Newshound Steve Rhodes, Poet JJ Tindall and Private Eye Ed Hammer Craft Ultimate ChiTown Tourists Stops

I read The Beachwood Reporter everyday* and my Testosterone level is higher than it was when I was Nineteen and My Investments in Precious Metals Have Made Me the Crassus of  South Rockwell! - Pat Hickey - Your Internet White Noise Specialist

Exclusive: Chicago's New Tourist Attractions!

Zip Lines And Petting Zoos

"Intriguing new attractions to make Chicago more appealing to international tourists could be implemented within months with the potential to attract 75 million visitors by 2020, blowing past Mayor Rahm Emanuel 50 million goal, the board chairman of Choose Chicago said Thursday," the Sun-Times reports.

"Glass-enclosed cable cars along the Chicago River, designated club cars on CTA trains to O'Hare Airport and plane rides along the lakefront may sound pie-in-the-sky but Bruce Rauner portrayed the ideas as attainable within a relatively short time frame."

And that's not nearly the half of it! The Beachwood has learned that the following ideas are also under consideration:

* Virtual City Council: Tourists invited to sit in city council meetings and cast actual votes as long as they agree to always vote Yes for the sake of historical accuracy.

* Downtown Zip Lines: Also known as Rapid Transit Air Lanes. Try one yourself or hail a Zip Cab.

* Drone Pilot For A Day: Fire missiles into random groups of Yemeni and Afghan civilians from an official U.S. military kiosk at Navy Pier.

* The Jesse Jackson Jr. Petting Zoo at Millennium Park:Stocked with just one species: Elk.

* Taste of Terre Haute: A festival featuring the food of the Terre Haute federal pen.

* Foreclosure Walking Tours: Tours last eight hours a day for a month. Patrons issued concealed 9MM Glocks, cadaver chalk and recycled red-light cameras.

* CompStat Theater: Watch from behind the glass as police chief Garry McCarthy reams out his commanders for embarrassing the mayor by not preventing crime it is impossible for them to prevent.

* Pizzeria UNO: Rebranded as the city's cloutiest pizza.

* CTA Grand Jury Trains: One of several brand extensions capitalizing on the popularity of the CTA Christmas Train franchise. Also: The CTA iPhone Robbery Train and the CTA Concealed Carry Train.

* Millennium Park 2.0: A life-size replica of a working U.S. Steel plant will rise on the site of the former U.S. Steel plant on the Southeast Side. All tourists who browse through the faux plant will be directed through the gift shop, where a half-dozen rotating part-time cashier jobs that pay minimum wage will be filled by former steelworkers who don't yet have mesothelioma.

* Charter Vest Rentals: Adventure tourists who want to visit real Chicago neighborhoods will be offered body armor rentals at airport and downtown kiosks. Proceeds will go to help struggling charter schools.

* Photos With Jim Belushi: He'll pay you to take a photo with him. Hopefully tourists will then pay it forward by spending that money at local establishments.

* Chicago 911: Tourists invited to respond to 911 calls the police don't take anymore.

* The Chicago Ghost Payroll Marathon: In lieu of actually running, spend three hours in a bar then show up at the finish line to collect your ribbon.

- J.J. Tindall, Ed Hammer, Steve Rhodes

Comments welcome.

Permalink

Posted on February 26, 2013

* except when Bother Rhodes has some lame ass excuse and then I have to re-read the previous day's pithy missives.

The Burge Trial - The Jury Will Not End Burge Industries: Lawyers, Louts and Loudmouths

Very good people are appalled by the idea of torture. The idea of torture in Chicago by homicide detectives committed to systemtic racism has been carefully crafted and marketed over the last thirty years.

Academics, Activists and Advocacy Agendanistas have parlayed the idea of torture into a mythology that permeates what passes for Chicago's corporate news media.

Carol Marin and other iconic columnists have not tucked their snouts into the story of Area 2, but have relied completely on the work of John Conroy and the propaganda machine of G. Flint Taylor. Code of Silence, Black Box, House of Screams, Vietnam 101 Torture are part of the Burge Industries glossary developed by Sasha Abramsky, Bernardine Dohrn, G. Flint Taylor, Northwestern Law, and especially John Conroy, who can not seem to be given the contract by the corporate media that laps up his every nuanced participle. Why is he not the editor of some great metropolitan newspaper? They all redact his texts and themes.

Twelve citizens will decide for or against Jon Burge, who has been fabricated into the face of torture, by G. Flint Taylor, The MacArthur Center for Justice, Jon Loevy, Locke Bowman, Jean McLean Snyder, Berardine Dohrn, WTTW, WBEZ, NPR, and the lazy and compliant editorial boards.

I have followed this story as a citizen and as an educator who spends seven days a week in Area 2 - I live here and live with the fall-out that has evolved as the result of the erosion in faith for Law Enforcement at the hands of lawyers, louts and loudmouths. A rainforest of crime has rooted up in Chicago- not in Wicker Park, Bucktown, Lakeview, Highland Park, Winnteka, or Wilmette, but in Gresham, Englewood, Brainerd, Morgan Park, Beverly and Roseland.

I have witnessed the savagery of street thuggery and attended the funerals of too many sweet and hard working young black men slaughtered in the Thug Comfort Zone created by Burge Industries - Eric Ersery, Jason Riley, Steven Lyons,Eric and Steve Lee to name but a few. I have witnessed the police officers and detectives of Gresham District (6th) and Area 2.

I don't buy the systemic racist torture at all. Am I intellectually dishonest? I don't think so. I have followed this story very religiously since Officers Fahey and O'Brien were tortured and murdered. I know that I have found the endless chorus of charges and the endless failures to make the case for torture a compelling case for doubt. What happened? I do not know, but I do not buy for one second the charges howled by G. Flint Taylor and the murdering savages that he represents. I suspect that G. Flint Taylor and others in his cottage industry including Chicago's news media want the Burge Saga to continue.

The perjury case against Jon Burge,it seems to me, was merely another legal sop paid to G.Flint Taylor. The City of Chicago and Cook County tried tossing millions of dollars at this public pest. They would have done well to stand in court and demanded a battle royal against the charges. They did not.

The jury will decide one way or the other, but do not think for a minute that Burge Industries will be satisfied. If Jon Burge is convicted or acquitted, G. Flint Taylor and his disciples will howl for more, more, more court time and greater fees. Taylor is smelling an acquittal of Jon Burge and has already ginned up his next moves:

Whatever the outcome of the Jon Burge perjury and obstruction of justice trial, the legal battles that have swirled around him for more than 20 years, and that have cost the city millions of dollars, will drag on.

Not only legal battles, but political battles,” said Flint Taylor, who represents several men who accused Mr. Burge and others of torturing them while at Area 2 violent-crimes unit of the police department on the Far South Side in the 1970s and ’80s. “This is just one phase in the long struggle against police torture.”

