South Side St. Paddy Parade is Looming and a Pot of Slumgullion is Just the Thing

slum·gul·lion(ˌsləmˈɡəlyən)
noun: USinformal
noun: slumgullion
cheap or insubstantial stew.

Insubstantial?  My broad manly rump, Hombre!  Who is writing these WEB definitions?

Before I bolt the hood, exchanging the shouting and bag piping of the annual South Side St. Paddy's Day Parade, for lowing of black and white dairy cattle in Dodgeville, Wisconsin ( home to best Cornish pasties that side of Bridgeport) and the expected dusting of March snow, I shall pot up a mess of slumgullion.

Slumgullion is the food of the working people who built America!  Not Howard Zinn activists and trust funded hair-shirts of the 21st Century American History textbooks, but the real people, former slaves, black, white, brown, yellow and tawny.  They are Edna Ferber's Midwestern Jews, Bohemian, Alsatian immigrants; they are John Dos Passos' Portuguese, Irish, WASP, and Begian adventurers; They are Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas and James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan.  They are slumgullion eaters.

Slumgullion is a varietal staple that can include Chinese five spices, Mexican cumino, Japanese ginger, Hungarian smoked paprika, or just salt and black paper.

You need a cauldron, Dutch oven, iron pot or slow cooker of some volume.

Beef and Pork are the usual cuts of meat, but chicken, squirrel, turtle, or fish will work as well.

Root vegetables, or macaroni, pasta, rice or noodles will add substance to savories.

Here is my offering today.

                                               Pat Hickey Slumgullion

two lbs - of chuck cut like Fajitas dredged in three good tablespoon of flour, smoked paprika and cilantro

One 1/2 cup of Mire Poix( celery,onion and carrots)

Five medium potatoes peeled - I use three Golden Yellow and two Russets

Five sprigs of Rosemary and five sprigs of thyme

One 16 oz. Can of Crushed Tomatoes and one small can of tomato paste

Two long dashes of Worcestershire sauce

A pinch of crushed Red pepper flakes

One five quart Hamilton Beach slow cooker

One skillet with three tablespoons of Olive Oil

Methode: À la manière de Hickey

In a large plastic bag add flour, smoked paprika and cilantro; Mix well and add the beef and roll it , bounce and knead the hell out of it  and let sit for about ten minutes.

Add beef to the skillet and brown it.  When good and brown make room for the mire poix and saute and them blend all together, Cook until all vegetables are tender-ish

Peel and coarsely cut five potatoes and place them in the bottom of the slow cooker.

Pour meat and mire poix mixture over the spuds.

Add 16 oz. can of crushed tomatoes and then the tomato paste and mix them together over the meat and spud.

Squirt five dashes of Worchester and sprinkle crushed red peppers over the tomatoes

Layer rosemary and thyme sprigs and mushrooms on top.

Cook on low for twelve to 24 hours. This will be ready to put in the ice box when I return from Wisconsin Sunday night and then Hold the Phone all week!

Serve with Pat Hickey Cornbread - Preheat oven to 425 degrees

2 cups of Aunt Jemima Corn Meal
one Jumbo egg
one can of creamed corn
2/3 cup of milk
two tablespoons of sugar
one tablespoon of good vanilla extra

Mix it all with a fork

Pour contents into a pie tin or cast iron skillet and drizzle honey over the mixture

Bake for 25-28 minutes.


This is perfect for the snowy weather expected next week.  I'll be eating it up to Friday next.  Then eggs, mushrooms, spinach, peppers and Giardinara.

The Problem of the Chicago Voter Outside of the Ensorcelled Circle

Imagine if a Mayor of Chicago, had at one time been a civil engineer and actually read Mary Wisniewski's fine piece of reporting in the editorially awful Chicago Tribune - all crap that Rahm approves.  Too bad a Mayor is not a civil engineer by trade . . . Oh, that's right . . .one (Ed Kelly) was but that was long before Ms.Wiszniewski wrote about crumbling bridges.

Instead, we live in a politics and policy driven Progressive, global, Banana Republic. This is a malicious make-believe palace, a fairy tale world where magical things can happen for an Oh, so very few, including an eight year stay in the White House for a very special lad, or where a little guy can sit on another little guy's lap and tell him that he too dreams of being Mayor.

It is a place where big dreams count as nothing and fortunes trump virtue.

It is a tight ensorcelled circle that welcomes only the approved - the businesses, the banks, the law firms, the real estate wizards, the University and 501(c)3 public policy tax vacuums and the very few people enchanted for windfalls.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle only those with an immediate connection to the source of gold some few benefit with multiple pensions, Shakman exempt appointments, or sinecures beyond  of the vision of  everyone else.

That leaves out millions of Chicagoans and many more Cook County residents.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle people make due, beef about water bills, tax increases, burgeoning crimes against person and property, horrific public schools and worse public servants.

Yet, these same put-upon people vote the ticket every election and every time.

Gun Violence and Police Misconduct keep every eye on flaccid media writers like Eric Zorn, Neil Steinberg, Stephen Chapman and Mary Schmich, or smarmy echo-chamber Orwellians on WBEZ, or WTTW.

Chicagoans nod, sigh and wait for the Cubbies. Sadly band wagon south siders feel a tingle in the thighs over the baby bear and forget 2005 as a time past. Same goes with political villainy.  Chicagoans are too nice by half.

They scratch their heads about

• Forrest Claypool's latest six figure job and pension package
• Suzanne Mendoza's leap from Herbie Pulgar to the Comptoller's chair
• Pat Quinn
• Proco Joe
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Mike Quigley
• Jan Schakowsky

And think nothing about putting an " I'm With Rahm" sign on the their lawns

Chicagoans will always do a neighbor a solid; even if the neighbor works against every fundmental core value you have, makes a ton of money and pension for following orders.

The only thing necessary for the perpetuation of evil in Cook County is for good people to do a solid for Frannie, Billy, Tommy, or any other knucklehead with a government gig.

It is one thing to break wind in the bath tub; it is another thing altogether to bite the bubbles.

Chicago Employee Pension Literature Proves ManPower Shortage, not "Systemic Racism, or Code of Silence" Behind ChiRaq's Crime Rates

 

Police Blogger, The Second City Cop (SCC), fought fake news from the Chicago media for decades; in fact, Sneed, Frank Main and Fran Spielman often pluck SSC's low-handing fruits of fact to shore up their propaganda efforts on behalf of the 5th Floor.


Along with left-leaning, but always fair-minded and honest Beachwood Reporter, Second City Cop opens my eyes to a new day, long before they labor over the ink spilled by any Chicago daily.

