The Spleen of the Senseless: Why AOC Matters

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken Washington, D.C by storm.She successfully ran an insurgent, grass-roots Congressional campaign. She is exceptionally bright. She is incredibly media savvy. She is hugely charismatic, because she is telegenic and photogenic, but also because she consistently seems to be a sincere, authentic, and truly nice and caring human being. In an age of bullshit, she is “real.” And she has the courage of her convictions. She has thus quickly been embraced by the left, reviled by the right, and treated with enormous skepticism by the center. Jeffrey C. Isaac

 The left often agonizes over the choice between pragmatism versus utopianism. The “reformists” will argue that what’s important is making “real” change in the present, rejecting any larger vision as “pie-in-the-sky” irresponsibility, while the “revolutionaries” may reject all present compromise in favor of theorizing about a better future, for which the correct historical conditions are always, somehow, yet to arrive. It’s a dumb standoff; reformers need militants to scare the powerful into concessions, as the recent experience of the Fair Labor Association and USAS at Kuk Dong shows. Dissent

 "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Rep. Hank Johnson D-GA upon hearing about adding military personnel on Guam

The Congress is chock-full of goofs, ninnies and grifters. Rep. Hank Johnson thought a troop build-up would capsize the island of Guam.  Congress always has been a home for cretins feebs and dummies. However, there was a time when the dim-bulbs were kept under a cone-of-silence and generally kept out of public view.

Today, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez has become a national acronym - AOC.

Like LSMFT, AOC reflects a spiritus mundi, a zeitgeist, and a political weltanschauung that makes the likes of Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren seem like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Muriel Siebert and Mercy Otis Warren.

I began my morning with an article by a practiced ninnie and dim-bulb, Indiana University professor Jeffery C. Issacs that further boost AOC as our best hope to become the SPQR of the looming post revolutionary empire:

It is worth taking a moment to think hard about this.

To liberal friends who are pretty skeptical of if not hostile to AOC: what do you make of the fact that it is she who is being singled out for her fine performance? Many more “moderate” and more senior Democrats also had their five minutes yesterday, and yet this 29-year old “radical” would appear to have most intelligently used her time to advance the cause of the rule of law, a liberal value if every there was one, in this matter.

To left, DSA-member friends who love AOC (as I do) but disparage all of those liberals, like me, who continue to place so much emphasis on Trump’s real threats to the rule of law, constitutional due process, and liberal democracy: what do you make of the fact that AOC did not use her five minutes to talk about the Green New Deal (which she rightly talks about all the time!) or to comment on how the hearings are a waste of time and the real policy issues are being ignored (it was the lunatic Republicans who said this). She used her five minutes to ask painstakingly direct and factual questions of the witness, and thus to seriously address the issue at hand in the hearings: the issue of Trump’s unhinged and unaccountable Presidency, and the need to defend constitutional democracy by using constitutionally-prescribed Congressional authority to hold Trump to account.

AOC is much more serious, and politically responsible, and “mature,” and thus important, than most commentators, those who love her and those who don’t, appreciate. While too many, left, right, and center, are using her as a symbol to beat each other up, she is doing her job and being a role model of what Democratic politics can be.

Seriously?  Much thought there, Doc? AOC is much, much more serious?

How about these AOC nuggets? BTW -one quote is from a dead white man -guess which one and win a chance to chill backstage with AOC.

•  Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.
•  Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.
•  Women like me aren't supposed to run for office.
•  I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.
• To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
•  I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.

AOC is no TR.

One of the above earned the Medal of Honor, broke horses, worked in Law Enforcement in Wyoming and New Yok City, authored many books and served as Governor, the other Tweets, is a Socialist and managed to beat someone dumber, but without Democratic Socialists of America backing for Congress and will serve but one term before going on CNN, or MSNBC.

AOC will do some legislative damage to the Republic in mean time.

We have given the stage of public debate to be people who could not tell you whick White Sox player in its history was a an all-time favorite, evene though that elected offical and pensioned President of the United States wore a Chicago White Sox hat at every public dress-down affair. 

I taught English for 43 years and voted in every election since 1972.   I ran and lost for Kankakee City Clerk as a Democrat.  PFH is no AOC. 

However, I was never scripted, nor promoted by a professor of Revolution from Indiana University. 

Here in Illinois we have many, many, many AOCs 

• Jan Schakowsky
• Danny Davis
• Mike Quigley
• Heather Steans
• Kelly Cassidy
• Blago
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Pat Quinn
• Forrest Claypool
• Deb Mell
• Deb Shore
• Amy Madigan

All of these People who would starve to death outside of Progressive Democratic Party politics.

Giving the microphone, or the floor, or a public office to the senseless is dangerous, no matter how much delicious spleen they vent, Tweet or . . . God help us . . .legislate. 

Both Sides Now and Always - How the Progressive Mouth Moves

Two Progressive Cook County Powerhouses and intellectual dim bulbs - Cook County Clerk and Rep. Mike Quigley,   have Yin and Yanged on the Trump investigation into voter fraud.

Vertically challenged Congressman Mike Quigley and former Mayor and  prognathic progressive Cook County Clerk Dave Orr are doing a classic pull-me-pull you argument that arrives with John Dewey certainty at the conclusion that Russia owns President Trump,

 
First, here is the diminutive Democrat's denunciation of Donald Trump:

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigleyclaims that Russia hacked into Illinois’ State Board of Elections last year to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process.
Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, made the assertion on Monday to the Chicago Tribune after an interview with its editorial board. “I believe they’re on the doorstep to hacking into our voting systems. That is my educated guess,” Quigley said. The congressman said the committee should look at classifying election systems as a “target” and devote federal resources to protect their integrity.

The problem is that since May 11, the Trump White House established a panel to study vote fraud in the United States ( the big 50, but not D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico).  Vote fraud -Russki, Lower Slobovian, or Mikva Challenge 5th Ward Goo-goo Go-Getters - is just wrong.

However, Maxillary Maximus, Clerk of Cook County and Grecian Formula Guy, offered this to the Chicago and Cook County Resistance in hipper Pilsen, Lakeview, Evanston, Peoples Republic of Oak Park,  Hyde Park, the Faith Community of St. Sabina, Unitarian flocks county wide, and in my 19th Ward, Longwood Drive and its ancillary cul de sac'd street - anywhere the Voice of Resistance WBEZ and WTTW blares:

From the time he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump has made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud happening throughout the nation. Now as president, Trump has assembled the inauthentic Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity to investigate voter registration and voter fraud.
This partisan Commission has been formed on false pretenses: 3 to 5 million people did not vote illegally in the last presidential election, as the president believes, and a true bi-partisan Commission requires careful analysis and expertise.
Were this Commission truly working in the interest of making our elections as error-free and our voter rolls as clean as possible, the focus would be on the following:
Bringing every state on-board with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) — a nationwide network of states, which includes Illinois, that securely shares voter registration data – so that voter information nationwide would be accurate and up-to-date.
Updating our nation’s election infrastructure — the machines voters use to cast their ballots — which in many election jurisdictions are a decade or more old and are being held together with replacement parts often purchased on eBay.
Pushing all states toward Automatic Voter Registration – a good government tool to help clean voter rolls across the nation.
Instead, the President’s Commission has told state election authorities to hand over information including the names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. The Commission also wants a record of felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006.
I’m happy to see that so far, election authorities in more than 40 states – including Kris Kobach’s own Kansas Secretary of State office – have rejected the Commission’s request for this information, and I urge the Illinois Board of Elections to stand up against this unnecessary overreach.
Voting is a fundamental right. Unfortunately, instead of a genuinely bipartisan group dedicated to protecting the vote, President Trump has stacked the deck of his Commission with a number of lawmakers who have shown an inclination towards voter suppression.
Furthermore, this comes at a time when Republicans have sought to defund the Election Assistance Commission, a truly bi-partisan Commission.
I strongly encourage the Illinois Board of Elections, as well as my fellow elections administrators, to be cautious of the motives of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity and not comply with this dangerous request.

