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This is not the Henry Atkins we all thought we knew.

Posted by Ed Lilly on Monday, November 17, 2008 7:42:36 AM
Clearly, this is a case where we must work hard to remember that there is a presumption of innocence until guilt is proven:

Postmaster General being investigated for possible VIP mortgage with Countrywide

I hope they didn't interrupt his golf game to notify him of the investigation.

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Who will, and who should, buy the Cubs?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Saturday, November 08, 2008 1:55:17 PM
There's news out of Chicago on the potential sale of the sports world's most inept and disappointing professional franchise, the Cubs:

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban remains as interested as ever in buying the Chicago Cubs, dismissing a report that Major League Baseball might not want him as an owner.

According to a Chicago Sun-Times report that cited a baseball source, there was "zero chance" of Cuban taking over the Cubs.

The Sun-Times source said the Internet billionaire would meet with resistance in trying to get approval from Major League Baseball.

Things I know, or think I know, about Mark Cuban:  1) he went to IU; 2) he has made a gazillion dollars in the high tech world; 3) he now owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise; 4) he has spent a lot of money on amenities for the Dallas Mavericks players; 5) he has been somewhat controversial with his unusually intimate involvement in games, perceived bad calls, and interactions with fans both live and online; and 6) the Mavericks have not won an NBA title despite all the money Cuban has thrown at them.

Things I know about the Chicago Cubs:  1) they have not won a World Series Title in 100 years, and counting.

That said, do I want Mark Cuban to be the new Cubs owner?  I don’t know.  The MLB owners are private citizens, running privately held businesses, and apparently they can make whatever decision they want on whether to allow a person, group, entity, or combination thereof to take over an available MLB franchise.  I can’t begin to name the owners of all the MLB teams, but certain owners come to mind, like Steinbrenner, Selig (Yeah, I know, he’s technically the commissioner and his daughter owns the team.  Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not.  Who  knows, and who really cares?), Peter Angelos, maybe Ted Turner if he still owns the Braves (can’t remember - he may have sold the team but still hangs around).

Are the four guys I can name off the top of my head somehow in a different class than Mark Cuban?  I doubt it.  I can’t say I’d want to spend 5 minutes with any of them.  Well, maybe Steinbrenner just to be sniggering in my head thinking of Larry David’s Steinbrenner the entire time I’m listening to the real thing.

But the Cubs could do a lot worse than having an owner who’s freakishly wealthy, freakishly involved in the team's operation, and freakishly willing to try to throw money at the team to make it into a winner, and maybe even a place where winning players want to be.

I’m just saying, the past 100 seasons without a title don’t exactly recommend the approach the owners have been taking.  Of course, as I noted above, Cuban’s Mavericks haven’t managed to win a title either.  So it’s a crap shoot.  But I would love to know what the criteria are that the other MLB owners use to evaluate a potential new owner.  A really good investigative reporter would get that story for the public.  Cubs fans need to know.

Tags: Cubs   sports  
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Another prediction for what the future holds!

Posted by Ed Lilly on Saturday, November 01, 2008 8:26:58 AM
I've been saying, at least to myself, for some time that eventually we'll reach a point where a person can officially declare that he (or she, if we must be politically correct) is marrying himself/herself so that he/she is not being discriminated against based on marital status, the right to marry, etc.  It will be weird and nonsensical.  But it will happen.

And this story moves us just a little bit closer to that world.

If the guy in Japan gets the right to marry a cartoon character, the possibilities start to get pretty interesting.  Want to marry a movie star's character from one of your favorite films?  Why not?  Meet my wife, Christie Brinkley as the hot girl from National Lampoon's Vacation!  Shoot, my cousin could finally "marry" his ideal of feminine beauty, Grace Kelly.  If we're not limited to three dimensional, sentient human beings, the sky's the limit.  And eventually, we can just invent marriage partners, multiple marriage partners, and then legally "marry" ourselves.

Thankfully, I'm already married to a babe, so this won't apply to me.  Though maybe I better make sure she isn't making plans for an alternate marriage reality....

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Only One Survivor of RMS Titanic Remains

Posted by Ed Lilly on Friday, October 17, 2008 6:30:54 AM
An interesting human interest story at Fox News this morning:

Millvina Dean was just two months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic.

