Chicago Daily Observer

In the song “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” the late Steve Goodman
described Wrigley Field as “an ivy covered burial ground.” It is true in more ways than one. The ashes of the late Charlie Grimm, the banjo playing player
manager of the Cubs, who won three pennants while helming the team, including
their last league title in 1945, are part of the landscape at the park.

Failing to close the deal has been a hallmark of the Cubs. Take your pick:
the 1969 team completely falling apart during the month of September and being
overtaken by the New York Mets (was it a black cat on the field at Shea
Stadium that hexed the Cubs?), Jim Frey mismanaging the bullpen against San Diego
in 1984, Roger Craig of the San Francisco Giants out maneuvering ... Read More...

I have disputed Sen. Obamas oratory since he was running against Alan Keyes, who generally defeated Sen. Obama in debate, while not having a serious chance in the general election.

Obama confirms his weaker than advertised skills in his muddled explanation of his put-down of small town America.

“I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” the Illinois senator said at a campaign rally at Ball State University in Indiana while dismissing it as “a typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true.”

So if I have this right, because Sen. Obama says it, then “everybody knows its true”. Oh sure, small town America has been enjoying guns, religion and foreign trade for 232 years now, but Sen. Obama has declared the facts, so everyone else must be wrong.

David Axelrod can try to astroturf over this, as he has with Rev. ... Read More...

I’m about done with Obama over this mill-closures-drive-small-town-losers-to-guns-and-God business. If you’re running as a glamorous blank slate on which people project their own utopian fantasies, you’ve got to be very careful not to give the game away – especially when the game turns out to be the usual cliched elite disdain for the great unwashed. I mention in the current issue of NR how odd it is that Michelle Obama is in many ways more condescending on the stump than Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now her husband’s at it, too. As Ed Driscoll says:

Leave it to Obama to make John Kerry’s Brahmin hauteur seem earnestly goofy in retrospect.

Quite. I had a ton of fun covering Kerry’s awkwardness with Americans but, in fairness, it was essentially a consumerist snobbery: he preferred the Newburgh Yacht Club for lunch over the local Wendy’s, he’d rather be windsurfing off Nantucket than rednecking at ... Read More...