Ralph Martire's Monster Budget - Ralph, Illinois Policy Institute Trims the Budget Blubber . . .And No One Dies

Rock-Solid By Gummy Illinois Son of the Soil -"Mrs. Illinois, not to be rude but Ralphie Rod Blag-Budget has gotten just a tad past chubby; now, I suppose that it's none of my business, but perhaps . . . maybe . . . Ralphie Rod might like a nice Soy Snack - 'stead a that thar Hershey's Dipped Deep Fried Oreo Wheel?"

SEIU Human Activists - "Coward! Ralphie Rod Has Feelings and Will Die Without Those Empty Calories! Call the Coalition! We are marching on this man . . . what's that? Oh, Woman. Sorry. Are you Gay? That would make a huge difference, . . .Oh, you were laughing at us! Youare a Man a Breeder! No Doubt against Womens Reproductive Health and a Theocrat. Nice. but the child needs his snack!"

John Tillman's Illinois Policy Intitute's Report and Recommendations shows legislators how to trim the lard from the State Budget without raising taxes.

In fact it gives very specific recommendations of just where to slice and dice wasteful spending - Chicago State University* for example, where its former President went on a taxpayer funded personal spending junket for years, is given only a modest cut in appropriated spending dollars.

No blood. No Fire. No Nothing. Just a reasonable taxpayer cash diet.

The report concludes:

If Illinois had enacted an expenditure limit in 2004 that limited spending growth to population plus inflation, the state could have cumulatively
saved $13.7 billion over the past six years. That’s money that could have
been put in a rainy day fund, applied toward the unfunded public employee
pension liabilities, or even refunded to taxpayers. Budget Savings from
Establishing a Spending Limit in 2004 An expenditure limit could have helped to
prevent the $11.606 billion budget deficit . . . state faces today. If Illinois had adopted an expenditure limit in 2004, the budget for fiscal year 2010 would be $29.1 billion. Given that the state is expected to bring in $26.9 billion
in revenue in 2010, the “diet” budget of $29.1 billion is much more in tune with reality than the actual 2010 base budget of $34.2 billion. Illinois has a good opportunity to prevent future runaway spending growth by immediately passing an expenditure limit based on inflation and population growth.

Purple T -Shirt give-aways are a nice way to get folks passionate about shouting at lawmakers and marching under the Capital Dome, but real solution to Budget Bloat is Fiscal and Fiduciary Fearlessness.

Legislators who voted down the tax-increase showed just that - Courage.

Ralph Martire sold Tax Bloat to Blago and others before him. Sensible Law makers said no. People like Patti Bellock, John Fritchey, Jim Watson, Debbie Mell - Yep Deb Mell, Kevin Joyce, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Brosnahan are the only people telling Illinois Budget Blubber Boy, Ralphie-Rod, 'Drop that Elephant Ear, Son! My God it's the size of a Harvester!'

Ralph is still hawking the lard. It's getting pretty tough to squeeze into those purple T-shirts - metaphorically speaking.


Cut the Bloat! Say No to Taxes!

Feel like Marching!



* Click ,y post title for the full report! Nice work John Tillman!
Check out Table # 3 on page 2 of the Illinois policy Institute Report
TABLE 3: Eliminating Governor Quinn’s
FY 2010 Spending Increases (general funds)

Voting Against Illinois Tax Monster is Not Cowardly, Ralph Martire - It is Your Monster, Ralph, You and Your Pal Blago. Get a Leash

"Avoiding a tax increase vote because you are concerned about your political career. That is cowardly," said the Center on Tax and Budget Accountability's Ralph Martire. SEIU Graphic Novel -Progress Illinois

Graphic Novels are what the Hep Cats call Comic Books these days. Ralph Martire is a career Academic Appointee who helped Gov. Rod Blagojevich buy fleets of PACE SUVs to help 'seniors' get around. That was nice. Grandma Donahue lived at 63rd & Kilpatrick near Midway and got around just fine on CTA. Seniors now ride free.

Old Lawyers from DuPage ride free. Blago sent his wife to Costa Rica and awaits more paper from Fitzy. Ralph Martire is still getting a handsome salary from one or more of the many Coalitions, that he handsomely manages to get appointed to, and shouts out scripted screams that tax-payers need to pay more.

Ralph, we're Tap City, Son.

My legislators voted against the Swelled-Like-A-Tick Budget that Ralph Martire helped Blago bloat. Ralph was Blago's Budget Big-shot ( Ralph has been Illinois' Mr. Programs since Dawn Clark Netsch first appointed Ralph to do some Coalition building).

Ralph is going around with Progressive, Fair and Efficient Charts and Numbers to make sure folks that who do not understand how a balance a check book can get all worked up over money that other people have earned.

http://www.kankakee.lib.il.us/podcasts/images/tax.pdf

Ralph is good for SEIU, Good for People who benefit from other people's tax burdens.

Ralph is not really good for people with mortgage payments, tuition burdens, and jobs ( for the moment) in Illinois. Ralph is good to people who appoint him to swell paying jobs and positions on boards. Ralph has not held elected office.

SEIU is going after Representatives voting the way the people (tax-payers) demand that they vote -

Up first was a trio of south suburban Democratic Reps. -- Kevin McCarthy, Jim Brosnahan, and Mike Zalewski -- who all voted against a temporary tax increase last month. They were paid a visit by dozens of state workers, including home health care aide Gwendolyn Vaughe, who asked the Representatives how they could justify the life-or-death cuts. "What does this mean for our seniors?" Vaughe asked. "Are they going to be left to die?"

When we caught up with Rep. McCarthy in his Orland Park office, he told us that he's yet to see exactly what programs are at stake (department heads are still pulling together the specifics), but acknowledged "dire circumstances" are ahead. "None of my colleagues have blinders on," he tells us. "They see how important these cuts are." But do they?

They do, Sweetheart. People who stand for election have a Coalition - the voters. Let the Legislature and its Leadership cut through the Fat on Ralph & Blago's Monster. Save the SOB stories.

Ralph, you made the Monster Budget. You feed him.

Chicago Daily Observer Connects the Allison Davis Dots Found By Sun Times' Tim Novak

Tim Novak of Chicago Sun Times has done more to put ’some’ light on the Progressive Machine; however, Mr. Novak’s great work scatters heaps of Dots that remain Unconnected on the political table.

His labors are Augean, but also like those of Sisyphus - much uphill groaning and heaving only to have the stone roll back.

Dan Kelley's timely piece might just prod the Lap Dogs to connect the piles of Dots:

If nothing else exposing Davis would serve a higher purpose: publicizing the blatant hypocrisy of the phony activists who are really reliable cogs in the Democratic Machine. A one time civil rights protester, who marched outside of City Hall, Davis proved to be someone who could be bought off by the system. His one time protégé, Obama means to overhaul the American economy and engage in a massive expansion of the size and scope of government activities. Like Davis, Obama, exempts himself from the rules and intends to live a life of ease and plenty. The president can jet off for a dinner date on Broadway without worrying about the hypocrisy of simultaneously asking all of us commoners to pay higher taxes and make sacrifices while reducing our wasteful use of energy and limiting our pollution causing habits.
Posing as a community activist is a tried and true way to advance your political and financial career in Democratic Chicago: the Shaw brothers, Bob and his late brother, Bill, were supposedly fair housing activists; Dorothy Tillman attended Chicago Board of Education meetings where she shouted down Angeline Caruso, a former acting school superintendent, and ridiculed Caruso’s frumpy appearance in the name of education activism; Luis Guiterez marched with Communists and Puerto Rican Nationalists, some of whom were later accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism; Marilyn Katz ran with the campus radicals, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and protested the Viet Nam war while hurling missiles at the police before she became a public relations expert for the political machine; Jan Schakowsky and her unapologetic, convicted criminal spouse, Robert Cremer, are two other fakers. Interestingly enough, despite their varied backgrounds, these folks have something in common: all of these individuals seemed to fall into line as soon as their personal needs and wants were gratified and they were given a place at the head table. They have all been feeding from the public trough ever since. The former Soviets called such privileged leaders “the vanguard of the proletariat.”
Obama has accepted bushel baskets of money from Davis in the form of campaign contributions. He lobbied to place housing redevelopment funds in the hands of Davis and Rezko. Perhaps, a few dollars from the pension fund profiteering ended up in Obama’s campaign war chest too. Only time will tell as the investigation proceeds.
Someday soon, the president needs to explain his relationship with both men. Calling it another “boneheaded” move or claiming “This is not the Allison Davis that I once knew” may not cut it indefinitely. Laundering clean a stained reputation is not an easy task. Club soda does not remove all types of spots.

