The Rahm Pile-On

Rahmbo has nothing to worry about regarding Blago’s scandal, but his intense reaction to the media does not bode well for Obama’s direct orders for “no drama” from his posse.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

I hate when some douche interrupts my toilet-using with yammering about death threats. Let me work.

?The urgency of this hunt seems a bit overblown…
.
Ya think?
.
Needless to say if you aren’t part of the solution then you are partt of the problem.

I think it’s Fitz ability to keep his lip buttoned that have you ALL running around looking like idiots.

And once Obama has compiled this report of all the staff contacts, the media will press him for the results. Just like they pressured Bush on his investigation of the Libby leak, right?

Oh, wait…

But the MSM loooves Obama and can’t stop covering for him and his people?

This must be some sort of dark conspiracy. Or maybe a conspiracy within a conspiracy!!!

I can’t help but notice as well that all of the actual reporting (as opposed to speculating and tut-tutting) is coming from the local Chicago media and affiliates. (Sun Times, Tribune, Fox)

As MS points out, there is other stuff going on out there in the world. John Cole, as usual, has a smart take.

Michael, thank you for closely following the rantings of the wingnuts and Drudge so that we don’t have to. Does it make you feel ‘dirty’ (like it did to Joe the Plumber)? It must be tough duty immersing yourself in the mud being tossed around by the delusional and the smear artists. Thank you for yet another post that breathlessly (if somewhat reluctantly) announces how Obama and his people did nothing wrong.
.
I’m pleased to hear that Obama’s people ‘talked to Gov. Rod Blagojevich about candidates who would be acceptable to Obama, but that the conversations involved no quid pro quo or dealmaking’. To do less than that would be an irresponsible betrayal of the voters that elected Obama to his senate seat. Obama has a responsibility to attempt to influence the appointment in a way that’s good for his constituents. I’m glad to see that he’s been doing that (in a legal and ethical manner).

I still await hearing of any actual wrong doing regarding Obama or his people. So far all I am hearing is that Obama had a person he favored to take his Senate seat, but was only willing to offer gratitude for the appointment. Scandal indeed.

In his news conference, Fitzgerald specifically cautioned the press to “not cast aspersions on people for being named or being discussed or if you learn they’re being interviewed.”

So of course, that’s exactly what the press does.

Liberojevich…
Blageraci…
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/24/arts/liberace.2.jpg

Apparently, you were not listening.

I’ve been watching cable news this afternon–I know, get a life!–and you know, Barack Obama comes from the same state as Rod Blagoyevich. That is really suspicious! What did he know and when did he know it? This is the first major scandal of the Obama Administration! He has to explain himself. You notice he hasn’t had any press conferences since this thing broke…oh, wait. He’s having a press conference tomorrow…And Patrick Fitzgerald said that Obama is no way involved in this? I’ll bet! That’s not what Sean Hannity thinks! It’s a coverup for sure. Will Obama be the first President to be impeached before he’s inaugurated?

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/10/vacancy/

Good grief. Who cares what freaking Drudge says? and death threats? over what? Oh wait, for being Obama’s chief of staff.
.
The world has gone nutty.

Apparently Drudge rules Michael’s world too.

It’s amazing that Obama hasn’t even taken the oath of office and the villagers have went back to the Clinton Rules of coverage.

Where the hell was this investigative zeal when Bush was committing illegal acts and sending our soldiers off to a phony war?

Where the hell was this investigative zeal…

You have to differentiate investigative zeal to speculative zeal.

What the lack of examination of the Iraq WMD claims and the “what is he hiding” festival of innuendo both have in common is that they require zero effort at determining the truth.

The number one rule of reporting is that laziness is job 1.

Link to Drudge and call it a day!

You just linked to Drudge. On the Time website. Wow. How do you still have a job?

It’s pretty obvious that Barack Obama wants to control the story to the extent that he gets all the facts as he knows them out on the table in one neat package. Obviously, he’ll have to do that sooner rather than later so we can dispense with the drip, drip, drip. But what does it hurt to give him a little time to assemble the evidence & squeeze his staff for the facts.

And, hey, it’s Friday afternoon! Isn’t this the traditional data dump hour?

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

Newspapers are shutting down, news magazines are shedding staff right and left, and Michael Scherer gets paid to link to Drudge and transcribe Letterman. Whose nephew are you, anyway?

Uh, oh. I wonder if Rahm got nervous because he’s hiding Obama’s Indonesian birth certificate in said bathroom.

I wonder if the cameraman went through Rahm’s medicine cabinet? Hmmm….

I can see the Drudge siren….

