Completely Unnecessary

Poor blog - left to the side when I have better things to do.

But! Since I’m in vague study mode, now seems a good time to run down random crap.

Firstly, Roland Burris. I keep hearing things from non-Illinois talking heads about how qualified he is, etc. I admit that Burris is probably the most qualified person that would accept an appointment from Blagojevich, but that does not make him qualified for the senate seat, per se.

Four times the voters of Illinois said, “Meh, no thanks,” to Roland Burris. And that was for city and state office. If he’s so keen to be the junior Senator from Illinois, why did he never throw his hat in the ring before now? [Ed.- Sorry, I meant except for early in his career (1984) when he was Comptroller.]

Perhaps a resigned recognition of his popularity amongst voters had something to do with it.

Anyway, looks like Reid’s going to back down. But I guarantee that Burris will lose yet another statewide primary in 2010 if he chooses to run again. (Though I sincerely doubt he has any interest in doing that.)

Teen pregnancies are up in 26 states (for those of you doing the math at home, that’s over half). Some people are laying the blame at the feet of the $178mil we spend on abstinence only education in our schools.

For shame, you uterus-coddling liberals.

And finally, the reason the Obama’s couldn’t move in early to Blair House is… John Howard!

Everyone’s favorite slumming-it-on-YouTube former PM will be in town to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Yes.

I nearly blogged about the medal the other day, but there was still a bit of spit up in my mouth. The combination of the medal plus the rejection of the Obamas earns my hair-trigger moral outrage.

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• Roland Burris - Ready to Serve in the Senate

Roland Burris?

I’m as confused by Blagojevich’s (obviously not going to be seated) Senate pick as I am by the commercial I just saw for a digital pregnancy test.

Both seem patently unnecessary and, I don’t know about the pregnancy test, but one of them has a good deal of trouble winning elected office. Hell, the digital preggo test is a more likely choice.

For serious, Roland Burris has tried and failed to win about a million primaries. At 71, two years leaves him with a Senate pension. I’d take it!

Here we go.

2:01: ABC news has learned that he’s going to choose Burris. Um - yeah guys. We all know.

2:01: Oh Jesus, Blago just spoke in Spanish. Bish, please.

2:02: Blago just stuck his tongue out in this really weird way when talking about Burris as an opponent. He looks impressed with his own cajones today.

2:02: Speaking of cajones, here’s the man himself! Also looking pleased.

2:03: ‘As a nation we face a convergence of unparalleled crisis…’

2:04: Burris is talking about things that have nothing to do with anything. Yep, the world is difficult. He’s talking like this is the most natural thing ever, as though nothing has affected this process in any way.

2:05: President-elect Obama has ’strapped it up’. Dude, he’s going to dress you down if you get seated in the Senate.

2:06: Jessie White isn’t going to seat Blago’s pick, so this is kind of a redundant process, but whatevs.

2:07: Burris is looking forward to the process of not being appointed by Jessie White (Sec of State).

2:07: Someone just asked about the $14, 000 he’s contributed to Blago. Burris’ actual reaction, “Is it that much?!?!’ Jesus.

2:09: Whoops, someone is trying to ask Burris a question, but the governor must have moved or something because the gaggle just went crazy trying to ask him questions.

2:09: Whoa that was some awkward not answering of whatever was asked. Dead silence, awkward glances and then Blago saying, “You’re the senator!”

2:10: Burris is just looking blithely at the crowd whilst Blago talks. This is surreal.

2:10: And now we’ve said hi to Bobby Rush from the podium. I’m sure he’s thrilled.

2:11: This is seriously amongst the most awkward things I’ve ever seen. Burris looks thrilled any time he gets to move away from the podium, and Blago looks… Oh my god, they’ve brought Bobby Rush up on stage!

2:12: Bobby just said his prayers have been answered.

2:13: And Bobby Rush is happily filibustering until these guys can run the hell out of this room.

