2. Be nice to Obots as I try to understand what the hell they’re thinking.
3. Give Barack Obama a chance to be the superfantasticglorioskilicious Savior of the Planet Earth he’s advertised to be.
4. Live within my means.
5. Get over it.
Those are my resolutions just because it’s traditional to make some. I have no plans whatsoever to do any of those things. I will nurse my grudges that led me to eagerly jump aboard the PUMA Express with both feet, and continue to scream, “I told you so, you idiots!” at every opportunity. The wounds inflicted on the thinking people by the Perpetrators of the Travesty Known as the Election of 2008 were too great to ever let go.
When you’ve got an ace in the hole, or a wild card, or an abundance of trumps, you can play with confidence. If you’ve tucked the only Joker in the deck up your sleeve, only allowing it to magically appear when needed, you can wipe out your opposition without breaking a sweat. But when another player, seemingly low on chips and on his way out the game, suddenly not only goes all in, but produces an even bigger Joker than yours, showing yours to have been a rather poor imitation of the real thing all along, your ass is punked.
After Obama relinquished his seat in November, there were no blacks in the Senate. In all of American history, there have only been five Senators of African descent. Only three African Americans have been elected to the Senate since Reconstruction; two of those Senators were from Illinois, and Barack Obama had a hand in the election of both of them.
Recruited by Sandy Newman to head up the Chicago chapter of Project Vote! in 1992, the group credited with increasing black voter turnout and putting Chicago’s first black U.S. Senator, Carol Moseley Braun over the top, Obama, before he became “post-racial,” actively, shamelessly, and successfully promoted black voter participation. From Chicago Magazine, 1993:
Within a few months, Obama, a tall, affable workaholic, had recruited staff and volunteers from black churches, community groups, and politicians. He helped train 700 deputy registrars, out of a total of 11,000 citywide. And he began a saturation media campaign with the help of black-owned Brainstorm Communications. (The company’s president, Terri Gardner, is the sister of Gary Gardner, president of Soft Sheen Products, Inc., which donated thousands of dollars to Project Voters efforts.) The group’s slogan-”It’s a Power Thing”-was ubiquitous in African-American neighborhoods. Posters were put up. Black-oriented radio stations aired the group’s ads and announced where people could go to register. Minority owners of McDonald’s restaurants allowed registrars on site and donated paid radio time to Project Vote! Labor unions provided funding, as, in late fall, did the Clin¬ton/Gore campaign, whose national voter-registration drive was being directed by Chicago alderman Bobby Rush.
Though Obama later claimed he never worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, (ACORN) Project Vote! is, at least now, affiliated with them, and the two groups collaborated on a voter drive on his behalf. In 1995, a Chicago Reader profile documented a community organizing relationship with ACORN that went undisputed by Camp O, even though the article does not chronicle direct employment.
Once Obama became a candidate for the U.S. Senate himself, however, it became necessary to distance himself from his radical blackness and adopt a more conciliatory demeanor. This facade was shaped in some measure by his defeat for Bobby Rush’s Congressional seat, when he was perceived as being out of touch with black reality:
Mr. Obama’s Ivy League education and his white liberal-establishment connections also became an issue. Mr. Rush told The Chicago Reader, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool. We’re not impressed with these folks with these Eastern elite degrees.”
Mr. Rush and his supporters faulted him for having missed experiences that more directly defined the previous generation of black people. “Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it,” Mr. Rush told The Reader.
Mr. Obama was seen as an intellectual, “not from us, not from the ’hood,” said Jerry Morrison, a consultant on the Rush campaign. Asked recently about that line of attack, Mr. Rush minimized it as “chest beating, signifying.”
The implication was not exactly that Mr. Obama was “not black enough,” as some blacks have suggested more recently; his credentials were suspect. “It was much more a function of class, not race,” Mr. Adelstein said. “Nobody said he’s ‘not black enough.’ They said he’s a professor, a Harvard elite who lives in Hyde Park.”
No dummy he, Mr. Obama quickly learned to exploit both his blackness and his whiteness successfully. Playing up his bi-raciality while at the same time being conveniently black only when necessary, placing himself above historical racial “distractions” was a neat trick, deftly executed, and proved to be irresistible to voters of all races. However, it was not without pitfalls, nor were racial aspects eliminated from the equation. Far from it. He just had to be clever about when, where, and how he chose to be “just black enough” to turn a given situation to his built-in advantage of being the only person of color in his races subsequent to the disastrous one against Rush. When you’re the only black guy running, you can define what blackness is without challenge.
Therefore, when you can get the Secret Service to protect you just because you’re black, when your wife can channel Spike Lee and implore blacks to “wake up” and vote for you, when you can get the safest, most beloved Mammy-figure since Aunt Jemimah to embrace and endorse you, when black mainstream media pundits and politicians champion the idea and ideals of your candidacy over it’s substance, it is akin to having an entire deckful of Aces up your sleeve. You can feign outrage over every perceived slight you can find to blow out of proportion, casting your opponent in the most vilely negative light imaginable in that situation, while nullifying the legitimacy of any condemnation of your actions. After all, how can a white person tell a black person how to feel about racism? How can a black person in their right mind defend such attacks against a “brother” who says he’s being demeaned? And, even if some things might seem overblown, and others inexplicably dismissed, when the players in the game all agree that the new guy has a right to the race cards up his sleeve simply because they know he knows they used to cheat guys who looked like him on a regular basis, the game becomes an exercise in futility for all but the guy it’s being guiltily thrown to.
Rod Blagojevich, who enjoys a lot of support in the black community himself, knows exactly how the game has been played, and saw clearly who was letting pots go, and who was slipping chips under the table to who. Seeing his own stack dwindle to almost nothing, he decided to call in the only guy to have ever beaten Barack Obama at the game he taught him, and by appointing an equally safe, seemingly unassailable black man to fill Obama’s vacant seat, go all in on having a bigger pair. From CNN:
Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, who appeared at the Tuesday news conference, warned senators about blocking Burris.
“There are no African-Americans in the U.S. Senate. And I don’t think any U.S. senator who’s sitting in the Senate right now wants to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate,” he said.
“I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer and separate the appointee from the appointer,” Rush said.
Unlike Obama, Rush has no incentive to pretend to be racially ambiguous; he is not, nor has he ever been; the former Black Panther has always been radically black. Now that all the race cards are face up in the middle of the table, it will be interesting to watch how Obama plays his hand.
In a surprising, nay, shocking, even jaw-droppingly so, development, President-elect In Training Wheels, Barack Obama, has actually interrupted his well-earned? vacation activities of surfing, golfing, annoying the troops, pec-flexing and getting p.o.’d with the omnipresent press for unabashedly loving him so, to comment on a matter of obvious grave import to him, the latest chess move in the power play he helped orchestrate against embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Disobeying the impotent Democratic Senate Caucus led by Harry Reid, Blagojevich defiantly appointed Roland Burris to the Great Hype Hope’s vacant Senate seat. From the Associated Press:
President-elect Barack Obama says he supports the decision by Senate Democrats to deny his vacated Senate seat to an appointee of embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. On Tuesday, Blagojevich appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. He would be the nation’s only black senator.
Democratic leaders in the Senate are rejecting the appointment, arguing that because of accusations that Blagojevich tried to sell the seat to the highest bidder, any appointment by him would be tainted.
In a statement, Obama called Burris a fine man but said he agreed that the Senate cannot accept an appointment from Blagojevich. Obama repeated his call for Blagojevich to resign and allow the seat to be filled by other means.
However, Politico pointed out that the Senate’s big talk amounts to just that:
It’s unclear whether Reid has the power to block Burris’ appointment. Senate leaders discussed the impending announcement on a conference call Tuesday afternoon.
John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a Politico Ideas piece this month that the Senate doesn’t have the power to reject the appointment.
“The Senate would have little recourse but to seat Blagojevich, as he meets the minimum constitutional qualifications for office,” Fortier wrote of the possibility that the governor might appoint himself. “But after seating Blagojevich, the Senate could then expel him by a two-thirds vote. The seat would be vacant again, and the new governor could make an appointment. Or by then, the Legislature might have changed the law to do away with appointments, in which case the seat would sit vacant until a special election was held.”
Obama, desperately trying to shape the Senate in his image using his typical passive/agressive, envelope pushing, playing dirtyby the book, “what who me?” hardball with clean hands tactics, is learning quickly that bringing a gun to a knife fight only works if your opponents are reluctant or unable to pull the pistols they keep tucked in their own belts. To portray Barack Obama as a good guy in this Blagogate mess, is akin to calling Al Capone a reformer for ridding the North Side of Bugs Moran’s gang in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Ha, ha, ha…I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing. “Crazy ol’” Rod Blagojevich, the embattled Illinois governor currently being impeached for everything from supposedly trying to sell a Senate seat to people who claim to have no idea such a seat was being offered for sale, to being declared certifiably insane based upon his enemies’ dislike of his Bob’s Big Boy hairdo, has just flipped a monkey wrench of enormous proportions off of his middle finger and into the game.
In late October, rumors began to fly about who would assume Barack Obama’s Senate seat should he be elected president. In the following days, according to media reports, parties in both the Obama and Blagojevich camps began to toss names around among themselves and with each other. There had also been talk from various factions that the seat should be filled by a black butt, since Obama was the lone African American in the Senate, one of only five in American history, three since Reconstruction and two from Illinois. Given all that, Valerie Jarrett, being both black and Obama’s “big sister” and neighbor, soon became the front-runner in the mind of the media (assuming there is such a thing) largely due to the efforts of Rahm Emanuel. Then, curiously, in early November, Valerie Jarrett removed her name from contention for an office she now claims she never sought, and Barack Obama officially resigned his Senate seat earlier than any other president-elect in history for no apparent reason. Soon, thereafter, if memory serves, Jesse Jackson, Jr. became the media’s odds on favorite. Interestingly, all names being considered in the press at that time were folks likely to be sanctioned by Team O.
Once Blagojevich was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery, not specifically for trying to unload the Senate seat, btw, all bets were off; people began to call for Blago’s head, impeachment was placed squarely in the center of the table, outraged howlers demanded that Blags give up his right to name a Senate successor, Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus even weighed in saying nobody Blago selected from that point on would be confirmed, and all the horses in the race began to jockey for position in public and in earnest.
While all this was going on, however, Blagojevich went to work. Oh, sure, he proclaimed his innocence, blah, blah, blah, he went for runs, he passed some bills, whatever, but basically, he just kept on being governor. As part of his duties, he still has the right, and some might say, obligation, to appoint Barack Obama’s Senate successor. And, at 2:00 today, it seems Rod Blagojevich is going to do just that:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected today to name former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.
The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.
Shortly after Obama’s Nov. 4 victory, Burris made known his interest in an appointment to the Senate but was never seriously considered, according to Blagojevich insiders. But in the days following Blagojevich’s arrest, and despite questions over the taint of a Senate appointment, Burris stepped up his efforts to win the governor’s support.
Though he is 71, Burris has said that Obama’s replacement should be able to win re-election and he has noted that despite a string of primary losses in races ranging from Chicago mayor to governor and U.S. senator, he’s never lost to a Republican.
Blagojevich, who has sole authority to name a replacement senator, scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference at his downtown Chicago office.
It bears noting that while a lot of people in Illinois politics hate Blagojevich’s guts and will go to great lengths to defeat him by any means necessary, the fact that he is or is not a crook has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Everybody in Illinois politics is a crook, crookedness even trumps party affiliation in the state. As I’ve said before, indicting any one Illinois pol on corruption charges is like trying to point out the one sinner in Hell. What’s going on with the hue and cry surrounding Blago is pure, down and dirty politics, all protestations of ideological and moral consternation nothing more than dramatic fuel for the elbow throwing fire. And, in this game of hand crushing ladder climbing, the too complacent enemies of Blags, believing their opponent to be sufficiently neutralized, just got punked.
Reid had said when the Blagojevich scandal broke earlier this month he would ask the Senate not to seat any Blagojevich appointee, in order to make sure the seat is free of taint. All the Senate Democrats concurred. Manley said Reid’s position has not changed.
Reid’s position may not have changed according to his aide, but most assuredly, the game now has.
In a sure sign that there are powerful factions in Illinois politics hellbent on getting Gov. Rod Blagojevich impeached for something, (by Lincoln’s birthday, if Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn has anything to do with it) the latest move in the Mad Hatter’s chess game has U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald petitioning the court to agree to release redacted copies of four wiretapped conversations with an unnamed lobbyist to the “Get Blago” (before he talks?) impeachment committee. These conversations have nothing to do with the sensationalized “Hot Senate Seat Sale Scandal” accusing Blagojevich with attempting to auction off the president-elect’s vacant seat to the highest bidder, which has been tabloidized in the mainstream press…
In a motion filed Monday, Fitzgerald wrote, “Although many relevant communications were intercepted, the government believes that, on balance, it is appropriate to seek the disclosure of four intercepted calls, in redacted form, to the Committee, and that disclosure of the calls by themselves would not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation.”
The motion emphasizes prosecutors do not take a position on whether Blagojevich should be impeached.
The motion also says that while U.S. law “does not necessarily require the government to obtain judicial authorization before disclosing intercepted communications to other law enforcement or investigative officers, the government does so here out of an abundance of caution and in order to afford
the interceptees in the recorded calls an opportunity to be heard and to object, if they so choose.”
…in fact, Blagojevich’s lawyer, Ed Genson makes the case that the same “internal investigation” self generated by the Obama transition team it clears, clears Blags, too. Check.
Genson’s next move, calling for the impeachment panel to subpoena the principals in the Senate sale drama who have been interviewed by authorities in connection with the case, namely Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel, who will officially resign from the House on Friday, was blocked by the US Attorney on the grounds that it could interfere with the ongoing investigation. In other words, the stuff Fitz is willing to release has nothing to do with Team O, and the stuff that does is off-limits to the “Get Blago” panel. Hmmmmm.
From what I can tell from surfing the internet daily about Barack Obama for the last two years, alarge numbera significant segmentquite a few some people are absolutely convinced that the circumstances of The Sheeple’s Choice’s birth render him unqualified to be president. Contrarily, most of these folks do not believe the Teflon TelePrompTer Messiah is an alien, or was hatched from an egg or a pod, or even born in a manger, (which would make the job of president a real demotion, imho) or that he is not a citizen, but rather that he is not a “natural born” citizen as required by the Constitution, that old, dated document a lot of other folks seem to want to burn and start over, but that’s another subject.
Anyway, a lotbunch couple of people think that the “natural born” thing is pretty important, and that the Certificate of Live Birth the new King of Kings of the World posted all over the internet as proof that he’s not an alien pod-person would be a load of hooey even if it wasn’t PhotoShopped. “Where’s the regular, long form birth certificate with the doctor’s name and hospital and baby’s weight and footprint on it, huh?” they ask in rare moments of lucidity. “And, anyway, so what,” they say when they get a roll going, “you even said yourself your dad was a British citizen when you were born, and Hawaii wasn’t even barely a state at that time, and, on top of that, we’re not even sure who your dad really is, a lot of black guys went to Hawaii back then, there’re military bases there and plus, it’s warm, you know, and we heard your mom put out and got around, maybe even to Kenya, so how do we know you’re not Nat “King” Cole or Patrice Lumumba’s kid or something? And, anyway, aren’t you adopted?” This is a pretty rowdy bunch of theorists who can really think outside the box due to their natural KoolAid buzz aversion once the Twinkie rush wears off.
Now, as far as I’m concerned, “natural born” can mean a lot of things, like, delivered without drugs, or not breech, or non-Ceasarean, or casually dropped in a field by a working mother with no health insurance or accumulated sick time, or hundreds of other things (I don’t drink KoolAid, either, btw, and I’m all out of Twinkies, fyi.) Personally, I believe Obama was created in a lab by David Axelrod from randomly accumulated scraps surreptitiously purloined over the decades from dead presidents and other smart, famous guys, and assembled on Astroturf through the miracle of secret, early stem cell and DNA technology, cleverly hidden over the years on a prototypical database by the parents of the guy who invented Google, but, that’s just my guess.
Anyway, it looks like we’re all wrong; according to this website, there is an official birth certificate here. Shucks, and I just bought a brand new roll of tin foil and a book on millinery.
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
Thus reads the true job description of astroturfing Democratic strategist/ventriloquist David Axelrod and his peevish puppet/dummy/Teflon TelePrompTer reading actor who plays president-elect on TV, Barack Obama. Regarding the unpopular choice of anti-gay pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation, Axelbama simply reiterates their oft repeated “reach out to enemies you disagree with…blah, blah, blah” disingenuous load of hooey disguised as placating mantra for those easily distracted by gaudy headlines over fine print. Anyone with half a brain can see through such nonsense, while most of us are forced to work with people we dislike, primarily because we disagree with everything they stand for, at one time or another, most of us have the good sense not to invite them to our house parties. Nor do we seek such people out to collaborate with on pet projects; in fact, we will often bribe co-workers to switch places with us if such situations are assigned.
Top Obama adviser David Axelrod strongly defended the selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the opening prayer at the inauguration, telling moderator David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the nation needs to get beyond “shaking our fists” across a political divide.
The selection of Warren, a Californian whose “The Purpose Driven Life” has sold 20 million copies, prompted a fierce backlash from some of Obama’s liberal supporters — especially gay activists, who were miffed at Warren’s support for the Golden State proposition outlawing same-sex marriage, which passed in November.
“You have a conservative evangelical pastor who’s coming to participate in the inauguration of a progressive president,” Axelrod said from Chicago. “This is a healthy thing and a good thing for our country. We have to find ways to work together on the things on which we do agree, even when we profoundly disagree on other things.”
First of all, what does Warren working with Obama in this situation accomplish? What does the country gain? It’s hard to see where such an imposition of the President-in-Training Wheels’ will nets him much more of an advantage than drawing arbitrary lines in the sand. Flexing one’s muscles simply for the sake of having teenage girls admire them is juvenile behavior beneath the dignity of the office the Obamessiah deigns to lower Himself to. Unless of course, the whole point is to establish just who’s in charge, which begs the question, just who’s in doubt about that?
Forget “Kumbayah” and “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.” The song of the modern, post-racial “Obamica the Beautiful” we now inhabit has got to be “Barack The Magic Negro.” The racially offensive, yet lighthearted “sparody” is a parody of a spoof lampooning those white Americans who need to take comfort in the notion that black people don’t hold a grudge for slavery by unreasonably devoting themselves to the first “non-threatening” black, national, Democratic politician that comes along. While it is obvious that the songwriter is not in on the joke, turning the spoof into a diatribe against those blacks unwilling to suppress the elements of their blackness that make white people who write such songs uncomfortable, that’s not the point.
