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As more and more information becomes available about the arrest on Tuesday of the Illinois governor, it becomes clear that many people knew what they were doing was wrong and have decided to cooperate in the investigation or resign.

The governor needs to do the same.

But in the meantime, it’s fun to watch the fallout. One of the presumptive potential candidates for the Senate seat was Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. There is no discussion in the affadavit of just cause about the potential to appoint Madigan to the senate other than a brief mention of various candidates. Attorney General Madigan has been above reproach in her job as AG and the reason the governor might want to appoint her would be to win favor with her father.

Madigan’s father, Mike Madigan, is a Chicago Democrat and long-time speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. Speaker Madigan has been a thorn in the governor’s side almost since the day he was elected, prompting many to speculate that the problems between the two were part of a good old fashioned Chicago turf war.

Regardless, the governor has argued with Speaker Madigan time and again about his duties as governor, the responsible management of the state and the Illinois Constitution, prompting the speaker to remind the governor that Speaker Madigan helped write the 1970 Constitution.

So, there is speculation that the governor considered appointing the Speaker’s daughter to the seat in hopes of getting some goodwill from the Speaker. Fat chance, Rod. They don’t call Speaker Madigan the Velvet Hammer for nothing. He gets what he wants and those who cross him don’t.

The Speaker has been considerably restrained in the last two days, allowing the Republicans to sponsor the bill forming an impeachment committee. All he did was call the special session of the House. Will your buddy Senate President Emil Jones call a special session of the Senate to hear the charges? Oh, I bet he will.

And, Attorney General Madigan, I think she was righteously pissed to see her name sullied simply by the innuendo that she was one of the candidates you were considering. Whatever their faults, the Madigan family has never shirked doing what is necessary for the people of Illinois.

Maybe that’s why Lisa told CNN today that she’d give the General Assembly a little time to handle this and then she would take it to court. It looks to me like she’s giving her Dad a chance to get his revenge and still making sure the people of the state get rid of Rod.

For the better part of the last three years, I have been howling about the incompetence of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Today, he was arrested.

He is accused of trying to sell the senate seat of presidnet-elect Barack Obama, among other things. To be honest, it’s the among other things that offended me the most.

For instance, the indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s office charges that the governor tried to sell reimbursement for children’s medical care. The charges claim he tried to force the CEO of Children’s Medical Hospital to donate $50,000 to hsi campaign fund in return for the state actually paying $8 million in bills. Since the state owes various contractors $5 billion, I can see where the CEO might have been tempted. The hospital like many others in Illinois is struggling because the state doesn’t pay its bills.

He is also charged with trying to force the Chicago Tribune to fire editors that were unfriendly or wrote editorials calling for the goernor’s impeachment. Hmmm, kick the journalists who are actually doing their jobs. The governor’s offer was to help the Tribune’s parent company in their efforts to sell Wrigley Field in Chicago. The indictment doesn’t exactly say that the Trib told the governor to go to hell, but Wrigley hasn’t sold and the Trib editors are still working.

The most heartening part of the news conference was, well, twofold. As a reporter, I was encouraged to hear that the Tribune had heard rumors of the investigation 2 months ago and when asked to hold the story until the evidence was in, they did.

The second heartening event was the report that while the governor and his chief of staff presumed that they could make a deal with the president-elect and appoint the person “he wanted” as his successor, the deal fell flat. Being prosecutors, the spokesmen for the U.S. Attorney’s office would not officially clear the president-elect from any wrongdoing, but repeated that just because the governor tried to make a deal doesn’t mean the president-elect was willing to play.

Pay to play politics in Illinois is nothing new, but this is ridiculous. Only two governors in the last 50 years have made it through their terms of office without accusations of wrongdoing. Maybe, as one local mayor suggested, it’s the office that’s corrupt.

Okay, so I generally think that Family Guy is a decent show, but tonight the show stepped over the line. In an episode where Mort, Stewie and Brian go back in time and end up in Berlin at the beginning of World War II. They mug a trio of SS officers and on one of the uniforms they find a McCain-Palin campaign button.

