News balance no easy task -- Political Candidates, Chicago Whit...

DON'T BE DUPED !!!

Large numbers of Republicans have been voting for Barack Obama in the DEMOCRATIC primaries, and caucuses from early on. Because they feel he would be a weaker opponent against John McCain. And because they feel that a Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ticket would be unbeatable. And also because with a Clinton and Obama ticket you are almost 100% certain to get quality, affordable universal health care very soon.

But first, all of you have to make certain that Hillary Clinton takes the democratic nomination and then the Whitehouse. NOW! is the time. THIS! is the moment you have all been working, and waiting for. You can do this America.“Carpe diem”(harvest the day).

I think Hillary Clinton see’s a beautiful world of plenty for all. She is a woman, and a mother. And it’s time America. Do this for your-self, and your children’s future. You will have to work together on this and be aggressive, relentless, and creative. Americans face an even worse catastrophe ahead than the one you are living through now.

Hillary Clinton has actually won by much larger margins than the vote totals showed. And lost by much smaller vote margins than the vote totals showed. Her delegate count is actually much higher than it shows. And higher than Obama’s. She also leads in the electoral college numbers that you must win to become President in the November national election. HILLARY CLINTON IS ALREADY THE TRUE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE!

As much as 30% of Obama's primary, and caucus votes are Republicans trying to choose the weakest democratic candidate for McCain to run against. These Republicans have been gaming the caucuses where it is easier to vote cheat. This is why Obama has not been able to win the BIG! states primaries. Even with Republican vote cheating help.

Hillary Clinton has been out manned, out gunned, and out spent 2 and 3 to 1. Yet Obama has only been able to manage a very tenuous, and questionable tie with Hillary Clinton.

If Obama is the democratic nominee for the national election in November he will be slaughtered. Because the Republican vote cheating help will suddenly evaporate. All of this vote fraud and republican manipulation has made Obama falsely look like a much stronger candidate than he really is. YOUNG PEOPLE. DON’T BE DUPED! Think about it. You have the most to lose.

The democratic party needs to fix this outrage. I suggest a Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ticket. Everyone needs to throw all your support to Hillary Clinton NOW! So you can end this outrage against YOU the voter, and against democracy.

I think Barack Obama has a once in a life time chance to make the ultimate historic gesture for unity, and change in America by accepting Hillary Clinton’s offer as running mate. Such an act now would for ever seal Barack Obama’s place at the top of the list of Americas all time great leaders, and unifiers for all of history.

The democratic party, and the super-delegates have a decision to make. Are the democrats, and the democratic party going to choose the DEMOCRATIC party nominee to fight for the American people. Or are the republicans going to choose the DEMOCRATIC party nominee through vote fraud, and gaming the DEMOCRATIC party primaries, and caucuses.

Fortunately the Clinton’s have been able to hold on against this fraudulent outrage with those repeated dramatic comebacks of Hillary Clinton’s. Only the Clinton’s are that resourceful, and strong. Hillary Clinton is your NOMINEE. They are the best I have ever seen.

Sincerely

jacksmith...

Kenneth wrote:

Don't we as readers have a responsibility to seek out alternative sources of news in order to receive a fuller picture? I'm not surprised that newspapers have certain political leanings. Newspapers are, after all, written by people who undoubtedly have their own biases and these biases will always find a way into their writings.
What does surprise me is that readers actually think their complaints will suddenly shift a paper's deeply entrenched bias. These journalists aren't sitting around in board rooms with charts and graphs trying to find the most effective ways of promoting one nominee over the other - they are just writing what they honestly believe is the news. However, over time, certain biases do appear, but we all have to recognize those are very difficult to eliminate.
There are other papers. And thanks to the internet, a quick search on Google News or something similar will help you find many articles on each candidate - from all angles. It only takes a few minutes of your time and it'll help you to broaden your horizons.
If you feel this strongly about the bias, the Tribune's loss of your readership will mean far more than a few complaints.

All that you say is great if you into blogs etc. If your only source for news coverage is the newspaper and you are fed this constant Obama barage you tend to get a different view point. Of course you can always say go out and buy other newspapers.

