Monthly archives: October, 2010

Mark Kirk Bumbles Again: Exaggerates Role in Berman Bill

October 18, 2010
AmericaChicagoChicagolandCongressCook CountyIllinoisRepublicans
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Yes, Mark Kirk did it again.

He claimed credit for something he did not do at all. Claimed credit for a bill the Democrats passed.

Mark Kirk claimed credit for a Democratic initiative.

Yet another Democratic wannabe.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Rep. Mark Kirk claims credit for being a driving force behind a bill signed into law this year that requires the president to crack down on companies doing business with Iran.

But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, says Kirk is guilty of "exaggeration" when he says the "Kirk bill" became the "Berman bill" so it could pass the Democratic Congress.

"We didn’t even look at his legislation at the time," Berman said. "Our bill did so much more and went so far beyond his bill, I would have to put it in the context of an exaggeration."

Kirk told the Sun-Times editorial board last month, "The Iran Sanctions Bill, it was originally Kirk-Andrews, but if you were going to move it, that means you need to adjust to the power of the House. This legislation eventually became Howard Berman’s legislation, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He had my full approval in moving that forward under his badge."

For years, Kirk has been an apostle of trying to hold Iran’s feet to the fire by choking off its supply of gasoline. He passed a resolution this year to do that — H.R. 3081. (His staff had inadvertently listed the resolution as 3801 — a bill dealing with mortgages — on his campaign website but corrected it Monday morning after a Sun-Times story was published.) Kirk is listed as a co-sponsor of Berman’s bill.

"There is no doubt that Mark was a committed person on this idea, which wasn’t his idea, it was out there in the press," Berman said. "He introduced legislation in the previous Congress on refined petroleum products. He did chair a group I occasionally went to, the Iran Working Group.

"The bill that I was involved with, we didn’t even look at his legislation at the time. It was a much broader bill than his bill and, in fact, we were persuaded that while the refined petroleum sanctions were valuable and useful, Iran has a way of reducing its reliance on imported petroleum."

Illinois, you need to get it. Mark Kirk is not your man.

Alexi Giannoulias is the only coherent vote for United States Senate.

G.O.P. U.S. Senate Candidate Joe Miller’s Security Thugs Handcuff a Journalist

October 18, 2010
AmericaCongressConstitutionDemocratic NewsRepublicansStrange
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Can you say "Bill of Rights?"

My teapot boileth over.

From the Alaska Dispatch:

Alaska Dispatch founder and editor Tony Hopfinger was grabbed and handcuffed by a private security detail working for U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller on Sunday while trying to ask the Fairbanks Republican questions following a town hall meeting at Central Middle School in Anchorage on Sunday.

Hopfinger was reportedly pressing Miller on whether the candidate had ever been reprimanded for politicking while working at the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008. Alaska Dispatch and other media have sued for the release of records related Miller’s time at the borough. Various accounts of what happened next generally agree on this course of events:

  • Two or three bodyguards told Hopfinger to stop asking questions and to leave the building.
  • Hopfinger continued to ask questions while apparently videotaping the candidate.
  • Bodyguards told him that if he persisted they would arrest him for trespassing, but refused to identify themselves to Hopfinger.
  • Hopfinger asked why he was trespassing, as the event was at a public school. Seconds later, he was then put in arm-bar and later handcuffed and sequestered at one end of a hallway for at least 30 minutes. He was told, "You’re under arrest." 
  • Anchorage Police arrived on the scene shortly after.

I watched Joe Miller on CNN this afternoon as he was interviewed by John King. He danced like I’ve never seen a pol dance, refusing to answer question after question, finally admitting that "he was disciplined for the misuse of local government computers."

Watch below:

Alaska, prove you are still Americans. Do not vote for this man.

Vote for the very, very moderate-to-conservative Democrat who will represent all Alaskans well.

Vote for Scott McAdams.

It’s about Alaska.

Oprah Is Taking Jon Stewart’s Thursday Audiendience to the Rally

October 14, 2010
America
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That was so cool.

October 30, 2010.

The. Rally. To. Restore. Sanity.

Forget the Tea Party.

Liberals. Are. Back.

And. We. Vote.

Thursday’s ‘Daily Show With Jon Stewart’ was so, so very cool.

Oprah is taking Jon Stewart’s audience to the rally.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Have You Met The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Behind Bars?

October 14, 2010
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From The Economist:

THE Nobel peace prize committee’s announcement on October 8th that they are giving the award to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, will infuriate Chinese leaders. It may well give extra ammunition to hardliners in China who argue that the West is bent on undermining Communist Party rule. This is the same faction that argues the party should take advantage of the West’s economic malaise to assert its own interests more robustly.

China reacted with outrage in 1989 when the Nobel peace prize was awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader in exile, to all appearances as a rebuke to the government for having crushed the Tiananmen Square protests earlier that year. Though China regards Tibet as an integral part of the nation, Mr Liu stands apart as an ethnic Han Chinese who has devoted himself to addressing the politics of China proper.

Mr Liu is precisely the kind of dissident that the party regards as most threatening. He is a seasoned campaigner, a veteran of the Tiananmen protests who has shown no sign of succumbing to the party’s intimidation in spite of three periods of incarceration over the past two decades (more than five years in total). He is a mildly spoken literary critic who has created the sort of consensus that is unusual to forge among China’s infighting intellectuals. Mr Liu’s Charter 08, a document that calls for democracy, was signed initially by more than 300 liberal thinkers (and then by thousands of others online). It struck a reasoned tone to which radicals and moderates alike could subscribe. The debate over “universal values” that it helped to fuel still rages within the party today.

More here.

