Charles Krauthammer - I am for McCain! Must Reading for Americans!

October 24, 2008
McCain for President
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Joe The Plumber! Ask Paul Vallas How Well Obama Redistributed Annenberg Wealth!

Here is how Barack Obama redistributed the wealth while Executive Director for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - ridiculously bad.

Paul Vallas*, who actually made all of the school improvements in the Chicago Public Schools and then was forced out by Mayor Daley, recently explained just how Barack Obama and his boss Billy Ayers pread the wealth to radical community groups like ACORN, while they had their elbows up to millions of dollars:

Posted: 4:51 am
October 20, 2008

Chicago's former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers - saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school "reform" groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards.

"There was a total lack of accountability. If you went back and asked, you'd be hard-pressed to find out how the money was spent," said Paul Vallas, the city's school superintendent when Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Foundation from 1995 to 1999.

Annenberg spent $49.5 million, mostly on grants to 211 public schools that partnered with community-based groups. But despite collecting millions, those schools performed no better than other public schools, a study found.

Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and an ex-Weather Underground bomber, wrote the grant that won the Windy City funding from the national Annenberg Challenge. He was a key adviser to the Chicago Annenberg board.

While much debate has centered on Obama's relationship with Ayers, there's been virtually no discussion about how the Annenberg schools performed.

"Very little of the money found its way directly into the classroom," Vallas said.

Most frustrating, Vallas said, was that Annenberg under Obama and Ayers funded groups that fought his mission, under Mayor Richard Daley, to impose uniform standards and stricter accountability in low-performing schools.

Many of Vallas' goals were later adopted by Mayor Bloomberg in Big Apple schools.

"Many of the school-reform groups viewed greater accountability as an infringement of local control. Some opposed ending social promotion and grade retention," Vallas said.

Obama defended the foundation's performance, saying it dispensed its funds to help struggling programs and train teachers.

carl.campanile@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10202008/news/politics/f_for_baracks_school_fix_134391.htm


Hey Joe! Watch your wallet!

*
Paul G. Vallas is currently superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans, Louisiana.

He first gained fame as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). During his tenure from 1995 to 2001, he led an effort to reform the school system, and his work was cited by President Bill Clinton for raising test scores, improving relations with the teachers' union, balancing the budget, and instituting several new programs included mandatory summer school, after school programs, and expanding alternative, charter, and magnet schools.

The position of CEO of the CPS was created by Mayor Richard M. Daley after he successfully convinced the Illinois State Legislature to place CPS under mayoral control. Vallas had previously directed the budget arm of the Illinois State Legislature and served as budget director for Daley.

Controversy plagued Vallas towards the end of his reign as CPS CEO. Following criticism from the mayor, and the election of a union president who ran on an anti-Vallas platform, Vallas resigned in 2001 and ran for Governor of Illinois as a Democrat. Vallas placed second in the Democratic primary, losing narrowly to now-Governor Rod Blagojevich while running ahead of former state Attorney General Roland Burris.

Following the election, Vallas was appointed CEO of School District of Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, he presided over the nation's largest experiment in privatized management of schools, with the management of over 40 schools turned over to outside for-profits, nonprofits, and universities beginning in Fall 2002.

In 2005, Vallas considered challenging Blagojevich again for Illinois governor in the Democratic Primary but decided against it. He then signed a two-year contract (2007-2008) as superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans, Louisiana.

On April 28, 2008 he appeared before the City Club of Chicago and on Chicago news shows discussing a possible run for governor in 2010.[1][

Ayers/Obama - Red Billy's Ubi Sunt - Commie Days 1974

From Zombie Time - Great Archival find on the BarackoSoros Rex - Billy The Bomber Ayers:

Furthermore: Obama and his supporters at first claimed he barely knew who Ayers was, but when public awareness of the connections between Obama and Ayers became too numerous and too strong to deny, Obama's supporters have now begun resorting to a fallback position: that William Ayers wasn't such a bad guy after all, and that it is no shame to be associated with him. The now-standard talking points are:


• Ayers was simply protesting against the Vietnam War, and a lot of people protested against the Vietnam War back then, so there's no shame in that.

• Ayers was never actually convicted of setting any bombs or killing anyone, so there's no real proof that he ever did anything wrong.

• Ayers is now a respected, mainstream, mild-mannered and popular professor, so obviously his political views couldn't have been that extreme.
This essay disproves all of these claims. The text that William Ayers authored in Prairie Fire, and the additional documentary links provided below, prove that:


• Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire. Secondly, and more significantly, the Vietnam War was only one of many issues cited by the Weather Undergound as the justifications for their violent acts. As you will see below, in various quotes from Prairie Fire and in their own list of their violent actions (and in additional impartial documentary links), Ayers and the Weather Underground enumerated dozens of different grievances as the rationales for their bombings -- their overarching goal being to inspire a violent mass uprising against the United States government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," in Ayers' own words.

• Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list, most likely typed up by Ayers himself, of the crimes they had committed up to that point. Ayers' list, scanned directly from Prairie Fire, is shown below. He may have escaped conviction due to a legal technicality (the prosecutors failed to get a warrant during some of their surveillance of the Weather Underground), but this in no way means that Ayers was factually innocent of the crimes. As has been widely reported, after the case against him was dropped, Ayers decribed himself as "guilty as hell, free as a bird."

• Just because Ayers tries to appear respectable now doesn't mean that he wasn't a violent revolutionary in the past. In fact, as the text of Prairie Fire shows, Ayers was one of the most extreme extremists in American political history. And as the links given as the end of this essay will prove, Ayers is just as politically radical now as he was back then. He has never renounced the political views he professed in the 1960s and 1970s. The only difference is that now he no longer commits violence to achieve his goals. After his stint as the leader of the Weather Underground, he shifted to a different tactic: to spread his ideology under the aegis of academia. But the goal remains the same: to turn America into a communist nation. Ayers' contemporary writings contain many of the same ideas (and even the same phrases) found in Prairie Fire, just toned down to make them more palatable in polite society.
But Where Is the Obama Connection?

