Sixty-seven years ago, my late father was an eighteen year old Marine who survived the landing on Guam's Red Beach 2 with Able Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, the slaughter on Bundschu Ridge where only he and a dozen other Marines were not killed or terribly wounded, the largest and most savage Banzai charge of the Pacific war and fighting toward the northern jungles of Guam in the Marianas. Guam was American soil and had been taken by Japan hours after Pearl Harbor. From 1941-1944, America captured islands from Japan through amphibious assault. Vast fleets of ships brought troops to shore, covered by air and ship-to-shore bombardments from plans developed by a Marine officer in the 1920's. Though Guam was declared secured on August 10, 1944, fighting on Guam would continue after Japan surrendered.
Twenty one years before and a year before my Dad's birth, another Marine, a forty-three year old Lieutenant Colonel and the man who developed amphibious warfare doctrine, on authorized leave and in the guise of an American Businessman for the Hughes Trading Company died under mysterious circumstances on the Japanese controlled islands of Palau group in the Caroline Islands. Earl Hancock "Pete" Ellis joined the Marines in 1900 in Chicago, Illinois, as a private. Ellis served on Guam and the Philippines and was commissioned as an officer in 1901.
From 1901 up to WWI, Pete Ellis earned a reputation as planning genius and as a violent alcoholic. Ellis proved, on Guam during an exercise, that heavy artillery could be successfully landed in an amphibious attack. During a very dull dinner with a Navy chaplain, Ellis livened things up by shooting the glasses off of the dinner table. The balance of genius and self-destruction kept Pete Ellis in the game.
During WWI, Ellis rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and directed operations and planning for the 4th Marine Brigade through the Armistice. For his courage and genius French Marshal Foch awarded the Marine Brigade honors still worn of the uniforms of certain regiments and said this of Pete Ellis, "From the 2nd to the 10th of October, 1918, near Blanc Mont, Lieutenant Colonel Ellis has shown a high sense of duty. Thanks to his intelligence, his courage and hi energy, the operations that this Brigade (Fourth Brigade, Second Division) took part in, have always been successful."
Military men should and do plan for the next war and Ellis was certain that America would face the growing ambitions of Japan in a vast and bloody conflict on the earth's greates ocean. The Pacific and Japan dominated Ellis' thoughts and energies, but beer and whiskey controlled his blood stream and toxified his vital organs. Lt. Col. was hospitalized several times for alcohol related illnesses immediately after the World War, but, in 1920,he energetically drafted a study for the necessity to plan for war across the Pacific Ocean.
"Operation Plan 712 - Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia", which underlined that in the events of hostilities of Japan, advanced bases would be required to support the fleet. To include that the Territory of Hawaii constituted the 'only' support for the United States Navy due to the lack of facilities in the Philippines and Guam. In since, Japan has already occupied the Marshall, Caroline, and the Palau Islands, which flanked the U.S. lines of communications in the region by more than 2,300 miles. Ellis's conclusion in his document predicted that Japan will initiate the war, and furthermore indicating that Japan would stay near their own territorial waters until encountered by the U.S. fleet. He also added that great losses to the Marine forces would occur during the amphibious assault in what he termed "ship-shore belt". He advised the war planners to avoid 'blue-water' transfers, to form task forces prior to leaving base ports, and not to divide units up among several transports.
'... a major fleet action would decide the war in the Pacific; the U.S. fleet would be 25 percent superior to that of the enemy; the enemy would hold his main fleet within his defense line; fleet unites must be husbanded; preliminary activities of the U.S fleet must be accomplished with a minimum of assets; Marine Corps forces must be self-sustaining; long, drawn-out operations must be avoided to afford the greatest protection to the fleet; sea objectives must include a fleet anchorage.'[
Wikipedia
It is at this point the Father of Amphibious Warfare asked for and received the permission of Marine Corps Commendant John Lejune and Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. to quietly resign his commission and travel incognito through Japan's expanding Pacific empire.
A recent biography and study of Lt. Col. Ellis by Dirk Anthony Balendorf and Merrill L. Bartlett probes the mysterious death of Ellis and the loss of the charts, maps, tide schedules, and reports that were confiscated by the Japanese upon his death.
Tomorrow, I will post more on this fascinating American.
One Man's Socrates is another man's MethMaster. Two gents who share my vocation in West Virginia now face more than a few semesters in the Iron Ivy League.
In a story we have been following for nearly two months, West Virginia State Police have arrested Keith Phipps and Jack Turley for meth precursor chemical offenses. It had been reported earlier that the pair were being investigated for allegedly buying and smoking meth on school property in Boone County. Charges have not been filed directly relating to those allegations. Phipps was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant for excessive purchase of pseudoephedrine (a meth* precursor chemical) in a month. Turley was arrested on an 8-count Kanawha County felony warrant for excessive purchase of pseudoephedrine and other meth precursor chemicals. Phipps was the principal at Boone County Career and Technical Center and Turley was a teacher there. The Boone Examiner
This stuff is brutal. Yet, we hear voices to make drugs legal.
*Methamphetamine increases alertness, concentration, energy, and in high doses, can induce euphoria, enhance self-esteem, and increase libido. Methamphetamine has high potential for abuse and addiction by activating the psychological reward system via triggering a cascading release of dopamine in the brain. In the United States, methamphetamine is FDA approved for the treatment of ADHD and exogenous obesity, dispensed in the USA under the trademark name Desoxyn. As a result of methamphetamine-induced neurotoxicity to dopaminergic neurons, chronic abuse may also lead to symptoms which persist beyond the withdrawal period for months, and even up to a year. Research has found that 20% of methamphetamine addicts experience a psychosis resembling schizophrenia which persists for longer than six months post-methamphetamine use; this amphetamine psychosis can be resistant to traditional treatment. In addition to psychological harm, physical harm, primarily consisting of cardiovascular damage, may occur with chronic misuse or acute overdose.[Wikipedia
"A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character." Harry S. Truman
Last night I watched the news on ABC at 5:30 - The World News With Aging Cheerleader Diane Sawyer: Debt Ceiling Crisis X 5, The monster of Norway X two, Amy Winehouse, Happy Meals for Fat Kids, Bear Attacks 7 Youths Learning About the Dangers of Bear Attacks,The French Dude who beat the rape rap and some other stuff.
Diane Sawyer is really not fun to watch and seems to have the personality of a dial tone. I 86'd ABC News and caught the exchange between White House Press Wrangler Jay Carney - the kid always appears to be on the verge of tears.
I was tossing towels and cloths in and out of baskets in the endless assembly line of laundry and watched the comedy that is our times. We worry about the weight of other peoples children and wring-hands over the death of a talented girl who seemed determine to kill herself. We feast on nonsense and then endlessly analyze the stool samples.
Here it is in transcript:
Q Jay, why not release the last offer that Boehner made? I mean, instead of -- if you don’t want to release your own plan, release that plan. If that’s the deal -- if that’s the last offer he made and you guys are willing to go back with a few minor tweaks, release it. It’s the last week -- release it.
MR. CARNEY: I’m not going to -- look, we have shown a lot of leg on what we were proposing --
Q Where?
MR. CARNEY: From the podium, right here. (Laughter.) And from the Roosevelt Room. Certainly the Speaker of the House can address, or his people can address what they were -- what their last offer was. They claim that they walked away from the table because of the $400 billion --
Q Why not you do it? If they throw it out there and then you’re --
MR. CARNEY: The President stood here -- Chuck, again, I can’t remember if you were here -- it might have been Kristen -- but the President stood here on Friday night and went into great detail. You should look at the transcript. The President’s people met --
Q I understand, I’ve seen the transcript -- there’s still nothing out there. Why not just release that plan?
MR. CARNEY: Is it because you -- I mean, look, you need something printed for you, you can’t write it down? There is ample detail --
I don't know the South Side - but on the North Side nothing compares to Andersonville. Darling comment on today's Huffington Post Chicago!
