Midterms Matter: Illinois 13th needs Rodney Davis

In Illinois 13th, incumbent Republican Rodney Davis is holding on to a slim lead.  This district needs Rodney Davis because of what he stands for, in fact the country needs more of it.

Rodney Davis stands against hate.

He stands for transparency and accountability.


His opponent, not so much.

Rodney Davis needs your support to win.  Please support him; volunteer, donate and most importantly vote.

Thank you.

Midterms Matter: In Illinois' 14th district, support Randy Hultgren

Results matter.  Re-elect Randy Hultgren for congress. The race is listed a a toss-up and Hultren holds a few points lead in the latest poll.

Check out his website, volunteer, donate and VOTE!

Thanks you.

Midterms Matter: In Illinois 6th District, please support Peter Roskam

An early September poll has Illinois 6th congressional district as a close toss-up race for the congressional seat.  Incumbent Peter Roskam has a very narrow lead, certainly within the poll's margin of error.  That's a shame, because Peter Roskam is a great representative.

His opponent is sketchy to say the least.

Contrast that with Peter Roskam:

Peter Roskam stands up for the people, consider standing up for him. Please support his efforts; volunteer, donate or at least check out his positions on his website. And by all means - vote.

Thank you.

Ides of March primary predictions

For what it's worth I'll continue to predict primary outcomes despite my tepid results so far.  It seems my strength is not my predictive abilities (to be honest, that's my day job but I ave better tools and more data directly at my disposal) but rather interpreting events and issues through my own conservative lens.

Nevertheless here's my predictions of primary victories.

On the Democratic side with Hillary Clinton leading in most every poll, seemingly a lock in each state, I'm going to pick a couple of upsets:

Ohio - Clinton will earn a narrow win but will take 88 or more of Ohio's 160 delegates

Florida -  Clinton will win handily and take a minimum of 124 of the state's 214 delegates 

Illinois - Sanders will earn a narrow win but take only 70 of the state's total 156 delegates

North Carolina - Clinton will win handily and take 81 or more of the 121 state delegates

Missouri - Sanders will earn a narrow win but both he and Hillary will wind up with 41 delegates

Hillary Clinton will able to claim victory on the night, swallowing up a lot of ground in the delegate count (420+ of 733 by my estimation) and equally importantly eating up the clock giving Sanders still less time to mount a comeback and further to travel to get there.

On the Republican side I'm going to go out on a limb as well.  Why not?

Florida - Trump will romp and take all 99 of the winner take all delegate count.  Rubio staying in as the anti-Trump option for Florida will be regarded by future historians as an all-time classic politcal blunder, both for Rubio and for the forces aligned against Trump. (I'm using aligned tongue-in-cheek here).

Ohio - John Kasich is going to pull this one out and take all 66 delegates.  The biggest loser in this scenario has to be Ted Cruz because Kasich will carry on and ensure Trump wins the delegate race come convention time. Kasich unwittingly will be enabling Trump and crippling the Republican party by splitting the anti-Trump votes and ensuring a brokered convention that will not end will for the GOP.

Illinois - Ted Cruz will upset Trump in Illinois and win up to the state's 69 delegates. The state is winner-take-all but with a twist, so Cruz may not end up with all of the delegates.

North Carolina - Trump wins this 72 delegate state, taking perhaps 2/3 of the proportional delegates with the majority of the remainder going to Cruz.

Missouri - this is going to be a too-close-to-call between Trump and Cruz. The state is a winner-take-most delegates and if my other predictions hold true, this state with 52 delegates could matter significantly.

By my math, Trump could end up with close to 200 delegates. Kasich will win his 66. Cruz' ceiling looks to be about 150 delegates. With 358 delegates up for grabs, it'll be an interesting night for the GOP.

Voting Machine fraud aids Democrats in Illinois

Really?  the Democrats need to cheat in Illinois by having machines change votes from Republican to Democrat votes?

"Moynihan offered this gracious lesson to his followers on Twitter: “Be careful when you vote in Illinois. Make sure you take the time to check your votes before submitting.”

Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti, told Illinois Watchdog, the machine was taken out of service and tested. 

