My father was a mathematics wizard. Yes, he was quite a few other things, too, not the least of which was a sports guy, as in team sports. He was extremely well-spoken, patient to a fault, and blessed with an active, not to say devilish, sense of humor.
But most of all, he was a math guy. Mathematics lived inside his mind as casually and easily as birds in the sky and fish in the sea. He saw numbers clearly and grasped their interaction so intuitively that he could practically do what might nowadays be called "amazing calculator tricks".
Long division to several places, in his head? Took a few seconds, but no problem. And no errors, either. Ordinary addition and subtraction seemed not even to need actual thought. Suddenly, there was the sum or remainder.
He spent his adult life in the insurance business, in the days before small computers and tiny calculators, and so this gift was of great assistance in daily life. He could stun customers with his lightning-fast calcs, done longhand on paper in the most beautiful cursive script you'd ever see (as the old nuns had pounded into him, he might say), and assimilate sporting statistics and rearrange them in a blink to prove a point, tag a trend, or spot a shortcoming.
In other words, he was a damned smart guy. Yes, you may misinterpret that with the other meaning as well, with no offense; he'd likely have agreed.
But what he wasn't, was a mechanic, or more specifically, a natural mechanic.
Nearly everyone will agree on that as a concept: that some humans have a brain built in a way that gives them a natural and effortless grasp of the interaction of physical objects, in much the same way as my dad seeing a page of numbers.
Some people even refer to those so equipped with a bit of, dare I say, reverence, as if the comprehension of mechanical parts interacting was some sort of special gift, like an ability to see into the future, or win at casino gambling, or to hit the curve ball. I don't think there's too many folks who don't, at one time or another, didn't wish for the appearance of a "natural mechanic" to cure some ill with a machine or structure.
It gets delicate, here, for Your Correspondent, wishing to proceed with the modesty of mien he was raised to have, but still, in his mind, being a natural mechanic himself. Fine. So I can go around the corner a little bit and mention that one of my brothers is a natural mechanic, and who followed in his father's mental footsteps by also being a gifted athlete and an exceptional mathematician.
But his father wasn't a natural mechanic. We would joke, lovingly, that he could barely operate a screwdriver, and only if you handed it to him facing the right way. A power drill was an object of great caution, and a power circular saw was simply to be shunned.
So where did his natural mechanic son come from? He can look at building and see things all the way through and top to bottom, and formulate answers to the problems as easily as putting a toothbrush in his mouth. The father? Never happened.
Two smart guys, two quick, effective thinkers, two highly analysis-capable minds. Two different sets of skills.
Quite a mystery to ponder, but one that has illumination value for some other difficult-to-understand seeming contradictions.
There, so while you, dear reader, are pondering all this, Your Correspondent is going to move on to another mystery, very much in the public square: anthropogenic global warming.
"Anthropogenic" means caused by human activity. In other words, AGW holds that humans, and specifically their "carbon" emissions, are causing a sudden, spectacular, and ultimately destructive increase in the planet's temperatures, so badly that a horrifying change in the entire planet's ecosystem is catastrophically nigh.
Like many another recasting (see post elsewhere here), this is frequently shortened both to simplify and to misdirect as "global warming". The basic tenet of AGW, and please don't drop off that "anthropogenic" part, because it's critical, is that humans are wrecking the planet. Not only that, but that the day of overwhelming cataclysm is due almost any month now, and only by reverting to the ways of our cave-dwelling, early-hominid ancestors can this light-switch-sudden change be mitigated to any degree.
AGW has become something akin to a cult. Never mind the science that has been cited to support the concept of worldwide climate catastrophe (let's call it "WCC" for fun), because the real guts of the AGW movement is the need for penitence, every bit as much as prudence.
And underlying that penitence is simple statism: the desire to put more and more of human activity under the positive control of the State; the spread and centralization of government.
The most obvious indicator of the cultiness is that now, to discuss the process of WCC via AGW in any curious or inquisitive way to commit heresy. AGW high priests have literally said, in public and being recorded, that there's "no question" to the science that proves their theory.
No, it's not even a theory: it's a proven fact, a fait accompli, a done deal.
Even the most non-scientifically-minded person should be given pause upon hearing so rash an assertion. Nowhere ever in the history of human science has any proposition been in the realm of"no question". That is exactly what scientific thought abhors: an absence of curiosity.
Insisting there's "no question" ought to, to any thinking person, delegitimize any statement purporting to be based on science.
Still, the anthropogenic global warming juggernaut roars on, crushing the curious and flattening the flouters with a righteous fury any old-time evangelist would be proud of.
But, with the actual science of AGW disintegrating week by week, and here I refer you to the reports of the NASA data most commonly cited as the true evidence being shown to be faulty, to a fatal degree (I'll take that pun, there), you would think somebody'd be starting to ask why the bum's rush, why no skepticism, why no dissent allowed?
Well, that's the way cults work, especially those emanting from the progressive corner of world view and political thought. Flagellation of America, be it the chief executive, the military, the economic system, the very concept of American exceptionalism, is the hoitiest of the toitiest, the loftiest of the most absolutely hippest, the smart set's take on just about anything about the US of A.
Well, automobiles came from the US, this thinking goes, as does large-scale electrification, and all the other horrors believed to be caused by the Great Satan, and so it must be, automatically, wrong. Not just wrong, but immoral, and for good measure, planet-wreckingly immoral.
Make no small accusations!
But, as few mainstream media consumers and Hollywood-movie-goers are aware, that factual basis for this deep belief is indeed being questioned. Real scientists, most notably those with actual experience in the natural sciences (as opposed to those with 28-million-dollar homes bought with speaking engagement fees) are either jumping off the AGW bandwagon, or still insisting there was never even a running board's worth of space on it in the first place.
The debate should be raging, but isn't. In schools, where rigid doctrinaire thought is being implanted with unconcern, children have been so drowned in the religous dictates of AGW that anything they might do that could be seen as disputatious would be stamped out in two shakes of a teacher's marker pen.
So, you may ask, what the heck does this all have to do with the concept of natural mechanics?
Simple- find one, ask him or her if he or she is good with AGW as a done deal, and I can assure you that are quite unlikely to be answered in the affirmative. Planet-wrecking warming being caused by little bitty humans spewing microscopic amounts of carbon?
Man, it just doesn't seem to figure. It's just not... natural.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Inversion therapy
I was brought up to consider all of my actions on the basis of what's known as the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But my dad had another perspective to overlay the Rule: when you're trying to consider a situation, event, remark, or pretty much anything in human interaction, try reversing the positions of the people involved. If A does X to B, is it proper for B to do X to A?
That kind of inversion has a great deal of utility now in the times of Presidential transition in shedding light upon the derailment of civil discourse in the discussion of President G.W. Bush.
The shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad, Iraq this past week could hardly have been a better illustration of how wrong the apprehension of Bush has been.
We've been deluged with news media reports of celebratory responses to the news of the shoe assault. No doubt that happened, to some degree. Perhaps even to a somewhat considerable degree. But it hasn't been anything like the universal sentiment that has been portrayed.
While beyond the comprehension of the Bush-hating news media, much of the world has been dismayed by the assault. And that's what it was, in reality: an assault upon a lawful head of state. Despite the insistence by thousands of unhappy Americans declaring the Bush "isn't my president", the real-world fact is that he is the President of the United States, and an attack upon him is still an attack upon a head of state.
The none-too-great lethality of the attack is of some import, but not as much as the basic fact: The Chief Executive of the US was assaulted.
Fine, now let's apply my dad's inversion therapy, updated for 21st Century American politics.
If an "enraged" Iraqi journalist, devasted over the desolation of his destroyed country after President Obama precipitously removes the American military despite the Iraqi (and world's) asking that they stay long enough to complete securing the victory acheived in mid-2008, beans Obama with his footwear, will that be a happy, even hilarious chuckle moment for the same folks who are displaying such unconcern, if not outright pleasure, for the same thing being perpetrated against Bush?
The obvious other flipper is to look at what happened to the thrower, who now, not incidentally, has apologized for his juvenile behavior (hear about that on CNN? The Trib's front page? Thought not.). His arms were not pulled out. His genitals were not removed with a torch. His eyes are still in their sockets and fully operational. And his wife was not raped and dismembered in front of him by a dozen Iraqi soldiers.
In fact, he was simply taken into a functional legal system and is going through the process, as he no doubt knew in advance would happen.
He knew he wouldn't be harmed. He knew he'd be fine.
He, better than practically anything else on the front pages, showed that we'd won, and the war against Iraq was over.
So the cacklers are going to go whistling right past the obvious: the "war" is over. The good guys won.
And George Bush just laughed at yet another crazed assault upon the guy who made the assault survivable.
But my dad had another perspective to overlay the Rule: when you're trying to consider a situation, event, remark, or pretty much anything in human interaction, try reversing the positions of the people involved. If A does X to B, is it proper for B to do X to A?
That kind of inversion has a great deal of utility now in the times of Presidential transition in shedding light upon the derailment of civil discourse in the discussion of President G.W. Bush.
The shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad, Iraq this past week could hardly have been a better illustration of how wrong the apprehension of Bush has been.
We've been deluged with news media reports of celebratory responses to the news of the shoe assault. No doubt that happened, to some degree. Perhaps even to a somewhat considerable degree. But it hasn't been anything like the universal sentiment that has been portrayed.
While beyond the comprehension of the Bush-hating news media, much of the world has been dismayed by the assault. And that's what it was, in reality: an assault upon a lawful head of state. Despite the insistence by thousands of unhappy Americans declaring the Bush "isn't my president", the real-world fact is that he is the President of the United States, and an attack upon him is still an attack upon a head of state.
The none-too-great lethality of the attack is of some import, but not as much as the basic fact: The Chief Executive of the US was assaulted.
Fine, now let's apply my dad's inversion therapy, updated for 21st Century American politics.
If an "enraged" Iraqi journalist, devasted over the desolation of his destroyed country after President Obama precipitously removes the American military despite the Iraqi (and world's) asking that they stay long enough to complete securing the victory acheived in mid-2008, beans Obama with his footwear, will that be a happy, even hilarious chuckle moment for the same folks who are displaying such unconcern, if not outright pleasure, for the same thing being perpetrated against Bush?
The obvious other flipper is to look at what happened to the thrower, who now, not incidentally, has apologized for his juvenile behavior (hear about that on CNN? The Trib's front page? Thought not.). His arms were not pulled out. His genitals were not removed with a torch. His eyes are still in their sockets and fully operational. And his wife was not raped and dismembered in front of him by a dozen Iraqi soldiers.
In fact, he was simply taken into a functional legal system and is going through the process, as he no doubt knew in advance would happen.
He knew he wouldn't be harmed. He knew he'd be fine.
He, better than practically anything else on the front pages, showed that we'd won, and the war against Iraq was over.
So the cacklers are going to go whistling right past the obvious: the "war" is over. The good guys won.
And George Bush just laughed at yet another crazed assault upon the guy who made the assault survivable.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Incomparable Iowahawk turns 5
Listen, we all know that the Internet has allowed the creation of a huge number of wonderful weblogs, scores or even hundreds of them intelligent, knowledgeable, peripatetic, and capable of knocking down untruths, false memes, faulty convential wisdom, and the myth of journalistic ethics. Your Correspondent will immediately cite Powerline, Instapundit, Jules Crittenden, and another half-dozen as the best of the best.
And while comparisons are indeed odius, they don't get any more olfactorily offensive than suggesting that there's a better observational blog, satire division than Iowahawk.
