Showing posts with label Bill Ayers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Ayers. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

School: Young People Go to School and Some Make 'Mugs in the News' and Others Achieve



I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him – rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.” – G.K. Chesterton

Wouldn't that be something?   Schools are created by people who have something to offer to younger, or less knowlegeable people.  The best schools offer something of value that honors Truth, Nature and our Creator.

Schools are formed by people who share common values and skills that converge to bring people from one place in their lives to another, be it one of the 1st Tier Elite Prep Schools that shape future Secretaries of State and Members of Secret Societies, a co-educational Chicago Public School in Auburn Gresham, Roseland, Englewood, or Garfield Park that warehouse 9-12 year so that one out of score students score above a 20 on ACT exams and less than half graduate, or a Catholic all-Male college prep high school where 90% of African-American students who begin their schooling in its halls graduate and every graduate is welcomed to four-year college or university.

Our American public schools have become places that glare Halogen lighting on politicians.  Elected officials comprise the Board of Directors to Public Schools.  Elected politicians are the Carnegie Endowments of the 50 States without whom nothing remains done.

My assertions are arguable with regard to public schooling, but the fact that everything about public schools links directly to some career political grifter.

Marcus Aurelius endowed the first school at Athens in because he believed that a good person should lead a life honed by reason. Aurelius was a Stoic by temperament and outlook; yet, he created a School for each of the Dominant Philosophies Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic and Epicurean.  He was no Ted Turner, or Bill Gates.
By the way, Emperor Marcus Aurelius persecuted Christians as brutally as Bill Maher of HBO would love to do.

Schools operated on endowments so that scholars ( people who showed up at school to teach or learn) develop themselves through immersion in the many disciplines that merged to a core belief, or philosophy.

When Romans allowed barbarians to protect them from barbarians, schools vanished.

From the 5th Century until John Dewey, schools were centered on God.  Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Wittenburg and Escorial were Royally endowed.  John Scotus Erigena, Boethius, Augustine,  Cassidorius, Aquinas, William of Occam, Roger Bacon,  Anselm, Ignatius, Gonzaga Descrates, and Gregor Mendel managed to have great impact on human justice, human development and the humanities in spite of the fact that they were pious Christians.  Catholic schools remain, or should remain, in this tradition.

Public schools came about when Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena in 1806.

I could almost hear Mike Klonsky and Jesse Sharkey's noggins explode.  No, that was not a bomb planted by UICC Department of Education retiree, terrorist Emeritus and Obama sponsor Bill Ayers. That was the Battle that created a Godless school - Public Education.

The result has been Mugs in the New and a Chicago Homicide Rate that spikes each weekend - come rain or shine.

On my side of street, dominated by a four story fortress of Virtue designed by Joseph McCarthy who was Daniel Burnham's Catholic-go-to-guy when spending Cardinal Mundelein's money, a Catholic high school serves the exact same clientele as Simeon, Crane, and the former Calumet high schools - young men of African American heritage and mostly ( 80%) CPS elementary graduates.

All young men ( teenage Man Childs) are willful, proud, loud, playful, fidgety, distracted, horny as goats and in need of guidance, instruction and an occasional kind word.  Inner city black kids educated according to the secular Hegelian John Dewey constructs are exponentially more so.

Public school teachers told them "We don't do that!"  Catholic school teachers can tell, Pat Hickey to quit farting, explain is tardiness in 250 words double spaced and shape up or he will die on the gallows, IN THUNDER because Christ, His Mother, the Holy Spirit and God of Abraham expect more of him.

A Public school teacher says, ' We don't do that."  A Catholic school teacher explains why one's actions have consequences well beyond his immediate impulse to folly.

Here is a better explanation.  Yesterday, I was delighted to shake hands, fist bump and hug a seventeen year old kid who was expelled two years ago.  This young gent has had a horrific life.  He was shuttled from one foster care home to another from the time he was six years old until he turned fourteen for a total of seven placements. A relative took him in and sent him to Leo High School as a freshman.  Troubles ensued - tardy, absent, disrespectful & etc. The kid is smart, tough as algebra and has an inner sweetness that belies his troubled young life.  He is among the brawny stalwarts hugging Francis Cardinal George in 2011 in the photo that accompanies this prose. In fact, Cardinal George counseled the young man on the quiet.

For two years, this talented and handsome young guy attended a neighboring public school and went  "All Street."  He caught a beef - a serious beef.  He was arrested and sent to Juvey and eventually lawyered his way out of the Juvenile Detention Center and is in the expungement process.  More so, this young man remembered why he was expelled from Leo High School and added up the consequences trailing his will to impulse in fall of 2011.

He is working community service hours. He was delighted that I still have his size twelve Stacy Adams black dress shoes on my office book shelf.  He left them with me upon expusion.  I asked him if he'd like to put the broggans back on and finish out at Leo.  He said, " If you'll have me back."

Hell, yes! Arne Duncan and Karen Lewis have had for too long.  This is a young man who might not punch a politcal clown in the nose, but he will dispute the secular nonsense pretending to schooling.

Young people is no stroll through Winnetka. . . .well, it is if you go to New Trier.

N.B.  By the way, two of the 100 Chicago Tribune Mugs in the News were known to my young friend.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

A Precious Mixture - Progressive Posturing of Corsairs. Rebels, and Goofs






Billy Ayers and Byron -Aristocratic Rebels: One had sincerity and talent and wrote great poems and the other is Bill Ayers.









Trin. Coll. (Wednesday), Novr. 6th, 1805

My Dear Augusta, - As might be supposed I like a College Life extremely, especially as I have escaped the Trammels or rather Fetters of my domestic Tyrant Mrs Byron, who continued to plague me during my visit in July and September. I am now most pleasantly situated in Superexcellent Rooms, flanked on one side by my Tutor, on the other by an old Fellow, both of whom are rather checks upon my vivacity. I am allowed 500 a year, a Servant and Horse, so Feel as independent as a German Prince who coins his own Cash, or a Cherokee Chief who coins no Cash at all, but enjoys what is more precious, Liberty.

George Gordon, Lord Byron [Trinity, 1805-07], letter to his sister Augusta, 6 November 1805


'I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame Bear, when I bought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was "he should sit for a fellowship." Sherard will explain the meaning of the sentence, if it is ambiguous. This answer delighted them not, we have eternal parties here, and this evening a large assortment of Jockies, Gamblers, Boxers, Authors, parsons, and poets, sup with me. - A precious Mixture, and they go well together.'

George Gordon, Lord Byron [Trinity, 1805-07], letter to Elizabeth Pigot, 26 October 1807



During the Vietnam War, many blue-collar and minority kids went to fight. The sons of more affluent and influential fathers went to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan and Berekley Universities and became radicals - rebels.

The high school classes of 1964-1969 took a pounding in Vietnam. Their Fortunate Son counterparts made war on American Involvement in South East Asia, Racism, Capitalism and Middle Class Mores. Dorms became he foxholes of a romantic revolution for American middle class and aristocratic rebels. Guys who sneaked a Schlitz in June, became Septemberists after a few tokes of weed. As Tom Hayden once said about the growing '60's drug culture, get a middle class square to break the law once, and you have a revolutionary for life.

All through their college years, some of America's Baby Boom generation played the role of Young Lord Byron. They repudiated the bourgeoisie lives of Ward and June, back home in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Winnetka, IL and Shaker Heights, OH. They bought East German Stassi great-coats, wore beads, long manes and facial hair. Some sported kaftans along with tied-dyed everything that matched classes on John Dewey,Thoreau, Rousseau, Marx, Hegel, Nietsche and sober sociology lectures on systemic racism.

