THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SEEKS TO SILENCE A MIDDLE EAST CRITIC BY ERASING HIM FROM THE 2008 ELECTION FOR U. S. SENATOR IN ILLINOIS

ANDY MARTIN
“He Works for the People of Illinois”
Republican for U. S. Senator
Suite 4406, 30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
Toll-free tel. (866) 706-2639
Toll-free fax (866) 707-2639
Web site: www.AndyforUSSenator.com
E-mail: mailto:AndyforIllinois@aol.com

October 30, 2007

Wade Thompson, Esq.
Jenner & Block
330 N. Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
via fax (312) 840-8713

Re: Martin v. Associated Press, Chicago Tribune
Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois
Docket No. 06 CH 1162

Latest antics by your client The Associated Press

Dear Mr. Thompson:

Today I filed nominating petitions in Springfield as a statewide candidate for United States Senator in the Republican Party primary.

In a stunning act of arrogance, and very likely a federal election law violation, the AP mentioned the filing of my primary opponent but erased my existence as a candidate from the news dispatch. See http://www.bnd.com/326/story/165356.html.

My understanding was that the AP reported “news,” or facts, and did not use its franchise to engage in retaliatory behavior or doctor the news to suit the AP’s private agenda. To erase a candidate from an election report smacks of Soviet-era Russia.

I believe that the legal standard of a “reasonable person” would conclude that the AP is trying to destroy my candidacy for federal office in retaliation for my exposing AP’s biased reporting in Springfield and Chicago. As such, your actions constitute a contribution to my opponent since you have targeted a specific candidate and you are seeking to use the AP’s media power to destroy that candidate through erasure.

In the long run, your client's actions may be counterproductive. AP's acts of corporate arrogance and abuse of media power are more likely to make me a hero than a villain. People know the American news media is biased and corrupt; your client is only proving my accusations. Indeed, in the above-encaptioned lawsuit, set for hearing in December, I specifically alleged that AP had directed its reporters to censor any news of my campaign and to exclude me from the AP Daybook. AP's latest actions seem to confirm the allegations in my lawsuit.

Americans are not fighting and dying in the Middle East so your firm can feel free to disseminate lies around the world. For shame.

Before I file suit I would like to (i) request a written and public apology and retraction from AP and a written agreement to cease and desist from future harassment and abuse; to (ii) notify you that AP’s actions appear to constitute an unlawful campaign contribution to a federal campaign, namely my opponent; and to (iii) advise you that if necessary I will be filing suit in Sangamon County where the false news originated.

AP subscribers have a right to believe that AP is providing impartial, accurate and complete factual news concerning election events. AP has now breached that covenant with its subscribers, as well as the public. I aim to see your client is made to obey the law. I will afford you up to and including November 5th to respond before I take further action.

I believe the behavior of your client is childish, self-destructive and profoundly ill-advised. Is AP acting on the basis of your legal counsel?

Sincerely yours,


ANDY MARTIN

AM:sp

cc: General Counsel, The Associated Press
450 W. 33rd St., New York, NY 10001

ANDY MARTIN ON THE "LAST DAYS OF OBAMA"

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

THE LAST DAYS OF OBAMA

(CHICAGO)(October 25, 2007) On October 4, 2007 I wrote about the “Fall of the House of Obama.” http://www.contrariancommentary.com/community/Home/tabid/36/mid/363/newsid363/141/Default.aspx

Today, Senator Barack Obama’s eventual demise became all but official when David Broder, the dean of America’s political columnists, published a funereal piece on Barry O. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/24/AR2007102402336.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Over three years ago, in August, 2003 I began exposing the Obama scam. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189687/posts; see also http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/21/14036/4115

When Barack began to run for president in February, we published a series of columns including a psychological profile that presaged his eventual collapse as a candidate.

ContrarianCommentary.com has been far, far ahead of the curve, as the national media and Chicago-based press continued to gulp down Obama’s campaign Kool-Aid. Why were we right and they wrong?

First, the national media failed to evaluate Obama’s phony track record in Illinois politics. Apart from his first campaign for the state senate, when he used truly nasty tactics, Obama had never been one to fight for victory. He was always the candidate offering himself for coronation.

On the Illinois football team where I played as a freshman, we used to talk about “dummy scrimmage All-Americans.” They were players who would hit the dummies hard, during the week, and then tremble when they saw the behemoths on the other team on Saturdays. Obama was a dummy scrimmage All-American. He could hit the dummies. He could not hit a real opposing team.

As long as Barry O was facing the dummies in Illinois politics, he was an All-American. The moment he came up against real competition, Team Clinton, he wilted. I saw this coming; the media pretended it wasn’t happening. I took the heat, and the abuse, from the Obama troupe and their media troopers, but I was right and they were. Well, what were they?

