Chris Kennedy Looking Good For My Vote - Press Going Full Press Michigan Avenue Fats

Chris Kennedy is an exceptionally nice man.  Like many liberals of the old cloth (Don Rose, the late great Phil Krone & etc.) Chris Kennedy belies the conservative mind-set of intolerant automatons in lock -step with Marxism, Planned Parenthood and Globalism.   Rather Mr. Kennedy is an active do-gooder who walks the talk.

In my two decades and change of work for Leo High School, I have encountered Chris Kennedy and his kids quietly delivering goods and services to people in and around 79th Street, right in Pflegerland between Ashland and Halsted.  Unlike the blonde Jesus who rules St. Sabina like a political ward healer, who never clears his throat, nor breaks wind without CBS,ABC,NBC, WGN, Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and Windy City Times acolytes holding back dozen or so nodding activists around Pastor Pfleger, the son of RFK does good without fanfare, applause and hack reporters.

That said, Chris Kennedy tows the Durbin Dogma too much for my liking.

I understand that.  Chris Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, is not like me, or most of the people (white black, Mexican, ethnic) I encounter.  He comes from the Lace-Curtain traditions that eschew rock-ribbed core values as obnoxiously quaint.  He is a PBS Catholic, stamped and approved by Bill Moyers.  His politics is not unlike many of the people in the more comfortable Zip Codes - Chris Kennedy is much more of 60643 than he is a 60620, or 60655.

My temperament has been formed by my faith, family and friends.  Please note, that I might be the only member of my vast to have not cast a vote for Barack Obama and hurled one into the mix for Donald Trump.  I vote Catholic, organized labor and working class values.  Lately, I have voted for Republicans but I largely loathe the GOP as party of the Quisling tasseled loafer crowd ( Bruuce Rauner, Mark Kirk, Judy Barr Topinka, Chuck Percy, John McCain and John Boehner)  and for  Socialists (Bernie and Chewy Garcia).

Can you  say"Property Taxes?"  Chris Kennedy called our Cook County/Madiganistan system "extortion."The Democrats only have them to bleed and nothing else and Chris Kennedy has criticized County and State abuses. The is sucking dry!

The only GOP voice in Illinois that registers with me is Rep. Jeannie Ives.

Jeannie Ives has more balls than a bowling alley, if may hazard an indelicate metaphor in her praise.

Because the media is feasting on Chris Kennedy's liver, because he has offended the Cook County Democratic Titans and shall be cast eternally into the chthonic depths of Tartarus, or Peotone, maybe, that I am moved to shout for all and sundry within my limited sphere to vote for him against JB Pritzker, The Michigan Avenue Fats of the Pritzker pedigree,

Today the Chicago Tribune lifted a story from Ohio that was all the news back in July, in order to gin up some Chris Kennedy hate.  Maybe SEIU can get the huge Rat put up in front of the Merchandise Mart.

It may take the Sun Times a day or two to catch up, because Sneed is working to help Kimm Fox.

If the media is piling on Chris Kennedy, I am all for him

I'd vote for Chris Kennedy.

I probably will take a GOP ballot to make sure that Jeannie Ives takes down Bruce Rauner.

Merry Gamiss-mas!!!! Kids, I Got Everything Already.

This is what happens when nice people insist on giving presents.   This too.


Everything I read on-line these days seems to have a pop up ad for Gamiss (with the A presented as an upside down V).  These ads are eye-popping examples of new fashion for new Americans. I imagine these folks would love a Techno-version of Christmas in Killarney.



These New Americans must be 'evolved' Americans who eschew meat, sugar, fat and any sense of other people on this planet.

Star Wars Meets Zena the Warrior Princess, Gents!

Kool Yule!

I got nothin'!

                                           Tyger Rags?

I am not a guy who does not like presents ( birthday, Father's Day, Christmas, or Talk like a Pirate Day).  I am not grouch.  I love giving presents to loved ones, but presents embarrass me.

I have everything, already. Gamiss can keep its goods well-warehoused and out of sight.  De Gustibus Non Est Disputandem - I likes what I likes and buy them myself.

