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This is really, really inside baseball and concerns Mr. Dienhart’s repeated slams against me (see his Update 2) in his increasingly salacious posts making claims about non-existent Obama “flips” on Iraq.
Just clearing the air a bit…
I posted the entire Declaration of Independence a year ago, some 11 score and more years after a group of wise men first wrote it using quill and parchment… In this election year, the 8th year of a controversial presidency many believe has set too many ill precedents and reverted back to several of the methods used by that other infamous George from the 1770s, this particular passage seems just as appropriate now as ever:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
And, of course, there are those grievance against King George III which also still resonate… In 2008, we people of these United States are dealing with the fall out from the current George: the suspension of habeus corpus, the illegal domestic spying, the Big Brother information gathering on all of us (not just “targets”), and even the treasonous publicizing of undercover American spies. Here’s what John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the others had to say of that earlier George:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
This one’s for you Rich Miller…
The setup from a Newsweek interview with Republican presidential nominee John McCain:
Q: Want to back up a little bit and talk about press coverage. One of the things that you mentioned in your speech in New Orleans was that you felt that the media hadn’t recognized or had overlooked some of the attributes that Hillary Clinton had brought to the race. And I wondered—
MCCAIN: I did not [say that]—that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it]—I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage…I can’t change any of the coverage that I know of except to just campaign as hard as I can and try to seek the approval of the majority of my fellow citizens.
It is something that the American people will judge, and I won’t complain about it and I won’t praise it. I will just run my campaign and hope that the American people will make a judgment.
(emphasis added for clarity)
The reality, courtesy of Republican nominee John McCain’s own mouth (video clip):
Senator Clinton has earned great respect for her tenacity and courage. The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes receives.
So… Sen. McCain did say exactly that the “media often overlooked” Sen. Clinton’s attributes.
Oh, and Sen. McCain has also complained plenty about media coverage that he doesn’t like.
So which is it: Is Sen. McCain lying or is he really that forgetful about something he said not even a week ago?
And will the BBQ-fed lapdog media bother noticing?
I originally posted this back on April 30… Seemed appropriate to repost it in light of some of the talking heads’ “concerns” aired earlier this evening…
(With apologies to Mike Royko… and, apparently, Pat “anti-copy and paste” Hickey…)
A few weeks back Arch posted an old Mike Royko column which, at the time, attempted to burst the balloon of racism swirling around a Chicago mayoral race which included then-candidate Harold Washington. Arch’s celebration yesterday of the 25th anniversary of the late Harold Washington’s swearing-in as the first black mayor of Chicago reminded me again of that Royko piece.
In light of the issues some Americans are saying they have and other Americans are pretending they don’t have with a certain 2008 presidential candidate, it seemed like it would be interesting to adapt the Royko column for the modern day. What would Royko have written if he were writing about the 2008 presidential election. One can only imagine…
So I told Uncle Chester: Don’t worry, Barack Obama doesn’t want to marry your sister.
That might seem like a strange thing to have to tell somebody about the man who may be the next President of the United States. I never had to tell Uncle Chester that President Bush (either one) or President Clinton wouldn’t marry his sister; though he might still have been cautious about Mr. What Is the Definition of “Is”.
On the other hand, no other President, in the long and storied history of America, has had one attribute of Obama.
He’s black. It appears to be a waste of space to bother pointing that out, since every American knows it.
But, just as with the Irish-shade-of-white Kennedy brothers’ Catholicism, you can’t write about Barack Obama’s candidacy without taking note of his skin color.
Yes, he is black. And that fact is going to create a deep psychological depression in many of the white people — still the majority demographic — across this great country in towns and counties and cities and states, each big and small.
Eeek! The next President of the United States could be a black man!
Let’s all quiver and quake.
Oh, come on. Let’s all act like sensible, adult human beings.
Let us take note of a few facts about Barack Obama.
First, Obama was born in an era when America was still struggling to move beyond an earlier time in which white folks lynched people in some parts of the United States. By “lynched,” I mean they took a black man out of his home, put a rope around his neck and murdered him by hanging. Then they went home to bed knowing they were untouchable because the sheriff helped pull the rope.
Obama’s youth was spent, in part, overseas and in states where the civil rights struggles did not flare up into Bloody Sundays. Even so, those iconic images of police dogs and fire hoses, of marches and voter registrations, of billy clubs and tear gas clouds flowed steadily as Obama grew up.
Indeed, before he would be 10 years old, a young Barry would bear witness right along with our roiling nation to assassination after assassination as those flying the banner of change were gunned down again and again.
Obama certainly benefited from the toils of that time; but as even he notes it can still be difficult for him to hale a cab and many white people to this day believe he is only where he is because of some unnamed quota system rather than his own merits.
I think that most of us – white, privileged, the success road wide open to us – might have turned into haters had we grown up witnessing those atrocities year after year and become adults with the leftover vestiges of such divisiveness still haunting the halls and streets of our nation.
Obama didn’t turn into a hater. Instead, he developed a capacity for living with his would-be tormenters and understanding that in the flow of history there are deep valleys and heady peaks.
He went to one college and then another as he earned his degree. Then he went to Harvard’s law school, at a time when blacks were still as common as alligators there (though it was improving). And he became the first black man to head the Harvard Law Review, a fact which still turns heads to this day considering this achievement happened not all that long ago at a university which is older than our nation.
