The Return(s) Of Valerie Jarrett - More Slum Properties for Middle Class Neighborhoods

“The court order requires that we build sustainable communities that are economically integrated and that will lead to racial integration as well. That's how my grandfather's vision will be realized,” Jarrett says. Affordable Housing Finance 11/01/2008

Yep, Valerie Jarrett is circling this corpse of a city looking for tasty parts that have as yet gone to rot - Jefferson Park, Albany Park Morgan Park.  Parkway Manor has problems and folks neeed to find affordable housing away fro O-Block, Roseland and of course Englewood.

Valerie Jarrett is coming home, sort-of.  Ariel Capital Investments, where Daley socked millions of pension dollars owed to City workers, just announced the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to its board of directors.

Rahm's City Council provided the venue.

Chicago-based Ariel Investments is one firm that got a lift from the state's effort to direct pension dollars to minority-owned firms. It received its first million-dollar investment from the Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago in 1984 and today it manages $123 million for the pension. It also manages money for a number of other state and local pensions.

“Illinois is doing a terrific job in this area,” said Ariel Chairman, CEO and Founder John Rogers, noting just a few exceptions among local pension funds that “don't get it.”
Illinois could use some help from other states to advance the cause, Raoul said. “Illinois shouldn't carry that burden,” he said. “We're not the only diverse state in the country.” Crain's Chicago Business

This can only signal affordable housing clusters in neighborhoods where crime is low, property taxes are paid and elites do not own townhouses, greystones, or Bed and Breakfasts.

Neighborhoods where cops, firemen, CTA  & CPS employees, Streets and Sanitation workers live and raise families are being eyed-for such development.

One might think that the Chicago Media's Investigative Teams would be all over this boondoggle that runs from Obama's White House to our State Budget Mensa Team in both Houses in Springfield, with stops at City Hall and Hyde Park, might be worth a gander.

One might, if one were a silly goose.

Nope. The news media is in on it, Dopes.

Cops are not dopes, nor are they grifters.  Some are better writers than Sun Times purse puppies and Tribune ink-slinging lambikins.

Second City Cop directs us to the creeps setting the table for Val, Ariel and the elite-players.

In the meantime, Ed Burke used a procedural motion to temporarily stall the CHA project building Arena (and Rahm) is trying to bring into 016 to lead to the latest round of "block busting:"
A plan to demolish a vacant food distribution site in the heart of Jefferson Park and replace it with a storage facility and apartment complex failed Monday to win the support of the City Council's zoning committee.
Although the council typically defers to the alderman of each ward when it comes to matters of zoning, Ald. Edward Burke (14th) stepped in during what had already been hours of contentious testimony about the plan to build a five-story, 68-foot warehouse at 5150 N. Northwest Highway.
Burke demanded that a roll call vote be taken to determine whether enough members of the committee were present for a vote to be valid. When it became clear that there was not enough members of the committee still present for the seventh hour of the meeting, the session was adjourned — much to the delight of opponents of the development.
No idea what pressure was brought to bear on Burke for this action - he doesn't seem to care that often. Perhaps he saw the north side going renegade and voting republican for generations instead of kowtowing to the Machine.
More drama next month.

Make book on it. That middle aged buzzard Valerie Jarrett does not wing into town for snacks; she's ready for a feed.

By the way NEIU is giving Val and Honorary Degree up there in North Park. Nice neighborhood.  Get ready for some swell affordable housing! This will be a scouting trip.

No Chicago paper will cover this - read Second City Cop.

Father Mallette Picked Up the Check - “give without expecting anything back.”

Father Dan Mallette greets Mike Joyce :“Great souls by instinct to each other turn, Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.”
―Joseph Addison

The world lost another great priest.  A few years ago we lost Francis Cardinal George*.  This Sunday, at Little Company of Mary Hospital, Father Dan Mallette went home to Christ.

There is a very nice story in the Chicago Sun Times giving people a hint of what the man was like in life, but that is like hearing about child birth.

Fr. Dan Mallette had fore-arms like Popeye and the deeply chiseled face of a tough guy that could do tribute to mankind on Easter Island.

At Mass, the Body and Blood of Christ was offered as the very real Presence of the redemptive Crucifixion and not some three-ring circus of self-congratulatory rhetoric. The Eucharist was about Christ in the lives of people and not about Dan Mallette.

Christ gave all and that made sense to Father Mallette.  He recognized no enemies.

Every moment with Father Mallette was sermon.

Imagine being at Franconello's, where you had just treated your family to big Italian feast.  You reach for your wallet and realize it is five blocks away on your dresser.  You are embarassed. anxious and worried that a great night will be spoiled by your mistake.

Marcia arrives; not with your bill, but with a message.

" Father Mallette, paid your bill!  He wanted you all to love one another, Oh, and I got a huge tip, already."

* Take the story of tensions between Cardinal George and Father Dan with a huge chunk of salt - the the press feared and hated Cardinal George for the very same reasons it praises Father Mallette.

Tribune Trots Out Trump Voters as Newly Aggrieved to Be Championed by the Elites Who are Screwing Them

 
Study says White Trump Voters are in mortal danger of dying drunk, buck-naked in what is left of a Santa outfit. 

