Illinois
updated
9:01 a.m.
Contains only posts that are ID'd as local content. An explanation. Want to help improve our local content filter? Add keywords here.
As some observers noted during the severe Midwestern flooding last month, global warming carries a high price tag for certain regions of the country. A groups of studies out this week from the University of Maryland backs up this assertion, predicting that climate change will in the long term cost the state of Illinois billions of dollars. Most of the cost will come in the form of da...
Progress Illinois - 9:01 a.m.
It didn't pop up in a news article. Or even an op-ed. No, the false claim that China is drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico -- peddled at times by Vice President Dick Cheney and GOP Rep. Mark Kirk -- has now been relegated to the letters to the editor section of the Daily Herald : Why won't they allow drilling wherever there is oil in our country? Every industry in the...
Progress Illinois - 8:39 a.m.
Obama Addresses Over 200,000 in Germany Although the McCain campaign called it "a premature victory lap," Barack Obama received widespread praise for his speech to more than 200,000 Berliners yesterday in which he attempted to "burnish his image as a global statesman." Obama has generated immense enthusiasm on the continent, in part because he is seen as an antidot...
Progress Illinois - 8:06 a.m.
I’m not sure which Chicago news outlet is most pathetic this week in its attempt to garner att ention from the antics of Drew Peterson. Is it the Chicago Sun-Times for trying to peddle as its very own a Joliet Herald News story that Peterson’s neighbors wore electronic surveillance devices to try to get him to make incriminating statements about the death of one ex-wife and disappearance of ano...
Chicago Argus - Thu 10:02 p.m. - 2 clicks 
We've seen it here in Illinois and in congressional districts nationwide. Republican candidates have coalesced around the argument that increased domestic oil drilling is the answer to rising fuel costs -- and they're going to ride it all the way to Election Day. Considering that most Americans disagree with them on almost every other issue, it's not a bad tactic. After all, increasing ...
Progress Illinois - Thu 2:37 p.m. - 6 clicks
The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) released a report this month outlining which states are most vulnerable to the rising price of oil, and which are doing the most to ween themselves off oil dependence. All told, the news is encouraging for Illinois, though there is plenty of room for improvement. The NRDC finds that the Prairie State is better off than 35 other states i...
Progress Illinois - Thu 2:02 p.m. - 7 clicks
Last week, Mayor Richard Daley took the media to task for their coverage of police brutality charges, suggesting that the risk of bad headlines is making Chicago cops timid. During the rant, he said: "Remember how long you kept beating the police? That affects them. They’re human beings. They can’t take it. I’m the mayor. You can beat me up every day. That’s your job." Take a liste...
Progress Illinois - Thu 1:09 p.m. - 6 clicks
We know GOP Rep. Mark Kirk doesn't have much sympathy for the unemployed . But now he's trying to count Democratic opponent Dan Seals as a member of that population. From a Roll Call article published Monday : “After losing his bid for Congress, Seals did not return to GE Finance and was unemployed,” according to a Kirk campaign memo out last week. “Near the end of the 2006 campaig...
Progress Illinois - Thu 11:39 a.m. - 4 clicks
Nine years ago, Chicagoan Mark Emerson left his job with a large company that offered group health coverage to pursue the American dream and start his own business. He did not know that this would begin an ordeal in which he was "charged back into the stone age” as a customer of the private health insurance market. Mark and his wife now pay more in health care costs than they do on thei...
Progress Illinois - Thu 10:35 a.m. - 8 clicks
...from the other day's Democratic Strategist : Walking Maliki Back If the subject weren't so serious, it would be pretty funny. Reports this weekend that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had more or less endorsed Barack Obama's redeployment plan for U.S. combat troops in his country produced all sorts of hysteria in the White House, which is now trying to claim Maliki and Bush are in...
Naperville Democrats - Thu 7:00 a.m. - 7 clicks
That’s my “honest” reaction to learning that the Republican presidential campaign of John McCain is trying to have some fun at Democratic o pponent Barack Obama’s expense. On Thursday, the day that Obama is making a public appearance in Berlin (within site of the Brandenburg Gate, although not in front of it like presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did), McCain is airing radio spots in...
Chicago Argus - Thu 2:10 a.m. - 2 clicks
I understand Barack Obama is no longer just a junior senator from Illinois; he’s a man of the world (literally, a new Gallup Organization survey showed at least 60 percent of Europeans feel they have a stake in his election as U.S. president). I also realize the Illinois State Fair has all the characteristics of a third-rate production that is best ignored, if at all possible. Many counties acros...
Chicago Argus - Thu 2:10 a.m. - 4 clicks
Beck is one of the few artists whose new album I'll buy without hearing a single song on it first. Even a bad Beck album will be better than most of what's released in any given year. Especially right now. Maybe the problem is that Springfield radio never plays anything new and interesting (I haven't even heard Beck's new single on the so-called "alternative" station that should be the perf...
Will Reynolds - Wed 1:11 p.m. - 10 clicks
I finally see just what serious chance Ralph Nader has to get votes come the Nov. 4 elections being held for president across the country – he could be the guy who convinces 7 percent of the U.S. electorate to “Vote for Ralph” for the White House. Where do I get this 7 percent figure? It comes from the latest Gallup Organization poll, which continues to show Democrat Barack Obama in a slight 3...