Today, using a brochure for City of Chicago Pensioners, SCC clearly addresses the decades long manpower shortage that burdens hard working Chicago peace officers. Pointing to a graph featuring annual employee contributions, SCC illustrates the lie told by Chicago media at the behest of Mayors Daley and Emanuel.

That is the manpower paying into the pension for the CPD, from 2006 thru 2015. And it shows, beyond any doubt, that manpower dwindled from 13,749 to 12,061 - a reduction of 1,688 officers. If you don't think that has a lot to do with the current rising crime trends, well, we can't help you. The Second City Cop

I get my news from many sources.  SCC is one of the most reliable.

I Believe President Trump is Doing a Great Job. . . .so, Far. Media Needs to Be Ignored.

Barack Obama began his political career as a community organizer on the south side. It would be difficult to imagine that he was not swept up into the mythology against Burge and his men taking shape on the south side at the very time he was honing his political skills and building his power base. 

After all, Obama’s political base is tied to both factions that came together in the wrongful conviction movement. One facet of Obama’s political power is clearly the black caucus of the south side. Obama also clearly has ties to the white, upper middle-class radical faction of the wrongful conviction movement as well, for his friendship and alliance with former Weather Underground terrorists and PLO allies like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers has been well documented. 

And like both these factions, Obama shares their intense antipathy to law enforcement and the criminal justice system, an antipathy born out throughout his presidency.  Author and CPD Officer Martin Preib 2016

Can't agree more.  President Obama will go down in history as the first Black President, the first Abortion President,  the Gay Marriage President, The Transgender Bathroom President and the President who ordered the strike on Osama Bin Laden.   That is pretty much all that he accomplished in eight long, self-congratulatory and mediocre years.

I voted for Donald Trump.  I am a Democrat, a Catholic, skilled trades pro-labor, anti-Communist and anti-Corporatist voter.  The last eight years and last thirty years here in Chicago and Cook County have proven to be the foundation poured and set for an oligarchy.  This is a Banana Republic that uses Marxist-Progressive rhetoric to mask corporate state economics that employs TIFS, Zoning, Untouchable Slum Real Estate moguls with a backdoor key to the White House, Banks, blue-stocking law firms, University and 501(c)3 treasure houses, a supine disinterested media and villainous political grifters to turn millions into billions, while retaining the votes and good will of the very people they looting, marginalizing and murdering.

Yep, urban Thug homicides and Police memes about racism are the shiny objects used to distract the masses from their evaporating pensions, unsafe neighborhoods and wretched public schools.

America was becoming the Banana Republic that is Chicago and Cook County, Illinois.

I voted for Donald Trump in the  hope that all of this might slow its pace.

Silly me, it sure appears that voting for Trump means much more.  The elites are trembling.

In the last 40 days, President Trump has

• Nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court - confounding  the abortion industry and haters of Justice Scalia
• Saved the Coal Industry - confounding Bill Nye the Science Guy and other Gore Shills
• Ok'd the Keystone Pipeline -confounding Warren Buffet's railroading of the environment, Native Americans and Union workers
• Set about the deconstruction of ObamaCare - confounding the pharmaceutical giants, the insurance grifters and Nancy Pelosi
• Killed the Trans Pacific Partnership - confounding Richard M. Daley, Red China and South China Sea pirates
• Challenged Sanctuary Cities - confounding Blaze Cardinal Cupich and other American Episco-politians
• Stocks are nuts and going up, up and up - confounding George Will, David Brooks and Michael Moore

Well, to read the Chicago papers and the go-a-longs who write for them, Trump has violated every sensibility, and endangers everything.

• Trump talks to Russians, but has yet to sit down with Chance the Rapper
• Trump bad mouths ChiRaq - for real?
• Trump has a big building named after him, but the street sign is gone
• Trump never barbecued with Bill Ayers
• Trump has no slum properties with Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis, or Judson Miner
• Can't speak French

It has been noted that 88% of the media coverage has been negative since January 20th.  Here in Chicago it must run as high 99%.

That is cool.  If I felt in harmony with Bruce Dold, or Birkenstock hemp sandals at the Sun Times, I rush over to see Dr. Harshad Mehta at Little Company about the levels of loco weed in my Wheaties.

As it is, I feel confident that things will be better for helots me and my neighbors.  Things might be a bit prickly for the once comfortable, smug, thoughtlessly arrogant and venal elites in this Hick burg.

That would be cool. 

Moral Outrage (Getting One's Undies in a Bunch) a Sign of an Unhealthy Conscience

Hey,hey! Ho, Ho! Kelly Anne Conway's Pumps Have Gotta Go! Some folks losing sleep over feet on the couch?  Not this bag of smelts.  And I doooooooooooo love smelts!

I sleep like a log.  Some might say. "well, so do psychopaths."  Yeah?  Name two.

Sleep is the benefit people cash-in because brave men and women stand guard over all of us. Better men than me have said so -

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. George Orwell

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,/The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here./”The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,…/O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;/An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bitIs five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.   Rudyard Kipling

Orwell wrote an essay on this Kipling  1890 poem Tommy Atkins and noted:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.

This here sleeper is as  yellow as a duck's foot, but  honors the people who stand watch over his crib.

Moral outrage works well with 'humanitarians' - people who wouldn't give a starving blind girl a Confederate dime - and seem to ignite great group fuses of carbon foot-prints.

My moral outrage pencil-detonator must not be American made.

Michael Moore neither amuses, nor impels the Hickey moral tinder to spark.  Fat old guys in baseball hats scare little kids off the playground. Stranger Danger!

A recent study that I found in a magazine from the UK, the home of Orwell and Kipling, points to some interesting and telling features about folks who get morally outraged with every Tweet.

Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.

No problem where I come from - guilt and shame are the real breakfast of champions.

I get yelled at by family, friends and neighbors whenever bumptious, boorish, or boastful bad old me surfaces.  Stay moral and stay at peace.

This study by Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion is most telling.

Here's a list of their finds from Reason magazine.

• Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
• The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
• Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
• "The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
• Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.

Hell, I ain't mad at nobody.

Love my straight eight.

The Birth of My Granddaughter Elizabeth Mary Rhein Made it Official: I am a Geezer!

I am proud to report that on February 28, 2017 at 6:15 P.M.  my grand-daughter Mary Elizabeth Rhein made me a geezer*:

Little Ms. Rhein's grandmother, who resides in Heaven, spent the last nine months and change bunking in with the young lady in formation, offering comfort, counsel and cooking tips- of that I have no doubt.

I have yet to meet this lovely lady, but plan to do so after classes today.

Mother and Father and bonding nicely with our little Princess.  Uncle and Aunt are stoked,

Grandpa is through the roof.

* ear hair machine
   blue hair
   dad
   Methusalah
    

State of the Union: 14 shot in Chicago Over the Weekend

So, La-La Land is runner up.

Gee.

