In which I ask, Did Bill Ayers write Obama’s “Dreams From My Father”?
Not only does literary analysis point in that direction, but he claims authorship, as well. But then again, he is a Narcissistic Post-Modern Radical Toolbox. So who can really tell?
Our descent into madness continues apace:
Woman accused of hate crime against Muslim – Chicago Breaking News
A woman who allegedly yanked the headscarf of a Muslim woman in a Tinley Park supermarket two days after the Fort Hood shootings has been charged with a hate crime.
Bank teller Valerie Kenney, 54, of the 16500 block of Evergreen Ave., is accused of confronting Amal Abusumayah while she shopped at the Jewel supermarket at Harlem Avenue and 171st Street on Nov. 7, Tinley Park police say.
Abusumayah alleged last week that Kenney made a reference to the Fort Hood shootings while passing her in an aisle of the supermarket.
Minutes later, Abusumayah alleges, Kenney approached her from behind near the cash register and pulled on her headscarf.
I’m sorry, but this is moronic. Charged with a “hate crime” for pulling someone’s headscarf?
Even worse, a FELONY?! She faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.
(voice over PA) George Orwell, pick up the red courtesy phone. George … Orwell … pick up the red courtesy phone.
If two white women got into a little tussle at the grocery store, and one of them pulled off the other one’s scarf, would that qualify for a hate crime? No, silly, that would just be a “chick fight”.
Hate crimes, you see, require class divisions, with a perceived victimizer exploiting a perceived victim .
Hate crimes are about guilt, basically. There is no guilt to repay when it’s just two white women. Who cares, right? But as soon as we get two people from different sides of the perceived victimizer – victim split, bingo! Hate crime!
Americans: you can now be charged with a felony and face 3 years in jail for the horrible crime of pulling a scarf off of someone’s head. Depending on who they are, and the level of perceived grievance they have against us at the time. Could go up and down over time, we don’t really know.
This is a thought crime. We enjoy Constitutionally protected freedom of speech, and to assemble and worship, but we aren’t allowed to have certain types of opinions about people. Got that?
Yeah, I’m sure the Founders would have been OK with that.
Let’s just lay this out there: the law has no business deciding which thoughts are permissible and which thoughts are not. Why this even needs to be mentioned, I do not understand. It goes against every concept that underlies the meaning of being a truly free people.
And besides, hate crime legislation is unnecessary, because beating up on people and killing them and stuff is already against the law.
Pulling on scarves, though, not so much. There’s the only divide that matters. You either assaulted somebody, or you didn’t. You either killed somebody, or you didn’t. You either committed a real crime, or you didn’t.
Instead, we now go down a bad road, a very bad road, when we lose that distinction and focus more on motivation than actions.
And, of course, as with any law, you have to plan for the inevitable overly-aggressive prosecution. Like this one, it seems. So, now an American citizen has to hire lawyers to fight against her own government–that she funds with her tax dollars–because she pulled off a scarf.
Help me out here. That nutjob Hasan who killed 13 people (plus an unborn baby of one of the victims) on Nov. 5 at Ft. Hood, and who for years had praised jihadis and suicide bombers, and made so many people uncomfortable about his jihadi ways that numerous complaints were filed about him, and who was even caught emailing a frigging terrorist fer-crying-out-loud … well, they just couldn’t quite figure out if he was a risk or not!
What were they hoping to find? An Al-Qaeda membership card? Electronic interception of direct orders from Osama bin Laden himself, like “IMPLEMENT OPERATION ‘KILL INFIDELS’ NOW!”? After getting a search warrant, of course.
This is sheer lunacy.
Obvious craziness motivated by real hatred is virtually ignored, while petty rudeness at the grocery store is elevated to a felony.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie, filled with bad dialogue, stupid characters, and a scary plot where the people of a country forget who they are and what made their country great. And then they end up pissing it all away, afraid of their own shadows. I don’t really like that ending much. I’m hoping for a different ending, where people wake the hell up and realize they are under siege. You have to admit you have a problem before you can start to address it.
Maybe there is more to this story, more info that will make it seem less idiotic and dangerous to our Constitutional freedoms. If so I’ll re-evaluate. But as it stands right now, this looks to me like a needless politically-motivated prosecution of an private American citizen by her own government.
