The Great Senate Seat Auction

My question is, why did Rod Blagojevich ever go into politics?  He'd have made a far bigger killing as an incestuous auctioneer - aka a REAL "power broker":

A supporter of U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. told the Democratic congressman in 2008 that he would raise $1 million in return for then-Governor Rod Blagojevich naming Jackson to the U.S. Senate, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday....

Translation: Triple-J offered Blago a cool million for Obama's old seat.  C'mon, in Chicago terms that isn't even ONE degree of separation.

The allegation, made on a busy day at Blagojevich's federal corruption trial, was the first time authorities publicly suggested Jackson was aware of efforts by his allies to swap campaign cash for his appointment to the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama....

Jackson has not been charged and has long denied knowledge or involvement of the alleged scheme to buy the Senate seat, which surfaced almost as soon as Blagojevich's arrest on December 9, 2008. Days later, the South Side congressman read a statement declaring: "I never sent a message or an emissary to the governor to make an offer, plead my case or propose a deal about a U.S. Senate seat, period."

Jackson did not return phone calls for comment Wednesday.

Well, would YOU return phone calls in his shoes?  Of course you wouldn't.  But since Triple-J has functional partisan immunity, one does wonder at his reticence (his seat is, after all, Death Wave-proof), just as you have to slack your jaw at Blago not chasing down his "intermediary" and offering to have the Sinister Minister's grandchildren in order to not let that kind of coin slip-slide away.

I do have to differ with Ace on one point: I don't think Chicago's status as a Donk cesspool is any kind of closely-guarded secret.  The One's deflector shields have taken fairly heavy fire from his own at-a-remove wheeling & dealing for his old senate seat, at least enough to force him to have to cross his other leg in the command chair.  It's just that his shields are vastly boosted and enhanced by the office he holds, just as was the case for Bill Clinton back in the day.  People always want to think the best of their president because, for those who voted for him, their choice reflects upon them.  When their president turns out to be a corrupt, incompetent, lying sack of pus, they prefer not to think of him, and their role in inflicting him on the country, at all, which is the stage we're at now.  Eventually things will get so bad that they'll turn to just about anybody on the other side just to get rid of him.

If Triple-J's little "oopsie" were to have bobbed to the surface a year and a half from now, it could have been the one-pebble-too-many that triggered the avalanche.  Now it's just part of the preliminary flotsam that will bounce off and hurtle away into the void.

Kind of "the one that got away".  Which Blago has to be lamenting more than anybody.