Kevin Myers - Irish Independent Writer and Sharp Thinking Tough Guy

Kevin Myers is an Irish writer for the Irish Independent newspapers. I came upon Mr. Myers and his work while reading Joel Kotkin, the American Demographer and writer and an article by Mr. Myers seemed to dovetail with Kotkin and my own thoughts about the dangers of public unions - tax salaried employees. California is sunk and Illinois is sliding to economic ruin due to the strident harping of SEIU and AFSCME. Massive numbers of people put the itch in the undies of gutless and dim politicians - always has been the case.

SEIU is a danger to the American Middle Class and the American Labor Movement that helped give this country a standard of living unmatched by any nation in history - until now.

Mr. Myers July 15, 2009 took Irish Public Unions to task for much the same reasons that I perceive SEIU and the lesser lights to be threat to the middle class.

There is no money left to tax!

Mr. Myers casts a surgeon's eye on movements grassroots and others that are often jammed down the public's maw by lazy members of the media.

I am a fan.

Kevin Myers (born 30 March 1947 in Leicester, England) is an Irish journalist and writer. He writes for the Irish Independent and is a former contributor to The Irish Times newspaper, where he wrote the "An Irishman's Diary" opinion column several times weekly. Until 2005, Myers wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in the UK.

His articles often offer criticism of left-wing opinion and the "liberal consensus", sometimes incorporating hyperbole, sarcasm and parody.

Myers' Irish Times opinion columns were often in contrast to its editorial position, which led to some conflict with his editors. In early January 2005, The Irish Times refused to publish a column in which he accused the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) of responsibility for the Northern Bank robbery. It was later published by the Daily Telegraph[2] He often advocates support for the United States, though he is sometimes critical of the foreign policies of the Bush administration. He ultimately endorsed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has praised George W. Bush, but has also described him as 'mad'. He is frequently critical of anti-war activists.

Myers is sceptical of the viability of multiculturalism and favours limits on immigration to prevent the growth of racial tension in Ireland. He has criticised the Catholic Church in many pieces, and favours the legalisation of prostitution.[4] In recent articles he has been critical of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. In his journalism Myers has opposed the classification of Travellers as an ethnic minority,[citation needed] and has opposed feminist philosophy and the role of trade unions in setting economic policy. He has written against the compensation culture and has opposed state policies towards the Irish language. (emphasis my own)

Other columns have a less political nature, discussing road safety, pet peeves, rugby union, favourite places in Ireland, etc. The fortnightly satirical publication, The Phoenix, regularly lampoons what it sees as his apparent self-obsession, and referring to him by his other names such as Kevin Myarse or Colonel MyArse.

Here is one of Myers' great pieces dealing with 'Feminists' against women and children:

By Kevin Myers


Tuesday April 07 2009

'Protect women and children in next week's Budget', declared the headline in a press release from the National Women's Council last Friday. The statement added a couple of paragraphs later: "Women and children are at the greatest risk of poverty and all payments supporting women and children should be protected. Women are already facing serious consequences from the recession with unemployment figures showing the sectors of retail and services have been severely hit."

So, 36 years after the foundation of the NWCI, we see what the official, government-sponsored version of Irish feminism has mutated into: the cry of the officers on the deck of the foundering Titanic -- "Women and Children First". But at least in those days there was a coherent moral order behind that command. Children were children, and women were seen to be weaker and inferior and thus voteless; gentlemen of all classes would naturally stand back and give them places in the lifeboats first.

If there is a coherent moral order to the present thoughts of the National Women's Council, it is that words no longer mean what they used to. In the Council's prospectus for the year 2009, the word "equality" is used 38 times. Yet clearly, in the sisters' deviant vocabulary, "equality" does not mean equality of pain, or hardship or suffering or poverty. No: it means the opposite of equality. It means a protection from these conditions, regardless of what men are enduring. In other words, lifeboat-feminism, surely the most ignoble and unprincipled of all the many liberal political creeds which dominate our ethos today.

Only a lifeboat-feminism could spout the gibberish "Women and children are at greatest risk from poverty . . . Women are already facing serious consequences from the recession", the very day after the unemployment figures were released. These showed that of the 19,600 jobs lost in March, 13,600 were those of men, and 6,000 were those of women. That is to say, job losses amongst women were just 44pc of the rate endured by men. Moreover, the area in which job losses are not going to occur, the public service, is heavily dominated by female employees. Only an organisation driven by a demented sense of counter-factual, gender self-pity could promote the fiction of female victimhood at such a time.

And no, the NCWI press release doesn't mean "mothers", it makes no mention of mothers, not even once. Though interestingly enough, it refers to "women and children" four times, and to "women" just three times. Psychologically, this is simply placing women at the protected level of children, just as was done on the Titanic: quite an achievement for a state-subsidised feminist body in 2009, if a largely unsurprising one.

Naturally, the National Women's Council is a quango, of which there is (equally naturally) no male equivalent. Over 70pc of its budget comes from the Department of Justice and, wait for it, Equality and Law Reform. Now, you just know that those terms "equality" and "law reform" are never intended to apply to improve the lives or the legal position of men, don't you? Other state-providers of funds to the NWC are Combat Poverty and the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. So, we have two government departments and one meaningless quango subsidising yet another quango, which is simply telling untruths, and making totally unrealistic demands of the Government which is paying for it.

This wouldn't matter if the shrill and unprincipled emanations of lifeboat-feminism were ignored. They are not. They are treated with a deferential respect by the Government and media alike. More than that, they have created a systemic imbalance in which women are consistently treated by less exacting standards than are men. The most grievous example of this of recent times concerned an Army officer who one night deserted her post as barracks-orderly, and left the armoury unprotected. She falsified the log to make it seem as if she had conducted perimeter patrols, which had never occurred, and she later lied to her commanding officer when questioned about her suspected absence from her post.

In other words, she had betrayed the greatest single institution in Irish life, and let down her fellow soldiers in a manner for which there could be no other proper outcome: a court martial, with an ignominious dismissal from the service. Instead, she was merely fined, and allowed to retain her commission. (Dear God in heaven, what would the great Bull Callaghan or Mickie Joe Costello have made of that?)

If the Army, the embodiment of the very qualities of steadfastness, stoicism and duty that we, as a society, most require in the maelstrom into which we are now sailing, can find itself applying the exceptionalist dogmas of lifeboat-feminism, what hope for the rest of us?

The blades of fiscal prudence will cut hard and low over the coming months, but you can be reasonably sure that, standing no less tall at the end than they were at the beginning, will be the state-sponsored feminist institutions of Irish life. And as the suffering deepens, their cry will doubtless ring over the ice-covered decks of Irish life: "Equality For All! Women And Children First!"

kmyers@independent.ie

Catch "Kid Houlihan" Tonight! Jack Desmond's Pub 6 P.M. Sharp! Not 6:20 Get Me?

As a child he rarely washed his hands, but did exhibit an early interest in literature...His mother would replace the Playboy magazines she found under his mattress with holy cards...which resulted in a Pavlovian response whenever the lad opened a prayer book.

Chicago Renaissance Man Mike Houlihan brings his 2009 Stimulus Package to the South Side!

1. Mental Health Reform - A Serious Case Study

2. A Woman's Right to Choose - any number of gents with pints in their mitts and mortal sins the size of Wyoming

3. Energy Independence - depending upon how tired the start of the week made you feel

Join Houli this Thursday night (July 16) at

Jack Desmond's Irish Pub in Chicago Ridge at

6pm, 10339 South Ridgeland, for some stand-up comedy and more hooliganism!

Keep up with Mike writing for The Irish American News
http://irishamericannews.com/index.php/people/social-circle/733-hooliganism-july-2009

The bartender listened to the old carney all night complaining about his crappy job.
What line of work are you in, pal?
I follow the elephants in the parade with my shovel.
Ever think about quitting?
What? And give up show business!

Catholic Cemetery's Roman Szabelski to Oversee the Horrors at Burr Oak

I was at Kean Gas this morning and heard from a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy that Sheriff Tom Dart had asked a judge to appoint someone to oversee the disaster that is Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL.

My Cousin Willie works for the Sheriff and he has not had much shut-eye in the last six or so days. Willie bought some fish from my son Conor at Di Cola's on Western Ave. just before closing on Tuesday. Conor said Willie looked dead on his feet.

All of the Sheriff's people have done a great job.

Today, I heard that Roman Szabelski of the Catholic Cemeteries was appointed.

Roman Szabelski the Chief of the forty or so Catholic Cemteries in the Chicago Area was appointred by a judge to oversee the horrors of Burr Oak Cemetery, years of mismanagement leading to one of the great horrors of recent history.

