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We get letters… One recent email to the blog* noted the use of the word “jerk” in this post in which I describe one such person fitting the bill.
Jerk = Slang. a contemptibly naive, fatuous, foolish, or inconsequential person.
Thanks for emailing, Mr. McJerky, ye Hater of New Mommies (others will have to read that earlier post to get the reference). 
Be sure to keep us posted on your latest prurient activities in Boystown and elsewhere.
* Fair warning, I updated the “About” page to reflect that future emails may be reprinted here on the blog and elsewhere. I’ll spare you the embarrassment this time.
Now back to your regular scheduled websurfing.
The Peoria Journal-Star reports today that wind-based electrical generation at schools statewide is getting a boost from Springfield; Rep. Don Moffitt (R-Gilson) to be precise.
While I’m not thrilled with the notion that some of this state assistance is coming in the form of monetary grants, it’s a great step forward toward more rational energy-production policies in this state. (Part of the other side to this Springfield coin is that school will be able to pool their windfarming resources together — a great idea.)
Why am I not all that enthused about the grants? Don’t get me wrong, everyone likes a little windfall now and then (bad pun intended), but the state’s coffers aren’t exactly overflowing and simply doling out batches of money is not sustainable in the longer-term — greenbacks need to flow back into the state’s accounts somewhere along the line.
My preference would be to see the state develop a no- or even low-interest loan program. Windmill implementation is ideally suited to loan packages because as excess current is generated it can be sold to the power utilities. This revenue stream can help pay off the loan’s P+I.
John Ruberry today links to a Des Moines Register article describing Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s nascent countrywide health insurance plans. In that story, the Register notes that Sen. Obama’s strategy for dealing with America’s healthcare crisis will require an investment of about $50 billion and, using what he must think is “logic”, Mr. Ruberry concludes that “A vote for Obama is a vote for higher taxes” … (go figure).
To pay for it, Sen. Obama proposes restoring the top two income tax brackets back to Clinton Administration rates. Chances are very good that no one reading this blog, nor Mr. Ruberry’s, would be affected by such a move. Moreover, poll after poll has clearly indicated that Americans realize this sort of investment — healthcare — is worthy of our tax monies.
Oddly enough, the never-ending war in Iraq that Mr. Ruberry and other partisan conservatives still support has cost Mr. Ruberry’s hometown of Morton Grove, IL alone well over $57.4 million as of 3:30pm Central today. Moreover, the $430.2 billion-with-a-B national toll for the conservatives’ war in Iraq has cost nearly 9x that of Sen. Obama’s positive proposal to date. According to CostOfWar.com, that amount could’ve covered more than a quarter billion-with-a-B kids’ healthcare for a whole year.
Perhaps Mr. Ruberry is so concerned about Sen. Obama’s lofty goals because he knows that Pres. Bush and the now-defeated rubber-stamp Republican Congreses never actually bothered to figure out how to pay for their Iraq War. Instead, Mr. Ruberry’s Republicans have been spending our kids’ money by putting these combat costs on the nation’s virtual credit card (courtesy of gargantuan loans from Communist China and terrorist-funding Saudi Arabia).
This war is costing our country roughly $100 billion dollars a year (plus the accumulating interest) and Sen. Obama’s plan is only proposed at about half that amount (and with a reasonable, unencumbering means of paying for it). Why is it that Mr. Ruberry is all too happy spending twice the money to wage a horrifically destructive zero-sum quagmire of a war but goes all chicken little with regards to Sen. Obama’s reasonable health ideas?
What sort of inverted, bizarro universe is Mr. Ruberry living in where war is a good investment but health insurance is not?
(Note that according to what passes for Mr. Ruberry’s “logic” a vote for any one of the 11 Republican candidates is also a vote for higher taxes … either that or a default on the Repulicans’ whopping debts to various international adversaries.)
Folks over at Daily Kos are moving toward meta mode in order to figure out just what the recent debate over the Iraq War supplemental funding bill means. Posts are analyzing recent history from the passage of the supplemental with timelines and its veto to the president’s intransigence during the next step so-called negotiations (really just the White House saying my-way-or-the-highway) and the resultant passage of a 3-month supplemental with weak pass-the-buck-to-the-Iraqis (and meaninglessly fluid) benchmarks.
In a DailyKos post called “What Now? A Poll“, DKos front-pager Meteor Blades tries to divine where the left-leaning ‘netroots’ are in terms of reaction to the results of the war debate. With nearly 3400 votes as of 1pm Central, a general consensus was forming around bottom line hat the Dem base is ticked off — ranging from perturbed to “furious”.
In “Finding the Leverage” Devilstower, another front-pager, offers a few thoughts on the electoral implications, and what can be done between now and the election, are discussed. DT quotes bits of a NY Times article which covered reactions in Congressman Mark Kirk’s (R-IL 10th) backyard and revealed that Republican voters are inclined to walk away from the party. (Rep. Kirk was the leader of the Republican cadre that went to visit Pres. Bush for a “frank” discussion about Iraq and, apparently more importantly for those Congressmen, their 2008 election propects in relation to the Republicans’ war).
Poster Thereisnospoon backs up the NY Times’ findings in telling his allegory of a recent visit to Iowa with his diary called “GOP in Trouble: My Personal Iowa Experience“. In it, he relates a conversation he had with a few Hawkeyes while sitting at a diner’s bar. Each of the Iowans has grown more and more soured on the conservatives’ war in Iraq and are increasingly willing to forego all other vote factors in order to have their say on the matter of Iraq.
Now, Devilstower advocates a ’surge’ of a different sort to help the Congressional Democrats find the leverage they need against the President — dramatically increasing the size of war protests as a means of illustrating how broad-ranging the ire against Pres. Bush’s war really is. DT theorizes that reports of dramatically large war protests will goad Congressional Dems and, more importantly, the slow-as-molasses number of Republicans moving toward the Dems’ positions into pressing harder against our stubborn president.
Given the media track record on such events, I’m doubtful such a plan would have the impact DT expects. Moreover, it may lead those former Republican-leaners-now-indies who are slowly calcifying in their angst over the Republicans’ war to look at a black and white newspaper report about ‘X thousands of war protesters’ and think “hippies and ne’er-do-wells” when in fact significant portions (if not outright majorities) of these war protests are actually middle aged and even in the grandparent set (whether they are former hippies I leave to them to declare for themselves). If such media myopia happens, it could have a result opposite to that which DT seeks.
Unfortunately missing in DT’s essay is acknowledgement of the fact that voters won’t have concrete impact on leveraging the war until November 5th, 2008 (actually, January of 2009). Til then, the impact remains in the realm of the virtual and the potential — especially considering the Commander-in-Chief’s status as lame duck.
Call Erin Brockovich, the Illinois Republican Party chieftains are drinking some funky H2O.
State party chair Andy McKenna recently told the Tribune that the move to a Feb. 5th primary date may end up helping Republicans in the Prairie State:
“I think it’s ironic that a move to help Obama among the Democrats is going to pay dividends for Republicans,” said Andy McKenna, the Republican state chairman. “At least among the campaigns we’ve spoken to, the indications are at this point that this is a state where they will be paying heavy interest.”
