So, Forrest Claypool Walks into a Pay Day Loan Store . . .What Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune Will Not Tell You.

The Chinless Wonder has done it again!   Forrest Claypool took out  huge Pay Loan for the children of CPS!  What a guy!

Forrest Claypool can do all of these things

• Fires key Park District personnel and calls it "Cost-cutting."
• Scapegoats people for Richie Daley
• Works with Quigley and Orr to ramrod Venezuelan Voting Machines - machines got hacked by the Russians
• Bombardier cars that don't fit the CTA rails
• Tries to hire ex-cons to do the work of union people
• Smears the union leader who objects
• Pushes Ventra Card
• Gives lawyer a CPS sinecure
• Gives CPS jobs to his CTA posse
• Increases CPS debt

and get away with it and move on to ever more lucrative pay days at our expense and fatten up his already lard-assed pension life.  Not only that, he gets protected by Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, the goofs at the Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and of Bruce Dold. 

Ain't he great?  He is a media protected, multiple tax-payer funded pension collector and career government grifter.  He is Forrest Claypool.

For any mossback sneak from down state Illinois, Claypool is a role model.  If the Better Government Association was anything other than flak-maker for the Chicago Oligarchs, Claypool would have been a private sector sneak and at best an orange jumpsuit run-way model.

That said, TRY AND FIND  the name of FORREST CLAYPOOL anywhere in its long article.

"Although the Board believes that it has the capacity to borrow both in the short-term and the long-term credit markets, there can be no assurance as to the terms on which the Board will continue to be able to procure such funding, whether the Board's existing statutory borrowing authority will provide sufficient borrowing capacity, or if market access will continue to be available to the Board," the district said in bond documents.(emphases my own)

The Board is Forrest.  In the recent past Tribune features we see Forrest Claypool

•  In Voice of the People, a reader takes the Tribune to task for its editorial regarding the "crisis" surrounding the Chicago Public Schools led by Forrest Claypool. It is unfortunate to see that there still are those who feel we should function with an..
• In your Tuesday editorial titled “We will do whatever is necessary,” you pull no punches in criticizing Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool. You say, for example, that he made a "foolhardy assumption” by relying on a "huge cash infusion from the...
•          Claypool: Illinois' school funding is unfair to CPS students In its recent editorial, the Tribune   correctly identifies the cause of the Chicago Public Schools fiscal crisis: the outsized  payments it must make to the teacher pension fund. The Tribune fails to note, however, that      the state of Illinois imposes this...
• Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool vowed recently that CPS will open on time in the fall despite the district's perpetual cash crunch. "We will do whatever is necessary ..." Claypool said in a City Club of Chicago speech. That's a refreshing...

There's no BOARD in CPS!  There's Forest Claypool . . .until he steps on his Johnson and gets shelter from Bruce Dold's investigative and editorial purse puppies.

So, Forrest goes all Pay Day Loan on your wallets again.  You have only yourselves and the Chicago media to blame.

Forrest Claypool will ride all over our backs once again and as long as Chicago and Cook County residents enjoy the consequences of living in a Banana Republic. 

The Racoon on the Fifth Floor and this Skunk of a Grifter created more debt, mayhem and misery for generations to come. 

 

Will the GOP Hear "The Chimes at Mignight?" They be Tolling, Cupcakes.

I could never bring myself to link up with the Grand Old Party.  I am just an old school Regular Democrat, I guess.  Ever since Chuck Percy was the alabaster Illinois Face of the Republican Party, the GOP was as comfortable a fit for me as spun-glass skivvies.

Right up to and through the last GOP Illinois Senator, Marque Kirque, the GOP is the Party that blows off it's own toes, on demand, at the behest of wily Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan, or the offish Sen. Dick Durbin.

I voted for three Republicans in my life: Nixon 1972, McCain 2008, Romney 2012.  I voted for Donald Trump, but I do not believe that he is a Republican. In fact, he may be, like me, a a disgusted Regular Democrat who understands that the national game is rigged between the Progressive 1972 Democrat loonies and GOP dweebs,  like any contest between the Globetrotters and the Generals.

