Call It A Comeback
For those who listened in to Collateral Damage last night, here is the article on Peter ‘the undercover homosexual lifestyle investigator? Labarbera You can also search for his name over at the ArchPundit side and find plenty of fun material. The General picked up on him recently as well.
You can stream the show here whenever the new episode goes up.
While I haven’t been linking to all of the stories on Alexi, they continue with some regularity…
Today’s, via Rich, Local loan to accused felons linked to treasurer candidate
A Chicago bank owned by Democratic state treasurer candidate Alexi Giannoulias and his family loaned more than $20 million to firms controlled by two local developers who are awaiting trial on federal money laundering charges.
Boris Stratievsky, 44, and Lev Stratievsky, 67, who were arrested last June and charged with money laundering and forgery, obtained six mortgage loans from Broadway Bank between 2001 and 2005 to finance real estate purchases in Chicago, Buffalo Grove and Wheeling, according to county records.
Obviously, Alexi didn’t spend money doing oppo on himself and is now paying the price. My only complaint is couldn’t the folks in the primary who started this have made it all come out early?
Alexi may stay on the ballot, but his candidacy is doomed. It’s another example of why unexperienced rich guys aren’t qualified for high office just because they are rich.
One has to wonder if George Bush is, as George Carlin described it, leaving his left blinker on and circling the world to the left.
Coming to the IFI any minute.
I generally don’t fall into the DLC bashing group since I used to consider myself a DLC kind of guy on many issues. Since From, Reed and Marshall Wittman have decided to blame Democrats for everything despite the Administration’s blundering mendacity, I stopped that and while I’m more conservative than many in the net roots, I don’t see that as opposed to being stridently anti-Bush (think Ed Kilgore).
Today though, Marshall Wittman is a huge ass:
Now that Mr. Kos has performed in a Lamont ad, should the Moose make a cameo for Joe?
And the Moose also wonders whether Mr. Lamont was aware of Mr. Kos’ infamous “screw ’em” comments about the American victims of terrorism ?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
What he is referring to is Markos’ comments about American by nationality mercenaries killed in Iraq. The problem is it’s really hard to call that an act of terrorism. The men killed were fighting without a country as paid mercenaries and went into an area without the appropriate support, but most basically, they were armed combatants in a war zone, not innocent civilians walking down the street attacked for no reason. They were legitimate military targets. Their treatment broke humane treatment for sure, but targeting them was not unreasonable given their status as combatants. They weren’t victims of terrorists, they were victims of their own stupidity.
They chose to fight in a war without a national flag. They went into a war zone and then got their dumb asses killed by going in without effective support.
I disagreed with Markos in saying Screw ’em because they were human beings and as such only the most odious deserve such sentiments. However, the United States of America doesn’t have a responsibility to defend those who are paid by corporations for mercenary work and mercenaries are combatants. They weren’t attacked out of the blue, they were attacked by other combatants even if those were non-traditional.
Trying to make Markos sound evil because he opposes the practice of mercenaries and doesn’t feel that the US Government is in the business of defending private mercenaries who aren’t fighting for their country, but for their corporation, isn’t the same as being callous towards actual victims of terrorism.
Rich says the commercials didn’t work because Rod’s numbers went down on approval and up on disapproval slightly. I’m not so sure.
Rod isn’t trying to improve his image with the commercials. I’m betting the campaign doesn’t expect the approval numbers to move much in the next few months if at all. So if you are an incumbent with a load of cash, what do you do? Make sure your opponents numbers look worse than yours.
Negative campaigning always hits the person going negative slightly, but it usually hits the target the hardest. From the Meeks numbers and the Topinka and G-Rod numbers rumored out there, the commercials are doing exactly what they are supposed to do–drive down Topinka’s numbers.
