James Joyner Challenges the Right - Start Thinking!

Cop pulls over a guy with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. The Cop walks up to the McCainiac's window, 'Got any I.D.?'

The slack jawed patriot replies, ''Bou Wha'?'

Looky here, Rubes -A War Hero was beaten by a Community Activist - think about it. A man with a resume featuring decades of distinguished service to his country was beaten by a first-term, back bencher whose Illinois Senate record was distinguished by votes of 'Present' - think about it. A grassroots army of unemployed and unemployable voter registration clipboard artists, wiped out the broad GOP coalition of cultural conservatives - think about it.

The conservative movement so vital in the late 1980's quit thinking when Old Dutch took the oath of office. Democrats became Liberals and Republicans became real Americans.

The Democratic Party is thick with patriots and thinkers. The GOP is thick with Air-waves loudmouths and snotty snipers.

James Joyner is calling on conservatives -not GOP swan-singers, or Democrats to think.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn’t work as a blanket response to micro-level issues. And defining conservatism solely by “What would Reagan do?” is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago. It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman. Time marches on. Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company? Perhaps the ever-moving James Poulus (now with a mixed bag of co-bloggers)? Pejman Yousefzadeh, perhaps, but his writings are not handily consolidated. All the others who come to mind are my age or older.

Good thinking, Mr. Joyner. Get to thinking.

My Royal Shave on the Eve of the Feast of Christ the King!

There are only two Truefitt & Hills in the world, and the original London establishment also lays claim as the world's oldest barbershop. Since its founding in 1805, the English Truefitt & Hill has counted every male British monarch from George III to Princes Philip and Charles, among its devoted clientele as well as Winston Churchill, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, the Duke of Kent, Lord Sainsbury and various members of Parliament, both past and present. After passing through a 120-year-old mahogany apothecary entrance, the visitor to Truefitt & Hill's estimable Michigan Avenue environs reposes in the waiting area (armed with a cookie, a cup of coffee and a copy of Royalty magazine) under framed lithographs of the Great Halls of the country of Kent. One of his venerable peers sits under prints of race horses, smiling distractedly, his pre-manicured hand resting in a pewter finger bowl. Across the room, under a portrait of a whippet, another silver-haired gent peruses the pages of The Wall Street Journal as his shoes are shined.

Ah, . . .the 19th Century . . .

'As far as the country went, there was here, to be sure, not much to be said. You pass through a sad-looking, bare, undulating country, with few trees, and poor stone-hedges, and poorer crops; nor have I yet taken in Ireland so dull a ride. About half way between Tralee and Killarney is a wretched town, where horses are changed, and where I saw more hideous beggary than anywhere else, I think. And I was glad to get over this gloomy tract of country, and enter the capital of Kerry.' William Makepeace Thackeray The Irish Sketch Book

The town Old Bill mentions ('About half way between Tralee and Killarney is a wretched town, where horses are changed, and where I saw more hideous beggary than anywhere else, I think.') would be Castleisland, County Kerry Ireland. The ancestral haunts.

Thanks to the American Experience, built upon the bones and sinews of American Labor - now under assault from the Maoist of SEIU, this Castleisland scion of 'hideous beggary' was massaged lathered and shaved on the Eve of the Feast of Christ the King in chair of the tonsorial firm of Truefitt & Hill - the barbers of the Royal Family.

As a birthday gift from an extraordinarily delicate, gracious, elegant, witty and beautiful woman of my affections, I got me a Royal Shave.

Yep, at 4:30 P.M. I tossed my lard and bones into the chair operated by Jan at Truefitt & Hill in the Bloomingdale Mega Mall on north Michigan Ave. just as the Festival of Lights was about to get under way.

Jan applied an oinment to my cheeks, jaw and jowls with stern abandon and wrapped my kisser in the requiste hot towel.

I drifted off into a reverie of delight unmatched in commerce of any sort or experience by me short of a bartender's proffering of a perfectly drawn pint - Keegan's Pub by Pintmaster General Bernard Callahan comes close to the match. My profane reveries are limitless.

My thoughts turned, strange to relate, to matters sacred, specifically, to the Feast of Christ the King* and early Mass at Sacred Heart Mission on 116th & Church Street the next morning. I had read about a Jesuit priest who was executed by the Communists in Mexico in 1927 and while chatting with Jan about her days as a barber on North Dearborn Ave. the reading sparked associations between my whiskers and many, many sins.

Jan lathered and scraped at my jaw posts with delicate severity.

Sin and Redemption. Like my shavings each morning, my vanities produce new crops of sins - familiar though more stubborn. The whiskers and transgressions disappear, but briefly and demand new mowings down.

As the second and third Hot Towel mummy treats hit my mug, I remembered the Mexican Jesuit who was placed against the wall:

Blessed Miguel Pro, a Mexican Jesuit who was executed by firing squad on 23 November 1927. He lived at a time of great persecution of the Church in Mexico; religious services were illegal but this didn’t prevent Fr Pro from secretly celebrating the sacraments and promoting the League for the Defence of Religious Freedom. He was arrested and falsely accused of conspiracy against the Government. As the young priest stood before the firing squad he raised his arms in the form of the cross and cried: Viva Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!

I sin and recover; I shave and grow stubble anew. Today's treatment was extra special. Suited for someone more worthy to be sure, but that is just another vanity of mine - Christ calls all, but only stand up guys like Father Pro go to the wall for their God. I sin and shave.

Jan's gentle but muscular ministrations with the razor awakened my dormant sensibilities about ritual and sacramental devotions necessary for leading a good life that have been numbed by my manic attentions to nonsense or business.

The Mass on Sunday attended by good and humble neighbors should have done the same thing for me -again, vanity and pride. The Feast of Christ the King would be different for me and the shame of it is that it took a thoughtful woman's gift of a trip to the Royal barber's chair to scrape some awareness through meditation.

This was one great shave!

Jan, took the scissors to my snot-locker and then took out the hay from my ears - Kerry ornaments. 'That Hickey is real Bog man - look at the tufts of hair sprouting from his ears!' Thackeray may have been appalled by my relatives in the 19th Century, but he would have genuine understanding of vanity and its play on Sin and Redemption.

Before Mass on the Feast of Christ the King I would need to shave again, but the trip to Truefitt & Hill gifted me with a better understanding of my faults and the means of shaving them down. Viva Cristo Rey!












*On 11 December 1925, towards the end of that Holy Year, Pope Pius XI instituted this liturgical celebration as a feast ranked as a Double of the First Class [1] with his encyclical Quas Primas.[2]

The title of the feast was "D. N. Jesu Christi Regis" (Our Lord Jesus Christ the King), and the date was "the last Sunday of the month of October - the Sunday, that is, which immediately precedes the Feast of All Saints".[3]




http://romanmiscellany.blogspot.com/2006/11/viva-cristo-rey.html

Quigley for Congress! Toes and Ankles Above All Else

This is the Monday of the Inflated Self! Desiree Rogers who has cashed in on her 'networking' abilities as the ex-Mrs. John Rogers at Illinois Lottey, Peoples Gas ( where she managed to offend skilled professional tradesmen and weasel her way out of a jackpot with ICC), high -profile philanthropic boards where she does not need to write a check, and mnost recently at Allstate Insurance, is going to Washington D.C. where she will dazzle as Obama White House Social Secretary. Adios!
This will be a howl!!!! Tic-Toc, Desiree!

