Sun Times Crows For Elitist Chicago

CityHall Vision for All  of us in most meighborhoods . . . and that Vision for all of them and the tourists. 

To thrive, a major city must keep re-imagining all of its streetscapes and neighborhoods. Sun Times

Without Vision the People Perish -The Book of Wisdom

The Chicago Sun Times has long lost any credibility to Chicagoans, people who live in its neighborhoods, attend its schools, pay its ridiculous fees and fines, while enduring the endless parade of grifters, grafters and goofs in public office, due to media stooging and propagandizing.

The Chicago Tribune has caught up to the Sun Times, but it continues to feign independence. Hal Hardick's bumshell of a yawn about working class boors needing to be replaced by working class boors of another race is an example Medill magic making Rahm seem to care, really care about the feelings of people universal.  Inspector Joseph Ferguson's pre-wrapped gift to Rahm needed more trumpet time.

You see the pipe trades and tangential trades unions were the first to wildly support Mayor Emanuel for his ludicrous second term.  They delivered.  Rahm can not reciprocate and therefore must send a message - the door on 5 is closed.  He slit the throat of his 'friend' Barrett Murphy in very public manner, in order to shore up his support of an African American lawsuit against close-knit ethnic ( media code for white, Catholic and usually Irish racists) leadership and rank and file in the Chicago Water Department.

E-mails revealed that pipe trades people engage in racist, homophobic and sexist banter.  Lord have Mercy, what a shock.

E-mails in the future will reveal similar attitudes, because " Dominance hierarchies exist in numerous social species, and rank in such hierarchies can dramatically influence the quality of an individual’s life. " — Robert Sapolsky.  The sword cuts two ways. Irish out and African American's in - Oh, wait a minute.  That's right.  The Irish still are dominant hierarchy of most trade unions.

Rahm needs time to work out exactly what the seismic shift in ethnic hegemony in the Water Department will mean to him and his brother elites.

The Tribune plays for time.  The Sun Times plays for the long game. The long game is for the zero-matter voter - people who buy in and play along.

The Sun Times chirped this brain-fart of an editorial

Sun-Times Editorial Board- To thrive, a major city must keep re-imagining all of its streetscapes and neighborhoods.
Chicago succeeded on that score last week as state and local officials unveiled their latest redevelopment plans for Lake Shore Drive from Grand Avenue north to Hollywood Avenue.

We don’t know where the money will come from, or even how much it would cost overall. But we hope some of the beguiling notions laid out in the plans inspire city leaders sufficiently to  lift at least some of these ideas off of the drawing boards and move them to reality.Among the concepts are straightening the hazardous S-curve near Oak Street Beach a bit, adding park land and installing more bike and pedestrian pathways. The goal is to speed traffic, ease pedestrian and cycling congestion and minimize flooding on wavy days. Construction won’t begin until 2019 at the earliest.

Ideas that fell by the wayside in the planning process include a light rail line and sending the Drive underground through a tunnel below Oak Street Beach. (emphasis my own)

Now, why did I highlight those locations for this 'visionary' miracle?  They ain't in Englewood.  They ain't in Back of the Yards. They ain't in New City.  They sure as hell ain't in Brighton Park.

Vision for city means the whole city, not just the choice chops of real estate with pretty infrascture.

The elitist vision is Chicago -50th Ward,  47th Ward, 46th Ward, 44th Ward, 42rd Ward, 41st Ward, 33rd Ward, 32nd Ward, 26th Ward,  20th Ward, 11th Ward, 5th Ward, 4th Ward, 3rd Ward, 2nd Ward, 1st Ward.  Roughly 75th & Lake shore Drive to Evanston and O'Hare Airport to the Loop.

These sixteen Wards represent who and what is important to Progressive Democratic Chicago - the global city.

Englewood, Brainerd, Grand Crossing, Gresham, Morgan Park, Beverly Mount Greenwood will be allowed to be mirror images of Ford Heights, Robbins, Markham, Harvey and Dalton.

From the garbage grid through this plan of limited scope and vision, Progressive Democratic Chicago is about shrinking the map and eliminating the neighborhoods.

Rahm's vision would never consider placing a trades school in Englewood when one can turn neighborhood Lindblom High School into a Magnet school, benefiting very few students living within walking distance.

Rahm's vision, like Richie Daley's seeks to get the most for the fewest number of people and shed the skins of all others.

Imagine if Rahm, the two Chicago newspapers, the bow-tied tweedy goofs at our private but public policy driven universities actually cared about people, homicides, justice, or the future.

Imagine.  Putting resources into neighborhood values-centered education that would help kids from K-12 develop skills that would make them competitors, who placed service, pride in work and family above getting over on people. Kids could learn and develop the skills necessary to become pipe-fitters and engineers and gain immediate admission to apprenticeship programs.  Kids need to know that 1/8th is larger than 1/16th and much larger than 1/32nd -Rahm's CPS has not managed to divine that mystery for generations of kids. Imagine that.

Politicians do not imagine, they appropriate. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune by Anne Little told the story of Olmstead's Riverside.  That is vision.

Frederick Law Olmstead created the only ideal living space in Cook County - Riverside, IL.  He came to Chicago with a whole vision - you know holistic. He wanted a respite from Chicago and its teeming neighborhoods packed with competing ethnicities.

