Ditto.
I dunno. I think we all know Obama is the cleanest politician in Illinois, which is kinda like being the skinniest guy at fat camp.
Don’t take it so hard. Over the years you’ll vote for many people who will come to disappoint you.
Obama has always treated Blago the Dark with whatever open form of respect you’d show the office. I don’t think there’s a lot of hand holding there. Certainly no one could say he’s relied on Future Convict # 666 for support.
I must say (if you hadn’t guessed), I spent a good part of the morning dancing the dance of joy most of the morning. “Stink about him” is the mildest understatement I’ve heard in weeks, and honestly Kalhoun, I would expect better from than that… 
Let’s degenerate directly to the truth: He’s a scumbag, oozing slime from each pore. He marries an alderman’s daughter, at the time, one of the real power brokers in the city, and as soon as he gets the FIL to wangle him a state representative job, decides that the wife’s dad is “one of the old school machine politicians” and disowns him. That had to make holidays uncomfortable eh?
It’s too bad that the wife and girls will have to go through the next few years of this.
And that’s the only remotely sympathetic thing I’ll have to say on this subject.
Like Convict says, Fitzgerald has political blinders when it comes to corruption investigations. He’s put a good number of Daley’s people away as well as Ryan and too many more to name. He’s got a really good conviction rate on these kinds of things - charging Blago now only comes on the heels of his office getting most everyone BUT the top guy in this case. It was only a matter of time, and I think I hear the bell ringing on this clown.
My wife tygre, who used to work in the Illinois state government under Hot Rod, responded with one word when I sent her the news:
FINALLY
What sort of person is Topinka, I wonder, that the voters actually preferred Blagojevich to her?!
I am sad to say that I really didn’t know how stinky he was when I voted for him. That’s my fault and I’m going to be more careful next time. Research is my friend. (…btw, The View girls are discussing him right now).
Your comment about Fitz is dead on. He’s like a modern day version of The Untouchables. Blago should be crapping himself right about now.
Not so bad actually. She bears a strong resemblance to Ronald Mac Donald, but seemed like a decent, non-fundy, middle of the road choice for the Republicans.
Which, come to think of it, is probably why she lost. She went through the primaries getting mud thrown at her from all sides - mostly her own party.
Also, 2002 was a veddy, veddy bad year to be running for state office in Illinois. If I remember, that was about when all the Ryan feces started getting tossed in to the proverbial fan.
I met her ex several times - really nice guy.
I just read the full indictment, and…WOW! The arrogance of this guy is amazing. Leaving the fund raising and Tribune thing to the side, he attempted to manipulate the President-elect in regards to appointing someone to the open Senate seat. He was angling for a cabinet seat (Health and Human Services) and then wanted the Pres.-elect to get people like Warren Buffet to contribute $10-20 million to a non-profit that Blago could then work for after his term of office was complete. If the Pres.-elect would do this Blago would then appoint Obama’s “choice” for the seat.
He also considered appointing himself to the Senate seat to position himself for a 2016 run at the Presidency! He considered appointing unqualified candidates to the Senate because the Pres.-elect would only offer Blago “appreciation.” At one point he said that if Obama wasn’t willing to play, “fuck 'em.”
What an arrogant, slimy bastard. My only regret is that if he’s convicted he’ll go to a white collar resort prison, not a POUND HIM IN THE ASS prison.
ETA: Upon review my last statement may have violated board rules and for that I apologize.
What I find particularly ironic about this is that Blagojevich got his start in Illinois politics as a reform candidate after Dan Rostenkowski lost his seat in the House of Representatives due to massive corruption charges.
I agree with this analysis. I liked Topinka a lot, and voted for her as State Treasurer each time. Her Wiki article points out that she was the only Republican in an elected state office during her last term, so even during a very anti-Republican and/or pro-Democrat time, she was still very much approved of by the citizens. Her party just didn’t support her, though.
I also don’t think the “stink” was as prevalent around Blago at the time as some remember, either. I thought he was a governor with big, often good, ideas, and sometimes crummy follow-through, but that Birkett as Lt. Gov. would be worse. A friend on another board was insisting that he “knew” Blago was corrupt at the time, but this friend’s cited commentary at the time of the election just says that for someone who ran on an anti-corruption platform, he sucked at actually doing anything about it.
This is my favorite thing for today, so far. The truthiness is uncanny!
His arrogance finally got the best of him, I think. It looks to me like he assumed he could get away with anything, since he hadn’t gotten caught so far.
I’m shocked! Shocked, to have found gambling in this establishment!
Corruption… Meh ,how boring? :o
Please bring nasty sex text messages next time
That’s the most arrogant thing of all! A guy who had a 4% (seriously, 4%) approval rating as governor really thought he had a shot at being President!
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Personally, I like Quinn a lot. As a union guy, I appreciate that Quinn’s walked several picket lines in recent years-- picket lines organized against Blago, no less.
Wouldn’t it save the taxpayers money in the long term by just relocating the governor’s office into a prison cell? Or maybe just converting Springfield into a low to medium security prison?
Is there a big dome we can just drop over it?
In this case, we’re talking about Patrick Fitzgerald, who among other things was responsible for (almost, if his sentence hadn’t been commuted) putting a Bush Administration official (Scooter Libby, in the Valery Plame case) behind bars.
I think Fitz is pretty much the definition of “squeaky clean”. He’s Elliott Ness reincarnated.