By Steve Rhodes
1. “Cutler plays the part of the infuriating adolescent so well it sometimes drives foes to absolute distraction,” our very own Jim Coffman writes in SportsMonday.
2. Remember when things got so bad with Block 37 the city tried to rename it 108 North State Street? Is it too late to just put the ice rink back? Or maybe turn it into a piece of urban realism by sticking a giant fork about this big in it . . . because it stopped being funny a long time ago. Now it’s just gruesome.
3. Halloween in Chicago 2009. (Someone went as Twitter.)
4. With apologies to Cheap Trick. In Playlist.
5. “Cheney FBI interview: 72 instances of can’t recall.”
Maybe he thought he was interviewing for the St. Louis Cardinals’ batting coach job.
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If only the poor would show the kind of character our wealthiest and most powerful citizens do . . .
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I guess it’s all about the parenting.
6. “Standard Parking Corporation Reports Solid Third Quarter 2009 Results and Free Cash Flow of $6.4 Million.”
7. “For 21 years, Terrence J. O’Brien has been on the board of Cook County’s sewage-treatment operation, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago,” the Sun-Times reports.
“During that time, O’Brien and his friends have started more than a dozen companies, including two engineering firms that have landed at least $3 million in contracts over the past decade from governments including the state of Illinois, the City of Chicago and the town of Cicero.”
8. “We don’t need to escalate.”
– Marvin Gaye
9. “Mayor Richard Daley is scheduled to hold a news conference to announce his ‘Energy Action Network plan’,” the Tribune reports. “He’ll only be taking questions from reporters on that topic, according to his staff.”
All reporters are also urged to turn in their homework by 5 today because the mayor has plans for the evening and wants to get his editing done early.
10. Dick Cheney is not here to talk about his criminal past.
11. Mark McGwire does not recall appearing before Congress.
12. Richard M. Daley says Chicago leads on ethics by example.
13. “WBBM-Ch. 2 political editor Mike Flannery has listed his longtime 17-room mansion in Beverly for $1.25 million.”
14. Former Tribune Internet haters tabbed by MacArthur Foundation, WTTW and Reader as visionaries.
15. Head exploding.
16. “As told by Mr. Ross Sorkin, a business writer at the New York Times, the policy response was even more seat-of-the-pants than it seemed at the time,” the Economist notes. “The $700 billion figure for the Troubled Asset Relief Programme was plucked from the air, the roughest of guesstimates . . .
“Just as remarkable is the combination of hubris and ineptitude of those running the most troubled firms. Lehman’s boss, Dick Fuld, sacked or sidelined those who gave warning about its dizzying debt levels and dangerous exposure to commercial property. He scuppered a life-saving deal with the South Koreans by barging clumsily into negotiations being run by a key lieutenant, which were delicately poised. AIG’s executives did not know how big the insurer’s balance-sheet hole was, and sometimes did not seem to care.”
17. Can we please not use the term “Bleacher Bums” anymore to describe those who sit in the Wrigley Field bleachers? They aren’t bums anymore, they’re yuppies. Adjust accordingly.
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And that goes double for new Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, who fits the new profile perfectly as a rich kid who coincidentally got rich himself. He’s a stock broker for godsakes! The transformation of a once-hallowed franchise whose fans were true believers in rooting for an underdog continually run aground by incompetent management who nonetheless played in a ballpark that symbolized enduring values is now complete. Sure it’s nice to be out from under the corporate yoke of Tribune Company, but make no mistake: Ricketts is of the new breed. He’s the frat guy who started going to Nirvana shows. Time to move on.
18. “Most socialists opposed the bailout,” Frank Llewellyn and Joseph Schwartz write in the Tribune. “They opposed the Bush administration’s trillion-dollar-plus corporate giveaway, not because they objected to the government acting to preserve financial stability, but because they took issue with doling out billions to banks without a serious restructuring of the financial system. Democratic socialists (and other progressives) favor regulatory reform that would compel financial institutions to lend responsibly to consumers and to invest in productive enterprises that create jobs. To this day, mega-banks continue to risk our collective economic well-being by speculating in exotic, non-transparent financial instruments that do not foster productive economic activity . . .
“Contemporary democratic socialists want to mitigate the many adverse effects that unregulated capitalist markets have on the lives of ordinary people by supporting intelligent democratic regulation of the economy (particularly the financial sector) and by using progressive taxation to finance high-quality public goods that can satisfy all citizens’ basic needs for health care, education, unemployment insurance and job training.”
19. “Study: 100% of Credit Cards Reviewed ‘Unfair or Deceptive’.”
20. If you rebuild it . . .
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The Beachwood Tip Line: In your grill.
Posted on November 2, 2009