President Trump is one wild card in deck full of jokers.  Against Old Maids like Reince Preibus and Lindsey Graham he is the trump.   Against Aces like McCain, Collins, Schumer, and the media masters, he's a push at best.

He is a ball of confusion; that's what the world is today. Hey, hey.

• North Korea
• Trans GI's
• Tweet du jour
• CNN silly
• Russian Intrigue
• Sessions Up; Sessions Down
• Leakers - pissing out of the Big Tent
• Foul Mouthed Mooches
• White House staff shuffles
• EU weepers

But, the best rattle and hum comes from the GOP.

One of the only Washington writers who makes any sense whatsoever is A. B. Stoddard.  Ms. Stoddard is the sole of integrity and does care if CNN, Fox, of the clowns at MSNBC want to hear what she has to say.  Ms. Stoddard offers up this today,

 Trump can write this all off to his plan to disrupt the GOP establishment in Congress and do things his way, but some have warned his plate-breaking might eventually cut into his base of support. Conservative writer and commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote that not only had Trump revealed “a deeply repellent vindictiveness in the service of a pathological need to display dominance,” but that his assault on Sessions “suggests to those conservatives how cynically expedient was Trump’s adoption of Sessions’s ideas in the first place.”

Trump must be some Machiavelli, there Neighbor.

I think of him as a seedy, aging and cagey Prince Hal.  Young Prince Hal, the scapegrace Prince of Wales  who hung around with disreputable outsiders in Henry IV Parts I & II emerged as the uniter in chief and hero of Agincourt of Shakespeare's Henry V.

Prince Hal, like Trump loves to keep his enemies close and his friends comfortably numb.

Read this and think of the Swamp:

King Henry IV, Part I

ACT I SCENE II London. An apartment of the Prince's.
[Enter the PRINCE OF WALES and FALSTAFF]
FALSTAFF Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HENRY Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. 5
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no 10
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.
FALSTAFF Indeed, you come near me now, Hal; for we that take
purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not
by Phoebus, he,'that wandering knight so fair.' And, 15
I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, God
save thy grace,--majesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none,--
PRINCE HENRY What, none?
FALSTAFF No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to 20
prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HENRY Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.
FALSTAFF Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let notus that are squires of the night's body be calledthieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's 25foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of themoon; and let men say we be men of good government,being governed, as the sea is, by our noble andchaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.PRINCE HENRY Thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the 30
fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and
flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is,
by the moon. As, for proof, now: a purse of goldmost resolutely snatched on Monday night and mostdissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with 35swearing 'Lay by' and spent with crying 'Bring in;'now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladderand by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.(emphases my own)

I see Falstaff as the GOP leadership, elected and behind the scenes, ready to lead Donald Hal up the garden path for a fleecing from the Progressives - the keepers of policy.

Yet, Hal offers warnings in his honeyed words to Fat Jack of the Swamp.  He must go before the real work begins. In Shakespeare's propaganda plays, virtue remains hidden in the likes of Mark Antony, The Bastard and Prince Hal.  These nimble players keep every one off balance.

Until the moment comes when even the most shameless and cynical rogues, like the Leader of the Senate and the three Mavericks, finally get it.

 FALSTAFF
God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING HENRY IV
My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.
Lord Chief-Justice Have you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak?
FALSTAFF
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY IV
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.

I hope that the firing of Preibus and appointment of General Kelly signals that Trump despises the the dream of the GOP being anything but a partner in the Swamp.

That would unite the nation.

I could do without an Agincourt. 

The Devil and Donald Trump, or Strike Tents, Don; Sounds Like the Old Scratch Won

I'm a White Sox fan.  I know the thrill of almost getting there.  The delight of watching back-to-back hits to the gaps and the balloon popping disappointment of leaving two men on - inning after inning.