To be honest, I don’t mind if actors and writers and animators have an opinion on politics. That is their American right.

However, I do find the political commentary offensive in this context. I was offended when Democrat Dick Durbin (one of my senators unfortuantely) compared American soldiers to Nazis and I am equally offended at the concept of the Nazis endorsing McCain-Palin.

There is absolutely no reason that Americans should resort to such an ugly way to characterize political opponents.

Yup, I can endorse having different opinions. I suggest open debate. I think name calling like this is petty and degrading to the entire political process.

I’ve seen a lot of people who think that Joe the Plumber won the debate for McCain last night.

If so, then the campaign is in even worse trouble than I thought. See, if it took a Joe the Plumber to get the McCain campaign a win, when his exchange with Senaotr Obama was nothing new, you have to consider the McCain campaign dry toast. Done and over with.

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk would like you to believe that Joe the Plumber represents traditional blue collar Americans everywhere. He does not. My plumber doesn’t make enough that he could buy out his boss and small business owners are not traditional Democrats–employees are.

Let’s look at what Senator Obama actually said. He told Joe that he wanted to see the people that helped get him there (to the $250,000 income mark) benefit as well, to see the wealth spread around. The McCain campaign and conservatives everywhere gasped and said,” ooh, he’s a socialist”.

What they missed is that Obama never once suggested that Joe’s “wealth” be given to random people on the street. He suggested, shock! faint! that the people who did the work that made the money ought to be entitled to a share of it too. Arguably, the senator needs a better political flak. His is doing a remarkably poor job controlling the spin on anything.

Here’s how the Joe the Plumber remark should be interpretted. Executives from Enron to Tyco to Lehman Brothers have spent decades trying to make millions while the little guy, the factory worker or the low-level sales manager, does all the work. It’s great that Joe has a boss who has paid him what he is worth and made it so that he can move up to an ownership position, but that should not mean that Joe can rest on his laurels and make other people do the work.

The reality is that owning a small business, any business, creates stresses on the owner, but if all the owner does is take and take from his employees than sometimes there has to be an equalizing force. Generally, we call this government. We all know that no matter how poorly an employer treats his staff, in desperate economic times, someone will tolerate the injustice just to work. Barack is fighting that injustice.

Now, I don’t know. Maybe Joe the plumber will be a great boss, but the reality is that most business owners do not play fair with their employees and Barack knows that.

Rush Limbaugh reported today seeing a photograph of Sarah Palin, with the Secret Service in tow, stopping at Wal Mart to buy diapers.

He seemed to believe that this photo if circulated would give Sarah more street cred with working mothers everywhere.

I call “Bullshit.”

Shopping at Wal Mart does not make Mrs. Palin seem more like the working mothers I know unless she did it at 6 a.m. on the way to drop the baby off at a daycare that she can barely afford, but has to pay just so she can work to keep said baby in diapers. In fact, my most recent friend to become a working mom wouldn’t get caught dead buying diapers at Wal Mart. She hates the evil empire.

But more importantly than whether or not shopping at Wal Mart makes Sarah Palin seem more like common folk is Limbaugh’s assumption that it did. For a man who goes on and on about the class warfare in this country and who likes to blame it on the Democrats, his comment was absurdly offensive.

First, it assumes that all working mothers shop at Wal Mart. Seriously, Rush, there are women who make enough money to shop other places. Really, we do.

Second, it assumes that all mothers can take their child to work with them. Mrs. Palin has the luxury of taking her five-month-old son to work. Most employers from on this.

Third, it assumes that “common folk” are more interested in where she shops or that Mrs. Palin is “like them” than in her politics.

Let me assure you, Sarah Palin is nothing like me even though I once bought diapers at Wal Mart. I went to one college for my undergraduate career and had two majors. i finished both degrees in four years. I have never had a job where I could bring my child to work and in fact, I lost a job once because I took part of a day off to take my four-month-old daughter to the doctor. When my daughter was born, I worked until 2 days before her birth and got 5 weeks, including my 2 weeks of vacation time, off after she was born. Bringing her with me was never an option.