The point now is, black people who are not normally considered part of the “black mainstream,” i.e, Barack Obama and other Republicans, are now fighting over which ones of them get the right to define, celebrate and/or exploit racism. Of course, the man at the center of the controversy has not commented, and likely will not, the “above it all,” “in, not of” elitism he embodies that sparked the crticism in the first place, precludes him from being so bothered. However, his henchmen in the mainstream media and blogosphere, being a large part of the League of White Tolerance, have predictably taken up the sword of outrage on his behalf. In so doing, they have managed to achieve the impossible; turn the tiny faction of Republicans who happen to be black against each other.
The National Black Republican Association, chaired by Frances Rice, has seemed to be united against Barack Obama in the past, considering the “open letter’ on their website, accusing him of race-baiting:
At a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida, Senator Barack Obama displayed his hypocrisy when he played the race card against Republicans, while whining that he expects Republicans to play the race card against him. This dishonest tactic is straight out of the Democratic Party’s race-baiting political playbook.
Since Obama wants the American people to believe he is disgusted by racism, we call upon Obama to condemn his fellow Democrats for their Jim Crow-style racist attacks against black Republicans because we do not adhere to the Democratic Party’s liberal agenda.
However Ken Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State and current candidate for RNC chair, is of the opinion that everybody should lighten up, which has prompted another “open letter” from one of three other black Republicans on the committee. From Politico:
“Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president,” said Blackwell, who would be the first black RNC chairman, in a statement forwarded to Politico by an aide. “I don’t think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people.”
In the above article, Ben Smith references a rebuttal by “one of three black members of the Republican National Committee,” which is printed in it’s entirety here, and attributed to Dr. Ada Fisher:
It is time we all grew up and exhibited some sophistication in how we act as it relates to this Republican party we supposedly love and support. Racist actions and deeds have no place in the party. The lack of sensitivity in understanding the historical election we just had and the challenges this nation faces as we must bind our wounds as well as bring our people together requires that we set aside our biases and search out those constitutional principles inherent in our nation’s foundings and our parties operation which must undergrid us as we move forward.
This is the party of Lincoln and it was founded on the backs of the oppression of blacks. If we are to be the leading party we had better understand that and act responsibly in addressing the needs of all of the citizens as we strive for more inclusiveness.
Ada M. Fisher, MD
NC Republican National Committee WOman
While I’m not sure we should embrace any party “founded on the backs of the oppression of blacks,” or what the hell “undergrid” means, I’m pretty much certain that most of the people involved are motivated by ambition, not principle. The incident that started the whole thing, a Christmas CD mailed to the RNC entitled “We Hate the USA” by another chairman wannabe, Chip Saltsman, as part of his audition for the job, according to Salon, is a clear window into the racist soul of the party, making any defense or condemnation of such action by black party members sad, funny and moot. “The Star Spanglish Banner,” “Wright Place, Wrong Pastor,” and “Barack, the Magic Negro,” have no place in anybody’s employment application.
Token “Negroes” fighting one another about the right to be racist against other blacks on behalf of white people is not only black on black crime, it should be a capital offense.
So, the Republican National Committee Chair candidate, Chris Saltsman, sends out a gift containing a parody about President-elect of the World, Barack Obama, written by a white guy, that insults black people based on a newspaper article making fun of white people written by a black (multi-racial?) guy, and the recently arrested Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, says the things he’s accused of are only illegal on the planet he must be from, and you do the hokey pokey…
Ah, yes, the Earth continues it’s comfortably wacky corkscrew spin on its now familiarly tilted axis, and all is right with the world. In March, 2007, L.A. Times columinist, David Ehrenstein wrote an article attempting to explain the inexplicable; why the hell was America so enamored of an unaccomplished, inexperienced junior Senator from Illinois? Ehrenstein deduced that Barack Obama’s non-threatening-ness was the key, that by embracing a traditional, “compliant darky” (Magic Negro) role, Obama has been able appease those whites irrationally afraid of the “urban myth” of violent, aggressive, beligerent blackness which has been exploited by both black and white media, allaying their baseless fears in much the same way happy, singing field hands, hapless, Jim Crow minstrels and Jack Benny’s Rochester did. While Ehrenstein limited his examination of Magic Negritude to more recent examples, American history is rife with fictional and fictionalized stories of powerful, often supernaturally so, black people only too happy and willing to subjugate themselves to the will of white people simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Women are often similarly depicted; powerful, sexy, dominant characters are regularly shown allowing themselves to be slapped around by tough guys in need of an ego boost; smart, talented, demure “librarians” toss their glasses and don their “Supergirl” sex appeal to save the hero stupid enough to get himself into trouble he’s incaple of escaping from; the “bad” girl takes a bullet to save the life of the “regular guy” whose only mission in life is to do the right thing. Where blacks are concerned, even people with “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men” have no problem at all serving their genetically inferior/superior “masters.” From the “last guy to die” in “Night of the Living Dead,” to Louise Beavers’ character saving Cary Grant’s butt (If you ain’t eating Wham, you ain’t eating ham!) to Benson providing sanity to the Soap loonies, to Jackie Robinson unflinchingly taking cleats to the face for the good of the game, white America has cultivated an acceptable, yet mythical, black image some African Americans have adopted, adapted and exploited to their advantage in order to get along. However, all players are in on the game, most rational adults are well aware that most black people are a little more than somewhat unwilling to sing happy songs as we give our lives to protect our “benefactors” while in some subordinate service to good white folks. Yet, by cultivating a non-threatening, over-tolerant, unnaturally unflappable image, Barack Obama has been able to hypnotize a certain element of white society, allowing them to allay their own racial guilt in his name.
Enter the bigots with their, you said “nigger,” why can’t I?” logic, feigning innocence as they gleefully engage in Basic Bigotry 101. From the Washington Post:
Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members this month a holiday music CD that included “Barack the Magic Negro,” a parody song first aired in 2007 by talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Created by conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, the song puts new lyrics to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and it is performed as if black activist Al Sharpton were singing it. Limbaugh played it after the Los Angeles Times ran an opinion piece with the same title.
It’s clear that Shanklin and Limbaugh are not making fun of the gullibility of white people willing to delude themselves into thinking that oppressed people will happily die to save their oppressors, as was Ehrenstein. Yet, the schoolyard-type, big baby cries of, “you started it!” are already being used to justify the deliberately offensive behavior. It’s below juvenile, childish rationalization, and like the prejudicial “parody” itself, should be beneath everyone associated with it. The fact that it’s not kind of proves Ehrenstein’s original point, racism is not only alive and well, it exists and thrives in many forms, and is exploited by all sorts of folks for their own twisted perceptions of advantage.
In our other example of illusionary truth masquerading as reality, Rod Blagojevich is proving not to be as easy to get rid of as some (previously mentioned, but currently unnamed) people might have wished. That could be because he’s not of our world. The governor, facing impeachment and criminal charges in relation to an alledged “pay to play” scam to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat, says there’s two sides to this story, too:
“Even in this process, without saying too much, that was all about trying to end up with the right decision that could do the most things for the people of Illinois, and when the full truth is told, you will see precisely that,” Blagojevich said.
“If somehow that’s impeachable, then I’m on the wrong planet and I’m living in the wrong place,” he said.
Blago’s lawyer, Ed Genson, has asked the impeachment committee to subpeona the president elect and the two of his aides, Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel, who, along with him, were interviewed by authorities regarding his case. Since U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has asked the committee to hold off on pursuing anything relative to his case, expect that aspect of impeachment to peter out pretty quickly. And if Blags keeps crying from the wildnerness of his otherworld, alternate universe, where all Illinois politicians with the same benefactors are created, and treated, equal, expect to see the tansition team squirm, magic or no magic.
It’s obvious that the curiously-funded, political science lab-created Axelsteinian entity selected by the nebulous powers-that-be to front the shadow cabal that actually seems hellbent on running the country into the ground thinks, along with his masters, that Joe and Jane Public are stupid as tree stumps. There’s evidence to support their opinion. First of all, USA Today says that America’s new Leader in the Light is the most admired man in the country. Despite the fact that he accomplished nothing of note as a state or US Senator, it seems that being elected because he wasn’t a Clinton or a Republican, as well as having the good fortune to be black in today’s Madison Avenue defined post-racial America, as designated by the Hope Pope, is enough to inspire awe and respect in 32% of those of our fellow citizens willing to be polled about such nonsense during the holidays. Hillary Clinton was dubbed “Most Admired Woman” for the umpteenth time, beating out Sarah, Oprah, Condi, Michelle and all the other American women famous enough for being famous that we know them by their first names.
However, the strongest evidence that the Obamessiah and His Disciples in and of the media are primarily committed to tending their sheeple flock is the realization that they believe that touting such fluff is sufficient to distract attention from the fact that their Teflon TelePrompTer Reader and two of his acolytes have been questioned at length in an investigation of “pay-to-play” corruption in his home state. In the federal building with lawyers present and everything. In their defense they cry, “we investigated ourselves and found ourselves innocent and the US Attorney says we’re not a target, anyway, and we told the governor all we were offering him in return for doing what we wanted was appreciation, but we didn’t know he wanted anything in the first place, and besides, that same US Attorney stopped the illegal enterprise before anybody besides the bad guy we want you to hate could be implicated, like us, but, since it’s Christmas we know you’re not really paying attention, and, oh, by the way, have you seen our guy’s pecs?
And, on top of all that, Rahm’s not even in the country right now, he’s in Africa, ‘cuz, well, he really, really wanted to go, and the Great Hype Hope is in Hawaii, spending googobs of somebody’s money while he rests up for the Greatest Inauguration Ever in a Recession, and nobody talks to Valerie Jarret besides her lawyer, so you couldn’t ask any of them any questions even if you were up on things. And don’t even worry about why the New York Times mentioned VJ staffer Michael Strautmanis in connection with the investigation and nobody else has, it’s probably not important.”
That would be the headline for any other president-elect at any other time in our history, since it accurately reflects the facts of a pretty sensational story. However, since we’re talking about an extraordinary Teflon TelePrompTer Messiah, elected/anointed/selected to lead us to the Promised Land of Peace and Prosperity at this unique point in history, the bulk of the headlines referring to Barack Obama’s “internal investigation report” into his own and his staff’s involvement in the Rod Blagojevich “Got A Hot Senate Seat, Gotta Move It” scandal read more like, “Jesus’ Little Brother Absolves Himself And All Who Love Him.” Hey, it’s Christmas.
On Dec. 11, Obama called for an internal investigation and said he and his staff were definitely, for sure not involved, no how, no way:
The president-elect said he was “as appalled and disappointed as anybody” by the allegations. He said that neither he nor his transition team have been a part of the continuing federal investigation, using language that was very specific but left several questions unanswered.
“I have not been contacted by any federal officials and we have not been interviewed by them,” Obama said.
On Dec. 15, we were told, hey, we’ve got a report, but the US Attorney wants us to hold off on releasing it, and since we’re such transparent good guys, of course we’re gonna comply:”
President-elect Barack Obama said Monday that his transition office was delaying release of a report on contacts with the Blagojevich administration until next week because the U.S. attorney’s office in Illinois asked for more time to conduct interviews about the controversial Senate vacancy.
I guess they just forgot to mention that the interviews the US Attorney wanted to conduct were with the president-elect and two key members of his inner circle. Their bad. On Dec. 18, 19, and 20th, Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett were questioned by authorities with their lawyers present:
Those with knowledge of the federal investigation have said that Emanuel is not a target in the case. There also is no indication that Jarrett ever was a target, a transition official said. Like Obama, both were accompanied by lawyers for their interviews with the prosecutor’s staff, Gibbs said.
We also now know that Jarrett talked to SEIU official Tom Balanoff about appointing Blagojevich Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that it had nothing to do with Jarrett or Obama’s Senate seat:
Obama’s report details a conversation about the appointment between Jarrett and Tom Balanoff, head of the Illinois chapter of the Service Employees International Union, in which Balanoff told her that Blagojevich had “raised with him” the idea of being appointed Health and Human Services secretary.
Balanoff informed Jarrett he had told Blagojevich it wouldn’t happen, and Jarrett agreed, discounting the notion as “ridiculous,” the report states.
However, there was never any suggestion in the conversation that Blagojevich was linking the Senate appointment to the possible Cabinet posting, the report states.
Ha, ha, ho, ho, and a good time was had by all. Another curious thing, at least to me, is that the interviews were held on consecutive days, with Emanuel’s being last. Emanuel, who had long been suspected of having had multiple contacts with the Illinois governor re: the Senate seat, seems to have needed to have his memory jogged by authorities:
During Emanuel’s interview Saturday, federal authorities played for him a taped recording of at least one conversation he had with Blagojevich’s office, according to a transition official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss information not included in the report.
As soon as Rahm’s interview was concluded, he went to Africa. No word on where David Axelrod went, but a trip to a creative writing class might be in order. Davey’s storytelling skills need a bit of brushing up:
Obama’s report also addresses confusion over earlier statements by David Axelrod, a top adviser who had said at one point that Obama discussed the Senate appointment with Blagojevich. Axelrod had discussed potential recommendations for the Senate appointment with Obama and Emanuel, and “was under the impression” that it would be Obama who would offer those to Blagojevich.
“He later learned that it was Mr. Emanuel who conveyed those names,” the report states.
Davey’s not the only one deficient in “once upon a time” skills; Greg Craig, the “investigator” who put the report together probably bores little kids to sleep, too:
Obama’s report states that none of Blagojevich’s aides reached out to the president-elect’s staff. The report only notes that Obama friend Eric Whitaker was approached by one of Blagojevich’s top aides to learn “who, if anyone, had the authority to speak for the president-elect” about the Senate appointment.
Obama told Whitaker that “no one was authorized to speak for him” and that “he had no interest in dictating the result of the selection process,” according to the report.
So, they didn’t reach out to staff, people just happened to bump into each other in the hall, or pick up silent phones only to find representatives from Blago’s office on the other end, or powerful psychic connections were made between highly receptive simpatico telepaths on both sides, or, just maybe, all the “reaching out” came from the Obamessiah side. Politico has an accounting of some other inconsistencies and curiosities associated with Oblagoma-gate, but one thing we’re not ever likely to figure out is why the New York Times mentioned Jarrett staffer Michael Strautmanis as a name likey to be dropped into this mess when it wasn’t. But, it’s a comfort to know that the president-elect absolved himself before and after he was hauled in front of the authorities. In fact, it’s nice to be reminded of that other heartwarming tale of righeous indignation spurring justice seeking, “The Ballad of Candidate Number 5,” who was also not only questioned by Fitz’s boys, but alerted to the governor’s impending arrest; only in his case, it was on other occasions that he exercised his civic duty to report unethical behavior. Makes my heart cockles all warm and fuzzy.
And, who wouldn’t want their cockles toasty on Christmas Eve?
Rahm’s in Africa, Barack’s in Hawaii, and the proverbial stuff is about to hit the fan. According to the Associated Press, the “internal investigation report” into Obama staff involvement in the Rod Blagojevich Senate seat sale scam shows that Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett have been questioned by the US Attorney’s office, and that Emanuel had “one or two” direct conversations with Blagojevich, and did so without Obama’s approval at least once:
The report was released Tuesday as a transition official disclosed that Obama and two of his top aides, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, have been interviewed in connection with the federal investigation into Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The transition official, speaking on a condition of anonymity before the report’s public release, also confirmed that Emanuel had been captured on wiretaps taken as part of the investigation.
edit
Emanuel had one or two conversations with Blagojevich and four with Harris on the subject of the Senate seat, according to the review. The report said Obama authorized Emanuel to pass on the names of four people he considered to be highly qualified to take over his seat — Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, Illinois Veterans’ Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
“In later telephone conversations, Mr. Emanuel — also with the president-elect’s approval — presented other names of qualified candidates to Mr. Harris including Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Ms. Cheryle Jackson,” the report said. “Mr. Harris did not make any effort to extract a personal benefit for the governor in any of these conversations. There was no discussion of a Cabinet position, of 501c(4), of a private sector position or of any other personal benefit to the governor in exchange for the Senate appointment.”
The report said that earlier, Emanuel recommended Jarrett for the Senate seat without Obama’s knowledge, and Jarrett later accepted a job as a senior White House adviser.
So, now we know, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office has “interviewed” Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett, and Rahmbo had “multiple conversations” with Blago’s office, but “nobody knows nothin’ ’bout sellin’ no Senate seats.” Right. Merry Fitzmas? We also know that Rahmbo did not come forward of his own accord:
In the meantime, the transition official said, Emanuel was interviewed by federal officials who replayed a wiretapped conversation for him. He then was able to give Craig more details about what he said, and those details were included in the final report, the transition official said. Transition officials discussed the final version with Obama on Monday as he vacationed in Hawaii.
While George Stephanoploulis had previously reported that Emanuel spoke to Blagojevich once, and his staff four times, and let it go at that, the New York Times had told us there was more to it than that:
Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman selected by Mr. Obama as his White House chief of staff, had a handful of contacts with the governor’s office. At least two other names also are expected to be mentioned in the review, including Michael Strautmanis, a longtime aide to Mr. Obama who once worked for Mr. Blagojevich.
Valerie Jarrett, a close friend to the Obama family who is a co-chairwoman of the transition effort, could also be referred to in the report. Her name was raised as a possible candidate for the Senate seat, but she withdrew from consideration last month and took a position in the White House.
Oh, and who is Michael Strautmanis, you ask? Wikipedia says:
Michael Strautmanis is an American lawyer. President-ElectBarack Obama announced on December 5, 2008, that Strautmanis will serve as Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.[1] He is currently Chief Counsel and the Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs on Obama’s presidential transition team.[2][3]
Though he seems expendable, since his conversations with Blago obviously occurred before he was named to the staff, he has a longer official relationship with Obama as Senior Adviser for Obama for America and his presidential campaign. His current boss is either Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president in charge of intergovernmental relations, or Tina Tchen, or both. The question remains, why did the New York Times mention his name when Greg Craig’s sketchy memo to the president-elect did not?
We now know more than we did about the whole thing, but the information is coming in at dribs and drabs. Wonder why? Hmmmm. I also wonder why Obama had seemed so sure about what was in the report last week when he didn’t have all the details until he got to Hawaii? And, did Rahm plan his African vacation before or after he heard himself on tape?
Internal report’s a-comin’! We got a report, and we’re gonna show it to ya! Boy, oh, boy, just wait til you read our report! That’s the gist of what we’ve been hearing about Barack Obama’s personal investigation into the degree of his and his surrogates’ involvement in the ongoing BlagoGate Hot Senate Seat for Sale scam. I expected to wake up to details being revealed, discussed, debated, analyzed, etc., but so far, the New York Times, the Associated Press, AFP, CNN, CBS, and everybody else is telling us, still, that the report’s a-comin’ and it will exonerate Obie and all who love him. But…seems to me, when all the info in the stories comes from people sympathetic to the Obamessiah, who have no more access to inside information than you or I do, something fishy stinks. CBS, at least, gives an ETA:
The report’s release is expected at around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, with the timing based on an agreement with the U.S. attorney. It comes as Mr. Obama is vacationing in Hawaii. Mr. Obama has been very clear that this report will allay any concerns about any improper contact between his staff and Blagojevich, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy. But he kept the details private while the federal investigation continues.
