While the GOP is transparently attempting to smear Obama with Blahojevich, it would be wise to remember that the Chicago political establishment is not the only hotbed of crime, corruption, and cronyism. For example, this:
Former CIA deputy executive director John Brennan had been the leading contender for the Langley job; he was pressured to withdraw from consideration because he was too closely linked to Bush Administration policies. Brennan still serves as a co-chair of Obama’s intelligence policy review board.
Sources say that Obama’s team is having trouble finding a potential CIA director who lacks politically incriminating links to controversial Bush Administration policies and yet commands the respect of the agency’s rank and file.
It isn’t just the politically incriminating links that are the current problem, as it is the view of many (me included), that the entire federal government has turned into little more than criminal enterprise. And just for fun, this:
Today, President Bush honored 24 recipients of this year’s award, including actor Gary Sinise and Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp. Also included in that mix was Chuck Colson, “the first member of the Nixon administration to serve prison time for Watergate-related offenses.” Colson was President Nixon’s counsel from 1969-1973 and pleaded guilty in 1974 to obstruction of justice. Colson received a one to three year sentence, but served just seven months.
What about Scooter Libby?
Tlazolteotl
Well, a whole lot of hardworking, dedicated civilian federal employees would beg to disagree with that.
The Moar You Know
The rules:
1. All conduct by Democrats is criminal.
2. No conduct by Republicans is criminal.
demimondian
@Tlazolteotl: I’ll echo that, actually. I know a lot of very dedicated and honest people who work in the government, even though they could earn more money in the private sector.
John Cole
@Tlazolteotl: You know what I mean.
Comrade Stuck
Patience. Pretty soon Libby and the nightmare of the Bush Decade will fade away into the hinterlands of our memory. A new age is upon us, and we must prepare now for the release of 90’s Redux(directors cut), with many new characters to enjoy but retaining the basic plotline dutifully updated up by the VRWC.
Laura W
@John Cole: Jesus, John. Post some puppy photos already. The humans are really pissy tonight!
It’s just pick pick pick, everywhere I click.
(How can I have a fever and be barely living and still be so clever, you ask?)
TheHatOnMyCat
Ditto.
JL
Since Colson wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute can we identify him as the first terrorist to receive a medal? Would he be the first? It’s hard to keep track.
jake 4 that 1
@Tlazolteotl: How did they escape the purges?
Zifnab
@John Cole:
I wish we did. I don’t doubt the existence of hard working, honest government employees, but every time you turn on the news its another Monica Goodling screwing over the judiciary or EPA Chief mucking up the environment.
Honest, intelligent, diligent career government folks are virtually invisible in the wave after wave of scandals. And its really only going to get worse in the next four years as Obama runs around flushing the bad apples out of the system.
Chuck Butcher
Most politicians are doing the job for pretty decent reasons, whatever their ideology. Most of these people could make more in private enterprise than in political office. You could easily make the case that there are rewards beyond monetary remuneration, but those are pretty hard gotten.
As a blue collar construction contractor running in a Primary I looked pretty carefully at the House salary. It was not a happy making scenario, the total salary was a rather sizable jump in annual income, but the reality of having two homes, one in DC, and the required travel to and from home and in District travel and the requirement to run every two years and possibly not win (say, where’d my business go?) starts to make it less attractive.
Since I’m a lousy mind-reader, I’ll talk about my own. I know why I tried it, my fellows are poorly served by the incumbent and I could do better by them. It is that simple, I’m one of those people poorly served and I know and am friends with a bunch of them, also. Now you could call me out for egotism, and I’d plead to it; but the bottom line of it is that there’s nothing there I wanted more than my nail banging career. Why should I or anyone else assume that I am an absolute exception rather than nearly the rule? The few corrupt or grubby ones are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I meet with and work with politicians in Oregon. I haven’t seen the grubbiness in them and it is hard to hide. Surely they present themselves as well as possible to me, but I pay attention to them and their actions. I don’t see myself as easily fooled.
Joshua Norton
Something new to watch for. (Oh, this is freaking sweet!):
In a move guaranteed to cause freeptards heads to explode, Obama says he plans to use "all three of his names" when he takes the oath of office in January.
Lock the doors and hide the kiddies. It’s raining wingnut skull bone shrapnel all over the place.
JL
Chuck,
The few corrupt should not prove the rule but unfortunately, they do get the attention of MSM. The price of campaigns is such that money rules.
JL
@Joshua Norton: Maybe the whackos need to find out how many presidents were sworn in using their entire name.
Mike in NC
A joke printed in the Washington Post the other day said, "It’s a good thing Barack Hitler Obama changed his middle name, otherwise he’d never have been elected".
Comrade Stuck
In the Federal Government, you have the career employees and the political appointees. The career employees have basic job descriptions that they carry out with no time limit except for normal retirement like most other Americans. They are of all political persuasions, although most tend to vote dem because they are the only party that cares about them and has their well being as Gov employees in mind.
The appointees are obviously partisan to one degree or another. The dem ones that come with a dem presnit, generally want their agency to meet whatever mandate that goes with their agencies existence. They may be incompetent and some crooked, but generally are honest public servants. The GOP ones in certain agencies, do not care one wit, and often do not even recognize the legitimacy of said mandate they are appointed to meet, or the gov employees that are also tasked to carry it out.
