Friday, May 18, 2012

Leo High School Track Sweeps IHSA Field at Chicago Christian


With help of a blessing from Chicago's Archbishop, Francis Cardinal George, last Friday. pluperfect weather, a magnificent host facility and staff provided by Chicago Christian and Leo High Schools in-door all-weather track featuring 1920 sport tech's four story ninety degree angle stairwells and the dedication of Coaches Ed Adams and Pete Doyle, Leo High School is poised to claim its seventh IHSA Track & Field State Championship.

Under a sunny sky, candied by cool breezes, the Leo Lions dominated the action.  I enjoyed the Irish air-conditioning and the full view of the action from my shady vantage under the south-end Dutch Reformed Elms.



Team Scores

Pl  School                            Head Coach            Score     
1   Leo                                                     127
2   Westmont                                                91.50
3   Latin                                                   46
4   Hales Franciscan                                        40.50
5   Seton Academy                                           31

Long Jump

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       
1   Shaquil Lawrence           Seton Academy                     21-03.00
2   Joshua Wright              Leo                               20-09.50

Pole Vault

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       
1   Joseph McDermott           Westmont                          9-06.00
2   Henry Clark                Northridge Prep                   9-06.00

High Jump

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       
1   Daniel Vatch               Immaculate Conception             6-02.00
2   Noah Wolff                 Parker                            5-05.00
2   Forest Moses               Northridge Prep                   5-05.00

Shot Put

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       
1   Sam Akainyah               North Shore Country Day           50-00.00
2   Eric Owens                 Leo                               46-06.50

Triple Jump

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       Run-Up     
1   Noah Wolf                  Parker                            40-05.50
2   Kristofer Pierce           Westmont                          39-09.00

Discus Throw

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Mark       
1   Hakeem Chatman             Leo                               159-03.00
2   David McDermott            Westmont                          139-08.00

4x800-Meter Relay

Pl  School                            Time          
1   Chicago Christian                 8:30.83
2   Westmont                          8:34.47

4x100-Meter Relay

Pl  School                            Time          
1   Leo                               42.91
2   Hales Franciscan                  44.00
3   Timothy Christian                 44.17

3200-Meter Run

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Nate Novota                Westmont                          10:03.39
2   Andrew Nadler              Latin                             10:05.26

110-Meter High Hurdles

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Joe Morrow                 Hales Franciscan                  14.99
2   Marlon Britton             Leo                               15.46

100-Meter Dash

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Keith Harris               Leo                               10.85
2   Theodore Hopkins           Leo                               11.18

800-Meter Run

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Britt Henderson            Latin                             1:58.99
2   Caleb Flack                Parker                            2:01.97

4x200-Meter Relay

Pl  School                            Time          
1   Leo                               1:28.94
2   Hales Franciscan                  1:30.73

400-Meter Dash

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Tim Doll                   Westmont                          49.96
2   Reggie Confer              Seton Academy                     50.97
3   Ethan Lee                  Latin                             51.53

300-Meter Intermediate Hurdles

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Jake Hooker                Timothy Christian                 40.15
2   Mikey Robertson            Westmont                          42.93

1600-Meter Run

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Britt Henderson            Latin                             4:32.64
2   Alex Sweatman              Timothy Christian                 4:36.66

200-Meter Dash

Pl  Competitor            Yr   School                            Time       
1   Keith Harris               Leo                               22.22
2   Theodore Hopkins           Leo                               22.78
3   Joe Morrow                 Hales Franciscan                  22.92

4x400-Meter Relay

Pl  School                            Time          
1   Leo                               3:32.48
2   Seton Academy                     3:36.55

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Jazz Up Your NATO Weekend with Terry Sullivan and the Chicago Jazz Caravan at 12 West Elm -Sunday May 20th at 3PM



During the NATO Summit, occupy yourselves with the American Songbook presented by jazz vocalist Miss Terry Sullivan and the Chicago Jazz Caravan at Chicago's sophisticated venue for great music - 12 West Elm. N,B. limited seating; reservations recommended
at 312/337-3200 or www.12westelm.com


Miss Sullivan, accompanied by Chicago Jazz greats, the  celebrated trio of  pianist Tom Muellner, Jim Cox on Bass and Art David on Trumpet sings America's greatest art form - jazz standards.



chicago jazz caravan
with vocalist Terry Sullivan

sunday, may 20, 2012
3:00 pm
TWELVEWEST
12 west elm, chicago
admission $15

sunday afternoon :chicago jazz caravan
with vocalist Terry Sullivan 
sunday, may 20, 2012
3:00 pm
TWELVEWEST
12 west elm, chicago
admission $15

 Tom Muellner - Piano
  Jim Cox - Bass
  Art David - Trumpet and Miss Terry Sullivan!



Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Be Our Guests! 1%ers March Through Back of the Yards, Canaryville and Bridgeport



 Occupy anti-NATO Commandos in Bridgeport - skin that never met a day's work, God Bless Them.
A band of several dozen protesters marched up Halsted Street this evening from the South Side through Bridgeport, where some engaged in a shouting match with residents.
The marchers, some of whom covered their faces with hoods or bandanas(sic), began their protest at about 51st Street and Halsted, chanting obscenities about police and police brutality.

A few dozen well-heeled, college educated, really sincere and snappily dressed masque-ers sporting button-festooned North Face head wear, American Eagle T-shirts and bandannas marched with a police escort up through the 11th Ward.  From Back of the Yards ( 51st Street) through Canaryville (47th-39th Streets) and Bridgeport up Halsted and past Jackie Schaller's landmark Chicago dining venue Schaller's Pump, America's young  spark-plugs of change paraded their V masks, Ninja costumes, and Indie fashion apparel along with the naughty words of the truly edgy. Like Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey in 1904, the Occupy Commandos were protected and served by the Chicago Police Department.

Halsted Street became the  Occupy/Dissident/Anarchist/ Hipster Runway.  We were given a preview of the accessory conscious young, armed with Dad-funded Visa Debit cards and Rage Against the Machine.

I'd bet a shiny new Sacagawea gold dollar that not one of these later-day Mother . . .Joneses could identify the significance of these neighborhoods in the real struggle of working people*. Below are the residents of Canaryville and Bridgeport who fought the real fight on Halsted Street the site of  yesterday's Che fashion stroll
The Residents of Canaryville circa 1904- meat cutters in Armour's & Swift's Packinghouses - one their great grandchildren attends Leo High School - a young man from St. Gabriel's parish in Canaryville.

This is where American Labor, real Labor and not the phony Reds of SEIU, won its spurs by being betrayed by Progressives and buried by Progressive History.  This is where the Jungle happened Cupcakes.  Bridgeport was the home of the real Lithuanian workmen portrayed by Upton Sinclair, another armchair recvolutionary opportunist, as protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his co-workers. Upton watched the 1904 Amalgamated Meatcutters Strike that shut down the American Meat Packing Industry from July to September in 1904 from the front porch of a previously Packingtown blacklisted Knight of Labor John Joyce and scribbled notes.
Jane Addams, like most Progressives is affluent, imperious and a very well protected species

Dr. Cornelia  De Bey and Jane Addams and her partner at the time Mary Rozet Smith were members of the Chicago Public School Board. Doc Cornelia had another partner.

The March of the Real Workers began at the Meatcutters Hall at 47th & Ashland. Michael Donnelly the President of the Amalgamated Meatcutters held out against the Strikebreakers, Meat Packers and the phony   Out And Proud Progressives Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey**.  Read the Chicago Tribune account of the end of the 1904 Strike - you will be required to purchase the articles in true Medill fashion; however the NYT covered the strike very well and praised the work of Father Maurice Dorney of St. Gabriel Parish in Canaryville, giving short shrift to the short-haired women and long-haired Progressives. The New York Times accounts are free.  Ask me nicely, and I might link my privately owned collection of contemporary accounts.
Father Maurice Dorney was a figure of National renown ( NYT reported on his Spanish American War Service and his heroic fight for workers in three national strikes) -try and find any mention of Father Dorney in the much ballyhooed Chicago Encyclopedia.

Too many Americans subsist on a diet of redacted historical bullshit.  Progressive revisionists have erased all traces of genuine social justice fighters.like Father Dorney, John Joyce, the Knights of Labor and actual strikers and given praise and homage to the likes of Jane Addams who sold out the strikers.

Hull House and other Settlement Houses in Hyde Park flourished immediately after the strike was broken.  Michael Donnelly, who called and led the strike, disappeared from Chicago and from history.  Upton Sinclair wrote a swell book.  Teddy Roosevelt got Progressive street cred.  The Strikers got bupkis.



