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I Guess You Wouldn’t Want to Double-Park the Brunomobile

I’ve been busy trying to find gainful employment, so I don’t know how long this story has been out there. But the Democrats in Albany are discovering “perks” Republicans granted themselves for being in the majority that are just insane. The Brunomobile, for example, is a rolling fortress filled with swiveling leather captain’s chairs and a golf course. And to go along with that monstrosity, they found – and this is not my trademark hyperbole – 800 parking spaces per Republican Senator, reserved just for them.

Must have been nice.

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Someone’s in a Conference With Blago. . .

. . . Someone’s in a conference with Bla-a-ago

OK, enough paraphrased folk song. Not really relevant to the new focus I’m trying to hone here at DFE, but of great interest to all of us, especially those who voted for Barack Obama. It seems there’s an interesting timeline brewing with the Blagojevich Senate appointment fiasco, involving unnamed “Washington advisers,” Valerie Jaret and a conference call which seems perhaps to have ended Jaret’s contention for the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. Once again, tis a tangled web, so rather than summarize, I’ll link:
Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Blagojevich’s Big Conference Call and Valerie Jarrett’s Clean Break

. . . And they discussed a deal involving the Service Employee International Union, which would be asked to install Mr. Blagojevich over one of its top political groups in exchange for the union getting to tell Mr. Obama that it was delivering the open U.S. Senate seat to his favorite candidate.

That candidate, Mr. Blagojevich believed, was Valerie Jarrett, according to sources familiar with this part of the probe.

Mr. Obama’s people are not commenting on details about the case. But the reason that question is on so many minds today is because of what happened that very same Monday night.

At 7:56 p.m. Eastern Time, CNN reported that “two Democratic sources close to President-elect Barack Obama tell CNN that top adviser Valerie Jarrett will not be appointed to replace him in the U.S. Senate.”

I’m probably being generous here, but it seems to me like the potential taint that might be involved with appointing Jaret to the Senate after such a discussion may have proved to be more than the Obama team could take, and they killed the Jaret deal. After all, there’s lots of places Valerie Jaret could be appointed to that don’t need to involve a tainted Governor.

And despite media scrutiny, I think that things have actually worked out rather well for Barack Obama in this deal: a hugely corrupt Governor who would have tainted *any* appointment to Obama’s seat has been removed. Such an appointment would have absolutely dogged Obama throughout the hard right for the entirety of his tenure.

Funny how things have a way of working themselves out for Obama.

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Big Trouble for a Little Beaver Near Big Beaver?

As Josh Marshall sez, “uh-oh:

Stabenow’s husband caught in Troy prostitution sting, police report says

Thomas L. Athans was stopped Feb. 26 by undercover officers investigating a possible prostitution ring in a room at the Residence Inn near Big Beaver and Interstate 75. Athans paid a 20-year-old prostitute $150 for sex in a Troy hotel but was not arrested, according to police reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by The Detroit News. The police report said officers observed Athans enter a room under surveillance and leave 15 minutes later. Detectives followed and stopped Athans’ silver 2002 Cadillac DeVille on Interstate 75 near Square Lake Road.

Out of curiosity, can we take it as a sign of the relative health of our economy in New York State that our sex-starved politicians (and presumably, their significants, though that’s yet to be confirmed) pay several times the going rate in Michigan?  Even if you factor in fractions of an hour (fifteen minutes?!?), that’s still only $600 an hour.

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Spitz Pays for Girls Who Swallow

And he pays quite a bit.  According to the New York Sun (h/t TAP), these girls charged as much as $5,500 an hour.  Here’s a question: wouldn’t a guy who can afford that much be better served spending that money on a trip to the Bunny Ranch, where it’s legal?  There’s apt to be less FBI agents tapping the phones out there. . .

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Spitzer Busted for Solicitation of Prostitution

H/t to TalkingPointsMemo.com, from whence I find the story.  Well, if we have any defense against the coming onslaught of Republican cries of foul play in the Governor’s Mansion, it may only be that we can hope these girls were at least of age and probably not found in public bathrooms.  The same cannot be said of all Republican scandals:

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring – New York Times

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved. But a person with knowledge of the governor’s role said that the person believes the governor is one of the men identified as clients in court papers.