Political Analysis From Some Guy Whose Got A City Job

The Chicago Sun Times is the worst paper with some of the best writers in Chicago - Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, Natasha Korecki and Dan Mihalppoulos.  Today, Chris Fusco and Dan Mihalopoulos report on the tacit support of Speaker Mike Madigan for Rahm Emanuel's next run for Mayor, " After staying neutral in the last race for Chicago mayor, Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan has provided major support to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of election records shows."

This analysis took place while Quinn was still Governor in Springfield.

The epiphany brought on by city workers armed with clipboards over stuffed with nominating petitions for the upcoming aldermanic and mayoral contests is hardly the Star of Bethleham signing, " Oh, Come! Oh Come, EeeeeeeeeeMaHahan You All! To run some crap games NEAR EAR Da EL."

Sorry.I have been trapped in 6th Grade at Little Flower Grammar School since 1964.  I got me some kind of Rod Serling brain disorder.

Anyway, Fusco and Mihalopoulos are on target.  Though it is hard to tell what a universally silent man is saying.  The troops are out.  I have barely finished hefting multiple Fran Hurley and Bill Cunningham panic fliers into the Blue Recycle Bins when new glossy political promissory notes appear in my mail chute.

I decided to talk to one of disappearing legionnaires of Chicago City Work Force - Clay Calhoun, or CC, to neighbors and friends.

CC came to Chicago in 1978 from Rapid City, SD as a campaign worker for Senator Frank Church's bid for the Presidential nomination. CC was quickly  dragoon'd to the Ted Kennedy Campaign and when Jimmy Carter got the nod was left here to dangle.  He worked for various Ward organizations, until he found a home here in 19th Ward which in the 1980's was run by giants - Jeremiah Joyce and Mike Sheahan. Giants speak truth - 'you have a job.'  Giants do not understand Passive Aggressive. That is the language of the Progressive - " I AM working for you. I AM hearing you. You Catholics are SO needed. The Republicans control everything and now is not a good time.  You are the Best!  Vote!"

Mike Madigan and the Giants got along.  Madigan speaks no words, but deeds up a storm.  Giants match deeds with words.

CC has worked steadily.  I decided to ask Clay Calhoun about the word about Emanuel as political currency;met him for coffee at Horse Thief Hollow.

"CC,"  I said, "  how will the 19th break the news to voters that it is Okay to vote for Mayor Coon Eyes?:"

CC looked up from his recent edition of the Beverly Review, took a sip of coffee, rub his South Dakota hawk-like beak and managed, " Rahm's not too bad."

Thereby hangs the tale and each every one of us.

Chicago Media Giggle Up Karen Lewis, Because Toni Preckwinle Wont' ( Can't) Play

Karen Lewis, less than a yard from her Svengali Jesse Sharkey (ISO & CTU) got the giggles shared by our propaganda media!


Chicago's Media (read Editorial Boards) are just giddy over new, scientific polling numbers that show Karen Lewis is also leading over Rahm Emanuel - Toni Preckwinkle holds 55% and the CTU sock-puppet for Socialist Jesse Sharkey with nine point lead - in the soon to be fabulous race to replace Rahm. The Sun Times conducted a poll showing Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Karen Lewis beating the bejazuz out of Mayor Coon Eyes.

Lewis revealed on Monday she already has an unofficial exploratory committee in the works, a chairperson has been named and her camp is working to have a representative in each of the city’s 77 neighborhoods.
Since an Early & Often poll released Sunday put Lewis at a 9-percentage-point advantage over Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Lewis’ phone has been ringing non-stop, she said.
“They’ve been coming from all over the country,” Lewis said in an interview Monday. “Facebook is blowing up. Twitter is blowing up.”

Blowing up like the great puffer fish!

Once again, Chicago sheep are encouraged to make the electoral choice of horse-poop, or manure.



Yep, you can not  beat the joy around the Editorial tables. They are happier than a teen age boy with two fish sticks.