Boot Camp over these young Robespierre's ascended the barricades and issued statements proclaiming solidarity with Nation Liberation Fronts Universal.

While the blue collar and minority running dog pawns went to Hines Hospital, Walter Reed and other Veterans Administration facilities to learn how to walk with prosthetic limbs, Childe Harold's matriculated to University of Michigan Law, Northwestern University Graduate Schools of Business, Johns Hopkins Medical School and other paths paved by Ward and June years before our Byrons took the ACTs.

Revolution is either for the miserable, or the very comfortable.

A peasant, slave or surf can only bear to see so many of his children starve. An Aristocratic Rebel can only stand to keep his/her views private in public for a non-second.

The Dead-head sticker on a Cadillac Generation had children and grandchildren now Occupying Time on Television and Editorial Pages.

Our Media is no longer made up of Chicago News Bureau shoe-leather investigators, but Medill School of Journalism Aristocratic Rebels.

Our Labor organizers are no longer articulate tough guys with visible scars and cauliflower ears, but University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work graduates trained by the generation of Aristocratic Rebels who fought the Vietnam War at Berkeley, Columbia, Michigan, Dartmouth and Yale.

Our Childe Harold's are being scooped up in Philly and L.A. and occasionally received a shot of pepper spray, or an old fashioned wood shampoo from law enforcement professionals. Here in Chicago, the iconic home of Underground Rowdies like Billy Ayers and Marilyn Katz, sadly enough the revolutionary spirit has done south for the winter - probably Naples, Fl. with gramps and granny, or to hotter climes.

Revolution is Romantic. Byron, Satan, Marx, Soros, Ayers, Code Pink, Daily Kos and OWS are the same.

The only thing difference being - Satan, Byron and Marx had some talent.

The aristocratic rebel, of whom Byron was in his day the exemplar, is a very different type from the leader of a peasant or proletarian revolt. Those who are hungry have no need of an elaborate philosophy to stimulate or excuse discontent, and anything of the kind appears to the m, merely an amusement of the idle rich. They want what others have, not some intangible and metaphysical good. Though they may preach Christian love, as the medieval communist rebels did, their real reasons for doing so are very simple: that the lack of it in the rich and powerful causes the sufferings of the poor, and that the presence of it among comrades in revolt is thought essential to success. But experience of the struggle leads to a despair of the power of love, leaving naked hate as the driving force. A rebel of this type, if, like Marx, he invents a philosophy, invents one solely designed to demonstrate the ultimate victory of his party, not one concerned with values. His values remain primitive: the good is enough to eat, and the rest is talk. No hungry man is likely to think otherwise.

The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have other causes of discontent. I do not include among rebels the mere leaders of factions temporarrily out of power; I include only m,en whose philosophy requires some greater change than their own personal success. It may be that love of power is the underground source of their disconte, but in their conscious thought there is criticism of the government of the world, which, when it goes deep enough, takes the form of Titanic cosmic sel-assertion or, in those who retain some superstition, of Satanism. Both are to be found in Byron. Both, largely through men whom he influenced, became common in large sections of society which could hardly be deemed aristocratic. The aristocratic philosophy of rebellion, growing, developing, and changing as it approached maturity, has inspired a long series of revolutionary movement,s from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon to Hitler's coup in 1933; and at each stage it has inspired a corresponding manner of thought and feeling among intellectuals and artists.

It is obvious that an aristocrat does not become a rebel unless his temperament and circumstances are in some way peculiar. Byron's circumstances were very peculiar. His earliest recollections were of his parents' quarrels; his mother was a woman whom he feared for her cruelty and despised for her vulgarity; his lameness filled him with shame, and prevented him from being one of the herd at school. At ten years old, after living in poverty, he suddenly found himself a Lord and the owner of Newstead. His great-uncle the 'wicked Lord,' from whom he inherited, had killed a man in a duel thirty-three years ago, and been ostracized by his neighbors ever since. The Byrons had been a lawless family, and the Gordons, his mother's ancestors, even more so. After the squalor of a back street in Aberdeen, the boy naturally rejoiced in his title and his Abbey, and was willing to take on the character of his ancestors in gratitude for their lands. And if, in recent years, their bellicosity had led them into trouble, he learnt that in former centuries it had brought them renown. One of his earliest poems, "On Leaving Newstead Abbey", relates his emotions at this time, which are of admiration for his ancestors who fought in the Crusades, at Crecy and at Marston Moor. He ends with pious resolve:

Like you will he live, or like you will he perish:
When decay'd may he mingle his dust with your own.

This is not the mood of a rebel, but it suggests "Childe" Harold, the modern peer who imitates medieval barons. As an undergraduate, when for the first time he had an income of his own, he wrote that he felt as independent as "a German Prince who coins his own cash, or a Cherokee Chief who coins no cash at all, but enjoys what is more precious, Liberty. I speak in raptures of that Goddess because my amiable Mama was so despotic." He wrote, in later life, much noble verse in praise of freedom, but it must be understood that the freedom he praised was that of a German Prince or a Cherokee Chief, not the inferior sor that mught conceivably be enjoyed by ordinary mortals.
Lord Betrand Russell History of Western Philosophy.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)

