Call It A Comeback
I’m wrong and the poll from the Southtown is capturing some dynamic–donate at the right to Barack Obama!
UPDATE: Errr–actually the link is down with the new site–so go to the site and hit the contribute button.
UPDATE 2: Link Fixed. Click Away!
One of my rants about St. Louis–usually found on Blog Saint Louis, the companion site to ArchPundit, is that Saint Louis leaders couldn’t find hip if it was attached to their thigh. But to give some credit to Blagorgeous, his admin is running commercials with Wilco songs promoting Illinois. As the Join Cross guys say–that is cool and hip.
Far more hip than Elvis.
And the problem–with Saint Louis? The Mayor nor anyone on RCGA has ever heard of Jay Farrar despite his residence on the South Side, ever present attendance at local concerts and a nationally known artist.
But they know who Nelly is. Dandy. I need to move North again.
And Chris–it isn’t as if I can get Steve Brown to pay attention anyway-unless a reader from around the office wants to bug him about the problem. (yes I know Steve Brown is not on that end of things, but lets face it–if the Speaker is going to get a fire lit under him to do something, it’s coming from Brown).
Is a riot, for the next few days I’ll be highlighting portions.
Today, Phil Crane in his own words from August of 2003.
“I did not realize unemployment was over 13% in Chicago. I’m not sure exactly what the explanation is for that.”
“The economy is good. By definition we only suffered a recession period of 3 months duration in the year 2001. That is the only time we suffered recession.”
Errr…two quarters of negative growth equals six months.
“Illinois gets back only 70 cents for every dollar sent by taxpayers to Washington DC. The 8th District only gets back 50 cents on the dollar.”
That’d be a hell of a campaign commercial….
“When I first came to congress I introduced legislation that would abolish any tax whatsoever on business.”
“The chairman of the Ways & Means Committee has a bill that provides tax relief to multi-national corporations. And I’m all for that.”
“I would happily volunteer to protect our borders against Mexican invasion than continue to spend a summer at Fort Leonard Hood.”
(Phil Crane on his military service)
“We have 7 million illegal immigrants in the US. And we haven’t been able to track them down.”
“In the year 2001, we were being taxed at the highest rate in the history of the country.”
To your right is an ad for Melissa Bean, Crane’s opponent this year. She is a very credible candidate. Go help her whether it be with manpower or money.
Some great anecdotes about riding to work. Biking to work is one of my favorite ways to clear out my mind–try it Friday if you haven’t before.
Ed Burke acted as if he was losing coverage with his cell phone while talking to reporters about the $17,000 in free insurance he received from Michael Segal.
Best part of the article:
Burke was notified he was getting free insurance. He started paying for it after Segal was arrested in 2002, according to testimony
Second best,
On Friday, when a reporter called the Finance Committee chairman on his cell phone to ask about the free insurance, the City Council’s most powerful alderman appeared to hide behind his cell phone.
”Hellooo? Hellooo??” Burke said, as if he didn’t hear the question, before hanging up.
A follow-up call to his cell phone seconds later went unanswered. He didn’t return a voice-mail message.
But did the phone ring or go directly into the voice mail?
Such a dandy choice, but reading this report on the Pentagon withholding $160 million for meals the Pentagon claims were not served suggests an either or proposition….
The auditors cited Halliburton for having inadequate methods to oversee its spending and its work with subcontractors.
So either they didn’t provide the meals or they can’t account for them properly.
The adults are back in charge, indeed.
Other recent problems:
==Allegations of a kickback scheme by two former workers in Kuwait that prompted Halliburton to reimburse the Pentagon $6.3 million.
==Faulty cost estimates on the $2.7 billion contract to serve troops in Iraq, including failing to tell the Pentagon that KBR fired two subcontractors. KBR admitted those mistakes in a letter to the DCAA.
==A separate DCAA audit that accused KBR of overcharging by $61 million for gasoline delivered to serve the civilian market in Iraq last year. Halliburton has said the charges were proper.
On the post concerning Rich Williamson:
I’m tracking down what his position was exactly, but Williamson is back at Mayer and whatever long name it has now as a law firm. His position at the UN wasn’t likely a deputy to Negroponte, but I haven’t had time to figure out exactly where he was in the organizational chart.
And in 2000, he had no official candidate he was backing in the primary as he was Republican Party Chair at the time.
My apologies for the mistakes and thanks to Jeff Berkowitz for catching them.
Greg Blankenship has a fairly thoughtful piece on how he perceives the conservative movement in Illinois proceeding.
Obama 48
Ryan 40
+/- 4.5
Sample Size 500
Automated phone call poll
95% confidence interval
The strangest finding in the poll is this:
Overall, 51 percent of respondents said they had a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of Ryan, compared with 48 percent for Obama. But a higher percentage ? 26 percent to 18 percent ? gave Obama a “very favorable” rating.
I find this suspicious because I don’t think people know who Jack Ryan is yet and without significant campaigning this is different from other polls.
Essentially this poll means that Ryan has caught up to Bush who he was behind by about 7-8 percentage points in previous polls. I still don’t see how that results in a win for either of them, but Ryan has at least gotten the core supporters to back him if this poll is accurate.
The Crack Web Site indicates you can contact someone in the following ways;
Democratic Party of Illinois
P.O. Box 518
Springfield, IL 62705
Phone: 217/546-7404
Fax: 217/546-8847
Yeah, great. A new web site any time soon guys?
Or is that new fangled technology too much to take advantage of?
Speaking of which, I think Obama’s campaign is starting to move towards its next step in the campaign. Fortunately for them, they already have some built in infrastructure from Democracy for America.
ArchPundit