A News Double Header…

At 7 on Channel 11, is the GOP dead in Illinois??? Tom Cross, Judy Barr Topinka and Chris Robling talk to Carol Marin about that…

And then at 10 on NBC5, how well as County Board President Todd Stroger used Homeland Security money?

Join us for both!

30 Days Til Election Day….Economic Problems Longer

Can Sarah Palin now be called the Comeback Kid?

Almost.

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Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin

The Alaska governor’s performance in St. Louis in the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden showed a lot of grit. From the git-go, Palin proved she was a gal ready to go toe-to-toe with Joe.

(“Hey, can I call you Joe?”)

Even Biden at times looked as though he admired the sheer fortitude it took for Palin not to wither or falter in the aftermath of disastrous interviews with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’ Katie Couric.

Palin demonstrated a fearlessness to be herself (“You betcha . . . Joe SixPack”) even in the wake of Tina Fey’s cutting parodies on “Saturday Night Live.”

Politics, as Sen. Biden knows well from two failed presidential bids, in the end is about survival.

And Palin survived St. Louis. Who knows, maybe she borrowed a page from the book of Biden’s late father. (“Champ, when you get knocked down, get up!”)

Still, the debate took place on the same day that Palin’s running mate, John McCain, abandoned Michigan as one of his battleground states. The meltdown of the economy and Barack Obama’s momentum have made Michigan, home of Big Auto and high unemployment, unmanageable for the McCain campaign.

Old soldiers know it’s hard to rebound when in retreat.

Not impossible, but hard.

By tomorrow or the next day, the vice presidential debate will be old news, just another blip on the radar screen of this election.

But before we move on to the next political event or headline moment, let’s remember what Joe Biden accomplished Thursday night.

Biden was presidential. Steady. Commanding. Clear.

For all the alleged virtue of not being part of the Washington establishment, something Obama, McCain and Biden all pretend to be despite the fact that each is a member of the capitol’s most exclusive legislative club, there is value in knowing how to work Washington. So give Biden points for understanding the system inside-out. And the world as well.

But here’s the thing.

The debates that count are between the candidates who count: McCain and Obama. We have yet to see either emerge as a meaningful leader on the business of saving this economy.

Oh, sure, McCain worried out loud about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae a couple of years ago, and Obama had some conversations about his worries about sub-prime lending.

But do you remember either of them — or anyone else, for that matter, including the governor of Alaska on behalf of the economy of her own home state — beating the drum long and hard and loud about the warning signs of this collapse?

We need cool heads, smart people, and yes, experience to guide us. But we also need whoever is the next president to be bold enough and brave enough to dispense medicine we do not want to take. And remember, McCain and Obama love to denounce lobbyists while their campaign committees are populated by some of the richest people in America who may not be lobbyists but whose banks, hotels, and investment firms employ fleets of them.

So there is a lot to ask Barack Obama and John McCain in the four weeks left in this campaign. Because one of them is going to walk into the White House and find executives from Detroit, that embattled city in that battered battleground state, in the outer office waiting to plead that government save them from the fate of Lehman Brothers.

Can you say Chrysler?

We need the specifics we haven’t heard yet.

Yes, George Bush is so yesterday, and Dick Cheney, thanks be to God, will be gone soon. (Here’s a shout-out to that.)

But with the hope that a new administration will bring this country comes the fact that no one has yet offered a picture of how we will deal with worse news ahead.

Seals v. Kirk in the 10th Congressional District

Sunday on NBC5’s City Desk, incumbent Mark Kirk and challenger Dan Seals talk about their respective differences toward issues that affect the 10th District.

Palin/Biden

Tune in to NBC5 at 10PM…..I’ll be reporting on the Veep Debate!

Carol Marin and Bob Schieffer

Carol interviews CBS correspondent and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Channel 11, at 7PM.  Topics include Sarah Palin and the state of news.

Bipartisan? Depends on Which Side of Bipartisan You’re On!

