More Like This Please
ArchPundit
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfhaeBbtvY&eurl=http://www.prairiestateblue.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4462[/youtube]
The Annenberg Challenge Papers
Are about as boring as most non-profit records apparently:
The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way. The two continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program, records show.
At a Democratic debate this year when the association between Obama and Ayers was raised, Obama said: “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Obama called Ayers’ past radical acts detestable.
But critics note that Obama visited Ayers’ home for a meeting at the start of his first state Senate bid in the mid-’90s.
The UIC records showed that Ayers was instrumental in securing the $50 million education grant to reform Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg. . After Chicago was awarded the money, Obama served as president of the Challenge’s board of directors, the fiscal arm that disbursed the grants to schools and raised private matching funds. Ayers participated in a second entity known as the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, the operational arm that worked with the grant recipients.
It’s fully reasonable and appropriate that the press got the records, but that a professor at UIC which the professor largely put together a grant was active on the grant is hardly exciting news and it certainly doesn’t help the conspiracy theorists that Barack Obama was actually a 60s radical at age 8.
But for boomers–it’s always and will always be 1968. The rest of us don’t give a damn.
Alexi Giannoulias at the DNC
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU8djhl0o14[/youtube]
Whomever at the DNC decided to use the Move Player and Silverlight needs a good smacking around.
Lisa Madigan at the DNC
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJ-leE7v0U[/youtube]
Dan Hynes at the DNC
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ2NRLjEApU[/youtube]
Emil at DNC
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UohzEj8Wso4[/youtube]
Vallas a Republican
It was in this column three weeks ago that I reported something Daley, House Speaker Michael Madigan, County Board President Todd Stroger and a whole host of ward bosses hate to think about.
Vallas, who back in 2001 resigned after differences with Daley, is considering something, well, drastic.
He is considering running for president of the patronage and contract rich Cook County Board as — brace yourself — a Republican.
“Paul has a lot of options,” his brother and adviser Dean Vallas said at the time.
“We would certainly welcome any Democrat,” said Illinois GOP Chairman Andy McKenna by phone Sunday. “We certainly respect Paul Vallas. … He has demonstrated he knows how to administer a complex governmental entity.”
The state Republican Party, which has been almost as big a mess as Stroger’s Cook County government, needs a messiah. A uniter. A vote-getter. A maverick.
Though neither McKenna nor Vallas confirm there is something in the works, trust me, there is.
And the raw political fact of the matter is that Vallas could win.
Cook County residents are so fed up with having the highest tax rate in the nation, so disgusted with Stroger’s family and friends feeding at the public trough, and so sick of inheritance politics where the father’s job is passed on to the son regardless of qualifications.
This could be the time for a revolt.
Or it could just be time for Vallas to end any chance for a career in Illinois politics. It’s one thing to say that the conditions might be right for a revolt, but it’s important to remember a poorly funded candidate who ran a crappy campaign. Beyond that, it assumes that the winner of the primary will be Stroger which I don’t think is a safe bet at all. Running against a Dem who isn’t Stroger would just make him look foolish.
Barack’s Walking A Fine Line
“You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there,” Obama said, according to transcripts released by ESPN. “People aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball.”
Okay, usually games are getting ruined at Wrigley by drunk dumbasses who don’t know the game. Not the time to bring it up thoguh
The Tribune: The New Sun-Times
Before the Sun-Times got better.
Seriously? The Red-Eye editor?
Oh, and the worst news:
James Warren, managing editor/features, will leave the paper, completing a management exodus that has largely rewritten the Tribune’s masthead in the eight months since real estate magnate Sam Zell took the paper’s parent company private in a debt-heavy $8.2 billion buyout.
Warren is a top notch reporter and editor–Keith Olbermann mentioned his impending departure on Friday. Just consider Zell the new Alien (AKA Murdoch).
I Demand Illinois NOW Pull It’s Collective Head out of Its Ass
About as effective as their call on Emil Jones to step down.
It didn’t sound like Jones, and now that we know Grabenhofer is part of the fiasco, there’s no reason Emil is even being bothered with this. You might remember Grabenhofer as the one who doesn’t even know who else voted like Obama on abortion bills, claims Illinois NOW didn’t endorse him because of it, but cannot explain why the endorsed Lisa Madigan who did the same thing. Update: As Rich points out, it does sound like Jones, actually, I’m just not sure it deserves this kind of coverage. That said, I’m not sure why it’s getting as much attention as our Governor trying tear apart the Illinois Constitution.
“That was a pretty horrible comment,” said Illinois NOW president Bonnie Grabenhofer, also a Clinton delegate, who issued the demand for Senate President Emil Jones’ resignation.
Feminists who make up the Illinois Clinton delegate contingent at the Democratic National Convention were outraged to learn of today’s exclusive Chicago Sun-Times report about Clinton delegate Delmarie Cobb’s accusation that Jones directed the racially loaded slur at her.
The flap comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Obama campaign, which is slumping in national polls and has struggled to bring Clinton delegates across the country into the fold.
“I’ve never heard anything as awful or as sexist or as racist as to call her that for supporting Hillary,” said Clinton delegate Gay Bruhn, another NOW member in Illinois who called for a public apology from Jones.
What is missing is that Bruhn isn’t just another NOW member, she’s Bonnie’s partner. That would be mentioned in any story referring to a heterosexual couple. So the story misses the context and treats same sex couples differently.