidated by the idea of a strong, independent woman.
I've been re-watching one of my very favorite shows, Oz. It is dark and really depressing at times but I'm still fascinated. I love most of HBO's original programming and Oz was one of their very first series.
All of the characters are interesting and pretty screwed up. Besides being in Oz, many of them have many common traits and behaviors. The most common being rage.
I'm not sure why I'm so sucked in to a show that is so violent and dark, but I am. Have you ever seen it? Any idea why shows like this seem to draw in perfectly normal people?
Well, it's just as racist to call black conservatives derogatory names or use disparaging racial epitaphs as it would be if a skinhead did it.
Being liberal or black doesn't absolve you of being a racist, it just makes you a hypocrite as well. Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
I was just annoyed. I can't stand racists but worse I can't stand people who try to justify being a racist.
• Joseph Wilson. In July 2003, when he demanded an investigation of a White House cabal for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by "outing" his wife, Mr. Wilson knew Ms. Plame did not meet the factual requirements for covert status under the act. She was neither covert at the time of publication nor had a covert foreign assignment within five years. He acknowledged so in his book: "My move back to Washington [in June 1997] coincided with the return to D.C. of a woman named Valerie Plame." As the Senate negotiator for this 1982 act, I know a trip or two by Ms. Plame to a foreign country while assigned to Langley, where she worked in July 2003, is not considered a foreign assignment. I also know covert officers are not assigned to Langley.
• Richard Armitage. Mr. Armitage now claims he knew only on Oct. 1, 2003 that he was Mr. Novak's source. We should question that claim in light of Mr. Novak's account this week that Mr. Armitage "made clear he considered [the information about Ms. Plame] especially suited for my column."
Mr. Armitage also knew he had met with Bob Woodward on June 13, 2003, telling him about Mr. Wilson's wife's CIA employment and her role in her husband's trip to Niger. But when the FBI interviewed Mr. Armitage on Oct. 2, he admitted to the Novak conversation only, notably forgetting meeting with one of our country's premier investigative reporters. By attributing his longtime silence to Mr. Fitzgerald's request, Mr. Armitage must have forgotten Mr. Fitzgerald was not appointed until Dec. 30, 2003. If Mr. Armitage had come forward during those three months, there might never have been a special counsel.
• Patrick Fitzgerald. What Mr. Fitzgerald knew, and chose to ignore, is troublesome. Despite what some CIA good ol' boys might have told Mr. Fitzgerald, he knew from the day he took office that the facts did not support a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; therefore, there was no crime to investigate. Although he claimed in Mr. Libby's indictment that Ms. Plame's employment status was "classified," Mr. Fitzgerald refuses to provide the basis for that fact and, even if true, can point to no law that would be violated by revealing a "classified" (not covert) employment. It was this gap in the law that created the need to pass the act in the first place.
So the muslims are pissed and outraged at the Pope for suggesting that Islam is a bit violent. The Pope said, "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul." What did many (but certainly not all) of the muslims do? "Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following remarks by Pope Benedict that angered many Muslims.
A Somali clerk urged for the Pope's murder and then some:
"We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin said in Friday evening prayers."
"Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.
"We call on all Islamic Communities across the world to take revenge on the baseless critic called the pope," he said.
An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI. Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope’s remarks last week on Islam and violence.
No one is ever going to hear me argue that I am more charitable toward my fellow wo/man than The Anchoress. She consistently shows the rest of us on the Right how to maintain emotional and intellectual equilibrium in the face of the outrage du jour from the Left. It seems some cobwebs are being swept from her eyes though:
...Bush hate on the left is not about Bush. It’s not about Iraq, it’s not about the war on terror, it’s not about tax cuts…it’s not about Bush. It’s about the foot-stomping tantrums of the perpetually adolescent who - even before the 2000 elections - could not bear even the idea of their side being out of power in congress and out of the White House. It has never been about Bush. They’d hate any Republican in that White House just as roundly and completely, on any pretext.
Seems to me that none of what the Dems do can be understood completely without knowing this.
BTW, this being my first political post in a while, I want it known that if you keep your comments civil and respectful, I'll respond. I'm not wading around in the muck any more. Go sling excrement in your own blogs or in Tim's and Rosemary's threads. You want the last word with me? Then use foul language.
I've spent the evening pondering my post and some of the comments. I stopped reading the comments around 6pm last night. Not because I'm uninterested but because I decided I needed to reconsider my post and I had a very lucid evening.
Here is what I decided. I absolutely abhor the idea that a movie would be considered suitable teaching material. Children need to be taught facts and if they want the kids to learn about 9/11 then they should use the 9/11 report. Not that I think the report is 100% accurate but it would certainly be better than a "docu-drama". I read this morning, in my local paper, that Scholastic is pulling it's classroom guide. Good. I don't want my kid learning that way. Make the kids read, dammit. Let them interpret for themselves based on as much fact as we have available.
Also, if the movie is using real characters and making them say/do things that they never said or did...that's pretty slanderous. I think that any official that finds their character has been besmirched by this film should take ABC/Disney to the cleaners. People have certainly sued for less.
Lastly, I will not be watching the film. I'm not going to waste my time and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you should give it a chance. Even if this movie is 95% accurate, how are we to know which 5% is bullshit? No. I didn't watch The Reagans, I didn't spend a dime on F9/11, and I'm not going to watch this.
If you want to know about the path to 9/11 then buy the damn report and read it. It's got inaccuracies too but at least it was compiled by a bi-partisan committee so both sides had a fair chance to give input.
Albright was joined by former Clinton security adviser Samuel R. Berger, and Bruce Lindsey, a former Clinton aide who now head of the Clinton Foundation.
