Monday, February 13, 2012

Chicago Tribune Editorial Hypocrisy Avoids School Choice, Vouchers, to Plump More U. of Chicago Influence - School Choice is The Metric that Matters


Nepotism, political hiring, crony capitalism, and toe-nail fungal infections get full bleat from Chicago's lily-livered editorial boards.

That tradition continues with today's milk and water editorial on Chicago's permanently hobbled public schools.

School closings, due to complete failure, gets the Hurrumph of the day. The editorial board panda bears of the Medill Empire tout yet another fabulous University of Chicago ( home of John Dewey, the Prospero of our Caliban public schools) study as the silver-bullet cure.

Under the heading of saving poor kids trapped in failing schools, the editorial praises the factory that produced this mess from the get-go:

One in three Chicago students is stuck in an academically feeble school. Scores of public schools languish — some for more than a decade — on academic probation.

We strongly support the CPS effort to close the worst-performing schools and send those students to better-performing schools nearby. We back the CPS plan to send 10 schools next year into what's known as turnaround — an aggressive move in which teachers and administrators are fired, and specially trained replacements are brought in.

Critics say these moves don't work. The critics are wrong. These dramatic reforms pay off in significant student gains, according to a just-released report by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The consortium found that 22 lagging elementary schools made dramatic academic progress in four years under several reform strategies, compared with similar schools that didn't undergo reforms.

The highlights:

• Faltering elementary schools dramatically improved in reading and math. The schools cut the gap between their test scores and the CPS average by half in reading, and by two-thirds in math. That's astounding growth in four years.

And what of similar schools that didn't undergo reform? No change. Those schools continued to fail their students.

• Revamping struggling schools generally didn't mean pushing out lower-performing students. By and large, the students who enrolled after the CPS intervention had previously attended the school.

Yes, the schools still fell short of the average CPS school. But the metric that matters here is student growth. The trajectory is up.


Boy, Howdy! The metric that matters is student growth! Please, parse that one.

Here's the deal, Sweethearts - To wax automotively metaphorical, the engine is shot; call a tow; get a new one.

School Choice, Vouchers for all Illinois taxpayers with children would fix the problem, but you already know that.

Nowhere in the hand-wringing of this editorial word are the words -school choice, school reform, or vouchers.

Instead we get another, trumpet blow for Chicago's policy factory -University of Chicago - the same geniuses that gave us the CTA Reforms ( Frank " Too Smart" Krusei and Forrest Claypool, The Garbage Grid, Cook County Reform & etc.) and place for former Mayor Daley to train future policy peddlers.

We need a Shakman Decree or sorts to protect citizens from the tweedy geniuses.

Catholic schools outperform public schools. Catholic Schools, were they collectively placed in an iron lung, would outperform CPS on a snow day following a plague of locusts.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

An Interrogative Reply to Rachel Maddow's Paean to Contraception

Rachel Maddow and the Missus in a domestic moment - contraception is not only favorable, but scientifically unnecessary



Rachel Maddow argues for contraception with same conviction and from the same moral and spiritual rampart as Ghandi ordering a steak.

Maddow sums up the HHS Choice Mandate thus:

There is no constitutional infirmity in requiring religious institutions to follow the same insurance and labor regulations as other employers. Twenty-eight states already require that health insurance plans cover contraception; eight states do not even exempt churches from that requirement, as the Obama administration’s rules would, even before the president announced an expanded religious exemption on Friday. New York, whose Catholic archbishop has railed so vehemently against the administration on this issue, already lives under the rule he decries — it’s state law. The rule is also partially enshrined in federal law thanks to a December 2000 ruling of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. More than a dozen congressional Republicans proposed that this same rule become federal law in 2001, to a furious outcry from precisely no one.

The right has picked a fight on this issue because religiosity is a convenient partisan cudgel to use against Democrats in an election year. Despite that, some Democrats and even some liberals have embraced their logic. The thinking inside the Beltway seems to be that religious voters will turn against Democrats unless the White House drops the basic idea that insurance should cover contraception.

Time will tell on the political impact of this fight, but the relevant political context here is more than just a 2012 measure of Catholic bishops’ influence on moral issues. It’s also this year’s mainstream Republican embrace of an antiabortion movement that no longer just marches on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to criminalize abortion; it now marches on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, holding signs that say “The Pill Kills.”



Which begs the question -What's it to you?



http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rachel-maddow-the-gop-war-on-birth-control/2012/02/10/gIQAbZ734Q_story.html

Catholics United - The Late Great Tom Roeser Called Them Vichy Catholics


Tom Roeser was one brilliant guy. I wish he were around to help out in the escalating brawl between Catholic Americans and the Obama Administration. Tom delighted in intellectual and moral combat. Catholics are a diverse demographic. Takes all kinds. They even let me in for God's sake.

Tom and I once talked about the diversity in the American Church. There is always room for disagreement among good people. There is even room for not-so-good people. Who am I to judge? Why, I judge not. In fact, I could could shive a git about the opinion of folks seeking to do harm while wrapping themselves snugly and smugly in hostile superiority. Shucks, I just hang around with people who are on the level and at least try to do some good, as carbon foot prints.

One group, that was funded and established by George Soros - the Cesare Borgia of the Obama Movement -Catholics United are about as genuine as my willingness to do 100 sit-ups each morning.

Tom Roeser called the Vichy* Catholics.

Vichy was the shakings of the bag given to Petain and Laval when Hitler absorbed France. Then the old wall-paper hanger took that back.

The Catholic Hospital Association are Vichy Catholics as well it seems. Why the hell not? The American Catholic Church witnessed the Quislings like Pelosi, Sebelius, and Durbin parse Planned Parenthood for years.

The news media are already a boil with chirps from Vichy Catholics and Quisling Politicians.


Yet the non-profit, Washington, DC-based Catholics United, Inc., offered its blessing on Mr. Obama, noting that “the new regulation will ensure that Catholic hospitals, universities and social service providers that are religiously opposed to contraception and sterilization do not have to provide or even refer for those services, while also requiring insurance companies provide contraceptive services free of charge to any enrollee who wishes to have the coverage.”


and the always daffy Carol Marin in the Chicago Sun Times My aunt Gert loves Carol, because "She's so feisty." Aunt Gert thinks that Johnny Mathis was feisty too.

Barack Obama relied on rank-and-file Catholics in his 2008 election. And he needs them now.

But the president also needs independent women on his side. And they, recently infuriated by the Susan B. Komen Foundation’s now-rescinded defunding of Planned Parenthood, are sick of feeling like second-class citizens when it comes to anything connected to birth control. The White House was forced to retrench.

And fast.

“Fortunately, they caught it, they fixed it,” Keehan said. “And we should continue to make the Affordable Care Act work for people who have nothing or very little in health insurance. And not be distracted.”


Really Sister Keehan -thanks for the collaboration. Vichy sent Jews to the gas chambers and helped the Reich sniff out patriots.

Catholics United offers this beauty -

Bishops are increasingly isolated from Catholic institutions most affected by the decision.

Washington DC – After demonstrating initial support for the Obama Administration's recent compromise on the HHS rule affecting religious exemption and access to contraception, yesterday evening, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops took the unfortunate step of escalating their campaign to include opposition to all forms of mandated contraception coverage. In a statement on their Website, the Catholic bishops announced that they will now pursue a legislative solution that rescinds mandated coverage for contraceptive services in all health care plans.

