Our endorsements also are driven by a belief that Illinois state and local governments are on a path to catastrophe. Two decades of fast-rising spending compounded by astonishing billions in taxpayer debt, unpaid bills and unsustainable pension obligations have slashed this once-brawny state's job creation record to 48th in the U.S., and its credit rating to 50th. And what is the Illinois Senate poised to consider two days after the election? Another $4 billion in borrowing. How suspicious is that timing?
Now look around. Government here is run by Democrats for as far as the eye can see. Every statewide office. The Illinois House. The Illinois Senate. Cook County. Chicago City Hall. Democrats even dominate the state Supreme Court. (Try that sentence on a friend who lives in a state where judges are chosen on merit, not political connections.) Consider:
If you as a voter, like our editorial board, want to reverse the Illinois death spiral, then you have to stop habitually re-electing people who have mismanaged this state, tolerated cronyism and clout, and driven employers elsewhere.
That means that, come Tuesday, you have to dump a lot of incumbents.
This being Illinois in 2010, the great majority of incumbents are Democrats.
So do your job. This year we see a real opportunity to restore some balance, some competition of ideas, in Illinois. An opportunity to elect fresh blood particularly in the legislature, where House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton have logged a total of 72 years. Do you think that re-empowering them by electing their loyalists will give you anything but more of the same policies and insatiable hunger for power they yearn to perpetuate?
#3
Don't worry bout it. After speculators are encouraged to buy commodities on account of EPA devises guaranteed to raise the cost per serving and blow the agricultural market skyward, big O will propose a bailout measure for the Chicago exchange. Annnddd..you have a very own Great Lakes Czar; why so worried?
#4
Maybe the voters in these states will catch on soon.
No, the intelligent ones are leaving as quickly as they can, just like many of our forefathers and fore-mothers left the 'old country' to seek a real future elsewhere. Abandon what you can't carry. You'll be better off in the long run than desperately clinging to anchor property or investments that are going to go down with the last act as the pols impose 'exit taxes'.
#5
And the idiots like Californians will continue to elect Governor Moonbeam and Boxer and the rat's nest of Marxists, socialists, and who knows what else that populates the legislature...spending them into almost $40B worth of debt.
#6
hey! I am a voting opponent of all of the above, and a lifelong Californian. Let's see how Tuesday plays out then you can mock (for certain races, certain people) Californians because CA is two different states and the times they are a changing
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/28/2010 23:49 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Seven months after launching an air and ground offensive against the Taliban in Orakzai, Pak generals say the mountain district outside direct government control is "90 per cent" clear.
In other words, most of the job is done. Except that in June, the military announced that major combat operations were over even though festivities continued.
And the generals admit that despite their apparent success in ridding the area of thugs, Taliban leaders have decamped into neighbouring districts.
The challenge in Orakzaki, just one of seven lawless tribal districts on the Afghan border, shows the enormity of the task facing Pakistain as it bids to stamp out the menace of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militancy.
It is one of the reasons the United States last week offered Islamabad two billion dollars of fresh military aid, subject to Congressional approval.
Washington wants its ally to do more to prevent gunnies crossing into Afghanistan and fuelling a nine-year war.
Today, a Pak flag snaps in the wind once more on the ridge overlooking Kalaya base and Major General Nadir Zeb, commander of the Frontier Scouts tribal militia, is proud of what he is about to tell the press.
The military flew international news hounds up to Kalaya on Tuesday to celebrate the "success" story of Orakzai -- a large red and gold tent erected under the pine trees to honour the occasion.
"It has been a major blow for terrorists. They are not an organised structure anymore," said Zeb, dressed in his navy blue uniform and beret.
"We broke their back here...now 90 per cent of the agency is clear. Lower Orakzai is totally clear. Problems with snuffies only remain in the Mamunzai area (in the north)," he said.
On paper it makes for a nice victory in a semi-autonomous tribal belt, dubbed by Washington the epicentre of Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies fighting in Afghanistan.
Washington calls the region the most dangerous place in the world. It is where the United States has welcomed offensives such as that in Orakzai and wants to see more such operations.
