The “this” in our story refers to the indictment of sitting Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, on charges that he’s attempting to and has engaged in “pay for play,” in efforts to, among other things, name the replacement for President-Elect Barack Obama, as Illinois’ junior United States Senator.

Having lived in Illinois for some 14+ years (in college and after graduation) prior to moving to New York, I’ve a special affinity to the Land of Lincoln, my adopted home state, and I’m none too shocked that influence peddling would snare yet another governor of that state.

Illinois has had three governors since 1970 jailed on corruption charges, and numerous other officials have been charged, jailed, paroled and some even re-jailed. In fact, the Chicago Tribune in 2006 presented a scorecard of Illinois officials so punished in recent history. In fact, Mr. Blagojevich has been the focus of Federal investigations since the start of his second term in 2006.

What separates these charges from the mundane brand of midwest corruption is the brazeness with which Mr. Blagojevich pursued personal enrichment. In expletive-laced phone conversations recorded by the Feds, “Blago” — and his wife — are heard excoriating editors at the Chicago Tribune who’ve been critical of the governor. (They began talk of impeachment proceedings in editorials as early as 2007.) The Blagojevich’s are also recorded saying things such as “hold up that fucking Cubs shit. . . fuck them,” in reference to delaying the sale of Wrigley Field and baseball’s Chicago Cubs — both owned by paper’s parent company The Tribune Company. (The sale of those two prized assets could net the company as much as $700 million. The Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this week.)

But the most damning allegation: that the Governor was seeking personal enrichment in return for appointing a favorable candidate to fill President-Elect Obama’s former seat as Senator. In the charging document, “Candidate 1″ is alleged to be Valerie Jarrett, chief advisor to Barack Obama. She removed her name from consideration in November, but Blagojevich is convinced that she is who Obama wants to take his former seat. When told that the Obama team will offer nothing of value except appreciation for appointing Jarret, Blago is quoted as saying “motherfucker [the President-elect].  Fuck him.  For nothing?  Fuck him.”

Blago wanted to be either Secretary of Health and Human Services, or Energy, in return for appointing Jarrett, but neither would be in his cards. He then suggested, among other things, that perhaps Obama and Warren Buffet would form a non-profit, the head of which would be Blagojevich, entitling him to a lucrative salary.

And when “Candidate 5″ — today acknowledged to be Jesse Jackson, Jr. — came up, Blago states he “will appoint [Senate Candidate 1] . . . but if they [the Obama team] feel like they can do this and not fucking give me anything . . . then I’ll fucking go [Senate Candidate 5],” and essentially extort him for upwards of half-million dollars in campaign contributions.

The charging document is quite a read, and one that any good-government fan will find about as distasteful as reading the Devil’s Bible.

The question I have to ask is: what in the hell was Rod Blagojevich thinking? Read the charging document: he sounds like a megalomanic. He makes outrageous demands, completely overestimates his worth, and sounds positively crazy.

So is it a case of absolute power corrupting absolutely, or stupidity? Or is it…syphillis?

As I understand it, the disease can cause people to go crazy! The insanity caused by late-stage syphilis was once one of the more common forms of dementia. Based on his recent acts, I can only surmise that Blagojevich’s particular brand of idiocy has to be caused by something beyond pedestrian ignorance. To be so brazen, so insistent, so ridiculously grandiose seems to me to go beyond the pale of anything seen in Illinois — or any other state for that matter.

Who knows, maybe the Gov pulled an Eliot Spitzer and had a lady of the night, but got a little bit more than he bargained for? I’m not making the allegation, but I need an explanation for the utter ridiculousness of his actions, which go way beyond what even hardened Illinoisans would consider “normal corruption.”

Regardless, I hope Mr. Blagojevich has nothing on his calendar for the next decade or so, because I think he’s going to be tied up for a while with jail.

Blagojevich = Epic Fail.

Fourteen years.

That’s a long time. Longer time than some murderers — well, manslaughterers, or homiciders, let’s not quibble over terminology — spend in prison, in fact. Why? Because mandatory minimum drug laws force judges to impose heavy, no-deal sentences.

