Sadly, No!

Rahm Emanuel Evades Property Tax Burden
Posted by: jbonham76
Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 11:08AM CST

Like most former/current Chicago residents, I was pretty astonished that Obama was starting his “change” administration with the quintessential face of Chicago Boss politics, one Rahm Emanual [sic]. It seemed something akin to inviting Al Capone to run the Treasury Department. Well, thanks to my old blogging home Illinois Review, we learn that high-taxing-Rahmy does not believe in paying high taxes himself:

According to the Cook County Assessor’s website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn’t exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel’s residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections’ website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home…

Why wouldn’t 4228 North Hermitage property owners Rahm Emanuel and wife Amy Rule not pay property taxes?

One reason may be because Emanuel and Rule declared their 4228 North Hermitage home as the office location for their non-profit foundation appropriately called the “Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation”. As a non-profit headquarters, they may consider their home as exempt from paying taxes.

I guess the change we can believe to see is “what is good for thee is not for me.”

Assessor’s response to Illinois Review
Thursday, Nov 6, 2008

1) The tax bill IS listed where the Emanuel home is located. They are on two lots.

2) By “for tax purposes,” I mean that this is the location associated with the PIN. But it’s the same property.

3) Yes, it was inaccurate to say that. Because it is the same house. It was listed in our records — and the Treasurer’s records — under a different address. Had you contacted either office to check this out, we could have told you that.

4) It would be highly misleading and irresponsible for you to say that, because we don’t assess property by address – we do it by PIN. And we do it because addresses change and get combined all the time, when owners divide and combine lots. Apparently, with this property, a previous owner had taken three lots and turned them into two.

Let me make one further point: Before posting this “story,” neither you nor anybody from the Illinois Review made an effort to contact the Assessor’s office to verify it. As a former newspaper reporter, I find this shocking.

Even after learning, when I emailed you at 10:46 this morning, that there were factual problems with the story, you kept it on your web site. Moreover, you deleted my effort to correct the story from the “comments” section. I’d be keenly interested in hearing your justification for this conduct.

– posted by Rich Miller

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FIN

Lieberman calls for an end to partisanship.

Also breaking: Partisans call for an end to Lieberman.

Ross Douthat, Patrick Ruffini, Greg Mankiw and David Frum all ponder why so many of the young’uns (which technically still includes me, even though I’m at the very edge of the 18-29 crowd) voted for Barack Obama. Frum and Mankiw blame the social cons, while Douthat says that economic concerns were far more of a factor. Ruffini seems to think that young people are just stupid and should probably be prevented from voting all together, though I can’t really tell.

Here’s something none of them mentioned: our current foreign policy of starting wars for no reason.

I’ll put it to you like this: in the aftermath of 9/11, I had a few friends join the army out of what they felt was their patriotic duty. Now, if a commie from Massachusetts like me had friends join the army after 9/11, I’ll wager that lots and lots of politically neutral people my age from across the country had friends who did the same thing. What’s more, I’ll bet a lot of these people were sent off to Iraq in 2003.

After it was revealed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, a lot of people who saw that their friends and loved ones had been put in danger over a non-existent threat were pissed. What pissed them off even more were apologists within the conservative movement who said that it was no big deal if we never found a single weapon of mass destruction anywhere in the country.

I don’t think you guys can begin to understand the sheer amount of damage this did to conservatism’s reputation. Sending people to war for bogus or fictitious reasons is one of the most heinous things any government can do — after all, why should anyone agree to make the ultimate sacrifice if they can’t be sure that their government is telling them the truth? If an entire generation of voters holds this against the Republican Party for the foreseeable future, I can’t say I’ll blame them. If I could pick one faction of the GOP to be forever purged from public life, it would have to be the neocons. As much as the Christian Right and the anti-tax wingnuts bug me, neither of them is as heinous as people whose sole political ambition is to start unjustified wars.

I can’t decide what part of this post-election period I enjoy more: the crazed ideological purges or the descent into survivalist paranoia. Heck, why do I have to choose?

Good News: Obama’s Election Spurs New Appreciation For Constitution

[…]

Barack Obama is a gun-banner at heart, and there is every reason for Americans to doubt his campaign’s more moderate rhetoric when compared to his actual record.

Buy guns, America. It’s good for the economy, good for the development of our nation’s moral character, and our last bulwark against tyranny.

While you’re at it, consider hitting the Paypal link in the sidebar to the right as a belated blogoversary present. What you think that SLR 106FR is going to buy itself?

So after begging his readers into buying him a brand-spankin’ new grill in the aftermath of Hurricane Humberto last year, Confederate Yankee is now using the impeding tyranny of the Obama administration to beg his readers to send him cash so he can buy more guns. Talk about self reliance!

Part of me thinks Confederate Yankee is just a very clever liberal guy who stokes conservatives’ fear and paranoia to get free stuff. If that is the case, then he’s twenty gajillion times smarter than I’ll ever be.

ABOVE: Ben Shapiro models active
wear

---

America’s Worst Former Law Firm Associate™, formerly known as America’s Worst Law Student™ and otherwise known as Ben Shapiro, has lots of time on his hands now, so he has very graciously taken the time to give us the word on why Barack Obama was elected:

The Great Election of 2008 is over. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. Now is the time to ask what this election was about.

Here’s what this election was (set ital)[sic] not (end ital)[sic] about: Barack Obama.

What, then, was the election actually about? Basement mold? Late-onset acne? Boner pills? Cheeto breath? Apparently, yes.

This election was about one thing and one thing only: Americans’ puerile need for unity through self-congratulatory, cathartic membership in a broad, transformative political movement.