2:15: After talking about the importance of having an African American in the Senate, he asked that we not ‘hang or lynch the appointee’. That’s called setting the narrative - he’s trying to shame the press out of questioning Burris for fear of seeming racist.

2:16: This is Illinois politics at its most… I can’t even say absurd. Unbelievable.

2:17: And Rush closes by noting that he’s ’sure’ that his good friend Durbin will support the choice.

2:19: Apparently Blago repeated the lynching line to the gaggle. To his credit, ABC’s Ben Bradley just called him on it.

2:20: Danny Davis turned Blago down around Christmas.

2:20: Bradley just said that Burris was one of the few politicians left standing with Blago. And then zinged him with, I think you see both of them up there. And looked pretty pleased with his zing. And the black/white pun he just made.

2:21: Whoops, Rush might have been a little forward by swearing Durbin’s support; Durbin co-signed the Reid letter saying they wouldn’t seat him.

2:23: That was insane.

Vaguely Related

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• Will Blagojevich Take Others Down with Him?

The Bush Admin has released what Planned Parenthood is calling a ‘anti-choice parting gift’.

A new Health and Human Services ‘conscience rule‘ allows federally funded health professionals to refuse to perform or even provide information on procedures they find objectionable.

It’s clearly a shot at abortion, except that laws protecting doctors from having to performing abortions have been on the books for 30 years.

Why the rule changes then?

Well, the wording is so ambiguous that it could be read to include objections to emergency contraception, birth control, IUDs and sterilizations.

The Obama team plans to overturn these and other anti-women/choice/take your pick rules, but these things take time to undo.

You know what the biggest dickhead move is about all this?

They’re releasing the rule tomorrow and it kicks in 30 days later  - i.e., they go into effect the day before the inauguration.

PP has a petition to make sure the rule’s repeal doesn’t get lost in the onslaught of activities for the new president.

The Bush Administration never misses a chance to turn the screw. I hope they have some kind of cleansing ritual for the White House.

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Looks like the end of the day Thursday might leave Coleman and Franken about even in the Minnesota recount.

As 538 noted in their lunchtime roundup, numbers are all over the place and guesses about who’s ”winning’ need to be taken with a grain of salt.*

The additional problem, as I discussed yesterday, is the original vs duplicated ballots.

According to Silver, ‘dozens’ of Coleman challenges have been put in the ‘blue folder’ to be dealt with later. Presumably, some of the Franken challenges that were ruled on will have to be taken out of the pile and rejudged.

How many Franken challenges need to be checked (and what their determination was) remains unclear.

(There’s also now a ‘green folder’, but no one seems to know what it’s for…)

Wow. For some reason I really want them to end the day with a nice clean tie. They’ve got six minutes; I wish they’d stop arguing!

Dang, fail:

However, the Strib guys have just pointed out that the 5000 or so withdrawn challenges have yet to be awarded to either candidate. Those will be mostly votes the candidate had on election night that were temporarily removed from his total.

I think it’s fair to say that this thing is going to court. For an entire host of reasons.

[The Strib guys are chatting about the plate of cookies they've put on their table in solidarity with the cookies on the Canvassing Board's table. I lived in MN for years, but I swear I understand Australian humor better than Minnesotan.]

* - here’s my grain: Franken had two days of challenges, and Coleman appears to have more challenges overall. It only took one day for Franken to catch up to Coleman. Unless Coleman has a very good day tomorrow, it seems that Franken will have the lead at the end of the recount. Keep the blue folder/procedural challenges in mind, though. We’re all of those pro-Coleman votes? We just don’t know.

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Minnesota Recount Limbo - Original vs Duplicated Ballots

Well curse it if Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t right.

Turns out that there were some unknown unknowns in the MN recount today. (Nate Silver runs us through the known knowns and the known unknowns.)

About the four o’clock hour - and just when the panel thought it might be able to break early before getting a fresh start on Coleman’s challenges tomorrow - the lawyers started wrangling.

At issue is the question of original versus duplicated ballots.