CVS is closing 11 stores in poor black neighborhoods. The Sun Times will not mention this.

Parkway Gardens is still O Block. However, Angela Caputo will never connect the dots back *to Habitat, HUD, Allison Davis and Valerie Jarrett. 

14 Chicagoans were killed since last Friday.

City of Chicago employees have had their pensions looted by elected officials from RMD (Richie of Mass Destruction) to RIE (Rahm Ignores Everything)

I am a City of Chicago employee. I am not the enemy, I am not the problem. You, the Government, have been raiding my pension fund whenever you need money. You, the Government, mismanaged your money. I also pay into my retirement every paycheck. I follow the rules you set up and we agreed to. Now you want to blame me for our State's/City's money woes and steal from my retirement benefits? If you are a public employee/retiree please copy and paste as your status. Facebook: 

And President Trump had absolutely nothing to do with any of the above.

Still, Chicago's two papers remain thick with Trump Toxicology teases.  Even the epic-ly empty Michael Sneed is offering rhetoric lessons to President 45 and Rahm Emanuel, who stood with the owners of Parkway Gardens in 2013, the privatized real estate development of a former HUD housing project, a pet Valerie Jarrett project,** remains bullet proof in both papers.

The State of the Union will be whoopee cushion for the media.


Chicago will keep on keepin' on.


Wonder what March will bring?

Now, who lives in La-La Land?


*Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems."Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there," said Jarrett, whose company manages more than 23,000 apartments. "I would argue that someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn't 100 percent public housing is by definition better off." Boston Globe 2008

**Valerie JarrettWho Am I?
Chicago Medical Center As Well.” (Jay Newton-Small, “Campaign Insider,” Time, 4/7/08)
“Chicago Is In The Running For The 2016 Olympics … One Of Obama’s Top Advisers, Valerie Jarrett, Is The Vice Chair Of Chicago’s Bid Committee.” (Lynn Sweet, “McCain, Obama, Clinton All Push Bush On China Games,” Chicago Sun-Times, 4/10/08)
Under A Plan Devised By The City Of Chicago And Habitat Co., “The City Has Lost More Than 13,000 Housing Units For The Poor.” (Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen, “Obama Adviser Shapes City Housing Policy,” Chicago Tribune, 7/5/08)
•”Habitat Has Earned $6.8 Million In Fees And $10.8 Million In Administrative Expenses Since The Plan Started In 2000, According To The U.S. Department Of Housing And Urban Development.” (Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen, “Obama Adviser Shapes City Housing Policy,” Chicago Tribune, 7/5/08)
“Jarrett Is The Chief Executive Of Habitat Co., Which Managed Grove Parc Plaza From 2001 Until This Winter And Co-Managed An Even Larger Subsidized Complex In Chicago That Was Seized By The Federal Government In 2006, After City Inspectors Found Widespread Problems.” (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim Proving Ground For Obama’s Housing Policy,” The Boston Globe, 6/27/08)
•”In 2006, Federal Inspectors Graded The Condition Of [Grove Parc] An 11 On A 100-Point Scale – A Score So Bad The Buildings Now Face Demolition.” (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim Proving Ground For Obama’s Housing Policy,” The Boston Globe, 6/27/08)
“[Jarrett] Has Also Served As Chair Of Both The Chicago Transit Board And The Chicago Stock Exchange.” (Jay Newton-Small, “Campaign Insider,” Time, 4/7/08)
“[M]ayor Richard Daley Thursday Announced The Merger Of The City’s Planning Department And Economic Development Department, To Be Headed By Valerie Jarrett, His Former Deputy Chief Of Staff.” (Robert Davis, “Daley Merges Planning, Economic Development Staffs,” Chicago Tribune, 10/11/91)

" It was Thoughtless, Cruel and Bullying of Trump!" Shrieked the Gal at the Urinal Nest To Me

Quid Nunc?

Yep, Trump's a dog.  I ordered ice cream at lunch today and one of the teachers asked me, as a social justice instructor, what I thought of Trump's transgender 'let the States Decide' mandate.
Like any good American I said, "Gee, I don't know. What do you think?"

My colleague went off on that Orange haired crazy man in the White House.

My ice cream melted.

If Obama had been in the White House, no would would ask me anything about his policies.

Trump melted my ice cream. Trump and global warming. It's February and it is 70 degrees. God? Carbon foot-printing? Trump?

Catholic social justice warns us that " rejecting the false promises of excessive or conspicuous consumption can even allow more time for family, friends, and civic responsibilities. A renewed sense of sacrifice and restraint could make an essential contribution to addressing global climate change. "

I had a scoop of vanilla.

I could have given it up and put $ 2.00 in the mission pouch.

I didn't.

I like vanilla ice cream.

It's all about me.

Trump melts ice cream. I am a selfish brute.

Off to the lavratory in our single gender Catholic high school.

John Kass Coins Brilliant Neologism - Supine Journalist and Oligarchy Sycophants are American Kemalists

Kemalism (Atatürkcülük) is the main structure of realistic ideas and principles about the state, ideologies, economics and the society’s fundamental institution that assure the Turkish Nation’s full independence, peace and welfare for the present and the future, the state’s being dependent on the nation’s solidarity Oxford Islamic Studies

One thought, one voice - that is the resistance.  From Michael Moore to Bruce Dold; from Nancy Pelosi to Rahm Emanuel; from Mika Brzezinski to Sheriff Tom Dart they are one in the spirit and one with the laws, policies and editorials that create more opportunities for Red Light Camera Companies, Uber Board Membership, Gentrification Aldermanic Generosities, and Nepotism leading to Dynastic Sinecures!

The Chicago Progressive Banana Republic was replicated nationally for eight years with the Obama White House.

From the Progressive Mikva Shakman Chicago of the 1980's there evolved the many faced Richie Daley's Ameritech Chicago, Boeing Chicago, LaSalle National Chicago, Fifth Third and Goldman Sachs Chicago and finally in full flowering fruition as Brand Obama Chicago, which it still remains with Rahm.

This oligarchic tendency is national and not limited to the City formerly known as Big Shoulders, but a coast and coast tendency blooming in New York and walking the red carpet in L.A.

The vast middle opened the door of the White House for the Obama moving van on November 8, 2016 and the howls have increased in volume from David Brooks to Eric Zorn, from Lynn Sweet to to Sally Kohn - TRUMP'S HITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, cupcakes, Hitler is still Hitler and Joe Stalin would be as welcome as the flowers in May on Morning Joe.

However, the only voice in print journalism un-impressed with, un-Hope-iumed and un-shackled by the Obama Chimera, John Kass offers a more compact nomenclature - American Kemalism, to describe the need, the plead, and greed that it corporatist statism covering American left culture like a Scherwin Williams ad.

