By Steve Rhodes

I’m attending to other matters this morning; the Papers will appear this afternoon or return tomorrow. And don’t forget Division Street for an extra fix.
Also, we do have today a Beachwood Exclusive: Inside Brian Urlacher’s contract.
The [Tuesday] Papers
1. “For presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the political goals of visiting seven countries over nine days – maximizing media coverage along the way in a series of staged events with dramatic visual backdrops – is to plug his resume gap and show him on an equal footing with world leaders,” Lynn Sweet writes.
I love how you can plug a foreign policy gap these days by making a few campaign stops overseas. It’s the “new kind of experience.”

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Posted on July 23, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

1. “For presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the political goals of visiting seven countries over nine days – maximizing media coverage along the way in a series of staged events with dramatic visual backdrops – is to plug his resume gap and show him on an equal footing with world leaders,” Lynn Sweet writes.
I love how you can plug a foreign policy gap these days by making a few campaign stops overseas. It’s the “new kind of experience.”

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Posted on July 22, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Among the things I haven’t made any mileage out of when it comes to Barack Obama is his icy relationships with former state legislative colleagues like Donne Trotter and Rickey Hendon, namely because those guys are boneheads. Obama’s modus operandi in Springfield, it seems to me, was to keep his distance from the dirt in order to maintain the viability of his ambitions. That didn’t mean standing up to the hacks or leading a reform movement, it just meant not wasting time with clowns unlikely to be useful to his future while waiting for the right opportunity to cleave himself to hack-in-chief Emil Jones.
So it’s kind of painful to read the Obama profiles that inevitably draw the wrong lesson from Obama’s dealings with these guys – as an example of his arrogance, aloofness, lack of “blackness”. That all just misses the point.
Trotter and, particularly, Hendon are artless fools. The latest example was bared on the pages of the Tribune on Sunday.

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Posted on July 21, 2008

By Natasha Julius

While you’re busy painting your face and munching popcorn this weekend, we’ll be at our usual post.
Market Update
Snack futures took a beating this week, with miserable earnings reported on stocks of both salsa and chips. Meanwhile, the long-term strategic partnership between Beer and Pork looks likely to fizzle on the global market.

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Posted on July 19, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

We all knew that the Cook County Jail was a hellhole, but the news this morning reminds me of an editor at the beginning of my career who used to advise reporters that “It’s always ten times worse than you think.” Too many reporters get thrown off the scent too soon. “Keep going,” ought to be the reporting rule of thumb.
So now comes this.
“In a scathing report released Thursday, federal authorities said that a culture exists at Cook County Jail in which inmates are systematically beaten by guards and medical care is so substandard that some inmates have died,” the Tribune reports.

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Posted on July 18, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Wow, you’d think Chicago had never experienced a rise in crime before.
For all I know, Jody Weis is a total fuck-up, but I really want to tell everybody to lay off the guy – and it’s not like I was a big fan of his hiring.
Instead, I’d like to ask Ike Carothers and his fellow city council weasels where they’ve been all these years.

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Posted on July 17, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

That was a pretty amazing All-Star game last night, and even though I hate the way the outcome now determines who gets home-field advantage in the World Series, I have to say I love the All-Star game. It’s really amazing to watch (for the most part) the best of the best not only competing, but as teammates and, truly, historical athletic figures.
That point was driven home last night with “the biggest collection” of All-Stars in the game’s history gathered on one field. Some of these guys I didn’t even know were still alive. Ralph Kiner! Whitey Ford! And you forget that legends like Willie Mays are still around.
I thought it was a pretty emotional moment when they went through the introductions of these guys, paired with the current players at each position. I love baseball.

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Posted on July 16, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

The departure of Ann Marie Lipinski as editor of the Chicago Tribune is not a surprise. She’s about as diametrically opposite of Sam Zell and his clownish deputies as one could be.
The promotion of Gerry Kern to replace her is a surprise. Howard Kurtz gets it right when he reports that “Journalists who have dealt with Kern call him a solid but unremarkable editor who was shuffled to the corporate side after losing internal competitions and spearheaded the idea of measuring the productivity of Tribune papers and their staffs.”

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Posted on July 15, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

BREAKING 11:49 A.M.: Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski resigns.
Gov. Baloneyvich
“Want to ruin your day? Try dealing with state government,” Kristen McQueary wrote on Sunday.
“On Wednesday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich followed through on his threat to veto social service programs from the state budget.
“After reviewing dozens of pages of vetoed items, it’s clear the governor once again put politics ahead of policy. He kept the nearly $1 million in cost-of-living pay raises he and lawmakers are set to receive, but he slashed quite discriminately in other areas.
“He cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut.”
If your day isn’t quite ruined yet, go read the rest of it and it will be.
[Editor’s Note: That link has suddenly and mysteriously become inoperable. I’ll leave it up in case it returns.]

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Posted on July 14, 2008

By Natasha Julius

We’ve been a bit busy, what with all the sorting and counting and hauling and such, but it’s no big thing. We’ve still got you covered.
Market Update
Apparently, the people who lend you money have no money either. So, you know, still pretty rocky out there.

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Posted on July 12, 2008