McKenna also said the GOP presidential campaigns and local Republican organizations have responded with interest in a proposed Illinois “straw poll” on Aug. 16 — Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. If held, the event would follow by five days the [Aug. 11] Iowa straw poll in Ames, which has been a traditional test of the early strength of the Republican contenders.
I think it’s ironic that the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party (birthplace of Ronald Reagan and launching pad for Abraham Lincoln) is left to make lemonade from the lemons the state Democratic party leaves behind for him.
While certainly such a straw poll may make for some bread and circuses it’s doubtful anything long-term would come of it (the same would be true for a Democratic straw poll, even if Sen. Obama was taken out of the mix). And those thinking there will be any February-to-November ripples from seeing ad after ad for Republican candidates during January are in for a rude awakening come November 5th, 2008. (PS, Canton Daily Ledger: there was no presidential election in 1950. Ike was elected in 1952 and re-elected in 1956.)
But, never one to be outdone, the good State House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) tells Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times that he thinks:
“Giuliani has a certain amount of star power like Obama.”
Not sure where Rep. Cross is coming from there, but he’s comparing Sen. Obama to an adulterous, cross-dressing guy whose sole claim to fame is placing his city’s emergency response hq in the one place he was warned to not build it lest the building be attacked again, leaving him to be photographed running out of the WTC on that fateful day (and then to subsequently reap many profits for himself and his questionable friends by selling security strategies based on the notoriety that event generated for him — here, here and here, among others). Is that really the kind of thinking we want in charge of national security, given that record of municipal security planning?
Is Rep. Cross working for Team Rudy? What’s he see in him that the rest of America doesn’t?
(h/t S-CAM)
For those of you who are just as weary as I am of the Christianists’ constant blaspheming in this country in which they pretend to know God’s Plan and “hear” Him telling them things (let alone their intellectual dishonesty), you may be interested to read the “dialogue” I have been having with Dave Smith of the Illinois “Family” Institute.
Feel free to add your own thoughts over on that thread or start some new comments here.
It all started just before the weekend when Mr. Smith posted a demonstrably false conclusion about marriage licenses in Massachusetts, claiming that a decline in marriage licenses among gay Bay Staters was evidence that ‘the marriage trend was over’…
Actually, the stats Mr. Smith refer to really just indicate that most of the pent-up demand for marriages has been met in the past few years (and that couples don’t like getting married in the cold months between January and April — that’s also true of heterosexuals). Someone equally biased in a different direction might look at marriage trends among heterosexuals and falsely conclude there is no ‘new’ interest because there is no significant increase in hetero marriage licenses. Which, while true that heterosexual marriage licensing remains fairly consistent, it’s entirely untrue that it’s because of any more or less interest. It’s simply a steady rate, much like the current rate for gay marriage licensing will prove to be in Massachusetts now that it is leveling off. Sheesh.
You’ll note that despite his numerous comments, Mr. Smith never actually accounts for his wildly inaccurate conclusion.
Last week in a post entitled appropriately enough Maun Responds to IR Readers we learned that LTC Joe Maun, a conservative sending essays to Illinois Review from his post in Iraq, took to heart the admonitions of those of us who think his partisan claim that “they’ll follow us home” is ridiculous (see my original post saying just that here).
In Maun’s original post he remarked that as a soldier he was not able to offer his opinions on political matters, yet he then proceeded to just that. In a similar contradiction within this response post, Maun notes that his military career has spanned three decades, including command of two battalions and training at the Command and General Staff College. As if those bona fides weren’t enough, he tells us he has both taught and studied military history.
I wonder if that review of military history and his career in the military included the Vietnam conflict. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t recall any Vietcong, or any commies in general, “following us home”. And, somehow I think Nixon would’ve been laughed off the stage if he’d tried using the phrase. What’s that? Nixon did say say just that? Seems he was just as wrong then as the Republicans who’ve inherited his love of dominoes are now — and the implications for 2008 are quite similar to 1968, even if the party roles are reversed.
I’m not sure what focus group it was that led partisan conservatives to believe “they’ll follow us home” was a winning sound bite, but the phrase is laughable on its face.
…Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper (warning: that’s a PDF file). On this, the good editor Fran Eaton of Illinois Review and I both agree. You’re shocked, I’m sure.
He’s not the “Republicans are going to slime whoever the Democratic nominee is with the same one-size-fits-all made-up misinformation blitzkreig” sort of flip-flopper caricatured in attack ads and Vice Presidential speeches. (If John Kerry had not been the nominee in 2004, Karl Rove was ready to attack John Edwards or Howard Dean as a “flip-flopper” and then find, or make-up, whatever evidence the Republicans needed to make the label stick.)
No. Gov. Romney’s a real, honest to goodness Pander Bear (Ursus doublespeakus). We’re learning he is the sort of rank politician (rather than public servant) who speaks out of both sides of his mouth and tells his largest block of ‘base voters’ whatever they want to hear.
I don’t envy Republicans. They are in 2008 where Democrats were a few election cycles back when the donkeys couldn’t find a candidate with spine and savvy. Plenty of experience, plenty of cash, and plenty of book smarts — just not a strong enough courage of their convictions nor strategic enough political brinksmanship to pull off quadrennial November wins. It appears 2008 will be different, with the elephants wandering the desert, maybe even holding their noses as they vote, and the Democratic primary goers having an abundance of truly well-qualified Presidential candidates (even well into the so-called “second tier”).
In fact, if trends showing Gov. Romney as the front-runner keep up (and he is indeed laying out an impressive ground game in the early primary states — now roughly half the country), political cartoonists are going to stop putting elephants in their drawings and sketch cute-n-cuddly pander bears instead.
Update 9/21/07: Enjoy Illinois Reason’s other Mitt Romney posts here. Just be sure to keep your cleaning supplies ready in case your pooch has issues with Mitt the Pander Bear.
Fair warning: This is just a silly, meaningless post and (like the earlier one on the same topic) it is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek given the illusory nature of the “rankings”… 
A week ago BlogNetNews launched their Illinois political blogs ranking index. Ms. Fran Eaton of Illinois Review was quite excited to learn the group blog she edits was ranked numero uno in the debut top 20 listing. (And the only reason I even mentioned it was because I found it hilarious that Ms. Eaton listed only the top 5 ranked blogs, despite the availability of all 20. This blog, Illinois Reason, was ranked #6 last week and thus didn’t make Ms. Eaton’s cut…)
While Illinois Review’s #1 rank was interesting it was also fleeting as BNN manager Dave Mastio warned. Sadly, Illinois Review has fallen from the #1 spot in this week’s horserace, dropping two spots to #3.
Guess which blog went the opposite direction, cracking the top 5 by jumping ahead two notches to #4… (Sorry John Ruberry that we knocked you out of the top 5 — we even did our part by recently linking to Marathon Pundit).
