Hot Rod’s race through Illinois

I just wrote a post combining several news sources and weaving them into one narrative from here in Illinois, where the governor has been known by that name for longer than the national media have even known his name.

But as has been the case too often lately, when I go to post the piece on the blog site, it disappears, requiring it all to be re-written again. No time for that now.

Here are some of the articles I linked to, with the narrative that this remains a circus, and this has reminded us that it’s about race, after all.

Blagojevich is defiant, and though we know this, nobody saw it coming.

Even president-elect Obama doesn’t want this outcome.

The story remains an enormous distraction…..and disturbance.

At the press conference, Blagojevich brought more trouble, including the issue of race, to an already florid scandal. He announced that he was appointing a successor, former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, to Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat — a move that will continue to roil the political waters in Illinois and ensure a continuing distraction for the President-elect. By naming Burris, the governor blatantly ignored warnings by Senate majority leader Harry Reid that any Blagojevich appointee would not be seated by the Senate. The governor also belied the assessment of his own defense attorney, who earlier said that Blagojevich would not be naming an Obama successor. At his press conference, the governor said he was “required” to make the appointment lest the people of Illinois lose their voice in the Senate, embodied by two Senators. Blagojevich is the only person empowered to fill an empty Senate seat from Illinois.

The land of Lincoln is currently la-la land, and it is unbefitting of the past president from here and the future president.

Integrity and leadership have to be earned, and Blagojevich has lost both, if he ever had either. And if we’ve learned anything from the Obama candidacy and election to the presidency, it’s that we either are beyond the color of skin or should be. For former Black Panther Bobby Rush to be out there at Blagojevich’s side and on the news shows saying the senate has to confirm Roland Burris based on the color of his skin sets the civil rights movement back decades and injects race into politics again. Ironic that it’s over Obama’s seat.

Those remarks shouldn’t be dignified with the attention they’re getting. But then, people are always attracted to a circus.