How could a report corroborating the US Attorney’s assertion that Team O is “not involved” compromise the investigation? And what the hell was Jo(k)e Biden talking about on This Week?
“I know in our system you are innocent until proven guilty, but those tapes that were released by the special prosecutor, excuse me, by the U.S. attorney seem incredibly, incredibly incriminating,” Biden said. “From where I sit, he looks like a guy who is not capable of governing.”
Somebody released some tapes? FOX News says Patrick Fitzgerald has asked the Illinois (Get Blago) Impeachment Committee to hold off on its’ investigation, but might release wiretap transcripts to them:
Federal prosecutors are asking the Illinois House impeachment committee not to dig into criminal charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
In a letter released Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says the panel could “significantly compromise” his investigation by interviewing Blagojevich aides about possible crimes.
Fitzgerald is also declining to provide information about his investigation, such as the identities of people mentioned in a criminal complaint.
But the prosecutor does say he hasn’t ruled out giving the committee copies of Blagojevich conversations caught on wiretaps.
So, as far as I can see, people with no business commenting on information they don’t have are trying pretty desperately to get the word out that everybody in ObamaLand is pure as the driven snow ahead of the release of Obamessiah’s Edict of Absolution.
Why not just release the damned report already and be done with it?
What exactly is behind the current Center For American Progress/Matthew Yglesias/Third Way beef? Seems acting CAP CEO Jennifer Palmieri (regular CEO John Podesta is currently otherwise occupied heading Barack Obama’s transition team) took exception to an Yglesias post on his CAP Think Progress blog critical of Third Way. Politico’s Ben Smith writes:
Matthew Yglesias, who now blogs on the website of the Center for American Progress, wrote Friday that Third Way, another Democratic group, puts out “shallow” policy and that its domestic agenda is “hyper-timid incrementalist bull***.” This isn’t the worst thing anyone ever said about anyone else on the Internet (“incrementalist” hasn’t always been a fighting word), but executives at the nonprofits seem to have taken it pretty seriously: In an unusual, unexplained move, the acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Jen Palmieri, posted an item to Yglesias’s blog expressing the group’s “respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product.”
“[W]e look forward to working with them in the future,” Palmieri wrote.
Yglesias himself doesn’t seem to think it’s any big deal, but a lot of friends of his apparently do. From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who calls Palmieri’s action a “Major Error in Judgment:”
In any case, I think it would be reasonable for CAP, if they had some institutional disagreement with what Matt wrote to say so on their front page or perhaps say so on some CAP company blog, if there is such a thing. I can’t think of an example where I’ve done that. But if someone who writes at TPM wrote something I strongly disagreed with, I don’t think I would refrain from doing a post on TPM saying I disagreed with them. But forcing a post onto the person’s own blog, their own editorial turf, completely undermines the whole organization’s credibility and all the writing that gets done at the site and frankly for the whole organization — which is too bad, since a lot of it is extremely good.
Given CAP’s Clintonian influence; founded by former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff Podesta, claimed by Hillary Clinton, who says she helped found the group and Media Matters, and DLC’s Third Way philosophy, you might think any objection to support for the Third Way organization might just be another example of Clinton Derangement Syndrome rearing it’s ugly head on a slow news day. Maybe the idea that any Clinton-inspired group so entrenched in the Obama White House is “looking forward” to working with another Clinton-affiliated group is just too much for the already put upon “progressive” wing of Left Blogistan to take.
Or, maybe they’re finally waking up to the fact that the currently vacationing “Actor-In-Chief-elect” is just a TelePrompTer reading, SAG quality, West Wing inspired, front man for the only real power brokers the Democrats have put forth in decades.
Blagojevich spin: I wanted to appoint Lisa Madigan to Barack Obama’s Senate seat to get her out of my hair, but Team O went ballistic and insisted on Valerie Jarrett. Rahm Emanuel really wanted Jarrett because he didn’t want her competing with him for the president’s attention in Washington.
Obama spin: We just wanted a qualified person to fill the seat, who that person would be was entirely up to the governor. As far as we know, no one on our staff said otherwise.
So, who’s telling the truth? Truth? What’s that, you say? What we know from the press is that Barack Obama’s team seems committed to the “what, who me?” defense; according to ABC, the much bally-hooed internal investigation absolves both Team O and Rahm Emanuel of any impropriety, since Rahm only had a total of 5 perfectly innocent contacts with Blago or his boys.
However, the Washington Times says that the “one” direct contact between Blags and Rahm wasn’t quite as clean as Team O might wish:
Mr. Emanuel did contact the governor’s office about the appointment, and left Mr. Blagojevich with the impression that he was pushing Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama friend, so he wouldn’t have to compete with her in the White House for Mr. Obama’s attention, said a source close to Mr. Blagojevich. The source requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk about the governor’s discussions regarding the vacancy.
But, as we discussed yesterday, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown hints in the San Francisco Chronicle that Rahm’s suggestion might have been offered as a counter solution to the one Blago had in mind:
I can’t go into details, but my impression is that the whole mess started because the governor had been considering appointing a political rival, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, to the Senate so she wouldn’t be able to run against him when he went up for re-election in 2010.
So, where are we? Blago says he had specific plans for the vacant Senate seat; sensible plans considering the enduring enmity between him and all things Madigan, until Rahmbo inserted himself into the process, making “polite” demands with only vague promises of “appreciation” in return. If that is the case, “fuck that” is a reasonable response. It’s also plausible, because if Rahmbo was indeed operating outside of Team O’s official purview, or more likely, charged with making it seem as if he were, Rahm would have nothing concrete to offer. Similarly, Blagojevich would have no incentive to cooperate.
Whatever the motives and machinations involved, we may never know the full extent of Team O’s complicity, given that they don’t have to release any documentation associated with their investigation. According to Politico:
But for now, a spokeswoman for President-elect Barack Obama said the transition team was not covered by a public information law that Politico cited in requesting copies of Obama staffers’ emails and notes about Blagojevich’s efforts to fill the Senate seat Obama vacated after winning the presidency.
Asked if the team would voluntarily release the records, the spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, was non-committal. “Let’s wait and see what we put out after our internal review,” she told Politico. “I don’t even know if there’s any correspondence to be had, so one step at a time.”
As we know from the Camp Obama response to questions of donor fraud, they’re not likely to do anything they don’t have to do. Besides, Obama’s internal investigation, worthless in the best of circumstances since it’s hardly likely to be impartial, is exponentially worthless-er given their lack of access to any official pertinent information, like, say, oh, maybe, at least 16 other wiretapped conversations and stuff. From the Associated Press:
An official familiar with Obama’s internal review said the president-elect’s team wrote their report without having access to transcripts of the FBI’s taped conversations. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the review publicly.
Looks like Rahm’s headed out the door and under the bus.
Though George Stephanopoulis claims that his “confidential sources” claim Rahm Emanuel only spoke to embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich once about President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat and Rahm’s own soon-to-be vacant House seat, and four conversations with Blago’s Chief Of Staff John Harris, which contradicts Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed’s claim of a total of 21 contacts, and the CBS News chacterization of Rahm’s involvement as “bad news” for Obama, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has a different take, this one supposedly direct from the horse’s mouth. First George’s story:
Sources tell me that the Obama team’s review of contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will show that Rahm Emanuel had only one phone conversation with Blagojevich.
The contact, described as a “pro-forma” courtesy call, came as Emanuel was named Chief of Staff for Obama. Most of the discussion concerned Emanuel’s Congressional seat (which had previously been held by Blagojevich), with only a “passing reference” to the Senate vacancy, according to these sources. No deal for the Senate vacancy was discussed.
edit
The sources add that the report will show Emanuel also had four phone calls with Blagojevich Chief of Staff John Harris. During those conversations, the Senate seat was discussed. The pros and cons of various candidates were reviewed, and the sources say that Emanuel repeatedly reminded Harris that Blagojevich should focus on the message the pick would send about the governor and his administration.
Now, heeeeerrrrre’s Willie. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown says Blago, sensing a sympathetic ear, called him to say there’s more to the story than Team O is allowing to meet our eye:
I can’t go into details, but my impression is that the whole mess started because the governor had been considering appointing a political rival, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, to the Senate so she wouldn’t be able to run against him when he went up for re-election in 2010.
Apparently, Obama’s people weren’t happy about the idea of Madigan coming to Washington, and there were some pretty heated conversations between Blagojevich and Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, which I understand will burn your ears off.
Since I trust Willie a lot more than George, I say, get your popcorn ready and pull up your seatbelt fastened Barcalounger. Looks like we’re in for a bumpy roller coaster ride. And remember, I told you so. Time and time, again.
It seems like such a small thing. change.gov. What’s the big deal, huh? Just another small, rubber stamping thing for the Obama team to use to reinforce the message that the underqualified, inexperienced junior Senator-turned-president is indeed, well…presidential. Thus, the “seal” of his personal “office of the president-elect” (no caps deserved), the plethora of American flags that drape each every public non-announcement (they could have all been announced at once to save a lot of time and energy, but that would defeat the purpose), the pointless Grand Tours, and now, his very own transition team website, validated with the authority of the federal government. That the only thing all these juvenile machinations reinforce is the fact that the former inexperienced, unqualified, junior Senator is now an inexperienced, unqualified junior president-elect is of no importance, when kids play dress-up, it’s all about the image.
Now, Michelle Malkin exposes the truth, Barack Obama’s “change.gov.” is unethical:
I’ve obtained documents sent to a reader in response to his FOIA request regarding the creation of Barack Obama’s Change.gov website. It gives you the rest of the story. You’ll recall last month that I blogged several questions about the propriety of allowing the perpetual Obama campaign to use a .gov domain name for what appeared to be a fund-raising front. Readers and industry observers noted that the decision appeared to violate General Services Administration rules governing government domains.
Guess what? They were right. The FOIA documents sent to Lance O., which he forwarded to me, reveal that the GSA initially rejected Obama’s application for “Change.gov.” On Oct. 21, Peter Alterman, Deputy Associate Administrator of Technology Strategy at the GSA, denied the Obama campaign’s request for a government domain because:
1) It would be a a violation of the government’s naming conventions (too generic); and
2) using ‘change’ in the domain name would be political, since it was the trademark slogan of the Obama campaign.
The bottom line? Though they clearly are not supposed to use the “.gov” designation for anything not officially governmental, the petulant baby president-to-be stamped his foot until he got what he wanted, for the government agency charged with protecting the integrity of “.gov” use to bend the rules to his whim. That’s change all right, but is it the kind we want to believe in?
Obviously Team O is adept at manipulating appearances. More frightening is the fact that even when his true face is revealed, many of his staunchest supporters willfully indulge him in his fantasy. When he behaves as he always has, according to his values, which have always run counter to the “progressive” wing of the blogosphere, they whine and cry as they attempt to find some, any justification that allows them to embrace him anyway. “He’ll fix it later,” “he’s just “playing possum,” “he’s better than the alternative,” and other such nonsensical explanations have all been put forth on his behalf over and over again. Even when he tells them otherwise, point blank, as he did in his missive to the Daily Kos in 2005, and more recently, basically telling them to suck it up, he was going to do what he wanted no matter what anybody said, they support him. When he betrays them with his FISA vote, or Rick Warren invocation invitation, or arch-enemy cabinet appointments, at the expense of other ardent backers, they scramble around, twisting, turning and contorting themselves until they find a way to kiss their own sore behinds and make it all better. And they’ve been doing it all along:
But well before the Caucuses, on blog sites like Talk Left and Firedoglake, questions were being raised about an Obama candidacy based on what sometimes seemed like excessive efforts to reach beyond the Democratic base.
For many bloggers, the problem with Obama was—and is–that he’s been playing into a much-derided “triangulation” meme in appealing to voters without traditional Democratic credentials. As Ezra Klein said last Tuesday, Obama was using “old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias.” Markos Moulitsas walked back from his announced intention to vote for Obama, saying “you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that’s not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy’s hearts a flutter.” Matt Yglesias tempered his former enthusiasm for the candidate as well, writing “while there’s a lot I like about Barack Obama, if he wins Iowa it won’t have been by running hard on the things I like best about him.”
In truth, Obama hasn’t been afraid to strike back at all his critics with whichever tool best fits the job. Whether criticizing Hillary on health care or questioning John Edwards on the Iraq war, his campaign throws an effective punch. When he announced his intent to seek the presidency, there were real questions about whether Obama had the toughness to win — no longer. But to his online critics, Obama willfully ignored a crucial tenet of blogosphere doctrine — they accuse him of using right-wing talking points to criticize his opponents. And in their eyes, there is no greater sin than validating a GOP frame.
That was posted January 7, 2008, on Democratic Strategist. So, no matter how many PUMA sites point out their hypocrisy, like this one, and this one, and this one, just to name three off the top of my head, the Left Loonistanians will continue to gleefully assist their mysteriously Chosen One perpetrate his fraud, as they always have, crediting him for innovations he deserves no credit for, whining and crying all the way. As long as he looks the part, (black) I guess they, and the rest of the world, can content themselves with self-administered back pats for the appearance of “progress.”
One of the dirtiest little secrets about abusers is how utterly nice they can appear to the world to be. Oftentimes, no one can believe that the handsome, charming, hail-fellow-well-met they know, love and admire can be a petty, vindictive, manipulating, asshole who beats his wife, or abuses family members, or seduces the children he coaches or mentors, or even sometimes, stalks, rapes, and kills strangers behind closed doors. Nope, not that guy, people say. He’s a clergyman, politician, teacher, doctor, volunteer, serviceman…fill in the blank, he could be that just as well as he could be unemployed, through no fault of his own, of course. Sometimes he even generates sympathy; poor guy, they say, too bad his accident-prone, loser wife drinks, his pre-pubescent teenager is a slut, his Little League team can’t seem to win. He’s so patient with them, he tries so hard, it’s a shame the people he loves always let him down.
Such men are masters of manipulation, adept at culling their victims from the “herd” of their families and friends, isolating and alienating them from those dedicated to protecting them, casting their “problems” as unfortunately self-generated. He loves them so much, you see. He can’t let them out of his sight. Who knows what they might do without him.
Nobody knows that such a guy’s wife is the most careful woman in the world, taking extraordinary pains to make sure things are always just the way he likes them, terrified that she will “fall down the stairs and into a door” if his dinner fork is a centimeter out of place, or her appearance doesn’t meet his approval, or a neighbor neglects to return his friendly wave. No, they blame his nubile young daughter for embodying the sexy allure of adolescence if ever unfounded allegations rear their ugly heads, and who could win Pop Warner football games when so many of his players seem just a little off? They all love him, don’t they? So, he spends hours away from home sometimes doing God knows what? So what? He’s entitled; he gives so much to his family, team, church, committees. And, whatever he keeps in his locked room is his business, isn’t it? A man deserves some privacy, some place he can call his own, doesn’t he?
He’s a saint.
When Rod Blagojevich announced today that he was going to fight the allegations against him, characterizing his troubles as attacks by his enemies, professing his loneliness, the media went into their predictable “who does this crazy guy think he is?” feeding frenzy. Nobody even considered that maybe, just maybe, his estranged “husband” in the political marriage of inconvenience he might have entered into once upon a time when it seemed mutually beneficial, just might be pulling the strings. Back when both parties harbored the same presidential dream, when marriage seemed prudent. Though there likely was never even a pretense of affection privately, there probably was wary respect, and hey, even if you make it before I do…whatever happens, it will be good for our family. Publicly, the union would have seemed to be made in Heaven. Until, gradually, stories would have begun to come out about the “wife’s” erratic behavior. Poor, put upon Mr. Sunshine would begin to notice the fluctuating liquor levels, the abundance of discarded pill bottles, the drop-off in his spouse’s professional and personal performance. What could possibly be wrong?
Publicly, the golden boy of the “marriage” would have continued to glow, untainted by even the hint of scandal, seemingly incapable of making even the tiniest misstep, while the other partner’s slightest indiscretion or miscalculation could always be expected to be innocently, indirectly, unfortunately, exposed, then magnified disproportionately in the eyes of the couple’s mutual acquaintances, family, co-workers and friends. How sad that one partner would seem almost mythical, magical, majestic, while being so burdened by the unimaginable failure he so valiantly “loves.”
No, no one would ever consider that the crazy criminal kook was issuing a cry for help, or that the charming, handsome messianic guy he shared his political house with was trying to push him down the steps in front of company.
Rahm Emanuel is not talking, but, Chicago’s “other paper,” (the nearly bankrupt Tribune being the one mentioned in the recent Blagogate scandal) the Sun-Times, says “oh, yes he did,” talk directly to Gov. Rod Blagojevich about filling Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat with Valerie Jarrett, even though Team O says, “oh, no he di’nt.”
President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported, the Sun-Times has learned. Emanuel had direct discussions about the seat with Gov. Blagojevich, who is is accused of trying to auction it to the highest bidder.
Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post, sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun-Times. There was no indication from sources that Emanuel brokered a deal, however.
Well, of course Rahmbo didn’t “broker a deal” for Jarrett, she pulled her name from contention after her BFF made it clear he desperately needed her in the White House, right before he officially resigned from the Senate earlier than anybody in history, for no apparent reason. Sheesh. The only problem for Rahmbobama is that Blag’s got a big mouth:
But sources with knowledge of the investigation said Blagojevich told his aides about the calls with Emanuel and sometimes gave them directions afterward. Sources said that early on, Emanuel pushed for the appointment of Jarrett to the governor and his staff and asked that it be done by a certain date.
At least some of the conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich were likely caught on tape, sources said.
“The boss would “appreciate” it if you would do him the favor of giving his Senate seat to his pal Val before the 12th, or this “offer you shouldn’t refuse goes away. Capice?”
–In a Nov. 10 phone call with advisers, Blagojevich discussed getting a
lucrative labor job in exchange for appointing an unnamed candidate
whom he believed was favored by Obama. In a Nov. 11 conversation,
Blagojevich acknowledged that Obama wanted an unnamed “Senate Candidate
1” for the seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything but
appreciation. [Expletive] them.”
“Blags, da boss is very disappointed. Remember “da list?” C’mon, you and me go back a long ways. Just to show you we’re honorable, reasonable, appreciative guys, ya got til the 15th to do the right thing, or I can’t be responsible for what comes next.”
Sometime after the election, Emanuel called Harris back to add the name of Democratic Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to the approved list, the source said.
Obviously, for Blagojevich “appreciation” was not enough:
Told by two other advisers he has to “suck it up” for two years, the FBI says, Blagojevich was heard complaining that he has to give this “motherf– [the president-elect] his senator. F– him. For nothing? F– him.”