Chicago Argus - Tue 10:02 p.m. - 11 clicks
A severe thunderstorm came through the Quad Cities Monday morning about 6 a.m. In the Illinois Quad Cities power was knocked out almost everywhere and had not been restored to large areas as of Monday evening and, according to the Moline Dispatch, would not be restored to many until Wednesday. I live in one of the few neighborhoods in Moline that never lost its power. I also had cable (and t...
Moline Illinois Democratic Maverick - Tue 10:04 a.m. - 11 clicks
[ Note to the uninitiated: This is satire . Thanks for the laugh, Hiram. ] Obama Leads McCain 76%-23% In National Poll - Obama Still Can Catch Up From the AP news wires today: Booneville, Ky - “Senator Barack Obama often commands large crowds of young people, college graduates and women at speeches and campaign rallies. But the central front in his war for the White House wi...
Naperville Democrats - Mon 11:31 p.m. - 7 clicks
There is bound to be somebody out there who will take offense and acc use me of exaggerating the significance of my predicament, but I can almost identify with the mood of those Chicagoans who were alive in the final days of October 1871. It was earlier in that month that a fire allegedly started in a barn managed to grow out of control and devastate much of the city, and the people of Chicago...
Chicago Argus - Mon 3:00 p.m. - 14 clicks
From what I've read about the state budget cuts, this picture best sums up what's in store for workers at IDNR, IDOT and other agencies. The Governor already put Springfield's economy on shaky ground by moving and eliminating so many state jobs. Maybe after this next round of budget cuts Springfield will qualify as an economically depressed region too and we can get some of those j...
Will Reynolds - Sun 3:08 p.m. - 19 clicks
Thanks to Jean Kaczmarek of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project for pointing me to this Bill Mego editorial from today's Naperville Sun : Election commission is challenged to explain voting machine accuracy July 17, 2008 "With all the mechanical improvements they have in the way of adding machines, and counting machines, they can't seem to invent anything to take the place of ...
Naperville Democrats - Jul 17 - 12 clicks
I’ll give the people with Starbuck’s a little bit of credit – I don’t think the Seattle-based gourmet coffee retailer intended to provoke a race war when they picked which of their Chicago-area stores would be among the 600 nationwide to be closed. But that is what they have managed to provoke with their choice. WHEN STARBUCK’S RELEASED their list of coffee shops across the country that will ...
Chicago Argus - Jul 17 - 11 clicks
Remember back just over one year ago when people sp eculated that Oprah Winfrey was going to use her influence over the nation’s female population to bolster the presidential dreams of Barack Obama? Well, if a recent survey is any indication, things are now reversed. IT COULD VERY well be Obama who uses his personal touch to reach out and convince the people of this country that the queen of...
Chicago Argus - Jul 15 - 11 clicks
The New Yorker magazine, one of the few publications that tries to give a forum for respectable writing and detaile d reporting, is the same outfit that these days thinks it is being satiric by feeding off the notions that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is a Muslim. Dropping the “S” word is how the magazine is defending the cartoon that provides the art for the cover of this week...
Chicago Argus - Jul 14 - 12 clicks
Considering how little many people pay attention to their surroundings, it is a wonder that incide nts such as what befelled Dominic DiAngi do not occur more often. For those of you who haven’t paid attention, DiAngi is the 7-year-old boy from suburban Frankfort who got hit in the skull by a stray baseball that was hit into the stands at Wrigley Field during a ball game last week. ALTHOUGH HE ...
Chicago Argus - Jul 14 - 10 clicks
This story from the Daily Herald is a few weeks old but I doubt I'm the only one who missed it. Gurnee Illinois is considering becoming a Cool City and they're starting to examine action items by forming a citizens environmental committee. Village Administrator James Hayner said converting lawnmowers in the municipal fleet from gas to propane power already is under consideration. Officials ...
Will Reynolds - Jul 14 - 11 clicks
Barack Obama would like to use the Brandenburg Gate, built originally as a monument to peace, for an address that would have his presidency work to bring the world together as one. Could such noble rhetoric be beyond Obama's political skills? Photograph provided by http://www.berlin101.com/ At what point do we start lambasting likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for rel...
Chicago Argus - Jul 12 - 11 clicks
When I wrote a commentary Wednesday night concerning the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s admission that he’d like to commit a particularly intimate act of bodily harm on Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, I didn’t use the actual word of “nuts.” For one thing, the audio I initially heard was so poor and garbled (which is why Jesse Ventura refused to comment on the matter when questioned Thursda...
Chicago Argus - Jul 10 - 14 clicks
When I was a reporter-type person at the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., I got to know Rich Miller, the publisher of a newsletter that includes much of the minutia of state government. That newsletter has evolved to include a pair of sites on the Internet that government observers consider significant reading. Which is how I came across Rich’s “Question of the Day” for Thursday, asking people to...
Chicago Argus - Jul 10 - 10 clicks
The company that provides Springfield with wind power is building a new photovoltaic solar plant in less time than it takes to build a coal plant. Unlike most large-scale solar plants, which use big mirrors to concentrate sunlight, the SunPower project will use the same solar panels that homeowners install on their rooftops. It will be built in Florida's DeSoto County and will generate up to...
Will Reynolds - Jul 10 - 11 clicks
There were two professors at Southern Illinois University whose classes I took every chance I got. One was Senator Paul Simon. The other was John Y. Simon, who died yesterday . I already knew who John Y. Simon was when I started classes at Carbondale thanks to my mom dragging me to civil war battlefields on family vacations. What made his courses so appealing was that, besides being a nation...
Will Reynolds - Jul 9 - 8 clicks
