American Catholics - Ben Stone on the Rock of Peter: Michael Moriarty Nails It.

Between Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Vice-President of the United States and former Speaker of the House, American Catholics and Catholicism have been officially given role models that publicly defy the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI and the centuries-long, pro-life tradition of the Church.

What Abraham Lincoln said about America may very well be repeated about the Catholic Church: If She dies, it won't be by a foreign power. It will be by suicide.

America is not dead yet but is, indeed, dying because of the Roe v Wade decision 38 years ago. There is no longer the American "inalienable right to life".

The same Leftist attack on the United States from within the Democrat Party is the same Leftist attack on the Catholic Church from within largely Democrat American Catholicism, i.e. Biden and Pelosi.

Michael Moriarty

It takes a mirror to tell me to lay off that third Italian beef from Al's on Taylor Street. Two is enough for any glutton. Those size 36/29s fit like a surgical glove and that ain't good . . .for other people to look at. A man can not go through life wearing "eatin' pants."

Being a Catholic is tougher than being a happy gent on the thresh-hold of size 38 britches. My note to self . . . leave the car in the garage and hike. Eat like a Unitarian and pray like a Poor Clare.

Yesterday, I posted a piece in reaction to Neil Steinberg's latest in his serious of snotty advice to Catholics concerning Governor Quinn's fealty to Planned Parenthood and Progressive Everything, over his loudly stated Christian conscience conflicting with his broadly stated personal Catholicism.

Today, I noticed that 19th Ward Blog which reaches many more readers is likewise offended by the Dante spouting Masker of the Sun Times.

http://19thwardchicago.blogspot.com/2011/12/latest-attack-on-catholic-churchby.htmlAmerican Catholics have a problem. Public Catholics (Clan Kennedy) and elected Catholics ( Biden, Daley, Durbin, Quinn, Kerry, Pelosi et al) tend to belong to the Democratic Party. Chicago Catholics like me tend be Democrats as well. The Progressives control the Democratic Party. The Progressives are secularists -no religion is better than any religion. Abortion is a must. There is no such thing as sin, because of evolution and Civil Rights.

The Catholic Church in America is the last stand against the evil that is killing an unborn child. Likewise, the Catholic Church in America is the last stand against the Progressive elimination of sin.

In the last couple of years, I have become more aware of intrinsic evil behind Progressive thought. Bertrand Russell, an agnostic intellectual, called Dewey/Hegelianism the most dangerous assault on thought in centuries and termed it a cosmic impiety. I witness the results of John Dewey's work daily, working at an inner city Catholic high school and see that Catholic education works well for non-Catholic African American young men. Catholic values help them succeed - not marches, T-shirts, nor tax-breaks.

It is the mirror held up to Public Education and the world without sin, or consequences that it helped create. We struggle at Leo everyday, undoing what John Dewey hath wrought, because the bulk of our students come from public schools. Leo is costly. Leo holds the individual accountable - teachers, administration, staff, students and parents.

Part of my work brought me into contact with one of America's best actors - Michael Moriarty. Mr. Moriarty is not only a gifted actor, but a splendid jazz musician, composer and essayist. More so, Michael Moriarty has stepped away from American life, lives very well in Canada and tries to make sense of lunacy here. By here, I mean the Progressive epi-center Chicago.

Michael Moriarty has Chicago roots, as I have written about, and keeps in touch with what is happening here. Chicago's capitulation to the Roger Baldwin, WEB Du Bois, John Dewey, Henry Wallace Progressives after decades of growth and success as the City That Works as a Catholic Democrat American city is as much a concern to Michael as it is to me.

Progressive secular doctrine has replace the Church Triumphant of Cardinal Mundelein and is actively trying to stamp out Catholic opposition to its agendas - abortion for all, and sin no longer exists - only systemic racism, classism and sexism.

Michael Moriarty has very solid grip on what is going on here in one of President Obama's many hometowns - Hawaii, Kansas, Indonesia, Chicago. Chicago is the progressive epi-center that created the President. The President, like the governor, owes his success to the secular Progressive papacy. Every Progressive is a pope . . . ask one.

Michael Moriarty writes another beautifully Joycean essay that links Catholicism, St. Joan, Progressive Marxism, abortion, and Democrat Catholic Maskers like Quinn and Durbin with the Jewish Catholic intellectual Simone Weil and the actress Ingrid Bergman in a stained-glass masterpiece of a mirror.

Law and Order's Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) understands the Rock of Peter and the sand that is a soulless secularism.

No way I am buying size 38 pants.

Click my post title

More Michael Moriarty at the Paley Media Center

http://www.ny.com/cgibin/frame.cgi?url=http://www.paleycenter.org/&frame=/frame/museums.html

Catholics Can Be Elected. We May Elect One Governor of Illinois Next Go Around

Friday is the day politicians enjoy as a news memory hole. TGIF! Friday was the day that Gov.Pat Quinn chose to meet with Cardinal George and nine other Illinois Bishops. He pretty much tossed the meet-up away until he shot his mouth off to the very talented Sun Times political reporter Abdon Pallasch. Quinn parsed the chat.

Everyday is Friday for too many Chicago columnists and editorial boards.

The Chicago Sun Times is now trolling for on-line subscriptions; therefore, a web-reader can only grab a snatch of what their out-front propagandists have to say. No way I'm popping out nickels to read with care and cut and paste for grist to mill.

The Chicago Sun Times has great reporters ( Natasha Korecki, Abdon Pallasch, Mark Konkol, Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, Fran Spielman, Maureen O'Donnell, Rick Morrisey) and a pretty good columnist in Mark Brown. The balance of ink-slingers is . . . pre-fabricated, or processed food for thought.

The editorial and commentary quality may improve in the coming months when more thoughtful and engaged investors give the substance a good look-see.

Neil Steinberg offers another in his phalanx of snotty columns aimed at the breeders and church-goers - Catholics. He wonders if Catholics can still be elected.

Steinberg's Lazy-Susan wit attempts to spin the bowls of anti-Catholic bigotry in to the Catholic Bishops of Illinois, when one might expect that anti-Catholic bigotry comes from another quarter. Clever, Lad! I read snatches of Steinberg, because the whack-a-mole Verison-funded tin-cup pop-up blocks the passages. Snatches were plenty for me; not clever.

The spiel is Steinberg defends Governor Pat Quinn, who attended thirteen years of Catholic schooling over the bishops who are charged with defending the Faith. Quinn is vassel to Terry Cosgrove a multi-purpose coalition Gay/Planned Parenthood Boss.
Quinn is also a governor whose Catholic education is at odds with his obligations to Personal PAC and Progressive Identity.

Click my post title for Catholic Teachings on Sexuality, Human Identity, and Marriage. You really need to do some Progressive parsing to ugly it up.

My Catholic Faith ( not for everyone and tough to live up to) is 2,000 years old and has withstood Goths,Moors and Vikings. It's greatest peril arose in the late Middle ages when comfort and riches politicized the faith and practices of Christians universal. Bishops and Popes and Kings and Emperors played politics and things went bad.

The pews got kind of empty, because religion and politics became toxic and sexual abuses of all sorts ( simony, usury, nepotism, & etc.) permeated the institutional Church. The Church reformed itself and people who no longer cared much for the smells and bells, rigors of authority and patriarchal pastoral priesthood took it on the heel and toe and became Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and for the more secular appetites Unitarians. We still have Popes and bishops, but in America Kings and Emperors were shown the door. We have Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Mayors and State Legislators, as well as judges. It gets complicated.

In the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, bribery was up-front. Families could purchase the Papacy and even the odd nation-state. Some American families ( Kennedy, Rockefeller, Bush, Dodd, and Daley) can and do purchase power with the help of PACS. In order to make the political landscape more Rainbow-hued and Abortion friendly these Families and PACS purchased Pro-life Catholic politicians. Coalition building is not possible on Rock of Peter.

Gov. Pat Quinn has placed himself outside of Catholic teaching on Abortion and Homosexual Marriage. Were I, as a Catholic teacher, to offer my personal convictions that a teenage boy should occupy his hours in front of computer screen in his locked room gratifying himself in front of images of naked babes with - " It is your Civil Right to pursue your Happiness," I think that I might be called to task and account fro my exercise of conscious. Likewise, were I inclined to fulfill my goatish instincts . . .too disturbing to catalogue. Happiness is not

You see Happiness, from Aristotle through Santayana, has very little to do with carnal desire. In fact Dante, as orthodox a Catholic moralist as one may find in a layman, takes Thomistic (St. Thomas Aquinas) morality to poetic task in the Divine Comedy. I believe that Neil Steinberg has loudly and often touted his love of Dante.
Dante would toss Catholic politicians who take coin and votes to promote abortion and secular homosexual doctrines into the jaws of Satan - like Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. Allegorically speaking, of course.

