kevin, mom and i went down to the capitol today to watch the second day of impeachment proceedings against our celebrity governor.
did you happen to see him yesterday? you could have watched him on “good morning america,” or on the today show, or “the view” or “Larry king live” or “nightline”…or this morning he was also on some morning news show and then he was on CNN and i just turned on Rick Sanchez on CNN and he was talking about the tapes…
our governor is everywhere, all over the media, is he going to turn up on the covers of all the magazines next week?
but then he’ll just be an unemployed guy.
anyway, we got to the senate chambers and had to show ID and sign in and get a green badge. we got there about 9:30 and it was supposed to start at ten and there were quite a few news trucks outside, but only one guy standing at his video camera, ready and waiting to start shooting.
they gave us each a copy of the rules, which included TURN YOUR CELL PHONE OFF; “VIBRATE” IS NOT ACCEPTABLE” and other stuff like no food or drinks. or they would THROW YOU OUT.
the funny thing is, there were two old guys sitting next to me, and one of them said they’d listened to it yesterday and wanted to witness history today. but then at some point the old guy next to me’s phone went off! it kept ringing and ringing and people were turning around and staring and he finally dug it out of his pocket…and answered it. he whispered that he couldn’t talk, and then i guess he shut it off, although he then told somebody behind him that the phone had already been off. so i guess it turned itself on and rang.
they didn’t throw him out, they didn’t even chastise him.
things did start promptly at 10, and by then there were a bunch of reporters sitting in front of us (they got to sit in the front row) and a photographer kept taking many photos of the individual senators.
i wonder if she got a shot of the guy down in front who was flipping through a very large book of photographs of some city, i couldn’t tell which one. this same guy later sure did look like he was dozing, and after we got a short break at about 11, he didn’t come back.
the rest of the senators, did seem to be mostly paying attention, even though basically the prosecutor was just reading aloud from the affadavit which was filed against the governor. special agent david cain was there, and it was his job to listen and follow along and verify that all the stuff that the prosecutor was true.
cain, incidentally, started out by recounting his background – he grew up in central illinois, went to the university of illinois in champaign, got a degree in accounting, and joined the fbi and investigated many big things, including the oklahoma city bombing, the bombing on the us embassy in kenya, and the crash of flight 93 on 9/11.
this man has seen a whole lot of stuff.
cain explained that, after they wrote the summaries of the phone conversations between the governor and many other people, that many agents then read and listened and compared them to make sure they were completely true and accurate. and they were, he knew they were.
the first thing the prosecutor discussed was the selling of the senate seat. as he talked about a conversation on november first, when blago was talking to “deputy governor A,” and blago said that “if they’re not going to offer anything of any vallue, then i might just take it…unless i get something good.”
as the prosecutor read, people put up great big cards on either side of the podium, with the quotes spelled out. they did this throughout most of the talk about the senate seat, putting up big cards with key quotes like the governor’s famous “golden” line. and when he said that the senate seat “is a f…ing valuable thing, you don’t give it away for nothing.”
he discussed getting an ambassadorship from the president-elect, or maybe a cabinet position.
blago said “i want to make money,” somewhere in the range of $200,000-300,000, and he “does not want to be Governor for the next two years.”
this would be a case of getting what you wish for, wouldn’t it?
i’d read all of this stuff before, but it was interesting to hear it all read again, especially blago talking about not wanting to get impeached – he talked about picking a particular person for the seat, and then if he (blago) was going to get impeached, that person he picked would then step down to blago could take the seat himself. and somehow not get impeached.
it was also interesting to hear again about how he wanted warren buffet to put 10-20 million dollars into an organization that blago would then go over to.
or, if he was a senator, he would then have lots of influence and money and power, plus he could get his wife a lobbyist job.
after the talk about the seat, they then read parts of the affidavit about blago wanting to have members of the chicago tribune’s editorial board fired, shaking down the childrens’ hospital, and getting a bunch of money from ali atta, who has cooperated with the investigation. they described how the man went to blago’s office and blago told him what a good supporter he was, as the check for 25k sat on his desk between them.
it made me think of a mobster, or a feudal lord or something.
blago is so used to squeezing money from people. i feel that once he’s not in office, he’ll somehow be able to keep squeezing, at least till he’s in prison.
we left when they took a lunch break and decided not to go back. they were supposedly going to listen to four exerpts from the taped conversations, but the prosecutor said that first he was going to read a few things that were “short but lengthy.” that didn’t sound promising.
of course, by the time we got home and i finally turned on the TV, the tapes had already been read and you can hear them yourself if you want to, i’m sure they’re everywhere. the CNN guy, rick sanchez, was talking to lots of “experts” who said the tapes didn’t sound so very incriminating, if it was a criminal trial…but of course, the stuff about the selling the senate seat and other particularly damning stuff that was in the transcribed version of the tapes wasn’t part of the stuff they were talking about.
talk talk talk.
that is all for now,
tuesday grace.