The Democrats passed their healthcare bill today. They did it without any help from Republicans. That way, they get the entire blame for the increased taxes and the lower benefits. I cannot think of one thing that is good about the Democrat healthcare bill. It does not do one thing that was part of the original ideas that the Democrats started out with. They wanted everyone covered by health insurance. This bill will not cover about the same amount of people that are currently not covered. They wanted the costs to be lower. The costs will be significantly higher than we currently pay with dramatic increases in cost in the future. The only thing they got was a healthcare bill.

The corruption on display for the nation to see was dramatic. There were Senators taking bribes for their states as if this was an appropriations bill. Taking a bribe to vote for an appropriations bill is bad, but it is understandable. You are representing your state or district, so getting more pork to your area is to be expected. This bill is not an appropriations bill. This bill fundamentally changes America. Since the bill will have a dramatic impact on all Americans, more is expected out of our Senators and Congressmen than working to bring home more pork to your state or district. You are expected to have the interests of all Americans on your mind, not your political supporters back home. Also, since this bill fundamentally changes America, you should make sure that the bill is constitutional. An appropriations bill is most likely constitutional because of what it is doing. This bill has a great chance of being unconstitutional. So, every Senator and Congressman should have looked at their copy of the Constitution and made sure that all provisions of the bill met Constitutional muster.

Michael Barone wrote today that one provision that undoubtedly will not pass Constitutional muster is the provision where parts of the bill cannot be repealed. One Congress cannot tell all Congresses in the future that what they did was perfect. The purpose of the Congress is to make corrections to things as we go along. This bill prevents future Congresses from correcting mistakes that are undoubtedly in this bill. That has to be unconstitutional. I don’t think that this part being unconstitutional will make the entire bill unconstitutional. It will take some of the important provisions, like taking away our freedom to achieve this goal to make the entire bill unconstitutional.

A lot of fighting went on up to this point. The Democrats ignored the will of the people and passed the bill. The last time the Democrats pulled off something like this was the Missouri Compromise of 1852. After that Missouri Compromise, the Democrat majority went from 131-48 to a minority of 108-71 to the newly formed Republican Party. The Democrats have the potential to do just that in 2010.

The rallying cry for all candidates running against Democrats should be to repeal the Obamacare bill. We do not need the bill. There were better ways of solving the problem, without destroying the best healthcare system in the world. So, any Republican or other party that runs against a Democrat needs to remind the public that the Democrats do not care about your health, they want control. So, the Democrats voted in this sham of a healthcare bill to gain control over the public. When they get control over the public, then they will start rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies. The Democrats expect this bill to insure that Democrats control Washington forever. We have a very small, shrinking, window of opportunity to rid ourselves of this albatross. Let us hope that it can be accomplished before too much damage is done to our economy and our healthcare system. The sooner the correction comes, the less damage that will occur.

Now is the time for all Americans to stand up and be counted. The European Socialist Democrat party has shown itself for what it truly is. Now it is the time for true Americans to show these socialists what Americans to do socialists. Vote them out of office and never vote for another socialist again. That should solve the problem of the European Socialist Democrats. There will always be a few to show us what kooks are like. Eliminating all of them would allow them to fool future generations. Keeping a few around to show them for the fools they are will keep the future generations informed about socialists.

The Democrats in the Senate showed that they do not believe in the Constitution of the United States. This is true, regardless of how much they might give lip service to the Constitution. How can I make a statement like that? Harry Reid held a first cloture vote at 1 am this morning. The vote was 60-40 to end the filibuster. Of the 60 votes, 59 were Democrats and one was the Socialist from Vermont. It could be argued that all this vote did was allow the vote on the healthcare bill to be held. The problem with that argument is that the healthcare bill is unconstitutional. Anyone who knows anything about the constitution knows that it is unconstitutional. Even the Democrats know it is unconstitutional, that is why they will not discuss its constitutionality.

