Jackson update and more

Well, there is now widespread agreement that Jesse Jackson Jr. is Senate candidate #5, the fellow who is alleged (by an FBI man who has heard some rather interesting wiretaps) to have offered Governor Rod Blagojevich a big, fat bribe in order to get a Senate seat. While other news outlets have been reporting the Jackson identification with a few dangling qualifiers, the Chicago Sun-Times is saying it flat out, no ifs ands or buts.

Jackson denies that anyone was authorized to offer a bribe on his behalf. On the wiretaps, Blagojevich says that he talked to an "emissary" who offered $500,000.

Let me state right here and now that I still much admire Jackson's father, and do not regret my vote for the man in 1988. But the younger Jackson has done an awful lot of things to piss me off during this campaign season -- not least among those piss-offable things being the time he needlessly dissed his own father in public.

Powerline says: "It's important to remember, though, that the reference to Senate Candidate 5 is just Blagojevich talking, not the gospel." Yep. But while the emissary goes unnamed in the Complaint, it appears that the FBI knows who he is. And the feds may or may not have a voice on the other end of the line. In which case, there will be pressure placed on said emissary to rat out Jackson.

I hold with those who think that the real target in all of this may be Obama.

Why else would they make the matter public now? Why not wait until that $500,000 changed hands, which would allow for a clean bust? Now they can put pressure on Jackson, and force him to talk.

The Complaint hints that Obama and Jackson are not as close as they once were. At least, Obi does not seem overjoyed at the prospect of Jackson taking that Senate seat.

You open up a criminal conspiracy by busting people lower down in the hierarchy and making deals in order to get someone higher up. You keep working your way up the ladder, making deal after deal, until you get Mr. Big. That's how these things get broken.

Right now, those lower down are thinking that they will be protected by the president. But Obama isn't the president yet. Bush -- if he has any honor or sense (which he probably doesn't) -- can appoint a special prosecutor as a parting shot. Even if Dubya does not go down that road (he may not want Rezko's ties to the Bush administration to be aired), it is now politically difficult, if not impossible, to can Fitzgerald.

So at a certain point, the folks inhabiting the lower rungs of the conspiracy must ask themselves if Obama is worth it -- and if Obama can survive, entering the presidency, as he will, already burdened by scandal.

I think there will also be a certain amount of resentment and envy driving the urge to gab. The sinecure that Blago wanted for his wife did not differ in any appreciable way from the well-paid sinecure Michelle Obama got on the board of that hospital. (Remember, Michelle's salary was raised north of $300 k when Obama starting sending earmarks to a hospital that overcharged the poor. And she didn't really do anything on that board, except cash checks.) At one point, Blago will tell himself: "Why should I be nabbed for doing the exact same thing that Obama got away with?"

The mini-imbroglio about Axelrod "mis-speaking" already shows how rattled these guys are, because nobody is buying it. It's an obvious lie. And the public understands that if Team Obama lies, there must be something to cover up.

Also keep in mind: The stuff about selling the Senate seat is what everyone is talking about right now, because it is shocking, it is sexy, and it is easy to understand. But there's a lot more in that Complaint. And there's a lot more not in the Complaint. The Obots who are now trying to establish distance between Blago and Obama are kidding themselves: In the days before the wiretaps were installed, they were partners in crime.

By the way -- did you know that Blagojevich, in prison, could still name himself to the Senate?