This essay is only about William Ayers' past and present political views. It is not about the connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers. That issue has been covered (and continues to be covered) elsewhere in innumerable news reports and blog postings. Yet as evidence mounts of the extensive and long-standing connection between Obama and Ayers, making their association more and more difficult to deny, Obama's campaign and supporters have started shifting their strategy; Sure, they say, Obama may have had a connection with Ayers, but why is that so bad? Look at William Ayers now: He's a completely respectable man. What -- he protested against the Vietnam War? So did everyone. He's no extremist. I see these arguments made in countless blog posts, comment sections, and even news articles. This essay exists to stop that political escape route. There's no getting around it: William Ayers was a violent communist revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government and "seizing power" in the United States. The proof is on this page. And the only difference between the 1970s William Ayers and the William Ayers with whom Barack Obama has associated is that Ayers no longer uses violence to achieve his goals. But Ayers' underlying political world-view (i.e. communism) has remained the same.

For the record, and just to be complete, here are links documenting some of Obama's many connections to William Ayers:

. . . And Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune thinks he's a newsman.

Hugo The Pumper Contra Joe the Plumber! Citgo! 'Well Make up Your Mind!'

Obama's favorite Third World Dictator Hugo Chavez makes a swell counter to Joe the Plumber - Hugo the Pumper!

Citgo is Hugo's Gas Company here in Yanqui Country! Billy The Bomber Ayers consults Hugo on School Reform.

Hugo, 'Citgo!'

Ayers, ' Which do you prefer, Jefe?'

Hugo, 'No, Citgo!'

Ayers, 'Make up your mind, Jefe!'

Hugo, 'CITGO!!!!'

Ayers, 'Sit? Go? Which one Jefe?'

Hugo, 'Que Pendejo!!!!'

All of us, 'Si, Jefe!!!'

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!

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

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

Here's a teaser:

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

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

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

jcoen@tribune.com

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

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

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

from Amazon

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






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

Chicago land Braces for Burge Blizzard!

Expect non-stop ‘all Burge all the time’ from the hard hitting cadre of investigative journalists and opinion slingers.

TV News Nitwits will adjust the odd comb-over and honey-do tresses and get all steely eyed.

Remember Millionaire Lefty Lawyer G. Flint Taylor (long time pal of Billy Ayers they go WAAAAY back!) brokered this Burge Story. He was last heard from while being sued by Urban Translator and Repentant Gang-banger Emeritus Wallace Gator Bradley, late of the Queen’s Own Gangster Disciples. G. Flint will no doubt want his cut, Tribune and STNG. He had to wrestle the Gator to keep his Burge Boodle!

Our own home grown newshounds could not pick up on the fact that Paul Vallas might have been a great person to call regarding Obama/Ayers Annenberg Playtime. It took a New York Post story to awaken the Nuanced Eric Zorn. They have awakened a sleeping Pygmy!

Here's the Deal:

1. No physical or corroborating evidence ever has been brought to bear in any number of attempts to bring Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge to trial

2. It seems to me that the media got on board of the bus driven entirely by radicals of Peoples Law Office, which succeeded in drawing in the national media back in the 1970's to discredit the FBI - G. Flint Taylor was that Boy Wonder and he brokered the media's love affair with this issue.

3. Four Mayors - Byrne, Washington, Orr, and Sawyer did nothing to spark inquiry into the issue

4. G. Flint Taylor and his cooperating witnesses - The Chicago Media - have orchestrated the case.


5. Okay, Fitzy! Let's see what you have.

6. I would not know Jon Burge if he walked on me. I do not know if he tortured anyone and neither did the Commission that spent 7 million dollars - that did not give Flint Taylor his money. Prove it Fitzy. I have yet to beimpressed with the Federal Prosecutor. I do know that the Chicago Media sees him as the poster boy for Justice and Jon Burge for all the evil and systemic racism that helps sell newspapers. They'll help you take Burge down, Fitzy! No worries there.

7. This trial is over as far as the media is concerned. Justice and the search for truth has nothing to do with it. Click my post title to get the perspective of the real victims in all this - The Police Officers.



http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/feds-arrest-ex-chicago-cop-burge.html

Chris 'Milky' Matthews: Obama Howler Monkey at Def-Con Six

Like a degenerate gambler circling a casino or a dry drunk popping into a saloon for a glass of water, I channel surfed and popped in at MSNBC - twice: once last night when Game Show Host and Great Gildersleeve Impersonator Keith Olbermann during one of his full-foam fumes and today while doing laundry I caught Chris 'Milky' Matthews getting 'tough' with Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R. New Mexico)concerning Milkey's theme of McCain Desperation. Like the gambler or the drunk I thought one stop can't hurt - Wrong!

Milky 'Right'-ed the Congresswoman throughout her talk and interrupted like Jack Cafferty on speed. The pay-off came when the the very proper middle aged woman smiled during Rep. Chris Van Hollen's attempt to defend Joe 'HIYAH FOLKS!' Biden for his recent self-inflicted tonsil massage with his Florsheims: 'The Kid's Gonna Get Us in Dutch! In Dutch I Tells Ya! We Gotta Stick By Him! He's Wrong but We Gotta! - Now, that's nuanced!

Milky - 'You're smiling - what's so funny?' - Saw Milky pull this one before.

Jesus. Think you can take her Chris?

I wish she could have reached out and dropped this fatuous pain-in-the-ass with one from the purse and right between his brow less piggy little eyes! Hard Ball! Pop!

Nah, Rep. Wilson was gracious.

Then, Milky went off on the Congresswoman and read his own thoughts on the State of Race and excoriated McCain and Palin.

MSNBC - The Tool Box! This is an irrelevant bunch of loudmouths. I wish people who agree to appear with them treated them so. Click my post title and get a glimpse at what IN THE TANK is all about.

I better put the blocker on this cable channel. Oh yeah, I forgot about Fat Boy!

Olbermann - Oil Can Harry with Tourrette Syndrome.

George Soros Funds Obama Catholics

If I had George Soros's money, I'd throw Warren Buffett's away! Not only is the Lefty Plutocrat funding MoveOn. Org. the DNC, Obama, Daily Kos, and MSNBC ( Matthews and Olbermann Just Got to be wetting their beaks from more than Peacock), and League of Frightened Goulash Eaters, but also two groups shilling as Catholics for Obama!
Man, buy a flat screen! A couple of failed banks. Papineau, Illinois. Something! Stimulate the Economy. Toss a couple of pounds of Benjamins my way and I'll write nice stuff about Kid Hope- I am easy but I'm not cheap.

Get this!