He, David Burge, is celebrating his fifth anniversary of being loose upon the 'nets, and I can only hope as a keyboard-pecker of grossly inferior skill, talent, and hope, to someday do a set of words that can come within an Iowa Interstate 80 mile (they are especially long, aren't they?) of Iowahawk's worst.
Yes, this is a crude attempt to gain entrance to IH's hallowed blogroll, and maybe even a blurb-out listing, but I still stand in awe of the capaciousness of mind that Mr. Burge has demonstrated to a barely worthy Web world and hope that he finds even greater success in the many half-decades to come.
And while comparisons are indeed odius, they don't get any more olfactorily offensive than suggesting that there's a better observational blog, satire division than Iowahawk.
He, David Burge, is celebrating his fifth anniversary of being loose upon the 'nets, and I can only hope as a keyboard-pecker of grossly inferior skill, talent, and hope, to someday do a set of words that can come within an Iowa Interstate 80 mile (they are especially long, aren't they?) of Iowahawk's worst.
Yes, this is a crude attempt to gain entrance to IH's hallowed blogroll, and maybe even a blurb-out listing, but I still stand in awe of the capaciousness of mind that Mr. Burge has demonstrated to a barely worthy Web world and hope that he finds even greater success in the many half-decades to come.
One mystery solved
Of all of the unclear things about the corruption arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, to this observer the biggest mystery has been: why an arrest (instead of a grand jury indictment), and why so soon?
The arrest method, done just before sunrise on a Tuesday at the Governor's home in Chicago, was extraordinary all by itself. Federal prosecutors nearly always prefer to have politicians turn themselves in at a Fed office. This takes some of the onus off the prosecutor's office and puts it on the accused. Knocking on a front door (after a cell phone call) in the dark is simply unheard of for a sitting official of any import.
But something went wrong with the Blagojevich investigation, that much has been obvious from the moment of the arrest. Not nearly enough has been made of this in the media/punditocracy storm. While the gaudy, top-of-the-story lede about "selling the seat" has grabbed the attention, to the detriment of the attention needing to be paid to the surrounding graft and malfeasance, the actual taking into custody portion is still the bright light in the sky no one's looking at.
Clearly, the prosecution had much more to come, and with the network of wiretaps and surveillance blanketing the players, one would have hoped the Feds could have snared more than one of the miscreants right smack in the act.
That didn't happen, and a lot of bad acts didn't happen, didn't get recorded, and didn't get anyone busted.
Well, now the Wall Street Journal has come out with an article describing how it was our good friends at the Chicago Tribune who yanked the rug out from underneath Fitzgerald and derailed the whole investigation. Yes, that same Tribune so vociferously attacking Blagojevich while preening and congratulating itself for being a vital cog in the bust.
It even ran an article itself, boasting how the Tribsters showed such excellent judgement as they withheld a story to let the prosecutors go deeper into the sewer.
Except, they didn't. They broke their story prematurely, on the Friday before the arrest, and sent the cockroaches scurrying from the light they then knew was about to be turned on them.
It's hard to describe how enraging this is. If it's true, and the WSJ quotes the Trib editor responsible with words that indicate they knew what they were doing, there's a whole world of questions for the Tribune, not the least of which is: Are you a co-conspirator in this mess?
Yes, the obvious first conclusion is that the paper did what it did for money. Plain old greed. The paper's failing financially, and they thought they could grab a few more bucks by popping early.
That's nice, and credible, and fits nicely with so many of the Trib's writers sneering at corporations and their vile profit-driven amorality.
But given it's the Chicago Tribune, and Barack Obama is involved, any sane person has to stop, hold their nose, and look again.
The first thing that occurs to this observer is that the Trib is protecting their guy Obama. They've always been there for him, most grossly with the takedown of Obama's senatorial opponent back in 2004, when they used their front page and the credibility of their ostensible major news media podium to wipe out Republican candidate Jack Ryan. We're still waiting for the Trib to publish any credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Ryan, even these four years later, but that didn't stanch the flow of accusation cascading from the Trib's front page.
Now, with their man on the verge of "assuming power", as they so love to put it, legitimate scandals are erupting all around him, stuff that should have seen the light of day while big-time journalists were working their typing fingers to the bone proving that Sarah Palin is a stupid goof. The Blagojevich scandal cuts close to the Obama myth, but it's slicing up Obama's closest contacts, not the least of which is Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff (maybe).
We've already noted Emanuel's sudden and unusually uncharacteristic disappearance from the news media. There are reports circulating that he's appeared in numerous instances in the Blagojevich tapes.
Would the Trib have taken down the investigation just to protect Emanuel? For heavens' sake, that doesn't seem like it would be worth it, not if even gaudier busts were coming in the next few weeks.
I'm going to hold on before making up my mind about the real motive, but plain greed and saving the Rahm just aren't enough to satisfy.
The arrest method, done just before sunrise on a Tuesday at the Governor's home in Chicago, was extraordinary all by itself. Federal prosecutors nearly always prefer to have politicians turn themselves in at a Fed office. This takes some of the onus off the prosecutor's office and puts it on the accused. Knocking on a front door (after a cell phone call) in the dark is simply unheard of for a sitting official of any import.
But something went wrong with the Blagojevich investigation, that much has been obvious from the moment of the arrest. Not nearly enough has been made of this in the media/punditocracy storm. While the gaudy, top-of-the-story lede about "selling the seat" has grabbed the attention, to the detriment of the attention needing to be paid to the surrounding graft and malfeasance, the actual taking into custody portion is still the bright light in the sky no one's looking at.
Clearly, the prosecution had much more to come, and with the network of wiretaps and surveillance blanketing the players, one would have hoped the Feds could have snared more than one of the miscreants right smack in the act.
That didn't happen, and a lot of bad acts didn't happen, didn't get recorded, and didn't get anyone busted.
Well, now the Wall Street Journal has come out with an article describing how it was our good friends at the Chicago Tribune who yanked the rug out from underneath Fitzgerald and derailed the whole investigation. Yes, that same Tribune so vociferously attacking Blagojevich while preening and congratulating itself for being a vital cog in the bust.
It even ran an article itself, boasting how the Tribsters showed such excellent judgement as they withheld a story to let the prosecutors go deeper into the sewer.
Except, they didn't. They broke their story prematurely, on the Friday before the arrest, and sent the cockroaches scurrying from the light they then knew was about to be turned on them.
It's hard to describe how enraging this is. If it's true, and the WSJ quotes the Trib editor responsible with words that indicate they knew what they were doing, there's a whole world of questions for the Tribune, not the least of which is: Are you a co-conspirator in this mess?
Yes, the obvious first conclusion is that the paper did what it did for money. Plain old greed. The paper's failing financially, and they thought they could grab a few more bucks by popping early.
That's nice, and credible, and fits nicely with so many of the Trib's writers sneering at corporations and their vile profit-driven amorality.
But given it's the Chicago Tribune, and Barack Obama is involved, any sane person has to stop, hold their nose, and look again.
The first thing that occurs to this observer is that the Trib is protecting their guy Obama. They've always been there for him, most grossly with the takedown of Obama's senatorial opponent back in 2004, when they used their front page and the credibility of their ostensible major news media podium to wipe out Republican candidate Jack Ryan. We're still waiting for the Trib to publish any credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Ryan, even these four years later, but that didn't stanch the flow of accusation cascading from the Trib's front page.
Now, with their man on the verge of "assuming power", as they so love to put it, legitimate scandals are erupting all around him, stuff that should have seen the light of day while big-time journalists were working their typing fingers to the bone proving that Sarah Palin is a stupid goof. The Blagojevich scandal cuts close to the Obama myth, but it's slicing up Obama's closest contacts, not the least of which is Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff (maybe).
We've already noted Emanuel's sudden and unusually uncharacteristic disappearance from the news media. There are reports circulating that he's appeared in numerous instances in the Blagojevich tapes.
Would the Trib have taken down the investigation just to protect Emanuel? For heavens' sake, that doesn't seem like it would be worth it, not if even gaudier busts were coming in the next few weeks.
I'm going to hold on before making up my mind about the real motive, but plain greed and saving the Rahm just aren't enough to satisfy.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Weaving around in Springfield
Today, the Illinois State House of Representatives began initial committee meetings to initiate an impeachment against Governor Rod Blagojevich.
In a land where things disappear with amazing alacrity, so has the "request" made by the Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the Illinois Supreme Court to precipitously remove the governor on the basis of his being "disabled".
It's possible that the chorus of thousands of wags pointing out his "disability" was the same as Madigan's, and scores of other Illinois politicos', might have slowed that train down just as it was clearing yard limits and making it out onto the main line.
When even leftist rags like the Chicago Tribune take a breath and a second look, you know the "request" plan had to be really stinko.
With The Obama's thunder being smothered day after day by the emanations from the sewer he just was sent from, the President-elect trotted out Chicago Schools boss Arne Duncan to be his secretary of education. Despite what non-native viewers might think, Duncan's actually clean, and has half a brain, and a good work ethic.
The tough part for the rest of the country is that Duncan's effectiveness bodes ill for those who believe that the Federal government has no business interfering in education in the first place, as, some may point out, it has no Constitutional authority to do.
Since expanding the power and control of the central government in his own image is Job One for Obama, though, having a non-putz running a bureaucracy that has enormous power, even more money, is shot through with teacher's union tentacles, and lives on top of a pretty cloud where grubby conservatives can't reach, isn't so great.
Meanwhile, back on the corruption beat, the real news of the day ought to be the new shining of a bit of a light on Machine (and Obama) fixer Tony Rezko, whose sentencing (following his conviction on Federal corruption charges) was mysteriously, and suddenly, put off Monday. Persons revolted by the staggering corruption in Illinois have reason to cheer that; maybe he's back to thinking about talking again, something the Feds, and all right-minded folks, really want. He could give forth with some really interesting stuff, the prosecutors may think, and might get some indictments some extra horsepower to climb the mountain of Machinery in front of them.
It's hard not to imagine that this latest change in Rezko's status is connected to Blagojevich's arrest. Who knows who might clear his throat and begin singing?
Oddly, I don't get that there's too much danger for the president-elect. It doesn't seem Fitzgerald and his merry band want to get after O, perhaps because he really hasn't done anything, legal or criminal, or anything in the way of "accomplishment" (save conning folks out of a cool billion). Or, maybe it's just common sense not to sniff too close to the new boss.
But the total media disappearance of major Obamite Rahm Emanuel is almost shocking. A guy who never could pass a news camera by without saying something fraught with powerful importance suddenly going mute, and invisible, is an eyebrow-raiser.
We've been assured Emanuel's not done anything "wrong", and specifically in the course of the passing on of Obama's former US Senate seat, but... there were lots of wiretaps going on out there, and their centerpiece, Blagojevich, talks to lots of folks in the course of things.
Now, Obama assures us that he's had an investigation done and everything's fine.
It's probably a good idea to have your own people investigate themselves, as it must simplfy things quite a bit. One has to appreciate the energy savings of it all. Very green.
But like every other thing Obama's given forth with since he got within a month of his elevation to the Oneness, there's a snagger line in there. This one's nearly unfathomable: that he'll release the results of his investigation "in a week".
A week? What the heck is that about? What happens in a week? The Rezko sentencing isn't happening soon, supposedly. Blagojevich isn't resigning in a week. Well, who knows, about that, either.
Why a week? Man, that's a juicy little nugget.
Or not. It could just be more bumbling from the guy whose been in the vicinity of more scandals between Election Day and Inauguration Day than any president ever.
In a land where things disappear with amazing alacrity, so has the "request" made by the Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the Illinois Supreme Court to precipitously remove the governor on the basis of his being "disabled".
