April Fools: Rahm's Mag Mile and Forrest Claypool's CTA: Nobody to Help Stop Well-Accessoried Teens

"There was nobody to help. There was no time, really. We were surrounded it happened in one stop, and then they got off the next stop, at Lake,'' she said. 27 year old woman victimized on Forrest Claypool's CTA

Was it a 'melee' as the Sun Times reports?  An altercation over smoker's rights?  A 'wilding'? 'Flash Mob?  

No, this was behavior rooted in the sad, secular, systemic mess we call public education.  This was not a storming of the Bastille, or Bolivarista Peoples Revolution that is so much a part of 'elementary education expert' Bill Ayer's doctrine.

The kids were well-clothed, nutritionally robust, energetic, focused and more than moderately accoutered with the latest Apple or Microsoft entertainment and communication applications and devices that would make Jobs and Gates glow with appreciation.  Both techno Edisons are icons of public education.

More so, from most accounts, these kids who look like the cast of a Disney series availed themselves of public transportation - the CTA.

The Sun Times feature leads off with the word melee, an innocuous sounding term for 'beating the supreme shit' out of another human being for no earthly good reason.

At least the Chicago Tribune account presented the facts of the attack as provided by the victim.

Now, a melee is a combat between two willing opponents - it is a term that arose from Middle Ages when knights and other men-at-arms squared off according to the rules of combat - most Catholic school kids know that.

The attack of a woman on the west side L smacks not of a melee -

A 27-year-old woman said she was returning home with her mother Saturday night on the Red Line after a dim sum dinner when a group of girls got on the train at the Monroe station and appeared to want to pick a fight.
"This girl started blowing smoke in my face, and she flicked her cigarette ashes at me,'' said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "I said: 'You need to put that out,' and the next thing I know there's all these girls that jumped on top of us.''
They began punching her face and then went for her hair. She believes their attackers had knives or box cutters and padlocks possibly placed inside socks."I put my head down between my legs so they would stop beating me in the face, but they were trying to pull my face up and hit me more,'' she said. "They ripped out chunks of my hair, and I've got a black eye and bruises on my face, and all over my back and shoulder.''
The 11 teenagers arrested in that incident at the CTA's State/Lake station in the Loop about 6:35 p.m. were among a total of 28 people arrested downtown Saturday night for disturbances that ranged from bumping into passers-by on sidewalks to the attack on the CTA train, authorities said.

The attackers were teenage girls, who have been taught under an educational rubric of entitlement.  I believe that these confused kids act out because they believe that they are entitled act out - after all they were encouraged to cheer on Occupy  idiots, NATO bomb-makers and their teachers who abandoned them last summer.  These kids have been taught, not the etymology and application of a word like melee, that personal empowerment is entitlement - what are they supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do?  Move.  Move out of Chicago.  It is all about real estate, Neighbors.  Real estate to be developed for green spaces, cultural entertainment and dining venues, fitness centers, and certainly no homes, apartments, or dwellings beyond the planned Urban Center Chicago  Urban Center Chicago is not for Stash, Wanda, Tony, Maria, Nacho, Teresa, Paddy, Nora, Clifton and Carmesha and their damn kids. It is for Aprile, Dak, E. Morton and Misty Salt, Spencer and Seth.

When public safety has lost all meaning; when basic city services are denied, or diminished by executive fiat, when schools become training grounds for thugs, it might be time to move.

That is why public safety has been purchased at the hands of the G. Flint Taylors, Jon Loevys, Locke Bowmans and the GDS, Vice Lords, Four Corner Hustlers, Mikey Cobras, and Latin Kings, as well as a grant or two for Ceasefire, while any and all public confidence in Chicago Police has been eroded.

That is why more people are alright with Privatizing Sanitation with the Garbage Grid. Seth and Spencer want those over-paid snoring louts fired. Seth and Spencer would be perfectly happy if the Fire Department were hired out and those tubby Mc911 heroes would leave for Romeoville.

That is why an otherwise unemployable good like Forrest Claypool keeps popping up and handed the wheel and throttle of public transportation - he is about Bombardier purchases, Red Line contracts and Ventra Cards and not the safety of a young lady and her mother who foolishly believe that riding the L should be violence free.

Don't think for minute that Forrest Claypool* gives a fat rat's ass about CTA riders, otherwise the CTA would  have addressed thuggery on public transportation long ago. Smart guy like Forrest could do just about anything to reform anything, if he really wanted to; at least that is what the news media always says.

