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Tuesday, November 02, 2010


Years ago...

...I voted in a booth that had a curtain which opened as you pulled the lever that cast your vote. I haven't seen them in a while and I don't know if they even exist anymore.

One election day, when I was married to my idiotex, I assumed that he had voted. After all, he said he would. I HAD voted and even had my Georgia peach sticker to prove it. I asked him if he had voted and if so, where was his peach sticker? He said that he had, indeed, voted and gave me some forgettable story about what had happened to his sticker.

I had that eerie, "This fool is lying again." feeling so I asked him another question. "Did the curtain work right? You know, how it opens when you pull the lever?" That nit wit said, "Oh yeah, that's what happened."

Since I really HAD voted, I knew that Georgia did NOT have that type of voting booth. He was caught in a bold face lie. Once again, he lied over some stupid fact that wouldn't have mattered one way or another. I wish I had a similar litmus test for all of his lies, but alas, I did not. And, he was quite good at lying. He could convince a woman that the legs on her panty hose didn't match.

I doubt that he voted this year but I really don't care. I do, on the other hand, care about today's election.

I actually READ the piles of campaign literature that came to the house and in doing so, I read a two page letter supposedly written by Cathy Hurlbut's husband. (I'm not making that name up, she's running for county board here in Kane County.) That entire two page epistle was totally void of any idea, opinion or piece of pertinent information. Rather, it was nothing but a "charming" account of Mrs. Hurlbut's personal history including the story of how she met the dismally named Mr. Hurlbut. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

Then, one day last week my friend and I were sitting on the couch chatting. We were about 15 feet from the front door. Shortly after that, I went outside to check the mailbox again. (We are still waiting for our Oprah Show cache!) On the door, I found some campaign literature from Mrs. Hurlbut that had written upon it, "Sorry I missed you!". No one had knocked on the door at all BUT this time, pertinent issues were discussed.

There were two issues that I was particularly curious about. I wondered what Mrs. Hurlbut's rationale was when she cast her county board votes, past and future, so I accepted her kind invitation to, "Feel free to call or email me if you have any concerns or questions!" I sent this email to the email address printed next to her invitation:

Hello Cathy,

I have two questions for you. Firstly, why did you oppose the red light camera? Secondly, now that the county is operating with such a large surplus, what are the plans for that cash? Could it be given back to the people who overpaid OR will there be a tax decrease to reflect the overpayment?

Thank you for your time,

Meg Kelso


As I said, that was last week. My mother was a Du Page County Board member so I know that there aren't millions of communiques flooding into a member's home. There is an occasional question and an occasional nut who calls the house, but other than that, there aren't a lot of people who really seem to care enough about county politics to go out of their way to query the candidates.

To this day, I have not received a reply from the esteemed Mrs. Hurlbut. I have concluded that either:

1. She doesn't really want to be on the county board.
2. She is extremely confident that she will win and therefore feels no need to respond to questions from her constituency.
3. She has no good answer to my questions.
OR
4. She lied when she said that "concerns or questions" were welcome.

Well, Mrs. Hurlbut, I need all the information I can get before I vote today. Thank you very much for your assistance in that matter!

14 Comments:

Anonymous Al said...

Meg, I got the same sappy letter from John Hurlbut. I read it on my web site with the theme of the Natural playing in the background. That piece of tripe deserved nothing less.

November 05, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

LOLOL...cute idea!

Well, I finally DID hear back from Mrs. Hurlbut. She made sure not to answer my questions before I had a chance to vote, after all, I may have disagreed with her...right?

Well, we may never know because her email was this barely comprehensible NON answer:

I am sorry I did not get your message before the election. However, I did want to answer you. I have always opposed red light camera's as I believe they are just revenue generators. Last meeting we passed a resolution that heavily restricted red light camera's for use by municipalities or the county on county road ways. In order to get the permit you cannot use right hand turn violations and have to have a significant track record of straight through and left hand turn violations with safety issues in order to obtain a permit. Any municipality that already has a permit will have to meet these new restrictions upon the annual renewal or the permit will be withdrawn.