Gentry liberalism has established a strong presence on the Internet, where such websites as MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post are lavishly funded by well-heeled liberals. These and other sites generally focus on foreign policy, gay rights, abortion and other social issues, as well as the environment. Traditional middle-class concerns such as the unavailability of affordable housing, escalating college tuitions and the shrinking number of manufacturing jobs usually don't rank as top concerns.
Kotkin and Seigel 2007
Let's walk this one through. If you are a working stiff, married with children, paying taxes, if Catholic, or Rahm Emanuel two tuitions for private schools attended by your kids and public schools for everyone else, belong to the skilled trades, serve the public as a police officer, fireman, teacher, nurse, city worker, or mid-level professional, you are the problem
Your carbon footprint is keeping down Capt. Planet and his Green Rangers, because you own a home, run air-conditioning, have two vehicles ( you and the Missus) which you use to drive to work, to WalMart/Sam's Club/Best Buy/ Outlet Malls and to your rentals in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.
You do not take Public Transportation, you bastards!!!!! You need to get to feed your breed, see them set for school with lunches and hugs, and fight traffic in order to get to work on time.
The Walkable Gentry Neighborhoods with loft one bedroom condos starting at $145,000 like the ones in Printers Row, for a better Class of Person to walk to Whole Foods, CSO, Galleries, Bistros, and Venues are what you are not. You and your breed need to live in bedroom communities like Edison Park, Albany Park, Garfield Ridge, Clearing, Midway, Chicago Lawn, Gresham, Brainerd, Chatham, Grand Crossing, Hegewisch, Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Yep, I do.
My kids, parented by this single old widower Dad, needed to go to Catholic Schools. Damn my eyes.
I, like thousands of my tax-paying neighbors who bucked up for the TIFS and snappy wrought iron street scapes in Printers Row, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Old Town, and other walkable communities, can catch a bus every forty minutes on Western Ave., but that would necessitate forgoing child care in order to schedule a proper and timely path to work. Instead, we tend to drive all the streets we can in order to make it to the Dan Ryan, the Tri-State and the Stevenson and road rage it to work. Just kidding, we helots, in fact, tend to be more courteous and safe drivers . . .as a demographic of course.
When not carbonate-ing Mother Earth, we do, in fact, walk.
We walk to Mass on Sunday; the kids walk to St. Cajetan, St. Barnabas, St. John Fisher, Queen of Martyrs, Christ the King, St. Margaret of Scotland, St. Christina and St. Walter. Some walk to the very excellent Morgan Park Academy which is way out of my wallet and a few others walk to Sutherland, Clissold, and Mount Greenwood CPS elementary schools.
After school the kids bike or walk to Kennedy, Beverly, Monroe, Mount Greenwood and Ridge Parks for parish athletics ( football mostly but some basketball and volleyball) and Little League in the summers.
We walk to Jewel on 103rd Street. County Fair on Western, Fair Play on 111th, CVS and Walgreen pharmacies every twenty feet, Java Express, Beverly Bean, Dunkin Donuts and Kean Gas for coffee and even a . . .Starbucks!!!!!!!! on Longwood at 103rd. Street
Why shucks there's even an art gallery, Jack Simmerling's Heritage Gallery, a few paces from the Starbucks as well as Calabria Imports, and a gourmet cuisine shoppe. Shoot we got us a castle to look at on Longwood at 103rd Street.
I have no doubt that every neighborhood is walkable in some manner, though hitting the sidewalk with your rump facing the in-coming rounds might be de riguer on your ambulation in some food desert communities.
Making the comfortable cozier is too often the role of the Media. Watching WTTW, listening to Public Radio or glancing at the organs lapped up by soul-patch knit cap crowd of trust-funded urban adventurers, and hipster-doofus hangers-on, would tend to make one believe that living a happy, productive and community centered life is a bad thing. The Walk Against Breast Cancer** began in Chicago's helot neighborhoods.
Huffington Post Chicago, serial Gold Digger Arianna Huffington's bully dunghill for affluent Progressives offers the Chicago's Ten (10) Most Walkable Neighborhoods and they are - Printers Row, Near North, Gold Coast,Sheridan Park, Dearborn Park, Noble Square, Park West, Old Town, Lincoln Square and Dearborn Park. That settles it.
Get this explanation:
According to Walk Score, their ranking is intended to measure how easy it is to live a car-free or "car-lite" lifestyle in any given location. The site's algorithm awards points based on the distance an address is from any number of amenities including parks, coffee shops and grocery stores. (The score doesn't, the site notes, take into account pedestrian design or safety.) The site argues that better walkability can help an area's environment, health, property values and even community involvement.
Looking deeper into Walk Score's Chicago report (with a nerdy-fun map to match), HuffPost Chicago wanted to highlight the top ten neighborhoods identified by the site, the majority of which are within walking distance to Lake Michigan.
While some of the neighborhood names are a bit dubious -- when was the last time you heard someone neighborhood-drop that they live in Dearborn Park or Park West? -- the rankings are interesting nonetheless. Chicago's walk score averages 74 (out of 100), while all the top 10 neighborhoods cleared the 94 marker.
Really? All of the neighborhoods deemed "walkable" by the good folks at Huffington Post Chicago happen to be home to Chicago's Gentry Liberal* demographic. And that Greek pastry, Arianna, worries about Class? You either got or you haven't got Class,because you work at it. Class does not come with a trust-fund, or the hook-'em-through the lips divorce settlement paperwork.
The point of these trendy polls is not to inform, but to exclude. Fair enough.
Take a walk.
Mighty nice out!
*
But what kind of liberalism is emerging as the dominant voice in the Democratic Party? Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism had its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility, strong protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and a network of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It also invented Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.
Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based, outsourcing U.S. economy -- though it does pay lip service to them.
Rather, gentry liberalism reflects the interests and values of the affluent winners in the era of globalization and the beneficiaries of the "financialization" of the economy. Its strongholds are the tony neighborhoods and luxurious suburbs in and around New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and West Los Angeles. . . .
Although many of the newly affluent are -- as is traditional -- politically conservative, a rising number of them are turning left. Surveys done by the Pew Research Center indicate that an increasing number of households with annual incomes greater than $135,000 -- the nation's top 10% -- are moving toward the Democrats. In 1995, there were nearly twice as many Republicans (46%) as Democrats (25%) in this category. Today, there are as many Democrats (31%) as Republicans (32%).
The political upshot is that Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts, according to Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
In part, this is because the Democratic gains in the 2006 elections were in affluent districts once held by the Republicans. In Iowa, for instance, the three wealthiest districts now send Democrats to Washington, and the two poorest are safe Republican seats.
Perhaps the best indicator of the growing political power of gentry liberals, however, is their ability to generate campaign contributions. Chiefly drawing on Wall Street, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this year's Democratic presidential candidates have raised 70% more money than their GOP counterparts, according to the Wall Street Journal. The securities industry, which awarded Republicans 58% of their campaign dollars in 1956, gave the GOP only 45% in 2006. In the newest sectors of the securities industry, most notably hedge funds, Democrats are favored. This year, hedge fund managers have given 77% of their contributions to Democrats in congressional races, reported the Journal.
Gentry liberalism is not an entirely new phenomenon. Its intellectual roots can be traced to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 1948 book, "The Vital Center." Schlesinger himself was the archetype of the gentry liberal. A product of Harvard University, he was as comfortable in the fashionable precincts of Manhattan's Upper East Side as he was advising presidents in Washington. Schlesinger was suspicious of the traditional liberalism of President Truman, who baldy appealed to the basic interests of returning middle- and working-class veterans of World War II.
**
May 2011 -- At 8 a.m., Sun., May 8, thousands will fill the streets of the historic Beverly Hills/Morgan Park neighborhood for the annual Beverly Breast Cancer Walk.
What began as a small walk among friends is now the largest of its kind in Chicago’s Southwest area. The walk’s evolution honors the lively spirit of its participants. It also shows a resolve to continue battling a disease that has touched so many.
The three-mile route starts in Ridge Park (96th and Longwood Drive) and includes historic Longwood Drive. To help alleviate parking, a trolley service will transport walkers from the east end of Little Company of Mary’s parking lot at 95th and California.
