My Dinner With Sammy

"A private dinner together after a screening of Brokeback Mountain."

This photo and caption is from MichaelMoore.com.

Apparently Mr. Moore took exception to Chris Matthews -- The Official George W. Bush Testicle Cozy of the 2006 Winter Olympics -- comparing him to Osama Bin Laden.

Now perhaps Mr. Moore could have composed a learned treatise on the subject of false comparisons, or maybe an essay on the why it is corrupting to public discourse in a democracy to make such irresponsible statements.

And then we could all stop what we're doing and wait for the sound of the collective hand-slap-to-the-forehead from the thousands of Republicans to ring across the land. A sound of Enlightenment Thunder from the Neocons, Christopaths and fellow travelers, who make a Big Fat Living off of slander and slime, suddenly epiphanying their asses off and -- leaping from the earmark-encrusted beds of their trollops -- shouting, “Wait a damned minute! It is just plain wrong to make baseless, scurrilous attacks on good men just because I disagree with them. I’m gonna eschew such tactics from now on, and as of this moment I am disavowing Karl Rove and all of his Dark Works!"

Also I’m also gonna lose that persistent 10 pounds I put on over the holidays.”

And then the Hands Across America, “Buy the World a Coke” singing dénouement to years of GOP perfidy will break across the our fair nation, from sea to shining sea.

Sure. That could work. Just ask President Kerry.

But just in case the Party of God is, y’know, being evil on purpose and wagging a righteous tsk-tsking finger at them amounts to pissing upwind into a hurricane, I’m thinking that quick, clear, crystalizing “cheap” shots like this, and taking every opportunity that is presented to us to Fight Back With Knives Out, might not be such a bad hammer to have in the 'ol Plan B toolbox.

I’m not a liar.

Just look at my cute puppy!

And the special Golden Globe, “Republican Cloth Coat” Award goes to…

Jack Abramoff’s Daddy, who got mad that he raised a criminal sleazebag, and that someone finally noticed, and that George Clooney decided to mention his son’s massive, self-inflicted wounds on teevee.

Or was it that Jack's Daddy left the hardwood and ran into the stands to beat the crap out of some fan he thought was taking a poke at his son?

Man, I gotta get more sleep.

Anyway, read the whole thing and see if you agree that the only thing missing is a little dog named Checkers (although it does have "...my sweet 12-year-old granddaughter).

No need for editorializing here: this one comes with batteries included and is entirely self-parodying,…

Frank Abramoff’s open letter to George Clooney

Oh how far Hollywood has fallen. When you rose to accept the Golden Globes best actor award earlier this week, you decided to take a gratuitous slap at my son, my family and even my dear departed father. Is this the tradition of Gable, Bogart, Pacino and Burton? Are you the heir to the dignity and greatness of Hollywood's past, or more likely a portent to a depressing and horrific future?

Your glib and ridiculous attack on my son, Jack, coupled with your obscene query as to the choice his mother and I made in naming him, brought shame and dishonor on you and your profession. What drove you to this lapse in lucidity, I can never know, but you need to know that your words were deeply hurtful to many innocent and decent people who love my son and who cherish our family.

We have had to endure two years of unmitigated, outrageous falsehood directed at my son and his record of achievement on behalf of his clients and friends. The bloodthirsty media, guilty of untold character assassinations during contemporary times, have even outdone themselves in their lust to create a cartoon which does not come close to resembling this fine man, my son.

The fact that you would spend those few moments accorded to you, as an honor for your work as an actor, bashing his name and his family, is astonishing. How do you sleep at night, other than perhaps with the drink, which you lamented not having at that early hour. Funny, it was very hard for us little people in television land to tell whether you had indulged in the bottle or not.

My son was named after my beloved departed father. His name, too, was Jack Abramoff. And, were he alive today, would be standing firmly behind his namesake, as his entire family and many more true friends than you will ever know.

Not that it matters to you, I am sure, but the worst part of your tirade is that it played out in front of many young people, including my sweet 12-year-old granddaughter, one of Jack's five children. Jack did not waste his time watching the garbage spewing from your mouth, but his daughter did. You drove her to a fit of tears. Are you proud of that?

For four generations, our family has worked hard to serve this country we love. I enlisted as a young man of seventeen into the United States Navy, so I could serve my nation in WWII. My brother did the same, and we both served in South Pacific. My son dedicated his life to patriotic and religious causes, which have made this nation great. He gave unsparingly of his time and resources to help those in need.

