Archive for January 15th, 2008
January 15th, 2008
The Speaker of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, is a member of the “party of the people,” the Democrats. And the people are going upscale, apparently. Pelosi has revamped the House cafe menu, says this story from The Politico.
Da Speaker, according to the story, has replaced processed cheese with brie, and there’s to be no more Jell-O. The workingman’s fare will give way to the sensibilities of the wine ‘n’ cheese Democrats, who will certainly enjoy “raspberry kiwi tarts and mini-lemon blueberry trifles. Meatloaf has moved over for mahi mahi and buns have been shunted aside in favor of baguettes,” Politico sez.
This is the House whose public approval rating is lower than President W’s. And that’s really low.
What? You say 50 million have no health care? We’ll deal with that later. Have another raspberry kiwi tart, Nancy?
January 15th, 2008
I stopped in to the Illinois Department of Transportation’s information meeting at Faith Center this afternoon to hear and see about the planned $15 million rebuild of the interchange at US 20 and South Main.
The bridge, more than 45 years old, is not in the best shape and needs to be replaced. Also, I learned that trucks carrying too-tall loads on South Main have actually hit the bridge!
The plan is to raise the level of US 20 by 2 and 1/2 feet and get rid of the cloverleaf style interchange, replacing it with long offramps that terminate in signaled intersections at South Main.
The new offramps are designed to accomodate a six lane highway, which engineers say will eventually be required on US 20 in coming decades.
The design also features room for a bicycle trail, engineers told me.
The rebuild is in the state of Illinois’ multi-year plan, and is currently in the engineering stage. However, construction depends on the state legislature and governor agreeing on a capital spending plan, and we haven’t had one of those since 1999.
January 15th, 2008
Did you see the picture of protesters against the proposed asphalt plant in Rockford Blacktop’s Mulford/Harrison quarry? The neighbors were holding up signs at the Rockford City Council meeting.
Despite an impressive lobbying effort, the protesters could muster but 5 aldermen to oppose the plant. The committee report that green-lights the plant was OK’d 8-5 Monday night. The final vote on the actual ordinance is next week; the totals probably won’t change. Or if Ald. Linda McNeely, D-13, is present next week, she’ll most likely vote against the asphalt plant, making it 8-6. Close, but no cigar. (Come to think of it, with the new smoking ban, you couldn’t smoke the cigar.)
The irony here is that the quarry is in the city, while most of the protesters live just outside. If they were city residents, more aldermen would pay attention to them.
But I don’t imagine they’d be interested in annexing.
January 15th, 2008
The big Republican race for Winnebago County state’s attorney got a second TV commercial today — at least that’s the first time I’ve seen it. Chuck Prorok, former chief deputy state’s attorney to former S.A. Paul Logli, has an impressive TV’er that shows him looking very official — at one point, he lifts a crime-scene tape and walks into the scene of SOMETHING IMPORTANT, I’m sure.
The ad says that Prorok is running because experience and independence count.
Prorok is running against appointed S.A. Phil Nicolosi, who’s ad has been running for awhile.
January 15th, 2008
Readers, if you really want to be informed about what the U.S. government is up to, you have to read foreign newspapers to get some parts that seem to be ignored by our national media.
Take this item in The Guardian, which I read every day. The well-written London paper reports and comments extensively on U.S. affairs that somehow escape the radar of Stateside reporters.
The spooky story says the FBI wants access to British databases to help it set up an international databases of iris, palm , and fingerprints, supposedly to help catch criminals worldwide..
That, of course, could easily be expanded to keep track of anyone. Knowing that Bush still is president, and that another Clinton could soon be president, I’m more than a little bit worried about this database. Whaddya think?
January 15th, 2008
Someone I know who’s familiar with the Clintons informs me that Hillary’s campaign has brought in the wrecking crew from Bubba’s White House years, and that poor ol’ nice guy Barack Obama is not going to know what hit him because he’ll soon be under attack from every direction.
Obama, though, predicted the onslaught of negativity from Camp Clinton in an interview last week with NBC’s Brian Williams. O said that he could hear the beep-beep-beep of the garbage truck backing up to his house.
The Clintonistas, expert at the art of dirty campaigning, are playing the race card in such a way that they have black surrogates make a racially-coded charge against Obama, then deny that the campaign had anything to do with such charges — of course repeating the charge in their denial.
Then the Clintons claim to be victims of the media for misinterpreting what was said. What would that be, the vast, left-wing conspiracy?
Hey, just asking.
The latest example is Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson’s speech at a Clinton at an event on Sunday. See it on YouTube.
The now infamous remark, about Obama “doin’ somethin in the neighborhood, don’t know what it was, but he said it in his book,” while the Clintons were supposedly down for the struggle alongside black folks, brought a hilarious (Hillarious?) clarification from Johnson when the original remark went over like a lead balloon.
Johnson “explained” that he was talking about Obama’s community organizing efforts in Chicago. Right. That’s so transparently disingenuous it would require a willing suspension of disbelief to give it credibility.
The Clintons thus get the charge repeated endlessly and also get to deny that they have anything to do with it. Kind of like Andrew Cuomo’s “shuckin’ ‘n’ jivin” remark aimed at Obama and the other racially-charged remarks by Clinton surrogates.
Republicans could never get away with this racie baiting, but it’s not new to the Clintons. Remember Bubba’s Sister Souljah moment? It played well among white voters, which was the idea.
One e-mail that’s going around the country — I don’t know who’s responsible, so I’m not blaming anyone –warns that Obama is secretly a radical Muslim who was educated in a radical Muslim school called a madrassas, and that his mother was an atheist. I received it from a well known Rockford businessman who asked what I thought of it.
Well, I’ve talked to Obama at length about a number of things, including his faith, and he’s a Christian. He went to a public school for two years in Indonesia, and he also went to a Catholic school there for two years. His mom was spiritual in her own way but not religious in the sense of practicing a certain faith.
CNN investigated the school in Jakarta and discovered it’s just a normal school. Sure, it’s nominally “Muslim,” but that’s the religion of most people in Indonesia.