Had Obama embodied a different personality, he may have tied in with a good law firm (he had plenty of high-paying offers), sat behind his desk, made a good buck and today would be playing golf at a private country club – a comfortable, reasonable life.
But for Obama that wouldn’t sit well with how he had been raised. Rather, he chose to use his law degree to work by applying his legal acumen in community organizing and improving the lives of average and even down-trodden folks.
Being no dummy, he gravitated toward politics and the Democratic Party of the city in which he made his home, even if he still had to navigate the last workings of that big city’s weakening machine to prove his mettle as a campaigner and legislator.
And he went somewhere. Come on, admit that, at least, even while you brood about a black man becoming your next President.
He became a state legislator. Then a United States Senator.
I’m still enough of an idealist to think that most people who become members of the Senate are at least a cut or two above the rest of us.
And even his critics say that as a state legislator and as a U.S. Senator, he was pretty good.
So I ask you: If Abe Lincoln is qualified to be President after holding no higher office than Congressman (and having also been an Illinois state legislator in the years prior) and if JFK was qualified as a ‘youthful’ Senator himself, what is the rap on Barack Obama?
And I also ask you: If Hillary Clinton is qualified to be President after only 8 years experience as a Senator (and no other elective experience) and an earlier 8 years as First Lady (the experiences of which she now appears to routinely “embellish”), what is so unthinkable about a man holding the Oval Office after being a state legislator for 8 years and a U.S. Senator for 4 (with significant Federal legislation under his belt positively affecting both the foreign and domestic spheres)?
The fact is, Obama’s credentials for this office meet or exceed those of George W. Bush, U.S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover and many of those who have held the office of Commander-in-Chief.
W was governor in a weak-governor state barely longer than Obama has been in Federal office, and half the time Obama has been in elected office overall. Grant was a war hero, reported to be a drunk, doled out patronage like parade candy and tolerated (and even defended) scandal after scandal by officials in his Administration the results of which were millions of dollars stolen by White House officials. A lawyer by trade, Taft had been appointed (not elected) governor of the then-US held islands of the Phillipines and later Cuba for barely a few years, along with an overlapping stint as Secretary of War. The scandal-plagued Harding had been a state legislator and a US Senator whose friends maneuvered him into a compromise nomination for president. With his background as a mining engineer, humanitarian Hoover’s highest office before being elected to the White House was Cabinet Secretary.
All became President. And America has seen her way through the ups and downs of each (as well as their aftermaths).
Some of these Presidents (as with all 43 of them) were remarkable men (indeed, Taft went on to reach his life’s goal — Supreme Court Chief Justice), others were pitiful, and the bulk just so-so. But during the years of their elections the nation didn’t have a tizzy over the color of their skin (only the content of their character).
But this spring, many (not all, not even most) of our nation’s citizens are gape-jawed at the prospect of Senator Obama becoming President Obama.
Relax, please. At least for the moment. There is time to become tense and angry when he fouls up as President – as anybody in that pressure cooker job inevitably will do.
Until he fouls up, though, give him a chance. The man is a United States citizen, with roots deeper than most of us have in this country. He is a 47-year-old Chicagoan who has been in politics and community organizing most of his life.
He is a smart, witty, politically savvy whippersnapper. He is far more understanding of the fears and fantasies of America’s whites than we white folks are of the frustrations of America’s blacks.
The nation isn’t going to slide into the ocean. The sun will come up today and tomorrow, and your real estate values and stock portfolios and job prospects won’t collapse because he is running (the incumbent and his party’s policies have already seen to that). History shows that those parameters in a country like America improve over the long haul, no matter who is President.
He’ll fire some Cabinet Secretaries, hire a few new ones, and the earth won’t shake under us.
He might hire some jerks. I haven’t seen a President who hasn’t. They don’t learn. In the months before Bush the Younger was first elected, many opined: “How he does will depend on the kind of people he surrounds himself with.”
W surrounded himself with Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and other unitary executive fetishists. With his poll numbers below freezing Pres. Bush is getting what he deserved.
If Obama is smart, which I think he is, he’ll surround himself with the very best talents and minds available. And they’re available. If not, we’ll survive and we’ll throw him out in 2012.
Meanwhile, don’t get hysterical. As many have said over the past fifteen-plus years, if we survived the Clenis, we can survive W (even though many have often wondered if we will).
And if we survive W, we easily can survive a real, live former professor of Constitutional Law, US Senator Barack Obama.
Who knows, we Americans might even wind up liking President Obama.
(Again, apologies to Mike Royko for slobbering all over his to-the-point Harold Washington column.)
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.
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)?
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.
Oak Lawn had a humorous safety campaign going encouraging people coming up to stop signs to actually stop at those signs.
Bureaucracy has gotten in the way and IDOT told Oak Lawn to take the funny signs down from the stop
sign posts.
Unfortunately, the local mayor sounds defeated and now says the town “had to junk” more than $1000 worth of funny, safety-minded signs.
Why not just move them? By all accounts they were pretty popular — why not work with local owners to place the quirky signs one or two properties in front of the stop signs?
(h/t CapFax’ Kevin Fanning)
If you’re easily offended — Fran Eaton — by unintentionally hilarious, x-rated graphic designers gone wild don’t click through….