NEW YORK, NY (Catholic League) - Catholic League president Bill Donohue exposes the nexus between George Soros and two left-wing Catholic groups, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United:

“In 2003, after left-wing mogul George Soros blamed Jews for anti-Semitism, the ADL branded his comments ‘obscene.’ Two years later, I accused him of anti-Catholicism when his group, MoveOn.org, posted a picture of a smiling Pope Benedict XVI holding a gavel outside the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the following inscription: ‘God Already Has a Job…He does not need one on the Supreme Court.’

“Why is this relevant? Because this same bigot is connected to two apologists for abortion rights, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United. In 2006, Soros’ Open Society Institute gave Catholics in Alliance $100,000 (double the amount he gave in 2005), and in the same year Catholics in Alliance listed Catholics United on its 990 as an organization with which it has a formal relationship. John Podesta, who runs the Soros-funded organization, Center for American Progress, admits that he works closely with Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United. The Center for American Progress is also the sponsor of Faith and Public Life.

“Why would any Catholic organization take money from a man like George Soros? Because legitimate sources of revenue aren’t available? And why would Soros have any interest in funding Catholic groups? He doesn’t give the Catholic League any money, and if he offered, I would refuse it.

“The reason Soros funds the Catholic Left is the same reason he lavishly funds Catholics for Choice, the pro-abortion group that has twice been condemned as a fraud by Catholic bishops: they all service his agenda, namely, to make support for abortion rights a respectable Catholic position. On October 17, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput accused Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United as doing a ‘disservice’ to the Catholic Church. He’s right. And now we know what really makes them tick.”

Chicago Tribune Targets Skilled Trades Unions to Obscure Class War Agenda

Dennis Gannon is not only a skilled and hard working Tradesman, but the leader of the Chicago Federation Labor, which includes the Chicago Building Trades Council. Due to many years of John Sweeney's leadership of AFL-CIO, Gannon inherited a toxic labor situation of poisoned waters polluted by Andy Stern of SEIU. SEIU represents the largest organization public salaried employees in America as well the largest force of unskilled and low skilled health care workers. SEIU rank and file depend upon increased taxes taken from the Skilled Trades Workers who earned their livlihoods through training and Collective Bargaining. SEIU and ACORN are working together to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States - so is the Chicago Tribune.*

It may be remembered, certainly not by the selective memory of Chicago Tribune editorial board, that Andy Stern and Anna Burger led their followers of SEIU out of the AFL-CIO. Sweeney, who was Stern's sponsor in SEIU, took the first of many knives to the ribs and well he should.

Dennis Gannon is another story. Labor has fallen on hard times, due in large part to the propaganda printed in newspapers like the Chicago Tribune - 'Excessive salaries and benefits!!!' American Labor, through collective bargaining, gave America the standard of living unequalled in human history. That standard of living is the Target of SEIU and its redistribution of wealth agenda.

Benefits and wages won in the arena of Collective Bargaining and here, again, is the opinion of the Chicago Tribune on why Daley's Budget is bloated to bursting with taxpayer money:

The generous wages and benefits given to many in the roughly 38,000-strong municipal workforce amount to 80 percent of the cost of running the city's government, making it impossible to significantly cut the budget without reducing personnel costs.

Those expenses are only going up since Daley agreed last year to a 10-year contract with dozens of labor unions. The deal guarantees continued pay increases that far outstrip inflation.

Take for instance the city's hoisting engineers, members of clout-heavy Local 150. Their top hourly wage of almost $44 an hour has risen from $37.50 in three years.

Local 150's city contract also allows for double time for any work over eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.

They and other blue-collar workers, such as laborers, get 12 sick days a year, which they can carry over to future years if not used, in addition to 12 paid holidays.

If a relative dies, members of the biggest trade unions get three paid days off—rising to five if the funeral is held out of state.

"Tax increases don't get at the core problem that operating costs are rising far faster than what any revenues could pay for," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a tax watchdog group.

But Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said cutting hundreds of unionized city workers would inevitably have a negative impact on city services.

"At the end of the day, somebody has to do the work," Gannon said. "Take them out of the equation and who is going to pick up that slack?"

The wages and benefits won by labor - Real Labor through collective bargaining - are to blame for Daley's give away politics?

Nonsense! Daley tossed $250,000 Plus to Chicago Public School kids to bribe them into doing what they are supposed to do. Daley's Duncan plans to send CPS teachers back to school to learn what they are supposed to teach. Daley tosses millions at programs with no oversight. But, The Chicago Tribune gives a NUANCED approach - take money away from skilled, trained and effective Tradesmen.

Dennis Gannon and all of the Skilled Trades Union have the albatross necklace of SEIU
which eschews Collective Bargaining in favor of hammering pressure on politicians to legislate tax-payer funded pay raises.

The Chicago Tribune has long acted as a mouthpiece for SEIU and stated 'Redistribution of Wealth Agenda.' That agenda will effectively kill the Skilled Trades Unions and eliminate the American Middle Class.

*Some of ACORN’s recent activities are as follows:

SEIU paid ACORN founder and chief of anti-Wal-Mart strategies Wade Rathke $21,885 in salary and $5,233 in expenses for the role of “campaign project organizer.”
SEIU gave $50,000 contribution to “Walmart Associations” in the care of Wade Rathke
SEIU paid a $126,000 “subsidy” to Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, operated by ACORN
Change to Win paid ACORN $30,000 for a “public awareness campaign.”
SEIU twice awarded ACORN a $40,000 “monthly retainer.”
SEIU paid more than $970,000 to ACORN’s ACLOC program for “training.”
SEIU Local 5 paid ACLOC $58,487 for an internship phase and for an “organizing partnership.”
UFCW hired ACLOC as a “consultant for organizing program” at a cost of $429,431
UFCW Local 876 paid $131,089 for a “community standards program.”
ACORN is also on record as providing direct staffing for various labor union efforts and programs as opposed to mere training and consultancy work, as well.

This close relationship raises questions as to whether ACORN should fall under Federal regulations as a labor organization.

http://theunionlabelblog.com/2008/07/23/acorn-and-its-connection-to-organized-labor/

Joe Epstein - Progressive Feminist Screamers -The Loathing of Sarah Palin

My career in teaching high school English is a lunch-bucket version of academics. Real teachers rarely become community activists, much less political polemicists. They are far too busy.

They get shuffled off to 'workshops' by the very people who could not hack it in the classroom and became Administrators with degrees in Education from the community college at best or mail-in diploma mills in order to hear Academics from the Colleges of Education who never once set foot in a classroom.