The affidavit said that Blagojevich was interested in a high-paying position with Change to Win, an organization affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and that he suggested in a conversation with a SEIU official on Nov. 12 that Obama wanted other people to be considered for the Senate seat besides Senate Candidate 1. Previous phone conversations indicated that Blagojevich knew the SEIU official “was an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1’s interest in the Senate seat,” the affidavit said.
Time passes, Jarrett withdraws, is appointed to some made-up White House lackey position, Obie leaves the seat wide open for Blago to do as he will and…the waiting game goes on. Until:
On December 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke to Advisor B and informed Advisor B that he was giving Senate Candidate 5 greater consideration for the Senate seat because, among other reasons, if ROD BLAGOJEVICH ran for re-election Senate Candidate 5 would “raise money” for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, although ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he might “get some (money) up front, maybe” from Senate Candidate 5 to insure Senate Candidate 5 kept his promise about raising money for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. (In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: “We were approached ‘pay to play.’ That, you know, he’d raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator.”)”
Good memory, Blago. Good thing that October 31 luncheon you had with 5’s homeys came back to you when it did and you could have him set up that fundraiser that lead to that lunch that lead to the Feebies calling Five to warn him that he had lead to the arrest that brought down the house that Rod built:
Blagojevich and the congressman met to discuss the Senate seat on Monday, one day before federal prosecutors arrested Blagojevich and charged him with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. As part of the charges, prosecutors alleged that Blagojevich was considering awarding the seat to a politician identified as “Senate Candidate 5″ because emissaries for that candidate were promising to raise as much as $1.5 million for Blagojevich’s campaign fund.
Coulda happened like that. But even if it did, Rahm didn’t do anything “inappropriate” on behalf of his boss, did he? And Obie didn’t talk to Blago directly, did he? So, even if my imagination is firing on all cylinders, the only guilty party in all this is crazy, greedy, corrupt slimeball, Rod Blagojevich, right? What’s the difference between “entrapment” and “set-up,” again?
Now that the looney denizens of Left Blogistan, as we’ve come to know and loathe them, have anointed a first-term Senator from the most enduringly corrupt city in one of the most corrupt states in the Union, for no apparent reason other than they thought it would be “teh kewl,” they seem to believe that gives them the right to question the newly crowned Obamessiah’s actions. Ha, ha, ha.
“Boo hoo hoo,” they cry, “how can He appoint those guys?” “Waaah,” they wail, “what about us?” “Bu, bu, but,” they blubber, “He promised!” Nyuk, nyuk,nyuk. Boy, am I enjoying this. Who needs Fitzmas when they’ve got ‘The Revelation of the True Face of the New Age Pagan God?” Behold:
“And I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. …
“And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about: That we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere … where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.”
Ah-men.
Don’t they get it? Their new Messiah can beckon forth whatever of His flock He chooses to bless His ascension. He needs no concordance. Especially from the sheeple whose only function was to rubber stamp his pre-ordained deification through the celebration of their groundless exaltation. How presumptuous of them! Fools!
Just when you think a despicable display of sexist misogyny has unfortunately been relegated to the dustbins of recent history, along comes a sad excuse for “journalism-as-spin” that brings the whole sordid mess back to the fore. In a silly-assed Washington Post rah-rah Obama piece, Eli Saslow “fluffs” Jon Favreau in an attempt to excuse his frat-boy behavior by talking up his dubious talent. Yes, Favreau can lift inspirational passages from famous historical speeches and bracket them with trite advertising slogans and folksy parables as well as, or better than, most, but, is that really praise-worthy? And, can any responsible adult be considered so if he promotes a “boys will be boys” excuse for the president-elect’s ventriloquist-by-proxy? (Axelrod puts the ideas in Favreau’s head, then Jonny puts the words in Obie’s mouth.)
Three months ago, Favreau lived in a group house with six friends in Chicago, where he rarely shaved, never cooked and sometimes stayed up to play video games until early morning. Now, he has transformed into what one friend called a “Washington political force” — a minor celebrity with a down payment on a Dupont Circle condo, whose silly Facebook photos with a Hillary Rodham Clinton cutout created what passes for controversy in Obama’s so far drama-free transition.
There are just so many things wrong with that portion of a paragraph from Salow’s pitiful piece of pointless praise that one barely knows where to start. “Obama’s so far drama-free transition?” Is this guy kidding? Did he just wake up from a self-induced coma, unburdened by the reality of Rezko, Blagojevich, Wright and Company Under The Bus tours? And, what the hell does shaving have to do with “celebrity?” Does “Favs” shave every day now? Was he freshly shaven at the party? Was the possibility that he was tonsorially irresponsible excuse, mitigate or explain his drunken, disrespectful pose with the image of the nation’s new Secretary of State?
I really don’t care what Hillary Clinton says about the incident, nor do I care for the “good ol’ boys” club mentality James Carville espouses that diminishes Favreau’s bad juvenile behavior. He got busted being stupid, he should be fired. Otherwise, he’ll never learn, and probably never grow up. And maybe Saslow and Carville will learn that “silly” jokes about sexual harassment are just as funny as ones about lynching black people, dumb Polacks, backwoods hillbillies, penny-pinching Jews, and their mothers.
There’s Chicago politics, and there’s Illinois politics; sometimes they overlap, sometimes they clash. Players who support each other locally gleefully sell each other down the river statewise and vice versa. You’ve heard of inmates running the asylum, imagine toddlers running the university and you have a pretty good idea of the political landscape in the Land of Lincoln.
Everybody hates everybody who can’t help them, until they can. Then, they support them fully, until they don’t. State Senator Dick Durbin supposedly joked, when asked about the long-standing feud between House Speaker, Mike Madigan (father of Attorney General Lisa) and Governor Rod Blagojevich, that it would be wiser to hang out in the Middle east than deal with their mess:
Illinois senior Senator Dick Durbin said in 2008 that he receives many constituent complaints about the dispute between Blagojevich and Madigan, with letter writers wanting him to step in to negotiate.[6] Durbin said the subject is also often talked about in the United States Congress in Washington, DC among the Illinois congressional delegation.[6] However, Durbin joked that he’d rather go to Baghdad to mediate than Springfield.[6]
That Madigan and Blagojevich are enemies is no secret, nor is the fact that Madigan has been planning to solicit the Supreme Court to have Blaggo removed since the summer, circulating an “impeachment memo” that House Impeachment Committee Chair, Obama supporter and neighbor, Barbara Flynn Currie called an “opinion piece” the committee was “not considering” in their ongoing process. Pouncing on the opportunity to put his plan in action afforded him by Hot Rod’s recent arrest, (the timing of which was not affected by any news story) Madigan, via Lisa announced their fall back intentions to have Blago declared unfit within hours of his release on bail. Unfortunately for them, that case was dismissed, as anybody with a brain knew it would be. No matter, Madigan’s purpose was served. Blago was further damaged by negative press, the Madigans at least tried, gosh darnit, and there’s always impeachment.
Mike Madigan and Currie were superdelegate supporters of Barack Obama, who has had his own love/hate relationship with Blags. Then, there’s Jesse Jackson, Jr. (Candidate Number 5,) Mayor Richard Daley and his brother, Obama campaign senior adviser, William, of J.P. Morgan Chase, Obama political “Godfather,” and Blagobuddy, Emil Jones, who hates Madigan, Tony Rezko and Alex Giannoulias, all of whom circulate in and around Oblago’s orbit, depending upon the degree of advantage doing so affords them. Daley has not always been an Obama fan, and Jesse Jr. has issues with Madigan (once co-chair of Blago’s re-election committee) regarding Obama’s support for Giannoulias. From Jackson’s website, August, 2006:
Everyone knows House Speaker Michael Madigan is a man of few words.
Last week, he uttered a special one: Messiah.
“There’s been no word from the messiah,” Madigan answered wryly when I asked whether he would be supporting Democratic Treasurer nominee Alexi Giannoulias in November.
The “messiah” to whom Madigan referred is U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.
Obama yanked Giannoulias from obscurity and endorsed his run for state treasurer — despite the fact that Madigan had a different candidate in mind. In TV commercials that catapulted Giannoulias into Illinois living rooms, Obama called the young treasurer candidate “one of the most outstanding young men I could ever hope to meet.”
Illinois State treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has been accused of making loans to mobsters, supports a “pooling pensions” plan once proposed by Blagojevich, (who has his own problems on that score with his father-in-law, Alderman Richard Mell as well as Rezko,) and has a long history with “the Messiah.” Of course, Obama and Blagojevich both also have Rezko connections. In light of the current Blago problems, that also touch upon his wife, Patti, her father, Mell, is threatening to tell what he knows.
And that’s just the prologue. After following all these links I’ve provided, I’m even more convinced that Obama’s brand of Chi-town politics is “Hardball with Clean Hands,” or, “you’re busted, prove I had something to do with it,” and that he likely, deliberately, set Blago up for this Senate seat fall. And we haven’t even mentioned Daley-Blagojevich supporting, DLC member, and designated carrot-dangler, Rahm Emanuel. As much as I’d like to go through each and every one of these little subplots and explore them in more detail, the multiple plot twists and turns have fried my brain. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day, and who knows who’ll be hating who by then?
It seems PUMAs are not the only “party unity my ass” advocates. In fact, that should be the motto of the Republicrats, the new party of “O.” Jack Cafferty’s question of the day is “how can the GOP help pres-elect Obama,” based on Newt Gingrich’s leter to the Republican National Convention condemning it’s Blagobama ads:
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
Gingrich, who predicted Obama would win Iowa in the primaries, and who once called Obie a Kennedy-esque phenomenon, joins Sen. John McCain in calling for cross-party support of McCain’s former rival. Obama, who has ticked off many so-called “progressives with his cabinet picks, has always enjoyed a cozy relationship with the GOP; Republicans for Obama claims to be a grassroots organization who “encouraged” Obama to run for president, he promoted “Democrat for a Day,” most notably in Pennsylvania, to get Republicans and Independents to temporarily switch party affiliation in order to vote for him in the primaries, and owes his election, in part, to Republican “Obamacan” crossover, especially during the primariesandcaucuses, and anti-McCain depressed general election turnout.
Colin Powell, not only endorsed Obama, he also had some not-so-nice things to say about his nominal party. However, it may be that Obama’s GOP buddies-to-be might soon have to take their positions under the bus, too; despite repeatedpromises to appoint Republicans to his “bi-partisan” cabinet, so far, there’s only been one, Robet Gates’ holdover.
Obviously the “day” part of “Democrat for a Day” meant more to Obama than his Obamacans knew. Just as obviously, some of them have added “dreaming” to the word. Then again, George Bush isgoing out of his way to hook his homeboy up.
UPDATE: According to the Boston Globe, the Republican record of one cabinet member will hold, though Obama is scheduled to name Illinois Republican, Rep. Ray LaHood Secretary of Transportation. Seems Robert Gates is registered Independent. Ah, could the Combine finally be going Washington?
Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor accused of trying to sell the Senate seat president-elect Barack Obama curiously vacated in record time, is “dying to talk,” according to Politico:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich spoke with reporters for several minutes before taking a jog in snowy Chicago, telling them to “hang loose” to hear his side of the story.
“I can’t wait to begin to tell my side of story, to address you guys and most important, the people of Illinois,” Blagojevich said. “That’s who I am dying to talk to.”
Also, according to Politico, Obama himself is “frustrated” that he can’t talk:
President-elect Barack Obama said he’s anxious to “correct immediately” some media reports on transition team contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but would hold off until next week as promised to federal authorities.
“It’s a little bit frustrating,” Obama said Wednesday at a Chicago news conference. “There’s been a lot of speculation in the press that I would love to correct immediately. We are abiding by the request of the U.S. attorney’s office, but it’s not going to be that long. By next week, you guys will have the answers to all your questions.”
In the same article, Obama’s ventriloquist, David (Astroturf King) Axelrod, railed against being “hamstrung” by the Fed’s request to zip it where the internal investigation report is concerned:
“Nobody is more eager than we are to be able to release that,” Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And when you see it, it will corroborate what the president-elect has said, which is that he never spoke with the governor or any of his aides about this, and that there were no inappropriate discussions between members of his staff and the governor’s office in this matter.”
So, a couple of things jump out at me. One, who says bribery and collusion, etc. are crimes that can only be committed among friends? How close do you have to be to buy and sell anything? I’ve never bought a car from a guy I had breakfast with the morning after. Just saying. Two, while Axelrove is vouching for everybody on Obie’s staff, (does that include Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Rahm Emanuel’s conversations with Team Baggo before Nov. 6, when he was officially announced as Chief of Staff? Just asking.) who’s gonna vouch for Davey? He has a long history with the Chicago Tribune…
At the age of 27, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed hints that Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s, officially appointed on Nov. 6, Chief of Staff had a whole bunch of conversations with recently arrested, and possibly crazy, Gov. Rod Blagojevich about Obama’s vacant Senate seat, which might have been caught on tape:
Sneed hears rumbles President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is reportedly on 21 different taped conversations by the feds — dealing with his boss’ vacant Senate seat!
President-elect Barack Obama said on Monday that an internal review confirms that no one on his staff had any “inappropriate” discussions with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich , but he’s postponing release of the full review until next week at the request of federal prosecutors investigating Blagojevich for corruption.
“I would ask for your patience because I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation,” Obama said during a news conference in Chicago , which he called to formally announce his appointments to lead energy and environment policy.
Stopping the reporter midsentence, Mr. Obama told him he didn’t want him to waste his time asking a question he wouldn’t answer. Mr. Obama said, as he had yesterday, that he had done a “full review” of the situation but at the request of the United States attorney, he would not comment on the matter until next week.
A local Chicago ABC News affiliate is reporting that Jesse Jackson, Jr., “Candidate Number 5” in the Rod Blagojevich “Senate seat sale” scandal, not only once blew the whistle on “Hot Rod,” he also received a “courtesy call” from the Feds before Blago’s arrest in the scheme. Since we have no information as to whether the terms, “watch your ass,” or, “you owe us big time,” were used, we have no way of knowing the nature of the Feebie’s “heads up.” However, given that Jackson served as Obama’s national campaign co-chair, the story is being presented by the media outlet in the best possible light. Otherwise, the blowback from Jackson’s possible complicity in the scam might blow back on The Chosen One, and we mustn’t have that.
Jackson has been fighting for his reputation since the federal complaint revealed his supporters were willing to raise money for the governor, if Jackson was appointed to the Senate.
The new information appears to support Jackson’s claim that he was not involved in a scheme to buy a U.S. Senate seat.
ABC7 has learned that since late last summer, the congressman has worked with federal prosecutors, informing on an alleged Blagojevich administration scheme two and half years earlier.
The meeting in June of 2006 at a Gold Coast hotel included Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Blagojevich fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko.
So, basically, the Feds have been on to Jackson for some time, one way or another. We don’t know the nature of these “interviews,” who initiated them, and/or whether Jackson’s “cooperation” was entirely voluntary. All we know from the article is that there have been multiple contacts:
Then last summer, weeks after Rezko was found guilty of un-related corruption, the U.S. Attorney’s Office interviewed the congressman as a possible witness against the governor in the Peotone matter.
And sources tell ABC7 that Jackson has been in regular contact with the feds and has told the government that in 2003 Blagojevich denied the congressman’s wife Sandi an appointment as Illinois lottery director because Jackson would not donate $25,000 to the governor’s campaign fund.
The article concludes, however, by pointing out that Jackson supporters might want to hold off on finagling the U.S. Attorney into publicly clearing their guy:
Jackson supporters ABC7 talked to on Monday want the U.S. attorney to give the congressman a clean bill of health so to speak.
In1998, then U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar did that for Republican gubernatorial candidate George Ryan. Ryan was eventually convicted of corruption and now sits in a federal prison.
At the very least, we now know for sure that Jackson had first hand knowledge that Blago was open to bribery.
Arne Duncan, Harvard grad, former pro basketball player, (Australia) and current Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, which Pres-elect Obie’s daughters do not attend) is said to be set to become Secretary of Education. Current Education Sec’y, Margaret Spellings, has nice things to say about the Chicagoan, but then, she doesn’t live there.
“I don’t want to hurt his chances but I think he’s a terrific school leader…and I’m saying this because we have a lot of experience together,” she said then. “I consider him a fellow reformer and someone who cares deeply about students. I think he’d be a great choice.”
Due to inaction in Illinois’ legislature, a coalition of ministers plan to escalate their demand for education reform by taking the issue to Wrigley Field during the Chicago Cubs playoff game on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. The ministers, their congregants and supporters will rally in the middle of the street in front of the ballpark.
The Clergy Coalition for School Funding Reform’s (CCSFR) latest action is to bring attention to the school funding inequities, which have plagued Illinois’ students for more than 30 years. On September 2, the group, led by Rev. Senator James T. Meeks, staged a two-day protest of Chicago Public Schools where more than 1400 children didn’t attend the first day of school and attempted to enroll in the wealthy, property rich school district of Winnetka. Meeks is the pastor of Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, the largest African American church in Illinois with over 20,000 members. He is also a state senator.
Senator John F. Kerry was named chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee today, pledging to use his stewardship of the influential panel to strengthen American interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, help end the war in Iraq, and craft solutions to the climate change crisis.
Forget all the bitter squawking about “Bush/Clinton dynasties” Hillary Clinton’s run for president generated. Poof! No longer valid. Now, dynasties are the “new black,” as in “endorse the black guy, get your family in.” First up, Caroline Kennedy. Now, she wants HRC’s Senate seat because, well, she’s a Kennedy, she endorsed Barack Obama for president and, doggone it, she really, really wants it.
While some Clintonites are miffed, the whole “she’s just an inexperienced Kennedy” stuff is a bit unfair in today’s world, no? Can you say “Schwartzenegger?” Who has his very own personal Kennedy, by the way. Fred Thompson, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Fred Gandy, Barack Obama, the celebrity politician list is growing. Who needs “experience” if they’re famous? Jeez.
Even though, according to Rasmussen, 45% of American voters believe that today’s soon-to-be officially elected president-elect, Barack Obama, or his team is likely to be involved in the evolving Gov. Rod Blagojevich Senate seat sale scandal, Team O has issued a statement saying, basically, “we’re not on tape doing anything wrong, and that’s all we can tell you right now.” From Politico:
“At the direction of the President-elect, a review of Transition staff contacts with Governor Blagojevich and his office has been conducted and completed and is ready for release. That review affirmed the public statements of the President-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that the President-elect’s staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as U.S. senator.
“Also at the President-elect’s direction, Gregory Craig, counsel to the Transition, has kept the US Attorney’s office informed of this fact-gathering process in order to ensure our full cooperation with the investigation.
“In the course of those discussions, the US Attorney’s office requested the public release of the Transition review be deferred until the week of December 22, in order not to impede their investigation of the governor. The Transition has agreed to this revised timetable for release.”