It's possible that the chorus of thousands of wags pointing out his "disability" was the same as Madigan's, and scores of other Illinois politicos', might have slowed that train down just as it was clearing yard limits and making it out onto the main line.
When even leftist rags like the Chicago Tribune take a breath and a second look, you know the "request" plan had to be really stinko.
With The Obama's thunder being smothered day after day by the emanations from the sewer he just was sent from, the President-elect trotted out Chicago Schools boss Arne Duncan to be his secretary of education. Despite what non-native viewers might think, Duncan's actually clean, and has half a brain, and a good work ethic.
The tough part for the rest of the country is that Duncan's effectiveness bodes ill for those who believe that the Federal government has no business interfering in education in the first place, as, some may point out, it has no Constitutional authority to do.
Since expanding the power and control of the central government in his own image is Job One for Obama, though, having a non-putz running a bureaucracy that has enormous power, even more money, is shot through with teacher's union tentacles, and lives on top of a pretty cloud where grubby conservatives can't reach, isn't so great.
Meanwhile, back on the corruption beat, the real news of the day ought to be the new shining of a bit of a light on Machine (and Obama) fixer Tony Rezko, whose sentencing (following his conviction on Federal corruption charges) was mysteriously, and suddenly, put off Monday. Persons revolted by the staggering corruption in Illinois have reason to cheer that; maybe he's back to thinking about talking again, something the Feds, and all right-minded folks, really want. He could give forth with some really interesting stuff, the prosecutors may think, and might get some indictments some extra horsepower to climb the mountain of Machinery in front of them.
It's hard not to imagine that this latest change in Rezko's status is connected to Blagojevich's arrest. Who knows who might clear his throat and begin singing?
Oddly, I don't get that there's too much danger for the president-elect. It doesn't seem Fitzgerald and his merry band want to get after O, perhaps because he really hasn't done anything, legal or criminal, or anything in the way of "accomplishment" (save conning folks out of a cool billion). Or, maybe it's just common sense not to sniff too close to the new boss.
But the total media disappearance of major Obamite Rahm Emanuel is almost shocking. A guy who never could pass a news camera by without saying something fraught with powerful importance suddenly going mute, and invisible, is an eyebrow-raiser.
We've been assured Emanuel's not done anything "wrong", and specifically in the course of the passing on of Obama's former US Senate seat, but... there were lots of wiretaps going on out there, and their centerpiece, Blagojevich, talks to lots of folks in the course of things.
Now, Obama assures us that he's had an investigation done and everything's fine.
It's probably a good idea to have your own people investigate themselves, as it must simplfy things quite a bit. One has to appreciate the energy savings of it all. Very green.
But like every other thing Obama's given forth with since he got within a month of his elevation to the Oneness, there's a snagger line in there. This one's nearly unfathomable: that he'll release the results of his investigation "in a week".
A week? What the heck is that about? What happens in a week? The Rezko sentencing isn't happening soon, supposedly. Blagojevich isn't resigning in a week. Well, who knows, about that, either.
Why a week? Man, that's a juicy little nugget.
Or not. It could just be more bumbling from the guy whose been in the vicinity of more scandals between Election Day and Inauguration Day than any president ever.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Law? What law?
Today, December 15th, is the Bill of Rights Day in the United States, celebrating the ratification of the first ten amendments to the original Constitution. While drafted and debated with a certain amount of controversy- some of the Founders felt that there was no need to enumerate the obvious, and in so doing, constraints upon those rights could grow up around the edges of the Bill of Rights- the Ten were voted in on this day in 1791.
While the modern assault upon those ten and many another is ongoing, an unusually brazen one took place here in northeastern Illinois over this past weekend.
Launching off what must have appeared to her to be overwhelming public demand, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan held a heavily-covered press conference outlining a "request" she had officially made upon the Illinois Supreme Court to forcibly and immediately remove Governor Rod Blagojevich from office.
Long-time Chicago observers found themselves on guard at once, seeing that the Attorney General had by her side former Congressman and judge Abner Mikva. Those not so familiar with Mikva, or with a benevolent view of the old Machine judge, should pay more attention to his presence.
Of course, his main purpose at the press conference was to lend some august-seeming weight to Madigan's plans. He's a big-shot famous judge, right?
Well, yes, but he's also a pretty good representative of the worst of mid-level leftist judicial activists from the '60s period. Prior to that, as a Congressman from Chicago, he was so far, and so staunchly Left that we had to imagine even his Boss, Richard the First, had to shake his jowly head at Mikva's proclivities for the authoritarian State.
He was the perfect "bookshelf backdrop" for Madigan's assault on the Illinois Constitution, and the notion of representative government in general.
Madigan filed a request saying that the Governor should be removed at once, owing to his being "disabled". There is a provision in the Illinois Constitution that a chief executive can be removed for "other disabilities", and Madigan made her determination that in fact, the Supreme Court should take that action.
As a legal brief, Madigan's paper is laughable. It cites little in the way of factual support and really, no legal window dressing at all, beyond "I said so." It's so brazen that even the Mainstream Media hordes preparing to adore her as they did her Machine predecessor on the national scene had to pull up short.
The urge to protect the Cook County Democratic Machine and it's fledgling president runs strong among our esteemed pontificators, so strong that the complete vaporization of Blagojevich in order to protect the Obama cannot possibly happen soon enough.
So, in the grand tradition of the modern statist (think prosecutor McCoy on television's bone-chilling "Law and Order", many modern American's concept of the American legal system), Madigan took prompt and precipitous action.
The fact that this plan has so many flaws the Internet is groaning under the load of lawprof blogs and even other responsible commentator's howling about the extra-legality of it didn't slow the Attorney General in the slightest. Coolly facing the media hordes, she went on an on about how she's representing "the people" of Illinois and so she's the good guy here. One gets the idea that she's just as dumb, just as clueless, and just as arrogant as her target, Blagojevich.
Even in the background, the Machine pretty boys, hacks, and Wizards of Oz have been slewing around crazily trying to find solid ground to stamp their foot down on. Lt. Governor Pat Quinn, shortly to be Governor himself, once said that there should be a special election, at the soon-upcoming and convenient date of the spring primary elections here in Illinois.
He quickly departed that island for the next, as has so many of his cohorts, and then Madigan was trotted out with her Draconian plan.
Of course the Dems don't want an election- they're manuevering themselves into a position to lose the dang thing, despite the staggering incompetence of their Republian Party opposition.
Especially with a new storm cloud seeming to be brewing over the other Big Star from the Machine, Rahm Emanuel, laying things out in public are counter-productive for the Daleys and their operatives, from Obama through Madigan and down to the last ward committeeman on the city's northwest side.
Many other commentators have already visited how the AG plan is mostly intended to insulate the state's Democrats from the embarrassment of impeaching, convicting, and removing the governor they just rammed down our throats- twice. Furthermore, Madigan's father, the Speaker of the Illinois House, Michael Madigan, would have to be the one putting together the impeachment, shining way too many lights upon himself, his daughter, the Democratic Party, and the Machine that runs the whole thing.
A week ago, Your Correspondent was fairly sure Madigan planned to use the governorship to launch her presidential aspirations. That comes in part from our conviction that Americans much prefer to elect governors, actual chief executives, to the White House, and not gasbags from the US Senate. Perhaps this past election has undone that paradigm, what with a gaggle of gasbags clogging up the presidential field, with only two governors, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sarah Palin of Alaska, figuring in at all.
Therefore, it now seems possible that Attorney General Madigan feels her future is best served by vaulting into the Senate and leaving the governorship in the hands of Pat Quinn, where it's about to easily fall anyway. That way, she can avoid the trap of actually doing anything of consequence, as her predecessor Obama craftily did on his way to the Big House. Sorry, White House.
It's hard not to point out the franticness with which the Democrats at all levels are insisting that this senatorial appointment must happen at once! at once!; that Illinois' citizens are being denuded of their rightful representation by the vacancy of the junior Senate seat on Capitol Hill.
For goodness' sake, folks, Barack Obama never did a thing with the seat anyway, and racked up one of the worst attendance (and work-) records in modern Senate history. He wasn't there, so someone not being there now's no big deal.
Excepting, of course, that with the US Senate close to being filibuster-proof upon the balance having swung so close to a Dem supermajority, they fear losing total control of all branches of the Federal government and so, risking the total power to rule that their Obama needs.
While the modern assault upon those ten and many another is ongoing, an unusually brazen one took place here in northeastern Illinois over this past weekend.
Launching off what must have appeared to her to be overwhelming public demand, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan held a heavily-covered press conference outlining a "request" she had officially made upon the Illinois Supreme Court to forcibly and immediately remove Governor Rod Blagojevich from office.
Long-time Chicago observers found themselves on guard at once, seeing that the Attorney General had by her side former Congressman and judge Abner Mikva. Those not so familiar with Mikva, or with a benevolent view of the old Machine judge, should pay more attention to his presence.
Of course, his main purpose at the press conference was to lend some august-seeming weight to Madigan's plans. He's a big-shot famous judge, right?
Well, yes, but he's also a pretty good representative of the worst of mid-level leftist judicial activists from the '60s period. Prior to that, as a Congressman from Chicago, he was so far, and so staunchly Left that we had to imagine even his Boss, Richard the First, had to shake his jowly head at Mikva's proclivities for the authoritarian State.
He was the perfect "bookshelf backdrop" for Madigan's assault on the Illinois Constitution, and the notion of representative government in general.
Madigan filed a request saying that the Governor should be removed at once, owing to his being "disabled". There is a provision in the Illinois Constitution that a chief executive can be removed for "other disabilities", and Madigan made her determination that in fact, the Supreme Court should take that action.
As a legal brief, Madigan's paper is laughable. It cites little in the way of factual support and really, no legal window dressing at all, beyond "I said so." It's so brazen that even the Mainstream Media hordes preparing to adore her as they did her Machine predecessor on the national scene had to pull up short.
The urge to protect the Cook County Democratic Machine and it's fledgling president runs strong among our esteemed pontificators, so strong that the complete vaporization of Blagojevich in order to protect the Obama cannot possibly happen soon enough.
So, in the grand tradition of the modern statist (think prosecutor McCoy on television's bone-chilling "Law and Order", many modern American's concept of the American legal system), Madigan took prompt and precipitous action.
The fact that this plan has so many flaws the Internet is groaning under the load of lawprof blogs and even other responsible commentator's howling about the extra-legality of it didn't slow the Attorney General in the slightest. Coolly facing the media hordes, she went on an on about how she's representing "the people" of Illinois and so she's the good guy here. One gets the idea that she's just as dumb, just as clueless, and just as arrogant as her target, Blagojevich.
Even in the background, the Machine pretty boys, hacks, and Wizards of Oz have been slewing around crazily trying to find solid ground to stamp their foot down on. Lt. Governor Pat Quinn, shortly to be Governor himself, once said that there should be a special election, at the soon-upcoming and convenient date of the spring primary elections here in Illinois.
He quickly departed that island for the next, as has so many of his cohorts, and then Madigan was trotted out with her Draconian plan.
Of course the Dems don't want an election- they're manuevering themselves into a position to lose the dang thing, despite the staggering incompetence of their Republian Party opposition.
Especially with a new storm cloud seeming to be brewing over the other Big Star from the Machine, Rahm Emanuel, laying things out in public are counter-productive for the Daleys and their operatives, from Obama through Madigan and down to the last ward committeeman on the city's northwest side.
