Sun Times Offers Bizzaro-World* 2020 Voters Guide - Do The Exact Opposite and Save Our Way of Life

 *The Bizarro World (also known as Htrae, which is "Earth" spelled backwards) is a fictional planet appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics.

The Sun Times of Chicago (formerly the City of Big Shoulders) offers the exact opposite of how to vote on Novemember 3rd. 

I watched Illinois rot from the tail up and with every vote that I cast, in order to maintain my south side, Irish Catholic Democrat identity, the more I betrayed that identity ( voting for paid operatives of Abortion, stooges of Marxists and outright thieves) and in many ways my country.

Every time we vote for clowns like Dick Durbin, Richie Daley, Pat Quinn, Toni Preckwinkle and Barack Obama, we are ensuring that our children and grandchildren will never know what it means to be middle class Americans.

Every time we pull the level for a Mike Madigan we are helping the Clintons, the Obamas and the Bidens amass many more millions of dollars  and prepare for that looming City Hall, County or State layoff.

Every time we go Ridin' With Biden, keep an eye out for the ditch that is deeper than we can imagine.

Every time we cast a vote for stooges of Black Lives matter, we load the extended clip of 9mm that will gun down people eating breakfast at a Lumes Pancake House in Morgan Park, or a attending a funeral at 79th & Carpenter Streets in Gresham

I now longer live in the State Stuck on Stupid (formerly Illinois, Land of Lincoln), but I love many people still in that captive territory dominated by oligarchs, grifters and thieves.

Our Nation stands a chance of becoming Chicago ( read John Kass's Weeekend Piece) about the thievingly affable plagiarist that the American Oligarchs want fitted for the Presidential jacket and quick exit out of the Oval Office. 

President Trump is an odd duck, but Joe Biden is Bizzaro World, made to order stooge and a practiced grifter

America is a divided, angry and often sheepish nation, but there are still memories of American greatness, will and courage enough to generate some push away against a looming totalitarianism. 

Chicago and Illinois is a kleptocracy dominated by the lupine Democrat Party and aided and abbeted by the thoroughly gelded GOP.  Taxpayers have one last chance to liberate themselves and their children from decades of 'mixing straw and mud' for the Pat Bradys, Mike Madigans and JB Pritzers as they build pyramid, after pyramid scam.

The Chicago Sun Times offers a guide to voting:  Follow it and cast your vote opposite of its recommendations:

•  Thus, Trump for Biden, Anyone for Durbin, Anyone for Quigley, Anyone for Danny Davis, Bobby Rush & etc. 
• Vote for Pat O'Brien over Kimm Fox
• Vote for Jeanne Ives over the smarmy and stupid Sean Casten
• Vote AGAINST The Progressive Tax Plan of the bloated oaf JB Pritzker.

This is not merely a choice of personalities; it is a choice of a way of life - democratic versus Totalitarian.

Safe yourselves, . . OR not. 

Thugs Kill Baby, Again! Trading Shots for Votes and Calling it Gun Violence

I got up this morning to a bold orange-colored sky, announcing a glorious Sunday in Michigan City, Indiana.

Mass is at 10 AM at St. Stanislaus, six blocks to the south of my home and up a paved street that was once a sand dune.

I read the news, beginning with Second City Cop, the only reliable source of news in Chicago and run by a mysteriously literate, witty and clear-thinking police officer.

The officer/writer included a Chicago media report of the slaughter of the baby and the wounding of his mother, while they returned home from a laundromat near 60th & Halsted in the Englewood neighborhood.  A car pulled up next to their car and seven to eight shots were fired, hitting the infant in the chest and grazing the mother.

Second City Cop knows all too well that no shooter will be brought to trial for this horror, but points directly at who is responsible:  Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, her creature States Attorney Kim Foxx, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Chief of Cook County Courts Tim Evans.

These pandering politicians are intellectual lightweights and shameless hucksters, concerned only with playing race-opportunity cards at every deal.

Tom Dart's press people paint him as a really WOKE and thoughtful agent of change, but he should act like a sheriff.  Hollywood actor John Cusack already grabbed the role that Dart insists upon playing to the advantage of no one but himself and his connected siblings. Dart has allowed the worst of the worst back on to Chicago's streets and preened before the likes of the oafish Mike Flannery and other propaganda spinners in Chicago's supine media.

Mayor Lightfoot proved herself to be a total incompetent this past May when she gave the green light to looters and Marxist agitators.

Toni Preckwinkle is a proven bigot and a vindictive power wielding oligarch.

Tim Evans is a career Democratic Party hack who parlayed his seat as a do-nothing alderman into a race-baiting grievance-policy autocrat who sends career criminals back to do havoc on Chicago.

The common shield used by each of these vote-sucking hacks is the strawman "Gun Violence."

The car used to drive up to the infant and his mother was driven by a thug.  The 7-8 bullets sprayed into the mother and child were helped along by the fingers of thugs.

Guns are inanimate objects.

Politicians and thugs know exactly what they are doing and they could care less about consequences.

I buried a score or more of bright and talented young men when I worked at Leo High School -1995-2016.  From Eric Ersery to Jason Riley to Antonio Collins, same old, same old - no one was caught, charged, tried, convicted, or imprisoned.  Hey, it's gun violence. No harm, no foul. 

I woke up in Michigan City, Indiana.  There are shots fired in this Indiana town, but they do not become part of a compelling narrative used to keep grifters elected to office.

I will go to 10 AM Mass at St. Stanislaus and say a prayer for the baby's mother. The child is home with Christ.

Chicago, Cook County and Illinois will do absolutely nothing for the grieving and wounded mother. 

Tom Dart will preen for Mike Flannery.  Lori Lightfoot will blame Trump. Toni Preckwinkle will raise taxes on everything and anything but her perpetual scowl and contempt for anyone not Toni Preckwinkle,  Kim Foxx will whine about police officers leading happy lives and she can't have that, and Tim Evans will open the iron bars and let more thugs out to exact more gun violence.

These politicians are not the only problem, however.

The other problem is that nice people will continue to allow Dart, Lightfoot, Preckwinkle and Foxx to hold public office,  Can't do a damn thing about Judge Tim Evans. He ain't going nowhere.

Neither is a former one-year old from Englewood.

Free People, or Helots. Hoosiers are Free People, for Now.

like donkeys suffering under heavy loads,
by painful force compelled to bring their masters half
of all the produce that the soil brought forth.
(Tyrtaeus West Fragment 6, trans. West)

Description

Helots - The helots were a subjugated population group that formed the main population of Laconia and Messenia, the territory controlled by Sparta. 

noun

1. a member of a class of serfs in ancient Sparta, intermediate in status between slaves and citizens.

