Hugh!!11!! Wait til you see this story on Cunningham bribe Octopus

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20051204-9999-1n4adcs.html

this is going to be a big one, with tentacles reaching deeply into the pugparty

it really highlights the extent of total corruption unfolding under the aegis of DeLay/K Street Project

if this doesn't bring them down, I don't know what does.

this goes from the number three man at CIA to Schwarzenegger to Duncan Hunter, to numerous and nameless former DeLay aids who parlayed their staff positions into lucrative lobby positions

Even Dan Lundberg, of all people, remarked upon the huge number of lobbyists appearing at doorways in the halls of congress after 1995.

this story should be more hugh than anything I can come up with, if it gets the play it should....Google is ignoring it on its first few pages, btw. they DID give it some play on CSPAN this morning, though. that's where I heard about it



much, much more at this link

you thought it was bad. as always with this bunch, it's even worse

it all gets tied in - and it will - with the Abramoff/Scanlon/DeLay investigation.

I've been saying, and I'll bet I'm right, that Patrick Fitzgerald is second, maybe third, chair on this one.

As always, it's a game of "follow the money."

This IS hugh!11!! I'm series!!1111!!

"Octopus"

know anything about Danny Casolaro?

this doesn't relate to his story, but the web the bug killer and his cronies have woven will take a long, long time to unravel

a kudos to the JD for going as far as it has. wonder how much farther it'll go before the word goes down as it did in Micronesia, or wherever Abramoff's first investo began, and the air will go out of the entire thing

fingers crossed

so I googled him.

Oh, man. Then I remembered everything.

The timing is right, too.

Fingers crossed here, too.

Someone in the JD is pissed off. Really pissed off. It's got to be a lifetime employee who's finally gotten fed up at the antics of Ashcroft and Gonzales. Wrong people to annoy, really.

Thanks for this, your honor.

how Delay's name keeps popping up in connection to dirty money

meanwhile...

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."— Gov. George W. Bush, Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000

1.7 million in legal bribes, yielding 95 million in contracts

actually a 50+ fold return is kind of LOW, when compared to other companies who, for a few million sprinkled around, get Billions and Brazilians of bucks in contracts

the American way

Look from last night

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/3/204731/868

http://www.powaymafia.com/

You can't even click anything.

Thanks for the heads-up, Gabi Hayes!

Every day, more good people in government know WTF is going on decide to get on it.

Regarding Cunningham's ties to Abramoff, Daniel Hopsicker, America's most underappreciated great journalist, pegs the turds:



Gee. Wouldn't it be great if the good guys ferret out the crooks using the Military-Industrial Complex to penure and rule America got busted?

Ha ha ha ha (maniacal Democratic Donkey laugh)!!!!

Talk about a "conflict of interest".

What they did to hide money flowing in from these guys, I understand, was to make their operations not a lobbying outfit, but a public relations outfit. That way, they didn't have to report the gifts and payola.

There's a real firestorm brewing.

I'm so glad.

other way around? OH! the BALLS! Putting them in prison isn't good enough. I want ALL the MONEY back with INTEREST!

Being housed within the DC office of Greenburg Traurig, LLP, a Miami-based Republican law firm, gave Abramoff and his partners additional insulation, including (arguably) attorney-client privilidge on its most sensitive arrangements.

This follows the old spook model of operating out of international law firms, a device that goes back to John Foster and Allen Dulles' old Wall Street firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, which was the CIA before the United States had an external intelligence service. Sullivan & Cromwell's exploits with the Republican Party go back to the 1890s, when a huge bribe to RNC Chair Mark Hannah netted Congressional approval for a public bond offering that handed S&C's partners and clients the cost of buying out French investors who had started the canal project.

C&S went on to represent the "merchants of death", defense contractors who overcharged the US for arms during WWI, and it was later the law firm that represented German banking interests -- the US subsidiary Union Trust Bank managed by Prescott Bush -- who funneled money to Hitler that financed the Nazi Party.

Beginning to see an historical pattern here?

:thumbsup:

...let me know

anyway, it's a start

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/donkey.html

Follow the $$.

Did you see the life he's living. Know wonder the country is broke. I hate these fuckers.

Clean up in aisle 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and and and

This Wade Mitchell is a piece of work, but then again, they all are, and he's just part of one tentacle.

I read an article that has really stuck with me about his arm-twisting for contributions and that quoted him as saying, "The only people I want to work with are people I give checks to. I own them."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20050622-9999-1n22mzm.html

Power and Money. Greed and Gain. Screw you, I've got mine.

