Neighbors, Merry Christmas ! 2017 in the 19th Ward

I am blessed.  I live and work in this wonderful neighborhood.  I live in Morgan Park and work at Brother Rice High School.  Children grow up centered, respectful  and industrious.  This is a neighborhood of families.  It is strong.

The many churches are places where these families draw their strength - Quaker, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal, Baptist and very large Catholic parishes nurture what is learned in the home.

A very hateful article by the editor of the Chicago Reader - sponsored by the Sun Times News Group and edited by Jake Malooley, the author of the piece - took the opportunity to stir up race hate for Christmas.

The Chicago Reader is a free press and has been for as long as I care to remember. It's slant is far left of center.

The Chicago Reader is only following exactly what the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and the now dead DNAinfo Chicago have done for decades without challenge.

Why challenge people who are wrong, hateful, bigoted and wildly unfair.

People in this neighborhood are welcoming - that is how journalists ooze into the confidence of people.  They violate welcome.

A very pretty female journalist found welcoming bar stools and chatty drinkers in the saloons of Mount Greenwood, in order to make a case that this neighborhood's vote for Trump was solely due to race hate,

Her editor used her dubious report to do the same,  "No demogorgon roams this netherworld, but a majority of its electorate did back the man who's been called the swamp monster: President Donald Trump. Jake Malooley editor Chicago Reader"

Demogorgon?  Homage to Statius' Thebiad or Dungeons and Dragons?  I think the later, The last pretentious hypocrite to smear the neighborhood is a wife beater.

Neil Steinberg did so after breaking bred with a crowd of 19th Ward people.  After being made welcome he insulted and villainized his hosts as Aryan Nation racists, "But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009"

 Steinberg was just joking, when I called him on it and his hypocrisy.  Steinberg is busy equating square dancing with cross-burning this Yuletide.

I have yet to read a news alert that young people from 60655 were stealing Christmas deliveries from UPS, FedEx and USPS routes in Roseland, Gresham, Englewood, West Lawn  or Garfield Heights.

On Halloween thousands of residents strolled with their children along the 111th Street business route.  Last week they did the same for Santa's Visit - all sponsored by local businesses and Aklderman Matt O'Shea.

No violence , as in Hyde Park.

No hate.

Christmas lives here every day, unless a few reporters manage to misquote and misrepresent the good people of this neighborhood.

Merry Christmas, everyone and everyday!

Merry Christmas, Maya and Jake!

The First Nativity Breakfast - Joe's Getting It Ready

When the shepherds, the drovers and the innkeeper's guests had gotten a good look at the young girl and her baby, the one the star pointed out,  and some time before the three gents from the east showed up with gifts, they took off with their bleating lambs their lowing cattle and their curiosity for the  stuff of everyday life.

Joseph too left his wife and child, for a very short while. No abandonment, you see.  Joe was being Dad.

The girl snuggled her baby, like the lovely young girl in the painting by Irish artist Adam Pomeroy, with protective love only a woman knows, while the baby's father went about in search of nourishment for his family.

Joe's Family was broke.  Remember, the innkeeper let them stay in stable, but no where does it say he let them bunk for free. Joseph, Mary and the little guy were in town to buck up some taxes.  This was not a vacation. Joe had to use his wits.

The First Christmas Breakfast was being put together by Joseph.

What would they have?

Scholars tell us that sugar was non-existent and that honey was only in homes of the wealthy. Dried fruits, nuts and grains were the staple diet of people in Roman occupied Judea.

 Bread was made by women who also ground the grains.  Joseph would have to buy bread, or try and get someone to offer up a few crusts.

I think that he beat it out into the wild and did some foraging for figs and olives to go with the curdled milk that was probably stored in the stable with the goats.  He could dig up some wild onions to flavor up the crushed olives.

While his exhausted bride and son slept to gain strength, Joseph threw together a meal. That is what Dad's do on Christmas mornings.

Maybe it wasn't pancakes, bacon, eggs and sausage, or an egg casserole with mushrooms, onions and peppers, but would guess that the man who put his wife on donkey to Bethlehem, watched with agonized joy as his son was born, while Mary endured the many hours of sustained torture thanks to the apple eaters, made the first meal for his family something very holy.

Our everyday lives have seemed to eclipse the sacred.  Maybe the mundane, quotidian and dull things we do out love can help restore the mystery and glory of sacred.

Our Ramparts: Chicago Trib and Sun Times Share Trump-Thumping Headline

Note the diversity at Tribune Tower!


Great minds think alike . . .and so do very small minds.

Today, after President Trump's Tax Cut, both Chicago rags offer identical headlines warning that, like the internet, we are all in peril, doomed I tells Ya!  Get to the Ramparts!

The ramparts are usually the defensive walls of castles, but in Trumpophobic America it refers to the Washington Post, newspapers that hate Trump in general, or so our later-day Henry Fonda, Tom Hanks, would have us believe.

"I would not have been able to imagine that we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville and jokes about Pocahontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers. And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts.” Tom Hanks -on not bringing the projector to the White House

You see, he has taken to the ramparts against Trump and refuses to be part of a showing of The Post at the Trump White House.

Like the Olympic snow bunny who took a Brody last week after say that she will not represent Trump in Seoul, was as good as her word.  Captain Phillips will not be taking Wilson to the White House.

Here on Chicago's sandbags and barbed wire, Bruce Dold and Tom McNamee have planted their ink wells - like their master Rahm Emanuel: No Trump Here!

Voila!

Chicago Tribune - Triumphant Trump celebrates tax win — but some fear backlash

 Chicago Sun Times - Triumphant Trump celebrates tax win, but some fear backlash

With one grammatical shift - the words are identical, as are the authors of said piece: Stephen Ohlemacher and Marcy Gordon | Associated Press

Cut and Paste, approved memes, pre-caste narratives and thin-gruel opines from lightweights like Neil Steinberg, Lynn Sweet, Steve Chapman, Rex Hupke and  Mary Schmich are what has replaced Nick Von Hoffman, Ray Coffey. Dorothy Collins and Mike Royko, in this hick burg.

Only John Kass writes with independence of thought, wit and courage.