   • a serf or slave.

I have been using this term to describe people of the middle class in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois for a number of years,   In ancient Sparta, Helots were the middle class, sandwiched between the upper class and slaves as we know the term. 

In Chicago during my life time (1952-2018) there, I watched the robust American middle/working class diminish, shrink and all but vanish from Cook County.   The upper classes and their stooges ( some journalists, activists, too many labor unions, private charities) have done everything to get people who pay taxes, work for a living and live happy lives get the Hell out of Dodge. 

A few weeks ago, one of the Oligarchy’s stooges with Chicago Sun Times  wrote a piece bewailing the departure of the black middle class from Chicago and positing the possibility of its return.   The stooges of Oligarchy have made Race the basis of everything, but the facts confound this lie.  The Black Middle Class is no different from the Polish, Swedish, Greek, Lithuanian, Bohemian, Mexican, Jewish and Italian middle class.  The only ethnic demographic of the Middle Class that does not get it is the Irish.

As a group the Irish serve the oligarchy with regularity and lick-spittle lock-step for the likes of Pat Quinn, Richie Daley, Toni Preckwinkle, Lori Lightfoot and JB Pritzker like no other.  

This is odd because the Irish were once in the forefront of creating the middle class.  My Grandfather was. a hairy pawed union slugger in the stock yards who helped form one of the most powerful and professional skilled trades unions in Illinois.  He went from coal heaver, to operating engineer, to union official always with a job in the trade.  He was a radical Big Jim Larkin off-the-boat bog-trotter in 1912, who eventually owned a huge brick bungalow for his wife and thirteen children at 7535 S. Marshfield, saw his grandson become a Norte Dame standout and Houston Oiler, but was as equally proud of that man’s younger brother who won an ITT fellowship in engineering design, because merit was a path out of the working class.  All of his 75 grandchildren became solidly middle class citizens. Those blue collar dreams came true in the early 1960’s. 

That was when John F. Kennedy became President and starred down the Communists in Berlin, Vietnam and Cuba.  Today, JFK would be excoriated as a Red-baiting, anti-abortion, Catholic deplorable. JFK would be a helot today.   Our world hates pugnacious people with moral centers.  The Fighting Irish is a logo.  Bishop Shiel is forgotten and the doughy mush Monsignor Jack Egan touted as a working class hero.  Today, a Pastor Michael Pfleger is treated with deference, if not the contempt that he works so very hard to elicit. 

The Irish tend to be generous to a fault, tribally loyal and willing to be counted.  Those same gifts allowed the Irish as a group to be co-opted by people and indeologies that detest them to the marrow.  Hyde Park buried Bridgeport between 1972 and the Progressive Hegemony that controls Illinois.  Abner Mikva and Dr. Quentin Young co-operated with City Hall and County Building and roped in the likes of Tom Hynes, Neil Hartigan and the young Daleys.  The Media, 501(c) # Fortunes and IVI-Good Government cache no longer assaulted The Machine. 

Mike Madigan understood that Ward power was over and played cent-field with Hyde Park.  The Irish fought no one and became most congenial. 

The Congenial Irish took the path of least resistance and all but erased the verbal fighting from their political, religious and moral lexicon.  The Irish got behind Neil Hartigan and went soft on abortion to the point that a mushy mope like Senator Dick Durbin walks publicly in a green sash. 

The Irish of the tail-end of the 20th Century get behind “great gals and guys” who take the coin, the endorsement and condescension of people who detest everything about being Irish. 

As such, huge voting blocks in neighborhoods in the 19th Ward have helped put shackles on the Irish and any ethnic group that marries into their flabby embrace. 

The Irish retain political influence in Cook County and Illinois because the Irish, as a group, go-along with the great enthusiasm.  

As a result, the middle class is being eliminated.  Why?  The middle class is anathema to the Oligarchy who blend Marxism with kleptomania. 

Cook County is Animal Farm.  Pigs get fat and everyone else gets slaughtered. 

Shunning, slogans, group hate and the daffy doings of the Bears and Cubbies numb middle class families  that still remain within the borders of the City and the State.  Like blacks and sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction American South, the middle class suffer the same burdens hoisted upon their backs by Richie Daleys, Rahm Emanuel, Bruce Rauner and now the completely supine Lori Lightfoot. 

Individuals finally get a bellyful. I planned to move out of Illinois and found a home in Michigan City, Indiana.   Alas, my children will continue to live in Illinois.  

All three were born outside of Cook County, but all three love being close to cousins, aunts and uncles and grandma, as did I. 

I can visit.  They own homes.

Hoosiers have resisted the harness.  The news papers have no reliable stooges, but report on public affairs and actually have local high school sports data and stories,  One might mark the end of freedom in Illinois from the time that the sports pages became propaganda for lovable losers and the milquetoasts of the Midway,

More significantly, the newspapers are independent and a MEDIA.  There are no self-absorbed stooges like Eric Zorn, Fran Spielman, Carol Marin, Michael Sneed, Rex Hupke, or the appalling Mary Schmich.

Politically, there is not a huge block of Woke Millennial Irish to wrap Progressive initiatives like abortion in corned beef and cabbage. 

The editorial boards are not lickspittles for City Hall.  In fact, today’s. headline screams this: 

 La PORTE – Just days before the election, felony charges were filed against Michigan City Mayor Ron Meer for his actions following the arrest of his stepson earlier this month, but no judge has yet agreed to conduct a probable cause hearing.Court records show that on Wednesday – under seal – the La Porte County Prosecutor's Office charged Meer with one felony count of official misconduct; five felony counts of intimidation; and two misdemeanor counts of false informing resulting in substantial hindrance to law enforcement.
The charges were initially filed in Superior Court 4, but Judge Greta Stirling Friedman recused herself from "even finding probable cause on the basis that, among other reasons, the Judge's spouse, whose employment caused him to be included on an email chain and could potentially lead to his being a witness in this matter," according to court records.

No Bruce Dold, Chicago Tribune managing editor could spike the story.  No team of Yahoos like Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg, or Mary Mitchel could blare out distraction yarns of Racism, or Yellow Corn.

 Days before election Mayor Ron needs to gussie-up his resume.  I spoke with Michigan Citizens and some like what Mayor Meer has done for the downtown area and others said that he was jerk when they worked for him in City Government.   Everyone has a vote and it is not for barter.

