Yo DeMint–It’s Not a How To Manual
ArchPundit
October 2010
So What About Sexually Active Single Men?
Seriously.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says that even though “no one” came to his defense in 2004 after he said that gay people and unwed mothers should be banned from teaching, “everyone” quietly told him that he shouldn’t back down from his position.
He also implied that not banning gay people and women who have sex before marriage from teaching would be an attack on Christians, and defended his position on banning gay teachers because he holds the same position on women who have sex outside of marriage.
“[When I said those things,] no one came to my defense,” he said, the Spartanberg Herald-Journal reported. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”
So what about single guys who get women pregnant? Funny how he didn’t cover that one.
How Could I Forget When Heartland Opened
Two years before Bill Brady went to Springfield.
Gov.Pat Quinn has repeatedly taunted state Sen. Bill Brady for his lack of accomplishments in 17 years in the General Assembly. When asked about this Thursday, Brady said not so! He said he played a key role in the creation of Heartland Community College, based in downstate Normal.
The school opened in 1991. Brady entered the legislature in 1993.
Bill Brady’s, ahem, Confusion Over State Government
Eric Zorn has what should be one of the most telling quotes about Bill Brady all cycle:
“There is a lack of transparency,” he said. “Yes we have an auditor general. And he provides us with reports and audits within about two years. But the governor says, and (Comptroller) Dan Hynes says, we owe over $5 billion to our vendors. We don’t know who’s owed what.”
I followed up a moment later: “You’re saying we owe $5 billion, and we don’t know to whom we owe it?”
“People don’t,” Brady said.
“You don’t?”
“Nope.”
But Dan Hynes does. His office reported Thursday afternoon that there are exactly 204,688 unpaid vouchers worth $5.4 billion on the comptroller’s desk.
This is an incredibly stupid statement and, in fact, a State Senator could easily ask the Comptroller’s office for a report on the unpaid bills. More than that, it has to be easily available because vendors can check the status of payments online.
Yet, that’s not all. You can use SAM reports to check obligations by the state and get categorical unpaid obligations by agency and purpose. The manual is available here.
IOW, maybe a State Senator doesn’t know himself where all of this is, but a simple request to a half competent staffer could find the information quite easily. The Comptroller has done an incredible job making his office transparent. The only excuse for Bill Brady not knowing this is he must not have tried to look for the information. He’s not a curious man so that isn’t too surprising. However, it would be nice if more members of the press besides Eric would call him on this bull.
Daily Dolts: Fran Eaton and Adam Kinzinger
For those who recall Fran Eaton and Jill Stanek attacking Debbie Halvorson for having HPV and essentially engaging in slut shaming regardless of the fact that it was Debbie’s first husband who exposed her to HPV. Let’s review their attacks on Halvorson:
So when renowns like actress Marissa Jaret Winokur and Illinois state Sen. Debbie Halvorson divulged their history of HPV as the basis for conducting a crusade against it, you’d think they would discourage the destructive behavior causing it by talking about it, such as:
* Discussing the number of sex partners they had throughout their lifetime and how each one increased the likelihood of contracting HPV, or conversely how one can contract HPV from a sole encounter;
* Discussing whether they realized at the time their sex partners carried HPV, which most people do not;
* Discussing whether it was their husbands who passed HPV on to them after sleeping with other women, demonstrating a good reason for fidelity.
But instead of speaking against the cause of HPV, Winokur and Halvorson are instead promoting a vaccination to halt just a tiny fraction of the multitude of consequences of this destructive behavior.
Here is where they erred. After having publicly presented themselves as Exhibit A in this discussion they tried to say, “I have a history of this disease, but my solution excludes assessing the history of my disease.” That is illogical and dangerous. As an RN I’ll add it is bad medicine.
When I presented the aforementioned topics for discussion on a blog this week, liberals accused me of hate, extremism, personal attacks, venom and vitriol.
Yes I did. And I stand by that. Adam Kinzinger has posted Fran Eaton’s most recent column bringing up that shameful episode on his website.
Once you’ve been dubbed a “mean girl” by a fellow journalist, you tend to react by becoming more thick-skinned and meaner, or you back off and try to adjust your attitude.
My having won that “mean girl” moniker a few years ago is the first thing I think of when I read about U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson. Before being elected to Congress in 2008, Halvorson was state Sen. Emil Jones’ lieutenant. During her final years in the Illinois Senate, she willingly jumped into a vat of legislative hot oil by sponsoring a bill that would mandate 9- to 11-year-old girls receive the human papilloma virus vaccine.
Adding any other vaccine doses to Illinois’ already overbearing 38 now required before a child can be admitted to school always should be met with caution. But mandating the newly developed HPV vaccine was especially troubling. HPV, a virus that experts say often leads to cervical cancer, is transmitted only by sexual contact or by needle exchange. To require 9- to 11-year-old girls to have an HPV shot for school attendance was a serious measure that should require parental information, lots of medical assessment and clear debate.
