Content warning for language. Also, in the beginning, someone seems to be making a fake penis out of a hand-towel, for some reason I don't understand.

Thanks to rdbrewer.

Noobs: It tells you how old this blog is (six years!) and how much it's grown that the majority of the readers now don't know what the Paul Anka thing is.

When I say gibberish like "Puts me some information," I'm quoting Anka.

So, look: Listen to it a couple of times, pick out your favorite catchphrases, and use them in comments.

And also: Take the Paul Anka Band-Entrance Test, also called the "Integrity SATs."

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (67)
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Just basically putting meat on the bones of Mallamutt's list.

Long story short: Assuming Kirk wins, we have a pretty good shot at getting eight, and at least putting ourselves into a good position to win the Senate in 2012.

Those last two, however, are going to be a bitch. We'd need not one but two improbable Brown-esque victories in very blue states.

Broken record time: To win the Senate at all we need blue state wins -- and a fair number of them, too -- and I continue not understanding how liberal states that voted for Obama by outsized margins of 65-35 are suddenly going to elect Tom Coburn style conservatives as Senators.

And let's talk about Scott Brown. Scott Brown didn't just win on ideology. I didn't even know his ideology when I decided he'd win. I just knew he was the sort of candidate who wins -- good looking, energetic, friendly, articulate, and with a great family. Those daughters? Central casting.

And that Cosmo spread helped him. Seriously -- not only was there the hunk factor, but that spread helped overcome one of the biggest prejudices against conservatives or Republicans, that we're all a bunch of no-fun prudes.

Scott Brown, in short, was the perfect candidate.

And he faced, quite possibly, the worst candidate in the past ten years.

And what did he win by?

Five.

Now, I got silly looking just at the comparison between Coakley and Brown and predicted 11. I did forget how liberal and Democratic and Obama-loving Massachusetts was, for a bit.

But our perfect candidate versus their worst candidate in a Republican year? A bare five-point victory in a blue state.

So yeah, when we talk about Scott Brown, we also have to acknowledge non-ideological factors at work here, and realize they are unlikely to be replicated very often, if at all.

Scott Brown made a bit of hawkishness and fiscal conservatism seem cool.

We need candidates like that, and should promote the hell out of them wherever we find them.

But in fact such candidates, who can persuade through force of personality and likability alone, are in fact few and far between.

Bear in mind we're excited (well, I am) that Dan Coats has entered the race against Evan Bayh.

Now, is Coats like some kind superstar? No, he's not. He's just a name, a guy who's won before, respected well enough, someone with name recognition and some small amount of goodwill from his previous service. (Not all much -- he served quite a while ago. Most people don't even remember him.)

But Coats is what is considered a strong candidate, a real get.

I'm not trying to put him down, but look: That is what we call a strong candidate. And he's not really all that strong.

We can't be unrealistic and just imagine we're going to have telegenic, energetic, appealing candidates who are dynamite with retail politics and have a pair of gorgeous daughters running in every race.

With the perfect candidate against a weak candidate, you can win in blue states, in a Republican year, by... five points.

What happens when you have a merely good candidate against a good candidate from the other party?

My point is that it's hard enough for a Republican to win in a blue state. It is all too much to insist they also take a bunch of positions which are unpopular in their states and win even burdened with that additional disadvantage.

Sure, if they won, we'd be more pleased.

But there's the problem: If. They actually won't win.

If another Scott Brown comes along, I'd encourage him to gamble a bit and take a bunch of unpopular conservative positions and trust that his innate strength as a candidate would be enough to squeak him past the finish line.

But if we have the normal sort of candidate -- merely average to somewhat good -- well, look: he's not going to win in a blue state if he's towing the national Republican line on every issue. If such a candidate could win on that platform, it wouldn't be a blue state in the first place.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (114)
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Someone wrote recently that a primary is only a "first-draft" for the Democrats as regard who their candidate will be; courts (Democrat-owned) will permit any sort of candidate switching, even against the clear law of the state, up until election night.

