Tamara Holder on Patti Blagojevich - Diary of a Housewife Married to the Mad-Hatter

Chicago attorney Tamara Holder has an interesting take on Patti Blagojevich:

A good wife sticks by her man's side. Shoot, many women bounce after their husband's arrest! (In fact, I think she got pretty lucky by not being slapped with some handcuffs herself.) Not that I'm suggesting she's a criminal, but, she was in the home all those hours that Blags was doing "business" on the bugged family phone while sitting on the couch in his jogging suit.

Go ahead, call Blags a scumbag criminal. As you know, I disagree. Gov. Blagojevich is not a Gov. Spitzer nor is he a member of the Gambino crime family. He does not have offshore accounts and he does not have cash tied up in real estate. Follow the paper trail...um, it doesn't exist! Blago is a wannabe criminal at best.
Like her or not, Patti is taking one for the Blags team by doing this silly show. Blago's defense attorneys need to be paid and her kids need to go to school. And, Patti needs to create an image separate from that of Mrs. Rod Blagojevich because, no matter how much Rod wants to be compared to Ghandi, it ain't happenin'.

Click my poist title for more from Ms. Holder!

Rod is, was, and continues to be a goof. However, Patti Mell fell in love with him, went halves on children with Rod, and is stepping into jungle for him. More tragically, the poor girl must hang around the jungle with A-List Mopes like the Baldwin kid. Que Mujer!
God bless women!

Martyr Quinn for Ralph Martire'sSake? Blago Budget Bonehead Backs Bloat Boost!

Progress Illinois which hands me more laughs than The Onion ( without meaning to do so and that is even funnier) is all Progressive and Pouffe *over Ralph Martire's** imprimatur on the Illinois Tax Boost. Today's giggle is from Josh Kalven again and he wants Illinois to know that Mike Madigan is very, very smart and Lisa Madigan has ambition!
http://progressillinois.com/2009/3/16/the-one-to-watch

Josh, Honor Bright?

Progress is all Quinnish and Daisy Happy! More Taxes Mean more slots for low skilled and unskilled SEIU placements in the State Budget! PI Loves PQ! They want Speaker Mike Madigan to be the bad guy. They can not go after Lisa Madigan for the obvious PC reasons - she's a Female Girl Woman, but they can get all Boiled Beet Progressive on Daddo.

Pat Quinn, the Governor, wants to increase Illinois taxes - Pat Quinn wants a dramatic increase. Really Huge! Quinn has Ralph Martire in his corner - 'Cut Me Ralph. I can go the Distance! This is a Long Distance Race? Boxing? I thought it was Cross-Country, Ralph! Ralph? Ralph! where's the water bottle? Taxed? That Too? Sponge Me! This is supposed to be Long Distance Cross Country Running! No?'

No; it's Boxing Guv and this is Round One! You might get to Round Two. Oh, thats right, Ralph is in your corner. The canvass is not all that comfortable. You will be hitting it hard, by the way.

Ralph Martire is a career know-it-all-screw-up - a Progressive Professor with his snout plunged in the public trough. From Dawn Clark Netsch to Rod Blagojevich, Ralph Martire's slide rule reads 'Taxes.' State Government Spendathons! Lefty Agit-Prop and Meeks Shall Inherit the Works Coalition Building! Pat Quinn is toast.

This from Peoria!

"What should the state do to balance the budget? Cut spending or raise taxes and maintain spending," Martire said.

In fact, Quinn said last week, he plans to do both. When he delivers his budget speech Wednesday, Quinn plans to ask for an increase in the state income tax, something that hasn't happened in Illinois since 1993, when the current 3 percent personal rate was made permanent. Quinn also said he will announce more than $800 million in cuts to the budget.

Quinn hasn't said how large a tax increase he will seek, although some reports have said he will ask for a new rate of 4.5 percent, a 50 percent increase. An increase of that magnitude would raise more than $4 billion in new revenue.

