Congrats to our royal newlyweds

Isn't it cute how both the bride and the groom's fathers have both been charged with felonies over their careers.

They always say you should marry into a family like your own. It looks like Chelsea has.

From "the most ethical congress ever"

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, will face charges of misusing her office and is expected to contest the claims in a House trial, the second powerful House Democrat to opt for such a public airing in recent days, Congressional officials said Friday.

A House ethics subcommittee has charged Ms. Waters, 71, a 10-term congresswoman, in a case involving communications that she had with the top executive of a bank that her husband owned stock in while it was applying for a federal bailout in 2008, two House officials said.

Charges are expected to be announced next week, several Congressional officials said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because the proceedings remained confidential. Details of the specific accusations of wrongdoing were not available Friday evening.

The expected trial, coming just after the start of a similar proceeding on Thursday for Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, would be a modern-day precedent for the House, Congressional officials said. At no time in at least the last two decades have two sitting House members faced a public hearing detailing allegations against them.

It would also be an embarrassment for the Congressional Black Caucus. Ms. Waters and Mr. Rangel are two of its most revered and long-standing members, and both have spent decades as key leaders in banking and financial services issues in the House.

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The Nuge on the loose

Barack Hussein Obama did not sneak into power. An army of clueless, disconnected, ignorant Americans invited him to bring his Marxist, glaringly anti-American jihad into our lives. This president's overtly destructive, clear-and-present-danger agenda is surpassed in transparency only by his ultra-leftist public voting record and overall lifetime conduct of consorting with the enemy as a child and student of Marxism, socialist and racist community organizer, congregant of the blatant America-hating black-theology- and social-justice-spewing Rev. Jeremiah Wright and close personal friend of convicted communist terrorists like Bill Ayers, and by his unflinching appointment of an array of communist czars, including Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunne, et al. So let me get this straight: You claim your intentions were noble because you simply wanted to get your child a puppy but somehow didn't notice that it was foaming at the mouth, and now you're shocked that your child has rabies? I think not. That is not a mistake. It is negligence -- dangerous, life threatening and, I am convinced, downright criminal negligence.

And the price for such negligence is catastrophic, don't you know.

But it gets worse. For, you see, the blame doesn't fall just on the obvious stupidity of our friends and families who voted for this corrupt, death-wish government in whose stranglehold we find ourselves. Ultimately, it is our fault. It is the failure of those of us who know better but have failed miserably to educate our own. Living our lives with a captive audience of family, friends, co-workers, socialites, fellow worshippers at church and other parents at school -- everyone in our everyday walks of life -- far too many of us have allowed uneducated, history-devoid, denial-riddled, fantasy-driven, anti-gun and anti-hunting, anti-capitalism general ignoramuses to remain so and run amok, when by all thoughtful considerations, it was our duty to educate and upgrade everyone in our lives to truth, logic and the American way.

Ted, I think that's what the rise of the Tea Parties represents.

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When government's run auto companies

You get the Volt. The Obama version of the Yugo.

Per the NY Times no less.............

GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,” it didn’t cancel the project.

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Why I'm a conservative? #4170

Because, unlike a liberal, I understand that government workers can only be supported by a healthy private sector...........

David Walker, the U.S. comptroller appointed by President Bill Clinton who continued in the role under George Bush, on Friday gave a bracing indictment of the pension and salary benefits being rewarded to government workers at the federal, state and local level. Walker said that public sector workers are growing prosperous on the back of private sector workers.

“There is a huge gap. State and local plans on average … are much more lucrative than typical plans for employees. State and local government employees, on average, have greater job security than people in the private sector. And state and local government employees, in the middle of government, in many cases make more money than their private sector counterparts,” Walker said during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to Pew numbers provided by the Chamber, the budget gap to cover state employees’ benefits totals $1 trillion.

“Therefore, if governments expect taxpayers to pay more taxes

to fund lucrative benefit programs that are much better than the average employee gets, in jobs that more job security and in some cases make more money than their private sector counterparts, that ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “But the only way it’s not going to happen is if there’s transparency and if the cover is blown, so that pressure is brought to bear to make changes.”

Walker, who is now president and chief executive of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said there are “many vested interests in the status quo, whether it be elected officials, appointed officials, union officials or otherwise.”

“The only way you’re going to break the cycle is to make this information public in an understandable, clear, compelling and concise form, such that the first three words of the Constitution can come alive: we the people. That’s the only way,” he said.