Many judges — both liberal and conservative — agree that  mandatory minimum sentences are unfair, and that they hogtie judicial independence. They say the rules leave them unable to use their own discretion in evaluating individual cases. And for those to be sentenced, the penalties are truly scary: getting nabbed by the Feds with less than 10 Mary Jane plants results in a minimum of 5 years incarceration and a fine not to exceed $250,000.

That’s a quarter-mil fine, and 60 months in the slam for a few pounds of biomass. No wonder none other than Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court calls them “harsh and unjust.”

Even conservative luminaries — the “law and order” set — like the late William F. Buckley, one of the most conservative public figures in the United States, was staunchly against mandatory minimums. He saw inherent unfairness in placing the non-violent crime of drug possession or trafficking on a par with murder or homicide. (Of note, conservative GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT) lobbied for Forté’s release.) And of course, civil rights activists claim — with cause — that “mandatory minimums” are applied inordinately to African-Americans, and to a lesser extent, Latinos. Built-in discrimination.

Since 1986, when Congress enacted this inane bit of penal policy, the target audience, drug kingpins and large-scale importers have largely escaped its reach. While Congress intended mandatory sentences to target these “kingpins” and “managers” in drug distribution networks, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that only 5.5 percent of all federal crack cocaine defendants and 11 percent of federal drug defendants are high-level drug dealers.

Not a shining example of success. Even good baseball players hit the ball at least 1 out of 3 times.

So, whither the mandatory minimum sentence in the Obama Administration?

Well, simply, it’s time to do away with mandatory minimums. Period. Of course, political realities might make such a turnaround difficult or impossible. But, the truth is, these poor examples of penal policy simply don’t work. And, when one considers more than 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to now is due to drug convictions, one can see that we’ve simply started to warehouse people, many of who are fairly harmless.

Now, I’m not suggesting that violent offenders be coddled or set free. They need to do maximum time. But again, why should a person pushing pot be in jail for as long, or longer than, the guy who pleaded down to manslaughter after killing his sexual rival, for example?

Worse, we may be creating better criminals. Low-level heretofore non-violent offenders, such as drug mules or street dealers, often end up serving longer sentences because they have little or no information to provide the government, no route to “trade up.” So, they stay in longer, and learn more about the fine art of criminality. As a friend of mine who was incarcerated once told me, all he learned about committing crime he learned in the Maryland State Penitentiary. His original crime: possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

He was stupid. Not dangerous.

Drug and penal policy in this country has been an abject and complete failure. The incarceration of those non-violent traffickers or dealers does nothing to reduce the number of dealers, nor the supply of drugs. It’s bankrupting states, and taxing the federal Bureau of Prisons, burdening the system, and costing taxpayers billions in direct and indirect costs.

Not only is it high time to stop taking away judge’s judgement — they are, after all, paid to judge and impose reasonable sentence — but it’s past time to stop trying to penalize our way to people not getting high, or enabling such.

Today’s image comes from a shoot in August, featuring my friend and aspiring model, Barbara. The shoot came about simply as a test opportunity, and a chance to shoot on the beach, a rare blessing.

I simply asked Barb to give subtle sexiness, with a hint of relaxation, while thinking about sun-bathing. She did and it all came togther.

It was a very bright day, and I wanted nice bokeh, which dictated the aperture/shutter speed combination. The shot was captured in RAW, for ease of editing in post. The pic didn’t need much retouch: just some highlight recovery, and a minor tweak to the black-point and I was good to go.

The interesting part came in what I did in post.

I’m using a demo of NiK Software’s Color Efex Pro 3.0 and lemme tell you, it’s fantastic! It allows a very precise editing capability powered by what they call U-Points. They function kind of like masks in Photoshop, but with more specificity and the ability to easily apply multiple opacities of the editing effects.

In this case, I used the Bleach Bypass effiect and the Midnight effects with a few U-Points to selectively darken and desaturate the sky, while allowing Barbara to be nicely toned. It creates a surreal effect that emphasizes her, while muting the bright sky and reducing contrast. After that, all I did was apply some output sharpening and that was that.

