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Apparently those in the national media tend to pout when they are called out on their sins of ommission… Must be why they’re being so conspicuously quiet now that the rug has also been pulled back to reveal their sins of commission in the run-up (and on-going cheerleading) for the Iraq War.
Unfortunately, while our nation may eventually recover its sullied reputation on the world stage, all our brave GIs who’ve sacrificed so much won’t find much solace even if the media realizes once again it ought to be the Fourth Estate (keeping a check and a balance on the three official branches of government) instead of zombie-like stenographers… McCain barbecue sauce and flowers for mum or not.
One of our kids’ favorite books is “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown. They love looking for the mouse and they always whisper “hush” right along with the little old lady. Their favorite page is the blank one that reads “Goodnight nobody.”
And so it was with rather loud laughter that I just noticed … “Goodnight Bush.”
On Memorial Day, Sen. Obama was speaking and told the story of his uncle, a veteran of the 89th ID, and his recollections of WWII. The 89th liberated Ohrdruf, a part of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Sen. Obama mistakenly said they liberated Auschwitz, which was actually liberated by the Soviets.
He immediately owned up to the error and noted the correct information.
That didn’t stop the attack poodles at the Republican National Committee and all across conservative partisandom from pouncing by inhumanely pitting one concentration camp against another as if such torture and murder were a contest from which they could somehow extract political points.
Jeff Lieber notes there is no difference between the deaths endured at Auschwitz and those at Buchenwald and implies that the Republican partisans ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they had consciences that is. And this comment about Dachau is particularly poignant… just read it.
This is what the Republican National Committee calls “an exaggeration”?
The only things the RNC managed to “win” in this is to both clearly illustrate how desperate they are to twist whatever they can and to also get the media to avoid talking about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the original point behind Sen. Obama’s retelling of his uncle’s story.
In fact, Sen. Obama’s veteran uncle spent days alone in his attack and didn’t leave his house for 6 months to cope with what he’d witnessed in the war and at Ohrdruf.
…But all the Republicans can do is act “gleeful,” as MSNBC puts it.
Disgusting.
This is so wrong on so many levels:
Wife of founder of Ozarks Minutemen pleads guilty to fake rape claim
[Angela] Wilburn is the wife of Brian Wilburn, who helped form the Ozarks Minutemen. [...]
Angela Wilburn told investigators that three Hispanic men broke into her mobile home and that one of the men sexually assaulted her in the hallway, then shot her in the knee with a handgun.
She soon retracted her story and said she heard a noise, and grabbed her husband’s gun. She told police the gun went off as she reached for a flashlight.
By the time Angela Wilburn made the admission, Greene County deputies had already spent more than 100 man-hours investigating the fictitious attack.
The sheriff’s department said in December it would seek restitution from Angela Wilburn for the wasted time. [...]
There is the obvious problem that a woman with this many … ahem … “issues” related to paranoid fantasies probably shouldn’t be allowed near a gun in the first place, at least not one that doesn’t have a trigger lock on it.
But there are more subtle indications that this woman has lost her bearings. Indeed, maybe I missed that day in 2nd grade geography but I’ve always had the impression that the Ozarks — including Greene County, Missouri — did not meet any international borders and are instead in the middle of the country.
Speaking of borders, most estimates indicate that at least half of illegal immigrants are not from Latin America. Inexplicably, the rabidly anti-immigrant forces always seem to forget that a whole bunch of illegal immigrants fly over any walls we put up using these things called commercial jets and that they arrive here on a legal visa and simply stay past their time.
These same forgetful people also seem to forget that there’s no wall on our northern, more Caucasian Canadian border… Not that race would ever have anything to do with their rhetoric and their false police reports. Nope. Never.
(h/t Kos)
Count Rachel Ray as the latest victim to Big Brother the uber-partisan, wild-eyed rantings of the Cult of Malkin. Obviously, not enough EVOO in their diets…
Shame on Dunkin Donuts for falling prey to such mind-numbing, bile-spewing dunceness from the likes of knee-knocking fraidy cat hyperpartisan Michelle Malkin (who once stalked a 12-year-old disabled boy because she was so afraid that he may have been a secret agent for KAOS intent on destroying apple pie … or something).
I wonder if Fail Blog would cover this 30 minute empty-calorie meal from the Kooky Conservative perspective — failure to possess any shred of common sense let alone capacity to put things in perspective — or the Gotta Make the Donuts perspective — failure to anticipate that a fringed paisley scarf on a perky brunette talkshow/cooking show host might send a handful of conservative pundit crackers into spasms of oversensitive, overhyped, over politically correct pantsuit-wetting.
Who’s more moronic? Michelle Malkin for promoting such blatant idiocy or the people who treat her like a goddess of goop by buying into this bollix (and thus allowing her to earn a living pimping such propaganda)?
Daily Herald reporter John Patterson writes that he just received a robocall targeting Melissa Bean, but it was with a 217 area code number.
Nevermind that the call apparently tried to mislead citizens by tsk-tsking the Congressional recess before a vote on military pay (implying our soldiers would somehow have to go unpaid in the interim — wholly untrue, the vote is for future pay).
