In Missouri, Republican Roy Blunt has a message: Obama is for his opponent! Enough said!
(It’s a Drudge heads-up:
IT’S ON: First negative ad from candidate linking Dem to Obama.)
Tag: Politics
Job-killer
In hard times, union hardball has no traction:
With one of its two elementary schools crippled by a stalled construction project, the school board of River Forest Elementary School District 90 voted this morning to cancel a union contract and bring in a non-union company to finish the job.
Look. The working man is not just the union member, who in this case is killing jobs for himself and his brothers and sisters. When will they ever learn?
Thing is, this school board depends not a whit on labor money.
There ain’t no justice department
Sad to say, the Eric BeHolder — beautiful in the eyes of — justice department is appearing not only grossly politicized but also inept, as in this “flub” of the Polanski case.
He’s Obama’s man, of course, a brother under the skin, but not before he was Bill Clinton’s, as in the case of the grossly venal pardons.
Good morning, Chicago
No surprises, says Chicagoist, that Stroger is using patronage to reward supporters. No surprise either, sez I, that Blagojevich used his office to enrich himself. We are used to hearing about both of them, as we have long been used to hearing about political corruption in Illinois, especially Cook County, especially Chicago.
What’s new this time around is the brazenness and ineptitude of Stroger and Blago, to whom we should be grateful for making it all so clear, so that maybe, maybe a periodic paroxysm of pseudo-reform can have its 15 minutes of fame in our state, county, and metropolitan area.
(By the way, when was the last time any of us heard a sermon against political corruption? Like this by Rev. Dr. Bellows in NYC in 1875?)
Fat black people are victims
Vapid is as vapid talks. Wanna hear empty pseudo-rhetoric, a bromide every minute full of air? Listen here to Michelle O. telling the NAACP about fat kids.
Did you listen? Did you get the part about the black community being threatened by its health — not by its bad eating habits and leaving exercise to favorite NBA players?
The lady urges “intensity,” Drudge headlines. It sits better than dieting and running, not to mention watching less TV and reading more books.
No self-respecting PTO would invite her back.
Hurricane warning
Something very big is coming this fall, to go by Gallup:
By an average 10 percentage-point margin since March, 45% to 35%, independent registered voters have consistently preferred the Republican to the Democrat when asked which congressional candidate they would vote for in their district. Independents’ preference for Republicans has been generally consistent over this time, with the gap in favor of Republicans increasing slightly since March, from 8 to 12 points.
Tsunami coming.
[HT: News Alert]
When School Choice Means Life or Death
Leo Catholic High on the South Side: a port in the storm.
May the best man win, says Berrios
Manuel Galvan tells us the Berrios for (Cook County) Assessor campaign will not contest independent former Democrat Forrest Claypool’s petitions and will rely instead on vote count in the general election in November.
The campaign’s “extensive review” found 30,000-plus valid signatures (of almost 90,000 submitted, per G.), and 26,000 were needed; so Berrios, who won the early, early (Dem) primary months ago, will not engage in litigation that might go “all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court” and will concede Claypool a place on the ballot — which is more than Obama did for his state senatorial opponent in a long-ago primary when he was fairly new on the scene.
Galvan asks only that Claypool, who enters the race with far less baggage than the grizzled Berrios — traveling light, as it were — “set aside the insults and empty rhetoric and pledge to conduct a spirited, fair and clean campaign,” which is asking a lot.
Soccer ref explains
Koman Coulibaly, the ref that called it wrong in the U.S.-Slovenia World Cup match, has fallen in love with a wonderful guy:
“I am now sitting in my hotel room in Pretoria, South Africa, thinking about adversity. And how Nelson Mandela and I have faced so many similar struggles,” he writes on his blog.
How so?
1) We are both African. [So are lots of refs who don’t blow championship calls.] Both Nelson Mandela and I suffered under the imperialist yoke of countries like Great Britain and America. And colonialism.
Ah. That imperialist yoke. And colonialism. Surefire recipe ingredients for bad calls and subsequent refusal to explain them.
2) We are talented soccer experts. I heard Mandela considered playing left mid for Bafana Bafana before becoming an activist.
Highly irrelevant, one might say. Mandela, for instance.
3) We are both kept from achieving our full potential because of racism. Mandela had apartheid. I face the racist Americans and FIFA. Do you think there would be so much doubt about my call if I was from Melbourne, not Mali? I don’t.
I do, somehow. One hoped against hope that he would not talk that way. Question: If U.S. were not imperialist, colonialist, and racist, would he have made his call?
4) We have both been imprisoned under horrible hardships. Like Mandela, I am a prisoner. Though there are no physical bars or concrete separating me from freedom, I have had to stay indoors since the US vs Slovenia game for fear of my safety. I guess apartheid whites and some American soccer fans also have things in common.
He guesses? Why so tentative? Will he elaborate on his fear? We think not. He does not elaborate. Suffering from imperialism, and racism, he just calls them as he thinks them. Why can’t we understand that?
Later: Reader D sees “a possible job opening in the White House as our Soccer Czar. He’s got the one necessary ingredient — a desire to cut the USA down to size.”
The summer when the sun don't shine for Dems
“I used to say I enjoyed taking his money, but now I think he’s taking mine.”
Blithe Spirit 