If it's Sunday, it must be worship time at the Temple of Obama, at least at the Chicago Tribune.  Today the top of the front page has a picture of Barack and Michelle embracing.  The headline is:  "White House romances: Obamas' affection is notable among presidential pairs."  Page 4 carries the story, also shown on the Trib's Web site with the headline "Scenes from Obamas' love story."  We learn:

Over the last two years the future first couple has made a practice of sharing such small, intimate moments on the grandest of stages, whether trading fist bumps, whispering "I love you" or stealing quick kisses on the campaign trail.

The Obamas' unabashed affection for each other suggests they could become the one of the most engaging sets of lovebirds in White House history. Though the home has known many deeply committed couples (as well as some infamously uncommitted), few were as young, attractive or willing to put their passion on public display.

Both of Chicago's major dailies have sold out editions containing special "commemorative" sections devoted to Barack Obama.  Judging by today's Chicago Tribune, perhaps the strategy is to push out an Obama commemorative issue every day.

The top half of the front page includes a huge color photo of a smiling Obama in a Chicago deli yesterday, a color picture of Obama with one of his daughters, and a color shot of a Chicago crowd watching Obama's motorcade speed by.  "At home: A brief taste of normalcy" is the accompanying story and it notes:

On Friday, he made time to leave the office briefly to pick up a corned beef sandwich and cherry pie from Manny's Coffee Shop & Deli, a favorite spot for Chicago politicians.

"I'm just glad to be out," Obama said amid applause and shouts of congratulations from surprised diners.

Yet the roughly 15-minute stop seemed more designed to provide a media photo opportunity—the first in nearly a week—than to let the president-elect step out for some fresh air.

Well, isn't this a hoot?

As Barack Obama appears to be appointing less than totally pro-surrender officials to his inner circle, far leftists are feeling constrained in their criticism by Obama Mania.

A Los Angeles Times article by Paul Richter with an amusing title ("Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet") notes that Obama has appointed or is considering many people who originally supported the war in Iraq (this apparently automatically makes them "hawks").

Richter's hawkish characterization of the likes of Richard Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton, Vice-president Elect Joe Biden, and John Kerry is inadvertently amusing to any reader who has followed the machinations in Washington since the 110th Congress began in January 2006.

Richter goes to one peace activist, Kevin Martin, to "prove" that Obama is a "centrist." But in the process, as noted in my bold, we see an antiwar zealot acknowledge that Obama Mania has gone over the top:

The Chicago Tribune is so enamored with President-elect and hometown hero Barack Obama that it's featuring a photo gallery devoted to "White House romance" directly below its Web page masthead (see screencap at right).

The 28-image gallery features four photographs of the first couple-to-be including Barack and Michelle "shar[ing] a tender moment at the Election Night rally" and another of them leaving "Spaggia restaurant after dinner, the day after winning the election."

To be fair, Tribune editors did include photos of other first couples going all the way back to the Trumans. Even so, Trib editors sought fit to include two photos from the 2000 Democratic Convention of Al and Tipper Gore, including the infamous on-stage kiss between the then-vice president and his wife.

Mainstream media Obamamania continues building.  Today's Chicago Tribune includes yet another "souvenir section" titled "Obama: A Life in Photos."  Moreover, there are articles in the newspaper's first section on the current owner of a 2000 Dodge Neon once owned by Obama, a doodle crafted by the senator that last year sold for $2,075, and how Illinois "bureaucrats are trying to figure out whether they should preserve for posterity the chair that cushioned his posterior."   Page 19 carries "They met Obama when. . . "  Also on the paper's Web site, the article begins:

In the wake of the election of the Historic Obama, as reporters are pressed by their editors to perhaps consider that large 47.3 percent of the electorate that didn’t vote for History, out comes the idea of conservatives gripped by white-man panic, with stories soaked in sociologists tagging gun owners with a "deep-seated fear of the armed black man," exacting "retribution for the very deep-seated legacy of slavery."

My friend Cam Edwards tipped me to this story in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune, headlined "Obama win triggers run on guns: Buyers said to fear crackdown on their rights, civil unrest." Reporting from Houston, deep in red-state rage, Howard Witt wrote the election if causing a run on gun stores for guns and ammo:

Some say they are worried that the incoming Obama administration will attempt to reimpose the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004. Others fear the loss of their right to own handguns. A few say they are preparing to protect themselves in the event of a race war.

Yeah, and the Chicago Cubs "seem" not to have won a World Series for 100 years.

A Thursday afternoon Chicago Tribune story (HTs to Ace and Say Anything) by Rex W. Huppke covers the appearance of a new afterword in a book by former Weather Underground leader William Ayers.

Let's just roll the excerpt:

In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.

In response to Chris Matthews' claim that his job is to make the Barack Obama presidency a success, the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus suggested the MSNBC host needs to see a neurologist.