In regard to the surplus. We are healthy but we do not have a significant surplus over our needed reserves. The built up surplus was saved and used to construct the jail. We did not ask the taxpayer's for additional funding of any kind in order to build this facility. this was based on years of financial planning.

I hope this answers your questions. Cathy



I know not of what she speaks!

Meg

November 06, 2010  
Anonymous Al said...

Hi Meg,
LOL, yep that sounds like Cathy. Here is a direct link to my archieved reading of John's soap opera. http://www.heartlandconservatives.com/linked/oct31.wav
Its a little 12 min or so radio program I do each week for the site. The soap opera is only a minute or so. Fear not, the Hurlbut piece is at the beginning so you need not suffer thru too much you can always opt out after the piece. Side note on Hurlbut, I am a republican precinct committeeman for Elgin Township 54 but also a conservative so do not see eye to eye with the Kane Tammany hall crowd most of the time. I supported the Independent running against her. I had Vic LaPorte signs in my rear window of the car along with the side windows in rear, added with LaPorte yard signs in my yard, the neighbor next door and the neighbor across the street. One Sunday I was working on my garage door gasket with the Vic Mobile parked in the drive. Up the drive walks Hurlbut with my "LaPorte wagon" parked in full view. I will say she did have the nerve to walk up...........but then again she IS a polished politician. She said I'm Cathy Hurlbut and I'm running against Vic. I said I know who you are, as that seemed to say it all. She left her propeganda and strolled off, immediately pulling out her cell phone. I later learned, from one of my undercover conservative cronies, that she planned on calling on the republican Hierarchy to tell me to knock it off. That call never materialized. Guess my reputation as a rogue committeeman is out. Ahhh, this is afterall, Illinois!

November 07, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

I listened to your radio bit, that was a great example of how you can show what a nit wit someone is using their own words. I can't believe how easily those 2 set themselves up for such stuff.

Cathy used the "county surplus" as a reason why she should be re-elected. It was an amazing feat when she was campaigning. But, when I asked her how she would see to it that Kane County taxpayers would be repayed their 8 million dollar overpayment, suddenly it lost it's importance. Now it isn't so great, and it certainly isn't worth paying back. If people overpaid their electric bill, the electric company would give them the money back. But when a taxpayer overpays, they are SOL. That money is gone for good.

I don't even know how to respond to her stand on the red light cameras because I didn't understand a word she said in defense of her opinion.

Interesting that her "small business" is a law firm that defends illegal immigrants. How did she fool the GOP into backing her?

It's lucky for politicians that so many voters are morons.

November 07, 2010  
Anonymous Al said...

Hi Meg,
I was hoping my dramic reading would of changed some voters minds but your right most voters are drones ready to pull the lever because the name "sounds right", or "Think I will color in the second circle, have not used that for a while". We saw that in the governors race, Quinn now claims his election is a mandate to raise taxes............guess what? He is right. These fools basically said they wanted an income tax increase, after all that is what he campaigned on! Brady was not my first choice as governor but I held my nose and voted for him, even walked precincts distributing info, but, to no availe. This year was my first experience as a precinct committeeman............I might of well have just stayed home and banged my head against a wall for all the good it did only about half of my candidates got in.

November 08, 2010  
Anonymous al said...

Oh I forgot, I don't know if she represents any illegals but her and her husbands firm does specialize in immigration law. I sure that helped garnish the hispanic vote.

November 08, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

Maybe you would have done better as a headbanger but it's nice to know that here are still people who care enough to walk their precincts. I remember stuffing envelopes for Goldwater when my dad was a Chicago precinct committeeman. Kudos to you, they are a dying breed.

:(

November 08, 2010  
Anonymous al said...

Thanks for the Kudos Meg! All I know is someone owes me a new pair of shoes after this and I think its the republicans! I walked precincts and got the blisters to prove it, at 57 I'm getting a little old for this too. It gets to be a real drag too when you drop off literature and someone throws it right back at ya......but then, thats those "morons" in the voting booth you mentioned, don't confuse me with facts. I love your political mind! You would fit in great with our rag tag group.