*Packinghouse workers, experiencing horrible working conditions and insufficient wages, sought to secure union recognition as the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. Two long and bloody strikes (1904 and 1921) were defeated by the companies. During both strikes, many African-American workers were temporarily employed to break the strikes. Since Black workers suffered from economic circumstances as desperate as those faced by the striking White workers, and since they were excluded generally from unions and consequently the benefits they would gain from unionization, these so-called "scab" workers felt no loyalty to the strikers or the union. In the aftermath of the two defeats, hostility towards Black workers rose, and Black resentment of Whites increased as well. For years, remembrances of racism and scabbing impaired any effort to create a common front against the packers. 
**When Jane Addams's travels took her away from her close companion Mary Rozet Smith, she sometimes took along a painting of Smith, even though the portrait was a rather bulky piece of luggage. Addams, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning social activist who founded Chicago's Hull-House in 1889, clearly felt a strong emotional attachment to the aristocratic, gracious woman in that picture, which now hangs at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum—with a question mark for a caption.
For the past year, the museum has been seeking suggestions on how to label the portrait, which Addams commissioned from Alice Kellogg Tyler. Should the caption suggest Addams and Smith were companions? Lesbian lovers? Or simply focus on Smith's role as one of Hull-House's most generous financial supporters? This summer, as the museum gets ready to decide, a new WTTW documentary is stepping into the fray and staking out the position that Addams and Smith were lesbians. The producers of Out & Proud in Chicago, Alexandra Silets and Dan Andries, say their film on the history of gays and lesbians in the city wouldn't be complete without Addams. "In not revealing this part of Jane Addams's life, you're denying the rest of us a role model," says Silets, a lesbian.



 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/class-and-race-in-the-us-labor-movement-the-case-of-the-packinghouse-workers/

http://books.google.com/books?id=DW4TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA425&lpg=PA425&dq=Jane+Addams+and+Cornelia+De+Bey&source=bl&ots=dQjc7A18Xg&sig=89nzLwjY4pN7hC4BQE098u4Aws0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hpuzT5bbOabS2QWO6cnpCA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jane%20Addams%20and%20Cornelia%20De%20Bey&f=false
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2008/Friends-With-Benefits/

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/tc/xtf/servlet/org.cdlib.xtf.crossQuery.CrossQuery?text=dorney&text-join=or

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Gay President Demands Style Power/Power Style


“You can be stylish and powerful, too. That's Michelle’s advice.” President Barack Obama, 1st Abortion & Gay President

If Gay Catholic Conservative Newsweek writer Andrew Sullivan's father were gay, he might look like President Obama, but Sullivan Père  is not and does not. I shouldn't think not.

As powerful and stylish and stylishly powerful as President Obama might be, he can not alter the fact that Pops Sullivan and Mrs. Sullivan went halves on a baby named Andrew who was natured or nurtured to be homosexual in his sexual preferences and proclivities. Style means much and power means more to Andrew Sullivan and even hetero-Obama cheerleaders like David " Sharp Britches" Brooks and the Obama White House.

The power of style is the style power in Washington D.C. and Beyond the Beltway and on the Run Way! Hope and Change is Style Power and Power Style. Style means fashion, all the rage, sine qua non, pouty strutting shoulder heaves - Get Out My Way! That is Power baby!
Power differs wildly from authority ( potens v. auctoritas) - Power ( potens) means the ability to affect behavior with or without any resistance - Mandate Style! Authority ( auctoritas) is "often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure - Substance - the thing absent from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

However, even Style conscious Power Puppies like David Brooks seem even more impotent than the President:

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist who is quite taken with Obama, writes in today’s paper that while Americans think Obama is doing a bad job on the economy and that the country is off track, Obama stands a good chance of being re-elected because of his demeanor: an “ESPN” brand of post-modern machismo cool.
When Obama supporters like Brooks make argument like these, they are engaged in willful self-deception.
There has been nothing very cool about the past 7 weeks for Obama. The president has twisted himself into a policy and rhetorical pretzel to win the support and money he needs from the members of the Democratic coalition.

The 2008 Coalition of the Willing seems to be falling apart.  Though he commands The View, President Obama can not see past his celestial pointed snout. Planned Parenthood, SEIU, Gay America and MSNBC will continue their solid investment in Style Power, but I think President Power Style has jumped the catfish (pl.N.)

President and Channel Cats of The View

 
President Obama has Star Power, Style Power, but lacks every bit Authority needed in a President.  The long daydream is yawning awake and the Childe Barry of Our Dreams appears more as a shabby, petulant narcissistic poser than he perhaps actually might be - not far amiss though.

President Obama and America really need to have Barack Obama getting busy with his Presidential Library as quick as the Constitution allows.








Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/15/alarm-grows-among-dems-about-obamas-chances/#ixzz1uxINAFvp

Michael Moriarty & Dennis Byrne -On Public Intellectuals and Marriage: Defense of 1st Principles




"I have concluded that to be an intellectual is to reach for an entirely different planet than the one most of us live on. Certainly to be an intellectual is to create another language of sorts.I understand the impulse, having been a lifelong, shameless dreamer." Michael Moriarty, Ottawa Life Magazine


"Few if any supporters of gay marriage demand as a matter of central concern that each gay partner be automatically recognized as the parent of any child generated by the other."  Dennis Byrne Chicago Tribune


God, in his Eternal sense of humor, has seen fit to allow me to breath and also to connect,, converse and commiserate with intellectuals fired with fierce fortitude. Fortitude is moral strength founded in a belief or faith beyond one's self that defines all subsequent actions and intellectual positions regardless of outcomes.

