Chicago Daily Observer

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, forever on guard against the white racism she’s expecting to spring troll-like from its ubiquitous hiding places, has managed again to twist a few facts to suit her nasty bigotry.

In her latest exercise in tedium, she cited an AP-Yahoo News poll that concludes that Barack Obama’s race could cost him “six percentage points—enough for him to lose in a closely contested race.”

I’m not sure what poll Mitchell is reading, since when I look at the one* she seems to be citing, I see different results. The poll finds that nine percent of all respondents said that Obama being the first black president would make them less likely to vote for him. Yes, this is wrong. But if you bother to read the survey’s next line, you find that another nine percent said that Obama being the first black president would make them more ... Read More...

Roger Ebert, blessed with the wisdom that comes from sitting in a dark theatre looking at a movie screen for, what?, tens of thousands of hours over his lifetime, piles on Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Read it here if you can stand it.

After wandering around, in apparent confusion about what to describe as the worst of Palin’s faults (one of them being she’s just unbearably common) he appears to have settled on this: She’s been out of the country only once. And that, gasp, wasn’t at the Festival de Cannes. Lord, lord, how can a person like her know anything at all about the real world?

Well, maybe Ebert can explain why wisdom automatically comes from being a world traveler. Which would make jet setters—the company that Ebert prefers—the wisest, smartest people in the world. There’s a logical falacy, a missing middle term as it might be ... Read More...

Bravo for a new Illinois law that protects you from discrimination by employers and insurers for illness and defects that genetic testing might turn up.

If, for example, sophisticated genetic testing shows that you are a likely candidate for a heart attack or breast cancer, you can’t be denied health insurance or have your premiums raised.

These protections join the many anti-discrimination laws and regulations, some warranted, others not. But this is certainly a worthy one. In this, I’m with so-called progressives, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, that support the protections.

But I wonder if progressives are with me when it comes to protecting people whose genetic diseases are turned up by sophisticated testing before they are born. Especially against discrimination of the ultimate kind by the parents, who don’t want to put up with having a “special needs child,” such as one with Down syndrome. About 90 ... Read More...

John McCain’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination was awful. Yes, it yanked the “change” flag out of Barack Obama’s hands and planted it on the GOP‘s ramparts, and yes, McCain admirably ripped his own party, and yes, there were touching moments of personal revelation.

But the speech was disorganized, overly vetted, sometimes banal, sometimes self-centered and devoid of forthright and realistic discussion of what bothers most voters: a sagging economy. What was needed was some straight talk, which I have provided here: “We’ve been hearing for years now that we’re in or approaching a recession. Gentlepeople, by any measure, we are not in a recession, but if we keep talking like down-in-the-mouth Democrats do, we’ll certainly sink into one.

If the McCain/Palin ticket loses in November—perish the thought—maybe we could talk her into moving to Illinois from Alaska to run for governor here.

Sarah Palin is everything Illinois needs in a governor, but never had, at least for as long as I can remember. Besides setting Alaska’s finances in order, she demonstrated her seriousness about ethics reform by siccing investigations on her fellow Republicans. “She doesn’t care for the Republican Party [in Alaska] and the old guard doesn’t care for her,” said her former Washington D.C. representative, Larry Persily.

An NPR story, of all things, noted: “As governor, Palin says she’s tried to instill public confidence in the government of a state that’s been shaken by political scandals. She won’t invite lobbyists to her office and has introduced ethics reform legislation. One of her first acts as governor was to kill the now infamous ‘bridge to nowhere’ ... Read More...

If you think this is outrageous, wait until Obama becomes president..

His campaign tries to force a radio station to not air an Obama critic

Unhappy that Chicago’s WGN radio would ask writer Stanley Kurtz what he has found in documents linking Obama with one-time fugitive radical Bill Ayers, Obama’s henchmen organized a campaign to flood the station with angry calls.

Sure, it’s their right to protest Kurtz’ appearance on the highly respected and long-running “Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg,” but it is clearly WGN‘s right to have as a guest anyone they wish. It says so right in the Bill of Rights.