Anyway, the guy who held a knife to his girlfriend's neck? Will probably not really be the Democratic candidate after all.

From Boots:

Quinn expects Cohen to leave guv. race ticket over abuse claim Feb. 04, 2010

(AP) — Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says he expects Scott Lee Cohen ultimately will have to step down as the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor over charges that he once abused his girlfriend.

Quinn called Thursday for Cohen to answer all questions about his 2005 arrest for domestic battery. But Quinn says he thinks Cohen will end up dropping out of the race.

Illinois voters choose the nominees for governor and lieutenant governor separately. Quinn and Cohen did not campaign together, but now they make up the Democratic ticket.

Quinn says he learned of the allegations after Tuesday's election.

The hell he did. What he learned is that the voters had learned of the charges.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (100)
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Which needs to be run.

Mallamutt puts me some information:

Here are the races Republicans can win and have to win. The order is from the surest (90% chance Republican can win) to the least likely (60-40 in favor of the Democrat). Please note, I am not going to list the long shots (Schummer, Leahy).

1. North Dakota

2. Arkansas

3. Deleware

4. Neveda

5. Illinois

6. Pennsylvania

7. Colorado

8. Indianna

9. New York (Gillibrand)

10. California

If Tommy Thompson gets in the race, you can put Wisconsin on the list. Gillibrand is there only if Pataki gets in the race. And, Ace is right, you still have to hold on to the 5 open Republican seats (NH, Missouri, Ohio, Florida and Kentucky) and the 1 incumbent Republican viewed as having problems (North Carolina).

We would need all ten and not lose a single seat of our own to win.

We simply cannot afford to sit here weighing the merits of Kirk vs. some theoretical super-conservative candidate who could, in some alternative dimension, win Illinois.

Unless you just want to do the thing where we pretend we actually want to govern but actually want to fall short of a majority so we can just snipe at the Democrats.

Which is an admittedly viable if cynical strategy.

But even if your hopes of really taking power are fixed on 2012 and not 2010 -- I just don't see how the hell you give up one of the few gettable Senate seats and tell yourself "Ah, we'll make up for that one later, when God Himself tosses another Golden Opportunity for a Unexpected Victory in our laps."

Sorry to invoke God. Impious, I know.

But, you know: When you're given a mitzvah of some kind, I don't think you can really turn your nose up at it and scorn it and then expect another one to be given to you later.

I mean, were I personally the one doling out the Golden Opportunities, and I saw the people I gave it to turning their noses up at as if it were dogshit, I don't think I'd be eager to drop another one in their laps.

And, by the way, via Hot Air, here were the results in the primary:

US Senate, GOP Primary:

Mark Kirk: 65%
Patrick Hughes: 18%
Don Lowery: 5%
Kathleen Thomas: 5%
Andy Martin: 4%
John Arrington: 3%

So spare me the assertions that a true-blue conservative could win it all if he just articulated conservative principles.

No. We have evidence that that is simply wrong.

Badly wrong.

Kirk didn't merely win. He walloped. He is by far the strongest candidate. A conservative couldn't even come close to him in the conservative-leaning primary.

Confession: Two weeks ago, or something, I asked "Sell me on Mark Kirk." Or Hughes. I wanted to know who to back.

Well, the thing is: People made strong cases for Kirk. Including in emails, where the case was particularly strong.

I didn't mention that, because I knew the rightroots (internet right) was on the side of Hughes and I didn't want to be seen as thwarting the Tea Party Movement and supporting a dreaded RINO.

I just shut up, so as not to hurt Hughes' chances. But I kinda knew, based on reader input, that not only would Kirk win, he should win, because even if a miracle happened and Hughes won the primary, he wasn't a strong enough candidate to even come close in the general.

Again: I shut up. I kept my opinion, which I knew would be scorned as "RINO-loving," to myself, and kept out of it, and let the inevitable happen without my pushing for it.