If only that same government had felt just as compelled to intervene with the Hasan situation.
Categories: Bad Government · Let's Not Kid Ourselves · Local · Politics · Stupid to the Extreme
Michael Pearson, one of the victims in the Ft. Hood massacre, laid to rest:
Sobs could be heard throughout the funeral parlor and in an overflow room where families watched the services on a television monitor. Other televisions flashed childhood pictures of the soldier who was also known for writing poetry and giving impromptu guitar lessons.
“He enjoyed making people happy with music,” said Scott Lorich, Pearson’s former guitar teacher. “He was doing music theory as a hobby. He loved it that much.”
Lorich said Pearson had enrolled in his beginning guitar class at Bolingbrook High School, even though his skills far exceeded the skills of others in the class, including the teacher.
He was just 22 years old. He was murdered in cold blood by a maniac who should have been kicked out of the Army, but was instead protected by cowardice at both the individual and institutional levels.
I have 3 sons, the oldest is 21, the youngest ones are 10 and 8. All three of them play guitar, mostly because I play, and bought them all a guitar of their own.
This hits home for me. Yeah, you could say that.
And Pfc. Pearson was just one of the 13 dead, not to mention the dozens of wounded.
More than 100 motorcycles bearing American flags, led the procession to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in nearby Elwood, where Pearson was buried with full military honors under a cloudy sky early Saturday evening. Hundreds gathered by the casket as gun shots were fired in salute and a bugle played “Taps.”
The honor guard fired three volleys. Three spent shell casings were placed inside the folded flag and presented to his mother. Each casing represents duty, honor and country.
May he rest in peace.
And may we re-discover sanity in our culture. Soon.
Back in the fall of 1975, when the monster album “Kiss Alive” was released, I remember buying it at Korvette’s for $5.99.
In fact, that might have been my first “hard rock” album. I was a junior in high school, and was just starting to get into Led Zeppelin, Kansas, The Who, all that, and Kiss was in the mix too.
Kiss, of course, was outrageous. They wore ridiculous makeup and costumes, and bass player Gene Simmons used to spit fake blood and do crazy things with his huge lizard tongue. To me, that whole thing seemed a tiny bit campy and silly, but they quickly developed a reputation as a great live act, and sold out shows accordingly. For me, it was more about (some of) the music. “Rock and Roll All Nite” was a decent party anthem, and I liked a few other songs, especially “Room Service” from the Dressed to Kill album.
But, seriously, if somebody had told me back then that 34 years later, Kiss would still be spitting blood, wearing ridiculous makeup, and selling out large arenas for live shows, I would never have believed it. Outrageous is strictly for the under-30 set, right?
The crowd at the United Center was a bunch of old guys and gals, some even dressed up like their favorite Kiss band member.
Yow! The mind reels.
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, the founders of the group, must be doing pretty well for themselves: for just another $30 last Friday night at the UC, you could get a “USB leather wristband containing digital files of the night’s performance”.
Do the math on that profit margin, and multiply it by all that other crap you can buy at concerts. Think about all the other old fogeys doing concerts today, and how much cash is made from all that crap people buy at the shows. Say, how’s that career choice looking now?
My Kiss fascination ended pretty quickly. Within 4-5 years I wasn’t even listening to much hard rock any more. Maybe their wimpy ballad “Beth”, from their next studio record, had something to do with that. That song, in fact, might have started a huge 1980s trend: power ballads from hard rock bands. Gosh, thanks for that, guys! Really, that’s just awesome. Thanks again.
For completists only, I imagine: a 1994 tribute record called Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved, featuring Stevie Wonder, Garth Brooks, Lenny Kravitz, among others.
If Lovie Smith doesn’t have answers, who does?.
David Haugh toes the line but doesn’t go over it, so I will. Lovie Smith is just not a good head coach, and it’s time we woke up to that cold hard reality.
In fact, based on the miserable showing of this team in 2 of the last 3 games, I’m questioning the talent evaluators, the GM, the scouts, the front-office people that hire them, and everybody who has a say in a team that displays over-paid mediocrity nearly every Sunday.