However, Quinn also will ask for the state personal income tax exemption to increase from $2,000 to $6,000 to offset the impact of the tax hike.

Martire thinks the income tax increase should be even larger. What's more, he thinks Quinn also should adjust the state sales tax while lawmakers are debating revenue increases.

Ralph Martire, who helped Blago give away the Illinois General Store to tax salaried SEIU pals and allies,as well as the usual Pork Eating Capitalists, warns that trimming the Budget Bloat through . . .TAX Cuts !!!! Hopi Indians, Mildred, think of the Children! . . .might . . . might mind you lead to rising unemployment figures.

Yeah???!!!!!!!!!!! Tax-salaried employees put in the State Budget by you and Blago Ralph!

Martire will be a Huge help in Pat Quinn's Martyrdom! You can set your watch by dopes like Martire . . . I mean Distinguished Professors on the Public Teat like Ralph Martire.

* footstool - SEIU's footstool, ottoman, place to put feet on & etc.

** Ralph Martire:Ralph Martire is executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (“CTBA”). He also serves as a regular columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the State Journal-Register and The Herald Newson issues involving government accountability, tax, fiscal and budget policies. Ralph served on the
budget advisory board to Governor Rod Blagojevich's transition team, where he acted as chairperson ofthe state revenue subcommittee. Ralph was the principal author of a study CTBA produced that identifiedrevenue enhancement proposals to address the 2002 fiscal crises in the state of Illinois. Five of the proposals identified in that study ultimately became law. Ralph also was a key member of the research
team that produced the groundbreaking "State of Working Illinois" report, which detailed industry,employment, wage and benefit trends in Illinois over the last 15 years. A joint project of CTBA andNorthern Illinois University, the State of Working Illinois has been featured in over 150 media (print andbroadcast) placements nationwide. ( emphasis my own)

http://www.ctbaonline.org/All%20Links%20to%20Press%20and%20Reports/Contact%20Us/Ralph%20Martire.pdf

Residency, Presidency, Cook County Needs Vallas

The nuanced voices are stacatto signalling caveats to Paul Vallas who announced thoughts of returning to Cook County and help fix the clown opera directed by Todd Stroger.

Todd Stroger was placed in the purple plush seat by some very nuanced thinkers in the Democratic Party who read in the tea leaves that Paul Vallas might, just might mind you, upset plans for off spring and even solidly emplaced 'powers that is.'

Paul Vallas was abandoned by the Democratic Leadership in Chicago and Cook County when he ran against Milorod Blagojevich, a shameless gate-crasher with clout, for Governor of Illinois.

Last week, Mark Brown of the Sun Times offered a nuanced reflection of Democrats turned Republican Past who failed in their bids at elected office in racially charged election cycles. I imagine that Brown had a Nuanced Chat with Quigley about Paul Vallas and Quigley, not to be brought up short(er) by a formidable man like Vallas jumped up to Brown's willing ears. Brown's nuances were deftly batted aside by Paul Vallas. Race is The Place for Nuanced Hack. Race works and so does Residency.

Today, Kristen McQueary, kind of a neighborhood girl, nuances the residency card:

Once again if he runs, he'll be doing it having not lived here for some time. He and his wife bought a home in Palos Heights, but Vallas spends most weeks in the bayou.

Maybe that means he still lives in Philly, according to his calculus.

How about this: Paul Vallas runs for office like a big boy, following all the rules. If he's a Democrat, he runs as a Democrat. We're kind of tired of schemes around here.

If Vallas runs for GOP Cook County Board president, he hasn't ruled out also running for a commissioner seat on the 17-member Cook County Board. That's how John Stroger did it. He held a commissioner seat, and therefore had a vote, while also serving as board president.

Todd Stroger opted not to run for a commissioner seat; he serves only as board president and does not have a vote.

