The Bizarre Twist to Hale
ArchPundit
Eric Zorn points out the most bizarre bit on Matt Hale, the judge had originally ruled for him.
April 2004
More Upcoming
A review of Arriana Huffington’s Fanatics and Fools . They nicely provided me a copy and I’ll nicely give it some mention. but not yet, I’m not done with it.
You can buy it at Amazon.
DCCC Blog Tour
Coming Soon to ArchPundit!
I love those guys. I’ll post there, and they’ll post here. Details to come probably next week. Charles Kuffner has one up now on Texas and Jesse is up at Off the Kuff
The Mighty Quinn
Moderate Republican Jack Quinn has announced his retirement putting his Democratic leaning District in play. Reminding everyone that Melissa Bean could be going to a very close House of Representatives.
Call Toomey
I’m calling Pennsylvania for Toomey. So donate to Obama so that Hoeffel can get more DSCC funds. On the right at the top.
Note: Highly unscientific feel that Toomey’s people are motivated and Specter’s aren’t is leading to this call!
Vince Demuzio Passes
Vince Demuzio of Carlinville passed today.
He was the longest currently serving Senator.
Digging through Berkowitz
Thank goodness Jeff puts up a summary, because his transcripts are long–though very useful. He has a great interview with Patrick O’Malley–my favorite Republican because if he were to win the gubernatorial nomination he could guarantee Democratic control for years (joking see below about party competitiveness being a good thing.
Two things stand out–O’Malley is a flame thrower and Berkowitz giving him tons of signals to pull back on the whether Obama cares about the poor takes a while to get through to him. Just a humorous insight into O’Malley
Second, he refuses to answer whether he has a financial stake in the Illinois Leader.
Bloggered?
For those using Blogger which is FUBAR today, let me suggest some alternatives that are cheap and higher quality and reliable
My old host Blogstudio is quite good.
Another great one is a St. Louis based company that is tiny, but gives great customer service, Bloghorn
Both offer free service for those looking for it. I chose a separately hosted deal because of the site traffic–harder to set-up, easier to manage with a lot of traffic.
The Land of Lincoln–Sort of
via Oneman:
Leader Message Board takes up Confederate Heritage
My take on it–if the Southern States want their flags back we’ll have ’em across the highway from Comisky. Come and get ’em.
Note to Oneman–having grown up in Normal, little Jacob would have been taken around to Lincoln sites until he got it. The South starts about three miles south of Springfield.
Ryan’s Cheekiness Is Sloppy
From the Capitol Fax:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK ”We never really say anything negative about our opponents, we’ll keep that throughout the general. I think voters want that. They want to hear about what issues you care about. How you want to change America and Illinois for the better. They don’t want to hear negative stuff,” Jack Ryan told Peoria’s WEEK-TV yesterday.
This is the same Ryan, you will recall, whose campaign referred to Barack Obama on Friday as “to the left of Mao Tse-Tung.” It’s the same candidate who, just last Thursday, toured the state falsely claiming Obama had voted for hundreds of tax hikes that he had actually voted against (WEEK reported on this fly-around, by the way). It’s the same Ryan who criticized Obama for attending a hip-hop convention rather than show up for a Cook County Medical Society meeting. It’s the same Ryan whose spokesperson called Obama’s politics, “truly extremist liberal.”
From Schoenburg last Sunday (no link)
Springfield State Journal-Register’s Schoenburg writes ex-teacher/ex-investment banker Jack Ryan (R) “is going to have to do a better job of preparation if he wants to be a serious contender” against state Sen. Barack Obama (D). “Lesson 1: You can’t leave the details to your hired guns. You have to know what you’re talking about.” Ryan, at a presser: “What we’ve found is over the last four years Barack Obama has supported 428 tax and fee increases.”
It turned out that 146 of the fees and taxes came from one bill, SB1028, which created the IL FIRST infrastructure program in ’99. The rest — more than 280 fees and taxes — were in just one other bill, SB1903 from ’03. That was the state’s budget authorization for FY ’04, which Obama voted “No” on. Ryan spokesperson Kelli Phiel “argued when told of the snafu that Obama still supported the state budget paid for by the fees.” Phiel: “If you vote for a budget, you have to find a way to pay for that budget. If you don’t have a plan to pay for that, it’s a de facto vote.” Ryan aide Dan Proft said Obama plays the legislative game of voting for spending programs but not being “accountable for financing that spending.”
“Even if there is an argument to be made by following this path, Jack Ryan certainly didn’t put it that way at the news conference. Not only didn’t he explain that he was accusing Obama of supporting fees Obama didn’t vote for, Ryan didn’t even seem familiar with the bills involved. And if Ryan knew that Obama voted against the bill calling for most of those fees, but didn’t say so, while repeatedly saying that Obama ‘supported’ them, that’s the next thing to dishonest. This was the same press conference where Ryan misread a chart,” saying “We now have more employees working for the state than working in manufacturing companies.” The chart actually listed 841K as the number of workers in all government jobs, not just state jobs. “And, when asked, Ryan didn’t know the origin of that chart”
The first sign of the unpreparedness was at the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board meeting where he didn’t know about the Kjellander payment from the state bond deal. Overall, the undercurrent of the coverage on the guy is that he is a lightweight. Whether that is fair or not, this kind of disconnect between the charges, reality, and his awareness is going to send him down the toilet in terms of press good will—a dangerous place to be–just ask Rich Williamson and Al Salvi.
Unfortunately for Ryan, there are no longer eight Republicans in the race for U.S. Senate. It?s just him. And it?s time to do some homework.