You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Republicans' category.
According to a press release sent out today, Daniel Biss has now outraised incumbent State Representative Beth Coulson for the third consecutive reporting period. Not only that, but he is cruising past her on several fronts that voters tend to look at when it comes to campaign fundraising. That same release provides these stats:
The reports from the first half of 2008 shows Biss outperformed Coulson by 60 percent in total money raised, more than two-to-one in money raised from individual receipts, more than three-to-one in money raised from within the 17th District, and nearly 50 percent in money raised in low dollar contributions.
Coulson did outperform Biss when it came to PAC contributions - nearly one-third of Coulson’s money came from Political Action Committees compared to Biss’s ten percent.
What jumps out at me is the 3 to 1 in-district rate since donors in-district also tend to be voters.
Mr. Biss is putting in the hard work it takes to run a campaign and stay rooted to his neighbors and community. This, in turn, bodes well for the 17th district should those folks elect him as their new State Rep this autumn.
Progress Illinois has also taken note of Mr. Biss’ work ethic.
Update: The Biss campaign now has the full press release online (PDF).
As if his first post in this debate wasn’t fibbing enough, George Dienhart has updated his most recent, very carefully parsed post and — again — cherry-picks out only the parts which fit his narrow, bizarro alternate reality all while continuing to falsely claim that somehow my pointing out facts which negate his fibs are “lies” in and of themselves.
Does Mr. Dienhart not know how to read the entire proposal Sen. Obama originally put forth in January of 2007? Does he not understand that taking only a few bullet points out of my own posts (post 1 and post 2) debunking his junk while ignoring the conclusions thereof doesn’t make his fibs any more true than before?
Sadly for his readers, this appears to be the case.
Perhaps Mr. Dienhart will bother to actually link to these posts and quotes of which he whines instead of cherry-picking a few lines from them as he fabricates his misinformation.
Only then would his readers be able to judge for themselves who is referring to fact-based info — such as the actual contents of Obama’s plan from 2007 which included references to the residual forces Mr. Dienhart now lies about being a “flip” — and who is, quite frankly, acting like an irritable troll by clipping quotes in convenient places.
Then again, in his partisan fog, perhaps Mr. Dienhart really thinks that Obama is somehow flipping his consistent positions simply because he’s not repeating every single line item of every single policy proposal every single time he mentions said proposals during 30 second debate points and soundbyte interviews… (Of course if he did do that then partisan Obama-haters would start complaining that Obama is overanalytical and elitist… Oh, wait, they’re saying that too. Hard to believe, I know.)
That said, the hypocritical Mr. Dienhart may want to discontinue crying about “partisan talking points”. Everything I’ve linked to was pre-existing information which I simply (and all too easily) referred to shine the light of truth on Mr. Dienhart’s lies.
On the other hand, several points Mr. Dienhart makes come straight from GOP talking points. Here’s but one example… Mr. Dienhart quotes something from what he calls a “Democrat” National Committee meeting (not sure what that is since the actual meeting on that day was the Democratic National Committee).
So right off the bat we know he’s using a unique misspelling. A quick Google search including that typo reveals that Mr. Dienhart pulled “his” talking point from an equally half-witted July 5th Republican talking point memo PDF hosted at GOP.com. GOP.com is, of course, the website of the Republican National Committee (or is it the “Republic” National Committee?).
Is it ok to produce a graphic that is reminiscent of the presidential seal or isn’t it?
Partisan conservatives like those mocking birds at Illinois Review, among many other nattering nabobs, are downright apoplectic that Obama’s graphic design team came up with a graphic that looks kinda sorta like a presidential seal. (Of course, the Obama campaign had been using an engraved image of an eagle for a while before this non-issue was raised anyway. Why didn’t cons gripe about it before? Must’ve been a slow news weekend.)
Problem is, plenty of Republicans have done the exact same thing — producing graphics that mimic the presidential seal and the seals of other branches of government. In fact, Republicans from local replacement candidate Martin Ozinga to presumptive presidential nominee John McCain have also been mimicking Obama’s other graphics so it’s abundantly clear that conservatives used to be ok with echoing earlier design work.
So which is it? Either it’s ok for all candidates to ‘borrow’ graphic design or it isn’t. Conservative partisans can’t whitewash and ignore instances of their candidates parroting designs but then go bonkers when the presidential front-runner (who also happens to be a Dem) does it.
