Peace You Will Find in Riverside

So, I had planned to watch the Cubs Celebrations at McNally's Saloon on Western Ave., notorious these days as a last bastion of White Sox partisanship.  I am a Sox fan, but I don't get my shorts in a knot, if the Cubs succeed - neither does anyone at McNally's - truth be told.

 McNally's stays single-minded about whom backs and  did not change the sign when TYPO went up.

McNally's is a great place to kill and afternoon.

Dim bulbs get outraged, offended and mount social media campaigns in  response to people who just do not shive a git about leaping onto bandwagons, wearing buttons, sports wear, or 'showing solidarity.'

On Tuesday, one of the most obnoxious and embarrassing displays of American stupidity will come to something like an end.  Enough said, about that.

Instead of covering a bar stool and soaking in the authentic atmosphere at McNally's yesterday. I did my baby a solid.  I drove to and walked around Riverside, a suburb of Berwyn, up around 31st & Harlem and hung up flyers for her up-coming Jazz Concert at Sts. Peter & Paul Lutheran Church on Sunday November 20th, featuring the exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan (vocals), Bobby Schiff (piano), Stewart Miller (Bass) and special guest - the great  Art Davis (trumpet and horns). More details on this opportunity to soak real jazz in the coming days.

Yep, I hung paper all over the great village of Riverside.





Riverside is what an ideal town looks like.

The men who planned Riverside were Calvert Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmstead. The streets of Riverside wind and caress the banks of the Desplaines River.

 The homes are beautiful and shout out affluent.  I live west of tony Beverly with homes on the majestic Longwood Drive rivaling Tara from  Gone with Wind and next to Riverside looks like 'Hootin' Holler.'

The town center has a an old world look to it with an almost uniform architecture reflective of some Sigmund Romberg operetta.

Even the Metra Station is something else

Walking the town, especially on river is a treat and I chatted up a couple of guys who were fishing with waders and having no luck, due to the speed of the current.  I pointed to a seven inch Buck Kife laying a few feet from me in about a two feet of water and thge guys named Mike went home with an expensive bit of piscatory cutlery.


Cubs fans were returning from the big day downtown and the universal word about their adventures was "Epic."

I decided to search out and Epic eatery.

Found it less than three hundred yards from the Metra.

Little Bohemian Restaurant sits on a side street near the Chew-Chew tavern and a great little empanadas shop , where I bought Miss Sullivan four of the best (2 beef, 2 spinach) for her evening meal.

Little Bohemian is a place that needs to hugged repeatedly like a sweet, plump Slovak aunt who makes everything from scratch and with love.

One of my psychological triggers is the trend of American sheep to flock to cookie cutter eateries from Coopers Hawk, to Olive Garden, to PJ McSwill's, to the nadir of gormandizing McDonald's and pass up great family owned restaurants like the Golden Steer in Forest Park, Klas in Cicero, Kens in Beverly, Schallers in Bridgport and Club 81 in Hegewisch.  Nothing makes me more postal than this trend - that and our two choices for President.

Little Bohemia serves up great simple family fare - stuffed cabbage, pot roast, meat loaf, duck, chicken and fish with a Bohemian grace and boats of the proper gravy. . .and home made kolaches!



We walked off the lunch again taking the river walks and soaked in sunshine, autumnal colors and very nice people.

Get over to Riverside and chill.  

I Conscientiously Object to Chicago Tribune Critic Michael Phillips

"I respectfully, conscientiously object to the way Desmond Doss has been simplified and sanctified in the movie (Hacksaw Ridge)."  Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
"Hacksaw Ridge" — 2.5 stars

 The extraordinary new film "Moonlight" exerts a tidal pull on your heartstrings, but honestly: It's better than that. The reason it's distinctive has less to do with raw emotion, or a relentless assault on your tear ducts, and more to do with the film medium's secret weapons: restraint, quiet honesty, fluid imagery and an observant, uncompromised way of imagining one outsider's world so that it becomes our own.
Since its festival premieres in Telluride and Toronto, "Moonlight" has been contending with well-meaning, largely misleading labels of "gay coming-of-age film," or "gay black coming-of-age film." True, yes: The writer-director Barry Jenkins, whose previous feature was "Medicine for Melancholy," has adapted an unproduced, semi-autobiographical play by Tarell Alvin McCraney titled "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue." The boy in question, played on screen by three actors at different phases of one young, searching lifetime, copes with being bullied for his apparent homosexuality, which he keeps locked away from nearly everyone, including himself.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
"Moonlight" — 4 stars

I did not see The Passion of the Christ and I will more than likely not see Hacksaw Ridge.  Blood fests do very little for me.  Call me old fashioned*, but I believe that horror is best served off screen. The rules work very well, especially in great theatre, or film.

Catharis, or the purging of our inner demons via the suffering of another is the most powerful element in the very human and community building activity that is drama. Catharis works best without Spectacle - special effects, gore, or pornography.

From the time of Greek tragedy on, up to the 1960's, dramaturgy kept the violence off-screen.  This not some puritanical dictum imposed by people of faith in Zeus, Aphrodite, Pan and Dionysius; it was because the human mind and soul reacts and engages theatrically, when Medea serves up her sons to her fury as a woman in civilization's prototypal feminist role.

Oedipus carves out his own eyes - off-stage and off-screen. Iphigenia leads the Chorus to the sacrificial altar of Aulis, where good old Dad will put the knife to her as an offering to the Olympians, so the Greeks can slaughter Troy, leaving Mom to plot the subsequent blood-shedding to come.

Ask any movie go-er about what was more terrifying, the Linda Blair pea souping of the Exorcist, or this



However, we are told constantly that we are evolved.  We are treated to every spectacle imaginable or Marvel comic possible.  Hetero/Homo sodomy the Norme d'amour, and heads must always explode.

Then we wring hands about people acting out.

Pornography has vanished with Satan**.

Frankly, it is dull.

Critics like Michael Phillips disagree,  They are social engineers using film to change hearts and minds.  Michael Phillips and Hollywood detest Mel Gibson, but I do not believe that Mr. Gibson loses any sleep over that fact.  I find him to be one the naturally great actors and a fine comic as well.

I saw Braveheart - meh.  Too much shouting and gore.

Michael Phillips does not like Gibson's underlying beliefs.

For all sorts of emotional and psychological reasons I'm trying to figure out as a critic and, relatedly, as a human, audiences tend to remember and even admire what traumatizes them in the name of entertainment. But even a film determined to show us the grisliest horrors of war must traumatize and — more palatably — excite in roughly equal measure, in order to make a lot of money.
I think director Mel Gibson's "Hacksaw Ridge" is going to make a lot of money.
Its old-fashioned storytelling collides with new-level gore, gory enough to make "Saving Private Ryan" look like "The Big Broadcast of 1938." The film knows exactly what it's doing, regarding faith-based audiences and war movie buffs. 

Evangelical Christians, Devout Jews and Catholics, as well as arm-chair generals will love this movie.

Phillips can not for the very critically human life of him understand why audiences admire what traumatizes them in the name of entertainment.

Really?