The annual event has raised more than $1 million for breast cancer treatment. Register early to receive a T-shirt with your $30 entry fee. The entry fee for children ages 18 and under is $15. Same-day registration is $5 more and shirt sizes are not guaranteed. To register for the Beverly Breast Cancer Walk visit www.beverlybreastcancerwalk.org or call 708-229-5066. To take a free breast cancer on-line risk assessment visit www.pursuingpainfreecancer.org/breast .
Irish tan An Irish tan occurs when a very pale-skinned Irish person gets too much sun, causing their skin to become even more red and uneven. An Irish tan is not a sunburn; turning red and splotchy is just how some very fair Irish-Americans tan. Urban Dictionary
The day off at Leo High School, and yet I rose before Phoebus as is my habit. The Busy old sun who bothers lovers' locked arms and bids farmers to hie to the fields of corn and soy bean and the daily assessment about God and the Government in league to cheat a man, as well as that bastard Cotter over to the grain elevator in Herscher . . .; the Sun who bakes and breeds.
I showered and did not shave. I eschewed my nattier work day wear, for Chicago Yeomanry togs - a Leo High School polo and my white-guy hillbilly denim shorts and play shoes. Looking good,Hombre! Out into misting morning air.
I needed my morning amble for coffee and took the long route east so I could swing by CVS on Western at 111th Street and pick up some stuff that I forgot to get yesterday and County Fair opens at 8AM.
At 109th & Western next to the Dubliner Pub a crowd of maybe thirty folks, mostly African American, were lined up for jobs at the Security Guard Company. Folks would wait another hour or so in order to beat back the waves of economic mayhem, God Bless Them.
CVS was emptier than a politician's words and I picked my items discounted by the handy red Extra Care Pays You Back card. I reflected on my tasks today.
Leo High School is hosting a Comedy Night on the Friday after Thanksgiving at the Beverly Fine Arts Center just parallel to my morning's manly amble.
I needed to call back Leo Man, Comedian and Green Activist Paul Kelly about the performers - Leo Lions all and Kings of Comedy: John Caponera, Soups Campbell, Paul Kelly, and Kenny Howell.
Leo Men are rock-ribbed givers - not philanthropists, Philanthropists generally make more from their charity giving than they actually dispense. Witness Oprah, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan and the robber barons of old Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt. No, Leo Men, like people and foundations of good will, give. Huge difference.
Leo Men also will say exactly what is on their minds. I noted this fact in 1995 when I attended my first Leo Banquet at the now vanished Martinique/Drury Lane Theater. I was carrying three big boxes of Leo Sweatshirts for sale, through a throng of Brawny Stalwarts from the 1930's -1980's.
A tall gentleman from the Class of 1932 was making his way at his top speed through the beefy likes of Tom Hopkins, Joe Ramos, Moose Gilmartin, Barney Bulfin, Jack McNamara, Bill Holland and the saintly Jack Howard. At some point, I rather shyly asked the gentleman's pardon, in order to make a detour around the thick Alumni throng.
"You didn't go Leo, did you Kid." The well dressed gentleman who looked like he might have been the retired CEO of General Motors -Thomas Aquinas Murphy stated a fact and not a question.
"No sir. I went to Little Flower High School and . . ." I word- weaseled out.
" No kidding. You'd gone to Leo; you'd a told me to haul my #$%^ing old ass out of the way." concluded this Captain of American Industry Emeritus.
On this poignant encounter, I had good cause to connect - The Beverly Arts Center is run by a Leo Man -Mike Nix - who had run the Martinique. I was passing the Arts Center in my westward jaunt for coffee at Kean Gas - operated by Jimmy and Rolly Kean relatives of Leo President Dan McGrath and home to Leo Alumni patrons.
I bought my coffee, said hello to Kean Pumps Man and hero Ray and took my path homeward north on Talman. The white pick up truck of Leo Class of 1970 Man and plumber Mike Regan pulled in the drive before I hit the sidewalk. 'Hi, Hick!'
Leo men! Givers and Diogenes' Sons - the lamp of honest assessment and cant free courtesy.
At 109th Street Mike Regan's white pick-up slowed portending hearty fellowship and salutations of good-will.
" Next time you're at the beach, Hickey, try getting out of your car!"
This is but one of the rough hewn granite blocks of human experience that forms the pyramid to God's All-Seeing Eye!
Rep. David Wu has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend, the latest scandal to engulf the troubled Oregon Democrat.
The Oregonian reported that the 56-year-old Wu “acknowledged a sexual encounter to his senior aides but insisted it was consensual,” according to sources aware of the incident.
. . .Shortly before the 2010 elections, Wu began behaving erratically, according to The Oregonian and other news outlets. Wu sent a bizarre picture of himself in a tiger costume to his staffers, and some of them urged him to seek psychiatric help. More than a half dozen staffers and campaign consultants quit as Wu bombarded them with troubling phone calls and emails.
“I freely admit that it was an intense campaign, and I was not always at my best with staff or constituents,” Wu said in a statement to Williamette Week, a Portland newspaper. “For all those moments, I wish I’d been better and I apologize.”
These latest allegations against Wu add to the growing list of sex scandals that have rocked Capitol Hill over the past two years.
Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) recently resigned from Congress following a national firestorm over lewd photos he sent to women he met over the Internet.
Former Rep. Christopher Lee (R-N.Y.) was caught sending a topless online photo and also resigned. Former Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) had an affair with one of his campaign aides, who also happened to be the wife of his deputy chief of staff. Ensign stepped down from office on May 3.
And ex-Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) quickly departed Capitol Hill in March 2010 after POLITICO reported he was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual harassment of male staffers. The Ethics Committee recently announced that it will continue looking into whether any Democratic lawmakers or staffers knew about those allegations but failed to take action against Massa.
Last week, I joined Skinny and Houli for a live taping (oxymoron like German Jazz and Progressive Charity?) of their wonderful radio program ( AM -WCEV 1450) at Jack Desmond's Irish Pub. Skinny Sheahan related another ripping yarn from his vast catalog of true-life south side apologues.
This tale was about a gent on Irish Welfare, a good paying fringe-of-the-government job, who was tasked with driving Mrs. Maggie Daley and the Dalhi Lama to a charity event some years ago.
Mrs. Daley requested that the A/C be turned up in the limousine. The driver with the guileless charm of most hard-scrabble rooted south side ethnics, informed the First Lady of Chicago that 'The Dial for it was right there up over Dolly's head.'
Mrs. Daley was plussed, 'Excuse me? Excuse me????'
'Dolly, he's sittin' right there across from you. Reach up and grab the dial for Crissakes!'
Thus, a career change.
Who knows what will happen to Irish Welfare in this our Good Government Golden Age?
Steve Rhodes is a paragon. I get on Steve's nerves over my skepticism concerning the near universal acceptance that Jon Burge tortured every black man who stepped into Area 2 ( Old and New). Unlike most folks beyond my Zipcode, I believe that the entire Monster Burge Mythology is just that and the truth of what happened is buried under mountains of bullshit. I get Steve as sore as boil on this issue, but that is as nothing to what my presence and performance art has on most people I love. I am a good-natured pain-in-the-ass at times. Many times.
Steve Rhodes writes, edits and publishes, what I believe to be the best news and opinion post in Chicago, if not the whole damned country.
Rhodes has a nose for cant and singular moral code that escapes most of our more iconic Media creatures - Steve Rhodes is a power iconoclast. He lives integrity. Some time ago Steve Rhodes abandoned a lucrative post as an editor of NBC's Chicago website, and remained fastened to the mast of Truth. His monetary ship sank, but the juggernaut of Rhodesian Integrity still cuts through the waves of journalistic bullshit. In 2009, Steve Rhodes resigned as editor for NBC ( from Mike Miner of the Chicago Reader)
Rhodes explains why he left. It came down to a lack of trust and a lack of respect; Rhodes focuses on one post, about Randy Michaels succeeding Sam Zell as CEO of the Tribune Company, that he says NBC took down, and another post, about the suicide of Michael Scott, that it never put up. He writes that he couldn't get a straight answer about what the problem with the Michaels post was, but an NBC exec said the Michaels post "didn't meet the standards of the NBC brand." The post recalled an old lawsuit that alleged Michaels "roamed his old Clear Channel offices with a 'flexible rubber penis' tied around his neck" and accused him of "a host of other crude rituals."
