Chicago Daily Observer

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. – Bill Burton, Obama Spokesman

Leave it to the Democrats to continue to their assault on small town America. I’m proud to be from one of those small towns and I find Mr. Burton’s comments insulting. Sen. Obama revealed his feelings about small town America months ago when he said that voters in Pennsylvania clung to “guns and religion” out of bitterness. Seems to me like Sen. Obama just doesn’t understand true American values. We don’t all shop at Whole Foods and we don’t care what the price arugula is.

Do Democratic presidential campaign committees think we are all stupid or do they suffer from some sort of group delusion?

This time around they are trying to take a man whose entire career has linked him with far-left anti-American characters, political agendas focused on redistribution of wealth, and racial spoils and pawn him off on us as a man who transcends race and partisanship.

As the façade’s cracks begin to show through — largely outside the focus of the major media — the Obama camp is behaving badly and thereby telegraphing that the charges involving Obama’s role in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) are not only true, but both unanswerable and exceedingly damaging to the campaign’s make-believe narrative about their candidate.

Unlike John McCain, who has the experience, vision and leadership to guide this country in turbulent times, the Obama camp is attempting to sell sizzle instead of steak. They don’t want the voters to look too closely, because, frankly, there is nothing there.

Families are worried about health care. Unlike John McCain’s health care plan, which is designed to return more control to the patients regarding their health care needs, Obama’s plan would result in higher taxes on businesses and individuals and, in the end, not cover all Americans.

Families want relief from high gas prices. John McCain advocates a comprehensive approach to alternative fuels while at the same time not increasing our dependency on foreign oil, which is what Obama’s windfall profits tax plan would do.

Here’s the best part about the Sarah Palin VP pick, and one fundamental difference between the Republicans and the Democrats: In presenting Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential pick, John McCain never referred to her as being a woman.

Oh, he used the pronoun “she.” But in no way he reference her gender as in any way giving her some sort of special right to our votes. Compare this with many Obama backers who have made the case that we do not elect Obama we are by definition a racist country, and the world will rightly paint us as such.
Is there any possibility the Democrats would have put a woman on the ticket without presenting her as “I am woman, hear me roar?” Not a chance.

As a woman, I couldn’t care less whether the President of the United States, or the folks serving in Washington are men ... Read More...

Open Invitation to Our Readers

Thursday, September 4, 2008
7pm Film and Question & Answer Session
8:30pm Reception
Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Ave
Chicago, IL 60611

Where are all the free-speech absolutists when you need them? Over the past month, left-wing partisans and Democratic lawyers have waged a brass-knuckled intimidation campaign against GOP donors, TV and radio stations, and even an investigative journalist — because they have all dared to question the radical cult of Barack Obama. A chill wind blows, but where the valiant protectors of political dissent are, nobody knows.

On August 11, I called the American Civil Liberties Union national headquarters in New York for comment about the Chicago gangland tactics of one of these groups — a nonprofit called “Accountable America” that is spearheaded by a former operative of the Obama-endorsing MoveOn outfit.

“Accountable America” is trolling campaign-finance databases and targeting conservative donors with “warning” letters in a thuggish attempt to depress Republican fundraising. (You’ll be interested to know that the official registered agent of Accountable America is Laurence Gold, a ... Read More...

Watching coverage of the Democratic National Convention the thought comes to me that operatives are banking on Americans suffering from amnesia. How else can it be explained that speaker after speaker is saying John McCain equals an extension of the George Bush administration? How can it be that the speakers tell us that we cannot afford another 4 years of the same past eight years? How can Senator Joseph Biden keep a straight face when he tells the audience that McCain agrees with everything this administration has done and is doing? Biden has to be counting on a national epidemic of amnesia. Either that, or the rarefied air of the Mile High City has gotten to him.

Do the democrat speakers actually believe that voters have forgotten that it was Senator John McCain who ran against George Bush for President – in an embittered race? They’re seemingly praying that voters ... Read More...

If you think this is outrageous, wait until Obama becomes president..

His campaign tries to force a radio station to not air an Obama critic

Unhappy that Chicago’s WGN radio would ask writer Stanley Kurtz what he has found in documents linking Obama with one-time fugitive radical Bill Ayers, Obama’s henchmen organized a campaign to flood the station with angry calls.

