Robert Gibbs has said that he will step down as press secretary in order to devote himself to Obama's re-election campaign. Which means that the Big O has decided to run again. The guy can't even admit that he has failed.
This news means that there MUST be an intra-party challenge to Obama. We simply cannot survive any more of this crap.
It gets better. Obama will probably give the press secretary position to Richard Daley's brother. When the House Republicans get their investigative engines going, they will be looking hard at Obama's links to Chicago corruption. This won't be like the Clinton years, when the Republican attacks were just smears. In Obama's case, the corruption was real.
And now he is going to have a member of the Daley family function as the voice of the administration. This will be fun.
Mayor Richard Daley has often sought to portray himself as above involvement in machine-style politics, once declaring, "My political organization is myself."
But testimony Monday in a federal corruption trial linked the mayor's brother William Daley and longtime top strategist Timothy Degnan to the embryonic stages of what became the Hispanic Democratic Organization.
Although the mayor has denied knowing that city job openings were rigged for his supporters, a former HDO leader from the Southeast Side testified Degnan dangled jobs in return for loyalty in Daley's first successful campaign for mayor in 1989.
And another former top Latino political operative said he helped build HDO on the North Side for Daley's political organization in the early 1990s at the urging of Degnan, William Daley and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.)
Hope you like reading about this sort of thing....
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As a Chicagoan, from the South Side (OBamaville), I just love reading stuff like that. Please keep it coming.
catlady
posted by Anonymous : 1:32 PM
Well....
Corruption is nothing new to us "Chicagoans." We've always known how the "Machine" worked and who benefited from selling their souls to it.
Those that think Obama was somehow above it all are the same sheep that swallow the bile these politicians and their media whores feed them on a daily basis!
It does not take a genius to see that Obama was knee deep in the shit that is Chicago politics.
He could never have risen to the level he did without selling his soul to Daley's Machine!!!
Joseph, anonymous 10:03 sounds just like our gal, Donna "stop the hate" Brazile. :)
posted by Zee : 11:40 PM
I was told by a retired federal judge during the primaries that there is a reason the US had never elected a President from Chicago. That reason was corruption. It took an entire party's political elite to drag his crooked ass across a rigged and polluted nominating circus, and then a bought and paid for media to lie him into office. Obama makes Warren Harding look good. When Darrell Issa gets rolling Chicago is going to look like ancient Rome.
posted by Anonymous : 4:24 AM
This cocksucker Obama just keeps poking his thumb in our eye, every damned day is a fresh outrage. Yet numbskulls like Anon@10:03 still lick his feet.
sheesh (to both)
posted by Pennelope Pennebaker : 9:45 AM
Did you see the Daley appointment is official? The Chamber of Commerce called it a 'strong appointment'. How can any Democrat possibly defend that?
Back when I was a Democratic Party official, I expressed my misgivings about Obama's obvious ethical impairments to one of my fellow party officers. His response was:
"Oh yeah, the guy is obviously completely mobbed up - but he can *win*."
As for expatriate mode, the Light of my Life is still (bless her heart) a Canadian citizen - so I suppose that's always an alternative.
The fact that the Daley's are involved in the corruption with Obama requires a Chief of Staff, Willaim Daley) who is in on the corruption. You don't want to have to bring in an outsider to have to explain. It is easier to maintain and manage the cover up and the corruption with people right in the middle of the Chicago Way.
Get ready, Joseph. They'll be back by the dozens before the end of the year.
Nothing makes me want to vote for a candidate more than his supporters calling me a bigot, old, and unneeded.
stxabuela
posted by Anonymous : 4:09 PM
And yes, that last statement was sarcastic.
stxabuela
posted by Anonymous : 4:11 PM
I just want to say enjoy your adventure. Change is a good thing except when it is accompanied by "Hope". Don't hope, make it happen. My question is "if Clinton was so bad, how come Obama is turning to all of Clinton's choices in choosing his advisors now?
