Posts Tagged ‘Rod Blagojevich
Blagojevich Headed to Prison. What’s the Catch?
Rod Blagojevich is headed to prison on Thursday for 12 to 14 years. He will be 69 years old if he serves his full term. He’ll probably serve 12 years.
Blago hasn’t been mentioned in awhile around here, but HillBuzz was all “a-buzz” (heh) about Blago back when the story broke and during the trial.
I was one of the people who was convinced that Blago would either bring down Obama, or (more likely) never serve a major prison sentence because of his association with Obama and his ability to “bring down the house” so to speak.
My assumption was not simply wishful thinking. Remember those improperly redacted memos that showed Obama and his team knew much more than they let on? The Blago-Obama connection was shaping up to be even more compelling than the Obama-Rezko connection.
It seems inconceivable that Blago knew of no skeletons in Obama’s closet. Those redacted memos essentially proved that Obama’s team had lied about what they knew, when they knew it, and what their actual involvement was. Even if there was no strictly provable link that could “bring Obama down”, surely Blago could have privately threatened to embellish or lie about Obama’s role in an effort to save himself from what could ultimately be a life sentence for a 55 year old man.
If I were a dirty politician with no moral compass and powerful friends, I would absolutely leverage those friends to keep myself out of possibly spending the last years of my life in prison. Yet that didn’t happen. Which makes no sense. So, what’s the catch?
Maybe there is none. Maybe Blago developed a conscience, or maybe he’s so committed to Obama’s ideology that he was willing to go to prison to protect him. What do you think?
In move to protect Rahm Emanuel, Blagojevich re-trial moved to April (after February 22nd Mayoral election in Chicago)
Stop Rahm Emanuel from becoming Mayor of Chicago
Have you ever seen the Kevin Costner/Sean Connery movie “The Untouchables”?
I remember watching that as a kid, in the theater, aghast at how corrupt Chicago was. Here was this thug, Al Capone, able to get away with just about anything in the city, and everyone from the Mayor, to the judges, to the police chief seemed to do his bidding. It was disgusting.
Flashforward to 2010, and the Blagojevich retrial has been pushed back to April so that it won’t encumber foul-mouthed thug Rahm Emanuel’s vainglorious bid to become Mayor of Chicago. Emanuel is going to be called by Blagojevich’s defense this time around — and if the trial proceeded in January, as originally scheduled, that would have thrown a wrench in Emanuel’s campaigning for the February 22nd Mayor’s race.
Even more surreal than this trial date change, Rahm’s supporters have been trying to paint his foul mouth and mean streak as an ASSET in being Mayor, because they’ve been saying “people are afraid of him so he can shake them down and get things done”.
Chicago does not need a tyrant-Mayor who sends people dead fish in the mail and screams at them naked while they’re taking showers.
Chicago politics does not need to be a horror movie.
Starting November 3rd, after the midterm elections, I’m going to ask all of you out there to help us here in Chicago and prevent Rahm Emanuel from becoming Mayor. You might not have ever cared much for our city, but we will need your help. We need to form a Resistance to Rahm’s takeover of the city.
It’s a strategic move on your part, because if the Chicago Machine is gearing up to help Rahm, defeating him is a blow to the Machine.
This has great national implications: Chicago was the staging ground for Obama’s 2008 campaign. Chicago greatly influenced Iowa’s Caucus, because Chicagoans were bused down to illegally vote in that contest, throwing it to Obama and setting him up to be the Democrats’ nominee.
In 2012, Chicago will be used to throw the Iowa primary on the Republican side to Mittens Romney so that a losing, Cocktail Party GOP candidate can go on to face Obama in his re-election bid. If Rahm Emanuel is not Mayor of Chicago, and someone decent and honest is (like Tom Dart, the Cook County Sheriff), then Democrats will find it harder to marshal the resources for mischief in Iowa.
America’s third largest city should not fall into the hands of an Obama acolyte.