A must read here..........

The party of rational discussion

Why employers use FICO scores

From Coyote Blog..........

Megan McArdle writes:

There was a great deal of back-and-forth in the left half of the blogosphere this weekend over employers who use FICO scores as a way of weeding out job candidates. In a sort of peculiarly American fashion, our nation seems to have decided that one’s credit history is a good proxy for one’s worth as a human being, and thus should be used to determine eligibility for everything from employment to excellent rates on car insurance.

I have no trouble believing that the FICO score is often a proxy for what some researchers call conscientiousness; I’ve certainly had roommates and others around me who had terrible credit because, well, they didn’t bother to pay their bills, and regarded rent as something optional that could be turned in if no more exciting commercial opportunities immediately presented themselves.

That said, it’s going to be at best a weak proxy. It’s also a proxy for things that, as a society, we may not want employers to consider, like a past history of depression. And for things that have nothing to do with your job performance, like a car accident that left you with huge medical bills and no job, or a sudden job loss. Looking at our national savings rate, lots and lots of Americans live very close to the edge of their paychecks; they can’t all be terrible employees.

I have never really even considered asking employees for their FICO score, in part because all small business people hate these scores as, even with perfect credit records, our scores tend to be smaller than people with similar income and history due to the constant credit checks made on us by vendors and other partners.

That being said, as someone who has 500 service employees working for me, I understand the insatiable desire for information on employee reliability and conscientiousness. A large number of our employees we hire who interview well tend to get released within 60 days of their hire. I can’t tell you how many people who seem totally normal and friendly turn out to be raving maniacs in stressful customer contact situations.

The elephant in the room that neither McArdle or folks like Kevin Drum mention is that businesses are starved for reliability information on potential employees. It used to be the best source was to check job references. Nowadays, though, very few employers will give a honest job reference, or will provide any information at all. I know I am guilty of that — my company does not allow any manager to give out performance data on past employees. I only needed to be sued once over somehow interfering with someone’s living by giving honest information about that employee’s reliability to change my behavior.

I understand that this is exactly what the Left is shooting for – an environment where the competent have no advantage over the incompetent. If employers are resorting to FICO scores, it just demonstrates how all the other reasonable avenues of obtaining information have been closed to them.

The only saving grace in this country is that employment is still mostly at-will, meaning we can fire our hiring mistakes and move on. Of course the Left wants a European-style system where it is impossible to fire anyone too — this is the system the post office has, and one can see how well it works out. If they are victorious on this final front, I will be forced into a game of Russian Roulette, where I can’t find out anything about those I hire, I can’t fire the incompetent people I do hire, and I am infinitely legally liable for any mistakes any of these employees make.

Life in "Progress" City - Tampa edition

For committing an act of pure decency, three black women are being ostracized by many other black people.

On the night of June 29, Delores Keen, Renee Roundtree and Rose Dodson rushed outside Keen’s Tampa, Fla., apartment after they heard gunshots. They discovered two police officers, David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab, lying together on the ground. The officers had been shot. Dontae Morris, a 24-year-old black ex-convict, would be charged in the shootings.

Roundtree checked the officers’ pulses, and Keen dialed 911. The three women stayed with the dying officers until others arrived. The Hillsborough County Commission honored the women for trying to help the officers.

Since their identities were made public, the women have been criticized by fellow blacks almost everywhere they go, walking down the street, at local social clubs and in stores.

Their sin, considered by many to be perhaps the worst in American black culture, was helping “the enemy” — the police. You are guilty of helping the enemy in two main ways: You give the police, or another authority, information about a black person who has committed or is suspected of having committed a crime, which is “snitching.” Or, as is the case with the three women, you physically aid and comfort police in distress, which is treated the same as snitching.

By trying to help the officers, Keen, Roundtree and Dodson showed, in the eyes of many, that they are not “authentically black.” They are traitors to their race.

Treating cops like criminals while criminals victimize your community?

Now that's "Progressive"!

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The Choice

For years, I've held the belief that Americans have been blessed with the correct wisdom to elect the right president for the time; even our bad ones. For instance, I don't believe Americans would have ever rallied to the message of Reagan's American exceptionalism without the Carter presidency.

And let's face it, without Bill Clinton, we never would have had reality TV in this country.

The Obama presidency has truly tested my belief system. But Dan Henninger may have put my mind at ease.............

If the Obama presidency didn't exist, we would have to invent it.