As I mentioned in the last post about this ephemeral bit of trivia, check out all the blogs BNN ranks this week. They represent a broad base of democracy and freedom of speech in action.
Kirk Polizzi of Chillicothe writes in a Tribune letter to the editor:
Brave Americans
…Memorial Day is a day of remembrance and honor.It is a time for quiet.
And it is a moment of national healing. …
…As opposed to the whiney crybabies at the Illinois State Rifle Association who would use the honor of our resolute troops as pawns to pull a contemptible stunt like this in a “Memorial” Day press release.
You want to own a gun? Fine. No need to go overboard, taking advantage of our soldiers as if the ISRA believes they’re mere tools for the ISRA’s self-absorbed political agenda.
The Illinois State Rifle Association has chosen to pee all over what Memorial Day actually stands for by promoting their petty political grievances against a stand-out State Senator instead of rising above politics to remember our brave soldiers’ sacrifices…
Memorial Day is the day above all others when we come together as one nation to honor the sacrifices of our nation’s Armed Forces and their families.
Is the ISRA truly this whiney and pathetic that they feel a need to use our troops as political pawns to advance their single-issue lobbying?
Funny thing is the Senator that the ISRA chose to target in its “Memorial Day” message (a message which wasn’t really about acknowledging our noble troops at all) actually received quite a lot of volunteer help from a broad range of right-leaning folks — from conservative to moderate. Senator Dan Kotowski has also been doing yeoman’s work — more than the Republicans in that seat before him — in Springfield and in our communities to advance veterans’ issues and improve the lives of those who have given so much in their service to our country and our state; service which the ISRA enjoys the benefits of.
But that doesn’t matter to an extreme partisan group such as this. All they care about is their one, solitary, petty issue; not our troops, not the military families, not the widows and orphans … just their own selfish ISRA lobbying efforts.
This truly does put the ISRA in league with the other liars out there like the gun lobby front-group National Shooting Sports Foundation who have chosen to trash people who believe in common sense and rational supervision. Obviously, the ISRA, NSSF, and their sycophants would rather lie than have a reasonable debate with common sense folks — whatever keeps those donations flowing in, eh. It’s clear that groups like the ISRA and NSSF could care less about our active-duty personnel and our veterans. especially not when they have a chance to promote themselves instead.
These are beyond the pale circus antics from such partisan conservatives for this Memorial week 2007. It makes them look like cry-babies.
This is a week for recognizing our troops’ everyday heroism, not using them as pawns.
Pathetic. Disgusting.
Springfield blogger Will Reynolds has a cogent post up about this Memorial Day and I echo his sentiments here:
Memorial Day
I may not get to post anything over the weekend so today I’m linking to a list of US Soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fatalities in Iraq include 3,441 U.S. soldiers, of which 123 were from Illinois, and one from Springfield, who graduated from my high school two years before I did. Additionally, over 25,000 Americans have been wounded.
They should all be remembered during this weekend in particular, regardless of ones views on the war. This still angers me.
Their sacrifices, and those of their fellow warriors, are noble and their families ought to be proud of the loved ones they’ve lost. (And the partisan Sinclair BS is also still troublesome on this front as well.)
This weekend, and for however long it takes, I will be helping to launch this local effort to do a small part to honor our veterans and current service-members. Also happening locally this weekend is Salute, Inc’s annual fundraiser run/walk. I encourage you to consider donating to Salute’s efforts to help our men and women of the Armed Forces and their families.
And one last note for this weekend of observances… Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Gov. Mitt Romney chose to take some cheap shots against not against their primary opponents but people that won’t even be on their primary ballots next year — Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
McCain and Romney both lambasted the two Democrats for their votes against continuing President Bush’s never-ending war in Iraq. Clearly, everyone in America supports our brave troops and that is why Sens. Obama and Clinton chose to take their one small step toward bringing them back home to their families.
For that, they were attacked.
But listen to Sen. Obama’s response, and realize that his heart is indeed in exactly the right place (along with the majority of Americans):
“This country is united in our support for our troops, but we also owe them a plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe the course we are on in Iraq is working, but I do not.”
“And if there ever was a reflection of that it’s the fact that Senator McCain required a flack jacket, ten armored Humvees, two Apache attack helicopters, and 100 soldiers with rifles by his side to stroll through a market in Baghdad just a few weeks ago.”
“Governor Romney and Senator McCain are still supporting a war that has cost us thousands of lives, made us less safe in the world, and resulted in a resurgence of al-Qaeda. It is time to end this war so that we can redeploy our forces to focus on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and all those who plan to do us harm.”
God bless our troops and their families!
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that conservatives are going to start slamming Sen. Hillary Clinton harder over her earlier remark to the Sun-Times that she cared for children of immigrant farm workers while she was a teen in Park Ridge.
I previously posted about partisan conservative John Ruberry’s vacuous comments on the interview, but based on Internet searches folks are using to arrive at that very post it appears something’s afoot. I don’t listen to the conservative talking heads on the AM dial so maybe they’ve been beating this dead horse.
Watch out. Next the partisan conservatives will be lying that she claimed to have invented farming just like they continue to lie about Al Gore and the Internet (that meme is demonstrably false by the way).
This is as good a time to as any to also observe the truth about the readiness and equipment levels of our united states’ National Guard units.
After the tornado disaster in Kansas earlier in the month, much ruckus was made about how the Kansas National Guard has been hampered by Iraq — with troops and equipment overseas instead of around the bend. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) was roundly panned by partisan conservative bigwigs such as White House Press Sec. Tony Snow and Sen./Pres. Candidate Sam Brownback (Kansas’ own senior US Senator).
Problem is, Gov. Sebelius was correct and the conservatives were lying through their teeth. Illinois also appears to have some readiness issues, mostly regarding equipment, though most assessments apparently show our own Prairie State National Guard should be able to handle a calamity along the lines of a flood, tornado, and the like. Still, Sen./Pres. Candidate Barack Obama (Illinois’ junior US Senator) is concerned about the diversion of resources into Iraq and writes:
We cannot afford to learn a lesson about unmet needs each time a disaster strikes. The National Guard is the essential mechanism through which states prepare for and respond to emergencies. If your administration chooses to divert state resources to assist the military overseas, this gap should be filled in order to protect Americans at home.
Agreed. Let’s, as a nation, honestly review our preparedness at home as well as abroad. But we cannot do that while conservatives continue to lie about the obvious.
Petey Labarbera apparently hates babies of gay couples:
There should be no touch of sadness when a healthy baby boy is born into a home with two parents, but in this case, we’re afraid, there is.
Mr. Labarbera writes a disgusting polemic littered with fallacies about conception (yes, gay people can bear children Mr. Labarbera), parenting (there are millions of children in this nation being raised by their mothers and doing just fine, Mr. Labarbera), and even common sense itself (common sense would say that Samuel David Cheney will actually do very well in life, given his lineage).
