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Ear to the Ground

Jack, Not Iraq, Is the Biggest Threat to Bush

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Posted on Dec 2, 2005

By Robert Scheer

Prediction: It’s the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, not Iraq, that will unravel the Bush empire. Abramoff will follow the lead of his partner, Michael Scanlon, in copping a plea bargain with prosecutors, whose likely targets include Tom DeLay, many other congressional Republicans and key players in the administration.

Check out our Uncovered file for updates on this story.

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By Elesabeth Pastorik, January 10, 2006 at 1:43 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Marty,
You come on strong angily at me as though I am defending the Rethuglicans and picking on your Dumbocrats. Not the case, I think 2 parties are
a waste. And, I haven’t seen but maybe one or two on either side that I would vote for. You have to remember that Soros is from Hungary. Or, did you know that? You’re better off going to Disneyland to find you a Hero Marty. I started to say you best hope and pray there are not a couple hundred more like him.
But, I think you need to learn for yourself. I hope you get to see. Personally,I don’t think he can get that far. And, why did you call me a Neocon? In your definition, what is and how am I a Neocon? Since I don’t associate with either party what qualifies me for the title you have so bestowed on me?

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By Marty, January 8, 2006 at 4:55 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Oh Sure Pastorik, this also includes some Democrats, so that lets the corrupt Republicans off.The problem is that the campaign donations to Reid and the other Dems are COMPLETELY legal and ethical. By the prevailing laws a donation is perfectly OK.It is the bribing and illegal gifts given by Abramoff almost exclusively to Republicans…and bigshot leader Republicans which is the focus of the scandal.Delay, Doolittle, Ney,Ralph Reed. Norquist, Safavian,Scanlan,Rabbi Lapin,and many others…ALL REPUBLICANS. Lets not forget about the indited Scooter, and the next-to-be-indited Rove, and the insider trader of ethical standards Frist. Then Hastert is involved with money from Turkey as gifts to block pro-Armenian legislation. Yes you little Neocon, it is an overwhelmingly Republican scandal , but if some Dems like Lieberman or Hillary are guilty of corruption, then let them burn too. As for Soros…he is a huge HERO.  I wish there were a hundred more like him

Marty

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By Donski, January 7, 2006 at 11:51 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Hey Ringer . . .

Your description of the dumb-as-a-stump political greed machine is “right on.”  It’s so good that I am going to use it in my next class to get the kids thinking (a seriously depleted commodity in these days of “doublethink”).

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By Elesabeth Pastorik, January 7, 2006 at 3:54 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I am a immigrant from Hungary, naturalized an American since 1984. My husband works in the government and I love politics. It is a mystery to me why no one is questioning the motives of George Soros and his ties to the Democratic Party, why he was thrown out of Russia, his relationship to Huffington…....and I am keeping up with the Abramoff thing and how it is spreading. For instance….
Included in the long list of Abramoff Tribal Donations are both Rethuglicans and a growing list of Dumbocrats. And, they are mustering up assertions from, “not knowing Abramoff,”
“nothing being sinister here,” etc.
So far, the Washington Post has listed these Dumbocrats:
Thomas A.Daschle(S.D.)$40,000+   
Harry M.Reid (Nev.)$40,000+       
Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.)$32,500
Patrick J. Kennedy (R.I.)$128,000
Patty Murray (Wash.)Committee she chaired $175,000
Byron I. Dorgan (N.D.)

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By Leonard Disla, January 6, 2006 at 5:18 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Hi :
What Robert has done is highly comendable.One of the signers of the Constitution, Edmund Burke, said : ” All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand idly by and do nothing.” How could it be that a Political Party can take the country by such a storm when most americans knew the Republican Party was/is more corrupt than, say, the Democratic Party ( I am not denying the Democratic Party is free from corruption ) the answer was given by Hitler who said: ” If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and consistently enough, the people WIL BELIEVE IT .” How said, that we haven’t learned our lesson.!  Leonard Disla.