In a brilliant rhetorical Granby taking the dominant voices of oligarchy to the mat, John Kass pins the supine media of the Obama Years:
But this business of finding a renewed sense of journalistic mission poses an awkward, unanswered question.

Just where was that sense of mission for the past eight years?
You know where it was. It was in polite hibernation, on its back, with President Barack Obama in the White House.
When he was elected, there were happy newsroom tears of real joy for America's first black liberal president. It wasn't contrived emotion. It was real, and there was much bonding over a sense of accomplishment.
But there is a cost to powerful emotional connections with a politician. Love of a president can blind, but so can hatred of a president. And in the land of the blind, things tend to get lost, like journalistic mission.

One might wonder.

But John Kass is a great neighbor and he not only clears up the matter of the skunks behind the dry wall, but shoos them out.

Now journalists are at the barricades once again, like those idealistic students of Paris in "Les Miserables," protecting us against the orange-haired barbarian they so very much despise.
And they also seek to protect America against his populist army, that forgotten working class that sent him to Washington and that frighten them so very much.
Trump despises his media critics, and in his raging narcissism, shrieks that what we call the establishment media is "the enemy of the American people," and this only encourages them to hunker down even deeper into their Left vs. Trump bunker.
Yes, the criers of Beltway news are on the political left. But that's like saying rain is wet. Where's the surprise in this?
Modern American liberal journalism might not believe religion has a place in the public square, but it has a deep abiding faith, in government to accomplish the good. And there is the danger.
Because if journalists were truly intent on speaking truth to power, they wouldn't be defending the unelected rulers of America:

One slight objection: Les Miz is so Bill Clinton.  These are Hamilton Partisans!

However, the guy from the Hood who can sling ink and say something, puts the cherry on this sundae with this neologism and a nod to Busty Brzezinski of Morning Joe:

 The unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucracy is true power. The federal governmental leviathan is the faceless vanguard of the status quo. It is the vast hiding place of our modern American Kemalists, who are at once the servants of empire, and its quiet rulers, and they will not relinquish power easily.
Trump was sent to Washington by the majority of the states and by his voters — those folks repeatedly mocked and ridiculed as deplorables by Beltway journalism — to break that status quo.
And the bureaucracy fights back, offering crippling news leaks and resistance against the White House — even classified intelligence leaks from the Deep State — in exchange for journalistic protection.
On the popular MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, co-host Mika Brzezinski responded to whether Trump's attacks on the status quo were the fulfillment of campaign promises.
"Well, and I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media," Brzezinski said, "trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is the — that is our job."
Later, she tweeted out that her comments were purposely misinterpreted, but I listened to it again and again and it was quite clear to me.
Controlling what people think isn't a mere job. It's a mission.
And now it's been renewed.

Journalism is not dead.  It written by neighbors.

American Kemalists are outed. 

Pray, Live and Act Solid and Solidarity Happens

Many Americans are fired up in a bad way about Trump getting elected, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, aka RevCom, founded in 1975 by UC Berkeley grad and party chairman Bob Avakian, are particularly vocal about it. A stroll by Revolution Books, in the alleyway just west of Telegraph, between Durant Avenue and Channing Way, will tell you as much. Outside the store sits a signboard with a large poster of Trump in a KKK cap, complete with Hitler-stache—an image made all the more sinister by the gloom of the dark, rainy skies that have been drowning the Bay in the wake of the election. “MEIN TRUMPF,” it reads below his scowling pumpkin-colored face, “A Thoroughly American Fascist Pig.” Below that, a flyer states: “WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FACIST AMERICA.” Cal Alumni Association

The Revolutionary Communist Party are the printers for the Solidarity crowd. Instead of the old Union Printers Bug One is more likely to see this at the bottom of every Solidarity march in the rainbow.

In November such signs were brought into my neighborhood to provoke and stir up outrage after a an idiot was shot and killed for pulling a loaded gun on people on 111th Street at three in the afternoon.

The Chicago Media (especially DNAinfo Chicago) never cited the Revolutionary Communists. They never will. The oligarchs need the divisive to rule the complacent.  It works swell in Chicago.

As to the November provocations, cool heads prevailed, in spite of a daily dose bad, incomplete and false information from the Chicago media, a street hustling priest, and Chicago's Episco-politician prelate.

The calls for Solidarity by agents of change are more like cattle calls for unoriginal thinkers, casting calls for self-absorbed people and opportunities to vent frustrations by most people who march, chant, moon and go home to HBO, than heroic phalanxes of determined patriots facing tanks, coiled Spetsnaz killers and fifty years of totalitarian rule.  Andy Thayer and Ja'mal Green ain't Lech Walensa.

I am teaching Social Justice to juniors at a Chicago single gender (make) Catholic High School.  The textbook for the class is very skewed toward PC Socialism, rather than Catholic Social Justice - Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Bishop Bernard Shiel, Francis Cabrini, or Bishop Dagger John Hughes.

Rather, it is propaganda for street activists and big dominant and wildly highlighted  word is Solidarity.  The book insists that Wealth is an evil as opposed to a pile of cash, much in the same way that the Left has made an anthropomorphic villain of a firearm.  Guns kill People!  Yes, in the same manner that pencils fail exams.

Thomas Aquinas would have the strap out for the editors.

I point out the more glaring falsities and less than subtle propaganda. High school students believe a text is true because it is 'on the test.'  My aunt believed Liberace was a catch for some nice girl. The USCCB approved the text as, -OK!

The book is bad and I'll leave it at that.  I voiced my opinion to the gents and they seem to agree.

Jesus was not a community organizer.  Jesus liked people.  Jesus did not like phonies and thieves. Jesus chided zealots.

In fact, St. Simon called the Zealot, is a confusing character to most scholars. Blockheads who saw and absorbed Jesus Christ Superstar insist that Simon influenced Jesus go all Che Guevara on the Romans.

Jesus said exactly what He and His Pa expect of us - said so this past Sunday:

"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." MT 5:38-48

Fr. Thomas Jackson, O.P. gave a delightful and poignant homily on this core text of Catholic Social Justice.  Father Jackson, an African American fullback of a man, begged us to pray for him.  Pray that he and all of us might turn down Bill O'Reilly, or Bill Maher and get real with our lives.  He mentioned that he still has trouble 'turning the other cheek' when confronted with real evil.  He said our grandfathers fought real evil and their sons and grandsons continue to do so in Iraq and on the streets of ChiRaq.  We all must confront real evil - not pretend evil - but there are those of us , like Knights Templar of old, who must and should wield the sword.  We who do confront evil as soldiers and police officers, should work for peace.  No salary, just do the right thing and treat people with respect.  Paid Peacemakers tend to be creeps who take the easy and the low road that never seems to be thick with consequences.

