Marathon Pundit: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

(Video) Hagel: If confirmed, I intend to learn about the Defense Dept.

Wait, I thought that RINO Chuck Hagel was picked by President Obama to run the Defense Department because he was knowledgeable about our military. However, the former senator was chosen by Obama because so he can say it was a Republican who dismantled the most powerful military the world has ever known.

"A number of questions were asked of me today about specific programs, submarine programs, different areas of technology and acquisitions, and our superior technology," Hagel recalled.

"I've said I do not know enough about it," he added "I don't. There are a lot of things I don;t know about. If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do. I will have to. But at the same time, I would never think that this, as I said earlier, is about me or I will be running anything. I will be the leader. I:ll be responsible. I will be accountable, but I've got to rely on the right teams, the right people to bring those people together. And again, it’s accountability and responsibility. I would stop there, if that gives you some sense of how I would intend to do this business."

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Video: The Imperial President

My good pals with the Conservative Campaign Committee is raising money to place its Imperial President ad on as many local TV stations as possible on Super Bowl Sunday. Click here to contribute--but the deadline to do so is tomorrow at 4:30pm.

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Barack Obama

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1930s postcard: Holy Trinity Cathedral in Liepāja, Latvia

Latvia's third largest city is Liepāja, which is on the Baltic Sea in the Kurzeme region.

During Soviet times it was highly militarized and foreigners couldn't visit. When I was in Latvia in 1998, a spoke with a man who was emigrated from there to the United States after World War II. His brother still lived in Liepāja and when he came visited Latvia the closest he could get to it was the capital, Riga, which was 150 miles away. The brothers were only able to meet there.

I've haven't visited Liepāja, but Mrs. Marathon Pundit has been there many times.

Pictured below is another postcard from her late godmother's collection. This one is of Liepāja Holy Trinity Lutheran Cathedral. Construction of the cathedral commenced in 1742, it was consecrated 16 years later.

The German name for Liepāja is Libau. On the upper right-hand corner of the card it reads, in German, "Libau-Heil. Dreieinigkeit-Kirche." In English that is Liepaja Holy Trinity Church.

Inside the cathedral is the world's second largest unreconstructed organ. It has 141 stops and 7,000 pipes.

This postcard, as with the others in this series, was composed in German. But this one has a date--1938.

A year later, Germany invaded Poland and the following year the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic States. And of course in 1941, the Nazis invaded the USSR.

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Friends of Reagan's Chicago Home blog: Obama library story "utterly inaccurate"

Marathon Pundit at
the Reagan home in 2011

In the Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home blog, Mary Claire Kendall, who has put more effort into the saving the apartment where Ronald Reagan lived in 1915 than anyone else--except for the late Redd Griffin--writes that the Washington Times Communities article linked by the Drudge Report is "utterly inaccurate."

That library story has gone viral--which is unfortunate. While the University of Chicago, which owns the six-flat at 832 E. 57th Street, filed for a demolition permit for the Reagan home through a surrogate so a parking lot can be built for the U of C Medical Center's New Pavilion, it has nothing to do with the Obama presidential library. Kendall cites "informed sources in Hyde Park."

President Obama has not even selected a city for his presidential library. While the University of Chicago is lobbying to be the site for that facility, Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood and developers at the former US Steel South Works plant on the Southeast Side have expressed interest in the library as well, as has the University of Hawaii.

Kendall urges interested readers learn more by reading her January 25 Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home blog post.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Broken: Illinois delays bond sale because of latest credit downgrade

As James Thurber once wrote in a baseball short story, "You could look it up." Among the three major credit agencies, Illinois' credit rating has been downgraded 11 times since Governor Pat Quinn succeeded his two-time running mate, Rod Blagojevich.

Today the state announced that it will delay the sale of $500 million worth of bonds--citing unfavorable market conditions.

Whoah. In regards to the last downgrade, when Standard & Poor's lowered Illinois' credit rating to A-, it also gave Illinois a negative outlook and said that another downgrade was possible. The Prairie State's rating is just two notches above "junk."

Illinois should sell those bonds now--before the next downgrade.

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illinois politics

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Home confinement: George Ryan released from halfway house

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan's stay at West Side Chicago halfway house was brief--just a few hours. He's headed home to Kankakee, the Chicago Tribune is reporting. Halfway houses can be scary places--as his former aide Scott Fawell told ABC 7 Chicago last week. Worse in fact, than the minimum security prison Ryan was released from this morning.

Oh, the Trib reports that Ryan already knew he was headed home--where he will serve the remaining five months of his sentence.

The GOPer was enmeshed in a licences-for-bribes scandal while he was Illinois' secretary of state.

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Saving Reagan's Chicago home: How you can help

Chicago Reagan apartment on
January 6. 2013

This morning the Drudge Report linked to William J. Kelly's article on the only Chicago home of Ronald Reagan. The University of Chicago owns the building and through a surrogate has applied for a demolition permit of the six-flat at 832 E. 57th Street where the Reagan family lived in 1915.

The apartment is across the street from the University of Chicago Medical Center's New Pavilion. The Med Center wants to replace the apartment with a parking lot. Several nearby structures have already been torn down.

Kelly's article is incorrect on one item. While the U of C is lobbying to be the site of the Barack Obama presidential library, to my knowledge not even a hypothetical location has not been chosen, let alone a city. Kelly's musing that the parking lot across from the New Pavilion could end up being used by visitors to such a library is wrong. I'm familiar with the geography of the neighborhood--one block west of the Reagan home is Washington Park, one block south is the university's football field. There is another medical facility one block east. And of course the New Pavilion is across the street. If the presidential library does end up on the University of Chicago campus, it won't be any closer than several blocks from 832 E. 57th Street.

Washington Park--New Pavilion center

Michelle Obama is a former senior officer of the Med Center and White House Senior Counsel Valerie Jarrett is the former chair of its board of trustees. The president is a former instructor in constitutional law at the university.

The Reagan home needs to be saved. My suggestion is to turn it into a museum about the 40th president--with a focus on the work of University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics--Reagan put Friedman's theories into practice and turned around a moribund American economy. And I believe the Chicago home should be added to the Ronald Reagan Trail.

To support the cause to save the Chicago Reagan home, tax deductible contributions can be mailed to:

Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home
P.O. Box 3772
Washington, DC 20027-3772

Click here to read the corporate purpose statement for Friends' of President Reagan's Chicago Home.

Next week--February 6--would have been Reagan's 102nd birthday. Let's win one for the Gipper.