Well, the primary's over now. As many readers told me, Kirk is not a bad guy, and in fact has recanted his (cynical, cowardly, political-positioning) vote for cap and trade, has a good biography (National Guardsman serving in Afghanistan), is squeaky-clean when corruption is on the ballot, is a good, likable campaigner with a tendency to win in a a blue district, etc.

You may not like it, but he was the best candidate. Ideology is not the only thing on the ballot for most voters. Personal qualities, charisma, biography, and connections (to donors and supporters) are actually more important, like it or not.

So it's done. The guy who may be shaky on ideology but blew away his opponents on the more important (for elections) qualities won.

That's the position you, me, all of us are in.

It helps us not here to play a Wishing Game where we're free to imagine a candidate who had Hughes' strengths (ideological fidelity) and all of Kirk's strengths (everything else).

That candidate didn't exist. The perfect theoretical candidate, a marriage of pure ideology and great political skills, wasn't on the ballot.

The guy who was better at ideology faced the guy who was much, much better at actual politics and to no one's surprise (well, not mine at least) the guy with the political skills won.

That's where we are. There are no time machines or wishing wells here.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (161)
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MA Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin seems to believe that having the power to sign a piece of paper signifying the will of the voters gives him the right to lecture the man they just elected.

Galvin expressed concern about the 41st vote Brown has come to represent. His upset election last month ended the DemocratsÂ’ super majority in the Senate.

“I think much of what we’ve seen in this whole discussion is about the 41st vote. Last time I checked the Constitution, it didn’t say anything about needing 60 votes for every single thing that needs to be done. I think that contributes to gridlock,” Galvin said. “This is about a process where the majority rules. Hopefully he will respect the rights of the majority.”

Galvin was elected secretary in 1994. While certifying Ted Kennedy's 2006 election win, I don't remember Galvin lecturing Kennedy about the rights of the majority, even though Kennedy had threatened to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee.

Scott Brown ran with a clear message that can be summarized as 'if you want the insanity in Washington to stop, vote for me.' And they did. What Galvin either doesn't realize, or willfully ignores, is that Mass voters want Brown to stop the majority because they didn't like what the majority was doing. Judging from the comments at that article, Galvin's inability to keep his opinion to himself has only fueled the anti-incumbent fire in Massachusetts. The independents and Republicans got a taste of victory last month, and it's clear they want more.

Related - I'll ask this question Howie Carr-style: why the bleep is Paul Kirk still voting in the Senate? Brown's certification was signed this morning. Kirk voted to confirm an Obama nominee just after noon. Precedent and history seem to indicate that he can't do that. Aren't any Senate Republicans going to make noise about this?

Posted by: Slublog at 09:57 AM | Comments (80)
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The eternal argument is going on again.

Boots:

Agghhh, I'm raising my blood pressure just by reading these ridiculous anti-Kirk comments. The primary election in Illinois was moved up by the dems back in 2008 when fav son Obama was on the ballot. They purposely made Illinois the first primary in the nation to give the chosen One a big win early. Because the dems here can get 200% voter participation and push anything over the finish line when they put their minds to it.

So with a primary on Feb 2, 2010, nominating petitions were due way back in November 2009. Which meant the filing season started in summer 2009. Umm, wasn't Obama the most popular guy in the universe last summer? Except for vanity candidates (i.e., Pat Hughes, a guy who has never voted in a primary election, in fact rarely votes at all, and has never lifted a finger to get anyone else elected either, he's a rich rich rich lawyer guy from Hinsdale who thought he could buy the nomination but I digress), it looked like a fools errand to run for Obama's former US Senate seat.

Mark Kirk (R-IL-10) decided to enter the race back in May or June of 2009. Illinois 10 is a suburban district just north of Evanston. Evanston's US Rep is Jan Schakowsky, a spittle-spitting lefty who makes Nancy Pelosi look moderate. Kirk's district trends very blue, but he kept getting elected, even in the face of Obama's win in 2008. Here's another little factoid: Kirk's district (IL-10) is the boyhood home of Rahm Emmanuel, and it's where David Axelrod lived for years. Do you think Axelrod would live in a red district? It's as blue as can be here, but Kirk continued to win.