Didn't meet standards? Rhodes doesn't buy that. He writes, "The Michaels post was partly about sexual harassment, not sex. It wasn't arted with yet another montage of cleavage that has become so familiar on the [NBC] site over the past few months."
As for the Scott post, Rhodes writes that he told it was "scotched because [Scott] was a friend of a high-ranking station official here in Chicago who had been 'ruffled' by the coverage of Scott's death."
Rhodes being Rhodes, he writes with a lot of heat and a fair amount of invective. He asserts at one point, "I didn't use names in this piece because I don't really intend this as a 'tell-all;' instead, to me, it's another in an incredibly long line of tales about journalism and its discontents. It's a sick, diseased industry that can't seem to get past the basics of what it is and what it's supposed to do.
"
This week, Steve Rhodes presents genuine analysis of the news concerning our President, his peeps, his foes and his handling of the Debt Crisis. It is his conclusion concerning lobbyists and the Obama Brand that is a masterstroke:
"The cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play," said then-Sen Obama in his February 2007 announcement speech. "They get the access while you get to write a letter . . . The time for that kind of politics is over."
Yes. Now we won't even read your letters!
"Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took 'key administration posts,' as defined by the White House" iWatchNews reports. "More than half the ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised more than half a million.
"The big bundlers had broad access to the White House for meetings with top administration officials and glitzy social events. In all, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits."
Waiting for Superman It's not the debt ceiling I'm worried about, it's the bullshit ceiling. Why do we keep raising that?
Click my post title for more Rhodes!
If you want the Truth, go to Steve Rhodes. He will tell you when you are a pain-in-the-ass. If you are not reading Beachwood Reporter, you should. If you are a philanthropist with a genuine love of good writing and analysis write a big check to Steve Rhodes.
The Lab School at the University of Chicago is prestigious and pricey, but I would send my kids to Moses Montefiore, before I'd send them there. As I sent them through Catholic schools the point is as moot as it is root. Nothing against the good folks at the Lab School who come armed to instruct with degrees and certifications that would make the founder's moustache quiver with delight. More so, I would hazard a guess that most of the staff of Baronet Moses Montefiore,Kt ( British Jewish Financier.Philanthropist and Sheriff of London 1784-1885) High School on Ashland Ave. were trained in the methods and philosophy of John Dewey. That said, all American public schools are fostered in Dewey/Hegelian non-sense.
As I have posted many times, John Dewey bullied his way into American Education by dint of his intellectual gifts and membership in the American Brahmin Class. Dewey clicked with good old American contrarian ways and means. Dewey made inquiry and not the pursuit of truth the core of American public education. The Lab School at University of Chicago mandates inquiry as play and play as power. You can arrive at any pre-conceived outcome so long as that outcome fully agrees with the point that inquiry begins. e.g. All police officers are brutal agents of systemic racism - Alpha and Omega. President Obama is the greatest President Ever! Our Economy is Better Now Than Under George W. Bush. The Debt Debate is a crisis leading to the aversion of the crisis created by the the very crisis itself. A family consists of any human beings. The Act of Sex is a Civil Right. The New York Times said it and that settles it. More Tax Dollars Poured into Public Education Will Save Tax Dollars.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is sending his kids to Chicago Lab School and they will follow the intellectual and professional paths of Arne Duncan, the Obama kids, and Valerie Jarrett. They will be fine. Their self-esteem, personal growth and life-long associations will blossom.
Founded in 1896 by pre-eminent American educator John Dewey, the Lab Schools are known as one of the most diverse of the nation's elite private institutions; about 35 percent of its students are people of color. It's also known as one of the best: its high school is one of the top feeders in the country to America's elite colleges and universities, and its extracurriculars, from newspaper and yearbook to Model U.N., are regular winners of regional and national awards.
Such prestige doesn't come cheap: the lower school costs $21,060 per year, while the upper school is just shy of $25,000 annually. That means that the Emanuels will be forking over more than $60,000 each year for their three kids' tuitions.
Huffington Post - The Hollywood Squares of Journalism
Hey, Catholic schools are diverse. Leo High School for example in the heart of Gresham has 90.9% persons of color and a growing number of Mexican kids and now several white ethnic Catholics from Canaryville. There is greater diversity, to be sure, at Mount Carmel, De LaSalle, St. Rita and Marist, but Leo is a very happy campus.
One thing is certain, the kids at south side, west side and north side Catholic schools come from very homogeneous financial backgrounds - Mom, Dad, Auntie, Gramma and Alumni are President Obama's working stiffs: cops, firemen, nurses, public school teachers, skilled tradesmen, industrial workers, Unlike the Lab young 'uns, these kids will not have the path of inquiry festooned with placement, nor will they have the grease and juice backing their play necessary to waltz into Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Oberlin. Catholic kids will scratch their way into those same schools by dint of achievement. Lab School kids get cache with a diploma.
Cache is okay, but core values are much better. Here is a recent commentary by an American Academic and covert to Islam. The guy knows that Dewey is as dangerous to his Faith as it is to Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, Unitarians and Wiccans. In writing about the idiotic neologism THE ARAB SPRING coined by New York Times Dewey-boy Thomas Friedman
Truth, however, cannot exist in a culture with an educational system that denies the possibility of its very existence. Without truth and justice, there is no such thing as a moral disaster. The root cause of most of the injustices in the world, however, is the moral disaster of secular utilitarianism. The wielders of financial and political influence in America have imposed this utilitarian philosophy as a paradigmatic monopoly in the American educational system and with it infected the entire world.
In a compartmentalized system of education, where there is no coherence in anything, the products of this system necessarily are too narrow to value knowledge exogenous to their field of expertise or even to sense that a system of morality can even exist.
The spread of this moral disaster has been going on within the American educational establishment for more than a century, especially since John Dewey. Dewey was born before the American Civil War and set the standard for modern education in America and throughout the world a hundred years ago in his many books, perhaps especially in his Depression-Era book, How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Dewey invented the school of “philosophical pragmatism” which is associated originally with John Stuart Mill, but was further developed at Harvard by others who defined all meaning in life and all morality as the maximization of net utility based on pain versus pleasure. Avoid whatever gives one pain, and embrace whatever gives pleasure, which, in turn, is associated with the philosophy of hedonism. One can argue with this approach pro and con, but the major distinction is that in modern secular education there is no truth and no justice, because even the concepts of truth and justice are thought to restrict rather than maximize human freedom.
Dr. Robert D. Crane*
Back at you, Doc!
*DR ROBERT D. CRANE Chairman, Center for Understanding Islam, and President, The Center for Policy Research. Earned a doctorate (J.D.) at Harvard Law School (1959) in international investment and comparative legal systems. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1981). Principal da’ii (religious instructor) at the Islamic Center, Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. (l983-86). Director of Publications, International Institute of Islamic Thought (1986-88). Founding member of The American Muslim Council and Director of its Legal Division, 1992-1994. He has published 10 books and 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management. Languages include English, German, Russian, Spanish, French and Arabic.
As much as the Gentry Class* ( affluent, professional, college-diploma Progressives) hate to recognize it, Chicago is a Catholic city. Catholics tend to vote Democratic even though Catholics are about as welcome in the Progressively controlled Democratic Party as a Lesbian Methodist Minister at a Taliban goat-roast after Ramadan.
Catholics belong to a Faith that remains committed to the sacrament of marriage and defends life from conception to the Hospice. Ethnic Catholics tend to go into the military, take careers in Law Enforcement, become home-owners and tax-payers. Catholics are saddled with a Church hierarchy that until only recently took its eye off the ball where children are concerned and almost universally kissed the botox-ed fannies of Planned Parenthood and its Democratic Party minions;too many in the Catholic clergy tried to become Unitarian ministers with better perks, tax-loop holes, residences and cover from accountability.
