Chicago Daily Observer

As a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama didn’t accomplish much.

He’d be the first to tell you that.

He got a job bank opened and brought public attention to an asbestos problem at a housing project.

He had his failures, too.

But Obama’s record of accomplishment wasn’t what Republicans were criticizing last week when they sneered at his time working for the city’s poor from 1985 to 1988.

They lambasted the job itself.

“He worked as a community organizer,” former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in an ugly speech Wednesday night to much sneering in the convention arena.

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and ... Read More...

Now for a Change of Subject. To Editorial Boards—Discover the Elements of True Public School Reform by Reading the Meeks-Gidwitz Report. Hint: It Deals With More Important Stuff than $$$.

Let this octogenarian graduate of a well-managed and superlatively endowed Chicago public high school curriculum tell you (William Howard Taft highy school, 1942–46), the decision by State Sen. (and Rev.) James Meeks to abandon his two-day school boycott in favor of sitting down with the Governor to talk school funding reform was a good idea…no matter what comes of it. It leaves standing a very instructive program of proposed school reform which Meeks worked out with civic leader (and perhaps, who knows, future governor aspirant) Ron Gidwitz-a comprehensive package which the editorial boards should decide to peruse even though it is not bristling with rhetoric that makes good editorial-writing fodder. So it is time to review the package again. It ... Read More...

Can’t You Feel Hillary’s Pain?

On the one hand, Hillary Clinton could just be a very happy woman about now. Witnessing the blockbuster Sarah Palin speech at the Republican convention Thursday night, she has to feel more than a glimmer of hope that Barack Obama will lose in November, making her the presumptive nominee for the Democrats four years from now starting on election day 2008. (And giving her “I told you so” rights galore.)

Her moment of glory and vindication may keep getting delayed, but in her mind it’s all about patience, patience, patience.

On the other hand, watching Sarah Palin had to be a little bit like The Grinch watching from afar on Christmas Morning as the “Whos” in “Whoville” welcomed the true meaning of Christmas. That inspite of the Grinch’s efforts to stop it, by swiping all of their Christmas goodies. Remember how The Grinch looked on ... Read More...

Sarah Palin’s foreign policy knowledge, background and experience: Hillary argued Obama wasn’t ready for that 3:00 am call? Is Sarah?
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Jeff Berkowitz: Mrs. McCain—
Cindy McCain: Hi, how are you?
Jeff Berkowitz: Is Sarah Palin ready to be President?
Cindy McCain: Absolutely.
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Jeff Berkowitz: Is Sarah Pelin ready to be President?
Andrea Mitchell: NBC Correspondent and married to former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan: I have no idea.
Jeff Berkowitz: You’ve seen her for a week. What do you think?
Andrea Mitchell: It’s way too early. A day is a lifetime in politics. I’ve got to go.
Berkowitz: She has no foreign policy experience. You agree?
Mitchell: Sorry, I’ve got to do my job.
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We spent last night at the Republican Party convention in St. Paul, Minnesota speaking to ... Read More...

Remember the story I told you about British Prime Minister Harold Mcmillan? He said politics was less a chess game than a series of “events, my dear boy, events.” Well, the last two weeks where I have been absent from The Wanderer, have been filled with highly determinative events to produce what will surely be regarded as one of the century’s most exciting contests in presidential history.

Two weeks ago to his dismay, David Axelrod of Chicago, Barack Obama’s top strategist and a man whom I have known for 30 years, discovered that while his client’s Iraq trip was a roaring success, his European speech was a failure-so much so that it was ridiculed as being eloquent but shallow despite all the media pazzaz. Why? Because his client seemed too simplistic, too innocent, too guileless, too idealistic. As one habitué of Manny’s Jewish deli ... Read More...

(T)he real thrust of the message that Mr. Obama and he gave to the cheering multitudes in Denver was: You are entitled to your job. If you are hit by a foreign competitor who is leaner and hungrier and less coddled than you, get down and stay down, and expect the government to put you back on your feet.

When Mrs. Thatcher became Britain’s prime minister in 1979, she assumed leadership of a country that had been devastated by several decades of ruinous economic and social policies. This was due to the same aversion to competition and international trade, and the same misplaced faith in the ability of government to act as the engine of progress and the guarantor of jobs.

The media is now applying an appropriate level of scrutiny to the political career of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. It remains an open question why they have not done the same thing to Barack Obama, who is, after all, a candidate for president.

