PEORIA -- Change we can believe in? Hardly.
Right wing preacher Rick Warren, anti-choice, anti-gay, to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration?
Tom Vilsack, pro-corporate biotech, in bed with Monsanto, to be Secretary of Agriculture?
Ken Salazar, pro-mining, anti-environment, for Secretary of the Interior?
And Peoria's own outgoing Congressman Ray LaHood, to be Secretary of Transportation?
How on earth is LaHood qualified for that post?
Did Obama just punch LaHood's ticket to become Illinois governor in 2010? He'll make lots of pals handing out the highway and other transportation pork as Trans-Sec.
We'll see highways that the public doesn't need or want -- the ring road, freeway along the Illinois River through fragile land to save a few minutes on the trip to Chicago, another freeway to Macomb destroying a scenic drive to replace a 2-lane blacktop through Fulton County.
Those who hate 2-lanes can take I-74 to Galesburg, then on to Macomb via 4-lanes all the way. Takes about 10 minutes longer.
We'll see expensive, expanded locks on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, further degrading those rivers. Barge transportation must be served.
What about mass transit? Others claim LaHood is anti-Amtrak.
What on earth is Obama thinking here? Does he want an anti-choice, anti-gay governor of Illinois? Maybe he does, given the awful Rick Warren pick.
Would Hillary Clinton make such appointments if she were the president-elect?
Just think about that -- the first female president would mean no Blago scandal or at least no preemptive arrest, no threat of a Republican takeover in Illinois, no unneeded highways or river locks.
So the real Obama has emerged: no change, more of the same.
How do you say "Jimmy Carter" as in one-term president?
How do you say "I told you so?"
-- Elaine Hopkins
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