OT: Elections/Politics thread, part 5

[Jared]

Old thread was here.

[LAking]

Sports related but also political. I heard Palin was going to drop the puck at a Flyers game. Sounds like a terrible idea to me. Flyers fans aren't known to be the most polite bunch of people. Too bad it's not on national TV.

[XXXIV]

The Flyer fans on this board are cool. I doubt they would attack a girl.

[Feanor]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

[FatPitcher]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

[RobVarak]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

From the comments at Hot Air

“It’s Philly. They weren’t booing Sarah, they were booing Trig.”

[FatPitcher]

Meanwhile, that angry, hateful right-wing mob is growing ever more dangerous. I suggest we call their irrational behavior "Obama Derangement Syndrome".

[RobVarak]

John Kass, who is clearly the Chicago columnist heir to the Royko tradition of speaking truth to Daley machine power, on how someone like Ayers can be "rehabilitated."

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

Unfortunately, that's true. Ayers is a terrorist. But this is Chicago.

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

And the boss of Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley. Mayor Shortshanks has thrown his protective embrace around both men. These are facts.

But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.

The new Daley machine is much more sophisticated than his father's. And the stereotype of knuckle-draggers and wiseguys—they're still around, and there are jobs on the city payroll for those who work the precincts.

Yet what's often ignored is that their university-educated cousins get city contracts to spin the news and shape the symbolism and tell out-of-town reporters that Ayers is no big deal. They won't bite the hand that feeds them. For an examination of the Daley spin machine—and its cost to taxpayers—please see Tribune reporter Dan Mihalopoulos' story in the Sunday editions.

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former '60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven. She's often a go-to quote for reporters to knock down the Ayers-Obama story.

"What Bill Ayers and [former Black Panther, now U.S. Rep.] Bobby Rush . . . did 40 years ago has nothing to do with [the presidential campaign]," Katz was quoted as saying in the Chicago Sun-Times in April. "[Ayers] has a national reputation. He lectures at Harvard [University] and Vassar [College]."

What that story and many other pro-Obama articles gloss over is that during the violent protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention here, Katz was the security chief for the radical Students for a Democratic Society. She once advocated throwing studded nails in front of police cars, back in the SDS days when the group was alleged to have thrown cellophane bags full of human excrement at cops and cans of urine and golf balls impaled with nails.

How things change.

Under this Daley, her firm, MK Communications, has many city deals, and one involves public relations for the Chicago Police Department's community policing program. From nails to contracts, the Chicago Way. Apparently, irony was not a '60s thing.

Now, as Daley prepares to lay off more than 1,000 city workers, he's given Katz and other public relations firms five-year contracts that could pay them as much as $5 million each for consulting, advertising and promotion.

Getting in good with Daley hasn't been bad for business. She also lists as her clients Daley's Chicago Housing Authority, Daley's City Colleges, Daley's city Law Department, and Daley's Departments of Aviation, Environment, Housing, Human Services, Planning and Development, Public Health, Public Works, Streets and Sanitation, Intergovernmental Affairs, Special Events—the list goes on.

Clearly, if she wasn't a good soldier for Shortshanks her list of clients would be quite small. Katz is often aggravating, but she's also funny and smart, so I called her to submit my theory: That by buying off the political left—through PR contracts to Katz, through his own support for Ayers—Daley maintains control over message and symbolism.

"I don't see it that way," said Katz. "As kids, our issues were schools, the environment, housing—and these things are the same things that the mayor cares about. So we have this in common. The agendas that drove us pulled us together. It's about respect for each other's point of view, not what we did when we were 19."

On Ayers and Obama, Katz still insists it isn't a story.

"Bill and I were in different parts of SDS. We disagreed on tactics. Bill has spent his entire life contributing to the betterment of society. That's all I can say about Bill," she said.

Happily, I beg to differ. Ayers is a terrorist—the narcissistic son of privilege and clout—whose father, Thomas, was the boss of Commonwealth Edison and a friend of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. As a leader of the ultraviolent Weather Underground, Ayers admitted to helping bomb the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon in the 1970s. He should have been sent to prison. Instead, Chicago political clout allowed him and his wife, fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn, to magically join the payrolls of universities here.

Obama says he was 8 years old when the bombs went off. But he was a grown man when he sought Ayers' political blessing, and when they worked on the same education projects.

"They're friends. So what?" Mayor Daley said in August.

