Mayor Daley on war protests: ‘What Happened to America?’ | WBEZ Blog | blogs.vocalo.org.

It’s worth a listen.  As much as he vexes us all now, life will certainly be more boring when he’s gone.  No one else, short of the old timer nursing an Early Times down at the Liquor & Tap, could deliver such a disjointed jeremiad about the country’s woes.  The most jaw-dropping comment was his lament over the absence of war protesters on the streets of Chicago.  Why aren’t they out there screaming about the country’s involvement in open-ended, ill-planned and expensive wars?

Maybe because the city almost never issues the permits it requires for any kind of meaningful public assembly, then lines the streets with police in riot gear so that no one will be able to get the 1968 Days of Rage out of their minds.

The cynic in me says that part of his newfound concern arises from the fact that his son Patrick is being deployed for his second tour of duty in the US Army.  Then again, in defense, my cynic is usually reliable.

After a White House meeting christened the “carp summit,” federal and state officials today announced a multi-pronged attack with a $78.5 million price tag to prevent Asian carp, an invasive species, from establishing populations in Lake Michigan.

….

The new strategy calls for a multi-tiered defense of the Great Lakes to keep carp out which scientists try to develop biological controls to prevent the prolific, non-native fish from developing self-sustaining populations.

Officials said a priority is limiting the number of carp that enter Lake Michigan. Key containment measures include:

• Constructing and operating a third electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal at the cost of $10.5 million. Two existing barriers are near Romeoville, Ill.
• Awarding a $13.2 million contract next month to construct concrete and chain-link fencing between the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Des Plaines River. The aim is to prevent fish passing around electric barriers when flooding occurs.
• Opening Chicago’s navigational locks less frequently to block carp movement and studying the feasibility and impact of permanent lock closure.
• Deploying larger field crews to conduct physical and sonar observation, electro-shocking and netting.
• Testing 120 water samples a week, twice the current number, for eDNA, which refers to environmental DNA showing trace amounts of carp.

via Officials detail plan to handle Asian carp threat – Chicago Breaking News.

Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Scott Lee Cohen, a Chicago pawnbroker whose surprise primary win last week was followed by scandalous revelations about his troubled past with a prostitute ex-girlfriend, said Sunday night he would quit as nominee.

“For the good of the people … I will resign,” a tearful Cohen told reporters at a news conference he chose to hold at a Far North Side bar during halftime of the Super Bowl.

via Scott Lee Cohen, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee, quits race – chicagotribune.com.

Now the next candidate will be chosen by Democratic State Central Committee, headed by powerful Speaker of the House Mike Madigan.   Gee, can’t wait to see what fine upstanding Springfield insider will be added to the ticket!

Image via Wikipedia

The latest scandal in Illinois politics might be a doozy — and really, it is — but it fails to jolt the needle on my Outrage-o-Meter.  It’s juicy, sure, with hookers and brawls and steroids, and I enjoy watching the current Democratic officeholders get their undies in a bunch about it.

To be outraged about damage done to an office, the office first has to be seen in high regard.  But the office of lieutenant governor is a sham, open to anyone who can buy enough advertising, and the office of Illinois governor has become so tainted in the past 10 years that only the lame or deranged would seek it.

For those needing a brief recap:  Scott Lee Cohen, after spending $2 million of his own money, emerged from a pack of five candidates to earn the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.  It was only after the fact that it became known that he threatened his hooker-massage therapist-girlfriend with a knife, threw her against a wall, and was arrested.  There are plenty of other weirdness popping up, which both Cohen and his ex-wife insist do not disqualify him for office.

Why did all his bad behavior go unnoticed?  Reporters around the state are kicking themselves they didn’t unearth all this dirt.  But there were a lot more things for voters to be paying attention to, and screaming about, in Tuesday’s election besides an unknown candidate for a do-nothing post.

1.  The choices for governor on the Democratic side were so bad that the Chicago Tribune refused to endorse either candidate.  Governor Pat Quinn or Comptroller Dan Hynes spent most of their time arguing about how was to blame for the scandal at Burr Oak Cemetary.

2.  The Democratic choices for US Senator were a clout-heavy banker with questionable ties to underworld activity, a former spokeswoman for Blagojevich, and a former Chicago inspector general who didn’t raise enough money to be a serious challenger (though he came close to an upset win).   We now have the chance to watch a slow-motion train wreck as Alexi Giannioulias tries to wash the stink off himself while running for President Obama’s old Senate seat.

3.  Illinois has a $13 billion budget shortfall, the third worst in the nation per capita.  And it has shown absolutely no inclination to get its financial house in order.  As far as I can remember, not a single candidate has any firm idea of how to do it, or the political clout to make changes.

4.  The voter turnout was a miserable 21%, but what do you expect in a closed primary, in the middle of winter, a full nine months before the general election?

So enjoy the entertainment while it lasts, but realize that Scott Lee Cohen is only a headache for Pat Quinn and the Democratic party.  (To find out why this electoral arrangement is their own doing, check out the Tribune’s Eric Zorn.)  And after the election in November, whoever wins, the state of Illinois will still be spending way more than it’s bringing in, losing jobs, stiffing its universities, and cutting social programs that have been proven to work.

Hey, maybe instead of public properties being leased outright (the Skyway, the parking meters, possibly the state toll roads), maybe they could just be put in hock with a pawnbroker?  Is that what Cohen is positioning himself for?  If so, it’s about as sound a plan as any I’ve heard.

Three scenarios are under study, which would close the locks from three days a week to two weeks out of every month, starting April 1. The most likely scenario, according to a posting today on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Web site, is closing two key locks near Chicago three to four days a week. The locks are now open seven days a week to barge traffic. During the days the locks are closed, the agencies would step up efforts to find Asian carp and stun them, net them or kill them with poison.

