By Steve Rhodes

“After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it,” the New York Times reports on its front page today.
“Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts ‘extremely anemic’.”

Read More

Posted on September 9, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

“The brand-spanking new $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium got its regular-season christening Sunday night,” the Indianapolis Star’s Phil Richards writes.
“A national television audience tuned in. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was in the house. Johnny Mathis sang the national anthem. They cranked open the massive retractable roof and the giant window on the stadium’s north end, and the standing-room-only crowd of 66,822 stood and roared for the U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters’ flyover.
“Then the Indianapolis Colts crashed and burned.
“The Chicago Bears dominated the Colts 29-13 and sent the quiet crowd home muttering.”

Read More

Posted on September 8, 2008

By Natasha Julius

We’ll be keeping a watchful eye on Hanna this weekend. We never really bought that sweet and innocent act anyway.
Market Update
Staying the Course looks set to end its long rally in the near future. Experts point out that, under current market conditions, there soon may not be much course left to stay anyway.

Read More

Posted on September 6, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

“John McCain packed a stadium full of supporters into his 6-by-7-foot prisoner-of-war cell Thursday night, suggesting his harrowing life history proves he is the battle-scarred warrior who could keep Americans safe and shake up Washington,” the Sun-Times reports.
Indeed. McCain came dangerously close to claiming – as his campaign has already been accused of – that he deserves the presidency because of his heroism in war, though he came just as close to pleading for a sympathy vote.
For the most part, McCain’s speech was lame. He failed to project leadership and overdosed on the flag. He did pull a neat turn though: He effectively attacked Barack Obama as a candidate who has only talked about reform instead of leading it, and in admitting his own party’s failures and implicitly rejecting the last eight years of George W. Bush, he tried to capture the mantle of hope and change.

Read More

Posted on September 5, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Not wanting to believe it doesn’t make it untrue.
“In her first national address, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wowed the Republican convention using wit, sarcasm, charm and ridicule in a full-scale assault on a now familiar cast of GOP targets: an elitist adversary, biased media and high taxes,” Politico reports.
“Without mentioning Democrat Barack Obama’s name and rarely losing a smile, the Alaska governor delivered one riposte after another.”
The relatively rational Chuck Todd says that conservatives have found their Obama.

Read More

Posted on September 4, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

I guess what has always separated me from the Obamaphiles is that I actually believe in his rhetoric, though I’ve never believed in him. I believe in an elevated form of new politics. That would be one that didn’t demonize, caricature and slime Sarah Palin no matter how passionately you disagreed with her political positions. The travails of her daughter are nobody’s business, and attempts to argue otherwise are just rationalizations from liberals on the attack. It would be one thing if Sarah Palin was pro-life in public but in private urged her daughter to get an abortion. Instead, her private actions seem to jibe perfectly with her public positions. And to make this about abstinence education is a laugh. I think abstinence education is a joke, but to make Bristol Palin an example of how it doesn’t work is absurd. For one thing, we don’t even know if Bristol Palin believes in abstinence; we only know her mother does. For another thing, people make mistakes. Finally, plenty of teenage girls go through the most sophisticated, smartest sex education classes ever devised by humankind and still end up pregnant. Barack Obama – whose mother was 18 when she had him – is right. If only his followers believed his words as much as I do.

Read More

Posted on September 3, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

It’s Bizarro World today.
* “Palin was seen as such a long shot by the Obama team, they did not bother much preparing for her arrival,” Lynn Sweet reports. “They figured a probe into whether she influenced the firing of her former brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper, would knock her out of contention.”
As opposed to the probe into Tony Rezko?
* “Palin’s husband, Todd, was arrested for drunken driving in 1986.”
Isn’t that about the time Obama was doing a little blow?
* “If ever there was a warning of the dangers of inaccurate effuvia spinning around the Internet, it is the inaccurate story that ultimately outed the pregnancy of the 17-year-old Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin,” Michael Sneed writes.

Read More

Posted on September 2, 2008

By Natasha Julius

LABOR DAY UPDATE: While there will be no Papers column today, please note the fantastic new material we’ve posted to the site just for your enjoyment. ->>>
The Weekend Desk Report
Just be really careful at the barbecue this weekend, OK? You watch the recipes, we’ll watch the headlines.
Market Update
Concerned about a lingering trade deficit, at least one American institution has hit on a novel way to keep cash in the United States.

Read More

Posted on August 30, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

1. I have plenty of thoughts about Barack Obama’s speech last night – and on the Democratic convention as a whole – but you know what? I’m just tired. Maybe I’ll write something up for Division Street later or post something here over the weekend. But I will say this: I was expecting a monstrosity of a set given all the hoopla about columns and togas and the set was fine. As for the speech, I will say here in general that I liked the beginning and the end, but the middle not so much because it was quite simply filled with Democratic boilerplate, phrases beneath the candidate (“Eight is enough!”) and attacks on John McCain representative of the worst of the old politics. (Regurgitating Phil Gramm? In this historic speech? Please.) But that’s enough for now, except to say that the TV punditry might have reached an all-time high on the inanity scale.

Read More

Posted on August 29, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

“When party activists gathered in Chicago to nominate Bill Clinton to a second term in 1996, Mr. Obama was making his first run for political office, but he did not have enough clout to get full access to the convention,” the New York Times recalled this week. “Instead, he concluded that high-dollar breakfasts and dinners seemed to lock voters out of the system, grousing to a reporter, ‘The convention’s for sale, right?'”
Yes. And it still is, even at a convention under his control. Just a few days earlier, the Times reported this:

Read More

Posted on August 28, 2008