Why only last week, Mr. Phillips wrote this:

 His mother (Naomie Harris, riveting as a loving, hostile paradox of a wreck) has fallen into crack cocaine and a wobbly, sometime relationship with her son, known as "Little."Her disarmingly sweet-natured drug dealer (Mahershala Ali, stunningly good) presents Little with his first serious moral dilemma: Can I trust this man, he wonders, who has become the key role model in the fatherless boy's life? Along with the dealer's live-in girlfriend (Janelle Monae), he offers the boy some solace, a hot meal and, in a key early scene, a trip to the beach that stays with Little long afterward.

Little becomes Chiron in segment two, played by the superb young actor Ashton Sanders, and his mother is now pretty far gone. School has become hellish, and in one especially grueling sequence, Chiron's one steady childhood friend, Kevin, reluctantly joins a group of abusive bullies in a terrible beating. This comes not long after Chiron and Kevin share a clandestine sexual encounter at the beach one night.

Gosh, no trauma there.  The theme is gay sexual-wakening and Chiron is not moving to Gresham, Englewood, or Beverly. The movie seems to be a 'sensitivity recruiting poster' for the African American male.  This will go over like a showing of Birth of a Nation at Louis Farrakhan's restaurant Salaam on 79th Street.

Micahel Phillips also gave the Obama Love Story, South Side With You, Three Stars and said, " 'South side with You' is best taken as a reminder of the value of the slow relational build, of taking your time and actually talking, and actually listening, with someone new. Even if there's not a staggering political future in your shared future."

Moonlight is another such  feel good film, because it flows to the socio-politico values of Hollywood and the elites.

Mel Gibson is playing only to The Deplorables

People who honor valor, selflessness, determination and self-reliance. Can't have that.

The man at the heart of the story does not need this sort of grandiosity. It "works," but it's shameless. And the way Gibson has staged the roughest of the Okinawa footage in the second half of "Hacksaw Ridge," weirdly little of it is from Doss' perspective. Gibson may be intellectually compelled by this pacifist in the midst of hell on Earth, but dramatically he's only nominally interested in how it informed every aspect of his life. In any event, Gibson may not be the director to explore the moral horrors of any war, any conflict. He's too interested in physical punishment to make room for much else, though the recurring images of Japanese (symbols of evil, not men) and American soldiers on fire are thematically linked to the all-consuming fire imagery ingrained in the Seventh-day Adventist beliefs.
"My values are under attack," says Garfield at one point, in a line, surely, that holds personal meaning to Gibson. The director's off-screen trials, alcohol-related run-ins with the law and ragey, anti-Semitic and misogynist comments put him in Hollywood's doghouse for years. But as quickly as they piled on, Gibson's onetime attackers may well pile right back off again. If "Hacksaw Ridge" is a success, Gibson's redemption seems assured. I respectfully, conscientiously object to the way Desmond Doss has been simplified and sanctified in the movie. But Gibson has talent to go with his demons, and someday he may realize it in full.

"My values are under attack,"  every day on the pages of the Chicago Tribune.  And yet, they wonder,  'How Trump?'


*Five Rules of Dramaturgy

• Hamartia - an error in judgment

• Hubris - arrogance, excessive, self-pride and self-confidence

• Anagnorisis - moment of discovery; epiphany

• Peripeteia - change of fortune for the hero contrary to audience's expectations

• Catharsis - purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, PITY AND FEAR (audience)

** Q-How much of a gateway to Satan has been opened by the wide availability of pornography on the Internet?

     A- Porn is a click away. I think it has incredible power of being an addictive activity. I think it’s nothing but objectifying one or both sexes. Sometimes there’s an incredible amount of violence that is attached to it. Depending on the frequency, I do think people’s minds after a while become amalgamated into a life of darkness. And when people are involved in this—it’s usually very hidden, much like Satan, who is hidden—I think it can open doorways to the demonic.

My Safe Space, Detoxing Masculinity and Now I am Afraid of Spiders and Lady Bugs

Fellow men, our self-perceived and peer-enforced inability to personally access and publicly express our full humanity is destroying us. And it’s damaging our loved ones and the world we all inhabit.

None of the men reading this likely see ourselves as anything like a Trump, or a Trump supporter. I know I don’t. But I also know that I have hurt women around me through the kind of masculine (and in my case, white masculine) entitlement that causes people to react to their struggles by identifying with his messages of fear, control and dominance. I have experienced the entitlement to dominate physical and emotional spaces over women. To gaze upon and touch women without their permission. Things I’m not proud of, that I can’t believe I thought were acceptable at the time, for which I have apologized, and from which I’ve learned. At the core of it has been a stunted faculty with emotional processing, where somehow along the way I internalized the idea that the objectification and sexual attainment of women would fill emotional voids for me.

What the dominant culture of toxic masculinity has done to us is unhealthy and unacceptable. I want to heal my toxic masculine coding and build the emotional, analytical and reflective tools to become a better friend, son, partner, neighbor, someday a father, and more. Collectiveaction





My home on Rockwell Street in Morgan
Park of Chicago  was intended to be a safe-space for me, once the kids moved out.  There I could freely explore my place in patriarchy and role in perpetuating the date-rape culture, gun-violence and the objectifying of women, as well as the thousands of  micro-aggressions I crank out by the minute.

 I thought of going to Duke University and signing up for the Man's Project "which sees a cohort of students get together each week to discuss men’s experiences with various elements and intersections of masculinity. In these sessions, they seek to create a male space with conversations focused on inclusion rather than exclusion; to bypass the turning of the shoulder that often happens when men think it’s better to suffer alone in strength than talk in vulnerability, to challenge the way we have traditionally thought of manhood in order to raise the standard of good men in tackling sexism and gender violence."

Instead, I decided to stay in my own safe space . . .with Alan Ford.



I thought about all of  the times that I wished date-rape had happened to me - never did - and I felt bad about it.  It would have been nice, if an exotic Eurasian Babe with legs up to H'yar had knocked me off my stumpy legs, grabbed me by my close-cropped hair with a grip that Janet Guthrie would have been proud of and smooched the hell out of me and then went after my old gigglestick with a gusto!

I've felt worse.

No getting around it.  I am one toxic male. Perhaps, I thought, I am not being vulnerable. Vulnerable is new Invincible!

I love puppies and kittens; rodents, not so much.

I love women's nylons, garters, silkens and satins and fancy things - on them. . . .for a while.

I love Fabric Softener and Wagon Train re-runs.

I love the Wizard of Oz - the flying monkeys and the Cossack guards.

I love Russ Meyer movies, but not Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill Kill - creeps me out.

Both Sides Now, by Judy Collins makes me feel the need to shower.!!

I wish I could still light tire fires under abandoned Viaduct at 75th Place and Wood Street and then look at Jugs and Ammo with Larry Fischeli and Al McFarland.

There I have de-toxed!  Now, to sheet rock the basement, eat a few Slim Jims and watch Roller Derby!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!  A Bug!  A Lady Bug!  Hate them.

Safe Space!

Neil Steinberg! Words that People Say Really Matter, Because They Often Match What People Believe And Do.