Sure, it’s their right to protest Kurtz’ appearance on the highly respected and long-running “Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg,” but it is clearly WGN‘s right to have as a guest anyone they wish. It says so right in the Bill of Rights.

It is typical of leftists that they seek to contain speech they disapprove of. Notice I said leftists, not the typical, garden variety citizen who calls himself a liberal. I see a leftist as a person so extreme in their liberal agenda that they seek the downfall of capitalism through increasing socialization of the economy and culture, at the least, and/or actual violent overthrow of America, a country they think to be unfair, imperialistic and racist at the worst.

What they really seek is power. The story of Barack Obama and his approach to reasonable disagreement is a great illustration of how tightly the candidate and his people would like to control their critics and, ultimately, America.

Barack Obama seems way too cozy with leftists, perhaps because the “most liberal Senator in America” is one. Communists, terrorists and other shady characters seem to populate his BFF list.

Here is ... Read More...

Milt talks with Stanley Kurtz,a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to National Review, about what he’s found in the newly opened Annenberg Challenge archives at the UIC Library.

Link opens in media player

The 2008 Democratic National Convention is passing with a welter of hugs. Things are going as hoped for. The Clintons are behaving. Joe Biden is tough and globally wise. The Obamas are the new-age, all-American family.

Out there in Denver we have watched the delegates applaud the shaky but determined appearance of the Kennedy patriarch, Teddy, fighting off his brain cancer to receive the kind of cheers the Kennedys always receive in honor of public trauma past.

While the lobbyists outside the big tent were opening their luxury hospitality suites, Michelle Obama gave her keynote speech in which she assured the delegates – and the estimated 40 million TV audience – that she loved her husband, her brother, her mother, her father, her daughters, and her country. At the end there were cute kids,

There is so much love going on that one almost wishes for a snarl or two, ... Read More...

Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly attacking the Dallas billionaire funding a harsh attack ad, Harold Simmons.

“We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits,” he wrote.

He called the group’s activities “patently illegal.”

Bauer made the case that Simmons’ group fulfilling its a real nonprofit charter because it hasn’t spent any money on anything other than attacking Obama.

The American Issues Project released a statement responding to the letter.

“Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama’s campaign now wants to put our donors in ... Read More...

Reflecting and Reporting on the Democratic Convention: The Kennedys, the Obamas, Ald. Burke and “moving on.”

On Monday night, it appeared Teddy Kennedy upstaged Michelle Obama a bit. It was not that Michelle was not warmly received at the Pepsi Center [This reporter kept hearing the Billy Goat’s and Second City’s “Pepsi, Pepsi, no Coke.”]

Michelle was warmly received, performed and spoke well, and she may have achieved what she set out to do. That is, be irresistibly likeable by the great majority of Americans [If not as much as her husband, at least in his league] and remove that bad taste in America’s mouth from her comment about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life—as a result of Barack’s run for President.

But, standing on the floor with the Illinois delegation, this reporter felt the tremendous warmth and affection of that crowd that Democrats ... Read More...

I’m here in Denver at the Democratic Convention, and while enjoying it, frankly miss the presence of Mike Royko with whom I palled around with at 10 conventions from 1968 to 1996 (including two Republican ones). My first National Convention was 1952 and this is my 17th convention, and in spite of Royko’s absence one of my two favorites.

The selection of Joe Biden as the vice-presidential candidate is appropriate for many reasons, but I’m lucky because on August 16 I was asked in Paris at a meeting
of Democrats Abroad where I had spoken why I hadn’t supported Biden for President.

I said that if I could choose a President I would have chosen Biden, but in a democracy you have to win, and for a variety reasons I had felt as early as the summer of 2006 that only Barack Obama had a chance of wresting the ... Read More...

The U.S. economy was much stronger in the spring than first thought because of better exports and less inventory liquidation by businesses, according to a government report that surprised economists.
REAL TIME ECONOMICS

[Go to blog]
• Read the latest news and analysis on the economy at WSJ.com’s Real Time Economics blog.

Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 3.3% annual rate April through June, the Commerce Department said Thursday in a new, revised estimate of second-quarter GDP.

Originally, the government had estimated second-quarter 2008 GDP climbed 1.9%. First-quarter GDP increased 0.9%.

Separately, the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly as expected last week but remained at elevated levels consistent with more declines in nonfarm employment.