 "The city, as yet, has no true suburb . . . in which urban and rural advantages are agreeably combined." Olmsted envisioned Riverside as a sylvan retreat where "the conveniences peculiar to the finest modern towns" would be combined with "the domestic advantages of a most charming country."

Daley and Rahm, with help from the globalist academics, pared down Chicago closing neighborhood saloons, eliminating parking, section 8 housing scams, paying off ludicrous lawsuits without the slightest challenge, looting pensions for foreign (Russian & Red China ) investments, race baiting, eliminating Ward autonomy until neighborhoods became empty of middle class values and initiatives and hope deserts.

The Sun Times has been the most obedient servant in these efforts.

Today's huzzah for a piecemeal streetscape for disposable income demographic as if it were Dan Burnham resurrected is just one more nail in Chicago's coffin.  Vision my broad manly ass.  Chiacgo is going to Hell - a Progressive Democratic Hell.

Hell is a place where the bartenders are physicists, the accountants are historians, the traffic engineers are experimental psychologists, and the clothing shops are run by geologists.

Those Fracking Russians! Colluding Up Some Sand With Green Activists

Frack Free Illinoisfracking

Tens of millions of dollars are moved from Russia through Klein “in the form of anonymous donations” to a U.S.-based nonprofit called the Sea Change Foundation. Newsweek

 My buddy, Stu Haugen, gave me a heads up on some Russki Collusion.

Since 2014,   Putin has been colluding with Obama bundler and environmental-oligarch Tom Steyer to put an end to fracking.

Top U.S. government officials who have acknowledged the connection between Russian and environmental groups include former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.
In 2014, Clinton delivered a “private speech” in which she discussed Russia’s financial support for environmental groups, the letter says. The speech was included in documents released by WikiLeaks, it says.
An Oct. 10, 2016, report in The Washington Times quoted Clinton as saying:
"We [the State Department and the U.S. government] were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand up against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of that money supporting that effort was coming from Russia."

Fracking is a modern method of getting cheaper fuels.

Can't have that,  any more than cheaper health care, according to the American elites.

While Donald Junior has stepped on his . . .finger, shall we say . . .with the e-mail dump from people who set him up like pay-day-loan customer and given the elites more combustible oxygen to burn out any thoughts other than Putin and Trump collusion, environmentalists  have taken Kremlin coin to fight fracking.

I saw this in North Utica, Illinois where I spent a glorious 4th of July.  There was this huge sign coming into town from I-80.  La Salle County, Illinois and Hegewisch as well as Whiting, Indiana have been targeted by Green activists for some serious activism and now it appears that like most Left-of -Center initiatives - grassroots come from far, far away.  In this case Vlad Putin's Russia. Fractrakker is one method and resource for activists who would not know Wisconsin Drift from Loess Over Bedrock, but would bus happily over to Starved Rock, or the Pierogo Festival to anti-Fas up a storm.

That said, fracking is controversial.  I have yet to set a match to a water faucet in Hegewisch, Whiting, or Utica and get immolated.   People have had problems.  Farmers are surrounded by sand pits, as more mining operations take hold in La Salle County

"Mining frac sand is a lot like mining regular sand except it's wildly profitable, and that's why everyone wants to do it," said Todd Vencil, managing director of equities research at Sterne Agee, a privately owned brokerage firm based in Birmingham, Ala.
The company paid $8 million to buy the land, according to property and state records, and it expects to invest $25 million to $50 million to get the mine running, according to company filings.
The rolling corn and soybean fields near Starved Rock State Park, 95 miles southwest of Chicago, are coveted by multinational corporations for the fine-grain sand deep below the rich soil. Known as Ottawa white, the sand is uniformly circular — perfect for drillers who pump a mixture of sand and chemicals into fracking wells across the nation.
"In the world, there are not that many — geographically speaking — deposits of very high quality northern white sand that has the technical specifications that are in greatest demand. One of those areas is in Illinois, and it's close to the surface of the earth," said Robert Stewart, executive vice president of strategy, corporate development and communications at Eagle Materials. (emphases my own)

La Salle County is not new to controversy - that was one of Com Ed's nuclear stations built to fight America's dependency on OPEC - remember them?  Nuclear power had environmentalists screaming doom to the loam, because La Salle County might be at seismic risk ( earth quake) and I might become an NBA power guard - the odds are about the same 1-357,143.

Fracking is good. Even Obama's energy Czar Ernest Muniz said so, “The natural gas boom, in particular, has led to the displacement of high-carbon coal with low-carbon natural gas producing fewer emissions. ”  The Obama EPA released a report that many of the myths about dangers to drinking water were revealed to be myths and uncomfortable falsehoods. 

That will not stop the Birkenstock irregulars from boarding buses and holding news conferences for the nodding public.

Fracking is the Green beef du jour in Illinois. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is heavy in Illinois and owns many State Representatives and State Senators. The NRDC is home to Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprion, as well as Illini activist Henry Henderson.  Henderson is a veryfrequent Huffington Post expert poster on things Green and as far back as 2013 has attempted to stop fracking in its steps

But our overall position on fracking has not changed: unless and until we have strong, protective safeguards on the books, we should not start fracking in Illinois. Certainly, plenty can happen between this point and the Governor’s desk, so while we are encouraged by what is currently in the bill (check my colleague Ann Alexander’s blog for a rundown of the technical issues addressed in the bill that has been introduced), we will remain vigilant for any weakening of the standards. A watered down version of the bill as it stands today might point to the need for other options in the Land of Lincoln.

