A Banana Republic of America Is What Pope Francis Warns Against

Corporate statism or state corporatism is a political culture and a form of corporatism whose adherents hold that the corporate group which is the basis of society is the state.

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service." General Smedley Darlington Butler 1881-1940

All of the loudest critics of Pope Francis from the Right, Conservatives, GOP Tassled Loafer Go-Alongs, Bow-Tied TV Chirpers and Pot Smoking and Growing Libertarians have one thing in common - they are dead wrong.

Pope Francis is the native son of Argentina - A Banana Republic. Argnetina's last one hundred and fifty years has been an economic train wreck for most of its people.

The very few, oligarchs, do handsomely by staying close to surviving leaders of military coups, or corporation backed 'elected' officials.  A Banana Republic is corportion statism.

From 1899 through 1920's and 1930's, the United States Marine Corps sent officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted men to build security around the governments of Haiti, The Dominican Republic and Nicaragua with idea of protecting American Interests ( United Fruit, Sugar, Mining and Banking Corporations) from the people they were looting and exploiting.

One of the most salty and on-spot critics of Corporate Statism was the Marine tasked with doing the protection, General Smedley Butler.  Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935 and that book has in turn been exploited by the Leftists critics of America from Howard Zinn to Noam Chomsky. Ywo-time Medal of Honor recipient General Butler swrote, " Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Name a so-called, government sponsored war and you will see that it is a racket - War on Poverty. War on Drugs, War on Terror and our War on Women's Health ( it ain't. it means abortion is murder).

Pope Francis seems to  have used the word capitalism to decry the exploitation of the middle class and especially the masses of poor people to whom he devoted most of his life as priest.  Immediately, George Will got his panties in a twist and then Hannity and the Mike Gallagher and then the three guys at the end of the bar.

Coporate Statism makes astounding fortunes for a very few, the lucky few, the wired-in few, the few who immediately flocked to President Barcak Obama's George Soros sponsored White House in 2008 and to a Seattle Conference of Corporate Statists no sooner than Pope Francis went wheels-up  to New York City yesterday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed Silicon Valley’s titans, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and billionaire investor Warren Buffet, in a closed-door conference in Wednesday.
At the event with America and China’s top business leaders, Xi vowed to work to remove barriers to foreign investment and improve intellectual property protections in a bid to crack down on his country’s rip-offs of US products.
But among those missing from the event was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
In fact, representatives from the social media giant, Twitter and Google were all notably missing and it is telling that China currently blocks those companies’ websites.

That's Harsh, Mark!  Twitter the White House and get a solid!  Viola!

Well, President Banana Republic ( modelled on Chicago, Argentina and Haiti) invited Mark Zuckerberg to join the oligarchs with him greeting the Chinese Reds in split screen MSNBC Time!.

 

Mark Zuckerberg has a friend, not in Jesus, but in Barack.

Pope Francis challenged Congress to fight the very thing that is happening in the White House - coporate statism. He did not attack Free Enterprise. He attacked Coporate Statism.

How, do you think that Mussolini made trains run on time ?   How did an unemployable Austrian-born community activists in Bavaria manage to get IG Farben to build gas chambers for Six Million Jews and other undesirables?

Yep!  Ask Warren Buffet!

Don't ask General Smedley Butler, because he'll tell you, " I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Obama hates the military.

Obama is not too happy with Pope Francis either.

“I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened perhaps as never before, from within and without. . . .  Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.”

The Kennelly Family Lives the Gospels

I raise money for a Catholic High School. We have an Alumni and circle of massively hearted friends who pump dollars to fuel a Catholic education for young men in Chicago.  I am in awe of them

One of Leo High School's historical athletic and bragging rights rivals is Mount Carmel High School.  Their Alumni is awesome.

The families who send their sons to Mount Carmel make huge sacrifices - they, like every Catholic school family in Chicago, pay for Public Schools and huge tuition bills so their sons can grow in the Catholic Faith and learn 2,000 plus years of shared truth.

I am awed.

Yesterday, a family in my neighborhood, having gone the path of so many Chicago families of having to say goodbye to a son and brother, performed an act of love, so out of place in our age of Kardasian and Pat Hickey self pity and direction, that I am stunned in awe.

The family of a Chicago teenager who was killed by a "sucker punch" during an alcohol-fueled beach brawl in Northwest Indiana in 2011 has agreed to a settlement of $1 million in a civil suit against the man charged with delivering the fatal punch.
Jean and Kevin Kennelly, the parents of the victim Kevin Kennelly, said the lawsuit "was never about the money." On Wednesday, they announced they will donate the entire $1 million settlement to Mt. Carmel High School in their son's name.

I learned of this from a neighbor and later listened to a news report as I drove to Chicago's Riverwalk to catch the Skinny & Houli Show at Lizzie McNeill's. I was meeting a local Chicago jazz diva and we planned to enjoy a nice supper and watch Jim Sheahan and Mike Houlihan grill Irish American News Publisher Cliff Carlson.

I sat near the recording booth after being patted down for contraband beverages by Special Olympics Tough Guy William Tang, who acts as Jim Sheahan's muscle and makes popcorn runs for Mike Houlihan. William allowed me near the radio set-up, but told me to 'park it' behind the speakers at table further removed from the Stars of Saturday's Airwaves from 3-4PM on AM 1450.

Park it, I did.

I rubber necked the flow of the Chicago Riverwalkway and saw the exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan making her way my way from McClurg Court.  When I brought Terry to the table, I noticed that seated next to me were Kevin and Jean Kennelly.

I was so moved by the act generous and loving goodness this most Catholic of couples performed that day at Mount Carmel that I nearly bawled like the whiner I am.

I explained to my dinner guest the five years of suffering and anguish Jean and Kevin had endured and the act that these true Apostles had done for young men at Mount Carmel High School.

The Kennelly's donated every nickel of a 'settlement' - the 2016 word for a money miracle that too often is wasted on things, travel  and entertainment- to help young men, like their beloved Kevin, wear the Carmelites Cream and Brown and learn to live Christ's message of forgiveness, giving and nurturing.

From the NBC report - "No amount of money could replace the life of our son, who was a billion dollars, not a million," Kevin Kennelly Sr." This is our intent, is to have something big out of Kevin's time on this earth and do some of the things that Kevin would have done. He was a very good man who would have done great things with his life."

Christ and Young Kevin Approve!

Christ be good to Kevin and Jean Kennelly


 

Obama's Handler Pooh Poohs Papal Party Punking

No one is more powerful in this nation than Valerie Jarrett - no one.  Why?  No one with the job of asking questions and getting answers has ever asked - you know, journalists.

Why?  Because, she's Valerie Jarrett. But, Why so much power and influence.

Because, as Chicago's only real journalist still on the job with a newspaper in this Rube Burg, John Kass explained to three score Chicago business and charity leaders last Friday, every editor and every columnist but Kass at the Chicago Tribune wet their britches over the very thought of Barack Hussein Obama.

It is very much the same at Chicago Sun Times, which should be able to boast the most talented crew of investigative reporters in this town.  Instead, the media micturating minions give Obama and every person who ever made a buck from his careerist activism get a pass.

So, the Pope will need to just take it and like, while he is treated like Ted Nugent at P.E.T.A. brunch.

President Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett says that negative publicity surrounding the Vatican’s unease with some of the guests expected at a White House welcoming ceremony has not soured the excitement of Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States.
“Oh my goodness, no,” Jarrett told ABC News . . .

The Vatican last week expressed discomfort over some of the guests who are expected in attendance -- reportedly concerned by the optics that could be created if the pope is photographed with transgender activists, the first openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop or a nun who will be on the South Lawn for the ceremony on Wednesday morning.

In the somewhat dated vernacular, The Pope was punk'd and Valerie Jarrett, I believe ordered the guest list.

Valerie Jarrett allowed herself a victim for the wheels of any theoretical bus.

 Jarrett admits that the administration has “a lot going on” but says “everybody’s working cooperatively together” – especially the president’s fourth social secretary in six and a half years, Deesha Dyer.
“She's a rock star! Let me tell you she's been planning all of these events for a very long time, both the Pope visit, the state visit with China, as well as the UN -- all of those fall under her portfolio,” Jarrett said. “She probably has not slept in weeks. She'll probably be spending the night here tonight and she's just been performing terrifically."

The fawning boot-lickers of the American news media do as their told and so, sadly, will the gentle, gracious and good-hearted Pope.

Pope Francis Comes to America

Pope Francis will land in the United States, . . .well, Washington D. C. anyway . .. at about 4PM today.

Pope Francis will 'explained' to the American people by such intellectual giants as Chris Matthews and Nancy Pelosi.

Pope Francis will be excoriated by likes of Pat Buchanan and George Will.

Here is exactly who is coming to America after leaving Castro's Cuba. The guy who said this - “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

That settles it for me.   All the rest is the verbal flatlence of the likes of Dick Durbin and John Boehner.

John Kass on Virtue

Unlike his conservative predecessor, the late Cardinal Francis George, the new leader of the Chicago Archdiocese has taken a decidedly progressive stance on union rights. ABC 7

 I never thought of "the late Cardinal Francis George" as a conservative.  Rather, I  knew and experienced Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. as a priest and a man of rock solid virtue.  I know another such man - John Kass of the Chicago Tribune.

John Kass and I have disagreed even to the point of a good old south side, " Well, @#$% You!" exchange of words.  Friends can do that and I consider John Kass a friend.  A friend is someone who will tell you in thunder and you have abandoned virtue, for convenience.

I was honored to attend a Breakfast Talk sponsored by Midtown Education Foundation at the Gleacher Center center yesterday. The featured speaker was John Kass​.

My take-away from John's thoughtful and heartfelt assessment of our times was the diminished study of Virtue at all levels.

Virtue is learned; you are not born with it.  To be brave you must do brave deeds.  To be kind and thoughtful, you  must act accordingly.  You see, virtues are what used to be called shared truths.

John Dewey strangled Virtue when he put 'shared truth' into the intellectual shredder and our public scholars, schools of Education and public schools have been spreading Dewey's Gospel like Miracle Grow on Hinsdale lawns.

John Kass​ lectured a few score of Chicago's big-hearted business leaders on Virtue and what it means to our liberty.  People who are called businessmen and business women (bankers, investors, traders & etc.) very often are the most vital resources to charity and the group assembled to hear John Kass are just such persons.   I am an old Catholic high school teacher and Catholic and private schools depend upon the kindnesses of these strangers.  I am also very much like these charitable folks.  We are all 'Chumbolones' - self-interested civic idiots who elect and return the absolute worst people among us to public office.

Chumbalones is a plural noun meaning 'idiot' in street Italian and re coined by John Kass.

An executive attending Thursday's breakfast asked John to explain the term, which sprang to his sense while covering a Chicago mob trial.  I will not even attempt to retrace the etymology of Chumbalone here, but offer the following. Chumablones want to appear hip, hep, plugged into the skinny and with it in regards to civics and voting and therefore will go along with the group think.: Obama is great. Jan Schakowsky is great. Dick Durbin in never a fatuous ninny who will go along with prevailing winds blown from Media Matters. Chumbalones will vote in and retain room temperature IQs,  snouts in the public trough and social engineers who could not craft a paper airplane.

We do this, not because we are intrinsically bad persons, but because " We know a guy, or girl   who needs an Obama, a Durbin, a Quigley, a Claypool, a Rahm Emanuel to think well of him, or her and might, just might, do them, and by extension all of us,  "a real genuine solid."

That has been my public sin of commission in the polling booth.

I have voted for public asses (repeatedly in too many cases) knowing full well that they had no business in public life, because a relative, a friend, a neighbor, an acquaintance, or even a precinct captain ( ubi sunt, hodie?) asked me to "Do them a solid."

I knew better and know better than this and I, like all of my fellow Americans, Chicagoans, Cook County taxpayers and citizens of this Land of Lincoln, have reaped the complete and thorough shafting of our democracy and liberty.

Mea Maxima Culpa.

Good God, last night I watched the news and even the Archbishop of Chicago is doing a solid for politics with his most public local labor statement aimed at the mess in Springfield.

I want to thank John Kass for calling me out and challenging me to embrace Virtue and skip doing someone a solid.

How Should I Respond to the Portmanteau Exclamation of Millennials " Perfect" ?

 

" Get off the Bench, Gramps"  Old man moves -" Perfect!"

mil·len·nial
miˈlenēəl/Submit
noun
plural noun: millennials; plural noun: Millennials
a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000; a Generation Yer.
"the industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick"

Per Fect - per- ‘through, completely’ + facere ‘do; rhymes with #$%^ You.


I spent a very busy day doing parking lot duties for the Stanley Cup visit to Leo High School on September 15, 2015.

The Champion Blackhawks organization and Star Defenseman Brent Seabrook were coming to our inner-city (Gresham) Catholic high school for young men and the school invited 300 or more guests.

Our parking lots fill up quickly and we had planned to place students and faculty in the tighter quarters, because our guests would be leaving before  the actual school community.  There is nothing so frustrating as attending a special event and being blocked in by persons who believe that they come first in all things.

I kept one lot locked ( supposedly until a 10 AM opening bell) and directed neighbors, faculty, staff, school vehicles and students to the tightest of squeezable spaces.

Want to hear God laugh?  Tell Him your plans.

I am a man of limited talents, capabilities and sense of humor; until an event like this takes place and soon., because of my ancient work ethic and Catholic sense of guilt, become THE INDESPENSABLE MAN.

" Mr. Hickey, where is the camera Tripod?"

The Tripod is with camera (attached at 7:45 AM) and placed exactly where you and I set it up in the Auditorium

"Mr. Hickey, have you seen Mr. _____?

Many times.

"Tell him, Bill Gates is not coming."

"Mr. Hickey, where are the traffic cones?"

" Mr. Hickey, call Six (CPD Gresham) and ask them for traffic cones"

" Mr. Hickey, find the six boys who are supposed help make signs for Mr. ________"

Lah Dee Dah to the second power.  That is what a job is all about and only suckers beef.  Just sayin' as the young folks are wont to say.

Now, each question or command required that I trot my husky 64 year old frame from one side of 79th Street to the other, as persons tend to shout inquiries from great distances and avoid a physical strain like walking up to another person, prior to inquiry.


My humor was tested early when a crew of very talented young people ( MillennialsAll) appeared on scene three hours prior to their expected arrival ( 10AM) and offered -" I'm with THE AGENCY why is the gate locked?"