So, November 2nd is not a day to celebrate and disengage…because the Chicago Mayor’s race that really begins on November 3rd has great national importance where your help will be greatly needed.
QUESTION: Can regular people attend the Blagojevich trial in Chicago as observers?
Some of us managed to get into the Jim Trafficant trial in Cleveland back in 2000 or so, which was an interesting experience.
Since we live in Chicago, we’d like to attend the Blagojevich trial as it’s being held this summer.
Can you help us research how to do this? Do they allow observers from the public?
If so, we’d be happy to hang out down there as many times as we are allowed and report back to you on it. If the trial’s in the Loop, then it’s not that hard to get there from Boystown, and we usually have at least two or three mornings and afternoons free where at least one of us can be there in person to take notes and observe the various shenannigans.
So, if you’d like a report from someone on the ground, then help us figure out how to get in as observers, and we’ll totally do that, starting next week if possible.
Question: Why did Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan go to the White House last week?
{{Actual footage from the Obama White House. It’s apparently Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in the seal costume }}
Here’s an interesting question we don’t know the answer to yet: why did Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan go to the White House last week?
To our knowledge, no other state attorneys general were at the White House…so it doesn’t seem like she was there for any sort of large meeting, summit, or attorneys general dance-off.
Madigan’s a small, surly, not very nice woman, so it can’t be that the Chicagoans transplanted to Washington missed her company so much they just “had to have her visit”.
“Ooooh, girl, you know what these parties we have every other day at great taxpayer expense REALLY need? Lisa Madigan up in here. Quick, send Air Force Three to pick Lisa up, lickety-splits. We’ll have a popcorn fight, some giggle time, talk about boys all night, and maybe get Justin Beiber to play and have all sorts of expensive food and drink. Where my Lisa at? I needs my Lisa!”.
That DOES sound like something the current President would say, though. He WOULD think Madigan was a lot of fun to be around. But he’s delusional if he thinks she’d talk about boys with him for hours. She sure knows her way around a Home Depot, though, in case any of the cabinets or credenzas in the White House have been damaged by the nonstop music video that is the Obama White House. Party every day. Spend as much taxpayer money as humanly possible. Spill on the rugs and blare music as loud as the speakers can manage.
Hope! Change! Another night at Versailles!
So, if Madigan wasn’t there for a party, and wasn’t there for an attorneys general summit, and she wasn’t there to give the current president makeup tips (because she’d need to start with getting some for herself), then why WAS she there?
Speculation in Chicago is that the White House is trying to get her to take Alexi Giannoulias’ place as the Democrat nominee for Senate in Illinois…since Giannoulias is rumored to be dropping out of the race by Easter.
We have to say, there are many, many people in Illinois who will love to work against a Madigan running for national office.
And Madigan could have had this Senate seat already, if she’d wanted it, because she could have ran for the nomination and won it against Giannoulias to begin with. But, she didn’t.
And she didn’t aggressively try to land the seat when Governor Rod Blagojevich was considering whom to appoint to the Seat in December 2008. It could have been Senator Madigan instead of Senator Burris.
So why would she want the nomination now?
Any thoughts out there?
Rod Blagojevich has the biggest pair in the history of testicular fortitude
Great Merciful Zeus, if Blagojevich really does this, we will have to hang a photo of him in our Hall of Heroes here at Buzzquarters.
He’s threatening to call Dr. Utopia himself to the stand if he’s forced to go to trial. The White House will refuse to cooperate, of course, and it will be a bigger debacle for them than “the most transparent administration in history” refusing to send Desiree Rogers to Congress to answer questions about her gross incompetence.
Just imagine Dr. and Mrs. Utopia having to appear in Court to testify…Rahm Emanuel on the stand, sweating his Max Factor to ruin like a whore in church…Valerie Jarrett rambling incoherently, making up lies, and being completely unsympathetic and unbelievable, like she always is.
It would be popcorn-munching, everyone get together for a party, MUST SEE TV.
If he really and truly does this, it would be the stuff of legend.
Go, Blago, Go!
