By Dan Proft

-I learned that the only group more tolerant of consistently poor performance than the front offices of the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bears is the Illinois electorate.
-I learned that Pat Quinn and his sidekick Squeezy the Pension Python should be hosting a Saturday morning children’s show not overseeing the 20th largest economy in the world
-I learned that federal indictments are Illinois’ version of term limits.
-I learned that Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis has an insatiable appetite—for other people’s money.
-Though I desired to watch the Chick-fil-A Bowl game between LSU and Clemson on New Year’s Eve, I remembered that I learned from Mayor Tiny Dancer that the bowl sponsor does not represent “Chicago values”.
-I learned that the right to carry, the right to work, the right to keep what you earn and the right to equal treatment before the law are not as popular in Illinois as in the other 49 states.
-I learned from Toni Preckwinkle and Rahm Emanuel that if you speak in complete sentences you can fool most people into thinking that you are actually conducting business differently from those who preceded you.
-I learned it has become axiomatic that whatever the worst possible outcome is for the Illinois Republican Party that is precisely what will happen.
-I learned from Sen. Dick Durbin that you can get away with making completely unreasonable and untrue statements if you do so in a reasonable tone of voice.
-I learned that the 800,000 people who have exited Illinois during the last 15 years were ahead of the learning curve.
-I learned about psychological disorders whose proximate cause is politics. President Obama diagnosed Mitt Romney’s penchant for flip-flopping on issues as “Romnesia”. In Chicago, voters suffer from the debilitating affliction of "Rahmnesia" the leading indicator of which is the inability of a voter to recall what has happened to them under Chicago Democrat rule when they enter a voting booth. And Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was stricken with “feditis” also known as “G-flu”, a malady that left him curiously able to conduct his private affairs, remodel his home and buy expensive time pieces, but not carry out his public duties.
-I learned that Illinois still isn’t broken. It is still fixed.