But several million Americans – black, white, and Hispanic – now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 a day, essentially the same standard that the World Bank uses to define destitution-level poverty in India or Africa. Finding shelter in the United States on that income is so difficult that $2-a-day poverty is almost certainly much worse in the US than $2-a-day poverty in India or Africa. Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel Lauerate and Princeton Economics Scholar

So, the impoverished  Americans in Back of the Yards, Austin and Englewood of Chicago,  Blue Island, Hopkins Park, Harrisburg, Danville, Murpheesboro, Mound City and Camden, Illinois just might be well-served by packing up to sub-Saharan desert nations, or Zimbabwe for a chance at happiness?  $2.00 a day in Addis Abbaba must go way further than it does in Phoenix, Illinois.

The study employed by Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune was conducted by Sir Angus Deaton, et al. and the ever-compliant Bruce is taking this opportunity ( post ObamaCare earthquake) to herd the white cats who voted for President Trump in the 'feel my pain' tent of 2016 Losers.

Nice idea.

The media has all but closed the curtains on Make America Great with no end of help from the tasseled loafer crowd of the GOP, the bug-eyed leaders of the angry opposition (Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) and President Twitter-Jonesing, his own bad self.

Me. I'll wait and see how the movie turns out.

Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune and the equally daffy DNC clown posse at the Sun Times will toll the death knell of Trump for the next four years, in same manner that Wally's Last Stop was closing this week from 1990-1998. They will be correct . . .years from now.

This is the same Nobel Laureate whose 2015 study that Millions of Americans live on $2 a day.  Debunked.  Now, it is white American working class, no-college yokels are pulling the Dutch Act.

In these mean times, Chicagoans are being treated with this:

Since 1999, white men and women ages 45 through 54 have endured a sharp increase in "deaths of despair," Case and Deaton found in their earlier work. These include suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths such as liver failure.
In the paper released Thursday, Case and Deaton draw a clearer relationship between rising death rates and changes in the job market since the 1970s. They find that men without college degrees are less likely to receive rising incomes over time, a trend "consistent with men moving to lower and lower skilled jobs."

And Trump was elected in November, 2016.  Now, here is the payoff -

Those dynamics helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump, who won widespread support among whites with only a high school diploma. Yet Deaton said his policies are unlikely to reverse these trends, particularly the health care legislation now before the House that Trump is championing. That bill would lead to higher premiums for older Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has found.

"The policies that you see, seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him," Deaton said.

Since, January 20th Trump has destroyed the American economy, confiscated Obama phones, hurt Hollywood's feelings a whole lot, cost Colin Kaepernick his NFL career, made Oprah want to President, put lead in Dick Durbins Perrier and given the keys to the White House to the national membershipof Outlaws, MC.

America is stuffed in a hand basket roaring to hell!

 I'm having Italian chicken and potatoes with garlic, lemon and red peppers, later this evening. That is one prediction that shall come to pass. Mmmm -mm.

From 1999 to 2015, Deaton's studies tell us, white working poor as well as black and Hispanic improverished have had a hell of a time.

Yet, it was the Clinton, Bush and Obama years that gutted the working poor of America with policies and real estate and banking gambles, not to mention the give-away government goodies that have overflowed the banks of the Washington swamp.  Here is what  Forbes had to say, THERE ARE ZERO AMERICANS LIVING ON $2 PER DAY:

So what they're really measuring is the cash incomes of the poorest people without accounting for pretty much all the things that are done to increase the total incomes (such total income being equal to consumption possibilities of course) of those poor people. The only part of welfare that they do include is cash welfare under TANF.

And that's where their large rise in this form of poverty comes from. They are, as above, measuring only the cash income of poor people, including cash from welfare. But this system was deliberately changed in the 1990s to reduce the amount of cash welfare people got and increase the amount of in kind welfare (ie, Section 8, EITC, SNAP and so on) that people got. So, what they're actually recording, in their increase, is what Congress voted for. Stop giving people cash and give them more in other ways instead. I don't think the original change was a good idea myself but it's still something of a statistical trick they're pulling off here, not a real change in what people can consume.

Finally, they're deliberately blurring how this sort of poverty persists or does not. When we look at those World Bank numbers for other countries then we're looking at people who live that way all the time. In this research done about the US we're not looking at that at all. Rather, at people who have, for some however short period of time, had very little cash income. Just as an example (and I emphasize, this is only an example, just to illustrate the logic here) imagine a family with one person in work earning $100,000 a year. Then they get fired. It takes them 2 months to find another job paying $100,000 a year (say, a decent software engineer in a company that goes bust). They do not file for any welfare while unemployed (perhaps because they have savings, that sort of thing). Under the method used to calculate those 1.5 million people living on less than $2 a day our thoroughly upper middle class software engineer qualifies. Because there was a period of one or two months where cash household income was under $2 a day per family member.

Do I think the US welfare system is perfect? Nope, most certainly not. It's also true that the US is more unequal than other advanced countries. But the real incidence of $2 a day poverty in the US is zero. The numbers cooked up for this book look only at cash income, not any other form of aid that people might get. They are also measuring transient populations flowing through a rocky patch, not some vast underclass. And finally they are measuring income, not the thing that we really want to measure, consumption possibilities.