Meanwhile, back at the Wall Street Journal, anonymous members of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s team say he, and they, are furious at the Chicago Tribune for jumping the gun and costing them “Candidate Number 5:”
Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.
The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald praised the Chicago Tribune during today’s press conference because the paper honored a request to hold off on publishing information about the investigation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The investigation involved bugs and wiretaps.
“We made an urgent request for the Tribune not to publish that story,” Fitzgerald said.
“I have to take my hat off” to the paper, Fitzgerald added.
Not long after the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, told a national television audience that Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was thinking of possibly resigning here on Monday, the governor’s spokesman broke some news of his own.
Not only was Mr. Blagojevich not resigning, the spokesman, Lucio Guerrero, said, but he was planning to go to work on Monday and study a few bills that might at some point require either his signature or veto — including one that will be hammered out in a special legislative session in Springfield that would strip him of his coveted appointment power over President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.
“He has no plans of resigning today or tomorrow,” Mr. Guerrero said on Sunday. “He still signs bills as governor, and he wants to see details.
Madigan, the daughter of Blago “frenemy,” Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, who has aspirations of her own for Blago’s job, and, who has officially called on Blago to resign, and who has initiated Supreme Court proiceedings against him, used her promotional face time on “Face The Nation” to engage in mainstream media gossip about Blag’s future plans.
Ms. Madigan is a longtime rival of Mr. Blagojevich who has expressed interest in the past of one day being governor herself, and she has requested that the State Supreme Court declare the governor unfit for office. Ms. Madigan acknowledged on CBS’s morning news show, “Face the Nation,” that her assertion was based on “rumors in the media.” But not before they set off a firestorm of speculation.
Her spokeswoman, Robyn Ziegler, said of her remarks after the television appearance: “She has no inside information about anything.”
Having grown up in Chicago, only to leave as a young woman to pursue my dreams, (and escape winter cold) I find the current consternation about the city’s corruption amusing. During his press conference with U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, charging Governor Rod Blagojevich with trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder, FBI agent Robert Grant referred to Illinois as “one hell of a competitor” for the title of most corrupt state in the country. USA Today, however, ranks Illinois as 18th, based on the number of per capita government convictions, asserting that North Dakota holds the title. However, that seems misleading. Basing corruption on the number of convictions is bass ackwards. A state that convicts officials for corruption obviously has a low tolerance for such behavior. That is not Illinois, or it’s largest city, by a long shot.
Chicagoans love corruption. It’s simply the way things are done, as they have always been. Corruption does not exist within the framework of Chicago politics, corruption is Chicago politics. They “don’t want nobody nobody sent.” ” Who sent you?” “Who do you know?” “What’s in it for me?” “Who do I make the check out to?” Need a job? See your alderman. Want a permit? Make a donation. Got a problem? Find “a guy” who “knows a guy.” That’s the Chicago Way.
Nobody comes through Chicago clean, because “clean” by Chicago standards is not the same as it must be in, say, North Dakota. “Will it come back on me?” No? Then it’s “clean.”
Peel back the layers in the Blagojevich “scandal” and you’ll find deals upon deals, with every player identified participating to one extent or another. A veritable soap opera of connections to connections, nepotism, cronyism, patronage and graft, with only outright theft being mildly frowned upon because it unneccessarily draws attention, not because it’s morally reprehensible.
Barack Obama chose the rough and tumble politics of Chicago over Honolulu, Los Angeles, Manhattan and Boston, all cities he has some connection to, while having none to the Windy City. Why? To clean it up, or maneuver through it? Both? Neither? Example: in September, during the run-up to the election, the Chicago Sun-Times and others took Obie to task for not backing pay-to-play ethics reform his “Godfather,” Emil Jones was blocking:
In the middle of a simmering Statehouse ethics battle is Obama’s “political godfather,” Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), who triggered questions Thursday about whether he may allow the legislation to die after the Nov. 4 election.
Designed as a response to the “pay-to-play politics” that have flourished under Gov. Blagojevich, the plan would bar firms with more than $50,000 in state contracts from donating to the officeholder in charge of the deals.
But the governor entirely rewrote the plan, stripping out that language and putting it in an executive order. In its place, he inserted provisions into the original legislation to deal with how lawmakers award themselves pay raises and to bar the practice by some state officeholders of holding outside, non-elected government jobs.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has taken the unusual step of weighing in on a high-profile ethics bill in Illinois, legislation that had been held up by his political mentor, Sen. Emil Jones.
“Senator Obama called Senator Jones today to offer his strong support for the ethics reforms pending before the Senate and urged him to pass them at the earliest possible opportunity,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
All of which, supposedly, (charitably) lead to the arrest of Blagojevich:
In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.
This is the way he navigated the murky waters of “the Chicago Way” well enough to form a springboard to the White House in no time flat. Like the legend of Milton Berle, just “do enough to win.” Neat trick, huh? The bottom line is, “reform” in Chicago means putting people you like in charge of passing out favors. So, as the Blagodrama unfolds, pay no attention to those who try to gloss over the city’s truth, watch the players scramble to answer the only pertinent question. Not “who did what?” but “what can they prove?”
Makes you wonder just what kind of “change” Washington’s going to get when it meets the “Chicago Way.” Whatever it is, it seems that, like Chicagoans, most Americans are just fine with it.
On Tuesday, when the news of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s arrest broke, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declared that it was “a sad day for Illinois government” and that Blagojevich had “taken us to a truly new low.” But, was it really? From the New York Times transcript of the press conference, Fitgerald said:
Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree. We acted to stop that crime spree.
The most appalling conduct Governor Blagojevich engaged in, according to the complaint filed today or unsealed today, is that he attempted to sell a Senate seat, the Senate seat he had the sole right to under Illinois to appoint to replace President-elect Obama.
Attempting to sell a Senate seat, an attempt that was thwarted by Fitzgerald, by the way, constitutes a “crime spree” that would make “Lincoln turn over in his grave?” Fitzgerald’s justification makes no sense at all. If Blago had indeed appointed someone to Obama’s seat in a “pay for play” scheme, Fitz would have netted 2 big fish dead to rights, since the payee/selectee would be guilty as sin, too. Nope, there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
What we also know is that some of these schemes went pretty far and some did not go far at all. But they had discussions about what they would do, who they would approach and how they would phrase it.
And we need to do the investigation, now that the investigation is overt, to find out from other people what happened, what they were told, how explicitly, what they understood, and what happened.
“I should make clear, the complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever,” Fitzgerald said. “We make no allegations that he’s aware of anything, and that’s as simply as I can put it. . . .
“There’s no reference in the complaint to any conversations involving the president-elect or indicating that the president-elect was aware of it. And that’s all I can say.”
Note he said “complaint,” not “investigation.” And, that’s all I can say.
In an apparent attempt to avoid answering potentially embarassing questions about his relationship with Senate seat salesman Rod Blagojevich, President-elect-to-be Barack Obama announced his new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, at the crack of dawn, without fanfare. From Politico:
In a twist on his use of new media to make news, President-elect Barack Obama used his weekly radio address this morning to announce his pick to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Obama appointed New York City Commissioner of Housing, Preservation and Development Shaun Donovan to the post, a move his transition apparently leaked last night to The New York Times. The paper has been a strong backer of Mayor Bloomberg and of his housing plans.
The announcement came in a radio and video address released on Saturday morning at 6 a.m., leaving no opportunity for reporters to ask questions, as they typically can when Cabinet announcements and other large initiatives are announced.
Unlike the last announcement of the appointment of Tom Daschle as head of Health and Human Services when Obama was peppered with questions about Blagobitching, today’s appointment came with no opportunity to pursue the matter. Coincidence? Sure.
Why are the Keepers of the Book of Barack, aka the mainstream media, pushing the “Blago’s batshit” story line as quasi-fact? Who does it benefit? If the embattled governor was making such claims, or acting in a manner as if he wanted people to think he’s nuts, it might be more understandable, even though, if that was the case, chances are the Barackomaniacs would reject such assertions as Blago’s pitiful attempts to exonerate himself. They would use his statements as evidence of his criminality just as they use his alleged criminality as evidence of his madness. Why?
The only person or persons likely to benefit from smearing Blagojevich’s mental state are those likely to be smeared by Blago’s potential allegations against them. Therefore, only those fearing implication would make finger twisting motions around their ears when Blago’s name is mentioned. Like Candidate Number 5, Jesse Jackson Jr. And, nobody from Team O is challenging the assertion, either. In fact, Obama’s “mentor,” Abner (we don’t want nobody nobody sent) Mikva, is one of the main pushers. In Jake Tapper’s column, Mikva comments on Blago’s stated desire to run for the presidency in 2016:
“It’s just such a bizarre state of mind, that Gov. Blagojevich had to be in to even think this was possible,” former Democratic Congressman and Judge Abner Mikva told ABC News.
Mikva used the word “delusional” to describe the governor.
The Chicago Sun-Times puts forth the theory that Blagojevich’s choice of hairdo is indicative of his mental deficiency:
Gov. Blagojevich’s glossy locks — perfectly sculpted in rain or snow — may be an indication of a sickness beneath his scalp, said one local psychologist.
“It’s all part of managing his image, managing his image of being without a blemish, without a flaw,” said Scott Ambers, who has practiced clinical psychology in the city for more than two decades.
A February, 2008 Chicago Magazine article specualted that Barack Obama was driving Blago nuts:
Some people think that the governor’s behavior has turned more erratic in the past few years. One reason, they suspect, could be Barack Obama’s extraordinary rise. “Obama’s ascendancy had a significant impact on this guy,” says a Democratic lawmaker from Chicago. “Here’s a lifelong plan that’s been unfolding better than anyone could ever script—an unremarkable state’s attorney becomes an unremarkable state representative, becomes an unremarkable congressman, becomes an unlikely governor. My God, everything’s falling into place! All of a sudden the proverbial skinny guy with the funny name starts making some headway, decides to run for U.S. senator, wins the primary, then gets tapped to do the keynote speech [at the Democratic National Convention]. Knocks the fucking thing out of the park. So now when political people coast to coast talk about Illinois, they talk about Barack Obama. They don’t give a fuck about Rod Blagojevich.” (Blagojevich, like nearly every other Democratic elected official in the state, endorsed Obama in the presidential primary.)
An emotional Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. touched off a surreal hugfest among bickering top Illinois Democrats meeting at a convention delegation breakfast, all in the name of party unity and Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid. Here’s the tale of the tape:
*Jackson summons state Sen. Debbie Halvorson, who’s running for Congress. The two have feuded over control of a third airport in the south suburbs. They embrace.
*“Who else out here been mad at me I ain’t figured out yet?” Jackson asks. Without skipping a beat, Mayor Daley jumps out of his seat and hugs his critic who contemplated a run against him for mayor. In tears, Jackson says, “I’ve been trying to get to know Mayor Daley for 14 years.”
*But Jackson is “not going to be satisfied” until he sees Gov. Rod Blagojevich give House Speaker Michael Madigan a hug. The bad blood between the two is legendary and has ground state government to a halt.
*Sporting a smile from ear to ear, Madigan walks across the makeshift stage and hugs Blagojevich, who then turns and hugs Jackson.
Chicago Tribune reporter John Kaas suggests everybdy’s setting Blago up for a “Frank Pentangeli“-type Godfather-style, “keep your mouth shut for the good of the family” scenario. But that would mean that Blags has something very incriminating to say about somebody who doesn’t want whatever it is to be believed. Whatever. The bottom line is, Rod Blagojevich’s mental health is more of a convenient excuse for his enemies than it is for him.
Well, it looks like the president-elect’s chief of staff might turn out to not be the Rahm Emanuel he knew. It seems Emanuel was the guy in contact with recently arrested Illinois governor “Hot” Rod Blagojevich, and that some of those conversations may have been caught on tape.
If you want to see the info in that You Tube clip, watch it fast, it’s being scrubbed like a clean freak on speed’s bathroom. Meanwhile, back in Chicago, John Kaas of the Tribune says if Rahm was talking to somebody about selling his boss’ quickly vacated Senate seat (Rahm has not yet officially relinquished his seat in the House, btw) it was probably some guy named Jimmy:
As in state Sen. James DeLeo (D-How You Doin?)
DeLeo is an extremely powerful politician. You know this because he’s hardly ever quoted in newspaper stories.
Emanuel and DeLeo have a relationship. Emanuel is the congressman from the 5th Congressional District, where DeLeo is the Democratic state central committeeman. What hasn’t been reported on much is that Emanuel has not yet resigned from the House. And if you want to play politics in Jimmy’s sandbox, you need his OK.
DeLeo is also considered by some to be the real governor of Illinois. Blagojevich is the nutty guy who makes the speeches and gets the federal slap. They’re so close that if Jimmy suddenly stopped walking, Rod would chip his teeth on the back of Jimmy’s head.
Now, Rahm says that the reason he has to sneak around and avoid the press is because somebody (a reporter?) is trying to kill him. How do we know? Those sneaky, dangerous sleuths are pulling out the old “can I use your can?” routine:
The President-elect’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said today he won’t go to the Chicago Presidential transition offices in order to avoid reporters seeking to ask him whether he had contact with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich about the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama’s election.
Emanuel appeared “beet-red,” according to an ABC News cameraman who was invited inside by Emmanuel to use his bathroom this morning.
“I’m getting regular death threats. You’ve put my home address on national television. I’m pissed at the networks. You’ve intruded too much, ” Emanuel said, according to the cameraman.
From what I’ve heard, you don’t want to piss Rahmbo off. I’ve also heard that he adapts well when tossed under the bus. Perhaps these traits will serve him well when the extent of his dealings with Blago comes to Obama the Crusader’s attention. ‘Cuz, if Patrick Fitzgerald’s got tape, Rahmbo will soon be exiting the Obus through a trap door.
In other, related news, Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan is going after Blago’s head, Blago’s chief of staff, John Harris voluntarily gave his up, and CNN’s Don Lemon says in an upcoming interview with him, Candidate Number 5, Jesse Jackson, Jr. is pushing the “Blago’s batshit” excuse.
The Obamessiah already walks on water, and if the mainstream media has it’s way, after Blagogate blows over, if it does, the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader will probably ascend to Washington in a golden chariot on Inauguration Day. What else would be left? According to the keepers of the Book of Barack, he is above the corruption that taints every other denizen of the city from which he hails, he has no peer, he is immaculate.
“I have never spoken to the governor on this subject,” Obama said Thursday, announcing his picks for top aides on health care issues. “I’m confident that no representatives of mine would have any part of any deals related to this seat. I think the materials released by the U.S. attorney reflect that fact.”
And yet, the Blagorezkobama ties have been bandied about for a long time. Jan. 9, 2008:
With Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s federal corruption trial looming, Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday tried to deflect the heat he’s been getting over his former adviser and top fundraiser by pointing out he’s not the only politician who has received help from Rezko.
Blagojevich ticked off a list of elected officials who also have ties to the indicted developer. While not naming them, he made reference to everyone from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to House Speaker Michael Madigan, his political nemesis, and Madigan’s daughter, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan.
The Washington Post points out that the Senate seat sale is no the only issue currently under investigation:
A footnote to the 76-page criminal complaint and affidavit charging Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) with soliciting bribes confirms what has long been rumored — that a former longtime friend and fundraiser for President-elect Barack Obama is talking to federal prosecutors in hopes of a reduced sentence.
Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s offer to provide authorities with evidence of others’ wrongdoing is “not complete,” and prosecutors are working to corroborate the claims he has made so far, the footnote said.
The Los Angeles Times tells us that, for some strange reason, Rezko’s sentencing date has been extended, even though he has recently requested otherwise:
Now, why would a judge extend the period before sentencing when the convicted prisoner expressed a desire to get on with prison? Without a new briefs deadline, the expedited Jan. 6 sentencing could now be pushed back further.
Because Rezko, in the hopes of reducing his sentence, is singing in his cell about Blagojevich and maybe others. He’s not done with his song repertoire and the feds haven’t fully checked out his information to determine how grateful to be in sentence-seeking.
So, maybe, just maybe, Obama is not lying about his involvement, or lack thereof, in the Senate seat sale, though Truthteller over at No Quarter makes a pretty darned good case that he is. Be that as it may, perhaps the reason Patrick Fitzgerald prevented Blago from actually committing the crime before King Obama’s coronation has more to do with things he is involved with. Could Blago’s pittance of bail in a rather ambiguous case, coupled with Rezko’s finding his singing voice have anything to do with the Obama house deal, or the kinds of things Evelyn Pringle outlined months ago and were regularly featured on The Real Barack Obama website and referenced on Cannonfire?
At any rate, it probably doesn’t matter if Fitzgerald is trying to flip Blago to corroborate something Rezko has against Obie. No matter what might turn up, the Obamessiah will simply rise above it. He and the keepers of the Book of Barack will see to it.
I don’t speak Spanish, but this video, supposedly filmed on Sept. 1 at the Democratic National Convention (August 25-28) and posted on You Tube Sept. 25, is suddenly making the rounds.
Barack Hussein Obama is calling for “Hot” Rod Blagojevich’s resignation. No surprise there. Perpetually “under investigation,” Blago has been arrested for trying to sell Obama’s curiously prematurely vacant Senate seat, after all. But, aside from the apparent, yet unexplained, sense of urgency that compelled the President-elect to give up his Senate earlier than any of his predecessors, many things in this “Keystone Cops Goes Soprano” drama make no sense. Why only $4,500 bail for crimes that would make “Lincoln roll over in his grave?” Isn’t that a little low?
Blagojevich was charged with two counts: conspiracy to commit fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and solicitation to commit bribery, which is punishable by up 10 years. He was released on his own recognizance.
Hmmmm…take a guy out of his house at 6:30 in the morning then let him go on his own recognizance for chump change and his passport. Okay, moving on. Nah, let’s back up. What if this whole thing is not really about Blago bullying ‘Bama’s Boyz? What if it’s about some of the other stuff mentioned in the complaint…like, say, Tony Rezko? I mean, Rezko suddenly did push for a sentencing date on Nov. 29th, after getting it delayed in early October. Why? Was he through singing? According to the Weekly Standard, Rezko’s the reason his partner in crime got arrested:
In the run-up to election day we heard a great deal about Tony Rezko, and how his criminal associations reflected poorly on Obama. Little did we suspect then that the biggest crook Rezko knows is the governor of Illinois. With the arrest of Governor Blagojevich this morning, it becomes clear that Tony Rezko played a significant role in putting him in jail. Rezko’s name appears 170 times in the criminal complaint against Blagojevich and Harris, and the FBI states early on (page 11) that he was cooperating with the investigation.
Now, we all know about Obama’s “boneheaded” house purchase with the “guy who isn’t the guy he thought he knew,” but what if that guy, and the other, Blago guy, think they know Obama pretty darned well? Could it be in their best interests to tell whatever they might know about the fella who likes to keep them at arm’s distance in return for leniency? It’s a thought.
