Day 11: Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

What time is his press conference?

We should do some live-blogging.

Stuck at work where I can’t see it … is he planning on taking questions? That should be the shit.

Scheduled to start in seven minutes, at 2:00 p.m.

I cannot live-blog. Last day of work before vacation.

“I will fight. I will fight. I will fight.” OK, Winston. Jackass.

And now: Rudyard Kipling. KILL ME NOW.

And that was just about it. Will answer questions in court, but not before. Which means he will (or intends to) say nothing until about Mayish. That’s just dandy.

Screw this. If the Illinois legislature doesn’t toss him, we don’t get a Senator until next fall. And this hangs over Hopey’s head until then. God damn.

@chicago bureau: It’ll great if they have to send the state police in after him, guns blazing, and he and wife go for it and decide to take their chances in a fire fight.

Proof of how tone deaf this guy is: his lawyer — who just gave a hilarious press conference after his client ran away from the press like a little girl — brought up the seniors-ride-the-CTA-free thing. Don’t impeach him because we got the old folks free bus passes.

Trouble is, that was part of a budget negotiation bait-and-switch. Deal on CTA funding hammered out, both Houses pass it. Blagojevich says I won’t sign this deal (which he negotiated) unless you add free-rides-for-seniors with 48 hours to go before the CTA installs a doomsday schedule that basically kills twenty bus lines and goes to Sunday service all week. Legislature caves in order to avert traffic hell.

That is when people in Illinois really began to hate this dude. And now it’s the crutch they lean on in order to avoid impeachment. This guy’s on another bleeping planet.

Can’t they do some emergency impeachment thingy? Or just explain to him that his services are no longer required and would he mind vacating his office, ta very much? I’m sure that once he understands he’ll be only too happy to hand in his papers. Probably he’s just shy.

Benedick: Impeachment committee in House reconvenes on Monday, when they hear from Blagojevich’s attorney again. If they had any sense, they would just shut him up and report out “abuse of power” articles. (It’s kind of like pass interference calls — if it looks like it happened, it happened and it’s a judgment call anyway so deal with it.)

Nobody would blame them if they did that. At the same time, everybody would blame them if they didn’t. Consider their hand forced.

Incidentally, we could set a good precedent here. Quoting Kipling in a political speech and making people listen to it = abuse of power = impeachable offense. Seriously.

The fucking psycho is going for it:

“I will fight. I will fight. I will fight. Until I take my last breath,” he said. “I have done nothing wrong.”

Blagojevich accused his critics of making their case in “30 second sound bytes” on TV. He didn’t mention the 76-page affidavit that outlines several incriminating conversations caught on FBI wiretaps.

The GOP should recruit this guy.

FlyingChainSaw: If I have a bet, he’s already on the GOP payroll. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for Democrats, including Black Eagle.

DEVELOPING HARD: It’s a final: Franken +249. But: there is assorted nonsense yet to go, including perhaps thousands of (clearly marked) ballots that still haven’t been counted. But the challenges, at least, are done.

@chicago bureau: 538 reports that Coleman is fighting the validation of the recount. Isn’t that a little whiny?

And in my fair state, Schwarzenegger uses the Blagojevich (say those two names three times fast) distraction to announce massive cuts to social services and two-day-a-month furloughs for state employees.

@SanFranLefty: He vetoed a budget deal yesterday because the cuts — by Democrats — in environmental protection weren’t deep enough.

@chicago bureau: Wasn’t there something floating around about Blago stepping down temporarily so the LG could appoint a replacement senator?

@nabisco: Great, let him go down whining and puking on himself the whole fucking way, ending his pathetic struggle on his knees with Frankel laughing diabolically, pissing in his face and shouting for the FBI, as he buckles back up, to come fit the guy for a wedding dress to wear to jail.

@chicago bureau: No doubt if they offered, he would find a way to accept. He’s just an accommodating kinda guy.

