>REACT: Blagojevich should be trolling for votes?

>There has been a lot of reaction to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s attendance at a Chicago Black Hawks hockey game while the legislature was in overtime emergency session, trying to work out a deal to determine just how much of our taxpayers’ money would be wasted on the Chicago Transit Authority. None of the reactions were good. Only his hired staff defended his absence from the field of battle, and not all that well. How could they?

Go back a few days, and you will recall that some sort of “deal” was likely to pass. Optimism abounded, if only the cautious type. Mayor Daley expected a bill (legislative variety, since only taxpayers get the other kind). The four legislative leaders were in agreement, the papers reported. But, no! Once again the ineptitude of our dysfunctional state government trumped reason, common sense and progress.

So … while the legislature burned, the Governor fiddled.

What was remarkable to me was his bull shit excuse. (Pardon the expletive, but no softer euphemism sufficiently describes the Governor’s response). He said it would not have done any good for him to be there. It would not have changed the outcome.

Read that again before you go on.

Now consider this. The Governor is say he has no influence. He has no power of persuasion. He has no bully pulpit. He has no Machiavellian strategy. He has no favors to call on. No ability to twist arms. Nope! His presence is irrelevant … inconsequential.

The Governor once bragged, “This is the kind of thing that I think, frankly, separates the men from the boys in leadership. Do you have the testicular virility to make a decision like that…?” (My emphasis.) The man who once flaunted his “testicular virility” now claims impotency – no more “testicular virility” than one of those troll characers. (Gads! He kind of looks like one, too. Don’t you think?)