My husband has never been part of a secessionist organization, nor does he drink and drive. I’ve never used the power of my position to get someone fired and I believe that when it becomes time for my daughter to have children of her own, I will not use her boyfriend/fiance/whatever as a stage prop.

No, Sarah, shopping at Wal Mart does not make you one of us.

Much debate has been made in the race for the Presidency about the future of American health care. it doesn’t take a genious to see that it’s all screwed up.
Now, some would say that handing it to the government to fix it does not inspire confidence.
Obama responded that John McCain seems pretty happy with his government funded health care.
And, he was probably right.
But today, Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes began a series of town hall meetings around the state focusing on the problems of state-funded healthcare, specifically the Illinois Medicaid program.
Now, to be fair, we have to mention here that the state of Illinois was, last week, just under $2 billion and 42 days behind on its bills. That’s 42 days after it reaches the comptroller’s office for payment. Before that, it spent as long as three months (maybe more) getting kicked around in the various state agencies before being approved for payment.
So, doctotrs aren’t taking Medicaid. There is no neurologist within 100 miles of my hometown that takes it and few other specialists. There is one company that takes the Medicaid card for glasses for children in the southern 11 or 12 counties of Illinois. Don’t like the Marion Eye Center? Then, pay for the glasses yourself.
Primarily, it’s specialists that are turning down the Medicaid card, but the longer the budget crisis continues, the fewer doctors accept it. Two years ago, when the state was only about $500 million behind on its bills and I still worked for the Marion Eye Center, they hadn’t been paid in more than 6 months and the state owed them close to $2 million.
It makes it hard for a relatively small business (less than 200 employees) to stay in business when they aren’t getting paid.
Imagine how much that has increased now.
Comptroller Hynes was not looking for an argument against state-funded health care, but was seeking to put a human face on the raw numbers. He thought maybe it would make his fellow politicians notice the crisis that is brewing.
I hope it works, but somehow, i expect more rhetoric from the likes of McCain. I expect that we’ll hear once again that the working poor choose not to have health care, choosing to spend their income elsewhere (like on food and gas).
I hope I’m wrong and that while we are looking at the cost of saving our economy we also take a good hard look at the cost of saving lives.

I heard a lot this weekend about the massive debt swap on Friday and the cost involved. Essentially about $400 billion in bad loans were insured against loss and when it came time to pay the piper, the loans were worth about 8.5 cents on the dollar. That meant the insurance companies who wrote insurance policies for the banks saying that if the loan was bad the insurance would pay off paid out about $365 billion on Friday.

Guess what segment of the American economy is in trouble next?

Yup, insurance companies. By the end of the week last week, insurance stocks were trading significantly lower because of the huge payouts that are coming. Reagan’s trickle down economics are coming in a tidal wave against the American people, but the sad truth is that neither the presidential candidates nor the American people seem to understand basic economics.

Just the other day, I was talking to a friend about the coming election and she asked why journalists couldn’t write comprehensively about the economy and explain what is happening and why. She was shocked when I told her most journalists don’t get business classes or study economics. We are too busy teaching them about the history of their profession to teacch them what they need to know about the things they will be covering.

Sadly, the problem extends beyond journalists. Most Americans who are not accountants could not read a profit and loss statement or understand double entry accounting. That means they often can’t read the handwriting on the economic wall. Even fewer understand business practices and business ethics.

So, instead, we elect politicians who sound good, but who might have no understanding of the real world we live in. As a result, what impacts one section of the economy soon impacts another and most of us are left with absolutely no understanding about why.

I read a piece in my local paper the other day pointing out how often McCain has voted against something desparately needed by our military and then claimed to be a friend of the military. The writer was most offended by his vote against improved equipment for our national guardsmen, including helmets, because he thought that though they were nice to have, we couldn’t afford to purchase them at that minute.