Gamiss is not doing it for me. I have everything already and more.

• I do not live in Isis, or Daesh controlled Syria
• I got a woman . . .crazy for me; she's funny that way
• My Kids are all splendid adults
• My Granddaughter Lily is a beautiful, happy and smart baby
• My roof don't leak . . .yet.
• I have most of my teeth
• I can still bend over and pick up pennies on the sidewalk and paper and pencils in the halls of Brother Rice
• I eat like a Sultan
• My Malibu starts and goes
• I take Communion with my neighbors most mornings
• God allows me to continue to draw breath
• Encore Westerns is on cable
• Lovely people crack me up
• Soda Stream keeps me hydrated
• I know Mike Joyce
• I still teach

Gamiss not this Christmas!  Give your love!  Tell me, "You're really not that bad."  Get yourself something nice - on me!  

Remember Christ was born in manger and not on Black Friday.

Brazil '66 Legend Lani Hall and Herb 'The Lonely Bull' Alpert Help Make a Pretty World of Centered People

Our world is populated with wonderful people, who love, give, create and share with God's own grace.

The Hollywood creeps, the City Hall sneaks, the White House oafs and psychopathic haters who dominate our media would have us believe the world is toast and needs a fork stuck in it.

Not so.

I am an empiricist, a south side Catholic one to be sure , but a skeptical observer of the passing scene -Tell a tourist, Bub,  I live here. I run encounter great people.

Last night, I was treated to a 65th birthday fete, by Miss Sullivan, a woman of extraordinary beauty, grace and deportment, that began with brisk walk through Little Italy to Rosebud on Taylor Street.  The lady enjoyed Veal Piccata and I the sinful Eggplant Parmesan, followed by a shared scoop of Lemon Sorbet.  We walked off this meal and went to my car for the present - Seats at Chicago Winery for Lani Hall and Herb Alpert!

This is what I'm talking about!



We sat with strangers who turned out to share paths in our lives- one woman is the sister of the owner of Katerina's on Irving Park Road, where Terry Sullivan sang with her trios and the other woman and her husband owned property near La Lumiere School, where I taught for years.  We both know and love a woman Jane Lindborg, who cooked for the school and authored the delightful quasi-memoir Tappy in 2002.

Strangers no more three couples two native Lakeview couples, my emigrant Buckeye beauty and this cynical south sider swapped yarns, memories and associations as if were familiars at a Leo Alumni dinner.  We don't know if we were Hilary voters, or Deplorables; we were enjoying each others company.

Lani Hall and Herb Alpert had packed Chicago Winery with people who love their music and what it did for us as people.

The couple is madly in love -- 43 years and change.  Herb Alpert, the Steve Stunning record label tycoon and savvy musician of the 1960's met Lani Hall, a Chicago girl from Lawrence and Kimball and a Von Steuben High grad through Sergio Mendez.  Mendez discovered Lani Hall at a north side pub and added her to the roster of Brazil '66 which had signed with Alpert's A & M records.

The love between is as real the examples I see at Mass at Scared Heart in Morgan Park and all around my immediate neighborhood and beyond.

My empirical senses were reignited after weeks of navel-gazingly horrible news on air and in print.

This is a Pretty World !

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iovvUsZU7MU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Mas Que Nada!



That's Portuguese for  "Yeah, right!" - in a good way.

Cardinal Blase Cupich - Exorcise Guns, Not Evil.

Guns kill people in the same way that pencils flunk exams.

The news media's most beloved Catholic leader, is Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Cupich.  Blase Cardinal Cupich is no Francis Cardinal George in that the media love Cupich's every utterance, teaching moment and close association with Cook County's political class, their operatives and their doctrines. The news media treated Cardinal George to an endless bed of nails.

Yesterday, Cardinal Cupich decried gun violence - not evil, but guns: assault rifles in particular.  Cardinal Cupich planted his crosier next to the banner of the Democratic Party in solidarity.