Each Senator has taken an oath to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. That means that any foreign threat should be defended against. This is something the Democrats are not likely to do, unless the enemy shows up with a gun. The domestic enemy is one who works to undermine the constitution. The Senators and Representatives that do not follow the Constitution are enemies of the Constitution. The Senators have to take action to prevent the Constitution being undermined. That means they cannot make laws that ignore the constitution.

Like Barack Obama said, the Constitution is a bill of negative rights. That means it tells government what it cannot do. It does not tell government what it can do. From a progressive’s viewpoint, that is the problem with the Constitution. But there is a reason the Constitution was written the way it was. The Founding Fathers did not trust government to be always benign. By writing the Constitution as negative rules, they prevent the progressives from making the government do too much. But, the Democrats do not believe the Constitution actually controls their actions. So, they can do anything they want and it is ok as long as they pass it. They are wrong. They have to account for the rights of the minority. But, to Democrats, the rights of minorities do not matter. Only what Democrats want is what they will do. What anyone else wants is obviously wrong in the eyes of the Democrats. Since it is wrong, it must be evil. Since it is evil, it must be stopped regardless of what you have to do, even lie, cheat and steal.

The supposed healthcare bill is not a healthcare bill. It is a control bill. It uses the healthcare system to grab more control over all of the citizens of the United States of America. If the Democrats can control the health care of all Americans, they can control the country. All they have to do is give breaks to their friends and punish their enemies. They will do this under the guise of compassion, but compassion it is not. When rationing of health care becomes the norm, then you will see the favoritism of the Democrats pet groups. All the groups that favor things the left does not like will be discriminated against by cutting their services. How can I make a statement like that? Just look at the stimulus funding and where it has gone. Democrat congressional districts have received over twice the funding of Republican congressional districts. This type of result will continue and accelerate when the Democrats take over the health care system.

America as originally conceived by the Founding Fathers is almost gone. We have slipped a long way from the freedom that our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution. The Democrats want to take the rest of our freedom away. This health care bill will go a long way to enslave the people of the United States. A country called the United States will exist past the passing of this health care bill. But, that country will not bear much resemblance to the country that was founded in 1776 or even the country that existed in 1945. It is sad that my generation gave America away to the slavers of the world. We did it without a fight. The fight is not over as the last nail on the coffin has not been driven in. But, things are looking rather black right now. The elections of 2010 might be too late to save the United States from extinction.

The Senate voted to disgrace themselves on Saturday evening by passing the destruction of the United States bill to discussion in the Senate. The bill should have been killed off at that point. Then, a bill that could truly solve the problems in healthcare could be constructed. This bill just trashes the good parts of American healthcare and adds lots of bad parts to replace those good parts. I cannot say one good thing about the bill in the Senate except that it was printed on paper.

The buying of votes was particularly disgraceful. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana should resign in disgrace for even considering the bribe offered by Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrat Senate Leadership. The Democrat Senate Leadership should resign in disgrace for offering a bribe to Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was offered $100 million in Medicare funds to Louisiana for her vote. The actual wording on the bribe is that any state that was designated a national emergency within the past 7 years will receive funding under this provision. The only state that qualifies under that provision is: Louisiana. In other words, the bill will strip $500 million from Medicare and turn around to give $100 million to Louisiana. I do know that the $500 million comes from Medicare in general and the $100 million is for the state program with a similar name. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) estimates that the true benefit for Louisiana will be $300 million, not the $100 million estimated by the CBO. So, she is an even bigger crook than we originally thought.

Other Democrat Senators, who had been enjoying their time on the fence, were now expressing anger at people for trying to persuade them to vote a particular way. What is it with fence sitters? They sit on the fence so everyone will give them attention. Then, when everyone gives them the attention they want they cry that they did not want “that” kind of attention. I think they want everyone to believe that they did it for principles, not for the greed and graft that they were angling for in reality.