All Mr. Larbarbera really proves is that he can be a jerk who can’t simply be happy at the birth of beautiful, bouncing baby boy. Oh, and that he is a blasphemous jerk seeing as how he pretends to know what God’s plan is for others.
Perhaps the real story here is Mr. Larbarera is actually afraid that little Samuel will turn out perfectly ok, probably even be heterosexual, despite the chicken little warnings from those who hate gay folks — and he feels he must hide his fear under a veneer of tough-guy jerkiness.
Rich Miller had a post up the other day asking that politicians and lobbyists stop with the pimping of ministers to do their political shill work. It really has gotten way out of hand during this legislative session.
Pastors claiming altering the cable tv system is or isn’t moral? Not even what’s on the cable channels, just the cable utility itself. Puh-leez. (Thank you AT&T for that brilliant stroke. The AT&T front group and their business competition — the cable establishment — with their own opposing front group both have men of cloth in their lobbying “flocks”…)
Coincidentally, partisan conservative Fran Eaton did a little digging into Gov. Blagojevich’s campaign finances (she got the idea from the Feds, apparently) and found that last fall his campaign apparently doled out a total of 20 grand to the Baptists’ Ministers Conference of Chicago. With the allusion in her post’s title, she clearly implies the 50 pastors of that conference are all Judases.
Why even bother bringing this up? One would think that Ms. Eaton would be happy to see churches receiving such large donations given her own claims of being a faithful Christian.
Ah, but we also learn from Ms. Eaton that certain of those pastors also endorsed the governor’s Illinois Covered health plan. Ms. Eaton is opposed to this plan. Thus, she all but calls those who promote it “Judas” — a very serious charge against a church leader.
While I agree in principle with both Mr. Miller and Ms. Eaton that politicians and lobbyists ought not to be “donating” to churches with the expectation that the leaders of those flocks will then support or oppose this or that agenda… It’s also not the least bit two-faced for Ms. Eaton to even bring this up given her record of supporting efforts to bend various religious leaders toward an agenda agreeable to Ms. Eaton’s brand of partisan conservatism.
In other words, Ms. Eaton has proven herself a partisan hypocrite yet again.
(And those commenting on her post have proven themselves to be even more base seeing as how they run off on a tangent asking about government monies and grants the churches may have received even though one of Pres. Bush’s own major initiatives is the White House’s office of faith-based initiatives… Maybe these folks think it’s only ok for conservative churches to receive government cash.)
A few weeks back, the Illinois State Rifle Association made a big circus out of creating their first-ever, brand spankin’ new, so hot you can hardly stand it “Gun Grabber of the Year” award. The media barely noticed. Not even the usually solidly partisan Illinois Review has yet picked up on the now old story. (Is the award like an OSCAR, all shiny and gold? Maybe the good Charlton Heston was their model if it is like an OSCAR statue.)
The ISRA gave their Big Grabowski trophy to my state senator, Dan Kotowski, a guy I volunteered for last election and will happily do so again for the next election given the depth of his work for our communities and our state in Springfield (and not just on the ISRA’s single issue).
I’d have to say, based on the work he’s done in literally his first few months in office to put reasonable oversights in place, he has earned this Big Grabowski and he ought to display it on his mantle with pride after the vomitous rhetoric the liberal gun law lobbyists and their apparatchiks spewed his way these last few months.
Even the ISRA press release about their Big Grabowski award lies by saying Sen. Kotowski has “contempt” for sportsmen — just like their allies lied about him before. Baloney.
What the senator has contempt for are the idiots who would ever choose to raise a weapon not at a tin can or live game but at a fellow human being. These prudent bills, once signed into law, will be one more tool for our men in blue to put such ne’er-do-wells (the criminals, the terrorists and their ilk) behind bars and off our streets.
Sen. Kotowski has taken the driver’s seat on several bills aimed at common sense weapons and sales supervision and in fact his efforts paid off as two of them — SB940 and SB1007 — have passed. (Sen. Kotowski has also worked hard on strengthening ethics reforms and other important topics but those equally vital matters never seem to matter to the single-issue folks.)
So sit back Sen. Kotowski and admire your handiwork for just a few moments. Your award is in fact richly deserved and from where I sit that award is an honor, not an insult. And, knowing Sen. Kotowski, he’s not going to rest on any such laurels as it is. He’s too busy actually working to represent our communities.
Oddly, while they were putting on their show the ISRA made no mention of terrorists and those who may be a danger to themselves or others.
Hmm, I wonder why since the ISRA’s efforts directly help them…
News reports are out indicating that Congressional Democrats are allowing the President to continue to turn the corner, supervise those last throes, declare more missions accomplished and generally keep on allowing our brave men and women in uniform to be caught up in the middle of what is now a foreign civil war…
One of the main roles of Congress is to oversee the Executive Branch. My feeling is that they’re giving the president too much leeway here. He is currently suggesting America wait to see how is new plan (really the old plan) is working come September. But now, at the tail end of the supplemental non-negotiations (it’s not a negotiation if one side, the president, refuses to actually discuss anything of substance), we learn that the White House is extending that to the end of the year.
One sad irony in this is summarized by two sentences from our President:
“It could make August a tough month, because, you see, what they’re going to try to do is kill as many innocent people as they can to try to influence the debate here at home,” he said.
“It could be a bloody - it could be a very difficult August.”
Mr. President, practically every month already is ‘the deadliest month‘ in Iraq for our brave troops. Your strategies are failing our nation and, worse, your failures are destroying our nation’s dauntless defenders.
And Democrats, don’t consider yourselves lucky that there is no alternative for the voters. That’s a false choice.
I agree with freshman Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) that we need to fund our men and women in battle — but we also need to hold our commander-in-chief accountable for the miserable failures of his actions. You have the power to tell our commander-in-chief he will get only so much and no more, with or without deadlines. Use it.
his is his mistake. Don’t continue to ask more of our honorable soldiers to die for it.
Champaign conservative John Bambanek has a little post up at Illinois Review about the recent kerfuffle in Crystal Lake over two girls who were handing out fliers that denigrated their classmates at their school. Petey Labarbera (the one who keeps his kid home from school on days he dislikes the weather, or something) also wrote some drivel on this matter.
Mr. Bambanek gives us the dish:
Two girls were arrested in McHenry County, Illinois last week for distributing flyers at their school that depicted a male classmate kissing another classmate and had the words “God Hates Fags” on the flyers …
Sounds familiar…
Know who else promotes the blasphemous idea that “God Hates Fags”? The same people who protested outside Rev. Jerry Falwell’s funeral and who made one Falwell follower so upset he allegedly put together some homemade bombs as a ‘gift’ for them. The same people who protest outside military funerals and spurred Americans of all stripes into forming the Patriot Guard to protect military families from their bile. The same people most partisan conservatives denounce as “venomous” when it suits their purposes to distance themselves from naturally kindred spirits (even if those kindred spirits go even further beyond the pale).
The same people who are the conservative activists known as Westboro Baptist Church.