Most telling the Uriah Heep of Illinois politics - Mike Quigley is leaping over the County Board Presidency and going for Rahmm-alama Dang Dong's Congressional Seat!

If Quigley officially enters the race, he could become the anti-Daley administration candidate if Daley does weigh in formally or informally on behalf of a candidate such as O'Connor. In the past, Quigley has clashed with the mayor over issues such as tax-increment financing.

Fifteen or more aldermen, state legislators and other elected and unelected individuals, including hotelier J.B. Pritzker and attorney Matt Devine, have mentioned their names in various stages of considering a run for the seat.

The Terror of Tiny Town! Gin up your news stooges Mickey! Make a show of it, Boyo!

Philly Lawyer/Journalist Honors Cops - Christine M. Flowers! Chicago Lawyers and News Hacks Sully Cops - How About a Switch, Philly?

There must be something to that idea of a parallel universe. Here in Chicago, citizens are treated to a daily litany of calumnies and charges against the very women and men who put their lives on the line to protect and serve.

The Chicago Sun Times ( and its satellite papers of STNG) and the Chicago Tribune shoo their reporters to The Center for Wrongful Convictions, the MacArthur Center for Justice and the Peoples Law Office for cookie -cutter feel good stories that uplift the hearts of people who live far,far from crime and those who commit the most heinous offenses.

The Path to the Pulitzer is assured by Trust Funded Think Tank Lawyers and 1960's Radicals with law licenses ( they actually did less harm to American society with bombs and bottles back in the day) committed to undermining any and all confidence in the Justice System.

However, in Philadelphia a lawyer and a journalist, Christine M. Flowers, has written many columns in defence of police officers and common sense. Today, Ms. Flowers offers a tribute to four police officers killed in the line of duty since May 2008 - this is Phildelphia's bloodiest year for Law Enforcement personnel since 1996.

In the City of Brotherly Love and where G. Flint Taylor screamed Free Mumia - a convicted cop killer and Boutique Bolshevik hero, Christine Flowers - did I mention that she was both a lawyer and journalist?- puts the human face on the victims of murder who happen to be Police Officers.

2008 has been the most dangerous year for Philadelphia officers since 1996, when four were killed. A prayer to Michael the Archangel, patron of police, that we don't break the record.

And even though each death is different, some brutal assassinations, others reckless accidents, the effect is the same: overwhelming grief, followed by uncontained anger.

And it's a different sort of anger from when civilians die.

Yes, it's an ugly aspect of nature that innocent children should be caught in a drug cross-fire on their way to school.

It pierces the heart when elderly women are raped in their bedrooms by teen intruders, when retired army vets are bludgeoned to death in their living rooms, when young mothers are murdered by the fathers of their babies.


IT'S A MISERABLE world in which such things not only happen but become commonplace. And Philadelphia is a part of that world.

But there's something surpassingly sad when you see men and women grouped at the entrance of a hospital, tears in their eyes for a stricken comrade. The grief that accompanies the coffin of a fallen officer is unlike any other because the occupant of that coffin met death on our behalf.

And the symbolism of a rider-less horse following close behind reminds us that - for a moment at least - the city is defenseless.

Of course, that's only a brief illusion. For every officer who falls in the line of duty there are hundreds more ready to take his or her place in the thin blue line. While no one can replace the one who has been taken, the obligation is picked up by brothers and sisters, an unbroken continuum of faith and service.

We saw it with Timothy Simpson. Stephen Liczbinski's friend took the murdered officer's handcuffs and placed them on his accused assassin's wrist when he was apprehended back in May. Simpson honored that debt. Now, tragically, he and Liczbinski are together again.

Some people complain about the attention given when an officer is slain.

Some judges think we should not elevate their deaths above "the rest of us," those without the bulletproof vests and the shields. Some citizens think that color excuses criminality, or that poverty is an explanation for antisocial behavior, or that grief is misplaced for those who willingly enter a dangerous profession.

These sentiments are heard in the streets, seen in the courtrooms, read on the letters page.

But they are wrong. Decent people understand it. The rest are irrelevant.

Four officers won't see the New Year. Four men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice for a city and a system that often seems to care more about rehabilitating criminals than honoring heroes.

And still, they keep answering the call.

No greater love. *

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

Ms. Flowers writes for the Philadelphia Daily News.

In the City of Big Shoulders and Pencil-Neck Media Stooges, who get spoon fed their investigative work into 'systemic racism, brutality and corruption'sagas by the very lawyers making millions of dollars out of lawsuits against the City of Chicago, police officers are fair game and objects of continual scorn and ridicule - Neil Steinberg went so far as to smear a whole neighborhood that is home to hundreds of the men and women who protect Neil Steinberg before he gets on the Metra to his lily white suburb, as a Nazi enclave.

I'd trade a fistful of cop-hating Media stooges for one Christine M. Flowers.

Tapioca Tonght! Mike Houlihan's Movie at Gene Siskel Center: 8:00 P.M!

See Houli's Tapioca At

GENE SISKEL CENTER

164 North State Street
Chicago, Illinois 60601
Tel: 312-846-2600
MOVIE HOTLINE: 312-846-2800


Located on State Street between Randolph and Lake streets, the Film Center is approximately one block from all CTA "L" and subway lines, as well as several major bus routes.

What an SEIU member Says About Andy Stern

Above : A Pair of Real Gold plated Jackasses - MSNBC's Milky Matthews and SEIU's Stalin Wannbe Andy Stern.

Here is a comment by an SEIU rank and file member about this Media Wrapped Maoist - Stern.

As a member of SEIU for 3 decades, the idea that Stern could get a cabinet post appalls me. This is a man who took a democratic, worker-oriented union, seized power, and forgot about the rest of us. We do not even have the means to vote him out of office. He treats current members as nothing more than dues-paying cash cows for his manic organizing efforts. He would rather have a give-back contract than allow a strike that would disrupt his real goals. Employers must love him. The rank and file does not. He will not fight for you after he gets you to sing up. Hell, he doesn’t bother even explaining himself to us. When he split the American Labor Movement by pulling out of the AFL-CIO, we didn’t vote, we never even learned his reasons. His rise to power has always been about Andy, not about America’s workers.

— howdeb

George McGovern v.EFCA 'risks silencing those who would speak.' Keep Unions and America Rights Strong

George McGovern against the Employee Free Choice Act - You will not see this in Chicago Newspapers. This is a reproduction from Wall Street Journal

SEIU has smothered the Chicago Media.

As a congressman, senator and one-time Democratic nominee for the presidency, I've participated in my share of vigorous public debates over issues of great consequence. And the public has been free to accept or reject the decisions I made when they walked into a ballot booth, drew the curtain and cast their vote. I didn't always win, but I always respected the process.

