Remember the good old days?

Remember the good old days when we laughed at the Soviets with their G-U-M stores, which were the only place you could buy anything? Leslie Patton and Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s divide-and- conquer strategy prevailed in Chicago by pitting construction workers against employees who will stock shelves and ring registers. …

“Wal-Mart played on the whims of the building trade unions, and the rest gave in,” Reverend Booker Vance, a spokesman for Good Jobs Chicago, a coalition of local unions, congregations and community groups, said in a telephone interview. “You have a lot of smoke and mirrors, and Wal-Mart would like to give the impression that they acted in good faith, but they have not.”

We’re not all that far from being the butt of our own joke. See also here.

Thursday Morning Calico Cat Blogging

A calico kitty managed to sneak onto the field during a Cubs game in Chicago. Fortunately, she managed to survive the experience and is now living at a local animal shelter under a vet’s care:

A veterinarian who was at the game took the cat after it was captured by a security guard and deposited tail-first into the box seats down the left field line.

[...]

The veterinarian plans to care for the cat the next 7-10 days, hoping that the owner shows up to Wrigley to claim it.

“If not, I’m sure it will find a good home,” Chase said.

There was no ID on the cat, so its name is unknown. A Wrigley groundskeeper said it should be named “Ozzie,” after White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who claims to have seen giant rats in Wrigley Field.

The kitty is almost certainly a she-kitty, as most calicos are female.

Keep It Up, Press Corps!

The past week seems to have been one giant attempt by the Traditional Media — despite everything Patrick Fitzgerald could sensibly do to prevent its happening — to pretend that Barack Obama is somehow guilty of doing Blago’s bidding, even though a large chunk of the profanity on the Blagojevich tapes is connected to Blago’s being angry precisely because Obama and his people wouldn’t do Blago’s bidding.

Well, if the GOP/Media Complex was trying to put a dent in Obama’s poll numbers, they might as well give up right now:

Gallup shows that 72 percent of the public has a favorable view of Obama, and 18 percent an unfavorable view. The 72 percent favorability rating matches the 72 percent score that Obama achieved on November 7th-9th for the highest since the election, whereas the 18 percent disapproval rating is Obama’s lowest yet. Three days ago, before Blagojevich’s arrest, those ratings were 70 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

Rasmussen, likewise, sees no change to Obama’s approval ratings. 67 percent of their voters now approve of Obama’s performance, and 31 percent disapprove, exactly matching Obama’s ratings from three days prior, and within a percentage point of his peak totals.

Keep it up, press corps! Let’s see if your bogus attacks can get him consistently over 80% approval before he’s sworn in next month.

Epic Blago Fail

Word has hit that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich tried to stiff-arm Obama’s transition team into giving him a plum job in exchange for picking somebody they’d like to see fill Obama’s seat, then got increasingly angry as the Obama people refused to play ball.

Why do we know this? Because Patrick Fitzgerald, the scourge of corrupt politicians of all parties, had Blago’s office phone tapped as a part of the ongoing Rezko probe. Ooooops. Now Blago’s in the pokey, along with his chief of staff.

I was wondering when Blago would be fitted for the orange jumpsuit he’s destined to be wearing for the next ten years or so. Now we know.

A New Dawn for the Chicago Sun-Times

Editor & Publisher reports that the Chicago Sun-Time, formerly owned by such rightwing rascals as Rupert Murdoch and Lord Conrad Black, is moving to the left:

“We are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune — that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue,” [Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed] wrote. “We’re rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush’s war in Iraq.”

[...]

Reed said the Sun-Times will be adding seats to the editorial board “so that board members — the paper’s brain trust — reflect the ethnic and social diversity of our city.”

If you live where the Sun-Times is delivered, consider subscribing to it. If the political shift has positive financial effects, other newspapers will take notice.