He's the boss and the master spinner. So it must not be a story.

[Jackdog]

Obama says he was 8 years old when the bombs went off. But he was a grown man when he sought Ayers' political blessing, and when they worked on the same education projects.

"They're friends. So what?" Mayor Daley said in August.

I can see why Troopergate is front page news. Rob,this is nothing.

While we're on the subject of Obama's neighbors. Have you seen Louie's new proclamation?

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L2oqS5VwSbg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Would that be the Christians or Muslims "Messiah"?

I'll bet Obama broke something when he saw that. The last thing he needs is Louie and Wright making soundbites right now. Should be an interesting month.

[Feanor]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

At least no one in the crowd suggested she should be killed.

[Teal]

Depends on how complicit the media continue to be in sidestepping and diminishing the problems with Obama. So far, they're batting in the high 8's.

[Teal]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

At least no one in the crowd suggested she should be killed.

How do you know that? Were you there? I wasn't either, but it's a stretch to make an assumption like that. Of course, no one would report it if they did.

[Feanor]

Cause the media never reports when Philly crowds do something awful? You just keep getting funnier and funnier as the election date gets closer.

[Teal]

Cause the media never reports when Philly crowds do something awful? You just keep getting funnier and funnier as the election date gets closer.

Glad you're entertained, whether you miss the point entirely or not...

[RobVarak]

I don't want Palin anywhere near the Oval Office, but I wouldn't boo her dropping the puck at a Flyers game. She obviously does like hockey.

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

At least no one in the crowd suggested she should be killed.

It's quite remarkable how sensitive the Left has gotten about this sort of thing despite basking in 8 years of assassination fantasies about Bush & Cheney. Touching, really.

[Feanor]

I think the posters worrying about some of a sports crowd booing Palin while others in the crowd cheered are clearly the overly sensitive ones.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/fly ... ngers.html

[FatPitcher]

I think the posters worrying about some of a sports crowd booing Palin while others in the crowd cheered are clearly the overly sensitive ones.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/fly ... ngers.html

And in case you wanted to hear for yourself instead of taking a reporter's word for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TgDanmWkg

I have to side with Teal on the selective reporting. I live in the San Francisco area and have seen a protest or two in my day. The four or five people at McCain rallies saying unkind things pales in comparison to what the the left-wing rabble out here do and say on a regular basis. Of course, the media has no interest in using the same measuring stick. There's a narrative to create: the Republicans are poor, desperate losers. That flies in the face of the lukewarm support McCain has had from the base throughout the campaign, but some people will believe it anyway because they want to.

[fsquid]

Looks like you were in the minority on that. Or maybe they were booing her daughter, who knows.

At least no one in the crowd suggested she should be killed.

It's quite remarkable how sensitive the Left has gotten about this sort of thing despite basking in 8 years of assassination fantasies about Bush & Cheney. Touching, really.

Wasn't a movie made about that subject?

[FatPitcher]

More angry white men (anyone remember that catch phrase?): http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2 ... tails.html

[XXXIV]

More angry white men (anyone remember that catch phrase?): http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2 ... tails.html

Meanwhile our incredible media has fantastic coverage of nothing.

[Jackdog]

More angry white men (anyone remember that catch phrase?): http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2 ... tails.html

That's pretty sad.

That makes me feel better about the Bob Barr bumpersticker on my car. Nobody knows who the hell he is.

[JackB1]

I think the posters worrying about some of a sports crowd booing Palin while others in the crowd cheered are clearly the overly sensitive ones.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/fly ... ngers.html

And in case you wanted to hear for yourself instead of taking a reporter's word for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TgDanmWkg

Clearly a lot more boos than cheers.

[Teal]

I think the posters worrying about some of a sports crowd booing Palin while others in the crowd cheered are clearly the overly sensitive ones.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/fly ... ngers.html

And in case you wanted to hear for yourself instead of taking a reporter's word for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TgDanmWkg

Clearly a lot more boos than cheers.

Yeah...clearly...

[XXXIV]

And in case you wanted to hear for yourself instead of taking a reporter's word for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TgDanmWkg

Clearly a lot more boos than cheers.

Yeah...clearly...

...

Whats wrong with you?

Dont you know he owns an Applause Meter 6000?

[Teal]

Clearly a lot more boos than cheers.

Yeah...clearly...

...

Whats wrong with you?

Dont you know he owns an Applause Meter 6000?

Yep...a BLUE one...