In reality, the vote was on whether or not future board members would receive the raise. The first group eligible would be those village trustees elected in the Spring of 2009.
The mistake was all mine and I sincerely apologize. (And I did also apologize to her in person.)
It’s a pretty embarrassing boo-boo given this blog is intended mainly to counter right-wing conservatives’ errors, doncha think?
In other, slightly related news, she also mentioned that there was recently a “coffee” in Elk Grove and of the residents that came to talk with her and others the pay raise vote was not even an issue. Glad to hear it.
(Again, full disclosure, I’ve known her opponent Mark Walker for a number years and am supporting him in this race.)
Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
He was reluctant to support it until his campaign-manager-who-is-also-a-lobbyist, his former staffers, and a six-figure bundler were hired?
And, Aloha Friday! One of those contributions came from as far away as Hawai’i.
Why are we doing this? To honor the legacy and generosity of Mr. Pat Botterman whose alternately described with phrases like hard-working, integrity of the highest order, patriot to his core, a class act, bulldogged and tough-minded … or, if you were not in his good graces … Darth Vader, jerk, major league @#%&!*, and more such well-earned epithets from all the “right” people.
Steering [Alderman Bernie] Stone to victory was Mike Noonan, who emerged as one of the premiere local political consultants for Regular Democrats by piloting Lisa Madigan’s first campaign for attorney general.
Directing Waguespack’s historic upset of Ald. Ted Matlak was Patrick Botterman, who has made his mark in Illinois politics by running the campaigns of independent-minded candidates willing to take on the Democratic establishment.
In essence, Noonan is Mr. Inside in Cook County Democratic circles while Botterman is Mr. Outside.
What they share is a nuts-and bolts knowledge of winning elections, knowledge that each gained while working in the trenches.
(h/t YDD at Illinoize, I couldn’t find that Brown column online at the Sun-Times site anymore)
Ms. Marin had asked Mr. Proft and Chicago legal eagle and Daily Kos contributor Georgia Logothetis about the effect of the blogosphere in relation to traditional media. Ms. Logothetis stated that the left blogosphere had acted as a fact-checking foiling the traditional media’s meme that the Democratic presidential race was somehow close when, in fact, it was mathematically near impossible for Sen. Clinton to overtake Sen. Obama’s pledged delegate count.
Here’s Mr. Proft’s response to the notion that the blogosphere was playing the part of fact-checker to the traditional media’s meme that the Dem primary season was ‘a close race’:
I mean Barack Obama? Until last night, he hadn’t won a primary in about three months. Err, yeah. Since… since Super Tuesday.
He was trying to say that the media got it right because Clinton was indeed somehow “close”… But perhaps Mr. Proft needs his own fact checker.
(You want to get uber-technical and point out that Mr. Proft said only that Obama hadn’t won a “primary”? Fine. It’s still a a fallacy since among those 13 states he won there were several primaries, including one right next door in Wisconsin a full two weeks after Super Tuesday.)
Either the man was lying or he’s a complete dunce.
Watch Mr. Proft for yourself:
Why did well-respected Chicago telejournalist Carol Marin not call him out?
Surely she knew about the primaries and caucuses in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state, the US Virgin Islands, Maine, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi…
And will Mr. Proft be asked back to Chicago Tonight … or any other self-respecting media outlet for that matter?
Only time will tell.
But one thing is for certain. No matter how poetic Mr. Proft’s spin and fibs, nobody’s “fearful” of such dim-wittedness.
In 10 days, the Wheeling and Palatine Township Democrats will be hosting a joint fundraiser (PDF) to help cover costs for keeping the only Democratic office in the northwest suburbs up and running.
Over the next 10 days, leading up to the brunch fundraiser, I’ll be asking folks to help out the Wheeling Dems with a wee bit of a virtual fundraiser. Keeping that Dem office open as an organizing base is important in the purpling, but still red, Chicago northwest suburbs … especially in this election year. It’s a true application of the DNC’s 50 state strategy to cover all the bases.
For those unfamiliar, Pat Botterman was a good friend to many, many people — Republican, Dem and apolitical alike. He was a pit bull on the campaign trail, burning the midnight oil and applying plenty of elbow grease for the candidates he worked for. He was also a mentor and networker par excellence, as his “alumni club” of former interns and volunteers, now campaign managers and field directors spread from coast to coast, will attest.
