No, crystal balling it ain't as arousing or provocative as, say, Teabagging it…but crystal balling it is a bit more coherent and understandable than TeaBagging it…so there's that.

One year ago on October 13th, in a blog post entitled, The Upcoming Obama Presidency, The Reverend typed out these predictions….

".…..after having paid very close attention to what took place between the years of 1992-2000, I think it's safe for me to predict…..if you liked the savaging-Clinton days, you're gonna' just love the savaging-Obama days starting after January 20, 2009."

A media so corrupt, so perverse, that they couldn't even use the word lie or liar in any article they had written or on any teevee appearance for 8 straight years of an openly fraudulent and lying Bush administration…..will….magically…..snap out of the spell they've been under….and begin microscopically examining every word that Obama speaks. A main media so covered-up in their own mistaken, propagandistic, slime encrusted wrongheadedness for 8 straight years, a media who never really ever considered impeachment as worthy of discussion for the worst president America has ever known….will be balls-to-the-wall aggressive in not only savaging a President Obama but encouraging an obstructionistic-minded Republican minority to gum up the federal works with impeachment talk and accusations."

"With the upcoming Obama presidency….Democrats will have near total control. This, in itself, will anger and frustrate the extreme right so badly that (I can't help but say this) actions of violence will follow. I believe that is what we witnessed last week at McCain-Palin gatherings. The first-fruits realization by the extremist nuts on the right that they've lost the game and lost it badly, is beginning to sink in."

Maybe I should change my name to The Prophet.

But wait….there's more.

Less than 9 months into the Obama presidency and just look at what is being suggested by some of the crazy folks at Newsmax…..

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

…..

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

…..

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America.

After only 9 months of a new Democratic president, radical conservatives are suggesting that America needs a "military intervention" to deal with the "Obama problem."

Newsmax is a primary source for American wingnuts. I am sure that main-whore-media will soon be asking conservative Democrats, and in all seriousness, whether, indeed, the military should intervene to stop President Obama from carrying out his Constitutional duties as president.

It is the job of main-whore-media to investigate and report on the unhinged and insane beliefs of the American wingnuts….as witnessed in the main-whore-media's coverage of Rush Limbaugh's "I want Obama to fail", the TeaBagger incoherent nuttiness, townhall bust-ups complete with semi-automatic weaponry, and most recently, the Beck-ClusterFox 9-12'er event attended by a minimum of one zillion people. (one zillion equaling approximately 60,000.)

No matter how crazy American wingnuts behave, or talk, (like in the cases of Sarah Palin or Joe "You Lie" Wilson), main-whore-media, just like they did during Bill Clinton's days, MUST take it very seriously and dwell on all the "implications" for weeks.

What I'm saying, after having predicted one year ago what we're now experiencing, is that the ugliness will get worse. The craziness, the frenziness, the threats, the intimidation, the witchhunts…..and, eventually, the calls for violence…unfortunately….will only get worse.

America has entered a domestic crisis period.

Maybe you saw David Fluffy Gregory's interview with Bill Clinton this past weekend on Meet the Press. The Village Fluffy, always trying to keep it real, asked Clinton about that "vast right wing conspiracy"…..

Fluffy…."Your wife, famously, talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama….is it still there?"

Clinton…."Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically…but it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him, you know, it's like when they accused me of being a murderer and all that stuff they did. But, it's not really good for the Republicans in the country, what's going on now. They may be hurting President Obama, they can take his numbers down, they can run his opposition up. But fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their (GOP'ers) agenda seems to be wanting him to fail. And that's not a prescription for a good America……"

In the 1990's, when Newt and his majority Republican gang persuaded Clinton to vote to gut American jobs with NAFTA and further punish the poverty class by "reforming" welfare, the vast right wing conspiracy rewarded Bubba's move to the right by hounding him mercilessly with made-up-sh*t. Then came the impeachment. That was the beginning of the incoherent, unintelligible and mindless Wingnut World that we are so privileged to be burdened with today.

That, and the birth of the 4th Estate's anti-Christ, FOX "News."