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By Bill Arnett, December 5, 2005 at 4:09 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Another thing not considered by Russ, above, is that this type of corruption and bribe-paying is to obtain INFLUENCE.

Now…let’s see…the prez, the House of Unrepentant, and the Seenot are in the control of…RETHUGLICANS! Imagine that.

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By spectrumist, December 5, 2005 at 1:28 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Regrettably, the Abramoff scandal is such a tangled web that it will probably not affect the current balance of power in Washington IMHO.  Too complex and not sexy enough for mass consumption.  If the affair can’t be summed up in a simple sentence that includes words like “war”, “sex”, or “death”, only a small segment of the populace will pay any attention.  The red-staters who elected the crooked pols will elect replacement neo-con-men rather than tacitly admit that their faith in right-leaning “values” has been mis-placed.

I would love to be wrong about this, but my inner cynic is holding sway today. Great new sites like this one are cause for hope, glad I found this place.

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By Jeffrey M Moskin, December 4, 2005 at 5:03 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Not that Dems have always been the party of the pure hands. It’s just that since the Gingrich Contract on America, the Dems have been the party OUT OF POWER.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And when you’ve been the party in power for 12 years, your party will be the one to have the scandals.

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By Romelee, December 4, 2005 at 3:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Are they really going to get them. They seem to get out of everything. Will be glad when they get them, always get dissapointed.

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By Marty, December 4, 2005 at 11:01 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I think that clones like Russ are part of a paid network of RNC operatives who spend all their time trying to blow smoke into any negative news afflicting the GOP. You cannot reason with them…they don’t care if what they write is stupid or lying…they just pump it out. Russ and his clones are to be pitied and ignored.

Marty

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By Monica Smith, December 4, 2005 at 7:56 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The reason Republicans have to worry is because they routinely reneg on their “friends.”  Remember Shylock!!!

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By Forjustice, December 4, 2005 at 4:25 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Glad to know you are back. They will get what they will deserve, what goes around comes around.

For justice in L.A.

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By Bone Moe, December 3, 2005 at 9:31 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Robert,
Thanks for finding all that “stuff”. Now we have a lot more truth to sink our teeth into. Keep on digging!
          Bone Moe

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By jean-paul from Tokyo, December 3, 2005 at 9:25 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

First look at your site (through Buzzflash): the people designing this should be kissed on their two cheeks! Clean, elegant, simple, a real joy. Beyond the form, you may also have a winner here as for the contents.
Concerning the comments section, what I would like to see is a place where people from every political color can agree to disagree in a sane way. I see at the top of this very thread that we already have the CAPITAL and BOLD LETTERS trolls lurking around (first! first!), but since this unpleasantness is found on the left too, I hope that the visiting majority here will resist hurling easy insults. And, oh yes, I hope also that the visiting majority will know how to spell: spelling on the web sometimes takes away from me the will to live!!!)

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By Rob, December 3, 2005 at 5:12 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I find it almost funny that here in Canada we are about to take down a very successful Liberal government for a measley $1.1 million in kickbacks that a few isolated feds received in Quebec. The only reason this may work is because people are very devoted to their parties and can be suckered in by a insignificant issue like this. On the other hand the Repugnican scandle about to unfold has the potential to dwarf our scandle by about a 100,000 to 1. If the Abramoff scandle were to occur n Canada, I’m afraid we would implode from the sheer enormity of the situation. Yet there are still those who support this party in your country. What does it take to piss those people off? I think they would need the offending politician to kick in their door, rape their family and steal their truck to get them off the damn couch!

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By Spence in Alaska, December 3, 2005 at 7:30 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Like the layout of your site. Best of luck. We need your voice!
Spence in Alaska

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By carol sanford, December 3, 2005 at 4:39 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Go Bob Go!