I will grant you that this vote only authorizes that the bill under discussion be discussed. The problem with that idea is that once bills get discussed in the Senate, they almost always get passed in some form or another. That is the problem. We do not need this bill in any possible form that resembles what is currently on the table. All you can hope for now is that some Democrats see the light of day. The odds on that happening are somewhere between slim and none. An Obamacare bill passing out of the Senate before the end of the year is almost certain. That means higher taxes, higher health insurance premiums, fewer choices in healthcare, poorer healthcare overall and an end to the America that existed for over 230 years. An America will still exist, but its heart will not be that of America it will be that of Europe or Moscow. An America without the heart of America is not America. At least, it is not the America that I want to pass on to my children and grandchildren.

You may argue, successfully, that other countries have been successful while having socialized medicine. I will grant that those countries appear strong, but their core is weak. If you push those countries, they will crack and fall because there is no inner strength that we have here in the US. We have that inner strength because of individualism. Socialized medicine destroys the concept of individualism in a very short period of time. Within one generation, the concept of individualism as an American ideal will be gone. Then, we are no different than any other country in the world. With the concept of individualism, we are the best country in the world. We are not perfect and have never claimed to be. We are the best and have claimed that for a very long time. To use the argument that we are not perfect, so we cannot be the best is silly. Anyone can be the best and not be perfect. If you want examples, just look at the National Football League. Only one time in its history has a team made it through an entire season with the playoffs and remained undefeated. For a country to be perfect would be impossible as it is made up of imperfect human beings. All a country can be is the best one in the world. One country has to be the best, right now it is us.

I want my grandchildren to be able to defend the “best” country in the world, not the second or third best. With socialized medicine, we will be one of the larger pack of countries in the middle, not at the top. That is why socialized medicine has to be defeated at the earliest level possible. We missed a chance on Saturday because of corruption. We will have another chance later, but corruption will be just as bad, if not worse, then.

On the way to work today, there was some disturbing news. Nobody else seemed disturbed by the news that the gang of 6 seems to be reaching some kind of agreement on a health care bill. That is exactly the wrong thing that should happen. The healthcare bill should go down in flames and then you start over with realistic ideas. You don’t try to pull Obama’s bacon out of the fire at the last minute. Obama needs a healthcare bill to sign into law. Any bill that gives the government authority over healthcare is a win for him. Since Max Baucus (D-MT) is happy about the bill, you can bet that the government will have lots of authority over healthcare. It would be a fantastic win after the long series of defeats in July, August and September.

The tendency of Republicans in the Senate is to roll over and play dead when negotiating with Democrats. The Democrats always get what they want and the Republicans never get anything more substantial than it will be considered at some future time, to be determined. Democrats get concrete things they can count on today. Republicans never get anything more than promises. With the reaction of Max Baucus, that would seem to be happening again.

Didn’t the Republicans see all the people that showed up in Washington over the weekend? Maybe they thought it was just a coincidence that they all showed up at the same time to protest about something. They obviously could not be serious or the Democrats would be calling them racists or something like that.

Barack Obama is in a “Take No Prisoners” mood. His talk last week to Congress was full of “My way or the highway” talk. For someone who is being actively opposed by large numbers of people, that is not the way to talk. If he persists in talking that way and forcing his minions in the House and Senate to vote that way, 2010 will be a bloodbath for the Democrats that they will not soon forget. The upshot of that is that it might make Obama into a halfway decent President. That’s what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. After his Democrats got their clock cleaned, he learned and adapted and became an almost decent President, scandals aside. The same could happen with Obama, except I do not think he has it in him. I do not think that he is one who learns from mistakes. He has always had things handed to him, so he would expect that to continue.

Since the Obamacare bill will not take effect until 2013, nobody will be impacted by Obamacare until then. That would give people time to forget about all the promises that were made to get the bill passed. People will forget about Obamacare until it bites them in the behind. Then it will be too late to do anything about it. That is why action now is so important.

The Saul Alinsky playbook has the advice to overwhelm the system. That means to put more balls into play than can possibly be hit. That will mean that some will get through and your agenda will get passed. We see that principle being used by the Obama administration when it comes to bills that are designed to destroy America as it has always been known.