You spend your days ridiculing our nation and our traditions. You mock those who serve our nation and its flag. You revile my son and publicly try to humiliate him in front of a national audience. I have news for you George Clooney — one day the truth about my son will come out and there will be a lot of people in your industry and others lined up to apologize for their efforts to destroy him and our family. You won't be in that line, though, because the plague of arrogance and falsehood will surely continue to blind your eyes and cause your tongue to disgrace the parents who brought you onto the earth.

One wonders how your father would respond, were the roles re versed. One wonders whether your children would delight in someone lampooning your name and besmirching your reputation. You have brought yourself to a low unparalleled by the greats of your profession. Shame on you.

FRANK ABRAMOFF

Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Here’s a riddle

that you’ve heard here before.

Q: “What would the first three words out of a Republican’s mouth be upon learning that George Bush was caught on video schtupping the family dog on the White House lawn, while throwing burning kittens at homeless veterans?”

A: B...b...but the Liberals!

Pick any random column by David Brooks or Tom Friedman, or a cross-section of conservative pundits on any given day when another GOPer has been caught doing what he aught’na.

And if, as is usually the case, there are no actual facts to support their idiot assertions…they’ll just make shit up.

As is the case here, via TPM…

In the bizarre AP piece I referenced below there's this surreal passage ...

The Abramoff investigation threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen members of Congress of both parties and Bush administration officials. Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients, has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is cooperating with prosecutors.

With the midterm elections 10 months away, Democrats have tried to link Abramoff to Republicans, the main recipients of his largesse.

At least half a dozen members of both parties.

That's quite a line. We're just on the outer edge of this investigation. And I'm certainly not willing to claim or predict that no Democrat, either in or out of Congress, will be taken down.

But to the best of my knowledge no credible claim has been made that any Democrat is even under investigation in the Abramoff scandal, let alone facing potential indictment. At least half a dozen Republicans have been so named in press reports, with varying degrees of specificity. The sentence is a plain statement of misinformation posing as news reportage.

Then comes the next line -- that Democrats are trying to link Abramoff with Republicans. This is like when Republicans tried to link James Carville to Democrats. Link him to Republicans? He's been a professional Republican and major GOP power-player for a quarter-century.

All the factual claims noted here in this article appear to be willful distortions, or statements with omissions so great as to be meant to confuse.

How can the public know what's happening in their government when the reporters of the news seem so bent on misleading them?

It is in matters like this the conservatives reveal themselves to be so hellbent on being “right”, that their lobotomy scars really show. Because being “right” to a conservative doesn’t mean what in means to you and me.

Being "right" to a GOPer doesn’t mean fidelity to the truth, or to the facts on the ground. This is a Party that still cannot collectively admit they fucked up in Iraq. Cannot admit, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that their President lied to them. Repeatedly. Wherever he is, he’s probably lying right now.

Cannot admit we’re losing in Iraq, and cannot admit that we will continue to lose in Iraq whether or not Dear Leader continues to play coy about coughing up any metric whatsoever for what “winning” might look like.

Could not and would not admit – despite overwhelming evidence – that Tom DeLay was a corrupt, amoral douchbag. And has been for years and years.

Because being “right” to a conservative means fidelity to Party and Dogma and Dear Leader…which have now become fused into a massive, misshapen lump of Cult of Personality. An in their minds, being even slightly off the reservation in any direction is cause for having hellfire rained down on you.

Thing is, they’re not very bright. They don’t have a lot of flea flickers in the ‘ol playbook if you know what I mean, so they keep it very simple.

Blame Clinton. Deny everything. When caught, whine “But the Liberals…”

Mind you, this is a Party that came to power, not on any programmatic platform, but on the premise that they were the Party of Good and God, and that Dems were irredeemably evil. It is the predicate they use to justify every excess, every slander, every lie, every Swiftboat. They must burn heretics and, lest the nation be made impure by gazing too long into Nancy Pelosi’s witchy eyes.

This is also the Party of Creationism, that still is pretty sure that Saddam planned 9/11 despite what all of those polls and newspapers say. These are people whose vision of “right” sinks not one, tiny anchor-bolt into reality at any point; all they have to keep their mingy souls warm at night is hate and doctrine. Republican Creed is their church, and George Bush their representative of God on Earth, and to this purely Stalinist vision of their party and its leader they bring the full weight of their wretched excuse for Christianity: Fundamentalism.