Pam wrote:

I find it hard to believe, as Jim and Kenneth stated on how we would look at someone based on their mannerism or dress.
This is exactly what is wrong with our country.
Can you feel the sting of high gas prices, a burden of debt in the trillions that will take decades to pay off, plumming housing values, a declining intra structure (roads, building, sewer systems) and let's not forget immigration and exporting of jobs. I don't need John Wayne, I need a leader who can make us respectable to the world after this idiot of a president for the last 8 years has destroyed all of our credibility.
Also, newpaper staff's have familes, etc., worry about their mortgage and have opinions just like us. As the Canadian writer wrote, read more and form your own opinions.

Hagee has not been Mc Cains pastor for 20 years. He just indoses Mc Cain. that is a big difference

Whodathunkit wrote:

The wingnuts never cease to amaze me. Do any of these idiots really think for one second that the Tribune is going to endorse anyone other than John McCain for President?
McCain could die before the election, the GOP could replace him with a monkey on rollerskates, and the Trib would endorse the monkey on rollerskates, simply because he had an (R) next to his name.
Get real people!

I thought the Trib endorsed Blago here in Illinois, what makes you think the presidential election would be different?

Way to go jacksmith...

Unfortunately, Obama will not throw in his towel and join forces with Hillary. He will never be a unifier. He's been told that he can have the price at any cost. Ralph Nader did the same dumb thing back '2000.

Like you, I do believe Hillary is the strongest of all the candidates. Her vision is light years ahead of most politicians but this again boils down to what's personal. There are to many marketing strategists spinning hate, which far to often have us focusing on the petty items of the day.

I don't want another 4 years of war, fear and corruption.

Obama and Hillary would make a great ticket together and as Maureen Dowd stated in the NYT, they have become strange bed fellows.

Lombard, IL poster IS spot on!
Years on, it has been, and continues
to be, a Free Ride-All-the-Way for
John McCain, by the Media Herd...

Jim wrote:

The problem with your point, poliwriter, is that the Tribune has been staunchly conservative editorially forever. They endorse Republican after Republican for president and every other elected office.
Yes, journalists are mostly left leaning, but so are most college graduates, especially those that major in the humanities. Journalists are people that are naturally curious, eager to learn new things and be exposed to new situations, and are always questioning the establishment. Those don't really sound like conservative values to me.
.

Are people still dredging up that old canard about the Tribune's supposedly conservative editorial page?

Can you name one conservative the Tribune has ever endorsed over a liberal Republican in a primary?

Editorially, the Tribune supports the Republicrat Daley-Business Combine. That is hardly conservative, but if you think John McCain a conservative, you wouldn't understand.

And as for liberal students being more naturally curious -- what a crock!

How much curiousity does it take to parrot back the liberal bromides that the average university student is force fed by an overwhelmingly left-leaning American academy?

The real rebels and free thinkers are the conservatives on American campuses who dare to stand up to the leftist academic establishment.

Washington conservative think tanks are filled with excellent writers and thinkers who could never get hired in a liberal newsroom like the Tribune's due to its ideologically left bias and lack of diversity.

If diversity is good per se, as the liberals suggest, then the liberal media establishment should end its hypocrisy and diversify by taking affirmative action to hire some people with a world outlook that is not left-statist in orientation.

And don't tell me that opinion radio talk shows are part of mainstream journalismm, so that there is balance -- sheesh!

Rezko received a $3.5 million loan from London-based IRAQI billionaire Nadhmi Auchi -- a loan that was later forgiven in exchange for shares in a prime slice of Chicago real estate. Rezko gave $700,000 of the money to his wife and used the rest to pay legal bills and funnel cash to various supporters."

These Funds from Auchi's loan helped finance a complex series of transactions between Rezko and Democratic Presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama involving the 2005 purchase of Obama's Chicago mansion and Rezko's purchase of an adjoining landlocked parcel.

Rezko claims he paid “full market price” and Obama apparently received a “discount” of several hundred thousand dollars for his parcel. Rezko then improved his parcel to benefit Obama.

Instead of handing cash to Obama, Rezko handed Obama a preferential price for property. This is the same form of “honest graft” and preferential treatment that sent former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to jail over 30 years ago, see United States v. Isaacs, 493 F.2d 1124 (7th Cir. 1974).