Teachers toss the hand outs and get in forty-winks, or grade papers while some tweedy jerk struts the stage and lights up the video.

Real teachers teach English, History, Business, Physical Education, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Languages. They are Jim the Physics Teacher; Donna the Volleyball Coach.

Seth the Fourth Vice Principal for Curriculum Development sets up Workshops and is paid seven times what real teachers make per year.

A Real Teacher from Northwestern University, Joe Epstein*, has recently scaled down his teaching load and written another book - this one on Fred Astair The Hoofer!

Today, Joe the Writer, presents an essay on the great shout-down: Joe The Plumber is being assaulted by the American Media, because he asked a question of Sen. Barack Obama and managed to pin Obama to the mat on his Redistribution of Wealth Agenda.

Joe Epstein concentrates on the Progressive pile-on by Progressive Feminist of Sarah Palin. The Progressive Feminists loath Sarah Palin, because the Governor of Alaska is a happy person. She is beautiful, successful, active, healthy, married, centered and powerful. Most of all they hate her because Sarah Palin is very happy. Most Americans are happy- beset by troubles, heartbreak, worry to be sure, but essentially happy. Progressive Feminists like Salon's Joan Walsh demand their Female Icons be as battle-damaged as she herself seems to be, but Sarah Palin, Doggoneit, is too happy!

Here is the nub of the rub from Joe the Writer:

Strongly liberal women get most agitated over the issue--though of course to them it is no issue but a long since resolved matter--of abortion. Abortion, to be sure, is the great third-rail subject in American politics. But when a male politician is against abortion, these women can write that off as the ignorance of a standard politician, if not himself a Christian fundamentalist, then another Republican cynically going after the fundamentalist vote. A woman not in favor of abortion is something quite different.

And it is all the more strikingly different when the same woman not only holds this opinion on abortion but acts on it and knowingly bears a child with Down syndrome, a child that most liberal women would have thought reason required aborting. What else, after all, is abortion for?

A few months ago Vanity Fair ran an article about the discovery that the playwright Arthur Miller, with his third wife, the photographer Inge Morath, 40 or so years ago had a Down syndrome son. Miller promptly clapped the boy into an institution--according to the article, not a first class one either--and never saw the child again. Most people would have taken this for a heartless act, one should have thought, especially on the part of a man known for excoriating the putative cruelties of capitalism and the endless barbarities of his own country's governments, whether Democratic or Republican. Yet, so far as one can tell, Arthur Miller's treatment of his own child has not put the least dent in his reputation, while Sarah Palin's having, keeping, and loving her Down syndrome child is somehow, by the standard of the liberal woman of our day, not so secretly thought the act of an obviously backward and ignorant woman, an affront to womanhood. "Her greatest hypocrisy," proclaimed Wendy Doniger, one of the leading feminist lights at the University of Chicago, "is her pretense that she is a woman."

*Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937) is a Chicagoan essayist, short story writer, and editor, best known as a former editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's The American Scholar magazine and for his recent essay collection, Snobbery: The American Version. He was also a lecturer at Northwestern University from 1974 - 2002. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weekly Standard and a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to The New Criterion and Commentary. The late William F. Buckley, Jr. in his review of Snobbery called Epstein the wittiest writer alive.
Essay collections and books
Divorced in America: Marriage in an age of possibility (1974)
Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life (1979)
Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)
Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (1983)
Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing (1985)
Once More Around the Block: Familiar Essays (1987)
Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (1988)
A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays (1991)
Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life (1993)
With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays (1995)
Life Sentences: Literary Essays (1997)
Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (1999, paperback 2007)
Snobbery: The American Version (2002)
Envy (2003)
Friendship: An Exposé (2006)
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (2006)
In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (2007)
Fred Astaire (2008)

[edit] Short story collections
The Goldin Boys: Stories (1991)
Fabulous Small Jews (2003)

[edit] Short Stories
My Brother Eli appearing in The Best American Short Stories 2007 pp. 85-112.

[edit] External links
"The Culture of Celebrity: Let us now praise famous airheads" in The Weekly Standard
"Friends Aren't What They Used to Be: The New Ethos of Intimacy" a review of Friendship: An Exposé, in Slate
"Kid Turns 70: And Nobody Cares" in The Weekly Standard
"Golden Juggler" a review of In a Cardboard Belt! by Joseph Tartakovsky, in the Claremont Review of Books

From the Good Folks at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Epstein_(writer)

Chicago Genius Tom Roeser Skewers and Broils Chicago Media Morons!

Thomas Roeser, Chicago's answer to 18th Century genius Dr. Samuel Johnson, skewers huge chunks of the meat heads who pass themselves off as journalists in Chicago.

Roeser, whose resume is longer than a Studs Terkle story, helps John Powers, local philanthropist and businessman, run Chicago's only balanced and authentic news and opinion organ Chicago Daily Observer.

It is so nicely balanced, that my south side musings appear along side those of Progressive genius, journalist, historian and political analyst Don Rose, who sent more brain cells down the drain of the gents at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap than I'd ever hope to have.

Roeser deconstructs the Chicago Media icono-sphere with all of the glee of Smash McKenna ( Pipe Coverer Extraordinaire!) in doing similar justice to a bust-out who grabbed Nualla's tip money at Keegan's Pub - more gore than Titus Andronicus and much more hilarious!

We start with Carol Marin the political columnist of the “Sun-Times.” She made her mark as a smooth TV anchor and feature reporter where her views were not readily known. Then came her rebellion at Channel 5 when management wanted to include Jerry Springer as a commentator. She left with a tsunami of favorable publicity but what wasn’t realized at the time was that her renegotiation was up for grabs and she might not have been retained anyway. But it worked. She has a smooth TV style--but as soon as she went over to the “Sun-Times” her mood 1960s Mother Superior attitude…literally…conveyed her true beliefs, that of a morally superior dilettante in politics who wants to enable true social justice on earth. Social justice means the welfare state…and which party better represents this goal than the Dems. All tied up in her sense of religious self-rectitude -which betrays, of course, a sense of vacuous non-theology.
Her first column was to celebrate that 14-carat phony with a self-embroidered history of radical activism from yesteryear, Studs Terkel, 96, a self-promoting agnostic windbag who named one of his kids after declared Communist stage actor and singer Paul Robson and , to hear Terkel tell it in his rasping voice which thrills his listeners since they fathom the real man of the street is talking… marched with the Wobblies, braved assaults from the club-wielding goons in the Armour strike, endured beatings with Walter Reuther in the Detroit sit-down strikes of the 1930, fought the white racists who opposed blacks swimming off a South Side pier in the 1920s, was black-listed because of his opposition to that hideous Joe McCarthy…all the stories inflating in coloration by the year-some invented out of whole cloth--while Ms. Marin beamed expressively and accepted his supposed man-in-the-street lingo as true genre.

