Custer Park Men Released into the Custody of Brian Wesbury - Economist

Two men from Custer Park, Illinois were arrested on suspicion of being recruited by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( and the Levant) ISIS(L).

Dwanne Burhop (45) and Dale 'Critter'  Poissons-Croc (44)  of Custer Park, Il claim that they only volunteered to enlist in the army of Islamic States of Iraq and Syria ( and the Levant) because the guy speaking on the toll free number mentioned Free Ice. Burhop took the call at Custer's Keg, when the owner asked him to watch the bar, while he grabbed a smoke outside,

Homeland Security has determined that the jug-line fishermen were not an existential threat; however, Dale 'Critter' Poisson-Croc is still under investigation for hate-crime speech and thought by yet-Attorney General Eric Holder, who is personally reviewing 'This Cracker's Hateful Soul." Poisson-Croc termed the membership of the Wilmington Rod and Gun Club "Faggots" and he did not mean bundles of kindling, nor underclassmen in an English boarding school.

Both men were release into the custody of economist Brian Wesbury.* Wesbury fully intends to make sure that Burhop and Poisson-Croc avoid future use telephones, as the Kankakee River Naturalists had been taken into custody for answering the phone at Custer's Keg and mistaking the ISIS(L) for an ice-philanthropist. Burhop told Reuters, or Rooters, or whatever, " We been keeping our cans of Red, White and Blue cool in the river and we eat everthing that comes our way on the spot.  These last few weeks the beers freeze.  It makes sense to get free ice. The damn Federal lawyers don't see it that way - needed us some ice.Man said, " Free Ices" so we're in."

He repeated that claim upon release. " Man said Free Ice-es. O........Kay?? What'ld any one do?  We said we're in!"

Wesbury is a graduate of Northwestern University and therefore can be counted to be 'nuanced.'

He is also a superb Jug-line fisherman and avid drinker of sub-Premium domestic beers.  He will shack with the two until Homeland Security is satisfied. Homeland Security is always 'satisfied' with the best intentions of inebriated motorist on the Dan Ryan slowing down to 15MPH at the sight of a State Police roller.

Wesbury had this to say,  "Pundits have a bottomless reservoir of pessimism and also a magnified ability to extrapolate the most recent trends. So, when Q1-2014 real GDP fell at an annual rate of 2.1%, fear turned rampant."

Poissant-Croc was non-plussed. Burhop has yet to go on record regarding Mr. Wesbury's stewardship,

Extrapolate.  Cool.  Now without jumping to no conclusions. . .this story will develop some.





*  Brian S. Wesbury (born September 8, 1958) is an American economist focusing on macroeconomics and economic forecasting. He is the economics editor and a monthly contributor for The American Spectator, a conservative political magazine, in addition to appearing on television stations such as CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News,and Bloomberg TV frequently. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and for five years served as an adjunct professor of economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.

U of C's John J. Mearschiemer Critic of Israel, Pal of Iran and Now Ukraine Crisis Molotov

Anyone who hates Israel, demands that Iran should get The Bomb and understands why Obama lie, naturally will want to sell the Ukrainian people back into slavery under Vlad Putin.

John J. Mearschiemer is a University of Chicago apologist for all things Valerie Jarrett.  Get this crapola from another rarefied air breathing professor -

Sending weapons to Ukraine will not rescue its army and will instead lead to an escalation in the fighting. Such a step is especially dangerous because Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and is seeking to defend a vital strategic interest.

There is no question that Ukraine’s military is badly outgunned by the separatists, who have Russian troops and weapons on their side. Because the balance of power decisively favors Moscow, Washington would have to send large amounts of equipment for Ukraine’s army to have a fighting chance.
But the conflict will not end there. Russia would counter-escalate, taking away any temporary benefit Kiev might get from American arms. The authors of the think tank study concede this, noting that “even with enormous support from the West, the Ukrainian Army will not be able to defeat a determined attack by the Russian military.” In short, the United States cannot win an arms race with Russia over Ukraine and thereby ensure Russia’s defeat on the battlefield.

I can almost see that other fatuous ninny David Brooks with brow a-knit nodding his doughy noggin with amiable accent on the PBS News Hour -'Yes, yes,'

Obama has already sold out 

• the American Middle Class 
• African Americans Citizens
• Black Youth in America
• Mexican American Citizens
• Organized Labor (sans public sector unions and SEIU)
• the Syrians
• the Libyans
• the Egyptians
• the Crimea
• Fort Hood
• Boston
• Coptic Christians in particular
• Christian universal
• Israel
• Jews universal
• NATO
• Nebraska
• Chicago Obama Library bidders
• Hillary Clinton

Vlad Putin a tin-horn bully who scares the poop out of Choom Gang Barry, was given a license to steal by President Obama and his White House.   Obama eco/petro fuel policies all but saved Putin from certain economic implosion.  

Valerie Jarrett, it seems, has called out her reliable academic shill John J. Mearsheimer to set the scenery for another dagger plunged in the back of the brave Ukrainian people. Obama and Putin dance to the same jig fiddled by George Soros - you must crack a few skulls to make brain salad.

Obama is a screw up.  He is a very calculated screw-up.  He listens only to a very few people. John J. Mearsheimer is one of them. 

Rahm Emanuel has "Earned" My Vote? BS, MBS & PhD!

There was a an old response to an outrageous assertion from a person who had college degrees after his name, that I no longer hear in Chicago.  It went  " Listen to him. He's an important guy. Look at the letters after his name BS, Master of BS, Piled High and Deep!"

We no longer live in Chicago.  We reside in Chicagoland.

Editorial Boards in Chicago are umbilical chords pumping life and vitality into the misery that is Illinois still-born government.  Editorial Boards in Chicago shined no light on Candidate Obama long association with Chicago Slum Warlords: Allsion Davis and Valerie Jarrett who trotted out bundler Tony Rezko - The Man in The Iron Mask. Nor did they point out the daffy irregularities of  Blago, Burris, Quinn & Company, Ralph Martire: The Architect of Pension Three Card Monte, Daley's Sell off of Assets.

Reporters did that. No paper has better reporter than Chicago Sun Times: Tim Novak, Dan Mihiapolous, Chris Fusco, the silenced Dave McKinney and Natasha Korecki. They are the Casandras of our  City.  Chicago went the way of the stockyards and became Chicagoland, which is gussied up with verbal arugula from Sundance Films and Sundance Bob Redford doing a solid for Ari Emanuel  We are asked to pretend that Rahm Emanuel is 'one of us.' Chicagoland is Hollywood-lite.

That is Okay with both Chicagoland Papers.

