Owner Eddie Carranza said the theater would close until a new operator can be hired.

After months of public hearings, the city put the hammer down on the North Side venue.

The burger chain will open on Clybourn Avenue in Lincoln Park on Wednesday.

The Finanance Committee raised concerns as Emanuel administration filed suit against a parking garage.

Two people were wounded in a South Loop shooting Friday morning, police said.

Two men were wounded in a South Loop shooting Friday morning, police said.

''Kindie'' star Ralph Covert hopes to bring his kids TV show into living rooms across the country.

In Illinois’ mythology, where the gods have decreed that political power is all-Democratic, all of the time, yet another cornucopia awaits. In the upcoming 2014, 2015 and 2016 election cycles, Democratic prospects are abundant and overflowing, while the Republicans’ are non-existent. Here’s an analysis, beginning with the latest first:

2016: State Democrats are energized, nearly orgasmitized, with the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidential bid. The “Chicago connection” to the White House will be prolonged. When Chicagoan Barack Obama won in 2008, he hustled fellow Chicagoans Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Bill Daley to Washington. If Clinton runs and wins, especially if she picks Emanuel for vice-president, Chicago’s “clout” will suffer no diminution.

What will suffer diminution is the Republicans’ U.S. Senate contingent, with first-term incumbent Mark Kirk (R) surely earmarked for oblivion. The senator’s seat is up in 2016, and he has two very serious problems. One is political, and the other physiological.

First, the political: In 2010, a year of thunderous anti-Obama reaction outside Illinois, and tepid anti-Obama dissonance within Illinois, Kirk beat flawed Democrat Alexi Giannoulias by 59,220 votes (48.1 percent), in a turnout of 3,792,770, which was just 50.5 percent of the state’s 7,506,073 registered voters; he won 98 of Illinois’ 102 counties. Kirk lost the Democratic bastions of Cook County (Chicago) by 456,722 votes, and Saint Clair County (East Saint Louis) by 327 votes, but managed to win the collar counties and Downstate by over 500,000 votes.

That’s not going to happen in 2016. In 2008, Obama won Illinois by a margin of 1,388,169 votes (61.9 percent), in a turnout of 5,577,509. In 2012, Obama won Illinois by 827,123 votes (58.4 percent), in a turnout of 4,898,735. For Kirk, the numbers are inauspicious. In 2010, Kirk got 1,778,698 votes, which was 252,481 less than the McCain-Palin ticket’s 2008 showing of 2,031,179; Giannoulias, however, got 1,719,478 votes, which was1,699,870 less than Obama-Biden’s 3,419,348 in 2008. Comparatively, 2010’s turnout was down by 1,784,739 from 2008; barely half the 2008 Obama voters opted for Giannoulias, while Kirk got roughly 87 percent of the McCain vote.

But in 2012, turnout rebounded to 5,242,014, almost equal to 2008’s. There is no reason to suspect that, with Clinton atop the ticket, turnout won’t be at least 5.3 million in 2016, and that Clinton will win Illinois by a margin of upwards of 750,000 votes. That means Kirk, to prevail, will need one in 3 Clinton voters to opt for him.

Second, there’s Kirk’s physical impairment, which has and will continue to impede his ability to campaign. Kirk, age 53, is now wheelchair-bound, having suffered an ischemic stroke in January 2012, rendering his left arm and leg non-operational; he the past year in rehab.

Any statewide campaign is a grueling ordeal, typically encompassing two strenuous years, and entailing a dozen events daily. If Kirk is going to seek re-election – which he claims he will – his campaign commences in December 2014. In his current condition, just one event is an ordeal.

Physical disabilities are of two varieties: An Act of God, or an act of a madman. Their impact can have three consequences: Recovery amidst adulation; recovery amidst admiration; and non-recovery and death.

Alabama Governor George Wallace and Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords are in the first category, having suffered debilitating gunshot wounds; in their case, people are not just sympathetic, they’re almost reverential, raising both to iconic stature, and making them politically unbeatable. After his 1972 shooting, which paralyzed him below the waist, Wallace was unbeatable at home, but never ran for president again. Giffords is still recovering from her 2011 brain injuries, and may run for senator in the future.

Kirk is in the second category, along with South Dakota senator Tim Johnson (D), who suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006. The difference is that Johnson had held office for 20 years, the first ten as congressman-at-large, and was well-known and well-liked. Although partially paralyzed, Johnson refused to resign, commenced therapy, and was re-elected in 2008 because Republicans knew sympathetic voters would give him one more term; he’s retiring this year. When elected in 2010, Kirk was poised to be the new face of the Illinois Republican Party – a social issue moderate and a winner. That never materialized. Unlike Illinois’ senior senator, Dick Durbin (D), Kirk has made minimal impact in Washington, having been absent for a year; he did, however, vote for the recent gun control bill. News stories about his “courageous” recovery are fresh in the public mind, but Democrats will not give him a “free pass” in 2016.