Rich Miller posts a “this just in” covering some goings on with “Public Official A“:
In or about July 2003, Rezko asked the defendant to make an additional $50,000 contribution to the campaign of Public Official A. The defendant agreed to contribute the same amount as he had previously, namely $25,000. The defendant made this contribution on or about July 25, 2005 by check payable to Public Official A’s campaign. The defendant gave this check to Rezko. Thereafter, the defendant had a conversation with Public Official A at a large fund-raising event at Navy Pier.
During this conversation, Public Official A told defendant that he had been a good supporter, indicated that Public Official A was aware that the defendant had made another substantial donation to Public Official A’s campaign, and told the defendant that Public Official A understood that the defendant would be joining Public Official A’s administration. The defendant responded that he was considering taking a position, and Public Official A stated that it had better be a job where the defendant could make some money.
(emphasis original to Rich)
Holy crap what a selfish, maniacal prick “Public Official A” is.
The implications are obvious: US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald now has at least one piece of very direct, very compelling evidence that “Public Official A” was literally providing state jobs in recognition of campaign contributions.
With the guilty plea of Ali Ata, a significant donor to POA’s campaign fund and subsequently the recipient of a job in POA’s administration, US Atty Fitzgerald has 1 of the 3 players involved in just that one case.
The other players are Antoin Rezko, on trial now, and Public Official A.
Should Rezko be found guilty, US Atty Fitzgerald will very likely offer a reduced jail sentence in exchange for testimony against Public Official A — and Fitz will have 2 of the 3 players involved as he puts the 3rd, Public Official A, on trial.
Most folks call this “Tax Day” and, let’s face it, no one enjoys paying their dues for living in this country. But when you realize all the incredible freedoms and securities and opportunities this nation of ours provides for so many of us, in the main the investment looks to be worth it as we secure our common good and general welfare.
Is there room for improvement? Sure there is. That’s why we have these elections and the freedom to voice our opinions on what should or should not be national priorities.
Some interesting tidbits related to our tax investments — Tax Freedom Day is coming earlier this year and — according to the same sets of standards (which, admittedly, are goofy) used to declare Illinois state grants for diabetes research are “pork” — the Federal Pork Rolls for spending that tax money are again well below where they were prior to 2006 and the second-lowest during Bush’s two terms (the lowest was last year, 2007).
The commonality there? Dems are back in charge in the halls of Congress.
Nice.
The new Illinois State Board of Elections site sucks it big time.
Trash this new design and go back to the old one.
Seriously.
Representative Daniel Lipinski, Congressman from the Third District of Illinois, has finally arisen from the back bench to which his posterior has evidently been welded and made an endorsement in the Democratic Presidential primary.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/
Please note that other than Rep. Emanuel (IL-05), who has a serious issue either way and has been “hiding under his desk” for months now, Rep. Lipinski becomes the last member of the Illinois delegation to declare - including Rep. Foster (IL-14), who has been a Member for, what, twelve minutes? (Yet another reason, as if we needed one, for progressives to start working Right Now to help keep Bill Foster in his seat)
Danny Boy - about freakin’ time, dude.
Dear AT&T,
Harry Caray is dead.
Nothing against John Caponera, but please stop those damn commercials. Here I thought ComCast’s racist stereotyped “guru” commercials were bad. Then your ads came out. Yours somehow manage to be worse.
Thank goodness for WOW.
Best, Me
My kids had Life this morning. The cereal was pretty much all shaped like Colorado and Wyoming with a few looking more like North Dakota or Utah.
Clearly, one box of Life will cover their tuitions at the U of I. Move over Mikey.
God bless our troops as they faithfully and patriotically execute our Commander in Chief’s orders. May they come home safe, sound and soon.
Another case of gun violence at another campus as another gunman has gone on another rampage:
Several people injured in NIU shooting
Chicago Tribune
God Bless NIU. Here’s hoping those who’ve been hurt will heal quickly and fully. My thoughts go out to the students, employees, alumni and families…
And no, idiots going on a shooting spree is not cause for arming people to the teeth because no matter how many guns there are, no one could’ve shot the guy in the instant before he opened fire. The only thing that will truly prevent such senseless acts would be removing the weapons before they can be “abused” (as one of this blog’s frequent critics euphemistically puts it) and the only way to do that is through common sense supervision.
Given the gun industry’s flood of profitable weapons across the country, that’ll be a long day coming.
UPDATE: Last night details were revealed which included the fact that several of the gunman’s victims passed on. My deepest, sincere sympathies and prayers to their peers and loved ones.
So I go to www.superdelegates.org, built by still-progressive, former-Illinoisan Rick Klau, a tech-savvy Dean campaign veteran who with a few buddies came up with some web thing-y that was nifty enough that Google bought it for 100 large or so and made Our Man Rick a v. rich veep.
Anyway, there on Google Earth are the Democratic superdelegates in Illinois and…what’s this? Now, I understand Rep. Emanuel being undecided officially. He’s been saying he’s hiding under his desk for months. A lose-lose for him, either way hurts someone he knows and likes.
But Rep. Lipinski? Danny Boy? Yo, dawg, wassup wit DAT?