The rest of the ninnies are stringing tinsel for barbed wire and piling Kit Kats for sandbags!  Get that helmet on McNamee!  Watch for Cops, Bruce; they might be sixth col-yoom- nists!

When the shelling is over, let me know how Tom Hanks' new flicker is doing at the box office.

Got me a tax cut.

Chicago Tribune Gins Up Police Hate for Christmas

Just a few bullet points:

• There is no Police Omerta - Code of Silence was invented by Commie Ambulance Chasers to bully more money from cowardly City Mayors.

• Veteran Police Officers return fire on offenders - they do not shoot boys/girls/children/babies/toddlers & etc.
• Chicago Tribune is goofy

G. Flint Taylor, a toxic Marxist opportunist, shameless showman and plutocrat, coined the media's over-used phrase, police code of silence. 

When fat-slob with a badge, Anthony Abbate beat a tiny Polish woman tending bar, where Abbate was all but sucking on bar rags, G. Flint Taylor took the opportunity to make hay at Huffington Post  -the kiosk for Kooks, Commies and Hollywood D-listers to pen nonsense.  G. Flint rolled the usual Marxist Meatball ingredients of Race, Class Envy Police Brutality and Jeremiad:

Editorial Boards captained by ninnies like Tom McNamee of the Chicago Sun Times and Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune were wowed by this social justice warrior's words and mimed the meme at every opportunity.  That was five years ago.

Today, the Chicago Tribune again  joins G. Flint Taylor's drum circle of jerks: City to pay $20 million to settle code-of-silence lawsuit over fatal crash caused by drunken Chicago cop, sources say

The Chicago Police have no Code of Silence. In fact, Chicago Police Officers are more than chatty about clouted, politically connected, slugs, mopes and bullies on the job.  Cops want them gone and the political creeps who wedged them into the ranks investigated.  Ask a cop.

More idiotic is Bruce Dold's editorialized banner rhetoric - Off-duty Chicago cop shoots armed boy trying to carjack him in Bronzeville, police say:

Around 6:30 p.m. Monday, an off-duty Chicago police officer was sitting in his personal vehicle in the 3600 block of South Prairie Avenue when two suspects approached him on both sides, according to Chicago Police Sgt. Cindy Guerra.  The suspect on the passenger’s side tapped on the window to distract the officer while the one on the driver’s side, a boy, announced a robbery, Guerra said.


The officer, an 18-year veteran assigned to the city’s 11th District, fired one shot striking the juvenile suspect in the abdomen. The boy was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his condition has stabilized. The other suspect ran away and is still at large.

The officer was also taken to Rush Medical Center for stress-related reasons, but is listed in good condition.

Please note that BOY is not in quotation marks.

Police did not say boy.

Tribune say Boy.

What say you?

Merry Christmas, G. Flint!

Merry Christmas, Bruce!

Sure hope there will not be a need for media omerta, when such idiotic bleed leading headlines inspires an idiot savage to open fire on a police officer - just in time for the Holidays,

Want to Get Illinois Out of Stupid? Pay Attention and Vote Erika Harold for Illinois Attorney General.

Erika Harold for Illinois Attorney General *- ASAP!

If are happy with your tax burden and the endless parade incompetent, larcenous and creepy elected officials in this City, County and State, vote the way you are told by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ, Crain's  NBC, WBBM, FOX 32, WGN, Chicago Business, The Reader and all of Fred Eychaner's Free Newsstand. 

Vote like Eric Zorn, Steve Chapman, Andy Shaw, Mike Flannery, Dane Placko, Chuck Goudie, Phil Ponce, Carol Marin, Mark Brown, Bruce Dold and Neil Steinberg.

That will ensure that, Sneedless to say, the buckshot, the upshot and the bullshot for Illinois will be JB Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel, Toni Preckwinkle and Kwame Rauol  in control City Hall, the County, the Governor's Mansion and, most importantly - Illinois Attorney General.

With 13 weeks till the primary election and Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s surprise decision not to seek re-election, Illinois voters have a crowded field of eight Democratic and two Republican candidates to choose from.

Though the Cook County Democratic Party last month crowned State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, as their choice, former Gov. Pat Quinn has secured the top ballot spot via a state lottery, which might help get him some votes. Raoul and Quinn are perhaps the most familiar names on the Democratic primary ballot.
In the Republican primary, Erika Harold — a Harvard-educated attorney and former Miss America who has the backing of the state’s Republican Party — faces Gary Grasso, a DuPage County Board member.  Sun Times

I don't know a thing about Mr. Grasso - probably a very nice gent. But, I know a little about Erika Harold.

This might be the only time you read about Erika Harold, Sneedless to say. Lisa Madigan was an access ticket for our lazy Illinois media and she had fourteen years of unexamined performance protecting Illinois politics from scrutiny.


Lisa Madigan has done nothing in her fourteen years as Attorney General but become the first woman to hold that office. 

Ms. Madigan argued successfully before the United States Supreme Court in Illinois v. Caballes," where the court reaffirmed the ability of police officers to use specially trained dogs without a search warrant or probable cause to detect the presence of illegal drugs during traffic stops."  Not exactly groundbreaking.

Ms. Madigan raised her profile by speaking out on many issues and accepted awards.

Illinois cork-screwed deeper into the rich soil of this State.

Kwame Rauol and Pat Quinn are equally challenged human beings, in fact the Lake Zurich Patch called them 'an unbeatbale ticket 2014.'  They lost, huge.

Now they face each other in duel of the challenged for Attorney General.   Pat Quinn secured the top spot on the ballot, but Kwame nailed imprimatur of the State Democratic Party.

The Illinois Attorney Generalshould not be a security blanket for crooks, cons, conniving creeps and cretins. Instead the States Attorney General's homepage reads like programming from NPR

• Advocating for Women
• Protecting the Environment
• Safeguarding children
• Advocating for the Older Citizens

Name one crook sent to the Illinois Corrections System by Lisa Madigan. Name one investigation of corporate collusion in the explosion of Pay Day/Car Title Loan industry in Illinois during Madigan's tenure.  