I also watch politics - a rigged sport - like old time Bob Luce Pro Wrestling, or Women's Roller Derby.    The Democrats, controlled by the nut-bag Progressive wing of American politics since 1972, and the GOP, run by the Nels Rockefeller-Chuck Percy moderate doormats since the 1960's, is a push-me-pull-you spectacle sport that gets ever more soul-sucking and sad.

Donald Trump is the product of this cynical enterprise.  I believed Candidate Trump to be a gross, loud, boorish and vain man.  I was wrong. That is his shtick and it works. It sucks the oxygen out of the room.

I really believe that President Trump wants to end the Dem-GOP perpetual taffy pull and drain the swamp, pool, or puddle that makes a Daniel Webster want to be convicted along with Jabez Stone.

This wonderful American story is no longer taught in our public schools and far too many of our Catholic schools.

Daniel Webster is an American historical figure, chosen by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet as the core character for his legend the Devil and Daniel Webster.

The Devil, Old Scratch, is a soul-sucking lobbyist, with piles of money at his command.  He lures a New Hampshire son of the soil, who is very down on his luck, Jabez Soul with a contract offering earthly wealth and honors, so long as his soul goes to OLD SCRATCH, Llc. for eternity.

Today, the soul is a secular punchline and laugh button for Bill Maher and latte night TV.

Congressman Daniel Webster, not to be confused with Senators Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Susan Collins, or John McCain, is a rock-ribbed Union Forever American Patriot.  He is no maverick. Webster is no moderate and would never appear on Rachel Maddow, or Sean Hannity.  Webster died and is buried:

Yes, Dan'l Webster's dead−or, at least, they buried him. But every time there's a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, "Dan'l Webster−Dan'l Webster!"  the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake.
And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, "Neighbor, how stands the Union?" Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock−bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, that's what I was told when I was a youngster.

Me too.

Durbin, Collins, Schumer and McCain chirp,  "Neighbor, How's They Polling?"   Maverick up!

They all work together and not for the State of the Union.

Donald Trump wants to change things and change does come easy, unless it is candy-coated in good old American bullshit, like the last eight years of Obama Hope & Change.

Old Scratch has The Union by the throat and is not letting go.  Obama Care is making too many people richer at the expense of everyone else.  Tax reform will never take place as long as 1/3 after a thick retainer means anything.   America will not be allowed to be Great Again, because the global oligarchs are winning.

When Jabez Stone wanted to weasel out of his contract, like any good Yankee Unitarian, Daniel Webster was forced to face a rigged jury of the worst traitors, cut-throats and back-sliders in American history, up to the 114th Congress anyway.  Old Dan'l reminded the louses of their birth on this soil and appealed to their Nativist love of country.    <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bXfU2AaJDEQ?list=PLWX-t5q2SkI0xslMuPftjy6mCioqZx_em" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Can't appeal to that anymore.  Faust has no sense of any universal truth - Americans are mavericks, no more Alamo, Valley Forge, or Khe Sahn for New York Times subscribers and listeners and viewers like Angie's List, Prudential, Northwestern Mutual and the Alliance for Climate Change.


Donald Trump is the President of the United States for a now.

I have a feeling that after yesterday's GOP betrayal on Health Care Reform, the traitors in the White House including the new guy, who already leaked to Ryan Lizza about his war on leakers, and  that Old Scratch has real cut-throats and crumbs in the jury box - no lightweights like Benedict Arnold, Edward Teach, or Simon Girty.

• David Brock' sAmerican Bridge
• Hollywood
• Neo Cons: McCain, Graham et al - "There's War Needs a Startin'"
• George Soros Move-On enterprises
• The Clinton Machine
• The GOP
• The Media

Strike tents, Neighbor Trump, or do something smart.  Now. Scratch wants his pay-out.

Next up - White Sox play Cleveland at home. Get excited, expect the let down.

Just Asking - Was Dave in the Army, or was she Diane? Harry was no Barry.

