Rod Blogojevich is funnier than Jim McGreevey.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
agreed, much much funnier.
I especially like the way he made Harry Reid look like a fool over burris.
not that that’s a very difficult task.
Gotta disagree
Both are crooks
But Jimbo is a “gay American” with a USMC dad, a gold digger wife, and a sugar daddy partner. And he teaches an ethics class at Drew U.
The divorce trial was great alone, especially regarding if it was appropriate for his daughter to sleep in his bedroom with lifesized artwork of buff naked men on the walls and ceiling.
Not that there is “anything wrong with that” :), just that they seem to think we care so much about them
But if you mean that his trainwreck is mostly over and Blaggos is just starting, then you are right.
that’s sounds far more pathetic than amusing.
But Blago has better hair, and isn’t that really more important?
He has been convicted without a trial.
By the media and by the left.
He may well be some kind of asshole, but then so are about 98% of the big-time pols who come down the pike. The question remains…when and how did he break the law?
By talking about tit-for-tat politics?
Please.
Did he take…or even demand…any flat-out bribes? We shall soon see if Fitzgerald has been playing a leaking game in the service of other forces or whether has real, convictable evidence of anything past Blagojevich’s bad taste in how he expresses himself when he thinks no one else is listening.
So far, no hard evidence has been presented of such criminality.
We shall see.
Personally I think that there is all kinds of sub rosa, blackmail-like shit percolating under this story…coming from both sides of the toilet….stuff that could quite possibly impact Rahm Emanuel and by extension Barack Obama.
Watch.
Do you not find it…strangely coincidental…that of all of the semi-crooked pols in this vast kleptocracy it is the governor of Obama’s home state whose feet are being held to the fire?
Hmmmm…
I do.
Watch.
Later…
AG
I agree with AG. If the prosecutor had an open and shut case he Fitz would not need an additional 90 days for an indictment. And sounds weak because you can always file with a complaint and than have a preliminary hearing to see if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial.
Apparently, the US Attorney General is afraid of going the second route, because the evidence may not be strong.
Guilty by/for being an a**hole, isn’t guilt beyond-a-reasonable doubt.
Yes, if being an a**hole was sufficient, then most, if not all, of the Illinois legislature should also be gone.
So you really think Fitzgerald is blatantly lying about the evidence that Blago shook down Children’s Hospital for $50,000 in order to let their state grant money go through, or told the Tribune management to fire hostile editorial board members if they didn’t want obstacles to arise in their sale of the Cubs? Or do you think they’re not grounds for impeachment?
There are dozens of allegations of that kind in this case. It’s unfortunate that the Senate seat one, probably the weakest in terms of provable criminality, is the one treated by the media as the smoking gun. It isn’t even part of the impeachment charges at this point.
Personally I think there were grounds for impeachment even without the federal case. Blagojevich’s nuttiness has run our state into the ground.
I think that the sniggering leftiness media atacks on Blagojevich…with Olbermann and Rachel Maddow playing the Bill O’Reilly/Rush Limbaugh roles…are shameful. And I further think that just as they acted in concert plugging Obama and sniping at Hillary Clinton during the primaries, they are literally following “orders” from the Obama camp. For future considerations of course. Nothing legally actionable. Just…favors.
Now my question is not why or even whether Blagojevich broke any laws and/or should be impeached. What I am asking is why does he stand so prominently in the sights of the Obama machine? Do you mean to tell me that theft of that sort is not rampant throughout this entire government? C’mon…the pork barreling going on in congress and among the military contractors makes Blago look like a amateur street corner three card monte hustler in comparison. Governors? Please. The whole system is rotted out, top to bottom.
Why Blagojevich?
I find it…intersting that so much media firepower is being directed at him.
Will we ever find out?
I doubt it. Betcha he cops a nice plea in exchange for not blowing the whistle on Emanuel or somebody. Accepts the impeachment with no jail time and a nice little Swiss bank account somewhere.
Watch.
If he moves to Granada or somplace similar in say 2010 or 2011 you’ll know the fix was in.,
Watch.