Even Huffington Post has gone dark on the Burge Trial.

The only real, genuine and consistant voice calling out the media for this sense of fait accompli in the Burge Trial has been Steve Rhodes of Beachwood Reporter and we agree not a bit in this matter. Rhodes even seemed to shame the Chicago Reader, once the home of John Conroy into some sense of coverage. Rhodes is honest and sincere in his antipathy to Jon Burge, unlike the moral whack-a-mole opportunists Carol Marin, or Eric Zorn.

John Conroy will be kept busy and his story line will continue as Carol Marin and others play the Polyanna do-gooders.

More kids will be slaughtered. If it bleeds it leads.

The scent of easy money, like the taste for blood can not be sated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/us/27cncburge.html

Steve Rhodes Explains his Resignation from NBC on WBEZ

Here is a great interview with Steve Rhodes by Justin Kaufmann, Web Editor for WBEZ.

However, yesterday I posted a WBEZ interview.

South Side's Billy Dec - Billy Hill - Kickin' It Mad for Olympics - Just Not in Copenhagen

Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes' Beachwood Reporter for an insight to the unsightly and unctuous Billy Dec whose south side counter part oozes down Western Ave. -Meet Billy Hill -again
Peabody nominated former Children's TV Cast Member ( Chuck Bill's Adventure Theatre - Voice of Herman the German Moose) , Dis-barred Illinois Attorney, Harvard Il.Business School.Llp, Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee Director of Way Too Human Relations, Slept with Elke Somer in 1978 when she appeared in Please Don't Eat the Daisies at the Martiniquel owns top Chicago Beverly/Morgan Park & Mt. Greenwood venues ,D.B.Mc Spitsteeth; Suds & Underwear Pub and Laundrymat, & won US Coin Operator of the Year! Check him out on the Yellow Pages, The Sign Over Fox's Pub & his blog www.aSelfisThang.com

Twitter Titter from Billy Hill Y'all! Props to my man president obama… knew he would bow down to the Boss… as a city, we are all making history…we are just all not gonna make money. I hope you are as proud and excited as I am!

As for St. Christina Gym , it is absolutely beautiful… so much history, the architecture is outstanding, the people are great,… well, I wish I had a video to spill it all… and btw, I keep doing these because of requests on twitter… if think I look like a big nerd as much as I do… I apologize… don’t watch. It's like when Dude. And as promised, will continue to keep you in the loop or in back o' the yards step by step on way to Copenhagen on twitter (click here to follow me). That's my light switch. o snaaaaaappppp!!!!!!! Day-em!

Most important, please take a minute today to tell all your friends, coworkers, contacts, family,… to share these celebrity messages from me and all the olympc supporters at Father Perez Knights of Columbus Council and the Magic where breakfast starts early and stays late - like tommy fitzgibbons -(shout out TF!) what's with the babe at Kean she's all pippy longstocking and never gives me the time of night - i mean day - Old habits are hard to break and new britches are tough to crack !Yeowww! billy you is baaad! with all so virally the rest of the world will know how great our country is an that we stoked the cabbage and how ready we are to welcome guests from around the globe (and the 4.4billion watching us sick groove on tv) as the sick nastiests host of the greatest sport, cultural, and friendship strengthening event ever! Bourbon Street Rocks Y'all!! (who knows, maybe they will get to one of the members judging us and it could all turn in our favor!) or not. Kickin' it at the evergreen plaza all this week!

BGA's Andy Shaw Clouted His Kids into Magnet Schools, But NOW it's a Scandal. Scandalous, Shocking and Oh, So Progressive.

Beachwood Reporter's publisher, editor and scalpel sharp wit, Steve Rhodes, a rock-ribbed Liberal of the Old School, plucked this gem out of the same old manure that passes for Chicago Journalism:

By Steve Rhodes

Mayor Daley recently half-joked that the burgeoning CPS clout scandal at least showed that some Chicago schools had become so desirable during his tenure that parents and politicians were willing to cheat to get their kids admitted into them.

But Marj Halperin's 1988 Chicago magazine article called "The Lottery" - which she recently shared with District 299 blogger Alexander Russo - shows that clout admissions and the controversial "principal picks" now under federal investigation pre-date the Richard M. Daley era.

Here's how Halperin opened her piece:

"Governor Thompson got his kid in. So did state representatives Ellis Levin and Al Ronan. You'll find the daughter of Alderman Patrick O'Connor, head of the City Council's education committee, in a magnet classroom this year. Alderman Ed Smith's, too.

"TV reporter Andy Shaw's daughters are in LaSalle Language Academy, the same as one-time Chicago Sting soccer star Karl Heinz Granitza's children. Monroe Anderson, the Mayor's press secretary and a former Newsweek reporter, sends his son to Inter-American Magnet. Perhaps if he drops Scott off himself, Anderson gives a nod to some of the Board of Ed employees, who also send their children to Inter-American - such as Margarita Rosa, of the board's research and evaluation office. Fernando Colon got his daughter in while working for the board's law department.

http://www.beachwoodreporter.com/column/the_monday_papers_166.php

This morning, I read that the Principal of Whitney Young has been subpoenaed to appear before a Federal Grand Jury on clout for classes!

This nonsense was kicked into overdrive by the mopes who are too lazy to really follow a lead. The same hypocrites who gave padded jobs to Bernadine Dorhn and Billy Ayers were huffing and puffing about the smell of clout at the University of Illinois. They were demanding immediate resignations ( Can I get a Harrumph?) of Trustees and rending their garments that 'No Such Clout Actions Took Place on Their Watches! ( I Didn't Hear a Harrumph From That Guy.Abner! Let Me Hear a Harrumph!).

The Newly Minted BGA Watch Pup, Andy ('What Floor?') Shaw clouted his kids into a school and is now sniffing out corruption? The two Brooks Brothers Bolsheviks who ran University of Illinois (Urbana & CC) who clouted the Underground Nick and Nora Charles into padded sinecures at Northwestern and UICC and padlocked any information on their actions are Howling out Jeremiads?

Progressive Hypocrisy makes Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna seem like Trappist Monks.

Well done Steve Rhodes!

Kickin' It Old School With Billy Hill!! Night Life After Ken's on Western Like Billy Dec!

Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes' Beachwood Reporter for an insight to the unsightly and unctuous Billy Dec whose south side counter part oozes down Western Ave. -Meet Billy Hill!