Let's see, vote for Karen and Lewis and Jesse Sharkey becomes mayor; vote for Toni Preckwinkle and Dr. Quentin Young owns Chicago as well as Illinois.

Either way, Chicago fast-tracks to Detroit.

Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey ( you get one without the other . . .ever!) want all of us to know that they have Grassroots support!  That means MoveOn Dot Orgasm and Grassroots Illinois Action cranking up the happy!

“Another local group, Grassroots Illinois Action, isn’t backing a particular candidate.
However, field director Abbie Illenberger said the group is building both its member and financial base in hopes to possibly boost the right candidate’s campaign. Illenberger said the group’s work is in the backdrop of Emanuel having $7 million in the bank and having a SuperPAC that has the potential to match that amount. The mayoral election is Feb. 24, 2015.

Now here's the side-splitter, "The ability for regular, working people to run means we have to organize ourselves and do it collectively,” says Abbie Illenberger.

Regular, working people?  Karen? Toni? Alderman Bob Fioretti? \

 Frank from down Maplewood Street works for Streets and Sanitation, Molly who took a leave of abscense from CPS because Tim King's Urban Prep thugs loused up the elementary school she worked at, Jerry the African American copper who drives the wagon in 22 and Dewey the laborer with County are all regular working people.

I am around regular working people 24/7 and they can't stand any of the above mentioned just plain folks.

The same news media that gave America the Barack Obama gum-scraping it now enjoys and paved Chicago's pot-holed streets with 40 Weight Motor oil for Rahm's Carpet-bagging tenure as Mayor is giggling giddily to make two more mediocrities Chicago's Chief Executives!

Now that' old news.

Rahm v. Preckinkle: Book Dodge Ball with Joe Epstein as Referee! Jimmy Fallon????

 

"Books are fun!" Just ask America's greatest essayist and literary critic-critic Joe Epstein!

I love books and I love getting nailed in the mush with dodge ball.  Books empower and dodge balls keep us on our toes.

Jimmy Fallon?  I guess he's pretty funny, but Jimmy could not get me to watch Bill Moyers, unless we were going to goof on that doughy mope's sanctimonious posturings on PBS, ala Mystery Science Theatre.

Rahm Emanuel, of CNN's Chicagoland and the Tonight Show Challenges, is Chicago Mayor who has done more to make the dim-bulb Progressive sour-puss Toni Preckwinkle seem like Frances Rappaport Horwich*  Toni Preckwinkle is former Chicago Alderman, former spouse of Zeus Preckwinkle and the current Cook County Board President with the personality of a dial tone and a room-temperature I.Q., I believe.

Rahm Emanuel took credit for Jimmy Fallon's March 2014 Polar Plunge in support of Chicago Special Olympics run by the witty, brilliant and painfully honest James "Skinny" Sheahan and is trying parlay that dubious ownership into a Tonight Show broadcast from the Chicago Theatre.  Rahm wants Jimmy Fallon to bring his show to Chiraq by dint of a promissory note from the Chicago Board of Education that Chicago Public School (CPS) children will read 2.5M books. That's allot of books.

"Here's our challenge: This year the kids of the city of Chicago, I challenged them to 2.4 million books to be read, and if they do it this summer we want you to bring the Tonight Show back to Chicago, it hasn't been since 1998," Emanuel said in a rare moment of pleading. "If they read it, will you do it, for the kids of Chicago?"
After Fallon tried to bump the number up to 11 million, Emanuel joked that a local accounting firm would handle the tally before saying, "2.5 million books, you can bring your show back to Chicago any time."
Fallon agreed, saying "I love to go to Chicago."

 Hey, who don't, Jimmy?

I read a lot of books and continue to do so, because my Mom and Dad read alot of books and I went to Catholic schools from K-20+ and taught literature in Catholic schools from 1975 -Present.

As a kid I read Captain of Ice , by Charles Spain Verral about twenty million times.

