I suspect Rahm Emmanuel may go down.

i think that even if rahm was approached, it was not by blago but by some other functionary of his – i think he says that on one of the calls, the only way a deal can be broached is if a friend of blago’s calls a friend of obama’s. too many degrees of separation there for rahm to effectively report anything – he doesn’t know that blago actually did anything wrong, just that somebody claiming to act for blago did, and they wouldn’t have known that blago’s phones were being tapped etc., so it puts him in quite a pickle. still possible he may go down, but if he hasn’t done anything unethical, he’s not going to go out without a fight.

(fwiw, ambinder reported in his blog that trusted sources say that emmanuel was not the rat.)

But the problem is if Obama refused to play ball it implies he, or at least someone on his staff, knew ball was being played. Did they report this to Fitz? If so, Obama’s approval rating will skyrocket even further, earnign him more political capital. But if not, we have a Kitty Genovese situation on our hands. I suspect Rahm Emmanuel may go down.

But it is touching how the Chicago machine involves all ethnic groups, no? Kind of like pre-’92 idyll of interfaith gangs in Mumbai where the only god was Mammon.

you know, louiecypher, just yesterday i was talking to a sepia commentator about this (wrt to the Kasab thread). how undisguised naked greed is preferable to this hideous combination of oil, MNCs, religious brainwashing, extremist armies, and arms dealers that is surely diverting our energies and resources away from the things that make humans happy (money, nice homes, health, clean water, decent family lives, a fulfilling freely-chosen job, dignity, recreation for all of us). oh the deadweight loss of it all! a couple weeks ago, my family was driving back from the himalayan foothills. you drive into delhi from parts of UP and uttarakhand. those were ghost towns. smoke billowing from mean little shops, thin people of short stature, no women to be seen, entire towns of haphazard matchstick homes, the only occupations seemed to be factory work, or shop and field labor, impenetrable fog, roads where cyclists would invisbly materialize, where oncoming traffic seemed to come straight at you……point being, these pockets of poverty are so depressing, so cut off in terms of opportunity, so poisoned — i can’t imagine how these places have escaped mass mayhem. i’m not saying happiness isn’t possible there, but for people like, the magnitude of deprivation is high (and these are not even the most poor places in india). anyway, i do not mean to chracterize this as poverty porn, but just an observation about how i think so much energy is being diverted to the wrong causes, and how i feel very powerless in the face of it. but of course, someone can just say, ‘oh you’re a city slicker and you are completely clueless about all this.’ and that’s quite true too. thanks for listening.

I hate it when we fight Port

oh, i love it when we make-up.

He has a lot of those family holiday cards that give the rundown on the last year to send out.

well, i guess this is one sector which is still a growth area for the economy even as the rest of the public is in a mental recession.