I have had a column in preparation for most of October about the pathetic way Obama has returned, time and time again, to his 2002 speech against the war in Iraq. It was Barry’s security blanket. His sense of entitlement because of that speech was overwhelming. Broder alludes to the panic in Obama’s campaign when Hillary Clinton upstaged him on October 2nd and obliterated Obama’s grandiose celebration of a four year-old speech.

What has Obama done since then? Precious little. He never really moved beyond 2002. He thought being right on the war in 2002 was a ticket to the White House. What conceit. What incompetence. What self-absorption. I was also “right” on the war in Iraq, but I don’t for a moment believe that as a result I am entitled to a seat in the U. S. Senate (for which I am a candidate). I am working to win. The old fashioned way.

Obama was a fundamentally immature man who had been spoon fed by the white establishment that anointed him as their African-American champion. Obama had no credible professional record. He was slavish in prostrating himself to the sleaziest elements of Chicago and Illinois politics. His sole claim to fame was his glibness and his invented ethnic heritage.

What made Barry’s rise to national prominence ludicrous is that Chicago is something of a Mecca for African-American advancement and accomplishment. There are outstanding lawyers, business persons and others who have accomplished much—on their own. People who have not sold out to politically-connected law firms and crooked politicians. Who have not been advanced by sleazy public officials. Or manqué billionaires. And yet out of this cornucopia of African-American achievement and merit, it was Obama that the establishment chose to promote to the national platform. But he was hollow. And weak.

Obama had no ideas, no firmly held convictions, nada. He never had to. Like Chauncey Gardner in Being There, Obama was worshipped for the profundity of his platitudes. This is not to say Team Clinton has morals or ideals; indeed, they have only one idea, and it serves them well: “Me.” Their self-advancement, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement and selfishness and hunger for power are all-consuming. The Clintons are totally concentrated on themselves—and it works. For them. For now.

Obama pretended he was in it for the people. But that was never saleable. For “change.” “For hope.” For s--t. He never used the platform he was given to build a strong personal presence. Obama never attacked or exposed the Clintons. He never became a real leader. A man that men would follow into battle. Months after he became a candidate, he was still pussyfooting around Team Clinton. A few days ago, he promised a “tough, new Obama.” “No more Mr. Nice Guy!” with Team Clinton. But it was more of the same sashaying around Hillary. He never laid a hand on her. All the while, he was being emasculated by Team Clinton.

It was left to me to begin the odyssey of Obama’s exposure three years ago. There were no believers them. The believers began to arrive earlier this year. I even began to get “credit” for stories I had not written. (Everything that we send out has our name on it. We do not do “anonymous.”) Now I am left to write his political obituary. “No,” his true believes declaimed to Broder. “Z.” Obama lives. But the answer really was “No.” Gertrude Stein understood Obama. There was no Obama there. No, really.

Barry may have tens of million of dollars in the bank. But he is bankrupt as a serious candidate for president. Like Cubs fans in Chicago, Obama’s sycophants will have to wait until “next year” for him to “arrive.” Don’t hold your breath. And, “no,” I don’t mean January, 2008. Maybe 2012. Maybe never. By, by Barry O.

“Mr. Broder, welcome to the ‘Last Days of Obama.’”

------------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is currently a candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com; AndyforUSSenator.com.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF OBAMA

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com

“Factually Correct, Not
Politically Correct”

THE DEATH OF “HOPE” ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

OBAMA BECOMES A PINUP FOR LEFT-WING DEMOCRATS, A PINHEAD FOR THE LIBERAL MEDIA THAT ADVANCED HIS CAREER AND PINNED DOWN UNDER HILLARY CLINTON’S FIRE. HE HAS LOST HIS UNDERPINNINGS.

(CHICAGO)(October 6, 2007) On September 21st I wrote that Barack Obama is not really running for president. Yes he is a candidate and yes he goes through the motions. But no, he knows he is not going to win, and he is looking forward to early retirement and a fat paycheck from corporate America.

When the history of the 2008 campaign is written the week of October 1st will probably be the week when the Obama campaign unraveled.

Obama began the week with what his handlers called a “Judgment and Experience Tour” and ended up demolishing both his judgment and his experience. By the end of the week Obama had been stripped of any appearance of either judgment or experience. He was bleeding from every pore.

This column actually began before the now celebrated flag pin fracas. I could see the end coming. The emptiness of Obama’s campaign, the hollow rhetoric was a sure tip off to me he was dying. But Obama’s contempt for the American flag and for the values it represents finally did him in. Friday’s (October 5th) Chicago Sun-Times implored Obama to “put the Stars and Stripes back on his lapel.” The Sun-Times could see that Obama had self-destructed even if Barry himself could not.

Earlier this year I assumed a Sun-Times columnist, Jennifer Hunter, had been put on the Obama campaign bus to act as a flack for a homeboy from Chicago. By this week even Hunter was intimating Obama was really a resume-inflating dissembler. Hunter wrote that Obama’s much-ballyhooed opposition to the war in 2002 was really riskless, and that Obama had distorted the time line of his opposition speech. http://www.suntimes.com/news/hunter/583542,CST-NWS-hunter02.article There you go again Barry.

