Call It A Comeback
Dan over at MoveonandShutup.org and I agree on relatively little although much like Gordy at Illinipundit I find him funny and generally smart. He has a great post on the Jill Stanek over at Illinoize.
If he doesn’t watch out he’ll be the new Amanda Marcotte. That’s a joke people.
It’s really hard to choose between all of the morons
David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, disagreed.
“I don’t think it’s going to fly. I think the people of Illinois made it clear during the petition drive,” Smith said.
The Illinois Family Institute spearheaded an effort last year to place a referendum on the November ballot asking voters if they wanted the state Constitution amended to ban gay marriage. Although well over 300,000 signatures were gathered, state elections officials determined that not enough of them were valid to allow the measure on the ballot.
A poll last summer showed that 40 percent of Illinoisans supported the proposed constitutional amendment. The same poll indicated 51 percent were opposed to gay marriages.
“There’s enough interest in not having marriage devolve into something other than one man and one woman,” Smith said. “I don’t think there is that much interest in the gay community for marriage. They don’t want to be like everyone else.”
I’m glad David is so in touch with the GLBT community.
On the February 19 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, host Tucker Carlson claimed that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) faith has become “suddenly conspicuous” — suggesting that Obama has only recently begun addressing his religious background as part of “a very calculated plan on the part of the Democratic Party to win” religious voters in the 2008 presidential race. Later in the program, Jim Wallis, president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, stated that he has known Obama for 10 years, saying that Obama is “not new to” speaking publicly about his faith and has “been doing it for a long time.” Carlson did not challenge Wallis’ statement.
As Media Matters for America noted, on the February 7 edition of Tucker, Carlson criticized Obama for belonging to a church Carlson claimed “sounds separatist to me” and “contradicts the basic tenets of Christianity,” a subject Carlson said he was “actually qualified to discuss.”
Obama has been speaking and writing about his faith for years. On Page 294 of his memoir Dreams From My Father (Three Rivers Press, 1995), Obama wrote:
And in that single note — hope! — I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish — and with which we could start to rebuild. And if part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.
Tucker Carlson is a tool.
Whomever let this article through the Sun-Times.
$100 is about the going rate. While grassroots campaigns tend to rely upon volunteers, it’s very common for campaigns to pay people–it’s a burgeoning business for some political consultants.
Who else gets paid $100 a day for election work? Election judges in the City of Chicago
Mayor Daley’s campaign is paying college students $100 apiece to get out the vote for the mayor on Election Day — and replace an army of precinct workers diminished by the City Hall hiring scandal.
Mayoral challenger Bill Walls accused the mayor of “buying” student support. He likened the $100 stipends to employment promises made to members of the Hispanic Democratic Organization and other pro-Daley armies at the center of the scandal. The mayor’s former patronage chief and three others were convicted last summer of rigging city hiring.
Look, you are asking people to give up part of their day. Many work for 10-12 hours making the going rate around $10 hour. It’s great that there are volunteers to do this in some campaigns, but in municipal elections it’s especially tough to find as many as the Mayor is going to want.
It should be taken as a good sign that the Mayor can no longer call upon the patronage machine. If anything the quotes by Walls and Brown show how bad of candidates they really are.
I thought Mack Bolan Novels books were something one grew out of around age 12. Charles Johnson proves otherwise.
Is someone waxing their eyebrows?
Illinois Review proudly stands beside what’s right in the long run for our daughters. Call that “mean” if you will, but we won’t budge and we won’t let up.
Sort of like the Pastors on the quads at state universities, the distinction between being an ass and actually being productive is never considered.
The level of absurdity from Eaton and Stanek is hard to fathom. But let’s start with the stupidest line in the post:
It’s “mean” not to care for those uninformed young women whose bodies may become protected by the HPV vaccine, but whose damaged hearts and broken dreams due to promiscuity will take years to heal
No one is suggesting someone go out and be promiscuous. Suggesting that a vaccine is going to be the difference between a woman sleeping around or not tends to demonstrate just how deluded Fran Eaton is about the world. Furthermore, it implies those with HPV are somehow sluts. This is not new for the dynamic duo of denseness.
Perhaps most odd about the anger over this issue is the notion that the state mandate is going to end up in parents having to commit heroic acts of civil disobedience if they disagree withthe law. This is not true
Beginning August 1,
2009 a female student who is 11 or 12 years of age may not enter
any grade of a public, private, or parochial school unless the
child presents to the school proof of having received a human
papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination or, after having received the
information required to be provided by the Department of Public
Health under subsection (a) of Section 2e of the Communicable
Disease Prevention Act, the student’s parent or legal guardian
presents to the school a signed statement that the parent or
legal guardian has elected for the student not to receive the
vaccination.
In the time one could compose a blog post, one could write the note saying that the parent has elected to not have their daughter receive the vaccination.
The reasoning behind making it mandatory is that insurers then have to pay for the vaccination. I’m not sure if there is a reason why this is better than say making it a mandated service covered by health insurance, but the practical effect is minute.
It’s “mean” and destructive for state funds to be delegated to teaching comprehensive sex ed over the overall healthier choice of abstinence until marriage
This is the usual candard about how only abstinence education should be utilized since abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method to avoid disease or pregancy. This is true in a theoretical world, and also rather pointless given teenagers have been sexually active for thousands of years and the practical effectiveness is very low. Worse, it’s counterproductive since abstinence only programs may slightly delay the onset of sexual activity, but it also leads to young people taking fewer precautions when they do become sexually active.
Furthermore, abstinence education programs are medically bizarre often such as discouraging masturbation usually–something for males that has significant health benefits as Adam Carolla often called it, the prostate maintenance program as regular masturbation decreases the chances of prostate cancer. Is that taught in abstinence only programs? Not so much.