 

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

 Obviously, you want Obama elected — the nation will soon realize what it has done, the pendulum will swing the other way — your way. At long last! Ausgerechnet jetzt!
Persuasive stuff. But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009

The immediate snotty crack above followed a series of Sun Times columns by other like-minded writers who hate cops and white Catholics in general that spouted pretty much the same lie. I live in Morgan Park which, like Mount Greenwood, gets grouped in a collective that the media call Beverly or the political landscape of the 19th Ward - home to largely white Catholic, government employees, teachers, nurses, tradesmen, some well-to-do folks, cops and fireman. Many black Americans live very well in this neighborhood as well. I used to meet black gents like Doc and Stewart up at Keegan's Pub having a drink and  a horse-laugh with their paler hued neighbors. Now, Keegan's  is Barney Callaghan's and a younger crowd attend the same salons. However, when I read Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times (without paying for either mind you), one might think that folks spent  all of  their time chasing Eliza over the ice flow on the Ohio River, as the poor child attempts to find the Underground High Speed Railroad. Nope.

Well, Monday was Halloween!  A very nice time for kids and their parents.

Trick, or Treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Note there is no question.  The implied meaning Treats without your windows getting soaped, your front porch egged, or worse. The tricks have gone the way of merry at Christmas time.

We still love Christmas, Hanukkah, or Yule tide, but the concept of being merry in our age could get a some poor slob locked up and wearing a Velcro dinner jacket on the fourth floor of the local hospital,

I glanced at the Sun Times this morning and saw that Neil Steinberg had a scold for people Neil deems stupid - anyone not Neil Steinberg.

He echoes William Butler Yeats's dismissal of 'polite, meaningless words'

People just say stuff.
Such as “How are you?” when they couldn’t care less how you are. And “I’m fine” when they’re not. It’s expected, the grease that society slides forward on. Hardly worth noting.
When it comes to politics, however, this just-say-stuff habit is more worrisome. Then the grease can send our nation skidding off of a cliff of toxic nonsense and paranoid fantasy. Politicians make promises that they can’t possibly deliver. They air claims that can’t possibly be true, that directly conflict what they just said a day or two ago. And their followers, well, follow, saying things they neither mean nor think about.

Yeats meant what he said about the people he met and knew before they 'changed; changed utterly' by British firing squads.  They were the same people, only dead and honored for their deaths in 1916.


Several days ago, Steinberg wrote a piece that was standard if you back Trump you are a racist Cro Magnon, honeyed with William Butler Yeats.

As terrible as the election of 2016 is, it is also only the beginning. Clinton might win — I hold out hope she will win, unless of course she doesn’t. But that won’t be the end. Somewhere, a sharper, slicker, more disciplined, more palatable version of Donald Trump — Donald 2.0 — is being assembled. Some Marco Rubio-caliber fraud is staring hard at himself in the mirror, liking what he sees, and cooing, “Next time, it’s your turn baby!” The rough beast awakes and slouches toward 2020 to be born.

I used to read and like Neil Steinberg.  Then I learned that his words did not match the guy. Where I come from, that is a problem.  Neil might have been well-served taking a graduate course in regular folks.  But, back to the nub. Neil is on a Yeats kick.

He and so many 'journalists, politicians, anchorpersons, bankers, oligarchs, academics and  hacks are worried that Trump might win on November 8th - I don't worry, nor do I believe that he will get by stacked decks.  Steinberg says stuff all of the time and he believes it.  He hates Trump and the people voting for him with the same passion as he hated people for not worshipping at Obama's 2008 Greek Temple. He goes Orewellian Big Brother on them with great regularity.

 

  Then, Neil decides to really gin-up the Two Minutes Hate on the specific people who might back Trump and nail us good:

Such as? Abortion. “Abortion is murder,” the anti-abortion crowd claims. You hear it all the time. First, that’s incorrect. Since murder is a legal term, and abortion is legal and thus it is by definition not murder. What they mean is “Abortion should be murder.” Except they don’t mean that either, as you can demonstrate by replying, “Oh really? If it’s murder, then for how long should the murderers go to jail?” And the answer is “umm.” We can translate that grunt as “OK ‘abortion is murder,’ is just something we say because it sounds powerful and more compact than, ‘I want to force my religion on you while dragging gender roles back to the 1950s.'” Admittedly quite a mouthful.

Quite a mouthful.  You know what they say about people who talk with their mouths full?

Two words - Nuremberg Laws, numb nuts.

Nuremberg Laws and Roe v. Wade. Hitler murdered Jews and Planned Parenthood murders babies.  See, nothing on my teeth and gums.

Words matter and people mean what they say, even if they use Yeats.

Neil went through a Dante period that was equally shallow in 2008-'09. During his Inferno Days,  Neil had lunch at Kens on Western Ave. around the time when Mr. Steinberg's conduct brought public humiliation on him and his tenure as an employee, much less a columnist was doubtful.  Blood under the bridge.  No one forgets a kindness like a guy who believes that he is Emile Zola.   I took Neil Steinberg to Jackie Casto's Ken's on Western Ave. for lunch, where the talented word-sculptor chatted with a thick number of folks who live here, including cops, fireman, school teachers. the Mayor of Evergreen Park, two writers from Beverly Review and a number of Leo Alums who had attended the Veterans Observance.

Generally, when one breaks bread with another person some kind of bond of mutual grace and respect surfaces - not so with too many columnists.  A few months later, Neil smeared the people he lunched with to make a snotty crack about the stupid people who did not vote for and worship Obama in 2009.

Hell, I didn't vote for Obama in 2008, or 2012, because I firmly the believe the man has limited mental capacities - he has yet to disappoint me as our first Ted Baxter President.

I say, "Good Morning,: because I mean that I hope everyone including Neil Steinberg has a very good morning.

Neil Steinberg is a semiotic totalitarian - he and his circle know what meaning is and they will tell us.  He gets caught up in all of that clever Jacques Derrida deconstructionism that journalists employ to white-out events, words, deeds and meanings. Poetry works for semiotic totalitarians.  Me and the neighbors tend to be prosaic.

When I say " Get the @#$% off my porch,"  I don't mean come on in and set a spell.

I am Not A Jew, But I Played With One, As a Kid. Obama's Shinola is Ticking: God Bless Israel!

 Obama wears a Shinola watch; of course he does. "While the main reason for President Obama's visit to Detroit on Wednesday was to shine a light on the recuperating auto industry, he also made a point of stopping by the city's finest watchmaker. Since 2011, Shinola has been crafting American-made timepieces in the Motor City, helping transform its image and neighborhoods along the way. "Esquire.  President Obama is waiting to help destroy Israel and burnish his progressive legacy.

"Does Mr. Obama want to be remembered as the President who criminalized Israeli citizenship," asks the Wall Street Journal

Yeah, I think that he would be perfectly fine with that.  He and Israel's Prime Minister have not been two for a four-some.

Israeli diplomats gird for the possibility that President Obama may try to force a diplomatic resolution for Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations. The White House has been unusually tight-lipped about what, if anything, it might have in mind. But our sources say the White House has asked the State Department to develop an options menu for the President’s final weeks.
One possibility would be to sponsor, or at least allow, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, perhaps alongside new IRS regulations revoking the tax-exempt status of people or entities involved in settlement building. The Administration vetoed such a resolution in 2011 on grounds that it “risks hardening the position of both sides,” which remains true.
But condemning the settlements has always been a popular way of scoring points against the Jewish state, not least at the State Department, and an antisettlement resolution might burnish Mr. Obama’s progressive brand for his post presidency. Wall Street Journal

Have I mentioned that I am of Irish Catholic descent?

