.jpg)
Congressman Jesse Jackson appears to be the only genuine victim of the Blagojevich Corruption Roller-coaster. Congressman Jesse L. Jackson who was named in the Criminal Complaint and subsequent indictment of Blago by the Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has now been piled on out of the blue with an additional set charges.
One accusation at a time Fitzy; One person at a time, one allegation at a time, Fitzy." My attorney pal. Tamara Holder said to me "It looks like they veered off the yellow brick road. Just an opinion, but this was about BLAGO. How did the arrows all of a sudden turn to JR?!?!"
Well, Tamara, from my front porch way down here in the 19th Ward, there appears to be some wiggle enough room for Paddy Fitz to drive a semi-trailer towing a Wide Load slab house. Seems like everyone Blago touched is now subject to a probe by the G.
This marriage of true minds brought together two polar opposites - me and Tamara Holder.
Two of God’s Creatures – Ms. Tamara Holder an athletic 'twenty something and change' beauty and attorney, activist, and legal affairs spokesperson for Fox News and CNN and me, a runty, old south side school teacher, who sits on the porch with a quart of Green River ( at minimum) jawing about politics and ‘those damned kids’ with my 19th Ward helot neighbors – polar opposites have come to the same conclusion that Congressman Jackson seems being fitted to wear a jacket that he just might not deserve.
Together we hope to raise some questions for our neighbors - Tamara's around Lincoln Park and my own around 108th & Rockwell -consider -
1. Why is Congressman Jackson being targeted with such vigor, while Blago goes on the Media Circuit, hawks an unreadable book and plays to his upcoming jury pool? And while Obama, Axelrod and Emanuel get to be tight-lipped too. "The Presidential Protection!"
2. Why are Feds Changing the Game? Are they dropping the Senate Shenanigans for Congressional mailings? Who benefits by Fitzy nailing Congressman Jackson's pelt to the shed?
3. Who's driving this railroad? Which Justice Department?
How's that?
4. As Ms. Holder mentioned to me -"How about we ask about how much money this is costing? Remember the Jesse Jackson investigation has been 5 months long with the Ethics Committee! TWO investigations, Fitzy's and Congresses. I wonder how much money Jackson used to allegedly have a staffer send a mass email to constituents regarding his desire for the Senate seat? All the while, the other leaders are flitting around in private jets and 1st class, reading his financials instead of the health care bill."
Fair questions in deed.
Full disclosure - I met Congressman Jackson on two occasions - back in 1993, Jesse Jackson, Junior was on the School Board for LeMans Academy in Rolling Prairie, Indiana along with Bulls Boss John Paxson. He impressed me as a well-read and very nice guy. Twelve or so years later, I met Congressman Jackson and his two adorable kids at Rainbow Cone, Ice Cream on Western Ave. and he did not seem bothered in the least that I had referred to him as Kid Staples - following his dramatic weight loss. I think his Old Man is a Race cottage industry stick-up artist, but, then again, my Dad is a gifted tradesman.
Watch Chicago Daily Observer for future thoughts on the Jackson issue from Beauty and the Beast.
Click my post title for Attorney Tamara Holder's sharp take on this issue
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tamara Holder and Pat Hickey Think Congressman Jackson is Having a Job Done on Him. It Don't Seem Right.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Romy Hammes - 1900-1981: Illinois Business Genius, Philanthropist and Good Guy -The Man from Kankakee
I taught a good many Hammes kids while at Bishop McNamara from 1975 until 1987 and the Hammes legend was very familiar to me.
However, I tripped over a story about Romy Hammes that really put the hook through my gills -it has every thing! well, aside from the Communist onslaught moving south in Vietnam no violence - yet - and no sex - though I am quite postive that procreation and adultery took place circa 1956.
Refugees, Persecution, Vietnam in the 1950's, 1950-51 Fords and Trucks, International Law, Catholic Charities, Notre Dame University, South Bend, and . . . more to come.
Romy Hammes
If there was ever one person from Kankakee, Illinois, who had it all and did it all it was a businessman with a seemingly inexhaustible Midas touch.
In September 1946, Kankakeeans who knew Romy Hammes were not surprised to discover he had received nation-wide recognition in a seven page article, "U.S. Success Story 1938-1946," that appeared in Life magazine. (This was Hammes' second appearance in Life, the first had been in a 1938 story on the automobile industry.) In 1974 the photographer that had taken the pictures of Hammes for Life, Bernard Hoffman, published a biography about "The amazing, meteoric like rise of a grass-roots American from small-town Ford salesman to international businessman" and titled it "The Man from Kankakee: The Story of Romy Hammes, Twentieth-Century Pioneer."
Born in 1900 to Anton N. and Mary Hammes, Romy Hammes grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
...
At the age of seven, Romy began helping out at his father's shoe store.At sixteen, having completed courses in bookkeeping, shorthand and typing at the University of Wisconsin Business School, he went to work for the local Ford dealer, Harry Dahl.
By 1926, Hammes had married Dorothy Hofweber and had won a nationwide Ford sales contest by selling 107 Model T's . He was then offered a dealership management position by the Ford Company.Given the choice of Atoma, Iowa, or Kankakee, Illinois, Hammes chose Kankakee in partnership with Dahl.
...
Hammes soon opened dealerships in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; DeKalb, Illinois; South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago.He also became a distributor for Ford-Ferguson tractors in fifty-two counties.
At the time Hoffman had contacted Hammes for the 1946 Life article, he learned Hammes, besides being a very successful Ford distributor owned an investment trust company, was a director of Kankakee's City National Bank; had opened Marycrest Business College.He also was dealing in real estate and building homes.When Hoffman returned in 1961 to take some pictures for Life's twenty-fifth anniversary issue, he found Hammes and his wife Dorothy, because of their generous philanthropic and charitable activities, had received the highest homage the Catholic Church can give to laymen.Anarticle in the January 1951 Kankakee Journal told the story:
"The honor of Knight of St. Gregory, conferred last week upon Romy Hammes of Kankakee by Pope Pius XII, is greater than many laymen appreciate.Not more than 100 men in the entire world may be accorded this knighthood, established in 1821 by Pope Gregory XVI. . . . "Mrs.Romy Hammes has been accorded the medal, "Pro Esslesia et Pontiface," in recognition of her services to the Roman Catholic church.The awardswere announced by the most Rev. Martin D. McNamara, bishop of Joliet diocese. . . ."
By 1970 The Hammes family had spent over 2 million dollars "in worldwide church and school construction."
Hammes expressed his credo in a 1970 Kankakee Sunday Journal interview:
"'About 20 years ago I decided to take the Blessed Virgin in as a partner,' said Romy, 'I decided to give her 25 percent of whatever I earned.After all, where do you get your good health and good fortune but from the Lord, and you must do something in return.'"Hammes's philanthropic and business projects embraced countries around the world as well several cities in the United States.They ranged from erecting a high school, church and bank building in Las Vegas and a resort hotel in Honolulu, to contributing to the establishment "of schools, orphanages, hospitals, living quarters and missions from Hong Kong to Africa."
In 1955, Hammes bought the Singer manufacturing company property in South Bend and Chicago. He planned a shopping center on the South Bend property and donated the 10-story Singer office building in Chicago to Chicago's First Church of the Nazarene.
On a local level Hammes built Marycrest Shopping Center and St. Teresa's school and church in the Marycrest subdivision of Kankakee; donated an outdoor statue of the Blessed Virgin to St. Joseph's Church in Bradley and opened branches of Peoples Bank of Marycrest in Bradley and Bourbonnais.
Romy Hammes died in December 1981 at the age of 81.
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Hammes_Romy_258514659.aspx
Friday, September 18, 2009
ACORN 8 Balls! - Meet the Acorn Advisory Board!
Meet Your Acorn All stars!
