Rezko Is Singing

Whatever happens won't happen until after the election, and at that point, he'll be untouchable, with the Dems in control of both houses.

The article ultimately says that Rezko's illegal activities have very little to do with Barack Obama. Just as Walt Anderson's illegal activities don't have all that much to do with his numerous associates in the NewSpace circuit. That's the bottom line.

Meanwhile the picture here is that, since you declared that Obama is unelectable, since you said flatly and repeatedly that he's going to lose, and since you're still belittling him as someone who can't write a book, it just doesn't sit well with you that he might win.

if this were the Republican candidate, it would be headline news every day for the next three weeks. But it's not.

Since you mention this, yes it's true that Palin has been calling the kettle black all week; lo and behold, she turns out to be the pot:

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides, "The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Apropos the first comment,

Guilt by Association absent any Proof (Obama) vs. Guilt by Guilt as Proven (Palin yesterday or McCain 1989).

Heh. What else is there to say?

I think that anyone who supports a product of the Chicago political machine for president who complains about Sarah Palin's "abuse of power" must have had their sense of irony removed at an early age.

She legally abused her power. What kind of horseshit is that? Meanwhile, Barack never met a marxist, terrorist or anti-American he didn't like. He has working relations with them for over twenty years but hardly knows them? Pathetic.

Is Rezko singing Soprano? (somebody had to say it ;-)

It's getting close to the time when domestic enemies of the constitution are going to push too far (I think they've done it already and have no idea of the backlash they are going to see.)

They are too bold. Not everybody is asleep.

She legally abused her power

No guys, it wasn't legal. Even if Palin hadn't fired her own appointee Walt Monegan, it was illegal for her to use the governor's office to try to punish her despised ex-brother-in-law. Per Statute 39.52.110, it is illegal in the state of Alaska to settle a personal score with a public appointment.

It's not just illegal; it's also odious to common sense. This not the handiwork of some mastermind who reads the law like the Devil. This is the work of an idiot who doesn't understand the basic expectations of her job.

In contrast to that, the talk about "the Chicago political machine" is just a lot of handwaving.

The firing was legal. Her husband Todd, asks this guy why the illegal actions of this officer didn't get him fired. This guy threatened his family with death.

So let's trumpet this abuse of power. Most people realize this is a non issue. Only the lefty loons see this as more important than the 20 years of Chicago machine.

Most people realize this is a non issue.

I don't know what most people realize. If they "realize" what you "realize", then most people are wrong. It may be legal if unethical to fire your own direct subordinate for an extraneous reason. In many cases, it is outright illegal for you to try to someone else fired just because he's a bad person. Or in the corporate world, it's a good way to get you fired.

Let's say that you're a division manager at Boeing. Let's say that you had a quarrel with one of the hardware engineers somewhere in your division. Let's that he confronted you at a bar over a woman. Let's say that you think that he threatened you. Can you then tell his project manager, your subordinate, to fire the bastard?

No you can't. Unless you're his supervisor, it's none of your business. Even if you are his supervisor, it's none of your business unless it has direct connection to his job. Even if you're absolutely right that he's a bastard and even if he really did threaten you, you still have to take it through proper channels. If the police and his supervisor then tell you that they've done what they can, you have to take no for an answer.

It looks like the Palins genuinely do not understand this basic point of ethics. To them, one ugly divorce case and the entire state government are on the same plane of human affairs. Confidentiality and recusal are just practical details, like whether doorknobs turn clockwise or counterclockwise. So to them, the state's chain of command is the same as the flagstones from your house to your neighbor's house. They think that if they walk over those flagstones to put a bastard in his place, that that's a good thing. So why should they be lectured by a criminal prosecutor?

Meanwhile off in Chicago, there is the machine. It's a corrupt system that does inhuman things with weird procedures and levers of power. The Palins may genuinely not understand that what they did is machine politics. They don't see that those flagstones are the path to the machine, paved with good intentions.

Well said Jim.

It amazes me that some people have to be educated to understand this. The depths they go trying to defend the indefensible is so unhinged.

Sarah Palin has all the makings of a petty dictator. Not hypothetically, but proven by FACT and a jury of her peers.

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates on the ticket were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

And they want to run as, get this, reformers! It would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous.

Well said Jim.

I see that the malignant hemorrhoid has an anonymous cheering section. I'd be anonymous, too, if I were it, and doing that.

Is Obama sweating? No. the guy who is sweating is Bob Kjellander (pronounced "Shellander"). Bob is the unindicted co-conspirator mentioned in Rezko's trial. Bob is also the head of the Republican Party in Illinois, former Republican National Committee Treasurer, and the guy who ran McCain's convention.

