Chicago Daily Observer

Frequent contributor to the Chicago Daily Observer, John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, will be on WLS 890 AM with Jerry Agar tomorrow morning at 9:35 a.m. Thursday February 21 to discuss Governor Blagojevich’s state of the state address. You can also listen online live.

You couldn’t ask for a bigger task. Turn around a newspaper giant when the newspaper business is sinking fast, perhaps irretrievably. There are few institutions more stodgy and resistant to innovation than a newspaper, and especially a large one like the Chicago Tribune.

Sam Zell and his band of unconventional managers are trying anyway. I like their style. This presentation is instructive and entertaining. If anybody can break the mindset and possibly reinvent the product, it might be Zell.

Do you remember watching previous Tribune management talks to employees on the Internet? This is more than a shakeup—it’s an upheaval.

For several times in this presidential campaign, the Obamas have been caught seeming rather embarrassed about their country and old-fashioned patriotism.

And it’s not by happenstance or accident. Barack Obama, the rock-star who sets crowds of young philistines swaying who are too young and too ignorant to know who Che Guevara was but who thrill to the coolness of revolution, purposely disdained wearing the American flag symbol on his lapel because purportedly patriotism is too intrinsic to be worn as an ornament. He has been photographed many times during playing of the national anthem with his hands at his side rather than his hand on his heart as candidates for office have been doing for decades. When questioned: oh, patriotism is too precious to be trivialized in this way. One time in a debate he seemingly let slip a view, but he caught himself, that at last he can be ... Read More...

Avidly seeking the blue-collar vote–in Wisconsin today and Texas and Ohio on March 4th–Obama continues to pump up the anti-trade populism, and to tack even further to the left. Ed Luce reports in the FT:

Barack Obama on Monday made an aggressive pitch at Ohio’s blue-collar workers by proposing a “Patriot Employers” plan that would lower corporate taxes for companies that did not ship jobs overseas.

The proposal, which came two weeks before the critical Ohio primary and just before on Tuesday’s nominating contest in Wisconsin, is the most radical any presidential candidate has put forward so far to mitigate the perceived effects of globalisation on US manufacturing…

At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.

The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is laying the groundwork to turn to taxpayers for more money to help in his struggling public relations efforts.

In a proposal to the County Board, Stroger’s hospital chief asks for $120,000 for a five-month contract with a clout-heavy PR firm to spread the good word about the hospital and its services.