1812: Childe Harold, cantos 1 and 2.
1813–14: The Oriental tales, including The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara.
1816: Separation from Lady Byron; leaves England, never to return.
1818: Begins Don Juan.
1813: Joins the Greek war for liberation from the Turks.
In his History of English Literature, written in the late 1850s, the French critic Hippolyte Taine gave only a few condescending pages to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, and then devoted a long enthusiastic chapter to Lord Byron, “the greatest and most English of these artists; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together.” This comment reflects the fact that Byron had achieved an immense European reputation during his own lifetime, while his English contemporaries were admired only by small coteries in England and America; through much of the nineteenth century he continued to be rated as one of the greatest of English poets and the very prototype of literary Romanticism. His influence was felt everywhere, not only among minor writers—in the two or three decades after his death, most European poets struck Byronic attitudes—but among the major poets and novelists (including Goethe in Germany, Balzac and Stendhal in France; Pushkin and Dostoevsky in Russia, and Melville in America), painters (especially Delacroix), and composers (especially Beethoven and Berlioz).
These facts may surprise the student who is aware of the modern estimate of Byron as the least consequential of the great Romantic poets, whose achievements have little in common with the distinctive innovations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, or Shelley. Only Shelley, among these writers, thought highly of either Byron or his work; while Byron spoke slightingly of all of them except Shelley, and in fact insisted that, measured against the poetic practice of Alexander Pope, he and his contemporaries were “all in the wrong, one as much as another… we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not worth a damn in itself.” Byron’s masterpiece, Don Juan, is an instance of that favorite neoclassic type, a satire against modern civilization, and shares many of the aims and methods of Pope, Swift, Voltaire, and Sterne. Even Byron’s lyrics are old-fashioned: many are in the eighteenth-century gentlemanly mode of witty extemporization and epigram (Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos) or continue the Cavalier tradition of the elaborate development of a compliment to a lady (She Walks in Beauty and There Be None of Beauty’s Daughters).
Byron’s chief claim to be considered an arch-Romantic is that he provided his age with what Taine called its “ruling personage; that is, the model that contemporaries invest with their admiration and sympathy.” This personage is the “Byronic hero.” He occurs in various guises in Byron’s writings, but from the first sketch in the opening canto of Childe Harold, and in the verse romances and dramas that follow, his persistent character is that of a moody, passionate, and remorse-torn but unrepentant wanderer. In his developed form, as we find it in Manfred, he is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, immensely superior in his passions and powers to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain. He harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an inevitable doom. He is in his isolation absolutely self reliant, inflexibly pursuing his own ends according to his self generated moral code against any opposition, human or supernatural. And he exerts an attraction on other characters which is the more compelling because it involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns and values. This figure, infusing the archrebel in a nonpolitical form with a strong erotic interest, embodied the implicit yearnings of Byron’s time, as imitated in life as well as in art, and helped shape the intellectual as well as the cultural history of the later nineteenth century. The literary descendants of the Byronic hero include Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the hero of Pushkin’s great poem Eugene Onegin. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, gives a chapter to Byron—not because he was a systematic thinker, but because “Byronism,” the attitude of “Titanic cosmic self assertion,” established an outlook and a stance toward humanity and the world that entered nineteenth-century philosophy and eventually helped to form Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman, the hero who stands outside the jurisdiction of the ordinary criteria of good and evil.
Byron’s contemporaries insisted on identifying the author with his fictional characters. But Byron’s letters and the testimony of his friends show that; except for recurrent moods of black depression, his own temperament was in many respects antithetic to that of his heroes. He was passionate and willful, but when in good humor he could be very much a man of the world in the eighteenth-century style—gregarious, lively, tolerant, and a witty conversationalist capable of taking an ironic attitude toward his own activities as well as those of other men. The aloof hauteur he exhibited in public was largely a mask to hide his diffidence when in a strange company; he possessed devoted friends, both men and women, and among them he was usually unassuming, companionable, sometimes even exuberant, and tactful; to his household dependents he was unfailingly generous and tenaciously loyal. But though Byronism was largely a fiction, produced by a collaboration between Byron’s imagination and that of his public, the fiction was historically more important than the poet in his actual person.
Byron was descended from two aristocratic families, both of them colourful, violent, and dissolute. His grandfather was an admiral nicknamed “Foulweather Jack”; his great-uncle was the fifth Baron Byron, known to his rural neighbors as the “Wicked Lord,” who was tried by his peers for killing his kinsman William Chaworth in a drunken duel; his father, Captain John Byron, was a rake and fortune-hunter who rapidly dissipated the patrimony of two wealthy wives. Byron’s mother was a Scotswoman, Catherine Gordon of Gight, the last descendant of a line of lawless Scottish lairds. After her husband died (Byron was then three), she brought up her son in near-poverty in Aberdeen, where he was indoctrinated with the Calvinistic morality of Scottish Presbyterianism. Mrs. Byron was an ill-educated and almost pathologically irascible woman who nevertheless had an abiding love for her son; they fought violently when together, but corresponded affectionately enough when apart, until her death in 1811.
When Byron was ten, the death of his great-uncle, preceded by that of more immediate heirs to the title, made him the sixth Lord Byron. In a fashion suitable to his new eminence he was sent to Harrow School, then to Trinity College, Cambridge. He had been born with a clubfoot, which was made worse by inept medical treatment, and this defect all his life caused him physical suffering and agonized embarrassment. His lameness made him avid for athletic prowess; he played cricket and made himself an expert boxer, fencer, and horseman, and a powerful swimmer. He was also sexually precocious; when only seven, he fell in love with a little cousin, Mary Duff, and so violently that ten years later news of her marriage threw him into convulsions. Both at Cambridge and at his ancestral estate of Newstead, he engaged with more than ordinary zeal in the expensive pursuits and fashionable dissipations of a young Regency lord. As a result, despite a sizable and increasing income, he got into financial difficulties from which he did not entirely extricate himself until late in his life. In the course of his schooling he formed many close friendships, the most important with John Cam Hobhouse, a sturdy political liberal and commonsense moralist who exerted a steadying influence throughout Byron’s turbulent life.
Despite his distractions at the university, Byron found time to try his hand at lyric verse, some of which was published in 1807 in a slim and conventional volume entitled Hours of Idleness. This was treated with unmerited harshness by the pontifical Edinburgh Review and Byron was provoked to write in reply his first important poem, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a vigorous satire in the couplet style of the late eighteenth-century followers of Pope, in which he incorporated skillful but tactless ridicule of all his major poetic contemporaries, including Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
After attaining his A. M. degree and his majority, Byron set out with Hobhouse in 1809 on a tour through Portugal and Spain to Malta, and then to little-known Albania, Greece, and Asia Minor. In this adventurous two-year excursion, he accumulated materials which he wove into most of his important poems, including his last work, Don Juan. The first literary product was Childe Harold; he wrote the opening two cantos while on the tour which the poem describes, published them in 1812 soon after his return to England, and, in his own oft-quoted phrase, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” He became the celebrity of fashionable London, enjoying an unprecedented literary success, which he soon increased by his series of highly readable Near Eastern verse tales; in these the Byronic hero, in various embodiments, flaunts his misanthropy and undergoes a variety of violent and romantic adventures that current gossip attributed to the author himself. In his chronic shortage of money, Byron could well have used the income from these publications, but instead maintained his status as an aristocratic amateur by giving the royalties away. Occupying his inherited seat in the House of Lords, he also became briefly active on the extreme liberal side of the Whig party and spoke courageously in defense of the Nottingham weavers who, made desperate by technological unemployment, had resorted to destroying the new textile machines; he also supported other liberal measures, including that of Catholic Emancipation.
In the meantime he found himself besieged by women. He was extraordinarily handsome—“so beautiful a countenance,” Coleridge wrote, “I scarcely ever saw… his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light, and for light.” Because of a constitutional tendency to obesity, however, Byron was able to maintain his beauty only by recurring again and again to a starvation diet of biscuits, soda water, and strong cathartics. Often as a result of female initiative rather than his own, Byron entered into a sequence of liaisons with ladies of fashion. One of these, the flamboyant, eccentric, and hysterical young Lady Caroline Lamb, caused him so much distress by her frenzied pursuit and public tantrums that Byron turned for relief to marriage with Annabella Milbanke, who was in every way Lady Caroline’s opposite, for was naïve, unworldly, intellectual (with a special passion for mathematics), and not a little priggish; she persuaded herself that she could make Byron over in her own image. This ill-starred marriage produced a daughter (Augusta Ada) and many scenes in which Byron, goaded by financial difficulties, behaved so frantically that his wife suspected his sanity; after only one year, the union ended in a legal separation. The final blow came when Lady Byron discovered her husband’s incestuous relations with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. The two had been raised apart, so that they were almost strangers when they met as adults; also, Byron seems to have had one attribute in common with the Byronic hero—a compulsion to try forbidden experience (including, as we now know, homosexual love affairs), joined with a tendency to court his own destruction. Byron’s affection for his sister, however guilty, was genuine, and endured all through his life. This affair proved a delicious morsel even to the jaded palate of the dissolute Regency society; Byron was ostracized by all but a few friends, and finally forced to leave England forever on April 25, 1816.
Byron now resumed the travels incorporated in the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold. At Geneva he lived for several months in close and intellectually fruitful relation to Shelley, who was accompanied by his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and by his wife’s stepsister Claire Clairmont—a misguided girl of seventeen who had forced herself upon Byron while he was still in England and who in January 1817 bore him a daughter, Allegra. In the fall of 1817 Byron established himself in Venice, where he inaugurated various affairs that culminated in a period of frenzied debauchery that, he estimated, involved more than two hundred women, mainly of the lower class. This period was also one of great literary creativity: often working through the later hours of the night he finished his tragedy Manfred, wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold, and after turning out Beppo, a short preview of the narrative style and stanza of Don Juan, began the composition of Don Juan itself In the colloquial ottava rima, he finally learned to write poetry as well as he had written the prose of his superbly vivid, informative, and witty letters.
Exhausted and bored by promiscuity, Byron in 1819 settled into a placid and relatively faithful relationship with Teresa Guiccioli, the young wife of the elderly Count Alessandro Guiccioli; according to the Italian upper-class mores of the times, having contracted a marriage of convenience, she could now with propriety attach Byron to herself as a cavaliere servente. Through Teresa’s nationalistic family, the Gambas, Byron became involved in the Carbonari plot against Austrian control over northern Italy. When the Gambas were forced by the authorities to move to Pisa, Byron followed them there, and for the second time joined Shelley. There grew up about the two friends the “Pisan Circle,” which in addition to the Gambas included Shelley’s wife Mary and his friends Thomas Medwin and Edward and Jane Williams, as well as the Greek nationalist leader Prince Mavrocordatos, the picturesque Irish Count Taaffe, and the flamboyant and mendacious adventurer Edward Trelawny, who seems to have stepped out of one of Byron’s romances. The circle was gradually broken up, first by Shelley’s anger over Byron’s treatment of his daughter, Allegra (Byron had sent the child to be brought up as a Catholic in an Italian convent, where she died of a fever in 1822); then by the expulsion of the Gambas, whom Byron followed to Genoa; and finally by the drowning of Shelley and Williams in July 1822.
Byron meanwhile had been steadily at work on a series of closet tragedies (including Cain, Sardanapalus, and Marino Faliero) and on his superb satire, The Vision of Judgment. But increasingly he devoted himself to the continuation of Don Juan. He had always been diffident in his self-judgments and easily swayed by literary advice. But now, confident that he had at last found his métier and was accomplishing a masterpiece, he kept on, in spite of persistent objections against the supposed immorality of the poem by the English public, by his publisher John Murray, by his friends and well-wishers, and by his extremely decorous mistress, the Countess Guiccioli—by almost everyone, in fact, except the idealist Shelley, who thought Juan incomparably better than anything he himself could write and insisted “that every word of it is pregnant with immortality.”
Byron finally broke off literature for action when he organized an expedition to assist in the Greek war for independence from the Turks. He knew too well the conditions in Greece, and had too skeptical an estimate of human nature, to entertain hope of success; but he was bored with love; with the domesticity of his relations to Teresa, and in some moods, with life itself. Also, since his own writings had helped to kindle European enthusiasm for the Greek cause, he now felt honor-bound to try what could be done. In the dismal, marshy town of Missolonghi he lived a Spartan existence, training troops whom he had himself subsidized and exhibiting great practical grasp and power of leadership amid a chaos of factionalism, intrigue, and military ineptitude. Worn out, he succumbed to a series of feverish attacks and died just after he had reached his thirty-sixth birthday. To this day Byron is revered by the Greek people as a national hero.
Students of Byron still feel, as his friends had felt, the magnetism of volatile temperament. As Mary Shelley wrote six years after his death, when she read Thomas Moore’s edition of his Letters and journals: “The Lord Byron I find there is our Lord Byron—the fascinating—faulty—childish—philosophical being—daring the world—docile to a private circle—impetuous and indolent—gloomy and yet more gay than any other. … [I become] reconciled (as I used to in his lifetime) to those waywardnesses which annoyed me when he was away, through the delightful and buoyant tone of his conversation and manners.” Of his inner discordances, Byron himself was aware; he told his friend Lady Blessington: “I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long—I am such a strange mélange of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me.” Yet he remained faithful to his code: a determination always to tell the truth as he saw it about the world and about himself (his refusal to suppress or conceal any of his moods is in part what made him seem so contradictory) and a dedication to the freedom of nations and individuals. As he went on to say to Lady Blessington: “There are but two sentiments to which I am constant—a strong love of liberty, and a detestation of cant.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=xS3sqPSvALEC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=bertrand+russell+on+byron+the+aristocratic+rebel&source=bl&ots=hddvzx7NwD&sig=DoM6dsQ7anKzOhMrhlBPVRoce6Q&hl=en&ei=laPXTpejM-702wWwhtSYDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=bertrand%20russell%20on%20byron%20the%20aristocratic%20rebel&f=false

