Blogs For Victory

The scandal swirls around, and I think none of us know where it will all wind up – though I think it now very unwise that we elected someone from this political sewer known as Chicago:

As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois’ next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich’s campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned.

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records.

Two businessmen who attended the meeting and spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity said that Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi privately told many of the more than two dozen attendees the fundraising effort was aimed at supporting Jackson’s bid for the Senate.

I had been thinking that Rep. Jackson was a bit of an innocent bystander in this, but now I’m coming ’round to the view that we should consider everyone even remotely connected with Blago to be under a cloud until the whole thing is cleared up. At bottom, a lot of people should be resigning their positions, starting with Blago, but including anyone who was involved in picking or canvassing for the next Senator from Illinois. We can’t afford to have such people close to the seat of power, and we can’t rely upon basic decency for those who are deep in this corruption.

UPDATE: Iowahawk strikes again (language warning):

BREAKING: Feds Seize Blagojevich eBay Account

As noted by Reason:

Che director Steven Soderbergh tells Politico why his new four-hour, two-part epic about Ernesto Guevara is relevant in 2008:

“We’re certainly seeing the result of what happens when you make profit the point of everything, where money that’s being earned doesn’t represent any particular product or labor on anybody’s part. That can’t sustain, because it’s magical thinking. It can’t go on indefinitely, because eventually it crashes. Che’s dream of a classless society, a society that isn’t built on the profit motive, is still relevant. The arguments still going on are about his methodology.”

…

Aye caramba. Yes, the real lesson to be drawn from a man who oversaw summary executions and ran Cuba’s economy 20,000 leagues under the sea is that profits and capitalism are evil.

Amazing what you can accomplish if you die young after having a cool picture taken of you in romantic revolutionary pose…you can, for instance, get people who don’t know anything to gloss over your mass murdering ways.

Byron York notes the sorry tale:

…hroughout the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich, there are references to unnamed individuals who play important roles in the scandal — and who know a lot about what went on and who was involved. None of those intermediaries is more intriguing than the person referred to as “Advisor B.”

We first learn about Advisor B in the complaint’s description of a November 7 three-way telephone call between Blagojevich, his chief of staff John Harris, and “Advisor B, a Washington D.C.-based consultant.” It was during this call that the participants talked about a “three-way deal for the open Senate seat,” involving the Service Employees International Union and its affiliated group “Change to Win.” The idea was that Blagojevich would appoint Obama favorite Valerie Jarrett to the seat, and in return, SEIU would make Blagojevich head of “Change to Win,” and then Obama would perform some unspecified act to help “Change to Win.” Harris said such a deal would give Obama a “buffer so there is no obvious quid pro quo for [Senate Candidate One],” according to the complaint. (“Senate Candidate One,” we now know, refers to Jarrett.) “Advisor B said that he liked the idea of the three-way deal,” the complaint says. “Advisor B said they should leverage the president-elect’s desire to have [Jarrett] appointed to the Senate seat in order to get a head position with Change to Win and a salary.”

Do read the whole thing, if you can stomach it. This is change we can believe in? I guess no one in Chicago or Team Obama figured that what the people of Illinois need is someone who will ably represent their interests in the United States Senate…someone, that is, who is pretty much unlike Obama who spent most of the last two years advancing himself while Illinois was left to shift for itself. Do keep in mind that Obama had no legal part to play here – he has resigned his Senate seat and bears no legal authority in the matter of who will be appointed to fill his place. But there go Obama advisers – and perhaps Obama, himself – cutting deals as if a US Senate seat is a mere political plaything.

This, liberals, is what you backed – what you said would change America; what you said would be far better than President Bush; what you said was the historic birth of a new era in America and the world. Too bad your standard bearer is a substandard, Chicago political hack who looks good and can give a good speech…this is just the foretaste of what we’re in for over the next four to eight years.

A hard fight, but well won:

A bailout-weary Congress killed a $14 billion package to aid struggling U.S. automakers Thursday night after a partisan dispute over union wage cuts derailed a last-ditch effort to revive the emergency aid before year’s end.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

This is what we should have been doing for years now – the Democrats wish to use the taxpayer’s money to help their friends and over the next two years they will be able to do a lot of it, but there’s no reason for we GOPers to be stampeded in to helping the Democrats swindle the American people. When it comes time to pay the piper, lets not have our Republican party picking up the Democrat’s check.