The team is a joke, and suffers from a complete lack of leadership at all levels.
Can you even imagine a Ditka coached team from the 1980s losing so badly? Losing close games is one thing. Getting your ass handed to you two weeks out of three, quite another.
Can you imagine a Singletary-led defense playing like that? I sure can’t. Man, I miss that guy. But he seems to have rejuvenated the 49ers, who play the Bears on Thursday night.
Imagine that, a black head coach who got the job because … he’s good at it.
I wonder what that would be like for a Bears team.
Note to ownership: we’ve seen great football in this town, played with passion and intensity and talent and dedication. And this AIN’T it.
I’d never heard of either Jerry Angelo or Lovie Smith when they were hired. But I bought in, and gave them both plenty of time.
Sorry, but I think it’s time to say it: neither one is very good at their jobs.
And so by extension, whoever hired Angelo isn’t very good either.
Wave goodbye to juice box!
Categories: Football · Let's Not Kid Ourselves · Local · Sports
Right after a crushing playoff loss in cold, windy weather, the football coaches of my son’s youth team gathered the kids around for the usual post-game talk.
The season is over now, there’s no getting around it. This is the end.
After 13 weeks of practice six hours a week … after 9 games … after all the team-building that results from good leadership of 25 ten-year-old boys who love football and get along well with each other … here we are now. Done. Over. After all that effort, and all that investment, suddenly, it’s all over.
Some of the coaches got choked up trying to put their intense emotions into words. Just like last year. And listening to them, and watching them, so did I. Just like last year.
And this was a totally different set of coaches from last year.
Two seasons of football, two different sets of coaches, but two identical scenarios at the end of the season: a tough loss, and an emotional message.
Two sets of good people connecting with our young men, doing a wonderful thing for them, and for us. Two sets of dads who throw themselves into coaching with great dedication and desire. with a sincere and earnest wish to teach football to 9- and 10-year-old boys. For nothing. Well, it isn’t really for nothing: the coaches get to spend a little of their own money, and a lot of their own time, energy, and emotion.
Some kids aren’t so lucky, I know, and end up with jerks for coaches, who ruin an entire sport for them forever, but we’ve been lucky enough to go 2-for-2 in the Good Football Coaches category.
The key thin I’ve learned over the last two enjoyable seasons is that football builds bonds like no other sport that I’ve ever seen up close. The investment of time and emotion is so big. SO, so big. And with all that investment comes bonding: boys with other boys, coaches with boys, parents with each other.
It all comes together, slowly, over a period of weeks. At some point, it turns into a team, a real team, where everybody works together for a common goal, without concern about who gets credit.
And it hurts when that finally ends. It hurts a lot. It hurts because you’ve built something real.
There is a very real sense of grief for the end of that bond. Maybe it hurts the adults more than the kids. In fact, I’m pretty sure about that.
And then we drag ourselves back to work, school, or wherever it is we put in our time each day, but we do so as changed people.
We’ve been transformed. Literally, transformed by the power of connecting with other people and working towards a common goal. It’s an amazing and beautiful thing. And I’m pretty sure this is one of the most powerful draws that keeps players coming back to play football, and keeps coaches coming back to coach it, at least in our local youth program.
Football is a great sport outside of all other considerations, but when you add in the teamwork and the life lessons, the character-building, the elevation of team over self, football becomes transcendent.
Someday when I’m old, and Jacob is grown, we’ll talk about the good times we had when he played youth football, and how much we both enjoyed it, and how much we both learned.
Life is mostly about building memories, and it feels good to know you’ve just built another great memory. It feels really, really good.
Categories: Columns · Essays · Family · Football · Kids, Family · Local · Sports
While you were out … the state of Michigan has turned into an economic hell-hole.
It’s too bad. Michigan is a nice place, with a lot of natural beauty, and Great Lakes on three sides. But the place is slowly being destroyed economically, due to a deadly combination of too much reliance on a very sick auto industry, and high taxes, and big government, and excessive union power.
So those who can leave, do. Every 12 minutes, a family leaves the state of Michigan. 5 families per hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Do the math. That’s 840 families every week.