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Obama Lost Illinois on November 8th 2011 - Bill Daley Won't You Please Go Home

Wow! Four Groupon Tickets good for 2.5% off any Billy Corgan Concert in the next week! I am speechless, Mr President . . .but not stupid . . .or forgetful . . .or,

How to energize the base - Obama just launched( incrementally of course) one of the men who made him - White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Cankles Joan Walsh of Salon has gotta be happy. For now.

The baldest Daley brother is one of those busiest of streets where moss don't grow so good.

In 1995, young ambitious community activist, attorney and Progressive plunger Barack H. Obama would have killed a Navy Seal Team to get close to Bill Daley.

President Obama was built by many hands, Bill Ayers and Bill Daley. The Bill Ayers part works with the lefty academic, bohemian journalist crowd and the Bill Daley part works. I have met Bill Daley on a few occasions and no doubt left the banker/political wiz/glad-hander unaware that we two carbon foot-prints occupy the same two centuries. He is cordial and every says that he is smart. Could be. He knows whom to reach out to when work needs to get done and usually rings the doorbell with his elbows.

President Obama arrives everywhere empty handed and yet expectant. He is the Yin and Yang that is the National Democratic Party - Goofs and Sneaks who want to be loved and respected. The Obama leadership is comprised of Lab School Brat Val Jarrett and old political hack Dave Axelrod as well as Dave Plouffe as in fluff. Daley had the relationships, the trust, and most of the cash.

As the press chews on the story today, the White House will no doubt take exception to characterizations of the change in roles as a staff shake-up, and will attempt to minimize the perception of tension and confusion within the president’s inner circle.

Several disgruntled Democratic donors who have attended events with Daley say they have complained to him about the way major political decisions are pre-cooked in advance with Plouffe, and then announced as fait accompli to senior staff, who subsequently complain about the chain of command to these outsiders.

Daley has acknowledged in these meetings that the president still relies on his closest aides -- Plouffe, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod (now in Chicago) -- more heavily.

Yesterday, about two weeks after Bill Daley treated jowly Roger Simon to an interview that percolated the panties of Progressives, because Daley seemed dismissive of goofs and sneaks, President Obama took some starch out of Bill Daley's stride.

Today, it is the day to note that Obama lost the State of Illinois in 2012.

Obama can count on Twitter and Social Networks to Grassroots his Campaign. He can only count on that round about here. Bill Daley was the Infrastructure. The Infrastructure is shovel ready - for Hillary.

Illinois is a big State, but big don't vote - people vote; most people live and vote near Chicago. Bill Daley might not feel all that energetic about energizing Streets and San workers about to get laid off, skilled trades unions that are waking up to menace that is public service unions and face not only looming layoffs, but heavier tax burdens - black, Hispanic, white, Pacific Islander, Native Indian, Asian and Aboriginal folks here in Cook County and the blue collar Collar Counties.

Downstate? It is to laugh.