I might be messing this up a bit because it’s complicated and I only had the audio on in the background, but it appears that in MN duplicate ballots can be created by election judges when there is an issue with a voter’s ballot.

From what they were arguing, it seems as though the election judge can fill it out exactly as the voter did in an attempt to get a proper read through the machine.

There appear to be some numbering issues between the original and duplicate ballots. They should all line up, but some have been misnumbered, etc.

This wouldn’t be a problem (because in a standard count, the election judge would make sure that only the duplicates were counted), except that the two campaigns fought vociferously that the original ballots be used for the recount.

(The Board made sure to note that the two campaigns argued for this against the advice of everyone who knows anything about elections in MN).

The upshot is that a poorly numbered duplicate ballot that was successful during the machine count might be counted again as the original during the hand recount.

The Coleman campaign wanted the Canvassing Board to deal with the issue, though they (and Team Franken) argued that it wasn’t really their jurisdiction. The Board is only there to judge the ballots that have been challenged, not to police the actions of individual counties.

The bigger problem is that the Board has already done all the Franken challenges, meaning that any changes to which ballots are under consideration might necessitate going back through those ballots (or at least trying to figure out which ones they are).

It was unclear (at least to me) what kind of numbers we might be talking about here. Five, dozens, hundreds?

And if it is a state-wide problem, the campaign that loses might have a compelling legal argument to start the recount all over again. From the beginning.

If, of course, it is even possible to match up all those original and duplicated ballots.

Instant. Runoff. Voting, people.

[No one else finds this interesting, right?]

Update: The Canvassing Board is going to review this issue today. According to the Strib’s color commentary, it seems like about 150 ballots might have been affected by the original vs duplicate issue.

As they pointed out, the Coleman campaign clearly feels that they were largely Franken double votes, as they’re pushing hard to have them found and dealt with. Team Franken is arging against. Democracy!

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied

I’m really not watching this constantly, I swear.

But kinda.

Team Franken has been withdrawing challenges throughout the day, with an apparent rise in goodwill towards the Franken campaign.

The lawyers are rarely allowed to talk, but Franken’s counsel seems to be getting less snippy responses when he tries to intercede.

In addition, yesterday’s challenges seemed to be largely Franken challenges on Coleman votes, many of which were rejected.

So Coleman’s total is reflecting a large number of votes that were in his pile at the end of the first Election Day count. (Similarly, Franken’s total should jump once they start looking at Coleman challenges on Franken votes.)

I don’t know how the order of these challenges is determined, but today there seems to be a larger number of votes that were deemed overvotes in the recount that are now being determined for Franken. He’s definitely picking up some votes.

That’s a pretty simple statement, but there’s an important distinction:

1. Coleman’s increasing total is largely the result of the reallocation of votes he already had on Election Day;
2. Franken’s increasing total is reflective of new votes, which will actually cut into Coleman’s lead.

Obviously, we can expect to see some of this happen for Coleman when his challenges are reviewed.

The real question is which campaign has more of these vote-gaining challenges.

Last month, 538 took a look at the four different types of challenges and the likely results. (The challenged vote totals have changed significantly since Silver wrote this up, so his assessments may be invalid at this point.)

In crazy Minnesota voter news - someone took the time to draw a perfectly straight line down the middle of all the ovals in every race, except president. As in, they clearly used a straight edge.

Apparently someone also wrote, “God help us” on their ballot. Why can’t people just go in and vote?

Here’s the one they just looked at. For serious.

Someone else filled in the oval next to every presidental candidate except for Obama and Nader.

Voting by the masses may or may not be an overrated idea.

Vaguely Related

• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied
• Minnesota Recount Limbo - Original vs Duplicated Ballots

It’s being streamed live and is surprisingly good watching. The canvassing board going through each of the around 3000 challenged ballots one by one.

The video is interesting because they’re doing a good job of showing each ballot as it’s being voted on, so you - the powerless citizen - can watch the process at work (read: vocalize your agreement or dissent at your computer).

Plus you get to watch the occasional ‘Minnesota nice’/passive aggressive comment about how they need more coffee and wouldn’t this have all been easier if there weren’t so many challenges.

