Well that sure didn’t take long did it?  With the news yesterday of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich attempts to “sell” the Senate seat Obama is vacating and the governor’s subsequent arrest by the Justice Department, the President-elect finds himself amid quite a firestorm. 

The tapes the Justice Department has clearly show Blagojevich trying to negotiate a sweet deal for himself and his wife in return for appointing Obama’s choice to the Senate seat.  His aspirations ranged from a cabinet post to an ambassadorship and included possible opportunities for his wife as well.  The tapes are quite damning and while he is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, there can be little doubt of Blagojevich’s guilt. 

As Bloomberg pointed out yesterday, Blagojevich simply was doing what seems to come naturally to Illinois politicians – being a crook.  The phrase “Chicago machine politics” was coined with good reason and the fact that Blagojevich is the fourth out of the last seven Illinois governors to be indicted speaks volumes.  This is of course the same machine that turned out Obama.

Therein lays the danger for the President-elect.  While Mr. Obama is not suspected of any wrong-doing, and indeed the tapes indicate he was not playing with Blagojevich at all, it does once again bring to the forefront questions of Obama’s past associations.  He did endorse Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election bid, after Blagojevich was already under investigation from the Feds for other illegal activities. 

This comes on the heels of many other questionable associations of Obama’s including Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi and others.  With each one, Mr. Obama simply claimed he didn’t know what was going on with any of them and the mainstream media gave him a pass and aided in the deception.  Yesterday he once again claimed ignorance about Blagojevich despite the fact that Obama’s closest advisor David Axelrod stated last month that the President-elect and Illinois governor had specifically talked about the vacant Senate seat. 

It really is pretty scary what has been going on in the Land of Lincoln.  I for one have to wonder…  Is there any truth to these questions about the President-elect’s associations?  Or is it that Mr. Obama just has some really bad luck in picking folks to hang out with?  I think it is pretty unlikely all of these are just coincidence and the fact this is coming more than a month before he is even inaugurated is troubling. 

U.S. News & World Report has a pretty interesting wrap on some of the issues at hand here that you may wish to check out:  http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_081211.htm