It’s not the first time that Cupich, a keen hunter and supporter of hunters’ rights, has called for tougher gun laws. But he was as pointed as he has been in his criticism of Republican politicians who toe the National Rifle Association’s line on gun control (President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have offered their prayers after Sunday’s atrocity, but none has supported an assault weapons ban).
“When the hunting sport has human prey, we have to take action,” Cupich said.

I would venture to guess that more human prey have been 'taken down' in human history by the long bow, spears and swords than all of the quadruped beings shot by hunters combined. From the Battle of Muye in 1046 BC, through Marathon in 490 BC and beyond Agincourt, scores of thousands of human beings perished by the sword, lance and arrow. Deer, ducks and  pheasant are shot seasonally for the table. Human beings kill one another, because of human evil.

There was and continues to be some serious evil going on with our species.

Time was, churchmen would encourage prayer and changes of heart.  Francis of Assisi was soldier before he turned from Satan. St. Ignatius Loyola, a wounded veteran, did the same.

Evil in men's hearts compels them to take up sword, lance, bow and the monster in Texas's a Ruger AR-556 rifle.

Devin Kelley slaughtered 26 worshippers in a Texas church - A Ruger AR-556 rifle did not.  In fact a brave man with a Ruger AR-556 rifle returned fire on the monster and chased him away from his desire to kill more people.

I venture to say that Devin Kelley was one very evil son of a bitch:

• Kelley was convicted of fracturing his baby stepson's skull and assaulting his first wife, Tessa, in the incident at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

• He was confined for a year, given a bad conduct discharge and reduced in rank to E-1, or airman basic,  . . .  The military failed to enter the domestic violence case into a database that would have made it illegal for him to buy a gun, officials said.

• Records show his first wife divorced him in 2012 in New Mexico. . . .adding that she did not want to speak about him until she was interviewed by law enforcement.

• Kelley remarried in Texas in 2014. The status of that marriage was not clear, but authorities said there was a "domestic situation" with his in-laws.

This atheist preacher, Kelley, was going to kill worshipers  - and he did - with fire, flood, famine, or an AR-15. 

My Cardinal sees no evil at work here?  Cardinal Cupich sees an opportunity to 'get on the right side ' of the media and the elites who govern what is printed, presented and portrayed.  What troubles me, as a wildly flawed Catholic, is the oddness of the Cardinal's words on this evil event, “The time, however, for expressing sorrow and leaving it at that is over. It’s time to act. Let’s start with these high-powered weapons. Both state and federal law need to change to make these guns not available. We don’t need military weapons in our society. We’re not supposed to be at war with one another.” (emphases my own)

No, we are not. Guns do not go to war on us.  People do.

Things should never take on the qualities of a human being, created by God with a soul.  Human beings are blessed with free will, but an AR-556 is not.  A Ruger A-556, though banned in every Catholic parish in this Archdiocese along with every other ballistic discharging metal/composite tube, will never load its own magazine and make its own way into a Mosque, Synagogue, Basilica, Church, or Meeting House to do slaughter.  An evil human being will use a Ruger AR-556, a can a gasoline, ammonia and bleach, a machete, golf clubs, or a 24" tire iron to do what he wills.

Anthropomorphism is a mental exercise that gives human qualities to inanimate objects ( Demon Rum/Drug Abuse/Gun Violence & etc.) .  It can also help us understand God who is three Persons. It can also allow people to practice anthropomorphism in reverse and say, "It's not a human being/person, it's just a blob of tissue."  Pretend that there is such a thing as 'gun violence' and not criminal violence and we will watch the body count rise even higher. 

I was disappointed that my Cardinal did not demand a war on evil. That is something that my beloved Francis Cardinal George would have done.  He taught all of us that Satan was active in our world and that evil happens when we allow Satan to dictate our actions. No, Cardinal Blase Cupich knows that such a response would be scorned by the likes of Rahm Emanuel, E.J. Dionne, Michael Sneed, Michael Pfleger, Jim Acosta and Toni Preckwinkle.   

Rather, our society is free to continue to pretend that things control our lives.