Kirk is a squeaky clean guy, Navy Reserve vet, and a good campaigner. The independents around here keep voting for him. He and Scott Brown are probably ideological twins. He will be a terrific force for good in Illinois politics. There is no perfect candidate, especially in Illinois.

Mallamutt:

think some also over look the obvious advantage of a Kirk win. If, and it is still a big if, the Republicans get control of the Senate (and you need Mark Kirk to win Illinois for that happen) then the Republicans control the committees, including the power of subpoena. Why is this important, lets take one issue: global warming. Want a serious congressional investigation of the science behind global warming - then you need someone like Tom Colburn chairing a committee with subpoena power to investigate. To do that, you need someone like Kirk to win to get there. As my Daddy used to say, its the price you pay for the thing you pray for.

stuiec:

I think you nailed it when you pointed out that Kirk ran harder than his opponents.

There's the old joke about the guy who dies and goes to Heaven and gets to ask God one question. He says, "God, I've always been good and faithful, so why is it that every week my prayer for a lottery jackpot went unanswered?" God says, "Murray, it's because you never actually bothered to buy a ticket."

Listen up: To win the Senate, we need the Kirk win. It is not possible (or only theoretically possible) to do without this win. Without the Kirk win, we'd need to win in Connecticut, too: And I don't think that is going to happen.

So any of you saying you don't want Kirk to win, or he's not good enough for your support, and etc. -- you are also saying you don't want the Senate, with the subpoena power, the power to approve of judicial nominations, etc.

Please explain to me in what fantasy scenario taking back the Senate is even possible without this victory.

Again: We'd have to win Connecticut. Maybe we could do that -- and if Kirk wins, sure, I will put myself into a "We Can Win Connecticut" frame of mind -- but this Illinois thing is a gift from above that you are scorning as "not a nice enough gift."

Did anyone really think we'd be favored to take Obama's seat? Did anyone think this was even possible?

And with victory possible, some decide to spurn it as not a great enough victory.

Well, whatever. This is essentially free-rolling as they say in gambling, playing with the house's money with nothing to lose except free money anyway, and if you want to just walk away from the table and forfeit your free money, that's your deal.

Kirk's ahead at least six in Illinois and the Republicans are down something like 10-20 in Connecticut. You tell me which is more gettable. (Actually, I think we're down 20-30 there -- Dodd's replacement is the most popular politician in the state.)

Politics is the art of the possible. I am sorry, but some of you seem to think this is all theoretical and we can afford to play the Art of the Impossible.

We can't. If you don't want Kirk, you don't want control of the Senate.

Balls: A lot of "better candidates" were not candidates at all because they were too afraid to run, thinking this was Obama's year.

Well, Kirk ran. (Hughes ran too, but had never run for anything before, nor even voted much, and was pretty much a protest candidate.)

So -- you know what all of your preferred candidates were lacking?

Ambition and drive and belief and even a little courage.

Kirk had those. The imaginary "better candidates" didn't.

No one can win without those.

Woody Allen said 80% of success was just showing up. Kirk showed up. Other "better candidates" didn't. I'm sort of not understanding why were are talking about gutless candidates who didn't even bother to stand for election.

Sean Connery Again: Here's another Jimmy Malone quote: "The Lord hates a coward."

Procedural Votes: As we keep seeing time and time again, the most crucial votes are often procedural -- closing debate, most famously, but there are others.

And as we see with the Democrats, a favorite trick is to vote with your party on the crucial procedural vote -- which effectively settles the matter -- while casting a cosmetic "Nay" on the substance, just so you can tell your constituents you broke with your party.

Again... I... I am baffled this is even a real argument.

I keep being told that the United States of America and the western way of civilization are at stake and then I get told by those same people they want to lose elections and trust that Democrats will make the right decisions.

