Illinois

**UPDATE*** With Audio Link

WLS AM 890 in Chicago hosted an in studio visit from ABC newser George Stephanopoulos this morning in the 8:30 segment. Host Don Wade played an interesting Dick Morris sound clip for Stephanopoulos and then asked for his response. That is when Stephanopoulos came right out and said "Dick is a liar." There was no equivocation, no weasel words, just a straight out "liar."

The discussion was focusing on Obama's request to Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-Illinois), a former Bill Clinton senior advisor, to become the new Obama chief of staff. Host Wade was questioning Stephanopoulos as to how the candidate of "change" could go back in time to an old Clinton hack and asked if Emanuel was a good choice for the position.

First it was Barack Obama's encounter with Joe the Plumber. Then there was his 2001 interview at Chicago radio station. Today, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air highlights yet another in what is turning out to be a long line of links and other items proving that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is a longtime dedicated, doctrinnaire soc-, soc-, (yes, we're still allowed to say it) socialist.

It comes from the March-April 1996 edition of New Ground, a publication of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (CDSA).

I'll cite the relevant verbiage after the jump. But what's more important, I will show just how easy it would have been for a journalist searching Google to find this item. The fact that either no one found this, or that those who might have found it obviously ignored it, shows just how lazy and/or negligent Old Media has been in vetting the Illinois senator's fitness to be president.

Here's what Obama had to say at "A Town Meeting on Economic Insecurity: Employment and Survival in Urban America" on February 25, 1996 in Chicago (bullets added by me for clarity, bold is mine):

Who you choose to surround yourself with makes you what you are and we already know Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama's associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and William Ayers.

The media have given an extensive examination to Samuel J. Wurzelbacher aka "Joe the Plumber" and Republican vice-presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But they've allowed another Obama associate to fly under the radar - Sokoni Karanja, president of the nonprofit Center for New Horizons. According a story in the Nov. 23, 2006 Chicago Tribune, Karanja co-founded the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, a leadership training nonprofit founded in 1994 with Obama.

But following the release of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," Karanja was arrested by Chicago Police. According to an article by Maureen O'Donnell in the June 28, 2004 Chicago Sun-Times, Karanja was walking his Doberman through a South Side Chicago neighborhood - where residents had been complaining about dog owners not cleaning up after pets.

If you're going base an entire TV show on taking potshots at conservatives and Republicans for anything and everything, you might try to get at least the simple things right - things like grade-school U.S. geography.

MSNBC's Oct. 13 "Rachel Maddow Show" must not have read that memo. After launching into a Keith Olbermann-esque tirade criticizing Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's geographic campaign strategy, the best and the brightest couldn't correctly label the state of Indiana, mistaking it for Illinois - which ironically is Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's home state.

Video below fold

In today's Chicago Sun-Times, media reporter Robert Feder writes:

Anchor's cheering section

•   •  Chicago reporters covering the Democratic Convention in Denver were stunned to witness WGN-Channel 9's Allison Payne cheering and applauding for speakers Wednesday night while she was seated with the Illinois delegation in the Pepsi Center.

The veteran newswoman has been co-anchoring convention coverage for the Tribune Co.-owned station.

Earlier in the week, Payne was quoted in the Chicago Tribune apologizing to viewers for her bizarre performance on Channel 9's 9 p.m. newscast Aug. 21. "I was not drunk," she said.

She attributed her slurred speech and erratic behavior to a series of ministrokes.

Chicago reporters were probably not taken aback by Payne's enthusiasm for the Democrats, but by her showing it so publicly.

It's supposed to be a secret that the mainstream media are in the tank for Democrats, Allison.  Didn't you get the memo?

**Audio below the fold**

Members of Barack Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago tried to shut down a local radio show on the City's most powerful radio signal, WGN 720, because they didn't like a conservative guest that was on going on the air to discuss Senator Barack Obama's ties to local terrorist William Ayers. This is a shocking attempt at stifling political free speech and a bald attempt to quash debate by the office of the Democratic Party's nominee. The funny thing is, WGN is the most liberal station in the City with every host but one slavishly supporting the junior Senator from Illinois.

