{"id":1642,"date":"2008-12-10T11:57:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T16:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2008-12-10T10:06:15","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T15:06:15","slug":"the-blagojevich-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1642","title":{"rendered":"The Blagojevich Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I like how Governor Blagojevich didn&#8217;t see the second and fourth items on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.suntimes.com\/news\/metro\/blagojevich\/1321300,rod-blagojevich-illinois-governor-custody-120908.article\">his agenda<\/a> as precluding the third:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Throughout the intercepted conversations, Blagojevich also allegedly spent significant time weighing the option of appointing himself to the open Senate seat and expressed a variety of reasons for doing so, according to the affidavit, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Frustration at being \u201cstuck\u201d as governor;<\/li>\n<li>A belief that he will be able to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting Senator as opposed to a sitting governor;<\/li>\n<li>A desire to remake his image in consideration of a possible run for President in 2016;<\/li>\n<li>Avoiding impeachment by the Illinois legislature&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>John Dickerson observes that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2206349\/\">Obama comes off looking great<\/a> in the indictment, quoting the charges themselves:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants &#8230; are telling him that he has to &#8220;suck it up&#8221; for two years and do nothing and give this &#8220;motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but &#8216;they&#8217;re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Dickerson&#8217;s conclusion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s a little incredible that prostitutes weren&#8217;t involved (or aren&#8217;t yet, at least). Perhaps even more staggering is that the man at the center was so reckless while simultaneously aware of the advances in modern surveillance. As Blagojevich says at one point: &#8220;You gotta be careful how you express that and assume everybody&#8217;s listening, the whole world is listening. You hear me?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like how Governor Blagojevich didn&#8217;t see the second and fourth items on his agenda as precluding the third: Throughout the intercepted conversations, Blagojevich also allegedly spent significant time weighing the option of appointing himself to the open Senate seat and expressed a variety of reasons for doing so, according to the affidavit, including: Frustration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,4,458],"tags":[1096,1097,1008,76],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","tag-blagojevich","tag-governor-blagojevich","tag-john-dickerson","tag-slate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-qu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1643,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}