damn it is just amazing how you have it all figured out, that everything was legal, even before the trials even begin!  if only I had such insight.

1/3 of it went to Democrats?  Which of his cronies did this?  To paraphrase Dean, are you saying the Indian tribe who gave Reid money was an agent of Abramoff?  They got screwed by him.  They weren’t in cahoots with him.

Get your talking points straight next time.

Good lord, 1/3 went to Democrats.  LOL

Dean told one of those “Washington Lies,” by which I mean that he spoke the truth in the narrow sense but deliberately left a misimpression. You know, sort of like when Clinton said he never had “sexual relations” with that woman, Miz Lewinsky? It’s true that he didn’t—at the time, Webster’s defined “sexual relations” as coitus, which didn’t occur. But that was a dodge and everyone knew it. Not that they wanted him impeached, either.

Anyway, this is a matter that every 5th grader can understand: 10% of the iceberg floats above water. Abramoff ran a corrupt keiretsu—a crony network—that “contrbuted” $4.4 million. ALL of the contributions were legal. Abramoff’s personal contributions were 5% of the total and they all went to Republicans. His cronies gave the rest of the money, and one-third of it went to Democrats.

Here is the proof. This scandal is just the latest in a long line of scandals involving The Permanent K Street Government. It’s a baronial system of lobbies—Big Agriculture, Big Pharma, Big Telecom/Tech, Pro-Israel, Big Entertainment, Big Labor, Big Defense, among others—that owns both parties lock, stock and barrel.

The Republicans have always been willing to sell out. It’s in their genetic code. But the Democrats had a 40-year run where they weren’t willing to sell out. That end sometime in the late 1970s, and ever since then the Democratic Party has progressively (bad word) sold its soul for corporate money.

A “Republican scandal?” Yeah, right. And I just think I sprout wings and fly to Venus this Thursday. Who do they think they’re kidding? Forty years ago, three-quarters of the public voted. Now it’s half. That means that in any national election, about 50 million voters and MIA. Who are they, and why are they missing in action?

I say they are people at the socio-economic margins who watch both parties focus their exclusive attention on people with money. As a result, every election has a declining rate of participation. The public is progressively giving up hope, and I think it’s largely because the Democrats have abandoned their principles.

If the Democratic Party refuses to stand up for working Americans, it can expect to batlle harder and harder for a diminishing supply of crumbs from Big Business.