Oops!!!

That, if true is a Doozie!!

the guy who is sweating is Bob Kjellander (pronounced "Shellander"). Bob is the unindicted co-conspirator mentioned in Rezko's trial. Bob is also the head of the Republican Party in Illinois, former Republican National Committee Treasurer, and the guy who ran McCain's convention.

Fine. I'm happy to see all corrupt Illinois politicians go down, particularly since I'm not a Republican.

But if you think he's the only one who's sweating, you're whistling past the graveyard.

"the talk about "the Chicago political machine" is just a lot of handwaving."

Yes, but specifically, it is just more guilt by association.

And Rand, Obama isn't a "product" of the machine. At worst, he is a newcomer to it, aligning with Mayor Daley only as recently as the beginning of his presidential campaign, and not before - not during his election to the Illinois Senate, not during his years as a state senator, not as a candidate for the US Senate, and not as US senator until he started his current campaign.
This article presents that view:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/26/AR2007022600720_2.html

Corrected link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/26/AR2007022600720.html

"I don't know what most people realize."

We know Jim, we know.

In many cases, it is outright illegal for you to try to someone else fired just because he's a bad person. Or in the corporate world, it's a good way to get you fired.

Jim, that is the craziest thing I've heard you say in a while. What kind of strange Stalinist state do you think Americans live in?

You can, generally speaking, be fired by your boss at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including "being a bad person" and insulting his wife at a bar outside of work, or brushing your hair in a way he doesn't like. Indeed, if you behave like a boor in public in such a way as to damage the company's reputation, or even worse raise the risk of a "deep pockets" lawsuit naming the company as some kind of enabler of your obnoxious or illegal behaviour, it would generally be your boss's ethical and legal (i.e. fiduciary) duty to fire you.

There are some very narrow cases where Congress has managed to make stick some interference with employment contracts, implied and otherwise. You can't be fired for complaining to OSHA about illegal working conditions, or specifically for getting pregnant, stuff like that. But these all have to do with preventing retaliation for your exercise of legal and reasonable activities. There is no crevice of the law that protects you from being fired for illegal and obnoxious activities.

it is outright illegal for you to try to [have] someone else fired just because he's a bad person

This is the bizarro world that you live in.

Only in the socialist world is a job a right and firing is unethical. In the capitalist world, making decisions has an impact on the performance of the company and hiring and firing are not ethical issues. No reason is required to fire someone. The owner sets the standard and reaps the competitive results. The owner decides who has the authority to hire and fire. If the owner makes capricious bad decisions, other companies not making those decisions will have a competitive advantage and eventually drive the bad companies out of the market.

This works out best for everyone. Suppose I'm a racist and will not hire Chinese? Another company does and it turns out to be an advantage to them. They will succeed where I fail. That's how it's suppose to work.

In this particular case, you are defending someone that threatened another persons life. Amazing how you can turn that into an ethical imperative.

Your argument was better than mine Carl, good show.

Guilt by association: what does it mean? It would be an unfair characterization if, as Obama has suggested he hardly knows these people and they are only ships passing in the night. It's an altogether different thing if they worked to accomplish the same goals over decades and are trying to hide the fact.

Walking the walk vs. talking the talk. BO is a good talker, but we've seen where he walks and there is a profound disconnect.

Saying something nice to someone on their birthday can get a republican shamed out of office.

What's the equivalent for a democrat?

sorry, didn't mean to be anon.

You can, generally speaking, be fired by your boss at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including "being a bad person" and insulting his wife at a bar outside of work, or brushing your hair in a way he doesn't like.

Your premise is that every manager is the dictator of the entire unit under him and he can therefore hire or fire at his personal whim. It's true that technically that authority is there in many companies --- in the short term. But unless you actually own the company, the story won't end there. If you're a salaried manager and you fire someone just because you don't like his face, then your own boss won't like your face and you'll get the pink slip next. After you're gone, the guy that you sacked might well get his job back.

Sure, if you own the whole company the way that Richard Branson owns Virgin Galactic, then you are free to fire anybody or everybody for any reason or for no reason. Short of breach of contract, anyway. But most corporate owners, especially shareholders of publicly traded companies, would rather maximize profit than play lord-and-master games. It pays to have a corporate code of ethics, which is why most companies have one.