The gate is locked for the convenience of THE AGENCY so as no one would take up the spaces provided ( four in total).

" Dude, I have a lot of stuff here; do me a solid."

Immediately!

" Perfect!"

Perfect is the subject of this somewhat rambling narrative.

By the time of the planned 10AM gate opening for the controlled West Lot I had crossed 79th Street no less than ten times and opened and relocked said Gate for the eight vehicles driven by the very talented young men and women of THE AGENCY.  Four spaces and eight vehicles, perfect!

More so, I had been told PERFECT by each and every member of THE AGENCY no less than twenty times.

 Perfect is nice but ever so rarely achieved and did not strike me as a fitting response to my nodding approval to do exactly what a Millennial asked of me, despite the protocol, or planned outcome.

I sensed that PERFECT actually meant " #$%^ You, Gramps, I got mine!"

I wonder.

Random, I guess.

The Holocaust and History Trivialized by Another' Public Scholar'

I was returning my tuxedo rental on Tuesday and caught more Howard Zinn inspired American History from a Yale University academic on National Public Radio.  The self-absorbed dimwit ROBERT Seigel for NPR allowed an obviously inflated resume to get away with a a very loopy consideration of The Holocaust ( 1939-1945), not only unchallenged, but candied with typical NPR lick-spittle.

Robert Siegel interviewed the author of  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

The basic theme of the tome is that Hitler the total Statist Monster was anti-Government, like some Tea Partier and destroyed States ( government protects Jews as well as Julias!)  that he did not take a shine to, like George W. Bush, and was not so much an human malevolence, as he was addicted to tales of the American West. Al Hitler allowed States like France, Holland and Norway to continue and Jews were just ducky!

Now, for the real villains -USA!

Doic Snyder says that the 7th Cavalry inspired the Einsatzgruppen to play Garryowen when knocking off Yiddish Commie Comanches.

It is not enough to study history, writes about history, or contribute to a 'the conversation, ' American academics must be recognized as 'public scholars.'  Here is one.

Profesor Tim Snyder of Yale.

 Hitler and men and women of his generation grew up in the late 19th century aware of what was happening in the United States, understanding it as an example of a successful land colonization, as a successful example of wiping out native peoples and transforming a whole region. So he saw the Americans as an inspiring example of what could be done.. . . One of the lessons of the Holocaust is that when you face choices between ideology and science, you should first see if science offers you solutions, and I mean this particularly in a time of climate change in which real shortages of food and real shortages of water are just around the corner.

Remember the Holocaust?  The one that took place between seventy and seventy-five years ago?  Well, forget it.  Ignore Elie Weisel.  Ignore Buchenwald.  That stuff was just the reification of Hitler's watching too many American Westerns.

Yep.  The Old Paper Hanger got hankerin' to do to Communists . . .You Know Jews?   . . .what Old Cump Sherman and Phil Sheridan did to indigenous peoples in North America.

Damn them Washington Redskins!

Deny evil. Deny the  two decades of lebensraum memes from Old Al and deny Mein Kampf and accept aDoc Snyder's hot new way to dismiss the murder of 6 millions Jews and remember that Hitler was pretty damn nice to French, Dutch and German Jews.

America inspired (1939) and inspires ( all current) genocide, says Professor Tim Snyder.

This horseshit is was passes for public scholarship.

The Settled Science of Silliness 2008 to Present (ex libris Hickey)

Minds are settled.

The New York Times ran a TV commercial  a few years ago in an attempt to capture more subscribers by way of touting the Weekender. The people in the ad are universally obnoxious, prissy, snotty and self-absorbed. To me and nearly every person I come into contact with every day, real people cops, foremen,teachers, City workers and the odd billionaire, all of the actors playing real New York Times readers seem like they were hand-picked by the DNC. One of the 'real readers' is an faux bald obnoxious goof in a turtleneck glasses sweater and horn rimmed who hisses 'It's in the Times and that settles it.'

That settles it. Think no more, search no more, accept a prissy meme and be happy.  All is well.

The problem is . . .there are more settled minds in America than is healthy.

Political discourse was fun at one time.  Since Obama took the White House and even a little before, chats about culture, religion, science and public policy artists at the City, County, State, National and International levels devolved into this dialog I had with an old friend in July 2008 at a fund raiser for a sick child at 115 Bourbon Street.

" Hey, Hickey! How's your McCain work going?"

I'm not working on McCain's campaign.  I plan to vote for him, if he gets the nomination.

" He's nuts!   You met Obama; how could you not be for him?  You've been a Democrat all your life."

I still am a registered Democrat.  Yes, I have met Obama, as head of the Woods Fund, at the Snow Flake Ball before Bobby Rush handed him his ass, at several family parties  and when he asked me how the hell I expected him to get into a boxing ring, when there is "No Gate!"  Obama is a very dumb guy, but looks like he could open a box of Wheaties without a tutorial and I can not stand the people behind him.

" Oh, like me?"

No. Like Abner Mikva and all of Hyde Park creeps running Richie Daley. Look he is run by Valerie Jarrett who is one of the nastiest vipers on the edge of the public trough.Only today, the Sun Times had the story of Obama's $1.1 million dollar gazebo giveaway to a connected pal in Englewood and we could not get the goof to endorse a grant for us at Leo, the entire time he was in the State Senate.  He tossed $100,000 to a campaign worker for a gazebo that doesn't exist.    It is in the Sun Times today.

" Awhh, @#$% You and all your right-wing pals!'

My right wing pals?  I don't ever drink tea.

That settled any future exchanges unrelated to weather and the robust state of my physical health.

Settled.  People who ask you what you think are not even remotely interested in your thoughts - You know the reified things that used to bus us to the conclusive idea, or opinion we hold at moment.

"How do you like my Onion and Garlic Cake with Maple Syrup?"

( generous exploratory mouthful and swallow) Gee, I think I am about to vomit.

" Awhh, @#$% you and your Food Channel pals!"

We are settled.  Settled things that require absolutely nothing more than a conclusion.

• Climate Change?  Settled  
• Science? Settled.  
• Donald Trump?  He's Really, really, really honest and thoughtful!  
• Mayor Rahm Emanuel? Fiscal Sophistication and Great for Organized Labor! 
• Abortion Videos ?  Please. 
• Pension Problems?  Politicians are Crooks and Not Our Fault, Because We Only Voted for Them!  
• Blackhawks' Patrick Kane?  Guilty!  
• 9/11?  Bush Killed Millions More - Noam Chomsly said So! 
•  Patriots' Deflatgator Tom Brady? Guilty?  
• Black Lives Matter? Shut the@#$% Up, Racists!  
• Cops? As if! Haven't You Been Watching CNN/MSNBC?
• Obama's Iran Deal?  No Wars Ever!

Facts and shared truths?  See Talking Points Memo, or Rush Limbaugh

I am unsettled.  Ask me.

Parodies Lost, or Milton in Monee

Outside of Crete- Monee, Illinois is a massive trucker stop and in it long-distance knights of the road can get a shower and meal. A question was posed to the hard-biten by life, 'I have-witnessed it all and change' fry cook and proprietor, Billy Foy.

One Ace of the Highways dropped in and posed playful questions of the onion and spuds chopping master of the house, launched his lanky as he launched his haunches onto to the rotating stool and asked, "Hey! How have you been, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Hey, How have you been, Smelly Billy?"