Click my Post Title for Dan Kelley's Expose of Chicago's Progressive Machine within its Very Nuanced Context and Chicago's Media's Feckless Disregard for Both.

Oh, Carol, You're The Bottom of the Barrel; The Dirty Rotten Apple of My Eye!

Today, Carol Marin does the buzzard on Fran Spielman's labors.

Fran Spielman is going after Mayor Daley's nephew - the Vanecko kid. Fair enough. The kid went into business with Progressive Clout Meister Allison Davis - Judson Miner's partner and Obama's Law Boss. It seems that the Sun Times wants no light on Allison Davis, whose own little boy had a real estate venture that got a three year old child killed when Cullen Davis' Venture* included a rusty gate that crushed the toddler.

Yep, The Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago shed no light on Progressive Impunity Immunity Workhorses. You see, if and when Allison Davis starts chirping to Fitzy - bad stuff about the Progressive Machine gets out.

Nota Bene! Sun Times Investigative Reporter - Tim Novak covered Allison Davis and Cullen Davis like quality wallpaper. In fact, this helot lamented the long absence of Tim Novak's powerful work over the last summer and fall. Here is a link to my references to Mr. Novak's great work ( amended 8:53 AM 6/17/2009). I apologize for this inadvertent slight of Chicago's most tenacious news pitbull.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/search?q=Tim+Novak
So, the pile on continues on Regular Democrats and GOP politicians only - oh, and any and all members of their families - It's A Progressive Thing.

Well, Old Carol Marin, for whom I have little, or no regard as a journalist, but fully understand and appreciate her status as a manufactured icon, does the buzzard on the body of work performed by a real reporter - Fran Spielman.

Carol can't eat all the carrion on her own self and powers, so she pours on the Royko Remoulade - Mike Royoko is the be all and end all of Progressive Coverage. The Sauce is Boss!

Voila,

Decades before the White House columns, he was writing about another generation of Vaneckos and Daleys and a disease he called "payrolliaitis."

"It isn't anything that would show up through scientific testing," wrote Royko in 1965, "but Mayor Richard J. Daley is a carrier of a fast-spreading germ . . . called payrolliaitis. The symptoms are easy to spot. A person gets close to the mayor. Crunch -- the payrolliaitis bug nips him. He wanders off in the direction of a city, state or county agency, sits down at a desk, and his name breaks out on a payroll."

Royko was talking about the hiring of Robert Vanecko's grandfather, Dr. Michael Vanecko, whose son married the late mayor's daughter. Shortly before the wedding, that Vanecko went to work for the Chicago Board of Health. And later, his son, Dr. Robert Vanecko, was hired as the physician for the city's municipal pension fund. And now today we have the third generation, as his son, another Robert Vanecko, lands a $68 million deal with -- what else -- city pension funds. He severed all business ties with the deal only after the feds began subpoenaing records.

I dialed Fran on Tuesday at City Hall to ask if she had ever been to dinner with the mayor.

"No," was all she said.

That's good. There's work to do.

Yeah, but Carol Marin will do bugger all of it!

Yep, Carol decided, or her Editorial Chinaman decided, that going after the Family Davis is au contraire! However, "Everyone Hates the Daley Family! The Knit Hat-Soul-Patch & Shave-No-Legs Crowd will find it Fabulous to rip Daley's Family Even Though There is No Tangible Connection Whatsoever to the Story! Just Splash on the Royko!"

So, Carol Marin impugns one of the City's best, most skilled and respected Thoracic Surgeons Dr. Robert Vanecko of Northwestern Medical Center and his surgeon Father as political hacks! Bottom of the Barrel Carol!

Carol, there was a great old song by the Fabulous Farquahr** a folkish musician ( No Pete Seeger, He!) of note with a cult following who penned a lyric about an odious woman named Carol. It is almost eerie.

Carol, you're the bottom of the barrel/You're the Dirty Rotten Apple of my eye/
And when I see you/ I hold my nose and go PU/ And When I See You, Carol

You're Face, You're, Hair, and Your Complexion/ Sure Could Use a Resurrection! - Carol . . .& etc.

* The Family Davis Saga has everything that No Progressive Wants Talked about - Billy Ayers, Comb-Over Dave Axelrod, Rahmbo, Bernardine Dohrn, Judson Miner, all the 1960's Radicals insulated from Inquiry!

**http://johnnykmusic.blogspot.com/search/label/Fabulous%20Farquahr

Mayor Daley's Take on Nephew is Very Believeable - Fran, Have You Ever Tried to Tell Anyone Under 40 About Anything?

"Family? Family? Look, get a dog."

He wants us to believe that, the minute he did find out, he ordered his nephew Robert Vanecko to drop out of the deal with developer Allison Davis, only to be ignored.If voters are having trouble swallowing the mayor's story, it's for good reason:

Yeah, it's in the papers.


Fran, voters don't swallow stories - they vote along Party lines and sometimes get tired of hyphenated Irish names trying to sneak on the Judicial benches in Cook County.

However voters have nephews and nieces. They get phone calls from their Moms and Aunts about the triumphs -'Muriel! Guess What! My Colleen ( McNamara-Haley's Comet- Eisenroth) is going to be a Judge! Remember that fat slob she married? well, it turns out that he has juice Downtown.' or ' Brian, got buried in a sewer trench. He laid down . . .only for a minute, because he was at Midnight Mass, and the SOBs pushed the dirt on him. They are all Daley's Punks from the 11th Ward on that crew especially that louse Sobcjec who lives out by the Airport . . .O'Hara not Midway . . . he's divorced . . .and moved outta the 'Ville, back when his wife was with the County and took up with that four eyes Reporter on Channel Seven . . .remember? Brian, got him a good lawyer who hates Daley's guts . . . the Cowboy Hat One. Brian's gonna be on a Cable Show Too with the black guy and the big fly swatter to tune-up Daley! My ankles is killing me.'

Nephews and Nieces tell Moms and the Aunts enough about their Triumphs and Tragedies to make a softer landing for their lard, when events take their Natural courses.

Nephews and Nieces, generally speaking, can not be told anything. They do not need to pay COBRAS for health insurance, because The President has their backs. HE remembers each and every one of them . . . the nieces and nephews, because THEY worked on his Campaign and They Had their pictures taken With HIM down in Uncle Vasco's basement at his Cinco De Mayo Party last April and they are on Facebook too ; and THEY have Facebook, Twitter, and a loan from Uncle Tommy the crippled Viet Namn Vet and VISA! They are young. They are bullet-proof.

Given the ever changing Obama Mythology - I'll bet He ain't got no Nephews! Hell, Ask his brother! No clout for the Obama clan. The last relative, I recall was living in a Box out in Boston.

I believe the Mayor. I am a recovering Nephew.

Jurassic Genes Awakened! Rip Van Winkle Micro-Bugs Are Back!

Now, that's a nap! From the wonderful science site Neatorama (click me post title) it is reported that bacteria Hermeniimonas glacei asleep at the bottom of a Greenland glacier have been told 'Get Your Ass, Up and Do Something! It's Nice Out!'

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

"We don’t know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating. [...]

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience has the fascinating story: Link

Stanley Crouch Beats on the Haters and Bigots - Anti-Semites Never See People.

Stanley Crouch, jazz critic, musician, historian, essayist and gentleman sacks the bigots.

Hate is real, because haters live in a fantasy world where people are merely the background to 'their' narrative.

I once asked my late wife Mary ( Mary was an an artist and art teacher) about Hitler's art work and she told me that it was merely sterile buildings and streets -'Hitler could not present people. He's a hater.'

Stanley Crouch exposes Haters in a fine essay on the Hate-soaked creep who murdered a fine and heroic family man while trying to 'Kill Jews' at the Holocaust Museum last week -

Von Brunn was probably thrilled because the bombing took place on April 19, 1995, a day before Hitler's birthday. Der Führer was a hero to von Brunn, who thought that the Nazis had gotten a raw deal because of the Jewish-controlled media, which had to take its place on the bench containing all of the other Jewish conspiracies working to destroy Western Christian civilization by any means necessary.