Mr. Patterson’s surprise wasn’t over the implied fallacy, it was over the 217 area code since it covers central Illinois and doesn’t even come close to Melissa Bean’s 8th district…
Oddly enough, Melissa Bean is sponsoring legislation that would require full disclosure listing exactly who is calling on Caller ID. If it were law, Mr. Patterson would know [who] that someone that called him is.
In light of that sponsorship conservative partisans, who typically claim they favor responsibility and honesty, have been railing against her ever since … replete with slimey over-the-top essays comparing this soccer mom Member of Congress to a brutal dictator in their feigned rage. (And with crackers like that poisoning the well it’s little wonder the American people by and large are rejecting such venomous rhetoric.)
(Disclosure: I’ve done some work for past Bean campaigns. Who knows if I will again this cycle. She’s a great person and seems to be coming into her own as a legislator.)
If we have no rule of law, we have only anarchy. But, this doesn’t seem to matter to self-proclaimed “law and order” conservative partisans.
To wit: McCain Message Coordination w/ Anti-Obama “Veterans For Freedom” organization
If the coordination (which seems obvious) is proven, it is illegal based on current election law. This, of course, comes after the McCain campaign apparently violated his own campaign finance law.
A good thing to see this week of Remembrance Day…
US Rep. Bill Foster on remembering our GIs and their families. He wants to take Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn’s Illinois program national.
Living up to our responsibility and debt to those who defend our rights and our nation is walking the walk, not just talking the talk, when it comes to “supporting our troops” … something those opposed to the Modern GI Bill would do well to remember.
To borrow a phrase from a friend who spoke yesterday during one of the nation’s countless Memorial Day ceremonies: our vets don’t want to be held up as heroes, they want to be held tight as family and friends.
All these humble men and women ask is that we remember them in our prayers and thoughts, not idly lionize them with jingoism and cliches.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
– John F. Kennedy
God bless our troops and their families.
The other post was getting too long to keep updating but there are two more interesting developments.
First, for those who enjoy Inside Baseball, Prairie State Blue blogger ‘bored now’ notes the manner in which the Kirk campaign went “ballistic” over Dan Seals’ overly successful gas station PR event and analyzes why this may be so (O-b-a-m-a…). It’s as good a breakdown of the raw numbers as any to date.
Second, in an irony of ironies, the Lincolnshire police chief tells the Pioneer Press that the last car to pull up for the discounted gas during the Seals event was full of (drumroll please) … Mark Kirk staffers.
Obviously this means that not all Kirk supporters thought it was a “stupid” idea or were so concerned about this legal activity being somehow portrayed as “illegal” (some of the more tame epithets Kirk’s partisans have used to smear Dan Seals).
No word on whether or not they were in a clown car.
…Couldn’t resist. 
Check out Team America and friends carrying water (or should I say “carrying gas”) over at Rich’s place while trying to spin his best baloney about Dan Seals gas price promo at a Lincolnshire station the 10th district.
Two points while TA and Co try to come up with more hollow rants opposing Seals..
- First, despite TA’s willful, partisan-induced ignorance, Mark Kirk also “gives away” things of value and material benefit to voters. There are plenty of Kirk for Congress shirts and caps on parade routes, and folks who go to his events are treated to free goodies like cookies, pop, etc.
All politicians give away items of value.
All.
- Second, a Republican in neighboring Indiana gave away gas for free — yes, for free — just last month.
Republican Luke Puckett, also a challenger just like Dan Seals, pumped free gas a month ago in South Bend while bending drivers’ ears about his plans to drill for oil in pristine natural areas of California and Alaska. (Wouldn’t weening our nation off what Pres. Bush calls an “addiction” to oil be smarter in the long run? Even if we destroyed God’s Creation to get at a few more barrels of oil, even those rigs will eventually run dry — and then what?)
The Republican party’s conservative base can’t both be mum when a well-known Iraqi immigrant to America (who also happens to be the Imam of the largest mosque in America) visits with and even advises Pres. Bush — in the White House no less — but then get hopping mad with hysteria when Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama meets with that same guy for a few minutes…
So which is it, either conservative partisans hate Muslims even if Pres. Bush and Sen. Obama meet with them or they don’t…
From DHinMI, in his reaction to reporting by Oliver Willis:
It makes sense that Obama would meet with the Imam. Qazwini came to the United States in 1992. He was first in California, but eventually ended up in Dearborn Michigan, home of the largest population of Middle Eastern Arabs outside the Middle East. The Arab-American population in Detroit—between a quarter and a half million—is diverse, but the largest group is Lebanese Shiite Muslims. Beginning in the 1990’s, the Shiite Lebanese were joined by Iraqi Shiites.
Like these new immigrants, Qazwini is from Iraq. His Grandfather was an Ayatollah in Karbala who Saddam arrested, and he died in prison. The family fled Iraq, Hussein Al-Qazwini came to the US, and unlike most of the Arab-American community, was a strong advocate for overthrowing Saddam. Eventually, however, even many of the Arab-Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq—always a small group–became disillusioned with the US occupation of Iraq and turned on Bush and the GOP.