. John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
• Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Board Member, RFK Foundation, former MD Lt. Governor
• Andrew Stern, International President, Service Employees International Union
• Henry Cisneros, Executive Chairman, Cityview
• John Banks, Vice President of Government Relations Con Ed
• Eric Eve, Senior VP of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, Citigroup
• Harvey Hirschfeld, President, Lawcash
• Dave Beckwith, Executive Director, Needmor Fund
John Podesta is the Bubba Clinton Vet who was tasked with the waterfall of pardons by Bubba and keeping a lid on the UFOs - I imagine we will learn more about the Spacemen in Rosewell than the synergy between SEIU/ACORN and the DNC.
Kathleen Kennedy -Townsend, The Old Lion's Niece and a Kennedy - touch football, sailing, PT Boat accidents, water hazards, annulments and the poor and down-trodden.
Andy Stern . . not enough space here . . .the man who is killing organized labor and the American Middle Class. Andy will try and muzzle Bertha Lewis before she shoots her mouth off on Fox Sunday.
Henry Cisneros was Bubba's running-with-britches-down mate in the early Clinton White House Housing and Urban Development who paid off one of his skirts, lied to G, did a guilty plea and pardoned by Bubba and John Podesta.
John Banks - Up and Coming New York Government Relations fizer with MTA and Con Ed. Traffic and lights.
Eric Eve another Clintonista who found a home with CITI Group who made out handsomely on bad loans and Federal Bailouts!
Harvey Hirschfeld is Pay-to-Play Player in the Easy Loan Get Fed Money Finance World now with Litigation Lawyers CashLaw!
Dave Beckwith is an AllStar Community Organizer Like Jesus Was! Like Jesus, Dave plays to win Dig it!" Unless the organization wins concrete, measurable benefits for those who participate, it will not last long. The groups that content themselves with holding endless meetings and plod along involving everyone in discussions that never lead to action or to victory are doomed to shrink into nothing. People want to see results. That's why they get involved. There is a theory (isn't there always?) that says that folks join up if two things are true. First, they must see a potential for either benefit or harm to themselves if the group succeeds or fails. Second, they must see that their personal involvement has an impact on the whole effort. This makes sense to me. Winning is critical, but if the group's going to win whether I get involved or not - if my personal involvement is not critical - then I can stay home and watch TV."
Better stick to MSNBC Dave, because everywhere else ACORN and your work with them ain't looking too good.
'Put Her There Pal! Putin There!' - Obama takes a Nerf ball to a Nuke Fight and Vlad is Glad! Poles Ain't Thrilled.
Vladimir Putin extends the hand of Friendship to his best Pal.
Nuance and thigh tingling soaring rhetoric aside, President Obama is Jimmy Carter.
Click my post title for Barack Obama's That 70's Show -starring President Obama as Jimmy Carter!
"Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama's new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous "gray zone" between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.
Will it be McKenna/Proft for the top of the Illinois GOP?
The Illinois field in the race for Governor is getting more applicants than American Idol. I'm no Randy Jackson, much less Ellen, but I like what I see.
Dan Proft is the only candidate with any real ideas - especially about education and how to get genuine ( Vouchers!)reform to our public schools -but Dan has fewer nickels in his jeans than your humble correspondent at the end of the pay cycle. Dan Proft welcomed one of the nicest guys in civic and public life into the hooley - Andy McKenna, Jr.
I met Andy McKenna years ago, when he served on a school board of directors. Mr. McKenna is tough, sharp, no-nonsense, good humored and as chatty as Speaker Mike Madigan. Andy McKenna operates on consensus, but does not dither. He will strike boldly.
Dan Proft grabs large issues and Gigantic political opposition by the belt, pulls the fight in close, tosses his forehead into the chest and pounds the short ribs until the bigger foe can no longer breathe - no breathe/no fight.
Yesterday, the sweet-natured but tough gutted Andy McKenna got a taste of Proft from the bell:
"We can nominate a candidate beholden to a small group of affluent political insiders who give money to both parties. They win when Republicans get elected; they win when Democrats get elected. Either way, you lose.
"Or we can nominate a candidate willing to take the fight to the establishment politicians of both parties, those who are concerned only with peddling influence and dividing up other people’s money.
"I am the only candidate willing to make a clean break from our ignominious past; to hold cynical Chicago Democrats and complicit Republicans accountable for what has happened on their watch; and to chart a future focused on expanding opportunity for people who play by the rules in Illinois.
"The McKenna family has donated thousands of dollars to Chicago Democrats, including Mike Madigan, Lisa Madigan, Dan Hynes, and Dick Durbin. They have also donated thousands of dollars to Republicans and the Illinois Republican Party.
"They hedge their bets, because they are interested in self-preservation. Mr. McKenna has taken indicted Springfield powerbroker Bill Cellini’s infamous ethos to heart, ‘When we're in, we're in, and when you're in, we're in. We're always in.’
"Who’s the ‘we’? I suggest you ask Andy McKenna. But the ‘we’ sure doesn’t include rank-and-file Republican primary voters.
"We have been down this road so many times as a party. Every time we allow the bipartisan combine to select our candidates, we run into a dead end. We cannot make the same mistake again if we want to not only win elections, but also bring about the system-change reform required to make Illinois economically viable. We cannot hope to un-fix Illinois before we un-fix our own party.
"As State Senator Matt Murphy, the other half of ‘Team Status Quo,’ said just a few weeks ago, ‘People are looking for a new face to take us in a new direction, especially on the Republican side…They want to see somebody who can represent a clean break from the past.’
"Sen. Murphy is right. And that is why Andy McKenna is absolutely the wrong candidate to lead our party and lead this state."
Ding!
I got a feeling here at ringside that we are going to see Dan Proft hammer away at Andy's short ribs round after round.
Now, here's the deal. If Jim Tyree had Andy's money and access to money, he'd toss his coin away. The dough is the stuff that keeps Ow-ees, cuts bruises and bumps from doing too much damage. Unlike Tomato-Candidates, Andy McKenna can devalue time and go round after round with Dan Proft. More importantly, Andy McKenna has a crowd of talented folks in his corner - he has an organization - troops. Andy McKenna has a Notre Dame sense of the field. Yet again and unlike Charlie Weiss, Dan Proft can read a clock and knows that what moves the arms on the tick-tock is the Dough Ray Me!
This just might be the GOP's year - Gov. Quinn got the backing of the Cook County Democratic Leadership, an endorsement from the Purple People Eaters of SEIU and is in a pillow fight with Dan Hynes. That should be gravy for the GOP and Dan Proft just might be the guy to keep them focused and keep the GOP from blowing their toes off - as is their wont. Dog! Yo! - make sure that Judy is out grabbing a smoke during the bouts, Dan.
This brawl might end up with Andy McKenna getting the big belt for Governor. I expect to see Dan Proft holding up Andy McKenna's arm with one hand and swinging the other one like a saloon door on payday in the role of Lt. Governor. This will be Dempsey v.Tunney *1926 all over.
Dan Proft will propbably come over to my 'Hood and flatten my tires for saying that: I would expect no less from a guy who is in the race to win. Andy, Proft can do the hard hitting.
*In his autobiography, Dempsey conceded that he forgot all about the rule: "It's hard to stop what you're doing, standing over a guy and waiting for him to get up."
Tunney, who floored Dempsey briefly in the ninth round, won the 10-round fight and retained the title he had won from Dempsey the year earlier.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
I Believe that God Looks like Dennis Haysbert and God Speaks - ' Jimmy Carter's Wrong!
"I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American.
"It's a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States," Carter said.
Because I have questioned President Obama, at least once a month or more, am I rock-ribbed hateful klansperson, opinionated person, prejudiced person, sectarian, segregationist, sexist person, white supremacist, xenophobe?
I love Amos and Andy, Hattie McDaniel, Eddie Robinson, as well as the Lads Marsallis, Dennis Haysbert ( whom I believe God must surely resemble), James Earl Jones, Muhammad Ali, Thomas Hayes, Marquis Ball, Big Dave, Ronnell, Mike Holmes, Chris Mad-Dog' Thomas, Lonnie Newman, Akim Hunter, Dr. Eric Wallace, Il. Rep. Mary Flowers, Dr. Lonnie Smith and all of the White Sox of Color.