Well, Illinois politicians are moved by their wallets Henry.

It sure seems that groups like NRDC needed to put the touch on Putin

 Contrary to what Russia’s propaganda machine and its environmental allies have told news consumers in Europe and America, fracking is safe, effective, and enormously beneficial, Nick Loris, an economist and energy policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, said in an email to The Daily Signal.
“If successful, an anti-fracking campaign is depriving Americans of good-paying jobs and affordable, dependable energy,” Loris said. “Despite smears and outright lies from environmental activists, smart drilling and energy extraction technologies have been proven to be safe.”
“It feels like every week a new study is published, confirming what we already know,” he said. “Hydraulic fracturing does not contaminate drinking water. The facts and history of hydraulic fracturing, a history that dates back more than half a century and over 1 million fracked wells, indicate that many of the fears associated with the process are grossly exaggerated or flat-out unsubstantiated.” Newsweek. 

Well, frack me crosseyed!

Better ask Vlad for more dough.

In the mean time - How About that Trump Kid?

When A No-Class Hump Talks Down to the Middle Class About Class

"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust." - Congressman David Crockett
(David) Brooks's conclusion is clear:
Davy Crockett was a gangster rapper.     Dr. Cleveland

"I suck...I can’t remember what I said but my mother told me I was extremely stupid.” - David Brooks*

Few public persons make my skin crawl like " cultural commentator" David Brooks.   Many other Americans feel the same about Brooks.

David Brooks is the go-to-voice of the elite against everyone else,  in the drag of a ' sober, sane and pliable conservative.'  You can read David Brooks in the American elitist rags, New York Times and the laughable Washington Post and watch Dave on PBS, ABC and other organs piping away for a corporatist elite America.

Brooks is a faux- person and author of the marvelously dull Bobos in Paradise.  I read it. It stinks on ice.  For cultural commentary go to P.J. O' Rourke, a man of intellectual heft and wit, but for pure oleaginous butt-munching propaganda, ask Dave Brooks.

Brooks is famously ludicrous for drooling over Barack Obama's smartly creased britches and Babesplains politics with the the bumptious Mark Shields and the prissy virago Judy Woodruff.

Today, this smarmy dope complains that the upper-middle class ( people with way more money than I will ever dream of) is ruining America, because Dave sees them as Hippies with too much time, treasure and absolutely no talent.  These  moneyed Hippies, like Dave himself, hold college and advanced degrees over the souls of the masses as proof that they are a priori better persons than high school diploma and GED people, but vastly superior to the people their policies enslave. This Brooks fart-in-a- windstorm of an Op-Ed for the New York Times offers servings of smarm like this:

I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.
Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.

American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”

Gee, unlettered people appreciate only Mexican, or Chinese, or Pizza?

Oh, Eat me!

Dave was braced, by a book.  I was braced by Officer Frank Sims, CPD at Hites on 79th Wood in 1969, because I was standing with Mike McKeating.

Eat me, again!

Most of my contemporaries chose entering the American workforce, the military and law enforcement over Loyola, DePaul, UICC, or Illinois State.  They own diplomas from CVS, Hubbard, Harper, Little Flower, Brother Rice, Leo, Maria, Bogan, Calumet, Mount Carmel, Weber, Lindbloom and De La Salle high schools and know all about not only soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette, but also galumpki, dolmades, pierogi, pascki, mazukas and colcannon.

The guys who went to war in late 1960's and early 1970's also are familiar with pho, banh gio and corned beef and cabbage banh mi.

Yet, syrupy Dave wants all and sundry to accept the fact that the upper-middle class has somehow developed an invisible electric-eye security fence ready to zap the shins of diploma holders and scare them out of tony eateries.  "Yo, Dog!  Don't go there!  You need an advanced degree in Phallic Studies from Occidental.  The Dick Degree, Fool!**"

I don't know any Old Money people.  You pedigree'd scions of the Mayflowe with given names like Increase, Purchase, Atonement, Sodomy and Commerce.  People who drive beaters and wear clothes from the Truman Era handed down from Mater and Pater and open wrestling farms, or work in the State Department.

The guys I know who went to Brown, Yale and Princeton won  scholarships and played football and they went to work teaching high school, working with under-funded kids, Boeing Corporation and the NSA.  They were never asked to join Skull and Bones.

I know many nouveau riche folks - upper-middle class, or Brooks' Bobos.  One guy went to Notre Dame from a dirt farm in the Texas panhandle and became the leading Real Estate name in Chicago.  He treats janitors and cleaning crews like they were Saudi Royalty.   Another made dolls and billions and taught kids at Leo what hard work can do for good. Money is only a tool.   Happiness lies far beyond the curve the dollar sign.

I know bartenders and roofers who have read more Milton, Conrad, Turgeniev and Joyce than the English Department of De Paul University and understood what they wrote and why the wrote even better.

David Brooks wrote this piece because he was 'braced' by a study that agreed with the crap on the pages of Bobos in Paradise.

He is an elitist cheerleader and works for some very nasty people. As my high school classmate who took four years of Latin, would say, Lector cave, or Cave ne qui legit.  

