Chicago Daily Observer

Robert McCullough, the “analyst known for his work with a Washington utility trying to prove that Enron manipulated power markets” (in the words of Newswatch: Energy), is back in the news with a report sure to appeal to the economically naive in Congress and elsewhere.

In his report McCullough concludes, “All available evidence indicates that the price spike of July 3rd was a form of market failure—most likely due to the significant concentration in the energy sector in recent years.” But his evidence for “significant concentration in the energy sector” consists of an estimate of market concentration (using HHI as his measure) based on the CFTC‘s Commitments of Traders data for trading on NYMEX. And of course, even if a trader held a large share of contracts on the NYMEX, that is far far from being anything like controlling a large share of the international oil ... Read More...

David Freddoso joins Jack Roeser, John Biver and Doug Ibendahl to discuss his book – “The Case Against Barack Obama. Freddoso” goes where most journalists refuse to tread. In this shocking exposé, he removes the gilt from the golden candidate, exposing Obama for who he really is.

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When in 1884 his campaign managers told Grover Cleveland in his Chicago hotel room that things looked bad for his nomination since his opponents had found almost irrefutable evidence that he had sired an illegitimate child and was getting the mother to so attest in the papers, the bachelor candidate, a massive, hulking figure at 250 pounds, standing 5 feet 11 with a huge bull neck, strong jaw, double chin, big fists into whose firm mouth was almost always clamped a cigar protruding under his bushy mustache, said calmly: “Well, gentlemen, you knew when you found me that I was no gelding even though the son of a minister and born in the Presbyterian manse..” A gelding (a word in common usage of the time) was a castrated horse or donkey.

This did not assuage them. What explanation did he have? God knows at age 47 he was a virile ... Read More...

Dear Transportation Security Administration:

I am a tall, blonde, female person – American – of a certain age (oh, let’s face it, I am elderly. I will be open with you about these things.)

I have written you three times before and gotten no answer. And, frankly, Transportation Security Administration, I am feeling a bit disregarded.

Let me say right away that I know you have a tough job guarding us from terrorists getting onto planes at our airports. You have certainly done a better job of it than whoever (is there someone?) is guarding our seaports with all those container packages being unloaded. And the subway guards in our cities. Well, there must be someone there at rush hour to check suspicious briefcases, don’t you think? Maybe your guys there are so slick we just don’t see them.

But we certainly see your brave men and women in their ... Read More...

Yesterday, August 12, 2008, Francis Cardinal George settled with the victims of priest/cleric abuse in the amount of $12.6 million dollars. The Chicago Tribune reported that story. The Sun Times, like the little fat punk who watches two tough guys fight and then rekindles the violence with taunts to each combatant, intends to milk this issue.

The horror of the abuse is too monstrous to imagine. Catholics are all too aware of the damage inflicted by monsters in stiff collars and vestments who hid behind canon law, the majesty of the Catholic Church and the protocols of the hierarchy, the trust of the faithful and innocence of children in order to lunge out and sodomize babies.
The victims, for the most part (there have been a couple of dubious claimants here and there), deserve every tiny bit of monetary and legal compensation – nothing can restore the damage to ... Read More...

Let’s assume everything is on the square at the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board.

OK. Forget about the fixing of the new hospital that Wisconsin’s Mercy Health Care System wanted to build in Crystal Lake to compete with local biggie Centegra Health Care System’s dominant hospitals in McHenry County.

Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed a new board, didn’t he?

Problem solved, right?

No reason to be suspicious when Naperville’s Edward Hospital gets turned down for the third time, right?

That was big of Sen./ Rev. James Meeks to dare someone to arrest the kids he’s leading out of the city’s public schools in an ill-conceived protest, when he’s the guy who should be pinched.

As for the students, truant officers ought to round them up and take them back to school where they belong. Of course, no one will do any of that because they don’t want to appear mean, racist or elitist. And that’s exactly the point of Meeks’ plan to haul Chicago students out of the first week of school to protest, at downtown offices and at Winnetka’s New Trier Township High School, the “inequities” of the state education funding formula.

Two percent. That’s the percent of voters outside the “Motor City” that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. You don’t have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan.

Sit in any restaurant or bar, and all you hear is people talking about Kilpatrick’s troubles. Indicted in March on eight felony counts for committing perjury during a whistleblower trial that eventually cost the city about $9 million, the Mayor spent one night in jail on August 7th for violating his bond and then was arraigned the next day for a new crime. In the latest charges, Kilpatrick is accused of assaulting two sheriff’s deputies as they were trying to serve one of his close friends with a subpoena.

And, what does this have to do with Barack Obama? Although Kilpatrick has distanced himself from Obama and Obama has distanced himself from ... Read More...

The Senate Ethics Committee has told Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that he’ll be engaged in a “serious violation of Senate rules” if he continues delivering babies back home in Oklahoma.

Coburn’s response: So what?

“On my own time, I’m taking care of women who have a need, and I’m going to continue to deliver babies,” Coburn, an obstetrician, told Politico. “I’m not going to stop.”