I am conflicted. I asked a noted south side intellect and he replied, " I think the Sh#nes make way too much of all this racism business." Hmmmm. I am conflicted. I see the intrinsic humor there, but I am made uneasy by its overt irony wrapped in frankness and my subsequent giggles.
So, I decided to ask God.
He was busy, but he left a message on my cell phone - ' It's your dime, Start talking . . .Just kidding. Hey, you missed me, but your call is important to me leave a message at the tone. I got your number in the memory card; so, if you don't hear from me, it's my falt! I didn't feel like calling! Hey, I'm God! Just kidding; wait fo the tone . . .' waiting, waiting, waiting (tone) it was David Allan Coe's "Now I Lay Me Down to Cheat"* (click my post title for God's Channel - Outlaw Country on Sirius Radio)
At the end of the chorus and subsequent buzz, I uttered out my carefully chosen words.
"Almighty Father, President Carter, on two occasions wedged into the Joe Wilson issue by branding critics of the President racists and . . .( Buuuuhp!!)
( Basso Profundo - It is Dennis Haysbert!)You really are a gabby little fellow. Listen here, Hoss! Let me get on this topic, like a Cow on the Cabbage. Son, Lookee here. You mistreat your fellow man and I'm on it. Your comeupance is ordained.
Now, off the record. Jimmy Earl is a Jackass. Now, don't go repeatin' that, or your ass is smote. I gotta go. Hey, know why the Hill-rods love Nascar?
"No, my Savior."
They all like to say "Hey, lookee thar! NAS Car! Yep, Shore is a NAS Car, Custis!" Now, look, dummy, behave and watch your language around of my little ones and re-read Matthew 23 - My Boy (IHS) said it right to that one. Nas Car!!!! Kills me.
Deus Misereatur !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Haysbert
*Now I lay me down to cheat
On the woman I love so
And if I die between these sheets
I pray to God she'll never know
President Obama is Jimmy Carter
In 2004, Democrats delivered a “Chorus Of Boos” during Bush's Bush’s State Of The Union when he called for renewal of the Patriot Act., according to the Washington Times.The Politico Sept. 10, 2009.
In 2005, Dems howled, hissed and shouted "No!" when Bush pushed for Social Security reform in the SOU: "Foreshadowing the contentiousness of the coming debate, Democrats broke decorum and booed twice," according to the National Journal.
At the time, CNN's Bill Schneider remarked, “It was unusual. I had never heard it at least at that level before. The Democrats clearly were booing, heckling, saying no when the president talked about the crisis in Social Security."
No matter how bad things were going in this country, Bush was respected as the president of the United States.Race Baiter Mary Mitchell Sept. 17, 2009
Mary Mitchell goes on to praise President Jimmy Carter, the guy who has his book ( Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid),on Osama Bin Laden's Must Read List.*
Of course! White People use every waking moment to bullwhip, bamboozle, cheat, slander, vilify, lynch oppress, and make God's Green Earth a bed of nails for black folks. That is why 100% of the African American kids at Leo High School get an education supported 99.9% by white guys. Hateful. Obvious irony is sarcasm. Sorry. Let's be up-beat about the Old Peanut Farmer Cincinnatus and Presidential Hamas Farm Hand - President Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter tossed his nose in to help President Obama with all of hsi customary planning, foresight and tactical wisdom that sent a doomed rescue team into Iran. The commandos sent in to rescue the hostages in Tehran were doomed from the dust-off. President Obama has now been historically fused to the lamest American President - ever.
Here's the deal. I like President Obama, but believe he is in way over his head, because he jumped to the White House too soon. More so, he is surrounded by the halt, lame and lazy.
Thanks Jimmy! President Obama needed your two cents like he needs another ACORN tape.
When the Race Card gets tossed, you lose.
Gov. Patterson, Roland Burris, William 'The Refrigerator' Jefferson, Maxine Waters - 24/7, Jena Seven, Duke LaCrosse, Bobby Rush, ACORN, MSNBC & Time/Warner & etc. Sad Company these Cartesians.
The sad truth is that President Obama seems to be wandering the same old lonesome road as Jimmy Carter did through the 1970's - appeasement, disarming America, and getting a weekly tune-up from tin-horn dictators and Islamist psychotics. Jimmy had plenty of advice from dilettante power players and so does President Obama.
With less than 300 days Office, President Obama is Jimmy Carter.
As the Old Spiritual tells us,
Nuts, Hot Nuts You Get 'Em From the Peanut Man!**
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/obama-is-pushing-israel-to-war.html
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/president-obama-to-replace-bushs-permanent-missile-defense-shield-plans-with-more-agile-system.html
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/09/16/business-lt-venezuela-oil-allies_6895980.html
**Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale.
One for five, two for ten,
If you buy 'em once, you'll buy 'em again.
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man.
Nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale.
You tell me your nuts is mighty fine,
But I bet your nuts isn't hot as mine.
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man.
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale.
You tell me that man's nuts is mighty small,
Best to have small nuts than have no nuts at all;
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man.
Spoken: Hot nuts? Peanuts! Nutsies? Nuts!
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy some nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale.
You see that man all dressed in brown,
He's got the hottest nuts in town.
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man.
Nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale.
When a hog gets hungry, he begins to grunt,
When a man gets hungry, he begins to hunt,
For nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
ACORN, The Faux Hegelian Crooks and Academic Posers and the Political Oafs of Illinois
Since morality is an experiment analogous to the scientific method, Dewey rejects any a priori moral limits on action; moral knowledge can only come in the process of experience. Dewey calls his method “naturalistic empiricism” (EN, 1a), and describes proper experimentalism as providing “a map of the road that has been traveled” (EN, 29). Dewey acknowledges as problematic that the retrospective method of traditional empiricism tends to accept the facts of past experience as given: “British empiricism, with its appeal to what has been in the past is, after all, only a kind of apriorism. For it lays down a fixed rule for future intelligence to follow.”26Instead of a purely retrospective empiricism, Dewey goes to great lengths to outline a dialectical experimentalism as opposed to a one-sided empiricism.27Always concerned
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/7/4/0/pages67408/p67408-11.php
I watched a bit of ACORN free-fall while channel surfing the Cable, during my laundry rituals this morning and amused myself with the always pie-eyed loudmouth, hip-hop Academic Michael Eric Dyson on Morning Joe. Dyson scatted loudly about race and the nuanced "Oh,No You Didn't" race machine-gunning of all manner of topic.
This dope was given an academic posting at the PC Self-Conscious DePaul University, a Sun Times column that was mercifully short-lived and launched himself on to the national scene at Georgetown University and gigs on CNN and the MSNBC Took-Shed ( staffed by more Tools than True Value Hardware.
Dyson went all Mumia on Morning Joe and Mika with 'You gotta understand' litanies that support failed President Jimmy Carter's moronic assertion that any opposition to President Obama is intrinsically racist and reaction against the election of America's first black President. Race is place for the helpful Hegelian Man Dyson.
Dyson and most extreme leftist Academics float on the clouds of Faux Hegelianism.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a 19th Century German Philosopher who developed the system of ideas that 'pump up' the State. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Kaiser Wilhelm, Tojo, Tito, Castro, Hugo Chavez, John Dewey, Roger Baldwin, W.E.B. Dubois, and Michael Eric Dyson are Hegelians, or at least faux Hegelians.
Hegel was the granddaddy of Totalitarian schemers and the polar opposite of liberal thinkers. Thus:
The worship of power is an old religion, and Hegel, to go no farther back, is full of it; but like traditional religion his system qualified its veneration for success by attributing success, in the future at least, to what could really inspire veneration; and such a master in equivocation could have no difficulty in convincing himself that the good must conquer in the end if whatever conquers in the end is the good.
– George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, I
In fact, so powerful was Hegel's system of thought that the entire philosophical foundation of the University of Chicago is Germanic Hegelianism and most rooted in Hegel was the man who screwed up American Public Education John Dewey. Hegel influenced Marx and Marx tried to stop Adam Smith style free market thought through Hegel's The State as Absolute Truth. All a priori truths -ethics morals and religious conviction are excised by John Dewey in his mad rush and crush on 'free inquiry.' Everything is absorbed by Hegel's Absolute -The State.
