"@#$% Me, Ye, Shower of Bastards!" A Blasphemy Bill - Ireland's PC Idiocy Attempts to Kill Language

My grandfather, a genuine Bogman from Crinna Hill, Castleisland in the Kingdom of Kerry, could blaspheme uninterrupted and without repeating himself employing a Gordian Knot of profanities, scatological, pornographic and epicly laced nouns, verbs, abverbs and adjectives that could shatter the teeth of a Dutchman.

Larry Hickey would walk Shep his mongrel mix of matted-haired fanged menace along the railroad tracks around 75th Place and Ashland, dragging the black/brown/yellow massive mutt with applications of broom handle for direction and darts ofvillainous language much more 'hurtful' as PC Cupcakes are wont to say. PETA would have loved Lawrence!

"Christ, Jeezus Almighty! Shtop, So! Godammit you rare 'Hoor of a frothy Bitch's welp! . . . & etc. only louder!" Much to the amusement and edification of urchins playing along the tracks at Marshfield.

Grandpa Hickey was a howling Modern Language Association Convention encorpified and a blazing tutorial on blasphemously charged imprecations and maledictions on two legs. I received a Four-letter Degree, along with my sixty-plus 1st cousins, well before the Sisters of Mercy taught me phonics and catechism.

Language is the sacrament of the Irish.

Now, due to PC-idiocy and membership in the European Union, Ireland is being coerced into dumb-down its once high-standards for licentious language:

A NEW crime of blasphemous libel is to be proposed by the Minister for Justice in an amendment to the Defamation Bill, which will be discussed by the Oireachtas committee on justice today.

At the moment there is no crime of blasphemy on the statute books, though it is prohibited by the Constitution.

Article 40 of the Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech, qualifies it by stating: “The State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.

“The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent material is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”

Last year the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, under the chairmanship of Fianna Fáil TD Seán Ardagh, recommended amending this Article to remove all references to sedition and blasphemy, and redrafting the Article along the lines of article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deals with freedom of expression.

The prohibition on blasphemy dates back to English law aimed at protecting the established church, the Church of England, from attack. It has been used relatively recently to prosecute satirical publications in the UK.

In the only Irish case taken under this article, Corway -v- Independent Newspapers, in 1999, the Supreme Court concluded that it was impossible to say “of what the offence of blasphemy consists”.

It also stated that a special protection for Christianity was incompatible with the religious equality provisions of Article 44.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern proposes to insert a new section into the Defamation Bill, stating: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”

“Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may issue a warrant authorising the Garda Síochána to enter, if necessary using reasonable force, a premises where the member of the force has reasonable grounds for believing there are copies of the blasphemous statements in order to seize them.

Labour spokesman on justice Pat Rabbitte is proposing an amendment to this section which would reduce the maximum fine to €1,000 and exclude from the definition of blasphemy any matter that had any literary, artistic, social or academic merit.

I am not an ordinary playwright in general practice. I am a specialist in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals.” George Bernard Shaw, 1909

“No nation can prosper or even continue to exist without heretics and advocates of shockingly immoral doctrines.” George Bernard Shaw, 1909

“The blasphemy laws are the legal protection of nonsense. Why is there not an equivalent of the blasphemy laws for science? The reason is that science can take any criticism leveled against it.” Nick Harding, 2007

“To criticise people for their race is manifestly irrational, but to criticise their religion is surely a right. The freedom to criticise or ridicule ideas – even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is a fundamental freedom.” Stephen King, Irish Examiner, 2009

“With one satiric touch Ahern has honoured the memory of Shaw, Yeats and Gregory and reminded us that blasphemy laws exist to protect, not religions, but bigots. For his next trick, he will mark the Darwin bicentenary by threatening to make creationism compulsory.” Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times, 2009

“I want everybody to realise what this Constitution states about authority… What we have here is clear at any rate - that authority is from God. That is fundamental Catholic doctrine, and it is here. It is true doctrine.” Eamon de Valera, 1937


So, I'm in Keegan's Pub on Western Ave.one night when the Salt Water Irish thicken up the south end of the bar and Eugenious Callahan makes a play for Aidan McKenna's sister - a Mickey Dodger with the Ursalines and after a few scoops of Guinness together she starts rubbin on Owenie a complete Guillermo, when McKenna admonishes -"You clatty pr*ck. I told you she had herpes. I'm pretty sure they're doing a line alright. There was f*ckin' gee juice and pubes all over the kitchen table this mornin'."
"
Eugenious protests "Jaysus, She's Nun! A Mickey Dodger! Feck Sake, your talking bollicks ,Man!"

McKenna opines,""Bit of advice, son. Don't ever tell a woman she's a stupid, fat cow with the personality of a f*cking toothpick and a face like a bag of spanners. I haven't got my oats off your mother in three f*cking weeks. The disagreeable b*tch."

Language! The Lubrication of Love, Liberty and Laughter!

http://www.irishslang.net/

Dan The Lip - Got Hip With Help! Patsy Square for Health Care? One Payer? Get Outta There!

Dan Lipinski has been as exciting as Melba Toast. All of a sudden the 3rd Congressional District Wall-Flower has Progressive Star Power!

Man Alive! This Cat is Gone! He's Knocked Out! The Purple Tax-Players of SEIU embrace this Reed! He's Cap'nTrade! He's Health Muscle!

In one week Dan Lipinski's political acne has gone all Clear A Sell!

Dig what this cat's Sayin' Here!

About 300 people turned out for the packed event, which featured eight speakers from organizations with a large stake in health reform, such as businesses, doctors, unions, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals. Rep. Lipinski wasted no time drawing a line in the sand, telling the 3rd Congressional District crowd that, in order to limit the cost of health care for individuals, small businesses, and the federal government, a public plan is a must.
But his support comes with a few caveats. Lipinski admits that employers may stop offering private insurance to workers if a government plan exists. "It all depends on how the public option is implemented," he said. And Lipinski prefers the "level-playing field option" championed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in which the government-run plan would be granted no special advantages over private insurers, such as the ability to use Medicare's low rates or to access taxpayer subsidies.

Dan, You Send Me -straight for the Loudmouth Soup! This Reed needs some steel, Son!
SEIU is providing the Lighweight - the right mates. Purple Shouters! Go Cat,Go!!!


http://www.lipinski.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=914&Itemid=1

Yip,Yip, Yip! Let;s Sing it to the Lip! Click my post title and listen to Keely Smith and Louie Prima!


Down on the Cal-Sag River in a knockdo* dive
I met a politico playin' character and Man alive!
When he began to rip, he really played it from the hip
And when I asked about his name, they told me, "That's 'The Lip'."
Yip yip yip yip
No one plays high notes like The Lip.
He's got a tone that's reminiscent of a boy named Bix
He plays so high that only dogs can hear him, just for kicks.
And when I asked him does he read
He says, "I'll tell you, hon, I read a little bit but not enough to hurt me none."
Yip yip yip yip.
No one plays high notes like The Lip.
I said The Lip.
She must mean Ray Anthony, huh?
I said The Lip.
No, man, she means Harry James.
I said The Lip.
You mean Louis Prima.
I said The Lip.
Noo, LIP-er-ace.
Yip yip yip yip
No one plays high notes like The Lip.
I never heard a trumpet player play a note so high
And I had to coax a lot before The Lip would tell me why
Then he took out a little jar that's labeled 'High-note Grease'
And he rubs a little every night on his mouthpiece
Yip yip yip yip
No one plays high notes like The Lip.
Listen here gal, are you kiddin' about all that 'high-note grease'?
No, man, I swear, he had ten in his valise.
Wha', you mean he goes to the drugstore and gets them from the medecine shelf?
No, some cat's told me he makes it himself.
Yip yip yip yip
Tell us the secret of The Lip.
Well..you take a buketful of steam
And a dozen rooster eggs
And you mix 'em up gently with a bushel full of goldfish legs
And ya hang 'em on a sky hook in the midnight sun
Mmm and then you fry them until they're done.
Yip yip yip yip
That's the secret of The Lip


Get hip and give the Lip the Slip! That Big Pink One!

