Tuesday OT
The FBI arrests Rod Blagojevich , the corrupt IL Gov. (D). Good riddance.
The Tribune Company , owners of a media empire and the Chicago Cubs, files for bankruptcy.
If Bush signs it, an automotive bailout will arrive today.
In entertainment news, the Dark Knight comes out on DVD, and Jay Leno
goes prime time (mistake).
Submitted by Specter on Tue, 2008-12-09 10:14
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Comments :
IIRC there were already clouds gathering
over Blagojevich, including from fallout from the Rezko trial. So maybe this is just icing on the cake, but wow that is some rich icing -- conspiracy to sell a Senate seat!?
Gotta love Chicago.
There is some speculation
at Redstate that the Obama team might have tipped off the FBI. I'd file that under wild guessing at this point, but I'm sure more details will be coming soon. There is also the possibility that Obama will get dragged into the mud as Blagojevich goes down, but again there isn't much to go on currently beyond conjecture.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I suppose
it is best if one's name is not mentioned at all in the context of a corruption scandal, but turning somebody in for corruption is the second best thing for Obama's credibility.
I wonder why Redstate would spin this positively (spinning in the sense that Obama's involvement is still speculation as you mentioned)?
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Becoming a little less speculative
according to this dKos diary
, which suggests team Obama (and perhaps Rahm Emanuel in particular) acted appropriately.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
"according to this Dkos Diary"....LOL!
Brendab, Brendan, Brendan.
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Yeah, I know, but it was breaking stuff
Maybe too breaking -- check the last update regarding Rahm's role.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I noticed
that partisan hack, Patrick Fitzgerald, is on the case. Oh wait, umm . . .
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
This Blogo thing will end up being very good for Obama...
...there is strong evidence now that Rahm Emanuel is the one who tipped off the feds that Blogo was trying to sell the senate seat.
This makes Obama and his team come out smelling like a rose, a paragon of anti-corruption.
"He tried to bribe us, and we turned his ass in."
That's a pretty positive spin for Obama and company.
The latest approval polls for Obama are a staggering 79%. They will go even higher after this.
Thank you Governor Blagojevich... you just gave President-Elect Obama even MORE political capital!
I survived the Bush Administration
It takes away
the argument that Obama is part of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machinery also.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Exactly....
This is Obama's "Robert-Kennedy-takes-on-Jimmy-Hoffa" moment.
I survived the Bush Administration
Obama and his team smell alright...
...but there's nothing rosey about it!
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
You can hope all you want, RW...
But the fact that it was Obama's transition team that tipped off Fitzgerald's office is an extremely positive development for Obama.
I know that, being a Bush supporter and all, you are not used to a President acting in an ethical and honest manner.... so this is a sort of culture-shock for you.
But I predict that over the next 8 years you will become accustomed to it.
I survived the Bush Administration
Turning someone in for
Turning someone in for offering you a bribe makes you a paragon of virtue? That's seems like a pretty sad statement on our culture.
Well we are talking about politicians :)
-nt.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
"Character is what you do when you think nobody is watching."
I forget who said that (or something like that).
But the point is.... how a politician (or anyone) acts when there aren't any cameras rolling says an awful lot about him or her.
Behind the scenes, when offered a bribe, Obama and/or his team said "f--- you. No way."
That tells me that I can trust the guy has the right character for the job.
I'm not convinced that either of our last two Presidents would have shown such character when the cameras weren't rolling.
I survived the Bush Administration
That or Obama's just smarter
That or Obama's just smarter and know's there is no "behind the scenes"
That's another character trait that gives me great confidence
Intelligence!
I know we've gone 8 long years without having that trait in the White House.....
I survived the Bush Administration
How to avoid getting dragged down by bad decisions
Interesting article at CSM, it is nominally about the Detroit bailout, but it applies to any sort of decision-making, and particularly institutional decision making.
With a Detroit bailout, the Fed may become too invested to quit
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Obama keeps looking better and better in the Blago indictment
www.slate.com/id/2206349/
I survived the Bush Administration
Argument to end the Transportation Security Administration
What good is the TSA?
End, don't mend, the Transportation Security Administration
According to this author, there was never any threat from our water bottles, yet the TSA won't admit it.
Reminds me of a Salon article from a while ago...