As an aside, its gotta hurt to be a Democrat just now – Obama can’t even get in to office without scandal dogging him, Democrats lose in Georgia and Louisiana and now their corrupt union buddies are hanging by a thread. It wasn’t supposed to be like this is The One Era. Guess Democrats still haven’t realized that they’ve got no ideas, are mired in corruption and are generally just barnacles on the ship of State. It was going to be a long four years for Republicans, but I’m feeling very jazzed up right now.

Now, Rod Blagojevich has been under a dark ethical cloud for a long time now.  He was corrupt enough that Mark and I gave him a dishonorable mention in our book, but that didn’t stop Barrack Obama from associating with him for the past few years. 

But, now that Blagojevich is on the verge of going down, Obama is trying to claim he had “no contact” with the disgraced governor — who would choose his successor in the Senate. 

Of course since his claim, various sources have revealed the opposite.  David Axelrod had said last month that they had in fact met and discussed who would replace him — only to claim this week he “misspoke.” Then woe found that it was reported the day after the election that Obama and Blagojevich had a meeting.

To be honest, I did not originally think Obama had any knowledge or involvement in the auctioning off of his Senate seat to the highest bidder. But, there is no point pretending that he never had any contact with him about who would replace him.

So why not be honest about the contact they did have, if the corrupt dealings weren’t a part of their conversations, Obama has nothing to hide. 

Well, apparently the reason why Obama is lying about having no contact with Blagojevich is that he may have had knowledge of Blagojevich’s pay to play scheme:

Barack Obama insists that he and his staff were not involved in the alleged schemes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cooked up to sell off the president-elect’s vacant Senate seat. 

But the timeline of activity outlined in the FBI’s 76-page complaint against Blagojevich suggests Obama’s team was aware that his home-state governor was playing political hardball in the weeks before his arrest.

That’s because shortly after Blagojevich allegedly told his advisers, in an expletive-laced conference call, that he would not appoint Obama’s pick to the Senate absent huge favors in return, Obama’s apparent pick promptly dropped out of the running for the Senate and joined the new White House staff. 

“Reading between the lines … clearly somebody from (Obama’s) operation did have a conversation with Blagojevich,” Democratic strategist Bob Beckel told FOX News. He added that Obama’s representative evidently wasn’t trying to cut a deal since Blagojevich indicated he was “getting nothing out of the Obama people.” 

FOX News has confirmed that Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, is the individual identified in the Blagojevich affidavit as Senate Candidate 1. 

The affidavit states that Senate Candidate 1 was likely to be supported by Obama for the seat, and that the Illinois governor was mulling a variety of ways to capitalize on such an appointment. Blagojevich allegedly wanted a corporate board appointment for his wife or millions in donations to a non-profit organization for his benefit, or even an appointment as secretary of health and human services, in exchange for appointing Senate Candidate 1. (Obama nominated former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle for the Cabinet post Blagojevich wanted on Thursday.)

But in the series of wiretapped conversations detailed in the complaint, Blagojevich and his advisers made clear that Obama was not willing to trade anything for the appointment of Senate Candidate 1. 

Corrupt to the core. If Obama was in the dark about Blagojevich’s scheme, he wouldn’t have lied about the contact he did have with Blagojevich that was so quickly determined to be lies.

So, Obama, what are you hiding?

One does wonder what really motivates these people:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains how the anti-Christmas agenda has changed:

“There was no anti-Christmas agenda until the 1980s, and at that time it was led by the ACLU. The strategy of choice was to ban the display of religious symbols, especially the crèche, on public property. This legal strategy, which worked relatively well, has been superseded by a cultural strategy. The goal now is to dilute the significance of Christmas via contrived competition. To wit: every religious, racial and ethnic heritage—including invented ones like Kwanzaa—is now celebrated in December.

“It is important to note that the agenda is not a positive one; it is not designed to honor world traditions. No, the agenda is negative—it is designed to combat Christmas. Here’s a splendid example.

“Margaret Downey, founder of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, sued Chester County in 2001 because a large Ten Commandments plaque was displayed at the Chester County Courthouse. After winding its way through the courts, Downey lost. Chester County, however, decided that the courthouse lawn should be open to all seasonal displays. The crèche and menorah were quickly displayed and now the lawn is adorned with Downey’s ‘Godless Holiday Tree’; it is decorated with the book covers of atheist tracts.

