News Man Tim Novak - The Only Eye-on Allison Davis

It’s been six years since five Chicago government pension plans hired DV Urban Realty — a start-up investment firm founded by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Robert G. Vanecko and President Barack Obama’s friend and former boss Allison S. Davis — to manage $68 million in retirement funds.

Those investments haven’t gone well for the pension funds that represent Chicago teachers, police officers, other city employees and transit workers. The funds have paid DV Urban a total of $7.2 million, including $4.7 million in fees to manage the small share of the pension funds’ money and another $2.5 million for a sister company to oversee the operations of three buildings bought with pension money.

Pension officials — including Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s two top financial advisers — are unhappy. By their estimation, the value of the funds’ real estate investments with DV Urban has fallen by 28 percent, or about $19 million.

(emphasis my own)

President Obama's pal and former boss ripping off the folks? Well, hush my beak!

That is news Goo-goos, Go-Alongs and their Media cheerleaders want hushed up.

I never hear Thundering Dick Simpson rail against real corruption around this burg. I never hear Abner Mikva beef about the cozy Progressive bed-bugs that have dominated the bad old Democratic Machine's mattress for decades.

Blago, Rezko, and Daley relatives get plenty of news ink, but only the great Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun Times keeps his choppers locked on the butts of IVI-IPO champion boondoggler Allison Davis.

God Bless Tim Novak! Now, if only an editorial board in this Crossroads of Crusading Crooks would grow a pair on tenth the size of the set Tim Novak is packing, we'd be informed.

It seems, Allison Davis is everywhere Federal, State and Local tax-dollars get dumped into a sanctioned cache of cash - HUD Money, Pension Funds, and Save the Children coffee cans. The Sun times Editorial Board did Old Allison a solid and did not post his photo along with Tim Novak's report. That Allison Davis up above with post shine -box President Obama.

Allison Davis is bullet-proof with Medill School Power Rangers and Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune Editorial Morning Zoo Crew.
Davis Père ( his boy Cullen was briefly in the jackpot when a toddler was crushed by Cullen's rusty gate) might be bullet proof, but if turns around and down he will find Tim Novak's choppers locked on his rump.

DV Urban turned a small profit — about $500,000 — when it sold one of the most valuable properties, a 344-unit apartment building at 1212 S. Michigan Ave., for $65.5 million last Nov. 30, county records show.
DV Urban bought the building using $9.9 million in money from the pension funds, records show. The pension funds will get back about $9 million from the sale, according to DV Urban’s countersuit.

Davis, 72, and Vanecko, 47, both of Chicago, founded DV Urban in 2005. Vanecko has given sworn testimony in a legal deposition that his father, Dr. Robert M. Vanecko, introduced him to Davis, a well-known lawyer and developer.

Every Chicagoan knows the names of Patrick Daley and Mr. Vanecko, but I'll be a Sacajawea Gold coin that less than a tennis double in each word has heard of Allison Davis.

Davis ran a small Chicago law firm that hired Obama after his graduation from Harvard Law School. Davis eventually left the law firm and became a business partner with one of his clients, Tony Rezko, in a venture to build affordable housing with taxpayer money.
Davis became a central figure in the trials of Rezko, a top fund-raiser for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and William F. Cellini, a longtime fund-raiser for Illinois Republicans, who were both convicted on corruption charges.According to testimony, once, during a meeting with Rezko and another Blagojevich fund-raiser, Christopher Kelly, Davis suggested they could raise money from Thomas Rosenberg, a Hollywood movie producer who also owned an investment firm that managed state pension money. Rosenberg tesified he was told he would lose his state deal unless he gave money to Blagojevich’s campaign. Cellini was convicted in the shakedown of Rosenberg. Davis was never charged with any crime.

Gee, Thundering Dick Simpson, one might get the idea that things aren't all on the square, on the up-and-up. Speak on it, Son! Testify!

Readers might also like this one from Tim Novak
http://www.suntimes.com/business/10416320-417/both-sides-file-lawsuits-in-flap-over-city-pension-fund-investments.html

A Celebration of Diversity from County Kerry, Ireland : Polish Lads and the Pikeys

Our International Celebration of Diversity! It's always fair weather, when great folks get together!