There is a cynical argument to be made that we don't want control of the Senate, where we'd actually have to pass budgets and such, but would rather almost take the Senate, leaving Democrats in nominal control while permitting ourselves all the irresponsibility of an opposition party (as the Democratic Party was 2000-2006, and then even kind of until now).

That's a genuine argument. It's probably true, if all we care about is political power. I discussed this with Gabe privately but I'm not really comfortable with the idea that I don't actually want to win, I just want to almost win, so we can pose and do politics while having no real responsibility of governance.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (152)
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Lookee what we found! A gift for you. Discovered at H2, in comments: The Peace Blimp.

Imagine...a "Peace Blimp"- defiantly displaying a message of peace across the skies of the nation, unable to be dismissed, ignored or brushed aside. Rallies for peace greet the blimp in every city it visits. Politicians, celebrities, movie stars, athletes, war veterans and peace activists make the call to bring our troops home by boarding the blimp for a ride.

Some hippy out there has unrealistically high expectations of blimp suasion.

We've been arguing about these wars for years now. But that was before the blimp chose a side. The blimp represents paradigm shift. The blimp woos you.

Don't forget to recommend a slogan in 'What Should the Blimp Say?'

UPDATE: Thank you for so generously sharing your inner beauty and love with the Peace Blimp. Commenters are saying that the PB is no longer accepting new suggestions.

It's too bad. Some of those were gold, GOLD, Jerry.

UPDATE [OregonMuse]: Looks like voting has been restored, even though the hippies are complaining on the blimp blog about getting their asses punk'd by a bunch of right-wingers.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:27 AM | Comments (372)
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Hey, he was the most conservative likely candidate the citizens of Illinois would elect.

The system worked.

Republican Mark Kirk holds a modest 46% to 40% lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias in the race for the Illinois Senate following TuesdayÂ’s party primaries.

The first post-primary Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 telephone survey of the Kirk-Giannoulias race finds just four percent (4%) of likely voters in the state prefer some other candidate, while another 10% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either of the major parties, the Republican holds a sizable 59% to 22% lead.

In December, Giannoulias was up by three points over Kirk. In October, the two men were tied at 41% each. In mid-August, Kirk held a modest 41% to 38% lead over Giannoulias.

It is possible that a bigger push for a conservative candidate by the rightroots/Tea Partiers could have gotten someone more conservative the nod.

The trouble was no one really knew that a victory in Illinois, in The Obama Seat, was even possible. All of this has snuck up on us. Well, I think I can say "us." I don't think too many people were expecting the Brown win, or... this.

Mark Kirk actually ran. Can't get too angry at him for being the only major Republican candidate to show up for the party.

I Expect Keith Olberman's Special Comment to be Ferocious: The Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor once kinda-sorta held a knife to his girlfriend's neck.

Scott Lee Cohen -- a pawnbroker who shocked state Democratic leaders Tuesday night by winning the party's nomination for lieutenant governor -- was arrested about four-and-a-half years ago and accused of holding a knife to a former live-in girlfriend's neck, newly obtained court records show.

The misdemeanor charge against Cohen was dropped weeks later when the woman -- who had just been found guilty of prostitution -- failed to show up to testify, according to those records.

This isn't the only piece of information Republicans might try to use against the Democratic gubernatorial ticket, the other half of which was being sorted out as Gov. Quinn and Dan Hynes ran neck-and-neck with ballots still to be counted.

Cohen's Oct. 14, 2005, arrest came five months after his wife filed for divorce and convinced a judge to give her a temporary order of protection, records show. A status hearing in the divorce case took place Wednesday, hours after Cohen's election-night triumph.

Cohen -- who records show also had federal tax troubles that he says he has settled -- denied in a written statement that he ever hurt the ex-girlfriend or his family. Cohen disclosed his domestic violence arrest when he announced his candidacy, but the details about the knife and prostitution case didn't surface in the campaign, as Cohen was considered a longshot.

