
| A Few Good Blogs |
| Think-Tanks, Mags, etc. |

| Saturday, May 10th, 2008 |
Our jobs bill means creating more than 85,000 jobs through mass transit construction, more than 7,000 jobs through school construction, and more than 140,000 jobs through road construction...We can build roads all around our state: roads like Route 51 in Decatur, widen I-55 outside of Chicago, widen Route 13 from Marion to Carterville, improve Route 2 in Rockford, Route 5 in Moline, build the Technology Boulevard in Peoria, start work on the Mississippi River bridge, and realize the dream of making Route 336 a gateway from Chicago all the way to Kansas City....And when I say jobs, these are good jobs. Laborers laying asphalt for the expansion of Route 2. Ironworkers fabricating the support beams for the new Mississippi River Bridge. And do you know what these jobs pay? They can pay anywhere from $40,000 all the way to $120,000 a year.That's what taxpayers want to hear, how well-paid all the new hires will be.
"It's a decision I could make by myself as a governor and I've made a decision to move some IDOT operations out of Springfield, where it's been for more than 100 years, to bring that IDOT facility and the jobs that go along with it to Southern Illinois as a way to do a couple of things," Blagojevich said. "First and foremost, it will balance the representation of the IDOT throughout Southern Illinois and give Southern Illinois a presence. The better part of it is the opportunity to create 150 jobs in Southern Illinois that otherwise didn't exist."There will not be 150 "new jobs", there will be 150 jobs moved from one place to the next as, by Blagojevich's own admission, an effort to "provide opportunities" under an administration that apparently can find no other means to do so.
"I respect their position, but as governor, my job is to provide opportunities across the state. Southern Illinois is a part of our state that for way too long has been (treated) sort of like a forgotten stepchild by state government," he said.
"You're always going to have critics and criticism and your motivations questioned. At the end of the day I know where my heart is and I know this is the right thing to do and I'll let all the critics be critics," Blagojevich said. "All I know is there will be 150 new jobs and I'm really excited about it."
Speculation that the relocation was politically motivated, perhaps in part as a sort of "payback" to Forby for not casting a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow for recall of public officials, is untrue, Blagojevich said.Therefore, it is likely true.
In a bizarre attempt to defend his conduct he said Hitler's Germany had instilled "a high regard for decency and uprightness" in him.For example, Fritzl raped a nurse at knifepoint in the 1960's.
He claimed he had "rescued" Elisabeth, who was then 18, to keep her from "going out to seedy bars" and "drinking and smoking".That would be because we hanged most of the people who were teaching that school. We know exactly what to do with people who belong to that school of thinking.
Fritzl also admitted incestuous feelings for his mother - who he described as "the greatest woman in the world".
"I belong to an old school of thinking that just does not exist today."
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 |

On May 15th, the Oak Brook-based restaurant chain will give customers samples of its "Southern style" chicken biscuits and sandwiches.If they don't change the photos, I won't be surprised if staff offer the free sandwiches, and customers, having already seen the picture on the menu, enthusiastically decline. I also won't be surprised if it turns out the "giveaway" was actually a scheme to liquidate unsold product before they pull it from the menu, because it is seemingly unpopular with the customers who have tried it:
Customers can get the free lunch and breakfast items when they buy any medium or large drink at the company's 14,000 U.S. restaurants.
The promotion's part of McDonald's efforts to convince customers to try their expanded chicken menu.
I ate a protein bar instead.Ouch. From the sound of this, I'm not sure they want more customers tasting it.

| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
| Sunday, May 4th, 2008 |
Don't know if you watched the Derby, but the horse Hillary wanted came in second, collapsed and was killed on the spot.Perhaps her efforts to paint herself as "down to Earth" would be more believable if her latest mailer claiming to support gun rights didn't simultaneously depict a $2,000 German rifle and have the image backwards. How much do you want to bet there was a conversation when this mailer went to press about finding a gun that didn't "look scary", and this is what came out?
"Why don't we hold these Wall Street money-grubbers responsible for their role in this recession?" Clinton asked at an Indiana Democratic Party dinner in Indianapolis tonight.OK. What was that role? Specifically.
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her [gas tax] proposal.She wouldn't want to get mixed up with the people who actually "know stuff".
"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.
"I am unabashed. I am unapologietic. I am going to fight for the middle class, and I am going to take on the oil companies and everybody else who has had it their way too long," she said in Fort Wayne.The only people who really stand to gain from this proposal are the oil companies.
This is one strange debate the candidates are having on energy policy. With gas prices close to $4 a gallon, Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they'll bring relief with a moratorium on the 18.4-cent federal gas tax. Barack Obama opposes that but prefers a 1970s-style windfall profits tax (as does Mrs. Clinton).Read the whole thing.
Mr. Obama is right to oppose the gas-tax gimmick, but his idea is even worse. Neither proposal addresses the problem of energy supply, especially the lack of domestic oil and gas thanks to decades of Congressional restrictions on U.S. production. Mr. Obama supports most of those "no drilling" rules, but that hasn't stopped him from denouncing high gas prices on the campaign trail. He is running TV ads in North Carolina that show him walking through a gas station and declaring that he'll slap a tax on the $40 billion in "excess profits" of Exxon Mobil....You may also be wondering how a higher tax on energy will lower gas prices...
This tiff over gas and oil taxes only highlights the intellectual policy confusion – or perhaps we should say cynicism – of our politicians. They want lower prices but don't want more production to increase supply. They want oil "independence" but they've declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand. They want more oil company investment but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment. And these folks want to be President?
| Friday, May 2nd, 2008 |
| Thursday, May 1st, 2008 |
A U.S. air strike killed an Islamist commander thought to be al Qaeda's man in Somalia, the insurgents and witnesses said on Thursday.Good.
ADAN HASHI AYRO: (Killed May 1, 2008) Head of Islamists' feared military wing, the Shabaab. Reportedly trained in Afghanistan. Linked to murders of four aid workers in Somaliland and more than a dozen Somalis with Western links. United States says has al Qaeda links via mentor Aweys. Reportedly gave al Qaeda members including al-Sudani housing, security and weapons in Mogadishu.
| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 |
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.Barack Obama, April 29th:
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother...
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs... I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this.So what was the heinous crime that finally led Obama to renounce his former pastor? It wasn't Wright's claim that the United States created AIDS to kill black people. That was already out of the bag when Obama played Wright as a "crazy uncle", seemingly displaying limitless fraternal love for a man most politically moderate Americans would've long since banned from their family dinner tables. The ideas Obama is condemning now are all old news.
And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing...more importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign and what we're trying to do for the American people and with the American people...That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me.When Wright declared that the Bible says God damns America for passing the three-strikes law, that the September 11th attacks were somehow a result of Apartheid and of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that wasn't enough to change Obama's relationship with the Reverend. No, what disgusted Obama enough to dump this "member of his family" was not Wright's enthusiastic loathing for the society which Obama aspires to lead, but rather that Wright "angered" and "disrespected" Obama, didn't "show concern" for what he's trying to do.
So apparently another issue that McCain and Obama disagree on is whether Jeremiah Wright is a legitimate issue. McCain says it isn't, Obama says it is. Will McCain now denounce Obama as voraciously as the North Carolina Republicans?Also, read this.
Do you think Jeremiah Wright hates America? Before you answer too quickly, think about it. Now, what he says makes it sound like he hates America, but what about his actions? The way he's going around right now spouting crazy stuff makes it seem like he's dead set on sinking the Obama candidacy, and is there a better way than that to show your love of America?
"I was unaware that Jeremiah Wright was a crazy man," he told them. "This is something I've just become aware of... and not something I ignored previously for political expediency. I totally just found out about it now."Heh.
"But didn't you quote Wright ranting about 'white greed' in your book Dreams from My Father?" another reporter asked.
"I've never read that book," Obama answered.
Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives..."We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."April 29th:
Dude, where's my car?It's not clear who owns it, but I like to think Al had to get it out of the impound lot. New York Post headline idea: "This city closes Al down."
The Rev. Al Sharpton may have felt something like the stoners in the film of that title when he emerged from a meeting in Queens yesterday with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) - and found his 2007 Jaguar missing. Turns out it had been tagged for some $900 in tickets - and towed.
"[S]econdly, if i could meet the masterminds behind this strike, i'd personally spit in each of their faces."Oh, wait, Sharpton was there for that, too.
"You guys really have a lot of balls. All you do is drive around in circles."
"Your strike is hurting financially the people with daily wages, people who usually have no medical insurance, no pension plans, who usually have to take mass transit because they don't make enough money to afford anything else (and who definitely make less then TWU workers). Luckily, some of them are making your sandwiches. So, I am hoping the TWU strikers will find some spit in theirs and some piss in the beer they drink between picketing duty."
"You agreed to not strike when you became MTA employees. You are criminals - if you are that dissatisfied, get another job. Oops, no you can't because where else are you going to get paid as much for doing nothing?"
"You suck."
On Monday night, the Rev. Al Sharpton kept his word and spent the night on a portable mattress with Toussaint supporters. One fellow camper said he had a personal assistant to escort him to the bathroom.Instead of needlessly harassing and alienating citizens who have nothing at all to do with the case and, in all likelyhood, already sympathize with Bell's family, Sharpton could focus on doing something constructive, or, at the very least, on pestering the judge directly. Of course, that wouldn't generate nearly as much personal media attention for Sharpton.
| Monday, April 28th, 2008 |
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.The market knows no borders.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.
| Sunday, April 27th, 2008 |
An ex-international fugitive helped spring Tony Rezko from jail earlier this month, putting up homes that comprise nearly one-third of the $8.5 million in property and cash securing Rezko's bail, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.Of those employees, no fewer than four were tied to "Central Management Services", the Orwellian bureaucracy created to figure out why Illinois has too much bureaucracy. A state audit later determined that the problem, at least in part, was that Central Management Services was contributing to state government's resemblance to a car with a hole in the gas tank, itself hiring contractors who would then bill the State of Illinois for, for example, the cost of parties to celebrate getting a lucrative state contract.
The three homes belonging to former Iraqi Electricity Minister Aiham Alsammarae -- a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who broke out of a Baghdad jail in 2006 -- are part of a long list made public in Rezko's case Friday following a Sun-Times request. Six of the other individuals who pledged property to get Rezko out of the Metropolitan Correctional Center on April 18 are current or former state employees.
Prosecutors, however, strongly opposed Rezko's release from jail, saying he was a flight risk and that he wouldn't think twice about leaving his closest friends penniless.
Ata marks the third person to say under oath that the governor offered to trade favors in return for raising money for his campaign.We know, we know.