These Usury Utilities prey on the poor, but the Attorney General's Consumer Affairs site offers this advise to the desperate: 

Consider Other OptionsWith their extremely high interest rates and many charges and fees, small consumer loans, payday installment loans, and payday loans can quickly transform a short-term financial crisis into a long-term debt problem. You should exhaust all possible resources – family, church, friends – before you even consider taking out one of these high-cost loans.

Should you exhaust all possible resources -family, church, friends - turn to gun violence on yourself after you have been taken to court by the good folks at PLC Illinois.

Thanks Lisa!

Like President Obama, Erika Harold is Harvard Law Alumna and, unlike POTUS 44, a practicing attorney in Illinois with a list of legal achievements.

• When she was blessed with the opportunity to attend Harvard Law School, she was thrown a curveball. She couldn’t afford the tuition.
• But Erika didn’t give up. Lacking the funds to pay for school, she got creative. She decided to compete in the Miss America Organization to attempt to earn the scholarship money necessary to pay for law school.She won. And she used her platform to not only pay for school, but also to give back.

• As Miss America 2003, Erika became a national leader in the fight to end youth violence and bullying, sharing with more than 100,000 students her own experience of overcoming bullying. Erika was named one of Fight Crime, Invest in Kids’ “Champions for Children” and received a leadership award from the National Center for Victims of Crime.

• Upon graduating from Harvard Law School, Erika worked as an attorney in the litigation groups of Sidley Austin LLP and Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C.

• Erika represented businesses in commercial disputes and advised religious institutions in matters involving First Amendment protections. She also was active in the law firms’ respective legal education efforts, teaching students about the U.S. legal system as part of the Lawyers in the Classroom program and coaching a team of high school students in the City-Wide Mock Trial Competition. She was also part of the teaching faculty for Harvard Law School’s 2017 Trial Advocacy Workshop.

• In 2015, the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Erika to serve on the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Equality.

• Erika is also a member of Trinity International University’s Board of Regents, and serves as a Commissioner on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism.

• Erika currently serves on the national board of directors of Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners and their families. In that capacity, she advocates for criminal justice reform.  She was also recently selected to the 2017 Emerging Lawyers list and was recognized in the categories of commercial litigation, civil rights/constitutional law.Erika Harold works as an attorney at Meyer Capel, one of Champaign County’s largest law firms.  

I doubt if Erika Harold will receive the Caroline Kennedy New Frontier Award, like Lisa Madigan, because Ms. Harold is not a child of nepotism, but she is willing open the books on Lisa's Dad and his minions, because, " Erika Harold knows that home is worth fighting for. That’s why she’s stepping up to take on Mike Madigan’s political machine."

Jeanne Ives should be linked arms with Erika Harold, ASAP.  Jeanne could point out all of the bones in Springfield graveyard of deals. 

That is something worth bucking the trend. 

Let's see if Illinois is ready to grow a pair. 

* My apologies - I had earlier confused States Attorney with the office of Attorney General.  My error was pointed out by a kind soul.  I am nothing, if not flawed.

Chicago Oligarchs

The globalization of cities and their elites often comes at the expense of many of the people who live there. Forced to compete with foreign capital and immigrant workers, native-born residents of cities from Los Angeles and London to Singapore often feel displaced, becoming strangers in what they thought was their own place. . . .in this era of powerful oligarchs and growing inequality, these planetary centers are less places for upward mobility than most other cities. This is clearly true in the United States, where its premier global city, New York, as well as its prime competitors for international standing, Chicago, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, rank among the 10 most unequal cities in the nation. Joel Kotkin - Forbes

 This is a formidable moment. Chicagoans can best negotiate it by placing their faith in Rahm Emanuel and his ethos of dogged effectiveness. No other candidate combines Emanuel's candor about the threats facing Chicago with the will to take necessary steps -- some of them unpopular -- to tame those threats.
Specifically: We're hugely impressed by Emanuel's forthrightness about the overarching crisis in city finances. He alone is frank about the immediate need to reform a pension system that otherwise will implode on city retirees and everyday taxpayers alike. Chicago Tribune - Rahm endorsement

Response, Citizens?  Mine is blue. Real blue. Not that I am against colorful language, but there just might be a sensitive soul scanning the web.

 Steven Colbert, the Chicago Tribune, WTTW, The Sun Times, WBEZ and Crain's Chicago Business are friends of Chicago Oligarchs.

Colbert, an ersatz satirist, offered Mayor Rahm Emanuel a national sound byte, echoing the drone of the Cook County and Illinois Democratic Party mantra - Trump is evil.

Candidate for Governor JB Pritzker offers only Trumpophobic nonsense, but offers no hope for this choking State, other than fight Trump.

The laughable Chicago Tribune acts as the MiniTru for City Hall and the County Building, with daily feature feed of Trump Thumping howlers from Rex Hupke, Stephen Chapman,  Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich and farmed-in pieces from WAPO, NYT, Salon, The Nation and VOX.

Not only that, but the Chicago Tribune continues its Bizzaro-world assaults on Chicago Police officers in full communion with Rahm Emanuel's creepy suppression of his role in burying the Laquan McDonald video.

There is absolutely no mention of the Forrest Claypool scandal, much less an incisive inquiry to his altering of documents and cover-up which to the reading public appears to be a Rico ready case.

Steven Colbert made no mention of this Rahm-an noodle bowl of worms.

Sadly, Chuy Garcia appears to have taken the path of least resistance and the coin as well as the Congressional seat of the larcenous Luis Gutierrez ll only days before Forrest Claypool fell on his silver spoon.

Trump-look-alike Bob Fioretti, a practiced stalking horse, is already out of the gate, clearing the way for the Chicago City Council Black Caucus to Raise-up Rahm!

The Oligarchy will continue - Trump a Lump!

Illinois voters will paint themselves into the already assigned corners and idiots like former governor Pat Quinn will step into Lisa Madigan's seat, Michigan Ave. Fats Pritzker will take Rauner's warm and comfy seat after months of editorial screeds painting Jeannie Ives as some kind of Trump Tranny and clown judges will return to County and State benches.

Get ready for it neighbors!  You thought the last eight years were burdensome?  Hold the phone.

Would God Like Me ? One Never Knows, Do One?

Simple Question: Would God Like You? Would God like me?

God Loves us all, that is why he created the universe, but I wonder if God would get along with me.