"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," Lindsey wrote, according to the New York Post.
Lindsey's letter accused ABC of "bias" and "fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," the Post reported.
Lindsey and Douglas Band, a top lawyer in Clinton's office, objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested that Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.
"While ABC is promoting "The Path to 9/11" as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said.
"Given your stated obligation to 'get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film," the said.
ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan defended the miniseries, telling the Post, it is a "dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews."
A dramatization is not a documentary. A documentary is supposed to be factual, a drama is more like an interpretation. Like say...Farenheit 9/11, that was a dramatization, right? Ask Michael Moore, he'll tell you. He's like an expert.
I heard that there is one ridiculous scene where Sandy Berger is caught shoving classified documents into his pants. I mean really! Who would ever be so dumb as to believe such nonsense? America is much smarter than that.
Yesterday was the first day of school in my town. Even though Jake is old enough to go on his own (4th grade), I still like to go with him. Besides he asked me to go so he could show off his little brother.
We walked to the designated area and that is when I heard it. Words that shocked me to my core.
Girl #1: Wow, Jake got "hot" over summer.
Girl #2: Jake's always been cute.
Girl #1: Cute, sure. I'm talkin' hot now.
Girl #2: Totally.
People please tell me that the boyfriend/girlfriend stuff doesn't really start in the 4th grade!!!!!
War on Terror critic and former National Security Advisor for Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brezinski poses in these pictures with Osama bin Laden.
Update: Looks like I got snookered. This picture is more than likely not Osama bin Laden but a Pakastani soldier. My apologies to ++Ungood for the snarky replies...
But many different accounts of bin Laden's biography say he did indeed join the Afghan fight in 1979. For Example
The U.S. government considers Osama bin Laden to be the most dangerous terrorist in the world. Bin Laden joined the Afghanistani resistance in 1979 and became a commander in the guerilla wars against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. After that war ended, bin Laden founded a loose organization of pro-Islamic terrorists, known as al-Qaeda, whose goals included driving the United States out of the Middle East and overthrowing the government of Saudi Arabia. Attacks which bin Laden is believed to have plotted or inspired include the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 truck bombing of a Saudi National Guard training center, and the 1998 explosions at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He is a prime suspect in the September 2001 attacks that crippled the Pentagon and destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Despite an intensive manhunt by the U.S. government in the years since that attack, bin Laden has not been captured.
I can see why. Rumsfeld calls some of our patriots on the carpet for their "dissent" and they don't like it one little bit. They call Rummy's speech ghastly. Some of our elected officials are freaking out too.
How dare Rummy suggest that people aren't taking the terror threat seriously? The bastard!
Of course, people like Olberman are going to try and change the context of Rummy's speech to make it look like he was calling Iraq War critics modern day Neville Chamberlains.
He wasn't talking about Iraq War critics, he was talking about people that want us to bury our collective heads in the sand and pretend things are okay. You know...liberals.
You know when I realized Rummy was right? As soon as he opened his mouth and all the anti-security, anti-war-on-terror, pro-appeasement liberals squealed like stuck pigs.
That's when I realized it, Neville. Don't like it Neville?
Then serve up more than just whine and fancy French Cheese. Got it Neville?
When she was three, my daughter saw a plane flying overhead and asked me where it was going. "It could be going any number of places.", was my response. To which she replied, "No Daddy, it's only going one place."
In that same vein, earlier this week, she hands my wife a letter she helped me fish out of the mailbox:
"Here, Mommy. This letter is for you."
"Who's it from?"
"Um, it's from the mailman."
Finally, today, I'm helping her clean up her states puzzle. You know, one that has the exact shape of the all the states as the puzzle pieces. They come in four colors: Blue, Green, Red, and Yellow.
She says, "I only like the Red states."
"Why?", I asked.
"Because I don't like the other ones.", came the instantaneous reply.
The kid on the right is Johnny Gosch, who disappeared in 1982 and who was the first kid ever to be put on a milk carton. No one ever heard from him again. But his mom recently received this photo anonymously in the mail.
The sick fuck who killed him is gloating is my guess. But I sure as hell hope this leads to them finding whoever did this. There's no way those kids are still alive I don't think although we can hope I guess. Anyone think they recognize the other two boys?
UPDATE Hey remember this is awful to look at but the police released this with the mom's consent. The cops are trying to figure out who those other two boys are. If they can figure it out it might help them zoom in on whoever the sick fucks are who did this. So it's hard to look at but shit, show it to anyone who you think might possibly have some ideas. Yeah some sicko's probably getting his jollies knowing this thing is all over the internet but he won't be so happy if this helps find him will he?
When I started posting here at QOAE, I had just begun reading volume one of Shelby Foote's epic narrative "The Civil War". I have recently finished volume three and wish to share a couple of memorable quotes from the end chapter.
Before I get to those, though, let me share one of the reasons I find the Civil War era so fascinating. It is that I can't think of a time in our history, other than the Civil War, that has the body politic as polarized as we are today. As in mid-19th century America, we now have very large groups at odds over the direction and future of the country. Each is convinced the other is insane and/or hopelessly corrupt, intellectually dishonest and/or morally bankrupt. Each views the undecided or unpledged, yet dwindling, fence-sitters as craven and/or lazily ignorant. There's almost no point in talking.
With that as a backdrop, without further adieu, here are the quotes I wish to share:
"What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged." -Abraham Lincoln
"Tell them - Tell the world that I only loved America." -Jefferson Davis
Would you like to read an excerpt of John and Dean's new novel? Go here and you can get a small taste and see if it is something that you may be interested in.
R.I.P. Steven Malcolm Anderson
Minion
of the Week