I don’t have a dog in the fight and look forward to election day. 

Hoosiers are not helots - yet.   

Red Carpet Kim Foxx, Mrs.Obama, Jussie Smollett and Toni Preckwinkle

 Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in Hollywood with new friends, actresses Amber Tambyln, Olivia Munn, Melissa Fumero, and Lisa Ling - Who paid for the trip? Did the Obama's make this happen?  Ask Toni Preckwinkle!  

Foxx recused herself late in the investigation, but only after she intervened in the case by asking Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over to the FBI at the request of a Smollett relative and a former Obama administration official, according to newly-released emails and text messages.

Foxx and the Smollett relative were put in touch with each other by private attorney Tina Tchen, who served as chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama and as an assistant to President Barack Obama. 

In a letter to John R. Lausch, the top U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham wrote, “private attorneys are not allowed to interfere with ongoing police investigations, particularly at the request of private individuals associated with subjects being investigated by the police.” Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown

 Eating kale chips in a downtown tea shop after a day of campaigning, Kim Foxx described the overhaul she wants to give the Cook County State's Attorney's Office if she wins the March 15 Democratic primary election against two-term incumbent Anita Alvarez, then the general election in November. . . . She pondered on the word for a moment, then smiled. "Let's go with 'transformative.' "

Whatever the proper adjective, Foxx, a 43-year-old former assistant state's attorney, chief of staff to Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle, and Alvarez's leading challenger, wants to end what she has called "the tough-on-crime boogeyman approach" to criminal justice that has led to a massive increase in the number of people, particularly blacks and Latinos, ensnared in the system "without making our communities safer."

"The things I'm talking about—some people might not want to [re]elect me after one term," Foxx said. "I want people to hold me accountable for that." The Reader

Toni Preckwinkle created Kimm Foxx and called the media to attention. The Chicago Reader jumped with the above puff-piece that outlined the Preckwinkle agenda to sabotage Cook County Law Enforecment and law itself,

Kim Foxx has marched to Toni's tune.

Undisturbed by media scrutiny of any kind, Kim Foxx has given career crimnals the freedom of the city, county and State, thanks to coxy relationship between the Chicago media and leftist political activists and lawyers posing as civic reform bodies like Reclaim Chicago, the People's Lobby, and the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice which all take marching orders form Jaimie Kalven's Invisible Institute. 

Money goes to money.

Toni Preckwinkle knows money and took Alderman Burkes filthy lucre, as well as G. Flint Taylor's public support in the fight against Law Enforcement officers universal.

Now, thanks to Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass and independent crime bloger Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown, the Foxx/ Preckwinkle press and legal scrutiny holiday may be over.

John Kass, unlike the Chicago Tribune editorial culture, went after Kim Foxx's fealty to Preckwinkle in 2016:

Preckwinkle, moving to extend her political reach, has been pushing her for the top prosecutor's job, and publicly demanded State's Attorney Anita Alvarez resign.
In other years, perhaps, it would be a wasted exercise.
But this is the year of Laquan McDonald and all things changed.
The protests aren't spontaneous, but orchestrated, pushed by the left and labor. Much of the political theater has been race-based and reflects the legitimate anger of many African-American voters toward police. But all the while the protesters demand the resignation of two Preckwinkle rivals:
Rahm Emanuel and Alvarez.

John Kass exposed Kim Foxx as a 'beholden' vassal in the Cook County Progressive  Political Animal Farm.

In one email, Foxx told Tchen she relayed a message to Chicago PD Superintendent Eddie Johnson, pictured left, about dropping the Smollett case and turning it over to the feds.
"Spoke to the Superintendent Johnson. I convinced him to reach out to FBI to ask that they take over the investigation," Foxx wrote to Tchen.
That same day, Foxx texted Smollett's relative with good news.
"Spoke to the superintendent earlier, he made the ask," Foxx wrote. "Trying to figure out logistics. I'll keep you posted."
"Omg this would be a huge victory," the Smollett relative replied.
"I make no guarantees, but I'm trying," Foxx replied.
"I understand," the Smollett relative typed. "I appreciate the effort."
That same effort wasn't afforded to the city's poor, less politically-connected citizens, noted Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass in his column published on March 15.

Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown added this:

Foxx recused herself late in the investigation, but only after she intervened in the case by asking Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over to the FBI at the request of a Smollett relative and a former Obama administration official, according to newly-released emails and text messages.
Foxx and the Smollett relative were put in touch with each other by private attorney Tina Tchen, who served as chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama and as an assistant to President Barack Obama.
In a letter to John R. Lausch, the top U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham wrote, “private attorneys are not allowed to interfere with ongoing police investigations, particularly at the request of private individuals associated with subjects being investigated by the police.”

Now, Preckwinkle is trying get votes for her designs on the Chicago City Hall 5th Floor.  Kim Foxx helped bring Toni Preckwinkle to this point.

Shortly after Kim Foxx did a solid for Michele Obama, she was feted in Hollywood at the Oscars.

Journalsy Florian Sohnke offers this:


For Foxx, the October 2018 conviction of former police officer Jason Van Dyke, her recusal in the Smollett fraud, and the excursion to Hollywood all intersect.

With sights set on higher office, Foxx traveled to Hollywood intending to create bonds of affection with the chorus line of Left-wing hedge-fund billionaires, movie moguls, and virtue-signaling actors and actresses, all of whom routinely underwrite liberal office seekers. A well-worn path for many elected Democrats with a burning desire to be seated on Capitol Hill, Foxx’s entire thrust in Hollywood was to mix with the monied elite, drum up support for her political ambitions, and engage in the closed-door fundraising efforts which characterize advance campaign activities. Unfortunately for Foxx, the deception concocted by Jussie Smollett was an unforeseen cataclysm which threatened to imperil the entire fundraising mission to the Oscars, and inspired her recusal from the case.
Regardless of the plain absurdity of his claim, in Hollywood’s prevailing wisdom, Jussie Smollett is a weak, helpless member of an abhorred group classifying him as a perpetual victim. Moreover, to Hollywood high society, Smollett is a gay man who absorbed himself in the noble gesture of staging an attack to sensitize the public to the supposed plight of intolerance faced by gay men in America. In contrast, R. Kelly involved himself in evil by engaging in the sinister act of sex with minors. While the Hollywood aristocracy’s response to the charges leveled against Kelly is proper and Kelly’s depraved actions deserve both universal condemnation and criminal prosecution, Smollett remains a victim among the celebrity circus in Hollywood. In view of the fact Hollywood envisages itself a de-facto human rights agency which brings rescue to victims of anti-gay attacks (even fictitious ones), many in Hollywood’s chattering classes are craving leniency be conferred on their latest hero, Smollett.

