BUSH AND BONGO-- A MEETING OF THE MINDS + A $9,000,000 ABRAMOFF-ARRANGED BRIBE. MORE DIGNITY IN THE OVAL OFFICE

I think there are 2 stories that have made me the most frustrated since I started DWT, both of which I've written about again and again and again and neither of which gets any play in the mainstream media. One is about how employees of indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and indicted Republican Crime Boss Tom DeLay are getting away with murder... real murder, like with a body (of Abramoff/DeLay soured business partner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis) and 3 mafioso who were working for them at the time (as "consultants") in jail awaiting murder trials. And the other is about how about-to-be-indicted and about-to-be-ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was selling presidential pardons for $400,000. The part of that story that frustrates me, aside from the major media hushing it up, is that no one asks the only person who can grant a presidential pardon what his cut of the $400,000 was.

Which brings us to Bush's fellow despot-called-president, Omar Bongo. Today's NY TIMES is reporting that Jack Abramoff had offered to set up a meeting between Bongo, "President" of Gabon and Bush, "President" of the United States (of America), for $9,000,000 (to be funneled in 3 separate payments into a shady Maryland-based front company for GOP campaign bribes, GrassRoots Interactive. Bush did welcome human rights abuser (like Bush, but not nearly as bad as Bush) to the White House less than a year later, on May 26, 2004. The $9,000,000 payoff is still being tracked by the FBI.

GOP White House and State Department flacks described Mr. Bush's meeting with President Bongo, whose government is regularly accused by the United States of human rights abuses, as routine-- part of Bush's well-known outreach to Africa. The flacks said -- and please sit down for this startling revelation-- that they know of no involvement by Abramoff in the arrangements. The Gabonese are mum. (What do they care? The payoff was probably straight out of foreign aid anyway-- a nice fat kickback to help elect more Republican goons like Forrester and Kilgore.)

When Abramoff was trying to get Bongo to start the money flowing his way (to make up for the loss of his other fabulous African despot client, Pat Robertson's partner, Mobuto Sese Seko of the Congo) he offered to come to Gabon-- in a Gabonese-supplied private jet only-- along "with the congressmen and senators I take" golfing in Scotland each year (that would be indicted Congressman Tom DeLay, subpoenaed congressman Bob Ney and probably corrupt Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, another scam-sniffing Abramoff crony).

This GrassRoots Interactive scam involves--aside from Bush-- several Abramoff relatives as well as now infamous (and disgraced) Bush crony-appointees, Timothy E. Flanigan and recently arrested David Safavian. The TIMES reports that "GrassRoots has no listed telephone number in Silver Spring, Md., where it had been based."