Show host Milt Rosenberg, the station's only conservative leaning host (probably to be considered more libertarian than Republican), had on short notice asked conservative writer Stanley Kurtz to come on the air to discuss his work on uncovering Obama's ties to terrorist Wiliam Ayres and the Annenberg Challenge project. Kurtz was just in Chicago for his investigation and Rosenberg contacted Kurtz only that morning to appear. At the same time, Rosenberg's producer contacted the Obama campaign's HQ -- which is but blocks from the radio station in downtown Chicago -- to offer some time on the air with Kurtz to debate Kurtz' claims about Obama and Ayres. The campaign, however, flatly refused the offer of the equal air time and instead tried to drum up via email a protest of the show, trying to get it stopped.

In my post on Tuesday, I wrote about Stanley Kurtz's efforts to access the Annenberg Challenge files housed at the University of Illinois-Chicago. These files documented an educational initiative started by Bill Ayers and chaired by Barack Obama.

At that point, only AP writer Pete Yost had written anything about the story. Additionally, U of I rep Bill Burton issued a press release. Since that time, there has been no movement from the university and coverage by the MSM has been minimal, though it is finally beginning to pick up. To wit, as reported in a blog post at the Chicago Tribune, Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, declined to intervene in the matter by pressing U of I to release the documents to Kurtz, saying, 

People keep trying to align himself [sic] with Barack Obama. It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he’s been making a strong contribution to our community.

According to Daley, we should move on and accept that any past relationship between Obama and Ayers was entirely innocuous, on his (Daley's) say so. Right.

Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid created quite a stir in the blogosphere yesterday with their dispatch from Baghdad, "Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard accurately called it a "stop the presses" story, and ended his post with an important perspective that you really must read if you haven't already.

Now that the story has had one overnight news cycle since its appearance at about 9 AM yesterday, I looked around to see how much coverage Burns's and Reid's work received.

I looked at what the three "newspapers of record" did (if anything) with the AP item; searched Google News for other coverage; and reviewed headline revisions made by outlets that carried it.

Results are below the fold.

Recently the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star subjected its readers to another fine example of sloppy journalism aimed at exalting the Obama candidacy. It is so bad, so pointless, so filled with empty platitudes and meaninglessness that one might suspect it was written by Barack Obama himself instead of a reputed journalist. But it is a perfect example of the sort of slavish devotion the Illinois press is bestowing on it's almost native son.

This time, the Register Star is seen assuring Illinoisans that a President Barack will be good for the state because "he's been here." That's it. That's the entire message. He will be good for Illinois because "he's been here." No explanation, no examples, no further revelation is needed... and the paper offers none.

Families USA is at it again and as usual the liberal media are dutifully parroting their rhetoric.

The liberal, pro-universal healthcare advocacy group recently released a report attacking President Bush’s budget proposal for Medicaid. In the report, Families USA Director Ron Pollack asserted that Bush’s proposed budget decreases funding for Medicaid. Like last time, Families USA has released state-specific studies showing that Bush’s supposed Medicaid cuts would cause the individual state to lose so many jobs and so much money. Local newspapers took the bait.

There’s just one problem: President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal does not cut funding for Medicaid. In fact it calls for an increase in Medicaid spending by $12 to $13 million as compared to the expected spending for 2008. The decrease in the president’s budget proposal is not really a decrease at all. What the president is proposing amounts to a slightly smaller annual average growth rate for Medicaid spending (7.1 percent) than the projected annual average growth rate of 7.4 percent over the next five years. (More information here).

Last evening, Chicago's Fox News at Nine aired the segment "Cardinal George Talks About Pope's Visit to America." Reporter Nancy Pender's interview with Chicago's Cardinal Francis George included video of Pope Benedict XVI touring the United States as Ms. Pender provided the voice-over:

"The Cardinal says the visit reinforced his view of the Pope as a warm, compassionate man, and not the hardline conservative he's reputed to be."

CARDINAL GEORGE: None of us is totally responsible for our reputations, it's what you make of it. So if that's the reputation he had, then it turns out not to be entirely true, because the man I saw during this visit is the man I've known for the last 20 years since being a bishop.

**Video below the fold**

 

On Feb 8, 2007 Channel 2 News Chicago had a little puff piece on Senator Barack Obama discussing his soon to be launched presidential campaign. It happened to air just before Barack's "60 Minutes" TV interview and it focused on Barack's attendance at the Trinity United Church of Christ. The interesting thing about this video is that Barack is seen sitting side by side with Rev. Wright as they sign copies of Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope." This chumminess seems to make the lie to the claim that Barack was in any way upset at his "spiritual mentor," Rev. Wright.

