#rsrh Jan Schakowsky (D, IL): dumb* as a sackful of hammers.

Verum Serum is perfectly correct: we either have a cash reserve of 3.2 trillion in our Social Security lockbox, or we do not (we do not, by the way).  If we did (we do not), then the President’s bluff of not issuing Social Security checks would have been even more stupid than it first seemed.  Since we do not have that reserve, it is irresponsible for the Democrats to pretend that the money is there – but that’s actually an incidental point; the true point is that Jan Schakowsky can’t have it both ways.  She has to pick one narrative, and live with the consequences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoDvkhnNdXo&feature=player_embedded

But it’s fun to watch her try to squirm off of the hook.  Yeah, call your hosts ignorant some more there, Jan.  That’ll shut them up… no, no it did not.

Moe Lane

*That is me being nice.

Jan Schakowsky (D, IL): SEALs are criminals!

Rep. Schakowsky, attempting to explain why photos of the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden would not be released, had this to say:

“These are pictures of a violent crime scene. This is a dead person. A dead Osama bin Laden,” she said.

Now, I will readily grant that normally a statement like this should be subject to Occam’s Razor.  The simplest way to explain the problems with the first sentence* would be to simply postulate that the person who uttered it is a semi-literate buffoon who is so unthinkingly programmed to parrot outworn and exploded progressive agitprop that she is truly unaware that even suggesting that Navy SEALs are criminals for killing Osama bin Laden is offensive.  Or that she has not contemplated that her aforementioned parroting handily confirms every not-nice said about the average progressive antiwar politician’s judgement, character, and native mother-wit.  Or that (by extension) Schakowsky is accusing fellow-Democrat President Barack Obama of war crimes, given that he gave the order.  Yes, really, if this had just been uttered by some nobody then you could simply chalk the comment up to pig-ignorance, coupled with thee utterer being a natural-born damned fool. Continue reading Jan Schakowsky (D, IL): SEALs are criminals!

Meet Alex Armour, Jan Schakowsky’s (D, IL-09) CoS.

…judging from his Twitter account (H/T: The Campaign Spot) Armour despises and loathes the roughly 60-70% of the population* of the United States that had a problem with the Ground Zero Mosque.  Extra points: Armour apparently also thinks that the expression of said problem demonstrates an ignorance of the purpose of the First Amendment, instead of it being what the First Amendment is for.  I note “extra points” because Armour probably ran around yelling about how dissent was the highest form of patriotism, back when he was fighting the establishment instead of cashing its checks.  He seems the sort who would do that.

Here’s the screenshot, for when Armour takes down the tweet: it uses too many obscenities to be safe for work.  The real question is, of course, whether Jan Schakowsky agrees with her own Chief of Staff: if the answer’s no, she should probably say so quickly.  Note that I am not calling for any kind of sanction, though.  Unlike Armour (and apparently Schakowsky), I respect these fools’ right to sound like fools in public…

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: Joel Pollak for IL-09Not a fool.

*No real national polling on this recently, sorry.

Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-09) saves Shorebank after all.

Back in May it was reported that the failing, yet politically-connected Shorebank in Illinois was to be bailed out.  The bank actually closed last Friday, but was resurrected yesterday and turned into a new bank – one that will of course have no obvious relationship to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), who lobbied very strenuously to save Shorebank… even though it’s not based in her district.  It is, however, the bank that Schakowsky’s convicted felon husband Robert Creamer used to partially extricate himself from the consequences of his fraud scheme; the bank provided critical assistance to Creamer that allowed him to avoid default – which would have beneficial effects on his sentencing a decade later*.  There is a strong whiff of this transaction being part of a quid pro quo – with the latter half being paid off, well, right about now.

If you’re wondering why Jan Schakowsky can get away with having her and her husband being  tied up in a dirty bank deal without censure by the House of Representatives, while Rep. Maxine Waters is currently facing ethics charges for her and her husband’s involvement with OneUnited, the answer’s easy: Schakowsky is white, and is thus simply fundamentally real to Democratic leadership in a way that no African-American Member of Congress could hope to be to them.  It should not be a surprise that House ethics investigations are being allowed to continue only against those legislators whose seats are considered locked-in by the Democrats anyway.

