Masters of Sleaze - By DAVID BROOKS - New York Times

[Jon8503]

Published: March 22, 2005

This article is by a conservative columnist who himself is becoming where he can't stand the republican party. Great article & the conserves can't just say written by another liberal columnist.

Down in the depths of the netherworld, where Tammany Hall grafters and Chicago ward heelers gather amid spittoons and brass railings, a reverential silence now spreads across the communion. The sleaze masters of old look back into the land of the mortals and they see greatness in the form of Jack Abramoff.

Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.

Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.

This is sleaze of a high order. And yet according to reports in The Washington Post and elsewhere, Abramoff accomplished it all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/opinion/22brooks.html?

[Al-CIAda]

1. Throw in Ralph Reed with Coushatta!

[IrateCitizen]

2. Don't delude yourself -- Brooks is a pure neocon...

He just likes to PRETEND once in a while that he's somehow a "moderate"....

I find it interesting that Brooks failed to mention the OTHER culprit in this fleecing of Indian tribes -- one Jack Scanlon. For the uninitiated, Jack Scanlon was a high-level staffer for none other than Tom DeLay (he might have even been his chief of staff).

Brooks will make plenty of noise about this today, but tomorrow all the rage will disappear and he'll be back to writing the same infantile drivel.

[tx_dem41]

3. Ummm...he does mention MIKE Scanlon, a former DeLay

spokesman in the article.

[IrateCitizen]

9. D'oh! I skimmed it and must have missed it!

Wiping egg off face.... :silly:

[Pepperbelly]

4. the fucker is trying to isolate Delay from his crimes ...

pure and simple. He is trying to cut Tom Delay out of the picture. Fuck David Brooks and the horse he rode in on. I hope it burns like ropes of lava coursing through his urethra and out his little Johnson.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Don't hold back now, Pepper

Tell us what you really think.


"It's all relative." - Albert Einstein

[UTUSN]

6. If He Keeps This Up, They Might Whack Him n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Et tu, Bobo?

:-)

[applegrove]

8. Novak too is a little worried about morals. I guess if the repukes are

grabbing money from their very own financial backers under false pretences..it is really bad.

Good that a few paleocons/neocons see the sociopathy has gone too far. Could that they at least can still see. I still say Bush is on the road selling SS because Rove needs him out of his office so Rove and do the important job of rebuilding America in his own image (where empathy does not exist and where winning and only winning is valued and where your enemies and foes all have to play by a different set of rules that you have to play with). I think the neocons are out of power in the WH and the whole thing is just about bullyboy tactics rather that 'efficiency expert geopolitical stuff'.

Peggy Noonan will have to make her 'grandiose' comments again soon. To try and tie that sucker down and keep him from skipping of into megalomania fantasyland where Rove is the giver and taker of all life..just as Hitler was at one point. Must annoy Rove to no end that cleaned up Bush's vomit for a decade and is still pretty much doing the same thing. Rove must want to step out into the limelight so bad... come on Karl...come out Karl..come on... show your fat ass with no emotional wrinkles at 55 - but a whole pile of the wrinkles the BTK killer had (the math solving problem wrinkles because that is the only way 'that type' use their brain.. having no real emotions).

I look forward to reading this newest (the cabal is weakening) article.