Nevertheless, the pews remain full in Catholic neighborhoods and the children go to Catholic schools that out-perform public schools across the board.
Charter Schools fit nicely in the Progressive pattern of John Dewey education, but aped the veneer of the hall-marks of Catholic schools: selective enrollment, uniforms, uniform discipline codes, Mission Statements, teacher accountability, and do more in the classroom with few dollars. Charter Schools, even the very best ones like the Noble Street models, are not Catholic Schools.
Charter Schools get tax-dollars and Catholic Schools do not.
Because Charter Schools get State tax-dollars, Public Service unions directed by SEIU pushed teacher unions to agitate for unionization in Charter Schools. The door to that was kicked wide open in 2009. Charter Schools are public schools and over the years to come will be dominated by the teachers unions who helped create the mess that is public education.
Catholic Schools and the fewer Lutheran, Dutch Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Independent Schools operate on tuition and money from fund raising. Catholic cops, firemen, streets and sanitation workers, skilled trades union members, nurses and public school teachers in tax-targeted middle class neighborhoods send their children to Catholic Schools - because their kids will receive faith-rooted moral instruction, discipline, accountability, feed-back, and self-esteem.
Empirically speaking, I see thousand of teens wearing Mount Carmel, St. Rita, Marist, Notre Dame, St. Gregory, Gordon Tech, Leo, Maria, and Our Lady of Tepeyac sports wear.
N.B. I must give a shout out to the Green and Gold of St. Patrick High School on the north side in celebration of its Centenial and a Half of service to Chicago!
I have yet to experience the sight of young people sporting Simeon, Dunbar, Hubbard, or Whitney Young caps, hoodies, or t-shirts.
Kids represent. When they are proud of the association with their school's history, record of achievement and street cred they brand themselves, Mom and Dad, Grannie and Gramps and the extended family and neighbors with Maroon and Orange of Brother Rice, Brown and Vanilla Mount Carmel, the Blue and White of Maria, Red, White and Gold of Mother McAuley, Blue and Crimson of St. Rita, the Orange and Grey of Gordon Tech and of course the Orange and Black of Leo.
Today in a very cogent and practically articulated article John Kass of Chicago Tribune offers a sound bit of advice to Mayor Rahm Emanuel - get behind School Choice Vouchers and now. Here is the impact point - Chicago's tax-base send their kids to Catholic schools -middle class families black, white and Hispanic - with great personal sacrifice: they pay tuition twice, because they are required to live within the City limits:
. . . And under the restrictive — and selectively interpreted — residency laws, Chicago schools have a captive middle class. Cops and firefighters and city workers and teachers must live in the city to keep their jobs.
They can't leave town and raise their kids in the suburbs, even if they keep a house address in Chicago. The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that a presidential chief of staff, living in Washington, with kids in Washington, can be considered a resident of Chicago. But don't be naive enough to think this standard would apply to others.
So if students can't be squeezed into top magnet high schools, the parents are compelled to fork over more than they can afford for parochial education. Or leave the city.
This sets up an unequal, two-tiered system, with limited resources. And in a city so historically corrupt, the dispensing of limited resources has predictable and cynical outcomes.
In March 2010, for example, the Tribune reported on the VIP list maintained by Chicago Public Schools. A nephew of former Mayor Richard Daley's lobbied to get a political supporter's two daughters into an elite high school. And there were other reports that Chicago politicians — including a so-called reform alderman — tried to clout their own children into select schools.
Those who win a spot in the excellent magnet schools sing the system's praises and lavish the politicians with praise and votes. And those who don't are abandoned to fate.
Certainly Rahm knows this. And, I'd like to think, it's what truly angers him.
jskass@tribune.com
John Kass is a public school guy, but John Kass is not a member of the Gentry Class. He is a blue-collar ink-slinger.
The Gentry Class control the Media. The Gentry Class controls Democratic Party and very sizeable number of GOP elected officials. The Progressive agendas present a steady diet of empty rhetorical memes - a Buffet of Bullshit.
Most people take a pass on the offerings under these sneeze guards, but their elected officials for whom they continue to vote wolf the offerings down.
Rahm Emanuel needs to serve up Vouchers, Chicago needs Catholic schools and their non-Catholic cousins: Lutheran, Dutch Christian, Hebrew, Muslim and Independent schools.
Chicago is still a Catholic city and Chicago Catholics have had enough from the Gentry Class Progressive Buffet.
* from Joel Kotkin:
Gentry liberalism combines four basic elements: faith in postindustrial "creative" financial capitalism, cultural liberalism, Gore-ite environmentalism and the backing of the nation's arguably best-organized political force, public employee unions. Obama rose to power on the back of all these forces and, until now, has governed as their tribune.
Obama's problems stem primarily from gentry liberalism's class contradictions. Focused on ultra-affluent greens, the media, Wall Street and the public sector, gentry liberalism generally gives short shrift to upward mobility, the basic aspiration of the middle class.
The guy can act, write, compose and tickle the 88s. Michael Moriarty is in the process of writing a series of prose reflections and this is the eighth rendering.
I have been blessed to know some really talented and good people in my 58 years of stomping on the terra. Michael Moriarty is as complex a moral man as the other Chicago rooted genius, actor, musician, comic, writer, composer and television pioneer Steve Allen, who was kicked out of Mount Carmel High School in his freshman year thanks to singer/actor and classmate Richard Kiley. Steve Allen was related to the Donahues, Murphys, Regans and Quinlans of the south side of Chicago and often returned to the old neighborhood even when he was at the height of fame as founder of the Tonight Show and played Hammond Organ concerts at the Franklin House on south Western Avenue*.
Michael Moriarty's grandfather George Moriarty was a baseball professional and contemporary of Tyrus Cobb, Buck Weaver, Eddie Collins and Jiggs Donahue who played for both the Cubs and The White Sox, before becoming an icon for the Detroit Tigers. George Moriarty was also a musician and composer, but nowhere near as deeply talented as his grandson Michael. I like to think that Chicago and especially the south side of Chicago - the Stockyards and beyond - had much to do with the evolution of genius in families Billy Allen and Bella Montrose to Steve Allen and George Moriarty to Michael.
In the Eighth edition of Moriarty's Haunted Heaven prose scatting, we consider eternity.
The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Eight: The Theater of the Mysterious Same By Michael Moriarty web posted July 18, 2011
As one hovers above the first and one of the most defining moments of a life, patience is the order of not only the day but the essence of eternity.
Eternity is one factor, however, that people can measure their lives by.
The infinity of the Universe and the eternity of Time?
These are the precepts upon which I now measure my life, both its relative insignificance but its spiritual importance as well.
Oh, I know, Stephen Hawking, whom I have never had the privilege to meet, might dispute the infinity of the Universe, and then again, since he has admitted to making mistakes himself, he eventually – because he is now an eternal factor of the universe – he eventually might change his mind again.
He might not dispute the infinity of the Universe.
If he is even slightly a pantheist, he might be willing to accept the Universe in its entirety as God Itself.
If, however, the Universe is infinite, then God is ultimately and infinitely incomprehensible.
"Not if it is just more of the same, Michael!"
I'm sure that metaphysically "It" is just "more of the same". However, the "same" is so infinite within "Itself" that It, Itself, demands to be capitalized.
The God of Same.
If we know that God looks in wonder upon Himself, then the "Same" is as bottomless a mystery as Life itself has proven to be for millenniums.
Then again, Stephen Hawking, as well as some of his certainties, might be exposed as hoaxes.
Global Warming, chapter two: Science as Inevitably Political Propaganda.
Therein lies the mystery!
Perhaps the Devil, at times, can put even God Himself in doubt, into anxiety.
Does God then call upon another God for reassurance?
No.
This is God The Father and whatever doubts He might have?
The Doubts must come from one question: what is He to do with His own creation, which in this case is the Devil?
Evil in all its secret and manifest forms, a fact that God Himself created.
The Devil Himself as a blessing in disguise, as it is the very necessitation of Human Free Will.