And, oh, by the way, when Rezko was arrested for wire fraud, money laundering, bribery and attempted extortion, he was originally released on 2 million dollars bond, which was revoked. He was re-arrested, then re-released for 8 million smackers.
Barack Obama has never made any bones about the fact that he is a product of the rough and tumble “Chicago Way.” And, while many have seen evidence of that fact and commented on it, most mischaracterize Obama’s particular, and peculiar, adaptation of the old school tactics he’s picked up along the way. Far from being above the muck and mire being raked and wallowed in by most Windy City blowhards, Obama relishes in his ability to play dirty and come up clean.
In the primaries, he gamed the caucuses, always within “da rules,” he pushed the envelope like a boxer who hits his opponent over the head with a folding chair and then demands that the referee show him where it says in the rule book that such a thing is not allowed. Since no one ever entertained the thought that a boxer would do such a thing, chances are, there is no rule and the match would go to the chair wielder. While boxing purists would forever decry such a manipulation of the dignity of the game, for the chair bopper, a win’s a win. For his opponent, a trip to the hospital and the enduring humiliation of not having foreseen the possibility of a chair meeting his skull that would be heaped upon him by those disappointed purists looking for someone to blame, would likely be enough to end his career. This is the way Obama does business.
Like most big cities, in many ways, Chicago operates like a small town. Considering the fact that the Obama Transition team offices in the John C. Kluczynski Federal Office Building, 230 South Dearborn St., Suite 3900 (39th floor) are located in the same plaza as the U. S. attorney’s in the Everett McKinley Dirksen Federal Courthouse, 219 South Dearborn, it’s not too far-fetched to think that gossip might swirl. Besides, the “news” that Blagojevich was “under investigation” was common knowledge, since just about every article mentioning the man in the last three years included the phrase. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to assume that Camp O, along with everybody else in Chicago remotely “in the know,” might have heard rumors of a wiretap being issued against Blago. The governor himself seemed very aware of the fact, even in taped conversations.
On Nov. 3, Blago began to make plans for utilizing the power he believed he would soon wield with Obama’s election and subsequent need to vacate his Senate seat. On Nov. 5, the two men met to discuss the situation. From all indications, Obama made his preference for Valerie Jarrett known, and in true Don Corleone style, indicated he would “appreciate” it. Clueless Blago did not fully “appreciate” the implications of the offer, and most likely, made it known that “appreciation” was not enough. It is also likely that “this was the moment” Obama decided to take him down.
On Nov. 10 – 12, Blago had discussions about what he wanted; in return for appointing Jarrett, Blago wanted an SEIU “Change to Win” position as National Director. On the 12th, Jarrett removed herself rom contention, which caught Blago off-guard:
Still, Jarrett’s announcement came as a surprise to sources close to Blagojevich, who said that representatives for Obama had floated her name on a regular basis.
On Nov. 13, Obama announced he was resigning his Senate seat, making the “juicy plum” Blago held even “juicier.” It also left Blgo on his own, twisting in the wind, digging his own grave. Well aware of the workings of the “Chicago Way” and Blago’s greed, Obama had to know how Blagojevich would react. He also knew that without cover, Blago would soon neutralize himself. After all, if Blago had taken Obie up on his offer, nothing would have happened, Blago would simply still be “under investigation,” and none would be the wiser. However, once Obama is no longer “in the picture” and the seat is “up for grabs” to the highest bidder, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Blago’s self-interests would become paramount and the force of nature that is Patrick Fitzgerald would naturally take it’s course from that point on.
Thus, Obama could sit back and let things develop predictably, all to his advantage, without lifting a finger. There was no need for Rahm Emanuel to “drop a dime” on anybody. And if, as an Obama emissary, he had done such a thing, there would be no need for denials of any sort, Obama would come out smelling like a rose as the “reformer” he claims to be. The fact that he and Axelrod back off such claims is more telling than anything else; that simply was not ever their motivation. Getting rid of Blagojevich and clearing the way for Obama’s real choice was the plan.
Hardball with clean hands. The Chicago Way – Obama-Style.
Maybe Camp No Drama Obama should get their stories straight. From the AP:
President-electBarack Obama says he is saddened by allegations that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to trade favors for Obama’s Senate seat — and says he had no contact with the governor or his office on the matter.
Okay, Barack Obama is not implicated in today’s allegations against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is suspected of trying to sell Barack Obama’s now vacant Senate seat in return for personal favors. U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and all the President-elect’s pundits, have gone to great lengths to make that perfectly clear. From the Associated Press:
Federal prosecutors say the investigation into allegations that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (bluh-GOY’-uh-vich) tried to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-electBarack Obama found no evidence that Obama did anything wrong.
At a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald reiterated a number of times that there were no allegations of impropriety on Obama’s part.
However, the question I have is, how much more valuable did Obama’s record-setting resignation make said seat? After all, Jo(k)e Biden has not officially resigned his. Nor has Hillary Clinton. So, why did Obama hand Blagojevich such a “juicy plum” so soon to give away for Christmas? From Lynn Sweet, Nov. 13, 2008:
Blagojevich is under no legal deadline to select an Obama replacement. The governor has to weigh a few factors: whether racial politics play a role, because Obama was the only African-American in the Senate and who has a political and fund-raising network that could help should Blagojevich seek a third term.
It’s been a long time since an Illinois governor had this juicy a plum to give away: the last Senate vacancy was in 1969 when Ralph Tyler Smith was selected by then Gov. Richard Ogilvie to fill the slot left vacant by the death of Sen. Everett Dirksen.
Was Obama helping the U. S. Attorney in some as yet unexplained and unexplored way, was he repaying Blagojevich in the old school, Chicago politics, you scratch my back…style, or was he pursuing some other personal agenda with his lightening quick exit out of Dodge?
At any rate, Blagojevich was arrested early this morning at his home for being criminally stupid, even though, according to Reuters, the official charges were mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery:
The 51-year-old Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were each charged in a federal complaint with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and a second count of solicitation of bribery.
In his statement, Fitzgerald said the charges “allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism.”
Blagojevich was accused of threatening to withhold state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of the Chicago Cubs’ baseball home, Wrigley Field, in order “to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical” of him, Fitzgerald said.
However, Politico reports that Blagojevich was apparently less than happy with Obama, who he refers to as a “motherf*cker.” It seems Obama’s reluctance to “pay to play” for the “juicy plum” he handed to Blago rubbed the good guv the wrong way:
“F**k him,” Blagjoveich says of Obama during a lengthy call with top aides and his wife recorded on November 10th, “For nothing? F**k him.”
In another section of the complaint, Blagojevich expresses exasperation that Obama and his team aren’t willing to offer him an inducement in exchange for appointing an aide, apparently Valerie Jarrett, to the Senate.
Blagojevich “said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but ‘they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them,’” says the complaint.
Blago, who certainly qualifies as stupid, given that he engaged in this wreckless behavior knowing, as did everyone, that he and his wife have been under investigation for years. Also, Blago, who replaced former, and now imprisoned, Republican Governor George Ryan by pledging to reform corruption, recently joined Illinois Senator Dick Durbin in an appeal to have Ryan’s sentence commuted by George Bush.
For all those who say groping a cardboard cutout of the Secretary of State-designate is no big deal, consider this. Women have put up with so much shit this election cycle that we’re just sick of it. At least during the primaries and general election, a weak case could be made that what was at play was just warring camps using, and accusing each other of using, the dirty tricks of racism vs. sexism to some misguided idea of political advantage, but at this point in the game, there’s just no excuse. Favreau’s bad judgment, leading to his own bad luck, is that he got caught indulging in sexist behavior just for the fun of it. Well, enough is enough. This time, women should not “get over it.” And, nobody should ask us to.
Screw James Carville, and the “just havin’ a little fun wit’ cardboard” excuse. If the little word thief is so repentant and apologetic, why is the offensive photo still up on Favreau’s Facebook page?
Ya gotta love Rev. Jeremiah Wright, bless his heart. I’m not kidding, ya gotta love him ‘cuz he won’t go away and stay gone so you can forget him. Like the proverbial bad penny, he keeps popping up, as full of piss and vinegar as ever. The Good Reverend was back ridin’ dirty in the Trinity United pulpit, celebrating the church’s 47th anniversary this Sunday, full of forgiveness for his wayward child’s “bad decision” to distance himself from his Unca Jerry…
“The hatred of the media and the haters in politics may have caused him to distance himself from us, but the love of Christ will never allow me to distance myself from him,” Wright said of Obama. “I can no more disown him than I can disown any other child of mine who makes [a] bad decision. He made a bad decision, but he’s still my child.”
“Jesus said upon this rock I will build–listen to the promise–my church,” he said. “And the gates of Hell–listen to the promise–the gates of Hell–neither ABC nor CNN–the gates of Hell–neither Hannity nor O’Reilly–the gates of Hell–neither Time, Time magazine, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune … the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Nothing will be impossible with God.”
But it was “dumb broad,” Elizabeth Hasselback’s ignorance of history that really got Wright ticked:
He implied that his previous use of derogatory language to describe Italians in a past sermon referred to the Roman oppression Luke condemned.
“Emperor Augustus in Rome–that’s in Italy, dizzy blond on the View,” Wright said, presumably referring to conservative television personality Elisabeth Hasselback, who has railed about Wright on the ABC daytime talk show.
Obviously, Hasselback could use a few pointers from “Jeremiah the Historian” who made a point to commemorate the Japanese civilians who died at the hands of America’s predatory military:
At the 11 a.m. service, Wright belittled “baby milk believers,” who, he said, suffer a delusion that politics don’t belong in the pulpit. He pointed out that “Luke the evangelist, not Wright the radical” lambasted the oppressive policies of the Roman government in the Gospel story that recounts Jesus’ life.
“Any preacher who dares to point out the simple ugly facts found in every field imaginable is demonized as volatile, controversial, incendiary, inflammatory, anti-American and radical,” Wright said, taking time out to note the thousands of Japanese civilians who died 67 years to the day when American warplane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. (Actually, Dec. 7 marks the day when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.)
Say what you will, he’s always entertaining.
Btw, ABC News is reporting that John McCain quite possibly blew the election by adhering to some sort of “politics as gentlemanly debate” code of ethics, and refusing to even show an ad going after Wright during the campaign. While I’m not sure a concentrated effort to discredit Obama via Wright would have turned the tide, I’m still pissed about all the good Wright rants McCain deprived us of.
PUMA bloggers are having fun at the expense of the bewildered living another day in the life of the Barack Obama vs. his “base” non-drama drama. Why the peace, love and internet “progressive/liberal/left” is in a snit defies logic. Weren’t these guys listening during the primaries, caucuses and general election? Or was the din in their echo chamber too loud?
Like Bible thumpers cherry picking passages, you could probably find Obama quotes to back up any position you want to take, if you Google long enough. Far from being some crusading straight shooter, Obama has always been a clever double talker. That is, when he’s on script, or in other words, reading or submitting ghost-written speeches. Off script, his words are often laughable, yet, equally adaptable, just much harder to decipher. “Uh, ah, above my pay grade…” can mean anything you want it to.
However, when the cardboard titty groper is putting words in his mouth, Obama becomes a double talking linguistic maestro, using language to magically transport an easily transfixed listener/reader to the brink of logical thought, only to employ a deft “sleight of tongue/pen” that metaphorically yanks the rational rug deftly from beneath one’s feet. Thus, true believing KoolAid drunks are left dazed and dazzled, while the mentally sober, upon noting the reaction of the bamboozled, are generally moved to hurl, immediately after muttering, “‘the fuck did he just say?”
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” is just stupid. Where have “we” been while “we” were waiting? And, how come “we” didn’t see “us?” That’s just one example of the silly shit he spews regularly and gets a pass for. “Save or create at least two and a half million jobs” is another doozy. Pay no attention to the fact that he just said a couple million jobs were at risk, or that we’ve lost more jobs than that in the last year, just think about the good times. “Now” is always “the time.” That’s what makes it “now.”
The fact that Obama never says anything he can’t wiggle out of, usually in the same sentence, has been lost on his faithful since Day One. He’s “always said” he was against “dumb wars” in the same speeches he was promoting other, presumably “smart” ones. October, 2, 2002:
Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.
He has “always said” he would “end the war” in Iraq as much, and as soon, as he could, only to re-deploy troops to Afghanistan. Only a braindead, pie-in-the-sky optimist could have ever taken anything he said as being “anti-war.” And yet, though repeatedly warned, some people feel cheated. Well, boo-hoo.
Obama even spelled out the kind of shape-shifting “commitments” he was likely to make to the goodfellas on Kos in 2005. In a diary entry he submitted regarding his position on the John Roberts confirmation, Obama “wrote:”
Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more “centrist.” In fact, I think the whole “centrist” versus “liberal” labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the “centrist” label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don’t think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don’t work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).
Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of “framing,” although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It’s a matter of actually having faith in the American people’s ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.
The “Obama is a liberal” noise came primarily from Republicans, not Obama. Anybody who heard/read anything different then, from what he’s doing/saying now, deserves whatever they get.
Can you say “Kennedy?” Talk about “entitled.” And, oh, Ted Kennedy’s fair haired boy did. Between “rising oceans” and “shining lights,” the “time had come” to “change” from the “old Washington” of the “Bush/Clinton dynasty.” Hell, “those Clintons” were so desperate to get back into the Oval Office they thought they rightfully owned, that poor Barack Obama didn’t know who he was running against sometimes. The mainstream media, bully blogger boyz and other Barack Obama minions, (think Father Pfleger) had a field day yelling about how Hillary Clinton wasn’t “entitled” just because she was a “Clinton.” In fact, Hillary wasn’t “entitled” at all, the only reason she even was in politics was because people just felt sorry for her. Hillary was forced to defend herself from those “Bush/Clinton dynasty” accusations throughout her presidential campaign, leveled mostly by teeny-bopper “change” enthusiasts bemoaning the fact that only two families had held the presidency “their whole lives.” No matter how thoroughly debunked; the “evil Clinton dynasty must die” theme lived on. The fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton have about as much in common with George Bush I and II, as Oprah Winfrey has with Sarah Palin, was of no apparent consequence. Even Bill “Judas” Richardson chimed in with the Clinton “entitlement” happy crappy in an attempt to justify his betrayal:
James Carville told the New York Times that Richardson, a former member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet, had committed “an act of betrayal,” adding that it “came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out [Jesus] for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.”
“I’m not going to get in the gutter like that,” Richardson responded on “Fox News Sunday.” “And you know, that’s typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.”
But, say the magic woid, “Kennedy,” and, well, that’s a different a-okay story. Now, the idea of “Sweet Caroline” continuing the “family legacy” has the blessing of the world, her Uncle Ted and the press. CNN:
Caroline Kennedy, who spent most of her life looking to steer clear of the spotlight, is capping off a year of unusually public — and political — activity with interest in the Senate seat that would be vacated by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton.
And her interest in that seat could mean the continuation of a Kennedy legacy in the Senate that began 56 years ago with the election of her father, John F. Kennedy, as the junior senator from Massachusetts.
But reached on Friday night, Eleanor Smeal, the president of Feminist Majority, said that if Ms. Kennedy decided to seek the job, she would have to go back to her board to discuss whom they would support going forward.
“I feel that her record is extremely strong. We know she gets things done,” Ms. Smeal said of Ms. Maloney. “But there’s no question we’ll go back to the board. You’re talking to someone who thinks Ted Kennedy is the most effective senator there.”
In other words, her name is Kennedy and Unca Ted wants it. The New York Post comes out and says it:
Powerful senator and family patriarch Ted Kennedy has been working back channels to promote niece Caroline as the replacement for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Senate, family sources told The Post.
The elder Kennedy (D-Mass.), who’s battling brain cancer, has sent word to Gov. Paterson’s office that Caroline Kennedy, 51, has contacts and family connections that would mean legislation affecting New York would receive prompt attention, family sources said.
Caroline Kennedy has even less political experience than Barack Obama, and that’s saying something. Sure, she lived in the White House when she was about six years old, but, as we know, things that happened when you were a little kid don’t count. Despite the fact that when HRC decided she wanted to be president, she went out and earned a Senate seat then worked her ass off in it, I expect Team O to trot Richardson, the baby blogger bullies, and all the other Clinton detractors out in the next few days to mount a “rah-rah Caroline Kennedy entitled dynasty heiress good thing” campaign to give her an unearned Senate seat, a virtual lock on it in 2010, and a leg up on a future White House run. Not just because Caroline is a “Kennedy;” mainly because she’s not a “Clinton. Gotta keep that torch passing from Kennedy family member to Kennedy family-sanctioned, duly-anointed, Enlightened One, back to legitimate family member, and do whatever is necessary to prevent another “Clinton” from sneaking in there when nobody’s looking, ever again. You never know what “those people” might have planned for Chelsea. They’re sneaky, you know.
Even though, I seem to remember that Kennedy “entitlement” thing didn’t work out too well for Ted’s presidential hopes, did it?
President-elect Barack Obama’s personal news network MSNBO, says the Prom King President wants you to tell him how to run the country, specifically by having holiday, “how to fix health care” house parties. And, oooo goody, Tom Daschle just might attend yours and report back. How fun, huh?
In between the tree trimming and gift-giving, President-elect Barack Obama is inviting Americans to spend part of the holiday season talking about health care — and report back to him.
As he gears up for major health reform legislation next year, Obama is encouraging average Americans to host informal gatherings to brainstorm about how to improve the U.S. system.
The sessions, which could take place at a party, over a Menorah-lighting or at the annual Christmas cookie bake-off, are to be held Dec. 15 to Dec. 31. Former senator Thomas A. Daschle, Obama’s point person on health, will attend at least one and prepare a detailed report, complete with video, to present to the next president.
By seeking broad public input early in the process, the incoming administration hopes to avoid some of the mistakes of President Clinton’s failed initiative 15 years ago, said Daschle, who is also Obama’s choice for secretary of health and human services.
You remember, don’t you guys? Everybody knows that the reason we haven’t been enjoying affordable health care these past fourteen-fifteen years is because Hillary Clinton, with her hubris, the witch, didn’t have sense enough to ask us for permission and suggestions. Makes you wonder why America’s TelePrompTer Idol would even ask his precious donors to help retire that cow’s debt, especially after all the time he’s been over-milking them for his own benefit. I mean, really, how much money is all these soon to be unemployed “small donors” even capable of generating? They’ve got the DeaNC, the DSCC, the DCCC and all the other Democratic election entities facing a shortfall to bail out too, for Goodness’ sakes. And, let’s face it, it’s gonna be a while before the new Lord of the Thieves will be able to put ‘em all to work fixing potholes and installing computers in schools and stuff.
It makes you wonder though, why bother with government programs and whatnot at all? Since the people who voted for the Community Organizer-In-Chief are so smart and have so much money to throw around, why not just tap the database, unload all the country’s problems on them and let ‘em donate and suggest us all out of crisis?