Barack Obama, the favorite son who is expected to sweep his home state in a landslide come Nov. 4, Monday could not sweep his allies in the Illinois congressional delegation. When the House bailed out of the bailout, four of 11 Illinois Democrats defected. All four who voted “no” are Obama supporters.

John McCain, who announced he was leaving the campaign trail to go to Washington and assist the rescue, didn’t carry his own team in Illinois. Five of seven Illinois Republican members of Congress also gave the bailout a resounding thumbs down.

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Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin

An odder vote tally you are not likely to see as liberal Democrat U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. found himself on the same side as a conservative Democrat with whom he seldom agrees, Dan Lipinski, and a suburban Republican, Peter Roskam, whose politics he does not share.

Reached by phone in Washington, Jackson had two words to explain his vote.

“Mildred Howell,” he said.

As far as Jackson is concerned, she is the human face of the current crisis who didn’t get a bit of help from the so-called bipartisan bailout that was rejected Monday.

Mrs. Howell is 68 and a widow. She and her husband, Caeser, bought a modest brick home in South Shore in 1969 where they raised three children. They worked hard for their American dream, making mortgage payments every month. He was a police officer, she had jobs at the Board of Health and at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Five years ago, Mr. Howell was robbed and beaten. He was 79 and died from his wounds. Their house was almost paid off. His wife went to their mortgage company to ask about a reverse mortgage, something that would take the home’s equity to supplement her small income of $1,700 a month. The company, according to mortgage specialist Robert Wallace who is now helping her, steered Mrs. Howell into an adjustable rate mortgage instead. And within four months, she was paying 82 percent of her income in house payments, drowning financially and on the road to foreclosure.

Should she have known better? Wallace, who has seen many senior citizens in Mrs. Howell’s predicament, says the lender deliberately misled and took advantage of Mrs. Howell.

Jackson and his wife, 7th Ward Ald. Sandi Jackson, along with Wallace, have tried to ride to her rescue. But, says the congressman, “There are millions Mildred Howells out there.”

In the congressman’s South Side office, longtime aide Rick Bryant says the phones have been ringing wildly. “Last time I remember getting this many calls was the impeachment of Bill Clinton,” he said Tuesday. Back then constituents were split 50-50 but this time, according to Bryant, callers were 100 percent against a bailout for Wall Street that was financed by Main Street without giving people there any help.

“No particular leader has been influential,” acknowledged Jackson.

Not President Bush. Not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And not presidential aspirants Obama or McCain.

It’s the American people who are leading on this.

Jackson, who favors a moratorium on foreclosures and outlawing adjustable rate mortgages, said, “There is no organized coalition . . . there are plenty of issues and everyone has a different reason” for their vote, pro or con.

Which accounts for the strange alliances within the Illinois delegation as Republican Mark Kirk, in a tough battle for re-election in the 10th District on the North Shore against Dan Seals, joined ranks with Democratic Chicago Rep. Danny Davis and Rahm Emmanuel in voting in favor of the bailout.

Bipartisan has been the byword of this rescue attempt.

But as Monday’s stunning defeat makes crystal clear, bipartisanship is a knife capable of cutting both ways.

Struggling Hockey Mom Needs More Ice Time

Sarah Palin’s debate with Joe Biden Thursday is must see TV.

And a lot rides on it.  Here’s Sunday’s Sun-Times column.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1188888,CST-EDT-carol28.article

A Farewell to an Old Friend

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1181102,CST-EDT-Carol24.article

Obama’s Nudge Might Help Pass Illinois Ethics Bill

Lucy and Ethel.

Bert and Ernie.

Oprah and Gayle.

Barack and Emil.

Sometimes friendship saves the day.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1174377,CST-EDT-carol21.article

Ethics Bill Anyone????

Just finished writing Sunday’s Chicago sun-Times column..which will be online Saturday….
The curtain goes up, thanks to a call from Barack Obama to Emil Jones, on the Senate’s reconsideration of the ethics bill following Governor Blagojevich’s amendatory veto.
Looks like we could have an ethics bill next week…but this is Illinois.  No counting chickens before they’re hatched.