Catholics can and should be elected to office. Here in Illinois we may begin to do so again.


http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/9524518-452/is-it-still-ok-to-elect-catholics.html

Pat Quinn's Gay Abortion Christmas Carol - " Did You Hear What I Heard?"

It was as gay as Christmas when Pat Quinn signed the Civil Union act; but, gay ain't always happy. The Bishops tried to correct Quinn on the issue. You can't fix . . . Governors.


Pat Quinn hears exactly what he hears. I hear a train a-coming and I get off the tracks. I hear a fire truck or ambulance siren and I ease to the right in traffic and stop. I hear 'the garage is on fire' and I tend to dial 911. Pat Quinn hears what he wants to hear.Cardinal George and nine more Catholic bishops of Illinois spoke to the daffy Governor for over two hours at Chicago's Union League Club about the differences between political PAC Obligations and Church teaching on the evil that is abortion and the fact that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Two hours - Abortion is 100% Evil
Marriage is between a Man and Woman


Pat Quinn explained the meeting to Abdon Pallasch of Chicago Sun Times -

Quinn said Saturday morning that the two-hour talk between him and Cardinal Francis George and 9 other bishops was “only a little bit” about his positions the bishops say are at odds with Catholic teachings on abortion and gay couples’ right to adopt — a clash that has made headlines recently — and more about the need to help the poor.

“A lot of the discussion was how we could work together to fight poverty, help the people who are less fortunate and need a helping hand,” Quinn told the Sun-Times as he left a Christmas toy give-away on the Far South Side. “Getting people jobs, helping people who don’t have enough food to eat — that’s what the church’s social mission is all about.”

Nope.

"But after reading Quinn’s comments posted on the Sun-Times website Saturday, the bishops that met with Quinn issued a written statement saying Quinn characterized the meeting wrong: The primary purpose of the sit-down, they said, was to admonish the governor for using his Catholic up-bringing to justify views that they say aren’t supported by the church. It was the second time in the past two months the bishops have issued a statement blasting the Catholic governor.

“We share the Governor’s concern for the poor,” they wrote. “From our point of view, however, this was a meeting between pastors and a member of the Church to discuss the principles of faith, not the works of faith. On several occasions, the Governor has referred to his Catholic conscience and faith as the justification for certain political decisions.”

Governor Quinn listens . . .to Boss Terry Cosgrove about the beauty and benefits of abortion and to openly gay Rep. Greg Harris who high speed-railed the Religious Liberty and Civil Union Legislation Which Pat Quinn signed with gusto! This is the religious liberty legislation that immediately made war on Catholic Charities.

Statewide Relationship RecognitionnoLicenses marriages for same-sex couples.noHonors marriages of same-sex couples from other jurisdictionsyesRelationship recognition for same-sex couples: civil unions.2010 Civil union law enacted, effective June 1, 2011. Allows same-sex and different-sex couples to enter into a civil union and receive "the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits as are afforded or recognized by the law of Illinois to spouses." Please join our Illinois Civil Union Tracker.1996 Anti-marriage bill adopted. Prohibits marriages "between two individuals of the same sex" and declares such lawful marriages to be "against public policy." See Illinois Compiled Statues, Chapter 750 §§ 5/201, 5/212 and 5/213.1.Statewide Employment ProtectionsyesPrivate employment protections based on sexual orientation.yesPrivate employment protections based on gender identity.yesPublic (state) employment protections based on sexual orientation.-Public (state) employment protections based on gender identity.See 775 ILCS 5/1-103 and 775 ILCS 5/1-102.2005 Sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the Illinois Human Rights Act. Senate Bill 3186, an amendment to existing law, signed by Governor Rod Blagojevich on 1/21/05Statewide Parenting LawsWho May Adopt Any person. 750 ILCS 50/2Second Parent Adoptions Approved in Petition of K.M. 653 N.E.2d 888 (Ill. App. 1995); reaffirmed in In re C.M.A., 715 N.E.2d 674 ( Ill. App. 1999)Notes Permits individual, joint and second parent adoption.

Greg Harris said that this legislation is merely the path to marriage between homosexual couples. Marriage between two men or two women is a problem for Catholics. Marriage is for procreation - breeders having kids. Breeders enjoying the procreative act outside of marriage are required to hit the confessional box and ask forgiveness for committing adultery.Adultery is having sex outside of marriage - one-tie all tie - homesexual, breeder, onanist ( the legendary Solitary Man that Neil Diamond celebrated in his 1966 song of the same name). At least that is what I hear and comprehend.

I am sure that Gov. Pat Quinn comprehends - Cosgrove's Personal PAC of Planned Parenthood gave him $ 500,000 to be governor of Illinois and Greg Harris did not obstruct Quinn's Budget. What did the Catholic Church give Pat Quinn - a pass. . . until now.

What do you hear?

The Jews of Illinois - Read The Reform Advocate

I love reading old books, newspapers and magazines. Recently, a pal sent me a link to an archive of periodicals long lost. The Online Library is the source.

One of the most striking and thoughtful is The Reform Advocate and English magazine published by Bloch and Neuman on Dearborn Street and Edited by Dr. Emil Hirsch. Click my post title and read the issue in full on the webiste.

The comon sense and clarity of the writing is wonderful (especiallially the editorial warning on the looming Prohibition laws)and the advertisements are great.

http://www.archive.org/stream/jewsofillinoisth00elia#page/n191/mode/2up

Alexis Ortiz - Recovering Alcoholic Ex-Con - Man of the Year

Hope and Change. Hope is a grace given by God to those of us who ask for help. Change is a circumstance. Place a hopeful person in a circumstance and and something wonderful can happen. Hope* is the first of the Heroic Virtues - those qualities that make us good people.

Just out of jail, a recovering alcoholic is being hailed a good Samaritan.

Alexis Ortiz found a wallet at the Mobil gas station at Walton and Sashabaw in Waterford yesterday.

Inside the wallet was enough cash to tempt even the most honest person: $1,000 in cash, credit cards and a man's identification.

The Ortiz family is struggling, but this father of seven did the right thing and called police.

A man in Detroit, father of seven, ex-con and a recovering alcoholic was at a Mobile gas station and found a wallet stuffed with cash amounting to about $ 1,000. For any man with seven children that is a live-changing amount of dough, but for a guy who gave up the sauce after getting out of jail, that is some circumstance.

Alexis Oritz is blessed with Hope. This we know because he passed the test of circumstance -Summa Cum Laude.

Ex-Con Finds, Returns Cash-Filled Wallet: MyFoxDETROIT.com

Merry Christmas Alexis! Thank You for this Christmas Gift of Heroic Virtue writ large!

* The Heroic Virtues - 2,000 years of them:


Hope is a firm trust that God will give us eternal life and all the means necessary to obtain it; it attains heroicity when it amounts to unshakeable confidence and security in God's help throughout all the untoward events of life, when it is ready to forsake and sacrifice all other goods in order to obtain the promised felicity of heaven. Such hope has its roots in a faith equally perfect. Abraham, the model of the faithful, is also the model of the hopeful "who against hope believed in hope. . .and he was not weak in faith; neither did he consider his own body now dead . . . nor the dead womb of Sara" (Romans 4:18-22).

Charity inclines man to love God above all things with the love of friendship. The perfect friend of God says with St. Paul: "With Christ I am nailed to the cross. And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:19-20). For love means union. Its type in heaven is the Divine Trinity in Unity; its highest degree in God's creatures is the beatific vision, i.e. participation in God's life. On earth it is the fruitful mother of holiness, the one thing necessary, the one all-sufficient possession. It is extolled in 1 Corinthians 13, and in St. John's Gospel and Epistles; the beloved disciple and the fiery missionary of the cross are the best interpreters of the mystery of love revealed to them in the Heart of Jesus. With the commandment to love God above all Jesus coupled another: "And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:31). The likeness, or the linking of the two commandments, lies in this: that in our neighbor we love God's image and likeness, His adopted children and the heirs of His Kingdom. Hence, serving our neighbor is serving God. And the works of spiritual and temporal mercy performed in this world will decide our fate in the next: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom. . .For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat. . . Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:34-40). For this reason the works of charity in heroic degree have been, from the beginning to this day, a distinctive mark of the Catholic Church, the pledge of sanctity in countless numbers of her sons and daughters.