All About Me:

Peabody nominated former Children's TV Cast Member ( Chuck Bill's Adventure Theatre - Voice of Herman the German Moose) , Dis-barred Illinois Attorney, Harvard Il.Business School.Llp, Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee Director of Way Too Human Relations, Slept with Elke Somer in 1978 when she appeared in Please Don't Eat the Daisies at the Martiniquel owns top Chicago Beverly/Morgan Park & Mt. Greenwood venues ,D.B.Mc Spitsteeth; Suds & Underwear Pub and Laundrymat, & won US Coin Operator of the Year! Check him out on the Yellow Pages, The Sign Over Fox's Pub & his blog www.aSelfisThang.com

Kickin It Old School with Two-Ton Baker's Boy Madden:

When I was dropping quarters and dimes in the phone near Kean about hanging with jimmy fallon so many people freaked out! jimmy said "No Way!" so i know there are fans out there that will love this one... i love Jimmy fallon too, he is a huge chicago sport fan... which of course made the Olympics in chicago a no brainer for him to talk about to Billy dec who is the Orginal G of this and I'm crowding 60 now and had my best years when Boz owned reilly's daughter pub and banned me, before gangster billy dauber shot me and my date! (I also got my man love-muscle, drummer from the brian ferguson experience who plays at the glendora house in chicago ridge, in a killer interview coming soon). I have had the pleasure of being in 30 rock green rooms and backstage in the past when i got past security with con boyle who knew everyone, and every time, it's a completely intimidating example of the biggest in tv production at its greatest... but it didn't matter to jimmy, he told me to go #$%^ myself and i was all "dude I would if I could like the dog you know' he still would not drop anything to sit w/ me and get real about his love for chicago... enjoy! i'm no stranger to the strange if you get me. Mike Houlihan won't return my calls which is cool and neither will georgie wendt or mike keaton who was just in beverly for a movie. You can't swim with minnows. the number in chicago is - (773) TRY-U812.

This deep you ain't shallow -kickin' with Billy hill!

So i called the stage hand and road manager for Dick "two-ton" Baker*, Sonny Madden. we hungout and partied past 8p.m. at Jackie Casto's Ken**'s on western. don't think too many hotties didn't ask for a hook-up either - but it was not a night for the ladies it was all about music and the rush that is being a celebrity. Kickin with me is chicago! I kick with kessler and a C'Old Style. Don't drink 'n drive yo!


oh, and don't forget, I'm posting at least one new celebrity interview a day here until I land in Copenhagen, Ky.on oct. 2nd to hear the official announcement on the radio that (hopefully) chicago/usa wins the title of home to the 2016 olympics! how does that happen? you help spread the news! watch tv, pennysavers, go up to people you don't even know while walking at ridge mall, have the kids email blast,.. whatever you can to get everyone in your city, country, world,... to watch these videos and hear how great Chicago is (and the USA is in general), and hear how much we want to host this cultural, sport, and friendship strengthening celebration in our home country in 2016! The Olympics will be huge. . .to people backin' it so I am backin' it!


i'm too busy to punctuate - words -know what i mean. Kickin' it Old school!

* Dick "Two Ton" Baker was a Chicago Entertainment Legend who played at south side clubs like Casto's, Club El Bianco, Franklin House, Mirror Lounge and Mel Collins' Sea Breeze Lounge on Ashland Avenue:

Dick "Two Ton" Baker was a giant -- literally and figuratively -- on the Chicago entertainment scene for nearly four decades, from the late 1930s until his death in 1975. He played piano quite well and sang in a pleasing, infectious baritone voice, but mainly, he entertained, in whatever medium. He had several popular radio shows on on the Chicago Tribune's flagship station, WGN, one of which went out nationwide over the Mutual network. He was on the first television broadcast on WGN-TV (April 5, 1948), and later had very popular children's programs on that and other Chicago TV stations.

http://twotonbaker.com/

** One of the finest ( along with Schaller's Pump in Bridgeport) Old School Family Restaurants where a Billy Dec is shown the door in short order - no dweebs and no hipster doofii.NoteDescription of Ken's Restaurant
This ageless gem has been a mainstay on the strip for many years. Ken's solid menu features outstanding ribs and a scrumdillicious London broil in full meal or sandwich form. The bar rests in a separate room adjoining the restaurant and is a bit of a hangout for the older folks. In other words, this is where Beverly's career drinkers hang out.

Average cost: $10

Ken's
10522 S. Western Ave., Chicago
Tel: (773) 238-0234


http://www.centerstagechicago.com/restaurants/kensrestaurant.html
Click my post title for Billy Dec's smarm

Dr. Camille Paglia Knows That Sgt. Jimmy Crowley Will Have Another Beer at the White House Before Obama's Public Option Gets Articulated

Salon is a pretentious word for a beer and wine guzzle and gum flap. Its roots are in the Italian neoclassical age ( late 16th century) when everyone who was anyone was agog over Horace, Cicero, Virgil and Catalus.

Groups of people who could read met in a big open room and read Latin poetry and discussed the beauties of the tropes and truths of the sentences. The French went apey over the salone gatherings of the Italians and aped the tradition from the 17th Century on and then the children and grandchildren of Yankee Puritans and immigrant swell-wannabees played Salon. They still do.

I attend a Salon every morning up at Kean Gas where worthies gather to exercise their gums over events and ideas large and small. This gathering includes teachers, lawyers, ComEd workers, Peoples Gas clerks, Cops, Firefighters, Nurses and Ward precinct captains. Invariably my faults and peccadillo's are tossed back upon my positions to poison the well of dispute -nonetheless, my helot's thoughts get free voice. Last Friday, I had the pleasure to 'salon' with Beachwood Reporter and NBC Chicago web-meister Steve Rhodes - a rock-ribbed liberal of the old school and young man with a lode of intellectual and literary gold to mine. I was bested in dispute and at Eight Ball no end by Rhodes and other 'bright young things' - and that is as it should be. It was the best of salons.

Salon ( Clique my Post Title) is also a slick magazine that features agreed upon smart-set contributors and sanctioned opinion-slingers. Ever-weepy and whiny Joan Walsh, an endlessly dull harpy and MSNBC head-shaker, holds this tent's center-post. However, the absolute best writer and only original thinker at this salone ( in deference to the Professor's Italian Heritage) is Camille Paglia.

I know of Dr. Pagila due to my trade as a has-been English teacher. Camille Paglia always extends the context - the breadth and depth of her reading never posts limits on her mind's ability to articulate without cant or bigotry.Dr. Pagila is openly gay yet not given to strident agenda netting. She is a former Catholic who respects the beauty, mystery and majesty of the Faith. She is a feminist who never allows simple-minded association to grab for the broad brush and repaint the house.

This week Dr. Paglia went right to the root of the Obama White House's failure to articulate why Health Care Reform must be accepted by every American without a careful examination of the guts of the agenda. Paglia writes that Obama Care's root problem could be witnessed a few weeks ago in the Gates/Crowley nonsense and distraction. Pagila states,

As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

Surely, the basic rule in comprehensive legislation should be: First, do no harm. The present proposals are full of noble aims, but the biggest danger always comes from unforeseen and unintended consequences. Example: the American incursion into Iraq, which destabilized the region by neutralizing Iran's rival and thus enormously enhancing Iran's power and nuclear ambitions.

