Monday, January 11, 2010

Blagojevich Comes Out Swinging

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has a new dog (Skittles), a new source of income (Elvis impersonations) and — despite an old worry (prison) — a confounding optimism. You have to read this.

Yep, it's an in-depth interview conducted by Scott Raab with disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich-courtesy of Esquire.

Some fascinating stuff. To quote Blago from the article-

"A lot of what's happened to me is Machiavellian, and yet my vision and the rightness of what I've done is kind of Galilean."


And evidently, he called Barak Obama a cocksucker, and here claims that he is as black as Obama, because he shined shoes and his father owned a business in a black neighborhood.

On politicians in general-

"It's such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man — and am real.


Frankly, I can't wait for this guy to get on the stand. After all, this is a man who will do almost anything for his kids, short of blowing sailors.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Galilean?

Talk about a messiah complex.

Somebody needs to start building a rubber room.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Also talk about knowing where the bodies are buried.

He's probably going to prison, but he might well end up taking a lot of people down with him as he goes.

I can't wait for him to get on the stand. I only hope cameras aren't banned from the proceedings, but I have an idea they probably will be.

Anonymous said...

Lets face it, PT, Blago's blustering isn't being done for "show". Unless he gets the same deal as Tony Rezko (or better), he's threatening to spill the whole bag of beans.

And none of the beans are ever going to get spilled. A deal WILL be cut. The only question remaining is how much of does Eric Holder think he can get away with in terms of public opinion backlash in letting Blago off? The fact that Blago's still squeeling only indicates that Holder hasn't offered him enough.... yet.

SecondComingOfBast said...

This whole thing was a way for Patrick Fitzgerald to jockey for a position in the Justice Department, in my opinion. I think he wanted an appointment, maybe as Attorney General. He knew that nobody in the state of Illinois really liked Blago (mainly because he refused to raise taxes, I think), and that is including Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, and David Axelrod, as well as almost every Democrat in the Illinois statehouse.

This whole thing came about before Eric Holder's appointment to the AG post, so there might be only so much Holder can do without looking like even more of a sleazeball than Blago, who is actually probably only guilty of doing what any politician typically does in his position-try to use his capacity to make a temporary Senate appointment to his own best advantage. Technically illegal, no doubt, but probably very commonplace.

The whole wire tap thing looks suspicious to me. What was the initial reason for it to begin with? Bear in mind, Fitzgerald was the same guy who hung Scooter Libby out to dry, even though he knew Richard Armitage was actually the one who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media as a CIA analyst.

The guy is as corrupt as they come, and he's in this for his own status and advantage. Same old game. If Holder goes, this might be his ticket to the top, on the grounds that he's capable of going after crooked Democratic officeholders as much as Republican advisers.

Only this could end up being more of a mess than he realized.