Prudence, which enables us to know what to desire or to avoid, attains heroicity when it coincides with the "gift of counsel", i.e. a clear, Divinely aided insight into right and wrong conduct. Of St. Paschasius Radbert, the Bollandists say: "So great was his prudence that from his mind a bourn of prudence seemed to flow. For he beheld together the past, the present, and the future, and was able to tell, by the counsel of God, what in each case was to be done" (2 January, c.v, n.16).

Justice, which gives every one his due, is the pivot on which turn the virtues of religion, piety, obedience, gratitude, truthfulness, friendship, and many more. Jesus sacrificing His life to give God His due, Abraham willing to sacrifice his son in obedience to God's will, these are acts of heroic justice.

Fortitude, which urges us on when difficulty stands in the way of our duty, is itself the heroic element in the practice of virtue; it reaches its apex when it overcomes obstacles which to ordinary virtue are insurmountable.

Temperance, which restrains us when passions urge us to what is wrong, comprises becoming deportment, modesty, abstinence, chastity, sobriety, and others. Instances of heroic temperance: St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist.

G. Flint Taylor, Jon Loevy and Locke Bowman Set to Sue Braidwood House of Barks?

The Dog is a Pig, Man!

John Conroy will have an illustrated Children's Book ( Graphic Golden Book) detailing the horrors of Atom - the canine Jon Burge - who learned his techniques in 'Nam and bit testicles.

Every ambulance chasing Commie in Illinois must have morally indignant wood in their Dad 'N Lads.

Will Gator Bradley be an Urban Dog Whisperer?

Police dog fired for brutality
By Mary Baskerville Sun-Times Media December 16, 2011 4:10PM
Reprints3TweetUpdated: December 16, 2011 5:16PM



Two incidents of aggression cost him his job on the Braidwood Police Department, despite a petition signed by 403 people and public pleas asking the Braidwood City Council to reinstate him.

But the city just couldn’t stand for police brutality. Even if it did come from a dog.

The city ordered canine officer Atom into retirement, which he’ll spend at the home of his handler, Officer Doug Savarino.

City Attorney Scott Pyles said Atom cost the city $300,000 in settlements.

The dog, who joined the department in 2006, attacked a man who was already apprehended for a traffic stop and was not resisting. In a separate incident, he attacked an Illinois Conservation Police officer during a search for a suspect, Pyles said.

“We had to take some action,” Pyles said.

Mayor Bill Rulien said the department is bringing on a new dog, Neutron, but he is trained as a drug-sniffing dog, and has not been trained to attack, Rulien said.

“He will find drugs but not eat people,” Rulien said.

Giggle not.

Wierd is the new normal.

Shakman Gave Cook County Our Gang, Abortion and SEIU Political Landscape

Thanks to Michael Shakman and the Shakman Decrees a Veteran Gangster Disciple can be an Impact Political Player! Hal Baskin with the late Judge R. Eugene Pincham and former United States Senator Roland Burris.













In 1969 Michael Shakman and other Hyde Park lawyers, along with the long-dormant Progressive political players indigenous to that Chicago community, went shopping for a judge.

The nature of that legal marketing expedition evolved from sociological laboratories around the University of Chicago sparked by John Dewey and other long haired gentlemen and short-haired females. This particular push against the Democratic Political Machine affected our political psyche once it was determined by the right judge that political hiring is an intrinsic evil.

The Shakman Decrees* did nothing to end corruption; rather, they made a transfer of power from a Political Machine to Progressive Coalition Machine. Shakman Decrees created the political landscape that elected a President. All the graveyards in Cook County could not create more votes than Shakman - SEIU, ACORN, Progressive Coalitions Universal and political power remained in the hands of the very few.

Barack Obama could not have vaulted over the political gradus to the White House without Shakman.

Like Hyde Park itself, the Shakman victory is unique. Only in Cook County and in some few Illinois towns did this Dewey shower of Inquiry is Truth blossom and grow. No where else,in America, can or will Michael Shakman Enterprises flourish. What Shakman hath wrought is this:

1. Planned Parenthood's Personal PAC Has More Money and Muscle Than the Teamsters

2. SEIU and the less Public Salary Unions are Ward Organizations

3. Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, Four Corner Hustlers, Mickey Cobras
are precinct captains

I find it . . .consistent that no newspaper, or media outlet is finding journalistic grist for the mills in Chicago Magazine's well-crafted investigation into the association of gangs and political hacks.

However, my concern lies in the authors' dismissal of gang-banger activism in Chicago as a mere homage to Bathhouse John and Hinky-Dink's high-jinks, instead of a wormy Progressive abortion of political honesty rooted in Shakman and the Shakman Decrees.

Here is Shakman's effects upon our political life in Cook County

Many forms of political corruption—taking bribes, rigging elections, engaging in pay-to-play deals—are plainly unethical, if not illegal. But forming political alliances with gangs isn’t a clear matter of right or wrong, some say. In many Chicago neighborhoods, it’s virtually impossible for elected officials and candidates for public office not to have at least some connection, even family ties, to gang members. “People try to paint this picture of bad versus good—it’s not like that,” says a veteran political organizer based in Chicago who specializes in getting out the vote in minority areas. “Everybody lives with each other, grew up with each other. Just because somebody goes this way or that way, it doesn’t mean you’re just gonna write them off automatically.”

For better or worse, gang members are constituents, the same as businesspeople in the Gold Coast. Says Aaron Patterson, an imprisoned gang member: “It ain’t like gangs come from another planet.”

For some politicians, gang members can be a source of political strength—all the more so given that the once-formidable City Hall–Cook County patronage system, the lifeblood of the old Machine, is mostly gone. In the heyday of the Machine, recalls Wallace Davis Jr., a former 27th Ward alderman, political chieftains could simply snap their fingers and marshal a large cadre of city workers to go door-to-door with “a pint of wine and a chicken” to turn out the vote.

Few politicians nowadays have such armies at their beck and call. To win elections, many officeholders and candidates—especially those who represent parts of the city with high concentrations of street gangs—turn to those gangs as their de facto political organizations. “It went from wine and a chicken to hiring a gangbanger,” says Davis, who served from 1983 to 1987. “It’s unfortunate.”

Though estimates vary, most authorities and criminologists agree that there are 70,000 to 125,000 gang members in the city. In the numbers game of Chicago politics—in which, as the old joke goes, a one-vote victory constitutes a landslide—a constituency of that size gets noticed. (Keep in mind that in Illinois convicted felons can vote once they are released from prison.)

Yet, Shakman goes unidentified.

Would that the authors went further -Inquiry is not Truth; John Dewey notwithstanding.



*

Shakman at work from todays's Chicago Tribune:. . .The concession deal was struck between the Park District and the restaurant operator under then-Mayor Richard Daley. Investors in the restaurant venture included Daley friend Fred Barbara and city contractor Raymond Chin. The city is now trying to undo the 20-year deal.

The Park Grill's lawyer, Michael Shakman, called the city's lawsuit "way off base" and said the restaurant's ownership group "was not selected through political connections."

The city's lawsuit "punishes honest people who created a restaurant that was risky and uncertain when the Park Grill agreed to go into Millennium Park," Shakman said in a statement. "Now that Millennium Park is successful, the city wants to redo the deal and wants money to which it has no right. That's not fair. A deal is a deal."

The city's Law Department is reviewing the countersuit, spokesman Roderick Drew said. The city maintains that the Park District did not have the authority to reach agreements for the use of the land, said Drew, who added that the deal was not approved by the City Council, which he said is required for approval of a concession permit.

rhaggerty@tribune.com

Twitter @RyanTHaggerty

Our Public Imagination Shakman
Shakman Decrees
In 1969, one man made his stand against the Chicago political machine. Michael Shakman, an independent candidate for delegate to the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention, battled against one of the most enduring traditions in Chicago's politics: political patronage, or the practice of hiring and firing government workers on the basis of political loyalty. With many behind-the-scenes supporters, Shakman's years of determination resulted in what became known as the “Shakman decrees.”

Shakman filed suit against the Democratic Organization of Cook County, arguing that the patronage system put nonorganized candidates and their supporters at an illegal and unconstitutional disadvantage. Politicians could hire, fire, promote, transfer—in essence, punish—employees for not supporting the system, or more particularly, a certain politician. The suit also argued that political patronage wasted taxpayer money because public employees, while at work, would often be forced to campaign for political candidates.

