A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One - CPD Officers,Sing This to Jody!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of enjoying Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance: A Slave to Duty*.

In Act II, came this great song. Given the wit and vinegar of Chicago's Law Enforcement Professionals, I am sure a parody fitting the Age and Morals of Chicago 2009 will grace the lyrics. I have rarely met people more well-read, insightful, good-humored, tolerant or braver than CPD members.

Sergeant. When a felon's not engaged in his employment –
Police. His employment,
Sergeant. Or maturing his felonious little plans –
Police. Little plans,
Sergeant. His capacity for innocent enjoyment –
Police. 'Cent enjoyment
Sergeant. Is just as great as any honest man's –
Police. Honest man's.


Sergeant. Our feelings we with difficulty smother –
Police. 'Culty smother,
Sergeant. When constabulary duty's to be done –
Police. To be done.
Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another –
Police. With another,
Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Police. Ah!
Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Sergeant. When the enterprising burglar's not a-burgling –
Police. Not a-burgling.
Sergeant. When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime –
Police. 'Pied in crime,
Sergeant. He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling –
Police. Brook a-gurgling,
Sergeant. And listen to the merry village chime –
Police. Village chime.


Sergeant. When the coster's finished jumping on his mother –
Police. On his mother,
Sergeant. He loves to lie a-basking in the sun –
Police. In the sun.
Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another –
Police. With another,
Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Police. Ah!


Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Click my post title for the melody and inflection.

God Bless Chicago Cops - He'd better.



*

After the sensational success of H.M.S. Pinafore, many American performing companies presented unauthorized versions of that opera. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte decided to prevent that from happening again by presenting official versions of their next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty simultaneously in England and America. The opera premiered on December 31, 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York with Sullivan conducting, but a single performance had been given on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, England, to secure the British copyright. Finally, the opera opened on April 3, 1880, at the Opéra Comique in London, where it ran for 363 performances, having already been playing successfully for over three months in New York.

On December 10, 1879, Sullivan had written a letter to his mother about the new opera, upon which he was hard at work in New York. "I think it will be a great success, for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching." True enough! The Pirates of Penzance was an immediate hit and takes its place today as one of the most popular and enduring works of musical theatre.

In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tenderhearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master's instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. But it turns out that he was born on February 29 in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daugters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria's name.

Solid, Jackson! The Rev. Revs Up to Opportunity . . . Winnowing the Jackson Community

BBC World Service- Veteran politician Rev Jesse Jackson, who has been counselling the Jackson family, said the behaviour of Michael Jackson's doctor needs to be explained. Click my post title for the video.

"Love Laughs at a King, Kings don't need no Bling on the Street of Dreams! Gold, Silver and Gold -all that you can hold - on a moon beam. Joe,I''ll accept that bauble - for starters. As that Dead White man said,"For within the hollow crown/That rounds the mortal temple of a king,/Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,/. . . . . . And humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin/Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! No King; No Bling! No Bling; No Thing!"


Rev. Jesse Jackson, from left, and his son Yusef DuBois Jackson, speak with Joe Jackson, father of the late pop star Michael Jackson, outside the Jackson family home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on Friday, June 26, 2009. AP Photo

The ripest fruit first falls - Richard II- Act II, Sc. I

In an act of solidarity the Family Jackson covers the loss like a Prudential Gold Plan. Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was hot to issue a call for a second "independent" autopsy on the mortal husk of Michael Jackson. He might just blanket the Gary Jacksons with Jackson Universal!

Rev. Jackson might orate"

"From Jackson Hole to Jackson Mississipi; From Jackson Street to Jackson Browne; Jackson be Jackson to Jackson and My Son to Your Son; from Yousef To Your Self -We Are all of us Jackson, until Jackson's Jack Jacks All Jacksons onto Some Jack and until We are all Jack City, then there be Jackson! . . .Solid Jackson!. . . I'll take the Questions of the Press as well!"

Be it known - while I view the Rev. Jackson with a squinty gimlet eye, a reknowned Chicago attorney and friend to both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and this cynical helot offered this assesment. ( Please note!)

Anyway, something you may not know is Rev. Jackson was like a surrogate father to MJ. They loved each other dearly. I witnessed it.

Tamara Holder

Mortimer Jerome Adler- Old and New Testament to a Happy Life

Eight years ago today, America lost Mortimer Adler. Mortimer Adler* challenged the world to lead a happy life based upon some understanding of the Great Ideas passed on to all of us through the history of human thought.

εὐδαιμονία -EuDaimonia ( which I can never, ever pronounce correctly) comes from two Greek words: Eu -Good,or well-being and Daimon - a person's total spirit or place in the world.

This weekend, the world snoops into the death of Michael Jackson, a terminally unhappy fifty year old pop-singer from Gary, Indiana. The late Mr. Jackson's ability to garner 98% of all news coverage is miraculous. MSNBC will report on the white smoke billowing from Neverland, or whatever Jackson Family compound not under receivership, when a new King of Pop is elected. Mortimer Adler was happy man. He was surrounded by the good works of life -in theory,output and practice.

Leading a happy life is hard work. There are no 'Atta-Boy's' for doing your job, being a good and decent citizen, loving,caring and providing for your children, living up to your obligations and making a difference while your walk on this earth.

We mistake 'enjoyment' for happiness. Michael Jackson and the attention his very unhappy life exuded is testimony to just that.

Mortimer Adler welded the Testaments of our Western Culture - he was born Jewish and died with the last rites of Roman Catholic Church. What brought Mr. Adler to the New Testament seems to have been his life-long study of a Pagan -Aristotle. From Aristotle, Adler employed the Jewish scholar Maimonides and Muslim Averroes to understand St. Thomas Aquinas. Adler was the greatest Aquinas Scholar of our time.

Rolling through the ages of thought, Adler dismissed the radical Hegelian paganism of the 19th Century, which is the basis for Progressive thought in America, forged by John Dewey and bowdlerized by political activists and tin-horn academics.

This Hegelian nonsense dismisses piety and humility in thought. It makes the individual God - it is what Bertrand Russell (an atheist by the way) called our 'Cosmic Impiety).

Respect for the gods, God, Great Ideas and better persons than ourselves is piety. Not a mealy-mouthed, pharisaic bead rattling show-off, but a person dedicated to qualities of virtue and obligation. Respect in America is as disposable as a plastic razor bought at Dollar Bill's.

Piety, which teaches how to respect ourselves, is what allows a person to be 'happy' - piety, virtue and dignity are what gives a person Authority; not alphabets after your name, scoops of cash, or the most toys, or the most ink.

Mortimer Adler reminded us that humility leads to authority.

Here are two American authorities on Mortimer J. Adler - in testimonies to Adler's welding of Man's Testament with God, given at his funeral service in St. Chrysostom Church in 2001.

Remembrances
Charles Van Doren

I met Mortimer for the first time more than seventy-five
years ago. I know the place and date exactly: Lennox Hill
Hospital, New York City, February 14, 1926. Mortimer
was a little over twenty-five years old. I was two—two days,
that is. My father and Mortimer were colleagues at Columbia,
leading a great-books seminar together. Dad had
brought Mortimer to see his first born, and Mortimer entertained me by neologizing. To neologize is to speak employing
words that you make up as you go along. The
meaning is not important; it is the sound that counts. I
loved the sound of Mortimer’s voice then, and I never
ceased to do so. At that time he spoke too fast for most
people to understand him, unless they paid very special attention,
which many people do not like to have to do.
Later, he slowed down and spoke in short, simple, direct
sentences—and wrote them too. The mellifluousness that
had charmed me as a two-day-old then began to charm
everyone else. What a speaker he was. You never had any
doubt what he was saying. But, if you disagreed, it was because
you did not quite understand. This was also true of
his books. With a single exception, every book that he
wrote after his sixtieth birthday was distinct and clear, its
language perfectly conformed to its meaning. As a reward,
almost every book was a best seller (comparatively speaking,
no bodice ripper he).
And what a teacher, too. In his autobiography, he wrote
about what he had learned from my father about leading a
seminar. And in every one of the more than two hundred
seminars Mortimer and I led together over thirty years in
Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and other places, I
always learned something important about something important—
as his friend Arthur Ruben used to say.
When I was a child, Mortimer astounded and fascinated
me. He would visit us, whenever he came to New York on
business—always with an agenda in hand of items to discuss.
I thought that was astonishing. We visited him at
Stone Pond in New Hampshire, and I was again astonished,
to see him happily splashing about with water wings
above his head, like Mickey Mouse ears. He never sneezed
just once, always three times, never more, never less. And
when I learned about his work with the Hayes Office,
which among other things ordained that a movie actress
could not show her legs more than a few inches above the
knee, and especially not the inside of her thighs, I was kerflummoxed.
(That’s not a neologism.) Since the inside of a
woman’s thigh was at time (I was thirteen) a matter of
enormous interest, I envied Mortimer. I imagined that he
had to check out all those beautiful thighs and make sure
they were not breaking the rules.
And then there came the time when I fell down, face down
in the mud, and he picked me up, brushed me off, and gave
me a job. It was the best kind of job: as he described it, one
you would do anyway, if you did not need the money. And
I did it for thirty years. First we worked together making
books for Encyclopædia Britannica. Then I, and many others,
helped him to design and edit the greatest encyclopedia
the world has ever seen. It has fallen on bad days, but it
will rise again and outlive us all—just as Mortimer’s philosophical
work will do.
I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly forty
years ago. The text was Plato’s dialogue, The Sophist. I had
read it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. It
could not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped us
all to understand it was. The true sophist, Plato is saying,
cannot be trapped—if he is willing to say anything whatsoever
to win the argument. If he wants to win at all costs
and does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fending
off the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph,
and you will fail. I asked Mortimer after the seminar
whether he agreed. “Yes,” he said, surprisingly, “Plato is
right.” But he believed (and I do to) that this is the tragedy
of intellect. In other words, truth must be fought for, even
though one may not be able to win. Mortimer fought for
the truth all of his life, although he believed in the end that
he had been defeated. We tried to persuade him that this
was not so, but we failed. Time, merciless and remorseless,
betrayed him—as eventually it betrays us all.
And now, having said that, I want to praise him. As another
man, a great general, praised another philosopher,
long ago. The general compared that other philosopher to a
satyr. (And, indeed, there was a certain rotundity of body
and an amused, ironic look on Mortimer’s face most of the
4ime.) That general said that that other philosopher was like
Marsyas, the great flute player who challenged Apollo, and
whose melodies charmed all who heard them. But the general
said that this philosopher produced the same effect
with his words only, and did not require a flute. “When we
hear any other speaker,” the general said, addressing his
friend, “His words produce absolutely no effect on us, or
not much. Whereas, the mere fragment of you and your
words, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported,
amaze and possess every man and woman and
make them confess that they ought not to live as they do.
Your words seem simple when we first hear them,” the
general said, “and not worthy or appropriate for their matter,
and are even laughed at, because you are always repeating
the same thing, in the same words. But when we look
within those words,” the general said to that other philosopher,
his friend, “We find that they are the only words that
have a meaning in them, abounding in fair images of virtue
and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to
the whole duty of a good and honorable man.” Thus did
Alcibiades praise Socrates, Mortimer, and thus do I praise
you. Your words, simple, direct, and clear, still tell us we
ought not to live as we do and describe the whole duty of a
good and honorable man.
I will not end with Plato, who, although he may have
started Mortimer on the road to philosophy, did not accompany
him for long. Mortimer would refute me is I did
not mention his nearly lifelong admiration for Plato’s famous
pupil. Many times he told me, as I imagine he told
you, that he hoped to meet Aristotle in the afterlife, so he
correct his errors—and also have the opportunity to talk
about all the most important things with a man who knew,
as Mortimer did, what they were and why they were important.
Mortimer and I agreed, when St. Christopher was struck
from the list of proper saints, that the action, although
probably correct, was a pity. I myself have stubbornly per5
sisted in addressing the benevolent giant every day of my
life. You know the gentle, little prayer:
St. Christopher be my guide,
In my most need,
Go by my side.
I have modified it in various ways over the years, and I offer
you another modification now:
St. Christopher, be Mortimer’s guide,
and Aristotle’s too,
In their most need.
If they are wandering in some
dark, cold, and lonely place
and cannot find one another,
Bring them together,
Join their hands,
Shed warmth and light upon them.
Go by their side
And from time to time,
Let Thomas Aquinas come for lunch.
Mortimer, we miss you, and we need your help. We all pursue
happiness, but we do not know what it is or how to
find it. We need you to remind us that happiness is not a
moment of ecstasy or a feeling of contentment that can
come and go. Instead, happiness is the product of a whole
life—a life lived in accordance with the two kinds of virtue:
intellectual and moral. We have to use our minds and not
waste them. And we have to acquire the habit of desiring
the right things, the things we really need and are good for
us, not the wrong things, which are bad for us and for everybody
else. In addition to all that, we need to be lucky—in
our country, in our friends, and in our loves. You were
lucky in all these, dear friend, and therefore we can conclude
that yours was a happy life. It is our great loss, not
yours, that it had to end.

Remembrances
Peter NortonPast President and CEO,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

I spent something over thirty years with The Encyclopædia
Britannica, and, of course, in that time I met many
very intelligent, very smart, very well-read intellectuals
and people generally. Unfortunately, I fell into none of
those categories. So, when I first knew that I was going to
meet Mortimer Adler, back in London in the early Sixties, I
was decidedly nervous. In fact, the feeling I really had was
one of great awe. I spent all my time trying to talk in sentences
as short as possible, so that he would not work out
quite what a nitwit was running the London company. But
we got on really quite well, and Mortimer, of course, as always,
was charming. Here was a man who had not just read
but had written more books—and was still writing at that
stage—than a lot of people have read in their lives. Now,
that’s not Britannica people, of course, because we had all
been weaned on How to Read a Book, and Mortimer had
made sure we all read the great books of the Western
world, to keep up with it. Consequently, I had quite a lot to
be nervous about.
But I am not going to talk about what Mortimer achieved,
and what he did. I am sure the others who follow me will
do that much better than I can. But I would like to talk a
little while about a Mortimer that I knew. In the early Seventies,
after I had relocated to the United States, at one of
Britannica’s international functions in Hawaii—we always
chose the best places to have our functions—sin attacked
me. In the course of an afternoon session, when I should
have been working with everybody else, I snuck out of the
meeting because there was the allure of a great and wonderful
ice-cream parlor. And I went down to the ice-cream
parlor, and I crept in very quietly to make sure there was
nobody there. And it was empty—except in the far corner
there was one very large ice-cream and chocolate concoc-
tion, out from behind which came a wonderful, very large,
ear-splitting grin on this wonderful, elfin-like face. And that
was when I met the other Mortimer.
As the years passed, Mortimer and I managed to commit all
sorts of terrible sins of gluttony, in all sorts of different
parts of the world, in ice-cream parlors and candy shops
and places like that. And what I came to find out was that
behind this austere intellectual facade was a fun-loving, excitable,
and very happy, life-loving little boy. This was the
little boy who, after having some problems in his youth
with swimming, at an age when most people had given up
swimming, succumbed to the challenge of a great marathon
swimming match at another Britannica meeting. He agreed
that he would do this, and he not only took on this challenge,
but he won it in great style and was triumphant.
(Now I must point out that the pool he swam in was approximately
fifteen feet long, and it was not more than
three feet deep, and there were at least twenty people ready
to jump in to save him if anything happened). At the end of
the course there was a bottle of champagne for the winner,
and that, of course, was the sort of incentive that Mortimer
always liked.
This was the Mortimer who not only liked to joke but
could take a joke when it was aimed at him. This was the
Mortimer who could walk with crowds and talk with kings,
and, although I cannot talk about his virtue, I can absolutely
guaranty that he never lost that common touch, that
common touch that made so many people love him, and
why so many people are here today who miss him. I shall
miss my young friend. But I have one remaining regret. I
have no doubt that, at this particular moment, Mortimer
and his God are in very deep discussions, which I would
love to be able to hear. I only hope that God is up to it.

Happy man! Thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas

* Mortimer J. Adler dropped out of school at the age of fourteen (14).

'68 Reunion Cops Nab -Billionaire Pervert Candy Maker & Activist - Wonka Wonked!

Chicago June 27, 2009

1968 Police Veteran and Group Spokesperson Sgt. Claudell 'Clubber' Lange (CPD ret.) detailed the detaining of Billionaire Candy-Maker and Progressive Activist Willy Wonka as he attempted to lure eternally ten year old Charlie Bucket into a psychedelically painted VW-Minibus a few feet from the Re-Union 1968 Chicago Police veterans.

Said Lange, "this little white boy banged on the hall where the re-union was taking place screaming that a middle-aged old white guy - a hippie - wanted to take him to forever where the boy would once again see his missing friends. When the boy confronted the pervert, whom we restrained with professional courtesy and Mid-western welcome until CPD officers could make their way through the tens of 20-something Protesters and Death Row Alumni. I wrote down and recorded their exchange for the States Attorney - it went something like this:


Charlie Bucket: Mr. Wonka, what'll happen to the other kids? Augustus, Veruca?

Willy Wonka: My dear boy, I promise you they'll be quite all right. When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

Willy Wonka: I don't understand it. The children are disappearing like rabbits. Well, we still have each other. Shall we press on?

At that point, we took citizens action and restrained the gentleman, who said that he was there only to protest the brutality of all police - not just CPD. He then started singing -

Willy Wonka: [singsong] There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There's no knowing where we're rowing / Or which way the river's flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? /
[apprehensive, now spoken]

Willy Wonka: Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes! The danger must be growing /
[yelling]
Willy Wonka: For the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!

Creepy huh? The Perv Perp said, "Do KNOW who I am! I'm The Candy Man!"

Wonka was taken into custody by Chicago Police and bonded out this morning. His court date is set for a year of total enchantment. This Wonka will be out in no time. Some reporter from WonkaVision taped the whole thing, but they'll slice and dice it so the Perv walks.


Wonka has retained lawyers Jon Loevy, G. Flint Taylor and Locke Bowman

Steve Huntley - Sun Times' Last Man Standing for Balance

whalen wrote:
Boo hoo, Steve. The Neanderthals lost the elections in 2008, remember? Pardon our dust as we rush past the Cro-Magnon years to enact much-belated initiatives before it is too late for all of us!

Well, Whalen - the last time Progressives had such a 'Pardon Our Dust' victory was the advent of Prohibition. From 1919 until its Repeal, America was set-back on its heels, Whalen.

Sorry, I can be prickly . . .Whalen , or as some Progressive might opine. without the adverbial ending there. With John Dewey*-esque devotion to 'inquiry' over fact, a Progressive Whalen responded to Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley - The Last Man Standing - over his revelatory column on Progressive Force-feeding of the Government Goose.

John Dewey is the father of radical progressive thought in America and the beauty who's views on education slaughtered Public Education**. Let it be pointed out -Oh, do - that John Dewey established a Lab School for the elites, while the unwashed masses could serve as lab-rats in an educational philosophy that pushed Public Education to eliminate the guts of education.

The study of how the American Government ( local,state and federal) has all but vanished; the canon of American Literature and British Literature has been diluted to a watery and sugary and under-nourishing swill; that for the Dewey Public Schools "inquiry" is the ethic - child should do as opposed to learn and they do not learn. With each new Hegelian/Marxist doctoral thesis comes a further murder of thought and history.

For Dewey and Progressives 'Inquiry' upon which an a priori goal - Gay Studies, Identity Politics in general, Group Thought is achieved and put in place. If you do not know a Concordat from a Magna Carta, a Peace of Wesphalia from a Piece of the Pie, then it is a fair chance that you are Public School Alum of the last forty years.