Do you think that Bill Daley will make his left ear wet and red from pressing a phone receiver to it - Hi, Bill Daley! Can Barack count on Local 007 Bond Agents this go around? No? Fair enough, So long Alex! Call ATT? Call Lawyers? Call Bankers? Call Ward Committeemen?

Naw. Watch some Me -TV and Chill, Bill Will!

Well, Obama said he did not mind the idea of being a one term President; now, he can prep for it.

Pay back is a dog lacking knackers.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Tribune Report on Egypt Protest - Solid Work by Reporter Dan Hinkel!


Chicago Tribune reporter Dan Hinkel identified the creeps and professional stooges attempting to hijack the legitimate grievances of Egyptians and Egyptian Americans. International Solidarity Movement (ISM) works with many anti-American and Marxist groups to destroy Israel masked as human rights do-gooders. The Hamas Flotillas last summer was planned in Cairo - Bill Ayers and his odious life partner Bernardine Dorhn have made numerous trips to the Middle East -Cairo in particular. Kevin Clark of ISM coached the naive Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer and Chicago Utility Activist (Gay Everything/Hamas/anti-Police) Andy Thayer are constant presence - Kevin Clark was behind the Catholic School Girls assault on Worshipers at Holy Name Cathedral and always manages to escape the notice of the Chicago Media. Nine SEIU/ISM activists were subpoenaed by a Federal Grand jury for work with Hamas and FARC in Columbia.

Today, one Chicago reporter identified the clowns.

"A smattering of socialists, anarchists and anti-Israel protesters joined their ranks, all under the eyes of uniformed police."

Now, let's have a solid follow-up.

Here's Kevin Clark doing his moral high ground medicine show in Chicago last June in solidarity with Hamas. Watch this Israel Hating creep and let's give Kevin some front page attention.



Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Phyllis Lockett, CEO of the Renaissance Schools Fund Should Head Chicago Public Schools

Dr. Phyllis Lockett at the podium -Ron Huberman looks off for his next appointment and opportunity for a six, or seven figure salary and something to screw up.
So, Ron Huberman is hitting the silk as CEO of CPS. Mach Nichts. Forgedaboudid. A Hearty Joe Biden BFD! It was in all (both) of the newspapers.

Ron Huberman*, Chicago's Post-Shakman Clout King went from the cops,where he did what? -to the CTA, where he did less -to CPS where gunfire is the Chicago school bell.

Huberman came on after Arne Duncan, who speaks like a marble salesman with mouth full of samples. Duncan is the creature of Ariel Capital Management's John Rogers, who gave Arne his shove into the limelight created by Rogers-happy media with gloves padded with Buckeens, The Elusive Spondulix, The Long-Green Difference. This is a Green City.

Arne Duncan was foisted upon the only effective CPS Leader in the last thirty years - Paul Vallas who was driven into exile.

Well, Ron Huberman who is a PC ICON is bailing out. Ron Huberman is Black, Jewish, Young Handsome, Articulate ( really?) Media Tagged "Really Smart" ( always dead give-away that the guy is a clever dope), and as Gay as Christmas! What is not to love and admire? The question -rhetorical and jam-packed with nutritious and delicious irony!

CPS? It is to laugh, if were not so tragic.

Phyllis Lockett, CEO of the Renaissance Schools Fund would make a great CEO for Chicago Public Schools, but she will be opposed by Bill Ayers, Mike Klonsky, Karen Lewis, Marilynn Stewart, the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago's daffy editorial boards, and every other person responsible for the destruction of education in Chicago.

Dr. Phyllis Lockett is the real deal and has earned the respect and attention of Chicago's most effective Business Leaders. Dr. Lockett is no Media Poser. She is tough, smart, energetic and responsible teacher, manager and fund-raiser. Dr. Lockett understands that competence,competition and accountability are the foundations of education.

No wonder Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky scream nonsense at Dr. Lockett - like this drivel -

"The business
community has a responsibility, as we all do, to
support public education. But these partnerships can
be built without selling off large chunks of public space.
Small schools are not a panacea, and, while they create
wonderful possibilities, the language of small schools
can be twisted to become an excuse for inequity and
promotion of the ownership culture. Every wave of official
“school reform,” including small schools and Ren
10, must be met with skepticism, agnosticism, and doubt
by those of us who hope and struggle for a more democratic
future, a more just social order.
A school renaissance built on the ideals of the ownership
society, on privilege for a few, on creating winners
and losers among students and among neighborhoods
will never sustain itself. On the other hand, small
schools and classrooms built on equality and community,
on shared power, on the right to humane treatment,
on full participation, and on access can flourish
and nourish a community."



Who let these two clowns near our children?

Bye, Ron!

http://www.pdkmembers.org/members_online/publications/archive/pdf/k0602aye.pdf



*RON HUBERMAN
Work: Police Department, 1995-2004; Office of Emergency Management and Communications, 2004-05; mayoral chief of staff, 2005-07; CTA president, 2007-09; Chicago Public Schools CEO, 2009- present.
Personal: Born in Israel, grew up in Tennessee and Chicago's western suburbs. He and his partner have adopted a son.
Chicago Sun Times

Friday, August 06, 2010

Bill Ayers -The Golden Years


For leaders at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the planned retirement from teaching of former Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers will be a great loss. Chicago Tribune August 6,2010

Πάν
Pan
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is gray and old,
And what remains to us of thee?....
Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady !
This modern world hath need of thee!—Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


Bill Ayers has earned his pension, his fixed-income that will league-up with the fixed-income his Pappy built up for him as well as the UICC sinecure, after Pap Ayers padded Stanley Ikenberry's palm.

Twenty years, and now the Golden Years, I can see it now!

Having put aside his sword and buckler as a world-wide Revolutionary Bill Ayers takes up "Me-Time"

He arises at 8:45 AM and smokes a Marlboro Lite with his white legs planted over the bed and hacks up a few loogies into a Kleenex, snuffs out the half smoked ciggie and heads out to the organic garden in back of his stately Hyde Park mansion for an eye-opening Doobie.

The day looks sunny and bright. In his running shorts and Bolivar T-shirt he heads back into the kitchen for a Coors Tall Boy! Breakfast of Champions!

Bernardine is showering and gussying up for the trip to NIU Law on LSD, where she will continue to undermine American Law with policy and agitate more left leaning lawyers to do her bidding.

Bill takes his wallet and makes sure that the ATM card is still there and puts on the same wrinked chinos that he wore all week. Off to The I-Opener's Pub at 53rd & Cornell. It is a pleasant walk that will eat up the time necessary to meet the opening bartender around back. And there he is right on time 9:57 AM!

"I can let you in Professor, but no toddies until opening bell! You know the drill. Hey, that cut on your forehead still hasn't healed, . . .." offers the solicitous tapman only to have the Distinguished Professor Emeritus grunt and wave off his concerns. Ayers is jonesing for the Joker Poker.

In this dark and desperate den of solitary men, Bill Ayers shuffles to the bonus points packed machine and rolls in the first of many twenty dollar bills. The pop and whiz of eletrical gambling sends a tingle up both thighs of the Unrepentant Bomber! This is what it is all about!

"Ten O'clock, Doc! Here's Lunch - One bucket of Domestics, and iced like Tamron Hall! Drink hearty Doc!" the happy draughtsman announces.

Bill Ayers lights up another Marlboro, hits maximum bet button and stares into the pull of the alluring screen, "Great! "You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn't make a mockery of your values." Ayers did not fill the gut-shot straight - Dang! Three more Jacksons are fed into the computerized capitalist horn of plenty.