You know how they do it or how it has been said that they do it. First, they do it through the root of evil - money. Then they move on to public education, entertainment, psychiatry, pornography, lecherous Jewish men and whorish Jewish women, misleading young people, Israel and whatever else they can make use of to beat down Western Christian civilization until it is ready for the slag heap that contains all good things permanently befouled by the Jews.

That's how a hard-shelled wing of people see Jews. Bigotry toward Jews transcends religion, class and race. Those who feel that Jews as a whole have to be held responsible for whatever is done by the most corrupt, opportunistic and malicious among them always agree on one thing that is essential to bigotry.

Click my post title for more from this wonderful man.


Stanley Crouch is a Man! 'Two men,' as my grandfather would say.

Speaker Madigan Explains the Nature of Trimming and Nemesis to Sen. Meeks and Others.

Speaker Mike Madigan understands how to trim waste from a budget. Click my post title for the 'orrible Trooth.' Phil Kadner once again carries the weepy water for Sen./Rev. Meeks.

An excited state Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) telephoned Sunday morning to tell me that after seven years, he had finally gotten a public school funding reform bill out of committee and onto the Illinois Senate floor.

"Can I quit now?" Meeks said, noting that the measure had passed the Senate.

I asked about the chances of the bill even getting called for a vote in the House.

"That's up to Speaker (Michael) Madigan," Meeks said. "I'm a member of the Senate. I can't do anything about the House."

What about Gov. Pat Quinn?

"He's on board," Meeks said, although the governor was also backing a separate bill to increase the state income tax. "I've been talking to him nearly every day for two weeks, and he's supporting my bill."

Meeks reminded me that during his initial run for public office in 2002, he had stopped by the editorial offices of this newspaper to announce he had only one goal if elected to the Illinois Senate: School funding reform.

At the time, I noted that promise had been made by many other candidates for the state Legislature during the previous decade. All had been elected. None had even managed to get a bill called for a vote on the Senate or House floors.

Meeks reminded me Sunday that he had promised to be different. He vowed never to quit until he got the bill before the full Senate for a vote.

He tried several times in recent years. But each time his proposal was blocked in committee by legislative leaders and Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"The difference this time is that the state is facing an $11 billion budget deficit," Meeks said. "Blagojevich is gone. Legislators had to do something. My argument to (Senate President John Cullerton) was that instead of passing a tax increase that would just fill the budget gap but fail to provide enough money to actually make improvements in Illinois, we needed to pass something that we could be proud of. We needed to be able to tell our constituents that we really did something to make their lives better."

S.B. 750 would increase the state income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent. It would impose sales taxes on a wide range of services that had previously escaped the tax, such as movie theater tickets, dry cleaning and Internet sales. And it would also provide property tax relief to homeowners who are being gouged by skyrocketing tax bills.

Although I had argued for such a tax bill for nearly 20 years, I had not written much about it in recent months. Since the crash of the national economy and the impeachment of Blagojevich, I had begun questioning whether the time had passed for such a remedy. Still, I congratulated Meeks on fulfilling his campaign pledge.

Less than 10 hours after Meeks called me, his tax plan was killed in a House committee.

And on Monday, the senator was not a happy man.

"You have been campaigning for a tax hike for 20 years, and nothing has happened," Meeks said. "Why? What's the one thing that has remained constant in those 20 years? Michael Madigan as a leader in the House. Everybody else in leadership is gone. If Madigan wanted this bill passed, it would have been passed."

Meeks was also disappointed in Quinn's leadership.

"At 7:30 Sunday night, Quinn held a press conference to announce that the tax bill was dead," Meeks said. "The Legislature was in session past midnight. So with more than four hours to go, he quit. That's like quitting in a basketball game in the fourth quarter. The Orlando Magic were down 22 points in the first half, and they came back to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. They didn't give up. But Gov. Quinn walked off the court in the fourth quarter.

"He should have called each legislator whose vote he needed into his office individually and asked them what they needed in exchange for their vote," Meeks said. "If they wanted him to appear in their districts, he should have said he would march in parades or show up at a town meeting. If they wanted his support for some other piece of legislation, he should have promised to do what he could to make sure the bill passed. If they had a special project, he should have promised to fund it.

"Instead, he did nothing. What he did do was cave in to Michael Madigan every step of the way. Quinn said he wanted a budget bill passed before a capital spending bill was passed. Madigan said he wanted a capital spending bill done first, and Quinn gave in.

"Quinn said he wanted to permanently raise the income tax from 3 percent to 4.5 percent. Madigan said he wanted it to be a temporary income tax hike. Quinn gave in.

"Quinn wanted to increase the personal exemption on the income tax from $2,000 to $6,000 and Madigan said he couldn't pass that bill. So Quinn came down to $3,000.

"The governor acquiesced to the demands of Speaker Madigan every step of the way, and in the end what did he get? Nothing," Meeks said. "And Mayor Daley didn't do anything, either. The mayor continually says the Chicago schools need more money and the state should do something.

"But he didn't hold a single news conference during this legislative session calling on Chicago officials to support a tax increase. I didn't hear about a single state legislator from Chicago getting a call from the mayor. He did nothing."

What Meeks still fails to understand is that this is not about the schoolchildren or the taxpayers or the quality of life in the state of Illinois.

The outcome of this game was fixed before the players took the court.

Madigan won. Everybody else lost.

Phil Kadner can be reached at pkadner@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-6787.

The Feast of Corpus Christi - June 11th, 2009 Father Kevin from County Kerry Reflects on Each of us - The Body of Christ

The Catholic Feast of Corpus Christi - The Body of Christ- was begun in the 13th Century when a French Augustinian nun began pestering her bishop about dreams that she had had concerning a 'spot on the moon.'

The Spot on the moon reflected an absence of a celebration for Christ that brought the entire Church together.

St. Paul wrote that the Church is the Body of Christ - a composite of us all.

In 1977, witnessed a celebration of Corpus Christi in Castleisland, County Kerry - the town from which my grandfather emigrated to Liverpool and later to America in 1912.

I had just completed my second year of teaching at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL and used my savings and tax return to go Ireland with Moose Gilmartin and Mike Lally. Ireland was then very Third World - 'Mexico with Micks,' was how Mike Lally termed it. The Irish and the Mexicans are very much alike.

Mike Lally had peeled off North to visit with his family in County Mayo, leaving Leo Man Moose Gilmartin and me in the Kingdom of Kerry! Our cultural and philosophical inclinations herded the two of us toward Licensed Premises! In Ireland, you could grab a beer while 'waiting for a head of cabbage to be cut out back' - with in the appropriate hours of course.

Castleisland, County Kerry boasts the widest street in Ireland outside of O'Connell Street in Dublin and is a market town - thus, being a Market Town - Market Hours made Castleisland a Pintsman's Oasis. You could get a beer before during and after the next minute. Moose and I availed ourselves of this economic liberalism.

Moose and I had punished the Smithwicks and the Scoops of Black ( Guinness) at my cousin Pat Hickey's Silver Dollar Saloon and then crossed to Terry Teahan's Old Chicago Pub on the Main Drag of Castleisland, and then to the Par Three Three ( Pitch 'n Putt Golf Course) when the Garda came around after hours. Dawn came up like thunder!

Mass Lads!

'It's Thursday!'

Corpus Christi, so. Brogans on.

'Jesus. . .'

He's waiting, so.

The entire town and country merged on the Church of Saints Stephan and John* and the procession was wonderful. We would have missed this and slept off a hangover, had not Margaret Hickey shouted 'Mass, Lads!'


The Feast of Corpus Christi was June 11, 2009. No one was near me to shout 'Mass, Lad!' I forgot once again.

I'll be at Sacred Heart Catholic Mission Church with my friends from all over my life at 10:30 AM for The Feast of the Body and and Blood of Christ


I looked up some Kerry notes last night and found a reflection by a Father Kevin which is simplicity and beauty itself.

Two little reflections on this weekend Feast of Corpus Christi; Fr. Kevin writes:

Notice one another.

People today are crying out for recognition. They want to be persons among persons. They want to be noticed, not in a showy way, or because they have money or status, but just because they are human beings. Each of us is on a pilgrimage. We are seeking to encounter others who have the same needs as ourselves. The greatest need of all is the need to be loved. But we pass one another by without noticing, without the slightest sign of recognition.
As Christians we are united by a bond so close that St. Paul called the Christian community “The Body of Christ.” It is time we began to notice one another. Each person is a brother or a sister in Christ. Each person must be recognised. Each person must be given some sign of friendship, be it only a smile or a nod of the head.

