Poor Rod Blagojevich. He got caught, of course, trying to negotiate a deal for how he’d go about appointing a replacement for Barack Obama’s senate seat. And the crowd went wild – liberals and conservatives alike. And, while using all the strength they could to keep straight faces, they intoned in a near-perfect chorus: How dare he? How could he? This isn’t the way things are done.

Bullshit. Old Blago was just a bit reckless.

But, cried the bullshitters, you can’t trade favors when it comes to making appointments like that. The liberal darling of the moment, Rachel Maddow, even went so far as to imply that Blago incriminated himself on her MSNBC show because he – rather laughingly – declared that what he was really trying to get in return for the appointment was a legislative promise or two.

Maddow’s knuckle-dragging competition at FOX News displayed a similar sense of “outrage,” only more so since Blago, the other key players and the seat in question were all wrapped in the “evil” D-word: Democrat.

The rules are clear, they all sang, you cannot seek anything in exchange for a political appointment.

Sure, this is a fine theory – not to mention one that ought to be followed and enforced. But, sorry silly talking heads, this is far from the political reality. And, of course, you know it.

Fast forward to today’s news that President Obama will be appointing New Hampshire’s Republican Senator, Judd Gregg, to be his Secretary of Commerce, an appointment that will lead to yet another open senate seat to be filled by a sitting governor.

When news of the potential Gregg appointment first broke last week it was portrayed as little more than a clever “trick” by the Obama team to either look bipartisan by even considering it or by knocking Gregg out of the Senate so that New Hampshire’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, could appoint a replacement – thus securing the coveted 60-seat filibuster-busting majority the Democrats desire.

As a result, the pundits scoffed at the Gregg pick. There’s no way Gregg would give up his seat and stick it to his Republican colleagues, they all chirped.

But that was last week. Because this week – today, in fact – a deal has apparently been reached: Gregg and Governor Lynch have agreed that a Republican will be appointed to take Gregg’s place once his appointment is confirmed. And not only that, they’ve also apparently agreed that whomever they appoint will also agree not to run for the open seat in two years.

So let’s tune into the MSNBC and FOX News pundits to feel their current outrage for the obvious “conditions” that were secured for a political appointment: Nothing. But. Silence.

Bullshitters, indeed.

And the most comical aspect to all of this is that these same news organizations are reporting this morning that the Obama administration has “not been involved” in any of the negotiations surrounding a possible replacement for Gregg. Cue the laugh track.

From a political perspective, I can understand why the Republican cheerleaders are keeping quiet on this one. But what about the liberals? They’re being asked to both “shut up” about the appointment of yet another Republican to the Obama cabinet and “ignore” the deal to appoint another Republican to replace him.

Geez, who put the “kick me” sign on their backs? But, being the good liberals that they are, they’ll just play along, pretending, of course, that maybe – just maybe – Obama will flash his mega-watt grin at them sometime soon.

The good news is that there’s at least one Democrat who won’t be keeping quiet on this New Hampshire deal: Rod Blagojevich. I’ll bet his lawyers are preparing the subpoenas right now for each and every player in the “Gregg deal” in order to prove what we all, unfortunately, should know: Our career politicians are little more than money and power whores.

And once they’re done with their dirty dealing, they rest of us still won’t have the jobs we need, the health care we deserve or the peace we desire.

Until we wake up.

My Dad had an unexpected quadruple bypass heart surgery last Friday in Iowa – our home state, if you allow us to ignore the not-so-short stops in Minnesota and Georgia. He was scheduled for what he told me was a “no big deal” angiogram on Thursday but when the doctors started their poking and prodding they found a heart that was very near quitting altogether.

Ah, there’s nothing like a little major surgery on your father that puts everything in a new light. While I haven’t been able to get there quite yet, he’s been on my mind constantly and on the other end of the phone as much as he can tolerate (“Nurse, more morphine, it’s my Nader-voting son on the line!”).

And my thoughts have returned me to the same place all weekend: I’m a lucky man to have a father like Jim Colby.

He’s never really had it easy, not from his childhood in the lower-class Des Moines neighborhoods, not when he was sixteen and had to take charge of the family when his own father killed himself, not with his (successful) battles with the bottle, and not when he gave forty years of his life to the Hormel Corporation, working himself up from mail clerk to mid-level management.

But he’s always made it look easy – at least from this son’s perspective. Because he’s almost always done it with a magnificent sense of humor and a wit that that could disarm the most arrogant bastard who dared to duel with his street-smart self. He’s not shy about his secret, either: He likes people.

In fact, he’s obsessed with people – their stories, their histories, their troubles and their triumphs. He wants it all from those he encounters – straight, no chaser, indeed. As a little guy who talked tough to survive in hardscrabble East Des Moines (yes, it existed in the 1950s), he knows better than most about the flim-flam exteriors people project and he wants nothing more than to pierce that exterior and find the inner-core that is so much more interesting.

My Dad loves books, movies, music (okay, okay, I’m willing to tolerate his Sinatra fixation) and, mostly, history. He’s always trying to connect with the “little guy.” He knows everything about the “American Indians,” fascinated by their plight and always thirsting for more information on their struggles. And he clings to his sense (more than reality –poke, poke) of being Irish, seemingly hell-bent on living and breathing the story of the ubber-underdog. Well, damn it, he’s earned it.

But my Dad’s best feature has always been his willingness to learn and to grow. He may have hit a few dead ends in his life but he sure as hell wasn’t using them as an excuse to throw in the towel. Hardly. They were all just bumps in the road – some bigger than others – that he eventually traversed with his usual aplomb. It’s the hand he was dealt and he’s going to make the best of it.

And so my thoughts are with him in his latest tangle with fate. I’m thankful that his wife, Brenda, and my older brother, Todd, are with him now and doing what they can to help navigate the glorious ship that is Jim Colby. I look forward to being there with him soon.

Yes, indeed, I’m a lucky man. I’ve got a great Dad. And while I know he’d appreciate a fine line right here that would turn us all toward a smile or a laugh (“Showtime!”), all I really want is for the universe to know what’s in my heart this morning: I love my Dad.