It is curious why the CBS 2 video showing a beaming Barack and Wright has not been more widely played by the media, but it does prove that Barack only recently, in the middle of scrutiny and only in the last month, has found himself trying to claim he disagrees with the racist Rev. After all, he was still quite friendly with the ranting Rev. Wright in the CBS video of but a year ago.

Illinois State Senator James Meeks has endorsed Barack Obama for president.

Here is how James Meeks and his relationship with Obama were described in a 2004 Men's News Daily report during Obama's 2004 US Senate campaign:

Obama’s closest religious advisers -- Fr. (Michael) Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago's Salem Baptist Church – may have quotes from Scripture always handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity.

..... According to State Sen./Rev. James Meeks’ humble, personal church Web page, “Meeks’ practical and charismatic style of instruction motivates the hearer to take action and has resulted in accomplishments of miraculous proportions.” When the good Senator/Reverend is not accomplishing miracles and other feats “never before documented in history,” he serves as the executive vice president of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s National Rainbow-Push Coalition.

The Rev. Meeks appears to have a problem similar to that of the now-infamous Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, as this excerpt from an August 2006 story at CBS Chicago shows (bolds are mine):

The story of an Illinois high school making a gay pornographic play required reading for seniors has been reported since March 7th, but it has been ignored for the most part with only a handful of news outlets having taken on this issue. The fact that a public high school that requires such reading doesn't raise a fuss in the media shows how the media supports the gay agenda, of course. It also shows the arrogance of the Deefield, Illinois school administrators that tried to slip this advocacy for homosexuality into the curriculum without bothering to sponsor a discussion on including it among the community that pays the taxes for the school district.

The book, "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has numerous passages that describes gay sexual encounters in exacting, sometimes violent, detail.

Here's one media bias everyone accepts (and expects): showing compassion and sympathy for a community after a horrifying mass murder, such as the killings at Northern Illinois University. The leftist website Alternet proved the exception to the rule, printing a bizarre article by an author named Mark Ames that trashed NIU as a mediocre school for mediocre students, and suggested that the "flat" plains of Middle America could make anyone shoot up a school or a post office. The headline was:

Northern Ill. University: Was the Killer Crazy, or the Campus Hopeless? Bracket this massacre as the work of a lunatic on drugs, and you miss the chance to consider the horrors of life in middle America.

In another example of the belt-tightening of the old media, NBC has announced that they will be closing two of their long standing news bureaus. Gone will be the Chicago and Dallas bureaus to be replaced by "regional hubs."

TVNewser gives us the scoop:

Insiders tell TVNewser the current NBC News global news gathering system is in for an overhaul. Sources tell us a 9am ET conference call among News division execs and the bureau managers will announce that the current system will be replaced with regional hubs covering large areas of the U.S. and, in some cases, the world.

TVNewser reports that the Chicago office will now answer to the New York office and Dallas will report to Atlanta. No word on how many jobs are to be lost, but it is certain that some will go away.

Now, I know finding a Republican in Chicago city government is probably less likely than spotting a nudist in a porcupine convention, but is it asking too much for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times to add a D-tag when reporting on six-term (and freshly re-elected) Mayor Richard M. Daley's push for an 11 percent city sales tax and a 10-cent-per-bottle bottled water tax?

It's particularly puzzling given the Sun-Times excellent reporting by Tim Novak and Fran Spielman on the "hidden tax" imposed by corruption within the Daley administration:

When Mayor Daley asked Chicagoans to cough up $293 million more next year to finance the cost of city government, there's one tax he failed to mention: The Corruption, Waste and Mismanagement Tax.

Hiding behind a fake company name, Planned Parenthood came into Aurora, Illinois, a suburban Chicago neighborhood, and built an abortion clinic without telling the city of Aurora that it was to be an abortion clinic. Yet, all the news about this story is centering on the pro-abortion/pro-life debate instead of Planned Parenthood's lies. This story has been going on for a few days in Aurora, Illinois. It seems Planned Parenthood told a teeny, tiny white lie to the City Planning Board of Aurora about what use a new building they were constructing near a residential neighborhood would be put to. In fact, they even misled city officials as to who they even were, and those officials are none too happy about it.