Whatever! How about some Mexican.  That was not a question.




*Biography
David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and appears regularly on “PBS News Hour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the bestselling author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement; Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There; and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. He has three children and lives in Maryland.

**The Phallus: Occidental College:
It’s difficult to get to grips with the exact nature of this course – if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s cited as studies  “between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism” but is actually a survey offered by this distinguished college’s department of critical theory and social justice.

A Note to Pope Francis - Distorted Visions Don't Contribute to Peter's Pence

" So, all of the Muslims in the wagon trains were scalped by the . . .Seventh Cavalry . . ."

“I am afraid there are very dangerous alliances between powers who have a distorted view of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Russia and Assad in the war in Syria,”  - Pope Francis I

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” - Barack Obama

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." - Howard Zinn


Pope Francis seems like a very nice man.  That said, I believe that he owns a very jaundiced view of America (United States), the American people and our values.

This is not a surprise as the Pope visited the United States for the only time in his life, after he became St. Peter's Successor. Pope Francis was squired around and reported on Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia by people who have as yellow a vision of America (USA), its people and its history.  A simple look at the CBS coverage highlights the social and cultural agenda of the media more than it does the impact of the Pope upon Catholics in America - at least two features go to great lengths to condemn the conscience of a Kentucky county clerk and attempt to make her out to be liar, rather than anything else of moment. President Obama had spoken and LQBTQIAPK marriage replaced traditional marriage, to some minds.

President Obama seemed perfect for Pope Francis and vice versa.  President Obama is the first Howard Zinn indoctrinated President, as well as the first Planned Parenthood, LGBTQIAPK and Black President.  Howard Zinn affected the study of American history like no scholar since Francis Parkman.  Zinn is 100% wrong on his Marxist disdain for American history, the American people and American values.

Zinn believed that the Greatest Generation, our fathers and grandfathers, should be ashamed of their sacrifices freeing Europe and Asia from global totalitarians, " Should we not honor, instead of parachutists and bomber pilots, those conscientious objectors who refused to fight or the radicals and pacifists who opposed the idea that young people of one nation should kill young people of another nation to serve the purposes of politicians and financiers?"

No, Howard.

My Dad did not collect Japanese grenade fragments in tribute to Wall Street.  He liberated the Melanesians of Bougainville, the Chamorros of Guam and whatever was supposed to live on Iwo Jima. One more landing and there would have been bump in the Hickey DNA and I would not be typing this.

President Obama's America came from Howard Zinn, Frank Marshall Davis and Pastor Jeremiah Wright. 

The Pope is political and his politics seems to be much more strident than his fore-runners, including the sainted John Paul II.  His appointment of the ultra political Blase Cupich to the Chicago Archdiocese is a pretty clear indication that Pope Francis wants his bishops to lock-in with the  local political powers.  Blase Cardinal Cupich has locked step with Chicago and Cook County politicians like a ballroom dancer. As a result, Chicago political pastor Micheal Pfleger :

It’s a first: Father Pfleger tells Sneed the appearance of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich at St. Sabina’s summer kickoff rally and March for Peace in the neighborhood was the first time a cardinal from the Chicago Archdiocese had ever attended the neighborhood event.
“I’ve been inviting them year after year to no avail. And Cardinal Cupich came directly off a flight from a Bishops Conference in Indianapolis in order to make the march. Pretty special”

Pretty special indeed. Pfleger owns the Chicago media and just made Cardinal Blase bullet-proof.  Cardinal George was vilified by the political stooges on Chicago's newspapers, as well as radio and television. It appears that Cupich cares more about the good opinion of Michael Sneed and Jay Levine than he does about the people in pews at St. Bede the Venerable, or St. Pascal's.

Pope Francis sponsored Cupich and now Phleger sponsors him as well. Is that a vision thing?

You bet.

Pope Francis does not seem to like President Trump.  Fair enough.  However, while President Trump was in Poland and later Germany in defense of Western Civilization, Pope Francis grouped America(USA) along with Russia, North Korea, Syria and Red China as nations with 'distored visions.'

I do not recall America crossing the 38th Parallel in 1950, crushing speech in Prague in 1968 and sending millions of people to the GULAG as well as persecuting Jews, or sending tanks into Tibet, nor laying down gas on civilians anywhere.

The late Howard Zinn could straighten me out, I guess, but he has shed his mortal husk.

I do know that American Catholics ( I'm one) send the most financial support to Peter's Pence every year.  Yep.  America on average contributes almost 30% annually to the Pope's Pot.

People with 'distorted vision' don't crack open their wallets. People with 'distorted visions' don't run to join the Marines and liberate people from real oppression for three years.  They don't qualify for Honor Fights.

People with 'distorted visions' are political people, Your Holiness.

Payback Really is a Bitch! Cook County Purge of Teamsters, Guards and Anyone Toni Preckwinkle Don't Like.

Hyde Park 2006 Independence Day parade (left to right starting at center in light green): Preckwinkle as the Statue of Liberty, Illinois State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie as Uncle Sam, and Chicago City Council Alderman Leslie Hairston as Betsy Ross

I did a buddy of mine a solid. He asked me to help get Pat Quinn elected Governor for real in 2009 and Pat would do my buddy a solid.  I was dubious.  No Progressive ever does any one a solid.   I am old school; I supported and voted for Pat Quinn for Governor. I still need a shower on that one.