At a time when the American people need to make some decisions about the nation's purpose, along comes Barack Obama to make the choices crystal clear.

In one corner of the world you have Europe, beset by a sovereign debt crisis that's been building for 50 years. The U.K.'s new prime minister, David Cameron, promises his people years of austerity to dig out from beneath their debt. Americans, staring at fiscal crevasses opening across Europe, have to decide if they also wish to spend the next 50 years laboring mainly to produce tax revenue to pay for public workers' pensions and other public promises. The private sector would exist for the public sector.

In another corner of the world, wealth is rising from the emerging economies of the east—China, India, Korea and the rest—posing America's greatest economic challenge in anyone's lifetime. Do the American people want to throw in the towel, or do they want to compete? If the latter, the public sector has to give way to the private sector.

One or the other. It's time to choose.

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Corrupt or ignorant, you decide

I'm still trying to figure out whether the Obamunists are corrupt or ignorant.

I guess a third choice could be that they are ignorant of their corruption..........

President Barack Obama posed with a Charlottesville woman at a White House event on July 19. What we didn't know - and what the White House may not have known - is that court records show she's been found guilty of prescription drug fraud.

In the daily press briefing Thursday afternoon, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House would have never invited Leslie Macko to pose with President Obama had they known about her criminal past.

CBS19 learned Thursday that Macko, the Charlottesville woman who appeared in the Rose Garden with President Barack Obama on July 19, has had more than one run-in with the law. In June of 2007, Macko was charged with grand larceny. The charge was reduced in court to petit larceny, and she was sentenced to two years good behavior.

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Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

It's a good thing Chicago banned all guns from the city. Otherwise something like this will eventually happen...............

A 13-year-old boy was shot 22 times overnight in the West Pullman Neighborhood while he rode his bicycle, according to police.

Robert Freeman, of the 11500 block of South Perry Avenue, died from the wounds.

Freeman was standing next to a car on South Perry at around 8:15 pm on Wednesday when a masked gunman jumped out of an overgrown vacant lot and opened fire into a crowd of people, his mother, Theresa Lumkin, said. Freeman was the only one hit.

"I miss my baby, I'm on my way to morgue right now," Lumkin said. "I've cried since 9:30 last night and I haven't had any sleep. I will not be eating.

putting 22 rounds into someone when guns are banned?

Now that's "progressive"!

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The most ethical congress evahhhh

It just gets stinkier as time goes on.......
 

Grayson billed the taxpayers 77,000 for this diddy

Why let the facts get in the way of a good narrative

Who did they vote for? #881

Ask yourself this question..... who carried this demographic during the last presidential campaign; Obama or McCain?

Almost 5 million California adults say they could use help with a mental or emotional problem, according to a survey released Wednesday by researchers at UCLA. About 1 million of them meet the criteria for "serious psychological distress."

However, only one in three people who perceive a need for mental health services or are in serious distress have seen a professional for treatment, the survey found.

The survey was conducted among more than 44,000 adults as part of the 2005 California Health Interview Survey, administered through the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Since the survey was conducted, the recession probably has contributed to worsening mental health for even more people, said the lead author of the study, David Grant.

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Portman "Jobs 2" TV Ad

Matthews on immigration

He absolutely nails this one

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Life in "Progress" city - Manhattan edition

Selling out your membership

Here's what I don't understand.

One argument against illegal immigration is that it suppresses wages for the average American worker. If that's the case, why the hell is the SEIU going to Arizona to rally against that state's immigration law?

As a judge weighs whether to halt Arizona's controversial immigration law, hundreds of Los Angeles union members and activists are planning a bus caravan to Phoenix on Thursday — the day the law is set to take effect.

More than 550 people plan to ride on 11 buses to Arizona to stage a protest and launch a partnership with Arizona groups to boost voter registration. During the one-day trip, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, participants will meet with Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, march to the state Capitol and hold a vigil. The participants represent 32 unions.

Huh?

It's the same thing with the union support of Cap and Trade laws. Did it ever occur to these guys that most coal miners are union. How about drilling in Alaska and the Gulf? those jobs are excellent paying union jobs, yet the unions are working with our incompetent administration to kill those very jobs.

If I were a skeptical type, I might think that a pack of global marxists were running our unions.

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Maybe it's the candidate

Democrat Lee Fisher's campaign for Ohio's open U.S. Senate seat has gone through three campaign managers this year, lost its press secretary this week, and continues to trail in polling and fundraising.