Book reports on this great read only got by the nuns twice.  Does Rahm factor distinct tomes into the wager's equation, or is he expecting any number of young scapegrace to read Diary of Wimpy Kid over and over?

Rather than get into the tall weeds of For the Kids legalese - why not offer a different challenge - Literary DodgeBall?

Rahm could go Mano a Mano with Toni Preckwinkle tossing unlimited literary volleys of question with retired Northwestern Literary Professor Joseph Epstein.

Each participant comes armed with an individual literary arsenal - Toni Preckwinkle once damned Nobel Laureate for Literature Saul Bellow as a racist.  I like to hear Rahm toss a dodgeball question like this -

• "CCBPresident Toni!  In one sentence, explain 'What exactly is Mr. Samler's Planet?' "
• " In the Canon of Bellow's racist tomes, Who exactly is __________ the Rainking?
• " Saul Bellow's imitation of James T. Farrell's south side trilogy is called The Adventures of Augie _________________, whom?"

Then having been pummeled, Smart as a Whip and former teacher and Hyde Park resident Toni could ask Rahm . . .hmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Let me see H'yar. Books, wait, wait, don't tell me.  Literary?

Man I'd pay to watch that and I'd bring a picnic basket chock full of eats from Manny's and something to read.

*"Frances Rappaport Horwich (born Frances Rappaport, 16 July 1907–22 July 2001) was the host of the popular children's television program 'Miss Frances' Ding Dong School.'"

The Media Never Even Got Close to The Pitch -Cardinal George Smokes It Past Them

Francis Cardinal George has more hop on the ball than Jake Peavy, at least these last few hours anyway. Kansas City went over the Sox 5-2 and Peavy took the loss hard.

Cardinal George fanned every "news" outlet in Chicago, again.   Louis Farrakhan gets more favorable treatment and coverage from our Chicago Values Media than Cardinal George.  Is the Medill Empire basically anti-Semitic ?

Hey, I heard from a guy very close to Senate Leader Harry Reid that Chicago Tribune Editor Bruce Dold has been given to wearing bow ties, lately . . . just sayin'!

Cardinal George, the Archbishop of the Chicago, a Catholic guy, wrote a wonderfully articulate reposte to Mayor Chicago Values over his remarks concerning Chick fil A River North and elsewhere.  Every paper ignored the Cardinal's teaching document.

When Chicagoans noticed the Cardinal's words without any help from Manya Brachear ( Trib), or Carol Marin (Cosmic Local), the  Fruit of Islam Chicago Tribune Editorial Board Minister Brutha Dold offered up a Chicken . . . Chick fil A . . .acknowledgment.  Nothing Dold-idian Less than  " Cardinal enters Chick-fil-A fray!" The Media went all Chick fil A on Bruce Dold's say - Google it your own bad self! Every news out outlet went all chicken . . . .

http://www.archchicago.org/blog/comments.aspx?postID=276

Here is a link above to the Cardinal's original response to our public yahoos in office - no chick, chicken, egg, poultry, feathers  . . .& etc.

I don't believe I recall seeing the words Chick, Fil, A, or Chicken anywhere in Cardinal George's response to Ald. Proco-Joe Moreno and Mayor Coon Eyes Emanuel Mussolini Improve.  It take a DOLD to build this village of the blind.  The Chicago Tribune has had its bat on its shoulder since Dave Axelrod pow-wowed about a Barack Obama White House.

Cardinal George is no Louis Farrakhan afterall.

Here is Cardinal George's fireball follow-up!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Chicago Values, Revisited: it’s not about chicken!

Responses to my reflections last week on “Chicago values” fell into two camps. There were almost universal plaudits for recognizing that the government should be concerned about actions and not about thoughts and values. The media, of course, are in this camp, because they are concerned about the free speech that is at the heart of their profession.

