Archive for January 3rd, 2009
Watch This Week with George Snuffleupagus tomorrow: Roland Burris will be discussed
We stopped watching the Sunday morning Obama cheerleading shows months ago, but are breaking that rule tomorrow. Roland Burris will be on Roland Burris will be DISCUSSED on This Week with George Snuffleupagus tomorrow on ABC at 930am CST. Dick Durbin and Mitch McConnell will discuss him.
Those in the know, who know what Burris plans to say and do tomorrow, have told us we better watch. In fact, here in Chicago, we’re going to a breakfast watching party for this one.
It’s going to be a preview of Burris’ strategy for Monday, when Harry Reid claims he will have Burris assailed with armed guards if he tries to enter the Senate.
We don’t wake up this early on Sunday for nothing. And we sure don’t pay any attention to that irrelevant little turncoat Snuffleupagus unless we absolutely have to.
But, it looks like tomorrow we have to.
UPDATE: Roland Burris is on the 900am CST Chicago morning show BEFORE Snuffleupagus. In Washington, Durbin and Mitch McConnell will talk ABOUT Burris.
If you haven’t heard Burris speak about this issue himself, just know he is solid, forthright, and hard to argue against. The gist of what Burris consistently says is:
* Burris is a legitimate appointment because the Governor is still the Governor and this is in his powers
* The Senate needs diversity and needs a black Senator from Illinois. Burris is the third black sent to the Senate from Illinois (Carol Mosley Braun, Obama, and now Burris)
* Burris does NOT rule out running for the seat again in 2010
* Illinois has many crises that need to be dealt with, and he will work hard in the Senate
* Burris has a track record of hard work and public service. The Governor may be accused of things, but Burris is accused of nothing and has no involvement with the Governor other than being his appointed replacement
* Burris told the reporter interviewing him to refer to him as Senator-Designate Burris
UPDATE #2: Dick Durbin makes a fool of himself practically every day that he wakes up and leaves his house, but today was a banner morning for him. If you heard him on This Week, you see clearly Democrats have no way of stopping Burris’ appointment and Durbin says as much — if you read between his lines:
(1) Durbin agrees the Governor of Illinois is still the Governor and still holds all of his powers under the Illinois constitution
(2) The state constitution gives sole appointment powers for a Senate seat to the Governor to appoint whom he chooses
(3) Durbin alludes to a nebulous “responsibility” of the US Senate to “decide if Mr. Burris was chosen in a proper manner”. Durbin says that Harry Reid and the rest of the US Senate needs to determine if the person who will serve alongside Durbin to represent Illinois was brought there properly.
(4) If you read 1-3 above, Reid and Durbin can blather and dither all they want, but Burris passes any tests they could muster, as he was not involved in any sort of pay to play arrangement and is an appointment made by a Governor who Durbin admits is empowered to make the appointment.
(5) Snuffleupagus brought up the 1996 contested election of Mary Landrieu, and the fact that Republicans provisionally sat her until the official result of the election could be determined. Durbin says they won’t provisionally seat Burris because Landrieu was only sat while votes were counted. Durbin said, once again, that the Senate must look into whether anything is improper with Burris’ appointment. That seems to be the talking points out of Reid’s office today, “that an investigation into whether anything improper was done with this appointment”. But, the fools contradict themselves because in the next breathe they say Burris is not involved in anything improper, so why is there a need for an investigation when they freely admit this? What they are doing is stalling because they think the state senate can move to impeach Blagojevich quickly (which it won’t).
(6) Snuffleupagus directly challenges Durbin with reports that Reid told Blagojevich not to appoint any blacks to Obama’s Senate seat (which the Chicago Sun Times says was caught on tape three days before Blagojevich was arrested). Durbin dodged the question and said only that Reid talked to Blagojevich about the appointment, just like Durbin did, and then Durbin launched into an attack on Blagojevich instead of talking about the gross bigotry or racism of Reid insisting no blacks take Obama’s seat. Durbin just ignored that, and Snuffleupagus let the question pass and moved on to something else.
(7) Snuffleupagus and Durbin talk about other issues for a while, and then Mith McConnell is brought in and he talks with Snuffles about the trillion dollar spending bill Democrats want to ram through passage without anyone reading it first. Then, Snuffles asks McConnell about Burris and McConnell says there needs to be a special election just like Durbin wanted, before he changed his mind and decided he didn’t want a special election (what NO ONE is saying is that Republican Mark Kirk would win the special election hands-down and everyone knows it…that is why Republicans want a special election and Democrats are fighting it).