Agencies weigh temporary closures of shipping locks to stop carp | freep.com | Detroit Free Press.

This new initiative strikes me as ominous.  And I’m not alone.

“It’s a fairly significant shift,” said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago. “I have to see more, but it’s nice to see we’re moving towards having a contingency strategy.”

With the Supreme Court denying Michigan’s right to force Illinois to close the locks, and the adamant stance of industry groups, this kind of coordinated effort between agencies tells me one thing:  The fish are a lot closer to (if not already in) Lake Michigan.

More than 13,000 people have made a Facebook pledge to show up in Beverly on the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day to give the late South Side Irish Parade a proper — and drunken — funeral. And another 7,600 folks count themselves as a “maybe” for what could turn the former parade day into the world’s largest pub crawl.

via Thousands ready for South Side Irish parade send-off :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says it’s unfair to keep the animal in captivity and subject him to the huge crowds and bright lights that accompany tens of thousands of revelers each Feb. 2 in Punxsutawney, a tiny borough about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. PETA is suggesting the use of an animatronic model.

But William Deeley, president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says the animal is “being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania.”

via PETA proposes robotic groundhog instead of Punxsutawney Phil | freep.com | Detroit Free Press.

About whom does this tell you more:  PETA stalwarts or parents in Pennsylvania?

Those who throw around the word suck, and those who don’t.

The fact that I feel this even needs mentioning should be a clue that I belong in the latter category.  Maybe this makes me an old fogey, or even a bluenose.  It certainly puts me at odds with every short-tempered chump on the internet and sports talk radio.

But I care what words come out of my kids’ mouths, especially when those words (and other mild profanity) get me called in to talk with the counselors at school.  When I dandled my little poppets on my knee many years ago by the light of the peat fire, I was confident my guiding hand would keep them from swearing like truck drivers.  What I didn’t know was that a constant current of mildly vulgar profanity would become everyone’s daily experience.

The word certainly is getting heavy use in pop culture.  Dennis Leary’s Why We Suck.  A girls’ math primer from Danica McKellar (innocent Winnie Cooper of “The Wonder Years”!) called Math Doesn’t Suck.  Kelly Clarkson’s My Life Would Suck Without You (which brings up but selfishly avoids the question of what our lives are like with her).  Within a year or two, I think it will manage to work its way into TV sitcoms, like “pissed” and “crap” have (two other words that brought us into the school meeting).

The word is coarse, urgent, flip, sort of edgy to some.  Of course, its constant use has made it seem commonplace, even acceptable.  Soon its derivation and provenance will begin to fade, and it will just come to mean the same thing as stink.

But the source of the word’s power is there and can’t be denied.  When I’ve tried to correct kids and teenagers about using suck in front of me, I’ll get a blank look.  “Why?  What’s wrong with it?”

“Here’s what’s wrong with it,” I say.  “Back in the day, something didn’t just suck.  In order to be really lousy, it had to suck … something.  Private body parts, mostly.  Eggs.  Donkeys.  Dead bears.”

It is priceless how their mouths will drop open from this bit of candor.  They’d never thought about it before.  Then, of course, they phase me out and go on their merry way, but at least I got through for the tiniest moment.

The next time you feel like saying something sucks, think for a minute what it is or might be sucking.  Hold that picture in your head for a while.  Think of that glorious turn of phrase, when we used to describe this action working on “the big one.”

Then think of another word that doesn’t suck the dignity out of the English language.

Image via Wikipedia

My good friend Jonathan Eig — author of the baseball biographies Luckiest Man and Opening Day — will soon be publishing a new book about the career of Al Capone called Get Capone, with lots of interesting new evidence that contradicts many of the well-accepted “facts” about his career.

Today Jon took the unusual step of testifying before the Chicago City Council’s Police and Fire Committee about the shotgun murder of a possible IRS informant from that era.

Congratulations are due, because the 70-year-old case will soon be reopened:

The unusual request to revisit the investigation came from Alderman Edward Burke, 14th, at a meeting of the council’s Police and Fire Committee and in advance of the release of a new book on Capone.

Burke made it clear he didn’t want detectives to spend too much time on the case, saying his intention was simply to set the record straight that it wasn’t Eliot Ness who brought Capone to justice.

O’Hare’s “contribution to the investigation of Al Capone ought to be put in proper perspective and that without his cooperation there never would have been a case against Capone,” Burke said.

Cops take new look at murder of Capone informant – Chicago Breaking News.

Edward O’Hare allegedly turned an IRS informant in order that his son “Butch” O’Hare could get into the U.S. Naval Academy.  O’Hare was likely killed by Capone’s family in a dispute over income from racetracks.  Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is named after the son, who was shot down over the Pacific in World War II.

There’s always something new and twisted to learn about Chicago history, isn’t there?

The city will meet a Feb. 1 deadline to tell the Federal Aviation Administration what its next steps will be to lease [Midway] Airport to a private operator, according to John Schmidt, the city’s outside attorney for privatization matters.

“The mayor has said he clearly wants to do it,” he added.

via Midway Airport privatization prepares to take off again | Crain’s Chicago Business.

You all remember how well the parking meter deal went, right?  If this follows that pattern, the mayor will

• accept 50 cents on the dollar of what the airport is worth,
• give the City Council a day to rubber stamp the deal,
• step back and let the new ownership jack up every rate, fee and tax at the airport,
• use almost all the money to plug holes in the current budget,
• whine that his despotic solution is the only way, because no one else came up with any better ideas.

Soon, “The City that Works” will become “The LLC by the Lake”.

Hey, I call dibs on The Bean!  I got a lot of car polish for Christmas!