These twin Chicagoland editorial boards work to get Rahm a permanent place on the 5th Floor.

That is their right and privilege.  The pin-stripe crowd that comes into Chicagoland from Lake County and points tonier and exits at sunset command the skype-ready board rooms that look down on Chicagoland and giggle with pride and snide, knowing full well that Rahm Emanuel will direct more cash to their vaults.  They nod with conviction and solemn agreement when the Twin Chicagoland Medill Brat Pack inks its endorsement.

The twin pulp endorsements are as glued to the truth as a Brian Williams combat yarn and tell us that our lot is Resignation.  "Resignation is the lot of the helot with thirty year mortgage and $ 487 water every six months.  Resign yourselves to the inevitable, pay your bills and shut the duck up, or Rahms sake."

I am told by the editorial board of the Sun Times, the paper with fanged talent I listed above, that Rahm Emanuel 'Earned My Vote.'

Bullshit!

Was that too intemperate and un-WTTW?

How about Horseshit - you know the stuff Ed Burke so solemnly banned from the Gold Coast.

I earn my pay.  I earn the love of my children and respect and courtesy of my neighbors.

The very same editorial ink that tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I owe my vote to Dancing Priam, tells me also that, " The city’s four main pension systems are underfunded by a stunning $20 billion. Workers and retirees will have to pay in more and get back less. There is no other way. Homeowners, best we can tell, will have to pay higher taxes. Absolutely nobody will be happy."

Gee, you think?

I will bet that my Ward, the 19th, will go along with Rahm, because for too many of my neighbors personal obligations will demand it.  They will be a doing a solid for the guy who desperately believes that Rahm wil save his job on the Garbage trucks, or down at the Hall, or help his kid get a pipes trades job, in some way.

I know. I have been there and voted that.

Vote for whomever you believe to the best person, be it Rahm, Bob, Chuy, Willie, Doc or Jimmy the Two-Headed Boy.

You owe no one your vote.   You don't need a PhD to tell you that, but he will.

ComEd and ReMix Chicago Offer Leo Men a Look Life in the Arts

A drone operated by two young artists greeted the van load of Leo High School students, who woke up early on Saturday, got gussied up, and boarded a van commanded by Coach Debo and History teacher Bill Tomaka and drove to the Pilsen neighborhood.  At LaCuna Lofts located at 2150 S. Canalport ( just off the street from Cermack Road), Com Ed sponsored a day-long program that featured REMIX.

The Remix Project was created in order to help level the playing field for young people from disadvantaged, marginalized and under served communities. Our programs and services serve youth who are trying to enter into the creative industries or further their formal education; The REMIX Project provides top-notch alternative, creative, educational programs, facilitators and facilities. Our mission is to help refine the raw talents of young people from across the GTA in order to help them find success as participants define it and on their own terms.

This program started in Toronto,Canada and recently found a home at Lacuna Lofts, with the backing of Joe Cacciatore, son of a great Chicago philanthropist.

Leo High School was invited to share the talents of our students with the artists and directors of REMIX.

We have a some very talented gents. One in particular happens to be less than an engaged academic gent, but actively pursues his musical interests and inclinations.  Two attendees from Leo are remarkable vocalists and the other five young men work in church choirs, act as sound technicians for DJs and MCs in their neighborhoods, or dabble in techno-artistry.

As Coach Debo wheeled the Leo van into the lot a drone hopvered over the vehicle and buzzed the gents as they alighted from Old Number 7 ( my morning pick-up vehicke for the last three years).

ComEd representatives greeted the gents, who were the first to arrive for the day's events and the Leo Lions mingled with grace and dignity. Click on the link for the day's events from Hashtag ComEd.  The photos here are my own.

Thank you to all of the folks at ComEd, REMIX and LaCuna Lofts!

This about sums it up!

 This last great shot is via ComEd

TWO Illinoisans of ICE-ES?

ISIS recruits Burhop and Poisson-Croc in Spring 2014 at the shack on Rt 113 Custer Park, IL -happier before involvement with ISIS(l)

February 6,2015 (Reuters, or Rooters, or Whatever)

 Dwanne Burhop (45) and Dale 'Critter'  Poissons-Croc (44)  of Custer Park, Il claim that they only volunteered to enlist in the army of Islamic States of Iraq and Syria ( and the Levant) because the guy speaking on the toll free number mentioned Free Ice. Burhop took the call at Custer's Keg, when the owner asked him to watch the bar, while he grabbed a smoke outside,

The life-long friends and Reed -Custer High School graduates live in a shack on the west bank of the Kankakee River, where they run Linco-Jug lines and trap river muskrats for a livihood, have not had a refrigerator since the Clinton Second term, when COMED shut off their power due to non payment.

" We been keeping our cans of Red, White and Blue cool in the river and we eat everthing that comes our way on the spot.  These last few weeks the beers freeze.  It makes sense to get free ice. The damn Federal lawyers don't see it that way - needed us some ice.Man said, " Free Ices" so we're in."

Dwanne Burhop's classmate and fellow Linco-Jug linesman Poissions-Croc added, "This is Bull@#$%! Some set up from the Wilmington Gun Club faggots who want us off the river."

Poisson-Croc is now charged with hate-speech crimes and is currently under review by Attorney General Eric Holder, who is"not anywhere near through stomping on the likes of these two."

Story Developing

More Raymond Chandler, Please! America Needs Chandler!

No American writer writes better than Raymond Chandler.  Chandler was considered Pulp.  Hemingway got a place in the canon of Literature.  That should be indicative of what is dreadfuylly wrong with us.  Raymond Chandler told the truth.  Ernest Hemingway is supposed be the truth.

Raymond Chandler knew that Hemingway was a bully with powerful friends and a typewriter. In The Big Sleep Chandler offered this insight via dialogue

Who is this Hemingway person at all?”
“A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.”
“That must take a hell of a long time,” the big man said.

Not really, Chandler knew that Americans will buy anything as long as it was packaged nicely. How else did Obama get two terms and why is Dancing Withe Stars?

Hemingway  wanted the world to know that he was 'vital.' Okay.

Chandler was, as another great writer described himself to be, ' the broken hearted witness to mankinds' folly.'

Raymond Chandler wrote within what is called the 'hard-boiled' detective genre.  His prose is supposed to be black and white and anything but elegant.  Well, get this -

“There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight- arms you with an ice- blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up- from- under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non- fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa- Romeo town car complete with pilot and co- pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent- mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

One of my favorite passages from The Long Goodbye ends the reverie of private detctive Phillip Marlowe's enchantment as he watches a stunningly put-together woman clinb a high dive ladder and plunge nto a pool -
"She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed."