In that case,let's take this slowly - John Dewey was a philospher of education, society, and psycholgy at the University of Chicago, who was heavily influeced by the German thinker Hegel. who is actually the granddaddy of Marxist thought. John Dewey believed that 'inquiry' is the most important thing in life so long as the outcomes agree with that inquiry. Thus, if we inquire into poverty as rooted in Racism; all poverty results from racism. If failure results from poverty. racism caused failure & etc. Progressive inquiry arrives at a Pre-Determined outcome.

Gay Marriage is good; all opposition to Gay Marriage is evil; Gay Marriage is good.

Abortion is Women's Reproductive Health, Uterine Cancer is a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; Uterine Cancer . . . Hey, get me a good Nuancer over here!

Dewey made the Artificial, Natural.

Take a look at the Media which offers a "Let's Look at Race Relations!" series.

The outcome is fixed - Systemic Racism, Imperialism, Class ism is always the conclusion. Whites are always bad and people of color are always good. Hence, no Race Crime can be committed by a person of color. Why? Don't matter just is and that is Dewey. Dewey Agree!

Dewey had clout ( Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman,I.F.Stone W.E.B. DuBois & etc.). Radical Progressive clout saw Dewey's Philosophy as a burglar bar with which to loot American History and geld American Education. Inquiry is not method it is a goal in Dewey Education.

Steve Huntley represents a mind-set that is valued by most Americans. The old Benthamite view of 'the most good for the most people.' Common Sense.

In Steve Huntley's June 26, 2009, he outlines the Progressive Agenda and the force feeding by the Democratic Leadership in the Congress at the direction of President Obama's White House:

Congress, driven by President Obama's ambitious political agenda, is out to be a jack of all trades. Just look at its to-do list for this year -- health-care reform, clean energy legislation, overhaul of financial regulation, a rewrite of immigration law, stimulus spending to prod the economy toward recovery. Whew! And with six months left in 2009, who knows what else might be added?

That list doesn't include such major business as considering a new U.S. Supreme Court nominee or a host of less sweeping but still significant bills, like a just-passed measure giving an overburdened Food and Drug Administration the duty of regulating tobacco. . . .
With Democrats in total control of the House and close to it in the Senate, fierce partisanship, long-cherished liberal goals and the pent-up energy of the Democratic left are driving the transformational agenda. There's no argument many of the bills address problems needing a fix, but that's best achieved with at least a degree of bipartisan support. Yet we're being force-fed a liberal prescription. A crowded agenda controlled by Democrats and a White House push for quick action crowd out competing views.

Regrettably, the major national media have been compliant. For example, this week ABC News offered an hour in prime time for Obama to monopolize the national discussion on health care.

Yet polls consistently show public discomfort with the implications of greater government control of medical services, worry about the costs and a high-level of satisfaction with their current health care among the majority with insurance. Recent news reminds us a public insurance option would open a new avenue for abuse of the taxpayer. Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of the northwest suburbs has started a "medi-fraud blog" tracking corruption and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. His latest entries note that in just the last week prosecutors broke up schemes in Detroit and Miami to defraud Medicare of $150 million.

Another issue is energy. Some of us think the emphasis should be more on energy security than green goals. Yes, we all want a cleaner planet, but our national security and economic future require the exploitation of abundant fossil fuels such as domestic coal and offshore oil as well as expansion of nuclear energy while we develop solar, wind and geothermal for the long term.

Similarly, the economic meltdown naturally leads to new regulation. Yet remember the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002, after the accounting scandals, saddled business with expensive and complex regulations making U.S. enterprises less competitive.

The focus on regulation ignores government's role in the housing collapse. The Wall Street Journal reports Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who encouraged the mortgage excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is at it again, urging the agencies to lower lending standards for condo buyers. Sounds like another dose of the easy credit that wrecked home values.

Obama and Democrats insist Congress works for the good of America in taking on so many projects. But the jack of all trades, as you may recall, is the master of none. Is that how you want the future of your health care or energy supply to be determined?

Columnist Steve Huntley, investigative journalist Tim Novak and Pultizer Prize winning cartoonist Jack Higgins maintain some semblance of thoughtful inquiry for Chicago, because they know that inquiry is not a goal upon which people are forced to agree.

Winning an election is only the beginning of government. The end of government is the preservation of the American Republic. Democrats and Republicans have been doing just that, until these last few months, it seems to me. Dewey has replaced the Founders Fathers for the Progressives. For now.

History has a way of Repealing itself!

*

Dewey is “attractive to those how are more impressed by our new control over natural forces than by the limitations to which that control is subject,” finding that Dewey’s philosophy “is in harmony with the age of industrialism and collective enterprise.” But it is Dewey’s underlying hubris that Russell singles out as “the greatest danger in our time” because “it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster,” however unintentionally.

Russell’s fears, at least in part, have been realized. There are many who would, without hesitation, describe public education, in combination with other social, economic and political forces, a “vast social disaster.” There are, of course, many more that disagree.

http://home.earthlink.net/~fheapblog/id28.html

**

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language.

I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature. . . I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. ( emphasis my own)

I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator.

I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.

Ben Stein,Mensch- UnDamaged by Celebrity and Touched With Humanity

This is a full text of Ben Stein's Last column Monday Nights at Mortons a glimpse at celebrity lifestyles in Hollywood.

Ben Stein, like my pals Mike Houlihan, Tom Roeser, Elias Crim, Steve Rhodes, John Powers and Max Weismann, is a Renaissance Man. Mr. Stein is a film maker, comic, wit, economist, professor and political analyst. More importantly, Mr. Stein is a Mensch* - a human being to the backbone! Read this fine analysis of fame, fortune and fraility.

Huge Hat Tip to Leo Hero - Robert Hylard ( Leo '44):

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.
I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer co mfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can.
It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

* "Reason in man is rather like God in the world."- St. Thomas Aquinas

Click my post title for Ben's House!

Mike Houlihan's Cross-town Classic for the Special Olympics at Bourbon Street -Sunday -June 28th -Noon to 4PM

STEP UP TO THE PLATE FOR SPECIAL OLYMPICS

Houli's pitching his best-selling book and donating a chunk of the proceeds to Special Olympics this Sunday at Bourbon Street.


Crosstown Challenge, Sox vs. Cubs

Sunday, June 28th
Noon to 4PMBourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th Street

Here's what Real Americans can do -
1. Show Yourself! Crack open the wallet and your $25 goes to Special Olympics and gets you food & booze

2. Watch the game!

3. Meet Southside wackos!

4. Laugh!

5. Cry when your team tanks!

6. Spring some dough for the Special Olympics!

There's-Raffles, silent auction, & more.

7. Mingle -Hot chicks, fat guys!

Now this last item causes me more than concern!
8. "Get lucky with local slut Finoola Hooligan!" - is this gambit to unload a cousin who should have 'taken the vail' Houli?????

Valet Parking available - So bring your Valet, too!

See you Sunday!

Southtown Star - A Lying Hate Rag - Hates Us - Smears Us with a Broad Brush - Shun It!

This is the reality of Kennedy Park. The Southtown Star smears us - all of us and lies about it.



The Southtown Star is a Hate Rag.

The Southtown Star is an agenda driven propaganda piece that was once a great community newspaper.

Last year, when Sun Times News Group cashiered every good veteran editor and staff reporter like Courtney Greve, John Hector, and Ed Koziarski, it ceased to exist.

The Southtown Star wanted to be more than a refrigerator magnet paper. It is - it is a disgrace.

Two intangible events took place over the last two weeks in the 19th Ward of Chicago - a black woman in Mount Greenwood found hateful words painted on the garage she rents and Swastikas were painted on the Chicago Park District Property at Kennedy Park in Morgan Park,

Here is the broad brush of hate painted by the Progressive editors and staff of the new Southtown Star:

June 24, 2009

THE ISSUE: Racist graffiti on the garage of a black Mount Greenwood resident sullies the whole community's reputation, once again.

WE SAY: Stand up for what is right, Mount Greenwood residents. Reject racist behavior loudly and publicly.

F or years, the community of Mount Greenwood on Chicago's Southwest Side has bristled at suggestions its residents foster racist attitudes. We're supposed to overlook incidents like last week's "Go home nigger" message spray-painted on the garage of Latricia Deanes' rented Mount Greenwood home. Deanes, who is black, is living there with her three children until repairs to her Beverly home are completed.

We're supposed to downplay it. Child's play. Those goofy kids - perhaps the same ones who spray-painted Nazi symbols on a Dumpster at nearby Kennedy Park.

Well, we aren't going to dismiss it.

Beverly is about two miles east of Mount Greenwood. They are two neighborhoods in Chicago's 19th Ward separated by a few railroad tracks and a cemetery. On a rudimentary, geographic level, Mount Greenwood and Beverly are next door to one another. So where, exactly, was Deanes supposed to "go home?" She is home, whether she's renting a house with her children in Mount Greenwood or living under a newly repaired roof down the street in Beverly. How nice of her neighbors to make her feel welcome.

Geography aside, incidents like this and the dismissive attitude of residents toward them make Mount Greenwood an embarrassment. The "bad apples," as Deanes described the culprits who committed this crime, wipe a stain over the entire community, and everyone else seems to keep their mouths shut.

Mount Greenwood, if you're tired of the bullying and the racism, speak up. Too often, silence only codifies community acceptance of this type of garbage. We know many Mount Greenwood residents feel the same outrage we do. Where are they?

Where are the elected officials? Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart lives in Mount Greenwood. So do labor leaders and police officials. Ald. Ginger Rugai (19th) represents Mount Greenwood, as do state officials Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago) and Sen. Edward Maloney, and at the federal level, Congressman Dan Lipinski. Where are they?

When Ryan Rush, a white teenager, was violently attacked by black teen-agers July 2007 at Beverly Park in what some believed was a hate crime, we vilified the vicious, unprovoked attack. We supported tough sentences for Micah Eastman and his two accomplices. What's wrong is wrong. (Emphasis my own)

This is wrong, too.

But too often, what we hear at the newspaper after stories like this appear are ignorant attempts at justification: Black people deserve what they get because they commit more crimes. Such-a nd-such high school used to be nice until black kids started going there. Black towns are no longer safe because of their racial make-up. Somehow Deanes deserved this. And on and on. Just read the online comments at the end of Steve Metsch's Saturday story about the graffiti.

To blame one resident for problems elsewhere, based solely on the color of her skin, is a ridiculous, misguided and shameful response. Whoever did this was evil. Period.

Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Clearly, Deanes deserves defending here, not the criminals. There's just no way around it. There is no justification - none - for what they did. The harm this crime did, and will do, to Deanes' children is serious and far-reaching.

We are ashamed.

You are shameless liars! Here is what you wrote:

Editorial : Attack on youth is a tragedy, but no reason for overreaction ( Emphasis my own)

THE ISSUE: A 14-year-old youth was beaten in broad daylight in a Beverly park in what police are investigating as a hate crime. WE SAY: We hope leaders and residents in the Beverly community and the Southland as a whole can respond without resorting to generalizations and put the incident in proper perspective. The Beverly community is one of the few neighborhoods in Chicago that have achieved a significant level of racial diversity with a minimum of racial tension.

A white boy nearly dies in a beat down from the hands of black kids, but the Southtown Star scolded the whole community to respond without resorting to generalizations .

They (STNG)reserve that right for themselves. This community needs be a vehicle for the agenda to force public officials to tell their neighbors and constituents that they are all racists - everyone.

Two properties got painted and the Southtown Star bloated a Group Race Hate smear on the community it purports to serve and then lies about it- Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Choke on it.

The Southtown Star serves only its agenda. The Southtown Star like the Chicago Sun Times needs controversy to make a go of it. Boycott these rags. Make them pay for that agenda so important that the truth matters not with their own money. Use your money for your kids and their friends -black, white, or whatever.

The ISSUE: The Southtown Star is a Hate Rag
WE SAY: Let it go bankrupt and soon!


You can get the high school sports results on-line for free.

Terry Sullivan Trio Do the Great American Song Book at Gallery Cabaret -June 29th

Ms. Terry Sullivan is a writer ( Cultural & Arts Editor for Chicago Daily Observer, choral director of St. Cecelia Chorus of St. John Cantius Catholic Church, and a seasoned Jazz singer, who Chicago nightlife pioneer and jazz enthusiast Mr. Nick Novich ( Nick's Place & etc.) likened to ' the sweet voice of Blossom Dearie.'

Terry Sullivan Trio will grace the stage of Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown on June 29th from 8-10:30PM. Get a start on your Summer with the vocal stylings of Ms. Terry Sullivan and Great American Song Book!

Ms. Sullivan is accompanied by two of Chicago's best Jazz Artists - pianist Tom Hope and Bass Man Brian Sandstrom.


Tom Hope, Jazz pianist, was born and raised in Houston, studied music at North Texas State U., and was a U. S. Army bandsman. He lived and worked in Los Angeles in the 70's and is a Chicagoan since 1976. An

experienced accompanist, he has a repertoire of thousands of tunes in all keys, with an emphasis on the Great American Songbook.

Tom has performed with Barrett Deems, Arnett Cobb, Scott Hamilton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Ira Sullivan, Ken Peplowski, Ed Polcer, Red Holloway, Lee Castle, Richie Cole, Al Grey, Britt Woodman and Charlie Persip, as well as singers such as Jaye P. Morgan and the Four Freshmen. He is also an accomplished singer and a student of the guitar.

Tom offers jazz vocal coaching in the context of the Great American Songbook. This involves learning the real melodies and rhythms of the songs, choosing tempos on the basis of lyrical sense and swing, then allowing one's natural style to develop. This leads to liberation from copying other performers' personal interpretations.



Brian Sandstrom - "One of the busiest bass players working in the Chicago area." Chicago Tribune.

Brian, sideman on more than 25 CDs, has toured Europe with free jazz pioneer Hal Russell. He has also recorded and played locally & nationally with such notables as Doug Blake, Frank Portolese, Willie Pickens, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Rusty Jones, Robert Shy, Mars Williams, Ed Pertersen, Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan, and Frank Catalano.


Gallery Caberet:

The Gallery Cabaret has been operating in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood since 1990. According to owner, Ken Strandberg, the Gallery Cabaret harkens back to a time when "you could walk into a joint, buy a drink, and enjoy live entertainment like comedy or music just for being there and being a patron." The Gallery has offered free entertainment 7 nites per week since it opened. Over time, many up and comers have graced the stage, like The Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Material Issue and Liz Phair (while they were still up and comers!). The Gallery has also hosted numerous comedy acts and poetry readings and slams. Every month, local artists have their work on display at the Gallery. Currently, we also offer cable TV including your favorite sports, until prior to showtime, and early bird drink specials from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm. We also have Darts and Golden Tee Golf. Can't wait for music to start? We have TouchTunes internet jukebox with access to 1000's of songs.

Old Greaser Anthem - For the Line Dancing.

The National Coalition to Stop the War was a multi-faced coalition - nay a Rainbow -of essentially the very same dweebs and victims ( Yppies, Diggers, SDS, Al Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, The Seven! et al. ) playing at tough guy and being fully surprised by the similar outcomes incumbent upon playing the fool.

"My Gawd, How can you say that, Hickey? You unfeeling Nazi .......but, They were sooooo Committed!!!"

I dunno. Just do.

The 1968 Democratic Convention has spawned more 'committed participants who were there, Man' than even Woodstock. Belying the fact that far fewer than 6,000 showed up in Grant Park.

Police Riot? well, if convicted ex-felon and former Governor Dan Walker says so . . . Nah. Goofs went too far and got a tune-up.

The same Dweeb/Victims got a rump-thumping from Italian young men, the 69th Street Loafers, some days prior to the Convention and again by Chicago Police Officers.

Later, the same knuckleheads with rich Mommies and Daddies went all commitment in Old Town ( the Days of Rage) and a year later when rioters tore up Balboa when Sly Stone failed to show up at the Grant Park Band shell.

After that . . .the commitment seemed to die. The Theatre continued through the 1970's with the Trial of the Seven and the rest is . . .ludicrous.

Don Rose brought Happy Days back this week. Progressives get more mileage out of nothing - why does this great Nation have an energy crisis with all the methane fired out by Dweebs and Victims yet.

Whine on, Oh Happy Worriers!

For the line dancing I have chosen a very swell and little played ditty by an Arc-Greaser! Eddie Cochran!

Click my post title for a Chicago Greaser Coalition anthem - it's something else.

Obama's Brass Going to China- Where is the American Economy Going?

This tip came from Mary Ann Roti - Unbelieveable Change

And so it continues . . .

Georgia Arms is the 5th largest retailer of .223 Ammo in America . They sell 9mm, .45, ..223 ammunition. They normally buy spent brass from the US Department of Defense. Spent brass is "one time used" shell cases used by our Military for training purposes.
They buy the brass, recondition it, and then reload the brass for resale to Law Enforcement, Gun Clubs, Gun Shops, and stores like Wal-Mart. They normally buy 30,000 lbs of spent brass at a time.
This week the DoD wrote a letter to the owner of Georgia Arms and informed him that from now on the DoD will be destroying the spent brass, shredding it. It will no longer be available to the ammo makers, unless they buy it in a scrap shredded condition (which they have no use for). The shredded brass is now going to be sold by the DoD to China as scrap metal, after the DoD pays for it to be shredded.. The DoD is selling the brass to China for less money than the ammo makers have been paying, plus the DoD has to pay to have the brass shredded and do the accounting paperwork.
This sure helps the economy now doesn't it? Sell cheaper to China , and do not sell at all to a proven US business. Any hidden agenda working here? Obama going after the Firearms Industry and our ammunition!!
The Georgia Arms owner even related a story that one of his competitors had already purchased a load of brass last week. The DoD contacted him this week and said they were sending someone over to make sure it was destroyed. Shell cases he had already bought!
The brass has no value to the ammo maker if it is destroyed/shredded/melted. The ammo manufacturer only uses the empty brass cases to reload different calibers, mainly 223 bullets.
The owner of Georgia Arms says that he will have to lay off at least half of his 60 workers, within 2-3 months if the DoD will no longer sell spent brass cases to the industry. Georgia Arms has 2-3 months of inventory to use, by summer they're out.
If the Reloading Industry has to purchase new manufacture brass cases, then the cost of ammunition will double or even triple, plus Obama want to add a 500% tax on each shell.

Hope for Change!

Coalition of Old Greasers Calls for Counter Protest to Protest Called by Radicals Protesting Police '68 Reunion

A Coalition of Old Greaser Gangs is Settin' a Meet-up with Don Rose and his Aging Cupcakes!

Cadillac Commie with Bad Buckers 'PROVOKES' an Illinois National Guardsman-not Dick Butkus for this Dental Challenged but Earnest Revolutionary.

You say want a Coalition, well You know . . .

Here they come - from all over, by over there, near the tracks and the viaducts, where the streetcar turns the bend around.

