Month: September 2004

She reports. You decide.

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi writes from Baghdad:

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. …

It’s hard to pinpoint when the “turning point” exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a “potential” threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to “imminent and active threat,” a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Read the whole shebang.

Ugh

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

My buddy Rob was kind enough to offer me a ticket to join him and two other friends to sit in the first row “dugout box” seats in between home plate and the visitors’ dugout last night. It was the closest I’ve ever been to the action at a major-league baseball game. I shot two rolls of film (you remember film, don’t you?) and once I’ve got prints I’ll scan a few and make them available here.

It’s a real shame the game itself was such a travesty for the Cubs, who lost 8-3. Maddux gave up three two-run homers and that was all she wrote. The Cubs are now tied for the wild card with the Giants, and the Astros trail by only a half game. They must win these next two games against the Reds to have any hope.

UPDATE: I had multiple offers for free tickets to the final two day games against the Reds. I couldn’t afford the time away from work, unfortunately. But after another (What’s the appropriate word here? Let’s try …) disgusting loss today and perhaps more of the same in store tomorrow, I’m glad I had to beg off.

So too, I think, are the folks who clean up the stands after the game. As my brain would have doubtless exploded after LaTroy Hawkins blew another lead with two outs in the ninth inning, they’d have had some messy work to do. See? it worked out best for everybody.

UPDATE II: Here are some photos Rob took at the game.

Escape from New York

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Compared to last September, this blog has been very blase about the Cubs’ scratching and clawing for a spot in the postseason this autumn. It’s not because I don’t care. My wife and neighbors, who must tolerate the occasional and all-too-literal howl of grief from yours truly, are quite aware of how much I care.

Like the boo-birds that have been nesting at Wrigley Field this summer, I probably expect too much from this supremely talented ballclub. I’m satisfied that regardless of what happens, the Cubs will finish above .500 for the second consecutive year for the first time since 1971-72. Still, in spite of all the injuries, this team should have 95 wins by now and be a cinch for the wild card.

Instead, they are doing everything they can to clutch an early golf season from the jaws of a postseason berth. Witness their pitiful series loss to the Mets. This team is what it is. The upsides (great starting pitching and incredible power) scale the greatest heights, and the downsides (mediocre relief pitching and terrible on-base percentage) slink to the lowest depths.

All I can do is root that their strengths will outweight their weaknesses, or just that they’ll do well enough over these last seven games to make the playoffs — where anything can happen. What’s there to say about a game like Saturday’s, where they led 3-0 with two outs in the top of the ninth and lost? Or a game like Sunday’s, where they managed a grand total of three hits off a team that’s 20 games below .500?

Not much, and here it is: Not much.

Who’s afraid of the big bad box store?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

After months of politicking in Chicago’s City Council (Da Mare decided to let the plebes decide for a change), Wal-Mart finally got a zoning allowance to build a store on the city’s West Side. Its bid for a store on the South Side was rejected by the Windy City’s feudal lords.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart seemed to back off the South Side project entirely, thanks to renewed efforts in the City Council to make the store pay a $10 minimum wage and provide health benefits — legal requirements no other grocery store must meet. The rules are meant to protect the local union shop grocery stores’ negotiating position and, purportedly, the workers who lucky enough to be hired by Wal-Mart.

The only problem is that Wal-Mart — for some absurd, obviously capitalist piggish and evil reason — doesn’t like to do business in places where it has to abide by a special set of rules that don’t apply to its competitors. With the ordinances looming, Wal-Mart may even beg off the West Side project.

So much for the hundreds of jobs the stores would bring to these less developed parts of the city. So much for the cheap, convenient shopping that would be available to area residents. Don’t worry, though. The project in the South Suburbs is still a go, according to the Northwest Times of Indiana. South and West siders will just have to keep driving out to the suburbs and pay extra for record-high gas prices. Who cares about them? They’re just consumers, after all.

But of course no one on the South Side would even dream of working at a Wal-Mart without City Council-approved “living wages.” Perhaps Shawala Turner would.

In a Tribune story on the people who would be affected by proposed cuts in night-owl el service, John Bebow tells her story:

It’s close to 4 a.m. now, and showing up is Shawala Turner’s only concern. The 28-year-old rises at 1:45, gets ready for work, and catches a bus to the 63rd Street station. The Red Line takes her to Washington Street, where she transfers to the Blue Line for the long ride out to O’Hare. She’s due there at 4:30. In eight hours, she’ll make about $56, before taxes, for pouring coffee at Starbucks.

“I don’t like coffee,” she says. “I really don’t.”

The proposed Wal-Mart store whose zoning variance was not approved by the noble protectionists in City Council would have been at 83rd Street and Stewart Avenue — three el stops away from Shawala on the red line.