Month: February 2006

Hard case

Don’t you Chi newspaper readers wonder sometimes why some people happy-birthday’ed by Sun-Times’s Michael Sneed are “ageless”?  Most have their ages behind their names, but some are special and suffer no such indignity.  Today’s “ageless” is Terry Durkin.  Who the heck is Terry Durkin?  Trying Google, one discovers:
 
An Indiana U. prof whom I have emailed asking if he’s ageless in Chicago.  He’s at The Open Source Lab, which sounds electronic. 
 
The MVP for 1982 for the Yale (U.) Bulldogs softball team, which means she’s a girl.  Ah-hah, we might be getting somewhere. 
 
A charter boat captain in Petersburg, Alaska, who promises “unforgettable fishing.”   Does Sneed fish?
 
A Clear Case product manager reachable email-wise at Rational-dot-com.  He has a 781 area code and is clearly (sorry) up to something electronic.
 
The founder (and charter member) of Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo and La Mesa, California who unfortunately died in 2003.  It can’t be he.
 
A senior software analyst at Human Resources Canada who gave a speech in 1998 that referred early on to his being “in the middle of one of those sleeps where you are barely above the level of a coma” and being awakened by the ring of his telephone.
 
The first president-elect of PERS (Pacific Estuarine Research Society) at its formation in 1978.  PERS, for those with the need to know, is an Affiliate Society of ERF (the Estuarine Research Federation).  What would be ageless about him (or her; I’d rather not be fooled) is anything but clear.
 
Which leaves us all in the dark.  Will Sneed clear this up for us some day?
 
Wait.  Hold your horses.  I may have it.  What a fool I was not to tell Google it’s Terry Durkin Chicago I have in mind!  There it is, third in line, in an Eric Zorn blog, entitled, what do you know, “Aging the ageless,” in which, don’t tell me, Zorn outs Sneed’s ageless birthday boys and girls, including “gaming [gambling] industry attorney Terry Durkin,” whom he exposed on Feb. 9, 2005, a year ago almost to the day, that is, the day after Sneed wished him Happy Birthday, calling him ageless, as 48 whole years old!
 
There it is!  All comes to him who knows or learns pretty quickly how to make best use of Google.  Terry Durkin on this day is 49 years old, and he’s a gambler’s lawyer.  Very interesting.  He’s also into Sneed somehow.  She owes him, that is.  In short, he’s a SOURCE, and where would Sneed be without sources?  Case closed.
 
One more thing.  Zorn explains his interest in ageless birthdays as in the Sneed column here.  Look it up.  But the sad thing is that this citing of Zorn will go unnoticed by him unless he reads my Chi Newspapers blog because for quite a while he has had a block on my email, maybe because he blocks a lot of inconsequential commentators but maybe also because I have pissed him off in email exchanges, for which I am heartily sorry and to prevent reoccurance am embracing a firm purpose of amendment.  Better stop now.  This has gone far too long.  Cheers.

Hard case

Don’t you Chi newspaper readers wonder sometimes why some people happy-birthday’ed by Sun-Times’s Michael Sneed are “ageless”?  Most have their ages behind their names, but some are special and suffer no such indignity.  Today’s “ageless” is Terry Durkin.  Who the heck is Terry Durkin?  Trying Google, one discovers:
 
An Indiana U. prof whom I have emailed asking if he’s ageless in Chicago.  He’s at The Open Source Lab, which sounds electronic. 
 
The MVP for 1982 for the Yale (U.) Bulldogs softball team, which means she’s a girl.  Ah-hah, we might be getting somewhere. 
 
A charter boat captain in Petersburg, Alaska, who promises “unforgettable fishing.”   Does Sneed fish?
 
A Clear Case product manager reachable email-wise at Rational-dot-com.  He has a 781 area code and is clearly (sorry) up to something electronic.
 
The founder (and charter member) of Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo and La Mesa, California who unfortunately died in 2003.  It can’t be he.
 
A senior software analyst at Human Resources Canada who gave a speech in 1998 that referred early on to his being “in the middle of one of those sleeps where you are barely above the level of a coma” and being awakened by the ring of his telephone.
 
