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Posted on 12.17.08 by dancurry @ 1:37 pm
The Illinois Republican Party has done a great job applying public pressure on Illinois Democrats in the wake of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. They have started a website, friendofblago.com, and are running the TV ad below. Here’s what liberal Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said about the party.
In order to sustain the effort, the party needs grassroots help from across America. Over at RedState, diarist Mark W. Johnson at IL GOP Network has started a drive titled NoMoreHacks urging a special election now in Illinois for Barack Obama’s senate seat. He is pointing people and donors to the state party so it can continue its TV and web barrage. Let’s jump on board and stop Illinois’ corrupt Democrats in their tracks. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.16.08 by dancurry @ 8:05 am
Illinois Democrats are laughingly trying to say they didn’t know Governor Rod Blagojevich was under intense federal scrutiny in 2006 when they lined up behind him during his re-election bid. At the time, the Chicago Tribune called the corruption probe “a five-alarm fire.” Speaker of the House Mike Madigan said this yesterday: “I can’t say I knew he was under intense scrutiny at the time.” Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn has ducked the question as best he could and suggested there was not a problem in 2006. Madigan was Blago’s campaign co-chairman and Quinn ran on his ticket and called him honest and someone who always does the right thing. Both are not telling the truth. Here are what newspaper editorials said during that campaign:
The campaign ads also tell the story. Illinois Democrats can’t escape their past. They had a choice in 2006 to dump Blagojevich and they chose corruption. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.13.08 by dancurry @ 6:17 pm
Barack Obama’s transition: A (not-so-well-oiled) machine. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.13.08 by dancurry @ 12:50 pm
A nuance being lost in the national coverage of the Rod Blagojevich arrest is the state of knowledge in Illinois. Prior to Tuesday’s hand-cuffing of the Illinois governor, it was known with virtual certainty that he was soon to be indicted. Considering this, it is gob-smacking stupid that Obama’s transition team was having any contact with the Blago administration beyond something in writing. This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. I was stunned when I first heard about the contacts. If Obama had a preference for his replacement, he simply could have written a letter to Blagojevich and released it to the public. Period. Any contacts beyond that amount to a negotiation. And Obama should have known better to negotiate with a man about to be indicted. It also should have dawned on Obama’s camp that he was about to take control of the Justice Department and that a key witness in the Blagojevich Operation Board Games investigation (Tony Rezko) was also a close friend of the President-Elect’s. A further entanglement is an Operation Board Games subpoena on the joint house-land sale Obama and Rezko undertook. If Obama can’t sniff trouble in the above circumstances, we are in big trouble when he sizes up foreign adversaries. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.10.08 by dancurry @ 11:04 pm
These campaign commercials from 2002 and 2006 attacking Il. Gov. Rod Blagojevich for corruption pinpoint what was known in Illinois at crucial junctures. The 2006 ads are first and show the mature nature of the federal investigations against Blagojevich. Despite this, many Illinois Democrats endorsed him, including President-Elect Barack Obama. They will have to answer for putting their party before the citizens of Illinois. All the ads were produced by one of the top Republican ad makers in the country, Rick Reed. The 2006 ads were for Republican Judy Baar Topinka, and the last two ads, from 2002, were made for Republican Jim Ryan. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.10.08 by dancurry @ 10:29 am
As readers of this blog know, I have written often over the past several years about Rod Blagojevich. I was convinced he would be indicted someday and said so. From my days as a spokesman for former Il. Attorney General Jim Ryan—who Blago defeated in the Il. governor’s race in 2002—it was apparent that Rod was an oddly constituted politician who would say absolutely anything, at any time, to advance his political career. It was also apparent he had no moral compass or interest in governing. Many other reasons to doubt Blagojevich’s fitness as a public servant were outlined in these posts, and, rather unceremoniously on this blog.