Don't we all.   

Why Honor The Honorable?

I am one fortunate son and that is said without one scintilla of irony wrapped in the clause.

My character, for what it is, was formed at a time in our history when honor was bestowed upon very exceptional persons.  They were exceptional for the virtues evident in their thoughts, words and especially deeds.  At grammar school sports banquets everyone who played on a team got huge plateful of spaghetti cooked by the Dads, ice cream Dixie cups with wooden spoons donated by Hamilton Dairy and the first kind words from coaches who challenged us to 'put out' in everything we did and reminded that no one loves a 'dogger.'  I don't recall trophies, ribbons, or certificates dispensed universal, but some tokens went to exceptional players.

We were not all champions and that was good, because only the tough guys who won The Soutrhtown Economist Big Bell ( usually St. Cajetan's) held that honorific.  In the late 1960's, St. Cajetan's dominated our conference in football and St. Sabina's in basketball. Those were exceptional teams of athletes.I was and remain an exceptionally bad athlete with all of the grace of a loose bowling ball in fast-moving panel truck carrying a glass menagerie.  Yet, I lack not for confidence, pep and get up and go.

Lessons learned early in theory and practice taught me some understanding of honor.  If one begrudges the exceptional any and all recognition, one is a bitter ass.

 Take a look at the 2014 Gallup lists of moost admired persons

There are some exceptional people, but there are more celebreties in place than exceptional, it seems to me.
Joel Osteen? That's some list

I do not like lists.  Lists are very New York City hoity-toity and were the whipping dogs of one of the all-time great modern ironists, Hessville of Hammond, Indiana's Jean Shepherd. This Midwestern born and bred writer and broadcaster was amazed by New York's addiction to list making and Made The List idolaters.

Lists seem to diminish the exceptional for sake of the appoiuted.  I would rather make a team, than be added on to it to make me feel good. The exceptional earn, the celebrated are granted.  The only real list that makers, it seems to me, is the roll-call of Medal of Honor recipients.  Terry Barrett wrote in The Search for the Forgotten Thirty Four ( a book no young man should miss reading) that " Without question the Medal of Honor recipients had a full measure of spirit, evident in their actions long before they entered combat. Childhood friends, school companions, and teammates recalled it. Fellow recruits recognized it early in training. And commanders counted upon it when they sent these men into harm’s way. This is the quality that the recipients breathed into the comrades who witnessed their heroic bravery. Only from spirit can come inspiration."

I once gave a student of mine a higher grade in a high school sophomore English survey course, not because of the essay on Ambrose Bierce's short story " The Sniper," but for the exceptional thing he brought to his essay. It was a handwritten Civil War journal from his great grand uncle who served in the Illinois 64th Regiment. They were snipers - sharpshooters. Exceptional.

That student went on to live an exceptional life. Exceptionally happy.  He became a machinist for a great Illinois Tool Maker.

We must teach our young people the difference between being an exceptional person and a celebrated person.  Today, young people love Seth Rogan, because they have forgotten Jack Black; though both have limited arsenals of wit and talent, both were wildly celebrated.

Letsbegin with honoring Medal of Honor Recipients - early and often. Terry Barret explains early in his book -

The men described in the following chapters lived and died in circumstances in which few people in the general population will ever find themselves. The majority of people will never know if they possess this brand of bravery, because heroic bravery is seldom called for in everyday events. 

Realistically, not all people are capable of heroic bravery. Yet, many more than are aware, “average” and “ordinary” individuals, do have the potential to experience bravery. Reading about bravery and learning about heroes might help us discover this quality within ourselves and practice it deliberately. We might find ourselves less troubled by fear.
Medal of Honor recipients provide us examples. By encouraging children and adults to take the nine actions described of these men and fostering the development of the traits they exemplify, people would accomplish much in life with greater confidence and more certain esteem for themselves.
Our culture would also discover itself to be less anxious, fearful, or cowered by the intimidations of terror. (emphasis my own)

Our culture might also wake up to the fact that police officers, firemen and most first responders are not Suge Knight.

Our Core Curriculum Must Value Valor

". . . the demonstration of bravery is a reflection of personal character." Major General James Livingston, USMC (ret.) fgrom the Preface to The Search For The Forgotten Thirty-Four , Terence Barrett

 Everything that is done by reason of ignorance is not voluntary; it is only what produces pain and repentance that is involuntary. For the man who has done something owing to ignorance, and feels not the least vexation at his action, has not acted voluntarily, since he did not know what he was doing, nor yet involuntarily, since he is not pained. Of people, then, who act by reason of ignorance he who repents is thought an involuntary agent, and the man who does not repent may, since he is different, be called a not voluntary agent; for, since he differs from the other, it is better that he should have a name of his own.  Aristotle -Nichomachean Ethics

If I were to plan a school for young men in 2015, it would be important to make sure that every lesson and every objective meet the test of Valor.

I am not a particularly brave person, but I know bravery and honor bravery, not in some crypto-Rahmbo homage to cruelty and acts of violence, but the underlying gentleness required of any brave act. My Dad, God rest him, fought in three brutal campaigns of the south Pacific, but bravest thing he ever did was hang laundry in the yard, when my Mom was laid up in the hospital with kidney failure in 1960.  He worked three jobs and took care of three little kids which meant laundry, cooking and cleaning during the Ozzie and Harriet epoch, when real men had dens, volumes of Playboys and 'the liitle woman' for such deeds.

My Dad, who was generally as combative as an old nun going through change of life, took the taunts from the Dads over fences. All but old man, Phil Bellina

Aristotle made the distinction between a brave man and crazy man, "   We ought presumably to call not what a fool or a madman would deliberate about, but what a sensible man would deliberate about, a subject of deliberation.: NE Book III.

We must deliberate.  Not always a possibility. How then do we act and how do we train generations of young men to act with grace, dignity, piety and deliberation if possible. Terence Barrett explains:

Brave acts occur every day. Great numbers of humans possess qualities of moral strength, purpose of mind, and courage. Finding themselves in the right difficult circumstances they demonstrate bravery. Most brave individuals go unheralded because their lives seem unremarkable or because they perform unwitnessed acts of bravery. Sometimes the witnesses to their bravery do not survive the circumstances.
Bravery is a personal quality, usually understood to be an inner core of strength and courage. Bravery is demonstrated by a deliberate and conscious choice to quickly, perhaps immediately, initiate an action in a difficult and challenging situation. That action will be in a manner uncommon (perhaps) to most people and performed in a socially accepted and respected way. Put simply, bravery is the demonstration of courage.  