What was needed for reform was an in-depth analysis, buttressed by documentary evidence, of waste, fraud and profiteering in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Instead what we've gotten is a series of facile, vulgar innuendos about how doctors conduct their practice, as if their primary motive is money. Quite frankly, the president gives little sense of direct knowledge of medical protocols; it's as if his views are a tissue of hearsay and scattershot worst-case scenarios.

Of course, it didn't help matters that, just when he needed maximum momentum on healthcare, Obama made the terrible gaffe of declaring that, even without his knowing the full facts, Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly" in arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Obama's automatic identification with the pampered Harvard elite (wildly unpopular with most sensible people), as well as his insulting condescension toward an officer doing his often dangerous duty, did serious and perhaps irreparable damage to the president's standing. The strained, prissy beer summit in the White House garden afterward didn't help. Is that the Obama notion of hospitality? Another staff breakdown.

Both Gates and Obama mistakenly assumed that the original incident at Gates' house was about race, when it was about class. It was the wealthy, lordly Gates who committed the first offense by instantly and evidently hysterically defaming the character of the officer who arrived at his door to investigate the report of a break-in. There was no excuse for Gates' loud and cheap charges of racism, which he should have immediately apologized for the next day, instead of threatening lawsuits and self-aggrandizing television exposés. On the other hand, given that Cambridge is virtually a company town, perhaps police headquarters should have dispatched a moderator to the tumultuous scene before a small, disabled Harvard professor was clapped in handcuffs and marched off to jail. But why should an Ivy League panjandrum be treated any differently from the rest of us hoi polloi?

Class rarely receives honest attention in the American media, as demonstrated by the reporting on a June incident at a swimming pool in the Philadelphia suburbs. When the director of the Valley Swim Club in Montgomery County cancelled its agreement with several urban day camps to use its private pool, the controversy was portrayed entirely in racial terms. There were uninvestigated allegations of remarks about "black kids" made by white mothers who ordered their children out of the pool, and the racial theme was intensified by the director's inept description of the "complexion" of the pool having been changed -- which may simply have been a whopper of a Freudian slip.

A salon is a big open room. Camille Paglia seems to be the only Salonista willing to welcome the helots who drink coffee with me at Kean.

God Bless, Dr. Paglia.

Mea Culpa! Steve Rhodes Tuned Up Blago - Not the Sun Times.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres,
quia peccavi nimis
cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissióne:
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Vírginem,
omnes Angelos et Sanctos,
et vos, fratres, orare pro me
ad Dominum Deum nostrum.

Yesterday, I posted that the always entertaining Steve Rhodes, Publisher of Beachwood Reporter and NBC Chicago on line was giving a tart twist to the Sun Times, when he pointed out the ludicrous use of Blago on WLS.

Steve wrote:

WLS-AM is once again giving Blagojevich a platform from which to spin his legal defense and build sympathy for his poor beleagured self. . . . Blago seems to be following the advice given him by Sun-Times editorial page editor Tom McNamee:

1. Pander.

2. Bully

3. Demonize

4. Distort the truth

5. Make stuff up

6. Forsake all intellectual honesty

Six for six.

Mea Maxima Culpa! At the Culpa - Culpa Cabana!Music and passion were always the fashion . . .At the Culpa....they fell in love! Sorry.


Well, in my joy-raced haste to note a marriage of true minds, I neglected to click on the link to Tom McNamee's fine piece of advise to Blago, which advovcated grace and good sense.

I confess my major sin of omission.

For my penance, I could say very nice things about the Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago, but that would be switching sins. Instead, I will ask for a General Absolution.

In consulation with The Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline* of the Sacrements, this may be the best path. If not, I'm tossing on the old hairshirt for a trip to North Avenue Beach on Saturday.

If in the opinion of the confessor there is a case of grave necessity that could permit "general absolution", it is to be submitted to the judgement of the Diocesan Bishop with whom lies the responsibility for deciding whether the necessary conditions are indeed present (cf. can. 961); without such a decision, "general absolution" may not be conferred. Moreover, as the canon itself points out, "sufficient necessity is not considered to exist when confessors cannot be available merely because of a great gathering of penitents, such as can occur on some major feastday or pilgrimages' (can. 961, S1, 2 ).

The authorization given to Diocesan Bishops does not permit them "to change the required conditions, to substitute other conditions for those given, or to determine grave necessity according to their personal criteria however worthy" (Pope Paul VI, Allocution to the Bishops of the region of New York in the United States of America, April 20, 1978: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 70 (1978) 330). The Diocesan Bishop "makes this judgement graviter onerata conscientia, and with full respect for the law and practice of the Church" (Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 2 December 1984, n. 33: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 77 (1985) 270). Furthermore, the fact that the canons acknowledge the right of the faithful to confess their sins on days and at times arranged for their convenience (cf. can. 986, S1) cannot be used as a justification for an alternative practice of "general absolution".

In this context it is of great importance to remember that even when the sacrament is received by means of a collective absolution, it nevertheless requires, as a result of its divine and irreformable foundation, that each penitent have the necessary dispositions for the reception of this sacrament, namely, individual and `personal repentance for sins committed, the resolution to rectify scandal or injuries that may have been caused in relation to those sins, the intention of amending his life, and the intention to make an integral and individual confession as soon as possible of those grave sins from which he is impeded from confessing at the time. Each of these dispositions must be present in order that the sacramental absolution be received validly (cf. Conc. Oecum. Trid., sessio XIV, cap. IV: Denz.-Schon. 1676-1677; sessio XIV, Canones de sacramento paenitentiae can. 5: Denz.-Schon. 1705; can. 987; Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sacramentum Paenitentia, (16 June 1972): Acta Apostolicae Sedis 64 (1972) 512; cane. 962, S1, 963, 988, S1; Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio Paenitentia, 2 December 1984, n. 31: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 77 (1985) 260-261).

Nor should the importance of the act of satisfaction be passed over. This final act of the penitent "crowns the sacramental sign of Penance" (Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 2 December 1984, n. 31 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 77 (1985) 263). Hence, the confessor is to impose salutary and appropriate penances, in proportion to the kind and number of sins confessed, taking into account, however, the condition of the penitent. The penitent, for his part, is bound personally to carry out these penances (cf. can. 981).

http://www.adoremus.org/699Penance.html


That hairshirt come in three or two button? Four button is positively decadent.

Steve Rhodes - True Wit - To Wit Blago the Twit!

