My Blog

Category: Politics

  • John Cusack Interviews Law Professor Jonathan Turley

    TURLEY: That’s exactly right. In fact, President Obama has not only maintained the position of George W. Bush in the area of national securities and in civil liberties, he’s actually expanded on those positions. He is actually worse than George Bush in some areas.

    CUSACK: Can you speak to which ones?

    TURLEY: Well, a good example of it is that President Bush ordered the killing of an American citizen when he approved a drone strike on a car in Yemen that he knew contained an American citizen as a passenger. Many of us at the time said, “You just effectively ordered the death of an American citizen in order to kill someone else, and where exactly do you have that authority?” But they made an argument that because the citizen wasn’t the primary target, he was just collateral damage. And there are many that believe that that is a plausible argument.

    CUSACK: By the way, we’re forgetting to kill even a foreign citizen is against the law. I hate to be so quaint…

    TURLEY: Well, President Obama outdid President Bush. He ordered the killing of two US citizens as the primary targets and has then gone forward and put out a policy that allows him to kill any American citizen when he unilaterally determines them to be a terrorist threat. Where President Bush had a citizen killed as collateral damage, President Obama has actually a formal policy allowing him to kill any US citizen.

    via Truth-Out.org.

    We’re at the point where the far left is starting to realize that Obama is simply shredding the Constitution.  I don’t think I’ve EVER agreed with  John Cusack before but he is 100% correct here.

    CUSACK: Oscar Wilde said most journalists would fall under the category of those who couldn’t tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization. But why is it that all the journalists that you see mostly on MSNBC or most of the progressives, or so-called progressives, who believe that under Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez these were great and grave constitutional crises, the wars were an ongoing moral fiasco — but now, since we have a friendly face in the White House, someone with kind of pleasing aesthetics and some new policies we like, now all of a sudden these aren’t crimes, there’s no crisis. Because he’s our guy? Go, team, go?

    I’m not sure that he means by “Pleasing aesthetics”.  Bush was not aesthetically pleasing?  I mean, he was no George Clooney but no ogre either.  … Or is that Obama is black?  I dunno.  But not sure I care either.  Where are all the anti-war protesters nowadays?

    Overall this is an amazing piece that should be required reading for everyone on the Left.  They should think about all the venom they spewed at Bush for years for acting exactly like Obama.  I’m not saying Bush had it right… far from.  But the hypocrisy on the left is unbearable.

     

  • Judge Jeanine on CPD Chief Garry McCarthy

    It’s time for a vote of no confidence in Garry.

    He’s let his mouth run too much and is simply no longer credible on any topic.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuXDYb8tcRg]

  • Dan Bongino’s Stump Speech

    Hope to see more of this guy in the future.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8WLXhahw_A]

  • Illinois Pensions — A Simple Primer

    I found this while at the Khan Academy.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tczu_dvVuuk]

  • Quinn Spends Another $1.5 Billion We Don’t Have

    Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday signed into law an extra $1.5 billion in spending for road construction and child welfare investigations, even as Republicans decried the measure as including ill-timed, pork barrel money.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    What is wrong with this guy?  Really?

    Quinn already stopped a bond auction because the rates for Illinois bonds are too high (and only going to go higher.)

    Illinois already has $9 billion in unpaid bills.  There’s also the looming pension time-bomb that no one wants to talk about.

    What does The Machine not understand?

    STOP SPENDING MONEY!

     

  • Illinois Never Met a Tax it Didn’t Like: Sneakers? Really?

    The cost of a new pair of basketball shoes could jump by 25 cents under a proposal floated this week by an Illinois lawmaker.

    State Rep. Will Davis, D-Hazel Crest, wants to create a new tax that would generate an estimated $3 million annually for a youth job preparation program. He said the added cost would likely go unnoticed by most consumers, while helping finance a program for kids during tight budget times.

    via St. Louis Today.

    Embarrassing that we have these people represent us.

  • Red-Light Camera Co.’s Chicago Corruption

    The chairman of the Australian company behind Chicago’s red-light program resigned this week and trading in the company’s stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract.

    Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company’s U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune.  …

    The internal probe found that company executives systematically courted former city transportation official John Bills with thousands of dollars in free trips to the Super Bowl and other sporting events, sources familiar with the investigation told the Tribune.  …
    The internal probe and a parallel investigation by city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson are also raising more questions about the company’s hiring of a longtime Bills friend who received more than $570,000 in company commissions as a customer service representative in Chicago, the sources said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    The Tribune got the OK to print this story because John Bills was one of Daley’s guys.  Since Daley is gone Rahm gave the nod.

    Hello Lisa Madigan?  Anita Alvarez?  Either of you awake?

     

  • No Warrant Required: The G Knows Everything About You

    … by law, utilities must hand over customer records — which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data — to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is “relevant” to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month.

    Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official’s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers — virtually all businesses — are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment — the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge.

    In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf)  …

    With the data the Alaska utility handed over, the DEA may then use further administrative subpoenas to acquire the suspected indoor-dope growers’ phone records, stored e-mails, and perhaps credit-card purchasing histories — all to build a case to acquire a probable-cause warrant to physically search their homes and businesses.

    via Wired.com.

    It’s out of control.

    A rebellion is coming.

  • Wanna See Our Future?

    Hundreds of people jostled for free vegetables handed out by farmers in a symbolic protest earlier on Wednesday, trampling one man and prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis.

    Images of people struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck dominated television, triggering a bout of soul-searching over the new depths of poverty in the debt-laden country.

    “These images make me angry. Angry for a proud people who have no food to eat, who can’t afford to keep warm, who can’t make ends meet,” said Kostas Barkas, a lawmaker from the leftist Syriza party.

    Other lawmakers from across the political spectrum decried the images “of people on the brink of despair” and the sense of “sadness for a proud people who have ended up like this”.

    People have seen their living standards crumble as the country faces its sixth year of recession that has driven unemployment to record highs.

    Greece has been forced to push through painful wage and pension cuts demanded by its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders as the price of bailout funds to avert bankruptcy.

    FARMERS ANGRY

    Greek ships sailed again from the busy ports of Piraeus and Rafina on Wednesday after the government ordered seamen to end a six-day strike aimed at securing wages and union rights.

    At dawn, smiling passengers who had been stranded at Piraeus carried their luggage across the port, relieved to be boarding the ships.

    But in northern and central Greece, farmers protesting high production costs and fuel prices placed their tractors on the sides of highways, threatening to block the country’s main road artery if not satisfied.

    In the capital, bus and trolleybus workers held a four-hour work stoppage, as did journalists at state broadcasters.

    The free food handout in Athens began peacefully as hundreds of Greeks lined up in advance outside the agriculture ministry, where protesting farmers laid out tables piled high with produce, giving away 50 metric tonnes (55.11 tons) of produce in under two hours.

    Tensions flared when the stalls ran out of produce and dozens of people – some carrying small children – rushed to a truck and shoved each other out of the way in the competition for what was left.

    One man was treated for injuries after being trampled when he fell to the ground in the commotion.

    “I never imagined that I would end up here,” said Panagiota Petropoulos, 65, who struggles to get by on her 530-euro monthly pension while paying 300 euros in rent.

    “I can’t afford anything, not even at the fruit market. Everything is expensive, prices of everything are going up while our income is going down and there are no jobs.”

    via Reuters.

    I’m willing to consider any logical and rational explanation as to why this won’t happen here.  But frankly, I don’t see how it can be any other way.

    Our debt to GDP ratio is now just over 100%  in that we have over $16 trillion in debt and a estimate 2012 GDP of $15.8 trillion.

    As recently as 2007 Greece’s ratio was a mere 105.1.  Today it’s 157.  How did this happen so quickly?  Because the debt kept growing faster that the economy was expanding; they economy was actually contracting for awhile (as was ours.)

    Spend a few minutes over at Shadow Government Statistics and you’ll see that sound economists believe this is exactly what is happening here.  Our debt keeps growing and growing and the economy is actually shrinking.

    This wouldn’t be the first time your government was lying to you.

    Tough times ahead.  Plan accordingly.

  • Texas Sen. Ted Cruz Writes a Letter

    Letter from Senator Ted Cruz to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Bank of America, TD Bank Group

    Putting folks in their place.