No Shinola, Sherlock. I am as Catholic as Tim Kaine, maybe more so.  I know American Catholics who hate Jews and really hate Israel.  I never understood that?   These days, the salt-water Irish I chat with who have come to America from Kerry, Clare, Mayo. Galway and Derry, really seem to hate Israel.  To a person they are very well educated, hard working, fair-minded and generous, but they all seem tained with the Noam Chomsky contrarian mindset, so fashionably sophisticated and European.

That I follow, but can not for the life of me understand.

The Irish and the Jews have had a long and firm grip on one another's suffering, history and contribution to Western Civilization.  The Israeli Defense Forces, fighting for the nation's existence, was formed on the tactics and strategies of the Irish Republican Army of 1921.

Not only were many of the Zionist military tactics in 1940’s Britain and Palestine drawn from pre-war IRA bombing campaigns in Britain but the Irgun was re-organized “on IRA lines”, according to Walton, by Robert Briscoe, father of Fianna Fail TD and Mayor of Dublin Ben Briscoe, who travelled secretly to Britain in the pre-war years to meet and advise Irgun representatives.
Briscoe Senior, himself a Fianna Fail TD for many years, had impeccable IRA credentials. He accompanied Eamonn de Valera to the USA on a lengthy fund-raising trip during the Anglo-Irish war and also was sent by Michael Collins to Germany in 1919 to procure arms for the IRA. A former Chief of Staff of the IRA’s boy scouts, na Fianna Eireann, Eamonn Martin was Briscoe’s best man at his wedding and he hated the British, describing himself in a memoir as a self-appointed professor holding “the chair of subversive activities against England”.
Another Irish Jew who strongly supported both Irish Republican and Zionist terrorism was Isaac Herzog, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland who emigrated to Palestine in 1936 where he was appointed to the chief rabbinate, the most powerful clerical position in the Jewish world. MI5 kept him under close surveillance and asked the Irish police to keep tabs on Briscoe.
He wrote in his memoirs that he elected himself “to a full Professorship with the Chair of Subversive Activities against England,”
 (See more at: )

These facts have been Progressively white-out-ed and erased from historical considerations. Note well, British MI-5 after WWII was run by the Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five's Marxist affections and the Soviets were no friend of Israel.

Over the years, younger Irish people ( under 75) came to believe that Palestinians never slaughtered Jews in 1920s, that the Grand Mufti was a Quaker and that the survivors of Holocaust were everything Hitler said they were in the Nuremberg Laws. They forgot that Sean MacStiophan and Menachim Begin were pals.  This was the result of the Irish Government's BBC culture that sprouted post-DeValera.

However, even after Kim Philby was proven to be a Soviet mole, the Old Boy OxBridge affections for Animal Farm rooted in academia and the BBC nestled in Old Blighty and Old Erin's bogs.

Israel morphed from a harbor from the Holocaust to Nazi Germany in the memes of the elites.

Irish politicians are seem unanimously anti-Israel: Michale Higgins, Enda Kenny, Mary Robinson & etc. Yanks are as bad.

America apes every Etonian fashion from Carnaby Street and Beatlemania to a World Without Borders and the Garden of Gaza. aways a few years behind.  The Brit anarchists were burning tires under viaducts, while Kurt Cobain was learning to string his own Silvertone. Long before Occupy and the Battle of Seattle,  Sophisticates, love Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

I am not that sophisticated.

I know Jews, love Jews, admire Jews and hung around with Jews.  From Danny Levy, Little Flower High School Class of 1970 to Phil Scharf, second violin Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to Si and Shirley Blitzstein who hired Catholic kids from Leo, Brother Rice and Little Flower at Mr. Lee's in the old Evergreen Plaza, I have known only honesty, humor, talent and American patriotism from my Jewish friends and neighbors.

President Obama is sophisticated,

His cabinet is full of sophisticates, like Valerie Jarrett who has done more for Persian hegemony in the world than Cyrus and his Celtic United Nations Ambassador Samantha Powers, who only recently took the side of Israel against the emerging nations dictators and sheiks.



That was in February, and Powers told Israel:

“When we see bias, injustice or the continuation of strife within the United Nations, it is not because the UN created all of this, it is because the UN gathers governments and gathers problems, and being in the UN doesn’t change the biases of those governments,” she said.
Power, whose visit was seen by some analysts as a sign of renewed US interest in jump-starting peace talks, admitted that the situation was not ripe for new negotiations, though the US would continue to pursue a two-state solution.
“I would expect that pursuit to continue, and right now we hope the parties will take steps to move them closer again to restart negotiations, which is not a position they are in now,” she said. “We will dedicate ourselves to that as long as we are in office.”
Power also expressed hope that students participating in the Model UN would soon be able to sit behind a “Palestine placard,” backing the importance of a two-state solution.
“You must strive to wade side by side into the toughest issues, because it is you and your children and the generations following them who will reap the benefits of the peace you’ve built, or else endure the suffering of ongoing strife,” she urged the students.

Things change.  Putin is about to shell Aleppo into dust, the Presidential election is seven days away, Iran and Valerie Jarrett want to make sure President Obama rolls up the carpet on Israel before he leaves office.

The worst option would be an effort to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Security Council setting “parameters” for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The French have been eager to do this for some time, and one option for the Administration would be to let the resolution pass simply by refusing to veto it. Or the U.S. could introduce the resolution itself, all the better to take credit for it.
As the old line has it, this would be worse than a crime—it would be a blunder. U.S. policy has long and wisely been that only Israelis and Palestinians can work out a peace agreement between themselves, and that efforts to impose one would be counterproductive. Whatever parameters the U.N. established would be unacceptable to any Israeli government, left or right, thereby destroying whatever is left of a peace camp in Israel.
The Palestinians would seize on those parameters as their birthright, making it impossible for any future Palestinian leader to bargain part of them away in a serious negotiation. Arab states would find their diplomatic hands tied, making it impossible to serve as useful intermediaries between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It could refreeze relations with Israel even as they finally seem to have thawed.
President Obama may be the last man on earth to get the memo, but after decades of fruitless efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it might be wiser for the U.S. to step back until the Palestinians recognize that peace cannot be imposed from the outside. If Mr. Obama is still seeking a Middle East legacy at this late stage in his presidency, his best move is do nothing to make it worse.

Samantha Powers is an accomplished person who actually wrote her own books and President Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.  Powers has been in the United Nations since August 2013.  Perhaps she has learned to see the world differently.  President Obama is the same man who took the Oath of Office in 2009 - the exact same man.  Valerie Jarrett never leaves his ears.