That sin of mine is the real reason why Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois are so screwed up.

We all do 'nice people,' a solid.

Jeremy Bentham, the great 19th Century economist argued for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Can't argue with that.

However, for a Progressive, the greatest number is # 1.  That truth was argued to young President Teddy Roosevelt by glaciologist John Muir and still holds true today.

I did a buddy a solid and did not vote my own conscience.  I detested Pat Quinn's politics going all of the way back to the days when he carried water for a crook and a Progressive - Governor Dan Walker.
Quinn opposed all regular Democrats, because he wanted to be viewed as a Reformer ( aka - unskilled policy bully).

The Late Illinois Senate Leader Phil Rock was a Democrat of the old school - anti-abortion, anti-Marxist and true to the values that created the greatest standard of living in world history. Phil Rock kept goofs like Quinn at arm's length.  That was long ago, when being middle class was a good thing.

Pat Quinn and Dan Walker and Abner Mikva and Dawn Clark Netsch and Bill Singer and Jesse Jackson and Michael Shakman and Larry Bloom and Toni Preckwinkle and the late Red guru Dr. Quentin Young were dead set against  this middle class hegemony.

Toni Preckwinkle was a Catholic high school ( Visitation), when Pat Quinn was honing his Hyde Park Mafia ( Abner Mikva) chops.  Preckwinkle had a reputation as a humorless, racist ( hates whitey) and not very well read history instructor and those qualities made her an ideal candidate for IVI-IPO Democrats.

It took Toni three swings  with the IVI bat to unseat Tim Evans for Alderman of the 4th Ward, but the rest is the typical Progressive history - suck up to Regular Democrats, gain their trust, knife them in the kidneys and repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat while keeping the media with you.

Sometimes, the Feds get in the way of Progressive Independent and Reform minded Democrats -Larry Bloom (neighboring 5th Ward Alderman), IVI-IPO operative Bob Creamer and Illinois Governors Dan Walker and Rod Blagojevich come to mind.

When Reformer Larry Bloom went to school in 1999, Mikva Challenged Federal Judge was wont to complain about Federal prosecutors for  "prosecutorial zeal does not, as I perceive it, justify overstatements of the nature I find in some respects in this case."  Convict Larry Bloom whined, "I was mugged--not by any petty thief or street tough, but by agents of my government, our government."

Translated - "Larry Stole and cheated on his taxes but criminy . . .he's a Goo-Goo!"

Thus far, Toni Preckwinkle has escaped the eyes of the Feds.  Therefore, Toni Preckwinkle does what she wants and to whom she wants. It is now the Teamsters, who work for Progressive rival Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Tit for tat?

Or a case of unintended consequences?

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office just got a letter from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle listing 925 positions designated for layoffs — if a judge doesn’t allow a countywide sweet beverage tax to take effect by August.
• The kicker: Sneed is told 377 of those jobs, many of them held by Cook County Jail correctional officers, are held by members of the Chicago Teamsters Union.
So here’s the kick in the butt.
Recently, the Teamsters Union took out a full-page newspaper ad opposing the tax, which Preckwinkle vigorously backed.
“This sure looked like a shot across the bow,” a top Sneed source said.
“Or interesting timing that many of the designated layoffs were members of the Teamsters Union, which took out the ad opposing the tax,” the source said.

You see, Teamsters not only work as Correctional personnel, but also deliver Pop. Pop is a Progressive target, because fat kids love it and it rots teeth, creates obesity and goes great with salty snacks.

Teamsters deliver salty snacks.

Teamsters also deliver votes.

Let's get back to my sins.

I agreed to do a pal a solid.  I helped support Pat Quinn for Governor.  Running with daffy Pat filling the void left by reformer Rod Blagojevich, for trying to sell  a Senate seat to IVI-IPO Alumnus Barack Obama, was Toni Preckwinkle for President of Cook County Board to unseat Todd Stroger, created by Progressive patron Tom Hynes, to replace the late John Stroger, a Regular Democrat and gentleman to the backbone.

My pal was immediately stabbed in the back by Pat Quinn upon his election, because Quinn has the loyalty of a gnat.

Toni Preckwinkle rode Quinn's coat-tails, because of people like me.  I did a pal a solid and created the person taking jobs away from 925 families in Cook County.

That's Progressive.  Get people to do you a solid and then give it to them good and hard.

As Progressive Federal Judge Milton Shadur lamented when he was forced to sentence Reformer Larry Bloom, "It is true of law-enforcement agencies in addition to anyone else that if you lie down with dogs, you are likely to get up with fleas."

As the great Fats Waller once reasoned, " One never knows, Do One?"

Ain't that a Bitch, Judge?

Both Sides Now and Always - How the Progressive Mouth Moves

Two Progressive Cook County Powerhouses and intellectual dim bulbs - Cook County Clerk and Rep. Mike Quigley,   have Yin and Yanged on the Trump investigation into voter fraud.

Vertically challenged Congressman Mike Quigley and former Mayor and  prognathic progressive Cook County Clerk Dave Orr are doing a classic pull-me-pull you argument that arrives with John Dewey certainty at the conclusion that Russia owns President Trump,

 
First, here is the diminutive Democrat's denunciation of Donald Trump:

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigleyclaims that Russia hacked into Illinois’ State Board of Elections last year to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process.
Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, made the assertion on Monday to the Chicago Tribune after an interview with its editorial board. “I believe they’re on the doorstep to hacking into our voting systems. That is my educated guess,” Quigley said. The congressman said the committee should look at classifying election systems as a “target” and devote federal resources to protect their integrity.