But I disagree slightly with Clinton here. The American winger world is MORE virulent today than during the 90's. The automatic weapons-bearing outside presidential townhalls, the 4-fold increase in threats to Obama versus threats to W., the hourly-generated lies and frenzied propaganda by a corrupt and rotted corporate media, the unhinged encouragement to behave badly by main media sponsors of anti-Obama Tea Parties and 9-12 events, the proliferation of Mao, Stalin, Castro, and Hitler signs equating Obama with tyrants……..all of it for the purpose of poisoning Obama's presidency, intimidating Americans and making the wingers feel better about themselves in a nation which has embarassingly rejected their now-dead conservative policies of intolerance, lassez-faire, trickle-down capitalism, and imperialistic wars of choice.

Why is the virulence worse now? Democrats not only have the Presidency now, like they did during the 90's, but also a firm majority in Congress. When political rats are cornered, as it were, they can prove the old adage of being "crazier than sh*thouse rats."

American conservatives say they are sticking to their principles in their virulent opposition to Obama and the Democrats. And that, of course, is the problem. Conservative principles have led directly to today's marginalized and impotent Republican Party,…..regionalized to mainly the southern states. Only 7% of all New Englanders, for example, identify now with the GOP.

Today's conservative "resistance" is more virulent now because the U.S.S Ronald Reagan is slowly sinking into the dark waters of political policy irrelevance. Rather than going through serious self-examination, acknowledging that America has changed, rather than coming up with new ideas for the 21st century……today's GOP, today's conservatives, apparently, would rather hang around their old stomping grounds, the political outhouse……where they can dart out daily, looking and sounding all crazy…..in the hopes of scaring any progressive change away.

On August 12, I wrote this….

The "rage" is not over government spending….or tax rates…..or deficits….or any of the flimsy excuses laid down by oh-so-serious conservatives and libertarians.

The rage, the passion has been caused by the man, now the president, Barack Obama. He is a black man. He is a Democrat. And that's what the bust-ups of health reform town halls are all about.

It won't matter what the issue, policy or topic is……the rage we've seen from before the election, the rage we see at the Tea Parties, and the rage we see at the town hall bust-ups…..will be repeated over and over BECAUSE…..America elected a black Democratic president.

It really ain't that complicated.

Yesterday, Digby reminded her readers about this from one of President Chuck Grassley's town halls….

President Barack Obama is a fascist.

This and other assertions flew through an emotionally-charged town hall meeting conducted by Sen. Chuck Grassley Monday in Pocahontas.

"The president of the United States, that's who you should be concerned about. Because he's acting like a little Hitler," said Tom Eisenhower, a World War II veteran. "I'd take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me."

And then Digby channels The Reverend….

Why is it that these people keep alluding to shooting Obama all the time? (And why doesn't anyone give a damn?) Are they so far gone that they really believe that potential government spending requires them to start shooting? Seriously, nobody's taxes have gone up. Nobody's. The recession was already a year old when Obama took office and Bush spent a huge surplus on tax cuts for rich people which these fools all applauded like trained seals.

So they are not very convincing when they try to say that their violent rhetoric is based upon some abstract fear of deficits and socialism. Nothing that Obama has done so far can possibly justify the wild-eyed, slavering, full blown lunacy we are seeing at these town halls.

The simple truth is that they are all a bunch of self-centered, childish sore losermen who refuse to accept that a Democrat won the presidency. And for at least some of them, the fact that a black Democrat won the presidency has obviously sent them around the bend. They are in the grip of a powerful reckoning in which it turns out that most Americans don't actually agree with their cramped worldview. Hence the crack-up.

That is exactly right.

However, 4th estate representatives just can't see it. Check this out from McClatchy's Steven Thomma in today's Beacon Journal…

"Finger pointing and yelling at town hall meetings this summer are signs of a country that's been building toward a boiling point for several years, stressed by a quickly changing economy, a flood of immigration and threats at home by terrorists.