State Rep. Robert Rita has a strange take on government employment. When news broke that Senate President Emil (I Need a Raise) Jones was trying to hand his seat over to his son, Emil III, Rita’s justification was:

“Give him a chance to prove himself.”

Astonishing. Yet, odds are that Chicago and Democratic voters, if given the chance, would elect Emil Jones III to succeed his father. Demonstrating again that they are gratified to be led by the nose by a political system that is more akin to an oligarchy than a republic. Naturally, Rita would jump to defend such a system, in that he, like so many others, is a beneficiary of the system. His father, John, is the longtime Calumet Township Democratic committeeman.

Perhaps there’s no other person qualified in Jones’ South Side district to fill father Emil’s shoes. Of course, Emil the Younger’s credentials are ... Read More...

“Gulp.”

That must have been Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s reaction as he sat in the stands of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium watching the $100-million, triumphantly staged Olympic opening ceremonies.

Daley’s vision of a 2016 Olympics in Chicago pales in comparison to China’s mind-bending pyrotechnics and its cast of ten thousands, the stupefying grandiosity of the stadium, clean-as-a-whistle new subway lines, the glittering infrastructure, the ebullient but always respective Chinese masses, the permanent new competitive venues and a list of other superlatives as long as the Great Wall.

If Daley wasn’t thinking to himself, “My God, what I have gotten us into?” he’s delusional, or worse. He’s got to be wondering, for example, how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is going to accept the idea of a temporary Olympic stadium squeezed into a South Side neighborhood, more than a mile from a crumbling L line, after seeing the accessible, centrally ... Read More...

Not too long ago, just a couple of years, actually, the east side of Bensenville was what should have been the showcase for everything that affordable housing advocates hold dear.

It was a peaceful, neat, leafy and thriving neighborhood of more than 600 families, living in modest, yet well-maintained homes and townhouses. The neighborhood, helped along with some federal infrastructure subsidies, the guiding hand of the DuPage County Housing Authority and the loving attention of Bensenville officials, demonstrated that the agency’s goal of “decent, sanitary and affordable housing” in the suburbs was achievable.

This well-established neighborhood was multi-ethnic, following the near-utopian model of activists who sought to bring perfect diversity to all suburbs. It provided shelter for those who wanted to escape the violence of city gangs. It was located close to the job-rich Elk Grove Village and other northwest suburbs, a fact that should have delighted urban activists who ... Read More...

Why do Illinois Democrats keep voting for those clowns of theirs?

They’d probably reply that their clowns are a cut above the Republican clowns, and they may be right. But that still leaves the question: How can Democratic voters keep electing the very people who keep assaulting health care, child welfare and other social programs so dear to the Democratic heart?

Even the most reactionary, right-wing troglodytes have not been as successfully obstructionist as Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan—Democrats all—whose budget stalemate is giving social service providers fits.

The city of Chicago is fighting the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a nearly $6-million tab for snow removal.

FEMA obviously doesn’t remember how hard it was for the Federal Aviation Administration to collect several million in fines from Chicago after Mayor Richard M. Daley one midnight bulldozed the federally subsidized, lakefront airport known as Meigs Field

If Chicago can raise $50 million a year using 100 cameras to catch red-light runners, I’m for the city putting in another 100. Or more. Same for the suburbs that are thinking about putting in the cameras.

Yes, we’re supposed to feel sympathy for motorists who race through red rights, as if they’re a picked-on species that is being victimized by the money-hungry Daley administration.

It’s not fair; it’s not constitutional, the ticketed public whimpers. Some lawyer, of course, has filed a class action suit, protesting—what?—a motorist’s right to speed through a red light undetected.

We’re supposed to believe that Chicago is behaving like those Georgia hick towns that ensnared passing Yankees (in Chicago’s case, suburbanites) in those legendary speed traps to feed the towns’ coffers. Or, we’re supposed to believe that cities are intentionally making the yellow caution light shorter to nab more riders.

We’re also supposed to believe ... Read More...