Living in the Present sense

A visitor to Atlanta, Georgia noticed a restaurant listed as the ‘Church of God Grill.’ Curiosity aroused he dialled the number and learned that it had begun as a mission church. To help pay the bills they began selling chicken dinners after Church on Sundays. Business grew so much that they had to cut back and eventually close the church, keeping only the name it started with – The Church of God Grill. A true story which reminds us of the importance of keeping our priorities focused. Today’s feast (The Body and Blood of Christ) helps. It focuses on bread. Just as in Jesus’ time it is a staple food, a basic part of most meals. However, in the time of Jesus, there were no forks or spoons. People would never defile themselves by putting a piece of metal in their mouths, instead they used bread. In understanding that, we may comprehend a little better what Jesus was saying. Just as one couldn’t have a meal without bread, we cannot really live without Christ. In a world full of choice and distractions with the ‘bread’ of money and fame, we celebrate a feast named ‘Corpus Christi’ the ‘Body of Christ’ Will He be there only in name?

These Kerry Notes from Father Kevin are great as well.

THANKS: A special thank you to Patsie and friends who organised our first Cemetery Mass of ’09 in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the June Bank Holiday. Very many thanks too to all who attended the Mass. May all who are buried there rest in peace, and may they enjoy the delights of God’s Kingdom.
FLEADH CHEOIL CHIARRAí commences on June 16th and concludes on June 21st. The 10.30 a.m. Mass in the Cathedral on Sunday next will be mostly in Irish and is organised by Comhaltas with choir and special music in honour of the Fleadh Cheoil We wish all involved with the Fleadh Cheoil every success and enjoyment. A Cead Míle Fáilte to all visitors attending the Fleadh. Cheoil.
SECOND COLLECTION: A Second Collection will be taken up at all Masses this weekend to help off set the expenses of Ireland hosting the Eucharistic Congress in 2012. Your generous support is very much appreciated.
EXAMS: Our prayerful good wishes and encouragement to all students still doing exams. The following prayer for you this week:
O God help me during my exams to remember the things which I have learned and studied. Help me to remember well and to think clearly. Help me not be so nervous or excited that I will do myself an injustice. Keep me calm and clear headed. Help me to try hardest and to do my best.
REMINDER: Fr. Kevin has been given his own column in the Killarney Outlook. It comes out each Friday. The column has been going since Holy Week.
CARERS ASSOCIATION: If you would like to nominate a Carer for their extraordinary levels of care they provide for a loved one; Application forms can be got from The Carers Association
PARISH BINGO: Every Thursday night in St. Mary’s Parish Hall. Visitors most welcome.
MUCKROSS COMMUNITY CENTRE ANNUAL OPEN DAY: 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday 21st. Everybody in Muckross encourage to bring a picnic.
Killarney Le Cheilé Intercultural Festival: A fun filled family friendly gathering in St. Brendan’s Field on Sunday 21st June from 1p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome.
PIGEONS GONE: Thankfully the Pigeons have left the Cathedral. After the drawn match in the Park they took flight. Maybe they were from Cork!

*Church of SS Stephen and John
Castleisland
Co. Kerry, Ireland
(066-7141241)

Chicago's Relevant Radio - A Catholic Voice in a Secular Desert

Ready for your next test of Faith? Naw, I had plenty this week. The tests are coming anyway.

1,500 City Workers are set to get laid off. Urban violence can set your watches - but who wears one anymore? North Korea and Iran are pushing nuclear confrontation with the World. Mother McAuley tuition is due on July 1st. You snap to attention every time the sump pump kicks on - well, I do anyway. Our UN Analog Television has 800 channels pumping out Celebrity News, re-runs of House/Law and Order: The Apocalypse Squad/Fat Programming/Cable Shout Downs.

Radio is not much better.

Yet, Relevant Radio offers a sea-change. Here in Chicago, Cardinal George has sparked an initiative to offer Catholics a road back to their roots and part of the initiative is Relevant Radio.

Chicago is blessed with some priests who really manage to really get it right - Father Eddie Pelrine, Bishop Joe Gorman, Bishop Joseph Perry, Father Frank Philipps, Father Marty O'Donovan, Father Canary, Father Tony Brankin and especially Cardinal George.

Catholic lay people, especially those who push to the forefront as spokespersons, can be real pains-in-the-ass as well, as the lazier Cupcake brand of Stiff Collar.

Yet, there are lay voices with genuine understanding of the Gospel who try to live Christian lives and are not starchy Pharisees, or PC Nit-wits.

Cardinal George seems to be giving these folks, genuine Catholic working people, a forum. Relevant Radio AM -950.


Relevant comes from the Latin relevare - to raise up. It now means offering evidence of proof to an argument or means of understanding a situation. Stiff Collars and Sky Pilots can too often toss out platitudes or snatches from Holy Writ that have absolutely nothing to do with the loss of a job, confusion, disappointment or fear in lay persons. Some of the gents can not get it right.

Take last night,

Your goofy correspondent here, went to the Institute of Christ the King in order to pick up his lady love, the beautiful and elegant Ms. Terry Sullivan, who attended a concert of Sacred Music, in the still being restored former St. Gelasius Catholic Church at 6414 S. Woodlawn.

I missed the Sacred Music concert, because I had to drop off Clare at yet another in the summer-long string of graduation parties for St. Cajetan's Parish and I had been topped off on Sacred Music at St. John Cantius these last two weeks from the Pentecost through last Sunday.

I am a dutiful; son of the Church, but more like the son with a messy, smelly room and sleeps until 2PM and asks,"What's for Breakfast?" Familiar, Brother Catholics?

Allow me to digress further . . . I get to the Institute at about 7PM, park and wander into the beautiful Church - empty. There is a woman standing out on the steps with a brochure in her hands. " Are you a Chicagoan?," she asks. Yes'm.

I learn that this lady had travelled from Kansas City for this concert and had been informed by some Father I-AM-Vere-Bisee, that she and her friend would not need a car as Chicago is an Olympic Class Urban Village of Delightful Souls AND that she could stay at the Ramada Inn in convenient HAMMOND, Indiana!

Father Cupcake evidently does not ever, need to try and find a Taxi! The woman and her friend got soaked by some cottage-industry moss-back with a car and a chauffer's license, discovered in the Hammond, Indiana phone-book. Try and find a Taxi in Hammond, much less in the neighborhood around 6414 S, Woodlawn - just around the corner from the site of Jeff Fort's Former Fortress of Stone Peace!

Now, I have about 7,836 years in Purgatory to cancel out and those are only ones I managed to build up between 1967 and 1982. The subsequent Years of Triumph I will not even get into; it definitely seemed like Corporal Work of Mercy Time!

After informing the two women that I would offer to drive them back to their rooms at The Ramada Inn on Calumet Ave., along with the gracious and sexy Ms. Sullivan, certainment, and having secured the requisite bona fides, from Chicago Daily Observer Editor and Chicago philanthropist John 'Shorty' Powers, that I do not (nor have I ever had) have a family of four in my basement freezer, I drove the women back to Hammond.

Pointing out the various sights and sites south on Stony Island - the former Greek Orthodox Church and now Nation of Islam Mosque; Moo and Oinks ( must stop shopping for high quality meats - I usually go the one at 85th & Racine); Chicago's Toll Booth and 1st City Asset Sold Off; CVS - Home of Dick Butkus; The Big Bridge; Chicago's Harbor; Pat Carroll's Cro Bar on 106th off Indianapolis & etc.!

All of this Clerical error could have been avoided had an actual 'in-the-game' Catholic person been allowed to give these travellers from Kansas the straight dope.

My favorite priest, Francis Cardinal George, is a Chicagoan. He knows that Taxi Cabs are limited to the nicer neighborhoods and that Hammond is not in Chicago. Cardinal George has promoted an outlet for Catholics, weary travellers in this burgeoning Vale of Tears, to get the Real Dope, the Skinny, and the Real Deal.

That is Radio 950 - Relevant Radio. Listen to the Catholic Voice of Chicago.

Mission Statement
Relevant Radio exists to assist the Church in the New Evangelization by providing relevant programming through a media platform to help people bridge the gap between faith and everyday life.