It's a land at turns frustrated and irate at a government that led its people into an unpopular war, proved itself inept at helping its citizens in a disastrous hurricane, presided over a historic economic collapse, then went on a spending spree that could commit the country to decades of crushing debt."

For Thomma, it's all just one big grab bag of frustration and resentment towards government. Even though no town hall bust-ups with crazies bearing guns was ever witnessed during the last administration, no nationally organized parties of protests over a Republican controlled federal government doubling the national debt in 8 short years were ever held, or even considered,…..to Thomma, recent conservative expressions of bitter hatred and rage over health care and spending under 8 months of Obama is all part and parcel of the same American distaste and frustration with government, which periodically and with no comprehensible pattern, just randomly appears on the national scene.

Clueless is not the correct word to describe Thomma's purposely dishonest piece of rubbish. Look at how he tiptoes around, hoping the reader won't notice what he's doing….

"This anger is more focused on the federal government, a resurgence of the hostility toward the government that started with Vietnam in the 1960s and Watergate in the 1970s, faded in the 1980s, resurfaced in the early 1990s and then faded away again."

See….the hippies who thought the federal government shouldn't recklessly murder 58,000 U.S. soldiers…..for no reason,…..those who wanted to see the second most lawless president in American history held accountable for his lawlessness…..were simply a piece of the whole. The whole being that Americans typically are frustrated and angry at their government. Nothing unusual.

But that frustration and anger…."faded in the 80's, resurfaced in the early 90's and then faded away again", says Thomma…..without providing any context whatsoever. In the 80's America saw Republican presidents, but in the 90's we had President Clinton, then in the 00's when we had another Republican president, public anger "faded again."

That's the story, Mr Thomma. During Democratic presidents, conservative ragers, the same ragers who slumber during Republican presidents, you know, are angrily awakened. That's the story. Not that Americans are, you know, randomly enraged at government in undetectable cycles.

Thomma, like most Village writers and conservative commenters, simply cannot tell the truth about the reality staring all of us in the face.

In modern history, when Republicans have been elected president, very little mass displays of rage and vicious, hatefilled anger was ever organized on a national basis against the government. During the 90's and now once again with Obama, the uncontrollable rage has returned.

The message of this madness is simple, as Digby and I have clearly outlined. A Democrat has been elected president, a black man with progressive solutions for America's future. A future that conservatives have never wanted any part of…..ever.

Thus, the manufactured rage.

Extra credit: The "Kraut" puts on his most cynical hat and taunts all those who think health care reform can be accomplished in America. An article which features the bastardly, bitterness of Mr. Krauthammer, the Very Serious Journalist whom the AB Journal dearly loves.

There was G.Gordon Liddy on my teevee screen last night telling me that there's a deposition by Barack Obama's step-grandmother swearing that Barack was born in a Kenyan hospital or clinic. I don't know why Liddy didn't bring a copy of the deposition with him.

Liddy, a convicted felon from the Watergate glory days, and a regular on Corporate Media, suggested that not only was Obama not born in the U.S…..but that he probably is still an undocumented immigrant and should be picked up by law enforcement. Approximately 15 minutes was spent discussing this "serious" issue.

There was Liz Cheney, spawn of Dick, on my teevee screen refusing to say that Obama was an American citizen, instead, telling me that "people…are uncomfortable, for the first time ever, in having a President who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas."

There was Rush Limbaugh on my teevee screen telling me that white firefighters from Connecticut are "under assault by agents of President Obama", and that President Obama's comment about police officers "acting stupidly" in the arrest of Professor Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts is proof enough that "now, white policemen are under assault from the East Room of the White House."

Was it Fox I was watching? No. It was that extremely liberal, bordering on communistic, network MSNBC that I was watching. The proof that liberal networks are, indeed, liberal, is found in their continual airing of the views of the most radical, right-wing celebrities. No, it isn't supposed to make sense.

This apparent contradiction, that liberal networks always make ample time for the screeds of the most extreme right wing celebrities, is rarely brought up on…umm… the teevee. Last night on Countdown was an exception.

