McHenry County Blog

A column from former Congressman Joe Walsh:

Obama is Lying

During the debt ceiling fight in 2011, when President Obama came up with the stupid sequester idea — which Congress went along with and I voted against — Obama went on TV and said that if the debt ceiling was not raised, he wouldn’t be able to make Social Security and Medicare payments.

I went on TV and said “The president is lying,” because he knew darn well that even if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, there was plenty of money to take care of our Social Security and Medicare obligations.

He’s doing the same thing now, and we Republicans are afraid to call him on it.

He’s traveling the country trying to scare the American people by saying that if the sequester goes through, flights will be endangered, food safety will be impaired, parents won’t be able to send their kids to day care, and a terrorist attack is more likely to happen.

The latest was yesterday when he sent his Education Secretary out to say that because of the sequester,

“Teachers all over the country were already getting pink slips.”

When asked to give an example, he could only give one, in West Virginia, and those dismissals had nothing to do with the sequester.

Arne Duncan was lying.

We Republicans are too nice.

The Democrats bring real knives to a knife fight.

We bring Power Point presentations.

This has to change.

The president isn’t being flexible.

He’s not being silly.

He and his cabinet are LYING to the American people.

We need to say it.

He is saying untruths to scare the American people over to his side.

He never, ever wants to cut government spending. That’s not who he is.

Call it what it is: The president of the United States is lying.

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See “Where’s Joe Walsh When We Need Him?”

See YouTube “Walsh to Obama: Quit Lying“

2008 was the first year since the Republican Party was formed that a Democrat carried McHenry County.

Barack Obama got 51.8% of the ballots cast to John McCains’s 44.5%.

This year, the Republicans took McHenry County.

Mitt Romney won 53.3% of the vote, while Obama took 44.5%.

In raw numbers, 131,179 voted for either Obama or McCain in 2012.

That compares to 137,133 casting ballots for one of the two major parties in 2008.

Almost 6,000 fewer votes were cast this year than four years ago.

In 2008. it was

• Obama – 72,288
• McCain – 64,845

In 2012, the totals were

• Obama – 59,691
• Romney – 71,488

Total turnout can be seen below:

• 2008 – 140,002 or 70.22% of those registered to vote
• 2012 – 134,323 so far or 66.1% of registered voters

Back during the early days of McHenry County Blog I had a couple of talks with Kenneth Conner, who had a view of the Tony Rezko-Barack Obama real estate deal.

Now, Conner has written a book that people interested in the inside story will want to read.

A press release about the book follows:

“Rezko for Radicals” Book Highlights Obama Calling the Purchase of his Mansion a ‘Fire Sale’

Rezko for Radicals includes a Tony Rezko prison letter in which Rezko informs his trial judge that feds wanted him to cooperate against Barack Obama

In his new book “Rezko for Radicals,” author Kenneth J. Conner, formerly a real estate analyst at Tony Rezko’s bank in Chicago, presents a carefully researched and insider accounting of Rezko’s real estate transactions involving Barack Obama.

Conner details a meeting with the FBI in October 2007 in which he advised agents that the Rezko lot next door to the Obama Mansion was worth a maximum of $500,000. Rezko paid $625,000. Later it became known that another appraisal valued the Rezko lot at $490,860. (Cook County Case # 2008L011470.)

As reported by the Washington Times (p3, November 4, 2008) and online, Ken told the FBI agents he believed Rezko’s purchase of the lot for more than market value amounted to a payoff, bribe or kickback from Tony Rezko to Barack Obama of at least $125,000.

On the same day Rezko bought the lot, Obama bought the mansion next door from the same seller for $300,000 below asking price.

Ken advised the FBI that of the $300,000 reduction, at least $125,000 is attributable to Rezko’s overpayment.

Obama previously called his mansion purchase “a market based transaction” and insisted that that “everybody who’s looked at it has acknowledged as such” until going off script in an extended no-cameras interview and calling it “a fire sale,” as reported on March 3, 2008 by Lynn Sweet, Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Also while researching for Rezko for Radicals the author found a court file prison letter from Tony Rezko in which he complains to his trial judge that the feds are being “overzealous” in “pressuring” Rezko to cooperate against Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama. (Case # 05 CR 691 – 4 in the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois; letter filed June 9, 2008)

Soon after the letter Rezko agreed to cooperate against Blagojevich.

Please order the new book Rezko for Radicals from Amazon here.

http://www.rezkoforradicals.com
@rezko4radicals

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The 2008 photo of President Barack Obama’s mansion is printed with permission of Marathon Pundit.

A press release from the polling firm We Ask America:

Favorite Son

There’s been a surprising amount of conjecture coming our way lately about the possibility of Mitt Romney inching closer to Barack Obama in Illinois.

We’ve not paid much attention that that conjecture until it started to be uttered in some national circles and a handful of reporters we respect called to ask if there was anything to it.

There isn’t.

