Chicago Daily Observer

f you are of a certain age…as I am…you can readily see even now the definite similarities between Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency and the 12 years of Franklin Roosevelt. I’m a geezer expert on FDR’s influence on this country: he was the only president I knew in my entire life, from kindergartener to high school senior. Like Obama, FDR depended on the support of a largely adulatory media. He tried to socialize the economy in fruitless experiments while liberals cheered his “decisiveness” and good intentions…notwithstanding that he “solved” unemployment only when we went to World War II. Could it happen again?

From 1933 to 1945 the Hyde Park country squire in the White House who (a) single-handedly commanded the media (except it seemed for the Chicago Tribune and the Hearst press ) and (b) experimented with the economy. Nothing…utterly nothing…worked in the long run until 1941 ... Read More...

If Illinois were a country, it would be Iceland.

That’s the country whose high-flying economy collapsed recently, the first to fail in the global economic slump. Crowds, angry at the government’s failure to prevent the crisis, have taken to the streets and called for an immediate election.

Don’t expect any mobs to show up in Illinois demanding the expulsion of our government for Illinois’ fiscal mess. Illinois voters are so tolerant that the government could sell the state to the Outfit for a box of trinkets and no one would notice. Illinois voters have no reason to feel smug about letting conditions get as far out of hand as they did in Iceland.

The New York Mets and Citigroup Inc said on Friday the naming rights deal the struggling banking giant has for the baseball team’s new ballpark remains in place.

The 20-year deal, announced two years ago, was reported to be a record $400 million and entailed naming the new stadium Citi Field after it opened in 2009 in the New York borough of Queens, adjacent to the team’s old home, Shea Stadium.

“There is no change in regard to Citi’s commitment to the new ballpark,” Mets spokesman Jay Horowitz said in an email.

Citigroup spokesman Steve Silverman said: “We remain committed to our relationship with the Mets. It’s an important marketing priority for us.”

Just call him Grandpa Wackadoodle.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright—a former pastor to Barack Obama who drew controversy to the president-elect’s campaign when short clips of his sermons circulated this year—said in a radio interview Monday that he and his family found escape from the death threats and “salivated” media hordes by keeping a sense of humor.

That meant Wright laughed when his granddaughter brought him a New York Times column that labeled him a “wackadoodle.” He and his wife joked about the nickname.

Rose Keefe pours on the gas from the first sentence. ‘As Jacob Goldberg rounded the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, the last person he expected to encounter on the bustling sidewalk was his old partner in crime, Harry Smith. Jacob considered himself to be a hard-working and law-abiding citizen these days, but his teenage years had included some wilder moments, and Harry had been an instigator of most of them. Seeing him now aroused portions of nostalgia and uneasiness.’

Rose Keefe writes vigorous prose when her razor-sharp mind cuts through layers of fat-headed assumptions. Everyone assumed that Dion ‘Dean’ O’Banion, the beer baron gunned down by Johnny Torrio’s thugs in a Chicago Flower shop was an off- the –boat Irish mobster; that George ‘Bugs’ Moran was an Irish American hitter whose north side mob challenged Al Capone and inspired ... Read More...