The larger problem being when teaching young people about sex, teaching them medically accurate and realistic scenarios is far more important than teaching them to do something that the vast majority of people will not follow nor have they ever followed.
I suppose it’s nice to live in a delusion, but it’s not very effective in determining public policy.
That said, tie the abstinence discussion to McCain and his recent claims to be all for abstinence only education and one laughs hysterically if they have read anything about John McCain as a young man.
And here is where the real problem is. Stanek and Eaton are proudly anti-sex. They attack contraception along with the HPV vaccine because they seem to be in the camp with Alan Keyes of people who think that sex is only for pro-creation within a marriage. More power to them in their lives, but many of us have no problem with contraception.
Yet, even though they are a small minority, they are able to get themselves into news stories on a regular basis regardless of how offensive and bizarre their assertions are. Nothing they can say will marginalize them in the press even though they have successfully marginalized themselves politically. The same rule applies to other wingnuts like Peter Labarbera. They cannot do or say anything that will marginalize them in the media. In contrast, similar fringe elements on the left barely are ever covered–how many times does a news outlet look for Indymedia types to interview other than at a protest? That’s not a bad thing in itself, it’s that the mirror image is called upon and called upon regularly.
Mr. Chairman: January 12, 1848
Some, if not all the gentlemen on, the other side of the House, who have addressed the committee within the last two days, have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago, declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President[James K Polk]. I admit that such a vote should not be given, in mere party wantonness, and that the one given, is justly censurable, if it have no other, or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case. How I got this impression, and how it may possibly be removed, I will now try to show. When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended. Some leading democrats, including Ex President Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand them; and I adhered to it, and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it, were it not that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so. Besides the continual effort of the President to argue every silent vote given for supplies, into an endorsement of the justice and wisdom of his conduct–besides that singularly candid paragraph, in his late message in which he tells us that Congress, with great unanimity, only two in the Senate and fourteen in the House dissenting, had declared that, “by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States,” when the same journals that informed him of this, also informed him, that when that declaration stood disconnected from the question of supplies, sixtyseven in the House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it–besides this open attempt to prove, by telling the truth, what he could not prove by telling the whole truth–demanding of all who will not submit to be misrepresented, in justice to themselves, to speak out–besides all this, one of my colleagues (Mr. Richardson) at a very early day in the session brought in a set of resolutions, expressly endorsing the original justice of the war on the part of the President. Upon these resolutions, when they shall be put on their passage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I can not be silent, if I would. Seeing this, I went about preparing myself to give the vote understandingly when it should come. I carefully examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him. Under the impression thus made, I gave the vote before mentioned. I propose now to give, concisely, the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the conclusion I did. The President, in his first war message of May 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico; and he repeats that declaration, almost in the same language, in each successive annual message, thus showing that he esteems that point, a highly essential one. In the importance of that point, I entirely agree with the President. To my judgment, it is the very point, upon which he should be justified, or condemned. In his message of Decr. 1846, it seems to have occurred to him, as is certainly true, that title–ownership–to soil, or any thing else, is not a simple fact; but is a conclusion following one or more simple facts; and that it was incumbent upon him, to present the facts, from which he concluded, the soil was ours, on which the first blood of the war was shed.=========
I am now through the whole of the President’s evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people, who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there, and thereby, the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said, which would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission, it does seem to me, could not have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there, I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client’s neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up, with many words, some point arising in the case, which he dared not admit, and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so; but with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me, that just such, and from just such necessity, is the President’s struggle in this case.
=========
Now sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence, as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution, to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories, I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer, fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer, as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no invasion–no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours, where the first blood of the war was shed–that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true df the site of Fort Brown, then I am with him for his justification. In that case I, shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this. I expect to give some votes, in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so. But if he can not, or will not do this–if on any pretense, or no pretense, he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive–what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning–to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory–that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood–that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy he plunged into it, and has swept, on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream, is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever, that we can get, but territory; at another, showing us how we can support the war, by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time, urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even, the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us, that “to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all it’s expenses, without a purpose or definite object[.]” So then, the national honor, security of the future, and every thing but territorial inderrmity, may be considered the no-purposes, and indefinite, objects of the war! But, having it now settled that teritorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all that he was content to take, a few months ago, and the whole province of lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war–to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again, the President is resolved, under all circumstances, to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess, after those expenses shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican territory. So again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico, shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done, after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions, I here suggest, be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying [to] show they are not.
The war has gone on some twenty months; for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one half of the Mexican teritory; and that, by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make any thing out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited; so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise some money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country; and all it’s lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How then are we to make any thing out of these lands with this encumbrance on them? or how, remove the encumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property. How then can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equaled the better half of the country, how long it’s future prosecution, will be in equaling, the less valuable half, is not a speculative, but a practical question, pressing closely upon us. And yet it is a question which the President seems to never have thought of. As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemies country; and, after apparently, talking himself tired, on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that “with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace[.]” Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us, that “this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.” But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of “more vigorous prosecution.[“] All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond it’s power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At it’s beginning, Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes–every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do,–after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us, that, as to the end, he himself, has, even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show, there is not something about his conscious, more painful than all his mental perplexity!
I love morons.
That’s Bernie Stone’s daughter yelling at Bridget for having the nerve to canvass in the ward where the daughter thinks they shouldn’t. The daughter has quite a rep. Hysterical.
When will those people learn to speak proper English?
I’m referring to Members of Congress, of course, as Virgil Goode says that Muslims want to put In Mooohamed We Trust on our money.
Of course, Muslims believe in the God of Abraham and Muhammad is a prophet–a highly revered prophet, but a prophet. He’s actually lower on the totem poll than Jesus.
I don’t know why I feel the need to point that out because you can’t fix stupid.
ArchPundit