David Orr Cook County Clerk (Emphases my own)

 You see, 20 States have already adopted ERIC and Illinois is one of them.  It was David  Orr and Mike Quigley who bulldozed electronic voting here in Cook County back in 2006.  I wrote about this only a few weeks ago -

Donald Trump did not force the use of computer-voting on the voters of Cook County. You did, Mike Quigley. And this twerp is on the House Intelligence Committee? Vlad Putin could not have gotten into our election machines without buck-toothed Dave Orr, Forrest Claypool, Larry Sufredin and the good folks at Sequoia Voting Systems.

In 2006, Mike Quigley was one of the Progressive grifters. . .I mean Commissioners,  who worked with Cook County Clerk David Orr, at the behest of Help America Vote, Abner Mikva and friends, to weld suburban Cook County and Chicago voters together with Venezuelan voting machines.

The Sequoia Voting Machines, Help America Vote, Forrest Claypool, Venezuela and those rascally Russians are all part of our Progressive History.  Prior to the 2008 Election of the transformative Barack H. Obama, a huge fan of Venezuelan Tin-pot Dictator the late Hugo Chavez and voting began getting hacked without hanging chads, on-line and vulnerable.

That was 2006, when former Mayor and Cook County Clerk David Orr insisted that Cook County and City Elections operate the identical voting systems.

 These swell voting gizmos are a product of Venezuela - that paragon of Progressive Democracy.

Well, boys and girls Quigley notes that the Kremlin hacked the Illinois Vote and wants the Federal government to get on that stick!

Dave Orr, who could bite a pig's ass through a picket fences, chews this cabbage twice and wants no scrutiny.

Straight talking Progressives - the gang that made Illinois a laughing stock, Obama President and voter fraud more accessible to computer hacking - always give their truth - out of both sides of their mouth.  One message and many directions. 

The Illinois Elector Commission had better open the books to Mike Pence and  Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity,



Progressives lack that last noun.

John Kass has been Denounced by the Politburo of Small Minds

 

Inventing the Enemy uses stories of personal relationships to explore the behavior of ordinary people during Stalin's terror. Communist Party leaders targeted specific groups for arrest, but also strongly encouraged ordinary citizens and party members to “unmask the hidden enemy.” People responded by flooding the secret police and local authorities with accusations. . . . every work place was convulsed by hyper-vigilance, intense suspicion, and the hunt for hidden enemies. Spouses, coworkers, friends, and relatives disavowed and denounced each other. People confronted hideous dilemmas. Forced to lie to protect loved ones, they struggled to reconcile political imperatives and personal loyalties. Work places were turned into snake pits. The strategies that people used to protect themselves – naming names, preemptive denunciations, and shifting blame – all helped to spread the terror. Inventing the Enemy , a history of the terror in five Moscow factories, explores personal relationships and individual behavior within a pervasive political culture of “enemy hunting.”   intro to Inventing the Enemy by Wendy Z. Goldman 2011

“I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love... too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate.”Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs."  George Orwell


The Muhammad Ali of the canon of African American writers is Ralph Ellison; never the less, Black writers from James Baldwin and Leroi Jones to the second raters of our day detested Ellison as one who would not play group think.  Artificial outrages couldn't make Ralph Holler.

I love it when Progressive voices begin to rise to the level that only mutts can hear.  That is almost a daily event.

Yesterday, some writer named Stephen Gossett wrote an Old Timey Joe Stalin Amalgamated Textile and Cash Register Workers DEE-NUN-SEE-Ay-SHUN of Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. Citing no less authoritative voices as Wonkette,

Stephen Gossett does total Battle of the Cowshed on Mr. Kass:

"John Kass' lodestar is provocation—and that has taken the Tribune columnist into some pretty ugly, even quasi-racist territory. But his latest incitement represents a new low.
First off, here's how Kass chose to introduce the column, titled "Murder numbers don't tell the story in Chicago. Shootings do," and published Thursday morning . . .

"The feral boys of #Chicago with their death sticks, a direct product of the #Democratic welfare state." Just let that rattle around for a second, then try to compose yourself.

As former Chicagoist editor Marcus Gilmer* pointed out, "feral" has become a preferred epithet for the alt-right, along the lines of "thug." And "boy," well, that sad, racist history precedes itself. This is, of course, the Trump-ian mode of public communication, borrowing "nationalistic" language and turning the dog whistle into a megaphone. But its familiarity makes it no less virulent.

The piece itself begins right away with more reprehensible language, particularly after mentioning Chicago's undoubtedly awful murder statistics"

Reprehensible language like this, " nihilistic feral boys, brandishing their guns in cars, waving their death sticks in rap videos, young African-American men who believe they have no future, waiting to die."

Nihilistic is dog whistle language for someone or some people with nothing to guide them - like a lodestar, or good Old Polaris, Stephen Gossett, but to be too provocative,myself.

Brandishing guns and waving death sticks is dog whistle language for props used in Face Book selfies by nihilistic feral boys.

You see, friends and neighbors, words matter.

When people are blocked from using the words in our language and culture by prissy little pundits with precious little to offer in the way of talent or impact,  as if a word's very existence caused genocide, famine and Skittles on the sidewalk, we end up with Hillary v. Trump.

The denunciation is a journalistic form of shunning.  It can be effective, especially when the readers have limited scope in their reading and experience, or are just dopes. It is especially effective when pleonastic sesquipedalians toss out them big words and studied up facts/

Post-factual race-baiting has been made the new normal in 2016; and now Kass seems all too content to join the worst of the fray. That's the true feral nihilism. And it's especially loathsome when its delivered by a messenger parachuting from the outer suburbs. Notice the location stamp on his tweet: the hard front lines of Berwyn.

Post-factual race-baiting has been the new normal in 2016 - hundreds of thousands of people have said so, during the global warming/climate change costume change and red carpet show.  Hey, Stephen Gossett, I read Variety, as well as Salon.

Well John Kass has been denounced as a writer of the English Language and as a suburbanite.  I know Joe Epstein lives in Evanston, but I do not think that Joe knows, or has read Stephen Gossett.