As the late Steve Neal, no conservative, pointed out in a column Terkel never did anything of note for the “working class,” is in reality a b.s’ing blatherer of tales who would long since have been thrown out of a neighborhood bar for inculcating terminal boredom, since he has lived far longer than most and has license to exaggerate scandalously without fact-checking. Aside from a brief acting career on early TV, Terkel’s has done nothing noteworthy except to snap on a tape recorder and capture stories from first-hand participants for which, as a canny capitalist, he paid nothing but from which he made a fortune for himself-beginning with “Division Street America.” A self-proclaimed man of the people, he deliberately never learned to drive and rides a bus, taking care to sit by the window where he, festooned in his red-checked shirt, can be quickly glimpsed. I debated him once at Bughouse Square. A coward when confronted, this giant puff ball self-inflated turned into a clawless pussy cat. I actually went easy on him after he caved. It was the first time he was ever called on any of his stories because his recollections were at variance with history. Marin the dilettante swallows it all.
The late John McDermott a once squishy soft liberal but always a truly authenticist Catholic (who changed to a Reagan voter because of the pro-life issue,…and who was for years an office mate of mine)…once embarked on a self-designated campaign to encourage Marin, either a fallen away or fallen away wanna-be to re-embrace the faith. According to McDermott her conditions involved the whole swath of feminism: contraception, abortion rights, keep-your-hands-off-my-womb, women priests, women bishops, gay rights. Oh, said I, sarcastically, by all means let us immediately reformulate 2000 years of theology so Carol will go back to the church! He never gave up on her and remembered her in his prayers every day. I said: save your breath.
So Democratic party cross-eyed is she that when she interviewed Henry Hyde for her paper she had to put in the piece that she told him she came from a family where the women never voted Republican-as if anyone cares…but it was her way of squaring herself to write about him at all. Her way of getting an insight into how the presidential campaign is going is to sit down with David Axelrod whom (ith her little girl naivete) he thinks will give it to her straight. So cross-eyed is she that she actually believes this stuff.

Always a treat to see Tom tune-up the fatuous loudmouth Studs Terkle. Avail yourselves Citizens! Avail Yourselves!


Skewered and Grilled! Get some more with Tom Roeser!

McCain Blew the Last Debate -Race Cards Will Shower Down From Obama Until It's Over

McCain blew the last debate. John McCain failed to follow-up on every lifeless jab at Obama's puff-pastry thin resume, association, dodge and the agenda that underlies his entire political ascent - the deconstruction of the middle class and redistribution of wealth imperative.

Andy Stern's conglomerate of PACs and SEIU are in the vanguard of Democratic National Committee's agenda to make advocacy political, one payer ( Government) health care, and monolithic American work force the Obama Magic Carpet.

McCain had Obama's hands on his forehead while his long arms kept the tiny fists from connecting anywhere. Never once did John McCain touch a rib, much less bloody Obama's nose.

It seemed that McCain's corner men had him train for a pygmy when in fact he was in the ring with Goliath.

Obama could have knocked McCain out but did not - he did not need to do so:Nothing about Franklin Raines and Fannie Mae, No Rezko, No Wright, No Real Ayers, NO SEIU, no nothing. Most of all, McCain had Obama pushed to ropes on on the John Lewis Race Baiting nonsense and McCain let him go . . .without question or consequence! You had Obama on Race and now he has McCain set up for an endless shower of Race-baiting charges. Anyone who votes for McCain is a racist and any objection to Obama is racist.

For the next 18 days, MSNBC cheerleaders and CNN sycophants will shower down charges of racial coding and subtext that will all but maintain McCain Camp's position in the corner.

McCain's fight was fixed from the start. He was going down. He did not fight Obama; he fought George Soros and those who see an opportunity to lard their fortunes by his lead; he fought SEIU and never once challenged their important part in this enterprise to deconstruct American Labor; he fought the corporate media NBC,ABC,CBS,the news papers, as well as the cartoonish 24 hour news cable circus; McCain fought eight years of Bush/Cheney; he fought Islamist Terror and their stooges in American Academia.

Now, the American voter is the last man standing.

Charles Krauthammer details the endless shower of Race Cards:

In the name of racial rectitude, McCain has denied himself the use of that perfectly legitimate issue. It is simply Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism. What makes it doubly Orwellian is that these charges are being made on behalf of the one presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and indeed quite brilliantly, deployed the race card.

How brilliantly? The reason Bill Clinton is sulking in his tent is because he feels that Obama surrogates succeeded in painting him as a racist. Clinton has many sins, but from his student days to his post-presidency, his commitment and sincerity in advancing the cause of African-Americans have been undeniable. If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.

And Obama has shown no hesitation in doing so to McCain. Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.

What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Vote! I Voted for McCain/Palin. Even if a fight is fixed - Keep swinging.

Joe the Plumber -I Too Hope It Ain't So, Joe - The Vanishing Middle Class

Joe - I am with you! I am as proudly partisan a hack as they can get - when I am for people I admire in Life and also in the cartoonish world that is politics, I stick with my friends. Generally,in politics, they tend to be hard working and honest elected officials at the local level, but with John McCain I see one of us. A genuine Middle Class Man! McCain is the real deal and no talking points or nuanced parsing changes that fact.

However, John McCain needed to give Senator Obama a real trimming and he did not. It was a debate, I know, but McCain really needed to land some serious punches and never seemed to get close.

Senator Obama was the Quill! Sadly, this media driven putsch on the White House is going the way of the people who are no friends of you, or me.

The Media decided long ago not to look into anything that would possibly keep Barack Obama from becoming the first black American President - in their infinite and unlimited gall - The Country Needs This More Than Anything. More than good schools. good teachers, a sound economy, a robust national defense, and a secure American middle class.

Ayers is a punk - with a well-heeled and well-connected cadre of cheerleaders.

