Blago busts a move

Well-played, sir!

Rod Blagojevich may have all the morals of a polecat, but clearly he also has the brass of a marching band. The embattled Illinois gov stole the headlines from all that untidy business in Gaza with his appointment of Plaxico Roland Burris for Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. And if that wasn’t enough, he followed up with a press conference in which state rep and erstwhile Obama foe Bobby Rush declared any Senate Democrat opposition to Burris - who would be the only black Senator - tantamount to lynching. No, really.

Via Josh Marshall, word comes that Jesse White, the IL secretary of state, will “reject any paperwork” that Blago files to name the new senator. Well, maybe he will and maybe he won’t:

White spokesman David Druker acknowledged there is no constitutional or statutory requirement that the secretary of state sign off on a gubernatorial appointment to the U.S. Senate - only longstanding precedent.

In other words, the role of the secretary of state in “signing off” on this kind of appointment is just a bit of empty formality - not unlike, say, the claimed legitimacy of the Pardon Attorney in the withdrawal of George Bush’s pardon of Isaac Toussie. A legal challenge to a roadblock by White would be obligatory.

So now everyone’s arguing over whether Burris - by most accounts honest and scandal-free - should be punished for having been named to the Senate by a scandal-ridden but-not-yet-ruled-guilty-of-anything governor, and wondering if African Americans will demand that the appointment be honored, and all the while Rod Blagojevich is having a whale of a time. He’s put his political adversaries in Washington in a corner, and though Harry Reid and Co. bluster in opposition, Blago knows as well as anyone that the Senate Democrats can be held up through the mail. Just ask Joe Lieberman.

Day after note: Let’s review the salient points.

Rod Blagojevich is still governor of Illinois. He has not been convicted - or even tried - of any crime. He has not been impeached. He has not resigned.

As such, he is fully empowered to name a successor for the vacant Senate seat.

There is no indication and rather scant likelihood that Roland Burris put the quo in any quid pro quo arrangement with Blagojevich in order to be named to the Senate.

Apart from basic qualification for the office - which amounts to sufficient age, proper citizenship, and being a carbon-based life form - there are no grounds for the Senate Democrats to say as much as boo regarding the Burris nomination.

The idea that Illinois secretary of state Jesse White might refuse to stick his seal on the evidently legal Burris nomination is wishful thinking.

The Illinois legislature does not intend to fast-track the Blagojevich impeachment proceedings in order to help out the hapless Senate Dems.

Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats put themselves in a position of weakness by blustering that they would refuse to seat Burris, all the while admitting that they know of no legal mechanisms on which they can rely to help them do this.

Barack Obama signed on to said weakness by agreeing with the Senate Dems.

Have we missed anything?

The lynx and the cat

Imprinting in action.

Little hunger monster

During a commercial break in last night’s ABC broadcast of Pirates of the Caribbean:

Me: Hey, that’s what hunger looks like these days. (Points to little orange hunger monster on screen)

Me: Scary.

M: Actually, he looks like he could be my friend.

Me: That’s because you love Muppets.

M: (laughs)

Weight Watchers may want to rethink its monster a bit.

Note: No, I couldn’t find the video of the ad anywhere on the Web. I’ll keep looking, though. Found it!

RIP, Eartha Kitt

Again: Bye bye baby, baby good bye.

Note to Philip Yordan (via the above-linked WaPo article): If you thought that Eartha Kitt was not a beautiful woman, clearly you didn’t get out enough.

From my comments at Shakesville: One of my aunts once swore to me that we were related to Kitt. Never saw any proof of that, though the obits today said that she was born in my home state, which I had not known before. Hmm.

Wow. First Bettie Page a while back, and now Eartha Kitt. Damn. What was it that that Claude Rains said as Captain Renault in ‘Casablanca’?

How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Some day they may be scarce.

No kidding.

Christmas all spent

The highest of Christian holy days (Christmas is higher than Easter, yes, or am I wrong about that?) came and went without distress today. M and I were as physically subdued as you’d expect from people trying to get over annoying head colds; consequently, we did not overtax ourselves. M fixed me a hearty omelet (cheese, onions, mushrooms, ham), French toast, and coffee for breakfast. We followed up breakfast with naps, then got together for our fairly new Christmas tradition, the viewing of Love Actually (which always makes us want to revisit London posthaste). Then a satisfying holiday dinner, full of pork and greens and Israeli couscous. Mmmm.

Not an especially religious day here at Casa Waveflux - Christmas, that is - but a very humanistic one. Treat yourself to quiet and rest, a favorite movie, a special meal. If God disapproves, He’s not the kind of deity with Whom I’d want to hang out anyway.

Not that you asked, but our major gift-giving this Christmas benefited Heifer International and Stray Rescue of St. Louis, wonderful efforts that could use your assistance.

We never did get around to buying a Christmas tree - head colds and such - but M’s brother and his wife sent us a lovely bouquet that serves us just fine. The cats are curious, but we make sure that they don’t eat the flowers.

Merry Christmas

Black Santa and White Santa (both employees of the Coca-Cola corporation) and the household of Casa Waveflux - that’s M and me and all six cats - wish all of you a merry Christmas.

Feel free to translate our good wishes for whatever holiday is appropriate for you, or else to simply accept the sincerity of the greeting, as you see fit.

We are the champions

Ahem.

Behold, citizens, the final standings in the Leather Heads fantasy football league. The Primetime Playmakers - managed by my brother and myself - cruised to an embarrasingly easy victory over the rival BCR RuffRyders. Final score: 147-74. Ha ha!