Many other commentators have already visited how the AG plan is mostly intended to insulate the state's Democrats from the embarrassment of impeaching, convicting, and removing the governor they just rammed down our throats- twice. Furthermore, Madigan's father, the Speaker of the Illinois House, Michael Madigan, would have to be the one putting together the impeachment, shining way too many lights upon himself, his daughter, the Democratic Party, and the Machine that runs the whole thing.
A week ago, Your Correspondent was fairly sure Madigan planned to use the governorship to launch her presidential aspirations. That comes in part from our conviction that Americans much prefer to elect governors, actual chief executives, to the White House, and not gasbags from the US Senate. Perhaps this past election has undone that paradigm, what with a gaggle of gasbags clogging up the presidential field, with only two governors, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sarah Palin of Alaska, figuring in at all.
Therefore, it now seems possible that Attorney General Madigan feels her future is best served by vaulting into the Senate and leaving the governorship in the hands of Pat Quinn, where it's about to easily fall anyway. That way, she can avoid the trap of actually doing anything of consequence, as her predecessor Obama craftily did on his way to the Big House. Sorry, White House.
It's hard not to point out the franticness with which the Democrats at all levels are insisting that this senatorial appointment must happen at once! at once!; that Illinois' citizens are being denuded of their rightful representation by the vacancy of the junior Senate seat on Capitol Hill.
For goodness' sake, folks, Barack Obama never did a thing with the seat anyway, and racked up one of the worst attendance (and work-) records in modern Senate history. He wasn't there, so someone not being there now's no big deal.
Excepting, of course, that with the US Senate close to being filibuster-proof upon the balance having swung so close to a Dem supermajority, they fear losing total control of all branches of the Federal government and so, risking the total power to rule that their Obama needs.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Where was Illnois' Attorney General?
As the Blagojevich scandal breaks wider and more noisily across the media world, observers are being treated to a steady stream of the visage of, mentions of, and quotes of the Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan.
Nearly every of these mentioning incidents includes how it is widely believed that Madigan will end up being the next governor of Illinois, at least, once the pesky Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is disposed of.
These mentions follow hot on the heels of a similar torrent of mentions of Madigan being Barack Obama's successor in the White House. The Illinois governorship is just a launching pad, as it was supposed to have been for former fair-haired boy Rod Blagojevich.
To new onlookers, some background is essential. Madigan is the offspring of Illinois House of Representatives Speaker Micheal Madigan, arguably the most powerful person in the state outside of Richard Daley. Since nothing happens in US legislation without the House of Representatives of whatever jurisdiction, Madigan the Senior's power over the doings of the state is considerable, almost to the point of final.
Mike Madigan and Rod Blagojevich weren't natural-born enemies, both being Chicago-born creatures of the Cook County Democratic Machine, but became so once Blagojevich got into the governorship and began to display his intemperate ways and bumbling self-absorption. Then, given the ascension of Lisa Madigan to the Attorney General's office, an elevation in the Chicago tradition of political royalty passing the scepter down the line, it is considered likely by several political reporters in Chicago that Madigan's antipathy towards Blagojevich was increased by Mike Madigan's desire to see Lisa continue to rise in politics.
So it stands now, with the junior Madigan's mug everywhere now pontificating in knowledgeable high legalese about how Illinois shall rid itself of Blagojevich. Last evening, we watched the local public television station's civic affairs show, Chicago Tonight on WTTW. Madigan was paired as a guest with former governor Jim Edgar, now two governors back, and who may have left office with a clean reputation intact, as improbable as that may seem.
Host Carol Marin, always an advocate for the Democrat, posed the question to Madigan about the possibility of Madigan's advancement to the Mansion. Madigan smiled coyly without a blush or any guilt, apparently unaware that publicly campaigning to unseat the current governor and then making herself governor with the aid of the immense power of the House Speakership was any sort of conflict of interest.
Not than any Machine pol gives much thought to conflicts of interest as bad things.
So here's my question, for Madigan the Junior and her supporters for elevation:
Where the hell has the office of the Attorney General of the State of Illinois been through all this? Why do we have Federal agents and prosecutors investigating and arresting Illinois officials in droves, and all we get from the AG's office is child-safety initiatives and senior-citizen support programs?
What in the world does the state's chief law-enforcement officer, the AG, do, if not attack corruption and the violation of the people's trust?
Where have you been, Attorney General Madigan? There were laws being broken. Aren't you supposed to be doing something about laws being broken?
One would think a State Attorney General who was awash in images of Federal prosecutors and investigators doing the law-enforcement work the SAG ought to have been doing would be too embarrassed to even been seen.
Not in Chicago. She's out campaigning for governor.
Nearly every of these mentioning incidents includes how it is widely believed that Madigan will end up being the next governor of Illinois, at least, once the pesky Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is disposed of.
These mentions follow hot on the heels of a similar torrent of mentions of Madigan being Barack Obama's successor in the White House. The Illinois governorship is just a launching pad, as it was supposed to have been for former fair-haired boy Rod Blagojevich.
To new onlookers, some background is essential. Madigan is the offspring of Illinois House of Representatives Speaker Micheal Madigan, arguably the most powerful person in the state outside of Richard Daley. Since nothing happens in US legislation without the House of Representatives of whatever jurisdiction, Madigan the Senior's power over the doings of the state is considerable, almost to the point of final.
Mike Madigan and Rod Blagojevich weren't natural-born enemies, both being Chicago-born creatures of the Cook County Democratic Machine, but became so once Blagojevich got into the governorship and began to display his intemperate ways and bumbling self-absorption. Then, given the ascension of Lisa Madigan to the Attorney General's office, an elevation in the Chicago tradition of political royalty passing the scepter down the line, it is considered likely by several political reporters in Chicago that Madigan's antipathy towards Blagojevich was increased by Mike Madigan's desire to see Lisa continue to rise in politics.
So it stands now, with the junior Madigan's mug everywhere now pontificating in knowledgeable high legalese about how Illinois shall rid itself of Blagojevich. Last evening, we watched the local public television station's civic affairs show, Chicago Tonight on WTTW. Madigan was paired as a guest with former governor Jim Edgar, now two governors back, and who may have left office with a clean reputation intact, as improbable as that may seem.
Host Carol Marin, always an advocate for the Democrat, posed the question to Madigan about the possibility of Madigan's advancement to the Mansion. Madigan smiled coyly without a blush or any guilt, apparently unaware that publicly campaigning to unseat the current governor and then making herself governor with the aid of the immense power of the House Speakership was any sort of conflict of interest.
Not than any Machine pol gives much thought to conflicts of interest as bad things.
So here's my question, for Madigan the Junior and her supporters for elevation:
Where the hell has the office of the Attorney General of the State of Illinois been through all this? Why do we have Federal agents and prosecutors investigating and arresting Illinois officials in droves, and all we get from the AG's office is child-safety initiatives and senior-citizen support programs?
What in the world does the state's chief law-enforcement officer, the AG, do, if not attack corruption and the violation of the people's trust?
Where have you been, Attorney General Madigan? There were laws being broken. Aren't you supposed to be doing something about laws being broken?
One would think a State Attorney General who was awash in images of Federal prosecutors and investigators doing the law-enforcement work the SAG ought to have been doing would be too embarrassed to even been seen.
Not in Chicago. She's out campaigning for governor.
Confusion among the Commentariat
While I had already begun a piece focusing on the misconceptions flooding across the national news media and punditry about the Real Meaning of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as usual, the superb John Kass, lonely voice of clarity at the Chicago Tribune, got there first in this morning's edition with the comment, regarding the mystification of these wise ones at Blagojevich's behavior, that "the pundits who make such diagnoses have never talked to a Chicago Machine politician in their life".
Of course, the first thing hitting television screens and front pages is that Barack Obama had nothing whatsoever to do with the charges, and likely wasn't even aware of the existence of Rod Blagojevich upon the planet. Nor were any of his aides, handlers, advisers, family, pets, or gym buddies. Furthermore, the stress was upon the fact that the charges outlined in the US Attorney's list did not include any against Obama, and the prosecutor specifically said Obama wasn't charged.
The obvious conclusion from the wall of separation hastily erected is that all these pundits were absolutely right all along that Barack Obama had nothing to do with Chicago politics, the Cook County Democratic Machine, or any other of these irrelevant little instances of official indiscretion.
Obama's first stumbling reactions during what his own machine had planned to be a rollout of global-warming hoaxster Al Gore and the president-elect's massive new plan for combatting anthropogenic global warming by expanding the role and power of the State were actually humorous. The old stammer was back, searching for lawyerly cracks to slip through, as he showed that in the clinch, he had no idea what to say.
"No idea" is a concept constantly being advanced by Obama's camp and acolytes. He had no idea that Blagojevich was corrupt. He had no idea that the Machine that sent him is so corrupt even jaded federal agents run out of polite language to describe it.
That's all part of the blanket of protection Obama's been afforded. He had no idea his close friend and real estate partner Tony Rezko was a crooked fixer of political payouts. He had no idea that getting into a contractual bed next to Rezko would be any sort of an issue.
He had no idea Jeremiah Wright said bad things every week for the twenty years he cited Wright as a mentor.
He had no idea that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had done bad things, or that the things they'd done were bad anyway. Nor did he have any idea that draining off a hundred million dollars to float a silly "education" scheme by the old Weatherman was in any way improper.
He had no idea that flying around on billionaires' private jets and not reporting the actual expense as campaign contributions was illegal.
He had no idea that the District of Columbia's draconian gun ban was unconstitutional, at least, not until the Supreme Court timidly pointed out that it was.
Apparently, having no idea is fine with his disciples, since they had no idea of what went on in Illinois politics' inner core deep in Chicago from whence their candidate came.
Now, for goodness' sake, if any readers still think the whole Blagojevich thing is just a bit of roadside inconvenience for the Obama, something that just happened to someone else somewhere else, get with Kass' work and read, read, read. You really need to know this stuff.
Of course, the first thing hitting television screens and front pages is that Barack Obama had nothing whatsoever to do with the charges, and likely wasn't even aware of the existence of Rod Blagojevich upon the planet. Nor were any of his aides, handlers, advisers, family, pets, or gym buddies. Furthermore, the stress was upon the fact that the charges outlined in the US Attorney's list did not include any against Obama, and the prosecutor specifically said Obama wasn't charged.
The obvious conclusion from the wall of separation hastily erected is that all these pundits were absolutely right all along that Barack Obama had nothing to do with Chicago politics, the Cook County Democratic Machine, or any other of these irrelevant little instances of official indiscretion.
Obama's first stumbling reactions during what his own machine had planned to be a rollout of global-warming hoaxster Al Gore and the president-elect's massive new plan for combatting anthropogenic global warming by expanding the role and power of the State were actually humorous. The old stammer was back, searching for lawyerly cracks to slip through, as he showed that in the clinch, he had no idea what to say.
"No idea" is a concept constantly being advanced by Obama's camp and acolytes. He had no idea that Blagojevich was corrupt. He had no idea that the Machine that sent him is so corrupt even jaded federal agents run out of polite language to describe it.
That's all part of the blanket of protection Obama's been afforded. He had no idea his close friend and real estate partner Tony Rezko was a crooked fixer of political payouts. He had no idea that getting into a contractual bed next to Rezko would be any sort of an issue.
He had no idea Jeremiah Wright said bad things every week for the twenty years he cited Wright as a mentor.
He had no idea that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had done bad things, or that the things they'd done were bad anyway. Nor did he have any idea that draining off a hundred million dollars to float a silly "education" scheme by the old Weatherman was in any way improper.
He had no idea that flying around on billionaires' private jets and not reporting the actual expense as campaign contributions was illegal.