People commit suicide when they despair.  Do people who vote despair?  That would be a nice study, but it might not come with pre-cast outcomes.

The only Nobel Prize Laureate of the last ten years that I will listen to is Bob Dylan.

"Dig Two Graves" Southern Illinois Gothic and a Wonderful Movie

I like good movies.  Therefore, this is not a traditional review.  Dig Two Graves is a gem:

Starring: Ted Levine, Samantha Isler, Danny Goldring, Troy Ruptash, Mark Lancaster, Dean Evans, Bradley Grant Smith, Kara Zediker, Ryan Kitley, Sauda Namir, Ann Sonneville, Mikush Lleshdedaj  

A supernatural thriller about the generational violence that plagues a small, backwoods town, set in the 1970s, Dig Two Graves asks “how far would you go to save those you love?” After 13-year-old Jacqueline Mather (Samantha Isler) loses her brother in a mysterious drowning accident she is soon visited by 3 moonshiners who offer to bring her brother back to life but at a grim cost. As the dark history of her grandfather, Sheriff Waterhouse (Ted Levine) is unearthed the true intentions of the moonshiners come to light. FaceBook

Last night, I was treated to a screen full of familiar sights and scenes from Southern Illinois: the great people of Illinois, Giant City State Park - great limestone canyons spiked with trees, deep mysterious quarries and most especially for me the school - grade school in Grand Chain, it chilled me.


The old Gresham Chicago Police District ( now Dudley Beauty College) at 85th & Green was about as cheery. It is in this Fritz Lang nightmare of a school that the young protagonist Jake comes to aid of the bullied target of doom.  No, spoiler this old boy.

Instead, I wish to recognize the high quality/low budget genius who commanded a crew of talented actors and masterful technicians -Hunter Adams.

His movie is a feast for the senses - all but the tongue. The snakes, coon, squirrel, otter and deer drying in the smoke filled cabin and caves of the mysterious strangers might be a bit for delicate appetites, but these flourishes spice the Gothic magic of Dig Two Graves.

The dialog is authentic to speech of real people and not Ryan Goslings, or Meryl Streeps.

What the actors bring to the script is magic - especially  Chicago veterans Ted Levine, Danny Goldring and the exquisite Kara Zediker, in the role of a woman who looses two children in 90 minutes of drama.

I am prejudiced, as I had the pleasure of teaching Ms. Zediker English and American Literature at Bishop McNamara High School and proudly watched her wonderful career.

Kara's expressive beauty captures the bone chilling nightmare of mother and daughter who outlives her children  and manages to capture a youthful resilience that will carry her family beyond its tragedies.

Young Samantha Isler reflects that feminine verdure of Kara Zediker's throughout the drama.

This drama is as dark as a winter afternoon in Cobden and Hunter Adams crafts natural and supernatural imagery that would shame Mary Shelley and Horace Walpole and get a sturdy tip of John Ford's Stetson.  Witness these scenes especially the lightning scene  right out of a John Ford Western.




Enjoy Illini Gothic.  See Dig Two Graves.

Kim Foxx ( aka Toni Preckwinkle) Turns Justice into a Pinata - 16 swings; one's gotta hit.

They ain't just taking 16 whacks at a cop, they are taking 16 stout wallops at the blind lady with the scales.

Today, because this cannot go on, we are endorsing Kim Foxx, a former chief of staff to Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, over incumbent State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. In a contentious race, Foxx has made clear she understands what this election is all about: Restoring faith in the state’s attorney’s office. Chicago Sun Times

COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — The Chicago police officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald in 2014 was indicted this month on 16 counts of aggravated battery — one for each bullet fired at the 17-year-old.
Officer Jason Van Dyke, 38, was indicted in 2015 on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct. Those charges still stand.

Kim Foxx is Toni Preckwinkle's creature, in same manner that Senator Tammy Duckworth is Dick Durbin's .  Both elected officials were groomed by the elder mentor.

That should give one pause at the outset.

Kim Foxx was elected because Laquan McDonald ingested PCP and decided to go on a knife-wielding stroll on the night of October 20, 2014 and several folks decide to call 911.

Shortly before 10:00 p.m., police were called to investigate McDonald at 4100 South Pulaski Road responding to reports that he was carrying a knife[9][13] and breaking into vehicles in a trucking yard at 41st Street and Kildare Avenue.[23][24] When officers confronted McDonald, he used a knife with a 3-inch blade to slice the tire on a patrol vehicle and damage its windshield.[24][25] McDonald walked away from police after numerous verbal instructions from officers to drop the knife,[26] at which point responding officers requested Taser backup, according to radio recordings released December 30, 2015, to Politico and NBC Chicago in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.[27]
Video of the shooting shows that Van Dyke was advancing on McDonald, while McDonald was walking astride from Van Dyke when the first shot was fired. The first shot hit McDonald, who spun and fell to the ground.[28] As McDonald lay on the ground, still holding the knife, Van Dyke fired more shots into him.[29] In total, Van Dyke shot MacDonald 16 times in 14–15 seconds, expending the maximum capacity of his 9mm semi-automatic firearm.[30] [26] Van Dyke was on the scene for less than 30 seconds before opening fire and began shooting approximately six seconds after exiting his car.[26] The first responding officer said that he did not see the need to use force, and none of the at least eight other officers on the scene fired their weapons.[30]
Laquan McDonald was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m.[31] Wikipedidia

The Burger King video of this shooting was really ugly. I mean really ugly.