Which brings us to the fun part about the wingers going crazy over Obama’s meeting with Qazwini. How many of the wingers were going crazy in 2003 when Qazwini gave an opening prayer before Congress? Who complained that Qazwini met with staffers of the Bush administration’s National Security Council to talk about the overthrow of Saddam? Where were the complaints about the four or five invitations to visit Bush at the White House extended to Qazwini? Did the wingers flip out when Qazwini participated in the roll-out of Bush’s Faith Based Initiative, an event that took place at the White House?
(links are original)
Oliver Willis even has photos of a hug and a kiss between Pres. Bush and his friend and advisor, Imam Qazwini. The Imam has even met with Pope Benedict for crying out loud.
But a handshake and a chat with Sen. Obama causes frantic fits among the cons?
Hypocrites.
…Actually, this round of “Which Is It” has a clear-cut answer.
Hard-line con hack Debbie Schlussel, no stranger to conspiracy theories and the originator of this most recent infopimped malarkey, has been attacking Bush, the Pope, and now Obama for the same reason — they’ve met with this Imam from Michigan her rabid, paranoid fear of Muslims…
What one person labels ‘vigilance against all Muslims’ is what most mainstream Americans refer to as “bigotry“… and clearly now the Pope, Bush and Obama are all automatically Muslim Manchurian Candidates simply for being in the same room as this Iraq escapee.
Oy.
John McCain had to write his own jokes for this YouTube piece.
I wonder why the national press following his campaign doesn’t pick up on this more… (Could you pass that sweet BBQ sauce … and a beer?)
And his ideas are different than Pres. Bush’s failed conservative policies how?
Someone pass the ribs basket while we wait for the not-so-liberal media to report on the many shady deals McCain’s chief campaigner and lifelong lobbyist Charlie Black has under his belt…
Is McCain’s chief Charlie Black a…
(a) Lobbyist to the Dictator Stars?
(b) Lobbyist Cashing in on Taxpayer-funded Pork?
(c) Lobbyist with ties to Fake Astroturfing PR Efforts?
Congrats John McCain — thanks to the lobbyists you’ve hired to run your Double Talk Express your “maverick judgment” is going the way of those used wetnaps from your Sedona Resort BBQ For the Media… and it’s unlikely any SNL sketches are going to help.
There must’ve been a run on coo-coo puffs lately…
Despite the fact the bottom is pretty far down on that side of the pool, desperate con partisans are still managing to bonk their beans as they jump off the deep end to wallow in their mucky, vile hatred of Sen. Obama.
If you scroll down at that post, you’ll notice frequent critics of reality and reason such as Citizen Wells and Pat Hickey make an appearance with comments supporting the tripe.
Remember the good ol’ days of oddball but cute/fuzzy presidential sideshows? Why do the conservatives feel the need to act so blatantly desperate?
While it’s fun to joke about this sort of tinfoil hat tripe, we also have to realize that this tripe is precisely why rational people have to be just as engaged and take their right and responsibility to vote just as seriously as these wackos.
If wackos like these are the only ones talking and voting… we all end up living in the same hateful, wacko world in which they appear to be ensnared.
Markos notes that conservative partisans pushed the Rev. Wright (manufactured) controversy hot and heavy in the deep red, Deep South Mississippi 1st Congressional District special election, with the NRCC spending $1.3 million it can barely afford and other conservative 527s and PACs spending gobs more.
The conservatives’ hypocritical, borderline-racist and anti-Christian efforts to demonize a black Christian pastor had no effect.
Dem Travis Childers won the special election by a healthy margin in a Republican district that is normally R+10 and that Bush won in 2004 with 63%. That makes the Dems 3 for 3 in red seat special elections this year. The wave began with now-Cong. Bill Foster picking up former GOP Speaker Denny Hastert’s seat right here in Illinois and was followed by strongly-R open districts in Louisiana and now Mississippi also switching to Democratic hands.
As the saying goes, a lot can happen between now and November … but wow … and ouch.
While it’s despicable that GOP “leaders” such as Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) would choose to slice out only the few phrases that would make the presumptive Democratic nominee for president look bad (and they have to actually ignore those phrases’ real intent even at that), it’s equally deplorable that a well-respected journalist such as the Sun-Times’ Washington Bureau chief and political columnist Lynn Sweet would let them get away with the distorted half-quoting via her own half-baked he-said/they-said stenography at her to-the-minute blog.
We’re more than a third of the way through our fundraising to honor Pat Botterman’s legacy and more than a third toward our goal — right on track.
If you haven’t already, please donate what you can.
As if you needed a reminder of Pat’s impact on our little neck of the woods, check out the impromptu eulogies left at Capitol Fax when Rich Miller reported on his death… A lot of heartfelt mourning, for good reason, from Dems, Republicans, family and friends.
