Chicago Daily Observer

In America we believe in redemption and even self-reinvention. And we don’t usually require stagy Stalinesque recantations. But Dohrn and Ayers test the limits of that generosity. They remain spectacularly unrepentant, self-indulgent, unreflective—still bloated with a sense of entitlement, still smug with certainty. They are dead to irony. Dohrn declared her contempt for the judicial system but wanted into the bar association. The two of them encourage young people to “be outraged.”

Ayers and Dohrn never posed any real threat to U.S. national security. Their asinine chatter about killing people and their anti-American sloganeering were as ineffective as their bombs. But they did real harm. Their victims were liberals: the millions of people who were part of the mainstream antiwar movement and who later voted against Ronald Reagan. These people opposed the Vietnam War but didn’t hate their country.

A funny thing happened to Bill Ayers in the years between his first headline-grabbing activities and his cameo role in the 2008 presidential campaign. He became a pillar of the very establishment he had once conspired to bring down.

Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed Ayers, an educational consultant to the city, “a valued member of the Chicago community.”

Ayers, 63, was less charitable about Daley’s father, who was mayor in 1968 when Vietnam War activists tried to disrupt the Democratic National Convention.

“White and fleshy, he reeked with the stench of evil,” Ayers wrote of Richard J. Daley in his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days.”

Billy Ayers, the Trust Funded, Insulated, Media Pampered Hyde Park Domestic Terrorist, who still, mercy sakes alive, has a job at University of Illinois Chicago Campus is the tack on the chair of Senator Obama’s Senate Seat.

Senator Obama is up and moving about the country weaving rhetorical flourishes to the people who think that Stanley Fish matters and that MSNBC provides information. While Senator Obama has been out of his seat, Illinois laughing-stock and Check Kiting Bob Creamer’s Bonnie Parker, Congressperson Jan Schakwosky is trolling for the chair – which would be Jan’s via appointment from Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Guv has problems. Jan Schakowsky, like most self-absorbed posers, is unaware of her problems. Her husband, Bob Creamer recently got out of the Federal Pen in Terra Haute, Indiana for check kiting and immediately wrote a boffo book on Progressive Politics and ran Camp Obama for the Obama ... Read More...

‘The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.’

Actually, what doesn’t make much sense is how an intelligent man such as Barack Obama might not see how a relationship with Bill Ayers does in fact reflect on him and his values. Especially when Ayers’ response to his “detestable acts” is simply, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Oh, really?

Of course, one can’t blame Obama for being so surprised or offended by a question he probably wasn’t expecting. For too long, the media have been complicit in polishing the images of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Kathy Boudin and the rest of their radical, violent ilk.

When George Stephanopoulos so rudely queried Sen. Barack Obama about his long-standing connections to unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers during a recent Democratic debate, many conservative newshounds cheered. At long last, Americans had been introduced to a name that only a handful of right-leaning news sources had previously explored. Obama challenged the question’s relevancy, carefully avoided details, and pivoted to another topic of discussion. The damage was done, though, and his campaign was forced to issue a “fact” sheet to debunk any nasty implications the “distraction” of a question may have raised. Team Obama informed readers that a) Obama himself is far too young to have been a member of the Weather Underground, b) The mainstream media consensus is that Obama’s ties to Ayers are irrelevant, c) All charges against Ayers were dropped, and d) Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are actually pretty “mainstream” these days. Three of these ... Read More...

Taking Stock of Barack

Time to take stock of Barack Obama. He lost decisively in Pennsylvania despite outspending Hillary a whole lot. Yes, she was expected to take the state, but not as handily as she did. Obama moved on to Indiana and North Carolina for his next test. It’s his to lose, but he’s on the defensive, and why is that?

Who is he anyway? And how many more surprises will come up between now and November? Already there are more than I can ever remember for a presidential candidate. With George W. there were the trumped-up charges on the National Guard and an October surprise low-speed drunk-driving charge in small town Maine. They used to be policy shifts, then secret plan conspiracy theories, then congressional witch hunts criminalizing policy, lately personal “dirt”. But who needs to pull any of that with Barack Obama?

Just Google the guy. Just ... Read More...

Broadway Baby was not mentioned during the Democratic infighting in Pennsylvania.

But Broadway Baby—once a chic children’s boutique in Manhattan’s Upper West Side—is the future, if Barack Obama is the presidential candidate in the fall.

This story involves two Chicagoans, former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, William Ayers, both Obama supporters who blessed his initial foray into politics. Last week, the unrepentant Ayers became a flash point in Obama’s debate with Hillary Clinton.