Obama seat for sale on eBay

http://cgi.ebay.com/Obamas-senate-seat_W0QQitemZ220327037270QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item220327037270&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A0|293%3A1|294%3A50

lol

12/10/2008 10:58:45 AM

^It's at 99-mil with 78 bids.

...I'm not sure what to think of that fact.

[Edited on December 10, 2008 at 11:16 AM. Reason : .]

12/10/2008 11:16:18 AM

Quote :

"I think it's going to be great in a couple years when witnesses come out from Kenya confirming that Obama was born there, and the Hawaii records show that Obama was listed as being born outside of a hospital."

lawl

would this be grounds for an impeachment?

or would arnold use it as precedent for his run for the presidency?

12/10/2008 11:33:27 AM

Quote :

"If they're from Chicago, play "one zero degrees of separation"."

fify

12/10/2008 12:03:54 PM

Uh-oh. Now they're saying Jesse Jackson Jr. may have some connection to this mess. And Bob Beckel is saying the story has legs.

12/10/2008 3:26:43 PM

Time Article on how the Chicago label helped Obama.

I wonder what Amy Sullivan thinks now.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1858493,00.html

Quote :

"Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 How the Chicago Way Helped Obama By Amy Sullivan Chicago may be "my kind of town," as the song goes, but since Barack Obama's election, conservatives have been busy warning that it could be his kind of White House as well. "Dozens of Chicago advisers, officials and fundraisers have helped grease Obama's ascent from community organizer to President-elect," reads one typical Fox.com report. "[They] may also be looking to ride Obama's coattails." The President-elect's selection of Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff and Chicago native John Podesta as his transition chief, as well as the news that his Chicago-based campaign senior strategist, David Axelrod, will be a White House adviser, has only fueled grumblings that machine-style patronage politics is on its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. John McCain trotted out a similar attack against Obama in the last few months of the campaign. In late September, the Arizona Senator released a television ad called "Chicago Machine." The spot began with a narrator intoning, "Barack Obama — born of the corrupt Chicago political machine," before running through a list of Obama's allegedly unsavory cronies. A few weeks later, McCain started using what became one of his favorite lines on the stump: "I don't need any lessons about telling the truth from a Chicago politician." (See pictures of Obama's victory celebration in Chicago.) It was a snappy line, the kind of zinger McCain loved. But as with so many of his attack lines during the campaign, this one didn't resonate with voters. The jab was based on an outdated caricature of Chicago, and more than anything, it further underscored McCain's age. What he and fellow Republicans didn't (and probably still don't) understand is that being from Chicago is now an asset for a presidential candidate, not a liability. Certainly there is no denying that the Windy City's storied political history is cartoonishly coarse and corrupt. The charge that in Chicago, residents "vote early and vote often," dates back to the election that followed the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Finger-pointing about who was to blame for the fire and its spread raised fears about electoral hanky-panky and led some voters to cast more than one ballot. In the early 20th century, a compromised police force and city administration allowed organized crime to thrive. Even the city's first commissioner of public welfare, a woman named Louise Rowe, had to resign within a year of her appointment in 1915 after running a kickback scheme in the welfare department. Chicago politics isn't for the faint of heart. In the 19th century, Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne famously remarked that "politics ain't beanbag," and that's still the town's reigning motto. Emanuel, a Chicago native, is a typically colorful figure, known for once mailing a rotting fish to a political opponent and for a post-election dinner in 1992 at which he repeatedly stabbed a steak knife into a table as he yelled out the names of those he considered President Bill Clinton's enemies. The Daley family has ruled the city for the better part of a half-century. And while the current mayor is considered tamer than his father, who was accused of swinging the 1960 election for John F. Kennedy with the help of some Chicago voters who had already drawn their last breath, Richard M. Daley has been dogged by problems of his own. At least one of his aides has been convicted in a contract-scam case, and the city council is rarely scandal-free. The problem with trying to taint Obama with the label of "Chicago politics" is that most Americans no longer make the association with corruption. "We're not looked at the same way we might have been years ago," says Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman and chair of the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "We're not Al Capone's city. We're not the stockyards of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle." These days Chicago is known for blending working-class kitsch — Da Bears and the Cubbies — with cosmopolitan shopping and restaurants on Michigan Avenue. Its graceful mix of cutting-edge, environmentally conscious modern architecture and classic parks and buildings has actually given it a reputation as a model of a 21st-century metropolis, which the city is hoping to use to help land the 2016 Summer Olympics. The attack also missed because it was hard to square with Obama himself. The description "old Chicago pol" conjures a stout machine boss wearing a porkpie hat and chomping on a stogie — not a whip-thin black guy trying to quit smoking. Nor was the Chicago machine an ingredient in Obama's political rise. "He didn't rely on the machine for his success," says David Moberg, who has covered Chicago politics closely as a longtime writer for alternative magazine In These Times. "When he ran for the state senate, Congress and the U.S. Senate, he was opposed by the party organization." Chicago didn't only not hurt Obama's political prospects — it ended up helping him with the electoral map. In recent presidential elections, Democrats have struggled to hold on to their once solid base in the Midwest as they focused much of their energy on Southern candidates who could help broaden their appeal in culturally conservative parts of the country. With Obama, the party eschewed that strategy and instead found its standard bearer in its industrial Rust Belt roots, a place where Obama's reputation and early ground game could have maximum impact. It was no accident that on election night, Obama captured six of the states that ring Illinois, including three — Ohio, Iowa and Indiana — that John Kerry lost in 2004. (Obama lost adjacent Missouri by less than 5,000 votes.) Illinois Democrats like Obama have also learned that their Midwestern base provides some inoculation against charges that dog their coastal colleagues. When Republicans call Nancy Pelosi a "San Francisco liberal" or derisively refer to Upper West Side and Cambridge lefties, they tag those Democrats as ideologically extreme and culturally élitist. Politicians from Chicago can be just as liberal as those from New York, New England and California, but they come from the much-fetishized heartland, which makes attacks on them a tougher sell to swing voters. And they have an advantage within the Democratic base as well: while party leaders have long assumed that only a Southerner could successfully take the White House, the party faithful have been skeptical of the centrist politics of many Southern candidates. Of course, Chicago roots aren't always enough for a candidate, as Adlai Stevenson proved twice. But for now, Republicans might need to look for a new line of attack. With Obama on his way to the White House, the Axelrod-Emanuel-Podesta trio by his side and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin the new center of influence in the U.S. Senate, Chicago Democrat appears to be a winning label."

