Happy Birthday America - Give Me the Simple Life by Ella Fitzgerald The Statue of Liberty of Song

Thaddeus McCotter 2012- Anti-Abortion Catholic, Pro Real Labor, Sensible on Free Trade, Plays a Fender Telecastor and has a Great Name

Thaddeus is a great name. It comes from the language only known by Biblical scholars and Mel Gibson -Aramaic. Aramaic is the language that Jesus spoke, a kind of Greek and Hebrew in a blender. Thaddeus means heart in Aramaic; Therefore, the purchase of thousands of bumper stickers sporting red faux ticker in place of the transitive verb following the nominative singular personal pronoun and preceding Thadeus would be redundant ( note to McCotter Spin Merchants).

Thaddeus in the Roman Catholic Faith is St. Jude Thaddeus the son of Cleophus and Mary, who stood with Mary Mother of God at the foot of the Cross, and is revered as the patron of hopeless causes.

Thaddeus McCotter is a Congressman who entered the Republican Presidential lists this 4Th of July Holiday Weekend.

Rep. McCotter arguably is the least recognized name in the very broad field. He has an odd name to be sure, but certainly one less exotic than the one on the mailbox at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. - Barack Obama was one term Senator from Illinois, when he challenged the power of Dean, Edwards, HR Clinton, Biden, & etc.

Here is a blue collar guy who will say, "With God's help, we can prevail." This is 180 degrees from the Mosh Pit Mantra of "Yes, Can We Can!" Yes, we can what? Bankrupt the nation? Abandon our Allies? Bow to tyrants and princes? Cash in the future? Keep killing the innocent? Yes, he do.

President Barack Obama plays a Rock Star, but he has no chops. Going on three years of Air Guitar Hero In Chief, perhaps it is time to listen to one who took the time to learn how to play. Here is Thad McCotter doing Norwegian Wood



He plays well with Democrats -The Second Amendments here at Farm Aid:



McCotter is married to a nurse, always a solid. MSNBC has no use for him and that is always a plus. Thad McCotter takes dung from no one - get this!



Thaddeus McCotter has the chops. Maybe, things are not as impossible as they seem.

http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Thad_McCotter_Abortion.htm

Independence Day Prep Music - Great Wedding Photo by David Ettinger and John Fogerty Live in London

Groom wearing U.S. Marines dress uniform reclining and holding a child. Wedding photographed 8/21/10. Photo by David Ettinger. The wedding of Catherin and Ryan was photographed by David Ettinger right here in Chicago. The above seems to have been shot near Lizzie McNeil's Irish Pub on the Chicago Riverwalk, where the Skinny and Houli Show 'debriefing's*' take place.

John Fogerty lets loose in Perfidious Albion!




Skinny and Houli return to AM Radio -WCEV 1450, 3(M today. Do dial in!

* Houli and Skinny have yet to debrief me, as it is my habit, custom and wont to sport Boxers.

I was Born This Way and Worked on It - Christine Flowers Serves up the Progressives

I have been blessed to know some great people. Christine Flowers is a Philadelphia attorney and journalist who happens to be one tougher-than-calculus and gorgeous woman.

Today, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miss Flowers offers takes a a rhetorical cutlass to the thin-witted rapiers of Progressive meme-enschanz.

Christine M. Flowers: My right-wing views are part of my DNA


By Christine M. Flowers
Philadelphia Daily News
I'VE COME to believe that conservatism is genetic, not environmental.
After all, to take a page from the gay community, why would I choose a lifestyle that subjects me to criticism, discrimination and general vilification if I wasn't born that way?

Now, allow me to dislodge my tongue from cheek, and I'll explain how social conservatives have become the new Nazis for some people. In fact, we've been lumped together with the SS by disgruntled citizens from Wisconsin to New Jersey, most of whom pay union dues and seem to have a particular penchant for depicting their governors as Hitler.

(And don't get me started on Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, either of whom can't make a slip of the tongue without the New York Times, MSNBC and the rest of the media lynch mob turning them into a cross between Aimee Semple McPherson and Leni Reifenstahl.)