Voting is an immense privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as "card-check." There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.

Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

There's no question that unions have done much good for this country. Their tenacious efforts have benefited millions of workers and helped build a strong middle class. They gave workers a new voice and pushed for laws that protect individuals from unfair treatment. They have been a friend to the Democratic Party, and so I oppose this legislation respectfully and with care.

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

Some of the most respected Democratic members of Congress -- including Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, George Miller and Pete Stark of California, and Barney Frank of Massachusetts -- have advised that workers in developing countries such as Mexico insist on the secret ballot when voting as to whether or not their workplaces should have a union. We should have no less for employees in our country.

I worry that there has been too little discussion about EFCA's true ramifications, and I think much of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends "no" when they press for a course that in the long run may weaken labor and disrupt a tried and trusted method for conducting honest elections.

While it is never pleasant to stand against one's party or one's friends, there are times when such actions are necessary -- as with my early and lonely opposition to the Vietnam War. I hope some of my friends in Congress will re-evaluate their support for this legislation. Because as Americans, we should strive to ensure that all of us enjoy the freedom of expression and freedom from fear that is our ideal and our right.

Mr. McGovern is a former senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.

Keep Illinois a Bureau of Apprenticeship Councils State - The Move is Afoot to Kill This.

In March of 2006, an effort was made to push the Media into Emil Jones and Illinois Black Caucus's corner to force the more jelly spined Illinois Legislators to move Illinois from a BAC State to a SAC State.

The Apprenticeship Programs for the Trades of Illinois are governed by the Bureau of Apprenticeship Councils. Emil Jones has long wanted to geld the requirements of Illinois Apprenticeship Programs. In 2005, SB1266 - Sen. Emil Jones sponsor, was introduced with a glossy press packet sent to the media and supported by City Colleges of Chicago: The Pathway to Apprenticeship: Roadblocks to Registration of Minorities and Women in Building Trade Union Apprenticeship Training Programs in Northeastern Illinois. ( click my post title for the text).

State of Illinois control over Trade Union Apprenticeship Programs was defeated, because such control would mirror the disastrous state of the State of Illinois itself. The already bloated State budget would have its 'Eatin' Pants' expanded by more bureaucracy - more jobs for the otherwise unemployable and larcenous - naturally.

The real danger lies in the killing of skilled Trades Unions. Apprenticeship Schools paid for, owned and operated by Trades Unions - like Local 597 Pipefitters: One of Largest and most impressive schools of its kind - would come under the thumb of Emil Jones- like True Men of Genius!

SEIU is blowing the smokescreen for such actions at the State Level and orchestrating the gutless Media that is 100% in SEIU's Purple Vest to shriek for support and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act is opposed by Labor Hero - Senator George McGovern, as fundamentally Stalinist and UnAmerican as it kills the Secret Ballot.

If the Employee Free Choice Act becomes Law - hold the phone! Illinois will be a State Apprenticeship Council state - Trades Unions will be become diluted, powerless and ineffective. The Bureau of Apprenticeship Councils systems maintains the integrity, safety, skills, and stewardship over apprenticeship programs. SAC systems will be as poisonously corrupt as Illinois Government.

The very labor unions - Trade Unions - 'going along' with Andy Stern and SEIU are cutting their own throats and helping the American Labor Movement Vanish.

SEIU's Class Warfare Act Hidden In Chicago Media

SEIU is a Marxist Political Action Machine posing as a Labor Union. SEIU affiliates around the country are being smashed by Andy Stern's Stalinist methods. Chicago's news media has been a paid stooge of SEIU for a long, long time.

Progress Illinois is a blog that is funded and operated by SEIU and the usual radical associates (Dr. Quentin Young M.D. And Nicholas Skala & etc.)beloved by the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times as well as the daffy dillies at the TV stations.

Today Keith Kelleher attacks McDonalds Corporation and other corporate entities that might not need a union organized in their works, much less the Marxist Class warriors of SEIU. It is all about power politics with SEIU and nothing about improving the lives of workers - janitors stay janitors; no skill and low skill stay that way. In Today's Progress Illinois offering Kelleher talks about his rough and tumble days organizing the paper hat workers at Burger King and McDonalds as a cautionary tale to excite the imaginary gonads of Chicago's gelding journalists to support The Employee Free Choice Act - which will be the death knell of real Trades Unions.

Kelleher gets all 'chilling' about the McDonald's Thugs - they brought in shrinks, lawyers and threw a party:

As workers started building their union inside the three local franchises, top-level corporate executives watched closely. It quickly became clear that the McDonald’s Corporation would take extreme measures to prevent their low-wage, part-time workforce from coming together to demand better jobs and working conditions.

A few weeks after we began, a team of psychologists rolled in. They quickly went to work, systematically interrogating each employee in a not-so-subtle attempt to intimidate them out of joining the union.

In the weeks that followed, McDonald’s brought in a high-powered corporate law firm that filed motion after motion to delay the union election that would give these McDonald’s workers an opportunity to unite. As the lawyers buried us in depositions, motions, and labor board charges, they were purposely slowing down the election process and buying McDonald’s more time to run an anti-union campaign built on spreading fear and misinformation among its workers. 

One by one, the strongest pro-union voices in the three franchises were either demoted, forced out, or fired.


The coup de grace was a mandatory “party” hosted by McDonald’s a few nights before the scheduled election. It featured an array of celebrities -- everyone from Detroit’s number-one deejay to football star Earl Campbell -- who each explained the evils of uniting in a union. Even a costumed Ronald McDonald was on hand to bust the organizing effort, running a raffle with cash prizes for everyone. 






Brrrrrrrr. Reminds me of the Reuther Brothers getting shot and stomped by the Ford Goons, Keith.

SEIU is in direct conflict with Trades Unions - the unions who made the American Standard of Living and the American Middle Class.

Here is a story of a the disruption of a a Convention of SEIU chapters 'out of favor with Andy Stern.' This did not make the Chicago news and would not.

Leaders of the Service Employees International Union launched what appeared to be a carefully crafted plan on April 12 to disrupt parts of the Labor Notes conference, where contingents from a dissident SEIU local, a new reform caucus within SEIU, and a competing union were in attendance.

On the second day of the conference a number of SEIU staffers—some of whom had registered with false names—interrupted four workshops by heckling and attempting to shout down speakers from the California Nurses Association and its affiliate the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

SEIU and CNA have long been at odds, often in direct competition to represent the same workforce and disagreeing vehemently over single-payer health care legislation, labor-management partnerships, and neutrality agreements that allow a union to recruit members without employer opposition. Their latest skirmish was over health care workers in Ohio (see Labor Notes April 2008).

The largest, most ambitious, and ultimately violent part of the planned disruption occurred later that night at the conference banquet.

“The crowd of SEIU members and staff trying to force their way into the banquet served to confirm and emphasize the need to turn the International away from the path they’re on,” said Joe Iosbaker, a member of SEIU Local 73’s executive board who witnessed the incident. “The thunder and noise about the CNA rallies people around the International in preparation for the internal fight that’s happening [between SEIU reformers and International officials].”

