[Ninong]

I'm here, I'm not queer, get used to it! I'm not coming out. And I'm not coming out of the Senate either!


Will Larry Craig attend the 2008 GOP convention?

Now that Larry Craig has decided to remain in the Senate, I wonder if he'll attend the GOP convention in Minneapolis next year?

I'm sure all the TV networks will feature segments on the Larry Craig bathroom at the Minneapolis airport and it would be nice to have Larry Craig on hand to give personal guided tours.

Even if Larry doesn't cooperate, that won't stop them from sending crews over to the airport men's room to conduct on site interviews asking if anyone remembers meeting Larry Craig there.

Yes, I think Minneapolis is a great choice for the GOP convention.

[zhenya]

George,

You know what is so disturbing in these pictures of Craig? Not Craig but the second guy in the picture... He looks like a deer caught in the headlights. It really disturbs me...

[Ninong]

Gene,

That's my favorite picture and it looks like I'll have lots of opportunities to used it over and over again.

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Gene,

That's my favorite picture and it looks like I'll have lots of opportunities to used it over and over again.

I understand that, it just that this second guy bothers me...

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by zhenya

I understand that, it just that this second guy bothers me...

The "second guy" is Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Minority Leader in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell has a reputation for "bothering" people. Just ask his Army buddies from 1967 about that. Mitch was discharged from the Army in August 1967 after serving less than 60 days. He received an honorable discharge for reasons he has refused to reveal.

Wussies for War video clip featuring Sen. Mitch McConnell et al.

[zhenya]

Wussies for War video clip featuring Sen. Mitch McConnell et al.

That's hilarious...

[Ninong]

What goes around, comes around...

The GOP has been using the gay issue for years as a wedge issue to try to divide the Democrats and now it has come back to bite them in the ass. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said that what Larry Craig did was "unforgivable," but just yesterday Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) spoke up for his friend saying Craig "has the right to pursue his legal options as does any citizen, and I support his effort."

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) who had encouraged Craig to try to overturn his plea, told reporters that his colleague had the right to stay in office. "Disorderly conduct is not moral turpitude," Specter said, "and is not a basis for leaving the Senate."

I had a hunch this was going to get good and it has.

[schrocat]

Gee.
I sure hope Mitch apologizes.

Larry might switch parties.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by zhenya

That's hilarious...

Gene,

I thought it was pretty funny, too, especially at the very end.

There have been rumors about Sen. Mitch McConnell's military service for years. His official biography makes no mention of any military service at all and earlier this year his press secretary denied that he had ever been in the military.

“Senator McConnell had polio as a child and he never served in armed services.” said Robert Steurer, press secretary for McConnell in Washington. “I am not aware of him ever serving.”

Reporters were questioning his military service because a letter turned up in the Special Collections department of the University of Kentucky Library that raised some interesting questions about McConnell's service.

Shortly after McConnell's Washington, D.C. office denied that he had ever been in the military at all, his Louisville campaign manager, Kyle Simmons, offered a different story about the senator's military record.

According to Simmons, McConnell enlisted for four months of active duty with the Army reserve at Fort Knox. Simmons said that McConnell failed his physical examination as a result of a doctor’s diagnosis of McConnell having the medical condition of optic neuritis.

Optic neuritis is not reason enough by itself to be discharged from the military. It's easily treated with steroids and can be cleared up in a matter of weeks. Furthermore, McConnell joined in March 1967 and reported for active duty for training in July 1967. He was discharged in August 1967. You take your physical immediately, not months later.

McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky Law School before reporting for active duty for training in July. He signed up in March while he was still in law school but reported in July after graduation from law school. This was the Army Reserve, not the Regular Army. No doubt, after basic training, he would have been sent to OCS for six months. As a lawyer, I imagine he would have eventually applied for JAG school so that he could enter the Judge Advocate General's Corps.

There have been rumors for years that McConnell was discharged from the Army Reserve because of some inappropriate behavior of the sort that got Larry Craig in trouble. These rumors may or may not be true but they have been around for a long time.