We know now, that before Kim Foxx went on the Hollywood Oscar junket, that Tina Tchen, Michele Obama's chief-of -staff lobbied the Cook County States Attorney.  Did Foxx tell Toni about doing Mrs. Obama a solid?  Who paid for Kim Foxx's junket? Toni Preckwinkle must be asked these questions.

Nothing is on the square in Chicago.

Foxx, Preckwinkle and Michele Obama play.  Cook County suffers. 

The Spleen of the Senseless: Why AOC Matters

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken Washington, D.C by storm.She successfully ran an insurgent, grass-roots Congressional campaign. She is exceptionally bright. She is incredibly media savvy. She is hugely charismatic, because she is telegenic and photogenic, but also because she consistently seems to be a sincere, authentic, and truly nice and caring human being. In an age of bullshit, she is “real.” And she has the courage of her convictions. She has thus quickly been embraced by the left, reviled by the right, and treated with enormous skepticism by the center. Jeffrey C. Isaac

 The left often agonizes over the choice between pragmatism versus utopianism. The “reformists” will argue that what’s important is making “real” change in the present, rejecting any larger vision as “pie-in-the-sky” irresponsibility, while the “revolutionaries” may reject all present compromise in favor of theorizing about a better future, for which the correct historical conditions are always, somehow, yet to arrive. It’s a dumb standoff; reformers need militants to scare the powerful into concessions, as the recent experience of the Fair Labor Association and USAS at Kuk Dong shows. Dissent

 "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Rep. Hank Johnson D-GA upon hearing about adding military personnel on Guam

The Congress is chock-full of goofs, ninnies and grifters. Rep. Hank Johnson thought a troop build-up would capsize the island of Guam.  Congress always has been a home for cretins feebs and dummies. However, there was a time when the dim-bulbs were kept under a cone-of-silence and generally kept out of public view.

Today, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez has become a national acronym - AOC.

Like LSMFT, AOC reflects a spiritus mundi, a zeitgeist, and a political weltanschauung that makes the likes of Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren seem like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Muriel Siebert and Mercy Otis Warren.

I began my morning with an article by a practiced ninnie and dim-bulb, Indiana University professor Jeffery C. Issacs that further boost AOC as our best hope to become the SPQR of the looming post revolutionary empire:

It is worth taking a moment to think hard about this.

To liberal friends who are pretty skeptical of if not hostile to AOC: what do you make of the fact that it is she who is being singled out for her fine performance? Many more “moderate” and more senior Democrats also had their five minutes yesterday, and yet this 29-year old “radical” would appear to have most intelligently used her time to advance the cause of the rule of law, a liberal value if every there was one, in this matter.

To left, DSA-member friends who love AOC (as I do) but disparage all of those liberals, like me, who continue to place so much emphasis on Trump’s real threats to the rule of law, constitutional due process, and liberal democracy: what do you make of the fact that AOC did not use her five minutes to talk about the Green New Deal (which she rightly talks about all the time!) or to comment on how the hearings are a waste of time and the real policy issues are being ignored (it was the lunatic Republicans who said this). She used her five minutes to ask painstakingly direct and factual questions of the witness, and thus to seriously address the issue at hand in the hearings: the issue of Trump’s unhinged and unaccountable Presidency, and the need to defend constitutional democracy by using constitutionally-prescribed Congressional authority to hold Trump to account.

AOC is much more serious, and politically responsible, and “mature,” and thus important, than most commentators, those who love her and those who don’t, appreciate. While too many, left, right, and center, are using her as a symbol to beat each other up, she is doing her job and being a role model of what Democratic politics can be.

Seriously?  Much thought there, Doc? AOC is much, much more serious?

How about these AOC nuggets? BTW -one quote is from a dead white man -guess which one and win a chance to chill backstage with AOC.

•  Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.
•  Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.
•  Women like me aren't supposed to run for office.
•  I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.
• To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
•  I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.

AOC is no TR.

One of the above earned the Medal of Honor, broke horses, worked in Law Enforcement in Wyoming and New Yok City, authored many books and served as Governor, the other Tweets, is a Socialist and managed to beat someone dumber, but without Democratic Socialists of America backing for Congress and will serve but one term before going on CNN, or MSNBC.

AOC will do some legislative damage to the Republic in mean time.

We have given the stage of public debate to be people who could not tell you whick White Sox player in its history was a an all-time favorite, evene though that elected offical and pensioned President of the United States wore a Chicago White Sox hat at every public dress-down affair. 

I taught English for 43 years and voted in every election since 1972.   I ran and lost for Kankakee City Clerk as a Democrat.  PFH is no AOC. 

However, I was never scripted, nor promoted by a professor of Revolution from Indiana University. 

Here in Illinois we have many, many, many AOCs 

• Jan Schakowsky
• Danny Davis
• Mike Quigley
• Heather Steans
• Kelly Cassidy
• Blago
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Pat Quinn
• Forrest Claypool
• Deb Mell
• Deb Shore
• Amy Madigan

All of these People who would starve to death outside of Progressive Democratic Party politics.

Giving the microphone, or the floor, or a public office to the senseless is dangerous, no matter how much delicious spleen they vent, Tweet or . . . God help us . . .legislate. 

Toni Goes OG on Lightfoot - Shafts Aloft!

 

Lori Lightfoot was portrayed Friday as a “wealthy corporate lawyer who’s defended the elites in this country” only to “recast” herself as a police reformer when the record shows otherwise. - Sun Times - Fran Spielman cozying up to one angry crone

     “Heroes, approach!” Atrides thus aloud,
     “Stand forth distinguish'd from the circling crowd,
     Ye who by skill or manly force may claim,
     Your rivals to surpass and merit fame.
     This cow, worth twenty oxen, is decreed,
     For him who farthest sends the winged reed.”
      —Iliad

"It is a formal letter of defiance," answered the Templar, " but, by our Lady of Bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary cartel that ever was sent across the drawbridge of a baronial castle." Walter Scott - Ivanhoe

Only a caitif recreant would hurl such an exraordinary cartle over the drawbridge of a baronial castle.   Straight up, G! Shafts fall!

Well, it took Toni the Phony no time to go scorched earth on Lori Lightfoot. Toni Preckwinkle, who famously dissed Nobel Laureate and Hyde Park emigrant Saul Bellow ( who parted from Chicago shortly after La Preckwinkle broad-brushed her misreading of a Bellow quote) is not even remotely a stranger to fouled waters and muddy-deeds.

