Tag: Blithe Spirit
The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times
Good morning, Chicago. Your daily mayhem report is ready . . .
. . . courtesy Sun-Times, where the reporting is excellent and the customary liberal viewpoints are acted out with adequate geniality and occasional glimmers of right-wing light.
5 hours Man wanted in U of I shooting surrenders to police Sun-Times Wire
6 hours 3 dead, 8 wounded in city shootings Thursday Sun-Times Wire
6 hours Austin shooting leaves 1 woundedSun-Times Wire
6 hours Woman wounded in Hermosa drive-by Sun-Times Wire
8 hours 1 critically hurt in Roseland shootingSun-Times Wire
9 hours 17-year-old boy shot in Grand Crossing Sun-Times Wire
9 hours Man shot in Austin Sun-Times Wire
10 hours Emergency pothole repair completed on Stevenson Expressway Sun-Times Wire
11 hours Man in custody after Humboldt Park stabbing Sun-Times Wire
11 hours Home invader points gun at person in driveway in Bristol Township Sun-Times Wire
Special attn. to be given to this Austin event:
A 25-year-old man was shot Thursday evening . . . about 8:20 p.m., in the leg, butt and arm in the 200 block of South Lotus Avenue.
This writer lived in the 300 block of North Lotus in 1968-69, until he and his wife emigrated to Oak Park in the wake of burglary and arson in their building, by the way.
Be (cautiously, as ever) consoled, ye Trumpsters
This UPI poll shows smooth sailing, unlikely to be reversed by the email lady with the cast-iron smile.
Comey and the Clintons: Thickened plot
The first thing to know about James Comey is that before he became the FBI Director in 2013, he was a top executive at Lockheed Martin from October, 2005 until July 2, 2010.
As former general counsel and vice president of Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor benefited under Comey’s leadership from a number of contracts awarded by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Lockheed Martin has been one of the top defense contributors to the Clinton Foundation:
Hillary’s state department approved:
. . . a $250,000 payment to Bill Clinton for a speech, just three days before a weapons-export contract was awarded to Lockheed:
Connecting the dots, in re Comey’s Lockheed M:
Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. would approve 215 speeches delivered by her husband Bill Clinton and a consulting deal worth a total of $48 million. In sum, 17 of 20 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation saw an increase in arms exports authorized under Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Comey’s Lockheed “would become a member of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010.” Cozy, if also disgusting.
“But it’s not the only company that had extensive ties with the Clinton Foundation in Comey’s background.”
In 2013, the same year that he was appointed the FBI Director, James Comey became a board member, a director, and a member of the Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee for the controversial London-based bank HSBC.
HSBC is a bank with close ties to the Clinton Foundation that lists among its clients Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate with ties to a Russian uranium deal approved under Clinton’s State Dept., and six other major foundation donors listed in a report by The Guardian.
Disgusting. He’s tied to the Clintons, maybe was installed at FBI with view to being of service.
BTW, go here for source of article, a very interesting startup, Independent Journal Review.
Comey making a point:
Why Clinton hasn’t put Trump away: She’s too tightly controlled.
You get the feeling Clinton wakes up and consults her briefing books, concerned chiefly with avoiding anything off-key. She mentioned her father a few times in the debate, but the lines seemed as well ironed as the pantsuit.
She’s controlled. Has to be, while Trump’s ebullience jumps out. He’s more comfortable with it. I like that about him. He’s more genuine in that respect. And all in all, more trustworthy.
Bai continues:
What was stunning about watching Trump Monday was his complete and unapologetic lack of depth. Never have we seen a candidate make less pretense of knowing anything about policy or history. When it comes to actual governance, Trump, at this late date, is still just a guy in a bar, tossing out platitudes he’s heard on TV.
And yet he displayed the mastery of emotion that has gotten him this far. A pure entertainer, he channels better than any candidate who ran this year the cynicism of the white electorate, and not just those who are staunchly conservative.
We’ll see about the pure-entertainer part. He surely knows how to warm up a crowd, get them enthusiastic. But I love that “guy in a bar, tossing out platitudes he’s heard on TV.” So what? I say — mainly because he’s not that guy.
But that’s not Bai’s point, which is not to endorse Trump but to appreciate him as a natural in his newly chosen field. At 71, by the way, and that’s no small thing. Bespeaks lots of experience knocking about with a wide variety of people.
So:
There are a couple of more debates coming up, and I’d guess that Clinton might win those too, on both the arguments and the atmospherics. But I’d also guess that, without a more emotional assault on his case for the presidency, Trump can remain viable, at least, straight through to Election Day.
But she cannot make such an assault. She has too much to hide and has to protect herself. She’s plastic, lacks the touch. Trump has the touch, say I.
Good morning, Chicago: Your mayhem report is ready
Business as usual in a long-time Democrat-run city. Hillary to make America safe again?
WIRE UPDATES
Ho-hum. (Compliments of Chicago Sun-Times)
What do Krauthammer and Will know about Comey to make them credit his “sincerity” that we don’t know?
. . . after Comey’s testimony today on the Clinton emails, granting of immunity leading to non-prosecution, etc., as each did on Fox News’ “Special Report” tonight?
They think he’s a nice guy, one of their own on the Washington scene? Very conservative stance by them meaning as to caution in making judgment. Very strange.
K. earlier had this on the Comey matter.
Copper doors, closed schools, need for austerity
Facing restless voters in the September 12, 2013 town hall meeting at Galewood Community Church, Sen. Don Harmon and Rep. Camille Lilly had another matter thrust before them, . . . .
. . . the recently publicized expensive copper doors for the state capitol, which the questioner said demonstrated a “let them eat cake” attitude.
The money for those doors did not come from general revenues, Harmon explained. It came from the Illinois Jobs Now! program, a capital spending bill signed into law (and nicknamed) by Governor Quinn in 2009.
This program, named as if it was job creation, was to cost $31 billion over six years and was to pay for more along lines of these copper doors — $17-plus million for two zoos, Brookfield and Lincoln Park, $1.2 million for the Muntu Dance Theater, and $.5 million for the Chicago Baseball Museum and Stadium, to name a few of its beneficiaries — all of it with accompanying taxation and borrowing.
Raise taxes on “cronies,” man said.
A man emptied a grab bag of populist-progressive complaints: “People in power need money, they get it,” he complained. “The state has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. We should raise taxes on the people who can afford it,” especially “cronies.”
Furthermore, he did not want Harmon and Lilly (“you guys”) to “follow lockstep with Rahm [Emanuel] and the others in closing [Chicago] schools.”
This tore it for Lilly, who . . .
. . . bristled at it. She was “one of the few” to oppose the closings,” she protested, and was “very concerned” and was “going to make sure this issue [city schools] is revisited in our great state.”
Nonetheless, austerity was in order, she said. “Everyone will have to help. . . . It’s not easy, it’s not comfortable. . . .” Someone spoke up, she cut her off. “Not yet,” she said, raising her voice a notch.
More to come, from Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters— available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.
Who’s that women with the manic grin?
And her friend with the painful-to-look-at trying-to-be-nice smile. When it’s hard work being a candidate.
Why Trump is poster candidate for bias
It’s becoming more obvious than ever. I find myself going to some trusted solely on-line sources, except now and then I see Chicago Sun-Times blaring front page that catches my attention, like today’s “Steinberg: Donald Trump is going to be elected president.”
Which is the kind of man-bites-dog story that sells newspapers. Congratulations, Neil!
We also get Chi Trib on weekends, which is good for more than obits, providing a window to conventional wisdom among the genteel leftist elite. (Not in its editorial page, btw, needless to say.)
Blithe Spirit 