The Chicago Sun-Times recently reported that Mr. Rezko, around the same general period he was wheeling with Obama, also provided a preferential price for a property purchase by U. S. Representative Luis Gutierrez.

Instead of transferring cash to buy influence, Rezko was engaging in structured property transactions and preferential treatment of public officials to confer significant financial benefits on them, far above the legal limits of any legitimate political contribution permitted by federal law.

Thanks to the release of Barack Obama's income tax records, we are finally able to get some necessary perspective on the big favor Tony Rezko did for the Obamas in buying what has been termed in the press "the adjacent, undeveloped lot". It turns out this is a seriously misleading description.
Rather than merely purchasing a separate lot, Rezko appears to have purchased the yard of the Obama manse, and allowed them to live in the house+yard property, amounting to a gift (or loan, if you will) of considerable value.

The Obamas' tax returns from 2000-2005 had personal information blanked out, but strangely enough, the 2006 Form 1040 left in the home address.

Mr. Tony Rezko who owns a slum landlord business in inner city Chicago is under indictment in Illinois for seeking to extort money from potential state vendors.

IRAQI billionaire Nadhmi Auchi stills lives in London.

I think the coverage is the worst ever. I have stopped watching all TV news coverage. OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA I am so sick of him I could scream!

I do not think that some of Obama's Senate staff members have heard his message about change etc. Why doesn't somebody write about how his staff relates to his constituents.

I'd be happy to talk about my experience with some of them.

The same type of story could be written about the other candidates too.

CORRECTION

The same type of story could be written about Senate staff of the other candidates too.

Mr. McNulty"

As you suggested, there's more to this than raw numbers. Invariably, some of the additional attention Barack Obama may have received on the front page has lately had more to do with Obama in reactive mode, rather than Obama as "instigator" of news.

It's fair to say that much of the last three weeks, Obama has been reacting to Hillary Clinton's sub rosa assertions about Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

There's of course no way to bury Obama's reactions to Clinton's insinuations on inside pages. Since how Obama reacts to the charges is (or seems to be) an intrinsically more compelling story -- the response to an attack has basic advantages as a news story over one about the one doing the attacking -- the numerical Obama edge over Clinton front-page stories seems to make a certain sense.

I suspect, too, that that number of Clinton stories may have pulled closer to even, in the wake of fresh coverage of her revisionist Bosnia history.

Echo wrote:

Obama, like Bush before him, seems to be the media's darling. I distrust this after the last fiasco. I think Hillary is my choice. She's more qualified and maybe more politically savvy.

Not maybe....definitely. Obama is a paper tiger and will break your heart. That said, he is still better than McCain and if the Democrats lose this election then I'm going over to the Green Party. Republican's lack of citizenship (and that includes Regan who kicked thousands of mentaly ill people out onto the streets of major cities) has convinced me never to vote them in for anything.

Jim wrote:

To JMO:
I take a bit of offense at your comments. I am a gay man, and an limp wristed priss, but I can give orders with the best of them and never have a problem getting the straightest of my subordinates to do exactly what I need for them to do. You give very little credit to our military, and unfortunately seem to think that machismo is the only barometer for evaluating one's ability to be Commander-in-Chief.
As far at our extraordinarily professional military goes, they take orders from the person with greater rank then they. Every time, no questions asked. They are fiercely dedicated to the idea of civilian leadership, as is our nation's Constitution and history.
Also, our current president is an example of your failed logic. No one could have come off as more macho and manly than this guy who bandies about challenges to terrorists with, "Bring it on!" He's both macho and a failure as Commander-in-Chief, thus negating your argument.
Please offer some critical analysis to Senator Obama instead of just implying that you think he is or acts gay. Grow up, this isn't junior high.

I'm with you Jim. Even though I'm a hetrosexual female, I found his posting very offensive. Especially in view of your observation regarding our "He Man" president.

Bruce B wrote:

Notice how the story omits the fact that over 80% of journalists vote for democrats? Bias by omission on a story about bias. Very telling.

Where did you get this fact?

