GAP Logo change: Shows you how shallow most people are today

Really. The GAP decides to change its logo and thousands of people -- many in the design industry who did not get the contract, start screaming. Seriously. Is that what people care about these days. The old GAP logo and the new GAP logo are truly the least important things we should be getting up in arms about in today's world. People are starving to death. Unemployment is still outrageous. And what gets people motivated

The old logo, dumped and now back:


The new logo, that has been scrapped

Honestly. The new logo looks far better than the old logo. The old logo is tired and unimaginative. The new one suggests moving in to the new century.

But the GAP owners cower under fear of offending the market, when the reality is the only people offended are a few over-active bloggers and a marketing industry upset that it didn't get the contract to design a new logo.

The GAP's real problem though is in execution. It's how they unveiled it that caused them problems. Instead of preparing the public, and alerting them so it wasn't a surprise -- surprise always makes for bad news in any industry -- they simply posted the new logo on the web site without any pre-notice and it was a surprise.

Pathetic and said reflect on our society. Shallow. Overly critical. Too angry. Ignoring so much that the GAP has done to make our lives easier. I prefer clothes from the GAP and have all my life. If the GAP wants to design a new logo, I support it.

But like with people who write letters to the editor, only those people who are upset take the time to do so. People who are happy have no emotional fuel or temper to push them to write anything. So the one angry letter looks like 500 when in fact it only represents one angry letter. And for every one angry letter, there are usually more than 500 positive people who feel the opposite but don't have the emotion-charged motivation to write and express their views.

Grow a spine GAP and tell the whiners to shut the f up!

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Battle for freedoms clothes-pinned to too much government-like controls and less freedoms

You'll want to hold your nose on this one, with a clothes pin.

Jill Saylor lives in a mobile home in Canton, Ohio. Yet she has come to symbolize the battle between the old days when people were free and the new days where everything is litigated in court and freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Americans are losing the rights to everything and they have nothing left to lose, the Janice Joplin lyrics from her song "Bobby McGee." But for Saylor, who came up with a small way to fight global warming, she's being hung out to dry by her trailer park management company.

The park where Saylor lives has a ban on drying your clothes out in public, in your backyard. If mobile homes even have a back yard. But according to the New York Times, Saylor is not alone. Turns out that in private communities -- places where an owner rents or leases out space for you to live -- the number one ban, among many, is one that prohibits the public drying of clothes on clothes lines outside of the home.

When I was young, I remember looking across out white picket fence and seeing dozens of backyards as far as the eye could see with cloths lines and clothes pins taut with damp clothes drying in the sun and waving in the breeze. Most of the clothes were sheets, shirts and pants. But you'd see the occasional underwear and bras and private things like lingerie. But it's not the saucy aspect of the practice that has the owners of Saylor's trailer park up in arms against her. They just don't like the site of clothes hanging on a clothes line. It makes the neighborhood look, "trashy" maybe?

But trashy has become our life in America these days where more and more controls are stripping away our private rights. We're living under oppressive restrictions that prohibit us from doing things that our parents and grandfathers took for granted. Some of the restrictions are the result of board members with nothing better to do. Others are the result of our own fears or maybe the conditioning which prohibits us from being the free people we are.

When I was young, our parents let us go trick-or-treating "until the street lights came on." These days, a child doesn't walk the street in daylight without a mother or parent closely monitoring them for tragedies like a child kidnapper, sexual predator or bullying by other students their age. And we're not talking just high school. We're talking kindergarten.

I used to walk to my kindergarten class. Was the world safer then or is it just a mental state of mind that is deteriorating?

Some economists claim that you can save as much as 20 percent on your home energy bills by hanging the clothes out to dry rather than running them through the dryer. Everyone has a washer and a dryer these days. It's an expensive convenience, but isn't convenience supposed to be expensive?

Everything has become a cause of a problem for someone else. We didn't have big backyard fences when I was a kid. They were short, picket fences you could see past and through. Today, everyone wants privacy. They erect wall-like wood fences that are six feet high to separate themselves from their neighbors. Maybe that is the real problem. We don't talk to each other any more. It's easy to dislike someone you don't know, and disliking people increases in a society where people lock themselves inside their castles to protect themselves from their neighbors, who might be sex predators and criminals on parole.

Common sense should rule but common sense is going out the window. The clothes lines that Saylor put up were not like the old days when the line stretched from the back fence to the brick wall of the back of the house in several rows. Or from poll to poll -- many people actually had clothes line polls cemented in the backyard as permanent fixtures, a service they paid for just as they pay for dryers from Sears or now Costco.

Saylor has a unique system of squares that minimized the visual size of the drying process. It is kind of like a rectangular maze with inner lines of clothes drying. It made it all look so efficient.

Why not? Well, some think what Saylor does doesn't look good.

