Abramoffgate: Mother of all scandals and a sure sign of the last days?

[Clara T]

Abramoffgate: Mother of all scandals and a sure sign of the last days?

By Abullisan Walqalem
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jan 6, 2006, 01:35

Jack Abramoff's much awaited and anticipated guilty plea was entered in a Washington Court on a cold winter morning on approximately the 3rd of January 2006 CE. Approximately, because the dates and months were changed a few times when the Julian calendar was being adjusted by Pope Gregory XIII and it appears that Jesus was actually born four years before he is believed to have been born.

Abramoff's singing is sure to affect the sleep of many mighty men and some mighty women all across the US and the Middle East. In Washington two congressmen and three congressional staffers are already under investigation, according to the plea details made public. Many more at both at the Capitol and in the White House are expected to join the long list of neo-insomniacs. The same will hold true for many federal bureaucrats such as David Safavian, who has already been charged, and many state level politicians.

<snip>

The Abramoffgate scandal is breathtaking and disturbing in its hugeness. The huge number of people from the legislative and executive branches at the state and national levels, who are said to be complicit, the obscene amounts of money involved, the arrogance and greed exhibited by the culprits, is sure to shock a nation that has become desensitized to corruption in politics.

Explosive terms such as corruption, bribes, double dealing, fraud, racketeering, illegal contracts, money laundering, bank fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and obstruction of justice involving the most high and mighty and mostly from within the Republican Party are sure to keep the public riveted to their TVs. Shockingly racist name calling by Mr. Abramoff while referring to his own clients, whom he was defrauding of millions of dollars, is likely to revolt the nation. The fact that he considers them to be "monkeys," "idiots" and "troglodites" simply because they are native Americans and not white Christians or Jews are sure to shock and repulse most Americans.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_397.shtml

[babylonsister]

1. Thanks, Clara T. It's breathtaking in scope! nt

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. They thought they could get away with ANYTHING

and almost have. I really think they thought with the GOP in control of all three branches, there was no way they would ever be investigated or would ever lose total control. Considering how easy it is to rake in graft legally, it is insanely stupid to actually break the pathetic loophole-ridden laws.

[aquart]

3. WHOSE last days?

Really, it's just daring God to claim this is the mother of all scandals.

Because we haven't met the daddy.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. McGlaughlin Group just rated this scandal

on a scale of 1-10, ten being the S&L scandal and other scandals that had brought down Congressmen before. The table basically said 10 except for one fellow who said it was a 12!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Consider this....... we are trying to superimpose "our righteous

ways" so say democracy upon Iraq. When they look at us they see Worldcom, Tyco, Enron, Abramoff, Delay, missing money for reconstruction in Iraq, trillions missing from Pentagon spending, our treasury RAIDED.... NOW CONSIDER THIS:


After the Iraqis raided the museum.... they felt bad..... and they brought most (not sure of the %) of the stuff back, or at least quite a bit of it. Would you expect that sort of behavior from the likes of the Enron gang, Abramoff, Delay, Wall Street traders, etc??? I think not, so why should we be pushing our economic "theories", our rules (Paul Bremer) and other things upon these people? Seems to me they should be invading us and showing us how to do right... since we don't seem to be able to do it by ourselves.

[spindrifter]

6. This should come as no surprise to American

TV watchers. I seldom watch TV, but I remember seeing on one of the programs possibly a couple of years ago a huge segment on Jack *off and his abhorrent behavior, calling Native people names and yukking it up. The program got into a number of the areas mentioned in this thread. Maybe with repetition some of the people around the country who are asleep at the wheel will wake up and see what they have allowed to happen.

[shraby]

7. Hmmm...and something like 9 billion is missing

from Iraq when Bremer was there? Again..Hmmmmmmm.

[IDemo]

8. JackGate is sure enough huge, but numbed Murkans won't care

"Explosive terms such as corruption, bribes, double dealing, fraud, racketeering, illegal contracts, money laundering, bank fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and obstruction of justice involving the most high and mighty and mostly from within the Republican Party are sure to keep the public riveted to their TVs."

Sadly, not unless the entire scenario is presented within the context of a "Survivor, Beltway" series..

[Clara T]

9. More

The Islamic Connection. As an Orthodox Jew who used Indian money to buy paramilitary gear for West Bank settlers, Abramoff never seemed the ideal lobbyist for the General Council for Islamic Banks or the governments of Pakistan and Malaysia. And he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would reportedly hire an Islamic-American activist named Khaled Saffuri to work for a front company called the Lexington Group. (The Hill newspaper broke this story about Saffuri last April.) According to some of Abramoff's old friends, the lobbyist dreamed of reaping vast amounts of Middle Eastern business. He greatly enjoyed the irony of a devout Jew representing Muslims, the same way he took pleasure in making the transition from rabid anti-Communist to cutting post-Soviet deals with one-time party hacks.

Government investigators have looked at Abramoff's network of Middle Eastern associates. Some believe they have found less than savory characters in the mix. That's where Safavian comes in. After he left Abramoff's old firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, he founded a lobbying outfit called Janus-Merritt Strategies. (Grover Norquist, Abramoff's old friend, happened to be a partner at Janus-Merritt.) At Janus-Merritt, according to lobbying disclosure forms, Safavian represented an activist named Abdurahman Alamoudi. The government now alleges that Alamoudi raised money for Al Qaeda and a plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. (Safavian claims that the disclosure forms were incorrect and that he never represented Alamoudi.)
Alamoudi makes another appearance in the Abramoff story. At the same time that Abramoff brought Saffuri into his lobbying empire, Saffuri received a check from Alamoudi to fund a group called the Islamic Institute, which he started with Norquist. Do these connections mean anything? Safavian might help answer that question.

The Norquist Connection. Grover Norquist gives good quotes and attends parties at reporters' homes. For those reasons, I suspect, his relationship with Jack Abramoff hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny. What's more, John McCain has thus far declined to call Norquist to testify about Abramoff before his Indian Affairs committee. But if you read through the available Preston Gates billing records, the extent of the Norquist-Abramoff relationship quickly becomes apparent. Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) was essentially a branch office of Abramoff's lobbying operation. They were in near daily communication, and Abramoff aggressively used Norquist's Wednesday meetings to promote his clients.

Safavian worked with both Norquist and Abramoff. And there are many open questions that he could help answer about the relationship: Why did the Choctaw funnel $850,000 through ATR to the Alabama Christian Coalition? What happened in the White House meetings that Norquist arranged for Indian tribes? Did other Abramoff clients write checks to ATR?

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050926&s=foer092805