Here is where  Law & Order hits the sound effects button for the Dun,Duh!

Rahm Emanuel buries the tape. I mean, Rahm's got an election in the spring!

The story is just another blotter case in ChiRaq.  No Chicago news hounds get their ears back about it and Rahm's CPD exempts are only to glad to help a Mayor out.

The story goes dark, but manages to get in the hands of an activist from Hyde Park who has made a career out of slum property, like so many Progressive Democrats ( Allison Davis/Valerie Jarrett et al) ,  Jamie Kalven!

N.B.

Kalven, whose father was Law School Professor Harry Kalven Jr., AB’35, JD’38, has spent three decades chronicling such urban problems as police misconduct and public housing’s poor living conditions in publications like the Nation, In These Times, and Slate. After years of reporting on the lives of Bronzeville’s Stateway Gardens residents, in the mid-1990s he served as a formal adviser to the building complex’s resident council and helped negotiate with city agencies, private real-estate developers, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the Experimental Station, Nate Roth (left), Leo Gertner, and journalist Jamie Kalven discuss a potential article examining police-contract negotiations.

He calls himself a human-rights reporter and community organizer, and he suggests the city is at a crossroads: “I pride myself in knowing Chicago and knowing my way around, but at this point I feel like I don’t know the city.”

That was back in 2008, around the time that young Barack Obama graduated from 15' of real estate to 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue.

Jamie Kalvan used to call himself a real estate  novelist, because he was; that has been pretty well scrubbed in recent Google history.

Well, Jamie Kalven went on to become a police bully, 'knowing Chicago and knowing (his) way around."

From Altgeld Gardens to Laquan McDonald, Kalven dug for race based gold nuggets all over his Invisible Empire - none bigger than the Laquan McDonald bonanza.

Kalven sued for police records of beefs and Kalven helped train street activists for the wars to come.

Kalven has run the national, as well as, Chicago media on police matters since the death of McDonald.


Kim Foxx listens to Jamie Kalven, because Toni Preckwinkle listens to Jamie Kalven.

Well, Kim Foxx was groomed to run against States Attorney Anita Alvarez, by the time that the missing video surfaced.

Kim easily took down Ms, Alvarez and at Toni Preckwinkle behest flung open the doors of County for miscreants, scamps and ne'er-do-wells who were on shorts.  That's a Cook County huzzah!

BUT - Kim inherited the shabby murder charge against the cop who killed McDonald. That is supposed to be a WTTW slam dunk, Girl-Friend!

Well, Kim Foxx and Toni Preckwinkle have no truck with Justice, much less the law and decided to turn Justice into a pinta!

Kim gets sixteen (swings) to break a man.

Cool. . . .And they say people are leaving Chicago, Cook County and Illinois in droves.

Sun Times Editorial Board Tries to Influence Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Run-Off Election

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has referred to city workers as neighborhood “anchors,” saying they are critical to the vibrancy of the city. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley, speaking more practically, used to warn the city could lose a large share of its middle class if the residency requirement were lifted. . . . For everybody else, as cops like to say, rules are rules. Sun Times

The only proper reply to such smarmy hypocrisy is " bite me."  Usually I am much more verbally adept, glib, and such but Sun Times has wowed me with this one.  Quoting from our Globalist Red China and Russian trade partner and University of Chicago don, Mayor Mumbles, takes the brie.

Today's screed is less about fairness than usual; it is about influencing the Fraternal Order of Police election run-off.

No paper has done more to drive a wedge between Chicago citizens and the Chicago Police officers who risk life, limb and personal reputation every time they answer roll call than the Chicago Sun Times.

From Mark Brown's "bring it on" editorializing a front page photo implying that a police officer was egging on already active West Side  rioters in 2008, to the Watchdogs' media lynching of a cop for the past month, to Andy Grimm's 'investigation' of a property owner who wears a badge, to this morning's Editorial Board's Harrumph of their 'phony baloney jobs,'  the Sun Times is the defender of the Chicago oligarchy.

Forrest Claypool could roll a crippled blind girl selling Girl Scout cookies at State and Madison and Tom Frisbie would mew, "Ever the Reformist, Claypool put an end to this Thin Mint hustler's hawking."  If a cop helped three little girls in Englewood, he would be violating their right to privacy.

The FOP is at a cross-roads.  The current leadership seems to do more to aid the comfortable and afflict the general membership, than it does to call out the hypocrisies and blatant corruption of City and County leadership.

The Sun Times has always nuzzled the rumps at City Hall more than it has sunk the fangs of a Tim Novak into the keisters of Rahm or Dame Preckwinkle.