The time for true gloating comes when victory is assured. From Sunday night:

Ah, sweet victory! Nothing like remembering the vain boasts of an opponent, and then taking a look at the scoreboard. But it’s not over yet, is it? The RuffRyders could still come all the way back. Chicago DEF just has to score over 81 points. Yeah, let’s sit back and wait for that.

Starting a 100 year-old quarterback: bold move! Seriously, though, Favre could have won it for you - eleven years ago. And TJ Whosyomamma - what happened to him? Did he miss the team bus? Oh, wait - you must have thought his QB was still Carson Palmer.

The Primetime Playmakers know that they don’t give out trophies for gaudy regular season stats; that’s why we reel off the wins when it counts. Bystanders shake their heads in disbelief; they look at each other and ask, “How? How did they do it?” Let this be the lesson of the day at Ryderville A&M: Chance favors the prepared mind!

I repeat: Ha ha!

Blagojevich battles back!

Embattled Blago gets all Churchillian. Sort of.

“I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong,” Blagojevich said in a brief news conference in Chicago. “I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.”

The comments were the first public statements from the second-term governor since he was arrested on federal corruption charges December 9.

On Wednesday, Blagojevich would not publicly address the charges but told reporters that he “can’t wait to begin to tell my side of the story.”

Rockin’! Let’s hope that his side of the story will include this:

In the earliest intercepted conversation about the Senate seat described in the affidavit, Blagojevich told Deputy Governor A on November 3 that if he is not going to get anything of value for the open seat, then he will take it for himself: “if . . . they’re not going to offer anything of any value, then I might just take it.” Later that day, speaking to Advisor A, Blagojevich said: “I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain.” He added later that the seat “is a [expletive] valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

This is going to be a [expletive] shame.

First prediction: Minnesota will have an elected senator before Illinois gets an appointed one.

Second prediction: The progressive blogosphere will determine that this is all the fault, somehow, of Caroline Kennedy.

Macworld, schmackworld

Daring Fireball: Apple to Mac enthusiasts: Hah! We don’t need your bleeping Macworld Expo. Just keep buying our widgets.

An inconvenient woman

Add Kevin Drum, Lindsay Beyerstein, and Steve Clemons to the “almost unanimous blogosphere consensus” (Drum’s words) opposing the latest threat to the Republic: the possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat being vacated by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton. From listening to some of the more strident dissenting voices, you’d think we were going to have to fight the British all over again.

The reasoning behind the opposition varies somewhat, depending on who’s doing the opposing: friends of Clinton who would view a Kennedy appointment as a “slap in the face,” given Kennedy’s support for Barack Obama (support welcomed and applauded by some of the same non-Hillary voting folks that would now just as soon see Kennedy disappear); activists angry that Kennedy didn’t support the progressive cause du jour back in the day; pundits bemoaning the deleterious effects of “political dynasties,” lumping Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes alike into a single sinister subversive element, not unlike Cobra, SMERSH, or the Trilateral Commission. See Joe Klein for an example of such muddled thinking. Dynasty! Celebrity! Oh noes!

Seriously, when you find yourself on the same page as Klein - especially when it comes to what Democrats should do - you might want to check your assumptions.

A particularly troubling rationale among the Kennedy nay-sayers bears some scrutiny. Exhibit A, courtesy of Steve Clemons:

It seems hypocritical to on the one hand challenge Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s qualifications and readiness to have potentially assumed the presidency if something had happened to John McCain and if, of course, their ticket had won on November 4th and then on the other, say nothing about Caroline Kennedy’s dearth of real policy and political experience to assume one of the most powerful offices in the country — even if a Senator is usually not as consequential as a President.

Never mind that Clemons partially invalidates his own criticism by the end of his statement; the disturbing thing is the amnesia at work here. It hasn’t been so long since the general election that we should have forgotten that the issue with Sarah Palin was not merely her absence of experience, but her abundant and demonstrable disqualifications: most notably, an incuriosity that made George Bush look like a Rhodes scholar, and an opposition to serious thought on a wide range of national and world affairs. Any equation of Palin and Kennedy along these lines is strange reasoning indeed.

Perhaps Clemons preferred Palin’s books on civil liberties and privacy rights to Kennedy’s…oh, wait. Well, maybe Palin’s work on funding public schools outshone Kennedy’s..ah, right. But surely Palin’s judgment and temperament were demonstrably equal to…oh, never mind.

I have to assume that Clemons knows better. Still, such wild comparisons and overstatements inform the mood of the “almost unanimous blogosphere consensus.”

You’d think that if “political experience” was as important to some of these dissenters as they now claim, they would have voted for John McCain. But that was different, I guess.

I don’t remember having ever seen this kind of contretemps involving what amounts to a caretaker Senate appointment. That we are seeing it now feels to me like a weird, delayed stress reaction: a backlash, however misplaced, against various high-level appointments made by Obama that may have displeased the progressive set. We’ll show you! And by “you,” we mean “somebody or other”! (Add: Perhaps it’s an understandable case of PTSD after eight years of the Bush regime. As McCain once called us: “My fellow prisoners…”)

At any rate: Too bad for Kennedy that she’s in an inconvenient spot, eh?

It’s possible that Kennedy could assuage some of the sturm und drang by, well, essentially campaigning. It’s very odd that a (possible!) appointee would actually have to campaign, but that’s the political mindset we have these days in Leftsville. When you’re facing “observations” that range from “Cute little girl runs for Senate” to OJ Simpson comparisons (however oblique), it seems you have to work a little harder.

Add: Apparently we have just now discovered that political endorsements can result in consideration for political appointments. It’s enough to make one clutch one’s pearls and swoon.

There is a bout of holier-than-thou-ism making the rounds among the progressive set, and it’s just weird.

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