Can this year end soon enough?
Not for me. But for the miracle of the Obama election (and I am still pinching myself thrice daily), most of the news has seemed dumb and dumber, glum and glummer.
In the meantime, the governor of Illinois pitches forward, more arrogantly than ever, the Iago Blago. Strutting his stuff, his own 3-ring circus, this crook is clearly, obscenely, relishing the limelight and the chance to try to stick it to the big boys. Innocent until proven guilty? He looks guiltier than Dick Cheney. Not an easy feat, nor should it be. The mighty Fitzgerald has so much evidence to plow through and process, he needs an extension.
Just one question: Why on earth does this man still have a podium, a voice, a job?
How long does it, or should it, take to lance an infected boil? I believe there was something in the first era of "Saturday Night Live" about The Thing Who Wouldn't Leave. Aah, to have John Belushi around to play Blago!
Can we flick the lights in Illinois, like a bar mitzvah that has run past its allotted time? Everything else in this country can now be done with lightning speed. My iPhone can call Saturn, cook a chicken, solve 12 quantum physics problems simultaneously, send my monthly IRS payments and do my laundry, all in less time than it took for Bristol Palin to break her virginity pledge. With the right PR and the august Colin Powell sounding the right tremulous tone at the UN, we can find billions of dollars to leap like morons into a wholly unnecessary war. We can also find billions to bail out thieves, and we can seemingly do this overnight. What we can't manage to do is fix life for the still-suffering Katrina victims, just to name an example. Or heal sick people or feed hungry people.
What is wrong with this picture?
What will it take to get rid of this guy? Must he be paid the right amount under the table to disappear? Is that the only language he understands?
How many more star moments will this greasy, greedy thug with the Howdy Doody hair have? How many more paychecks? All 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus opposed an appointment, but he can still pop up to pull this Burris rabbit out of his hat? (Burris, meanwhile, may be '08's last perfect stooge. Has he been sleeping somewhere under a rock for the past three weeks?) Enough already. Get the hook. Does Blagojevich honestly think that if he puffs his chest out far enough and acts as if he hasn't been caught, isn't a disgrace, that we'll go along with it? And even more to the point, will we?
What does this guy have to do in order to get tossed out on his no doubt illegally-bought ear? Rob Wall Street in broad daylight? Oh, I forgot. Too late. That happened already.
But really, if you work in Starbucks and keep spilling scaldingly-hot coffee on the customers, how long do you get to keep your job?
If you work at the Gap and get caught, again and again, stealing sweaters, how fast are you sent packing?
This is New Year's Eve. Out with the old, in with the new.
We are about to enter a new year with new hope and new promise, but in this regard at least, the stink clings, like old fish, trailing us, unluckily and unwisely, into '09.