That is why Mayor Rahm Emanuel can sleep nights after putting the bite on President Obama for a loan of $100 million buckeens to gussy up the Riverwalk, rather than hire more cops, improve their working conditions and really do something about melees by the kids.

He might even really try to improve public schools by demanding Vouchers.

Nope.  It is easier to wait for the frustrated, the frightened and the families to move the hell away, while his cheerleaders in the media wring-hands.


*

NPR Approves Catholic Women Wiccan Worship as Wonderful

The Archdiocese of Chicago is denying burial in a Catholic cemetery to a woman ordained as a priest.

Chicago Public Radio May 18, 2010

Question why don't Catholics name their male children Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli?

Because they were not Catholics! They ( above named) jumped ship; Quit; Heroically departed; caused Schism; split; took it on the heel and toe; bounced; caught the fast train on a slow track; took a powder; took the air. . . I could go on, but then I'd be quilty of being a Progressive Pain in the Dupa. Can't have that. I must get to the point - something Chicago Public Radio and every Progressive never seems to do.

Chicago Public Radio is not a friend of Catholics, nor is NPR, nor is WTTW.

Public Broadcasting in all of its manifestations is cozy with Abortion/Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender stuff/ Reversing the Chicago River/Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers like G. Flint Taylor, Jon Loevy and Catholic Bashing Ambulance Chaser Jeff Anderson.

Chicago Public Radio huff and puffed about a poor woman who died of cancer and believed hersel;f to be an ordained Catholic Priest. At best she was delusional as worst a schismatic. I am a prosaic man. I believe that the poor thing took Progressive nonsense to heart. Chicago Public Radio is a humorless joke - always was and always will be.

Here is the NPR Propaganda piece which should be entitled - Damn Those Catholics! We Do!

And I'm Steve Inskeep.

Outside Washington, D.C. in a suburb called Falls Church, Virginia, about 40 Roman Catholics gathered this week to hear mass. They were not in a church and the person delivering the sermon was not a man. Fifteen American women claim they were ordained as Catholic priests this summer. Church leaders say the women are heretics and may be excommunicated.

NPR's Rachel Martin reports.

RACHEL MARTIN reporting:

The congregants mill around the driveway at the home of Bridget Mary Meehan. They sip iced tea and make small talk. Some wear gold cross pendants. Others carry well-worn bibles. When it's time to start, they walk two by two into the backyard accompanied by Meehan's 81-year-old father on the saxophone.

(Soundbite of song, Amazing Grace)

MARTIN: As insects buzz in the trees, 58-year-old Bridget Mary, wrapped in white robes, delivers her message to the ad-hoc congregation.

Ms. BRIDGET MARY MEEHAN: Jesus was a rule-breaker. Jesus challenged the religious leaders, so do we. All are welcome at this table.

MARTIN: She says a prayer over a plate of bread and a glass of wine, then issues a sacramental blessing to each person who comes forward. Meehan and fourteen other women say they were ordained as priests or deacons through two ceremonies earlier this summer, one in Europe and another in Pennsylvania. The women say their ordinations were conducted by three European women and these women were ordained in a secret ceremony by male bishops who are in good standing with the Vatican, which makes all their subsequent ordinations legitimate. For Bridget Mary Meehan and the other self-described priests this is the realization of a lifelong calling.

Ms. MEEHAN: I feel called to be a Roman Catholic priest. It's in my DNA. I'm Irish born, Irish Catholic. We're here because we love the Catholic Church and we're called to make it a better church, to make it a church where we're all equal, women and men. So we are really practicing holy disobedience to an unjust law.

MARTIN: According to canon law, only men can be ordained as priests and conduct the primary rituals of the Catholic Church. Phil Lawler, an editor with Catholic World News, says the women's claim to ordination makes a mockery of Catholic doctrine.

Mr. PHIL LAWLER (Editor, Catholic World News): They do tremendous harm, first of all to themselves and to whatever people are following them into this sort of break from the church. And they do a tremendous harm in terms of muddying the water and confusing people about what the Catholic Church is and does.

MARTIN: Three of the women received letters from their bishops saying their actions are grounds for automatic dismissal from the church. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee wrote a letter to the Vatican suggesting all the women be excommunicated. Bridget Mary Meehan has written several popular books on religion and spirituality. Her Catholic publisher has now dropped her, saying Meehan's actions put her at odds with the church.

Dolores Leckey is with the Woodstock Theological Society at Georgetown University. She says the women have not only distanced themselves from mainstream Catholicism but their actions undermine real improvements in the church on women's rights.