I am prepping my students for their final exams next week here at Brother Rice High School in Mount Greenwood.  I have four sections of Juniors taking a Christian Morality Class and one section of Freshmen in an Old Testament Class. All are very fun, challenging and sobering for me the instructor.

In the junior classes we cover morality

• Natural Moral Law  - the Unitarian Canon - we are all alike
• Old Testament Moral Law - God's contract with Man and Israel in particular
• New Testament - Christ's Challenge to Live Drudgery and find Happiness
• The Precepts of the Catholic Church The Magnificent 7: 1.Go to Mass, 2.take the Sacraments, 3.Study for Confirmation, 4.Observe Marriage Laws, 5.Support the Church - make that drop, 6. do penance and 7. be an Apostle - make Catholic Christianity attractive
• Canon law - The quotidian web of laws, teachings about worship, Church property, and role of laity - buck up, folks. 

We just finished a Unit on the the Sixth Commandment - Thou Shalt Not Kill and the lads were astonished to see what is covered under that:

• Do not Offer Scandal - If the Kids see me coming out of Pole Katz, or hookers popping in and out of Casa Hickey along the tracks, I have 'killed' their innocence by saying adultery is acceptable. I am a teacher and a Theology teacher at that.  More so, if I stay in bed on Sundays and ditch Mass, my kids learn to do the same.  Not on this fat boy's watch.
• Give People Their Dignity from Womb to Tomb - if you are OK with abortion, you are OK with anything. Likewise if you help prey on the poor by placing Pay Day Loan and Car Title Loan stores in Zip Codes of poor people, if you  are a State Legislator/Senator who helped enact the growth of predatory lenders you have sinned against the 6th Commandment.
• If you eat like hog and act like one as well, you might be committing suicide of the installment plan.
• There is a difference between 'killing' and a Homicide.
• Bullies are killing peoples' dignity 

The Freshmen have studied the LAW of God.  The Old Testament is great literature and the inspired Word of God written by some very talented people.

We have Covered Genesis & Exodus; Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel 1 & 2 and the Book of Kings.

The guys learned that God wants us to listen to Him and the We ignore Him until the shit hits the fan.

The God hears our cries and 'raises up' flawed, scared and doubtful men and women to get our lard out of the frying pan.

Adam, Eve, Cain Abraham, Issac, Lot, Noah, Moses, Joshua, Gideon,  Samson Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, Saul David and Solomon all go their own ways ,after God has promised them His full support.  Even after God delivers, the OT people try to go their own way - just like all of us. 

What I have been blessed with is a nagging question - Would God like Hickey.  Would Jesus immediately kick my ass upon meeting? Has my life merited a sound beat-down? Would my ass be smote?

In the words of the great Fats Waller, One never knows, Do One!"

Chicago Tribune Does Rahm Recovery and Dan Mihalopoulos Tosses Red Meat to Real Readers

It does not take a Jeremiah, a Daniel, or an Ezra to read Chicago Tea-leaves and know with 100% certainty that Chicago's Media will apply rouge, mascara and pancake to the potholes on Rahm Emanuel's mug only seconds after every disaster. 

Immediately after the weekend's whirlwind "Forget about it!  Good Men Make Mistakes"  from Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune, the greasepaint got slapped on with hefty trowel:

Top news
CLOUT STREET
Trying to dig out of turmoil of second term, Emanuel looks ahead to re-election bid:
Bill Ruthhart
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in the back half of a second term filled with controversies and challenges that would have left many politically weakened if not finished for good, but he’s as cocksure as ever about his future.

Gee, what a scrappy kid!  What a with it guy!  Them controversies???  Go on; pick one!

Whoever runs against Emanuel, the Tribune will morph him/her into 'The Trump Candidate.'

Already Dold's hacks, Steve Chapman, Rex Hupke, as well as imported features are dominating the most read section with Trump Thumping tub-thumpers.

• I Study Liars fro  Living. I've Never Seen One Like President Trump
• A lesson in history: Why the furor behind declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital?
• Donald Trump's biggest flaw: He's not that bright
• Don't underestimate how low Trump can go
• Trump endorses Moore — something for Gross America to ...

We get it Bruce, Trump is bad, very, very, very very bad.   So is the Tribune.

Rahm Emanuel is Cocksure that he can depend upon the purse-puppies in the Tribune Tower to lick-spittle up a storm for him! Membership in the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy requires lock-step from stooges.

However, West of the tower along the river, the Sun Times' Dan Mihalopoulos  has tossed raw meat to real readers

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get a brief break from his troubles here next week — thanks to a star in the vast constellation of brother Ari.
When news broke that Emanuel will go to New York to be a guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday, I couldn’t help but immediately suspect Colbert is one of the many entertainers who make gobs of money for uber-agent (and Uber investor) Ari Emanuel.Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Think Colbert will ask about the Feds circling around Forrest Claypool and not Cook County Forest Preserve workers? Not a chance!

Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Mihalopoulos goes for the jugular . . .and all south side Irish . . .by forcing readers to remember Robert Redford's lousy docu-drama that attempted to present Rahm as a human being

As with CNN’s fawning “Chicagoland” series — which starred Rahm Emanuel and his then-loyal top cop Garry McCarthy during Emanuel’s first term — the mayor is again benefitting from people who are financially connected to his little brother.
Clients of Ari Emanuel directed CNN’s 2014 homage to Rahm and Garry. Before that show aired, the directors promised to be so fair and balanced that Mayor Emanuel would be irked.  The final result was virtually a propaganda film, with Emanuel and McCarthy portrayed like urban superheroes. Emails later revealed the show’s producers privately coordinated scenes with mayoral aides and even promised to present Emanuel as “the star that he really is.”

You Steven Colbert works for Ari Emanuel's talent rodeo.  He is in with the Chicago Progressive Democratic Oligarchs and a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE Trump Thumper.

