Ceasefire: Throwing Money on a Blood Soaked Street

Ceasefire was ceased back in March of 2015.   That means simply that Ceasefire received no more State Money from us to them.

Ceasefire's web page commands, Cure Violence.  Well, Ceasefire is smoked, salted, honeyed and cured like any great piece of pork and it is done.

Now, the Illinois voices that depend upon Illinois Alzheiner's (IA) are calling for the return of cash to Ceasefire $$$$$$. Illinois Alzheimer's- voters forget everything, every screwing, every promise, every election.  IA is the only explanation for the continued public life of Dick Durbin, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Toni Preckwinkle, 90% of the Chicago City Council and the guy from over by Midway, what runs the State. IA allows Ralph Martire to continue to pie-chart Illinois into the poor house.  IA allows Lisa Madigan to shine the light on workers and not the real gonifs - SEE Above.

Illinois Alzeheimers is chronic, progressive and fatal.

IA comes from being a person of normal intelligence, generous sentiments and modest income being too afraid to tell his neighbors, that 'No, I do not think that Andy Shaw is not a goof, I do believe that WBEZ is as lame as Derrick Rose, I am not with Hillary, Abortion is always killing a baby and the Sun Times is the Tribune with more wasted space.'

This fear being termed a Tea Party Palin-ite, Earth Hating, Meat Eating, Cretinous Downton Abbey Ignorant, Trumper Bumper Sticker, Racist Homophobe is all too real and has made all of us afraid to speak our minds and our expeinces, for fear that Bill Moyers will pop out the bushes and DEFINE US!  Being defined by other people who need social reassurances verfied by WTTW, only hurts once.  You get over it. It gets better and that is the Savage Truth.


Now, Ceasefire is back on the tongues of people taking the Metra to the Merc, looking for great seats to Hamilton and finding just the right candelabra for the last picnics of the summer at Ravinia.

Only last night I heard a jazz fan at the Serbian Village, a Chicago Police Officer say, " Ceasefire will get funded, but cops will get railroaded out of existence."  I agreed and we listened to the music, Waiting for the Train to Come In.

Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog - the Illinois Clearing House of Budget Scams and Legislation lashing, is all in for Ceasefire. Miller offers a hand-wringing lament over the numbers of Chicago's fallen citizens,

Today’s number: 425
Monday, Aug 22, 2016
* Tribune…
Through Sunday, 425 people were slain in Chicago, up 50 percent from 283 in a year-earlier period, according to official police statistics. During the same period, shooting incidents rose by 48 percent to 2,136, up from 1,443, the data show.
Other violent crimes such as sexual assaults, robberies and aggravated batteries also have spiked by double digits.
- Posted by Rich Miller      

and opens the door for commentary by lobbyists and Democratic operatives around Illinois

 - uptown progressive - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 11:11 am:
There is no magic bullet - but in my community we lost CeaseFire funding (violence interrupters) and the CCBYS funding (crisis intervention with at-risk youth) was greatly reduced. No expansion in youth employment opportunities or for fully funded afterschool programing. These programs do make a difference.

Examples, please?  No?

 - Earnest - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 11:31 am:
>These programs do make a difference.
If only Rauner worried that his intentional destruction of the social service system could result in him appearing “soft on crime.”

Examples, please,  of Ceasefire bringing thug violence to a $hit-screaming halt? One deep thinker lamented the fact that blood is not spilled in Switzerland Chicago -

- cassandra - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 12:02 pm:
Let’s not forget that some parts of Chicago are said to be a safe as Switzerland, and those of us who live in or near Chicago know which these (predominantly white, upper-middle-class) areas are.
Chicago is deeply segregated, by race and economic status. More police and social services and persuading more folks to get married may help around the edges, but it is persistent segregation which must be addressed–and isn’t being addressed adequately at any level of goverment. Too risky for our political masters, I guess.

Well, Ride the Nine Down on my Broad Manly White Ass!   I live in Geneva!  Morgan Park!

That same Monday morning, The Better Government Association's Andy Shaw thundered loudly for all of us to "Think Ouside the Box" on thug violence ( often referred to as gun, or police violence in the Media), including opening the coffers to Tio Hardiman's Ceasefire Interrupters and Gang-banger Alumni Association

Are there any solutions?  While we’re waiting for City Hall and CPD to implement reforms spelled out several months ago in a task force report, including a new agency to replace the ineffectual Independent Police Review Authority, other well- intentioned suggestions are surfacing:
Veteran Chicago journalist Jim O’Shea, writing in the Sun-Times, encourages CPD to resurrect the Cease Fire program that enlists former gang members and ex-convicts to work with police to curb violence.
O’Shea points to the program’s impact over the July 4th weekend in Englewood last year—no homicides or shootings—compared with 11 shootings this year, after the program was sidelined by insufficient funding and CPD’s reluctance to work with the group.
“City officials and the Chicago Police Department,” O’Shea writes, “seem willing to try anything to stop the violence…except something that actually works.”

Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck and civil rights lawyer Connie Rice, writing in the New York Times, argue for the kind of sophisticated community policing that’s reduced violence in some of LA’s toughest sections.
Success, they write, depends on communities cooperating with “humane, compassionate, culturally fluent cops who have a mind set of respect, do not fear black men, and serve long enough to know residents’ names, speak their language and help improve their neighborhoods.”

Microphone!!!!!!!

Ceasefire has done . . .nothing to stop, curb. or hinder thug violence.

LA is not Chicago, Andy. Chicago is more like Philly, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Baton Rouge, because the Media, the political oligarchs. academics and Marxist lawyers have destroyed policing.

The answer to the problem is radical.  Stop listening to morons, grifters and Reds.  Even more radical - start voting out the morons, grifters and Reds.  That is how one avoids Illinois Alzheimers.

Why Print Journalism Needs to Survive - Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen and Marthon Terror Bombing

 Boston cops at the Finish Line on Boylston Street. Kevin Cullen of the  Boston Globe respects cops - you tell by his writing

"This is how bad this is. I went out Monday night and bumped into some firefighters I know. They said one of the dead was an 8-year-old boy from Dorchester who had gone out to hug his dad after he crossed the finish line. The dad walked on; the boy went back to the sidewalk to join his mom and his little sister. And then the bomb went off. The boy was killed. His sister’s leg was blown off. His mother was badly injured. That’s just one ­family, one story." 

Kevin Cullen, The Boston Globe

Television news is a sick joke.  Print media is not much better,  Radio still provides . . . news.  The computer as well and I am damned if I will go to the phone, the Pad, or whatever the techno-geek billionaires crank out.

There are good writers waste deep in the swamp that was once a stream of facts, opinion and entertainment.  There are writers like Steve Rhodes, Dennis Byrne, Caroline Connors, Steve Metsch, Rick Morrisey, Mike Mulligan, Natasha Korecki, Tim Novak, Dan Mihiapolus, Mark Konkol and the iconoclastic John Kass still writing with grace and skill. Politically, they are as different as the as the cast of Rawhide.

Years ago, I got to be pals with Brian McGrory of the Globe and he wrote the intro to my history of Leo High School.  Brian is a terrific writer, but saddled with onerous task of Managing Editor and more importantly a fine human being.

The Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen is a writer.  Today, in a few paragraphs, Cullen gives a tutorial in journalism.  He has the facts at his feet and his finger tips, but he does not rattle off a staccato shower of nouns like a Nazi Death Camp accountant, or EJ Dionne.

Cullen goes for the heart the head and the humanity of the reader without intruding himself over the narrative, like Geraldo Rivera or our President.

This is a fine example of just what I am talking about -

In an instant, so many lives changed. Some ended. The telephone lines burned. Everybody was trying to figure out who and why. The cops I talked to were shaking their heads. It could be anybody. Could be foreign. Could be domestic. Could be Al Qaeda. Could be home-grown nuts.
It was Patriots Day. It was tax day. It was Israel’s independence day. Theories swirled like the smoke above Boylston Street. Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Then there was the story about the young Saudi guy who was being questioned by the FBI. Now, the FBI wouldn’t tell me if my pants were on fire, but my old pal John Miller from CBS News reported that the kid did a runner after the explosion and that somebody tackled him and held him for the police. Miller used to be an associate director at the FBI, and let’s just say his sources there are impeccable. Miller says the Saudi guy was cooperative and denied he had anything to do with the bombing. He says he took off because, like everybody else in the Back Bay, he was terrified. A law enforcement source later told me that Miller’s story is right on the money.
I saw Lisa Hughes from WBZ-TV trying to do her job, amid the blood and the body parts. And then I remembered that Lisa, who is as nice a person as you’ll find in this business, married a guy from Wellesley named Mike Casey who lost his wife Neilie on one of the planes out of Boston that crashed into the Twin Towers. And then I tried not to cry and just marveled at how professional Lisa was.

Unlike our homegrown TV nitwits ( Andy Shaw  and Chuck Goudie always comes to mind),  Kevin Cullen places the spotlight on the people the reader should learn about and care about and not what an Andy or an EJ, or a Chuck think about anything.

As TV is swamped with ninnies, let's pray that print media can once again feature writers who are also good people. Journalism can and should work that way.

I Am Never, Ever Bored!

Come again?





Once more, please?



The preacher’s garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oh, Yeah . . .this kills me , too!

Andy Shaw - Why Illinois Corruption is Safe in His Hands and Illinois Blues,Pizza and Buildings

Andy Shaw is not the dumbest S.O.B. (Solidly Oblivious Busybody) in Illinois, but he'll do!