Dr. Barrett's wonderful book The Search for the Forgotten Thirty Four examines the lives thirty four men who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for acts of conspicuous bravery.and who died in relative obscurity even in their own home towns. Barrett write, "  Examination of Medal of Honor Citations suggests that Marines repeatedly perform in certain ways in their demonstration of heroic bravery."

He goes on with this  tem[late of brave actions "Nine general actions were identified to be ways in which Marines earned the nation’s highest award for bravery in battle:
1) Do what is asked for or required and more.
2) Fend off an enemy assault, especially one of unequal odds.
3) Volunteer for a challenging task potentially dangerous to oneself.
4) Turn the outcome of an engagement with the enemy by initiating an assault.
5) Demonstrate leadership that inspires others to take action despite imminent danger.
6) Sustain deliberateness of purpose despite extended duress.
7) Carry on one’s duty in spite of grievous, debilitating, and life-threatening wounds.
8) Put self in harm’s way, disregarding danger, to rescue others.
9) Act in defense of fellow combatants, even to the risk of one’s self.

A hero’s age at the time of action does not determine bravery."

If we graduate a student with Honors, but without an understanding of the nature of valor, I believe we might as well not teach at all.

Bravery is observable and self-evident and requires no parsing, or context management.  To do what is virtuous requires brave deliberation.  This is a cross-disciplinary imperative for a good school. Every book, every essay, every quiz and every activity should be dedicated to giving young men the outlet for bravery. Lessons should focus on examples of valor : in Geometry and Mathematics the Bravery of Archimedes;
Biology and Physics the Self Sacrifice of Pierre Currie and intellectual courage of Gregor Mendel and the Internet can provide halls of learning beyond the walls of the school.

All students come to school with fears. Those should be addressed and Barrett does a wonderful job of it -

Bravery does not mean fearlessness.
American author Mark Twain had traveled, worked on the Mississippi steamboats, and watched the Civil War nearly tear the nation apart. When he wrote the following comment, he was 59-years-old. He was not trying to be funny; he was serious when he said; “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear.” 6
Mark Twain and others have long understood that fear and bravery go hand-in-hand.
Acting with bravery means that a person must perceive a danger or threat, real or imagined. Bravery is then demonstrated by an admirable human action, an indifference to fear, and a disregard for the personal danger. Note, however, that indifference to fear does not mean the absence of it. A person recognized to possess bravery consciously rises to meet a challenge that triggers fear, draws upon this personal quality, and takes an initiative few might endeavor.
The award Citations for the recipients repeatedly describe their heroic actions with specific words: included among these are admirable, bold, courageous, daring, dauntless, fearless, gallant, honorable, indomitable, intrepid, resolute, stout hearted, tenacious, unfaltering, unwavering, valiant, and valorous. The words impart a certain sense to the actions of these men.
Can we accept the implied meaning as accurate? Is dauntless a measurable and quantifiable personal quality? How might courage best be defined? A person described to be dauntless is believed to be without fear, unintimidated by danger. The words dauntless and courageous are often used interchangeably. Both are considered synonymous with brave. Yet, dauntless and courageous do not mean the same thing.
There can be no question that the Marines described in this book acted courageously. That they acted without fear at the same time is not accurate. A person does not have to be dauntless to be brave.

Dare I work toward this?  

Just a thought.

Jeb? Governor Jeb Bush? You Mean John Ellis "Call Me Jeb" Bush? President? I'll Pass.

"With inferior numbers you concentrated your troops, and successfully opposed his progress, and obliged him to relinquish his purpose. His next attempt will be on our right" - Robert E. Lee

I have heard many really smart political people tell me just how smart Barack H. Obama was, how heroic John Kerry was, how fair Jim Edgar was, how  selfless Judy Barr Topinka was, how much Richie and Maggie Daley LOVED Chicago, how nice Pat Quinn was, how loyal Charlie Crist was, how incorruptible Valerie Jarrett was, how maverick McCain was, how horrible Palin remains, how American Indian Bessie Warren believes herself to be and that all turned out to be very wrong.
  Even Einstein burned his toast,  once in while.

The bell weather it seems to me is always a consensus built by some schmuck with a bad come-over and worse mustache who hates middle class ethnics and blacks, but knows they are essential to any election.

People who seem to be consistently wrong about everything, make very good Campaign Gurus, because they know that we don't like to be wrong about elections and fools about political candidates and will never publicly say, " I knew that the late Judy Barr Topinka* was afraid, but I convinced myself that she was just one 'tough gal who tells it like it is.'"  People want to Win With Quinn, but avoid the consequences of his terms in office.

It continues.

All the World is getting political wood over the inevitable crowning of JEB.  No,not the swashbuckling Reb Jeb, who screwed the pooch at Gettysburg in '63 and allowed George Gordon Meade to hand Ol' Marse Robert his rump. but the other Bush White Meat.  Jeb Bush, Governor Jeb Bush. John Ellis Bush who is not George W. Bush.

Who asked for him? Probably some GOP bath water guzzler like US Senator Marque Kirque (R IL). More than likely. it is also some Democrats who realize now that President Barack H. Obama had less control over Chicago slumlord weevil Valerie Jarrett, who runs the White House policy wheels, than he had over his unravelling terms of office and have decided to right off 2016 as a loss.

All I know is that JEB Bush seems to be as tired a product as John McCain, Lindsey Graham.  McCain quit the race for the White House in September 2008 when the economy tanked and allowed his flabby campaign's only asset to be chewed up by the punk media.

JEB?  Jeb Bush, Governor John Ellis " Call Me Jeb " Bush really wants the job. He wants the job in the same manner and with the same sense of entitlement as the current daffy, but dangerous occupant. Scott Walker makes sense and has with stood more poop tossed at him than Governor Palin endured in month of MSNBC treatments.  He's tough, not full of himself, cautious around the press. and actually has succeeded.

I would love to see America elect an African American as President, Dr. Ben Carson, but that will not happen, as long as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton hold a 9mm loaded with Race Rounds to heads of Goldman Sachs, Hollywood, GE and both coasts.

JEB?  I think not.  We just had eight years of Obama's empty suit.

If the likes of Dana Millbank, Joan Walsh, EJ Dionne, David Brooks and all of the other dependable ink-slinging amoebas, praise JEB Bush, it seems to me he will be a disaster as President.

Smart guys????????

What say you?







*Judy Barr Topinka grabbed a delegate's spot to attend the 2008 RNC rather than do her own due-dilligence - get petitions, win the delgate elections & etc.  Nasty old hag.

