Ratfucker Goes Down

Ratfucking, for those of you new to this game, is political dirty tricks. The term comes out the Watergate era. Those guys trying to break into the DNC back in the day? Ratfuckers.

Well the modern equivalent just got himself in similar hot water. James O'Keefe the guy behind the bazaar "dress up like a pimp and see if the ACORN receptionist does anything about it" incident got picked up by the FBI yesterday in a plot to bug the office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. A classic ratfucking maneuver.

So where does this all lead? Not to White House, but O'Keefe is plugged into the whole conservative network - media, money, and activists. Who does he work for? Who funds him?

Via

Not the Right Kind

There are certain scandals one would associate with the White House Office of Management and Budget Director. Not getting the numbers to add up is a perennial problem, and generally beyond any individual to fix. Actually telling the truth to the Atlantic Monthly that Supply-side economics is a giant scam and that your Administration has no clue with regard to the budget is my personal favorite.

But OMB directors are nerdy types, anti-social and concerned with math and numbers and such. This kind of stuff just isn't what you expect.

Geing Old Doesn't Mean Slowing Down

The 86-year-old governor of a southern Indian state has resigned, after a tape came to light showing him in bed with 3 women.

Wow.

I mean, sorry about losing your job and all, grandfather, but still...

Well done sir, well done.

Forgot the Safe Word

You know, this is why I stay away from activities that require a safe word.

Republican sex: really dangerous.

Conversation of the Day

"Oh great!"

"What?"

"Now we are going to get weeks and weeks on Tiger Wood's penis and what it's done."

"Really isn't any of our business, is it?"

"Well, he keeps trying to sell me a Buick. I think I should know what his penis has been up to."

Just an Affair

So the whole missing Governor affair turned out to be just that - an affair. Kinda boring, once you think about. I was hoping for secret plastic surgery or some kind of amnesia And lucky us we get to see the mother of all mid-life crisis's play out in news conference form. At least the man had the decency of not bringing his wife along for the soul-bearing. No more lectures on family values from anybody. Ever.

No Kidding

Who could have possibly thought that the man appointed by Blago could later get tripped up in ethics questions?

Turns out, everyone but Roland Burris.

Bad Old Days

Keith Olbermann on Countdown put together a top twenty-five most corrupt American politicians. Man we had some corrupt mo-fos back in the day. The Grant Administration was mind-blowingly terrible. Congressman Andrew Jackson May of Kentucky actually killed at least 38 American soldiers by foisting a bad defense contractor on the US Army during WWII. Boss Tweed was estimated to have stolen something on the order of $3.2 billion in today's dollars.

The popular story is that America was clean and innocent until Watergate took it all away. But we've had corruption and dirty deals from the beginning. The sad truth is, overall, we are a lot more clean than we used to be, Governor Blago, notwithstanding.

Complication

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose been under investigation for years on corruption and has a single digit approval ratings, just got arrested. Among the charges it appear he was trying to sell off the vacant Senate seat formerly held by Mr Obama. The US Attorney on this case is Patrick Fitzgerald, notable for being the guy who got Scooter Libby, before the whole Presidential commutation of sentence thing.

This makes replacing Obama in the senate rather complicated.

Oy

Oy

The McCain Files

The story of the day is this from the NY Times, which details how John McCain was metaphorically in bed with a lobbyist and does its best to imply that he was literally in bed with this lobbyist. Sleeping with a lobbyist may be the most irresistible metaphor since the Titanic hit that iceberg, but the article seems a little thin. Basically, McCain aids were very concerned that this relationship might be a relationship.

Now, according to rules established during the Clinton impeachment, as a good liberal, I must now point out that who McCain does or does not bonk has no bearing on his ability to serve as President of these United States.

Of course, that very same Clinton impeachment established the conservative position on the matter. Boinking outside the bounds of holy matrimony is grounds for impeachment. Clearly even the possibility disqualifies McCain from office. I eagerly await conservatives to once again put this principle into action.

Stop, Um, Thief?

Something very, very strange happened in the Washington State GOP Caucus on Saturday. With John McCain slightly ahead and about 13% of precincts left to count, the State Party stopped counting votes and declared McCain the winner. This has struck many people, particularly the Huckabee campaign as rather peculiar.

Whatever the ill effects of the 2000 election (And they are many) It forever put voting procedures and voting rights on the national radar. I don’t care if they are trying to steal an election in a GOP race that is “already decided” And I don’t have a real brief for Huckabee. But still, this banana republic crap should not stand.

Release the Hounds!

Get this over with

Ok, it's time to speed this along. Gentlemen, could everyone who has not had sex with Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) please take two steps back.

Everything!

