Caroline Kennedy made a little more news on NY1 tonight, telling host Dominic Carter that she finally spoke to Hillary Clinton -- who didn't initially take her call -- and that, if she's not selected, she won't run for the seat.
"We did have a very nice, you know, conversation, and obviously I'm not gonna talk about that, except to say that she said this was the greatest job that she'd ever had and could imagine having," Kennedy said. "So, she was very encouraging, and that was, you know, that was nice because she's a huge inspiration of mine."
Kennedy, who projected a relaxed, accessible persona, was also asked if she'd run in 2010 if not selected. "Well, if he doesn't select me, I would support the person that he does select," she said.
In other words, she's not going to dirty her hands if she actually has to, you know, run for the job.
Kennedy also implied that she'd voted for Democrat Freddy Ferrer over Mayor Mike Bloomberg, her local patron, in 2005: "I've been a Democrat all my life," she said. "I am, you know, a Democrat through and through. I've always voted Democratic. You know, that is where my heart lies."
A spokesman, Stefan Friedman, confirmed she'd voted for Ferrer.
Kennedy also said she'd had "a number of conversations" with Governor David Paterson, who will make the choice.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/27/2008 01:35 ||
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#5
if she's not selected, she won't run for the seat
so if she's not given the seat as royalty, she doesn't want it enough to have to actually do anything, like campaign (how vulgar!) for the rubes' votes. I'm REALLY disliking this pampered entitlement bitch now. Before this, I couldn't have cared less
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/27/2008 10:29 Comments ||
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Kennedy, who projected a relaxed, accessible persona, was also asked if she'd run in 2010 if not selected.
Hows about we access your financial disclosure, huh, Princess?
It seems that Illinois' legally challenged Gov. Rod Blagojevich is not the only close Barack Obama associate and Democratic governor being investigated by the feds for possibly selling government business in return for campaign contributions.
New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson, who is the newly named Secretary of Commerce in Obama's about-to-be Cabinet, is also being investigated by a federal grand jury in his home state for possibly steering state bond business from the New Mexico Financial Authority toward David Rubin, a significant campaign contributor, according to an NBC News report, among others.
NBC's Lisa Myers reports that two former state officials say they've recently been questioned by a federal grand jury specifically about allegations that Richardson or aides pushed state business worth nearly $1.5 million in fees toward CDR Financial Products in 2004. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills.
This was about the same time as CDR's founder, Rubin, donated $100,000 to two of Richardson's political action committees; mainly it appears to cover expenses of the governor and his staff at the Democratic Party's National Convention in Boston that summer.
Rubin also donated another $29,000 to Richardson's unsuccessful presidential campaign this year and last.
The probe is part of a broad national federal exploration of "pay-to-play," in which government officials reap financial or other benefits in return for state business.
Richardson has ignored reporters' questions on the federal investigation, while a spokesman says he's confident the relationship was entirely appropriate and the governor expects state employees to cooperate fully with federal investigators. A CDR spokesman also said the transactions were appropriate.
An Obama transition official has refused to comment on whether the president-elect knew of the investigation before he appointed Richardson to his new Cabinet position.
Obama has called Richardson "my great friend" and said the governor would be a key member of his administration's economic team. Richardson, the first Latino in Obama's Cabinet, described himself the same way.
On Tuesday, the Obama transition team issued a five-page report of its own involvement with Blagojevich, who's charged in a federal criminal complaint with demanding money for state aid, business and his appointment of Obama's Senate replacement.
The Obama team report completely absolved the Obama team of any wrongdoing, as the Ticket reported here. But Obama was already on vacation when the report was issued and has said he won't be talking further about the matter. The president-elect's main Blagojevich contact, new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel also happened to be unreachable on a vacation in Africa.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/27/2008 01:35 ||
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One of the alternate state mottoes there newc [along with Home of the Flea - Land of the Plague, Manana, et al]. Two prior State Treasurers are or have served federal time for corruption. Just another version of corruption in 'Name that Party', though I think their model is more (Mexican) PRI rather than Chicago.
Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- An Illinois panel considering the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich is divided over whether to subpoena aides of President-elect Barack Obama and a U.S. congressman. The committee is looking into the Democratic governor's alleged attempt to auction Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.
Blagojevich's attorney, Edward Genson, today sent the 21- member impeachment committee a list of witnesses he wants summoned to testify before the panel next week. The list includes Obama's chief of staff appointee Rahm Emanuel and adviser Valerie Jarrett, both of whom were interviewed last week by federal prosecutors in a corruption probe of the governor's office.
Republican members of the impeachment panel want Democratic Chairwoman Barbara Flynn Currie to grant Genson's request to subpoena Emanuel, Jarrett and U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., a Chicago Democrat and aspirant to Obama's former Senate post.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Caroline Kennedy emerged from weeks of near-silence Friday about her bid for a Senate seat by saying that after a lifetime of closely guarded privacy, she felt compelled to answer the call to service issued by her father a generation ago. She said two events shaped her decision to ask Gov. David Paterson 11 days ago to consider her for the position if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and her work for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
In her first sit-down interview since she emerged as a Senate hopeful, the 51-year-old daughter of President John F. Kennedy cited her father's legacy in explaining her decision to seek to serve alongside her uncle Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. "Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth," she said. "Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility. I'm not saying that I am anything like him, I'm just saying there's a spirit that I think I've grown up with that is something that means a tremendous amount to me."