Some like to say that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, but that's simply a way to denigrate those of us who believe in personal responsibility. Liberals tend to sympathize with the mugger, and have a hard time waking up to the fact that not every miscreant on the street is a Jean Valjean looking for bread to feed his starving family. Sometimes, if it walks like a thug, talks like a thug and looks like a thug, it is a thug - and no amount of social engineering will make the thug sympathetic.

Social conservatives, as opposed to their fiscal and foreign-policy neocon cousins, have had a particularly hard time of it.

While the mainstream media drums up grudging appreciation for a guy like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who says we should abandon our fixation on social issues - and even had a (temporary) crush on Rudy Giuliani, who balanced his law-and-order creds with moderate views on abortion and gay marriage - anyone who is pro-life, anti-gay marriage, supports religion in the public square and thinks that the Equal Rights Amendment was a savvy scam is anathema to the Fourth Estate.

And when the media is agin' ye, thee has a problem, Pilgrim - because most of the Pulitzer-winning opinionators out there are unabashedly liberal, and seemingly incapable of believing that a rational being can ever be against abortion, same-sex unions, institutional atheism and anything else opposed by evolutionary amoebas like me.

So that's why I'm convinced social conservatism is a matter of DNA, not GOP, since anyone with a sense of self-preservation wouldn't willingly choose to live a life where you are considered a bigot, racist, misogynistic or, my very favorite, hopelessly stupid. Even those of us with advanced degrees, like Bachmann, a tax lawyer, are ridiculed as clueless simply because we don't sound like subscribers to Ms. magazine.

Our brothers and sisters in the gay community have made great inroads with the idea that they were born with their particular sexual orientation, something they neither acquired nor necessarily desired. They just "are," which helped reach the recent decision legalizing same-sex marriage in New York.

And while I used to struggle against that interpretation, given my strong belief that we are not slaves to biology, I have to admit that it makes life an awful lot easier if we can just say, "Hey, it's not my decision that I'm this way, so don't hate me for it!"

That's why I've decided that the next time someone writes a snarky comment after one of my op-eds calling me a mean-spirited "rhymes-with-witch," I'll try to convince them that believing in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception is as much a part of me as my attraction to men.

And the next time I get an email telling me I'm a coldhearted "rhymes-with-punt" because I don't think that the homeless should be able to use the sidewalk for a toilet, I'll argue that wanting to keep innocent citizens safe from unpredictably dangerous mental patients is as much a part of me as my Italian heritage.

And the next time I get a voice mail wondering why the Daily News employs a disgusting "rhymes-with-trucker" like me, I'll leave a return message explaining my belief that you can't give constitutional cover to same-sex marriage is as much a part of my inherited identity as my brown eyes and freckles.

I'm not sure it will work. But given the recent results in New York, I'm optimistic.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.
philly.com/philly/blogs/flowersshow.

There is nothing sexier than a smart woman!

Today, Gov. Quinn Kills the Illinois Death Penalty, but Abortion is Okay - Is This the Language of Love?

Everything should be just jake, now!

Gov. Pat Quinn signed the ban on capital punishment March 9, but the law didn't take effect until July 1.At the time, the governor also said he would commute the sentences of those on death row to life in prison. Quinn wanted to avoid the inconsistency of having a death penalty ban for future crimes but still having inmates awaiting execution.

The reprieve cleared death row at Pontiac Correctional Center, where 15 condemned inmates were imprisoned.

Five days after Quinn signed the ban, the inmates got the commutation orders.

From that point, each inmate was evaluated for the most appropriate prison. All but one were sent to maximum security prisons, and most were placed in double cells with other inmates in the general population.

Teodoro Baez, a convicted samurai-sword murderer from the West Side, was placed at Dixon Correctional Center, a medium-high security prison with a mental health facility, officials said.

Over several weeks, decisions were made that scattered the other 14 inmates among Stateville, Menard and Pontiac. One inmate who stayed at Pontiac but moved into the general population was Brian Dugan, the killer in the 1983 attack on 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, of Naperville.

Hey, glad to hear that these fine folks are cozy. Terry Cosgrove's Guv Pat Quinn* is deeper in Illinois Planned Parenthood's pouch than a new born baby Joey in Perth; therefore unborn kids will be facing the knife and forceps. Makes sense to a Progressive.

Murder, He says? Solid, Jackson!



*

Governor Pat Quinn's appointment of the head of a pro-choice political group to a spot on the Human Rights Commission.