Without looking up from his labors, the truck-stop Rick Bayless snorted, " I have been sleeping with your wife, she fills a hole my life, But she's a dumb thing and doesn't  seem to bother."

Unfazed the jimmy engine-braker continued, " Did let she you in house, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Did she let you in our house, Fetid Billy?"

Flipping the diced Vidalias and Yukons, the Monee mess masher handed back, " She opened her garage, where was parked your vintage Dodge, and we nailed things right on your back-up starter."

The lanky road warrior was abashed, " I'll have the spinach - pie, Billy Foy, Billy boy. I'll have the spinach pie, Mephitic Billy."

With the contempt of Agamemnon for Menelaus, the Cretan cuisinier turned and said, " You'll get better than your wife, there's the door, I gotta knife ( snort) How about Chun King, or the #$%^ing salmon platter."


If this reminds you of anything, it really shouldn't.

We are Officially Returning McKinley Park to It's Native Name and Owners! Mopes

Mopetown* was an old Chicago neighborhood wedged between Bridgeport and McKinley Park - north of Archer and caressing Ashland Avenue.  There was great old saloon that gave me shelter from Chicago weather, when rode the bus to work, or from Loyola back in the late 1960's and early '70's.  The saloon was called McGloins, and now it is the Archer Foot Care: Total Foot and Fungus Treatment Center.

I read where President Obama renamed Mount McKinley.  "Today we’re returning Mount McKinley to its native name - Denali, a step to reflect the heritage of Alaska Natives." He is a Mope!

We?  He's Alexander Sixtus Borgia Hawaiian!

Our preening Progressive Pope will do anything to piss off a large number of people and get away with it for no other reason than . . .  well, he can. I'm surprised he didn't give the whole dman Sarah Palin State back to the Russians, after all they had the initial naming rights to Mount McKinley when Seward cheated the Tzar out of one sweet land scam and he gives Putin anything. The Russkies called Mount McKinley Bolshaya Gora , which translates to Climate Change Big Lie. Now it is the biggest mountain in America is called Denali in Eskimo and translates to Man it's Cold Up Here!!!!!!!!!

In the spirit of America's worst President next to old Gay As Christmas Buck Buchanan, I , meaning we, give McKinley Park back to the The Scolios, the Forrers, the Walshes, the Verdons The Gerrings, the Atkinses, the Starrs and the Polyaks  - the indigenous people who were forced to leave their homes by the State of Illinois, Cook County and City of Chicago so the slowest Expressway in North America could be built and screw up traffic three times a day. 

*The great Anne Keegan wrote about vanishing Mopetown in 1987 and the last house in Mopetown in 1990.

"Hey, Have You Heard About The Pallium?" Who has not?

That's the pallium! The white thing with crosses around the neck and over the shoulders of Archbishop Blase Cupich, when the pallium was invested recently, after much media attention and breathless anticipation.

Archbishop Blase Cupich has the Pallium. NBC, ABC, WGN and every newspaper (including a very special edition of the Catholic New World ) in Chicago has talked about the pallium conferred upon Chicago's Archbishop by Pope Francis and sent through the Papal Nuncio to Archbishop Blase Cupich.

The Catholic pallium is, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, ". . .  is a circular band about two inches wide, worn about the neck, breast, and shoulders, and having two pendants, one hanging down in front and one behind. The pendants are about two inches wide and twelve inches long, and are weighted with small pieces of lead covered with black silk. The remainder of the pallium is made of white wool, part of which is supplied by two lambs presented annually as a tax by the Lateran Canons Regular to the Chapter of St. John on the feast of St. Agnes, solemnly blessed on the high altar of that church after the pontifical Mass, and then offered to the pope. The ornamentation of the pallium consists of six small black crosses — one each on the breast and back, one on each shoulder, and one on each pendant. The crosses on the breast, back, and left shoulder are provided with a loop for the reception of a gold pin set with a precious stone. The pallium is worn over the chasuble."

Got that?  It is piece of garment; it is a symbol of a shepherd being a shepherd.

I have been kind of amazed by the news coverage this summer about the pallium. Does an Irish American family in St. Barnabas Parish call the Beverly Review and Can-TV the first time young Eamon, or Mickey dons his first South Side Irish shirt , green Sox Side Irish hat and over-sized  khaki cargo shorts?  Does a De LaSalle Institute lad with bloodlines linking 24th & Oakley to Lucca in Old Tuscany get his folks to rent out Ignotz for a feast and shout to all and sundry that his Pop bought him his first Three-pack of Haines 'Wife Beaters' for summer street wear?  I just don't know.

I have been a Catholic for three score and almost four years and have yet to see the level of news worthy importance placed upon an article of ecclesiastical clothing placed upon the shoulders of an ecclesiastic.



In fact, I do not remember The Eighth Ordianry of Chicago, nor his attendants making much of an issue about the pallium.  Maybe , they did.  Any way the pallium is on the shoulders of Ninth Ordinary and any and all news tangent to being Catholic in Chicago is pallium centered.  Now, even ABC 7's I Team Honcho Chuck Goudie, probably knows what a pallium is all about. By the way, the late Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. had a pallium and a Red Hat . . .several red hats, but he only seemed to be impressed by the collar he always wore with his black clerical shirt and coat.

I don't know.  I think there might be some things, you know, like all of the things that Francis Cardinal George thought was important, might be newsworthy.  What do I know?

Perhaps, this is signal by the media that there is new age of really good feeling for Catholics, so long as matters of Faith get tucked away. Perhaps.

I know that Archbishop Blase Cupich is wearing the pallium. Cool.

Chicago's Club of the UnClubbable

  

Above - Mycroft Holmes - Below Mike Houlihan in manly Pre-Labor Day Panama tan suit gives a stern temperance lecture to an obviously clubbable and reed thin chap at a charitable event. Absent from this charitable event were members of Chicago's Union League Club.


Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, the talented and cerebral sons of Bob and Tess Holmes, coal carters from Yorkshire, remind me of Mike Houlihan: Like Mycroft, Mike Houlihan is cerebral, philosophical and poetic:Mike Houlihan - Author, Actor, Playwright, Film Director, Columnist, Patriot, Wit, Gadabout, Free-Spender, Arch-Goodguy, Pugilist, Censor.

Like Mycroft given to deep thought to the point of ennui:

...he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points...

– Sherlock Holmes, speaking of his brother in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

From our friends at Wikpedia

And yet like Sherlock (- Ratiocinator extraordinaire, dope fiend, tobacconist, actor par excellence, musician, grifter, and wower of hot chicks) a man of the world, .

Houli is a complex man of universal tastes and inclinations - at once private and thoughtful and concurrently a Rabelaisian Rounder of the First Order.

Mike Houlihan,an 18th Century man of Johnsonian ( Samuel Johnson ) exertions and talents trapped in a faux-Edwardian world of stuffed shirts and phonies.