Seems a bit hypocritical that Illinois’ partisan conservatives would criticize Westboro Baptist Church but jump to excuse-making for the McHenry County Two and start blogging about “trying to find out more about this case” (as Mr. Labarbera would like to do) and questioning the legitimacy of the arrest (as Mr. Bambanek comes close to doing)…
For the record, any mere mortal who thinks they know what God thinks is a blasphemer — including those who think they know that God “hates” anyone. (These people have obviously never read John 13:34.)
Logic seems to escape Dave Smith of Illinois Family Institute. But, when does logic ever play a role for a zealot who has a chance at being overly partisan (especially when there’s a little hate-mongering to also be had)?
The rabidly anti-gay Mr. Smith thinks marriages have “hit the skids” in Massachusetts. Now, the number of marriages have indeed significantly fallen off but the reason is easy for any rational person to figure out.
Mr. Smith pulls out a few statistics to draw his completely bizarre conclusion:
Nearly two-thirds of the 9,695 marriages that have taken place took place in 2004, the year the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision took effect. Some 6,121 homosexual marriages took place in 2004, with 2,060 same-sex couples marrying a year later in 2005, and even fewer, 1,427, in 2006. As of late April of this year, only eighty-seven couples decided to take advantage of the state’s issuance of marriage licenses to homosexual partners.
The numbers are extremely small as compared to the state’s population. Homosexual partners in Massachusetts seem to have lost interest in the institution of marriage — as it is not being sought after by the gay community. (emphasis added)
“Hitting the skids” and “lost interest” have nothing to do with it and is an entirely false conclusion.
Rather, after years of not being able to marry their one true love, these committed couples were finally granted the right by the state of Massachussetts and thousands of Bay State couples quickly jumped at the chance. Now that all those adoring couples who wanted to marry are married there is less ‘pent-up’ demand for marriage licenses.
Duh.
Strangely enough, Mr. Smith is the head of an organization that claims to be pro-family, pro-love, pro-marriage and pro-commitment. Why then does he rail against those very things? Is it simply because these nearly 10,000 pro-family, pro-love, pro-marriage and pro-commitment couples just happen to be gay?
The answer, sadly, seems to be yes. In his hatred for gay Americans, Mr. Smith attempts to find (even to “make up”) any excuse he can for why they should not be allowed to marry their soulmate despite the clear fact that heterosexual couples (such as myself and my wife) have been completely unaffected by marriages in the Bay State whether between homosexuals or heterosexuals.
In fact, my wife finds it romantic to see so many happy couples who are positively ebullient as newlyweds and we exchange knowing glances at each other whenever we see photos of their nuptials on TV or in print. Their love has made our love grow that much stronger. Then again, unlike Mr. Smith and the Illinois Review editor who approved the posting of his guest essay, we don’t hate gay people so their love would not cause us such consternation in the first place.
Mr. Smith didn’t stop there unfortunately. He piled on a bit more hatred for gays at the conclusion of his diatribe:
These numbers are not surprising as monogamy has never been the norm in the homosexual lifestyle, especially among homosexual males.
Mr. Smith would define ‘monogamy’ as having only one single sexual partner during your entire lifetime (and abstaining until marriage at that). Given that definition, monogamy is not the “norm” among heterosexuals either — just ask the Republican presidential candidates and their ex-wives and ex-mistresses.
But far be it from Mr. Smith to actually think such dirty, even if honest, thoughts when he has a chance to ooze such vile animus against his fellow Americans simply because of his interpretation of his book of faith.
Busy day today but just had to say this cracked me up…
Fran Eaton of Illinois Review brags a wee bit about the Blog Net News “Illinois Influence” rankings, in which Illinois Review is found to be #1. Ms. Eaton immediately jumps to the conclusion that this pole position must mean “Illinois Review Ranked #1 Most Influential Political Blog in IL“.
Whether that ranking actually means Ill. Review is influencing anyone or simply offering up a daily laugh for folks is not made clear by the BNN rankings. Seeing as how Illinois Reviews own contributors claim all their posts are jokes anyway… well, BNN reports, you decide, and then we all guffaw, or something like that.
Conveniently, Ms. Eaton also lists only the top 5 ranked “Illinois Influence” blogs. Two group blogs, 2 news blogs and John Ruberry’s Marathon Pundit comprise those 5. But guess which blog is ranked #6 after only 3 months of being “on the air”?
(And yes, the word “conveniently” in the paragraph above has a double-entendre given this blog’s 6th position.)
Go check out the rankings for yourself — many a good blog to be read from across the political spectrum.
What do you do when your own fellow conservatives have had enough of your bullshit that they constantly take you to task for your own over-the-top ineptitude and fear-mongering (here and here)?
If you’re Illinois Reviewer John Ruskin … you imply they’re Nazis … twice.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
While most of the rest of us have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ruskin chooses to routinely find new chicken little fears to fret over even if he has to make them up. And apparently he feels picked on when folks call him out on it.
Poor-a, poor-a John Ruskin. Must be tough having his little never-never-land bubble burst over and over.
Anyone else think it sounds like John Ruskin is borderline paranoid and wants the Illinois prison authority to open a Gitmo style concentration camp in the Prairie State? Just read his over-the-top, pernicious number-crunching: Illinois’ Domestic Terrorism: Part II
(But remember, it’s ok for terrorists to get guns according to the partisan conservatives. Hypocrisy, thy name is “conservative”.)
Update: “Truthful James” (aka Pete Speer, Peter Dee) in comments at Illinois Review points out numerous errors in Mr. Ruskin’s post…
John –
Certain of your numbers do not jibe. For instance the summary of the Pew Study reads
“…That sentiment is strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them say it can often be justified, 13 percent say sometimes and 11 percent say rarely…”
That would men the percentages within the age group younger than 30. You extrapolate that those percentages against the total population of Muslims within Illinois.
At the same time you refer to ["]strongly believe["] as a category. I can not find it
Since the Pew Study focused that question on “attacks on their religion” I am surprised that the total is so low.
The most interesting part of the Pew Study — not mentioned by you– is the following:
“…Even so, U.S. Muslims are far less accepting of suicide attacks than Muslims in many other nations. In surveys Pew conducted last year, support in some Muslim countries exceeded 50 percent, while it was considered justifiable by about one in four Muslims in Britain and Spain, and one in three in France…”
So there ya go. Here’s to conservatives who choose to be honest rather than partisan and xenophobic.
Lots of news reports today about polls that are 6-months too early. In particular, “polls say” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is leading the former front-runners Sen. John McCain and Mayor Rudy Giuliani by double digits.
Interestingly, partisan conservatives such as George Dienhart may consider Gov. Romney to be a “Blame America Firster” since he continues to sharply criticize the United States’ execution of the Iraq War:
“I think we made a number of miscalculations in the Iraq war,” he said, sitting forward in a brown leather club chair. “I think we were under-prepared for what actually existed in Iraq. We were under-planned for what we would do when Saddam Hussein was replaced. We under-managed the troops, so we have created many of the difficulties and extended the conflict longer than may have been necessary.”