Professional Peacemakers never seem go to North Korea, or chant 'Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho,/Boko Haram must let the girls go!' - now, why is that?  Well, because Kim would use them for mortar practice and Boko Haram would rape and butcher them.  Peace advocates never call for Solidarity against ISIS(l).  No they spit at, abuse, threaten and advocate the killing of police officers, Trump voters, or Milo.

It is tough to love everyone.  That is why sainthood is not for cupcakes. I am as yellow as a duck's foot and as crabby as Charlie Sheen after a long weekend.   Like Father Jackson, I need prayer.  I need courage. I need grace. The only source of those comes from Christ.


I will not obtain the grace to love my fellow man, even the creeps on AARP commercials, by marching in Solidarity with cherry-picked identity victims.

Solidarity requires that one hate the haters.  Someone else picks the haters. Standing in Solidarity places you against of your neighbors.   Pretty soon, rounding them up seems like a great idea.

Pray, live and act like a solid person.  You will find yourself in great company.

 

Lemonade Stands All Over the 19th Ward From February 17th to President's Day

 Did your carbon footprint create this glorious weather?  Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself?  No?  Me, neither.

This was one glorious weekend in February!

Here in the neighborhood ( Morgan Park/Beverly/ Mount Greenwood), I found side-walk chalk markings all up and down Talman and in the parking lot of St. John Fisher, but more importantly, while hiking my lard around the Ward from Friday through Sunday, I nearly went broke buying lemonade.

Kids were busy kicking up a buck at 108th & Campbell, 110th & Washtenaw, Talman between 109th and 103rd looked like a county fair.

Little ladies and gents were hawking their Real Lemon Reconstituted, water and Domino's mixed elixirs from card tables, wagons, lawn chairs and or porches.

" Buy some Lemonade, Mister!"

The dude abides.  

ABC 7 I-Team Smear of Cops - Chuck Goudie Couldn't Find a Car Dealership on Western Avenue

A Tree knows how to respond to a Chuck Goudie investigation. 

Chuck Goudie has had a long and sad career as reader on Chicago Channel 7, ABC (Disney) News.

Chuck violated a crime scene during the investigation of Lee Miglin's 1997 murder.

Over the years, Goudie and some other aggressive reporters have come under criticism at times for perhaps going too far to get a story.
Goudie found himself squarely in the national media spotlight in 1997, when he covered the hunt for Andrew Cunanan, who was accused of killing Chicago developer Lee Miglin and designer Gianni Versace.
In Miami Beach, Goudie was let into a hotel room where Cunanan apparently had stayed, but that the police and FBI had overlooked. Goudie filed a report that showed him holding some items in the room.
Law enforcement officials were outraged and accused Goudie of crossing an ethical line in his reporting and possibly tampering with evidence. Some colleagues, including the news director for the ABC affiliate in Miami, which ran video of the report, were harsh in their criticism.
He says he had been told that police and the FBI had already been through the room, and that the room was ready for someone else to use.
"I was surprised some people in my business turned on it so quickly," Goudie says.

Gee, sounds like Chuck all but invented alternative facts.

Then, Chuck went on to smear Leo High School.

 By Chuck Goudie and Ann Pistone

 3 CHICAGO AREA CATHOLIC SCHOOLS KEEP DANGEROUS SECRETS, SEX ABUSE VICTIMS SAY

Tuesday, June 02, 2015
CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team looked into claims by nearly 100 alleged victims of sexual abuse in metro Chicago that the archdiocese and some of its schools are keeping dangerous secrets.
The case involves claims of sexual and physical abuse by priests and teachers at three local Catholic high schools. The three high schools have been a part of a Roman Catholic order called the Irish Christian Brothers. Hundreds of men and women accused members of the North American order of sexual abuse. . . . He says this to close Investigations, ” The I-Team left numerous messages at , Leo and . . . , but never heard back.”

Well, in 2015 I was working at Leo High School;  I replied to Chuck and his I-Team in the Chicago Daily Observer:

 Not true, Chuck.  One lovely young African American single mother of two answers, or takes down every phone message, every e-mail and every carrier pigeon missive that come to Leo High School, where it has been since 1926 at 7901 S. Sangamon Street 60620, ph.(773) 224-9600 ex. 208 (for me) and fax at (773) 224-3856. E-mail come to admin@leohighschool.org. Also, every communication with regard to Leo High School goes through a genuine journalist and newsman, Leo President Dan McGrath.  This inquiry, Chuck, would not be Dan McGrath’s first rodeo.  We got nothing from ABC, Channel 7, or the I-Team.
Nothing from I-Team and nothing from Chuck. So, that is a smear – saying we do not return phone calls, much less keep “dangerous secrets.”
Unless Chuck Goudie is prepared to call a lovely young African American single mother of two a liar, I’d say Chuck should crawfish on his report in a very public manner.
In a really nice world, a Leo Alumnus who has a very public record of going to court and righting public wrongs should give Chuck Goudie an old school legal ass-kicking.

Leo never heard from Chuck Goudie, before, during and certainly never after Chuck's investigation went nowhere.

Chuck gets fed his dope by people with an agenda and that is what he calls "investigative journalism."

Today, with bodies piling up all over Chicago, hostility toward police at toxic levels, a Banana Republic operating out of City Hall and the County Building the ABC 7 I-Team led by Chuck the Boneless tosses piles of domestic violence numbers at the wall to see if anything will stick:

By Chuck Goudie and Ross Weidner, Christine Tressel, Barb Markoff
Thursday, February 16, 2017 10:34PM
CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC 7 I-Team uncovered a stunning number of domestic violence complaints against Chicago police officers and an overwhelming lack of disciplinary action resulting from those complaints.
If you are a Chicago police officer accused of domestic violence, Code 600 will be the likely outcome. That is the police jargon for no disciplinary action.
In nine of every 10 domestic violence allegations made against officers by their spouse or children, no disciplinary action is ever taken. And there are a lot of allegations.
Chicago police respond to nearly 500 domestic related calls a day, according to the latest department data; calls for help at home from across the city.
But the I-Team uncovered surprising domestic violence complaints about police officers themselves.
"It kind of shakes people to the core to have to deal with that reality that this may be the person who's answering your call for help," Diane Wetendorf, police domestic violence expert, said.
Wetendorf is a police domestic violence expert and advocate based in the northern suburbs. For years she said she helped victims who were abused at the hands of Chicago police.

Gee, a for-real domestic violence expert and advocate!

This level of nonsense goes nowhere, but into the maws of critics of police and into the pockets of experts and advocates.

Police work is brutal, but not as brutal, small-hearted and idiotic as Chicago's mewling political lickspittle media.

Chuck Goudie is the media.

American Media - Our Own Oroville Dam: Thank You, Mrs. Conway!