I think I’m going to love this package! It’s a touch expensive right now, but perhaps as a Christmas gift to myself…

And boy, what a First Lady-to-be she is! Accomplished, brilliant, a family woman, and beautiful!

Truth is, the presentation of a certain type of confident, beautiful black womanhood can only be a good thing for us as a people. The media usually portray black women as either sexually over-confident trollops or materialistic, driven and angry golddigers. Such a (horribly wrong) depiction leaves little in the way of role models for the majority of young sistas; there is no middle ground. And for the brothers, seeing a beautiful woman, genuinely a part of, and enabling her husband’s success might change a few minds on the utility of the black woman.

But it’s not her immediate visage that has some talking. No, it’s Mrs. Obama’s, uh, assets, her last, her derriére, that has men (and women) looking at her say “damn!” The public eye has settled on Mrs. Obama badonk. A lovely backside it is, but I still can’t help but feel looking at the booty of the FLOTUS is…in bad form. Not that such a thing has stopped me (or anyone else for that matter), but is there any impropriety in noting that she is a quite beautiful, phenotypically African-American woman? I guess it’s all in how one does it. I think a tasteful noting of her statuesque presentation — such as this post — would be, and is OK, but a paen along the lines of “Baby Got Back” might be inappropriate.

Regardless, the blogosphere has been rife with discussion of Mrs. Obama’s ample tush, with everyone from Slate to random feminist blogs to Complex Magazine commenting on the pulchritude of the First-Lady-to-be, some in more dignified ways than others. I have to admit, it’ll be nice to not have a dowdy sista as First Lady, if only to show that the sistas can keep it sultry and business-classy simultaneously, rather than the either/or dichotomy that the modern media seems to think is the norm.

From a sophisticated brother’s point of view, it’s time the butt got some mainstream respect. Ever since slavery, it’s been both vilified and fetishized as the most recognizably “black” of all AfAm female features. Of course, black men have been connoisseurs for some time now, but now we can share our fetishes with the wider world audience. In fact, her presence in the White House may do more to increase the political activism of brothers than any of her husbands policies! I joke, I joke.

But in these way too serious times, you’ll have to excuse me if I have a little fun, and take a moment to applaud Mrs. Obama, and thank her mother, on behalf of the men of America, for what momma gave her.

I am in the process of migrating content to the new platform, so the ‘Hustle is down for a moment…

Please check back shortly, for the new look and new posts at The ‘Hustle!

Well, today the truth comes out.

It was a lie. A hoax.

The backstory: A woman named Ashley Todd, from College Station, TX, volunteering in Pittsburgh with the McCain campaign alleged that on Wednesday, she was attacked at a bank ATM while retrieving cash, in the East End section of the city. She was relieved of $60, and when the perpetrator saw her McCain/Palin bumper sticker on her car, the miscreant punched her, pushed her to the ground, and beat her about the head and shoulders.

Then, in a fit of inexplicable political awareness, the villain, described as a dark-skinned, black male, 6-foot-4 and about 220 pounds, produced a “dull butter-knife” and proceeded to carve an upper-case “B” — presumably for “Barack” in to the right cheek of the victim.

She refused medical treatment.

Police investigated, and a story was leaked to the scurillous Drudge Report website, after which a media frenzy resulted. But the lack of medical treatment and other problems plagued police. They were disturbed by inconsistencies in her story, administered a lie detector test, and requestioned her Thursday.

Then today, Pittsburgh Police released a statement saying the woman lied and fabricated the whole mess.

Aside from the obvious wrongs of lying to police, creating a crime from whole-cloth, and the use of a political dirty trick, Ms. Todd had to use as a foil the most race-incendiary target she could: a black man.

And people wonder why black folks are angry? Why couldn’t this woman have said her attacker was a white guy or even Latino?