He had no idea that the District of Columbia's draconian gun ban was unconstitutional, at least, not until the Supreme Court timidly pointed out that it was.
Apparently, having no idea is fine with his disciples, since they had no idea of what went on in Illinois politics' inner core deep in Chicago from whence their candidate came.
Now, for goodness' sake, if any readers still think the whole Blagojevich thing is just a bit of roadside inconvenience for the Obama, something that just happened to someone else somewhere else, get with Kass' work and read, read, read. You really need to know this stuff.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Illinois Governor Arrested
Today's biggest news story, across town and across the country, is the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for some fairly spectacular corruption charges.
The centerpoint of those being reported is that Blagojevich allegedly demanded compensation for the appointment to the seat in the US Senate vacated by the President-elect.
In reality, the charges are far more wide-ranging than that, and include criminal acts already accomplished, and not just planned as the Senate allegation is.
Rod Blagojevich is yet another Cook County Democratic Machine operative, and as such, most close observers of Illinois politics not attached to the Machine already assumed that Blagojevich was on his way to join many another of recent Illinois governors. Just in Your Correspondent's lifetime, three have gone to the Big House: Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, and George Ryan. Certainly, if Blagojevich should join that muster, it would have to be some sort of record somewhere.
Actually, northeastern Illinois politicians take the long ride to Oxford (Wisconsin Federal Pen) in rather large numbers. The most well-known of the recent convicts is actually not a politician, per se, in that he has not been elected. But Tony Rezko's position in the Machine, called a "fixer", is just another job opportunity for the people who've been "sent".
Your Correspondent could never hope to catch up to Chicago Tribune stalwart, political feature columnist John Kass. In some ways, a successor the wonderful Mike Royko, author of the Chicago explication "Boss", Kass has been on the point of all journalists, local and national, in keeping track of all the ins and outs of the Machine. His columns tell a decades-long tale of connections and corruption, of Outfit (as the Mafia is known around here) and Big Labor attachments and infiltrations that defy human comprehension.
The current governor, now in his second term (yes, he got re-elected... a cause for wonder, too), is a typical Machine product manufactured for national consumption.
Glib and photogenic, Blagojevich married the daughter of long-time Machine alderman Richard Mell, Patty, and was quickly started on the now-familiar path. First an Illinois State Representative, with a campaign platform that consisted of little more than stringent gun-control proposals, he was then inserted into the second point of his career path, the governorship.
Almost from the moment he took office, he was being systematically "mentioned" for the US presidency. Given his photogenic appearance and ability to speak in public with a modicum of apparent intelligence, he fit the familiar profile of Daley sendees being dispatched Washington-ward in order to do the bidding of the Mayor.
Other recent operatives issued forth along with Blagojevich include former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, a repeated Presidential mentionee who skulked from office after a large amount of stupid and conflcited public behavior got enough headlines that the Machine threw her overboard.
The most obvious of this cohort is of course, President-elect Barack Obama, who, similarly equipped with with charm, charisma, and that same ability to speak seemingly intelligently, with added bonus feature of being half-black, went on to the White House in order to help keep his Mayor out of prison, and swimming in a large pool of federal money to save the failing City and County.
Already obvious as Blagojevich's replacement is Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan. The daughter of the imperious Illinois Senate President Michael Madigan and a dutiful Machine operative, she is placeholding in the Springfield equivalent of Press Release Heaven.
The state AG really doesn't have to do much besides get on television. It goes without saying that the staggering corruption and criminality of Cook County rolls merrily along without the slightest thought of the AG intruding in any way. I can't recall a single instance of the State Attorney General's office even presenting so much as a single word about pursuing corruption on the northeast corner of the state.
Madigan is frequently mentioned as Obama's successor, too, and not "just" in the US Senate. With a clear path to the Illinois Governor's Mansion about to open before her- the current Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn, is hard to imagine as holding on to the governorship once Daley settles upon Madigan- she should be able to continue her constant stream of press releases about child-safety initiatives and senior-assistance programs as the media horde is carefully prepped and assembled into the same sort of juggernaut that placed Obama on Pennsylvania Avenue.
More will come out about Blagojevich's misdeeds, alleged and accomplished, but, mysteriously, those around him are somehow being treated in the media as surprised, and innocent, bystanders.
Already, Richard Daley's gotten on the radio to say "these things happen", and "it's just an individual thing", as if the environment in which Blagojevich's sort of activities are just ordinary, every-day, business as usual. Obama will portray himself as surprised and saddened, and Madigan will be nowhere near the investigation or the charges.
What, one wonders, an Attorney General is for, but apparently an Illinois AG need not be able to detect the sort of doings that propel the likes of Moseley Braun, Obama, Bloagojevich, and Madigan towards national eminence.
One wonders if the non-Chicagoans on the national scene who believe that the Machine's new President is something new and special will be able to make the logical connection. We will just submit that these folks should just remember Obama's predecessors like Moseley Braun and Blagojevich.
The centerpoint of those being reported is that Blagojevich allegedly demanded compensation for the appointment to the seat in the US Senate vacated by the President-elect.
In reality, the charges are far more wide-ranging than that, and include criminal acts already accomplished, and not just planned as the Senate allegation is.
Rod Blagojevich is yet another Cook County Democratic Machine operative, and as such, most close observers of Illinois politics not attached to the Machine already assumed that Blagojevich was on his way to join many another of recent Illinois governors. Just in Your Correspondent's lifetime, three have gone to the Big House: Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, and George Ryan. Certainly, if Blagojevich should join that muster, it would have to be some sort of record somewhere.
Actually, northeastern Illinois politicians take the long ride to Oxford (Wisconsin Federal Pen) in rather large numbers. The most well-known of the recent convicts is actually not a politician, per se, in that he has not been elected. But Tony Rezko's position in the Machine, called a "fixer", is just another job opportunity for the people who've been "sent".
Your Correspondent could never hope to catch up to Chicago Tribune stalwart, political feature columnist John Kass. In some ways, a successor the wonderful Mike Royko, author of the Chicago explication "Boss", Kass has been on the point of all journalists, local and national, in keeping track of all the ins and outs of the Machine. His columns tell a decades-long tale of connections and corruption, of Outfit (as the Mafia is known around here) and Big Labor attachments and infiltrations that defy human comprehension.
The current governor, now in his second term (yes, he got re-elected... a cause for wonder, too), is a typical Machine product manufactured for national consumption.
Glib and photogenic, Blagojevich married the daughter of long-time Machine alderman Richard Mell, Patty, and was quickly started on the now-familiar path. First an Illinois State Representative, with a campaign platform that consisted of little more than stringent gun-control proposals, he was then inserted into the second point of his career path, the governorship.
Almost from the moment he took office, he was being systematically "mentioned" for the US presidency. Given his photogenic appearance and ability to speak in public with a modicum of apparent intelligence, he fit the familiar profile of Daley sendees being dispatched Washington-ward in order to do the bidding of the Mayor.
Other recent operatives issued forth along with Blagojevich include former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, a repeated Presidential mentionee who skulked from office after a large amount of stupid and conflcited public behavior got enough headlines that the Machine threw her overboard.
The most obvious of this cohort is of course, President-elect Barack Obama, who, similarly equipped with with charm, charisma, and that same ability to speak seemingly intelligently, with added bonus feature of being half-black, went on to the White House in order to help keep his Mayor out of prison, and swimming in a large pool of federal money to save the failing City and County.
Already obvious as Blagojevich's replacement is Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan. The daughter of the imperious Illinois Senate President Michael Madigan and a dutiful Machine operative, she is placeholding in the Springfield equivalent of Press Release Heaven.
The state AG really doesn't have to do much besides get on television. It goes without saying that the staggering corruption and criminality of Cook County rolls merrily along without the slightest thought of the AG intruding in any way. I can't recall a single instance of the State Attorney General's office even presenting so much as a single word about pursuing corruption on the northeast corner of the state.
Madigan is frequently mentioned as Obama's successor, too, and not "just" in the US Senate. With a clear path to the Illinois Governor's Mansion about to open before her- the current Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn, is hard to imagine as holding on to the governorship once Daley settles upon Madigan- she should be able to continue her constant stream of press releases about child-safety initiatives and senior-assistance programs as the media horde is carefully prepped and assembled into the same sort of juggernaut that placed Obama on Pennsylvania Avenue.
More will come out about Blagojevich's misdeeds, alleged and accomplished, but, mysteriously, those around him are somehow being treated in the media as surprised, and innocent, bystanders.
Already, Richard Daley's gotten on the radio to say "these things happen", and "it's just an individual thing", as if the environment in which Blagojevich's sort of activities are just ordinary, every-day, business as usual. Obama will portray himself as surprised and saddened, and Madigan will be nowhere near the investigation or the charges.
What, one wonders, an Attorney General is for, but apparently an Illinois AG need not be able to detect the sort of doings that propel the likes of Moseley Braun, Obama, Bloagojevich, and Madigan towards national eminence.
One wonders if the non-Chicagoans on the national scene who believe that the Machine's new President is something new and special will be able to make the logical connection. We will just submit that these folks should just remember Obama's predecessors like Moseley Braun and Blagojevich.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Mumbai
The terror attack on the Indian city of Mumbai (or Bombay) of late November, 2008 is past and just now are some of the background facts starting to emerge from the fog of the war on the ground there.
One of the first things Americans might be inclined to ask, as are the pundits and journalists a-commenting apace, is whether the same attack can or will happen here.
I might as well cut to the chase and say "no".
There's no such thing as certainty, and a really bad judgment call on the part of a mid-level Al-Qaeda or other terror group manager might produce one anyway, but an open-air attack with small arms upon a metropolitan center? It would be hard to imagine anything stupider or more likely to fail.
There's one, simple, two-word refutation that could all by itself close down such a debate, but I shall save that for later.
The overwhelming characteristic of this attack was the dependence upon there being both an unarmed citizenry and an almost-unarmed, and unaggressive, local police and security apparatus. These attackers knew full well they faced no opposition whatsoever, a concept fully borne out in the real-life results. They were able to land, advance, control territory, move freely, and command local conditions with veritable ease. There was no opposition. They had practically nothing to fear, in terms of the success of the terror attack.
Possibly the nadir of the Indian resistance to the attack came from the moment described in the now-famous words of the photographer on the scene who lamented that the police there did not draw or fire the weapons they had, despite his urging them explicitly to do so. Further, viewing some of the local video footage that's starting to get around, it can be seen that nearly all of the police on the scene were more likely to remain behind cover than to present themselves.
All this, against a paltry score of attackers. I assume that many, as opposed to the stories that concluded there were only ten, since the implausibility factor escalates too fast to keep up with.
Historian and small-arms expert Col. Jeff Cooper once wrote about the advent of the repeating pistol that a man armed with two Colt's was a squad-level problem within a hundred yards.
In the descriptions of the Mumbai attack, we are being given to believe that a policeman armed with a 15-shot Browning HP could not at least impede somewhat a two-man fire team distracted by dozens of onlookers in a screaming mob. The final evidence, on the videos and sprawled across the sidewalks, says that this was indeed so.
The totality of the stories coming out suggest that virtually no resistance was offered to the attackers at any level once they had completed their raid on the police headquarters and up until the time the federal "commandos" completed wiping out the attack (after, shockingly, days' worth of time gone by).
Furthermore, no evidence whatsoever has suggested that any non-official Indian offered any resistance, either.
Simply put, this wouldn't happen in America. The differences between the American culture and the pallid remants of the British world could hardly be more stark. Our sophisticated Brit friends have, since the horror of the Second World War, gone far down the path of disarmament, and the consequent emasculation of their society's will to survive through self-defense.