To reiterate, Pat often dug deep into his own pockets to help keep the local Wheeling Township Democratic Organization up and running. That group’s office (shared with the Palatine Twp Dems) is the only permanent Democratic office in the purpling Chicago northwest suburbs and it’s used by a variety of campaigns and groups as a way to touch base and keep organized.
Your donation — small or large — will help keep it going. Please contribute now.
Want to know more about Pat and his life’s work? Glad you asked…
- Here is the local Daily Herald’s obituary on Pat Botterman.
- Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown also reviewed Pat’s career (via the affable Frank Coconate, scroll down to March 12, 2008).
- State Representative John Fritchey gives us his take on Pat’s work.
- E-man gives us a tear-jerker take on his experiences working with Pat in the campaign trenches.
- And a few more comments about Pat via the Hyer Standard blog.
Keep that legacy of hard-nosed determination and personal integrity going, with your donation in Pat’s memory.
Earlier posts in this series…
- Wheeling Dems donor drive - 50 state strategy in action
- Wheeling Dems donor drive - Aloha Friday
- Hey, did you hear the one about the fundraiser?
Friends’ posts supporting this donor drive…
(c/p Daily Kos)
Last week, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in the wake of his near-tie in Indiana and landslide win in North Carolina.
One of the topics covered presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain’s recent attacks on Sen. Obama.
Presidential candidate Obama replied that some of Sen. McCain’s recent “smears” indicate that he appears to be “losing his bearings” given that he had earlier pledged to run an issues-based campaign and avoid the gutter slime and sucker punches. Sen. Obama:
“For him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don’t need name-calling in this debate.”
In other words, Sen. McCain had pledged to run an ethical campaign but Sen. Obama says he’s “losing his bearings” (his ethical compass) as he sells out to cheap-shot partisan smears.
Oddly, the McCain campaign either didn’t understand that or chose to ignore it because instead of defending McCain’s bearings on ethics vis a vis partisanship, they decided to counter that Obama was somehow talking about McCain’s age (if elected, he would be the oldest president sworn in to office).
So which is it? Has the good Sen. McCain lost his bearing because he has left his ethical compass behind (as Obama says) or because of his age (as McCain’s camp apparently claims)?
Either immigrants are the worst thing ever* and they’re stealing all our jobs or we don’t have enough people in this country willing to fill all the manual labor, low-wage, hourly positions to keep up with demand.
This has been another rousing edition of “Which is it?” … brought to you as always by divisive partisanship.
* - keep in mind about 99 bajillion percent of Americans are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants…
I headed over to IL-66 GOP State Rep candidate Chris Prochno’s “Conversations with Christine” meet-n-greet earlier this morning.
She informed me that in my “Local on the 8s” post from a few days ago I mistakenly wrote that she had voted herself a pay raise as a village trustee.
In reality, the vote was on whether or not future board members would receive the raise. The first group eligible would be those village trustees elected in the Spring of 2009.
The mistake was all mine and I sincerely apologize. (And I did also apologize to her in person.)
It’s a pretty embarrassing boo-boo given this blog is intended mainly to counter right-wing conservatives’ errors, doncha think?
In other, slightly related news, she also mentioned that there was recently a “coffee” in Elk Grove and of the residents that came to talk with her and others the pay raise vote was not even an issue. Glad to hear it.
(Again, full disclosure, I’ve known her opponent Mark Walker for a number years and am supporting him in this race.)
We blew past our original goal of $250 within one day.
With 8 days left to go, the new goal is $750. Please consider donating to the Wheeling Township Dems today.
Oh dear. From WaPo:
Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
He was reluctant to support it until his campaign-manager-who-is-also-a-lobbyist, his former staffers, and a six-figure bundler were hired?
What is it that John Ruberry, Juliana “Dan Proft” Johnson, and other conservative partisans keep saying about having the judgment to be president?
We know what Sen. Obama says about that mythical McCain judgment: McCain has lost his bearings. Hopefully Sen. McCain won’t get so worked up at having been caught red-handed in this land benefits deal that he hops off and calls the reporter a dirty name.
Read the rest of this entry »
I introduced the Wheeling Township Dems Donor Drive online yesterday as a way to honor my friend and well-known Illinois Dem “operative” Pat Botterman.
Wow, one day down and only 9 to go and already the Wheeling Dems Donor Drive is off to a great start. That, of course, is thanks in no small part to the wonderful help of local activist and Botterman Alum Aaron Krager over at Faithfully Liberal who set up a goal of $250 over the next ten days.
He is already more than halfway there in 24 hours. He might have to bump that bar up at this rate! Please help bust through that modest goal with your own donation – large or small.
And, Aloha Friday! One of those contributions came from as far away as Hawai’i.
Why are we doing this? To honor the legacy and generosity of Mr. Pat Botterman whose alternately described with phrases like hard-working, integrity of the highest order, patriot to his core, a class act, bulldogged and tough-minded … or, if you were not in his good graces … Darth Vader, jerk, major league @#%&!*, and more such well-earned epithets from all the “right” people.
How’d Pat earn such high regard? Less than a year before his untimely passing, Sun-Times columnist Steve Brown explained….