I have one request - Please, please, whatever happens - let it take down Katherine Harris, too. Is anyone really buying her scramble to give the 50,000+ contributions she received to charity as enough to disassociate herself from the filth?

with direct involvement. He was so sad that his best friend 'Duke' Cunningham, my former Congressman, was going to jail, now perhaps they can be roommates!

Both of these horrible people were the biggest cheerleaders for war and killing...now we know why. I have their purple index fingers burned into my memory banks. As though Iraqis voting had anything to do with the cash they were bringing down!

They need to KNOW how we feel about them. and then email a copy to your local newspaper and tv stations. We have got to start to flood them with this kind of email that tells them just how sick and tired we are of their sh!t.

My home back in the states is in Lakeside, which puts me right in Hunter's district. I'd so like to come back next September and find out that jackass is sharing cells with Cunningham.

:nopity:

You can't click the site though...
http://www.wilkesfoundation.org/

Someone should start a research thread on this guy.

His wife Gina is on the Poway School district board of directors
http://powayusd.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/partners/foundation.htm
Poway Unified School District Foundation

Board of Directors
Irene S. Frank, Executive Director

Alex Armstrong
Cora Bagley
Jon A. Baker
Douglas E. Barnhart
Linda Cialeo
Bob Emery
Brian Maienschein
Don Raczka

Gina Wilkes

Do they know they have a criminal on the board? Someone should complain.

can spend more time with their families.

The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.

Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.

So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?

Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.

All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/

More names to research.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2005/12/deeper-into-wilkesmzm-scandals-updated.html

(The one in your post is to the home page of the blog, so it won't lead to the article in a couple of days.)

It's a Syndicate. Organized Crime has morphed into the Bush Republican Syndicate.

gotten in three plus years

Black Box voting scandals, theft of 2004 election in Ohio, RE: president of Diebold, is it, from Ohio, who promised to deliver?

to believe 3 years ago. Now it makes a hell of a lot more sense, doesn't it?

Rich was a very important client of Scooter Libby. Here is an amazing article which details more of what goes on behind the scenes. Worth reading, but takes time to absorb all the implications.

http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=1102

Also I knew that Rove had contacted movie-makers about propagandizing the war; but after seeing this chart I suspected it was Paramount. Bingo! Definitely a major player in the catapulting of propaganda.

http://movies.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,9105,00.html?newsrellink

As the criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was underway this spring, a spokesman for the law firm representing him issued a statement saying that Abramoff was "being singled out by the media for actions that are commonplace in Washington and are totally proper." Abramoff has since said much the same thing. The lawyer was half right. Like many other lobbyists, Abramoff often arranged for private organizations, particularly nonprofit groups, to sponsor pleasant, even luxurious, trips for members of Congress, with lobbyists like himself tagging along and enjoying the unparalleled "access" that such a setting provides; i.e., they get to know congressmen and sell them on legislation. They take over skyboxes at sporting events, inviting members of Congress and their staffs.


...............


Abramoff's behavior is symptomatic of the unprecedented corruption—the intensified buying and selling of influence over legislation and federal policy —that has become endemic in Washington under a Republican Congress and White House. Corruption has always been present in Washington, but in recent years it has become more sophisticated, pervasive, and blatant than ever. A friend of mine who works closely with lobbyists says, "There are no restraints now; business groups and lobbyists are going crazy—they're in every room on Capitol Hill writing the legislation. You can't move on the Hill without giving money."

This remark is only slightly exaggerated. For over ten years, but particularly since George W. Bush took office, powerful Republicans, among them Tom DeLay and Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, have been carrying out what they call the "K Street Project," an effort to place more Republicans and get rid of Democrats in the trade associations and major national lobbying organizations that have offices on K Street in downtown Washington (although, of course, some have offices elsewhere).

the beauty part...I know it's not new, but it is beyond these environs, pretty much....time for a little schadenfreude....

The Republican purge of K Street is a more thorough, ruthless, vindictive, and effective attack on Democratic lobbyists and other Democrats who represent businesses and other organizations than anything Washington has seen before. The Republicans don't simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs: they want the lobbyists they helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives; to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions. The former aides become part of their previous employers' power networks. Republican leaders also want to have like-minded people on K Street who can further their ideological goals by helping to formulate their legislative programs, get them passed, and generally circulate their ideas. When I suggested to Grover Norquist, the influential right-wing leader and the leading enforcer of the K Street Project outside Congress, that numerous Democrats on K Street were not particularly ideological and were happy to serve corporate interests, he replied, "We don't want nonideological people on K Street, we want conservative activist Republicans on K Street."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18075

sit and rotate, boyyyyzzzzz



sposed to be DeLay, but isn't there quite a bit of the Duke in there?

