This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Our house is JUST below the 400′ contour line. Probably at around 390′.
City of Bellevue prepares for snowy weekend
(Joshua Hicks, Bellevue Reporter, 10 Dec 2008)
Weather forecasters this week predicted snowfall in Bellevue for Friday and Saturday.
Icy roads are also likely throughout the weekend as rain and melted snow could freeze when temperatures dip into the 20s, as expected on Saturday and Sunday night.
City utilities crews say they are be prepared to work around the clock if necessary to clear roads.
Snow is most common in Bellevue south of I-90, where elevations reach as high as 1,500 feet in some parts. Most neighborhoods in the city are below 500 feet.
Forecasters projected snowfall on Friday night at 400 feet, with an 80- to 90-percent chance of precipitation.
This will be the first time this season. Woo!
 Sam and Ivan talk about:
- Detroit Bailouts
- Financial Bailouts
- Official Recession
- Obama’s Blackberry
- Stimulus
- Minnesota
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We didn’t record the podcast until Monday (UTC) this week. I didn’t get a chance to edit it and put it out last night. I was going to do it this morning before work. But of course I’ve been paying attention to this Blagojevich stuff instead. So… I think it probably won’t be out until tomorrow. Apologies to anybody who is anxiously awaiting it. :-)
This is pretty funny…
ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker
his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”
…
Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.”
I just finished reading the whole thing. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Blogojevich viewed “Senate Candidate 1” as Obama’s desired replacement for himself, and kept trying to suggest “deals” in exchange for that, but the transition staff essentially offered “only their appreciation” and was not responsive to any of the overtures. So Blagojevich and company started getting more and more upset, and throwing out other candidates they would appoint instead to piss off Obama… and of course also evaluating each of those alternate candidates by how much personal benefit they could bring to the Blagojevich family… and meanwhile still trying to construct deals on Senate Candidate 1 that would be less obvious andless directly traceable back to Obama. And of course plans to appoint himself to the seat if none of that worked out.
At least that is what it looks like. The Complaint says that what is included is only a small subset of what was recorded, and what is included does not seem to include any conversations with the transition team, only with Blagojevich and his advisors discussion options and what they wanted in exchange for what. So there might still be more not public.
But at least initially, it seems like the Obama team was doing the right thing and basically ignoring this asshole.
Anyway, the press conference on this is about to start…
[Edited 17:21 UTC to add the second quote]
From the actual complaint (pdf):
Defendants ROD BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS, together with
others, attempted to use ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s authority to appoint a United States Senator
for the purpose of obtaining personal benefits for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, including, among
other things, appointment as Secretary of Health & Human Services in the President-elect’s
administration…
(via The Corner)
Most of the coverage I’ve seen so far has concentrated on the “selling the seat” bit, suggesting he would give the spot to someone who “contributed” the most or some such. But there also seems to be a bit here with him looking for favors or appointments from Obama. We’ll see soon here who, if anybody, within the Obama transition is caught on tape here too and what they said.
This could get interesting…
The complaint is 76 pages long. I’d better get reading… well, perhaps skimming.
What wonderful fun news to wake up to. The Governor of Illinois arrested for essentially trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. Ha! Wonderful.
The logistics thing I asked the other day that is.
I did have a bunch of references I found, but I won’t properly footnote this, just give the results. It just took 15 or 20 minutes of Googling that I didn’t have time for when I posted the original question.
The way it usually works in presidential transitions is this:
- The president-elect announces his intention to nominate various people to the cabinet once he is inaugurated.
- The new senate is sworn in early in January.
- The appropriate committees of the new senate hold hearings on the prospective nominees, even though there are no actual nominees yet, just intended nominees.
- The committees vote on the prospective nominees to give their recommendations to the full Senate.
- The President is inaugurated.
- Usually within the first hour or two of the presidency, the new president officially makes the nominations.
- The Senate convenes for a special session, usually once again just an hour or two later, for the final vote on the nominees… often a single voice vote to approve all nominees at once rather than full individual votes on each nominee.
- The new cabinet officers are sworn in, usually also within an hour or two.
And that be that. Pretty much what I expected. I find it an interesting cart before the horse thing to hold the confirmation hearings before the actual formal nomination, but given the practical consideration of needing to let the new cabinet be seated as quickly as possible after the new administration begins, it makes sense. But it is still odd.
There are even more odd things that can happen in edge conditions during the transitional period. For instance, the line of succession gets somewhat odd if “bad things” happen during the time period where parts of the new administration has taken office, but not all of it, because while it is traditional for the previous cabinet to resign and be replaced by the new cabinet, the actual timing of such resignations can vary. Do folks resign effective at noon on Inauguration day? Effective at the moment the new President is sworn in? Effective when their successor is sworn in? Depending on exactly how that is done, during Inauguration day itself, there can be times where the line of succession still includes members of the old administration as well as the new. (There is also oddness due to the fact that the Vice President is sworn in first in the case something happens to the outgoing president after the new VP is sworn in but before the new President is.)
Now, if anything happened that actually caused any of the above to matter, I’m guessing there would be much confusion, but the end result would very quickly be made to match what you would expect to have happened if the new administration had already fully taken their place… and the detailed timelines of when various things are supposed to happen would be ignored, but…
Obama can’t actually appoint people to positions right now because he isn’t President yet, right? He is essentially announcing his intention to do so and then presumably on the afternoon of inauguration day he would sign a whole bunch of papers officially doing the nominating, right?
But I’ve also heard there will be confirmation hearings and such prior to January 20th. Not sure about the actual final votes on the nominations. How does that officially work if Obama does not yet actually have the power to nominate people to positions and won’t until he is inaugurated?
I realize that practically it needs to be arranged in such a way that the new cabinet can start working as soon as the new administration takes office.
But does anybody know the technicalities of exactly how they work this?
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