THE REBELS: 47th Street and Ashland;63RD STREET IMPERIALS; 63rd STREET BEER CLUB;
V's: They hung around behind Gage Park High School.
69th STREET LOAFERS: Mostly Italian from 69th and Hermitage:DUKES OF HERMITAGE.
Hung around Hermitage Park and 59th and Hermitage:SAWYER BOYS: They hung at Sawyer school at 53rd and Sawyer;WHIPPLE STREET BOYS;ARTESIAN COBRAS: (a greaser gang who evolved from the 59 Street Supreme rulers, and most of whom were weightlifting fanatics) issued a statement concerning the call by Food Critic, Public Relations Maven and Later-day Kropotkin Don Rose to protest a planned reunion of septuagenarian and octogenarian Chicago Police Veterans in celebration of their Service and Protection of Chicago during the attempted coup by Cadillac Commie Cupcakes at the Democratic Convention:

From ABC Seven ( Andy Shaw Free Since 2008)-

June 23, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A police watchdog group says it will march in protest of a planned reunion of Chicago officers who worked during the 1968 Democratic convention.
The Chicago convention was marked by protests and violence. The group Chicago Copwatch says the planned reunion celebrates police violence against demonstrators. They plan to march this Friday, June 26, - the same day of the scheduled Chicago riot police reunion. They also delivered a letter to the mayor's office asking him to condemn the reunion.
"These were unprovoked assaults by the police on several occasions in Grant Park, on Michigan Avenue," said Don Rose, activist.
"The Chicago Police Department, the City of Chicago, broke the laws they were obligated to uphold," said Patricia Hill, African American Police League.

Chicago Greaser and Street-corner Guy* Coalition Spokesguy Niti Capone, III had this to say, " These Fruits came around the park over by the viaduct on Ashland and tried to get Vinny, Me and the Three Parisi Brothers to come downtown and help them toss 7-Up bottles of Pee and Irish Confetti at the Bulls, but we done that already and there was 16" Ball-game at Sherman Park with Slinky Ryan from Wood Streets and those Micks what live south of the tracks, across from Our Lady A Mount Carmel and all go to Leo, but their sissies what go to Big Weed (Little Flower H.S.), like this skinny little turd name Hickey who goes to all our dances and ain't too much of a damn pest, because he's tight with Tony DiPolito and the Vasi Brothers. We go to Harper and Hubbard and Parker, but we go to Church and all.

So, this Fruit** in the Dickie and Tweed and Beatle Boots says that they gonna bring Revolution! We start yankin' his pud! Then he gets his panty-hose bloated and cracks wise and Larry with the three fingers from Murray Park gives him a crack because Larry's brother is in Vietnam fightin' the Chinese Reds.

The Fruit near pee'd his cords - wearin' cords in July - and cries, 'We're Your Brothers! Off The Pigs!' and Larry gives him another crack. Then the other Fruits in the Volkswagon, we all drive Chevies, and its gots these plastic wallpaper flowers for Peace, start bawling so we swarm them and take a tire iron to the hood, which is the trunk of those Fag Wagons. We're all frisky on Sneaky Pete's ( Tall Schlitz with Ripple Red poured in) and got the giggles over these Room 222 Fags. We toss our lit Luckies into the Hitler Bug and they all start cryin' like little bitches.

We crack the bunch of them and they're all cryin' about 'callin' the Cops' and We yell back -'Off The Pigs! Dude!' The Cops from Englewood always treated us Okay and Mr. Pape was a cop and his cousin ran the Little League. So we called a bunch of the guys that we used to bloody up in the parks and at the parties and Parish dances - the Polacks, Harps, Hunkies, Mex-es and Ricans - all great guys. I was in the Army for two years with a couple of Polack Gaylords from Back o' the Yards and two Psychos from Canaryville - lovely gents.

If you see that Mick runt Hickey, let him know that my cousin Emil ain't forgotten that he cut-in on a slow dance at VIZ with Trolly Manuppa and he still ain't real happy. You ain't that Hickey are you? Jesus, you was in shape what happened? Just kidding. No, really? Don't do pull-ups anymore?

Anyway, we called the old guys to come out and support the Old Cops. The Fruits are still fruits and hate America.

Yeah, we made some calls we'll be there to help the Old Time Coppers."

Click my post title for Chicago Stone Greasers - splendid historical record - no Kidding! The Photos for the south side gangs are the work of Chicago Historian and Photag Mr. Larry Raeder who grew up in the Sherman Park Hood. Mr. Rader has been an invaluable source of knowledge for Crime Biographer Rose Keefe and Historian Richard Lindberg.

* Greaser was an attitude - generally but not exclusively of Italian, Polish, Czech, Mexican. Puerto Rican ethnic origin
Street-Corner Guy was a person attuned to proximity to smokes, beer, Pop, eats, mischief - often Irish, Jewish, German, Belgian, and Swedish


** Fruit, Fag Sissy, Cupcake, Shirley & etc ( archaic - Pre -PC) - generally a person of whom one has slight regard and middling concern due to aura of Self-absorption, infidelity and poor or unacceptable habits of dress and coiffure.

Rahm Emanuel Knows What's for Dinner - It's David Brooks - Trussed, Appled, Sauced and Smoking!

Washington Post correspondent Howard Kurtz does a splendid job of presenting Rahm Emmanuel the Chief of Staff for President Obama, as man who knows how to put Media Bacon on the President's table.

When Mr. Emanuel goes to market every little piggy gets looked over, but le treatment royale is reserved for the sucklings who play on conservative or independent high ground - notably David Brooks.

David Brooks does not do much for me, as a writer, much less as an original thinker. He reminds me of a kid who grew up playing with Major League baseball cards, but never went to the prairie between the two-flats for pick-up rules baseball. Now, he goes to swap-shows for memorabilia and shows the disinterested citizens of America all the swell stuff he got. " Hey, that's nice Dave. Look, I gotta go."

Rahm Emanuel eyed this little piggy for the platter early on the game. Howard Kurz notes:

Conservative critics also got the Rahm treatment. After Michael Kelly, then the New Republic's editor, called Clinton a "shocking liar," Emanuel took him to lunch. Emanuel called Times columnist William Safire "Uncle Bill" and had him over for dinner, despite his having called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar."

Against this backdrop, Emanuel's courtship of Brooks, a conservative who has at times been sympathetic to Obama, is hardly surprising. In March, after Brooks wrote that Obama had turned out to be another big-spending liberal, he found himself talking to Emanuel, two other top officials and the president, which produced a follow-up column crediting the White House with making a "sophisticated and fact-based" case.

Brooks says he had a half-dozen dinners with Emanuel during his congressional days and now considers him a policy maven as well as political tactician. "He's comfortable with journalists," Brooks says. "He provides real information without giving too much away. With some people you just get the spin; he does go beyond that."

Rahm Emanuel never drew a stupid breath in his life. Hell, it's easy to 'get comfortable with journalists,' Dave! It is, "Come For the Table, Newsies! Here, Newsies,Newsies! Soo-Weeeeeee!" And the Porcine Parade prances to dinner!

He feeds you apples and sugar. You provide the feast! Bon Appetite, Mr. President!

Remember newspapers,folks? Now, they are used to wrap up the fat, the bones, the snout and the ears.

Czech Please! Klas Restaurant! "The Accidental Army"; Goulash and Great Conversation with Steve Jordan and Elias Crim: Save Our History! Czech Please!

I had a most memorable Father's Day Dinner with Ms. Terry Sullivan; Susan and Steve Jordan of Oak Park; historian, editor and executive network operator Elias Crim and his three beautiful and talented daughters at the landmark Bohemian restaurant Klas in Cicero, IL.

Klas is a family operated restaurant that is a museum of Czech Culture and a delight of Old World service and atmosphere. Klas* is " the largest Czech Restaurant in the U.S.A. and a reminder of Chicago's debt to Bohemian people who brought skilled craftsmanship to the building trades and examples of personal and family thrift as an ethic - too long ignored.

The first Czech in Chicago is reported to have arrived before 1850:

Jan Habenicht in his Czech publication Dejiny Cechüv americkych (History of American Czechs) published in Si. Louis in 1910, categorically wrote that the first Czech settler in Chicago was a Moravian native Dr. Frantisek Adolf Valenta. This claim was generally accepted even by such eminent scholars as Professor Francis Dvornik.

Dr. Frantisek A. Valenta originally came to America in 1849 and, after a brief stay in New York City, he settled in August of the same year on the north side of Chicago. Later on he established a pharmacy on the corner of State and Van Buren Streets. His knowledge of German enabled him to practice medicine especially among Germans. After fourteen years of medical practice, he was quite rich and returned to Bohemia, reportedly with some $50,000. There he purchased a farm and in 1870 he died. Habenicht harshly
criticized Valenta's German orientation, however, if we look at it from a different perspective, we ought to give him credit for his entrepreneurship and be comforted by the fact that his presumed riches did not come from the back of poor Czech settlers.

http://www.svu2000.org/cs_america/chicago.htm

Chicago's Czech immigrants possessed few locally marketable skills, and in the 1880s, working at unsteady jobs, notably as lumber shovers in the “lumber district” adjoining Pilsen, they earned less than nearly all other major ethnic group in the city. Eschewing traditional craft unions, they readily employed the mass strike to better their economic situation, drawing on their dense associational network. Whole neighborhoods joined to keep out strikebreakers, playing a prominent part in street fighting with police and militia in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and other labor conflicts. The event that precipitated the Haymarket tragedy was a violent clash between heavily Bohemian lumber shovers and the police. Led by socialist-leaning freethinkers, Bohemians turned readily to the Socialist Labor Party at the end of the nineteenth century. By the 1910s and 1920s, however, Czechs earned more and worked at a wider range of occupations, including as operatives at Western Electric. Their energies were devoted more to ethnic and neighborhood organizations than to radical or unionist activity.

Early Czech immigrants largely voted for the Republican Party because of their opposition to slavery. However, Chicago Czechs changed their allegiance in local politics after the Democratic Party nominated a Czech for alderman in 1883. Czech support for the Democrats continued well into the twentieth century, peaking with the election of Anton Cermak, a Czech immigrant, as the Democratic mayor of Chicago in 1931.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/153.html

Klas is located on the street named for Chicago's best known Bohemian - Anton Cermak.

Terry, the Jordan's and the Crims had attended Mass and a play at St. Odilo's Catholic Church, while I had spent a few hours wishing my Dad a Happy Father's Day - "Hell, yes it's Happy - for Crissake, I'm still on top of the grass!"

I dropped my girls off at home and took Cicero Ave. up to Cermak Road and West eight blocks to the massive Klas and and quaffed samples the fine 'Shirley Temples' in the masterfully carved deep dark wooden bar festooned with carved statuary, memorabilia and Bohemian/Moravian Welcome!

The Jordans arrived and so also the beautiful and elegant Ms. Sullivan and Crims of Valparaiso, Indiana!

Steve Jordan is Boston-born banker who was raised Irish Catholic in San Francisco and his beautiful wife Susan is an native San Franciscan. Steve Jordan spent many years in South East Asia - Singapore primarily - and is man with wealth of historical knowledge and eclectic discernment's on all manner of cultural interests - governmental as well as gastronomical.

Steve pointed out the photos of Czech soldiers in Czarist Russian winter gear and identified them as members of the famous Czech Legion (Česká družina). 'These were giants!, remarked the talented Mr. Jordan. "The Czech Legion fought an epic battle against the Red Armies all along the Trans-Siberian Railroad route from Asia to Europe and yet very few people have ever heard of them. They fought an epic paralleled only by the Anabasis of Xenophon and Chosin Reservoir of Chesty Puller - God I love this place! You get a real sense of history here!"

Chicago film-maker Bruce Bendinger has made a film about the Czech Legion - The Accidental Army, which opened here in Chicago on June 20th at the Gene Siskel Center.

Ed Koziarki of Chicago Reader has written a splendid piece about this film and Chicago's debt to the Czechs of Chicago - here is an excerpt of Ed's review:

“Here was a story that almost nobody knows,” Bendinger says. “You pull a thread and the more you pull, the more interesting it got. Even in the Czech and Slovak republics, it’s become a historical blind spot.”

The Chicago connection goes back to 1902, when local plumbing magnate Charles Crane recruited Tomáš Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Czech nationalist who’d served in the Austro-Hungarian parliament, to lecture at the University of Chicago. (A memorial to Masaryk and the Czechoslovak Legion now stands on campus, at the east end of the Midway Plaisance). The Slavs of Central Europe had no state of their own at the time: most Czechs and Slovaks were subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while a sizable minority lived in Russia. Nearly 100,000 Czechs had immigrated to Chicago, giving the city the world’s second-highest Czech population after Prague.

After his summer stint at the U. of C., Masaryk returned to Austro-Hungary and resumed his political activities. When the empire invaded Serbia in 1914, initiating World War I, he fled to England, becoming leader of an Allied spy network and the foremost international spokesman for the Czechoslovak independence movement.

On the day the war broke out, thousands of Chicago Slavs gathered in Pilsen Park at 26th and Albany—in Little Village, then called Czech California—to urge the United States to join the Allied effort against Austro-Hungary and the Central Powers. They launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting their relatives in Europe to resist conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, or to desert and fight for the Allies. “The letters [showed] how people were feeling,” Bendinger says. “Thousands of [Slavic] Austro-Hungarian soldiers surrendered as quickly as they could.” Chicago Czechs and other Slavs “were at the forefront of being on the Allied side in World War I. Their relatives were the ones being killed, or being drafted to fight for the Germans and Austro-Hungarians.”

The first Czechoslovak Legion was a force of 10,000 in the Russian army—ostensibly volunteers, though many were pressured to fight under threat of losing their land. Their ranks swelled after Masaryk convinced the Russian government to allow 50,000 Czech and Slovak POWs from the Austro-Hungarian army to defect and fight for Russia. The Czechoslovak Legion is credited with helping to tie up German forces on the Eastern front, giving the Allies a crucial edge on the Western front. Their service, Bendinger says, also gave the Czech independence movement vital “skin in the game.”

In May 1918, Masaryk went on a barnstorming tour of the U.S. to raise political and financial backing for Czech independence. In downtown Chicago, outside the Blackstone Hotel, he addressed a crowd of 150,000 supporters, demonstrating the independence movement’s political muscle and turning American political discourse in favor of a Czechoslovak nation.

(Standing before a statue of Masaryk in Prague on April 5, President Obama said, “Masaryk spoke to a crowd in Chicago that was estimated to be over 100,000. I don’t think I can match Masaryk’s record, but I’m honored to follow his footsteps from Chicago to Prague.”)

Steve Jordan knew the story. Elias Crim knew the story. I had heard about the Czech Legion, but as with most things in my life managed to place that thought in the top drawer of my Brain Dresser - the one that holds treasures; baby teeth, match boxes from memorable places; ear rings lost and stepped upon & etc.

America needs to open that drawer often. We are losing our sense of History. President Obama has a very poor sense of history** and swats at historical facts like so many flies. Jimmy Carter also took a paddle to the rabbit of Historical sense, and allowed an Iranian Revolution that still seems to hold America hostage. That's history, folks! Learn it or live it . . .over and over again.

Too many Americans like to believe the things that they are told to them by ersatz authorities ( Look, Bill Ayers is called an Academic! Have you ever read his nonsense?)- like America is murderous, racist, greedy, opportunistic, Imperialist. Americans like to embrace icons like Margaret Sanger, who was as twisted a Eugenics racist as Hitler on a bad day, yet she is padded with Planned Parenthood coins in the memory slot; that Jane Addams was more than just a self-absorbed and bitter person; that Saul Alinsky really mattered to anyone while he was alive and that he actually improved the lives of the people that he used.

Open your eyes to history. At Klas Restaurant on Cermak Road it is all around you.
However it also helps to have interested and interesting people like Jordans and the Crims when enjoying the Goulash.

*Klas Restaurant
5734 W Cermak Rd
Cicero, IL 60804
(708) 652-0795


**

Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America's relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution -- and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.

Little more than three decades ago, Jimmy Carter, another American president convinced that what had come before him could be annulled and wished away, called on the nation to shed its "inordinate fear of communism," and to put aside its concern with "traditional issues of war and peace" in favor of "new global issues of justice, equity and human rights." We had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War, he said, "fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is quenched with water." The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.

Mr. Carter would try an atonement in the last year of his presidency. He would pose as a born-again hawk. It was too late in the hour for such redemption. It would take another standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, to see that great struggle to victory.

Iran's ordeal and its ways shattered the Carter presidency. President Obama's Persian tutorial has just begun.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124563005022735881.html

Happy Fathers Day - St. Joseph, Si Blitzstein and Dad - Bless Us.

“a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame” (Matthew 1:19).

"He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: ‘Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord’” (St. Bernardine of Siena).

Just as the saying goes that behind every great man there is a great woman, the inspiration behind the celebration of a Father's Day is owed at least partly to its slightly earlier counterpart, Mother's Day. Mother's Day was just beginning to gather widespread attention in the United States in 1909, when Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, of Spokane, Washington, heard a sermon on the merits of setting aside a day to honor one's mother. It gave her the idea to petition for a day to honor fathers, and in particular, her own father, William Jackson Smart, who had raised her and her five siblings by himself, after her mother died in childbirth.

With support from the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA, her efforts paid off, and on June 19, 1910, the first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane. The rose was selected as the official Father's Day flower, and some suggest that people wear a white rose to honor a father who is deceased, and a red one for a father who is living. In 1972, Richard Nixon signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day.

http://fathers-day.123holiday.net/


I have three wonderful children - Nora, Conor and Clare. Their Mother and my Bride, Mary, is in Heaven. She watches the cartoon playing 24/7 which is my care for those three great kids. Homer Simpson looks like Lord Chesterfield next to my ministrations as Hickey Pater Familias.

Jesus! Rag, rag, rag and the occasional Rage. That's this weak Sister, Bubba.

I do what I can, or attempt to make myself believe that all that I do for them comes not from a misstep, a lazy half-measure, or out of my personal vanity.

They deserve a great Father. They have one in God the Father and a reasonable facsimile here on earth.

Fathers are important, I guess. There are commercials telling us about Father's Rights from lawyers in Cowboy Hats; Celebration Sales for Hardware, Steaks, Golf Shirts and Old Country Buffets.

A wonderful boss that I had back when I worked one of my many jobs to meet tuition at Loyola was Simon Bitzstein.

Si Blitzstein hired legions of Catholic Youth to sell Van Huesen Shirts, Levis, quality suits, sport coats, and accessories at Mr. Lee's in the Evergreen Plaza*. One Fathers Day while fitting a guy home from the Navy for a suit, Si was asked what he was doing for Father's Day. He said, "This. This is what Fathers do."

"Hickey, he said, "You know when's Mothers Day?"

I said, "Last month."

Si rejoined, "Nine Months after Fathers Day. You got children? You work."

That was no joke. Do your job.

Fathers, no matter how strong, weak, smart, flawed, best-intended, or exemplary, are committed to a contact made with the women that they love and the subsequent gift from God that this contact requested.

It's work. We Catholics celebrated Fathers Day long before the thoughtful Methodist Miss Strong, and the subsequent Presidents declared a fitting tribute.

Fulfill the contract.

My Dad, was a three Campaign Marine veteran of the Pacific who worked three jobs. When my Mom was sick, the Old Man cooked,cleaned, washed, dried and folded clothes in between those jobs. Never a word about it.

Si Blitzstein fitted a sailor for a new suit.

St. Joseph raised the Son of God.

That's Fathers.

I pray to be half- the men they are - Fathers.




* Click my post title for the impending demolition of this landmark shopping center.

Protect Guam from North Korean Missiles

( North Guam including Anderson AFB)

President Obama wants to talk. That is what he does and how he became our President.

However, President Obama acted on his words trying to nuance the world. President Obama does not want anti-missile defence systems in Europe or even the United States in order to make his words more compelling to Thugs. The world has some real nasty villains afoot.

These villains are not unlike the drive-by thugs in America's cities who shoot with impunity and murder anyone.

President Obama comes from the Progressive Mind-set that embraces the notion that Guns Kill People. Guns kill people in the very same way that pencils flunk examinations.