For those of you with, you know, more interesting things to do or actual responsibilities, you can simply refresh the Strib’s count.

Keep in mind that Franken’s challenges are being assessed today, so the discrepancy between the number of votes allocated to Coleman versus Franken will likely change.

By the way, idiots who have complicated this process by writing things like “Chuck Norris” randomly on their ballots are amongst our truly dumb. Voting for Coleman and then writing in “GOD” below is sort of weirdly funny, but is costing MN lots of money.

Update: Another Chuck Norris. Why? And also this:

There’s also a vote for Barkley where someone wrote “<— NOT HIM” next to his name and also bubbled in Coleman. Voter intent determined!

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied

You know who else had a bad week?

Former IL governor and convicted felon George Ryan.

Nothing says, ‘Gee, I’m probably not going to get this sentence commuted after all,” like having the entire country in an uproar over your successor’s all-too-familiar public corruption charges.

I mean, everyone in Illinois was complaining loudly about Durbin asking Bush for the commutation as it was.

My highly unscientific tally of the Tribune’s Letter to the Editor page was about 8 to 1 against - with the rare supporting being like, “Yeah, but remember that death penalty moratorium?”

Yes, that was a good thing to do. But an act of germane public policy (which is, you know, the job of the governor in other states) doesn’t - to me - stand up against ten years of corruption without ever admitting guilt or apologizing to the public.

And… cue public apology:

“I want to make things right in my heart with God, with my family and with those that I have hurt,” said the statement, which was read by former Gov. Jim Thompson at a news conference held at Thompson’s Chicago law offices.

Amazing how total panic over not getting the commutation you thought was in the bag will make a one see the error of his ways.

“I think he is a much-changed man,” Thompson said.

I bet he is, sir.

I bet he is.

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I really thought that women politicians had provided the media with enough fodder during the unending election cycle.

But now, with Thanksgiving over, the media have nothing to look forward to until Sarah Palin’s inevitable mangling of the Christmas season.

Luckily, one scrappy woman has stepped in to plug the gap in the news hole - Patti Blagojevich.

Let me state - again - that it appears the Mrs Blagojevich was part of the criminal conspiracy her husband is alleged to have masterminded.

But let’s take a trip through the last 24 hours of Patti in the media, shall we?

The Chicago Sun Times skipped the insinuation and just got straight to the point:

My three dailies  - NYT, Chicago Tribune and The Age - ran various permutations of the same Lady Macbeth story, along with flattering photos:

I like that last one from the Trib especially. It’s a nice companion to the Blago Rats! photo from the Sun Times.

There are, of course, nuggets from all the stories. What I really love is that, aside from the AP story where the author is unclear - women journo’s were assigned the task of gender-ripping Mrs Blagojevich.

The NYT:

In the 76-page federal complaint, Ms. Blagojevich appears to be an influential and demanding partner to her husband’s schemes…
…
And, in a blast of vulgar language, Ms. Blagojevich eggs on her husband when he reportedly threatens to prevent the Tribune Company from selling the Chicago Cubs…
…
The Web site for the governor’s office says that in addition to raising the couple’s two daughters, Ms. Blagojevich occupies herself with typical first lady issues: raising awareness on children’s health, food allergies and literacy, and starting the State Beautification Initiative, which planted native wildflowers along state roads.
…
Ms. Mell’s spokeswoman, Leah Cunningham Pouw, said her own impression of Ms. Blagojevich was that “she is extremely dedicated to her kids,” adding: “I’ve seen her laughing and playing with them. She’s funny; she’s light. When you go in their house, there’s pictures of their drawings posted on the stairwell.”

So, instead of being a typical first lady; she’s a schemer and a corrupter. Does this really come as a surprise? Her husband was supposed to be occupying himself with typical gubernatorial issues: governing and not engaging in corrupt fuckwittery.

That didn’t work out so well, so why are we holding Patti to a different standard? Isn’t it enough that she’s corrupt? Why does she have to be lady-corrupt?