Right now, Obama is trying to throw things at us faster than we can discuss and decide about them. His problem is the US Senate. It was never designed to handle a large workload of major bills. Every time they get a major bill, it takes a month or three to get it decided upon. That has thwarted the agenda of the Obama administration. They wanted all their bills decided without reading or discussing. That is not what they got in the Senate. They are being discussed. I am not sure if they are being read by Democrats. But Republicans are reading the bills and they do not like what they see. This health bill was supposed to be decided and voted on so the President could sign it by July 4. We are almost two months past that date and rumors have this bill occupying the Senate’s time for another 4-5 months. This is especially true after the death of Ted Kennedy.

What the Republicans in the Senate should do is filibuster all the budget busting bills in the Senate. That would delay things at least 5 months. It would also push these budget busting bills into the election cycle of 2010. That would make the Democrats from conservative states very nervous. In a non-election year, Democrats can get by with voting for stupid things. The public will usually forget about those votes by the time it comes to vote again. Pushing votes on Healthcare, Cap and Tax and all those other bills into an election year suddenly makes them election fodder. Voters may forget votes taken one year ago. They are unlikely to forget votes taken just 2-3 months ago. It would be an interesting way to see how committed these Democrats are to communism.

Many Democrats are vulnerable in 2010. The most prominent Democrat that is vulnerable is the Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. He is being challenged by Danny Tarkanian. The polls show that Harry Reid trails Danny Tarkanian by 11 points at this time. For a powerful incumbent like Harry Reid, this cannot be good news. He should be ahead by 25-30 points at a minimum. To be trailing to a relative unknown is not good news for Democrats. There have to be other Democrats that are also as vulnerable as Harry Reid. It may be possible to retake the majority in the Senate after this election, if the trends hold. Similar results have to be showing in the polls for the House as well.

Democrats are on the ropes right now. We need to press the advantage and keep them down. We cannot give them any chance for a face-saving play. That would destroy the momentum that has built up from the Tea Parties to the Townhall Protests. There is a lot of energy and anger at the excesses of the Democrats. We need to keep the public focused on the socialist agenda that is being pushed by the White House and the Democrat leaders in the House and Senate. If we do that we can retake Congress from the clutches of the Democrats. That would thwart the agenda of the Obama administration. Anything that thwarts the agenda of Barack Obama is good for America.

The “Blue Dog” Democrats rolled over and played dead yesterday on the health care bill. They are portraying it as a great victory, but if you look at the details you will see they caved for nothing. All they got for their stance was some good press and some promises that are not worth the paper they are printed on. Democrats are well known for promising to talk about all sorts of reforms, then not implementing those reforms when the time comes. So, in essence the Blue Dog Democrats caved from their position and got absolutely nothing for their efforts. They did get some positive press, which might help them get re-elected if their opponent is not smart enough to realize that a promise is not the same thing as having it actually happen.

It is rumored that there are 3 Republican Senators that are negotiating with Democrats in the Senate. This is undoubtedly the bill that stands the greatest chance at passing. It will be the one that will have the fewest problems. The current House bill is a major disaster. The current Democrat bill in the Senate is an improvement over the House bill, but not by much. The 3 sellout Republicans bill will probably get the greatest amount of support. We can only hope that the “public” option has been taken off of the table. I doubt that very much.

The good thing that has come from the delaying by the Blue Dog Democrats is that the bill will not be considered by the House before the August recess. That gives people at home a chance to chew on their Senators and Congressmen to tell them that we do not want socialized healthcare in the United States of America.

Right now, we do not have a crisis of health care. Anyone who needs to see a doctor can see a doctor. They can see a doctor at the time they need to see the doctor. Everyone will be treated, whether they have insurance or not. The quality of care may be different if you have insurance or not, but you will receive care. Under socialized medicine, if it is not convenient for the doctors you do not receive treatment, even if it is an emergency. In Canada, they close the Urgent Care clinics on Sundays. Where are the Canadians going to come for health care if we are being forced to wait for months for care we used to get immediately?

