Saturday, April 28, 2007

Okay, Now They're Just Messing With Us

Senior Official Linked to Escort Service Resigns, via Andrew Sullivan.

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.

Tobias, 65, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the ambassador for the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

A State Department press release late Friday afternoon said only he was leaving for "personal reasons."

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages...

As a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries, Tobias was responsible for enforcing a U.S. policy, enacted during the Bush administration, that requires recipients to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. USAID adopted a similar policy in 2004.


And a snippet from wikipedia:
In his capacity as Director of Foreign Assistance, Tobias encouraged sexual abstinence, and discounted the use of condoms, in preventing HIV/AIDS. "Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective," Tobias told a news conference in Berlin on April 21, 2004.[2]


So to sum up, Bush put someone who worked for chemical companies in charge of the EPA, an anti-OSHA activist at the head of OSHA, the guy who wants the UN destroyed as ambassador to the UN, a horce racing expert as the head of FEMA, and the dude who (allegedly) is a regular customer of prostitutes as the head of his abstinence campaign. Sometimes I think Bush and his friends are just having fun seeing how far they can go. ("Come on Dick, ten bucks says you can't shoot your friend in the face and then have him apologize to you on national t.v.")

(Full disclosure: my last two sentences were inspired by a comment on MetaFilter a while back.)

12 comments:

Foilwoman said...

Oh, those family value Republicans! Aren't they just wacky?

Anonymous said...

Um, is there any evidence at all that the administration knew of this guys extra-curricular activities before they hired him? Because otherwise it looks like the truth came out on Thursday and he was forced out of his job the following day. How is that "having fun seeing how far they can go"?

And that is ignoring the irony of somebody who spent 8 years defending Clinton criticising a guy for having a massage...

Random

Jewish Atheist said...

Random:

I'm sure they didn't know. I'm just kidding about the messing with us part. And I've never defended Clinton for his adultery.

asher said...

Republicans are a bunch of incompetent hypocrites who never take yes for an answer....This is why we need a guy like Obama in the white house. You neglected to comment on his speech on the day of the Virginia Tech murders where he compared the shootings to the "other violence in this country..like the violece of having your job shipped overseas"
Now that's the kind of clear thinking we need.

Sadie Lou said...

I'm sorry. It's so ridiculous for one political party to point the finger at the other one. Democrats and Republicans alike are guilty of corruption. We need to clean house and get rid of both Dems and Repubs and give some other party a chance to prove their worth.
JA, I expect better from you, I really, really do. Both parties have corruption to their core. You're just kidding yourself if you think one is worse than the other.

Jewish Atheist said...

Sadie:

Both parties have corruption. But one is much, much worse than the other.

Sadie Lou said...

How can you honestly believe that? Why?

beepbeepitsme said...

It is always more interesting when the party which assumes the high moral ground, displays its feet of clay.

In other words, republicans spend a lot of time telling everyone how moral they are in respect to democrats or liberals - it is part of their party platform.

Consequently, when the "holy rollers" display their immorality for all to see, I have no problem with associating the word "hypocrite" with them.

Jewish Atheist said...

Sadie:

Please don't buy into the propaganda that the Dems are just as bad as the Repubs. The Bush administration's ineptitude and sheer contempt for the institutions of American government is virtually unprecedented. Even most (paleo-)conservatives have realized this and jumped ship.

Republicans today are more corrupt than Democrats today. Maybe you could make the case that it's just because they've been in power, but the truth remains. Also, we're not just talking about corruption, but moral hypocrisy and ineptitude.

Scott said...

The shame of Bush's seeming ineptitude is that people haven't lost faith in the system. They're still under the impression that FEMA can save them from disaster, they just think there needs to be a different guy in charge of it. Maybe a guy who just likes black people a little more. Guess it'll be atleast another 8 years and a few trillion more dollars before we learn.

In other words, republicans spend a lot of time telling everyone how moral they are in respect to democrats or liberals - it is part of their party platform.

The Democrats political platform is just as morally based as the Republicans. They just have different names for their morality, like Social Justice and other such nonesense.

Sadie Lou said...

Please don't buy into the propaganda that the Dems are just as bad as the Repubs.

I have to buy into it, JA. Politics, by nature, force people to compromise and that's on both sides of the fence. Compromise here, compromise there and before you know it, everyone's hands are dirty and I don't believe, for one second, that any party is immune to it. I also don't believe that Dems are somehow above it and that Repubs compromise more--they all do it.

Sadie Lou said...

What about *this* discussion?