English intellectuals and politicians boast of how they've installed peace and safety across their part of the planet, most loudly by amplifying the power and importance of the State at the consequent expense of the power and importance of the citizen. In England as in India, the official line is that there is no need for self-defense, and that the State will provide all the protection the citizen needs. Whether it be by usurping the individual's ability to choose and use medical care, to gun bans so stringent as to bring tears of joy to the eyes of Marxists and statists across the Western world, down to the actual criminalization of that most basic human right, that of self-defense, the rise of the State has sucked the self-reliance out of the people and left them helpless in the face of evil.
Ask the average American if it should be a felony including life imprisonment for using strong, and potentially deadly, force to resist a violent criminal attack inside one's own home, and you will be met with a blank stare. Yet, that is the reality of the British (and Indian) mindset, and law. Strike a rapist in your bedroom with a baseball bat, and you may expect to do serious time in prison.
With that in mind, the pictures of hundreds of helpless- in their own minds- Indian citizens, civilian and official alike, begins to be somewhat more comprehensible, if no less appalling.
America has been well-saturated with the same statism and more of it continues to pour down upon American heads every day. Enough of the old Americanism remains, though, that even the haughtiest of urban elites would, upon being assaulted in the manner of Mumbai, be calling for a reply with force.
Can anyone here imagine a group of ten ordinary American police officers standing, cowed, behind building corners and simply watching such a slaughter? I doubt it. There may be tactical considerations, and some reasonable self-preservation making a degree of caution possible, but a two-man team with AKs and grenades would not last long even in a place like Los Angeles. Transplant that same situation into most of the rest of America, that beyond the deep-urban elites, and the conclusion of the attack would be swift, brutal, and total, and not in favor of the attackers.
Let those same terrorists figuratively come ashore in a place like Pennsylvania, Texas, or Wyoming, and the police would be arriving only in time to distribute body bags and take pictures.
There's a reason the United States has never been invaded since it emerged from its infancy: Americans have a culture that still, despite all of the modernization (especially since the Television Age), prizes the individual citizen, enough to not just allow, but insist that Joe and Jane Citizen are actively responsible for both their own safety and the safety of the society at large. The preamble to the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, so often misconstrued into nonsensical statist gibberish by intellectual leftists, clearly states that the purpose of the basic human right enumerated there is "the security of a free state".
Americans, on the whole, actually believe that, and believe that a free citizen is, as a part of his or her citizenship, charged with a certain amount of responsibility as a citizen to act towards the security of that free state. Indeed, one can imagine a pack of AK-wielding terrorists landing in boat upon the shore of Lake Michigan and wreaking some sort of death and destruction. But not for long, and should they have the temerity to go beyond the urban limits, they would be meeting their fates with shocking speed.
I promised the two-word proof to this attitude and here they are, still visible in the scarred forest floor of Shanksville, Pennsylvania: Flight 93.
One of the first things Americans might be inclined to ask, as are the pundits and journalists a-commenting apace, is whether the same attack can or will happen here.
I might as well cut to the chase and say "no".
There's no such thing as certainty, and a really bad judgment call on the part of a mid-level Al-Qaeda or other terror group manager might produce one anyway, but an open-air attack with small arms upon a metropolitan center? It would be hard to imagine anything stupider or more likely to fail.
There's one, simple, two-word refutation that could all by itself close down such a debate, but I shall save that for later.
The overwhelming characteristic of this attack was the dependence upon there being both an unarmed citizenry and an almost-unarmed, and unaggressive, local police and security apparatus. These attackers knew full well they faced no opposition whatsoever, a concept fully borne out in the real-life results. They were able to land, advance, control territory, move freely, and command local conditions with veritable ease. There was no opposition. They had practically nothing to fear, in terms of the success of the terror attack.
Possibly the nadir of the Indian resistance to the attack came from the moment described in the now-famous words of the photographer on the scene who lamented that the police there did not draw or fire the weapons they had, despite his urging them explicitly to do so. Further, viewing some of the local video footage that's starting to get around, it can be seen that nearly all of the police on the scene were more likely to remain behind cover than to present themselves.
All this, against a paltry score of attackers. I assume that many, as opposed to the stories that concluded there were only ten, since the implausibility factor escalates too fast to keep up with.
Historian and small-arms expert Col. Jeff Cooper once wrote about the advent of the repeating pistol that a man armed with two Colt's was a squad-level problem within a hundred yards.
In the descriptions of the Mumbai attack, we are being given to believe that a policeman armed with a 15-shot Browning HP could not at least impede somewhat a two-man fire team distracted by dozens of onlookers in a screaming mob. The final evidence, on the videos and sprawled across the sidewalks, says that this was indeed so.
The totality of the stories coming out suggest that virtually no resistance was offered to the attackers at any level once they had completed their raid on the police headquarters and up until the time the federal "commandos" completed wiping out the attack (after, shockingly, days' worth of time gone by).
Furthermore, no evidence whatsoever has suggested that any non-official Indian offered any resistance, either.
Simply put, this wouldn't happen in America. The differences between the American culture and the pallid remants of the British world could hardly be more stark. Our sophisticated Brit friends have, since the horror of the Second World War, gone far down the path of disarmament, and the consequent emasculation of their society's will to survive through self-defense.
English intellectuals and politicians boast of how they've installed peace and safety across their part of the planet, most loudly by amplifying the power and importance of the State at the consequent expense of the power and importance of the citizen. In England as in India, the official line is that there is no need for self-defense, and that the State will provide all the protection the citizen needs. Whether it be by usurping the individual's ability to choose and use medical care, to gun bans so stringent as to bring tears of joy to the eyes of Marxists and statists across the Western world, down to the actual criminalization of that most basic human right, that of self-defense, the rise of the State has sucked the self-reliance out of the people and left them helpless in the face of evil.
Ask the average American if it should be a felony including life imprisonment for using strong, and potentially deadly, force to resist a violent criminal attack inside one's own home, and you will be met with a blank stare. Yet, that is the reality of the British (and Indian) mindset, and law. Strike a rapist in your bedroom with a baseball bat, and you may expect to do serious time in prison.
With that in mind, the pictures of hundreds of helpless- in their own minds- Indian citizens, civilian and official alike, begins to be somewhat more comprehensible, if no less appalling.
America has been well-saturated with the same statism and more of it continues to pour down upon American heads every day. Enough of the old Americanism remains, though, that even the haughtiest of urban elites would, upon being assaulted in the manner of Mumbai, be calling for a reply with force.
Can anyone here imagine a group of ten ordinary American police officers standing, cowed, behind building corners and simply watching such a slaughter? I doubt it. There may be tactical considerations, and some reasonable self-preservation making a degree of caution possible, but a two-man team with AKs and grenades would not last long even in a place like Los Angeles. Transplant that same situation into most of the rest of America, that beyond the deep-urban elites, and the conclusion of the attack would be swift, brutal, and total, and not in favor of the attackers.
Let those same terrorists figuratively come ashore in a place like Pennsylvania, Texas, or Wyoming, and the police would be arriving only in time to distribute body bags and take pictures.
There's a reason the United States has never been invaded since it emerged from its infancy: Americans have a culture that still, despite all of the modernization (especially since the Television Age), prizes the individual citizen, enough to not just allow, but insist that Joe and Jane Citizen are actively responsible for both their own safety and the safety of the society at large. The preamble to the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, so often misconstrued into nonsensical statist gibberish by intellectual leftists, clearly states that the purpose of the basic human right enumerated there is "the security of a free state".
Americans, on the whole, actually believe that, and believe that a free citizen is, as a part of his or her citizenship, charged with a certain amount of responsibility as a citizen to act towards the security of that free state. Indeed, one can imagine a pack of AK-wielding terrorists landing in boat upon the shore of Lake Michigan and wreaking some sort of death and destruction. But not for long, and should they have the temerity to go beyond the urban limits, they would be meeting their fates with shocking speed.
I promised the two-word proof to this attitude and here they are, still visible in the scarred forest floor of Shanksville, Pennsylvania: Flight 93.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The end of a lifelong habit
Your Correspondent has been reading a daily newspaper every single morning for nearly a half-century. Born in part of a habit developed as a paperboy (for the younger person out there, a boy employed by a news agency to deliver newspapers directly to homes) wrapping Tribs and Suns at 5am, and in part from an early-ingrained affection for reading, this habit is as crucial to a day-beginning as coffee or a shower.
But it's no longer the same thing. For most of that time, the words on the papers had a verity. It was non-fiction. It was technical, as might be described by the term "technical writing", a concept that holds much appeal to your correspondent, who would like to aspire to earning a living as such a scribe.
The stuff on the page, now, isn't non-fiction anymore. There may well be real facts, or at least factoids, sprinkled around, and they may indeed serve as legitimate points, topics, and stories.
But there's no way to be sure, not without checking. There may be declarative sentences in those columns of words, but taking them as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, just can't be done.
Marveling at the breadth and depth of the impact of the internet, a favorite pastime here, can never escape the biggest impact of all: the access to information, far, far more than any ordinary citizen could have ever imagined before.
Recall the Tribune's coverage of the spring, 2008 Iraqi offensive against the Sadrist holdouts in Basra. Consistent with the Democratic Party's party line, accepting blindly at face value that the whole enterprise was a smashing failure, the Trib ran two articles by their correspondent Aamer Mahdani depicting the whole effort as a near-catastrophe. There were a few sprinkles of facts, mostly amplified far out of proportion but plausible to a gullible and under-informed readership (and editorial staff), cited to illustrate the failure.Of course, all of that was nonsense; the offensive was a significant success. Like virtually every other military operation in an urban area in the history of humankind, it was fraught with error and misapprehension. That part, though, was all that was reported, by the Democrat partisans and the old time media like Mahdani and the Tribune.If I had a subcontractor or employee working for me, who did two days' worth of work that was so wrong, so far from the correct way to do the job that it was entirely useless, that person would be gone from my employment forever (even not withstanding this reporter's previous egregiously wrong work on world affairs).
Not at the Tribune. A few weeks later, a major, front-page "news" story by this same author, going through the same editors, regarding the Iranian belligerence crisis a-building, began with a full paragraph about the Iraq campaign, and what a failure it was, and capped with citing the AP's faux-combat death toll (it's actually all deaths, including vehicle accidents unrelated to combat, and represents an inflation of nearly a third).
All this comes to mind in preparation for today's Second Amendment Freedom Rally in downtown Chicago, a few hundred yards from Tribune Tower. We wait with bated breath to see what the Trib does with this story. A mass of Brady quotes interrupted by an occasional nugget about the actual event of the day? Sadly, it's what the existing pattern would lead us to expect.
Updated: The event prouduced a turnout of 600 or so, a remarkably diverse group at that. One Tribune reporter was identified by the partisans and was spoken to. Given what ensued, the reporter's comment to the rallygoer, that "this wasn't the crowd we were expecting", was highly appropriate.
What ensued was nothing. The Tribune rigorously avoided mentioning the existence of the rally at all. Buried deep in an article on a completely different topic was a very brief mention of the rally, and that was all.
Contrasted with the paper's lavish coverage of "rallies" set up by causes the Trib chooses to advocate for, such as illegal immigration, the blackout is hardly surprising.
Yet the vaunted Editorial Board insists we readers are the dummies for questioning our intellectual and moral masters in mainstream journalism.
Controlling the message comes close to controlling the history.
But it's no longer the same thing. For most of that time, the words on the papers had a verity. It was non-fiction. It was technical, as might be described by the term "technical writing", a concept that holds much appeal to your correspondent, who would like to aspire to earning a living as such a scribe.