In addition, some folks have noticed he seems to enjoy pander bears. Seeing as how he likes those pander bears so much it’s a good thing the guy believes in evolution (unlike 30% of the Republican prez candidates) according to that Jill Zuckman Tribune article:
Romney has grown used to such [flip-flopping] criticism, and depicts his changes as evolution rather than flip-flopping.
Then again, the Guv’s “evolution” as a candidate has revealed his thought process is remarkably similar to a certain Democratic candidate with the initials HRC:
“My approach is a highly deliberative, data-driven approach, drawing on the expertise of people who vehemently disagree with each other, who state their case, who argue their position with data and sound analysis and then following that deliberative process we can make a decision, or if necessary, I can make it alone,” he said. (emphasis added)
I wonder if that means he’ll hire a lot of folks who post comments to the Capitol Fax family of blogs (here and here).This early out, any such polls are meaningless to voters. But, they do serve two purposes. First, and this is “inside baseball”, they light fires under the butts of opponents’ staffs. Keep in mind that Gov. Howard Dean, MD, was leading the polls in summer 2003 which only served to drive Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards into overdrive.
Second, for those fans of the game, the polls generate reactions from the other candidates which are actually much more interesting — because of what they reveal — than the number-crunching itself. In this case, we now get to see how the Republican base truly feels about a pandering, indecisive governor from a liberal state (who just happens to be Mormon).
I’ve always thought it interesting when partisans pull “life lessons” from pop culture and use them to illustrate their own perceived superiority of their political philosophy. Such in-the-moment analogies serve as little windows into the soul, revealing what a partisan is actually thinking and feeling deep down.
I get it, of course. Talking about a new movie, a big game or a hot news event serves as a readily-understood means for partisans to promote their ideas and it’s also an easy device to use because at any given moment everyone’s focused on the pop event of that moment.
Fran “Gene Shallot” Eaton illustrates my point to a T with her commentary on “Shrek the Third” over at Illinois Review this morning. This recently opened kid-oriented animation is, as our pres-schooler says, ‘only in vaders’ (Star Wars made a big impression) and the commercial promotion and cross-promotion is fast and furious, especially in the kids’ media.
Ms. Eaton calls her soliloquy “Shrek: a strange setting to promote transgenderism” and this paragraph sums up her thoughts:
Right in the midst of a warm “traditional family” setting, the film writers place a man dressed as a woman in with Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White (the good gals). The crossdressing character simply doesn’t make sense, except as a ploy to desensitize children and parents to transgenders.
Desensitize? Really? Desensitize them to what?
“Truthful James” (aka, Pete Speer, Peter Dee) takes one of Illinois Review’s most goofy, John Ruskin, to task in response to Mr. Ruskin’s out of the blue slur of “terrorism” against a doctor.
John, stop eith [sic] the polemic.
“purposefully allowed to die” That is a damn serious charge, which raises the possibility of a slander suit against you and against the IR [Illinois Review].
Your source has its own axe to grind.
I have been to emergency rooms twice since Thanksgiving. The triage process is quite complicated and on several levels/
We lack in the article and from the bereaved and suing son any sort of a medical history wirg [sic] diagnosis at any level of triage.
Come back to earth
Couldn’t have said it better myself. The original post by Mr. Ruskin was based on a Front Page Magazine article about an alleged wrongful death case. Front Page is, sure enough, a partisan conservative magazine which is why “James” says they have their own axe to grind.
As for the doctor being Muslim or not, perhaps this is another case of the conservatives actually being all in favor of medical malpractice lawsuits (at least, when it suits their partisan agenda to denigrate Muslims with slurs of “domestic terrorism” and charges of “purposefully” allowing a patient to die without submitting any evidence to back up the claim).
One wonders why Illinois Civil Justice Leaguer Ed Murnane continues to post at Illinois Review given their constant promotion of his archnemesis, the ambiguous “frivolous” (supposedly) lawsuit.
Oh no! Not “Obama Youth Camps“! What are we going to do about this political training of young voters?!?!
Hilariously, John Ruskin concludes his alarmist post about an everyday campaign activity with this open-ended, Jerry Fletcherism:
Nothing like a little re-education for the kids. Other’s [sic] have used the same tactic in the past. You know. (emphasis added, y’know)
Yes, Mr. Ruskin, others have used the same tactic in the past (complete with “a little re-education for the kids”). Hmm, I wonder why Mr. Ruskin didn’t sound the alarm about those kids who were bussed into Illinois from other states and put to work furthering a political agenda during the middle of their school week.
Oh, the hypocrisy, y’know?
Ed Murnane, one of the super folk at the Illinois Civil Justice League, has a post out today on two bills that could impact litigation in the state. I disgree with him on one bill, but agree on the other.
First, Mr. Murnane writes about HB1798, a bill which would allow juries to decide awards with regards to “‘grief, sorrow, and mental suffering’ in wrongful death cases” (as Mr. Murnane writes it). He, as a backer of big business’ interests, is naturally opposed to anyone being responsible for a widow’s grief. I disagree.
Mr. Murnane and his allies like to couch this and other jury award issues as some sort of “pay raise” for lawyers. Hardly. Though that is one side effect (and no doubt part of the reason why the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, like any trade group in a similar situation, supports HB1798), the heart of the matter gets to responsibility and accountability, not paychecks.
HB1798 is about ensuring those who are found to be responsible for a wrongful death are held accountable for their actions. To use a crass analogy, Mr. Murnane is on the side of OJ Simpson and Scott Peterson in this matter.
On the other hand, Mr. Murnane also discusses another ITLA-backed bill, SB1296. While I disagree with his goofy mislabeling of this as a “Deep Pockets Bill” I do agree that this is bad legislation that oversteps its bounds. SB1296 would effectively overhaul liability such that a person or organization which may be found to be only partially responsible in a civil suit could be held liable for 100% of damages.
That’s the dictionary definition of “illogical” and is actually a good chance for Mr. Murnane to recycle his oft-used “unfair” label. (Of course, Mr. Murnane seems to think a lot of tort issues are “unfair” … but I guess that’s bound to happen when you’re more concerned with a business’ bottom line than holding people and organizations accountable for their actions.)
As Mr. Murnane suggests, you can contact your state legislators on either or both of these bills — though SB1296 is the hot one given that it is just out of the House committee and could be voted on by the entire House soon (meaning: contact your State Rep).
John Ruskin was up to his silly lying ways yet again this weekend. Like many partisan conservatives he seems to have this problem with the truth in that, to them, it appears to be somehow “liberal”. This means when news reports cover reality (y’know, the truth), conservatives from Richard Nixon to the present flail their arms yelping “Liberal bias” in the media, which is hogwash.
So in his silly little post, Mr. Ruskin starts off by claiming that the Democratic Party somehow “owns” NPR as a propaganda arm. Of course, many liberals (and independents) feel the same way about Republicans and their Fox News which often seems to be so much agitprop for the red party.
Neither, of course, is true. Democrats don’t “own” NPR (or CNN, or ABC, etc) any more than Republicans “own” Fox News.