It’s time to bring back the Chicago Machine. Or the Democratic Machine. Or Machine Politics.

For those of you who are thinking, “the Chicago Machine has never left, so what’s to bring back?” you’re quite right. We’ve still got the Chicago Machine. But some time ago, use of the expression “Chicago Machine” fell out of favor.

But the continued omission of references to the Machine insults reality, disserves the reading public and permits the Machine to go its happy way as if it doesn’t exist. Maintaining this pretense has national implications, allowing Democratic presidential candidate and Chicago favorite son Barack Obama to continue the fiction that he ain’t no scion of no stinking Machine.

Maybe this denial of a Machine by omission was the result of the popular interpretations, that the victory of Harold Washington as the city’s first black mayor demolished the machine and handed the reins of government ... Read More...

This apology mania is getting out of hand. It’s bad enough to have to beg for forgiveness for every perceived slight or insult. Now, Jesse Jackson has taken it a step further by issuing apologies when most of us didn’t even know what he was sorry for.

Only after Jackson jumped before the cameras to issue his mea culpa did we learn that he had criticized—in front of an open mic—the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for “talking down to black people” by supporting federally funded faith-based initiatives. For that, Jackson said he would like to cut off Obama’s testicles.

So, when I had turned on the TV, I had no clue about what Jackson was apologizing for. It didn’t help when he tried to explain the meaning of what he said:
“It does not reflect any disparagement on my part for the historic event in which ... Read More...

It boggles the mind how a culture can lionize the recently departed comedian George Carlin while simultaneously consigning radio guy Don Imus to the lowest precincts of hell.

They both have made a raunchy career out of “offending,” yet one—Carlin—was revered and eulogized while the other—Imus—is despised. After Carlin, 71, died of heart failure last Sunday, the praise rolled in, about his genius and brilliance, his ground-breaking comedy and social commentary, his willingness to challenge the powerful, and his advocacy for free speech. He, indeed, was all of that.

Imus, in turn, got himself in trouble, again, for “insensitive” and racist remarks. He lost one job last year for describing the players on a woman’s college basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Now, he’s in trouble again for a comment he made about Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam (Pacman) Jones, after another of his serial run-ins with the law. Imus asked, “What ... Read More...

Jay Mariotti, the Sun-Times sport oracle, had left a message on my voice mail, and, ooh, was he mad.

It was, maybe, a dozen years ago when I was an editorial board member and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. As a White Sox fan, I had written something (I presume it must have been nice) about the team and its owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Mariotti disagreed. Furiously.

Don’t you know, Mariotti raged, that “they” are talking about “it.” By “it,” it turned out that Mariotti had written a contrary column on the same subject (I hadn’t seen or heard about it before I wrote mine) and “they” were, presumably, his sports writing colleagues who were having a chuckle that someone from the same paper would disagree with His Majesty.

Most of the rest of the irate message is lost in the fog of my memory, except for this ending: “The next ... Read More...

If Mayor Richard M. Daley can’t get his phantasmagoric O’Hare Airport expansion plan completed in time for the 2016 Olympics, maybe he can get the Games postponed.

That’s because he has a better chance of getting the Olympics delayed than he has of realizing his airport expansion hallucination by then.

Doubt that? Then consider the Daley airport record so far: False starts, delays, broken promises, excuses. After huge cost overruns and missed timetables for just the first, northern runway (still not open) of the expansion plan’s Phase 1, the news out of City Hall is that Daley has ordered that $200 million more be spent on what only can be called the premature planning and engineering of the even more difficult Phase 2. That’s even though the financially troubled airlines that are supposed to pay for much of the entire expansion have said they are not in for phase 2.

You should if he’s Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

And surprisingly, under the Illinois Constitution, you can.

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, which requires “high crimes and misdemeanors” as justification for impeachment and removal from office, the state Constitution is purposely vague on the subject. So being the blockhead he is, the General Assembly can grant his most cherished desire: to become a permanent resident of Ravenswood who never, ever needs to go to Springfield again.

