This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Delayed Curmudgeon

We didn’t record the podcast until Monday (UTC) this week. I didn’t get a chance to edit it and put it out last night. I was going to do it this morning before work. But of course I’ve been paying attention to this Blagojevich stuff instead. So… I think it probably won’t be out until tomorrow. Apologies to anybody who is anxiously awaiting it. :-)

Who is Senate Candidate 1?

This is pretty funny…

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker

his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”

Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.”

I just finished reading the whole thing. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Blogojevich viewed “Senate Candidate 1” as Obama’s desired replacement for himself, and kept trying to suggest “deals” in exchange for that, but the transition staff essentially offered “only their appreciation” and was not responsive to any of the overtures. So Blagojevich and company started getting more and more upset, and throwing out other candidates they would appoint instead to piss off Obama… and of course also evaluating each of those alternate candidates by how much personal benefit they could bring to the Blagojevich family… and meanwhile still trying to construct deals on Senate Candidate 1 that would be less obvious andless directly traceable back to Obama. And of course plans to appoint himself to the seat if none of that worked out.

At least that is what it looks like. The Complaint says that what is included is only a small subset of what was recorded, and what is included does not seem to include any conversations with the transition team, only with Blagojevich and his advisors discussion options and what they wanted in exchange for what. So there might still be more not public.

But at least initially, it seems like the Obama team was doing the right thing and basically ignoring this asshole.

Anyway, the press conference on this is about to start…

[Edited 17:21 UTC to add the second quote]

Um…

From the actual complaint (pdf):

Defendants ROD BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS, together with
others, attempted to use ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s authority to appoint a United States Senator
for the purpose of obtaining personal benefits for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, including, among
other things, appointment as Secretary of Health & Human Services in the President-elect’s
administration…

(via The Corner)

Most of the coverage I’ve seen so far has concentrated on the “selling the seat” bit, suggesting he would give the spot to someone who “contributed” the most or some such. But there also seems to be a bit here with him looking for favors or appointments from Obama. We’ll see soon here who, if anybody, within the Obama transition is caught on tape here too and what they said.

This could get interesting…

The complaint is 76 pages long. I’d better get reading… well, perhaps skimming.

Ain’t Illinois Grand?

What wonderful fun news to wake up to. The Governor of Illinois arrested for essentially trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. Ha! Wonderful.