Now, more than 95 years later, Dean, the last living survivor of the disaster, is hoping to help pay her nursing home fees by selling artifacts of her rescue — a suitcase and other mementos expected to auction for about $5,200.

What a sad story.  I can’t imagine that $5,200 will go very far toward nursing home fees for Ms. Dean.  Perhaps it’s my increasing cynicism over the pending elections that makes me wonder why some of the liberal blowhards in Hollywood, who profited immensely from a little movie a few years ago that had something to do with the sinking of RMS Titanic, didn’t do something gracious like make an anonymous contribution to a trust fund established for the benefit of the very few survivors of the sinking alive at the time the film was made.

And it’s probably just my increasingly warped sense of humor that makes me wonder if perhaps the Seinfeld cast should do something similar for survivors of the Andrea Dorea / Stockholm accident.

In any event, good luck to Ms. Dean, and may she have many more healthy and happy days ahead.


Tags: Media   culture  
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A Chance for Redemption in Chicago

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 3:55:21 PM
A news story at Bloomberg.com contains the following interesting update on scientific research:

The Bee Gees' disco anthem “Stayin’ Alive” from 1977 has 103 beats a minute, close to the number of chest compressions needed for cardiopulmonary resuscitation to work, according to a study at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.  Students who listened to the tune while practicing CPR on a dummy learned to give the right number of pumps, an abstract of the research in the Annals of Emergency Medicine said.

And later notes:

The results will be presented at a meeting of the Dallas-based group later this month, in Chicago.

So disco music may somehow wind up being involved in helping mankind.  Who would have thought?

It’s especially nice that this research is being presented in Chicago, where disco music has a somewhat less glorious history:

Disco Demolition Night was a promotional event that took place on July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago.  It was held during a scheduled twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. During the event, rowdy fans surged onto the field, and a near riot ensued.

If you follow the link above for the background information on Disco Demolition Night, and a more complete description of the event, in which approximately 75,000 fans staged the “near riot” between the doubleheader games, resulting in forfeiture of the second game, you won’t be disappointed.  I remember Disco Demolition Night dimly from my youth, but know the story well from having heard the radio hosts involved in the promotion, Steve Dahl and Gary Meier, for years afterward on Chicago radio.

I don't think Steve and Gary are on the air anymore.  If they are, it would be a nice touch for them to get press passes for the medical conference so they can provide full coverage of this latest "threat" of the return of disco.

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Am I still a Cubs fan?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Sunday, October 05, 2008 2:58:49 AM
Growing up as a fan of the Cubs and Bears in the 70s and 80s, I saw a lot of bad teams and awful players.  But I was fortunate enough to still be in high school and then college when da Bears put together a juggernaut team under Mike Ditka and won a Super Bowl.  An actual world championship for a Chicago team in my lifetime!  Amazing!

Of course, at the same time that Bears team was rising to prominence in the NFC, the Cubs exploded into a contender in 1984 with a team put together masterfully by Dallas Green.  Cubs fans well remember the meltdown that fall in San Diego, but it seemed going into the playoffs the Cubs had a legitimate shot to go to the World Series at last.  Sure, it would have been tough facing the Tigers that year, but anything can happen.  The sense was very real that the 1984 Cubs team was something special that might finally break through and win it all.

In 2003, the year of the Bartman incident, there seemed to be a similar vibe about the Cubs.  They looked like a team that was pretty well put together with pitching, defense and hitting.  They were a handful of outs from the World Series.  Still, it didn't happen.

Other Cubs playoff teams of the past 25 years seem, at least in retrospect, to be more like this year's model.  Good regular season clubs that fell apart in a hurry in the post-season.  They never managed to take the fans to the edge of getting to the World Series, and so the disappointment in their failing is somewhat muted.

Perhaps the 1989 squad's collapse against the Giants was a bit more painful than 1998 or the past 2 years, as the '89 team seemed to have some toughness, character and leadership that the later teams never did.  In '89 there was Sandberg, Dawson, Maddux, Sutcliffe, and a young Mark Grace playing their hardest for Don Zimmer.

The '98 team 'won' the wild card behind a steroid fueled Sammy Sosa and flamed out for Jim Riggleman.