In 1972, after an exhaustive court procedure and much negotiating, the parties reached an agreement prohibiting politically motivated firings, demotions, transfers, or other punishment of government employees. A 1979 ruling led to a court order in 1983 that made it unlawful to take any political factor into account in hiring public employees (with exceptions for positions such as policy making). Those decisions along with companion consent judgments—collectively called the Shakman decrees—are binding on more than 40 city and statewide offices.

http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1138.html

The Common Hurd - Modern Genius

Sam Hurd is a Chicago Bear playing on specialty teams for which he is paid a tidy $ 4,000,000 per year.

In order to use his capital earned from standing on the sidelines for most NFL engagements between the Monsters of the Midway and their competition, Sam wanted to continue investing his dollars in tax-free capitalism.

No doubt apprehending the growing demand for medicinal and recreational marijuana, which Cook County President the Chicago City Council are now hard pressed to deliver to the Weed Demographic, Master Hurd sought to capitalize on that herb's future demand with a robust supply.

The NFL vetting process matches that of the national media; therefore, NIU scholar/athlete and NFL veteran Hurd saw Opportunity's fore-lock in need of a hardy tug.

He reached out in a manner befitting his status:

Hurd’s party dined on $300 worth of filet mignon Wednesday. At the steakhouse, he told the undercover agent “his co-conspirator is in charge of doing the majority of the deals” while he focused on “higher-end deals,” the affidavit said. Hurd also allegedly told the agent that they already distribute four kilos of cocaine a week in the Chicago area, but his supplier couldn’t keep up with his demands.

Hurd also asked the agent if he could provide him with Mexican cell phone numbers, “as Hurd believed that law enforcement did not have the capability of ‘listening’ to Mexican telephones.” He even referenced the money that had been taken by authorities in Dallas, and claimed “the seizure of currency could not be associated to him.”

Mexican cell phones must have that Cartel Cache Coding Device. Kind of like, Irish GPS - "Hey, Murphy sober up! Your wife is on her way and she ain't happy; now, drink up."


Modern Genius - 10 % inspiration and 90 % incarceration

MSNBC Flash Mob and Demographic

Lean Forw. . .Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Michael Moriarty in Full - Read This Brilliant Analysis of Music, Faith and the Progressive Culture of Death

Michael Moriarty has a written an important essay. Read this.

The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Twenty Seven: Old Notes In A New WayBy Michael Moriarty
web posted December 1, 2011

Leonard Bernstein again seems to have entered my memoir as a musical guide for this most revolutionizing corner of my life. His lectures on modern music, now blocked by Koch Entertainment, this one in particular, defines "composers that have something to say". In America you increasingly pay for any education that might be offered on the internet.

With his customary brilliance, Bernstein reveals how a final diatonic, major chord, orchestrated as Stravinsky does in his Symphony of Psalms, can even sound "new".

Next, I'm watching Bernstein put Bachian muscle and balance into the execution of a Bach orchestral work.

Now, the St. Matthew Passion, as Bernstein himself says, "writing music was religion for J. S. Bach'.

"His godliness shines through all his music, first to last."

Bernstein's own divine genius as a teacher, as a composer, as a conductor?

It is beyond indisputable.

Alright.

Follow my reasoning, my deduction. If one looks at the political forces and "themes" that run and increasingly clash? Cacophony? Or modern music?

Bernstein might say, "Both!"

In that monosyllabic declaration lies Bernstein's infuriating equivocations politically. What might he be thinking now, were he alive? Would he, for one, be defending Roe v Wade?

Of course, as the only "civilized thing to do!"

Hmmm … and since Protestants, Progressive Protestants such as the Clintons and the Obamas actually promote abortion, Bach, being a Protestant child of Luther's Reformation, might agree, mightn't he?

There has always been a war between artistic genius and sanity. The confines of sanity, however, begin with "thou shalt not murder". Wander "out of that box" and you either have lunacy or just pure evil.

Crime and sin for the sake of crime and sin … until, of course, the thrill of crime and sin for the sake of crime and sin is gone.\ Then crime and sin would continue for no other joy than the pure abandon of evil. That is not lunacy, that is Evil. Evil's pure and conscious intent is the utter destruction of Good. That, of course, would mean the end of God.

Progressive "Reason" would inevitably necessitate the end of religion.

The end of God.

Eventually.

Not that the Progressives like the Clintons wouldn't lie to the faithful. They would lie and already have lied, as they say, "Big Time!" The Devil's Lobby, I call it.

C. S. Lewis, an Anglican of all things, wrote a great deal about The Devil in The Screwtape Letters and was later re-immortalized in the 1993 film, Shadowlands.

Catholic writers, of which I consider James Joyce, of course, one of, if not the greatest – the greatest, that is, if you don't consider Shakespeare a Catholic (many do) – have a profoundly more complex and subtler relationship with The Devil. The Church has truly split hairs about the depth of Hell involved with each transgression.

Forgiveness, of course, for any of the sinners is always possible, depending, of course, upon the sincerity of the sinner.

How did I get here in a chapter entitled "Old Notes In A New Way"?

There are few existing and major "old notes" that are older than the Catholic Church. The preceding Greek and Latin cultures, of course, haunt us in the same way they haunt the Catholic Church. The Catholic church, however, will be known eventually as the creation that saved the human race by her unswerving stand against abortion.

What is haunting me now is why a video accompanying a January, 2011 article, The Ox-Bow Generation, didn't work for quite some time. Yet it works now, months later. The Hanging of an innocent man is, indeed, an abortion.

The Fierce Faction For Abortion, and that is the only name I could label it with at this point, has massive influence obviously.

At the same time, this is the second day of the Arizona shooting in Tucson and Sarah Palin is still being targeted, ostensibly for her "target" symbolism.

No. It is for her stand against abortion. No one more fully represents pro-life than Sarah Palin.

Now, with Palin out of the 2012 Presidential race, it is Herman Cain who has been "forced out", not, as the press say, because of his marital past, but because of his unmitigated stand against abortion. Such a position is an assault against all "modern women"!

This is an example of The Bipartisan Progressives using gossip and marital secrets as propaganda in an "old way".

"Using old propaganda tools in an old way."

Michelle Malkin's article The progressive "climate of hate:" An illustrated primer, 2000-2010 lists, with her column's telescopic memory, the ten years of hate engendered by the fallaciously "hate-hating" Left.

The Left is well-known for serving up its vengeance cold.

Proud of it.

Glenn Beck, while on television, was doing his best to warn the Right against violence of any kind but righteous indignation can be tranquilized just so long. Perhaps that is why he avoided the issue of abortion as best he could. He was rather pushed into one episode dealing with the horrors of infanticide. Though Beck eventually proved too inflammatory and expensive for Fox Network, even he knew the hot potato that abortion has always proven to be. I don't follow his radio show so I have no idea how concerned he's been about Roe v Wade's spiritual destruction of the American soul.

However, 37 years of legalized murder could very well amount to 89 years of legalized slavery. We know how America and Americans could endure such inhumanity for just so long and then …

Ending legalized slavery is an "old note" for America.

Ending legalized abortion, with the hindsight we have about slavery, can be handled legislatively and at a much slower pace than the five years of Civil War.

Something, however, must be done now!

Why?

The American soul and her "inalienable right to life" have been destroyed by Roe v Wade.

As I have said one thousand times, the Golden Rule does not read, "Do unto gestating infants what you would not have wanted done unto your own gestating infancy."

Devoid of the Golden Rule, the American people's silence before the murder of Roe v Wade seems to be begging for an even colder indifference to human life out of the present, Far Left American government.

How does one resist a one hundred year-old Progressive Movement with profoundly international support and resources?

The Catholic Church.

An old note to be played in a new way.

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.

Caitiffs and Cads -Bounders and Blackguards

Of course a monarch can never be a caitiff, cad, or bounder . . .much less a blackguard.

This miserable measure the wretched souls maintain of those who lived without infamy and without praise. Mingled are they with that caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebels, nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves. The heavens chased them out in order to be not less beautiful, nor doth the depth of Hell receive them, because the damned would have some glory from them.

