WHEN WE LAST looked in on Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, he was hosting a plan that would have smeared President Obama with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright gambit that failed four years ago. But when the GOP Golden Oldie was exposed, you'd think he would have turned his attention to his family- owned Chicago Cubs. It can be easily authenticated that the team that once boasted of Ernie Banks, Ron Santo and Stan Hack ended its 12-game losing streak on Memorial Day. For the Cubs, it wasn't another day at the office.
But for all of their riches, billionaires do get bored. There is nothing left to satisfy their whimsical illusions. Who can imagine a guy like Ricketts fretting about the Cubs like a kid from a North Side Chicago sandlot? You can't. So Rickets has now found a new path for his intended destruction of President Obama. It's a book called "The Roots of Obama's Rage," written by a far-right polemicist Dinesh d'Souza in 2010 and headed for a documentary! D'Souza insists that Obama is ready to punish America's colonialism by supporting anticolonialists around the world. One line in the book will suffice: "For Obama, the radical Muslims are on the right side of history - that's why he is so unnaturally solicitous toward them."
Ricketts describes D'Souza as a "respected scholar".
Joe, shouldn't you be spending more time looking around for some pitchers for the Cubs?
* * * * *
Speaking of boredom, should John McCain's friends find something more productive for him to do on Sunday mornings? As we've all known for years, he has been the leading go-to guy for the Sunday morning talk shows . I don't know why that is. Certainly not because he makes any sense. Maybe because he figures no one will again ask him why he agreed to Sarah Palin as his exciting chaperone on the ticket. Maybe it's because he's not considered to be as crazy as most of the Beltway Republicans. It's certainly not any profound insights that he brings to the table. Old soldiers like McCain don't even fade away.
I should tell you that I stopped watching these shows a long time ago. They are so politically correct with pundits on both sides with George Will forever reading the liberals last will and testament. Except for Fox News, an outfit from whom I would never buy a used car.
From what I read, McCain showed up at Fox to denounce Obama for not solving all of the problems in the Middle East. He thought Obama should have been doing more "stuff" to resolve the issues and that we should stay in Afghanistan for an eternity. I tire. Do you think he's still sulking because as a military hero he lost to some upstart community organizer whose skin color was never acceptable in the Oval Office until 2008?
Showing posts with label Joe Ricketts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Ricketts. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Chicago...that toddling town
One of the gems of Chicago lore is the quaint tale of how the Chicago Cubs have been a miserable baseball team for so long because of the "Billy Goat Curse". As it has been explained, the curse derived from an unhappy Greek saloon-keeper who had a pet goat in his tavern across the street from Wrigley Field. When he tried to enter the stadium with his goat during the 1945 World Series, he was turned back because the goat had an unpleasant odor. The Cubs didn't win that series and have never played in one ever since. Sam Sianis, the goat's owner, is said to have laid an eternal curse on the wretched Cubs over the incident.
Other versions of the team's woes have survived, but I like this one because it fits perfectly into the city's exceptional trail of colorful characters - whether sinister, deadly or just your average Runyonesque ward-heelers. One of the latter, a Democratic alderman, once knowingly responded to a complaint that a city project would tear up too much green space. "You can have too much grass," he said with a straight face.
Then there was alderman Mathias "Paddy" Bauer, a friend of former titanic Mayor Richard J. Daley, who declared early in his spotty political career,"Chicago ain't ready for reform".
Much of the city's political shenanigans was recorded by the late columnist Mike Royko, who rose to journlistic stardom simply by recording what the hooligans were uttering with an unusual writer's eye for detail. (During the many times that I visited the Chicago area, I looked forward to watching Columnist Irv Kupcinet on a TV show with his unique version of the English language. In one instance, in good form, he came up with the unforgettable term, "misleading nomers". Somehow it worked in the context of the Daley-controlled wards.)
Newt Gingrich never let anyone forget that President Obama was a community organizer on Chicago's South Side where Saul Alinsky held forth for many years. What he never said was that Alinsky was conservative in some respects, patriotic, ate at the best steakhouses and included a Catholic priest, businessmen and a member of the Marshall Field department store family among his many his friends. (Of course, Newt said a lot of things that weren't true.)
Deservedly, the Democrats were accused of all sorts of political mischief to sustain their hegemony over Sandburg's "Hog butcher for the world". Yet Chicago also came to be known as the "the city that works." My late father-in-law, a suburban businessman with an office in the Loop, was a Republican who praised Daley. "I've never voted for a Democrat, but if I lived in the city, I'd vote for Dick Daley," he said.