I don't have a vote. I am not a cop.  I honor their work and am appalled by their treatment in the Chicago Media, so wrapped up with the people who created Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone ( Marxist lawyers, race baiting pastors and the University centered and funded Wrongful America Industry.

A vitalized FOP would be burr under the saddle of the comfortable oligarchs making millions off of the shrinking Chicago middle class and that could mean tougher access to weasels for Fran Spielman and Michael Sneed, doncha know?

This must stop.  Stop buying these rags.  Read The Second City Cop. 

Happy St. Joseph's Day! Hickey's Kapusta Soup

I love Polish food.  Hell, I love food.  One of my favorite dishes at every Hickey gathering was my Aunt Aurelia's Kapusta. My Uncle Sylvester Hickey had the good sense to marry a Polish girl from over by St. Michael the Archangel on South Shore Drive.

Kapusta is a stew of bacon, Polish Sausage, onion, garlic, apples and sauerkraut.

I have been making a soup using the basic ingredients.

Here 'Tis,

1 1/2 lb Pork Shoulder (Mariano's)
1 lb. jar of excellent Polish Cracovia Sauerkraut ( Mariano's)
1 lb of Bobak's Polish Smoked Sausage (Mariano's) cut into thick chunks

1 large carrot diced small
1 medium onion diced small
2 stalks of cellery diced small

I thumb sized cut of brown sugar

1 500 ML Box of Bandit Pinot Grigiot ( Mariano's) :

Radiant and fresh, Bandit Pinot Grigio charms the senses with aromas of citrus, peach and pear followed by flavors of lemon and green apple. A splash of sweet is tempered by a tiny bit of tart, resulting in a vivacious wine that pairs perfectly with everything from delicate dishes to fiery fare.

Well, I dump over the meat and vegetables

1/3rd cup of brown apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons of Smoked Paprika

1 tablespoon of dried ground sage

6-8 black peppercorns

I tablespoon of Kerry Gold butter - ( anywhere but Wisconsin)

Using the wonderful Hamilton Beach 5 quart slow cooking set on low - LOW

Place pork shoulder covered with mierpoix ( onion, carrots, celery), ground sage, the peppercorns, the thumb of brown sugar and pour the box of wine over all. Cook on low for ten hours. then shred the pork, removing anything feeling like a chunk of bone.

You can place the mixture in the icebox over night.

After a nice cool marinade in the ice box, set on High and return the vessel to the heating element.

Now, add the Cracovia Sauerkraut, the smoked paprika, as much crushed garlic as you like, the apple cider vinegar. Cook on high for two hours and then set to Low.  Add the butter and Bobak's Polish Sausage chunks and cook on low until you can no longer resist great aroma emanating from the bubbling cauldron - about an hour and a half.

Soups on!~

Serve with good Polish Rye bread.  Ten irlandzki bum umie gotować!

St. Joseph would elbow the balance of the Holy Family out of way to get at this, as nice a guy as he is.

The GOP Blows Off Its Own Toes . . .Yet, Again!

“The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder… The middle class are getting absolutely destroyed. This country won’t have a middle class soon.” — Donald Trump

"We've had people we've known our whole lives decide we're racist and white supremacist," said Suzanne Monk.

Resistance to President Donald Trump is cropping up in the most unlikeliest of places: the House GOP caucus.
At least four Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, some of whom have been questioned, booed and heckled at recent town halls by their constituents, publicly called for Trump to release his tax returns in order to review for any potential conflicts of interest that pose a national security risk or violate the Constitution. Salon

The tassled-loafer wing-tip of the American Political Elite ( global statists, bent upon aiding in the creation of the American Banana Republic) is worn by the folks who helped create ObamaCare - the GOP ( 'go-along' and all Oligarchs profit).

• The likes of former U.S. Senator Marque Kirque of Illinois, who remained in U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's back pocket, in sickness and in health, for his entire senatorial tenure, comes to mind.

• Then there are Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Uncle Cyp and Aunt Sap, of Nation-building Endless Warfare.

• The Womens Media Team of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins always ready to hot-foot the end of Roe v. Wade.

If they are talking on CNN and MSNBC, it means that they are on the job for the elites.

Let us not forget that the GOP was always friendly to abortion, prior to Nixon.

From Nixon using abortion legislation to strategically woo Catholics to lobbyists deliberately linking family planning to abortion in the '90s, the Republican long game to court a new voter base was nothing if not effective. Today, it's almost impossible to be a pro-choice Republican running for any major political office. And across the country, state-level efforts to restrict abortion access are powering forward: in Texas, the number of abortion providers dropped from 40 to eight in a little over a year.
Though reproductive rights seem to be disappearing before our eyes, the secret Republican history of Planned Parenthood tells a different story—namely that it doesn't have to be this way, because it hasn't always been.