Hegelianism is at the core of what we call modern American Progressives ( Emma Goldman, Roger Baldwin & etc.) Progressives seek to ensure that every human thought, activity and inclination be absorbed into the One Absolute -The State ( Government -witness the great 1919 Progressive Victory Prohibition and its children State controlled Vice -Gaming, Smoking, Banking, Industry, Health, Sex, Abortion, Eugenics, Voting, Education, ad infinitum!) Thus,. . .
Perhaps one of the most influential parts of Hegel's Philosophy of Right concerns his analysis of the contradictions of the unfettered capitalist economy. On the one hand, Hegel agreed with Adam Smith that the interlinking of productive activities allowed by the modern market meant that “subjective selfishness” turned into a “contribution towards the satisfaction of the needs of everyone else.” But this did not mean that he accepted Smith's idea that this “general plenty” produced thereby diffused (or “trickled down” ) though the rest of society. From within the type of consciousness generated within civil society, in which individuals are grasped as “bearers of rights” abstracted from the particular concrete relationships to which they belong, Smithean optimism may seem justified. But this simply attests to the one-sidedness of this type of abstract thought, and the need for it to be mediated by the type of consciousness based in the family in which individuals are grasped in terms of the way they belong to the social body. In fact, the unfettered operations of the market produces a class caught in a spiral of poverty. Starting from this analysis, Marx later used it as evidence of the need to abolish the individual proprietorial rights at the heart of Hegel's “civil society” and socialise the means of production. Hegel, however, did not draw this conclusion. His conception of the exchange contract as a form of recognition that played an essential role within the state's capacity to provide the conditions for the existence of rational and free-willing subjects would certainly prevent such a move. Rather, the economy was to be contained within an over-arching institutional framework of the state, and its social effects offset by welfarist state intervention
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
Hegel defies common sense and the true sense of the human community. Progressives have done more to vanish the Humanities than any 3rd Century Vandal could have dreamed of doing. Why burn a library when you can burn away the Human Voice! " You Lie!" No, I don't!
That is why faux Hegelians like Dyson find such warmth in Hegel's illogical blanket. If it deifies sense -hey it works. The eye is valuable, but it is not intrinsically essential in and of its self. The eye is good for seeing stuff, but take the eye out of the human being and it is useless. A Hegelian like Dyson takes something that might have value and turns it into an absolute. Racism is valuable to racists whether they are leading the Aryan Nation, or commenting loudly on Morning Joe.
Hegelians love ACORN. Hell they founded it. According to Hegel the only things that matters is the complete subjugation of everything needed to help feed its appetite for Power an that Power's ability to feed the State is absolute. Hookers, Pimps and sex-slave traffickers have a place under the Mighty Oak. Until the last two weeks anyway.
Federal Funding to ACORN was dumped. More on the way.
Our two Illinois Senators voted to stand with ACORN. Makes perfect Hegelian sense.
Dick Durbin* is a Hegelian's Dream Candidate - everything and anything fits Durbin handsomely, but common sense. Senator Roland Burris . . .that says it all.
ACORN lost its funding after years of being a haven for 60's radicals and a money laundering operation that benefits elected officials.
When the Faith, Patriotism, Decency and Honesty of American citizens can be tagged as essentially and absolutely racist in all matters, Hegelian thought is afoot.
*
Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) introduced an amendment to the HUD and Transportation appropriation bill to strip ACORN of all federal funding. A week ago, Johanns wouldn’t have gotten the amendment to the floor. Today, however, after three straight days of BigGovernment.com’s video exposés of ACORN offices in Washington DC, New York City, and Baltimore offering assistance to pimping, tax evasion, and trafficking in underage Salvadorean girls, Johanns not only got his vote — but he got an impressive bipartisan showing. The Senate passed the Johanns amendment 83-7.
The seven Senators supporting ACORN:
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Roland Burris (D-IL)
Robert Casey (D-PA)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/durbin-burris-vote-to-continue-funding-acorn,65681
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Shoeless Joe Wilson! Jesus, Work on it Dude! You Are No Muntazer al-Zaidi, I Can Tell You, Bubba!
House Cougar Nancy Pelosi will offer this Iraqi Kid an all Congressional Expense Paid Trip on one of the swell but aging Congressional Perquisite G5s to com on over and get the Approval of Congress for tossing his brogans at war-criminal President Bush, getting waterboarded, zapped with Jon Burgish ( local Chicago villain of choice for Progressives)electrical thingees, slandered, libeled, called words that ain't in the Bible! Muntazer al-Zaidi is the Total Progressive Package!
Meantime, Shoeless Joe Wilson is getting his. Owwwwwww. Congressmen who can't read a bill let alone explain one have ill-will for me! Chilling.
Shoeless Joe you, #$%^ed Up! He's the President. Now GW Bush was the President too. Muntazer al-Zaidi tossed his Florsheims at President Bush and the House Loved it! He's getting Libyan Hero's Welcome and More Face-time than Kanye West.
Congressman Wilson you should have told AP, Reuters, NSNBC that you were waterboarded by Rahmbo and Comb Over Dave Axelrod after the President's Speech. Be a martyr, if youmust be a be a great one!
Politico Says 'Get to Know Mike Quigley' and That Pain in Your Kidneys is Phantom Pain -Your Wallet's Missing!
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) is a hockey-loving, hard-fightin’ type of guy who has a lot to live up to — or reform — while holding Rod Blagojevich’s and Rahm Emanuel’s old seat.
by Politikos' -Anne Shredder Mills:
What’s the hardest thing to get used to in Washington?
When you come in on a special election, there’s no pause for orientation. It’s kind of like being transferred to a new high school halfway through the year. Besides the steep learning curve and catching up on institutional memory, it’s hard to figure out where the cool kids’ table is, but Barney Franks and Danny Davis let me into the cool caucuses. We goof on the squares and punk Dan Lipinski. Oh, and the pizza. I miss my Chicago deep dish and Ann Sather’s cinnamon rolls. Another thing is the door knobs are all changed. In the County Building, Forrest had them drop them down for me.
You’re a hockey enthusiast. How many fights have you gotten into while playing hockey?
One too many, and I have the stitches to prove it. That Jan Schakowsky thought I was the help.
What was the worst fight?
The one that Mr. Daly - the father of Mary Ellen Daly - which I avoided that was the worst fight I never had - like all ones I fought and never had on the County Board, I guess.
Would you rather check a guy or make a great pass?
Pass. I never accept a check. I learned from Bernie Hanson that cash is King!
And what about this fight at the Blackhawks game a few months ago? What happened there?
I did my part beating back the evil horde from Tiny Town.
You’re one of these “sleeps in his office” types. Why?
I'll sleep anywhere. The County. The Ward. Oh, Congress! Here, you mean. Not when CSPan's panning, It’s a short commute. Now if I could just convince the cleaning crew not to vacuum at 2 p.m.
Has Emanuel given you any advice on his old district?
Before the election, his advice was to never forget who the #$%^ got you to Washington, you half-pint mother#$%^&er: the voters - #$%^ them!. We may have slightly different vocabularies, but at around 5 feet 7 inches, we see eye to knee.
Blago’s book just came out. Have you read it? Do you plan to?
Probably not, I don't know that many words. I prefer history to fiction and cartoons to landscape painting.
There’s an open seat next to each of the following: Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.). Which one do you choose and why?
Oh, so that’s where the cool kids’ table is. I’d actually like to spend more time with [Rep.] John Lewis (D-Ga.); I’ve been reading his book. A few weeks after being sworn in, my first co-sponsored bill — the Civil Rights Oral History Project — was signed into law, and the president invited me to join him and some colleagues in the Oval Office for the bill signing. I got a P-51 model that I built here its cool and one like them Colored Guys Flew in that War. There I was, standing with Congressman Lewis and the president. And I showed them the model and they said it was cool too. Just three weeks before that, I was standing on the floor of the Cook County Board and looking right at Tony Peraica's shoe laces. He busted up my first model of the plane the Colored Guys Flew - Tusk-something. Tony's Republican and Republicans Hate Coloreds and I Love Coloreds. Without hesitation I thought to myself, “Yeah, this is better.” The paint on the tail of this one is so much cooler. The President said so.