Murder and killing are very different.  One is an act of desperation and the other an act of necessity.  A woman and a man are very different, in most cases.  That difference is a necessity to human generation.  President Obama is not only America's First Abortionist, but also America's First Gay, because public intellectuals have said so.  I am sure that Barack Obama would wildly object to either claim made on his behalf, by the people who fund, support, worship and obey his every waking thought, as a matter of Pragmatism - saying anything, at anytime, for different reasons.  Pragmatism is the core, but very moveable, doctrine of  the American Intellectual.  Pragmatism denies 1st Principles - faith in God is the very First of 1st Principles*.  God is Inconvenient Truth.


I was told by a Jesuit of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this bar to the country club of parsers.
Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor. Michael Moriarty, Chicago rooted actor, musician, composer and writer,nicely unmasks the clever masker in his recent article for Ottawa Life Magazine.

Mr. Moriarty reacts to an article by Professor Louis Menand of New York University, in The New Yorker.  This piece concerns the state of American higher education.  Prof. Menand's hobby-horse is the American public intellectual - the citizen-scholar who 'purifies' culture - Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael to Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, Joan Walsh, and Alec Baldwin. 
"They (NY Intellectuals) played the role of purveying intellectual culture to a wider audience, and spoke to people outside their own fields.”
THEY made 1st Principles ( God and all of His Works) obscure enough for Ad Men and Ambulance Chasers, one step out of the cow shit in Wisconsin, want to be little Andre Malrauxs and feel the WILL to be proletarian.  Make six to seven figures selling Ban Roll-on Deodorant and write checks to the Black Panthers, SDS, and John Lindsey.  Our capitalist economy made them gentry, and the New Republic allowed them to play Atticus Finch - One Man's Murder of an Unborn Child is Another's Woman's Health Care, Scout. Who's to say? - with a self-satisfied snap of the store-bought galluses. 

Michael Moriarty picks the parsing Pragmatist's bones clean, because like most Catholic educated folks, he remembers what he has read before and applies scrutiny accordingly:

I first encountered Prof. Menand, . . . , as somewhat of an authority on the American literary and social critic Edmund Wilson, the rather intense-looking face to the left.
Louis Menand’s preface for Wilson’s To the Finland Station had the refreshing wisdom to include a very Russian warning about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: Vladimir Nabokov’s remark that Lenin was “a glass of the milk of human kindness at the bottom of which was a dead rat.”
One assumes, however, that the publisher of To the Finland Station must have considered Menand a Wilson authority or at least an admirer of some sort.
In typically mystifying fashion, Menand says about his college dissertation on Edmund Wilson.
“I didn’t write about Wilson because he was an important figure for me, but because he was part of that phenomenon.”He means the “Modernist” phenomenon… or is it the “Post-Modernist” phenomenon?As a further glimpse into his dissertation, he says,

Prof. Louis Menand
“The writers who influenced me the most were Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael. It wasn’t Edmund Wilson and it wasn’t Lionel Trilling, even though I certainly read them. When I was a graduate student, I thought about them as possible models, but when I look at what I have done since, they have not been particularly influential. The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated in seeing through issues about culture and ideas that actually is very like contemporary academic thinking. The thing about Wilson—that in the end is frustrating about him—is that he had no ability to think theoretically. In the few cases where he does, it is his least satisfactory work.”“The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated…“ “Sophisticated” is the seminal code word, I believe. All five of the writers achieved success, literary American triumph actually, without being necessarily branded as Communist.
Seeming is believing in Pragmatic Progressivism

In 1971, I was taught by a Jesuit priest and philosophy professor of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs paying Loyola tuition know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this particular bar to the country club of Pragmatic parsers. 'Sometimes it is a gift to be refused admission,'  said the Missionary with a cold sore to boiling aboriginal stew pot. 
Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor.

Around the time that Father Al was teaching Ethics to me and Mike Miller, Jim Molloy, Mike Stankewicz, Jack McNamara, Mary Kay Harvey and Stanley Jurich, the Temptaions were singing Just My Imagination, Running Away With Me.