Should President Obama take the oath of office the radicals who disrupted the 1968 Democratic Convention and their media stooges get their victory. Fair enough.

SEIU will dismantle the American Labor Movement.

The Fairness Doctrine will slide through and kill Free Speech.

Public Schools (Charter & Normal) will continue to make education an international laughing stock.

Abortion Industry will flourish.

America will lose the war on terror.

Hugo Chavez will keep an American President cooling his heels, until El Jefe deigns to see him.

The American Dream by 2010 will not fill a single REM cycle.

Chris Matthews's legs will tingle, because his race-baiting BS is far from done.

I already voted for John McCain here in Chicago. I hope that more people do the same. It looks bad, but I have Faith in Americans.

2012 is very long way off and I hope that you can hang onto your business. My youngest will be graduating from high school and about the only jobs an American Kid can look forward to will be working for a Community Activist or stooging for ACORN. The building trades will disappear.

Chris Buckley Explains What HE Meant by His Snub of McCain and Rub up on Obama

Heavens, Houlihan! How in the name of Hyrcania did House . . . Oh, hello. Dabbling in Geopolitical gamesmanship with estimable film maker Mike Houlihan - whose production of Tapioca premieres at the Gene Siskel Theatre on November 20th, 2008. Click my Post Title, Do! Oh, Do so attend. We were discussing the defection of dandified dabbler Christopher Buckley to the Redistribution of Wealth Syndicate of Camp Obama. Most dyspeptic over this. Salts, Please, Willingham! Now where was I, this certainly not Kansas - Ah yes Illinois -Bold Blue. Buckley, yes.

I could not get Chris Buckley to explain himself per his recent endorsement of Senator Barack Obama, as I did not try.

He is as top-hole a writer, wit, gad-about and nuanced parser as Kid Hope could ever dream of finding in his Redistribution of Wealth library - or as Sarah Palin might say - along with so many of us helots -Lie Barry. Hmmmmm.

Damme! I tried to recall, as best I could, exactly whom Chris Buckley most sounds like - there is a shiney new dime for whoever guesses the literary source for my imaginary journalism ( an homage to Huffington Post):

Chris Buckley, Poison Squirrels! Let's have it!

Hickey -'Mr. Buckley why did you eschew McCain for Obama?'

"You will agree with me that he is not everybody's money."

"There may be something in what you say, sir."
"Cleopatra wouldn't have liked him."
"Possibly not, sir."


You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.
Scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found ... what appeared at first sight to be the Devil, A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.
We do not tell old friends beneath our roof-tree that they are an offence to the eyesight.
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
The female in question was a sloppy pest
There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots.
A slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion had reached saturation point.
I consider that of all the dashed silly, drivelling ideas I ever heard in my puff this is the most blithering and futile. It won't work. Not a chance.
And a moment later there was a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and the relative had crossed the threshold at fifty m.p.h. under her own steam.



My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all.
she cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.
"Have you ever heard of Market Snodsbury Grammar School?"

"Never."
"It's a grammar school at Market Snodsbury."
I told her a little frigidly that I had divined as much.

I goggled. Her words did not appear to make sense. They seemed the mere aimless vapouring of an aunt who has been sitting out in the sun without a hat.
"You're pulling my leg."

"I am not pulling your leg. Nothing would induce me to touch your beastly leg."

"But why do you want me? I mean, what am I? Ask yourself that."

"I often have."
"I'm hopeless at a game like that. Ask Jeeves about the time I got lugged in to address a girls' school. I made the most colossal ass of myself."
"And I confidently anticipate that you will make an equally colossal ass of yourself on the thirty-first of this month. That's why I want you. The way I look at it is that, as the thing is bound to be a frost, anyway,one may as well get a hearty laugh out of it."

He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's, cast up on some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and tides.
It's only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don't want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the girl what a hell of a time he'd been having among the cannibals and what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for the awestruck "Oh-h! Not really?", she had said that the whole thing had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably really been a prominent local vegetarian.
"It's the sort of thing you would do."
"My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you."
"No, thanks."
"I say to myself----"
"But not to me."
"Do listen for a second."
"I won't."
"Right ho, then. I am dumb."
"And have been from a child."

"And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned. "
In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake.
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.
"I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves," I said, "but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?' Like the latter, it seems to be tinged with a definite scepticism. It suggests a lack of faith in my vision. The impression I retain after hearing you shoot it at me a couple of times is that you consider me to be talking through the back of my neck, and that only a feudal sense of what is fitting restrains you from substituting for it the words 'Says you!'"
"Oh? I didn't know that."
"There isn't much you do know."

"Tut!" I said.
"What did you say?"
"I said 'Tut!'"
"Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at."
"Quite."
"Any tutting that's required, I'll attend to myself. And the same applies to clicking the tongue, if you were thinking of doing that."
"Far from it."
"Good."

And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.
I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course.
"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.
When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.". Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.
Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well.
Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't forget him in the general distribution.
Contenting myself, accordingly, with a gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or did not throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on the table beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the impression that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork, but I was feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe.
"Goodbye, Bertie," he said, rising.
I seemed to spot an error.
"You mean 'Hullo,' don't you?"
"No, I don't. I mean goodbye. I'm off."
"Off where?"
"To the kitchen garden. To drown myself."
"Don't be an ass."
"I'm not an ass.... Am I an ass, Jeeves?"
"Possibly a little injudicious, sir."
"Drowning myself, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"You think, on the whole, not drown myself?"
"I should not advocate it, sir."
"Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond."


"Jeeves," I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, "what the dickens is all this?"
I wouldn't have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.
If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.
"I've been through hell, Bertie."
"Through where?"
"Hell."
"Oh, hell? And what took you there?"

"Beginning with a _critique_ of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum."
"The boy is the father of the man."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about this Glossop."
"I thought you said something about somebody's father."
"I said the boy was the father of the man."
"What boy?"
"The boy Glossop."
"He hasn't got a father."
"I never said he had. I said he was the father of the boy--or, rather, of the man."
"What man?"

Besides, isn't there something in the book of rules about a man may not marry his cousin? Or am I thinking of grandmothers?

"My dear Tuppy, does one bandy a woman's name?"
"One does if one doesn't want one's ruddy head pulled off."
I saw that it was a special case.

