Posted on Monday, February 8, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Chris Berman's ESPN contract is up soon and, supposedly, other networks are after him.

Sports by Brooks says DirecTV wants him and ESPN would like to keep him, but "will not break the bank".

The Big Lead says the NFL Network wants him.

I watched NFL Countdown on ESPN for years, but I have switched to the NFL Network pregame and, as I have noted previously, have become a Red Zone addict. If Berman goes to the NFL Network, I will go back to ESPN.

Berman is only 54, but it seems like he's 94. His schtick is tired and he has overexposed himself (in commercials and such, I mean).

He hasn't jumped the shark, he's done a triple lutz over the shark.

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Posted on Monday, February 8, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

This is from Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit who was in Quincy for the September 12 event:

America's prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it's different. It's not America's churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It's America's politicians and parties. They've grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they're supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Read the rest of it by clicking here.

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Posted on Monday, February 8, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Did last week really happen?

When the long-suffering New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl is the most-believable thing that happened, then that tells you what kind of week it was.

(Time out...what was the deal with all of the SB commercials with guys in their underwear? Is Ashton Kutcher in charge of creative?)

When a razor-thin GOP primary for governor gets bumped off the front page, you know it is strange.

So Scott Lee Cohen decides to end his political career at a Chicago tavern during the Super Bowl after some "gentle prodding" from House Speaker/State Democratic Chairman Mike Madigan.

It seems many pundits and pols are pointing fingers of blame regarding Cohen. Everybody deserves their share...the party, the media, the voters (congrats to the 377 people in Adams County who voted for Cohen. The first person to confess to voting for him and admitting it to me gets a QNO t-shirt) and an early primary which didn't allow for enough time to property vet the candidates.

I met Cohen following a meeting he had with the Historic Quincy Business District last month. He had trouble looking me in the eye while talking to me. I had a tough time taking notes because he was all over the place. I ended up not even writing a story about his visit.

But I had no clue about him other than he was a pawnbroker who was basically self-financing his own campaign. But I knew he had a shot because of that money and because State Rep. Art Turner and State Sen. Ricky Hendon were going to split the Chicago vote.

Now there is all sorts of speculation about who will succeed Cohen on the ballot, although the Dan Hynes camp says the man who lost in the Democratic gubernatorial primary is not interested.

It's the call of the Democratic State Central Committee now though. If Madigan wasn't involved before, you know he will be now.

Here were the five most read stories on QuincyNews.org from last week:

Dillard to resume campaigning on Monday: This story picked up a nice Instapundit link because I asked the senator about his appearance in the Obama commercial and how the president was using him as an example of a Republican who was getting hammered for working with him.

Macomb Farm King store gunman takes his own life: A compilation of links from the Quad Cities, Macomb and Peoria sources.

City hands over FBI report on 'Hackergate': Apparently, some people still do care.

Adams County group has concerns over wind farms: So this group wants zoning and the other group doesn't. Steel cage match!

Illinois governors races too close to call: This followed the Brady/Dillard saga. Still nothing final although Brady has a slight lead.

This is for my son Alex, who was too depressed to talk last night: Roger Staubach had a post-season record of 11-7 as a starter and came off the bench in the 1972 playoffs to beat the 49ers, so his record is really 12-7. Of course, The Dodger also has two Super Bowl wins. He also would have beaten the Colts in Super Bowl V if Tom Landry hadn't been so stubborn and stuck with Craig Morton (okay, I know I'm laying it on thick with that last comment).

I know, Montana and Bradshaw have better post-season records and more Super Bowls, but this is my idol vs. my son's idol, Peyton Manning.

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Posted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

From tennessean.com: "How's that hopey, changey stuff workin' out for ya?" Sarah Palin asked 1,000 or so supporters who paid $300 apiece to attend her speech at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

"Put your faith in ideas. I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by one leader or operation," Palin told the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. The small government movement is "a ground-up call to action that's forcing both parties to change the way they're doing business. This is about the people."

Click here for the entire story.

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Posted on Friday, February 5, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Who would win in a no holds barred, steel cage match between ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Lt. Gov. candidate Scott Lee Cohen?

And yes, no holds barred means Cohen can juice up if need be. And Blago could use his favorite guitar to hit Cohen over the head (Wasn't there a WWE character who did that?).

Anybody that looks at this state's politics over the last decade (Who am I kidding? We could go back to when the dead voted for JFK.) could pitch all of it to a Hollywood producer and get laughed out of the studio.

A former governor in his seventies goes to jail?

An unknown community organizer with a funny name goes from state senator to U.S. senator to our first african-american president in four years and along the way defeated the country's most popular female politican and a war hero?