The problem is that since May 11, the Trump White House established a panel to study vote fraud in the United States ( the big 50, but not D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico).  Vote fraud -Russki, Lower Slobovian, or Mikva Challenge 5th Ward Goo-goo Go-Getters - is just wrong.

However, Maxillary Maximus, Clerk of Cook County and Grecian Formula Guy, offered this to the Chicago and Cook County Resistance in hipper Pilsen, Lakeview, Evanston, Peoples Republic of Oak Park,  Hyde Park, the Faith Community of St. Sabina, Unitarian flocks county wide, and in my 19th Ward, Longwood Drive and its ancillary cul de sac'd street - anywhere the Voice of Resistance WBEZ and WTTW blares:

From the time he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump has made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud happening throughout the nation. Now as president, Trump has assembled the inauthentic Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity to investigate voter registration and voter fraud.
This partisan Commission has been formed on false pretenses: 3 to 5 million people did not vote illegally in the last presidential election, as the president believes, and a true bi-partisan Commission requires careful analysis and expertise.
Were this Commission truly working in the interest of making our elections as error-free and our voter rolls as clean as possible, the focus would be on the following:
Bringing every state on-board with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) — a nationwide network of states, which includes Illinois, that securely shares voter registration data – so that voter information nationwide would be accurate and up-to-date.
Updating our nation’s election infrastructure — the machines voters use to cast their ballots — which in many election jurisdictions are a decade or more old and are being held together with replacement parts often purchased on eBay.
Pushing all states toward Automatic Voter Registration – a good government tool to help clean voter rolls across the nation.
Instead, the President’s Commission has told state election authorities to hand over information including the names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. The Commission also wants a record of felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006.
I’m happy to see that so far, election authorities in more than 40 states – including Kris Kobach’s own Kansas Secretary of State office – have rejected the Commission’s request for this information, and I urge the Illinois Board of Elections to stand up against this unnecessary overreach.
Voting is a fundamental right. Unfortunately, instead of a genuinely bipartisan group dedicated to protecting the vote, President Trump has stacked the deck of his Commission with a number of lawmakers who have shown an inclination towards voter suppression.
Furthermore, this comes at a time when Republicans have sought to defund the Election Assistance Commission, a truly bi-partisan Commission.
I strongly encourage the Illinois Board of Elections, as well as my fellow elections administrators, to be cautious of the motives of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity and not comply with this dangerous request.

David Orr Cook County Clerk (Emphases my own)

 You see, 20 States have already adopted ERIC and Illinois is one of them.  It was David  Orr and Mike Quigley who bulldozed electronic voting here in Cook County back in 2006.  I wrote about this only a few weeks ago -

Donald Trump did not force the use of computer-voting on the voters of Cook County. You did, Mike Quigley. And this twerp is on the House Intelligence Committee? Vlad Putin could not have gotten into our election machines without buck-toothed Dave Orr, Forrest Claypool, Larry Sufredin and the good folks at Sequoia Voting Systems.

In 2006, Mike Quigley was one of the Progressive grifters. . .I mean Commissioners,  who worked with Cook County Clerk David Orr, at the behest of Help America Vote, Abner Mikva and friends, to weld suburban Cook County and Chicago voters together with Venezuelan voting machines.

The Sequoia Voting Machines, Help America Vote, Forrest Claypool, Venezuela and those rascally Russians are all part of our Progressive History.  Prior to the 2008 Election of the transformative Barack H. Obama, a huge fan of Venezuelan Tin-pot Dictator the late Hugo Chavez and voting began getting hacked without hanging chads, on-line and vulnerable.

That was 2006, when former Mayor and Cook County Clerk David Orr insisted that Cook County and City Elections operate the identical voting systems.

 These swell voting gizmos are a product of Venezuela - that paragon of Progressive Democracy.

Well, boys and girls Quigley notes that the Kremlin hacked the Illinois Vote and wants the Federal government to get on that stick!

Dave Orr, who could bite a pig's ass through a picket fences, chews this cabbage twice and wants no scrutiny.

Straight talking Progressives - the gang that made Illinois a laughing stock, Obama President and voter fraud more accessible to computer hacking - always give their truth - out of both sides of their mouth.  One message and many directions. 

The Illinois Elector Commission had better open the books to Mike Pence and  Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity,



Progressives lack that last noun.

