2009

A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

It’s pretty clear the purity of essence wing of the Illinois Circular Firing Squad Team (ICFST (GOP)) is fucking losing it.

Check out Roeser:

If Kirk decides and gets the party’s all-but-official nod, the party can kiss goodbye any hope that social conservatives will support Kirk. I divide Republican moderates as either pro-choice or pro-abort. Kirk has made no bones about the fact that he is a hard-left pro-abort. He supports not only abortion on demand but has spoken against the Born Alive bill which guarantees nutrition, comfort and medical care to babies born alive from botched abortions…which puts him squarely in Barack Obama’s pro-abortion camp. He supports partial birth abortion, public funding for abortion, total ban on parental consent and use of embryonic stem cells for experimentation. In short, where Jim Edgar could have been called pro-choice (he opposed partial birth abortion), Kirk is hard-line all the way.

It might be ameliorated if Kirk were to run for the U. S. Senate but as governor and leader of the party in Illinois, he would assuredly shut down any remaining pro-life dissent and would be a variant of Big Jimbo Thompson on the issue.

=========================

To my mind, a case could be made for Kirk running for the U. S. Senate and Gidwitz for governor. Unfortunately it appears that those who are planning a double-digit state campaign budget are not so inclined. Another possibility would be the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Bob Thomas for governor.

Thomas is a deeply committed evangelical pro-lifer. I don’t see any great support for him either among the financial powers. They should be warned against thinking Bill Brady is the answer. All I can say is there is much to him which is faux. And much which can come out.

Evidently the powers that be think it would be a great sop if they were to back a pro-lifer well down the ticket…a Dan Rutherford for state treasurer. To them I say the role of state treasurer has nothing to do whatsoever with social conservatism. If they think slating State Rep. Jim Durkin for state AG would help, it won’t. Durkin is a pro-lifer in mien but is not known for either the intensity of his feeling or his association in any meaningful way with the movement.

The good news seems to be that the business types are on to Judy Baar Topinka who wants to run for her old post of state treasurer. Two reasons why she ought to be cut adrift and allowed to make do for herself without a massive influx of party funds. One, her complicity as state GOP chairman to cause Peter Fitzgerald to abandon any plan he had for reelection because she was cozy with anti-Fitzgerald-ites George Ryan and Speaker Dennis Hastert. On my radio show heard for 100,000 she steadfastly refused to endorse him…which she has shamelessly lied about ever since despite the fact that tens of thousands heard her.

Second: while running for governor she showed an idiosyncratic tendency to market herself as a flip, vulgar comedienne for the gossip columns…example: owner of a late pooch who, she says with her back-alley humor, “peed in 100 countries.” Her self-marketing as an attempted comedienne is based on her need to divert attention from her lamentable failure to master the fiscal issues notwithstanding her long service in the legislature and state treasurer. She is counting on her strident anti-conservatism to woo friends in the media. I could not vote for her and wrote in Stufflebeam. She has told a friend of mine that by her estimation in my writing and radio broadcasts I cost her 16,000 votes. Good. I hope so. As governor she would have shut down any conservatism, would have given us a tax increase, social permissiveness and the spectacle of her riding in gay rights parades and prattling about her doggy going wee-wee in numberless foreign countries. Gee, if I cost her the job I’ll take that Upstairs when I go as a recommendation.

Sir, we had to burn down the village to save it.  This level of batshit craziness is all over conservative Illinois blogs and despite Blagojevich and Stroger, it appears that such nuttiness will give Democrats a better chance than ever in 2010.

In another post, it gets better:

At the root is narcissism but also more than that. Barack Obama’s still largely unexamined (by the media) personal background presages deeper analysis. His is not a family tree but a bramble bush of inconclusive parentage devoid of familial or parental stability…which explains his unfeeling inability to even feign patriotism or loyalty when what is supposed to be his country is under attack by foreign enemies. Answer: it is not his country; he knows no loyalty to anyone by himself. He is a multi-layered ideological non-citizen of any country: an anomaly of confusion even to himself.

Barack Birth Certificate truthers are the new 9-11 truthers.

Purity of Essence Wing Is Happy To Get Rid of Spector

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Goodbye Arlen! This is change we can believe in.

Bush, in his infinite poor judgment, backed him against Pat Toomey back in 2004. Polls show Tommey beating Specter easily in a Republican primary in 2010.

Like any self-serving rat- he jumped ship to save his useless political hide.

Will help the amnesty/pro open border advocates significantly. Yes, he was always one of them. But this will give the Dems even more power to cut off debate and shove it down our citizenry throats.

You can be assured that there will be even less of an open debate on this matter now that he is with the Democratics.

Posted by: Frank Goudy | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 04:09 PM

We are a bigger minority! Hot damn! More purity!