Assisting the Church
In fidelity to God, Relevant Radio creates, promotes and endorses programming that follows the post-Vatican II teachings of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. Relevant Radio is the first and only radio network to be approved by the USCCB as a national media outlet and through a strategic collaboration with bishops and their dioceses, Relevant Radio is able to serve the Church by providing programming that is adapted to the needs of the listening audience.

The New Evangelization
The late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, encouraged American Catholics to seize the means and methods of modern communication to inspire the faithful with a deeper understanding and commitment to Christ and His Church. This he called the New Evangelization. Pope Benedict XVI agrees that “the possibilities opened up for us by modern means of social communications are indeed marvelous and extraordinary.”

Relevant Programming
Relevant Radio programming plays a crucial role in helping people integrate a Catholic perspective into their daily lives and guides them in asking the fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Through listener-interactive programs that focus on current issues and events, Relevant Radio seeks to incorporate Catholic beliefs into these discussions to contribute to the maturation of faith through evangelization, affirmation, and catechesis.

We believe it is possible to present fundamental elements of the Catholic faith in a manner that can satisfy committed Catholics, nominal Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and all who sincerely seek the truth that makes life meaningful.

It Takes a Philly Lady Lawyer to School the Left -On Abortion! Christine Flowers, Esq.

Milky Matthew and Olberbloat have somersaulted and minced the murder of Abortionist Dr. Tiller for the gals at Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood wants women to kill their kids, but Old Maggie Sanger said that it was a great way to clear the path of ugly, wrong-race, dumb, and bothersome human beings. It's a Progressive thing.

Planned Parenhood has even tweaked the English language - abortion is now 'women's health.'

Planned Parenthood and its satellite loud-mouths demand that abortion continue.

I have yet to meet a self-labeled Progressive who was not at core a to-the-bone self-absorbed jerk. Especially with regards to abortion. Most people find killing a child at any stage in human development to be abhorrent. One of the best people I know, Christine Flowers, a lawyer in Philadelphia who has championed the unborn for years, writes a column for Philadelphia Daily News that smacks back at the Progressive group think in her neck of the woods. Planned Prenhood can not get to this smart, tough and centered woman!


In all the goofiness surrounding Dr. Tiller's murder by a a guy with more than a few bricks shy of load, we occasionally get a sound and thoughtful voice. MSNBC is working OT on this one. Goofball, Chris 'Milky' Matthews went so far as to link Sarah Palin to Tiller's murder and then stretched it out to the 88 year old anti-Semite Von Braun.

Tip O'Neill tolerated Matthews? Can't see that.

Yet, Ms. Flowers cuts deeply into the body of 'the facts' tossed by Matthews and other Agenda shills. This is an especially poignant cut from Christine Flowers' very sharp analysis of the Tiller milling:

The manipulation began the minute the news came out of Kansas. First was the nomenclature - the conspicuous absence of the word "abortionist." Tiller was described as an "abortion provider" (when he wasn't being canonized as a martyr). When is the last time a dentist was described as a "root-canal provider?" Or a cosmetic surgeon described as a "breast-enhancement provider"? Or a shrink as a "peace of mind provider"?

Apparently, "abortionist" still conjures up unsavory images of back alleys and bloody hangers, so the powers that be decided to sanitize the whole issue and present Tiller as the Albert Schweitzer of the (another great euphemism) "reproductive-health" movement.

Which brings me to the next bit of manipulation. Ignoring the fact that Tiller made a more than healthy living plying his trade, women's-rights activists waxed poetic about his "heroic" work on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood want them 'most vulnerable' dead.

Here is Philadelphia lawyer an columnist Christine Flowers:


Click my post title for more from this honest and tough woman.

Sarah Palin is a Happy Person and that makes Goofs Crazy - Governor, Stay Happy -Only Suckers Beef.

Sarah Palin must be the biggest threat to the corporate Progressive Machine, as the news cycle and the later-Goebbels on MSNBC, CNN and on the Big ( ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have worked this woman and her family over like they were characters out of Aeschylus*.

You are only as big as the enemies you have and Sarah Palin must be enormous.

Palin's Old Man, the kids, and even the grand kids are targeted by sad people like Letterman, Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Matthews, Schuster, Brown, and Maher -insignificant and self-absorbed people one and all.

These sad human beings, who make a great deal of money and have the attention of many not very bright people, detest Sarah Palin, not because she is Pro Life/Pro Gun/Pro Family/ Pro Free Enterprise, Republican, or pretty, or wildly popular. They detest Sarah Palin, because the woman is happy.

Not DL Hughley/Joy Behar/Kanye West/Alec Baldwin/Bill Maher or Katie Couric happy, but fulfilled, meaningful, centered and significant - happy.

When the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was on his death-bed he told his mother that he was never happier.

The Irish are generally a pretty happy people - I remember going to the wake of Man from County Clare; I asked 'what did he die of?' His young widow replied, 'Nothing serious.'

Happy people make other people happy, by giving us direction. Only suckers beef.

That dictum came from a wise bartender who refused to hear the drunken bile coming from louts who 'vented' about what bitches their wives were, or how disappointing their kids turned out.

Governor Palin, stay happy.

Mortimer Adler's lesson on Happiness Eudaimonia,a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous, as opposed to giddy, silly, aimless and vacuous, tells us that:

These matters, of relevance to the theory of happiness, are discussed in the chapters on ETERNITY and IMMORTALITY; and in the chapter on SIN we find another religious dogma, that of original sin, which has an obvious bearing on earthly happiness as well as on eternal salvation. Fallen human nature, according to Christian teaching, is incompetent to achieve even the natural end of imperfect temporal happiness without God's help. Milton expounds this doctrine of indispensable grace in Paradise Lost, in words which God the Father addresses to His Son:
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fall'n condition is, and to me owe
All his deliv'rance, and to none but me.

God's grace is needed for men to lead a good life on earth as well as for eternal blessedness. On earth, man's efforts to be virtuous require the reinforcement of supernatural gifts - faith, hope, and charity, and the infused moral virtues. The beatific vision in Heaven totally exceeds the natural powers of the soul and comes with the gift of added supernatural light. It seems, in short, that there is no purely natural happiness according to the strict tenets of Christian doctrine.

Aquinas employs the conception of eternal beatitude not only to measure the imperfection of earthly life, but also to insist that temporal happiness is happiness at all only to the extent that it is a remote participation of true and perfect happiness. It cannot be said of temporal happiness that it "excludes every evil and fulfills every desire. In this life every evil cannot be excluded - For this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils: to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite-; and to many penalties on the part of the body ... . Likewise," Aquinas continues, "neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For man naturally desires the good which he has to be abiding . Now the goods of the present life pass away since life itself passes away ... . Wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in this life."

If perfect happiness consists in "the vision of the Divine Essence, which men cannot obtain in this life," then, according to Aquinas, only the earthly life which somehow partakes of God has a measure of happiness in it. Earthly happiness, imperfect because of its temporal and bodily conditions, consists in a life devoted to God - a kind of inchoate participation here and now of the beatific vision hereafter. On earth there can be only a beginning "in respect of that operation whereby man is united to God. ... In the present life, in as far as we fall short of the unity and continuity of that operation, so do we fall short of perfect happiness. Nevertheless it is a participation of happiness; and so much the greater, as the operation can be more continuous and more one. Consequently the active life which is busy with many things, has less of happiness than the contemplative life, which is busied with one thing, i.e., the contemplation of truth."

When the theologians consider the modes of life on earth in terms of the fundamental distinction between the secular and the religious, or the active and the contemplative, they seem to admit the possibility of imperfect happiness in either mode. In either, a devout Christian dedicates every act to the glory of God, and through such dedication embraces the divine in the passing moments of his earthly pilgrimage.

Sarah Palin, like most happy people, suffers outrageous set-backs, endures insults, personal tragedies, stumbles and falls, but remains happy because she is centered and other directed.

That drives sad, but very successful people, crazy.

The crazy is on 24/7 on cable television.

Click my post title for one of my favorite sites belonging to a very smart Obama supporter.

Quigley and Claypool - Southern Illinois University - Early Eighties - with a Sears Catalog

An imaginative fictive turn* of the lives of the Self-absorbed:

Roosevelt University student Mike Quigley visited Forrest Claypool of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for the summer where both worked as fry cooks for Dave's 'Every Picture Tells a Story -Donut!'