His most recent campaign was one with which the “netroots” are quite familiar — managing the Mark Pera for Congress primary campaign. Before that, he also helped elect Democratic State Senator Dan Kotowski to a northwest suburban seat that had been held by Republicans for nearly a century and a half. Pat knew both defeat and victory (more often defeat given his penchant for the underdog) and as one of his friends noted after his passing, he was even-keeled in both.
Above all, he was a patriot dedicated to improving his (and our) country, state and communities and he did it with more integrity in his pinky than some in politics have in their whole selves.
His funeral and wake featured a line out the door of literally hundreds of friends and family… pols, activists and volunteers… first responders, GIs and work-a-day union guys and gals… and was decorated with floral arrangements from the likes of “Obama for America” and more.
But now, two months on, the guy who more often than not paid the bills for the local party out of his own pocket is gone — looking on from above, probably embarrassed as all get out that people are making such a fuss.
The staunchly anti-reality Ms. Schlafly recently whined about the folks who are panning Ben Stein’s goofy “Expelled.” While the movie is a work of fiction … wait, it’s not supposed to be fiction? … well, then.
Perhaps Ms. Schlafly will share her dubious distinction of dunceness with Mr. Stein.
And, of course, both Schlafly and Stein present perfect illustrations of self-fulfilling martyrdom: they publicly promote easily refuted garbage and then complain when regular folks point out that their bunk is, in fact, easily refuted garbage.
Whatever floats your boat, eh? Thank goodness for the 1st Amendment which allows for such amusing comedy.
I’ve been meaning to put up some info local to the northwest suburbs but haven’t had the chance to do so til now. So, here are eight points about local goings-on over the past few weeks.
Newt Gingrich has some advice for worried, “shellshocked” Republican incumbents in Congress:
In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face “real disaster” on Election Day unless they move immediately to “chart a bold course of real reform” for the country.
Because, in all honesty, just because he’s calling his ideas ’something brand new’, Sen. McCain’s only offering 4 more years of the same (or 100 years, depending on who you ask). …Except for the ribs. The bbq ribs are new.
“This subsidized (ethanol) program - paid for by taxpayer dollars - has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world,” McCain said in a statement.
Oh really? Unfortunately for the apparently confused Senator, reality is quite different than the cons’ spin. Also from that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article:
…not enough attention was being placed on the role that rising crude oil prices - which surged to $120 a barrel Monday - have played in driving up the cost of food.
“It’s the wrong medicine for the problem,” Wisconsin Agriculture Secretary Rod Nilsestuen said. “If we hadn’t had the significant increase in renewable fuels that we’ve seen in the last five years, we would have higher gas prices today, not lower ones.”
Here are the facts. In the last five years, despite the nearly threefold growth of the corn ethanol industry (or actually because of it), the U.S. corn crop grew by 35 percent, the production of distillers grain (a high-value animal feed made from the protein saved from the corn used for ethanol) quadrupled and the net corn food and feed product of the U.S. increased 26 percent.
Contrary to claims that farmers have cut other crops to grow more corn, U.S. soybean plantings this year are expected to be up 18 percent and wheat plantings up 6 percent. U.S. farm exports are up 23 percent. [...]
The increased demand for food from the hundreds of millions of people in China and India rising out of poverty and moving to a more calorie-rich diet affects the price of food the most. Second is the price of [petroleum-based] fuel.
Higher fuel prices increase the cost of production, transport, wages and packaging, the main cost of retail food. For example, a $3 box of cornflakes contains 15 ounces of corn that cost 8 cents when bought from the farmer. So, farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices. But the effect of oil price increases can be huge.
So, given those facts, what should Sen. McCain really be worried about? The current president’s Saudi “uncles”.
Zubrin and Luft again:
According to Merrill Lynch analysts, without biofuel programs, the price of oil would be about $13 a barrel higher than it now is. A $13 savings for each barrel could save the U.S. $65 billion in foreign oil payments.
So, rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down the oil cartel. (emphasis added)
Should we be looking at other alternative fuels beside corn-based ethanol? Absolutely. The whole point to a “free” market is competition.
Give petroleum competition through ethanol, methanol, electric, “100mpg biodiesel“, etc.
Much of that will require a reluctant Detroit (and Japan, Germany, Korea, etc.) to lay out an extra $100 or so to upgrade modern vehicle to meet Flexfuel standards. But $100 per vehicle in exchange for saving $65 billion-with-a-B in oil payments to foreign countries? That’s a bargain.