The first president-elect of PERS (Pacific Estuarine Research Society) at its formation in 1978.  PERS, for those with the need to know, is an Affiliate Society of ERF (the Estuarine Research Federation).  What would be ageless about him (or her; I’d rather not be fooled) is anything but clear.
 
Which leaves us all in the dark.  Will Sneed clear this up for us some day?
 
Wait.  Hold your horses.  I may have it.  What a fool I was not to tell Google it’s Terry Durkin Chicago I have in mind!  There it is, third in line, in an Eric Zorn blog, entitled, what do you know, “Aging the ageless,” in which, don’t tell me, Zorn outs Sneed’s ageless birthday boys and girls, including “gaming [gambling] industry attorney Terry Durkin,” whom he exposed on Feb. 9, 2005, a year ago almost to the day, that is, the day after Sneed wished him Happy Birthday, calling him ageless, as 48 whole years old!
 
There it is!  All comes to him who knows or learns pretty quickly how to make best use of Google.  Terry Durkin on this day is 49 years old, and he’s a gambler’s lawyer.  Very interesting.  He’s also into Sneed somehow.  She owes him, that is.  In short, he’s a SOURCE, and where would Sneed be without sources?  Case closed.
 
One more thing.  Zorn explains his interest in ageless birthdays as in the Sneed column here.  Look it up.  But the sad thing is that this citing of Zorn will go unnoticed by him unless he reads my Chi Newspapers blog because for quite a while he has had a block on my email, maybe because he blocks a lot of inconsequential commentators but maybe also because I have pissed him off in email exchanges, for which I am heartily sorry and to prevent reoccurance am embracing a firm purpose of amendment.  Better stop now.  This has gone far too long.  Cheers.

Looney

Cartoons came front and center a week ago, with Muslims rioting and protesting.  But Chi Trib took until today, Tuesday the 7th, to come up with a page one story “Why [they] sparked furor: Islamic tradition and freedom of press clash over artists’ depictions of Prophet Muhammad,” by its dynamic religion duo, and they are good, Margaret Ramirez and Manya A. Brachear, who clearly were given the assignment.  It’s a fine Saturday religion-page story, full of citations from various academics and ethnic ax-grinders — it’s what you do to provide what an ad saleswoman once told me is “editorial support,” for church-page ads.
 
But this one is just below the page-one fold (on a Tuesday) and a vivid, vivid color shot of a burning Danish flag — when was the last time you saw a really fiery Danish flag, a sure sign that’s something’s rotten in Denmark — the entire spectacle beneath a sparkling quote from some Catholic professor, drawn, I hope out of context because it tends to make a religious act out of rioting and destruction: “In Muslim culture, there is a very strong sense of the sacred.”
 
The sacred, yes, the last refuge of Islamo-fascists bent on destroying almost everything that makes life living, incited by clerics who phonied up cartoons of The Prophet to go with those that ran in the offending Danish newspaper — the one tut-tutted by Boston Globe and other first-amendment heroes for its impolitic behavior — and spread them around Muslim-land.  The rioters doing it in countries where nothing — nada, nihil. rien, zilch — happens without govt say-so.
 
Chi Trib would have us think we really know why Muslims riot, offering various repetitive statements of what is old, old news by now, that the Muslim world is more religion-oriented than we.  But nothing is said about radical imams who plot and scheme and incite riots.  There are days when I want my fifty cents back from 435 N. Michigan.

Looney

Cartoons came front and center a week ago, with Muslims rioting and protesting.  But Chi Trib took until today, Tuesday the 7th, to come up with a page one story “Why [they] sparked furor: Islamic tradition and freedom of press clash over artists’ depictions of Prophet Muhammad,” by its dynamic religion duo, and they are good, Margaret Ramirez and Manya A. Brachear, who clearly were given the assignment.  It’s a fine Saturday religion-page story, full of citations from various academics and ethnic ax-grinders — it’s what you do to provide what an ad saleswoman once told me is “editorial support,” for church-page ads.
 