I was actually excited when the Cubs hired Dusty Baker as manager.  While he never won a World Series, he seemed to get the most out of his teams in San Francisco, so I thought he might be the kind of guy who could somehow catch lightning in a bottle on the North Side, and he almost did in 2003.

Now having seen Lou Piniella preside over six consecutive post-season thumpings, and that the team exercised its option to pick up an additional year on Lou's contract just before the playoffs began, it's hard to see how Lou ever gets even as close to the World Series with the Cubs as Baker did.

Maybe I'll be surprised and the Cubs will find a way to again be competitive in the NL Central (ugh, how I hate all these new divisional groups), but given the way teams so often have difficulty in winning year after year, I think it's more realistic to think that injuries, disappointment, and the rise of other teams will combine to bring another season of misery to Chicago next summer.  It may even be so ugly that Piniella is no longer managing the team by the end of the year.

I can't imagine who the Cubs ownership, whoever it may be by then, would try to bring in to right the ship if that's the case.  Conventional wisdom is that baseball teams alternate between tough guys who ride their teams hard and are hated by the players and "players' managers" who make almost everyone on the roster happy and are beloved by the team.

I've lost track of where the Cubs are on this supposed cycle.  Regardless whether it's Lou or someone else who next manages to take the Cubs to the post-season, I'll be curious to see how the team is put together.  On paper, this year's squad seemed like it should have captured my heart and had me believing that, yes, after 100 years everything had finally come full circle and we were on the verge of a World Series title.

But I never believed in this team.  More to the point, I never loved this team.  There was never anyone on the team that made me think they would do anything to win a title.  The '84 squad had those kinds of players, and I loved them for it.

It's probably more my perception than anything, but with the possible exception of Mark DeRosa, I don't see any "gamers" on the current Cubs roster.  They have plenty of solid players on paper.  But none that seem to exude leadership or appear to be great teammates that you would love to have in your locker room to make a pennant run.

So we end another baseball season with that familiar, optimistic cheer:  "Go Bears!"


Tags: Cubs   baseball  
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This one time, at band camp....

Posted by Ed Lilly on Saturday, October 04, 2008 7:20:51 AM
Weird news from SI.com:

The University of Wisconsin marching band has been suspended indefinitely while allegations of hazing, alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct are investigated.
Apparently Michelle Flaherty was unavailable for comment.

Reactions?  First, it's a marching band / college campus story.  One thing it is NOT is a sports story, even though the marching band does appear during half-time of college football games.  I guess Sports Illustrated chose to run it because it's titillating (yeah, I know), but this is really a poor choice of story to even pick up, much less to link at the SI homepage.

Second, is there anyone in the U.S. who is surprised, much less interested, that there is alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct on college campuses?  Isn't this the ultimate dog-bites-man "news" story?

Finally, hazing?  From reading the story it sounds like there were some inappropriate things going on, like "making" female band members kiss other female band members before they could use a bathroom on the bus.  I suppose in the world of college educators this is hazing.  I hope that if my daughter ever finds herself a band geek on a college campus and she is told to do something like this she has the good sense to respond the way Jim McMahon did as a rookie with da Bears when the veterans told him he had to sing his college fight song at meals.  The Punky QB reportedly gave them a two word answer beginning with the letters "F" and "O" and went about eating his meal.

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Maybe the Chicago Olympic Committee can place a call to China

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:39:11 AM
News out of the Windy City on problems that have arisen with the site chosen for the proposed Olympic Village that is a critical component of Chicago's efforts to land the 2016 Summer Games:

Faced with soaring demolition and environmental cleanup costs and a recalcitrant property owner, the Daley administration has broken off talks aimed at moving the $1.1 billion Olympic Village to the campus of Michael Reese Hospital.

Hmmm.  Seems to me that if the Chicago political machine of the corruptocrat Daley family wants something done, it will find a way to get it done.  And isn't there somebody with Chicago political machine connections who's in the news about now?  And didn't he have an observation about the recent Olympic Games held in Peiping?  Why, yes there is, and yes he did:

Obama, yesterday [8/21/08]: "Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics, Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, 'Beijing looks like a pretty good option.'"