Terry Cosgrove is president and CEO of Personal PAC, a group that is dedicated to electing pro-choice politcians. His confirmation passed the Illinois Senate by a vote of 30-25 Thursday, with Republicans vehemently opposed and debate getting so heated that two senators had to be separated, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Huffington Post

Harvard Study Finds Parades Are Too "Right-Wing"

"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard.




"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam. [Enjoy political cartoons about President Obama.]

Now, I ask you, what is more American than Cowboys -Windy City Cowboys!

Same Folks Who Buy Gender Neutral Probably Bought Pajama Jeans and a Hummer

Them ain't cowboy-boots, there Par'd! But, they will take you as far as Miss Kitty's Long-branch and all you might possibly dream!


John Kass beat me to the punch -sorry about the pugilist tropes this early.

Beat me like a four-fingered cousin from Scartaglen, staying with us until she gets her Green Card, because the Prendeville's in Ontario had no room for the poor homely thing.

Kass jumped all over the news about the Swedish Pre-School dedicated to gelding little boys and butching up little girls.

Gender neutrality is the ideal at Egalia, a Swedish preschool that made huge news recently. And it's the kind of news that makes American dads spew their oatmeal at breakfast.

"Society expects girls to be girly, nice and pretty, and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing," Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old Swedish teacher, said in an Associated Press story. "Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be."

I get it, girls shouldn't be nice and pretty. And boys must not be rough and outgoing. It's all laid out by relentlessly progressive experts and bureaucrats, aided by so-called gender pedagogues who hunt down gender differences and blot them out.

Unleashing the gender police on children to snuff out dangerous proclivities toward gender roles tells me one thing.

It tells me that Swedish bureaucrats don't have kids.

It tells me Brother John, if I may call you by that hirsute and sweaty appellation, that these morphadites rarely get out of the bureaucratic cubicle, much less get any such opportunity to pro-create.

The Swedish school will fly, for a while, because America has provided a surplus population of affluent nit-wits with the ready cash to buy Pajama Jeans, Hummers (ever watch a moron try to parallel park a Hummer around 31st & Princeton to avoid paying for White Sox Parking?), Keurig B3000 coffeemaker which lasts about six months, or the Home Juicers at $1,400 a pop. Disposable income and really dumb ideas, like Progressive politics, go hand-in-hand.

The gender neutral, we are all the same, meme is the coin of the realm of the laughable. The laughable are always dead-serious, The rest of us are just too damn polite to scream "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR $%^&ing MIND?" while hosing coffee and bottled water out of the old snot-locker at the latest presentation by Marque Ozzoro and Lotte Vuhlsheet at the recent CAPS, LSC, Altar and Rosary, or League of Women Bowlers meetings.

Let's get serious and start laughing at loud at these mopes. We have a sane world to restore and giggles be a great recuperative implement. John Kass' article is real kidney tickler.

Same Sex Marriage Demand - Using Race to Obfuscate

There are huge differences between men and women, thanks be to God! I am no Maurice Chevalier but I thank Heaven for Little Girls! That is not to say, that one might hold the opposite view - some do. Vive la difference!
Each time I see a little girl
Of five or six or seven
I can't resist a joyous urge
To smile and say
Thank heaven for little girls
For little girls get
Bigger every day
Thank heaven for little girls
They grow up in
The most delightful way.
Those little eyes
So helpless and appealing
When they were flashing
Send you crashing
Through the ceiling
Thank heaven for little girls
Thank heaven for them all
No matter where,
No matter who
Without them
What would little boys do
Thank heaven
Thank heaven for little girls.

What would little boys do? Now, I do not think that Maurice Chevalier, let alone Messieurs Lerner and Lowe were homophobic bigots. They were answering the question that has plagued man since the Fall of Adam. The answer was Eve. To be sure my position is rather less sophisticated than Lady Gaga's anthem, but the human species requires the old X & Y to propagate - have kids - Test-tubes, and biochemistry break-throughs not withstanding of course.


Marriage is between a Man and a Woman. Two men can and do fall in love with another, but they can not procreate; two women can and do have sexual yearnings for one another, but they will never need birth control. The great hue and cry of this summer's key media issue, which is always a politically manufactured crisis, demands that everyone accept that marriage is something that it is not and never can be.