BANQUET INVASION
As the banquet was beginning, 200-300 chanting SEIU members and staffers rushed through a double set of exterior hotel doors. The locked doors were opened from the inside by SEIU staffers attending the conference.

Most of the demonstrators wore the signature SEIU purple T-shirts; some carried signs denouncing the CNA. CNA’s executive director, Rose Ann DeMoro, had been scheduled since November to address the banquet on single-payer health care, although her cancellation had been announced earlier in the day.

About 15 conference volunteers and Labor Notes staff were acting as security at the banquet hall doors. When the chanting protesters entered, waving noisemakers, they and other conference attendees in the foyer of the banquet hall quickly formed a double line in front of the doors, linking arms to block the way.

A number of participants were thrown to the ground by larger SEIUers, some of whom were wearing bandanas around their faces. One protestor broke through the first line and, finding himself trapped between the two lines, flailed wildly.

Protesters continued to try to advance toward the doors, some nonviolently and others more aggressively. Inside the hall, attendees barricaded the doors with chairs to prevent entry.

Former Labor Notes office manager Dianne Feeley, a United Auto Workers retiree from American Axle, was knocked over by one protester and fell, cutting her head. She was treated at an emergency room. Several conference-goers who had their arms linked on the line received minor injuries from blows by protesters attempting to force open the banquet doors.

Hotel security and Dearborn police eventually made their presence felt. After chanting “we’ll be back,” the protesters returned to their six buses, some of which had come from Ohio.

MISLED MEMBERS
Many of the protesters were African-American members drawn from SEIU’s Michigan health care unit, Local 79. David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked some of these rank-and-file members milling around the edges of the protest why they had come.

Cohen said one responded, “They told us just to get on the bus.” Cohen added that protesters he talked to were simply told that the conference was a group of “people looking to break their union.”

The mobilization of Black members for the banquet invasion drew an angry response on April 17 from four leaders of the union’s national Black caucus, AFRAM. Two of the leaders are officers in United Healthcare Workers-West, a key local in the SEIU reform movement.

“SEIU members and their children were led into the hotel where violence erupted at the initiation of SEIU staff,” stated the leaders in a letter to their caucus president. “Why weren’t they told the truth about their presence at this conference? “Why were only African Americans and their children invited, with the exception of the SEIU staffers? Why would SEIU create an environment of hostility rather than encourage and participate in the debate over differences?”

The four noted the tragic death of Local 79 member-organizer David Smith, who collapsed outside the hotel.

STORM OF CRITICISM
Shortly after the protestors left, SEIU’s national leadership issued a press release titled, “SEIU Members Stand Up For The Future Of The Labor Movement And The Interests of All Workers.” SEIU Vice President Mary Kay Henry praised the demonstrators. Five subsequent press releases from the union’s leadership gave conflicting accounts of what happened, ultimately blaming conference-goers themselves for the violence.

The action, however, drew criticism of SEIU’s national leadership.

“There is no justification—none—for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney April 15. As the former president of SEIU, he called on a lesson from the union’s history, stating: “No union should understand the corrosive effect of violence better than SEIU, which was founded by courageous janitors in the face of employer violence in the 1920s and 1930s. I call on the leaders of SEIU to condemn what happened in Detroit.”

Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove also called on SEIU President Andy Stern to condemn the attack, in an open letter.

Another letter was circulated by members of the SEIU reform group, SMART, who were present at the conference.

“We believe it was precisely open debate and discussion that were the target of this hostile attack,” it said.

The photos above are from that riot sparked by Andy Stern. That is also rough and tumble Paper Hat Organizer Keith Kelleher. John L. Lewis? Nah.

ABC - 7's Andy Shaw Takes 'Stupid' National!

You Go, Andy! That's Andy Shaw as natural as he gets and a City Hall insider by the name of Buck DaMedea!

Now this goof Andy Shaw is a walking metaphor for Chicago's Media Elite! You really need to work at it 24/7 to be this stupid and Andy is no clock watcher!


True story, this one! Remember Terry Teele, Mayor Daley's go-to-guy on all things Planning and Development? Get this.

When Terry Teele was forced to resign from his position in Daley's Office, I happened to be sitting in the Planning and Development waiting room - a breathless Andy Shaw Charged In - 'The Teele resignation - I'M here!'

The lovely middle aged black woman informed this Profound Newshound - 'Fifth Floor, Sir. Mr. Teele works on the Fifth Floor. We are on the 10th Floor?'

Here's Andy Shaw Breathlessly stupid once again with President Elect Obama and the always affable Senator John ' Sure! I Suffer Fools Gladly' McCain:

Obama's aides started trying to clear the press out, reminding them there were not supposed to be questions.

That did not stop ABC-7 political reporter Andy Shaw from asking McCain if he planned to work with Obama to help him get things done. ( Emphasis my own!)
Even as the aides shouted louder not to ask questions, McCain said, "Obviously."
Obama smiled and told the reporters still asking questions they were "incorrigible." Then he proceeded to lean over to McCain and tell him a campaign-trail story about one of his aides.

Bed and breakfast, Andy! You take Stupid to a new level!

Andy Shaw meets Doyle Brunson and Phil Helmuth at the World Series of Poker -'Playing Cards, Fellows?'

MSM - Fat Smart! Chicago Tribune's Fat-ous Progressivism

Caveat Lardassians, of the Chicago Metro Area! The Media is on the Case of all you 'unrepentant' donut gulpers, biscuits and gravy swallowers, Lardboys and Lady Lard-Smugglers! It is a national imperative!

Like smokers, fois gras cracker nippers, and other thought criminals MSM is doing its Pre-Emptive Reportage!

Progressives tend to really hate the sinner and 'understand' the sin. Progressives, according to leading Demographic experts, tend to be college educated, fit, single or married, but childless.

The new progressivism reflects largely the narcissism of its political base in the urban core and a few elite suburbs. Liberal “progressive” activists in affluent,largely childless places like San Francisco, Manhattan, Seattle, Portland, and Boston see the world as needing simply to become more like themselves. As The
Stranger, a Seattle weekly, put it, they perceive themselves as “islands of sanity,
liberalism and compassion” compared with the suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas
where “people are fatter and slower and dumber. “

The Boutique Elites who control the Democratic Party and the National Media agree -'everyone else is dumber, fatter and of little or no consequence.'

The Boutique Elites bull through legislation that outlaws and proscribes - Smoking, Goose Guts & etc.

Today the Chicago Tribune offers two thoughts on Fat and Fat People.

First, the Trib points out America's Fattest City! Lardo! Blubber Ahoy! It's Huntington, West Virginia! Rednecks!

It's a sad situation, and a potential harbinger of what will happen to other U.S. communities, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor who is working with West Virginia officials on health reform legislation.

"They may be at the very top, but obesity and diabetes trends are very similar" in many other communities, particularly in the South, Thorpe said.

Culture and history are at least part of the problem, health officials say.

For decades, Huntington thrived with coal mines to its south. Nearly 90,000 people lived in the city in 1950. The traditional diet was dense with calories burned off through manual labor.