More recently -- February 2007 -- a letter was discovered in the Special Collections department of the University of Kentucky Library. The letter was found in the personal letters of Sen. John Sherman Cooper, a Republican who represented Kentucky. Mitch McConnell served as an intern in Sen. Cooper's Washington, D.C. office in the summer of 1964. The letter is dated August 10, 1967 and it is from Sen. Cooper to Maj. Gen. A. D. Surles, commanding general of Fort Knox. At that time McConnell was in training at Ft. Knox with the 100th Division of the U.S. Army Reserve. In the letter, Sen. Cooper advises General Surles that "Mitchell anxious to clear post in order to enroll NYU. Please advise when final action can be expected." McConnell was released from the service shortly thereafter.

According to the Registrar's Office at New York University, Mitch McConnell never applied for or enrolled in any classes at that university. Don't forget, he had already graduated from law school at this time.

After being presented with these conflicting reports, McConnell's office issued a statement saying that Sen. McConnell would have nothing to say about his military service. They now refuse to answer any questions and refuse to give any reason for his discharge. That information would be included on his form DD214 but it's possible that there is no DD214 in his file if he was in the service for less than 90 days. However, there should be something in his file to indicate the reasons for his separation.

[Ninong]

Wow! I had no idea!

All this time I've been thinking that Larry Craig's behavior in the men's room at the Minneapolis airport was inappropriate because he may have intended to engage in sexual conduct in one of the stalls right then and there. This reasoning led me to agree that it was appropriate for the local police to take action to discourage such behavior.

I didn't think the toe-tapping and hand swiping under the stall partition was all that offensive but the idea that people would engage in sexual conduct in a public restroom seemed inappropriate to me. For starters, there's the kid factor.

However, after reading the judge's decision in rejecting Larry Craig's petition to withdraw his guilty plea to the disorderly conduct charge, it appears that I may have been mistaken.

In Minnesota, consensual sex in a public restroom stall is protected behavior!?! Solitication of sex in a public restroom stall by "Defendant's entry into an occupied stall with his eyes, hand, and foot" is criminal behavior.

Here is how the judge explained it on page 26 of his 27-page decision yesterday:

"The ACLU also argues the conviction is void because individuals engaging in consensual sex in a public restroom stall have a reasonable expectation of privacy under State v. Bryant, 177 N.W.2d 800 (Minn. 1970). While, depending on the facts of any particular case, that may be true, the acts alleged in this case are the solicitation, not the sex act, and the criminal behavior is the Defendant's entry into an occupied stall with his eyes, hand, and foot. The ACLU's arguments are without merit."

The ACLU had filed an amicus curiae brief in the case.

[Ninong]

Robert Novak says he talked to several of his GOP sources in the Senate and...

they knew about Larry Craig's habit of cruising public men's restrooms all along. Novak pretends to be surprised.

The good part comes 1:17 into the clip.

[Ninong]

Sen. Larry Craig will be inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame...

...on October 13. Others will be inducted at that same ceremony alongside Craig including Gov. Butch Otter, Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, Boise State University football coach Chris Petersen and John Grossenbacher, director of the Idaho National Laboratory nuclear and energy research center.

[schrocat]

He deserves the award.

...I mean c'mon, the dude invented the super tuber.

mmmmmmmm

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

He deserves the award.

...I mean c'mon, the dude invented the super tuber.

mmmmmmmm

He may have invented it but he had his wife Suzanne submit the recipe under her name for one of those Congress Cooks cookbooks. He probably didn't want people to know he had invented something so suggestive.

[Ninong]

SNL's Seth & Amy discuss Larry Craig

Here.

[Ninong]

GOP Nauti Buoys will be making headlines and providing punchlines for Jay Leno for some time to come...

Coming out Nov. 13 will be the January issue of Hustler magazine, including a show & tell by Wendy Cortez, one of Sen. David Vitter's many prostitute girlfriends. She's the one he visited two to three times a week for more than four months straight. According to Ms Cortez, Sen. Vitter freaked out when she told him her real first name. She had been using her stage name of Leah. Upon hearing that her real name was Wendy, Vitter reportedly replied, "Oh, my God!" That might have been because Vitter's wife's name is Wendy.