But there is a difference here. Mr. Ruskin claims that because NPR is government-funded it must be a Democratic Party tool. This ignores two points. First, NPR receives about 90% of its funding from donations and private grants. The other 10 or so per cent come in the form of government subsidies from all levels of government. Second, those government subsidies also happened while Republicans ran the show in Washington so claiming Democrats wielded some power over NPR during that time is, of course, ludicrous.
There are also some specific differences between the Democrats/NPR allusion, which is demonstrably false as I just indicated, and the Republicans/Fox News allusion, for which there is actually quite a bit of evidence.
President George W. Bush is threatening to veto the recently passed military budget because it includes a 3.5% pay raise for our troops (a paltry 1/2% more than he would prefer) plus increased benefits for families of KIAs and more.
Mr. President, walk your talk. Support our troops. They deserve our deepest gratitude — not political board games.
Conservative LTC Joe Maun is stationed in Iraq and has been sending essays from Baghdad to Illinois Review, which editor Fran Eaton then publishes. I applaud LTC Maun for his dedication and service to our great nation but with all due respect, he is wrong.
Over the weekend, Ms. Eaton published his latest essay in which LTC Maun immediately contradicts himself:
As a soldier, I cannot take sides in a public political debate. As an American I can say that it is better that these things, as terrible as they seem, happen over here and not on the streets of a US city.
So immediately after saying he can’t take sides in a political debate, he does. You see where this is going early on. He adds:
The fanatics hate America and all that we stand for. People who think that peace will be achieved by the Military leaving completely at a specific time or moving from the area and “Re-deploying to a safe distance” is wrong. These people will follow us.
I firmly believe that I will see ambulances with our children’s feet sticking out the back if we do not finish this the right way. The peace-at-any-cost group in the US get a lot of play over here.
We are reliving history. The bloodiest part of World War II for the US was in the last year, not the first. Imagine the American Army redeploying to Florida instead of stepping off the beach at Normandy. We have a job to do over here. I pray that we are allowed to finish it.
A lot of fear-filled, horrific images in those paragraphs. Interestingly, soldier Maun complains that the Iraqis and a clear majority of Americans are wrong seeing as how both groups clearly want our boys, including Maun, out of Iraq but an ever-shrinking minority of Americans disagrees (included in that collapsing minority, however, is our Commander-in-Chief). Both Iraqis and Americans realize that our troops’ very presence in Iraq is fueling those “fanatics” and that if our troops are redeployed out of country at least one catalyst for violence will dissippate, though their 1500-year-old civil war may rage on.
Why Maun thinks that people who would rather run away as refugees to neighboring Syria or Jordan or head to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban would come to Peoria instead is unclear — but for those partisans who fear fear itself such imagery must be powerfully motivating indeed.
More importantly, if the concern is truly that the “fanatics” would follow us home if we are unable to clean Iraq’s civil warring house before we leave, then our President’s strategy is clearly wrong (though it is improving, several years too late). Instead of acting as Iraq’s police, military and border guard for so many years we ought to have significantly stepped up training Iraqis on all three of those fronts. But, obviously, military and foreign policy are not the Republicans’ strong suits of late.
In the span of literally a few moments over two different posts this morning, Fran Eaton quickly contradicts herself over at Illinois Review.
With the first post, about FOID cards, Ms. Eaton plaintively inquires:
But when will we learn that reactionary legislation almost always is found to be dangerous and right-stripping? (emphasis added)
In the very next post, Ms. Eaton contradicts that thought by advocating against an expansion of equal rights for all Americans of age:
The same Senate that refuses to consider a constitutional amendment protecting the defintion [sic] of marriage as between one man and one woman had no problem with adding another $5 to the cost of getting married… (emphasis added)
So we should be against reactionary legislation, no matter how reasonable it actually, but only if it’s “reactionary” based on Ms. Eaton’s definitions and only if it’s legislation that Ms. Eaton opposes…
It’s all so clear now.
In a post originally about the 6 or so protesters outside Rep. Paul Froehlich’s (R-Schaumburg) office last weekend, and a similar protest planned for Sen. Dan Kotowski’s (D-Park Ridge) office tomorrow we learn a few things about one extreme side of the immigration debate.
First, these handful of immigration protesters are apparently unaware that the “Z” visa compromise (guest worker/indentured servant program) is a Federal bill, not a state bill. I give them credit for speaking their mind — even if with an apparently tiny, fringe voice and against the wrong type of Representative (they wanted to be in front of Mark Kirk’s office if their issue is “amnesty”).
Second, in comments we find that conservative poster “Jerry” hillariously claims, “The Minutemen in Illinois have a hard time getting people to their protests, yes. The people who support them work for a living; it’s the curse of speaking for solid citizens.” (emphasis added)
Jerry, this was a Saturday as the original post notes. Bright, sunny, warm and middle of the day (as the pictures show). So much for your lame excuse-making that people didn’t show up to protest because they were “working”. Please.
Third, notice anything about the “Guest Wkr” sign in the first picture at that post? The local “Vanna White 5 + Dime” apparently ran out of vowels last weekend.
Fourth, not many of these people like showing their faces. They’re hiding behind their signs in the first photo.
Finally, curiously enough, we learn in a follow-up comment from Fran Eaton that, “There is an effort to find a good candidate to knock him [Sen. Dan Kotowski] off in 2008. IF you have any ideas, now’s the time to let the SRCC know.”
Now, you might say ‘Why is that curious? Fran’s as partisan a conservative as they come and Sen. Kotowski’s a Dem who beat a Republican for the seat.’
Funny thing is, Sen. Kotowski beat that Republican for that seat by earning the votes and, much more importantly, the avid support of the very Republicans Ms. Eaton’s mythical “good candidate” would hope to get. I could be wrong in thinking that support isn’t going to waiver simply based on an [R] or a [D], but I doubt it. The work Sen. Kotowski has been doing in Springfield and, again much more importantly, back home in the district goes a long way to proving his value and his integrity to the mainstream voters in the 33rd district. Besides, even many of the Republicans out this way are much too liberal for a hardline partisan conservative such as Ms. Eaton.
Ms. Eaton and the “SRCC” are barking up the wrong tree, just as the Minutemen are in protesting Federal legislation outside of state legislators’ offices. But that word “mainstream” is the key to why they’re doing that — barking up the wrong tree is what happens when those at the political extremes start going after the mainstream and the values commonly held by that mainstream.
(For the record, the immigration “protests” — if that’s what you call a few folks on a sidewalk — are supposedly over Illinois HB1500, the driver’s certificate bill. To my knowledge, Sen. Kotowski has not committed to an up or down vote on that bill. Hence the “protest” by a handful of people.)
Holy crap. Just holy crap.
In the civil suit case over the treasonous outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s attorney argued before the judge that Cheney is immune from lawsuits because the immunity enjoyed by the president in conducting the normal business of that office also inherently applies to all members of a president’s administration. So now the president has apparently cloned himself — must have been a grainy xerox machine.
