Before I get to the problem of the Illinois Republican Party, a question: how do we get our government officials in the U.S.A.? Answer: we elect them. Now, you may be wondering why I begin here with something so simple, something we all take as a given? Let me answer that…

We DON’T elect them in Illinois. At least where it concerns selection of our Republican state central committeemen, anyway. It’s shocking, I know, but in the Illinois Republican Party, the voters have NO SAY WHATEVER in who takes a seat on the state central committee for the Ill GOP.

In Illinois, even the corrupt Democrat Party elects their central committeemen by rank and file voters. But not the Republicans. In the Illinois GOP the folks that guide our entire party establishment are afforded their seat by the selection of local precinct committeemen only, not by the votes of rank and file Illinois Republicans. The people have no direct say. None.

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The self-aggrandizing denizens of Hollywood constantly scold Americans over a lack of national healthcare. It is the biggest failure of American society ever that there is no cradle to the grave program for free health care, they constantly tell us. And now, in keeping with these nearly universal Hollywood “principles,” to prove how Hollywood is far more moral than we lowly citizens of flyover country, and to show that they are better than the great unwashed in the backwaters of America… Hollywood is closing its nearly 90-year-old Motion Picture Fund hospital and accompanying long-term living facilities for aging actors.

Yep, dumping it. Walking away from the facilities for free healthcare for actors. Fuggedaboutit.

Sean Penn has advocated for national healthcare in the U.S. basing his interests upon his close personal friendship with the dictatorial, socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. The twin activists of Susan Sarandon and hubby Tim Robbins have claimed that healthcare is one of the most important issues facing the country today. Many of Hollywood’s biggest stars have been heard to lament about how healthcare is something that only the caring, you know, care about, and stuff.

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Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com seems to think that Bill Clinton’s nonexistent boogie men, “the militias,” are back. Why are they back? Because all white people are angry, racists that are mad that Obama got elected, of course. What else could have dredged up this fantasy from the depths of the liberal’s worst nightmares of the 1990s? Somehow, though, it’s a bit hard to imagine Greenwald’s main premise considering the fact that millions of those same white Americans Greenwald so fears actually voted for Obama.

But, in an effort to scold Fox News for airing Glenn Beck’s recent “War Room” segments, Greenwald indulged in precisely the same sort of behavior he claims Beck does, namely that of making wild, unsubstantiated claims about the “other” side.

Greenwald imagines that militias are again on the rise because Barack Obama is “an exotic other occupying the White House” and because the U.S. is a “declining imperial power,” these things upsetting to gun-owning, white folks, apparently. Greenwald also scoffs at the “militia movement” that Clinton talked about in the 1990s because they “completely vanished” once George Bush became president in 2000, that this shows they really had no principles he says.

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My good friend, Ken Marrero over at Blue Collar Muse, did some interesting research into where the money from Tennessee’s share of the so-called stimulus payoff ends up going. Ken notes that there is a lot of money floating around but little of it goes to stimulate the economy. In fact, it seems that the lion’s share goes to government and its grasping needs as opposed to the economy.

According to Marrero, The Volunteer State stands to have a windfall of $3,779,708,000 thanks to the pork-laden bill passed by Congress and President Obama. The list of payouts is impressive, but it really does show that only a small amount of the total could be considered an economic stimulant.

The list of recipients is instructive:

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One of the fixes that Democrats are insisting upon to save people’s homes is the idea of the “modified mortgage.” A modified loan is an offer to homeowners that have either become delinquent in payments or have become overwhelmed in interest to have their loans reinstated with certain modifications that are expected to make payments lower to the borrower. The idea is that the troubled homeowner can forestall foreclosure and stay in their home.

Sounds like a great program. The bank or mortgage holder can continue getting paid without all the hassle or foreclosing and taking possession of the house, the homeowner is not thrown out in the street and with all that turmoil avoided, society is in approximate harmony. And, with Democrats making noise on how they support these sorts of programs, they get to pretend they care about Mr. and Mrs. America down on their luck.

It’s a win-win for everybody, right?

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We have been talking about it for some time here, that most odious provision in the Democrat pushed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that eliminates the secret ballot for prospective union members. Democrats want to eliminate the secret ballot because, they say, it will make it easier to enlarge union membership without all that messy votes of conscience stuff. It’s easier, they feel, to leave prospective new members open to union intimidation to get them to vote pro-union.

So, doing away with the secret ballot is a particular goal of the EFCA. Democrats are dead set on passing this act with this anti-democratic voting measure intact.

