The Goldsteining of Pastor Corey Brooks by Action Now and Illinois Democrats and Media

So, I'm standing in the open entrance to New Beginning Church and a couple of Blue T-Shirt Bedecked-out Volunteers ask me, " You Corey Brooks?"  Now, that was Spontaneous! I love spontaneity!  Baby's laughter.  A Great Smooch! Keeley Smith on WDCB!

Unamazzed though bemused, having listened to the Action Now "Volunteers" being warmed up for five minutes east of Martin Luther King Drive on 65th Place with chants themed to say that Pastor Corey Brooks betrayed Jesus, I replied, " No ladies, I am an aging white man. Corey Brools is a big, burly and handsome young Black man"

They smiled and moved back in line; herded by two young white people: a  guy in a pink Cape Cod cap and a chain-smoking young woman with a clipboard.  I have been off my Marlboro Reds for a couple of weeks and fought the temptation to bum a smoke from the young lady.

You see, I was at one of those community activist well-orchestrated SPONTANEOUS protests of some outrage.

The outrage du jour is Pastor Corey Brooks.  Got that?

Pastor Brooks was on his way back from the hospital, where he had accompanied members of the family of a parishioner stricken with a heart attack and picking up tubs of iced down bottled water for the two dozen chanting volunteers following Action Now cheerleader with the bullhorn and herded by Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim.

Comrade Cape Cod

Virginia Slim

Popeye's Pappy

There was also an aging activist citizen journalist who looked like Popeye's Pappy,  White Progressive Privilege. Love it.  These three white folks acted like border collies for the two dozen "Volunteers."

I have the feeling that a community pantry, or shelter was the place to find activists.  One lady in blue Action Now T-Shirt agreed with me.

You see, Corey Brooks is not liked by the artificial turfed Grassroots activists allied with National, State, County and City Democrats.  He supported Bruce Rauner for Governor over Pat "JRW!!!!" Quinn. Shortly after Pastor Brooks endorsed Rauner, his church was violated. Talk about action now! Now, Action Now demands that Pastor Brooks STEP DOWN! Or, so the chanters chanted. man, you'd think Pastor Brooks asked to defund Planned Parenthood, or shot Cecil the Lion. Brooks hate abortion, like a man; howver I do not believe that he had taken up Big Game hunting.  No, he has committed thought crime.

It was this public endorsement of Rauner that caused the Goldsteining of Pastor Brooks yesterday and I first caught the mighty wind of Action Now's protest on Beachwood Reporter.  I like Pastor Brooks and called to give his church members a heads-up and stand in solidarity, as the slogan goes, with a neighbor.  I park at New Beginnings Church every morning of the school year, when I pick up Leo Students from Grand Crossing and have come to know Pastor Brooks.

Pastor Brooks, unlike too many priests, preachers and prophets in Englewood, Gresham, Grand Crossing and other desperate and blood soaked neighborhoods, is no race hustler, or grifter.  He questions support of Democrats who like to play the role of plantation boss.  He even endorsed a  Republican and Rauner, like all politicians rewarded a solid with a solid. Pastor Brooks was appointed to the Illinois Tollway Commission, which is open to African Americans as well as DuPage County Dowagers.  I believe the litmus test for such an honorific appointment is spelling Tollway. Nah, it's probably a little tougher.

Quite seriously, Action Now would demand that the African American Community deserves NO representation, because Rauner plans to destroy the African American Community. Thus the Goldsteining of Corey Brooks.

It takes mob Action Now to properly Goldstein a citizen.  Slogans, chants and T-shirts targeting the target for the day is how so-called "Grassroots" Activists assassinate a person's character. Located at 820 West Jackson in the heart of Chicago's . . .Greektown.  Two dozen activist volunteers made their way from Chicago's massive south side ( The Lake to Pulaski) Black communities, at their own expense, to board  bus to bring them to a Church in the heart of the community they just spent precious Ventra Credits to get to the bus in Greektown. Or so Virginia Slim explained, they are all volunteers and came on their own.

But arrived on a bus? Together with Action Now Alinsky Border Collies, Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad?  "One never knows, do one?" to quote Fats Waller.

I guess my tone betrays my sentiments.  Pastor Corey Brooks was targeted by some Democrat, or a rival activist priest, pastor or prophet, or maybe he is all three rolled  in one.  Corey Brooks was targeted for political punishment.

Pastor Corey Brooks handed out water and Dunkin Donuts and Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim immediately ginned up the hate.

Pastor Brooks smiled and forgave. They know not what they do.

Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad do.

Ron Gidwitz is Right About Kirk. Senator! Blow!