AG
maybe Bag, forgot to say “yes Godfather” when asked to appoint Baracks friend to the Senate. Let Bag. have his day in court
Fitzpatrick, the Republican federal prosecutor, is retroactively a member of the “Obama machine” and scurrying to carry out orders he got from Obama before he was even running for the Senate? Obama must be even smarter than I thought.
As to why the media frenzy, you know as well as anybody that the media will always jump on anything with a tie-in to the Big Story of the week. So yeah, if Blago had been guv of Maine or someplace, we probably wouldn’t be seeing the screaming headlines. So what?
And FYI, in Illinois impeachment does not require that he incumbent broke any laws. As you know but won’t tell, it is a political, not judicial process. They don’t have to prove anything. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s how it is. The impeachment wouldn’t have so much momentum if Blago managed double digit approval ratings in his own state. And so it goes.
Of course you characteristically didn’t answer the question: Are you claiming that Fitzpatrick’s quotes from the phone calls and other evidence are just blatant lies, or not? Impeachment does not depend on whether Blago somehow wiggles out of a criminal conviction. It depends on whether the legislators believe the evidence. You don’t say why they shouldn’t.
First of all I have not yet seen why they should. In fact, I haven’t seen any evidence other than a few snippets of phone calls and some less than polite language. And secondly I am talking more about criminal proceedings than impeachment. I am not a lawyer (Thank you, Lord!!!) so I have no idea of what the Illinois statutes…themselves written by criminal hustlers, I am quite sure… have to say about the impeachment of a governor. But…as you say, “…it is a political, not judicial process. ” And contrary to your statement “As you know but won’t tell…” I have been making the point here that this whole farce is a political circle jerk, not trying to hide it.
You write:
Lissen up, podna. Fitzgerald is a political prosecutor, and he basically does what he is told to do. When the PermaGov establishment..a bi-partisan, equal opportunity employer, bet on it (Money talks, neither DemRats nor Ratpubs walk.)…decided that they had just about had enough of BushCo they used Mr. Fitz to chase down part of the then still ongoing BushCo Blood For Oil scam.
Now that they have decided Obama is the anointed one they are using Fitzgerald to shut up someone who knows something harmful about what went in behind the scenes in Illinois politics.
I personally believe that the decision to throw the election to whichever candidate won the Democratic primary was made over a year ago, and that McCain’s campaign was a puppet show for the rubes to watch while power was being rearranged and transferred. Thus the overwhelmingly positive media coverage of Obama and I suspect thus the choice of the transparently unprepared Sarah Palin (Remember how “unexpected:” that choice seemed to be at the time?)…to be the heir apparent to a 70+ year old cancer victim. It was an artfully thrown boxing match, nothing more and nothing less. And Fitzgerald is part of the fix.
“Republican?” That term was used to protect him when he went after the whole Yellowcake scam and now you are using it to disparage any efforts to cast an honest eye on him for working towards yet more Democratic goals? What do you think the Libby/Cheney thing was? He is allied with the PermaGov, and he does his job whether the words on his voter registration say Republican, Democrat, Independent, Tory, Whig, Anarchist or fucking Christian Democrat.
Grow up.
He’s a trained attack dog, nothing more, nothing less. And he has been trained to back off when he is told to do so as well.
Watch.
Blago walks.
Richer than he was when he started.
Watch.
Later…
AG
Scapegoat for all Illinois corruption?
The local news here mentioned some new charges against blago. One was that he bought vaccine from Canada that was not distributed and wound up wasted. The Bush administration threatened to arrest him if that vaccine was distributed because it was from that risky Third-World place, Canada. Bush deserves impeachment for that more than Blagojevich. (Why doesn’t the spell checker like that? I’m pretty sure I spelled Blagojevich correctly)
Another article of impeachment was for diverting money appropriated for other (unspecified) uses into Public Health. That may well be illegal, but no more so than lying under oath about sex. We cut Clinton slack and I’m inclined to cut Blagojevich slack for bolstering Public Health.
These petty charges do make it sound like a kangaroo court.
And I don’t like it.
Something smells.
AG