Ms. DOLORES LECKEY (Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Society, Georgetown University): Twenty-five years ago, women were not in the positions of leadership that they are today. And they have a voice and an influence on what happens in the actual day-to-day life of the church.

MARTIN: But for many at this backyard mass, like Barbara Fiske(ph), the all-male priesthood is the last front in the fight for gender equality in the church.

Ms. BARBARA FISKE: It's a day of rejoicing. I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime, but I am happy to be able to rejoice today.

MARTIN: Her friend, Mary Lou Sleevey(ph), shows off her t-shirt emblazoned with the word heretic and a list of names including Joan of Arc and Galileo.

What does that mean?

Ms. MARY LOU SLEEVEY: That means some of us are considered fringe.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. SLEEVEY: You know, you...

MARTIN: Is that a bad word?

Ms. SLEEVEY: Not for me it isn't.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: A study out of Georgetown University in 2000 showed that 70 percent of American Catholics surveyed would support women priests if the church approved. Religious scholars say that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Rachel Martin, NPR News, Washington.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5662518

Catholic Cemetery's Roman Szabelski to Oversee the Horrors at Burr Oak

I was at Kean Gas this morning and heard from a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy that Sheriff Tom Dart had asked a judge to appoint someone to oversee the disaster that is Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL.

My Cousin Willie works for the Sheriff and he has not had much shut-eye in the last six or so days. Willie bought some fish from my son Conor at Di Cola's on Western Ave. just before closing on Tuesday. Conor said Willie looked dead on his feet.

All of the Sheriff's people have done a great job.

Today, I heard that Roman Szabelski of the Catholic Cemeteries was appointed.

Roman Szabelski the Chief of the forty or so Catholic Cemteries in the Chicago Area was appointred by a judge to oversee the horrors of Burr Oak Cemetery, years of mismanagement leading to one of the great horrors of recent history.

Two years ago, Mr. Szabelski appeared on Public Radio to talk about Green Issues in the Cemetery Industry. ( click my post title)

Brushing aside the usual smarm ( snide remarks about 'What Catholics Believe') from the soft-talkers of Public Radio, Mr. Szabelski articulated the care and concern of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese for families of the deceased:

RICHARD: The Catholic Church prefers full-body burial in consecrated ground. That’s because Catholics believe in the resurrection of the dead. The church has only allowed cremation since the mid-Sixties.

MELBY: That doesn’t mean Chicago’s Catholic cemeteries are immune to progress.

COMPUTERIZED GRAVE LOCATOR: Spell out the last name of the deceased that you are trying to locate using the touch-screen keyboard, and then press search.

SZABELSKI: So I’ve just keyed in my family name and I’m pushing search. Florence Szabelski is my mother so I’m asking it to show that record to me.

MELBY: That’s Roman Szabelski. He’s executive director of Catholic cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

RICHARD: Roman started mowing grass at the cemeteries in 1979. Today, he presides over 2.2 million dead at 43 cemeteries around Chicago. He has a good sense of what his customers want.

SZABELSKI: We come from a very conservative tradition where people want their 3 by 8, their grave, to look like their backyard, which is perfectly manicured.

MELBY: Providing that much space won’t be a problem anytime soon. Roman says the archdiocese has stockpiled enough land not just for the next couple decades, but for the next one to two hundred years.

SZABELSKI: We’re sitting in Queen of Heaven Cemetery right now, which is roughly about a 300-acre site. About 100 of those acres are leased to the golf course next door. As we need the property, the golf course will go from 18 to 9 to zero and a driving range and that property will be used.

MELBY: Roman doesn’t expect to dig into that golf course for another 25 years.

RICHARD: Yet Roman is considering carving out a green burial section in one of the cemeteries here.

MELBY: Still it won’t be easy to do in this sea of manicured lawns. Green burial advocates prefer a natural landscape of wild grass and trees. Their preference is to keep the plots free of any monuments or markers.

SZABELSKI: So we’re trying to figure out how do you incorporate a green burial cemetery section into a traditionally kept cemetery.

Not much Green at Burr Oak, but a great deal of grief. I wonder if Chicago Public Radio will make note? Most likely not.


The families of the thousands of Burr Oak Cemetery Dead will at last have a caring and thoughtful soul looking out for them. Francis Cardinal George has a solid man being tasked with this extra duty.

Catholics cause Progressives the itch, until a human crisis like Burr Oak Cemetery seems to impact on all of us - and while the work is being done for people, the Progressives will stand on the sidelines and wait for the green light to go Bill Maher on Catholics again.

God Bless the work, Roman!