I say the restrictions are all wet.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Scott Lee Cohen's campaign stands out above the rest when it comes to positive messages

Scott Lee Cohen's campaign for governor stands out about the rest

Television commercial breaks are filled with mudslinging from the various candidates. The candidates for the U.S. Senate, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, spend most of their time bashing each other. During the 5 pm news on WLS TV, I saw six commercials from each of them bashing each other.

It's the same in the race for governor between the anointed lead candidates, Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican challenger Bill Brady are hammering each other with accusations and attacks.

It's sickening that in our culture, the only way to stand out in an election is to throw mud and broadcast a tsunami of negative commercials.

There is one candidate who stands out above the crowd. Scott Lee Cohen. Every commercial I have seen of his has been positive. Instead of bashing Quinn or Brady, Cohen has been pushing his idea to host job fairs to help people out of work -- there is 10 percent unemployment in the state -- to find new jobs.

It's so positive that the mainstream news media -- which benefits from the attack ads because they are purchased on their stations and in ads in their newspapers -- have been attacking Cohen, challenging his positive messages and questioning the job fairs. It got so bad that Cohen lashed back at the thinned-skinned hypocritical media which loves to dish it out but can't take the criticism. Cohen chastised the media for focusing on the negative, ignoring his campaign and then rushing in with absurd claims that the public is not interested in his job fairs.

It sounds like the mainstream media is protecting its election campaign revenue flow. Data predicts that $3 billion will be spent on election ads by the November 2 election, much by unanimous organizations that don't have to identify themselves or their sources. The media allows the other candidates to bash each other because it brings in big money. Bashing Cohen allows the media to suck up to those candidates.

It's pathetic. Voters are tired of the name-calling, the attack mailers and TV commercials. They are nauseating. I want to see one candidate who spends his money focusing on what he will do to help the people of Illinois, not waste money attacking his opponent so that he can bring him down and make his own poll numbers look better. That's what negative ads do. They bring down the opponent and make the attacker appear to be better. In reality, the attacker doesn't look better. They stay the same as they were.

But they could be better if they would focus their attention telling voters how they plan to deal with Illinois' gargantuan economic problems. How do we get people back to work? How do we raise revenues without increasing the burden on the already over-burdened taxpayers? How do we trim waste and end corruption and make sure that the taxpayers get their money's worth from our elected officials.

I'm not hearing that from Kirk, Giannoulias, Quinn or Brady.

But I am hearing it from Cohen.

Voters should wise up and stop allowing the media and the negative attacks to lead them through another election in which the same old people are put in power and nothing changes. Nothing.

Take a careful look at Cohen and judge for yourself. The guy has his act together.

As for those who would attack him for his personal issues -- a failed marriage, a bad relationship -- well, everyone is in the same boat. Every person in Illinois has something that is embarrassing in their life. No one is any better than Scott Lee Cohen. He's just a human being like all of us.

But if a candidate can be judged on how they conduct themselves in an election, Scott Lee Cohen has risen above the rest.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Tribune slams Joan Murphy and Deborah Sims but endorsed Liz Gorman for the Cook County Board

Tribune slams Joan Patricia Murphy and Deborah Sims, but endorsed Liz Gorman for the Cook County Board

5th District (South Side, south suburbs): Incumbent Deborah Sims has a disastrous pro-tax, anti-jobs agenda, but Democrats in her economically distressed district renominated her over a far superior candidate. Her opponent on the Republican ticket is Miriam Shabo. No endorsement.

6th District (south suburbs): Time and again, incumbent Democrat Joan Patricia Murphy has cast votes that punished taxpayers and employers in her district. We've noted before that Murphy is fiercely dedicated to three things: obeying Stroger, kowtowing to big labor and raising taxes: In 2009, Murphy, like Sims, even voted against a sales tax rollback that she had co-sponsored. Republicans offer a much better option in small-businesswoman Sandra Czyznikiewicz, whose reform votes on the board could begin to undo the damage Murphy has wrought on her constituents. The Tribune endorses Czyznikiewicz, who wants to immediately repeal the remaining half of the Stroger sales tax increase — and who is determined to cut the county's bloated spending.

17th District (southwest, west and northwest suburbs): We could fill the page detailing the to-and-fro in this hard-fought race. WFLD-TV outed Democrat challenger Patrick Maher for not coming clean in candidate questionnaires about his arrest for severely beating a fellow student in his days at Illinois State University. GOP incumbent Elizabeth Doody Gorman faces questions — but not charges — about a transfer of money claimed by Chrysler Financial Services to the Orland Township Republican Organization. We can't begin to adjudicate all of the competing and complex accusations in this race. But we do suggest that voters look past the dispiriting volley to focus on this: Gorman aggressively co-led the fight to roll back Stroger's sales tax hike, and she has a solid record of working to reduce county spending and streamline this government. The Tribune endorses Gorman.

Local Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to be featured on "The Ray Hanania Show"radio

Local Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to be featured on Chicagoland radio

Elmhurst, Il – Soldiers from the Chicagoland land area serving in Afghanistan and Iraq will speak to the Chicagoland audiences about their experiences in a new segment to be broadcast on “The Ray Hanania Show” on WJJG AM 1530 radio called “Voices of our Soldiers.”

