Month: June 2016

Illinois Blues: Pensioner’s “desperate look,” bond ratings, unemployment

At the Oak Park Library town hall, July 17, 2013 — from Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters, Chapter 3, “There Will Be No Cuts”:

A man asked why it had taken so long to do something about the pension issue when the Civic Federation of Chicago had raised the issue five years earlier.

Sen. Harmon played the therapist. He shared the questioner’s “frustration,” having seen the “desperate look” on the faces of people who fear losing pensions.

Nothing about why it had taken so long. Treating the do-nothing years as an act of God, himself as horrified observer. Not horrified, however, since even as he spoke, there was no crisis, he had said.

Another man complained that in response to Illinois’ lowest-in-nation bond rating and one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, said citizens got nothing but “rhetoric.”

It was the first question about fiscal issues as such. The man stayed with his complaint, enlarging on it. Harmon listened up to a point, then called “next,” choosing not to engage him.

Rep. Lilly gloriously missed this and picked up with the persistent questioner, entering on extended commentary of her own, pacing back and forth, gesticulating, in general speaking as if to settle the question in an earnest, forceful, however cheery a manner.

The man threw in the towel, giving way to the next question, about a much-protested pawn shop on economically limping North Avenue and related matters.

Illinois Blues is available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.

AG Lynch soft spot in heart for Muslims, so?

She downplays the Islamic in Islamic terrorism, or so it seems.

Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, have worked with an organization dedicated to interfering with law enforcement efforts to monitor activities at the most radical mosques.

Lynch and DOJ Civil Rights Division head Vanita Gupta have appeared at gala events for an organization called Muslim Advocates. The George Soros-funded charity has badgered the New York City Police Department away from monitoring the most radical mosques in the city.


Well this makes her Obama’s kind of attorney general, I must say. And of course, Soros’ too. What gives with him, anyhow? Did he attend a Muslim school too?

OCCUPY CONGRESS: John Lewis shuts things down

He risked his life for this?

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) has come full circle in his astounding, American life.

He came to prominence during the struggles of the 1960s as an original member of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders who risked their lives for the rights of black Americans to vote and exercise other basic rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

And last night, he led a sit-in on the floor of the US House of Representatives for the sole purpose of curtailing those same constitutionally-protected rights

Source: OCCUPY CONGRESS: Speaker Ryan adjourns House as Dems continue sit-in protest to infringe on individual rights « Hot Air