On some show or other I heard an atheist state that they are trying to reclaim Christmas from we Christians who usurped it – as if we would hold a celebration at this time just to annoy atheists of 2,000 years ago, supposing any such really existed back then. In actuality, of course, Christmas is held on December 25th due to various calculations of time designed to fit the story of salvation in to one calendar year. No one was trying to hijack a pagan holiday – its just that December 25th is approximately 9 months after Christians celebrate the Annunciation when the Word was made flesh in the womb of Mary. And the Annunciation, in turn, is observed in its turn due to calculations on the birth of John the Baptist, who was a little older than Jesus and who first came into contact with Our Lord on the Visitation. And so on and on. If you’re terribly interested in the whole Liturgical Year, go here.

There are approximately two billion Christians of various denominations in the world, with half of them being Catholic of various rites. In other words, one in three human beings believes in some measure that on Christmas day the only begotten Son of God was born to the Virgin Mary. As far as human activities go, this is as close to a universal thing as you can get. It is a tremendously important holy day – and the celebrations around it are entirely Christian. Were it not for Jesus and the Church he founded, December 25th would be just a day of the year. The basic desire of Christians is to celebrate this overwhelmingly important event in public and private – to which celebrations all are invited, but which must remain Christian because it is a Christian event. To try and de-Christianize it would be akin to trying to de-Americanize the Fourth of July – you might be able to do it, but what would be the point of observing it, once you had done so?

Its time for pernicious atheists and other busy bodies to keep their hands off Christmas – its none of anyone’s business what we do in our celebrations and, additionally, as we make up the very large majority of the population we’ll take no back chat about using the public square we largely pay for to celebrate our great holy day. If you don’t like Christmas being celebrated by Christians, then I suggest moving to a country with a smaller Christian tradition.

If you believe, then this is the second most important day of the year (the first would be Easter); if you don’t believe, then kindly observe your Christian brothers and sisters and join in any part of the celebration which tickles your fancy – but lay off absurd attempts to take Christ out of Christmas, or to exile Christians from their own public square.

Now on to Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL):

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said Wednesday he openly sought appointment to Barack Obama’s Senate seat but denied offering favors in return to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and said he was not involved “whatsoever in any wrongdoing.”

A lawyer for Jackson acknowledged that the Illinois Democrat is “Senate Candidate 5” in the 76-page federal complaint filed against Blagojevich, who was arrested Tuesday. Wiretapped conversations suggest Blagojevich felt the candidate would raise campaign money for him in exchange for being appointed to the Senate seat vacated by the president-elect.

Jackson, a seven-term House member and son of civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, told reporters in Washington that he spoke with the U.S. attorney’s office Tuesday.

“They shared with me that I am not a target of the investigation and that I am not accused of any misconduct,” said Jackson, who left the crowded session without taking questions.

U.S. attorney’s spokesman Randall Samborn would not confirm or deny Jackson’s assertions.

One thing seems to be certain, this scandal will re-work Illinois politics – no one can possibly say how this will shake out, but it can be said with certainty that no one should think that anything is certain for Illinois over the next two to four years. Heck, if anyone wants to start a third party, Illinois is the place to be right now. With a Democratic governor set to join his GOP predecessor in jail, both parties are at a low ebb in the public estimation.

The MSM will continue to do all it can to spare Obama any trouble over this, but the house of cards is collapsing in Illinois and the thing no one yet knows is who will roll over on everyone else in order to get leniency. Obama is very connected to all of these Illinois pols caught in this web of corruption – he can stay out of it, but it will take a great deal of finesse and the absolute ability of Obama to not be directly connected to any shady dealings over the past three or four years (beyond that it can be classed as “old news” – still a problem, but not a deadly political problem).

For the nation as a whole, this is our chance to really go after corruption in politics – for too long, those who are in politics have forgotten who they work for, and with Democrats giving their own a pass on corruption, the Democratic party has especially become the home of “pay for play” of various stripes. We, the people, should insist on a full investigation of all government – regardless of cost and let the chips fall where they may, a team of prosecutors should be empowered to look into corruption right, left and center and bring to justice those who have betrayed the public trust.

And the question now is whether or not the GOP will muster the strength in the Senate to kill this horrific bill:

The House passed a stopgap $14 billion bailout to U.S. automakers Wednesday evening, but Republican opposition cast doubts about its fate as it moves on to the Senate.