Rep. Lipinski Caves in - Votes for the Catastrophic Cap and Trade Bill

Dan Lipinski was given his Congressional Seat by his Dad - Dan Lipinski defeated a boiled beet Progressive John Sullivan and a genuine Man of the People -Honest John Kelly ( who gave Carol Marin the Hose Knot of a lifetime with his 'straightforward' answers to smarmy and snobby questions) in the Democratic Primary. Once in Congress Lipinski faded into the wallpaper. Now, Dan joined Republican Mark Kirk to betray Illinois on this most dangerous and gutless vote.

These two elected goofs need to go. Mark Kirk is a Republican and thinks that he'' make a swell Senator - Mark, we already have two lightweights in the U.S. Senate -Durbin and Burris - all filled up here! Kirk's MSNBC-friendly nose nuzzle showed Illinois what his presence in Washington is worth. Dan Lipinski decided that playing ball against his constituents is Okay - it ain't Congressman.
You 'killed the job' as they say in the Trades.

Dan Lipinski represents a very traditional Democratic base - people described as blue-collar, Catholic, anti-Abortion, anti-tax Democrats.

Dan Lipinski took the path of least resistance. Dan Lipinski voted for the most dangerous piece of legislation to the American Way of Life ever crafted - The Cap and Trade Bill. Dan Lipinski allowed his rump to be padded against the Progressive Loudmouths and Purple T-shirt howlers. This was a close vote in a very sheepish U.S. House of Representatives that is driven by the Media and the special interests Planned Parenthood, ACLU, SEIU, ACORN and the balance of the Acronym pantheon of activists.

Dan bleeted with this flock of beauties.

Illinois is represented by two Locked Up Senators - Dithering Dick Durbin and Roland Burris. They are Cap and Trade Teammates.

Dan Lipinksi betrayed my neighbors. I do not believe that Dan Lipinki could name three people from his District (3rd) to begin with - Dan sold them out, anyway.

In the United States, the House of Representative climate bill, approved by a 219-212 vote Friday evening (see list below), would mandate that 15% of the nation's electricity come from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2020, potentially expanding the market and profit potential for companies in those sectors. Towards that goal, it seeks to boost nascent industries such as wind-generated electricity and solar power.

Last March this article by R. Emmett Tyrell laid out the facts of Cap and Trade:

Cap-and-trade has been tried in Europe by the signers of the Kyoto Protocol and according to the Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman, "Nearly every European country participating has higher emissions today than when the treaty was first signed in 1992. ... emissions in many of these nations are actually rising faster than in the United States." Yet perhaps the Obama administration has its eye on something other than limiting emissions. Possibly it sees cap-and-trade as a great way to gain control of still more of the private sector.

As mentioned above, the huge amount of money mulcted from the private sector and handed over to the public sector has got to please every collectivist in the White House. Moreover there is the huge bureaucracy that will have to be set up to oversee cap-and-trade.

Those of us who have followed the economic crisis and the Ponzi schemes of Bernard Madoff are familiar with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If the administration's climate legislation is passed, we shall have the Cap and Trade Commission (CAP). It will be vast.

To begin with, CAP's agents will have to go to every factory and office building and presumably even public buildings and decide their allowable amount of emissions. That is to say, their cap.

Next the agency will auction off and oversee the sale of the documents that certify emissions allowances. Call them coupons. Then the agency will have to monitor the exchange of these allowances and the ownership. Finally the agency will have to monitor compliance and presumably punish those who fail to comply.

In this setup there will be countless opportunities for corruption as polluters try to bribe CAP's agents, or the agents try to elicit bribes. As with the SEC, there will be incompetence and lax enforcement. Finally, there will be senators and members of the House of Representatives making special pleadings for corporations in their regions, labor unions, special pleaders of all sorts.

Finally, there is the economics of the legislation. It will take $2 trillion from the private sector and dump it into the public sector. That is to say, a large tax on the private sector will transfer money to the public sector. So how is the private sector to grow itself out of this recession? The administration's answer is that the government will return the money to worthy endeavors, health care, green technology - again still more opportunities for corruption and for special favors to pleading solons and numas on Capitol Hill. ( emphasis my own)

The Prophet Obama was very disturbed recently when asked if he was a socialist. Socialism is government control of the means of producing and distributing goods and services. What I have just described is a powerful instrumentality toward socialism. Along with Cap-and-Trade, the Obama administration is calling for a sufficient number of these instrumentalities to socialism that by the next election the United States will be very close to being a socialist state.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/20/cap-and-trade-promises-disaster/

Dan Lipinki needs to be voted out. I hope a real Democrat steps up and soon.

Norman Thomas' - Blue-Print to Catastrophe

Democrats used to give elites like Norman Thomas the chair in the corner. Remember, at one time Organized Labor and the Democratic Party helped make the American Middle Class and raise the American Standard of Living that was marvel of history.

Boiled Beet Progressives like Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams and Norman Thomas were generally 'praised' but largely ignored and well they should be. They are fit subjects for the salon set - who generally do not work for a living - much less for anyone else; but as far as impacting on American life -they offer bupkis.

Noramn Thomas ran for President of the United States six times and just before his death remarked -" I have not come to burn the American Flag; I have come to cleanse it!"

Really? Nope Norm, Roger, Jane, W.E.B. and their heirs have succeeded in smothering debate, controlling the weak-kitten Media, Academia and Stalinist labor. Acronyms with bags of gelt -ACLU, SEIU, ACORN - have replaced personalities like the old timey radicals.

SEIU's Stalin Andy Stern was able to blackmail WAl-Mart and squeeze a letter out of the corporation that killed main street:

Wal-Mart -- which provides insurance to employees and wants to level the playing field with companies that don't -- on Tuesday delivered a letter to President Obama taking a different stance.

"We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage," said the letter, signed by Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also signed the letter, along with John Podesta, who led President Obama's transition team and is chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.

The National Retail Federation, the industry's main lobby, said it was "flabbergasted" by Wal-Mart's move. "We have been one of the foremost opponents to employer mandate," said Neil Trautwein, vice president with the Washington-based trade group. "We are surprised and disappointed by Wal-Mart's choice to embrace an employer mandate in exchange for a promise of cost savings."

Old Norma Thomas came to clean the American Flag - his children, like Andy Stern have come to polish off the American Middle Class.

A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One - CPD Officers,Sing This to Jody!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of enjoying Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance: A Slave to Duty*.

In Act II, came this great song. Given the wit and vinegar of Chicago's Law Enforcement Professionals, I am sure a parody fitting the Age and Morals of Chicago 2009 will grace the lyrics. I have rarely met people more well-read, insightful, good-humored, tolerant or braver than CPD members.

Sergeant. When a felon's not engaged in his employment –
Police. His employment,
Sergeant. Or maturing his felonious little plans –
Police. Little plans,
Sergeant. His capacity for innocent enjoyment –
Police. 'Cent enjoyment
Sergeant. Is just as great as any honest man's –
Police. Honest man's.