St. Francis was a wild kid, before he transformed from a free spending boozer with a taste for French fashions - Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was called "Frenchie," or Francesco by his Dad and  pals:

 No one loved pleasure more than Francis; he had a ready wit, sang merrily, delighted in fine clothes and showy display. Handsome, gay, gallant, and courteous, he soon became the prime favourite among the young nobles of Assisi, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leader of the civil revels, the very king of frolic. But even at this time Francis showed an instinctive sympathy with the poor, and though he spent money lavishly, it still flowed in such channels as to attest a princely magnanimity of spirit.

He shed his expensive French garments some time after he got out of the army, having been a prisoner of war and a victim of fever, when he had a vision of becoming a Prince dedicated to Our Lady of Poverty, whom he said that he was 'betrothed,' went on a pilgrimage to Rome, tried to give money from goods that he stole from his father to a beggarly priest, only to have the gift refused and hid from his father's wrath in a cave, emerged from that cave after a few weeks and was hooted and howled at by his friends, family and neighbors as a madman.

Francis had transformed.

He had transformed from a vain, pampered and selfish boy into a man.

He was not the same person who went into the Army of Assisi to fight the Perugians.  Francis was no longer Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, but not Frances.  He was gender specific, transformed to be sure, but still the guy his mother birthed.

Today, transformation is tightly and politically defined as sexual and born of desire to be someone else - Chasity to Chaz and Bruce to Caitlyn.   Drag Queens are no longer spotlight vamps belting out "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have" at the old Empire Room, they are our neighbors.  That is the current meme, anyway.  Personally, the only Trans-persons, I have encountered are Col. Pritzker and the coterie of prostitutes who throng at 74th and Halsted in Englewood.

Col. Pritzker helped the Leo Alumni re-Dedicated the grave site of Medal of Honor recipient John Fardy, before his gender reassignment surgery.  Col. Pritzker is a highly decorated retired Army officer of the 82nd Airborne.

Of the male drag queen hookers on Halsted,  one beat up the Alderman of the 17th Ward a few years back.

Yesterday, it was announced that President Trump, as commander-in-chief, reversed the executive order of President Obama, as commander-in-chief, executed June 2016 lifting all bans on transgender personnel:

“Effective immediately, transgender Americans may serve openly,” Mr. Carter announced, on June 30, 2016. “They can no longer be discharged or otherwise separated from the military just for being transgender.”
He said that the Pentagon would cover the medical costs of those in uniform who wished to undergo gender transition, and that it would begin a yearlong training program for service members on the changes.

It appears that the issue was economic and required a solid 'civil rights' coating of rainbow paint to equate sex and gender with the 'color of a man's skin.'

The administration achieved many if not all of these goals. It’s been most successful in the arena of gay and lesbian rights. Obama signed into law an expansion of the hate-crime statute to include crimes motivated by antigay bias. He ended “don’t ask, don’t tell” and, more recently, lifted the ban on transgender people serving in the military. He issued an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He personally endorsed marriage equality in May 2012 and refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the law signed by Bill Clinton that denied federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states that recognized such marriages, thereby easing the way for its invalidation by the Supreme Court in 2013. And when the Court took up the question of same-sex marriage directly, the Obama administration supported the claimants, and Obama’s solicitor general, Don Verrilli, delivered an impassioned argument for why the Court shouldn’t defer recognition of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. A federal bill barring employment discrimination against LGBTQ people has not passed, but there the blame lies with Congress. (emphasis my own)

The issue is and was whether a person in the military, let's say someone who accepts n appointment to a Military Academy, or enlists as a gender specific person, decides to change genders, will the government be required to  pick up the costs.

According to multiple sources, the price of basic genital reassignment surgery (or genital reconstruction surgery) for a man transitioning to a woman ranges from $7,000 for a simple orchiectomy and vaginoplasty to $25,000 for orchiectomy and the more complicated colovaginoplasty. This is often, but not always, followed up by breast augmentation, which can run anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. That’s a total average high of $35,000, but estimates for the two procedures combined have ranged from $10,000 to upwards of $50,000.