I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.
He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, 'Don't talk rot, old Tom Travers.' 'I am not accustomed to talk rot,' he said. 'Then, for a beginner,' I said, 'you do it dashed well.' And I think you will admit, boys and ladies and gentlemen, that that was telling him."
"The fellow with a face rather like a walnut."
Nature, when planning this sterling fellow, shoved in a lot more lower jaw than was absolutely necessary and made the eyes a bit too keen and piercing for one who was neither an Empire builder nor a traffic policeman.
"She loves this newt-nuzzling blister."

Newt Nuzzling,Sir? Why I never . . .well, rarely. Dear Old Pup, now, what Wode he say? Tah!

John McCain, Bring Up the Ohio Plumber

McCain will blow up Obama, like Billy Ayers with a Home Depot full of C-4, if he snakes the pipes of Kid Hope's Redistribution of Wealth Imperative!

Make the Plumber's Help keep a plunging down on the Obama's Pie Hole until the Marxist slug rushes up out of the Old P-Trap!

Here is Jake Tapper's Great report from Oct. 12, 2008 when the Plumber plunged into the Campaign and brought up the burping pipes of Obamanomics!

In Working-Class Ohio, Obama Meets Amorous Dogs, Skeptical Plumber
October 12, 2008 5:58 PM

OREGON, OHIO -- On Shrewsbury Street in the working-class Lincoln Green section of Holland, Ohio, Sunday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., knocked on some doors to chat with voters in this battleground state where polls have him and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., neck and neck.

Sue Sekel, a 43-year old health care worker wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with the words "Las Vegas" written in a Tommy Hilfiger-like pattern, told Obama she'd voted early.

She also said Sunday was “the one day I come home to clean ceiling fans and look like crap, and then this happens.”

Clutching cameras, three teenage girls raced to him from across the street, with no shoes on.

“Where are your shoes?” Obama asked them.

He took photos with them, and others, shaking hands, talking about the economy.

The mother of one of the girls, Shelly Kretz, stood on the periphery of the group while snapshots were being taken.

“Mom, you look good. C’mon,” Obama said to her.

Kretz, a 38-year-old employee of Proctor & Gamble, reluctantly joined the group for a photo. Later, she told reporters that she'd been on the fence, but she liked Obama's answers to her neighbors' questions.

“It’s really awesome that he takes the time to talk to the middle class and answer questions,” she said. Kretz said her brothers were also there, and had also been converted by Obama’s appearance this afternoon.

Obama approached another house but was warned by one neighbor about two amorous dogs.

“Oh, is that right?" Obama asked. "So I don’t want to get too close, huh? They might start, they might start."

The dogs began canoodling with one another.

"Yeah, they seem like they enjoy themselves," Obama said. He then told the dogs, "Alright, don’t do anything in front of the cameras that would be inappropriate."

He reached down to pet them, scratching a small black dog behind its ears.

“Do you believe in the American dream?” a local plumber asked.

Obama said he did.

"I'm being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream,” the man said, in comments interpreted by reporters as a reference to the Democrat's proposal to increase income taxes on those making $200,000 or more a year.

Obama recited his now-familiar talking points about 95 percent of the American people would get a tax cut under his plan.

The plumber did not seem convinced.

As Obama left the man, he said, "I've got to go prepare for this debate, but that was pretty good practice."

As the old Marxist dodger Andre Malraux would say, "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets."

Sometimes we need a great plumber!

Eric Zorn is a 6th Grader -Ayers is a Terrorist and McCain is an Adulterer.

If Ayers is a terrorist, then McCain is an adulterer and I am a 6th grader.

Perhaps history will one day judge harshly all of those who participated in educational reform efforts or other civic projects in which Ayers was involved. This will include former University of Illinois and Northwestern University presidents; top honchos at Ameritech, Continental Bank and the Field Museum; and even the former publisher of the Tribune

Eric Zorn's Change of Subject



Yep. McCain committed adultery. I hate adultery. I never once even considered cheating on my late wife who struggled like a Champ through brain cancer and to her return to Christ. I don't forgive adultery. However, I have voted for many adulterers for public office - Bubba is World Class Tom Cat-er and I voted for Clinton twice. Billy Ayers is a terrorist and will always be one. McCain cheated on his wife and she forgave him. Bubba cheated on Hillary and they are still together. Billy Ayers would blow up anything to do with the integrity of American Life with dynamite or pedagogy and that I do not forget or forgive, but as long as Ayers obeys the law may he live peacefully in the ignominy he so well deserves.

Eric Zorn is busy doing nuanced parsing about Obama/Ayers - Obama made his bones with Billy Ayers.

Eric Zorn is a 6th Grader. McCain is an Adulterer; Eric a 6th Grader; and Billy Ayers an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Now that we have that settled. . .Eric. . .here is your curriculum Get Busy, Big Boy!

REQUIRED COURSES


COMMUNICATON ARTS
The sixth grade Communication Arts class is a required full year course. The class will focus on the total writing process and center on grammar, mechanics, and spelling. Writing will include effective sentences, paragraphs, compositions, and reports. The class will include at least one oral presentation.


SOCIAL STUDIES
Sixth grade Social Studies is the study of geographic regions of the world. Students study the social, political, economic and physical aspects of world geography. The study of world geography helps the student gain a greater understanding of countries' locations, cultures, developments, relationships and interdependence.


SCIENCE
Sixth grade General Science is a course which builds upon elementary science. The course includes integrated units of study on life, earth and physical science in preparation for specific courses in grades 7-12. Experimentation will be an integral part of science instruction and process skills will be stressed. Students will be prompted to question, investigate, explore and hypothesize. Activities may include the construction of models and/or the use of manipulative, interactive and physical materials.


MATHEMATICS
Sixth grade Mathematics, a survey of mathematics, will review and extend the mathematical concepts of whole numbers and fraction arithmetic, statistics, and geometry.


READING
Sixth grade Reading is a required course that meets daily throughout the school year. Students will use a wide variety of reading materials and genres appropriate to their reading and interest levels. Previously learned reading skills will continue to be reinforced while new comprehension, vocabulary and study skills are introduced. Students will participate in silent reading during regularly scheduled blocks of time.


PHYSICAL EDUCATION (ALTERNATE DAYS)
Sixth grade Physical Education is a progressively planned co-educational program in lifetime sports. Content will include large and small group games, skill drills, individual sports activities, and related lifetime sports.




