od Blagojevich – that’s him with his hand on the Holy Bible – has for months been the focus of corruption charges stemming from his ties to Tony Rezko’s scheme to squeeze companies for kickbacks in return for state contracts – but heck, he was just getting started.
Today, finally, Blagojevich is in jail (I presume), arrested this morning for trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder, and for strong-arming the nearly broke Tribune Company, and for trying to get the Chicago Trib’s editorial board fired. As if that weren’t enough, he proved how blind to reality politicans can become by considering appointing his corrupted a$$ as Obama’s replacement:
Blagojevich considered appointing himself. The affidavit said that as late as Nov. 3, he told his deputy governor that if “they’re not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it.”
“I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain,” Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was “a valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.” (Source)
Blagojevich’s top aide was also arrested.
As a society we’re pretty well attuned to avarice, but Blogojevich is a reminder that there’s always someone out beyond the worst we can imagine. And when these cases come to light, there are always two sins prominent in the perp’s personality: Ego and greed.
Blagojevich’s ego made him think he deserved the money he craved so greedily, and also convinced him that he could fool everyone, even as investigators swarmed around his administration. The last two to manifest these sins, leading to their plummeting into infamy were Dems – Elliot Spitzer and now Blogojevich – but Duke Cunningham wasn’t that far in the past.
The lesson: Trust politicians with your vote, but not much else.
y friend Jim usually just gets a hat-tip; this time he gets a post all his own. Jim, carry on …
In a message dated 10/27/2008 10:43:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, “swingdawg” writes:
I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration should be enough time to repair all the damage that has been done.
Oh, by the way, it was Bush who just ‘Socialized’ the banking/mortgage industry.
Excuse me, but haven’t the Democrats been in charge of both houses of Congress since the last election? What great things have they to show for their turn at the oars? (Besides a 12% approval rating, the lowest in history, and considerably lower than President Bush’s.)
“Swingdawg” would like to have everyone forget or ignore history and join the folks over at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos and succumb to BDS, but (thanks to the wonderful Internet that Al Gore invented) we can actually go back in time and see what happened.
It was during the Clinton administration (a Democrat if memory serves) that they enacted policies that set up the collapse of the housing market. 1) On November 12, 1999, President Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which for 55 years had prevented banks, the nation’s lenders, to get into the so-called “investment banking” business (stock brokers). 2) Also in 1999, Clinton appointed Franklin Raines… to become the CEO of the obscure but powerful Fannie Mae giant GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), which had been “privatized” and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
So the pattern becomes clear. Harvard Law School attorneys – noted for their lack of economic knowledge — create an easy-money system which relies on flakey loans provided by fat-cat financial manipulators who are the primary contributors to the re-election campaigns of the legislators – almost exclusively Democrats. (Some more good history here.)
In 2005, we almost fixed the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac problem, but the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
(Another bit of historical data here. [NOTE: Do not read if you are a "Progressive," it is not healthy to be confused by facts after your mind is made up.])
Since your friend writes. “I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area…”, I have to ask if he blames the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims, on President Bush’s policies as well?
Referring back to our Internet history sources once again, it seems that our earlier attacks go back to President Carter’s time (I think that he was a Democrat too), and really ramped up under President Clinton, where in 1993 we had our first attack on the World Trade Center; (and allowed our Special Forces to be humiliated by a pissant Warlord in Somalia); followed by (Oklahoma City in 1995?), the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the coordinated bombings of our two US Embassies (Tanzania & Kenya) in 1998. President Clinton then finished out his term with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.
In my opinion, President Bush’s kick-ass response to that is pretty much what has helped keep us safe for these past years, not the Democrats or Progressives!
Your friend might also want to consider how poorly Democrats do in other areas of government. In spite of what the Media would like folks to believe, it was Democratic Mayor Nagin and NOT President Bush, who left all the school buses parked during Katrina.
A popular chain email, Chicago War Zone Information, sloshing around Chicago informs the reader, “Body count. In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq.”
Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley. . . . our leadership in Illinois. . . . all Democrats. Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago (a lot of good gun control does, huh?). Of course they’re all blaming each other. Can’t blame Republicans; there aren’t any!
The Illinois state pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, the worst in country. Cook County (Chicago) sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in country. (Look’em up if you want). Chicago’s school system one of the worst in country (despite the millions from Ayres/Obama). This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois. He’s gonna ‘fix’ Washington politics? Give me a break!!!
You might ask “Swingdawg” if he can give an example of where a Progressive policy (other than just a hand-out, of course) has actually improved conditions for a minority group?
