Nadya Suleman and Her 8 babies - Sell the naming rights

I watched her interview or what they've shown of it so far. All I can say is that the woman is a nut case. The "I will go to school in the fall" is already sounding like someone who has lost their reality.

California law says for newborn, the ratio of chldren to caretakers is 4:1. Nadya is already in violation of that law for a babysitter.

Since her children are currently named A thru H, she should sell the "naming rights" to the kids to take in money.

Where Is The Outrage Over This Child's Treatment?

Vincent Richardson is the 14 year old who two weeks ago walked into a police station on the South Side dressed in a real Chicago Police Department uniform and reported for duty.

Now anyone reading this column should be outraged right now. Why? Because as a 14-year-old child, the news outlets should have used their common sense and not have allowed his name to be made public.

But even more than his name, which I understand his mother released to the press (still doesn't mean that the press should have gone ahead and used it), but there is a photo of him taken while he sat in the lockup at the police department.

That photo was featured on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times and is making the rounds over the Internet. Now that is a complete violation of a juvenile's right to privacy.

So I'm going to start of by asking several questions. Our activist ministers always seem to find the time to go pray with the politicians whose adult behavior has gotten themselves in trouble. Where are they now that a child - obviously one who has some problems - has had his face and name plastered all over while a Chicago police officer can commit any crime against a citizen, and we never even learn the officer's gender?

What about our politicians who staged a boycott and protest for more money for the Chicago Public Schools? Where are their voices in outrage when one of those students is being exploited?

If you want to know why young people see the older generation as hypocrites, one needs look no further than the case of Vincent Richardson. And I only use his name because it is already out there.

I don't condone what he did. He put himself in danger. He exposed a huge security flaw in the practices or lack thereof at the CPD. He put the life of the officer he was assigned to patrol with at risk.

There can be no sicker feeling for any on-duty officer than to find out that for five hours the person who was assigned to work with you and have your back was a kid with newspaper stuffed in a pretend bullet proof vest and an empty holster for a gun.

But to see the headlines in the newspapers is to believe that Vincent is on the same page with some of the teenage kids who go and shoot up a school. The outrage from JFed, the nickname given to Jody Weis, our ex-FBI, $300,000-a-year-plus police superintendent, who never patrolled a city street in his entire life, was predictable.

He declared that heads would roll. Our mayor? As usual he puts the blame on others to deflect from any of us having a Kodak moment and remembering that he put Jody Weis in as head of the police department.

But whose fault is it really? Right now the finger pointing is starting from the bottom. The officer who rode with Vincent should have noticed he was a kid. The commander who allowed him on the street should have done something. And on and on. But what of our highly compensated police superintendent as well as the mayor? Shouldn't the buck stop at the top?

After reading the latest news that Vincent is currently being held in a juvenile detention center, I couldn't help juxtaposing his situation with another story in the paper that day of someone else who is "locked up" as well.

That is Flor Crisostomo, the illegal alien who is currently avoiding a deportation order by refusing to leave Adalberto United Methodist Church on West Division.

When you look at their situations side-by-side, both of them just wanted to work. Both of them were doing a job most of us don't want to do. Both of them lied about their legal ability to work. Both of them don't have driver's licenses. Both of them are guilty of pretending to be something other than what they really are - one a CPD officer the other a U.S. citizen.

So why is one in custody and the other not? I thought Chicago is a sanctuary city - right?

Rod Blagojevich - Slimely - Sleazy

Anyone watching the TV news programs this past Monday was sure to have seen our Governor Rod Blagojevich on TV from morning until night.

On ABC alone, he started his media blitz with Good Morning America, ended it with Nightline and even went on The View in between. Not only was his face and hair all over the place, even his name was properly spoken since he has now become an infamous household word.