Poles charged over fight with Travellers*
TWO Polish men appeared in court in Listowel on Thursday last charged in connection with an alleged altercation with members of the Travelling community on the previous weekend

Jan Bieszczanin (24) of 30 Cluainín, Listowel and 28-year-old Piotr Jaron of 89 Fairway Heights, The Kerries were each charged with possession of a baseball bat and three pickaxe handles, with intent to cause harm to members of the Mccarthy family.

The court was told that both men were initially arrested in Lisselton on Monday afternoon, February 6, and taken to Listowel Garda Station. However, both men were re-arrested and charged before Thursday's siting. The arresting garda said that in reply to the charge against him, Mr Jaron said: "I didn't have a baseball bat.'Both men were released on bail, subject to a number of conditions, to appear again on March 8. Solicitor Pa Daly was granted legal aid for the men, who are both in receipt of social welfare.

(emphasis my own) Aye, so and like the shtory.

*

Pikeys:Folks of no Fixed Abode -More recently, pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (also known as tinkers and knackers) and non-Roma Gypsies.In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable."

Pikey's most common contemporary use is not as a term for the Gypsy ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around with no fixed abode.

Help Kick Off South Side Parade This Saturday at Bourbon Street - The Benefit and Charity Headquarters of the South Side

The South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee has one goal and this to celebrate the parishes and families of Chicago's south side and the contributions of Irish Americans to our city, state and country. President Obama said this is “one of the great events in America.”

Bourbon Street is a party venue and restaurant that really captures the spirit of this community. There is not a weekend that goes by without a benefit to help a struggling family or fight a disease that is not conducted at Bourbon Street. In fact on the night before the parade Leo Boxing Coach and Fox WFLD newsman Pat Elwood will host a Leo Boxing Card to Benefit the St. Baldrick's Camapign Against Cancer. Therefore it is most fitting that the Parade Committee chose Bourbon Street to rev up support for this celebration on March 11, 2011.

South Side Irish Saint Patrick's Day

Pre- Parade Fundraiser at Bourbon Street

"Tradition Marches On" Step Off

The South Side Irish Parade Committee and Bourbon Street will co-host a Pre-Parade fundraiser Saturday, February 18, 2012 from 6 until 10 p.m. in Marionette Park.

Regarded as the first official celebration marking the return of the South Side Irish Parade, the Bourbon Street fundraiser will help the committee meet the mounting costs earmarked for barricades, porta-potties, marketing, security and clean up.

"Everyone's rolling up their sleeves or reaching in their wallets because they know the return of the parade with a zero tolerance campaign is a winner for the neighborhood," said Joe Connelly, parade chairman. "Our pre-parade party celebrates the accomplishments of all those who have worked hard to recast this parade and those who want to contribute now to help defray costs."

Advance tickets will be $25 ($30 at the door) for food, beverages, live music and door prizes. The Larkin and Moran Brothers will perform traditional Gaelic music. The evening will include silent auctions, raffles, split the pot and more.

Tradition Marches On is the theme for the March 11, 2012 South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade, a bookend finish to Sunday's Family Fest at the Beverly Arts Center and a grand culmination of a 10-day celebration of Irish heritage in the Beverly/Morgan Park community.


"The parade committee salutes the many businesses who exhibited creativity and monetary pledges to support the return of the parade," said Jim Sheahan, a volunteer. "The desire to retain and enrich this 32-year tradition has proven worth it."

Tickets can be purchased in advance at O'Brien Pub or the South Side Irish Parade offices at 10934 A South Western Ave. Chicago, IL 60643.

For more information, call: 708/388-8881.

Click my post title and read the Great Mark Konkol's piece on the South Side St. Patrick's Parade.

You and the family pop in for some giggles and support the South Side St. Patrick's Parade.

Ultra -Slaughter by Planned Parenthood Trends Up - Our Dowager Holocaust Gets an Ultra Sound from Jill Stanek

More babies are alive and kicking because of this lovely woman -Jill Stanek

While Eric Zorn beefs that new Ultra-Sound Legislation is Ultra Creepy, because it warns expectant mothers lured into an abortion mill by presenting her with her child.

That will sure kill off a Choice to kill the child; unless of course one is doctrinally prone to clubbing baby harp seals, tossing kittens into a Weber, or shooting baby ducks and chicks with a 12 gauge.