Chicago has the strictest Gun Laws in America, but also the highest number of Public School Kids murdered by Thugs with Guns. Those Gun Laws keep academics, suburban dwelling columnists, lawsuit lawyers and community activists off a patch of Mayor Daley's back, but have contributed in making Chicago a Thug Comfort Zone.
Black and Hispanic kids die from Thugs throwing shots at them with impunity bordering on immunity.

The world has thugs. North Korea is a Thug Nation. You can not talk to thugs. Thugs can only be interdicted - defended against by Law Enforcement Officers armed with guns and a government with something amounting to a spine.

President Obama told the world that he would rid it of Nuclear Weapons back in April and the North Koreans called President Obama's soaring Rhetoric:

PRAGUE – Just hours after North Korea launched a long-range rocket, President Barack Obama called for "a world without nuclear weapons" and said the United States has a “moral responsibility ” to lead the way, as the only nation ever to use them.

Obama’s speech was long planned as the centerpiece of his first presidential trip overseas, but it gained new urgency after North Korea sent a multi-part rocket soaring over the Sea of Japan early Sunday morning.

North Korea insisted the launch was meant to put a satellite into space but the U.S. and other nations believe Pyongyang is trying to develop the capability to launch a nuclear warhead.

The president, who was woken up just after 4:30 a.m. local time by news of the launch, spoke to the authoritarian state in remarks hastily added to his text.

“Now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons,” Obama said to thousands thronged into the cobblestone square outside the elegant Prague Castle, in what was the largest crowd of his five-country, eight-day swing.

“All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that's why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”

World Nuke Control? Where only the Thugs have guns - like here in Chicago? Come on!

Guam is America's Asian Strategic Outpost and it is vulnerable to a North Korean missile threat. Guam, as it was before World War II, is always an American afterthought . . .until Thugs attack it. Guam is America, Mr. President. Guam voted for you.

Here are the thoughts of a gent in Virginia who sees the real threat from North Korea is a strike at Guam.

I think that the North Koreans could make a much more dangerous point by launching a long range missile and having it hit a target in the ocean that is exactly 3,404 kilometers away.

3,404 km being the exact distance between Pyongyang and Guam. Guam being the strategic hub of US military operations in the Pacific. Guam is home to roughly a third of our Air Force's aircraft at any given time and a large proportion of our naval assets. Nuking Guam would severely cripple us in the Pacific. Such an attack would be the modern equivalent of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. In pure military terms, hitting Guam now would hurt us more than a hit on Hawaii would.

North Korea is still a ways from being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and place it on top of a long range missile. And there is no way that one of their aircraft could get close enough to Guam's airspace to bomb it. But just putting a missile down at exactly that distance would make the point that they are approaching the ability to strategically attack the US in something beyond an asymmetrical manner. Posted by Jack Landers at Friday, June 19, 2009

( emphasis my own)

Mr. President this is no time for Nuance.

Thanks Gino Ford and the ComEd Crews Who Tackled the Storms!

Gino Ford is a man a half! Mr. Ford is a Charter member of the Kean Gas* Coffee Salon - a coterie of neighborhood worthies ( Boz O'Brien, Mary Therese Riordan RN, Capt. Eddie Ryan CFD, Eddie Carroll, Terry McEldowney - Lyric Opera, Det. Neal Mosh CPD, Frank Hodorowicz, Marty Tully, Billy Higgins, Mike Quinlan, Rich Doyle, Fred Riley, Eugenius Callahan, Smash McKenna, Joe Murphy, Jerry Schumacher, Pat Sheehan, and me self) who caucus at the gas station for coffee and bon mots between 5AM and 6AM most mornings.

It is with this diverse group of tradesmen, nurses, civil servants and venture capitalists that my insights to the economic, cultural, social and religious impact upon Patriots and Neighbors and their families is incubated and hatched - prematurely and full term.

We are blessed with such people as these. They have America's back.

Gino Ford services all of us with ComEd and is the vanguard warrior who returns electrical power to all of us.

ComEd is a bete noir with most of us helots - rate hikes and obscure billing protocols developed by sneaky bean counters and protected by some Legislators in Springfield - most notably the former leader of the Illinois Senate Emil Jones.


However, the crews who venture up on the high wires face injury and death ever day and most especially when our planet goes Gangster on us - Ice Storms and Hurricano Downpours- like yesterday.

Gino missed coffee, because he is out with the crews. Gino is sweating up a storm in heavy jacket asbestos gloves, helmet and harness with tens of pounds of gear pulling him to earth along with the buffeting winds and pelts of rain.

Yesterday evening when I travelled north to pick up the beautiful and talented Ms. Terry Sullivan for evening at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase to witness the electric performance of Jazz Diva Dee Dee Bridgewater* and her quintet, I counted more than twenty huge ComEd Utility and Cherry -Picker Rigs heading north in the express lanes of the Dan Ryan.

That was Gino and the Lads. They are still at it.

Here is the high power and exotic Ms. Dee Dee Bridgewater singing Sweet Rain for Gino and the Com Ed Helots - the High Wire and Pole Artistes! God Bless you all and watch over your labors!

Thanks!

Chicago's Dept. of Streets and San says the storms that ripped thru the city downed 350 trees and put out more than 60 traffic lights. 450+ basements have flooded and more than 500 streets have been made impassable by the runoff.
Spokesman Matt Smith says the department will work through the night to get things back to normal.
Com Ed crews are out in force in the Southwest suburbs. Tonight's round of storms knocked out powerline and downed trees.
No serious injuries were reported but it will some time before communities recover. About 36-thousand of the 120-thousand power outages are located in the South suburbs.

NZ-Weather

* Dee Bridgewater 'Sweet Rain'

Kean Brothers Inc‎ -
2632 W 111th St, Chicago, IL‎ - (773) 445-3626‎

What's With Progressive Women and Busted Limbs? Rep. Endora Schakowsky on the Gimp,Too!

First it was Wise Latina Judge Sotomayor doing the old Step-And-Half Waltz and then Sec. of State Giggles Clinton hammers her elbow and now we learn that Rep. Jan 'Endora' Schakowsky is on the gimp, as well!

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., one of the strongest proponents of closing down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came home after a visit there in arguably worse physical shape than the detainees.
Schakowsky was seen limping down a basement hallway in the Capitol on Tuesday, using crutches and sporting a cast. She said she fell down in a briefing room Guantanamo and broke her left foot.
Schakowsky has been a vocal opponent of the prison and has visited several times, reporting on "the harsh conditions detainees face there," as well as "horrific stories" told by detainees claiming to have been treated badly there.
Last year she introduced legislation that would have banned the CIA from using interrogation techniques on prisoners that have been deemed to be torture.
Schakowsy isn't blaming anyone but herself for her injury, however.
"This was not one of those enhanced interrogation techniques," she joked. "This was not to get me to confess."

Girls, time to load up on calcium! Are Progressives brittle, or what?

Tom Dart Should be County Board President - Why He Would Want It?

Sheriff Tom Dart is the best qualified person to be President of of Cook County Board. Tom Dart is a brilliant young man and a good guy to the bargain. He is collegial, tough, courteous but no push-over.

Like Speaker Madigan, and any true public servant, Tom Dart plays things close to the vest.

Tom Dart has slowly climbed the Chicago political gradus and has developed the skills to allow him to be effective.

Tom Dart was President Obama's roommate and colleague in Springfield while working to reform the looming pay-day-loan catastrophe that is now Tsunami'd into a National Storm of Debt. Dart's Bi-Partisan efforts were smothered by political self-interests. The Zip-code was declared Racist by Rev. Jess Jackson and the hand -wringers went along on the disaster train. Tom Dart warned of this impending crisis ten years ago.

Tom Dart is Cook County Sheriff - the most thankless and ugly job on the planet.

However, the source of the sewer is the Cook County Board. A Sheriff is needed so the next Sheriff can avoid having the same clowns who killed phony pay-day-loan legislation undermine that job.

Tom Dart's predecessor had these clowns and their lawyers, and think tanks and journalist stooges bed-bugging his efforts to improve Cook County Law Enforcement twenty-four hours a day.

I love Paul Vallas, but he gave the job a duck. God Bless Him! Forrest Claypool passed on it. Forrest will be fine. He's always fine. Toni Preckwinkle could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street, but so wants to sit in Todd's Chair. Todd Stoger . . .ah, Jaysus, the poor thing.

Cook County could use someone who took the time to learn how to lead. That is Tom Dart. Tom Dart could fix the Cook County Mess. There will still be greedy, back-stabbing oppotunists buzzing around him, like President Obama's Late Mr. Fly, but the skilled, honest and professional Mr. Dart can handle them - and PETA as well.

Dart began his career in public service as an Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney, where he prosecuted hundreds of felony crimes during his five years with the office. As part of his duties he was assigned to prosecute crimes in the South Suburbs, where he helped initiate a massive investigation of corruption in the town of Ford Height’s Police Department, leading to the indictment of the chief and several of the towns police officers. Coincidentally in 2008, Sheriff Dart’s took over police protection in Ford Heights because of ongoing problems with the town’s police department.

By 1991, Dart had moved to the Illinois General Assembly when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the State Senate. The next year, he ran for elected office for the first time and won a seat in the Illinois House, representing a diverse district on Chicago’s South Side that included communities like Roseland, Pullman, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, Calumet Park, and portions of Blue Island.In Springfield, Dart quickly developed a reputation as a reform minded legislator who was willing to take on the state bureaucracy.

He served as chief sponsor of more than a dozen new child welfare laws that helped restructure the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. And, as an indication of things to come, Dart turned his attention to matters related to law enforcement. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he sponsored Mayor Daley’s Safe Neighborhood Act and authored several state laws designed to crackdown on child sex offenders, including a statute that targeted child predators who use the Internet to lure young victims. He also wrote the Sexually Violent Predators Commitment Act, a groundbreaking law that enable judges to deny freedom to sexual predators and detain them in state mental health facilities if they were deemed likely to commit new sex crimes after being released from prison.

Dart received dozens of honors for his work in the legislature, including the Illinois State Bar Association’s President’s Commendation and “Legislator of the Year Awards” from several groups, including the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, the Illinois State Crime Commission, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Neal referred to Dart as an “impact player” during his decade of service in the Illinois House.

Dart left the legislature in 2003 after an unsuccessful campaign for Illinois State Treasurer and was appointed to serve as Chief of Staff Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan. In 2006 Dart was elected to a four-year term as the new Sheriff of Cook County after Sheahan retired.

As Sheriff, Dart has enacted a variety of new policy initiatives. Among the many changes are an institution of psychological testing for entry level recruits, installing new technology in the Cook County Jail and court facilities throughout Cook County, and the creation of a weapons free committee to target the widespread use of homemade knives and shanks in the jail.
Under Dart’s directive, the Sheriff’s Police have initiated a variety of stings, crackdowns, and investigations of criminal activity. He has been in the forefront in breaking up dog fighting rings and presided over the arrests of prostitution rings that use the internet as their advertising arm.

Dart holds a J.D. from Loyola University and a Bachelor’s Degree in History and General Social Studies from Providence College. He and his wife Patricia reside in Chicago and are the proud parents of four children.

Ralph Martire's Monster Budget - Ralph, Illinois Policy Institute Trims the Budget Blubber . . .And No One Dies

Rock-Solid By Gummy Illinois Son of the Soil -"Mrs. Illinois, not to be rude but Ralphie Rod Blag-Budget has gotten just a tad past chubby; now, I suppose that it's none of my business, but perhaps . . . maybe . . . Ralphie Rod might like a nice Soy Snack - 'stead a that thar Hershey's Dipped Deep Fried Oreo Wheel?"

SEIU Human Activists - "Coward! Ralphie Rod Has Feelings and Will Die Without Those Empty Calories! Call the Coalition! We are marching on this man . . . what's that? Oh, Woman. Sorry. Are you Gay? That would make a huge difference, . . .Oh, you were laughing at us! Youare a Man a Breeder! No Doubt against Womens Reproductive Health and a Theocrat. Nice. but the child needs his snack!"

John Tillman's Illinois Policy Intitute's Report and Recommendations shows legislators how to trim the lard from the State Budget without raising taxes.

In fact it gives very specific recommendations of just where to slice and dice wasteful spending - Chicago State University* for example, where its former President went on a taxpayer funded personal spending junket for years, is given only a modest cut in appropriated spending dollars.

No blood. No Fire. No Nothing. Just a reasonable taxpayer cash diet.

The report concludes:

If Illinois had enacted an expenditure limit in 2004 that limited spending growth to population plus inflation, the state could have cumulatively
saved $13.7 billion over the past six years. That’s money that could have
been put in a rainy day fund, applied toward the unfunded public employee
pension liabilities, or even refunded to taxpayers. Budget Savings from
Establishing a Spending Limit in 2004 An expenditure limit could have helped to
prevent the $11.606 billion budget deficit . . . state faces today. If Illinois had adopted an expenditure limit in 2004, the budget for fiscal year 2010 would be $29.1 billion. Given that the state is expected to bring in $26.9 billion
in revenue in 2010, the “diet” budget of $29.1 billion is much more in tune with reality than the actual 2010 base budget of $34.2 billion. Illinois has a good opportunity to prevent future runaway spending growth by immediately passing an expenditure limit based on inflation and population growth.

Purple T -Shirt give-aways are a nice way to get folks passionate about shouting at lawmakers and marching under the Capital Dome, but real solution to Budget Bloat is Fiscal and Fiduciary Fearlessness.

Legislators who voted down the tax-increase showed just that - Courage.

Ralph Martire sold Tax Bloat to Blago and others before him. Sensible Law makers said no. People like Patti Bellock, John Fritchey, Jim Watson, Debbie Mell - Yep Deb Mell, Kevin Joyce, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Brosnahan are the only people telling Illinois Budget Blubber Boy, Ralphie-Rod, 'Drop that Elephant Ear, Son! My God it's the size of a Harvester!'

Ralph is still hawking the lard. It's getting pretty tough to squeeze into those purple T-shirts - metaphorically speaking.


Cut the Bloat! Say No to Taxes!

Feel like Marching!



* Click ,y post title for the full report! Nice work John Tillman!
Check out Table # 3 on page 2 of the Illinois policy Institute Report
TABLE 3: Eliminating Governor Quinn’s
FY 2010 Spending Increases (general funds)

Voting Against Illinois Tax Monster is Not Cowardly, Ralph Martire - It is Your Monster, Ralph, You and Your Pal Blago. Get a Leash

"Avoiding a tax increase vote because you are concerned about your political career. That is cowardly," said the Center on Tax and Budget Accountability's Ralph Martire. SEIU Graphic Novel -Progress Illinois

Graphic Novels are what the Hep Cats call Comic Books these days. Ralph Martire is a career Academic Appointee who helped Gov. Rod Blagojevich buy fleets of PACE SUVs to help 'seniors' get around. That was nice. Grandma Donahue lived at 63rd & Kilpatrick near Midway and got around just fine on CTA. Seniors now ride free.

Old Lawyers from DuPage ride free. Blago sent his wife to Costa Rica and awaits more paper from Fitzy. Ralph Martire is still getting a handsome salary from one or more of the many Coalitions, that he handsomely manages to get appointed to, and shouts out scripted screams that tax-payers need to pay more.

Ralph, we're Tap City, Son.

My legislators voted against the Swelled-Like-A-Tick Budget that Ralph Martire helped Blago bloat. Ralph was Blago's Budget Big-shot ( Ralph has been Illinois' Mr. Programs since Dawn Clark Netsch first appointed Ralph to do some Coalition building).

Ralph is going around with Progressive, Fair and Efficient Charts and Numbers to make sure folks that who do not understand how a balance a check book can get all worked up over money that other people have earned.

http://www.kankakee.lib.il.us/podcasts/images/tax.pdf

Ralph is good for SEIU, Good for People who benefit from other people's tax burdens.

Ralph is not really good for people with mortgage payments, tuition burdens, and jobs ( for the moment) in Illinois. Ralph is good to people who appoint him to swell paying jobs and positions on boards. Ralph has not held elected office.

SEIU is going after Representatives voting the way the people (tax-payers) demand that they vote -

Up first was a trio of south suburban Democratic Reps. -- Kevin McCarthy, Jim Brosnahan, and Mike Zalewski -- who all voted against a temporary tax increase last month. They were paid a visit by dozens of state workers, including home health care aide Gwendolyn Vaughe, who asked the Representatives how they could justify the life-or-death cuts. "What does this mean for our seniors?" Vaughe asked. "Are they going to be left to die?"

When we caught up with Rep. McCarthy in his Orland Park office, he told us that he's yet to see exactly what programs are at stake (department heads are still pulling together the specifics), but acknowledged "dire circumstances" are ahead. "None of my colleagues have blinders on," he tells us. "They see how important these cuts are." But do they?

They do, Sweetheart. People who stand for election have a Coalition - the voters. Let the Legislature and its Leadership cut through the Fat on Ralph & Blago's Monster. Save the SOB stories.

Ralph, you made the Monster Budget. You feed him.

Chicago Daily Observer Connects the Allison Davis Dots Found By Sun Times' Tim Novak

Tim Novak of Chicago Sun Times has done more to put ’some’ light on the Progressive Machine; however, Mr. Novak’s great work scatters heaps of Dots that remain Unconnected on the political table.

His labors are Augean, but also like those of Sisyphus - much uphill groaning and heaving only to have the stone roll back.

Dan Kelley's timely piece might just prod the Lap Dogs to connect the piles of Dots:

If nothing else exposing Davis would serve a higher purpose: publicizing the blatant hypocrisy of the phony activists who are really reliable cogs in the Democratic Machine. A one time civil rights protester, who marched outside of City Hall, Davis proved to be someone who could be bought off by the system. His one time protégé, Obama means to overhaul the American economy and engage in a massive expansion of the size and scope of government activities. Like Davis, Obama, exempts himself from the rules and intends to live a life of ease and plenty. The president can jet off for a dinner date on Broadway without worrying about the hypocrisy of simultaneously asking all of us commoners to pay higher taxes and make sacrifices while reducing our wasteful use of energy and limiting our pollution causing habits.
Posing as a community activist is a tried and true way to advance your political and financial career in Democratic Chicago: the Shaw brothers, Bob and his late brother, Bill, were supposedly fair housing activists; Dorothy Tillman attended Chicago Board of Education meetings where she shouted down Angeline Caruso, a former acting school superintendent, and ridiculed Caruso’s frumpy appearance in the name of education activism; Luis Guiterez marched with Communists and Puerto Rican Nationalists, some of whom were later accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism; Marilyn Katz ran with the campus radicals, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and protested the Viet Nam war while hurling missiles at the police before she became a public relations expert for the political machine; Jan Schakowsky and her unapologetic, convicted criminal spouse, Robert Cremer, are two other fakers. Interestingly enough, despite their varied backgrounds, these folks have something in common: all of these individuals seemed to fall into line as soon as their personal needs and wants were gratified and they were given a place at the head table. They have all been feeding from the public trough ever since. The former Soviets called such privileged leaders “the vanguard of the proletariat.”
Obama has accepted bushel baskets of money from Davis in the form of campaign contributions. He lobbied to place housing redevelopment funds in the hands of Davis and Rezko. Perhaps, a few dollars from the pension fund profiteering ended up in Obama’s campaign war chest too. Only time will tell as the investigation proceeds.
Someday soon, the president needs to explain his relationship with both men. Calling it another “boneheaded” move or claiming “This is not the Allison Davis that I once knew” may not cut it indefinitely. Laundering clean a stained reputation is not an easy task. Club soda does not remove all types of spots.