@chicago bureau: Hey. What’s wrong with Kipling? And in your explanation is that a Spurt analogy? And I would understand that because…?

But I get it. Something will happen on Monday. Unless it doesn’t. In which case it will happen on another day. On a planet far far away.

T/J: BTW have you all seen Four months, Three Weeks, Two Days? If not rent it instantly. Dazzling.

Benedick: “If” is in the top 10 of overquoted poems in the history of English literature. Mostly at high school graduations.

Coming from the chief executive of a major American state? Cringe-inducing.

@chicago bureau: Oh, yeah, he’s a twit. Stupider he is, though, more likely he’ll go into berserker mode when he is cornered and that he’ll end up on the evening news holed up in the governor’s mansion, howling about fighting to the last breath. Give us the Tarantino finale, Blagoshit, or don’t show up for the show at all!

@chicago bureau: Plain Tales from the Raj. Pretty interesting. To say nothing of his personal biography. Listen, I’d rather read others but I feel compelled at times to defend my racist, empire-building roots.

@Benedick: @chicago bureau: Sure, he’s an over-quoted racist imperialist, but what moves me is the poem he wrote after his only son was killed in WWI, which even Kipling recognized was a completely senseless war.

@Mistress Cynica: Well, we got Snoopy and the Red Baron out of it, some awesome spikey helmets . . .

@redmanlaw: Crappy frozen pizza.

@redmanlaw:
Wilfred Owen.
Robert Graves.

Siegfried Sassoon.
This, from one of his poems:
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

@Ewalda:
A quick update

You smug-faced crowds with yellow magnet ties
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

(This used to be on the wall of my room — I was a morbid kid.)

Without Benefit of Declaration
by Langston Hughes

Listen here, Joe
Don’t you know
That tomorrow
You got to go
Out yonder where
The steel winds blow?

Listen here, kid,
It’s been said
Tomorrow you’ll be dead
Out there where
The snow is lead.

Don’t ask me why.
Just go ahead and die.
Hidden from the sky
Out yonder you’ll lie:
A medal to your family–
In exchange for
A guy.

Mama, don’t cry.

@Ewalda: @JNOV:

I love the poetry readings on Stinque.

@SanFranLefty: Where else would one find Langston Hughes, Kipling, and Siegfried Sassoon in a commenting thread that was ostensibly about Blago’s Last Stand?

@Ewalda:

Nowhere else. And I’m fighting the urge to add Sylvia Plath.

And that’s why I heart every one of you wacky-doodle stinquer cynics.

@SanFranLefty: Don’t fight it! Let it floooow, sister!

@JNOV:
Chrissakes, either go to bed or move to the Left Coast!
How much sleep you getting these days, darling JNOV?

@Ewalda: Not much without the help of Ativan or Lunesta. I just took a benzo, so I’ll be around for maybe another half hour. I like hanging out late with the big kids. And I adore you, baby Ewalda. You’ve been missed.

@JNOV: For you, but please don’t read anything into this. My favorite poem by one of my favorite poets:

Mad Girl’s Love Song
Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

@SanFranLefty: @JNOV:
I bow before your combined awesomeness.
This here Stinque is a wonderful place.
‘Night all.

@SanFranLefty: It’s beautful. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

@Mistress Cynica: re Kipling: Thank you.

@Ewalda: Now you’re talking. I had tea once with a woman (Cathleen Nesbitt) who was Rupert Graves’s lover. Remember that he died from blood poisoning in WWI. I was very young and so overwhelmed I could hardly speak. She was very old with hands deformed by arthritis but exquisitely elegant nonetheless.

Favorite poem?
See the happy moron,
He doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I was a moron –
My God! Perhaps I am.
Anonymous?

Or, this fine couplet:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.”
Philip Larkin

@JNOV: Sorry you’re not sleeping. It’s horrible, very depressing. I’d suggest reading Emily Dickinson but don’t want to seem flippant. Mind you, it works. At least I hope you got to sleep late.