Propped up by a culture of fear, TSA has become a bureaucracy with too much power and little accountability. Where will the lunacy stop?
Which reminds me of another (more emotional) story of a guy who got detained (and banned from an airport) because he had challenged a screener who embarassed his wife such that she cried.
It's kinda screwy.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Just about everything
put in place in the 9/11 aftermath is best scrapped as terrible ideas born of short sighted over-reaction.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
RS is salivating over the blago take down
believing it will end up tarnishing Obama.
Personally I doubt it, whether or not Obama did anything actually dirty. Between the usual post-election political burn out, economic woes, and the holiday season (not to mention that Obama isn't even president yet) I tend to doubt many people really care. Unless some dramatic j'accuse moment shows up I think this'll be ancient history by the time the inauguration rolls around.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Desperate times
call for desperate arguments.
Remember, this is the same bunch whose campaign platform last election was 'guilt by association.' Do you think they'd give that up now?
I agree that outside of IL, which Obama has secured anyway, this will be a fleeting story.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
The argument of the right, at least from Hannity, appears to be
this:
Obama may have rejected the bribe from Blago, but the simply fact that he associates with the guy means he's corrupt.
That is the equivalent of this situation:
A drug dealer offers Obama heroin. Obama follows Nancy Reagan's advice and just "says no".
The next day, Hannity and company proclaim: "Obama associates with drug dealers!"
Or a more relevant example. Obama is to Blagojevich what Palin is to Stevens.
"What is that you say? But Palin fought against the corruption of Stevens! Just because they are both part of the Republican machine in Alaska doesn't mean she's as corrupt as him! That's guilt by association!"
The two situations are pretty analogous.
I survived the Bush Administration
Point taken
But unless I knew the context I wouldn't know which party you were talking about. Hello? McSame?
Guilt by association and all the other wonderful logical fallacies
exist because:
1) People are too lazy to make coherent, logical arguments
2) Many people buy lazy arguments to begin with
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Guilt by association
is logically sloppy but suspicion by association is just good sense.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
exactly: suspicion by association
Logic gets you nowhere without facts. We all have very limited information about the world...so we glean what information we can, where we can.
In a world where high value information about a person (such as complete documentation of everything that they've every done) is unavailable, we have to rely on low value information (such as whether they associate with criminals).
Real life does not require the same standards of evidence that a a courtroom does. We have to move foreward knowing that we will often be wrong, but try to reduce the frequency that we are wrong.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
I suppose you are correct
Perhaps from my subjective point I saw McCain's platform, driven mostly by Palin, to be more negative and stress the guilt by association connections. I know many Republicans who feel differently.
For what its worth, a google search of 'Obama terrorist' leads to 5,820,000 hits and 'McCain Bush' only has 4,650,000 hits. I know that does not prove anything necessarily (there could be one or two million articles defending Obama from these attacks), but it is still interesting that the Bush/McCain' tie gets 20% less.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
obama terrorist
They could also be discussing Obama's opinions on anti-terrorism policy.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
I obviously
have not looked at them all, but from a quick perusal, I seriously doubt that those consist of a substantial number of them. The tags/related search terms at the bottom of the page (obama muslim, sean hannity, ann coulter, glenn beck) lead me to believe that Obama's terrorism policy is not the bulk of the entries.
BTW, I don't know if I misspelled terrorist the first time or what, but the second and third time I checked the amount, it came to 9,750,000. Without further research, it does not prove anything, but it still gives some credence to my view above.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
I'm missing something
Can anyone read this story and tell me what exactly is the problem:
wordpress.redstate.com/crippy/2008/12/09/rise-of-the-food-nazis/
Short version- restaraunt implements new policy which reduces waste and pleases customers. Somehow this drives the author o an immediate godwin violation.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
It's not you
This Crippy fellow's previous post
apparently was the classic "It's cold outside today, so global warming is a hoax." So I wouldn't be too concerned about missing any logic that might be in his rants.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
what a moron
Okay, I bit and read the restate diary. I didn't read the entire news article, but based on the first quote and the diarist's reaction, he seems to be conflating the resturaunt's regulation of their "all you can eat" deal with the anti-hunger activist's complaint about how much food is wasted...as though this policy came from outside of the resturaunt.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Didn't you know?
All liberals are 100% alike according to many of the most partisan on the right.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,