Hell, ask her husband Zeus now, safe, happy and no-doubt penshioned off, in Mindanao from the 4th Ward Virago!

Ask Cook County Committeemen who were lashed thoroughly for not immediately backing a Preckwinkle selection for judge.  Preckwinkle is one humorless and nasty person with a room temperature I.Q. - such persons at one time ran the Movie Theatre Projectionists Union.  Now, they become Progressive Cook County Board Presidents and candidates for Mayor of Chicago.

Preckwinkle is painting Lori Lighfoot, a same gender householder and law enforcement misathropist, as Bill Daley, the Daddy Warbucks of La Salle Street Investors, who gave mightily to Bill's recent Leveraged Buy-out of Chicago.  Nonsense, Vieille fille Toni!

By St. Thomas a Becket, your bolts bounced benignly a boulder's toss from Lightfoot's pate.

While I am no fan of Monsieur Pied léger, I find Toni Preckwinkle to be as welcome as a rattlesnake's fangs to my more tender extremities.

I know Lori Lightfoot is a lesbian and that is just fine with me and would have no factor in my vote.  I vote for the dialectal epicene pronoun per ability.   I know Lori Lightfoot is No Bill Daley.  Who Is?

That said, ask Toni Preckwinkle to translate the more exigent sententiae- she was a teacher.

Chicago Got a Very Bad Haircut Last Night

                                                 

Q. What's the difference between Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle?
A.  7,856 Votes

Q. What's the difference between a very bad haircut and a return to some semblance of good grooming?
A. Two Weeks.


Wow.  Two stunning mediocrities will face-off in April with the winner set to close Chicago down altogether,  Talk about a bad hair day.

I was surprised to see Lori Lightfoot best Toni Preckwinkle.  SEIU won that one for Ms. Lightfoot and will allow the idiotic editorial board of SEIU's Sun Times and its cut and paste columnists to crow over a landmark defeat of the really idiotic Chicago Tribune and its help in Bill Daley's attempted hostile take-over of Chicago.

Credit is due to the Purple T-Shirts and not the ink-slinging four-flushers of that daily rag.

Toni Preckwinkle, the humorless former Mrs. Zeus and County Board Boss, will go scorched earth on Ms. Lightfoot these next few weeks and her army of patronage workers will feel the lash for coming up short last night.

Chicago?  Chicago screws itself every election.

Chicago will not recover, but the oligarchs who make millions from the Liberal Gentry Culture here will make millions more in real estate and government set-asides.

The gap between Rich and Poor is closed.

The Middle Class ( the Skilled Trades Members, City Employees, Small Business People) , which is to blame for this situation, truth be told,  is vanished.



Note this telling graphic lifted from Second City Cop (on election day ironically enough) which notes the middle class going the way of the  aboriginal Illinois Confederation.
The Orange represents the poor and the blue represents the rich.  The lighter colors are the middle class of Chicago, which has all but disappeared, since I graduated from Little Flower High School in Auburn Gresham,

I am moving to a south suburb, after twenty years in Morgan Park of the 19th Ward,

Two of my children rent in Chicago and one owns a home just across the street from Chicago.  God help them.

I loved growing up in Chicago.  I got great haircuts from Max Esposito in his shop at Marshfield and 79th Street, next to Billy Ellis' Wooden House.  Max Esposito was an exacting and serious barber, but his shop had no comic books.  


Mac the Barber/Bookie had every DC issue of Batman and Superman, as well as sexy calendars, but haircuts were often given by gamblers, while Mac made book calls in the back.  My folks knew immediately where I had gone for a haircut.

Chicago has opted for Mac haircuts these last twenty years (Daley/Rahm & Whoever).  Last night was the worst chop of all.

We can celebrate that an African American Woman ( one openly LGBTQRSTUNVWXYZ) and Chicago will. . . .ad nauseam. 

Can we celebrate a bad haircut for the next four + years?

We will.

Hey, Chicago!  I see YOUR barber has a great sense of humor!

What You Really Need to Know About Chicago's Mayoral Election - Our Catholic Legislators Work for the Abortion Industry

These Illinois Legislators work for the Abortion Industry - Oh, and there is a Mayoral Election on Tuesday Next.

• State Senator Billy Cunningham
• Representative Fran Hurley
• Representative Kelly Burke

The Abortion Industry can count on their support and they are allowed to present themselves to southwest side and suburban Catholic voters as 'Catholics.'

Their pastors do appear to have a problem with their fealty to Illinois Murder Incorporated, or Personal PAC/ Illinois Planned Parenthood.  The Archbishop of Chicago has no problem with their pro-abortion votes any more than he did with defrocked Cardinal Ted McCarrick's sexual predations. 

I have a problem with abortion: if the willful murder of a living child is cool with you, anything else is gravy.

I voted for Jerry Joyce for Mayor of Chicago. He is anti-abortion.  Jerry Joyce's brother Kevin was the last true Democat in Springfield and fierce enemy of abortion .

His successor, a Tom Dart acolyte, turned his back on 19th Ward Catholic voters, knowing full well that Democrat voters generally do not hold to eternal principles in the voting booth ( e.g.  Daley, Durbin,  Obama votes won in the solid 19th Ward) . Toni Preckwinkle beat Todd Stroger thanks to the 19th Ward voters like me who worked in the sub-zero cold on her behalf in the vain hope that Preckwinkle would never stab a helper in the back - as if. 

Nope, on Tuesday at 7PM (February 26,2019) the polls will close and Bill Daley will face a run-off.  

Will Jerry Joyce be in the mix?  I pray so.  I also pray that abortion will end in Illinois, but we have elected JB Pritzker as Governor and a super-majority Democrat State Legislature poised to slaughter every common sense stay against Abortion in Illinois State Law. 

VOILA! 

Title: Senate Bill 1407 [SB 1407] – Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) for abortion

Date filed: February 14, 2017

Sponsor(s): Senator Heather Steans (D) 7th district

Summary: At this time, SB 1407 is a “shell bill.” Language for the bill still needs to be written, but it is suspected to be the same as the FOCA bill that was defeated in 2009. This bill creates a “right to abortion” in Illinois.  It negates all U.S. Supreme Court exemptions to its 1972 Roe vs. Wade decision, such as Partial-Birth Abortion Bans, Parental Notification, and other important regulations on abortion clinics. It also forces all Illinois taxpayers to pay for abortions of those under Medicaid, shields abortionists from civil and criminal penalties for botched abortions, and forces healthcare professionals to assist women in obtaining abortions.

