…mostly left.
When politicos play musical chairs in Illinois, what happens after the music stops and there’s no safe place to sit?
There have been four dead in recent years, unrelated cases of suicide, different except for the acts of the common pageant: The corruption investigators call. The music ends abruptly.
Two were done in by guns, one on a beach, the other under a bridge. A third was by pills in a construction trailer.
The fourth came Friday morning during rush hour, announced by that body under that white sheet on the Metra tracks in McHenry County.
The quote in the title is from Dan Collins of POWIP, who adds a fifth (a potential Burris perjury witness) to John Kass’ list of four Illinois political figures who suddenly became unavailable to prosecutors involved in corruption investigations. While the latest one on Kass’ list is almost certainly not murder – he jumped in front of a train, carrying a “Metra manual on how to handle service disruptions in the event of a suicide” – there’s at least two on that list that are, well, iffy. And five that are darned convenient for what Kass calls the Illinois Combine.
You know, it’s not that I think that this current administration is really, deeply, personally involved in any of this; it’s that I think that this administration effectively grew up breathing the poisonous air of the Windy City, got used to it – and that it now assumes that America is merely a larger Chicago.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Moe Lane
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
Jeff Emanuel
suicide?
kyle8 (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 10:38AM EDT (link)Thats what they want you to think!
“Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty”
Kyle
Chicago's atmosphere is toxic ...
acat (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 10:51AM EDT (link)Pagano (the Metra boss) sure looks like a suicide – hard to fake someone stepping in front of a train – but the others .. all could be foul play. IIRC, the Michael Scott (Board of Ed) suicide raised a lot of questions because it was so out of character.
The danger is in thinking that Illinois can be fixed “if we just elect republicans” – but The Combine (go read Kass) is bipartisan; corruption is only marginally more likely to happen under a Dem than under a Repub. What’s needed is clean government – with lots and lots of sunshine and citizen-activists who want to keep it clean.
Whether the Land of Lincoln can get there remains to be seen.
Mew
——
Caveat Suffragator
Shades of Arkansas. Surely a front page story.
johnt Sunday, May 9th at 10:45AM EDT (link)Has Bill Clinton been brought in as an adviser? The nation’s leading and most famous sex assaulter is invaluable at times when his party needs him.
“a man’s admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him”. Tocqueville
My question would be: What was worse than
janis (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 10:46AM EDT (link)throwing yourself in front of a train? What would these people have done to this guy that could have been more traumatic than death by locomotive? Threaten his family? Would someone who was so distraught and afraid really bother to carry around a manual about service disruptions?
I smell so many rats in this woodpile that I think we should all head to Chicago with pockets full of cheese and draw them out. And then sack ‘em up and throw them into the Chicago River.
Oh, please no.
cwilson (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 12:33PM EDT (link)Even if there is anything to this, we CAN’T go there. It’s shades of the whole Vince Foster conspiracy nuttery — which did NOTHING but help the Clintons: by casting all of their opposition as tin-foil-hatters.
The Birthers are bad enough, let’s not add THIS to the list of “easy ways to diminish the standing of Teh Won’s opposition”.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! –Samuel Adams
But you've got to admit that at least 5 of them?
janis (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 12:40PM EDT (link)One, maybe two, but FIVE! That’s more than a coincidence, you know. Vince Foster, and maybe Ron Brown, that’s two. But 5?! And all involved in the same are of investigations.
We’re not nutters, cwilson. Just observant conservatives. And we can add.
Doesn't matter whether you are a nutter or not.
cwilson (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 12:49PM EDT (link)Nor does it matter whether there is anything to this story or not. This is politics.
This meme will get play: “Those unhinged teabaggers are now pulling out the Vince Foster conspiracy card, AGAIN. It didn’t work before, but since they have no agenda or principles other than unreasoning raaaaacist hatred of a black president, they’re gonna try it again”.
And it will work — and cost us seats (a few? many?) in the next election. Possibly even turn 2012 into a repeat of 1996. And quite frankly, I believe the lives of thousands, if not millions, of Americans depends on getting these irresponsible maniacs out of office and getting someone in who will defend against terrorist attacks, because “blind luck” is NOT a strategy.
Just don’t go there. Keep your eye on the ball.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! –Samuel Adams
I doubt that any one of us is going to make this a big thing, cwilson.
janis (Diary) Sunday, May 9th at 1:06PM EDT (link)But facts are facts and numbers are numbers. Just call it another instructive moment in seeing just what Chicago politics is all about.
My eye is always on the ball. And I’m hoping that it will roll right into November and crush the hopes of so many incumbents on both sides who wish for nothing more than business as usual.
cwilson, I'm terrified already, big bad media
johnt Sunday, May 9th at 1:34PM EDT (link)will mock us.
Relax, pop an aspirin, take a nap. Elections will be lost because of this?? Take two aspirin and stay in bed.
There have been a few changes since 1996. The NY Times has about fifty family members who still read it, and what the other media does now is basically cater to the already nutty left and those semi-literates who at 6:30 every evening see Truth on the TV screen, where Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson are seers.
We ought not to make such a debased, sick, industry our de facto censors. Oddly, they are the ones who continually shoot themselves in the foot, and with more people noticing.
“a man’s admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him”. Tocqueville
Suicide? Ask Rommel how he feels about that description
archer52 Sunday, May 9th at 2:10PM EDT (link)http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/rommel.htm
There are many ways to “encourage” a man to end it. I’m sure in Chicago, they have perfected a number of those methods. Four dead in a case? Can’t be an accident.