Monday, April 04, 2005

ROD BLAGOJEVICH FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008!

Rod WHO? You may well ask...

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is becoming someone to watch in the Democratic party. This Washington Post article is worth a read. It talks about how he believes that if the feds won't allow us to have medicines manufactured in Canada or England, states ought to go ahead and make those medicines available.

"People across Illinois, and across our country, deserve access to safe and lower cost prescription drugs," he says.

More on his involvement in the prescription drugs issue at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6376-2004Aug16.html

On January 21, 2005, Illinois became the 14th state with a law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. Blagojevich signed a bill that adds "sexual orientation" to an existing law that protects people from bias based on race, religion and other traits. It bans discrimination in areas including jobs, housing and credit.

"What we're doing today is older than Scripture: Love thy neighbor," Blagojevich said to a cheering group of about 150 gay rights supporters and community leaders.

The rest of this article is at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/01/21/national1915EST0671.DTL

Blagojevich also recently issued an order to the pharmacists of Illinois, meant to insure that they are prescribing drugs to people as requested. Some pharmacists in recent times are refusing to dispense birth-control and other medicines based on their religious beliefs. Blagojevich is basically telling them not to preach, but to do their jobs and fill the prescriptions!

“Five weeks ago, two women called in prescriptions to their local pharmacy in the South Loop to purchase contraceptives. The law gives them every right to do that. Each woman had a prescription from her doctor. Both women only sought to buy contraceptives. And yet both were denied. Why? Because the pharmacist refused to fill the prescription. Unfortunately, this story is not unique to Chicago or to Illinois. Cases like this have been popping up all over the country. It’s happened in Wisconsin, Texas, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, California, and in other states around the country. Now I don’t believe this is a coincidence. I have a sneaking suspicion that in all likelihood, this is part of a concerted effort to deny women access to birth control. Those involved in this effort may be getting away with this in other states, but here in Illinois, we are not going to let that happen,” said Gov. Blagojevich.

From later in the article: “Today – in the 21st Century – our actions are nothing more than protecting a woman’s right to have the same access to health care as men do. Nothing more. Nothing less,” said Gov. Blagojevich.

Here is a link to the whole article:
http://www.illinois.gov/PressReleases/ShowPressRelease.cfm?SubjectID=3&RecNum=3805

His website lists issues with which he is currently involved. Seems to me like this guy might have a pretty bright future in the Democratic party! Check him out at:
http://www.illinois.gov/gov/

The only thing I wouldn't like about him being a presidential candidate is that his last name might be too difficult for people to pronounce, and with our national 5-second attention span, people might tend to dismiss him if they become flummoxed with the last name. I don't even know how to say it (and spelling it is difficult too!) Is it pronounced Blah-go-YAY-vitch? Someone help me out here!

Anyway, how about a Blagojevich-Obama ticket in '08?

1 Comments:

Blogger Sheryl said...

I still like the idea of Russ Feingold for President, but this guy sounds good too.

He needs a few extra syllables in his name. Perhaps a nick name. Then you could revise that John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt melody into a campaign song. Like: Rod "Tough Guy" Blago-je-evich. That is his name. Whenever he's about. The people always shout: Rod "Tough Guy" Blago-je-evich!Da da da da da.

Of course, that only works if you know the original song, and even then it probably doesn't work that well. Hahahaha.

1:17 AM  

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