In 2002, Paul took the Philly job and Sharon and the kids remained here and tried to sell their house. By 2005, most people in Illinois wished that they could have had a Governor Do-Over, as Joliet Land-Fill Rod had fallen out with Dick Mell and many others. Vallas sold his Morgan Park neighborhood home at 25$% West 107th Street, because the brilliant Burt Odelson had been blocked by the courts in allowing Paul Vallas to appear on the 2006 ballot for Governor against the nuanced Rod Blagojevich and that he was saddled with a huge campaign debt from 2002. Took a long time for the Vallas Family to sell that Georgian, but the Vallas Family was never too far from home, while Paul worked in Philly.

Heck, Paul Vallas continues to be an active Strategic Planning Board Member for Leo ( Catholic) High School in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. Paul and Sharon bought a home in Palos Heights quite some time ago, while Paul worked in Philly and subsequently headed to Crescent City to help straighten out post-Katrina Louisiana education for Gov. Bobby Jindal. Nevertheless, Paul and Sharon remained more in-touch with Illinois than the Nuanced Hack Supported Serving Govenor ( now impeached and convicted and out of office but on TV everywhere!) and the Empurpled and Daffy Todd Stroger, President of the Cook County Board.

Shoot, me and the neighbors talk to Paul and Sharon all the time.

Paul Vallas is not an educator, he is a budget and policy professional who was first brought into the Public Eye by Illinois Senator Phil Rock, a man of talent and integrity. Paul Vallas is needed in Cook County, for openers, and in the State of Illinois.

Save the nuance for the next idiot the Nuanced Voices of Journalism want to trot out for public office - with, of course the counsel of beauties like Mike Quigley.

SEIU Helped Create the Blago We All Know - Watch Them Now

Progress Illinois, SEIU's Junior Commissar Mikey Mouse Club, is huffing and puffing about more grassroots reform now that Blago has been 86-ed by the State of Illinois.

In our latest feature article, Adam notes that Rod Blagojevich's removal from office could clear the way for some far-reaching -- and much-needed -- campaign finance restrictions in Illinois. On WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, former state comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch echoed that sentiment. She highlighted the "window of opportunity" created by Blagojevich's departure and cited caps on campaign contributions as "essential." Watch it: Netsch's observation that "it can't just be legislators" pushing these sorts of reforms is very important. Grassroots and institutional support is going to be crucial. And to that point, I want to highlight the fact that SEIU Illinois (which sponsors this website) is itself pushing for strict restrictions on campaign contributions, which bodes well for the cause.

Oh Heavens Yes, Gracie! Josh, you are a dilly!


SEIU you will recall was mired deeply in Blago's Honey-Dipping Governorship and SEIU figures in Federal Prosecutor Fitzgerald's Criminal Complaint against the only Governor in Illinois History Impeached and Convicted by the Legislature.

Andy Stern's SEIU will be there, to quote Tom Joad from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to troll for and make new Blago. Make no mistake.

Here is a lovely compilation of SEIU/Blago Bedroom Eyes from the World Socialist Website -published by International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)them own selves!

In any event, Blagojevich and the SEIU have a lengthy and mutually beneficial relationship. The Wall Street Journal notes that the union “was an early and strong supporter of Mr. Blagojevich, backing him over several other candidates [for Illinois governor] in 2002.” As a condition of its support, the SEIU won a pledge from Blagojevich that once in office he would issue an executive order directing the state government to negotiate a union contract with home health-care workers.


Shortly after taking office, the new Illinois governor signed an order allowing as many as 20,000 such workers to unionize. They were signed up by the SEIU. Blagojevich also appointed Balanoff to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which approves hospital construction projects.


A second executive order, signed in February 2005, allowed collective bargaining for child-care workers. “The day after it received a letter from the governor’s office saying that a union election could be held, SEIU submitted 18,000 cards from workers it had signed up” (Wall Street Journal). The workers involved are highly exploited, suffering from low wages and a lack of benefits.