Steering [Alderman Bernie] Stone to victory was Mike Noonan, who emerged as one of the premiere local political consultants for Regular Democrats by piloting Lisa Madigan’s first campaign for attorney general.
Directing Waguespack’s historic upset of Ald. Ted Matlak was Patrick Botterman, who has made his mark in Illinois politics by running the campaigns of independent-minded candidates willing to take on the Democratic establishment.
In essence, Noonan is Mr. Inside in Cook County Democratic circles while Botterman is Mr. Outside.
What they share is a nuts-and bolts knowledge of winning elections, knowledge that each gained while working in the trenches.
(h/t YDD at Illinoize, I couldn’t find that Brown column online at the Sun-Times site anymore)
Please consider adding your contribution to honor Pat. $5 to $50 to $250… or more, it all helps!
Earlier posts in this series…
Friends’ posts supporting this donor drive…
(c/p at Daily Kos)
Check out conservative strategist Dan “The Saddest Clown” Proft at about 2:50 into this Chicago Tonight interview with WTTW’s Carol Marin.
Ms. Marin had asked Mr. Proft and Chicago legal eagle and Daily Kos contributor Georgia Logothetis about the effect of the blogosphere in relation to traditional media. Ms. Logothetis stated that the left blogosphere had acted as a fact-checking foiling the traditional media’s meme that the Democratic presidential race was somehow close when, in fact, it was mathematically near impossible for Sen. Clinton to overtake Sen. Obama’s pledged delegate count.
Here’s Mr. Proft’s response to the notion that the blogosphere was playing the part of fact-checker to the traditional media’s meme that the Dem primary season was ‘a close race’:
I mean Barack Obama? Until last night, he hadn’t won a primary in about three months. Err, yeah. Since… since Super Tuesday.
He was trying to say that the media got it right because Clinton was indeed somehow “close”… But perhaps Mr. Proft needs his own fact checker.
Some facts…
Super Tuesday was February 5th, 2008.
This Chicago Tonight interview was May 7th, 2008.
Barack Obama won the delegate count in 13 primaries and caucuses in the three months since Super Tuesday.
What’s that? Thirteen wins?
“…Err, yeah. Since… since Super Tuesday.”
(You want to get uber-technical and point out that Mr. Proft said only that Obama hadn’t won a “primary”? Fine. It’s still a a fallacy since among those 13 states he won there were several primaries, including one right next door in Wisconsin a full two weeks after Super Tuesday.)
Either the man was lying or he’s a complete dunce.
Watch Mr. Proft for yourself:
Why did well-respected Chicago telejournalist Carol Marin not call him out?
Surely she knew about the primaries and caucuses in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state, the US Virgin Islands, Maine, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi…
And will Mr. Proft be asked back to Chicago Tonight … or any other self-respecting media outlet for that matter?
Only time will tell.
But one thing is for certain. No matter how poetic Mr. Proft’s spin and fibs, nobody’s “fearful” of such dim-wittedness.
PS Dan: the garden’s doing fine, thank you very much. How are your cats and sock puppets?
(h/t Illinois Review “Conservative vs Liberal on Chicago Tonight”)
In 10 days, the Wheeling and Palatine Township Democrats will be hosting a joint fundraiser (PDF) to help cover costs for keeping the only Democratic office in the northwest suburbs up and running.
The Wheeling Dems in particular will also be awarding the First Annual Pat Botterman Leadership Award to honor the legacy of the late, great Wheeling Township Committeman who died suddenly on March 10th.
Over the next 10 days, leading up to the brunch fundraiser, I’ll be asking folks to help out the Wheeling Dems with a wee bit of a virtual fundraiser. Keeping that Dem office open as an organizing base is important in the purpling, but still red, Chicago northwest suburbs … especially in this election year. It’s a true application of the DNC’s 50 state strategy to cover all the bases.
Please donate what you can now through the secure Wheeling Dems ActBlue page.
For those unfamiliar, Pat Botterman was a good friend to many, many people — Republican, Dem and apolitical alike. He was a pit bull on the campaign trail, burning the midnight oil and applying plenty of elbow grease for the candidates he worked for. He was also a mentor and networker par excellence, as his “alumni club” of former interns and volunteers, now campaign managers and field directors spread from coast to coast, will attest.
His most recent campaign was one with which the “netroots” are quite familiar — managing the Mark Pera for Congress primary campaign. Before that, he also helped elect Democratic State Senator Dan Kotowski to a northwest suburban seat that had been held by Republicans for nearly a century and a half. Pat knew both defeat and victory (more often defeat given his penchant for the underdog) and as one of his friends noted after his passing, he was even-keeled in both.
Above all, he was a patriot dedicated to improving his (and our) country, state and communities and he did it with more integrity in his pinky than some in politics have in their whole selves.
His funeral and wake featured a line out the door of literally hundreds of friends and family… pols, activists and volunteers… first responders, GIs and work-a-day union guys and gals… and was decorated with floral arrangements from the likes of “Obama for America” and more.
