Blago, Etc.

Rod Blagojevich's actions have been no different than his predecessors.

Maybe with one exception, and that is it was Republicans who hatched the scheme to entrapment him almost as soon as he took office.

In any case, Blago is weighing his legal options.

John McCain doesn't think much of the all of the GOP handwringing and attempts to use the Blago arrest as a way to help their own fortunes.

The timing, after all, is quite transparent.

Blago, Etc. (More)

What a lying bastard Patrick "Kenneth Starr" Fitzgerald is. Sure he had no choice but to have Blagojevich arrested, coincidentally at the time he is about to appoint a successor to Barack Obama. Now, if Blago can just resign, that'll be music to the ears of the GOP:

U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said the governor's actions forced his office to intervene. "Gov. Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree," he said. Fitzgerald said Blagojevich's "conduct would make [ Abraham] Lincoln roll over in his grave."

What a shitbag Fitz is. He knows he will be out of a job in January, so he "had" to act quickly. The timing of the arrest was the key to the whole deal.

Of course, the operative who runs "Hillary is 44," a fraud of a Democrat if there ever was one, is now promoting the GOP talking points that a special prosecutor should be appointed in the Blago matter. It should have been apparent from the get-go this guy was NOT a Clinton supporter but was peddling anti-Obama talking points in order to sow division among Democrats. Somebody was feeding him the talking points about Rezko, etc., for this was one of the first sites on the net to write about it. ALL Rodriguez EVER did on his site was bash Obama. Sure, he'd throw a bone now and then to the Clinton supporters to make them think he was on their side, but it was gradually becoming MORE obvious by the month this guy is a fraud, more even than his target.

Naturally, Obama should reject such horseshit of appointing a special prosecutor, and Democrats in Congress should shoot any such crap down. The GOP has already tainted the judicial system with judges and so forth. We don't need this bullshit anymore.

The timeline says it all:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich became the state's first Democratic chief executive in more than a quarter of a century after vowing to reform what he labeled the culture of corruption surrounding his predecessor that had fed deep cynicism among Illinoisans.

But little more than a year after replacing George Ryan in office in 2003, Blagojevich found his administration at the early stages of what became a host of state and federal investigations into allegations of wrongdoing involving state hiring, board appointments, contracting and fundraising that battered his tenure.

In their prosecution of Blagojevich fundraisers and allies, dubbed "Operation Board Games," federal prosecutors detailed a scheme that began only months after Blagojevich took office in which top fundraiser and adviser Antoin "Tony" Rezko conspired with longtime GOP government apparatchik Stuart Levine to split kickbacks from a state pension deal. Rezko also helped ensure Levine's reappointment to a state pension board.

As part of the investigation, in which 13 people have been indicted or convicted, kickbacks were often the prescribed price of doing high-level business, be it the pension board for state teachers or the panel that decided whether hospitals could expand their facilities. And the extortion efforts went beyond merely enriching the participants to include soliciting campaign funds for Blagojevich.

Blago found himself in the middle of this GOP scheme.

He refuses to step down, but I don't know how long he can hold out. It is Democrats who are trying to force him out, but they were playing right into the GOP's hands when they pushed for a special election instead of doing the following:

Other Democrats in Washington edged away from calls for a special election to fill Obama's place in the Senate, hoping that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn would soon become governor and fill the vacancy on his own. That would assure the party of holding the seat, and on a far faster timetable than any balloting would allow.

That's what SHOULD happen in this case, but I don't expect the Republicans to go along with this. Maybe a few Democrats finally got it in their heads this isn't about what Blago did or didn't do but about the GOP trying to steal two Democratic seats as payback for Obama winning the White House.

Blago, Etc.

The Chicago Tribune wants Blago to resign the governorship, thus paving the way for the GOP to take BOTH the governorship AND Obama's Senate seat, for the timing of the arrest is everything.