Both chaps were engaged in the study of Government and how government can best separate the wallets from citizens. They learned well. Nevertheless, the ardent Progressive scholars busied their days at Dave's dropping dough - the flour, egg and soda variety.

Their evenings were spent in mutual salvos of political tactics and strategies, and in the wistful exercises of jejune male fantasies.

The Sears Catlog arrived at the trailer Claypool.

FC- "Mike did you see how beautiful these models are in the Sears Catalog?"

MQ - " I did, Forrest, and they are not all that expensive!"

FC- "It says, 'Immediate Delivery' - Let's Order, today!"

The winsome youths pooled their coppers and silver and Rushed a Money Order to Sears Roebuck & Company Headquartered in Mike's hometown of Chicago - at the newly opened Sears Tower.

Days passed and quality Donuts were scooped from the bubbling cauldron in Dave's 'Every Picture Tells A Story -Donut' and nights melted in dreamy expectation.

Mike Quigley worked the late shift and received a Call from his buddy landlord -"Packages Here!"

After work Mike stumped his way to the Rolling Cloud Trailer Park outside of Carbondale on the road to Cobden.

Moist with anticipation, the future Cook County Board Pit Bull and U.S. Congressman shouted to his equally ambitious and horny pal, " Are the Girls Here, Yet?"

The tall and stylishly attired Progressive Cub Scout replied, " No Mike, but they should be here soon! Their clothes arrived!"

. . .and Illinois was the better for these earnest youths!

* Many thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas! Also, click my post title for other ripping yarns.

Ron Gidwitz for Governor and Paul Vallas, Lt. Governor - That's The Ticket!

Gidwitz/Vallas Ticket Equals GOP Victory for Governor!


Paul Vallas should avoid the Cook County President Race like a drunken blind date with a festering cold sore. The Cook County mess needs to be cleaned up by the boys and girls who created the mess – if that means the power suits who foisted Todd Stroger upon us, then so be it Dudes – back Todd again! Let Buzz Saw Tony Peraica gut whomever he needs to win the big chair that Todd Stroger dangles his feet high over the carpet in the County Board Hearing Room.

Paul Vallas was long gone and away from the world created by Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, Bobbie Steele, and Tony Peraica. Stay clear of this one, Paul. Get your feet wet as a campaigner. You could use a little seasoning on that dish, as you have been in appointed positions for years. Sadly, you lost your first campaign and the Stigma of Loser is wrongly tagged on you. Illinois was the real loser when Blagojevich squeaked out a Primary win. The too cute by half Democrats in the positions of Ward power, with exception of the Joyces and the Sheehans, posted with Blago. So noted.

Do not go top ticket. You are young. You have plenty of time. Ron Gidwitz will make a fine Governor and so will you in a few years.

Do not allow yourself to be used by the race baiting clowns. Leave that to goofs who use that like a calling card and toss out the word ‘Bosses’ every other noun.

Paul Vallas, come home. Come home to Illinois and work with Ron Gidwitz as Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Talk about a dream team.

Both gentlemen would give the GOP a genuine opportunity to actually win the Governorship. Both gentlemen would provide Illinois tax-payers with career waste-cutters from the private and the public sectors.

Neither man is a back-slapping lout, like the two term former Governor of Illinois who sent his poor bride and mother of his children to Costa Rica to eat tarantulas and hang out with an unwashed Baldwin.

Neither man is a pay-to-play Alumnus.

Neither man is self-serving Machiavellian stooge for any interest.

Ron Gidwitz and Paul Vallas would not only be a dream team for the GOP but for Illinois. The trick will be getting the Illinois GOP interested in actually winning something.

Joel Kotkin's 'Gentry Liberalism' - Defined and Indentifiable Among the Yanks

Gentry -

In more modern American society, gentry is often used to refer loosely to the highly educated professional upper-middle class, this use of the terminology is inconsistent with the British use of the same term as the American use would include those without confirmed aristocratic roots (as is required under the British definition). This sense of the term is often pejoratively used in the term "gentrification", a term that could alternatively be called "bourgeois-ification". Attitudes stemming from the phenomenon of the historic American gentry help clarify the current use of the term in U.S. society, and it is still loosely applied to people from old-monied and landed families in the United States, though the term "gentry" is very rarely used in America for cultural and historical reasons.

- Read Yuppies, Trust-fund babies, like Billy Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Ted Kennedy, Friends of the Parks, Schakowsky Voters, most members of the Chicago Media, and people who never ever look at the balances in their checking accounts.

Gentry Liberals (Progressives) want Mass Transportation, because they rarely if ever need it; they want Public School Funding, because Catholic/Lutheran-Dutch,Baptist & Protestant/Jewish/Muslim schools are values based educations; they want SEIU/ACORN to do whatever the hell they please, because they promote whatever agenda the Gentry embrace.

America is involved in a Class War. Gentry ( anyone who plays ball with them) and the Helots.

I'm a Helot - a worker bee/blue collar value/pro-Real Labor/anti-abortion/Mom and Dad Marriage and Gays can have a happy life with each other/tax-paying American.

I go to the ATM, not to draw out cash, but to make sure that I have enough Buckos to cover bills and obligations. I used to have more nickels at the end of the pay cycle. Gas costs a lung; groceries a kidney; tuition . . . enough with the internal organs. My neighbors are getting laid off.

The Gentry are loud. They get attention. They are not cops, firefighters, nurses, school teachers, pipe fitters, electricians, accontants, clerks, plumbers, and carpenters. They sure as hell are not housewives - housewives do not lunch or join Friends of the Parks, or PETA, much less Planned Parenthood.

The Gentry join gyms, don't smoke, attend theatre, opera, the best restaurants, and the Progressive Political Grassroots - working stiffs go the above when they have two nickels to rub together. Helots do not hold Subscriptions to any of the above; they buy tickets. Helots are not subscribers; they do not have enough disposable income. The Gentry are Public Television and Radio.

Helots work, provide for their families, pay too many taxes and die.

Joel Kotkin has been writing about the American Gentry ( Liberal Progressive) for decades, but his recent Forbes article warning President Obama about America's swing to Socialism, while Europe is returning to grassroots capitalism, hit a nerve*.

http://www.joelkotkin.com/

Kotkin illustrates Gentry Liberalism:

You have to wonder what average Brits must make of the likes of Jonathon Porritt, the head of the government's Sustainable Development Commission--a member of the gentry in both attitude and lineage. The Eton-educated Porritt's recent pronouncements include such gems as a call to restrict the number of children per family to two to reduce Britain's population from 60 to 30 million. He also has scolded overweight people for causing climate change.

These do not seem like sure electoral winners. Today extreme green policies that were once merely odd or eccentric are becoming increasingly oppressive, leading to even more actions that disadvantage suburban lifestyles. Environmental activists' solution for the country's severe housing shortage--particularly in the London region--is to cram the working and middle classes into dense urban units resembling sardine cans and force even more suburbanites off the road.

Even so, large-scale house production over the past decade has lagged behind demand and, as a result, the tidy single-family home with a nice back garden so beloved by the British public may soon be attainable only by the highly affluent--and, ironically, that includes much of the gentry. What an odd posture for a party supposedly built around working-class aspirations.

"New Labour has brought in 'New Urbanism,' and the results are not pretty," suggests University of Westminster social historian Mark Clapson, as he showed me some particularly tiny, surprisingly expensive new houses outside of London

Familiar? Vote accordingly.

* Click my post title for many articles on Gentry Liberalism

Revolt Against 'Gentry Liberalism' ( Progressives) Hits Illinois - Gov. Quinn is Its First Victim

Last week it became evident that Europe had had enough of the Left. America always seems to be a few years, if not decades behind Europe - fashion, food and funding programs. 'Socialism seems so Cool so Let's Get Us Some!'


Our Later-day Trotskyites and Malraux Guevara's soak the Obama Administration with their earnest presence. They should earnestly stay away from government at any level, but they Grassrooted out Government Truffles.

Illinois has SEIU funding these pie-dish deep thinkers at Progress Illinois and have succeeded in co-opting the Illinois Media. Taxes Mean Big Hearts! Mean People Hate Taxes!

Americans, as I mentioned last week continue to be Rubes. Innocents Abroad.

Its the Economy, Rubes! The wallet's empty!

Government is not meant to be a Cash Pantry for every 'community based' program.