The Catholic Church will forever be the target of hatred and derision in America and elsewhere, until the day that mitred cupcakes cave-in and agree that abortion is a Woman's "choice" and that homosexuality is a norm. One cannot find comment section on any web-article dealing with any subject employing the word Catholic that does not have a litany of

First off, if no one ever challenged their church, the Catholic church would still be killing the rest of you so why not let's leave that "they should leave" argument on the sidelines now, okay?

Second, Gay people are not "just like adulterers?, murders, liars. . .".We're people who love other people. . . . So, there has ALWAYS been only ONE and they are Catholic and Orthodox? So, is this the 15th century we're in?
Adoption is a civil not a religious issue, so getting the Catholic church (and their anti-gay bigotry) out of this business is a step it the right direction.
Maybe the Catholic church hopes the courts will overlook the fact that they also teach that only Catholics go to heaven (Yes, they do as this ex-Catholi?c and veteran of Catholic school can attest). It follows then that their paramount concern all along should have been with placing children exclusively?y in homes where they will be raised as Catholics. But they've never raised that issue with the state of Illinois. Need any more evidence that this is all about anti-gay bigotry and NOT, as they claim, about upholding general religious principles?? . . .
How nice that the church is willing to hold children hostage to their antiquated beliefs. . . .These priests always put the children last . . .
not the ones they rape." ( all from recent Huffington Post thought pieces)

The problem for the Catholic Church in America is one of leadership and courage. The problem for America is acceptance of group think.

The lawyers working for Gay Marriage are very good. They have welded Civil Rights and Race to the same-sex marriage meme. Homosexuals are Millenium Blacks in America.
The Chains are the laws of lifestyle slavery and The Stonewall Bar in New York is the bridge at Selma.

Not really, but it works rhetorically. Logically, historically, legally and biologically a man and man will never produce a child - the same for two women.

Today in the Boston Globe, there is a powerful article by Jeff Jacoby. I do not know if Mr. Jacoby is a Catholic or not but he writes a very clear constitutional law argument into the issue.

There is no disputing the emotional power of linking the campaign for gay marriage to the struggle over anti-miscegenation laws in the civil rights era. I agree that the two are connected. But not in the way same-sex marriage advocates think.

When the Supreme Court ruled in June 1967 that Virginia’s law penalizing interracial marriage could not stand, it was not changing the fundamental and enduring meaning of marriage: It was affirming it. It was upholding the integrity of marriage by protecting it from irrelevant — and unconstitutional — racial manipulation. Virginia had interfered with the core elements of marriage in order to promote white supremacy, a value completely alien to marriage. Marriage is designed to bring men and women together; anti-miscegenation laws frustrated that design, and could not stand.

Same-sex marriage, too, interferes with the core elements of wedlock in order to advance an unrelated goal — the dignity and equality of gays and lesbians. The fact that many decent people ardently embrace that goal doesn’t change reality: The essential, public purpose of marriage is to unite male and female — to bind men and women to each other and to the children that their sexual behavior may produce. It is rooted in the belief that every child needs a mother and a father. Gay marriage, whether enacted by lawmakers or imposed by judges, disconnects marriage from its most basic idea. Ultimately, that isn’t tenable either.

Here in Chicago last Sunday the issue of same sex marriage hissed out of the slashed tires in a warehouse on 48th and Halsted and the activists immediately cried hate crime - civil rights. Let's not confuse civil rights with personal and community pride - that is what Sharia Law is all about.

I don't believe that the nature of marriage needs to be challenged as a political dodge in order for two people to be happy together. Civil union up a storm, but let's not make a barnacle goose out of log in the water*.


The Gay Marriage issue has been brought to you by the very same folks who made the Big Box Ordinances a civil rights issue that blew up on its own merits. Gov. Andrew Cuomo looks good this summer.

Read the full article by clicking on my post title.

*

Bishops and religious men (viri religiosi) in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh nor born of flesh.... But in so doing they are led into sin. For if anyone were to eat of the leg of our first parent (Adam) although he was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating meat.

Giraldus Cambrensis Topographica Hiberniaehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/agency-takes-over-foster-_n_878411.html

Christ Welcome Home Lura Lynne Ryan! God Bless You, George and the Kids.