The Conways




The American Media

News hucksters paved Donald Trump's path to the White House and wasted every brick trust in so doing.

People who wanted to see an end of to the global corporatist oligarchy built by Progressive Democrats during during the Clinton years and tuck-pointed by GOP mavericks and Skull and Bones opportunity trowel masters, hoped for Scott Walker or Rand Paul, or James Webb, or Ben Carson to emerge from the political hair-ball that was 2016 Election, but due to CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post and  Internet-pockets of pimply Journolism at Salon, VOX and Daily Beast bet that Donald Trump would suck all of the air out of atmosphere and blow life into Hillary Clinton.

These people, me included. turned to Donald Trump as the only choice and hoped that he would be better than he seemed.

He was and sure seems to be - Michael Flynn notwithstanding.

I read that Morning Joe, as well as CNN has banned Kelly Anne Conway.  Good.  Kelly Anne Conway makes sense and confounds airheads like busty Mika and vapid Joe.

Mrs. Conway belongs to my crowd of people. People who shop main street, send the kids to Catholic school, speak plainly, understand the nuances of bullshitters and respond in kind, work for a living and care about the truth.  She does not 'only watch PBS, read the New York Times, or admire David Brooks.'  Mrs. Conway reads everything and also speaks with people who can not put a dime in her purse. I am getting to like Trump, because of Kelly Anne Conway.

My neighbors feel the same way.  I mean my neighbors who do not have Shakman exempt jobs with the City of Chicago, or the County,  Those folks say little, except " Can you BELIEVE Trump is President ?"  Why, yes.  Yes, I can and do. Most others say, " Trump's doing what he said he'd do.  This could work."

The media has become the Oroville Dam. That creaky California concrete weir poised to collapse at the next drop of rain.

For years Jerry Brown and other unicorn collectors have allowed the infrastructure to rot, while they pumped millions of dollars into human give-away programs and feel good unfunded mandates.

The dam is busting.

For decades the American journalism has worked the cult of personality and befogged debate with memes/

The dam is busting.


Kelly Anne Conway can not go on CNN, or Morning Joe.

Well, done, Mrs. Conway!

Extravagant Affectations: Radical Feminist Theologian Wants Abortion

I am proud that I took my degrees at Loyola University of Chicago.  The courses were rigorous, unforgiving and complete.

Things seems to have changed at my Alma Mater - radically so.

Today, the Sun Times a secularist myna bird of a paper offered a silly screed from a professor of Theology from Loyola - Susan A. Ross.

Not only is Ms. Ross a professor, but also " a faculty scholar at Loyola University Chicago, where she previously served as department chair. She is past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and a Public Voices Greenhouse Fellow through The OpEd Project."

The OpEd Project is a radical feminist project that collects "  the number of women thought leaders contributing to key commentary forums—which feed all other media, and drive thought leadership across all industries—to a tipping point.  We envision a world in which the best ideas—regardless of where or whom they come from—will have a chance to be heard and shape society and the world.  "

No guys.

Today's piece by Ms. Ross obfuscates Catholic tradition on abortion.

Like most Progressive abortion lovers, Ms. Ross employs the happy face of Pope Francis to mask the fact that abortion is evil, unjustifiable and sinful.

Pope Francis has challenged single-issue definitions of what it means to be Catholic. He has said that love of God and neighbor and, especially, mercy and compassion, are at the heart of what it means to be Christian and devoted an entire year to Mercy.
He has changed the rule that says abortion is such a serious sin that only a bishop could forgive it; now any priest has that power. He has chided church leaders for their focus on sexual issues and urged them to make the church more welcoming.
Perhaps the bishops are beginning to see that opposition to abortion is not the only thing that defines a “good” Catholic. With the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, they have also begun to make statements about the potentially disastrous impact of the loss of health insurance for millions of people.
And in the wake of Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, some Catholic leaders have spoken out strongly on the devastating impact.
Perhaps over the next four years, pro-life Catholics will begin to consider the effects of defunding reproductive health services on poor women not only in the United States, but also across the globe. Or perhaps pro-life Catholics will consider marching for pre- and post-natal health care, maternity leave and child care. Perhaps pro-life Catholics will speak up for women’s voices and moral agency in a church whose leadership is made up of celibate men.

Yeah, them single issues can really enslave women. Pink knit hatted women howled against Trump. and some even mooned the guy's building near the river.   That is one enthralling single issue - hating Trump. Only thing missing form Ms. Ross's smoke job was " Keep your rosaries off my ovaries" and a nod to Virginia Slims and women's health.

I was a senior at Loyola, when Roe V. Wade was judicially legislated as the law of the land.  Loyola University was disgusted. The students were ashamed of the Ruling and America stopped being a great nation.

Today, Susan A. Ross is allowed to misrepresent Catholic traditions and teaching to smooth political opportunities for the school that I loved. Hell, why should De Paul get all the great land deals from the Chicago Banana Republic?

Professor Ross has a powerful audience of radical feminists and spineless males who are perfectly happy with abortion, Kermit Barron Gosnell and the lie about women's rights.

There are more women with brains and wonderful hearts.

Abortion should and will go the way of the Virginia Slim.

The Young Pope and the Old Secularists

"I don't want any more part-time believers,"  Pope Pius XII on The Young Pope

HBO has very little use for God in all of His manifestations.  Unless, there is a political schtick and secularists stick whacking the global pious and opiated masses, HBO offers minimalist religion.

I was wondering who let The Young Pope slip by.  This is one very savvy and and less-tan PC presentation of faith, family and cynical folly.

Vanity Fair hates it. The New York Times calls it "Ridiculous." With reviews like tehse a show just can not miss!

The episodes are brilliant.  I was reminded of Frederick Rolfe's brilliant 1904 novel Hadrian VII The satire turns the pomp and pretentious around on the cynical minds that howl against faith in any form. 

 Here is a brilliant scene from an episode in which Pius XIII, who refuses to allow any 'exhibition' of Peter's successor dresses down an African dictator and a popularly 'sainted' nun who uses water as a weapon over suffering people and also all of us.

The chain smoking, opaque and delightfully orthodox Pope is a saint.

Others near him and against him also find themselves becoming more saintly. 

HBO - thanks.  No, really. 

DNAinfo Chicago Runs Free Political Ads for Illinois' U.S. Senators Double Ds

 Old Aeschylus knew war.

The media is at War with President Trump and it will take no prisoners.

Whatever.  A fun read is becoming as tiresome as SNL and the two Chicago dailies.

The Double D brand has been burned into the hide of DNAinfo Chicago.  That is too bad, because the otherwise entertaining and marginally informative 'neighborhood news' site, has been turned into yet another propaganda sheet for Illinois Oligarchs.

