Chicago Daily Observer

In response to various rumors of the Chicago Tribune using Obama T-Shirts as a premium for new subscribers, I made the short trip over to the Walgreens at Clark and Lake today to verify the claims.

Sure enough, you can get an Obama T-shirt for signing up for a 4 week trial of the Trib (seems like an apt punishment enough for taking the subscription), or a Cubs/Sox hat.

The vendor did not want to be photographed, and noted that these promo’s are via an agent of the Tribune, not the Chicago Tribune itself. He also mentioned that he keeps the Obama shirts under the counter, as he thinks giving them away is “preferential to one candidate over another”, as there was no McCain shirt to be had.

So much for the Republican Newspaper of Record.

Pictures are over at the Captital Fax Blog:

http://thecapitolfaxblog.com/2008/06/19/a-sticky-wicket/

n Amsterdam, fliers who arrive at Schiphol Airport can board an express train that will whisk them downtown in 20 minutes or so. The story is the same in London and Paris and Hong Kong and even Moscow, for heaven’s sake: reliable, affordable, fast transport to the city center.

In Chicago, we have the $300-million-and-counting “superstation” under Block 37. Until someone wheels in the tons of additional loot needed to finish it and the high-speed rail link to O’Hare International Airport it’s supposed to anchor, the facility will remain empty — a dank, dark and half-completed mausoleum, useless to anyone except perhaps Hollywood for a bat cave set, as Crain’s editorial writer suggested.

Sheriff Bell’s dark ruminations amount to a closing deduction supported by two hours of onscreen mayhem and gloom, but if someone said these things to me, I would offer the following remarks. If God has never come into your life, how can you possibly know what his opinion of you might be? And if you experience him only as an absence he’s definitely part of your life, because he’s in your thoughts—even if your thoughts are untested, gut level assumptions. No Country for Old men is a grim, lumbering tale loaded with precisely the same ... Read More...

Angry at the high price of gasoline? If it bothers you to be shelling out over 4 dollars a gallon, how would you feel if you knew the prices didn’t have to be that high? Angrier?
Well, the truth is, this price gouging – between the multiple layered government taxes placed on each gallon of gas and the high prices being charged by foreign suppliers— didn’t have to happen. We could have had energy independence, plenty of gasoline, and much lower prices at the pump.
Who’s to blame? A former president. Over a decade ago President Bill Clinton vetoed a measure, passed by the Congress that would have allowed drilling in the United States where there is plenty of high grade oil to be found. We could have fuel reserves right now had that veto not been used.
But we don’t read about that in the ... Read More...