Junto Boys

Rashid Khalidi

The LA Times refuses release the tape.

It seems increasingly true that Chicago style politics has morphed from being merely corrupt to being quite radically anti-American. Chicago is not Obama's hometown but a place he chose and feel's comfortable with. He wasn't a crusader for change there.

As measured as he is in discourse, his political roots are with one shady character after another. These people from his past do not fit the narrative the press has written about Obama and Obama's involvement with these people is treated as peripheral part of his rise. But who are the moderates in Chicago that were a bigger influence on him?

And if Obama was not an agent for change in Chicago, isn't it possible that the Chicago model is what he wants to bring to America?

The media doesn't seem the least bit interested in how Obama might actually govern outside of the flowery talk we get on the campaign trail. This latest example of his anti-American associates brings nothing but a yawn to the media who wants to pin Ted Stevens to Sarah Palin.

Palin's name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors.

Palin's relationship with Alaska's senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain's running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.

Palin, an anti-corruption crusader in Alaska, had called on Stevens to be open about the issues behind the investigation. But she also held a joint news conference with him in July, before he was indicted, to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.

Stevens had been helpful to Palin during her run for governor, swooping in with a last moment endorsement. And the two filmed a campaign commercial together to highlight Stevens's endorsement of Palin during the 2006 race.

But Stevens is exactly like Old Man Daley from Chicago, merely corrupt without being anti-American. Why is he such a big story? And between Palin and Obama who has stood up to that kind of corruption. Palin has not been shown to have gained personally from Stevens corruption, but their relationship remains complicated to the press.

Take Tony Rezko, the least anti-American of Obama's shady associations. The Chicago Sun Times goes to pains to let Obama off the hook in the relationship.

A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.

The Times just lets it lie there without comment. It's not even complicated just boneheaded. Obama is just an idiot like GW Bush, so naive to the money men and terrorists in his circle, but so brilliant and nuanced at all other times.

Gee, Wally, I didn't realize that Rezko and his wife saving me $300,000 on the house was such a problem. Well, Beav, don't do it again or I'll have to slug ya, you bonehead.