All discussions with Fundy’s begin and end with their smirking, unassailable, “Heaven’s Gate” certainty of the inerrant rightness of every single thing their cult leaders tell them…and that your degree of sinfulness is measured by how far from James Dobson’s vision of the Universe you have strayed.

The problem is, translating that kind of morally arteriosclerotic thinking about the Bible – where everyone is conveniently long dead – into modern politics can be tricky. Yes, the groundwork has been laid (after all, Fundies come pre-lobotomized with their “Asslicking Obedience to White Male Authority Figures Pounding Bibles” software pre-loaded) and baldfaced assertions of God’s intervention on the side of Dubya and against smelly hippies and braless chicks pops up again and again in wingnut rhetoric, but the problem still remains: The biggest truncheon in the Fundy arsenal is The Miracle, and they can’t use it here.

Got a problem stain that just won’t come out? Is reality kicking the shit out of your fuctard vision of the Universe? From Galileo to germ theory to Evolution, the same pattern repeats itself. Rub a little "God Passed a Fucking Miracle" into the collar and cuffs. Rinse under Holy Water. And then attack and slander the proponents of fact-based thinking as heretics.

This is Page One of the Republican hymnal, but in the teevee age it becomes deucedly hard to say that the reason George Bush didn’t really lie about Iraqi nukes or terrorist training camps was…hey look…it’s a Fucking Miracle!!

…with a straight face, although now that the feculent MacArthur Park Cake the White House has been serving up as gospel for five years begins to show signs of melting in the Reign of King George I, Scott McClellan does seem to be on the verge of trying to slip in “Miraculous Intercession” as a possible alternate theory at every opportunity.

So since “Right” to them means adherence to Republican Dogma, and the Magic Lime-Away of divine intervention is denied to you when it comes to eliding over those pesky facts, what's a god-fearin' homunculi to do?

Simple. Just extract the essence of “miracle” and repackage it. And the essence of a miracle is really just a magic, unproveable trump card you play to win an argument that you are losing miserably on facts alone.

In this case, it’s the assertion that there is some “Hard left” or “Extreme left” in politics that somehow always manages to balance out the wingnut right. It is the ludicrous assertion made by the self-conscious apologists for the ruling junta that their asses are not hanging waaaay out in Wingnut country, but that they are safely nestled in their Mythical Center.

How can you tell?

Because on Mondays, Wednedays and Fridays, they rail on the Democrats for having no ideas. For only being negative (Partially guilty as charged. We’re against having criminal run our country. Against having liars and plutocrats dupe us into war. Against having cronies and frat reach-around buddies run vital government and letting whole cities die. So sue me) and having nothing to propose (Uh, how about NOT having criminals run our country? NOT having liars and plutocrats make foreign policy? How about leaving the running of the government to intelligent professionals and not whichever inbred twit one of Dubya's apple-polisherd shared a bong with back at dear, old Goldwater U?)

And yet miraculously, on Tuesdays and Thursdays – and always on Sunday mornings – GOP gears are ground to rust and shake as Democrats are suddenly repackaged as extreme, relentless Commie warriors, pushing some “far left agenda” that I have never seen or heard of.

Because the wear and tear on the knees and gums that comes from being the crack-whores of journalism like BoBo or Andy Sullivan is starting to show on their faces, and they desperately want to believe that they’ve been servicing heroes and they're not just hirelings, glory holing Jack Abramoff’s client list at a cocktail party for $2 a throw and all the shrimp they can pocket.

They want to tell themselves they haven’t been plying their trade in a Tidal Basin alley at 3:00 a.m….so they close their eyes and wish away the Fundy or wingnut or fat lobbyist they’re going down on and go to their Happy Place.

Their Safe Place.

Where clients don’t wipe themselves off on their faces when they’re done, throw a couple of bucks at them, and walk away laughing.

Their Warm and Snuggly Imaginary Center where they do their thing on satin sheets with ideological soul mates who love them.

And where Democrats are somehow, magically, miraculously, perfectly, equally and oppositely to blame for those open, running sores that their pancake makeup doesn’t cover up so good any more.

Ahab issues his final report.

"I'll get that fucking white devil yet!"

This mathom from the past just bobbed back up in the NYT this morning. A little relic from a bygone era of peace, prosperity, checks and balances and competent men and women running government Departments.

A time before dimwits and monarchists in the Oval Office.

