I'm a huge Obama fan who is proud to live in Chicago. I'm also a huge fan of  the Batman comic books and movies.

Last summer I was working downtown as they were doing the filming of the Dark Knight. I think Chicago will do a great job playing Gotham City this summer. I'm pretty sure i'm not the only one in the Windy City who thinks this way.

My good friend, a Republican (i dont know why) who decided to vote for Romney after previously committing to vote for Barack to deny Hillary, sent me this great youtube video.

This video consists of Clinton and Obama set to the sound of the trailer of the upcoming Batman Movie, the Dark Knight.

Enjoy!

Update DigDug pointed to a much better video, the Primary Knight. It's after the jump

I'm getting sick and tired of this. Do you want Illinois to grow? Do all of you want Chicago to be a good place to live and to do business? Why on earth should the sales tax increase to 11%? Do you take pride in Chicago possibly having the highest municipal sales tax in the country? Do you want people who live in the city to drive out to the suburbs to go shopping? I moved to the city to work and to enjoy shopping without driving a car.

I'm considering buying property in a year or two. How can you justify possibly jacking up property taxes when I read stories about hired truck scandals and other embarrassments?

I take the El downtown to work. How the hell did it turn into rocket science to allocate money for the CTA? Is it that hard to repair the tracks? Or do anything right? How come the NTSB Audit was a complete embarrassment? Do all of you take pride in this?

Everyone seems to complain about Iowa and New Hampshire going first. I'm not a fan of their "privileged status" either. So, here's a simple solution: National Primary Day.

Any state interested in picking the nominee before the media hurricane blowing horse race manure on the country should do one simple thing: Set their primary or caucus day to the same day as Iowa's Caucus. The law should be in plain and simple English

Our Presidential Election Primary or Caucus or similar contest should be held on the same day as Iowa, or whichever state has theirs first.

Seriously, who gives a flying leap about angering Iowa or New Hampshire?

They move it early, everyone follows. This law will neuter the laws that Iowa and New Hampshire have.

Big states like Illinois, New York, Texas, and California wont be ATMs.

I believe that there is enough time for all other 48 states to change their laws. Iowa and New Hampshire can have their hissy fits, but tough. The media will have to report over the country and they wont result to lazy punditry and analysis.

Update on the flip

This is from TPM

The new Gallup poll shows Hillary Clinton with a huge national lead for the Democratic nomination — indeed, it's almost a full majority. Hillary has 48%, Barack Obama 25%, John Edwards 13%, and no other candidate registers above two percent. With Al Gore added into the mix, Hillary is still way ahead: Clinton 42%, Obama 21%, Gore 15% and Edwards 11%. A third question narrows the choices down to just Hillary and Obama: Clinton 61%, Obama 34%.

Food for thought: Ok, I looked at this poll. Its early. It probably doesn't mean much. However, what on earth accounts for Hillary having such a big lead?

I wonder if its possible if Gallup is calling Republicans by accident or some of the independents (in reality Republicans) are simply voicing their choice for Hillary for tactical reasons: (on the flip)

This morning I voted in the 32nd ward in the Waguespack - Matlak aldermanic runoff election. It sure has been one crazy ride so far, with mud flying and  even the Mayor of Berwyn weighing in for Scott Waguespack's good name.

My prediction: Waguespack puts the nail in the coffin of the Rostenkowski-Gabinski-Matlak machine regime.

(For non-Chicagoans: I live in the 5th congressional district of Illinois, currently represented by Rahm Emanuel, who followed current Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, some random republican in the GOP wave of 1994, and longtime House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski (who was defeated due to some corruption scandal). The 32nd ward is represented by a guy named Ted Matlak, appointed to his position by Mayor Daley after serving as his predecessor's chief of staff and being a page for Dan Rostenkowski. Dan Rostenkowski's father was either a congressman or an alderman. The Rostenkowski organization has controlled the ward since the 1930s.

Other ward predictions and more 32nd ward history on the flip

Illinois House Speaker (and state party chair) Michael Madigan (Chicago, D) plans to move the primary from March 18th to February 5th to help Barack Obama , but only four states - Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina - would be earlier than Illinois.

"These states are not representative of mainstream America. They're clearly not as representative of America as Illinois would be," Madigan said. "But if Barack is a candidate, recent history tells us the selection process may be finished before it reaches the Illinois primary."

This is great! (Full disclosure: I live in Chicago). In 2003 I was angry that my mid-march vote for Howard Dean didnt mean anything (unlike my vote for Obama ;) ). Illinois is a lot more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire. The big urban vote was sorely missing in deciding the democratic nominee. Go to the flip to see the Illinois GOP's lame response ...