Oh, and just for the record…
Demographers have shown that since the 1940s, the Democratic Party has segued from the party of the working middle class to the party whose voters look like a double-hump camel: they are either the poor who vote for entitlements or the extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires who provide the “juice” to buy the allegiance of the first group.
The title on the CNN screen says, for the full two minutes of this segment and probably much longer, “Special Investigations Unit/Registration Fraud Allegations/Hiring Homeless and Drug Addicts” and over that headline for most of the clip are pictures of Barack Obama.
This is CNN, folks, not Fox. That means the people who are listening to this are not largely already in the McCain camp and will therefore be questioning the candidate of their choice, not getting more negative news about a candidate they don’t like.
The report itself is not groundbreaking, but it’s quite good. Wolf Blitzer gives the reporter, Drew Griffen, an opportunity to cut the Obama campaign some slack, pawning off their involvement on “some third party that contracted with ACORN,” but he nixes that, quoting emails between CNN and the campaign that say, “Yes, we did use a subsidiary of ACORN.”
That is not what Obama told reporters today. In a press briefing outside the Maumee Bay Resort and Conference Center in Oregon, OH, he said:
“There is an ACORN organization in Chicago. They have been active. As an elected official, I’ve had interactions with them. But they are not advising our campaign. We’ve got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.”
He does not mention that he taught community organizing to ACORN, nor does he mention that he paid $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary in the primaries to register voters – who knows how crookedly – so he could knock off Hillary. Instead he wiggles dishonestly, “… right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.” Yeah, but “back then” they did.
As for ACORN’s fraudulent operations, Obama sees it differently than the rest of us:
“So there’s been fraud perpetrated on probably ACORN if they paid these individuals and they actually didn’t do registrations.”
Oh. It’s the poor voter registration workers, who are swamped by stacks of fraudulent ACORN voter registration forms dumped on them at the last minute, who are the bad guys. Thanks for that, Barack.Really, really classy.
Here’s another, longer, CNN clip that doesn’t tie ACORN and Obama, but when put together with CNN reporting on the connection will be damning because Griffen shows a signed ACORN registration card for a voter who died last year.
It also includes an ACORN attorney, Brian Mellor, who says ACORN fires people who cheat, but can’t adequately answer whether they fired people in Lake County, IN, after massive ACORN voter fraud was uncovered there. He then goes on, like Obama, to rag on election officials as the cause of the problem.
Mellor is, in a word, offensive, and all middle of the road (and right side of the road) Americans will see him as such, and will think his group’s association with Obama stinks to high heaven.
With CNN joining Fox and ABC, which have been hitting hard on this story for days, we now have a significant part of the TV news-watching electorate getting this nasty story front and center, which is why McCain needs to hammer on Obama and ACORN tomorrow night, much more than the Obama and Ayres hammering.
By the way, CBS hasn’t run an ACORN story since last Friday. NBC finally got around to running a story today (can you say “deliberately asleep at the wheel?”) positioning it as “a registration fraud story, not a voter fraud story.” In the tape they play Obama’s excuses (referenced above) and say the McCain campaign is overstating the Obama-ACORN connection because there’s “no evidence of an ongoing close relationship with ACORN at this point.”
If any of you would like to send me $800,000 I guarantee we’ll have a close relationship.
“We have no idea what the motive behind it is. It’s just overwhelming to us.” – Lake County IN Elections Board Official
T
he official – probably Dem. Sally Sota, but the CNN article is edited so badly we can’t tell for sure – was speaking of ACORN; specifically, the 2,000+ fraudulent voter registration forms found in the first 2,000+ ACORN-submitted forms.
To ACORN, free and fair elections are just a joke, as evidenced by the names they use on the forms – fast food restaurant names, sports team names – and the cavalier attitude they have about cheating Democracy:
“All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”
Lake County includes Gary, which is 84% black. It’s not like the Obama campaign had to work overtime to dominate the vote in this county – one of the ones where the campaign is quite content that there’s racism, black racism, in America. Yet ACORN found it worthwhile to cheat the system. Why? So he could win 101% of the vote there?
ACORN of course refuses to admit blame; any criticism of its actions is just Big Brother in action:
“We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes,” [ACORN attorney Brian] Mellor said. “We believe that by attacking ACORN, they are going to discourage people that have registered to vote with ACORN from voting.”
A federal district court judge has found Democrat Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner guilty of violating federal election laws. The ruling goes to the heart of the ACORN-centered voter fraud epidemic spreading across the country. This is the second judgment against Brunner.