Ummm, yeah. I was pretty offended by that too. I have a dear friend who is an Army Reservist serving in Iraq. I would be ashamed if my country did not supply ehr with her basic needs including a weapon and helmet. Oh, wait…

But even more offensive was the concept that McCain voted against a bill that would have demanded troops get an adequate rest between deployments. Have you seen the length of time some of our volunteer soldiers are being required to stay in a war zone? Have you heard, Senator McCain, about the wartime extensions of service that many of our original troops sent to Iraq endured?

The closer the election gets the more I agree with a fellow today.com blogger who wrote about how she loathes Cindy McCain.

It’s not just Cindy though, it’s the entire Republican ticket. John thinks that he should get the military vote because he served, Cindy thinks that Gucci makes her an average American. Sarah thinks its appropriate for the woman who wants to be vice president to issue “shout outs” and Todd, well, he makes the Michelle Obama statement that she was finally proud to be an American look like a statement from a saint. The man has been convited for drunk driving and belonged to an organization promoting dissolution of the fifty states, knocking it back down to 49.

In the column published today, Leonard Pitts wrote about the lack of family values discussion in the Republican Party this eyar. Could that be with a history of drug abuse (Cindy McCain), DUI (Todd Palin), infidelity and divorce (John McCain) and more they have nothing to talk about?

It’s time for the American people to reexamine those values that they have been assuming should be attributed to the party on the right. it would seem that they are dead wrong.

A few weeks ago, I bloggged about an attack on the owner of a store called The Country Goddess. Crystal was attacked by a woman throwing kerosene on her and then trying to light her on fire. Police are investigating, but so far, there have been no arrests.

So today, I was catching up with Crystal whern we heard from another patron that something similar had happened elsewhere. Wondering if it could be related, I investigated.

This story came out of Michigan. Apparently, a professor there had his students reading Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”, a play about the Salem Witch Trials. One of the students assumed that this meant the professor was a witch and doused the professor with holy water and had a lighter, reportedly saying they should “burn the witch.”

You can read the story here.

Strangely, I think this is a product of the religious intolerance shown in our election debates. Mitt Romney was vilified because he is a Mormon. Attempts have been made to “smear” Barack Obama by claiming thast he is a Muslim.

What the hell happened to religious freedom? Since when did it become okay to discriminate based on religion? You might remember that this country wasx founded by people fleeing religious persecution. Sure, they were debating the way to practice their Christianity not Christian versus Wicca versus Muslims versus whatever else, but this is ridiculous.

I’m ashamed of many members of my country and my faith. What happened to God is love?

Last night, after the abyssmal thing that passed for a debate between the candidates, my husband and I were talking politics again. Not surprising I guess, givent he state of the American nightmare these days.

But what we both wanted, neither candidate has provided at all. Joe Biden comes the closest, but I’m not sure he can count in this context.

Quite simply, we want a platform. Yup, I want campaign promises. I want specific to do lists and things that the candidates stand for–not change and maverick, but real honest to goodness, “If I am elected, I will..” type statements.

I’m glad the candidates were relatively civil during the debate, but I’d also like them to call each other out on the outrageous lies and misleading implications. I’d like to hear Barack ask John how he would really solve the economic crisis given his previous statements about understanding economics. In fact, I don’t weant school room debates with points and counterpoints. I want policy statements and proof that they are thinking about governing and not just getting elected.

Today, Barack said in a speech he finds it odd that Sen. McCain doesn’t want to expand government health care for the average American when Sen. McCain has government health care and it seems to be working for him. My first impressionw as “Nice shot” and then, “Why didn’t you hit that last night?”

Neither candidate seems willing to talk about specifics in anything and I really want a platform. Joe Biden seems to be the only one of the four candidates that has expressed a plan for anything. How sad is that?

I don’t want to hear, Senators, what your party stands for or more buzz words. I want a specific platform and I’d like it now please! What will you accomplish in the first 100 days, first year or first term. If you don’t know, then I don’t know how I can vote for you.