She also credited her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with giving her the courage to seek the job. "I think my mother ... made it clear that you have to live life by your own terms and you have to not worry about what other people think and you have to have the courage to do the unexpected," she said.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/27/2008 00:00 ||
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"We're starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service."
For those who don't care to sully their hands with honest campaigning there is of course the Blago option. How much money you got to spread around, Princess?
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team was involved in any eye-popping dealmaking over filling his vacated Senate seat. Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed. "Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Translation....cover story being told uniformly.
Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case against Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. But the corruption scandal has drained precious energy from Obama's preparations to take over the White House.
In addition to the time Craig devoted to the internal review that Obama requested, the topic also has surfaced at news conferences intended to highlight key appointments and policy priorities. And Obama himself had to sit down last week in Chicago for an interview by federal investigators, Craig's report revealed. Accompanying him was lawyer Robert Bauer, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Federal investigators last week also interviewed two top Obama aides, incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Though Craig completed his review more than a week ago, Obama delayed making it public until those interviews were finished and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald gave his team the go-ahead to put it out. Then he and Rahm split for an extended, media controlled vacation.
Rahm went to deepest, darkest Africa. Not sure what he's doing there but he's not coming back anytime soon ...
The inquiry was released Tuesday in Washington while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii. Though Obama has taken questions on the matter on five occasions since Blagojevich's Dec. 9 arrest, the president-elect did not make himself available Tuesday to talk about it. Signal to press.... don't bring it up again if you wish to see me on a regular basis.
Blagojevich is accused of trying to use his authority as governor to appoint Obama's Senate replacement to get cash or a lucrative job for himself, starting days before Obama's Nov. 4 election through Dec. 5. The governor has denied any criminal wrongdoing and has resisted multiple calls for his resignation, including from Obama. And he will hopefully fight to the very end of Obama.
Wiretapped conversations cited in the criminal complaint against Blagojevich were not available to the Obama lawyers who conducted the internal review. Which means Obama lawyers probably requested them.
And they don't get them because their client hasn't been indicted.
It's a great game: Fitzgerald & Co. know what's on the tapes but no one else does. They know who talked to whom and when. They can check telephone records and find out who each party on the tapes talked to before and after each taped call. They can then go to those third parties and ask questions about what they said to the targets. They can then go back to the targets and ask each of them what was said in those conversations. And anything that doesn't sound or smell right gets more attention.
This is how Fitzgerald & Co. trapped Scooter Libby. Libby might not have done anything wrong in outing Plame (a reasonable debate could be had), but he didn't help himself by giving conflicting and inconsistent answers to the investigators. And federal investigators hate being lied to.
Brick by brick, drip by drip, Fitzgerald & Co. build a case based on the taped conversations, the phone logs, and by repeated interviews with the targets and the third parties. And it's doubly bad for Rahm and any other staffer involved, because they don't dare invoke their Fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination: even the New York Times would have to report that, and you can imagine the damage to the Bambi administration.
I am not going to pray that the country fail just to get Bambi. I am not going to be like the Kos Kiddies these past eight years despoiling George Bush at every opportunity. I want the country to recover, the recession to end, our troops to come home with the honor they deserve, and the good people of the world to be safe from terrorists.
And if I can have all that and a salacious scandal for the Bambi administration, well then, heh ...
#1
President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team was involved in any eye-popping dealmaking over filling his vacated Senate seat. Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed.
"Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel
Well that settles it then, right? Nothing to see here, everybody move along. Guess we're in for four years of the media acting as Obama's volunteer PR staff.
#4
So convenient that Rahmbo had booked a safari at just this time of year. Remember, Rahm is still the elected CongressCritter from the 5th District of Illinois. Keeping that little chit in his pocket for insurance.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two former Clinton administration officials were named Tuesday to join the State Department in high posts when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state.
James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, was chosen as deputy secretary of state. Jacob J. Lew, who was Clinton's budget director, was named to oversee management and budget issues as co-deputy, a unique arrangement for the department.
President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden also named Thomas E. Donilon, another Clinton administration veteran, to be deputy national security adviser. Antony Blinken, chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was named as Biden's national security adviser. Biden is the committee's outgoing chairman.
Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Caroline Kennedy made a little more news on NY1 tonight, telling host Dominic Carter that she finally spoke to Hillary Clinton -- who didn't initially take her call -- and that, if she's not selected, she won't run for the seat.
Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- An Illinois panel considering the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich is divided over whether to subpoena aides of President-elect Barack Obama and a U.S. congressman. The committee is looking into the Democratic governor's alleged attempt to auction Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team was involved in any eye-popping dealmaking over filling his vacated Senate seat. Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed. "Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. 
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two former Clinton administration officials were named Tuesday to join the State Department in high posts when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state.
