Massive Explosion On Indy's Southside

Gas explosion completely destroys home

A massive explosion in the Richmond Hills subdivision on Indianapolis' south side occurred late tonight. Early reports indicate that at least one home was entirely destroyed, two nearby homes were in flames and most of the homes in the subdivision located near the Johnson Co. line sustained damage. Witnesses believe it was a gas explosion. Police have evacuated nearby residents to an elementary school in the area. WISH-TV has amateur video footage taken shortly after the explosion took place.

UPDATE: WTHR has confirmed two fatalities. Both persons were occupants of the two homes destroyed by the initial explosion. Another five people have been hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. At least 18 homes sustained significant damage from the explosion. Nearly 200 people have been forced from their homes as a result of the damage and the subsequent clean-up and recovery efforts. Officials have not yet confirmed if a natural gas leak caused the explosion. Fire officials have ruled out a plane crash, which some early callers had thought caused the explosion due to the proximity of the Richmond Hills subdivision to the Greenwood airport. The Red Cross is requesting monetary donations for those who wish to aid the victims. Dan Considine, a spokesman for Citizens Gas, says inspection of gas mains in the area have not revealed any leaks. The gas utility's personnel has not been able to gain access to the home where the explosion occurred yet. Citizens Gas had no record of prior reports of the smell of gas in the area of the explosion according to Considine.

Aerial view of damage caused by the explosion taken the morning after (Indianapolis Star photo)

Plea Deal Confirmed For Jesse Jackson, Jr.

The post-election surprises just keep coming. CBS 2 news in Chicago has confirmed that U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that includes his agreement to plead guilty to misusing campaign funds for personal use, resigning his seat in Congress, serving a minimum sentence in prison and repaying the funds he misspent. According to the report, Winston & Strawn's Dan Webb, a former U.S. Attorney, has represented Jackson in the plea discussions. Despite the fact that he has not worked a day since last June, did not campaign for re-election and voters in his district knew that he was under federal investigation, he won re-election in last Tuesday's election by a landslide over his Republican opponent because Chicago voters are too stupid to vote for anyone other than a Democrat regardless of how corrupt or inept they are.

Illinois Pay To Play blog, which has done an excellent job chronicling all of the recent corruption in Chicago, including illegal actions by President Obama, speculates that Sam Adams, Jr., the criminal defense attorney who defended former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in his public corruption trial, may be in line to claim Jackson's seat when he steps down. The blog has wondered why Blagojevich's attorneys, including Adams, have remained silent after two Chicago Tribune reporters detailed in their book the unprecedented access former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald gave them to wiretapped telephone conversations of the former governor that his office has blocked from public access and how his office tipped off the two reporters that it was recording his conversations, who in turn asked Blagojevich if he was aware his calls were being recorded. Blagojevich and his attorneys always insisted that if the federal prosecutors had permitted the public to listen to all of the tapes, they would show that he was innocent of at least some of the charges federal prosecutors brought against him. Jurors in the case were only permitted to hear selected portions of the recordings. “I’ve said this from day one, having listened to them – not just talking, having listened to them – I honestly believe in my gut, there is no doubt that this trial would have been different," Adams told reporters in December, 2011. "I honestly believe there is no doubt that this case would have been different, and if I’m wrong, why can’t we hear them now?” While the tapes are not being released, nothing prevents Blagojevich or his attorneys from discussing their content.

White House Knew For Months About CIA Director's Affair

Newsmax's Ronald Kessler is reporting that the Obama administration had known for months that the FBI had uncovered evidence of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with a journalist but chose to delay any decision regarding his future until after the election to save the administration from political embarrassment. The move angered FBI agents investigating Petraeus, who believe the decision to allow him to remain in his position put the country's national security at risk. Kessler writes:

The resignation of David H. Petraeus as CIA director followed an FBI investigation of many months, raising the question of why he was not forced out until after the election . . . 

Still, the White House, with concurrence by the FBI and Justice Department, held off on asking for Petraeus’ resignation until after the election. His resignation occurred three days after the election, avoiding the possibility that Obama’s ill-fated appointment of Petraeus could become an issue in the election.

FBI agents on the case were aware that such a decision had been made to hold off on forcing him out until after the election and were outraged.

“The decision was made to delay the resignation apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the election,” an FBI source says. “To leave him in such a sensitive position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months compromised our security and is inexcusable.”