Houli got clubbed by the membership committee of the Union League Club - a dusty and pretentious convention center for low-brows with American Express Gold Cards. He was deemed 'unclubbale' - to use Dr. Johnson's 18th Century coinage. His heartache cried up to dry our eyes from the pulpy pages of Cliff Carlson's Irish American Magazine and made them moist with brotherly understanding - Page 28 - click my post title for the link:

Here is a poignant passage:

Of course I’m happy now that I
couldn’t join their club. Who wants
to go where they’re not wanted? But
these schmucks wouldn’t even put it in
writing, no letter, just the word passed
on to me, “Sorry you’re not our kind
darling.”
It’s all for the best. I couldn’t afford
it now anyway. However I would suggest
they remove the word “Chicago”
from their moniker at the Union League
Club. As Eddie Vrdolyak once said, “In
Chicago, we don’t stab you in the back,
we stab you in the front!” Well not
these guys.
So I will take pride in their snub and
remember my mother’s words “the bitter
lesson is best taught”. It’s what I got for
sticking my nose into a wasps nest.
Of course I forgive them and even
though I may announce to the world that
the Union League Club can kiss my fat
Irish ass, I’m actually, in my own way,
just turning the other cheek

Christian Gentleman to the backbone!

Houli, My Dear Fellow, a man of your expanded worth should not be confined, much less defined by a membership. You do more in a day than most of the Union League Club's overpaid ambulance chasers in two-tone broadcloth $400 shirts do a lifetime.

Who was it that said 'Study everything; join nothing?'

Mike Houlihan's Giant's eyes take in the cant and hypocrisy of our world right here in Chicago. This man is not Clubbable? Pish Posh!

Houli, enact a Club without Walls; found an Association without a Membership Committee. Make it an open membership to whomever you have the grace with whom you deign to congress.

To the phonies, snobs, louts, boors, tightwads - you might be unclubbable.

The Chicago Tribune's Complete Blackout of Aurora Planned Parenthood Protest is Another Disgrace by Print News

Last Saturday, August 22, 2015, while I was enjoying myself at the Leo High School Black and Orange Football Kickoff, thousands ( yes, that is correct) thousands of good people protested the massive, fortress -like Planned Parenthood facility in Aurora, Illinois.

This Planned Parenthood abortion mill looks like a blockhouse protected by God's seedlings - trees ironically called the 'tree of life' in its Latin cognomen. Now, these are tall poplar type trees.  Ask a Tribune investigative reporter what the actual name of the tree happens to be.  I know, but I'd rather you ask a Tribune story hound.  Warts will vanish quicker than you will get a response.

You, see is a huge story here and the Chicago Tribune editorial board is run by Bruce Dold and Bruce Dold likes to have mealy mouthed politicians think well of him,  Tribune reader be damned.  This story has roots and limbs and all sorts of living and breathing components, just like the human beings that Planned Parenthood slaughters daily,  Bruce Dold wants this story hidden in the Tribune's 'News Womb"' with the factual umbilical snug around the neck.

This protest is linked to the national outrage over the release of the Planned Parenthood videos, but there is so much more going on in Aurora, Illinois local government and its role in doing the bidding of Planned Parenthood.

The Chicago Tribune ignores a hot story about the dicey manner in which Aurora government officials grease the way for this Planned Parenthood Abortion Mill's development an construction.

This Abortion Mill in Aurora is on thin legal ice.

No Tribune ink-slinger will tell you why, because no Tribune ink-slinger will get the task of asking any questions.

I read John Kass on-line and with Face Book.  John Kass is a heroic enemy of the American Holocaust. There are other great sources of accurate information on this national disgrace smeared with political grease paint, just like Ms. Richards and other Prada drapped dowagers of death.

A nurse from Oak Lawn who has had a Terry Cosgrove, Illinois Personal PAC, Dick Durbin and Eric Zorn pinned to her back for decades tells the accurate story. Read Jill Stanek.and turn to the sports coverage in the two rags that pass for Chicago news daily papers.

As to the Sun Times, I read only articles by Dan Mihalopoulos, Tim Novak and the estimable Natasha Korecki and the sports pages.  They stopped being anything other than Cook County PR sheet years ago.

There is a TOTAL news black out of Saturday's Planned Parenthood protest in Aurora. The Chicago Tribune editorial board is so completely wired into the murderous dowagers who support Planned Parenthood ( Personal PAC Illinois) that there is ZERO mention of this protest in Chicago Tribune on line's front page. The myth that the print media is the only 'real news' and that anywhere else one only obtains dubious reports is no longer' a dog that won't hunt' but dog of an idea that is deader than innocents slaughtered by Cecile Richards, Barack Obama, Dick Durbin and the mealy mouthed Tribune's Bruce Dold. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Bruce Dold - at least admit you will never take up the cause of the innocents.

Hackers Reveal Hickey as a Madison Client

 Computer hackers gained access to the entire database of Ashley Madison, a dating website for people who want to have affairs, and posted the names of all 37 million users on the internet. Around 115,000 are reported to be Irish. Irish Examiner

Yes, I have cheated, treated myself in the doing with fine Dolly Madison Products.!  Here's my Peeps!

Check, Please ? I Think Not. The Epic Crime of Dine and Dash Should be on Public Television

We are soooo not paying!

Instead of self-absorbed, affluent and very transient Urban Foodies( Like these mimosa sucking cretins below) and scions of old Kenya who sleep in the White House, Chicago's own public television should produce a show with real bust-outs, louts, rum-pots and deadbeats from the Rainbow of Gender who beat the check. 

I have watched Check, Please on PBS ( WTTW - Wilmette Talking to Winnetka) whenever the paint had dried, or the grass had yet to rise above my thick and manly calf and been thoroughly repulsed by smarmy, self-important, thumb-dummy handlers of I-phones who send back orders and sniff Mogan David and Chateauneuf du Pape with matching contempt and yet complain that " This beer is nowhere near Hoppy Enough!"  Every time I watch PBS programming I get that old feeling. That now is the time for the all-too-human rubber band that holds our sanity together to go boink and then grab the Bowie knife, my sling shot and burlap bag full of ball bearings( I hate guns) and go hunting for Urban Adventurers in Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square and only a small sections of Logan Square and  Hyde Park as well as portions my own neighboring Beverly.  Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village are populated by young, hip and generally cynical young 'uns who can't stand PBS/WTTW either. Closer to home folks in Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood and all of Black Chicago seem populated with patriots and people of prayerful good sense.

I would love to see Dine and Dash Chicago.  Just recently the Northwest Indiana Times reported on a Chicago Cub Jersey festooned . . .(what's the word I am looking for . . .wait, wait; don't tell me) . . .lummox who beat Buffalo Wild Wings of Porter out of a ound personal gorging  and guzzling that totaled a little more than Half a Yard.

PORTAGE | Police are seeking the public's help identifying a suspect in multiple dine-and-dash incidents.
Police on Thursday released a photo of a man they said failed to pay his bill Aug. 13 at Buffalo Wild Wings, 6530 U.S. 6.
Police said he failed to pay for $51.67 worth of food and drinks.
Police said the man in the photo wearing a Cubs jersey has used the name Terry at the restaurant.Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Cpl. Ted Uzelac at (219) 764-5707.

Imagine, a thirty minutes long weekly docu-drama with real people empaneled to present and discus their experiences of cheating bartenders, waiters, waitresses and restaurant owners out of tips and purchases!

