In case you missed the Blagovernor's presser today, check it out. Out went the Elvis impersonation and the whole black leather jacket-KGB look. Blago showed up in his most elegant dark suit with spiffy power tie, and quoting Kipling poetry (no less) declared that he's gonna fight, fight, and then fight some more "to my last breath."
So there won't be any easy fix, with Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn stepping up to hand-pick a new Senator from among those ready to play, if not pay. The Democrat-controlled Legislature still won't pass a bill calling a special election, lest the state's voters go crazy and elect someone not annointed by the Party elite. Obama will continue to lie as low as possible to avoid contamination from the whole mess. Illinois may not have two Senators again until the statehouse pols can figure out how to impeach Blago without U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's help. (Plus, you have to wonder if their hearts are really in it, since Blago probably knows a thing or two about other people's skeletons.) For that matter, Illinois may have to muddle through without what you'd call a government for quote a while, as the pols duke it out.
As for the Kipling thing, maybe Blago should have chosen someone else to quote. His more literary fellow Chicagoans may be offended by what the English writer, who traveled to many places besides the Khyber Pass, has to say about their home town: "I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages."
When I was 11 - some fifty years ago - one of our neighbors in central Illinois referred to the Illinois governor of that time as "Billy the Kid the Bandit"
ReplyDeleteThis comment prepared me for a lifetime of being made aware by various news stories, that the appellation "bandit" is quite common among the politicians of my home state.
If the "Blag-meister" were to step down in a timely manner and in a dignified fashion, how would we know we were talking about the governor of Illinois?