And Sarah Palin obviously doesn't own the Alaska state government. She is a civil servant, just like her ex-brother-in-law that she hates. I don't for a minute defend Mike Wooten, who for all I know is some Bubba who will always be a bad husband and a bad father. Maybe Wooten even belongs in jail, who knows. But Palin still has to obey the law.

Well, Jim, I see you see reason to the extent you're backing off the argument that it's somehow illegal to fire someone for being an asshole and at least a PR liability, and retreating to the argument that if you don't clear it with higher-ups you could, yourself, get in trouble. An obvious point, so I concede instantly.

Governor Palin's conduct in the context of being governor is, of course, an entirely different matter, as the government certainly does have a huge and complex set of rules about who you can fire and when, and how.

But if you'll read the report to which you are so gleefully referring, and bear in mind it was prepared by one person at the behest of another, who despises Palin because she beat him in the election, and that its contents have not been independently reviewed or adopted by even the subcommittee of the AK legislature charged with oversight -- in other words, this is the equivalent of a lawyer's brief for the prosecution, which the judge has not yet decided to accept -- you'll note that even this highly partisan viewpoint states the following:

I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

That's hardly strong stuff, is it? Even this highly partisan person has said, well, she had several reasons for firing the guy, and it strains the imagination that she wouldn't also not mind getting rid of him because he was willing to tolerate a guy as state trooper who was -- it seems everyone agrees -- a bit of a jerk. So maybe she had that in mind when the re-assigned him, and the law says you shouldn't, I think.

And BTW, don't you object to jerks with guns and badges? Aren't you a big defender of civil liberties? You don't think a cop that uses his badge and uniform to threaten people with whom he is having personal difficulties should be off the force? If Sarah Palin didn't have an R after her name, wouldn't you be praising a governor who tried to clean house at the state police barracks, get rid of arrogant pricks?

Palin still has to obey the law

Which she did in the case of firing her subordinate. Considering it was a witchhunt that came to this decision it's pretty conclusive. Did she abuse her power? Perhaps so, that's what the witchhunt says. How significant an issue is this? Considering the circumstance, not much. But go ahead and beat that drum. Loudly please. We want everybody to hear what you think are the significant issues.

LOL Please Carl, let me know when you are going to post so I can read it before making my post. LOL

Again, great job.

I see you see reason to the extent you're backing off the argument that it's somehow illegal to fire someone for being an asshole and at least a PR liability

In the private sector, it isn't necessarily illegal, but it's certainly unprofitable unless the guy was an asshole on the job. And yeah, if you do that as a manager, you can get fired for putting your own interest above that of the company.

Ed, the company owner: Why did you fire that forklift guy, Jane?

Jane, the middle manager: He really lost it at a bar last year. He used to be married to my sister and he was badmouthing her all night. He threatened her new boyfriend and almost started a fight.

Ed: But what does that have to do with my company? Don't you know how expensive it is to train a forklift operator?

Jane: He was a PR bomb waiting to go off.

Ed: Then you caused the problem that you wanted to prevent, because this wasn't in the papers until his coworkers complained about arbitrary termination.

Jane: I just don't like his face, and I had the authority to do this.

Ed: Fine. My advice to you is to stand far away from him in the unemployment line.

----

Even this highly partisan person has said, well, she had several reasons for firing the guy

Well now you're conflating Walt Monegan, the former Public Safety Commissioner, with Mike Wooten, a state trooper. Sure, she didn't break the law when she fired Monegan. She discredited herself because she hired Monegan in the first place and because her reasons to fire him weren't truthful, but it wasn't illegal.

Entirely apart from that, she tried to get Wooten fired. That was illegal, because she had no authority as governor to demand that he be fired. She could and did file a complaint as an ordinary citizen, but that had already played out and she couldn't take no for an answer.

In the private sector, it isn't necessarily illegal, but it's certainly unprofitable unless the guy was an asshole on the job

Dead wrong, Jim. Go talk to your HR manager, if you've got one, or to the nearest entrepreneur. Or just google "blog fired from job" and get a load of the people who have lost their jobs because they merely blogged about stuff that put their employer in a bad spot. If you make the company look bad by your behaviour, you're a PR liability, at the least, and possibly a legal liability time bomb, since a person with bad judgment is not likely to confine his exercise of it to when he's off company time.

You're thinking of the relatively rare case where you, as the employee, are so valuable that a certain amount of obnoxiousness must be tolerated, because you're very difficult to replace. That does happen, yes. Master carpenters can get away with being jerks, sometimes. So can heart surgeons, if they're the very best, or professors with tenure.