Marque Kirque is another in the American parade of doughy mediocrities occupying political office (Senator Dick Durbin, Rep. Mike Quigley, Orrin Hatch, John Boehner, Barack Obama, former Gov. Jeb Bush) and breathing our air.

He is the Republican United States Senator from Illinois only because of the late Judy Baar Topinka, Rod Blagojevich, Senator Emeritus Roland "Tombstone" Burris and the doughy former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, with more than a little help from hundreds of thousands of spiritually flat-lined Illinois voters.

Marque Kirque is Dick Durbin without solid media cover.  The media will chip, Spackle and paint over ANYTHING Dick Durbin lies about, screws up, sells out, cowers from or pockets, because Dick Durbin is a national stooge for America's haters and wallet-lifters.

Marque Kirque suffered a stroke, but remains a full capacity lap-dog, whipping boy and handy vote for the ever unctuous and lip sucking Senior Senator from Illinois.

In the best of all worlds, both men would have an epiphany - realize the shabby lives they've led taking coin from Henry Van Ameringen, George Soros, Planned Parenthood USA and Mrs. Murphy of 10Sex57 S. Rockwell, Chicago, Illinois and resign, retire and repose in Sylvan glade to count their payoff money.  That only happens in a Disney movie, or Dan Savage Disney sit com.

It gets better.  Really? Can't set your watch by it.

We live in Illinois. That takes a guy with some $trength of character, $Partan values and $Parkling clean dollars.  Someone with political muscle wrapped in Benjamins . . . thousands of Benjamins.

Ron Gidwitz thinks Marque Kirque should go.  Speak on it, Ron!“I do not believe he will be a U.S. senator in 2017 and, as top of the ticket, he could cause collateral damage [to other Republican candidates]. I call on him to step aside and allow other Republicans to seek his seat,” Gidwitz told

Ron Gidwitz ran for governor and was stabbed in the back by the Illinois GOP, especially the late Judy Baar Topinka an accomplished kidney surgeon from way back ( ask George Ryan).  Ron Gidwitz would have made a superb governor. Much more honest, skilled and empathetic than Governor Rahm Rauner . . .I mean Governor Bruce Emmanuel.

Gidwitz was talking to Crain's Chicago Business and spoke his mind.

I like it.

Mr. Gidwitz backpedaled on his remarks, in the time-honored Illinois GOP tradition of blowing off ones own toes, but that does not diminish the power of his words.

Hey Marque Kirque!  Blow.  

Whiting's Pierogi Fest 2015 - Dough Matters & Odzemok on 119th Street

Today is the last day of the Whiting, Indiana 2015 Peirogi Fest - the absolute best street fest anywhere.  I have been going to Pierogi Fest since the 1990's when I lived in Griffith, Indiana. This is a celebration of people manifested in the treats prepared by busha, or jaja, depending upon ethnic origin.  For northwest Indiana, that means Slovak, Polish, Czech. Bohemian, Moldavian, Serbian or Croatian more than likely.  These folks were the manufacturers of American steel and the refiners of John D. Rockefeller's oil for the 100 years of the American Century.

The American Century seems to embarrass too many people today.  That is sad.   Sad people call the tunes too often these days - they are the ones out among the happy people with the 'equality and fairness' tape measures squawking about hurt feelings and feelings not as yet pinched.  Sad people do not celebrate, they berate, ridicule, ignore and forget.  Happy people dance! Happy people eat!  Happy people sing!  Happy people put away as much Pierogi as they can lay hands upon.

I am happy.    I spent the entire day among happy eaters and dancers: earth launched boot slapping Slovakian horn-dogs locking metaphorical antlers with other athletic swains from the valleys and meadows of the Heart of Europe in thick rut for the attentions of gorgeous, black and blue-eyed beauties in bright pink, black, green, orange and yellow dresses whirling wildly enough for this old geezer to remark "I See London; I See France!" Odzemok, Boy-oh! Three Slovak Dance Troupes from Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto wowed me.

I am happy!  I watched hundreds of kids hurling 12" softball at a modestly sized target-trigger in order to sink a little Carmelite nun into a vat of cool water.  For $ 5 you get three shots to Dunk the Nun.. I couldn't dunk a Camelite.  Had it been a Sinsinawa Dominican or a Sister of Mercy, I'd still be peeling off $20s. I donated my five and bought sister a cold beverage of malted grains.  Best believe that, Junior.


I am happy.  I spent some quality time with Mr. Pierogi, his own bad -self.

I am happy.  I spent a few Jacksons on Pierogi prepared by a landsman - Conley's Pierogis!