But as the coal industry modernized and the economy changed, manufacturing jobs left. The city's population is now fewer than 50,000, and chronic diseases—many of them connected to obesity—seem much more common.

Nurse Shari Wiley runs a program that identifies heavy school children and tries to teach them better eating and exercise habits. The effort began because of an alarming trend.

"A lot of the patients we were seeing were getting heart attacks in their 30s," she said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-fat-citynov
17,0,4780970.story

Yet,

. . . scientists also say an active brain is one that may not be as prone to Alzheimer's and other brain-damaging maladies. Mental exercise like reading the newspaper (hint, hint), attending a play or even playing checkers can ward off Alzheimer's, according to a study released last year by Rush University Medical Center researchers.

But there may be another way to keep the brain on but the pounds off.

Researchers now say that they often can detect brain activity changes that predict a person's choice before that person becomes aware of that choice. Apparently there can be a 10-second lag between the time the brain starts forming a decision and a person becomes consciously aware of it and acts, according to a May 2008 study in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

So, what if that emerging decision, particularly if it involved eating, could be intercepted and canceled in the 10 seconds before a person becomes conscious of it and acts?

Belay that brownie order! Short-circuit that shortcake! No, you really don't want fries with that!

What a breakthrough for those who struggle on a diet. Think of the possibilities.

But not too hard.

Thought brings on the Lard! The Chicago Tribune is Lean - Svelt! Reed-like! Willowy! Oh, So thin! And the Chicago Sun Times is positively . . .disappearing! Now, That's Progress!

Chicago Sun Times Wants Catholics to Shut Up - Abortion Is A Great Way For Woman to Look Better and Get Empowered!

A woman's right to choose means that she should be empowered to have Old Doc jam a sharp or blunt object into her wombed child; yank the corpse out and toss Junior's guts into a can unencumbered by civil, moral or ethical constraints whatsoever.

The Chicago Sun Times a wad of thinning sheets of howling opinion and bugger all thought slicked up some encomiums from its three readers in reaction to Catholic Bishops doing their jobs:

Catholic Church forgets other 9 commandments
Comments

November 13, 2008

I love stories about the abortion issue and the Catholic Church. The last time I checked there were 10 commandments, not just one.

They pick and choose our politicians to punish for their personal beliefs on commandment No. 5 ("Thou shalt not kill"), yet they overlook all the other ones.

How about commandment No. 6 ("Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife") or No. 7 ("Thou shalt not steal")?

Are these lesser offenses in the eyes of the Catholic Church?

Sean Lowry, Beverly

Stay out of politics
Please, as a Catholic, I ask if there isn't someone who will tell Catholic bishops to get out of politics?

Their moral stance is fine when it is applied to their religion, but not to a whole country. After all, it was not God who told us that abortion was wrong, but a group of cardinals who voted that a child was given a soul at the moment of conception rather than at the moment of birth, and it only won by one vote.

Arlene Cozzi, Lake View

George should step down
Cardinal Francis George needs to step down. Any person who does not protect innocent children needs to be replaced. He has allowed pedophiles to have close contact with children for years. That shows that something is really wrong. This is just another example of what our society thinks of children. Our laws do not protect them, because they cannot vote. So our politicians turn their backs on them.

Lea Tomassone,

River Grove

Yep, powerful commentary.

Here's the AP on the Catholic Bishops Stand on Abortion:

Cardinal Francis George told a gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Monday that continued support for abortion rights will undermine any advances in social justice that come from a new president and Congress.

George, president of the bishops group, said: ''we must all rejoice'' that an African American will be in the White House for the first time in a country that ''once enshrined slavery'' in law.
But he said the U.S. still violates universal human rights by keeping abortion legal.

''The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice,'' George said.

His speech didn't directly address the policies of President-elect Barack Obama, who is Protestant, and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, who is Roman Catholic. Both men support abortion rights and take other stands that differ from Catholic teaching.

At a later news conference, George said bishops are preparing to lobby the Obama administration on policies that diverge from Catholic teaching on marriage, abortion and other issues.

AP

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Chicago Sun Times while sinking like a doughball in the gullet of a Kankakee River Channel Catfish, fights for a woman's right to cosmetically get rid of excess weight brought on by sexual relations. Abortion is no more than liposuction, if one has no moral root. In my experience, the only women who have ever argued stridently for abortion seemed to be as willing to toss husbands, unruly pets and even their unaborted children. Too much bother. 'Get that Duck out of MY Oven!'

The Pink T-Shirts of Planned Parenthood stayed in the wearhouse this Campaign Cycle, but the fashionable and smart ladies who Salon will be out in full howl and the Chicago Sun Times will whine its way into oblivion.

Father Bob Barron had nice explanation that would be lost on the threeMetro Chicagoans getting their Shouts Out with the Sun Times above - you see the Catholic Church is not the Democratic Party! Troubling, LuLu?

The problem here is that the social teaching of the church flows necessarily from and is subordinated to the doctrinal convictions of classical Christianity. We care for the poor precisely because we are all connected to one another through the acts of creation and redemption. More to it, we worry about the marginalized precisely because all of us are cells, molecules and organs in a mystical body whose head is Christ risen from the dead. And our work on behalf of social justice is nourished by the Eucharist, which fully realizes and expresses the living dynamics of the mystical communion.

Read more - read something -http://www.catholicnewworld.com/cnwonline/2008/1109/faithculture.aspx

Abortion is an evil. Parse up a Nuanced storm.

Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin - Cammy You are My Kind of Gal! Well, Gal Pal Anyway. . .Look, I'm with Sappho Too. . .

Camille Paglia is great teacher of literature. I was OK. Ms. Paglia is a common sense Feminist; I am a devout sexist. Ms. Paglia is a devotee of Sappho (attracted to women) and so am I!

I'd buy her a beer the size of Connecticut

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

Cammy, when and if you hit Chicago, I'll spring for steak that would gag Keith Olbermann and shut-up Chris Matthews . . .for a moment. We'll double! We can even take in some South American tunes.

Hickey is Going All Metrosexual! Hell, I Thought McCain Would Win -Time to Get Right With Those Who Salon!

I went halves on three kids, but does that make me a man - Oh Hell no! Being a man was learned - I thought - by watching real men love their wives, care for their children, remember God's hand in all things, meet obligations, honor commitments, stoically take set-backs and affronts, dust one's self off when failure does a smash-up on our egos. That sort of thing.

I'm off the hook! Not in the modern sense of being 'really keen,' but in my old male sense of -unencumbered by obligations.

Here's the word from the lovely Nancy Morgan!

The Girly Men are back. With a vengeance. And I expect they'll be granted a front row seat in any and all national conversations for the next four years. They are the new and improved version of men. Designed by feminists and launched in a successful frontal assault on America's outdated notion of masculinity.

Gone are the masculine heroes of yesterday - the John Wayne's and the General Patton's. Gone are the the testosterone laden warriors and the outdated dudes who think their job is to protect women. They've been banished to the fringes of the 'politically acceptable', along with all the men who don't shave their chest hair. (And they don't even have 72 virgins to console them. Virginity has been banned as, well, unacceptable for any self-realized woman. Or girl.)

