Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham might need a new moniker.
Perhaps, Randy ‘Big Pussy‘ Cunningham, or Duke ‘Bonpensiero’.
Cunningham pleaded guilty Nov. 28 to taking $2.4 million in bribes — including a yacht, a Rolls Royce and a 19th Century Louis-Philippe commode — from a defense contractor,
wore a wire at some point during the short interval between the moment he began cooperating with the feds and the announcement of his guilty plea on Nov. 28.
The identity of those with whom the San Diego congressman met while wearing the wire remains unclear, and is the source of furious — and nervous — speculation by congressional Republicans.
The DeLay-Abramoff Congress doesn’t just operate like the mafia, they actually use their catering services and associate with wise guy assassins. So, they are understandably furious with Cunningham’s violation of the rules of Omertà.
Cunningham went against his own, much as Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero betrayed his Boss, Tony Soprano.
Caught smuggling heroin, the FBI offered him a choice: become a confidential informant or spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary. To say it was an agonizing decision is a supreme understatement. If Pussy helped the feds get Tony, he was betraying a man he loved, a guy who would catch a bullet for a friend. If Pussy didn’t cooperate, he’d be in prison – isolated from his children and with no way to pay for the college education that would keep them from ending up like their father. Pussy agreed to wear a wire.
And Pussy lived to regret it:
One morning, Tony, Silvio and Paulie [Walnuts] took Pussy for a boat ride and, when they were far enough from shore, confronted him. To his credit, Pussy didn’t live up to his name in his final moments. He made an attempt to talk his way out of it – it’s expected in these situations. But when at last guns were drawn, Pussy asked only for a seat and that they aim away from his face. Afterward, Tony, Paulie and Silvio wrapped Pussy’s body in chains, pushed it overboard and headed back to shore.
If I were Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, I’d keep an eye out for any of Abramoff or DeLay’s associates. Any bets the Duke will explain himself the same way another rat (Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano) did?
“All [DeLay] had to do was come to me once during that eleven months we were together and say, ‘[Dukie], I’m sorry. My big fucking mouth got you indicted, number one. Number two, let’s try to get a severance for you, so you could fight your case. Fuck the public. Let’s try to fight this so that one of us, all of us, a couple of us, get out of this fucking mess.’
“If he done that, I would have never cooperated with the government, not in a million years would I have cooperated.”
Riiiight. I love this shit.
Let the whole bunch of them turn on each other. They are no better than gangsters, and they act no better than gangsters.