Obama's comments on Chinese infrastructure drew some criticism from people who still have a grasp on reality (meaning the mainstream media arm of the Democrat Party ignored it).  Summarizing three news stories from China in 2008 prior to the Olympic Games, National Review's Jim Geraghty noted:

Yes, their power outages, crowds at train stations, and outbreaks of air rage are vastly superior to ours.

Even more appropriate in light of the environmental remediation snafu that has now cropped up in Chicago, Hugh Hewitt noted the following with respect to Obama's analysis:

Obama's praise for China's Olympics building binge ignores how those structures were assembled, the source and conditions of the labor, the lack of pollution controls in Beijing and throughout China, the many complaints that Chinese infrastructure outside the Olympics zone remains shoddy, the recent record of Chinese manufacturing scandals, including the heparin fiasco which killed many Americans, and of course the catastrophe brought about by Chinese building standards in the region rocked by the recent earthquake.

Can someone with a press pass please get an answer from Obama on why Chicago shouldn't just take the Chinese approach to getting the Olympic Village done and ignore environmental cleanup laws, labor and construction standards, and personal property rights?  If it was so wonderful when the Chinese did it, shouldn't Obama be urging the Cook County construction industry to get on board with the same approach?

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Sometimes numbers don't tell you the real story

Posted by Ed Lilly on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:18:43 AM
Listening to PGA Tour radio last week, I heard a couple of facts that surprised me, but in retrospect they shouldn't have.  I remember years ago hearing that Tom Kite had managed to make it to the top of the Tour lifetime money list, so I understand that you can be a good player, but not a legend, and in today's world of ever-higher prize money you wind up looking like potentially the best golfer of all time.

But I was still surprised to hear that Jack Nicklaus, winner of 18 professional majors and runner-up in another 19 (I think), along with winning many other tournaments and championships over the course of his career, earned "only" $5.7 million on Tour in winnings.  Over the long trajectory of his career, that's not as much as I would have guessed given his success.  I realize the dollars available on Tour have exploded with the rise of Tiger, but I would have speculated that Nicklaus easily earned about twice the number cited.

And to really blow me away, the news blurb on PGA Tour radio noted that Nicklaus is now number 155 on the Tour Money List, having just been passed by Anthony Kim (oops - my original post mistakenly referred to "Andrew" Kim).


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I'm not sure if Monty Hall is still alive...

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 6:38:19 AM
...but that's immediately who I thought of when I heard a clip on the radio from the MTV music video awards show, or whatever it is called.  The host of the awards program was apparently a comedian from Great Britain, and at one point in the program he spoke up on behalf of people from outside the U.S. in begging the citizens of our country to elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.  Apparently Obama really has the non-U.S. citizen vote pretty much wrapped up.

Let's Make a Deal!  We'll all agree to let Obama take over as head of the United Nations on the condition that he never be allowed to hold a position in the United States government ever again.  Seems like a win-win.

Now, where's my "U.S. Out of U.N." sign....

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Another reason not to trust the mainstream media?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 7:29:41 AM
With the nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, there has been a lot of discussion from the mainstream media and their friends in the Democrat party about whether she has enough experience for the job of vice president.  Mrs. Palin has apparently been a city council member, mayor, and now governor of a state with a budget of something like $11-12 billion dollars and about 15,000 employees.

Regardless how you come out on whether she is qualified to be vice president, or ultimately president should that eventuality arise, you should take any concerns voiced by the mainstream media about the importance of succession planning with a grain of salt about the size of Rhode Island.

After all, when Tim Russert died unexpectedly, NBC had a slew of well qualified people ready to step in an make sure Meet the Press and their national election coverage would be taken over by the next generation of experienced, qualified journalists, right?

Um, not so much.  They wound up behaving exactly like their buddies in the Democrat party, dragging marble-mouthed Tom Brokaw out of quasi-retirement and thrusting him back into news coverage.

If the libs can't even manage to figure out how to come up with the next person most able to read a teleprompter and draw on a whiteboard, how much credibility do they have when worrying about anyone else's ability to pick qualified successors?

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I don't remember everyone criticizing Geena Davis when she took over as President...