Illinois - Land of Lotus Eaters

 “What is our basic problem? I think it’s been a lack of political will for generations to deal with tax policy honestly. Tax is one of two, three-letter words ending in ‘X’ in the English language that really gets people excited. And generally, not in a good way. So, most elected officials want to avoid dealing with tax policy. Our chosen method for avoiding dealing with tax policy in Illinois has been, and everyone knows this, is to underfund what the state owed to its five pension systems and divert the revenue that should have gone to normal costs to instead fund current services.” Ralph ("Illinois faces a revenue problem, not a pension problem.") Martire Illinois Director of Lotus Eaters


For nine days I was driven by fierce winds over the teeming sea: but on the tenth we set foot on the shores of the Lotus-eaters, who eat its flowery food. On land we drew water, and my friends ate by the ships. Once we had tasted food and drink, I sent some of the men inland to discover what kind of human beings lived there: selecting two and sending a third as herald. They left at once and came upon the Lotus-eaters, who had no thought of killing my comrades, but gave them lotus to eat. Those who ate the honey-sweet lotus fruit no longer wished to bring back word to us, or sail for home. They wanted to stay with the Lotus-eaters, eating the lotus, forgetting all thoughts of return. I dragged those men back to the shore myself by force, while they wept, and bound them tight in the hollow ships, pushing them under the benches. Then I ordered my men to embark quickly on the fast craft, fearing that others would eat the lotus and forget their homes. They boarded swiftly and took their place on the benches then sitting in their rows struck the grey water with their oars.’ Odyssey

People who use the phrase "Help Working Families" could care less about families, much less the work that they do.  People who use the phrase "Help Working Families" want more, much more of the few dollars earned by  working stiffs for their families.

Meet Ralph Martire!   Way back when . . . when Jim Edgar was Governor . . .Dawn Clark Netsch was the Illinois Comptroller and used that office to rail against Illinois Tax policies.  Old Abner Mikva schooled Dawn Clark real good. Get the middle class and plutocrats to pay the checks.

 In 1992 Democrats and Republicans even got together to draft a statewide referendum asking voters to fund at least 51 percent of educational costs through the income tax. But a few days before the election the sitting governor, Jim Edgar, a Republican, announced that he would vote against the measure on the grounds that the state couldn't afford to commit so much money to education. The referendum still got 58 percent of the vote, but it needed 60 percent to pass.
In 1994 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch revived the issue, calling for a swap. Edgar mocked her as a tax-and-spend liberal and scoffed at the notion that the state needed a great new source of money. He won reelection with almost 60 percent of the vote.
A few weeks after his victory Edgar bowed to fiscal reality and changed his tune. Citing a pending budget crisis, he appointed a blue-ribbon committee to study the idea of a tax swap. The committee produced a plan similar to Netsch's, and with Edgar's backing it made its way through the house of representatives. It died in the state senate, killed by another Republican, senate president James "Pate" Philip. One longtime observer says Philip acted more out of political spite than ideology: "Pate was mad at Edgar. He basically said, 'I'd told everyone you weren't going to do this, and you did it--so screw you!' Nothing's happened on this front since.

And Illinois drifted off into its long dope-induced snooze.  One might argue that this was the advent of Hopium, as John Kass so accurately termed the eight year bender of the Obama years.  It feels good to drift away and just gnaw on the Lotus leaves.  No problem so big that one can not run the hell away from it!

Folks like Ralph Martire offer the Lotus, but we gobble it up and feel good about it.

Ralph is the boss of the ' non-partisan' Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA).  CBTA is a shell game of pie-chart pirates from public sector funded organizations,  unions, and the Woods Fund which provides the math and the bullshit to argue for tax-increases on working families.






Note - every huge contributor to Ralph Martire Enterprises has been handsomely rewarded with an Illinois Pension - which is as valuable as Confederate Money. The Woods Fund which helped give us Barack Obama and a nice sinecure for Bill Ayers, made up the balance.

Ralph worked with Dawn Clark Netsch to end Illinois' 'regressive tax' policies.  Tax more and spend more is the mantra. Give to every advocacy and reap re-election!  Glut public pensions and tax the rich.

It worked and between oily Jim Edgar and sand-paper smooth Bruce Rauner, every Governor and every General Assembly have kicked cans down deteriorating roads, burned inadequate bridges and flood more debt.

All the while the voters of Illinois have done a solid for the Guvs, the Speaker, the legislative leadership and both Houses stocked with feather-weight intellects and moral midgets by returning the clowns to the Big Top every voting cycle - the clowns merely exit their tiny cars, disappear for a while and return to the Big Top.

People who had means, beat it out of Illinois.

Illinois is drowzey, sleepy and really dopey.

It is not the Land of Lincoln; it is the Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Lotus leaves provided by Marxist economists, Ralph Martire, the Illinois Media, Bad Math, the Paul Simon Institute and every boob you send to Springfield - in both parties.

Illinois needs an Odysseus to grab Illinois by the short and curlies and drag it screaming and kicking back to its senses.

Good luck with that.

It is the 'Morality' that Causes Chicago's Mortalities - Bikes, Crotch-Rockets, Guns, or 2 X 4's

Yingying Zhang was about a month into a yearlong appointment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign when she disappeared June 9, 2017. | Courtesy of the University of Illinois Police Department via AP

Morality -a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.

Idiot - is a person perceived to be lacking intelligence, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. 

Yesterday, the White House offered the only conclusive explanation for Chicago's murders, it's lawless disregard of people and it's perpetual state of moral paralysis.

WASHINGTON – Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday crime in Chicago was ‘driven more by morality” than access to guns, commenting after the Trump administration sent 20 more U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents to the city to combat gun violence.

Those four words comprising the only government disambiguation over last ten years, immediately sparked more foolish from the media and it's nodding public.

• elako02Member1 hour(s) ago:And how knows more about morality than Trump and his aides?

• Dannoday1Member10 hour(s) ago: Immoral guns.