Our host could be a toothsome young gusher from Lincoln Park who would chirp. 'Tonight,  we, . . . Ah,. . . some random, Ah, . . . You now Okay dashers.  Tim originally from MacMansionland Naperville and now stays in McKinley Park will tell us about beating the check at Tufano's Vernon Park Tap.  Tim, you, ah, just got of Ok, . . .Illinois Rehab . . .but had a Um great meal?  Right? "

Tim,  a soul patched and tattooed Occupy Chicago veteran and  hipster living in McKinley Park, because Bridgeport is so 2010, is wearing a colorful and thick Heavy wool Toque and 'I Love Spam' t-shirt under and open flannel ginoormous-checked shirt, replies" It was, So kind.  I started with eight Blue Moons at the bar, 'cuz they make you wait, and I told this old lady that I had stuff to do later and she was all like 'Sinatra waits; you wait.' whatever and this random guy like a cop says to mind my manners or he'll give a slap and I'm like 'that's harsh!' So, then the old lady says, I can sit done, but I've had seven Blue Moons and I said - "Hey I'm enjoying my cocktails." The cop-like guy, probably from Homan Square and up for going all Burge and Gitmo on me gets up and I'm like 'Okay!'  So, I get a table near these breeders and their kids which is cool, because it's always better to have a crowded place to beat the check and I get another old lady who says 'What can I get you?' and I'm like '2016 Pitchfork Passes, Granma!'  Not cool I guess but I order a bottle of Layer Cake Primitevo and the fried calamari, two orders of pizza bread and salad. Then I got the Tufano's Lemon Chicken and potatoes. Now, I'm stuffed and buzzed.  I got cannoli to go. Now, this is sweet.  I get up and pretend to go to the toilet and stand there like some old dude is like still in there and so I go stand next to cop guy at the bar, like I'm interested in the sports game hockey, or something and wave to an imaginary guy I know near the door and shout, " Dude! This place is Sweet!' and act like I'm going to shake his hand and then out the door.

Chirpy, the half-wit daughter of an Obama bundler from Evanston, squeals, " Sweet! What a total scam.  But tell us what followed."

Tim, feigns bashful, " This  huge dude parking cars grabs me and tosses me in the street and shouts that I'm like lucky this neighborhood gentrified, cuz if it had been twenty years ago at The Sisters, or the Nut House I 'd be in a sewer in pieces and then he gets all harsh-up on me and then I'm like in Illinois Rehab and a dude from Peoples Law Office files a wrongful beat-down suit against them and tells me I should score big when they get the right judge. Whatever."

Yep, that would be sweet and so 2015 Chicago.

The next guests - Alderman Proco Joe Moreno and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.

Leo High School Plans Television Production Studio ( WCHI NEWS)

Leo High School begins its 90th year of serving Chicago with a new opportunity - a television production studio.

A donor has provided a studio ( WCHI NEWS) and all of the equipment to begin giving Leo students the chance to learn television production skills in front of and behind the cameras.

This digital television production studio will eventually be directed and operated by Leo students and advisors from the school and colleges like Columbia College, as well as media professionals from Chicago.

President Dan McGrath and the donor conducted a series of meetings this summer to discuss feasibilty and implementaion of the gift.

 Chicago Actress Kara Zediker with Bill Figel (Leo '73 and President Dan McGrath ( Leo '68)

On August 18th McGrath's Committee met in the Leo Board to set immediate goals. Leo Alumnus, retired Sun Times Sports writer and PR executive William Figel*, Chicago based actress and Columbia College Alumna Kara Zediker **and Editor John Weeks of WCHI News offered counsel.  This committee agreed after two hours that the month of September provided our students with three big school events for student reports.

It was determined to immediately get equipment into the hands of the students and begin shooting footage with the goal of having enough skills to cover three events in September

• Chicago Sports Team visit ( as yet must be kept secret)  at Leo September 15th
• Entrepreneur and scion of the Jackie Robinson legacy, David Robinson’s Visit September 16th
• West Point Cadet and Leo Boxing Event September 19th

Students will begin shadowing WCHI's John Weeks and other tech savvy pros in the editing. sound mixing and animation in production.

 Leo High School  will begin the process of resourcing student talent from Columbia College, who will supervise students along with a moderator from Leo High School, as interns gaining academic credit for hours served. Interns will help Mr. Weeks in training cameramen, sound and animation production, lighting gaffers and script production and editing.

With footage and some practice in editing our goal will be to have a basic quality product to show prospective parents, use in recruitment, put up on You Tube, and attach to grant requests.
 Leo VP, football coach and father figure Mike Holmes showed the Media Resource Center to John Weeks being constructed in the old Leo library at the moment.

This is an opportunity that comes at no better time in the proud history of Leo High School. .

* Mr. Figel teaches Leo's Journalism Course - pro bono.

** Ms. Zediker appeared recently on NBC's Chicago PD and may soon grace the small screen on Chicago Med. 

How Leftists Looted a Charity - Chuck Feeney's Money Went to Build Goverment Policy and Not Help People

MacArthur will narrow its focus to address global climate change and reform the U.S. criminal justice system - Julie Stasch,President of the MacArthur Foundation

“I can only surmise that you underestimate, or perhaps wish not to engage with, my misgivings about, and objections to, Atlantic’s current grant making focus, the structure of the board and certain of its practices, and a number of operational aspects, including ever-increasing staff numbers and elevated overhead costs.” Feeney reiterated that he was less exercised about “social justice” as a philanthropic theme than he was about whether it was “a worthy use of our resources - from Chuck Feeny Fights Back

Big Charities ( Ford, Hearst, Polk Brothers, Joyce, MacArthur, Annenberg & etc.) 

Chuck Feeney* is one of my personal heroes.  He is working class, Irish Catholic from Elizabeth, NJ who through his own genius amassed a fortune and decided to help people.  Mr. Feeney came from the same background as me, but in much tougher times.  Feeney grew up in Depression/WWII New Jersey and witnessed how Irish immigrants and Irish Americans squeezed out a living and managed to share with their less fortunate neighbors.

When Feeney made billions of dollars with his Duty Free Airport shops, he decided to give away most of what he had earned.  He formed Atlantic Philanthropies and 501(c) 3 organization dedicated to making better world.  He formed a board, as did John MacArthur here in Chicago, and trusted people to make good use of his money.  In 1981, Chicago based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation purged its board of any and all member with "conservative" inclinations, like former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon. Atlantic Philanthropies did likewise.

However, Chuck Feeney fought back.  Here is a detailed story of how Marxist and Left Leaning activists abuse philanthropy. Click Chuck Feeney's name in the first paragraph to read the full story.

This is very long, very clearly written piece.  I will merely cut and paste the conclusion for you here below, but do read the study in its entirety - Public Policy is not Philanthropy.  The Public Policy Pirates and people who hate how Chuck Feeney made his fortune work with political leeches and agenda driven activists to make this world, more hungry, less free and very dangerous.

Conclusion
Chuck Feeney initially sought anonymity as he gave away his fortune, but he is now very much a public figure. In that anonymous January 2010 letter, Feeney’s friends said they hoped he himself would make public the story of how AP’s board grew deaf to the wishes of its founder—as paraphrased by O’Clery, “so that those who might follow [Feeney] could benefit from his mistakes as well as his successes.” That would include the matter of how hard Feeney had to fight to preserve his vision for his own foundation versus that of certain board members.
Feeney’s story contains an obvious lesson about protecting donor intent, one that this writer imagines is being very carefully, if quietly, studied by individuals and families who have already endowed, or are considering endowing, some of their wealth to foundations.
On that score, there’s a telling moment in the book where Feeney, Bill Gates, and future AP CEO Christopher Oeschli are sitting together in January 2011. Oeschli asks Gates about his experience with “outside advisors” in running a foundation. “We discovered they bring an agenda and ego of their own,” Gates says.
As Feeney’s own story shows, that agenda and ego can clash directly with a donor’s stated, expressed intent. But a donor does not have to simply cave in when that intent comes under attack. The donor doesn’t have to accept the attacks, or be intimidated by self-important “advisors” on a foundation board with august pedigrees or overfed egos.
If there’s a lesson in Feeney’s experience, it might be (paraphrasing Esther Forbes’ novel Johnny Tremain) that “a donor can stand up.”
Neil Maghami’s most recent piece for CRC was “Tom Steyer, the New Paladin of the Left” (Foundation Watch, August 2014).