This toxic love affair between WASP delicacy where unwelcomed babies made manicured finger-tips touch shamed pink cheeks, so too the blush of profitable partnership with the radical Progressives (ACLU) and Neo-Cons:

Yet the triumph of neoconservatism was hardly permanent or complete. The administration so far has not adopted neocon arguments to push for regime change in North Korea and Iran. Bush has cooled on the "axis of evil" talk and has launched negotiations with the regime in North Korea. The president has also established friendlier relations with Communist China than many neocons would like, and he launched a high-profile effort to promote a "road map" for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that most neocons (correctly) predicted would lead nowhere.
"Neocons Are Liberals Who Have Been Mugged by Reality"
No longer true. Original neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol, who memorably defined neocons as liberals who'd been "mugged by reality," were (and still are) in favor of welfare benefits, racial equality, and many other liberal tenets. But they were driven rightward by the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when crime was increasing in the United States, the Soviet Union was gaining ground in the Cold War, and the dominant wing of the Democratic Party was unwilling to get tough on either problem.
A few neocons, like philosopher Sidney Hook or Kristol himself, had once been Marxists or Trotskyites. Most, like former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, simply had been hawkish Democrats who became disenchanted with their party as it drifted further left in the 1970s. Many neocons, such as Richard Perle, originally rallied around Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democratic senator who led the opposition to the Nixon-Ford policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Following the 1980 election, U.S. President Ronald Reagan became the new standard bearer of the neoconservative cause.

Abortion, Civil Liberties When Acceptable to the Elite, and Nation Building are the global initiatives are meat and global warming, gay triumphalism, class and race warfare the gravy of the elitism defeated by Middle America in November 2017.

The GOP and Progressive Democrats hate Trump with equally bilious malice.


Here in Illinois, the radical Progressive Democrat Party runs everything with the help of Illionois GOP.   Had they not, Dan Proft might be our Governor.  Make no mistake. A Governor Rauner is the the twin of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin dip from the same dish.

President Trump was not my first, or my fifth choice for President, but I have come to appreciate his genuine concern for Helot America.

The GOP is the Party that blows off its own toes, when the elites are threatened. They are threatened.

President Trump looks better to me every news cast and with each fold of the page.

South Side St. Paddy Parade is Looming and a Pot of Slumgullion is Just the Thing

slum·gul·lion(ˌsləmˈɡəlyən)
noun: USinformal
noun: slumgullion
cheap or insubstantial stew.

Insubstantial?  My broad manly rump, Hombre!  Who is writing these WEB definitions?

Before I bolt the hood, exchanging the shouting and bag piping of the annual South Side St. Paddy's Day Parade, for lowing of black and white dairy cattle in Dodgeville, Wisconsin ( home to best Cornish pasties that side of Bridgeport) and the expected dusting of March snow, I shall pot up a mess of slumgullion.

Slumgullion is the food of the working people who built America!  Not Howard Zinn activists and trust funded hair-shirts of the 21st Century American History textbooks, but the real people, former slaves, black, white, brown, yellow and tawny.  They are Edna Ferber's Midwestern Jews, Bohemian, Alsatian immigrants; they are John Dos Passos' Portuguese, Irish, WASP, and Begian adventurers; They are Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas and James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan.  They are slumgullion eaters.

Slumgullion is a varietal staple that can include Chinese five spices, Mexican cumino, Japanese ginger, Hungarian smoked paprika, or just salt and black paper.

You need a cauldron, Dutch oven, iron pot or slow cooker of some volume.

Beef and Pork are the usual cuts of meat, but chicken, squirrel, turtle, or fish will work as well.

Root vegetables, or macaroni, pasta, rice or noodles will add substance to savories.

Here is my offering today.

                                               Pat Hickey Slumgullion

two lbs - of chuck cut like Fajitas dredged in three good tablespoon of flour, smoked paprika and cilantro

One 1/2 cup of Mire Poix( celery,onion and carrots)

Five medium potatoes peeled - I use three Golden Yellow and two Russets

Five sprigs of Rosemary and five sprigs of thyme

One 16 oz. Can of Crushed Tomatoes and one small can of tomato paste

Two long dashes of Worcestershire sauce

A pinch of crushed Red pepper flakes

One five quart Hamilton Beach slow cooker

One skillet with three tablespoons of Olive Oil

Methode: À la manière de Hickey

In a large plastic bag add flour, smoked paprika and cilantro; Mix well and add the beef and roll it , bounce and knead the hell out of it  and let sit for about ten minutes.

Add beef to the skillet and brown it.  When good and brown make room for the mire poix and saute and them blend all together, Cook until all vegetables are tender-ish

Peel and coarsely cut five potatoes and place them in the bottom of the slow cooker.

Pour meat and mire poix mixture over the spuds.

Add 16 oz. can of crushed tomatoes and then the tomato paste and mix them together over the meat and spud.

Squirt five dashes of Worchester and sprinkle crushed red peppers over the tomatoes

Layer rosemary and thyme sprigs and mushrooms on top.

Cook on low for twelve to 24 hours. This will be ready to put in the ice box when I return from Wisconsin Sunday night and then Hold the Phone all week!

Serve with Pat Hickey Cornbread - Preheat oven to 425 degrees

2 cups of Aunt Jemima Corn Meal
one Jumbo egg
one can of creamed corn
2/3 cup of milk
two tablespoons of sugar
one tablespoon of good vanilla extra

Mix it all with a fork

Pour contents into a pie tin or cast iron skillet and drizzle honey over the mixture

Bake for 25-28 minutes.