EXPLORATORY COURSES
PROGRAM 1
Art (Alternate Days) - Sixth grade Exploratory Art will involve the student in the basics of two-dimensional drawing, painting, printmaking and design as well as three-dimensional forms. A variety of methods and media will be stressed with hands-on activities.
Music (Alternate Days) - Sixth grade General Music is a semester class required of all students who are not enrolled in Beginning Band or Orchestra. Classes meet every other day, alternating with Physical Education. Two main areas of study include music reading fundamentals and music literature. Reading fundamentals will be developed primarily through the study of vocal music. The music literature component will consist of an historical overview of the western art music tradition.
PROGRAM 2


Beginning Band - Beginning Band is a year-long course designed to offer students an opportunity to learn to play a band instrument. Students will be divided into like instrument groups. Emphasis will be placed on learning basic instrumental skills and technique, care of the instrument and music terminology.


PROGRAM 3
Beginning Strings - The Beginning String program includes students in grades five, six, and seven. At this level students are encouraged to work for musical performance by producing a good tone, playing in tune, and developing correct technical skills. At the end of the first year of study, students are given the opportunity to perform in an all district orchestra.
Junior Orchestra (Alternate Days) - Junior Orchestra is a year-long class for sixth grade students who have completed Beginning Strings. Emphasis will be on note reading and ensemble playing. Some performances are required.

John McCain/Sarah Palin Get My Vote - Today!

In 1972, Democratic nominee George McGovern threw Daley out of the Democratic National Convention (replacing his delegation with one led by Jesse Jackson). This event arguably marked a downturn in Daley's power and influence within the Democratic Party but, given his public standing, McGovern later made amends by putting Daley loyalist (and Kennedy in-law) Sargent Shriver on his ticket.

from Wikipedia

The radicals who distrupted the 1968 Democratic Convention succeeded in intimidating the spineless in the Democratic Party in 1972 and now control the DNC.

My first vote cast as an American citizen, a 21 year old college student volunteer for the 18th Ward Regular Democratic Organization in 1972 went to Richard M. Nixon.

In August 1974, after graduating from Loyola of Chicago. I watched Richard M. Nixon resign in disgrace.

From that time on, I voted for every Democratic candidate in every election local, State and Federal. In 1977, I was honored to run for the office of Kankakee City Clerk after being asked to do so by Milton Shapiro. The Democratic ticket got creamed.

My first vote was a protest. A protest to the idiotic and totalitarian treatment of the Chicago Delegation by the Democratic National Convention. The DNC is continues to be idiotic, but now it is positively dangerous. The DNC is an has been controlled by the Abortion industry, Advocacy fascists and redistribution of wealth Leftists.

I am voting for John McCain/Sarah Palin at the 22nd Chicago Police District in my neighborhood. I am voting for McCain/Palin -Today. The balance of ballot is my business. I am voting early and unlike Obama's cadres of ACORN and community organizers -Just Once.

Vote.

Obama and the Plumber - The Issue: The Plumbers Lose!

Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to "spread the wealth around" -- a comment that may only draw fire from riled-up John McCain supporters who have taken to calling Obama a "socialist" at the Republican's rallies.

Obama made the remark, caught on camera, after fielding some tough questions from the plumber Sunday in Ohio, where the Democratic candidate canvassed neighborhoods and encouraged residents to vote early.

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

( click post titel for the full story)

It's good for George Soros

It's good for MSNBC, NBC, CNN

It's good for the Radicals of SEIU

It's good for Billy Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN

It's good for everyone but plumbers, cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers, carpenters, pipe fitters, stationary engineers, roofers, laborers, and small business owners.

It's good for Obama - Yep, That's Everbody!

Ruth Ann Dailey of Pittsburgh Post Gazette Has Obama's and DNC's Number - Watch Out Now!

The Race Card was shuffled and dealt months ago by the Obama Camp - The former King and Queen of Hearts, Bill and Hillary Clinton were trumped hard in the Primaries. When questioned about Rev. Wright back in February, Obama decided to lecture America on Race, without ever explaining his twenty years at the feet of the now disgraced and Obama Bus Thumped Gamaliel ( he was the dude who taught St. Paul to be a Community Activist and name picked by Saul Alinsky for the subsequent parsing of the term) - Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

CNN's resident nut-job Jack Cafferty tossed out the Race Card during the waning days of summer, when Kid Hope was slumping. MSNBC has David Schuster fountain-mouth his 'say-it-don't spray it' musings with the regularity of a tornado warning on Missouri Cable Channels.

From battleground Pennsylvania - Pittsburgh to be exact comes one of the best articulation of the Hope or Die agenda by Obama that warns of race riots and other 'makes my heart hurt' dire prognostications to one and all.

The Democrats' perversion of the race issue has gotten so brazen that someone who merely points out the undeniably true -- like Mr. Obama's controversial ties to radicals or felons of any race or nationality -- is accused of racism. Left-wing politicos have opined that racism motivates even Democratic voters who don't support Mr. Obama (as if ideas don't matter), while James Carville, the Dems' talking head from the House of Slytherin, fears rioting if Mr. Obama loses.

And the Republican Party elders, to the chagrin of us younger conservatives, have accepted the Democrats' rules of engagement. Apparently, racial absolution will have to wait another decade.

For demographers, a generation may span two decades, but in culture and politics, generational characteristics seem to move in 10-year cycles. I belong to the group born at the tail end of the baby boom, the group who came of age just in time to vote for Ronald Reagan.

We burned the Iranian flag, not the American one, on the steps to our peaceful, already integrated schools. We who grew up in the homes of Eisenhower Republicans didn't hear racist language or thought and have no cause for shame.

But we watched the kids eight or 10 years ahead of us don their ratty denim uniforms of non-conformity and jump on the tail end of a historical movement they'd paid no price to further, noisily congratulating themselves for being superior to their narrow-minded parents.

We watched the party of segregation now pushing social policies soon demonstrated to be destructive and enslaving to a new generation of blacks.

And as adults we've watched blacks who dared to be conservatives get symbolically lynched by the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden (who, like their media counterparts, have finally found a black man they can respect!).

Perhaps older Republicans and their political operatives are silent in the face of the left's racial exploitation because they were present for and complicit with the racially divisive "Southern strategy."

Not so for us younger folk. There's a whole generation of us who have clear consciences and cheerfully defiant attitudes. For us, this presidential campaign is not a traveling revival tent, nor the ballot box an altar at which we expunge our alleged sins. It's just politics. It always was.

Nicely stated Ms. Dailey.