Dan Mihalopoulos cuts through the PR stooging from Rahm's office person and gets to meat of the matter:

An Endeavor spokesman on Friday confirmed Colbert is a client of Dixon Talent, but Dixon Talent did not return messages seeking comment on Rahm Emanuel’s appearance with Colbert.
A spokeswoman for CBS, the network that airs Colbert’s show, had no interest in elaborating on why they would want the mayor of Chicago on their show.
“So you’re aware, we don’t comment on our booking process,” said the spokeswoman, Lauren Kamm. “Photos of the mayor’s appearance will be available on Monday evening and the full clip of the interview will post on The Late Show’s YouTube page on Tuesday morning.”
We local yokels also can tune in to CBS-Channel 2 at 10:35 p.m. Monday. The mayor is scheduled to appear between Oscar winner Matt Damon and Colombian musician Juanes.
Emanuel should hope he gets glowing reviews in Beverly and other neighborhoods of his city — and not just in Beverly Hills. (emphasis my own)

Rahm plays Ok in Beverly, but west of Western and East of Longwood Drive ? Morgan Park?  Roseland?  Auburn-Gresham? Mount Greenwood?  West Beverly?   Garfield Ridge?  West Lawn?  Noyt so much.

Dan Mihiapolous shows real fangs and claws, unlike his editorial board.

Sun Times will back the SEIU/AFSCME approved candidate and then curry favor with the Third Term Rahm Administration, once the stalking horses white, black and Latino divide the votes again.

Here's hoping the Feds still have a RICO bullet in the chamber for Forrest Claypool and the will to let fly.

If not Rahm will face Trump and win again.

Colbert ought to be ashamed, but he is not. He is Hollywood.

Until then, Nothing is on Square and the Nine Digit Midget remains on Five.

Question for the 'Watchdogs' - How Soon Will the Feds Fell Forrest?

                                      December 8, 2017 - The Great Fellation of Forrest

“Issues over which you should leave go to corruption or profiteering. What you have here is a guy who wanted to get the best possible representation for the kids of Chicago and was overzealous in making that happen, . . .   Rahm, from my conversations with him, appreciates the progress the system has made in terms of dealing with its horrific financial problems and educationally on Forrest’s watch.” David Axelrod in The Maroon

I read the Maroon, the paper published by University of Chicago, home of Richie Daley, Dave Axelrod and the Hyde Park Mafia.

Let's the head of an organization shops six and settles on his college roomie to justify the Federally funded salary of lawyer with a huge conflict of interest and covers-up his tracks in a conspiracy to defraud the children he has sworn to serve is overzealous?

Yeah, Dave and that  Old Joe Stalin sure was vexed by them Ukrainians, some.

Comb Over Dave is really good at salting the soil with meaningless words - masterful.  Eight years of Obama and people still think he was better than . . .mildly adequate.

That's what a link to University of Chicago will do for your rhetoric. Dave is a wheel at U of C.

The University of Chicago is and has been tightly allied to City Hall and the County Board from the time that Richard M. Daley chiseled away at his Bridgeport foundation and built policies upon the sand dunes of the Midway.  His wife made him move out of the neighborhood and away from the people who put him in office, toss childhood friends under the buses and embrace effete political tyros cadre-ed and marshaled by Abner Mikva and funded with the many millions of dollars attached to 501(c)3 strings in the progressive web.

University of Chicago embraced every political grifter and every Marxist ambulance chaser hell-bent on power and social engineering.   Richard M. Daley - formerly Richie - wanted to please the bride and best his old man.  He was nice guy when he was Richie Daley.  Richard M. Daley?  Not so much.

Power and cover he got and did his minions - Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool and David Axelrod the Three Amigos of the room temperature I.Q. generated wit of Michael Sneed.

The old Ward Democratic Party was chopped up with the Shakman axe, set fire with Harris, Pritzker, Woods, MacArthur and Polk kindling and bellowed with hot air from The Tribune, Sun Times, Chicago Reader, WTTW, WBEZ, WBBM, NBC and Disney's ABC for decades.

The new Progressive Democratic Oligarchy was unstoppable.

Claypool hopped from six figure salary, screw-ups, scandals and sophistry to bigger piles of pension wampum - unexamined, unchallenged and celebrated by our media Watchdogs, the BGA and all of us.

Axelrod leaped to the White House.

Rahm Emanuel oozed onto the 5th Floor.

The Litulone, Cuchulain and Kutoyis of Cook County, Illinois, America and our globalist world, Barack H. Obama magically appeared in the 1990's from a clot of blood dropped from a wounded buffalo and rose via the magic of 501(c)3 boodle, a compliant media and seedy world created in Hyde Park Laboratory Schools, Slum Real Estate Ventures and Policy Parties.

The Progressive Democratic Oligarchy hugged, petted and foisted the University of Chicago approved John Henry upon our consciences and Barack Obama went from sic and fetch at the Woods Fund for Billy Ayers, to adjunct instructor ( Constitutional Law Scholar) to State Senator, US Senator to 44th President of United States and the Nobel Prize!  Check Please!

The simple fact that this 'life-long Sox Fan' could not name one White Sox player (1900-present), much less, could not under stand that one gets into a boxing ring by climbing through the ropes, is and remains a talisman for people's consciences.

More significantly POTUS '44's administration covered the dealings of Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel with impunity immunity for eight happy years.

Now, the onomatopoeic bully is in the White House and the Justice Department is no longer the cattle prod of Eric Holder, or candy dish of Loretta Lynch.

Forrest Claypool might be the G-string in this striptease.

His resignation said more about the hot breath of Feds on the white collar criminals with Progressive pedigrees, than the purchase of airline tickets to Cuba, or Montenegro,  most non-extradition countries are 'emerging nations' and PBS approved - all but the Vatican, but too is changing.

The timing ( Friday News Cycle), the fellation (Rahm's CPS Love Fest) and media feather bedding ( Tribune and Sun Times editorials with some serious Trump thumping) lead me to believe that the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy of Chicago has pooped the bed, one too many times.

You can't make a desert with felling the forest and Forrest is about to make a sandbox of Chicago's preening plutocrats.

Dry times ahead.

Okay Watchdogs!  Sic 'em!

Forrest Claypool - Quare desine/Why Resign? Club Fed, n'cest pas?

Quare Desine- Latin:  Why resign?

Forrest Claypool resigned on December 8, 2017 - A day that will live in someone's calendar.