The city granted a building permit to a company called Gemini Office Development LLC to build what was being called a “medical office building.” It turns out, however, that Gemini Office Development LLC is actually a shell company for Planned Parenthood and this new building was not going to be just a regular, non-descript “medical office building” but a Planned Parenthood abortion mill, instead. Curiously, Planned Parenthood neglected to tell the city of its plans until the building was complete and they were ready to open for business.

Chicago, like Washington, D.C., has a stringent gun ban. So naturally the move by the District to defend the ban before the Supreme Court will be big news in the Windy City. Yet that doesn't excuse the Chicago Tribune's James Oliphant for breezing over gun rights advocates in his article, "D.C. gun case may hit Chicago."

Oliphant began by telling his readers that gun rights advocates would come gunning for Chicago's gun ban if they succeed before the high Court.:

On Wednesday’s "American Morning," CNN co-host Soledad O’Brien must have surprised former Clinton administration official and Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel (D) with a tough question concerning the Bush administration’s use of executive privilege versus the Clinton administration’s use. Emanuel tried to claim the privilege is usually "reserved for national security," which even CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wasn’t buying. Here’s the exchange:

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: "You worked in the White House, the Clinton Administration, where they claimed executive privilege for Bruce Lindsey and for Sidney Blumenthal in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, essentially. Why that time around was the efforts you made -- it failed, but there was an effort to say executive privilege. Let's protect these guys. They shouldn't have to go testify before Congress. It failed. But that was what was claimed, so why this time around does it not seem fair?"

Sprinkled throughout the mainstream media today are news reports about the Army Times and similar periodicals running an editorial Monday calling on the President to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  Typical was the story carried on NBC5.com, Chicago's NBC affiliate, "Military Newspapers Call For Rumsfeld Removal."  The piece begins, "The Military Times Media Group, which publishes the influential Army Times and other military periodicals, said it will be running an editorial Monday urging President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld."

But wait a minute.  Are these publications actually "military newspapers?"  The average reader might well interpret that term to mean that they're produced by active duty military personnel.  They're not.  Although the newspapers are targeted for service members, the Army Times and all the others are private, independent operations.  They are subsidiaries of the Gannett Co., which also publishes USA Today.

In today's Chicago Sun-Times article, "Controversial judge plans to retire," the newspaper writes: "A judge who once upheld a speeding ticket given to a woman in labor, told two young girls they would 'go to hell' if they lied on the stand and denied a woman a bathroom break before she soiled herself is stepping down from the bench."

Three sentences later, the retiring judge is identified as a Republican. OK, fine, that's relevant and should be reported.

The problem is the newspaper doesn't do that consistently. Less than two years ago, a Cook County Democratic judge was temporarily removed from the bench by the chief judge who, after reviewing a court transcript,said he "was exceedingly troubled by (the judge's) lack of respect for the high office which he holds and for those individuals present for the proceedings." The Sun-Times reported at the time: "After (the judge's) outburst-- which included the judge using the 'F' word twice -- Chief Judge Timothy Evans reassigned him and took him off the bench 'until further notice.'"

Robert Klein Engler is an author and member of the Illinois Minuteman Project. After the massive protests in Chicago opposed to reforming immigration, WGN Chicago invited Engler on the air to talk about the issue and represent the group. But Engler says he was invited under false pretenses.

Engler wrote a report of his experience at the studio:

Many of those involved in the Illinois Minuteman Project believe the Chicago media is biased towards illegal immigrants. At best the media is ill informed and at worst it is simply the propaganda arm for the Democratic Party and the Clan of Bridgeport. Recently, I was invited to appear on WGN's TV-News program, Adelante, as a representative of The Illinois Minuteman Project to see if what we believe about the media is true. What happened was an eye-opener.

I was asked to represent the IMP by its director Rosana Pulido. She was told to send someone who would be on the program with a woman representing the Latino community to talk about U. S. House of Representative's Bill H. R. 4437. That bill would make being an illegal immigrant in the U. S. a felony crime. When I arrived at the TV station and was taken to the green room, I soon discovered what I had prepared for was not going to happen. The discussion I planned to attend turned into a setup.