Vice Chair of the Caucus Race Update
ArchPundit
In the Hill–outward support hasn’t changed with Crowley at 42, Schakowsky at 38 and Larson at 17.
BTW, what up with the new Schakowsky blog?
2005
Phil Hersch for the Tour? Hmmmm…
Long time Trib Sports Correspondent Bonnie DeSimone is writing for the Boston Globe so it looks like Philip Hersh is anchoring the Trib coverage with a good helping of AP coverage.
Mainly I’m disappointed because I think DeSimone gave some fo the best feel to cycling coverage in big newspapers, but with Google news alerts, I won’t miss much of it.
Beyond OLN’s site for listening every day starting Saturday, the Austin American-Statesman site provides one ofthe better hubs for different cycling news sources.
And, unfortunately, Lance punching bag Gilberto Simoni won’t be making the race….
Reader Poll and Open Thread
Should ArchPundit the blog be killed with ArchPundt: Snarkiness Personified the Magazine start?
Check out Atrios if you don’t get the reference.
(I’ll be doing more open threads as well)
And answer me why Maxxim gets the media exemption and not me.
Buy Democracy Bonds
The new Democratic National Committee web site is up and running and while there are some kinks to work out, it’s designed to increase interactivity. There’s a midwest blog I’ll link to soon.
They’ve renamed the blog from Kickin’ Ass which I believe is a mistake, but hey.
Finally, they are advertising a new program to your right for individuals to buy Democracy Bonds which are monthly contributions to the Party. I highly recommend them so take a look.
There’s also an ad for the Downing Street Memo which I haven’t covered, but the good folks at DFA are.
Missed Mentioning the Pavich Fundraiser
So go drop by his web site and check it out–he’s running in IL-11 against El Geraldo Weller.
Missed this one, IL – 14
Ruben Zamora will make another run of it in the 14th CD against Hastert. Apparently this was back in May that he announced.
David Gill Runs again in Illinois 15
The District I grew up in–except then it was Ed Madigan before hsi rather unillustrious period as Secretary of Ag.
Gill, 45, said Thursday he is actively raising money in hopes of tripling the $101,000 he raised in his first bid against Johnson.
Federal election reports show Gill with $7,500 in the bank, but he says he’s collected nearly $20,000 in the months since that was reported. Johnson reports having more than $240,000 in his war chest.
Gill’s off to a decent start, but he needs more than just to triple the 2004 total. I believe Renner ended up at $400,000 raised and still didn’t have enough to close the deal. In addition, getting name recognition early is vital so you can show a decent shot in the last 4 months–a key to getting real national support.
To help himself, Gill should shoot for a DFA endorsement which helps with both grassroots support and fundraising in the initial stage. I think this is an uphill race, but hope to see a good surprise.
I’ll link up to the blog next time I update links (which will be soon–I have some others to do).
Hacks Attack Obama
The eternally breathless and utterly silly Peggy Noonan attacks Obama’s column on Lincoln
What’s wrong with them? That’s what I’m thinking more and more as I watch the news from Washington.
A few weeks ago it was the senators who announced the judicial compromise. There is nothing wrong with compromise and nothing wrong with announcements, but the senators who spoke referred to themselves with such flights of vanity and conceit–we’re so brave, so farsighted, so high-minded–that it was embarrassing. They patted themselves on the back so hard they looked like a bevy of big breasted pigeons in a mass wing-flap. Little grey feathers and bits of corn came through my TV screen, and I had to sweep up when they were done.
This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he’s a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat–in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles.”
Oh. So that’s what Lincoln’s for. Actually Lincoln’s life is a lot like Mr. Obama’s. Lincoln came from a lean-to in the backwoods. His mother died when he was 9. The Lincolns had no money, no standing. Lincoln educated himself, reading law on his own, working as a field hand, a store clerk and a raft hand on the Mississippi. He also split some rails. He entered politics, knew more defeat than victory, and went on to lead the nation through its greatest trauma, the Civil War, and past its greatest sin, slavery.
Barack Obama, the son of two University of Hawaii students, went to Columbia and Harvard Law after attending a private academy that taught the children of the Hawaiian royal family. He made his name in politics as an aggressive Chicago vote hustler in Bill Clinton’s first campaign for the presidency.
You see the similarities.
While Obama didn’t grow up in desperate poverty, he certainly didn’t grow up wealthy and priviliged as Noonan is trying to say in the above, he was able to attend Columbia and Harvard because he was an excellent students. His grandparents, who raised him after his early childhood were employed as a furniture salesman and in a bank and lived in a small apartment.
But more to the point is the whole context:
In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat–in all this, he reminded me not just of my own struggles. He also reminded me of a larger, fundamental element of American life–the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.
Obama’s struggles include losing a father he never really knew, but also came from modest means and struggled as a person with a very uncommon background with no one to really relate and in fact, he says Lincoln’s background is even more improbable. It isn’t written as an exact comparison and only and idiot would take it that way. All of which explains her drivel.
Unlike most of the people who populate the US Senate, the House and the Presidency, Obama is an outlier, he didn’t come from a powerful family with a political background, or incredible wealth, and he didn’t get in to college on a legacy admission–he got in on merit. And for those of us who grew up spoonfed on Lincoln in Central Illinois, it is that characteristic one learns to respect the most. Lincoln was that guy who wasn’t supposed to succeed and yet he did. Barack Obama wasn’t supposed to achieve what he has, but he has. Trying to belittle him as just another Senator from a family of privilege and power or comparing his accomplishments to the President who depended on legacy admissions and connections simply shows how completely out of touch with reality Peggy Noonan is.
“baseless and a political witch hunt” orchestrated by local Republicans unsuccessful in defeating the 12-term Democrat.
You don’t pay $200,00 for a baseless witchhunt.
There’s a lot of ways to spin a campaign finance violation such as saying the law is so technical the campaign made unintentional errors and coordination occurred.
Saying it’s baseless at that level just produces guffaws.
It’s a Cross Clarification
He was handicapping the race for the GOP Gubernatorial, not endorsing Topinka.