Click my Post Title for Dan Kelley's Expose of Chicago's Progressive Machine within its Very Nuanced Context and Chicago's Media's Feckless Disregard for Both.

Oh, Carol, You're The Bottom of the Barrel; The Dirty Rotten Apple of My Eye!

Today, Carol Marin does the buzzard on Fran Spielman's labors.

Fran Spielman is going after Mayor Daley's nephew - the Vanecko kid. Fair enough. The kid went into business with Progressive Clout Meister Allison Davis - Judson Miner's partner and Obama's Law Boss. It seems that the Sun Times wants no light on Allison Davis, whose own little boy had a real estate venture that got a three year old child killed when Cullen Davis' Venture* included a rusty gate that crushed the toddler.

Yep, The Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago shed no light on Progressive Impunity Immunity Workhorses. You see, if and when Allison Davis starts chirping to Fitzy - bad stuff about the Progressive Machine gets out.

Nota Bene! Sun Times Investigative Reporter - Tim Novak covered Allison Davis and Cullen Davis like quality wallpaper. In fact, this helot lamented the long absence of Tim Novak's powerful work over the last summer and fall. Here is a link to my references to Mr. Novak's great work ( amended 8:53 AM 6/17/2009). I apologize for this inadvertent slight of Chicago's most tenacious news pitbull.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/search?q=Tim+Novak
So, the pile on continues on Regular Democrats and GOP politicians only - oh, and any and all members of their families - It's A Progressive Thing.

Well, Old Carol Marin, for whom I have little, or no regard as a journalist, but fully understand and appreciate her status as a manufactured icon, does the buzzard on the body of work performed by a real reporter - Fran Spielman.

Carol can't eat all the carrion on her own self and powers, so she pours on the Royko Remoulade - Mike Royoko is the be all and end all of Progressive Coverage. The Sauce is Boss!

Voila,

Decades before the White House columns, he was writing about another generation of Vaneckos and Daleys and a disease he called "payrolliaitis."

"It isn't anything that would show up through scientific testing," wrote Royko in 1965, "but Mayor Richard J. Daley is a carrier of a fast-spreading germ . . . called payrolliaitis. The symptoms are easy to spot. A person gets close to the mayor. Crunch -- the payrolliaitis bug nips him. He wanders off in the direction of a city, state or county agency, sits down at a desk, and his name breaks out on a payroll."

Royko was talking about the hiring of Robert Vanecko's grandfather, Dr. Michael Vanecko, whose son married the late mayor's daughter. Shortly before the wedding, that Vanecko went to work for the Chicago Board of Health. And later, his son, Dr. Robert Vanecko, was hired as the physician for the city's municipal pension fund. And now today we have the third generation, as his son, another Robert Vanecko, lands a $68 million deal with -- what else -- city pension funds. He severed all business ties with the deal only after the feds began subpoenaing records.

I dialed Fran on Tuesday at City Hall to ask if she had ever been to dinner with the mayor.

"No," was all she said.

That's good. There's work to do.

Yeah, but Carol Marin will do bugger all of it!

Yep, Carol decided, or her Editorial Chinaman decided, that going after the Family Davis is au contraire! However, "Everyone Hates the Daley Family! The Knit Hat-Soul-Patch & Shave-No-Legs Crowd will find it Fabulous to rip Daley's Family Even Though There is No Tangible Connection Whatsoever to the Story! Just Splash on the Royko!"

So, Carol Marin impugns one of the City's best, most skilled and respected Thoracic Surgeons Dr. Robert Vanecko of Northwestern Medical Center and his surgeon Father as political hacks! Bottom of the Barrel Carol!

Carol, there was a great old song by the Fabulous Farquahr** a folkish musician ( No Pete Seeger, He!) of note with a cult following who penned a lyric about an odious woman named Carol. It is almost eerie.

Carol, you're the bottom of the barrel/You're the Dirty Rotten Apple of my eye/
And when I see you/ I hold my nose and go PU/ And When I See You, Carol

You're Face, You're, Hair, and Your Complexion/ Sure Could Use a Resurrection! - Carol . . .& etc.

* The Family Davis Saga has everything that No Progressive Wants Talked about - Billy Ayers, Comb-Over Dave Axelrod, Rahmbo, Bernardine Dohrn, Judson Miner, all the 1960's Radicals insulated from Inquiry!

**http://johnnykmusic.blogspot.com/search/label/Fabulous%20Farquahr

Mayor Daley's Take on Nephew is Very Believeable - Fran, Have You Ever Tried to Tell Anyone Under 40 About Anything?

"Family? Family? Look, get a dog."

He wants us to believe that, the minute he did find out, he ordered his nephew Robert Vanecko to drop out of the deal with developer Allison Davis, only to be ignored.If voters are having trouble swallowing the mayor's story, it's for good reason:

Yeah, it's in the papers.


Fran, voters don't swallow stories - they vote along Party lines and sometimes get tired of hyphenated Irish names trying to sneak on the Judicial benches in Cook County.

However voters have nephews and nieces. They get phone calls from their Moms and Aunts about the triumphs -'Muriel! Guess What! My Colleen ( McNamara-Haley's Comet- Eisenroth) is going to be a Judge! Remember that fat slob she married? well, it turns out that he has juice Downtown.' or ' Brian, got buried in a sewer trench. He laid down . . .only for a minute, because he was at Midnight Mass, and the SOBs pushed the dirt on him. They are all Daley's Punks from the 11th Ward on that crew especially that louse Sobcjec who lives out by the Airport . . .O'Hara not Midway . . . he's divorced . . .and moved outta the 'Ville, back when his wife was with the County and took up with that four eyes Reporter on Channel Seven . . .remember? Brian, got him a good lawyer who hates Daley's guts . . . the Cowboy Hat One. Brian's gonna be on a Cable Show Too with the black guy and the big fly swatter to tune-up Daley! My ankles is killing me.'

Nephews and Nieces tell Moms and the Aunts enough about their Triumphs and Tragedies to make a softer landing for their lard, when events take their Natural courses.

Nephews and Nieces, generally speaking, can not be told anything. They do not need to pay COBRAS for health insurance, because The President has their backs. HE remembers each and every one of them . . . the nieces and nephews, because THEY worked on his Campaign and They Had their pictures taken With HIM down in Uncle Vasco's basement at his Cinco De Mayo Party last April and they are on Facebook too ; and THEY have Facebook, Twitter, and a loan from Uncle Tommy the crippled Viet Namn Vet and VISA! They are young. They are bullet-proof.

Given the ever changing Obama Mythology - I'll bet He ain't got no Nephews! Hell, Ask his brother! No clout for the Obama clan. The last relative, I recall was living in a Box out in Boston.

I believe the Mayor. I am a recovering Nephew.

Jurassic Genes Awakened! Rip Van Winkle Micro-Bugs Are Back!

Now, that's a nap! From the wonderful science site Neatorama (click me post title) it is reported that bacteria Hermeniimonas glacei asleep at the bottom of a Greenland glacier have been told 'Get Your Ass, Up and Do Something! It's Nice Out!'

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

"We don’t know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating. [...]

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience has the fascinating story: Link

Stanley Crouch Beats on the Haters and Bigots - Anti-Semites Never See People.

Stanley Crouch, jazz critic, musician, historian, essayist and gentleman sacks the bigots.

Hate is real, because haters live in a fantasy world where people are merely the background to 'their' narrative.

I once asked my late wife Mary ( Mary was an an artist and art teacher) about Hitler's art work and she told me that it was merely sterile buildings and streets -'Hitler could not present people. He's a hater.'

Stanley Crouch exposes Haters in a fine essay on the Hate-soaked creep who murdered a fine and heroic family man while trying to 'Kill Jews' at the Holocaust Museum last week -

Von Brunn was probably thrilled because the bombing took place on April 19, 1995, a day before Hitler's birthday. Der Führer was a hero to von Brunn, who thought that the Nazis had gotten a raw deal because of the Jewish-controlled media, which had to take its place on the bench containing all of the other Jewish conspiracies working to destroy Western Christian civilization by any means necessary.

You know how they do it or how it has been said that they do it. First, they do it through the root of evil - money. Then they move on to public education, entertainment, psychiatry, pornography, lecherous Jewish men and whorish Jewish women, misleading young people, Israel and whatever else they can make use of to beat down Western Christian civilization until it is ready for the slag heap that contains all good things permanently befouled by the Jews.

That's how a hard-shelled wing of people see Jews. Bigotry toward Jews transcends religion, class and race. Those who feel that Jews as a whole have to be held responsible for whatever is done by the most corrupt, opportunistic and malicious among them always agree on one thing that is essential to bigotry.

Click my post title for more from this wonderful man.


Stanley Crouch is a Man! 'Two men,' as my grandfather would say.

Speaker Madigan Explains the Nature of Trimming and Nemesis to Sen. Meeks and Others.

Speaker Mike Madigan understands how to trim waste from a budget. Click my post title for the 'orrible Trooth.' Phil Kadner once again carries the weepy water for Sen./Rev. Meeks.

An excited state Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) telephoned Sunday morning to tell me that after seven years, he had finally gotten a public school funding reform bill out of committee and onto the Illinois Senate floor.

"Can I quit now?" Meeks said, noting that the measure had passed the Senate.

I asked about the chances of the bill even getting called for a vote in the House.

"That's up to Speaker (Michael) Madigan," Meeks said. "I'm a member of the Senate. I can't do anything about the House."

What about Gov. Pat Quinn?

"He's on board," Meeks said, although the governor was also backing a separate bill to increase the state income tax. "I've been talking to him nearly every day for two weeks, and he's supporting my bill."

Meeks reminded me that during his initial run for public office in 2002, he had stopped by the editorial offices of this newspaper to announce he had only one goal if elected to the Illinois Senate: School funding reform.

At the time, I noted that promise had been made by many other candidates for the state Legislature during the previous decade. All had been elected. None had even managed to get a bill called for a vote on the Senate or House floors.

Meeks reminded me Sunday that he had promised to be different. He vowed never to quit until he got the bill before the full Senate for a vote.

He tried several times in recent years. But each time his proposal was blocked in committee by legislative leaders and Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"The difference this time is that the state is facing an $11 billion budget deficit," Meeks said. "Blagojevich is gone. Legislators had to do something. My argument to (Senate President John Cullerton) was that instead of passing a tax increase that would just fill the budget gap but fail to provide enough money to actually make improvements in Illinois, we needed to pass something that we could be proud of. We needed to be able to tell our constituents that we really did something to make their lives better."

S.B. 750 would increase the state income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent. It would impose sales taxes on a wide range of services that had previously escaped the tax, such as movie theater tickets, dry cleaning and Internet sales. And it would also provide property tax relief to homeowners who are being gouged by skyrocketing tax bills.

Although I had argued for such a tax bill for nearly 20 years, I had not written much about it in recent months. Since the crash of the national economy and the impeachment of Blagojevich, I had begun questioning whether the time had passed for such a remedy. Still, I congratulated Meeks on fulfilling his campaign pledge.

Less than 10 hours after Meeks called me, his tax plan was killed in a House committee.

And on Monday, the senator was not a happy man.

"You have been campaigning for a tax hike for 20 years, and nothing has happened," Meeks said. "Why? What's the one thing that has remained constant in those 20 years? Michael Madigan as a leader in the House. Everybody else in leadership is gone. If Madigan wanted this bill passed, it would have been passed."

Meeks was also disappointed in Quinn's leadership.

"At 7:30 Sunday night, Quinn held a press conference to announce that the tax bill was dead," Meeks said. "The Legislature was in session past midnight. So with more than four hours to go, he quit. That's like quitting in a basketball game in the fourth quarter. The Orlando Magic were down 22 points in the first half, and they came back to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. They didn't give up. But Gov. Quinn walked off the court in the fourth quarter.

"He should have called each legislator whose vote he needed into his office individually and asked them what they needed in exchange for their vote," Meeks said. "If they wanted him to appear in their districts, he should have said he would march in parades or show up at a town meeting. If they wanted his support for some other piece of legislation, he should have promised to do what he could to make sure the bill passed. If they had a special project, he should have promised to fund it.

"Instead, he did nothing. What he did do was cave in to Michael Madigan every step of the way. Quinn said he wanted a budget bill passed before a capital spending bill was passed. Madigan said he wanted a capital spending bill done first, and Quinn gave in.

"Quinn said he wanted to permanently raise the income tax from 3 percent to 4.5 percent. Madigan said he wanted it to be a temporary income tax hike. Quinn gave in.

"Quinn wanted to increase the personal exemption on the income tax from $2,000 to $6,000 and Madigan said he couldn't pass that bill. So Quinn came down to $3,000.

"The governor acquiesced to the demands of Speaker Madigan every step of the way, and in the end what did he get? Nothing," Meeks said. "And Mayor Daley didn't do anything, either. The mayor continually says the Chicago schools need more money and the state should do something.

"But he didn't hold a single news conference during this legislative session calling on Chicago officials to support a tax increase. I didn't hear about a single state legislator from Chicago getting a call from the mayor. He did nothing."

What Meeks still fails to understand is that this is not about the schoolchildren or the taxpayers or the quality of life in the state of Illinois.

The outcome of this game was fixed before the players took the court.

Madigan won. Everybody else lost.

Phil Kadner can be reached at pkadner@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-6787.

The Feast of Corpus Christi - June 11th, 2009 Father Kevin from County Kerry Reflects on Each of us - The Body of Christ

The Catholic Feast of Corpus Christi - The Body of Christ- was begun in the 13th Century when a French Augustinian nun began pestering her bishop about dreams that she had had concerning a 'spot on the moon.'

The Spot on the moon reflected an absence of a celebration for Christ that brought the entire Church together.

St. Paul wrote that the Church is the Body of Christ - a composite of us all.

In 1977, witnessed a celebration of Corpus Christi in Castleisland, County Kerry - the town from which my grandfather emigrated to Liverpool and later to America in 1912.

I had just completed my second year of teaching at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL and used my savings and tax return to go Ireland with Moose Gilmartin and Mike Lally. Ireland was then very Third World - 'Mexico with Micks,' was how Mike Lally termed it. The Irish and the Mexicans are very much alike.

Mike Lally had peeled off North to visit with his family in County Mayo, leaving Leo Man Moose Gilmartin and me in the Kingdom of Kerry! Our cultural and philosophical inclinations herded the two of us toward Licensed Premises! In Ireland, you could grab a beer while 'waiting for a head of cabbage to be cut out back' - with in the appropriate hours of course.

Castleisland, County Kerry boasts the widest street in Ireland outside of O'Connell Street in Dublin and is a market town - thus, being a Market Town - Market Hours made Castleisland a Pintsman's Oasis. You could get a beer before during and after the next minute. Moose and I availed ourselves of this economic liberalism.

Moose and I had punished the Smithwicks and the Scoops of Black ( Guinness) at my cousin Pat Hickey's Silver Dollar Saloon and then crossed to Terry Teahan's Old Chicago Pub on the Main Drag of Castleisland, and then to the Par Three Three ( Pitch 'n Putt Golf Course) when the Garda came around after hours. Dawn came up like thunder!

Mass Lads!

'It's Thursday!'

Corpus Christi, so. Brogans on.

'Jesus. . .'

He's waiting, so.

The entire town and country merged on the Church of Saints Stephan and John* and the procession was wonderful. We would have missed this and slept off a hangover, had not Margaret Hickey shouted 'Mass, Lads!'


The Feast of Corpus Christi was June 11, 2009. No one was near me to shout 'Mass, Lad!' I forgot once again.

I'll be at Sacred Heart Catholic Mission Church with my friends from all over my life at 10:30 AM for The Feast of the Body and and Blood of Christ


I looked up some Kerry notes last night and found a reflection by a Father Kevin which is simplicity and beauty itself.

Two little reflections on this weekend Feast of Corpus Christi; Fr. Kevin writes:

Notice one another.

People today are crying out for recognition. They want to be persons among persons. They want to be noticed, not in a showy way, or because they have money or status, but just because they are human beings. Each of us is on a pilgrimage. We are seeking to encounter others who have the same needs as ourselves. The greatest need of all is the need to be loved. But we pass one another by without noticing, without the slightest sign of recognition.
As Christians we are united by a bond so close that St. Paul called the Christian community “The Body of Christ.” It is time we began to notice one another. Each person is a brother or a sister in Christ. Each person must be recognised. Each person must be given some sign of friendship, be it only a smile or a nod of the head.

Living in the Present sense

A visitor to Atlanta, Georgia noticed a restaurant listed as the ‘Church of God Grill.’ Curiosity aroused he dialled the number and learned that it had begun as a mission church. To help pay the bills they began selling chicken dinners after Church on Sundays. Business grew so much that they had to cut back and eventually close the church, keeping only the name it started with – The Church of God Grill. A true story which reminds us of the importance of keeping our priorities focused. Today’s feast (The Body and Blood of Christ) helps. It focuses on bread. Just as in Jesus’ time it is a staple food, a basic part of most meals. However, in the time of Jesus, there were no forks or spoons. People would never defile themselves by putting a piece of metal in their mouths, instead they used bread. In understanding that, we may comprehend a little better what Jesus was saying. Just as one couldn’t have a meal without bread, we cannot really live without Christ. In a world full of choice and distractions with the ‘bread’ of money and fame, we celebrate a feast named ‘Corpus Christi’ the ‘Body of Christ’ Will He be there only in name?

These Kerry Notes from Father Kevin are great as well.

THANKS: A special thank you to Patsie and friends who organised our first Cemetery Mass of ’09 in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the June Bank Holiday. Very many thanks too to all who attended the Mass. May all who are buried there rest in peace, and may they enjoy the delights of God’s Kingdom.
FLEADH CHEOIL CHIARRAí commences on June 16th and concludes on June 21st. The 10.30 a.m. Mass in the Cathedral on Sunday next will be mostly in Irish and is organised by Comhaltas with choir and special music in honour of the Fleadh Cheoil We wish all involved with the Fleadh Cheoil every success and enjoyment. A Cead Míle Fáilte to all visitors attending the Fleadh. Cheoil.
SECOND COLLECTION: A Second Collection will be taken up at all Masses this weekend to help off set the expenses of Ireland hosting the Eucharistic Congress in 2012. Your generous support is very much appreciated.
EXAMS: Our prayerful good wishes and encouragement to all students still doing exams. The following prayer for you this week:
O God help me during my exams to remember the things which I have learned and studied. Help me to remember well and to think clearly. Help me not be so nervous or excited that I will do myself an injustice. Keep me calm and clear headed. Help me to try hardest and to do my best.
REMINDER: Fr. Kevin has been given his own column in the Killarney Outlook. It comes out each Friday. The column has been going since Holy Week.
CARERS ASSOCIATION: If you would like to nominate a Carer for their extraordinary levels of care they provide for a loved one; Application forms can be got from The Carers Association
PARISH BINGO: Every Thursday night in St. Mary’s Parish Hall. Visitors most welcome.
MUCKROSS COMMUNITY CENTRE ANNUAL OPEN DAY: 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday 21st. Everybody in Muckross encourage to bring a picnic.
Killarney Le Cheilé Intercultural Festival: A fun filled family friendly gathering in St. Brendan’s Field on Sunday 21st June from 1p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome.
PIGEONS GONE: Thankfully the Pigeons have left the Cathedral. After the drawn match in the Park they took flight. Maybe they were from Cork!

*Church of SS Stephen and John
Castleisland
Co. Kerry, Ireland
(066-7141241)

Chicago's Relevant Radio - A Catholic Voice in a Secular Desert

Ready for your next test of Faith? Naw, I had plenty this week. The tests are coming anyway.