It's a one-time gift by Democrats that they've nominated these guys with absolutely no regard to how they would fare in the general. They assumed that, as usual, the general would be a cakewalk, and so they could nominate whatever corrupt/crazy/socialist idiot they liked in the primary.

Conservatives have been having a heated argument about just this -- how far can we go? It seems the Democratic Party hasn't had this argument at all in blue states.

They're going to pay for that.

Alas, they will not be this stupid for too much longer.

Backgrounder on Alexi "Juicebox" Giannoulias: A few weeks old, but still true.

After graduating in 1998, Alexi played pro ball for a year in Greece, then enrolled in law school at Tulane. His JD in hand, he returned to Chicago and took a job as a loan officer at Broadway Bank. Within two years he'd been named senior loan officer and a bank vice president.

It's not clear what responsibilities came with these titles. He's said that as VP he oversaw all of Broadway's lending—but he's also said he was really just the guy who serviced the bank's loans—overseeing things like billing and payment collection— while more senior officers, including his older brother Demetris, negotiated the deals and made the final decisions. When I pressed him to specify his job descriptions at each stage of his employment at the bank, he laughed.

"You have to understand that it was the family business—I did everything there," he said. "Sometimes I was a teller and sometimes I serviced loans—whatever we needed."

...

Broadway was one of hundreds of banks around the country that profited greatly from that boom and kept it going with aggressive lending policies. From 2002 through 2006 its assets more than doubled, from $434 million to $946 million, and Crain's Chicago Business ranked it the most profitable bank in Illinois (by figuring its income as a percentage of its assets) for four years running.

Notice after the fact Bush is credited with a "boom." It was never described as such at the time, when it might politically benefit him.

"People think there's some kind of magic to it," Alexi told Crain's in 2004. In fact, he said, it was simply the result of hard work and his father's deep roots in the community. "He knows what deals are solid or not solid, what areas are hot or not hot."

But there was at least one additional factor: risk tolerance. Broadway's growth and profits were fueled largely by its rapidly expanding business in issuing loans for new real estate development. Traditionally lending for construction and development (known in the industry as C & D) has been seen as a bigger gamble than lending for, say, existing homes or small businesses, since a relatively high number of plans for new hotels, condos, housing developments, office complexes, and the like end up flopping. In the early to mid-2000s, though, as the soaring real estate markets drove the national economy, many lenders downplayed the risk and dived in.

At the end of 2002, Alexi's first year as a full-time employee, the bank had nearly $80 million in outstanding C & D loans—about 25 percent of its total loan portfolio, according to records filed with the FDIC. By the end of 2006, not long after he'd left the bank, it had $356 million in C & D loans accounting for nearly 46 percent of its loan total. During those years, it was consistently among the 20 banks, out of hundreds its size, with the biggest share of their portfolios tied up in such loans.

Moreover, rather than relying primarily on depositors from the community for its lending money, the bank relied heavily on brokered deposits, or "hot money"—pots of money collected by brokers from investors around the country. Over the last decade scores of banks have used brokered deposits to quickly bolster their cash supplies—but at a cost. These deposits command higher interest rates; furthermore, the depositors are less likely to stick with the bank if they see they can do better somewhere else. "When properly managed, BDs offer institutions a number of important benefits such as ready access to funding," the FDIC notes on its Web site. "However, BDs can be a higher-cost and more volatile funding source and, as such, present potential liquidity, earnings, and other risks that must be properly managed."

In 2002, the ratio of brokered deposits to total assets at Broadway was 53 percent, according to FDIC records; four years later, it had risen to 68 percent. The average for all federally insured banks nationwide was 4.5 percent. According to an explanation of hot money on AOL's Daily Finance in July, "the 79 U.S. bank failures in the last two years had four times the brokered deposits of the average bank, and 33 percent of the failed banks had high brokered deposits and extremely fast growth."

In the early and middle part of the decade, when the economy was thriving...

First I've heard the economy was thriving under Bush.

...this just meant that Broadway had money to lend. Giannoulias says that it was able to aid countless small businesses and enable important development projects to get off the ground. "We've taken enormous pride in helping people," he says, naming a neighborhood health store and a nail salon. "We have people who've had checking accounts for 25 or 30 years."