The Distinguished Professor Emeritus will remain fixed at the machine, interrupted only by trips to the Gents and the always handy ATM machine, until the cab arrives for him around 7PM.

Down, all his days!

Yesirre-Bob! "You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn't make a mockery of your values." Bill Ayers!

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Media! Wake up! Kevin Clark is still getting the Full Medill Camoflage Job!



The Full Medill Metro Media, boys and girls!

Kevin Clark is the éminence grise in the grey tweed looking like the cat who swallowed someone's canary of this dandy quartet.
.
Decked out like the Hamas Guerrilla that he is Kevin Clark, a local louse with a free pass to mouth off hate against Jews and get kids killed ( which he did with ISM) did the splits and waved pom -pons for terror in front of the Israeli Consulate immediately after the Gaza Hate Flotilla was interdicted by Israel.

This cockroach Clark has been getting the full Medill from journalists in Chicago.

The full Medill is the three monkeys of reporting -see no evil,hear no evil, report no evil - Thus:

Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor and not a pampered gutless sneak.

Bernardine Dohrn is a Northwestern Law Professor and not a convicted felon serial hit and run driver and dedcated terrorist

G. Flint Taylor is Peoples Advocate and not a syrupy ambulance chaser who wrassles Gator Bradley for nickels on the Courthouse Floor

SEIU is Labor Union and not a Marxist PAC that is destroying the Middle Class

The Full Medill is named for Old Joe Medill an anti-Catholic Bigot whose twisted doctrines are imprinted on generations of students who never raise their hands.

Here is today's Full Medill on goof Kevin Clark.

The Rachel Corrie, sailing from Ireland, is the largest of the four crafts carrying desperately needed medicines, school supplies, and food, said Kevin Clark, the Chicago coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement. Named after an American citizen killed by a bulldozer while protesting the demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip, the Corrie was part of the original nine- vessel fleet that became embroiled in the international incident, but due to unspecified delays it idled in the Mediterranean during the crisis, he said.


Kevin Clark helped push goad enocourage Rachel Corrie to get in front of an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2004.

Kevin Clark pushed, goaded, encouraged six(6) dimwitted kids to toss phony blood all over kids, the elderly and the carpet at Holy Name Cathedral at Easter Mass in 2008 so Kevin Clark could preen and pout and pose CLTV for the Gay Liberation Network.

Chicago's Media monkeys see no evil -hear no evil and report no evil.

Grow a metaphorical pair you gelded hypocrites.

I guess you can't pick a fight with eunuchs; you can't expect much from moral cripples; you can't shame a skunk.

http://chicago.indymedia.org/mod/search/dosearch/index.php?dosearch=1&searchtext=kevin+clark

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Stan Ikenberry - Billy Ayers' Chinaman - Hazth Hizth Tongth Sthuck in Histh Shteek, Yesth, Yesthm and Yesth

The News Gazzett

Ikenberry, president of the UI from 1979 to 1995 – in much better budget days – grinned when asked about the reception he got Wednesday.

"I think this stacks up with the very best I can remember," he said. "The tongue's a little bit in the cheek, yes


Sthan. Yearsth ago, many, many Yearsth ago, Billy Ayersth Dad wasth head of COmun Wealsth Edisthon and tosthed Sthousandsth of Bucksth to You off Eye ( Uof I).

Sthat wasth Tstweet. Awuhl You needeth tah Do wasth Hire Billy and histh Olds Slady.

Sthougher now, I'll Besth.

My Tongth's sthuk un my Shteek too.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Arianna Huffington Responds to Queries Re: Bill Ayers @ HuffPo



Arianna Huffington - 'Gude Af-tar Nune! Beel Ay-arhs Hes Joyn'd Da Mony Gude and Tahlented Peoples uf My Blug. Beel Ay-arhs Hes Hed Mony Bed T'ings Sed a'bout Heem 'en Hees Wy-fe Bern-ahdeen. Na-ow det Press-a-dent O-bama hess ben Helected . .. Aye hef dis to say . . .Ay gamisou GEDDAOWDA MY SSSSSSSSPAISE!!! Fur Aye Tro -Haht Water on Alla Yew! .EEEEEYEIEEEEEE!

As to thialo , malakas poustis



Seth! Seth, vlakas! Cal dee Kops Hon 'Em! GEDOOWD! Fila mou to kolo !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Ayers/Dohrn's New Post Racial Tome on White Supremacy -Thanks for Asking!


Marathon Pundit, John Rubery, who along with Bill Baar and Anne Leary raised the spectre of Obama's long and close relationship to terrorists Billy Ayers and his odious Old Lady Bernardine Dohrn, linked up a new book coming out on American White Supremacy. Helping Old Billy is the ever complicit Chicago Tribune with a 'searing' account ( I think that was Obama's words for his review of one of Billy's Hate Primers) of some goof who thinks he's Der Fuehrer.

Here's a teaser:

William White of Virginia was indicted Tuesday in Chicago on charges he sought to harm the foreman of the jury that convicted white supremacist Matthew Hale in 2004 of plotting to kill U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. The judge had ruled against Hale in a trademark-infringement suit.

White listed the foreman's address, phone numbers and the name of a pet cat under the heading, "The Juror Who Convicted Matt Hale," according to the indictment.

White, the self-appointed leader of the American National Socialist Workers' Party, is expected to appear at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago. He remains in custody in Virginia. His lawyer could not be reached for comment Wednesday. . .

jcoen@tribune.com

That should get the buzz-up for Ayers, after all he's long-time friend of Chicago Tribune, that also wants to make sure that everyone gets angry about the salaries earned by Skilled Tradesmen.

Here's a taste of Billy Ayers' 'searing' new look at all of us white folks:

White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.
from Amazon

Just in time as a stocking stuffer! How long will this narcissistic punk stay a distinguished resident terrorist At UICC on the Illinois Taxpayers' dime depends upon his further insulation from the goofballs at the Chicago Tribune and other fine media outlets.






http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-white-supremacistoct23,0,2813837.story

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Ayers/Obama: Past is Prologue -Except When it Makes Obama Uncomfortable



The New York Times offers a flabby push-up, as opposed to rigorous work-out on Obama's long, close, dangerous and uncomfortable association with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Chicago's complex and cowardly web of convenience that weaves radicals, Private Foundations ( Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation, MacArthur and others), law firms ( Sidley & Austin,,Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, Bluhm Center, Peoples Law Office) real estate opportunists ( Tony Rezko, Allison Davis, Cullen Davis), universities ( UICC, Northwestern, and University of Chicago), and the media ( WGN, Chicago Tribune, Medill School of Journalism) and gutless and cynical politicians ( Daley and Blagojevich) provides the cover for this long, close and dangerous association.

This corporate weave is the 'dumb-down comforter' that wraps Ayers and his odious wife in such warmth that they can stare down from their stoops at America with contempt and allow Billy the Bomber, who polka-ed all over Old Glory in the Tribune's glossy and chi-chi Chicago Magazine, to give AMERICA THE FINGER. Even a Huffington Post Obamabot Michael Shaw noticed that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-emny_b_131855.html

Obama is rooted to William Ayers and his political ascendancy owes more to Ayers than it does to the urban myth - Obama as Chicago Machine Politician. Obama is no more a Democratic Machine Politician than Tony Rezko is a philanthropist, or the Chicago Sun Times is a newspaper.

For all the protestations from Obama's journalists - worldwide - there has never been a serious inquiry, much less valuable study of William Ayers and his dangerous influence upon Obama by any Mainstream Media -including the cut-and-paste work of Sean Hannity.