Each day through my window I watch her as she passes by
I say to myself you're such a lucky guy,
To have a girl like her is truly a dream come true
out of all the fellows in the world she belongs to me.
But it was Just my imagination,
once again runnin' away with me.
It was just my imagination runnin' away with me. Oo
Soon we'll be married and raise a family (Oh yeah)
A cozy little home out in the country with two children maybe three.
I tell you I can visualize it all
this couldn't be a dream for too real it all seems;

But it was Just my imagination once again runnin' way with me.
Tell you it was just my imagination runnin' away with me.
Rigor.  Michael Moriarty is a dreamer in the mold of Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Billy of Occam, Moses Maimonides, and John Scotus Erigenna.  Those medieval gents were the Temptin' T's of scholastic thought - four Brits and a Jew. Like them, the Temptations - African American scholastics - cut the veil between imagination and reality to happy conclusion - marriage is between a Man and Woman.  Celebrate that diversity in Holy Wedlock!

Dennis Byrne, another Jesuit educated writer, has heroically challenged the parsing pragmatists over Marriage.  The outcome of his position will be a cavalcade of idiotically molded screeching from peanut gallery in the comment page.  I'd wager that the five star estimate by robo-writers will assess Mr. Byrne's defense of Marriage between a Man and Woman at two stars by day's end and here's why:

Research and common sense indisputably validate that heterosexual marriage is uniquely good in itself, better for the children and essential for the common good.
That's why government has seen fit to regulate this singular institution. Government doesn't regulate all human relationships; you don't need a license to form a friendship or a court decree to dump a friend. If marriage didn't serve a unique public good, government protections of all of its parties wouldn't be required; it would be regarded as little more than two people living together.
This is not to say that every marriage must produce children or that children raised in different circumstances, e.g. adoption, in separated families or by gay partners, can't do as well as or better. Nor does it deny that a same-sex partnership can't bond into a permanent, caring relationship, as good as or better than can heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is an ideal, and like all other ideals, in practice it can fall short of its lofty goals. That doesn't negate the importance of preserving the ideal.
The ideal is not pragmatic.  Never was, no how.  Seeming is all the believing Bruce Dold and Chicago Tribune editorial board require, Mr. Byrne.  It is easier to be Eric Zorn, Carol Marin, Mary Schmich, Neil Steinberg, and Steve Chapman in this cracker-chested burg these days, because they all write the exact same thing in every column - like the citizen-scholars Michael Moriarty unmasks in his recent article - these lightweights  purvey what passes for  intellectual culture to a wider audience.

Holding to First Principles and all that goes with them requires virtue- "Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. "

Michael Moriarty and Dennis Byrne offer excellent examples of intellectual discernment and courage; not
Just my Imagination, running away with me.

  
In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first principles, all the way to the elements. It is clear, then, that in the science of nature as elsewhere, we should try first to determine questions about the first principles. The naturally proper direction of our road is from things better known and clearer to us, to things that are clearer and better known by nature; for the things known to us are not the same as the things known unconditionally (haplôs). Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. (Phys. 184a10–21) Aristotle

 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0515-byrne-20120515,0,6394836.column
http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/05/moriartys-musings-new-yorks-public-intellectuals/

Monday, May 14, 2012

Terry Sullivan and the Chicago Jazz Caravan May 20th at 12 West Elm



During the NATO Summit, occupy yourselves with the American Songbook presented by jazz vocalist Miss Terry Sullivan and the Chicago Jazz Caravan at Chicago's sophisticated venue for great music - 12 West Elm.

Miss Sullivan, accompanied by Chicago Jazz greats, the  celebrated trio of  pianist Tom Muellner, Jim Cox on Bass and Art Davis on Trumpet sings America's greatest art form - jazz standards.



chicago jazz caravan
with vocalist Terry Sullivan

sunday, may 20, 2012
3:00 pm
TWELVEWEST
12 west elm, chicago
admission $15



sunday afternoon jazz hour

chicago jazz caravan
with vocalist Terry Sullivan 
sunday, may 20, 2012
3:00 pm
TWELVEWEST
12 west elm, chicago
admission $15

 Tom Muellner - Piano
  Jim Cox - Bass
  Art David - Trumpet and Miss Terry Sullivan!



Friday, May 11, 2012

Leo High School Welcomes Francis Cardinal George!





Today, at 9:30 A.M. Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. will arrive at Leo High School. Cardinal George is the first Chicago Archbishop to visit Leo High School since 1926, when George Cardinal Mundelien dedicated this great school.

The Leo Students, Leo Alumni, Parents, Board Members, Benfactors, Staff and Chicago Police and Fire Department heroes and our neighbors will greet His Eminence and celebrate this school's dedication and commitment to Catholic Education and Chicago culture.  Five Leo students will escort His Eminence into the school and the Leo Board Room to meet the school leadership.

