Rod Blagojevich was stunned at conviction?

Dave Ross Commentary – Listen: Rod Blagojevich was stunned at conviction?

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich couldn’t believe it:

“I frankly am stunned,” said Blagojevich after his conviction.

Stunned that a jury would convict him of trying to sell Barack Obama’s old senate seat.

Really? Stunned? After the FBI taped you saying stuff like this?

“I told my nephew Alex, he just turned 26 today, I said, ‘Alex,’ I called him for his birthday, ‘It’s too bad you’re not 4 years older, because I could have given you a US Senate seat for your birthday. I’ve got this thing and its golden, and I’m just not giving it up for nothing.

And that’s the sanitized version.

Blagojevich’s lawyers said this was merely brainstorming. Thinking out loud:

“Now listen to me, you don’t know what’s going on here, so you’ve got to be careful, don’t be talking too much. It’s a repugnant idea, but I need to leverage that Jesse Jr. with these national people to get the deal for Lisa.”

You know, there’s way too much brainstorming going on in America. Every politician, every mobster, every terrorist ever caught on tape: we were just BRAINSTORMING, putting things up on the whiteboard, no bad ideas…

But there ARE bad ideas, barnstormers. Especially when you’re in a position to DO the thing you’re brainstorming about, which Blogojevich was, then you talk about it on the phone.

The best advice Blagojevich ever got was from Sinbad on celebrity apprentice:

“Hang up the phone. Rod, Rod, Hang up the phone man.”

If only he’d done something where the stakes were REALLY big — like a president brainstorming about a war … see, THAT would have been a policy discussion, and the FBI wouldn’t have touched him.

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