You are denounced John Kass. You and John Dos Passos, Camille Paglia, Ralph Ellison, Mark Twain. Saul Bellow,John Steinbeck, H.L. Mencken, Russell Kirk, Joseph Epstein, Walker Percy, John Kennedy Toole, P.J. O' Rourke, . . .**

* ??????????Marcus Gilmer - related to Jimmy Gilmer?

** Denunciation Alumni

The Ballerina and Bicyclist: Rahm Recycles Oberman's Empty Resume with Metra Appointment!

 “I’m not there as a person who rides Metra every day,’’ Oberman, 68, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday. “I’m a bicylist.’’

A Metra rider asked me about Rahm Emanuel's appointment of Marty Oberman to the Metra Board.  I said that was an homage to Dr. Quentin Young and his disciple Abner Mikva.  The ballet of the bicycle!  The photo above pretty much tells it all.  That get up in any neigyhborhood but Lincoln Park would spark thousands of  calls to 911 from concerned parents. 

On Marty it works.

Bicycles were all the rage in Mao's Red China and Progressives want America to return to those thrilling days of yester-year.  The Reds how ever went all Adam Smith recently and are happily killing the biosphere with auto-emissions as well as babies.

In the very special world of the Cook County Progressive, Marty Oberman is the cherry on the bullshit sundae.  A self- stamped Reformer, Oberman is notable for riding bicycles and having occupied the aldermanic sinecure that is the 43rd Ward.  Abner Mikva is the Progressive Wizard of our bankrupt, stooge-stuffed, incompetent and ninnie/nannies of Illinois.

Name a dope in public life: 

• JanSchakowsky
• Pat Quinn
• Rep. Mike Quigley
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Rep. Danny Davis
• Dick Simpson
• the late Dawn Clark Netsch
• Barabar Flynn Currie
• Julie Hamos
• Deb Mell
• Deb Shore
• Forrest Claypool
• Valerie Jarrett
• Arne Duncan
• Desiree Rogers
• Joe Moore
• Shelia Simon

and you will find the stamp of the Mikva Challenge all over them.  Progressives (IPI/IVI) are the only protected species in Illinois public biology.  Short of public agreeing with Francis Cardinal George any and all crimes/misdemeanors/slapping the help/or acting ass by these loudly trumpeted blow-hards of "Good Government" gets immediate consignment to the Medill Memory Hole.

Marty Oberman is back!  He is going to be Rahm Emanuel's Metra Guy!  Like Forrest Claypool, who knows absolutely nothing about buses or train-cars, not linked to a boon-doggle with Bombardier, or Ventra Cards, Marty Oberman don't takle no trains - he bikes.

Biking is the street-cred for Reformers, who snap fingers at waitresses, leave no tip and manage to have Chicago's media purse puppies write glowing accounts of their purported brains and hearts. These memes go unchallenged even after a Toni Preckwinkle manages to collect cadavers for Cook County, or a Jan Schakowsky manages to tune-up a young Asian volunteer at an Alexi Giannoulias meet-and-greet, or a Forrest Claypool trolls for an appointment.  That is Reform.

Metra evidently needs to pay Marty Oberman in order to right itself and provide commuters with safe and timely public transportation.  Marty Oberman's CV reads like a Wikipedia entry purged of facts.

Lookee H'yar!

As first General Counsel for the Illinois Racing Board in the 1970s, Oberman investigated corrupt racing interests. From 1975 to 1987, he was known as a voice of independence in the City Council and opponent of Machine regulars during Council Wars.
Oberman also served as chairman of the Mayoral Commission on Labor and Management under Mayor Jane Byrne; as chairman of the Shoreline Protection Commission under Mayor Washington, and, more recently, as a member of Emanuel’s Midway Airport Advisory Council.

Rahm knows money and money comes from Progressives.  Now, politics and actual government in the bad old Machine Days required that people who actually knew anything about, anything could help make a difference - Mayor Ed Kelly was an civil engineer;  Mayor Richard J. Daley was a practiced accountant and budget master with decades of experience in Springfield.  The hair-shirts of Progressive Illinois had ties to fortunes and university faculties and the more radical law firms.  When money (political action committees/foundations/coalitions supported by real estate and banking) trumped competency Reform ( read Goo-goo) replace Machine.  Reform is the flatulent  by product of corned beef and cabbage Ward politics and government - it is loud and drifts with the prevailing winds, befouls the atmosphere and chokes the tax-payer.

Marty Oberman is only now breaking wind with his ten-speed.

Portrait of Andy Thayer - Pan Pest and Utility Fruitcake

Chicago Sun Times reporter Kim Janssen does a complete work-up on one of Chicago's ubiquitous pests, who traditionally stays under scrutiny by the Chicago Media.

For the first time, that I can recall, a Chicago newsman has done a thorough work-up of the activities and the background on one of the Progressive Machine's utility loudmouths -Andy Thayer.

Mr. Thayer has been given more face and microphone time than Oprah Winfrey in the last couple of years, but like Hamas leader ISM's Kevin Clark, Radical PR mogul Marilyn Katz, the unctious and odius Bill Ayers &Bernardine Dohrn, police torture/abuse wildcatter G. Flint Taylor, and Thayer's employer Lawsuit Lotto Lawyer Jon Loevy, remains unanalyzed by our local news hounds.

Until today - Thayer prefers the fitted T-shirts, sensible glasses and neat haircut that befit a middle-aged gay man whose day job is office manager for the law firm Loevy & Loevy. He’s quick to agree that he’s only one of many organizers, and that G-8 NATO protestors will march for a plethora of causes, including an “Occupy” coalition that emphasizes collective action over individual leadership.

For all that, his whole life might have been building to this moment.

Raised in a small town in upstate New York by his father, who designed missile parts, and his mother, an activist who secretly helped Vietnam draft dodgers escape to Canada, he was a misfit from the start.

The Sun Times remains daffy at the editorial/columnist level, but is blessed with genuine news talent -Mark Konkol, Natasha Korecki, Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, Steve Metsch, and Abdon Pallasch. Chicagoans deserve to have the bullshit icing removed from the fruitcakes, sneaks, and bullies called activists. Let's get real, as Crown Heights Al Sharpton might say, in the fervent hope that it never actually gets real.

I hope that other journalists follow Kim Janssen's lead and give Chicago readers some insight into the people who play at Revolution and have been allowed to not only get away with crimes and misdemeanors, but manage to suck tax-dollars out of our pockets. It would be nice to see work ups on the goofballs and screw-ups trotted out at election time as "Ain't She Great/Ain't He Great" ballot choices. Look at the race between Dorothy Brown and Ricky Munoz as empirical evidence of that.

An informed public and electorate needs information, not propaganda.