Before going into battle in March, the military said Orakzai had been controlled for two years by the Pak Taliban, blamed for most of the suicide and bomb attacks that have hit the country for more than three years.
From Orakzai, Zeb says, the Taliban planned attacks all around the country.
Since 5,000 troops launched the offensive on March 24, 67 soldiers and 654 snuffies have been killed, and 250 snuffies jugged, he said.
He gave no number of civilian casualties, but Riaz Masood, the administrator of Orakzai, said about 85 per cent of the estimated 220,000 people living in Lower Orakzai had decamped the combat, mostly for the nearby towns of Hangu and Kohat.
He said that around 10,000 families have come back.
Zeb showed off photographs of the turban training camps that were allegedly uncovered, but the military told journalists that it was not possible to leave the military base on Tuesday to visit the camps.
Instead, war booty was laid out on wooden trestle-tables: about 60 shotguns, 20 mortar shells and a dozen grenades.
Then all the material needed to make bombs in the Taliban style: gas cylinders, gunpowder, ball bearings and remote-control switches.
But beyond the confines of the base, there appears to be a different story.
Pak security officials said snuffies on Tuesday attacked a paramilitary post at Tanda, three kilometres from Kalaya, killing a soldier.
Last Friday, a bomb killed six soldiers on a routine patrol.
The same officials say the Taliban also have hideouts in Dabori and Ghaljo, other than in Mamunzai in Upper Orakzai -- that the military has partially cleared roads, but not the mountains.
Asked how long it would take to "clear" Orakzai completely, Zeb was careful. "It will take some time, months," he said.
And he admitted local Taliban leaders had decamped into the districts of Khyber and Kurram in the cat-and-mouse chase that has been repeated in successive offensives since 2002, after Pakistain joined the US "war on terror".
In the same way, Taliban elements entered Orakzai after fleeing a sweeping offensive designed to clear out their headquarters in South Wazoo.
But the military's capacity is limited. Pakistain has already deployed more than 100,000 troops in the tribal belt and committed the military to relief efforts after catastrophic floods affected 21 million people this summer.
To guard against any Taliban return, the strategy has been to raise local rustics in pro-government militias or lashkars. But that does not ease the mind of Guldar Khan, a tribal leader in the nearby village of Utman Khel.
"The army restored security. Tribes have made a strong commitment to fight gunnies at all costs. We have a lashkar with 100 men, but a big problem: we don't have weapons. But without weapons, we can't even shoot birds!"
Posted by: Fred ||
10/28/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
If they would kill Gul they could begin making progress. -- just saying...
Posted by: Water Modem ||
10/28/2010 12:38 Comments ||
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Barack Obama is a pragmatist, James Kloppenberg tells the New York Times. No, he doesn't mean Obama is practical-minded; no one thinks that anymore. In fact, Kloppenberg, a Harvard historian, disparages the "vulgar pragmatism" of Bill Clinton while praising Obama's "philosophical pragmatism"...
...Professors imagine Obama is one of them because he shares their attitudes: their politically correct opinions, their condescending view of ordinary Americans, their belief in their own authority as an intellectual elite. He is the ideal product of the homogeneous world of contemporary academia. In his importance, they see a reflection of their self-importance.
Kloppenberg's thesis reminds us of another elaborate attempt at explaining Obama: Dinesh D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage." D'Souza, like Kloppenberg, imputes to Obama a coherent philosophy, in D'Souza's case "anticolonialism." It is a needlessly elaborate explanation for an unremarkable set of facts.
Occam's razor suggests that Obama is a mere conformist--someone who absorbed every left-wing platitude he encountered in college and never seems to have seriously questioned any of them. Kloppenberg characterizes Obama as a skeptic, not a true believer. We're not sure he has an active enough mind to be either one.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/28/2010 17:40 ||
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#1
Glad we have such smarties on this. Didn't Obama say something like you see yourself in me? To be as generic as possible to be all things to all people, letting the individual fill in the gaps of personality which should be there.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