Just in case anyone out there had any illusions he wasn’t a go-along, get-along back bencher, a wholly owned subsidiary of his Dad whose ties to HillBilly go way back. Not like Danny’s a Congressman from ILLINOIS or anything. I mean, I see Sen. Clinton does OK with the supers from Tennessee, where Danny is really from - where he was when he got the hereditary call to Congress that is.
Talk about a DINO. I can’t WAIT for Mark Pera to get a second crack at this guy. Maybe by then President Obama can come with him on a campaign swing and say thanks for nothin’ to ol’ Danny boy. He’s the one with the yellow push pin instead of the Obama logo.
Kiyoshi is reporting over at Illinoize that the extreme conservatives of Westboro Baptist Church are going to protest the funerals of the women who were shot at the Tinley Park Lane Bryant.
Westboro Baptist is better known as the gutter dwellers who protest military funerals because they think the United States is too tolerant of gay folks, and thus (in their sad little minds) soldiers somehow deserve to die in the line of duty. These gay-bashing conservatives are the scum of the earth.
Typically, the Patriot Guard Riders will prevent the Westboro Baptist gang from disrupting military funerals. No word yet on whether or not they’ll be there to counter the Westboro Baptist creeps.
Not to glare askance at another Democrat but as a good Chicagoan would say, dere’s som’in’ hinky goin’ on here.
The MSM news Wednesday morning was all about how, gee, it’s close on the Dem side, although yes, Senator Clinton did end up with more delegates than Senator Obama.
But then comes this, from Time, pointed out to us by the fine folks at MoveOn (who didn’t, I notice, highlight this fishiness). Seems that by this count that good Chicago Irishman, Barry O’Bama, in fact has the lead in the delegate count AND in the number of states won.
”Things that make ya go ‘Hmm…’ “
This is the joke version of T-ball. Have at it, kids.
The State of Illinois has awarded $100,000 sole sourced to Ducks Unlimited, to help grow more ducks in Saskatchewan, so folks can shoot them when they fly over Illinois, so the state can get more tax and license revenue from their “sporting” endeavors to do so. What a boondoggle.
‘Course I’m sure the downstate and suburban Republicans are all for it. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel.
Where’s a Senator Proxmire when we need one? (you have to click the pic to enlarge and read it)
US Rep. Mark Kirk’s father has passed away. May he rest in peace and may their family be comforted.
Not sure I’ll have time to get to those “local races” that folks are requesting since Feb 5th is fast approaching — quite the busy boy — but I’ll certainly try to get to the 66th which features the only state lege contested primary in the area (Prochno v Bartell).
Here’s a topic: Compare and contrast the Skywalkers and Lipinskis…
Based on the completely off-topic posts being left at the entry about the conservative partisans’ lies regarding Sen. Obama’s faith and his Christian church it seems some folks want a little playground to romp around in… Have at it, y’all.
Joshua Hoyt, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, points out that scary brown people aren’t nearly as scary as immigrant bashers would like you to think:
The results are in. In a state where voters had a clear choice to vote for Romney’s tough stance on illegal immigration in the Republican caucuses, they instead turned out in historic numbers to vote Democratic. There they picked Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has unabashedly advocated an earned path to citizenship for the undocumented.
On the Republican side, Romney, despite his overwhelming funding advantage, came up short. University of Iowa polls showed that 57 percent of Iowa voters favored earned citizenship for the undocumented and only 23 percent favored deportation.
This is consistent with national polling. In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option.
Immigrant bashing just does not move votes. The 2006 elections were a disaster for anti-immigrant demagoguery. Not only did the issue fail to stave off the Republican loss of the House and Senate, but leading Republican anti-immigrant campaigners such as Reps. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and John Hostettler of Indiana and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania all lost their races. And in a telling portent of the future, Latino support for the GOP dropped to 26 percent from 44 percent.
While addressing immigration is necessary given the utter incompetence carried over from the INS to Homeland Security, it’s not an issue that is going to deliver a national election or take a good lead and turn it into a loss. It does matter on the periphery of elections and certainly if you are in a close election, it can hurt a candidate who isn’t bashing. At some point you have to stand up and do the right thing though and there are a lot of positive ways to address the issue and still win.
More than anything, the Democratic Party’s future is going to rely on building a base for constructive immigration reform.
But even in the party where the issue is hot, the guy who is relatively moderate took a greater percentage of the vote for those who thought the issue was important than did Romney.
After the jump, an e-mail from the Americans for Legal Immigration–a fine example of hysteria about brown people
Here’s Eric Zorn’s list of new years predictions questions and my responses:
- Will the feds indict Gov. Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges?
Nope. More of his associates, but I don’t think they’ll get to G-Rod this year, if at all.
- Will Chicago get a casino?
I hope not. Casinos suck.
- Will Chicago still be in the running to host the 2016 Summer Olympics when the International Olympic Committee issues its short list of nominees?
Unfortunately.
- Will Planned Parenthood’s controversial abortion clinic still be operating in Aurora?
Yes
- Will searchers find missing Bolingbrook resident Stacy Peterson?
I was going to write a long rant about how unimportant DWG stories are. I won’t. Because DWG’s aren’t important stories. Not when New Orleans is still a cesspool, not when our kids are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not when Pakistan’s burning. Not when Putin is working on becoming Czar Putin. Not when there are a million more important stories every day.
- Will prosecutors indict Drew Peterson for murder?
Don’t care.