I read a post on Hugh Hewitt’s blog this morning from a person with bladder cancer. He went over his treatment from initial diagnosis to now. In the letter, he tells how one doctor tells him that in socialized medicine countries his care is radiation treatment, instead of surgery and chemotherapy that he received. That made him question whether his treatment program was right. He was told that the reason that radiation is used in socialized medicine countries is that it is cheaper. The best way to treat the cancer this person has is by surgery and chemotherapy. The problem is that the treatment is also more expensive. The letter writer’s insurance company never questioned any treatment that he received.

The problem is supposed to be 47 million people that are uninsured. That may be a true number, I am not sure. Some people claim the number is high and others claim it is low. For the point to be made, it does not really matter. About 1/3 of that number are people who are not here legally. Any nationalized health care system would not cover these people anyway. About 1/3 are people that are young and unmarried. This is the indestructible period. They do not buy health insurance because they do not feel that they need health insurance. The remaining 1/3 contains two groups of people. One group makes enough money that they feel they can pay for their health care by themselves, without insurance. Rush Limbaugh falls into this category. The other part of the group are people that either have a pre-existing condition that makes it difficult or impossible to get health insurance or they cannot afford health insurance. It is this last group that is the problem and where all the efforts should be placed.

Instead of changing the entire system to cover a small number of people, just tweak a part of the system to get those covered who really need the insurance and cannot get it. This group numbers less than 10 million people. Develop some program for these people.

The other problem people are missing is the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are breaking us financially. If the government cannot run those two health programs properly, how could they run a massive new program with any degree of efficiency? If you want to know what socialized medicine will be like, spend a day at the DMV. In a report I saw from Canada, many of their clinics offices looked like DMV offices. It gave me the chills to think that I might have to endure that kind of horror in the near future.

The time to stop Obamacare is during this Congressional Recess. If we show up at the Townhall meetings that the Senators and Congressmen hold over the break, we might get it through to them. If we fail at this time, then the United States will fail to last as a country. The experiment in self-government will be called a failure and it will be our generation that lost the dream. I do not want that on my head. What about you?

One thing that the Obama administration does that really bothers me is to declare everything an emergency. Then, after declaring it an emergency the solution is to ram a bill through Congress that no member of Congress has read.

Congress does not take orders from the White House. Members of the House and Senate are expected to be knowledgeable about the bills they vote on. A great example of how this system is broken is the health care bill currently being rammed down the throats of Congress. Even the White House has no idea what is in the bill. I have not heard or read one member of Congress or the Executive Branch who has said they know what is contained in the health care bill. This includes the President. Who said yesterday that he had no idea what was contained in the bill. Since nobody knows what is in the bill, shouldn’t we take a step back and let everyone read it first? That would seem to be the prudent thing to do. If a member of Congress did not want to read the actual bill, they could assign a member of their staff to read the bill and prepare a summary for them to read. This second method would get them over the hump, but is clearly not the best option.

We all saw what happened when nobody reads a bill. The stimulus bill was passed because it was so important for the country that it passes immediately. Come to find out that most of the bill will not even take effect for years. When you do not read a bill, you can expect to be surprised at what is contained in the bill. You cannot rely on the White House, regardless of which party holds the White House, to tell you the truth. You have to do your own research to find out if there is anything in there that you object to. If you oppose funding abortions, you better know if the bill proposes to fund abortions or your credibility is shot with your constituents. The people that vote for you expect you to read each and every bill before you vote on that bill. If you want government funding of abortions and the bill prohibits government funding of abortions, you had better know about it before the vote.

Is it me, or have members of Congress gotten lazy about reading each bill. It used to be that you could guarantee that each member of the House and Senate had read and was familiar with all aspects of a bill before it was debated before each chamber. Now, you can tell that some have not read the bills from the comments they make in the debates. One of the problems is the voters. We keep electing these politicians that do not take the time to do their job. The reason we keep electing them is that we do not do our job. If a politician messes up big time in year one of his term, by the end of his term people have forgotten about it altogether. We need to make sure that we keep after these politicians to keep them honest. If we do our job better, you can guarantee that the politicians will do their jobs better so they can keep their jobs.

