Call It A Comeback
I have to admit that holding kids back until they reach a level of proficiency sounds like good common sense, but sometimes common sense isn’t enough.
The reality is probably that these kids have chaotic home lives or learning problems/disabilities. Addressing this issue needs to be done using hard data and not what we think is common sense.
Link to Schmich and Zorn in their dialogues, but it’s nice to have him back.
I’m always meaning to write on more than my obsession with politics, but it never seems to happen
But it looks like the new Wilco album will be delayed to accomodate Jeff Tweedy’s stint in rehab. While I’m disappointed about the delay, best to Jeff on getting better. And, ummm, I have it and haven’t had a chance to listen, though I will buy a copy right away.
Tweedy is a Southern Illinois native raised in Belleville along with his former bandmate in Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar. Farrar is now a resident of south Saint Louis.
You too can listen to a stream of the new album at Wilcoweb
I reserve most of my press bashing for the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch over on Blog Saint Louis, but Jeff Berkowitz has a great set up and clincher on Stahl’s excuse concerning the conflict between CBS and Clarke’s books publisher being owned by the same folks. For those not seeing the problem, switch the partisanship of who Clarke targets and it becomes pretty funny pretty quickly. I forgot.
But OneMan points out where it is really funny–the Illinois Leader. This is laugh out loud funny.
If this appeared in the Onion, we’d think it was over the top.
OneMan laments the Republicans taking each other out in public and has a good point. The one thing that the Leader could do is be a critic of corruption in the Party and work towards a united party. I wouldn’t make fun of that sort of move as a Circular Firing Squad. And sometimes it does this. Of course, the Leaderand many, many others don’t to that most of the time. Most of the time individuals trade charges and rant and create more divisions than they unite to fight what are problems in the current Illinois Republican Party. If you insist that everyone in your party is ideologically pure, you lose.
He is taking her down daily with the most recent over the Mormon comments. He has a stronger stomach than I do. I just ignore her before getting annoyed.
Roeser is trying to get the GOP to put resources into Illinois with a wishful thinking essay that says Bush can be competitive.
Let’s just start with the polls. Bush is down by between 10-14 points in Illinois. Nationally he is in essentially a dead heat with Kerry. What possible sense does it make to go after Illinois or California? None. If he were to carry Illinois, it would be because he won in a landslide. This isn’t likely to be a landside election, but even if it were, one would still concentrate upon likely swing states and take the rest as gravy. But by all means spend the money in Illinois. Please. My TV is already spewing Bush/Kerry commercials and I’m damn tired of it.
The Club for Growth continues to give Democrats chances for pick-ups by targeting moderate Republicans. Novak reports on their efforts to unseat Spector.
The conservative Club for Growth has raised $700,000 in hard money and $950,000 in soft money for Rep. Pat Toomey in his Pennsylvania Republican primary challenge against four-term Sen. Arlen Specter.
That is four times more money than the Club for Growth has spent on a single candidate. The organization’s supporters are distributing a March 16 poll showing Specter’s lead down to 10 points. Toomey’s backers claim the race would be even closer if Specter were not being strongly supported by Pennsylvania’s other senator: Rick Santorum, the conservative chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
A footnote: Democratic strategists had written off Specter’s seat as safely Republican but now say it may be competitive thanks to Toomey’s challenge. Rep. Joe Hoeffel, whose voting record is far more liberal than Specter’s, is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
Keep up the good work CfG!
He claims Obama weakens the Jacksons. I spit up my soda on that one.
Chicago Democratic enemies of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his son the congressman are claiming that the landslide nomination for the U.S. Senate of state Sen. Barack Obama means the Jacksons are washed up in Illinois politics.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. vigorously denies that, contending he and Obama support each other. Nevertheless, anti-Jackson Democrats are delighted that Jesse Jr. has been supplanted by Obama as the top African American among Illinois Democrats.
The word has been spread in Chicago Democratic circles that the Jacksons plan to relocate in California, but the congressman told this column that there is absolutely no truth to that report.
This assumes the Jacksons couldn’t have kneecapped the guy. The reality is they handed him their machine for the election. The cost of that is unclear to Obama, but given he is known for independence one can expect he’ll primarily be called on for favors in upper chamber regarding pork.
UPDATE: Note to self–read the Hotline if you aren’t going to sift through Letters to the Editors.
One of the most satisfying aspects of the March 16 primary was that voters throughout Illinois rejected the worn conventional wisdom that said we could not build a multiethnic, multi-racial coalition for a responsible new direction in Washington.
Now, in his April 4 column, Robert Novak has spun another myth. Novak suggests that my victory in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate was a defeat for the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. Novak advances this flawed theory, despite the fact that both Rev. Jackson and Rep. Jackson were early, strong and enthusiastic supporters of my candidacy, and despite the fact that their records of service helped pave the way for my own success.
Novak apparently believes that if one leader from the African-American community succeeds, it somehow diminishes others. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Leadership is not a zero-sum game. All our voices and talents are needed.
I look forward to working closely with Rep. Jackson, Rev. Jackson and leaders throughout the state to address issues of importance to all our people.
State Sen. Barack Obama
(D-Chicago)
IOW–I’m his man for pork!
One of the funnier claims about the 1994 takeover of Congress was that the Republicans wouldn’t be pork driven. To anyone who studies the institution this was pure hogwash because pork isn’t some moral restraint issue, it is an issue of institutional incentives. Mayhew argued that one could not design a better institution to serve the reelection neds of its Members than the US House and pork is an integral part of that.
Novak launches into a broadside against pork in one of his recent columns,
The highway bill marks the absolute termination of the Gingrich Revolution ushered in by the 1994 sweep. In the face of Bush’s repeated veto threats, Republicans are determined to pass a bill filled with earmarked spending for individual members of Congress. The 1982 highway bill contained only 10 earmarks. The 1991 bill, the last highway bill passed under Democratic leadership, contained 538 such projects. But the addiction for pork has grown so large that the current bill contains at least 3,193 earmarks.
The addiction is bipartisan, thanks to the policy of the House’s reigning king of pork. While House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young has packed the bill with money for his state of Alaska, he makes sure Democrats are allocated their share of money for roads and other goodies in order to build a bipartisan majority on the floor.
Overdoing pork, such as in this case, is bad. But pork also produces a way to govern done in moderation. Without it and with generally weak parties, pork provides a manner to create majorities where they might not exist.
Make no mistake, that pork will not go away. However, if one is truly upset about it, one should consider institutional change, not just a party change.
ArchPundit