Which is it, con whiners? Or are the cons perhaps really just upset because McCain didn’t think of it first instead of borrowing a chiseled star from graphics related to the US military?
(And so much for the tattered, faded myth of “liberal” media seeing as how this non-issue seems to be all they can talk about, now that they’ve stopped overanalyzing Michelle Obama’s pantyhose, or lack thereof…)
(h/t Mark Nickolas)
I wrote on Sunday about another of the lies Sen. Lindsey Graham told America during his “This Week” appearance on ABC.
Sen. Graham’s bit was ostensibly to talk up John McCain but in reality he ended up mostly muddying waters and blurring lines. In the process, he told the whopper I noted last Sunday about McCain’s campaign not being full of lobbyists when the fact is not only are there lobbyists working at the highest levels of Camp McCain but they even do their lobbying from the back of his Straight(ish) Talk Express and are clearly influencing his policy statements, both foreign and domestic.
But enough about the Mac team’s attempts at smoke and mirrors on lobbyists.
Sen. Graham, of course, lied about other stuff too. To wit, on the heels of the discussion of McCain’s cozy association with lobbyists came this whiney subject-changer in the form of a weak try at guilt-by-association:
“John McCain didn’t borrow money from a guy going to jail to build his house.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) discussing Barack Obama on Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulous.”
Neither did any other presidential candidate, including front-runner Barack Obama.
Eric Zorn of the Tribune describes 8 basic points as he tries to set Sen. Graham, and the record, straight on Rezko. In short:
1. The deal could have gone down without Rezko. …
2. The Obamas did not get a special discount on the house. …the sellers have confirmed that the sale price was the result of routine real estate negotiations and was the best offer they received on the house.
3. The sellers rejected two lower bids from the Obamas. …
4. The Rezkos did not pay an inflated price for the vacant lot. …
5. The Obamas did not get a special discount from the Rezkos when they later purchased a one-sixth strip of the vacant lot to enlarge their yard. …
6. The Obamas did not receive or borrow any money from the Rezkos to buy their house. …
7. Obama hasn’t done any political or personal favors for Rezko since this saga began. …
8. The reason Obama is nevertheless correct in describing his actions here as “boneheaded” is that Rezko is and was a sleazeball.
ArchPundit has a ton more details in his series on Tony Rezko for anyone who’s actually interested in the truth.
If all the Republicans have on Sen. Obama are lies (which would fit an emerging pattern of other lies)… what does that mean for the McCain campaign?
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain needs to decide whether he wants to be George Bush’s best bud or just throw him under the bus and be done with it.
On Tuesday evening, we learned from Sen. McCain that despite his 95% Bush voting record in 2007 and his 100% Bush voting record in 2008, that suddenly:
I disagreed strongly with the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq.
Now, it’s rather odd that Sen. McCain would try to tell his national audience that he “disagreed strongly” with Bush on Iraq since just a few weeks ago he told us all on the Michael Gallagher Show:
No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have.
So… which is it?
No wonder the ‘applause’ was delayed from his Republican audience. They were clearly confused by the flip-flops he was wearing on his sleave.
Don’t believe the audio? Unfortunately for the Straightish Talker there’s also plenty of video…
(That said, it’s also rather odd that he would go to a suburb of New Orleans to make his speech. Sen. McCain has not only repeatedly worked against supporting that great American city while it rebuilds, he was also caught eating his cake with George Bush while the two ignored all the people literally drowning in NOLA.)
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.
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.
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.)
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 »
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”)
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.)
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…
Sun-Times News Group columnist Kristen McQueary, generally regarding as hard-nosed but fair-minded, dives into Martin Ozinga III’s “lucrative” contracts with the city of Chicago and other government agencies. She also takes a gander at his and his company’s big bucks donations to Democratic candidates and groups.
Given his donor history it is a bit surprising that Mr. Ozinga is the Republican candidate for Congress in the open Illinois 11th, not the Dem:
…Ozinga has given Gov. Rod Blagojevich at least $20,000, including a $10,000 donation in 2005 during a fundraising luncheon.
Ozinga has opened his checkbook for gubernatorial candidates, Chicago aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District officials and city ward organizations.
His company, Ozinga Bros., holds a lucrative and powerful position as the sole provider of concrete for city of Chicago projects.