Yet in 2001 the same Democrats that are so intent on eliminating the secret ballot for American workers were all exercised over maintaining the secret ballot for Mexican workers.

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune is often called the “Red Star” Tribune by residents of Minneapolis for its long-time, virulently left-wing outlook. Many has been the time when the editorial board of the Star Trib has carried water for political candidates shilling for big labor.

The STrib endorsed Obama for president for his supposed fiscal responsibility as well as his focus on the working classes. It is well known that big labor was solidly behind Obama and have been getting payoffs every week since the January inaugural.

But that was then. Now-a-days the STrib is not so keen on unions. In fact, it is so put off by unions that it is going to court to have its contract with its printers union annulled and asks for new terms to be imposed by the courts to save the paper from going bankrupt. Apparently, unions are fine for politicians as far as the STrib is concerned, but when it is faced with real life union demands, well, the courts are asked to save them from union excess.

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The ABC News medical unit wants to warn you about a stunning new risk to your health: fast food. Amazingly, it “ups your stroke risk” ABC tells us. Of course, we all know that eating too much fast food is bad for us, right? Well ABC has even more startling news. It isn’t necessarily only eating the stuff that’ll kill you. You see, ABC wants us to believe that just living near fast food places will kill you, too.

Now stop laughing. I think ABC is serious with this stuff.

ABC unleashed this “news” piece on February 19 with a headline that screams “Living Near Fast Food Ups Stroke Risk” and based it on yet another one of those groundbreaking “studies” that are always touted as “science.” This piece is filled with dire warnings and shocking conclusions… unless you actually read it, that is. Then you find it is really built on conjecture, maybes and assumptions instead of hard proof. So much for science.

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In a recent issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a story on the delicate political spot occupied by Senator Arlen Specter was discussed showing that he has worked himself into a can’t win for loosing situation. He’s made both sides mad with his erratic stance on both sides of the political fence.

But one quote by Bill George the head of the Penn. AFL-CIO was telling about how unions view the Employee Free Choice Act. At least in George’s case, he proves to either have no clue what’s in the EFCA, or he knows all too well and is willing to obfuscate just to get it passed.

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-By Warner Todd Huston

Want to see the front page of the news papers of many major American cities?

Take a look at Today’s Front Pages over at the Newseum.

My friend, Paul Young over at Prying1, passed this cool website on to me.

Let me first say that I am no judge of poetry. I have little knowledge of the stuff and have even less interest in it. So, for all I knew the poem that Elizabeth Alexander read during Obama’s inaugural was a great one. It seemed a bit pedestrian to me, but, like I said, what do I know?

As the days rolled onward after the inaugural ended more and more people in the know about poetry came out to say that Alexander’s poem was a bad one. Well, apparently the poem buying public agrees with those in the know because the book in which this panned poem appears is selling like crap cakes.

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In 1996 Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the welfare reforms that for the first time in 20 years caused poverty statistics for black children to fall to unprecedented lows during the modern welfare era.

In 1996, Barack Obama was against these reforms.

In 2009, with his giant welfare bill he calls a “stimulus plan,” Barack Obama has eliminated these reforms.

Watch this video to see how Obama wants to return to the days of higher poverty rates for black children.

Proof once again that Democrats want to enlarge welfare rolls, destroy the lives of citizens, make everyone poorer, and create a permanent underclass that they can count on for votes.

-By Warner Todd Huston

For the Chicago Tribune, Romney supporter turned Obama man Douglas Kmiec indulged in quite a litany of name-calling, finger pointing and demagoguery against the GOP that would have been amazing from the same man only one year ago. Hopefully questioning “The Death of the GOP,” Kmiec has shown that he no longer cares much how he is viewed, going full Democrat Partisan at this point.

In his Tribune article, Kmiec outrageously says that Republicans don’t care about “helping” the country, that they denigrate the “values, hopes and planning of others,” and have “no interest in family, work or neighborhood.” After heaping such calumny onto the GOP, he then does further damage to poor Mitt Romney by happily reminding us that Romney is a “flip flopper” that should join the Obama administration. Some friend he is!

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Kudos must go to the Wall Street Journal for standing by its principles. Haaretz reports that the WSJ pulled its sponsorship this week for a tennis tournament in Dubai after that Islamic state ignorantly denied a visa for an Israeli player scheduled to play there.

Dubai refused the visa for Israeli player Shahar Peer because of the supposed anger of Muslim tennis fans over the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza. United Arab Emirates officials claimed they feared riots if they allowed Peer to attend.

Once the decision was made known, however, the WSJ reacted well in a statement released on Wednesday.