In the third category fit two other Illinois politicians – Henry Horner and John Stroger. Horner (D) was elected governor in 1932 and re-elected in 1936, despite opposition from the Chicago Kelly-Nash Machine; he suffered a coronary thrombosis in November 1938, and was thereafter closeted in the governor’s mansion until he died in 1940. The state was run by his advisors for two years. Stroger, the black county board president, was elected in 1994, and had been a county commissioner since 1970. He was felled by a stroke in March 2006, just before the Democratic primary. A wave of sympathy, particularly among black voters, enabled him to beat Forrest Claypool. Stroger never recovered, and his resignation was arranged in August, so the party could replace him with Todd Stroger.

For 2016, the Democratic field is wide: Lisa Madigan (if she doesn’t run for governor in 2014), Pat Quinn (if he loses in 2014), Sheila Simon, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Dart, Bill Daley, Tammy Duckworth. Sympathy for Kirk’s plight exists, but he won’t win votes because of it. 2016 will be a huge Democratic year in Illinois, and Kirk’s seat is there for the taking.

**
Russ Stewart is a political analyst for the Chicago Daily Observer

E-mail Russ@russstewart.com or visit his website at www.russstewart.com.

image Brumidi corridor

You slept right through a housing bust, a financial panic, the deepest recession since the Great Depression, the passing (and upholding) of Obamacare, multiple bouts of debt-limit brinksmanship, two fiscal cliffs, the European financial “crisis,” a tsunami in Japan, the BP oil fiasco, and a long list of other media-obsessions over the past 67½ months.

You woke up, and the Dow and S&P 500 were up 8.4% and 6.5%, respectively, from when you fell asleep, with both at new record highs. Including dividends, the S&P 500 has returned 3.3% per year since you went to sleep, while consumer prices rose 2% per year and short-term rates averaged 0.5%.

Now…imagine that no one would tell you what happened in the past six years. All you could do was compare current market data to what it was when you fell asleep. Would you buy equities, or sell them?

Corporate profits rose 34% during the deep sleep, so Price-to-Earnings (P-E) ratios are lower. Short-term interest rates were 4%, now they are near zero; yields on long-term Treasury notes were 4.5% back then, and now below 2%. Gold has jumped from $740 per ounce to $1,350; oil from $73 per barrel to $96.

In a nutshell, relative to fixed income and commodity markets, equities look significantly cheaper today than they did in 2007. There is even more reason to buy.

The unemployment rate was only 4.7% when you fell asleep: now it’s 7.5%. Believe it or not, that is good news. Historically, high unemployment means things are going to get better, while periods of low unemployment suggest things are about to get worse. We get the flu when we feel good; we get over it when we feel bad.

It was this focus on fundamentals that motivated our forecast that equity values would rise this year. At the beginning of 2013, we forecast the Dow at 15,500 and S&P 1700 by year-end. We felt that this higher-than-consensus forecast was realistic and, yet, conservative. We’ve been proven right. Equities have gone up even faster than we thought and we see no reason the bull market won’t continue.

As a result, we are raising our forecast. We now expect a year-end Dow of 16,250, with the S&P 500 at 1,765, a respectable gain of 5.8% from Friday’s close. That’s an annualized gain of almost 10% for the rest of the year, with dividends boosting the total return to 12% annualized.

This would boost the 2013 return for the Dow to 24%, the most for any year since 2003. So even though bearish forecasters are saying the 2013 increase in equity prices is “insane,” it is actually well within historical norms.

We use a capitalized-profits model to find fair-value for equities. We divide corporate profits by the current 10-year Treasury yield (1.95%), and then compare the current level of this index to each quarter for the past 60 years. This method gives us a fair-value for the Dow of 48,000 – three times the current level. Obviously, this is crazy.

But it’s what happens when the Fed holds interest rates at artificially low levels. So, we adjust by using a 10-year Treasury yield of 4.5% – the same as the Federal Reserve’s estimate of long-term growth in nominal GDP (real GDP growth plus inflation). Using 4.5% as our discount rate suggests a much more reasonable fair value of 21,000 on the Dow and 2,250 for the S&P 500.

But what if record high corporate profits, 12.7% of GDP, revert to their historical norm of about 9.5%, at the same time the 10-year Treasury yield moves to 4.5%? If that happened, the fair value of the Dow would be 15,650, and the S&P 500 would be 1700. In other words, if profits fall 25% and interest rates more than double, broad stock market indices are still slightly undervalued. That said, this scenario is highly unlikely. If rates are rising, it will most likely be because the economy is doing well, which means corporate profits will not collapse.

This does not mean markets will rise in a straight line. Volatility is part of life. But, if you can find a way to sleep through the next few years, and be long equities at the same time, you should wake up wealthier. Stay bullish.

**

Brian Wesbury is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

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Alley too tight for squad car and local activist's auto to pass — and mayhem breaks out.