But it's not the usual way of things. It's rarely the case that Joe Average is so valuable an employee that a manager would put the company's reputation at risk for more than, oh, about as long as it takes to cut the guy a two weeks' pay check and call security to show him to the door.

Haven't you ever hired someone? Ever advertise a decent job and not had about 150 people apply? Good work in a good firm -- exactly the kind that guard their reputations jealously -- is not that easy to get.

Well now you're conflating Walt Monegan, the former Public Safety Commissioner, with Mike Wooten, a state trooper

Sounds like you're confusing the issue, actually. What other way did she "abuse" her office as governor in trying to get rid of Wooten than in threatening Monegan with the loss of his job if it didn't happen? And if she didn't do that, if Monegan lost his job fair and square, how can you accuse Palin of abusing her office? She's certainly entitled (perhaps even duty-bound), both as a citizen and the governor, to forcefully express the opinion, based on facts known to her personally, that the trooper was a shithead and shouldn't be representing the people of Alaska.

And I see you've evaded that point. Should the trooper have kept his job? Tasering a 10-year-old kid? Threatening to kill a man? This guy should carry a gun and a badge?

And if you think he shouldn't, on what basis are you arguing that the Governor shouldn't have argued for his removal? Are you going to say that merely because his removal would please her personally as well as be good for the people of Alaska, then it's all shady and unethical for her to propose it? That seems a bit silly.

The link was a waste of time. Rezko isn't singing about Obama -- the article plainly and repeatedly says so just a few paragraphs in. What's the point? That Chicago politics are bad, and therefore all Chicago politicians are bad and unfit for office? The associative tautalogies are getting stretched further and looser by the day.

Can we discuss some substantive issues, please? Even McCain is now telling his audiences to cut this crap.

Sheesh...

Looks like Jim Harris thinks state-trooper Wooten's job should be protected even though he tazered a 7-year old kid.

Well said Robert. Jim Harris's priorities are jacked up.

Jim said, it's certainly unprofitable

That's the beauty of capitalism. Without raising any question of ethics, actions are rewarded and punished as they benefit or not. The point is your certainty happens not to be so certain. The result of the action however, is certain, one way or the other.

I'm glad I waited to see Carl's post first. He does such a good job I don't mind handling the table scraps.

Joe, how do you know the lyrics to his song? There seems to be a certain mob bank that Barack is connected to. Not only that, but Rezko will probably lead to a whole choir of songbirds, with BO quite the juicy target. So don't be so sure BO is untouchable, this is Chicago ya know.

Hmmmmm.

@ Jim Harris

"No guys, it wasn't legal. Even if Palin hadn't fired her own appointee Walt Monegan, it was illegal for her to use the governor's office to try to punish her despised ex-brother-in-law. Per Statute 39.52.110, it is illegal in the state of Alaska to settle a personal score with a public appointment."

Except of course that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palin violated that statute or that she tried to "punish" Wooten.

You complete jackass.

Except of course that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palin violated that statute or that she tried to "punish" Wooten.

No, there's a lot of evidence whatsoever. REad the report.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20081010_TROOPER.pdf

The jackass is who ?

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849399,00.html

Maybe memomachine should read the Branchflower report, unanimously approved by 7 Republicans and 5 Democrats - find out more about McCain's extraordinary choice.

Write a new memo .

While it's nice to see Harris defending bad cops, the rest of us think that there's a difference between a thuggish Boeing engineer and a thuggish cop.

As far as the "chain of command" goes, does Harris really think that an engineer who keys Boeing's president's car isn't going to face some job action? Firing and hiring decisions are made all the time by folks higher up the ladder.

While it's nice to see Harris defending bad cops

I certainly don't defend bad cops, and for that matter the Palins were never strongly opposed to them as a group. Their notion of Alaska is that there it only has ONE bad cop in the entire state. If they had been clever, they could have set up a police misconduct commission that might have bagged five or ten bad cops, possibly together with Mike Wooten. But that's not how they played it. They wanted to bag Wooten and Wooten alone, and they wanted to do it under the table.

As the report says, Branchflower found evidence that the Palins had an agenda other than personal or public safety. It looks like their real goal was to drive Wooten out of the state so that Palin's sister wouldn't have to fight with him over joint custody of their children. They didn't really seem worried about their safety or anyone's safety.

As far as the "chain of command" goes, does Harris really think that an engineer who keys Boeing's president's car isn't going to face some job action?

Some job action, sure. And Wooten did face some job action: He was suspended for five days, and that mark on his record later blocked a job transfer that he wanted. But in a well-run company, even the president is not entitled to unlimited retaliation.

