O Schadenfreude, O Schadenfreude

YOU CAN SING THE above to "O Tannenbaum," or perhaps "Duel of the Fates" if you wish to shoehorn the syllables a tad, but any way you sing it, it's what I'm abubble with over the unfolding Mark Foley scandal.

Do you remember how you perceived Congress and Bill Clinton before the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit? I recall the time before that as having an eerie calm, surely a retrospective illusion given the Republican-sprayed shitstorm that followed. Now, in less than a week, the Repubs themselves, a month away from a midterm election that could result in their losing control of the legislature, the entire leadership has its hands full of this mess.

One good source for daily snippets and linkage for this story has been Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blog (accessible through my links). He has links to all of the ongoing homina-homina-homina from the Congressional leadership about who knew what about whom and when. NPR also has a solid chronology here. By all means check out just how far the party of morals and the moneyed Jesus-fucks who have worked to install it can cram their collective foot into its collective mouth trying to defend this former chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

If nothing else, bloated hack Dennis Hastert might be in the position John Hurt as Caligula found himself in I, Claudius: figuratively locked into a corridor and butchered by his former allies as his thugs pound on the doors to save their only connection to Washington power. At best, the one-two punch of the Bob Woodward book and the Foley black hole might tilt the balance on Election Day and open a massive crack in the support Bush has to continue his asinine trade practices.

It's been a truism since the First Continental Congress, a tarpit into which arrogant politicians who think they're immortal and untouchable will stumble and sink for as long as the US of A caps this hemisphere: "Never get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."

P.S. Hunter Thompson would have LOVED this.