I should tell you that these vignettes of the lives and times of the impolite Chicago pols was encouraged by a recent Republican implosion that added another notch to the city's awkward political history, Meet Joe Ricketts, bloated billionaire, right-winger and founder of the on-line brokerage, TD Ameritrade. It surely ranks higher than a mere dishonorable mention. Although Ricketts is full of denials, he was nearing the moment when he would put up $10 million in an advertising assault on President Obama, described in the plan as a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln." (I can't imagine Billy Goat Sianis or Paddy Bauer using a word like "metrosexual," can you? In their day, it would have cost them tons of support on the street.)
The key to the attack on Obama would be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a dumb idea back in 2008 whose sponsors planned to stretch a few more wearying miles.
Funny, but there may be a link to the Billy Goat Curse here. The Cubs are currently in last place and in an extended losing streak. At the same time, thre NY Times" exposure of Ricketts' association with the anti-Obama preliminaries probably has set back his efforts to haul in $300 million in taxpayer money to rennovate Wrigley Field, in which the Ricketts family-owned Chicago Cubs, play - when they're up to it.
Worse yet, the mayor of Chicago is a feisty Democrat named Rahm Emanuel, former top-ranking member of the Obama team. When Ricketts called Emanuel after the Times article appeared, the mayor didn't bother to return the call.
Yep, irony of ironies, the same Joe Ricketts who also founded the Ending Spending Fund to reduce government spending.
Mitt Romney tells us to rely on the business world because they know how to do it.
On the other hand, Mike Royko might have won another Pulitzer playing with this one.
Other versions of the team's woes have survived, but I like this one because it fits perfectly into the city's exceptional trail of colorful characters - whether sinister, deadly or just your average Runyonesque ward-heelers. One of the latter, a Democratic alderman, once knowingly responded to a complaint that a city project would tear up too much green space. "You can have too much grass," he said with a straight face.
Then there was alderman Mathias "Paddy" Bauer, a friend of former titanic Mayor Richard J. Daley, who declared early in his spotty political career,"Chicago ain't ready for reform".
Much of the city's political shenanigans was recorded by the late columnist Mike Royko, who rose to journlistic stardom simply by recording what the hooligans were uttering with an unusual writer's eye for detail. (During the many times that I visited the Chicago area, I looked forward to watching Columnist Irv Kupcinet on a TV show with his unique version of the English language. In one instance, in good form, he came up with the unforgettable term, "misleading nomers". Somehow it worked in the context of the Daley-controlled wards.)
Newt Gingrich never let anyone forget that President Obama was a community organizer on Chicago's South Side where Saul Alinsky held forth for many years. What he never said was that Alinsky was conservative in some respects, patriotic, ate at the best steakhouses and included a Catholic priest, businessmen and a member of the Marshall Field department store family among his many his friends. (Of course, Newt said a lot of things that weren't true.)
Deservedly, the Democrats were accused of all sorts of political mischief to sustain their hegemony over Sandburg's "Hog butcher for the world". Yet Chicago also came to be known as the "the city that works." My late father-in-law, a suburban businessman with an office in the Loop, was a Republican who praised Daley. "I've never voted for a Democrat, but if I lived in the city, I'd vote for Dick Daley," he said.
I should tell you that these vignettes of the lives and times of the impolite Chicago pols was encouraged by a recent Republican implosion that added another notch to the city's awkward political history, Meet Joe Ricketts, bloated billionaire, right-winger and founder of the on-line brokerage, TD Ameritrade. It surely ranks higher than a mere dishonorable mention. Although Ricketts is full of denials, he was nearing the moment when he would put up $10 million in an advertising assault on President Obama, described in the plan as a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln." (I can't imagine Billy Goat Sianis or Paddy Bauer using a word like "metrosexual," can you? In their day, it would have cost them tons of support on the street.)
The key to the attack on Obama would be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a dumb idea back in 2008 whose sponsors planned to stretch a few more wearying miles.
Funny, but there may be a link to the Billy Goat Curse here. The Cubs are currently in last place and in an extended losing streak. At the same time, thre NY Times" exposure of Ricketts' association with the anti-Obama preliminaries probably has set back his efforts to haul in $300 million in taxpayer money to rennovate Wrigley Field, in which the Ricketts family-owned Chicago Cubs, play - when they're up to it.
Worse yet, the mayor of Chicago is a feisty Democrat named Rahm Emanuel, former top-ranking member of the Obama team. When Ricketts called Emanuel after the Times article appeared, the mayor didn't bother to return the call.
Yep, irony of ironies, the same Joe Ricketts who also founded the Ending Spending Fund to reduce government spending.
Mitt Romney tells us to rely on the business world because they know how to do it.
On the other hand, Mike Royko might have won another Pulitzer playing with this one.
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