Year: 2008

More Voters Heading Left

Posted on by TL

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

Posted on by TL

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

Posted on by TL

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

Posted on by TL

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

Posted on by TL

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.

Missing Myron Cope

Posted on by TL

My Dad called this morning to break the news, and it felt like somebody in the family had died. Amazed at my own reaction, I realized how much this incredible talent meant to me and my family. I never even met the man, but he was as much a part of my childhood as anybody else.

Yoi.

Cope was always there. No matter what, Myron would help us make sense of it all, every game, win or lose. Myron gave us the Terrible Towel so we could celebrate, and he let us know when it was alright to bring the Towel to the stadium.

And we followed him religiously. The Steelers were our religion. Even our priests knew that in Pittsburgh, there was the Christmas Season, Lent and Easter Season, and Steeler Season. Period. Some of them even had black and gold stoles.

Rule #1: The Terrible Towel only came to the stadium for the playoffs. That was when we were all but certain we would get there every year. And when the Steelers weren’t so great, Myron was there to tell us why, “Hmmm, haa!”

Rule #2: Listen to Myron.

I waved that Towel to the sky this evening, and I wept inside. And laughed. All day, for some reason, I had Myron’s horrific version of “Deck the Halls” running through my mind.

Double Yoi!

The Terrible Towel

Thanks, Myron.

“Shots Fired!”

Posted on by TL

I cannot comprehend what it must be like for law enforcement to hear those words. Especially today, in the aftermath of the NIU slayings, the Lane Bryant/Tinley Park slayings, the Kirkwood City Council slayings, etc. etc.

There has been too much blood shed. And I think it has something to do with us.

Ordinarily, I am not one for trashing the 2nd Amendment. I do not think it would be prudent to do so. I am convinced that the problem is not the prevelance of guns, the easy availability of guns, or anything like that. The problem is that, for some goddamn reason, we are too willing to use guns on each other. We are entirely too ready to shoot each other. And this should worry us all.

Yes, I get what Michael Moore was saying in Bowling for Columbine. You may dislike Michael Moore, but don’t dislike him until you’ve actually watched this film. Citizens in other industrialized countries have guns. People around the world listen to music with very disturbing lyrics, enjoy very violent video games, live in poverty, and sex, yes, they have sex.

But they’re not shooting or killing each other at nearly the rate we are.

So what the hell is wrong with us?

Why can we not handle our guns? Why do we have to shoot each other? Why do we have to kill at such an alarming rate per capita compared to people in other industrialized countries?  Why is the United States of America the least safe place to be on Earth outside of a war zone?

Ordinarily, I’m not for gun control. Guns are not the problem, I’m convinced. People in the United States using guns at the rate we do is the problem. And that’s the problem we have to confront.

I don’t have the answer.

I just know that I knew one of the Tinley Park Five, and her loss hurts me deeply.

We have a problem, and we must face that problem honestly.

Why do we shoot so many people in this country?

Barack Prevails

Posted on by TL

This will most likely be my last post before the weekend.

Wow.  Barack cleaned house over the weekend, and very well may continue to do so this week.  I’ll resist the awful temptation to make predictions.  But I’m incredibly excited.

I’m looking forward to “President Obama.”

I know Republicans who voted as Democrats in Illinois.  Why?  They’re afraid of Barack.  One person in particular told me he hopes Hillary Clinton wins because he believes Republicans can beat her.  Pulled a Democratic ballot for the first time in his life.

And a life-long Republican colleague of mine said he’s seriously considering voting for Barack Obama in the General Election in November, should Barack prevail and win the ticket.  This gentleman is over 80 years-old and has voted for Republicans religiously his entire life.  Quite frankly, I was amazed to hear him say this.

I do not look forward to Bill Clinton back in the White House.  I think his time has passed, incredible as it was.  His place in history is firm.  He was successful.

The time has come for change — positive change, a new direction for this country.

The time has come for Barack Obama.

Yes, we can.

Missing Heath

Posted on by TL

Heath Ledger

I don’t know why his death makes me so sad.

28 years old and gone.

From the New York Times:

Heath Ledger, the Australian-born actor whose breakthrough role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 movie “Brokeback Mountain” earned him a nomination for an Academy Award and comparisons to the likes of Marlon Brando, was found dead Tuesday in an apartment in Manhattan with sleeping pills near his body, the police said.

Already there were suggestions on ABC news that this was a suicide or drug related. They found sleeping pills.

At least the NYTimes showed some restraint, and did not draw these conclusions:

“There was no indication of a disturbance,” he said, adding that there were no signs that Mr. Ledger had been drinking. Nor were any illegal drugs found in the loft, which takes up the entire fourth floor. Neighbors said Mr. Ledger had occupied it for several months.

Police officials said that a bottle of prescription sleeping pills was found on a nearby night table, but that they did not know whether the pills had anything to do with Mr. Ledger’s death. Officers who checked the apartment found other prescription medications in the bathroom. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office said an autopsy would be conducted on Wednesday.

And then this:

Mr. Browne said no obvious indication of suicide, like a note, was found in the bedroom.

I’m just very, very sad to hear this news. I don’t know what happened to him. No speculation at all. I’m just missing Heath right now.

Iran, Oil, and the Neverending Story

Posted on by TL

I get it.  We’re stuck with oil and there’s no way out.  At least that’s what we’re supposed to think if we believe Robert Bryce at the Washington Post.   Bryce sets out to dismiss 5 arguments many make regarding our dependence on foreign oil:

  1. Energy independence will reduce or eliminate terrorism.
  2. A big push for alternative fuels will break our oil addiction.
  3. Energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries.
  4. Energy independence will mean reform in the Muslim world.
  5. Energy independence will mean a more secure U.S. energy supply.

The thread that ties all of these, according to Bryce, is that “we’re woven in with the rest of the world — and going to stay that way.”  While arguing that there has been terrorism before there was oil, indeed, “terrorism is an ancient tactic that predates the oil era,” he concludes there is no other alternative but to keep using oil.

But his arguments fall short.  In dismissing alternative fuels, for example, he relies on the United States remaining with the internal combustion engine, which may or may not happen.

I’m always loathe to believe anyone who claims to know the future.  The fact is that all of these arguments fall short of the wonderful, profound truth that we need to pursue alternative energy solutions for more important than Bryce’s confining arguments.  Alternative energy, energy independence, simply means imagining for just a few moments that we are actually dreaming once again.

And we may arrive at completely different and innovative solutions to our current energy problems.  And, for my friends on the Right, these may actually prove lucrative as well.