Whitewater? Rezko ain't Whitewater. Blago ain't Whitewater. Fitz ain't Starr, and anyone who argues otherwise is a fucking idiot. The only ones to whom the "Clinton rules" still apply are the Clintons -- who, let me remind you, were roundly dissed and smeared, in a very Whitewaterish way, by none other than Joe Conason during the primaries. Fortunately, his old partner Gene Lyons kept his head, or most of it.
And yeah -- Illinois is uniquely corrupt. I am fully aware of the stat that Illinois ranks a mere 18th on the scale of public corruption convictions. Seems to me that a state which has achieved perfect corruption -- the Platonic ideal of corruption, if you will -- would have zero convictions.
Stop whistling in the dark, progs. If I may be allowed to reverse the central tenet of the Upanishads: This ain't that.
7 comments:
Jim McDougal had been through an entire cycle with federal prosecutors and come out the other end by the time Clinton ran for the presidency. it was a done deal at that point in time. Prosecutors had come in, looked around, indicted and finished the prosecution of McDougal. I can't remember whether he was acquitted or convicted. Suffice to say, Clinton had no reason to think that prosecution would rear its head again.
That is not the case with this Rezko/Obama/Blago situation.
Yeah, it IS Whitewater in that the release of the affidavit and arrest are timed for political reasons. Geez, what does it take to state the obvious, that the Republicans are trying to find a way to take both the governorship AND the Senate seat, and timed this thing in order to create a special election? Hopefully the Democrats will keep the GOP's wet dream from happening and will make Blago resign, Quinn take the job, and Quinn appoint a successor to Obama. You have to look at the entire context, Joseph, of this. The timing gives the entire charade away.
Susan:
The timing is based on the commission of the crime.
Unless you think the GOP controlled that too?
The problem with the Dems' "making Blago resign" is that he's likely to retaliate by taking the whole Illinois Democratic Party down with him. Of course, he's likely to do that anyway when he starts bargaining for a lesser charge and/or lighter sentence. Letting him string it out buys time for the entire machine, not just for the guy with the deceased skunk on his head.
No doubt the tie-in with when the arrest was made to what time of the year, will be an interesting topic. This being a Political problem will later turn out to look more like a Political Mafia which is what it needs to be called. However because it's Politcal there is to be expected a lot of "Mind Games" too. But everyone will be more than surprised to learn what else is involved because this runs really deep and into many other areas and includes many. It's more like there is a mountain of information known but we'll nail him on only what he recently did. Better fasten your seatbelt folks!
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
If it was "timed" for GOP "political reasons" it would have happened the week before the Presidential election. It didn't. Blagojevich has been under investigation for months. The timing of the arrest had everything to do with the timing of the solicitation of a bribe.
How can anyone compare the phony scandal of Whitewater,completely GOP and Press driven, to this real scandal? Having written a book on how phony Whitwater was ( with Gene Lyons) Conason should know better than to compare the two. What happened to him? It's sad.
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