Garrison Keillor nails pseudo-Christian Ralphie Boy so hard in this article that I almost feel sorry for Reed's miserable, lying ass. Almost. Reed is the epitome of corruption, moral degeneracy trying to pass itself off as piety, and a personal dishonesty so breathtaking in its audacity that you wonder why the Almighty just doesn't zap the son of a bitch into a pile of dirty ashes right there where Reed is standing (or sitting with his palms outstretched for bribe money). Keillor lays it on hard:
The facts are fairly simple. Mr. Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997 as it was sinking, and he was paid by Jack Abramoff to organize opposition to a gambling bill in the Texas legislature that would have opened the door to competition for Mr. Abramoff's client casinos in Louisiana. So Reed got the good Christians of Texas ("We have over 50 pastors mobilized, with a total membership in those churches of over 40,000--that includes Second Baptist, which has 12,000 members," he reported breathlessly) to bombard the legislature with phone calls and letters denouncing gambling, for which Mr. Reed was paid millions of dollars in gambling money, by way of Abramoff's bagman, Grover Norquist.
Reed also helped defeat a state lottery and video poker in Alabama, on behalf of casinos in Mississippi. In Alabama, he told Abramoff, he had "over 3,000 pastors and 90,000 religious conservative households." ... Imagine if Ralph Nader had solicited money from Ford and Chrysler when he went after General Motors' Corvair. ...
"Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken the work," he said, when the details came out in a Senate Indian Affairs Committee report. Mr. Reed insists he didn't know it was gambling money, which, given the e-mail traffic between him and Mr. Abramoff, is a thin twig on which to hang a defense. Either Mr. Reed understands English or he does not. Mr. Abramoff tells him that he'll get a check as soon as the Coushatta Indians send in the money. The Coushattas were in the casino business. You don't come up with $5.3 million from selling beaded coin purses. Mr. Reed also argues that his stopping gambling in Texas and Alabama was a good thing in and of itself, even though he was hired by rival casinos to do it.
The sexual trespass of a president is a story any mortal can understand, and the use of your father's influence to sneak you into a military unit where you're less likely to face combat is an act of cowardice all of us cowards can appreciate. But the chutzpah of Mr. Reed in wheedling money from Abramoff to snooker Christians against gambling is cold-hearted greed. And his work on behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.
In August 1999, political organizer Ralph Reed's firm sent out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then-Rep. Bob Riley (R-Ala.) and tell him to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws. [Emphasis added]
Now those seven-year-old words are coming back to haunt Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition and a candidate for the Republican nomination to be Georgia's lieutenant governor.
"The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands," the mailer from Reed's firm said. The Chinese workers, it added, "are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" while on the islands, and many "are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand."
A year earlier, the Department of the Interior -- which oversees federal policy toward the U.S. territory -- presented a very different picture of life for Chinese workers on the islands. An Interior report found that Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry. [Emphasis added]
It also alleged that the garment industry and other businesses set up facilities on the Northern Marianas to produce products labeled "Made in the USA," while importing workers from China and other Asian countries and paying them less than U.S. minimum wage under conditions not subject to federal safety standards.
HORRIBLE. Forced abortions and sexual slavery? Reed says he didn't know anything about all of it. That is the biggest pile of steaming horseshit I've ever heard. Reed is crafty and he has an intimate knowledge of all his business deals. He knew G-D DAMNED WELL what was going on in the Marianas (as did Tom DeLay, who is also closely connected with this scandal) and chose to ignore it. He is the farthest thing from a true Christian, and if there is indeed an afterlife where we are all judged, Ralph is screwed, to put it bluntly.
Ralph Reed: the true face, along with Ann Coulter, of the Republican Party.
No comments:
Post a Comment