1,500 City Workers are set to get laid off. Urban violence can set your watches - but who wears one anymore? North Korea and Iran are pushing nuclear confrontation with the World. Mother McAuley tuition is due on July 1st. You snap to attention every time the sump pump kicks on - well, I do anyway. Our UN Analog Television has 800 channels pumping out Celebrity News, re-runs of House/Law and Order: The Apocalypse Squad/Fat Programming/Cable Shout Downs.

Radio is not much better.

Yet, Relevant Radio offers a sea-change. Here in Chicago, Cardinal George has sparked an initiative to offer Catholics a road back to their roots and part of the initiative is Relevant Radio.

Chicago is blessed with some priests who really manage to really get it right - Father Eddie Pelrine, Bishop Joe Gorman, Bishop Joseph Perry, Father Frank Philipps, Father Marty O'Donovan, Father Canary, Father Tony Brankin and especially Cardinal George.

Catholic lay people, especially those who push to the forefront as spokespersons, can be real pains-in-the-ass as well, as the lazier Cupcake brand of Stiff Collar.

Yet, there are lay voices with genuine understanding of the Gospel who try to live Christian lives and are not starchy Pharisees, or PC Nit-wits.

Cardinal George seems to be giving these folks, genuine Catholic working people, a forum. Relevant Radio AM -950.


Relevant comes from the Latin relevare - to raise up. It now means offering evidence of proof to an argument or means of understanding a situation. Stiff Collars and Sky Pilots can too often toss out platitudes or snatches from Holy Writ that have absolutely nothing to do with the loss of a job, confusion, disappointment or fear in lay persons. Some of the gents can not get it right.

Take last night,

Your goofy correspondent here, went to the Institute of Christ the King in order to pick up his lady love, the beautiful and elegant Ms. Terry Sullivan, who attended a concert of Sacred Music, in the still being restored former St. Gelasius Catholic Church at 6414 S. Woodlawn.

I missed the Sacred Music concert, because I had to drop off Clare at yet another in the summer-long string of graduation parties for St. Cajetan's Parish and I had been topped off on Sacred Music at St. John Cantius these last two weeks from the Pentecost through last Sunday.

I am a dutiful; son of the Church, but more like the son with a messy, smelly room and sleeps until 2PM and asks,"What's for Breakfast?" Familiar, Brother Catholics?

Allow me to digress further . . . I get to the Institute at about 7PM, park and wander into the beautiful Church - empty. There is a woman standing out on the steps with a brochure in her hands. " Are you a Chicagoan?," she asks. Yes'm.

I learn that this lady had travelled from Kansas City for this concert and had been informed by some Father I-AM-Vere-Bisee, that she and her friend would not need a car as Chicago is an Olympic Class Urban Village of Delightful Souls AND that she could stay at the Ramada Inn in convenient HAMMOND, Indiana!

Father Cupcake evidently does not ever, need to try and find a Taxi! The woman and her friend got soaked by some cottage-industry moss-back with a car and a chauffer's license, discovered in the Hammond, Indiana phone-book. Try and find a Taxi in Hammond, much less in the neighborhood around 6414 S, Woodlawn - just around the corner from the site of Jeff Fort's Former Fortress of Stone Peace!

Now, I have about 7,836 years in Purgatory to cancel out and those are only ones I managed to build up between 1967 and 1982. The subsequent Years of Triumph I will not even get into; it definitely seemed like Corporal Work of Mercy Time!

After informing the two women that I would offer to drive them back to their rooms at The Ramada Inn on Calumet Ave., along with the gracious and sexy Ms. Sullivan, certainment, and having secured the requisite bona fides, from Chicago Daily Observer Editor and Chicago philanthropist John 'Shorty' Powers, that I do not (nor have I ever had) have a family of four in my basement freezer, I drove the women back to Hammond.

Pointing out the various sights and sites south on Stony Island - the former Greek Orthodox Church and now Nation of Islam Mosque; Moo and Oinks ( must stop shopping for high quality meats - I usually go the one at 85th & Racine); Chicago's Toll Booth and 1st City Asset Sold Off; CVS - Home of Dick Butkus; The Big Bridge; Chicago's Harbor; Pat Carroll's Cro Bar on 106th off Indianapolis & etc.!

All of this Clerical error could have been avoided had an actual 'in-the-game' Catholic person been allowed to give these travellers from Kansas the straight dope.

My favorite priest, Francis Cardinal George, is a Chicagoan. He knows that Taxi Cabs are limited to the nicer neighborhoods and that Hammond is not in Chicago. Cardinal George has promoted an outlet for Catholics, weary travellers in this burgeoning Vale of Tears, to get the Real Dope, the Skinny, and the Real Deal.

That is Radio 950 - Relevant Radio. Listen to the Catholic Voice of Chicago.

Mission Statement
Relevant Radio exists to assist the Church in the New Evangelization by providing relevant programming through a media platform to help people bridge the gap between faith and everyday life.

Assisting the Church
In fidelity to God, Relevant Radio creates, promotes and endorses programming that follows the post-Vatican II teachings of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. Relevant Radio is the first and only radio network to be approved by the USCCB as a national media outlet and through a strategic collaboration with bishops and their dioceses, Relevant Radio is able to serve the Church by providing programming that is adapted to the needs of the listening audience.

The New Evangelization
The late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, encouraged American Catholics to seize the means and methods of modern communication to inspire the faithful with a deeper understanding and commitment to Christ and His Church. This he called the New Evangelization. Pope Benedict XVI agrees that “the possibilities opened up for us by modern means of social communications are indeed marvelous and extraordinary.”

Relevant Programming
Relevant Radio programming plays a crucial role in helping people integrate a Catholic perspective into their daily lives and guides them in asking the fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Through listener-interactive programs that focus on current issues and events, Relevant Radio seeks to incorporate Catholic beliefs into these discussions to contribute to the maturation of faith through evangelization, affirmation, and catechesis.

We believe it is possible to present fundamental elements of the Catholic faith in a manner that can satisfy committed Catholics, nominal Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and all who sincerely seek the truth that makes life meaningful.

It Takes a Philly Lady Lawyer to School the Left -On Abortion! Christine Flowers, Esq.

Milky Matthew and Olberbloat have somersaulted and minced the murder of Abortionist Dr. Tiller for the gals at Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood wants women to kill their kids, but Old Maggie Sanger said that it was a great way to clear the path of ugly, wrong-race, dumb, and bothersome human beings. It's a Progressive thing.

Planned Parenhood has even tweaked the English language - abortion is now 'women's health.'

Planned Parenthood and its satellite loud-mouths demand that abortion continue.

I have yet to meet a self-labeled Progressive who was not at core a to-the-bone self-absorbed jerk. Especially with regards to abortion. Most people find killing a child at any stage in human development to be abhorrent. One of the best people I know, Christine Flowers, a lawyer in Philadelphia who has championed the unborn for years, writes a column for Philadelphia Daily News that smacks back at the Progressive group think in her neck of the woods. Planned Prenhood can not get to this smart, tough and centered woman!


In all the goofiness surrounding Dr. Tiller's murder by a a guy with more than a few bricks shy of load, we occasionally get a sound and thoughtful voice. MSNBC is working OT on this one. Goofball, Chris 'Milky' Matthews went so far as to link Sarah Palin to Tiller's murder and then stretched it out to the 88 year old anti-Semite Von Braun.

Tip O'Neill tolerated Matthews? Can't see that.

Yet, Ms. Flowers cuts deeply into the body of 'the facts' tossed by Matthews and other Agenda shills. This is an especially poignant cut from Christine Flowers' very sharp analysis of the Tiller milling:

The manipulation began the minute the news came out of Kansas. First was the nomenclature - the conspicuous absence of the word "abortionist." Tiller was described as an "abortion provider" (when he wasn't being canonized as a martyr). When is the last time a dentist was described as a "root-canal provider?" Or a cosmetic surgeon described as a "breast-enhancement provider"? Or a shrink as a "peace of mind provider"?

Apparently, "abortionist" still conjures up unsavory images of back alleys and bloody hangers, so the powers that be decided to sanitize the whole issue and present Tiller as the Albert Schweitzer of the (another great euphemism) "reproductive-health" movement.

Which brings me to the next bit of manipulation. Ignoring the fact that Tiller made a more than healthy living plying his trade, women's-rights activists waxed poetic about his "heroic" work on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood want them 'most vulnerable' dead.

Here is Philadelphia lawyer an columnist Christine Flowers:


Click my post title for more from this honest and tough woman.

Sarah Palin is a Happy Person and that makes Goofs Crazy - Governor, Stay Happy -Only Suckers Beef.

Sarah Palin must be the biggest threat to the corporate Progressive Machine, as the news cycle and the later-Goebbels on MSNBC, CNN and on the Big ( ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have worked this woman and her family over like they were characters out of Aeschylus*.

You are only as big as the enemies you have and Sarah Palin must be enormous.

Palin's Old Man, the kids, and even the grand kids are targeted by sad people like Letterman, Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Matthews, Schuster, Brown, and Maher -insignificant and self-absorbed people one and all.

These sad human beings, who make a great deal of money and have the attention of many not very bright people, detest Sarah Palin, not because she is Pro Life/Pro Gun/Pro Family/ Pro Free Enterprise, Republican, or pretty, or wildly popular. They detest Sarah Palin, because the woman is happy.

Not DL Hughley/Joy Behar/Kanye West/Alec Baldwin/Bill Maher or Katie Couric happy, but fulfilled, meaningful, centered and significant - happy.

When the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was on his death-bed he told his mother that he was never happier.

The Irish are generally a pretty happy people - I remember going to the wake of Man from County Clare; I asked 'what did he die of?' His young widow replied, 'Nothing serious.'

Happy people make other people happy, by giving us direction. Only suckers beef.

That dictum came from a wise bartender who refused to hear the drunken bile coming from louts who 'vented' about what bitches their wives were, or how disappointing their kids turned out.

Governor Palin, stay happy.

Mortimer Adler's lesson on Happiness Eudaimonia,a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous, as opposed to giddy, silly, aimless and vacuous, tells us that:

These matters, of relevance to the theory of happiness, are discussed in the chapters on ETERNITY and IMMORTALITY; and in the chapter on SIN we find another religious dogma, that of original sin, which has an obvious bearing on earthly happiness as well as on eternal salvation. Fallen human nature, according to Christian teaching, is incompetent to achieve even the natural end of imperfect temporal happiness without God's help. Milton expounds this doctrine of indispensable grace in Paradise Lost, in words which God the Father addresses to His Son:
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fall'n condition is, and to me owe
All his deliv'rance, and to none but me.

God's grace is needed for men to lead a good life on earth as well as for eternal blessedness. On earth, man's efforts to be virtuous require the reinforcement of supernatural gifts - faith, hope, and charity, and the infused moral virtues. The beatific vision in Heaven totally exceeds the natural powers of the soul and comes with the gift of added supernatural light. It seems, in short, that there is no purely natural happiness according to the strict tenets of Christian doctrine.

Aquinas employs the conception of eternal beatitude not only to measure the imperfection of earthly life, but also to insist that temporal happiness is happiness at all only to the extent that it is a remote participation of true and perfect happiness. It cannot be said of temporal happiness that it "excludes every evil and fulfills every desire. In this life every evil cannot be excluded - For this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils: to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite-; and to many penalties on the part of the body ... . Likewise," Aquinas continues, "neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For man naturally desires the good which he has to be abiding . Now the goods of the present life pass away since life itself passes away ... . Wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in this life."

If perfect happiness consists in "the vision of the Divine Essence, which men cannot obtain in this life," then, according to Aquinas, only the earthly life which somehow partakes of God has a measure of happiness in it. Earthly happiness, imperfect because of its temporal and bodily conditions, consists in a life devoted to God - a kind of inchoate participation here and now of the beatific vision hereafter. On earth there can be only a beginning "in respect of that operation whereby man is united to God. ... In the present life, in as far as we fall short of the unity and continuity of that operation, so do we fall short of perfect happiness. Nevertheless it is a participation of happiness; and so much the greater, as the operation can be more continuous and more one. Consequently the active life which is busy with many things, has less of happiness than the contemplative life, which is busied with one thing, i.e., the contemplation of truth."

When the theologians consider the modes of life on earth in terms of the fundamental distinction between the secular and the religious, or the active and the contemplative, they seem to admit the possibility of imperfect happiness in either mode. In either, a devout Christian dedicates every act to the glory of God, and through such dedication embraces the divine in the passing moments of his earthly pilgrimage.

Sarah Palin, like most happy people, suffers outrageous set-backs, endures insults, personal tragedies, stumbles and falls, but remains happy because she is centered and other directed.

That drives sad, but very successful people, crazy.

The crazy is on 24/7 on cable television.

Click my post title for one of my favorite sites belonging to a very smart Obama supporter.

Quigley and Claypool - Southern Illinois University - Early Eighties - with a Sears Catalog

An imaginative fictive turn* of the lives of the Self-absorbed:

Roosevelt University student Mike Quigley visited Forrest Claypool of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for the summer where both worked as fry cooks for Dave's 'Every Picture Tells a Story -Donut!'

Both chaps were engaged in the study of Government and how government can best separate the wallets from citizens. They learned well. Nevertheless, the ardent Progressive scholars busied their days at Dave's dropping dough - the flour, egg and soda variety.

Their evenings were spent in mutual salvos of political tactics and strategies, and in the wistful exercises of jejune male fantasies.

The Sears Catlog arrived at the trailer Claypool.

FC- "Mike did you see how beautiful these models are in the Sears Catalog?"

MQ - " I did, Forrest, and they are not all that expensive!"

FC- "It says, 'Immediate Delivery' - Let's Order, today!"

The winsome youths pooled their coppers and silver and Rushed a Money Order to Sears Roebuck & Company Headquartered in Mike's hometown of Chicago - at the newly opened Sears Tower.

Days passed and quality Donuts were scooped from the bubbling cauldron in Dave's 'Every Picture Tells A Story -Donut' and nights melted in dreamy expectation.

Mike Quigley worked the late shift and received a Call from his buddy landlord -"Packages Here!"

After work Mike stumped his way to the Rolling Cloud Trailer Park outside of Carbondale on the road to Cobden.

Moist with anticipation, the future Cook County Board Pit Bull and U.S. Congressman shouted to his equally ambitious and horny pal, " Are the Girls Here, Yet?"

The tall and stylishly attired Progressive Cub Scout replied, " No Mike, but they should be here soon! Their clothes arrived!"

. . .and Illinois was the better for these earnest youths!

* Many thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas! Also, click my post title for other ripping yarns.

Ron Gidwitz for Governor and Paul Vallas, Lt. Governor - That's The Ticket!

Gidwitz/Vallas Ticket Equals GOP Victory for Governor!


Paul Vallas should avoid the Cook County President Race like a drunken blind date with a festering cold sore. The Cook County mess needs to be cleaned up by the boys and girls who created the mess – if that means the power suits who foisted Todd Stroger upon us, then so be it Dudes – back Todd again! Let Buzz Saw Tony Peraica gut whomever he needs to win the big chair that Todd Stroger dangles his feet high over the carpet in the County Board Hearing Room.

Paul Vallas was long gone and away from the world created by Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, Bobbie Steele, and Tony Peraica. Stay clear of this one, Paul. Get your feet wet as a campaigner. You could use a little seasoning on that dish, as you have been in appointed positions for years. Sadly, you lost your first campaign and the Stigma of Loser is wrongly tagged on you. Illinois was the real loser when Blagojevich squeaked out a Primary win. The too cute by half Democrats in the positions of Ward power, with exception of the Joyces and the Sheehans, posted with Blago. So noted.

Do not go top ticket. You are young. You have plenty of time. Ron Gidwitz will make a fine Governor and so will you in a few years.

Do not allow yourself to be used by the race baiting clowns. Leave that to goofs who use that like a calling card and toss out the word ‘Bosses’ every other noun.

Paul Vallas, come home. Come home to Illinois and work with Ron Gidwitz as Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Talk about a dream team.

Both gentlemen would give the GOP a genuine opportunity to actually win the Governorship. Both gentlemen would provide Illinois tax-payers with career waste-cutters from the private and the public sectors.

Neither man is a back-slapping lout, like the two term former Governor of Illinois who sent his poor bride and mother of his children to Costa Rica to eat tarantulas and hang out with an unwashed Baldwin.

Neither man is a pay-to-play Alumnus.

Neither man is self-serving Machiavellian stooge for any interest.

Ron Gidwitz and Paul Vallas would not only be a dream team for the GOP but for Illinois. The trick will be getting the Illinois GOP interested in actually winning something.

Joel Kotkin's 'Gentry Liberalism' - Defined and Indentifiable Among the Yanks

Gentry -

In more modern American society, gentry is often used to refer loosely to the highly educated professional upper-middle class, this use of the terminology is inconsistent with the British use of the same term as the American use would include those without confirmed aristocratic roots (as is required under the British definition). This sense of the term is often pejoratively used in the term "gentrification", a term that could alternatively be called "bourgeois-ification". Attitudes stemming from the phenomenon of the historic American gentry help clarify the current use of the term in U.S. society, and it is still loosely applied to people from old-monied and landed families in the United States, though the term "gentry" is very rarely used in America for cultural and historical reasons.

- Read Yuppies, Trust-fund babies, like Billy Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Ted Kennedy, Friends of the Parks, Schakowsky Voters, most members of the Chicago Media, and people who never ever look at the balances in their checking accounts.

Gentry Liberals (Progressives) want Mass Transportation, because they rarely if ever need it; they want Public School Funding, because Catholic/Lutheran-Dutch,Baptist & Protestant/Jewish/Muslim schools are values based educations; they want SEIU/ACORN to do whatever the hell they please, because they promote whatever agenda the Gentry embrace.

America is involved in a Class War. Gentry ( anyone who plays ball with them) and the Helots.

I'm a Helot - a worker bee/blue collar value/pro-Real Labor/anti-abortion/Mom and Dad Marriage and Gays can have a happy life with each other/tax-paying American.

I go to the ATM, not to draw out cash, but to make sure that I have enough Buckos to cover bills and obligations. I used to have more nickels at the end of the pay cycle. Gas costs a lung; groceries a kidney; tuition . . . enough with the internal organs. My neighbors are getting laid off.

The Gentry are loud. They get attention. They are not cops, firefighters, nurses, school teachers, pipe fitters, electricians, accontants, clerks, plumbers, and carpenters. They sure as hell are not housewives - housewives do not lunch or join Friends of the Parks, or PETA, much less Planned Parenthood.

The Gentry join gyms, don't smoke, attend theatre, opera, the best restaurants, and the Progressive Political Grassroots - working stiffs go the above when they have two nickels to rub together. Helots do not hold Subscriptions to any of the above; they buy tickets. Helots are not subscribers; they do not have enough disposable income. The Gentry are Public Television and Radio.

Helots work, provide for their families, pay too many taxes and die.

Joel Kotkin has been writing about the American Gentry ( Liberal Progressive) for decades, but his recent Forbes article warning President Obama about America's swing to Socialism, while Europe is returning to grassroots capitalism, hit a nerve*.

http://www.joelkotkin.com/

Kotkin illustrates Gentry Liberalism:

You have to wonder what average Brits must make of the likes of Jonathon Porritt, the head of the government's Sustainable Development Commission--a member of the gentry in both attitude and lineage. The Eton-educated Porritt's recent pronouncements include such gems as a call to restrict the number of children per family to two to reduce Britain's population from 60 to 30 million. He also has scolded overweight people for causing climate change.

