* On to the Scribble Live-enabled coverage. BlackBerry users click here. Everybody else can just kick back and watch. We’ll be posting more videos to this feed today as well…
* As I already told you, I participated in the State Fair celebrity harness race again yesterday. I “showed.” I’ve never won that race, but I’ve always finished in the money.
* The CREDO SuperPAC has a new survey of the 8th Congressional District race conducted by Public Policy Polling…
* Of the questions asking whether stuff that Joe Walsh said would make them more or less likely to vote for him, here’s what appears to be the strongest response…
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn calls outspoken Rep. Joe Walsh “the worst congressman in America.”
The Democratic governor didn’t mention Walsh by name Wednesday, but he was talking about congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth’s opponent. She’s running against Walsh, a Republican from McHenry.
The Walsh campaign quickly hit back, calling Quinn “the worst governor in the country presiding over a state with 8.6 percent unemployment and a massive unfunded pension liability.”
Quinn, spokeswoman Erin Rapp said, “should spend more time focusing on how to solve Illinois’ fiscal crisis and get Illinoisans back to work rather than share his unwarranted opinions on the congressman.'’
* Related…
* Joe Walsh Doubles Down On Radical Islam Comments
* Quinn Calls Walsh “Worst Congressman in America”: Erin Rapp, a Walsh spokesperson, brushed the criticism aside, telling Chicagoist that Walsh “completely agrees with Gov. Quinn that there is no place in Illinois for hate crime and religious intolerance.”
* VIDEO: Rep. Walsh Response to Homegrown Radical Islamic Terrorism
* For those of you who’d like to actually listen to Gov. Pat Quinn’s State Fair speech in its entirety, you can watch this video, provided by our good friends at BlueRoomStream.com. The governor’s remarks begin at about the 14-minute mark…
* But the only people who could actually hear the speech were those with electronic access to his microphone. This is Part 1 of what everybody actually heard yesterday…
* Democrats booed by unions at State Fair: Congressman Danny Davis, who was with Quinn, said state Democrats treat unions better than Republicans. “If they think they’re going to get more consideration from that group than they get from Pat Quinn and Mike Madigan and John Cullerton, I don’t know what planet they’re living on,” Davis said.
* Protesters boo top Democrats at Illinois State Fair: Raucous protests by members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, angry about proposed wage and pension cuts, hounded the Chicago Democrat all day. They taunted the governor as he entered the annual Democratic County Chairmen’s breakfast Wednesday morning and later as he chomped on a pork chop on a stick in the Pork Patio. The spectacle resulted in one of the shortest Governor’s Day rallies in recent memory.
* Governor’s Day at the State Fair just not Quinn’s day: “Thank you for that warm, warm welcome,” the governor said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. His speech was interrupted by cheers for a union-sponsored plane overhead, pulling a banner that read “Gov. Quinn — Unfair to Workers.” … During his remarks, he insisted the people of Illinois were “with me” and took it directly to his pension-reform critics, almost waving a figurative middle finger at the union-dominated crowd. “I inherited a lot of problems that I didn’t create, but I’m here to repair and resolve them, reform them. And there may be some people perhaps in this audience even who aren’t pleased with some of those decisions, but I want to ask the people of Illinois today: Do you think it’s right that in 1992, some state worker who retired on a $60,000 pension — that’s 1992 and a $60,000 pension — that 20 years later, under the current pension rules that need to be reformed, that very same person is getting $120,000 from the taxpayers? I think most taxpayers and parents in Illinois, particularly those who are concerned about education, want to make sure we invest more money in education of our children and our students in Illinois than we put into the pension piggyback for retired state workers,” he said.
* Unions spoil Quinn’s day at state fair over pension: Not exactly the picture of unity the party sought to project on Democrat Day at the state fair. The protest provided a vivid display of the high political stakes surrounding an election-year special legislative session Quinn has set for Friday on reforming public employee pensions that could result in financial pain for government workers. Organized labor is a vital political constituency in the Democrat-controlled state. But the unionized show of force, which included workers wearing green shirts that featured messages like “Pensions are a promise” and “Governor Quinn’s Illinois, the new Wisconsin” resulted in Democrats cutting short their afternoon program at the fairgrounds. The governor left via a back exit.
* Illinois workers heckle Democratic governor over pension cuts: “They claim Illinois is broke and they blame it on us,” Roach said. “But no one’s talking about the hundreds of millions given to corporations. State employees are made out to be the villains. We’re made out to be greedy, overpaid, underworked - the cause of the problem. But that’s just not the case.”
* Video: Illinois public pension protest: State employees in Illinois say they want their state jobs and state pensions, but also say the government needs to figure out how to pay for them.
