Thoughts While Shaving: Merkel Wins Big On Tax Cuts…Tribune Markedly Improved but--…What Did Beck Mean on McCain-Obama?

Merkel Wins Big.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel won reelection big yesterday on her pledge to implement $22 billion in tax cuts, business deregulation and expansion of licenses for nuclear power plants. Her opposing SPD party which promised penalizing the rich with higher taxes suffered the worst loss in postwar history. Voter turnout was 72%. So much for a supposedly authoritative Sun-Times Op Ed commentary quoting obviously left-wing Germans who said that Merkel could suffer electoral reverses because she denied Barack Obama access to the Brandenburg Gate for his campaign speech in 2008, relegating him to the Victory Column.

Tribune Markedly Improved—but…

In the last few weeks, the Tribune has improved in news content markedly…especially in the number of in-depth analyses it has run on local, state and national issues. It’s publisher has reportedly issued a mandate that the editorials should be of the crusading type. Okay—but the “crusade” the paper settled on is so minor-league when compared to the Sun-Times’ disclosures that it hardly gets anyone’s blood running hot. That is the “scandal” dealing with favoritism shown to politicians in opening up slots at the University of Illinois for some constituents. The fact that the paper has railroaded a very good university president out of his job because of that tempest-in-a-teapot is outrageous. It shows a sophomoric naivete in choice of a crusading issue when there are so many other legitimate scandals to dwell on.

Placing kids of constituents in university slots must rank 1,230th in a list of problems in the state of Illinois—even problems in education. The disclosure should have warranted a few lines back of the corset ads on page 18…and the remedy is to spotlight the political favor-seekers rather than the hapless university staff that, depending on the support of guys like Madigan and Cullerton, are condemned for bowing to political realities rather than turning them down summarily and causing the university to be penalized. Com’on guys. You bear great responsibility for hounding an excellent university president out of his job…all for a 10th rate circulation-builder that isn’t even a scandal.

Glenn Beck on Obama v. McCain.

I like Glenn Beck very much—especially since he stopped mugging the camera and started hitting on ACORN and other liberal excesses…but I’ve been trying to figure out his exact point in his interview with CBS’s Katie Couric wherein he said that Barack Obama is to be preferred for the presidency over John McCain. Was that utterance the result of a temporary blood clot on the brain which interfered with rational thought processes before it coursed back through the arteries or what? Your views please. Send your best guess and rationale to thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net

If Chicago Doesn’t Get the Olympics…

…one factor that could be blamed is the lamentable ad graphics the city bought into to advertise it. It started out with bad drawings of runners streaking ahead with blurry orange shadows behind them. These boards dominated the scene for months…such as the gigantic one painted laboriously on the back of the building right off the Kennedy Expressway at about North avenue that everyone stalled in traffic had to shield their eyes to avoid.

Then comes the denouement which is everywhere in the city today…including the same graphic on the same building off the Kennedy at North. Believe it or not it shows badly drawn cartoons of athletes drawn…I can’t imagine why…with tread-marks from gym shoes and athletic sneakers. God almighty, it’s awful. Now if the Tribune wants to zero in on a scandal, it should probe what agency got the contract for it, who was the artist for this atrocity, who approved it, why did they approve it… and how much the Olympic committee is paying for this surrealistic crap.