For women transitioning to men, the initial costs can be higher, and the choices more complicated. Some estimates lower-end cost of a metoidioplasty—a procedure that “frees” a hormone therapy-enlarged clitoris from the body for use as a phallus—at $2,000. That said, there are estimates of more complex metoidioplasties, as well as procedures that add testicles and involve full phalloplasties that top $100,000. Often double mastectomies, ranging in cost from $15,000 to $25,000, and sometimes hysterectomies, which run from $7,500 to $11,500, are performed.

These are the low-end figures.  The best guess-timate lies in the neighborhood of  $130,000 per gender re-assignment. Bradley/Chelsae Manning has his/her's.

The media is dead -set against the Trump Order.  It's a Trump order.  Some have raised Harry S. Truman's Executive 9981 ordering the end of racial segregation ( black/Japanese) in all military units, Non-Active Duty Navy Seals living post surgical lives, tales of hard-charging Alpha Male buddies who are now soccer moms, to pump up the Resistance on this issue.

I do not believe that this is a Selma moment, again.

Francis stopped being Giovanni. Col. Pritzker was not Jennifer when he finished jump school at Fort Bragg. Bruce Jenner won the Decathalon, but Caitlynn is not getting in the blocks.  Pfc.Bradley Manning sold military secrets and Chelsae got out of the stockade in May.

"Give 'Em Hell Harry," commanded an artillery battery loaded with Micks, not a Baptist's favorite gang, but learned about them,

. I have the Irish Catholic Battery but they seem to like me pretty well and I'm satisfied if I don't blow up with to many worries that I'll have a good Btty. I hope the best in the Brigade. The one that does the best work here gets to fire the first shot of the Brigade at the Hun. I shall do my very best to win the honor although I may fail to get it as there is hot competition. You've no idea the experience I'm getting. I've seen most everything and done most everything in this man's army since August 5 and now I have attained my one ambition to be a Battery Commander. If I can only make good at it I can hold my head up any way the rest of my days.
I'd give most anything to see you. I hope also that Hinde's[23] prophecy is true. But of course we can't come home until we do a thorough job over here. Please keep writing and remember I love you always.
Harry
Capt. Harry S. Truman
Bty D. 129th F.A.

Truman did what FDR was afraid to do - he ended racial segregation in the services.

President Obama did what policy wanted and floated on the breeze.

 The Nobel Prize winning 44th President made traditional marriage a parlor game for semiotic totalitarians, "When I became president, same-sex marriage was legal in only two states. Today it's legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia."

What a guy!

Barry was no Harry.

James jumped at Fort Bragg and Jennifer own the biography.  That is a fact.  Might not be the truth, but it is a fact - today.

Put me in the Q category.

Sweet PR for Wee Mike Quigley - Collusion of the Media with American Oligarchs

"A byproduct of Quigley’s membership on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — and its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election — has been to raise the national profile of the North Side lawmaker, who has become a frequent guest on cable shows discussing the probe. "-  Lynn "Sweetheart of the Clown Rodeo" Sweet: Chicago Sun Times

When was the last time Lynn Sweet did a puff PR piece, wrapped as news, for any Illinois member of Congress, other than spotted cows and incestuous cousins of the Progressive Cook County Democrats?

Dan Lipinski? Only when he was a super-delegate for the Democratic Convention and threatened to cast his vote for Bernie Sanders.

“As a Democratic member of Congress, I have a vote at the Democratic National Convention as a superdelegate. Before the Illinois primary I told Democrats in the 3rd District that I decided that I would pledge my vote to whichever candidate won the district,” Lipinski told the Sun-Times in an email.

Bernie whupped Hillary here in the 3rd District , during the Illinois primary.  Sweet tried to toss sand in Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan's eyes, for not coming through for HRC - the choice of the Cook County Banana Republic.

Pete Roskam?  Only to to shill for the laboriously obnoxious Cheri Bustos and toxic Illinois Personal PAC- aka Abortions R Us.

