Chicago Daily Observer

What better sign do we have that Obama Central is running scared in the wake of Rev. Jeremiah’s sermons than this plaintive plea by Sun-Times columnist and O. enthusiast Mary Mitchell:

But frankly, critics and those who are supporting a candidate other than Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination have gotten all of the mileage they can out of this debate. [No.]

The GOP will select Martin Ozinga III to replace New Lenox mayor Tim Baldermann on the ballot in the 11th congressional district. He’ll face off with State Sen. Debbie Halvorson in November.

Ozinga is president of Ozinga Brothers, a concrete and construction firm. He meets the first qualifier for the ILGOP and national Republicans: he’s self-funding. Baldermann griped about not being able to raise funds, but then again he confessed in essence that he was too lazy to do the legwork. Ozinga has the money to fund his own race, or at least a good portion of it.

Even as the subprime mortgage meltdown continues to roil the nation’s financial markets, debate is warming up in Springfield over an eerily similar lending matter: payday loans.

At issue is whether to close what some consider a glaring loophole in existing law that arguably subjects tens of thousands of folks who don’t have much money to start with to the kinds of high fees and interest rates (as much as 1,200%) that can destroy a family just as surely as foreclosure on their home.

Let me begin by reminding you I was not in the editorial board meetings when Barack Obama charmed staff at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times last week.

I did not experience his effervescence as he carefully waded through questions about Tony Rezko.

I did not breathe his seductive cologne.

And I have yet to receive the “benefit of the doubt” card he must have flashed at both meetings. You know, similar to the “get out of jail free” card in Monopoly.

The timing was coincidental but totally appropriate: at two separate meetings on a single day last week, announcements were made revealing the very different fates of the Three Arts Club building, at 1300 N. Dearborn, and the organization that owned it for nearly a century.

Since the controversial $13 million sale of the structure to a developer last year, the two had gone their separate ways. Pockets stuffed with $11 million in net proceeds from the sale, the venerable Three Arts Club went off in search of a new mission to replace the one Jane Addams and 31 colleagues had articulated for it in 1912: creating a safe haven in the city for women artists. Meanwhile, the haven itself—a Byzantine-style landmark by City Hall designers Holabird and Roche, with quarters for 100 residents, a tea room, a library, a dining hall, and a spacious courtyard—headed down Zoning Change Lane toward ... Read More...

Just asking: Will alderman Ed Burke actually follow through on his latest environmental proposal?

Burke, the longest-serving alderman in the council, is widely assumed to have more clout than anyone else in city government except the mayor.

Over the years he’s proposed a series of an impressive environmental reforms, from tightening restrictions [PDF] on the city’s two heavily polluting coal-fired power plants to limiting the use of dangerous dry-cleaning chemicals to banning plastic shopping bags.

As he sat down to write the lead “Tribune” editorial on Obama’s Philadelphia speech, Cringeley…who is there because he is not too liberal, not too conservative, not too moderate, not too pro-business, not too anti-free market…looked at the clock on the wall for some long seconds, calculated his deadline and started to ruminate.

He thought:

Let’s see. God the biggest thing I have to watch out for is that this paper not be considered racist. That’s first and foremost. So suppose I start out with the thought that Obama is undeniably the most talented man of his generation. No, can’t say that. Can’t use “man.” The most talented black man. No, AWFUL! That would make people think that there are separate classifications for talented blacks and others. No, let’s say “the most talented public official of his generation.” Is that right? No, that’s larding it on a bit too ... Read More...

Okaaay — but if he thinks Wright’s view were so appalling how come Obama was a member of a church where the pastor embodied such appalling views, and where Obama sat through such poisonous sermonising in services every week? For Wright’s comments weren’t just controversial. They were beyond the pale. There are many more of them than have been reported: the church is a black power church. How could Obama have remained in such a church unless he agreed with its basic black power philosophy? How come he was recruited into Christianity in the first place by such a man? The desperate attempts in the last few days to bat away such questions by suggesting that Obama didn’t really know about Wright’s attitudes are themselves blown away by Obama’s own comments today:

HT: Pat Hickey, With Both Hands