The new segment is being coordinated with the U.S. Military command in Kabul, Afghanistan and in Baghdad, Iraq.

The first interview will be with Sgt. Joshua Hall, whose mother is from Yorkville and fiancée lives in Batavia, Illinois. The segment will be broadcast live from Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 at 9 am Chicago time (6:30 pm Afghanistan).

Hall is a member of the US Army infantry fighting the terrorists, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The public is invited to call in and show support for the troops by calling 708-493-1530 during the segment.

“This is an exciting segment for the show. As a veteran who served during the Vietnam War, I am very proud of our military who have served to protect this country from terrorism and extremist violence,” said show host Ray Hanania.

Hanania, a former City Hall reporter (77-92) and radio talk show host at WLS AM, launched the WJJG radio show in February 2008. The program focuses on listener talk and interviews with people in the news.

The program is broadcast Monday through Friday, Mon-Thurs 8-9:30 am and Fri 7 to 9 am. On Fridays, Hanania simulcasts a show between 7 and 8 am with WNZK in Detroit, Michigan focusing on American Arab issues. Hanania is American Palestinian. His co-host in Detroit is Laila elHussini who is American Syrian.

The audience can listen to the show on radio and also live on the Internet every morning. The show also broadcasts in live video, too, at www.RadioChicagoland.com. WJJG AM 1530 broadcasts primarily to the Northern Illinois region and is a daytime FCC licensed station. The signal can be picked up as far south as Orland Park, Illinois and to the Wisconsin and Iowa borders.

Hanania is an award winning syndicated columnist on mainstream American and Middle East issues. His columns are published in local community newspapers and his Middle East column is published in the Jerusalem Post and distributed by Creators Syndicate.

END

At least State Rep. Kevin McCarthy knows how to campaign

At least State Rep. Kevin McCarthy knows how to campaign

State Rep. Kevin McCarthy ventured from his office, one house away from me, to stop by and say hi. He's walking the precincts, which is a good thing to do these days. Not take the election for granted.

McCarthy's challenger, Jeffrey Junkas, hasn't been around at all and the one conversation I had with was uncomfortable as he has somewhat extremist conservative views. 

I wasn't home when McCarthy came by but my wife and son said he was the epitome of respect. He acknowledged he has to get out there more and work harder to reach voters with his message. And he was respectful, which means he understands the role of columnists. I don't expect friendship but I do expect elected officials to talk to the voters.

I didn't like McCarthy's mailers

, though I know he is a good person

. They were below him. The one slamming Junkas was not worth the time or money to print, the usual strategy of a PR consultant with no real experience. Why slam Junkas when you can tell voters what you stand for? And be specific. Tell your media people to work a little harder at representing what you really stand for in the mailers. Don't waste my time with a generic mailer with pictures of seniors on it, especially one with a black eye. It was offensive. And had it not come in the mail, I might not have wailed on McCarthy's campaign.

There's no doubt in my mind that McCarthy is going to win. Junkas doesn't have the money. He has an abrasive personality. And he has helped to split the Republican party with his internal squabbles. I happen to like Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, the Republican incumbent. She's a good representative. And she's stood up for the right causes. Maybe Junkas should look around at who is around him and make some new decisions if he really wants to be a contender.

And just because you are going to win, Rep. McCarthy, doesn't mean you should take the voters for granted. Mail out some good literature. Tell the public what you stand for. Speak from the heart, not from the talents of some over-politicized political consultant.

I want to see a mailer who tells the people who McCarthy is, followed by one that tells the voters what he plans to do and why.

That would impress me.

Working hard to earn voter support, even if you have a cake walk, is a good way to show the voters you care.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com

Maher loses firefighter's backing in county race against Gorman

Local Firefighters Union Backs Off Endorsement

(Orland Park, Illinois) – Support for 17th District Cook County Commissioner Democrat nominee Patrick Maher continues to melt away in the wake of news reports documenting Maher’s misstatements about both his academic and criminal records and his attempts to conceal his criminal past. (Reports from Fox News Chicago, the Southtown Star, and the Daily Herald). The latest group to walk away from Maher is the local firefighters union that (through their PAC) had planned to endorse Maher, who currently serves as the Board Chairman for the Orland Fire Protection District. After initially recommending an endorsement of Maher, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 2754, per a vote by their executive board, has decided against endorsing Maher and instead will remain neutral in the race for 17th District Cook County Commissioner. “Given the information that has come out about Mr. Maher’s problems telling the truth, the union clearly did the right thing by rethinking their endorsement and deciding to stay neutral and showed political courage in doing so,” said Cook County GOP Chairman Lee Roupas.  “Working families in the 17th District have a friend in Commissioner Liz Gorman,” Roupas added.   “She has a strong record on the County Board of fighting for working families and opposing the pervasive fraud and mismanagement institutionalized by the Democrat Machine.” ###