Our friends, the Mexico drug cartels? Or will ISIS soon be at O’Hare?

I got my laugh Friday from The Inquisitr, a website that I suspect likes to think it’s giving us serious news but seems to have a sense of the garish in terms of how things get reported.

What I found humorous was their story headlined, ISIS Plans to Invade United States through Mexico, But Drug Cartels Could Fight Back.

THEY’RE CLAIMING THAT the militant Islamic State organization that is the newest troublemaker in the news is slowly, but surely, building up their forces by getting people into Mexico.

One day, those people will be large enough to be a military-like force who will then move north into the southwestern United States – then beyond.

First, Truth or Consequences. Then Phoenix and Albuquerque. Pretty soon, they’ll be marching down Michigan Avenue and desecrating the lions out front of the Art Institute of Chicago and camping in Millennium Park – while pondering the “decadent Western” mind who created the concept of “the Bean.”

Of course, the web site threw the potential oddball factor into the equation. To get to the United States, they’d have to go through those northern regions where drug cartels have been fighting for control with the Mexican military for many years.

WOULD THOSE DRUG dealers object so much to anyone trying to come through their “turf” that they’d wind up providing resistance? It almost reminds me of that 1990 film “The Rocketeer,” which had a scene where gangsters suddenly found themselves fighting alongside FBI agents against a common enemy – Nazis.

Would the future security of the United States wind up being supplemented by the same people who are spreading so much of the illicit drugs that are causing so many social problems in our society?

Writing these past few paragraphs has been unusual, because what I have basically spewed is a nonsense theory – albeit one that I’m sure the conservative ideologues of our society are way too eager to believe. Just look at the way Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made claims that some Islamic State agents already have entered the United States through Texas!

They have been spreading for years the idea that these subversive elements of our world would use Mexico to try to get at the United States. Usually as part of their cockamamie idea to fortify, and militarize, the U.S./Mexico border – while also deporting everyone who doesn’t fit their image of who ought to be allowed to consider themselves an “American.”

IF ANYTHING, THIS ought to be evidence enough of why we ought to be encouraging of friendly relations with Mexico, so that our interests and theirs remain as one. Unless we want to have to count on a real-life scenario like the 1942 film “Soy Puro Mexicano” (where a man at his local bar overhears talk at another table, realizes the people are Nazi agents with plans to enter the United States, then spends the rest of the film fighting them off – because no self-respecting Mexican would want to be a Nazi!).

On a more serious note, it is encouraging to learn that a Department of Homeland Security official testified this week before a Senate committee that the current intelligence level and capability along the border is capable of handling a threat – should it occur.

Many news organizations (including the New York Daily News, CNN and the Daily Mail, to name a few) have reported that this is more the latest topic for the kind of people who take Twitter too seriously! It also should be noted that federal officials are more concerned about those people with ties to the Islamic State organization who manage to get passports, then catch airplane flights into a U.S. airport – just like any other international tourist.

Does this mean that if there is an “invasion,” it’s more likely to be with a group of these people flying into O’Hare International Airport?

I CAN JUST see it now. They get off their flight, seize control of the food court (where they declare the concept of stuffed “Chicago-style” pizza to be “decadent”) and work their way to taxicabs that they commandeer.

Where they then proceed to get stuck in rush hour traffic on the Kennedy Expressway.

Be honest; that scenario is about as legitimate as the notion that an ISIS “army” is going to be wading through the Rio Grande any time soon!

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More scut-work, less ‘news’

I’m not going to join the gathering of people who feel compelled to trash Journatic – an entity designed to do the “scut-work” of putting together local information so it can be published in newspapers.

Will more and more of these boxes be empty?



It’s not that I think much of the type of information the company says it produces. If anything, the company has been fairly honest about what it intends to produce – which isn’t anything of any real substance.

THEY’RE TRYING TO make a profit off the production of all that routine information that readers might want, but is so labor-intensive (and costly) to produce.

And they’re taking advantage of the inherent laziness of some publications in wanting to have people do real work (at real pay) by offering to do it for them.

Among those publications is the Chicago Tribune, which for about a month had a contract with Journatic to produce much of the information that fills the pages of those TribLocal sections that the newspaper inserts into the copies of the paper that sell in the suburbs that they deem worthy.

They used to have a combination of staff and freelance writers to produce the sections, until the Tribune thought it could have the sections at a discount.

SO THE FACT that the techniques by which Journatic operates to produce scut-work sound borderline sleazy doesn’t really reflect poorly on that company – since I never expected much of anything from them to begin with.

I’m bothered by the Tribune management that was looking for a way to cut corners and reduce their costs while pretending to offer some improved journalistic benefit.

And now that they’re trying to be all high-minded and holier-than-thou by saying they will no longer use Journatic content, that is what really offends me.

Tribune-types should have known exactly what they were getting when they signed on with this company. If they didn’t, they were clueless. If they did and went ahead with the deal anyway, that makes all this outrage the company now expresses just a bunch of bunk.

AS FAR AS I’m concerned, phony outrage is more appalling than the idea of Philippines-based “writers” putting Anglo-sounding bylines on their copy to make it look like it was produced in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of those TribLocal sites (which some Tribune readers never see if they happen to live in a community or neighborhood that marketing-types believe is unworthy of such an effort), since the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the Tribune has no plans to hire more people to do the work.