And it’s no wonder. Taxes are a strong disincentive to invest, to run a business, to work or raise a family. Raising taxes chases away the people who pay into the system but get very little out of it, leaving behind those who depend on that system–government largesse–for their livelihood. It’s a recipe for failure.
And Illinois, which is right now facing some big financial burdens, has the same tendency to “raise taxes first and ask questions later”. So does the U.S. government.
They might want to take a look at Michigan’s situation. And you might, as well. If raising taxes to address budget problems works so well, why do they have to keep doing it?
Categories: Cites · Economics · Local · Politics · Someone Thinks We R Stupid
Chicago learns next Friday, October 2, whether it will host the 2016 Summer Olympics. But if they do win the games, the taxpayers in Cook County won’t learn until much later just how big the bill might be.
There is a 12% profit factored into the $3.8M budget, but that pales in comparison to the potential cost overruns, as described in this eyes-wide-open article “Peeling back the coverage” at chicagobusiness.com.
For instance, while there is $1.1B of insurance promised, there is no insurance coverage (or not enough) for:
And that’s just the insurance piece of the pie.
Predictably, construction costs are key, with the main costs being the Olympic Village and the sports venues. The plan is to convince private developers to “transform the former Michael Reese Hospital into athletic quarters to be sold later as condominiums or rental housing”. I’m not quite sure if this means converting the actual buildings themselves–which seems sort of crazy to me–or if it means first tearing down the whole thing and building new.
As for sports venues, the 2004 Athens games went double what they budgeted. The 2010 Vancouver games are running 23% higher than projected. Chicago 2016 is only allocating a 10% overrun, plus another 10% in insurance on top of that.
Then we have concerns about revenue projections.
Just read the whole thing.
The money quote by Allan Sanderson, a sports economist at the University of Chicago: “Athens was three times over budget; London is four times over budget. I don’t see that happening here. But are they going to come in at $4.8 billion? No, I just don’t see it.”
Categories: Let's Not Kid Ourselves · Local · Olympics · Politics · Someone Thinks We R Stupid
Apparently, some folks in a neighborhood not far from ours are easily distressed.
A group of neighbors near Park Boulevard and Hillside Avenue in Glen Ellyn are all up in arms about … a Montessori preschool in their neighborhood!
Yikes. What’s next? Gangs and drive-by shootings?
The main concern seems to be traffic. OK, so a few more cars come and go at the same times every day. How big can that “problem” get? It’s a Montessori pre-school, in a town with tons of stay-at-home moms. We’re not talking 200 kids here.
Ron Repking and his wife (name not given) own Diamante Montessori Preschool, and they bought a vacant church to house it in 2007. And it’s been a contentious battle ever since, with yard signs, lawsuits, and everything in between. When driving past the area, I’ve noticed the signs, and wondered just what they were all about.
Now I know, and I think it’s pretty lame.
Who knows, maybe some benefits accrue to the neighborhood from having young kids educated there, Montessori-style? Is that possible? Good kharma, and all that?
And even if the answer to that is “no”, and you have to put up with the auditory horrors of children squealing with delight now and again, we think you just might survive it. We really do.
And if you get supremely annoyed by a few extra cars cruising on public streets, to deliver and pick up children to/from a licensed school run by responsible adults, then maybe it’s time to lighten up a tad. Just a teensy bit.
Or, continue to push hard on an issue that no reasonable person sees your way.
Either/Or.
Categories: Columns · Education · Essays · Kids, Family · Local · Stupid to the Extreme
The Wildcat formation is causing defensive coordinators in the NFL to do some adapting, and this article does a nice job of explaining the whys and wherefores.
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Golf legend Arnold Palmer turns 80 on Sept. 10th, and USA Today has a bunch of reader rememberances.
In reading them, it’s very easy to see how he got to be so popular: he went out of his way to engage people. Probably because he’s just a nice guy and a people person. You know who could stand to loosen up a little bit in that department? Tiger Woods. But then, he wouldn’t be Tiger Woods. He thrives on focus and drive, and those things are incompatible with being a people person.
Golf could really use a guy like Arnold Palmer right now. How many people started playing golf entirely because of Arnold Palmer’s charisma? It sure sounds like a lot, from reading those letters.
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One of my favorite bands, Steely Dan, played the Chicago Theatre last week. Monday night they played “Aja” in its entirety at the start, and then a bunch of their other great songs. Check out this set list:
1 Black Cow
2 Aja
3 Deacon Blues
4 Peg
5 Home at Last
6 I Got the News
7 Josie
8 Black Friday
9 Time out of Mind
10 Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More11 Bodhisattva
12 Babylon Sisters13 Show Biz Kids
14 Hey Nineteen
15 Dirty Work
16 Love is Like an Itching in My Heart (Supremes)/band intros
17 Do It Again
18 Don’t Take Me Alive
19 My Old School
20 Kid CharlemagneEncore
21 Reelin’ in the Years
Color me bright green with envy. I’ve listened to most of these songs sooooo many times over the years, I know every solo, every chord change, every note and lyric. Except for the songs on Gaucho … never a big fan of that record.
My favorite Steely Dan records, in order:
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Locally, Chicago’s attempt to remake public housing has fallen somewhat short. So, to review, the Federal Government created the publc housing mess which helped destroy our cities, and then the city government has distributed that mess into the neighborhoods and suburbs, and done an inferior job at it, too. Maybe it’s time to bring sanity back to housing policy?
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Finally, Tony Woodlief writes about the quality of education today. I agree with everything he says there. We don’t home school, but I support and sympathize with many of those who do. And then we have this Education school lunacy. Do people realize what is going on under their noses? On their dime? To their kids? I really don’t think they do.
Categories: Cites · Columns · Education · Football · Golf · Local · Music · Sports
Worth Mulling: A Late-Summer Reading List – a few books on this list I’d like to track down:
Bolt shreds 200m mark, sets second world record this week – 19.19 for the 200m. Sliced .11 off the old world mark of 19.30 he set in last year’s Olympics. This guy is amazing, and I hope he’s clean. We don’t need more reasons to be suspicious of athletic performances.
Giants’ owner and teammates say Burress jail term is an American tragedy – I’m not a Giants fan, I don’t care about Plaxico Burress, but it sure seems odd to me, the way that whole story has evolved. Two years in jail for a weapons violation? Wow. Whose interests are served by it?
Bus drivers reject paying red-light tickets – Issuing automatic $100 tickets for not stopping at some exact spot on a road is a DUMB idea. It annoys drivers who are doing nothing wrong, and is nothing more than a cash grab by cash-obsessed local governments. Just because technology enables a particular idea is NOT justification enough for implementing it. In fact, that might be an argument against it.
Categories: Cites · Economics · Football · Local · Olympics · Reading · Sports
Some 35yo non-athlete white dude tries to duplicate the stunt that Bears rookie Jarron Gilbert did on YouTube: jump out of a 3-foot pool and land on his feet.
.
Didn’t work out so well for the non-athlete white dude. Yeah, I’m shocked too.
Talk about explosive power … of course, he can also squat-lift 635 pounds …
… maybe that has something to do with it.
After years of holding out for some now-inexplicable reason, we finally saw the light and joined Costco this weekend.
Costco, for those who’ve never heard of it, is a discount retailer that requires a yearly membership to join, similar to Sam’s Club. We could just as easily have joined Sam’s as well, but there isn’t a location that is very close to us. In fact, the closest Costco is about a twenty-minute drive, so that isn’t super-convenient either. But it’s close enough, starting now.
We went to the Bloomingdale store at around 12:45 on Saturday. Parking lot: big, and jammed. The membership process was easy, and fairly quick. We opted for the Executive membership, which costs $100, instead of $50 for the standard membership, but you get 2% back on your purchases, so it will easily pay for the difference if we spend $2500 in a year there. Which shouldn’t be very hard, since we spent over $100 the first day we went, mostly on food.
We spend an unbelievable amount of money on food, for a family of five. $250 a week, more or less. And we don’t buy lots and lots of extras, like chips, pop, convenience items, etc. (we do buy some of those things, but not much).
Places like Costco and Sam’s have good deals for families like us with their large packages of frozen meats, like hamburgers and chicken. Also deli meats, and the largest tub of yogurt I’ve ever seen, four pounds of yogurt. You need two hands to lift the thing.
And they had a ten pound bag of apples for like $8. Usually, people that buy ten pounds of apples have 6 kids, or horses. We, however, have a 10-year-old son named Jacob.
We go through all that stuff really fast, and it is all pretty expensive at our local Jewel Food Store.
So even though a Costco run takes forty minutes round-trip, we’ll find a way to squeeze in one or two trips a month, if we can save some bucks on the food bill, not to mention all the other things they have there. Like wine, beer, booze, a pharmacy, even golf balls!
Just two things to remember. One, we now need more storage space in our house. And two, we must never, ever go to Costco on Saturday afternoons.
Categories: Encounters · Essays · Family · Local
There are some things that you just never expect to see in your lifetime.
The Cubs winning a World Series. Sensible politics in Washington. Being able to lose that last 15 pounds. A picture of Cheap Trick hanging with WGN weatherman Tom Skilling.
Oops, scratch that last one, because here it is.
Cheap Trick played live on WGN this morning: “I Want You to Want Me”, awesome as it ever was.
That Rick Nielsen, he can play guitar a little bit, eh? Funny, too. Watch the video.
You have to wonder if maybe Illinois wouldn’t be in such a big budget crisis right now if the state legislature didn’t routinely, and for many years, approve new programs without funding them.
Seems a little risky, no?
In a business, or even a family, non-essential expenses are the very first thing you evaluate. It’s called “cutting the fat”, and it’s how sane people try to balance budgets.
But not in government! Governments have these wonderful ATM-like things called “taxpayers”.
Governments think taxpayers are awesome because taxpayers are too busy leading their lives to learn much about how completely they get ripped off by their governments. And the media likes taxpayers too, as long as they are kept in the dark about how markets work and what taxes do to an economy.
Isn’t it funny how none of the politicians or news stories mention any of this when the going gets tough? No, it’s all about yanking food right out of the mouths of starving children.
Gee thanks, but I’m trying to cut down on my big-government platitudes and insulting emotional appeals meant to trip my trigger and open my wallet.
The Economist notes how widespread it is :
Despite allocations of federal aid to states, services are being cut, state employees are being laid off, and taxes are being raised in order to balance the budgets of local governments constitutionally unable to run deficits. It’s not at all clear that the federal stimulus will entirely compensate for state-level fiscal tightening, which means that American fiscal policy could, on net, be contractionary.
Q: Is there anybody in the room who dares to ask the obvious? That, maybe, just maybe, we’re overspending?
A: Sadly, no. Doing that would require cutting programs that benefit special-interest groups. And the media, which frames the discussion about the role of government in our lives, believes all government spending is inherently a Good Thing.
And so on and on we go. Giving government more and more power by relying on it to fix things for us.
How’s that working out so far?
Categories: Economics · Essays · Local · Pandering · Politics
If you drive in Illinois, you’d better keep your speed EXACTLY at the work zone speed limit.
If you go too slow, you’ll have 20 ton semis about 6 inches from your rear bumper.
And if you go too fast, even by just ONE MPH, you risk a $375 fine mailed to you as a result of photo enforcement that goes into effect tomorrow, July 1.
Of course, slowing down every driver in every work zone in the entire state will cost us all more time and money. More time, obviously. And more money, because gas mileage is always worse at 45 m.p.h than at 55 or 65. And gas prices are already higher in the summer, because demand is higher … because there are already more of us on the road. A perfect time to insist on slower driving.
And I won’t even get into the possibility that some of the speed trap photo enforcement equipment will be poorly calibrated, resulting in fines for innocent drivers. That would be unhelpful.
I also won’t get into the risks of adding time to an already-long drive which can cause drowsiness later. Again, unhelpful.
But as a benefit, we might get some unknown level of slightly reduced risk. Maybe. So, YAY!
Enjoy your summer! Get out there and travel — the economy needs you!
And Waxman-Markey thinks YOU are stupid enough to support this dumb idea:
Now Congress is trying to pass a new law called ‘Cap and Trade,’ which is really just another new energy tax. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the new tax could cost you between 61 cents and $1.60 for every gallon of gas you buy. Economists think this could cost the average family $3,100 a year. I’m working hard to defeat this new tax.
Funny how that huge tax increase on everybody who drives doesn’t seem to resonate in the media. Huh.