Many American Catholics who buy into the Social Justice Warrior facade detest Israel and support the Obama Palestinian gambit.  Catholic Activists like Kevin Clark, a member of International Solidarity Movement went Israel and encourage American students to throw themselves in front of IDF bulldozers in Gaza.  The blood of Rachel Corrie, for whom the Irish OXFAM Gaza Flotilla flagship was named, is not on the hands of Israel, but on Clark the Social Justice Warrior.  This guy is bad and he has the ear of Catholic social justice sheep. 

I grew up believing that deeds and not words marked the character of people.

We all can be fooled, tricked, gulled, anesthetized, or  made oblivious.  A few of us don't mind any of the afore mentioned conditions.

My Irish cousins forgot that Israel is not Nazi Germany.  My Catholic coreligionists need to leave moral equivalency to the Unitarians and too many of the other Mainline faiths.

I know that Shinola can be a watch and a swell shoe polish.  I know that Israel is our best friend on the planet.  President Obama?  Not so much.

Ready for Hillary? I'm Ready for the Soup!

Official PAC Name:

READY FOR HILLARY PAC 

Location: MCLEAN, VA 22106

Industry: Democratic/Liberal

Treasurer: AMY WILLS GRAY 

FEC Committee ID: 

Hillary don't Te Rogamus. She is the  Hors d'oeuvre

          Hate to kick a man who's down, but I do not mind it at all that Hillary Clinton is getting heaping helping cosmic Karma.  Dharma has that task handled and I am sure the litany of saints are gearing up for some old timey Te Rogamus!

Peccatores, (sinners)

 te rogamus, audi nos. Beseach thee, Hear us

Ut nobis parcas,

te rogamus, audi nos.

Ut nobis indulgeas, ( Pardon us)

te rogamus, audi nos.

With the Hors d'oeuvre offered and eaten up, Let's get to the soup!

The real noodles in the pot have yet to boil.   By real noodles I mean  every head that nodded and went along with the stout marrow bones of political players from the Oval Office to the DOJ.

It is and has been my simple belief that nothing and I mean nothing has happened since January 2009 without the implied, or explicit direction of Valerie Jarrett.  We shall see, more of Valerie Jarrett's control over President Obama and his White House over the next score of months.  

The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop that they believe was used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. . . .

Now here is where it gets really soupy

At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned the FBI that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.

The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle. . . .Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.

This sleazy saga began when the Oval Office, State Department, Justice Department and the compliant media tossed out the straw man story of a video offensive to Islam and the massacre in Benghazi. Wasted tax dollars on endless hearings, stalled, ridiculed and contaminated by hacks and the media.

Sad to say, that Rep. Elijah Cummings wasted gallons of fatty outrage, when all it took was a pervert Democrat Congressman and his ex-wife's own Valerie Jarrett side-show on the Clinton Campaign to shed real light on the cockroaches racing from icebox to stove in Washington D.C..

The Justice Department and State Department players are in the soup.
The fish will be  Loretta Lynch and maybe others from DOJ past and present
The Entree The Clinton Foundation, The Saudi Royals, George Soros and the Bush Family
The Removes  President Obama, Susan Rice and Long John Kerry
The Desert -Valerie Jarrett

Bon appetite?

I am sick to my stomach

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

I am Having a Ball in the Classroom at Brother Rice High School

I am hardly back in the saddle again, but for the past two weeks I have had more fun than a man deserves serving as a substitute teacher at Brother Rice High School.

I began teaching English in 1975 and continued joyfully for twenty years, but obligations as father and husband required that I leave the classroom for the more lucrative position of Director of Development.

This is a new position in education and rather important one at that, particularly in private and Catholic education. The Director of Development  is generally the chief fundraising officer answerable to the President and the Board of Directors. bring in new streams of cash from grants, individual donations and sometime special events.  I ran  two special events at La Lumiere School, one a success and the other barely broke even, one special event at Bishop Noll Institute that brought in  $10,000 when the goal was $20,000 and no events at Leo High School that could be termed 'special events' in the traditional sense - elaborate dinners, or Star focused concerts. Thank God and Bob Foster, my CEO for fifteen of my twenty years at Leo.

I write a good grant and I can be a pretty good person to put the bite on a person with the capacity to make a difference,

I was a Department of one at Leo.  I tracked gifts, wrote letters, appeals, went out to call upon donors, researched new sources, courted new sources and hit on news sources - sometimes with success and more times than not received the " while your mission is a truly deserving one, at this time, we would like you and your mission to help young urban men receive a faith-based education in a safe environment to go and . . ."  Stuff like that, or a nicer version.

Leo High School has a unique culture that is male, honest, uncompromisingly straight-forward, tough, results oriented and proudly successful. Fools might be suffered gladly, but will have only a blink on their resumes and CVs, if Leo Men have any say in the matter.

There is no BS, so don't attempt any.  BS is largely the domain of Director's of Development in too many schools and DDs, or IAs,* do all pie-chart and Stephen Covey fog-horning all too often, net work for new jobs and then job hop all over the philanthropic landscape - many ending their days as consultants with Institutional Advancement companies.

To me the job was an extension of my vocation as a teacher - do my homework, try to explain what exactly needs to get done and remain honest, help the students first, the parents second, the Alumni next and of course myself.  I had a ball.  I raised some money. I started boilers on winter mornings and drove a van and picked up students as well. Sold Beanie Babies and Ty Warner Products as well as sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats, blankets and do-dads to the Alumni.

I missed teaching. I asked my old high school Buddy Kevin Burns to give me a shot and he did.  Kevin is President of Brother Rice.  Thanks, Kev!

Now, I am trying to get my sea-legs back.  You do not plunge back into a room full of adolescent males going through four stages of human growth, as well as academic placements, five to six periods a day, at age 64 and expect to greeted as Good Old Chips!  When I was 22, I needed to earn the trust and respect of young people only a few years minor to me and that was a job of work.

I have witnessed career "re-treads' give teaching a try after successful careers in management, sales and engineering and most ended with middle aged men and women running out the door with their hair on fire and a shout of "Mail Me my Damn Check!"

Teaching is and should be a bitch and a half.

Come prepared - do your homework, expect to be challenged about everything, remember that these are kids and not your own and that you're here to teach something - not change their lives or add to your Face Book friends trove.

Kids smell fear and BS from a great distance.  Be afraid, a healthy anxiety is a good thing, but never try to BS your way through anything.  If you do not know something, admit it and tell them you will find out and then deliver immediately.

I have taught English, History, Spanish and Band to no ill effect.  Frankie, Antonio, Reggie, Packy, Liam, Josh and Mr. Veal** have yet to take offense to my methods, or my  lessons.

I have been blown away by the wonderful manly deportment, friendliness, general knowledge and musicianship of the young Crusaders.

The band is something else and reminds me of the Bishop McNamara music program when it was under the direction of Kevin McNulty and Joel Hawkinson.  Concert band, Philharmonic, Choral and beginning band are all in task and on message.

The halls are empty of students when class begins and I have yet to witness any tardiness, absenteeism, or ungentlemanly behavior whatsoever.

I took a number of photos with my Old Guy phone and they have yet to appear in my e-mail box.

Safe to say.  I will need Frankie, Antonio, Reggie, Packy, Liam, Josh and Mr. Veal to give me a hand. I had to use stock photos on this go-around -sorry. I love teaching again.

Thanks Crusaders!