Inferno by Dante Alighieri

That ain't good . . .to be a caitiff. The word comes from the Anglo-French of the 11th Century, following the name change William The Bastard of Normandy affected with his conquest of Harold the Saxon in 1066. It's better to be a conqueror than a bastard. Being a bastard is tough, because one inherits only his skin and is required to acquire a name for oneself. The word caitiff differs a bit from a bastard.A caitfiff is bastardized form of the Latin captivus or captive.




One was expected to die in combat, rather than become a captive. A caitiff therefore is someone who was there at a battle, and surrendered - called it quits.

From that military meaning evolved a judgment of character - one who surrendered was implied to be a wretch, a craven, a coward. Someone without the honor to die rather than surrender, because he lacked inner feelings of virtue and nobility. Such a craven person would huddle with other like minded self-interested cowards in a township.



A Cadet ( Capitellum or 'little head') was a townie. Someone who curried favor of his betters - not to the Manor Born. If you lived in a Manor, you were noble by birth and blood. From Cadet evolved the caddie, a low-born person who did the bidding of his betters. A Cad was one who strayed into a better circle of society by dint of service and might flirt and play the dandy with the Lady of the Manor, but a Cad who went over the boundaries was a bounder -first employed in our living language around 1550. The extent of a Cad's excesses would be semiotic -signals and promises of exhausting pleasures - and go no further.



A Bounder is a complete rotter, scoundrel, or near-do well. One capable of any and all manner of miscreance - a breaker of faith. One might trust Clive Ajouter-Sur -Un-Matelas, the family wine steward, to distinguish a claret from a Rhenish, but should not be altogether floored to find Imported Frog-eater bouncing on the Baldacchino Supreme atop of Lady Salope.

Clive has gone from cad to bounder. A Cad might intend to diddle Lady Cuisses-Chaud Salope, but a bounder will enact the deed.

A Caitiff merely will know what is going on in the chambre à oucher master
between Lady Salope and Clive and smirk and ooze about his daily tasks.

A Bounder becomes a Blackguard when he mocks, curses, thrashes and ultimately beats Lady S following a particularly Herculean assignation, confronts Lord S with the unhappy fact that his Lordship has been goated. . . has been goated vigorously and often, with a grand sweep of the cape given him by her Ladyship exits Salope Manor with a great Spanish leather Gladstone choked with Pounds Sterling and minor coin as well as trinkets and stones snatched from Lady S's horde of jewels and successfully publishes his 3rd person omniscient account of the decade long carnal romps with Lady S all the while plotting against Baron Vaine Salope's appointment to the Ministry of Exchequer.


A Blackguard is the top of the wicked tree here. Caitiff and Cads edge close to the boundaries of a higher social circle, while taking only those liberties afforded their place in life. Thus a Caitiff who ventures to flirt with Lady S becomes a Cad and Cad graduates to Bounder when seals the carnal deal. However, a Blackguard goes the extra mile in letting the world know about it - kiss and tell, don't you know.

I like bounders.

Our Leave it to Beaver President - Ward, Has a Real Man-to-Man Chat in the Den with Barry.

Guard One - کید آن را می خواهد. ( The kid wants it back.)

Guard Two- نداره، او را دمار از روزگارمان درآورد، ما آن را نگه داشتن. (Nah, #$%^ hiM; we're keeping it)
Ward Calls Beav. . .Barry into the den:

Ward Churchill - Barry, step into the den, I want to have a word with you about taking care of your possessions. Sit down there on the davenport. . . .

Now, when I was a boy, I liked to sail kites and balsa wood gliders.

Sometimes they'd get caught in the phone lines, trees or just fly away. Othertimes, the tough boys from the Catholic schools would grab my things from me and call me names like like Faux Injun Plagiarist and smash up, those toys, cut my pony tail, pull down my pants and paint my butt blue . . . I was none too happy about that, I'll tell, but I got more than even. Well, Barry, they went on to become cops, firemen, and skilled tradesmen and I went on to become a protected distinguished academic for no real work at all; just like my pal Lumpy -Mr Ayers to you, young man.

Now, Barry, the toys that I lost were cheap. Kite and balsa wood Saber Jets only costs about five nickels, back then, but now-a-days they'd retail at about $ 8.96 because of the 1% who want to keep down us 99% folks.

Well, Barry that particular drone we gave you and you lost was a super- advanced Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, nick-named the Beast of Kandahar and boy did you have a lot of fun with it. Yes, Sir, you sure did.

Now, Barry, even I know that the loss of the drone is important and I am as phony as a Chris Matthews Let Me Finish. Now, look at me.

Boy, when you saw that You shouted to know if it came with a Garrett TFE731 or General Electric TF34! Now, Barry that drone was expensive. In fact we are keeping the costs of it under wraps for the time being, but you know that the average drone flight you have been playing with costs between $10,000 and $25,000 per flight.

Barry, you did not order the self-destruct on that toy. I know, you wanted no opportunity for an explosion in or over our Persian neighbor's yard and all, but maybe you should have done that.

Oh, come on now. No need for tears. You say it was not your fault and everyone believes you. Some of your Army guys are even telling folks that the Iranians are showing a fake drone. Fact of the matter, Beav . . .er, Barry -Now Iran has a perfectly good RQ-170 Sentinel and you know what that means? You don't.

Now, Barry, you go back to Mr.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ask him nicely again. You go back time and again, Barry, like we taught you. Bow to his wishes. Now, scoot you rascal! . . . And take care of what we give you, Son!

Now, if you lose an expensive drone, you might also lose a second term and we can't have that happen, now, can we?

Rahm, Explain NATO/G-8 Benefits to "Everybody" . . . Very, Very Slowly.

“Everybody understands the big upside for our city’s economic activity, job creation. There’s gonna be world leaders, foreign ministers, finance ministers, press from around the world to see what we all know to be the greatness of the city of Chicago*.”

Yep,and Yessiree, Bob! Why only last August the protected activists announced the icing on Rahm's Window to the World Welcome Cake! Light them candles!

Chicago could see crowds of protesters similar to the 35,000 or so activists who descended on St. Paul, Minn., during the 2008 Republican National Convention, said Joe Lombardo, co-coordinator for the New York-based United National Anti-War Committee.

"With the war (and) the global economy as they are, and the (U.S. presidential) election in full swing next spring, I think it will have the potential to be bigger than the protests in Minnesota," said Lombardo, a retired New York state government worker who has participated in demonstrations since the 1960s. "Those issues are not going to go away (by May), and Chicago is a larger city than some of the other places they've had these summits recently."

Chicago activist Joe Iosbaker, who helped organize the RNC protests in 2008 and whose home was raided by FBI agents in October 2010, said he applied for permits to hold demonstrations in Daley Plaza and Federal Plaza downtown the day the White House announced the city would host the summits.

So far, he has not heard anything about the status of the permits from Cook County about using Daley Plaza or the agency that controls Federal Plaza. City officials also have said organizers will not be able to apply for a permit for a planned march through the city until the first of the year, Iosbaker said.

"They told me they would get back to me in two weeks to let me know at least that we were in the process of getting the permit," Iosbaker said. "That was nine weeks ago."

Local activist Andy Thayer said demonstrations will be peaceful, despite a recent statement by police Superintendent Garry McCarthy that the department is preparing for "mass arrests" of protesters during the summit. . . . Iosbaker noted that events like the G8 and World Trade Organization summits have seen some violence in their host cities. Iosbaker attributed the clashes to aggressive police and said his group is planning to do nothing to disrupt the city or the conferences.

"What we want is a safe, permitted, legal protest," Iosbaker said. "Something that parents feel safe bringing their babies in strollers to, and we want our voice to be heard."

DUDE!!! Anarchists, SDS Senior Citizens, Joe Isobaker's XXXXXL SEIU Purple T-Shirted Shouters, Andy Thayer's Gay Rainbow Multi-Purpose Protest Coalition, Mummers, Zombies, The Hamas Cruise Directors, ISM's Kevin Clark and the Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War, Happenin' Dudes in V-Masks, Code Pinkettes, Wobblies, OWS Veterans, Billy Ayers and his Odious Old Lady, Peoples Law Office Ambulance Chasers, More Andy Thayer, Clowns, Balloons and Michael Moore Rides for the Kids!

My Questions, Rahm:

Ample Parking? What about Ample Parking?

Cinco De Mayo? No Mas, or will it be a moveable feast like October Fest?

How you gonna get all the off the clock Euro-Trash Conventioneers to the Horseshoe Casino?

What's the Over and Under on the Litigation Net?

Where's the Youthful Flash Mobs supposed to loot?

Does Christine Amanpour still get a press pass?