True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
-- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
-- Essay on Criticism, Part ii, Line 97

The Media freak show continues on the WLS Airwaves with disgraced Governor Blago yapping away for pay. ( click my post title)

Pay to Play! Then WLS gets all Harrumphing about the State of the State of Illinois and tosses the Gatecrasher of Illinois more Dog Yummies. " Gee, you mean, if we keep starving and beating this pitbull puppy and making it wear a twenty Pound weight around its little neck, that it could possibly bite someone? For Real?"

Oh, yeah! Giving Blago radio time is very much like wearing a porkchop suit to a huge dog fight. Great idea!

Steve Rhodes, a real journalist with a wide context of human understanding and rich and varied frame of reference, skewers the Tossed Twit Guv and also gets in a very accurate shot at the Sun Times - the soon to be bankrupt rag that pretends to matter. STNG- The Chicago Standard for Rock Solid Hypocrisy!


Noted budget expert Rod Blagojevich took to the airwaves (again) on Sunday to advise state lawmakers on solving the state's fiscal crisis -- as adeptly as he handled the public till during his six years as governor.

He did not give advice on how not to get impeached.

Among his ideas: privatize the state lottery - which the U.S. Department of Justice have pretty much determined would be illegal.

But this isn't about what's good for the state, it's about what's good for Rod Blagojevich.

WLS-AM is once again giving Blagojevich a platform from which to spin his legal defense and build sympathy for his poor beleagured self. . . . Blago seems to be following the advice given him by Sun-Times editorial page editor Tom McNamee:

1. Pander.

2. Bully

3. Demonize

4. Distort the truth

5. Make stuff up

6. Forsake all intellectual honesty

Six for six.

At least Blago's good at something.


True ease in writing comes from art and not chance, like wearing a belt and not losing your pants.

Well, done Rhodes Old Man!

Ben Stein,Mensch- UnDamaged by Celebrity and Touched With Humanity

This is a full text of Ben Stein's Last column Monday Nights at Mortons a glimpse at celebrity lifestyles in Hollywood.

Ben Stein, like my pals Mike Houlihan, Tom Roeser, Elias Crim, Steve Rhodes, John Powers and Max Weismann, is a Renaissance Man. Mr. Stein is a film maker, comic, wit, economist, professor and political analyst. More importantly, Mr. Stein is a Mensch* - a human being to the backbone! Read this fine analysis of fame, fortune and fraility.

Huge Hat Tip to Leo Hero - Robert Hylard ( Leo '44):

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.
I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer co mfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can.
It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

* "Reason in man is rather like God in the world."- St. Thomas Aquinas

Click my post title for Ben's House!

Jan, Nancy and Barney Announce - 'Schakowsky Stays Put!'

Boiled Beet Progressive Democrats of the House Hissed a Huge Huzzah as Jan Schakowsky, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Franks announced that the Evanston Elitist will stay safely snug!

Huge and Elegant Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes!

Clique my Post Title for the Real Dope!

Governor Lisa Madigan - and not because of her Dad. Read Tom Roeser and Steve Rhodes

Even The Hoods like Lisa Madigan.

Mr. Tom Roeser and Master ( He's Way Younger than Tom and much younger than me) Steve Rhodes are two very sharp Chicago political observers and clear political journalists.

They are poles apart politically and pols mean very little to them personally.

Today both gents treated the discerning reader to the expected arrival of Governor Lisa Madigan (D.IL).

First the insight and judgment of Tom Roeser. After giving Rep. Mark Kirk (R.) a tune-up over his Pro-Choice on Abortion -a Woman's Right to Kill Her Kid - Tom Roeser nails it:

At this writing no one has heard from Kirk about his plans. But this is just to say to the party’s financial leaders who are planning that double-digit budget: it will all go to waste and be lost in the election of Lisa Madigan (likely to be the Dem gubernatorial nominee) if you don’t consider conservative grassroots people in the gubernatorial selection. Madigan is a veritable pinwheel of grassroots movement support: pro-aborts, feminists, labor, gay rights. You name a nice little guy with a cute button nose and smile but no grassroots and you’ll once again have to relearn what you should have learned when you nominated Judy Baar Topinka: a Republican nominee for governor with no grassroots conservative support can’t make it.

http://www.tomroeser.com/

Attorney General Lisa Madigan has performed as a solid Attorney General for Illinois and has made that Office her own and no adjunct to her Dad, Speaker Michael Madigan's adult direction of Springfield. Governor Pat Quinn is a lovely guy, who made a career as the earnest clean-government hobby-horse rider in the sky. He's is Governor of Illinois because Illinois wanted Rod Blagojevich and gave that goof enough gas in his Mo-Ped to ride all over that desire. Why to go Land O' Lincoln!

Governor Pat Quinn wants to shoot Illinois' feet off with a tax from hell. Alpha Mike Foxtrot, as Marty Tully would say. Marty did a bunch of tours in Vietnam before becoming one of the two best homicide cops in Chicago.

Mr. Roeser, the Illinois Samuel Johnson, picks up the Governor Madigan specimen with the delicacy of a Loyola University Medical Center Neurosurgeon. This Butterfly Lives! Lisa Madigan flies on gossamer-like wings made of a cotton and linen blend, with red and blue minute silk fibers running through it -dollar bills miles of them.
Those dollars come from real Labor Unions and also PACS -ACORN/SEIU/Planned Parenthood & etc.the Democratic Party Astro-turf. The GOP tends to draw dough from businesses and rich guys.

Lisa Madigan will be the governor of Illinois.

Then, at the NBC website, the brilliant and witty Steve Rhodes with more pithy prose and Progressive sympathies states the glaringly obvious -

Madigan can always change her mind, or opt to run for another office, but right now she - or somebody on her behalf - is raising money in preparation for something, and seeing as how the e-mail references a poll that looked at a match-up with Quinn, there is no other conclusion to draw at the moment.

That poll, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, showed Madigan with a 48-24 lead over Quinn in the city of Chicago, with 28 percent undecided. An early poll like this has limited value, but its portentous that Madigan is raising money off it.

The path to Springfield is paved with dough - that is nothing new, nor is something to pull your skirts up and shriek like a fair, fat and fifty something Maiden Aunt.
There is a right way to raise money and the Blagojevich way - 'Hey, I'm gonna be Governor . . . know what I mean? That's some wallet you got there. Gimme it!'

All the Campaign Reform nonsense comes from losers who could not get anyone with the pilot light going to drop them a nickel. That is why SEIU and Planned Parenthood shower dough on Forty Watt Howlers like Jan Schakowsky. I could care less if anyone financed his own campaign or had the backing of Uncle Moneybags. The smart money goes on the horse with the best blood, feed, trainer and record.

Lisa Madigan is the Class of Field. The Oat-blowers of the Democratic Party and the Glue Bottle-Aspirants of the GOP should be aware of the very sound drubbing they will get from Lisa Madigan.

