We suck (cont)

Barring a SHOCKING development, this should be the 95th post of the year. We did 98 in a WEEK once. Lots of baseball and lolcats. Also spider pig.

Is K-Mad EVER going to update the label count? Does Brain Dead Bob still exist? Anybody?

42% of Chicagoans Agree: WE SUCK

Forbes lists Chicago among nation's miserable cities

Chicago is America's third most miserable city, beating out bleak towns like Flint, Mich. and Buffalo, NY, according to a recently released Forbes magazine list.
Chicago's dubious ranking comes just six months after the magazine dubbed Chicago the most stressed-out city in America.
The magazine said Chicago's weather, long commute times, rising unemployment and the country's highest sales tax earned it the number three spot on the list, below Stockton, Calif. and Memphis.
For the first time this year, Forbes used "corruption" as a factor when ranking America's 150 largest metropolitan areas in order of misery, according to Forbes.com.
"Illinois' record of public corruption, particularly in the governor's office, is staggering," the article says. "Five of the past nine governors have been charged with crimes, and three, as of now, have served time in prison." To add insult to injury, the magazine writes that people have been migrating out of the city the last seven years, and that the Cubs' 100 year long title drought is 40 percent longer than any other major professional sports team.
Forbes used nine factors -- commute times, corruption, pro sports teams, Superfund sites, income and sales taxes, unemployment, violent crime and weather -- when ranking the cities.
Following Stockton, Memphis and Chicago are Cleveland, Modesto, Calif., Flint, Detroit, Buffalo, Miami and St. Louis.
Read the entire Forbes article "America's Most Miserable Cities."

POLL RESULTS ::
Is Chicago a miserable city?
Yes
42%
252 votes
No
57%
336 votes
Total Votes: 588

Of course, Steve "Flat Tax" Forbes: MAJOR DOUCHEBAG. (--ed.)
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But how do you measure "most theatrically corrupt?"

Weisberg recognized that the "unmasking" of our governor "as a kleptocrat of Paraguayan proportion" finally gave Illinois "a real chance —its first in more than a generation — to defeat Louisiana in the NCAA finals of American political corruption."

Weisberg allowed that the Corporate Crime Reporter put Louisiana first in the nation for the period from 1997 to 2006 with 7.67 federal corruption convictions per 100,000 residents. Illinois, though its absolute numbers were bigger, managed only a 4.68 convictions ratio to finish "an embarrassing sixth. . ."

Over the past decade:

Sheer number of public officials convicted in federal courts of corruption -- Florida first with 824; Illinois seventh with 502.

Convictions per capita: the District of Columbia first with 66.9 per million residents per year. If you don't count DC (and the Virgin Islands and Guam), North Dakota first with 8.3; Illinois 22nd with 4.0.

A survey of journalists!!! Rhode Island first, Louisiana second, Illinois tenth. . .
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We suck

4 straight weeks of declining posts? If we're not careful, we'll lose our reader.

We Suck at Everything (cont'd)

Some Danish guy won the World Series of Poker.

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How to Suck at Democracy (cont'd)

Long waits continue to mar early voting; Video captures machine flipping votes in W.Virginia; Florida no-match list grows to 12,165 voters; Investigation finds thousands wrongly denied right to register in Houston; Bogus flier in VA tells Democrats wrong date for elections...
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on perfecting the art of keeping people who have been foreclosed on and other undesirables away from the voting booth (cont'd)

Encouraging signs everywhere... but nobody has had the balls to establish a poll tax?

* In Colorado and New Mexico there are not enough voting booths or machines for Election Day.
* Students in Virginia are receiving probing questionnaires from voting officials falsely implying they don't have the right to vote there.
* In Ohio alone, more than 600,000 newly-registered voters are threatened with purging.
* There are reports of sometimes-illegal mass voter roll purges in Michigan, New Mexico, Florida, Georgia, Colorado and other states. Several states are even purging voter rolls of people who are "Bob" on driver's licenses and "Robert" on voter registration forms.
* Officials in Indiana are avoiding setting up polling places in areas of the state heavily populated by minorities.
* The Republican Party in Michigan planned to challenge the registrations of every voter whose home had been foreclosed on recently.
* ACORN, which has been held out as a bogeyman for voter fraud (though only 26 TOTAL cases of voter fraud were prosecuted nationwide from 2002 - 2005), has bad registration rates below the California Republican Party's and a lawsuit alleging fraud in 2004 was dismissed by a judge for lack of merit.
* And, of course, there are ongoing worries across the country about electronic voting machines.

I can't wait for the maverickyness to start... this is even better than waiting for the compassionate conservatism to start...