The Tribune proved it was non-partisan in its reporting by withholding information at the request of U.S. attorney Fitzgerald.

Blago will resign, of course, and will be forgotten. The GOP has just put out its opening salvo for the 2010 elections by comically running on a "clean government" theme.

And people by the millions, including so-called Clinton supporters, will fall for Fitzgerald's antics.

The FIRST thing Obama should do when he is inaugurated is to get rid of all of the U.S. attorneys including Fitzgerald, despite howls from the GOP and a misguided public. We have too many urgent problems to allow the Republicans, like they did during the Clinton years, to pervert the courts for partisan reasons.
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The AP says Blago could still appoint somebody for the vacant Senate seat, but does anybody actually think he will be allowed to do so? You've got Democrats like Pat Quinn and Dick Durbin calling for a special election--which is the goal of the GOP in order to steal a seat.

God, this whole thing is transparent. I suppose Obama will be pressured by the fascists to appoint a special prosecutor after he's president, and here we go again with Clinton II. The GOP will obstruct Obama at every turn, since the Democrats don't have a filibuster-proof majority, and then they will pervert the courts with "investigations" of Obama in order to help their own political chances, just as they tried to do with the Clintons.

The Republicans will never change. They are dirtbags who should be permanently marginalized.
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Operation Board Games

The end of another political career is at hand, as Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested on federal corruption charges:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges.

Blagojevich and Harris were accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy that included Blagojevich conspiring to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. The governor was also accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.

Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning.

A Blagojevich spokesman said he was unaware of the development. "Haven't heard anything -- you are first to call," Lucio Guerrero said in an e-mail.

The stunning, early morning visit by authorities to the governor's North Side home came amid revelations that federal investigators had recorded the governor with the cooperation of a longtime confidant and had begun to focus on the possibility that the process of choosing a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama could be tainted by pay-to-play politics.

This isn't good news for Obama, either. More:

A 76-page FBI affidavit alleges that Blagojevich was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps during the last month conspiring to sell or trade Illinois’ U.S. Senate seat vacated by Obama for financial and other personal benefits for himself and his wife.

At various times, in exchange for the Senate appointment, Blagojevich allegedly discussed obtaining:

• A substantial salary for himself at a either a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

• Placing his wife on paid corporate boards where he speculated she might garner as much as $150,000 a year.

• Promises of campaign funds — including cash up front.

• A cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself.

Jesus Christ.

You can read the affidavit in all its glory here.

Another point of view is this is another Don Siegelman-like case:

But we are now getting a preview of what we're going to face for the next four years, because John Boehner has already intimated that Republicans intend on campaigning against a "Democrat Culture of Corruption." Their ultra-partisan U.S. Attorneys have salted enough informants away, with threats of long prison sentences if they don't cooperate, to whipsaw Democrats in the House, Senate, governors' mansions. We're getting a preview of what we're in for until the inauguration and Obama's replacement of Bush's partisan Federal attorneys, whose efforts can be combined with similarly partisan FBI operatives, and judges to perform a considerable amount of mischief. Really NASTY mischief.

Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on a litany of charges that arose from the same people they beat down during the Reszko trial, This all originated with a couple of corrupt REPUBLICAN operatives, holdovers from George Ryan's old administration, one named Cerillo and another named Levine, who ruled a little feifdom that included the state pension board and medical care. Blagojevich was going to reform these agencies, and so Levine and Cerillo evidently conducted a rather nasty entrapment scheme, wearing wires and everything, attempting to get Blagojevich out.

In the process, they are trying to tie Obama into it, intimating (without any actual evidence, mind you) that Obama promised Blagojevich a cabinet post, possibly HHS or Energy, in return to naming Obama's preferred individual to fill his vacated Senate seat.

I have doubts either Blago or Obama is clean, and I don't doubt the ultimate fish the prosecutors want is Obama, but the LAST thing Democrats need is this bullshit when the entire country is going into the shitter.

