The Audacity of Nope

It got late early and the Cubs just gave us more of the same. In what was thought to be a change postseason for Major League Baseball, the North Side nihilists ended up giving hope the finger. The curse will not be reversed.

Can somebody write an immigration bill that will deport Manny Ramirez?

While an October surprise proved fatal to the Cubs, its electoral influence remains unknown. The GOP (Government of the Preposterous) is deploying a hit-and-run strategy and will swing at anything – Ayers, Islam, race – just to get back into the game. The signals Sarah Palin is winking through the screen also reveal an End of Days strategy and not so intelligently designed approach to bring evangelicals back to the plate.

As Cubs fans, we really have nothing to fear. We understand what it is like to live through an apocalypse and come out stronger. We just did it and will want to do it again. When hot stove discussions begin in a couple months, Barack Obama will be President Elect and the rest of us will be obsessing over next year’s lead off hitter. There is no other way.

A promise to never again believe has as much merit as lower taxes for everyone and universal healthcare by opening day. As Cubs fans, we are genetically wired to believe that next year will always be the year. Ironically, this is the only part of Darwin’s theory that we share with much of the republican base. You see it is possible to touch both ideological bases at once.

A pilot light of hope remains with Bears, a former occupant of Wrigley Field who today took a statistically significant lead in the NFC North polls. Kyle Orton, a hybrid driving hippie and sometime organizer for the democratic party, is emerging as the team’s first legit quarterback since the Truman Administration. Their defense blows away anything put together by Don Rumsfeld.

With a wide open field of candidates, we now must debate the Bears chances of winning the big one. The inauguration is only two days after the NFC Championship, so it’s best to plan these things early. If anything, the double fantasy of Barack Obama being leader of a free world in which the Bears are champions will give us something to do until pitchers and catchers report in February.

It starts and ends with Obama and the Bears.

Blue State Patriotism Hits Home with ObamaCubs.com Merchandise

As lawmakers and the Executive Branch take their bailout battle into extra innings, ObamaCubs.com is offering an economic stimulus package of its own. By investing in our tee shirts, hats and bumper stickers, you will reinforce consumer confidence while helping to hit our ideological agenda out of the park.

 

Show your pride in ObamaCubs.com and visit our store today!

 

 

Entering Homestretch, Reality Strikes Back

While it has yet to get late early, Obama and the Cubs enter the fall well-positioned to win their complete games.

 

Having pitched their way out of recent jams, both can now focus on the heart of the world order. As we approach the September 26 Presidential Debate at the University of Mississippi (or the proposed rescheduled debate at Miller Park) and the October 1 opener of the National League Divisional Series at The Friendly Confines, ObamaCubs.com serves up some advice.

 

Only Karlrovian Kryptonite and a colossally cruel curse stand in the way of victory.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense: The Obama candidacy could sprinkle in a few hit and runs on McCain. The meat of McCain’s economic line-up – Keating, Graham, Fiorina – can no longer reach first base in the current economic environment. Now is the time for Obama to pull one to right and allow free markets to drill those who got us into this mess before they steal all of our homes.

 

Don’t Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory:  Call it the bizarro Ernie Banks. Avoid the “lets play two” debacle of the Cubs not at least making it to the World Series and the democrats not reclaiming the White House. There is enough distance between the Cubs and the rest of the National League that only a cursed past, present and future could deny them the votes on the field to reach the fall classic. For Obama, if he can’t defeat the republicans after eight years of war and financial disaster, than he is destined for a minor league post in the capital house in Springfield.

 

Have Fun: In addition to being a national and civic diversion during our time of economic crises, don’t forget that baseball is still a game and the purpose is to have fun out there. Cubs’ players shouldn’t worry about Tribune Co. paying them with food stamps after the company defaults later this year. Obama did OK growing up on food stamps. The future is now.

 

Fire Peanut Tillman: Obama should not allow McCain to one-up him when it comes to delivering unauthorized pink slips to those who have no direct culpability to the problems at hand. If you can’t fire Tillman for his egregious error against the Bucs on Sunday, mention in the debates that you would support capital punishment in the cases of murder, tax evasion, and committing an unnecessary unsportsmanlike conduct with the game on the line in overtime.