But experts and community leaders say Broadway developed a reputation for giving out loans to just about anyone who walked in the door. Among the recipients of loans while Alexi worked full-time at the bank were: Michael Giorango, a Florida developer who's been convicted of running bookmaking and prostitution rings; Boris and Lev Stratievsky, a father-son team later convicted of laundering money for Ukrainian drug dealers; and Tony Rezko, the developer-businessman-political fixer who was eventually convicted of fraud and money laundering for his role in pay-to-play schemes during the administration of Governor Blagojevich. Giannoulias and current bank officials have said all of them were creditworthy when the loans were issued.

Another loan, for $1 million, was issued in 2002 to a woman whose family claims she was suffering from dementia—and that both Alexi, as the loan officer, and his brother Demetris, then the bank's CFO, knew it but gave her the loan anyway.

During his 2006 run for state treasurer -- once a fundraiser and campaigner for Obama; now Obama's protoge -- Giannoulias' mob connections surfaced.

Just days before the election, news outlets ran stories about Broadway Bank loans in the 1990s and early 2000s to Giorango, the Florida developer with ties to bookmaking and prostitution—stories prompted by a pre-primary mailer from the Madigan-led state Democratic Party declaring that Giannoulias was "friends" with mobsters. Giannoulias said privacy laws prohibited him from getting into details, but he noted that there was nothing illegal about the loans. "We lend money to people who we trust from a business standpoint," he said at a news conference. "We're a safe and sound financial institution and we run a good business." He added that these loans were irrelevant to his campaign—he'd been in law school when they were issued.

That was true—but Giannoulias himself had overseen a couple of loans to Giorango in 2005, and the Tribune soon dug up records of those. The paper reported that one of those loans had been used to take out a mortgage on a marina in South Carolina that was home to a casino boat. One of the companies with a stake in the boat had been led by a Greek immigrant named Konstantinos Boulis, who'd been murdered in an apparent hit in 2001. The company was then sold to investors that included Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist convicted on federal corruption charges in June 2006, before being sold back to Boulis's nephew, Spiros Naos—who had donated $5,000 to Giannoulias's campaign in December 2005. But the campaign had returned the check in February, when the Daily Herald had written about Naos's connection to Abramoff.

Forced to concede that he'd met Giorango and checked out some of his properties in Florida, Giannoulias continued to downplay his involvement in the loans, saying he'd merely done the paperwork and credit evaluation. "I don't cultivate the relationships," he said. "I don't bring these deals in." He said Giorango had led him to believe the money for the casino mortgage was going toward a condo development, and he emphasized that because banks don't generally run background checks of their borrowers, he had no way of knowing that Giorango had a criminal record.

His general election opponent, Republican Christine Radogno, seized on the controversy, accusing Giannoulias of "an association with organized crime" and questioning what he'd actually done at Broadway. "When it was convenient he was the vice president in charge of loans, but when they became an issue he wasn't involved," she says.

And when all the risky loans the family had made started going bust, the Giannoulias family did what any prudent bank would do -- they depleted the bank's operating capital by paying themselves big dividends.

At the end of 2006, the last year Giannoulias worked there, Broadway Bank reported net income of more than $45 million, and its return on assets was ranked fifth nationally among 240 banks of its size. But it ranked tenth in the share of its loans tied up in construction and development projects (44 percent) and second in the share of its loans that went toward real estate (97 percent), according to Russ Yates of SNL Financial, a firm that specializes in bank and real estate data analysis.

Then the real estate market began to sink, and fast, leaving many of Broadway's borrowers struggling to keep up with their loan payments. FDIC records show that from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007 the value of the bank's bad real estate loans—those at least 90 days past due—more than doubled, from $3.4 million to $7.4 million. And that was just the beginning of the trouble. By December 2008 the figure had soared to $39.3 million. Giannoulias had left the bank for the treasurer's office by this time, but since there's typically some lag time between when a loan is taken out and when it goes bad, it's probable that some of Broadway's problem loans were issued on his watch.