This is perfect for the snowy weather expected next week.  I'll be eating it up to Friday next.  Then eggs, mushrooms, spinach, peppers and Giardinara.

The Problem of the Chicago Voter Outside of the Ensorcelled Circle

Imagine if a Mayor of Chicago, had at one time been a civil engineer and actually read Mary Wisniewski's fine piece of reporting in the editorially awful Chicago Tribune - all crap that Rahm approves.  Too bad a Mayor is not a civil engineer by trade . . . Oh, that's right . . .one (Ed Kelly) was but that was long before Ms.Wiszniewski wrote about crumbling bridges.

Instead, we live in a politics and policy driven Progressive, global, Banana Republic. This is a malicious make-believe palace, a fairy tale world where magical things can happen for an Oh, so very few, including an eight year stay in the White House for a very special lad, or where a little guy can sit on another little guy's lap and tell him that he too dreams of being Mayor.

It is a place where big dreams count as nothing and fortunes trump virtue.

It is a tight ensorcelled circle that welcomes only the approved - the businesses, the banks, the law firms, the real estate wizards, the University and 501(c)3 public policy tax vacuums and the very few people enchanted for windfalls.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle only those with an immediate connection to the source of gold some few benefit with multiple pensions, Shakman exempt appointments, or sinecures beyond  of the vision of  everyone else.

That leaves out millions of Chicagoans and many more Cook County residents.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle people make due, beef about water bills, tax increases, burgeoning crimes against person and property, horrific public schools and worse public servants.

Yet, these same put-upon people vote the ticket every election and every time.

Gun Violence and Police Misconduct keep every eye on flaccid media writers like Eric Zorn, Neil Steinberg, Stephen Chapman and Mary Schmich, or smarmy echo-chamber Orwellians on WBEZ, or WTTW.

Chicagoans nod, sigh and wait for the Cubbies. Sadly band wagon south siders feel a tingle in the thighs over the baby bear and forget 2005 as a time past. Same goes with political villainy.  Chicagoans are too nice by half.

They scratch their heads about

• Forrest Claypool's latest six figure job and pension package
• Suzanne Mendoza's leap from Herbie Pulgar to the Comptoller's chair
• Pat Quinn
• Proco Joe
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Mike Quigley
• Jan Schakowsky

And think nothing about putting an " I'm With Rahm" sign on the their lawns

Chicagoans will always do a neighbor a solid; even if the neighbor works against every fundmental core value you have, makes a ton of money and pension for following orders.

The only thing necessary for the perpetuation of evil in Cook County is for good people to do a solid for Frannie, Billy, Tommy, or any other knucklehead with a government gig.

It is one thing to break wind in the bath tub; it is another thing altogether to bite the bubbles.

Chicago Employee Pension Literature Proves ManPower Shortage, not "Systemic Racism, or Code of Silence" Behind ChiRaq's Crime Rates

 

Police Blogger, The Second City Cop (SCC), fought fake news from the Chicago media for decades; in fact, Sneed, Frank Main and Fran Spielman often pluck SSC's low-handing fruits of fact to shore up their propaganda efforts on behalf of the 5th Floor.


Along with left-leaning, but always fair-minded and honest Beachwood Reporter, Second City Cop opens my eyes to a new day, long before they labor over the ink spilled by any Chicago daily.

Today, using a brochure for City of Chicago Pensioners, SCC clearly addresses the decades long manpower shortage that burdens hard working Chicago peace officers. Pointing to a graph featuring annual employee contributions, SCC illustrates the lie told by Chicago media at the behest of Mayors Daley and Emanuel.

That is the manpower paying into the pension for the CPD, from 2006 thru 2015. And it shows, beyond any doubt, that manpower dwindled from 13,749 to 12,061 - a reduction of 1,688 officers. If you don't think that has a lot to do with the current rising crime trends, well, we can't help you. The Second City Cop

I get my news from many sources.  SCC is one of the most reliable.

I Believe President Trump is Doing a Great Job. . . .so, Far. Media Needs to Be Ignored.

Barack Obama began his political career as a community organizer on the south side. It would be difficult to imagine that he was not swept up into the mythology against Burge and his men taking shape on the south side at the very time he was honing his political skills and building his power base. 

After all, Obama’s political base is tied to both factions that came together in the wrongful conviction movement. One facet of Obama’s political power is clearly the black caucus of the south side. Obama also clearly has ties to the white, upper middle-class radical faction of the wrongful conviction movement as well, for his friendship and alliance with former Weather Underground terrorists and PLO allies like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers has been well documented. 

And like both these factions, Obama shares their intense antipathy to law enforcement and the criminal justice system, an antipathy born out throughout his presidency.  Author and CPD Officer Martin Preib 2016

Can't agree more.  President Obama will go down in history as the first Black President, the first Abortion President,  the Gay Marriage President, The Transgender Bathroom President and the President who ordered the strike on Osama Bin Laden.   That is pretty much all that he accomplished in eight long, self-congratulatory and mediocre years.