But now, two months on, the guy who more often than not paid the bills for the local party out of his own pocket is gone — looking on from above, probably embarrassed as all get out that people are making such a fuss.
Will you help out to keep the Wheeling Dems going in this important election year? Even contributions as little as $5, $10 or $25 will go far with group that picked up Pat’s penny-stretching habits long ago. Your contribution will be much appreciated.
Miss ya, buddy.
(c/p Daily Kos)
Evil Bender says it better, and in more depth, than I…
Announcing the winner of the 2nd Phyllis Schlafly award: Phyllis Schlafly
The staunchly anti-reality Ms. Schlafly recently whined about the folks who are panning Ben Stein’s goofy “Expelled.” While the movie is a work of fiction … wait, it’s not supposed to be fiction? … well, then.
Perhaps Ms. Schlafly will share her dubious distinction of dunceness with Mr. Stein.
And, of course, both Schlafly and Stein present perfect illustrations of self-fulfilling martyrdom: they publicly promote easily refuted garbage and then complain when regular folks point out that their bunk is, in fact, easily refuted garbage.
Whatever floats your boat, eh? Thank goodness for the 1st Amendment which allows for such amusing comedy.
I’ve been meaning to put up some info local to the northwest suburbs but haven’t had the chance to do so til now. So, here are eight points about local goings-on over the past few weeks.
Newt Gingrich has some advice for worried, “shellshocked” Republican incumbents in Congress:
In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face “real disaster” on Election Day unless they move immediately to “chart a bold course of real reform” for the country.
Does he mean this “bold course of real reform“?
Because, in all honesty, just because he’s calling his ideas ’something brand new’, Sen. McCain’s only offering 4 more years of the same (or 100 years, depending on who you ask). …Except for the ribs. The bbq ribs are new.
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain needs to get his facts straight…
“This subsidized (ethanol) program - paid for by taxpayer dollars - has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world,” McCain said in a statement.
Oh really? Unfortunately for the apparently confused Senator, reality is quite different than the cons’ spin. Also from that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article:
…not enough attention was being placed on the role that rising crude oil prices - which surged to $120 a barrel Monday - have played in driving up the cost of food.
“It’s the wrong medicine for the problem,” Wisconsin Agriculture Secretary Rod Nilsestuen said. “If we hadn’t had the significant increase in renewable fuels that we’ve seen in the last five years, we would have higher gas prices today, not lower ones.”
Moreover, an editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune from rocket engineer and mathematician Robert Zubrin and global security expert Gal Luft adds more facts to debunk the cons’ anti-ethanol spin:
Here are the facts. In the last five years, despite the nearly threefold growth of the corn ethanol industry (or actually because of it), the U.S. corn crop grew by 35 percent, the production of distillers grain (a high-value animal feed made from the protein saved from the corn used for ethanol) quadrupled and the net corn food and feed product of the U.S. increased 26 percent.
Contrary to claims that farmers have cut other crops to grow more corn, U.S. soybean plantings this year are expected to be up 18 percent and wheat plantings up 6 percent. U.S. farm exports are up 23 percent. [...]
The increased demand for food from the hundreds of millions of people in China and India rising out of poverty and moving to a more calorie-rich diet affects the price of food the most. Second is the price of [petroleum-based] fuel.
Higher fuel prices increase the cost of production, transport, wages and packaging, the main cost of retail food. For example, a $3 box of cornflakes contains 15 ounces of corn that cost 8 cents when bought from the farmer. So, farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices. But the effect of oil price increases can be huge.
So, given those facts, what should Sen. McCain really be worried about? The current president’s Saudi “uncles”.
Zubrin and Luft again:
According to Merrill Lynch analysts, without biofuel programs, the price of oil would be about $13 a barrel higher than it now is. A $13 savings for each barrel could save the U.S. $65 billion in foreign oil payments.
So, rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down the oil cartel. (emphasis added)
Should we be looking at other alternative fuels beside corn-based ethanol? Absolutely. The whole point to a “free” market is competition.
Give petroleum competition through ethanol, methanol, electric, “100mpg biodiesel“, etc.
Give corn-based ethanol competition through cellulosic-based ethanol, etc. (Shoot, Brazil uses sugar cane ethanol and even exports it to us!)
Much of that will require a reluctant Detroit (and Japan, Germany, Korea, etc.) to lay out an extra $100 or so to upgrade modern vehicle to meet Flexfuel standards. But $100 per vehicle in exchange for saving $65 billion-with-a-B in oil payments to foreign countries? That’s a bargain.
Open it up to actual competition.
Go read the whole Zubrin/Luft column. They raise several good points on how we can be spending our fuel dollars here at home, driving the US economy, rather than shipping that money off to OPEC and other foreign hands.
(h/t Illinois Review)
The following is a press release from the Pete Gutzmer for State Senate campaign. Pete is a firefighter having a second go against Matt Murphy in Illinois 27th Senate district (northwest suburbs).
Pete goes after Matt’s support for rolling back the road- and infrastructure-funding gas tax.