We polled 1,198 Illinois likely voters last night. Following are the weighted head-to-head results and a regional breakdown:

Poll type: Automated Date: October 30, 2012 – Participants: 1,198 Likely Voters – Margin of Error: ± 2.95%

Poll type: Automated Date: October 30, 2012 – Participants: 1,198 Likely Voters – Margin of Error: ± 2.95%

	Barack Obama	Mitt Romney	3rd Party
ALL VOTERS	57%	41%	2%
Chicago	82%	16%	2%
Sub. Cook	66%	31%	3%
Collar Counties	44%	55%	1%
Downstate	46%	51%	3%

For those of you uninitiated in the Illinois political scene — outside of following the hijinks of our politicians in Popular Prison Monthly — Chicago and Suburban Cook County each account for about 20% of the vote in the Land of Lincoln.

No matter how well Romney does in the five suburban “collar counties” or downstate (the rest of Illinois outside of Chicago, Suburban Cook & the Collars), the huge hunk of burning love that his home base provides the president simply cannot be toppled.

Some of our projections include turnout scenarios that put Romney as close as 10 points from the lead, but there is no way that Chicagoland is going to abandon it’s Favorite Son.

Obama even carried McHenry County four years ago.

Meanwhile, a political mailing from Peter Roskam, the man who beat Tammy Duckworth the last time she ran for Congress, surfaced.

It urges people to vote early.

While Roskam recommends voting early at the Crystal Lake City Hall, there are plenty of other early voting locations throughout McHenry County. You can find a list here.

One of the most politically active unions in McHenry County is Local 150 of the Operating Engineers.

I guess most people wouldn’t be surprised that its members are supporting the re-election of Barack Obama.

There are other signs as well:

The local and legislative candidates with signs near the Local 150 Banquet Hall are the following candidates, all Republican:

• Bonnie Thompson Carter, Lake County Board
• JoAnne Osmond, State Representative
• Linda Petersen, Lake County Board
• Mary McClellan, McHenry County Board
• Mike Nerheim, Lake County State’s Attorney

When a village decides there are to be no political signs on the rights-of-way of their streets, it should not be surprised if people see if there is a partisan angle.

Today McHenry County Blog shows two examples in the neighborhood of Fox River Grove’s castle of signs of Democrats that somehow have escaped the notice of both the Public Works Department and the Police Department.

Here’s another one for the Demcoratic Party candidate for State Senate:

Now why might the village employees leave standing signs for a Democrat and an Independent backed ever so heavily by Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan?

Perhaps the signs in front of Fox River Village President Robert Nunamaker might provide an explanation.

In a comment under a Republican sign theft story is posted this comment from Becky Deignan, who lives in Cary:

“The Obama yard sign from my front yard was stolen again this year.

“I decided to protest instead of playing cat and mouse games.

“Please click to see. http://www.facebook.com/becky.deignan

“I will send Cal a photo of this that he can post. My comment is below.

In place of a stolen Barack Obama sign people driving past this home will see three protest signs: “Fear & Repression,” “Resting Place of Stolen Obama Sign,” and ‘Unbecoming and Un-American.”  There is also a “No Trespassing” sign.  Maybe there is a hidden camera, too.

“Yes! I absolutely realize that elections are not won by yard signs.

“However, yard signs do indicate that a person has given some thought to a candidate, and is willing to be counted as a supporter…perhaps, even be open to debate, and tha…t is a good thing.

“It strengthens and enhances conventional wisdom.

“It makes us stronger. No one has a lock on the truth.

“Even simple signs are a form of political expression, a form of liberty, a right enshrined in our bill of rights.

“This is why I get so angry, when any side steals signs from any side!

“Social/peer intimidation of political expression is a bad thing.”

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I agree completely.

My wife says she noticed my neighbor across the intersection was missing his Obama and two Jim Roden for County Board sign as she drove to church this morning.

Scott Rasmussen is a pollster best known for doing a daily poll on Presidential approval and disapproval.

Yesterday he published an article that points to Wisconsin as the key for a Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.

Will Illinois activists on both sides of the aisle now head to Wisconsin, as they did in the Scott Walker Recall Election?

Rasmussen says that Wisconsin is a toss-up.

A press release from Congressman Peter Roskam:

House Rejects Solyndranomics, Votes to Protect Taxpayers from Bad Obama Investments

Washington, DC—Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06) released the following statement after House passage of the

“No More Solyndras Act:

“Over the past four years, Americans have been the victims of a raw deal.

“Call it Solyndranomics, the use of taxpayer dollars for broad government intervention in the economy, often to support the president’s speculative adventures and give payoffs to his political supporters.

We all know how Solyndranomics ends: hundreds of millions lost in service to the Obama green energy narrative, that failed to create either green energy or green jobs.

“President Obama called the $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra ‘a good bet.’ Today the House voted to put an end to the government rolling the dice on risky investments with taxpayer money.”

There they were.

Two bumper stickers fighting on Route 14 in Crystal Lake.

First I saw the one below:

Right next to it was the bumper sticker you see below: