Wednesdays are Busy
ArchPundit
Move along, back with a lot tomorrow.
2003
Who Wins: Inhofe vs. Daley
Think about the repercussions of taking on the most powerful Mayor in America, Jim. Or just go back to ranting about evolution and how our Israel policy should be determined by the Book of Revelation.
Last Monday, after the late night demolition, I was critical of Daley for the manner in which he pulled off this stunt, but the shutting down of Meigs is very reasonable. After hearing from the critics of the move, I’m starting to think Daley acted to mildly and should have gone further. The only lame part of Daley’s argument is his trying to justify it for security reasons.
James Inhofe probably doesn’t realize what is bloody obvious to the rest of the world outside of Oklahoma and the home-schooled. The fact that Inhofe is a moron of spectacular dimensions simply eludes his self-awareness.
A pilot who once lived in Chicago, Inhofe said he found it bitterly ironic the hearing dealt with improving "infrastructure" when the city demolished a critical piece of infrastructure: Meigs’ only runway.
In no way is Meigs Field’s one runway a critical piece of infrastructure. It served a small number of corporate planes and the State of Illinois jets ferrying state legislators and staff back and forth to Springfield for the weekends. On top of it, Meigs is unreliable because of bad lake weather.
Meigs had been slated for closing and being turned into a park for nearly 50 years. It cannot handle much traffic due to size and weather. It is 20 minutes to Midway and it is owned by the Chicago Parks District.
If someone wanted to save it, there was a law before the Senate that the dim-witted Inhofe’s colleague killed. If he wanted to save Meigs as a ‘critical piece of infrastructure’ there was a deal to be made, but Peter Fitzgerald refused. Whining that Daley did what the city had planned for 50 years isn’t a very convincing argument as to why Inhofe might threaten Illinois’ infrastructure funding.
And if Inhofe thinks that their Congressional Delegation can beat our Congressional Delegation, let’s introduce him to the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Ted “Peter Krause” Barlow
Ted Barlow is clearly a fake name for Peter Krause
Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s Bobby Rush
In the 1999 Chicago Mayoral lamb to the slaughter, Bobby Rush was spinning his wheels against Richard Daley. So his last chance was a huge snowstorm that shut down the city. Betting that Jane Byrne rode poor snow removal to the Mayor’s office, Rush figured he could do the same and set-up a press conference showing unremoved snow. Of course, this battle was about as lopsided as the US-Iraq war and he doubled his mitake by allowing his back to be up against the road. The entire time he was giving his press conference, City of Chicago snow plows made that the clearest damn spot of street in the city. All the while Rush had to try and keep his dignity.
I believe Saeed al-Sahhaf knows how Bobby Rush felt.
Pulitzer at the Trib
For her work on editorials about the death penalty.
Well deserved.
The Problem of Downstate Labor
Is they want coal subsidies. How about instead, an investment program to actually make the educational system in that part of the state an educational system?
Support the Renewable Energy Standard In Illinois
Here. Really, go now.
April Fool’s Day in East Saint Louis
I’ve been trying to put together a list of the best of Carl Officer, but it was done by Pat Gauen
My personal favorite was the day he gathered the press to announce that he was filing a federal suit to stop Gov. James Thompson from using the National Guard to seize the city. When I broke the news to Thompson’s press secretary, I thought the poor man would laugh himself into a stroke. No troops ever showed up.
Or maybe the best was the time Carl began a speech by greeting me from the podium, by name, but then complained the next day to my editor that the resulting story was unfair because he wouldn’t have spoken so candidly had he known a reporter was present.
No, I think it was the opening of an obstetrical unit to help deal with the community’s soaring population of unwed mothers. Carl, a bachelor, publicly announced that he was personally going to start work on populating the place that very night.
Oops, I almost forgot the major MetroLink ceremony where Carl wiped the smile off every face by vowing to block the project because he wasn’t consulted. (Civic leaders unanimously insisted that Carl was invited to every meeting but never once showed up.)
You’ve surely heard about how Zaire un-invited Carl to help fine-tune its government after he announced that he would take his own blood supply, so if he got sick he wouldn’t depend on its "monkey blood."
Perhaps the best was when he got stopped by police doing 108 mph in a Jaguar borrowed from a convicted drug dealer. Carl bitterly denied the cop’s version, insisting he really had been doing 140.
Is there no end to it?
I haven’t gotten to the bodyguard with the Uzi. Or the $2,200 Carl claimed for trips never taken. Or the consulting contract the city council approved for $545,000 but Carl signed for $1.3 million. Or Carl’s hearty endorsement of a $450 million riverfront development plan long after everyone else, including a federal grand jury, figured out that it was just a big scam.
On the one hand: I’m gonna have a lot material.
On the other hand: Roll ’em up.