Meanwhile, Broadway continued its risky real estate lending practices. The bank went from $356 million in construction and development loans in 2006 to $443 million in September 2009; Yates says it now has a larger portion of its loan portfolio tied up in C & D projects than all but two of those 240 similarly sized banks. And the number of these loans going south has also increased. Less than 2 percent of the bank's loans were at least 90 days past due in 2006; now nearly a quarter of them are, which is the second-worst rate in the nation for a bank of its size. Broadway's gone from being among the country's most profitable institutions to operating in the red. Last year it reported a $14 million loss, and it lost another $27 million in the first nine months of this year.

Analysts say that when banks engage in high-risk lending they're supposed to sock away extra money to protect them against the likely losses. From 2002 through 2006, Broadway paid out between $11.3 and $15.4 million a year in cash dividends, according to FDIC reports. In 2007 and 2008, as its earnings went south, it paid out $47.8 million and $34.5 million. The Giannoulias family owns all the stock in the bank's holding company.

By this fall Broadway was at its lowest level of equity—the capital invested in the institution—in six years. "Once their loans started going bad, what did they do?" says Iannaccone. "They pulled money out, and that is the problem."

A lot of Democrats have worried that if Giannoulias won the primary, they'd lose the senate seat in the general. Too inexperienced and too tied to the shady family business, with not enough distance between himself, his bad loans, his huge cashouts as the bank was struggling, and his mob clients.

And by the way: No one will confirm this -- not Obama and not Giannoulias -- but it is strongly suspected by conservative diggers that it was Broadway Bank which underwrote the shady loans for the sham Rezko "property sale."

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (96)
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Pwnd.

Thanks to BruceW.

Unrelated: Jim Treacher got hit-and-run last night, breaking his knee, and he thinks it was the Secret Service. Black SUV racing around.

They really need to chill with this Praetorian shit.

It doesn't even seem to have been a convoy, just a lone vehicle, which makes me strongly doubt the car was carrying someone who was a true top security target.

But it just sped off after clipping a guy in a crosswalk.

Posted by: Ace at 08:01 AM | Comments (61)
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Spook86 from In From the Cold caught this admission from CIA Director Panetta during Congressional testimony on Tuesday. According to Panetta another attack on the US from Al Qaeda is expected within the next 3 to 6 months.

Now if anyone would know about upcoming attacks it ought to be him so I assume he has enough details that point to an imminent attack to make him willing to predict one publicly. But the cynical side of me also suspects that he's just covering himself in case something does happen since there's less political downside to a false alarm than no alarm whatsoever.

Mr. Panetta offered that chilling prediction today, during Congressional testimony that also included FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. The CIA chief said the terror group is utilizing new recruits who are more difficult to detect and trace

British intelligence officials believe the Nigerian was part of a larger group of terrorists that trained in Al Qaida camps in Yemen last year. The whereabouts of those operatives remains unknown. Extended questioning of Abdulmutallab by trained interrogators might have yielded actionable intelligence on those trainees and their operational assignments.

Also unclear is the status of 36 American ex-convicts who traveled to Yemen over the past year, ostensibly to study Arabic. Thomas Joscelyn of The Weekly Standard has unearthed a little-publicized report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (released last month) that raises concerns about the former convicts and a second group of Americans, who moved to Yemen several years ago and converted to a form of radical Islam.

So if we know that Al Qaeda is planning attacks using non-typical recruits that have been trained in Yemen, you'd think the government would have pulled out the stops Jack Bauer-style to get info out of the only such terrorist they had in custody. But instead they decided to Mirandize the crotch bomber after just 50 minutes.

If I were the Obama administration, I'd be very, very worried that Panetta's prediction will come true. Because if Al Quaeda does pull off a successful attack their actions would rightfully be considered malignant incompetence.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 07:20 AM | Comments (84)
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