But Ohio Democratic leaders say none of that really matters.

Republicans have been crowing that the troubles Fisher, Ohio's lieutenant governor, has faced are signs of a campaign in disarray with only two months to go before early voting starts on Sept. 28.

When Fisher campaign press secretary John Collins announced Monday he was leaving to join Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway's campaign in Kentucky, the campaign of Republican senate candidate Rob Portman was quick with a response.

"Just like over a thousand others, this is one more job that's moved south to Kentucky on Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher's watch," said Jeff Sadosky, communications director for the Portman campaign.

Republicans argue that the fact that Fisher has had trouble keeping a campaign staff together, trails Portman by a nine-to-one margin in campaign funds and is six points behind in a Rasmussen Reports poll released last week is proof of a campaign in trouble.

The Rasmussen poll showed Portman with support from 45 percent of the likely voters polled, while Fisher had 39 percent.

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It's for the children.......

SAMENIA MAYER said that she'd always tried to do right by the students she served at Germantown High, where she recruited and trained mentors to keep incoming freshmen on the right path.

So, when she noticed that teachers there were helping themselves to federally funded lunches before their students could get to them during a summer program, she complained to the principal, who ignored her complaints, she said.

Mayer said that the problem became so bad that even when the school ordered more than 100 boxed lunches for about 80 students, up to 20 students still went hungry, an allegation that students backed up last week.

She alerted alumni, clergy and community organizers, about what was going on, but when nothing changed, she called and e-mailed staff at the school district, seeking action. She was told to raise her concerns with the school's principal, Margaret Mullen-Bavwidinsi, who turned around and fired her, Mayer said. To add insult to injury, the day after she was fired, signs went up around the building warning teachers not to eat the students' food.

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OMG

A couple of months ago, the Gekko's went through the summer concert schedule and couldn't find a lot of shows we were interested in seeing.

The Lovely Mrs. Gekko suggested we go to the John Mayer show. Both of us like John Mayer as a guitar player, not so much as a pop star, so I was hesitant to see one of his shows because of the potential teeny bopper crowd.

None the less, we drug Midas along with us and it was about what I expected. Let me describe the crowd with this text message exchange


You.............. So how was the show?

Average person at the Mayer show.......... OMG I wuz sooo wasted.

That gives you an idea of the crowd demographic.

Regardless, I spent most of the night trying to stay hydrated with anything that would give me a brain freeze.

Mayer can flat out play. He did an awesome cover of Ain't no Sunshine mix with Wrapped Around My Finger and the guitar solo on Gravity when he laid his axe on the ground and played it like a steel guitar.

He also got a couple of good jabs in at Lady Gaga and U2.

We probably won't see Mayer again until this crew of fans turns into parents and their kids go to the show screaming OMG...........

More stories of democratic arrogance

From the "honorable" Barney Frank............

Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island's popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday. Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn't have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, "Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation." Frank made news last year when he was spotted looking uncomfortable around a bevy of topless, well-built men at the Pines Annual Ascension Beach Party. Frank's spokesperson confirmed to Page Six that his partner, James Ready, asked the ticket office for a regular ticket for himself and a senior ticket for Frank, "but was turned down because Frank didn't have a resident ID."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/sorry_barney_no_discount_BSco6dW9b1VTgrL7GcCFrN#ixzz0uycoHFj0

What happened to Blog the News Ohio?

My link to Blog the News Ohio no longer works and google searches no longer link.

Hopefully this isn't a long term issue since it was the only way for me to surf the variety of liberal ding bats across the state.

The hand writing on the wall

Peter Wehner notes three things during the Obama campaign that could have predicted that he would be a liberal failure as president.

He left out this one.............



What's hilarious is the last part of the video where he talks about credit cards from China.

Do as I say, not as i do

Over the weekend, I noted how liberals are so willing to give a pass to fellow liberals as long as they continue to trumpet the liberal orthodoxy.

Do you think there might be an environmentalist in the house who might rip a senator who espouses cap and trade taxes while he boards a 72 foot yacht?

The definition of pompous a-hole

Really..... could there be anyone more arrogant?

Charles Sherrods Uncle Toms

The words of Shirley Sherrod's husband.

Geeeez.

Clue phone to Obama.... Hard to have jobs without businesses

Just days after President Obama signed landmark legislation increasing oversight of Wall Street, he is again being slammed for being anti-business.