TAGS: Mike Quigley, Illinois, Hockey
On- The - Level Liberal Lawyer Tamara Holder Beer Tends for Tom Tunney - Tips to Charity
I respect and admire Liberals - folks who believe that real justice issues like housing, health and social services can best be promoted through government. I take a very dim view of Progressives - patch-work Hegelians and phonies.
Liberals I admire and Progressives give me the giggles. The more one giggles the more self-righteous and goofy become the Progressives.
Pat Quinn is a liberal. I like and admire the Governor.
Toni Preckwinkle is a Progressive and Toni believes that Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow is Ian Smith*. Some one told Toni that Saul bellow was a racist and that settle the novelist's hash for him. No Street Name, Saul! Toni is smarter than a Fifth Grader and wants to be our County Board President.
One of my favorite Liberal lawers is Tamara Holder - a true believer. She holds for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and not the daffy world of Roger Baldwin and G. Flint Taylor. That's Tamara Holder with the late King of Pop - who will not attend Friday night's event.
Ms. Holder will be tending bar for St. Thomas More Grammar School Alum an 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney - a Liberal I admire, as well.
Ms. Holder's bar tending tips will go to Hands on Helping. So, all you big tipping swells and Liberally inclined persons of quality drop by the 44th Ward Dinner Party and toss some swag into Tamara Holder's Tip Jar. Remember - Tipping is not a town in China. Always tip your bartender, waiter, waitress, cab driver, maid and red cap.
True fact, I have never - ever - seen a Progressive duke 'the help.'
*Ian Smith lived an exemplary family life and in private was a down-to-earth, modest man. Ian Smith was not corrupt nor was he a megalomaniac. However whilst Ian Smith acted in what he thought were the best interests of then Rhodesia he made some disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister which directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today... The policies of his Rhodesia Front party radicalized black nationalists and directly spawned the violent and fascist rule of Zanu PF.
—David Coltart, member of the Zimbabwe Parliament (House of Assembly and Senate) since 2000
Monday, September 14, 2009
Seth Moyers -Birkenstock of Huffing Pope.com Let's Me Have It!
* Seth Moyers-Birkenstock is writer/activist/Falatalist-Falangista/actor/ and grass roots organizer living in LaJolla, CA and Custer Park, IL.
Moyers-Birknstock played Danny in the 1970's Quinn-Martin (QM) Production of Mom's Gums. He was recently quoted by Senator Al Franken (D.MN) as saying 'This Obama Health Plan . . .Dude!' He is a regular contributer and member to the Pasedena Men and Boys Bell Choir.
Rod and Kanye Blagojevich-West
"Chris is my friend," ... "I am saddened to hear these allegations about his personal life" -Rod Blagojevich
"Taylor, I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time" -Kanye West
CHICAGO (AP) - The investigation into the death of the former chief fundraiser for ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich intensified on Sunday as medical examiners completed an autopsy and detectives looked into whether drugs found in the trusted aide's vehicle might have factored into his death. Dwight Welch, the mayor of suburban Country Club Hills where Christopher Kelly was found slumped over his vehicle's steering wheel in a lumber yard, said a number of drugs were found in the former fundraiser's black Cadillac Escalade but declined to say which drugs. He did say the investigation was being treated as a possible suicide.
NEW YORK (AP) - Kanye West apologized for an outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards that was directed at country-pop sweetheart Taylor Swift. West interrupted Swift's acceptance speech at Sunday's VMAs and said that Beyonce deserved to win.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
'Shoeless' Joe Took the Dough and Only Buck Weaver Died Game
Two more lawyers have joined the Progressive chorus to Free Shoeless Joe Jackson from the bribes that he took while helping Ed Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox and Arnold Rothstein of the American Gaming Interests fix the 1919 World Series.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-clear-shoeless-joesep09,0,556801.story
Swell. You guys are a few months late - Studs Terkel is off the air.
The late loud-mouth and Chicago buried treasure Studs Terkel was a huge advocate for the Free Joe Jackson movement. He did so only to sully the name of White Sox Founder and Owner Charles Comiskey and push victim politics. There are victims, but Progressives tend to make perpetrators ( Mumia, Most Gang-bangers, Libya, ACORN and Van Jones) appear the victim by heaping more horse manure into a moral mountain.
Yesterday, I passed the gates of Mount Hope Cemetery, where last week families and investigators were looking into allegations that more African American families had deceased loved ones disrespected by persons tasked with keeping their burial plots. Chicago White Sox Great and the only member of the 1919 Team tainted by the FIX and absolutely innocent of taking bribes from Rothstein, George Daniel 'Buck' Weaver is buried at Mount Hope.
Buck Weaver does not enjoy the 'victimhood' anointed to the eyes, mouth, temples and ears of Shoeless Joe.
Buck Weaver was a stand-up guy and would never rat-out his teammates, let alone help fix a game in anyway. George Weaver took his infamy with stoic heroism. Shoeless Joe has lawyers, crumbs and money.
Shoeless Joe was a dumb-as-dirt phenomenon. He sold his gifts and talents for the coin of the corrupt. However, he wanted his bat and ball back.
Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis ruled. Baseball, from Judge Landis on down to Bud Selig, has denied attempts to clear anyone that the Landis Ruling banished from Baseball. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama wrote to Commissioner Selig in attempt to clear Buck Weaver, but that was before he became President of the United States. I'll bet the President could clear Buck. It was damned great of Sen. Obama to try and right a genuine wrong in 2005.
Shoeless Joe took the money and Buck Weaver did not. Joe Jackson got exactly what he wanted and immediately. Only Buck Weaver is Pure. I hope his grave remains as unsullied as his great heart and soul.
In 2004 Tribune Sports Legend Dan McGrath conducted a forum along with Dr. David Fletcher of the Baseball Museum at the Chicago Historical Society to clear Buck Weaver.
Chicago Treasure Studs Terkel, a Shoeless Joe Confederate, did not participate. Buck Weaver did not inspire Folk Songs on Public Radio and Dirt-Poor, Dumb-as-Dirt Shoeless Joe certainly did. You see clearing Buck Weaver would also clear Charles Comiskey -owner of the 1919 White Sox who is the goat in all of this Progressive Clap-trap.
Here was what the late World Class Word Moocher StudsTerkel offered to the New York Times following the Chicago White Sox 2005 Championship - "If there had been real justice after the scandal of 1919, Charlie Comiskey, the Sox owner, would have been the one kicked out of the game. That year, the star pitcher Eddie Ciccote had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games; as he neared the mark Comiskey had him benched for the remainder of the season rather than open his wallet.
But there was nothing the players could do. Most weren't very worldly -- Shoeless Joe Jackson couldn't sign his own name -- and they couldn't change teams. They were serfs of the owners. "http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E5DC1E3FF93BA15753C1A9639C8B63
Hoist the Red Flag, Studs, you mope. The serfs took bribes, all but Buck Weaver. Baseball as Class Warfare - and this goof is an icon?
Well, now Studs is stealing ideas and stories from Gunga Din while he pours drinks to 'poor damned souls.'
Charlie Comiskey paid his players according to the contracts that they 'in good faith' signed after they agreed to comply. Comiskey has been tarred by the Progressives as a tight-wad. However, Comiskey cared more for the people who came to the games than the sociological implications of Shoeless Joe's poverty and ignorance.
George Daniel 'Buck' Weaver was the only pure Chicago White Sox Player in the 1919 Scandal. Charles Comiskey was a victim too.*WEAVER DIES GAME AS REDS ROLL ON
Cincinnati Post
October 10,
1919
By: Ross Tenney
Though they are hopeless and heartless, the White Sox
have a hero. He is George Weaver, who plays and fights at third base.