Why? Quare desine,  as  the Latin Fathers asked. Here' a bit of Why

Claypool wanted CPS to hire Jenner & Block to handle the case. The firm’s lawyer who signed the deal with the Claypool administration was Randall Mehrberg. He’d been the top lawyer for the Chicago Park District in the 1990s, when Claypool was parks chief under then-mayor Richard M. Daley. Mehrberg later gave tens of thousands of dollars to Claypool’s political campaigns.
Mehrberg also was a volunteer adviser to Claypool in the mayor’s office when Claypool was Emanuel’s chief of staff, in 2015.
After Claypool went to CPS, Mehberg left City Hall, too. He went to work at Jenner & Block, where he began focusing on what would be CPS’ case against the state.
On March 1, 2016, Mehrberg sent a message to Claypool from his new job: “I started at Jenner today. I will get the file opened.”
Two days later, the firm started billing CPS, records show.
Claypool wanted Marmer to supervise the Jenner & Block lawyers working for the cash-strapped public schools. And Marmer did, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported, citing internal emails.
By April 2016, Mehrberg had sent Marmer copies of a draft lawsuit, and Marmer reported to Claypool on the case’s progress. Also that month, Mehrberg emailed Claypool to tell him he and Marmer had a “good conversation” about the planned suit.
“Great,” Claypool replied.
But there was one problem. Under the school system’s ethics code, officials can’t supervise the work of any CPS contractor with whom they have a “business relationship.” And Marmer was getting a $1 million severance package from Jenner & Block, in five $200,000 yearly installments through 2018.
Four in-house lawyers agreed Marmer shouldn’t be supervising his old employers. Two outside lawyers consulted in the spring of 2016 agreed.
But Claypool scurried to find a seventh — this time favorable — legal opinion from political supporter J. Timothy Eaton in June 2016.
By that time — May 12, 2016 — the Sun-Times had filed the first in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for CPS records on the deal.
CPS didn’t comply with the requests until after the school board approved the deal with Jenner & Block in late July 2016. A Sun-Times report on the issue prompted CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler to begin investigating.
On Tuesday — 16 months later — Schuler handed Board of Ed members a searing report that called for Claypool’s firing, saying the CEO lied repeatedly to him in a “full-blown cover-up” of a clear ethical violation by Marmer.
Schuler wrote that Claypool refused to pay one of the outside lawyers and got the other to alter the work description on his firm’s invoices, all to hide what was going on.
“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

Quare desine?  Why resign?

“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

No, it should not have happened and the Sun Time and the Tribune and the goofs at WTTW and WBEZ knew  all along that some shoe was about to drop and they were helping the powers that be make hurt go away.

The media never takes a chance at losing access - sneedless to say.

The 5th Floor's reliable Sneed of the Sun Times wrote this on December 6th:

Well, that may no longer be a question in the case of former top cop Garry McCarthy, who detests Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the man who fired him — and the man whose job he wants.“An announcement on McCarthy’s decision could come as soon as the aftermath of the Super Bowl,” said a top McCarthy supporter who cites recent polling as a hopeful sign McCarthy will green-light a bid next month for mayor of Chicago.
“The polling was encouraging,” the source said.
Sneed has learned a polling firm called We Ask America, which is run by XPS, described as “a political fulfillment firm owned by the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association,” did some polling “which did not shut the door” on the McCarthy movement, a top political source said.
• Backshot: A McCarthy for Mayor Exploratory Committee was created after papers were filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections in mid-September.• Big bucks shot: “Garry knows the campaign is going to cost $10 million and he’s got a lot of  money to raise — and it’s not going to happen until he gets into the race,” said the source, who is one of his backers — but asked to remain anonymous.
“But from what we’ve seen so far his sidewalk support is huge. . . . I can’t tell you how many people come up to him on the street and ask him to run. I’ve been with him when it happens and it is astounding. And we’ve heard rumblings Rahm’s approval rating is not great.”
• Upshot: But an attempt to reach McCarthy was unsuccessful on Wednesday.

The Same Day - the usually reliable Fran Spielman wrote this:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in a no-win position now that Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has been exposed as a liar and the architect of a cover-up.
If Emanuel fires Claypool, he’ll be turning his back on a friend of nearly 40 years whose tenure has included impressive results on both the education and school funding fronts.
The mayor would also be emboldening the Chicago Teachers Union in the run-up to the 2019 mayoral election by serving up the head on a platter the union has long demanded.
If Emanuel keeps Claypool — even after he “repeatedly lied” to Inspector General Nicholas Schuler — it will invite CPS employees to do the same, send a dangerous message to students and gamble that a schools CEO whose integrity has been tarnished can still function.

Uh, oh!!!!!!!!! Conflict!!!!! Bet a call from the Nine Digit Midget on Five shook up Comrades Tom Frisbee and Tom McNamee a bit.

On December 8th, Fran Spielman wrote this about Rahm orchestrated public fellation for Forrest:

On Friday, Emanuel called his longtime friend “selfless” at least half a dozen times in as many minutes as he praised Claypool for restoring faith in the schools after his predecessor, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, left amid a bribery scandal that sent her to prison.
“He can walk out with his head high because he did the job well, and he will always be my friend,” the mayor said. “He did a great job for the children of the city of Chicago.
“Wherever he has worked, he’s left an incredible, indelible mark on every endeavor,” Emanuel said. “He has been selfless, and more than just selfless, he has been courageous to take on institutional inertia and make the entity — whether it was the park district, the CTA or CPS — better.”
In the 103-page report Schuler delivered to the school board Tuesday, he painted a different picture of Claypool. He said he “repeatedly lied” during the investigation of Marmer for overseeing work for CPS done by his former law firm even as he was receiving payments toward a $1 million severance. (emphasis my own) 
 

And?

How about asking if Claypool doctored the wording on Marmer's contract?

That is a felony, or as Claypool weaseled, “Good men can make stupid mistakes.”

Do good men lie and shop for lawyers in the pursuit of justice for CPS kids?

More telling though is this - Why is the Chicago media slow-rolling a block-buster scandal?