Kessler describes thousands of e-mails Petraeus had exchanged with the woman now identified as Paula Broadwell, a journalist with unprecedented access to Petraeus during his command of U.S. troops in Afghanistan who wrote a glowing biography about his work, "All In: The Education of General David Petraus." "The e-mails include sexually explicit references to such items as sex under a desk," Kessler writes. Kessler said that Broadwell broke off her relationship with Petraeus after he became CIA Director, but he continued to pursue her, sending her thousands of e-mails over the past several months alone. Petraeus has been scheduled to testify before Congress next week on the failed security at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead after a deadly September 11th attack on the facility during which President Obama refused to authorize any military rescue attempts. In initial briefings to Congress, the CIA claimed the attack on the consulate was the outgrowth of a spontaneous demonstration provoked by a YouTube video about a movie critical of Islam despite overwhelming evidence that it was a planned terrorist attack.

True to course, the White House is lying to the lamestream media about when it learned of Petraeus' transgressions. "A senior administration official said the White House learned only Wednesday that Petraeus had a potentially serious problem," the Washington Post reports. The Post adds that
"[c]urrent and former U.S. military officials said suspicions of infidelities had followed Petraeus for several years." Huh? This guy gets the most important national security position in the nation despite suspicions for years that he cheated on his wife? I suppose after Bill Clinton's escapades the bar has been set pretty low. California Sen. Diane Feinstein is obviously a complete idiot who shouldn't even be on the intelligence committee. “I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision,” she said in a statement. She described Petraeus’s resignation as an “enormous loss for our nation’s intelligence community and for our country.” It sickens me to think that this man was more concerned about getting his rocks off with a woman other than his wife while we were suffering the largest loss of lives during the 10-year purposeless war in Afghanistan. Petraeus' wife, Holly, works in the Obama administration at the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau where she worked under Elizabeth Warren, the woman who falsely claimed to be a Cherokee Indian to gain special treatment as a minority when she taught at Harvard Law School and who was elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's election. Petraeus met his mistress at Harvard where she was working on a dissertation about leadership according to the Post.

I find it fascinating how the liberal media and blogs used to despise Petraeus when he worked under the command of President George W. Bush. Then they often derisively referred to him as Gen. Betrayus. He turned into this great war hero after he began serving under President Obama. They're such hypocrites. Same thing with Gen. Collin Powell. He was an Uncle Tom who foolishly helped sucker us into going to war in Iraq when he worked for President Bush, but he became a respected retired military leader when he endorsed Obama over McCain in 2008.

 

Carmel City Council Discusses $100,000 Settlement Payment To Libman

Carmel city council members had an interesting exchange with interim Performing Arts Center CEO Frank Basile at Monday night's council meeting concerning the $100,000 settlement the City of Carmel paid to its former CEO Steven Libman after he abruptly resigned his position. Carmel Mayor James Brainard had authorized a private investigator to investigate Libman's relationship with a female employee he supervised. Basile explains to council members that the Performing Arts Center rejected two requests by the Carmel Redevelopment Commission to pay the $100,000 settlement Mayor Brainard had agreed to pay to Libman to avoid a lawsuit over the invasion of his privacy. Basile notes that the second request came as a condition of the Center receiving a payment the city had agreed to pay to the center to support its operations, but he declined the demand as he did the earlier request, at which point the City released the money to the Center without further conditions. Basile explained that it was his organization's position that Libman's claim was against the City of Carmel and not the Center, and that it should not be liable for payment of the settlement the City had agreed to pay Libman through a mediated settlement. Similarly, the Center refused to pay the bill of International Investigators hired by Mayor Brainard. Basile told the council that to the best of his knowledge there were no other requests that the Center make payments on behalf of the City that it felt it was not legally obligated to pay.

Arbitrator's Latest Ruling Could Require Private Lottery Operator To Pay Millions In Penalties To Illinois

Northstar, a joint venture that includes the company to whom the Hoosier Lottery recently awarded a 15-year privatization contract, may have to pay the state of Illinois millions in penalties for failing to meet profit goals set out in its contract to manage the state of Illinois' lottery. The Chicago Tribune reports on an arbitrator's ruling in a dispute between the state and Northstar:

An arbitrator denied more than $230 million in concessions requested by the Illinois Lottery's private management company, which fell short of promised revenue goals last year.

As a result, Northstar Lottery Group could owe between $28 million and $36 million in penalties for underperformance, according to a Tribune analysis of the contract and revenues.

The company had asked for the concessions due to alleged "adverse actions" by the state that the company said hindered it from meeting its revenue targets. These actions included alleged delays in executing the contract and underfunding advertisement and marketing campaigns.

This week, the arbitrator granted the company concessions totaling more than $28 million for the past fiscal year and an additional $2.9 million for the current fiscal year.

"What we do with (the arbitrator's) final determination is still being evaluated," Lottery Superintendent Michael Jones said. "The state continues to reject that it took any adverse actions that impacted Northstar's ability to maximize revenue to the state under the first-ever private management agreement."

In July, unofficial lottery figures showed a net profit of a little more than $726 million for the 2012 fiscal year.

The company had promised to bring in between $825 million and $851 million.