Professor Steve Diamond and National Review's Stanley Kurtz have conducted the only real examinations of Ayers and the many other radical mentors of Barack Obama.

The Annenberg Challenge which was funded by Ambassador Walter Annenberg, himself a publisher of sorts -TV Guide and such - and the off-spring of real Chicago Gangsters - Moe Anneberg and the nephew of Max Annenberg. The lazy media dismiss the Annenberg Challenge as a Republican cover -'not just Ayers but Republicans too.'

Nuance!

Ayers and Dohrn were helped to toss their crimes against Americans into the Orwellian Memory Hole, through political convenience. Dorhn has been helping radical lawyers bring suit against Illinois taxpayers through her studies of children being assaulted by a racist Justice system that promotes police torture of blacks, inadequate legal representation for minorities at Northwestern Law School. Dorhn can not practice law. However she can yield power and influence over our courts through radical agitation methods and heavy, heavy lawsuits - Sue the City, Sue the County, Sue the racist People of America. I wish she would have stuck to C-4 as she would have done much less damage to lives and property.

Ayers bombs minds at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They got these jobs and cover of academic propriety through Law Firms - notably Sidley and Austin, where Michele Obama worked.

Obama took the path to White House holding the hands of Ayers and Dorhn.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Ayers has Camp Obama in Overdrive - Ayers Could be the Bounce Catcher




The Temple is Down - The Bounce is On. Senator Obama gave a wonderful, thigh-tingling speech accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party as candidate for President of the United States. A wonderful moment in American History as the first black American to run for the White House was sharedby the entire nation.

The Obama Campaign, however, is running in hyper-drive to kill the growing story of Senator Obama's long and close association with Billy Ayers. This will be the bounce killer.

Obama Campaign Overwhelming Ayers Swift-Boat Spot With More Response Ads
By Greg Sargent - August 28, 2008, 5:19PM


Okay, this is interesting: The Obama campaign is now running ads responding to the Swift-Boating Obama-Ayers spot at a significantly faster pace than the original spot itself is running.

It's yet another sign that the Obama campaign is dead serious about sinking real resources into real media buys responding to such attacks, thus using rebuttal ads to saturate the local markets where the attack spots are running.

On August 26th -- the last date for which info is available -- the American Issues Project, the group behind the spot tying Obama to the former Weatherman, ran the ad 304 times in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia.

On that same day, the Obama campaign aired its response ad some 550 times -- nearly twice as many times -- in those same four states.

According to Evan Tracey, who tracks national ad buys for the Campaign Media Analysis Group and supplied us with these numbers, this shows that the Obama campaign's response is overtaking the ad itself in frequency.

"If current trends continue, Obama will be drowning out those ads," Tracey says.

The numbers tell the story. AIP has run the Ayers spot a total of 730 times overall as of the end of the 26th. Obama started running his response ad later, but it has already run nearly as many times overall -- 643. And on the 26th, Obama's ad ran significantly more times -- indicating that he's now running his response at a higher pace, Tracey says.

"Obama won't be outgunned. That's one of the advantages of having money," Tracey concludes. "The Obama campaign is not afraid to deviate from its national message to put out these local fires."

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

John McCain: School Choice or William Ayers, Secretary of Education


Investors Business Daily cites concerns about Sen. Obama's Education Agenda - and with good reason.

Here in Illinois, Obama Illinois Senate colleague, Rev./Senator James Meeks pushed his redistribution of wealth scam on ABC Chicago affiliate WLS TV (7) during a Sunday talk show in which he advocated that Chicago Public Schools(CPS) 'fudge the numbers' in reporting attendance to the Illinois Funding for School Districts. In Illinois funding is based upon attendance and James Meeks called for CPS students to ditch school on the first day of class.

Obama opposes Choice in Education, but is a powerful advocate of Abortion - Obama's Choice.


John McCain is for School Choice ( Vouchers) and opposes Abortion.

Today, Investors Business Daily gets to root of Obama's problem - nationally, locally and personally - he is joined at the hip to people like William Ayers. He used to bomb buildings and now he bombs education.He's the son of a powerful and wealthy man - therefore any and all crimes are forgiven by Progressives.

Here is powerful insight in the IBD piece:

Obama's buddy, former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, has plans for the same captive student audiences Obama wants to keep captive. Now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ayers works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."

For his course "Urban Education," Ayers writes: "In a truly just society, there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources."

All of this sounds like Obama's plans for "economic justice" and redistribution of the nation's wealth.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the city's public schools. On his Web site, Obama describes Ayers as a "tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a 'respected advisor to Mayor Daley on school reform.' "

And a future secretary of education, perhaps?



The Choice is Clear!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Look to Ayers/Chavez Link! Senator Obama's Foreign Minister - Without-Patriotism


Now INTERPOL has analyzed computers found during the Ecuadorean raid, they have concluded that Chavez and his leadership is doing just what our allies have claimed. We reported on this computer find from Bogota’ and on the tensions between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela about 6 weeks ago and now this determination places blame directly on Chavez. I have been getting e-mails from contacts inside Venezuela claiming this same connection and believe it or not, some of these folks are desperate for the world to take notice of their opposition to their leader and even hope (in some cases) that the United States will list Venezuela as a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’.

. . .Florida's Congressman Connie Mack Had this to say about the Interpol unmasking of Chavez are a rogue State dictator actively engaging in terrorism,

“Today’s report sheds another bright light on the active efforts of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and his cronies to promote terror and instability throughout Latin America. He has used his vast oil wealth to fund terrorism in the region and make mischief in order to undermine democratic institutions and principles in Colombia and other countries.

“Because of his allegiances to rogue nations like Iran and Syria, and the evidence conclusively tying Chavez to the highest levels of the FARCterrorist organization, I introduced a resolution two months ago calling on the Administration to add Venezuela to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“Today’s developments once again show the need for the State Department to fully recognize the very real threat that Chavez and his allies pose toLatin America and the Western Hemisphere and to impose real and targeted sanctions on the government of Venezuela.

“These sanctions will cripple the ability of the Chavez regime to fund its terrorist friends and allies and will strengthen the stability of the Andean region. Most importantly, tough sanctions will help in the effort to preserve freedom, security and prosperity for all of Latin America.

“It is imperative for the Administration to take these important steps without delay. Latin America is at a crossroads. We need strong leadership now in the United States and across Latin America to confront tyranny and to preserve and strengthen democracy throughout the region. The people ofVenezuela, and indeed all of Latin America, deserve nothing less.”

Hyde Park's Insulated Terrorist and Educator-Manque Billy Ayers had this to say about Hugo Chavez:November 7, 2006
Centro Interncional Miranda
Caracas, Venezuela

November , 2006
President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests,comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!

This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. Thank you, Luis, for everything you’ve done.

I also thank my youngest son, Chesa Boudin, who is interpreting my talk this morning and whose book on the Bolivarian revolution has played an important part in countering the barrage of lies spread by the U.S. State Department and the corrupted Northamerican media.
On my last trip to Caracas I spoke of traveling to a literacy class—Mission Robinson— in the hills above the city along a long and winding road. As we made our way higher and higher, the talk turned to politics as it inevitably does here, and someone noted that the wealthy—here and everywhere, here and in the US surely—have certain received opinions, a kind of absolute judgment about poor and working people, and yet they have never traveled this road, nor any road like it. They have never boarded this bus up into these hills, and not just the oligarchy or the wealthy—this lack of first-hand knowledge, of open investigation, of generous regard is also a condition of the everyday liberals, and even many of the radicals and armchair intellectuals whose formulations sit lifeless and stifling in a crypt of mythology about poor people. Everyone should come and travel these roads into the hills, we agreed then—and not just once, but again and again and again – if they will ever learn anything of the real conditions of life here, surely, but more important than that, if they will ever encounter the wisdom and experience and insight that lives here as well.