Why is Fran Spielman backpedaling? Here is a hint:

David Axelrod, formerly a top aide in the Obama White House and a close friend of Emanuel and Claypool, had predicted Thursday that Claypool would remain in office.
“The mayor never asked him to” resign, Axelrod said after Claypool quit. “But it’s also obvious that this would be an issue as we enter political season, and that would make it hard to do the job.”

Why bring out Comb-over Dave?

Abusing Federal budget - cover-ups after the crime!  Claypool a practiced lawyer has two or more predicate acts in the Marmer case alone commited by by the head of an organization and a criminal conspiracy with his old college rommie? Can you say RICO?

Why resign?

Hell, why not indict?

I think the Feds are snuffling very close to Rahm's rump and where Rahm's rump ranges, there you will find  Claypool.

The media, as expected the Sun Times and as follows the Tribune ( with the exception of John Kass) works for City Hall the County Building and the money infrastructure of Illinois all serving the few - the clouted and the bullet proof.

Things are chaotic with that crazy old Trump in the White House and even crazier with an independent Justice Department.

The Tribune wrote this weasel-word editorial for Forrest and Rahm the day before Forrest Claypool resigned"

Is this a firing offense? Based on what we know, no. We take ethics in government — and everywhere else — seriously. We strongly support the IG’s role in keeping a vigilant eye on CPS brass. You don’t need a long memory to recall that the last CPS chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now resides in prison on corruption charges.
But every rules violation isn’t a firing offense. This looks like a case in which the actions that drew the ire of the IG in the first place are less serious than later efforts to cover them up. But lying to the ethics watchdog is a serious matter. We think Claypool now understands that.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Board of Education members should consider the high stakes here. Ask yourselves: Are Chicago’s schoolchildren better off today because Claypool leads the district? We think the answer is an unqualified yes. Claypool was whistled in to do a grueling job: Get CPS in shape. He deserves a large share of credit for helping to shore up the district’s finances and boost its academic performance.
One more factor: From what we’ve heard, there’s plenty of friction between Claypool and Schuler. They’ve battled over the IG’s report on problems at the school at Cook County Jail, for example. We don’t know where all of this is headed.
For now, Claypool is on notice that he can’t pick and choose which ethics policies he’ll follow. This brouhaha may or may not get him fired. Everyone else who thinks ethics rules maybe don’t apply to them — including politicians and school officials — watch and learn.

Bite me, Bruce!

Watch this - from your editorial yesterday:

 It’s easy to see why Claypool concluded that he couldn’t continue under an ethics cloud. Even if he had the support of Emanuel, the optics of Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s report were terrible. Headlines about how Claypool engaged in a “full-blown cover-up.” And how the schools chief “pushed the matter beyond all bounds when he chose to lie through two separate OIG interviews,” in the words of Schuler’s report.
“It goes without saying that if any line employee had done that much, he or she would be fired,” the report concluded.
We didn’t think Claypool’s transgressions amounted to a firing offense.

No. it is a felony.  Did Claypool doctor a contract ( one of many, many, many more - Ventra/Bombardier) ? Hmmmm?

Claypool, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools chief, has staunchly defended Marmer’s actions since the Sun-Times reported last year that Marmer is getting the $1 million package from Jenner & Block LLP, the Chicago firm hired to help CPS sue the state to try to win more funding for city schools.
But Schuler says six lawyers — four at CPS and two from outside firms — privately advised school officials that Marmer was violating the ethics code by supervising Jenner & Block’s work.
Only after CPS went to a seventh lawyer, in June 2016, did Claypool secure a legal opinion defending Marmer’s conduct. That opinion came from J. Timothy Eaton, a lawyer who has contributed to Claypool’s political campaigns.
“The clear inference is that Claypool had to shop through six lawyers until he found a seventh one who would publicly clear Marmer,” Schuler wrote to the Board of Education in the confidential report, which the Sun-Times reviewed

Good men make mistakes. Right?

 Political Weasels and Career Grifters lie, hide, doctor and cover-up.

Why Resign?  Quare desine?

Is it because the Feds are about to put the bracelets on some protected Progressive Species?


Rahm Emanuel?
Claypool?
Mike Quigley ( with Claypool over the voting machines?)

Maybe all  squirming in one big net?

The media knows and is not saying.  They will know when we know.  That is why we have contempt for the media - they print and report only what they want.

Fran Spielman indicated that she was on to something on December 8th.   Why back off?

Maybe we already know answer.

Things are chaotic!  It's a crisis!  Let's not waste a crisis!

Forrest Claypool is Never Down, Much Less Out. Watchdog that Head-Scratcher.

“I have fully acknowledged my mistakes in judgment and apologized,” Claypool said. “But I did not regret the passion for justice that led to that mistake.”

Claypool mistakes lying as the defense of justice for poor kids and that is why he will always have a job and another six figure pension in Illinois.

You see Forrest was doing a solid for  CPS General Counsel Ronald L. Marmer at the CPS Board , a pal.
   
This pal would throw your salary and my salary away - combined.  Pals like Ron always need more gelt.  That is why they can and do waste tax dollars in the public trough, while kids at Harper High and Oglesby Elementary learn . . .nothing.

Illinois is a stupid State.

• We elected Pat Quinn, after he proved what a ninny he was when Blago went to the joint.
• We elected GOP Bruce Rauner to hold a place for Prog-Dem Michigan Avenue Fats -aka JB Pritzker
• We worry about Mike Madigan and vote handsomely for his daughter
• We think a wedding dress is proof of residency
• We loved Toni Preckwinkle until the Pop Tax
• We elected Durbin and Duckworth to the Senate
• We elected Marque Kirque to the Senate
• We believe the idiotic media.
• We think Paul Simon Polls are not rigged
• We tolerate Forrest Claypool and his all too numerous ilk

I hate to kick a man when he is down.  I don't.  Forrest Claypool, the poster child for Illinois Grift and Illinois Attention Deficit Disorder,  is anything but down.

Forrest Claypool will never be down, unlike some Streets and Sanitation truckman, who might nod off on break in the cab of a big blue city truck and catch the camera eye of Chuck Goudie's I-Team, or Andy Shaw's BGA snitch patrol.  That guy will never work again in Cook County and his kids will be pulled out of St. Joseph the Worker Grammar School, or the Lou Rawls Charter School, because the tuition nut is too high. Forrest Claypool has amassed a fistful of pensions as well as all of the change that fell between the cushions on the 5th Floor, Chicago Parks, County Board, CTA and CPS.