David Shuster, filling in for Keith, had Charlie Pierce of the Boston Globe magazine on the last segment of Countdown. I'd like to shake Mr. Pierce's hand.

Listen closely to what Mr. Pierce says about Chuck Todd, the NY Times, Kathleen Willey, Jennifer Flowers, Chris Matthews, MSNBC, and coverage of the Al Gore campaign as he points out the extremely obvious…..this is must-see teevee….

Pierce…."Why would these people (far right-wingers) think this wouldn't work again? Whitewater didn't hurt them, the Swiftboat accusations didn't hurt them…"

Shuster pushes back. "There's no truth, whatsoever, to the charge that Obama's not an American, there's absolutely no comparison." (with Whitewater, Swiftboat, etc)

Pierce, and this is beautiful…."There IS a comparison, because we're floating it David…..there was no truth to the Swiftboat…(Shuster shouts him down at this point)"

Shuster tries to get Pierce to bash Liz Cheney, asking why she says what she says. Pierce doesn't go along with Shuster's framing…"Because they've seen the advantage of doing the nudge, nudge wink wink stuff. This isn't any sillier than what Senator Imhofe(R-OK) says about global warming. It's just the id of the party rather prominently displayed."

Shuster tries one more time…"If Liz Cheney is unwilling to acknowledge the facts..on Obama's birth….why should she be trusted on anything else that she wants to talk about?"

Pierce hits a homerun with this response…"I don't know, I'm not the one who booked her." "She's a prominent Republican because she has been made one on teevee."

Shuster was visibly frustrated, completely oblivious to the razor sharp, truthful points Pierce was seeking to make about the corrupt and craven corporate media. Corporate media, even "liberal" corporate media, continually reserves valuable air time for the most insane conservatives to put voice to their insanity.

Radically extreme conservatives and Republicans will continue to say the most insane stuff because, as Charlie Pierce rightly said, "it works". The more insane the talk from far-right spokespeople, the better chance to be invited onto the teevee machine or have your video clip played….thus echoing and amplifying the insanity.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius is a personal case study in what's wrong down in the Village. Again the AB Journal gives Ignatius top billing on it's op-ed page….and again, Ignatius lays down the isolated and rotted Village mindset.

If the U.S. federal government, according to Ignatius, holds it's agencies, like the CIA, accountable for it's actions…..then "other countries" who might otherwise "admire America's committment to democracy and the rule of law" would simply "conclude that we are all plain nuts."

That's what Mr. Village says. If the powerful people in our federal agencies are held accountable for their actions, then America has lost it's collective mind.

Ignatius, admittedly, has a hard time understanding what could be wrong with a vice-president ordering CIA officials to withhold super-secret intelligence programs from Congress, in defiance of existing law. It's just too, too difficult for elected officials to obey the law these days, and naturally with Ignatius, any considerations of investigating or prosecuting high-level conservatives in the Village would only be a cause for group fainting.

Right off the Village bat, Ignatius has it all pegged….

"The latest ''scandals" involving the Central Intelligence Agency are genuinely hard to understand, other than in terms of political payback."

Yep, David….it's all just too "hard to understand". Too hard to understand for anyone. If Villager Dave doesn't understand those "scandals" because they're just too hard to follow, how could a judge or jury or commission understand…let alone those poor ignorant Americans out there.

It''s just gotta' be "political payback." Big Village Dave, like Fox's Bill O'Reilly, is just looking out for the little guy who finds all this stuff "hard to understand", and in the case of Dick Cheney's capture and control of the CIA during the Terror years…….

It would be impossible to prove "criminal intent" for CIA interrogators who operated within the framework of the Justice Department's guidance.

There you have it. The Village has spoken.

Ignatius flaunts his Village citizenry. In Village thinking, the Bush Justice Department COULDN'T have done anything illegal or wrong. If Bush and Cheney cherry-picked John Yoo out of the Justice Department, didn't tell his superiors, and ordered him to write torture memoes in direct violation of existing American law….to Ignatius, that's standard conservative operating procedure.