* DD - Director of Development; IA Institutional Advancement person

** Mr.Veal is a trumpet man who broke his left wrist in last week's Loyola game.

The Grifter, or the Boor?

You are forced to invite one of two persons into your home and feed the chosen a turkey dinner with all of the trimmings - you must . . .can't get out of it, no how,  on November 8th.


You must choose . . .

between a woman who will eat a meal with you and young extended family, talk down to you and your family, complain about the turkey being too moist, loudly dominate the conversation, announce that 'You are all such deplorable Company'  and walk off with your wife's Belleek China gravy bowl, three Waterford Crystal sherry glasses and your unmarried daughter's Adele: Live at the Royal Albert Hall disc,




or a loud, boorish man with eyes for your bride and her two sisters, who talks with food in his mouth, out of his mouth and from his mouth onto you, breaks wind all through dinner, guzzles the port, excuses himself and falls asleep attending to Nature in the small powder room without turning on the exhaust fan, until breakfast the next day.

Me?  The later.

The one guest has a husband who takes any opportunity to loot the world.

The cross-pollination is flagrant, and Mr. Band gives example after example of how it works. He and his partner Declan Kelly (a Hillary Clinton fundraiser whom Mrs. Clinton rewarded by making him the State Department’s special envoy to Northern Ireland) buttered up their clients with special visits to Bill’s home and tête-à-tête golf rounds with the former president. They then “cultivated” these marks ( Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, UBS) for foundation dollars, and then again for high-dollar Bill Clinton speeches and other business payouts.
Teneo’s incestuous behavior also included Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. The Band memo boasts that Mr. Kelly (while he was Mrs. Clinton’s State envoy) introduced the then-head of UBS Wealth Management, Bob McCann, to Bill Clinton at an American Ireland Fund event in 2009. “Mr. Kelly subsequently asked Mr. Mccann [sic] to support the Foundation, which he did . . . Mr. Kelly also encouraged Mr. Mccann [sic] to invite President Clinton to give several paid speeches, which he has done,” reads Mr. Band’s memo. UBS ultimately paid Bill $2 million.

The other has looted, or hurt the feelings of fellow gonifs.

Cuban did an about-face when he took to social media to praise Trump’s nascent presidential campaign as “probably the best thing to happen to politics in a long long time.” Trump responded on Twitter with a post that thanked Cuban and proclaimed Trump was “rapidly becoming a [Dallas Mavericks] fan.”
Cuban further stoked the flames of what appeared to be a growing bromance between himself and Trump later that month, when the Shark Tank star told the media that he would “consider” running as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate if he were asked. Cuban later walked that statement back, though, adding that he’s “not cut out for politics” . . . A year ago, Trump’s early GOP primary success drove Cuban to ponder what would happen if he entered the presidential race himself. Talking to reporters at the time, Cuban said he was frequently being asked if he would enter the race, calling it “a fun idea to toss around.” While Cuban didn’t sound likely to actually launch a campaign, he still seemed to like his chances, no matter his opponent. “If I ran as a Dem, I know I could beat Hillary Clinton,” Cuban said at the time. “And if it was me vs. Trump, I would crush him. No doubt about it.”

There your have it - choose.  You gotta.

American Halloween: Satan is dressed like Atticus Finch

"The real Satan however will look just like Jesus Christ (Revelation 13), he shall come in peaceably (Daniel 11) and he shall work wonders in the sight of mankind in order to deceive them into believing he is Jesus Christ (Revelation 13)." comments from Times of Israel

The ACLU vigorously defends the rights of all Americans to practice their religion. But because the ACLU is often better known for its work preventing the government from promoting and funding selected religious activities, it is sometimes wrongly assumed that the ACLU does not zealously defend the rights of all religious believers to practice their faith. The actions described below – over half of which were brought on behalf of self-identified Christians, with the remaining cases defending the rights of a wide range of minority faiths – reveal just how mistaken such assumptions are. ACLU

America has a devil of problem.  We believe that everyone has a right to practise their faith.  Americans have a poioumenon problem - in over two hundred years we have decided to take the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and The Devil and Daniel Webster as a metafictional taffy pull.

My twenty dollar words  roughly translate to a 'product' in which the story is about the process of creation.   Pure John Dewey - the play is the thing and it is all about the inquiry, Yo!

Take a text, an article of faith, a statement. a word, or even a gesture and make something huge out of it.  Think of a social justice defense lawyer, - a protester has a constitutional right to exercise his free speech (verbally, artistically, dramatically and confrontationally); ergo, the charges against a protester must be dropped, unless they embarrass the mayor who blesses the actions of said attorney.

It is not what the Bill of Rights actually says in the document, but what a press protected, politically paid up pettifogger can make the public go along with at the moment.

Feelings help. Appeals to the breast of a public television subscriber can't miss in America.

America no longer trusts in God and it bans prayer, religious iconography ( unless Muslim for the time being, anyway), rosaries, crosses, or even solemn looks.

However, amid all of this civitas in bella Dei,  quasi-quack collegia et Satanas Wicca vocati sunt. Satan and Wicca are welcome.

I travel to the great State of Wisconsin as often as possible.  The people the grace and simple courtesies offered statewide above the Illinois border are a tonic.

I tend to go to Monroe, Green, Lafayatte and Madison counties, lands settled by sturdy Swiss, German, Nordic and Celtic immigrants before the Civil War.  There are United Churches of Christ, Catholic parishes, and every Evangelical and Mainline Protestant houses of worship up and down the rolling hills of Dairyland.  There is at least one synagogue in Madison and more than few Mosques and Muslim Circles. It is the UCC Swiss and Mennonite Dutch and others whose dairy barns in the Swiss/Nordic counties that sport Hex signs.  

The word Hex is believed to have come from the Teutonic word Hexe, or "witch." The signs are elaborate Rosetta's, circles with interior designs of geometric shapes.  They are beautiful examples of folk art. Some believe they have more to do with flowers, than witchcraft.  Most acknowledge the pre-Christian designs as part of the Alpine German " Sun of the Alps."

I was told by a Swiss blooded American that farmers placed Hex Signs on their barns to ward off Satan - he explained that many built round barns " so the Devil had no corner to hide in."

Actually, they were very practical and sound structures.  Here is one in Dane County near Mount Horeb that was converted into a magnificent home
Mount Horeb is home to Circle Sanctuary's many tribes of 'witches' and Wiccans, shamanns, circkes of drummers and Indigenous Peoples practitioners along what is collectively called The Spirit Pathways.  

In Mount Horeb,  the "Circle comprises a network of Pagan, Wiccan, Goddess and Shamanic gatherings from around the country and the world. Directed, more or less, by Selena Fox. The Circle home page is an extensive informational site, to say the least."  That it is.

The ACLU has no beef with The Circle whatsoever. The ACLU is all over Catholics, Jews and Evangelicals ( Main-liners are totally NPR and Muslims have yet to experience the Roger Baldwining of their beliefs).


The ACLU has no problem with Satan, but sure has one with the Decalogue.