England in Flames: The Arrogance of Entitlement

Guardian photo




I'm in London now, I am sad and literally devastated by the riots and the turn of events that has gotten it to this place. The emerging youths that are getting involved in looting need to stay away as it is only a matter of time for someone else to get hurt or go to jail senselessly. Urging the families and the parents of the young kids to keep them home. Communities need to stick together to keep them away. Not just London but nationwide, please keep them home and safe.
Idris Elba, The handsome east London-born star of Luther, The Office and The Wire, has told the Guardian:

I do not believe that Mr. Elba became a fine actor because of his race, his good-looks, or any sense of entitlement. God Bless this fine gentleman.

I spent some time in Great Britain and Ireland. The British custom of the queue is unlike anything here in America. The Queue is the lining up of passengers, or customers for transportation, entertainment or goods. It is an example of what is best in man -manners, courtesy and humility. People wait in line, or rather they did.

Americans need signs posted and a contest recording on modes of transportation to allow the disabled, expectant mothers and the elderly, first passage aboard buses and trains. Americans do not queue - they position.

I worked as a janitor and as a dock worker for Gateway Transportation and Shipping, while I was in high school and college. As a janitor, was would clean toilets and use a sifter to clean sand filled ash-trays (remember them). Very often, I might be seen by friends and neighbors at my menial unskilled tasks for which I was paid the prevailing wage, because I paid union dues. The prevailing wage for a janitor was about $2.85 in 1970. Janitors were largely immigrants from eastern European countries and college punks like me. The immigrants worked like dogs and sad to confess too often this college punk dogged the work, because was only paying my tuition at Little Flower and Loyola. The Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, Lithuanian, Russian, Greek and Croatian DPs were earning the rent, the groceries and saving what they could.

I worked like a dog on the docks at Gateway Trucking originally located near Western and Cermak and later out in Chicago Ridge on Harlem at about 106th. Gateway was the largest trucking dock in the Midwest at the time. It went bankrupt in the 1980's, was taken over by Yellow Trucking and is now a rust-belt ghost town. I was a casual -non-union freight humper. We were on call and when called in you showed up, or you didn't work again. The Teamsters were the highly skilled truckers and fork-lift drivers. Some Teamsters supervised the casuals. In the winter the dock was brutally cold, but you kept warm by staying busy. You were entitled to one bathroom break every two hours and a twenty minute lunch each eight hour shift. You were entitled to your pay, which was more than a union janitor made, back then - about $ 4.25 an hour.

When not working I was reading American, Russian, British, Classical Latin literature and studying the core curriculum for a bachelor of arts degree. The education I received at both Little Flower High School and Loyola University was priceless. On the wall of Marquette Center at the Rush Street Campus were the Latin quotations of The Great Jesuit Thinkers, Ignatius Loyola, Aloysius Gonzaga, Saints. and Scripture.
One that struck me the most was this one -Initium sapientiae timor domini est: The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.

Like the United States, Great Britain has turned God into a guest on Bill Moyers for PBS - God is, if He must Be at all, a champion of diversity, Gay marriage, Abortion, and a Class warfare firebrand. The Archbishop of Canterbury has come out in favor of Sharia Law and embraces diversity.

Diversity erases any and all crimes - assault, arson, looting, the odd rape here and there.

London and other cities in Great Britain look like the Blitz Reenactment - not because of poverty, Class, or oppression. The diverse youth are looting because diversity is the father of entitlement. Entitlement means you are a God!

In Chicago demi-Gods kill with impunity, because they may do so without fear.

The Media has portrayed murdering, gang-banging thugs as victims and heart-tugging urchins. Ever since the media played Yummie Sandifer as a martyr to 'not not doing enough for thugs' Chicago has enjoyed a willful slide into Apocalypse. There is no respect for Law, because there is no fear of anything. God?

God is for gun-hugging, toothless breeder hillbillies.

I don't buy that sorghum. I was educated by real scholars who understood that learning is a two-edged sword - it cuts its way to wisdom, or to hubris. Wisdom requires humility. Hubris requires only entitlement. Nothing is free. Education is costly -then, now and always. The more one invests in pursuit of that end, the more one values it as a whole.

My tastes in literature run to sensibilities developed between John Dryden and William Makepeace Thackeray - it often called in the canon of literature Augustan or Neo-classical. It holds that science is a tool and not an end. That understanding that Man is a creature and not a God is wisdom.

Alexander Pope's Essay on Man presents this little fire extinguisher:

Of systems possible, if ’tis confest
That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:
And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, though laboured on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God’s one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

I worked as a janitor and on a loading dock in order to become an English teacher. I hope that was an adequate one. Sifting ash-tray sand for cigar, cigarette butts, wrappers, wads of used tissue, unplugging toilets, mopping up everything imaginable, dumping trash into rat-happy gondolas is not humbling. Humping freight is not humbling. I was blessed t learn that I am entitled to nothing; therefore, I am not terribly inclined to bump the queue, smash windows and grab Reboks. Study and work are part of the whole.

Arrogant Man is burning the cities of Great Britain and shooting anyone on the streets of Chicago.

I was Born This Way and Worked on It - Christine Flowers Serves up the Progressives

I have been blessed to know some great people. Christine Flowers is a Philadelphia attorney and journalist who happens to be one tougher-than-calculus and gorgeous woman.

Today, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miss Flowers offers takes a a rhetorical cutlass to the thin-witted rapiers of Progressive meme-enschanz.

Christine M. Flowers: My right-wing views are part of my DNA


By Christine M. Flowers
Philadelphia Daily News
I'VE COME to believe that conservatism is genetic, not environmental.
After all, to take a page from the gay community, why would I choose a lifestyle that subjects me to criticism, discrimination and general vilification if I wasn't born that way?

Now, allow me to dislodge my tongue from cheek, and I'll explain how social conservatives have become the new Nazis for some people. In fact, we've been lumped together with the SS by disgruntled citizens from Wisconsin to New Jersey, most of whom pay union dues and seem to have a particular penchant for depicting their governors as Hitler.

(And don't get me started on Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, either of whom can't make a slip of the tongue without the New York Times, MSNBC and the rest of the media lynch mob turning them into a cross between Aimee Semple McPherson and Leni Reifenstahl.)

Some like to say that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, but that's simply a way to denigrate those of us who believe in personal responsibility. Liberals tend to sympathize with the mugger, and have a hard time waking up to the fact that not every miscreant on the street is a Jean Valjean looking for bread to feed his starving family. Sometimes, if it walks like a thug, talks like a thug and looks like a thug, it is a thug - and no amount of social engineering will make the thug sympathetic.

Social conservatives, as opposed to their fiscal and foreign-policy neocon cousins, have had a particularly hard time of it.

While the mainstream media drums up grudging appreciation for a guy like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who says we should abandon our fixation on social issues - and even had a (temporary) crush on Rudy Giuliani, who balanced his law-and-order creds with moderate views on abortion and gay marriage - anyone who is pro-life, anti-gay marriage, supports religion in the public square and thinks that the Equal Rights Amendment was a savvy scam is anathema to the Fourth Estate.

And when the media is agin' ye, thee has a problem, Pilgrim - because most of the Pulitzer-winning opinionators out there are unabashedly liberal, and seemingly incapable of believing that a rational being can ever be against abortion, same-sex unions, institutional atheism and anything else opposed by evolutionary amoebas like me.