12/10/2008 3:39:24 PM

I wouldn't ascribe too much to Chicago. This guy is an idiot.
But I'm glad you are using this as a way to attack Obama! gg

12/10/2008 4:21:03 PM

are you kidding me

people are dropping like flies all around obama .. its only a matter of time

12/10/2008 4:46:44 PM

too bad obama supported an ethics bill in illinois last year that blago then vetoed. it's clear that there's no love lost between blago and obama. the only gruel that they really have on obama is the rezko connection and that's already been shown to be pretty thin.

12/10/2008 5:05:36 PM

Quote :

"Blagojevich was overheard by the FBI saying "I want to make money" and complaining that he was "financially hurting." Blagojevich also sought a high-paying job for his wife, according to the FBI. "Is there a play here, with these guys, with her" to work for a firm in Washington or New York, he reportedly asked. The FBI affidavit said Blagojevich had been told by an adviser "the president-elect can get Rod Blagojevich's wife on paid corporate boards in exchange for naming the president-elect's pick to the Senate." Told by two other advisers he has to "suck it up" for two years, the FBI says, Blagojevich was heard complaining that he has to give this "motherf-- [the president-elect] his senator. F-- him. For nothing? F-- him." The affidavit said that Blagojevich was interested in a high-paying position with Change to Win, an organization affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and that he suggested in a conversation with a SEIU official on Nov. 12 that Obama wanted other people to be considered for the Senate seat besides Senate Candidate 1. Previous phone conversations indicated that Blagojevich knew the SEIU official "was an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1's interest in the Senate seat," the affidavit said. "Harris suggested that SEIU Official make Rod Blagojevich the head of Change to Win and, in exchange, the President-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level," noted the affidavit. SEIU has denied any involvement, saying in a statement, "We have no reason to believe that SEIU or any SEIU official was involved in any wrongdoing." Change to Win released a statement saying that the organization never "considered, discussed or promised" any position to Blagojevich or his staff and that the group only learned of conversations between the governor and his advisers discussing such a position upon the release of the affidavit today. The FBI affidavit says Blagojevich thought he might get something "tangible up front" from Senate Candidate 5. Aware that he was under FBI investigation, Blagojevich apparently considered appointing himself to Obama's Senate seat, the affidavit says. He is quoted as saying, "He will be able to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting senator as opposed to a sitting governor." "