Blagojevich’s numbers are bad. The question is can he make Topinka’s numbers bad enough to win. Given the GOP problems this year and given the Blue tilt of the state, all other things equal I’d put my money on the Governor. That said, the developing investigations could quickly flip that if indictments start being issued. After laying down for George Ryan in 1998, the press isn’t about to let another candidate get away with saying there is nothing there.
The Republican response is lacking. I’m getting press releases that are the usual (meaning they could be from either party) about how it’s election year politicking.
Yeah, it is. So? And what is the Republican response?
It’s fine to attack the Governor. I’m happy to quite often, but it’s a little hard to get too worked up about him when there don’t appear to be any serious policy proposals coming forward on the other side.
What is Judy’s education plan? How does she plan to solve the long term structural problems? While a recent bill was passed to allow easier consoliditation no one is seriously talking about forcing consolidation.
How about providing a blue print to make the state less dependent on property taxes for educational funding? If a tax swap isn’t it, what is?
How about a serious response to All Kids? Senate Republicans pushed for managed care to save money for years. So Blagojevich instituted it and then used the projected savings (close to what Republicans claimed would occur) to provide co-pay insurance for all children in Illinois. It’s hard to take serious the complaints without alternative ideas.
What about pensions? I’m not a fan of spending the proceeds of the bond sales in one lump as we did. What are the other solutions? Hitting the targets? We are doing that. We should do better, but how else do Republicans want to make the long term financial viability of the state stable? Raise taxes?
Cut services? Which ones in detail and remember G-Rod for all of his faults, already did a number on state jobs.
Want to be upset about the state of our state parks? Go for it–I find it appallling that one of the premeir archeological sites in the country is being overridden by crappy development in the Metro East. How do you want to fix it? Judy has been good on this issue so the criticism is more general. Where is the money coming from? Or is it as Blagojevich charges, only about Republicans in parks jobs?
It’s fair to say this administration is mortgaging the future by spending money from assets and using the money on continuing expenditures. However, there has to be a serious counter proposal how to change that and that involves restructuing the state tax system and probably raising them. If not, show me a proposal.
This Governor is irresponsible, but to prove you can govern, you have to do more than say, we aren’t him. His programs are popular, but probably unsustainable. How do you sustain them?
Ethics? What is the Republican ethics proposal? Why weren’t Republicans pushing for the Fritchey-Hynes bill?
I understand that Democrats are in control in Springfield and the mess they make is their mess to fix, but if you want to take the reigns, you have to demonstrate you aren’t going to do the same thing and right now, there isn’t a lot of evidence that it wouldn’t be much of the same. As someone who could easily throw the Governor under a bus, I’m not seeing many reasons to do so that actually produce a better outcome.
Quick Update: And for bonus points–what about mercury emissions? These are as much if not more of a danger to our park system than underfunding it. Where’s Judy’s plan for that?
Was the National Guard Limo Service related to securing the evidence of his criminality? Remember William Jefferson made the National Guard troops wait outside of his house for about an hour in the aftermath of Katrina. He was hit with subpeonas only a week before Katrina so worrying about the evidence may well have been on his mind.
Just your daily dose of paranoia. And no one is seriously challenging this jackass.
Apparently Scott Fawell wasn’t the only one to put the clout list to electronic format.
Rich has the basics on the whole story, but the big issue is that someone was flouting civil service rules for some of the jobs and that is where it becomes a big issue. Not surprisingly, Kelly and Rezko show up in the stories.
Worst of all is the use of counsel to follow the investigations. It smells. Bad. It doesn’t mean automatically that this is George Ryan II, but it certainly does a great job of suggesting to the press that it is, in fact, GR II. Even if true, it isn’t GRII, it’s more like Ernie Fletcher and we see how that ended.
If the Administration let Gianulis and on down run away with the hiring bus, then throw them under it. That’s the good result of all of this.
One complaint–and I’ll keep writing it–it wasn’t $1400 in one night at a strip club, it was over $2700 in one night at a strip club–he continues to avoid fessing up to that after claiming he ‘couldn’t remember’ what it was for.
ArchPundit