The new improved Girly Men are marching, (mincing) in lockstep in front of anyone who will watch, patting themselves on the back for having 'evolved'. These men have swallowed whole the feminist mantra that This Is What Women Want. A new, sensitive man. A man not afraid of feelings, a man in touch with his inner self who has the, yes, the raw courage, to shed the shackles (whew) of masculinity.

No longer will these men have to battle for their place in the pecking order by the old (brutal) traditional means. It has been decided by popular vote that feelings will now determine social ranking. Acerbic wit will replace arm wrestling. Tears will replace stoicism, dialogue will replace confrontation and liposuction will replace rippling muscles.

Thank God! I have been sucking in my, what used to be refered to as 'gut,' Amber Waves of Lard. I can now get a full body tan - and well do I need that . . .once I ask Seth to razor and wax all the hair off of me.

A New Age marked by a Dionysian sensibility has hugged the Nation. This New Age of Theban Maleness will allow much less attention to manly details like making my son Conor wipe up the assorted sauces, spices, condiments and clean the sinkful of pots, pans and skillets.

'Hey, look, Bub! This is not what being a man is all about. You do not leave a mess for your little sister to clean up, much less your silver-haired Pappy. Take care of your own messes.'

'Like you, I suppose.'

'Indeed. Look, Sally, this is not a debating society get busy.'

Now, I can get mellow. 'Conor's sloth might not necessarily lead him into membership of Order of Chaeronea, but it sure is nice not to level up the old testicle barometer to full Dad Rage Levels. Chill, Daddy-o!'

If Putin wants to incinerate Poland, let the man Dance! Babies? I got three! Let a woman liposuction some life out with those unwanted rolls of lard with Dr. Gaddam Gupta! Chill, baby. Christmas is for squares. God is a nap. Time for Sex in the City! I can have Clare's 8th Grade girlfriends in for a sleepover and play re-runs to show them just what women need to appreciate! It's all good.

I can feel breasts sprouting! Hey, at this point I'll have Knee Knockers by 2012!

What Golden Age this might be! I am going to rent some Will and Grace - never saw that; get me a full length mirror; get in some sweet quality time with the Metro guys at a really Happening gym. Cry, again. Watch Oprah! Look concerned while silently saying 'As if!' Read less and watch more! Chill.

I wonder if they have just the right oils at CVS.

My Dad - Guam in 1944 and St. Cajetan's Vet Services 2008

My Dad, Pfc.Patrick E. Hickey USMCR, a machine gunner with Able Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines was photographed on Guam in July, 1944. He was 19 years old at the time and a veteran of the Bougainville Campaign in the Solomon Islands in 1943. The following year he would go to Iwo Jima and return to Guam where he 'checked caves until he came home in November 1945 - he had the Points. Yesterday, the kids of St. Cajetan School in my Morgan Park neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, honored the Veterans of our Parish. My Dad is featured at the beginning of the video and had trouble standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

St. Cajetan Parish is honored by the service of about twenty young men now deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He met a 'young guy' who served in the 3rd Marines during Operation Desert Storm and told him 'Semper Fi, Mac.'

Thank you to St. Cajetan's School!

Click my post title for great Southtown Star coverage of kids giving touching tribute to our heroes -Old and Young.

Katha Pollitt - Palin Hater for America and One Ugly Broad! Chicago Tribune Thinks She's Swell!

Katha Pollitt is one ugly woman - this past Halloween the kids at the door gave her candy; in Katha's photo album there's only negatives;beauty is only skin deep but ugly is to the bone (Dangerfield. New York).

Click my post title for the article - it is pretty standard hate stuff but very badly written and certainly worthy of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

I read Miss Pollitt's op-ed piece with great interest this morning. The Tribune did not provide a photo of Miss Pollitt but I managed to match the face with the message. Miss Pollitt is also not all that bright it seems to me thata demitasse would fit her head like a sombrero. Miss Pollitt is also rather . . .shall we say offensive? I've come across decomposed bodies of two fishermen tossed up on the beach at Holland Michigan that were less offensive than Miss Pollitt.

Miss Pollitt would scare a starving dog off a meat wagon, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As Progressive are wont to say 'Who's to judge?' As I am wont to say, 'Me.' That is one ugly broad. Beauty works it's way up from the heart and Miss Pollitt's words of unnecessary invective match her tiny heart.

But shucks, don't take my word for it I am a dedicated and devout sexist.

My favorite Lesbian/literary critic Camille Paglia thinks not much of Miss Pollitt*. as well.

Feminist author Camille Paglia described Pollitt as a "whiny troll, an unscrupulous and unreliable critic and a cultural philistine...She's a good example of the phony prep-school/trust-fund leftism suffusing the incestuously interwined Ivy League cliques who run the corrupt East Coast literary and magazine establishment."[6]

Yet, the Chicago Tribune's editorial board sees fit to use a 'whiny troll' to smear Sarah Palin. Pollitt is a feminist. One of those feminists who can not seem to develop a happy life and Billy-bedamns any woman who is everything that they are not. Pollitt tosses hate on Sarah Palin like Englewood Napalm ( a horrific concoction of boiling water and bacon grease that is infamous for branding domestic disputes.

Sarah Palin will be fine. The Radical Feminists are scared witless - I believe that is the word I wish - of Sarah Palin.

The Chicago Tribune has become as sad a joke in journalism as the soon to closed Chicago Sun Times.

Katha Pollitt is married ( her second and his third) to Marxist critic Steve Lukes.

Sarah Palin is Governor of Alaska and happily married to the man she met in high school.

This is list from Mother Jones by Katha Pollitt Her Ten Must Reads - Yeah, I'll get around to those hits . . .when it snows in the Philippines.
Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation magazine and author of Reasonable Creatures: Feminism & Society in American Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 1994). In the early 1980s, she reviewed books for Mother Jones. Her choices, listed chronologically:

1976 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society, by Raymond Williams (London: Oxford University Press). The great Marxist scholar of English literature analyzes the history of 131 crucial words, from "aesthetic," which has always meant the opposite of "social" and "practical," to "work," which did not always mean paid employment.

1978 For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (New York: Doubleday). This feminist classic is still the most elegant and spirited dissection of received medical wisdom -- a.k.a. sexism.

1983 Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson (London: Verso). A brilliant and erudite investigation of the concept of national identity -- a modern invention whose psychological power lies in denying that it is one.

1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, by Pierre Bourdieu (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). With subtlety and sophistication, the great French sociologist analyzes the way social and economic classes are shaped and preserved by myriad tiny but amazingly precise differences -- from preferences in food and art to body language and hairstyles. The data are French, the implications universal.

1984 Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, by R.C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin (New York: Pantheon). Three prominent scientists debunk genetic determinism and sociobiology so thoroughly it's amazing The Bell Curve got published.

1988 A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A beautiful, furious essay about the author's native Antigua, tourist mecca and postcolonial slum -- the modern world in a nutshell.