The House vote came in the wake of an agreement on the measure earlier in the day between Democratic Congressional leaders and the Bush administration…

…The measure passed by a count of 237 to 170 thanks to overwhelming Democratic support. But only 32 Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the bill.

Eight of those Republicans are from Michigan, joining the six Democrats in the state’s delegation in voting for the measure.

A ninth Michigan Republican, Timothy Walberg, did not vote. Seven other Republicans that voted for the bill are from nearby Midwestern states that are also home to auto plants. But outside of the auto belt, the bailout had little Republican support.

Senate rules would allow the Republican minority to block or even kill the legislation. And even with the support from the White House, Republican anger seemed to grow throughout the day.

This is the GOP’s first test of the Obama era – our willingness to get down into the fight on principle and make a clear stand against using taxpayer money to benefit major Democrat donors. Standing tall, we still may lose but we’ll also free ourselves from the morass of corruption and spending which is Washington, DC. We’ll become, once again, the outsiders battling for the people against the entrenched special interests. As an aside, this now joins CFR and the prescription drug benefit as legislative efforts of President Bush which I oppose. For a Republican to be signed on to this dog of a bill is not just wrong, its a serious political blunder. Democrats are desperate for GOP cover on this and want nothing more than to lay this nauseating pile of political feces on the Republican party in the public mind. All Republicans should have nothing to do with it.

Our watchwords have to be honesty, restraint, solutions – if what someone wants to do can’t be classified as one of those three things, then we shouldn’t get within a country mile of it.

The Emperor gets more naked all the time:

The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

Now for some quotes:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” – Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

One can dismiss all this as the ravings of paid shills for the energy industry – but the fact that global temperatures have been stable for the past 10 years is a strong indicator that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is nonsense. CO2 has flooded into the atmosphere in increasing quantities over the past 10 years and according to the climate models we should see increasing global temperatures. This will, I think, prove to be the biggest hoax in human history.

From Jake Tapper:

…it should be pointed out, Mr. Obama has a relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, having not only endorsed Blagojevich in 2002 and 2006, but having served as a top adviser to the Illinois governor in his first 2002 run for the state house.

In the Democratic gubernatorial primary that year, then-state sen. Obama endorsed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. But after Blagojevich won, Obama came around enthusiastically. At the same time, meanwhile, Axelrod had such serious concerns about whether Blagojevich was ready for governing he refused to work for his one-time client.

According to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., Mr. Obama’s incoming White House chief of staff, Emanuel, then-state senator Obama, a third Blagojevich aide, and Blagojevich’s campaign co-chair, David Wilhelm, were the top strategists of Blagojevich’s 2002 gubernatorial victory.

Emanuel told the New Yorker earlier this year that he and Obama “participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two.”

Naturally, Emanuel is backing away from this as fast as he can – amazing how many people will claim they are actually idiots in order to get out of a tight spot. But whatever else Emanuel might be, he’s not an idiot – in fact, he’s probably one of the smartest men in politics today. Point blank, I’m not buying Emanuel’s new story that he was entirely wrong back when but now has been reminded of what it was really like. Like Obama’s statement he hadn’t spoken with Blagojevich about his replacement, Emanuel’s statement that he’s only now correctly remembering what happened is not just a likely falsehood, but is a very stupid likely falsehood, into the bargain. These sorts of statements can only be made by people 100% certain that, in the end, the MSM will cover for them.

This is the biggest corruption scandal in many a year, and the mud will splash on to everyone involved in Illinois politics, especially its Chicago division. Obama is hip deep in Chicago politics, and the dumbest thing he can do is try to pretend he wasn’t around. The smart move is to embrace the muck, express sadness that former colleagues are caught up in this and insist that his only purpose is to see that justice is done. Of course, Obama can only do this if he’s certain that there’s no direct dirt on himself. If Obama has dirt to worry about, then dodging and weaving is all he can do – and hope that other matters quickly trump the public’s attention.

As an aside, anyone who read Caucus of Corruption is entirely unsurprised at this turn of events. Of, if surprised, only by the fact that it took this long for all of it to come out. The book is still for sale – and Blagojevich, Obama and Emanuel are not the only Democrats mentioned in it, nor have even a tithe of the skeletons come out of the Democrat closet at this point.