- Will R. Kelly be found guilty at his upcoming trial?
He’s still on trial? WTF?
- Will Tony Rezko be found guilty at his upcoming trial?
All signs point to yes. Will Amy Jacobson get a job in TV news?
Uhhh….who?
- Will the price of regular unleaded gasoline exceed $4 a gallon in Chicago
Yes. In about a month.
- Will the Cubs win the National League pennant?
Pfff. Yeah, right.
- Will Rex Grossman remain with the Chicago Bears
No. Nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goo-oood bye!
- Will there be a foreign or domestic terrorist attack in the U.S. that kills more than 100 people?
More than 100? No. There will be domestic terror attacks though. There are every year.
- Will Osama bin Laden be killed or captured?
Nope.
- Who will win the Democratic presidential nomination?
Obama.
- Who will win the Republican presidential nomination?.
No one. Brokered convention ends up in chaos as Huckabee’s Heroes go toe to toe with Romney’s Rambos and McCain’s Commandoes.
- Which party will win the White House?
Democrats. There will be 4 republicans on the ballot.
- Will Sen. Dick Durbin get at least 66 percent of the vote when he runs for re-election in November?
Yes.
- Who will win the race in the 10th U.S. Congressional District (North Shore)?
Seals. Especially with Obama on the national ticket.
- Who will win the race for the 14th U.S. Congressional District (West suburban) seat formerly held by Republican Dennis Hastert?
Foster. The two republicans are too nutty.
Merry Christmas everybody. Had it not been for Gen. George Washington’s sneak attack — crossing the Delaware — on this day in 1776 we might all be celebrating a very British Christmas.
More on who’s been naughty or nice (or plainly hypocritical) a bit later in the week.
Be safe…
What’s Santa putting in your stocking this Christmas, a heap o’ happy or a lump o’ coal?
UPDATE: Since C-Rock Carl blindly thinks people taking out mortgages are to blame for the foreclosure mess — rather than the oft-unscrupulous companies which cajoled them into taking out knowingly bad loans and piling on fee after fee in predatory fashion — here are two instances of some kids being naughty…
ABC News Nightline: Playing the Odds: Lawyer Max Gardner Says Some Mortgage Servicers May Be Taking Homeowners for a Ride
Chicago Tribune: Illinois probing top home lender
Congrats to U of I whose comeback season has them headed to Pasadena vs. USC in a traditional Rose Bowl Big Ten/Pac-10 match-up.
And kudos to Ohio State for benefitting enough from the end of the Big Ten’s schedule to jump back into pole position without even playing. The Buckeyes head to the January 7th BCS title game to face LSU’s Tigers.
What’re you thankful for this Thanksgiving? I’m thankful most of all for my wonderful family and friends and all the blessings we’re able to share.
From the subhead to today’s Tribune front-page story on BP’s plant in Indiana (which dumps toxic waste in our drinking water):
Officials contend that they still don’t know how to keep levels of ammonia and solids routinely below the stricter limits they had pledged to follow
If they “don’t know” how to keep the levels under what they promised then they need to try harder. Millions of families drink that water and hundreds of thousands of people swim, fish and otherwise recreate in Lake Michigan.
Don’t just give up (as the Republican Indiana governor’s “exemptions” would allow BP to do).
Fight harder to do the right thing.
…I would say the blog posts have been slow out of sympathy for the Writers Guild of America strike, but it’s really just because I’ve been busy. I should be getting back to regular writing in the next few days (not that anyone’s missing anything, right?).
As for that strike, those people who oppose giving folks an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work ought to consider this conundrum presented by Daily Kos diarist SusanG…
The first story line in the present instance is sketched out via a Business Week Q & A with a small business expert, alarmingly headlined Writers Strike Could Devastate Small Business:
How are small businesses going to be affected by this strike?
Thousands of small businesses are going to lose revenues. I wouldn’t be surprised if several hundred would have to close operations. [...]
Who’s really going to suffer the most if it does stretch out that long?
It’s the small business player who is the unsung victim here, and there will be a big trickle-down from them throughout the entire economy….
Naturally, it’s best to frame this in terms of hitting the little guy hard. But the real clincher in this argument is that these people (writers, auto workers, truck drivers, teachers, air traffic controllers, whoever is striking that day) are so absolutely vital to the health of the American economy that they, and they alone, are going to bring down upon this nation a crash of unprecedented proportions. Billions of dollars lost! Hundreds of businesses close! Unsung victims! Trickle down! Entire economy!
But … they’re not worth sharing a dime more of residuals with. Or providing a decent pension or health care plan for, or adjusting overtime compensation, or whatever the issue is in a specific strike. [...]
If they’re the foundation the economy is built upon, pay them accordingly. If they’re not, quit screaming that the sky is falling if they decide not to show up for work.
While you ponder this two-faced nature of the union haters’ spin, Technorati kindly asks that I post this to “get the ball rolling” for their services: Technorati Profile
Orange + Blue = Sweet
And that’s really all I have to say about that…
So, the first round of Doomsday is almost here. Technically, it arrives Sunday, but the full impact will not be felt until Monday. Pretty much everything that can be written about Doomsday has been written about Doomsday in places like thecapitolfaxblog, at chicagoist, at ctatattler, and in many other places.