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ConductUnbecoming/Story?id=6431739&page=4

Interesting.

Looks like Jesse Jackson jr might be fucked. Obama might have dodged a bullet. Or maybe not. We'll see.

12/10/2008 5:12:12 PM

hes dodging bullets left and right

12/10/2008 5:40:32 PM

12/10/2008 5:59:48 PM

omg two illinois politicians stood next to each other!



[Edited on December 10, 2008 at 6:04 PM. Reason : .]

12/10/2008 6:02:20 PM

if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck .. its a fuckin duck

dont kid yourselves here

12/10/2008 6:05:28 PM

so the guy who blago is pissed off at is somehow in cahoots with blago? are you retarded?

12/10/2008 6:05:56 PM

are you?

12/10/2008 6:07:15 PM

you're basically clinging to the fact that blago and obama have had contact both as Democrats in Illinois. Evidence points towards obama and blago not really getting along, specifically over state ethics reform.

12/10/2008 6:09:49 PM

Yeah, this is retarded.

Obama apparently refused to participate in Blago's pay-for-play scheme, despite being in perfect position to do so as President-elect.

12/10/2008 6:10:22 PM

aint no joke: obama's a smart motherfucker.

12/10/2008 6:35:38 PM

at the very least, he's not dumb enough to get involved w/ a politician who is currently being investigated for corruption.

I mean really, what the fuck was going through this guy's mind? "Hmmm, I'm being investigated for corruption... It'd be a good idea to try and sell the Illinois Senate seat. Lemme call some people..."

12/10/2008 6:42:17 PM

^^Yes he is.

But I gotta wonder how involved Obama was when I read this:

Quote :

"The FBI affidavit said Blagojevich had been told by an adviser "the president-elect can get Rod Blagojevich's wife on paid corporate boards in exchange for naming the president-elect's pick to the Senate." Told by two other advisers he has to "suck it up" for two years, the FBI says, Blagojevich was heard complaining that he has to give this "motherf-- [the president-elect] his senator. F-- him. For nothing? F-- him." The affidavit said that Blagojevich was interested in a high-paying position with Change to Win, an organization affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and that he suggested in a conversation with a SEIU official on Nov. 12 that Obama wanted other people to be considered for the Senate seat besides Senate Candidate 1. Previous phone conversations indicated that Blagojevich knew the SEIU official "was an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1's interest in the Senate seat," the affidavit said. "Harris suggested that SEIU Official make Rod Blagojevich the head of Change to Win and, in exchange, the President-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level," noted the affidavit. "

[Edited on December 10, 2008 at 6:43 PM. Reason : 2]

12/10/2008 6:43:23 PM

OBAMA WAS...

12/10/2008 7:17:50 PM

yeah soylent green is next

jk

but really

you gotta wipe the fraud away like sweat to be honest with yourself

12/10/2008 8:07:56 PM

list of politicians that cannot be tied to shady, corrupt, or just plain awful characters:

1. ...

12/10/2008 8:13:46 PM

so youre excusing corruption

12/10/2008 8:15:26 PM

no? do i have to shout about it?

i'm being cynical

12/10/2008 8:16:08 PM

obviously

12/10/2008 8:18:03 PM

i just want clarification

1) the chicago tribune (sun-times) was rebuked by this guy after they hated on him

2) obama may or may not have communicated with the governor of illinois at some point recently

3) people love the mob according to the sopranos, godfather and scarface

12/10/2008 10:15:10 PM

Quote :

"naw, hes a wop in polack clothing. look at that swarthy bastard. you know his ancestors were dipping in the Moorish wells."

joe_solecism

Your unfortunate ethnic slurs aside--and I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here--"swarthy"? Really?!