And the only method of defending her alleged co-corruption is, of course, to talk about how good she is with her kids.

Right.

And from The Age (AP):

And in the 78-page criminal complaint against him, his 43-year-old wife emerged as a woman who schemed to cash in on her husband’s job and punish those who got in her way
….
Patti Blagojevich appeared to be a woman who knew her priorities and would not let working at her real estate brokerage firm interfere with raising the couple’s two small daughters.

She apparently was not that kind of woman, though. [The bold and italics are mine - the only way I could convey my reaction to that word, which consisted of nearly spitting up.]

Though I do start to understand how hard it is to capture the full background in crisis reporting. Check out this random nugget of reporting from the AP (printed in The Age):

[Dick Mell] was a powerful Chicago alderman who held a fundraiser in the late 1980s. Hoping to drum up business for his practice, Rod Blagojevich - then a young lawyer - attended and met Patti Mell. The two married in 1990.

What? Dick Mell is still a powerful Chicago alderman. I saw him crapping on and on at the Council meeting just last week. I guess that’s the three sentence history of the situation, but it makes about zero sense.

Anyway, by the time all this is said and done it will be all Patti’s fault. And it will be revealed that she killed some lady’s cats.

Cuz that’s how bitches do.

Vaguely Related

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All right, Chicago Tribune. I was going to write about your Patti Blagojevich/Lady Macbeth article anyway, but her appearance on your homepage has hurried it up a few hours.

Look, I know that people are suddenly visiting chicagotribune.com, so you want to keep those pageviews up. But don’t let the twin shocks of bankruptcy and unexpected relevance go to your head.

Because this is inappropriate:

Lady Macbeth, as you will no doubt recall from Mr Johnson’s English Lit class, is the devil woman who convinces her husband to murder the king, paving the way for his own ascension.

Lady Macbeth doesn’t merely profit from her husband’s rise, she actively corrupts him.

Which is not to say that Patti Blagojevich’s hands are clean. It appears that she was in on the criminal conspiracy, and charges should follow if they are merited. I don’t believe she should get a free ride because her husband is (likely) going to jail and they’ve got kids. Do the crime, do the time.

However! Let’s take a quick look at how we’re covering Mrs Blago’s not-even-alleged-at-this-point crimes.

An unflattering portrait depicting Illinois First Lady Patricia Blagojevich as a modern-day Lady Macbeth who plotted against her husband’s perceived enemies and backed his corrupt schemes emerged in court documents connected to the governor’s arrest Tuesday.

It appears that Patti’s ‘crimes’ so far consist of conduct unbecoming a lady. The Tribune article describes her ‘alleged ambitions and brashness‘ and the ‘obscenity-filled tirade‘ she ‘unleashed’ in support of firing Tribune employees.

That ‘obscenity-filled tirade’ consists of saying ‘fuck’ twice and ’shit’ once. Perhaps not language fit for high society, but certainly language I use in my home when I assume the feds aren’t listening. (And, from the transcript, language that appears par for the course in the Blagojevich household.)

But what really stirs my cauldron is the negative depictions of Patti herself.

For Rod, ambition has not been described as the problem, but rather as a motivator for the corruption he (allegedly) perpetrated. For Patti, the mere act of having ambition is modified with ‘alleged’ - as though that were her crime.

And, of course, we have the word ‘brash’, which has been used time and time again to describe the grating brassiness of women who step out of line.

Should the good governor’s wife should have knitted merrily whilst her husband cooked up the schemes?

From a legal standpoint, it appears so! But for the daughter of Chicago political boss, Dick Mell, not [bleeping] likely.

If she deserves it - and it looks as though she does - let’s try Patti Blagojevich in the courts. But let’s not use insulting literary metaphors to punish a woman for her unladylike ambition and language choice.

[Ed. note- I took the wrong spelling of Patricia Blagojevich's nickname. I've fixed it, and regret the (all-too-common) errors in my spelling.]

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