Before people who wipe their ass with the Constitution and hold it aloft like a bloody shirt were cheered by a million weasels and bigots, Christopaths and chickenhawks who no longer feel constrained to hide their contempt for Democracy and the rule for law.

Back when Republicans made a cottage industry out of ruthlessly persecuting petty crimes and pecadillos, instead of ignoring and covering up Massive Crimes and High Treason.

January 19, 2006
Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.
...

Mr. Barrett's 746-page report said that the tax and obstruction phase of the inquiry ended without a definitive conclusion, but it declared: "These agencies' treatment of possible charges against Cisneros was at best questionable and at worst represented serious wrongdoing. There seems to be no question that Cisneros was given special consideration and more limited scrutiny because of who he was - an important political appointee."

Justice Department officials who disputed Mr. Barrett's findings portrayed his investigation as deeply misguided and said the tax case against Mr. Cisneros had little merit. They suggested that the prosecutor had turned his disappointment in his inability to prove the obstruction allegations into unprovable theories.

Robert S. Litt, one of the Justice Department officials involved, wrote in a comment letter on May 31, 2005, that he was allowed to read only edited parts of the report but that he concluded that the report was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."
...

The longest special prosecution in the history of the Universe.

21 million dollars.

Running well over a decade.

And now with impeachable offenses covering the White House like kudzu, the Party of the Guardians of Public Virtue suddenly ain’t interested.

Fuck these people.

Augggh!

Damn that stings.

Kirk Squirt out Horta Fetus.

And then auctions his child off for filthy lucre.

I read this on the internets early this morning, and then heard it on Air Amer before I could post, but it still cracks me up. So at the risk of being duplicative...

Shatner Sells Kidney Stone for Charity
49 minutes ago
An online casino has a piece of Capt. Kirk. Actor William Shatner has sold his kidney stone for $25,000, with the money going to a housing charity, it was announced Tuesday. Shatner reached agreement Monday to sell the stone to GoldenPalace.com.

"This takes organ donors to a new height, to a new low, maybe. How much is a piece of me worth?" he said in a telephone interview.

GoldenPalace.com is noted for its collection of oddities, which includes a partially eaten cheese sandwich thought to contain the image of the Virgin Mary.

"This is a bold new addition to our fleet," GoldenPalace.com Chief Executive Officer Richard Rowe said in a statement.

The money will go to Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for the needy.
"This would be the first Habitat for Humanity house built out of stone," joked Darren Julien, president of Los Angeles-based Julien's Auctions, which handled the sale.

Shatner, who played Kirk on the original "Star Trek" TV show and won an Emmy for his role on "Boston Legal," passed the stone last fall.
The stone was so big, Shatner said, "you'd want to wear it on your finger."
…

My…son.


They…bought........my…son.

Happy Belated “No Fucking WMDmas”

Don't worry. You're not too late to get those last few gifts into the mail...

I know it’s been a hectic year-end for me, and probably for you too. With Fitzmas I behind us, and Fitzmas II looming ahead, I had enough shopping and parties and Fitzmas cookies to keep me plenty busy.

But then you throw in the bottomless fecucopia that is Jack Abramoff and what appears to be fully half of the Party of “We Are SO Much Holier Than Thou” slow motion exploding like a hundred, rat-infested Park District toilets going critical?

The CIA apparently tossing H/E around with less care than a myopic snack vendor at Wrigley slinging peanuts?

The Preznit violating the law and his oath of office like he was going for the High Crime land-speed record? As if abuse of power was a drinking game where he gets to do a shot of Dewars every time he blows a hole in the Constitution?

Well, you can see why, with all these major holidays packed together, one might be forgiven for acting like an American overlooking Boxing Day when it comes to neglecting to get all of one's “No Fucking WMDmas”-day gift wrapping done.

You remember “No Fucking WMDmas”, right?

The day when the predicate for Bush’s War fell into slag and was shown, finally and irrefutably, to have been pure bullshit?

The day when the GOP Revisionist/Stalinist Machine's battle to efface, yet again, and rewrite, yet again, the tawdry, reckless history of Dick and George’s Excellent Iraqi Adventure kicked into high gear.

The day when the Iraq Survey Group officially threw in the towel?

This from ISN Security Watch in January 13, 2005…

Iraq Survey Group formally ends WMD hunt
ISN SECURITY WATCH (13/01/05) - The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a US task force charged with searching Iraq for Saddam Hussein’s supposed arms stockpiles, has officially ended its hunt for weapons of mass destruction in the occupied country and has confirmed the findings of its 30 September interim report, which contradicted nearly every assertion about Iraq made by the Bush administration to justify its invasion of the oil-rich country.