Now I don’t admit to being a fan of the governor. I never voted for him and never liked him as a politician. And I am not a constitutional expert, so I can’t say whether or not the impeachment hearings currently going on in the Illinois General Assembly are fair or not. But what I do know is this. In an earlier appearance on TV in regards to the allegations against him, Governor Blagojevich said, “I will fight, I will fight, I will fight.” Apparently his fight includes being out of the state on the day of his impeachment and preferring instead to go on a number of interview shows where the hosts look like they were on steroids in their questioning of Gov. Blagojevich.

Even Barbara Walters got so exasperated by the governors continuous line of,“They won’t let me bring witnesses” and not answering the questions, that she remarked to him “Why are you wasting our time?” And waste a lot of time he did.

In every interview, besides the “not allowing witnesses” accusations, the governor said in essence that without him at the helm, our evil state legislators were mad because he, Gov. Rod R Blagojevich was putting thru legislation that would create job, give health care and prevent them from increasing our taxes. To hear him make those statements that he alone- was our superhero in a suit- was astonishing. All he was doing was “leveraging the seat” in order to serve the people of Illinois.

He even admitted to having considered Oprah Winfrey as a replacement for Barack Obama. To toot my own horn, most readers of my blog know that I reported on that information over a month ago. Anyway, Governor Rod also lauded himself for going around the legislators to get free rides for seniors and free medical screenings. But as anyone knows, there is nothing “free” in this society. Somebody is paying the cost for those “free” rides, either in the form of higher fares for non-senior riders and through additional taxes. The same with the medical screening.

On all of the interviews I saw with Blagojevich, the one question he successfully tapped dance around was the one about his “selling the vacated senate seat” of Barack Obama. No matter how he tried to paint that the conversations were taken out of context, he couldn’t exactly paint a clear picture of what the context could be for him to say what he said.

Most amusing to me was his explanation of the foul mouth language that was captured on tape. He grew up in a tough neighborhood. You didn’t say those kinds of words around your mother. But you did in the schoolyard, playing basketball or hanging out with the guys. What a message to send. And just where did Blagojevich grow up? Cicero and Armitage, attending Foreman High School where he graduated in 1975.


I can see all the schoolchildren now responding to anything said to them in the schoolyard with “effing” this or “effing” that and all because our governor who is trying to save his butt has come up with the most lamest of excuses.

How low can our governor go? Well he somehow managed to bring the names of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi into this debacle. As he sat in a cell in the federal detention center, he thought of them because he is an “innocent man-wrongly accused”. Now I don’t know about his guilt in regards to selling the senate seat, but as to his personality, he is a “snake oil salesman- properly exposed!”

I'm Glad Daley Picked Huberman

When the mayor of Chicago feels that he is an annointed king, free to do whatever he wants, then he cares less about the voters and is content to do what he pleases, residents be damned - because he is the KING OF THE CITY.

To all Chicagoans, Don't get mad, JUST VOTE HIM OUT OF OFFICE!!!!

Oprah Winfrey for Senate Seat - OLD NEWS TO ANYONE READING THIS BLOG

Just check my archieves for December 2008! If I know it, you'll know it!

Cash Station Machines Accepting Cash Deposits

I sent the following to the Trib, Sun-Times and Defender: Has anyone else experienced those new ATMs. I have never been as scared as knowing that I had a large amount of cash to deposit and the machine opens because of a malfunction displaying my deposit.

*****************************************************************************

Dear Editor,

There are times when technological advances are great. But late on Friday night as I attempted to deposit cash into an ATM at a local Chase branch, all I could find were the ones where the machines wanted me to feed the cash directly into it as opposed to accepting the money inside a deposit envelope.



As I attempted to put several thousand dollars into the machine, the dollar feeder area suddenly opened and all my deposit was exposed and the ATM screen displayed a message that the machine was unable to accept a cash deposit. As I took my money back all I could think about was that any criminal watching that area could see me depositing large amounts of cash and kill me for it.



