I may have been born at night....

....But not last night.

Obama's Campaign Manager, David Axelrod, on Obama and Blagojevich and the question of who ought to be appointed as his successor.....

"I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Now that would make emminent sense.... I don't care if it is corrupt Cook County, or a bunch of Mormoms from Utah: A senator ought to have an opinion on who ought to be appointed to the office to which he was elected but has now moved on from, and he ought to share those thoughts with his state's governor.

But that was way back on November 23. Today, after Blagojevich's scandal broke, the Axe and O show are singing a completely different tune. Axe....

"I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the
President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate
vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject."

I don't know whether Obama or any of his team knew of the shakedown that Blago was attempting to run. It would be somewhat naive to think that an Illinois politician might have never heard of such a thing, but at this point there is no evidence to believe that O was part of the (alleged) corruption. But The One has a history of blaming staffers, or saying he or others had mispoke when their previously-uncontroversial statements came up to bite them. And when you couple this with the thing that is really, REALLY grating on me--that the YouTube of the Axe interview is now no longer available (thrown down the Memory Hole, no doubt)--you'll pardon me if my Suspicious Spidey-Sense is tingling.

There is something else going on here. Something that the O-bots, the Chicago Machine, and the press don't want us to dig into. The thinking now is that "Senate Candidate Number 5" is none other than Jesse Jackson, Jr (which would explain Jesse Jackson's tears in Grant Park). I also can't help but remember that Rahm ("Rahmbo") Emanuel is also a Chicago politician of some note. I can only speculate that Emanuel was offended at the depth of Blago's corruption and set up the governor for the fall he deserved to take.

The players here are too close for me to believe that Blago's indiscreet corruption was not known among them.