Whew. I, of course, was accusing Obama being a resume-inflating, time line distorting phony way back in 2004. Welcome, Jennifer (and please do something with your hands in that stock picture the Sun-Times uses!).

How and why did it all unravel? First, Obama claimed to be an “outsider,” but he was an ersatz “insider’s outsider.” On September 30th the Chicago Tribune detailed how Obama had been hobnobbing with Pritzker money since the 1990's, long before he announced for the senate. http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/chi-pritzker_bdsep30,0,2168891.story

Now there’s nothing wrong with rich people, especially when they invite you to their “bonfire on the beach,” but don’t pretend you’re from the ‘hood while you swim in a billionaire’s pool.

Second, Obama really has nothing to sell but his sales approach. The great literary critic Isaiah Berlin once said “T. S. Eliot writes marvelously but says nothing.” The same could be said of Obama, who lives a life of bold rhetoric (“fundamentally change the game") but hasn’t really changed anything since entering politics except his bank balance.

Barry’s perfervid supporters still have not realized what a huckster Obama is; they probably never will. In just a few weeks they will be yelling that the Clintons “stole” the election from Obama. They didn’t. Obama fumbled. Eight months after he announced he still has an animated but sliver-thin base of support. He raises money but he can’t raise his standing in the polls. Ron Paul will get further with his newly found $5 million than Obama has gotten with his $75 million.

I was an early opponent of the war in Iraq. Still am. I marched against the war and I wrote about the war, and what a disaster it would be. And then I ended up in Baghdad and lived to experience all of the insanity and incompetence I had predicted. Barry Obama was safely at home. Obama has used the war to advance his political career; he has not been an opponent so much as a manipulator and exploiter of the war, for political profit and self-aggrandizement. All while voting 500 billion dollars to support the war. Yo!

But this week Obama was a sad figure when he tried to revive his 2002 speech in opposition to invading Iraq. Jennifer Hunter dumped on the “bravery” that Obama claimed and showed that Obama had even distorted the timing of his speech. Liar. Obama said he gave his antiwar speech in the “middle” of his senate race; she showed he gave the speech before he even announced!

Obama doesn’t realize that he is a complete wuss. Wusses seldom do. Especially when they have highly-paid sycophants and retainers to tell them they are making history. Obama was elected to the senate, and started voting to support the war, until Hillary changed course this year and he was forced to follow her tail.

Ultimately, Obama, who fancies himself a basketball player, is a very poor strategist and field general. You can’t beat the top dog by being a lap dog. And that’s a fact. Obama has been afraid to take on Hillary, and he has tap danced around her with the finesse of a Fred Astaire, all while Hillary ignored him and used Bill as her counterattack dog. When Hillary wanted to attack Obama, she used Bill to suggest Barry O was “inexperienced.” What a pair. But love or hate the Clintons, they are ruthless, ferocious predators. You can’t beat Team Clinton by being Mr. Newbie.

And so Obama has fallen back on his fund raising as a mark of his manliness. It hasn’t work. Now Hillary has surpassed Barry in the fund raising department as well and stripped him of his manliness.

In the middle of the fund raising deflation Obama decided to dump on the American flag. That was too much even for the Sun-Times, a paper that has been remarkably sympathetic to Obama for a long time. I remember when wearing the flag last became an issue, way, way back in 1969-1970. Democrats just pinned on their flags and walloped the Republicans in the 1970 election. Now Republicans and Democrats are both walloping Obama.

Who was the genius that told Obama to make an issue out of the “phony patriotism” of wearing the flag? Probably the same guy who told Rush Limbaugh to use the phrase “phony soldiers” (Limbaugh says he was quoted out of context). Maybe Obama should try Limbaugh’s strategy, and say that he really meant true patriots wear the flag, to show what’s in their heart. I studied semiotics under Joseph T. Tykociner at the University of Illinois. Barry should talk to me before he decides to diss the flag. And, by the way, I have a flag on my lapel.

Don’t expect the Obama balloon to deflate overnight. But right now he looks like a pinhead who’s pinned down and has become a pinup for the radical left in America. He has lost his underpinnings, and probably his underpants as well. Hillary and Bill must be smiling. And no, he is not going to be vice president. Hillary is smarter than that.

Rather, Obama will spend his $75 million or $100 million or whatever he raises sashaying across the political spectrum until he senses the timing is right to sell out and join corporate America. That’s what I said on September 21st. That’s still my story and I’m sticking to it.

“Bye, bye Barry. Too bad you had to go” (to the tune of By By Birdie)(suggested lyrics welcomed).

The House of Obama has fallen. It only took eight months for the great dissembler and resume inflater to fall from grace.

Now about Jennifer’s hands and arms in her Sun-Times picture. Lighten up lass.
------------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of experience. He is currently a candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com; AndyforUSSenator.com.