 I had Taco Pierogis. I had Louisiana Gator Pierogis!  I had Big Daddy's BubbaQue Pierogis.

I am Happy!  I was with people I know and Love! Neighbors who celebrate!  Sad people don't celebrate - they organize, march and howl. Happy people celebrate up a plenty!

The heat and humidity was exquisite and the massive crowd of happy people enjoying the celebration of genuine happiness was courteous to all and sundry.  Even the eight month olds were happy.

Get happy.  Get over to Whiting.



*Odzemok, considered by many to be the "national" or most typical dance of Slovakia, has been well preserved up to the present time. The physically strenuous and virtuoso movements of odzemok, along with its martial elements, make it basically a man's dance that is very special, indeed.

Variants of the dance are known throughout the Carpathian region by various names and are often referred to as "weapon dances." Such dances were originally danced by soldiers, robbers, and shepherds, but later they were also danced by the nobility. Accounts of this dance form survive from the 16th century and by the 19th century information became more profuse. Still, in this century, its vigor is quite remarkable.

Odzemok is found everywhere in Slovakia but is richest in the central and northeast parts, especially in the High Tatra Mountains.

8:30 A.M. July 21, 1944 - Guam Liberation Begins

PFC Patrick E. Hickey USMCR carrying the Tripod for a .30 Cal. Machine Gun - July, 1944 on the ridges above Guam's Red Beach 2.


My father, Patrick E. Hickey, died April 25, 2010. Most of the young men in his WWII Marine Company - Able, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines were wounded or killed on this day.

My Dad's platoon leader Lt. Krawiec of Chicago was wounded and evacuated getting out of the LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) on the Red Beach 2. PFC Boyd Curtis Troup of Jones, Michigan one of my Dad's best friends and fellow .30 Caliber Heavy Machine Gun crew member was wounded on this beach and evacuated as well.

The balance of Company A ( Able)including it's heroic company commander "Skipper" was pretty much wiped out over the next seventy-two hours taking Chorito Cliff and Bundschu Ridge ( named for Capt. Geary Bundschu-Navy Cross Skipper of A-1-3). Very few members of Able Company continued through the Guam Campaign, in fact the regimental casualties on the first day of the battle, exceeded the 3rd Marine Division Campaign casulties for the previous Battle for Bougainville ( Nov. 1-Dec. 25, 1943).

Author Scott Carmichael, while researching Bunschu Ridge acount of  my Dad's Company and the battles that he never talked about for the balance of his life, sent me this note about apicture that I had forwarded to him. . I informed him that my cousin Willie had found my Dad's Seabag with the number 312 stenciled next to his name. Mr. Carmichael replied -

Wow. Do you know what the number 312 represents? The men used a numbering
system for their gear. They didn't take their seabags along as they rode
their amtraks onto the beach, of course. Seabags were left behind on the
LSTs, for later retrieval. The men numbered not only their seabags, but a
lot of other equipment and gear. 312 = 3rd Marine Regiment/1st Battalion/2nd
company. The headquarters company was always listed as the 1st company
(311). That made Able company the 2nd company in the battalion (312).
Thanks for the information about the photograph.

The photograph above was confirmed to be my Dad carrying the tripod of the machine gun.


Mr. Carmichael contacted me days after my Dad passed away. He was looking for the few survivors of Able Company. Marine Lt. Krawiec died in January 0f 2010, but the gentle and humorous Mr. Troup still lives with his wife and the horrible and multiple wounds he received on Red Beach 2 Sixty Six years ago. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Troup, back in May.

God Bless Every American Veteran!

Rebecca Fried - American Scholar and High School Student Quieted "No Irish Need Apply" Denier from the University of Illinois

Augusta Constitutionalist (Ga) 31 July 1868.

Kids love a challenge and nothing challenges them like a teacher saying something outrageous ( to their experiences) and demanding of them -"Well prove me wrong!"

My students LOVED rubbing my pug-nose in it -deeply and lovingly -and I have to say I loved it too.

I am wrong, early and often, and I will fess up when called on mistakes, misteps and, too often, miss spellings.  I write fast and furious and seem to require a full time editor just to pay the light bill.

A few years back there was a huge Hoo-Ha from a very celebrated American academic at University of Illinois who broadly and  loudly told Irish Americans to believe him and not their lying eyes.  I read his article published by OxFord University ( I'm in there too, under Thackeray BTW) Press and dismissed the professor 'painstaking and careful research' which denied that "No Irish Need Apply" signs existed - ever.

I remember seeing those very signs in the ads of old Chicago newspapers all the way up to WWII.