The governor with a funny name (who came in after governor who went to jail) was arrested after he (allegedly) tries to sell the U.S. Senate seat of the man who became president? And he gets recorded by the feds talking like he's trying out for The Soprano's: The Musical.

Then he gives the senate seat to a guy who already has his resume on his tombstone...and he's not dead yet.

That governor gets impeached and the new governor, who made his bones as a gadfly and outsider, wins a primary over a scion of the state's Democratic machine?

And the impeached governor goes on to write a book, perform Elvis impersonations for hire and reality television shows.

A state with a Democratic stronghold has a chance to lose both the governor's mansion and the senate seat which was once held by the current president just two years after he was elected president?

And I haven't even gotten to Scott Lee Cohen. His story may be the best of all.

Pawnbroker with a shady past spends $2 million of his own money while neglecting his child support payments to win a primary and is only a general election win away from being one heartbeat away from being governor.

I gotta get a book deal.

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Posted on Friday, February 5, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

This is really, really awful...so of course, I'm linking it.

Click here to watch a satirical cartoon.

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Posted on Thursday, February 4, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Click here and watch this report. WBBM's Mike Flannery reads off a list of things from the court documents, says "Dude!" and sticks the mic in Cohen's face. I wasn't taught this technique at Mizzou, but it is great.

Then when asked how the media and the Democratic Party missed this, Flannery said "Bottom link is, we didn't take this guy seriously."

Flannery and Capitol Fax's Rich Miller gave Mark Brown of the Sun-Times props as the only one who had written about this before the election.

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Posted on Thursday, February 4, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

When I got a tip about this from a loyal reader/friend I said "No they didn't!"

But it appears to be the case. Click here for more.

It's a twitpic from the NBC cafeteria by a guy named Questlove. He's got 1.2 million Twitter followers and I've never heard of him.

Personally, I love fried chicken and jalapeno cornbread. I don't think I've ever had a collard green.

If FOX had done this, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be fighting for air time.

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Posted on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

An amazing night in both governor's races. We still don't know who won. Brady's surge caught all of the pundits by surprise.

Can a ticket with two downstaters at the top win? That's a tough thing to imagine.

And now the race for the U.S. Senate really begins. Kirk-Giannoulias will be the most watched U.S. Senate race in November.

How much does Obama work to keep the seat he used to occupy in Democratic hands?

Here's some analysis from the gang at sj-r.com.

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Posted on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

My wife, the special education teacher, hates the "R" more than she hates the "F" word.

From the excellent blog of Jake Tapper of ABC News: Last August, (White House COS Rahm) Emanuel "showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides," the Journal's Peter Wallsten reported. "Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul. 'F-ing retarded,' Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items."

Tapper says Emanel has apologized to the Special Olympics brass.

More from Tapper: (Tim) Shriver heads the Special Olympics, which has launched a campaign urging people to stop using the term "retarded" as an insult, "Spread the word to end the word."

Former Alaska Gov, Sarah Palin, who has a son with Down's Syndrome, was offended by Emanuel's reported remark, posting on her Facebook page: "Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the 'N-word' or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities - and the people who love them - is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking.

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Posted on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

I just got off the phone with someone who I talk politics with on a semi-regular basis and always on Election Day and he kind of shrugged (yes, I sensed his shrug over the phone) and said "We've never been here before".

A February primary in an off-year election cycle was what he was referring to. This primary was moved up for Obama in 2008. Who knows why it wasn't moved back to its regular date in March. I guess the state has had other things to worry about, or maybe the Legislature really wanted Pat Quinn gone sooner rather than later (although that doesn't matter. He's still in charge until the new guy is sworn in).

Shame on me. Governor Quinn can still win this thing. Heck, anybody can win this thing.

I've been checking blogs and Websites around the state. Turnout is dismally low all over. More judges than people who have voted so far.

But what does it say when one of the GOP front runners (who is also the former party chairman) and the House GOP Leader show up on Election Eve and only one member of the Quincy media decides to go cover them? Of course, Adam Andrzejweski can't get coverage in Chicago when he's got a legendary former world leader there to visit, so who knows.

Please make sure you vote before 7 p.m. I'll be blogging and linking through most of the evening, starting about 7:30 p.m.

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Posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Now this is from the Adam Andrzejewski camp's internals, but his polling shows he's within two points heading into Tuesday's primary, jumping from being about eight points back last week.

Our friend Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit breaks it down here.

Sources also are telling me that some of the state's Republican leadership has been making private phone calls this weekend to Adam, offering full support if he wins. Maybe they are doing that for all of the candidates though. I'm not sure about that.

