You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2007.
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.