No such weapons have been found.

The White House had been reluctant to call off the hunt, professing the hope that some evidence for WMD programs could still be found, but ISG leader Charles Duelfer said that there was nothing new to add to the interim report submitted to the US Congress in September.

The ISG interviewed every individual it could find that had any connection to Iraq's earlier weapons programs, and searched every suspect site. It confirmed what former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and Iraqi officials had been saying before the US launched its war - that there was no ongoing program for WMD.

The lack of evidence also seems to justify doubts expressed before the invasion about a number of assertions by British and US intelligence services, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s infamous warning that Iraq could attack western targets with WMD “within 45 minutes”, references to a nonexistent IAEA report on Iraq’s alleged nuclear program, and other statements that experts said had no basis in fact. According to Duelfer, if the ISG continued working it would only find "greater substantiation to the picture we've already put forward".
…

Fortunately, if you forgot to get that special someone something special, that's cool. As you might well imagine, the gift-giving traditions of “No Fucking WMDmas” are very screw-up friendly.

In fact, it's sort of the point.

So lets say, for example, you decided to buy your girlfriend a watch.

Well, first thing is, you don;t even try to keep it a secret. In fact, in the spirit of “No Fucking WMDmas”, you tell her waaaaaaay in advance that she’s definitely getting a watch.

A Vacheron Constantin, Tour de L'Ile to be exact.

You tell her the precise kind she’s getting. The style. Hell, you even tell her the name of the store.

In fact you bust out a PowerpPoint

and show her this picture of it.


Then this pop up detailed maps of exotic, faraway lands


just to underscore that you damned well know exactly what you’re doing.

You point to the map and say something unimpeachably authoritative like, "We know where the watches are are. They're in the area around. Tikrit and Baghdad. We know exactly where they are."

OK, so you’re also struggling couple on a budget, so when she asks about the price, brush her off.

“Coupla bucks,” you tell her. “It’s nuthin.”

And if by some freak chance she happened to be, say, a horologist and knew that --

Each of the pieces in this anniversary collection have special guilloché dials with a 'secret signature' at 12 o'clock and an exclusively shaped case and lugs. Also unique is the placement of the Poinçon de Genève hallmark on the dial in the form of a small appliqué shield.

One of the most remarkable pieces must be the pink gold Tour de L'Ile with its new caliber 2750 that required more than 10,000 hours of research and development to complete; it contains more than 834 parts.

It is also a record breaker, taking the current title of the world's most complicated wristwatch with a total of 16 complication. This is clearly a wristwatch intended to be worn and enjoyed and not kept in a vault, although only 7 people in the world will be able to have that particular honor.

-- just tell her to STFU. Question her patriotism. Ask her if she wants the terrorists to win and come and kill her? Huh? Do ya? Do ya? Terrorists? Killin’ ya? And your parents, maybe!?

Then assure her you’ll get it for a steal. The salesman’ll greet you at the door with flowers and candy and mad handjobs, and practically beg you on the life of his children to come in and “liberate” the watch.

Then – and this is very important – before you even leave for the store (in her borrowed car), tack a huge sign over the garage door that says “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”. Then come out in your AquaMan suit (and it wouldn’t hurt to have it cut to accentuate Little AquaMan, if you know what I mean) and make a little speech about how the watch is practically in your pocket already.

Then off to the store you go!

Over the next year or two, swing back past the house every now and then to grab one of her friends, or borrow money.

When she asks what the fuck is going on, sock her in the throat, call her “objectively pro-terrorist” and drive away.

Keep it up for a year or two, and then show back up again to stay, a trillion in debt and covered in blood, with her car wrecked and a mob chasing you, and inexplicably sporting a spiffy, new Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And when she asks you where the watch is, more importantly, and why the Hell her friends are dead and her bank account has been drained, remember to give her this traditional, holiday greeting:

First, smack her upside the head and call her a liar.

Second, scream, “Watch, watch watch! All I ever hear about is that fucking watch! Why the fuck don’t you shut the fuck up already about the fucking watch!”

And third, and most importantly, make sure you let her know in no uncertain terms that anyone who asks any questions about what you’ve done is a cut-and-running, Democracy-hating coward.

