My former Congressman, Mark Kirk (R-IL 10), is running for the Senate seat once held by Barack Obama. Mark Kirk, a pragmatic Republican, is easily one of the most qualified candidates ever to run for the US Senate from Illinois over the past 30 years; Kirk and other Republican congressmen are standing up to Illinois Democrats, whom have engaged in political spin in terms of promoting the use of an Illinois facility to house alleged terrorists. Blagojevich successor Pat Quinn and Illinois' senior senator, Dick Durbin, are trying to help out Obama with his ill-considered decision putting political pandering (i.e., the largely symbolic goal of closing down Guantanamo Bay detention center, a state-of-the-art facility already paid for with taxpayer money) over common sense by offering to establish "Gitmo North", the Thomson correctional facility in northwestern Illinois. Quinn and his heavy-spending fellow Democratic legislative cohorts are desperate for a federal bailout, to feed on the federal teat, even to the extent of accepting a disproportionate amount of the risk (up to nearly half of remaining detainees) relative to other states, suggesting the safety of Illinois citizens is for sale in the middle of a deep recession. I personally think that the existing staff at Guantanamo Bay have done an excellent job of keeping the rest of the world safe from these dangerous detainees that nobody wants.
More on the Palin Book
Sarah Palin's book goes on sale today. (I'm not sure which New York Times list her book will appear in--nonfiction or fiction. As McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt notes, "It's total fiction.") Unlike her former running mate John McCain, Sarah Palin is as much into political spin as Obama and almost every other Democratic politician. The Associated Press has ready issued a fact check on the book. The reader can check out the long laundry list; I'll simply note as an example Palin's claims of frugality with Alaskan taxpayer money are called into question with things like occasional $700/night hotel rooms and trying to claim up to $20K in her children's travel costs. Reportedly even McCain has been troubled by some of Palin's scapegoating of and unprovoked, one-sided, unfair attacks on campaign staffers. Who are the real adversaries in Palin's mind--progressives or McCain staffers? It's hard to tell. How do the people, whom knew and worked with her on a day-to-day on the campaign, see her? They reveal a side not apparent in public rallies when she was on her best behavior:
"The book fully reveals her. Dishonest, small and petty...People knew that's what she was like...It's like, 'What's she so angry about?' She was picked to be vice president of the United States. She had an exceptional opportunity. Everything is someone else's fault. There's no accountability. It's mean-spirited. But if you look at the record, it is what it is."In life sometimes you don't get a second chance to make a good impression. Sarah Palin had an opportunity not to sweat the small stuff, to be gracious, humble and forgiving. To quote the concluding lines of one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Political Cartoon
Cartoonist Gary Varvel suggests here that the upcoming KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) trial may become a circus just like the OJ Simpson murder trial, calling to mind attorney Johnnie Cochran's famous reference to the ill-fitting blood-stained glove: "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit." The real target of the cartoon is progressives, whom are so fixated on identifying enhanced interrogation techniques as "torture" they would probably on principle even let the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks go free.
Musical Interlude: One of my Favorite Love Duets
The upcoming American Music Awards is featuring an appearance by one of the most outstanding female pop vocalists over the past 25 years, Whitney Houston. My favorite song from her was released in 1991, and she had an extraordinary duet with another gifted vocalist (Mariah Carey), both likely upcoming features in this spot. But the first single that really caught my ear in 1986 wasn't so much her breakthrough hit ("Saving All My Love For You"), but a sweet duet with one of Michael Jackson's big brothers, Jermaine.
If you say my eyes are beautiful
It's because they're looking at you
And if you could only see yourself,
You'd feel the same way too.
You could say that I am a dreamer
Who's had a dream come true,
If you say my eyes are beautiful
It's because they're looking at you.
If you wonder why I'm smilin'
It's because I'm happy with you
And the warm sensations touch my heart
And fill me through and through,
I could hold you close forever
And never let you go
If you say my eyes are beautiful,
It's because I just love you so.
Now, my heart is an open door
Won't you come inside for more
You give love so sweetly now,
Take my love,
Take me completely now.
If you say my eyes are beautiful
It's because they're looking at you
And my eyes are just the windows,
For my feelings to come through,
And by far you are more beautiful
Than anything I ever knew,
If you say my eyes are beautiful (X3)
It's because they're looking at you.