These do not seem like sure electoral winners. Today extreme green policies that were once merely odd or eccentric are becoming increasingly oppressive, leading to even more actions that disadvantage suburban lifestyles. Environmental activists' solution for the country's severe housing shortage--particularly in the London region--is to cram the working and middle classes into dense urban units resembling sardine cans and force even more suburbanites off the road.

Even so, large-scale house production over the past decade has lagged behind demand and, as a result, the tidy single-family home with a nice back garden so beloved by the British public may soon be attainable only by the highly affluent--and, ironically, that includes much of the gentry. What an odd posture for a party supposedly built around working-class aspirations.

"New Labour has brought in 'New Urbanism,' and the results are not pretty," suggests University of Westminster social historian Mark Clapson, as he showed me some particularly tiny, surprisingly expensive new houses outside of London

Familiar? Vote accordingly.

* Click my post title for many articles on Gentry Liberalism

Revolt Against 'Gentry Liberalism' ( Progressives) Hits Illinois - Gov. Quinn is Its First Victim

Last week it became evident that Europe had had enough of the Left. America always seems to be a few years, if not decades behind Europe - fashion, food and funding programs. 'Socialism seems so Cool so Let's Get Us Some!'


Our Later-day Trotskyites and Malraux Guevara's soak the Obama Administration with their earnest presence. They should earnestly stay away from government at any level, but they Grassrooted out Government Truffles.

Illinois has SEIU funding these pie-dish deep thinkers at Progress Illinois and have succeeded in co-opting the Illinois Media. Taxes Mean Big Hearts! Mean People Hate Taxes!

Americans, as I mentioned last week continue to be Rubes. Innocents Abroad.

Its the Economy, Rubes! The wallet's empty!

Government is not meant to be a Cash Pantry for every 'community based' program.

The middle class is running out of money and SEIU/ACORN and State and Federal government is crying for more.

Urban Studies expert, Joel Kotkin has warned of this trend toward giving the store away in the name of politics.

Great Britain's Labor Party under Gordon Brown is a mess. President Obama's Administration is only weeks away from a similar situation.

However, Illinois seems to have taken the lead in the revolt against what Joel Kotkin calls Gentry Liberalism, another name for the Progressives.

Gentry liberalism--which reached its height in Britain earlier this decade and is currently peaking in the U.S.--melded traditional left-of-center constituencies, such as organized labor and ethnic minorities, with an expanding class of upper-class professionals from field like media, finance and technology.
. . .But today, this broad coalition lies in ruins. An urban expert at the London School of Economics, Tony Travers, suggests that New Labour's biggest loss is due to the erosion of middle-class suburban support. The party also appears to be shedding significant parts of its historic working-class base, particularly those constituents who aren't members of the public employee unions.

Even some longstanding ethnic minorities, most notably the highly entrepreneurial South Asians, also show signs of drifting away from Labour. The only Labour supporters left, then, are the liberal gentry, the government apparatus and the most aggrieved minorities.
. . .The shift reveals the weakening hold of gentry liberalism. At its core, gentry liberalism depends on massive profits in key sectors--largely finance and real estate--to maintain its affluence while servicing both its environmentally friendly priorities and redistributing wealth to the long-term poor.

This has also allowed for a massive expansion of both the scope and size of government. . . . This kind of approach has gained some proponents among the Obama crowd. Recent administration pronouncements endorse such things as "coercing" Americans from their cars, fighting suburban "sprawl" and even imposing restrictions on how much they can drive. It makes you wonder what future they have in mind for our recently bailed-out auto companies.

It's possible that America's middle-income voters will eventually be turned off by such policies, as is the case in Britain. President Obama's remarkable genius for political theater may insulate him now, but it won't for eternity. Over time, some of the Democrats' hard-won, suburban middle-class support could erode.

Yep. Here in Illinois our Gentry Liberalism Governor Pat Quinn is crying for more:

Rookie Gov. Pat Quinn, who supported both failed tax plans, said he would call legislative leaders together Monday to work on putting together a better budget than one that is "hopelessly out of balance."

Quinn said he was "a little disappointed" in the legislature but undaunted. Asked why Illinoisans shouldn't consider this a new embarrassment for Democrats, Quinn said, "Give us a couple more days."

House Democrats were able to send Quinn a measure backed by the governor that would impose first-ever campaign donation limits on politicians. But the plan was blasted by a variety of self-styled reform advocates, including Quinn's own Reform Commission, as loophole-ridden and designed to ensure that those now in power stay in power. Lawmakers also sent Quinn a bill to eliminate their cost-of-living increases, abolish a controversial board that recommended salary raises and required themselves to take four furlough days.

The reform votes on the final day of the legislature's spring session capped a frenetic week dominated by a debate over whether Springfield had done enough to clean up state government in the wake of Blagojevich's arrest, ouster and indictment on charges he sold government favors for personal and political gain.

House Speaker Michael Madigan had repeatedly said that lawmakers must prove to taxpayers the government could do a better job before asking for more money. But while he declared victory on high-profile ethics plans, he found that Democrats in his tightly controlled chamber were not fully on board with any plan to raise income taxes amid a sagging economy.

Even without the income-tax and sales-tax increases, lawmakers have already approved a host of fee and tax hikes, including higher license plate and driver's license fees and a boost in taxes on liquor, candy, tea-infused drinks at retail, and beauty aids and medicated retail products. Those increases, coupled with legalized video gambling and a proposal to sell lottery tickets on the Internet, would fund a massive public works program.

Facing an estimated $12 billion two-year deficit, lawmakers scrambled to find ways to help fund government operations. With no major revenue sources in sight and amid Republican demands for cuts before higher taxes, House lawmakers approved a short-term spending plan that would fund government for about six months. The Senate was expected to follow suit late Sunday.

Just a day after Senate Democrats approved a 67 percent increase in personal income taxes that also broadened the sales tax to some services, House Democrats said they lacked the votes to send it to Quinn. At the same time, the House overwhelmingly rejected a smaller two-year, 50 percent income-tax increase.

The failure of Democrats to adjourn the legislature on time would be considered the latest political embarrassment for their one-party rule of Springfield after Blagojevich became the first governor impeached and removed from office in state history. His successor, Quinn, watched as tensions increased among House members under Madigan and senators under President John Cullerton.

Quinn attempted to reinsert himself as his tax-raising efforts he had pushed collapsed. He warned that his signature on a $29 billion public works program was predicated on lawmakers enacting a balanced full-year budget and that investors would not purchase the bonds needed to finance the plan while uncertainty reigned over the state's fiscal problems.

But it was Cullerton's assertion of his power in a legislature long dominated by Madigan that prompted the collision of House and Senate Democrats.

Cullerton's decision to advance an income-tax plan from the Senate marked his independence from Madigan, his longtime friend, at a time when some Senate Democrats grumbled that Cullerton was little more than a political appendage of the House speaker. It also solidified Cullerton's standing among African-American Senate Democrats who had pushed him to call an increase in higher taxes in the chamber and not wait for Madigan.

"I think it's time we step up," Cullerton said as his Senate Democrats approved the larger tax-increase late Saturday.

But Sunday, House Democrats said they didn't have the votes for the tax-increase plan advanced by Cullerton. Then they rejected a smaller temporary two-year plan to increase income taxes by 50 percent to raise more than $4 billion. It would have boosted the 3 percent personal income-tax rate to 4.5 percent and increased the corporate-tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7.2 percent.

"If we don't raise taxes, we are looking at very deep problems in the state's human services and education programs," Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), Madigan's chief deputy, said in urging passage of the smaller tax increase.

Currie later led House passage of the makeshift budget bill. With all 118 House seats up for election next year, that would allow House Democrats fearful of casting a tax-increase vote before the election year to see if any opponents have filed against them.

With the need to fix the budget hole, Republicans in the House now have a seat at the bargaining table in the coming weeks and months.

"We don't want to run from the problem, but we are going to insist on fundamental change in the way state government operates budget-wise in the state of Illinois," said House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego.

The Revolt against Gentry Liberalism (Progressive) is on!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-legislature01jun01,0,2960790.story

Hickey's Gitmo Gutter Guests! -A Modest Proposal

After cleaning gutters, Gitmo Gutter Snipes, enjoy a hearty al fresco breakfast on the deck of the Hickey Facility in St, Cajetan's Parish of the Morgan Park neighborhood.
My tired old ass ( having cleaned the gutters) was treated to a boost from Chicago Attorney Tamara Holder.

This lovely, elegant and tough almost thirty-something Law Dog sent me a link to her column on the Guantanamo ( Gitmo) Terror Prison dilemma invented by President Obama who seems to have inherited every malady known to man from GW Bush.

The President, it seems to me, pandered to the Progressives and pulled the trigger way too soon on Gitmo. He is drawing dead on this issue.

Now, he is bringing an American-born terrorist home from Gitmo and can't find the lad a home. The lovely Ms. Holder writes,"President Obama has not resolved the issue of where these detainees will serve their sentences, if convicted, even though he promised to close Gitmo down by January 2010. But how can he close the doors on Gitmo before having new doors open? What a premature promise!"

Yep. Perhaps I can be of some service to my country. I'll take one or two.

I might even develop a business, whereby the terrorists can learn the glories of free market capitalism. Gitmo Gutter Snipes, Inc.!

Headquartered in my Morgan Park raised ranch, these Fruits of Islam can bunk in with Conor - he puts in a lot of hours at Di Cola's Fish Market on Western Ave. when he is not at Morraine Valley CC. His room is probably not as fresh-air sweet as what the boys from Cuba Non Libre might have been used to, but Conor might learn some valuable folding and put away techniques from the Gitmo Gents and become more Eco-Friendly.

As to the more Bad-ass Patriots worried that these enemies of America might be too comfortable here - Au contraire!

As any one of my three children will attest, 'Dad's a Psycho!'

I could have used Ahmed up on the damn roof. Mr. President, Send me a gitmo Guest, or two and they'd rue the day they ever went all street and drew down on Uncle Sam!

" Get up here! and turn that Goddam TV off! Now! Look, Ahmed, when I say I want the garage cleaned I don't want to hear about 'Celebrity Survivor' - yeah, she's the Guv's wife BFD! and all, but you ain't eating bugs with the Hickey's and you get to watch 'The Hills' with Nora and Clare -Now, get your ass back out there and sweep the damn garage floor. And Bub! Those cases of beer cans are counted,Bub! Two imports and three cheapos. Get busy, lunch is soon. You get Italian beef when it's ready; you want potato salad or cole slaw or both? You get Apple Valley juice - the Leinies are mine!"

Now, not only will the Gitmo Guest(s) on Rockwell get three hots and a cot, Ms. Holder reminded me of Prison Industry!

Our prison system is currently extremely overcrowded. Keep in mind, there are only 240 detainees; it's not like we are talking about thousands of beds here. But, these men will be housed in the maximum security facilities. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars per year, per Gitmo convict, to house these men.

This issue of "WHERE" gives states a tremendous bargaining chip in this time of financial crisis. States that decide to house these men are in a position to receive an additional hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Overcrowding may become a secondary issue...give the states enough money and they'll surely find a way to put these dudes somewhere. Money talks!

Prison Industry Allows for Private Companies to Profit Too

Modern day slavery still occurs in the prisons. Corporations pay prisoners pennies on the dollar for work. Be on the lookout fo lobbyists supporting the states bringing the detainees to the state pen. They can make some cash off of them too.

I will provide a home and a living wage! Honest Injun!

Mr. President, toss me some Stimulus Shekels and you and me'll get a GITMO GUTTER SNIPES, INC. prospectus up and running.

Your foreign policy was determined by 'Dignity Promotion*!'

Gitmo Gutters? Nice sound to that Penal Venture Enterprise? Sean Keane of Keane Sweep, Inc. would probably be delighted to learn that my tires got slashed . . . by some unknown party with a gutter cleaning business in the neighborhood . . .in the event that Gitmo Gutter Snipes came to pass.



* "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January (200speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right."


Let's all give it up for that fine 'Dignity Promotion' Foreign Policy!

Cleaning the Gutters - Our Trees and the Things They Deposit

Two weeks ago a poor guy in my Morgan Park neighborhood, Willie Whitaker, had the media crawling up his back, because he removed trees on his property.

Willie Whitaker must have his reasons for cutting down the 100-year-old oaks on his property in the Morgan Park neighborhood, but so far he's not letting on.

And his neighbors are pissed.

"This is insane," Carla Winterbottom told the SouthtownStar. "It took 100 years for some of these trees to grow, and now they're gone in 10 minutes."

Winterbottom is the head of Keeping Beverly Green. Unfortunately, there is no Keeping Willie Whitaker Green branch.

"They're my trees. They didn't pay for the trees. My trees are going to be cut," Whitaker told a SouthtownStar reporter before refusing to comment further.

Even the work crew - which counted 175 rings on one stump - was perplexed; the trees were healthy.

Theodore Richardson, who has lived on Longwood Drive across from Whitaker's yard since 1974, said, "He's another Mr. T."

Citing allergies, Mr. T., the Rush Street bouncer-turned-actor, cut down about 100 oak trees from his seven-acre estate in 1987, angering his neighbors in Lake Forest, the SouthtownStar reported.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/The-Tree-Hater-of-Morgan-Park.html

Mr. Whitaker owns the property.

Wells Fargo Mortgage and I own mine.

The parkway on 108th Street runs along my property on which three mighty Maples were planted decades ago. The Parkway on my property was planted with these Green Giants. The City no longer cares for these mighty gifts of Nature, that toss roots into my foundation and sewer pipes -clog gutters with whirly-bird seeds creating a Planter of the Gutters! - break up the sidewalks & etc. Only God Can Make a Tree! Unless the former City Dept. of Forestry (RIP) planted the woody SOBs back when Kelly was Mayor. I have three such gifts of Nature and long dead City Largess! Thanks So Mucking Fuch! ...

I do not have the steel of spine of Mr. Whitaker and I do enjoy the shade; thus, it falls to my lot - and on my LOT - that I must get in the gutter.

I have an extension ladder ( 24' Aluminum) however the rope that pulls the extension section fouled and broke immediately upon inspection. Therefore, I set the ladder on the deck over back-door ( locked and note attached that Dad is up on the roof in OSHA compliance) and wearing my True Value faux leather working man's gloves, set my gnarled and horny fingers to the rungs and pushed my stumpy haunches up onto the stairway to heaven.

Eight steps up, I carefully eased my blubber up over the gutters and onto the roof, jackknifed my knees in safe balance, pulled the sturdy black bags from my pocket and began the hour long removal of gutter-clutter -whirly-bird plants, grown in honor of the recent wettings by nature, empty Marlboro Lights packs tossed up in celebratory good humor by passing young Americans, Wiffle Balls and the odd dead bird.

This is Nature's bounty and reminders of the Great Chain of Being. The whirly-birds are the seedlings that God in His Wisdom returns to Earth with Hope of Rising. Had I not gotten my lazy ass up there and removed them, I would have the Greenest Roof in Morgan Park - Full Maples on my Roof!

The Wiffle Balls are the cheap toys that we buy little kids, when they are getting the balance that will one day lead them up onto roofs of their own. The Wiffle Balls got smacked and little Jimmy McKenna came home with only his over-sized red plastic bat to the question from the Old Man, recently laid off by the City, 'Hey, where's the ball, Kiddo? Those things don't grow on trees.'

To which the buzz cut red-headed six year old replies, 'Hickey's Roof, Dad.'

'Jesus, Bucko, that gizmo's up there for Good!'

Not so, Brother McKenna, not so. It is now on my kitchen floor and my black cat is chasing it, like Tim Novak* on a corruption story.

It is my property, after all.

Trees remind us that God is found in the details.



Tim Novak - Sun Times Investigative Newsman - the last of dying breed.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1613491,CST-NWS-mayor09.article

Jan, Nancy and Barney Announce - 'Schakowsky Stays Put!'

Boiled Beet Progressive Democrats of the House Hissed a Huge Huzzah as Jan Schakowsky, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Franks announced that the Evanston Elitist will stay safely snug!

Huge and Elegant Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes!

Clique my Post Title for the Real Dope!

Elias Crim - Historian and Humanist & Network Provider for International Capitalism!

"Another damned, thick, square, book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?" (William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving the second volume from the author, 1781)

Duke Billy is like too many of the powerful, smug, lazy and oafish. Gibbon wrote a work to stand beside, the Bible, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Canon. Historians and men of genius continue to be treated with such smug and stupid disdain.

Last night, I had the pleasure of reading a couple of offerings from The Armchair Historian. This wonderful twenty-four page History magazine is now out of print. I read Terry Sullivan's copies of the Armchair Historian last night and nearly cried myself to sleep knowing that I had missed this venture and with the personal spite and envy of a twisted maniac out of a Poe Tale. UBI SUNT? Where are they ( the volume of Armchair Historian )now?

We live in a cultural swamp that flourishes on freak-shows and foul-ups. People Magazine and Celebrity Survivor do well and Armchair Historian vanishes.

While Elias Crim's Armchair Historian lived, quality thinkers and writers got together.

Here was Civil War Historian Sheby Foote commenting on Ted Turner's movie Gettysburg, Navy Secretary John Lehman reviewing Conor Cruise O'Brien's seminal biography of Edmund Burke, and NY Governor Mario Cuomo offering historical perspective on Elias Crim's magazine. I was blown away - that such a necessary gem is no longer breathing and that the industrious and brilliant Elias Crim single-handedly brought together this arsenal of talent!


What was amazing about the Armchair Historian was the talent contributing to the work -Mario Cuomo and Shelby Foote to name two and that one man had the pluck and patience to rake them to his work. I wanted Crim's heart under my floor boards! Just kidding really, I love Elias and I also keep my Skittles and Sour Laffy-Taffies under the floor boards.

Elias Crim is a friend of mine. Mr. Crim has established a Network for American and International Capitalists ( CEOs, CFOs, CIOs % etc.) and this is a remarkable venture in the true American Spirit.

This network provides talent and treasure to meet. Elias Crim is what the American Spirit is all about - the man is a doer and he is bringing energetic and talented people together. Click my post title and find the link to Elias Crims Interim CEO Network. This is a work of genius.

America will be fine.

Why is America Behind Europe? We're Left Turn Yankee Rubes, I Reckon.

Parisian couture; Londoner Pukka Charm; Berliner Hegelian Weltqeist; Madrid Garbo; Roman Sprezztura and American Dog-Patch Day Late and Trillions of Dollars Short!

Them's Old Buildin's Ya Got Thar. Pope!

When a system or trend fails, give American Rubes a few decades and they'll follow them off the cliff.

The Rube-in-Chief, having underwhelmed President and Mrs. Sarkozy once again, will arrive back here in DogPatch to continue the steering of American life far away from the values that were honored on the Beaches of Normandy over the weekend.

Yep, time to get all Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey on the economy! Programs and Guv'mint Give-Aways, Neighbors!

While Europe moves away from Socialism, Yankee Rubes 'Folley The Prez'dint over the Cliff!

Lookee H'yar!

In some European countries, left-wing parties have failed to maintain a broad electoral base and ended up fractured and battling with one another. In Germany, the Social Democrats have suffered from a long-term decline that's linked to the decline in their unionized, working-class base, says Manfred Göllner, head of opinion-polling institute Forsa in Berlin.

Under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005, the party tried to win new, middle-class voters by marrying social justice with economic efficiency. But that fell apart when Mr. Schröder was forced to cut social spending to bring budget deficits under control at a time of record unemployment. The result: The party split, with dissidents defecting to help form a new, anti-capitalist party called "The Left" in 2007.

