Republicans don't care about our kids

Sure, they like to make a big stink everytime some violent sicko attacks a school or a child -- bleating loudly that Democrats would led perverts abuse your kids but when it comes to prevention, Bush and the GOP are completely AWOL. From Thinkprogress:

In the past few weeks, the nation has been stunned by the rash of school shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin, and at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennyslvania. President Bush said he was “saddened and deeply concerned” about the shootings and plans to convene a summit of education and law enforcement experts to discuss federal action that can help communities prevent violence.

But the facts of the matter are very different from the caring compassionate conservative picture painted by the President.

– In 2006, Bush proposed a five percent cut for youth and crime prevention programs. Bush’s 2005 budget proposed a 40 percent drop in juvenile-crime prevention, following a 44 percent cut in 2004.

– The Bush administration has repeatedly recommended eliminating federal funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
and Communities State Grants program, which works on juvenile-crime prevention.

– Since 2001, Congress has voted to retain the Grants program over the administration’s objections, but at reduced levels. Funding for the program was $439.2 million in 2001 but fell to $346.5 million this year, with $310 million recommended for 2007.

– More than half the nation’s school districts receive $10,000 or less per year to fight violence and substance abuse — “too little to make a difference” according to an Education Department official.

Not only are Republicans failing to protect Congressional Pages from their own members, even though they had warnings over two years ago, they're failing to protect all our children and trying to somehow pin the blame for everything on George Soros ...

When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said: "I think the base has to realize after awhile, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."

He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.

"All I know is what I hear and what I see," the speaker said. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then."

and gays

There have been a number of signals through the course of the day that the last gambit of the GOP House leadership will be to blame the Foley debacle on a cabal of gay staffers who hid and/or enabled Rep. Foley's behavior for years. The idea being that they are to blame rather than the leadership.

That may sound like a plot turn out of a bad novel. But with the times we're living in I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Fordham, the staffer who just turned on Hastert, is openly gay, as is at least one other central player in the drama. Fordham's word now threatens to take down the whole House leadership. So they're going to throw everything at him.

- which is completely, absolutely, pathetic, but perfectly in character for the GOP.

Vyan