What Chicago is talking about today: Blagojevich admits White House pressured him to make Rahm Emanuel a Senator
This is all anyone in Chicago is talking about today: former Governor Rod Blagojevich is talking about the pressure the White House put on him to make Valerie Jarrett a placeholder Senator until Rahm Emanuel could run for the Senate in 2010. The plan was to make Rahm Emanuel Majority Leader, since Democrats realize Harry Reid is going down in Nevada and won’t be re-elected.
More later on all this…but that’s what the 8 phone calls between Blagojevich and Emanuel were all about. Dr. Utopia wanted his Senate seat to go to crony Jarrett briefly…then pass permanently to Emanuel.
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Indicted
The indictment for Blagojevich and others close to him was delivered today.
But, that’s not the real story.
In essence, the real story sort of begins today — and won’t get really interesting until a trial begins.
Because Blagojevich has everything to gain and nothing to lose from taking as many people down with him as possible, and spilling every nasty secret he knows about everyone in Illinois while he’s at it.
It would be surprising if Rahm Emanuel, especially, wasn’t caught up in some of this before everything is said and done.
For those of you who remember Congressman Jim Trafficant from Youngstown, Ohio (ironically another man with odd, giant hair), you will remember what his corruption trial was like back in 2000 or so.
It was a circus, with Trafficant acting as his own defense, and making all sorts of wild accusations, alleging various conspiracy theories. Those of us from Cleveland actually got to sit in on two days of court for that — and it was the most surreal and tragically hilarious thing you could ever imagine.
It would be stunning if Blagojevich’s trial does not surpass Trafficant’s in all things circus and hilarious.
Former Governor Rod Blagojevich has a book deal
Remember all the effort Blagojevich put into media appearances in the week before his impeachment trial?
Running coast to coast, grabbing national attention instead of defending himself in Illinois?
Doing everything possible to get as much attention for himself as he could?
Well, looks like it paid off — a 6-figure book deal, with said book to come out in October.
And Blagojevich says he is going to name names and spill all of Illinois’ dirt.
That’s a lot of dirt.
He is incentivized to do so, too, because the juicier the book is, the more royalties he gets.
Ironically, he’ll make more money off of all of this than he would have earned if he’d remained Governor (at his salary of around $175,000 a year).
Would you voluntarily leave your dream job, that no one on Earth can legally fire you from?
What if you lucked into your dream job, a job you tried to apply for in the past but were rejected for, and you found yourself, not long before your retirement, at the very end of your career, in the position you always wanted?
No one one Earth can fire you.
You’re guaranteed a gorgeous office in a historic building, complete with staff, luxurious travel arrangements, the world’s best healthcare, legal authority to use your own signature as valid US postage, the ability to buddy up with a colleague or two and go anywhere on the planet you want and do anything you’ve dreamed of and call it “a fact-finding mission”.
People have to call you SENATOR.
Would you voluntarily give that up? No matter how many people stood outside your window and clamoured for you to quit and go home?
Honestly and truly, if any one of us here became a United States Senator (D-HillBuzz), mobs with torches and pitch forks couldn’t convince us to step down.
We wouldn’t give a flying fig if a state governor or the White House told us to resign, or if nobody in the Senate cafeteria wanted to sit at the lunch table with us. That’s what takeout and a conference table in our plush Senate office is for. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn doesn’t like it? Tough turkeys.
The Illinois state senate should have thought of that back in December, when former Governor Blagojevich told the legislature he would sign a bill authorizing a special election to fill Obama’s Senate seat. But, Democrats in Illinois realized Republican Mark Kirk would win that seat, so they never passed the special election legislation, and Blagojevich appointed Burris to the Senate vacancy so the people of Illinois would have two Senators representing them in Washington (well, one Senator, and then Dick Durbin, who’s more a waste of space than anything else).