 

We will always love you Peanut, but one more bone-head play like Sunday and you shall be impeached from the Bears’ secondary.

Time for Obama to Flash His No Hit Stuff

While lipstick can only pump up a pig for so long, our scary September swoon was thankfully slaughtered for good on Sunday night in the Milwaukee mud.

 

If you had doubts about Wisconsin landing in the Blue column this November, fear not. Twenty-three thousand true believers who took a pilgrimage to Wrigleyville North witnessed history.

 

Who needs a shoulder MRI when you have God on your side?

While it is debatable what place our Lord has in guiding foreign policy, we have no problem with Carlos Zambrano mixing church with the state of his fastball. His no-hit performance on September 14 was a revelation.

Zambrano no-hitting George H. Bush’s favorite team was not as much a shock as a recognition that the Cubs are on a mission and ultimately will not be beat. With their postseason magic number now in single digits, the Cubs can no focus on their crucial October diamond debates.

 

As for Obama, his campaign has withstood weeks of being pulled back by the antlers yet remains tied in the polls with decided advantage in crucial swing states. Just as the Cubs lost several straight before getting their mojo back, Obama must find his footing from within to reclaim his championship mantle. While he might want to throw a couple high and inside to brush back McCain and Co. from the plate, Obama’s real strength is painting the corners between ideology and inspiration.

 

Ultimately, all he needs to do is aim his pitches at the bat of eight years of tired, dysfunctional policies and allow any of McCain’s drives to die in the atmospherics of real change. It is easy to play defense when all the drives against you are aimed at right field.

 

Now is the time for the Junior Senator from Illinois to call his shot and grab victory from those who are still on the fence.

Fighting Words: McCain’s Battle Scars a Walk in the Park Compared to Cubbie Blues

The mitts are coming off.

 

After a conventional double header that showcased political narratives from both left and right fields, it is now time to decide on a national cleanup hitter. Lost in the Mile High Obamathon and ideological Iditarod, however, is the real debate we must address in the coming months. Who has persevered through more adversity, Hanoi Hilton alum John McCain or the legions of Cubs fans that have rooted in vein?

 

Mark Prior did not need to be shot down by the Vietnamese to lose full strength in his arms and shoulders. We have all suffered as a result.

While ObamaCubs.com respects the Senior Senator from Arizona’s patriotism and prolonged sacrifice at bat for our freedom, John McCain’s biography should not be used to throw a curve ball around his Bush League voting record. If McCain’s campaign wants to exploit his years as a POW to win an election, the least we can do here in the peanut gallery is debate where his suffering fits in the overall lineup of national sacrifice.

 

Cubs’ fans, collectively speaking, have a century-long reservoir of pain, suffering, and unyielding commitment to their cause. Just as we thought scars from the 1969, 1984, and 2003 campaigns were beginning to wear off, the Cubs offense this month has gone AWOL and 40 percent of its starting rotation has landed in a MASH unit. All we have is hope, and hope shall carry us to the Promised Land (until it doesn’t).

 

Nobody else in America can really feel our pain. Yet our belief in a better tomorrow is unyielding, and not thrown out at home by a Karl Rove focus group. Can yesterday’s hero say the same thing?

McCain owns a piece of the Arizona Diamondbacks and could not fathom spending a decade (much less a century) not seeing his team win it all.

Cubs and Obama Brace for September Storm

Nobody ever said pulling off a Double Fantasy of hope would be easy.

 

As the Cubs try to avoid sliding head first into another historically tragic “occurrence”, the Obama campaign must learn to respectfully debate and counterpunch our nation’s new spokesperson for conservative creationism. The double steal McCain and Co. are trying to pull off with their selection of Sarah Palin makes one almost nostalgic for compassionate conservatism. Almost…

 

McCain and Palin seen here on the campaign trail failing to get their signs in synch. Who can blame them for not yet being on the same page? They’ve spent less time together in the last year than Ronnie Woo Woo and his orthodontist.

Before making plans to move to a part of the world that both values scientific reasoning and can care less about Major League Baseball, rejoice in the fact that the fundamentals of both campaigns this fall our on our side. Despite this week’s pseudo pageantry in the Twin Cities, the Republican party today is about as popular as David Kingman was in The Friendly Confines a generation ago after blowing off  his own tee-shirt day. It will take several stadiums of hockey moms to win the electoral Stanley Cup in November.

