The Spitzer Resignation: Our Loss As Well As His

OK, color me fucking amazed (and not in a good way): you can lie entire nations INTO a war, and then lie about the results of that war every damned day, and yet if anyone speaks out against the lies, the naysayers are the "evil doers". Screw a prostitute using your own money and bye.

Clearly, it was WRONG of Spitzer to do what he did when he was, quite recently, New York State's chief prosecutor who could make decisions on others engaging in some of the same acts. But I still can't begin to equate prostitute-hiring with the needless deaths of more than a million innocents in Iraq (and I think that number is notoriously, obscenely low for what we know happened) as well as a MINIMUM of 4,000 soldiers.

What was sickening was the complete holy sanctity of the right yesterday, proclaiming there has never been a bigger scandal (oh really? Watergate? Iran-Contra? every fucking thing the Bush-Cheney team has DONE?) and, oh yeah, btw, "we want Spitzer out because he prosecuted so many CEOs and finance people." Read: Republicans LOVE to protect the worst offenders and God help anyone who tries to play by the rules. And then to use laws on the books from 1918 and federal task forces to bring Spitzer down, when we've got the anthrax killer still going about his business just makes me ill.

And not a single Dem seemed to lift a lip to say anything to the contrary.

NY Republicans and Stone Casting

Funny... those family value Republicans - even New York ones - always have SUCH a short tolerance for anything even vaguely hinky anyone else does when we've got folks like GOP "morality czar" (and no bigger hypocrit has ever graced the title) and addicted gambler and dominatrix-driven "boy toy" Bill Bennett and House Rep David "When Clinton did it, it's bad. If I do it with prostitutes, it's good family values!" Vitters are racing to grab the biggest stones to hurl at NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's house of glass by demanding the latest pol-with-a-prostitute-proclivity resign or be impeached within 48 hours.

I dunno. Of the main claims, I don't see where Spitzer differs from Republicans - hey, remember was it once GOP-big-deal Dan Burton's OTHER wife? And Burton's stayed on for years in the House - who have tippled in the paid trade. What I find most egregious (the adultery thing really IS between Spitzer and his wife) is being the attorney general and prosecuting others while knowingly breaking the law. BUT the prostitute thing sure is less on my anger-meter than when Tom DeLay has still yet to spend an instant in jail with all the evil he pulled for years. At least Spitzer figured he could only screw women he was married to or whom he could pay rather than screwing ALL of us up the tender chute with billions in corruption and ever-more-screwed democracy through his dirty tricks.

DeLay wasn't forced out by the people - although many did get damned mad and have stayed mad at him - and not by his colleagues (though staying every day he did was damned outrageous). And turned right around and reinserted himself back in politics while daring anyone to remind him he was indicted. His wife, too, no?

Considering the good Spitzer has done (took on prosecution of cases that HURT us over "the powers that be"), and the fact that prostitution, tawdry as it is, just doesn't rise to the occasion of lying us into war as Bush did, for example. And we didn't kick the boy king Bush out.