Start packin' Senator Kirk

Although the election is 20 months out, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk can start planning for the next stage of his life. On Monday, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth announces her candidacy for Democratic Senate nominee in 2016, to oppose Senator Kirk in the general election.

Sadly, Kirk's current stage, member of Congress since 1991, has been squandered spending trillions on criminal wars that have killed hundreds of thousands. Kirk surveyed the carnage he championed every day in Congress and decided, "We need more war." He has taken over a million dollars from the Israel Lobby, delighted in listening to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defile the Congress with a speech to sabotage the delicate Iran nuclear talks, and signed a traitorous letter to the Iranian Mullahs telling them the Republicans will rescind any nuclear deal between Iran and America if the GOP wins the 2016 presidency. 
 

After getting a million or more in medical care to partially recover from a devastating stroke, he went on national TV to oppose Obamacare for the needy. He says "Tough luck" to all the little people who go bankrupt, suffer devastating health problems and die, simply because they don't have the silver spoon of Congresscare that not only saved his life, it enabled Kirk to continue promoting war full time.
Tammy Duckworth, deceived by the criminal Bush war cabinet to fight in Iraq, paid dearly for it with devastating injuries. She's on record opposing criminal wars. Kirk served in the military but avoided 'harm's way'. Then he padded his military resume to score points with the 'Military Always' crowd. Though caught, he sneaked into the Senate due to a woefully weak challenger.
Memo to Kirk: Tammy Duckworth is no Alexi Giannoulias.

After the election Kirk can always find work as lobbyist for the war party. That way he can continue to promote senseless war... behind a desk on K Street.

Did Art Vandelay do sign work at College of DuPage?

Carla Burkhart must be a big fan of Seinfeld, and in particular George Costanza. Whenever George needed a resume boost to get a job or win a girl, he adopted the alter ego of Art Vandelay, architect. As George, I mean Art put it, "There is no higher calling than an architect."

 Carla Burkhart, and her company Herricane Graphics, are now under local and state scrutiny for possibly mis-representing herself as an architect to get no bid contracts from College of DuPage for mundane signage work. A 2012 contract worth a cool $107,000 was written an a boilerplate architectural contract; Herricane Graphics was listed on the first page as project architect, and the 25 page contract contained the word architect 324 times. Under state law architectural contracts are exempt from no bid contracts. Since 2011, Burkhart has enjoyed $630,000 in no bid work at COD, much of it tied to the now suspicious architectural contract. Why suspicious? Burkhart is not an architect. That's OK, says COD's new $250 per hour PR firm, Res Publica, because signage requires a "high degree of professional skill", which also qualifies for a no-bid exemption under state law. That didn't stop Governor's State University and the Illinois Tollway Authority from bidding out their contracts for mundane signage. They probably got a much better deal than COD since their bidding process surely weeded out all those Art Vandelay wannabes.

How NY Times enabled Iraq war

Between September 11, 2001, and the March 19, 2003 kickoff of criminal Iraq war, the NY Times was instrumental in the successful propaganda campaign to legitimize it. Bush war cabinet puppet from Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, fed false information about an imaginary WMD program of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Judith Miller, star NY Times reporter. Miller dutifully reported these lies which somehow passed the Times smell test, 'All the news that's fit ...to print.' Bush administration war criminal Dick Cheney then went on cable news and cited Miller's reporting to justify the war. That is a successful use of propaganda that would bring a gleam to the eye of some dude named Goebbels. And here we are over 12 years later and the Times is giving valuable ink and pixels to John "Bonkers" Bolton to drum up support for another needless, murderous and criminal war, this time against Iran. That is why yesterday I called for the Times to change their motto to "All the warmongering unfit to print."

A satire it wasn't

My sleepy 6:00 AM eyes spied the last headline on my electronic edition of the NY Times and thought I must be viewing an Andy Borowitz satire in Reader Supported News. "To stop Iran bomb, bomb Iran" winked, winked the pixels. Then spotting the author, John Bolton, I knew this was no satire. John "Bonkers" Bolton, virulent neocon operative in the Bush administration, gleefully wears the bloodstains of hundreds of thousands killed in the criminal Iraq war he ...promoted with every fiber of his warmongering being. Unlike some who promoted that failed exercise in murderous American exceptionalism, he has never waivered in his commitment to launch new wars against bête noirs, large and small. I'm not going to dignify the substance of his argument that to prevent war with Iran, we must launch war with Iran. And what is worse? Failed human being John Bolton once again promoting war, or failed news organization NY Times, once again promoting war. Maybe the Times should change their motto to: "All the warmongering unfit to print."

Netanyahu fastest flip flopper ever

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set a record for fastest flip flopper in history on way to winning re-election last Tuesday. On the eve of the election he promised his extremist Likud Party supporters there would never be a Palestinian state under his watch. He further compromised the cause of peace in the area, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, by warning his supporters to turn out because the dreaded Arab Israelis were "coming out in droves." But within two days he walked backed both cynical statements, saying he was mis-interpreted. 

Too late, Mr. Prime Minister. Your action in cavorting with your paid lobby, the Republican Party, to undermine our best chance to avoid war with Iran; dismissing the only chance for peace and justice for Palestinians; and your racist, xenophobic appeal for votes, has forever changed the debate in America about your false friendship. We'll now be able to have a healthy debate about endless, $3 billion a year giveaways and sole vetoes at the UN to enable your continued subjugation, indeed destruction, of the Palestinian people.  That is the main takeaway from your Pyrrhic re-election victory.