Chicago Daily Observer

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Sam Zell. All the guy’s doing is asking for a handout, the sort of thing Mayor Daley dishes out to developers all the time.

“The Trib’s Selling and We’re Not Buying,” read the front page of today’s Sun-Times. “Only Sam Zell and his Tribune Co., owners of the ballpark, stand to gain. And in an economic downturn, only the taxpayers stand to lose.”

The headline and accompanying editorial—which had me cheering over my morning coffee—are referring to the state’s proposal to use sales taxes to buy and rebuild Wrigley Field so whoever owns the Cubs can sell more tickets and concessions and make more money.

“My mother liked good food. She used to say: ‘I’d rather have good food than bad food any old day’”
—Don Knotts as Luther Heggs in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

“All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn”
—Barack Obama in the Huffington Post

Obama “is, in my view, a better speaker than Kennedy”.
—William Rees-Mogg, a venerable former editor of The Times (London)

Though Luther Heggs may be a better speaker than Obama.

A Long Way From “Satan’s Mile”
The booming South Loop has a tortuous and tawdry tale to tell.

As the clock struck five on a recent Friday, patrons began to bounce through the doors at the Bar Louie in Dearborn Station. First two, then five, then a boisterous group ten strong and looking barely legal. Laughter erupted from a quartet of African-American women in business casual. Two young Latinos worked laptops at a two-top by the bar, where a lone white guy in a painter’s cap nursed a Corona and watched the Blackhawks game flash across a bank of TVs. A couple of cops in yellow vests stomped in to shake off the cold. “Sweet Child o’ Mine” squealed from the PA; somewhere a bartender dimmed the lights. Welcome to the new South Loop: Prosperous. Multiethnic. Clean. A far cry from the days when South State Street was known ... Read More...

No other churches for Obama to pick?

At some point, in some venue, Mr. Obama is going to have to give a speech directly addressing his longtime pastor’s views and answering a simple question: Why didn’t he find another church that didn’t include a leader who so frequently engaged in such hate speech?

That’s John Fund in WSJ.com’s Political Diary, voicing my very thought in the matter. It’s been 30 years (this month, in fact) since I regularly attended church on assignment. But I must say that there have to be other South Side churches and preachers — black, white, and indifferent — that don’t demagogue the Gospel.