We've All Been Punked

I first saw the following on the DNC's Kicking Ass blog and it absolutely bears cross-posting. Please do copy and paste as much as you'd like to every blog you can find.

The original article is at Salon and the original blogging is at Crooks and Liars.

Nov. 3, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Up-and-coming Republican hacks would do well to watch closely the ongoing Senate investigations of superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his former business partner Michael Scanlon. The power duo stand accused of exploiting Native American tribes to the tune of roughly $66 million, laundering that money into bank accounts they controlled and then using it to buy favors for powerful members of Congress and the executive branch.

But they sure did know how to play the game.

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

This revelation, if I may loosely use the term, is stunning and sickening on every level of humanity a decent person would call "decent". Many moderates and Progressives have suspected an orchestration of "values" "messages" in order to fire up a fringe cult for the purpose of stacking elections and electoral results. Here we have it in plain writing, in an exchange between two minor players now heavily under investigation.

I say "minor" for in the great scheme of RNC operations, Scanlon and Abramoff are but cogs in a great wheel of "message" and practice. These are not the only two involved in this practice: it stems from the White House via Rove on down to the street level.

It's bad enough that these two miscreants quoted above would adopt a practice that has been in vogue for the last two major election cycles -- that of planting false messages against the most gullible in the US population. It's even worse that they would gloat about it.

Which leads me to my rant.

Fact: the wackogelicals will gladly install their theocracy by destroying the Constitution as it was laid out. They've made this abundantly clear by endless court cases, the stacking of the Court System and in the rhetoric of their candidates. Just last year in central NC, the "my Jesus is bigger than your Jesus" rhetoric was so thick between the hopefuls for Senate and House positions it played worse than one of Pat Robertson's or Phelps' spews. Virginia Foxx, Vernon Robinson and Richard Burr all used this tactic to whip up the fringe crowd.

Fact: The RNC systematically uses this vehicle to bring about their fascist state and to push their destructive policies.

Mission accomplished, many Democrats stayed home because of the disgusting practice of ramming a particular religion -- no, an abhorrent sub-cult of a particular religion -- down the throats of people who prefer to believe as Jesus did, that religion is a private matter between an individual and G'd.

Those who stayed home, thinking "there's nothing I can do about it", were dead wrong and allowed the players like Scanlon and Abramoff to work their electoral voodoo. By planting non-issue wedge issues, they brought the cultists out in droves, armed with fire and brimstone to vote in favor of America's demise.

I'm pissed with Scanlon and Abramoff for actively encouraging the worst element of a sick society then gloating about it. I'm pissed with the wackojeezicals for betraying our Constitution and our country for some wholly unChristian war-god they choose to worship. I'm pissed that they would twist a gentle religion of compassion into a firebrand to foment bigotry of all sorts. I'm pissed with them twice over for insisting that their disease become our own.

Look at what their pResident, senators and congressmen have wrought: the largest deficit in American history (more than 41 presidents before Bush could rack up combined); the reduction or cancellation of benefits for seniors and the ill; giveaways to the ultra-rich in the form of tax breaks; jobs flying away overseas faster than we can say "Amen"; more scandals than any other Oval Office in American history; a war, picked by bullies for the purpose of imperialism, based on lies; draconian bankruptcy legislation that liberates corporations to be as irresponsible as they like while walking-around Joe with astounding medical bills will lose his house, car, and all; ... the list is longer than a blog entry can accommodate.

Though I am not a Christian, I honor Jesus' teachings as practical, compassionate and indicative of a way of connecting to G'd and to honor G'd's position and works. Jesus didn't pick wars, nor did He condone the same. He was absolutely dead-set against mixing His business with the state's. If the wackogelicals had but once opened their Bibles to the Gospels and read the Red Letters (I have and do often), they would have seen clearly that if Jesus directed us not to mix G'd's business with the state's.

That should have settled the issue. If they truly valued the name they choose to call their vile and bigoted form of religion, they never would have allowed the state to meddle with it at all.

Now we're stuck with a corrupt Congress who have played and preyed on the weak-minded and counted on the rest being uninformed or uninspired. They perform their legislative savagery on a daily basis, rewriting rules as they go about their unseemly lust for power and money. They commit fraud and money-laundering openly, then blame the justice system for their woes when caught. They lie to the American public, steal livelihoods and ruin people who have worked hard all their lives.

I have to ask the wackogelicals: is this your god and is this the kind of world your god wants to force on us? Your god is most decidedly not Jesus' Father in Heaven and it's certainly not mine.