America’s rulers are crooks and thieves. Some just get caught
by Andrew Redmond
Poor Rod Blagojevich.
Only a few weeks after the dawning of a new politically correct Golden Age, with Republicans run out of office everywhere and the fresh brown President set to rule with a pet media following and his cowed opponents afraid to question him, Illinois Democrat Governor Blagojevich, an Obama ally, gets caught telling the truth: a Senate seat is “a f**king valuable thing.”
And not only was he prepared to sell it, there were apparently a lot of buyers, at least according to the federal indictment. Five in fact, among them “Senate Candidate Number Five,” that scion of black aristocracy, Jesse Jackson, Jr., son of the noted race hustler, http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4079"😉 Jackson, Sr. According to reports, which he denies, Jr. was prepared to throw a cool million at Governor Blagojevich in exchange for Blagojevich naming him as replacement for Barack Obama as the new junior US senator from Illinois.
On federal wiretaps, Blagojevich sounds explicit: “I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I’m saying. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”
Now everybody, and in modern America “everybody” means the government, media, politicians, people with serious money, and those they choose to allow to speak, is totally surprised at Blagojevich’s alleged behavior. Appalled, in fact. Especially Obama, that paragon of holiness who walked between serious raindrops like William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright. Obama’s “as appalled and disappointed as anybody by the revelations earlier this week” of Blagojevich’s alleged corruption. “What I want to see is a quick resolution of this issue. I want to make sure that the next senator from the State of Illinois is carrying on a tradition of service,” he said.Yes, that old (cough) “tradition of service” we are all trained to politely agree animates America’s political leaders even if, like Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana, they kept a cool $90,000 in alleged bribe cash in their freezer, or, like Senator Larry Craig, pleaded guilty to a charge related to sex in a men’s room, or, as in the case of Congressman Mark  Foley, sent homosexual emails to underage boys. And even if, like Ted Kennedy, you kill a girl, what counts is the fact that you just want to “help people.” Personal reward has nothing to do with any of it.
Acceptance of this kind of polite fiction is absolutely necessary in how late stage imperial America functions, because America is not governed by ideology, or even policy, but by a loose coalition of corrupt people who have agreed to divide the spoils among themselves. Those observers who approach politics ideologically or idealistically are often left stumped by the behaviors of America’s politicians. In the runup to the 2006 Congressional midterm elections, vast portions of the antiwar movement thought that, if only they could throw those Republican bums out, the Democrats, the guys who brought you two world wars, Korea and Vietnam, would have everybody home from Iraq by the following Christmas. Yet, sure enough, nothing was done, despite all the promises and all the yap about a new morning for America. And one of the first things Obama did, after getting the votes of many of these same people, was to appoint hardline Zionist http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6059, whose politics got the US into Iraq in the first place, as his right hand man. Did Obama make the Emmanuel appointment because he’s a Zionist ideologue himself, or because he knows who butters his bread?
Conservatives have put up with the same kind of baloney for generations. Literally since Roe v. Wade, Republicans have promised to end abortion, and, like clockwork, prolife conservatives eat it up, election after election after election. Yet not one single abortion has ever been stopped by the actions of this political crowd. Some of them, the straight ones at least, even procure abortions for their girlfriends.
This kind of ideological drift as a result of the venality of leadership is not unique to America. Europe is in just as bad a place, with cross party “purple coalitions” of managerial elites ruling for the sake of power and devoid of any real ideological focus. It’s a sign that the status quo in the Western world is on its last legs, which is why nationalists face such http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5785 and oppression: the current elites fear their replacement.
Consider this. If getting elected to high office is all about upholding America’s vaunted “tradition of service,” why do hopefuls pour such vast wealth into getting elected to jobs that, they claim, barely make ends meet? Why would all the various special interest donors give so much if they believed, REALLY believed, that their donations were being taken by Simon Pures who wouldn’t even dream of favoring a political donor or a special interest group with bucks and the clout bucks purchase?
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, for the elections of  2008, $967,681,352 was raised for all races to the House of Representatives, and another $389,724,577 for the Senate. How much did the Presidency cost? Obama raised $1,039,703,322, while John McCain got $651,013,768. Now THOSE are “service” charges!
So all of the whining and moaning about Rod Blagojevich is just a lot of hot air. He is going down because he put too many people in the loop, and one of the losers of his  Senatorial price war was sure to talk about it at some point. That would put Blagojevich’s Senate appointment in question, and look bad for Obama, so Blagojevich had to be shut down now.
In fact, Blagojevich’s crime may have been that he was too honest. He spoke the truth, albeit unwittingly to hidden microphones, about politics in this day and age in the United States: “I want to make money.”