By Steve Rhodes
1. Obama Dares Republicans To Block His Coming Jobs Package.
This can’t end well.
2. Obama To Unveil Ideas For Jobs, Growth In September. Because you don’t introduce a new product in August.
3. Social Security Wrongly Declares 14,000 People Dead Each Year.
Maybe they’re dead on the inside.
4. “Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard made waves when he stated during his new monthly WBEZ call-in show last week that recess would be in every Chicago elementary school by the 2012-13 school year,” Rebecca Harris reports for Catalyst Chicago.
“The statement followed the district’s May release of a guide to restoring recess to schools.
“However, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll says that schools will be able to opt out of the district’s ‘mandatory’ recess policy. ‘It is mandated that recess return to the middle of the day, but there is an opt-out for schools,’ Carroll wrote in an e-mail.
“Communications staff did not respond to questions about what the criteria would be for opting out. Instead, they referred questions to the district’s ‘Developing A School Recess Plan‘ guide, which does not say that recess will be mandatory in fall 2012. Nor does it list opt-out criteria for schools.”
5. “State Rep. Dan Burke [Ed’s brother] represents a Southwest Side district where three out of four residents don’t speak English and less than one in 10 has a bachelor’s degree,” the Sun-Times reports.
“So when it was time to hand out a free college education to someone under the century-old legislative scholarship program, whom did Burke pick?
“Not someone who grew up in the working-class district straddling the Stevenson Expressway near Midway Airport. Instead, the 10-term lawmaker chose a young, Downstate woman he described as a member of his state government ‘family.'”
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Gee, maybe the Cook County State’s Attorney ought to investigate. Where is Anita Alvarez these days?
“Ald. Ed Burke and wife, state Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, hosted a re-election campaign reception for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez at their home last week,” Stella Foster (!) reports. “Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Pat Quinn, Speaker of the House Mike Madigan and City Clerk Susana Mendoza attended.”
Oh.
6. “Dubuque’s Telegraph Herald published a front-page editorial, suggesting to the president that he could have skipped the campaign-style trip and ‘sent the savings to Dubuque County and Northwest Illinois, which were inundated by flash floods less than three weeks ago’ but didn’t get federal assistance,” Maureen Dowd writes.
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“The headline in the Telegraph Herald Tuesday morning proclaimed ‘Welcome, Mr. President’ in advance of President Obama’s rural economic forum nearby,” USA Today reports. “It was all downhill from there.”
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Reading the editorial requires a subscription. Just think of all that traffic they just missed out on.
7. “In Cannon Falls, Minn., the president compared negotiating with House Republicans to negotiating with his wife,” Dowd also writes.
“‘In my house,’ Obama noted, ‘if I said, You know, Michelle, honey, we got to cut back, so we’re going to have you stop shopping completely. You can’t buy shoes; you can’t buy dresses; but I’m keeping my golf clubs. You know, that wouldn’t go over so well.’
“In Decorah, he said: ‘Everybody cannot get 100 percent of what they want. Now, for those of you who are married, there is an analogy here. I basically let Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But, at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, Give me my little 10 percent.”
Um, wow.
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“If the differences with the leading Republican candidates wasn’t clear enough, Obama took them all on at once on the issue of taxes,” USA Today reports. “He noted at both his stops Monday that in a debate last week, all the Republican White House hopefuls said they wouldn’t raise taxes even if they were cutting spending by 10 times as much.
“‘Ten-to-one ratio, and nobody was willing to take that deal,’ Obama said in Decorah. ‘And what that tells me is, okay, you’ve gotten to the point where you’re just thinking about politics; you’re not thinking about common sense. You’ve got to be willing to compromise in order to move the country forward.'”
Perhaps. Or perhaps the Republicans know, like Michelle, that there is no reason to accept a 10-1 ratio when they can easily hold out for 15- or 20-1. After all, we have a president who has never read this.
8. Rahm Not Tough Enough To Face Mental Health Advocates.
9. Leader Of The Pack . . . And 19 Other QBs Worth Drafting.
10. 30,000-Volume Collection Now Open To Public.
11. Leinie’s Rolling Out The Barrels.
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Posted on August 17, 2011