Waiting For It to Hit

I could have listened to my grandfather. He turned down the governorship of West Virginia in the 40s, retiring to Florida and to a second career in banking. He wanted me to go to Florida law school, marry one of his State Senate cronies’ granddaughters and become Governor of the Sunshine State. I went into broadcasting instead. Under the circumstances, I am beginning to think I really missed out on a lot – hookers, clothes and jail. Governors Eliot Spitzer, Sarah Palin and Rod Blagojevich, take a bow.

New York’s crime busting Spitzer at least had more class, if not gravitas, than to get busted in Trenton by undercover police busting “Johns” for soliciting sex from street walkers. It would have made better story. Right-wing radio ate it up anyway. A Democrat and a prostitute make a great daily double. Alaska’s “Bridge-to-Nowhere” Palin should be incarcerated for the attempted murder of a language. That she could not get her stories straight and helped John McCain lose the presidential election did not matter to right-wing radio. Being a Republican and a conservative babe made for another daily double.

However, Illinois’ crusading reformer Blagojevich (Bluh-GOY-uh-vich) succeeded Republican Governor George Ryan, who was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for racketeering and fraud. Few people outside of the Prairie State (also known as the Sucker State) care. The Democrat governor having been arrested on federal corruption charges for attempting to sell the president-elect’s senate seat for which he can go to jail gives the right-wing a trifecta. Rush must be in heaven. What could be better than graft, corruption and Obama-by-implication?

The Washington Post’s George Will cannot quit chewing on the Fairness Doctrine rag that right-wing radio named the “Hush Rush Bill.” Now that Blagojevich has hit the news, Will and the rest of conservative center-right broadcast and print punditry have a new rag to chew. Wait until the inauguration is over.

It is doubtful that main stream media will go easy on this story, especially since its subject seems oblivious to the size of the dung heap he has built for himself. What is significant to the Premise Loft is how the conservatives respond to the case. Kristol, Will, Krauthammer, Gerson and even Brooks are doubtless word processing as I post. Doubtless they are looking up “Sucker State.” We will get to see how they prepare for the moments when the ubiquitous It hits the Obama administration. And It will.

Crooks Win and Go to Prison

I moved from Tampa Bay to Portland Oregon as the presidential election had not been decided in 2000. By the narrowest of margins, the less qualified major candidate got over the most qualified candidate. My interest at the time was that the outcome proved Florida’s crookedness, especially since the least qualified candidate’s brother governed the Sunshine State. Crooks win. Crooks also go to prison.

On this blog in Ticket to Nowhere, I wrote that the Alaska Governor, who claims to have “stood up to her Republican Party “ was the only candidate who wasn’t a member of the ‘Corrupt Old Bastard’ network in Juneau when Federal corruption investigations began or [was] just witless enough to let the Ted Stevens Party have her installed. Little of anything governmental in Alaska has ever been done without that Grand Old Patriarch’s approval.”

Live with me for quoting myself and make a note. Upon Senator Stevens’s conviction, the Washington Post says, “[I]t was difficult not to feel some sadness . . . when the 84-year-old Republican was convicted of all seven counts of accepting more than $250,000 in gifts.” The arithmetic suggests that the $150,000 in wardrobe “gifts” that Alaska’s Governor received, which was a mere $100,000 short of Stevens’ gifts, is legal while his “gifts” are not. It shocks me to think of what she can do with this country.

So will the octogenarian Senator be returned to the Senate a convicted felon? His gubernatorial selection, now running to become vice president of the United States, says he should “do the right thing.” Even though main stream media is now quoting a written statement that the RNC folks cleaned up, here is the unedited version.

"Ted Stevens, you know, a sad day for Alaska yesterday when he was found guilty of seven felonies," Palin said. "But — and now he needs to do the right thing, and the right thing is — as he's proclaiming his innocence and proclaiming, too, that he will go through the appellate process, OK, then he needs to step aside and allow our state to elect someone who will be supportive of those ideals of America: the free enterprise, the missions that we're on, to win the war, those things that have got to take place in order to progress this country. Ted Stevens has got to play a very statesmanlike role in this now."

She has yet to be investigated. But when she speaks, as the Post opines, I “feel some sadness” too.