Why has Ignatius gone all Peak-Village right now?

Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate criminal actions by CIA officers involved in the harsh interrogation of al-Qaida prisoners. But the internal CIA report on which he's said to be basing this decision was referred five years ago to the Justice Department, where attorneys concluded that no prosecution was warranted.

Obama doesn't want an investigation, and Bush/Cheney sure as hell don't want one….and the Village doesn't want one. But Holder, confronted by the egregious nature of recent evidence pointing to numerous national and international war crimes ordered by the Bush administration, is "considering appointing a prosecutor." The nerve of the Attorney General, huh?

Notice Village Dave's thinking. Holder is considering appointing an investigator to look into how the torture memos the Bush Justice Department "legalized" were implemented…..but Ignatius concludes that the Bush Justice Department already looked into those complaints and concluded that no wrongdoing happened. Well, that settles it then, right?

Today in Villageland, holding any conservatives in power to account is simply "gotcha" politics….

President Obama has tried to end this "gotcha" culture….

Try that one out on a local judge or law enforcement representative….."Judge, don't you want to look forward and not backward? Any attempt by you, Judge, to hold me accountable for breaking the law would just be some vindictive payback on your part, Judge. Just more silly "gotcha" politics."

Summarizing…..I often blog about today's corporate "journalists", labeling them the Knee Pad Media, or the Village. David Ignatius' piece today encapsulates the ethos of that Village. If conservatives are in power, according to Villager David Ignatius, those conservatives are above the law and can never be prosecuted, or even investigated, for anything they did while in office. That's the given. Any attempts to go against this given are only and always "political payback" and "gotcha" politics by non-conservatives.

If Democrats are in power, then the Village rules are entirely different. If Democrats are in power, then fibbing about fellatio is a horrendous national threat that demands a $50 million, multiple-year investigation and a teevee sham spectacle of a prosecution.

Here'a an excellent takedown of the Village on this same topic.

Update:
Village regular, Roger Cressey, tells the new and obnoxious MSNBC dumbass anchor, Dylan Ratigan, that those Democrats who want to investigate law breaking are "stupid and foolish…."

On October 20, 2007, 16 months ago The Reverend wrote this…

I'm sticking to my March (2008) recession prediction. The monied boys and the GOP crooks will hand the Democrats a quagmire in Iraq, a recession here at home and a cranky electorate…. and then they will ask the Dems, "Why did you let this happen?".

On January 4, 2008, 14 months ago, The Reverend wrote this….

One other wager I think I would make as well……I bet the economic decline that has begun with Junior, under his leadership, will all be blamed on……….wait for this one too……Democrats.

March 3, 2009, less than 6 weeks into the Obama administration, WSJ online…

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

Current Newsbusters poll question…."Is the Bear Market Obama's Fault?"

More from Newsbusters…

A consistent media meme since Election Day has been that Barack Obama was inheriting a recession that some believe began as far back as December 2007.

Since then, despite various rescue plans from his Administration, and the passage of a $787 billion stimulus package, the stock market has continued to plummet while employers shed payrolls in a fashion rarely seen in history.

This all raises an important question: will media ever blame current economic conditions on Obama, or will they continue to point fingers at George W. Bush despite his residence being in Texas?

From a Bloomberg.com piece, March 8, 2009, entitled, "Obama Bear Market Punishes Investors as Dow Slumps"…..

“It’s the Obama bear market,” said Dan Veru, who helps oversee $2.8 billion at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey. “We don’t know what the rules are in so many different areas the government is touching.”

It's not The Reverend's clairvoyance skills I'm highlighting here…..it's how utterly predictable the pathetic Villager Media has become.

The last time we saw such ridiculous performances by corporate media was during the Clinton administration. Then, like Rumpelstiltskin, these same corporate whores took an 8 year long nap….completely worn out finally from all the ridiculous frenzy they had worked themselves into over a blowjob.

These media patriots knew that with the GOP'er, G.W. Bush, at the helm, it was safe to drop their critical stance….because George represented the powerful monied interests media patriots whored for. So they slept. Why tire yourself out being critical when you're getting so many deep tax cuts? And hell….so what if he destroys the country….you'll still be rich.