Two years ago, Mr. Szabelski appeared on Public Radio to talk about Green Issues in the Cemetery Industry. ( click my post title)

Brushing aside the usual smarm ( snide remarks about 'What Catholics Believe') from the soft-talkers of Public Radio, Mr. Szabelski articulated the care and concern of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese for families of the deceased:

RICHARD: The Catholic Church prefers full-body burial in consecrated ground. That’s because Catholics believe in the resurrection of the dead. The church has only allowed cremation since the mid-Sixties.

MELBY: That doesn’t mean Chicago’s Catholic cemeteries are immune to progress.

COMPUTERIZED GRAVE LOCATOR: Spell out the last name of the deceased that you are trying to locate using the touch-screen keyboard, and then press search.

SZABELSKI: So I’ve just keyed in my family name and I’m pushing search. Florence Szabelski is my mother so I’m asking it to show that record to me.

MELBY: That’s Roman Szabelski. He’s executive director of Catholic cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

RICHARD: Roman started mowing grass at the cemeteries in 1979. Today, he presides over 2.2 million dead at 43 cemeteries around Chicago. He has a good sense of what his customers want.

SZABELSKI: We come from a very conservative tradition where people want their 3 by 8, their grave, to look like their backyard, which is perfectly manicured.

MELBY: Providing that much space won’t be a problem anytime soon. Roman says the archdiocese has stockpiled enough land not just for the next couple decades, but for the next one to two hundred years.

SZABELSKI: We’re sitting in Queen of Heaven Cemetery right now, which is roughly about a 300-acre site. About 100 of those acres are leased to the golf course next door. As we need the property, the golf course will go from 18 to 9 to zero and a driving range and that property will be used.

MELBY: Roman doesn’t expect to dig into that golf course for another 25 years.

RICHARD: Yet Roman is considering carving out a green burial section in one of the cemeteries here.

MELBY: Still it won’t be easy to do in this sea of manicured lawns. Green burial advocates prefer a natural landscape of wild grass and trees. Their preference is to keep the plots free of any monuments or markers.

SZABELSKI: So we’re trying to figure out how do you incorporate a green burial cemetery section into a traditionally kept cemetery.

Not much Green at Burr Oak, but a great deal of grief. I wonder if Chicago Public Radio will make note? Most likely not.


The families of the thousands of Burr Oak Cemetery Dead will at last have a caring and thoughtful soul looking out for them. Francis Cardinal George has a solid man being tasked with this extra duty.

Catholics cause Progressives the itch, until a human crisis like Burr Oak Cemetery seems to impact on all of us - and while the work is being done for people, the Progressives will stand on the sidelines and wait for the green light to go Bill Maher on Catholics again.

God Bless the work, Roman!

Public Unions, The Irish, Mayor Daley and Dennis Gannon - When PC Collides with An Empty Wallet

The Andy Stern Doctrine is International Chaos and out of Chaos Comes More Chaos and out of Chaos More Power has helped cause chaos and crisis for families and governments all over the globe. Here in Chicago, Sons of Erin Mayor Richard M. Daley and Dennis Gannon are confronted with the reality of Public Unions and the Skilled Trades Locals are taking Andy Stern's heat. Hundreds of workers will be laid off as negotiations have been twisted by AFSCME and the Teamsters - Andy Stern's pets.

Big Labor is the euphemism that Andy Stern's SEIU dictates America's Media to employ in every article.

Big Labor means SEIU. It means Public Unions - whose membership are paid out of taxes.

Bad Labor is always the Skilled Trades Unions - these men and women invested thousands of their own dollars and countless hours of time to develop the rights that they earned and their unions bargained in good faith to own. They are the backbone of the American Middle Class. Andy Stern and the Boiled Beets Progressives intend to tax the American Middle Clas out of existence.

Andy Stern merely bullies gutless political hacks and news persons to scratch out tax-dollars for his multitudes.

Taxes are paid by members of real unions -Skilled Trades Unions and Industrial Unions.

Andy Stern can not organize Skilled Trades. SEIU depends upon monstrous numbers of unskilled workers and works overtime to bring illegal aliens under the umbrella of Big Labor.

Politicians know numbers - heads, votes and dollars.

California is a budgetary train wreck and Illinois is about to slide off the tracks as well.

The Media ( TV,Radio, Intranet, Print) are largely in Andy Stern's vest pocket along with the leadership of the Democratic Party ( DNC) and far too many Skilled Trades unions.

Play ball with Andy Stern and you lose your bat, your glove, your shoes and your shirt.

Ireland is undergoing a Great Awakening - the land of Big Jim Larkin and James Connolly has long plucked the Harp of Labor and the Workingman. Ireland is waking up to the Andy Stern Doctrine thanks to journalists like Kevin Myers of the Irish Independent.

Public Unions in Ireland are, as they in America, largely comprised of massive numbers of unskilled workers, low skill workers, and immigrant workers. The navvies and the hod-carriers; the sweepers and bar-keepers are Romanians, Poles, Ugandans, Kenyans, Moroccans, Serbs and Croatians: The Irish Congress Trades Unions. Private sector jobs are gone and public sector jobs are bleeding the Celtic Tiger dry.

Here is Kevin Meyers' witty and sharp analysis of Public Unions on the Irish Economy:

It is nine months since economic Armageddon hit this Republic. In that time, about a quarter of a million people in the private sector have lost their jobs. In the public sector, the story has been a little different. Yes, some temporary jobs have gone there, but they were temporary all along.

Just one job went in the public sector. Financial Regulator Patrick Neary was allowed to take early retirement, with a €630,000 pay-off and a pension of €140,000 a year.

Otherwise, the serious jobs are still there: permanent, pensionable and, what do you know, still with rising incomes. Yes, public-sector pay actually increased by around 4pc in the last year. Everyone with jobs in the private sector lost money.

Let me put this slowly, for the politburo of Ictu and Siptu and Fukyu and all those other insane public-service bodies, who have been inhaling too deeply in the public trough. There is no money. Do you get that? There is no shagging money. The notion that you can continue to enjoy your present incomes, with lovely fat pensions to follow, compares with Pyongyang's plans to capture and colonise Arizona.

We are borrowing €30m a day to pay public service wages and pensions. Even a North Korean economist would realise that this is unsustainable. Comrades Begg and O'Connor clearly have not.

I have not yet made up my mind whether this is because they are too stupid or too demented. It really doesn't matter. The result is much the same.

As Alan Ruddock revealed last Sunday, pay in the public sector is 47pc higher than in the private sector -- for those in the shattered, battered latter category who still have jobs, that is. Alan has a strong stomach: he has trawled through Comrade Begg's speeches searching for shiny gobbets of wisdom, which is rather like wading through the late Kim Il-sung's public utterances looking for a Shakespearian sonnet.

Anyway, our intrepid explorer came up with this pearl from Comrade Begg: "Our problem is not the size of our public service, but the collapse of our tax base."

In the entire and voluminous history of trade union brainlessness, has there ever been a remark as devoid of cerebral content as that?

Every single penny in tax-take goes on public service incomes, but that is still not enough; and so we still have to borrow over €200m a week, just to match the public-sector pay bill alone. And worse still is the proposed cure: the terms set for Colm McCarthy's committee to propose economies.

This is well-named as An Bord Snip, for it is limited to making cuts in public services, but none in the number of public servants.

The latter will remain as numerous as ever: they'll just have less work to do.

And, of course, since we all know that these economies will not be nearly enough, the International Monetary Fund will sooner or later move in, bearing glittering scythes. It will sack droves of public servants, cut all pensions, slash judges' pay, and halt all tribunals, and best of all, it will savage TDs' incomes and expenses.

It will do this. This is as certain as the Saharan sun burns. And the reason this will happen is that Fianna Fail -- and that piece of reptile's foreskin otherwise known as the Greens -- would prefer to have some nameless foreigners take the blame for the necessary fiscal surgery than impose it themselves.

In the meantime, terrible and probably irreversible damage will have been done to our economy.

But, of course, neither that, nor even the loss of sovereignty to the IMF, matters much to our political masters.

Provided outsiders are seen to be doing the dirty work, which of course Fianna Fail will protest vehemently at, the gamble is that the party will once again be returned to office in the next election.

That there is neither pride nor dignity -- and least of all, patriotism -- in such a ploy is utterly irrelevant.

For as the heirs of Kim Il-sung or deValera alike will tell you, political power is the purpose. It is all that counts, no matter how ignobly or basely it is achieved.

Oh, Dear Reader! U of I Dean Tells All -about something. Apologies to Stacy St. Clair and Jodi Cohen

Trustee meddling in student affairs at the University of Illinois' flagship campus extended beyond admissions as one board member made sure his relative got the classes he wanted, an associate dean testified Monday before a state panel.

Ms. Doyen Sheepshanks, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, told the Illinois Admissions Review Commission that she received a "directive" from the provost's office in 2003 to help the student secure spots in classes that were already filled.

In doing so, the student jumped over scores of others ahead of him in the queues, she said.

"I remember it distinctly because of how distasteful I found it to be, but nevertheless, why put off memories, been invited on dates; might have gone but what for; awfully different without you; don't get around much any more." Dean Sheepshanks told the panel, which is investigating abuses at the Urbana-Champaign campus. . . .

The trustee's relative eventually registered for four of the six classes he wanted, the associate dean said. He was denied entry to one course because the room could not accommodate another morbidly obese student under the fire code and was rejected from the other when a department chair balked at such nepotism, poor grooming, nostril hair and halitosis, Sheepshanks testified.

The incident marked at least the second time the trustee's relative received preferential treatment on his class schedule, she said. In the 2003 case, the student had not registered for classes at his assigned time and was shut out of several courses when he eventually tried, but managed to spend the entire semester playing pool and caging drinks from Graduate students of the School of Economics.

"If they had used the regular enrollment time, they would have gotten in on their own,but as the directive had come from the Provost, distasteful at it might seem, I nevertheless inked a pithy note on good quality Florentine card stock, which was a gift from gentleman that I met at this quaint truck stop in Gilman, or was it Paxton . . .nevertheless, he was a robust and lusty poet-Teamster with leonine hair that waved luxuriantly even without the faintest of breeze and the Arms of an Adonis, or a Francis Boyle and we dallied a bit in Arcola and purchased delightful Amish candies and soaps, but . . . the wanderlust doused the torch of passion, we parted sweetly and I must uphold the Woman's burden." she said.

The student later sent a letter to college officials apologizing for the trustee's meddling, saying he never wanted preferential treatment. " It was cool that you helped. I can't be the Chief, so why go to U of I? I mean, my posse is going to SIU and they party cheaper in Giant City and Cobden. Gotta bounce! Peace out!"

Sheepshanks refused to identify the student or the trustee, citing federal laws protecting student privacy, but waxed rhapsodical about the Gentleman Poet- Teamster and their Arcola Idyll.

After all. long time ( 16 years) University Boss Stanley Ikenberry said nothing like this happened on his watch! As far as he wished to tell.

Profound apologies to the fine work of Chicago Tribune's Stacy St. Clair and Jodi Cohen. Keep these fatuous folks a talking!

DO! Oh, do, Dear Reader, click my post title for the fine work of St. Clair and Cohen. Like good homicide detectives, the Chicago Tribune keeps these goofs talking.

Senator Al Franken – History as Sound Byte!

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” Senator Al Franken

Yesterday, in Senator Al Franken’s first public utterance to the United States of America, he stepped on his Wikipedia.

In attempting to blow kisses in the direction of the camera and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Senator Al Franken told Sotomayor that she was "the most experienced Supreme Court nominee in 100 years." Well, Al that’s nice, but not really all that truthful. 100 years would set the historical chronology bar at 1909 So, maybe Al gets this one. Let's See Here! Do Math, Do the Math . . . Nope. Charles Evans Hughes was the Michael Jordan of Law America – he was two-time nominee – he retired from the Court and like MJ –Hughes Returned! Hughes was first nominated ninety nine years ago. Yep, he’s under on both.

I like Wikipedia. It is flawed and so am I. Nevertheless, a quick reference check can clean up any dodgy bullet point. However, it helps to have a patina of reading and learning, when using quick points for full rhetorical value. However, I will forego my use of Wikipedia, and take a look at Cornell University Law site.
Yep. Plenty on Charles Evans Hughes. Charles Evans Hughes was much more experienced, but probably no where near as empathetic as Judge Sotomayor. Senator Al Franken wanted to shine the apple for the SOTUS designate ASAP and was a LOL.
Charles Evans Hughes was first appointed Associate Justice of United States Supreme Court in 1910, and then resigned in 1916 to run against Woodrow Wilson, to whom he lost by 3,000 votes in California. Hughes was named again to the Supreme Court in 1839, after having served as Secretary of State and was nominated as Chief Justice by Herbert Hoover and subsequently gave FDR all kinds of Holy Hell from 1930 until 1941.


Now, Charles Evans Hughes had been Governor of New York and Dean of Cornell Law School and had done all kinds of Law work and taught Latin, Japanese and Calculus prior to a great public career.Senator Al Franken was a comedian who defeated Norm Coleman with the help of ACORN and other grassroots travelers.

Senator Al Franken will be good many laughs during his short time in the United States Senate.Sonia Sotomayor will join the United States Supreme Court for Life. History is not a sound byte.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j1LmmL3rs_PHzUL8uK_s_yualRRgD99DNVBG1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken

Quinn Pumps a Dry Well in Illinois

Gov. Pat Quinn is Dry Pumping Illinois.

"This is jobs. This is Illinois recovery. We've got to get our economy back on track," Quinn said at the bill-signing at Marshall High School on the West Side.

"And, as Franklin Roosevelt said a long time ago, the best way to do it is to prime the pump with public works where the government steps in and builds buildings and builds a lot of other things that the people need," the governor said.

People need it good and hard, sayeth Quinn!

Okay!

1.Start pumping the Double Saw-Bucks into Video Poker! Done that ( illegally) and lost beau coup Bucks! Now, Illinois Budget Commandos can straddle a stool and go home to the wife and kids and proudly proclaim, " I invested this month's mortgage in Illinois Infrastructure Improvements! Oh, I tossed in the Mount Carmel tuitions and groceries, but I expect to have a much better day, once I swipe the new Visa Gold and head back to the Bucket of Blood with a fistful of Dollars! . . . What????"

2. Spend more for shampoo, candy, beer, wine, bottled tea ( Kids -Meet Captain Lipton and the Big-Ass Pitcher)!

3. Pony Up at the Currency Exchange for Title Transfers, Illinois Plates, Stickers and Fees!

4. Line-up for Shovel Ready Jobs ( pay for your Laborers Card first . . .Oh, and that big sharp metal thingy, there; that goes into the clay-thick Illinois Soil - You grab the long wooden shaft - that's the working end of the Shovel) and see who gets hired! As Foxy John Cullerton says this Dollar Give-away ends "the practice of using out-of-work Illinoisans as political leverage while also removing a major roadblock to bipartisan cooperation and trust among political leaders." . . . And the Easter Bunny lives under my deck.

5. Oh, and this nugget was missing from the Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago ( Sun Times) account, but found down low in the Chicago Tribune Budget Bonanza! Say good-bye to $ 3.6 Billion Dollars Governor Rookie Quinn will 'borrow' -

Quinn's latest budget plan would include borrowing up to $3.6 billion to pay public-employee pensions. Quinn helped defeat a similar proposal in May as he tried to force a tax increase.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-quinn-capital-spending14jul14,0,4384338.story

You feeling me, Illinois? You will! Ralph Martire Budgets and We get to pay for it! Hey, Ralph, how about spotting me and the kids an inch or two of Grants, or Jacksons until summer is over? Invest in my Children! Ralph, The Children!!!!!

But the Mighty Quinn says no Illinois Income Tax . . . yet. Well, I have just enough Irish Chapstick ( Preparation H) to see me through October.


Here's the deal. When there ain't nothing to Pump Up, the well is bone dry!

Daley Detail Copper Nabs Hoosier Hood!

A CHicago Cop detailed to Mayor Daley's Grand Beach, Michigan Getaway caught one of three escaped Michigan City Indiana Prison Escapees.

Well Done, Office!

GRAND BEACH, Mich. -- One of three inmates who escaped from the Indiana State Prison was caught Monday in a southwestern Michigan town by a security guard for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

A Grand Beach police officer got a call before 7 a.m. that a private security guard for Daley was holding convicted killer Charles Smith at gunpoint in a home's driveway near the mayor's vacation house in the town about eight miles from the prison, said Grand Beach Police Chief Dan Schroeder.

Schroeder said another inmate had been spotted in Grand Beach, but he didn't know which one or who saw him.

Authorities were still searching for convicted murderer Mark Booher, 46, of New Castle, and convicted rapist Lance Battreal, 45, of Rockport.

It was not immediately clear whether Daley was at the house when Smith taken into custody and Schroeder did not have any more information about Smith's capture.

Private Security Guard? Detail or CPD veteran I would say!

GOP - Screw- Pooch Adviser Mike Murphy (MSNBC Shill) - If Palin's a Loser, Let Her Go!

As a bartender of many years, I listened to marinated mopes go through the stages of Drunkenness:


1. Witty and charming (part 1)
This is after one or two drinks. Mr. Booze is coursing the old brain pan and you are now Robert Wagner. Often Self- deprecating at the on-set to show what a sweet-natured but with it guy you are! "C Students Make the World Go-'Round!"

2. Rich and famous
By the third drink, " Hey, I can get You in to See Daley! No Kidding, I Know Cheeks Malone on the Mayor's Detail!"

3. Benevolent
Here's a twenty for your bar-maid, Pal. She's single Mom I hear too. It's only money.

4. Just one more and We'll eat Boys -On Me!
a stall tactic

5. Are We Men or Campfire Girls ? Fornicate Dinner ! A Round, Chief! Everyone,from the Street to the Shithouse!Just one more and then we'll eat!Honest!

6. Patriotic
The war stories Begin " Yeah, I was One A, but They Never Called me Up For 'Nam! I'da Gone Too!"

7. Warm up the Enola Gay !

" I'dA Gone To 'Nam But I Had a High Lottery Number
"We would have won in 'Nam, but..."

8. Invisible
You flip the finger to the Biggest Biker in the Bar - "No Dude! The Librarian Behind You!"

9. Witty and charming (part 2)
"You know, I Like a Girl with a Head on her like a Boulder in a Roy Rogers Movie"

10. Bulletproof
" Ged On Yer, Triscull, Na'cy boy . . . You go ta Carmuhl? . . .Hi' me agun 'n see what happens!"

GOP - Spin Doctors are Stage 10 on Palin!

GOP Political Operatives want Sarah Palin's pelt on the door before the Congresional Races of 2010 get started. Palin will be a huge influence. Murphy and Harp Harpy Noonan are Palin Drunk and Bullet Proof. Watch the Dipsos chase the pink elephants!

Chick Magnet and MSNBC lap-dog Mike Murphy is the loudest. The geek Mark McKinnon with the Miami Vice thing going on Butch Maddow's show is good too.

MSNBC cuts checks to people who will read their scripts.

Here's Mike Murphy:

"Professional operatives keep their eye on a broader horizon and understand, without independents and swing voters, she can't win," Murphy said. "She's a stone-cold loser in a general election. . . .Some blame sexism, though again there is sharp disagreement between Palin's supporters and detractors. Some think the former beauty queen has always been hurt by her looks, whereas others think her appearance has helped her considerably. "If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?" Murphy asked."

Sarah Palin will draw Democrats and grass-roots Republicans and Independents to vote out Congress Bozos in 2010. Hell, folks like her! I like her. She's like the Moms on my block and like them could run government like Eamonn Coglan.

Mike Murphy and other over-paid GOP loser advisers are pooping themselves like a DQ Soft-Serve dispenser on an August Night in Gila Bend, Arizona - that's hot!

Girls, if Sarah Palin is such a loser, why all the fuss?

St. Bridget of Kildare - Pray for Burr Oak Cemetery Families and Give Them Comfort!

Last week was nuts! Burr Oak Cemetery was desecrated and thousands of my neighbors are at a loss to understand the monstrous misdeeds perpetrated on the souls now departed and their families.

I went to Mass and spent the whole time rubber necking and trying to coax a smile out of a blondie two year old trying to pull a Steve McQueen from her Mom and older sisters -'I not like Church!' Share it, Sister.

Last night I tried to make up for my crumby Mass by doing some reading and came upon a great site run by a Catholic Convert. We don't get many of them these days. I was touched by this remark on the Home Page, by Dee:

I am a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church (2005) from Evangelical Protestantism. I'm interested in Catholic theology, Celtic spirituality, and Benedictine Spirituality. I am an Associate at Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY (Episcopalian) and work and live in beautiful New England. I love to travel, and my most recent trip was to the Holy Land in February 2008. I enjoy music, reading, family and friends. I enjoy blogging about my faith and facilitating the Great Adventure Bible Study, an overview of Salvation History. Hope you enjoy my new blog

I do, Dee. I am especially delighted to note that St. Bridget of Ireland is one of my favorite Saints. St. Bridget was the saint of the Mighty Oak. Kildare means the Church of the Oak in Irish. Bridget was a Celtic aristocrat who devoted her live to Christ. She was a powerful Abbess and leader long before the Second Wave Feminists and goofballs. St. Bridget like most great women put her whole heart, soul and muscle into getting the job done and without the reward of publicity. This is from Dee's site:

Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare in the eighth century, expounded the metrical life of St. Brigid, and versified it in good Latin. This is what is known as the "Second Life", and is an excellent example of Irish scholarship in the mid-eighth century. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Cogitosus's work is the description of the Cathedral of Kildare in his day: "Solo spatioso et in altum minaci proceritate porruta ac decorata pictis tabulis, tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis". (The rood-screen was formed of wooden boards, lavishly decorated, and with beautifully decorated curtains. )



Probably the famous Round Tower of Kildare dates from the sixth century. Although St. Brigid was "veiled" or received by St. Macaille, at Croghan, yet, it is tolerably certain that she was professed by St. Mel of Ardagh, who also conferred on her abbatial powers. From Ardagh St. Macaille and St. Brigid followed St. Mel into the country of Teffia in Meath, including portions of Westmeath and Longford. This occurred about the year 468. St. Brigid's small oratory at Cill-Dara became the centre of religion and learning, and developed into a cathedral city. She founded two monastic institutions, one for men, and the other for women, and appointed St. Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to St. Conleth, Bishop of Kildare, but, as Archbishop Healy points out, she simply "selected the person to whom the Church gave this jurisdiction", and her biographer tells us distinctly that she chose St. Conleth "to govern the church along with herself".

Thus, for centuries, Kildare was ruled by a double line of abbot-bishops and of abbesses, the Abbess of Kildare being regarded as superioress general of the convents in Ireland.

Not alone was St. Bridget a patroness of students, but she also founded a school of art, including metal work and illumination, over which St. Conleth presided. From the Kildare scriptorium came the wondrous book of the Gospels, which elicited unbounded praise from Giraldus Cambrensis, but which has disappeared since the Reformation.

According to this twelfth- century ecclesiastic, nothing that he had ever seen was at all comparable to the "Book of Kildare", every page of which was gorgeously illuminated, and he concludes a most laudatory notice by saying that the interlaced work and the harmony of the colours left the impression that "all this is the work of angelic, and not human skill".

Small wonder that Gerald Barry assumed the book to have been written night after night as St. Bridget prayed, "an angel furnishing the designs, the scribe copying". Even allowing for the exaggerated stories told of St. Brigid by her numerous biographers, it is certain that she ranks as one of the most remarkable Irishwomen of the fifth century and as the Patroness of Ireland. She is lovingly called the "Queen of the South: the Mary of the Gael" by a writer in the "Leabhar Breac". St. Brigid died leaving a cathedral city and school that became famous all over Europe. In her honour St. Ultan wrote a hymn commencing:

Christus in nostra insula Que vocatur Hivernia Ostensus est hominibus Maximis mirabilibus Que perfecit per felicem Celestis vite virginem Precellentem pro merito Magno in numdi circulo.(In our island of Hibernia Christ was made known to man by the very great miracles which he performed through the happy virgin of celestial life, famous for her merits through the whole world.)

The sixth Life of the saint printed by Colgan is attributed to Coelan, an Irish monk of the eighth century, and it derives a peculiar importance from the fact that it is prefaced by a foreword from the pen of St. Donatus, also an Irish monk, who became Bishop of Fiesole in 824. St. Donatus refers to previous lives by St. Ultan and St. Aileran. When dying, St. Brigid was attended by St. Ninnidh, who was ever afterwards known as "Ninnidh of the Clean Hand" because he had his right hand encased with a metal covering to prevent its ever being defiled, after being he medium of administering the viaticum to Ireland's Patroness.

She was interred at the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral, and a costly tomb was erected over her. In after years her shrine was an object of veneration for pilgrims, especially on her feast day, 1 February, as Cogitosus related. About the year 878, owing to the Scandinavian raids, the relics of St. Brigid were taken to Downpatrick, where they were interred in the tomb of St. Patrick and St. Columba. The relics of the three saints were discovered in 1185, and on 9 June of the following year were solemnly translated to a suitable resting place in Downpatrick Cathedral, in presence of Cardinal Vivian, fifteen bishops, and numerous abbots and ecclesiastics. Various Continental breviaries of the pre-Reformation period commemorate St. Brigid, and her name is included in a litany in the Stowe Missal.

In Ireland today, after 1500 years, the memory of "the Mary of the Gael" is as dear as ever to the Irish heart, and, as is well known, Brigid preponderates as a female Christian name. Moreover, hundreds of place-names in her honour are to be found all over the country, e.g. Kilbride, Brideswell, Tubberbride, Templebride, etc. The hand of St. Brigid is preserved at Lumiar near Lisbon, Portugal, since 1587, and another relic is at St. Martin's Cologne.
Text taken from http://www.newadvent.com/

The interesting part of this whole essay is that it is not mentioned directly but Brigid (pronounced Breed in the ancient Gaelic) is often confused, and their stores interwoven, with another Brigid who was a pagan and honored as a goddess. The whole idea that St. Brigid's convent was underneath a large oak tree, oaks being highly venerated by the Druids and priestesses of pagan Ireland, certainly has reinforced the idea for centuries.