But this one is just below the page-one fold (on a Tuesday) and a vivid, vivid color shot of a burning Danish flag — when was the last time you saw a really fiery Danish flag, a sure sign that’s something’s rotten in Denmark — the entire spectacle beneath a sparkling quote from some Catholic professor, drawn, I hope out of context because it tends to make a religious act out of rioting and destruction: “In Muslim culture, there is a very strong sense of the sacred.”
 
The sacred, yes, the last refuge of Islamo-fascists bent on destroying almost everything that makes life living, incited by clerics who phonied up cartoons of The Prophet to go with those that ran in the offending Danish newspaper — the one tut-tutted by Boston Globe and other first-amendment heroes for its impolitic behavior — and spread them around Muslim-land.  The rioters doing it in countries where nothing — nada, nihil. rien, zilch — happens without govt say-so.
 
Chi Trib would have us think we really know why Muslims riot, offering various repetitive statements of what is old, old news by now, that the Muslim world is more religion-oriented than we.  But nothing is said about radical imams who plot and scheme and incite riots.  There are days when I want my fifty cents back from 435 N. Michigan.

More on Julian who?

Sun-Times runs Julian Bond’s comments today (no link available). In his QT column, Zay Smith, who is reliably protective of left-wing Dem interests, pairs Bond with Repub senator Santorum, who likened Dem filibuster tactics to Hitler’s in 1942.
Now where in heck did Smith learn that? From timely reports, I’d say, such as have emerged about the Bond speech — no throwaway line but a whole gosh-darned speech — nowhere in MSM outlets, at least according to Google.
But hand it to Smith, he dug around and got a Republican who had talked that way, ignoring Dem Sen. Robert Byrd of WV, who on March 1 compared Republican tactics on judicial nominees to Hitler’s use of power in Nazi Germany. However, give Smith credit: he’s trying to be fair and balanced.

You couldn’t make this up

The ACLU is joining the appeal of a man convicted for seeking to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge who wants his conviction overturned because he was “illegally” spied on by NSA.

Back in December, Iyman Faris, the only named American target of the National Security Agency’s secret warrantless wiretap program announced his consideration of a lawsuit against the president of the United States. To accomplish this goal, his lawyer David Smith issued an all points bulletin for civil liberties attorneys and constitutional scholars interested in taking up his client’s case.

“There has to be a real plaintiff with a real injury,” explained  Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty program, one of many civil libertarians who

Despite Faris’ admitted guilt, . . . were chomping at the bit to get him off the hook,

says StopTheACLU.com.  What did the man say about liberalism?  Yes, James Burnham: “Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.”  I think of Chill Wills riding the a-bomb with a cowboy whoop in “Dr. Strangelove.”  That’s ACLU riding its ideology.

You couldn’t make this up

The ACLU is joining the appeal of a man convicted for seeking to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge who wants his conviction overturned because he was “illegally” spied on by NSA.

Back in December, Iyman Faris, the only named American target of the National Security Agency’s secret warrantless wiretap program announced his consideration of a lawsuit against the president of the United States. To accomplish this goal, his lawyer David Smith issued an all points bulletin for civil liberties attorneys and constitutional scholars interested in taking up his client’s case.

“There has to be a real plaintiff with a real injury,” explained  Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty program, one of many civil libertarians who

Despite Faris’ admitted guilt, . . . were chomping at the bit to get him off the hook,

says StopTheACLU.com.  What did the man say about liberalism?  Yes, James Burnham: “Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.”  I think of Chill Wills riding the a-bomb with a cowboy whoop in “Dr. Strangelove.”  That’s ACLU riding its ideology.

Julian who?

What do we think of this kind of talk?

[Prominent public figure] delivered a blistering partisan speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina last night, equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and characterizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as “tokens.”

“The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side,” he charged.

Calling President Bush a liar, [he] told the audience at the historically black institution that this White House’s lies are more serious than the lies of his predecessor’s because Clinton’s lies didn’t kill people. . . .

He referred to former Attorney General John Ashcroft as J. Edgar Ashcroft. He compared Bush’s judicial nominees to the Taliban.