I just learned of the passing of Lura Lynne Ryan. This wonderful and kind woman suffered for a very long time. The treatment she and her family had at the hands of the politcal hypocrites, especially those of the news media, made her fight with cancer seem like a day-spa.

Yesterday, justice caught up with a former Illinois Governor.

Law put George Ryan in prison. Through all of the political and legal troubles, Lura Lynne Ryan was gracious. I posted this some time ago:

I first met George Ryan, in 1975 when I was a baby teacher/coach at Bishop McNamara in Kankakee - a Chicago 18th Ward Democrat in Republican Land. In Fact Mimi Shapiro asked me to run for City Clerk as a Democrat - I figured what the hell -good way to learn the town. George’s brother Tom was the Mayor. The GOP slated Gene Glenzinski for City Clerk and the Dad of one my wrestlers and a better man never pulled on socks.

The Race was a blast and we had frequent ‘debates’ and run-ins with the Machine. George Ryan was a lovely guy. One day while walking to work, up Brookmont from my apartment in White City near Washington Park. I saw guys replacing Democratic signs that had been knocked down. I asked one of the guys ‘What gives?’ He said, ‘ George said to get them back up. You guys are gonna get waxed anyway.’ Laughed my butt off.

The Democratic slate was slaughtered, in fact I got the most votes -novelty votes for the kid, I imagine.

George Ryan was present wherever anyone from Kankakee, especially his political opponents, were in a jam or suffering. I saw George Ryan at St. Mary's Hospital visiting dying relatives of people who hated him politically. George Ryan had time for everyone. He was the reason why the Kankakee GOP was so successful and it was because he genuinely cared for people. The only person nicer than George Ryan is his bride Lura Lynn. That woman was everywhere!

I never once voted for George Ryan. Oh Hell, I'm a Party Democrat . . . I was anyway. I backed candidates who wouldn't give a penny to starving blind man . . .they would enact Programs for Hungry Blind and Indigent . . .once elected.

I have met George Ryan at many wakes and weddings, in Kankakee and Joliet. He is a very nice man. I’d buy the man a steak any day, at Ken’s in my neighborhood, or Krapil’s, or Franconello’s or some such homey place reminiscent of Kings Court and Town and Country in Kankakee, if he’d allow me. George Ryan did not seem to match Gibson’s or Tavern on Rush or the other news-ghoul & hustler eateries. These other fore mentioned places are where George Ryan’s people eat.

The type of people who go to Ken’s and other neighborhood dining spots are the people George Ryan connected to - not political allies, hangers-on or opportunists, but people like Ryan himself. I witnessed quite a few of George Ryan’s many acts of kindness to people who could never do any political boon for anyone - let alone George Ryan - too numerous to catalog. He treated Joe Blow from the docks at Tenney Sales on 5th Ave. in Kankakee like he was a Sam Zell with an ink wet contribution check.

Conversely, I have followed the words of many familiar voices in print that have universally called for a mighty punishment on George Ryan - most of the people writing those words seem like people that I can do without. John Kass and Tom Roeser are the only two valid voices of anti-Ryan sentiment in my opinion - there are others to be sure, mostly regular folks and I respect their feelings.

However, there are many more, mostly media creatures. who are stone hypocrites -DuPage GOP ‘almost weres and fatuous Polka Partners like Judy Topinka who could not get snug enough in George’s back pockets when he was flush with clout and now stomp on his crippled limbs.

It seemed to me that Ryan’s Judge and Federal Prosecutors were going to get George Ryan come Hell, Highwater, or the lady with the blindfold. and they did - the voices in print ( paper and electronic) - sock-puppets or anonymous back-shooters for the most part - howl in genuine agony that George Ryan has the same rights as other citizens. ‘The quicker he is in jail the happier I’ll be’ read one such post, or ‘Ryan can rot in Hell’. Must be a lovely people . . . to avoid.

God be good to your husband and children Lura Lynne, because I know He is glad to see you.

Frankly, Blago, No Else is Stunned.