The following is a press release from the Pete Gutzmer for State Senate campaign. Pete is a firefighter having a second go against Matt Murphy in Illinois 27th Senate district (northwest suburbs).
The Supreme Court recently ruled (in a split decision) that the state of Indiana can require voters to present photo identification in order to cast a ballot.
The problem with such a stipulation is that it in fact present a barrier, preventing citizens from voting simply because they do not have a picture id.
Most everyone has to have a photo ID for any travel on planes with Homeland Security as it is. They either drive or are able to get an ID at the Secretary of State’s office for less than $10 bucks. You have to have a photo id in many stores now to use a credit card. I’m not sure why voting should be less scrutized.
Actually, no. As this group of now-disenfranchised nuns illustrates, not everyone needs or wants a photo id. And as for the $10 cost, again, not everyone can spare even $10. Indeed, the 24th Amendment declares it illegal to deny the right to vote to persons who are unable to pay a poll tax. That cost of the government-issued photo id amounts to a poll tax by another name. Ms. Eaton would apparently wish that we also disenfranchise the poor. Finally, buying material goods with a credit card is a privilege, not a right enshrined throughout various Sections and Amendments in our Constitution. (Ms. Eaton, of course, is on record as opposing expansion of laws related to firearm owner ID cards … for apparently opposite reasons.)
Then again, maybe the nuns were secretly dead people or illegal immigrants trying to boost vote fraud numbers seeing as how vote fraud was already exceedingly rare even before the recent SCOTUS split decision.
These Indiana rules amount to little more than an intentional disenfranchisement of American citizens who have the legal right to vote, except for wont of a picture — and conservatives applaud such disenfranchisement.
WARNING: Severe political incorrectness approaching. Avert your eyes.
I think it’s time progressives in Illinois started gathering around a meta-message, as we look to the fall when Republicans are going to try to foist another wolf in sheep’s clothing on us. IMHO the most effective meme is the most obvious - McCain is the Manchurian Candidate. I mean, seriously, what has HAPPENED to the guy?
Forty years ago John McCain, the admiral’s son, did an incredibly brave and self-sacrificing thing. Any Democrat who says otherwise is simply following KKKarl Rove’s playbook and smearing a legitimate hero.
Key words, “forty years ago.” So…what happened to “John McCain” in the interim? He’s gone a little nuts is what the evidence suggests, or at least has lost all moral moorings in pursuit of the White House.
2000 - no way John McCain would kiss the religious far right’s…ring to get votes. That was Bush territory and he was Mr. Straight Talk. Well, KKKarl Rove talked straight, straight into the robo-call machine, push-polling a question about McCain and interracial children and McCain was DOA in South Carolina and that was that.
2007 - McCain speaks at Bob Jones University, or maybe it was Liberty (Falwell) U. Who cares. Either way - what happened to John McCain?
HOW many fights - actual, physical fistfights - has Sen. McCain gotten into with his colleagues in the Capitol? How many do we know about and how many are folks not talking about? A bit unhinged?
What about campaign finance, both the letter and the spirit of the law? Mr. “McCain-Feingold” himself - which gives him WAY more cred with some on the left than is deserved - has now completely flouted the very laws and mechanisms about Federal campaign financing that he himself helped put in place. What happened to John McCain? The “John McCain” that has had some Dems thinking of voting for him over HillBilly (if they’re the nominee) is nowhere to be found these days.
It is completely not fair, from one standpoint, to bring up the whole age thing, if one is Barack Obama. I, however, am not Barack Obama so I’ll say it - could it be that the cumulative effects of life-altering torture forty years ago have accelerated a general decline in both the physical and mental capacities of the senior Senator from Arizona such that he just is physically, dispositionally and yes mentally not up to the job?
“Yes, he’s old, so what?’ I’ll tell you what - he’s not getting any younger. Duh. He would START in his early 70s and go down from there.
Look, we depend upon people in their 60s, 70s and much older, every day, to do important work, and we would be lost as a society, and certainly less rich for it, if age were a barrier to meaningful participation in the life of the body politic, not to mention our world as a whole. Think of the critical importance of senior, experienced doctors, professors, writers - and certainly activists. Crucial and invaluable and, with the aging of the Boomer generation, much more of a part of daily life in years to come.
But being President of the United States is a job that accelerates the aging of even the healthiest people and with what the North Vietnamese did to him forty years ago, Sen. McCain isn’t ahead of the curve.