Will CTA Forest Claypool be get time and half, or double bubble driving buses without a pee?

How will this affect side-walk cafe life for the Liberal Gentry?

North Avenue Beach? Open? Closed? Film at Ten?

Should be a dandy May.


*Chicago Principles
• Our solidarity will be based on respect for a political diversity within the struggle for social, economic and
environmental justice. As individuals and groups, we may choose to engage in a diversity of tactics and plans of
action but are committed to treating each other with respect and working towards a common goal of peace and
justice.
• As we plan our actions and tactics, we will take care to maintain appropriate separations of time and space
between divergent tactics.
• We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption, limiting our action
to “free speech zones,” and violence, or attempts to divide our movement through the conscious creation of
divisions regarding tactics, organization, strategies, and alliances.
• Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of
fellow activists and events.http://cang8.wordpress.com/
https://www.google.com/search?q=NATO+G8+Summit+in+Chicago&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_summit

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Resist-the-Chicago-G8NATO-Summits-May-2012/199067310146117

Actress Kara Zediker - A Great Talent from Kankakee, Illinois

One of the great rewards of a teaching career is seeing the lives developed by students who endured your time with them.

Kara Zediker and her brother John were two wonderful youngsters and are now very successful and splendid young adults. Kara is an actress and John is a CEO for a private company and works on the Du Page County Board. Their folks are Carol, "Cookie," and Phil Zediker one of the great husband and wife teams - Phil is a psychiatrist and Cookie taught with my wife Mary and me at Bishop McNamara High School.

Kara was a member of the Paula Aubrey Dance Studio while a student and acted in every play and sang at every opportunity. Kara is a very pretty kid happy in her own skin - her best role was as Mammy Yokum in the musical Li'l Abner, though she could just as easily filled the role of Daisy May.

Kara and my wife Mary, an art teacher, were great pals. Mary was always the invited guest and I got dragged along to dinners and outings. More so, like the dusty twerp in James Hilton's novel, my wife made me look better and kept the students from hiring a retired Scout Sniper. I was and continue to be a huge pain in the ass. Imagine being a 14-18 year old kid stuck in a desk with me for 50 minutes, or more. I do not know how they did it.

Kara and John were both superb students and very popular kids as well. Kara studied at Columbia College here in Chicago and was selected to act with Goodman Theatre and Steppenwolf and bravely acted with John Malkovich in a perfectly horrible play -A Slip of the Tongue*. She also had roles in The Babe with John Goodman and Uncle Buck with John Candy.

Kara plays the lead in a short film to be released in 2012 and plays an Italian woman in a period piece called No God, No Masters about the 1919 Palmer Raids against Italian immigrants.

Here is a trailer for Wedensday's Child The story of a young girl who discovers that her entire nine year existence has been a series of experiments for books written by her parents, and the drastic action she takes to force them into admitting the truth.

Wednesday's Child from Mike Kwielford on Vimeo.

here is Kara as a nurse from a recent episode of Without a Trace-



Phil and Cookie raised two great kids. Kara is an especially talented young lady. Houli! Remember Kara for your next film!


John Zediker - http://www.dupageco.org/CountyBoard/Members/12024/

Kara Zediker-http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0954150/


*

Past Threatens Nation`s Freedom In `Slip`
February 07, 1992|By Lawrence Bommer.
It was inevitable: A play has emerged depicting Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Opening Sunday at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company,

``A Slip of the Tongue`` is a world premiere by Dusty Hughes that takes place in an Eastern European country both before and after the revolution of 1989. Its hero, Dominic Tantra, is a leading dissident writer who has spent years in exile in a rural area.After the fall of his repressive government, he returns to the capital city, where he`s given all the privileges he`d been denied. Conflict arises when Tantra, who wants to forget about the past, discovers that the movement that he was a part of and suffered for has become preoccupied with retributive justice. The story focuses on Tantra`s relationships with four university students.

Playing the lead role in Simons Stokes` staging is Steppenwolf stage and screen star John Malkovich. Other cast members are French actress Clotilde Courau, British actress Lizzy McInnerny, Chicagoan Kara Zediker and Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite.

``A Slip of the Tongue`` runs through March 22 at 1650 N. Halsted St.;

312-335-1888.

Bears - Mrs. McCaskey Needs To Lead You Guys to Holy Name Cathedral - Pray to St. Humility

St. Humility carries the bricks to build a church; Tim Tebow carries Denver

In fact, everything about Tebow, a 24-year-old Floridian, seems polarizing, from his unabashed religious proselytizing to his unorthodox approach to playing quarterback. If you crossed a tight end with a fullback and raised him in the God-fearing home of a pious linebacker — a Mike Singletary type — you’d have Tim Tebow.

Dan McGrath Chicago News Cooperative December 10, 2011




13-10 - Biblical. The Bears had a 10-0 lead in the waning minutes of a defensive brawl in Denver. Then, as the clock ticked away precious seconds, an unnecessary trip to the sidelines struck down the Monsters of the Midway like the staff of Moses on the Rock - and there poured forth a Biblical end.

Guess what? The year 1310 AD marks date of the death of St. Humility.

Born Rosanna Negusanti to a noble family from Faenza, she was married at the age of fifteen to a nobleman named Ugoletto (Ugonotto) dei Caccianemici (d. 1256). She bore two children, both of whom died in infancy. In 1250, Ugoletto became a monk upon recovering from an illness that nearly killed him. Rosanna entered the same double monastery of canonesses named Saint Perpetua, near Faenza, becoming a nun and taking the name Humility.

She became an anchoress in a cell attached to the Vallumbrosan church of Saint Apollinaris in Faenza, where she lived as a hermit or recluse for twelve years.

However, at the request of the abbot-general she founded a monastery outside Faenza and became its abbess. Blessed Margherita became one of her disciples.

In 1282 she founded a second convent at Florence, where she died in 1310 of natural causes. She left a number of mystical writings.

She was canonized on January 27, 1720 by Pope Clement XI.

Her feast day is celebrated on May 22.

The relics of Humility and her disciple Margherita are venerated at the convent of Spirito Santo at Varlungo near Florence.

St. Humility was loaded. She was a mother who watched her children die and nearly lost her husband -who entered a monastery. St. Humility did the same. That is something.

Tim Tebow is something. He has all the gifts -especially humility. Humility is the recognition of the dirt under our feet -from hence we came. Dirt, turf - real or artificial - dust to dust and all that jazz.

One of the most devout persons in Chicago, of any faith and creed, is Mrs. Virginia McCaskey, scion of the Halas Family and matriarch of the Chicago Bears. Mrs. McCaskey spends a great deal of her time in the pew and the balance doing acts of charity.

Mrs. McCaskey is loaded, but that does not seem to matter much to her.

Virginia McCaskey is our Tim Tebow. Perhaps a field trip to Holy Name Cathedral and more than few laps around the rosary might be in order, as opposed to goating poor Marion Barber.

Humility is not dancing in the end zone.

Humility seems to work in Denver.

December 20, 2011- Meet the Top Bidder for Public Square 10th Anniversary Dinner for Six with Bill Ayers and His Odious Old Lady

WE have a Winner! WBEZ is proud to announce the top bidder for the scintillatingly unforgetable dinner with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn - Retired Chicago Police Officer Byrne Yuras. Officer Yuras and five of his best friends and fellow members of the American Knights Motorcycle Club, Chicago Chapter.

Officer Yuras has had a colorful career in Law Enforcement since he returned from Vietnam in 1969. Joining CPD in 1970, Officer Yuras was briefly assigned to the Red Squad but after that unit was disbanded remained a patrol officer until his retirement in 2008. He is a widower, weight-lifter, motorcycle enthusiast, member of Mensa Brighton Park Chapter, Knight of Columbus and an Illinois Megaball Jackpot winner.

Officer Yuras says that he and his fellow retired officers will ring the doorbell with their elbows. He's bringing dessert and entertainment. You are listening to WBEZ, in Chicago! The time is 8:28.

Description:
Enjoy an unforgettable and scintillating dinner for a party of six cooked by veteran activists and educators Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Fascinating conversation over a meal is the agenda for this special evening.

William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is currently the vice-president of the curriculum studies division of the American Educational Research Association.

Bernardine Dorhn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center, is a child advocate who teaches, lectures and writes about children’s law, juvenile justice, the needs and rights of youth, and international human rights. With Steven A. Drizin, she is co-founder of the Center on the Wrongful Conviction of Youth.