“This was a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine,” Scalzitti said. “When Mr. Moynihan used the touch-screen, it improperly assigned his votes due to improper calibration.”

Uh huh.  Just one machine.  Nothing to see here folks.

The GOP doesn't need this

It's a lot easier to agree on what is wrong than what is the right way to fix it.  But it is even more difficult it seems, to agree on the root cause of the problems.  Because of that, it's best to focus on what needs to be fixed when seeking elected office and when talking about solutions keeping it simple and talking in broad strokes rather than getting specific.  It's too easy to make mistakes or have something you propose picked apart in the media.

With Republicans in Illinois' 9th Congressional district about as  popular as typhoid (A Republican has not held the seat since 1949, you'd think they need a candidate who focuses on day-to-day issues of voters in a consensus-minded way.  The district is a challenge for the GOP to say the least.

So the candidate they have put forward from the primaries is questionable at best.  Believing in God is fine, being a deeply religious person is not a problem.  But tying God directly to politics is not a winning formula, particularly in a district like the one in question.

Via Mediaite,

Illinois Republicans opted to nominate Susanne Atanus as their party’s choice in the primary for that state’s 9th district by a margin of almost five percentage points. Earlier this year, Atanus drew attention by telling The Daily Herald newspaper that as a “God-first conservative Republican” she believes many of the plights of the last several decades, including droughts, tornadoes and diseases like autism and dementia are God’s punishment for gay marriage and legalized abortions.

“God controls the weather,” Atanus said definitively in January. “God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions. We are provoking him with same-sex marriage, gay rights, civil unions.”

Audio can be found here.

Illinois primary will go to Romney

In what I predict will be a depressing development, today's Illinois primary will shake out for Mitt Romney, despite the strength of recent Santorum showings and head-to-head polling versus Obama.  It doesn't matter in the bigger picture.  Yes, there are a lot of potential delegates for Romney to scoop up today, and it will help him progress towards the nomination.  But Illinois will vote for Obama in November anyway.

14 years for Blago, not the Chicago Way.

From the cesspool that is Illinois political corruption, emerges the lengthy sentence for Rod Blagojevich - 14 years in prison for trying to get the biggest possible bribe in finding a replacement for Barack Obama's vacated senate seat.  

No doubt the sentence will be appealed but this does serve as a timely reminder that seedy backroom politics are the norm not only as far as Blagojevich is concerned but that this is the environment president Obama emerged from , and that the Democratic party was not entirely above board on finding a replacement for the seat vacated by Obama to become president.

CHICAGO (CBS) – Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. 

U.S. District Judge James Zagel handed down the sentence on Wednesday, shortly after Blagojevich made a plea for leniency, following his conviction on 18 corruption counts.

Remember how Obama's seat was filled by Blagojevich with senator Burris after Harry Reid had aid the Senate would not recognize Burris as legitimate, a day before they recognized Burris as legitimate.

Perhaps this will serve voters with a fresh reminder about the culture of corruption the country faces - an issue which has been overshadowed by the debt and jobs issues.

Helping Out Mark Kirk

In the latest Rasmussen poll in Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk holds onto a slim lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. He needs your help. He needs your vote. He deserves your vote.

Here's one reason why.



And then there's this.



And this bit of uncomfortableness;

Military Ballots Matter

The state of corruption in Illinois (or IS Illinois) calls into question the suspicious nature of the fact that in that state, where a very close Senate race is being contested, the Democratic machine could be somehow pulling the strings to ensure that military voters are disenfranchised this cycle.  A slap on the wrist and a 'oops, my bad' after  a close Democrat victory does nothing to ensure that every vote counts.  Remember that one Democrats?

From WLS-AM 890,

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the state of Illinois missed the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to members of the military and other overseas American voters as part of a new federal overseas voting law.

Cris Cray, Director of Legislation at the Illinois State Board of Elections, says not all of Illinois' 110 jurisdictions were compliant with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE).

The law requires every state to mail their absentee ballots 45 days prior to Election Day to overseas troops, government employees and other Americans who want to vote from abroad.