So that's why I'm convinced social conservatism is a matter of DNA, not GOP, since anyone with a sense of self-preservation wouldn't willingly choose to live a life where you are considered a bigot, racist, misogynistic or, my very favorite, hopelessly stupid. Even those of us with advanced degrees, like Bachmann, a tax lawyer, are ridiculed as clueless simply because we don't sound like subscribers to Ms. magazine.

Our brothers and sisters in the gay community have made great inroads with the idea that they were born with their particular sexual orientation, something they neither acquired nor necessarily desired. They just "are," which helped reach the recent decision legalizing same-sex marriage in New York.

And while I used to struggle against that interpretation, given my strong belief that we are not slaves to biology, I have to admit that it makes life an awful lot easier if we can just say, "Hey, it's not my decision that I'm this way, so don't hate me for it!"

That's why I've decided that the next time someone writes a snarky comment after one of my op-eds calling me a mean-spirited "rhymes-with-witch," I'll try to convince them that believing in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception is as much a part of me as my attraction to men.

And the next time I get an email telling me I'm a coldhearted "rhymes-with-punt" because I don't think that the homeless should be able to use the sidewalk for a toilet, I'll argue that wanting to keep innocent citizens safe from unpredictably dangerous mental patients is as much a part of me as my Italian heritage.

And the next time I get a voice mail wondering why the Daily News employs a disgusting "rhymes-with-trucker" like me, I'll leave a return message explaining my belief that you can't give constitutional cover to same-sex marriage is as much a part of my inherited identity as my brown eyes and freckles.

I'm not sure it will work. But given the recent results in New York, I'm optimistic.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.
philly.com/philly/blogs/flowersshow.

There is nothing sexier than a smart woman!

George Babbitt Lives! And He'll Again Vote for President Obama, Support Abortion, and Gay Marriage

Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.
For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail—
Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.

In 1922, Sinclair Lewis had his comic novel Babbitt published. Warren G. Harding placed the first radio in the White House; construction began on Yankee Stadium in the Bronx; The Red Army captured Vladivostok; Sergei Diaghilev, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust and Igor Stravinsky dine together in Paris, at the Majestic hotel;The Mandate of Palestine is approved by the Council of the League of Nations; Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and George Babbitt became an America metaphor against conformity.

George Babbitt conformed and fought his dreams. Babbitt embraced the American Secular religion of Boosterism. Boosterism helped anything and everything that kept things moving. Boosters were the shoulder punchers who wanted everyone to know the worth and value of their towns, affiliations, congregations and associations. Today, boosterism is called grassroots. It is based upon 'stay-on-message' group think.

When I read Babbitt for the first time in Father James Sheridan, OSA's American literature class in 1967, Babbitt was viewed as a two-dimensional hypocrite, a conservative, and a square, by many of us junior year close readers. Father Sheridan helped us read deeper. The guy was sincerely trying to do right by his family. Doing right by his family required that George Babbitt think like everyone else.

In Sinclair Lewis' presentation George Babbitt belongs to everything in his mythical town of Zenith, in the mythical Tri-State formation he calls Winnemac forged of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

Today, George Babbitt would belong to Planned Parenthood, Better government Association, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, Move On.org and contribute to Public Broadcasting and Television, as well as serve on several bank boards, United Methodist boards.

Babbitt would be a 46 year old, suburban, well-schooled, affluent Progressive. Babbitt would be a cash-cow bundler for the DNC.

If he lived anywhere near Chicago, George F. Babbitt he'd be in the thick of every reform panel, anti-police study group and the Make Chicago Safe for NATO Committee. George F. Babbitt would have ridden aboard one of the Pride Floats that he made sure were not stored at 48th & Halsted and he'd be helping build a memorial to police torture victims. George Babbitt is a booster - in 1922 and 2011.

Green Faith and Chia Churches

The Green Faith's Buck-Neckid Cathedral!

Huffington Post - The Mayor Emanuel Playbook offers a peek at Green Faith Initiatives! Click my post title.

Green Churches - now that's something. Synogogues and Churches (I can not imagine a Green Mosque other than the paint job) that are Way Green and in full communion with Eco-Theologians Rev. Tommy Barry and Daffy Matt Fox.

In essence, Ecotheology is about as sensible to me as Scientology . . .well, almost.

It is one of those seamless garments crafted with the way hip and the almost hep in mind - folks who, after having introduced yourself to them, will tell you, loudly, and in no uncertain terms that they 'watch only public television, listen only to NPR, and read only the New York Times!'

Gracious me. How can one not be overwhelmed by such an unsolicited proclamation and shink whelp-like into the shadows?

Easy.

Ecotheology began at the University of Southern California in 1967 with Lynn White a Medievalist who held that patriarchal Christianity is anthropocentric -Man Centered (I thought it was Christ Centered) and therefore very, very, very bad. Man uses the Earth! He treds on Mother Earth; plucks her fruit; butchers the fawna and salads up the flora! The old, " I Love Animals . . .they're Delicious!"

If it were not for people the earth would be a lovely place.

People are to the Earth, what Whitey is to all other Races. Bad. Good people want to give the Earth back to the Earth. We elect many Green Machine Party hacks. Like the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Lesbian Green Advocate of reversing the flow of the Chicago River - Debra Shore. Debra Shore laces her polemics in Father Barry's ideas.

Father Tommy Barry shed his mortal husk in 2009 after years of evolving. Father Barry gave hope to the unfulfilled worshiper who who demands cosmic linkage. Such worshippers and sacerdotal functionaries can be found in the hipper Parishes of the Catholic Church. The ones where the outre is encouraged - liturgical requisites be damned.

These are churches that fulfill - personal ministries are doled out and embraced no matter how daffy: Amnesty for All Illegals, Peace Agitation, Solidarity with Criminals, Terrorists, Race Falgellators and the Sexually Preposterous.

If the Church ain't Green, it's patriarchal, racist, fascist and mean. Mean! No what I mean?


I believe that the Green Faith might find more telling theology in the 22nd Chapter of the Gospel of Yossarian in Joseph Heller's brilliant satire Catch 22.

Joseph Heller's Green Jesus -Capt. Yossarian at Snowden's funeral.


Here is the context - B-25 bombardier Yossarian has flown more than one too many missions over Italy and the former Yugoslavia in WWII. On one mission, a gunner Snowden had his guts spill out all over Yossarian having been rendered by Nazi flak. Yossarian stripped off all of his clothes and climbed a tree. He is visted by venture capitalist Milo Minderbinder who wants to sell chocolate covered Egyptian cotton to the troops and asks Yossarian to taste it.

Gripping the bough above with both hands, Milo began inching his way out on the limb sideways with utmost care and apprehension. His face was rigid with tension, and he sighed with relief when he found himself seated securely beside Yossarian. He stroked the tree affectionately. “This is a pretty good tree,” he observed admiringly with proprietary gratitude.

“It’s the tree of life,” Yossarian answered, waggling his toes, “and of knowledge of good and evil, too.”