With the considerable anxiety many caucasians feel about the potential
rise of a black president, this trollop’s clearly race-baiting
allegation was designed stoke the fires of racial animus through guilt
by association: black man criminal -> supporting black man
candidate -> white people will be victims.

She was looking to create her own little Willie Horton situation for Pennsylvania GOPers to hang their hat on.

Susan Smith, Charles Stuart, and others have found easy acceptance of their stories of black men victimizing defenseless white people by doing the unspeakable. Of course, the truth as we later learn, is usually far different.

Unfortunately for society, these claims are all-to-easy to make and still all-to-easily believed by a plurality of white folks.

I guess this situation just proves the addage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

For your ignorance, and slanderous speech against General Colin Powell, after his endorsement of the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, I hope you go straight to hell.

To state as you have, that Colin Powell should be “loyal” to the party that “gave” him his fourth star (the military rank of full General),  belittles his exemplary accomplishment, his complete loyalty and fealty to this nation, and attempts to paint him as unworthy of his EARNED position and some “pet” of the Right, the worst recipient of Affirmative Action.

The man of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Purple Heart, Legion of Merit, and Bronze Star. Former Secretary of State, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The architect of the winning strategy in the First Gulf War.

But he ought be loyal to a bankrupt party, because they “gave” him his positions of merit.

Please.

And then to allege that he’s simply giving in to race in his endorsement of candidate Obama, you suggest that Mr. Powell’s extensive leadership experience has been subverted, and subsumed by shared skin complexion. You, in essence, make the argument that Powell is nothing but a race pimp.

But you ignore — completely — the fact that high-profile conservatives have been abandoning Sen. John McCain in droves, people like William Buckley Jr., Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, and others. Yet, Powell is driven by race.

It’s not that McCain has run the single worst Presidential campaign in recent — or long-past — history, with a running mate that is utterly unqualified for the lofty office she seeks. It’s race.

You’re out of touch. And completely, startlingly stupid, not to mention just plain wrong.

Rush you’re a joke, a comedian, a hack, and a pusillanimous partisan. Only, you don’t know it. You still think you’re relevant. Well, I appreciate you exposing yourself for the jackass that you really are.

Rush, go to hell.

There is a special place there for you.

When Osama bin Laden’s al qaeda brought down the “towers of Babylon,” the World Trade Center, he explicitly stated that one of his goals was the crippling of the US economy. He was planning to attack the economy, and expose the “capitalist infidels” in America “God’s wrath.”

Attacking the economy with the goal to bring it to its knees.

Shortly thereafter, Reverend Jeremiah Wright made a comment — on September 16, 2001 — to the effect of:

“We have supported state terrorism against the
Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because
the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own
front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,”

Chicken’s coming home to roost.

As I look at 478,000 job losses this quarter alone, a deepening recession, and what experts are saying might be an “economic 9/11,” I am left to wonder if those two men, from opposite sides of right and wrong, one a violent killer and one a man of God, were coming to the same point from two different angles.

The twin wars in the Middle and Far East are draining the treasury. The government and Wall Street have conspired to drain individual American pockets and 401(k) accounts. Bringing our economy to its knees. Internal overly-partisan politics, driven by a right-wing, “50% + 1″ strategy formed by a presidential mental midget, and his turd blossom sidekick have Americans at each other’s throats. A nation with internal disunity, fostered by a “just win, baby” attitude, similar to strategies with which we seeded other nations, to cause internal strife. Chickens coming home to roost.

The more I look — dispassionately — at these concomitant issues, I’m starting to feel that the attacks of 9/11 were the catalyst that allowed American faux-machismo to do ourselves in. We’ve helped to have the chickens come home to roost.

If you didn’t know better, and viewed this dispassionately, one could
be forgiven if they thought that America was on a slide, seven years in the engineering.

With that said, are we watching the death of capitalism? Quite possibly. At least the way we know it. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh) certainly believes so. And I’m coming around to his point of view.