Says the Ohio GOP:
“For some reason, Jennifer Brunner does not want these new registrations checked,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. “Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio.”
Brunner’s effort to fight the court order comes just two days after the Democrat activist group ACORN admitted to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity.
ACORN’s excuse for the fraud? You’ll love this:
Ohio ACORN officials “blamed the elections board for not scrutinizing ACORN’s suspicious cards,” claiming the group “can’t be expected to catch everything.”
“I Can’t Even Count How Many Registrations I’ve Filled Out”
Malkin’s story includes a film clip from Palestra.com, the college web-TV network, in which a young black woman says ACORN workers scrub the neighborhoods asking people again and again to register. “I can’t even count how many registrations I’ve filled out,” the woman says. She says she does it for her country – who taught her civics?
Here’s a YouTube copy of the Palestra clip, which I wasn’t able to post:
In addition to Indiana and Ohio, ACORN investigations are proceeding in, at a minimum, Nevada, Missouri, Connecticut and Wisconsin, plus North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Pennsylvania, and Washington. And that was just page one of the Google search.
Obama’s position? “I’ve never worked for ACORN.”
Sweetness & Light has the goods. He did work for Project Vote, which shares the same address in Washington DC and other cities with ACORN, shares the same job postings, and which multiple MSM outlets identified as an arm of ACORN. Not to mention the documentation provided by IRS tax forms.
“So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
So he didn’t really work for ACORN, like he didn’t really listen to his pastor … but he did lawyer for ACORN. Media Circus has a page of a court settlement for a lawsuit brought by ACORN which includes the names of the settling attorneys:
What was the lawsuit? Well, glad you asked. It was a Community Reinvestment Act lawsuit charging redlining by a bank, the classic ACORN strategy to force banks to make bad mortgage loans and the genesis of the financial meltdown that’s giving us all intense heebie-jeebies today.
Plus, of course, he shoveled buckets of cash ACORN’s way while running the Annenberg Chicago Challenge.
So, class, to refresh: A group tied to Barack Obama is caught trying to throw the election. He denies he ever worked for them, but he’s lying, lying, lying. And his lie also covers up his direct involvement in the mortgage shell game that’s brought our economy to its knees.
ere’s the story of another Muslim honor killing here on our shores … but dressed up with enough crime lingo to make it appear to be just another case of an enraged father killing his daughter just because she’s disgraced the family. (I hope you see the sardonic humor in that!)
A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. …
Chaudhry Rashid, wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, went before Chief Judge Daphne Walker at the Clayton County Magistrate Court where he was arraigned on a murder charge. …
The 25-year-old victim, Sandeela Kanwal, was wed in Pakistan in an arranged marriage. Police said Kanwal hadn’t seen her husband, who lives in Chicago, for months.
According to police, there was “friction between father and victim” in the weeks leading up to the killing. Rashid had not spoken to his daughter in more than two months.
Police said Rashid was so angered that his daughter planned to divorce her husband that he killed her after a heated argument at the family’s home, FOX News affiliate MyFoxAtlanta reported. …
“The family is very upset and stressed,” said Shahid Malik of the Pakistani American Community of Atlanta. Malik told MyFoxAtlanta that he met with the family Sunday and said they were all traumatized. (Fox News)
Not quite as traumatized as the daughter, though.
In his native Pakistan, it’s likely Rashid would walk with little or no penalty. In America, it’s likely that many Muslims feel he did the honorable thing and should walk – one reason why we should scoff at any efforts to allow Sharia law for Muslims here.
In fact, if we allow greater punishments for so-called “hate crimes,” then it follows that we should do the same for “honor” killings, since Sandeela Kanwal would very likely be alive today were it not for her religion.
The Obama administration told us that not only would they be very good at spending unfathomable sums of money, but they’d also be maestros at turning that cash into jobs for a job-hungry America. Like so many White House words, the Big Job Promise is turning out to be nothing more than hype-fuel for the [...]
With Obama winning the presidency by seven percent, we can't blame the media. Their laudatory coverage and refusal to extensively probe into Obama's background and [lack of] experience was at best responsible for five percent of his vote, the pundits tell us. Here is a compilation of over 100 significant instances of pro-Obama/anti-McCain bias during the 2008 campaign.
"Thank you for the Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked it, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— a high school teacher.
I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration 
In 2005, we 
Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.
Obama’s position? “I’ve never worked for ACORN.”
A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. …