Republican National Committeewoman Mary Jo Arndt  2008
Major General John Borling, USAF (Ret).
Former Ambassador and Former Illinois Republican Party Chair Rich Williamson ILLINOIS DELEGATES
Gregg Abbott
Helen Albert
Mike Amrozowicz
Mayor Jim Ardis
John Atchley
Kirby Ballard
Joe Bartolomucci
Tony Becker
Harry Bond
Maj. Gen. John Borling
Scott Boukal
Rep. Daniel P. Brady
Julie Brady
Kevin Brady
Mary Jane Brady
Will Callard
Dean A. Casper, Jr.
Mayor Thomas Tolbert Chisum
Vincent P. Churak
Robert Cook
Michael Corrigan
James L. Coxworth
Sen. Dan Cronin
Larry DeYoung
Sen. Kirk Dillard
Richard E. Diller
Mary Pat Dixon
William Durkin
Rep. Jim Durkin
Barbara Dwyer
Deb Detmers Fansler
Bobby Vaughan Ferguson
Joann Finger
John Fogarty, Jr.
Rep. Mike Fortner
Jim Fuchs
Susan Gere
Kimberly Pate Godden
Gustavo Gonzalez
Joyce Gooding
Thomas Gooding
William S. Graham
Kent Gray
Mike Hagerty
Donald B. Hall
J. Sue Hamilton
John Harty
Thomas Hayes
Sean Healy
William L. Henniger
Herbert Hentschel
Roy Hertel
Nora Kathleen Hickey
Stephanie Hitt
Damon Hofstrand
Mark Hosty
Robert Hudon
Bill Jacklin
David A. Kelm
Virginia Kenney
Pam Kinsey
U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood
Nadja Lalvani
Prem Lalvani
Pastor Ceasar LeFlore
Stephen Liehr
Cindy Limbach
Andrew Loveday
Alex Martella
Rilio Mastrantonio
Rep. Sidney Mathias
Karen Matjasko
Matthew Mau
John McCrory
Tom McRae
Margaret McSweeney
Ann Melichar
Rep. James Meyer
Mary Jo Mikottis
Jack Murphy
Tim O’Neill
Rep. Joann Osmond
Ray Pawlak
Nick Peric
Rep. Raymond Poe
Dennis Presley
William Read
Nate Rice
James A. Riemer, Jr.
Wayne Rosenthal
Carlos Saucedo
Lisa Schumacher
John Scully
William G. Shepherd
Det. Larry Shepherd
U.S. Rep. John M. Shimkus
Karen Slattery
Michael Sneed
Jason Speer
David Stanton
Nina Stephenson
Eugene Syring
Steven Tomaszewski
Mayor Bruce Tossell
Rep. Jil Tracy
Mayor Henry Vicenik
Charlie Watts
Becky Weber
Mary A. Welling
Ambassador Rich Williamson
Alderman Elmo R. Younger, Veteran of WWII

The Joan Walsh Evolution: Wall Flower to Shrill Hag To Spartan Fascist

Be nice to homely girls, always; for if you do not, they may become dangerous. 

In another attempt to define normal people as dysfunctional and Republican candidates as what they are,  spineless dummies, Joan Walsh has mapped out her personal journey from porky wall-flower to Spartan Fascist -


Joan Walsh, the poor door full of woman, not only demands women abort a child to feel fresh, but now has gone full Spartan.

Parents own kids.  Most cultures hold that to be true and self-evident.

The Spartans, as goofy a gang of homoerotic zenophobes as ever raped a helot, did not believe that chldren belonged with their parenst; neither, did Plato; neither did The Utopians; neither did Hitler nor did Hooky Sanger and Planned Parenthood Movement of America.

Joan Walsh must have been treated very badly by my male contempraries at whatever sock-hops, dances or socials Miss Walsh hugged a wall.  Hurt can lead to bitterness and bitterness to savagery - Spartan savagery.

 The Spartan family was quite different from that of other Ancient Greek city-states. The word "spartan" has come down to us to describe self-denial and simplicity. This is what Spartan life was all about. Children were children of the state more than of their parents. They were raised to be soldiers, loyal to the state, strong and self-disciplined.
It began in infancy. When a Spartan baby was born, soldiers came to the house and examined it carefully to determine its strength.The baby was bathed in wine rather than water, to see its reaction. If a baby was weak, the Spartans exposed it on the hillside or took it away to become a slave (helot). Infanticide was common in ancient cultures, but the Spartans were particularly picky about their children. It was not just a matter of the family, the city-state decided the fate of the child. Nurses had the primary care of the baby and did not coddle it.Soldiers took the boys from their mothers at age 7, housed them in a dormitory with other boys and trained them as soldiers. The mother's softening influence was considered detrimental to a boy's education. The boys endured harsh physical discipline and deprivation to make them strong. The marched without shoes and went without food. They learned to fight, endure pain and survive through their wits. The older boys willingly participated in beating the younger boys to toughen them. Self-denial, simplicity, the warrior code, and loyalty to the city-state governed their lives.Spartan children were taught stories of courage and fortitude. One favorite story was about a boy who followed the Spartan code. He captured a live fox and intended to eat it. Although boys were encouraged to scrounge for food, they were punished if caught. The boy noticed some Spartan soldiers coming, and hid the fox beneath his shirt. When the soldiers confronted him, he allowed the fox to chew into his stomach rather than confess, and showed no sign of pain in his body or face. This was the Spartan way.At the age of 20 or so, they had to pass a rigorous test to graduate and become full citizens. Only the soldiers were received the aristocratic citizenship. If they failed their tests they never became citizens, but became perioeci, the middle class. So to some extent class was based on merit rather than birth.

The Spartans hated eveyone - not just Darius' Persians.Haters gonna Hate.  Joan Walsh is full-Spartan: cool with infanticide, hates everyone not herself.

Thus, the damage done to life's unplucked flowers - the nunnery, or Spatan fascism.

Man and child, it is a bitter thing to witness what happens when a girl can go from walllower to harpy.  Spartan, almost 

I'm Back. . .Until I Start Talking Back to the Crucifix

I had surgery on 7AM Monday morning at Advocate Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.  Christ Advocate ranks only behind Northwestern, Rush and University of Chicago and is one of the busiest ER's on the planet - if there is a shooting victim south of Madison Avenue you can bet Christ Advocate gets the work.

The night before we took on 19.3 " of snow - taller than Chicago's Mayor and much, much more deep.