Day after day Weaver has done his work and smiled. In spite of the certain fate that closed about the hopes of the Sox, Weaver smiled and scrapped. One by one his mates gave up. Weaver continued to grin and fought harder. Cicotte and Williams fell and the Sox were two games to the bad. Weaver’s smile never faded. His spirit never waned.
Cicotte tried again and failed. Williams made his second game ttempt butthe Red Juggernaut rolled on. In that sixth inning when Moran’s men sluggedand pounded the Sox into submission, Weaver pulled his cap lower over his eyes and grinned. Two of the Sox hits were lined out by his bat.
The Reds have beaten the spirit out of the Sox all but Weaver. Buck’s spirit is untouched. He was ready to die fighting. Buck is Chicago’s one big hero; long may he fight and smile.
George Daniel ‘Buck’ Weaver “A joyous boy, all heart and
hard-trying. A territorial animal…who guarded the spiked sand around third like his life…”
- Nelson Algren,“The Swede was a Hard Guy” in “The Last Carousel”
http://www.clearbuck.com/pdf/Online%20-%20Newsletter%208.pdf
Thursday, September 10, 2009
This Budweiser Ad is For You! 'L of an Ad and Beatles Others Hollow
Click my post title for You Tube Link!
Are They, Whoever They Happen to Be, Afraid of Dan Proft? Yep. If Not, Why Do They Seem To Be?
Far down the line is Dan Proft of Wheaton – a citizen activist and news commentator. Quinn and Hynes are in a pillow fight for the Primary and have staked out positions on just how much more taxes will be heaped upon the backs of Illinois voters and citizens. Brady, Dillard and Murphy seem to angling for the position to be the candidate to dangle a reason for people to cast Democratic votes for Governor in the General Election. Each GOP Senator/Candidate appears to be following the Mark Kirk Brand of Illinois GOP White Flag hoopla with all of the vim, vigor and vitality of the Italian Army in Libya in 1943.
Since July, Dan Proft’s Campaign has stung the tender rumps of Illinois’s most Progressive columnists, editorial boards and mouth-organs like SEIU’s Progress Illinois and Arianna Huffington’s Chicago Huff Po – an absolute howl of sheet. Dan Proft has Progressive Tit-Mice screaming like drunks at closing time. I like that. Dan Proft’s positions are not Progressive. Progressive Positions gave us the Cook County Board Punch and Judy Show and Blago’s Travelling Snake Oil Tour. Programs developed by policy wonks like Ralph Martire and other 501©3 Systemic Change Fountainheads have placed Illinois in a financial jackpot unseen since 1839, when Illinois Auditor General (Comptroller) James J. Shields* saved Illinois from bankruptcy.
I am a Democrat. I voted for John McCain in the Presidential election of 2008, because Barack Obama did not seem to be any where near prepared to be President and was surrounded by the 501©3 Larded Progressives of Illinois, who disdain precinct captain, door-to-door Ward level politics to the Tsunami Sweep of Program Padded and PAC foot-soldiered crowds of shouters who play the lazy and willing Illinois Media. Eric Zorn do what he do. Lawd Ha' Mercy!
I’m an anti-Abortion, School Choice (Vouchers), Pro-Real (Skilled Trades Union) Labor, Law and Order Democrat of the 3rd Congressional District, 23rd Precinct of the 19th Ward Variety Democrat. I have spent most of my career in education in Auburn-Gresham neighborhood.
Dan Proft is running for Governor as a Republican, but he speaks to Democrats on issues that most affect them – on taxes, School Choice, Abortion, and cutting the Illinois budget.
Here are the candidates for Governor as listed by the Belleville Democrat News in Brian Brueggemann’s fine piece:
Democrat:
Pat Quinn: He became governor in January, after Gov. Rod Blagojevich's ouster. He had served as lieutenant governor since 2003. He previously served as state treasurer, beginning in 1990. He's a lawyer from Chicago.
Dan Hynes: He's serving his third term as state comptroller. Says his tenure has focused on "consumer and taxpayer advocacy, government accountability and long-term budget reform." He's an attorney from Chicago.
Jack D. Franks: He's a state representative from Marengo who was first elected in 1998. He said recently that he's not yet decided on whether to run for governor.
Republican:
Bill Brady: Brady's a state senator from Bloomington who joined the Senate in 2002. He previously served in the Illinois House, from 1993-2000. He's a businessman who has been involved in home construction, real estate development and property management.
Kirk Dillard: Dillard, of Hinsdale, has been a state senator since 1994. He previously served as chief of staff for former Gov. Jim Edgar and has served on the Illinois Court of Claims.
Matt Murphy: He's been a state senator since 2006. Murphy says the state needs to reduce corporate income tax to attract businesses and jobs. He's a lawyer from Palatine.
Bob Schillerstrom: Has served as DuPage County Board chairman since 1998. Boasts that he's cut property taxes in that county seven of the past 10 years. He's a lawyer and resides in Naperville.
Dan Proft: A Wheaton resident, Proft is a political commentator and consultant who has worked on numerous candidates' campaigns.
Adam Andrzejewski: It's pronounced And-jee-ef-skee. He's a businessman from Hinsdale who started a phone book company, then established an organization that promotes transparency in government by encouraging government bodies to post their checkbooks online.
Frank Edwards: Edwards has been a Springfield City Council member since 2002. He previously served as the city's fire chief and owns an automotive shop.
Constitution:
Randy Stufflebeam: Stufflebeam is a retired U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who resides in Belleville. He says both of the established parties have managed to produce a string of corrupt governors for Illinois, and that it's "time for something different." He has served as the state chairman of the Constitution Party.
Green:
Rich Whitney: Whitney is a lawyer from Carbondale. He was a member of the Socialist Labor Party from 1975 to 1993, but has since rejected socialism. He proposes increasing the income tax for wealthier people and favors a single-payer health care system. His memberships include: American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace, and Illinois Coalition for Peace, Justice and the Environment.
Independent:
Michael White: He's a Gulf War veteran from Lindenhurst who is retired from the military, having served 22 years combined in the Illinois National Guard, U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves. He's a manager for a speech therapy clinic.
Dan Proft has no friend in Planned Parenthood which owns a hunk of most Illinois Democrats –Sen. Durbin, Gov. Quinn, and Comptroller Hynes. Dan Proft has no friend in the Illinois Education Lobby (Teachers Unions & Program Larded Industries) and has not only called for the creation of more Charter Schools but continues to advocate vouchers – Real School Choice – for all Illinois families. Dan Proft has no friends among the tax-salaried PACS like SEIU that spend millions on buying candidates, but not nickel one on vocational training for the rank and file, but ensure that an SEIU member remains a low-paid serf for life. Real Labor (The Skilled Trades) provides the path to the American Middle Class, which Andy Stern’s SEIU is hell-bent on destroying ASAP.
Dan Proft has no friend in the editorial board grandees who take policy dictates from Planned Parenthood, The Education Lobby, and SEIU. So far I am more than friendly to Dan Proft’s positions on most things. There are more than a few Democrats in the 3rd Congressional District like-minded in voter affection. Dan Proft has made a great beginning toward February and more than a few friends.
*In 1839, Douglas helped Shields gain appointment to the post of Illinois state auditor. Shields insisted that debtors pay the state's bank the face value on money they owed it and not the devalued price. This stance angered Lincoln and the Whigs, but saved Illinois from economic ruin.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Dr.Camille Paglia Explains Hijacking of Democratic Party by Snobs
I have long been an admirer of Dr. Camille Paglia*, one of America's most authentic voices in the Canon of American Letters. Paglia writes for a lefty Cheering Squad - Salon - and with each column 'Deconstructs' the fatuous, phony and fawning voices that comprise the American cultural, social and political elite.
As a Catholic (though rarely, if ever, hits the pews anymore), Paglia honors the beautiful and community forming nature of literary truths and defends the exacting nature of literary inquiry in an age that parses and puffs up frauds and charlatans in academics and public life.
Paglia is at heart the tough Philly Italian kid and seems as bewildered by the hijacking of the Democratic Party as we urban, close-knit ethnic (Catholic & Jewish), second and third generation children of the world-wide diasporas.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
Thanks Doc!
