Blagojevich says he’d prefer a black candidate — “It would be very good if all the factors converged and if an African-American candidate would fit that bill … and that certainly would be the best of all worlds, and that’s possible, but that by itself is not the only consideration,” he says; and he says an unwillingness to run for reelection is “not a deal-breaker,” which could rule back in Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Obama mentor Emil Jones.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich will appoint whomever Obama wants to fill Obama’s Senate seat, and supposedly he will do so before the end of the year (because if he waits longer than that, Obama’s replacement will lose seniority points when the new class of freshman Senators is sworn in come January…and the Senate is ALL ABOUT seniority points).
Jesse Jackson Jr. will run for the Senate seat in 2010, and seems to already be gearing up to do just that. So, at first we thought he would be the logical choice to replace Obama now — he could then run as the sitting Senator in 2010 for re-election of Obama’s seat.
It’s inconceivable that Obama wouldn’t be replaced with another black Senator, or that his Senate seat wouldn’t be awarded as a choice prize to someone Obama owes for his election to the presidency.
Without Emil Jones, Obama would never be where he is today — and Jones wants that Senate seat, because of all the perks it will bring him, not the least of which will be the $125,000 pension he’ll receive each year with the Senate seat on his resume (his pension is accumulative, so this short stint in the Senate for less than two years is the added boost he needed, on top of his Illinois state senate pension, to make it to $125,000 a year).
This is how things work in Illinois, and in the Obama Nation at large. Without Jones’ help, Obama would have never been able to successfully run for the Senate himself, and the last 4 years would have never happened. Here in Illinois, what Jones wants, Jones gets, so we can’t imagine that stopping now.
What’s best for the actual people of Illinois, or even Democrats’ chances of keeping the seat in 2010 is entirely besides the point in terms of Blagojevich’s decision.
Hope!
Change!
New Kind of Politics!
December 4, 2008 at 8:51 am
we have to start thinking in terms of who Obama will appoint because they know too much about him and are in a position to blackmail him
Jones most certainly knows some personal facts about Obama.
Listen to Donofrio, Orly & W…. (lawyers with briefs at supreme and superior court levels) discuss how justice is being thwarted at those levels. AND HOW A DEAD ELECTORATE TURNED UP – discovered by Orly’s team! The voters weren’t the only ones involved in electing Barack who were dead!!
http://www.plainsradio.com/show/Voice%201-1-08.mp3
December 4, 2008 at 10:04 am
Since I am an Illinois resident and Obama was my senator (Thank goodness we are no longer paying his salary…), I was hoping that they would pick Tammie Duckworth to be Obama’s replacement. I emailed Sen. Durbin re: this but of course did not get any reply. Tammie is a patriotic American who lost both legs in Iraq, a congresswoman who is an honest politician (if that is possible) and a good person. If Emil Jones is our senator, then the fix is in again and it will be more dirty politics as usual in Illinois-Obama Land. Perhaps Jones will care about us more than Obama did. Maybe Jones will actually show up and vote for something to benefit the people of Illinois, but I won’t be holding my breath…I think he will just let the clock run out on his senatorial position and then wait in line to collect his pension check.
December 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
Imagine if Blago had said he wanted to replace a white senator with a white senator? Whatever happened to giving people positions who would do a good job? AH, stupid me. This is Illinois. They are all useless, so who cares! I would vote for a Hillbuzz guy in ‘12, and I have vowed never to vote for a Dem again!
December 4, 2008 at 2:33 pm
“must be black”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/02/congressman-obamas-senate-replacement-black/
December 4, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Even when I thought the standards for becoming a member of Congress couldn’t go any lower, I have been proved wrong! Emil Jones is completely out of place anywhere near the Senate. We’re taking people now with nothing more than ’street creds’ into the highest decision making roles in this country?
What about standards and values? Don’t they count anymore? Is it only about payback and payoffs?
December 4, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Dec. 5, 2008 10:49 PM link L | Harleyville, SC
Friends,
Will you please take the time to read this, and if you think it worthwhile, pass it along to your email list, and ask them to read it? Even if they voted, with all good intentions, for Mr. Obama?
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.
Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten – fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. (news link)
That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving.
Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman)
Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?. We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about)–the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska.
All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.
Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises.
Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot.
And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media–did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)
Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.
Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years–a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency–it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe–and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
Best regards
A Concerned American Citizen
Next Watch Obama’s Chief of Staff in an interview explaining how college students and others will now soon be forced to wear uniforms and be part of Obama’s Civil Defense Scheme. AKA Gestapo – See
Obama’s Civil Defense Plans Revealed by His Chief of Staff
Please feel free to copy and paste this article anywhere and on any blog. The author gives permission.
December 5, 2008 at 12:31 am
Affirmative action in the senate……crikey
And I thought it wasn’t about race.
December 5, 2008 at 7:02 am
I must say that I agree with (L) on so many of the things that have been written. There is a different feeling in this country today ..one that makes me feel anxious. So many of our citizens are brain dead..and are going along with things without trying to learn anything about obama. To some it was enough being recommended by oprah. To some it was because he was a democrat and they had never voted republican. To many it was because they were a part of a movement. None of the reasons very realistic. Even now…the king has taken over ruling the land before the office of president is vacated.
December 5, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I’m sick of identity politics. “I’d prefer a black candidate” BS!!! How about I’d prefer a QUALIFIED, intelligent candidate and not some party hack or someone who “fits the bill” because they are of a certain race or sex??????
December 6, 2008 at 5:07 am
Thank you L for confirming what I have felt for years. And living in Illinois with the elected officials we have to put up with, just turns my stomach and hurts my heart. I feel I have no voice in this state and to put Emil Jones in after all the underhanded politics he has done just adds to that feeling.
I saw a documentary on the History Channel about Hitler and the youth. He put the children in schools to indoctrinate them realizing that he can form the young minds easier than the adults. Eventually children were ratting out those who opposed Hitler’s views, mother’s, fathers, etc. and basically became zombies with no heart or emotion. Is that where we are headed?
Let’s not wait too long to speak up and take action, and maybe stock up and get your guns!!
December 6, 2008 at 12:41 pm
This thing about the federal reserve is insane. How do we the people get our power back? It’s gone now… Nov. 4th forever sealed the absolute governmental power deal…
December 9, 2008 at 12:42 am
L, you need to cut and paste your comment each week on this site. I am positive it will not lose it’s relevancy.
Great post. Thank you. I join you in your prayer.