Look, I wear the fucking ribbon.

What more do you people want!?

This from the Associated Press...

Frist AIDS Charity Paid Consultants
By JONATHAN M. KATZ and JOHN SOLOMON,

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful's nonprofit.

The returns for World of Hope Inc., obtained by The Associated Press, also show the charity raised the lion's share of its $4.4 million from just 18 sources. They gave between $97,950 and $267,735 each to help fund Frist's efforts to fight AIDS.
The tax forms, filed nine months after they were first due, do not identify the 18 major donors by name.

Frist's lawyer, Alex Vogel, said Friday that he would not give their names because tax law does not require their public disclosure. Frist's office provided a list of 96 donors who were supportive of the charity, but did not say how much each contributed.

The donors included several corporations with frequent business before Congress, such as insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield, manufacturer 3M, drug maker Eli Lilly and the Goldman Sachs investment firm.

World of Hope gave $3 million it raised to charitable AIDS causes, such as Africare and evangelical Christian groups with ties to Republicans — Franklin Graham's Samaritan Purse and the Rev. Luis Cortes' Esperanza USA, for example.
The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist's longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.
The charity also hired the law firm of Vogel's wife, Jill Holtzman Vogel, and Frist's Tennessee accountant, Deborah Kolarich.

Kolarich's name recently surfaced in an e-mail involving Frist's controversial sale of stock in his family founded health care company. That transaction is now under federal investigation.

…
"These tax deductible gifts were earmarked through Senator Frist," Cooper said. "They were raised in the political arena at the 2004 Republican Convention and the natural question is were they given to the Senate majority leader to gain favor or were they given for true charitable purposes?"

Cooper said the consulting fees were "excessively high" and the fact that they were "paid to primarily political consultants also raises questions about the long-range strategic benefits for the 2008 presidential race."

…
Frist formed the charity in 2003. It drew attention in August 2004 when it held a benefit concert in New York during the Republican National Convention at which President Bush was nominated for re-election.

The group's 2004 tax return was due April 15, 2005, but it filed for two extensions and only reported its activity to the IRS last month.

The tax forms show at least 11 of the charity's 18 biggest donors gave $97,950 each, that one gave $100,000 and that the rest gave more than $245,000 each.

…
The amount Catignani was paid by Frist's charity in 2004 is roughly the same as what his firms received over the past three years for work for Frist's political action committee, Volunteer PAC. The firm collected $523,666 in fees from the PAC since 2003, FEC records show.

World of Hope's beneficiaries include evangelical Christian groups with Republican connections.

Cortes, Esperanza USA's president, is an influential evangelical leader who hosted Bush at this year's National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast.
…

Well I’m no fédérale, but by the Reasonable Man Stank Test, this sure as shit reeks of money laundering.

Money laundering using AIDS victims as unwitting mules.

But then again, what more can one expect from the Party of DeLay and Abramoff and Rove?

People who are, in the end, simply whores. Utterly, nakedly shameless whores for whom there is apparently no depth too low to plumb in search of a few more dollars they can trade for a few more amps of power.

And I can’t figure our which is more pathetic: that they exist in the first place, that they swaddle their moral depravity in the Constitution and skin peeled from the flesh of the Living Christ, or that there really are millions of people in this country actually hateful or nuts or just plain bone-stick-stone stupid enough to vote for them.

One this is certain though -- the beat just goes with these people, doesn’t it.

On and on and on.