Cray says she is currently compiling data from each of Illinois' jurisdictions to determine which were compliant and which were delinquent. Cray said it's possible the ballots may not be counted because the state was tardy in sending them out...

Overseas ballots could be a deciding factor in Illinois' mid-term elections where recent polls show a tight U.S. Senate race between Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Republican Bill Brady has an edge over Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn for governor.

A post-electoral apology does not counter disenfranchisement of voters. This isn't about hanging chads. This about non-compliance and an apparent lack of effort to make sure that citizens of the state get to actually, you know, vote. Or worse, this is about circumventing democracy and trying to make it seem accidental. Surely this runs counter to democracy. It would seem a possibility that it is deliberately so.

Pragmatism and the Mark Kirk Win

There's a great post at RedState on the Mark Kirk primary win for the GOP in Illinois yesterday. It explains why, even though Kirk can't be classified as a true conservative, he should still garner GOP and conservatives' support up to and into the November 2010 mid-term elections.

A distilled version of the points Leon H. Wolf makes;

-Kirk was not selected by the RNC

-Kirk won more than 50% of the vote

-Kirk's positions reflect the GOP voters in Illinois

This despite his pro-abortion and Cap and Trade voting. He's by no means a perfect conservative candidate. But in the bigger scheme of things, he's better than a far left liberal Obama-clone, which is the alternative here.

As conservatives most would have issue with some of Kirk's positions. But in the grander scheme of things, pragmatism has to play a part in 2010 conservative strategy. If Kirk voted with conservatives only 50% of the time, it's still infinitely more than any Democrat would. As Wolf points out, there's also the signal of a Republican winning Obama's old seat.

I'd also add a couple of points of my own to reasons that Mark Kirk should be supported.

-he represents a major shift for Illinois if he wins, much as Scott Brown represented in Massachusetts

-if he has any sort of momentum in the state, he makes a better place to spend time and treasure than a more conservative candidate in say California, who is 20 points behind

-there's a momentum factor in politics. If winning a seat in Illinois with a weak conservative is possible, imagine what can be accomplished in 2012 and 2014

-I would take it one step further than Wolf on Kirk's abortion stance. While he is pro-choice, he is a Republican in a Democrat heartland. He will need GOP support in the future, and that means he may have to bite the bullet on some votes he doesn't want to do so on. Depending on his needs and the party's needs, abortion could be one of those issues. That's hard, cold cynicism on how Washington works, but despite our purity of intentions, politics was, is and will always be dirty business and hard ball

-There's always the remember who is on your team philosophy. A team mate needn't be team captain, or contribute as much as the other players, but they still are part of your team and deserve your support and encouragement

-Illinois will never be Texas, and the GOP will need less conservative candidates in some districts in order to compete. Better the fighting goes on within conservative leaning ranks than within a Democrat majority

-He's not that different from Scott Brown in Massachusetts and his win was important, so why not Kirk's? Every win is important, always. We can sort out the progress towards more conservative candidates in future cycles - the urgency of now, is indeed fierce.

Would I rather see a Barry Goldwater as the candidate in Illinois? Sure. But it didn't happen, and now Kirk is part of Team GOP. He deserves no less support than would any other candidate, even if it means you have to hold your nose while you help.

That's the Chicago Way

Everyone inclined to read my blog has probably already beaten this one to death already. But it bears repeating. The Chicago political machine is corrupt, hypocritical ,

(Governor Blagojevich Meets with Laid-off Workers Protesting at Republic Windows & Doors CHICAGO – Showing solidarity and stressing the importance of protecting workers’ rights, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today met with laid-off employees at the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors in Chicago. Governor Blagojevich told workers, who have been peacefully protesting at the plant since it closed on Friday, that the State would suspend business with Republic Windows & Doors and Bank of America, its lender, and the Illinois Department of
Labor would file a complaint if negotiations are not quickly concluded. ) ,

embarrassing, and Byzantine in it's twisted complexity.

How blind are people?

Not your usual Disclaimer -- Blagovich needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Any contact with anyone associated with President Elect should also be prosecuted as well. This is a horrible black eye for America. How can you expect to request that Pakistan straighten up it's act on corruption, if the President of the United States is half a step away from this type of sickening garbage?