Milo squinted closely at the bark and branches. “No it isn’t,” he replied. “It’s a chestnut tree. I ought to know. I sell chestnuts.”

“Have it your way.”

They sat in the tree without talking for several seconds, their legs dangling and their hands almost straight up on the bough above, the one completely nude but for a pair of crepe-soled sandals, the other completely dressed in a coarse olive-drab uniform with his tie knotted right. Milo studied Yossarian diffidently through the corner of his eye, hesitating tactfully.

“I want to ask you something,” he said at last. “You don’t have any clothes on. I don’t want to butt in or anything, but I just want to know. Why aren’t you wearing your uniform?”

“I don’t want to.”

Milo nodded rapidly like a sparrow pecking. “I see, I see,” he stated quickly with a look of vivid confusion. “I understand perfectly. I heard Appleby and Captain Black say you had gone crazy, and I just wanted to find out.” He hesitated politely again, weighing his next question. “Aren’t you ever going to put your uniform on again?”

“I don’t think so.”

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Funnier than Heller, is the Green Faith initiatives that are sure to ignite the passions of the unfulfilled. Time to build that Chia Cathedral?

Progressive Chicago Victory Complete - Read on Huffington Post Chicago

The Chicago and Cook County Democratic Party gradually and finally handed the keys to the County and City over to the Progressives. Daley in fact did just that last year about this time, when Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel dreamed of becoming a Chicagoan and the Mayor. Mayor Daley exited, having destroyed politics for policy and exhausted the affection of Chicagoans in creating a Postcard out of what had been a City of Neighborhoods.

Chicago is never cutting edge. Chicago always apes other cities, whether it is London's checker-board Cop hat bands, Big Brother Blue Light Cameras, Cabs,Buses, or clean subways. Chicago bans smoking, neighborhood saloons,or trans-fatty acid because New York City did so and allows anarchists the freedom of the streets, media and bike paths in homage to Seattle. Daley is touring the Hoods that aped other cities.

Daley has left the 19th Ward and other blue-collar neighborhoods that helped get him elected ( Beverly, Morgan Park & Mount Greenwood out of his walking tours, because those neighborhoods, while loyal, are deemed unimportant -only voters, tax-payers, breeders and Catholics there. Mayor Daley is quite correct. Neighborhoods stopped being important years ago. Community -whatever the hell that means - trumped neighborhoods.

Chicago's Purty, unless you take the 79th street bus east or west, or try to get from Hegewisch to Navy Pier via public transportation, or sell your home in Garfield Ridge.

Identity Policy trumped politics ( the old quid pro quo that got things done . . . for now. The Dreams of Leon Despres, Abner Mikva, and Dick Simpson are realized. Chicago will turn the microphone off on the last of political professionals.

Rahm Emanuel will govern Chicago according to the needs, whims, and wants of the 2012 Presidential Re-Election Campaign. In fact the Rahm years will be a replay of the Obama Administration 2008-2012. All the players are here already. It will be like the Seinfeld Reunion. Chicago City services will be the collateral damage. Chicago's Serial Appointee, Forrest Claypool, the Rula Lenska of Chicago politics, will run the buses and trains; Joe Moore will be the City Council voice; former Mayor Clerk Dave Orr will direct policy to the media; Wards will be re-mapped into silence - especially the 19th Ward where turnout is always heavy.

Politics no longer exists. Policy reigns supreme and that settles it.

If Chicagoans want to know what is going to happen - skip reading the Tribune and the Sun Times. All you need to know is to be found on the Huffington Post Chicago links.

There you will find Toni Periwinkle's dagger in the kidneys of Sheriff Tom Dart; Dick Simpson's imitation of the Daniel Burhnam; Locke Bowman's Daily Burge Reminder that Racism is 24/7.

All of the non-blinking Progressive Superstars ( folks who used be laughed out of the room) are loudly reminding Chicagoans that THEY, not you - won! Get over it!

Julie Westerhoeff who partners with Mike Klonsky and Bill Ayers with the ironic and seemingly adversarial help of the Chicago Teachers Union to make sure that Public Schools get worse has been featured prominently of late.

Also, Christine Bork of the YWCA Metro will demand more abortions for black babies because she and Planned Parenthood understand the black experience better than black people.

If you are LGBTQ you can be sure that your voice will dominate those breeders who dare utter a sound. It will be a universal WTTW Panel shout down of breeders.

If you do not worry about where the money comes from, not to break a sweat! Taxes go to breeders, racists, mean people, tea-baggers, homophobes, and working stiffs.

Chicagoans will learn what is important - not solid police presence, not fire fighting, not teacher accountability, not personal accountability. Cultural Bread and Circuses, Race Baiting, Gay Supremacy at every level - Gay Friendly is Homophobic, Food Fascism, Green Propaganda even though the boilers have not worked in years, Rain Barrels over Water Filtration, Reversing Chicago River Flow, Sanctuary City Sanctification, Abortion, Police Brutality/Systemic Racism Lawsuits,and Hate Crime Up-Ticks.

This will be the Progressive Golden Age - four years anyway.

Progressives captured the Captive City! Billy Sunday could not shut it down. The Democratic Party, Media and the patient Lefties killed the Machine.

The City of the Big Shoulders has trimmed down to Metrosexually Sized Smartness.

Have fun. See you in four!

I'm a Democrat - Here is Why Progressives Make Me Feel Like I'm Wearing Spun Glass LongJohns - Sen. Bernie Sanders!

Bernie Sanders - What Being an A$$hole is all about!~

There has been no shortage of individuals and institutions that have sought to capitalize on the shootings in Tucson. Add Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to that list.

This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other “right-wing reactionaries” responsible for the climate that led to the shooting.

He writes:

Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country. I also want to thank the very many supporters who have begun contributing online to my 2012 reelection campaign at www.bernie.org. There is no question but that the Republican Party, big money corporate interests and right-wing organizations will vigorously oppose me. Your financial support now and in the future is much appreciated.

Sanders lists several events as evidence that right-wing rhetoric led to the attacks, and then continues:

Progressive Guest Blogger - Secular Feminist Gay Cannibal Rights Advocate - Ms. Seeley Hoyne-Hamilton

The delicate and thoughtful woman with whom I spend the best hours of my week, in person or via phone chides me to consider the point of view of others.

In order to really get to know autere people one must leave one's comfort zone and seek differing points of view - like turning on NPR, WTTW, CBS, NBC, ABC,CNN, reading the NYT,Trib, Sun Times Editorials, or taking coffee at another venue.

Rather than take coffee with the 19th Ward Yeomanry, which is my wont, at Kean Gas Station, White Hen What's By the Beverly Bank, Karim and Bidya's Dunkin Donuts on
104th and Western, I decided to get my Arabica on at Fuzzy Quim's Alternative Roast over by 99th & the Metra. I met a dowager ( late-50's ) who after four failed marriages divorced the right banker and got the magnificent Frank Lloyd Wright-Knock Off on Longwood Drive in Beverly 60643 where she resides with her Lovers ( I did not ask and I shall not tell). She has a point of view that rings familiar and at the same time runs counter to the thought patterns of my neighbors.

