Chicago Daily Observer

Strolling the quiet streets on a morning in May you’ll admire the lilacs spilling over the low stone fences, the mansions with the squares of lawn marching to the edge of the boulevards, the funky, vine-covered apartment buildings shaded by overarching oak and poplar. Only after a day or so do you notice what’s not here. There are no movie theaters, for example, and not much commerce generally. There’s nowhere to buy a pair of pants or shoes. There aren’t many restaurants, and only a single overpriced restaurant catering to the culinary affectations of the yuppie trade—strange for a neighborhood with so many wealthy residents. Only in the last few months did the neighborhood get a reliable, clean, and well-stocked grocery store.

More than his racist minister chums, his starkly liberal voting record, his pandering to the get-out-of-Iraq-right-now zealots, what really bothers me about Barack Obama is his association with politics as practiced in Chicago and Illinois.

This is not a crime, of course, but the fact that he is someone who got his start and was propelled to stardom after an internship in the incubator of perhaps the nation’s most corrupt state gives me, at least, pause. It seems that everywhere you turn here, especially if it is toward the federal courthouse, some politician or political insider is being found guilty of some or another form of corruption.

I took a pleasant drive up to Winnetka with my family yesterday afternoon, stopping by one of my favorite houses, the Harold Ickes Estate, which has been on the market for well over a year now. No open house yesterday, but still a commanding property held long ago by FDR‘s (somewhat power-mad) Secretary of the Interior.

The property is listed for $6 Million, which prompted me to think of the tax implications of high priced real estate vs. the number of Obama signs in the neighboring yards in Winnetka.

Sen. Obama has proposed thwarting some class-angst demon by re-instating the 55% tax on estates valued at $1 Million or over at the time of the owners death. He has voted for the estate tax 3 times, and campaigned against relief calling estate tax relief the “Paris Hilton Tax Break”.

$1 Million does not get you that far in Winnetka, ... Read More...

The Roman Catholic archdiocese went eyeball-to-eyeball with Fr. Michael Pfleger…and the archdiocese blinked. The incendiary priest is to return to his pulpit and pastorate June 16 to a forest of high-fives from those to whom the Mass and reverent ceremonials have always meant not much more than a circus.

Not surprising.

All along the archdiocese has forfeited its authority because it has been afraid. Afraid of black anger at St. Sabina’s. Afraid it couldn’t find a replacement that could build support to succeed him. Afraid the media…headed by the Bohemian Girl reporter, Cathleen Falsani…Carol Marin’s little sister…who has Catholic antecedents but is a Wheaton College grad (even though little evangelical propriety is observed in her hippie writing) who disses Roman Catholic cardinals as “men in red dresses” would portray the archdiocese as…gasp…unfeeling, untrendy.

All along the archdiocese had seven points to consider which authenticists say doesn’t rank very high with ... Read More...