But allow me to add some more to the discussion. This crisis has been building for years. The old, incompetent Frank Kreusi was warning about the coming of Doomsday years ago. He kept predicting Doomsday over the past couple of years, turning into the boy who cried wolf. I remember dire predictions of all service running on weekend schedules, and transit effectively grinding to a halt. Kruesi always resisted efforts to clean up the CTA’s act, and bought into the Mayor’s pony plans at the same time.
This created a great deal of skepticism in regards to the CTA’s plight. That CTA didn’t really need the money. After all, it was paying for pony plans like the superstation. Nevermind that Kreusi would never tell Daley no, and that the City and private developers are paying for most of the superstation. It’s a terrible idea, one that will make Daley look like the buffoon he is. But the CTA’s share is a relatively modest $25 million out of its capital funds. Most of the money is undoubtedly coming from the Mayor’s favorite slush accounts TIF funds.
Anyway, the CTA has been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul for years now. It doesn’t have the funds to operate at full capacity, so it raids it’s capital funds. That keeps the system running, pays salaries, buys fuel, pays to keep buses and trains running. But, that means that those same capital funds are not available for what they are supposed to be used for. That is, replacing track, replacing old buses, and buying new train cars.
Huberman has stunned me with his…competence as head of the CTA. I figured that he would just be another hack. But here’s a guy who has cut CTA operational costs way back, who found a way to pay to eliminate slow zones on the most dilapidated lines (the north side red and blue lines), and negotiated new union contracts to make pension and medical costs more palatable. The State’s Office of the Auditor General audited the CTA and RTA and found the systems to be run very efficiently, finding little cause for concern in terms of wasted resources.
In other words, Huberman has done everything he’s been asked to do and more. Kruesi predicted it would take a decade to eliminate the slow zones. Of course, the dilapidation that resulted in the slow zones was due to terrible management under Kruesi. The blue line subway slow zone is already eliminated, and the O’Hare highway extension zones will be eliminated by the end of 2008.
And, with Doomsday looming, it appears to be all for naught. Because Governor Blagojevich won’t play ball. Rep. Hamos has the best possible bill pending before the House to save the CTA, Metra, and Pace. It’s basically the solution that the Auditor General recommended. A quarter of a percent increase in sales taxes in the region serviced by the RTA, plus an increase in the real estate transfer tax in Chicago. The bill gives Chicago the ability to levy that extra tax, which will be passed to RTA for allocation to the CTA. The CTA’s funding needs will be mostly met by the real estate transfer tax. The sales tax primarily goes to Metra and Pace. Which means that Chicago taxpayers will actually be subsidizing suburban commuters, contrary to what anti-tax zealots like to say. Sales taxes paid by city dwellers will go to Metra and Pace riders, who are primarily suburban. Yes, there is some overlap, but some suburban people also ride the CTA.
Anyway, the Governor won’t abide an increase in the sales tax. And now, in the classic stylings of George Bush, he’s trying to pass the blame to the very people who have done everything they’ve been asked to do:
“If they turn down millions of dollars of help and force their riders to find other ways to get to work, then shame on the RTA and the CTA, and maybe there should be some new leadership in those two organizations,” Blagojevich said.
Yeah, that’s it governor. The RTA and Ron Huberman are at fault for this mess. Not you. Not the guy who has promised to veto the funding bill. The guys who did everything they were asked to do to reduce costs. Ron Huberman has been a godsend for the CTA. A rarity in Mayor Daley’s Chicago. A competent administrator. Of course he should be fired. Competency is a crime under Rod Blagojevich’s regime.
No Governor. It’s you that is to blame. You are the one who bears responsibility at the end of the day for this mess. No one else. Not the RTA Board. Not Ron Huberman. Not even the oaf on the fifth floor. You.
Who would have thought the day would arrive when Speaker Madigan looks like the good guy?
Doomsday is almost here. If you ride an express bus, start looking for another option. And it’ll just get worse in January (warning - pdf).
Update - Looks like another temporary reprieve…Doomsday is delayed until January…$21 27 million in federal capital dollars authorized for operating purposes…How much do you want to bet that we’re in the same position in 2 months?
I’ve switched out the header to reflect the autumn season: enjoy.
We’re seeing a mix of some amazing fall colors around here, along with a few real duds that look like dried up nothings.
Commence open threading…
[confetti and balloons]
Welcome to Jerry101, Illinois Reason’s newest blogger. He’s got a post up just below introducing himself and also listing a few campaign notes.
[/confetti and balloons]
Here’s an open thread to discuss “autumn” vs “fall” now that July-in-October seems to be over.
I’m guessing the thing ain’t a day past 6,001 years old. 85 million? Who can even count that high? Too many zeroes. And who ever heard of a dinosaur quacking like a duck anyway.
I’m sure Andy Schlafly and the Gigglepediers will back me up on that logical assessment based on an approximation of Biblical timing according to retranslations of earlier oral histories. I wonder if Adam and Eve dined on duck-billed dino a l’orange… They must have, I tell you.
Former AG and Gov candidate Jim Ryan’s son has died in an apparent suicide attempt. My prayers and sympathies go out to the Ryans.
Baseball season is over (for all practical purposes): Cubs threw in the towel over the weekend. Wish they could’ve made more of their play-off opportunity but they didn’t.