The stuff on the page, now, isn't non-fiction anymore. There may well be real facts, or at least factoids, sprinkled around, and they may indeed serve as legitimate points, topics, and stories.
But there's no way to be sure, not without checking. There may be declarative sentences in those columns of words, but taking them as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, just can't be done.
Marveling at the breadth and depth of the impact of the internet, a favorite pastime here, can never escape the biggest impact of all: the access to information, far, far more than any ordinary citizen could have ever imagined before.
Recall the Tribune's coverage of the spring, 2008 Iraqi offensive against the Sadrist holdouts in Basra. Consistent with the Democratic Party's party line, accepting blindly at face value that the whole enterprise was a smashing failure, the Trib ran two articles by their correspondent Aamer Mahdani depicting the whole effort as a near-catastrophe. There were a few sprinkles of facts, mostly amplified far out of proportion but plausible to a gullible and under-informed readership (and editorial staff), cited to illustrate the failure.Of course, all of that was nonsense; the offensive was a significant success. Like virtually every other military operation in an urban area in the history of humankind, it was fraught with error and misapprehension. That part, though, was all that was reported, by the Democrat partisans and the old time media like Mahdani and the Tribune.If I had a subcontractor or employee working for me, who did two days' worth of work that was so wrong, so far from the correct way to do the job that it was entirely useless, that person would be gone from my employment forever (even not withstanding this reporter's previous egregiously wrong work on world affairs).
Not at the Tribune. A few weeks later, a major, front-page "news" story by this same author, going through the same editors, regarding the Iranian belligerence crisis a-building, began with a full paragraph about the Iraq campaign, and what a failure it was, and capped with citing the AP's faux-combat death toll (it's actually all deaths, including vehicle accidents unrelated to combat, and represents an inflation of nearly a third).
All this comes to mind in preparation for today's Second Amendment Freedom Rally in downtown Chicago, a few hundred yards from Tribune Tower. We wait with bated breath to see what the Trib does with this story. A mass of Brady quotes interrupted by an occasional nugget about the actual event of the day? Sadly, it's what the existing pattern would lead us to expect.
Updated: The event prouduced a turnout of 600 or so, a remarkably diverse group at that. One Tribune reporter was identified by the partisans and was spoken to. Given what ensued, the reporter's comment to the rallygoer, that "this wasn't the crowd we were expecting", was highly appropriate.
What ensued was nothing. The Tribune rigorously avoided mentioning the existence of the rally at all. Buried deep in an article on a completely different topic was a very brief mention of the rally, and that was all.
Contrasted with the paper's lavish coverage of "rallies" set up by causes the Trib chooses to advocate for, such as illegal immigration, the blackout is hardly surprising.
Yet the vaunted Editorial Board insists we readers are the dummies for questioning our intellectual and moral masters in mainstream journalism.
Controlling the message comes close to controlling the history.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Tribune continues its war on guns and the law
The Chicago Tribune carries on its all-fronts onslaught against the private possession of firearms on March 25th, 2008 with an editorial suggesting a number of things that simply aren't true.
In a fit of blogger laziness, I will just paste in my response:
To the editors:
Today, March 25th, 2008, the Tribune gave forth with an editorial taking a look, after a fashion, at the recently-argued Supreme Court case of Heller v. District of Columbia, the hugely important civil rights case concerning the Second Amendment in the Constitution's Bill Of Rights.
In it, the editorialist makes three mistakes, misapprehensions of what the underlying elements in this case are and what the law actually is.
Given that the Tribune rarely prints any sort of article on the subject of guns, gun rights, and gun law that does not contain significant errors of fact- look at the recent news article by reporter James Oliphant with its two factually incorrect elements, that the Constitution "gives" rights (it does not, and under American law, cannot), and that conventional wisdom holds that the "collective rights" interpretation of the Second is the correct one (it does not, not even among many leftists), one would not expect an editorial to be any more accurate. But accuracy is both critical and achievable.
The assertion that the opening clause of the Amendment, stating that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, somehow introduces an ambiguity into the operative clause, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, is just plain a misreading of ordinary English. The first clause illustrates why the main clause is important, but does not, under any rule of grammar taught in centuries, alter or dim its rather boldly clear meaning. Even this somewhat common misinterpretation had been pretty well cleared from most of thoughtful society. How it survives in an institution filled with people supposedly highly educated in functional English is surprising.
The editorialist goes on to posit the "militia-dependant" interpretation, the one also used by DC to some extent in its suit.
When the editorial states that the militia in American law is the "18th Century equivalent of the National Guard", it betrays a serious lack of background knowledge. The militia is no such thing. The militia is actually carefully and specifically defined in American law in numerous places, not the least of which is the Militia Act, a still-operable Federal law.
Further, there is a mountain of law and scholarship given the definition of militia in America, and it can be easily boiled down to this: the militia is any voter.By “voter”, the implication is that the person is a citizen, an adult, and has not been denied any portion of his or her citizenship (by such as a felony conviction).
The concept of militia does not require organization by any governmental agency, it does not require any specific number of citizens, and it does not separate citizens from government as two different kinds of entities. Underlying this is the main, and most important concept of Americanism, which is embodied in the all-important preamble “We, the People.” In American thought, the people are the government. When that basic concept is absorbed, then the meaning of the militia and how all citizens are part of it, and responsible for the security of the state, becomes abundantly clear.
The editorialist goes on to almost wistfully say that one wishes one could go back and query "Madison and Company" as to what they really meant. There is a mountain of evidence and scholarship on what the Founders thought, said, and meant. The first and most basic resource is the Federalist Papers.
Beyond that, this miraculous assemblage of great thinkers put out huge volumes of correspondence on the subject of the new country and the Constitution they put together.
Their thinking on the subject of an armed citizenry could hardly be clearer, and given their incredible foresight and ability to distill fundamental human rights concepts into the most practical form of freedom-based governance in history, it still takes one’s breath away today. We urge that the Tribune take a little time to look into the subject before running articles that appear on this side of the newsstand to be unaware of the foundation of America law and American thought.
Sincerely...
In a fit of blogger laziness, I will just paste in my response:
To the editors:
Today, March 25th, 2008, the Tribune gave forth with an editorial taking a look, after a fashion, at the recently-argued Supreme Court case of Heller v. District of Columbia, the hugely important civil rights case concerning the Second Amendment in the Constitution's Bill Of Rights.
In it, the editorialist makes three mistakes, misapprehensions of what the underlying elements in this case are and what the law actually is.
Given that the Tribune rarely prints any sort of article on the subject of guns, gun rights, and gun law that does not contain significant errors of fact- look at the recent news article by reporter James Oliphant with its two factually incorrect elements, that the Constitution "gives" rights (it does not, and under American law, cannot), and that conventional wisdom holds that the "collective rights" interpretation of the Second is the correct one (it does not, not even among many leftists), one would not expect an editorial to be any more accurate. But accuracy is both critical and achievable.
The assertion that the opening clause of the Amendment, stating that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, somehow introduces an ambiguity into the operative clause, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, is just plain a misreading of ordinary English. The first clause illustrates why the main clause is important, but does not, under any rule of grammar taught in centuries, alter or dim its rather boldly clear meaning. Even this somewhat common misinterpretation had been pretty well cleared from most of thoughtful society. How it survives in an institution filled with people supposedly highly educated in functional English is surprising.
The editorialist goes on to posit the "militia-dependant" interpretation, the one also used by DC to some extent in its suit.
When the editorial states that the militia in American law is the "18th Century equivalent of the National Guard", it betrays a serious lack of background knowledge. The militia is no such thing. The militia is actually carefully and specifically defined in American law in numerous places, not the least of which is the Militia Act, a still-operable Federal law.
Further, there is a mountain of law and scholarship given the definition of militia in America, and it can be easily boiled down to this: the militia is any voter.By “voter”, the implication is that the person is a citizen, an adult, and has not been denied any portion of his or her citizenship (by such as a felony conviction).
The concept of militia does not require organization by any governmental agency, it does not require any specific number of citizens, and it does not separate citizens from government as two different kinds of entities. Underlying this is the main, and most important concept of Americanism, which is embodied in the all-important preamble “We, the People.” In American thought, the people are the government. When that basic concept is absorbed, then the meaning of the militia and how all citizens are part of it, and responsible for the security of the state, becomes abundantly clear.
The editorialist goes on to almost wistfully say that one wishes one could go back and query "Madison and Company" as to what they really meant. There is a mountain of evidence and scholarship on what the Founders thought, said, and meant. The first and most basic resource is the Federalist Papers.
Beyond that, this miraculous assemblage of great thinkers put out huge volumes of correspondence on the subject of the new country and the Constitution they put together.
Their thinking on the subject of an armed citizenry could hardly be clearer, and given their incredible foresight and ability to distill fundamental human rights concepts into the most practical form of freedom-based governance in history, it still takes one’s breath away today. We urge that the Tribune take a little time to look into the subject before running articles that appear on this side of the newsstand to be unaware of the foundation of America law and American thought.
Sincerely...
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Obama-mania goes full-cult
The March 4th, 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune website included a feature entitled: "Test your Obama IQ", which contained seventeen multiple-choice questions about the most precious moments in the Obama's trek to the kingship. Each was more adoring than the last, leaving even the most fawning of the Trib's coverage of their Savior in the adulation dust.
Try this one: "What kind of car did Barack Obama buy to get him from Chicago to Boston to start Harvard Law School?"
Will there be a yellow-brick memorial of the Great One's early years, showing how he made this wonderful journey to become, wonderfully, even more wonderful?
Really, it would be humanly impossible to make this up, if one was trying to parody the collapse of morality within modern mainstream journalism.
Update: Yes, it can get worse. Also in the same online edition comes an article by Trib reporter Jason George, about a website named "I Dream Of Barack", in which participants, instead of seeking urgently needed mental health intervention, post what they say are their dreams about the Great One, with a decided tendency to include (based on the sample supplied) personal engagement scenarios (that's as polite a term as I can think of) bathing the dreamer in cascades of wonderfullness.
Your Correspondent apologizes for being unwilling to subject his own mental stability to any further shaking by actually directly perusing the dream-site. Tough is as tough does, but losing a perfectly good breakfast is more than this old nail-slugger's willing to give up for his readers.
Try this one: "What kind of car did Barack Obama buy to get him from Chicago to Boston to start Harvard Law School?"
Will there be a yellow-brick memorial of the Great One's early years, showing how he made this wonderful journey to become, wonderfully, even more wonderful?
Really, it would be humanly impossible to make this up, if one was trying to parody the collapse of morality within modern mainstream journalism.
Update: Yes, it can get worse. Also in the same online edition comes an article by Trib reporter Jason George, about a website named "I Dream Of Barack", in which participants, instead of seeking urgently needed mental health intervention, post what they say are their dreams about the Great One, with a decided tendency to include (based on the sample supplied) personal engagement scenarios (that's as polite a term as I can think of) bathing the dreamer in cascades of wonderfullness.
Your Correspondent apologizes for being unwilling to subject his own mental stability to any further shaking by actually directly perusing the dream-site. Tough is as tough does, but losing a perfectly good breakfast is more than this old nail-slugger's willing to give up for his readers.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
More on Chicagoness, and the 2008 presidential election
I'm a Chicagoan, born and bred, and still living in the County of Cook after 55 years of subjugation to the Throne of Daley Everlasting. Having also done business within the County as a remodeler/contractor, I've had some close-up perspective to fill in around my lifelong attention to things Machine.
