Call It A Comeback
After a really busy fall, ad sales have fallen off, so I’ve dropped ad prices down significantly. Take a look at the different strips and let’s get you advertising on ArchPundit–I will not be taking any more unexpected breaks from the site through the election.
Who knew John McCain had this much batshit insane funniness in him?
Until we start hearing how it is necessary to get out of Iraq to attack Iran?
I clearly picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue:
This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday. This flyer can be found on a bilingual page on BarackObama.com advertising the event:
Using German in Germany? Extraordinary? Really?
The local Fox outlet just showed me clips of McCain saying (roughly) “Obama won’t acknowledge that we’ve succeeded [in Iraq]” and “He’s in favor of unconditional withdrawal.”
If we’ve succeeded why can’t we leave? Just who are we at war with and what conditions should we demand before we withdraw? Does any of this make any fucking sense at all?
No.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Projection by Kirk apparently. One of the most bizarre argument by the Frank Burns of the Blogosphere and Kirk is that a candidate should be employed full time while running—which is convenient if you are an incumbent who is paid by the constituents, can mail to constituents with franking, can use your position to get your name out there, and generally have every advantage of incumbency.
IOW, of course a serious challenger for Congress is not working full time. The successful ones seldom do.
Bloggers are beating you to the punch again–and even the Politico doesn’t give them credit
Tries to blame Madigan for the budget cuts to DNR:
In one respect we can’t fault Blagojevich for doing what the Legislature didn’t, which was to craft a solvent spending plan. Illinois is bound by its constitution to pass a balanced budget. The one that landed on the governor’s desk was an indefensible $2 billion in the red. House Speaker Michael Madigan pretty much punted, then practically dared the guv, his political rival, to do the hard work for him. That Blagojevich did.
This is simply bogus. How I ended up defending Mike Madigan on a consistent basis demonstrates how screwed up Springfield has become, but Madigan was willing to talk about tax increases instead of one time revenue fixes that this Governor has consistently used to pretend the budget was balanced.
Some of the funds sweeps are probably reasonable if they are truly overfunded, but that isn’t the debate we are having on that issue. Blagojevich wants to go to one-half billion dollars from those funds, Madigan wants to only allow $300 million. Without lengthy audits, prudent fiscal policy means you don’t take more than you know is excess. The lottery lease would require a lease floor of $10 billion, but might not even bring in that, while Blagojevich is suggesting it could take in $12 to $14 billion for an 80% lease instead of a 100% lease he suggested in previous years.
As others have pointed out, Madigan argues for hiring a management team instead of selling the lottery thus keeping control of the asset. If the lottery is that underperforming, than why shouldn’t the state benefit from those improvements.
Blagojevich wants another round of restructuring the State’s pension funds…something at the center of the corruption investigations.
Blagojevich is trying to mortgage the future of the state to claim it’s balanced now with bogus revenue projections. Madigan, for all of his faults, is the guy stopping that.
“No, I’m not mad at him. I’m not upset with him,” Daley said. “He said it. He has to live with those words.”
Translation: I’m going to cut his balls off
Illinois Senate President Emil Jones said Wednesday that if Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s budget cuts for social programs, health care and other statewide offices stand, the blame will fall squarely on the House led by Speaker Michael Madigan, a fellow Chicago Democrat.
The House voted to override those cuts, but Jones said the Senate will not do the same.
“We have to have a balanced budget,” Jones said. “I’m not going to get involved in playing silly games and giving false hopes to people when the money isn’t there. I support many of the programs that cut. But we in the Senate also supported the revenue to support the budget. That’s why we passed the revenue to support the budget in May. Now, if the House was genuinely sincere about passing those programs, then they in turn would pass the revenue to support it.”
Jones compared the House’s approval of the budget without enough revenue to support it to “check kiting.”
“The House is good at check kiting. Send them a big check, knowing dog-gone well the check is going to bounce. And that’s where we stand right now.”
And fund sweeps aren’t check kiting? Yeah.
ArchPundit