In contrast to the position of the Catholic bishops, many significant Catholic organizations directly affected by the HHS rule - such as the Catholic Health Association, the University of Notre Dame, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Catholic Charities USA- publicly supported and welcomed the Obama Administration's willingness to accommodate their religious concerns.
Strictly non partisan. So is the 19th Ward Democratic Organization.

Catholics United -Vichy Catholics - are headed by Jimmy Salt -Le Chagrin et la PitiƩ

James Salt - Executive Director
James has extensive experience working with national progressive Catholic peace and justice organizations as well as political campaigns involving Catholic strategy. He has worked for Pax Christi USA as a leader Pax Christi's Young Adult Forum, NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, and was part of the launch team of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Most recently, he held an organizing position Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, and oversaw the Kansas Democratic Party's faith outreach efforts, including messaging work for Governor Sebelius and development of faith-based messaging resources. James lives in Washington, DC.


Well I'll be dipped an rolled there Salty! Faith-based messaging? Propaganda, you might say? Messaging for HHS Sec. Sebelius?

The Catholic Church in America is diverse. It even tolerates Vichy messaging.

*Vichy for Dummies

"On 14th June 1940, the German Army occupied Paris. Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, now realized that the German Western Offensive could not be halted and suggested that the government should move to territories it owned in North Africa. This was opposed by his vice-premier, Henri-Philippe Petain, and the supreme commander of the armed forces, General Maxime Weygand. They insisted that the government should remain in France and seek an armistice.

Out voted, Reynaud resigned and President Albert Lebrun, appointed Petain as France's new premier. He immediately began negotiations with Adolf Hitler and on 22nd June signed an armistice with Germany. The terms of the agreement divided France into occupied and unoccupied zones, with a rigid demarcation line between the two. The Germans would directly control three-fifths of the country, an area that included northern and western France and the entire Atlantic coast. The remaining section of the country would be administered by the French government at Vichy under Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain.

Other provisions of the armistice included the surrender of all Jews living in France to the Germans. The French Army was disbanded except for a force of 100,000 men to maintain domestic order. The 1.5 million French soldiers captured by the Germans were to remain prisoners of war. The French government also agreed to stop members of its armed forces from leaving the country and instructed its citizens not to fight against the Germans. Finally, France had to pay the occupation costs of the German troops.

Over the next four years Henri-Philippe Petain led the right-wing government of Vichy France. The famous revolutionary principles of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" were replaced by "Work, Family, Fatherland". Prominent figures in the Vichy government included Pierre Laval, Jean-Francois Darlan and Joseph Darnand.


http://www.catholics-united.org/

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/10556310-452/a-sensible-and-solid-compromise.html

http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2007/09/vichy-collaborators.html

Cardinal George's Letter on Obama Choice Mandate-Cosmic Impiety and Single Living


"Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth with a lever" Archimedes

Cardinal George's powerful letter deconstructs the Obama Shell Game regarding Mandated Choice and serves notice on a culture that celebrates the end of marriage as the fulcrum that supports and hinges civilization.

Contraception means 'against fertilization.' No babies. An unfertilized civilization runs against the clock and ultimately . . .well who is left to do the counting? Nancy Pelosi? Dave Axelrod? Forced contraception is Planned Parenthood's President Obama's triumph of what Bertrand Russell called the cosmic impiety of secular thought.

Piety is recognition of obligations. Cardinal George's fine letter read to Catholics in Chicago today challenges us to those obligations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20 that
almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Administration has seemingly ignored the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics must be prepared either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made
second class citizens because of their religious beliefs. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. All that has been built up over so many years in our Catholic institutions should not be taken away by the stroke of an administrator’s pen. This order reduces the Church to a private club, destroying her public mission in society. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.


Francis Cardinal George has challenged not only Catholic, but Americans to stand together against the prevailing sentiment that marriage is the fulcrum of culture.

Cardinal George and Joel Kotkin, America's best societal analyst and demographer, write about the mindset that is America's Cosmic Impiety. In Russell’s chapter in his A History of Western Philosophy on the American pragmatist philosophy John Dewey, he has a long aside on what he calls “cosmic impiety” with a certain dread as to unspoken but potentially ruinous consequences:

“The attitude of man towards the non-human environment has differed profoundly at different times. The Greeks, with their dread of hubris and their belief in a Necessity or Fate superior even to Zeus, carefully avoided what would have seemed to them insolence towards the universe. The Middle Ages carried submission much further: humility towards God was a Christian’s first duty. Initiative was cramped by this attitude, and great originality was scarcely possible. The Renaissance restored human pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and disaster. Its work was largely undone by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. But modern technique, while not altogether favorable to the lordly individual of the Renaissance, has revived the sense of the collective power of human communities. Man, formerly too humble, begins to think of himself as almost a God. The Italian pragmatist Papini urges us to substitute the ‘Imitation of God’ for the ‘Imitation of Christ’.” (Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, p. 737)

Russell further goes on to say on the same page:

In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the way in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness… I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time…

Nothing says Dewey like Planned Parenthood. In order to make the euthanasia and infanticide wholesome articles of modern evolved secular doctrinal bad medicine go down, the sugar of self-love and single living is poured down from every cultural outlet. Joel Kotkin hones in on this toxic sweetener by identifying where single living takes root:

The importance of singlehood and childlessness is amplified by location. The greatest bastions of non-families are found in the centers of the country’s media, cultural and intellectual life. Single households already constitute a majority in Manhattan and Washington, and they are heading in that direction in Denver, Seattle and San Francisco.

The growing self-confidence of these post-familial constituencies is evident in recent articles and books hailing not only the legitimacy but even the preference of this lifestyle option. Kate Bollick’s much celebrated and well-argued portrayal in the Atlantic of attractive matchless, and childless, 40-something females celebrates the coming of age of this new perspective on family life.

Bollick , citing the degraded condition of today’s males, openly embraces “the end of traditional marriage as an ideal.” One of her heroines, California psychologist Bella DePaulo, dismisses the traditional family unit as a kind of mental malady she labels “matrimania.” Oh well, there goes the primary basis for four thousand years of civilization.


Why would this be important, one might ask? Kotkin explains it's all about political power, Clyde!

The Atlantic piece serves as a kind manifesto for this key emerging Democratic constituency. But it’s not just single women now swarming into the Democratic Party. NYU Professor Eric Klineberg’s recent ode to singleness in the New York Times follows a similar narrative, but has room for left-leaning male singletons as well. This trend is even more pronounced in demographically disintegrating Europe, a fact that only increases its appeal to the sophisticated denizens of the single zone.

Are there any risks to Democrats — and advantages to Republicans — in this new post-familial tilt? Author and New America fellow Phil Longman argues that in the long run the “greater fertility of conservative segments of society ” could allow the palpably brain-dead GOP to inherit the country. Childless singletons may be riding high now, he writes, but as non-breeders their influence ends with their own lifespans.

To win the future, according to Democratic activists and millennial chroniclers Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, Democrats must all appeal to the next generation of families. Many of today’s childless millennials are still under 30 and plan to have kids. Reflecting their own experience with divorce as children, 50% consider being a good parent their highest priority in life. A strong plurality also see themselves ending up in the suburbs.

That means Democrats could pay a big price for disdaining homemakers, the often unaesthetic chores of child-raising and particularly suburbia, because that’s precisely the place where many of today’s urban millennials will likely end up in the next decade.

To address the future millennials, Democrats don’t need to adopt the often Medievalist views of their Republican rivals. But they will have to craft a message that appeals to a demographic that looks, at least somewhat, like the current First Family.