Pretty extreme, huh?  Worthy of slapping into a newspaper, right?  Not necessarily.  That was Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond speaking, and the coverage is in World Net Daily, an Internet publication.  Where else?  Not in Chi Trib or Sun-Times or in any other MSM outlet, unless you count Fayetteville’s News 14 TV show.

James Taranto calls it “whitewashing a black leader” and likens it to coverage of the late Yasser Arafat,

talking peace in English while inciting hatred in Arabic–except that in this case Bond is speaking a language everyone understands, and reporters, whose job is to report the facts, are instead concealing them. [Italics added]  Bond’s mostly black audience at Fayetteville hears his message of division and resentment, while the broader public is told that he has a “positive attitude” and is engaged in a “fight for equal rights.”

Let’s hear it for freedom of the press.

Julian who?

What do we think of this kind of talk?

[Prominent public figure] delivered a blistering partisan speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina last night, equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and characterizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as “tokens.”

“The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side,” he charged.

Calling President Bush a liar, [he] told the audience at the historically black institution that this White House’s lies are more serious than the lies of his predecessor’s because Clinton’s lies didn’t kill people. . . .

He referred to former Attorney General John Ashcroft as J. Edgar Ashcroft. He compared Bush’s judicial nominees to the Taliban.

Pretty extreme, huh?  Worthy of slapping into a newspaper, right?  Not necessarily.  That was Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond speaking, and the coverage is in World Net Daily, an Internet publication.  Where else?  Not in Chi Trib or Sun-Times or in any other MSM outlet, unless you count Fayetteville’s News 14 TV show.

James Taranto calls it “whitewashing a black leader” and likens it to coverage of the late Yasser Arafat,

talking peace in English while inciting hatred in Arabic–except that in this case Bond is speaking a language everyone understands, and reporters, whose job is to report the facts, are instead concealing them. [Italics added]  Bond’s mostly black audience at Fayetteville hears his message of division and resentment, while the broader public is told that he has a “positive attitude” and is engaged in a “fight for equal rights.”

Let’s hear it for freedom of the press.

The anti-Stroger

We’ve had quite the circus . . . in Cook County over the past few days.

. . . another indictment was handed down from US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office, charging a subsidiary of technology giant Siemens AG with defrauding Cook County. The company and two of its executives are accused of entered into a phony partnership with a minority owned business to win a $49 million contract with Stroger Hospital.

Only a few days later, the Chicago Sun-Times revealed the county’s corruption watchdogs, the inspector general, auditor and ethics director and members of those offices, had made numerous contributions to President Stroger’s campaign fund. It’s little wonder that scams that defraud the taxpayers of Cook County like the Siemens scam at Stroger Hospital seem to slip through the cracks.

President Stroger . . . promised not to accept [any more] campaign contributions from these . . . officials, whose primary task is to investigate claims of corruption in Cook County government or other “sensitive officials”.

. . . finally, there’s the strange story of Vincent Jones, a relative of President Stroger and a member of Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore’s political organization. Mr. Jones is accused of roughing up a Forest Park man who declined to have political campaign signs placed his yard. Police report that Mr. Jones became belligerent and threatened to have the arresting officers “politically taken care of”.

That’s from the web site of Tony Peraica, the star of last Saturday’s Republican beauty show at Oak Park library, where he made the top of the (ballot) program, gave a crisp, intelligent, easy-listening talk, answered qq, and then had to run.  (He had an easy act to follow, it’s true: acting OP GOP chairman Richard Willis, who, apparently conscious of Oak Parkers’ reading problems, was kind enough not only to flash sentences on the overhead but also to read them to us, word for word.)

Peraica is an immigrant (from Croatia), having arrived here 34 years ago at 13 after losing both parents, speaking no English.  He’s a Cook County commissioner, since 2002, when he took 53% of the vote over a 14–year incumbent.  He’s going after John Stroger’s county board chairmanship and playing anti-corruption melodies to a fare-thee-well.  His www.votetony06.com web site is a winner.  It includes “Tony’s blog” http://www.votetony06.com/blogs/, which makes good reading.