*Camille (Anna) Paglia (born April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York) is a social critic, author and feminist. She is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Paglia is an intellectual of many apparent contradictions: a classicist who champions art both high and low, with a Hobbesian view that human nature is inherently dangerous, and yet who also celebrates dionysian revelry in the wilder, darker sides of human sexuality.
Paglia came to attention with the publication of her first book, "Sexual Personae", in 1990, when she also began writing about popular culture and feminism in mainstream newspapers and magazines. In early 1991, she was the subject of a New York magazine cover story, "Woman Warrior". She reached the height of her fame in 1992 with the publication of Sex, Art and American Culture, which was much read on college campuses. Her next book, Vamps and Tramps (late 1994), was a collection of short pieces along and new material such as a theoretical manifesto about sex, "No Law in the Arena". In 1998 she published a short volume about Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" in the British Film Institute Film Classics series.
She is currently writing a study of poetry for Pantheon Books as well as a third essay collection for Vintage Books. She was a columnist for Salon.com for six years from its first issue and is now a contributing editor at Interview magazine. She continues to write articles and reviews for media and scholarly journals, such as her long article, "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s", published in the classics and humanities journal Arion in Winter 2003.
Her significance in the 1990s intellectual world was two-fold:
The seventies had seen the rise of a particularly rigid, doctrinaire "feminism" that many were finding stifling but only a few were challenging (e.g., the "sex positive" S/M lesbians, perhaps typified by Susie Bright).
The left was pushing for a change in the traditional focus of western universities on western culture (sometimes derided as the study of "dead white males"). For example, Stanford University was dropping its well-regarded undergraduate requirement of a year-long course in "Western Culture" in favor of a more broadly-focused study of "Cultures Ideas and Values" or CIV.
Against this backdrop, Camille Paglia appeared on the scene as a female intellectual who enjoyed challenging the left-wing position in these areas, but far from being the usual stodgy conservative, she did so by arguing from an unusual, flashy position that also embraced homosexuality, fetish, and prostitution. She describes herself as a "libertarian," as she speaks out in favor of individual freedom, which may help explain the apparent contradiction, and the consternation she causes in crossing back and forth between the dominant political camps. She is also an atheist, though she thinks comparative religion should be at the center of world education.
Books
Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art (Dissertation: 1974)
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays (1992)
Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (1994) ISBN 0679751203
The Birds (BFI Film Classics) (1998)
Biography
Camille Anna Paglia was born April 2, 1947, at 6:57 PM in Endicott, New York. She was the first child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (Colapietro) Paglia, who was born in Italy, and was raised in an Italian immigrant family.
(The name "Paglia" specifically describes the color of the straw that is produced in Italy, the same color that George Eliot had in mind in Daniel Deronda when she wrote of "the pale-golden straw scattered or in heaps.")
The Paglia household had little money, but the parents exposed their daughter to the best of Western art and culture. She has said that the first music to leave an impression on her was Bizet's Carmen, an opera which, in her words, "struck me with electrifying force." She was three when she heard it. That same year, she also became enamored with the witch in Walt Disney's Snow White, a character she later described as elegant and imperious. Throughout her childhood, she would be drawn to several charismatic and powerful figures in art, popular culture and history, setting a precedent for her adult career as culture critic and scholar. She studied them, emulated them and even dressed as them for Halloween (she dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland at the age of four, followed by Robin Hood at five, the toreador Escamillo at six, a Roman soldier at seven, Napoleon at eight and Hamlet at nine.) When she was four she became fascinated with the Egypt collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Later that year, her father visited France to study at the Sorbonne and returned with a copy of Art Treasures of the Louvre, a book which puzzled her with its numerous depictions of nude figures. Around this same time, she saw the movie Show Boat (1951), and fell in love with Ava Gardner.
Her primary school years were spent in Oxford, New York, a farming community where, at the Oxford Academy, her father taught high school students. At the age of nine she tried to produce the play Hamlet (based on the Classics Comic Books) in school but became frustrated because some of her classmates hadn't learned their lines. The experience taught her that she couldn't depend on other people, and she soon became a rather aggressive child.
Her family moved to Syracuse, New York, where her father entered graduate school at Syracuse University and then taught as a professor of romance languages at Le Moyne College. Paglia attended the Edward Smith Elementary school,T. Aaron Levy Junior High and William Nottingham High School.
During the summers, Paglia went to Spruce Ridge Camp, a Girl Scout facility in the Adirondacks. She spoke of it many years later in the New York Observer as a "prelesbian heaven. It was just so romantic. I had mad crushes on all the counselors." She took different names when she was there, including Anastasia, [her confirmation name, inspired by the Ingrid Bergman film]], Stacy, and Stanley. In one formative experience, she exploded the outhouse by pouring in too much lime. She said, "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture...."
The year 1959 was an especially important year in Paglia's development, as it was the year her family got both a telephone and a TV set. It was television which exposed her to the movies of the 1930s for the first time, especially those of Katharine Hepburn, who made a big impression on her. She also fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and obsessively collected every photograph of her that she could lay her hands on. In 1961 when Taylor won for Best Actress at the 1960 Academy Awards for Butterfield 8, Paglia's reaction was "feverish excitement the whole next day at school."
While in high school, she began research on Amelia Earhart. The research lasted three years, ending when she was 17. She said, "I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime." She planned to write a book on Earhart, but the project never came to be.
She was an excellent and devoted student at Nottingham High. Carmelia Metosh was her Latin teacher for three years, and in 1992 recalled that "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now. She was very alert, `with it' in every way." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to "Sexual Personae," and in January, 2000, described her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards."
In many ways, 1963 was the beginning of her career. For her birthday that year, she received a copy of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex from a Belgian colleauge of her father's, Josphina van Hal McGinn. The book had a tremendous influence on her and furthered her resolve to be an important feminist writer. On July 8 of that year, Newsweek published her letter about equal opportunity for American women. And on November 24, she appeared in Syracuse's Herald American in a short profile about her outstanding achievements as a student.
College Years
She graduated high school in 1964 and began attending SUNY Binghamton, Harpur College. There she became friendly with Bruce Benderson (who had also attended Nottingham High School), Stephen Jarratt and Stephen Feld, three gay men who would have a big influence on her. During a summer break, she worked the night shift at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse as a secretary in the emergency ward.
One semester at college she was put on probation for committing 39 pranks. When she was 19, she hit a drunken young stranger in the teeth with her right fist, protecting a small woman whom he and a friend were groping on the street. Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" was released that year. Paglia saw it and was particularly taken with actress Mary Woronov. She later remarked that "She was one of the most original, stylish, and articulate sexual personae of the royal House of Warhol. I never forgot her, and I followed her subsequent movie career with great fascination." Many of Paglia's memories of the '60s are linked to movies. For instance, in 1968 she and her friend Stephen Jarratt saw Joseph Losey's Secret Ceremony, and Valley of the Dolls, and continued to write about the experience years later.
She graduated from college in 1968, valedictorian of her class. She's repeatedly noted she was publicly out as a lesbian at Yale Graduate School, which she began attending in 1968. One day in New York that summer, she happened to run into Catherine Deneuve on Fifth Avenue and found herself "stalking" her through Saks Fifth Avenue. Paglia ran into the St. Regis Hotel and phoned her friend Stephen Jarratt, then working at a laundromat in Binghamton, to tell him about it. In her book Vamps & Tramps she wrote that it was "The first major incident I had to endure without my gay legionnaires...." She was a lesbian and alone.
Just a few months later, as a student at the Yale Graduate School she attended a party in the home of R. W. B. Lewis, one of her teachers, and she was insulted by a prominent Yale psychiatrist named Robert Jay Lifton and his wife for being a lesbian. Lifton, at that time, was the Foundations' Fund Research Professor in Psychiatry at Yale, a position he held until 1984. His attack seems to have emboldened her to not only be out as a lesbian, but to be in everyone's face about it. She has insisted that she was the only openly gay student at Yale for the four years she was a student. Paglia quarreled with "a then darkly nihilist Rita Mae Brown, who came to the Yale University campus for an early feminist conference", and she fought with the New Haven, Connecticut Women's Liberation Rock Band because they dismissed the Rolling Stones as "sexist."