(8) George Will, in the round table segment of the show, brings up the 1969 Powell case where the SCOTUS ruled on the matter of Powell, under a cloud of financial impropriety, who was indeed seated as a Senator because the House and Senate can only judge ELIGIBILITY qualifications of a member, not make any other sort of judgment on who is seated. Meaning, they can determine if Burris is over 35, is a US citizen, etc., but not stop him from being seated for any other reason. They have to seat him.
(9) Johnathan Karl says every legal expert he talks to says the Senate is on very shaky legal ground and that there is a reason Blagojevich did this (basically, it was a trap they all walked into). Unless there was a deal to sell this seat to Burris, there is nothing the Senate can do.
(10) Cokie Roberts says this is very poor strategy on the Democrats’ part, because it is starting the new administration on a contentious note. Another commentator said that Burris would not be the worst US Senator by a mile, so this is just a sideshow.
Great effort is being made to defeat Sarah Palin in 2010
This is something we say to you as lifelong Hillary Clinton supporters: though we worked night and day for Hillary’s campaign (and some of us lost our jobs because of all the time we took off to canvass for her in other states), we’re still haunted by the feeling that we didn’t work EARLY enough for Clinton. We wanted to actively campaign for her in Iowa back in March of 2007, but her campaign wasn’t set up for that, and higher-ups believed no one was needed on the ground until December of 2007. Our gut was to organize anyway and let the suits catch up later, but we trusted those we thought knew better.
And look where we are today.
Well, that was a hard lesson for all of us here to learn, and it’s one we are not going to ever forget.
We believe in Sarah Palin and want to see her re-elected as Governor of Alaska in 2010. Right now, we see the beginnings of a malicious campaign against her — propelled largely by the Obots, who now have nothing better to do with themselves. So, these trolls and gremlins are focusing all of their hate on Palin. They want her to lose the Governorship in 2010 so she’ll be unable to compete in 2012.
We don’t know what we can do to help Palin from Chicago, but sign us up now. If anyone from Team Sarah reads this, take it from a bunch of Hillary guys who know whereof we speak: you need to start helping Palin TODAY to guarantee she’ll have opportunities tomorrow. Do NOT make Team Hillary’s mistakes of waiting too long to mobilize.
Because here in Boystown, the left is busy making Palin into a cartoon boogeyman, now that Bush is leaving that role. All of that irrational hate has to go somewhere, and mixed with misogynistic and sexist tendencies strong in this group, it’s being channeled at Palin with gusto. We can barely pick up an Advocate or local gay paper here in Chicago because the attacks on Palin are so numerous and childish (including a sick new put-down here in Boystown when someone does or says something stupd: “What, are you Sarah Palin’s son Trig?”. These pampered, spoiled, yuppy fools actually mock a Down Syndrome baby and think they are cute. It’s just sick, sick sick…and merely the tip of the icerberg we fear).
We don’t know how to help Sarah…but we know someone needs to figure that out. Many in our ranks will help you, if we can form the beginnings of a plan.
Who’s with us?
Rod Blagojevich calls his hairbrush "the football"
We’ve been wrapping fish in the NY Times lately, as that’s what it’s most good for, which is why we missed this interesting piece when it was originally published.
It matches with everything we have ever heard about what it’s like to deal with Blagojevich on a regular basis.
Must reading for those of you out there who want to know what it feels like to live in Illinois and wonder what’s going on behind the scenes here.
Among other tidbits, you’ll learn that Blagojevich calls his black Paul Mitchell hairbrush “the football” and throws tantrums when he can’t find it.
Democrats are playing Dungeons & Dragons with Senate seats
When we were in high school, the lunchroom carved up into the assorted fiefdoms you’d expect from watching anything in the John Hughes oeuvre. There was the Model UN/Quiz Team table, the Pep Squad, the Hockey jocks, the Art Club, various forgettable bunches, the Drama kids, and the Dungeons and Dragons gang.
That last bunch spent every lunch period arguing incessently about trolls, goblins, and the unstoppable Elf armies of the Forbidden Forest.
They had little trading cards they would whip out with strength and power points on them, and they’d toss them onto the table in flurries, gesticulating wildly as one or another of them calculated which troll or goblin won the imaginary battle in front of them. Apparently, those little cards were micro-printed with rules the bredth and scope of the Similarion. In original Elfish, natch.
