By Steve Rhodes
1. “If we raise $10,000,000,000, we will give it to The City of Chicago if they will build a weather-shielding dome over our fair city.”
From The Chicago Winter Dome Project.
2. My Super Bowl prediction.
3. Do we now have to drink every time Barack Obama mentions Ted Kennedy?
And more, in Mystery Debate Theater 2008!
4. Seriously, last night’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles was fantastic. And not just because our very own Tim Willette demanded that each candidate explain what they’ll do after their health care plan fails to pass Congress.
“This may have been the most edifying presidential debate in modern American history. It was a pleasure to watch these two candidates removed from the pettiness of ordinary politics. Maybe that’s to the credit of Obama’s rhetoric, even though he’s been as petty and divisive as anyone in this campaign,” I wrote in our analysis.
“Hillary Clinton showed that she is clearly more shrewd and in command of policy than Obama. Obama showed that he has a more charismatic presentation. He’s the car salesman, she’s the mechanic. It depends on what you want out of your president.”
5. “I agree with the buzz,” Greg Couch writes in the Sun-Times. “The Mets get Santana, the best pitcher in baseball, and the Cubs get a 100-year anniversary . . . when people ask whether Cubs fans believe in curses, I hope they’ll say this: I believe in Johan Santana.”
6. White people vote for race, too. (Last letter)
7. “Originally, [Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene] Moore says, Mayor Daley pledged to endorse him,” Mick Dumke reports in the Reader. “‘He called me at [my] office,’ Moore says. ‘I went to his office, because I’d never been to his office. I was elated that the mayor called. And he told me he was supporting me.’
“The mayor backed out for one reason, according to Moore: [challenger Ald. Ed] Smith agreed to vote for Daley’s 2008 budget, including hundreds of millions of dollars in tax hikes. ‘He sold his own community down the drain for a few piees of silver,’ Moore says.”
8. Ald. Berny Stone calls Daley’s version of why he is opposing the alderman’s re-election bid for ward committeeman “absolute bullshit,” the Sun-Times reports.
“I’m ashamed of him,” Stone told Fran Spielman. “I really am. I didn’t like the real estate tax increase and I’m not a phony. I told him upfront. He asked me not to speak on it and I kept my word. Apparently, he doesn’t. He told me he’d stay out of the committeeman’s race and he didn’t.”
9. “Joe Hosey of the Sun-Times Media Group’s Joliet Herald News has parlayed his coverage of Drew Peterson into a book deal,” Phil Rosenthal reports in the Tribune. (Low in column)
“Publishers Weekly has pegged the value of Hosey’s deal at six figures.”
And I’m sure he’ll exercise the good taste to give that all away to charity; he wouldn’t want to profit so handsomely off the exploited tragedy of another, right?
10. How weird is it that those paid to know are always the last to know?
11. Beachwood reader Garry Jaffe writes: “When I saw the headline of Sneed’s column on Thursday – ‘Over and Out Bye! Bye!‘ – I thought, she taking the buyout! Good riddance!
“Damn, it was just about Guiliani’s campaign bus!
“More seriously, if the third item about the cost of the death penalty is accurate, it shouldn’t have been buried in her column, it should have been the lead on the front page.”
12. “Under the deal between the Park District and the Park Grill, the restaurant gets to skip paying the minimum annual rent of $275,000 until investors recover half of the $4.2 million they spent on construction,” the Sun-Times reports.
“In the wake of the Sun-Times investigation, city officials said they would renegotiate the terms of the Park Grill’s deal. It’s three years later now, and that hasn’t happened.”
13. Lost in Obama’s Caroline Kennedy moment is the fact that three of Robert F. Kennedy’s kids have endorsed Hillary Clinton.
14. Host: “The Associated Press reports that former Senator John Edwards is expected to suspend his presidential bid later today. On the line with us is Joe Miller, the AP reporter who’s been on the ground with the Edwards campaign since the start. Joe, what’s your take on Edwards’s anticipated announcement?
Miller: “Well, Chris, during the campaign, I really thought Sen. Edwards was overemphasizing the populism theme – the poverty, the ‘two Americas’ message, all that stuff. But now that I’m about to be out of work, I have to say it makes perfect sense. In fact, I can’t believe all that crap I wrote about class warfare – I really thought management would take care of me once we finished the guy off.”
– Tim Willette
15. “I’m too young to have been there, but apparently the sex-addicted son of a Neville Chamberlain sympathizer gave America the sense of national possibility it needed to get into the Vietnam War, leave a bunch of Cuban exiles for dead as part of the worst coup attempt ever, run to the brink of nuclear apocalypse, and help install the Baath party as the ruling party of Iraq,” Whet Moser writes at Chicagoland. “Oh, and we sent people to the moon, that was awesome.
“The Kennedys certainly have some admirably progressive initiatives to their credit, particularly in the fields of social justice, immigration, and civil rights, but the continuing lionization of the family, particularly JFK, is unnerving. For a brutally honest take on the phenomenon by a progressive Catholic, I highly recommend Garry Wills’ The Kennedy Imprisonment.”
16. John “Stat of the Week” Dewan’s expert Super Bowl prediction.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Kennedyesque.
Posted on February 1, 2008