That makes sense to me.
I'm now listening to a playback of my Seeds, the title for my own, little, musical inspirations, melodic and harmonic thoughts that … well … might very well fit themselves together into a masterpiece?!
The Seeds themselves, at this point in musical history, are nothing new. It is the order in which they are placed and developed that will determine whether or not they are the seeds for a work of art or the distracted pastimes of a wannabe.
Ah, ego mania! The bane of all exceptional creativity!!
One must be patient, particularly with one's own shortcomings.
I look at myself metaphorically, feel and see the considerable amount of damage that Life and I have done to myself, but, then again, I look at it as God's own work of art.
The Devil had a hand, that is for certain. Must we think of God and the Devil as Rogers and Hammerstein?!
The division between my responsibilities and Life's gets blurred very quickly when Progressive Psychology becomes involved. So involved that Good and Evil, even High and Low become a relative matter.
That is when Madness sets in and Evil becomes the Master to destroy all Masterpieces.
What is Progressivism?
"Anything but the Same!"
"Damn the Same!!" cry the Progressives.
Just now, I came to a possible format – and I only say possible format – for my symphonic series: the first movement always being an Overture of sorts, there to introduce the audience to the themes of the coming movements. Oh I would love to wait and wait, as Brahms did before he unleashed his highest symphonic achievement, his First Symphony, but I'm 70 years old!
"On, don't go back!" as the great English director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie would order us to do.
We poor but proud players of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
This poor but proud composer soldiers on.
What theater am I working for now?
The Theater of the Mysterious Same!
Old songs but eternally new settings.
Those who know the old songs best?
They lead!
We follow.
The goal?
Our destination?
Heaven!
If you are really serious about your life, why settle for anything less?
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and 4Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.
I remember a top rated loud mouth FM radio personality, as they were termed, horse-laughing the mention of Steve Allen, in the early 1990's. His side-kick buzzed and hooted slight regard for the man who won Emmys for Network and Public TV and Grammys for some of his 5,000 songs, comic genius, artistry at the piano and prodigious literary output. Hell, he had the drive-time slot!
* Both Moriarty and Steve Allen are criticized for their defense of eternal truths:
Michael Moriarty--like Jon Voight before him--turns Right.
It's a sort of ritual for certain aging male celebrities to publicly retreat into social and/or poltical conservatism. Steve Allen, in his last years, became a cranky crusader against what he considered "filth" in entertainment. The late Ron Silver (once involved with the left-to-moderate Creative Coalition) became vocal about his rightist beliefs after 9/11. Jon Voight, who won an Oscar for playing an anti-Vietnam War paraplegic (inspired by Ron Kovic) in COMING HOME, now can be found opnionating on Fox News. And don't get me started on former comedian Dennis Miller.
Michael Moriarty has now come to the proverbial fork in the road--and has turned Right. Here are links to an interview and a Moriarty-penned article for Andrew Breitbart's showbiz-liberalism-bashing site BIG HOLLYWOOD.
Chicagoland and most of the continental United States is under a dome of heat and humidity, not experienced since 1999.
"It's a two-footer," my Old Pappy used to say, because on nights like these urban Chicagoans of yore would often post their feet on the window-sills and catch a cooling gangway breeze. The more fortunate south siders along Garfield Boulvard might pack up all the kids and sleep in the grass for miles along the tree shaded parkway - folks from Visitation and St. Basil's parishes between Wentworth to Western Avenues.
Recently while quaffing a pint of iced soda water and lime with my pugish nose tucked into the leafs of Rilke's prose collection Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, my peripheral gaze caught the sight of the affable contractor, Eddie Carroll himself, saunter through the black doors of Keegan's Pub ( 10618 S. Western Ave.)and amiably call for a round on him. Another soda water for me and some pink concoction for the young woman sitting on the North ( Protestant) side of the bar beneath the poster of Irish balladeer Christy Moore. She was the sunny side of forty and fetching in a summer weight frock with Auburn tresses that adorned the thick athletic whiteness of breasts that betoken the bounty that is woman.
Eddie Carroll immediately noticed this young lady at the bar on her own. After requisite cooling swallows of malted grain beverage, he decided to offer her another drink and make the afternoon light with small talk and the broad promise of mutual affection.
"What's your name?" Eddie aked after opening gallantries regarding her habiliments and the tautness of her frame.
"Carmen Needham," she replied.
"That's a lovely and operatic name," he said. "Did your mother or father name you for Georges Bizet's tragic gypsy who scornfully tosses the ring Jose gave her only to take his blade -Cette bague, autrefois? I absolutely live for dance and the Dionyisian spark of music! Did mother and Dada so name you?"
"Neither parent was responsible," she said. "I changed my name when I was 18 from Sharon to Carmen."
"Odd that -As Sharon betokens the the fertile plain of Israel, why did you do that? " he asked.
"Well," she explained, "I like men and I like cars, so that is how I got my name. What's your name?"
"Mr. Beertits Quickly," the affable contractor replied.
I thanked Eddie for the bonus cocktail and returned to Rilke.
Is it warm. or is it me?
*
Carroll Roofing & Construction Carroll Roofing & Construction stars Be the first to review 10912 S Western Ave Chicago, IL 60643
Wendi Murdoch jumped up quicker than starvin' dingo on a slab of good tucker to protect her husband. Wendi is the jailbait bride of 76 year old Rupert Murdoch the # 2 most powerful man in business, answering the questions of politicians would snuggled in Murdoch's power and now want to go all Big I Am for the British Media.
Some eedjit shock jock, or Bill Maher tried to cream pie Rupert and got walloped by Wendi and she whacks the mope like a Mother McAuley Spiker!
Here is Telegraph report from Lucy Jones:
So now we know the real reason Rupert Murdoch married 42-year-old Wendi Deng: her kick-ass slam dunk. As the stupid git in the checked shirt sabotaged Louise Mensch’s questioning to attack Rupert Murdoch with a foam pie, Ninja Wendi jumped to his defence. And she didn’t hold back. Was her swift reaction and killer shot helped by years of playing volleyball? What a gal. From the beginning of the Select Committee, it was clear – from her body language and eyes following his every move – that Wendi is Rupert’s great protector. But no one expected she’d be a better bodyguard than the Metropolitan Police! Could this story get any more surreal? Wendi Deng, you’re a hero.
Wendi's a good Sheila.
I'm gonna try and catch the Red-head on Live Cable this afternoon.
MCG, D, and Me - President Dan McGrath, Sophomore Leader Darnell Harris and a Really Good-looking Middle Aged Gent With More Chins Than a Chinese Phone-book. BTW - Darnell* never looked happier.
Another two police officers were shot in West Garfield. God Bless the Officers and their Families. Every time we open the papers there are photos of chalk lines, yellow police-line tape, and the dead-eyes in the mug shots of the arrested.
The prose is not much better or uplifting. Englewood, Gresham,Roseland, Lawndale, Brainerd, Grand Crossing, Garfield, Back of the Yards, and Chatham are proper nouns as familiar in Winnetka, Wilmette, Highland Park, Burr Ridge, and Barrington because they are the place names for the other people who have the problems.
I work in Gresham five to six days a week at Leo High School. Last Thursday, Leo President Dan McGrath and I bid God Speed to the Varsity Football Team as they set off for Rantoul, Illinois and camp. Hakim Chapman ( 2012 and Captain) and me are old pals. He is one splendid young man - he can go sideline -to -sideline without so much as moving his head and put a definitive end to a well-crafted and executed play by another Catholic League rival, as middle line backer. In classroom, Hakim is all business and makes sure his less engaged fellows understand why they are in a Leo classroom.
Hakim assured Dan McGrath and me that all the guys could be counted upon to stick to tasks and represent Leo in a manner that would make Ike Mahoney, Whitey Cronin, Horsey O'Neill, Jimmy Arneberg, Bob Hanlon and Bob Foster proud.
Dan McGrath told Hakim, "You always do." They do.