1990 City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, by Mike Davis (London: Verso). I learned something from every page of this bold social history of Los Angeles as the prototype of a new kind of city, the world megalopolis.

1991 Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi (New York: Crown). The book that woke American women from their Reagan-era "post-feminist" nap. Faludi shows how the media operates as a kind of Möbius strip, endlessly recycling half-truths and distortions to "prove" that feminism has made women miserable.

1991 Mao II, by Don DeLillo (New York: Penguin). A Pynchon-like writer leaves his study to explore a world of cults, terrorists, dilapidation, and drift. A tragic meditation on post-modernity as alternating currents of isolation and mass hysteria.

Adolph Reed Jr.'s essays are not collected in a book, but he is the smartest person of any race, class, or gender writing on race, class, and gender. (His writing appears in the Progressive and Village Voice.)


Rather have my gums scrapped, Katha!

Cammy, with words such as yours about Katha ('She's a good example of the phony prep-school/trust-fund leftism suffusing the incestuously interwined Ivy League cliques who run the corrupt East Coast literary and magazine establishment.') I am proud to call myself a Lesbian too!

George Will - Irony's Sycophant a Swell Contrast to St. Augustine

Unlike the radicals on the right who want to upend American traditions, Will seeks to conserve them. Despite his habitual caution, however, even Will seems to have made at least one concession to modernity that may leave some of his admirers reeling. The bow tie has vanished. For the cover photograph of “One Man’s America,” he’s donned a necktie. New York Times Review of Books by Jacob Heilbrunn

Heck George, Tucker Carlson did that years ago!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

George Will is Irony's Sycophant - wordy parser posing as an authentic voice. Shoot Will required research assistants, from what I hear, to scoop up baseball facts and figures in an attempt to become 'a real fan.' Now that's ironic. Today George Will worms his words through the loam of the new Washington, D.C.- the New Athens built from the Spartan helots of Daley's Chicago. Will wants in.

The door might be open to a parser. Thus, Will explains conservative America rotting like the corpse of a Marine gunned down in the surf off Tarawa in 1943:

More irony: September's financial storm probably sealed Obama's victory by raising the electorate's anxieties while lowering its confidence in Obama's opponent. John McCain's responses -- suspending, sort of, his campaign; ratcheting up his rhetoric about Wall Street "greed and corruption" -- suggested a line spoken solemnly by the Capitol Steps' George W. Bush impersonator: "Uncertain times call for uncertain leadership." But the storm's aftermath -- $1 trillion or so of government resources siphoned away -- will severely constrain Obama's presidency. So, this year the conditions conducive to the election of liberals, with their baroque plans and rococo dreams, have put a polar frost on most such ambitions.

Indeed, Obama's first problem will be drawing lines to circumscribe bailout promiscuity. The Bush administration, having executed a swan dive, or perhaps a belly-flop, into the financial sector, now seems to be flinching from extending the interventions into the industrial sector. Democrats in Congress, feeling their oats and hearing clamors from local corporations, will be Obama's first affliction.

Some of the Republicans' afflictions are self-inflicted. Some conservatives who are gluttons for punishment are getting a head start on ensuring a 2012 drubbing by prescribing peculiar medication for a misdiagnosed illness. They are monomaniacal about media bias, which is real but rarely decisive, and unhinged by their anger about the loathing of Sarah Palin by similarly deranged liberals. These conservatives, confusing pugnacity with a political philosophy, are hot to anoint Palin, an emblem of rural and small-town sensibilities, as the party's presumptive 2012 nominee.

These conservatives preen as especially respectful of regular -- or as Palin says, "real" -- Americans, whose tribune Palin purports to be. But note the argument that the manipulation of Americans by "the mainstream media" explains the fact that the more Palin campaigned, the less Americans thought of her qualifications. This argument portrays Americans as a bovine herd -- or as inert clay in the hands of wily media, which only Palin's conservative celebrators can decipher and resist.

Which George Will offers to. . . to offset, with milquetoast oil, and usher in a backdoor to principle! The Lap Dog's Return! George Will is seaching for a warm lap and a comfy chair. What a jerk!

George, the bovine herd? Well, Will there are herds and hoards. Hoards sweepin change. Herds remain static until herded, or is it lead? Ironic, that.

In Roman Hippo, a suburb of Carthage, the Bishop worried about Change and Hope as the Vandals and the Goths swept out the corruption of Old Rome. Augustine was no George Will. Augustine, was rooted in conservative principles that outlasted the Vandals and the Goths and took a hard look at political change as merely a vanity.

George Will is all about vanity. Augustine wrote:

CHAP. XVII. -- NEVERTHELESS THERE IS TIME PAST AND FUTURE.

22. I ask, Father, I do not affirm. O my God, rule and guide me. "Who is there who can say to me that there are not three times (as we learned when boys, and as we have taught boys), the past, present, and future, but only present, because these two are not? Or are they also; but when from future it becometh present, cometh it forth from some secret place, and when from the present it becometh past, doth it retire into anything secret? For where have they, who have foretold future things, seen these things, if as yet they are not? For that which is not cannot be seen. And they who relate things past could not relate them as true, did they not perceive them in their mind. Which things, if they were not, they could in no wise be discerned. There are therefore things both future and past.

George Will denies these points. The Irony being - that is a very good thing.

Keep yapping Georgie, someone will pick you up!

N.B. - Speaking of Principles and parsing for wiggle room: Nancy Pelosi, one of the Goths in Congress tried to parse St. Augustine over Abortion and received a clip on the snout from Bishop Chaput.

In the summer of 2008, this aspect ( condemnation of abortion) of Augustine's thoughtt (i.e., the gravity of abortion vis-a-vis the ensoulment of the fetus) was used by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, in defence of her pro-choice political stance. She quoted one of his works, in which he wrote:

"The law does not provide that the act [abortion] pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.'[64]

In the week following her comments, she was corrected by numerous American bishops, such as Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver, who wrote: "In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself..."[65]

Now, That's Ironic!

American Catholics - Time to Ask Where We Go to Mass - Grant Park or The Parish Near You!

Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in his recent book, Render Unto Caesar,

“The point we must never forget is this: We need to keep fighting for the human person, starting with the unborn child and extending throughout life. We abandon our vocation as Catholics if we give up; if we drop out of political issues altogether or knuckle under to America’s growing callousness toward human dignity. We need to keep fighting. Otherwise we become what the Word of God has such disgust for: salt that has lost its flavor.”

The Sun Times, Chicago's Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago, is fighting for Gay Marriage. No children result from gay marriage - a biological imperative - but the Sun Times hammers home 'It's about the Children.' Which is the burning issue? Gay Rights it seems. Third Trimester Kids die every day thanks to Advocacy of a Woman's Right To Choose having a doctor jam a spike into the babies skulls and yank out the corpses with forceps, but the real heart-tugger comes when Randy and Andy ( gender Neutral handles) can not obtain a Cook County Marriage Licence from Dave Orr.

In Arkansas, voters barred unmarried couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents in a state that doesn't have enough foster homes. This action comes despite a recent study showing that same-sex couples play a critical role in the world of adoption because they will take the kids who are the hardest to place -- older children and ones with special needs.