"When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down."
— Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror The Calamitous 14th Century)




Blagojevich on verdict: "I, frankly, am stunned"

From the Chicago Tribune archives:

Vallas vote
By Kathryn Krumsee | November 2, 2002
I'm with John Kass on this election. I am going to write in Paul Vallas with no care that my vote has gone to waste because I cannot with any conscience vote for either of the two clowns on the governor's ballot. If term limits are the solution to this terrible fix our state and city have gotten into politically, then we need to start working now to put them in place.

In the closing hours of the 2002 Gubernatorial Primary, March I believe it was, several goons from the Blagojevich Campaign vandalized the home of Paul and Sharon Vallas down the block from me. It was in the very early morning hours. Paul was out campaigning and Sharon was home with their three boys, Paul, Gust, and Mark.

A crew vandalized the yard sign, which is de rigueur in urban politics, but took it one step better - they terrorized a woman and her three kids. This was pure Milorod Blagojevich. Some of the political geniuses in the 19th Ward had made a pact with Blago, for whatever Byzantine notions of fortunes to come, and turned the cold shoulder to neighbor Paul. The Joyces and the Sheehans stood with Paul Vallas, as did most of the 19th Ward. The cowards who tried to spook Sharon picked on the wrong woman. Sharon Vallas is as tough as Calculus. Sharon tried to confront them herself, but they bolted - never to be caught. That is also politically de rigueur in this our urban jungle and the Reformer IVO-IPO Progressive Blago squeaked out a primary win and Illinois lost the talents and integrity of Paul Vallas.

Rod Blagojevich, whom our supine news anchors and blow-dried beat reporters called 'Charming' yesterday after Mr. Pistachio racked up 17 of 20 charges.

The Charms of Blagojevich were long lost on this helot voter and most of his neighbors. We viewed Rod Blagojevich as a shameless gate-crasher and serial dope.

Politics is loaded with shameless gate-crashers and serial dopes, but Blago is not just one rotten apple - he is the whole orchard.

This clown was willing to send his bride into the jungle to eat bugs in order to squeeze a few more dollars out of a culture that equates Larry the Cable Guy to Barbara Tuchman and a soul-patched, head-shaved mope like Howie Mandel to Paul Schofield. Why not a Blago over a Paul Vallas? Why not? Who's to say?

Illinois accepted Rod Blagojevich - Mr. Pistachio. He won the 2002 Democratic primary against one solid candidate and the National joke who would take Senator Obama's seat Tombstone Roland, the general election against another solid man Republican Jim Ryan and yet another term against the clownish Illinois Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka in 2006. I wonder who voted for Blago?

WLS tossed this disgracefully 'Charming' bully a few bucks, when his clown act, following the impeachment, in 2009 went National. Having a guest host who would devour used Depends at State and Madison at high noon would have been more dignified.

Blago is going to the Federal iron hotel for many, many, many semesters. His wife and kids will be on their own. Sharon Vallas and her three boys were on their own that night before the primary.

The Porcelain Unicorn - A Short Film That Says It All

This summer, Philips and the renowned director/producer Ridley Scott launched a global filmmaker competition dubbed “Tell It Your Way” following its Cannes Lions award-winning short-film project “Parallel Lines.”

The entrants were given freedom of expression and could take up any theme they wanted; still there were two strict rules—there had to be the exact six-line dialogue as it was in the Parallel Lines films, plus the entries could last no longer than three minutes.

Here's the prize-winning entry in Phillips' "Tell It Your Way" competition. It gets my vote for winning entry also. I can easily see how it impressed and touched the judges. Watch it here:



Thanks to the link from Max Weismann

George Babbitt Lives! And He'll Again Vote for President Obama, Support Abortion, and Gay Marriage

Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.
For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail—
Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.

In 1922, Sinclair Lewis had his comic novel Babbitt published. Warren G. Harding placed the first radio in the White House; construction began on Yankee Stadium in the Bronx; The Red Army captured Vladivostok; Sergei Diaghilev, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust and Igor Stravinsky dine together in Paris, at the Majestic hotel;The Mandate of Palestine is approved by the Council of the League of Nations; Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and George Babbitt became an America metaphor against conformity.

George Babbitt conformed and fought his dreams. Babbitt embraced the American Secular religion of Boosterism. Boosterism helped anything and everything that kept things moving. Boosters were the shoulder punchers who wanted everyone to know the worth and value of their towns, affiliations, congregations and associations. Today, boosterism is called grassroots. It is based upon 'stay-on-message' group think.

