No pies in face for the Great Obama

How wondrous is President-elect Obama’s amazing ability to "transcend" the seamy politics in which he has been deeply involved for most of his adult life. Close associates have been knee deep in scandal, bribery, defamation, misrepresentation and even bombing, and Obama (so far) is the white knight that eludes any taint. The most telling metaphor for Obama that occurs to me is The Great Lesley, played by Tony Curtis, in the 1965 movie, "The Great Race." In a mad pie-throwing scene this dashing young man dressed in white manages to avoid pies that find others’ faces multiple times. Obama seems to have the same sort of untouchability.

The current scandal, in which the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, has been caught on a wire expressing his desire to shake down as much as half a million dollars from "candidate 5" in return for appointment to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Obama, is the perfect illustration, but hardly the only one.

The dutiful State Senator Obama assisted Gov. Blagojevich is his campaign for reelection in 2006. There is no record of his disapproval, even though residents of Illinois had long since written "Blago" off as another in a string of crooked governors (not to mention Chicago mayors, aldermen, etc.)

In fact, in this case Obama has resorted to the now-familiar tactic of surprise, and then repudiation when the stench became too foul to ignore. Of course, there are other examples.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, came to public attention earlier this year when network news clips showed him engaging in some rhetorical excess. That included everything from calling America "the US of KKKA" that "had it coming" in the attacks of September 11, 2001, to a plot by the CIA to spread AIDS among blacks and calling the U.S. Government "terrorist."

Obama’s first response was to express surprise that his pastor and spiritual mentor for 20 years, who united him and his wife in holy matrimony and baptized his children, could have said such a thing, or at least had been taken out of context. He compared Wright to his own white grandmother, neither of whom could free themselves of racism.

But when Wright repeated his comments to the National Press Club and the NAACP, Obama reluctantly repudiated him and made a long-winded speech about race relations in America that was more a diversion than a contribution to public understanding of our nation’s greatest dilemma.

Then there was William Ayers, 1970 bomber of the Pentagon and a New York City police station, who provided a home for Obama to launch his campaign for an Illinois state senate seat in 1996. This was supposed to be an unremarkable association, given that Obama "was only eight years old" when Ayers committed his criminal acts.

Evidently Obama has forgiveness for a man who not only never repudiated his vicious crimes but regrets only that he didn’t accomplish more than he did. Ayers has taken on the protective veneer of an "educational theorist" who is trying to reform public education.

Ayers’ reform act ties in nicely, no doubt, with the president-elect’s desire to "transform" America into a regime in which the outmoded United States Constitution can be stretched into whatever form necessary for income-redistribution and abortion-facilitating purposes.

Then there are smaller fry, like Tony Rezko, recently convicted of multiple fraud counts, who mysteriously assisted Obama in a land deal.

"In June 2005, in what Obama now describes as a ‘boneheaded’ mistake, Obama and Rezko's wife bought adjacent properties on Chicago's South Side, closing the deals on the same day. Seven months later, wanting a bigger yard for his $1.65 million house, Obama bought a slice of the Rezko property for $104,500," according to the Washington Post one year ago today.

This man bears watching.

When Richard Nixon was elected President in 1960, John Osborne of the liberal periodical The New Republic, began a series of columns he called "The Nixon Watch." So convinced was he that "Tricky Dick" would show his unsavory spots, Osborne was determined to record them.

Is Obama "the new Nixon?" There are some interesting parallels here that truly bear watching.

By the way, at the end of the movie pie-throwing scene, The Great Lesley finally was hit. But he walked off with the pretty girl, and certainly Obama is entitled to a continuation of his domestic felicity, outside the White House, no later than the end of his term in office.

Funny how Blago rhymes with BHO

This week's spin is what a bad guy the governor of Illinois is yet how Obama, once again, knew nothing about this guy's character. As before, here's a person that Obama once had very congenial and close relationships with that turns out to be less than an honorable person. He just seems to have a real inability to judge character, which is frightening. Editors welcome new contributor: Betsy Red is the pen name of a Colorado Springs grandmother who has also blogged for the American Thinker, the American Spectator, and the Colorado Index. We're glad to have her aboard.

Both he and his campaign manager, David Axelrod, were fully supportive of Blago when he was running for governor (Axelrod ran the latter's campaign also), and the Obamas enjoyed frequent social occasions with the governor and his wife in recent years. Obama was happy to have Blago on stage with him at all his Illinois campaign stops, the Broadway stage production this summer at Invesco Field, the party at Grant Park on election night and both times Obama stood before the State Capitol in Springfield to address his adoring throngs.

Yet now we're told that Obama knew nothing about Blago's nefarious actions and of course, never spoke to him about any of it. Obama said he is 'stunned' and 'sobered' about these revelations. Aren't we all? Yet another person in the Obama camp turns out to have undesirable personality traits, yet Obama was blind to them until revealed on the public stage.

Just like the rest of America, Obama was obviously suckered back in October when federal investigators were ready to indict Blagojevich and didn't. They held off so as not to taint the election. Had Obama been told back then that his one-time buddy was a bad guy, he could have distanced himself before this latest round of problems. He could have said, "This is not the Rod Blagojevich I once knew" as he frequently stated about all his other friends that were popping up with nasty backgrounds.

I was born and raised in Illinois and have seen this pattern. Just as a person that wants to make it in the film industry moves to Hollywood, a Democrat that wants a springboard into national politics often finds their way to Illinois, specifically Cook County. Prior to the election, when the Feds released statements that they had enough info on the IL governor to indict him, like so much else, this stayed under the radar. I blogged about it at the time. Nothing was said; it was glossed over and now we learn the reason why.

The prosecutor, Fitzgerald, did not want to indict him in October before the election because he did not want to create a potential issue in the presidential election. It wasn't considered a good idea to indict the governor from the state of one of the candidates right before an election. Of course not. That might have triggered questions amongst the electorate and brought into question why, time after time, Obama is linked to questionable public figures.

He didn't know that Rev. Wright was damning America from the pulpit, at first he didn't even know that Bill Ayers had been involved in anti-American domestic terrorism (later stated he thought Mr. Ayers had repented of his despicable acts and since his wife was no longer on the FBI's most wanted list, she must be o.k., too), he didn't know Tony Rezko was involved in shady real estate deals although Obama himself funneled Illinois tax money to Rezko to build shoddy public housing and the list goes on and on.

And now, he had no idea that the governor of Illinois was almost indicted in October and now that Inauguration Day approaches, the rug has been pulled out, and Mr. Obama has a few weeks, plus the Christmas holiday to have this all quietly go away without much public scrutiny and certainly no intellectual inquisition by the media. Amazing.....

For me, the spotlight in this should also shine on the federal prosecutor, Fitzgerald. He doggedly went after Libby and Rove on the Valerie Plame fiasco, at great taxpayer expense. He knew that Libby and Rove were not the 'leakers', yet pursued the case with an obvious intent to cause as much damage to the Bush administration and Republican Party as possible.

Will he be as relentless and tireless in his pursuit of all the connecting dots and all the involved parties in this case? We know Obama will get a pass. Mr. Teflon never has anything stick to him, but will there be as much effort to at least try and get to the bottom of all the truth as we've observed Mr. Fitzgerald to exert in the past?