Ben uses this elitist, arugula-infused vocabulary to convince you that, although it’s only been a couple of years since his mom caught him wanking in the upstairs bathroom, he’s not himself “puerile” but “manly, mature and wise.” (Of course, don’t ask Ben to explain why this “need for unity” doesn’t just as accurately describe all those wingnuts who are card-carrying members of the Holy and Blessed Church of Saint Ronnie, Champion of Free Markets, Comforter of the Wealthy, Vanquisher of Commie Rat Bastards, and Defender of Unborn Zygotes.)

[Obama] embodied the need of the American public for unity by hearkening back to the ultimate unifying feature of American life: third-grade slogans. He spouted Hope and Change. He told us, “We’re All Americans.” He told us, “Yes, We Can.”

Although Ben obviously has a vivid memory of his relatively recent experiences in the third grade, he appears to have forgotten, say, the third-grade slogans of St. Ronnie and St. Nancy: “Morning in America,” “Just Say No,” “Thousand Points of Light,” “City on a Hill,” “Bring Down This Wall,” and “Facts Are Stupid Things.”

[Obama] spouted Hope and Change. He told us, “We’re All Americans.” He told us, “Yes, We Can.” From any other politician, it would be ridiculous drivel. From a black candidate, it was inspiring.

I mean, we were expecting him to say “We Is All Americans” or “Yes, We Be” or “A Fried Chicken in Every Bucket and A Pimped-Out Hummer For Every Crib.”

They implied that if we voted against him, we were engaging in racial hatred; some supporters even implied America would undergo a race war if he lost. That’s the last thing we wanted.

Ben seems to have slipped off message here. Just a few paragraphs before we were voting for Barack because of a “puerile need” for unity. Now, it seems we’re voting for Obama to avoid seeing our white women raped in our own front yards by big black bucks with the sweat on their naked backs glistening in the light of our flame-engulfed homes. You just knew that, sooner or later, Ben was going to have to go there, didn’t you?

Oh my. Oh, oh my:

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace: What must our enemies be thinking?

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

Are you kidding? Sewage treatment plants are actually useful! What the hell has Bush ever done?

According to recent Gallup polls, the president’s average approval rating is below 30% — down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”

Then he tried to screw us over by placing our Social Security money into the stock market. What a guy.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Bush can eat me.

Eight years ago, Bill Clinton left this country prosperous and at peace. Come January, Bush will leave the next president with two unfinished wars, a massive amount of debt, a recession and a major financial crisis. Not since Herbert Hoover have the good fortunes of this country so deteriorated under the watch of one president. As I have said before, history will not vindicate Bush. Rather, it will take a big heaping dump on his face.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, I’m drinking your tears.

Now this is a project that’ll help win over swing voters in 2012: ending the careers of fellow Republicans who had the audacity to criticize Sarah Palin for being completely ignorant about everything:

Operation Leper

Posted by: Erick Erickson

RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper.

We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details.

We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.

It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.

Why does St. Sarah command such dogged loyalty, you ask? Michelle Malkin explains:

[T]wo fundamental conservative stands she took mattered greatly to me: She vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy.

In other words: she’s shot a gun and she didn’t abort her children. In Malkinworld, that’s good enough to be preznit some day!!!

The GOP civil war is only beginning, my friends. I personally hope the Malkinites succeed in purging every last educated person out of the Republican Party. 2012 will see a Sarah Palin-Joe the Plumber ticket. Allah be praised, I will never stop enjoying this.

Dear wingnuts conservative friends,

No presidential candidate in my lifetime has inspired me as much as has our new President-Elect, Barack Obama. On election night, in the spirit of unity and conciliation, he asked us to “resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics”. He asked us to remember the values we all share, and he promised that he would be the leader of all Americans, not just the ones whose support he already has.

In this same spirit, I wish to refrain, at this historical moment, from pointing out that your first major prediction for the post-Obama world — that angry coloreds would riot in the streets — has utterly failed to come true. Now is not the time for blame. Now is the time to put one another at ease, not to put one another on edge.

Therefore, I would like you to know: I have bought a hat.

ABOVE: A hat.

My pledge to you, in the spirit of President Obama’s desire that we be well and truly one nation, is this. Should any of the following things take place during the Obama administration:

1. The institution, at a federal level, of sharia law throughout the country
2. The nationalization and centralization of the production economy
3. Race-based land reform
4. The mass seizure of legally acquired firearms
5. The widespread arrest and imprisonment of conservative talk show hosts
6. The institution of any laws which prohibit criticizing President Obama
7. The destruction of Israel at the hands of an Obama-led American military
8. The introduction of any kind of mandatory national service
9. New terror bombings perpetrated by William Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn
10. The taxation of earned income and/or capital gains at a rate within 25% of its peak during the Eisenhower administration
11. The nomination of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, or Louis Farrakhan to a Cabinet-level position
12. The disappearance of Christianity as the dominant religion in America

Then I will eat the hat.

This I pledge to you in the spirit of bipartisanship, and God bless America.

Above: Wingnuts soon to be interned in Hope Camps

While I’m here wedging the server open through sheer stubbornness and attention span, I should like to say that if this is another of those tedious DDOS attacks, the truth will not be supressed.

Site hosed, awesome animated GIF removed, hundredth attempt to pry into the server with a butter knife and post this post.

See teh GIF at Shabooty.com. Stupidest thing ever written by a human is here — but not for long, because they’re already trying to top it.

Update: It would seem that we are under attack by the Obot thugs and their fearsome “thug thizzle.”