Which means we’re talking about existing staff having to take on a larger workload. More scut-work for swamped staff – which means less “news.”

Of course, we’re also getting less access to “news” because of the loss of WIQI-FM as a news-format radio station. The news format never caught on with listeners, causing management to dump all the talk on Tuesday and convert to an “adult hits” format.

BUT I WONDER if anyone is even going to notice. The ratings for the radio station were really that low. The most attention they ever got may have been for those nonsensical billboards they ran using Rod Blagojevich’s picture (then pasting over a smiley-face with a funky blue hairdo when Blagojevich’s attorneys objected).

It seems the station had counted on the idea of a clear-sounding FM signal as their gimmick to get people away from long-running newsradio WBBM-AM. Except that the CBS station got its own FM simulcast.

No more!!!!



Which made the self-described “FM News” sound like a flightier take on real news. I heard some people claim the station was “news, with a hip-hop flava.” Although on the few occasions I heard the station, it struck me as a pop station stuck in the ‘80s and thinking it was “hip.” The kind of people who think that "cutting edge" is Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo in Michael Jackson's hit song, "Beat It."

Maybe the radio station’s fate is merely evidence that more serious information will always prevail, and that the real problem is those executives who believe the problem with modern-day “media” is that it wastes so much time on “news.”

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Way too early for real people, but not politicos, to think about ‘14 elections

Speculation that Toni Preckwinkle is already being considered for higher office – even though she’s barely finished the first year of her term as Cook County Board president – bothers me, although it doesn’t surprise me.

PRECKWINKLE: Governor, someday?

For the record, Carol Marin used her column for the Chicago Sun-Times to include a tidbit that the Illinois Legislature’s leaders (Michael Madigan and John Cullerton) are trying to encourage Preckwinkle to run against Gov. Pat Quinn when the position is up for election again in 2014.

MEANWHILE, THE CAPITOL Fax newsletter used its website to follow up with a statement from Cullerton (the Illinois Senate leader) saying it’s not true, and that it is “irresponsible” to think about such things right now.

After all, how should Quinn react to the idea that the two legislative leaders who are supposed to be his political allies are already searching for his replacement? I can’t even recall former Senate President James “Pate” Philip doing anything like that to then-Gov. Jim Edgar!

Personally, my guess would be that it is too strong to say that Madigan and Cullerton are backing Preckwinkle for a future gubernatorial bid – which allows them to “deny” the story at this point.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been discussed, and that there aren’t some people trying now to figure out what would have to be done to prepare for such an electoral bid to take place three years from now.

THAT IS THE reality of electoral politics. People who run for government positions have to constantly think forward. Personally, I compare them to sharks – who have to keep moving at all times or else they can’t breathe properly and they’d die.

I’m sure some of you will think of other ways in which government officials and sharks are similar, but I’m not going there. Not today.

But that is also part of why many of us feel that disconnect between the people who run government, and those of us who expect government to operate to our benefit (those of you who like the Grover Norquist image of “drowning government in the bathtub” are a unique breed who should best be considered at a different time).

I personally am not really even in the mood to have to think about who should be president in 2012, or who should win election to Congress or the state Legislature (the big posts that will be up for grabs in this year’s election cycle).

I CERTAINLY DON’T want to have to think about who should be the new Illinois governor (since a part of me hasn’t really recovered from the ugliness of the 2010 elections for governor). A part of me reads these tidbits being reported in recent days about Preckwinkle and shudders in disgust.

It’s too early to be thinking of any such effort to depose Quinn – almost as though the powers-that-be have already determined they’re not going to accomplish much of anything during the next couple of years. So they’re shopping for a leader with whom they’d rather work.

Which makes me wonder (at least in part) if the hard-headed attitude that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich used to take in dealing with the legislative leaders may have been justified.

Madigan recently used a speech at Elmhurst College to say that Blagojevich’s goals as governor seemed more motivated by trying to make him look noble for a future run for higher office. In short, they were about himself, not the people!

BUT COULD IT just be that Blagojevich knew he was working with legislative leaders who had their own agendas, and that he’d have to get tough if he weren’t to get pushed around? Which takes on some more credibility because of the oft-expressed complaint by Democratic political people that Quinn is weak and lets himself get pushed around.

Perhaps the reality is that he’s not getting pushed around enough to appease the legislative leadership. So they want to dump him?

I don’t know what to think. Personally, I have no problem with the concept of Toni Preckwinkle. She has been effective in her current post. And it wouldn’t shock me to see her try to run for some higher level office at some point in the future.

Maybe even in 2014.

THAT’S JUST TOO far in the future for me to want to contemplate at this time. And I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that way.

The only problem is that we’re now forced to have to consider it on some level.

Because if we’re not careful, the political powers that be will work some sort of deal behind the scenes, and then they’ll try to impose it on us in a couple of years in such a way that perhaps they’ll make us think it was our idea to begin with and they're just following our will.

Which sounds, to me, like the sequel to the film “Wag the Dog” will be set in Illinois.

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