I present the morning musings of my invited guest Ms. Seeley Hoyne-Hamilton - she is not the stereotypical Beverly Breeder Catholic/Baptist/Lutheran/Methodist/Wiccan( Yes, Muriel, There be Wiccans here about - nice folks, don't piss them off) Mom.

"The secular identity of the American people is not something to criticize, but to celebrate. We have rejected dogmatic religion devoid of compassion. I wear Pink only on Days that coincide with my menstrual flow and my Lovers' willingness to drive my three cats to the Unitarian Day Care in Hyde Park. I chose abortion, it did not choose me.

After thirteen years of George Bush and his racist war on the Iraqi people, of whom I sing! Zionist, Pig! Millions of Afghan women were systemically tortured by Bush's thugs and the Pope's Swiss Guard Why has the Pope not been arrested for the sexual abuse of children? Benny the Rat doesn't want anybody to be tolerant of atheists, gays, and intellectuals, or to treat women as equals.

Planned Parenthood and Gloria Steinem is having a Tea to celebrate women and I will be there. How about you? Not Breeders of course. Before my Awakening , I had any number of baby bumps aborted and I proudly tell everyone how do you think I keep this figure? Abortion colon cleansings, and reading Joan Walsh in Salon. I am WOMAN and not Womb-Man.

Who is the intolerant one here? If Gays and Cannibals, after all of their Great Service to America, can not who can? Remember Gays and Cannibals never owned slaves - Gays I mean really. And Cannibals dined on persons of all hues in the Rainbow!Imagine, persecuting someone whose choice of diet includes human flesh, well, that is not the America I choose.

I Love dance and contribute regularly to the Planned Parenthood Ballet in Lakeview, where Congressman Mike Quigley has made sure that Health Care Funding Dollars make our Arts a priority for sexually ambivalent teens and questioning young adults who may not know that door to the hideous Zionist closet is open to them - once Israel is wiped off the face of the earth,pets and Breeders spayed and neutered.


Eric Zorn is the only genuine voice for women and Palin and ll those Tea Baggers and Ward Thugs will emasculate Real Women. Read Sister Miriam MacGillis, founder of Genesis Farm and recipient of the 2005 Thomas Berry Award for her ministry on the new cosmology so that we can finally do as Sierra Club and Debra Shore demand and change the flow of the Chicago River. I Am a Progressive Woman, because the penis fell off all of the smart people who Chose to terminate that unwanted child within!

I can not get a head of good organic arugula in this stupid neighborhood. After my colon cleansings nothing is more important than the quality time I spend with Rachel Maddow and my Lovers.

The Old Boy's Club? It think not and I vote not!

Lastly, I Hate Fat, Stupid People and this beautiful planet is just too overpopulated with them. Be kind."

Well, Hush My Beak! Next on Fresh Air!

Progressives - Piety? Not Feeling it. Ross Douthat Explains

To too many Catholics, piety went out of fashion with Vatican II and the Lay Pontificate took off - fat ugly nuns in polyester Orwellian duds beating tom-tom drums, or doing the Isadora Duncan through the pews in a whirling Liturgical dance & etc!

Piety is rooted in human understanding of a greater good - God. The etymology of piety can be traced through Latin and Greek to the Indo-Aryan languages of Persia and India.

In America, the neo-Romantic grifters Emerson, Thoreau, the Brooke Farm crowd later Jane Addams and the Baby Reds of John Dewey's Age, stomped all over Piety.

Sinclair Lewis laughed at piety in Main Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry.

The Secular Hegalians looted popular culture of piety - well almost.

I can not watch Glenn Beck, but I admire the work he is doing. He gets first rate thinkers like Peter Hitchens, Jonah Goldberg and others to form a context for his feelings. He's a Mormon and seems to be pious man.

As with Beck, I admire Sarah Palin. She is happy in her own skin and as tough as a cob. She strikes me as a genuinely pious woman.

I admire piety. I do not admire smarm or snotty Cliffs Notes Readers who tuck the New York Times under their armpits and slowly shake their heads in sad, sad disbelief that people could ever have voted for George Bush or not believe that Abortion is great.

Here is a snotty example - Ross Douthat of the New York Times damning Beck and Americans with very faint praise.

There was piety — endless piety, as speaker after speaker demanded that Americans rededicate themselves to God. There was patriotism: fund- raising for children of slain Special Forces vets, paeans to military heroism (delivered by Sarah Palin, among others), encomiums to the founding fathers. There was an awards ceremony on the theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” in which community-service prizes were handed out to a black minister, a Mormon businessman and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols. And since this was (as you may have heard) the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, there was a long tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Now more than ever, Americans love leaders who seem to validate their way of life. This spirit of self-affirmation was at work in evangelicals’ enduring support for Bush, in the enthusiasm for the Dean campaign among the young, secular and tech-savvy, and now in the devotion that Palin inspires among socially conservative women. The Obama campaign raised it to an art form, convincing voters that by merely supporting his candidacy, they were proving themselves cosmopolitan and young-at-heart, multicultural and hip.

( Emphasis my own)

"Americans love leaders who seem to validate their way of life." validate? Like a parking chit? Stop into a Veterans Hospital or a VFW and ask one of these heroes to validate your way of life. Progressives can not admire any virtue - by nature Virtue is manly.

It is time that Americans laughed at these pompous twerps and got themselves pious once again.

In God We Trust -Dropped on New Gold Dollar Coins -

Mary Ann Roti gave me a heads up on one of the new idiocies that rolls out everyday since President Obama was swept into office by Progressive forces ( millionaires, movie stars and pseud=intellectuals).

In God We Trust has been removed from new coins.

The motto has been on American currency since 1864, when Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase ordered that American coins reflect the faith of its citizens.

It is good to hate God according to Progressives, because made Laws long before Progressives could get Federal Judges to undermine them.

Use four old quarters rather than one new coin.

Give it back to them, good and hard.

Progressive - American English for Going Backward at Full Speed!

Our Progressive Yin and Yang!


President Obama is our Jobs President - American Unemployment is at 9.7%. Unemployment happens because of deficit spending. President Obama is pouring more Federal dollars into extending the Unemployment Credits to stimulate growth for more unemployed and that is his plan to reduce unemployment to 8.7% by the end of this year. More Unemployment benefits means more employment?

I plan to take off ten pounds and save $10,000 by July 1st, by eating in Heart of Italy *( 24th & Oakley) at Miceli's, Bruna's Bachanalia, & etc. every meal - six times a day. I am doubling my meals, because this is an Unprecedented Application of Progressive Thought.

I caught Henry Waxman's soul mate on the Sunday Chat Fests -there must be an embargo on lens crack Henry's mug. Man, the guy is the ugliest!

Congressman Ed Markey has that Johnny Edwards thang going on. Together the yin and yang of male eye candy ( Markey/ Waxman) have concocted the Most Idiotic Piece of Legislation since Prohibition. The Cap 'N Trade Cereal!