November 08, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

My bad, thanks for setting the record straight. But, what else do immigrant attorneys do? I could be wrong, it's happened before!

BTW, I'm nothing if not rag tag!

November 08, 2010  
Anonymous Al said...

Here is how they protray their firm in the internet yellow pages

Hurlbut & Hurlbut, PC is an immigration law office serving Fox Valley, IL. With more than 20 years of experience, we have a former INS deputy district counselor on our team. Our firm is especially capable in dealing with difficult legal issues, and thrives when helping clients with hard-to-handle cases. We are committed to providing our clients with the best possible resolution. We are licensed and board-certified to handle both district and federal immigration cases. Our expertise includes: ? Family-based visas ? Deportation ? Employment-based visas ? Naturalization We can even help you with immigration-related criminal offenses. We have conversational skill in Spanish, Polish and American Sign Language, allowing us to better assist a wider range of people. If you need help with citizenship, then contact Catherine and John Hurlbut. Schedule your initial consultation today. SE Habla Espanol, Naturalization, Immigration Related Criminal Law, Federal Courts, Family Based Visas, Employment Based Visas, Deportation Matters, Over 20 Years Experience

Just dotting the old I and crossing the T. Its just the mechanical draftsman in me!

Hey! Your our kind of rag tag. A bunch of us ran as conservative reformers. We figured before we could do anything nationally we needed to clean up the mess in our own back yard. We made some small gains but need more Hefty bags.
Al

November 08, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

I used to be a whole lot heftier but hefty to some degree I remain.

All politics are local so you're right, you do have to start close to home. Roll up the shit they roll down at you. My parents were politicians, Reagan type.

The Tammany Hall reference was funny but sadly appropriate. It's interesting to see that Kane County has all the drama of Du Page.

I love Illinois, nowhere else can you be unabashedly crooked and get away with it. Over the past 50 years I've watched that logic follow the path of White Flight. Fascinating, isn't it?

November 09, 2010  
Anonymous Al said...

Don't start on the hefty, it comes with age. I just buy baggier shirts and pretend. Your right about the unabashed crookedness but add on to that smug about it too. Case in point Governor Rod. Interresting article in Republican news watch that should carry under subject line "arrogance". Here is the link http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=8415
It lists Roger Claar's refusal to endorse Crenshaw, Kim, and Enriquez. The good old boy GOP is alive and well and living in Illinois. In just the few exchanges I've had with you you'd be a perfect fit for our group, or like they said in "Ghost Busters", lets split up, we can do more damage that way! A fellow conservative sent me a cartoon, talking about rolling up the shit. It an arrangement of bird perches. The top perch is Obama deficating on the next perch down which is the senate, who in turn deficates on the perch below them, Congress, and low and behole the bottom perch is the voter, totally covered with excrement. If Washington D.C. is the A-hole of creation then Illinois is 700 miles up it.

November 09, 2010  
Blogger Meg Kelso said...

What kind of group is it? I hope it's not anything sexual. I'm not at all liberal, you know! Of course, I am open minded and willing to learn.

Do you have meetings or do you stay split up? I love doing damage. I'm good at it.

:)

November 09, 2010  
Anonymous Al said...

Nothing sexual, at least none of them have told me. Doesn't matter, I'm probably too old anyway. The group is conservative committeeman. We really have not had any formal meetings with the exception of a few stradegy meetings during the campaign, but that might change as we get more organized. Our goal is to run conservative republicans as precinct committeeman. The committeeman vote for the township chairman, the county chairman, and state chair of the republican party. Seeing its all basically infested with RINO's currently there's a whole lot of shaking that needs to go on. You would also be hard pressed to find a liberal in our gang, in fact we are all Reagan conservatives and proud FOID card carriers. If your interrested in running for PC or just getting involved send me an email al@heartlandconservatives.com I can tell ya one thing for sure.......you'll find a lot of like minded folks politically. In fact Hurlbut is up for re-election in 2012...........does that peak your curiousity? I can answer more via email.........as you say "loose lips sink ships".
Al

November 10, 2010  

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