Football Coach, Admissions Director, and Father Flanagan Mentor Mike Holmes called the brawny stalwarts together with the coaches -they said the Our Father and asked God's blessing for safety on this trip, for our families and all Leo Men.
Mike is married to the lovely Hon. Pat Holmes an Illinois judge and legal wizard. Mike is the mentor anyone would want for a child. Mike is the Fatherly Mother Hen of Leo Men. There can be no doubt that Mike Holmes admonishes the Young Lions to be good men and God's men.
Hefting shoulder pads covered with Orange Black practice jerseys, helmets, equipment bags, water jugs and bookbags the Leo Lions boarded the yellow buses. Yesterday, before the blast furnace that is Leo High School in the summer got too much for me, I chatted with a couple of the returned football campers doing sprints on the turf practice field between Sangamon and Morgan Streets on the south side of 79th Street. How was camp?
" We were busy all the time, but it was good. Holmes had us real busy."
Did you have any fun?
" Hickey, it was football camp! Please."
Mike Holmes pulled up and gave me the Cliffs Notes Version and I was on my way home to some AC. The boys were sprinting.
Leo High School is a Catholic high school. It is not a Charter School. Leo High School maintains its Catholic Faith, Identity, and Traditions though nearly all of the young guys it serves are non-Catholic and a few happen to be Muslim. That is what marks Leo men - Facta Non Verba. Deeds Not Words. They come to school here and pay tuition and work. The Leo Alumni support the costs of tuition that too many families can not meet.
Catholic Schools are tuition and fund-raising driven operations. Leo High School is unique among other Catholic high schools in Chicago. The Alumni support comes largely from white middle aged and older Catholics and it is heavy. This year alone, President for Institutional Advancement Dan McGrath raised more than $ 800,000 over and above tuition payments in his first year ob the job and identified two major sources for future help. All of this in a lousy economy and the St. Sabina flap hurt us as well. Neverteless, Dan's work is a great beginning to an old story - Leo Commitment and Courage.
One of Dan's crowning achievements, along with restoring the legendary school newspaper The Oriole under the direction of editor Marcus Pass 2004, is the Leo Website.
Mary and Peggy Burke are the wizards behind this wonderful website. Thanks girls!
If your soul is abused by the news of shootings, thug-mobs and excuses, give your yourself a treat and click my post title to the new Leo Website.
The eyes of young men from Englewood, Gresham,Roseland, Lawndale, Brainerd, Grand Crossing, Garfield, Back of the Yards, and Chatham who attend Leo High School are bright with hope, self-assurance and a Catholic -based moral center.
Well done, Dan McGrath! God Bless All Leo Men! Smile D!
* Come on over to Leo High School at 7901 South Sangamon - You should see the smile on Darnell Harris' Student of Month Picture; it is much less giddy than the above.
I am never disappointed in the Media, though I am generally appalled by the Media. The Media ( not individual reporters, copy editors, or investigative professionals) tend to be the pampered children of privilege, or protected creatures who spout contrarian opinion to common sense, human dignity, and reality.
The Media are America's collective "the makers of fashion" in pop culture and politics. Would, for example a Lady Gaga be a finalist on America's Got Talent? Likewise, who creates a Congressman Weiner, other than the Media? The Media made academia a safe have for the likes of terrorist and droning gasbag Billy-boy Ayers and his odious Old Lady - Northwestern Law Prof Who Can't Practice Law Bernardine Dohrn. The Media decided that police officers are the universally brutal systemic racist Simon Lagrees of post-Racial America. Bullying is the sole property of the Media.
Last year, at this time, the Journolist Scandal bubbled, but never really boiled with anything like fury. The Jounolist is a cabal of rich, privileged Blue Chip university grad-punksters that the Media graces with license. This Licentious Journo-List played havoc with the truth all through the 2008 election cycle and beyond.
Who are the Jounrolistas? One gent identified this cadre with sharp and witty accuracy - they are largely nerds, dweebs, and gents who are repelled by the thought of conjugal affection with any female. They took particular delight in their attempted ravaging of the Palin Family. Sarah Palin is a beautiful woman who happens to be happily married to a union man and the mother of universally welcomed children. Palins don't abort. Moreso, they breed.
Last summer, Mark Judge, a writer for The Daily Caller ( liberal journalist, attorney, Fox TV News legal analyst, and Leo High School Board Member Tamara Holder also contributes to DC) offered this dandy assessment of the core of journolist ire
Andrew Sullivan’s obsessive hatred of Palin goes far beyond the cynicism of a journalist; there is a kind of primordial spasm of rage against something so marvelously lovely, so downright awesome. It’s like that guy a few years ago who took a hammer to Da Vinci’s sculpting of David. The beauty was unbearable! Palin is an archetype that the left does not know how to contain or control: the hot female jock who also happens to be cool. The left hates good-looking Republican women and jocks, so combining the two is like an exorcist hitting a demon with not only prayers, but water blessed by the Pope.
There’s usually one hot female jock like Palin in every school. It’s a girl who is so stunning that even teachers find themselves staring, yet she is too modest to acknowledge her beauty. She plays it down or changes the subject when someone brings it up. It may be because she was raised with good values, the desire to be humble, but it could also be because she wants to be taken seriously as a jock. Palin is a triple threat: a pretty jock who is also incredibly sexy (pretty and sexy are two different things). In high school she was the kind of girl that the school newspaper nerds – the future Journolisters – despised. Pummeled with so much raw beauty, athleticism and sex appeal – and she’s nice, too, goddamn her – these fearless chroniclers of reality were left sputtering – and seething.
Like the plot of a Tina Fey script, Ezra Klein's Kommandos controlled the Media narrative, until called on it - by the non-Media. That would be anyone or thing that stands opposed to full agreement with AV-Club/'We Are So Much Smarter' Cabal of Gleeks.
The Journolistas howl, "Fox and Breitbart must be behind this bullying! Therefore, let's get some pusillanimous payback!"
Welcome to summer of Rupert. Rupert Murdoch is an Empire of Opinion that runs counter to the Nerdocracy that is the American Media. The American Media has political pit-poodles like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois who began yapping for Congressional Hearings aimed at Murdoch's problems in Perfidious Albion.
Sen. Dick Durbin is always a contrarian delight, whether he is parsing for Planned Parenthood, calling American miltary folks Nazi's, or trying to make things just a bit more comfortable for our Gitmo guests. If Durbin is for it, I generally feel that it is a really bad idea. Sen Durbin is a Tapioca Bernie Sanders. Any digging at great Federal expense for Murdoch Muddy Water will be a dry well, here in the Colonies. It will probably happen, because Murdoch represents the Yin to the Media's Yang; therfore, the Progressive Pit Poodle will go on his nerdy Fox Hunt.
The Media is a abuzz with the arrest of Titian Tress ed Murdoch Babe*, who was married to the Shrek-like Ross Kemp until his Rainbow Randy Roisterings ( Ross, it seems batted from the other side of plate) were cause for marital infidelity divorce proceeding, much objected to by an openly Gay MP. This homophobic harpy had to go! The Rebekkah Brooks titillation's will take up the balance of summer, until the lady is released.
All in all, the Media is a hypocritical band of nerdy Mean Girl Boys. They will always have a place at the table, until people decide to not accept their nonsense.
At 76, Murdoch appears to be at the height of his powers. He views Dow Jones, along with the recent launch of the Fox Business Network, as steps in the creation of a globe-spanning financial news powerhouse. Can he do it? The breadth of his ambition could be his Achilles heel - the more dominant News Corp. becomes, the more opposition it tends to provoke. Still, Murdoch has proved time and again that counting him out is a high-risk strategy. --Tim Arango
Forbes Magazine - Top 25 Most Powerful People in Business and Rupert is # 2.
He’s an Australian by birth, and media ownership required American citizenship, something anti-immigration conservatives had no problem awarding when it came to the billionaire mogul. Murdoch became a citizen during the Reagan administration.
Now, as I write this, the Murdoch scandal has taken down the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Les Hinton, who had been with Murdoch’s News Corp. for decades.