(I know both Pete and Matt. I’m volunteering a bit for Pete. Good guys, both.)
The Supreme Court recently ruled (in a split decision) that the state of Indiana can require voters to present photo identification in order to cast a ballot.
Conservatives cheered with glee.
The problem with such a stipulation is that it in fact present a barrier, preventing citizens from voting simply because they do not have a picture id.
And that, in fact, is exactly what happened earlier today in Indiana as a group of nuns were unable to cast ballots for lack of an id.
Why didn’t they just go and get an id? They don’t drive and had no means of getting to the nearest state facility to have a photo id made.
Shame on conservatives for refusing these nuns the right to vote. Illinois Review editor Fran Eaton lists the typical “so what/big deal” excuse-making from conservatives:
Most everyone has to have a photo ID for any travel on planes with Homeland Security as it is. They either drive or are able to get an ID at the Secretary of State’s office for less than $10 bucks. You have to have a photo id in many stores now to use a credit card. I’m not sure why voting should be less scrutized.
Actually, no. As this group of now-disenfranchised nuns illustrates, not everyone needs or wants a photo id. And as for the $10 cost, again, not everyone can spare even $10. Indeed, the 24th Amendment declares it illegal to deny the right to vote to persons who are unable to pay a poll tax. That cost of the government-issued photo id amounts to a poll tax by another name. Ms. Eaton would apparently wish that we also disenfranchise the poor. Finally, buying material goods with a credit card is a privilege, not a right enshrined throughout various Sections and Amendments in our Constitution. (Ms. Eaton, of course, is on record as opposing expansion of laws related to firearm owner ID cards … for apparently opposite reasons.)
Then again, maybe the nuns were secretly dead people or illegal immigrants trying to boost vote fraud numbers seeing as how vote fraud was already exceedingly rare even before the recent SCOTUS split decision.
These Indiana rules amount to little more than an intentional disenfranchisement of American citizens who have the legal right to vote, except for wont of a picture — and conservatives applaud such disenfranchisement.
So much for “spreading democracy”…
WARNING: Severe political incorrectness approaching. Avert your eyes.
I think it’s time progressives in Illinois started gathering around a meta-message, as we look to the fall when Republicans are going to try to foist another wolf in sheep’s clothing on us. IMHO the most effective meme is the most obvious - McCain is the Manchurian Candidate. I mean, seriously, what has HAPPENED to the guy?
Forty years ago John McCain, the admiral’s son, did an incredibly brave and self-sacrificing thing. Any Democrat who says otherwise is simply following KKKarl Rove’s playbook and smearing a legitimate hero.
Key words, “forty years ago.” So…what happened to “John McCain” in the interim? He’s gone a little nuts is what the evidence suggests, or at least has lost all moral moorings in pursuit of the White House.
2000 - no way John McCain would kiss the religious far right’s…ring to get votes. That was Bush territory and he was Mr. Straight Talk. Well, KKKarl Rove talked straight, straight into the robo-call machine, push-polling a question about McCain and interracial children and McCain was DOA in South Carolina and that was that.
2007 - McCain speaks at Bob Jones University, or maybe it was Liberty (Falwell) U. Who cares. Either way - what happened to John McCain?
HOW many fights - actual, physical fistfights - has Sen. McCain gotten into with his colleagues in the Capitol? How many do we know about and how many are folks not talking about? A bit unhinged?
What about campaign finance, both the letter and the spirit of the law? Mr. “McCain-Feingold” himself - which gives him WAY more cred with some on the left than is deserved - has now completely flouted the very laws and mechanisms about Federal campaign financing that he himself helped put in place. What happened to John McCain? The “John McCain” that has had some Dems thinking of voting for him over HillBilly (if they’re the nominee) is nowhere to be found these days.
It is completely not fair, from one standpoint, to bring up the whole age thing, if one is Barack Obama. I, however, am not Barack Obama so I’ll say it - could it be that the cumulative effects of life-altering torture forty years ago have accelerated a general decline in both the physical and mental capacities of the senior Senator from Arizona such that he just is physically, dispositionally and yes mentally not up to the job?
“Yes, he’s old, so what?’ I’ll tell you what - he’s not getting any younger. Duh. He would START in his early 70s and go down from there.
Look, we depend upon people in their 60s, 70s and much older, every day, to do important work, and we would be lost as a society, and certainly less rich for it, if age were a barrier to meaningful participation in the life of the body politic, not to mention our world as a whole. Think of the critical importance of senior, experienced doctors, professors, writers - and certainly activists. Crucial and invaluable and, with the aging of the Boomer generation, much more of a part of daily life in years to come.
But being President of the United States is a job that accelerates the aging of even the healthiest people and with what the North Vietnamese did to him forty years ago, Sen. McCain isn’t ahead of the curve.
Senator Obama on the other hand, has been knocked from the beginning, with the idea that a “young man” of 46 (types the guy who feels plenty old at 47) is too unseasoned for the job. He is young…er, but he will get older and better, not older and worse. He will get stronger and more experienced, more capable, growing in the job, rather than…declining. It is completely not fair. If life were fair, it would have been McCain who lost to Al Gore in 2000 rather than Bush. But it is what it is.