If Obama is tainted, then we KNOW he was being set up by the GOP to be the Democratic Party nominee to take the fall to help the Republicans get back into power by running on an "anti-corruption" theme, which is laughable coming from them.

And, yes the timing is certainly suspicious. If Blago is out, this means there is an open governorship AND an open Senate seat, both ripe for the stealing by the GOP. As the writer above notes, READ the footnotes; they are key. Almost all of these "witnesses" are shady characters who have received plea deals or immunity.

Now people want to know who can name Obama's replacement. Well, if Blago goes, it would seem the next in line is Democrat Pat Quinn. But apparently not; it looks like there would have to be a special election, something the GOP would LOVE to have:

Those sentiments were echoed by Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the Senate’s second-ranking Democratic leader, who said that the state legislature should move swiftly to schedule a special election to fill the vacant seat, effectively pushing Mr. Blagojevich aside.

“No appointment by this governor, under these circumstances, could produce a credible replacement,” Mr. Durbin told reporters today.

That's what this arrest was all about in reality, regardless of whether the allegations have any merit.

And this shitty blog admits it:

The complaint filed against Obama pal Governor Rod Blagojevich is a situation forced on Prosecutor Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald acted in an emergency manner to stop the Obama Senate seat from going to another corrupt Dimocrat. “We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it.” said Fitzgerald.

Fuck you and your shitty blog, Alex. You are not a Hillary Clinton supporter, shitface. A GOP operative pretending to be a Hillary Clinton supporter is what you are. Need I mention Fitz's job is NOT supposed to be about filling a vacant Senate seat with a Republican. Of course, you don't allow opposing comments on your crappy blog, just cheerleaders, so nobody can slap you in the face with a bit of reality.

Rezko.

Could it be that Obama will be next or near next in Patrick Fitzgerald's prosecution in connection with the Illinois corruption scandal?

Of course we will hear very little about this until after the convention. Call me a cynic.

This

is a good summary, in just a few words, of what Evelyn Pringle's articles are about, specifically where they concern Obama.

Obama is so tainted, the question must be asked why he ever bothered to run for president in the first place.

I Don't Think

I linked this long article about the problems with Barack Obama by one Evelyn Pringle, but it is worth looking at as he gets closer than he should to the Democratic nomination.

(Update: There are two more installments of the above linked story here and here.)

I've never seen anybody so totally flawed as to be almost a Republican-created caricature of a Democrat as Obama.

I think I linked one of Pringle's articles before; I can't remember where out of the 32,000 posts I have written on this blog since 2002. However, I have a tag with her name on it, so I think I've linked the first article before.

In any case this sums Obama up:

John McCain is just drooling waiting for Obama to become the nominee so that he can come out with the trail of dirt that the Democratic party is too afraid to reveal this late in the in the game. If nominated, Obama will not survive a month when faced with the Republican attack machine.

If he becomes the nominee, the web of corruption leading to Obama's rise to power that this investigative journalist was able to untangle in less than three weeks, will be front page news right up until election day, handing the Republicans their only chance in hell of winning the White House.

Instead of the leaders of the Democratic party doing their homework, a small group of investigative reporters in Chicago will be credited with exposing the corrupt backbone of Obama political career and the mainstream media need only follow their lead if the Democrats hold him out to be a viable candidate.

However, the national media REFUSED to vet Obama and for quite obvious reasons.

Also by Pringle is a series of articles about "curtain time" for the Audacity of Hype:

Part 1.

Here is Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

And the final chapter of this lengthy series of articles.

These articles are mostly about Obama's shady connections centering on Rezko and his trial, which has gone to the jury. Most of this information has been out there for a while, and because of these sordid connections, Obama has no business running for dogcatcher, let alone run for president. He will be lucky if he isn't indicted before long.

I mean it's really bad shit, and Pringle brings all of that information together and connects the dots.

Pringle explains here how and why she started investigating Obama's sordid Chicago past.