To that I’d say hurrah and alleluia. And three cheers for the Democratic staff, which works under the direction of Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, for getting the ball rolling for laying out one of the best indictments I’ve seen yet for kicking In-Rod-We-Trust out of office. Yes, it is ironic for one top state Democratic office holder to go after the state’s highest Democratic state officer, for, of all things, corruption, when the Democratic Party ... Read More...

No surprise here; the Chicago City Council today approved a new home for the Children’s Museum in Grant Park.

Now that we’ve got it straight that Grant Park can be torn up on the whim of Mayor Richard M. Daley, as if it were another Meigs Field, maybe we should look around Grant Park for what’s next to go. You’ve got all that empty space in the south end of the park, by Buckingham Fountain and the rose gardens that’s just going to waste.

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna used the occasion of the conviction of Democratic fixer Tony Rezko to call for repair of the “broken political system in Illinois.”

Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.

McKenna’s commitment to reform will be tested this weekend when the state GOP convention meets in Decatur to debate, among other things, freeing the party from that “broken political system.” It will be a test of whether the party’s Ins will be able to keep the party’s Outs out.

The party’s Ins are doing whatever is necessary to keep that system broken because it ensures the continue flowing (to them) of money and power. The Outs have the ideas and the conscience necessary to revitalize the party and liberate the state from its Rezko-like corruption in which both the Democratic and Republican brass wallow together. The GOP’s only hope for redemption is to yank ... Read More...

Considering the constitution’s unequivocal command that the expenses can’t outstrip revenues, it’s hard to give any credibility to the Legislature’s assertion that it can go home after passing a budget that is, oh, just a couple of billions short of being balanced.

Yet, incredibly, that’s the claim being made by the Democrats who on Friday—just before a deadline—passed this $59 billion budget without indicating the source of the additional money needed make sure that “expenditures shall not exceed” revenues. “That’s a decision for the governor ... Read More...

Barack Obama’s pastor buddies don’t frighten me as much as his church-going brethren.

You have to expect that the bizarre likes of Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright would ooze to the surface in any number of organizations or institutions—right or left, Republican or Democratic. But the multitude gathered in what is supposed to be a temple of God, cheering on the racist slobbering of the two “reverends’” is scary.

Cheering is too mild a word. Look at the video of Pfleger’s rant against Hilary Clinton; notice the guys in the background. They’re on their feet, clapping, laughing and cheering. One is nearly doubled over in laughter. Broader shots of the crowds show that while some people are sitting quietly—in disapproval, I hope—there also was widespread affirmation of both Pfleger’s and Wright’s “sermons.”

They were eating it up.

God damn America. White people think they’re entitled to everything. They won’t tolerate ... Read More...

Chumps.

That’s what Illinois voters are. We got a healthy reminder of that today when we were treated to the latest outrage about an old, old story—the sweet deal that some insiders wrangled from state government to build a fancy hotel in Springfield. The deal was that if the hotel didn’t make a profit, the insiders wouldn’t have to pay off a state loan they got to help build the palace.

Naturally, the hotel failed, the state ended up taking it over and the investors got away without having to pay back almost all of the dough. That’s a $15.5 million loan, from us taxpayers.

Chumps. Patsies. Suckers. That’s what we are. This deal has been haunting us since it was worked out in 1985 at the highest levels in state government. It raised “serious questions” at the time, but we voters, blockheads that we are, still go about electing ... Read More...

Bill Ayers is a funny guy.

Well, maybe not so funny when he was saying things like: ’‘Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”

But his memoir—Fugitive Days, an accounting of his life on the run in the 1960s and 1970s as a chieftain of the radical and violent Weather Underground—is funny. I know, we’re supposed to be taking Ayers seriously ever since he showed up as a contributor to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) But a read of his 295-page book suggests he is a bit more notorious than he deserves, and a lot more comical.

Considering the controversy that Ayers has stirred up, I thought that his book might provide needed insight. But getting through it was like a slog through a used clothing store crammed with bellbottoms, psychedelic ... Read More...