Her study of sexuality in Western literature continued to develop with her reading of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Several of her closest friends, Benderson, Jarratt and Feld all moved to San Francisco. Paglia recalled that she "had two close encounters with Kate Millett (author of "Sexual Politics") just after she became famous, in New Haven, Connecticut, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, but she was too morosely self-absorbed to notice." Because of what she saw as Millett's "careless" attitude toward scholarship, Millett became a person Paglia began to define herself against.
In 1971 she discovered Kenneth Clark's The Nude while browsing the shelves of Yale's library. "If ever I was in love with a book, it was with this one," she wrote in Sex, Art & American Culture; and in an article for Women's Quarterly in 2002, she called it "The best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art." She wrote, "Students who read Clark will be safely inoculated against the worst excesses of feminist theory, with its prattle about objectification and the male gaze -- terms cooked up by ideologues with glaringly little knowledge of or feeling for art." The book influenced her writing in her Yale dissertation and subsequent works.
Of the dissertation, her mentor and adviser, Harold Bloom found one fault in the draft he read in 1971. He cautioned in the margin that one passage was "Mere Sontagisme!". Paglia later wrote, "It saddened me, but I knew Bloom was right. Sontag, who could have been Jane Harrison's successor as a supreme woman scholar, had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing." She received a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Yale that year.
In February of 1972 she wrote a letter to Carolyn Heilbrun, asking for information about her forthcoming book on androgyny, and Heilbrun responded with a letter saying that her book would not be able to deal with all available material on that subject. When the book came out, Paglia gave a thoroughly negative assessment of it in an anonymous review for the journal the Yale Review the following year, 1973. It was the journal's policy for reviews to be published without attribution.
Later in 1972, she toured Washington D.C. with her mother, where she saw Edward Brooke. She later described the black Republican senator from Massachusets as "a glamorous, lordly male who, from my one passing encounter with him as he sauntered elegantly down the Capitol steps in 1972, had a distinctly roving eye." She also saw Barry Goldwater on the Senate floor. "After knowing him only in the twisted, demonic form projected by the liberal Manhattan media, I was stunned at his simple, natural dignity and air of integrity," she later recalled. "He was the most charismatic man I have ever seen off a movie screen. With his unexpected height, solid physique and flowing white hair, he had the regality of an aging lion."
Teaching Career
In the fall, she began her first semester teaching at Bennington College. There she met James Fessenden, a philosophy instructor from Columbia University, who started teaching at the same time as Paglia. In January 1997, Mark W. Edmundson, now a professor at the University of Virginia, recalled attending Bennington while Paglia was there. "She was appointed as my faculty advisor in her first term. I went in for my advisorial visit and she was entirely herself, talking very fast about many things I knew nothing about. I ran in fear. Alas, I was too puzzled to take any of her classes, which seemed to be full of very sophisticated people from LA and from New York."
In 1973, her paper, "Lord Hervey and Pope," was published in the journal 18th century Studies. A Times Literary Supplement cover story on Lord Hervey, November 2nd, praised the paper as "brilliant." On April 9th, she traveled to see Susan Sontag at a lecture at Dartmouth and later invited her to Bennington. Sontag spoke there on October 4th, an event that caused much controversy at Bennington since she read a short story instead of giving a cultural lecture, as she had agreed to. Paglia later commented, "I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual," and then wrote about the meeting at length in a dishy essay, "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", first published in "Vamps & Tramps".
Another intellectual disappointment was Marija Gimbutas, who published The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe in 1974. At the same time, Paglia launched "a detailed attack on an exhibit at Bennington's Crossett Library, 'Matriarchy: The Golden Age,' which used appallingly shoddy feminist materials alleging the existence of a peaceful, prehistoric matriarchy, later supposedly overthrown by nasty males."
Through her study of the classics and her reading of the scholarship of Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, Erich Neumann and others, Paglia had developed a theory of sexual history that was in opposition to the ideas in vogue at the time, which is why she was so critical of Gimbutas, Heilbrun, Millet and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and many other topics in her dissertation Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, which she completed in December of 1974, at the age of 27.
At the time she completed her dissertation and was awarded her Ph.D. by Yale, her friend James Fessenden, "after being forced out of Bennington," returned to New York. Likewise, her friend Bruce Benderson, who had also become a writer, moved to New York from San Francisco. But gay culture had changed since the '60s, and Paglia found that she was no longer allowed to go into gay bars with her male friends, a situation which infuriated her.
In March of 1965, Paglia drove from Vermont to Albany to see Germaine Greer speak. She was disappointed, reporting later that "During the question period, I nervously raised my hand from the crowd and asked if Greer, a former English professor, would be writing on literary subjects again soon. Her reply was stern and swift: 'There are far more important things in the world than literature!'" Another time while visiting Albany, Paglia "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's-studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior. These women (whose field was literature) attributed my respect for science to 'brainwashing' by men."
Similar sorts of fights with feminists, lesbians, chauvinists, homophobes, and academics would continue for years, reaching a high point in 1978. While at Bennington, Paglia had two girlfriends. The second one, a theatrical young woman named Patty, was a former student. The couple went to a school dance one evening when a rich student from Chicago came out of nowhere and physically attacked them. Paglia spoke about this to Heather Findlay in a cover story for Girlfriends magazine. She said, "I went to the police and filed a report. Then her parents went ballistic. There was an enormous to-do from her rich parents telling the administration, 'Open homosexuals shouldn't be employed by a college. We're not sending our daughter to a place where there are gays like this on the faculty.'" After a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned a year later. The relationship with Patty ended the following year. Karen Young's song "Hot Shot" became a disco hit during this time, a fact Paglia noted decades later when she pointed out that this "classic high disco... was created at the Queen Village Recording Studio" near the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She didn't know it at the time, but the University of the Arts in Philadelphia would become an institution of tremendous importance to her life in the following decades.
In the early 1980s, Paglia finished her book but couldn't get published and was supporting herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. She taught night classes at the Sikorsky Helicopter plant. Her paper, "The Apollonian Androgyne and the Faerie Queen ," was published in ELR, Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "Wuthering Heights and the Ellipses of Interpretation," in Journal of Religion in Literature, but aside from that, not much was happening with her academic career at a time when her peers were moving on to important positions at major universities. In a letter of March 1993 to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (The Advocate) in the early 1980s. There was an article on the historic pizzerias of the town and also one on an old house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad."
In 1984 she got a teaching job at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged with its next-door neighbor, the Philadelphia College of Art, to become the University of the Arts in 1987. The completed manuscript for "Sexual Personae" was rejected by seven publishers and five agents, until it was finally accepted by Yale University Press and published in February 1990. Paglia had no romantic relationships during this period and has described her "endless frustration" in trying to meet women in bars. However, she met Alison Maddex, then living in Washington, D.C., in 1993, and the two have been together ever since.
In March of 1985, an interesting letter of hers about the Liberty Bell was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer. An article concerning the conservation of the Liberty Bell appeared in the New York Times, March 27, quoting from her letter ("Philadelphia deserves a classier display of its heritage.") In April, she copyrighted a children's book, The Grocery Store Wars, with drawings by her sister Lenora. A chapter of Sexual Personae, "Oscar Wilde and the English Epicene," was published in the journal Raritan. In 1986, her essay "Nature, Sex, and Decadence," was published in the book Pre-Raphaelite Poets, edited by Harold Bloom; and her essay, "Christabel," was published in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also edited by Bloom.
For the next few years, she continued to teach while perfecting Sexual Personae for its eventual publication, and releasing a few additional portions of it in other journals and books. Her essay "Oscar Wilde and the English Epicene," was published in 1988 in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, edited by Bloom; Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art, was published in 1988 in Western Humanities Review; and "Sex," was published in the Spenser Encyclopedia, by A. C. Hamilton in 1989.
In the early '90s, her friends Stephen Jarratt and James Fessenden died of AIDS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