It is so idiotic that Para-Sailing Fop John Kerry can't talk about anything else! Carbon Credit! Oh, Baby!

Here is Dandified Ed Markey at his most revealingly Progressive Knitting of Wit in an exchange with a former Shell Oil Executive about the Gulf Oil Disaster - Obama's Pearl Harbor. They are talking about the 1920 Jones Act that embargoes foreign, no-union ships and vessels in American waters.

MR. HOFMEISTER: It would have to have a waiver. There was a waiver after Katrina to help do whatever needed to be done. There should be a waiver now. This is a unique, unprecedented situation. The U.S. hasn’t made supertankers in–ever. Supertankers have always been made in foreign shipbuilding yards. And we need to bring that kind of scale to bear, in my opinion.

MR. GREGORY: Congressman, you’re shaking your head. You don’t…

REP. MARKEY: The, the Jones Act, the Jones Act does not apply to situations like this, emergency situations, relief situations.

MR. GREGORY: You should be able to get those ships in there right away.

REP. MARKEY: Yeah, and they can. There has been no request from another country that has been denied by the Obama administration at all.

Yet,

The Houston Chronicle reported a week and a half ago that the Dutch govt. offered help and was turned down. But the paper now reports that the U.S. is using foreign ships to help battle the spill:

U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of the skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge.

For breakfast I plan to have the garlic and butter stuffed Artichoke, Porterhouse Vesuvio, a nice Chianti, a basket of bread, and Tiramisu.

Six pack abs by, July 1, 2010! I'm a Progressive!!!!!

*The Heart of Italy
24th and Oakley dishes it up, Italian-style.
Wednesday Mar 02, 2005. By Dennis Foley Food Feed



In the second half of the 19th century, Chicago became a huge stopping point for many Italian immigrants. Sicilians flocked to the Taylor Street area (now affectionately known as "Little Italy"); when the Tuscans left Northern Italy, they settled in what became known as the "Heart of Italy" neighborhood, centered near 24th and Oakley on the city's near South Side. Today, the stretch of Oakley that runs through the Heart of Italy has been renamed "Vito Marzullo Boulevard" in honor of the late, legendary alderman who did so much for the people of this neighborhood.

A walk along Oakley in the Heart of Italy always gives one the feel of times past. The buildings that house the shops and restaurants have been around for a century or more, and the city has installed wonderful retro streetlights, which only serve to add to that yesteryear feel. When you come to eat at the restaurants in this neighborhood, be prepared for all Italian all the time. And that's a good thing. Though the food offered in these wonderful eateries may have its similarities, each place has its own distinct style, its own personality and moves to its own beat. Price-wise, all of the Heart of Italy restaurants fall in a similar range, with dinners running roughly $8-$20, making it a great destination for a reasonably priced date.

Come June, don't miss the Taste of the Heart of Italy, the hood's festival of great Italian food and music. In the meantime, make a beeline south and try one of these Italian eateries:

Ignotz Ristorante
For starters, the Ignotz staff brings warm bread, oil, cheese and baked garlic to your table. Talk about a way to jump-start your engine: This is it. The pre-dinner delights don't end there. A number of solid appetizers are available, including baked clams. The dining area here is intimate and just as welcoming for those looking for a great place for a hot date or to tote a boatload of kids in for a family dinner. Chances are affable owner Roger Wroblewski will stop by your table, say hello and make sure your chow is to your liking. The menu features pastas, a wide range of veal meals, steaks and more. The shrimp versace is melt-in-your-mouth good, and solid pizza dishes are also available. Don't leave without asking for the dessert specials, featuring an assortment of items (tiramisu, pyramid cake) that will make the perfect bookend to your meal.

Il Vicinato
This lovely eatery features two dining areas, one in the front by the bar section, and a second larger room in the back. The bar area isn't huge, but with 12 seats or so, there's plenty of room to chat while you wait for a table. Both rooms are decorated nicely and always filled with lively patron conversation. Make certain you order the Il Vicinato salad for starters; this salad features your standard array of greens, but comes with assorted meats, blue cheese and a fantastic house dressing. Possibly the finest salad in the city, it's brought to you in a big bowl so everyone at your table can enjoy it. After that, dive right in to any of the pasta dishes you find, many of which come with a Bolognese sauce. The meat-filled ravioli is fantastic, as are the whitefish dishes. Try the filling roast sirloin of beef should you be in a meat mood. This always-tender special is a crowd pleaser.

Bacchanalia
Of all the eateries on Oakley, Bacchanalia has that 1970s sort of "Goodfellas" look and feel to it. Mirrors can be found throughout the dimly lit dining area, and the tables are set close enough to let you listen in on your neighbor's conversation, should you feel the desire to eavesdrop. There's not a bad dish on the menu, but some of the big winners are scampi alla romana, where you'll find your shrimp resting on a bed of fettuccine served with a marinara sauce, as well as chicken vesuvio and mouth-watering manicotti. The fish specials (tilapia) are often excellent; for dessert make sure you try the tiramisu.

La Fontanella
This tiny eatery is a delight. There's a smallish bar up front where you can rest your elbows for a bit, before moving into the two-car garage-sized dining area which features roughly 15 checkerboard tables. Pasta dishes abound: The sausage and peppers and the eggplant parmigiana are definite winners. You'll also find some wonderful whitefish and salmon dishes spiced to perfection. Should you feel like a pasta dish but want something other than standard spaghetti, go for the always-tasty fusilli in vodka sauce if it's on the specials sheet. Meat-wise, the lamb scaloppini will have you returning again and again. La Fontanella is suitable for any occasion, but it is the tiniest of the Oakley eateries. If you need special arrangements for seating, call in advance.

Bruna's Ristorante
As you approach Bruna's, you'll find bottles of wine resting in the windows; once inside the tiny eating area, you'll find posters and photos of various scenes from the old country. With lively patrons, an intimate setting and a friendly wait staff, this place definitely exudes fun. There are many wonderful pasta dishes to choose from here, but the wise won't pass on the spaghetti carbonara, where the spaghetti comes in a cream sauce with Italian bacon. Other popular specials include veal chops, eggplant parmigiana and spinach-cheese ravioli. When former Chicago cop turned actor, Dennis Farina, is in town, he spends time in all of the Heart of Italy eateries, though Bruna's is one of his favorites.

Miceli's Deli
Miceli's isn't a big league dinner destination like the others in the Heart of Italy and it doesn't pretend to be. This is a lunch joint, plain and simple, and without the flair and cost of the other eateries on the block. Here, you'll find a number of tables set in the midst of this deli, and at lunch the seats fill up quickly. Miceli's serves great sub specials, hot meals like sausage and peppers and linguine and clams, as well as tasty salads; prices range from a wallet friendly $3.50-$8. If you see the spicy tuna steak salad on the specials sheet, dive right in. It will gas up your tank for the rest of the day. Police and attorney-types from the nearby Cook County criminal court's complex at 26th and California frequent this eatery.