As for the Cubs, their lineup from top to bottom is as strong as there is in the National League if not all of baseball. Their pitching, assuming Carlos Zambrano’s right shoulder isn’t impeached in the next eight weeks, is solid from their front line of starters through a mostly stingy bullpen. While their lead over the also slumping Brewers is not insurmountable, the team’s nine game advantage in Wildcard polling can help us skate through a September surprise of mediocrity.

 

All of this said, the Cubbies, like the democrats, have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Accordingly, as a convention week tribute to Governor Palin, ObamaCubs.com is asking its supporters to ignore the day-to-day realities they see in front of them and rely on prayer and the hand of God to guide us past home plate.

With the face of a champion, Carlos Marmol is poised to deliver us all to the promised land.

 

 

 

 

Obama, Cubs Nail Grand Slam Performances

We live in groovy times.

 

Anybody who believes it is a coincidence that Aramis Ramirez hit a game-winning Grand Slam the very hour Barack Obama accepted his nomination for the presidency is seeing the world as it is rather than what it is destined to be.

 

Thanks to Ramirez, getting into the playoffs this year won’t be such a dogfight.

The double header impossibility of Barack Obama running a free world in which the Cubs are the World Champions is looking more likely by the inning. While the Cubs are on pace to win more than 100 games, Obama is surging to mile high heights of his own.

 

As the nation enjoys its brief intermission between political conventions, the wind is at the back of the Obama campaign. The fact that his acceptance speech was substantively spectacular should be as much of a given as taking a series from The Pirates this year. Obama’s consecutive hitting streak of policies and governing philosophies inspired a standing room audience from start to finish. Legions of loyal Obama advance scouts can today more confidently canvas the country on behalf of the cause.   

 

The McCain campaign, meanwhile, has tapped its AA affiliate in Anchorage for electoral reinforcements. While the Arizona Senator’s choice of Sarah Palin as battery mate earned him a win in the 24-minute news cycle, McCain’s first significant decision since securing the Republican nomination shows that he is more concerned with candidacy than country. While Palin seems to be a likeable, eventual All Star for the conservative team, she has absolutely no experience at the Major League Level.

 

A nation in the midst of two wars and a severely slumping economy cannot afford to have its number two hitter stumble into her swing while on the job. Palin may help the GOP ticket pickoff a few Hillary-ites who veered too far off their ideological base, yet as an executive barely has earned a place on the 27-person roster. McCain either cynically understands this calculation and proceeded ahead anyway, or really has no clear eye for talent and any proven ability to succeed at the Major League Level.

 

Even in frosty early April, how many Cubs fans would be caught dead with that piece of rat fur around their necks?

Obama to White Sox Fans – You’re Ugly!

In an effort to appeal to bitter, disaffected voters who carry “an antipathy to people who are not like them,” Barack Obama publicly supported the Chicago White Sox and their brand of “serious” baseball during a recent interview with ESPN’s Stuart Scott.

 

The Junior Senator from Illinois also used the opportunity to deliver a political blow to North Side baseball fans, many of whom may or may not know how many homes they own.

 

“You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there” said Obama, squeezing in a dig at Cindy McCain and her Anheuser-Busch bottling empire. “People aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball. South Side.”  

 

This salt of the earth criminal took time off from scoring a 2003 game at “The Cell” to blindside a member of the Kansas City Royals’ coaching staff. So much for turning Missouri into a Blue State.

 

 

While ObamaCubs.com recognizes that the soon-to-be nominee needs to brush back charges of elitism in order to win the general election, his pandering to downtrodden Sox fans (who will probably write in their votes for Daley anyway) has officially exceeded his political pitch count. We can live with pseudo terrorist weatherman and narcissistic men of the cloth, but Obama’s suicide squeeze into political Ozzieball makes some of us root for an 11^th Hour brokered convention. At least Hilary was a Cubs fan for most of her life.