But, the Illini are ranked again for the first time since the beginning of the decade and they look to build on it in coming weeks (if Williams’ knee isn’t too bad). And the Bears beat the Pack at Lambeau. While it remains to be seen if they did indeed turn around the season on the strength of two Peanut pokes and a good half of D and O… beating the Packers in their house means a lot.
Illinois coach Ron Zook philosophizes:
“Any time you’re ranked it’s an honor, a privilege,” he said. “But it doesn’t really mean anything until it’s over. Like I told the team after the game, it’s important to understand what you’ve accomplished, but we haven’t accomplished anything. None of our goals have been met yet. We still have a long way to go”
Same is true of a lot in life, eh?
I can understand Dan Proft’s irritable ball syndrome because he professes to be a life-long fan of the ChiSox but boy did his team stink big time this year. Rich “Benedict Arnold” Miller has no excuse for his animus. He chose his lot in life when he left Cubs Nation.
Go Cubbies! On to AC 00 00 00.
PS: The Daley Plaza rally was a MLB production, politicians’ tomfoolery notwithstanding. MLB did the same thing in Phoenix and other cities with winning teams. Perhaps it was to make up for Bone-head Bud setting the game times at very un-kid friendly hours.
(I removed the dig on season records after a kind reader pointed out the error of my ways. Have fun quoting that one out of context.)
It’s been a bit since DWLawson challenged me to read and explain the findings of “the NIJ study on the effectiveness of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban (included high capacity magazines as well)”…
I did read it.
Apparently DW did not. He claims the National Institute of Justice study by Prof. Christopher Koper (PDF) “shows NO evidence of any positive result from the 10 year ban.”
The authors of this study funded by the Bush Administration’s Dept. of Justice answer his challenge for me:
The Ban’s Success in Reducing Criminal Use of the Banned Guns and Magazines Has Been Mixed
• Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AWs declined by 17% to 72% across the localities examined for this study (Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, St. Louis, and Anchorage), based on data covering all or portions of the 1995-2003 post-ban period. This is consistent with patterns found in national data on guns recovered by police and reported to ATF.
• The decline in the use of AWs has been due primarily to a reduction in the use of assault pistols (APs), which are used in crime more commonly than assault rifles (ARs). There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons and by substitution of post-ban rifles that are very similar to the banned AR models.
• However, the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with LCMs in jurisdictions studied (Baltimore, Milwaukee, Louisville, and Anchorage). The failure to reduce LCM use has likely been due to the immense stock of exempted pre-ban magazines, which has been enhanced by recent imports.
It is Premature to Make Definitive Assessments of the Ban’s Impact on Gun Crime
• Because the ban has not yet reduced the use of LCMs in crime, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. However, the ban’s exemption of millions of pre-ban AWs and LCMs ensured that the effects of the law would occur only gradually. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers.
Further on, toward the study’s concluding chapters…
10.1.1. An Agenda for Assault Weapons Research and Recommendations for Data Collection by Law Enforcement
The effects of the AW-LCM ban have yet to be fully realized; therefore, we recommend continued study of trends in the availability and criminal use of AWs and LCMs. Even if the ban is lifted, longer-term study of crimes with AWs and LCMs will inform future assessment of the consequences of these policy shifts and improve understanding of the responses of gun markets to gun legislation more generally.
Developing better data on crimes with LCMs is especially important. To this end, we urge police departments and their affiliated crime labs to record information about magazines recovered with crime guns. Further, we recommend that ATF integrate ammunition magazine data into its national gun tracing system and encourage reporting of magazine data by police departments that trace firearms. [...]
Research on aggregate trends should be complemented by more incident-based studies that contrast the dynamics and outcomes of attacks with different types of guns and magazines, while controlling for relevant characteristics of the actors and situations. Such studies would refine predictions of the change in gun deaths and injuries that would follow reductions in attacks with AWs and LCMs. [...]
(Note: The National Rifle Association and other assorted members of the “gun lobby” have opposed weapons tracing efforts, especially on a national scale.)
10.1.2. Studying the Implementation and Market Impacts of Gun Control
More broadly, this study reiterates the importance of examining the implementation of gun policies and the workings of gun markets, considerations that have been largely absent from prior research on gun control. Typical methods of evaluating gun policies involve statistical comparisons of total or gun crime rates between places and/or time periods with and without different gun control provisions. Without complimentary implementation and market measures, such studies have a “black box” quality and may lead to misleading conclusions. For example, a time series study of gun murder rates before and after the AW-LCM ban might find that the ban has not reduced gun murders. Yet the interpretation of such a finding would be ambiguous, absent market or implementation measures. Reducing attacks with AWs and LCMs may in fact have no more than a trivial impact on gun deaths and injuries, but any such impact cannot be realized or adequately assessed until the availability and use of the banned guns and magazines decline appreciably. Additionally, it may take many years for the effects of modest, incremental policy changes to be fully felt, a reality that both researchers and policy makers should heed. Similar implementation concerns apply to the evaluation of various gun control policies, ranging from gun bans to enhanced sentences for gun offenders. [...]
(all bold emphasis added; italic text indicates author’s headlines and subheads)
Long story short: Some reduction in violence was seen, but because of mitigating factors (incomplete traceability data, “immense number” of grandfathered-in weapons and magazines, availability of imported weapons, etc.) results were mixed. Given that the results were mixed, the authors indicated a continuation of the ban may have resulted in definitive reduction in violence using the banned weapons.