Sergeant. Our feelings we with difficulty smother –
Police. 'Culty smother,
Sergeant. When constabulary duty's to be done –
Police. To be done.
Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another –
Police. With another,
Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Police. Ah!
Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Sergeant. When the enterprising burglar's not a-burgling –
Police. Not a-burgling.
Sergeant. When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime –
Police. 'Pied in crime,
Sergeant. He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling –
Police. Brook a-gurgling,
Sergeant. And listen to the merry village chime –
Police. Village chime.


Sergeant. When the coster's finished jumping on his mother –
Police. On his mother,
Sergeant. He loves to lie a-basking in the sun –
Police. In the sun.
Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another –
Police. With another,
Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Police. Ah!


Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Click my post title for the melody and inflection.

God Bless Chicago Cops - He'd better.



*

After the sensational success of H.M.S. Pinafore, many American performing companies presented unauthorized versions of that opera. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte decided to prevent that from happening again by presenting official versions of their next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty simultaneously in England and America. The opera premiered on December 31, 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York with Sullivan conducting, but a single performance had been given on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, England, to secure the British copyright. Finally, the opera opened on April 3, 1880, at the Opéra Comique in London, where it ran for 363 performances, having already been playing successfully for over three months in New York.

On December 10, 1879, Sullivan had written a letter to his mother about the new opera, upon which he was hard at work in New York. "I think it will be a great success, for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching." True enough! The Pirates of Penzance was an immediate hit and takes its place today as one of the most popular and enduring works of musical theatre.

In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tenderhearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master's instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. But it turns out that he was born on February 29 in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daugters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria's name.

Solid, Jackson! The Rev. Revs Up to Opportunity . . . Winnowing the Jackson Community

BBC World Service- Veteran politician Rev Jesse Jackson, who has been counselling the Jackson family, said the behaviour of Michael Jackson's doctor needs to be explained. Click my post title for the video.

"Love Laughs at a King, Kings don't need no Bling on the Street of Dreams! Gold, Silver and Gold -all that you can hold - on a moon beam. Joe,I''ll accept that bauble - for starters. As that Dead White man said,"For within the hollow crown/That rounds the mortal temple of a king,/Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,/. . . . . . And humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin/Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! No King; No Bling! No Bling; No Thing!"


Rev. Jesse Jackson, from left, and his son Yusef DuBois Jackson, speak with Joe Jackson, father of the late pop star Michael Jackson, outside the Jackson family home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on Friday, June 26, 2009. AP Photo

The ripest fruit first falls - Richard II- Act II, Sc. I

In an act of solidarity the Family Jackson covers the loss like a Prudential Gold Plan. Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was hot to issue a call for a second "independent" autopsy on the mortal husk of Michael Jackson. He might just blanket the Gary Jacksons with Jackson Universal!

Rev. Jackson might orate"

"From Jackson Hole to Jackson Mississipi; From Jackson Street to Jackson Browne; Jackson be Jackson to Jackson and My Son to Your Son; from Yousef To Your Self -We Are all of us Jackson, until Jackson's Jack Jacks All Jacksons onto Some Jack and until We are all Jack City, then there be Jackson! . . .Solid Jackson!. . . I'll take the Questions of the Press as well!"

Be it known - while I view the Rev. Jackson with a squinty gimlet eye, a reknowned Chicago attorney and friend to both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and this cynical helot offered this assesment. ( Please note!)

Anyway, something you may not know is Rev. Jackson was like a surrogate father to MJ. They loved each other dearly. I witnessed it.

Tamara Holder

Mortimer Jerome Adler- Old and New Testament to a Happy Life

Eight years ago today, America lost Mortimer Adler. Mortimer Adler* challenged the world to lead a happy life based upon some understanding of the Great Ideas passed on to all of us through the history of human thought.

εὐδαιμονία -EuDaimonia ( which I can never, ever pronounce correctly) comes from two Greek words: Eu -Good,or well-being and Daimon - a person's total spirit or place in the world.

This weekend, the world snoops into the death of Michael Jackson, a terminally unhappy fifty year old pop-singer from Gary, Indiana. The late Mr. Jackson's ability to garner 98% of all news coverage is miraculous. MSNBC will report on the white smoke billowing from Neverland, or whatever Jackson Family compound not under receivership, when a new King of Pop is elected. Mortimer Adler was happy man. He was surrounded by the good works of life -in theory,output and practice.

Leading a happy life is hard work. There are no 'Atta-Boy's' for doing your job, being a good and decent citizen, loving,caring and providing for your children, living up to your obligations and making a difference while your walk on this earth.

We mistake 'enjoyment' for happiness. Michael Jackson and the attention his very unhappy life exuded is testimony to just that.

Mortimer Adler welded the Testaments of our Western Culture - he was born Jewish and died with the last rites of Roman Catholic Church. What brought Mr. Adler to the New Testament seems to have been his life-long study of a Pagan -Aristotle. From Aristotle, Adler employed the Jewish scholar Maimonides and Muslim Averroes to understand St. Thomas Aquinas. Adler was the greatest Aquinas Scholar of our time.

Rolling through the ages of thought, Adler dismissed the radical Hegelian paganism of the 19th Century, which is the basis for Progressive thought in America, forged by John Dewey and bowdlerized by political activists and tin-horn academics.

This Hegelian nonsense dismisses piety and humility in thought. It makes the individual God - it is what Bertrand Russell (an atheist by the way) called our 'Cosmic Impiety).

Respect for the gods, God, Great Ideas and better persons than ourselves is piety. Not a mealy-mouthed, pharisaic bead rattling show-off, but a person dedicated to qualities of virtue and obligation. Respect in America is as disposable as a plastic razor bought at Dollar Bill's.

Piety, which teaches how to respect ourselves, is what allows a person to be 'happy' - piety, virtue and dignity are what gives a person Authority; not alphabets after your name, scoops of cash, or the most toys, or the most ink.

Mortimer Adler reminded us that humility leads to authority.

Here are two American authorities on Mortimer J. Adler - in testimonies to Adler's welding of Man's Testament with God, given at his funeral service in St. Chrysostom Church in 2001.