Senator Obama on the other hand, has been knocked from the beginning, with the idea that a “young man” of 46 (types the guy who feels plenty old at 47) is too unseasoned for the job. He is young…er, but he will get older and better, not older and worse. He will get stronger and more experienced, more capable, growing in the job, rather than…declining. It is completely not fair. If life were fair, it would have been McCain who lost to Al Gore in 2000 rather than Bush. But it is what it is.
So what indeed happened to “John McCain”? The brand got stale. We need to point that out to folks.
Needless to say, the black community’s first warning should have been after Barack Obama professed his Christian values, and then advocated for gay rights…
Advocating for equal rights is a Christian value, Dr. Wallace. Simple as that.
Why would Dr. Wallace take Christ’s own teachings out of Christianity? Perhaps he ought to change his name to Peter, since he is denying Christ with his self-interested partisan ranting.
You don’t think Dr. Wallace’s was pure, unadulturated self-interest? His own words belie his aims:
Thus we ask, that all our conservative friends support our [Freedom's Journal] magazine. To purchase a subscription click here. To advertise your business, and support our efforts click here.
Who publishes Freedom’s Journal (not the historical 1800s version but the modern conservative version which usurped that proud publication’s name)?
A fellow who had previously supported Sen. Joe Biden’s primary campaign asked Sen. John McCain during one of his townhall events a question that many people concerned about McCain’s well-known anger management issues have:
“This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I’ve been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a cunt?”
Harsh language, but the reality is this questioner was asking Sen. McCain whether or not the reports of that infamous domestic tirade are true (the c-word was precipitated by his wife playfully mussing his hair a bit in front of some other people, who verified that he said it).
McCain’s obfuscation?
“Now, now. You don’t want to …Um, you know, that’s the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don’t …. There’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language. So I’ll move on to the next questioner in the back.”
The source of the c-bomb report? A book called The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which includes this paragraph:
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
(emphasis added)
Of course, this townhall question gets to the heart of McCain’s claims that he’s a “straight” talker, “one of the guys” and, most importantly, “prepared and experienced”…
First, he never answered the question. If the fact-checked report was somehow untrue (and the people who verified that he did indeed drop the c-bomb on his wife were for some reason fibbing) he could have just said so and put it to rest. He could have even “condemned” that four-letter-word since “condemnation” is the bar he seems to prefer for rhetoric he doesn’t like. And, we’ve already learned that once McCain “condemns” something it magically disappears down the memory hole with all those rib baskets and wetnaps simply by virtue of the fact that he is the McCain and the press thinks he talks straight.
So much for that “straight” talk.
Second, Sen. McCain is hardly “one of the guys” given that he dumped his first wife, a former model who had faithfully and anxiously waited for him while he was being held prisoner, because she was in a car accident and got chubby. In exchange, the Navy airman cum politician married a beautiful millionaire heiress. Her wealth has supplied McCain with handfuls of homes (including the site of his ribfest for the lackey media near the resort town of Sedona) and a private jet…. about as elitist as they get.
And, unfortunately, she was the target of McCain’s tirade in which he reportedly used the c-word, a word of which he now says, “There’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language.”
I agree.
Third, is he truly prepared to keep his renowned anger in check?
Did he, as reports verify, or did he not use such disrespectful language to verbally abuse his wife, a spouse who has provided him with so much material wealth in life, simply because she was being playful with her own husband?
And if he did, why did he feel a need to use such a harsh, abusive word and then duck a simple question about it?
Is ignoring a voter asking McCain to simply deny or verify-and-explain more of that same “poor judgment”?
Is insulting his doting wife by calling her a “trollop” and a “c***” also a sign of anger issues and yet more “poor judgment”?
Finally, another of the McC-word apologists used the headline “Stay Classy Dems” to whine about the guy who quoted McCain… seeing as how the questioner was asking about what McCain said, shouldn’t that read “Stay Classy McC-word”? Nice spin, but the question wasn’t what was offensive. What Mr. McCain called Mrs. McCain in that hot-headed haranguing is what is offensive.
PS conserv-o-partisans: Even former Biden supporters who are now supporting Obama are Americans, as are all the women McCain might call “trollop” or “c-dash-dash-dash” and, if McCain were elected president, he’d be their president too. Go figure.
Here’s video from that townhall with Sen. McCain refusing to either deny the report or condemn the word…