Officials of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) complained of the “special relationship” the SEIU had with Blagojevich. The latter union was the number one contributor to the governor’s re-election bid in 2006, donating more than $900,000, or some 5 percent of his total campaign fund.


The SEIU also has a close relationship with the president-elect. The union’s political action committee “spent at least $26 million on Mr. Obama’s behalf in the presidential campaign, making it by far the largest single PAC donor in the campaign” (New York Times).


The union, in the words of the Washington Post, has “become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics.”


An SEIU spokeswoman, Michelle Ringuette, defended the contributions. “Many unions make political donations to political candidates,” she told the Times, “in the interest of making sure we have elected officials who represent the interest of working families, men and women who get up and go to work every day.”


Neither Blagojevich nor Obama represent “working families,” although they may posture along those lines. Their policies defend the interests of big business and the corporate-financial aristocracy. The present corruption scandal provides a glimpse into the reality behind the rhetoric of Democratic Party politics: corrupt, well-heeled individuals pursuing their own selfish goals.


Moreover, the SEIU and the rest of the American union bureaucracy do not make use of their members’ dues money in the form of contributions to Democratic candidates to advance workers’ interests, but to safeguard their own incomes and privileges.


Stern and the SEIU have recently made a specialty of reaching contracts with governments and corporations that benefit themselves and the employers, at the expense of union members. (See Backroom deals by US service unions strip workers of rights)


The SEIU broke away from the sclerotic and discredited AFL-CIO promising a new brand of dynamic unionism, with a special emphasis on organizing the unorganized. As the WSWS noted last May: “However, this has nothing to do with defending or improving conditions, but involves colluding with employers to impose union membership on low-paid workers, who are denied the right to vote on union certification and in some cases don’t even realize they are joining a union.”


The union has set itself up as a kind of labor contractor, offering employers “labor peace” in exchange for the right to collect dues.


In its contract with California nursing home chains, reported the San Francisco Weekly, the SEIU agreed that workers would have no input regarding hours, vacations, pay, layoffs, staffing levels or any other matter concerning their jobs. The newspaper reported, “The employers may outsource work performed by union members, and speed up, reassign, or eliminate jobs at will. The employer may eliminate vacations, or any time off, as the employer sees fit.”


The SEIU went on to use this arrangement as a model for other “organizing” efforts in Washington and New Jersey.


At the time of his arrest Blagojevich was reportedly preparing to issue another executive order that would have allowed 1,200 workers who care for the developmentally disabled in Illinois to organize. Spokeswoman Ringuette told the Wall Street Journal that the SEIU “was aware of the executive order but didn’t know what role, if any, the union played in developing it.”

Blago's Borscht Capades Channels Mickey Katz - Oy Vey!

"Men who eat salami come on and Join the Yiddish army,/ Fight! Fight! Fight for Palestine!/
If you like your bread and gravy Come and join the Jewish navy/ Fight fight fight for Palestine./
Come on you sons of bitches Put on those Purple britches/ Fight Fight for Palestine." Mickey Katz*


"I will fight, I will fight, till I take my very last breath. I have done nothing wrong.” - R. Blagojevich 12/19/2008

I heard Governor Sunshine sing his battle cry and thought that he was channeling the great Yiddish Parodist Mickey Katz! My late pal and boyhood chum, Danny Levi sang this song at a Little Flower Picnic. Danny's family was Jewish in a neighborhood surrounded by Goyisher Cossocks from Ireland.

Danny Levi bought a saloon ( photo above) on 111th Street that was mainstay of Little Flower, St. Sabina, St. Killian, Visitation, St. Tommy More, St. Ethelreda and St. Margaret of Scotland children of the Diaspora - The Irish Temple! Danny's logo was a Star of David encompassing a Shamrock. Danny knew more Clancy Brother and traditional Irish ballads than Terry McEldowney and he also knew the great Yiddish works of Klezmer artists and Borscht Belt singers like Mickey Katz.