Americans Agnostic About Gay Marriage: The Economist

October 14, 2010
AmericaEthicsGLBTLegal
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From the Economist:

THE debate over gay marriage is at the heart of many races in America’s mid-term elections. On Sunday October 10th Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, said that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable and that he would veto any gay-marriage bill. But that view places him in a minority. For the first time since the Pew Research Centre began conducting polls on the subject in 1995, fewer than half of Americans (48%) are opposed to gay marriage, while 42% are in favour. All religious groups are more accepting than they were in polls taken between 2008 and 2009. The most notable shift has been among white mainstream Protestants and Catholics, 49% of whom are now in favour, and that figure was even higher for those who attend church less than once a week.

American opinion on gay marriage

This is good news for our gay and lesbian friends.

Obama Related to Palin and Limbaugh, Franklin’s ‘Big Fat Idiot’

October 13, 2010
Barack ObamaConservativesLiberalsStrange
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From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Yup — the president has family ties to none other than Sarah Palin, according to the genealogists at Ancestry.com.

Obama and Palin are 10th cousins through a common ancestor named John Smith, a pastor and early settler in 17th century Massachusetts. Obama is related to Smith through his mother, as is Palin.

The president is also related to Rush Limbaugh, who’s a 10th cousin of the president — one time removed — through a common ancestor named Richmond Terrell, who was a large landowner in Virginia, also in the 17th century.

Hee hee hee.

(The ‘big fat idiot’ reference is in reference to Al Frankin’s wonderful book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. I highly recommend it.)

State Rep. Anthony Deluca Is a Democrat and Deserves Your Vote

October 7, 2010
Democratic NewsElections
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Never in a million years did I ever think I would be writing this. Never.

I was quite disturbed when Chicago Heights Mayor Anthony Deluca was named a state representative by Bloom Township Democratic Committeeman Terry Matthews. I wrote about my disappointment, calling Anthony a “faux Democrat.”

He has passed the test, many times over, apparently.

Deluca votes with the Democrats, according to a state senator and other colleagues of State Rep. Deluca in the Illinois House.

And he will vote with them on social issues. Anthony, a Catholic, will vote to preserve a woman’s right to choose.

Not sure where he stands on civil unions between people of the same sex. He would be well advised to vote in favor.

God, after all, gives us a choice as to whether we sin or not.  Government does not have the right to take that choice away. (That’s not from me. That is from a local conservative black Bishop.)

I don’t know if Rep. Deluca is voting with the Dems so he can stay in office.  I don’t think he would violate his conscience just for an office.  He has a nice gig in Chicago Heights if he loses.  He doesn’t need the money.

Here is my endorsement: State Rep. Anthony Deluca should remain a State Representative.

Vote for him.

NYTimes Explosive Report: Sam Zell’s Culture of Stupidity at the Tribune Company

October 6, 2010
BusinessChicagoChicagolandCook CountyEconomyEthicsIllinoisJobsLegalStrange
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I heard Sam Zell speak a couple of years ago at the Inland Press Association’s Annual Meeting. He was funny. Seemed full of energy, off the cuff, eccentric.

An article in today’s New York Times reveals so much more, reporting on the bizarre culture Zell and those he has brought in have created at the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere at the Tribune Company.

Clearly, Zell is steering company into the ground.

From the NYTimes:

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The report goes downhill from there, where sexual harassment is justified as path to creative thinking, with disclaimers like this in the Tribune’s revised employee handbook:

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

My jaw dropped several times reading this article. So sad. I don’t see how the Tribune can be taken seriously any more.

President Obama’s Base Step Up for Mid-Term Elections

October 5, 2010
Barack ObamaCongressDemocratic NewsElectionsEthicsPhilosophicalRepublicans
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It’s happening.

It was in the news tonight.

President Obama’s Blue Revolution is coming together for the Democrats at the mid-term. All of us on the Left are realizing that, if we stay at home on election day, the Tea Party, the right-wing arm of the filthy rich screaming to take power in America and restore the Gilded Age, may gain a foothold in Congress.

But Obama’s Dems will not let that happen. Obama’s Dems are waking up.

And we will vote.

Todd Stroger Is There For You 24-9

October 5, 2010
ChicagoChicagolandCook CountyCrime and PunishmentDemocratic NewsElectionsEthicsIllinoisLiberals
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24-9: the new magic number to watch for in upcoming indictments.

A top aide to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was arrested and charged Monday with several felonies relating to alleged money laundering and theft.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Carla Oglesby, Stroger’s deputy chief of staff, was taken into custody about 4 p.m. by members of the Cook County state’s attorney’s financial crimes unit, said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

Oglesby is charged with several felonies, including theft of government property over $100,000, money laundering and official misconduct.

“It’s in connection with the ongoing financial crimes investigation conducted by the state’s attorney’s office into the awarding of so-called 24-9 contracts,” Daly said.

The “24-9” reference is to contracts that fall below the $25,000 mark, the threshold requiring approval by the Cook County Board.

On Monday afternoon Oglesby was pulling out of a Loop parking garage when investigators — armed with an arrest warrant — stopped her vehicle and took her into custody, placing handcuffs on her before they drove her to a nearby police station.

Her attorney did not return a call for comment.

Todd Stroger could not be reached for comment either, the Sun-Times reports.

I remember when Todd Stroger was running to be elected to the seat his father held. I was at a meeting of a local township’s Democratic organization when a young college student asked the Democratic Committeeman if Stroger received the nod just because of his name. The committeeman responded with a lecture, “Young lady, you need to understand how things work.”

“How things work” at the time essentially meant “fall in line.” The young college student was too naive.

Weren’t we all…?

Toni Preckwinkle, clean up this mess. Please.

And work for the taxpayers of Cook County 24-7, not 24-9.