The middle class is running out of money and SEIU/ACORN and State and Federal government is crying for more.

Urban Studies expert, Joel Kotkin has warned of this trend toward giving the store away in the name of politics.

Great Britain's Labor Party under Gordon Brown is a mess. President Obama's Administration is only weeks away from a similar situation.

However, Illinois seems to have taken the lead in the revolt against what Joel Kotkin calls Gentry Liberalism, another name for the Progressives.

Gentry liberalism--which reached its height in Britain earlier this decade and is currently peaking in the U.S.--melded traditional left-of-center constituencies, such as organized labor and ethnic minorities, with an expanding class of upper-class professionals from field like media, finance and technology.
. . .But today, this broad coalition lies in ruins. An urban expert at the London School of Economics, Tony Travers, suggests that New Labour's biggest loss is due to the erosion of middle-class suburban support. The party also appears to be shedding significant parts of its historic working-class base, particularly those constituents who aren't members of the public employee unions.

Even some longstanding ethnic minorities, most notably the highly entrepreneurial South Asians, also show signs of drifting away from Labour. The only Labour supporters left, then, are the liberal gentry, the government apparatus and the most aggrieved minorities.
. . .The shift reveals the weakening hold of gentry liberalism. At its core, gentry liberalism depends on massive profits in key sectors--largely finance and real estate--to maintain its affluence while servicing both its environmentally friendly priorities and redistributing wealth to the long-term poor.

This has also allowed for a massive expansion of both the scope and size of government. . . . This kind of approach has gained some proponents among the Obama crowd. Recent administration pronouncements endorse such things as "coercing" Americans from their cars, fighting suburban "sprawl" and even imposing restrictions on how much they can drive. It makes you wonder what future they have in mind for our recently bailed-out auto companies.

It's possible that America's middle-income voters will eventually be turned off by such policies, as is the case in Britain. President Obama's remarkable genius for political theater may insulate him now, but it won't for eternity. Over time, some of the Democrats' hard-won, suburban middle-class support could erode.

Yep. Here in Illinois our Gentry Liberalism Governor Pat Quinn is crying for more:

Rookie Gov. Pat Quinn, who supported both failed tax plans, said he would call legislative leaders together Monday to work on putting together a better budget than one that is "hopelessly out of balance."

Quinn said he was "a little disappointed" in the legislature but undaunted. Asked why Illinoisans shouldn't consider this a new embarrassment for Democrats, Quinn said, "Give us a couple more days."

House Democrats were able to send Quinn a measure backed by the governor that would impose first-ever campaign donation limits on politicians. But the plan was blasted by a variety of self-styled reform advocates, including Quinn's own Reform Commission, as loophole-ridden and designed to ensure that those now in power stay in power. Lawmakers also sent Quinn a bill to eliminate their cost-of-living increases, abolish a controversial board that recommended salary raises and required themselves to take four furlough days.

The reform votes on the final day of the legislature's spring session capped a frenetic week dominated by a debate over whether Springfield had done enough to clean up state government in the wake of Blagojevich's arrest, ouster and indictment on charges he sold government favors for personal and political gain.

House Speaker Michael Madigan had repeatedly said that lawmakers must prove to taxpayers the government could do a better job before asking for more money. But while he declared victory on high-profile ethics plans, he found that Democrats in his tightly controlled chamber were not fully on board with any plan to raise income taxes amid a sagging economy.

Even without the income-tax and sales-tax increases, lawmakers have already approved a host of fee and tax hikes, including higher license plate and driver's license fees and a boost in taxes on liquor, candy, tea-infused drinks at retail, and beauty aids and medicated retail products. Those increases, coupled with legalized video gambling and a proposal to sell lottery tickets on the Internet, would fund a massive public works program.

Facing an estimated $12 billion two-year deficit, lawmakers scrambled to find ways to help fund government operations. With no major revenue sources in sight and amid Republican demands for cuts before higher taxes, House lawmakers approved a short-term spending plan that would fund government for about six months. The Senate was expected to follow suit late Sunday.

Just a day after Senate Democrats approved a 67 percent increase in personal income taxes that also broadened the sales tax to some services, House Democrats said they lacked the votes to send it to Quinn. At the same time, the House overwhelmingly rejected a smaller two-year, 50 percent income-tax increase.

The failure of Democrats to adjourn the legislature on time would be considered the latest political embarrassment for their one-party rule of Springfield after Blagojevich became the first governor impeached and removed from office in state history. His successor, Quinn, watched as tensions increased among House members under Madigan and senators under President John Cullerton.

Quinn attempted to reinsert himself as his tax-raising efforts he had pushed collapsed. He warned that his signature on a $29 billion public works program was predicated on lawmakers enacting a balanced full-year budget and that investors would not purchase the bonds needed to finance the plan while uncertainty reigned over the state's fiscal problems.

But it was Cullerton's assertion of his power in a legislature long dominated by Madigan that prompted the collision of House and Senate Democrats.

Cullerton's decision to advance an income-tax plan from the Senate marked his independence from Madigan, his longtime friend, at a time when some Senate Democrats grumbled that Cullerton was little more than a political appendage of the House speaker. It also solidified Cullerton's standing among African-American Senate Democrats who had pushed him to call an increase in higher taxes in the chamber and not wait for Madigan.

"I think it's time we step up," Cullerton said as his Senate Democrats approved the larger tax-increase late Saturday.

But Sunday, House Democrats said they didn't have the votes for the tax-increase plan advanced by Cullerton. Then they rejected a smaller temporary two-year plan to increase income taxes by 50 percent to raise more than $4 billion. It would have boosted the 3 percent personal income-tax rate to 4.5 percent and increased the corporate-tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7.2 percent.

"If we don't raise taxes, we are looking at very deep problems in the state's human services and education programs," Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), Madigan's chief deputy, said in urging passage of the smaller tax increase.

Currie later led House passage of the makeshift budget bill. With all 118 House seats up for election next year, that would allow House Democrats fearful of casting a tax-increase vote before the election year to see if any opponents have filed against them.

With the need to fix the budget hole, Republicans in the House now have a seat at the bargaining table in the coming weeks and months.

"We don't want to run from the problem, but we are going to insist on fundamental change in the way state government operates budget-wise in the state of Illinois," said House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego.

The Revolt against Gentry Liberalism (Progressive) is on!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-legislature01jun01,0,2960790.story

Hickey's Gitmo Gutter Guests! -A Modest Proposal

After cleaning gutters, Gitmo Gutter Snipes, enjoy a hearty al fresco breakfast on the deck of the Hickey Facility in St, Cajetan's Parish of the Morgan Park neighborhood.
My tired old ass ( having cleaned the gutters) was treated to a boost from Chicago Attorney Tamara Holder.

This lovely, elegant and tough almost thirty-something Law Dog sent me a link to her column on the Guantanamo ( Gitmo) Terror Prison dilemma invented by President Obama who seems to have inherited every malady known to man from GW Bush.

The President, it seems to me, pandered to the Progressives and pulled the trigger way too soon on Gitmo. He is drawing dead on this issue.

Now, he is bringing an American-born terrorist home from Gitmo and can't find the lad a home. The lovely Ms. Holder writes,"President Obama has not resolved the issue of where these detainees will serve their sentences, if convicted, even though he promised to close Gitmo down by January 2010. But how can he close the doors on Gitmo before having new doors open? What a premature promise!"

Yep. Perhaps I can be of some service to my country. I'll take one or two.

I might even develop a business, whereby the terrorists can learn the glories of free market capitalism. Gitmo Gutter Snipes, Inc.!

Headquartered in my Morgan Park raised ranch, these Fruits of Islam can bunk in with Conor - he puts in a lot of hours at Di Cola's Fish Market on Western Ave. when he is not at Morraine Valley CC. His room is probably not as fresh-air sweet as what the boys from Cuba Non Libre might have been used to, but Conor might learn some valuable folding and put away techniques from the Gitmo Gents and become more Eco-Friendly.

As to the more Bad-ass Patriots worried that these enemies of America might be too comfortable here - Au contraire!

As any one of my three children will attest, 'Dad's a Psycho!'

I could have used Ahmed up on the damn roof. Mr. President, Send me a gitmo Guest, or two and they'd rue the day they ever went all street and drew down on Uncle Sam!

" Get up here! and turn that Goddam TV off! Now! Look, Ahmed, when I say I want the garage cleaned I don't want to hear about 'Celebrity Survivor' - yeah, she's the Guv's wife BFD! and all, but you ain't eating bugs with the Hickey's and you get to watch 'The Hills' with Nora and Clare -Now, get your ass back out there and sweep the damn garage floor. And Bub! Those cases of beer cans are counted,Bub! Two imports and three cheapos. Get busy, lunch is soon. You get Italian beef when it's ready; you want potato salad or cole slaw or both? You get Apple Valley juice - the Leinies are mine!"

Now, not only will the Gitmo Guest(s) on Rockwell get three hots and a cot, Ms. Holder reminded me of Prison Industry!

Our prison system is currently extremely overcrowded. Keep in mind, there are only 240 detainees; it's not like we are talking about thousands of beds here. But, these men will be housed in the maximum security facilities. It will cost taxpayers millions of dollars per year, per Gitmo convict, to house these men.

This issue of "WHERE" gives states a tremendous bargaining chip in this time of financial crisis. States that decide to house these men are in a position to receive an additional hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Overcrowding may become a secondary issue...give the states enough money and they'll surely find a way to put these dudes somewhere. Money talks!

Prison Industry Allows for Private Companies to Profit Too

Modern day slavery still occurs in the prisons. Corporations pay prisoners pennies on the dollar for work. Be on the lookout fo lobbyists supporting the states bringing the detainees to the state pen. They can make some cash off of them too.

I will provide a home and a living wage! Honest Injun!

Mr. President, toss me some Stimulus Shekels and you and me'll get a GITMO GUTTER SNIPES, INC. prospectus up and running.

Your foreign policy was determined by 'Dignity Promotion*!'

Gitmo Gutters? Nice sound to that Penal Venture Enterprise? Sean Keane of Keane Sweep, Inc. would probably be delighted to learn that my tires got slashed . . . by some unknown party with a gutter cleaning business in the neighborhood . . .in the event that Gitmo Gutter Snipes came to pass.



* "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January (200speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right."


Let's all give it up for that fine 'Dignity Promotion' Foreign Policy!

Cleaning the Gutters - Our Trees and the Things They Deposit

Two weeks ago a poor guy in my Morgan Park neighborhood, Willie Whitaker, had the media crawling up his back, because he removed trees on his property.

Willie Whitaker must have his reasons for cutting down the 100-year-old oaks on his property in the Morgan Park neighborhood, but so far he's not letting on.

And his neighbors are pissed.

"This is insane," Carla Winterbottom told the SouthtownStar. "It took 100 years for some of these trees to grow, and now they're gone in 10 minutes."

Winterbottom is the head of Keeping Beverly Green. Unfortunately, there is no Keeping Willie Whitaker Green branch.

"They're my trees. They didn't pay for the trees. My trees are going to be cut," Whitaker told a SouthtownStar reporter before refusing to comment further.

Even the work crew - which counted 175 rings on one stump - was perplexed; the trees were healthy.

Theodore Richardson, who has lived on Longwood Drive across from Whitaker's yard since 1974, said, "He's another Mr. T."

Citing allergies, Mr. T., the Rush Street bouncer-turned-actor, cut down about 100 oak trees from his seven-acre estate in 1987, angering his neighbors in Lake Forest, the SouthtownStar reported.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/The-Tree-Hater-of-Morgan-Park.html

Mr. Whitaker owns the property.

Wells Fargo Mortgage and I own mine.

The parkway on 108th Street runs along my property on which three mighty Maples were planted decades ago. The Parkway on my property was planted with these Green Giants. The City no longer cares for these mighty gifts of Nature, that toss roots into my foundation and sewer pipes -clog gutters with whirly-bird seeds creating a Planter of the Gutters! - break up the sidewalks & etc. Only God Can Make a Tree! Unless the former City Dept. of Forestry (RIP) planted the woody SOBs back when Kelly was Mayor. I have three such gifts of Nature and long dead City Largess! Thanks So Mucking Fuch! ...

I do not have the steel of spine of Mr. Whitaker and I do enjoy the shade; thus, it falls to my lot - and on my LOT - that I must get in the gutter.

I have an extension ladder ( 24' Aluminum) however the rope that pulls the extension section fouled and broke immediately upon inspection. Therefore, I set the ladder on the deck over back-door ( locked and note attached that Dad is up on the roof in OSHA compliance) and wearing my True Value faux leather working man's gloves, set my gnarled and horny fingers to the rungs and pushed my stumpy haunches up onto the stairway to heaven.

Eight steps up, I carefully eased my blubber up over the gutters and onto the roof, jackknifed my knees in safe balance, pulled the sturdy black bags from my pocket and began the hour long removal of gutter-clutter -whirly-bird plants, grown in honor of the recent wettings by nature, empty Marlboro Lights packs tossed up in celebratory good humor by passing young Americans, Wiffle Balls and the odd dead bird.

This is Nature's bounty and reminders of the Great Chain of Being. The whirly-birds are the seedlings that God in His Wisdom returns to Earth with Hope of Rising. Had I not gotten my lazy ass up there and removed them, I would have the Greenest Roof in Morgan Park - Full Maples on my Roof!

The Wiffle Balls are the cheap toys that we buy little kids, when they are getting the balance that will one day lead them up onto roofs of their own. The Wiffle Balls got smacked and little Jimmy McKenna came home with only his over-sized red plastic bat to the question from the Old Man, recently laid off by the City, 'Hey, where's the ball, Kiddo? Those things don't grow on trees.'

To which the buzz cut red-headed six year old replies, 'Hickey's Roof, Dad.'

'Jesus, Bucko, that gizmo's up there for Good!'

Not so, Brother McKenna, not so. It is now on my kitchen floor and my black cat is chasing it, like Tim Novak* on a corruption story.

It is my property, after all.

Trees remind us that God is found in the details.



Tim Novak - Sun Times Investigative Newsman - the last of dying breed.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1613491,CST-NWS-mayor09.article

Jan, Nancy and Barney Announce - 'Schakowsky Stays Put!'

Boiled Beet Progressive Democrats of the House Hissed a Huge Huzzah as Jan Schakowsky, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Franks announced that the Evanston Elitist will stay safely snug!

Huge and Elegant Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes!

Clique my Post Title for the Real Dope!

Elias Crim - Historian and Humanist & Network Provider for International Capitalism!

"Another damned, thick, square, book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?" (William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving the second volume from the author, 1781)

Duke Billy is like too many of the powerful, smug, lazy and oafish. Gibbon wrote a work to stand beside, the Bible, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Canon. Historians and men of genius continue to be treated with such smug and stupid disdain.

Last night, I had the pleasure of reading a couple of offerings from The Armchair Historian. This wonderful twenty-four page History magazine is now out of print. I read Terry Sullivan's copies of the Armchair Historian last night and nearly cried myself to sleep knowing that I had missed this venture and with the personal spite and envy of a twisted maniac out of a Poe Tale. UBI SUNT? Where are they ( the volume of Armchair Historian )now?

We live in a cultural swamp that flourishes on freak-shows and foul-ups. People Magazine and Celebrity Survivor do well and Armchair Historian vanishes.

While Elias Crim's Armchair Historian lived, quality thinkers and writers got together.

Here was Civil War Historian Sheby Foote commenting on Ted Turner's movie Gettysburg, Navy Secretary John Lehman reviewing Conor Cruise O'Brien's seminal biography of Edmund Burke, and NY Governor Mario Cuomo offering historical perspective on Elias Crim's magazine. I was blown away - that such a necessary gem is no longer breathing and that the industrious and brilliant Elias Crim single-handedly brought together this arsenal of talent!


What was amazing about the Armchair Historian was the talent contributing to the work -Mario Cuomo and Shelby Foote to name two and that one man had the pluck and patience to rake them to his work. I wanted Crim's heart under my floor boards! Just kidding really, I love Elias and I also keep my Skittles and Sour Laffy-Taffies under the floor boards.

Elias Crim is a friend of mine. Mr. Crim has established a Network for American and International Capitalists ( CEOs, CFOs, CIOs % etc.) and this is a remarkable venture in the true American Spirit.

This network provides talent and treasure to meet. Elias Crim is what the American Spirit is all about - the man is a doer and he is bringing energetic and talented people together. Click my post title and find the link to Elias Crims Interim CEO Network. This is a work of genius.

America will be fine.