Hinton claimed not to have known that other parts of Murdoch’s vast media empire had engaged in deplorable, illegal conduct.
It was, as they say, news to him.
Carol "Empty Calories" Marin -Chicago Media Icon and Character Dry-Gulcher
. . .Keith Murdoch, who, by 1917, aged just 30, had become a celebrated guest in the power salons of London society. Senior politicians sought his advice: generals entertained him; society ladies fawned on him: yet he knew nothing about war.
Like father, like son. Five successive British prime ministers have courted Rupert Murdoch because of his influence -- and that in turn could only have resulted from his own brutal charisma, combined with his awesome determination to have his way. Moreover, British and Irish journalism owes him a huge debt -- for only his willpower could have broken the toxic stranglehold of the corrupt and villainous print-unions over journalism, in which, rather typically, the National Union of Journalists became the flaccid and weak-willed accomplice of its actual enemies, the printers.
Given the incredible personal might of Rupert Murdoch, and the extraordinary ability of his organisations to create compelling public narratives, I should not be at all surprised in five years' time to see that the horror story of TNOTW will have become a largely forgotten footnote in the history of British journalism. For remember this: mankind does not endlessly relate tales about the truth, but instead studiously opts for tales that serve some particular social function. And of course, almost all modern Murdochian tales serve a very particular purpose indeed; namely, dynastic pride.
Kevin Myers Irish Independent
I wouldn't know Rupert Murdoch if he were buying my dinner at Les Nomades -
" 'Ere, Garçon ! See the well-set up Bloke sitting with the stunner oveh theyah? The 'andsome gent with the Brooks Brothers Outleet spawt-kit 'n the Bass Pro Shop cra-vayt - A tie you'se Yanks call'em. 'Im, the Bloke what 'eld the chay-ah fer iz Sheelah a'fore 'ee set dayun. Good on 'im! I'm buyin' 'is Tucker. Nayow scat, Ya Faht-knocker!"
That would be a nice savings on a fabulous meal, but only a day-dream.
I woke up to another of Carol Marin's poison dart masterpieces tossed at the back of the neck of a wounded prey - this time it is Rupert Murdoch. Carol kicked the late and lovely Lura Lynne Ryan during George's trial, actually just before the Kangaroo Court Ruling for no other reason than malice and to exercise her iconic power. Carol destroyed the lives of Mary and Chris Fogarty by accusing them of being an IRA hit team. Rupert Murdoch is no Jerry Springer, by all accounts. Carol brought out the heavy-guns, Harry Potter and the ghost of Royko, to lend her empty intellectual calories some weight in her latest too-too-bitchy offering - Well, that's Carol in this City! Rupert Murdoch will be fine.
His tabloid empire across the pond has been interestingly assaulted by the world media. The same hypocrites who unsealed Senate Candidate Jack Ryan's divorce files to ensure that back-bencher Barack Obama ran against nutty Al Keyes for US Senate, who outsourced help to unearth dirt about Governor Palin's tenure and personal life while Governor of Alaska, who Jounolista'd it up across America to assassinate character as ordered by the Politico-Bureau, are all trying to chip away at Rupert Murdoch, while praying that some Deus Ex Machina will descend to give him am ideological come-upance.
I look at the world and its players and try and consider the sources concerning who is criticizing whom - Carol is consistent. I know only one person who has ever met Rubert Murdoch in person and that is Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Jack Higgins. Jack said that he was very nice. Jack also works for the Chicago Sun Times. I respect Jack Higgins and I understand Carol Marin.
More so, Rupert Murdoch is married to Wendy. Rupert will be fine.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange butchered Hog Belly Futures yesterday. The cleaver came down on trading of this wonderful commodity at the closing bell - Friday July 16th in the Year of Our Lord 2011.
The closing had been expected. Trading in pork belly futures had dropped to nearly zero in recent years after the meat industry became integrated and used fresh pork bellies instead of frozen ones to make bacon.
Pork bellies, as the name indicates, are cuts of pork that come from the underside of the hog and are made into bacon. Demand for pork bellies and bacon increases in the summer when tomatoes ripen and people make bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches.
Because pork production peaks in the autumn, the frozen pork belly contract was created as a way to give pork companies a means to cover the cost of storing, or freezing, pork bellies until the following summer when they were thawed and processed into bacon, said long-time Chicago trader Bob Short,
"The name sounded attractive. Nobody knew it was bacon. It made people laugh," Short said.
Though Bacon is with us yet, one more historical item has been consigned to the Orwellian Memory Hole and Hog Belly Futures will go the way of carburetors, Conestoga Wagons, Zippo Lighters, Black Jack Gum, CTA Transfer Tokens, Coal Chutes in architecture, and historical sensibilties.
However, a young Korean American genius by the name of Bernard Moon* writes a Blog Silicon Moon which features his poetry. I found his Ode to Bacon most fitting.
Ode To Bacon Bacon, oh, bacon You wonderful thing! The tigers and lions All rise and sing!
The grease that comes From your rich loins Are an unequal sum To millions of coins.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner Teatime, bartime, late night too! Every meal is a winner And more enjoyable with you!
Wrapped on scallops, Or in Korean stew Nothing makes me gallop More than you!
Clogging my arteries and veins With your beautiful juice! You drive me insane Like a bull cut loose!
No matter how filthy you originally are No care to what Vincent Vega thinks Bacon is the shining star That kicks the ass of sausage links!!
Bernard Moon
Joseph Addison might gripe that Brother Moon's line might not scan elegantly - could not pass the finger test, and old poetry scansion cranks might agree; however them lines is finger licking Okay!
Read more Bernard Moon poems by clicking my post title.
*
Bernard Moon Co-founder & CEO of XS Groupe I'm Co-founder & CEO of Vidquik, a new easy-to-use web conferencing platform, and Co-founder of XS Groupe, an online luxury private sale site. I was previously at a private investment firm, the Lunsford Group, which was involved in real estate, healthcare and other industries. I was Co-founder & VP of Business Development of GoingOn Networks, a social media platform for companies, and also led our product development where BusinessWeek recognized us in their "Best of the Web" list. I co-founded a couple other startups, raised over $50 million in venture capital, and love to help other entrepreneurs as much as possible.
I'm active on a few nonprofit boards, such as the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA, which serves the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, and Liberty in North Korea (LiNK).
I grew up in suburban Chicago, and attended Wisconsin (Go Badgers!) and Columbia University. I have a strong interest in public policy, which is what I studied during graduate school, and why I did the Coro Fellowship, a post-graduate leadership development program. I have lived in Springfield, IL, St. Louis, MO, NYC, Hong Kong, Seoul, San Francisco, and now reside in Palo Alto, CA. I enjoy writing and exploring various topics, so I maintain a blog about my random thoughts and write op-eds for various technology blogs, such as VentureBeat. I love to travel, eat, ski, play basketball, and watch our twin girls grow.
There was an exchange of opinion in the commentary section of these postings concerning my lineage, ancestry, and inclinations -civic, amorous, and otherwise. These offerings violated taste, wit and concern for the winsome hearts of ladies everywhere. Nevertheless, this exchange between two worthies might clear up any and all misconceptions regarding the character and deportment of your humble servant.
His handsome face and rich attire had appealed to their admiration, his cool daring and the way he had handled the bully of the town had won their respect.
"I tell ye what, boys," a burly miner remarked, "he ain't no slouch, ef ye hear me squeal, but did enny of ye ever see him afore?"
'I did," a grizzled old prospector offered this of the paragon Prolific Hickey" I know'd the villain over in Custer Park, 'bout Twenty Seven yar ago."
"An' what war his record thar?"
"All white;- a chief— free with his dust, his dukes, and his derringers, jess as it'd suit ye; an' clear grit down to hard-pan."
"I thought so— he looks it. An' that kid o' his'n (Conor Oliver Hickey)! I sw'ar he's a whale! the little feller came ridin' in on thet thar hoss, an' a-singin' out Lord, boys, so like's 'f he meant business, an' when I reckon he did, ye could a-knocked me down with a chaw o' tobacco, I war so 'mazed like."
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