So a merry-if-belated “No Fucking WMDmas” to us, one and all.

“What monsters would walk the streets,

if men's faces


were as unfinished

as their souls.“ -- Quote by Eric Hoffer

File this under: “Hey Ralphie Boy! Why the long face?”

In Ga., Abramoff Scandal Threatens a Political Ascendancy
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, January 16, 2006; A01

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. -- Ralph Reed, candidate for lieutenant governor, had just finished his opening statement to the Dawson County Republican Party when retired pulp paper executive Gary Pichon sprang from his seat with a question that cut to the chase:
"Did you accept any gifts, commissions or other payments of any kind from Mr. Abramoff, and are you likely to be a party in the unfolding investigation?"
Silence enveloped the 60 or so Republicans in the auditorium, and Reed's cheerful manner turned tense. "No," he replied. "No to all these."

As everyone knew, Pichon was referring to Jack Abramoff, whose outsize Washington lobbying scandal has reached down to Georgia. Abramoff and Reed -- the former executive director of the Christian Coalition -- have been friends for 25 years, and until recently it had been a mutually profitable association. Now it is proving highly inconvenient for Reed, and threatens to stall a career that has been emblematic of the modern GOP.

Reed served as executive director of the College Republicans from 1983 to 1985 and led a revival of the Christian right in the 1990s. He founded a grass-roots lobbying firm in 1997, bringing in millions of dollars in fees, chaired the Georgia Republican Party in 2002 when the GOP took over the state, and served as Southeast director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.

At age 44, he still has the choirboy looks that have been noted in dozens of profiles over the past 20 years. But the first major dent in Reed's carefully cultivated image came with the disclosure in the summer of 2004 that his public relations and lobbying companies had received at least $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight Indian casinos competing with Abramoff's casino clients.

Similarly damaging has been a torrent of e-mails revealed during the investigation that shows a side of Reed that some former supporters say cannot be reconciled with his professed Christian values.

"After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God," said Phil Dacosta, a Georgia Christian Coalition member who had initially backed Reed. "We are righteously casting him out."

Among those e-mails was one from Reed to Abramoff in late 1998: "I need to start humping in corporate accounts! . . . I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts." Within months, Abramoff hired him to lobby on behalf of the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, who were seeking to prevent competitors from setting up facilities in nearby Alabama.

In 1999, Reed e-mailed Abramoff after submitting a bill for $120,000 and warning that he would need as much as $300,000 more: "We are opening the bomb bays and holding nothing back."

In 2004, when the casino payments to Reed were disclosed, Reed issued a statement declaring "no direct knowledge of their [Abramoff's law firm's] clients or interests." In 2005, however, Senate investigators released a 1999 e-mail from Abramoff to Reed explicitly citing the client: "It would be really helpful if you could get me invoices [for services performed] as soon as possible so I can get Choctaw to get us checks ASAP."

One of the most damaging e-mails was sent by Abramoff to partner Michael Scanlon, complaining about Reed's billing practices and expenditure claims: "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him." Scanlon and Abramoff have pleaded guilty to defrauding clients.

…
Todd Guy, owner of Trader Golf, said succinctly in response to an inquiry: "Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition? My God! Abramoff."
…

Reed has the heart of a carjacker and a soul that has always served a very Dark Master. He is the newer, sleeker model of the same, old ChristoHuckster that is forever promising old ladies and gasoline sippers salvation while mining their patched pockets for dimes and votes. The difference is that Reed was synthesized in the Fluffy Bunny Cutesy Labs at Disney, but he is literally nothing but the latest model of the same, tired, old Lonesome Rhodes/Elmer Gantry/Jim Bakker/Jimmy Swaggart moral cut-purse.

What is rage-inducing is not the existence of a creature like Reed: they come and they go, and with the GOP in temporary ascendancy, their feeding grounds have grown richer and stupider.

What is infuriating it precisely that Reed is nothing new.

He is the same Bible-and-Flag-swaddled ambulatory Republican Trichinella Nematode, standing on top of the same mountain of rotting meat that has been worshiped by the Great Wad decade after decade. The same, black, dead thing, it’s reek perfumed over by a generous spackling of the Blood of Christ, wearing the corpse of Lincoln like a syphilitic flasher’s overcoat, wagging the same decomposing finger at the rest of the world and moralizing at 1,000 decibels about everyone else’s shortcomings.