This could be the sort of like a good old NASCAR race (back in the days when they really raced) with the front four cars banging on each other so much that they bite it in turn four and the fifth place car grabs the checkered flag.

Folks, there is between 15 and 20 percent of the GOP voters who are undecided among six candidates with less than 48 hours until the polls open. Anybody who thinks they know what is going to happen doesn't really know what is going to happen, but most of the journalists who I've talked to and who cover the state capitol are guessing Sen. Kirk Dillard will win come Tuesday.

But Adam A. has been getting a ton of play in the conservative online media, including the visit from former Polish leader Lech Walesa where Walesa endorsed Adam. Amazingly, most of the Chicago mainstream media blew off a visit by one of the men who was key in ridding Communism from Eastern Europe.

At the final gubernatorial debate, the other candidates trained their guns on Adam. During Dillard's visit to Quincy, he said governor is not an entry-level job, which was a shot at Adam and Dan Proft, the two conservatives who can call themselves outsiders without blushing. A source told me Dillard's internals show him to be in "good shape", but offered no other details.

Bill Brady's campaign is doing the same thing. From the Brady camp: "There are 3 Chicago-style insiders: Ryan, McKenna and Dillard. There are 2 candidates with many of the same positions as Bill but who are too untested and inexperienced: Adam and Dan. And then there is one...Bill Brady's campaign is about making lives better for Illinois families and giving Illinois citizens back their government. Tea Party values. It's about a clean break from the past, not about the status quo."

Seems like everybody is after that Tea Party vote these days.

On Tuesday, we'll see if Illinois is ready to support yet another guy with a funny name for governor while hoping for better results this time around.

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Posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

From stltoday.com: Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts says he opposes federal funding for abortions, but thinks women should have the right to choose whether to have one. Brown tells ABC's "This Week" that he disagrees with his party's position that the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion should be overturned.

As a matter of fact, he got the endorsement from Massachusetts Citizens for Life, who were convinced he would vote for a pro-life Supreme Court judge. Click here for more on that.

This piece in politicsdaily.com was entitled "Did pro-lifers sell their souls for Scott Brown?" before editors softened it to "Roe v. Wade supporter Scott Brown, improbable pro-life hero". 

From the David Gibson piece: "What faithful Catholic did not ponder late Tuesday night that the election of Scott Brown to the 'Kennedy seat' was God's judgment on Kennedyism," Austin Ruse, head of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, wrote in a celebratory, if not exactly kind-hearted, column. "After all, Brown's election is the precursor to the final deathblow to Kennedy's lifetime project to nationalize health care. And though Brown did not run as a pro-lifer, he ran to kill that monstrous bill, which would have been the largest expansion of baby killing in our post-Roe history." In a similar vein, the Susan B. Anthony List trumpeted Brown's victory as "a WIN for women" and for the pro-life cause.

For what it is worth, Brown is Protestant.

More from Gibson: At the Catholic blog Vox Nova, Henry Karlson generated a heated discussion when he wrote that pro-life supporters of Brown could now be considered "fake pro-lifers": "It is one thing to suggest people can make prudential decisions, it is another for groups founded on the issue of life to give direct support to candidates whose policies are completely contrary to the pro-life cause. Any advocacy group which supports a candidate directly in contradiction to their advocacy has been compromised. What happened? When and how did many of the pro-life movement become compromised? Can those pro-life groups which, as a group, promoted and supported Brown be taken seriously again?"

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Posted on Saturday, January 30, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

So Senator Dick Durbin spent Friday passing out pork with Governor Pat Quinn. Billions for high-speed rail because, of course, the state is so flush with cash for such a project.

Thousands of jobs? Really? I've asked the governor's office for a complete breakdown of the 6,000 jobs they are touting. We'll see what that says.

From ILLINOIZE: During the last 12 months, Durbin and Quinn successfully paired-up to drive home the importance of obtaining financial assistance for high-speed rail upgrades and the sale of a state-owned prison in northwestern Illinois to the federal prison system to house soon-to-be transferred Guantanamo Bay detainees.

But despite the partnership and compliments the two have given one another, Durbin said he would not be adding his name to Quinn's list of endorsements.

"I haven't endorsed any statewide candidates," Durbin said following a presentation to nearly 130 people crammed into the Amtrak station (in Alton). "I've decided to stay neutral. I have a lot of friends running."

Click here to see the rest of the story and Durbin video.

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Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 by J. Robert Gough

Are you freaking kidding me?

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

But airplanes are okay if they fly into buildings, right?

It's just amazing we haven't found this guy. Plenty of blame to go around on that.

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