I have a feeling it would resonate with the consumer.
That passage above is from this link at the site of my congressman, Peter Roskam (Ill.). I sent him an email today requesting that he vote no on that legislation, before I knew how strongly he already opposed it. He doesn’t like the Waxman-Markey bill. He is a smart man.
You can also find this graphic at that link, reflecting the cost of gas in Chicago, which already pays the highest prices in the nation, and which could increase by up to $1.60:
http://roskam.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=4291
Thanks, but no. Sorry … I’m really trying to cut down.
Categories: Economics · Environment · Local · Pandering · Politics
Since Monday is also known as “Free Coffee Monday” at McDonald’s, I decided to stop in on the way to work this morning and grab one.
Small, and black. Like Flip Wilson.
Surprise #1: “That’ll be $1.18, please”. What happened to Free Coffee Monday? Still not sure, because the cashier’s answer was inaudible.
Surprise #2: So I tried to hand her $2. She took $1, and gave me back 46 cents. No, I didn’t get it either. Maybe it’s some new Impromptu Whiner’s Discount.
Surprise #3: After sipping the coffee a couple of times, it tasted a little odd, so I took off the lid. It had cream in it.
So my free black coffee became a 54-cent coffee with cream. Maybe McDonald’s itself could use a little jolt of Free Coffee Monday.
Categories: Encounters · Food and Wine · Local
Former WSCR sports radio personality Mike North was fired Friday from his Internet radio startup chicagosportswebio.com, along with his wife BeBe and another man. They were fired for inquiring about recent bounced checks for some of the employees, including broadcasting legend Chet Coppock.
Hold on, it hasn’t even begun to get weird yet.
Yesterday, the CEO of the company, David Hernandez, who is also the prime investor in North’s show “Monsters in the Morning” on Comcast SportsNet, called a meeting and announced the company was still in good shape, and that he would make good on the bad checks. He left and said he’d be back at 1:30. He never returned.
Then the employees learned Hernandez is being sued by the SEC for running a Ponzi scheme with his companies NextStep Financial and NextStep Medical Services (the prime sponsor of “Monsters” on Comcast).
Last night, Hernandez’ wife — also named in the SEC suit — reported him missing to the Downers Grove police.
Hernandez, as it turns out, declared bankruptcy three times in the last 5 years, and served time in jail in the late 90s.
So now chicagosportswebio.com is probably kaput, though Coppock plans on one more broadcast today at 3:00. THAT ought to be interesting.
And the future of “Monsters”, without its prime sponsor, is up in the air as well.
I always kind of wondered about the sponsorship deal with NextStep and “Monsters”. Seemed a little too good to be true: a single company sponsoring a TV show? When does that ever happen?
Never, apparently.
Related:
Ah, well. The Hawks lost to a better team. But they gave a great effort in game 5, and have nothing to be ashamed of. The game was scoreless well into the third period, and even after Detroit went up 1-0, the Hawks came back to tie it a few minutes later to force overtime. Their determination and will to win were evident for all to see.
And losing to a better team is an education of sorts, for the players, coaches and front office staff.
Questions come up. Are we good enough at defense? Do we have enough size? Do we need to get better at puck possession skills? No, no, and yes.
Even more important, hunger is created in the hearts and minds of the players. It hurts to lose in the round before the Final of any tournament in any sport, because it feels like unfinished business. You’ve worked so hard, for so long, and won so many tough games, and then you have to go home and watch the team that just beat you play some other team in the Final, and get all the attention and respect that comes from that.
So, looking back? A great, great season. The Hawks showed us a lot during this playoff run. Next year, this team will still be the youngest in the NHL, but with the added experience and education of winning two playoff rounds—one of them without home ice advantage and against a team (Vancouver) that many saw as superior—and then losing a tough series against a superior opponent.
Good luck to the Wings, I guess. I don’t know why, but it’s hard to like that team. Maybe it’s the goofy red uniforms? The white unis are cool, but the red ones look like little kid jammies. And the Pens have one of the best uniforms in sports, for my money. And two uber-cool young stud players in Crosby and Malkin, who have been making sick plays all during the playoffs, and have 30 goals and 56 points between them.
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