ha

"Welcome to the Machine" by Nicholas Confessore
"The Democrats are terrified that our K Street Project is going to replicate the
way that they behaved when they had the House and Senate," says Norquist. ...
www.washingtonmonthly.com/ features/2003/0307.confessore.html - 41k - Cached - Similar pages

The Washington Monthly
THE K STREET PROJECT....Tuesday's Washington Post ran a long story by Thomas
Edsall about the success that House Majority Whip Roy Blunt has had in making K ...
www.washingtonmonthly.com/ archives/individual/2005_05/006339.php - 101k - Dec 3, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

K-STREET PROJECT
RIGHTCORNER. RIGHTSIDESMALL. SECTIONS:. FRONT PAGE · WORD ON THE STREET ·
CORNER GANG · STREET STUDIES · STREET CLEANING · KSP JOBS · LINKS · ABOUT KSP ...
www.kstreetproject.com/ - 15k - Dec 2, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

K Street Project - SourceWatch
The K Street Project is a project by the Republican Party to pressure Washington
lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal ...
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=K_Street_Project - 19k - Dec 2, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

The New York Review of Books: Selling Washington
The K Street Project has become critical to the Republicans' efforts to ...
When the Republicans first announced the K Street Project after they won a ...
www.nybooks.com/articles/18075 - 34k - Dec 2, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

ATR: K Street Project
The K Street Project is a non-partisan research of political affiliation, employment
background, and political donations of members in Washington DC's ...
www.atr.org/national/kstreet/ - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

The Road to Riches Is Called K Street
The result has been a gold rush on K Street, the lobbyists' boulevard. Quinn Gillespie
has added at least 16 clients and six professionals since its ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062101632.html - Similar pages

Going Left on K Street (washingtonpost.com)
K Street Project spokesman Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax
Reform, ... The K Street Project, which was conceived by Republican leaders in ...
www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/articles/A21972-2004Jul1.html - Similar pages

The Carpetbagger Report » Blog Archive » The GOP's disturbing "K ...
Most Americans have never heard of the "K Street Project." For that matter, most
Americans have probably never head of K Street. But this project is shaping ...
www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/000362.html - 21k - Cached - Similar pages

Republicans take over K Street | csmonitor.com
To encourage such a change of culture, Mr. Norquist and Tom DeLay of Texas, now
House majority leader, launched what they call "the K Street Project" in ...
www.csmonitor.com/2003/0829/p01s01-uspo.html?usaNav - 61k - Cached - Similar page

How many times have you heard a GOP troll call we conspiracy theorists, "NUTS"? Conspiracies happen EVERYDAY in America and it seems to me, that they are happening at a very rapid pace lately. It also seems to me that the party that has painted so many people as "Conspiracy Nuts," is the party squarely behind most of the conspiracies. How many times have you heard, Tucker, ShYAWN, Billy O', Chris, Wolf, Larry King, Newt, Ann the mann, Rush, Bush, Cheney, all the leaders of the GOP and all the leaders of the RNC rave about how we democrats are "CONSPIRACY NUTS?"

I wear my tinfoil hat PROUDLY, as a badge of good common sense and it's the damned GOP that's NUTS!

Sorry about straying from the topic a little, but we were talkin' conspiracies and we should ALWAYS point them out when they are brought to light, with as much fanfare and as much enthusiasm, as the Fools, GOPers and Freepers use, to label those of us who ask, WHY, What, When, Who and Where, "Conspiracy Nuts!"

to ever sky dive.

How in the HELL can a man who can't ride a bike, fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound? America is probably damned lucky W went aWol when he did, because turning him loose in a supersonic jet would have torn up more shit than all 19 of the 9/11 terra-ists put together!

He would have even been to stupid to qualify for the space program, when they were still looking for chimps to launch!

Someone should ask Billy O' if he knew that Adam and Eve conspired to steal an apple!

:kick: This is some good information...

I think it's an important story. More so than what tweety or Zer0'really said about Christmas, or some other goofy shit. The GOPers care more about the cash Christmas generates, than about God, Jesus, Santa Clause and The Grand Wazoo put together.

or questions about where 'tweety' comes from?

or who invented the combover?

I post stuff like that, but I'm getting old, all of a sudden, and maybe it's time to start getting more better, more seriouser

just opining here; could be wrong

http://www.dubyaspeak.com/audio/player.phtml?clip_name=opining

But sometimes I get series!1!1!!

First a taste of the sweet(the jokes)then both barrels with the bitter(the BUSHit).

Marry Poppins once said,
"That a...
Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way"

Mary was heavily into the "Shock and Awe" thing, even back then, I think.