Posted by Ed Lilly on Thursday, September 04, 2008 10:41:15 PM
I never saw the show a couple of years ago where Geena Davis played the first woman to be President of the United States.  My understanding is that the setup was that she was selected to be the running mate by a guy who hated her, but believed he needed her to win.   Good luck for him - he wins the presidency!  Bad luck for him - he dies!  So Geena moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I remember reading posts and articles by commentators at the time that the show was just a Hollywood tribute to Hillary Clinton that was designed to get everyone used to the idea of a woman president for Mrs. Clinton's impending and unstoppable election.  Then the show tanked and was canceled, and Mrs. Clinton failed to make it out of her party's presidential primaries.  Life imitates art!

But I don't remember anyone, from the political right or left, getting upset with the premise of the show based on Davis's character already having responsibility for her young child, so that she should never have run for the vice presidency, much less accepted elevation to the presidency.

I guess life can only imitate art so far.

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Finding silver linings whenever possible

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 10:32:05 PM
I have had the opportunity to listen to some of the Townhall radio broadcasters such as Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt during the GOP convention.  A lot of the talk the past two days has been on the treatment Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has received at the hands of the Democrats and their friends in the media.  Dennis Prager played some comments made by Sally Quinn, apparently a columnist with the Washington Post.  Prager and many of his listeners were rightly and understandably very upset at the questions asked by Quinn in relation to Governor Palin and her decision to seek the vice presidency even though she happens to have several small children and a teenage daughter who is now expecting a child.

But in listening to the clip, the part that stood out to me was Ms. Quinn's matter-of-fact statement along the lines of, "look, we all know men and women are different."  Really?!  Liberals have known all along, and still know, that men and women are different?  Someone better get that printed in 50 point font and make sure the faculty at Harvard are apprised so they can get to work on apologizing to former Harvard President Larry Summers, and bringing him back.

Another aspect of the discussion of the media's treatment of Governor Palin involved an editorial, I think, whose theme was that "Average isn't good enough" in picking a vice president.  Apparently we need someone who is outstanding and exceptional to fill such a position.

After having had the message beaten into me over the past 15 years that we should not let children's athletic teams keep score so no one's feelings get hurt, that every team and team member in children's sports leagues get trophies so they can all be winners, and that having valedictorians, salutatorians, etc., is wrong, I found it refreshing to see that the liberals have finally gotten on board with the notion that some people do in fact achieve more than others in some areas.

Liberals still have a long way to go in overcoming their belief in government as the solution to all life's problems, but perhaps we're making progress somehow.

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The return of the Fairness Doctrine? Let's try it this way....

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 12:15:26 AM
I have a small proposal.  Seems there is a concern that a Democrat-controlled House, Senate and White House will work together to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine, which would mandate equal time for political talk radio stations.  It was the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine during Reagan's presidency that led to the rise and success of radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and many others.  Democrats have not been happy with the fact that quite a few conservative talk radio shows have been very successful, and influential, while very few liberal talk radio shows can make the same claim.  So the Dems are promising to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine in hopes of taking Limbaugh, Hannity and others off the air.

Mike Pence, fighting the good fight and making Hoosiers proud, is trying to get legislation passed that would act as a permanent ban on the Fairness Doctrine.  Despite having, I believe, all of the GOP House members on board, as well as apparently quite a few Democrats, Speaker Pelosi is refusing to allow Pence's proposal to come up fo a vote.  Hardly a surprise.

So my suggestion to Pence would be as follows:  create an amendment to the Fairness Doctrine the Democrats want to re-enact that would broaden the scope.  Atttach it to every piece of legislation and/or item that comes up for discussion and/or vote in Congress.  Make it apply not only to radio, but to television, newspapers, magazines, and, most importantly, federally elected officials.  So any time a member of Congress runs a campaign ad, or sends out mail to constituents, or schedules a townhall meeting with constituents, equal time has to be given to "the other side" of whatever issue(s) are raised.  Make the congress critters have to pay not only for their own message(s), but the contra message from opponents if the other side doesn't have enough money.  After all, that would be REAL fairness, right?


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So was it Gerald or Lawrence who fainted?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Saturday, August 23, 2008 7:58:26 AM
Seeing the linkline below at Sports Illustrated's site this morning prompts my question above:

Synchronized swimmer faints, rescued in pool

My money's on Lawrence.  As he said:

I don't swim.

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