I got up at 3 AM and plowed the dive and the sidewalk - not to be a pain-in-the-ass to the neighbors, but to allow McNamara Cab easy access. It was a futile gesture. MAC CAB called me at 4:50 AM  to inform me he was stuck at 10th & Rockwell. No sweat - boots on and move them stumpy legs.

We got there in time ( 5:35 AM) and I Duked the drive a saw buck. In I go. 

I had a quickly developing tumor on my nose (left nostril) and looked like Bardolph in Kenneth Brannagh's glorious version of Henry V for the last three weeks.

I was referred to a lovely Greek American woman ( Dr. Nicki) to perform my plastic surgery.  My anaesthesiologists was guy who looked all too familiar - did I borrow a huge amount of cash from him in gaming days?   I was asked to shift from my bed to surgeon's table and told that I might get sleepy - out before my ass snuggled into the new pallet.

I spent Monday in a nice dope induced fog and yesterday getting used to the Dr. Nicki's knife work and sewing.  I have a double gauze cover for my nose sutures and long thin bikini scar from right ear to heroic jaw, where Dr. Nicki took skin grafts.  I am taking pain killers and antibiotics.

I came into work this AM and will try to get in a full day - we have a board meeting at 3PM.  I got here at 4AM and answered some e-mails.  I feel a tad dopey . . .but otherwise pretty good.

Outside of my cibicle is a huge (6') crucifix and kneeler - I made use of it and did a lap on the rosary.

Crucified Christ gave me some glances reminicent of my south side bretheran -" Gee, had an Owwee Hickey? Well, too bad about you."

Yep. You can not hide.

You Won't Ever See Rahm Emanuel Helping Out A Neighbor -Ald. Matt O' Shea Will Pump Gas and Clean Windshields at Kean Gas

19th Ward Aldermann Matt O'Shea -Doing; Not Talking = Facta Non Verba and likes his neighbors, because he is one.

"Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There's a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn't exist."   Rahm Emanuel
“To learn real human nature you have to go among the people, see them and be seen. I know every man, woman, and child in the Fifteenth District, except them that's been born this summer and I know some of them, too. I know what they like and what they don't like, what they are strong at and what they are weak in, and I reach them by approachin' at the right side.” George Washington Plunkitt

Last Friday at around 3 PM, the Morgan Park Temple of 'Didn't See You at Mass on Sunday. Hickey' - Kean Gas at 111th & Talman was robbed.  The neighbors wondered why no news of robbery had been enough to nterest the Chicago media in doing a clause, or two.  Many said, " Rahm's up for the vote this month and 'don't you know' crime is way down and we have way too many cops on the job?"

Cynical, but well earned; especially these days, when Chicago is run by a Hollywood-dollar fueled misanthrope with 9.5 fingers and zero capacity for neighborhoods.

Our alderman responded as he always does, by going in up to his elbows.

As many of you may know, Kean Brothers' Gas Station, 2632 W. 111th Street, was the victim of an armed robbery last week. The Kean family has operated a business in our community for more than 70 years, supporting countless charitable, civic and parish causes along the way. I am asking that we rally in support of them by visiting the station tomorrow, Wednesday, February 4th to fill up your tank or purchase a few things inside the station. Kean is open from 5:30 am - 10:00 pm. I will be there pumping gas between 3:00 - 6:00 pm, I hope to see you there. Matt O'Shea

Matt is only one of 50 City Council officers, called alderman by real Chicagoans, and the only one who actually works, sleeps and plays with his neighbors.   I catch Matt O'Shea at it all the time - My brother picked me up from surgery on Monday ( SnowMaggedon '15), we took 95th Street east from Christ Hospital to Westen Ave. and Western Ave south - past 103rd the Bro says, " Who's that guy digging the Old Bat ( elderly woman) out of the drift?"  Digging furiously and cheerfully mear the old KODA and the 19th Ward office was . . . .

Ald. Matt OShea -the anti-Rahm.

Rahm's War on Neighborhoods is One of Attrition - Make Everyone Tired of Living Here

I live in a great neighborhood. great people who keep an eye on your home and most especially your kids.   The problem is that my neighborhood is in a city run by a guy who absolutely detests everything about living in a neighborhood.  His people do not live in bungalows, raised ranches, Georgians, or Flats - Rahm Emanuel's people have addresses, residences, places to end a busy day accumulation.

Rahm's people accumulate power in business, entertainment, political grifts, academics and most of all policy.

 Rahm's people do not shovel snow, cut grass, pick up empty beer cans tossed on the lawn by America's youth, nor do they agonize over ballooning taxes, revenue grifts and where to send the kids to school.  Neighbors do that.

Rahm Emanuel wants neighbors gone from Chicago and voters limited to dependable communities.

Rahm Emanuel is a smart-size city guy.  Reduce the city to lovely areas where affluent constituents and investors can walk and bike along streets free of traffic.  Reduce the number of benefits available to Chicagoans and raise the costs out of this world. We have one of the largest inland seas on the planet and it is potable water - you can drink it.

God's Lake on Chicago's shoreline.  Our water bill jumped a whopping 86%, because . . .. ?  Rahm can.

Chicago has the best police force on earth.  Yet, they are undermanned and out gunned. Thugs know - go and rob, beat, even murder, where there are no cops on patrol - in a safe neighborhood.  Big time crooks and grifters hitch their star to politics and government cash.   CPS alumni and drop-outs have the will to steal big, but lack the intellectual heft of a Northwestern education and must eke out a livlihood in a safe neighborhood in a an undermanned neighborhood.

On Friday afternoon at about 3PM, a gas station that serves as a neighborhood temple of good fellowship, Kean Gas at 111th & Talman *was robbed. Kean is place to grab a paper, coffee, candy for the kids and the real news, as well as top-off the gas tank.  Black, Mexican and Caucasians congregate like neighbors, do.

A black kid might rob a store, or grab a kid's cell phone, but it also common knowlege that 3rd generation Irish American might be doing Rahm's bidding and some Mexican St. Rita guy at the Merc could put them all to shame.

There seems to be a news embargo on what happened at Kean Gas on Friday.

No one is talking but the neighbors.

• No news casts
• No news features in print or on the web
• No nothing

Yet, Kean Gas was robbed. Here is what the neighbors know - on Friday, "around 3PM there was an armed robbery at the Kean gas station located on 111th and Talman. The offender is described as a black male in his 20s that possibly fled in a black mini-van."

Rahm is up for re-election.  Chuy Garcia has all of pension gobblers and Willie Wilson has $$$$$$$$$, Ald. Bob Fioretti has a mane of hair the hue of which resides outside of nature.  Chuy is all populist. Willie Wilson is all new.  Bob Fioretti is all about Bob.