Satanists have found a haven and coven in Salem, Massachusetts , home to full-blooded nut job and 1/2,6789th Cherokee Senator Bessie Warren.  Salem was where deplorables and abolitionists burned witches at the stake in 17th Century, inspiring Hawthorne's Hester Prynne to proudly sport the Big A and causing Arthur Miller to attack McCarthyisms with the Crucible. Roger Baldwin's ancestors ran Catholics and Baptists to Maryland and set the tone for  ACLU the American bed and breakfast industry  

Located one-mile from historic sites tied to Salem’s 1692 witchcraft hysteria, the building — a former funeral home — was inaugurated last month by activist Malcolm Jarry, a self-described “secular Jew” who co-founded The Satanic Temple (TST) in 2013. Jarry is a pseudonym, and he refuses to be photographed.The temple houses an art gallery in honor of Baphomet (see above), a “sabbatic goat” representing the universe. Behind the two-story building, an eight-foot tall statue of Baphomet sits in a plain shed, where visitors can pay to view it.
With up to 50,000 members in chapters around the world, TST has garnered colossal media attention in the last three years. Chief among Jarry’s causes are marriage equality and women’s reproductive freedom. Any issue related to the government using religion to restrict individual freedom is also likely to engage temple leaders, some of whom staged a 2014 “Black Mass” at Harvard University to push the envelope on religious freedom.
Outside of New England, TST has taken legal action against the placement of edifices of the Ten Commandments in civic settings, including statehouses. To illustrate how such displays violate religious freedom, the temple has insisted it be allowed to erect goat-headed Baphomet statues in the same locations. TST is also planning to take on some schools’ use of isolation, denial of bathroom access, and corporal punishment of children. Times of Israel (emphases my own)

Man, talk about outdoing the public relations of NPR and the Unitarians!  Satan is a Progressive and dresses up like Atticus Finch for go-to-meeting duds, I'll Elizabeth Warrant !

The establishment of a religion?  No. the State sponsored destruction of religious liberty.

Happy Halloween!

Ticket Whiners "Hit Back' for Chicago and then 'Ditch School' Get Real News from Second City Cop, before you go to Chicago Rags

“You’ve hit Chicago numerous times. . . . When you hit Chicago, Chicago hits back.” Ald. Anthony Beale 

Mos Def, G! No slippin' dis area code, Yo!*

Alderman Beale is not warning the GDs, Vice Lords, Mickey Cobras, Four Corner Hustlers, Latin Kings, or even the ethnically cleansed Irish Deuces. Beale is really giving it to Donald Trump, he and the 49 other amoebas with plush chairs in the Chicago City Council.

The Chicago 50 - the City Council, not its collective I.Q. - hit back at Donald Trump and took down the brown sign that anyone with the ear of an Alder-creature can get hung up.  Legend has it that some have even been a 'taste' for a deal, but Andy Shaw's BGA would been all over that, like a four year old boy on bowl of steamed cauliflower. Yes Sir!

Fran Spielman, the voice of the Chicago Banana Republic, takes a delightful swipe at the oafish plutocrat, erstwhile reality show star and Presidential candidate.

The City Council’s Transportation Committee unanimously agreed to strip Trump of a recognition he covets: “Trump Plaza,” the honorary designation for the east side of Wabash Avenue between Illinois Street and the Chicago River, outside the 96-story Trump International Hotel & Tower. . . .As for the honorary street designation, one of the Trump Plaza signs already has been stolen. So only one more needs to be removed. That will be done post-haste, if the full City Council approves the punishment, thanks to a so-called “pending passage” letter that (Ald.)Beale promised to sign.(Ald.) Reilly said Trump no longer deserves the honor after making political hay at Chicago’s expense in a way that has damaged the city’s reputation on the global stage.
Trump’s decision to portray Chicago as a “war zone” that needs stop-and-frisk during the first presidential debate was the final straw.

Yeah, Brendan, we live in Honeysuckle Vinewater Way,you mewling turd.

In December 2010, Trump contributed $50,000 to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and $5,000 to Reilly.
That was two years after the opening of Trump Tower with the vanity sign touting the Trump brand.
On Tuesday, Reilly was asked about the hypocrisy of accepting Trump’s money, only to bite the hand that feeds him.
He promised, once again, to send the money to back.
“I will be doing that on Nov. 9, the day after the election — so Mr. Trump can’t spend it,” Reilly said.

More important Chicago's Aldermen Approved, Sanctioned and Abetted Thud Comfort Zone will bleed mightily while the Cubs and some of our Aldercritters hire a bus and 'road trip' to Cleveland for game # 2. of the World Series.  After whining like pimps shorted by street walkers, when the Chicago Cubs Organization withdrew its proffer of free tickets to 50 moochers, Progressive Cop-Hating loudmouth Alderman Anwar Pawar beefed about the hit he took

Three aldermen on Monday confirmed that the team had withdrawn the offer after the Board of Ethics on Friday sent out new guidance to aldermen, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials on the issue. Some aldermen were upset, contending that the ethics board and its new chairman, William Conlon, were making much ado about nothing.
"This whole thing is a circus," said Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, whose North Side ward includes part of Wrigleyville, the area that's home to the team's iconic ballpark. "Rather than celebrate the Cubs, the Cubs now are going to have to comment on something when we as a city should be celebrating going to a World Series." Chicago Tribune

N.B. -Attribution goes to Second City Cop, as I always read my news there, before the media cheerleaders.

Also, SCC offers a pithy assessment in vernacular concerning this city's two-score and ten hypocrites:

 "Remember, that's an alder-asshole who decided he was going to threaten the LOCAL Lodge for an endorsement that a NATIONAL Lodge made. Never let actual ethics get in the way of a corrupt deal."

The gobshites are 'ditching school today' -

The City Council chambers will be emptier today, during the important budget hearings because a large number of aldermen, who cannot get tickets to the games in Wrigley Field, have gotten a bus and are going to Cleveland to watch the game, after getting tickets on Stub Hub scalping site.

Thank goodness the Budget Hearings can take care of themselves. SCC

Stronger Together!!!!!!!

Keep voting for morons, neighbors.


* A breathy affirmation and editorial.

Secretary of State John Kerry - Global ReMax Agent

 

It's clear that China is intent to claim all of the South China Sea as its own, and for its exclusive use. Their recent agreement with the Philippines will embolden them further even though the Philippines has not officially given up their claim, they made it clear that it is "for sale". When you understand the Philippines, this makes sense. And to be fair to Filipinos, Hillary Clinton put the US State Department up for sale to the highest bidder and profited personally from her time in office. It's easy to look at the Philippines and blaggard them, but Sec. Clinton did the same thing - only worse. Retired American Intelligence Office

I was flabbergasted by the universal scorn, contempt and low-opinion of John Kerry in the remarks on a Face Book site of  Chicago Council on Foreign Relations touting the appearance of Secretary of State John Kerry.

From negotiating the Iranian nuclear agreement to reopening a US Embassy in Cuba, US Secretary of State John Kerry has shaped historic foreign policy directives. In an increasingly complex international system, growing challenges such as a progressively assertive Russia and China, the global refugee crisis, climate change, and terrorism have all had an impact on US national security and are reshaping America's role in the global arena. How will America continue to respond and engage in a changing world?