Politicians understand votes very well. If they perceive that if they vote a certain way that they will lose their next race, they will not vote that way. This is true, even if the politician believes strongly in the idea. That is because most politicians are not “true believers”. Politicians will jump from issue to issue and flip-flop on both sides of an issue. What keeps them in check is a block of voters that believe strongly in an idea and threatening the politician’s job. The threat does not have to be in the open. Just having a group together that will support an idea is enough to get political support from the politician. You also have to make sure that the politician knows that you support a particular issue and that you have votes behind you. That will change a politician’s mind faster than anything else.

There were two items that happened yesterday that need to be mentioned today. The first is the fact that Barack Obama is taking a position on the Honduras Presidential situation that is exactly the same as three known communist dictators and against the rule of law. The second is that Al Franken officially was declared the winner in the Minnesota Senate race. That means that he stole the Senate seat from Minnesota. We are in big trouble if both of these are allowed to go unchallenged.

The most disturbing is the fact that the United States is being put in a position supporting a communist dictator against the people of Honduras. The President of Honduras wanted a second term of office. In fact, he wanted to be President as long as he wanted to be President. The Constitution in Honduras said that he could only hold one four year term of office. So, the President decided to change the Constitution. The only problem with that was that the Legislature had to initiate the process to change the Constitution and they refused to do it. He then decided to have a referendum on his own, without the legislature’s approval. The legislature had to approve the funding to print the ballots and they refused. So, he had the ballots printed in Venezuela with Venezuelan money. When the ballots were delivered to Honduras, the country’s Supreme Court had the ballots seized. The President then organized a mob to get the ballots and hold the election. The Supreme Court ordered the Army to arrest the President and have him removed from the country. That was completed.

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, all of our hemisphere’s communists, went on record denouncing the effort in Honduras as a coup. It was not a coup, but a Constitutional effort under the direction of the Supreme Court and the Legislature. Barack Obama sided with the communists and against the free people of Honduras. Today, the leaders in Canada also called on Honduras to allow the return of the dictator to power.

Our country should be on the side of freedom, wherever and whenever we find it. In our current President, we find him not supporting freedom when given the chance and supporting dictators whenever given the chance. This is backwards from what should be happening. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? I am getting the feeling that we are being prepared for something in the future. I am not sure of what that something is, but I have a feeling that I will not like it when it happens. The early indicators are that freedom will not have a part of the Obama legacy.

The second disturbing thing is the elevation of Al Franken to the Senate. He lost the race in November. He lost the first recount. He lost the second recount. Then, his lawyers started finding votes where none existed and he managed to take a 700+ vote deficit into a 300+ vote victory. In the process, every canvassing board decision went against Norm Coleman. The Supreme Court decided that there was no pattern of deceit in the actions of the Franken team or the Minnesota canvassing board. That they could not see the obvious is ridiculous. Anyone with an eye and a brain can put one and one together to add up to two. This is the second election that the Democrats have stolen from the Republicans. The first was the Washington Governor’s race a few years back. In both cases, the Republican won the race and the first couple of recounts. It wasn’t until the Democrat vote producing machine took hold that the vote actually changed from Republican to Democrat. In both cases, miraculous votes appeared from unlikely places to give the Democrat the edge. In every case, the votes came from Democrat held counties. There were never any additional votes found in counties that were held by Republican officials. That makes one smell a rat. If this were a fair recount, there would be votes found in every county or at least most counties. No, all the votes found were in the heaviest Democrat counties. Either the Democrat held counties are the worst places to get votes counted properly or there was voting fraud after the election. I tend to believe the latter.

These two things do not bode well for the future. Al Franken makes it impossible for Republicans to stop anything without Democrat help. That means that any bill the Democrats can muster every Democrat to vote for will pass. It means Sonia Sotomayor will be on the Supreme Court, even though she is not qualified. Al Franken in the Senate is a disaster for America.