Marriage and the family is the fulcrum for the lever of civilization. Without marriage there is an empty planet, let alone a civilization.

Cardinal George and Joel Kotkin are taking up the warning against Dewey/Hegalian 'cosmic impiety' from 1946. We are challenged.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/02/10/sex-singles-and-the-presidency/2/

http://geopolicraticus.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/cosmic-hubris-or-cosmic-humility/

Friday, February 10, 2012

Jews and Catholics in the Same Boat on Lake Progressive America ( It Ain't No Ark)


The idea that a mainstream American church would engage in this sort of abuse of Jews and the Jewish state is shameful. Jonathan Tobin Commentary

Jonathan Tobin and many other Jews are perplexed by Christians who are not evangelical or Roman Catholic. Big Club, pal.

The mainstream Churches of whom Mr. Jonathan Tobin speaks are the same folks that kept Catholics and Jews out of the YimKa! The YMCA!!!!! The Mainstream Progressive Christian Churches were always happy to oblige Planned Parenthood in keeping down the Negro population, because they could get nowhere with Jews and Catholics.

Yep, the butt-neckid swimmers at the Y did not welcome Yids or Fish Eaters. Abby's Irish Rose worked on Broadway, but not at the local Y.

On the south side, Leo High School had a much better in door swimming pool, anyway. And you wore swimming trunks. We also had Ridge Park for indoor swimming or Memorial Park in Blue Island for out door swimming.

The Churches of Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt always welcomed Progressive anything. Presbyterians shrugged off the Scottish "Wee Kirk in the Dell" tartan long ago in America and embrace the KKK as well as the YMCA to keep America Healthy and 100% American! Methodists, United Church of Christ also shed and reptilian immigrant traits and coalitioned up with APA Progressive America.

The fashionable Christian Churches also managed to lure many Catholics away from the Paddy, Giuseppe, Stash and Vitus identity. Back of the Yards Eddie Cullen of De La Salle Institute matriculated to University of Chicago and became E. Claude Cullen, III, Esq. after U f C Law and is the Beverly Community Chairman of Call of to Action*.

Call to Action are Catholic Unitarians - upset that Jesus, Peter, James and John & the other guys were not women, gay or at least gender neutral.

Likewise Jewish Kid like Dovid Voorsanger, ran from Dad the Kantor at 76th & Euclid to become Dave Kant, President of Chicago Chapter ACLU.

The ACLU is crazy on steroids, or what happens when glue-sniffers start wearing suits.

Dave and E. Claude worked with Miss Raven NightGoat to help pass Illinois Lesbian War Memorial and Safe Driver Legislation.

It should come as no surprise whatsoever that Presbyterian U.S.A. and the other faith communities under secularist Progressive Doctrine (see National Council of Churches) finding fault with Israel and Jews who follow the Faith. These are the folks that built the YMCA. These are the Ecumenical folks, unless the issue happens to be abortion, homosexual marriage, capitalism, and common sense. Therefore, Israel is in the jackpot. Likewise, a Bill Moyer can stare longingly into the brown eyes of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and swoon like Archie gazing at Betty. Makes as much sense as Liberation Theology - black, white, or rainbow.

Jews and Catholics are in the same boat with most evangelical Christians - a stiff-necked people one and all.

Mr. Tobin concludes:

While this has nothing to do with the beliefs, let alone the actions of the overwhelming majority of American Presbyterians, it goes without saying the responsibility for policing these institutions belongs to church members. Because Jewish community relations professionals have failed to get the church hierarchy to act on this question up until now, it is up to the rank-and-file to speak out against this behavior and see that it ends. Those Presbyterians who say they wish to live in fellowship with their Jewish neighbors are obligated to ensure their church does not engage in anti-Semitism or support an economic war on the Jewish state. On this point, there can be no middle ground. The church must repudiate these extremists who have appropriated their good name to promote a hateful cause.
Don't hold your breath, there Jonathan. remember Progressives have the verifiable satisfying outcomes and you have only the truth.

That stiff-neckedness helped keep on our swimming trunks, believe it or not. The more things change the more they remain the same.



* Call to Action:Mission
Call To Action educates, inspires and activates Catholics to act for justice and build inclusive communities through a lens of anti-racism and anti-oppression principles.

Vision
Call To Action will be the leader in challenging Catholics to act for justice and build inclusive communities
e.g.
An Open Letter to President Obama
"We support marriage equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people not in spite of being Catholic, but because we are Catholic. As Catholics, we believe that we are all beloved children of God, and we want the laws of our land to mandate fairness, justice, and equality for all."

To read the full Open Letter, click here.

Support Women's Ordination and Fr. Roy!
Sign this petition that will be hand-carried by Fr. Roy Bourgeois, his lawyer and church justice leaders to the Vatican in October as part of a delegation witnessing for women's ordination.







Click on the links below to visit communion websites.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Alliance of Baptists

American Baptist Churches in the USA

Apostolic Catholic Church
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

Church of the Brethren

Community of Christ

The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America

The Episcopal Church

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Friends United Meeting

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Hungarian Reformed Church in America

International Council of Community Churches

Korean Presbyterian Church Abroad

Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

Mar Thoma Church
Moravian Church in America Northern Province and Southern Province

National Baptist Convention of America

National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.

National Missionary Baptist Convention of America

Orthodox Church in America

Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Polish National Catholic Church of America

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.

Reformed Church in America

Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada

The Swedenborgian Church

Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch

Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America

United Church of Christ

The United Methodist Church


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http://www.ncccusa.org/about/about_ncc.html

http://www.cta-usa.org/

Americans Welcome Challenges; Not Mandates

The day LBJ died the American Holocaust was born.

The tweedy old maids and dowager crabs who are and have been Progressive America can only have their will forced down peoples' throats. They never do well at the ballot box.

Academic cheerleaders and spin doctors give heft to the ACLU in its challenges to federal judges, when elections fail to do the will of the tweedy old maids and dowager crabs. They load the debate with historical evidence that sex between two gents is the moral and legal equivalent of a black child getting an education from a Jim Crow public school.

If these same academic sophists trotted out the true history of Progressive America it would begin with Radical Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War and not with Osawatomie John Brown.

Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner ignored Lincoln's Malice toward None foundation to southern reconstruction and mandated a punitive military occupation and reorganization to southern states. The balance of the 19th Century and most of the early 20th Century was a disaster for blacks and whites.

Reconstruction of the South is Progressive America's starting point and the next Progressive victory was Prohibition.

We live in the shadow of the ultimate Progressive Mandate -Roe v. Wade - the victory of eugenics over core human values.

Americans accept challenges and when that challenge is taken up very good things happen.

When Soviet Russia put Sputnik up above the stratosphere, a Jewish U.S. Navy submariner, Adm. Hyman Rickover challenged America to do a better job as parents, teachers and school administrators to shore up our lousy public schools in handling science and math. Good idea! No Mandate, a challenge.

America went to Space.

JFK worried about tubby kids and sent Pierre Salinger and his little brother Bobby, as well as Army and Marine recruits on 50 Mile Hikes.

Good idea! No Mandate, a challenge.

We did more sit-ups, pull-ups, sprints and push-ups in Gym and out of school.

When the dowager feminists of Planned Parenthood demanded to go beyond birth control to abortion they went went shopping for Federal Judges all the way up too the U.S. Supreme Court. Worst idea ever! A Mandate, and a huge challenge to the American soul.

We have a Mandate President obligated to dowagers and old maids.