Join the Council on Global Affairs and Secretary Kerry for a major speech highlighting America's current international objectives and discussing our country's role in the world moving forward.  (emphases my own)

And John Kerry will explain exactly what?

• How has the Obama Doctrine ( bowing) helped keep the Ukrainian military and merchant fleets bottled up in the Black Sea?
• Why is Syria going to remain in the hands of a chinless psycho path for next few decades?
• Where is China's territorial limit in the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea, the Sea of Japan and Lake Michigan?
• Who is responsible for the Philippine Islands embrace of Red China after 100 years of blood forged alliance and strategic mutual interests?
• What do you have to say about your roll in making Iran a nuclear power and Geo-political player?

Long John Kerry was a lousy Presidential Candidate and allowed Planned Parenthood and a wind sail win the White House for two terms of globalist Neo - Conservatism venture capitalism.

Kerry and most other Progressives of his ilk are corporatist couch-change hunters and Foundation lap dogs who parlay place and position for access.

In short, like Hillary Clinton before him, John Kerry is the global ReMax agent, rather than a steward of American strategic interests - let's negotiate - make a deal!

What deals were managed to allow Red China the control of Pacific, or Putin's the boorish navigation of the English Channel and the Irish Sea?

John Kerry took orders from Valerie Jarrett, just like President Obama, and she knows real estate - local slums and global totalitarian property. Kerry talk is Free.    Nothing else is.

What else is for barter?     Not my time. I would not go, if they handed out Milk Duds at the door.

John Kerry will flap-doodle before an eager crowd of Selfie artists exchanging Kerry's parses for a snap-chat at his is the fourth annual Louis B. Susman Lecture for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations  

If you want to learn something about what is being done to American interests, read Virtual Mirage. 

I am Voting Today - Deplorable, For What It's Worth

Yeah, that's right Hickey. With two Rs. H.I . . .Rockwell.


People get their shorts in a knot because I will not vote for Hillary R. Clinton, Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson. That leaves only Mr. Deplorable Himself, the Gettysburg Groper.

I do not care for whom you vote; you vote for thee - not me.

This is the terrible truth of a republican democracy - we must choose. Maybe, we will choose wrongly.

In my career as a voter ( 1972- Present)- here are my votes:
 1.( W) Richard M. Nixon: I worked for the 18th Ward Regular Democrat Organization to help elect McGovern Delegates.  In Miami, Jesse Jackson, Abner Mikva, Michael Shakman and Bill Singer challenged those delegates and the DNC tossed them - my first Progressive Rig-job. The Roe V. Wade easily put America on its death spiral.  I voted for Tricky Dick, who resigned and good old Gerald Ford pardoned the crumb - that nixed any vote for Jerry. I went to GOP dominated Kankakee, IL and began teaching in 1975.

2. (W)Jimmy Carter: Boy was that fun and then Mr. Peanut put on sweaters and gas went through the roof and Iran went crazy and rabbits attacked him and Brother Billy brewed beer and took bribes from the Libyans and I thought Ronald Reagan was scary and so . . .well, Ted Kennedy who drowned a girl popped up every election cycle like a legacy whack-a-mole and teased Gov. Moonbeam and Jimmy.

3.(L) Jimmy Carter got smeared and Ronald Reagan softened the hearts of blue collar Catholic voters, by fighting for the unborn, fighting the Reds, taking a bullet and behaving with dignity, but he was still a GOP, Protestant left-footer. Abscam, the Ruskie Afghanistan bleed out, Star Wars, Commie in Central America and Grenada, Lebanon and now , (l)Fritz Mondale

4. ( L) Fritz Mondale, sweet guy.  Road kill.  The Reagan Years - Pax Americana.

5. Then George Herbert Walker Bush emerged from the shadows of the Vice Presidency, CIA and Huge Oil and sounded like Aunt Nancy from Chebanse and we had TED Kennedy again, and finally   ( L) Mike Dukakis - Snoopy Drives an Abrams and the  Desert Storm of Poppi of Kennibunkport and then Bubba showed . . .upin 1988 at the DNC!   I had taken a job in Indiana and watched the world get goofier  beyond the pines and spring fed lake of La Lumiere School.

6. ( W.W.)William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore were the first two non-WWII veteran, baby-boomers to run for President and they seemed like great guys - one with a homely wife and one with a stunner. The guy with the pooch-Frau was the top of the ticket and word got around that he was quite a hound himself.  I remember pushing my son Conor in a stroller at the 1992 South Side Irish Parade and seeing Gore and Clinton work the crowd on Western Ave. two tall good looking guys in black topcoats. I voted Clinton over Dole in 1996

7.  Bubba had the chops and his two terms mired by repeated scandals about money and sex and finally the national humiliation of unveiling the truth about a President who could eat a pizza, enjoy a fellation from a young White Staffer and chat with a congressman about Bosnia all at once. Our moral soul fit like OJ's gloves.  I needed a shower. and ( L) John Kerry did not help with his I Had an Abortion  pinking up the Boston DNC, while he wind-sailed to the camera's - What and A$$hole!. GW Bush was gearing up for a royal coronation, because Kerry was as lame as he has been as Secretary of State and got hammered.  We went to War on Terror and I like the way GW Bush responded to the 9/11/2001 attack on America, until he took Poppi's phone call and allowed the Saudis to jet away scot-free and then sent our kids to Afghanistan and then Iraq.

8. (L) Al Gore 'invented the internet' and brought all of the excitement and energy of a glutton at Weight Watchers to a challenge to GW and my vote for the last Democratic Presidential Candidate of my career in the polling booth ended on the hanging chads.

9.( L) John McCain should have easily beaten Barack Obama in 2008: he had a great VP choice in Governor Palin, a great message, experience and the media behind him for the most part against a callow, not-very-bright, prickly, self-absorbed community organizer who was whiter than Clarence Thomas and pals with the very people who made me cast my virgin vote for Nixon.  The Mortgage Investment Bubble blew and the economy tanked.  McCain who had endured horrible dangers and excruciating torture at the hands of Communists, ran away from a capitalist bump in the road and all but stopped campaigning after September 2008. He allowed Sarah Palin and her entire family to become a target for ridicule and never stood up for her.  Obama handed him his ass.

10. Barack H. Obama with Valerie Jarrett handing him orders and orchestrating his every move is the most protected, petted and pitiful President in our nation's history.  Obama is the 501(c) 3 President and PAC powerful clothes-horse.  The GOP is a party of cowards, sycophants, martyrs and zealots interspersed with a few genuine men of integrity and ability. (L) Mitt Romney, the Walter Mondale of the GOP, was offered up in sacrifice to Obama, in order to save and even increase numbers in House and Senate.

Bringing me to Election 2016.  I really need a shower.  I would have voted Democrat for Jim Webb, Republican Scott Walker, or Independent Rand Paul.  Instead we have the current choices, a Shameless Abortion Happy Medusa and a Shameful Braggart and Groper.  The others are toys for the Never/Never crowd of moral fiber eaters.

I am voting when the early polls vote. I stand at 4-7.

W - Nixon, Carter, Clinton (2) = 4
L. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, Gore, McCain. Romney =7

Here goes my ballot 2016!