Mickey Katz knocked the schmaltz out of faux sentiment when he was with Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Governor (extant) Rod Blagojevich is taking another great leap over the political shark and using faux sentiment that works so well for elected officials caught in the act of grabbing a baby's Laffy Taffy or knocking another man's wing-tips from under a John Stall:

In his first statement since he was arrested on federal charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes, Mr. Blagojevich was alternately emotional and combative, his voice breaking as he told reporters that he would be vindicated, and asked Illinois residents to withhold their judgment.

“I intend to stay on the job and I will fight this thing every step of the way,” he said in an appearance at the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. “I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, till I take my very last breath. I have done nothing wrong.”

Blago lawyered up with the Illinois Criminal Law A Team; Fitzy must play Beat the Clock with an indictment; President Elect Obama ain't saying nothing; Rahmbo's loins are on the Weber; the Illinois Legislature is posturing; the Media is as genuinely curious about 'the Truth' as a sixteen year old boy is about Quantum Mechanics - Mickey Katz! America needs You!


CLICK my Post Title for Mickey Katz's rendition of Davy Crockett!


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/us/20illinois.html?bl&ex=1229922000&en=4151becfb65bac73&ei=5087%0A

*

Mickey Katz (June 15, 1909 Born: Cleveland, Ohio - April 30, 1985) was a U.S. Jewish comedian and musician who received his first moments of fame in the 1940s as a member of Spike Jones and His City Slickers where he was most famous for his "glugging" vocal sound effects on tunes like "Cocktails for Two" and others. He later went on to perform his own parodic musical review and record highly popular "ethnic" comedy albums on the Capitol label where he would perform English-Yiddish parody songs. He was also recognized as a master of what would later be called Klezmer style clarinet and had several hits during his long career. Though Katz sang primarily in broken Yiddish, he is often as recognized as one of the godfathers of American song parody which would later be advanced by the likes of Allan Sherman and, in the 1980s, Weird Al Yankovic.

Katz and his group can be seen in the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie accompanying Julie Andrews as she sings a Yiddish song at a Jewish wedding.

Katz is the father of Broadway legend Joel Grey and a grandfather of the actress Jennifer Grey. In the early 1980s he told the story of his life in a biography called Papa Play for Me.

A number of famous Jewish musicians, including those with their own bands have recorded with him including Manny Klein, Ziggy Elman and Si Zentner.

Jazz musician Don Byron recorded a tribute to Mickey Katz in 1993 entitled Don Byron Plays The Music of Mickey Katz.

The 2003 British movie Wondrous Oblivion featured Katz' "The Barber of Schlemiel" (a parody of The Barber of Seville in a scene where the Jewish main character played the record for his Jamaican neighbor. No soundtrack has been released for the film as yet.

Jesse Jackson Junior Too Smart To Play Ball with 40 Watt Blago

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is smart. He is ambitious. He is at times a bit vain. Intelligence, Ambition and a bit of Vanity are essential to a Public Person.

Rod Blagojevich is dumber than NBC News and Charlie Weis* on crack. He is the Peter (pun up a storm, Kids) Principle to Enth Power Squared. Blago is Vain-er than an Old Man's Legs with Run-away Phlebitis -Characteristics best worn by a bar-fly.

I saw Congressman Jackson's presentation and Statement as Candidate # 5 and I believe him. He may have had some ambitious emissary gulled by Harris and the Guv into a power chat, but I do not believe that Congressman Jackson in any way tried to make Medicine with grown man who quotes Elvis Lyrics in Public . . . at least it was not Friend and Lover's 'It think it's so Groovy Now/That People are Finally Gettin' Togetha!!' That would be David Axelrod.

Jackson was sucked into Fitzy's wire-tap by Blago like a degenerate gambler takes in friends, relatives, banks, Pay-Day Loans and kids with wagons of empty pop bottles.

* Charlie Weis and Rod Blagojevich have mirror personalities and command presence - No 1st Downs! No 1st Downs! No 1st Downs!.