Help John Laesch

* swopa:

"Even if you're a determined pessimist like Markos, you have to admit that things don't seem quite so bad now. What happened to undo the seemingly indestructible Bush PR juggernaut? Reality happened, that's what. Karl Rove and his minions can build the Shrub-in-Chief up as a king all they want, but ultimately he can’t command the waves of reality — and whether those waves erode his sand monument to himself slowly (as in the agonizing, gradual disintegration of Iraq) or suddenly (as with Hurricane Katrina last year), eventually people can see for themselves how little substance is really there.

Over the past couple weeks, a perfect storm of reality — the Mark Foley page-stalking scandal, the official National Intelligence Estimate that we're losing ground against terrorism due to the Iraq debacle, and the revelations of Bob Woodward's book State of Denial — came together so fiercely that even largely inattentive Americans couldn't shut it out, and the Bushites' grotesquely fabricated celebrations (ghastly as it sounds, that's what they were) of the fifth anniversary of September 11th were washed away. "

* The Hill:

"Foley scandal a boon for Hastert’s opponent

The scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) has trickled down to help the longest of long shots, including Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) opponent.

In the days since Foley resigned, Democrat John Laesch raked in $40,000 from online contributions. He has had to reorder yard signs and install new phone lines in his campaign headquarters in Yorkville, Ill.

"Over the weekend, there were 20 to 30 people in the office that I’d never seen before," Laesch told The Hill. "People were coming in with a $100 check and asking for a yard sign."

The new interest in Laesch’s quixotic campaign underscores the impact the Foley scandal has had. Still, Hastert has never had a close race since winning with 52 percent of the vote in 1986. Since then he has always won with more than 64 percent of the vote in a district that President Bush won in 2000 and 2004 with 55 percent of the vote. "

Help John Laesch