So what indeed happened to “John McCain”? The brand got stale. We need to point that out to folks.
Didn’t Christ teach us to love one another? Why, yes, He did.
Why then would Illinois Review conservative and former state lege candidate Eric Wallace, PhD, bash Obama with the following snide, anti-Christian remark:
Needless to say, the black community’s first warning should have been after Barack Obama professed his Christian values, and then advocated for gay rights…
Advocating for equal rights is a Christian value, Dr. Wallace. Simple as that.
Why would Dr. Wallace take Christ’s own teachings out of Christianity? Perhaps he ought to change his name to Peter, since he is denying Christ with his self-interested partisan ranting.
You don’t think Dr. Wallace’s was pure, unadulturated self-interest? His own words belie his aims:
Thus we ask, that all our conservative friends support our [Freedom's Journal] magazine. To purchase a subscription click here. To advertise your business, and support our efforts click here.
Who publishes Freedom’s Journal (not the historical 1800s version but the modern conservative version which usurped that proud publication’s name)?
Seeing as how Dr. Wallace’s denial of Christ’s teachings in his post is related to his pursuit of money, perhaps he’s more like Judas than Peter.
Irony has long had a home among the partisans of the conservative persuasion and today’s events are proving no different. McCain apologists like John Ruberry and Pat “Melvinna” Hickey, among others, are attacking a guy who was simply quoting something McCain is alleged to have called his wife…
(In recent days, other McCain apologists have also gone after the recent Democratic National Committee ad which not only quotes McCain’s own words but shows the video clip of him saying those words. Attacking people who quote McCain appears to be par for the course, since more and more of what he says is unfortunately indefensible.)
A fellow who had previously supported Sen. Joe Biden’s primary campaign asked Sen. John McCain during one of his townhall events a question that many people concerned about McCain’s well-known anger management issues have:
“This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I’ve been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a cunt?”
Harsh language, but the reality is this questioner was asking Sen. McCain whether or not the reports of that infamous domestic tirade are true (the c-word was precipitated by his wife playfully mussing his hair a bit in front of some other people, who verified that he said it).
McCain’s obfuscation?
“Now, now. You don’t want to …Um, you know, that’s the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don’t …. There’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language. So I’ll move on to the next questioner in the back.”
The source of the c-bomb report? A book called The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which includes this paragraph:
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
(emphasis added)
Of course, this townhall question gets to the heart of McCain’s claims that he’s a “straight” talker, “one of the guys” and, most importantly, “prepared and experienced”…
First, he never answered the question. If the fact-checked report was somehow untrue (and the people who verified that he did indeed drop the c-bomb on his wife were for some reason fibbing) he could have just said so and put it to rest. He could have even “condemned” that four-letter-word since “condemnation” is the bar he seems to prefer for rhetoric he doesn’t like. And, we’ve already learned that once McCain “condemns” something it magically disappears down the memory hole with all those rib baskets and wetnaps simply by virtue of the fact that he is the McCain and the press thinks he talks straight.
So much for that “straight” talk.
Second, Sen. McCain is hardly “one of the guys” given that he dumped his first wife, a former model who had faithfully and anxiously waited for him while he was being held prisoner, because she was in a car accident and got chubby. In exchange, the Navy airman cum politician married a beautiful millionaire heiress. Her wealth has supplied McCain with handfuls of homes (including the site of his ribfest for the lackey media near the resort town of Sedona) and a private jet…. about as elitist as they get.
And, unfortunately, she was the target of McCain’s tirade in which he reportedly used the c-word, a word of which he now says, “There’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language.”
I agree.
Third, is he truly prepared to keep his renowned anger in check?
Did he, as reports verify, or did he not use such disrespectful language to verbally abuse his wife, a spouse who has provided him with so much material wealth in life, simply because she was being playful with her own husband?
And if he did, why did he feel a need to use such a harsh, abusive word and then duck a simple question about it?
As one of his apologists, John Ruberry, has already admitted Sen. McCain has been found in the past to have “poor judgment”.
Is ignoring a voter asking McCain to simply deny or verify-and-explain more of that same “poor judgment”?
Is insulting his doting wife by calling her a “trollop” and a “c***” also a sign of anger issues and yet more “poor judgment”?
Finally, another of the McC-word apologists used the headline “Stay Classy Dems” to whine about the guy who quoted McCain… seeing as how the questioner was asking about what McCain said, shouldn’t that read “Stay Classy McC-word”? Nice spin, but the question wasn’t what was offensive. What Mr. McCain called Mrs. McCain in that hot-headed haranguing is what is offensive.
PS conserv-o-partisans: Even former Biden supporters who are now supporting Obama are Americans, as are all the women McCain might call “trollop” or “c-dash-dash-dash” and, if McCain were elected president, he’d be their president too. Go figure.
Here’s video from that townhall with Sen. McCain refusing to either deny the report or condemn the word…