Cardinal George will bless this school and all of the people who have contributed to its vitality, growth and service to young men.

Thank you, Your Eminence, for your leadership and commitment to the Faith and Families of Chicago and especially for your visit here today.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

God Saw All That He Had Made, And It Was Very Good." . . .Unless You are an Evolved Progressive"

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,in the image of God he created them;male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. ”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. ” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning —the sixth day. Genesis 1, 1-31 God Almighty

 "At a certain point I've just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." Genesis II Obama Evolved and Gayer Than Christmas*!


Marry, the man has evolved and yet he can swing that first person personal pronoun like a saloon door on payday!  Now, let's see about that post creation part - “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. "   Male to Male and Female to Female . . .no stork; Pert neer, but not plumb.

Well, that's Progress anyway.  The same President who believes that there are more than 57 States in this Democratic Republic ( there's that diversity! We don't have a Democratic Democracy, or a Republican Republic for a the very same reason;  + &  - = the old charge!) has determined that Will and Gary and Gert and Grace can have children.

Well,call me un-evolved and bust my britches!  Gay Marriage, not civil unions and insurance, hospital visitation rights, property control, inheritance is a litmus test for evolution.

The end game is not bundles of joy for same sex couples sanctified in Holy Wedlock, of course, but the hammering down of God. The Judeo Christian object of worship of course and certainly not the one covered under Sharia Law.

Once God is locked in the closet,the party is on!   "Kill them babies, Breeders!  Why should loving and caring same sex couples be denied the civil right of marriage?"

 Biology?

"Un-evolved Brute."

Shucks. Fellas, my tongue musta got twisted around my eye-teeth and I couldn't 'zactly see what I was sayin' Just funnin' ya.

Abortion and Homosexual Marriage are the fruits of the same vine, not the tree of Life. That vine is the twisted Hegelian secularism that is easy to follow. The Tree of Life is rooted in first principles - God's Word.  Abortion is murder and America said it was fine with murder in Roe v. Wade.

Most Americans, Catholics, Jews and Evangelicals included, could care less about the sexual inclinations of two same sex adults who choose to make themselves warm and satisfied in arms of each other.  Americans are fair and more than tolerant of one another. They believe in God and that is a problem for Progressives who are intolerant of everyone and everything.  They are really intolerant of God, the Father Figure who makes all of the rules that are just too hard and mostly inconvenient to follow.

This going to get very interesting.

Well, time to subdue my breakfast, beat out the old cave and get to hunting and gathering.


* Michael Houlihan - film maker, author, swordsman and Mount Carmel Varsity Football Letterman: Tapioca, Her Majesty Da Queen, Our Irish Cousins - openning near you.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=NIV

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577394332545729926.html



Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Catholics - Are You as Important as Planned Parenthood? The Census Map Indicates that You Are


The blind Chinese Abortion Foe, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, is out of the news this week and the Obama White House could not be happier.

Chicago journalist Dennis Byrne accurately fingered the complicity of the American news media as agents  of Obama Change in his most recent Chicago Tribune column.


Interestingly, the administration is getting pummeled more for its "missteps" in the handling of Chen's flight to the American Embassy in Beijing than for its tolerance of forced abortions and sterilizations. Certainly Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintonand theU.S. State Department can be judged adversely for the still not fully understood actions that resulted in Chen's return to China's dominion. It is a sad day for a nation that prides itself as a beacon of liberty. But the administration's bungling of the affair comes second to what amounts to its lip service — at best — condemnation of forced abortion and sterilization.
More appalling are population control adherents who obliquely suggest that China's one-child policy might be the correct one because "breeders" are condemning Earth to ultimate destruction. As if the way to control population growth is to control women. Chicago Tribune May7, 2012 (emphasis my own)

 The Media appropriated the Chen narrative and all but wholly ignored the fact that the lawyer-activist is a "dissident" because of the heroic stand against Red China's Abortion Mandate.  The Media did so in the same manner that it helped the ham-handed Obama White House in January and February.  The Obama HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius mandated that all institutions, especially the vast Catholic social service community, provide and pay for contraception and abortifacients, regardless of religious conviction and the basics of religious liberty. The media made this a War on Women and a "discussion" on contraception that begins and ends with " Well, everyone, including 99.9% of Catholics use birth control."   Planned Parenthood and DNC demand that Catholics obey and like it.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are Chen Guangcheng.  The Media have flooded the narrative pad with calumnies against Catholics and their leadership like "patriarchal, anti-woman, Old Boys, pedophile happy and complicit homophobic, racist  authoritarians."