You guys really seem to admire the idea of running a company as a dictatorship. Do you really think that that's the way to make employees productive? To tell them that the personal whims and grudges of The Boss are more important than quality work? In fact I have been involved in personnel decisions in the workplace, and no, it's not the way to maximize profit. Rather, it's the way to maximize cronyism.

Listen, Just because Obama was raised as a Muslim, mentored by a commie, smoked dope, snorted coke and studied Marxism in high school and college, purposely chose socialist professors in college; had his Harvard education paid for by socialists, and radical foreign Muslims; was mentored and hired by a commie domestic terrorist as whose house he kicked off his political career and was supported by a socialist political group, did virtually nothing as a state senator except take money and gets grants and funds for his buddies, and has done nothing other than take bribes and get federal money for his wife's employer and run for president as a US senator; doesn't make him a bad person.

Yeah, yeah: Squirm, Spin, Fib and Deviate. Nothing you folks can say or do can change the facts:

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.

Palin: A petty dictator with a penchant for lying and an inability to speak the English language except in fragments of gibberish. A clear and present danger. Someone McCain now wishes would simply go away - an embarassment to everything he once held dear. A woman thoroughly and particularly unsuited to the office of Vice President of the United States. Her guilt proven not by supposition or hyperbole, not by association or inference, but by sheer facts.

It's hard for some of you. Just swallow the bitter pill.

Just swallow the bitter pill.

You seem to be a bitter pill. Does it hurt to contain that much insane bile?

Does it hurt to contain that much insane bile?

Rand, there has really been too much negativism from you lately in these political discussion. You should cheer up and remember that America is a great country. What we're seeing with this election is democracy in action.

I admit that some people have gotten too caught up in the contest. On one side there are some overheated celebrities such as Sandra Bernhard who are making some ugly "jokes" with more menace than ha-ha. On the other side there are some insecure politicians such as Sarah Palin who associate the other side with terrorists. So I agree that people on both sides need to chill out.

I also admit that I implied that Palin is an idiot. That was unkind. I don't think that she is all that qualified and I think that her ethics case in Alaska speaks to that point. But calling her an idiot is too ad hominem and I shouldn't have said it that way.

Setting all of that aside, we still have two decent candidates, McCain and Obama, who can debate the issues. For instance, McCain thinks that the financial sector needs reassurance from the top; while Obama thinks that the financial sector has too little regulation. It's up to the voters to decide who is more correct.

Let's be glad that we live in a country where the voters can make choices like this, rather than in an unfree and poor country such as Egypt.

What we're seeing with this election is democracy in action.

Or perhaps we are not. If the 4th estate doesn't report truthfully, is that democracy? Our founding fathers thought it essential. If Obama stole the primaries from Hillary to become the nominee, is that democracy? If massive voter registration fraud turns into massive voter fraud to overturn the will of the people, is that democracy?

If the media reports that Obama is so far ahead that McCain could never catch up, when the reality is they are much closer and McCain may even be ahead is some places and all this discourages some, is that democracy?

PUMA stands for Party Unity My Ass and they are actively campaigning for McCain, so how can Obama be ahead? If the country is evenly divide and a significant percentage of democrats have aligned with the republicans, how can Obama be ahead? Unless the media is lying to us?

If Obama is elected, I look forward to seeing him perp walked out of the whitehouse.

That's the Chicago way.

Jim. first you wrote:

This is the work of an idiot who doesn't understand the basic expectations of her job.

Then you wrote:

I also admit that I implied that Palin is an idiot.

In logic, you would be technically correct, but in rhetoric an implication is an indirect indication. Calling someone an idiot directly accuses them of being an idiot. "Assertion" would be more accurate, but maybe someone knows a better term.

Hmmmm.

@ Jim Harris

"No, there's a lot of evidence whatsoever. REad the report."

I read the report. It does not contain anything that Sarah Palin did. All it does is try to assert, falsely, that -Todd Palin- no longer has any constitutional rights under either the US constitution or the Alaska constitution and that, by virtue of being the spouse of the governor, he also loses all protections of Alaska law.

If there is one single unenumerated right in any US or state constitution is the right for any citizen to complain about a public servant to -anybody-.

And this idiot report tries to assert otherwise.

Hmmmm.

@ II

"Maybe memomachine should read the Branchflower report, unanimously approved by 7 Republicans and 5 Democrats - find out more about McCain's extraordinary choice."

Yeah because anything a Republican says is the unadorned truthiness that I have to take at face value and can never question.

You unambiguous twit.