Tag: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Illinois Blues: A new heroine by name of Foxx

An Illinois Blues moment here: Dem State’s Attorney candidate Kim Foxx has been working for a firm that has “often sued” the county and has given her $18,500 to help her get elected, Chi Trib reported Sunday.

 How better to illustrate the Illinois Ruling Party way of doing things? She’s been doing it for the year since she left County Board President Preckwinkle’s office — clearly, we may say, with intent to be the prosecutor representing the county.

 Made no never-mind. She plugged away at helping her colleagues with other work while they squeezed cash — $6 million here, $3 million there, etc. — out of the very county which in months she will be working for.

 Not a problem, she said. She promised her justice would be blind. “No conflict,” she decreed.

 The $6-million case was argued by Larry Rogers Jr., a $100,000-a-year man at the county Board of Review, which rules on property tax appeals. He was elected to that (side?) job — as a candidate of the Ruling Party, needless to say.

 He clammed up when taking a call from a reporter.

Asked whether she was working in any capacity at his law firm, Rogers said, “What now?” Then he said he had another call to take, adding that he would call a reporter back before hanging up. Rogers did not call back and did not return subsequent phone messages left for him.

I love that. Any other context, it’s called arrogance.

It’s how it’s done, however.

Foxx did her denials and promises Saturday after a union meeting where she spoke, privately.

Union spokesman Graeme Zielinski had advised the rally was open to the press but denied a reporter entry to the event. Asked whether Foxx was addressing the union workers as scheduled, Zielinski said Foxx would not be attending.

About 15 minutes later, campaign spokesman Robert Foley emerged from the Pilsen union hall to say Foxx was, in fact, inside giving a speech and would answer questions about her consulting work.

 She’s the people’s choice, the people of blue, blue Illinois, which has the blues.

New ball game, folks.

It’s the candidate’s health, stupid.

Campaign dismisses it.

But the issue is that Clinton kept reporters totally in the dark for 90 minutes after her abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial service for a health-related matter.

No reporter was allowed to follow her. (Clinton has resisted a protective pool for coverage because Donald Trump refuses to participate in one.)

This is, yet again, the Clinton campaign asking everyone to just trust it. She got overheated! But she’s fine now!

A week ago, this fellow dismissed the issue, he says. No more.

Rep. Lilly in Franklin Park — not quite decipherable

More on two Oak Park legislators’ town-hall-meeting tour in 2013 as told in my Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters.

Sen. Don Harmon appeared with Rep. Camille Lilly and three other legislators on July 30 in Franklin Park’s park district headquarters, seven miles northwest of his and Lilly’s offices in Oak Park and on the West Side — another stark example of redistricting by Illinois Democrats according to their electoral requirements.

Among the other three was Sen. John Mulroe, a Northwest Side Chicago Democrat, who, “new to politics,” had run for office in 2010 because the state was “on the brink of disaster.” As an inveterate crisis-denier, Harmon must have cringed at that.

The two others were Rep. Kathleen Willis, from far-distant Addison, in DuPage County eight miles away, and Rep Mike McAuliffe, a Republican based on the city’s far Northwest Side. He made the point early on that he works with the others and had little to say in the ensuing conversation.

Neither did Oak Park’s Lilly, who did manage several times to squeeze in reference to her experience as a sophomore legislator. Indeed, her more extended contributions were about what she had experienced since her appointment — her voyage of discovery, as it were — even as she offered observations that she alone among the legislators apparently considered germane.

During discussion of the state’s economic situation, for instance, she noted that Illinois’ population was growing, which it was — one half of one percent since 2010, according to the Census Bureau — sixth-lowest growth in the nation, which had grown 2.5 percent in that time. Her point was followed up by no other panelist.

In a discussion of whether the state is business-friendly, she came up with something not quite decipherable. “We signed legislation today,” to encourage “small business loans,” she said. We? Signed? On that day? There was nothing in the news about this, nothing on state web sites. An email requesting clarification two days later and another two weeks later, each copied to Harmon, got no response from either.

She was proud of her vote to end double-dipping in pension payouts, she said, adding (twice) that there’s constant “monitoring” of that. “It’s important,” she said, adding, “To me,” squelching the rumor that when she says something is important, she sometimes means to others, not herself.

All in all, she remained true to form as modestly talented, inadequately informed, and good at picking out odd facts or fanciful pronouncements for mention in the public forum.

From Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters— available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.

Who’s sorry now? Who’s deplorable now?

Hah! She took it back. I am maybe no longer deplorable.

She’s a modern-day Lady MacBeth, with her “Out, damned fraction.” Half don’t cut it today.

Pauline had fewer perils.

Perilsofpauline.jpg

Oh, while we’re on Lady MacBeth, here’s later in the line: “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow’r to accompt?” Shakespeare never could spell. It’s “account.” OK?

 

 

Libs want debate moderator to win one for the email lady: Do the fact-checking, or all is lost

In Chi Trib, veteran presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer “gets at an important and frequently overlooked point” about fact-checking, writes James Taranto.

Even if the moderators play it straight, Trump will have an antagonist in the debates: Hillary Clinton. Implicit in the demand that moderators favor Mrs. Clinton is the fear that she is not up to the task of taking on Trump herself.

That’s what you get when you choose a nominee based on family connections and spare her the tough primary campaign that might have exposed her lack of political talent.

Yes.

When “stop the presses” means “stop uncovering things”

What’s that old joke, playing on “if the shoe fits, wear it”? Starts off, “If the foo . . . “

See how Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto reads a newspaper:

A Washington Post editorial today laments that, as the headline puts it, “The Hillary Clinton Email Story Is Out of Control,” though the editors never specify who they think should control it. “Ms. Clinton’s emails have endured much more scrutiny than an ordinary person’s would have,” they shrug, and besides, “there is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office.” The paper that has dined out for decades on its aggressive Watergate coverage is now pro-coverup.

A clear case among other things of Corruptio optimi pessima.