Well, I never bothered with Professor Richard J. Jensen's thesis and harbored my prejudices based upon emprirical evidence.
A high school student from Brooklyn, NY gutted Professor Jensen two weeks ago from t'aint to gizzard:

 in a piece for the Oxford Journal of Social History – the same journal where Jensen published his findings – Rebecca A. Fried, a  a high-school student at the Sidwell Friends school in Washington, DC,” has found overwhelming evidence that the NINA signs were very real and very prevalent.
In a wonderfully written and researched rebuttal, Fried challenges Jensen’s claim that “the NINA phenomenon is an ahistorical memory to be explained by ‘delu[sional]’ group psychology and ‘the political need to be bona-fide victims’ rather than by the fact of historic discrimination.”
Instead, she writes, “the documentary record better supports the earlier view that Irish-Americans have a communal recollection of NINA advertising because NINA advertising did, in fact, exist over a substantial period of United States history, sometimes on a fairly widespread basis.”


Wanted advertisement displaying the qualification “No Irish need apply.” The New York Herald, Vol. XXVIII Issue 186, Page 11. 7 July 1863.

How about that, youngster!?!!!!! Professor Jensen is being tuned up thanks to kid who was challenged by a teacher . . .not a real nice on it seems from the exchanges Old Doc Jensen is having with Rebbecca.

CPS Gets Claypool; Chicago Gets Another Sound and Thorough Screwing!

Just when one might believe that CPS is up the proverbial creek with the legendary paddle, Rahm makes Forrest Claypool, the chinless wonder of all metropolitan career grifters, to be CEO of CPS.

Well, F Me!

Forrest will serve Chicago's soul-less local cadre of connected venture capitalist as well as he did in every appointment he has enjoyed at the County and City levels of government.

Name a Claypool achievement, success, or non-disaster.

Name one.

I hear crickets.

Ty Warner - You Can't Fake Being a Good Guy

On Friday June 10, 2015, after many months of deliberation in an America that has been programed to boil furiously over whenever a successful person is deemed to be more equal than . . .anyone, the United States Seventh District Court of Appeals ruled that Ty Warner's punishment and sentence was just.

That was a shock to me.  Given our spiritus mundi (can I still say that?),  I expected the reverse, because I have gotten to know Ty Warner a little bit and that little bit leads me to believe that he is a good guy and this is no time for good guys - to paraphrase Cormac McCarthy. Creeps prosper, but good guys seem to take it in the neck.  The Sharptons, The Trumps, The Clintons, The Ayers and the self-made creeps like Dan Savage,Bill Cosby and Rachel Dolezal flourish in the age of Harrison Bergeron.

Every news outlet reporting on this fact strains mightily to get a hissy-slap at the billionaire anyway and that is only to be expected. You see, Ty Warner built his empire. Ty Warner is a man whom the legal cozeners, the academic milquetoasts and media purse puppies want punished, because he built his success.  Can't have that getting around. We are living in a time predicted by writer Kurt Vonnegut decades ago.  In his story Harrison Bergeron everyone must be equal -whatever.        

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal
before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter
than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was
stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing
vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. 

The Handicapper General is coming, unless good guys ( gender neutral, mind) take stock.

Ty Warner has spent a great deal of time here at Leo High School, as part of his probation to be sure, but having a wonderful time of it. I am an old timey English teacher who learned his trade by watching and emulating my betters.  How I engaged my students was how I was assessed, by Father Bob Erickson, Father Jim Fanale, Father Ken Yarno, Nick Novich, Jim Frogge, Dave Raiche, Sister Hellen Kavanaugh and Rich Zinnani.  They told me and taught me that teaching kids required much more than book learnin' - did I like being with people who wanted to learn something; not just people to talk at.  My great mentors taught me that I could not fake it. " Hickey, you can't pretend to be a good guy,"

You is, or you ain't. Only a good guy can be an effective teacher and the State don't issue Type-301 Good Guy Certification.

Ty Warner would have made a superb class-room teacher.

He is patient, witty, prepared, engaged and engaging with willful, occasionally obstreperous and easily bored young men who might not ever become billionaires.  They might not. Ty Warner offers them an up-close and personal opportunity to learn from a man who is a billionaire.

All of Ty Warner's billions of dollars can not make him a good guy, nor can he leave that in his Will.

He earned that sobriquet, just as he did his fortune, on his own.  Ty Warner treats people, who can do absolutely nothing for him, like they are the most important and interesting people on earth.  You can not fake that.

I am very happy that at least one good guy survived our Harrison Bergeron culture and society. Thanks be to God.