Status of the bill: SB 1407 was referred to the Senate Committee on Assignments. The bill is dead, but will continue to be monitored.

• Title: House Bill 3735 [HB 3735]

Date filed: February 10, 2017

Sponsor(s): Rep. Deb Conroy (D) 46th district, Silvana Tabares (D) 21st district, Gregory Harris (D) 13th district, John C. D’Amico (D) 15th district, Michelle Mussman (D) 56th district, Jaime M. Andrade (D) 40th district, Jr., Carol Sente (D) 59th district, Elgie R. Sims, Jr. (D) 34th district

Summary: HB 3735 amends the Unified Code of Corrections. It makes “intimidation” of patients attending a clinic, or physicians or nurses performing services at the clinic, a crime. Intimidation is vaguely defined to include speech exposing any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, which can be used to target side walk counselors and clinic protesters.

Status of the bill: HB 3735 did not come up for a vote by the deadline required in the House. It was re-referred to the House Rules Committee. The bill is dead, but will continue to be monitored.

Rauner signed into law a fistful of murderous legislation already 

The Mayoral Election is Tuesday and Jussie Smollett is being written out of Empire.

To me, THAT is moral equivalence.

 Abortion Hero -Kermit Gosnell ( Call Sen. Cunningham and Rep. Hurley's offices at 773-445-8128 for more information.)

I plan to do something about it.  I voted for Jerry Joyce a week ago.

This week I will think about how I can expose the votes of my State legislators as perpetuating a fraud on the voters of my neighborhood - their ( Cunningham, Hurley, Burke) constituencies.

If you go along with the murder of children, what will you not go along with?  Pension theft?

Oh, Heavens.

Remember to vote, now.

Chicago Mayoral Elections - Not Much You Can Do, But Vote.

I voted for Jerry Joyce.  

Bill Daley will be the next mayor, because we live in a 'fixed' City.

Bill Daley, Gery Chico. Toni Preckwinkle and Susan Mendosa are oligarchs.  They are the ruling class in this Banana Republic.

Illinois, Cook County and Chicago are all rigged by the monied interests and there is not a damn thing my vote can do about it.

The GOP - formerly a political party for the privileged progressive few became nothing more than a name a few decades back under Illinois Governor Jim Edgar.  Since then, The Illinois, Cook County and City of Chicago GOP has been an irrelevancy.

ILLINOIS GOP Clowns like Senator Mark Kirk stooge'd for the Daley family and helped shore-up its Russian investment empire that the Chicago media ignores.

Senator Mark Kirk appointed Efimova chair of the Eastern European Advisory Board. Three years later, she was appointed vice president (Midwest) of the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce. It’s a 501(c) nonprofit established in 2009 to “promote business between Russia and the United States of America.”Through her work with Kirk, Bob Dold (Dist. 10, R-IL) asked her to help with his outreach to the Russian-speaking community for his 2012 campaign. She’s “participated in numerous interviews and promotions…and on mailers that were sent to every Russian-speaking household.” She’s worked on his last three campaigns.
Efimova was one of 70 prominent Chicagoans on the committee to host the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago. The hosting committee was headed by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s wife, Amy Rule. That same year, Rahm sent a delegation of the World Business Chicago and CSI on a trade mission to Russia to “ establish relationships with Russian companies and spur new business development opportunities.”

Fred Eychaner's Terry Cosgrove and Planned Parenthood control erstwhile Catholic Democrat State Senators and Representatives like Bill Cunningham, Kelly Burke and Fran Hurley with such force that all common sense anti-abortion statutes will be eliminated from Illinois law. 

In Chicago, labor caved to the oligarchs when the pipe-trades wildly endorsed Rahm Emanuel for his disastrous second term and doubled down with Governor JB Pritzker.

I am not cynical.  Just reporting.

Vote.  Believe.

The fact of the matter is this.  Bill Daley will be Mayor.  Abortion will rule Illinois, just like legal weed.

We can move elsewhere.  We can hunker down and take it.

OR we can step away from the all you can can eat buffet of bullshit put out by the oligarchs' media stooges and start to listen to good people like

• Jerry Joyce - Get him in the Run Off

• Jeanne Ives - Help fight two evil pieces of legislation :HB 40 & SB 1407 i

• Rev. Corey Brooks - Demand that genuine voices of the African American Community get equal time against grifters and clowns like Blonde Jesus Pfleger and Jesse Jackson. 

I plan to demand a town hall in the very Catholic parishes of each self-claimed Catholic Illinois legislator to ask why, Fran Hurley, Kelly Burke and Billy Cunningham offer fealty to Personal PAC Illinois that trumps Catholic doctrine on abortion and why their pastors aid and abet their hypocrisies.  Just to keep them honest, or least outed in public.  Hell, I admit my many manifold personal and public sins. 

It is a small thing and the least that I can do; that and cast my vote upon the waters. 

12 Hopefuls - One Mayor;Uglier Than Homemade Soup This election

Rahm Emanuel realized that the Jason Van Dyke Trial, assorted Expressway shut-downs, more revelations about the McDonald  Shooting Video shell game coming to light in the next two weeks and the cold fact of the matter that voting Chicagoans can't stand the sight of him, brought him to the conclusion that the Chicago News Media and Bahzillions of dollars are not enough to see him returned to the 5th Floor for a third term.


Rahm is out.


Twelve people want to be mayor.


Less than a handful of them are qualified, but that matters not in Chicago. 


The only thing that matters in Chicago, Cook County of Illinois is the question, " How long can the string-pullers and money pavers endure some Yutz in any office?"


The answer to that question bespeaks the long tenures of


Toni Preckwinkle


Dick Durbin


Pat Quinn


Bruce Rauner
Lisa Madigan


David Orr


Mike Quigley


Jan Schakowsky


Danny Davis


Bobby Rush


Dorothy Brown


These marginal people of marginal talents are the current pantheon of political lions.  I would not ask most of them to cut my lawn and my lawn is disgraceful.


Now, Chicago sits on the cusp of another opportunity to wade through media muck and take seat on that celestial shoreline with a qualified human being in charge of an important political office.

• Paul Vallas  is a man of great talent and nice sensibilities who spent the last thirty years fixing other peoples problems in Pennsylvania, new jersey and Louisiana.