I might even suggest that a little something must have landed in the side pockets of Claypool's Joseph A. Banks slacks from Ventra and Bombardier, were I a mean-spirited scandal monger.

Shucks, I don't work for the media.

Any way.  The Chicago media is more than reluctantly kicking grease and mud on Forrest's nicely tailored duds about fibbing to the General Inspector.

He will survive. He will survive.  Claypool will survive because he is such an unctuous weasel, practiced grifter,  a preening soul-less Progressive and habitual sneak.  In short, he is the perfect model of the WTTW, WBEZ approved Reformer.

He is passionate about justice and will lie his lath-like ass off to get justice.

Forrest resigned as CPS CEO.

Give him a solid twenty minutes and he will be appointed to another monster salary on our dimes.

I never kick a man when he is down.

Never. 

And You Voted For this Dope???

"Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote." former President Barak H. Obama.

Germans voted Mr. Nobel President.  They voted for a dopey clown with powerful grassroots organization and a tightly controlled narrative dangled to a supine press.

The United States however did not lose a world war, nor did it undergo foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, nor look longingly for a return to the monarchy.

America only endured your Comedy Central Presidency.

That was more than  enough to make Donald J. Trump preferable to you and Hilary Clinton. 

Oh, and there is more.

Barak Obama spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago with Mrs. Star War Museum Melody Hobson-Lucas and compared Trump to Hitler, his Presidency to the Weimar Republic and praised America's bandwidth*:

American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.
Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson—in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman—before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts.
One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."

OooooRah Yankee Bandwidth!!!!! That should lock up more Tech Geek bucks.

Now, go louse up Jackson Park the outer drive and other peoples' days

And you voted for this dope?


*  In computing, bandwidth is the bit-rate of available or consumed information capacity expressed typically in metric multiples of bits per second. Variously, bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth.

No Need to "Process" Idioms by Idiots

 “I’m still really processing it.” - Anne Curry NBC Hostess and Mensa Second Stringer upon the exposure of Matt Lauer's priapism and goatish hypocrisies. 

Idiomatic phrases allow us a pause in the old brain-pain. Some useful idioms add color to speech

• Kick the Bucket - Shed our mortal husk
• Take a Brody - Jump off  High Place ( bridge & etc.)
• Do the Dutch Act - Take one's life
• Two to Tango - Dance,or  ride an Argentine tandem
• Rock the Boat - Sit down Stubby!
  

Today, pretentious losers employ faux-brainy phrases dim the fog of culutral war and also tend to  whine,'Can't we dialogue?' when losing an argument.

No, Dummy we can not dialogue, unless you can present dialogue as a verb with all five characteristics!  Voila!

Dialogue: N.B: "It was evidently well-used as a verb in Shakespeare's day, fell out of favor, then returned in recent history as a business-speak word. I hate business-speak. There are alternatives, and, where there are good alternatives, I'm usually against verbification. Unless it's a colorful verbification. Discuss works nicely in most situations. What does dialog add other than a faint suggestion of probably non-existent workplace democracy and/or respect for the opinions of all?"Luftmarque - sage, that, Luft!

Person (first, second, third)

Number (singular, plural)

Tense (present, future, future perfect, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect)

Mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, [participle])

Voice (active, passive) (Deponents are active)

These are the very same dopes who mispronounce common words like Armistice,Oeuvre,  Charcuterie and Denouement in correcting the proper pronunciation of said words, will preeningly puke out trendy phrases like  - 'Still processing' when trying not to laugh-snort a schnozzle full of coffee when talking about the late Matt Lauer- NBC's Mr. 30 Cock. 

Ubi Sunt, Matt Lauer?

Qui Shives a git!

Anne Curry, I guess,  and People, Hollywood Extra and other havens of craven sophisticates like Anne, Matt, Harvey, Spacey and CK Louis. 

The clowns are down for a few weeks. Let's enjoy their absences from our public stage.  Let us pay attention to children, to heroes and hard-working Americans.

Let's do that and make fun of pretentious imbeciles making oodles of cash.

Process that Miss Curry!

I Wish a Buck Were Still Silver: Moral Hazards, or Merle Haggard?

I generally watch the news between 5-6 P.M. but never seem to watch to the end, because NBC, CBS, FOX and CNN usually drift into the moral hazards bothering the rich, the powerful and politically protested.

I feel the need to shower after watching and reading the news.

Last night, it was very different.  I went to Catholic high high school wrestling, instead of watching preening dopes and oleaginous creeps parse tweets and tweak the turpitudes of turds in the political punch bowl.

I am no longer affected by the repellant Garrison Keillor, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Senator Al Franken, Judge Roy Moore, or the cavalcade of clowns occupying public office in Illinois.

I watched more than three hours of high school school wrestling and feel 100% morally clean, renewed, energetic and ready for the brand new day.

I watched Brother Rice High School, Loyola Academy and Leo High School grapple-ers hit the mats from 5: 30 P.M. to shortly before 9: P.M. in a  controlled violence ballet in which each combatant gave his all until a quicker man with better lock-up pinned two shoulder blades, or garnered more points with escapes and near-falls until the clock ran out.

Not a second of shame in over three hours and not a whine from anyone. The victorious raised hand was shaken by the loser and both young men applauded vigorously by the crowd. I went home and listened to Merle Haggard's "Are The Good Times Really Gone?"



I prepared my classes on Christian Morality and the Old Testament and wondered about  things -

Wish a buck was still silver.
It was, back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis; before the Vietnam war came along.
Before The Beatles and "Yesterday",
When a man could still work, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.
Wish a Ford and a Chevy,
Could still last ten years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?

I don't think so Merle, just different - sloppier, sillier, sissy-er, maybe, but wrestlers compete and hug their moms after a pin or a pinning and sheepishly glance to see if Dad's eyes shine a bit moister than usual.

Black, White Mexican, Arab and Filipino kids who had spit in cups and nodded off in class due to trying to 'cut weight' came alive for three minutes in a husky three hours.

No one was rolling to hell last night, Merle.