Now, rested and refreshed, and right on cue, these same servicers of the powerful are back attacking and trying to delegitimize another Democratic president.

That is, when they're not telling us, in detail, all about the national security implications of Michelle Obama exposing her muscles.

It's Sunday, March 8, 2009…..and still today, the corporate main media looms as America's number one threat. The Old Soviets must be green with envy.

A brief review….

Since November 4th, last, the small group of Republicans left in Congress, their corporate media lapdogs leashed up tight, have gone about, non-stop, trying to diminish, discredit, and in some cases, delegitimize Obama's presidency and his larger Democratic majority in Congress.

It's been Governor Blago for weeks. The subliminal Sesame Street words each day have been "taint" and "dog", not-so-coyly suggesting that it was Obama who was tainted and would be dogged by reporters insisting he was….tainted. Simultaneously, came the rabid, mouthbreathing attempts to get the Supreme Court to rule that Obama was not really an American citizen and shouldn't be president, even though he won by nearly 10 million votes.

After the Hillary announcement for Sec. of State, it became balls-to-the-wall coverage of how she would run a parallel government, if confirmed. It would be too threatening for Obama…and then there's, you know, Bill. How would Obama guarantee that Bill would not have an erection during Hillary's stay at State? What would Obama do if Bill did, accidently or on purpose, sprout wood while he was carrying out his international charitable blackbag fund raising operations? Usual-establishment-suspects wrung their hands raw while speculating. Make your own mental pun….or perhaps not.

These are the same people, by the way, who automatically begin to clutch their pearls whenever a Democratic president is elected. These are the same people who told us for months on end that, "Obama has big trouble with white voters, Hillary voters, Pennsylvania voters, non-blues loving voters, midget voters, incest-victim voters, A-B positive blood voters, Bradley-effect denying voters and dead Appalachian voters."

Then came the "Obama is a centrist, almost conservative", horsepucky, after the president-elect kept Gates at Defense and invited Saddle-bareback, Rick Warren to offer a symbolic prayer at the inauguration. "The most liberal senator in the Senate", "a liberal's liberal", "a socialist", "a black liberation-theology Marxist"…..suddenly, and without warning or explanation….became a conservative centrist who realized that the nation was, in actuality, center-right.

Recently it's been brilliance-in-news-porn with tremendously responsible articles like, "What would Dick do?"…..instructing Obama on how he will have to keep some of The Dick's criminal policies on national and international activities…alive and well….if Americans are going to be kept, you know, safe.

Yesterday, at Eric Holder's confirmation hearings to become Attorney General, there was a brief case study moment on how the corrupt game between, primarily, conservative politicians, and establishment media lapdogs….really works….the warp and woof, if you will….

For several weeks, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) has been feuding with Patrick Leahy (D-VT) about when Holder's confirmation hearings would be scheduled. Specter wanted a delay, and began suggesting that there were a lot of unanswered questions about Holder, including the Marc Rich pardon, the Elian Gonzalez saga, and other real old stuff that nobody cares about anymore….except for obstructionist-minded Republicans and their Knee Pad Media partners.

Politico, Knee Pad Extraordinaire Blogsite, led the way, starting December 10th….

Specter, a former prosecutor himself, said he was troubled that Holder did not stand up to President Clinton on the pardon of Rich, who was a fugitive living abroad at the time of the pardon.

…the Judiciary Committee Republicans are going to have a field day with the Rich pardon.

Following Specter's pulling of the Knee Padders chains about Holder early on in December, Padders went forward everywhere echoing Specter's deep and serious concerns.

Which led to Specter's comments at Holder's hearing yesterday….completing the Knee Pad Circle….