So, a supposed pro-family measure winds up hurting children.

Now that sounds Urgent!

Stop the Presses!

That is because marriage is between two people of opposite gender - a union that is intended - great lawyer-word INTENT - to propagate the species, or more feely -Families.

Gays enjoy sex to express love between two people of same sexual gender ( Man to Man; Woman to Woman). Everyone else expresses their love with sex in hope of having children and raising them according to that union.

The expression of love comes in many forms - sex is one and a powerful one. In our times ( between the 1960's and today) one of the most powerful expressions of love has become politics: Advocacy Politics pick and issue, get behind it and votes will pour in.

As Chicago Sun Times Advocacy Columnist, Neil Steinberg said today in his column on Chicago: The New Athens,

One thing this election has taught me is that there are lots of facts, an infinity of facts, and too many people seize on just a few, puzzle pieces that fit neatly into their puzzled minds. Then they ignore the rest, staring at one pebble in a field of boulders.

The father and son singing might not be important. But it's something I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce Devil's Dictionary.

It is time for principles to skip politics. Catholics, like me, need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask, 'What do I believe? What do I share with my children? What is worth holding on to and what is worth letting go?

I listened to Catholic Journalist Raymond Arroyo last night and pointed out the liturgical nature of the Obama Celebration - almost a Mass it was! Thousands of people took Communion with President Elect Obama.

The Obama Liturgy in Grant Park on Tuesday Night and all that it means might be a good start to begin my examination of conscience.

We all live together to be sure, but we go Hell on our own.

Yes, indeed. Abortion has Advocacy. Gays have Advocacy. The Unborn are on their own.

Leo Veterans Observance -Friday November 7 at 11AM -Leo Piper David McKee Leads the Way

Leo High School's David McKee '46 - the Dean of Stockyard Kilty Pipe Band - opens the Leo Veterans Observance tomorrow by piping in the Colors.

Come over to Leo High School -Leo High School site of Veterans Observance on Friday, November 7th, 2008 @11:00 A.M

Contact - Mr. Pat Hickey -Director of Development (773) 224-9600,ex.#16

Leo High School, Leo Alumni Association, Windy City Veterans, The Burbank, Illinois Unit of the Marine Corps League, The Veterans Leadership Program, American Legion Giles Post #87, & Chicago Commission on Human Relations will hold a special Veterans Memorial Observance at the Leo War Memorial in the school’s courtyard. , Leo High School President Robert W. Foster & Vice Principal Frank Wilson (USMC ret.) will direct the observance which features presentations by Veterans, wreath - laying by Richard Furlong, President of the Alumni Association , Mrs. Rochelle Crump - Veteran and Asst. Director for the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services.

It is the Veterans who make this event special.

Leo High School erected a memorial in 1965 to the many Leo men who have died serving America in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam and the Windy City Veterans of Chicago updated the engraved names and constructed permanent lighting for the memorial. Last year more than two hundred persons joined the 220 Leo students in honoring America’s war fallen.

John Fardy (Leo 1940) was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic sacrifice during World War II. Mr. John Houlihan (Leo ‘41) served in the Marine Corps as did Mr. Dick Prendergast and twenty (20) more of his classmates from the Class of ‘43. Many Leo men have been decorated for heroism, including Mr. Jim Farrell (Leo ‘61), Mr. Jack Farnan, (Leo ‘63), and Mr. Jim Furlong ( Leo ‘65), all members of the Leo Hall of Fame and highly decorated Vietnam Veterans. The late Mr.Thomas Stack (Leo ‘61) organized the first welcome home to the Veterans of Vietnam. Mr.Tom Stack won two Silver Stars and three Bronze Stars in Vietnam.
Another highly decorated Vietnam Veteran, Gen. George Muellner, USAF (ret.) graduated from Leo, flew more than 600 combat fighter missions, commanded many fighter commands, and developed the STAR communications weapon system for Operation Desert Storm. Gen. Muellner is now the VP for Boeing Corporation’s Stealth Projects. Chicago Police Officer Eric Lee ( USMC) was killed in the line of duty several years ago and is remembered in Leo High School's Hall of Fame.The Veterans Memorial Observance, as always, will be held in the school courtyard located on 79th Street.

President Barack Obama -Congratulations, Mr. President Elect!

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves... self-discipline with all of them came first. Harry S. Truman

President Elect Barack Obama won the greatest political victory of modern American History.

President
Barack Obama
349John McCain
163 Senate
Democrats
56* (+5)Republicans
40 (-5)
House
Democrats
251 (+20)Republicans
172 (-20)
Barack Obama Elected President
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· President ·Obama/Biden 52% (349) McCain/Palin 47% (163)
7:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Georgia (15) 46% 53% (99%) South Carolina (8) 45% 54% (94%)
Indiana (11) 50% 49% (99%) Vermont (3) 67% 31% (89%)
Kentucky (8) 41% 58% (100%) Virginia (13) 52% 47% (99%)
7:30 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
North Carolina (15) 50% 49% (100%) Ohio (20) 51% 47% (94%)
West Virginia (5) 43% 56% (99%)
8:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Alabama (9) 39% 61% (99%) Massachusetts (12) 62% 36% (96%)
Connecticut (7) 60% 39% (96%) Mississippi (6) 43% 57% (99%)
Delaware (3) 62% 37% (100%) Missouri (11) 49% 50% (100%)
DC (3) 93% 7% (100%) New Hampshire (4) 55% 44% (84%)
Florida (27) 51% 49% (99%) New Jersey (15) 57% 42% (98%)
Illinois (21) 61% 38% (95%) Oklahoma (7) 34% 66% (99%)
Maine (4) 58% 40% (78%) Pennsylvania (21) 55% 44% (99%)
Maryland (10) 61% 38% (97%) Tennessee (11) 42% 57% (98%)
8:30 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Arkansas (6) 39% 59% (94%)
9:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Arizona (10) 45% 54% (97%) New York (31) 62% 37% (99%)
Colorado (9) 53% 46% (80%) North Dakota (3) 45% 53% (97%)
Kansas (6) 42% 57% (97%) Rhode Island (4) 63% 35% (98%)
Louisiana (9) 38% 60% (96%) South Dakota (3) 44% 54% (98%)
Michigan (17) 57% 41% (97%) Texas (34) 44% 55% (96%)
Minnesota (10) 54% 44% (98%) Wisconsin (10) 56% 43% (96%)
Nebraska (5) 41% 57% (99%) Wyoming (3) 33% 65% (100%)
New Mexico (5) 57% 42% (98%)
10:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Iowa (7) 54% 45% (99%) Nevada (5) 56% 42% (73%)
Montana (3) 46% 51% (88%) Utah (5) 34% 63% (99%)
11:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
California (55) 61% 37% (73%) Oregon (7) 56% 43% (58%)
Hawaii (4) 72% 27% (99%) Washington (11) 57% 41% (52%)
Idaho (4) 35% 62% (85%)
1:00 ET Obama McCain Obama McCain
Alaska (3) 36% 62% (81%)