McQueary asks the question on many folks’ minds regarding this replacement candidate…
Can a person with those ties, landing those deals, floating in that stratosphere, stay clean?
And then offers us her take as someone reporting day in and day out on those insiders…
After 40 minutes, I wasn’t entirely convinced. For railing against the system, Ozinga is doing pretty well within it [...]
But I wasn’t unconvinced either. [...]
(emphasis added)
After being represented by Congressman Jerry “Most Corrupt” Weller and subsequently being abandoned by him as he retires to spend more time with his family (and perhaps his Central American land deals), Illinoisans in the 11th district are likely weary of anyone with a whiff of corruption near them. This is likely why Republicans are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to tie Sen. Debbie Halvorson (the actual Dem candidate) to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. In light of Mr. Ozinga’s past support for Blago, that spin doesn’t quite wash.
Ms. McQueary spent 40 minutes talking with Mr. Ozinga about his ties to the Machine. Voters now have 6 months…
(h/t Poodle Walker)
Recently resigned Bush administration official Lurita Doan is alleged to have scheduled meetings and planned ribbon cutting type ceremonies with partisan aims in mind (ie, positive media stories) and generally pulled other strings to shine favorable lights on incumbent GOP legislators — while doing the opposite as retaliation against Dems.
Having the head of the taxpayer-funded general services administration committing such blatant political favoritism is of course a big no-no and apparently, after years and years of not being caught, she got caught and the WH asked her to resign. (Whether Bush wanted her to leave because what she did was unethical or because she got caught we may never know.)
All of which lead Time magazine blogger Karen Tumulty to wonder “what took so long”.
Atrios and several commenters to her own Time blog post give her the answer she least expected, but the most obvious for those paying attention — that darned (not so) liberal media ‘in action’ again.
The Illinois Republican Party’s too-cute-by-half Bloggin on Blago Blog declares that “Voters won’t forget that Halvorson chose Blagojevich over them.”
Perhaps voters will also not forget that Sen. Halvorson’s hand-picked GOP opponent Martin Ozinga III has given nearly $25 grand to Blago, generous donations he now apparently regrets.
Will IRP also blog on Blago-backer Ozinga’s choice to support Blagojevich?
While they’re at it they can explain just how he may have gotten some of that money that he donated to Democrats.
…And maybe then they can also blog on Ozinga’s Obama-like logo.
Let’s hope this attempt to curtail pay-to-play politics makes it through the process now that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. And, let’s hope that Gov. Public Official A signs it. HB0824 is another great step in what should be a series (in a perfect world) of efforts to codify some common sense ethics.
All the House and Senate members who cooperated on this and all the other interested leaders — Dan Hynes and Cindi Canary get a shout-out from Rep. Fritchey — ought to hold their heads a bit higher today.
Get it passed. Get the guv to sign it. And then … accept our thanks.
McCain blames the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Congress:
Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.
Yet, McCain is a member of that same Congress he now chastises. If he really had a problem with his fellow Republican Ted Stevens and his Bridge to Nowhere, as he now claims, then he could’ve filibustered the spending bill til he got his way.
In fact, if McCain had a problem with spending over the last umpteen years all he had to do was turn to his fellow Republicans — they controlled Congress for all but a few months in the decade-plus leading up to that tragic bridge collapse.
This all-talk, no-action gig seems to be a pattern with McCain: saying he’s against something but not actually doing anything to quash it. From Rev. Hagee’s bigoted and anti-American sermons to the North Carolina Republican Party’s bizarre racially tinged guilt-by-association ad to now throwing his own fellow legislators under his campaign bus….
Indeed, having the presumptive Republican prez nominee throwing his fellow Members of Congress under the bus as a cheap political stunt makes even less sense than when the actual incumbent Republican President did the same thing a day earlier. (Pres. Bush complained Congress wasn’t sending him any bills to help “fix” the economy. It is members of Bush’s and McCain’s Republican Party who are holding up those bills with procedural shenanigans while the majority Dems have been working to get those bills unlocked from the GOP hijinx and send them down the street to the Prez…)
PS: If he were really concerned about our roads and bridges and infrastructure McCain wouldn’t be suggesting his cotton candy gas tax holiday (tastes good, but rots your teeth and leaves you empty). His empty gesture would instantly vacuum $10 billion out of the Highway Trust Fund with no alternate funding source for infrastructure investment in mind. Conservative and progressive economists agree that McCain’s anti-tax plan stinks
How does Cong. Peter Roskam “support” our troops? By insinuating they’re a bunch of sex-crazed horndogs who must be nannied over lest they give in to temptations of the X-rated variety.