More complicated, on the other hand, was the reaction to the “value” that was the case in point: same-sex “marriage.” Some who are comfortably in the first camp deserted the field of argument on gay marriage. An argument is always made in a context that determines what can be considered sensible, and it seems to me that some of us are arguing out of different contexts.
There are three contexts for discussing “gay marriage”: 1) the arena of individual rights and their protection in civil law, 2) the field of activities defined by nature and its laws, and 3) the realm of faith as a response to God’s self-revelation in history. Unfortunately, when the only permissible context for discussing public values is that of individual rights protected by civil law, then it is the government alone that determines how it is acceptable to act. Every public actor (including faith communities) then becomes the government’s agent. This is a formula for tyranny.
We can see how appeals to pluralism and toleration gradually become tyrannical in the development of how we are now expected to regard the killing of unborn children. When the individual civil right to abort a living child was discovered in the Constitution, its justification began as a “necessary evil” for the sake of a woman’s health; it was then applauded in nobler terms as a positive symbol of a woman’s freedom; it is now part of the value system of our society and everyone must be involved in paying for it, either through taxes or insurance. It is mainstream medicine and settled social policy. Its opponents are relegated to a quirky fringe, outside of the American consensus not only on what it is legal to do but also on what it is good to support. When the government, the media and the entertainment industries agree to agree on how to use words and shape the argument, society itself is deliberately transformed in ways that bring academics, judges, legislators, lawyers, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, actors, psychiatrists, doctors and every other public professional into public agreement, all portraying themselves as original thinkers. Anyone opposed to the new consensus, no matter the reason, is dismissed as a throwback to an earlier age, to be tolerated, perhaps, but removed from public life and, eventually, punished. It’s a very old story.

Getting people to think outside the context of “civil rights” is difficult. It’s as if Americans were forbidden to think beyond politics. What is singularly peculiar about the “gay marriage” argument is the way its proponents dismiss the field of nature itself as in any way normative for human actions. We would think it odd if the government, in order to please those who desire to fly without an airplane, were to repeal the law of gravity. If nature gets in the way of a new civil right to “gay marriage,” however, that’s too bad for nature. This strikes me as bizarre.
Entering into the context of faith, the believer looks to how God has intervened in history through the calling of the Jewish people to a particular vocation, through inspiring the Hebrew prophets, by the incarnation of the eternal Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth, and the founding of the Church that speaks in Jesus’ name until he returns in glory. The God who created order in nature also reveals his plan for us in history; and the religious teaching on the nature of marriage is eminently clear. Those who dismiss any religiously based argument as simply private and therefore not publicly normative are at least consistent with the secularism that makes protection of individual “civil rights” entirely determinative of public life.
What is puzzling is the case of those who, while claiming to be believers, ignore the history of salvation and reduce God to a cosmic wimp who smiles and blesses whatever comes down the track, as if God were without intelligence or the ability to discern right from wrong. Jesus is certainly “inclusive” as the savior of the whole world who invites all to follow him. But Jesus calls us to convert to his ways, which are not ours. Among the sayings of Jesus, there are about as many that start “Woe to you…” as there are those that begin “Blessed are they…” A Jesus reduced to our wishful thinking is useless.
What remains a Gospel imperative, of course, is a respectful and loving concern for those who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, including them in the community of faith and accompanying them in their quest for holiness of life. The Archdiocese attempts this response, in part, through AGLO and Courage groups.
Thanks to all who responded to last week’s blog; apologies to anyone who feels unfairly judged. I’ve tried to keep it at the level of ideas and social trends that seem to me to be dangerous to us all, Chicagoans or others.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI (emphases my own)

 You broke the clock gun there, Cardinal! They never even heard it coming, let alone saw it whiz by, Your Eminence!


https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268#q=Cardinal+George+and+Chick+Fil+A&hl=en&tbo=1&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268&output=search&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&psj=1&ei=RGUiUKDTDsnxygGY3YAo&ved=0CAYQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=416d567912eb08ea&biw=1007&bih=613
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-02/news/ct-met-cardinal-george-chick-fill-a-0802-20120802_1_gay-marriage-chicago-values-chicago-cardinal-francis-george