it finally hit me: The republican elite is like in the OMEN or Rosemary's

baby.....in this regard: The real movers and shakers are a small group, who are "in on it". They don't risk expanding the group too much for fear of someone finding out what "it" is.
Therefore the same people keep getting rotated around into different positions, as long as they stay close and remain accountable and usable as tendrils of the corruption, to do the bidding of the central few.

This is why harriet myers, Gonzales, Bolton, you name it are people that have been in the same cabal for decades. They don't have a lot of "new blood". Mostly its the old guard running things. It isn't just cronyism: its cronyism with an added twist: its complicit and conspirational cronyism. These few have signed their name in blood to support the "it".

Sure, that's similar to what you were describing, but it's all about money, not any sort of belief system (though they DO have a particular belief system -- that is itself all about money).

You think Capone would have been able to steal a billion dollars, much less $8 billion? No way. He was an amateur compared to these people...

I think Capone got the slammer for a couple million dollars worth of federal tax evasion. That was when a million dollars was real money.

the Mafia does not do a great deal to be secret.

I guess another difference: you screw up in the mafia, you're wearing cement shoes. You screw up with the neocons: you get a medal of honor.

But regarding the 'screwing up' consequence issue, you misunderstand what 'screwing up' means to them.

A good example is the case of mid-level capo Mike 'Brownie' Brown, formerly of FEMA. We might think he 'screwed up' in New Orleans, but his actions during Katrina resulted in millions of dollars in contract business being funneled to Family interests. So from their point of view, he did just FINE -- a 'heck of a good job', in fact.

Same goes for those who got us into the Iraq war. They didn't screw up -- they funneled BILLIONS to Family front businesses, resulting in enormous profits. THAT is what they got the medals for -- the rest of the consequences of the war were irrelevant to The Family.

If a mob boss burns down a mob warehouse, he'll only get in trouble if the mob didn't make money from it.

okay then.

It's a little off-point, so I do apologize. But I watched The Omen for the first time last year and was startled by the similarities. The family's name is Thorn (like on a bush). The family is a rich controlling one in the international energy business that's greedy and likes to eat the poor. In sequels, Damien is groomed for a life in politics and Dad's in international politics (he's an Ambassador instead of President, but Damien does go on to follow in this Dad's footsteps in the exact same position). For a while as a child he lives in the White House with the President after he kills off his parents. Those who get in Damien's way mysteriously die while his minions are freakishly adoring (as in Harriet Miers). And, then of course there's the cabal that surrounds him as you've pointed out.

Sure, it's stretching it some, but I could not shake a spooky feeling as I was watching the film - and it didn't just come from the film itself ('cause it's not that spooky).

or else risk the whole group goes to the federal penetiary for a long, long time. Just like the Mob.

In the case of the Bush family, these crimes go back generations to Prescott's management of Union Trust Bank, the US subsidiary of the German bank that funnelled money to the Nazi Party during the 1930s.

Their modus operendi hasn't changed at all. Now, his grandsons and their cronies are involved in funneling money from abroad into the GOP and back out to fund various terrorist fronts.

The extreme far right was never purged from American politics, and took over the Republican Party after World War Two under the guise of anti-Communism.

The Bush-Dulles clique is the same GOP cabal that engineered the rise of the Nazi Party from Wall Street law firms with Ford Motor Co. and Standard Oil money during the 1920s and 1930s. They went on to forment and profit from the Cold War, and later to sponsor and manipulate al-Qaeda in the hope of taking over Saudi Arabia.

Time for some too-long delayed housecleaning in the United States. What a delicious irony it would be if leading Republican Party functionaries were prosecuted under the Patriot Act.

now fill in the middle of the joke with your scatalogical worst.

by every person she turns to for help. By the time she realizes what has been done to her, it's too late.