And no one ever really “won” anything, because it was just a game, and they never could agree on whether trolls or goblins were better, or what the outcome of their little battles was ever supposed to be, or what a coherent strategy even was for the unstoppable Elf armies.
Sophomore year, the whole lot of them missed school for the last three months of second semester when they caught some form of ameobic dysentary from drinking contaminated creek water in the Metroparks, on a weekend dressed in their costumes, when one of their magic cards told them to refresh their Elfish powers by tasting the cool waters of the River of Dreams, or some other such nonsense.
So all that haggling, squabbling, obsessing, scheming, and costume-wearing ultimately just led to nothing more than grief and copious amounts of diarrhea.
Diarrhea for months.
And that’s, strangely (or maybe not so strangely, considering the players involved), what we keep thinking about as we watch Democrats in the Senate and Illinois haggling, squabbling, obsessing, scheming, and pretense-wearing in all matters pertaining to Obama’s vacated Senate seat.
Harry Reid sure fits the bill of a particularly unctious troll, that’s for sure.
And his threat to create a scene of indellible memory by blocking Roland Burris from the Senate with armed guards on Monday is the craziest damn thing we’ve heard since those fools back in Ohio drank the magic creek water.
Like or not Democrats, Rod Blagojevich is the Governor of Illinois. You had your chance to take away his power to appoint a Senate replacement by changing the state constitution to provide for a special election for the seat. Blagojevich even said he would sign that legislation. But, you (accurately) surmised Republican Mark Kirk would win the special election, and so Democrats sank that idea, to maintain that much more of an edge in the Senate. It truly does appear that Reid and Senate Democrats would not be resisting Burris’ appointment if he was white, and thus perceived as more able to win election in his own right to the seat in 2010.
So there is much troll logic and goblin scheming behind the machinations in play from Washington to Springfield, by way of Chicago, these days.
None of which has absolutely anything to do with what’s best for the people of Illinois.
It’s all about how best to hold the Senate seat in Democrats’ hands, which in Reid’s calculations means keeping it out of black hands.
We wonder how much contact Lt. Governor Pat Quinn has had with Harry Reid, and how much investment’s being made in Tammy Duckworth, as she seems to be the Senator Democrats in Washington want for Illinois (just as Caroline Kennedy is whom they want for New York, and a placeholder is whom they want in Delaware until Beau Biden returns from Iraq to claim his father’s seat in the House of Lords United States Senate).
Something tells us the lot of these clowns sat at a Dungeons & Dragons table of their own in high school…and might still be up to their old tricks in the Senate cafeteria now.
Is Harry Reid a racist, or just a bigot?
Things are getting more and more interesting in the drama to replace Obama in the Senate.
Apparently, Harry Reid’s on tape in conversations with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich shortly before his arrest insisting no black replace Obama in the Senate. Reid wanted either Tammy Duckworth or Lisa Madigan, since Reid believed (correctly) that Jesse Jackson Jr., Emil Jones, Danny Davis, or other black politicians won’t be able to win election in their own right in 2010.
The other day when Congressman Bobby Rush whipped out the race card to pressure acceptance of Roland Burris as Obama’s Senate replacement, it seemed like Rush was just reading from the successful Obama playbook, and race-baiting without cause for political gain.
Now, it looks like Rush was really onto something, and Reid is doing everything he can to keep a black Senator off the table…because Reid wants to hold that seat in 2010 and does not believe a black Senator will hold it. Based purely on the color of that Senator’s skin.
Which makes Reid, in a sense, racist…and the parallel between him and George Wallace, as used by Rush, just got more credible. Threatening to bar Burris from the Senate with armed guards is indeed very similar to Wallace’s use of armed guards to bar black students from schools. Just because Burris is black, and does not fit into Reid’s 2010 plans.
Tammy Duckworth’s not guaranteed a Senate seat in 2010 if she ran after an appointment. The Democrats in Illinois tried to force Duckworth into Congress in 2006, and that failed. She’s a very nice woman who served her country bravely in Iraq, but she’s never going to set the world on fire. She’s a mediocre speaker at best, has trouble revving up crowds, does not command a large political following, and would be something of a joke in Illinois if people weren’t so afraid of being accused of making fun of her disabilities. When most people here hear her name, they say, “Oh, that poor woman,” and feel bad about her loss of limbs, but don’t necessarily translate that sympathy into a burning zeal to vote for her.