Additionally, I am married to a daughter and granddaughter of old-time Irish Chicago policemen, a woman who also spent ten years toiling for a large, wealthy suburb as a mid-manager and who fled one Friday afternoon, exclaiming, "I'm becoming one of them!", her final tribute to government employment.
I mention all of this as background to my introduction of a point: As far as the 2008 election campaign/endless train wreck goes, a grasp of Chicagoness is critical to a full comprehension of what is about to take place. I have little doubt that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president. What's important about Chicagoness is that both are Chicagoans (to some degree) but more importantly, both are products of the Cook County Machine. Clinton grew up inches from the Chicago line, and still consorts with her old local friends.
Clinton's easy, casual corruption, a long and should-be-well-known story, comes right out of her Chicagoness and growing up under the aegis of the Daley behemoth.
But more important is Barack Obama. I submit that few who are not Chicagoans really appreciate what he is: a well-designed and manufactured product of the Daley Machine. He was built for the specific purpose of keeping his master, and his many wealthy friends, out of prison.
Second on his task list is funneling enormous amounts of money into the county, which is far beyond broke, and beyond salvation, as well, owing to the assiduous purchasing of power by the Man. Chicago is beautiful, and broke. Daley needs billions to hold on and keep the lights on. Obama is merely the front man for that effort.
There was nothing accidental about his rise to prominence. Some of the most capable political operatives in the country seized upon his potential to create a nearly irresistible force in national politics.
The creators knew his one natural asset, his incredible, practically weapons-grade personal charm, was by far the most important thing. No buzz could ever take hold without something to initiate it.
I will cite as a personal example: a close friend works for one of the giant corporations who have early on established ownership of the President-to-be. I wish I could provide better context, but I cannot chance my friend's gainful employment at his beloved line of work.
Non-political, he was an instantaneous convert upon first meeting. The transformation was truly frightening. I tried to reason: everything you believe in as a (now-formerly) self-employed person is what Obama is against!
To no avail. The pod had done its work; the neuralizer had wiped out the past; the soma had undone the skepticism.
Multiply that by thousands and it's easy to picture the Freres Daley rubbing their hands with glee.
Into their new empty vessel they allowed some sophisticated-sounding stuff they remembered from the Sixties to be poured in, just so it all sounded nice and intellectual and elite-like.
One managed election process later, they had a newly-minted state senator, who, when he could be stirred into actually taking a stand, mostly just followed the party line demanding a total ban on firearm possession. Usually, though, a lowish profile and a set of "present" votes was plenty.
When the time came to spring the creation upon the broader public and insert him into the US Senate where he could start making some real hay, one small kink developed- the normally hopelessly inept Illinois Republican Party inadvertently nominated a superior candidate. Jack Ryan was not only far more qualified, with far more intellectual horsepower (a measure of work accomplished, remember), he was every bit as pretty and nearly as charming as the Daleybot.
This impediment was quickly dispatched with though, as the Machine enlisted the aid of the local newsrag, the Chicago Tribune, which they knew, of course, could not help themselves but to assist the ascension of one of their own, a "progressive".Furthermore, knowing the deeply-ingrained institutional racism of the leftist press, the fact that the candidate could be called "black", even if he wasn't, very, made the process a slam-dunk. No modern journo could help but be an advocate for the saintly victim, the put-upon Person Of Color.
Jack Ryan was taken out swiftly with a smear campaign that probably left even Ryan stunned, and he was plenty smart enough to know what he was getting himself into.
Even if the Daleyites weren't brutal enough, the infusion of Clintonites, most especially the savage Rahm Emmanuel, should have let him know how bad it was going to be.
It was bad. The Tribune ran daily front-page screamers about suspected problems with Ryan, while judge-shopping across the country (who paid for that? The Trib? Soros/MoveOn? The DNC?) in a frantic effort to find dirt.They never actually did, but with the trumpets blaring that candidate Ryan was being investigated, and Seriously Wrong Things were sure to be found, the tide of public opinion began to slip away from the hapless Ryan. Merely having totally overshadowed the Machine product in every way imaginable was no match for the war-sized headlines.Finally the Tribsters (or whoever they hired) managed to get Ryan's divorce papers unsealed. Right there was enough to power days' worth of headlines. When the nasty bits were finally opened to public view (destroying the son's life, too), all they had was the unsubstantiated claim made by the wife's divorce attorney, refuted by Ryan, that he had asked her to have intercourse with him, her husband, in an inappropriate place.
Lacking anything other than this assertion, the Trib went so full blast that even the ordinarily-politically-savvy Trib columnist John Kass crumbled and began to whimper that maybe Ryan (who he respected and favored) should step aside.
It took about three weeks to demolish the decent Ryan. It took merely hours for the Party to appoint Alan Keyes, a talk-show-host/intellectual from Maryland, to the now-absurd candidacy. Apparently no one else was willing to step in front of the Daley/Emmanuel firing line.
Even running virtually unopposed, Obama struggled to get two-thirds of the vote in a very blue state with the assistance of a machine capable of delivering tens of thousands of “extra” votes.
Obama still has not yet won an actual, contested election (can’t count the Iowa primary caucuses). But given the nature of 21st Century media, it hardly matters. Oprah, Brian Williams, Barbara Walters, and the whole rest of the Lefty opinion-maker class has already swooned for the Obama charm, and in an environment wherein substance, stands, and common sense are just baggage to be concealed, the bandwagon has gone out on the road with nary a bump in the golden brick road ahead of it.
The Tribune has never stopped its advocacy. They did the clearing of the battlespace early on, as the current practice requires, and got most of that annoying corruption stuff out of the way and got on with the business of hyping without allowing any leaks of any position on any topic save that of "change". Now, they're content to run daily hagiographies with glamour shots of the product, usually with a microphone, smiling beneficently at the little people while expounding on how much better it's all going to be when he's running things.
In the end, it's hard not to think the Machine is getting its very own president.
Additionally, I am married to a daughter and granddaughter of old-time Irish Chicago policemen, a woman who also spent ten years toiling for a large, wealthy suburb as a mid-manager and who fled one Friday afternoon, exclaiming, "I'm becoming one of them!", her final tribute to government employment.
I mention all of this as background to my introduction of a point: As far as the 2008 election campaign/endless train wreck goes, a grasp of Chicagoness is critical to a full comprehension of what is about to take place. I have little doubt that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president. What's important about Chicagoness is that both are Chicagoans (to some degree) but more importantly, both are products of the Cook County Machine. Clinton grew up inches from the Chicago line, and still consorts with her old local friends.
Clinton's easy, casual corruption, a long and should-be-well-known story, comes right out of her Chicagoness and growing up under the aegis of the Daley behemoth.
But more important is Barack Obama. I submit that few who are not Chicagoans really appreciate what he is: a well-designed and manufactured product of the Daley Machine. He was built for the specific purpose of keeping his master, and his many wealthy friends, out of prison.
Second on his task list is funneling enormous amounts of money into the county, which is far beyond broke, and beyond salvation, as well, owing to the assiduous purchasing of power by the Man. Chicago is beautiful, and broke. Daley needs billions to hold on and keep the lights on. Obama is merely the front man for that effort.
There was nothing accidental about his rise to prominence. Some of the most capable political operatives in the country seized upon his potential to create a nearly irresistible force in national politics.
The creators knew his one natural asset, his incredible, practically weapons-grade personal charm, was by far the most important thing. No buzz could ever take hold without something to initiate it.
I will cite as a personal example: a close friend works for one of the giant corporations who have early on established ownership of the President-to-be. I wish I could provide better context, but I cannot chance my friend's gainful employment at his beloved line of work.
Non-political, he was an instantaneous convert upon first meeting. The transformation was truly frightening. I tried to reason: everything you believe in as a (now-formerly) self-employed person is what Obama is against!
To no avail. The pod had done its work; the neuralizer had wiped out the past; the soma had undone the skepticism.
Multiply that by thousands and it's easy to picture the Freres Daley rubbing their hands with glee.
Into their new empty vessel they allowed some sophisticated-sounding stuff they remembered from the Sixties to be poured in, just so it all sounded nice and intellectual and elite-like.
One managed election process later, they had a newly-minted state senator, who, when he could be stirred into actually taking a stand, mostly just followed the party line demanding a total ban on firearm possession. Usually, though, a lowish profile and a set of "present" votes was plenty.
When the time came to spring the creation upon the broader public and insert him into the US Senate where he could start making some real hay, one small kink developed- the normally hopelessly inept Illinois Republican Party inadvertently nominated a superior candidate. Jack Ryan was not only far more qualified, with far more intellectual horsepower (a measure of work accomplished, remember), he was every bit as pretty and nearly as charming as the Daleybot.
This impediment was quickly dispatched with though, as the Machine enlisted the aid of the local newsrag, the Chicago Tribune, which they knew, of course, could not help themselves but to assist the ascension of one of their own, a "progressive".Furthermore, knowing the deeply-ingrained institutional racism of the leftist press, the fact that the candidate could be called "black", even if he wasn't, very, made the process a slam-dunk. No modern journo could help but be an advocate for the saintly victim, the put-upon Person Of Color.
Jack Ryan was taken out swiftly with a smear campaign that probably left even Ryan stunned, and he was plenty smart enough to know what he was getting himself into.
Even if the Daleyites weren't brutal enough, the infusion of Clintonites, most especially the savage Rahm Emmanuel, should have let him know how bad it was going to be.
It was bad. The Tribune ran daily front-page screamers about suspected problems with Ryan, while judge-shopping across the country (who paid for that? The Trib? Soros/MoveOn? The DNC?) in a frantic effort to find dirt.They never actually did, but with the trumpets blaring that candidate Ryan was being investigated, and Seriously Wrong Things were sure to be found, the tide of public opinion began to slip away from the hapless Ryan. Merely having totally overshadowed the Machine product in every way imaginable was no match for the war-sized headlines.Finally the Tribsters (or whoever they hired) managed to get Ryan's divorce papers unsealed. Right there was enough to power days' worth of headlines. When the nasty bits were finally opened to public view (destroying the son's life, too), all they had was the unsubstantiated claim made by the wife's divorce attorney, refuted by Ryan, that he had asked her to have intercourse with him, her husband, in an inappropriate place.
Lacking anything other than this assertion, the Trib went so full blast that even the ordinarily-politically-savvy Trib columnist John Kass crumbled and began to whimper that maybe Ryan (who he respected and favored) should step aside.
It took about three weeks to demolish the decent Ryan. It took merely hours for the Party to appoint Alan Keyes, a talk-show-host/intellectual from Maryland, to the now-absurd candidacy. Apparently no one else was willing to step in front of the Daley/Emmanuel firing line.
Even running virtually unopposed, Obama struggled to get two-thirds of the vote in a very blue state with the assistance of a machine capable of delivering tens of thousands of “extra” votes.
Obama still has not yet won an actual, contested election (can’t count the Iowa primary caucuses). But given the nature of 21st Century media, it hardly matters. Oprah, Brian Williams, Barbara Walters, and the whole rest of the Lefty opinion-maker class has already swooned for the Obama charm, and in an environment wherein substance, stands, and common sense are just baggage to be concealed, the bandwagon has gone out on the road with nary a bump in the golden brick road ahead of it.
The Tribune has never stopped its advocacy. They did the clearing of the battlespace early on, as the current practice requires, and got most of that annoying corruption stuff out of the way and got on with the business of hyping without allowing any leaks of any position on any topic save that of "change". Now, they're content to run daily hagiographies with glamour shots of the product, usually with a microphone, smiling beneficently at the little people while expounding on how much better it's all going to be when he's running things.
In the end, it's hard not to think the Machine is getting its very own president.
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