I've always thought that the Birther Movement was an Axlerod creation to divert attention away from Obama's Chicago problems. Any legitimate look into Obama's ties to the Chicago Machine will be painted with the same brush used on the Birthers.
posted by Mr. Mike : 5:57 AM
I think too many here are too young to be cynical enough to understand what goes on with US presidents.
Hint: without many exceptions, the entirety of all post-WW II presidents, maybe excepting Ike, came out of highly corrupt circumstances. This isn't a bug of our system, but a feature.
Our plutocratic system's owners are amoral enough to qualify as psychopaths, and the people they allow and/or help to attain high power are their creatures. If someone of a contrary bend slips through their gauntlet, or later decides they have a conscience and begin to oppose the power, they will be removed.
Clinton's first term as governor, his defeat and return for many more terms, provide a helpful example. In his first term, he functioned as a liberal. Business interests didn't like it, and ensured his defeat. After they 'explained' it like that, he got the picture, and began his pro-corporate switch.
Kucinich's run-in with the PTB in Cleveland as mayor are also instructive. He didn't cave to them by selling the municipal power plant, and he was thrown out of elective politics for some decades.
So my take is that far from being a failure, Obama is about the best we can get, given this system. He hasn't fixed the economy, because frankly it is broken beyond easy or quick repair, or maybe any repair. His job is to paper over the national bankruptcy and create a semblance of normality, while putting that velvet glove over the chain-mail fist that was the overtly fascistic Bush approach.
And those are the choices, in my view. Now, either the iron fist, or the iron fist in the velvet glove (kinder, gentler appearing fascism).
If you overthrow the Shah, you get Khomeini. Like it or not, the alternative to Obama-ism is the troglodyte right and their gloves off approach.
I had a bit of a "Sullivan's Travel's" beginning to my trip. In fact, my last hours on my home turf were spent watching Jerry Brown get himself sworn in as Governor, while we waited for wheel bearings to be replaced on our hideously overweight minivan. Brown talked about the trials experienced by the settlers who came to California via wagon train -- an appropriate image, since we are going in the opposite direction.
So are a lot of other folks, from what I gather.
Brown's a good man, and California was prosperous during his previous time in office. But I don't think that he can solve the state's current problems. No-one can. Gridlock in Sacramento will continue,because the Republicans (many of whom make Sharron Angle look like Eleanor Roosevelt) simply will not compromise.
So I got out of Dodge. But things do not appear to be muich better elsewhere.
During our first night out of the state, we spoke to a motel manager who revealed that he has a Master's degree in physics. Running a motel -- working for a nice gentleman from India -- is the best job he can get.
Libertarianism has destroyed America. Marx never harmed us. Milton Friedman did.
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Having heard enough stories like these, I've saved every penny and firmly embraced minimalism and frugality over the last few years. Fortunately I live in the midwest where I can easily lower my living expenses in order to bolster my savings. Whenever I feel like I'm starting to slip back into old consumerist paradigms I fire up "Fight Club" and maybe read some Thoreau.
posted by Zolodoco : 7:03 PM
So where the f**k are you? The offer still stands, you know...
...the other side of the country, that is. While most of you were out celebrating, I spent the night packing the Hippo.
It just occurred to me that many readers will find the previous sentence obscene. "The Hippo" is the nickname for our minivan.
A cross-country trip like this is scary, especially after one has read tales of 100-car pile-ups in North Dakota. But one must embrace adventure. An infinitude of thanks to readers who made this adventure possible. Thanks for everything.
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Enjoy your trip. I did the X-Country thing in my youth, taking the North route to avoid country western radio stations, and enjoyed every minute of it. This is a BIG country! I don't know anything about Maryland, but have been an east coaster my whole life (outside of that military time) and it's not as bad as the left coasters are saying.
posted by Sophie : 10:37 AM
Congrats on the embracing the new and the courage to follow your dreams.