Rahm is 'all about our suffering middle class,' . . . no really.

The skilled trades who howl at the sound of Bruce Rauner gave him the endoresement, the firemen gave him their nod, the business suits

There is no news about the robbery at Kean Gas in our neighborhood, because there must be another in the legion of embargos on news.  No one is talking, but the neighbors.

* You may remember Kean Gas as the staging area for the L'il JO-Jo mourners.

Skilled Trades Unions Give to Rahm: Folly

“folly…that is, the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved,” Barbara Tuchman from The March of Folly

Firefighters, union electricians, tradesmen...the very people Rahm has been campaigning against publicly for years. There's also a list of out-of-state financiers, bankers, and other big money types looking at RAhm's national ambitions - like maybe Kirk's Senate seat. Second City Cop

Just imagine if Rahm put this much effort into raising money for the pension balloon payment - we'd be sitting pretty.


Filtered through a dependable Media myna bird, Rahm Emanuel will announce more support for his mayoral re-set from Skilled Trades Unions:

• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (representing two locals)
• Laborers District Council (represents eight locals)
• International Union of Operating Engineers (represents two locals)
• Ironworkers District Council (representing three locals)
• Painters District Council 14 (representing 13 locals) 

Rahm is anathema to public sector unions, but he is no Scott Walker - he is a nastier Bruce Rauner, who is no stranger to nasty.


The public salaried 'unions' are backing Jesus 'Chuy' Garcia and they are remarkable because of the numbers.

Rahm has cur a deal with 'real labor' - trades that actually earn their salaries and benefits, through sweat equity, personal sacrifice and contract negotiation.

Public sector employees depend up later-day Trotskies and Jesse Sharkey, who writes the script for the Teachers Union and retired Weathermen like Mike Klonsky.  These Cadillac Commies share brie with the likes of Progressive Mandarins in Hyde Park and Evanston, like Dr. Quentin Young and Abner Mikva, followed by vigorous policy bullying of National Honor Society/Phi Beta Kappa Gold Key ink slingers and news readers of the Chicago media and then bulldoze legislation to give teachers, clerks and go-fers in government employ more money in salary, pension and medical bennies than Lotto player could ever dream of - and call it Labor.

The Skilled Trades are the middle class, because they built the middle class in America, when teachers, clerks and bureaucratic go-fers crossed theor picket lines from the 1920's through the 1960's. Add  globs of John Dewey mis-education for decades and pour on rhetorical bullshit seven days a week in the media and Chicago voters accept SEIU, CTU, AFSCME as children from Terrence Powderly and Sam Gompers. Voila!

I became aware that Rahm was gioing to play Middle Class Hold 'Em early this fall when a massive billboard went up on the Dan Ryan Expressway on the south east corner of 79th Street. I see it every morning as I drive a van load of Leo HS students to school - big as a The Big Lie.

N.B. Try and find an image of that sign on Google!

Anyway.  Rahm Emanuel, like every Progressive, hates the middle class down to the marrow. Rahm hates Catholic (private -non Chicago Lab) schools, parking spaces, streets without bike lanes, neighborhoods and the people who live in them.

Plumbers, pipe-fitters, pipe-coverers, electricians, laborers, carpenters, firemen, machinists and teamsters live in Gresham, Mount Greenwood, Portage Park, Garfield Ridge, Canaryville, Back of the Yards, Pilsen, and over by Midway.

I would never tell anyone for whom she/he should vote. Never have.  Me, I have made the mistake of voting for people like Dick Durbin, Pat Quinn and others who pretend to be my friend, but work to destroy the values and prosperity of my  middle class standard of living.  Rahm Emanuel makes Durbin and Quinn seem like nice, straight-forward gents.

I am just a school teacher and a pretty good one.  I know my trade, because I work at it - just like a pipefitter.

I read much and remember more.  Barbara Tuchman wrote a book on stupid decisions in history that were based upon foolish self-interest. I taught that book.  Tuchman details the lust for power that operates the motives of a Priam, a Pope Sixtus, A George III and a Rahm Emanuel, "Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.”  Power for the sake of agenda, usually Progressive these days, gives us Thug Comfort Zones, Massive Water Bills, Red Light Cameras, Lousy Schools in Perpetuity, Higher Property Taxes, Diminished Savings and less opportunity.

Tuchman elaborates, “A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?”


Finally she warns, like Cassandra herself, about our massive memory loss, “The attitude was a sense of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable. A feeling of this kind leads to ignorance of the world and of others because it suppresses curiosity.”
 

Old Coon Eyes is Back!

I have been a selfish man.

All of my thoughts, words and deeds for last several weeks have been about

• Raising more money for the guys attending Leo
• Getting the bus started
• Dealing with the huge horn grwoing out of the left side of my schnoze
• Praying for some really suffering people, kids with cancer and Chicago's Iron Man Great Shepherd -Francis Cardinal George
• Salting the walkways
• Finding a someone to cover my bus driving duties next week when I get my beak clipped
• Worrying about my motives in all things
• Worrying about my limitations
• Worrying that if I do go to see American Sniper, which I probably will not, because the my lady frined cringes about the violence on Dora the Explorer and shuddered like my hard wood floors when the CXO passes my house, all through UnBroke, will I be required to attend Tea Party rallies
• Worrying that, somehow, I have made Speaker John Boehner cry . . .

That is until, I unstuffed my mail box yesterday.

I had not gone to the mail box since last Thursday and Lowe and 35th St. there was a huge wad of Rahm Emanuel campaign flyers addressed to me, Patrick F..Hickey.

 

In all of my desultory worry and desperate acts of do-good rooted in my south side Catholic guilt-trippy being, I had totally forgotten our Random Mayor - Mayor Coon Eyes.

His adds reminded me of just what a warm, caring, 9.5 fingered neighborhood guy Rahm Emanuel happens to be. - I had forgotten all of that after I read my current bi-annual Water Bill that reads like a 2015 Lexus payment.  That made me forget that Rahn made bike lanes where people never cycle, gave Forrest Claypool another public teat - CTA,  voided more parking space, gelded the City Council like an Iowa hog farmer, made pot-holes last longer than an Alaska night and silenced more critics than Barbra Streisand during change of life.

The Campaign Flyers snapped out of it -my self-serving care for family, friends and freedom.

I'll remember, now. 

Hickey to Get a Modest Rhinoplasty

You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. They lose their noses. [flicks knife, cutting open Jake's nostril] Next time you lose the whole thing. Cut it off and feed it to my goldfish. Understand? Understand!?

All I asked was, "Where's you get the midget, Jesus."