I imagine that the shadowy forces of corruption in this State ( you know, Mikva, Kennedy and Dawn Clark Netsch) pushed out the daffy J. Terrence Brunner & Sons from the BGA in order to clear the way for Andy "Tenth Floor" Shaw - I witnessed AS of the BGA when he was the 'hard-hitting ABC News Ham' rush into the 10TH Floor Office of Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and demand the whereabouts of resigning Daley Aide Terry Teele. Terry Teele worked on the 5th Floor -the Mayor's Office. Lawd, Lawd!

Never one to disappoint my expectations of his talents and worth, I share,this, Andy's HUFFPO offering on Bad Guys.

Illinois is a legendary state in so many ways - from its architecture to its food; from its famed blues music to its political scene. One of the states more infamous residents happens to be the ex-Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who also holds the title of being the first governor in Illinois history to be impeached. Sadly, he is also the fourth Illinois governor since 1970 to be indicted on federal charges.

Illinois Architecture?

Illinois Food?

Illinois Blues?

Lookee H'yar!

Head Scratcher that one . . .

Illinois Architecture - The Towering Majesty of the Turk Furniture Building 126 N Schuyler in Kankakee



Illinois Cuisine -Illinois Deep Dish Sausage Gravy Biscuit Pizza - Cat Fish Nugget Newburg at the Wilmington Dam Pub



Illinois Blues -Blues Legend -The Late Dan Fogelberg?

Crooks in Elected Office!!! Grab with both hands, Boys and Girls! Andy's got our backs.

Dick Simpson and Gang Trot Out Corruption Stage for Dave Orr

What a phony piece of garbage this report happens to be.

This is nothing more than a swell BGA/Progressive/Media/UIC dung-heap upon which Cook County Clerk David Orr intends to crow his Mayoral Platform of Reform.

Daley will hand Dave his mustache months before Dave asks the 19th Ward, 11th Ward, 18th Ward, 14th Ward and 47th Ward to send some helpers to get him some signatures.

However, the Media Howler Monkeys will paste up some serious nonsense for the dim-bulb soul patchers.

Slap it on thick, Girls!

The UIC (a real hallmark of 'distinguished fugitives') and the BGA (Andy Shaw's Golden Parachute) study is a mere Google search of convictions that deftly avoids the indictments, trials and conviction IVI-IPO sanctioned crooks who went to the Iron Hotel for Reform Looting sprees.

Nice try there, Cupcakes.

Andy Shaw's BGA and Professor Dick Simpson presented a nice thirty-three page study ( The Idiot's Guide to Chicago Crooks -not Our Progressive Crooks, but Regular Democratic Crooks) that is merely a litany of Cook County convictions.

The bottom line is that only Dave Orr ( former Mayor of Chicago who did not lift a finger while Burge was a Cop)is to be trusted, because he brought in the Hugo Chavez manufactured voting machines.

Give it a thumb-through. It is as informative and valuable as the palm cards that Todd Stroger bought in January.

Click my post title for the breathless NBC ( the clowns who pushed out Steve Rhodes when he refused to tweak his take on corruption the Tribune Managing Party Animal - in the Chicago Media) link and then click on the BGA pdf link.

The Corruption Cesspool is the Media's wallow as well Dick and Andy.

BTW - Dave Orr - will stay Clerk. He's got no where else to go.

ABC - 7's Andy Shaw Takes 'Stupid' National!

You Go, Andy! That's Andy Shaw as natural as he gets and a City Hall insider by the name of Buck DaMedea!

Now this goof Andy Shaw is a walking metaphor for Chicago's Media Elite! You really need to work at it 24/7 to be this stupid and Andy is no clock watcher!


True story, this one! Remember Terry Teele, Mayor Daley's go-to-guy on all things Planning and Development? Get this.

When Terry Teele was forced to resign from his position in Daley's Office, I happened to be sitting in the Planning and Development waiting room - a breathless Andy Shaw Charged In - 'The Teele resignation - I'M here!'

The lovely middle aged black woman informed this Profound Newshound - 'Fifth Floor, Sir. Mr. Teele works on the Fifth Floor. We are on the 10th Floor?'

Here's Andy Shaw Breathlessly stupid once again with President Elect Obama and the always affable Senator John ' Sure! I Suffer Fools Gladly' McCain:

Obama's aides started trying to clear the press out, reminding them there were not supposed to be questions.

That did not stop ABC-7 political reporter Andy Shaw from asking McCain if he planned to work with Obama to help him get things done. ( Emphasis my own!)
Even as the aides shouted louder not to ask questions, McCain said, "Obviously."
Obama smiled and told the reporters still asking questions they were "incorrigible." Then he proceeded to lean over to McCain and tell him a campaign-trail story about one of his aides.

Bed and breakfast, Andy! You take Stupid to a new level!

Andy Shaw meets Doyle Brunson and Phil Helmuth at the World Series of Poker -'Playing Cards, Fellows?'