Obama: Chicago Politician Part II

A few days ago I tried to place Barack Obama within the context of the corrupt Chicago politics.  Now someone who really knows his Chicago politics, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, has weighed in.  His conclusion: while not directly participating in Chicago corruption (the Rezko deal perhaps being an exception) Obama, the so-called candidate of change and reform, has been conspicuously silent about corruption while benefiting from his association with dishonest officials. 

That's an easy political commercial for the Republicans: Mobbed-up white guys party at the old Como Inn with Daley, and they get $100 million in city affirmative action contracts and Daley doesn't know how it happened and Obama endorses the mayor in the name of reform.

Obama had nothing to do with the Duff deal. But he kept mum. He has endorsed Daley, endorsed Daley's hapless stooge Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board. These are not the acts of a reformer, but of a guy who, as we say in Chicago, won't make no waves and won't back no losers.

Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd).

If Kass is accurate in his reporting, Obama is much closer to the Daley machine than I suggested in my previous post.  In some ways that's a relief, putting Obama in my "corrupt but competent" category.

For other Obama news, see Stanley Kurtz's investigation into Jeremiah Wright's theology. Kurtz's broad theme is that radical politics pervades in Wright's church, with little to no distinction between politics and religion.  There goes the "separation of church and state" about which Progressives are always preaching.  Here is just one of several examples taken from the church magazine. 

While the nationally distributed issues of Trumpet in 2006 contained no pieces blaming 9/11 on America's "terrorist" foreign policy (as Wright did in a famous sermon), one remarkable piece defended then-congress-woman Cynthia McKinney's suspicion that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. This column, "The Beloved Cynthia McKinney" (illustrated with pictures of McKinney in model-like poses), decries the fact that McKinney was "tarred and feathered in the press" for raising questions about possible government foreknowledge of 9/11. The "crimes of 9/11," it darkly announces, are "not only unsolved, but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans."

One might also recall that Cynthia McKinney blamed her 2002 primary loss on a Jewish conspiracy. Here is the central point:

There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always.