A heroic nurse from Oak Lawn, Illinois, Jill Stanek has done more to help save children from the flames of a Planned Parenthood crematorium, than any battalion of firemen could hope to save with her work at Life News.com and her own website linked belwo. Jill Stanek has made Planned Parenthood's abortion lust her personal vocation. God Bless this heroic woman. Jill Stanek rubs the jelly and holds the paddles to Planned Parenthood's swelled belly.

Abortion is what Planned Parenthood is all about - making money off of the slaughter of children. WaPo Pulitzer recipienet Eugene (Eugenics) Robinson told MSNBC empty vessel Rachel Maddow that conception is "insane." Eugenious's Insane Clown Posse includes our own Abortion Mencken Eric Zorn. Zorn warns fellow Insane Clown Posse Patriots-

This month Republican majorities in both chambers in Virginia's Legislature passed one of the strictest mandatory pre-abortion ultrasound bills in the nation — a measure that's certain to require women seeking early-stage abortions to submit to being vaginally penetrated by a condom-covered electronic probe before the abortion is allowed to proceed.

The procedure is called a "transvaginal ultrasound," and it's the best and sometimes only way in the first stages of pregnancy for physicians to obtain images that "contain the dimensions of the fetus, and accurately portray the presence of external members and internal organs of the fetus," as the bill requires.

Such ultrasounds are common medical procedures. But make no mistake. The proposed regulation, which Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell previously indicated he will sign if, as expected, legislators send a final version to his desk next week, has nothing to do with the practice of medicine.

OMG, E! But make no mistake, Goernor Quinn will never sign such legislation here in Personl Pac Man, Terry Cosgrove's Illinois. Until Quinn sent back to his Spartan kitchen to whipup some tasty eggs in his forty year old skillet, Abortion is safe and sound -Ultra Sounds notwithstanding.

In Fact Abortion Industry USA -Planned Parenthood is fat and sassy -abortions account for 51.5% of its income and lards in another hefty 46.5 % from Gummint Muny. In a very recent Article in LifeNews Steven Ertelt reports on the pregnant financials at Planned Parenthood.

Check the charts E.



Abortions are UP UP UP! Ultra-Plenty! Kids shell out dollars at the behest of skeletal but botoxed Cougars and cashmmere wrapped Dowagers who read The Female Eunuch and other feminist tones, along with their issues of Cosmopolitan and the Neiman Marcus catalogs and with the same intellectual gifts and rigor.

“By comparing PP’s abortion income with its clinic income, we get a much more accurate picture of Planned Parenthood’s business model. In 2010, Planned Parenthood’s abortion income was 51.5 percent of its clinic income.”

Government funding accounts for 46.5 percent of Planned Parenthood’s income — to the tune of $1.3 million per day,




It is pretty hard to parse an ultra-sound. What's on the screen is what a woman is expected to kill there, EZ. T'ain't so easy.

http://www.jillstanek.com/http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2012/02/ultra-creepy-new-ultrasound-laws-are-the-shame-of-the-ultra-right.html

MSNBC's Pulitzer Prize Eugenics Robinson -"Catholics Insane"

By God there were black Nazis.


Serial Mumbler and real Pulitzer Prize Eugenics Robinson explains everything to contraceptively superfluous Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

So, I mean, the only thing I can figure out, Rachel, is that’s based on a wrong and frankly insane belief that a fertilized egg is a fully formed person and has personhood and that, you know, preventing the implantation of that egg is some-, is murder.

Catholic are Insane, quoth he. ACLU? Nah. Stupid is as Stupid Be.

Ein Reich for the Right Folks, Eugenious? I guess not everyone is cut out to be a Tuskeegee Airman.

Progressive Polonius -Thundering Dick Simpson on Corruption? When the Statutes of Limitation Run out?

Now, Here's A Pair of Aces to Draw to! Simpson of UICC follows Shaw of BGA -"Two Guys Corruption Plumbing" - Open for Bids!

‘Hath there been a time — I would fain know that —
That I have positively said ‘ ‘Tis so’,
When it proved otherwise?’ Polonius - The Master P of Hamlet

Alderman Dick Simpson was 44th Alderman between 1971 and 1979 - the tumultuous fin de siècle of Mayor Richard J. Daley's Rule of Chicago.

Eddie Vrdolyak and Ed Burke were the Young Turks. Billy Singer and later Marty Oberman ran the 43rd Ward. Radical eminence gris Leon Despres, who, along with Marty Oberman were the last lions of genuine integrity claimed by Progressives, continued as the voice of Hyde Park. Ald. Depres was the real deal and genuine gentleman.


Dick Simpson was part of the 44th Ward encompassing Lakeview from Diversy to the Cemetery and the Lake to Clinton - jogging in and out some. It is an affluent, transient land of restaurants, amusements, nightclubs and apartments, so attractive to single, childless and cash-handy professionals, students, activists and boutique capitalists.


The 44th was run at one time by John Merlo who could trace his political lineage back to Al Capone, which Dick Simpson artfully noted in his latest 'study.'

Dick Simpson tossed off the mortal coils of politics in 1979 and paved the way for Bernie Hansen, who begot Tom Tunney at the say so of Mayor Richard M. Daley, in order to don the gown at Cement City - University of Illinois Chicago Campus UICC -in order to articulate his political wisdom to kids needing a Poly Sci credit.

Dick Simpson, whose public record is buried Googlishly somewhere in the cybersphere, or in the dusty but pricey archives of our great metropolitan newspaper, surfaced on occasion to burnish his Progressive Street Cred and take picture s with Billy Ayers. Dick Simpson wrote pieces for the Sun Times under Cheryl Reed's Spanish Civil War Reenactment phase and occasionally trotted out studies of his own, like that dandy one a few years ago trumpeting the new age of Aldermanic Independence in 2006.

For frame of refernce, dear reader, Ald. Joe Moore is Dick Simpson these days, at least until he gets that new gig with the State. See? Okay.

The always accurate Russ Stewart noted Daffy Dick's fatuous 2006 study of Chicago's Fighting Bob LaFollete City Council, after Stewart had noted that the Joe Moore-varietal aldermen were as compliantly perky as the hungry puppies under Daley Père ( 1954-1976):

Dick Simpson, a University of Illinois professor and a former 44th Ward alderman, thinks otherwise. He has released a seriously flawed study that heralds a "newly found" council independence. Citing resolutions on such nongermane matters as the Iraq War, slave reparations and the Patriot Act, the Simpson study mixes the symbolic votes with the substantive. "We're the Chicago City Council, not the Council on Foreign Relations," said Alderman Tom Allen (38th). "It is not our job to make foreign policy."

Wasn't That a Time? A Veritable Golden Age of NPR Goodness! Brought Bush to his knees and added more Vitamin C to our diets!

Now, thunderous Dick, post Daley Le Fils of course and no doubt with the tacit nodding approval of current Mayor Racoon Eyes, proclaims that Chicago is the Most Corrupt City in America! Thunderous Dick trots out the glaringly obvious with his latest Jeremiad bouillon.

Simpson and Jim Nowlan, a senior fellow with the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs, released the report as Mayor Rahm Emanuel's ethics task force prepared to hold its first public hearing Wednesday night.

Simpson generally praised Emanuel for early steps on ethics, but said the city's top attorney should release documents he has refused to provide to the city's inspector general on the basis of attorney-client privilege.

The professor also wants the inspector general to be able to investigate aldermen and their staffs. And he would like to see better city ethics training.

"The city's ethics training is a joke," Simpson said during a City Hall news conference. "We need real ethics training because people in this building don't seem to have it."

(emphasis my own)

ETHICS TRAINING???????? Gee, could our Progressive Polonius have a pre-packaged Political Ethics Adjunct Professorship cum Grease and Lube Job behind the curtain . . .'for a fee, always for a fee . . .Pestas! Siempre!'

The news media today operates on collective memory loss and the repetition of memes and themes. We remember Dick Simpson as a camera happy ineffective hack of an alderman. The expensive media archieves should bear that fruit, children, if you care to partake of it.

Grey old gummers like me don't really need such reminders of the fatuous ninny, the Progressive Polonius whose mitts are now out trolling for more public dough - The Dick Simpson Ethics Coalition and Bed and Breakfast Summer Camp.

One Question,, Thundering Dick! Where the . . .where the . . . where the Helen Shiller were you back when the pies were getting cut up and dished up to every jackal with a tongue and teeth?

Shakman killed the Machine, Bub. Corruption is rooted in the Gordian knot created by the Progressive over the last forty years. Corruption . . . adds millions in Federal Housing dollars to lefty lawyers who now snatch up housing project bones and mill more fertilizer for Green Growth Industries, as well as pad sinecures for mopes who run our buses and trains off the rails, buy parking meter slot machines and one-eyed bandit traffic cameras.

Thundering Dick, our Chicago Progressive Polonius! He is a giggle. Unless of course you absolutely are void of any memory, historical and political context, or common sense . . .not to mention a smidgen of Ethics.

http://www.russstewart.com/2-06.htm

A Catholic Founding Father Speaks to the Obama Regime

"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments." Charles Carroll* (September 19, 1737 – November 14, 1832)

Save it, Charlie. Too much money in abortions -the original hate crime - and our President is all for it. President Obama compromises in an empty room. We'll need to vote his regime out.


*

Charles Carroll of Carrollton
1737-1832

Representing Maryland at the Continental Congress


by Ole Erekson, Engraver, c1876, Library of CongressBorn: September 19, 1737
Birthplace: Annapolis, Md.
Education: Jesuits' College at St. Omar, France; seminary in Rheims; Graduate, College of Louis the Grande; Bourges; studies in Paris; Studies, apprenticeship in London. (Scholar, Lawyer)
Work: Member of first Maryland Committee of Safety, Provincial Congress, 1775; Delayed member of Continental Congress, August, 1776, Signed Declaration of Independence; Appointed to board of War, 1776; Elected to Senate of Maryland, 1781; Elected U.S. Senator from Maryland, 1788, returned to Maryland Senate 1789-'99.
Died: November 14, 1832

Charles Carroll was born into a wealthy Roman Catholic family in Annapolis Maryland. He began his rather remarkable formal education at the age of 8, when he was packed off to France to attend a Jesuit College at St. Omer. He graduated the College of Louis the Grande at age Seventeen and continued practical studies in Europe until, at the age of 28, he returned to his home. Into the radical climate produced by the Stamp Act, walked a Highly refined Gentleman with all of the education and experience that might be expected of an emissary of the finest courts in Europe. Charles Carroll is said to have identified with the radical cause at once, and he proceeded to work in the circles of American patriots. In 1772 he anonymously engaged the secretary of the colony of Maryland in a series of Newspaper articles protesting the right of the British government to tax the colonies without representation.

Carroll was an early advocate for armed resistance with the object of separation from Gr. Britain. However, his native colony was less certain in this matter and did not even send a representative to the first Continental Congress. He served on the first Committee of Safety, at Annapolis, in 1775, and also in the Provincial Congress. He visited the Continental Congress in 1776, and was enlisted in a diplomatic mission to Canada, along with Franklin and Chase. Shortly after his return, the Maryland Convention decided to join in support for the Revolution. Carroll was elected to represent Maryland on the 4th of July, and though he was too late to vote for the Declaration, he did sign it.

He served in the Continental Congress, on the Board of War, through much of the War of Independence, and simultaneously participated in the framing of a constitution for Maryland. In 1778 he returned to Maryland to participate in the formation of the state government. He was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1781, and to the first Federal Congress in 1788. He returned again to the State Senate in 1790 and served there for 10 years. He retired from that post in 1800.

Charles Carroll was the last surviving member of those who signed the Declaration. He died, the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration, in 1832 at the age of 95.

http://throwthebumsoutin2010.blogspot.com/2012/02/obama-says-hes-done-negotiating-with.html

Real Power Has No Public Face , Nor Wants One. Chicago Magazine Notwithstanding - These Eight Determine the State

Judge Richard Posner is easily my pick as the most powerful person . . .anywhere around here. Numero Uno! El Jefe!

"Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities."

"Power is not alluring to pure minds."
Thomas Jefferson

"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"If any place breeds power, it’s Chicago. “Clout” and the city have gone together since the early 1900s, when our Irish Catholic forefathers clapped a stranglehold on the levers of authority that they have been loath to relinquish in modern times." -Chicago Magazine

Christ have mercy! Who wrote this? Ald. Dick Simpson? Well, he says the same thing in his latest prouncement on Corruption . . .Bad.
Chicago Magazine listed series of people believed be the most powerful in Chicago and the Illinois hinterlands. It is a vanity piece.

Only one face of the 100 persons in the article is what I would call powerful and that is # 67 Federal Judge Richard Posner. He should be # 1. - the most powerful single individual in the Federal Northern District. Judge Posner is the force in business, moral and legal policy. Everyone else is a piker.

Judge Posner scares the breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner out of every Black Robe, and I don't mean Jesuit, within a tankful of Premium of Lake Michigan.

Judge Posner overturns any other judge's ruling ( the sentencing of Eddie Vrdolyak e.g.) with a call to the editorial boards of our great metropolitan newspapers.

Absent as well are the Progressive Political Machine* that have so thoroughly dismantled the Democratic Political Machine that most people think snitching nickels is corruption. Policy, Law and of Course Wealth is power.

Along with Judge Richard Posner at # 1,


These folks should be in the magazine's top ten and are my Huge Hickey Eight.

2. Terry Cosgrove - The President of Personal PAC commands the political muscle and money of Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ Activists and owns Governor Quinn.



3. Dr. Quentin Young - Progressive leader of Hyde Park and Health Policy foundation architect of Obama Care



4. Arthur Loevy - Leftist Labor and the architect of Police Abuse Lawsuit Policy - Loevey made the marriage of left-wing public labor and politics a reality


5. G. Flint Taylor- Peoples Law Office - From Fred Hampton to tommorrow's Burge Headline this lawsuit lootery lawyer has helped bankrupt Cook County and Chicago, but has undermined any and all public faith in law enforcement and law itself.




6. Abner Mikva - The Progressive King of Policy and Progressive Government - if Mikva gives no imprimatur it does not happen - Abner Mikva is Michael Shakman's Chinaman - Now THAT is clout. No one in Cook County can ever say, " I'll call my guy!" " My Guy, or any Guy" is now an exhibit at the Field Museum.



7. Dawn Clark Netsch -from the ERA to Personal PAC every piece of legislation that has been an unfunded mandate on education, health and labor begins and ends with DCN>



8. Tie Fred Eychaner
and John Rogers -
Money Talks and now owns the TelaPrompter - Ariel Capital Management and Fred Eychnaer created Congressman Mike Quigley, CTA's Forrest Claypool, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama, as well as powerful GLBTQ political operatives - Debs Mell & Shore and Greg Harris, yet only Rogers' Ex gets the props in Chicago Magazine? Desiree , for real?

Whether it is the fees we pay, how safe we are from thugs, what our kids learn and not learn in public schools, our ability to petition for redress of grievances from government, who gets elected and our very freedom to worship is determined, not by Irish Catholic whitemen, or Swedes.

The Democratic Party exists in name only. Illinois, Cook County and Chicago are corrupt, or really wonderful places to live, because of eight powerful people

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." John Dewey

They have the power.



Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_dewey.html#ixzz1mSMSjv1I
*Throughout the twentieth century, middle-class progressives embraced visions of democracy rooted in their relatively privileged life experiences. Progressive educators developed pedagogies designed to nurture the individual voice within egalitarian classrooms, assuming that collective action in the public realm could be modeled on the relatively safe small-group interactions they were familiar with in their families, schools, and associations. Partly as a result, they remained blind to (and often denigrated) the democratic aspects of working-class organizations, such as unions and community action groups, which found strength in solidarity. In this article Aaron Schutz argues that progressives must integrate into their models the often brutal lessons about power learned by those with less privilege. Until they do so, their approaches to democratic education will continue to have limited capacity to support social transformation and empowerment in the world as it is.
from POWER AND TRUST IN THE PUBLIC REALM: JOHN DEWEY, SAUL ALINSKY, AND THE LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION
Aaron Schutz*

St. Valentine's Day! Why I Love Women.

How We Men See Ourselves-



Empirical Man - How I Are. Anyway -








"As Madam Sappho in some sonnet said / 'A slap and a tickle / Is all that the fickle / Male / Ever has in his head' " Cole Porter, who went no where near Sappho, or any other skirt, on her best day.

("Unless they [men] are castrated, their brains do not function properly" Erica Jong from Sappho's Leap.


I have been a committed Sapphist all of of my life. Like most men, I have perpetually visiting Sapphic desires that are only augmented by a healthy regard for the dignity and strength that is woman, taught by women themselves. Nevertheless, I choose to hang on to Le Dieu du package donné Homme ( literal and metaphorical) until the warranty gives out; thank you, very much.

From Holy Mary Mother of God, to Ma - Ginny, to Sis Joan, to the departed Mary Cleary Mother of my children, to my girls Nora and Clare to my mother in-law Alice, to sister in law Gail Cleary and my St. Cajetan's sexy neighbor gals,to Sophisticated Lady, to Lady is a Tramp, to Snow White's Wicked StepMom ( my personal Milf #1.)to Alligator Woman, to Thank Heaven for Little Girls, to the Woman of My Dreams who deigns to be seen in public with me, to girls that had the very good sense to give me the brush off, To all the girls I've loved before Who travelled in and out my door I'm glad they came along I dedicate this song To all the girls I've loved before To all the girls I once caressed And may I say I've held the best For helping me to growI owe a lot I know Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Why you have anything to do with us lumpy, shiftless, attention defective, cartoon watching, lazy, whiney, horney, slip-shod hypochondriacs I will never know, but thank you.

We do what we can. . .if there is absolutely no way of putting it off, or getting out of it.

Women rule our thoughts, our vanities, our insecurities and our obligations. You clean us up, get us to church, and inspire us to be better than we are. No small task that.

A girl married to a very lucky Chicago Fireman in my neighborhood writes possibly the best antidote to the idiotic radical feminism so dominant in our culture. I believe that radical feminism nearly emasculated the American Male and diminished the natural and spiritual worth that is Woman. Marianne writes this about her choice in men. Girls and Perpetual Boys are the by-products of feminism it seems to me.

Girls are silly romantic dopes, like Amelia in Thackeray's Vanity Fair - in love with a fecklessly cruel sneak of a spoiled child, well into her middle age. Boys are obnoxious preening fops, who believe that they are poets and brigands - Byronic goofs. Boys are serial goats -leaping from sexual conquest to contest and always armed with a battery of bullshit.

Marianne, of We Band of Mothers notes:

Romantic Guy is the man who has perfected the art of making women swoon. He is poetry and roses. He is chivalrous. Gallant even. He is hard to resist because he feeds into a woman's desire for Hollywood romance and utter adoration.

Of course, Romantic Guy typically has the attention span of a flea. He tends to leave women sobbing in their lattes once his attention turns to the next best thing.

After one such relationship, I swore to my girlfriends that I didn't want to waste another moment with Romantic Guy. Instead, I longed for "Thick & Thin Guy."

Thick & Thin Guy stands by his gal in good times and in bad. He cares as much for her when she's a size 16 as he did when she was an 8. He is loyal, committed, and has never written a poem because he thinks only sissies do that.

I met and married Thick & Thin Guy. Life with my husband is not perfect, but it is pretty darn nice. I never doubt his love for his family, and he is the only man who has figured out that it's better to make me laugh than to do battle when I'm "in a mood."

You girls know what I'm talking about it

I love women! Girls are OK to witness, but absolutely lousy partners in anything. The only worse partner is a Boy. Try getting one to meet an obligation - too many toys and too much time.

I love women unconditionally.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Jan Schakowsky - Local Nitwit Tells National Joke That Catholics Don't Follow Their Faith

Jan screams, " I don't believe you goddam Christians! That was my last Altoid!"


Because the bi-partisan guys in Springfield wanted Jan Schakowsky the hell out of the Illinois Capital fast, some years back, we have Jan Nationwide. The Blob* (1958) grew slower. Congressman Jan Schakowsky continues the proud tradition of Blago and Burris in blackguarding the Land of Lincoln.

From Turkish** spy dalliances to felon huuby's White House visit, Jan Schakowsky is the billboard girl for everything that is wrong with politics and President Obama placed this daffy dame on the Deficit Reduction ( Simpson-Bowles) panel along with SEIU Mandarin Andy Stern. He went to Harvard. . . .U of C Law Don . . .smarter than the New Trier NHS. . . . Latin School mensa.

Here is a loo-loo! Now, Jan Schakowsky who could not find a chinaman on 22nd Street if she were slapping her, waxes looney with Big Ed Schultz of MSNBC et.al. on Catholics. It is always nice to listen to two mental defectives share insights on things national.

Speak on it sister!

JAN SCHAKOWSKY: First of all, let me thank you, Ed, because it's not just members of Congress but there have been, there's been a lot of male punditry, um, saying, oh, you know, we act as if this is a matter of religious freedom, and that kind of thing, forgetting that it's also a matter of women's health and women's lives. And you aren't one of those, and I appreciate it.

Um, but, you know, I, I really, I'm quite annoyed actually, um, by that, that Democrats were willing in some instances, I think, to throw women under the bus. And, you know, this is basic.

And you know what? The case is closed, too. There's no controversy around, uh, around contraceptives for almost 100 percent of Americans.

You know, there's few in the, uh, some in the Catholic Church and maybe some other Evangelical churches, I don't know, that think that it's wrong, but none of the American people follow that.

(emphasis my own)

Um, Uh, I, I mean, I really, Jan, um I, uh, really think you spent way too much timewith a tube of Testors up your old nostrils,there, Kiddo.

Jan stop by Sacred Heart Mission at 116th & Church just east of Morgan Park at 8:30 Mass next Sunday. Do little shoe-leather, grassroots research. It's Donut Sunday next week, as well.

The only woman that would be my choice to wait supine for the metaphorical bus is Congressjoke Jan Schakowsky.

*The Blob - 1958

A mysterious creature from another planet, resembling a giant blob of jelly, lands on earth. The people of a nearby small town refuse to listen to some teenagers who have witnessed the blob's destructive power. In the meantime, the blob just keeps on getting bigger.

**
Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator and the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition told the magazine that Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky was targeted by the Turks who compromised her with a Turkish female spy who seduced the bi-sexual and married Schakowsky. Schakowsky's townhouse had been bugged with cameras and microphones to capture the sex acts to later blackmail her. (Source: News.am) Dang! What's up with that one?

http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com/2009/09/did-jan-schakowsky-have-lesbian-spy.html

Father Bob Barron Exposes Obama's War on Catholics

The HBObama Channel's History of the Founding Fathers 2013, unless . . .


While the Chicago Sun Times offers a silly report on Vichy Priest(s) ( nod to Tom Roeser's genius) who refused to read Cardinal George's powerful condemnation of Obama's HHS Contraception Mandate ( only one priest is reported by-the-way), Chicago's Father Robert Barron presents a scholarly and pastoral expose of President Obama's secularist slight-of-hand within the larger secularist war on faith in general. Click my post title for this important article,

This might be a pretty good summary from Father Barron's work.

The secularist state recognizes that its principle enemy is the Church Catholic. Accordingly, it wants Catholicism off the public stage and relegated to a private realm where it cannot interfere with secularism's totalitarian agenda. I realize that in using that particular term, I'm dropping a rhetorical bomb, but I am not doing so casually.

There is a modality of secular liberalism that is not aggressive toward religion, but rather recognizes that religion makes an indispensable contribution to civil society. This more tolerant liberalism allows, not only for freedom of worship, but also for real freedom of religion, which is to say, the expression of religious values in the public square and the free play of religious ideas in the public conversation. Most of our founding fathers advocated just this type of liberalism.

But there is another modality of secularism -- sadly on display in the current administration -- that is actively aggressive toward religion, precisely because it sees religion as its primary rival in the public arena. Appreciating certain moral convictions as disvalues-think here especially of Catholic teachings concerning sexuality -- it seeks to eliminate religion or at the very least to privatize and hence marginalize it. In doing so, it indeed reveals itself as totalitarian, for it allows no room in the public space for anything but itself.

The reason that the Bill of Rights is so important is that it holds off the tendency, inherent in any government, toward totalitarianism, even if that means the totalitarianism of the majority. The very first amendment, of course, guarantees the free exercise of religion in our country. Our founders obviously feared that even a democratic system, predicated upon a repudiation of tyranny, could become so tyrannical itself that it would seek to intrude upon the sacred realm of the religious conscience.

That is a powerful quartet of paragraphs.

President Obama should be in for the fight of his political life. Vichy Catholics are with the President. The Catholic Church and others are all in for a nasty political and ideological brawl.

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.

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 Pitié

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/

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.


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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.

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.