Chicago is home to a retired conservative University of Chicago professor named Milt Rosenberg who hosts an evening talk show on WGN radio.  WGN stands for “World’s Greatest Newspaper” because it is owned by the Tribune Company which also owns the Chicago Cubs. Jack Brickhouse, the voice of the Cubs for years when I was growing up, broadcast on WGN. And these days many people follow the Cubs on WGN cable television all over the country. 

In other words, the folks at WGN are Chicago icons.

Yet the Milt Rosenberg show was the subject of a wave of hostile attacks from followers of the Obama campaign because Milt had the nerve to put on his show Dr. Stanley Kurtz, a journalist and conservative intellectual who writes for National Review Online. (more…)

Here are some questions the media should be asking and did not ask throughout the long primary season, abdicating its responsibility. Imagine what would have happened if the media had fully vetted Obama and practiced journalism as they should have done.

1. When did Barack Obama first meet Bill Ayers? Was it in New York City? Under what circumstances? Was it at Cooper Union when Ayers was a graduate student there and Obama at Columbia? Was it at Columbia when Ayers was at the teachers’ college?
2. Did Ayers play any role in Obama coming to Chicago as an organizer in 1985? Did the Ayers influence the Woods Fund in any way to subsidize through the Gamaliel Foundation Obama’s job? (The Woods Fund was created by the family of the Safari Coal Company, a major supplier of Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO was Thomas Ayers.)
3. Did Ayers introduce Obama the organizer to his family, his father Tom and brother John? Did they involve Obama in the school reform movement they led in Chicago?
4. Did the Ayers family help Obama become a summer associate at Sidley Austen, the father’s company’s law firm?
5. Did Bernardine Dohrn know Michelle Robinson when they both worked at Sidley at the same time? Did she or Ayers introduce Michelle to Barack at Sidley?
6. Did Dohrn, who attended the University of Chicago Law School with Judson Miner, play any part in helping Obama get a job at the Davis Miner law firm?

UPDATE: It was 40 years ago today that William Ayers was arrested at the Democratic national convention — just like the “Recreate68″ extreme-left protestors at this convention:
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The strength of the ad is its accuracy. Unlike the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s ads, there is no available counter-argument. Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist. Obama’s political career was launched at Bill Ayers’ house. Obama did serve on the Woods Fund board with Ayers. The ad hits Obama hardest on his self-proclaimed good judgment. As law professor Steve Diamond states, Obama wasn’t just friends with Ayers, he wasn’t just a guy in the neighborhood, he was Obama’s benefactor for 20 years.

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These documents were provided to me by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. They include the original grant application submitted by Bill Ayers and Anne Hallett to Brown which hosted the national Annenberg Challenge.

In addition these documents include the program reports and annual and semi-annual reports prepared on a regular basis by the Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Ken Rolling. Rolling had been recruited to head the CAC from a position at the Woods Fund where he had been active in support for the controversial 1988 reform of Chicago schools.  Obama’s Developing Communities Project received more than $27,000 from the Woods Fund during that period.

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Or two, or three - kinda hard to keep up with Obama and all of the people he throws under the bus on a daily basis. Whew! The latest one is the Mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, the one who is having some legal trouble in Detroit (a little perjury here, a little assault there…).

He’s a big buddy of Obama’s, and was worried he could not make the Democratic National Convention because of his pesky little ankle bracelet keeping him around home. Oh, but WAIT! He got a judge to “modify” his bond to allow him to go! Yippee for him!! (more…)

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For example, the overriding theme of the piece is Obama’s unbridled ambition. Early during his brief, three year tenure as a community organizer–whatever THAT job entailed—Obama openly discussed his long-term and very, very large political ambitions with even his newest acquaintances.

After connecting up with “king makers” like his employer, Allison Davis, and Annenberg Challenge associate, William Ayers, Obama found an opening when the Illinois state Senator from his neighborhood, Alice Palmer, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Ironically, the seat Palmer sought was open due to recently disclosed past corruption on the part of the person that had previously held it and she was beaten in the Democratic primary to fill the seat by (of all people) Jesse Jackson’s son. (more…)

They sent a 30-something New Yorker named Ryan Lizza to Chicago.  And Chicago ate him for breakfast and never looked back.

Of course, as patient readers of Global Labor well know, we asked, and answered, the age old Chicago political question - Who Sent You? - back in April of this year and we updated it several times most recently on June 23.  No mention of our work in the New Yorker - but that’s ok, they likely would have screwed it up anyway.

As we wrote then, the key to understanding Obama’s rise to power in Chicago politics is knowing which questions to ask, and of whom, and to understand why some will give you a straight answer while others will smile as broad as daylight at you and feed you a pile of horse manure. Lizza ate a lot of the latter. Now he wants you to eat it, too.  Don’t be fooled.

Let’s just take apart one paragraph as an example, about the critical relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

Lizza writes as follows:

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I have zero compassion for them. Anyone who supported Obama after March 2008 is clearly either a delusional Obama cultist or a head in the sand idiot. This one is on you.

You had better more experienced choices, say Senator Joe Biden. You had better more principled candidates who live their convictions, say Representative Dennis Kucinich. You had a reform-minded committed populist, say former Senator John Edwards. And then you had Hillary Clinton who despite some flaws encompassed all the best qualities of the aforementioned. You dug the Democratic Party’s grave, now wallow in it for all I care.

For months, countless voices of reason have pointed out time and again, Obama is an empty suit (the above cartoon is from March 2007 so don’t act surprise that Obama is devoid of substance). Obama is a fraud. He lacks experience. He has no relevant qualifications. He has no conviction other than his own political welfare.

His past behaviour is troublesome. He threw Alice Palmer and four others off the ballot. His rise through the labyrinth of Chicago politics took him down some worrisome alleys and forged alliances with a cast of characters include Louis Farrahkan, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Reverend James Meeks, Antonin Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn. Now he pals around with Donnie McClurkin, Father Michael Pfleger, and Jodie Evans.

For months committed liberals like Paul Krugman, in column after column, demonstrated how his proposals weren’t that progressive or even centrist. I’ve grown hoarse pointing out Obama’s lobbyist connections and his ties to the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.

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