“William Ayer’s Toothbrush Found in Rahm’s Medicine Cabinet. Developing…”

This is not a criticism of anyone, but I confess to being fascinated to the point of obsession by what I see as a huge stylistic/temperamental divide between Obama and Emanuel. I can’t help but think that Obama cringed when reading of Emanuel getting short with reporters and not coming into headquarters out of frustration. Again, I’m not judging it. I just think Emanuel’s default attitude/behavior is so different than Obama’s, and I wonder how that will play out in the key partnership of the land.

This is just like how the media dogged George W Bush when fellow Texan Tom DeLay was indicted, except no, it isn’t.

“The urgency of this hunt seems a bit overblown…”
.
Yeah, right. Must credit Scherer! Must credit Scherer! Whoopwhoopwhoop!

Watta jerkoff.

Back in the day, Drudge’s accuracy rate was about one item out of three – not so hot since most of his ‘reporting’ came from mainstream folk.
.
Nothing I’ve seen lately suggests he’s improved his score.

coffee – But reportedly Emanuel has actually “mellowed” in the last few years, and Obama’s known him long enough to know exactly what he’s getting. Obama, after all, is the one who roasted Emanuel by saying that when he cut off part of his middle finger it had the effect of rendering him partially mute. Hard to see him cringing over Emanuel getting short with reporters. May even be the work of a prestidigitator.

My prediction is that Emanuel will wind up with pie on his face before it is all over.

@kathy – I’ll take your word for it, but they seem the odd couple to me.

Good grief! Much ado about nothing! I heard on one of the news shows this afternoon that Emanuel heard about this and shut it down. Remember the Gov. said he was angry that all the Obama Team had to offer him was their appreciation. The Governor goes down, Obama’s team goes to the Inauguration.

It amazes me how the media looked the other way for 7 years while Bush and his cronies did all sorts of criminal things.
Because Obama lives in the same city as Blago the media has been trashing this man and making him sound like he was in on Blago;s corruption.
Because someone who knows someone who knows someone, so on, says Rahm talked to Blago the media tries and find the man guilty – of what exactly isn’t clear – just guilty.
Are we going to have to deal with 8 years of the press dogging Obama over every little thing and when he doesn’t respond the way the media assumes he should they will try and find him guilty as well.

The RNC chair is having fun with this story too. (The “story,” such as it is, will likely reveal that Rahm passed along a list of preferred Senate candidates to Blago but did nothing wrong.) The Republicans ought to worry less about Illinois politics and more about salvaging what’s left of their credibility as a national (rather than Southern) party. They did themselves no good this week by obstructing the auto-industry vote, and pushing away even more voters in states that they lost in November. Good luck in 2010 and 2012 in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, guys.

Word, cheeseman.
.
The media are enamored of potential scandal but after the inaugural, what to you think the people will be more concerned about – Obama’s putative connection to Blago the Corrupt or the GOP’s insistence on using the potential economic collapse as backdrop for political agenda?

Michael Scherer continues to deliver the same stinky servings of slippery $h!t on stick. My lord, Michael, you and your buds in the traditional media are so boring.

“The urgency of this hunt seems a bit overblown. Obama has made clear that he has requested a report on all of his staff’s contacts with the Blagojevich office.”

Michael, let’s talk some more about these couple of sentences you (or your team of monkeys) put together. Do you think you could state (or even overstate) the obvious any more here? Don’t you think that if Fitz had anything on Rahm, Rahm would have been booked and fingerprinted? Don’t you think that stronger words than “overblown” are more appropriate here? How about “the urgency of this hunt is a useless waste of a national reporter’s time, so I’m going to write and blog about something more interesting, and which people actually care about.” There. Fixed.

And no $h!t Obama asked his people to come clean on all contacts, and will be releasing what he can. Isn’t it obvious that Fitz already knows what the relevant contacts were with Blago’s office?

Can you just leave this to us Illinoisans to fix now? We have a governor to impeach over here, so please, Michael, shut up about this, and go do something else, please.

I think that MS is trying to keep FOX news from withering on the vine.
.
You see, FOX can lie, cheat, steal, smear, or whatever, but if you are “reporting” their reactions as “news”, well, you get the best of both worlds:
.
1. Republican talking points get broadcast to the rest of the world
2. The innocent pundit is staying on the factual side of things
.
A new, and decidedly odd method of continuing to disseminate lies in disinformation…

Wake me up when tchotchke Rahm is no more.

The obsessions of Matt Drudge and John McCain herd the young sheep to their desired article…

Mr. Scherer, thanks for letting me know you take your cues from Matt Drudge. I’ll be sure never to read anything by you again.