Here's a something scandalous that I'm pretty sure touches every single aspect of the United States I don't like. Judith Regan, former publisher for News Corporation, the evil empire of Rupert Murdoch (Ding!) and home of Fox News Channel, (Ding!) was fired in the wake of the OJ Simpson (Ding!)"If I did it" book scandal. She had an affair with Bernard Kerik, the mobbed-up former police commish for Rudy Giuliani (Ding!)Kerik, who came this close to being in charge of the department of Homeland Security (Ding), is now under indictment for a bunch of corruption-related activities. Judith Regan is now saying in a 100-million dollar lawsuit that a senior executive with NewsCorp encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Kerik in order to to protect the Presidential run of Giuliani. (Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!)

So if I figure this right, this whole affair has the potential to damage FoxNews, Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, The White House, Rudy! and OJ Simpson.

Excellent.

Again

So, another conservative caught with his hand in the gay cookie jar. This time it's an Idaho Senator whose was otherwise notable only for having the tasteful name of Larry Craig.

Look, there's a reason why this kind of thing keeps happening. The GOP and the conservative movement at this point are built around hating gay people. But there are a number of gay people in the country who really like church, tax cuts, or invading countries for no good reason. So we end up with quite of few closeted Republicans. Who are still gay, despite all efforts to the contrary. So we keep getting these ludicrous scandals as ideology loses out to nature.

Miss You

Ted Stevens, the man who brought us the "Bridge to Nowhere" and "The Internet is a Series of Tubes" just got his home raided by the FBI as part of a corruption probe.

I'm going to miss him.

AG-AG, not so much.

Muck!

The Fired Federal Prosecutors thing is blowing up in a major way. A Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suddenly feels like he isn't spending enough time with his family way.

Right Out the Door

I think we can mark down a new causality in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Ralph Reed, baby-faced former head of the Christian Coalition, has gone down to defeat in the Republican Primary for Lt. Govenor of Georgia. Yeah.

This is a real fall from grace for Reed, who sometime in the 90's appeared on a Time cover with the caption THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD. Reed provided the Christians in Abramoff's sleazy "Get Conservative Christians to oppose new gambling operations with the money from existing gambling operations" con game.

New Donkey has been crazy obsessed with this race, so check in with him if you want more details and analysis.

Look at THIS

For those of you who simpley will not pay attention to the Jack Abramoff/Tom Delay/GOP scandels, no matter what (Abramoff in a Black Hat!, Gangland style murder!)I offer the final hook: Romance! Betrayal! States Evidence! Via Muckraker, the story of how a jilted lover, left at the alter, brought down a criminal empire:

The engagement of Emily Miller and Michael Scanlon was supposed to mark the coming out of a new Washington power couple.

The two had met on Capitol Hill, where they worked as press secretaries to Rep. Tom DeLay, the feared Texas Republican. They got engaged in September 2001 on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., and planned an August 2002 wedding. As the date approached, Mr. Scanlon bought a $4.7 million oceanside mansion and guest house, formerly part of the DuPont estate, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He furnished it down to the monogrammed towels and presented it to his bride-to-be.

Then, with the wedding a few months away, he called off the engagement and started dating a 24-year-old waitress.

Betrayal! Heartbreak! The monogrammed towels no longer make sense! Ms. Miller turned to the only person who could give her comfort in this dark period of her life: the Federal Prosecutor.

Prosecutors came to Ms. Miller to help them build a case that drove her ex-fiancé to plead guilty, according to a person familiar with the situation. Mr. Scanlon's testimony in turn helped force Mr. Abramoff into a guilty plea. Another former DeLay aide, Tony Rudy, has been cited by prosecutors in the investigation. Now Washington is wondering whether prosecutors will use testimony from Messrs. Scanlon and Rudy to go after Mr. DeLay, who has resigned as majority leader.

Break her heart, not only is she sending you to prison, but all your friends as well. So there it is. This whole corruption affair brought to life because of a busted engagement. They are not kidding about the woman scorned thing.

Rings True

I've come across a few conservative critics of the movie Syriana in my random web surfing. A pretty typical example is this Charles Krauthammer piece. Basically this these critics boil down to the contention that Syriana's vision of corruption and US foreign policy is just a Hollywood fantasy. Which brings us to the new TPMMuckraker, explorer of all things corrupt. One of the revelations: Mitchell Wade - the defense contractor who bought off Duke Cunningham, also set up an outfit called the "Iranian Democratization Foundation." Oh and it also appears that Wade was buying off people inside the CIA and White House for defense contracts. Syriana featured a shadowy "Democracy for Iran" group that seemed to consisted of nothing but well-aged white men. There is a pretty good reason that Syriana rings true, despite Krauthammer's protestations that US foreign policy is noble and incorruptible. That reason is called the news.

Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale, thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself, maybe get elected some two-bit, no-name congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you. No, sir. "But, Danny, these are sovereign nations." Sovereign nations. What is a sovereign nation, but a collective of greed run by one individual? "But, Danny, they're codified by the U.N. charter!" Legitimized gangsterism on a global basis that has no more validity than an agreement between the Crips and the Bloods! Corruption charges. Corruption? Corruption ain't nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around here instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.

--Syriana