Week of 05/31/2010

Is It Finally Time For Rahm To Go?
– by David Matthews 2

In the 1920’s Al Capone thought he was untouchable.

He controlled the liquor business in Chicago. He owned the police. He owned the prosecutors. He owned the judges. His competition was quickly eliminated. He was even liked by the public. Local boy does good. Besides, he offered the masses what was - at that time - illegal. Of course they would see him as a saint!

But Capone still screwed up, and he did so from the simplest of things. Something so minor that he didn’t even consider it at all. Capone was indicted and convicted for tax evasion.

For all of his resources, for all of his influence, for all of the people he could buy and control… he could have easily found a way to justify his wealth, paid his taxes, and gotten away with it. He could have easily retired as the “king” of organized crime instead of suffering in prison and eventually dying as a frail and diseased shell of his former self.

It’s always something STUPID that trips people up.

President Bill Clinton did not have to be impeached for perjury in 1998. He was already into his second term when he made his mistake. He knew he couldn’t run for a third term. He was more popular than the GOP majority in Congress. All he had to do was to tell the truth about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

It’s not like he was never accused of fooling around before, and he really would not be the first President accused of dallying in office.

He could have been honest about it, at least to the grand jury where he was sworn to tell the truth. Instead, he lied. And of ALL of the various things that Clinton and his wife were accused of being involved in… Clinton was impeached for LYING about something that was ultimately irrelevant!

Now maybe in the grand scheme of things, his impeachment for lying under oath about oral sex from an intern allowed all of the other accusations to fall by the wayside. After all, Special Prosecutor Ken Starr got his trophy and a media scolding for wasting over a hundred million on a muckraking expedition.

But it also could have done him some good to tell the truth. Clear the air and defuse a situation before it even becomes one. We’ll never know, of course, but it does prove my point that it’s always something STUPID that trips people up.

The same can be said for President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. As an acolyte of the old Clinton Regime, Rahm should know all about how one can be tripped up doing stupid things. He should also remember how stupid things ended up forcing out one of his predecessors… former Governor John Sununu.

So let’s see… what was Rahm’s stupid thing?

It starts with the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania. Incumbent and party-flipper US Senator Arlen Specter was facing a challenge from party faithful Congressman Joe Sestak. It looked like Sestak would win. Then in February, Sestak says that he was offered a high-level White House position if he would drop out of the race and let Specter keep his cushy Senate chair.

This is supposedly wrong. The GOP, the Party of Crash-And-Burn Insurrection, demanded that this be investigated. Never mind, of course, any possible criminal activity with Wall Street. Never mind, of course, any possible criminal activity between BP and Halliburton over the oil rig explosion in the Gulf. The Party of Scorched Earth America has DECLARED that THIS CASE is a criminal case of the HIGHEST DEGREE!

Well here are the details: Supposedly the White House DID reach out to Sestak through an intermediary. That middleman was former President Clinton himself, Rahm’s mentor. The man in the White House, according to White House Council Robert Bauer, was Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The position in question would have been an unpaid advisor, but had he accepted it, it would have required him to drop out of the Senate race AND from his current job as a Congressman.

THAT IS IT, according to Bauer. That is the whole story right there, and Sestak himself even confirmed it.

Even conservative lawyers are saying this is a non-issue.

And yet someone needs to pay the price for this… and that someone needs to be Rahm Emanuel.

Let’s get brutally honest here… this was a stupid, STUPID, PHENOMENALLY STUPID move by Emanuel! Despite the pledges and promises from both Candidate Obama and President Obama to not resort to the old political games, Emanuel has been fingered by the White House doing the very thing that people despise in politics!

First, what the hell is the White House doing playing backroom games anyway? They should have ENOUGH problems already with the insurrectionists in Congress. The economy continues to deteriorate, despite their delusions that we’ve somehow “come back from the brink”. They’re still using short-term solutions for a LONG-term problem. Financial reform is still an uphill battle between the House and the Senate. They still have to somehow get a fix for the fix they made with healthcare reform. The Senate is still playing games between Majority Leader Harry Reid and the GOP insurrectionists who sabotage every “unanimous consent” vote put before them. Oh, and there is a Supreme Court vacancy to fill, which was pretty much a sure thing LONG BEFORE Justice John Paul Stevens made the official announcement.

In other words, they have enough on their plate already.

And Rahm Emanuel thinks that the White House should waste time playing kingmaker for individual Senate positions?

I’m sorry, but that is not acceptable.

Let’s not forget that the Party of “Just Say No” is looking for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER to relive the Clinton Impeachment days. They will AND HAVE grasped at ANY kind of impropriety, no matter how slight, and blown it up to being tantamount to treason.

Make no mistake; this issue WILL be the one the GOP and their trained parrots of talk radio and Fox News will bring up from now until the mid-term elections in November. They will link EVERY Democrat challenger and incumbent with this non-scandal. They will tar EVERY Democrat to this because it is tied to the Obama White House. Their majority control in both houses of Congress could very well be at stake because of this STUPID THING that Emanuel has done.

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel should be issuing his resignation at the earliest possible convenience, and if he doesn’t then President Obama should promptly fire him. This needs to be done immediately to neutralize the political impact of this story. Every day that this is not done is another day that it is used as political fodder against the White House. Every day that this is not done is another opportunity for a campaign commercial or talk-radio rant to be released using it against the White House. Every day that this is not done is another stain on the White House reputation.

The American people cannot afford to sit back and watch these old political games be played over and over again. Emanuel has demonstrated through his STUPID action that he is not a part of the “hope” and “change” that the American people voted for, and for that reason, he needs to go.