Remembrances
Charles Van Doren

I met Mortimer for the first time more than seventy-five
years ago. I know the place and date exactly: Lennox Hill
Hospital, New York City, February 14, 1926. Mortimer
was a little over twenty-five years old. I was two—two days,
that is. My father and Mortimer were colleagues at Columbia,
leading a great-books seminar together. Dad had
brought Mortimer to see his first born, and Mortimer entertained me by neologizing. To neologize is to speak employing
words that you make up as you go along. The
meaning is not important; it is the sound that counts. I
loved the sound of Mortimer’s voice then, and I never
ceased to do so. At that time he spoke too fast for most
people to understand him, unless they paid very special attention,
which many people do not like to have to do.
Later, he slowed down and spoke in short, simple, direct
sentences—and wrote them too. The mellifluousness that
had charmed me as a two-day-old then began to charm
everyone else. What a speaker he was. You never had any
doubt what he was saying. But, if you disagreed, it was because
you did not quite understand. This was also true of
his books. With a single exception, every book that he
wrote after his sixtieth birthday was distinct and clear, its
language perfectly conformed to its meaning. As a reward,
almost every book was a best seller (comparatively speaking,
no bodice ripper he).
And what a teacher, too. In his autobiography, he wrote
about what he had learned from my father about leading a
seminar. And in every one of the more than two hundred
seminars Mortimer and I led together over thirty years in
Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and other places, I
always learned something important about something important—
as his friend Arthur Ruben used to say.
When I was a child, Mortimer astounded and fascinated
me. He would visit us, whenever he came to New York on
business—always with an agenda in hand of items to discuss.
I thought that was astonishing. We visited him at
Stone Pond in New Hampshire, and I was again astonished,
to see him happily splashing about with water wings
above his head, like Mickey Mouse ears. He never sneezed
just once, always three times, never more, never less. And
when I learned about his work with the Hayes Office,
which among other things ordained that a movie actress
could not show her legs more than a few inches above the
knee, and especially not the inside of her thighs, I was kerflummoxed.
(That’s not a neologism.) Since the inside of a
woman’s thigh was at time (I was thirteen) a matter of
enormous interest, I envied Mortimer. I imagined that he
had to check out all those beautiful thighs and make sure
they were not breaking the rules.
And then there came the time when I fell down, face down
in the mud, and he picked me up, brushed me off, and gave
me a job. It was the best kind of job: as he described it, one
you would do anyway, if you did not need the money. And
I did it for thirty years. First we worked together making
books for Encyclopædia Britannica. Then I, and many others,
helped him to design and edit the greatest encyclopedia
the world has ever seen. It has fallen on bad days, but it
will rise again and outlive us all—just as Mortimer’s philosophical
work will do.
I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly forty
years ago. The text was Plato’s dialogue, The Sophist. I had
read it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. It
could not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped us
all to understand it was. The true sophist, Plato is saying,
cannot be trapped—if he is willing to say anything whatsoever
to win the argument. If he wants to win at all costs
and does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fending
off the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph,
and you will fail. I asked Mortimer after the seminar
whether he agreed. “Yes,” he said, surprisingly, “Plato is
right.” But he believed (and I do to) that this is the tragedy
of intellect. In other words, truth must be fought for, even
though one may not be able to win. Mortimer fought for
the truth all of his life, although he believed in the end that
he had been defeated. We tried to persuade him that this
was not so, but we failed. Time, merciless and remorseless,
betrayed him—as eventually it betrays us all.
And now, having said that, I want to praise him. As another
man, a great general, praised another philosopher,
long ago. The general compared that other philosopher to a
satyr. (And, indeed, there was a certain rotundity of body
and an amused, ironic look on Mortimer’s face most of the
4ime.) That general said that that other philosopher was like
Marsyas, the great flute player who challenged Apollo, and
whose melodies charmed all who heard them. But the general
said that this philosopher produced the same effect
with his words only, and did not require a flute. “When we
hear any other speaker,” the general said, addressing his
friend, “His words produce absolutely no effect on us, or
not much. Whereas, the mere fragment of you and your
words, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported,
amaze and possess every man and woman and
make them confess that they ought not to live as they do.
Your words seem simple when we first hear them,” the
general said, “and not worthy or appropriate for their matter,
and are even laughed at, because you are always repeating
the same thing, in the same words. But when we look
within those words,” the general said to that other philosopher,
his friend, “We find that they are the only words that
have a meaning in them, abounding in fair images of virtue
and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to
the whole duty of a good and honorable man.” Thus did
Alcibiades praise Socrates, Mortimer, and thus do I praise
you. Your words, simple, direct, and clear, still tell us we
ought not to live as we do and describe the whole duty of a
good and honorable man.
I will not end with Plato, who, although he may have
started Mortimer on the road to philosophy, did not accompany
him for long. Mortimer would refute me is I did
not mention his nearly lifelong admiration for Plato’s famous
pupil. Many times he told me, as I imagine he told
you, that he hoped to meet Aristotle in the afterlife, so he
correct his errors—and also have the opportunity to talk
about all the most important things with a man who knew,
as Mortimer did, what they were and why they were important.
Mortimer and I agreed, when St. Christopher was struck
from the list of proper saints, that the action, although
probably correct, was a pity. I myself have stubbornly per5
sisted in addressing the benevolent giant every day of my
life. You know the gentle, little prayer:
St. Christopher be my guide,
In my most need,
Go by my side.
I have modified it in various ways over the years, and I offer
you another modification now:
St. Christopher, be Mortimer’s guide,
and Aristotle’s too,
In their most need.
If they are wandering in some
dark, cold, and lonely place
and cannot find one another,
Bring them together,
Join their hands,
Shed warmth and light upon them.
Go by their side
And from time to time,
Let Thomas Aquinas come for lunch.
Mortimer, we miss you, and we need your help. We all pursue
happiness, but we do not know what it is or how to
find it. We need you to remind us that happiness is not a
moment of ecstasy or a feeling of contentment that can
come and go. Instead, happiness is the product of a whole
life—a life lived in accordance with the two kinds of virtue:
intellectual and moral. We have to use our minds and not
waste them. And we have to acquire the habit of desiring
the right things, the things we really need and are good for
us, not the wrong things, which are bad for us and for everybody
else. In addition to all that, we need to be lucky—in
our country, in our friends, and in our loves. You were
lucky in all these, dear friend, and therefore we can conclude
that yours was a happy life. It is our great loss, not
yours, that it had to end.

Remembrances
Peter NortonPast President and CEO,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

I spent something over thirty years with The Encyclopædia
Britannica, and, of course, in that time I met many
very intelligent, very smart, very well-read intellectuals
and people generally. Unfortunately, I fell into none of
those categories. So, when I first knew that I was going to
meet Mortimer Adler, back in London in the early Sixties, I
was decidedly nervous. In fact, the feeling I really had was
one of great awe. I spent all my time trying to talk in sentences
as short as possible, so that he would not work out
quite what a nitwit was running the London company. But
we got on really quite well, and Mortimer, of course, as always,
was charming. Here was a man who had not just read
but had written more books—and was still writing at that
stage—than a lot of people have read in their lives. Now,
that’s not Britannica people, of course, because we had all
been weaned on How to Read a Book, and Mortimer had
made sure we all read the great books of the Western
world, to keep up with it. Consequently, I had quite a lot to
be nervous about.
But I am not going to talk about what Mortimer achieved,
and what he did. I am sure the others who follow me will
do that much better than I can. But I would like to talk a
little while about a Mortimer that I knew. In the early Seventies,
after I had relocated to the United States, at one of
Britannica’s international functions in Hawaii—we always
chose the best places to have our functions—sin attacked
me. In the course of an afternoon session, when I should
have been working with everybody else, I snuck out of the
meeting because there was the allure of a great and wonderful
ice-cream parlor. And I went down to the ice-cream
parlor, and I crept in very quietly to make sure there was
nobody there. And it was empty—except in the far corner
there was one very large ice-cream and chocolate concoc-
tion, out from behind which came a wonderful, very large,
ear-splitting grin on this wonderful, elfin-like face. And that
was when I met the other Mortimer.
As the years passed, Mortimer and I managed to commit all
sorts of terrible sins of gluttony, in all sorts of different
parts of the world, in ice-cream parlors and candy shops
and places like that. And what I came to find out was that
behind this austere intellectual facade was a fun-loving, excitable,
and very happy, life-loving little boy. This was the
little boy who, after having some problems in his youth
with swimming, at an age when most people had given up
swimming, succumbed to the challenge of a great marathon
swimming match at another Britannica meeting. He agreed
that he would do this, and he not only took on this challenge,
but he won it in great style and was triumphant.
(Now I must point out that the pool he swam in was approximately
fifteen feet long, and it was not more than
three feet deep, and there were at least twenty people ready
to jump in to save him if anything happened). At the end of
the course there was a bottle of champagne for the winner,
and that, of course, was the sort of incentive that Mortimer
always liked.
This was the Mortimer who not only liked to joke but
could take a joke when it was aimed at him. This was the
Mortimer who could walk with crowds and talk with kings,
and, although I cannot talk about his virtue, I can absolutely
guaranty that he never lost that common touch, that
common touch that made so many people love him, and
why so many people are here today who miss him. I shall
miss my young friend. But I have one remaining regret. I
have no doubt that, at this particular moment, Mortimer
and his God are in very deep discussions, which I would
love to be able to hear. I only hope that God is up to it.