WASHINGTON — Seeing cracks in once solid GOP suburban Chicago turf, Democrats are promising to give Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., his biggest race since he was first elected in 2006.
“There are at last count 22 different people looking to take him on,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., on the recruitment team for the national Dem House political shop, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Nope.  Only the lumps and loonies of the IVI-IPO Mikva Challenged Young Pioneer Progressives machine get kindness - Daley, Durbin, Obama, Quinn, Preckwinkle, Dart (formerly 19th Ward - currently?  Not so much), Schawosky, Deb Mell, Bobby Rush, Danny Davis and Dave Orr are all Lynn Sweetie Pies.

Today, the man who helped Buck Toothed Dave Orr, Cook County Clerk,  make voting easy to hack in 2006, Congressman Mike Quigley (D-himself), who found Borscht  on the Russian Tea Time menu and announced the Ivans in the electoral woodpile!  Quigley was appointed to the House Select Committee on Intelligence by no less a mental giant than Nancy Pelosi.  Wee Mike, who had been Alderman Bernie Hansen's rat-catcher, bag-man, stooge and minion back in the 1980's shaking down real estate and gay bars, has bounded his stumpy legs up and onto greater seats of power -Cook County Commissioner and U.S.  Congressman on such powerful committees as  Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) and the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD).

THUD - total boondoggle!

Lynn Sweet is not concerned that piggy little Mike Quigley has his practiced chubby fingers very deep in the Federal cookie jar, because she knows that Progressive only steal ( make clever investments) out of love for children, elderly Black folks and Dreamers.

You see, Mike Quigley is using his Congressional high stool to unhorse Jared Kushner and quicken the exit of President Trump, before he drains the lucrative swamp that waters Lynn Sweet's NPR, CNN, MSNBC and newtwork face time, as well as the Federal funds siphoned from the streams of plenty to the Cook County Banana Republic.

Instead, Lynn Sweet cheer leads for Team Banana Republic.

The 11-page statement Kushner released through his attorney before he headed to Capitol Hill filled in blanks and put a lot more on the table — such as a meeting now-former Russia Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak brokered between Kushner with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian bank.
Quigley told me his questions would dive into more than what Kushner offered up in his statement, such as the basic, “Why did you meet with the Russian banker?

”Quigley said there is more to be learned about why Kushner even entertained the notion that he go to the Russian embassy to get a secure line for a conversation. Said Quigley, “You would assume that the Russian ambassador was laughing inside.”

You would assume that Mike Quigley would be worried about some smart, honest and courageous investigative journalist combing through the minutes of the Cook County Board in 2006 and grubby little Mike's paws all over collusion with the Venzuelan Voting Machines along with CPS Czar Forrest Claypool and Dave Orr in collusion with real Russian hacking and vote tampering.

You would assume that, but this is Cook County - The Banana Republic that shakes the federal Trees.
Thud!

Sweet.

Idiot Bicyclists and Bistro Voltaire

 “Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.” ― Voltaire

  DNAinfo ChicagoThe video shows a bicyclist apparently slowly pedaling into the intersection of Halsted and Roosevelt when a car hits him, sending the man over the car's roof and landing several feet away.
The driver of the car, a 22-year-old woman, stayed at the scene and has not been cited in the crash
Read more at https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=995_1500584271#UeqSxFGsIJCZARVJ.99

“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.” ― Voltaire


My lovely friend and I enjoyed a superb evening at a remarkable destination - Bistro Voltaire at 222 West Chicago Avenue.  The getting there was like watching Dunkirk on IMAX.

We began our trip to Bistro Voltaire at 4 P.M. on a hot and sticky Saturday, armed with an umbrella for the much threatened rains.  No rain.  I decided to take North Avenue from Oak Park to the restaurant, because Taste of River North was getting under way and the expected traffic at Ohio exit of 94 North would be as thick as creme brulee on hot sidewalk.