With the Kool Kidz at Chicagoist - The Blago Book

I get out of the neighborhood when my kids let me off the leash and I venture to the North Side. The Woman Who Has Captured My Heart lives up North - no kidding. She has me doing things that I have not done in years - no, I shower and groom with great gusto and regularity thank you - get all dogged up and go hear live music ( jazz mostly) attend the theatre, peek in galleries, cane louts and ne'er -do-wells . . .

I like the Flatiron district of Wicker Park at the intersection of Milwaukee Avenue, North Avenue, and Damen Avenue. Cafe Absinthe with bartender Brendan from New York is a great spot. Among the muffler's and soul-matched Dudes, I'm the Geezer in J.C. Penny black top coat that some DuPage County Sonovabitch left when he grabbed my Brooks Brothers at the Illinois Crime Commission Dinner hosted by Patrick Elwood last Spring, Irish farmer cap, $ 15 Regular Boys Haircut from John's on 111th and crew neck sweater over button collar shirt.

'Whoa! Who let that Square in there!'

Lookee Here, your father's hip he know what cooks!

In that spirit I turn to Chicagoist a franchise Big City hipster website that always seems to capture the pulse of Chicago . . . North of Bridgeport anyway.
After reading John Kass's great send-up of Milod's tome I treated myself the Chicagoist treatment. Our kids drew from the AP posting on this item:

It's like watching a train wreck,” Martin told the Sun-Times in reference to Blago’s appearance on several network television shows since Jan. 26. “And I'm not sure, in this economy especially, people will pay money to read about a train wreck.” According to the Associated Press, a Blago book deal or talk show might be a viable option for the ex-governor’s two-pink-slip household, now down two salaries worth $277,000 a year.

Literary agent Ted Weinstein, who helped a Nevada school teacher turned campaigning congressman hook up with Random House, predicted the governor could land a book deal valued at up to six figures if - and only if - he admits he is guilty or spills about some friends. “If he says, ‘Here's how the whole world works’ -- the underside of Chicago, naming names -- damn, we'd all want to buy that,” Weinstein told the Sun-Times. Blagojevich’s public relations agent, Glenn Selig, whose firm also represents Drew Peterson, confirmed the ex-governor has been offered more than one book deal, but stayed mum on the possible contents of such a book.

Would that they offered more commentary Ala Steve Rhodes' Beachwood Reporter Now, that lad hands me a giggle with regularity of a Dick Durbin about-face.

As to Blago's Book . . . Who's gonna read it to him?

Steve Rhodes & NBC Live Blog Exposes Boy Impersonating Illinois Governor

Leno laughs at Chicago Police Department and Geraldo Stalks the View to chat with Milorod, but the real expose of the day is Steve Rhodes, publisher of Beachwood Reporter, and his Live Blogging of the Impeachment Trial in the Illinois Senate. Rhodes exposed the pre-adolescent boy who has impersonated the Governor of Illinois since 2002.

Click my post title for the link up to the wee lad's impeachment. I got to pop in for the show yesterday, during a break in my day and it was wonderful to see the sharp insights and clever turns of phrase as Illinois scrapes the gum off its shoes.

Well done, Brother Rhodes!

Beachwood Reporter Details Blago T'aint as Much Tainted as Illinois - The Besmeared Realities of Progressive Politics

Steve Rhodes did a real nice summary of the Obama Internal Whitewash - 'We did NOT inhale'- the fumes of Stinky Politics. But Illinois has been Smoke Free for a Year Now! Progressive Nanny Staters sent Old Man Tobacco the Way of Demon Rum and Effective Government!

That is Progressive. You see Progressive Political Reality is this - 'We can not win an election more than three hundred yards from the Lakefront without the 'Old Timey Saloon Keeper' methods, but we like to stand far and away from them and allow the Machinery to get us in.' Take politics out of the smoke-filled back rooms of the saloons and a Commonwealth akin to Sesame Street ( brought to you by grant from the MacArthur Center for Justice) will grass-root itself and make Teutopolis, Carmi, Rock Island, Ottawa, Papineau, and Coal City, IL virtual Hyde Parks.

Prohibit the rights of citizens by legislative fiat and Free Illinois!

Reform Crusaders, like Mike Quigley, Joe Moore, Ed Smith love to Prohibit and yet they always require old school Ward operatives of the smoke filled room variety to get out the vote and then Mike, Joe, and Ed can sink their Progressive incisors deeply into the hands that passed out the palm cards on election in the Chicago Media, once re-elected.

President Elect Barack Obama's political life was made possible from a grant of the local Ward Committeemen.

Now the chickens have come home to roost. No one within spitting distance of local Chicago politics is shocked or surprised, but propriety and the solemnity of the up-coming Change is Hope Inauguration on January 20th dictates a whiff a smelling salts in public. 'Saul, Saul why have you forsaken us!'

Beachwood Reporter's Steve Rhodes offers a nice redaction and commentary on the explosively obvious Obama Whitewash - 'We're Okay!'

"Obama also said 'he had no interest in dictating the results of the selection process and he would not do so, either directly or indirectly through staff or others,' the report said, adding that Whitaker relayed that information to Peters."

*

But we know that Obama indeed did try to influence the selection process.

*

Then again, if Jarrett bailed because the process was dirty, why this?

"After Jarrett removes herself from consideration from the Senate seat, Obama discusses other qualified candidates with Emanuel and Obama adviser Axelrod, including U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., state Comptroller Dan Hynes and Illinois Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth. Obama understands that Emanuel will relay these names to Blagojevich's office."

And again, if Obama "understands" that Emanuel will relay these names to Blagojevich's office, how is that not trying to influence the selection process?

*

"But the report, when meshed with allegations in Blagojevich's criminal complaint, portrays Jarrett as being far more involved in seeking to be appointed to the Senate than has been previously known," the Sun-Times reports. "She removed herself from consideration after a conversation with a union official who had spoken with Blagojevich."

*

Emanuel listened to at least one recording, according to an AP report.

*

"Blagojevich, the complaint indicates, met with Balanoff around Nov. 5, at which time the governor understood Balanoff 'was an emissary' to discuss Jarrett's interest in the Senate seat."

*

"'Though their conversation would seem to suggest that Blagojevich - who holds the sole power to appoint Obama's replacement - was seeking a quid pro quo, 'Ms. Jarrett did not understand the conversation to suggest that the governor wanted the cabinet seat as a quid pro quo for selecting any specific candidate to be the President-elect's replacement,' the Obama report states."

*

"Obama, who has downplayed his role in the Senate selection process, 'believed it appropriate to provide the names of multiple candidates to be considered," according to the report."

*

"Unlike other contenders, who went hat-in-hand to Blagojevich - under an ethics cloud even before he was arrested Dec. 9 on public corruption charges - Jarrett did not approach the governor directly. I can see why. Would have been off message," Lynn Sweet writes.