Long story shorter: DW was wrong to claim there were “NO” positive results. The ban worked, but was hobbled by flaws built into it.
There were some positive results in the form of reduced violence, but those results were offset because of loopholes constructed in the ban at the behest of the gun lobby.
A few days back Nightline featured the story of a St. Louis Chicago* area mom named Aimee, her husband Jim and their three kids.
Aimee has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and her young children don’t have too many more years left with her. After first learning of that she had Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Aimee at first began to withdraw and tried to mentally and emotionally cordon off her children.
Then one day her daughter, Emily, came home from school and said she wanted tacos. In that instant, Aimee says she knew that even though she was going to die within years she was going to fight to honor the loving bond she and her children have.
I’ve had moments like that myself. Bad day at the office, lots of things going on in the schedule, and just a lot of life happening. And then the kids say or do something that just cuts through everything and puts it all in perspective (and it’s not as if my struggles are anywhere near the level of Aimee’s disease)…
And so now Aimee is fighting to raise awareness of ALS, the rare but fatal disease that is going to some day rob her and her children of such moments. She’s also using her first amendment rights to fight Congress and bad info in the press.
Head to the ALS Association website and see what you can do. Offer to volunteer near you or send them a donation. (I just missed posting about ALSA’s “Call for a Cure” action day, which I didn’t realize was this week. Perhaps you could still follow up with that.)
* Aimee and family are from the Chicago burbs … but she’s a Cards fan. (At least her husband’s a Cubbies fan! Go Cubs!) Darn those silly bloggers playing fast and loose with the facts.
WordPress is saying they’re going to start scheduled maintenance later this morning. Not sure how long it’ll take but enjoy the sunshine while they tinker.
Commence open thread…
Chicago Tribune architectural critic Blair Kamin’s opinion piece in this morning’s Sunday Perspective was about the need to adequately fund our “invisible” infrastructure, which is clearly growing more and more decrepit. Mr. Kamin discussed weak CTA rail lines, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and more. That essay reminded me of a post I read over at Ellen’s blog a few days back about a homeowners’ association which is collapsing as homeowners lose their homes to foreclosure — the association is quite simply unable to collect dues owed as the homes go empty.
In both the Trib essay and the blog post we see the cracks in the conservatives’ arguments for privatization and a take-two-tax-cuts and call me in the morning mantra. As we are now seeing with some frequency, there is a limit to the good privatizing infrastructure can do and certainly a direct consequence to funding cutbacks due to tax cutbacks.
Our forebearers in this country knew that there were some things which only the community as a whole could best do — they called this the common good, aka the general welfare. They took this view whether the “community” in consideration be a city, a county, a state or the nation itself. It’s why the big park in Boston (a colonial and Revolutionary Era town if ever there was one) is called “Boston Commons” — the citizens shared that land for gardening, animal husbandry, etc. In fact, promoting the general welfare of the nascent nation is right there in the very Preamble to our Constitution.
Unfortunately it’s also a concept that years of con chirping about tax “relief” has dramatically eroded.
What sort of relief is it when a bridge crumbles due, in large part, to inadequate funding for basic repairs and upkeep?
I’ve noticed that Bruno Behrend and others like him seem content to keep smugly talking about the reason for global climate change, with little real discussion of the hows and whys and, perhaps most important, what to dos. While I and those like me consider these folks to have their collective head in the sand because of global climate change (the phenomena Bill Maher calls “Armageddon“), the partisan “deniers” as Bruno calls himself have been quite successful is creating a controversy in order to say evidence surrounding global warming is controversial.
Such is life.
The truth of the matter is that whether or not global warming is caused by pollution in whole or in part there is plenty of good reason to stop polluting anyway. I’m not saying climate change isn’t an issue (it is and it will continue to be), but the partisan opponents have zeroed in on an argument over whether or not man-made pollution is a factor in global warming and that’s all the media (and thus the general public) seem to focus on.
It’s a completely irrelevant debate for two reasons. First, even if global warming is not entirely due to pollution, study after study have shown that it is at the least a contributing factor. As Bruno likes to point out, the sun’s energy may be increasing (scientists are studying that now) … but if we know pollution also contributes to trapping the sun’s energy in the atmosphere why continue to exacerbate the problem? Second, man-made pollution results in a legion of other negative problems from acid rain to increased asthma and other maladies. We don’t drink or eat garbage like sewage, so why breathe it?
So between those two factors, we already have plenty of rationale for cutting back on pollution as best we can as a society and as a global community. Of course, a big ingredient in pollution is the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, small machines, power plants, etc. which leads to another very good reason to kick the oil habit… Cash money.
For all those “It’s your money” conservatives out there, it’s clear the cost of crude has been creeping up on us slowly but surely over the last several decades. Nevermind global warming, oil’s expensive and getting more so. As the AP tells us this week, “Oil ends above $80; gas prices rise.”
With the world sucking on those oil reserve straws harder and harder, those prices are only going to go up as the oil flow slowly dwindles to zilch (though it may even dwindle quickly unless we do something about how much we all use globally).
So all the partisan shills yapping about global warming being no big deal can ignore the atmospheric and climatic implications of oil use. Instead, they can focus their ire on the costs of the rising barrel of crude and the