Dinner will be arranged on a mutually agreed upon date before September 30, 2012. All sales are final.

Ask us a question about this item.

http://www.akmc.us/index.php

Catholic Liturgical Ditties and Sacred Music

Music can trigger a wake up call for my better angels. The softer side of our selves is what makes us respond to our place here on earth and our understanding of that delicate and brief posture we show to the universe and the face of God. We might not know all about the art, the words, the tone, or the ritual taking place but we know that something we are experiencing takes us out of ourselves to someplace wonderful. We can only experience this mystical journey if we put ourselves exactly where it is possible: a library, a museum, a monument, a place of worship. We gotta go there.

Last night, I was swept up by the Nine Lessons and Carols Concert at St. John Cantius, where the works of Canadian Comper Healey Willan were performed. Healey Willan was commissioned to compose sacred music for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The St. Cecilia Choir performed his Hodie Carol. Hodie, Cristus Natus Est. Today Christ is born- declarative, simple and elegant. Sacred.

Catholic liturgy should use music with greater care and it does not. St. John Cantius is a parish on the north side of Chicago where the stated mission is to return God's people where they belong via the sacred. St. John Cantius is the Catholic Church many of us Baby Boomer and older Catholics remember. The entire atmosphere is reverent, beautiful and sacred. The music is exquisite and the performance by the St. Cecilia Choir under the direction of a non-Catholic, Dan Robinson more than matches the musical manuscripts.

The Sacred is rare in our culture. The sacred is parodied or dismissed in public life, education, politics, conversation and child care. Why else could we as a culture embrace everything anything as disposable - books, razors, friendships, and life itself. We seem to have replaced the Sacred with Sanctioned. I am as guilty of that most hours of the day.

My friend Jim Bowman, a dedicated career religious journalist, posed this issue at Blithe Spirit quoting from an article he read on Catholic Liturgical Music and the empty pews in the light of the recent Catholic Campaign to Return Home:

A long time Catholic of bourgeois sensibilities, a man who trying to hold on to his faith but doesn’t attend Mass on a regular basis, decides that it is time to try again. He goes to a parish not far from his house. The processional says to him: nothing has changed from the last time I tried this. He grinds his teeth throughout. By communion time, he is nearly losing his mind. The recessional hymn puts him over the top. He goes out to the parking lot cursing under his breath, mad all over again, recalling why he doesn’t go that often.

The problem is the music. It is bad pop music, shabbily done by people who nonetheless seem to be pretty proud of their performance. The entire Mass, the man keeps asking himself: how does it happen that the most beautiful liturgy, the product of 2000 years of tradition, could be reduced to this? More importantly, isn't there something that can be done about it?

There is, but, like everything else, the problem is more than fifty years of neglect that needs to be addressed. The Masses composed around the Big Six (Kyrie,Gloria,Credo,Sanctus,,Benedictus and Agnus Dei) by Cavalli, Bach, Mozart,Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt,Schubert,Verdi, Rossini and Antonin Dvořák, became as irrelvant as Latin, the Memorare and the Prayer of St. Michael.

The music became the property of Sister Sally and the Electric Prunes ( yes, the lads who brought us "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" composed an electric guitar Mass in F Minor) and local kids who played the guitar very badly. The Mass became relevant as Hell. It was profaned. I know profane inside and out, God help me. I do and get profane, much more than necessary, and it has its place.

There have been many modern compositions that are sacred and fitting to liturgy, but these are ignored, because parish liturgists have been trained to do their own thing.

Again, from article cited by Jim Bowman:

The number one issue, in my own view that has been formed over a decade of close study, is that the musicians themselves do not know better. Most people doing music in the Catholic Church do not even have a rudimentary understanding of the musical demands of the Roman rite. They do not know what parts of the Mass constitute the ordinary structure of the Mass. They do not know that the propers of the Mass exist. They have no idea how the music is related to the word or the calendar (apart from Christmas and Easter). They have no idea what is mandatory, what is an option, what is the Church’s choice, what is the publisher’s choice, what tradition consists of, or how to tell genuine liturgical music from nonliturgical music.

This is because they have never been told. And a reason that they have never been told is that very few people actually have this understanding at all. You can attend ten national conventions, read ten books, subscribe to all the major liturgy publications, troll websites all day, talk to your pastor and grill your predecessors, and still never discover these basic points about the Catholic liturgy and its musical demands. Yes, you will come away with some slogans and with the knowledge that “the people” need to participate but do not (it’s always easier to focus on the sins of others), but that’s about it.

The core information about the role of music is not known because it is not known, and this problem is not only serious at the grass roots; it goes straight to the top. Again, it is not malice that is preventing this knowledge from leaking out; it is just that so much information has been lost during these confusing decades that there are very few around that truly get it.

Want to get it?

Here is a pretty good tutorial that helps us understand the difference.

Can you tell the difference?? from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

That's a baby step. We need to walk into Sacred Places to experience the Sacred. You'll know it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healey_Willan
http://www.chantcafe.com/search/label/Jeffrey%20Tucker

http://blithespirit.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/read-this-and-weep-ye-pewsitting-catholics/

A Great Profile of a Great Catholic Priest - Bishop Thomas Paprocki

Bishop Thomas Paprocki has our backs, Catholics.

‘You’ll get no fable that’s told by me.

For Paul, in writing there to Timothy,

Reproves those who swerve from truthfulness,

Relating fables and such sinfulness.

Why should I sow chaff from my fist,

When I can sow wheat, as I would wish?

So I will say, that if you wish to hear

Of morality and virtuous things here,

And grant me of my speech an audience,

I will gladly do Christ full reverence,

Giving you lawful pleasure, as I can.

But in truth I am a southern man;

I cannot give you “rum, ram, ruf” by letter,

And, God knows, I hold rhyme little better.

Rhyme and alliteration I’ll dispose

With, and tell you a merry tale in prose,

To knit up all this game and make an end.

Parson's Prologue -Canterbury Tales.

The only real priest and honest Churchman in the Canterbury Tales is the Parson. Chaucer lived in a time when Church was identified more with clerical abuse than sanctity - Monks were slum-land-lords, Nuns were no better than Rush Street Cougars, Friars were sots on the make and Abbots were gang-banging Warlords. The Parson was Christ-like.

Yesterday, I read a wonderful profile of Springfield Catholic Bishop Thomas Paprocki, by Bruce Rushton in Illinois Times. Bishop Paprocki is a tough Polish kid from 'over-by there.' Paprocki is a priest's priest and a jock-strap: an very educated man who remembers that he walked in alleys and ran through gangways.

Like the Parson of Chaucer's poem, Bishop Paprocki gives Catholics hope.

Only Catholic clerics who cave-in to secular agendas get fair play with academics, media mouth-pieces and political opportunists in and out of office.

Abortion is unacceptable. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Sex outside of marriage requires a trip to the confessional box and not a plebiscite. Social justice should not require a public relations team.

Esse Quam Videri was stated by lawyer and orator Cicero - To be rather than seem.

The Catholic Church has seemed to be anything and everything for more than forty years. That is far too long. Bishop Thomas Paprocki lives what must be, for Catholics and other good people. Good people protect their children, their rights and their souls as best they can.

They call him the Holy Goalie, the bishop who saves goals and saves souls. He is, according to Jeff Rocco, director of the Sacred Heart-Griffin hockey squad, the real deal in the net – you’d never know that he didn’t take up ice hockey until the late 1990s, when he was closing in on 50.

What possesses a man in mid-life to become a puck target?

“Why do you want to play goalie – it’s like, why do you want to be a priest?” answers Paprocki, who also runs marathons. “Part of it, I guess, is being at the center of the action. Being a goalie is like being a bishop: You’re at the center of the action.

Really, Paprocki says, it isn’t much different than playing goal in floor hockey, which he did back in the eighth grade while growing up on Chicago’s south side. There were no ice rinks, and so his six brothers and their friends played in a basement beneath his father’s pharmacy.

“The basic principle is, you play the angles,” he says. “You just want to position yourself in a way so the puck hits you.”

Plenty of pucks have hit Paprocki since his arrival in Springfield 18 months ago. He doesn’t shy from strong statements, which has earned him critics who call him divisive, arrogant, inflammatory – and worse.
. . . After passing the bar exam in 1981, Paprocki and Grossman founded the Chicago Legal Clinic, which still provides legal services to the poor. Grossman is executive director while Paprocki remains president. Grossman, who is Jewish, says the bishop has a keen sense of humor, the sort who enjoys stories that begin with “A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar….”