Now I'm not a Mary Poppins fan, mind you, but I left her on the TV long enough to hear her say that once, before I jumped up and changed the channel to Gilligan. I liked Eric Clapton's version of 'Spoonful better than Mary's tune, but the lyrics to Mary's little jingle just kind of gave me something to live by and no matter how hard I've tried, over all these years, I haven't been able to shake that idea that Mary's song imparted...

evruh buddah's DYin bout it

SPOON

ful

or.....


come on now, bay bee...
step in to my big black car

I wanna just SHOW you
what my politics are

He would have even been to stupid to qualify for the space program, when they were still looking for chimps to launch!

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Thanks Hubert. That's a line for the ages!

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/05.28.03/chimps-0322.html









http://www.peacepretzel.org/

Way down younder in Crawford land sitting by a cottonwood tree,
there sat our little monkey assed chimp--and Lordy how he loved his gin.
Everynight in the pale moonlight he drank four pints you see,
these stern words the First Lady said to he...


"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said old pickles to the chimp.
"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said the chimpee back to his boss.
All night long they were happy and gay.
All day long they bushitted away,
a-grinnin' and a-spinnin in a honky, tonky way.


"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
she said chimp, "You're dumber than sh*t."
Abba dabba dabba in primate talk
means "Chimp let go-a my t*ts."
Then Karen baboon, one night in June,
came to square chimpy's sh*t away,
She kicked long and fast, on his chimpy little @$$,
an the chimp sang a different tune.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

I think I mentioned it here already:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5513869

You will find that they also contributed about 300,000 to George W Bush, also....?

It's too bad Gabi used that freeper "hugh" thingy in the title. This is a serious matter and shoudn't be used in this thread title. I wonder if posters ignore the thread because of it? Just asking.

and I MEAN that

this is important stuff, and I'm hoping that the Joe-mentum on this is just beginning to accumulate

if the media do their job....wait a minute; I just jinxed it

don't see how they can ignore the myriad indictments that I pray start to roll off as a result of just this particular tentacle

all night tonight. I think if there is at least one or two good MSM reporters at a good paper it could bring this administration down.

The corruption is so big, so astounding that I feel just stunned. The article at Cannonfire is very clear, these are front companies.

I hope that this story doesn't get lost. I think it may be up to the bloggers and posters to push it into the general public awareness.

Here's at least one story from the San Diego paper that seems to be getting the scent of the story.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051204/news_1n4adcs.html

A series on the Cunningham and/or K Street scandal would be a worthy entrant for the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism.

http://www.pulitzer.org/EntryForms/jentform.pdf

http://www.pulitzer.org/


It's probably too late for 2005, but for 2006, but some MSM reporters should have their eyes on the prize.

As a side note, I certainly agree with this article:

Revoke Miller's Pulitzer

Now that the New York Times' own ombudsman has weighed in with a scathing critique of Judith Miller's lies and deceptions about her WMD and Al Qaeda reporting, including a recommendation that the paper not allow her back in its newsroom, it's time to call for an independent investigation into her much trumpeted Pulitzer Prize, which she won jointly in 2002 with several other Times reporters for her articles in 2001 about Al Qaeda.

Clearly, Miller was no independent journalist looking for truth in her incarnation as "Ms. Run Amok," pushing the Bush Administration line for war with Iraq in the post 9/11 run-up to the invasion of that country. Her breathless and terrifying stories claiming that Saddam Hussein was sitting on masses of WMDs--biological and chemical weapons and perhaps even nuclear bombs--and that his regime was tight with Osama Bin Laden and his merry band of bombers and terrorists--were at best single-sourced propaganda, and at worst deliberate fabrications.

Not that this is new information. As early as August 2003, Alex Cockburn, in Counterpunch, laid out the ongoing scandal of Miller's and the Times' war-mongering reporting in detail, showing how disinformation about WMDs and Al Qaeda was routinely passed off as fact, and how promised verification was never forthcoming. It's just taken the Times over two years to finally admit (at least some of) what was going on.

As a 2004 article in Salon magazine explained her modus operandi, Miller would go to Iraq con-man and convicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi, who would give her his latest wild fabrications about WMDs and Al Qaeda links, Chalabi would also go to the White House with the same information, which would be assimilated by the White House Iraq Group, a war marketing enterprise set up and run by Andrew Card and Karl Rove, and then Miller, who knew all this, would go to WHIG for "confirmation" of the information she'd gotten from Chalabi, which she would then portray, to Times editors and readers, as "confirmed" by White House sources.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10242005.html

:kick: This scandal is going to shock the shit out of San Diegans. I loved the town and lived there for 23 years but it has turned into a STINKHOLE of REPUKE values. Greed, Corruption, Graft, Narcissism run amok. Whenever I think of the term Grifters I immediately think of San Diego politicos.

No way Donna lost that last election for mayor BTW no fucking way. I want to see all theses SD politicos go down!