Happy man! Thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas

* Mortimer J. Adler dropped out of school at the age of fourteen (14).

'68 Reunion Cops Nab -Billionaire Pervert Candy Maker & Activist - Wonka Wonked!

Chicago June 27, 2009

1968 Police Veteran and Group Spokesperson Sgt. Claudell 'Clubber' Lange (CPD ret.) detailed the detaining of Billionaire Candy-Maker and Progressive Activist Willy Wonka as he attempted to lure eternally ten year old Charlie Bucket into a psychedelically painted VW-Minibus a few feet from the Re-Union 1968 Chicago Police veterans.

Said Lange, "this little white boy banged on the hall where the re-union was taking place screaming that a middle-aged old white guy - a hippie - wanted to take him to forever where the boy would once again see his missing friends. When the boy confronted the pervert, whom we restrained with professional courtesy and Mid-western welcome until CPD officers could make their way through the tens of 20-something Protesters and Death Row Alumni. I wrote down and recorded their exchange for the States Attorney - it went something like this:


Charlie Bucket: Mr. Wonka, what'll happen to the other kids? Augustus, Veruca?

Willy Wonka: My dear boy, I promise you they'll be quite all right. When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

Willy Wonka: I don't understand it. The children are disappearing like rabbits. Well, we still have each other. Shall we press on?

At that point, we took citizens action and restrained the gentleman, who said that he was there only to protest the brutality of all police - not just CPD. He then started singing -

Willy Wonka: [singsong] There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There's no knowing where we're rowing / Or which way the river's flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? /
[apprehensive, now spoken]

Willy Wonka: Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes! The danger must be growing /
[yelling]
Willy Wonka: For the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!

Creepy huh? The Perv Perp said, "Do KNOW who I am! I'm The Candy Man!"

Wonka was taken into custody by Chicago Police and bonded out this morning. His court date is set for a year of total enchantment. This Wonka will be out in no time. Some reporter from WonkaVision taped the whole thing, but they'll slice and dice it so the Perv walks.


Wonka has retained lawyers Jon Loevy, G. Flint Taylor and Locke Bowman

Steve Huntley - Sun Times' Last Man Standing for Balance

whalen wrote:
Boo hoo, Steve. The Neanderthals lost the elections in 2008, remember? Pardon our dust as we rush past the Cro-Magnon years to enact much-belated initiatives before it is too late for all of us!

Well, Whalen - the last time Progressives had such a 'Pardon Our Dust' victory was the advent of Prohibition. From 1919 until its Repeal, America was set-back on its heels, Whalen.

Sorry, I can be prickly . . .Whalen , or as some Progressive might opine. without the adverbial ending there. With John Dewey*-esque devotion to 'inquiry' over fact, a Progressive Whalen responded to Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley - The Last Man Standing - over his revelatory column on Progressive Force-feeding of the Government Goose.

John Dewey is the father of radical progressive thought in America and the beauty who's views on education slaughtered Public Education**. Let it be pointed out -Oh, do - that John Dewey established a Lab School for the elites, while the unwashed masses could serve as lab-rats in an educational philosophy that pushed Public Education to eliminate the guts of education.

The study of how the American Government ( local,state and federal) has all but vanished; the canon of American Literature and British Literature has been diluted to a watery and sugary and under-nourishing swill; that for the Dewey Public Schools "inquiry" is the ethic - child should do as opposed to learn and they do not learn. With each new Hegelian/Marxist doctoral thesis comes a further murder of thought and history.

For Dewey and Progressives 'Inquiry' upon which an a priori goal - Gay Studies, Identity Politics in general, Group Thought is achieved and put in place. If you do not know a Concordat from a Magna Carta, a Peace of Wesphalia from a Piece of the Pie, then it is a fair chance that you are Public School Alum of the last forty years.

In that case,let's take this slowly - John Dewey was a philospher of education, society, and psycholgy at the University of Chicago, who was heavily influeced by the German thinker Hegel. who is actually the granddaddy of Marxist thought. John Dewey believed that 'inquiry' is the most important thing in life so long as the outcomes agree with that inquiry. Thus, if we inquire into poverty as rooted in Racism; all poverty results from racism. If failure results from poverty. racism caused failure & etc. Progressive inquiry arrives at a Pre-Determined outcome.

Gay Marriage is good; all opposition to Gay Marriage is evil; Gay Marriage is good.

Abortion is Women's Reproductive Health, Uterine Cancer is a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; Uterine Cancer . . . Hey, get me a good Nuancer over here!

Dewey made the Artificial, Natural.

Take a look at the Media which offers a "Let's Look at Race Relations!" series.

The outcome is fixed - Systemic Racism, Imperialism, Class ism is always the conclusion. Whites are always bad and people of color are always good. Hence, no Race Crime can be committed by a person of color. Why? Don't matter just is and that is Dewey. Dewey Agree!

Dewey had clout ( Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman,I.F.Stone W.E.B. DuBois & etc.). Radical Progressive clout saw Dewey's Philosophy as a burglar bar with which to loot American History and geld American Education. Inquiry is not method it is a goal in Dewey Education.

Steve Huntley represents a mind-set that is valued by most Americans. The old Benthamite view of 'the most good for the most people.' Common Sense.

In Steve Huntley's June 26, 2009, he outlines the Progressive Agenda and the force feeding by the Democratic Leadership in the Congress at the direction of President Obama's White House:

Congress, driven by President Obama's ambitious political agenda, is out to be a jack of all trades. Just look at its to-do list for this year -- health-care reform, clean energy legislation, overhaul of financial regulation, a rewrite of immigration law, stimulus spending to prod the economy toward recovery. Whew! And with six months left in 2009, who knows what else might be added?

That list doesn't include such major business as considering a new U.S. Supreme Court nominee or a host of less sweeping but still significant bills, like a just-passed measure giving an overburdened Food and Drug Administration the duty of regulating tobacco. . . .
With Democrats in total control of the House and close to it in the Senate, fierce partisanship, long-cherished liberal goals and the pent-up energy of the Democratic left are driving the transformational agenda. There's no argument many of the bills address problems needing a fix, but that's best achieved with at least a degree of bipartisan support. Yet we're being force-fed a liberal prescription. A crowded agenda controlled by Democrats and a White House push for quick action crowd out competing views.

Regrettably, the major national media have been compliant. For example, this week ABC News offered an hour in prime time for Obama to monopolize the national discussion on health care.

Yet polls consistently show public discomfort with the implications of greater government control of medical services, worry about the costs and a high-level of satisfaction with their current health care among the majority with insurance. Recent news reminds us a public insurance option would open a new avenue for abuse of the taxpayer. Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of the northwest suburbs has started a "medi-fraud blog" tracking corruption and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. His latest entries note that in just the last week prosecutors broke up schemes in Detroit and Miami to defraud Medicare of $150 million.

Another issue is energy. Some of us think the emphasis should be more on energy security than green goals. Yes, we all want a cleaner planet, but our national security and economic future require the exploitation of abundant fossil fuels such as domestic coal and offshore oil as well as expansion of nuclear energy while we develop solar, wind and geothermal for the long term.

Similarly, the economic meltdown naturally leads to new regulation. Yet remember the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002, after the accounting scandals, saddled business with expensive and complex regulations making U.S. enterprises less competitive.

The focus on regulation ignores government's role in the housing collapse. The Wall Street Journal reports Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who encouraged the mortgage excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is at it again, urging the agencies to lower lending standards for condo buyers. Sounds like another dose of the easy credit that wrecked home values.

Obama and Democrats insist Congress works for the good of America in taking on so many projects. But the jack of all trades, as you may recall, is the master of none. Is that how you want the future of your health care or energy supply to be determined?

Columnist Steve Huntley, investigative journalist Tim Novak and Pultizer Prize winning cartoonist Jack Higgins maintain some semblance of thoughtful inquiry for Chicago, because they know that inquiry is not a goal upon which people are forced to agree.

Winning an election is only the beginning of government. The end of government is the preservation of the American Republic. Democrats and Republicans have been doing just that, until these last few months, it seems to me. Dewey has replaced the Founders Fathers for the Progressives. For now.

History has a way of Repealing itself!

*

Dewey is “attractive to those how are more impressed by our new control over natural forces than by the limitations to which that control is subject,” finding that Dewey’s philosophy “is in harmony with the age of industrialism and collective enterprise.” But it is Dewey’s underlying hubris that Russell singles out as “the greatest danger in our time” because “it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster,” however unintentionally.

Russell’s fears, at least in part, have been realized. There are many who would, without hesitation, describe public education, in combination with other social, economic and political forces, a “vast social disaster.” There are, of course, many more that disagree.

http://home.earthlink.net/~fheapblog/id28.html

**

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language.

I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature. . . I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. ( emphasis my own)

I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator.

I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.

Ben Stein,Mensch- UnDamaged by Celebrity and Touched With Humanity

This is a full text of Ben Stein's Last column Monday Nights at Mortons a glimpse at celebrity lifestyles in Hollywood.

Ben Stein, like my pals Mike Houlihan, Tom Roeser, Elias Crim, Steve Rhodes, John Powers and Max Weismann, is a Renaissance Man. Mr. Stein is a film maker, comic, wit, economist, professor and political analyst. More importantly, Mr. Stein is a Mensch* - a human being to the backbone! Read this fine analysis of fame, fortune and fraility.

Huge Hat Tip to Leo Hero - Robert Hylard ( Leo '44):

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.
I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer co mfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can.
It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

* "Reason in man is rather like God in the world."- St. Thomas Aquinas

Click my post title for Ben's House!

Mike Houlihan's Cross-town Classic for the Special Olympics at Bourbon Street -Sunday -June 28th -Noon to 4PM

STEP UP TO THE PLATE FOR SPECIAL OLYMPICS

Houli's pitching his best-selling book and donating a chunk of the proceeds to Special Olympics this Sunday at Bourbon Street.


Crosstown Challenge, Sox vs. Cubs

Sunday, June 28th
Noon to 4PMBourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th Street

Here's what Real Americans can do -
1. Show Yourself! Crack open the wallet and your $25 goes to Special Olympics and gets you food & booze

2. Watch the game!

3. Meet Southside wackos!

4. Laugh!

5. Cry when your team tanks!

6. Spring some dough for the Special Olympics!

There's-Raffles, silent auction, & more.

7. Mingle -Hot chicks, fat guys!

Now this last item causes me more than concern!
8. "Get lucky with local slut Finoola Hooligan!" - is this gambit to unload a cousin who should have 'taken the vail' Houli?????

Valet Parking available - So bring your Valet, too!

See you Sunday!

Southtown Star - A Lying Hate Rag - Hates Us - Smears Us with a Broad Brush - Shun It!

This is the reality of Kennedy Park. The Southtown Star smears us - all of us and lies about it.



The Southtown Star is a Hate Rag.

The Southtown Star is an agenda driven propaganda piece that was once a great community newspaper.

Last year, when Sun Times News Group cashiered every good veteran editor and staff reporter like Courtney Greve, John Hector, and Ed Koziarski, it ceased to exist.

The Southtown Star wanted to be more than a refrigerator magnet paper. It is - it is a disgrace.

Two intangible events took place over the last two weeks in the 19th Ward of Chicago - a black woman in Mount Greenwood found hateful words painted on the garage she rents and Swastikas were painted on the Chicago Park District Property at Kennedy Park in Morgan Park,

Here is the broad brush of hate painted by the Progressive editors and staff of the new Southtown Star:

June 24, 2009

THE ISSUE: Racist graffiti on the garage of a black Mount Greenwood resident sullies the whole community's reputation, once again.

WE SAY: Stand up for what is right, Mount Greenwood residents. Reject racist behavior loudly and publicly.

F or years, the community of Mount Greenwood on Chicago's Southwest Side has bristled at suggestions its residents foster racist attitudes. We're supposed to overlook incidents like last week's "Go home nigger" message spray-painted on the garage of Latricia Deanes' rented Mount Greenwood home. Deanes, who is black, is living there with her three children until repairs to her Beverly home are completed.

We're supposed to downplay it. Child's play. Those goofy kids - perhaps the same ones who spray-painted Nazi symbols on a Dumpster at nearby Kennedy Park.

Well, we aren't going to dismiss it.

Beverly is about two miles east of Mount Greenwood. They are two neighborhoods in Chicago's 19th Ward separated by a few railroad tracks and a cemetery. On a rudimentary, geographic level, Mount Greenwood and Beverly are next door to one another. So where, exactly, was Deanes supposed to "go home?" She is home, whether she's renting a house with her children in Mount Greenwood or living under a newly repaired roof down the street in Beverly. How nice of her neighbors to make her feel welcome.

Geography aside, incidents like this and the dismissive attitude of residents toward them make Mount Greenwood an embarrassment. The "bad apples," as Deanes described the culprits who committed this crime, wipe a stain over the entire community, and everyone else seems to keep their mouths shut.

Mount Greenwood, if you're tired of the bullying and the racism, speak up. Too often, silence only codifies community acceptance of this type of garbage. We know many Mount Greenwood residents feel the same outrage we do. Where are they?

Where are the elected officials? Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart lives in Mount Greenwood. So do labor leaders and police officials. Ald. Ginger Rugai (19th) represents Mount Greenwood, as do state officials Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago) and Sen. Edward Maloney, and at the federal level, Congressman Dan Lipinski. Where are they?

When Ryan Rush, a white teenager, was violently attacked by black teen-agers July 2007 at Beverly Park in what some believed was a hate crime, we vilified the vicious, unprovoked attack. We supported tough sentences for Micah Eastman and his two accomplices. What's wrong is wrong. (Emphasis my own)

This is wrong, too.

But too often, what we hear at the newspaper after stories like this appear are ignorant attempts at justification: Black people deserve what they get because they commit more crimes. Such-a nd-such high school used to be nice until black kids started going there. Black towns are no longer safe because of their racial make-up. Somehow Deanes deserved this. And on and on. Just read the online comments at the end of Steve Metsch's Saturday story about the graffiti.

To blame one resident for problems elsewhere, based solely on the color of her skin, is a ridiculous, misguided and shameful response. Whoever did this was evil. Period.

Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Clearly, Deanes deserves defending here, not the criminals. There's just no way around it. There is no justification - none - for what they did. The harm this crime did, and will do, to Deanes' children is serious and far-reaching.

We are ashamed.

You are shameless liars! Here is what you wrote:

Editorial : Attack on youth is a tragedy, but no reason for overreaction ( Emphasis my own)

THE ISSUE: A 14-year-old youth was beaten in broad daylight in a Beverly park in what police are investigating as a hate crime. WE SAY: We hope leaders and residents in the Beverly community and the Southland as a whole can respond without resorting to generalizations and put the incident in proper perspective. The Beverly community is one of the few neighborhoods in Chicago that have achieved a significant level of racial diversity with a minimum of racial tension.