Lisa Madigan, from where we sit, is already running for Governor, a role the Madigan family prefers she fill — as, with Mike Madigan the current Speaker of the Illinois House, that’s much better for the Madigans, where they’d essentially control two branches of government in the state. So Reid’s efforts to bully her into the Senate are silly.
And Democrats’ claims to be the champions of black voters are just plain ridiculous. Blacks aren’t even being CONSIDERED for Senate replacements in Delaware, New York, or Colorado. Why not? Surely there must be a black candidate SOMEWHERE in all of those states.
But, evidently, Harry Reid doesn’t want any blacks to serve in the Senate, for whatever reason, so what does that say about Democrats?
Not that anyone seems to care, in the lingering haze of hopium, but it’s there for you to see it.
Today in History: January 3rd
1431 – Joan of Arc handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon
1496 – Leonadro da Vinci unsuccessfully tests flying machine
1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther (that will teach him)
1749 – First land grants issued that lead to establishment of Vermont
1777 – George Washington defeats Cornwallis at Battle of Princeton
1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is first president of African Republic of Liberia
1868 – Meiji Restoration in Japan: Tokugawa shogunate abolished
1870 – Construction of Brooklyn Bridge begins
1899 – First known use of the word automobile, in a New York Times editorial
1924 – English explorer Howard Carter discovers sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings
1925 – Benito Mussolini assumes dictatorial powers in Italy
1933 – Minnie D. Craig becomes Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female speaker in the US
1938 – March of Dimes established by President Roosevelt
1945 – Admiral Nimitz given command of all US Naval Forces in preparation for assault on Iwo Jim and Okinawa
1947 – Proceedings of Congress televised for the first time
1953 – Frances and Oliver Bolton become first mother and son to serve in Congress simultaneously
1959 – Alaska admitted as 49th state (and thanks to Sarah Palin, our new favorite state)
1961 – US severs diplomatic ties with Cuba
1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro (that will teach him)
1977 – Apple Computer incorporated
1988 – Margaret Thatcher becomes longest serving British Prime Minister in 20th Century
1990 – Manuel Noriega surrenders to US forces
1993 – George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign second START treaty
1999 – Mars polar lander launched
Today in History: January 2nd
366 – Alamanni cross Rhine to invade Rome
533 – Mercurius becomes first pope to take a new name (Pope John II)
1492 – Last Muslim stronghold in Spain (Granada) surrenders
1757 – United Kingdom captures Calcutta, India
1777 – George Washington defeats British attack at Battle of Assunpink
1788 – Georgia is fourth state to ratify US Constitution
1791 – Big Bottom (massacre in Ohio Country marking beginning of Northwest Indan War). In no way a joke about Rahm Emanuel’s proclivities.
1860 – Discovery of the mystery planet Vulcan is announced at meeting of the Academy of Science n Paris. NOTE: Vulcan is believed by some to be a small planet in orbit between the sun and Mercury. Detected by the same astronomer who calculated the existence of Neptune, Vulcan was supposedly disproved by Einstein’s relativity equation. Because it would be so close to the sun, telescopes can’t see clearly whether it is there or not (light is too bright)
1871 – Amadeus I becomes King of Spain
1872 – Brigham Young arrested for having 25 wives
1882 – John D. Rockefeller creates Standard Oil Trust
1900 – John Hay announces Open Doory Policy with China
1905 – American anarcho-syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World forms (Yes, they can)
1920 – Palmer Raids begin in the United States
1923 – Interior Secretary Albert Fall takes one over Teapot Dome
1929 – Canada and the US agree to preserve Niagra Falls (and, 80 years later, it is thus in no way tacky or commercialized)
1935 – Bruno Hauptmann goes on trial for murder of the Lindbergh Baby
1942 – Duquesne Spy Ring convictions of 35
1955 – Panamanian president Jose Antonio Remon assassinated
1959 – Luna I is the first spacecraft to reach vacinity of the moon and orbit the sun (USSR)
1974 – Richard Nixon lowers maximum US speed limits to 55 mph to save gas
1999 – Great snowstorm smashes into Miwaukee and Chicago, dumping 19 inches
2001 – Sila Caderon is first female governor of Puerto Rico