"Almost every major newspaper in the country has comment about the importance of questioning Mr. Holder. And as I said on the floor, I have an open mind but I think there are important questions to be asked and upon the questions to be answered.
The editorials have commented about the need for the questioning of Mr. Holder based upon some of the factors in his background. There's no doubt he comes with an excellent resume, but there are questions nonetheless. So says the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the Rocky Mountain News, and many other newspapers across the country." Link

The same lapdog, Knee Pad wearing, GOP appendages in the media who have been feverishly trying to discredit, smear, taint, and delegitimize Obama for months…..have their chains pulled by Arlen Specter, motivating them to stenographically repeat Specter's implications about Holder in newspaper columns and teevee news shows everywhere….resulting in Specter referring to those same Knee Pad pieces as the basis for why he has to be an asshole, challenging Holder as a matter of 'principle'.

A clearer example of how it all works couldn't be found. Republicans can't govern…..journalists can't report news…..but together they can mislead, manipulate, obstruct and propagandize with the best of them.

Happy 2009.

I've been thinking about the Blago case and I just can't come up with an answer to this question….

Why did prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald arrest Illinois Governor Blagojevich when he did?

If it is true that Fitzgerald, working on the Blago case for FIVE years, wasn't prepared, really, to arrest the governor and bring charges until the spring of 2009…..why did he pull the trigger, pre-emptively, arresting Governor F-Word months earlier than he had planned?

According to my reading on the subject, Fitz had heard, either through eavesdropping or from other sources, that Blago was actively selling the open senate seat vacated by president-elect Obama. Fitzgerald, as the story goes, didn't want Blago to consummate an alleged pay-to-play deal for that senate seat.

Why not? What was Fitzgerald thinking here? Fitz is supposed to be a very smart guy. Didn't he know that simply arresting Blago would not stop him from appointing the vacant senate seat, anyway? Did Fitz not know that impeachment by the Illinois legislature was the only way to remove the threat of this Blago appointment….and that that process would likely take months? Surely, the 'bulldog', Fitzgerald, knew these things.

Hypothetically then….let's say Blago had been allowed to follow through with his pay-to-play senate seat appointment. Wouldn't it be true, with the wiretaps and all, that Fitzgerald would have gained even more corruption evidence on Blago….AND the senate seat appointee, as well? What would have been wrong with that?

If it was prosecutor Fitzgerald's intention, in arresting Blago when he did, to prevent any "taint" from developing on the senate seat appointment……how has that intention worked out? Wasn't that Governor Blagojevich appointing Obama's replacement the other day? And, despite bloviating Democratic leaders, isn't it true that consensus opinion has now formed around the fact that Blago has every legal right to fill Obama's empty seat?

Additionally, absent some yet to emerge pay-to-play scam between Blago and Burris, isn't it true that Roland Burris hasn't done anything wrong? So, why would Burris' appointment be regarded as tainted? If a person has a criminal complaint brought against him, as Blago has, does that mean that EVERYTHING he does after that point in time is, by definition, illegal or tainted?

So, what was Patrick Fitzgerald thinking when he pre-emptively arrested Governor Blagojevich? What was Fitzgerald doing when he publicly read selective Blago wiretap dialogue potentially biasing Illinois jurors? Quite candidly……I don't get it.

It couldn't possibly be that Fitzgerald was doing anything political, right? Isn't Fitzgerald regarded, like the Divine General Petraeus, to be totally above reproach?

At the risk of sounding like, you know, a conspiracist…..do you think that Patrick Fitzgerald knew, before arresting Blago, that in so doing, he would be creating a Knee Pad Media swarm hell-bent on implicating President-Elect Obama, despite his own statement that Obama was not implicated? And isn't that what has happened? It's not like the Knee Padders haven't already had a lot of practice with their 'Obama is guilty by association' attempts.

I'm having difficulty in not comparing this alleged scandal with the Clintons' Whitewater alleged scandal. Although the Clintons lost money on a real estate deal, and were never found guilty of ANYTHING Whitewater related…..the perception of wrongdoing by the Clintons, because of Knee Pad Swarmers armed with only their Knee Pads, dogged Bill Clinton's entire presidency. While acknowledging that the Blago case is different, is it possible that…

Fitzgerald was siccing the dogs on Obama?