Cheney’s attorney then kicked the BS up to notches unknown:
Cheney’s attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit. (emphasis added)
“So you’re arguing there is nothing — absolutely nothing — these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment [whether it was] true or false?,” U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked.
“That’s true, your honor.”
Translation: The current administration believes they can lie with impugnity because their magical (and fictional) copy of the Constitution is actually also a Get Outta Jail Free card… And here I thought in these United States the president and veep were just regular citizens, not “unique” players in some role with wizard-like powers.
Holy crap.
(h/t Devilstower at DKos)
Why did the Bush Administration feel a need to create a “War Czar” post to oversee the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
And why do it now, several years, thousands of lives and multiple billions of dollars after the onset of the two wars?
For that matter, why nominate a 3-star general to now oversee 4-star generals (h/t Archpundit)?
Finally, as Democratic leaders have pointed out, do we not already have a “War Czar” whose actual title is “President of the United States” (let alone the Secretary of Defense, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of CENTCOM, etc.)?
Archpundit opines that this redundant position seems to be custom-made for finding a scapegoat. Perhaps the partisan conservatives have grown weary of blaming Pres. Clinton and Democrats for all their messes and wanted to find yet another senior member of the armed forces to villify.
It’s well-known that the partisan conservatives over at Illinois Review despise Sen. Barack Obama. They’ve made up silly sandbox epithets for him like “big ears” and “donkey ears” and “he who walks on water.” I’m surprised they don’t just call him “Sen. Poopy Head”.
So it’s clear that when it comes to the Senator, they don’t have much maturity but do have a bunch o’ hate.
Enter John Ruskin. Mr. Ruskin wants to paint Sen. Obama as a liar. He’s using every little flub and, indeed, every little word to do so — whether they’re actually lies or not. (”Not” being the operative word there.)
I’ve pointed out before where other conservatives have used the same rhetorical technique — take whatever words they can to create what looks to them like a lie rather than actually calling out a real lie — just so they can jump on their trampoline of partisanship and yell “Liar … Liar … Liar … Liar” every time they bounce up and down.
I’ve also pointed out where the Republicans were found to have pre-determined that, no matter who the 2004 Democratic candidate would be, the RNC strategy was going to be to paint them as a flip-flopper — just add the name of whoever got the nomination (John Kerry in that case).
To an extent, Gov. Blagojevich did the same thing against Judy Baar Topinka last year with “What is she thinking?” — everything she did, no matter how innocent, was plugged into that mold and hammered over and over (and over).
Mr. Ruskin is certainly no Rod Blagojevich or Karl Rove. Yet he continues to lie about Senator Obama today with his latest post in which he picks a nit so tiny that a gnat would have a hard time seeing it.
Mr. Ruskin, a condo ain’t a house. You might own everything inside the four walls of a condo, but there’s no yard for the little ones and any maintenance on that hole in the roof or the matted down carpeting in the hallway is shared. But just so long as Mr. Ruskin can lie in the process of calling someone he hates a liar, he’s apparently happy as a clam.
Why Illinois Review continues to give that clam any space is not clear.
In recent days the legislature in Springfield has passed a bill moving Illinois’ primary from March up to Feb. 5th (the earliest date allowed by the national parties, lest state parties wish to incur penalties).
For those of us who are less politically-inclined, there’s a whole long, inside-baseball story as to why that day is such a cause celebre but suffice it to say Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 is quickly become a virtual national primary day with many of the largest states (”blue”, “red”, and “purple”) all moving to hold their polls on that single day. California, Florida, Illinois … a total of 15 states already have or are planning to host their primaries that day. Add those to the January states and nearly half the country will have primaried or caucused by the first week of February next year.
Now, some reactions to this trend have been silly. The Tribune for one is complaining that it’ll be cold that day. Perhaps they’re forgetting Illinois’ most recent primary day in March, 2006. I’m surprised 100s of campaign workers didn’t lose fingers to frostbite on that bone-numbingly cold March day. My how quickly the Trib forgets (that was just in 2006 after all). Someone else complained that campaign lit might be sent out at the same time as holiday cards (whoever that was, they forgot January is four weeks long and most campaign mailers come in that last month before voting).
Others have debated the move with Vulcan-like logic. The general election campaign season will be too long while the primary season will become too short (both presented as arguments against moving it up).
On the other hand, many present reasonable points in favor of moving it up. Illinois and other large states reflect a better picture of America as a whole, some say. The Beacon News notes Illinois is, apparently, the most average state among the 50 according to an AP study of Census data. Along the same lines, politicians and others argue that Iowa and New Hampshire wield too much national influence as it is and creating a Super Duper Ton o’ Bricks Tuesday will dampen that influence (people who think ethanol is so much hokum agree that corn-fed Iowa is too dominant in presidential politics). Plus, it couldn’t hurt to have 20+ presidential contenders at least landing on a tarmac in your state instead of simply flying over it. Maybe they’ll gas up before taking off again and thus toss a few coins into our state’s gas tax, and if their campaign worker bees plunk down some cash for ad contracts in local media so much the better for our state’s economy, right?
I’m agnostic on the issue. The weather will be the weather no matter what — it didn’t even really start to get cold til late January this winter anyway. Political mailers will go from mailbox to recycling bin in a matter of seconds whether they arrive around New Year’s or Valentine’s Day. No, Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the entire nation and the “traditions” they rely on as “first-in-the-nation” are only traditions in those two states. And yes, the general campaign season just grew by about a month — but we’re already faced with permanent campaigns from both ends as it is (this and other blogs included to a degree).
No matter what, I’m just damn glad to be able to not just vote but to also be able to go door to door to talk with people about voting. God bless America that we can debate over not whether to vote, but when.
(h/t Rich Miller for a lot of those links above)
Several conservative bloggers today are commenting on this week’s Republican presidential debate hosted by the partisan conservatives at Fox News. Strangely enough, some of the biggest applause lines of the night came after security salesman Rudy Giulani and others whole-heartedly endorsed torture (specifically water-boarding), something with which both the Dept. of Justice and U.S. Armed Forces — including Gen. David Patraeus — disagree.
And, while conservatives like John Ruberry (whose reaction to the torture Q+A mirrors that of many conservatives) at least acknowledge that Senator John McCain is the only one of the 10 who actually has any standing on the matter of torture (as a former POW), Sen. McCain’s opposition to torture is roundly panned by cons, including Mr. Ruberry. But for promoting torture, Mayor Giuliani, Reps. Hunter and Tancredo, and the others are rewarded with near-rabid applause. (In fact, Rep. Tancredo claims to want our best and brightest to act like a law-breaking fictional TV character … something the Pentagon is strongly against.)
Sadly for the current Republican Party and its base (which seems to grow more extreme by the day), this sort of bizzaro torture fetish fits right along with the 30% of Republican candidates who don’t believe in evolution.
I wonder what our Founding Fathers would have to say about this lot of 10. The United States of America I know is better than this.