• Garry McCarthy was Rahm Emanuel's 'out of town talent for police matters until he wasn't.  Is he a good cop?  Some cops say he was good boss.  Others, just a political hack.  I see that he a genuine talent for remaining relevant and is a smart and cagey interviewer.
• Lori Lightfoot is . . . a darling of the media and should expect and demand their vassalage.
• Dorothy Brown is a whisper from an indictment.
• Willie Wilson is a self-made millionaire with the oratorical and rhetorical kills of Slip Mahoney.

The latest entry into the lists is Jeremiah Joyce, Jr.  I know Jerry and admire him. Mr. Joyce is smart without being a grafter; thoughtful without being a pest and caring without being Phil Ponce. Joyce should be mayor and would do a damn fine job as mayor.  However, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the only man who should have been President since Harry S. Truman, Jeremiah Joyce will be treated to Trump-like bile and vituperations from Chicago's Neil Steinberg, Laura Washington, Mark Brown, Ron "'68" Grossman, Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich and the always laughable Rex Hupke.
People will buy what they are selling.


If voters want change, they can vote for a competent Chicagoan.


The remaining months before the mayoral election will be uglier than home made soup.

My Lunch with Jeanne Ives

Yesterday, I took the Rock Island Metra from 103rd to La Salle Street station for an 11:30 luncheon of the Finance Committtee of Ives for Illinois.  I was flattered to be invited, because I do not have two-nickels to rub together.

I helped Chicago Renaissance Man Mike Houlihan form  the Irish for Ives which will host a fundraiser at Reilly's Daughter on Monday, March 5th between 5-7PM.  That will be a great event, where traditional Democrats like me can ask Jeanne Ives about their public service pensions, Bosco Rauner's lie, that Representative Ives shovels Mike Madigan's snow covered sidewalks over on Kedvale & 64th and how she plans to get Illinois back on its feet.I passed out some fliers to my fellow passengers who either accepted them, or politely declined.  Most took them.  One woman chatted me up and said that she will probably go to the event.

Jeanne Ives has nowhere near the money to respond to Governor "Bosco" Rauner's calumnies.  This same place-holding creep, tried to hijack the funeral of Commander Paul Bauer and equated drinking chocolate milk to solving race relations.   As such many 19th Ward residents are buying the ads from Governor Bosco, like they were words coming from a burning bush:

                      She's a Madigan crony!
                      She is hateful, bigoted and wants my pension

All without any examples given other than repetitions of Eric Zorn, or Sun Times talking points.

The worst comes from a shirt-tail cousin of mine with a swell County job, who will be working to re-elect Toni Preckwinkle shortly.

If you see the "Irish for Ives" posters up on the South Side, let the businesses know you won't support them. I saw one on 111th in Mt Greenwood today and they immediately agreed to take it down. There's supposed to be a fundraiser for her at Reilly's Daughter Oak Lawn. Let them know too.

He attached a smear piece from Daily Kos 2013 about Ives the Union Buster though the same Union Buster has been supported by IUEO 150.  Jeanne Ives must be scaring the hell out of people who want to keep things going the way they are.  They know if Ives knocks Rauner out in the primary, JB Pritzker will not have the planned can of tomatoes in the 15 round bout in November.  Nor, do they want Jeanne Ives to face Chris Kennedy, let alone Progressive Boy Toy Biss.   So union leaders who were all-in for Rahm want Rauner to lay down in November for them all.

The rank and file union membership are stuck with the property taxes, the water bills, the lousy schools and are told who not to vote for.

Union voters must declare in a primary polling place and people have big ears, adapted to the slightest volume thanks to street cash and Rauner has plenty.  I takes a very special kind integrity to take an unsanctioned ballot in Chicago.

Tearing down posters and threatening business boycotts?   These same union loyalists shop at WalMart and regularly cross picket lines to snag an Italian beef.   Hey, it's a free country. . .still.

I arrived at the Union League Club and was asked to man the greeter's table for a few minutes, which I did and introduced myself while I handed out name tags.

A gentleman by the name of Mike Schultz was carrying a huge briefcase and asked me, " I suppose Ives is a Democrat, this being Illinois.  I am coming from Wisconsin and satyed here over night."

I explained that Jeanne Ives was running against Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March Primary as a Republican and he asked me about her.  I explained that Ives is the only Pro-Life candidate for the office of Governor by either Party,  was a comon sense fiscal conservative who wants to halt the run-away pension crisis while easing the pain of the victims of former Governor Jim Edgar's IOU briberies, a West Point grad and Army officer, mother of five children two of whom serve in the armed forses and honest,tough and good humored, happy person.

Jeanne Ives came up the stairs and we met for the first time, " Pat Hickey, it's nice to see a Facebook person in person."

I introduced the Guv to Mr. Schultz.

Mr. Schultz is a dreamer, of German, Irish and Japanese blood, who grew up in Bridgeport.  His grandmother lived two doors down from the real Mayor - Richard J. Daley.   Schultz went on to explain that he was selling a product that he helped developed - a pain relieving lotion made from hemp oil.  He is searching States for the expansion of his business and is skipping Illinois as toxic to innovation and industry.

Mike Schultz gave me a bottle of the lotion for my retired carpenter brother who is crippled up with artheritis in his knees, hands, shoulders and ankle.  He is no fan of Trump, Rauner, or Ives.  I am a huge fan of Jeanne Ives.

Mr. Schultz bid farewell and said, " I am very impressed with you, Mrs. Ives.  Best of luck!"

We were called into lunch/

I knew Dan Proft and was astonished to see him  with whiskers.  I was introduced to Jeanne's husband Rich, who is an engineer and a West Point man.  He had been with Kenny Construction, when the great flood washed through the Loop.  Rich is like  . . .every guy I know in this neighborhood, funny, embarassed to be there, serious about his wife and his family.   Rich Ives would be at ease at Kens, Barney Callaghan's or Hinky Dinks.  Alas,Mr. Ives gave up beer and smokes for Lent.

There at my table sat Mike Houlihan with two gentleman donors, as well as Dan Patlak, the only Republican in Cook County government, and Representative Tom Morrison.  We later joined by Mr. Spencer from Christ the King Parish.  Jim Tobin and John Powers sat with the Ives' and Chair of Finance Committee Mr. Vince Kolber, an elegant Polish gent from Seneca, NY who adopted Illinois as his home state, built a mechanical service corporation RESIDCO, funds The Little Sisters of the Poor and The Big Shoulders Fund.   Real robber-baron type.

We began with the Pledge of Allegiance and Mr. Kobler explained his notion of fund-raising which matched that of the great Bob Foster of Leo High School - make everyone an investor.

