"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
Say it isn’t so, Hill!
Emails in Clinton probe dealt with planned CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, though in vaguely worded terms, law-enforcement and congressional officials briefed on the probe said.
Source: Emails in Clinton Probe Dealt With Planned Drone Strikes – WSJ
From Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters:
Sen. Don Harmon opened the July 17 (2013) Oak Park Library session with a reprise of his calm-down, don’t-worry commentary.
There had been “decades of underfunding” of pensions, he said. Nothing to see here, move on, why the fuss?
The problem can be solved without taking from “core government services, especially social services,” he said. Again, why the fuss?
Rep. Camille Lilly agreed but said the budget process was “really, really, really critical.” A triple-really gets the mind working: there might be cuts?
In any case, she had an important tip: Have a look at the budget on the state’s web site. It’s “the new technology of today,” she said. . . . .
Illinois Blues is available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.
For years, Illinois has found the municipal-bond market open whenever it needs to raise money, despite budget deficits, worst-in-the-nation pension shortfalls and a political paralysis so severe it’s headed for a second year without even a blueprint for what it should be spending.
It’s about time to shut the doors on the state, says BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager.
“We as municipal market participants should really be penalizing in some way, by almost not giving them any access to the market,” Peter Hayes, who oversees $119 billion as head of munis at BlackRock, said in New York on Wednesday. “Think about it — they’re a state without a budget, they refuse to pass a budget, they have the lowest funded ratio on their pension of any state, and yet they’re going to come to market and borrow money.”
This from someone who tries to handle other people’s money responsibly. Tries harder, we might say, than many if not most of Illinois’ elected officials.
I am definitely missing something here. What’s wrong with me? If it’s racist to speak of illegals, what isn’t?
I mean, come on, folks.
Tila Tequila pisses off the internet again with racist Instagram post
“Ain’t nuthin better than riding around Texas in my cowboy boots to hunt down these damn illegals!” she posted VIDEO
Not to mention, who is Tila Tequila?
Candidate Bluster (learning on the job in stop-and-go fashion) vs. Candidate Bold-faced Liar & Schemer?
Ladies and gentleman, choose.
GOP not.
When they voted for it, supporters of Dodd-Frank told us it would “promote financial stability,” “end too big to fail,” and “lift the economy.” None of this has come to pass.
Today the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer. In other words, even more banking assets are now concentrated in the so-called “Too Big to Fail” firms. Pray tell, how does this promote financial stability?
And how does it harm big banks? It doesn’t.
More here: Notable & Quotable: Hensarling on Dodd-Frank – WSJ
Oh, the vapors, the vapors… Donald Trump, while detailing his veteran donations at a news conference, thoroughly dissed the press and called a reporter “sleazy.” . . .
Well, of course Donald did because they are mostly sleazy, all of them, including me. I’m particularly sleazy when I’m reporting, slightly less so when I’m writing an opinion piece.
And that’s the point — it’s all opinion when you examine it closely, reporting not so much. Nothing is really objective. It can’t be. We’re all biased for one obvious reason — we’re human. Ever meet an unbiased human? It was probably a corpse. An old one.
And as for journalists as a class, Joan Didion put it best in her introduction to her classic Slouching toward Bethlehem: “writers are always selling somebody out.”
Reporters are most sleazy when they pretend to be objective, following diligently in the footsteps of the Grey Lady herself and her onetime motto “All the news that’s fit to print.” Only the Times chose what news fit, not to mention what news “fit” on the front page and what on page twenty-four. Bias anyone? (It took years for the Times to put Auschwitz on the front page.)
Read the rest of it here: Trump States the Obvious about the Press | PJ Media
Donald, Donald, when will you ever learn?
Oh, the vapors, the vapors… Donald Trump, while detailing his veteran donations at a news conference, thoroughly dissed the press and called a reporter “sleazy.” (Hillary Clinton, it’s worth noting, doesn’t do that. She can’t because, although running for president, she hasn’t had a news conference in 2016.)
So she doesn’t LIKE news conferences. You have a problem with that?
From Chapter 2, “The Lilly Factor”
On July 17, a few weeks after Sen. Harmon did what he could to reassure the Business and Civic Council, he faced citizens in a town hall gathering of his own scheduling, accompanied by one of Oak Park’s two state representatives, Camille Lilly. . . . .
Rep. Lilly deserves introduction. Appointed in 2010 to replace the incumbent, who had been appointed alderman to replace one who’d gone to prison on a corruption conviction, she represented north and most of central Oak Park, plus a city neighborhood just north of the village and parts of three other suburbs. Her base was the adjoining Austin neighborhood of the city to the east, a high-crime, mostly black community where she was a hospital executive and chamber of commerce director.
She was picked by five committeemen in a speedy closed session at the Carleton Hotel after a two-hour open session in which seven candidates were interviewed. One of the committeemen called for a unanimous vote, and Lilly had it. Harmon cast his own vote plus another for the River Forest committeeman, whose proxy he held — but who had directed otherwise. This did not stop Harmon, who used “latitude” he said he had if a committeeman calls for a unanimous vote, casting this man’s vote also for Lilly.
Harmon was taken by surprise, he said. His suggestion of a five-minute break before the vote had been ignored, there had been not even a token “pow-wow” by the committee.
“The deal was done before the process was rolled out,” said one of the six defeated candidates. Lilly had been “the inside candidate,” Wednesday Journal publisher Dan Haley had written days earlier — for a position that had to be filled “because there [were] important instructions from [Speaker] Mike Madigan to be carried out and he [was] short a minion.”
Harmon, who had chaired the proceedings, congratulated himself and the party for the unusual open-interview session. He said he thought “folks” were “just weary of politicians and of government,” which was “horribly unfortunate,” adding, “We’re trying things we’ve done in Springfield to try and restore trust in government and trust in politics, and it’s a long road.”
It was the anti-politician comment from a politician — meaningless except when accompanied by tearful resignation and subsequent entrance into a monastery. As one effete plutocrat said to the other at poolside in a long-ago New Yorker cartoon, as the two of them watched a robed and bearded man walking towards them on the water’s surface, “It’s a long time since that’s been done well.”
Illinois Blues is available also in epub and Kindle formats.
Having skipped over dozens of what seemed overblown stories in several newspapers about Ali, I got stopped with this one and am glad I was.
The brash young fighter ran from a punch, they said, and he was hanging out with Malcolm X and the Muslims.
It’s all about lead-up to the Sonny Liston fight. Read it.
Source: When Ali was still Clay, the old white sportswriters didn’t know what to think – The Washington Post