 

 

Ironically, the real hero from the Illinois delegation this week was not even invited to speak in Denver. Now we know why. It wasn’t Governor Blagojevich’s association with Tony Rezko or his perpetual 0-2 count with prospective voters that denied him the podium. In 2005, as Blago was gearing up for his reelection campaign, the Governor (for once) relied on his principals and refused to endorse The White Sox as World Champions. This, more than his $10 million war chest, helped defeat Judy Barr Topinka in the following year’s general election.

 

 

So, Senator Obama, while our loyalty to you is ultimately unending, we ask that you show both principled and political judgment and rethink your position on the American Pastime. Illinois is yours no matter what, but you may want to consider that generations of voters outside the state historically are more likely to support the Cubs by watching nationwide WGN than the Sox via the fuzzy Channel 44 or ONTV’s SportsVision.

 

 

For ObamaCubs.com readers who feel as passionately as we do and that Obama needs to reinforce his Cubby bona fides, there is no greater way to express your support that by buying a shirt or bumper sticker at our online store. Proceeds will be invested in research and development towards developing a sustainable business model for online media and satirical weblogs.

 

There is still time to make history.

 

 

 

Take a lesson from Da Mayor and declare your allegiance now.

Bench Coach Biden Bleeds Blue All Over

The same week Carlos Zambrano loses one of his molars on the mound, Barack Obama finds yet another way to put new teeth into his campaign.

 

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as presidential battery mate was inspired. Not only will it help the Junior Senator from Illinois win the election, but Biden – a perennial number two hitter if there ever were one – will also help Obama set up his governing rotation this January.

 

The arrows are pointing up for Obama and the Cubs heading into the home stretch.

The regular season of the 2008 presidential campaign finally begins this week in the Mile High City and then continues to the Twin Cities after Labor Day. While Obama enjoys a slight lead in the aggregate standings, the American public will have the opportunity to see both campaigns in consecutive weeks compete on equal playing fields. Biden’s addition to the democratic oratorical rotation should have as great if not a greater impact than the Cubbie’s celebrated mid-season pickup.

 

And speaking of the real savior to our hopes and dreams…

 

Excuse the mixture of church and cyberspace, but Rich Harden has been a revelation since first stepping foot onto The Friendly Confines six weeks ago. An import from deep blue Northern California, Harden has been sent to the North Side to both win the war this October and responsibly end a century worth of futility.

 

Like Cleveland, Ohio swing state veteran and eventual Cy Young Winner Rick Sutcliff, Harden has joined the Cubs amidst a magical season and is nearly unbeatable when the lights shine on his craft. Lets just pray that Harden and co., unlike their 1984 counterparts, have the stomach to finish the job when playing for keeps deeper in the fall.

 

Allan Trammell, a 1984 World Champion with the Detroi Tigers, points Rich Harden to The Promised Land.

ObamaCubs.com Casts Vote for HuffPo Chicago

While it is getting late early for the conventional journalism industry as we know it, Chicago is lucky to have the services of a late inning pinch hitter that can drive us out of a funk with one swing of the bat. The famed Huffington Post led off its lineup of local market publications in Chicago earlier this month, and ObamaCubs.com encourages everyone to read it early and often.

 

While Arianna Huffington is clearly an Obama supporter, her vote for the Junior Senator from Illinois at ObamaCubs.com is not a foregone conclusion. A native of Greece, Huffington has a deep appreciation for tragedy, history and comedy which are all of course central tenets of the Cubbie platform.

As Chicago’s grand patriarch Richard J. Daley would say today, if you can’t help those who have linked to your website than “who can you help?” That said, we would be remiss not to disclose that HuffPo was kind enough to introduce ObamaCubs.com to its world on August 18. The exposure generated a nice uptick in our early polling.

Once visiting HuffPo Chicago, we also recommend you take a look at the tragically genius submission by our friends at TheHeckler.com. The Heckler harkens back to around this time in 1984, when the Red Barron Rick Sutcliff, catch a fire Jody Davis and pastor Jesus Manny Trillo were on their way to bringing Chicago a World Series Champion for the first time in 76 years.

Not only did the Cubs predictably lose in the NLCS after being up two games, but the series was an overcooked appetizer to further disappointment in November. The world would have been a better place if MondaleCubs.com had its own chance to shine.

Mondale was probably a Twins fan anyway.