Most people believe that fundraising is whale-hunting. Everyone seems to believe the notion of nailing down a million dollar give, as the pinnacle of success. No.  Leo High School defied the know-it-alls for decades, including my own two, but counting on committed people.  Leo's Alumni are like 17th Century Jesuit Black Robes - they drag in new converts and turn those converts into missionaries.

Jeanne Ives has the support of this Democrat because she is honest, happy and heroic.  One older gentleman in  Mount Greenwood told me " She's gonna win!  The little girl has alot of hard bark on her." That, she do.

Vince Kobler is accepting checks for Ives for Illinois and he wrote another huge one yesterday. Vince Kobler had writtne big checks for Governor Bruce "Bosco" Rauner, until he proved himself to be the fraud that he happens to be.  Jeanne Ives was handed a check in the amount of $ 300,000.

Mike Houlihan and I felt the change in our pockets.

Jeanne Ives thanked Mr. Kobler, who himself had run for Congress in the 5th District in 2016, for leading her 'rag-tag band of insurgents'  who depend upon people power to get her message out.

Ives noted that all Rauner has is money, lots and lots and lots and lots of money.   Fund-raising is the art of friend making.

Jeanne Ives praised Mike Houlihan and me for our work on the upcoming Reilly's Daughter event.  In a room full of well-to-do women and men, it was uncommonly nice of Jeanne to recognize two broke boys.

Like I said, fund-raising is friend making and Jeanne Ives was on way to Peoria.  She had just comeback from Decatur, Belleville, and Watseka, Illinois, where union members learned the truth about Ives for Illinois from Jeanne Ives herself.

I wish my shirt-tail cousin and a few of louder partisans were as fair-minded.


I met Jeanne Ives and I don't have two-nickels together.


Wonder if Rauner, or JB Pritzker would give me two hoots in hell?


It's your vote.

Hey leave up the signs.  Don't go to the event.  Even better, don't vote.

Politico's Natasha Korecki Details Progressive Duplicity - The Luis and Jan Knifing of Lipinski's Kidneys

It is what they do. Progressives are creeps.  They are not Democrats. They are not Liberals.  They are anything but decent and forthright people. If you think that is a bit harsh,  do a favor for one.

• Help Mike Quigley
• Ring a doorbell for Schakowsky
• March for Gutierrez the Gangbanger
• Cut Pat Quinn's lawn
• Give Toni Preckwinkle a Mountain Dew

I saw Forrest Claypool at a Democratic Regular fundraiser at Bourbon Street about ten years ago and a week later the Sun-Times ran a smear on a guest two weeks later - subsequently retracted.

I witnessed Jan Schakowsky bully an Asian girl at Alex Giannoulias's kick-off speech at the Hilton, because Jan was late and was not allowed to push other people out of theway in order to stand next to  Senator Obama . No, the little Asian volunteer did not know who Comrade Jan was and was subjected to all kinds of un-PC racist dressing down.  My ten year old daughter asked, "What is wrong with that woman, Dad?"  

I answered, " That is a Progressive.  Stay away from them."

Well, yesterday, my Congressman Dan Lipinski took two shivs in the kidneys from Comrade Jan and Luis El Piojo . 

The best political reporter in Chicago writes for Politico, without Fran Spielman's bootlicking deference to City Hall and Michael Sneed's gate-crashing idiocies. Natasha Korecki gives the low-down on the Lown-down shameless Progressive Playbook:

Natasha Report in Full:

 LIPINSKI KNIFED BY HIS OWN PARTY

When two veteran members of Congress kicked to the curb one of their own colleagues on Wednesday, even they called it unprecedented.

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, both Democrats, held a news conference to condemn fellow Democrat Rep. Dan Lipinski for his relatively conservative views and back his little-known primary opponent Marie Newman.

“It’s not easy to endorse a challenger for a colleague in the House of Representatives. Especially when that colleague is a member of your own party,” Gutierrez said at the news event on the Hill. “This is a very special, and, I think, dangerous time in the United States of America.”

The public shunning of a colleague for their positions on issues alone is almost unheard of in Congress. It’s a violation of the so-called “club rules.” If it’s done, it happens quietly, behind the scenes. For progressive groups angling to oust Lipinski, however, this is the Democrat’s comeuppance for years of bad votes. Gutierrez and Schakowsky both cited Lipinski’s opposition to abortion and past votes on immigration as out of step with his district.

“I assure you that this district is overwhelmingly pro-choice,” Schakowsky said.

Did Lipinski feel betrayed? “Jan has worked against me in the past. She’s never come out formally against me. Her husband has been straight about working against me,” Lipinski said in an interview with POLITICO. “It certainly does not surprise me. Even though I have supported her when she ran for vice chair of the caucus … I’ve been back and forth with Luis. He’s been with me, he’s not been with me. I’m not sure what his future is.” Lipinski defended his stance on immigration and said he’s worked for five months on a bipartisan agreement on DACA. He seemed to indicate it was his style as much as his positions that were under attack.

“I put in a lot of hard work trying to get this done. I’m a workhorse, I’m not a showboat,” he said. “I’m a problem solver. I see myself as a common sense Democrat. Some people want to be bomb throwers, they’re more interested in rhetoric than results.” Full story will be posted later at Politico.com and http://www.politico.com/news/illinois

SETTLING SCORES? Democrats privately questioned whether the retiring Gutierrez was settling a score by going against Lipinski and thus Mike Madigan, a longtime ally of Lipinski’s father.

“He jettisoned, 50-60,000 voters. Not Latino voters, not black voters. White voters, from his district. Wah-la they showed up in the 4th congressional district! I was happy to get them. Then all of a sudden I have the zoo. Brookfield Zoo … Just think about it. Pilsen, Little Village, Humboldt Park, Back of the Yards,” he said. “He did it because he was running away from progressive Democrats.”

Gutierrez told us later his point was that Lipinski wanted to export that population because areas like Berwyn and Brookfield were turning too progressive. “He didn’t get rid of them because of race. It was ideological,” he said.

LUIS FOR MADIGAN! Gutierrez said he had no issue with the remap. In fact, he said the General Assembly accommodated him when he moved out of his district. “I got my house included. I called my state reps and state senators, and said 'please, I moved,'” Gutierrez said. “They're wrong. this has nothing to do with that. I supported [Mike Madigan] three years ago. I did radio commercials, direct mail appeals. If the speaker calls me tonight and said he needed my help, I would jump on the first plane and go help him get reelected.”

As I told my daughter years ago -"Progressives - stay away from them." Thank you Natsha Koreki!