If you drove anywhere in the Chicago area Tuesday morning, we feel for you.
At one point it was taking 90 minutes or more to get from downtown to O"Hare. If you were commuting from the suburbs, after 9 a.m., when the sun was out and the snow plowed, it still took more than 80 minutes to travel from near Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg to the heart of Chicago.
All it seems to take is a couple bad accidents, anywhere on any Interstate, and it brings things to a crawl throughout the whole system. (And feel free to share your commuter nightmares with us.)
Sure the RTA has its operational funding in place, but the horrible traffic shouts out that regional transportation woes are far from over.
Olympic sprinter and former gold medalist Marion Jones was once considered the fastest woman on earth.
But she can't run away from her mistakes any more. On Friday, she was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to investigators about using performance enhancing drugs and her role in a check fraud scam.
A little late with this, but what the heck was Hillary Clinton wearing last week at her victory rally in New Hampshire? It looked like a sofa your grandma would have.
Sure it's tougher for a woman. All men do is put on a variation on that same dull suit they all have - with a flag pin, of course. They are the guys in the WaMu commercials (with Obama being the cool, laid back guy they bankers in the ad just don't get but are sort of in awe of maybe.)
But for a campaign like Clinton's that seems so programmed, one can only imagine the sessions deciding what she will wear for the day.
Forget about Huckabee, Clinton, Obama, Giuliani and the rest of that lot. The voting America really loves starts next week when the new season of "American Idol" begins.
Actually the first few weeks of the show are the hardest to stomach, a theater of cruelty featuring the bizarre and the off-key prancing and singing for that insufferable panel of judges: Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell.
A good amount of the godawful singing seems staged and if it isn't it's just picking on the mentally or psychologically challenged.
It wouldn't be so bad but for that Jackson has claimed to this "dawg" that the dreadful talent they show represents a true cross section of the talent they encounter.
That may be true, but the only reason they put it on is to make fun of the frail.
While in the Middle East this week, President Bush visited Capernaum, a site where Jesus is said to have performed miracles.
He must have been inspired because he predicted the signing of a Middle East peace treaty - within a year.
"I believe it's going to happen, that there's going to be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office," he said.
Well it would be nothing short of a miracle if Bush could accomplish what other leaders haven't.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency claims that only $1 billion of the $4.5 billion allotted for projects down in Louisiana and Mississippi has been used.
According to USA Today, the money is supposed to go to the states which turn it over to local governments for rebuilding.
Part of the trouble is that some of the money is in the form of matching grants - and the towns can't come up with the funding, explained "Scout Prime," a blogger at First Draft who has made numerous trips to the Gulf since Katrina to lend a hand and to document what the heck is - and isn't - happening.
The suburb of Evanston will soon consider an ordinance that would make it a "sanctuary city."
This would mean that in most cases city employees and police could not ask about a person's immigration status. This is also technically the case in Cook County and Chicago where there is a "don't ask don't tell" immigration policy in place.
GM executives are touting the new technology that will allow its cars to drive themselves and park at their destination. And, says Larry Burns, research and development vice president, it could be ready for sale in the next 10 years.
I'm all for new technology, and I even welcomed the technology that already allows a high-end Lexus model to park itself. But a car that drives itself may be going too far.
Maybe it'll work when there are dedicated lanes on U.S. highways to accommodate such high-tech vehicles. Until then, I rather take my chances on the road with cars driven by attentive humans.
Leave it to misguided environmentalists to fuel demand for ethanol. Corn is in short supply because it is being used to make ethanol, added to gasoline to reduce reliance on crude oil. And as government corn subsidies increase, farmers are planting more corn.
What may be good for the environment is not so good for beer drinkers. The shift in crops is creating a shortage of hops and barley, two key ingredients in beer — and the result is higher prices for beer. The price hikes have already hit other items in nation's shopping car, everything from milk and bread to snacks.
It's all the more galling because the benefits of ethanol are debatable. Scientific studies have shown it takes as much as 29 percent more energy to process corn into ethanol than the fuel it produces. That makes the higher prices we must pay for food and beer that much harder to swallow.