When I read Babbitt for the first time in Father James Sheridan, OSA's American literature class in 1967, Babbitt was viewed as a two-dimensional hypocrite, a conservative, and a square, by many of us junior year close readers. Father Sheridan helped us read deeper. The guy was sincerely trying to do right by his family. Doing right by his family required that George Babbitt think like everyone else.

In Sinclair Lewis' presentation George Babbitt belongs to everything in his mythical town of Zenith, in the mythical Tri-State formation he calls Winnemac forged of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

Today, George Babbitt would belong to Planned Parenthood, Better government Association, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, Move On.org and contribute to Public Broadcasting and Television, as well as serve on several bank boards, United Methodist boards.

Babbitt would be a 46 year old, suburban, well-schooled, affluent Progressive. Babbitt would be a cash-cow bundler for the DNC.

If he lived anywhere near Chicago, George F. Babbitt he'd be in the thick of every reform panel, anti-police study group and the Make Chicago Safe for NATO Committee. George F. Babbitt would have ridden aboard one of the Pride Floats that he made sure were not stored at 48th & Halsted and he'd be helping build a memorial to police torture victims. George Babbitt is a booster - in 1922 and 2011.

"Sarah Palin Is America," Michael Moriarty Calls It Correctly

Any people who agree that the killing of a child is choice, will also agree that two gentleman can procreate, that America can only win by losing, that up is down and round is square have been educated pretty badly.

When Washington sent Cornwallis and his redcoats out of the trenches at Yorktown, the Crown forces bandsmen played a song -"The World Turned Upside Down." The Monarchy was sent packing. The colonists fought to become Americans. The Americans fought the British again, as well as Napoleon's Navy and the Barbary Pirates to maintain a flawed but free democratic republic that eventually ironed out the slavery issues with the blood of Americans.

After two World Wars, a catastrophic economic and climate disaster in the 1930's, the America meant to be was built in the 1950's - a revolution in life style. That lifestyle brought ease and comfort to the Nation. Wars were no longer declared, but remained horrific. Korean and Vietnam war veterans returned to comments from neighbors and even family members, "Where have you been?" Bleeding.

"No matter, we have a new two-car garage, color TV, and free college tuition. Only dummies go in the Service."

Perhaps that ease gave us too much time to worry about ourselves. I know that I am about self-absorbed as one can get - well, maybe not always.

We allowed Roe v. Wade. To me that is akin to question asked of returning servicemen -"Where have you been? Out of sight; out of mind." Out of mind can mean madness.

Actor, musician, journalist and defender of the innocent unborn Michael Moriarty wrote a powerful endorsement of Sarah Palin in Big Hollywood. I agree with Mr. Moriarty.

Lincoln predicted that America would not be destroyed by a foreign power. If she dies, it will be by suicide.
Sarah is the only life raft America has right now. Any other candidate for the Republican Party, Romney in particular, will eventually be in the back room cutting deals with a virulently Progressive Democratic Party, a radically Leftist’s poison that has, with Obama, proven its own promise: “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”
After four years of Obama, the Dr. Jeckyll of America has already become Mr. Hyde. This radical experiment with a known Marxist in the Presidency?
Suicide.
Ms. Palin has said she will announce in the near future.
Should she even announce her withdrawal, I trust these words and those of others might help her to reconsider.
Sarah Palin is America.
America at her most beautiful, her most honest, her most simply eloquent and her most resilient.
Resilience is what America needs now.
Without Sarah Palin as President, America cannot bounce back.
Many might call a President Palin “bold medicine”.
With America on the edge of suicide, Sarah Palin is the “shock treatment” needed by the entirely moribund, self-defeated and suicidally depressed world.
The human race must either be pro-life or pro-death. Those “enlightened despots” who think otherwise and are certain we can “split hairs” into whole crops of Progressive New World Order Thinking?

Sarah Palin reminds me of the women that I admire. She is a happy person. She is happy because she is honest and unafraid. I always thought that Barack Obama was a pretty good politician, until he ran for President. He was elected to be sure. You can't take that from the man. Why he was elected will be the subject of history.


Well stated, Mr. Moriarty. I do not believe that Michael Moriarty is too much concerned about criticism. We still have the vote.