And there’s something in it for you too, dear taxpayers: a complete waste of the Pentagon’s time and our tax dollars as military brass are commanded to search and destroy pin-ups and videos instead of, oh say, our enemies.
What’s next? Banning government-issue condoms? Mandating abstinence for unmarried troops and the calendar method for those who are married?
What’s the difference between Cong. “Porno Pete” Roskam’s nanny-state attitude and the House of Saud’s regulations for US troops manning bases in Saudi Arabia in the 90s? At least King Saud let the guys have Victoria Secret catalogs (though not much else).
Can you imagine Rep. Roskam walking in to give a pep talk at the local armory before the next National Guard deployment? …”Don’t go fight yon terrorists, men. Fight the nudie rags instead. It’s not Hezbollah we’re after — it’s Hollywood! You just might get warts on your hands if you don’t listen to my dire warnings to avoid the girlie magazines.”
Perhaps instead of being so worried about oversexed troops, Porno Pete Roskam ought to be quite a bit more concerned about the rapists staffing the war profiteering contractors hired by the White House. So much for any Republican claims of “family values” given that they continue to let those atrocities go on.
Say, aren’t there more important things going on? Something about a recession? And exorbitant gas costs? And what’s this war thingy we keep hearing about? And healthcare for uninsured kids? And the White House spying on Americans … what’s that all about?
Oh, wait. Raunchy Roskam apparently couldn’t give two shakes about work-a-day folks, agrees in principle with Sen. McCain on keeping our troops in Iraq for 100 years in spite of reality on the ground, has voted against our children multiple times (and lied about why), and he favors shredding our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Nevermind.
Then again, the media seems to have recently discovered that black folks have … preachers! Maybe Rep. Roskam will take care of that “problem” too.
How f’ing sick do you have to be to tie in Chicago’s recent rash of gun violence and murdered children to the Presidential campaign???
Congrats, Anne Leary and Gang… You’ve gleefully skipped right over trying to actually find a solution to the problem and instead dove headfirst right into that disgusting cesspool of partisan politicking; a sewage pond you’re now choosing to fill with the still fresh blood of those children whose souls you’re now abusing.
Ms. Leary is promoting yet another trite guilt-by-association smear — a low-budget YouTube ad, hoping to be picked up and endlessly replayed for free on the boob tube — from yet another con partisan who has no interest in actual, honest conservative principles but rather a near-prurient need to score evermore partisan chits. Ms. Leary finds herself applauding the news that ABC’s Jake Tapper will be promoting the video as well as the alphabet network apparently continues down its path of turning the news division into just another version of their soaps.
While Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain are actually trying to have an issues-based campaign debated on high standards, Ms. Leary and her con comrades would rather try to smear Obama with any shred of “violence” or “radicalism” by playing Six Degrees of Bullshit. (Then again, Ms. Leary, you’re admonishing your own nominee because he doesn’t see a place for the unprincipled uber-partisanship you espouse … just so we know where you’re coming from.)
Say, who’s behind this propaganda effort to try and overtly connect Obama to the concept of “violence” as a means to tarnish him through the use of the common propaganda technique of “transferance”?
None other than Floyd Brown, a low-brow GOP operative known for producing vitriolic guilt-by-association ads that do absolutely nothing to actually prevent the violent crimes he exploits for his partisan gain.
I don’t know of a word in the English language that accurately describe just how pathetic, amoral and debasing such partisans who would use the murders of children for purely partisan gain really are. But Ms. Leary, you’re right there with Mr. Floyd in whatever ring of hell that peccant place is.
Those kids are dead — and you’re using their murders to channel your hatred for Sen. Obama?
Again, a strong enough word does not exist, though loathsome comes close.
(PS: Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty has been proven time and again to not deter murder and other violent crimes as it is … so what on earth are Ms. Leary and Mr. Brown trying to accomplish?)
–
As an aside, Rep. John Fritchey makes several very good points in his discussion of the actual topic — gun violence. Ms. Leary and her cohorts would do well to stop shooting up with their partisan syringes for a time and think about practical means to prevent such violence instead…