Okay, so I’m surfin’ my favorite PUMA sites, (hmmmm hmmm hmmm, la di da di da) and I of course end up on the Confluence, (doen’t everyone, sooner or later, darling?) and there, in the comment section of a post by Dakinikat, is a reference to Dan Lacey, Painter of Pancakes. Naturally I am intrigued. It seems Mr. Lacey, who usually paints people with pancakes on their heads, has painted a portrait of a nude Barack Obama atop a unicorn. Why, you ask. I have to admit I don’t know why Mr. Lacey deviated from his norm and left the pancakes off this time.
This is not just harmless, innocent, frat-boy immaturity on display. This is highly offensive behavior, indicative of the complete lack of respect towards women we as a nation seem to be okay with. And, I’m no raging feminist. Not because I don’t think that women get a raw deal most of the time (the whole “we’re more likely to die at the hands of lovers and husbands, and get infected with HIV while in ‘monogamous‘ relationships” thing pisses me off, royally) it’s just that I’m not much of a “joiner.” That’s why I had no problem whatsoever leaving the Democratic party when they pissed me off. No Party Affiliation works fine for me. I’ve never understood why you have to adopt an “-ism” and find a bunch of other people who agree with you before you could feel comfortable having an opinion. If I think something sucks, I’ll say so, and I don’t care how many people form how many groups to “advance my position.”
That picture sucks.
Hillary Clinton is somebody’s mother, and old enough to be Favreau’s. Would the defenders of this misogynistic display be comfortable substituting a cutout of their own mother with hers in that photo?
Mrs. Clinton is also a former First Lady, a United States Senator, and Secretary of State-designate. She’s a lawyer, human rights advocate and dedicated public servant. More importantly, she’s a human being and deserves respect, especially from snot-nosed, overpaid asswipes who make their living ripping off DisneyLand Hall of Presidents animatronics speeches and using them to help create the illusion of “Great Moments With Mr. Never Accomplished Much.”
Mr. Favreau should grow up. By rights, he should do it on the ever-growing unemployment line, but, we all know he can’t be fired, to do so would render the TelePrompTer Messiah mute. CNN’s Campbell Brown should also be fired, just for being an idiot. While Brown gets that Favreau is an idiot, too, she has the nerve to take Senator Clinton to task for an equally idiotic statement made on Clinton’s behalf by an aide, Phillippe Reines, who himself deserves to be fired for his flippant, “too cutesy by half”
“Sen. Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon’s obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application”
remark. Clinton hasn’t said anything, and I doubt if she personally authorized that particular statement. It’s too obviously a “guy” response, in fact, it reads like a gay guy response. It tries too hard to be dispassionately PC about something for which there is no political correctness, while simultaneously being dismissive of the potential for female outrage and supportive of the bad male behavior. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay guys or the remarks they make, unless they’re stupid and being attributed to Senator Clinton, who is simply not stupid, nor a gay guy. But why should we expect hacks like Brown to investigate, or try to verify the story and risk letting the facts stop her and the rest of today’s “journalists” from making shit up and blaming people for stupid stuff as they see fit?
Like I said, I’m not much of a “joiner,” so I’m not going to ask anybody to march, or protest, or do much of anything besides ask themselves a question. Are you comfortable with what a picture of two young men pretending to force-feed a woman alcohol while they grope her private parts says about our society? And does knowing the identity of the people in the photo make matters better, or worse?
Poor, misunderstood Bill Ayers. Everybody just loves picking on him. At least, that seems to be the theme of his current “Those Mean Old Republicans and All Those Other People Who Don’t Reflexively Sniff At The Jock of The Most Worthy TelePrompTer Reader of His Frat-Boy Alter Ego’s Speeches Between Waffles, Are Picking On Me” tour.
The latest installment of the “Ayers/Obama Drama” is an autobiographical op-ed New York Times piece entitled, “The Real Bill Ayers” in which the mischaracterized “unrepentant terrorist” with his almost pathological need to be right about everything, attempts to set the record straight. He’s not “unrepentant,” and he’s not a “terrorist.” So, there.
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
See? He never hurt anybody. Those pesky bombs just sashayed into his friend’s apartment to a Disney-esque flute solo ala Fantasia and set themselves off just to make him look bad. And who cares if the New York Times once reported that the Weather Underground was founded before the Greenwich Village thing? So, what? It was just a Sept. 11, 2001 interview to promote his fictionalized non-fiction book, “Fugitive Days.” Who would believe anything in a story like that, huh?
Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight — antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village.
This Obamaunveiled PDF file, Weather Underground Timeline, clears things up a bit. According to them, the Weathermen were an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society founded in 1968, who changed their name to the Weather Underground in 1970 after the “Days of Rage” when they went into hiding, or “underground,” duh.
After The Leaders Of The Weathermen Went Into Hiding, They Changed Their Name To The Weather
Underground. “The police charged that one of the leaders of the ‘days of rage’ was Miss. Dohrn. After the riots in
Chicago Miss. Dohrn went underground with the rest of the leadership of the Weathermen. The name was later
changed to the Weather Underground.” (Josh Barbanel, “Bernardine Dohrn Reportedly Seen On West Side,” The New York Times, 11/27/80)
Who cares how many sources claim that the name change was just a bit of a cosmetic application designed to reflect the existing group’s new circumstances, and not the birth of a new movement? And, who really cares if the move underground was motivated by the lighthearted, yet accidental, bomb-romp that killed his girlfriend, (ooops) or, by his even more radical current wife, Bernadine Dohn’s “Days of Rage” involvement and subsequent fear of arrest? Isn’t that just “splitting Ayers?”
This is Barack Obama’s ventriloquist speechwriter kickin’ back and chilling wit’ his homey after a long day of putting words in his boss’ mouth via TelePrompTer. Favreau, recently announced to be Chief Official Thought Gatherer and “Um” Remover” for the new administration, was just hangin’ out, feeling up a cardboard cutout of the newly appointed Secretary of State; typical Saturday night wordsmith hijinks. Too bad this photo appeared on his Facebook page long enough for Al Kamen of the Washington Post to get hold of it:
Question No. 58 in the transition team vetting document for the Obama White House asks that applicants: “Please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g. Facebook, My Space, etc.)”
Question No. 63 asks that applicants “please provide any other information … that could … be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect.”
For a while there this afternoon, President-elect Barack Obama’s immensely talented chief speechwriter, 27-year-old Jon Favreau, might have been pondering how to address that question.
That’s when some interesting photos of a recent party he attended — including one where he’s dancing with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of secretary of state-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and another where he’s placed his hand on the cardboard former first lady’s chest while a friend is offering her lips a beer — popped up on Facebook for about two hours. The photos were quickly taken down — along with every other photo Favreau had of himself on the popular social networking site, save for one profile headshot.
Guess not everybody on the TelePrompter Prince’s staff hates Hillary. At least Favreau didn’t call her a monster.
NOTE: I changed the title because PUMA Pac has the story up with the same title I had.
President-elect Barack Obama’s aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.
Why?
The New York Times article which features that opening sentence never does answer that question. In fact, it reads like snark. Basically, the whole thing is just a list of possible venues for this…dare I say it?…pointless flucking speech. If you set it to music, it would probably sound like “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.”
Well, he could speak in Riyadh, Brad
Talk in Kuwait, Kate
Maybe the Maldives, Jeeves
Or even Tashkent
I was going to go on with it and rhyme “Amman” next, but I wasn’t sure if I should use “Dan” or “John” and decided it was just as stupid to continue as it was to read the whole friggin’ stupid-assed NYT piece. By the way, Helene Cooper, who wrote the thing, and the folks she “consulted” decided this…speech (wtf?!) should take place in Cairo. Why? Why the fluck not?
And, if this story isn’t bizarre enough, (why the hell should the new president make a point of going to “an Islamic capitol” in his first 100 days in office, to make a…speech? wtf?) Politico is reporting that The TelePrompTer Messiah has been planning this for a couple of years, and telling people about it. Claiming to be in possession of an email from a donor who attended a fundraiser in California last year, Ben Smith quotes:
“Obama told the 20 or so of us at breakfast that ‘his first trip as President would be to Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country,’” Leary recalled.
“He then said when he got off [Air Force One], he would say ‘xxxxxxxx’ – which we, of course, didn’t understand,” Leary emailed. “He said that it was Indonesian (which he speaks) for, ‘I am back, dudes.’”
Who knew he spoke “Indonesian?” When he was going around telling everybody to learn a second language, he never mentioned that little tidbit.
Lord, please tell me this is snark.
Otherwise, knowing that the staunch Christian guy who once called the Muslim call to prayer, “one of the prettiest sounds on earth,” and who once “slipped up” and said, “my Muslim faith,” has been planning to give a shout-out to the Muslim world as soon as he gets in office, might make some people think that this guy’s got some ’splainin’ to do.
That Barney Frank is one funny guy. Even when he’s bitching about one thing or another, which is most of the time, the House Financial Services Committee Chairman is good for a few yucks. Right now, he’s kinda miffed at the new president-elect for insisting on remaining president-elect when it’s convenient, and acting like King of the Freaking World when it’s not. It’s the “I’m not really president yet, guys,” thing that’s got Frank’s knickers twisted, though, especially when it comes to the financial crisis. According to AP-Yahoo News:
“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”
Ol’ Barn’s not the only Dem miffed, and talking about it, either. It’s just that Chris Dodd…
“The Obama team has to step up,” Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and one of the lead negotiators, said Nov. 21 in Hartford, Conn. “In the minds of the people, this is the Obama administration. I don’t think we can wait until January 20.”
…and Carl Levin…
“It would be very helpful if the president-elect would become more involved in resolving the issue over the source of the funds,” he said. “I want him to offer his assistance. He is a person who can really bring people together.”
…are not nearly as cute when they’re pissed. Lord King ObiWanNaBePresidentINO’s BFF, B.F., also takes issue with The Lyin King’s “post partisan” poop:
“It is a grave mistake to assume that parties are irrelevant to this process,” he said. “My one difference with the president-elect, about whom I am very enthusiastic, is when he talks about being post-partisan.
“Having lived with this very right wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression,” Frank said.
The reason Barack Obama has not, as yet, produced his long-form vault copy birth certificate is because he can’t. Not because he doesn’t have it, or have access to it. He does. Not because he was born on some far-off Kenyan goat farm. He wasn’t. And, it’s not because it lists his father’s name as Frank Marshall Davis or Malcolm X. It doesn’t. The reason is far more simple, yet simultaneously complex, than that.
The Obamessiah cannot produce a verifiable birth record because he was born in a manger on the Big Island to a Teenage Virgin Mother. Three wise men, Curly, Larry and Moe, or Manny, Moe and Jack, depending on who you believe, walked to Hawaii from the mainland, following a bright, eastern star. Took them forever, by the way. Anyway, you can see how this information, were it to be confirmed, would open a huge can of worms, with global implications. Given that the Teenage Mother in question was Caucasian, and her virgin-born offspring is obviously not, imagine the back pedaling the Vatican would have to do. And, while the truth would permanently put to rest those persistent Muslim rumors, it muddies up the whole “right of return for Ethiopian Jews” thing. A “black” president is one thing, but living, breathing, strong circumstantial evidence of the ethnicity of God? Puh-leeze.
Therefore, we are unlikely to see any definitive proof of the Obamessiah’s divine birth in our lifetimes. We will just have to forget about all those lawsuits, and take the fact of our “wondrous joy to behold” on faith.
That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it. I don’t care what outlandish stories he’s pushing.
“Contrary to the rumors you’ve heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton, sent here by my father Jor-El, to save the planet Earth.”
Why should the federal government spend one dime of taxpayer money bailing companies out of jams of their own making? Whatever happened to “you made your own bed…”? Whether we start with the reverse Robin Hoods of the real estate/housing/mortgage-gouging Ponzi schemers in the “lending” industry and all the attendant theives in their RICO caliber conspiracy, or focus on the “Big 3″ automakers now singing, “waaah, waaah, waaah,” in unison and harmony in front of Congress, the fact remains that they knew long ago that if they kept doing what they were doing, they’d end up where they are. Duh.
Supposedly, because of the ACORN-inspired Community Reinvestment Act “requirement” that the lending institutions lend money to poor people, the put-upon bankers just had to issue “zero down,” 100% financing, double mortgages to anybody who came through the door, and encourage them to pay too much for houses they couldn’t afford, since they could always take out another “home improvement” loan to replace perfectly good ceramic tile countertops, plain Jane white appliances, and linoleum tile floors, with the far superior granite countertops, super slick stainless steel appliances and chi-chi slate/terrazzo tile or other hip, urban flooring, in order to further inflate the already inflated home prices and pass them on to the next newly stiffed potential homeowners they were assured they would be able to sell their over-priced “investments” to in the very near future at a nifty, hefty profit. Now, these poor, put-upon “lenders” are so surprized that the bottom has fallen out of these “sound lending principled” scams, since of course, they couldn’t “see this coming,” (I mean, who could?) that they just gotta have a gazillion dollars of taxpayer money just to get by. And, it stands to reason that if these “lenders” can no longer afford to “lend” at the same super-inflated rates they were enjoying so much profit from, well, then, nobody can loan anybody any money to buy anything. Right? So, it naturally follows that, the big, bad auto companies, who have lending arms of their own, at least one of which was involved in home loans, and, who aren’t predisposed to loaning money to people to buy their own product anymore, just have to make up the shortfall with taxpayer bailout money.
Bite. Me. Hard.
“Nobody’s buying our cars anymore, waaah. They want smaller, fuel-efficient foreign cars.” Bullshit. According to a Reuter’s blog article today, Americans aren’t buying anybody’s crap:
Unfortunately, neither loans nor the companies’ promises address the basic problem: Americans just aren’t buying cars, whether GM, Toyota, Ford, or Nissan.
Consider the November sales data, showing GM ’s sales down 41% from a year earlier, Ford’s down 30%, and Chrysler’s down 47%. Foreign brands were hurt, too: Toyota down 34%, Honda 32%, Nissan 42%, Hyundai 40%.
The truth is, there is no “out.” The financial industry scammed the public and now that all the co-conspirators are caught with their pants down and their hands elbow deep in the cookie jar, they want to scream “victim” so they don’t get the spanking they deserve. Union concessions, private jet sales, and other “belt-tightening” measures amount to spitting in the ocean. Until the housing market prices begin to more accurately reflect their value, everybody will continue to lose money and try to blame eveybody else.
Either bail everybody, including homeowners, out, or let ‘em eat cakeshit ____ (fill in the blank with the expletive you prefer.)
The election of Barack Obama as president just might be the funniest tragedy-in-the-making in world history. As I watch the mainstream media cheerleaders who worked so diligently to elect him, (some pseudo/quasi “journalists” even seeing it as their job to help him) now watching him be exactly as he’s always been, and asking themselves, “my God, what have we done?” I can’t help but laugh. Whaddaya mean, “what have you done?” You’ve encouraged the majority of the voting public, as well as (let you tell it) the entire freaking world to elect a guy you studiously avoided finding anything out about. And, not only that, you didn’t let anybody else find anything out about him, either. He certainly wasn’t telling, and you guys in the MSM weren’t even curious about that.
There was a time when the surest way to get the media and press to investigate a guy was for that guy to act like he was hiding something. The only thing more certain to get their attention was for a guy to issue a “catch me if you can, na nanna na na,” challenge. Obama did both repeatedly, simply saying, “I’m not telling you anything,” whenever he was asked a question he didn’t like. Of course, he never said it directly, he usually just whined, “can’t I eat my waffle?” or “c’mon guys, I a’reddy answered like, what, eight questions?” and left. And our previously, notoriously nosy press corps said, “okay, everybody, he said, no,” and left, too. That was usually it. Oh, until the official Obama Denial Team issued an official Obama denial. Then that was really it.
“He says he’s not a Muslim, he just doesn’t listen in churches he’s not really interested in, unless going to them can advance his career.” “He said he doesn’t have any records from the Illinois senate.” “He said his dad was a British subject, but he’s a natural born citizen.” “He told us he went to Columbia, he got into Harvard, he must be smart. We don’t need to see his transcripts.” On and on it went, every question answered in the press with “The Obama Camp Issues A Denial, That’s Good Enough For Us!” headlines. “Of course he doesn’t ‘pal around with‘ terrorists who just happen to live down the block and used to work with him a lot. He’s only eight years old, and they’re not terrorists anymore, and anyway, he’s got a lot of friends, so what?” “What’s it to you if he wrote letters for a guy who’s going to jail and let people freeze in houses our guy helped him buy? Yeah, they had a deal on his own house but, gee whiz, it’s no big deal.” “He answered eight questions and now lookit, his waffle’s cold! See what you did?” I’ve heard of “Big Brother” but this kind of over-protective, surrogate parent role for the media is a little much, even for Orwell.
Now, this stellar press/media industry is amazed that people don’t trust them anymore. Go figure. Even people who allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the bullshit they spewed resent them. And now, these brilliant wordsmiths, pundits, analysts, commentators and investigators seem bewitched, bothered and befuddled by their own bullshit.
Funny as hell.
Here’s a newsflash fuh ya. You shamelessly promoted a hologram of a Pet Rock/Mr. Potato Head. He’s admitted to being a “Rorschach test” and a “blank screen,” and you guys projected constantly shifting images of everybody from Ghandi to Elvis to Martin Luther King to JFK/Lincoln/Roosevelt/God to Kermit the Frog and Norman Rockwell’s granny on him and pretended there was a “there there.” Well, there, there, honey, there ain’t no “there.” And those of you who are my age and older, the boomers, are the worst. You guys should really know better. What you thought was a toy when you were five and later realized was just a potato, what you marveled at as a brilliant marketing ploy when you were a teenager, knowing all along when you weren’t stoned that this new “toy” selling like hotcakes was just a rock in a box, was re-packaged and reissued in Barack Obama, and you fell for it again.
He’s not even a real rock or a potato, he just “evokes the wondrous spirit of an innocent child playing with one.” Or some other such heart-tugging, hackneyed, platitudinous nonsense. And you bought it. Hook, line and sinker. I “can’t believe you ate the whole thing!” Shoulda called Mikey, he not only hates everything, at least he wasn’t stupid. Now, you and all the other duped and deluded denizens of their own imaginary mental dungeons are trying mighty hard not to look as silly as you feel. Progressives, bullybloggerboyz, op-ed columnists and, funniest yet, the conservatives who fell so hard for the snow job that they abandoned their own selves to vote for “hopey, happy, joy, joy,” are all suddenly consumed with “who is this guy” questions they feel compelled to share with us all, assuming we all now feel their self-induced pain.