*

In other words, don't taint the image with reality.

Thank God and Greyhound the Obama linens are unsoiled!

Rod Blagojevich is the Governor of Illinois. He was keel-hauled immediately after the election of President Elect Obama by Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald - the all purpose bleach of the life political in Illinois. I feel that Fitzy might have pulled the trigger too quickly on Gov. Rod.

The Guv is the same guy who appeared to be as nutty as a Stuckey's Log when he ran against Paul Vallas in 2002. In fact, he just might be a little more restrained these days; however, the politically expedient in Illinois took a shine to young Milorad:

Here's my 'guy who gets the news with the other guys at Kean Gas at 5AM' political scratch sheet from Wikipedia:

In 2002, Blagojevich ran for his party's nomination to become governor. Blagojevich won a close primary campaign against former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, whose base was largely African-American voters,[citation needed] and Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas, who ran well in the suburban "collar" counties of Chicago.[citation needed] Blagojevich finished strongly in southern Illinois, winning 55% of the primary vote downstate, enough to win a primary victory by a thin margin.[16]

During the primary, state Senator Barack Obama backed former Attorney General Burris, but supported Blagojevich after he won the primary at Burris' suggestion,[21] serving as a "top adviser" for the general election.[22] Future Obama senior adviser David Axelrod had previously worked with Blagojevich on Congressional campaigns, but did not consider Blagojevich ready to be governor and declined to work for him on this campaign.[22] According to Rahm Emanuel, he, Barack Obama, Blagojevich's campaign co-chair David Wilhelm, and another Blagojevich staffer "were the top strategists of Blagojevich's 2002 gubernatorial victory," meeting weekly to outline campaign strategies.[22] However, Wilhelm has said that Emanuel overstated Obama's role in the sessions, and Emanuel said in December 2008 that Wilhelm was correct and he had been wrong in his earlier 2008 recollection to The New Yorker.[22] ( emphasis my own - to point out the incidental 'well-lookee here' on future U.S. Senator Roland Burris of Illinois - The Land of Linens)

In the [general election, Blagojevich defeated Republican Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.[16] Blagojevich's campaign was helped by his connected father-in-law, Chicago alderman Richard Mell.[16] Ethics scandals had plagued the previous administration of Republican George Ryan (no relation to Jim), and Blagojevich's campaign focused on the theme of "ending business as usual" in state government.[23] Polls prior to the election found that many Illinois voters were confused about the names of George Ryan and Jim Ryan, a fact Blagojevich capitalized on.[24] He asked, "How can you replace one Ryan with another Ryan and call that change? You want change? Elect a guy named Blagojevich."[24] Blagojevich won with 52% of the vote over Jim Ryan.[24] On election night, he said: “Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Illinois has voted for change.” [23]

A Cornucopia of Progressive endorsements hailed Blago into the Governorship. SEIU opened its huge wallet! Progress Illinois! Hail Rod! Hail Progress! Hail Storms!

Yep, Change one set of soiled linens for the breezy fresh Progressive new ones - Oh, wait them undies is soiled as well!

Walp!

1. Gov. Rod Blagojevich is the Governor of Illinois and he is Constitutionally ( large 'C' as in Illinois Con and not small 'c' as in capable)empowered to appoint the next U.S. Senator.

2. Roland Burris will be the next the U.S. Senator.

3. None of this stuff is new or shocking.

4. Blagojevich will most likely be impeached, but will probably waltz on the charges brought on by Fitzy.

5. Politics needs to be purged of Progressive influence and returned to effective career politicians.

6. Smoke-filled back rooms are essential to the conduct of good government and effective government services - time to lift the smoking ban. Either that, or require that Lisa Madigan, Barbara Flynn-Curry, Mary Flowers and the the other solid women in politics take up dipping Copenhagen and gnawing chaws of Red Man.

Obama No School Reform Pal -Vallas v. Obama Myth Outlined by Steve Rhodes on Division Street: Must Read

Steve Rhodes who publishes Beachwood Reporter, my favorite Chicago Media Watchdog and Chicago Jackanapes File, offers a smart and insightful precis of Paul Vallas's recent truthtelling on Camp Obama - Obama, while in the employ of Billy Ayers did next to nothing to help improve Chicago Schools.

Paul lived down the block from me when he was putting in nearly 20 hour days exposing waste and mismanagement at CPS. Because Paul was so effective in getting Corporate and Private Foundations to support 'systemic reform' - which took millions of dollars out of the reach of Catholic Schools - I used to call my neighbor and pal 'The Prince of Darkness.'

Like any effective public servant, Paul Vallas was viewed as a threat to Mayor Daley and the rest as we say is history. Daley don't like no smart guys too close: or, to wax 18th Century: "Should such a man ( Daley), too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne", Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 197."

Here's a taste of what Steve Rhodes offers:
“Only after the fig leaf was in place did Obama come out publicly in support of local school councils, making a brief speech on the Senate floor to codify the final agreement preserving local councils’ authority,” Russo writes.

“In being so late to the debate, however, Obama didn’t really have to stand up to anyone - not the groups he was affiliated with, not Vallas, not Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. He was just approving the final result. He remained loyal to his roots, but only when it was easy to do so. To some critics, this is exactly the problem.”

Obama does have a champion in the Chicago education community, however: schools superintendent Arne Duncan, who was in charge of the city’s magnet schools under Vallas, and then replaced him in 2001. Obama and Duncan are hold Hyde Park friends and basketball buddies (Duncan was co-captain of Harvard’s basketball team and played professionally in Australia).

It would be Duncan, then, not Vallas, on the short list for Education Secretary of an Obama administration.

Now, there is cause for concern! Duncan? Yeah let's take all the kids in America to hear Wilco at Soldier Field - that'll get them hitting the books!

Well done, brother Rhodes!

McCain/Palin: Steve Rhodes at NBC's Division Street Blog Restores Chicago Reporting!

That's Steve Rhodes -editor of Beachwood Reporter and NBC-Division Street casting pearls to swine -wearing lipstick and without!

Steve Rhodes is editor of the great Media Watch Blog The Beachwood Reporter

Steve Rhodes also manages NBC's Division Street Blog which tends to treat readres better than most Chicago newspaper political columnists.

Mr. Rhodes and I rarely, if ever, agree on things political. However, we agree that most politicians and political commentators are encrusted with equine effluvia -horse shit. Daley ( not John Daley whatsoever), Blago, Stroger, Quigley, Claypool, Shakowsky, Lipinski, and - my fingers are cramping - others are like a tribe of New Guinea spearmen encrusted with fecal matter. Like wise political pundits -print and public - have layers of horse shit abounding: Marin, Brown, Dold, Chapman, Greeley, Mitchell &etc.