Much of Palin’s record, as outlined in a 2006 opposition-research document from the campaign of her Democratic opponent for governor (obtained by Politico), is positive and impressive. As mayor, she fought against laws to shorten bar hours in Wasilla, and against unnecessary and arbitrary statewide laws limiting the hours of alcohol sales. She called for spending reductions and a hiring freeze in state government. She helped keep crisis-pregnancy centers — which provide support for women who might otherwise feel forced into having abortions — open by providing very modest city funding.

John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is a bit awkward for Barack Obama. He would like to argue that she is too inexperienced, but that underscores his own deficit of experience. Time magazine notes that in a CNN interview, Obama tried to argue that he should get credit for his time as a candidate:

Obama: Well, my understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town of Wasilla has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.
By this standard, if you’ve been unemployed for five years but spent the time sending out résumés and ... Read More...

There’s something about outspoken conservative women that drives the left mad. It’s a peculiar pathology I’ve reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can’t help themselves.

Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an “R” by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender. As female Republican officeholders and female conservative public figures have grown in number and visibility, so has the progression of Conservative Female Abuse. The astonishing vitriol and virulent hatred directed at GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the most severe manifestation to date.

With all the pollution and poison permeating the air waves and the internet, unabashedly focused on defeating Republican team John McCain and Sarah Palin’s candidacy, it’s time for Illinois conservative Republicans to stop whining and fight back.

It’s time to stop whining and and time to fight back.

Last night, the Republican National Convention planners did an excellent job of dismantling the Democrats’ faulty caricature of Republicans being nothing more than heartless, selfish, greedy old white men sitting around tables plotting how they can make their fellow humans’ existence as miserable as possible.

This atmosphere is totally distracting. I think I’ve walked around St. Paul and the Xcel Center a gazillion times, taking pix here and there, meeting bloggers and chitchatting. Also celebrity and politico sightings. That’s Laura Bush down there. I was up level with the celebratory balloons. I saw Bill Bennett the other night on the way to the Laura Bush speech and said, “Mr. Bennett!” and patted him on the arm in passing like I was his mother or something.

This morning on the way in, just past security, Jon Voight was being interviewed yet again, (pix up and left). I shook his hand, told him I was a blogger from Chicago and thanked him for standing up for the right. This morning I attended a RedState/Google brunch, met Erick Erickson and Ben Domenach, and had the honor of listening to Sen. Fred Thompson. And I got to ask the ... Read More...

Hindsight, they say, has 20/20 vision. On August 3 in emails sent to my own mailing list I suggested that Senator McCain would appoint a woman if the Democratic Party nominated two men. I listed several women, but Governor Palin was first. In an article that appeared on these pages on August 28 (the day before the surprise anouncement of Governor Palin was made) I said that if McCain chose a woman it would be window dressing and given the way she was vetted I think I’m right.

Twenty four years ago the Democratic Party nominated Geraldine Ferraro for Vice-President and it did not prevent Ronald Reagan from being elected. This year the selection of Governor Palin of Alaska will not be the reason why Barack Obama is either elected or not elected. Her strength is not that she’s a woman, but that she is an absolute pro lifer; though ... Read More...

It is beginning to get ugly.

The hysterical and sexist attacks are mounting as Sarah Palin and her family are being maligned.

Did you know that her husband, Todd Palin, once ran a stop sign and was ticketed? Imagine that! Additionally, he was cited on another occasion for operating a vehicle on public property that was set aside as a wildlife refuge.

That type of occurrence is routine in Alaska where paved roads are few and far between and the frontier is not always well marked. What is even more damning is the fact that he was given a DUI ticket a quarter of a century ago. Todd Palin was twenty years old at the time.

How low can the smear tactics go? Will we next learn that a member of the Palin family has had to pay library fines on overdue books? Not any books, mind you, but ... Read More...

So, where do you think I spent the finest week of the summer…beginning on the 19th of August? In sunny Arlington Heights, that’s where, at scenic, voluptuous, scandalously decadent Northwest Community Hospital.

8/18 I posted my last entry in this place on my radio guest earlier that night- one James Merriner, author of a yet to be published book of a man James R. Thompson hopes to be beatified for emptying death row. If not beatified at least PARDONED by a soon-to-depart George W. Bush. The subject of Merriner’s book is, memorably, “The Man Who Emptied Death Row,” …who else but the infamous former Governor George Ryan whose corrupt secretary of state’s office took money to conferring commercial drivers’ licenses on anyone who would pay for them-this resulting in an illegal alien driving a truck in Milwaukee and, unable to understand English, failing to understand a warning shouted by ... Read More...