Senators Lauzen and Syverson Part of the Soros Conspiracy

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Pot legalization passes Senate Public Health

Disagreeable Mediocrity as a Politician

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Toobin on Burris:

During his long career in Illinois politics, Burris has encountered many of the state’s most influential figures, some of them principled risk-takers and some corrupt rogues. And it’s been clear that Burris belongs to neither category. He is a conventional politician, one guided far more by cautious self-interest than by ideological passion. His self-regard may be greater than that of some of his peers; he is especially known for the words of self-celebration carved into the wall of a mausoleum that is waiting for him in a Chicago cemetery. (The structure bears the inscription “Trail Blazer” and lists such accomplishments as being the first African-American undergraduate at Southern Illinois University to be an exchange student at the University of Hamburg, in Germany.) “He was a figure of fun, because he was highly egocentric,” Alan Dobry, a former Democratic ward committeeman in Chicago, said of Burris’s years as a local politician. “When he was in office, he had two aides who went around with him, and they were generally referred to as the ‘Rolaids.’ ” According to the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, a longtime student of Chicago politics, Burris “was a soldier, part of the machine. He’s not a distinguished politician. He’s not a powerful political thinker.” Of course, this description hardly distinguishes Burris from many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill. In his very ordinariness, Burris may represent a triumph of sorts for the civil-rights movement, which was, at least in part, a struggle for black people to be seen as just like everybody else.

I think the traditional view of Burris as a perfect fit in as a Soviet style functionary has given Burris a free pass for far too long.

At a minimum, Roland Burris was an incompetent boob.  Let’s look at how he left the Comptroller’s office (and some of the issues were never dealt with by Netsch either, but she was there for a couple years and then running for office.  Roland ran the office for 12 years with Loleta Didrickson and then Hynes cleaning the damn place up.

Auditor General Holland has been busting the chops of inept electeds for years and here is a story on the state of the Comptroller’s office in 1997:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)

May 31, 1997, Saturday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION 
Correction Appended

Comptroller Seeks To Regain $ 8 Million In Cemetery Funds

The Illinois Comptroller’s Office is seeking to recover more than $ 8 million in misspent cemetery trust funds that it is supposed to monitor, a state audit said Friday.

The problem is that until recently the comptroller’s office didn’t have enough control over the funds, according to the report from Auditor General Bill Holland.

The comptroller is responsible for licensing cemetery operators and making sure they properly administer trust funds that people pay into for future maintenance of graves, crypts or other cemetery services.

“Prior to 1995, the Office’s Cemetery Care and Burial Trust Department placed little emphasis on the quality or accuracy of information provided by licensees,” the audit said. “As a result, several situations arose whe re, although annual reports had been filed as required, substantial sums of money were improperly diverted from trust funds.”

Comptroller Loleta Didrickson agreed with the audit’s findings and has been working to fix the deficiencies, according to the audit and a spokesman for Didrickson. Laws adopted last year at Didrickson’s urging give her office more power to oversee the trust funds.

Where does this become important in Roland’s political career?

As a lobbyist he has done several years of lobbying for those very cemetery owners (August 1996 Comptroller’s Newsletter):

When someone purchases a cemetery plot from a licensed private cemetery, a portion of that sale is required to
be placed in trust so that the care of that plot will be perpetually provided.  There are similar trust requirements for funeral homes and other providers of pre-need service. The Comptroller has had the responsibility to regulate privately held funeral home, cemetery and burial trusts (excluding religious or fraternal) since 1972, but in those 23 years, only nine licenses have been revoked within an industry that’s grown from having trust funds of $2.8 million in 1978 to $667 mil- lion today, with projections that level will hit $1 billion in 1998.

An investigation of the cemetery and funeral industry conducted by the Comptroller’s Office revealed that some unscrupulous operators have raided cemetery care trust funds, removing monies intended to provide perpetual care for the cemetery and using those funds for unauthorized purposes.

In an attempt to protect the public from the greed and mismanagement of the few “bad apples” in the industry, the
Comptroller’s reform package estab lishes a two-tiered audit process that allows the Office to use private Certified
Public Accountants to more closely scrutinize those operations showing signs of financial difficulty.  It also makes explicit the authority to conduct investigations in cases of suspected fraud, to file civil suits on behalf of consumers, and  provides for the appointment of independent trustees to oversee the largest of trust funds (more than $500,000).

Add that to his close ties to the Blagojevich administration and the contracts he got from the state government during that time including soliciting a lobbyist close to Rod Blagojevich for state work.

The pattern or Roland Burris’ career is certainly not one of being a dynamic agent of change, but he’s far more connected to the trough of political favors and revolving doors than anyone was pointed out yet.  Certainly his ego overshadows other parts of his life, but his efforts to cash in on his public service since leaving office and being cozy with those who can deliver jobs and money to him have been going for some time.  He never effectively regulated an industry he oversaw during a period of explosive growth.  If anything, his incompetence kept him from being more effective at wringing money out of those he sought contracts and favors from.  His efforts to talk to the Blagojevich administration largely centered on finding jobs for family members or getting some work thrown his way.

Details?

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Really, that’s who Schock wanted to get intereviewed by?  Details?