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Greg Sargent is reporting that a coalition of conservative Democrats, the so-called “Blue Dogs,” have joined to ask Speaker Pelosi not to bring the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to the floor.

The Blue Dogs have asked Pelosi not to consider the bill until the Senate has first voted on it. As far as the Senate goes, Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he won’t bring it up for vote unless he knows he has 60 votes and that number doesn’t seem very likely at this time.

Moderate Democrats from more conservative districts are afraid that if the House takes up the bill first, two divergent versions of the bill will exist between the House and the Senate and that this confusion will give opponents of the EFCA enough ammo to hurt the reelection chances of the moderates.

“Their concern is that the House will pass something, then the Senate will take up the bill and do something different,” the senior leadership aide tells me. “The Blue Dogs don’t want to end up voting on something that won’t even become law. They’re saying, `See what can get through the Senate first, and then we’ll vote on it.’”

House Dem leaders agree with this assessment, the aide says. Asked if it would anger labor leaders, the aide said that labor might not like it but that labor leaders would “understand the dynamic.”

In any case, if Pelosi heeds this warning from moderate Democrats, we may see the EFCA stymied for a while unable to go forward. Opponents of this bill need to keep the pressure up on Democrat representatives in right to work states. It is obviously having an effect so far.

Maybe you are a homeowner with substantial acreage in your possession. Maybe you have a nice fence with which you might makes “good” neighbors of those whom you may want to keep off your land. Maybe you then built a small barn or a shed but forgot to mention it to your county appraiser and regulatory offices by applying for a building permit.

Don’t worry. You’ll still be paying through the nose. The tax man has found a new way to get you and its called Google.

The bean counters and taxmongers in Hidalgo County, Texas have found a new way to find out if you’ve built a structure for which you didn’t get a building permit if your property happens not to be visible from the streets upon which these tax men have traditionally prowled.

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Want a gun in Illinois? Fine. Then you’ll be forced to carry an expensive, million dollar insurance policy to be “allowed” to observe your Second Amendment right. At least, that will be the law if lefty gun-banner Kenneth Dunkin has any say in the matter.

Dunkin (D, Chicago) has made this attempt to undermine the Second Amendment even worse than a mere “insurance” policy. He has also slipped into this unConstitutional morass a provision that says gun owners will be liable if their gun is used in a crime after it has been stolen from them. The bill also authorizes the State Police to confiscate the firearm owner’s ID (FOID) from any citizen that doesn’t comply with purchasing the hefty insurance policy.

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Despite all claims to the contrary, President Obama has not been very vigilant about pursuing that idea of “transparency” he ballyhooed during the recent campaign. Politico reported on a host of documents, proclamations and executive orders that Obama has made in the last month and none of them were online. In fact, many were not even released at all to the press by the White House.

So, where is the drumbeat of outrage about the “secret presidency” we heard for the last 6 or so years?

Remember all the mavens of the Old Media establishment that kept claiming that Bush was too secretive? Along with the Old Media, the nutrooters also took up the claim as a battle cry against the evil Bush administration. Of course, Bush was trying to fight an intelligence war where keeping secrets means life or death for our soldiers. But, regardless of Bush’s reasons, the media and the left were constantly apoplectic over this supposed “secrecy.”

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For some thirty years Congress has built into bills a legislative device called a “pro-life rider.” These riders prevent public funding for abortion from being slipped into bills under the radar. These riders have wide bi-partisan support having resisted elimination since the 1970s.

But, now these riders are coming under threat by the new Obama administration and his pro-abortion Democratic Party cohorts. A bi-partisan group of House members, however, seek to quash the effort by Obama and his followers to reverse a thirty-year tradition, one that conforms to the majority opinion of the American electorate.

Heath Shuler (D-NC), Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and nearly 100 of their fellow House members have signed a letter urging the House majority leaders to retain pro-life riders into the coming session and beyond. (see text of letter here, .pdf file format)

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We’ve seen the Obamacized media call President Obama Lincoln, we’ve heard him called FDR and Kennedy, we’ve been informed that he gives newsers a thrill up their leg. The media has even ridiculously called Barack Obama a “light worker.” He is The One, their Obammessiah. Well, we can now add another undue adulation to the media’s obsession of finding great figures to compare Obama to: Mahatma Gandhi. At least according to the New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg he is, anyway.

In a piece from February 23, headlined “Partisanship, by the bye,” Hertzberg likened Obama’s work on the so-called stimulus bill to a “Gandhian” effort because it is going so swimmingly for The One.

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