A white boy nearly dies in a beat down from the hands of black kids, but the Southtown Star scolded the whole community to respond without resorting to generalizations .

They (STNG)reserve that right for themselves. This community needs be a vehicle for the agenda to force public officials to tell their neighbors and constituents that they are all racists - everyone.

Two properties got painted and the Southtown Star bloated a Group Race Hate smear on the community it purports to serve and then lies about it- Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Choke on it.

The Southtown Star serves only its agenda. The Southtown Star like the Chicago Sun Times needs controversy to make a go of it. Boycott these rags. Make them pay for that agenda so important that the truth matters not with their own money. Use your money for your kids and their friends -black, white, or whatever.

The ISSUE: The Southtown Star is a Hate Rag
WE SAY: Let it go bankrupt and soon!


You can get the high school sports results on-line for free.

Terry Sullivan Trio Do the Great American Song Book at Gallery Cabaret -June 29th

Ms. Terry Sullivan is a writer ( Cultural & Arts Editor for Chicago Daily Observer, choral director of St. Cecelia Chorus of St. John Cantius Catholic Church, and a seasoned Jazz singer, who Chicago nightlife pioneer and jazz enthusiast Mr. Nick Novich ( Nick's Place & etc.) likened to ' the sweet voice of Blossom Dearie.'

Terry Sullivan Trio will grace the stage of Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown on June 29th from 8-10:30PM. Get a start on your Summer with the vocal stylings of Ms. Terry Sullivan and Great American Song Book!

Ms. Sullivan is accompanied by two of Chicago's best Jazz Artists - pianist Tom Hope and Bass Man Brian Sandstrom.


Tom Hope, Jazz pianist, was born and raised in Houston, studied music at North Texas State U., and was a U. S. Army bandsman. He lived and worked in Los Angeles in the 70's and is a Chicagoan since 1976. An

experienced accompanist, he has a repertoire of thousands of tunes in all keys, with an emphasis on the Great American Songbook.

Tom has performed with Barrett Deems, Arnett Cobb, Scott Hamilton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Ira Sullivan, Ken Peplowski, Ed Polcer, Red Holloway, Lee Castle, Richie Cole, Al Grey, Britt Woodman and Charlie Persip, as well as singers such as Jaye P. Morgan and the Four Freshmen. He is also an accomplished singer and a student of the guitar.

Tom offers jazz vocal coaching in the context of the Great American Songbook. This involves learning the real melodies and rhythms of the songs, choosing tempos on the basis of lyrical sense and swing, then allowing one's natural style to develop. This leads to liberation from copying other performers' personal interpretations.



Brian Sandstrom - "One of the busiest bass players working in the Chicago area." Chicago Tribune.

Brian, sideman on more than 25 CDs, has toured Europe with free jazz pioneer Hal Russell. He has also recorded and played locally & nationally with such notables as Doug Blake, Frank Portolese, Willie Pickens, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Rusty Jones, Robert Shy, Mars Williams, Ed Pertersen, Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan, and Frank Catalano.


Gallery Caberet:

The Gallery Cabaret has been operating in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood since 1990. According to owner, Ken Strandberg, the Gallery Cabaret harkens back to a time when "you could walk into a joint, buy a drink, and enjoy live entertainment like comedy or music just for being there and being a patron." The Gallery has offered free entertainment 7 nites per week since it opened. Over time, many up and comers have graced the stage, like The Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Material Issue and Liz Phair (while they were still up and comers!). The Gallery has also hosted numerous comedy acts and poetry readings and slams. Every month, local artists have their work on display at the Gallery. Currently, we also offer cable TV including your favorite sports, until prior to showtime, and early bird drink specials from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm. We also have Darts and Golden Tee Golf. Can't wait for music to start? We have TouchTunes internet jukebox with access to 1000's of songs.

Old Greaser Anthem - For the Line Dancing.

The National Coalition to Stop the War was a multi-faced coalition - nay a Rainbow -of essentially the very same dweebs and victims ( Yppies, Diggers, SDS, Al Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, The Seven! et al. ) playing at tough guy and being fully surprised by the similar outcomes incumbent upon playing the fool.

"My Gawd, How can you say that, Hickey? You unfeeling Nazi .......but, They were sooooo Committed!!!"

I dunno. Just do.

The 1968 Democratic Convention has spawned more 'committed participants who were there, Man' than even Woodstock. Belying the fact that far fewer than 6,000 showed up in Grant Park.

Police Riot? well, if convicted ex-felon and former Governor Dan Walker says so . . . Nah. Goofs went too far and got a tune-up.

The same Dweeb/Victims got a rump-thumping from Italian young men, the 69th Street Loafers, some days prior to the Convention and again by Chicago Police Officers.

Later, the same knuckleheads with rich Mommies and Daddies went all commitment in Old Town ( the Days of Rage) and a year later when rioters tore up Balboa when Sly Stone failed to show up at the Grant Park Band shell.

After that . . .the commitment seemed to die. The Theatre continued through the 1970's with the Trial of the Seven and the rest is . . .ludicrous.

Don Rose brought Happy Days back this week. Progressives get more mileage out of nothing - why does this great Nation have an energy crisis with all the methane fired out by Dweebs and Victims yet.

Whine on, Oh Happy Worriers!

For the line dancing I have chosen a very swell and little played ditty by an Arc-Greaser! Eddie Cochran!

Click my post title for a Chicago Greaser Coalition anthem - it's something else.

Obama's Brass Going to China- Where is the American Economy Going?

This tip came from Mary Ann Roti - Unbelieveable Change

And so it continues . . .

Georgia Arms is the 5th largest retailer of .223 Ammo in America . They sell 9mm, .45, ..223 ammunition. They normally buy spent brass from the US Department of Defense. Spent brass is "one time used" shell cases used by our Military for training purposes.
They buy the brass, recondition it, and then reload the brass for resale to Law Enforcement, Gun Clubs, Gun Shops, and stores like Wal-Mart. They normally buy 30,000 lbs of spent brass at a time.
This week the DoD wrote a letter to the owner of Georgia Arms and informed him that from now on the DoD will be destroying the spent brass, shredding it. It will no longer be available to the ammo makers, unless they buy it in a scrap shredded condition (which they have no use for). The shredded brass is now going to be sold by the DoD to China as scrap metal, after the DoD pays for it to be shredded.. The DoD is selling the brass to China for less money than the ammo makers have been paying, plus the DoD has to pay to have the brass shredded and do the accounting paperwork.
This sure helps the economy now doesn't it? Sell cheaper to China , and do not sell at all to a proven US business. Any hidden agenda working here? Obama going after the Firearms Industry and our ammunition!!
The Georgia Arms owner even related a story that one of his competitors had already purchased a load of brass last week. The DoD contacted him this week and said they were sending someone over to make sure it was destroyed. Shell cases he had already bought!
The brass has no value to the ammo maker if it is destroyed/shredded/melted. The ammo manufacturer only uses the empty brass cases to reload different calibers, mainly 223 bullets.
The owner of Georgia Arms says that he will have to lay off at least half of his 60 workers, within 2-3 months if the DoD will no longer sell spent brass cases to the industry. Georgia Arms has 2-3 months of inventory to use, by summer they're out.
If the Reloading Industry has to purchase new manufacture brass cases, then the cost of ammunition will double or even triple, plus Obama want to add a 500% tax on each shell.

Hope for Change!

Coalition of Old Greasers Calls for Counter Protest to Protest Called by Radicals Protesting Police '68 Reunion

A Coalition of Old Greaser Gangs is Settin' a Meet-up with Don Rose and his Aging Cupcakes!

