More on the Chicago Culture of Corruption In Which Obama Thrived
More: KHQA, Which Reported Obama-Blago Meeting, Disappears Articles Reporting It; Tom Magurie Wonders if They Just Didn't Get It Wrong from the Get-Go

At Michelle Malkin's:

You want an expose, look into the links between the banks owned by Amrish Mahajan (Mutual Bank) and the Giannoulias family (Broadway Bank) and all the state business and real estate deals (including Obama’s) and that ran through those banks. Alexi Giannoulias is the Illinois State Treasurer, who, you might recall, came out of nowhere when he was endorsed by Obama. Conveniently, Patty Blagojevich is a realtor who has made thousands of dollars in commissions from Hot Rod’s cronies. The Chicago Tribune has detailed the commissions-as-politcal-donations policy of the Blagojevich’s many times. Basically, the only way to make it big in Chicago politics is to pay to play, and this is an environment in which Obama not only existed but thrived. To say that corruption in Chicago and Cook County is pervasive would be an understatement. Unfortunately America will now have to live with the decision of chosing a Chicago politician as president and what that means for the nation as favors are repaid over the next four years...

She also writes of the Democratic Party's culture of corruption.

itzgerald says President-elect Obama was not implicated in the plethora of charges against Democrats Blago and Harris. The national media went out of their way to absolve him, too. But declaring Team Obama’s hands clean — especially with Blago crony and indicted Obama donor Tony Rezko in the middle of it all — is premature. (And if you’re wondering why I keep putting “Democrat” in front of the accused corruptocrats, it’s because the mainstream newspapers can’t seem to remember to identify their party prominently the way they do when Republicans are nabbed.)

...

Democrats and the media can no longer rest on the old rationalization that Blago is an exception to the “we’re cleaner than thou” rule. 2008 was the year of Democratic Reps. William “Cold Cash” Jefferson, Charlie “Sweetheart Deals” Rangel, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame “Text Me” Kilpatrick. It was the year Democratic Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson got caught stuffing bribes from an FBI informant down her shirt. It was the year 12 Democratic leaders and staffers in Pennsylvania’s state Capitol were stung in a massive corruption scandal involving cash, sex and abuse of public office. And it was the year of multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandals at Democratic satellite offices of ACORN and the SEIU.

Wouldn't Some Vetting of The Chicago Way Have Been Helpful Before the Election? Actually, I'll take some vetting of Obama's political culture after the election. Won't get that either, of course.

Geraghty writes:

In light of allegations that the governor of Illinois was ready to auction off Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder, does any major media organization feel like they examined the political culture that Obama came from sufficiently? Do the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major networks, the newsweeklies, the cable networks, etc. — do they feel that they really gave their readers and viewers a good sense of how Chicago politics works, and how that place shaped Obama?

The MSM seems to be taking the position that in a city in which most politicians are extraordinarily corrupt, Obama is to be praised for being merely ordinarily corrupt.

Thanks to CJ for that.

And Yeah... Obama did in fact meet Blago on November 5th.

It is unlikely in the extreme that Obama plotted corruptly with Blago shortly after having been elected president. That's not the way the favor bank works, after all. The guy with more power doesn't need the guy with less power very much.

It does however underscore Obama's breathless dishonesty on his contacts with his various criminal associates -- he simply makes shit up out of whole cloth. He just doesn't care that there is a factual record to rebut his lies-- he knows the Obamamedia won't call him out.

Thanks to Intaglio.

Misprison of a Felony? Unlikely that Obama's mere failure to report a Blago shakedown would itself be criminal -- the case law requires an active, culpable step such as concealment, not mere inaction. Obama might want to take a bit more care, though, in lying about the meeting now.

Doubt on November 5 Meeting: Tom Maguire notes that Blago didn't seem to say they'd met on November 5 contemporaneously, making him wonder about this single report claiming a meeting.

Still, as he also notes, Axelrod previously said they'd had discussions about the Senate seat.

Yet More: KHQA Yanks Their Articles Stating There Was a Meeting: Are they hiding the truth? Or stealth-correcting an error by simply yanking the articles without admitting they got the story about the meeting wrong?

Thanks to CJ.

posted by Ace at 04:11 PM

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