If anyone here hasn't read Barack Obama's first book, Dreams of my Father, you might not know that he did a lot of drugs when he was in high school and early in college.

Lois Romano wrote an an article in the Washington Post today about it.
Here's the quote

In the book, Obama acknowledges that he used cocaine as a high school student but rejected heroin. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," he says.

Ok, so what? He's upfront and honest. Good for him for disclosing this openly unlike the sorry excuses from our two previous presidents

As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton thought marijuana use could be enough of a liability in 1992 that he felt compelled to say he had not inhaled. And President Bush has managed to deflect endless gossip about his past by acknowledging that he had an "irresponsible" youth but offering no details.

more on the flip

No, this is not a joke. I'm laughing so hard..

The Hill.com reports that she showed up with her husband to a Kitty Kelley book signing in DC.

People were ignoring Kelley and surrounding Plame and Wilson.

It figures that Plame would show up with her husband to buy Kitty Kelley's Bush-Bashing book because.....

THOSE TRAITORS WRECKED HER CAREER!!!!!

Scooter Libby, you are most likely the leaker, so I hope you feel PROUD about your action as a TRAITOR. Damn NeoCONServatives dont give a damn about national security, only their shortsighted agenda.

This is interesting. But here's the kicker....

Before/After 1979

Those people were happy! It almost looks like America!
The old Imperial Iranian soldier's uniforms were cool. The Iranian people look almost european.

Now its just a mess, and the country is ruled by maniacs who probably want to nuke all the Arabs, Israel, and our country too.

There are some massive student protests going on in Iran now. In 1999, a big riot broke out in Tehran, near Tehran University. The regime sent out its goon squads (the basiiji militia) and hezbollah thugs to literally beat the living shit out of anyone who supported reform. The police in Iran are scared of these guys.

The most famous student protestor is Ahmed Batebi, who was beaten and imprisoned simply for being in this photo

Here's the link

Here's the link

Senator Hagel is a man who served in Vietnam. He stuck up for Kerry, along with John McCain,  when the ChickenHawk NeoCon sludgemasters tried to paint him as weak on defense. Hagel also opposed this war (I think) and he's taken several potshots at creeps like Richard Perle.

Since Bush got us into this mess, why not draft his daughters? Heck, lets draft Perle, Wolfowitz, Limbaugh, Feith, Wurmser, Ledeen, the entire staff of the American Enterprise Institute, Project for a New American Century and any other person who ranted and raved for this war beyond reason.

Lets send all the kids of all the NeoCons so that they can all see how horrible Bush's insane war really is.

If Bush wants to lose almost all the college vote, go ahead, reinstate the draft. While your'e at it, declare war on Syria, Iran, and North Korea. I'm sure the parents of prospective draftees would love you starting more wars. If you want to divide the country like in Vietnam, go ahead and lose the election by reinstating the draft before the election

Just how many pages are there in the August 6th, 2001 PDB?

Also, look above the footer on the last page? What is that mark? Looks like someone wasnt good enough with their erasing. Also, what are those other marks on the page?

I can understand the level of secrecy in blacking out the names of the intelligence services that helped us out. But why black out the number of pages in the PDB? Why the other marks? Is there anything else in this PDB that could be damning to bush?

Someone forward this to Helen Thomas so that she can raise hell tonight, that is, IF Bush is confident enough to face the grand dame of the White House press corps.

This comes from NealPollack.com. I've never seen this site before, and I do not know if he's reliable. I hope that some other Kossacks can verify this.

This sounds like pure BS, but lets press Pollack to give up his sources or at least provide a link

We shoud investigate the claims on Neal Pollack's website.

Specifically,

Can someone look into the writings of PNAC to see if this is legit or crap?

Also, is 19 an arbitrary number?

This seems like old news.

My best bet is that the Feds though this guy was delusional, so they buried this under their paper mountain

WTF?? Did the CIA agent check this guy out with the FBI and the INS?  And where, specifically, was the CIA agent meeting with Atta? If its in the US Homeland, isnt that illegal?  Arent CIA officers restricted to only working out of the country? Did the FBI know about this? Why or why not?

This seems too surreal to be believed. However, since our taxpayer dollars foot the bill for the Pentagon, lets see if this is true.

In the spirit of declassification, lets see everything the CIA, DIA, and FBI knew about the 19 hijackers. Heck, bring up the information from the INS as well