Barack Obama is signaling solidarity with his communist brethren. He has done this by coddling Kim Jong Il. He is standing firm against freedom everywhere he finds it. He is even standing firm against freedom at home. We are in big trouble as long as King Barack I is in office. Or is it Comrade Barack? I do not have good feelings about what will happen between now and November 2010. I just hope that there is still an America there that will be able to vote in November 2010. If we get to vote, the Democrats will all be lame ducks between November 2010 and January 2011. That is when they could inflict real damage, but that damage might be just temporary.

It has just now come out that there were 21 contacts between Rahm Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich about the Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated. Having an interest in who is replacing you is natural. Talking to the person who is making the selection is natural. The original number of a small number or five would be reasonable and would not raise any eyebrows. But, the number twenty-one is astounding. We are not talking about a long period of time. Obama only resigned his seat last month and was elected on November 4, so these contacts could not have been much more than about one to two months long. That would translate into a phone call about every other day from Rahm Emanuel to Rod Blagojevich.

What went on during these phone calls? We can assume that Emanuel talked about Obama resigning the seat and then about who would fill the seat. There was undoubtedly a list of names that the Obama people put forth as acceptable and probably one name they would like to see picked. That is all that we can assume to know that went on during the conversations. Any other conversations would be pure speculation. But, that would have only taken up one or two of the 21 conversations. They must have had something else to talk about in those conversations. Some of the conversations were undoubtedly updates on the progress.

Knowing what we know about Rod Blagojevich we can assume that he talked about the pay for play. We also know that Rahm Emanuel is a product of the Chicago political machine. So, he would not have thought anything unusual about talking about pay for play. Whether this conversation included a pay for play from the Obama administration is unknown. We do know that Rod Blagojevich was upset that at the end, he was told all he would get would be the thanks from the Obama administration. We do not know if that was before or after the Obama team learned of the investigation into Rod Blagojevich.

Barack Obama originally said that there were no contacts between his campaign and Rod Blagojevich. Then, he revised that to say that there were contacts but that there were no conversations about the pay for play. The news media is sticking to the no contact part of the story. An Obama advisor, Axelrod made a statement on November 23 that Obama had talked to Rod Blagojevich about the Senate seat. After this scandal hit, that statement was revised to say that Axelrod misspoke. Axelrod may be a lot of things and he may do a lot of things, but there is one thing he does not do and that is make a mistake in what he says. Axelrod is also a product of the Chicago political machine. He knows the importance of saying the correct thing to the public, even when the exact opposite is going on in private.

The person who is in the biggest trouble is Jesse Jackson, Jr. He has been identified as appointee number 5. Appointee number 5 is supposed to have agreed to raise $1 million for Blagojevich in exchange for the Senate seat. The Saturday before the news hit, Jesse Jackson, Sr. held a fund raiser for Blagojevich that raised $500,000. That would lend credence to the idea that Jesse Jackson, Jr. would be in trouble. His people were actually taking active steps to do what was agreed to in those meetings with Blagojevich. If that agreement is on the tapes, Jesse Jackson, Jr. is in a lot of trouble. The problem is that it would be a Chicago jury that would have to hear the case and it would be unlikely to convict him of anything. He would have bought off the jurors or at least enough of them to make a difference.

The one thing that is certain is that Rod Blagojevich has held his last political office. He will be forced to retire somewhere and be forgotten. That is at a minimum for him. There is a good possibility that he will have to answer charges. Because he is white, there would be a good chance he would be convicted by a Chicago jury.

Obama is not looking too good with all this mess. He has handled it very poorly. He is also starting to sound like he wants an Imperial Presidency after cutting off a reporter yesterday. That is no way to keep the media on your side. They want to be stroked and coddled. They do not like to be cut off and told not to waste their questions. If he does that much more, he may find a very short honeymoon in Washington. Already there are questions about his leadership ability. If he cannot control the people in his administration, how is he going to be able to deal with people who dislike him? At the very least, there are people questioning him now that voted for him in November. That is a bit late, but we will take what we can get when we can get it at this point.