Today, Steve Rhodes save Chicago journlism at Division Street:

Was Alaska Governor Sarah Palin really plucked from “relative obscurity” to run on John McCain’s ticket? Should a politician whom Matt Damon has never heard of be allowed on a national ticket? (Hey, Matt, when did you first hear of Barack Obama? A convention speech?) Is she really lying about the Bridge to Nowhere and her maverick credentials?

I took a spin through the ProQuest database of America’s newspapers and found, in fact, that the coverage of Sarah Palin in real time gibes perfectly with the image she and her allies are presenting. Take an objective journey with me and decide for yourself.

I’ll start with the Chicago dailies just to satisfy local curiosity and then move to the national press and wire services. This collection represents virtually every article returned in my search; I have omitted nothing of consequence or anything that would present a different view.

*

Sarah Palin in the Chicago Tribune

1. HEADLINE: Governor cancels ‘bridge to nowhere’
DATE: Sept. 22, 2007
EXCERPT: “Gov. Sarah Palin ordered state transportation officials Friday to abandon the “bridge to nowhere” project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending.”

2. HEADLINE: Here’s the buzz: Sites help you keep up with trends (about google trends)
DATE: Oct. 19, 2007
EXCERPT: You can use buzz trackers to find out what’s making news, a sort of meta version of a news site’s “most e-mailed” list. Why, you may ask, is a “Sarah Palin” showing up on one list? A few clicks and, aha, she’s the get-tough (and photogenic!) Alaska governor getting the national-media spotlight right now.

3. HEADLINE: Alaska governor generates VP buzz
DATE: March 14, 2008
EXCERPT: Gov. Sarah Palin will be the first to admit that it might be a stretch for a hockey mom from Alaska to be considered for the No. 2 spot on Sen. John McCain’s presidential ticket.

But there’s an undeniable national buzz surrounding the first-term governor, seen by many Republicans as a fresh, new face to represent the party’s future.

Palin says she has not spoken to McCain about the prospect. But it came up when she was in Washington two weeks ago for a National Governors Association meeting. She rubbed elbows with others cited as vice-presidential possibilities: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.

“We all had a meeting with President Bush and he said, ‘Look at all these vice presidents sitting here,’” Palin said.

As for her recent news that she is pregnant with her fifth child, Palin said: “I’m very confident that a pregnant woman should not and doesn’t have to be prohibited from doing anything, including running for vice president.”

Keep reading →

→ 4 CommentsCategories: Presidential Poop · Punditocracy
Tagged: Barack Obama, Bridge to Nowhere, hockey mom, John McCain, maverick, polar bears, Sarah Palin

Eric Zorn’s Sexist Folly
September 11, 2008 · No Comments
The Tribune columnist today retells the jokes of late-night comics about Sarah Palin without any recognition of how offensive many of them are. For example:

Bill Maher: “I, John McCain, am the only one standing between the blood-thirsty Al Qaeda and you. But if I die, this stewardess can handle it.”

Jimmy Kimmel: “[S]he looks like one of those women in the Van Halen videos who takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and then all of a sudden, she’s in high heels and a bikini.”

David Letterman: “[She looks] like the lady in the dental office who gives you the keys to the restroom” and “like the woman in the department store who tries to spray you with perfume.”

Steve Rhodes, who manages and edits of the best Media Watching Blogs The Beachwood Reporter, also runs Chicago NBC's Division Street Blog.

Steve and I rarely agree on politics ( and the Piggies who slurp at its trough), but we agree on depth and fecundity of the equine effluvia tossed by the bulk of politicians and their parasites.

Steve and I agree that a saloon and not a salon is the very best place to hear, injest and disseminate political thought.

Today, Steve Rhodes offers an honest and open assessment of the HAWKEE MAWM from Wassila - with whom I am enchanted. I have no illusions that Sarah Palin would not shoot, geld, and field dress me were it in her political interests; yet, I find her to be free of the horse-shit that encoats Daley ( all but John Daley - he is H/S Free), Blagojevich, Quigley, Claypool, Shakowsky, Stroger, and Durbin. Most political journalists or would be political journalists surpass the professional horse-hit merchants - Zorn, Brown, Dold, Chapman, Greeley, Sweet, Mitchell, and Marin.

Steve Rhodes, Mark Rhoads,Steve Huntley, Levois,Cal Skinner, Bill Baar, John Rubery, Anne Leary, Tom Roeser, Phil Kadner, Kristen McQueary tend to be horse-shit free.

Steve, I'll buy you one the size of Quigley's Ego!

*Click my post title for the Full Pint from Steve Rhodes!

McCain/Palin- Sun Times Stuck on Stupid - Read This Idiotic Editorial on Sarah Palin's Speech! Wear Your Depends -or Borrow Some!

Hat Tip to my Pal Steve Rhodes at Beachwood Reporter! Thanks Steve! Have a Falstaff Son!

I did not get around to peeking at 'The Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago' this morning, as I was busy doing what most Americans do - taking care of kids, getting to work and actulaly doing something when I get there! Never on Queen's Time!

So, I turned to the Beachwood Reporter to get an update on Chicago Media Moon-Howlers!

Never disappointed - Heeyah 'Tis - The Sun Times (STNG) in all of its suicidal glory (excerpt of course)!

. . .Because his pick for vice president, Sarah Palin, is woefully unprepared to be Leader of the Free World.

Does this sound harsh? We know it does, though we mean no disrespect. Our sincere hope is that McCain, a good and brave American, lives a long and healthy life. But when the senator chose Alaska Gov. Palin to be his running mate, and in doing so deemed her fit to stand a heartbeat from the presidency, he either demonstrated phenomenally bad judgment or put politics ahead of country.

Palin has almost no experience on the national or international stage. She has virtually no qualifications to be commander in chief. She is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town about the size of a couple of Chicago high schools. She has been governor for 20 months of a wilderness state with a population of 684,000 -- about the number of folks in Will County.

And the more Palin's GOP defenders contort themselves to defend her credentials, attempting to inflate the uninflatable, the more obviously thin her resume looks.

Asked by a CNN reporter what qualifies Palin to be commander in chief of America's armed forces, a McCain aide pointed out that, as governor, Palin "commanded" the Alaska National Guard. The reporter then asked, to no avail, for a single instance in which Palin had involved herself in the business of the Guard.

A commentator for the conservative National Review generously granted Palin "foreign policy" experience solely on the basis of geography -- Alaska is next to Russia and borders Canada. If the commentator knew of any Palin-Putin talks, he failed to mention them.

Jimmy the Two-Headed Boy, or most De LaSalle Graduates could understand Palin's speech last night. Not Chicago's 'Progressive Independent Voice' - they are waiting for John McCain to explain it to them - Senator, Read Slowly!!!!!!!!! Use Pictures!