Although I agree that Matthews clearly has a fixation that needs attention, I'm not sure it's physiological rather than purely psychological.

Regardless of the cause, the symptom was the source of discussion on Sunday's "Reliable Sources":

Studs Terkel, author and broadcaster, died on Halloween.  Barack Obama observed: "Studs was not just a Chicago institution, he was a national treasure. His writings, broadcasts, and interviews shed light on what it meant to be an American in the 20th century." Obama highly praised Terkel when he was alive, declaring him " not just a national treasure - he's one of Chicago's treasures." 

Terkel's appeal to liberals may at least partially be explained by his political activities.  The Associated Press today reports:

Terkel's politics were liberal, vintage FDR. He would never forget the many New Deal programs from the Great Depression and worried that the country suffered from "a national Alzheimer's disease" that made government the perceived enemy.

If you needed any more evidence that the media meme regarding Sarah Palin not being qualified for vice president is nothing but liberal propaganda from America's Obama-loving press you got it on Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show."

After the panel of New York magazine's John Heilemann, the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, and the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page unanimously concluded that Palin was a horrible choice as John McCain's runningmate due to her lack of qualifications, they all agreed that she will be a serious candidate for president in 2012 if Obama wins this November.

Interesting hypocrisy, wouldn't you agree?

Readers are strongly encouraged to strap themselves in before proceeding to the following partial transcript of this astonishingly revealing segment (video embedded upper-right):

I guess it's not enough for Barack Obama to be regularly captured by photographers with a halo around him. Now, thanks to the Chicago Tribune, Michelle's got one, too (h/t NBer Dan Schwartz):

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.

Chicago Tribune staff writer Rex Huppke has solicited the expertise of communist party leaders to defend Barack Obama from the fallout of the now famous answer he supplied to a man referred to as Joe the Plumber.

In an article with the misleading headline "Socialists: Obama No Socialist" Huppke applied some painstaking logic to reach his conclusion that Barack Obama can not be a socialist if avowed communists will not state that he is.

Local communists, rarely tapped as campaign pundits, say Sen. Barack Obama and his policies stand far afield from any form of socialism they know.

John Bachtell, the Illinois organizer for Communist Party USA, sees attempts by Sen. John McCain's campaign to label Obama a socialist as both offensive to socialists and a desperate ploy to tap into fears of voters who haven't forgotten their Cold War rhetoric.

“The Chicago Tribune did something today it had never done before -- it had not endorsed a Democrat for President, not even Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in his two runs,” CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric touted Friday night before heralding the endorsement of the candidate from the paper's circulation area: “But today, the Trib endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama. It said he's better suited than John McCain to restore a quote, 'common sense of national purpose.'”

The endorsement editorial posted Friday afternoon, but presumably to appear in Sunday's newspaper, acknowledged the paper's admiration for the hometown Senator is nothing new: “On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.”

The dead tree media, the dinosaur media, the Old Media has spoken. It's officially worse than ever! The Chicago Tribune has pronounced political discourse worse than ever before and it's all because of that "obnoxious" Internet. So, you folks reading this should know that the Trib blames these rancorous times on you. Of course, what the Trib and its "experts" suffer from is My-Lifeitis, that well known sickness that afflicts those that imagine that today is worse than it's ever been, that only in their lifetimes have things become so bad. In other words, they are historically illiterate.

Now, before I get into the Trib's somewhat blinkered analysis of today's political climate -- or as the Tribune prosaically says, the "more polarized political environment" -- I have to ask one thing of the Trib: Are you guys just now noticing that the Internet tends to stir the pot? Where have you been the last ten years?

Now, that said, let's dive into this silly story.

One-Time NPR Commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Chicago Tribune caught up with William Ayers at his university office yesterday. While Ayers refused to comment for the reporters he told them from his door, "What could I possibly add? Life happens."

The Tribune notes that the door or William Ayers is decorated with pictures of celebrated cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and murderous Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. These pictures alone contradict the narrative that William Ayers is somehow a repentant former radical:

On August 27, 1996, in the midst of that year's Democratic National Convention in the Windy City, the Chicago Tribune had interesting news (posted in full at my web host for fair use and discussion purposes) about what was then a new Internet initiative.

That Tribune story serves to confirm why the distancing from and supposed ignorance of the past activities of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn by presidential candidate Barack Obama and other members of the Democratic Party ring very hollow.

James Coates's Tribune piece begins with an all-too-typical whitewash of the pair's violent past. But what's revealing is what Ayers and Dohrn were involved with, and who else was involved with them (bolds are mine):

Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers took to the streets 28 years ago to protest what they considered the injustices in the world, especially the war in Vietnam.

The former leaders of the Weather Underground still are fighting injustice, but--adapting to the changing landscape of American politics--their current arena is the World Wide Web.