These days the French media are obsessed with their president's love life. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who divorced his wife of 11 years in October, is now dating an ex-model turned pop singer, Carla Bruni.
The media are salivating and they photographed them vacationing in Egypt. Ooh la la!
Would you spend a week in jail to lose enough pounds to hit your ideal weight? Nearly a quarter of respondents in a FItness magazine poll of 1,000 women said they would. Twenty-three percent would shave their head, 22 percent would wear a bikini on TV and 21 percent would trade 10 years of their life, according to a USA Today story. Most would rather have an extra toe than an extra 50 pounds.
The thing is, none of this is surprising. It's hard, hard work to lose weight. Who wouldn't take a shortcut if they could? (Although that part about sacrificing ten years of your life is a bit much.) And you can hide a sixth toe a lot easier than you can hide 50 pounds. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution.
Alexander Nuxoll wants to be able to wear a T-shirt to Neuqua Valley High School in the far southwest suburbs that reads "Be Happy, Not Gay."
The school won't let him, but suggested the phrase be "Be Happy, Be Straight." Apparently not catchy enough, Nuxoll and his supporters are turning the matter into a drawn out civics lesson which they see as a free speech issue and the school district sees as its duty to promote tolerance and keep order.
Women hold home parties for Tupperware, Pampered Chef, candles, fondue, bad art, even adult toys. So nobody should be shocked to hear that out in Arizona Dana Shafman has been holding Taser parties, getting singles, wives, moms and grandmothers to buy pretty pink stun guns at $350 a clip.
Taser has a booth at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas set up to look like a living room where Shafman will hold one of her gatherings for business people showing how she sells the company's C2 model to women who feel they need such protection.
One of Shafman's potential customers already told AP what would be a great ad slogan: "You don't want to kill somebody. You just want to be safe, you know?"
But if Taser conquers the home market, we can see the inevitable accident: Someone reaches for a cell phone, mistakenly grabs a C2 and stuns herself while multitasking on the Kennedy, causing an accident and massive traffic jam.
Ricky Labit, a big guy down in Louisiana, is beefing because he says a an all-you-can-eat buffet first overcharged him, then comped his bill and told him not to come back.
Labit , 6'3'', 277 pounds, apparently was overeating crab and frog legs in a way that would make Homer Simpson proud.
Note to buffets: With the size of many Americans, don't make your place all-you-can eat, because many of us can really, really eat. Set a maximum number of plates or put a pound limit on the amount someone can have each visit.
"A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years." That's how long John McCain said he's willing to have U.S. troops remain in Iraq. Think the Arizona senator might be having a bad campaign day?
One more example of how we sometimes put too much trust in technology: A driver in New York, following the directions of his GPS device, turns right onto some railroad tracks and gets stuck. He escapes his Ford Focus just before it gets slammed by a train. And this isn't the first time this has happened. Blindly obeying the devices or being distracted by them has caused other accidents across the country.
Who are you going to trust, your GPS or your lyin' eyes?
Is New Jersey determined to make headlines, or does it just seem that way? Last month Its lawmakers became the first in the country to abolish the death penalty since it was restored by the Supreme Court 21 years ago. Today, it moved toward becoming the first state north of the Mason-Dixon line to apologize for slavery.
Caucus time is about to begin in Iowa, gatherings at 1,800 places in a state that has 3 milliion people. About 200,000 of them are expected to take part in the curious meetings which are the first strange steps on the long, long road to the White House.
One of those meeting halls is a bar, and we could all use a drink of some sort or other as this complicated process unwinds. That's especially true on the Democratic side where after the first tally, participants representing candidates getting small percentages can switch allegiances.
Such is democracy. No one said it can't be quirky, too.
If you’re unmarried and single, there’s a pretty good chance there’s more to your life than the hunt for Mr. or Mrs. Right. But a search for Web sites for singletons would have you believe otherwise.
Thankfully, amid the sea of dating advice and online matchmakers, a new site launched recently that celebrates the single life and
