Chicago Daily Observer

Of the many ludicrous political discussions of the last six months, the most ludicrous may well be the discussion of the alleged association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground.

Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, have lived in the Hyde Park area in Chicago. So has Barack Obama. (So have I.) If you lived in Hyde Park for (say) a decade, there was a good chance that you’d run across Ayers, and maybe even be at a social occasion with him. And if you were a social person, or someone who was running for political office, you would meet a lot of people, and it’s pretty likely that you would run across Ayers, or be at some social occasion with him.

Katy says: How many people separate Barack Obama from Hugo Chávez? Yesterday’s debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton gives us the answer: two!

Barack Obama… sat on the board of the non-profit Woods Fund of Chicago with ‘60s radical and University of Illinois professor Bill Ayers, a friend of the Bolivarian Revolution and..

Chesa Boudin, a Rhodes scholar, one of the founders of chavista think-tank and PSF echo chamber Centro Internacional Miranda, who has an office in Miraflores Palace and is a key advisor of…

Hugo Chávez, autocrat extraordinaire.

In fact, if Ayers himself has a personal relationship with Hugo Chávez, then that’s one degree of separation.

Chicago did what it does best on last Monday, with the City Club of Chicago holding the city accountable to being the host to visitors from all over the world for the upcoming Art Chicago international fair of contemporary and modern art.

Imagine this: you put 150 politicians, businessmen, journalists, and artistic types (with very little overlap) in one room, call on Chris Kennedy from the Merchandise Mart to give an enlightening presentation, and fill the above with Maggiano’s pasta and deserts, and ask everyone present to straighten up a bit so that Chicago can have an adult face to show the rest of the world. Democrats, Republicans (maybe only at the Observer table), Liberals, Conservatives with all partisanship devoted to supporting Chicago and the State of Illinois. It worked.

The show looks very interesting , and with 180 different exhibitors from local galleries and worldwide coming into the ... Read More...

Maybe we’re asking the wrong question when we debate whether the $100 million Chicago Children’s Museum should be built in Grant Park.

A better question is: Why is anyone spending $100 million on a children’s museum in the first place?

When the civic good hearts go about raising the $100 million in private money for the controversial museum in Grant Park, they should ask themselves: Isn’t there a better way to help the children? The answer is: Yes there is. Especially when Chicago’s children have a crying need for better schools. Think of what $100 million could do by duplicating the demonstrable successes of, say, Marva Collins Preparatory School on the South Side.

Counting down to the Pennsylvania primary, it surprises me that neither Democrat is hitting hard on the relationship between the two wars we’re fighting on borrowed money, skyrocketing oil prices and our descent into recession and economic turmoil.

True, a month ago, when Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes published their treatise “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” documenting the real cost of the Iraq adventure, there were a few speeches noting the incredible cost and how better the money could have been spent.

But in Pennsylvania of all places, where town after town has been devastated economically, one would expect either Clinton or Obama to probe more deeply—to rub raw the sores of discontent, to paraphrase Chicago’s own Saul Alinsky.
In interviews, Stiglitz acknowledges that the stunning rise in oil and gasoline prices is due in part to the war—the only issue is how much. ... Read More...

Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don’t much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife’s limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

Will Gov. Blagojevich be indicted? Let’s say that a cursory study of grand jury corruption probes from all 50 states…including those when the U.S. consisted of 48…shows that there has never been an occasion when so many allegations and testimony before federal juries has failed to yield an indictment of a major figure whose name has been so prominently mentioned. That doesn’t mean this couldn’t be the first time—but knowledgeable people say not for attribution that if Blagojevich isn’t nailed, it will be an historic first.

One deciding factor seems to be testimony last week at the Rezko trial by Clyde Robinson, director of investor relations at JER Partners, a private equity, real estate investment management company headquartered in McLean, Virginia which manages private equity real estate funds with clients totaling more than 100 institutional investors including some of the world’s largest public and private pension funds, endowments and ... Read More...