Monthly archives: March, 2008

More Voters Heading Left

March 6, 2008
Democratic NewsElections
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I was a bit worried when I started reading “phillyPete” at the Daily Kos:

I’m doing something today that many of you may think is no big deal, but to me it’s a small form of surrender that is partly overdue.

I’ve just printed out the application to switch parties in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania requires voters to register with a party prior to voting.  In Illinois, we do not declare a party when we vote.  This allows us a certain flexibility for the primaries.  We ask for the ballot of our choice when we show up to vote.  This also leads to some typically underhanded voting techniques.  I know at least one registered, card-carrying Republican who took a Democratic ballot in Illinois on February 5 so he could vote for Hillary Clinton.   The Republicans are so hungry for Hillary, they’re trying to stack the deck so she is their opponent in the November’s general election.

This Hunger for Hillary will no doubt lead to overconfidence should the Senator from New York win the Democratic Presidential nomination.

But back to “phillyPete”.  I was worried.  He  says he originally registered as an Independent when he was younger.

As soon as I became 18, I registered to vote, and began paying attention to the Debates and reading the papers. I wanted to be a good, informed, responsible voter. This was not easy because I was not a book-smart kid. But I watched as Dukakis and Reagan sparred and tried to make up my mind. I easily started leaning Democratic, but felt that the Conservatives still had some good ideas.

But, lucky for us, “phillyPete” is changing parties, and registering as a Democrat.

Welcome aboard, Pete.

Todd Stroger Bumbles Again

March 6, 2008
ChicagolandDemocratic News
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Cook County President Todd Stroger could be doing better.

The Chicago Tribune reported today Stroger disputed the findings of a report he had not read, and this on political patronage in County government, a sore spot with Republicans, and, frankly, most people in the Chicagoland area.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger on Thursday disputed the findings of a report suggesting patronage was alive and well in county government, then admitted he had not read the 54-page document. Instead, he deferred to newspaper accounts of the report. Unbelievable.

“I haven’t read her report yet,” Stroger said, referring to the review filed in court last week by retired Cook County Circuit Judge Julia Nowicki, a federally appointed hiring monitor.

Stroger said he knew about the report’s details from newspaper accounts. “I can read the newspaper,” said Stroger, a freshman board president and former Chicago alderman. “I’ve got a good education.”

As a Democrat, I supported Stroger’s candidacy for Board President. As someone who can also read the newspapers, watch news accounts on television and is probably more in touch with tax payers than President Stroger, I’m ashamed. Certainly there will be those in the media who will hound Stroger and make unfair or unfounded accusations, but Stroger needs to be smart, read the report and respond intelligently.

Otherwise, he just sounds like George W. Bush – uninformed and out of touch.

Women Suffer in Iraq

March 6, 2008
InternationalIraq
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There aren’t many stories in the United States media about how highly women are generally regarded in Islam.  Many choose to focus on how repressed women are, often without cause.  Muslims I have come to know in the Chicagoland area are proud to share who they are, and how poorly the American media has told their story.

Iraq is a different story.  The American occupation has not helped, according to journalist Dahr Jamail.  While no one denies that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, women actually fared better in Iraq prior to the American invasion:

Former dictator Saddam Hussein maintained a relatively secular society, where it was common for women to take up jobs as professors, doctors and government officials. In today’s Iraq, women are being killed by militia groups for not conforming to strict Islamist ways.

Basra police chief Gen. Jalil Hannoon told reporters and Arab TV channels in December that at least 40 women had been killed during the previous five months in that city alone.

Read the rest of Jamail’s account here.

It’s Officially McCain

March 4, 2008
Anti-ScienceInternationalRantRepublicansWhite House
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CNN has projected that John McCain now has enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for president. Mike Huckabee is not on CNN conceding to John McCain.

Huckabee has class. He has some evolutionary problems, but he’s a nice guy. Our astronomer friend may disagree (Huckabee = very very very bad guy), but I think he’s a nice guy. His appearance on Saturday Night Live was very funny.

But we’re officially up against McCain.

I have major concerns about McCain, and you should too. Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, longtime Speaker of the House, once said, “All politics is local,” and Illinois is feeling terribly the effects of the Two Trillion Dollar War. Bob Herbert really drives that home today in the New York Times:

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

McCain said we could be there 100 years, and he wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. That’s a plan for horrible disaster.

McCain is a nice guy. Huckabee is a nice guy. Their policies would tear us apart.

Remember this number?

$9,370,442,189,107.39

That’s our National Debt. If you go to that page now, the number will be higher. That’s George Bush’s legacy. And here’s the price tag on Iraq right now:

The War in Iraq Costs

$499,777,068,876

Illinois has paid the following

The War in Iraq Costs

$27,062,363,778

That money is gone, and we’re not finished yet. McCain has a plan, after all. A Hundred-Year-Plan. We must learn patience, because, one day, 100 years or so down the road, we will finally know peace in Iraq.  Perhaps, too, the entire world will finally know peace.

America will be long gone, of course, probably bought out by Japan and China who currently own much of our national debt.

But there will be peace at last in Iraq.

 

Out With It, Senator

March 4, 2008
Democratic NewsElections
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As Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont head to the polls today in Democratic primaries, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet reports that Senator Barack Obama was “thrown seriously off message being asked about influence peddler Tony Rezko and why his campaign at first denied his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee met the Canadian consul in Chicago and talked about NAFTA, some reporters — me included — wanted him to take more questions.”

Sweet and other top Chicago journalists took Obama to task, and Barack did not handle this one well.

“You may still have questions, which I am happy to answer,” Obama said to Marin, adding it is not fair to “suggest somehow” he has been trying to hide something.

Soon after he said, “If there is a specific question that you have, Carol, I’ll be happy to respond to it.”

Obama added as the press conference progressed, “If there are specific requests in terms of information that you feel that you don’t yet have, we will be happy to talk about that.”

And then there was the fourth happy. “If there is a specific question that you have, I am happy to respond to it.”

For all the happy talk, nothing was forthcoming on Monday.

So Sweet concludes her column.

While I personally support Barack Obama for President, the journalist in me is wanting more from him on this matter. Too much is at stake, and if the Senator from Illinois does get the nod today, the questioning will only intensify. As many times as I have heard Obama speak, and in the personal conversations I’ve had with him, I’ve been impressed. But he has to do more on this matter.

Perhaps Sweet and her colleagues were over the top with their questions. But the others she mentions are not sensationalist. Carol Marin, for one, is at the top of her game as a journalist.

It was just Obama’s luck that by coincidence on this particular day he had a contingent of Chicago journalists to deal with who are not, well, shy because we have covered Obama for years. I was there, as well as Sun-Times political columnist Carol Marin and CBS2 political reporter Mike Flannery.

I was impressed during Obama’s run for the senate that he ran a clean campaign. But he will be confronted by many who do not play clean at all. He has to be ready for the worst dirt the right, center or left throw. And right now he’s raising more questions on this matter than he’s answering.

It’s hard to focus on a dream while denying the nightmares.