Asked about recent perceptions among business leaders that Obama is not in their corner, Steve Forbes, chairman and CEO of Forbes, Inc., agreed with that assessment.

Related video: Forbes, Zuckerman on the economy, Obama, the business community

“Well, the president clearly is [anti-business],” Forbes, a former Republican presidential hopeful, said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I mean you can take excesses [of some on Wall Street] and tar the whole business community, which is like taking election fraud and saying that's why we shouldn't have free elections. He caricatures them, and you saw it in that letter that his top aides sent to the Business Roundtable saying our doors are open even to the business community.”

Forbes told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley that the Obama administration would do well to heed some of the business community’s concerns.

“The business community employs 110 million people; companies and the people who work with them pay most of the taxes in this country. That's where the innovation comes from,” he said.

“So whenever business talks about the need for a stable currency, about the need for a better tax code, they always say, oh, well they're always whining, that's what they always want as if there's some dog that keeps barking or baby crying on an airplane instead of dealing with the substance of the thing. And that is: when you have a tax environment where you don't punish success, where you don't trample on the rule of laws – as they did with Chrysler and other situations - where you can trust the currency, where you're not going to have massive, thousands of new rules come and hit you, and you have no idea what they're going to be, they don't take that stuff seriously. They just think they're a bunch of greedy crybabies, and the business community is reacting to that.”

Mort Zuckerman, a prominent supporter of Obama's campaign and the editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, told Crowley that he believes Obama’s rhetoric when it comes to the business community runs counter to the kind of confidence the economy needs right now to turn itself around.

“I'm not saying that Washington hasn't tried to do some good things,” Zuckerman told Crowley. “They've also done some things that I think are really, really very, very counter to trying to get this economy growing.

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Where the jobs are

CNN Money magazine with their list of the top counties in the county for jobs.

Hint, you probably won't find a lot of democrats in the area.

US consents to Lockerbie bomber treatment

From the administration who somehow seems to really hate America........

Barack Obama is under growing pressure to release a letter that reveals the US grudgingly supported freeing the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds.

The letter was sent to Scottish ministers by a senior diplomat at the US embassy in London last August, eight days before Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from prison because he was dying from inoperable prostate cancer.

Obama's administration has refused to allow publication of the letter, in which the US says allowing Megrahi to live at home in Scotland would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya under the prisoner transfer deal brokered by former prime minister Tony Blair in 2007.

Although Megrahi was allowed to go home to die in Tripoli, Scottish officials believe this undermines Obama's vigorous criticisms of the decision to free Megrahi earlier this month, when he said he was left "surprised, disappointed and angry" by the Libyan's release. David Cameron said he and Obama were in "violent agreement" that freeing Megrahi was a bad decision.

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The diference between liberals and conservatives

Conservatives actually hold their politicians accountable to boorish behavior (see Trent Lott, Bob Packwood, and soon Mark Sanford).


Liberals do not.

Seriously, Liberals believe that the rich should pay more but they'll be more than happy to give a pass to Charlie Rangel and John Kerry.

They allegedly believe that Global Warming will soon be upon us yet give the Father of the movement, Al Gore, a pass for having roughly 300,000 square feet of 11 homes that he pays the utilities on in addtion to his humongous yacht.

Liberals believe that women should be respected but they'll be more than happy to give a pass to a politician a pass as long as they are pro abortion. Hell, you can even be accused of several rapes (Billary) and even kill a young woman (Kennedy) and you'll get a pass.

Liberals believe in racial equality but they'll be more than happy to give a pass to a former KKK member (Byrd).


But you know what doesn't get you a pass. If you dare walk off the liberal reservation and even propose something off the journolist orthodoxy.

Just read the comments referring to Jim Webb, who dared propose that affirmative action be eliminated in a Wall Street Journal article..

Jim my advice to you is to apologize, go join the Klan and drown an intern when you have a spare moment.

Howard 'Dr Demento' Dean Tripped Up By Facts

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

This is the story of why they won’t stop shooting in Chicago.

It’s told by the wounded, the accused and the officers who were on the street during a weekend in April 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.

Two years later, the grim reality is this: Nearly all of the shooters from that weekend have escaped charges.

“You don’t go to jail for shooting people,” says Dontae Gamble, who took six bullets that weekend, only to see his alleged shooter walk free.

“That’s why m------------- think they can get back on the streets and kill again. You feel me?”

So far, not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

Letting murderers walk free in your city?

Now that's "Progressive"!

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