John Kass, in the Chicago Tribune makes a great study of the HHS Choice Mandate requiring Catholic institutions to violate the tenets of faith.

Do Americans want access to contraceptives, and do some want abortion-inducing drugs? Of course, some do, and arguments have been made in support of such policy.

But should Catholic hospitals be forced by the federal government to provide such abortion-inducing drugs and other birth control in violation of faith?

Most Americans cringe at such a prospect. We see abusive federal power battering the church and we wonder, rightfully: What's next?

Naturally, Republicans will try to take advantage of this, but the problem is bigger than partisan politics. And the feeding of the federal leviathan isn't particular to Obama, as President George W. Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act proved to educators.

With great will and personal charm, Obama pushed through government-run health care. The problem was never with giving care to the needy. The problem was that this policy increased federal power. And now Americans are learning a terrible fact about what happens to freedom as federal authority grows. A line in a Wall Street Journal editorial makes this clear.

"When politics determines who can or should receive what benefits, and who pays what for it, government will use its force to dictate the outcomes that it wants — either for reasons of cost, or to promote its values, which in this case means that 'women's health' trumps religious conscience."
(emphasis my own - The Queen of the tweedy Old Maids his own bad self -John "Outcomes" Dewey!)

Americans are challenged, Catholics and non-Catholics. Living is not a Mandate it is a God's gift.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

City, County, State and Federal "Take it and Like It." South Side Parade, Progressive Government and All of Us

President Obama and the Lawn Rangers

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration indicated this week that it doesn't think the group trying to resurrect the South Side Irish Parade, shut down three years ago because of drunken violence, is prepared to pull it off Chicago Tribune

You set your watch by our elected officials - Gay marriage introduced - 'kill the parade where the breeders live . . .they also object to abortion . . .and are racist . . .and pay taxes.'


One Parade in the City of Chicago, one only, is a 'drunken' monstrosity. That is the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade. Only one parade in the City of Chicago is bad and all others are good, no matter what.

In the past ten years, the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade in the Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood neighborhoods has morphed into the South Side Chirish Parade thanks to the news media. Not only has the name been changed but the very location - a Catholic conglomeration of Catholic Parishes, schools and a university - has been tagged as intrinsically racist and bigoted.

Phil Kadner of the Sun Times Group wrote an article immediately after the 2008 Parade in which he attempted to mislead readers with a real stretcher that the genesis of the parade was no more than white flight Irish Catholic racism.

According to neighborhood legend, the South Side Irish Parade was launched by two families that fondly recalled the original St. Patrick's Day Parade on 79th Street.

It seems to me it really grew in popularity about the time the Daley clan was out of power, Harold Washington was mayor, and the Irish of the 19th Ward decided to secede from Chicago.


The parade was begun long before Harold Washington decided to run for Mayor of Chicago and really took off in popularity when Mayor Jane Byrne pulled Chicago Police Department security to punish the striking firefighters who live in this Ward. Like this year, only the South Side St. Patrick's Day enjoys no official support and the media does as it is told.

Sadly, Alderman Matt O'Shea finds himself opposing a neighborhood event that at one time needed to shore up security denied by the Mayor with private volunteers and could have used his skills and leadership. When Mayor Byrne tried to kill the Parade as a message to city workers, Alderman Mike Sheahan led the neighborhood keeping the Parade safe and sober without Chicago Police. The Parade was even more community minded than years previous. Politicians and news creatures broke their knee-caps crawling to and from this very Catholic community event every year subsequent.

Every politician from Mayor Washington to Governor Blagojevich participated in this 'drunken and racist' event. President Obama, while running for State and U.S. Senate made sure he was given proper place in the march route down Western Ave., as did Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown, Al Gore and even Pat Buchanan.

The South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade stands a good chance of being aborted by Rahm Emanuel. Security is the issue. Curbing drunken behavior and white ethnic Catholic racist highjinx that never happened at any past parade in this neighborhood will be Emanuel's meme. Parade Denied. Like the Obama HHS Choice Mandate, this is Progressive government writ large. Take it and like it and vote Democratic this March!

James "Skinny" Sheahan, brother of Alderman and Sheriff Mike Sheahan, provided leadership and is to be commended, whether the Parade marches on or not.

Sheahan demands 100% community intolerance of public consumpstrion of beer and booze. We don't want this neighborhood to be like Wrigleyville on a home game.

Every Cubs home game is a mini-south side Chi-rish Bacchanalia, but it is sanctioned and supported by Annie Sather's Cinnabon Alderman and Mayor alike.

The South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade was made into a political football by the 19th Ward Alderman, the news media, and the Mayor of Chicago. Football is a one tough game.

The Parade was brought back for the very same reasons the parade was begun - to celebrate the identity - Faith, Family and Friendship -of the Irish Catholics who live here. No other reason. The bar owners are hardly a powerful lobby and many are barely scratching out a living thanks to City, County and State taxes and regulations and the always one-way relationship with elected officials - take it and like it and buy some tickets.

Opposition to the parade is sometimes genuine. I live three short blocks west of the parade route. The north side and suburban fern-bar buses drop off revelers from outside of the neighborhood right in front of my house at 7AM on parade days and do not pick up the disoriented and tummysick youngsters until 7PM.

I end up picking up few empties from my lawn, but that is about it. I have helped a few mopes, who missed the pick-up back to Bucktown and River North, call for cabs, or Mommy. Not exactly a Gethsemane.

If the Parade is killed it will be an act of the usual politically correct and very Progressive hypocrisy that controls the public debate - Take it and Like It!

Writing in this morning's Wall Street Journal about the Obama Choice Mandate -pills, abortifacients and rubbers for all of God's Children no matter what God says -the author writes a summary of Progressive Government -
So here we are, with the government demanding that the church hold up its end of a Faustian bargain that was supposed to permit it to perform limitless acts of virtue. Instead, what the government believes the deal is about, more than anything else, is compliance.

Politically bloodless liberals would respond that, net-net, government forcings do much social good despite breaking a few eggs, such as the Catholic Church's First Amendment sensibilities. That is one view. But the depth of anger among Catholics over this suggests they recognize more is at stake here than political results. They are right. The question raised by the Catholic Church's battle with ObamaCare is whether anyone can remain free of a U.S. government determined to do what it wants to do, at whatever cost. .
WSJColumnist Dan Henninger on the Catholic church and government

This is the secularist Progressive Seamless Garment -ObamaCare, Gay Marriage, No School Vouchers, Abortion and more taxes for the middle class have the South Side St. Patrick's Day to be a litmus test.

If we need to sacrifice the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade to let the Catholic homophobic breeders and racists and drunks know -what's what - so be it.

Greg Harris introduced the Religious Liberty & Gay Marriage legislation in Springfield only yesterday, in order to allow the lame duck Democrats to high speed rail another bill that will be signed by the always compliant Progressive stooge governor. Take it and like it.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Santorum Sweep - No Camelot Moments Here; Move On ! MSNBC Analyst Meghan McCain on Suicide Watch

" You seem like a fine lad, Billy. . .er, Mimi Alford, an intern here at the White House. Yes she is . . . Mimi is 19 and might be a bit old for you, son. "Get them before they grow teeth," my Daddy always told me. Keep at it, Billy. Pleasure." A Camelot Moment.

Rick Santorum's sweep of the three primary/caucus States( Colorado, Minnesota and Missourri), by huge numbers, should harbinger the following events up to and through this weekend-

Wednesday -Newt Gingrich will get the full MSNBC Chris Matthews Camelot Treatment Ala Mimi Alford - "take care of Dave Powers and Teddy, Mimi. They're tense."

Thursday- MSNBC Mensa Member Meghan McCain will remain on 24 hour suicide watch. ( “If he (Daddy) would’ve endorsed Santorum, I mean, I would be, like, slitting my wrists.” Meghan with Noodles O'Donnell 1-5-2012)

Friday, the Obama Administration will dump HHS Choice mandate along with thousands of incriminating Fast and Furious and Solyndra e-mails.

Saturday -Axe and the lads will explain the troubling numbers to the Science President.

Sunday President Obama family will attend to Mass and attempt to take the Eucharist . . . under advisement.

Catholics have a clear choice for President and he does not have an Honorary Degree from Notre Dame, or Georgetown, let alone a Nobel Prize.

News Black Out in Chicago - Catholic Bishops Make Huge Statement on Obama Choice Mandate and No Coverage

President Obama,Our Secular Science President, loads up and aims more than marshmallows at Fish Eaters.

Yesterday, the Chicago news media avoiding mentioning the powerful statement on Obama's Health and Human Services Mandate. Cardinal George wrote this:

Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. All that has been built up over so many years in our Catholic institutions should not be taken away by the stroke of an administrator’s pen. This order reduces the Church to a private club, destroying her public mission in society. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.
(click my post title for the text in full)

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times have much invested in Obama 2012, as in 2008. Barack Obama is a Chicago resident and has and continues to enjoy the full partnership of the Progressive Machine that helped him dance on the lily pads to the White House - State Senate of Illinois after an ignominious defeat for Congress at the hands of Bobby Rush, the media driven character assassinations of competition ( Democrat Blair Hull and Republican Jack Ryan), GOP's Judy Barr Topinka's deft selection of Amb. Alan Keyes as a general election opponent, elevation to the United State Senate, the stem winder in Boston 2004 at the DNC and tingle in Chris Matthews' leg 2008-Present.

Only John Kass, Steve Huntley and Dennis Byrne have criticized President Obama - rather they have refused to ignore his very obvious short-comings.

The HHS Obama Choice Mandate, crafted by Planned Parenthood and others, has awakened a sense that President Obama represents folks with absolutely no tolerance for Catholics.

Chicago is the most Catholic of American cities. . .no really.

John Powers of Chicago Daily Observer, for whom I occasionally offer my prose, lit into our supine media.

So how did the Chicago incumbent media react?

Op-eds from Dennis Byrne and Steve Huntley, both are against the intrusive HHS ruling and the denial of religious liberty. Yet, both columns look to be written before the Catholic Bishops letter was published by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

No mention in the Sun-Times; No mention in the Chicago Tribune; No mention on WLS-7 or any other media outlet, as far as I can search. As Peggy Noonan says, this may be the issue that gets President Obama defeated this fall, but the incumbent Chicago Media has chosen to stifle the opposition to the incumbent President on this one.

Anyone surprised?


I am sure many are surprised. That is the pity of it all.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Civil Liberties Are Not Afforded to Catholics - Dennis Byrne Explains the "The Yeah-Butters."


The Yeah, Butters are secular Progressive meme-mummers. The talking points (memes) are churned in the well-larded cash cows that produce the "The Yeah, Buts" - arguments and shout downs meant to silence any and all opposition to anything.

The "Yeah, Butters" created the "little liberty free zones" - no smoking, no trans-fatties, no goose liver, no nothing landscape that are the hall mark of Progressive America's laboratory schools of thought.

Progressives hate large families

Progressives hate smokers

Progressive hate people with pot-bellies

Progressives hate talk radio

Progressives hate you-name-it

Progressives hate schools that work ( Washington D.C., Catholic Schools and private schools)

Is hate too strong a word? Gosh, yes. Rather let's say that the above are Verifiably Unsatisfactory targets for elimination. Everybody Dance Now!

Progressives ( American Dewey/Hegelian Secularists - think Bill Moyers) really hate Catholics and always have done so. From Lyman Beecher - to Thoreau - to Jane Addams - to Roger Baldwin, Progressives have worked like Mexicans with family to eliminate Roman Catholic American influence and existence.

In the last fifty years, Catholic Democrats have done their heavy lifting. Funding from the big Yeah, Butter Dairies - Planned Parenthood, ACLU, 501 (c) 3 Family Foundations with boards backed with Lefties, public service unions and lending institutions helped baptized Catholic politicians, become born-again Henry Wallace/Margaret Sanger mouthpieces.

The result is the looming battle against religious liberty - going the way of cigarettes, sugar and butter. Catholics are the target for tonight and everynight.
Dennis Byrne, in his Chicago Tribune column answers the Yeah, Butters in their own words.

Radical secularists spit out their usual canard about how "Catholics seek to impose their morals on everyone else." This is the goofiest of upside-down arguments. In truth, it should be clear to anyone but the blindly ideological and anti-Catholic bigots that secularists are imposing their beliefs on Catholics. As the Rev. Robert Barron, a Catholic priest, scholar and author, noted: "Who is using the law to impose morality on people? It ain't the Catholic Church. It's the secular state."

Secularists will drag out plenty of diversionary arguments to the central issue, most typically: Many Catholic couples use artificial birth control, so it doesn't matter if the government tells the church what to do about contraception. As if the government can decide what church teachings are valid and constitutionally protected by taking a poll. If church membership disagrees with the church's beliefs, that's a problem for the church and its members, not the government. Government already has enough problems of its own.

In his controversial appearance at the University of Notre Dame, President Barack Obama promised a sensible approach to matters of conscience. He now touts how he draws from his Christian faith when crafting public policy.

It's all campaign rhetoric, and Catholics who fell for it by giving him a majority of their votes in 2008 have cause for regret and anger.


Yeah, but there is so much more coming.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Egypt Lives up to "Arab" Stereotypes - Where's CAIR?



"Why does the word “Arab” evoke images of terrorists & veiled, oppressed women?" -website Reclaiming Identity: dismantling Arab Stereotypes

Gee, I don't know. Maybe this might help:


I offered my morning rosary to Our Lady to help keep the 19 young Americans safe from the Arab Springers of Egypt.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's son Sam is among the group of current and former studens in Cairo to help that civility challenged nation at least appear to be interested in living at peace with Christians and Jews.

God help them.

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have charged the Egypt country directors of the International Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute in an investigation into the financing of pro-democracy organizations, state media reported Monday.

IRI’s Sam LaHood, the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, was the first of 43 names published Monday afternoon on the Arabic-language Web site by state-owned newspaper al-Ahram. Several other American and Egyptian IRI employees are also being charged.

. . .Fayza Abul Naga, Egypt’s minister for international cooperation, who is widely seen as the mastermind of the probe, said Sunday’s announcement should leave no doubt about the “government’s seriousness about discovering some of these groups’ plans to destabilize Egypt,” the state-owned newspaper al-Ahram reported on its Web site. The minister is among the few Mubarak loyalists who remain in the Egyptian cabinet.


There is no Statement by CAIR - it is busydoing nothing to dismantle arab stereotypes. Here is a partial list of CAIR's immediate concerns

U.S. Muslim on No-Fly List Detained after Sea Travel to U.K.
Oregon resident took train to N.Y., ship to U.K., was detained on arrival

CAIR Calls for Reform of FBI's Training on Islam, Muslims
CAIR today joined a coalition of other civil rights and advocacy organizations in calling on the FBI to eliminate anti-Muslim bias from the system used to train its agents.

Al-Awlaki's Calls to Violence Rejected by U.S. Muslims
Civil rights group concerned about constitutional issues raised by assassination of American citizen

CAIR Says Bill Unfairly Singles Out U.S. Muslims
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/19/11) -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today urged American Muslims and other people of conscience to call members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about proposed legislation that singles out American Muslims for additional scrutiny over the threat of violent extremism in the United States.

CAIR Concerned About FBI’s Use of ‘Outreach’ to Spy on Muslims
ACLU documents show agents gathering intelligence on those they met

CAIR Decries Santorum’s Call for Profiling of Muslims
Civil rights group asks Republicans to reject Islamophobia

CAIR Asks FBI to Probe Internet Threats to Mosques
Comment on anti-Islam hate site: ‘I want [Muslim] blood on my hands’

TN GOP Rep. Tells Muslims to ‘Go Back to Where They Came From’
CAIR says GOP leaders must demand Rep. Womick’s resignation from Tennessee General Assembly

CAIR: D.C. Hotel Uses ‘National Security’ Defense in Muslim Bias Suit
Muslim civil rights group calls hotel’s defense an ‘unprecedented claim’

Safe, it pal.

http://www.cair.com/AmericanMuslims/AntiTerrorism.aspx

http://www.cair.com/

http://arabstereotypes.org/

http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-egypt-19-americans-to-be-tried-over.html

Tales of the South Side - 'Hear Me Roar!' I Did and Called Out for More


"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn." —Gloria Steinem


Caitlin Nolan-Kane called her husband Charlie F. Kane at work.

Charlie Works for Com Ed.

Charlie went to trade school, while Caitlin, his honey-haired sweeties went to De Paul Law School and they married after Caitlin passed the last of more than a couple of bar exams. Caitlin had credentials and Charlie had solid reputation as an electrician and solid citizen.

Charlie was in a cherry-picker basket high above an alley in West Beverly over by the Bank on 103rd & Western.

Caitlin Nolan-Kane was struggling with a problem at her dining room table.

The couple had been married for the better part of year and Caitlin was unsure whether or not she should be stay-at-home Mom, or a Cook County Judge.

Caitlin had passed the Illinois Bar Exam on the third go-around just before she married Charlie.

Caitlin's stay-at-home Mom issue was one of what might be, as she and Kane had no children. The odds were better of Caitlin becoming a Cook County Judge. Charlie put in a great deal of overtime.

The electricians cell phone rang repeatedly, because he was rather busy and he ignored doing anything unrelated to the task at hand. Caitlin was persistent.


The frustrated and perplexed young woman asked Charlie Kane, " Why didn't you answer?"

" I'm up in the basket, Sweetie," answered the devoted spouse and tradesman.

"Can you help me when you get home?"

"Sure," he replies. "What's the problem?"


"Well, I started a really hard puzzle and I can't even find the edge pieces."

"Look on the box," Charlie said. "There's always a picture of what the puzzle is."


"It's a big rooster," she said.

"I'll be home at 5, or 5:30, Babe."

"Don't stop with guys at Keegan's, Honey. I really want to finish this."

"I'll be right home once I get the truck back, Love. Try and relax. Do something else until I get home."

As good as his word, the forthright Charlie Kane put the Tahoe in the garage of their sweet home on Talman near Kean Gas. He removed his work boots and went straight to the dining romm table and surveyed the problem that confronted his pretty wife.

Having repaired rainbows of wires and circuits and conduits tangled and fouled and kinked in Gordian knots the electrician immediately assessed the problem, "Okay, put the corn flakes back in the box."

"Oh, My God! I took out the wrong box."

" These things happen."

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Real Jazz - The Lost Tapes: Monica Zetterlund



Monica Zetterlund had the tone of Ella Fitzgerald and an ability to create a real sense intimacy in the artificial setting of a studio.

This is sensational genius at work with quiet dignity.







. . . And because you have been very, very good to stop here, Monica nd the Bill Evans Trio!

Cardinal Barry Obama's Church of The Missing Context



"I actually think that's going to make economic sense," said Obama. "But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.'" From John Kass Chicago Tribune on Preacher Barry

Man, the President will read anything put in front of him "Here, Mr. President, this has you quote from Jesuah, Mathews, Maddow, Luke . . . St. Paul . . .who cares . . .it's biblical and it makes great copy and context for your getting the rich to pay more - the rich. . .no not GE. or George . . .the other rich people . . .pipefitters and Local 150 Operators. Yes, sir it is working perfectly and it is off camera. . . Go get 'em!"


John Kass's column this morning reminded me of that. The President was given Luke 12:48 and today's gospel at Mass was Mark 1: 29 - 39. It's good one.

Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James and John, his Million Loaves and Fishes Quartet, performed a a miraculous cure of Simon's mother-in-law and good woman got up from her fever bed and good the lads some lunch. Jeuss then cured the folks in the neighborhood and cast out demons. People were as screwed up then as they are now, but at least then they didn't drink donkey squirtings on NBC's Fear Factor and call that entertainment.

NBC and GE are huge investors in President Obama's vision of America.

John Kass reminded me of President Obama's Prayer Breakfast preachifying this past week.

The President occupied the podium with Biblical parsings for taxing us much more. By "us" I mean all of us - United States taxpayers. We are blessed! However, I do not believe that Luke's passage (Luke 12:48), all Dewey'd up by President Corinthian Barry Obama at the prayer breakfast is in any way, shape or, form about taxes. Nope that Luke pastoral piece is about getting your ass smote -

"But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." New International Bible

or, King James -"But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Then there's the Douhy-Rheims used by us Fish Eaters and HHS Traitorous Dogs -
But he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.


You see, them 'stripes' have to do with cuts of the old bullwhip. Deuteronomy 25:3 called for no more forty good-and-sound on the backs of servants and stewards who screwed up.

A whack with a bullwhip can be taxing on the soft, supple milky flesh of young handmaiden. . .sorry. How the mind do race.

Context Folks! Here's the full Luke -

40 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

41 Then Peter said to Him, “Lord, do You speak this parable only to us, or to all people?”

42 And the Lord said, “Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season? 43 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 44 Truly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all that he has. 45 But if that servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, 46 the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

47 And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

48 But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.
(emphasis my own)

No taxes. No 1% and no 99%. Stewards, whips, and portions of stripes for servants who knew their job descriptions, but screwed up.

Luke's gospel tells us that as Catholics, or Christians we come into this world with a set of instructions. That is called VALUES. We get taxed later.

We know that abortion is murder, because the rules we agree to as Catholics, or Christians or Jews, state just that and also that birth control can be a chemical abortifacient - something that causes an abortion. If we know the rules and screw up, we face the "stripes" down the road.

Our Faith is what has been given to us and if we give that Faith over to Political Correctness, Weakness, Self-loathing, or Opportunity, Jesus warned us that "much" would be given.

The President might want to consult with Congressman Jan Schakowsky about taking a whip to the help.

In other news, Carmel of Mundelein Alumnus Rick Santorum is ahead of President Obama in the latest Rassmussen Poll.



In a potential Election 2012 matchup, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is at 45% while President Obama earns 44%. This is the first time in any poll that Santorum has led the president. Several other GOP challengers have led the president a single time in the polls including Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. Each man briefly held the lead while they were surging in the polls, only to fall quickly. It remains to be seen what will happen to Santorum’s support.

Santorum gets 78% of the Republican vote and leads by ten among those not affiliated with either major party. President Obama get 83% of the Democratic vote in that matchup. Santorum leads by 16 points among men but trails by 12 among women. As is typically the case in all matchups, the president leads among those under 40 while the GOP hopeful leads among those who are over 40.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Historical Art Genre Takes Political Turn - Artist Jon McNaughton


"You can look at a picture of an artifact for days and still not know it. But examining it in your own hands reveals its texture, its substance and how it works,. . . There has been too much distortion over the years. I believe the more accurate the presentation is, the clearer our image will be of our heritage. It is a far better way to honor our ancestors." Don Troiani -historical artist.

A former Federal officer sent me an e-mail with the controversial art of Jon McNaughton attached.

I immediately was reminded of the Revolutionary and Civil War presentations of Don Troiani. Several of his works appear on the walls of Fox's Pizza Resaturant at 100th & Western Ave, depicting the Irish Brigade at Antietam being blessed by Catholic Chaplain Father Corby of Notre Dame. And Clear the Way - the Charge of The Irish Bridage at Fredicksburg*


The work above by Mr. McNaughton presents President Obama standing on the U.S. Constitution to the applause of a few former President, but a general attitude of shock and dismay from most. Most significantly is the center piece of the work - The Forgotten Man on the bench.

This is very good representational art. The painter identifies the theme, heroic or forelorn, and places the sweep of history's personailities and events into a framed context.

I expect, Mr. McNaughton to take more heat than any Guggenheim sponsored dabbler who toseed execrement at the Virgin Mary, or descrecrated the Torah.

Some folks demand to tell us what is correcrt; hence the gent on the bench.


*On a cold December day, 1862, the 28th Massachusetts, part of Brigadier General Meagher's Irish Brigade, fought a valiant but suicidal assault at Fredericksburg.

http://www.historicalartprints.com/aboutus.php

Friday, February 03, 2012

Obama Paloozza II, or Grant Park Reducks



The Obama Campaign 2008 resembled a Leni Riefenstahl (or was that Reni Liefenstahl?) production and McCain/Palin Campaign was like Wagon Train without Ward Bond.

Obama had doric columns in his Denver Parthenon and John McCain showed up somewhere.

Obama was on a half-shell high above Olympus and Strobe-lighted and John McCain had a Polaroid Land-camera album of his carrier days.

Obama had Campaign Stuffed with gold and McCain had old gum, lint, popcorn kernels, toe-nails, and some coins found in the couch in the rumpus room.

Barack Obama wanted to win big like a kid on Star Search; McCain thought it might be nice.

Thus, we have The Making of a President 2008 for Dummies.

Now, we are hip deep in an the orchestrated Orwellian howl-hootenanny 2012. President Obama will face Someone. It could be a new Thomas Jefferson, a new Roland Burris - Someone 2012's got my vote.

I am backing and voting with all of my heart and soul, time, treasure and talent, for Someone 2012!. Someone was, is and shall be better choice than President Obama. If John McCain had tried even a little he would have been President, but he allowed Governor Palin to do all of the heavy lifting.

I like Barack Obama in same way, that I like many Illinois politicians. Barack Obama comes from the Protected Panjandrum species - Ald. Brendan O'Reilly, Sheila Simon, and Chris Kennedy. They are the " Where the Hell Did He/She Come From?" only a hen-scratch better than the Ain't They Greaters. They come fully funded by someone, or some group and get appointed or slotted into an easy to win race. Obama v. Keyes e.g.


I dislike a very few - Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Tony Preckwinkle and of course Jan Schakowsky. They are Ain't They Greaters -moved from post to post and office to office, more to get them out of town, or out of the way than anything else.

Then there are "What Can You Do?" goofballs - seemingly harmless dopes who have the backing of far more competent persons. These officials, like Blago, Sen. Roland Burris, Sen. Dick Durbin and former Gov. Pat Quinn, never fail to disappoint.

President Obama, in my opinion, will go down in history as the worst President since James Buchanan and just slightly worse than Jimmy Carter. However, given the GOP's tendency to do political seppuku at any moment, he has a slim chance of holding onto the White House in November. President Obama helped only the Abortion Industry - Planned Parenthood in his term of office. Oh, and he allowed a Navy Seal Team to rub-out Osama. Hell, I could have done that, bit no one asked me.



Oh, really?, say thee.

Sure. Without citing the Corporate Sponsorship of Obama Bundler and Hyde Park Mogul John Rogers ( ex. of Desiree Rogers), explain Arne Duncan.

Take your time and use all of your notes; this is open book.


Dave Axelrod is planing another Grant Park Obama-palooza Obama Palooza II. Like Lalapalooza, perhaps the Obama Campaign will asked to pay for the park, finally.

I wonder if the bill from 2008 was paid. Probably written off by Daley, in exchange ofr the Distinguihsed Harris Professorship at U of C.

Presidential advisor David Axelrod said Thursday that the location hasn't been discussed.

"But, you know, our [campaign] headquarters is here. The president's heart is here. So, you know, I think that will help guide our decision-making," Axelrod said.

Axelrod said he would like the festivities to be in Chicago.


Remember these?


* "Press File Seat - $935 (includes 1 Press File Credential, seat in heated Press File Tent, Power, Cable Television, High Speed Wired Internet Service, Catering)"

* "Radio Position - $715 (includes table space and chair behind the riser, power and an ISDN BRI line for radio -- comes with two credentials)"

* Obama's top donors--not the masses who donated the $5, $10 and $25 the campaign brag about--will have VIP access throughout election night and received an early heads up a week ago to plan to spend Election Night in Chicago.

Now, did the Obama 2008 Campaign up on all of the Grant Park Obamapalooza I?

Before, what just might be . . .
check the ledgers.


Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/Obamas_Bill.html#ixzz1lKeSib49

http://chicagoist.com/2008/10/21/obama_goes_ticketmaster_on_media.php

Leo High School: The Walgreen's Building at 79th & Halsted - No Story Here, It's Under the Rubble Getting Hauled Away



Since Tuesday afternoon, the heavy traffic on 79th Street between Morgan and Halsted is . . .absent.

Yesterday, Leo President Dan McGrath and I walked over to CVS on the south side of 79th at Halsted. Dan and I frequent buyers at CVS. The Ladies told us that once the building collpased and the demoltion began that the Occupy Walgreens were looking for new habitats. These are famous Chicago Rattus Norvegicus* Occupiers. Business was way off all around the commercial hub.


The Liberty Tax dancers were now taking up positions in front of Leo High School, as well.

This morning, when I pulled into the faculty lot on the south side of 79th Street just west of Leo High School, I was asked by a young guy where he might pick up a bus. He needed to go west. I tyold him that his best bet was to hike over to the Halsted Terminal at about 80th Street.

I could have stretched out in the middle of 79th Street and taken a nap, it is that free of traffic.

Our west parking lot is part of a complex that includs an artifically turfed practice field enclosed by Rickie Daley wrought iron. There was once a monastery whioh housed the Irish Christian Brothers until 1991. In 1995, Leo President Bob Foster demolished the monastery at a huge cost to Leo High School, in order to keep the neighborhood safe. Foster then ordered his staff to find a means of acquiring the entire block of empty, or struggling buisiness buildings between the site of the monastery and Morgan Street.

That was accomplished by 1998.

All the while the building that collapsed on Tuesday was owned by the Nation of Islam,whicj also had buildings and a huge restaurant on the north side of 79th Street including the still unoccupied and operated Salaam restaurant, as I recall. On the south side in the Walgreen's Buildings there were a few offices with Final Call signs above 79th Street that were occupied . In 2004, the City of Chicago aquired the buildings, built the same year that Leo High School opened -1926. Leo is no where near collapsing.

These buildings were built! However, they do come with aresponsibility to maintain what was built. They are quality constructions and bitch and half to demolish.

In fact, Heneghan Demolition which Leo High School contracted to demolish the delapidated monastery and business block to its west, is doing the demolition at Halsted. They do painstakingly great work.

It took Heneghan an entire summer to take down the Irish Christian Brother Monastery - that place had more reinforced concrete than Hitler's Bunker.

That beautiful old building was neglected for as long as I have worked here at Leo -1995 - at the moment. There was a tree growing out of the roof of it.

Bob Foster kept Leo High School vital and its campus healthy. When the monastery built in 1950, by Father Pat Molloy of St. Leo Parish for use of the Christian Brothers, was abandoned, Bob Foster did not want its shell to become a hazzard in waiting. Bob Foster acted and Leo High School added to the health of the Gresham neighborhood.

The opposite is true of the terra cota facade of ownership and responsibilty for the Walgreen's Building that collapsed and injured four people.

As the saying goes, "$hit happens." It happens all of the time and the truth about the blocked streets, re-routed buses, interruption of commerce and the rat-catching due to the habitat relocation will be hauled away in the trucks of the Heneghan Demolition Company.

*Norway Rat -These “super rats” can reach 16″ in length. Each female rat can give birth to 20 pups in her lifetime. Some factors affecting rat populations in cities include continuously mild winters, weather-related disasters, and encroachment of their habitats by new urban development. They have been living rent free in the Walgreen's Building for decades now.

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Cappy Dick says, " What is the Number of Cop Convictions for Police Torture Proven in Court?"


" Burge tied my shoes too tight! It was Hurtful! It was Wrongful! Where's my Money, Flint?"


Tortured is the logic of the wrongful conviction, Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers, Hep-cat columnists and kittenish editorial boards. If you believe hard enough, really, realy hard enough and can quote from John Conroy it is satisfyingly verifiable and therefore true. Every convicted thug is a victim. Anything used to convict Mr. Kill-all is torture and we all hate torture.

Torture is magical!

After the actual torturers and murderers of two Chicago Police Officers (Fahey & O'Brien), the celebrated thugs the Brothers Wilson, became the Mumia-lite for Chicago's Progressive Machine, Leftists became 1%-ers - Jon Loevy, G. Flint Taylor, Locke Bowman & etc.

Today, Police Torture that now includes, any form of interrogation hit the Illinoi Supreme Court, which vote 6-o in complete agreement with popular opinion.

The court’s 6-0 decision represented another milestone in the long-running saga of Burge and his crew of officers, who repeatedly have been accused of torturing African-American suspects in the 1970s and 1980s at a South Side police station.

Defense attorneys had feared that any break in the court’s tough stance would lead to the kind of abuse seen during Burge*’s tenure. Prosecutors had hoped that the court would issue a ruling allowing them to use tainted confessions when the other evidence against a suspect was overwhelming.

“We believe that this type of coercion by the state ...constitutes an egregious violation of an underlying principle of our criminal justice system...” the court wrote.

The vote in the case was 6-0 because Justice Robert Thomas did not take part in the case.



Here's aquestion for the court - when has any cop ( Burge, Beavers, or Brezyak) been convicted of torture?

Waiting ................................................................!


I find it wonderful, that people of faith continue to firmly believe in that which can not, nor ever will be proven.


*In October 2008, Patrick Fitzgerald had Burge arrested on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to a civil suit regarding the torture allegations against him. On April 1, 2010, Judge Joan Lefkow postponed the trial, for the fourth time, to May 24, 2010.[1] Burge was convicted on all counts on June 28, 2010 and sentenced to four and one half years in federal prison on January 21, 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Burge

Your Morning Smear of Obama "Yeah, Butter" - The New Anti-Catholic Meme

Planned Parenthood (Abortion) Made President Obama

Progressives are "Yeah, but" -ters. Yeah butters.

No matter what evidence is placed before a Dewey Doctrinaire there is always "Yeah, Butter" -

"Yeah, but . . . Bush created the mess."
"Yeah, but . . . We are to blame for Islamic Terror."
"Yeah, but . . . Catholics are homophobic racists."
"Yeah, but . . . Don't you care about the children? They are being born, People!
"Yeah, but . . . Police ALWAYS torture murderers"
"Yeah, but . . . 1%-ers like my Dad made me a 99%-er in a cardboard box in Oakland."
" Yeah,but . . . Where is the Catholic Church's outrage at the Republicans' support for war, the death penalty, and tearing great big gaping holes in the social safety net?"

To which I generally cock an eybrow and query, "Pardonnez-moi, mais avez-vous ƩtƩ sniffer de la colle?"


Today, the Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi offers the latest meme -slather of "Yeah, Butter" - concerning Obama's HHS Choice Mandate.

Catholic Institutions without regard to Catholic values must pay for abortifacients, condoms, and birth control pills as part of any health care plan.

Here is the "Yeah, Butter, du jour.

But not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That’s the Obama administration’s argument, and it makes sense.


Well, gee. How does Joan assume that? People are hired without reghard to race, creed or color, per Federal Fiat.

Therefore, she can only assume that some employees might not be Catholic.

Joan says, "Obama isn’t trying to undermine Catholicism. He’s telling Catholic leaders they can’t regulate the beliefs of those of other faiths."

YEAH, But!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Girl, Please!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone has a but! Did I spell that correctly?

Emersonian Irony: Breast Cancer - No Longer a Woman's Health Issue

Consistent Progressive Moveon.org will take a shoe-horn to out of step Breasts Cancer Battler Susan G. Komen.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines RW Emerson

The Dowagers and the Lefties have a collective hinder binder due to the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation's wise and sweet decision to deny Planned Parenthood -Abortion America - future grants. John Dewey called that an unsatisfactory result.

No one, not a Pope, not a bishop, not any Thomistic philosopher is as goofily consistent as a Progressive. The Progressives will never disappoint and always live up to low expectations, because once Progressives have an idea visit their closeted collective mind, no force on earth can change the Outcomes, consummatory experiences, as old John Dewey taught them. Dewey taught that ethics and values are mere hypotheses.

Butting their horny heads against facts, let alone the more metaphysical verities, hurts like hell, but can not stop a Progressive. Now, Breast Cancer is trumped by Abortion -surgical and chemical - as a woman's health issue.

So, cordedly uncomfortable are the collective cougar thongs that Moveon.org is soul-patching its knit hat wearing Trotskies out in defense of national infanticide.


Moveon.org launched a campaign Wednesday against the “the world’s largest breast cancer organization” Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

“Susan G. Komen for the Cure just cut all its funding to Planned Parenthood for breast health screenings, bowing to anti-choice pressure and making breast health care suddenly inaccessible to many women,” the liberal group wrote in an email to supporters.

Komen announced Tuesday night that they will no longer be awarding the abortion provider Planned Parenthood with grants due to a new policy prohibiting Komen from giving to institutions under investigation by government bodies.

Planned Parenthood is currently facing a congressional investigation into whether taxpayer funds went toward abortions.


Ouch.

The trolling menstrual minstrels offering comments across the blogosphere and former print news sites will be all carpal tunnelled up clicking and sending tropes and memes.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/01/moveon-org-launches-campaign-against-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure/#ixzz1lE6bQvHs