In some countries, the left has disintegrated into a myriad of groups. There have been so many defections from France's Socialist Party that the country now has half-a-dozen left-leaning movements. They include the New Anti-Capitalist Party, a Trotskyite movement, and the Left Front, an alliance of Communists and Communist-leaning politicians. The Socialist Party is divided over whether it should tie up with the Greens or with the MoDem, a center-right movement.

Italy's left has never quite recovered from the fall, in early 2008, of a government supported by a tenuous coalition of nine separate left-leaning movements ranging from Catholics to hard-core communists. Now, most don't believe the left will be a credible alternative to scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition for years to come.

Yep. Georgie Soros is one -a -them You're A Pee-ins and he's bank-rolled the Rube-in-Chief!

Mr. President - Lecture Them Swedish Grannies on DuSable Gun Violence! Soaring Thigh Tingling Rhetoric Needed a Few Blocks West of Hyde Park

The president is scheduled to return to the U.S. tomorrow while his family will stay on in Paris, according to the White House.

On his fourth trip abroad as president, Obama visited Saudi Arabia, where he spent more than three hours meeting with King Abdullah; Cairo, where he conferred with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; and Dresden, where he held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aw17G6x.F1FM

The midday gunfire drew a sharp reaction from Police Supt. Jody Weis.

The shooter "engages two targets, runs down the street, almost at high noon, shooting at them," Weis said. "He gets in a car and drives away. This is not the wild, wild West. This is Chicago. ... We've got to get some sort of peace back to the streets here."

Shucks, Jody, 'The Shooter' is quite comfortable zinging out the 9s and 4/5s! Chicago is a Thug Comfort Zone.

Maybe the President can offer a lecture. CPD Superintendent Jody Weis is only saying what every one knows.

However, the Media Morons will call for Marches and American Flag Desecration's and More Gun Laws!!!!

Perhaps, a Presidential soaring, thigh tingling rhetoric, stern yet Pragmatic Lecture directed at 90 year old Swedish women about their complicity in America's Gun Violence will help. After all, what have Swedish Grannies actually done to curb the gun violence in America's inner cities? Zippo!

Comb-Over Dave Axelrod can get this Whirly-Gig a-Going! Have Senators Burris and Dithering Dick Durbin flank you and the trusty teleprompter.

Let's see - January 20, 2009 and President Shovel Ready, or is that Shuttle Ready. Four trips outside the USA and America's economy is rapidly becoming a branch of Government, takes fistful trips to Asia, Central America & Mexico, the Middle East and Europe ( not to mention cheap date night). One Hundred Days and Change. Seems longer.

Candidate Obama lectured America on Race, in order to explain twenty years of soaking up Pastor Wright's message.

President Obama lectured Catholics on their inability to understand his career of service to Planned Parenthood at the PR Driven School in Indiana.

President Obama lectured Corporate America on using the company motor pool for fun.

President Obama lectured North Korea on . . . what was it again?

President Obama lectured Islam on Our Founding Imams and America's Muslim roots.

How about a lecture to 90 year Old Swedish Grandma's on the Thug Comfort Zones in America's cities?


President Obama might want to stay home for a few days. Bring MSNBC whole cavalcade of goof-balls; bring the White House Press Corps for burgers and Leinies at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, prior to the Lecture on the Steps of DuSable. The President could lecture and soar some rhetoric a few blocks west of Hyde Park and keep Air Force One running at O'Hare.

DuSable High School was the scene of another CPS-Proximity Homicide. Remember, Chicago, the 19 year old victim was 'NOT a CPS student.' Heavens, do remember that!

Perhaps a Media Junket to Chicago's Homicide & Thug Comfort Zones ( Englewood, Gresham & etc.) might be just the ticket for President Obama to make a dramatic impact and change the hearts here at home.

Mr. President, turn that soaring and thigh-tingling rhetoric on them Swedish Grannies - they might respond better than Catholics and Kim Jong Il.

David Brooks - LapDog for a New Millenium

"What in the hell is Dave Brooks doing in there, for Crissakes? The Kid's gotta be soft." Cautious, Clever, Machiavellian Neighborhood Guy opines.

Chicagoans like to see themselves as pragmatists, not ideologues.
that means they contain both sides of The Great Tension. In Chicago, there is a tension between the lakefront and the neighborhoods inland. The lakefront tends to be idealistic, earnest and liberal. The neighborhoods are clever, cautious and Machiavellian. In all great endeavors, the Obama administration weaves together both of these tendencies.

David Brook NY Times: Dweeb and Victim*

Click my Post title for Lap-dog little Dave Brooks' Hosanna for President Obama! Little Dave, feels the Friendship Train is pulling out without his chubby little fingers gripping the boarding handle. Run, Dave, Run! Atta boy.

Really, Dave? So you're gonna lecture us on Pragmatism, while planting a wet one on the President's Permanent Vertical Smile? That's nice. All you really need to do is smooch, Cupcake; no need to parse.

Dave, You Sweet boy! I mean that, in the Cook County sense! Listen up, you smarmy little dweeb.

Aw, Jesus, now he's crying. Come on, Dave, this is not how a Chicago Big Boy behaves!

Dave, that's how clever, cautious, Machiavellians address doofi from beyond the Pale of clever, cautious Machiavellian neighborhood limits. Dave you ain't from Canaryville; that's no sh%t! Hell, even a starving Hyde Park dwarf with rickets would stuff you in an ash-can.

Nice Dichotomy, Dave, get that in school?

I was up in the idealistic, earnest and liberal Lakefront last night for an event hosted by a Ward that takes in both Idealistic, Earnest and Liberal people, as well as Clever, Cautious and Machiavellian folks. It was a hoot. They Pragmatically took up plates and scooped up Cream Cheese Dip, Italian Sausage and Peppers, Mashed Spuds and Gravy ( non-Italian variety), and broasted chickens and then balanced the plates with great Pragamatism while nailing back long-neck beers.

It was a celebration of Diversity! That has been going on since the cow kicked the lantern, you Dope.

While smooching the President's elegant ass, Dave, you do not need to pretend that you actually understand Chicago. It is out of your Ivy League, Cupcake.

Focus on Georgetown and the bow-tie wearing sissies, four-eyes. Just kidding. You know, like the Pansies on MSNBC do all the time.


*Out in the Cautious, Clever and Machivellian Chicago neighborhoods, where Moms are married to Dads and breed kids, young fellows like Dave Brooks get encouraged not to wear capes, crowns and Indian headdresses to high school ( at least); thus avoiding Victimhood.

Here in Chicago's neighborhoods, we can spot a potential victim from a city block away. 'Oh, that poor kid in the Paris Hilton is Hot! T-shirt really should not intrude upon that group of Gangster Disciples (GD's) and ask them WHAT TIME'S IT?'

Tamara Holder on Patti Blagojevich - Diary of a Housewife Married to the Mad-Hatter

Chicago attorney Tamara Holder has an interesting take on Patti Blagojevich:

A good wife sticks by her man's side. Shoot, many women bounce after their husband's arrest! (In fact, I think she got pretty lucky by not being slapped with some handcuffs herself.) Not that I'm suggesting she's a criminal, but, she was in the home all those hours that Blags was doing "business" on the bugged family phone while sitting on the couch in his jogging suit.

Go ahead, call Blags a scumbag criminal. As you know, I disagree. Gov. Blagojevich is not a Gov. Spitzer nor is he a member of the Gambino crime family. He does not have offshore accounts and he does not have cash tied up in real estate. Follow the paper trail...um, it doesn't exist! Blago is a wannabe criminal at best.
Like her or not, Patti is taking one for the Blags team by doing this silly show. Blago's defense attorneys need to be paid and her kids need to go to school. And, Patti needs to create an image separate from that of Mrs. Rod Blagojevich because, no matter how much Rod wants to be compared to Ghandi, it ain't happenin'.

Click my poist title for more from Ms. Holder!

Rod is, was, and continues to be a goof. However, Patti Mell fell in love with him, went halves on children with Rod, and is stepping into jungle for him. More tragically, the poor girl must hang around the jungle with A-List Mopes like the Baldwin kid. Que Mujer!
God bless women!

Richard C. Lindberg Tonight -on Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg

Milt Rosenberg invites Chicago Historian - Richard C. Lindberg on to Extension 720.

The brilliant and genial host and Richard Lindberg will discuss the Gambler King of Clark Street - Rich's full-length biography of the Man Who Invented the Chicago Democratic Machine.

Click my post title for more on this great author and subject at Chicago Daily Observer - Chicago's best source for what is happening!

FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH
GAMBLER KING OF CLARK STREET
Tonight we welcome a favorite guest on Extension 720, Chicago historian Richard Lindberg. Lindberg is a prolific author with many books on Chicago history including his latest The Gambler King of Clark Street. The book is a biography of Michael McDonald, a 19th century political power broker, among other distinctions. We'll talk with Lindberg about this book and more after the early Cubs game. We should be on the air by around 9:30pm.

http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/ext720/wgnam-ext720-june-09-program-guide,0,596976.story

The Muslim World of St. Cajetan's Parish, er . . .Whadda We Call it, Now?

Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.

"And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

President Barack H. Obama 6/2/2009 or is that AH 1430*

In the Name of Father . . .Alla Akabar! This meeting of the St. Cajetan . . .Caliph Umr . . . Knights of the Blessed Sacra. .. Seljuk Turks is called to order this day June . . .something er other AH 1430.

I'm Marty O'Hara, Grand Moujik of this Lodge and stuff. Okay to business

Imam Terry O'Donovan will be up in the minaret if any of you guys want to to go to Confession . . Salah, its ritual prayer, Hickey, like a novena only different - look the Sin Box is out. . . but you guys ain't exactly wearing the carpet out going in there anyway.

The Zakat, was off last week and Father Te. . . Imam Terry is beefing to me so tell the family to dig.

Sawm is like Lent, only we're moving things up to September, because Easter is out and some of you guys can stand some Sawm and then some. Half you clowns got Dunlap's Disease**- terminal.

Gaffney and O'Connell Travel has booked Ryan Air Flights -Chicago to Shannon to Mecca for this year's The Hajj,

The Tarrif ain't too bad. Nice gambling junket in the United Arab Emirates too . . .eats are nice.

Look, all this Change is what President Obama told the world we gotta do and we're gonna do it or MSNBC be will peeing all over the place 24/7.

The beer concession is cancelled 'officially' but chilled 'milk of Islam' is in the coolers so grab a couple and let's get Submissive!


This concludes the business.

Gambling, smokes and water-pipes may be lit. Imam Terry said that we gotta go easy on the noise. Cash for chips.

* Islamic Calendar

http://www.rabiah.com/convert/

** Dunlap's Disease - an affliction brought on by an excess of empty calories and an absence of exercise - 'where the belly done lops over the belt' in helot argot.

NLRB on Charters -'Bump in the Road' for SEIU Should Mean Smooth Sailing for Charter Education U.S.A.

H/T to Progress Illinois ( SEIU's Intranet Comic Book, or is it Graphic Novel?)

Looks like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)put a knot in SEIU's undies. The NLRB accepted the Civitas (Education Management Organization) for Interntional Charter Schools position that as a for-profit, private entity Public School Rules do not necessarily fit. Right here, in Illinois, there's trouble for the feebs in sheep-skin clothing, attempting to snare Charter Education Reform away from the tax payers of Illinois. Well, Lord save us from all harm and phonies!

SEIU and Marilyn Stewart's attempt to sneak one past the people who actually want Education Reform has hit a 'bump in the road.' Let's hope that it is a very long trip back to the pavement . . .about eighty years or so.

Thus,"The national board determined that the teachers are employees of a private firm, the Civitas educational management company, not public employees who would be governed by the state labor board.

As a practical matter, the ruling means that the teachers will have to vote in a secret ballot on whether they want to unionize."

http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/index.php/entry/333

Therefore, The SEIU/Chicago Teachers Union(CTU) may not pave over Reform in Education -just this yet.

NLRB makes SEIU/CTU SOL!

Tough week tootsies! Taxpayers have had enough of the whining and NL(that's Labor, girls)RB ruled for real people. AND!!!!! They(Illinois Legislature)created double the number of Charters Available! That's gotta hurt the Halt, Lame and Lazy!

Back to the Barricades, Baristas!

Clare Hickey -Now a St. Cajetan Graduate!

Nora, Clare and Conor Hickey at St. Cajetan Parish 8th Grade Graduation Last Night

Memorare*! Clare, one thing to take from your 9(pre-school & eight years) years at St. Cajetan, besides the thick cohort of friends and the wings of happy memories, is this prayer.

Your Mom said this every day. Your Dad only seems to remember it when he is in trouble. Be like Mom.

Your Mother, Mary, both of them, watch over you. Mom only had the earthly joy of you for a little while. Mary the Mother of God has had you much longer. Both have you eternally.

You are in an elite club, St. Cajetan Alumni. St. Cajetan always won the Southtown Economist Bell in Football - that was a trophy. St. Cajetan always educated great people - the Joyces, the Schumachers, the Wards, The Reyas, The Hodorowicz's, the Miers, the Cullens, the Sheehans, the Millers, and Hopkins.

You, Clare, will bring much to our world that is needed. Say the Memorare and get help in all you need to do. Be like Mom.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.

Amen.

* Here's a link to Patriot, Wit, Author, Playwright and Film Maker,Mike Houlihan's take on the Memorare! Click my post title for Mike's piece

Mark Brown Decries His Own Column - We're Way Ahead of You, Mark! Cops Are Not Judged by Columinists

I'm Mark Brown. I do what I do! That's me. This is how I look. Pretty Good?

I'll probably catch hell for linking these two events together -- the cowardly Abbate with the heroic Valadez -- but I don't really see how we can separate them entirely. . . . The importance of an Anthony Abbate is that his case shows how easy it is for one policeman to bring discredit to his fellow officers, even detracting from the ultimate sacrifice of an Alejandro Valadez.

Mark Brown 'must' link the death of Officer Valadez to the thug Anthony Abbate. He Must!

There is only one reason columnists like Mark Brown take pimp slaps at Police Officers, they know that they will not face any criticism or suffer any consequences in so doing. Mark Brown and too many others helped build the Thug Comfort Zone here in Chicago.

Like the old adage, that questions why Fido gratifies himself - 'because he can.'

The Media, as opposed to newspaper reporters, like Ray Coffey and John Drummond, use police misconduct to undermine any and all confidence in Law Enforcement. They play Identity Politics and Advocacy Journalism. The Sun Times is wheezing its way into oblivion, hoping against hope to become a Government Agency, like Chrysler, GM, and the American Banking Industry. It may happen.

Then, would be Zolas could become Later Day Goebbels Lites.

It is typical, but still sickening that when a Police Officer is murdered in the line of Duty, a hack like Brown would push the agenda.

Mark obeys his highers and betters. He stays supine when told to lay down. Like when there is another CPS News embargo on 'bad situations.' Like this one -

A riot took place at Simeon High School during a ComEd power grid failure two weeks ago. Gangbangers rioted in the school and out into the community form 83rd Street to 79th Street. Police Officers quieted the riot without a death or serious injury to the 'the children.' Mark Brown had his head somewhere else, when Police Oficers were doing exactly what they do every day here in Auburn/Gresham/Brainerd/Englewood and Chatham.

Ask a cop from the 6th, 7th, 8th, or 22nd District - they responded to the riot. I don't need to; I saw it. We got the kids of Leo High School home and safe without incident because of Chicago Police standard operating procedures. When the lights went out at Simeon, however . . .hold the phone.

Mark Brown's head is firmly stuck where he wants it to be - nice view I guess.

Ron Gidwitz - GOP Best and Only Hope for Governor

Governor Pat Quinn is a decent guy. He is an Oak Park Democrat with, for my tastes anyway, a much too close working relationship with Boiled Beet Progressives.

Governor Quinn just had his butt handed to him by the tax payers of Illinois, through their elected Representatives in Springfield.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-legislature01jun01,0,2960790.story
Programs ( code for tax dollars to Progressive groups, lawyers and individuals wasted) have sucked the life out of Illinois. The well is bone dry.

For the last few months, Illinois Teachers Unions have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sophomoric and childishly whiny radio ads about saving 'good teachers' because pensions are 'the fair share.' Nope. Pensions are a benny.

Great teachers continue to teach in Catholic Schools, Independent Schools, Christian Schools, Muslim Schools, Jewish Schools and Charter Schools. SEIU and the Chicago Teachers Unions want to kill Charters. Every time public school test score drill deeper into the Illinois soil, a march is televised to ask why the children in Illinois Schools are not filling up on State funded energy drinks, snacks or pills.

District School Superintendents with just the right 'credentials' to get them safely out of the classrooms that they could never control continue to make salaries that European Monarchs would envy. Then, they get caught on camera diddling the help as well as the tax-payers.

It's Children First! . . .and then the looting frenzy!

Illinois needs a good governor. Governor Quinn is a good man, but he has played ball with the Program Gluttons. It is time Illinois put the old feather down the throat and tickled up the tummies of the Progressives.

The Illinois GOP has shot its toes off backing Topinka and the Milkman and others.

It is time to get smart with a smart guy. Ron Gidwitz is just that man.

Here's what the Tribune ( believe it or not) said about Ron Gidwitz in 2006, when Illinois allowed Blago another kick at the Program Cat.

Ron Gidwitz is the Republican best equipped to earn that trust, and to empty that dark, fetid moat. The Tribune endorses Gidwitz in the Republican primary for governor and his running mate, state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, for lieutenant governor.

This primary is about plans and positions, but it’s also about nominating a candidate who will break eggs and make omelets.

That’s Gidwitz. As CEO of Helene Curtis, he built a cosmetics business into an empire. As chairman of the State Board of Education, he ordered bureaucrats to visit Illinois classrooms to see how state policies affected schoolchildren. As chairman of the City Colleges of Chicago, he demanded that students’ curriculum meet the needs of the modern workplace. His mantra to board members (after he scuttled their pricey limo service): Look, folks, this is the last degree many of our students will ever earn. We need to make sure they’re employable.

Gidwitz will choose his advisers wisely, as a chief executive must. The evidence: His decision to team with Rauschenberger, one of the most independent, creative members of the legislature.

Gidwitz’s detractors say he’s abrasive. Yes, he’s all-business. He doesn’t suffer fools. Yes, he’s been a political insider, a contributor to politicos in both parties. But the GOP hierarchy isn’t backing him in this race, all the more reason to believe him when he says he’ll commandeer the bully pulpit, murmur “Brace yourselves,” and roust clubby lobbyists, lawyers and legislators from the rotunda and into the sunlight.

I usually vote Democrat. However, I am sticking very close to home with my Democratic Votes - Ed Maloney and Kevin Joyce will always have my vote. They vote the will of my neighbors.

I have met Mr. Gidwitz on a couple of occasions. Mr. Gidwitz is courtly and soft-spoken. I do not believe that he would toss a handful of Jacksons on the bar at Keegan's Pub and yuck it up with the lads. Hell, neither do Joyce or Maloney. Kevin Joyce has seven kids and Ed Maloney has his First Communion money. However, Mr. Gidwitz is a serious business gent. He does not suffer fools gladly. Hence, the abrasive canard that gets tossed his way. Ron Gidwitz don't polka.

Judy Topinka polkas . . .when it suits her.

Nope, Ron Gidwitz might have the personality of a dial tone, but the man can manage.

Illinois needs a Chief Executive. He'd work great with Speaker Mike Madigan. Imagine the giggles and gab when these two serious gents got together!

Ron Gidwitz is just what Illinois needs. Pat Quinn is a nice guy - there's millions of them.