Dragons and wolves
Sunday, Dec 5, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller The So-Called Austin Mayor has deconstructed Governor Rod Blagojevich’s penchant for scoring cheap publicity points. He calls it “Blago-Mojo.” 1) A cause that no one could be against This is pretty standard political stuff, but the governor appears to be elevating it to an art form. He specializes in tackling “issues” that he has no or very little influence over, but are popular with the voting public. The So-Called Austin Mayor’s (I’d use a simple abbreviation rather than repeating his whole name, but in this case it would be the unfortunately harsh acronym “SCAM,” and that wouldn’t be nice) latest “Blago-Mojo” entry was about the guv’s reaction to the Chicago Sun-Times’ excellent report on how wounded Illinois veterans are being shafted by the Veterans’Administration. In today’s Sun-Times, the Blagovernor returns to the first page in his playbook, this time as a response to the ST investigation into why Illinois’ wounded soldiers are receiving some of the lowest disability pay in the country: What the so-called mayor didn’t include from the article might be even more illuminating, however, and is also part of a pattern. In his letter… Blagojevich called the Chicago office “hostile” and criticized Chicago VA Director Michael Olson as giving “little cooperation” to the governor’s veterans affairs staff. Here’s another Blago-Mojo deconstruction of the guv’s attack on foreign flu-shot maker Aventis for not cooperating with federal authorities: 1) A cause that no one could be against — “the health of the most vulnerable members of our population” — Check! Except that Aventis flatly denied it was dragging its feet. So, maybe there is an eventual downside. The governor flailing at imaginary dragons is one thing. But constantly crying “wolf” can have consequences.
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Kirk delivers cards to Iraq
Friday, Dec 3, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller
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Princess on the steeple
Friday, Dec 3, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller
Their objection to the song came on two levels. The unstated reason was that they just didn’t like raucous rock ‘n’ roll. The sales and marketing people had made Columbia a winner by selling mainstream American music - pop, jazz, country, gospel, the best of Broadway and Hollywood. But rock? No way. It was this thinking that had led the label to turn down Elvis Presley in 1955 and the first American album by the Beatles in 1963. Read the whole thing. Definitely worth it. Also, Grow a Brain has a bunch of great Dylan links, including some rare bootleg cuts.
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Slone Snark
Friday, Dec 3, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller This is the snarkiest thing I’ve seen on Rep. Ricca Slone to date, and it didn’t even come from Peoria Pundit.
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Friday Topinka blogging
Friday, Dec 3, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller
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Bad budget news
Thursday, Dec 2, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller The spring session will likely be long and mean. And the worse the budget situation, the longer and meaner the session will be. The state’s backlog of Medicaid payments to vendors such as pharmacies, nursing homes and hospitals has reached $1 billion, just six months after the state borrowed $850 million to clear the back payments. [Snip]
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