North  Avenue is a wonderful ride east to the hipper environs. You travel through Austin and West ad East Garfield Parks, where my Aunt Nellie Shea and her husband Dinny had an apartment until their moves to Heaven and then Humboldt Park.  I turned south at California and we saw old gents playing dominoes in Humboldt Park.  We passed the wonderful Flying Saucer diner run by a brilliant Australian lad named Andy and headed east again at Chicago Avenue heading into Ukrainian Village with its magnificent Churches and Museum and finally the bedroom community of the self absorbed.

These hipper environs are noticeable more by its tattooed and tanned denizens pedaling expensive CEEPO Vipers, or the more modest 6061 BLACK LABEL - PEARL WHITE.  These people want everyone to know that they are alive . . ., at the moment. 

Last week I watched a video (above)  of a graceful idiot imitating a bug on a windshield, in DNAinfo Chicago.

Yesterday, I watched no fewer than four such well-accoutred imbeciles sped through red lights at Chicago and Western , Chicago and Damen, Chicago and Ashland and finally at Chicago and Larabee.  These death defying morons caused traffic, which was not inconsiderable, to buckle and wane in expectation of meeting between force and matter.

My son lives in Wicker Park, as do many young people brought up with Old World values in the un-hippest of neighborhoods and continue to live accordingly.  These young people know what it means to not receive participation trophies, how to wait their turns, have deference for other people and how not to spark a confrontation with their elders and betters.

Living among them are tattooed and tanned spawn of Montessori, Lab and Liberation education.

Free to form, do what they may with creative intensity and speak their little minds.

There were no speeding ninnies observed from Oak Park to Sacramento along Chicago Avenue, it was only at the boundaries of Wards run by Proco Joe Moreno and Brian Hopkins that the Clay-brained people emerged.  Always aboard a most expensive set of wheels

Our Lady Blue Divvy bikers tended to their slow pace and themselves.

Once we found on-street parking on Chicago Avenue, we took an amble to the Brehon Pub and caught the pivotal 8th Inning of yesterday's W over St. Louis.  My lady had scrumptious baked pretzel as a pre-prandial salivation for the delights awaiting at our 5:30 P.M. reservation.

Opened in 2010, Bistro Volatire is top of the charts.  The music is an exquisite combination real jazz, jazz Manouche, Edith Piaff, Michel Le Grande and Ray Charles.  The walls are festooned with image of Western literary giants, save the bothersome portrait of career bullshitter Studs Terkel - Volatire, Balzac, Victor Hugo, John Dos Passos, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrud Stein, Virginia Wolf, Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, James Joyce and Eugene O'Neill.

The lighting is perfect, the seating cozy-comfortable and the service wonderfully attentive, friendly and pure Chicago homespun at its best.

Our server, James, was a Dubliner and student at UCD enjoying the freedom of our city and working the fresh markets in the same neighborhoods that are home to the Morons sur les bicyclettes of our trip here.

The menu is simple and inviting .  We both had the Bistro Salade of crisp and chilled Romaine and endive lettuce, bacon, and  a poached egg over a Dijon mustard vinaigrette.

After sampling the driest of white wines and settling on the Chardonnay, the birthday girl ordered the Vivaneau - Red snapper over spinach and parsnip puree.

My only disappointment was they were out of swordfish and I opted for the wonderful steak au poivre.  You can not miss this.  The Frittes (fries) are seasoned with garlic and pure love of Man.   I could cut the steak with a spoon.

Knowing that my lovely guest was celebrating her birthday, the wonderful manager sent over the lady's favorite cocktail Kir Royal and a candle topped Profiterolle ( a pastry puff stuffed with gelato and covered in a sinful chocolate sauce.  I got more than few spoons of it.

Bistro Voltaire is the ideal  romantic evening, special dinner treat that will put you in solid with the one you love.  Get there before James returns to his studies in economics at University of Dublin in September.  He is a great entry to the superb entrees at Bistro Voltaire.

I took I 94 to the Ike home - no bikes.