Plus, the dollar feeders, similar to an automatic feed on a photocopy machine, didn't like it when one of the bills didn't get sucked in properly. For a second time that night at a different Chase location, my deposit was exposed for anyone to see. If banks want to use those types of machines during regular banking hours to give customers an option of not needing a teller, then I support it. But ATM locations where the entry is based on swiping your debit card and is viewable to anyone passing by because of the huge expanse of glass windows and doors is not the place to offer that type of an ATM. I don't mind it accepting a check. But cash - no way.



Those type of machines should be immediately outlawed before someone loses their life in a robbery attempt.



Arlene Jones

Yes Virginia, If Something Cost Six Cents There Is A Tax!

Have you ever gone to a party or event and enjoyed yourself so much that later on, when talking to others about the same event, you are shocked to learn that so much other stuff occurred at the same time? Stuff you weren't even aware of? For example, I was reminiscing about a previous family reunion with my cousin when he told me of some things that occurred during the party.

I was shocked that I had been completely unaware of some of the drama others had pulled while I sat in a corner enjoying myself with other relatives, completely oblivious to our surroundings. I feel that this is the same thing that happened Tuesday with many of us in Chicago. There is so much euphoria over President Barack Obama's inauguration that we are blinded to some of the things our local politicians have been up to-like with our mayor and his city council. They recently voted to make us, the taxpayers, liable for the 2016 Olympic bid and all the costs associated with it.

Those costs will include added police protection, streets and sanitation maintenance, and who knows what other services. This is the same city that just told you it didn't have enough money to plow snowy side streets until someone whispered in the mayor's ear and reminded him that former mayor Michael Bilandic lost a re-election bid because of snow. So, after promising that his desire wouldn't affect the average taxpayer's pocketbook, our current mayor and his aldermen have now placed us on the hook for the cost of his Olympic dream. Costs from overruns that will surely come from the 2016 Olympics the majority of us never told him we wanted in the first place.

Over the past decade, the mayor has privatized everything he could, claiming it would save the taxpayers money. The schools lost cafeteria workers as food handling was outsourced to his suburban buddies. Still, the budget increased. The mayor has leased the Skyway, all the city's parking garages, destroyed Meigs Field and leased Midway airport. Most recently, he's leased the city's parking meters and still the budget has a shortfall.

But as the mayor has deemed his legacy incomplete without an Olympic event, amazingly, there is money to be found for it. Money hidden away in TIF (tax increment financing) funds that can legally be transferred from one city parcel to the next if they are linked. Most of those links are done by drawing a "TIF" line down the middle of the street. So TIF monies paid in Austin are transferred to TIF districts downtown.

One bit of good news is something that didn't happen. In a desperate move to find any new source of revenue that he could tax, the mayor lost his bid to levy your satellite dishes. Apparently, the federal government is not too keen on allowing cities to tax broadcast satellite services. Yeah! But had he been successful, you would have received a new tax bill owed to the city for 9 percent of your satellite cable bill. This is one of the few times your mayor failed to dig deeper into your pockets to take your last dime, and maybe even some of the lint coating in it as well.

Even our beloved county board finds itself in the news. Those commissioners just last year voted to make our sales taxes the highest in the country. Meanwhile, they make $85,000 a year in salary for a job that's more part time than that of an alderman. And they have a sweet little perk-an additional $1200 a month to cover out-of-pocket expenses.

But guess what? They barely document what they use that money for, but when given the chance recently to show some frugality with our tax dollars, they avoided that responsibility by failing to pass a county board motion to abolish the perk. Ain't they sweet? Should we be sensitive to how we are taxed? Hell yeah we should. I recently bought one single hex nut at Home Depot to replace a missing bolt on my snow-blower. The hexnut cost six cents. Then the register added a penny for sales tax.

Yes, the Barack Obama inauguration party is fun and we enjoyed ourselves. But don't party so hard that you're not paying attention to the separate parties our mayor and country board commissioners are having. They are all up for reelection soon-the county board in 2010 and the mayor and aldermen the following year. Let us take Barack Obama's message of change and apply it to them.

Then we'll have the last laugh at the party.