That’s where the problem arose. Halvorson launched a campaign for the HPV mandate by publicly admitting her own battle with HPV. Upon initiation, it seemed like a public service to promote the vaccine, but when it was discovered that Halvorson had been involved in a legislative group that was financially assisted by vaccine promoters, her cause lost its sheen. We learned soon after that the vaccine makers had invested heavily in legislative groups throughout the country, planning to sweep the nation state by state with profit-inducing HPV vaccine mandates.
That’s when the situation in Illinois got testy.
Healthy queries as to Halvorson’s own legislative background on the issue, her political ties and her rationale for the HPV vaccine push were turned into frank online discussions. As a result, a couple of us concerned about the vaccine mandate were dubbed “mean girls” by a fellow female columnist.
So, when viewing a YouTube video showing Halvorson’s Joliet office as the gathering spot for protesters who had just shouted at folks going into an Americans for Prosperity rally in Joliet last week, I hesitated to address it. After all, holding Halvorson’s campaign workers accountable for what they clearly did might raise that “mean girl” label again. And gee, was it worth it?
Two of the people attempting to intimidate concerned 11th District voters away from the Sept. 15 gathering to promote free markets and lower taxes and to oppose Obamacare and a scary economy clearly were connected with the Halvorson campaign. The photos and videos shot by concerned citizen journalists who followed the protesters back to the Halvorson office clearly make that point.
Halvorson says she had nothing to do with the protest, and she denies her campaign workers were involved in putting Hitleresque mustaches on protesters’ signs of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Halvorson’s Republican opponent, Adam Kinzinger.
All we can do is take Halvorson’s word that she knew nothing, but we can say for certain her campaign workers knew fully what was going on. They were in the middle of the whole ordeal.
Except it turns out not to be true as Bill Preston came forward saying he and one other person were behind the Hitler signs and not connected to the coordinated campaign. More interesting is that a quick web search turned up a picture of Bill Preston protesting BP in Chicago apparently on his own. So, not only is Kinzinger promoting a factually debunked story, he’s giving creedence to a woman who called his opponent a slut.
By that standard we should expect Kinzinger to start talking in detail about his own sexual history given Eaton’s standards. Or maybe not since I don’t really want to know. However, the other consistent choice is to point out that Fran Eaton is a mean and detestable human being who compared a decent public servant to a porn star.
Bill Brady: I’ve Done Several Things
If by several you mean one:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7kVIHr4wKc[/youtube]
For his initial House seat this was a step up since Gordon Ropp’s primary claim to fame was trying and failing to pass a state soil bill and literally crying about why his colleagues wouldn’t give him this one thing on the floor of the State House.
Oh, Bill has a Porsche too. Very accomplished. I’ve been pretty resigned to the fact that this incredibly ridiculous man was going to be the next Governor. I still think he’s got a better than 50 percent chance, but the most recent polling makes this race a serious one at least.
Scott Lee Cohen
I thought he was a problem until it turns out he hurts Brady.
On a more serious note–what a joke:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjEw87M-QMs[/youtube]
I ran for a really useless office and Pat Quinn confirmed it would be a really useless office so I dropped out. Makes perfect sense.
Slow Down Dold–I Can’t Keep Up With Your Problems….
Bob Dold (R-Screwed) is in a bit of trouble.
What was congressional candidate Bob Dold’s “primary residence” from 2004 to 2006?
He received about $4,000 in tax breaks during those years for claiming a homeowner’s exemption on his house in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood, according to the Cook County Assessor’s office.
But he voted in every primary and general election in Winnetka, according to the Cook County Clerk’s office. That’s in the North Shore 10th Congressional District where Dold, the Republican nominee, boasts he is a “life-long resident.”
When this apparent discrepancy was called to Cook County Clerk David Orr’s attention Tuesday, his office called the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office to turn over the information.
“When things like this are brought to our attention, we take it very seriously and we forward it to States Attorney’s office for review,” said Orr spokeswoman Courtney Greve.
Multiple GOP sources started yelling ACORN! until they realized it was one of their guys.
Dold had to declare his residence in Roscoe Village was his principle residence for the year in question and so he is trying to distinguish between a permanent residence and a principal residence. I don’t know the case law, but it’s a pretty tough distinction to make. What is interesting is his wife is an IRS attorney and so ignorance or mistake isn’t going to fly in this case.
Turns out he has more problems:
Mary Stowell is a lawyer whose old job at the U.S. Attorney’s office kept her out of politics. But now in private practice, she’s making up for lost time.
“I felt it was my duty to file this complaint,” the Winnetka resident said after noting irregularities in Republican Bob Dold’s July report to the Federal Election Commission.
Dold is running for U.S Representative of Illinois 10th Congressional District, a seat vacated by Rep. Mark Kirk.
“I noticed he made very careful filings of expenditures under two dollars and I couldn’t imagine why an expenditure of this size was not listed,” Stowell explains of a motor coach that was used in Dold’s ads as part of a bus tour he touted post-primary and through the summer. In April, the cost was disclosed as about $15,000, but in July’s report, it wasn’t there.
Yeah, haven’t received a bill yet doesn’t work for an expense of that size. But it’s a nice try.