Senator Vitter, according to Ms Cortez, was extremely careful about not leaving anything laying around. She said he was her only client who took his used condoms with him when he left. He showered before doing it and after doing it, always using unscented soap. He was always very polite and courteous -- a perfect Southern gentleman -- according to Ms Cortez.

When asked what she remembers most about Sen. Vitter, Ms Cortez said he had a little something that she will always remember him by.

[Ninong]

Another GOP Nauti Buoy busted for tap-dancing in the men's room.

A Louisiana GOP official who is a good friend of David Vitter's has been outed for Larry Craig behavior.


Joey DiFatta, Chairman of the St. Bernard Parish Council and GOP candidate for Louisiana Senate.

Here.

Or, you can skip the newspaper article and go straight to the police reports for the details, such as:

Detective Couvillion entered a stall and sat down. At this time a male subject sitting in the stall started to make contact with undercover officer. It should be noted through training and experience vice officers are aware of signals and body language men do in restrooms for the purpose of soliciting homosexual type of activities. Such conduct was used by this subject including sliding his foot in undercover officer's stall and tapping officer's foot. When the undercover officer replied by tapping his foot, the male subject reached under the partition and started rubbing on the officer's leg and making hand gestures indicating for the undercover officer to come into his stall. The subject also made a gesture with his hand which is known to indicate masturbation. Detective Couvillion asked the subject, "what do you want" and the male replied, "I want to play with you."

P.S. -- This being Louisiana, he was NOT arrested either time after he produced a card from the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office identifying him as a captain. Cards like that, and even just the local sheriff's personal business card, will get you out of almost any sort of difficulty, such as traffic stops, as long as the law enforcement officer you are talking to belongs to the same sheriff's department or a neighboring one. They honor each other's cards.

From the article:

Conley confronted DiFatta outside the bathroom, and DiFatta apologized and said he would not return, according to the report. DiFatta also said he has a problem with such behavior and had sought counseling for the addiction in the past, the report states.

In both instances, DiFatta produced his commission from the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office identifying him as a captain. DiFatta said Thursday he did not show his commission either time until officers asked him for identification, all of which he keeps in his wallet.


Too bad Larry Craig didn't have a card identifying him as a sheriff's department captain in Minneapolis. That might have worked better than his U.S. Senator business card.

[Ninong]

How did I ever miss this in that newspaper article:

Earlier Thursday, DiFatta called reporters to announce that he planned to withdraw from the Senate race. He said he has been having chest pains for a few weeks, and elevated enzyme levels indicate he might have had a minor heart attack in the past few days. As a result, his doctor advised him to slow down and make some changes in his life.

DiFatta, who has served on the St. Bernard Parish Council since January 1996 and is currently its chairman, denied he is stepping down from the Senate race for fear that the reports would become public. In fact, he said he did not know the reports had surfaced when he made his decision.

So now we know that in addition to soy beans, elevated enzyme levels can cause you to turn gay.




__________________________________________________

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." -- Mrs. George H. W. Bush, Sept. 5, 2005, while touring an evacuation center in Houston where many poor black victims of Hurricane Katrina had been given shelter.

Then she added: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas."

[Ninong]

What's up with the latest inductee into the Idaho Hall of Fame?


Still Not-Gay

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) has announced that he is appealing the decision of the Minneapolis court turning down his petition to withdraw his guilty plea to the charge of disorderly conduct. This process could take several months!

[Ninong]

"He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again."


Still Not-Gay


Idaho Senator Larry E. Craig is lashing out at Mitt Romney, who unceremoniously dumped Craig from his campaign after Craig's arrest in a Minneapolis airport bathroom sex sting and called the conduct "disgraceful."

"I'd worked hard for him here in the state," Craig told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview to be aired Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "I was a co-chair of his campaign on Capitol Hill. And he not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again."