Those net revenue targets are central to a complex set of calculations that determine whether the firm should be paid incentives or owe penalties for underperformance . . .

The Hoosier Lottery chose GTECH over Scientific Games in a competitive bid to manage Indiana's lottery for the next 15 years. Scientific Games is GTECH's partner in the Northstar joint venture which runs the Illinois lottery. Scientific Games is challenging the Hoosier Lottery's decision to award the contract to GTECH, claiming the scoring of their competing proposals was flawed. An analysis of the contract entered into by the Hoosier Lottery and GTECH by this blog revealed that it was virtually a cut-and-paste of the contract Northstar entered into with the Illinois lottery.

More On Showing Up Is Half The Battle

Voters in Detroit care as little about how corrupt their elected officials are as voters in Chicago as long as you have a letter "D" behind your name. An 8-time convicted felon with a rap sheet spanning many years won election as a state representative from a district including northeast Detroit. Democrat Brian Banks won 68% of the vote against his Republican opponent. “Yes, I’ve made many poor decisions, and yes, I have a record, but that’s exactly what it is, my past,” Banks told WWJ Newsradio in September. “I would ask [voters] to look at what I’ve accomplished professionally and academically, since my poor decisions.” His campaign slogan was “You can Bank on Banks.” Banks' past convictions include credit card fraud and writing bad checks. Banks was evicted from two homes during this year's campaign for non-payment of rent. In his most recent eviction, his landlord accused him of writing bad checks.

Romney's High Tech GOTV Failed On Election Day

Breitbart is exclusively reporting that a high tech get-out-the-vote system implemented by the Romney campaign known as Project Orca for use in the battleground states failed miserably on election day. According to the report, poll watchers were suppose to be able to record voters' names on their smart phones as the voters checked in on election day, which would give the Romney real-time data on who to direct their efforts on getting to the polls. The Romney campaign recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers to work on the effort. The problem was that the user names and passwords used by the volunteers to report didn't work on election day and the reset tool wouldn't work. The problems were experienced in states where Romney's losing margin was small, including Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia. The report blames Romney's loss, in part, to the diversion of nearly 40,000 election day volunteers to a failing computer program.

Female Vote Sank Mourdock

According to an AP exit poll of Hoosier voters from Tuesday's election, Joe Donnelly had a 10-point advantage among female voters, 52-42%. The same poll claims that Donnelly would have lost nearly one-fourth of his support if his opponent had been Sen. Richard Lugar instead of Mourdock. In a match-up between Lugar and Donnelly, Lugar led 46-39%, although that margin is much smaller than match-ups between Donnelly and Lugar in polls taken last spring when Mourdock easily defeated him in the Republican primary. If Donnelly had directed the negative attacks he used against Mourdock on Lugar instead, focusing on him being in Washington too long, that result may have been entirely different on Tuesday. In the race for governor, a smaller plurality of women favored John Gregg over Mike Pence. Six in ten voters cited the economy as the most important issue in this election.

Showing Up Is Half The Battle If You're A Democrat In Chicago

Chicago voters prove once again just how low they set the bar for the people they elect to office to run their government as long as you have the letter "D" behind your name. State Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) was indicted by the feds for soliciting a $7,000 bribe to assist a constituent in obtaining a state grant. The Democratic-controlled House expelled Smith, but he refused to drop his bid for re-election. On Tuesday, he was re-elected by his constituents with 62% of the vote over a third-party candidate backed by the party. Despite Democrats taking the state of Illinois to the brink of bankruptcy with its reckless tax and spend management of the state's finances, voters also re-elected all incumbent legislators and ousted one Republican legislator to increase their large majorities in the state's House and Senate chambers. Illinois will likely become the first state in the country to go bankrupt and look to the federal taxpayers for a bailout. The state has failed to fund its public employee pension systems by $86 billion, and its voters failed to enact a state constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would have made it more difficult for officials to keep padding public pension benefits for which the government lacks the funds to pay.

In the case of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., he proves that showing up isn't even a requirement if you have the letter "D" behind your last name in Chicago. Jackson, who has been on leave from his job since last June for treatment of a mental illness and who didn't even campaign for re-election, was re-elected with more than 60% of the vote over his Republican opponent. Jackson has been under investigation by the feds for spending about $40,000 in campaign funds on his female mistress.  Jackson was also accused of attempting to purchase Obama's Senate seat from former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The Sun-Times' gossip columnist Michael Sneed reported on Wednesday that Jackson is about to reach a plea agreement with the Obama Justice Department in connection with the ongoing investigations. This would be the same Justice Department which ignored overwhelming evidence that Barack Obama had taken cash bribes from convicted political fixer Tony Rezko before his election to the U.S. Senate. After Tuesday's election, it is apparent that the American voters now set the bar for the election of our president as low as Chicagoans set for their elected officials.