Syndicate and Hague

Hey! Did you hear? Russia and Georgia are pretty much at war. There had been a build up of Russian troops in South Ossetia and then all hell broke loose. This is what the Georgian prez had to say about it:

Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said Russia’s ambitions were even more extensive. He declared that Georgia was in a state of war, and said in an interview that Russia was planning to seize ports and an oil pipeline and to overthrow his government.
(NY Times)

Gosh, you might say, I don’t even know where Georgia is in relation to Russia! Well, I’m here to help with that.

Sadly, the U.S. has no moral authority to say anything the Russians need to take seriously. How can this not make you laugh?

The Bush administration said it would seek a resolution from the United Nations Security Council condemning Russian military actions in Georgia.
(NY Times)

UN Security Council, eh? Well. We’ve always cared so much about what they think.

As one top adviser described the argument, Mr. Bush must decide ”whether to go it alone or go to the U.N.” with one final if largely symbolic effort to force Mr. Hussein to re-admit arms inspectors, who left Iraq three and a half years ago.

…

Secretary General Kofi Annan seemed to confirm those fears at a news conference today in Botswana, when he said, ”The U.N. is not agitating for military action” against Iraq.

China and Russia, which both have veto power in the Security Council, oppose military action. France, which also holds a veto, has demanded a Security Council vote and has made it clear it would oppose military action without evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq.
(NY Times, 2002)

And now,

The Russians issued an ultimatum to Georgian forces to disarm or face attack, and proceeded to occupy government buildings there, the Georgians said.

And the South Ossetia conflict also appeared to have widened, with Georgia accusing Russia of capturing the town of Gori in central Georgia.
(BBC)

Sooooo…wait…I did promise to tell you why everyone should STFU about John Edwards, didn’t I? Yeah, that was kind of a bait and switch. But not really, because the lack of reporting (outside more “global” news outlets) on this conflict is partially because the news fucking sucks. They spend a ridiculous amount of time going over the details of Edwards’s affair, and nothing on a war breaking out.

But here are my thoughts about Edwards:

It was dumb. But is an affair really our business? My philosophy on sexual ‘improprieties’ is that if it’s personal, it’s your own business, but if you spend your days as a moral crusader trying to invade other peoples’ bedrooms, then it’s public business. I think it’s a bit melodramatic to say, as Andrea Mitchell did on Countdown on Friday, that Edwards’s public service career is over. And, by extension, Elizabeth Edwards’s.

Do you hear that? That is the sound of my eyes rolling so far into the back of my head that they snapped whatever attaches them to my body.

Did affairs affect the careers of John McCain (HuffPo, LA Times)? Newt Gingrich (See below? Did toe-tapping in a Minneapolis airport destroy Larry Craig? What about David Vitter going to a prostitute?

Nope. They hung onto office.

A taste of Gingrich’s affair:

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.” (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’” Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
(Washington Monthly)

How about the criminal behavior of other Republicans (Well, Vitter is in this group as well) Here’s a list from Kos. I’ll give you some highlights (links to sources are found on the page I just linked to).

• John Bolton: George W. Bush’s latest Ambassador to United Nations. Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department.
• Robert Bauman, Republican congressman and anti-gay activist from Maryland, was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
• Bob Barr, Republican Congressman from Georgia. Sponsored the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, saying “The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit.” Was married three times. Paid for his second wife’s abortion. Failed to pay child support to the children of his first two wives and while married to his third and present wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of strippers at his inaugural party.
• Jon Grunseth, Republican businessman and candidate for Minnesota governor, withdrew his candidacy after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter, and tried to grope one. “I’ve made some mistakes” he said.
• Newt Gingrich, Republican from Georgia, married three times. Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. Informed one wife he was filing for divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer treatments.
• Henry Hyde, Republican Congressman from Illinois, Judge who oversaw Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, prominent opponent of reproductive rights, who had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children, during the course of which she and her husband were divorced.
• Bob Livingston, former Congressman (R-La.), Speaker of the House; resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery — at the same time he was leading calls for impeachment of President Clinton.
• Jeff Miller, (R-Cleveland), Senate Republican Caucus Chairman in Tennessee and the sponsor of Tennessee’s Marriage Protection act, getting divorced (as of April 2005) because of an affair he was having with an office aide. Miller described the Tennessee Marriage Protection Act as a means of preserving the sanctity of marriage. He opposed an amendment, however, which stated that “Adultery is deemed to be a threat to the institution of marriage and contrary to public policy in Tennessee.”
• John Peterson, Congressman (R-Pa), accused of sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment by six women. Peterson has refused to admit a crime, saying only “I may have been an excessive hugger.”
• Jim West, Spokane Mayor. Supported a bill, which failed, would have barred gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. Voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS. Proposed that “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person” among teens be criminalized. Had a sexual affair with an 18 year old boy.

And then there’s the stuff that crops up on a daily basis.

• Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.
• Yesterday afternoon, Allen was sentenced on a misdemeanor count of solicitation for prostitution (in lay terms: they done punished him for trying to blow that guy in the potty room).
• The complaint, filed by Clearfield police Chief Jeffrey Rhone and signed by [District Attorney] Shaw, accuses Walker of using his cell phone to videotape a former girlfriend in an intimate moment with another man on Aug. 25, 2007. The complaint also alleges that he had contact with her on two other occasions, despite being told by a police officer on Aug. 25 that he should avoid further contact and that charges were pending.

As I’m sure you could tell, I could go on and on and on and on and on.

All I’m saying is: I don’t care who the hell you sleep with unless you go around making homophobic statements/legislating things like Defense of Marriage Acts/trying to outlaw abortion/promoting abstinence-only education/acting like a puritan freak about sex.

By the way–have you heard there’s a war a-brewin?