Edward C. Sellner, in his book Wisdom of the Celtic Saints states that 'nuns at her monastery are said to have kept an eternal flame burning there, a custom that may have originated with female druids residing at that spot long before the saint arrived. Their leader supposedly was a high priestess who bore the name of the goddess Brigit or Brighid, a deity of wisdom, poetry, fire and the hearth. Like other Celtic goddesses who sometimes appear in groups of threes, the goddess Brigit was associated with two sisters by the same name -- one who was patron of healing and the other of the smith's craft. The attributes were eventually identified with Brigit, the saint, whose feast day, February 1, came to be celebrated on the same day as that of the pagan goddess.'

St. Bridget - Bring peace to the people hurting from Burr Oak Cemetery and give comfort to those who are confused.

Senator Patrick Leahy Fights Torture With Tortured Earnestness!

Democrat Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the conclusions of this review should help shed more light on these rule-of-law issues that the previous administration avoided for a long time.

"This report underscores why we should move forward with a nonpartisan commission of inquiry," Leahy said. "Without a thorough, independent review of decisions that run counter to our laws and treaties, we cannot ensure that these same mistakes are not repeated. Such a commission must have bipartisan support to be able to truly get to the bottom of these issues with objectivity and credibility."

Click me Post Title to Follow More!!

Leahy: Well, you got me here so do your worst, but by God, I'll take one of you with me! I know your game. Get me into that tiled room and then out come the rubber hoses!
Bush Gang: Oh, there's a fire, is there?
Leahy: You ugly, great brute. You have sadism stamped all over your bloated British kisser!
Bush Gang: Eh?
Leahy: I'll go on hunger strike! I know your caper. The kidney punch and the rabbit clout. The third degree and the size twelve boot ankle tap.
Bush Gang: What's he on about?
Leahy: I'm a soldier for the Republic! You'll need the mahogany truncheons on this boyo.

Or, Something to that effect.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gbmJ61GItjVdbI6rLlbNlq-8wneA

We Have a Problem! Burr Oak Cemetery and Someone Else's Troubles

Father Dan Mallette blesses the desecrated grounds at Burr Oak.


So I asked the undertaker what it took to make him laugh/when all he ever saw is people cryin'

first he hands me a bunch of flowers that he received on my behalf/he said, "Steve business just gets better all the time
Steve Goodman -Somebody Else's Troubles



Max Weismann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas is an architect and a philosopher.

He designs. Max Weismann thinks. He thinks because he reads and he reads what is great. Max wrote to me in response to the horrific desecration of the dead Americans at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL

"We are under Siege!Aside from the plethora of current inequities and iniquities being perpetrated on the citizens of this nation, we have now reached the nadir--Congress now passes massive bills of profound and long lasting consequences, without even reading them.

That said, we are ultimately at fault--whenever something is wrong in our communities, cities, states or country, it's because we let it get that way."

We are responsible. Max Weismann is using the 1st Person Plural in its archaic form. Thanks to Progressive PC obfuscation of the common language ( O, Let's Ban Midget!)The first person plural however now means You. Thanks to Victimhood and Identity Politics. Many thanks. Like the name of that old Hippie/Yuppie bar Fred Holstein's - Somebody Else's Trouble , people like to talk of the revolution that someone else fights and spreading the wealth that someone else pays for.

I grew up in a blue collar world where free lunch ends when Mom stops making it. If someone at the bar buys me a beer, I am duty bound to buy the next one. It all evens out, unless you happen to be the type of louse who stands around caging drinks and smile with your short arms and deeper pockets when the round comes to you. I don't do those things, because I have had my ass kicked repeatedly and with great gusto by my elders and betters. You don't get away with that too much around Western Avenue, though I have seen it done. I called such a person a louse, an insect who feeds on others; but, who's to say? One man's louse is another man's cause celebre.

The bane of my outlook in all things over the last four decades has been a dominance of earnest people who speak in hushed measured tones and affect a look of pained recognition but intolerant disgust with all other people. Joan Walsh a Progressive writer and editor of Salon and all too frequent guest on MSNBC ( the Tool Shed) comes to mind. Joan Walsh and folks like her have a mantra - 'Who's to Say?'

e.g. Michael Jackson was not only the greatest entertainer of all time, the 21st Century Dionysus who danced in a Golden Age; a John the Baptist who announced Barack Obama. Who's to say?

Me. I don't do group think and neither do most Americans. I voted for Barack Obama when he ran against Bobby Rush in my Congressional District - Obama lost. I like Barack Obama.

I worked for John McCain. John McCain lost, because he seemed to want to lose, after September 19th 2008 - the day the American Economy tanked. My Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Aunts and my hundreds of cousins voted for Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is my President. I still feel that he was no where near ready to be President and that he will be the Jimmy Carter of the New Millennium - too bad. Nice guy.

I belong to the We - 99% of the Hickey/Winters/Brennan/Donahue/Cleary family voted to make Barack Obama Our President. Pronouns matter. Possessive Pronouns really matter. My guy lost, We won. That is America! Thanks be to God!

Who's to say? Me. I read and seem to understand history. I read and seem to understand poetry,drama, fiction and essays. I taught literature with some success for decades. I occasionally even get paid to write something, because I have something to say. Somethings I managed to learn on my own -from great books.
The rest I learned by getting the odd slap when needed, or from the silent treatment for being a jerk.

I work for and with black teenagers at Leo High School in Gresham neighborhood - in fact a black kid was shot over at 1400 W. 78th Place early this morning by a clown in dred-locks firing from the sun-roof of the car in which he was riding. Some mother has a kid at Advocate Hospital in Oak Lawn with his guts shot out and tubes in every orifice - my kids are asleep. This kid could be a Leo Man, I hope and pray not. The Kids at Leo High School are all black, but the guys helping pay their tuition are nearly all white guys.

Race relations issues are talked about by Joan Walsh-like head-shakers on WTTW who never drop a dime to help kids at Leo. Race Relations happen every day and race relations are pretty damn good. Leo High School is a safe place for Black Kids - they study, meet old white guys, play sports and succeed. Their folks pay heavy tuition bills and old white guys buck up plenty to ease their pain.

Gresham District Chicago Cops protect the kids once they are out of the school and help to see that they get home, without some clown throwing shots at them.


Sheriff Tom Dart unearthed the horrific desecration of My Neighbors at Burr Oak Cemetery. We have a problem. We are under siege, as Max Weismann wrote to me with heartbreakingly succinct clarity.

A Joan Walsh can write for Salon and shake her jowls with disgust at all of us, while making a case for Abortion about white on black systemic racism on MSNBC. Great.

The bones of a child are as precious to me as the bones of Emmett Till, Ezzard Charles, Dinah Washington and the hundreds of people who struggled and laughed and provided for their children and were back-hoe-ed by three morons at the bidding of some others.

We have a problem. Sheriff Tom Dart and all of us are now doing something about what was done. We need to start taking care of Someone Else's Troubles by calling out the dopes who continue to say 'Who's to Say?' We Do.

We need to Read what is Great and not just what is rammed down our throats, by Group Thinkers. We can read Dead White Men and still honor the thoughts of living women of color - honor bright; it can happen.

We need to say that killing Children is not a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; murder is not the result of systemic racism, but an individual act selfish contempt for everyone else; suffering is not Some Else's Trouble; help is not always the result of more taxes.

Who's to say? Me. I don't need to be right; I just need to live like I might be correct.


Go to The Center for the Study of Great Ideas and get some Great Ideas from people who had them.

The CENTER has two primary missions:

One, to help awaken citizens from their moral and intellectual slumbers and to help them understand why philosophy is everybody's business: the possibility of finding sound and practical answers to questions about the good life and good society. And philosophy's ability to answer the most basic normative questions, WHAT OUGHT WE SEEK IN LIFE? And HOW OUGHT WE SEEK IT?

Two, to promulgate the insights and ideals embedded in Dr. Adler's lifelong intellectual work in the fields of Philosophy, Liberal Education, Ethics and Politics. To continue functioning as THE resource for, access to, and the on-going interpretation of his work.

Burr Oak - The Four? Oh, There's Got to be More! Ah, "The Presence of Management!"

The looting of graves to make room for more bodies and bigger profits at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL. necessarily leads to the simple proposition -" God ain't making any more land."

Four cemetery employees are charged with dismembering human bodies so plots could be resold, or pounding down original graves to create more room, affecting nearly 300 deceased. ( click my post title for more) For openers.


The path from Burr Oak Cemetery goes well beyond the greedy designs of four hapless mopes - three gravediggers/graverobbers and the Lady in the Office - to Tucson, Arizona where the former corporate heads of Perpetua laid their weary bodies down in retirement.

Slivy Edmonds Cotton, the former president and CEO of Perpetua, Inc, lives in Tucson, AZ. She says she stepped down in 2002.

During her time with the company, she managed Burr Oak Cemetery.

Cotton says, "I have to tell you I was totally shocked and appalled at such a horrendous story, we really spent a lot of time trying to create the type of company in the funeral industry that was all about serving families and people."

We asked cotton if she investigated any similar cases of cemetery desecration at the time she was managing Burr Oak.

Cotton says, "I don't think that there's ever been anything to this magnitude. There are always rumors about things may have happened years ago, and there were rumors about things that might have happened years ago. We did do some investigation and were not able to identify anything that had actually happened."

Cotton says she did hire Carolyn Towns. Towns was one of the employees arrested in the case.

Cotton adds, "Carolyn having been on the management team, she was certainly aware at that time that these types of things were not tolerated."

Cotton goes on to say that she hasn't had contact with Towns in years, nor the company.

"I was there very often and we had two or three other managers who traveled to the various properties to make sure there was enough presence of management. This is not the way most cemeteries operate, and it's certainly was not the way Burr Oak operated at the time I was involved."

The current president of Perpetua in Richardson, Texas, Melvin Bryant didn't return our calls.

Ah, the Presence of Management! Is that something akin to The Ghost of Management, or the Chimera of Management? The Veneer of Management? How about the Panavision of Profit? The Galaxy of Greed?

I live near Burr Oak. In fact, I live near most cemeteries it seems. My wife and most of my family are interred with the Catholic Cemeteries at Holy Sepulchre and Mount Olivet. The Catholic Cemeteries purchased vast tracks of land way back in the 19th Century. Remarkably, despite more than a century of Christian burials in those vast tracks of land there remains many more great tracks of land, yet unused, or plotted.

Where the land is tight for burial, some real hideous shenanigans can dance afoot. Cui Bono? Those who might profit. Grave diggers, Management Presence Officers, and there just might be long procession of others who profit in Loss.

It seems that 111th Street, 115th Street and 127th Street and the adjunct north and south routes to the various Gates to Eternity in the southwest Chicago Mortuary Community are rarely if ever free of anacondas of cars trailing a hearse.

Land is tight and the mortal certainty of death must have made an impact upon a few people beyond the four mopes now in custody.

Sheriff Tom Dart, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and other members of Law Enforcement should be digging into the financial records and acquisitions of the Perpetua Corporate Officers past and present and perhaps other industries in the Death Market who passed through the Gates at Burr Oak.

This is only getting warmed up, Folks!

Sheriff Tom Dart - Dignity for the Deceased as Profit Made from Burking by Resurrectionists at Burr Oak in Alsip

Grave robbing is a taboo that goes back to the dawn of civilized (people living together) history. Respect, piety and grace is bestowed upon the dead, unless profit is to be had in violating the sanctity of eternal sleep. Indiana Jones, or Burke and Hare, rob graves for profit.

Burking the dead was a practice also known as Resurrectionists, after the two Irish grave robbers in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early part of the 19th Century -William Burke and William Hare - in which graves would be robbed and bodies sold for medical research and anatomy lectures. The practice was so lucrative that Burke and Hare became serial killers who filled the graves that they would later rob.

In the light of the miserable treatment of the dead at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL., Sheriff Tom Dart dispatched the Chaplains of the Cook County Sheriff's Office to bless the grounds in which the bodies were dumped, after their plots were re-sold.

This small act of decency speaks very well of the Cook County Sheriff. When small deeds mark a heart, one can trust that larger issues will be graced with a great heart.

Well done, Sheriff Dart!



Click my post title for the link to the Tribune Story.

Lisa Madigan - Genius

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Edmund Burke

’Tis with out judgment as our watches, none go just alike, yet each believes his own. In poets (Politicians) as true genius is bur rare, true taste as seldom is the critic’s share…” (lines 9-12).

“But you who seek to give and merit fame, and justly bear a critic’s noble name, be sure yourself and your own reach to know, how far your genius, taste, and learning go…” (lines 46-49). Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism



"Politics is more difficult than physics."
- Albert Einstein
Physicist (1879 - 1955)


Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is a genius. The fact that her father is the Illinois Speaker of the House matters not; it don't hurt none, but it matters not. It only matters to people who tend to be smarmy and bitter in the first place.

Politics is not a science; it is an Art. It is a skill that is mastered over years of practice in the same way that a poet, or a plumber becomes one with the craft.

Many plumbers have sons and daughters in the trade, but damn few poets hang out a sign that reads- Oscar Wilde & Sons - Preferred Posey. To the Gay Absolutist and the Homophobe - Oscar had kids, before he buggered off with Lord Douglas. None of the Kids went into the business, however.

Politicians pass the Art on to their children - each in her/his own way. Lord Randolph Churchill greatest accomplishment in his years on earth had to be the psychological abuse and torment he passed on to Winston Churchill, who would go on to serve and save Western Civilization.

Mayor Richard J. Daley, the exact tempermental polar opposite of Lord Randolph, was a 'take the kids to work' politician, much like the artiste plumber, whose children can not wait to draw a union card, cut and thread pipe and then dope it up!

Adlai Stevenson was another very good Artist. We have many political father and sons shops here in the 19th Ward - most are pretty damn effective mechanics.

Mike Madigan is a master politician and his daughter Lisa Madigan is a political genius.

Attorney General Madigan followed a wonderful man, Republican Jim Ryan and a political hack, our Junior Senator from Illinois into the job. Lisa Madigan learned from both of her predecessors.

It was the cow-pie of Roland's Burris's brief,but far too long tenure in the U.S. Senate that prompted most 'columnists' to hold Lisa Madigan up as challenger to Burris. It will be Chris Kennedy. That will be an absolute howl to witness!

Lisa Madigan understands that her management of Attorney General in the toxic Illinois atmosphere will allow her to chose her Office in her own Time.

In fact, I expect Attorney General Madigan to make a string of indictments against the many Foxes in the Taxpayers Hen house over the next few semesters, that will make national headlines and power alliances on both sides of political aisle.

Fight for the Governorship! Fight with Roland! Their bones will bleach like roadkill outside of Carbondale in August.

Lisa Madigan is a genius. Her old man is a great mechanic, but the girl is a genius!

Monday, July 6, 2009
MADIGAN SUES CHICAGO FURNITURE RETAILER
Read more »


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Thursday, July 2, 2009
***CONSUMER ALERT***CONSUMER ALERT***
MADIGAN: 4 MILLION BABY FLOATS RECALLED DUE TO DROWNING RISK
31 Reports of Children Falling Into Water When Float Seat Splits
Read more »
Inflatable Baby Floats Recalled

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Thursday, July 2, 2009
DuPAGE COUNTY MAN SENTENCED ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CONVICTION
Read more »


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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
MADIGAN: TICKETMASTER AGREES TO SHUT DOWN DECEPTIVE TICKET BROKER WEB SITES
New Guidelines Result from Attorney General’s Investigation of Exorbitant Hannah Montana Ticket Prices
Read more »


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Monday, June 29, 2009
***CONSUMER ALERT***CONSUMER ALERT***
ATTORNEY GENERAL MADIGAN AND AARP WARN CONSUMERS ABOUT DEFECTIVE WOMEN’S ROBES LINKED TO SIX DEATHS
More than 2,500 Dangerous Robes Still in Illinois Homes
Read more »
Photo of Product

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Friday, June 26, 2009
MADIGAN, I-SORT PARTNERS ANNOUNCE RESULTS OF QUINCY AREA SEX OFFENDER COMPLIANCE CHECKS
Read more »


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Thursday, June 25, 2009
MADIGAN FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST WHEELING TRAVEL COMPANY FOR FAILURE TO PROVIDE REFUNDS TO CONSUMERS
Attorney General Urges Consumers to Be Alert for Fraud During Summer Travel Season
Read more »


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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
MADIGAN, TJ MAXX REACH AGREEMENT TO ENSURE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA FOLLOWING MASSIVE SECURITY BREACH
TJ Maxx Parent Company to Implement Comprehensive Data Security System
Read more »
Attorney General Lisa Madigan is no Dan Lipinski and certainly no Todd Stroger. The fact that her Dad is Illinois Speaker of the House of Representatives matters not - it don't hurt none, either.

In fact, The Illinois Attorney General is a genius.

A genius understands her times and her abilties to make the most of those times.

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Monday, June 22, 2009
ATTORNEY GENERAL SUES DECEPTIVE IMMIGRATION SERVICES PRACTICE FOR FAILURE TO PROVIDE PROMISED SERVICES
Read more »


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Thursday, June 18, 2009
MADIGAN REACHES AGREEMENT WITH US CREDIT FIND TO PREVENT PHONE CRAMMING
Read more »

Houli is Back - Writing on Cook County: Mike Houlihan's Cook County Buzz at the Examiner

Chicago Renaissance Man, writer, film director, actor and political prognosticator Michael Houlihan is writing and mentor, long-time Chicago News legend, Jim Strong giving sound journalistic advice, at the Chicago Examiner! Recent Forbes Magazine profile subject ( 31st Wealthiest Man Around) Philip Anschutz is the publisher of The Examiner chain.

Mike's monthly Hooliganism for the Irish American News is no where near enough blue collar value point of view for a Metropolitan Area living in a veritable Honesty Desert. With Houlihan there is -No Nuance, No Parsing, No Smarm ( south side culture allows No Smarm - only hot-blooded invective, malediction and blasphemy) and No Group Think Whining that the Pencil Neck Progressives offer. Thus, " We were ALL of Us made better people the day Michael Jackson decided to become Diana Ross - all of us!"

Now, the Chicago Examiner provides writers like Mike Houlihan to present the unvarnished and un-PC truths to readers, wasting away to intellectual nothingness for lack of solid opinion fiber. Houli got Fiber, Y'all!

Houli is fiber rich and chock full of the real McCoy. Here's a taste of Houli's declamation on Goo-Goos ( Good Government Progressive Feebs in Creeps Clothing):

Many goo-goo’s in Cook County are Democrats, but they chafe at the reputation of their party. They elected Blago, but won’t admit it. They love Governor Pat Quinn for his record as a goo-goo, but they reserve disdain for Daley.

Goo-goo’s are so much more than simple good government people; they are patronizing peddlers of pabulum. Like Zorn in the Tribune, Carol Marin in the Sun-Times, or that brilliant seasoned journalist Katie Couric who so intellectually took Sarah Palin to task on what magazines she read during the campaign.

Goo-goo’s belong to Planned Parenthood and PETA and the “Society for the Prevention of Jimmy Pushing Johnny Out of Line”.

Goo-goo’s believe that our new President walks on water and if we don’t see it we are racist luddites.

Goo-goo’s fear Palin more than Putin, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, and the Pope. She’s the antithesis of the goo-goo worldview, and she just might get elected President someday. That’s what scares them more than anything.

Chicago thanks the Examiner.Com for the return of sense to scene. Houli will be an imporant part of my great breakfast!

Primary Weasel -Joe Klein, or Billy Jack Does America!

Joe Klein knows Billy Jack. The real guy who made what is arguably and probably the first PC Movie. It was about an Irish -looking American Indian (Native American) dude who went all martial arts on Rednecks and Bikers in order to save Hippies and the Red Folks. Joe Klein is a Billy Jack Journalist - he kicks everyone he don't like. Hell, Joe hangs out! Picks up kicking tips and protects Hippies and Red Folks. Kick them rednecks!

http://www.billyjack.com/

Remember that idiotic song, One Tin-Soldier? Jesus, my filings hurt every time I hear that! There is a very special place in Hell for every person associated with that song.

Catholics are always good kicking targets:

"I do believe there's something weird a few of our colleagues have [against Clinton]," he said. "They tend to be Roman Catholics, actually. People like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd. They've had it in for Bill and Hillary Clinton since Monica Lewinsky. They feel that the Clintons are trying to put one over on us all the time."

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/03/03/klein-alter-and-lowry-on-anti-hillary-bias

Well, for elites like Joe Klein, Catholics never belonged here in the first place, unless they were needed to dig ditches, trim-lawns, hump steel and provide political aptitude for Progressive Cupcakes. Nuance.

It seems that after getting out of the elite Hackley School and University of Pennsylvania ( the official school of SEIU Leadership), Joe wrote for Rolling Stone and got close to Tom Laughlin - Billy Jack his own Bad Self.

Joe Klein out-ed the Clinton's with his Roman a clef Primary Colors as self--absorbed power vampires and made a killing by cashing-in trust and professionalism. Get cozy and trusted and betray that trust. Nuance.

The Nuanced are the Elitists who insult people and get rewarded. Joe Klein makes much money. Joe Klein talks down from that pile of dough.

Joe Klein offers all of us, in his Rolling Stoneish -Time piece, his sober Redneck kick on Redneck America in a dutiful slap as part of the Palin Pile On.

I wrote that Palin's America--white folks, small towns, traditional values--was a Republican fantasy, a vestige of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" hornswoggle in the 1980s.

Yep, you did Joe. Those are the bullies picking on Hippies and Red Folks outside of the feed store and around the Hippie School.

Americans are hornswoggled folks.

Real America is much different from, and more interesting than, that white-bread fantasy, a problem the Republican Party--the party of immigrant bashing--will be wrestling with for the immediate future. And it brings to mind a conversation I overheard, and can't get out of my mind, between two educated Iranians at a North Tehran party last month. Both had attended university in the U.S. One had recently returned from the States, the other hadn't been back here in 15 years. "You wouldn't recognize the place," the recent returnee said. "They don't have any Americans left."

I was in Real America last night and woke up in real America this morning and work ( Leo High School: All Black Male Catholic High School supported by Old White Catholic Guys)at the corner of 79th and Sangamon Streets, when I finish banging this out.

Last night I picked up my daughter Clare, Kara Donleavy, and Maddie Braun from cheerleading at St. Rita High School and got there early as always. I watched the St. Rita Varsity Football for twenty minutes with a white City Worker from St. Dennis Parish ( 83rd & Lawndale) who is required to live in the City limits and has five years left to meet his pension and later chatted with young Mike Crutchley a 36 year old African American CTA bus supervisor, at the barns on Archer Ave. and Pershing Road, who is a Chicago public school graduate and sends his daughters to Catholic Schools so that they will learn something and become successful. He wishes there were more Charter Schools. Catholic Schools cost a lung. The guy from St. Dennis sent three boys to St. Rita and three girls to McAuley -God bless him. Mike the CTA Superviser wondered 'how did he do that?' Mike knows. It was a rhetorical question posed by an American.

Mike's Daughter Casey and my daughter Clare are lifters in the same 'toss the smallest girl' contingent. The girl getting launched is a Mexican beauty named Isabella. All three girls will attend Mother McAuley -Irish American, African American and Mexican American. They work as team.

That is Real America.

Hey, Billy Joe, they pay you for your thoughts?

Ain't this country great?

Klein graduated from the Hackley School and the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in American civilization. In 1969, Klein began reporting for the Essex County Newspapers, and The Peabody Times in Massachusetts In 1972, he reported for Boston's WGBH, and until 1974 he was also the news editor for The Real Paper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a contributing editor for Rolling Stone from 1975 to 1980, and Washington bureau chief from 1975 to 1977.[1] He became friends with actor-director Tom Laughlin after interviewing him for Rolling Stone and appeared briefly as a reporter in Laughlin's 1977 film Billy Jack Goes to Washington.

Klein published Woody Guthrie: A Life in 1980 and Payback: Five Marines After Vietnam in 1984. He was a political columnist for New York from 1987 to 1992 where he won the Peter Kihss Award for reporting on the 1989 race for Mayor of New York. In May 1992 he joined Newsweek and wrote the column "Public Lives", which won a National Headliner Award in 1994. Newsweek also won a National Magazine Award for their coverage of Bill Clinton's 1992 victory. From 1992 to 1996 he was also a consultant for CBS News, providing commentary.[1]

'Crazy Legs' Quinn Side Steps Madigan's Tax-Guard and Waltzes into a Hay-Maker!

Governor Pat Quinn is a lovely man. Speaker Mike Madigan is probably a lovely guy as well. Mike Madigan is as easy to pin down, publicly and privately, as it is the very last olive oil coated snow pea on a huge plate with a dinner fork, while thirty formally dressed celebrities ask you questions about quantum mechanics while being taped by the crew of 60 Minutes for their Christmas Special.

The difference being that Pat Quinn has made a career of crafting a public persona as a guy who cuts his own lawn with an ancient Sears Craftsman 18 in. Cut Path Reel Mower, Hand Pushed, like the one he used twenty years ago against George Ryan, who hired guys to cut his lawn; and Mike Madigan, could care less what I, the Sun Times editorial board, PETA, Pope Benedict XVI, Perez Hilton, Rev. James Meeks, Carol Marin, WTTW, or the cast Blue Man Group think of him.

Mike Madigan is the Packey McFarland* of politics. Muhammad Ali once called Chicago welter-weight Packey McFarland the greatest boxer who never one a championship.

Pat Quinn is ballromm dancer in the ring with Packey McFarland, the king of the Stockyards.

Tim Novak, the only real investigative writer at the Sun Times wrote this on July 4th:

The governor spent two hours Friday -- a holiday for most state workers -- discussing the state's $9 billion deficit with state Sen. James Meeks, who backs the tax hike. Their meeting came one day after Quinn met with 27 female legislators.

The governor says he plans to sit down with more lawmakers in the coming days.

"I have a number of other legislators -- Democrat and Republican, House and Senate -- I will be meeting with over the next few days,'' Quinn told reporters. "We believe in consensus-building.''

The Senate approved a tax-hike proposal in May, but it failed in the House.

Madigan won't support Quinn's income-tax increase without support from Republican legislators, leaving the state without a budget, which could force drastic cuts in social service programs across Illinois.

Quinn didn't blame Madigan for the stalemate over the state's budget crisis. But Meeks did.

"I do not think the governor is the problem,'' said Meeks, who is also pastor of Salem Baptist Church, which has one of the biggest congregations in Illinois.

"I ain't scared to call the speaker out -- he ain't my daddy,'' Meeks said. "If the speaker wanted this solved, it would be solved. For whatever reason, he doesn't want to work this out. Pat Quinn is trying to do everything he can to save social services.''

Meeks accused Madigan of playing politics by refusing to pass the income-tax increase without support from Republican legislators.

"That's a political decision, not based on what's right and wrong,'' Meeks said. "I think the Democrats bear the burden here because we're in leadership. We can pass any bill.''

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said "the speaker is attempting to work cooperatively with the governor. The speaker supports a tax increase, but it's going to have to be a bipartisan effort. He [Meeks] ought to focus his efforts on Republicans.''

Political observers say they think Madigan is using the state budget crisis to politically weaken Quinn, who plans to run for election next year. One of Quinn's opponents in the Democratic primary could be Madigan's daughter, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. She is also mulling a run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Roland Burris.

Progress Illinois, SEIU's web comic book, uses Tim Novak's piece as a Madigan smear offering; however, it appears that the SEIU goon tactics in Springfield over the last few weeks have become tiresome to legislators as well as tax-payers.

Governor Quinn might try to 'side-step' Mike Madigan, but he will have canvass all over his back, when he hears the end of the Ten Count. Governor Pat Quinn has danced to SEIU's and Rev. James 'Someone Else's Money' Meeks hornpipes and Mike Madigan is a balanced hitter.

The more the media try to explain the motives of Mike Madigan, the more Pat Quinn will step into a Madigan Hay-Maker.

*

During his entire career, Packey engaged in 104 bouts and lost just the one. He never forgot the loss and as he moved up in competition, placed caution first and preferred to outbox his man with shiftiness and speed rather than try to put him out and risk getting caught by a lucky punch. For the remainder of his career, he was floored only twice – by Ray Bronson and “Cyclone” Johnny Thompson.

Packey grew up in a tough section of Chicago (“back of the stock yards”) and learned early on to use his fists to take care of himself in fights on the street and in the handball courts. During his first year in the ring (1904), at fifteen years of age, Packey lost the only fights he would ever lose. Harry Gilmore Jr. noticed him in 1906 and guided him to some impressive wins over Billy Finucane, Fred Gilmore, Young Morris, and Jack Fox and, in 1907, wins over Steve Kinsey, Joe Galligan, Kid Goodman, Maurice Sayers, Charlie Neary, and Benny Yanger. Another win over Goodman and victories over Kid Herman (newspaper) and Bert Keyes earned him a match with Freddie Welsh, the unbeaten Britisher.

Packey gained a decision over Welsh in ten rounds at Milwaukee on February 21, 1908 and followed this great win by defeating Jimmy Britt in six rounds at Colma on April 11, 1908.

When accusations of favoritism surfaced after the first McFarland-Welsh bout, fans clamoured for a rematch. A second bout with Welsh was held on July 4, 1908 at Los Angeles. It ended in a draw after twenty-five rounds. Welsh showed himself very clever and skillful at close quarters while McFarland was better at a distance.

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Lodge/6525/Article-PackeyMcFarland.htm

Governor Palin - Tosses the Clowns Back into Their Volkswagon

Palin Haters on Vacation! For now.

As a Regular Democrat (one not given to the allure of free Purple T-Shirts or having MSNBC think well of you), Sarah Palin represented all that is good in public service - Gov. Palin reminds me of all the great women in my neighborhood.

Moreover, Gov. Palin drew fire for John McCain*, for whom I had great hope and more admiration, until the economy tanked and McCain limped through the end of Campaign, and did so cheerfully and heroically.

Gov. Palin exuded the qualities detested by the Progressive robot-army of academics, media mopes, lard-padded politicians like Dick Durbin. ( click my post title for those)

Gov. Palin is feared, because she is genuine.

When the clowns gang up on one genuine American, it seems to me, time to pull the clowns off and toss them back into the Volkswagon.


* I was a very early McCain partisan in the last go-around, my daughter Nora was elected to be a McCain Delegate, and was sad to see John McCain give up the fight after September 19, 2008.

Who Should Challenge Dan Lipinski in the 3rd District?

Illinois - Third Congressional District

Area 124.5 mi² (322.45 km²)
Distribution 100% urban, 0% rural
Population (2000) 653,647
Median income $48,048
Ethnicity 77.9% White, 5.9% Black, 2.9% Asian, 21.3% Hispanic, 0.3% Native American, 2.7% other
Occupation 27.6% blue collar, 58.1% white collar, 14.3% gray collar
Cook PVI D + 11

Dan Lipinski -Congressman 3rd District:

Since taking office, Dan Lipinski has continued his father's pro-life stance, voting with Republicans to give federal courts jurisdiction in the Terri Schiavo case, and to maintain restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.[25] Among the legislation he has sponsored is the Family and Consumer Choice Act (HR 2738 IH), which would require cable television companies to either provide subscribers with increased options of channel selection or comply with the same FCC decency standards that apply to broadcasters.[26] He has voted to strengthen border security, with no provisions for citizenship for illegal immigrants, and to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border. In December 2005 he voted to make the Patriot Act permanent. In June 2006 he joined Republicans in opposing a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq and declaring the Iraq War to be a part of the War on Terrorism. Although in March 2007 he voted with Democrats in supporting a war spending bill which would establish a timetable, in May he voted for a spending bill which favored benchmarks rather than a timetable.[25][27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_3rd_congressional_district
Although marks a change in direction by Rep. Dan Lipinski that has shouted out with his vote for the Cap and Trade Bill ( in my opinion, the single most thoughtless and dangerous Bill since Prohibition) and now his support for a government controlled Health Care Reform measure that will add a trillion dollars to our tax-burdens and only cover one-third of the forty-five million Americans it trumpets to cover. Click my post title for that vote (219 for Cap & Trade-212 Against the worst Bill since Prohibition)
The squeaks in this set of brogans will be heard around the world.

The 3rd Congressional District is fiscally and socially Conservative and comprised of the very people who bear America's tax burdens - blue collar and white collar workers. The 3rd Congressional District is largely Catholic and anti-Abortion.

It seems to me that Dan Lipinski wanted to stay in his Congressional seat more than he cared to represent the people of this District. Progress Illinois the propaganda arm of the Leftist SEIU Illinois which represents unskilled and no skill workers who are tax-salaried as janitors, security guard and State funded nursing home workers, has embraced Dan Lipinski. SEIU targeted Real Democrats in the Illinois House Kevin McCarthy, Jim Brosnahan, and especially Kevin Joyce who fought run-away waste in revenue for SEIU pet programs. Congressman Dan Lipinski is snuggling up to SEIU - whose Andy Stern remains determined to kill Trades Union Apprenticeship Programs in every State and gain control of Trades requirements, examinations and ability to license. Nice friends, Dan.

http://progressillinois.com/2009/7/1/lipinski-public-plan

Dan Lipinski played ball on Cap and Trade and will vote for government Health Care.

Dan Lipinski gave the vote needed to bring the number necessary for passage to 218 votes in House of Representatives and Illinois Republican Mark Kirk tossed the leg over that fence for 219 for Cap and Trade.

Cap and Trade was rushed. It was not studied, nor was it debated. Cap and Trade will kill the Illinois Coal Industry. Cap and Trade will make 3rd District residents - most making enough in salary to meet their mortgage obligations and run-away Cook County and Illinois Taxes - confined to the home that they own.

Cap and Trade will make it nearly impossible for Middle Class home owners to sell their homes, without going into greater debt by meeting the new Federally mandated Green Energy Standards for heating, insulation, lighting and windows.

Dan Lipinski sold out the 3rd District in order to find cover with the Progressives.

SEIU will stay off Dan's back. Democratic Legislative Strategist Chuck Schumer reached out to Dan Lipinski. Schumer needs his ducks in a row and Dan Lipinski already quacked on Cap and Trade.

A Democrat is needed to challenege Dan Lipinski

Democrat who will stand up to Planned Parenthood and the Abortion Industry; a Democrat who wants to secure America's borders, but, unlike Dan Lipinksi, respects the Mexican Americans and their relatives who want to find a path to citizenship; a Democrat who recognizes Real Labor ( American Trades Unions) and not the bullying Stalinists who frighten gutless politicians and dandified editorial boards and arm-chair Menckens who write columns for Chicago's media; a Democrat who wants America's military supported and our foreign policy proud; A Democrat who is a fiscal Conservative, unwilling to cave-in to political expediency; a Democrat who will not be a Progressive stooge, but represent this District with Faith, Family and Freedom in mind at all times.

This is America's Independence Day Celebration weekend.

What better way to celebrate than have a Real Democrat challenge Dan Lipinski.