“He always tells those jokes,” Grossman says.

But Paprocki knows where the line is located.

“He is never not a bishop,” Grossman says. “It’s not a job for him. It’s a lifestyle. It’s something that permeates every aspect of his being.”

Paprocki entered law school three months after he was ordained – it was all part of a plan that made sense to him, he says, but perhaps not to others.

“That all fit for me,” he says with a chuckle. “I describe the law as a tool for ministry. Other people looking at that, ‘He was ordained a priest and now he’s studying to be a lawyer? He’s already so dissatisfied with the priesthood...’ . . .
Between explaining himself on high-profile matters, Paprocki leads the day-to-day life of a bishop, lawyer, marathon runner (he finished 531st out of 1,330 finishers with a time of 4:08:39 in the Kansas City Marathon last fall) and, Grossman says, a man who is making plans to earn a master’s degree in business administration. Somehow, he finds time for matters large and small.

“You can imagine a person in his position must get asked a favor or for something a million times a day,” Grossman says. “He always, always, always takes time for people.”

Including for members of the Sacred Heart-Griffin hockey team, which won its first-ever championship last season, when Paprocki served as the squad’s goalie coach during his first year in Springfield. The bishop attends about 70 percent of the team’s practices and games, says Rocco, the team’s director, and he commands respect by blocking 60-mph shots by college-bound players.

“He can play,” Rocco says.

You got that right, Rocco. Play is damned serious these days.

We Interrupt the Endless Looping of Insipidly Produced and Performed Christmas Music . . .

The other evening my beloved and I were chased out of a near north side restaurant by the endless looping ( Sirius XM) of Kenny G quality Holiday Tunes. Pan Fluted " Winter Wonderlands." Soprano Sax'd "Oh, Little Town of Bethlehams." and any version of "Little Drummer Boy" are toxic to the soul and an affront to quality of life.

It is not Christmas Music that is bad; rather, it is the selections looped and presented. More so, it is the wicked and smarmy imposition of these very bad productions by people who actually believe that one and all are charmed by their control of the atmosphere that is intrinsically pernicious.

Therefore, to gas station managers, mall directors, restaurateurs and secularists everywhere, give it a rest. In the spirit of Christmas giving may I offer this comely and well-stated ballad.



Merry Christmas and do sing along with this carol of sense and sensibility - Kenny G, my broad manly arse.

Left,Left,Left,Right ,Left


Husslers shootin' eightball
Throwin' darts at the wall
Feelin' damn near 10 ft. tall
Here she comes, Lord help us all
Old T.W.'s girlfriend done slapped him out his chair
Poor ole boy, it ain't his fault
It's so hard not to stare
At (Miranda's)honky tonk badonkadonk
Keepin' perfect rhythm
Make ya wanna swing along
Got it goin' on
Like Donkey Kong
And ooo-wee
Shut my mouth, slap your grandma
There outta be a law
Get the Sheriff on the phone
Lord have mercy, how she even get them britches on with that
That honky tonk badonkadonk
(Aww son)

Now Honey, you can't blame her
For what her mama gave her
It ain't right to hate her
For workin' that money-maker
Band shuts down at two
But we're hangin' out till three
We hate to see her go
But love to watch her leave
With that honky tonk badonkadonk
Keepin' perfect rhythm
Make ya wanna swing along
Got it goin' on
Like Donkey Kong
And ooo-wee
Shut my mouth, slap your grandma
There outta be a law
Get the Sheriff on the phone
Lord have mercy, how she even get them britches on
With that honky tonk badonkadonk
(Ooh, that's what I'm talkin' bout right there honey)

We don't care bout the drinkin'
Barely listen to the band
Our hands, they start a shakin'
When she gets the urge to dance
Drivin' everybody crazy
You think you fell in love
Boys, you better keep your distance
You can look but you can't touch
That honkey tonk badonkadonk
Keepin' perfect rhythm
Make ya wanna swing along
Got it goin' on
Like Donkey Kong
And ooo-wee
Shut my mouth, slap your grandma
There outta be a law
Get the Sheriff on the phone
Lord have mercy, how she even get them britches on with that
That honky tonk badonkadonk

That honky tonk badonkadonk
Yeah, that honky tonk badonkadonk
That honky tonk badonkadonk


(That's it, boys, that's why we do what we do
It ain't for the money, it ain't for the glory, it ain't for the free whiskey, its for the badonkadonk)

Gimlet Eye on “Chicago Way” - Joel Kotkin Excoriates The City that Shirks

Blago got 14 years. He got fourteen years, because he is a goof and was a very easy target for Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzy does not harpoon Moby Dick; he nets smelt: Rezko, Blago and other ham sammich indictees.

The core of Chicago Style Corruption lies not with the guy asking his precinct captain to go to bat for his kid. Chicago Style Corruption* is not a cop telling you that, "You were travelling $35 over the posted speed limit." Chicago Style Corruption is not some mopey kid sleeping off a hang-over in the back of a Water Department Truct awakened by Dane Placko, Pam Zekman.

Chicago Style Corruption is Lab School. Shakman Decrees were the starting blocks. When political hiring was targeted as the strawman, elected officials danced around its bonfire. No longer would an elected official be required to attend wakes, go church repasts, attend Knights of Columbus Tootsie Roll Drives, chat up soft-ball Moms, or actually do something for other people. Shakman freed political powerhouses to shake of the pests with a stentorian, "I'll look into it."

Instead, Policy was crafted to deny, shirk, ignore and dismiss. "Jesus, Guido, can't help you. Shakman. What can I do? Don't forget to pull a straight ticket, Guid. Here's some tickets to my golf outing - there a Hundo each."

Nope. Policy was crafted at University of Chicago, Northwestern, or imported by a 1960's hippie crime expert. The BGA took care of the whistle-blowers. The Media took care of the rest -ignoring policy wrought real estate scams that funneled Housing dollars into the pockets of IVI lawyers turned moguls and their kids. Policy established boards and placed cranks, loudmouths and do-gooders over the street patrolmen.

Blago got fourteen years. George Ryan got six. Rezko got ten and change. Shakman got millions. Pat Quinn got to be Governor, Rahm Mayor and Dawn Clark Netsch a comfy seat on the Ethics panel. Illinois got screwed, blued and tatooed.

John Dewey, not Paddy Bauler, invented our Chicago Style Corruption. Eddie Burke, Eddie Vrdolyk and Mike Madigan are pikers compared to the Judson Miner/Allison Davis ( who can forget Sun Times investigator Tim Novak's incisive reports on Allison Davis and his son Cullen's real estate triumphs and the tragic death of a child?) crowd. Steve Preckwinkle? No relation to Toni's hubby Zeus? Outrageous, to ask such a question. Michael Shakman defending a hot property boon-doggle?Shack them jowls in indignation!!!

Chicago Style Corruption is a co-operative, a coalition of elected officials, academics, real estate players, agenda rangers ( SEIU, Planned Parenthood,LGBTQ,)lawyers and the media. I'll take nickel snitcher anytime. A thief will leave something - even fingerprints. No body steals like Progressive Reformer, because the editorial nodders bleach the crime scenes - unless, you are a Blago.

Chicago and its Daley dictatorship has been much celebrated in the media – particularly after Obama’s election in everything from the liberal New Yorker to Fast Company, which named Chicago “city of the year” in 2008. The following year, the Windy City was deemed the best city for men by Askmen.com, for offering what it claimed was “the perfect balance between cosmopolitan and comfortable, combining all of the culture, entertainment and sophistication of an internationally renowned destination with an affordable lifestyle and down-to-earth work hard/play hard character.”

Well, you can make that case, unless you happen to be searching for a job. Over the past decade, “the Chicago way” has proven more adept at getting good coverage than creating employment for its residents. In Forbes’ last cities rankings greater Chicago ranked 41st out of the 51 largest metropolitan areas. Between 2001 and 2011 it actually lost jobs. Since 2007 the region has lost more jobs than Detroit, and more than twice as many as New York. It has lost about as many jobs – 250,000 – as up and comer Houston has gained. In Forbes recent survey of high-tech performance, the Chicago region stood at a dismal 47th among the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas.

Blago is going to the join and the Goo-goo's are going to the bank for a very, very, very long time.

* E.G. - Read the great Anne Leary today on the Triumph of the Policy Pirates

http://backyardconservative.blogspot.com/2011/12/ayers-on-platter-dohrn-with-fork.html