A pop quiz: When was Chicago supposed to run out of landfill capacity and we’d all have to start eating our garbage?

Answer? I don’t know exactly, but it was some time past, according to environmentalists who warned that in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s the city—and the rest of the country—would run out of places to dump the garbage. Adding to the crisis mentality were scary claims that leaking toxic substances and methane would poison and asphyxiate the populace. Somebody had to “do something,” and fast.

So, Chicago and other municipalities stampeded into adopting solid waste recycling programs. Americans suddenly were “educated” or forced into massive recycling efforts, separating paper, cans, plastic and other materials from the oozing, dripping, rotting stuff. Recycling became a matter of given truth in the bible of the caring, even though the net benefits were, and in some quarters still are, in doubt.

Among ... Read More...

Ah, the debate is back about how much preschool we should force every American toddler to have.

“Force” may be an odd way to put it, but what we’re talking about is “universal” pre-school, early childhood “intervention” and a raft of other government “programs” that mostly Democrats “advocate.” And in all this talk, there’s little about “choice,” as in whether parents can decide whether not to send their kids.

Although the debate about universal preschool is hardly new, it will re-emerge with new gusto as the elections approach. It is one of those “issues” that Democrats love to raise because it makes Republicans, who generally question the effectiveness, cost and philosophical underpinnings of such programs, look like ogres. If you’re not prepared to plunge headlong into a nation-wide roundup of every kid 5 and under you’re presumed to be a monster.

The “experts” and their partisan allies who constantly raise ... Read More...

Proving that you can never glance away from Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Illinois Legislature and remain safe from a sneak attack, they have just passed a law requiring Illinois to turn its presidential electoral votes over to the rest of the country.

That’s not how supporters of the National Popular Vote bill would describe the new law, but that’s precisely what they’ve done. Under it, Illinois promises to award its 21 Electoral College votes in the presidential election to the candidate that wins the popular vote nationwide. So, if the voters of Illinois choose a Democrat to be president, but the nation’s popular vote goes to the Republican candidate (perish the thought), the state’s electoral votes will go to the Republican.

Perhaps that scenario seems too remote to Democrats who run the state; but the fact is that it could turn Illinois into a red state from blue.

If ... Read More...

Lois Wille looked like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

Wille, an icon in the lakefront preservation community, had just announced at a press conference her support of the proposed controversial move of the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park.

Rich Samuels, a reporter for WTTW Channel 11’s Chicago Tonight, had asked if she was “selling out.” Pause. “Selling out?” Wille asked. I’m trying to remember her exact response, as I was taken aback as much as she appeared to be. Her answer, as I recall, was calm and reasonable, even persuasive for someone (me) who has opposed the move. Certainly reasonable enough to wonder where the “sell out” question came from.

Wille’s credentials are unrivaled: editorial page editor at the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times and Daily News, twice Pulitzer Prize winner, and, most relevant to the Grant Park debate, author of Forever Open Free and Clear: The Struggle ... Read More...

Who woulda thought anyone would have taken me seriously last October when I suggested that Illinois voters should be enabled to dump incompetent, dishonest and otherwise dreadful public officials by a “recall” referendum?

The idea was so, well, California-like, where voters in 2003 recalled the bumbling Gov. Gray Davis. And it so unlike Chicago and Illinois, where such a reform would be regarded as just another useless goo-goo (good-government) gesture.

But here comes the Illinois House, advancing with remarkable ease legislation that would allow voters to dispose unceremoniously of the governor, members of the General Assembly and executive branch officers elected statewide, such as the attorney general and secretary of state.

Last week, the House voted 80–25 (!) to tack onto the legislation an amendment that would exempt circuit, appellate and supreme court judges from recall. Such a wide margin of approval signals, according to the conventional wisdom, that the ... Read More...

Perfectly reasonable people can’t be blamed if they suspect that Big Oil is jazzing gasoline prices.

Gasoline inventories are reportedly at a 15-year high, which, according to the laws of supply and demand, should mean that prices ought to be sinking. Instead, the national average retail price of regular gasoline has risen to a record $3.29 a