I love slow news days; you can travel off the beaten path and find real nuggets of gems among the huge boulders of cowpies that usually compose the unexciting filler that passes for “news” in lieu of…well, real news “news.” “The automakers are still trying to file bankruptcy in Congress to avoid filing real bankruptcy in court like they should be forced to since it’s their own damned fault they’re broke.” Yawn. “The Obamessiah is really probably for sure going to appoint Judas Richarson to Secretary of Commerce, like they’ve been reporting for weeks, since all the good jobs are filled by now, and ‘cuz, after all, he is Hispanic and it looks good.” Big whoop. Who cares what a bunch of governors asked for that they’re not gonna get? Or, who’s blaming who now for that India thing? So, Saxby Chambliss won in Georgia, and the current ex-president’s brother is thinking about running for the Senate? Big freakin’ deal! Some guy in Philly worked out with Obama!
The webpage for the local NBC affiliate in Chicago’s headline screams “I Worked Out With Obama!” The sub-headline says, “When the Obama buzz started, Stepp Stewart put his stinky clothes back on.” Stepp, a Philadelphia choreographer, was finishing up his own workout when he heard the One And Only President-Elect Of The World was coming. What’s a dancer to do? Well, here’s Stepp’s breathtaking account in his own words. Trust me, if you’ve got a pulse, you’ll be riveted:
“There has been no moment like this morning! I can’t stop talking about it. My mouth is moving a mile a minute.
This morning, I was late! I was gonna be on the treadmill (at the Philadelphia Sports Club on Hamilton Street) by 6. It’s more like 6:30.
I run. I’m done. I go to the shower, get all cleaned up and I’m just about to put my lotion on and I hear a rumor that someone is coming. Obama! And he’s gonna be here in 30 minutes!
Girl, I put my sweat-drenched, funky-smellin’ clothes right back on, got right back on the floor and started fakin’ a workout!
All the sudden, people are eyeballing the door. Here comes the secret service.Then here comes Barack, walking up with a baseball cap on. He stops at the front desk. All the sudden, there’s a line of people.
But here I was, sitting on a spin bike that was broken! It’s a prop. But it’s right by the door. I am faking it again, so I can have a good spot at the door!
I get off the bike. He looks me dead in the eye.
He shook my hand. I held onto it as long as I could.
HIS HANDS WERE SOFT AS BUTTER!
Girl, couldn’t you just plotz? I know I could. Chil’, how could you not, knowing that Stepp saw Obama, dressed in black sweat pants and a grey, long-sleeved shirt (presumably just as funky and sweat-stained as Stepp’s by the end) read a USA Today after they ran on side-by-side treadmills? And it was soooo clever of Stepp to stop fakin’ the funk on the broke spin bike and grab the adjacent treadmill after some silly girrrrllll had the nerve to get off when King Lord ObieWanNaRuleDaWorld came in. Can you believe it? Me neither, boo. I think I’m gonna have to go lay down, girlfriend, see if I can get my heartrate back down to normal, honey.
In announcing his “centrist, hawkish,” National Security team today, President-Elect, Barack Obama spoke, predictably, of “a new dawn of American leadership” and said, “the time has come for a new beginning.”
There is no question that the soaring rhetoric employed by Barack Obama, brazenly read from a TelePrompTer or not-so-discreetly placed index cards, reflecting not necessarily the views of the candidate, his handlers or scriptwriter, but of what those entities believe the nameless, poll-taking focus groups representing the “will of the people” want to hear, have been successful. Seemingly obsessed with clock watching, “now is the time,” the “fierce urgency of now,” “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” and similarly chronologically based phrases have been used to great effect, evoking a spirit of awakening to a new day, a better time, a different place, a new beginning. That these meaningless promises are so much total bullshit is also beyond question. Yet, for a lot of Americans, especially black Americans, it’s just the kind of bullshit we have indeed been waiting for.
Negative images of black Americans, predominantly young black males, litter the nation’s information highways. Coming of age in the era of the braggadocious boasting of “gangsta rappers,” alternating between lyrics full of swaggering, blustering claims of “wannabe ballers, shot callers”, and lamentations of their fears of early, violent death, to the buffoonish, minstrel-esque characterizations embraced by “sitcoms” and “standup comedians” as well as supposedly more mainstream, artistic, cinematic endeavors, it’s hard for young black men of this generation to find anything in our popular culture that reinforces anything positive about themselves and their lives.
Now, add to the mix a “black” man pursuing the highest office in the land, symbolically superimposing the image of positive potential over the media-generated “reality” of limited access to success and respect, and you have a powerful dynamic, whether the actual possibilities have increased, or the situation, for any but the new symbolic “black” man has really changed. In other words, while their lives haven’t changed, the lives they can now allow themselves to dream about have. Thus, even if this “symbol of possibility” sees fit to demean the very men he purports to represent in order to achieve their “shared” goal of ethnic respectability, it is excused as a necessary means to an end. “Pookie” and “RayRay” will accept being called irresponsible ne’er-do-wells as long as it furthers the cause of their “alpha male leader to the Promised Land.” Never mind the fact that the “Pookies and RayRays” AlphaMale needs to achieve his personal goals recieve no tangible benefit, the symbolic validation they get from basking in the glow of his victory is more than sufficient. It is essential.
So, the “promise” of the “dream” is said to be upon us “now” if we “believe” that the “time” we “have waited” for our long held “hopes” for “change” to “come” “has arrived” now that “we” know “we can.” Or, like schoolboys not invited to the snooty dance who are told by the one guy in the group who did get invited, “pretend you don’t know me, once I get in, I’ll open the door for you. And even if I can’t, I’ll sneak you out some food and tell you about it, later,” more often than not, the buddies left outside with their noses pressed to the window, have had to content themselves with being friends with the guy who can get in.
Sadly, given the current landscape of black America, that is enough.
Even sadder still, the same con worked for many other Americans, too. “I am the symbol of your hopes and dreams,” only works if people feel marginalized. Fortunately for the Democrats, half the country seemed to be able to be convinced they felt that way after “eight years of the same failed policies.” Empathetic identification goes a long way.
Those marginalized Americans, be they black, poor, progressive, “minority” or whatever, can expect more of the same “platitudes without promises” in the future. For those whom such empty words were enough, they will soon find that’s all they get. You got your “change,” the “promise” was fulfilled. Now the work must be done. Dreamers and hopers would only get in the way of actually governing. So when the president you elected, faced with the same daunting, overwhelming problems presidents always face, responds in a similar fashion to the other men who served before him, be content with your dream.
The “new day” is indeed here. Too bad it comes with the same old shit.
Is the President-In-Training really the Obamessiah? Or, just the black Obamessiah? Are the people who believe that he is certifiable? Is there any evidence that “Obamania” is finally, slowly, being played out? That question is being asked in a myriad of ways in an interesting variety of sources. Citing San Francisco Chronicle writer Mark Morford’s infamous “Lightworker” article as the height of Obama foolishness, Pajamas Media says the phenomenon they call “Obamamania” is “on the wane.” While Morford was either clearly delusional, or clearly having fun at Obama’s expense, his over-the-top testament to Obamanipotence was not the only example of hero worship at the feet of The Precious by a long shot.
The Chicago Tribune cites many others, including websites that spoof ObamaLove, in their “Obama: Was He Sent To Save Us?” article today. I’m not sure, but I think they think that the answer to their headline question is “not.”
CNN asks, “Which Hero Do We Want Obama To Be?” They limit their examination of Obama fascination to those who insist upon comparing the unproven, untested, some say unqualified, former junior senator with the short resume to former presidential greats like Kennedy, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Clinton, and conclude, basically, who the hell knows if he can be like any of them since nobody ever bothered to vet him in the first place?
While it is fun to lampoon the guy who invokes the “oceans to rise” and “lights to shine down” and the folks who bought into the “hopey dopey happy crappy” he spews, it’s even more fun to mock the “serious journalists” who are only now seeing the humor of the errors of their own ways. And, though it is good to see that some of the sources of the worst forms of suckupitude are finally “seeing the light,” ya gotta wonder, what took those guys so long? Maybe soon they’ll “wake up and get” the whole bogus “over-exploitation of the black half” national faux racial angst thing, as well as the “you’re likable enough, sweetie, so get over it” what sexism? thing too.
But hey, deprogramming a cult is a lot like overcoming addiction, right?
It’s official, just call her Madame President Secretary. Shhhhhh, it’s Secretary in public, okay? We’ll all play along and call him Mr. President ‘cuz…well, the sheeple voted for him, but, hey, how much damage can he do as long as he just reads what’s on the cards? Plus, it’s all good; keeps those women’s issues in focus and balances out the black thing. Cool. Now, unlike some people, I don’t think we’re seeing Bush II or Clinton III. I think it’s Clinton 1, Obama 0.
Game, set, match.
Oh, Susan Rice is short, and Janet Napolitano barks.
Jo(k)e Biden is extraneous.
And Hillary needs to work on her poker face. She looked like a cat in a room with a missing canary.
Who is responsible for our current economic crisis? How come nobody “saw it coming?” Because everybody involved is a one of an equally culpable bunch of lying thieves, that’s why. On October 2, I wrote a post called “Bailout, Misdirection and Lies,” one of a series claiming that anybody with access to Home and Garden TV should have seen the housing crisis coming years ago, since the network features a treasure trove of information about home buying, renovations, and all manner of real estate and home improvement transactions, nearly all of which have been “no money down,” 100% financing, double mortgage deals regardless of the income level and/or credit-worthiness of the purchasers. First time buyers, home flippers, vacation home purchasing retirees and any and everybody else was encouraged to buy more house than they could afford, take out additional home improvement loans, rennovate, redesign and redecorate these over-priced, too large homesteads, only to put them back on the market in short order at even more inflated prices. Anybody with any sense could spend a few hours watching HGTV and see the government sanctioned bank pirates’ Ponzi scheme they were promoting, wittingly or un-, develop right before their very eyes.
But, nobody knew nuttin’. Now the Associated Press is “breaking the news” that indeed everybody knew everything, and did it anyway:
The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
In an article full of schoolyard finger pointing, AP reports that some, like Comptroller of the Currency, John C. Dugan, have been trying to sound the alarm since 2005. While that is true, it is not news. In my “bailout” post, even I provide the Dugan quote to which AP refers. From a Sept. 27, 2005, Washington Post article about an American Banker’s Association convention at which Alan Greenspan, along with Dugan, issued warnings, I quoted:
Dugan reinforced Greenspan’s message to the banking industry, expressing concern that “looser underwriting standards and the more widespread penetration of riskier mortgage products have raised questions about how these loans will fare in the event of a rise in interest rates or a softening in house prices.”
While I don’t expect AP to read me, doesn’t anybody read the Washington Post? What’s the point of this “breaking news” blame game bullshit that doesn’t pass the smell or laugh test? Whose ass are they trying to cover? The Republicans didn’t do anything, the Democrats didn’t do anything, the bankers, regulators, brokers, nor the buyers did anything at all to get out of the way of the approaching train barreling down the tracks they insisted upon having a block party on. Now they want to stand in the middle of the tracks saying, “It wasn’t my idea,” “he did it,” “I just heard the music and stopped by for the free food,” and all other manner of copouts, denials and lies, knowing that they can, since they hold the controls to the mechanism that switches the train to the track we’re standing on before it derails completely, taking everybody out but them.
Screw Fuck ‘em all. They’re all crooks. Whether they’re bankers, elected officials, regulators, realtors, contractors or any of the other runaway train riders, conductors or engineers, they should all be prosecuted to the fullest under existing RICO laws. Because if this is not a criminal conspiracy of the highest order, there’s no such thing.
UPDATE: We are now officially in a recession, and have been since December, 2007. They just decided to tell us that, though.
When you’ve got an ace in the hole, or a wild card, or an abundance of trumps, you can play with confidence. If you’ve tucked the only Joker in the deck up your sleeve, only allowing it to magically appear when needed, you can wipe out your opposition without breaking a sweat. But when another player, seemingly low on chips and on his way out the game, suddenly not only goes all in, but produces an even bigger Joker than yours, showing yours to have been a rather poor imitation of the real thing all along, your ass is punked.
In a surprising, nay, shocking, even jaw-droppingly so, development, President-elect In Training Wheels, Barack Obama, has actually interrupted his well-earned? vacation activities of surfing, golfing, 
Ha, ha, ha…I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing. “Crazy ol’” Rod Blagojevich, the 
In a sure sign that there are powerful factions in Illinois politics hellbent on getting Gov. Rod Blagojevich impeached for something, (by 
From what I can tell from surfing the internet daily about Barack Obama for the last two years, 
Thus reads the true job description of 
Forget “Kumbayah” and “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.” The song of the modern, post-racial “Obamica the Beautiful” we now inhabit has got to be “Barack The Magic Negro.” The racially offensive, yet lighthearted “sparody” is a parody of a 
So, the Republican National Committee Chair candidate, 
It’s obvious that the curiously-funded, political science lab-created 
That would be the headline for any other president-elect at any other time in our history, since it accurately reflects the facts of a pretty sensational story. However, since we’re talking about an extraordinary Teflon TelePrompTer Messiah, elected/anointed/selected to lead us to the Promised Land of Peace and Prosperity at this unique point in history, the bulk of the headlines referring to Barack Obama’s “
Rahm’s in Africa
What exactly is behind the current Center For American Progress/Matthew Yglesias/Third Way beef? Seems acting CAP CEO Jennifer Palmieri (regular CEO John Podesta is currently otherwise occupied heading Barack Obama’s transition team) took exception to an 
Blagojevich spin: I wanted to appoint Lisa Madigan to Barack Obama’s Senate seat to get her out of my hair, but Team O went ballistic and insisted on Valerie Jarrett. Rahm Emanuel really wanted Jarrett because he didn’t want her competing with him for the president’s attention in Washington.
Though George Stephanopoulis claims that his “confidential sources” claim Rahm Emanuel only spoke to embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich once about President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat and Rahm’s own soon-to-be vacant House seat, and four conversations with Blago’s Chief Of Staff John Harris, which contradicts Chicago Sun-Times columnist 
It seems like such a small thing. 
One of the dirtiest little secrets about abusers is how utterly nice they can appear to the world to be. Oftentimes, no one can believe that the handsome, charming, hail-fellow-well-met they know, love and admire can be a petty, vindictive, manipulating, asshole who beats his wife, or abuses family members, or seduces the children he coaches or mentors, or even sometimes, stalks, rapes, and kills strangers behind closed doors. Nope, not that guy, people say. He’s a clergyman, politician, teacher, doctor, volunteer, serviceman…fill in the blank, he could be that just as well as he could be unemployed, through no fault of his own, of course. Sometimes he even generates sympathy; poor guy, they say, too bad his accident-prone, loser wife drinks, his pre-pubescent teenager is a slut, his Little League team can’t seem to win. He’s so patient with them, he tries so hard, it’s a shame the people he loves always let him down.
Rahm Emanuel
Now that the looney denizens of 
Just when you think a despicable display of sexist misogyny has unfortunately been relegated to the dustbins of recent history, along comes a sad excuse for “journalism-as-spin” that brings the whole sordid mess back to the fore. In a silly-assed 
There’s 
It seems PUMAs are not the only “party unity my ass” advocates. In fact, that should be the motto of the Republicrats, the new party of “O.” Jack Cafferty’s question of the day is “
Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor accused of trying to sell the Senate seat president-elect Barack Obama 
Chicago Sun-Times
A local Chicago 
The 
Forget all the bitter squawking about “
The New York Times
Having grown up in Chicago, only to leave as a young woman to pursue my dreams, (and escape winter cold) I find the current consternation about the city’s corruption amusing. During his 
On Tuesday, when the news of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s arrest broke, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declared that it was “a sad day for Illinois government” and that Blagojevich had “taken us to a truly new low.” But, was it really? From the 
In an apparent attempt to avoid 
Why are the Keepers of the Book of Barack, aka the mainstream media, pushing the “Blago’s batshit” story line as quasi-fact? Who does it benefit? If the embattled governor was making such claims, or acting in a manner as if he wanted people to think he’s nuts, it might be more understandable, even though, if that was the case, chances are the Barackomaniacs would reject such assertions as Blago’s pitiful attempts to exonerate himself. They would use his statements as evidence of his criminality just as they use his alleged criminality as evidence of his madness. Why?
The Obamessiah already walks on water, and if the mainstream media has it’s way, after 
Barack Hussein Obama
“If they 
Okay, Barack Obama is not implicated in today’s allegations against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is suspected of trying to sell Barack Obama’s now vacant Senate seat in return for personal favors. U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and all the President-elect’s pundits, have gone to great lengths to make that perfectly clear. From the 
For all those who say groping a cardboard cutout of the Secretary of State-designate is no big deal, consider this. Women have put up with so much shit this election cycle that we’re just sick of it. At least during the primaries and general election, a weak case could be made that what was at play was just warring camps using, and accusing each other of using, the dirty tricks of racism vs. sexism to some misguided idea of political advantage, but at this point in the game, there’s just no excuse. Favreau’s bad judgment, leading to his own bad luck, is that he got caught indulging in sexist behavior just for the fun of it. Well, enough is enough. This time, women should not “get over it.” And, nobody should ask us to.
Ya gotta love Rev. Jeremiah Wright, bless his heart. I’m not kidding, ya gotta love him ‘cuz he won’t go away and stay gone so you can forget him. Like the proverbial bad penny, he keeps popping up, as full of piss and vinegar as ever. The Good Reverend was back 
“
Can you say “Kennedy?” Talk about “entitled.” And, oh, 
President-elect Barack Obama’s personal news network 
Okay, so I’m surfin’ my favorite PUMA sites, (hmmmm hmmm hmmm, la di da di da) and I of course end up on the 
This is not just harmless, innocent, frat-boy immaturity on display. This is highly offensive behavior, indicative of the complete lack of respect towards women we as a nation seem to be okay with. And, I’m no raging feminist. Not because I don’t think that women get a raw deal most of the time (the whole “we’re more likely to 
Poor, misunderstood Bill Ayers. Everybody just loves picking on him. At least, that seems to be the theme of his current “Those Mean Old Republicans and All Those Other People Who Don’t Reflexively Sniff At The Jock of The Most Worthy TelePrompTer Reader of His Frat-Boy Alter Ego’s Speeches Between Waffles, Are Picking On Me” tour.
That Barney Frank is one funny guy. Even when he’s bitching about one thing or another, which is most of the time, the House Financial Services Committee Chairman is good for a few yucks. Right now, he’s kinda miffed at the new president-elect for insisting on remaining president-elect when it’s convenient, and acting like King of the Freaking World when it’s not. It’s the “I’m not really president yet, guys,” thing that’s got Frank’s knickers twisted, though, especially when it comes to the financial crisis. According to 
The reason Barack Obama has not, as yet, produced his long-form vault copy birth certificate is because he can’t. Not because he doesn’t have it, or have access to it. He does. Not because he was born on some far-off 
Is the President-In-Training really the 
Who is responsible for our current economic crisis? How come nobody “saw it coming?” Because everybody involved is a one of an equally culpable bunch of lying thieves, that’s why. On October 2, I wrote a post called “