JMO wrote:

<quoted text>
If appearance doesn't matter, why is the Tribune and other major media outlets constantly harping on Hillary's choice of yellow outfits? Why did Nixon lose in 1960 because of his 5 o'clock shadow?
If you don't think appearances count, you what ostriches show when they bury their heads in the sand.
I am well aware that appearances don't count for everything, Bush is indeed a prime example of that. Or is he? Short little bantam strutting around...what might that have warned people about?
I stand by my own personal impression: Obama looked weak and effeminate. Are you saying I can't have an opinion if it doesn't match yours?

You can have any opionion you want. No one is saying you can't. However, we can disagree with it, can't we?

ranting loons wrote:

<quoted text>
I thought the Trib endorsed Blago here in Illinois, what makes you think the presidential election would be different?

Because in its entire existence of well over a hundred years, the Trib has never failed to endorse the Republican presidential candidate, and its editor stated publicly only a few years ago that the Trib would NEVER fail to endorse the Republican presidential candidate. Thats's why.

politwriter wrote:

<quoted text>
This is an excellent point. Even a recent Harvard study showed that the vast majority of working press are left-wing in outlook. Based on their voting behavior, if the news media chose presidents, we would have had Presidents McGovern, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore and Kerry.
Yet all talk of "diversity" in the newsroom just centers around replacing liberal white males with liberal women, blacks and Latinos.
And the odd thing is, the liberals in the media don't really understand justhow unrepresentative and out of touch they are with the bulk of the American populace.

And yet, this LIBERAL media of ours didn't say anything when Bush was leading us into one of the biggest political blunders in our history. Why do you think the media cars were pelted with eggs and booed by "crazy leftwing liberals", during the inaugural parade for Bush's second election? Which, by the way, was hardly covered in the news.

Pam wrote:

In this country we need to have more debate teams.
It's not personal and our differences are good for us and as a nation. I believe in Freedom of the Press and your right to express your thoughts.
Newspapers it appears are afraid of expressing or editorializing these days. Readers are anger at the writers, the editor or whoever made the decision to put to many of Obama, Hillary or McClain's stories/photo's in the newspaper.

I certainly won't cancel my newspaper because I disagree with the editorial.
I would like to see some good old fashion reporting on what has gone right in the last eight years with the Republican party.
There's my two cents - just the facts and it's certainly not personal.

My dear, readers have been angry with newspapers since the first one was ever distributed.

Not THIS Woman - Not at THIS Moment in History!

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Gender bias is very acceptable all around the world, and it's been rearing it's ugly head in the democratic primary.

Generally, I think it's a good thing for the most part, that our society has an open, friendly, often humorous dialog about gender. It's better that tip-toeing around our differences, as we often do on racial and religious issues, afraid of saying the wrong thing and causing offense. Most of the time, I wouldn't find a lot of this stuff offensive.

On the other hand, we have allies, such as Saudi Arabia, where women are beaten for being raped, aren't allowed to drive a car, or attend school. There are practices like arranged marriages, honor killings, forced abortions, sexual slavery, and female castration that we, as a world power, should be more outraged about, more proactive to end than we are.

I wonder how many people know the percentage of women who are raped and/or victims of domestic violence during their lifetimes? 1 in 3 women will be victims of sexual assault during their lifetimes. Women in some countries are still treated as property.

Women have had to fight for the right to vote, own property, and a lot of other rights men took for granted and still do. You can say a lot of things about Hillary Clinton, but you can't say she hasn't been an advocate for women and children her entire life.

So, yes, I take gender slurs against the first woman to have a serious shot at the presidency of this country seriously. I don't think they have a place in the discourse any more than racial slurs against Obama. Denigrate her for her policies or her integrity, but not because she's female. Not this women - not at this moment. It denigrates all women. Like her or hate her, all women deserve this one small concession in the dialog. Women's suffering is usually the last to be acknowledged or addressed.

I'm not some rabid feminist, but I am extremely proud that a women has broken through and come so close to leading this country, but just like there are ignorant people who won't vote for Obama because he's a black man, there are people who won't for for Clinton because she's a woman, and I've encountered quite a few of them. They call me "honey" and "babe" and tell me not to get emotional, while lacing their remarks with references to shrillness, pantsuits, and crying for votes.

In this election, for once, we should be as sensitive to gender slurs as we are racial slurs and be proud of these historic candidates we've selected.