FW to friends.

*Charles Francis "Chuck" Feeney is an Irish-American businessman and philanthropist and the founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private foundations in the world

Collecting Water Using Only a Beachball, or Dialog With a Progressive

Progressives constantly call people to dialog with them.  Most human beings converse, share ideas, do the old verbal gambit.  There is give and take. The Progressive opens with previously drawn conclusion

• Police torture black people 24/7 and use Homan Square as their Racist Gitmo
• Marriage is only about emotion
• President Obama errs not
• Bicycles and their riders are above the law
• Blackhawks Patrick Kane raped a girl, because it was in the news and he is a sports figure and right-winger . . .on the ice

Disagree and get dismissed. I was told by a very talented and well educated young man with sterling career as a journalist and with whom I have spent some very happy moments, to stay off of his Facebook and other means of communication, because I said that it seemed like the accused but not charged hockey player was being set up for extortion according to eye-witnesses.  That is disappointing.   An educated man not just uninterested in one side of story, but censorious

That is the current spiritus mundi and that person's problem. Emotions are not facts and pre-drawn conclusions not truth.  Truth has always  a moveable feast for Progressives from the day John Dewey shared his treacle become gospel. 

You see, nowadays. there is only group thought ( read Daily Kos or other Progressive site commentaries) and no grey area, no doubts and above all there certainly is no God. Progressives also reject 'shared truths' -apriori. Shared truths are what bring people together.  Without shared truths, politics and government can provide millions of dollars to people who teach, advocate and legislate for the final solution to shared truths.That is why my Eurpean blood kin the  Irish people, who in reality are most welcoming generous and loyal people, rail against the Jew Media and Israel, support Hezbollah, smuggle weapons into Gaza along with Palestinian relief and agree that Pre-Obama America must be brought low. It is a head-scratcher, reading the Kerryman, or the Irish Examiner to find that school children in my grandmother's hometown, Cahirciveen were trained by a teacher to be Jew baiters at Christmas time in 2013.

Israeli journalist, Sarah Honig, was in Ireland to celebrate the mutual love for freedom between the Israelis and the Irish an and learned that the worm had definitely turned. Trocaire a thickly Marxist organization is much like the hijacked former charities here in Chicago ( MacArthur Center for Justice & etc.) dedicated to dividing people and damn the cost.  I read for a living and tend to remember what I read.  More importantly, many former 501(c) 3 charities were boarded and seized by Marxist buccaneers in the late 1980's and 90's and redirected the money of MacArthurs, Annenbergs and others from charitable purposes to identify and agenda political cooperatives. The news media paints these Marxist in inoffensive pink and purple and yellow pastels and the dodge works.  Most people believe the philanthropic dodge and dismiss any thought of chicanery.  Most people are so much nicer than I happen to be, "  The Easter Bunny in front of the Walgreens is really an axe-murderer, but he looks so cute!  Let's take the kids to play with him."

Trocaire and the local school abused kids. 

Santa hat wearing school kids were raising money to be given to Trocaire to plant olive trees for the Palestinians in the town of Daniel O'Connell - The Liberator, explained that Palestinians were suffering at the hands of the evil Jews.  Their teacher had shared his OxBridge BBC Talking Points with these children, which happen to be reinforced by RTE ( Irish Radio and Television) and too many in the Irish Government especially President Michael Higgins, a fierce enemy of Pre-Obama America and Israel.  

Presenting ideas to Progressive, much less gaining any hearing whatsoever, is like collecting water with a beachball.  

Leo High School Begins Its 90th Year of Service to Chicago

Leo High School will be 90 years old on September 9, 2016.  The school opened on that day in 1926.  !926 was the year that

• Chicago's Blackhawks took to the ice for the first time
• Vitners Foods began making their snack products
• Rainbow Cone scooped pistachio, chocolate and orange sherbert over vanilla icecream

We serve this city and produce great products.

Here are only a very few of the productive people who light the way for Leo Men to come.

General Thomas P. Gerrity ( Leo 1930) - father of Air Force Missiles and Logistics

Thomas A. Murphy ( Leo 1934) CEO of General Motors during its Golden Age

Dr. James B. Hartney ( Leo 1939) Pathologist and Hero of Our Lady of Angels Fire

Frank Considine (Leo 1939) - CEO of National Can and the man who modernized Egypt's Economy for Anwar Sadat

John P. Fardy (Leo 1940) - Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

Dr. Stafford Hood ( Leo 1970) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Andre Brown (class of 2000), NBA forward (2006–present).

Thomas R. Fitzgerald (class of 1959), retired chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court

Jason Jefferson (class of 1998), NFL defensive lineman (2005-08).

Jim O'Toole (class of 1955), Major League Baseball pitcher, starter for National League in 1963 All-Star Game

Chris Watson (class of 1995), NFL defensive back (1999–2003).

Multipy these great men by twenty five and you will have an accurate understanding of why Leo High School means so much to this city.

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world but only these two. The race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere, they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense no group is of pure race. Viktor Frankl, author, physcian and Holocaust Survivor

Why Anyone Would Side With Donald Trump Is Beyond Me.

' Megyn Kelly,dyed her hair/DooDah, Doodah!"

I like billionaires.  I can safely say, that I know two billionaires, one is a Chicago real estate developer ( as is Trump) and the other makes plush toys.  The two billionaires that I know are gentlemen to the backbone, witty, kind, hard-working and very generous.

Then there is Donald Trump.

I first became Trump conscious in 1988, while teaching at La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana.  My wife and I ran a dorm called Becket House on the heart-breakingly beautiful campus hugging a spring fed lake.  We had twenty three young gents of the junior class in our charge and one of them was Murph.  Murph was a delight.  He has a Fred Flintstone mug attached to a head that was the size of a boulder in a Gene Autry western, to paraphrase Skinny Sheahan.  Murph wanted to be a billionaire.  He was a rock-ribbed David Stockman/Ronald Reagan/Russell Kirk Republican from the far western suburbs of Chicago.  Murph was built like a bull and owned a generous, merry-hearted  savagery that was delight to watch from the sidelines of Laker football.  He loved combat and dominated  at middle linebacker, but was a sucker for the draw play. Murph!!!!!!!!  Don't Blitz on Every GD Play!!!!!!

I had Murph in English class and he constantly topped off his armful of books with Trump: The Art of the Deal.  I caught the lad yellow marking this flabby tome, when he should have been reading Billy Budd, during each day's mandatory two and 1/2 hour silent study in the dorm.  I was perched at my desk in the common room situated between our living quarters and ten double occupant rooms of my charges and did my work as well as hush up the lads, look for and confiscate walk-men buzzing with Dead Head tapes, wake up sleepers and generally maintain the sanctity of study.  This required that I get off my broad manly ass and manage by walking around.

Murph was an incorrigible.  Sleep? You bet.  Eat his Korean dormy's candy?  Check!  Read the Art of the Deal?  Only when not sleeping, or eating imported Haitai Cherry Marus from the Heedon's round metal candy box. More than the Asian confections, Murph stuffed himself with The Art of Deal.

" Murph!  Eighty Six that idiot's tripe!"

" Mr. Hickey, Trump's a genius and you're just a Thackeray geek."

"Notwithstanding. Get to work on your weekly essay.  It is Thursday and you have yet to write alick."

" I'm on it. Hey what is Mary making us? Damn she can cook, Hick Old Man."

I read the book. It is crap-doodle, ghosted by the guy who says that high energy is counter productive.  Really?  Relax and make millions?

I could never get Murph to abandon Trump.  I admire that in a man - fierce loyalty.  I am pretty much like that myself.  Hell, I'm still a Democrat. Don't look like one, but I am. Loyalty is vital.  Bad people manage to win the loyalty of good people.

There is nothing about Donald Trump, that could induce me to walk across a small carpet to meet him.  Not interested.  I know hustlers and users.  I have been in education since 1975 and that industry is jam-packed with creeps, grifters and protected incompetents.  Donald Trump might have made splendid member of the Obama Administration had he not gone on his four decades of gilted national hustle. He just might become President.

Donald Trump is backed by the Eugene Robinson, Chris Matthews, CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, Obama's Jornolistseses, Rachel ( "I'm Backin' Ya, Butch!") Maddow George Soros, Planned Parenthood, the League of Progressives, Rahm Emanuel, and millions of Howard Beal Tea Party Libertarian Pro-Lifers.

After the debate Trump's fans went NYC wilding on Megyn Kelly, who gave Mr. Hair Club for Men a kick in the nuts unparalleled since the fight between Butch Cassidy and Harvey Logan



Me?  I like Megyn Kelly and she has Trump on the ropes.

I wonder how Murph is doing?  God, I loved that kid!

Tonight's 2016 GOP Presidential Debate - Suicide is Painless

I expect tonight's GOP Presidential Candidate Debate for the 2016 Run for Office to look like the mass suicide cave scene from Clint Eastwood's brilliant Letters from Iwo Jima.

The ten candidates who made the FOX NEWS cut will have a golden opportunity to commit the Dutch Act before the largest expected audience in history.

They will not need CNN's John King, or PBS's Gwen Ifil to play gottcha; in fact, it will be a comfortable setting for the Party that always manages to blow off its own toes to self-destruct. The theme music from the 1969 movie M.A.S.H. would be a deft touch. 

Donald Trump will win the debate, not because he is the best candidate, but because he is the biggest loser on the stage and all of the other in-the-tank media outlets will glory in his oafish swinishness and place the debate laurels deeply upon his Hair Club for Men noggin.

This may also be the shark that FOX News has yet to bound over. 

Ruminams et sobrii civis cavete! 

Inside Out - Leo High School and a Little Flower Learning Moment Killed by PC

 

Little Flower Lancers: 1966-67  15 - 11   Palos Hills District Champions     
                             Thanksgiving Tourney Champions                             District Scores                                Semi-final Beat Stagg 85-42                             Title Game Beat St. Francis de Sales 69-66                             Oak Lawn Regional Tournament                                        

I am here at Leo High School every morning with the chirping of the birds, sometime between 4 AM and 5AM,depending on my duties to attend, or my level of laziness. This is a good time to get some work done and to write down ideas for development that might benefit this great old school.

In the winter months, I go directly to the boiler room and start up the furnaces.  It does not take long to heat up this well-constructed ninety year old gem and in the summer months my windowless inner cubicle gets hotter than the hinges of Hell.

Please, remember that I am talking about the building, a four story 32,000 square foot pile of concrete, ree-bar, wood, conduit, pipes, carpet and furniture.  It is not a school until at least one scholar arrives to learn and another to teach. Only then, does the place I drive to each morning become a school.
A school is a gathering of scholars usually disciples and a master, or masters.  From the Middle Ages all the way to the day John Dewey destroyed the notion of shared truth, students were called discipuli and the teacher magister. Latin was the langiuage of scholarly discourse.

In my lifetime, I witnessed the euthanizing of Latin and the Death of God by academics and churchmen.  Latin was deemed irrelevant, the vernacular ascended to Parnassus and the Vatican dome.  That is too bad.  The mystery of learning has gone the way of sacred liturgy -no mystery and no beauty.  Education means punching one's ticket for entry to something else.

Good teaching only comes from good scholars.  These days, paper means scholarship. Teacher certification is the stamp on the back of one's hand to the very special velvet roped section of Club Career marked education.

A good teacher has some capacity to articulate the facts, opinions, concepts and skills mastered over number of years in schools, or other occupations.  Two men who would recoil, if one called them scholars gave me a special learning moment. A young self-absorbed priest more concerned with social justice and artificial peace killed that moment.

I was in eighth grade when Little Flower High School Basketball was making a name for itself.  Parish founder and beating heart Monsignor McMahon was placed on Emeritus status and replaced by a nice guy, who allowed John Cardinal ( Louisiana Fats) Cody to systematically destroy the parish which featured a magnificent campus comprising the church, rectory, a fruit orchard grammar school and high school.  The grammar school was free to parishioners and high school almost free ( my 1969-70 tuition was $ 80).  We had many good teachers who volunteered their time, or received an almost invisible stipend for services - some were not even Illinois State Certified.

In my eighth grade year, we went to the community center in the high school - a state of the art gymnasium - to watch the Lancers on the hardwood.  These were athletic and graceful young men who had been coached by Tom Spatz (Leo '58) and Jim Dolan ( Leo '54).  They were magnificent human beings and they worked long and hard hours with us.

We (8th graders) were spazes. Uncoordinated bones and skin attached to undisciplined brain pans.

These two men, the  best PE teachers I ever had in all of my years of schooling,  made all of the boys in our class learn close order drill. Veterans Jim Dolan and Tom Spatz attempted to de-spaz thirty or more eleven year olds, by combining commands and movements: "Step with your left foot, Hickey! Your other LEFT!  Jesus Christ, did you have polio when you were younger, or are you deaf?"

We were awkward (spazmodic), graceless, distracted and chaotic, as all boys are, until we learned to keep pace, time and balance on command.

One the assistant priests, at Little Flower, a social engineer of the Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand stamp complained that Spatz and Dolan were turning us precious little boys into goosestepping storm troopers and the weak pastor bowed to political correctness.  Close order drill no more, Mr. Dolan de-volunteered and Mr. Spatz stuck to basketball.

We went back to spaz. In four years, Cardinal Cody sold the filled to capacity and debt free Little Flower High School and Community Center to the Chicago Board of Education.  The parish closed in 1993.

Father Cupcake saved us from the goosestep and Msgr, Go-Along made nice with Louisiana Fats.

Thus, a school activity that was deemed irrelevant by a person not engaged in the activity, whatsoever, was legislated out of existence The rise of the pest, the pain-the-ass in the vernacular, had dawned.

Good teaching has nothing to do with State Certification, Inquiry, or political correctness.

Just saying.