We arrived at eight o’clock to a literacy circle already underway being conducted in a small, poorly-lit classroom. And here in an odd and dark space, a sun was shining: ten people had pulled their chairs close together—a young woman maybe 19, a grandmother maybe 65, two men in their 40s—each struggling to read. And I thought of a poem called A Poor Woman Learns to Write by Margaret Atwood about a woman working laboriously to print her name in the dirt. She never thought she could do it, the poet notes, not her– this writing business was for others. But she does it, prints her name, her first word so far, and she looks up and smiles— for she did it right.

The woman in the poem—just like the students in Mission Robinson—is living out a universal dialectic that embodies education at its very best: she wrote her name, she changed herself, and she altered the conditions of her life. As she wrote the word, she changed the world, and another world became—suddenly and surprisingly—possible.

I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!
I taught at first in something like a Simoncito—called Head Start—and eventually taught at every level in barrios and prisons and insurgent projects across the United States. I learned then that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space – what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?

Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.

Education contributes to human liberation to the extent that people reflect on their lives, and, becoming more conscious, insert themselves as subjects in history. To be a good teacher means above all to have faith in the people, to believe in the possibility that people can create and change things. Education is not preparation for life, but rather education is life itself ,an active process in which everyone— students and teachers– participates as co-learners.

Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.

The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem to his fellow writers called “The Poet’s Obligation” in which he instructed them in their core responsibility: you must, he said, become aware of your sisters and brothers who are trapped in subjugation and meaninglessness, imprisoned in ignorance and despair. You must move in and out of windows carrying a vision of the vast oceans just beyond the bars of the prison– a message of hope and possibility. Neruda ends with this: it is through me that freedom and the sea will call in answer to the shrouded heart.

Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.

Viva Mission Sucre!
Viva Presidente Chavez!
Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana!
Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

Emphasis my own - ain't he something? 'I walked out of jail and into my first teaching job!' Que Hombre! Que Guerrilla! Que Caca!

What a self-absorbed juice bag! Directly from the slammer to the school room - Oh, Yeah.

'Mr. Ayers,I'm Curtis. You smell funny, Mr. Ayers. Do you have a house, Mr. Ayers? I live at Alligator Gardens. Where's my Mom now? Do you like Pez? I got Pez.'

'Shut Up! Curtis, We got us a Revolution! Kill your Parents. Pez is a tool of the Pig Establishment - gimme those. I have not eaten since the Cops beat me . . . we playing Paper,Scissors Rock . . . but they beat me. Gimme them Pez.'


That FARC backpack and computer will be a real Pandora's Box for Senator Obama.



http://billayers.wordpress.com/2006/11/

Thursday, May 01, 2008

John McCain: More Americans Getting On The Straight Talk Express & May Once Belonged to Mary the Mother of God





Happy May Day! This is the Month of Mary Mother of God in my faith. Back in the day, Catholic Churches in Chicago glutted the streets with processions of school children, the faithful, Knights of Columbus, politicians who wanted Catholic votes, and our friends and neighbors. The Church Militant became too self-conscious for socially sensitive Jocist priests trained to be more social worker than pastor. Such displays of faith were shelved. Priests now marched in International May Day Celebrations and the Catholic faithful at Visitation, Sacred Heart, St. Leo, St. Sabina, St. Cajetan, St. Brendan's, St. Justin Martyr, Little Flower, and the people of rest of Chicago's parishes could go scratch themselves. Father Guitar Mass, Knew Best. It was an Ecumenical Imperative!

Now, in their seventies, some of these same Jocist priests trained by Monsignor Hillenbrand in 1940's and '50's might be scratching theirs - feeling kind of forgotten.

Stanley Fish says 'ideas have no consequences,' boys. I wonder if you still might agree with the social Left these day. Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn are doing splendidly. Give them a call this May Day.


Most Americans respect and admire activities in every Faith that bring people together. Americans of all Faiths are putting aside the 'childish things' of the 1960's and moving forward. The stupidities and arrogance that marked the social engineering fascism of the 1960's radicals are nothing if not childish.

Look at Ayers. A spoiled child of privilege who knew that he could always depend upon the power of his family's wealth and influence to get him out of any crime, Ayers planted bombs and orgainized armed robberies. Like any spoiled child, his tyranny over family affection won out. His violent tantrums were crimes against America including bombing and armed robbery. The Childish Thought Tyranny of the 1960's gave him a get-out- of-jail- free card with no expiration date.

The Democratic Party, my Party, like my Church, got itself all mired and muddied with 1960's nonsense and is paying the price in this election cycle. Obama and Clinton are as much a part of the 1960's nonsense as Billy Ayers and Pastor Wright, because they continue to pay lip-service to 1960's nonsense: Choice means Murder the Innocent; Government Payouts on Anything mean Progress; Anti-American Rhetoric Means Patriotism. Childish nonsense.

Service, Dignity, Commitment, Self-reliance, Responsiblity and Caring Stewardship are American Values - grown-up American Values.

America is growing up.

More Americans are turning to John McCain's values - those are our values. About time.



A relatively large minority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (40%) say they have come to feel more favorably toward GOP presidential nominee John McCain in recent days; in a new Pew survey, among all Americans, about as many say that their opinion of John McCain had grown more favorable as say it has recently become less favorable (18% vs. 15%). By contrast, Americans reporting more unfavorable views of both Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, outnumber those reporting more favorable views in the survey. As is the case with Obama and Clinton, most Americans (61%) said their opinion of McCain had not changed recently.



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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

I Wonder What Bill Ayers Is Doing Tonight: Camelot - No Just Breathing Hard!



Bill Ayers:

I know what you people are thinking tonight,
As home through the shadows they wander.
Ev'ryone smiling in secret delight,
They stare at Hyde Park and ponder.
Whenever bomb blows this way,
You can almost hear ev'ryone say:

I wonder what Bill Ayers is doing tonight?
What merriment is Billy pursuing tonight?
The Haymarket Copper it never burned as bright.
I wonder what Bill Ayers is up to tonight?
How goes the Peoples Power
As Bill stares at Old Sears Tower
Being regally and legally prepared?
Well, I'll tell you what Bill Ayers is doing tonight:
He's scared! He's scared!

You mean the lad who fought a Nation,
Bombed the Pentagon and tried Penn Station,
Goes to be wet in terror and distress?
Yes!

A radical who's so calm in handcuffs,
Even his lawyer wears nice makeup
Faces public scrutiny with fright?
Right!

You mean that appalling clamoring
That sounds like a nickstick hammering
Is merely the banging of his radical knees?
Please!

You wonder what Bill Ayers is wishing tonight?
He's wishing he were in Soho salon-ing tonight!
What occupies his time covering his own backside?
He's searching high and low for some place to hide.
And Obama's expectation,
The Public's anticipation
B.A. must feel about the inquiry to come.
Well, I'll tell you what Bill Ayers is feeling tonight:
He's numb!
He shakes!
He quails! He quakes!
And that's what Bill Ayers is doing tonight.


H/T to:
T. H. White (novel The Once and Future King)
Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe