How a Blue Collar Yank Sees Brexit - Punters Pummel Polls, Pols and Plutocrat

Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill

The folks who like to be called

What they have always been called

"The folks who live on the hill"

So the Common Market, gussied up in OXFam/BBC GlobeSpeak to EU, got a bit lighter at 5AM London time.

Brexit forces won the national referendum to - Leave, or Remain in the European Union, formerly known as the Common Market.

The United Kingdom joined the EU in 1975, the year I began teaching in American Catholic secondary schools.

Since that time, I have married the woman of my dreams, fathered three splendid children, purchased two homes, been widowed, taught English at three secondary schools and raised millions of dollars as a Director of Development, met and court yet another woman of my dreams and watched the world get meaner.

I use the more archaic form of 'mean' which is anything but golden.  My County Kerry grandparents used the term to describe actions and people that were unnecessarily cruel, stingy, loutish, short-sighted and vain. Inconsiderate and selfish wags the world.

Not always and everywhere, mind you, just the self-described 'big dogs' doing the geopolitical rump wiggles - Politicians, plutocrats and their pet mandarins - pollsters.

Pollsters take orders from politicians and  plutocrats and tell us what is morally objectionable. Us are we. The Darby and Joans.  Regular folks.

They tell us what is the right side of history.

Well Darby and Joans, all over the UK, just confounded the smart and huge money. I watched one flustered chap on the BBC explain that the banks and markets followed William Hill, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power

Bookies have drastically revised their odds on Brexit betting after unexpectedly strong early polling for the leave campaign upended their confidence that the United Kingdom would vote to stay in the European Union.
Markets have followed the same dramatic route, with the pound hitting six-month highs before dropping off a cliff.
As voting closed about 7am Australian time, betting agency William Hill was offering odds of 1/9 for a remain victory - indicating a 90 per cent probability the UK would stay in the EU.

The Punters beat the house.  Punter is a British term for 'the people in the shoppe'  -fingering goods and merchandise - searching for a bargain.  Yew Knaooow!  The Commoners.

The oily Hungarian Bond Villain who funds every creepy political astro-turf organization, put his man in the White House with Vakerie Jarrett to yank his voice box in 2008, screwed up Venezuela and Central America more than Jefe Hugo and backed the REMAIN Global UK initiative and even ordered the White House to phone it in hours before the polls opened.

With the date of the Brexit referendum approaching and “Leave” leading in the polls, Soros published an article in the UK Guardian claiming that a vote to leave the EU would trigger an economic disaster.
“It is reasonable to assume, given the expectations implied by the market pricing at present, that after a Brexit vote the pound would fall by at least 15% and possibly more than 20%,” Soros wrote.
Soros coupled his comments with references to a wildly questionable British Treasury economic “model” that estimated a Brexit would reduce UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per household by $6,321 in 2030.
The scare tactics seemed to work over the next few days. The polls indicated that the chances of a “Leave” vote fell dramatically and global stock markets rallied back.
Matthew Tyrmand believes that this is typical of a Soros’ orchestrated “reflexivity” campaign to overload the consciousness of most UK middle- and lower-class voters that against their own self-interest, they will vote to remain in the EU. 

Well, Darby and Joan launched a UK Bourgeois revolution. Like our British cousins, American workers are fed daily yards of tripe from the Soros funded thought mills and have the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Jan Schakowsky and Barack Obama pound our ears about what they are doing for the middle class.  Seems to me that they are doing economic genocide on the American Middle Class.

Another son of blue collar south side Chicago, political journalist, John Patrick Feehry, writes,

The global economy has been remarkable efficient in bringing more products to more customers at better prices.  It has been the principle reason that more people have been lifted out of abject poverty in global history. 

But for the middle class, those who do the bulk of the voting, globalization has come at a tremendous cost.  The poor have done markedly better, the rich have done amazingly better, but those stuck in the middle have seen their wages stagnate if they have jobs at all.
Brexit was vote to stick it to the globalizers.  It was a vote to reestablish national identity.  It was a vote reclaim control of their little piece of the world. 

Well, Shucks!  The Politicians, Polls and the Plutocrat had it handed to them in Old Blighty. Europe faces what one paper called an 'existential crisis' - Sartre would call that ironic.

The UK is out of the EU.  I think that is good thing.  If Polls, Politicians and Plutocrats can look stupid, I call that a very good day.

Now, let's see what America will do - stay on the leash, or break the chains.

This is for you, Darby and Joan!


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How a Blue Collar Yank Sees Brexit - Punters Pummel Polls, Pols and Plutocrat

Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill

The folks who like to be called

What they have always been called

"The folks who live on the hill"

So the Common Market, gussied up in OXFam/BBC GlobeSpeak to EU, got a bit lighter at 5AM London time.

Brexit forces won the national referendum to - Leave, or Remain in the European Union, formerly known as the Common Market.

The United Kingdom joined the EU in 1975, the year I began teaching in American Catholic secondary schools.

Since that time, I have married the woman of my dreams, fathered three splendid children, purchased two homes, been widowed, taught English at three secondary schools and raised millions of dollars as a Director of Development, met and court yet another woman of my dreams and watched the world get meaner.

I use the more archaic form of 'mean' which is anything but golden.  My County Kerry grandparents used the term to describe actions and people that were unnecessarily cruel, stingy, loutish, short-sighted and vain. Inconsiderate and selfish wags the world.

Not always and everywhere, mind you, just the self-described 'big dogs' doing the geopolitical rump wiggles - Politicians, plutocrats and their pet mandarins - pollsters.

Pollsters take orders from politicians and  plutocrats and tell us what is morally objectionable. Us are we. The Darby and Joans.  Regular folks.

They tell us what is the right side of history.

Well Darby and Joans, all over the UK, just confounded the smart and huge money. I watched one flustered chap on the BBC explain that the banks and markets followed William Hill, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power

Bookies have drastically revised their odds on Brexit betting after unexpectedly strong early polling for the leave campaign upended their confidence that the United Kingdom would vote to stay in the European Union.
Markets have followed the same dramatic route, with the pound hitting six-month highs before dropping off a cliff.
As voting closed about 7am Australian time, betting agency William Hill was offering odds of 1/9 for a remain victory - indicating a 90 per cent probability the UK would stay in the EU.

The Punters beat the house.  Punter is a British term for 'the people in the shoppe'  -fingering goods and merchandise - searching for a bargain.  Yew Knaooow!  The Commoners.

The oily Hungarian Bond Villain who funds every creepy political astro-turf organization, put his man in the White House with Vakerie Jarrett to yank his voice box in 2008, screwed up Venezuela and Central America more than Jefe Hugo and backed the REMAIN Global UK initiative and even ordered the White House to phone it in hours before the polls opened.

With the date of the Brexit referendum approaching and “Leave” leading in the polls, Soros published an article in the UK Guardian claiming that a vote to leave the EU would trigger an economic disaster.
“It is reasonable to assume, given the expectations implied by the market pricing at present, that after a Brexit vote the pound would fall by at least 15% and possibly more than 20%,” Soros wrote.
Soros coupled his comments with references to a wildly questionable British Treasury economic “model” that estimated a Brexit would reduce UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per household by $6,321 in 2030.
The scare tactics seemed to work over the next few days. The polls indicated that the chances of a “Leave” vote fell dramatically and global stock markets rallied back.
Matthew Tyrmand believes that this is typical of a Soros’ orchestrated “reflexivity” campaign to overload the consciousness of most UK middle- and lower-class voters that against their own self-interest, they will vote to remain in the EU. 

Well, Darby and Joan launched a UK Bourgeois revolution. Like our British cousins, American workers are fed daily yards of tripe from the Soros funded thought mills and have the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Jan Schakowsky and Barack Obama pound our ears about what they are doing for the middle class.  Seems to me that they are doing economic genocide on the American Middle Class.

Another son of blue collar south side Chicago and political journalist, John Patrick Feehry, writes,

The global economy has been remarkable efficient in bringing more products to more customers at better prices.  It has been the principle reason that more people have been lifted out of abject poverty in global history. 

But for the middle class, those who do the bulk of the voting, globalization has come at a tremendous cost.  The poor have done markedly better, the rich have done amazingly better, but those stuck in the middle have seen their wages stagnate if they have jobs at all.
Brexit was vote to stick it to the globalizers.  It was a vote to reestablish national identity.  It was a vote reclaim control of their little piece of the world. 

Well, Shucks!  The Politicians, Polls and the Plutocrat had it handed to them in Old Blighty. Europe faces what one paper called an 'existential crisis' - Sartre would call that ironic.

The UK is out of the EU.  I think that is good thing.  If Polls, Politicians and Plutocrats can look stupid, I call that a very good day.

Now, let's see what America will do - stay on the leash, or break the chains.

This is for you, Darby and Joan!

Sit-in By Cynical Slobs - Sorry; Save for CSPAN Saps.

I am a Democrat.  Still vote that way - largely. I love my Alderman,Matt O'Shea of the 19th Ward, because he is a genuine representative of the people he represents.  I will not vote for a Congressman, State Senator,or State Rep who takes coin from the Abortion Industry, Planned Parenthood, or Personal PAC Illinois - sorry.  I am not a gun owner, never was and never will own one - not because I believe that guns kill people.  Guns can be used to kill people.  People kill with any means they find handy.

I do know that Planned Parenthood kills more people than the NRA.

I have buried far too many young African Americans ( 9 by my count) in the last twenty years.  Not one happened to be gang-banger.  Twice that number have been wounded and one splendid young man will be in a wheelchair for life.

I have had several close calls as well.  The first time in 1998, a bullet whispered past my left ear and then two more, before I hit the pavement at 79th Street and Sangamon.  I called my Dad, who was a WWII veteran of Bougainville, Guam and Iwo Jima and described the very distinct sound of the rounds. " Did fill your Union Suit?" was his response.  No, I answered.  " You will the next time."

He was right.  I learned to fall with my broad manly rump facing the shooter, so as not to take one in the head.  Strange things one learns in one's middle age.

I was not a target; I was in the way.  The students I mentioned above were targets, but they were no fortunate. Eric Ersery was murdered in 1998 at 79th & Laflin, trying to protect a young girl. Eric's mother had paid the last installment of his tuition that April day.  Eric went to classes and then on to work at Burlington Coat Factory at 81st & Cicero.  When he got off the 79th Street bus, Eric walked over to talk to the girl he knew.  Gangbangers mistook the girl for relative ( CPD Area 2 Detectives later explained) who had run afoul of them and they emerged from the gangway 9's a popping.  Eric covered the girl and his bullet peppered body was found over the girl, who also died.

I don't hate guns.  I don't hate inanimate objects.  I hate the acts of people too stupid and too thuggish to consider the consequences of their wants.

I hate bullying. I hate violence,  I hate stupidity.  Most of the mugs in the photo attached above from my experience with them (Schakowsky, Quigley, Duckworth, Davis) as people who impressed me to be very stupid bullies.  Violent? Beats me.

I do not like meaningless gestures, nicely phrased appeals to our better angels; especially from people who care only their position, power and pleasure - preachers, pundits and politicians, for example.

Aside from Robin Kelly (whom I have never met) , the people of the Illinois Congressional Delegation are some of the most obnoxious, smarmy, dim-witted, opportunistic and puffed up bullies, it has been my sad experience to suffocate some of my time earth in their company.

To say that this group of self-serving snobs and simpering bootlickers is in any way shape or fashion sincere, beggars logic and sentiment.

Their rumps kissing the floor of the Nation's Capitol insult the victims of thuggery world wide.

Guns do not kill people and more than pencils fail exams.

People who pretend otherwise are sitting on the floors of Congress.

Sun Times, Yet Again, Sides With Corporatist Mayor Rahm Disney Star Wars

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Jiminy Cricket chirps them sentiments.  Chicago is populated with Jiminy Crickets - goofs and goo-goos who not only go along with the destruction of neighborhoods, but see the rainbow and a crock of gold.  Jiminy Cricket got Rahm re-elected, put Toni Preckwinkle in her President's chair, backed every single digit I.Q. in Springfield and will do it all over again.

Every Jiminy Cricket Chicagoan (Ready for Hillary/Thinks the BGA Works for People Other Than the People Screwing Our Lives/Still Read The Trib and Sun Times Without Laughing, or Tossing The Old Cookies/Votes Straight Ticket Like It Was 1963) will be only too delighted to know the Narrative Created for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts Continues.

The Friends have abandoned their loftiest argument, that a 1973 ordinance and the spirit of a “free and open” lakefront prohibit further private development east of Lake Shore Drive. Now they’re just trying to cut a deal on the particulars of the museum, like everybody else.

You mean like Becky and Stan across the street who can be sure to profit handsomely by Rahm's Public Land Yard Sale to the wee Lad with bags of gold doubloons and happens to be married to a Hyde Park Mafia Princess? Chomsky, Please! Those two are  'real' players and Becky and Stan are, like every non-in-the-mix Chicago citizen, abstractions - votes.

The Compelling narrative voices of the Sun Times Editorial Board, like the castrati on the Chicago Tribune's, are in full harmony here -

But in giving up the high ground of pure principle, the Friends have lost much of their authority in this debate. Why should anybody listen to them? They are a respected and valued group, undoubtedly, but elected by nobody. If it is not a violation of fundamental civic values to grant the Lucas Museum a lakefront location, as the Friends appear to have conceded, then they should step aside. They should drop their law suit and leave it to those who actually were elected by somebody — the mayor and the City Council — to cut the best deal for our city.
Maybe then this negotiation can move into the real world.

Really? Gee. So, the unelected must shut up?  Brave New World; Well, compel my britches!

• The BGA has a niche right smack dab in the middle of the Sun Times Thought Cathedral seven days a week.  No one elected Andy Shaw and the laid off former Sun Times and Tribune ink-slingers who support the Rahm Disney Star Wars Magic Kingdom . . .I mean Chicago.
• Jesse L. Jackson, Ist of His Name, and one of most practiced and accomplished stick up artist in Social Justice Mythology continues to prop up the power on Chicago's leading tabloid. - No One Elected the King of Beers
• Madeleine Dubeck, came to the Sun Times at the Birth of ReBoot Illinois and no one elected this former editor of the Daily Herald to ReBoot the old Illinois Hard Drive, but she slings ink now and then for the Sun Times, whenever the billionaires ( Crown/Griffin et al) need to gin up some grassroots horseshit for some more Green.

The Sun Times sanctions columns for "advocates and activists" who help draw up compelling narratives to change the social, moral, culture and political landscape of America and heap profits upon the chosen few in league with the Progressive Corporatist Power at City Hall, in Cook County and even out in Springfield.

Jiminy Crickets! When I wish upon a star, I sure don't expect to see Forrest Claypool, Pat Quinn, Toni Preckwinkle, Bruce Rauner, Rahm Emanuel, or Valerie Jarrett to get sprinkled with Hollywood Star Wars Dust and an Obama Museum.  Jiminy Crickets all over Chicago do and the Sun Times is always there to make their Dreams Come True.

Next Mayoral Election - I'm Voting Straight Friends of the Park.

Rahm's Chicago is Richie Daley's Monument - No Havoc Here.

"Let's face it: we have a problem in Chicago. The name-calling and politics at City Hall are keeping us from tackling the real issues ... I may not be the best speaker in town, but I know how to run a government and how to bring people together."
Rahm Emanuel worked for the Daley campaign as a fundraiser,[42] David Axelrod as campaign strategist, William Daley as chief strategist, and Forrest Claypool as a campaign aide. Wikipedia on Richard M. Daley

"The more killing and homicides you have, the more havoc it prevents." Richard M. Daley(RMD)

To be fair, Rahm's Chicago began at that time in Richie Daley's Mayorship when the University of Chicago Hyde Park Mafia sunk its hooks in his tiny heart.  That was when kitchen cabinet Progressive types encouraged RMD to Move out of Bridgeport

• Ax people like Pat Huels, Terry Teele and Oscar De Angelo pronto
• Use Marilyn Katz PR and watch the Feds takeover  CHA* and send problems to neighborhoods
• Trust U of C and Northwestern to beat up on the solid but Progressively disdained people who got you elected ( Sheahan, Joyce and Degnan) via university trained Hegelian activists, lawyers and media types: G. Flint Taylor/Locke Bowman/Jeanne Snyder/Bernardin Dorhn et al 
• Snuggle up to the University of Chicago policy artistes
• Use hard-ball tactics against old school Ward bosses - embrace Shakman
• Close neighborhood taverns, where people talk politics ( RMD) closed scores of family saloons in Bridgeport, Canaryville, Back of the Yards, McKinley Park, Brighton Park and in the southwest Mick Wards. 
• Embrace Progressive platitudes and play act regular old schoolisms to fool the helots.
• Place Progressive icons in City Departments as Heads and hug  Shakman tighter
• Have Regular Democratic Organizations ( 10th, 14th, 19th Wards e.g.)  send field troops into Lakeview, Uptown, Rogers Park and Hyde Park to shoo out the votes for our Mike Quigleys, Joe Mooores and Toni Preckwinkles.
• Turn the keys of the City over to Ameritech, Nortyh Michigan Ave Business Association and Disney.
• Don't Worry about Torture or Burge, or whatever - Our judges like Judge Robert Gettleman got your back.

All of those moves put Valerie Jarrett in the White House and helped build Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone.

Today, Chicago is America's largest illegal gun range.  The guns used in Chicago's daily bloodbaths are not Commie AK-47s in the hands of Aryan Nation Pro-Lifeers; they are street steel.

We have no havoc and we have tons of homicides.  

Here is today's Butcher Bill 

Year to DateShot - Killed: 271
Shot - Wounded: 1490
Total Shot: 1761
Total Homicides: 302

No Havoc!  Enjoy The Pride Parade, Buy some great Disney Products on the Mag Mile and in City Kiosks Everywhere, but Engelwood, Taste of Chicago and Ride the Giant Ferris wheel!

Disney had one  horrific week with the slaughter of people in a nightclub, the stalker murder of a young singer and the corporate controlled death of a toddler at a Disney Resort.

We have the same corporately controlled environment here in Chicago  - hey, deaths happen, people.

Alligators go where they wants to go and urban thugs get chillin' with killin' G!

Today we "learn" that Disney was very aware of threats posed by alligators even when their nature habitat is 'controlled' by the suits who erased Walt Disney's Vision.



Here is a solid Disney employee shooing away Wally Gator (Chicago has one as well) from guests on Splash Mountain.

More interesting is the comment section from the Daily Mail article that broke this story. where gent from Birmingham, Michigan notes,

@#$$%%%^^, Birmingham MI, United States, about 5 hours ago
Safer here than walking on streets of Chicago

That is quite true, There has yet to be another alligator attack since the horror of last week, but Chicago killings and homices continue to keep Old Man Havoc away!

Disney and Daley and Rahm's Chicago Both Are No-Fly Zones: "“I think just the whole debate about the flight restriction–temporary flight restriction. How difficult that was, how hard it was to get as compared to Mickey and Minnie getting it.”

Hard, Richie, way hard.  Harder than arithmetic.

*Joseph Shuldiner, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing, will be HUD's point man in Chicago. The former head of New York City's housing authority, Mr. Shuldiner will oversee much of the transition from local to Federal control.
He will arrive in Chicago either Monday or Tuesday to brief Mayor Daley and to talk with residents and the staff of the authority. Mr. Daley is out of the city on a trip to England, paid for by American Airlines, and he could not be reached for comment.

Give Disney the Brush; Not Because of a Tragedy, But Because of Old Walt

 “To create a land that would make this dream reality, we pictured ourselves far from civilization, in the remote jungles of Asia and Africa.” WALT DISNEY 

“We knew that Disney was aware that this was a problem, and yet they encourage people to be there,”  Disney Guest in the wake of the horrific death of a toddler at Disney Resort 

To be perfectly fair, Old Walt intended to have guests be awed by mechanical plastic alligators in Anaheim.  Disney today is a very far stretch from Walt's vision - it is a corporate banana republic.

Disney will do everything to keep the horrific death of a baby snatched by one of Florida's ubiquitous alligators - in The Happiest Place on Earth's controlled environments - out of Court.  No signs for alligators?  Why worry.  Disney has plenty of worry and well it should.

I expect the Disney guest, quoted above, will get a threatening call from the suits for " The Happiest Place on Earth - that you can shell out a year's salary for you and the family."

Already there are voices calling for 'examination of parents,' as in the recent Cincinnati Zoo incident when a toddler managed to get into the gorilla exhibit and escaped only because of the quick thinking zoo response team. The magnificent Silverback was killed and the world seemed to want to lynch the parents of the little boy.  Now, Disney ranked the 66th on the Forbes 500  appears to be at DEF CON Six.

Disney's beaches remained closed on Thursday and the company was "conducting a swift and thorough review of all of our processes and protocols," Jacquee Wahler, vice president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a statement Thursday.
"This includes the number, placement and wording of our signage and warnings," she said in the statement.
There was a "no-swimming" sign near the water, but there were no alligator warning signs where the attacked occurred, a Disney spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

Disney, like McDonald's, is not my cup of tea -flying, steaming, or otherwise.



McDonald's lost any and all appeal for me when it exchanged the winking fat guy, "Speedee" for the predatory child molesting Ronald McDonald. I refused to take my kids to McDonald's ( 1984-Present) and encouraged them to consume products made by Mom & Pop joints in the neighborhood.  Primarily because the corporate culture creeped me out.

Likewise, Disney went south for me during the late 1970's and 1980's when the oily suits replaced lovable Old Walt and anyone else with his DNA. Yet I am widowed Dad who was joyfully married to an artistic woman who loved her Mickey and Minnie. The Dude abides.

My kids loved Disney!  What little kids do not?  I have probably the most comprehensive and thoroughly useless VHS collection of the Disney Canon from Steamboat Willie to Lilo and Stitch. We even went to Orlando on two occasions.  They sold beer at Epcot. I joined a Universal Brotherhood of Disney Dad's in Tow!

I friended Dad's from France, an Orangeman from Belfast, a Sikh and a Latvian auto dealer.  At Disney Resorts you can hear -

"Maintenant écoute. Rapide les pleurs . Tout le monde doit attendre en ligne . Ce voyage côte votre maman et moi un poumon . Maintenant , éteignez les ouvrages hydrauliques!" French

"Tagad klausīties . Quick raudāšana . Ikvienam ir jāgaida rindā . Šis ceļojums krasts jūsu Mamma un Me plaušu . Tagad , izslēdziet ūdens darbus Latvian

In every tongue!  Translated to - " Now listen. Quit the crying. Everyone must wait in line. This trip cost your Mom and Me a lung. Now, turn off the water works!"

To which, in every tongue, wives would override with " Lighten up! For Once?  Okay?"

I make light of Disney . . .they can take it.

They dish it out aplenty, as well.

I do not make light of the horrific loss of a sweet angel to Melissa and Matt Graves of Nebraska.  My God, there is nothing so horrific as the loss of a child.

My hope is that maybe families will begin to see the World of Wonder dreamed up by the Chicago North Side Irishman, back in the 1950's.  Go to places where America's past is honored. Go to places that give children a sense of wonder - right in their own backyards,  No lines and you won't have to cough up a lung.

My kids seek out great hamburgers, because they know what they are and who makes them.  If they want toys, take them to a toy store; Top Notch throws together some serious burger over on 95th Street.

Disney and McDonalds are business; not family.

Walt said it best, “A man should never neglect his family for business."

Life of Muhammad Ali is Errol Garner's "April in Paris"

Since early Saturday, June 4th 2016, I have read, watched and listened to tributes, remembrances and analyses from ink-slingers, talking heads and tweedy fops that contort the life of Muhammad Ali, the father-in-law of my friend Mike Joyce, in pretzel logic so his life and his passing from this life makes their own pet theories somehow important.

Muhammad Ali was a one of the greatest athletes in human history and a genius.

He was an Adonis for most of his seventy four years here with us and man of wit and grace.  

You can not explain the life of Muhammad Ali by making him into a Black Joe Hill, a muscular Howard Zinn, a testicular Gloria Steinem, or a good humored Donald Trump.

I understand Muhammad Ali by listening to Errol Garner's April in Paris from Concert by the Sea

Its is all here -humor, power, love, artistry, joy, righteous anger, gratitude, humilty and grace in the hands of two man blessed by God. 

Was I a Headline This Morning? My Adventure on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway ( 9-9:46 AM on May 23, 2016)

 "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Ian Betteridge's Law of Journalism

" A Semi driver was shot and seriously wounded as he drove north on the Dan Ryan Expressway near 95th Street on Thursday night, the second shooting on a Chicago expressway in five days and among more than a dozen this year, state police said." - Chicago Tribune

Taking a friend to the airport is a task that most of us view as a simple obligation to family and friends.  Taking a friend to the airport in Chicago is another matter. For a resident of the Morgan Park neighborhood, the choice of route depends upon the airport - Midway Airport, or O'Hare. Midway is a breeze - head north on Cicero Ave to 63rd street and get in the right lane.  Going to O'Hare should be determined by the Tolls, or the Chicago traffic. One can easily go directly to O'Hare on Interstate 294 and pay a couple of tolls, if one is going directly to O'Hare. My task required a trip to River Forest; thus, the Dan Ryan and the Ike.

Recently the stretch of the Dan Ryan between 127th Street and 95th Street has been the site of a number of lethal thug killings and woundings.  These incidents that the media and political social justice charlatans call 'gun violence' have boosted Chicago's reputation as the nation's number one Thug Comfort Zone and will only increase the municipal exeunt omnes brought on by such law makers and loud mouths.

I left the barn for my good deed a few minutes before 9 AM.  As my friend's flight on United was scheduled for 1:45 PM and required a three hour pre-TSA Mugging arrival and the one hour and change it takes to get to Division and Harlem, I did not wish to shoot craps with Jane Byrne Interchange Cluster Hug.

Driving 111th Street east to Ryan is a breeze.  People from Beverly, Morgan Park, Roseland, Mount Greenwood, Washington Heights and Fernwood are generally traffic observant and friendly.  There is also the neighborhood's bastion of Service and Protection - the 22nd District of Chicago Police Department at Monteray - just before the Dan Ryan entrance ramp on Hamlet Street.

There was a red light before the ramp and I was enjoying WCDB 90.5 jazz,when my car jarred.

The driver of a red, late-model Nissan Altima had bumped me. As it was slight bump, I turned in my seat and waved off any concern for the driver's inattention, or technical problem.  Seconds passed and the light changed.  I took my foot off the brake and checked my rear view mirror - the driver, a thirty-something African American man, was screaming at me and laying on the horn - He was saying that I am a Caucasian Fornicator of Oedipal Inclinations.

I recalled the recent spat of Dan Ryan shootings.  Though they took place during wee small hours of the mornings, perhaps the huge thick portion day-break was not out of the question: 1. the man hit me. 2. I was sure that he was not infuriated because I had not given him the opportunity to make a clean breast of things concerning his violation Secretary of State Jesse White's Rules of the Illinois Roads. The driver was going apeshit and now was trying to run me off the road.

I am a very good driver and I did not want to allow my nemesis to pull up even with me.  After checking on-coming traffic in the rear views, I hit the brakes and swerved in behind the red Nissan and we engaged what can only be described as an expressway dogfight - doing vehicular Immalmans, and two dimensional barrelrolls from 111th Street all the was to 87th Street when I managed to secure my place behind this person who intended no good for me.

On several occasions my enemy in this duel of American ( I drive a Chevy) and Japanese cars managed to pull up next to and began lowering his window. With my peripheral vision I gauged traffic and looked for a firearm and hit the brakes whenever he was close to giving me a more robust burst from his arsenal of epithets concerning my race, or a sound hosing of 9mm pills.

Just past 87th Street, I made a call to 911 and asked for Illinois State Police - I gave the make, model and Illinois license plate numbers and hung up.  I was not going to pull over and test Dame Fortune with this gent. All the time I managed to stay behind this guy.

No State Troopers anywhere, Not at 63rd.  Not at 47th Canaryville.  Not at Sox Park.  Not at Chinatown and the guy was staying with me - though just ahead me.  He kept turning his head to shout at me.   I called again and was told that ' we are covering an accident.'

I followed him to the Ike at the Jane Byrne Interchange onto 290 and west side.  The guy pulled as far to the right as he could and I remained on his tail.  He faked an exit at Racine. Another at Western Ave. and gave no indication that he was going to allow me top avoid a confrontation with him.

Finally, he gave up at Homan Ave. and I continued on to pick up my friend and take her to O'Hare.  we arrived in plenty of time.

After fulfilling my simple task on that particular Holy Trinity Sunday, I headed back to 111th Street and went into 22nd. District Headquarters and made a hit and run complaint, as that was my only means of getting on the record - he hit me on Hamlet Street and that was not on the Dan Ryan.  I did not pull over and 'wait' for the Illinois State Police show up.

Mostly, I did not wish to be headline - 63 year old shot in yet another expressway incident - no suspects.

As it is, I was blessed by God.

I have no idea what the other guy is all about.

6:30 AM at St. John Fisher Parish: An Existential Moment in Stained Glass

"Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth."--Søren Kierkegaard

These May mornings are fall like.  For the last two weeks you would believe that it was time to rake leaves.

God wakes me up and the least I can do say some small thanks.  After prayers, the morning ablutions and whisker landscaping it is time to pound the pavement to 6:30 AM services at my neighboring parish St. John Fisher.  Located in what is called West Beverly ( the area north of my Morgan Park neighborhood) the walk is a splendid mile and change that takes me up Talman Avenue and some of the most beautiful homes in the 19th Ward on south side of Chicago.  Unlike the tony mansion and massive bungalow phalanxes crowding the Ward east of Western Avenue and the blue collar raised ranches and Cape Cods and frames of Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood, West Beverly aka St. John Fisher Parish, or just Fisher, features streets where every home sports a unique architectural jacket.  The photo above is an example.


St. John Fisher Grammar School is the most desired placement in the neighborhood for the children of cops, firemen, CPS teachers, nurses and Cook County and City Hall Government mandarins of every rank.  The school run by Sister Jean McGrath is one of most successfully enrolled schools in the Chicago Archdiocese.

 A forty foot high cross marks St. John Fisher parish campus of Church, school, rectory and convent.

 The church represents the post-World War II architecture found in parishes on the far southwest side - departures from the huge granite, marble Gothic, Lombardy, and Romansque churches found in the older south side parishes.  It is a large open and comfortable place of worship.

 The parish is named in honor of a martyr to Henry the Eighth's glandular theology of the Anglican and Episopal denominations. St. John Fisher was a bishop who went to King Henry's chopping block before St. Thomas More who seemed to have had a better public relations appeal in history.

 Our Lady was crowned by the kids of the parish a few weeks ago.

 Early morning services are attended by a baker's dozen of regulars.

 My daily perch is in the last pew on the south side of the church which features this stained glass representation of Abraham's interrupted sacrifice of his lad Issac in the most existential episode of the Bible. The knife is up!  Will Abe really bring it down on his kid?  God's Hand Shows Up!

 Since the beginning of Lent and right up to this morning, I have studied this window.

I realized that the young man depicted as ISSAC in the stained glass went to Mount Carmel.  He is wearing the 19th Ward requisite tonsorial headwear - a brown MC baseball cap with brim turned around to keep the sun off the kid with see-through Irish skin on his neck.(click on the photo for a better look)

Preserve The Family Restaurant and Steak House - The Golden Steer

A brilliant banker, writer and culinary journeyman, Steve Jordan, lamented the manic idiocy that passes for Food Shows on cable television.  He noted that what had once been a comfortably informative sharing of recipes and food prep techniques is now a mere rat-race of reality TV tryting to beat the clock.

Cable has done more to kill history than Howard Zinn - witness the History Channel Lineup: Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Counting Cars.  Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall is  the greatest holistic consideration of an epoch of history and the History Channel is a cartoon station with very rare exceptions. So too. have become  Cookin Channel Food Network treatments like Chopped, Rev Runs Sunday Dinners, Cupcake Wars, and Cutthroat Kitchen.

People who relish these television servings of shallow and empty I.Q. calories, also tend to flock to LongHorn Steakhouse, Chipotle, Applebees, Chilies, Olive Garden and other trick-name ( PTSD McNugget's Shamrock Pub Grubs) big-box swill troughs.  Family owned restaurants offer better food and often better parking, service and mosty certainly atmosphere.

Yesterday, I treated my lady friend to dinner at Forest Park's. Golden Steer*.

This is a family owned and operated steak house run by the same family since 1969,  "Owners/Chefs Kiriakos (Charlie) and Gus Tzouras bring more 35 years experience in creating meals that will warm up your stomachs and your souls."

Tell me about it.

We arrived at 4:30 P.M. and were greeted by two lovely women who have worked at this restaurant for more than two decades. The hostess informed me that she also works as a soda jerk in an old fashiones icecream parlor during the day.  Our waitress was a decades long veteran who said," We love coming to work here and if we get fired, we are hired back the same day - go figure."

Loyalty begets great service.

I ordered a T-Bone medium rare with baked potatoe, roasted asparagas and Roqueford salad and the exquiite Miss Sullivan ordered the broiled scrod, baked potatoe and house salad and shared the broiled asparagas.  After we placed our order the Owner/Chef Charlie asked if we would mind moving to another table, as a large family had come in with more guests than the reservations taken - it was big Mexican American family celebrating a young lady's graduation from Dominican University in River Forest.  We were only too happy to jump tables.

By 5 P.M. the restaurant was filled to capacity and the bar was thick with people waiting for a table.

The food was wonderful and our waitress was attentive and sweetly salty with me, " Want me get a wheel chair to roll out after tucking away the grub, Honey?" Truth be told, I took home 3/4the of the T-Bone and Miss Sullivan carried away half of her scrod.

Before I could call for the bill,  the owner and our lovely waitress put a thick slice of Tiramisu between us and order us to do it justice.  I did most of the heavy-lifting.  This was Chef Charlie's thank you to us for moving to another table.  Family means much to a family business.

Will family owned and operated restaurants be around for future generations?

I rather doubt it.  Look at what passes for television and look at the forest of Applebees, Longhorns, Chili's and DT McPtomaine's.

*Get to Golden Steet - there are no on-line reservations - you must call in 

CALL US NOW

708-771-7798

What to do on Friday: March 11th 2016 - Let's See? Free Trump Passes or Pay a Sawbuck and Watch Leo Win State Title?

Donald Trump?  You can have him.  Not as President, I hope, nor pretty much anything else, but he's all your's.



He is going to be at UIC (Cement City) on Friday and is giving away free passes to hear him talk about himself. Caveat!  If you go to see Trump, you also must endure Chicago's GangBanger Emeritus clown Congressman Luis Gutierrz. Lord Have mercy! Two humps on the same cement?  Nah. Pass.

You see, both humps are here to help Hillary Clinton nail down the Oval Office.

The only thing that could get me anywhere near that hump Trump might be an all you can eat gift certificate for Tufano's Vernon Park Tap, which is within walking-away distance of the UIC Pavilion.

So you have that going on.

Leo High School is in the IHSA Class 1-A Final Four.

So, I intend to drive 2 hours and fifty-seven minutes away from the clown show at Cement City and drive to Whiskey City - Peoria, IL and watch the mighty, mighty Leo Lions defeat Woodlawn ( no small task that) and then return on Saturday to watch the same-said Lions cut off the nets in the Carver Arena.

You see, Donald Trump is exactly same kind of clown as the ones who get all of the urban media face-time and ink-slop over race-hustling, thug murder and street activism.  There is absolutely no difference, whatsoever, between Trump and any of the insta-loudmouth-Reverend- prophet -activists the media worship.  In fact, the very same words of affection used to 'justify' the local blatherskites, apply to Donald H. Trump: "fiery, speaks his mind, helps so many, concerned, at times divisive, obnoxious, contoversial, but always news worthy."

Uh,huh.

The fact is that street hustling stiff-collars and Donald Trump have done and will do nothing for kids, old people, or starving blind match girls.

I would much rather enjoy the joy and sparkle of the faces of fifteen young men and their coaches engaged in the formative combat that is athletic competition, where no one is a victim and outcomes matter.  Score more baskets; cut nets off of the rims attached to expensive backboards at the Carver Arena.

Leo High School ( the maintenance staff, the ladies who run the offices and Leo the parents, the teachers,  the administrators, the Alumni, The Big Shoulders Fund, and the many generous non-Leo donors who are Catholic and Jewish ) knows that Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Lives in the Womb Matter and All Lives Out of Womb Matter a whole bunch and our kids will tear off nets because of that knowledge.

Street hustlers say that they know it, but they could care less and do absolutely nothing to ever make a difference here, or anywhere, unless Jay Levine, or Carol Marin can broadcast their words and totally ignore anything else.

Cardinal George knew Leo High School stood for everything in my above parentheses  and Acted upon it.  Cardinal George, to use the media word 'advocated' for Leo High School and also acted to raise money sending checks from his personal account and not the Archdiocese bank accounts, or some creep State legislator, or City Hall stooge to scratch up a taxpayer funded boondoggle.  Mostly, Cardinal George ministered to students, counselled individual kids from Grand Crossing, Englewood, Gresham and Canaryville without a call to the Tribune or the Sun Times.  No bishop of Chicago, ever did more for kids at Leo than the late Cardinal George.

Chicago wants Francis Cardinal George in its memory hole - forgotten.

Donald Trump wants everything in a memory hole.

Now, I am no fan of Trump, as I am no fan of race baiting, street hustling prophets, but that does not mean you should not delight in their words and the media words about them.  Oh, Hell No!

That's just me.

However, I am a huge fan of pure high school achievement - athletic and academic.  I am a huge fan of Facta Non Verba: Deeds and Not Words.

Two hours and fifty minutes, two tanks of gas at praeter-Cook County prices, parking in Peoria and a $10 ticket to the Carver is well worth being anywhere near bumptious ass who wants to help Hillary Clinton become President.

Terror Town Gets a Pass and a Police Officer Does the Time

"The constitution applies to felons, it applies to drug addicts, You don't get a pass every few years because you work in Terror Town*." Judge Kendall

The Constitution obviously takes an entitrely different application althogether to the judicial mindset of United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Virginia Kendall, when it comes to serving Chicago Police Officers in this Post BLM Era.  The Black Lives of Women and Men Serving in CPD Blue can expect getting two and and one half year Federal sentence reduced to two years, by judicial fiat, however.

Chicago Police Officer Aldo Brown received a two year sentnce from Judge Kendall for his October conviction of "excessive force for hitting and kicking a convenience store clerk in September 2012. Brown testified at his trial that he began throwing punches at Jecque Howard at the Omar Salma shop on East 76th Street only after he realized Howard had a handgun in his back pocket."



Officer Aldo Brown worked in Terror Town, not far from where I work every day.   Terror Town, like O Street, is another hip media-driven set of real estate that colorfully adds luster to 'compelling narratives' for hand-wringers and nod-with-conviction arm-chair activists in Evanston, Hyde Park, Highland Park and the hispter havens of elites in Wicker Park, Lakeview, or the political ruling class bed-room community Lincoln Square.

Those of us who live and work in ,and near,  the Terror Towns, The Englewoods, the Greshams, the Grand Crossings and actually interact with residents and CPD professionals daily, know that this conviction of Officer Aldo Brown is more political theatre than jurisprudence and wide walk around Justice.

God Help Us. God Save Us from the constant shower of bullshit! Ora Pro Nobis.

 *Terror Town is a nickname for a violent area in Chicago, Illinois. Individuals in the area claim that Terror Town refers to 75th and 79th streets between Yates and Colfax. This particular area in Chicago is on the East Side and is filled with various gangs such as the Black P. Stones and Gangster Disciples. Apart from its violent history, this particular area gained notoriety due to the rising fame of 2 of its residents, Lil Herb and Lil Bibby. Both Herb and Bibby are members of the Black P. Stone gang and often make reference to both Terror Town and their gang in songs.
Read more at: http://www.hipwiki.com/Terror+Town+(Chicago)

Early Voting Bonus - How About a Forrest Claypool Dunk-Tank?

I usually vote on the stated Election Day, primary elections are a huge pain in the ass with all of the same names sneaking into GOP and DNC conventions.  I usually need to bone up on candidates and issues.

This primary is easy.  I am drawing Democratic ballot and will vote for two people.  The rest I will have some fun with - this primary is an insult to every voter in America; I shall return the compliment.

I usually vote on election day, but I could be induced to try early voting, if the City Election Commissioner would offer free back-to- school CPS left-overs, Wilco's Jeff Tweddy and Gang playing on a flat bed truck in the parking lot, or. better yet. a dunk tank featuring CPS/CTA/Cook County/ Chicago Parks/City Hall multi-pension jackpot career grifter, lightweight, dim-bulb and chinless wonder Forrest Claypool squeezed into a Chicago Logo speedo over big-ass barrel of chilled Lake Michigan Straight.

After chopping teachers and staff at CPS, this smarmy soulless Klepto-bureaucrat and WTTW regular could use a Polar Plunge*.

The temperature of his pasty pelt could then match that of the blood coursing through Temple Claypool.

Someone, maybe Commisioner Bill Kresse, or a Bill Kresse Imitator, wearing a huge Flava Flav style clock on a gold chain could collect each I Voted chit and shout enthusiastically as the alarm clock clangs, 'WHATBOYIE???? What????  WHAT TIME IS IT? Dunk Time!"

Each citizen emerging from a designated early voting polling place rewarded with an I VOTED sticker, or palm card could march up to the dunk tank and collect three yellow plastic coated 12" softball for a shot at the metal target/release trigger and plunk Claypool into the icy brine.

Kids and Veterans t'row free all day!

CPS teachers showing proper identification get two additional balls - a metaphor for the apparatii missing from most elected officials and every insider-career grifter.

March can be chilly.

But nothing is so cold as the endless placement and pension looting by Progressive Shakman Sanctioned creeps in government.

* Chicago's real hero James Sheahan raises millions fro special needs youngsters.

Trump: Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Hey, he says what we all feel!


I get Trump, the Yin to Hillary Clinton's Yang, and I can do nicely with out him.: " A name to all succeeding ages curst./For close designs, and crooked counsels fit."

Voter anger is real.  Anger untempered by thought, based upon shared truth is rage and rage only works in Jerry Bruckheimer movie epics, or Mad Max reconfigurations.

Trump reminds me historical persons like Earl of Shaftesbury in King Charles II's court, the odious Thomas Boleyn who pimped out his children for merry old King Henry VIII and an Italian school teacher turned journalist after the First World War.

Mostly, I am reminded of John Dryden's portrayal of Shaftsbury from his 17th Century mock epic Absalom and Achitophel. The poem is splendid example of quality hack work and was no doubt commissioned by King Charles, when his enemies introduced the Exclusion Bill, " which would keep the Catholic James from the throne, using Charles’s illegitimate son, the duke of Monmouth, a puppet of Shaftesbury, as a possible claimant to the throne. Although the bill passed in the Commons, it was rejected by the Lords because of the king’s strong opposition."

Shaftsbury, like Trump, was a skilled political hater.

Some had in courts been great, and thrown from thence,
Like fiends, were harden'd in impenitence.
Some by their monarch's fatal mercy grown,
From pardon'd rebels, kinsmen to the throne;
Were rais'd in pow'r and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie. 

    Of these the false Achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit:
Restless, unfixt in principles and place;
In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace.
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay:
And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.   John Dryden

I was saddened to read about Trump Mask anti-Mexican nonsense between Gary Andrean Catholic High School and Bishop Noll Institute.    Giving the media any ammo to pick at scabs, or trump-up divisive rage is bad enough, but giving a black eye to two very fine Catholic schools is galling - all over the misplaced notion that Trump will do anything for anyone.

Really good people tell me that America needs Trump.

These same people shouted at me that America needed Obama.

America needs to read something besides Talking Points Memo, the New York Times and listening NPR who are as much responsible for Trump, as they are for Hillary Clinton.

. . . . In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.

Sun Times Editorials Add Up, Only If You You Really Stink At Math

I took a sound beat down every day from Sisters Doralese and Gertrudis, ( Sisters of Mercy ,bye the by) through Sixth and Seventh Grades at Little Flower Grammar School in the mid-1960's, due to my profound inabilities where numbers are concerned.

Pay attention, or I'll give something to whimper about . . .' take the sum of any . . . .' and shave that mustache, Boyo!

In Eight Grade, I took B Honors, because the nun I had thought that I was someone else and graded accordingly.

I did learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide and fractions.

The Editorial Board of the Chicago Sun Times?  I would have been proud to have them sit around around me in those swell desks bolted to the hardwood of Little Flower.  I would have been spared a few cuts and thrashings, from the two Irish women, my Bogman Grandpa Hickey called 'Life's Unplucked Flowers,' when women were present, or 'hairy-faced old Galway Bitches,' between the two of us.

The Chicago Sun Times thumps its Saltine-like chest and thunders like Governor Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles, because the Workers Compensation Payouts are not like New York City's and that the Finance Committee is operating according to the rules of its charter.

The City paid out a whopping 115 million dollars 2011, but no where in the editorial is proof of illegality.

What the editorial amounts to is this - the City is bleeding dollars from the public schools, the CTA and special relationships like this between Friends of Richie Daley and Valerie Jarret in real estate swindles that add up actual theft.

In same edition is Watchdogs ( Tim Novak who investigated Obama/Rezko/Jarret/Allison Davis slum real estates in 2008, but magically vanished around election day), but appears again with Vanecko lad, in keeping with the  paper's Kochman bleatings.

The editorial deals with John Dewey Math (there might be theft Q.E.D. there is!) and Watchdogs in math that Archimedes could understand.

Now, Lookee H'yar!
Here’s how the Davises and Vanecko handled the pension money, according to documents obtained over the past nine years from the five pension funds.

• $9.9 million was lost on the purchase of the 344-unit building at 1212 S. Michigan Ave. Using pension money, Davis and Vanecko paid $65.2 million in September 2006 to buy it — and sold it about five years later for $65.5 million. The pension funds never got any money from the sale.

• $2.8 million was lost on two loans to the owners of the Chicago Defender’s former home, a boarded-up building at 2400 S. Michigan Ave. It’s unclear why DV Urban lent pension money to developers Brian O’Connell of LaGrange and his partner, Matthew A. O’Malley, a politically connected restaurateur who has been battling City Hall over a sweetheart deal to operate the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. After a bank foreclosed on the Defender building, O’Connell and O’Malley sold the property in 2014. The pension funds didn’t get any money from the sale.

• $2.65 million helped DV Urban pay $11.7 million in 2007 for a commercial building at 217 N. Jefferson St. The building was sold last year for $14.5 million — one of the deals that helped the pension funds recover $6 million.

• $6.5 million was used by DV Urban toward $11.5 million it paid for a 162-unit apartment building at 7100 S. South Shore Dr. It was sold last year for $6.75 million, helping return some money to the pension funds.

• $3.5 million went toward $4.2 million DV Urban paid for the stores at 3508 S. State St., part of the CHA’s redevelopment of Stateway Gardens. The pension funds hope to sell the land this year.

• $16.9 million went to loans to developers of 3030 N. Broadway, where a Mariano’s store is being built, and to buy adjacent land at 3013-17 N. Waterloo. The property is expected to be sold this year.

• $4.2 million was invested with the firm Sydney Partners, which paid $10.5 million for a 15.6-acre industrial property at 3348 S. Pulaski. DV Urban leased part of the space to the city. But, beset by environmental problems including polluted soil, the property was sold for just $5.4 million in 2014, and the pension fund money was lost.

• $4.5 million was earmarked to buy the former headquarters of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ Chicago branch at 1411 S. Michigan, next door to the Chicago Firehouse restaurant owned by O’Malley. The deal ended up in court when DV Urban backed out of the deal, asking the letter carriers to return the money — which the union had used to build its new headquarters. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but the pension funds lost all of their money.

Now, I was taught round off decimals at .5 and adding these here figures comes to -

$30 M in losses from City Worker Contributions to Pension Funds - no how about that?  Might call for a old timey stem-winder of an editorial!

Instead, Michael Shakman beefed that he was not getting his cut from Ed Burke's Finance Committee and the harrumphing went viral.

$ 30M is a not, to be sure, a whopping 115 million dollars paid out to workers compensation claims according to the existing law and rules, but $30M in real loss to people who trusted politicians and had their savings picked clean by Progressively Approved Valerie Jarrett slumlords, just might be investigation worthy of city newspaper.  Nah.  Gentlemen, we goota protect our phoney baloney jobs!

Now, here is smelly part.  While cops and school teachers took an investment beating that would have warmed cold-hearts of the two above-mentioned Sisters of Mercy.

Valerie Jarret's slum-lord partner ( Valerie is somehow absent from Tim Novak's investigation) Allison Davis and one of the Vanecko boys made out like porch-climbers.

“The investment was effectively a total loss for DV Urban,” says Miller-May of the teachers pension fund.
DV Urban was paid $8 million in management fees between 2006 and 2012, when the pension funds got permission from a Delaware judge to fire the company.
A little over $1 million, for property-management fees, went to a company owned by Cullen Davis*, another Davis son, who oversaw some of the apartment buildings bought with pension money.
Another $1.7 million went to two companies, including Newport Capital Partners, to manage the DV Urban portfolio and sell off the assets in an effort to recover as much money as possible for the pension funds.
Beyond the money lost on the investments with DV Urban, the pension funds also had to pay $2.5 million for attorneys who fought the firm for two years in courtrooms from Chicago to Delaware over control of the real estate investments.

That's $13 million in money looted from City Workers and tucked in the wallets of slumlords added to $30m in losses comes to a very real $ 43 M beat down of City Workers, not a possible boondoggle.

Where is the editorial on this one?  Somethings don't add up.  Like editorial three-monte providing cover for Rahm, while doing absolutely nothing.

Alderman Ed Burke is playing according to the rules approved by the City of Chicago and he does seem worried a bit nor should he.  He knows this is not newspaper, but a daily political fog machine.

* Like the Ayers/Obama papers held hostage at Cement City, better late than never.
Whenever I am near a Progressive Do-Gooder, I throw both hands over the Left check of my ass to protect my wallet.
Whenever a Progressive Do-Gooder gets near poor people, they rake in millions, properties get boarded up, and people die.

Smearing a Justice - The Poison of Progressive Bad Ideas is the Breakfast of Champions

Bad and chemicals and Bad Ideas are the Yin and Yang of madness -from Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

I had an exchange with a young Progressive teacher recently.  This person is smart, but, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut poisoned with 'bad ideas."  We were discussing youth boxing programs.  I stated that The Leo Boxing and Celtic Boxing programs did more for poor inner city young men, than activists, race hustling political priests and tweedy academics.  In our exchange Gandhi came up and I noted that lawyer Gandhi was not averse to actually showing up early and helping others to set-up chairs, as far cry from media hungry street agitators and activist.  This teacher responded that Gandhi was " better man than our late Supreme Court Justice, Scalia, who sat in his chair and took this county back 100 years. Gandi did not harm anyone working with a chair...but Scalia's politically/religious motivations continue to help the wealthy and hurt the poor. He was pro birth and anti life"

The young teacher applied the talking points (bad ideas) right out of Talking Points Memo - a script warehouse for group thought

This is nothing new, shocking, or something required to be ignored by the media. They will and do.

The trouble comes when people accept and never challenge bad ideas.

Justice Scalia was a towering intellect and probably the greatest Supreme Court Justice, since Oliver Wendell Holmes - the Great Dissenter.

However, immediately upon his death the folks at Bad Idea Central began to smear Justice Scalia and it continues.

Bad Ideas are the coin of our realm, I am sad to say.

In his hilarious and humane novel Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut's protagonist, Dwayne Hoover, is mentally ill.  In Vonnegut's way of thinking,  human beings are just 'large rubbery test tubes' and we are filled with either 'good chemicals, or bad chenicals' - Sometimes 'bad chemicals' sit deep in our bodies like fused explosives that will only go off, when triggered by 'bad ideas.'

Vonnegut, who was raised as an atheist by German American Free Thinkers seriously doubted free will.  He disliked religion entirely.

Free Will was something that Vonnegut thought was a dodge, created by organized religions. Rather, we were products of some cosmic crap-shoot and endowed, by No One, with either good chemicals, or bad chemicals and introduced to good ideas, or bad ideas.

Vonnegut seemed a very good, kind and wildly thoughtful man.

Today, I think he might  agree with me that our American condition is quite mad - nuts, milky in filberty, off the chump, crazier than rodents in that old timey out-house.

I do not necessarily believe that our God-given human make-up is a crap-shoot.  Neither did the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia believed that human beings are free agents and the Law was provided to protect, check, or correct the choices we make as individuals and citizens.

Bad ideas abound, because bad ideas are agreed upon and forced down the throats of Americans.  The bad ideas are rooted in group thought.

This morning, I read the latest "Kick the Corpse of Scalia" in  The Washington Post, 

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 11 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.
After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.

The piece goes on to 'suggest' -in an investigative report - but no where reports a nefarious plot in involving Justice Scalia with some crypto-Masonic Catholic Odessa File billionaires.

A Secret Society? They must not be trying too hard.  Hillary's e-mails and Obama's college records stay hidden in plain sight to the American media 'investigative reporters."

I want Glenn Greenwald to fire up The Guardian and all of his satellite hipster-doofus websites to get to the bottom of Justice Scalia's possible membership in the Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles!*

I read this piece of "investigative journalism" and thought about Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions(BoC). Wheaties is not the BoC, but the martini's served to Dwayne Hoover by a wise-cracking waitress, which adds to his Cosmos-given 'bad chemicals.'  Wheaties had Bruce Jenner on its boxes at the time it was published in 1973 - how about that?

Justice Scalia will never appear on a box of Wheaties and, unless bad ideas get called out for what they truly happen to be, more young, earnest teachers will help the Talking Points Memos - Our National Warehouse of Bad Ideas - murder memory, shared truth and our country.

Speaking of Bad Ideas: Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Breakfast of Champion, anyone?

* I am a member - inducted 1972 by Buzzy Lawson, Ma Fleming's Saloon at Swedes in Delavan, WI.

If Cooking Matters, Go to Rosario's !

After Mass this morning, I'll take a swing over to Rosario's Sausage,  because I read a story about a man who tried to trade a baby for fifteen Big Macs.  Mother of God.  This poor gluttonous louse stole a baby, only to barter for food that would gag a maggot.

Please note the photo that I chose for this piece (it tells the story )-  over Rosario's is a corporatist road sign distracting drivers' attentions from a business worthy of their coin.

I tried to keep my children from Mickey D's, not because I am food snob, or nutrition Nazi, but because the entire corporatist Ronald McDonald Clown Happy Meal net offends me to the marrow.

Families make better foods than corporations. Wal-Mart offends me because it makes people lazier and murders generations of family businesses on main streets universal.  I was anti-WalMart long before the Brooks Brothers Bolsheviks of SEIU leadership.

For hamburgers and hot dogs my kids went to Pop's at 111th Kedzie, Top Notch on 95th, Fat Tommy's on 111th and the now closed Wonder Burger at 110th & Kedzie.

Pizza Hut, Little Caesar's and Domino's were all verboten in Casa Hickey.

Whether or not those lessons impacted, I am not sure, but at least they were presented, like going to Mass on Sunday: " You belong to the Club; you go to the meetings."

For good cooking, ingredients matter.  Rosario's makes great sausage daily and  the place opens at 9:30 A.M. and will be packed.

I am making Penne ala Vodka Cream Sauce for two.

I could go to Jewel(s), Mariano's, or Pat and Jacks for Italian Sausage, but am cooking for someone I love, respect and like to see smile over a plateful of my efforts.



Rosario's, like the long-gone Sardi's in the Old St. Mary of Mount Carmel parish on 69th Street back in the 1960's-70's, is place where the respectful buy Italian meats, spices, cheese and condiments worthy of the genre - Italian Cooking.

I will have big pot of lightly salted

This a temple, a sanctuary of sausage perfection and family owned purveyor of priceless products for modest purses.

There is also the neon sign showing pigs and cows only too delighted to leap into the meat grinder like straight-ticket Ward Democrats at a polling place.

I will buy the spicy sausage ( out of casing) and brown the hell out of it over medium heat in a Olive oiled caste iron skillet.  No need for the McCormicks crushed red pepper flakes and so I will add four cloves of crushed garlic, one small red onion chopped to the Rosario's goodness, until brownish.  I will add a 28 ounce can of  Red Gold brand crushed tomatoes with the liquid and cook until eye-ball reduced,  Then I will add three shots of good vodka and cook for a good while - timer be damned,

Lastly, in goes heavy cream and chopped basil and a pinch of oregano.

Withe penne cooked to the tooth, in it goes like the happy cows and pigs and gets a thorough tossing in a skilletful tasty.

I will plate with Basil, crusty Dago bread and hand grated Parmesano.

Our world has family owned, loving and true treasure like Rosarios Sausage.  Skip the convenient. Go for the genuine

Rosario's Italian Sausage
8611 S Pulaski Rd, Chicago, IL 60652