Yes, let me clear: I’m explicitly calling the House Democratic leadership a bunch of racists.  They are, you know.  And it’s never more obvious than when you consider the things that they don’t do, when they don’t have to.

Moe Lane

PS: Joel Pollak is the GOP candidate for IL-09, and he’s been all over this topic.  I’ve met him: he’s a good guy.  Check him out.

Continue reading Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-09) saves Shorebank after all.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-09), insurance industry profiteer.

It’s about the hypocrisy, stu… err, ‘folks.’

This came up a couple of days ago:

…while Rep. Schakowsky likes to attack health insurance profits, those profits have found a way into her own pocket. Her 2008 financial disclosure statement to the U.S. House of Representatives reveals that she owns several mutual funds that, in turn, own stock in major health insurance companies and provide her with dividend income.

Through her mutual funds, Schakowsky has a stake in UnitedHealth, the biggest health insurance company in America. She also profits indirectly from Aetna, the third-largest U.S. health insurer, as well as online insurance retailer eHealth. Rep. Schakowsky even owns mutual funds that hold shares in foreign insurance companies, such as China Life Insurance and Ping An Insurance Group of China, as well as the Islamic Arab Insurance Co., which specializes in Shari’ah compliant funds.

In addition, Rep. Schakowsky’s mutual funds own shares in other companies and industries that she has singled out in the past, according to the most recent information available.

Back when Robin Williams was funny – back when I was a teenager, in other words – he was in a movie with Walter Matthau called The Survivors. One of the characters in it was the leader of what Hollywood imagined a survivalist group looked like; he went everywhere with a locked briefcase full of what he claimed was his master plan for rebuilding after civilization collapsed. Turned out that the briefcase was really full of stock certificates and land deeds that the guy bought with all the money that his followers were uncritically giving him.

And that’s Jan Schakowsky, right there.  Heck, she even invested in funds that own a piece of Halliburton.

Moe Lane

PS: Not benefiting from the health insurance industry and Halliburton profits that she decries would be part of her loudly-expressed moral framework, not mine.  It’s her job to either live up to her ideals, or else admit that she doesn’t try to.  Yelling at me won’t make her less of a hypocrite.

Deal with it.

PPS: Joel Pollak is running for this seat; there may be others.

Crossposted to RedState.

HCAN organizer in impromptu astroturf seminar.

Why you need to start bringing cameras everywhere.

(Via Gateway Pundit) This got filmed yesterday, and shows an organizer for HCAN giving quick instructions on how to keep Rep. Jan Schakowsky‘s constituents from being heard when they raise concerns on the health care rationing bill:

As Glenn Reynolds notes, there’s a certain amount of projection going on, here.

Moe Lane

PS: Exit question: why are the Democrats so worried about a D+20 district? Maybe we should look into that.

PPS: Seriously. Bring a camera everywhere.

Crossposted to RedState.

Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-09) loves her tax fraud.

I assume, at least.  There’s no indication that their marriage is in trouble.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. No, I don’t think that we’re very squashable, either.

I agree with Glenn Reynolds that Rep Schakowsky’s comments about the Tea Parties (‘despicable’ and ‘shameful’) were ‘pathetic.’ I also agree that the fact that she’s married to a convicted tax fraud (not to mention, Huffington Post writer) to be ‘ironic.’  But I’d like to add one:

Utterly Typical: “The husband of an Illinois congresswoman was sentenced to five months in prison Wednesday. Robert Creamer is married to US Representative Jan Schakowsky. He was convicted on charges of writing bad checks and tax evasion.”

Why do people like Creamer think that they can get away with tax evasion? Because when you’re married to a Democratic Congresswoman, very often you can. That’s because people like Schakowsky don’t think that the rules apply to them. Which is her problem with the Tea Parties, really: the people involved with them have a distinctly different opinion, and they aren’t the sort that get amused with the argument that social justice sometimes requires bank fraud. Best to try to squash them quick.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.