Cadillac Commie with Bad Buckers 'PROVOKES' an Illinois National Guardsman-not Dick Butkus for this Dental Challenged but Earnest Revolutionary.

You say want a Coalition, well You know . . .

Here they come - from all over, by over there, near the tracks and the viaducts, where the streetcar turns the bend around.

THE REBELS: 47th Street and Ashland;63RD STREET IMPERIALS; 63rd STREET BEER CLUB;
V's: They hung around behind Gage Park High School.
69th STREET LOAFERS: Mostly Italian from 69th and Hermitage:DUKES OF HERMITAGE.
Hung around Hermitage Park and 59th and Hermitage:SAWYER BOYS: They hung at Sawyer school at 53rd and Sawyer;WHIPPLE STREET BOYS;ARTESIAN COBRAS: (a greaser gang who evolved from the 59 Street Supreme rulers, and most of whom were weightlifting fanatics) issued a statement concerning the call by Food Critic, Public Relations Maven and Later-day Kropotkin Don Rose to protest a planned reunion of septuagenarian and octogenarian Chicago Police Veterans in celebration of their Service and Protection of Chicago during the attempted coup by Cadillac Commie Cupcakes at the Democratic Convention:

From ABC Seven ( Andy Shaw Free Since 2008)-

June 23, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A police watchdog group says it will march in protest of a planned reunion of Chicago officers who worked during the 1968 Democratic convention.
The Chicago convention was marked by protests and violence. The group Chicago Copwatch says the planned reunion celebrates police violence against demonstrators. They plan to march this Friday, June 26, - the same day of the scheduled Chicago riot police reunion. They also delivered a letter to the mayor's office asking him to condemn the reunion.
"These were unprovoked assaults by the police on several occasions in Grant Park, on Michigan Avenue," said Don Rose, activist.
"The Chicago Police Department, the City of Chicago, broke the laws they were obligated to uphold," said Patricia Hill, African American Police League.

Chicago Greaser and Street-corner Guy* Coalition Spokesguy Niti Capone, III had this to say, " These Fruits came around the park over by the viaduct on Ashland and tried to get Vinny, Me and the Three Parisi Brothers to come downtown and help them toss 7-Up bottles of Pee and Irish Confetti at the Bulls, but we done that already and there was 16" Ball-game at Sherman Park with Slinky Ryan from Wood Streets and those Micks what live south of the tracks, across from Our Lady A Mount Carmel and all go to Leo, but their sissies what go to Big Weed (Little Flower H.S.), like this skinny little turd name Hickey who goes to all our dances and ain't too much of a damn pest, because he's tight with Tony DiPolito and the Vasi Brothers. We go to Harper and Hubbard and Parker, but we go to Church and all.

So, this Fruit** in the Dickie and Tweed and Beatle Boots says that they gonna bring Revolution! We start yankin' his pud! Then he gets his panty-hose bloated and cracks wise and Larry with the three fingers from Murray Park gives him a crack because Larry's brother is in Vietnam fightin' the Chinese Reds.

The Fruit near pee'd his cords - wearin' cords in July - and cries, 'We're Your Brothers! Off The Pigs!' and Larry gives him another crack. Then the other Fruits in the Volkswagon, we all drive Chevies, and its gots these plastic wallpaper flowers for Peace, start bawling so we swarm them and take a tire iron to the hood, which is the trunk of those Fag Wagons. We're all frisky on Sneaky Pete's ( Tall Schlitz with Ripple Red poured in) and got the giggles over these Room 222 Fags. We toss our lit Luckies into the Hitler Bug and they all start cryin' like little bitches.

We crack the bunch of them and they're all cryin' about 'callin' the Cops' and We yell back -'Off The Pigs! Dude!' The Cops from Englewood always treated us Okay and Mr. Pape was a cop and his cousin ran the Little League. So we called a bunch of the guys that we used to bloody up in the parks and at the parties and Parish dances - the Polacks, Harps, Hunkies, Mex-es and Ricans - all great guys. I was in the Army for two years with a couple of Polack Gaylords from Back o' the Yards and two Psychos from Canaryville - lovely gents.

If you see that Mick runt Hickey, let him know that my cousin Emil ain't forgotten that he cut-in on a slow dance at VIZ with Trolly Manuppa and he still ain't real happy. You ain't that Hickey are you? Jesus, you was in shape what happened? Just kidding. No, really? Don't do pull-ups anymore?

Anyway, we called the old guys to come out and support the Old Cops. The Fruits are still fruits and hate America.

Yeah, we made some calls we'll be there to help the Old Time Coppers."

Click my post title for Chicago Stone Greasers - splendid historical record - no Kidding! The Photos for the south side gangs are the work of Chicago Historian and Photag Mr. Larry Raeder who grew up in the Sherman Park Hood. Mr. Rader has been an invaluable source of knowledge for Crime Biographer Rose Keefe and Historian Richard Lindberg.

* Greaser was an attitude - generally but not exclusively of Italian, Polish, Czech, Mexican. Puerto Rican ethnic origin
Street-Corner Guy was a person attuned to proximity to smokes, beer, Pop, eats, mischief - often Irish, Jewish, German, Belgian, and Swedish


** Fruit, Fag Sissy, Cupcake, Shirley & etc ( archaic - Pre -PC) - generally a person of whom one has slight regard and middling concern due to aura of Self-absorption, infidelity and poor or unacceptable habits of dress and coiffure.

Rahm Emanuel Knows What's for Dinner - It's David Brooks - Trussed, Appled, Sauced and Smoking!

Washington Post correspondent Howard Kurtz does a splendid job of presenting Rahm Emmanuel the Chief of Staff for President Obama, as man who knows how to put Media Bacon on the President's table.

When Mr. Emanuel goes to market every little piggy gets looked over, but le treatment royale is reserved for the sucklings who play on conservative or independent high ground - notably David Brooks.

David Brooks does not do much for me, as a writer, much less as an original thinker. He reminds me of a kid who grew up playing with Major League baseball cards, but never went to the prairie between the two-flats for pick-up rules baseball. Now, he goes to swap-shows for memorabilia and shows the disinterested citizens of America all the swell stuff he got. " Hey, that's nice Dave. Look, I gotta go."

Rahm Emanuel eyed this little piggy for the platter early on the game. Howard Kurz notes:

Conservative critics also got the Rahm treatment. After Michael Kelly, then the New Republic's editor, called Clinton a "shocking liar," Emanuel took him to lunch. Emanuel called Times columnist William Safire "Uncle Bill" and had him over for dinner, despite his having called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar."

Against this backdrop, Emanuel's courtship of Brooks, a conservative who has at times been sympathetic to Obama, is hardly surprising. In March, after Brooks wrote that Obama had turned out to be another big-spending liberal, he found himself talking to Emanuel, two other top officials and the president, which produced a follow-up column crediting the White House with making a "sophisticated and fact-based" case.

Brooks says he had a half-dozen dinners with Emanuel during his congressional days and now considers him a policy maven as well as political tactician. "He's comfortable with journalists," Brooks says. "He provides real information without giving too much away. With some people you just get the spin; he does go beyond that."

Rahm Emanuel never drew a stupid breath in his life. Hell, it's easy to 'get comfortable with journalists,' Dave! It is, "Come For the Table, Newsies! Here, Newsies,Newsies! Soo-Weeeeeee!" And the Porcine Parade prances to dinner!

He feeds you apples and sugar. You provide the feast! Bon Appetite, Mr. President!

Remember newspapers,folks? Now, they are used to wrap up the fat, the bones, the snout and the ears.