These appointees retain a lot of power at the top level of management and decision making, but cannot just outright refuse to do the job Congress has mandated thru public law. So what they set about doing, is create as many administrative roadblocks as possible. via manpower allocation, funding, and a zillion other clusterfucks limited only by their imagination. Every GOP admin has done this to some degree the past 50 years or so, but like everything else Bush has fucked up, he has made a Texas size mess out of our Federal departments, bureaus and agencies. We won’t know the full extent of damage until Obama takes office.
My suspicion is that even the Iraq war and all the constitutional breaches we know about, the destruction of the functionality of the government by GWB, as a whole will, dwarf all other crimes and misdemeanors.
So no, it’s not the career employees fault, but they have become unwilling accomplices in the GOP inc. crime spree.
Comrade Stuck
"Dwarf" was a poor choice of word. Especially appied to Iraq and the thousands of dead Iraqis and Americans, The mismanagement of the fed gov is not comparable to that , or torture.
TenguPhule
If being stupid were a crime, Humanity would be extinct.
Zifnab
@Comrade Stuck:
The soldiers all died as heroes (which is all an American making under $250k / year can really aspire towards) and the Iraqi casualties had it coming to them for being Moon Worshipers and living in a big stinking national terrorist factory.
That said, I suspect we won’t really see destruction of the fundamentals of government until the Republicans join forces with the conservative wing of the Democratic Party to stab Barack Obama in the back for four years running.
Once we get another GOPer-in-Chief in office to "save" us like Reagen did after Carter, we’ll get to see some real Constitutional raping and pillaging.
This is certainly a pessimistic prediction, but after watching Dems cave to the GOP minority at every opportunity for the last two years, its not one I’m blind towards.
Comrade Stuck
@Zifnab:
Obama now has a 70 approval before even taking office, so he has some political capital his recent predecessors did not. I think he will have some time, maybe a year or so, to make some progress on the economy before the Blue Dog Long Knives come out. Until then, I think he will get pretty much what he asks for, provided it’s not seen as overly ideological. The dems have much bigger majorities in Congress, so there is a buffer. But I remember also the past two years, and wouldn’t be all that surprised if your right in your prediction.
JL
According to The Page, the Time magazine blog
IMO, I think it would have been better if the meeting were held when he first took office in 2001.
JL
@Comrade Stuck: I hope that you are right but after reading that Arlen is thinking about holding up the hearings on Holder’s nomination, I have my doubts. The repubs are out for blood. They wanted the turkey from Alaska.
Comrade Stuck
@JL:
Yea, I saw a little of his floor speech on cspan. Blaming Holder for Clinton’s pardon of Rich is in the same realm of blaming Obama for Blago’s crookery. The truth is that wingnuts are scared shitless of Holder. He knows the DOJ inside and out and has made it clear the past 8 years what he thinks of wingnut shredding of the constitution. The fact remains that to stop Holder’s nomination, the Senate GOP will have a 2 vote window. Not to mention the risk of filibustering a Pres with a 70 percent approval and a country routing for him to fix the mess that nutters have wrought. But I agree that they are as crazy as they’ve ever been right now == a party cornered can be expected to do about anything.
Bob In Pacifica
I think the technique is known as "jacketing". You find something embarrassing and connect your target to the embarrassing thing. So Obama’s preacher says something fiery a decade ago when Obama wasn’t even in town, then that makes Obama a black radical. He sits on a board of a Republican charity with William Ayers, then he’s a terrorist. If a Democratic politician in Illinois is indicted, then Obama is a corrupt Democrat.
By the way, I heard an FBI agent on the news make some comment that Illinois is the most politically corrupt state in the country. I guess he didn’t mention Alabama because the Siegelman case was in large part federal corruption. I’m sure the Feebs will be right on that one very soon. Considering the FBI’s performance in the anthrax letter case and their jacketing of Ivins, I wouldn’t be pointing fingers.
Ash Can
OT, this is just too fucking funny.
Delia
@Ash Can:
that’s hilarious.
handy
Great post. Heard some "moderate" winger on hate radio say something to the effect this morning that Chicago politics is the dirtiest in the bizz. I wanted to shout back to the not-quite-ditto-head, "Yeah because DC under eight years of Bush and the Repubs has been so clean and dandy!"
Hypocrites.
Person of Choler
Bush is soon gone and the spotlight is now shining on Obama. It will be interesting to see what becomes visible under the close inspection he will get over the next years.
Who cares what your wingnuts say. If Obama messes up, saying "Bush is evil" or "Republicans are corrupt" won’t cover for him.
Welcome to having your guy in charge.
Jon H
@Joshua Norton:
All three?
"Klaatu Barada Nikto"
Jon H
@JL:
Heh. If he does, the Dems should bring in Scooter Libby to testify. As I recall, he was Marc Rich’s lawyer and was instrumental in seeking the pardon.
It might be best to hold hearings before Obama even takes office.
Josh Hueco
@handy:
(Texas clears throat loudly)