Bravo, Blagojevich! Amidst the awe-inspiring legacy of corruption you will leave behind (which takes a lot coming out of my hometown Chicago), you had the integrity and foresight to neatly distance "That One" from your middle-school mentality shakedowns.
President-Elect "Motherfucker," as you so fondly referred to him on federal wires, stands clearly out of the loop of your own pompous power grab. Your "fuck him" disdain for this historical politician who ascended from your home state not only keeps Obama the good guy, but your drooling over the Senate seat he left behind makes you look far less the leader of the Land of Lincoln, and more like a spoiled rich kid who inherited a prestigious family heirloom and ran to put it on Craigslist.
I am sorry you felt "stuck" as Governor of my home state, a job you rolled into fairly easily considering the outgoing Republican Gov. Ryan was going to jail for 6 years for corruption charges, and your Republican challenger to succeed him happened to also have the last name Ryan. (You just might be able to have too many Irish in politics after all.) Throw in your Polish-sounding last name to an electorate in Chicago where there are more Polish people than in Warsaw, and you, sir, just drew the lucky bingo card into Springfield.
So it might have been annoying to you that your name was despised by most Illinois Democrats so quickly, as you freely helped yourself to what was rightly yours as far as power, respect, deference, ass-kissing, money, favors, the like. So what if it was reported your own father-in-law wouldn't allow you in his home after you used him in your climb to the top?
Meanwhile, that pesky do-gooder Senator South Side, everybody loved him, they were already speculating about him "someday" as a presidential candidate. Everybody knows Governors have better odds at the White House, and you'd have to wait and plot your chance to 2016 for that gimme.
Beyond Blago's blindingly brilliant gift of that precious "plausible deniability" that Republican White Houses have shred countless careers for (paging Patrick Fitzgerald, care to comment?), he has further provided a simpleton's primer in The Way of Pay to Play.
One party rule (any party) breeds corruption like a big pile of fresh manure draws flies. Power unhampered, egos unchecked, oversight uncool -- nobody wants to make waves and invite retribution from the only authority there is. And the non-empowered political and business leaders, as well as their electorate, they have to accept it and work with the system.
Two party politics proliferates Pay to Play. Without public financing of elections, only two (2) political parties get to make the rules for potential backers. And this happens in any state, at any level. While party-specific patterns emerge over corruption between Democrats and Republicans -- Democrats tend to go down over shameless shakedowns and sorry sex scandals, while Republicans go down over big-time cash crimes and gay sex scandals -- these are two flavors of the same canned goods.
And when one party just temporarily looks slightly better than the other, it empowers that popular choice to make all the rules. Until hubris hits them hard, and then suddenly the eager business interests dart in the other direction like a school of fish. Over the years, in places like Illinois, Ohio, Washington D.C., it becomes a nauseous cycle of back and forth.
As an Obama staffer just wrote here on HuffPo, this new President is for everyone, not just you Progressives. We'll see if politics as usual breeds business as usual, or if our new leader can lead us all above petulant indulgence.
But we don't have to wait for that. We must get involved in our own local races, we have to take control of how our elections are funded, and we have to not let oafs like Rod Blagojevich believe they are the rule makers, when they are actually inheritors of the rules.
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"Throw in your Polish-sounding last name to an electorate in Chicago where there are more Polish people than in Warsaw, and you, sir, just drew the lucky bingo card into Springfield."
As a Polish-American living in Chicago, I must point out that to anyone who is Polish, "Blagojevich" is not Polish-sounding. It is Eastern-European-sounding, sure, but Serbia and Poland are two separate and distinct countries.
To be an uber-nerd, I'll point out that if he WERE Polish, the spelling would be something like "Blagojewicz" -- the Polish language rarely, if ever, uses the letter "v," we use "j" where Serbs and Russians use "y", and use "cz" instead of "ch."
Additionally, when Blago ran for re-election, many Poles voted for Judy Barr Topinka, who has a strong background with working with the Polish-American community. Topinka warned, at the time, about how corrupt Blagojevich was -- unfortunately, not effectively enough.
I knew, as did many Chicagoans, that Blago was corrupt and a pig. But I was shocked at the depth of the corruption, at his arrogance, and his sense of entitlement. I hope that our local, state, and national authorities can move quickly and efficiently to help remove this awful man from politics forever.
Ill. governor meeting with Obama today
By Carol Sowers
Wednesday, November 05, 2008 at 10:39 a.m.
"CHICAGO, ILL. -- Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled.
That's one of Obama's first priorities today.
He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss it."
http://www.connecttristates.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=217582
PE Obama... Why oh why did you lie about this???
Michale.....
It's simply inconceivable that PE Obama would not have had ANY words with Blagojevich regarding the appointment of the Senate seat.
By trying to distance from it, the Obama camp simply raised more questions..
What's wrong with "Yea, we discussed it once or twice, but I had NO IDEA that Blagojevich was going to do what he did!"
It's probably the truth (as supported by Blago's own statements) and would have left PE Obama free, clear and completely above the mess...
Michale.....
it will be ignored....
A lie is still a lie even if you paint it as "misspeaking"
politicians. Isn't it exciting to realize that the show will be going national in the next few weeks.