Great marketing strategy.
They gotta figure that if anyone is dumb enough to vote for Obama they’ll buy a plate with his picture on it.

“Hurry and get yours now before the original dye is broken forever”

I guess, tipster, what the cons are wondering is whether Obama (re: the Obama camp) knew what Blago was up to. I think they realize Obama himself, and his close circle as well, would be too smart to actually partake in Blago’s shenanigans. But if the rumors are true about Emanuel outting Blago, that tells us that yes, they knew - or at least they found out - , no, they didn’t partake, and yes, they did something good about it. Not only does it relieve Obama of any political pain from this, but he actually comes out looking like an even better guy. So, if the cons are fishing for an Obama scandal here, it’s probably not going to work. besides, wrecking the economy, lying us into war, and ruining our international reputation are a lot worse than what the moron Blago did. Obama’s going to have to eat a live baby on national TV to get people to forget what the GOP has done lately.

JMJ

To understand Obama it is important to realise there are two things that separate most politicians. One division is between idealists and those who enter public life for personal enrichment, whether it is power, ego or money. The other distinction is between those who behave honestly and those who will lie, steal and dissemble to get ahead. Although outright fraud and corruption are very rare, as are people who are completely honest, many people view power as an end in itself and are willing to be extremely disingenuous about their true beliefs. There tends to be a strong relationship between idealism and honesty, as those who are in politics for selfish reasons tend to be less scrupulous.

Obama is one of the few politicians who break this honest idealist / dishonest egoist dichotomy. Although he has an ego, Obama is clearly an idealist who has strong core beliefs that have driven him to put himself on the national stage. However, at the same time, Obama is also a very skilled backroom operator who thrived in the brutal world of Illinois politics and managed to outwit Hillary Clinton, by cutting backdoor deals with the minor candidates in the Iowa caucuses and using super-delegates to stop her comeback. His recent cabinet appointments are similarly an attempt to co-opt potential rivals and put a respectable face on a radical foreign policy.

In this respect Obama’s behaviour with Blagojevich is no different. At worst Obama and his aides were involved in some dubious horse-trading, and Obama clearly has nothing to do with any of the other corrupt (and clearly criminal) practices that Blagojevich was involved in (and which he should go to jail for). However, it is becoming clearer that Rahm did “suggest” some names, and that a reward in the form of a future political appointment was probably mooted. However, Rahm’s unwillingness to offer an explicit quid pro quo was probably the reason that the deal broke down. To that extent, although Obama and his staff did nothing criminal, his ‘new politics’ is clearly just rhetoric.

We are unlikely to see Obama involved with allegations of sleaze to the extent that Clinton was. However, Obama is clearly quite Machiavellian and has learnt a lot about power politics from his time in Chicago. Alexandra Starr puts its best in this week’s (British) Spectator when she said, ‘if you get beyond the stereotypes of who has succeeded in Chi-Town, it become apparent Obama is very much a product of the city he moved to little more than two decades ago. Political victors in Chicago have been not just aggressive but also artful…(Obama) will bring the iconic Chicago mix of an above-the-fray public persona with hard-as-nails political manoeuvring to the White House’.

The rest of Starr’s article is worth reading:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3077716/the-white-house-will-be-run-like-chicago.thtml

http://www.victoryplate.com/?directLoad&uid=9C9DFB40D8AE2B228B0AF47FF021AEBC

Of course if you’re watching NBC/MSNBC/CNN you get to see this plug every 15 minutes.
Its about as hoky and cheap as it gets.
I’ll make sure to put it right next to my black velvet painting of Michelle.

JMJ