Part of the perks of my White Privilege is having a 'see-through' Irish pelt.  For six decades and change, me and that lucky old sun have been at war with Hickey Lad taking the pasting to his pallor.

Days at Rainbow Beach from digging sand pits to flexing for the babes, waist deep in the mighty Kankakee on burning hot days casting the line of my Zebco, Fins McCool, to the mouths of Smallies, quaffing that superrogatory quart of ice cold Drewrys and having a nice lie down in open field for some day time Rapid Eye Movement deprived night-night, yelling encouragement from grandstands and sidelines sans UPF 50, or Quaker State, and just walking around under the blaze and bake of Old Sol have added a bumb to my porcine pug smeller.

I have what appears to be one big-ass Basal Cell Carcinoma occupying my schnozzola.

This will be addressed by a lovely Greek American plastic surgeon.

The alternative, would be searching out celebrated Pédophile et cinéaste, Roman Polanski, and piss him off  - Ainsi !



Change A Comin'!

An Obama Library Could Get Haunted by Old Studs Lonigan

Washington Park's Studs Lonigan didn't cotton to Coloreds in his neighborhood around 58th & Indiana

John Kass notes the possible site of an Obama Presidential Library near 58th & Indiana.  I believe our preening President is, was and has been finished with Chicago and will demand that his Presidential shelves filled with copies of his ghost written autobiographies will be located in Hawaii, where he choom-ganged his way through school.  That said, were our  Guest of the City President to acced to the wishes of University of Chicago swells and the real estate kings ( Judson Miner and Allison Davis) who bankrolled Obama's ghost-ride to Springfield and thence Washington D. C. such a spepulchre to self-worship might find a ghost wandering its halls - William "Studs" Lonigan, as fictional a character as the President, his own bad self.

Studs Lonigan is a character from the Trilogy bearing his name. A trilogy is a trio of books linked by similar plot, character development and theme, not unlike the duology Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. You have a novel, a duology, a triology, a tetraology, a pentaology, a hexology, and a heptology, an octology, a enneaeolgy and posiibly a decalogy.

James T. Farrell, was the Mount Carmel High School student athlete who went to University of Chicago and bought into all of John Dewey's crapola, and wrote about 'the old neighborhood.'  Farrell wrote about a guy died young, after a long career as a bust-out, bar bully who wasted his soul and health on our American Dream. The American Dream is the dope of the middle class, according to University Lab School trust fund babies and anyone who actually believes that John Dewey makes any sense.

Farrell's Studs Lonigan character is a sad, grunting bum who recoils from hard work, human feelings and doing for others.  The real person Farrell modeled Studs' character on is buried a couple of hundred yards from my modest, middle class front porch in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Buried with and near this sad guy are hundreds of wonderful south siders - priests, soldiers, poets, Fenians, bootleggers, teachers, cops, firemen, nurses, business moguls and writers.  The quiet souls rest in Christ's smile. Studs? Probably not so much.

The unquiet soul just might wander.  The real Studs Lonigan might take a ghoulish street car from Morgan Park and back to Washington Park. This racist, drunken lout must be sickened that a 'shine, a coon, a dinge' became President of the United States and want to haunt the guy's library.  Hold the phone!

The Washington Park neighborhood lies near the lake and the gray Gothic towers of the University of Chicago, but this is a working-class town. On hot summer nights you could smell the sweaty wind from the stockyards to the west, and the smoke from the steel mills all the way to East Chicago and Gary. Though these streets have fallen on hard times, the heavy masonry and brick give the churches, the two- and three-flat buildings, and large apartment houses a look of fortress-like solidity and permanence. They must have influenced Farrell’s prose. Not far from St. Anselm’s, at 58th and Indiana, a sign may soon be going up, renaming the block “James T. Farrell Way.” This was the heart of the old neighborhood: the Mom and Pop groceries, the drugstores where you had to exchange a nickel for a slug to make a phone call, the movies and the pool hall where the gang hung out. The corner. A corner of Chicago that belongs to Farrell, and to his most famous creation, Studs Lonigan. 

James T. Farrell was miserable guy.  He made himself miserable, because Studs Lonigan was all that people wanted.  He was bummed that Chicago never lionized him for his literary art.  Farrell visited Loyola, a year after I graduated, at the gracious invitation of Dr. Suzanne Gossett who taught the Chicago novel. Farrell was anything but gracious.  He died shortly in his self-imposed exile in New York.

President Barack Obama is very much like James T, Farrell in the way that he constantly blames others for his self-made miseries.  They are brothers of the Maroon, having both won glittering, but unearned prizes at University of Chicago and they are authors, as well.  Farrell hated his neighborhood. Obama hates anything resembling a neighborhood and the Babbitts who choose to remain in the them.

If Obama's Presidential ends up being the Chicago default choice, they had better budget big dollars for the poor slobs working the night shift.  Studs will be in the House!

Pray on Your Knees and Live on Your Feet

"Pray on your knees and live on your feet."  Patrick E. Hickey

Those are two hard imperatives from a hard guy, from hard school.

My Dad was not an exceptionally public pietist. He was not public anything.  He never joined anything but the Marines and the Union.  He was private, actually a Private First Class.  He had been kicked out of Catholic grammar school as an 'incorrigible' ( "I decked a nun") and managed to attend St. Rita High School only because of the diplomatic and saintly efforts of his mother - Nora: Grannie Hickey.

Dad was a three campaign ( Bougainville, Guam, & Iwo Jima) combat veteran.  The only WWII memorabilia that survived his seabag ( saved by his sister Marguerite) were his Identification cards, discharge papers, a compass, a letter opener that said GUAM, a carbine bayonet, a pair of canvas leggings and a couple pictures of Dad and Bob Guth. One other item, remained. It was a steel disc with a cross.  Dad gave it to one of my daughters, before he died.  My son has his I.D.'s and compass, The carbine bayonet remains in the sock drawer of his dresser at my Mom's house.  I have his seabag.

The rosary is memorable because of its size and simplicity - a seabag was all a guy had to carry everything he owned back then. He prayed alot, it may be deduced. Each of three campaigns contained enough horrors and challenges for twenty persons, let alone a teenager from Chicago.

When my wife's brain tumor was diagnosed as inoperable, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself - I ain't no tough guy.  My Dad took me out for a couple of beers and counselled, " That poor girl of yours is hit; leave her on the beach."

Talk about a WTF moment.

" All you can do is make her happy in her last few days ro minutes. You have alot to do, my boy. Get busy with it and you had better hit your knees every morning.  Pray on knees and you'll stand up alright."