Now that he’s Governor, Pat Quinn’s calling for Burris to resign, so he can appoint a “temporary replacement” for him, and then hold a special election for the Senate seat (in which, we still insist, Mark Kirk would win). Something tells us Quinn won’t really go ahead with the special election part of his dream scheme: instead, he would appoint another black Senator to replace Burris, and then leave it at that until 2010. Either Danny Davis or Jesse White seem to be the two top candidates Quinn has in mind so far.
But, why on Earth would Burris quit a job no one can fire him from?
When people are demanding you give up and quit something, it’s because they can’t get rid of you on their own — or they would.
So, why give them the satisfaction of quitting?
Why give up the office you’ve always wanted, especially when you know you’re not going to run for re-election in 2010?
Why not just enjoy all the perks, have a grand time, gain enough notoriety to write your memoirs and have them actually published, and give a giant, Illinois-style, F-U to all detractors far and wide?
That’s certainly what we’d do.
How about you?
UPDATE: As long as we are talking about asking people to resign. Here’s 10 people we’d love to see resign from the Senate:
(1) Claire McCaskill – whose children “bug her to do things”
(2) Bob Casey – whose children “bug him to do things”
(3) Ted Kennedy – who let Mary Jo Kopechne drown, and who now is incapacitated with illness
(4) Arlen Specter – who spent ONE TRILLION DOLLARS without reading the bill
(5) Olympia Snow – who spent ONE TRILLION DOLLARS without reading the bill
(6) Susan Collins – who spent ONE TRILLION DOLLARS without reading the bill
(7) Max Baucus – who is ineptitude and incompetence personified
(8) Dick Durbin – who is a waste of space
(9) Harry Reid – who says tourists smell, and jammed $8 billion for his own train set into the Spending Wish List
(10) David Vitter – who is possibly the most revolting man we’ve ever met
And that’s, literally, just off the top of our heads, of people who truly do deserve to resign, for gross incompetence and the inability to either think for themselves, read properly, or make decent decisions.
He's got his crayons ready. He's ready to write it. He likes to tell stories.
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is hitting the talk show circuit again — in what’s either more strategy for jury manipulation (ratcheting up his sympathy vote), more fodder for a book deal, or just plain old-fashioned, vain-glorious, attention-seeking.
In truth, it’s probably a mixture of all of the above.
Our favorite parts of what he’s been saying since his impeachment?
“I’ve got my crayons ready, I’m ready to write it. I’d like to tell those stories,” Blagojevich said, regarding his desire for a book deal.
We’d like him to tell those stories too — and actually write them in crayon (Smurf blood blue, if he can find one. That’s Obama’s favorite crayon, since that’s the trademarked shade he used on all his printed material during the campaign).
When talking about Illinois Democrats, Blagojevich said, “A bunch of them are cheating on their spouses, a lot of them drink in excess, very few of them know what’s going on, they just take their marching orders from legislative leaders.”
We can’t argue with much of that, either.
But, what we’re most interested in Blagojevich talking to authorities about are:
(1) Alexi Giannoulias and Broadway Bank
(2) Yesse Yehudah and the $10,000 bribe Obama took from him in 2000
(3) The pay-to-play scam the Obamas ran with University of Chicago hospital exchanging a million dollar funding grant for a $350,000/year cushy VP position for Michelle (that the hospital’s eliminated after her departure)
(4) The Tony Rezko land deal and ownership of Obama’s house
(5) Mayor Daley’s hiring practices and city contracts
(6) Emil Jones and the day to day operations in the Illinois Senate
And that’s not even the salacious material Blagojevich has on people: like what Rahm Emanuel and others in Illinois like to get up to in their spare time, and with whom. The “with whom” part is, of course, always the most interesting, and surprising (for people who are deaf, dumb, and blind anyway).
Blagojevich could have interesting things to say about all sorts of people and things most of you have never heard about, but will indeed be hearing about, in slow reveal, over the next four years.
The former Governor wants to stay in the headlines for the success of his book, while staying out of jail as much as possibly by cooperating with federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (whom Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed will indeed stay in his position, investigating corruption in Illinois, wherever it leads…including, we believe, all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue).
