Peoria Pundit

From Wikipedia:

Triangulation is the name given to the act of a political candidate presenting his or her ideology as being “above” and “between” the “left” and “right” sides (or “wings”) of a traditional (e.g. UK or US) democratic “political spectrum”. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one’s political opponent (or apparent opponent). The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue. Opponents of triangulation, who believe in a fundamental “left” and “right”, consider the dynamic a deviation from its “reality” and dismiss those that strive for it as whimsical.

And now consider this paragraph:

Urging strict future restraint even as current spending soars, President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last week.

Emphasis mine.

Here’ an idea, Mr. President: Introduce legislation recinding those part of the stimulus package that do nothing put prop up state and local government programs. Leave only those part that put people to work by funding infrastructure project, like roads and bridges.

Take a look at the “shovel ready” Illinois stimulus projects submitted to the U.S. Conference of Mayors (organized for public consumption by Stimulus Watch). See Peoria in there? Nope.

Where is the combined sewer overflow project? Were are the sidewalk projects? The Peoria City Council debated this for two meetings.

The City of Bolingbrook managed to submit 22 separate projects worth of combined $107,900,000.

The shovel ready projects are the only part of the stimulus package that approaches good government. And Peoria seems to be left out in the good.

After a cursory glance at these projects, I don’t see any local cities on the list. No Jacksonville or Springfield projects either. In fact, there’s nothing in the 18th District that I notice.

Is Peoria being punished because Congressman Aaron Schock didn’t didn’t vote for the stimulus? It’s worth asking.

Hat tip to Chef Kevin.

*Sigh*

And I had SUCH high hopes for Obama.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush’s eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration’s bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

Laugh if you must. But criminals are such law-abiding types, it just might work.

And if it doesn’t, just make people carry an excessive amount of insurance.

Hat tip: Second City Cop.

This YouTube video makes some of the same point I am making about the stimulus package, namely that the final version is NOTHING like  it was advertised as being. And it’s not very stimulating at all.

Hat tip: Precinct Committeeman.

From a press release:

Koehler and Gordon should join Gov. Quinn’s call for Special Election for US Senate Seat

Koehler & Gordon are “Putting Price on Democracy” by not Speaking Up.

(PEORIA) Peoria County GOP Chairman Rudy Lewis is calling on Democrats Sen. Dave Koehler and Rep. Jehan Gordon to join the call of Democrat Governor Pat Quinn for a Special Election for the U.S. Senate seat held by Senator Roland Burris.

“By not stepping forward and adding their voice to the bipartisan chorus calling for a Special Election, Koehler and Gordon are putting a price on Democracy,” says Lewis.

“After ousting Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich for putting a price on the U.S. Senate Seat vacated by President Barack Obama, Koehler and Gordon are re-opening the wounds of corruption by not allowing Illinois voters to have a say in who represents them in Washington. Governor Pat Quinn announced yesterday that he recognizes that the Senate seat should be filled by the voters and not by him as Governor,” said Lewis

“Sen. Dave Koehler has had no problem voting for Blagojevich’s bloated budgets that have put the State of Illinois in a $9 billion structural deficit, but refuses to spend state dollars to allow the citizens of Illinois to elect their own U.S. Senator,” Lewis pointed out.

Lewis stated that, “had the Democrat controlled legislature agreed to fill the seat with a special election in the first place, the election could have been held with municipal elections in March and minimized the cost of the election. However, even though they failed to act in the wake of the Blagojevich scandal it should not stop Koehler and Gordon from doing the right thing now, especially after having seen the result of their bad decision.”

Lewis said that State Senator Dale Risinger and State Representative David Leitch would welcome Koehler and Gordon joining them in their call for a Special Election.

Over 90 days after Obama’s huge Election Day evening celebration “Party in the Park”, the cash strapped City of Chicago is holding on to the hope that the Obama camp will reimburse them the cost of same. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”

In late October, Mayor Daley assured that the cash-flush Obama campaign would reimburse the city for every penny spent on the rally. “We have a financial crisis,” he said at the time. “The City of Chicago could not afford $2 million on this because we’re gonna be laying off people, cutting back. That [cost] would really be unfortunate. . . . It’s a huge cost to the City of Chicago. “This is not a presidential visit. . . . This is a political event, and they’ve agreed to pay for all those services — all the expenses of that. … It’s costly, but they raised quite a bit of money. There’s no [shortage] of money in that campaign.”

Maybe there is a good reason the Obama camp hasn’t paid their bills.  Although I’m sure that people that haven’t paid their heat  bills and mortgages for over 90 days might have good reasons too.  The outcome for them, however, will be a foreclosed home with frozen pipes.

In any event, wait until Gary Sandberg gets hold of this. He is going to go ballistic!

First we have the Obama Administration, which is dropping hints all over the place that it’s going to start nationalizing banks. They deny it, but they don’t flatly rule it out. It sorta sounds like what Peoria Mayor Dave Ransburg used to do: State firmly that there are no plans to do a certain thing, like lay off his workers and send their jobs to China, and keep saying saying this — right up until the moment he announces he’s laying off workers and sending their jobs to China.

‘We have no plans to nationalize the banks …’  Yeah, right.

So the markets took a sickening nose dive on these remarks.

And its no wonder there aren’t more people going insane with fury:

UPDATE: Chris Muir couldn’t let is pass either:

Heh.

Republicans rail against government regulations on business all the time. Here’s two GOPers who want to enforce a whopping new regulation on ordinary citizens:

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.

And the name of this wonderful piece of legislation? The “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” AKA the Internet Safety Act. It affects anyone operating any device that dynamically assigns an IP address. This includes companies like Comcast. It also includes your Mom, if she uses a wireless laptop to send pictures of her grandkids.

One day, the cops could knock on her door to check her user logs. Or YOUR door. Did you clear out those logs in a reboot? Congratulations, might get charged with violating the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act.”

It’s unworkable I’ve done Internet tech support. Sometimes you HAVE to clear out all that junk to let anyone connect. I’m going to have to save this date to my computer now? I’m going to have to maintain those logs?

This is wickedly stupid legislation.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s for the CHILDREN! In the name of GOD, somebody think of the CHILDREN!

via tumblr:

prophetic