It took seven weeks, but he's finally gone... or so we thought. My governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, was kicked out of office last Thursday on a unanimous vote by the Illinois State Senate. To further salt his imaginary wounds, the senate also voted 59-0 to forbid him from ever running for public office in our state again. What ultimately torpedoed Blagojevich was that he never admitted to any wrongdoing nor specifically addressed the charges against him. In his closing statement to the senate, he apologized for being too pushy at times, stated that he was only looking out for the state's best interests, but it was clear that he didn't take the accusations all that seriously. As a result, his last four or five allies in the senate turned their back on him.
Hopefully this view of Blago doesn't clash with the image most non-Illinoisans are familiar with, the one where he pops up on any talk show that will book him so he can declare himself a victim and a pariah. His latest stop will be on Letterman, where he'll sit down for his first post-impeachment interview tonight. I can only hope that Dave will grill the ex-gov tonight, and that this experience discourages Blagojevich from stating his case with an apathetic public that neither voted for him nor heard of him prior to December 9th. His newfound articulation and awkward urges to recite 19th-century poetry did nothing to conceal his status as a hustler, a raging egomaniac, and a cog in the Chicago political machine, and I tip my hat to our state senate for making the brave decision to throw his sorry ass out of office. On that note, I send my regards to our new governor Patrick Quinn, a moderate-left reformer type who washed his hands clean of Blago a long time ago. Quinn has yet to accomplish anything of consequence, but he's already the best state executive we've had since Jim Edgar left office ten years ago.
Other notes:
+ I was disappointed to learn last week that my entire office is taking a 5% pay cut to further soften the edge of our company's financial struggles. Considering that we had layoffs back in November, I worry that this might be a slippery slope but I realize that this is the current state of the radio industry. I can only hope that things stabilize, and the sooner the better.
+ Here's an interesting article regarding Obama's effect on the culture wars. I was fascinated by how it goes into great detail about church-state seperation and the need for religious liberty.
+ Speaking of our 44th president- I'll admit that his first two weeks in office have been a mixed bag. Obama made the wise decision to close Guantanemo Bay, but I'm not fully convinced that his economic stimulus plan was nonpartisan or ready to make an immediate impact. I guess the objective is to spend money now to make money later, as this withdrawal of cash would go towards energy, education, and infrastructure, but it's still another heaping of government spending.
+ Today marks the 6th anniversary of when I launched my account at TV Tome (the precursor to TV.com). Thank you again to everyone that has made all of this possible.
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Like I told you on Facebook, watching Blago's Impeachment was a thing of beauty.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with you on Obamas first two weeks, although I thought his first one was alright, this one has not been very good as some of his nominees have dropped out, and the Stimulus looks like it is meant to piss away money into some Politicians pet projects instead of creating jobs.
I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, but hopefully the rest of his term will be better than this.