Some observations going forward: 1. Most of the federal case against Blagojevich has yet to be revealed. What emerged yesterday were schemes hatched in the last several months. The core of the case against the governor, including other shakedown allegations and income tax avoidance, has yet to be made public. 2. Many Il. Democrats have much to worry about, legally. Subjects and targets of the investigation will be cashing in what’s left of their leverage by talking to the feds. To get consideration, they will need to produce new allegations of value. Expect other names to become ensnared in U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s net. 3. Barack Obama, despite the MSM coverage, is not out of the woods. It is already known that Fitzgerald subpoenaed records related to the joint Tony Rezko-Obama house/lot sale. We also know that Rezko is not done talking. There are a number of other common donors and consultants between Blagojevich and Obama. The splatter could be considerable when full recordings and other court filings are made public. 4. Il. Democrats have considerable political exposure enabling Blagojevich’s re-election in 2006. Obama and much of the Democratic establishment in Illinois endorsed his re-election two years ago knowing about the federal investigations, which had already reached high into the governor’s office. To those same Dems who criticized Republicans for supporting George Ryan in 1998 while he was under federal investigation I have a news flash: The Blago investigation was much more apparent and advanced in 2006. Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn vouched for Blagojevich’s honesty and got re-elected because of the governor’s dirty fundraising. 5. Blagojevich is unlikely to step down soon. He probably is nearly broke and stepping down would cut off his only source of income, his salary. A sane person would plead quickly and keep his wife from exposure. That’s the deal allegedly on the table from the feds. Rod, however, is far from sane so predictions are difficult. 6. Happy birthday, governor! Today, he is 52. Some people must have been confused on the date because I heard from many of them as they celebrated yesterday. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.09.08 by dancurry @ 10:50 am
I’ll have much more on this later. In the meantime, peruse my past posts on Blagojevich, which number in the hundreds. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 12.01.08 by dancurry @ 7:47 am
An Abraham Lincoln author and Barack Obama admirer says as a writer, Obama is no Lincoln.
Somebody tell MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who has already swooned over many of Obama’s speeches with over-the-top praise. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 11.30.08 by dancurry @ 9:58 pm
When will Mayor Daley, dozens of other Illinois politicians and the Chicago media establishment pay a price for the O’Hare International Airport expansion plan, a public policy blunder of epic proportions. Just as former U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald and a few others said years ago, the plan eventually would collapse because it was economically and operationally unfeasible. The prophecy was brought into focus recently when the Chicago Tribune found letters that showed airlines have no intention of funding the second and largest phase of the $20 billion project because it makes no economic sense. In short, there never was adequate space to make a workable expansion work at O’Hare. But Mayor Daley and corporate chieftans in Chicago had no intention of driving to the south suburbs for a new airport where it belonged. So they spent hundreds of millions of dollars for public relations, planning, and land acquisition ramrodding the ill-conceived O’Hare plan forward. The Tribune was particularly helpful to the “cause” by, in Fitzgerald’s words, “going on a jihad” against all those who dared oppose the expansion. Besides the enormous expenditures, which total at least $2 billion to date, there was a tragic human cost. This was chronicled by Dennis Byrne, a longtime critic of the expansion, who makes the point that victims were the working families that Democrats unfailingly claim they represent.
The expansion plan is not dead yet. Mayor Daley and other politicians won’t backtrack. They have too much invested in a plan that has paid them hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from myriad O’Hare consultants and contractors. There’s always a chance, with a President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, that taxpayers will bail out this monstrous misjudgment. If there was a functioning news media in Chicago, it would spend months untangling the runaway public policy steamroller that was artificially created to prop up this mega-boondoggle. It should be yet another reminder that when the establishment and the media lock arms in favor of a narrative or a plan, citizens should be very wary. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 11.26.08 by dancurry @ 12:20 pm
Patrick Ruffini is doing a great job framing the Right’s challenges for the future. He’s the Republican’s preeminent new media tactician. He nailed it in a recent column that pointed out the difference between conservative and liberal online sites and blogs.
The Left’s work over the past six years showed itself in 2008. It tipped the balance of power. In 2004, the MSM tried to blockade the Swift Boat issue and the Right responded with a 527 counterpunch that perplexed the Left and resonated with the electorate. This time, the MSM media doubled down on its blockade of negative narratives about Barack Obama and the Left was ready to do battle with emerging 527s and other independent expenditure groups. The Obama group attacked the groups in court and the Left online presence, buttressed by millions in donations by wealthy liberals, helped knock down any attacks on Obama. Thus, the Right was left only with talk radio, conservative blogs and Fox News. That wasn’t enough to get traction with the electorate. The problem, as Ruffini pointed out, was content. The legitimate criticisms on Obama were stuffed and the Right had no mechanism to further explore them. There was a desperate need for new content. For example, we all know that Obama and Bill Ayers were lying about the true nature of their relationship but nobody found new facts to rebut the lies. Others narratives were left on the table, such as the Tony Rezko-Obama house sale and Obama’s participation in a slum scheme that enriched his top donors and screwed his low-income constituents. New information matters in a campaign. Hillary Clinton would be president today if her researchers had found the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos a couple of months before ABC News found them. What the Right needs is a new online news entity. It should be sufficiently funded to hire at least half a dozen seasoned investigators/journalists to get to the bottom of news narratives the MSM refuses to explore. We need to stop complaining about MSM bias and start making it irrelevant. Of course we need much more in terms of good candidates, good ideas and a reworked online infrastructure. But we can’t ignore that the Left created a massive shield that allowed a largely unexplored and untested poser to get elected president. We know the same shield will be employed in future elections. Let’s not get blocked again. Technorati Tags: |
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