Catholics can still vote.  In 2008, Catholics welcomed Barack Obama.  From January 2009 on, President Obama welcomed Catholics to abandon their faith and convictions at Georgetown University and University of Notre Dame, to the NLRB's stripping Catholic institutions of their religious identity and Obama's HHS Mandate.  He is only getting warmed up, Mackerel Snappers!  The Gay Marriage conversation has the dial set at 11 already.The Washington Post and James Carville are paying attention.

We wrote last week that Catholics may be the ultimate 2012 bellwether as they have bounced back in between the two parties over the past decade and, almost always, wound up voting for the winner.One of the main reasons that Catholics tend to function as an accurate election predictor is because there are large numbers of them in the upper Midwest, a traditional swing area between the two parties.
Here’s a map released last week from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census that details where across American Catholics live:




 The Obama White House is Catholic friendly only at Georgetown University, which dutifully yanked down the crucifix and other icons of its Catholic identity, Notre Dame University which rolled over like a vitamin deficient puppy and arrested septuagenarian priests and old folks who prayed the rosary, or the Al Smith Dinner where Vichy Catholics in tuxedos and stiff collars giggled when insulted by a President who has nothing but contempt for Catholics.

Catholics can vote.  Catholics can pretend again that Obama is their friend, or that he is misunderstood.  Catholics can also determine to defend their faith and liberty at the ballot box next November.



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0508-byrne-20120508,0,491999.column

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/why-the-catholic-vote-matters--in-one-map/2012/05/07/gIQA9fg87T_blog.html?wprss=rss_the-fix

http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/08/carville-to-dems-wake-the-f-up-video/

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Obama's Evolving Teaching Maha-Kalpa

A teaching moment? Nay, an Obama-Kalpa!

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Illlinois U.S. Senator Barack H. Obama was asked about his decades long relationship with United Church of Christ Black Liberation Theologian and mentor Jeremiah Wright who not only 'Goddammed America and its KKK chickens coming home to roost, but all those  "Italians (who) for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans."


Despite this scholar's indifference to the fact that Romans, not Italians, occupied Galilee, as well as North Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, suburbs of Germany, and ever patch of dirt between Adriatic to the Euphrates and the folks who dwelt upon them, candidate Barack Obama offered the first in an endless belt  of teaching moments, interrupted only by his inauguration and a beer summit. On St. Paddy's Day 2008, Senator Obama taught America about Race.  He did not address  the fact that he sat enraptured by the lessons of Pastor Wright, but told America it has much to learn.  That was a teaching moment = The Alpha!  Swami Obama was elected President.  This President has done more explaining of his words and deeds than the hero of Ring Lardner's baseball novella Alibi Ike.


This has not been an administration, but an evolutionary epoch - a veritable Maha-Kalpa (Sanskrit) - fellow garlic eaters the Greeks termed it an aeon. Obama-Kalpa , like the Buddhist and Confusion measurements of time, holds mysteries to our collective American malaise.


Americans are fat
Americans are bullies
Americans are cowards
Americans are stingy
Americans are clingy
Americans are unevolved Breeders and homophobes - watch Will and Grace
Americans are suspicious of foreigners who live with American benefits and rights
Americans do not understand Fast and Furious
Americans are in intolerant of Acorns
Americans are intolerant of Desiree Rogers, Van Jones, Anita Dunn and the EPA
Catholics make war on women
Blind Chinamen can't make themselves understood to Planned Parenthood's State Department
A Mandate is a Compromise
The Economy was inherited, unless you like it
The Economy is improving
Unemployment is all a figment of FOX TV propaganda
Egypt is just like Topeka
North Korea and Iran just need a hug
The Dude wore Brut and Sarong - Playuh! Long-legged Mack-Daddy!
Putin is waiting for more Presidential Flexibility
If your thigh don't tingle, well, don't ask to mingle!
I* . . .am Soooooo . . .In Love With You . . .
"I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." -Think about it! 
Merry Holidays


President Obama does not explain; he teaches; he evolves. 

Obama-Kalpa will tell you what is the issue:


Read Joe Biden's lips - Gay Marriage is a BFD and Romney is a Mormon and he is very comfortable with that . . . you the Red Chinese abortions and that gay thing, not Mormons. 


It's Gay Marriage Stupid and You ARE a Fat Bully Racist if you think President Obama needs to explain why carpenters, cement workers and back-hoe operators have not had work since Howie Do It (NBC) and Homeland Security USA ( ABC) were cancelled.


Here is all you need to know -


Catholics War on Women
Breeders are Fat and killing our planet
Gay Marriage Needs more Evolutionary Teaching
99% of you are Obama's Peeps - but that number is subject to change
The Economy was the worst since Pepsident and Ipana were big selling toothpastes
The Congress and Supreme Courts need to Go.
Don't Ask who plays for the Chicago White Sox


Ask yourselves, pearl onion, olive, or a twist?