The problem is the same gay-bashin’, Negro-hatin’, Creationist-believin’, staggeringly imbecilic Christards who keep falling for this shit over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and again.

Frankly our nation’s deepest problems will never be excised down to their rotten roots until these homunculi are marginalized, repudiated and electorally burned off the flesh of our Democracy like ticks.

Which is why it's easy for me to be a Democrat, as deeply flawed as they might be, and why the ruin of this country at the hand of the Moderate Republicans is the greatest unreported story of the last 30 years.

Why, if we go down into darkness, the guilt for our nation’s fall will be on the head’s of the Moderates forever.

I have never expected heroes or messiahs from my elected leaders, but when I look around at my fellow travelers at least I see Liberals and Progressives who repudiate racists, and give degenerates like Reed the back of their hand.

Which is what makes it easy for me to choose my allies.

Because when I look across the fence at the remnants of what once was the Republican Party, I see self-blinded ideologues smiling and drowning in a brine of hate and fear. Men and women mesmerized into stupefyingly self-destructive acts of denial and delusion by the Stalin-like cult of personality that has been erected around the epically corrupt and incompetent Bush Administration.

A dead press that steadfastly will not report on what matters.

A dead Center where critters like Andrew Sullivan, Tom Friedman and David Brooks camp out and hobble hither and thither to find some fake “other side” of every fucking thing from Creationism to bestowing monarchical powers on George W. Bush. Who have debased themselves into useless, human difference engines that reflexively infuse their editorial tintures with one part rat poison and and one part wine, divide the brew by two, and declare whatever half-toxic slurry that they have left over to automatically be the “Reasonable Middle”.

Well guys, there is no fucking philosophical “Center” that can accommodate the racists and Dominionists of the Right and free thinkers and Compassionate Christians of the Left.

Or to paraphrase Lincoln – who your Party used to esteem highly, once upon a time, before you sold your Founder out the heirs of Jefferson Davis --

A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half Wahabi Christian and bigot, and half tolerant.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.

Because in the end, you must choose.

This Sunday, for example, on the Chris Matthews Show, the Wall O’ Pundits flipped through one Republican corruption and treason after another like a deck flash cards in the service of a conversation mocking and sniping...at Democrats!

Scandal after Republican scandal. Failure after Republican failure. And buttlicking drivel like this from Andrew Sullivan -- “The only opposition is coming from the Conservatives. Democrats are nothing but whiners and spectators.” – went unrebutted and unquestioned.

Hey, cocknoggin'! Isn’t carving into the people that are actually destroying this country, actually lying to the public, actually bleeding our Democracy dry sorta Your Fucking Job?!

Oh, it was quite the gigglefest until Cynthia Tucker threw a sharp elbow into the throat of Matthews’ "Ain’t the Dems a buncha bumblefucks" party by letting the phrase "Southern Strategy" pass her lips. Then she actually fleshed out the ugly, racist-pandering history of the modern GOP; reminding the panel of the true face of who it is they actually serve as Matthew’s fum-fuhed around, trying to find the escape hatch.

Then…silence. Crickets. Nothing.

Instant right-handed circle-jerk buzzkill. Hit Sullivan so hard that it almost knocked Bush’s dick out of his mouth.

In the end, the simple truth that people like Sullivan fight almost hysterically to deny is that you have to choose -- and your choices will always be imperfect -- but when you intellectually geld yourself in a desperate attempt to pretend that the midpoint between the proud, upright magnificence of the Enlightenment and the slinking, slouching sponsors of a new Dark Ages is a reasonable place to stand…you choose to side with the Pat Robertsons of this world.

When you passively let it slide on by, opt to do nothing, or to fritter your power away into the wind of political movements that will never, ever garner more than one or two percent of the vote, you choose to let the Falwells win.

And if you are a Republican Moderates, in exchange for tax cuts for billionaires and a few other boutique, ideological gift bag goodies, with eyes wide shut -- you, who damned well knows better -- who damned well know the true and monstrous face of the likes of Ralph Reed -- choose to climb into bed the scum of the Earth.

Choose to serve the sworn enemies of everything you claim to believe.

Well, well.

Who’da thunk it?

Someone called my attention to the fact that Salon.com’s Daou Report had slipped entirely out of her fetching décolletage, slid under the table and, barely concealed by the heavy linen cloth and clatter from the kitchen, was giving this blog a refreshing, early-morning jello lancing.

And shy as I am, upon reflection, I find that I’m totally OK with that ;-)