Even Weller wasn’t that dumb.

Chris Kennedy?

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Really:

Sneed has learned Chris Kennedy, son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, may be this/close to entering the U.S. Senate sweepstakes from Illinois.

•    •    To wit: “Right now, it’s an 85 percent chance Chris is going to do it,” a top Kennedy source tells Sneed.

•    •    Poll ’em: Sneed is told Kennedy, who runs the Merchandise Mart, has commissioned Obama pollster John Anzalone — and has talked to media consultants Larry Grisolano and John Kupper, who now run the firm once headed by David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior adviser.

•    •    Translation: The poll, which is expected at the end of the week, “will give him a better lay of the land in this ever-changing race,” the source said.

•    •    The rationale: Top Dem party sources tell Sneed a Kennedy candidacy would bring instantaneous name recognition. “He’s also lived here for 25 years, is in his late 40s, comes from a business background, and has that Kennedy magic,” the source added.

•    •    The chat: Although the outcome of the poll would not be the only factor in whether Kennedy runs, word is Kennedy is concerned about media spillover from the drubbing his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, got during her ill-fated bid to get appointed to Hillary Clinton’s seat in New York.

The rationale is that he’s a rich guy with a famous name who thinks he’s entitled to the damn position.  We have enough dynasties in Illinois politics without importing one from Massachusetts.

Not To Be

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

Bill Daley’s Motto:

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Rumors suggest he is coming up with a coherent recount strategy for Florida though!

Schakowsky Polling Numbers

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

To: Interested Parties

From: Lake Research Partners

Subject: The 2010 Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in Illinois

Findings from a recent survey of likely Democratic Primary voters in Illinois show a wide open race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Roland Burris, with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky holding a narrow lead over all candidates, including the incumbent Senator. In addition, when voters learn more information (positive and negative) about the candidates, Schakowsky expands her lead over the field.[1] Schakowsky’s message resonates strongly with a Democratic electorate hungry for progressive leadership that will once again provide Illinois families a chance at the American Dream.

· Congresswoman Schakowsky owns a slight lead in a race that is wide open at this early stage. In an initial three-way trial heat, Schakowsky takes nearly a quarter of the vote (24%), narrowly edging out State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (22%). Senator Roland Burris draws just 18% of the vote – a striking indicator of his vulnerability. The intensity of support also narrowly favors Schakowsky (16% strong support), followed by Giannoulias (15%) and Burris (10%). Still, with over one-third (36%) of the Democratic Primary electorate undecided, this seat is up for grabs.

· After voters hear positive statements about the candidates, Schakowsky posts a double-digit lead. Schakowsky’s lead grows from 2 points in the initial ballot to 16 points after voters hear more about the candidates (see text of statements on following page). She leads Giannoulias on the three-way ballot, 38% to 22%, with 21% undecided. C.E.O. Cheryle Jackson attracts 17% of the vote.[2]

• • Notably, the percentage of voters who support Schakowsky strongly on the informed ballot (23% strong support) outnumbers the total percentage of voters who support Giannoulias (22% overall support).

· Even after voters hear negative information about Schakowsky and the other candidates, Schakowsky retains a solid lead over the field.

· Even more impressive, Schakowsky’s lead is not a function of superior name recognition, which actually belongs to Giannoulias. Voters have a slightly more informed opinion of Giannoulias, and both candidates are viewed positively. Despite Giannoulias’ advantage in name recognition, however, Schakowsky leads throughout.

· Bottom Line: At this early stage in the race, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky is the strongest candidate in a wide open race for the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ U.S. Senate seat. Schakowsky’s lead on the initial ballot against incumbent Senator Roland Burris and several other serious candidates is impressive, and once voters learn more about each of the candidates they coalesce around her candidacy in significant numbers. Even after hearing a strong attack on Schakowsky, the Congresswoman retains her lead.

Running for President

ArchPundit April 28, 2009 No Comments

The judge seemed surprised that Rod Blagojevich wasn’t taking the charges seriously the other day.  From Eric’s column today:

The most telling new detail comes from Bob Arya, Blagojevich’s senior adviser from 2006 to early 2008.

Arya, who confirmed Brackett’s account in an interview Monday, said all major speeches needed the OK of a Washington consulting firm that was trying to position Blagojevich for a presidential run.

Arya said it was this consulting firm that inserted disastrously aggressive anti-business rhetoric into Blagojevich’s 2007 budget address. In early drafts, the need for a new tax on gross business receipts was framed as an attempt to close loopholes and make the tax system more progressive, Arya said.

“But the consultants said he should turn the issue into big business against the little guy,” Arya said. “So he tried to make businesses look nefarious when they were just following the law. All this did was inflame a lot of people whose support he needed.”

What’s amazing about this is anyone paying attention knew he was going to prison in 2007.  I made that point repeatedly in the 2006 race–so that Rod Blagojevich is delusional now isn’t news. He always has been.

Testing Twitter

ArchPundit April 22, 2009 No Comments

Testing Twitter Feed