DNAinfo Chicago features two of Chicago's most honest, witty and ethical writers - Mark Schipper and Eddie Komenda.  These gentlemen present the news and the background a Chicagoan requires, without the mewling belly-rubs by power brokers required of too many in journalism. Sadly, the need to divide, silence and besmear people with differing political points of view erases their quality work.  Cow-Towing to oligarchs is becoming a regular feature.

Durbin and his creature Duckworth are Double D Industries.  A double dose of fatuous bargainers, representing Illinois in the 'greatest deliberative body' on the planet.  You know the one where recently Senate Majority Leader Yertle the Turtle hushed up the Socialist Saccagewea.

For the better part of a month DNAinfo has posted this Barnum-esque bunkum:

See How Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth Vote On Trump's Cabinet Picks

Wow!  See -Hercules Defeat the Minotaur!  See - Moses Part Donald's Weave!

Got it!  Every rag in this hick burg, delighted to be lorded over by jerks, cretins, grifters and well-healed oligarchs, begins and ends each day with a list of Trump Thumping nonsense that no one reads.

The Chicago Sun Times and Tribune can not cover Chicago high school sports with anything  resembling competence, but will crow like starlings in Bridgeport about its hard-hitting political coverage and ignore the daily thievery and bullying emanating from execrable City Hall and the egregious County Building.

Now, DNAinfo is a full time propaganda slinger.  Well, old Aeschylus also seems to have advised our 21st Century ink-slingers and nodders in his play Agamemnon - Do not kick against the pricks.

Much safer. 

LI Bowl Super: Commentary Not So

Houston (CNN)For the first time, a Super Bowl needed overtime, and for the fifth time, the New England Patriots are Super Bowl champions.
This time, it took the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history to do it, rallying from a 25-point deficit and defeating the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 at NRG Stadium in Houston in Super Bowl LI. CNN

Fifty-One is done and it was as toxic as 2016.  Good Lord. Net-roots nonsense ozzed into sports journalism over the past decade and sucks all of the oxygen out of the planet.

Last year, it was deflate-gate.

This year Fifty-one became LI(e) for half of the nation addicted to ESPN SJWS in Anchor Jackets and group thought. They hate Tom Brady.  He now has participated in Seven (7) Superbowls and possesses Five (5) Championship Rings, at the once tender age of 39. Gotta hate that.

Football has always been a holiday game.  But, Super Bowl created a new national holiday that is entirely consumer driven, secular and until lately non-political.

NFL Football is a game played by mesomophs and Caucasian, African American and Pacific islander endomorphs wearing buzz-cuts, dred-locks, man buns and retro-mullets.

With few exceptions, football players are as beautiful, delicate and momentary as snow flakes.  They vanish from our attentions and imaginations instantly and go on to ordinary lives and too many to painful, sad and lonely deaths.

Football is a male game.  At its best, high school football is and should be a game a beauty and not a Super Bowl Lite.   Prayers to Our Lady of Victory!

Pro Football is fun to watch, but painful to listen to - thanks to the pan-pest preaching of Bob Costa Living analysts and Social Justice Warriors.

We live in nation that that is slowly recovering from eight years of willful blindness.  Half the country went blind looking for something, anything, of authentic greatness in its Chief Executive and it painfully settled for gold-leaf mediocrity.

Half of the nation, kept its mouth shut out of neighborly compassion and patient understanding, but voted to recover some our sight.

People are hurting, bubbled-up, and in safe spaces where they can loudly impune and physically moon a building sporting the Forty Fifth President's Name. That'll show that inanimate object.

The Super Bowl LI  became the last gasp, it seemed to me, of the resistance.  Tom Brady who was smeared by the national sports press for "deflategate" was now vilified as a Trump backer and so were his coach and the Patriots owner.

I watched the game with sound off and played Gustav Holtz' The Planets for sound.

I spoke with many people including family members, with whom I remain on outs for not going light-limbed over Obama,Lo these many years, and they were delighted by the first half.   I said, we shall see.

The New England Patriots, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and owner Robert Craft were relentless.

No LI. Just football.

Blue Books - Real Exams for Real Men of Theology 3

In-class essays (Blue Books) are a normal part of academic life.  Academic life, of course, is not normal.  But it does present a socially acceptable way to focus on personal skills. Properly pursued, the whole process aims to bring about change we associate with learning. As one of many academic avenues, In-Class Essays offer a way to approach yourself, to confront what you know and how well you communicate your thoughts and beliefs.  What is sometimes most scary is that we don't like what we find.  What we want for ourselves and what we have are different. Learning focuses on this difference, and Exams provide a practical and periodic way to organize what you have learned and what is missing. It is designed to challenge. If you've taken an In-Class exam in the past, you have a fair idea how difficult it is to write persuasive prose under pressure.  Time will fly. You will not be able to write as much as you know. If you have not taken a Blue Book Exam before, pay attention to what follows. Be clear:  In-Class Essays ask that you present your understanding and interpretations of course material in lucid, persuasive prose. The 'Blue Book Challenge' is not designed for fun. But the process can be gratifying.  Dr. Robert Hatch

" We take Blue Book Exams, Gentlemen."  The pause was as pregnant as the now large-with-child Beyonce,  from my thirty six times three sections of Theology 3.   This 5.4 score of young Catholic manhood, commanding desks ill-fitted to the New Millennium mesomorphs stuffed to rib cages by the particle board desk tops, responded with " Coach, what're Blue Books?  They anything like Blue Ba. . ?"

No, not exactly.

Theology, or religion classes in Catholic secondary education tend to be either a grade point booster, or, at the very worst, fifty daily minutes of Mime Clown Jesus and androgynous Godhead exercises in Unitarian principles for unhappy spinsters and life-long victims.

Somewhere in between these extremes lies the Goldem Mean - rigor without condescending intimidation.

" Coach, you're high!  We take True/False and Multiple Guess tests."

With my avuncular grin that teases raccoons out of my 19th Ward trash containers I replied, " We don't work that street no more. "

Gobsmacked young-uns, " What's that mean?"

" You employed the first person plural in the false assumption that WE means something.  We  -in the accusative =is taking only essay exams in Theology 3. "

"What's that mean?"

" Put it this way, 'Chicks who really count, dig only guys who take out  and dominate Blue Book Exams!'  That's the word on the street, from the time Plato tossed away the stylus and tablets, Lads.  Essay exams are the only true test of what a man - a fuul-grown, Hoochie-Coochie Mayne - really knows," I answered to the best of my wont.