• 1Realistic1Visitor10 hour(s) ago: Morality?!? Sarah Huckabee Sanders has the gall to lecture on morality? The same Sarah Huckabee Sanders whose daddy, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, publicly defended Josh Duggar, the admitted child molester who fondled his own kid sisters?    She should check herself.

 Chicago Sun Times Obama Cheerleader Lynn Sweet was quick to pounce with Journo-perfect snark:

The extra agents were heralded by President Donald Trump in a Friday Twitter post.
“Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!”
According to the Sun-Times’ count, even more people, 1,737, have been shot this year, 306 of them killed. This comes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been asking Trump to send in more federal help for six months.
Gun trafficking is a leading contributing factor in Chicago shootings. The Trump Justice Department created the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force to hunt down and prosecute firearms traffickers.
Sanders ( Sarah Huckabee-Sanders) at the White House briefing deflected a question about the link between guns and crime in Chicago even as more ATF agents were assigned to Chicago.
Asked if Chicago’s problems were due in part to access to firearms Sanders replied, “I think that the problem there is pretty clear that it’s a crime problem. I think that crime is probably driven more by morality than anything else.”

Sweet is sour on anything not torn from the John Dewey Pre-cast Policy Dispenser, used by the Presidential Bush Boys, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  Guns Kill People -end of story.

However, two-thousand years plus of Western Civilization, from Genesis through Socrates and beyond Thomas Aquinas, argues that Guns Kill People, like Pencil Flunk Tests.

You will never find Pastor Pfleger leading Jesse Jackson and a dozen solemn faced martyrs in front of School R Us, because young Cuthbert and Amy continue to fail Common Core Math.

Think of that, children.

No.  Guns are to nodders, as Donald Trump is to nodders - a cardboard figure to be hated, reviled, destroyed.

People who have not the time, treasure and talents to be nodders, make informed judgments about actions and their results.  People kill people with guns, knives, bikes, crotch-rockets, sweat pants, chairs, pickle jars, umbrellas and 2 x 4s.  People kill people because they can.  Some people return to kill more people, because Judges, Sheriffs and States Attorneys need core voters.

Yesterday, a Chinese family learned the name of the person charged with abducting their beautiful and talented daughter from the streets around University of Illinois and possibly murdering the innocent. This poor baby.

The person charged is as brilliant as Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, a professor like President Obama was and a man of science like Bill Nye, the Monsanto Guy.  Did he purchase a hand gun?

Yingying Zhang, the daughter of a working-class factory driver from China, disappeared on June 9, just weeks after arriving at the University of Illinois where she was pursuing studies in agriculture sciences.
Federal authorities say 27-year-old Brendt Christensen of Champaign, Illinois, is accused of kidnapping Zhang shortly after she stepped off a bus near the university campus. Video show her getting into the front seat of a black Saturn Astra.   The affidavit filed in federal court in support of the complaint says Christensen was under surveillance Thursday when agents overheard him explaining that he kidnapped Zhang. Authorities say based on this, and other facts uncovered during the investigation, agents believe Zhang is no longer alive.
Authorities have not indicated if a body has been found.

Was a gun involved?

We do not know, as yet. What we do know at this time is that Brendt Christensen's cell phone is described as "a means, a facility and instrumentality of Interstate Commerce" and, " therefore, used in committing and in futherance of the commission of this crime."

A cell phone - smart phone no doubt.

I anguish over the abduction of this little girl. Yingying is my youngest daughter's age.  I anguish and pray for the Zhang family.

I shudder at the accused.  I shudder, because he is someone's child and he is the same age as my son.  My son had no use for school, other than what shaped him ( sports, buddies, shared obligations, religious center) as an honest, thoughtful, courageous and courteous gentleman.  This accused son of someone reaped academic honors and developed into a monster, or so it seems. A brilliant idiot.
Brendt Christensen - the accused

Guns and bullets might surface, but I kind of doubt that - the monster a man of science and hubris and consider himself the superior of his victim, or so it seems to me.  Like the killers of Bobby Franks at the University of Chicago in the 1920's, the Democratic Precinct Captain and Clown who slaughtered Gay, Bisexual and Questioning boys in the 1970's, or superior-quality strapped thugs who shot up an end-of-school picnic last month, Brandt Christensen felt comfortable doing what he did.

This is what we do!  

That is the idiot's Rebel yell!  When a person is the center of the universe and not gifted with other-directed thoughts, that person will roller-blade, skate-board, run, bike, or motor through other people and shout "This is What We Do!"

Not all idiots are strapped - armed with a 9mm -but all idiots are ballistically lethal. Here is a video of Chicago values aboard expensive crotch rockets ( The Ducati 999, Suzuki GSXR1000 and Yamaha YZF-R1 are good examples of ~1000cc crotch-rockets.) 'doing what they do'






The action occurred on Irving Park Road near O'Hare International Airport.  Imagine what would  have happened to the police officers interdicting "This is What We Do!" had there been a collision.

I imagine that they would appear before a Grand Jury, once the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times rolled out a series on police pursuit policies and Rahm squeaked, " The streets belong to all of us!"

Retired Chicago Police officer Larry Casey offered me this look at the ballistic idiots and the website that seems to defend their actions.

Morality is a state of being and it includes immorality as accepted.

Idiots grow in an immoral society.  No moral society Balkanizes behavior.  Chicago Values do that.