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By The Ringer, December 3, 2005 at 3:16 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Hellooooooooo.  Thinking people out there.  We need to cultivate sites like truthdig to take America back from the military industrial- corporate-fundamentalist-fake news-fake alert-fake compassion-anti-science-dumber than a stump-Bushian greed-waste machine.  It’s a pivotal moment in U.S. history.  Time for this generation to create the social will that will make this a smart, compassionate and trusted nation.

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By thoughtfulguy, December 3, 2005 at 2:30 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I couldn’t agree more with you Robert. Jack-A and his filthy money has a stitch in most every Republican in the beltway. As always, I look forward to seeing them reap what they have sewn.

Great site Robert. Love it!

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By Mazeman, December 3, 2005 at 2:26 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Hey Nestlinger,

I really don’t care if the Abramoff Scandals end up taking down a few Democratic crooks along with a pile of Republican crooks.  Crooks are Crooks.  It’s time for a purge of the greedy power bastards, who take filthy corporate donations, from both parties.  I have a hunch that this will be much more of a problem for the Repubs than the Demos.

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By Paul, December 3, 2005 at 1:34 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Bob,
The sort of widespread corruption we are seeing in the Republican Party seems to be a direct result of combining the forces of the Neo Con’s with the Christian Right. I think we all could sense it would end up like this. Your many articles and public comments have been revealing this,
Thanks,
Paul

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By melior in France, December 3, 2005 at 12:53 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I’m not sure if russ is aware that most judges don’t buy “but he did it too” as exculpatory evidence.

Regardless, it’s also highly misleading to imply that the GOP is not the world leader in corruption. Heard of a little thing called the K Street Project?

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By DLE, December 2, 2005 at 11:16 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

What Russ fails to consider is that Scheer is pointing out that where 90+% of the corruption lies, there will the onus fall.  Yes, there are always a few weasels in the opposition party who can be bought off, to make it look bui-partisan.  But, real understanding of the extremity of corruption requires a focus upon the majority party, which is the one of the three most corrupt governments America has ever had. (Harding and Grant were the other two regimes of extreme corruption, Nixon being tied with Bush—but at least neither the Grant nor the Harding regimes sought to undermine and destroy the foundations of American democracy itself).

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By Travis, December 2, 2005 at 3:52 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

New to the site, but I’m going to stick around I think.

Does anyone else get the feeling that Jack Abramoff right now is the equivalent of a 400 lb mountain climbing tandem to Republican Washington?  It was nice to have him there for a while, he could get so much done and everything ... but now he’s slipped and they can all feel the weight on that belay line getting more and more severe.

And I don’t think the DC Republicans have the option, at this point, of just cutting the rope.

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By Charmaniac, December 2, 2005 at 2:49 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Holy shit, this website is awesome.  I think you guys need to promote it more, because I just heard about it from Catch.com.

Wow, I am very impressed with your layout.

It puts Pajama Pantsload Open Source whatever its called to shame.

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By Marsha L. Respess, December 2, 2005 at 1:16 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Robert—

I admit that I have been delighted by the “trials” of both Abramoff and Scanlon because Tom DeLay is going to have a very hard time trying to get the charges dismissed against him.  Also what happened to Cunningham is fascinating because he is like DeLay only a much smaller scale so one can only hope that justice will prevail for once.

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By Alan Nestlinger, December 2, 2005 at 1:15 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Mr. Scheer,

I look forward to your continued success both here on truthdig and at the San Francisco newspaper (Examiner? Chronicle?) where the strength of your progressive voice is not feared or hated as it was at the LAT.  Your presence at the LAT was the biggest reason I subscribed to the LAT.

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By russ, December 2, 2005 at 12:54 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Per his usual style, Mr. Scheer gets it wrong again…

So one can’t help but wonder is Mr. Scheer so pathetically uniformed or is he lying?

Consider the following: Anytime a Republican’s name is mentioned in connection to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff it becomes a story for the liberal media, and fodder for Democrats’ smear campaign against the Republican Party. The truth of the matter is that even members of the Democratic Party have connections to Jack Abramoff…

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