That was three weeks ago. In that time, I taught a Unit on Poverty for the Social Justice Classes, Second Semester of Theology 3.  This Unit looked at poverty, " the experience of living without the basic needs for existence, necessary for a full and dignified life." Having taken the teachings of Rerum Novarum by Pope XIII as the advent of Catholic Social Justice, we looked at poverty at the financial, intellectual, emotional and spiritual life of persons marginalized and trapped in the seemingly endless cycle of poverty, through a study of Robert Thompson, one of two Liverpool ten year olds who murdered toddler James Bulger in 1993.  


We applied Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to this study and contrasted Thompson to Manchester slum dweller Anthony Burgess who became the 21st Century's most prolific novelist and composer.

I presented the gents four thought problems early this week for yesterday's Blue Book Exam.

By the way - each examinee was required to purchase a Blue Book booklet @ $.50 per. and bring along a blue or black ink pen.  Needless, to say, these are adolescent males and increased volume, salty sobriquets and excruciating repetitions of command by this examinant improved the odds for success.

Today, I am up to my fleshy jowls in Blue Books this post First Friday weekend in February and I must say that I am singularly delighted by the  waves of  smart, exact and carefully crafted sententiae offered by my heroes.

The grades are very high and, with very few exceptions, worthy of public display.


This was their first Big Boy Blue Book exam and they passed with flying colors.  There is red ink all over the pages of each Blue Book, to be sure but it is Mission Accomplished!

Students will rise the challenge, when challenged.  Today one of our Regional Crusader wrestlers will stand in 1st Place, but also sport a 95% on his Blue Book Exam.

" Coach, I smoked this test!"

" That was not a test Young Will! That was a Blue Book Exam. You got your big boy pants on, Son!"

" Whatever."

 Ah, I do love teaching, so

"To cut the matter short, Ratcliffe, you have been a most notorious thief,"  Sorry, I was thinking about Heart of Midlothian.  Lord, but I doooo drift some.

David Brooks: The Beltway Lickspittle's Censorious Sillinesss

   

Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. They don’t particularly admire him as a man, they don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media. (emphasis my own)  David Brooks  New York Times

Burn your books, GOP!  Davie Brooks is on the playground and he is not a happy boy. Watch out, now! Lookee Here! 

He's goin' all allusion, Gangstah, on They Ass! Dave, Goethe, or Kit Marlow?

This inconsequential blatherer who spent the last eight years fawning over President Obama's pants creases and parsing nonsense on PBS is now Cato the Censor in short pants.

A faux-conservative voice on PBS, ABC, MSNBC and ink spiller for the great American Progressive rags, New York Times /Washington Post, Brooks has made a career of mewling his way into the creases of Washinton D.C. britches and toils fawningly to curry more favor among the Jonathan Alters, E.J. Dionnes, Katerina Vanden Heuvels, and Ben Smiths as an authentic voice of the opposition.

Tokyo Rose was more convincing as a friend to our boys on Corregidor, Dave.

This lick-spittle phony is a lefty cheerleader.

. . .  it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.
The administration could have simply tightened up the refugee review process and capped the refugee intake at 50,000, but instead went out of its way to insult Islam. The administration could have simply tightened up immigration procedures, but Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with all of Mexico.

Dave, the more you sissy-britches and metro-sexually emotional weepers paint Trump as a two-dimensional villain, the more normal people who pay little attention to a man's pant creases will  tire of your piping.

Now, go play.

Gee, Valerie Jarrett Ran the Presidency for Eight Years and the New York Times Said Nothing

Love this snap!

For eight years, President Obama basked in the glow of the artificial light created by his Team of Brand Obama craftsmen and directed the affairs of the nation at the behest of Valerie Jarrett the de facto Chief Executive from January 2009-January 20, 2017.

President Obama parted with high poll numbers, no sense of obligation and a Presidential Library next door to Tiger Woods' Jackson Park Golf Mecca. The New York Times praised the commands of Valerie Jarrett:

WASHINGTON — President Obama was in a bind, and his chief of staff could not figure out how he had ended up there.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were up in arms last fall over a proposal to require employers to provide health insurance that covered birth control. But caving in to the church’s demands for a broad exemption in the name of religious liberty would pit the president against a crucial constituency, women’s groups, who saw the coverage as basic preventive care.
Worried about the political and legal implications, the chief of staff, William M. Daley, reached out to the proposal’s author, Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary. How, he wondered, had the White House been put in this situation with so little presidential input? “You are way out there on a limb on this,” he recalls telling her.
“It was then made clear to me that, no, there were senior White House officials who had been involved and supported this,” said Mr. Daley, who left his post early this year.

What he did not realize was that while he was trying to put out what he considered a fire, the person fanning the flames was sitting just one flight up from him: Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas’ first friend, the proposal’s chief patron and a tenacious White House operator who would ultimately outmaneuver not only Mr. Daley but also the vice president in her effort to include the broadest possible contraception coverage in the administration’s health care overhaul.

A Chicagoan who helped Mr. Obama navigate his rise through that city’s aggressive politics, Ms. Jarrett came to Washington with no national experience. But her unmatched access to the Obamas has made her a driving force in some of the most significant domestic policy decisions of the president’s first term, her persuasive power only amplified by Mr. Obama’s insular management style.

From the first, her official job has been somewhat vague. But nearly four years on, with Mr. Obama poised to accept his party’s renomination this week, her standing is clear, to her many admirers and detractors alike. “She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House,” said one former senior White House official, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity.

“She’s there to try to promote what she understands to be what the president wants,” the former aide said. “Ultimately the president makes his own decisions. The question that is hard to get inside of, the black box, is whether she is really influencing him or merely executing decisions he’s made. That’s like asking, ‘Is the light on in the refrigerator when the door is closed?’ ”

Gee, only today the New York Times, beefed about Steve Bannon doing exactl;y what Frau Jarrett had done for eight years of thigh-tingling Obama-licious policy.

 Plenty of presidents have had prominent political advisers, and some of those advisers have been suspected of quietly setting policy behind the scenes (recall Karl Rove or, if your memory stretches back far enough, Dick Morris). But we’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon — nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence.
Mr. Bannon supercharged Breitbart News as a platform for inciting the alt-right, did the same with the Trump campaign and is now repeating the act with the Trump White House itself. That was perhaps to be expected, though the speed with which President Trump has moved to alienate Mexicans (by declaring they would pay for a border wall), Jews (by disregarding their unique experience of the Holocaust) and Muslims (the ban) has been impressive. Mr. Trump never showed much inclination to reach beyond the minority base of voters that delivered his Electoral College victory, and Mr. Bannon, whose fingerprints were on each of those initiatives, is helping make sure he doesn’t.
But a new executive order, politicizing the process for national security decisions, suggests Mr. Bannon is positioning himself not merely as a Svengali but as the de facto president.

Yeah, what are you gonna do?

Me?  Steve Bannon is not a slum Lord; nor is he friendly with the mullahs in Tehran.

Not bothered.