The only thing "dark" about Blago is that bouffant hairdo and his grasping, wrenching, scraping political machinations. Other than these aspects, Blago looks as white as Frosty the Snowman with Elvis hair.

PS (unrelated): Jake Tapper of ABC News has taken to calling Obama "PEBO" (President-elect Barack Obama). What do you think about this acronym?

12/11/2008 3:58:03 AM

It's an insult to a man I know that is named Pebo.

12/11/2008 6:54:56 AM

"this is not the Blagojevich I knew"

12/11/2008 10:10:25 AM

I guess Blagojevich thought he was the next Buddy Cianci. Now there's a beloved mob politician.

12/11/2008 10:19:46 AM

At least Cianci had that old school, mobster style that made him so interesting. The man got reelected to office even after assault charges (something involving putting out a lit cigar on his wife's lover).

12/11/2008 1:22:07 PM

Did I hear correctly that Blagojevich's home phonelines were wiretapped, or was it just his government lines?

12/11/2008 3:41:49 PM

Quote :

"2) obama may or may not have communicated with the governor of illinois at some point recently"

i'm guessing yes since obama had a choice he wanted to take over his seat?

12/11/2008 6:33:42 PM

What I want to know is WTF is wrong with this guy. I hope I am reading this wrong but the story I saw said he was trying to sell the Senate seat in exchange for a job that paid 250K a year.

What kind of former Governor from the fourth largest state in the union cannot find a job paying 250K!!?? Is he an Alcoholic? You figure it would be worth paying him 250K to sell box seats at the White Sox stadium or something.

I would think he had 250K a year worth of influence and connections without resorting to actual bribery. You figure he could write a tell-all book or sell people out to the Enquirer for more than that. I mean Christ! Thats just f-king sad.

12/12/2008 3:33:42 PM

Quote :

" (CNN) -- Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Friday asked her state's highest court to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich temporarily from office. Moments after her announcement, news broke that Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, has resigned, a spokesman for the governor said. "

12/12/2008 3:54:29 PM

Quote :

"WHITE SOX STADIUM"

12/12/2008 4:26:56 PM

Quote :

"What kind of former Governor from the fourth largest state in the union cannot find a job paying 250K!!??"

The kind who had a 4% approval rating.

12/12/2008 5:31:36 PM

Jesse Jackson Jr.: 'I want my name back'

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/12/jackson.jr.blagojevich/index.html

He doth protest too much, methinks.

[Edited on December 12, 2008 at 8:43 PM. Reason : .]

12/12/2008 8:42:07 PM

i wonder what obama payed to get his senate position

texas$

12/13/2008 3:07:40 PM

i wonder what obama payed to get his senate position

texas$

12/13/2008 3:07:40 PM

because he's proven how terrible a campaigner he is. he could have never won statewide office in illinois legitimately. that would be absurd.

[Edited on December 13, 2008 at 3:28 PM. Reason : it's not like he ran against a carpetbagger joke like keyes or anything to get his seat.]

12/13/2008 3:28:11 PM

TKEshultz has claimed Stupidest Soap Box Troll title.

what an assclown. he makes TreeTwista look like a freakin scholar.

12/13/2008 11:45:19 PM

so this jesse jackson jr guy is a piece of shit? or no? i get the piece of shit vibe from him

12/13/2008 11:47:24 PM

Ill think ole jesse jr will turn out to be full of shit when the evidence shows he was shopping the seat as well, despite what he is saying. Of course they go through agents and not directly.. but it sure looks like he was offering up some money for it.

12/14/2008 12:05:58 AM

is it safe to say that jesse jr and jesse sr associate frequently?

12/14/2008 12:08:47 AM

jesse jackson jr is so full of shit

his eyes are turning brown now

12/15/2008 5:08:48 PM

12/16/2008 12:40:00 AM

ahah

setemup

12/16/2008 12:46:31 AM