By David Rutter

1. Embattled Carla Oglesby, WTF?
We all enjoyed the perp walk by county board president Todd Stroger’s deputy chief of staff on Monday (What is this title fetish? It’s like the bridge command for Battlestar Gallactica).
According to the Trib, “A message left on Stroger’s cell phone was not immediately returned” but that’s because he was too busy screaming “Son of a bitch!” at the top of his lungs.
Carla ain’t be going down by her own good self. Nosiree, Bob. It was an all-around bad day for Olgesby. If you entered the words “Carla Oglesby arrested” on Google, it reported 78,000 hits.
We could regale you with the juicy details of this scam, but it’s the pathetically usual taking-money-for-nothing at county government headquarters. She was very clever and was totally in the clear because she made all the filched contracts cost $24,900, which avoids the law that requires the county board be advised of $25,000 deals. What she forgot was that it was still illegal to steal the money. A minor detail, sure, but that’s one of the quirks in felony theft law.
And speaking of Nosiree, Bob . . .

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Posted on October 10, 2010

By TOA Technologies

Being forced to wait for hours at home for a service or delivery appointment is a frustrating experience for today’s busy consumer, and it is also an expensive one.
TOA Technologies, a software company uniquely focused on putting an end to waiting without knowing, conducted the second annual Cost of Waiting Survey and Report to shed new light on the economic impact of waiting for in-home appointments.
The report, published today, found 69% of American adults have waited for utilities, cable/satellite TV, Internet, retail home deliveries and other services in the past year.
Those that wait typically do so about four times per year, for an astonishing average wait of almost four and a half hours per appointment – costing consumers about $752 in lost time annually (based on respondent-reported values for their time).

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Posted on October 7, 2010

By The Beachwood Booksellers Affairs Division

Please join us on Thursday, October 14 for a very special presentation of J.J. Tindall’s Ballots From The Dead.
Choose your own poem to read from our Chicagoetry collection and bring books to donate to our gracious host, Open Books.

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Posted on October 4, 2010

By David Rutter

1. Goober-natorial, WTF?
Pat Quinn (D-Dense) and challenger Wild Bill Brady (R-Freakin’ Nuts) have been debating over the governorship that one of them will hold in another month.
Depressed by the choice? Yeah, us, too. WTF is thinking about moving to Canada, buying plaid shirts and changing our name to Bruce.
WTF Bruce? Has a nice ring to it.
Quinn calls Brady “heartless” for his proposed social services cuts; Brady calls Quinn brainless because, well, let’s not belabor the painfully obvious. All we need is the Cowardly Lion and a babe in sparkly red heels. We’ve already cast Judy Baar Topinka for Margaret Hamilton’s Witch of the West role.
Blago is the flying monkey.

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Posted on October 1, 2010

By Brett McNeil

My police registration card arrived in the mail today. It’s signed by the Inspector General of the National Police in Jakarta and attests to the fact that I’ve been sufficiently vetted by the proper authorities and adjudged sound enough of mind and circumstance to warrant the card. Which is nice.
I’m not exactly sure why I have the card or what it took to get one but the folks running the Fulbright program here in Indonesia told us that a police registration card is difficult to come by. In a country still very much defined by those who have access or an inkling of access to power and those who most definitely do not, possessing a difficult thing suggests a little social or political heft. It’s exclusive, or exclusive-ish, and maybe the cops don’t give you the hassle you might otherwise get as a foreigner working in a country where the official unemployment rate – about 8 percent – is a patently ginned-up fiction. Maybe you get to go without greasing anyone’s palm, or maybe the asking price is a tad more cut-rate.

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Posted on September 28, 2010

By Claudia Hunter

So after the initial shock of my mom’s cancer wore off, life tried to go on as normal. Well, as normal as it ever gets around here, anyway. Only it didn’t work too well. Aside from the fact that I’ve been sick for a year with some Crohn’s-like disease and am fairly often home-bound (with my parents), now mom’s sick too. And as hard as it is for me to deal with her being sick, she really can’t deal with me being sick. Which is understandable. She’s freaked out. Who wouldn’t be?
A few days after her diagnosis, she flew off to bridge camp. Yes, she and her friends go to an old country house every September and do nothing but play bridge for five days. Yowza.

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Posted on September 27, 2010

By David Rutter

1. Jesse Jackson Jr., WTF?
Don’t you just hate it when bad things happen to good people? Er, wait a sec. Sorry. That was a mistake. We think it was an LSD Reflux Moment.
Go ahead, Junior, taunt the federal prosecutor’s office. Wag your finger in their face and tell them, “Bring it on.” And then duck when the smart bomb catches your scent and explodes inside your pants. Are you happy to see us, Jesse, or is that an ICBM in your pocket?

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Posted on September 24, 2010

By The Beachwood Our House Affairs Desk

Spotted on the listserv of Investigative Reporters & Editors, posted by Michael Ravnitzky.
1. These items were recently spotted on the Government Attic Website:
Pages from the National Security Agency (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History
(CCH) intranet web site, 2009 – PDF 22.7 MB
http://tinyurl.com/247r9lo
*
Audit of Circumstances Surrounding Issuance of Visas to Sheik Omar Ali Ahmed
Abdel Rahman; and Audit of Review of the Nonimmigrant Visa-Issuing Process,
1994-1995 – PDF 13.9 MB
http://tinyurl.com/2d47mew

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Posted on September 20, 2010

By David Rutter

1. Chicago cops, WTF?
As a Chicagoan, you can be embarrassed that there are too many criminals and too few cops. That stinks. You can be embarrassed by integrity-challenged politicians who use the public pocketbook as their own piggy bank. There’s enough WTF outrage to go around.
But it’s really embarrassing to be embarrassed by the cops themselves. What-the-royal-EF?
The picket lines this week against chief Jody Weis show a grotesque myopia. Let us introduce Chicago police to the concept of irony, which, as we know, was killed in 1998, but has been rebirthed in Chicago ever since.
There were no police picketers against the rampant corruption and scandals that brought Weis to town in the first place. WTF, officers, we all know you stand steadfastly against attempts to clean up your own force. Your silence confirmed it. How many really bad cops have been defended down to the last dime by the FOP? By you?

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Posted on September 17, 2010

By Dracula Fangs

JOIN THE RANKS OF THE BLOODTHIRSTY: DON’T LET THE WALL STREET BLOODSUCKERS HAVE ALL THE FUN!
Boulder, USA – Are you jealous of CEOs and their multi-million-dollar golden parachutes? Do you want your own $1,600 shower curtains paid for by the American taxpayer? Do you wish that you, too, could suck the life force out of your fellow citizens? Now you can – with Wall Street Bloodsuckers™! Wall Street Bloodsuckers™ can be purchased online at www.DraculaFangs.com for $19.99 a pair.

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Posted on September 15, 2010