He gave an impassioned speech on the subject yesterday, with the upshot being that he sees the violent end of the industrial capitalism that the US has been known for, during the past century and a half, the replacement being “casino socialism.” In essence, hard, sometimes physically taxing, but certainly mentally taxing, work — what you and I do on a daily basis — is being done away with here, the new products of “labor” being the creation of debt, and “paper” as a product (á la credit-default obligations, and commercial paper — short-term credit), along with a gambler’s spirit replacing work ethic. And when those humongous bets go awry, the people, the hard working, people — through the government — are forced into involuntary transfers of wealth to the bettors, who’ve produced nothing, except for great fortunes for themselves and debt for others.

Someone said “you only have to make a fortune once.” Well it seems some have taken that maxim to heart, and made a fortune and nothing else of value, and you and I are left holding the bag.

As for the punch in the nose, it seems on worker did what so many of us feel like doing to bosses who f*** up royally.

Apparently, Richard Fuld, CEO of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers, was jogging in the corporate gym at their headquarters on Seventh Avenue here in New York when he was attacked an knocked out cold (!) by an irate staffer. While former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was testifying before the House
Oversight Committee Oct. 6, CNBC reported he had been punched in the
face at the Lehman Brothers gym after it was announced the firm was
going bankrupt.

No word on whether the staffer will be charged (probably not).

I don’t condone violence, but a well-considered (and -placed) punch in the face
certainly doesn’t seem out of place here. I think all the shareholders, and American people
that got royally screwed by this man, should get a shot at him.

Governor Sarah Palin was supposed to implode. She did not. I am surprised.

That said, she did get her clock cleaned but, she wasn’t utterly destroyed — which many were expecting Joe Biden to do. Now, don’t mistake my comments for praise for the governor. They are not; I’m simply noting that Palin survived the maelstrom.

As to the performance of both candidates, Senator Joe Biden (D-De.) was all he was billed up to be and not what people expected, at the same time. And both sides of that statement are net pluses for him and the top of the ticket, Barack Obama.

Biden was, as expected, the seasoned policy wonk and consumate Senator with bearing, as a result of years in the Well of the Senate, and cloakroom deal-making expertise. Pluses. He wasn’t condescending, obtuse, or rambling; nor did he put his foot in his mouth, not once that I could discern. Those are takeaways from his normal persona. Minuses. But, they were pluses in a paradoxical sense. Confusing, I know.

And he was also human, visibly choking up when discussing the near-death experience of his son, after the horrible car accident that killed his wife and daughter some 30 years ago. A huge plus for him, personally.

Palin was…well, she was there. She didn’t fumble too much, and for the most part she gave nothing new to the public. You saw a woman who was obvious coached, and forced to go the rote memorization route with her responses. You saw a woman whose folksy demeanor is at once disarming and off-putting, attacking with a smile, while speaking with a voice sounding like a sad imitation of Frances McDormand’s character Marge Gunderson in Fargo, but without the impressive toughness and intelligence.

Aside blatantly ignoring several questions Gwen Ifill posited, and committing a few verbal gaffes — she misnamed the commanding general in Afghanistan, calling him General McClelland (he’s actually General David McKiernan), she was mistaken about the troop levels in Iraq being below pre-surge levels (they are still above pre-surge levels), and she said the surge strategy in Iraq should be applied in Afghanistan (General McKiernan says not) — she did better than expected.

Oh, except for her comment that the constitutional powers of the Vice President should be increased. That was a huge mistake. Huge.

After 8 years of Dick Cheney’s secretive management of both the war on terror and the energy un-policy of the United States, and his ridiculous assertion that his office is actually part of the legislative branch — rather than its righful place in the executive — the last thing we need is another Veep that thinks their power reaches beyond the billet given them by the president.

I won’t blast Mrs. Palin here, there will be plenty of time for that in the days to come. But I will say that she is a good memorizer, if not very solid on her knowledge about the weighty issues of the day.

At the end of the day, if you’re a partisan, you left feeling better about your guy’s VP choice, on both sides. If you’re an independent or undecided, you probably leaned left to Biden. And all of us — the left and right alike — are happy that Mrs. Palin didn’t embarass the nation collectively with a laughably bad performance.