Obamas Bogeyman, Americans for Prosperity, to Target Illinois
By Carol Felsenthal

While Illinois is not currently on the most recent list of the 11 states (24 congressional districts) that the right-leaning Americans for Prosperity has targeted with a major ad campaign, an AFP rep for the state said that the group is planning a new project to bring its movement here.

AFP is the nonprofit that Barack Obama blasted in a speech last week in Austin, Texas, calling it the epitome of what’s wrong with the Supreme Court’s January decision that allows corporate and union money to be used for political campaigns.

Read more: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/August-2010/Obamas-bogeyman-Americans-for-Prosperity-to-Target-Illinois/

Alan Dershowitz has endorsed Republican Joel Pollack for US Representative in the Illinois 9th over incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky.

It’s in Politico, a Washington Post Blog, while Chicago Now posts a press release from the Pollak campaign in one of our favorite blogs. TPM and Salon ridicule Dershowitz for straying from the apparatchik’s devotion to Pollak’s opponent Jan Schakowsky.
The Tribune and Sun-Time’s missed it, they must have been otherwise engaged with nitpicking Mark Kirk’s teaching record (Sun-Times)  or nitpicking Mark Kirk’s military record (Tribune).
Carol Felsenthal does the full job on …

In light of the Chicago Tribune’s startling revelation that *GASP* Mike Madigan may have peformed service for taxpayers in Illinois, I am repeating a piece from the last Tribune witchunt at the University of Illinois.  Great minds thinking alike here

Trib Headliner Stop the presses.  Mike Madigan might be doing useful work!
John Kass falls into the Clout tarpit.  Is there anyone without Clout in Illinois?  Can I use my Clout to get my kids to go to bed on time?  What can’t be clouted JK?
Carol Felsenthal thinks Lisa Madigan may be …

The Republican challenger to the corrupt–did we say corrupt?–and dour leftist Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the 9th, who last year called Tea Partiers shameful and despicable, is one Joel Pollak. Carol Felsenthal,formerly of Huffpo, now with Chicago Magazin…

Toni Preckwinkle, almost certainly the next President of the Cook County Board, is backing Democrat Joseph Berrios—lobbyist, head of the County Democratic Party, toady of House Speaker and state Democratic Party chief Mike Madigan—for assessor.

When I read of Preckwinkle’s preference for Berrios over reformer Forrest Claypool (in Stella Foster’s Sun-Times column), I was surprised. Silly me.
Read more from Carol Felsenthal in Chicago Magazine

After the Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Mike Sneed reported a cute item last week that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan was at the White House and had taken home to her daughters “two boxes of presidential M&M candy,” I wondered if Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and/or David Alexrod had attempted to persuade Madigan that she should replace Alexi Giannoulias, the deeply flawed Democratic candidate for Barack Obama’s Senate seat–assuming that they could somehow elbow Alexi out for the good of his basketball buddy Obama and the party.

Read more at the Huffington …

Retired Senate President Emil Jones — Obama’s mentor — “is mounting a formidable effort to re-elect embattled Cook County Board President Todd Stroger” by gathering “business powerhouses from the black community to generate a business-based final push for the candidacy of Stroger, who needs a concerted turnout in the black community.”
There was no link in her story, unfortunately, to Carol Marin and Don Moseley’s excellent investigative piece, also in today’s Sun-Times:
A consulting firm headed by former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr.’s stepson John Sterling has been paid more than …

No one expects the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man of education, intellect, talent and professional and material success to commit an act of violence. I don’t believe that Wright, now retired, is trying consciously to incite his admirers and former congregants to do much more than go to the polling place.
Still, it’s worth noting that on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 the world heard an audio tape of Wright’s diatribe against the Jews who, he seemed to be complaining, were pulling the levers in the Obama White House. In a taped …

On Wednesday’s “Don Wade & Roma Morning Show” Cook County Board President Todd Stroger said he may or may not veto Tuesday’s vote to repeal a 1 percent Cook County sales tax increase imposed last year. He is said to have the votes to do it.
“Why do an exercise in fertility?” he asked Don and Roma. “If they don’t really care about what happens? If they don’t think they need the money, then say nothing and we’ll just let it happen. But somebody’s gotta do something.”
More at Huffington Post

I have written a lot about Roland W. Burris—the petite man with the jumbo ego– since that day in late December when now impeached Gov. Blagojevich made dopes of Democratic leaders locally and nationally by appointing the hapless, shameless Burris to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat.
Burris isn’t going anywhere. With  a group of African American ministers and the  Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus threatening white politicians who try to force out the U.S. Senate’s only black member, the flexible spines of Dick Durbin and Pat Quinn—at various times both called …