I voted for Donald Trump.  I am a Democrat, a Catholic, skilled trades pro-labor, anti-Communist and anti-Corporatist voter.  The last eight years and last thirty years here in Chicago and Cook County have proven to be the foundation poured and set for an oligarchy.  This is a Banana Republic that uses Marxist-Progressive rhetoric to mask corporate state economics that employs TIFS, Zoning, Untouchable Slum Real Estate moguls with a backdoor key to the White House, Banks, blue-stocking law firms, University and 501(c)3 treasure houses, a supine disinterested media and villainous political grifters to turn millions into billions, while retaining the votes and good will of the very people they looting, marginalizing and murdering.

Yep, urban Thug homicides and Police memes about racism are the shiny objects used to distract the masses from their evaporating pensions, unsafe neighborhoods and wretched public schools.

America was becoming the Banana Republic that is Chicago and Cook County, Illinois.

I voted for Donald Trump in the  hope that all of this might slow its pace.

Silly me, it sure appears that voting for Trump means much more.  The elites are trembling.

In the last 40 days, President Trump has

• Nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court - confounding  the abortion industry and haters of Justice Scalia
• Saved the Coal Industry - confounding Bill Nye the Science Guy and other Gore Shills
• Ok'd the Keystone Pipeline -confounding Warren Buffet's railroading of the environment, Native Americans and Union workers
• Set about the deconstruction of ObamaCare - confounding the pharmaceutical giants, the insurance grifters and Nancy Pelosi
• Killed the Trans Pacific Partnership - confounding Richard M. Daley, Red China and South China Sea pirates
• Challenged Sanctuary Cities - confounding Blaze Cardinal Cupich and other American Episco-politians
• Stocks are nuts and going up, up and up - confounding George Will, David Brooks and Michael Moore

Well, to read the Chicago papers and the go-a-longs who write for them, Trump has violated every sensibility, and endangers everything.

• Trump talks to Russians, but has yet to sit down with Chance the Rapper
• Trump bad mouths ChiRaq - for real?
• Trump has a big building named after him, but the street sign is gone
• Trump never barbecued with Bill Ayers
• Trump has no slum properties with Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis, or Judson Miner
• Can't speak French

It has been noted that 88% of the media coverage has been negative since January 20th.  Here in Chicago it must run as high 99%.

That is cool.  If I felt in harmony with Bruce Dold, or Birkenstock hemp sandals at the Sun Times, I rush over to see Dr. Harshad Mehta at Little Company about the levels of loco weed in my Wheaties.

As it is, I feel confident that things will be better for helots me and my neighbors.  Things might be a bit prickly for the once comfortable, smug, thoughtlessly arrogant and venal elites in this Hick burg.

That would be cool. 

Moral Outrage (Getting One's Undies in a Bunch) a Sign of an Unhealthy Conscience

Hey,hey! Ho, Ho! Kelly Anne Conway's Pumps Have Gotta Go! Some folks losing sleep over feet on the couch?  Not this bag of smelts.  And I doooooooooooo love smelts!

I sleep like a log.  Some might say. "well, so do psychopaths."  Yeah?  Name two.

Sleep is the benefit people cash-in because brave men and women stand guard over all of us. Better men than me have said so -

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. George Orwell

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,/The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here./”The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,…/O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;/An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bitIs five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.   Rudyard Kipling

Orwell wrote an essay on this Kipling  1890 poem Tommy Atkins and noted:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.

This here sleeper is as  yellow as a duck's foot, but  honors the people who stand watch over his crib.

Moral outrage works well with 'humanitarians' - people who wouldn't give a starving blind girl a Confederate dime - and seem to ignite great group fuses of carbon foot-prints.

My moral outrage pencil-detonator must not be American made.

Michael Moore neither amuses, nor impels the Hickey moral tinder to spark.  Fat old guys in baseball hats scare little kids off the playground. Stranger Danger!

A recent study that I found in a magazine from the UK, the home of Orwell and Kipling, points to some interesting and telling features about folks who get morally outraged with every Tweet.

Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.

No problem where I come from - guilt and shame are the real breakfast of champions.

I get yelled at by family, friends and neighbors whenever bumptious, boorish, or boastful bad old me surfaces.  Stay moral and stay at peace.

This study by Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion is most telling.

Here's a list of their finds from Reason magazine.

• Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
• The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
• Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
• "The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
• Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.

Hell, I ain't mad at nobody.

Love my straight eight.

The Birth of My Granddaughter Elizabeth Mary Rhein Made it Official: I am a Geezer!

I am proud to report that on February 28, 2017 at 6:15 P.M.  my grand-daughter Mary Elizabeth Rhein made me a geezer*:

Little Ms. Rhein's grandmother, who resides in Heaven, spent the last nine months and change bunking in with the young lady in formation, offering comfort, counsel and cooking tips- of that I have no doubt.

I have yet to meet this lovely lady, but plan to do so after classes today.

Mother and Father and bonding nicely with our little Princess.  Uncle and Aunt are stoked,

Grandpa is through the roof.

* ear hair machine
   blue hair
   dad
   Methusalah