Monday, May 07, 2012

France - A Preview of Obama Deuxième


The new president is expected to be sworn in on May 15. Hollande will travel to Berlin shortly thereafter to challengeGermany's focus on austerity policies and press new ideas for stimulating growth as fears about the euro zone's debt crisis resurface following an inconclusive election in Greece.  - Reuters 4:36 a.m. CDTMay 7, 2012

From May 15th, when Frankie Hollande is sworn in as Frog One, until you punch a hole in the ballot for President on November 6th, France will show you exactly what an Obama Second Term will look like.

Here is just a taste -  "In every capital, beyond the heads of state and government, there are people who have found hope thanks to us, who are looking to us and want to put an end to austerity." 

Put on them eatin' pants! We are investin' up a storm!  No, those are my words translated from the Foucaultian French. Monsewer Hollande's economic adviser cautioned exuberant cafe sitters, students and brooding intellectuals that the new team was not coming in to power to 'hand out money' (Reuters). 

Not just yet, anyway.  The new leftist government will be required to go to Berlin and guilt the Germans into a bailout Everyone! Frankie Hollande won by trashing not only the flamboyant Sarkozy, but also Frau Merkel.  Frankie Hollande, Mr. Normal, was less than courtois  with regard to Frau Merkel. Not only that the conservative party that undermined the moderate Sarkozy led by The Front National (FN) of Mme. Le Pen was tagged as  ensacheuses de thé mob of 'designer fascists' racists, anti-Woman Catholics, and country bumpkins.

Francois Hollande's government is secularist, abortion friendly, illegal immigrant happy, and tax daffy.  President Obama finally has a kindred spirit on the World Stage - for a couple of months any, as French Governments go quicker than a mooch's memory.

Like the Obama Hollywood Regime, the Socialists in France gut-stab their enemies from behind.  Then try to make it seem to be a high-minded activity.  Here in Chicago, in the coming two weeks we will get a look at French Socialism. President Francios Hollande will come to Chicago on May 20th along with the anachists, faux-labor activists, goofs, and tire fire addicts joining local fruit-cake Andy Thayer's March.

French just blew off there toes electing a government as stupidly backward as old Leon Blum's.  I am reminded of the 1936 Leon Blum victory from William Schirer's  Collapse of the Third Republic.    Blum was an MSNBC dream.  He increased wages, cut work hours, gave everyone a two week paid vacation, increased public service union membership from 1 million to 5 million members and France welcomed Hitler to Paris four years later

France now is a preview of an Obama Second Term.








Saturday, May 05, 2012

Chen Guangcheng and the Centered People Who Help Me


 Attorney, journalist and abortion foe Christine Flowers writes a powerful piece about Chinese hero Chen Guangcheng . . .after I shoot my flannel-mouth off.

I spend my days with very centered people:  the old homeostasis, 98.6, the Golden Mean, the Nicomachean Ethics and all that jazz.   What gives us our center? Gravity, the laws of physics, push-me-pull you, experience, judgement, understanding working in harmony, a good breakfast, a light lunch and a sensible dinner followed by a nice trot, or amble, the dial set at the center and a good 7-8 hours of shut-eye for the absolute basics. Beyond the fundamental needs and realities, spirited centered people give us our balance.

Yesterday, as is my routine, I prayed ( Memorare & Novena to the Little Flower, stretched my once nimble and heroically chiseled muscles, corded sinews and toned epidermis in what passes for exercise, performed my morning ablutions ( Sh,Sh & Sh'd) donned day-task appropriate but elegant and raffish attire, looked in on my three sleeping off-spring, read, wrote and got out into God's glorious world.  I smoked the first of my daily five Marlboro (red) Regulars and scanned the swiftly Easterly exiting cloud masses of the departing warm front, pitched the butt into the alley storm sewer and mounted my Malibu for the visit to Karim's Dunkin Donuts at 104th & Western Aveneue.

Dunkin Donuts has been my venue for coffee these last months as a once convivial and lively morning Salon has evaporated.  Many of my Kean Gas Coffee Colleagues have retired, emptied the nest and moved to the south Loop.  Dunkin Donuts offers a far, far tastier 20 ounces of coffee and is well worth the price doubling.  Karim is a native Moroccan gentleman who with his third shift bride works seven day a week.  Karim is the American work ethic writ large. Dunkin Donuts is situated just east of the CTA/PACE bus stop 49A/349.

I arrive shortly after Karim opens and purchase an extra-large coffee and cream that will go with me to Leo, a small of the same that I will savor on the spot and strawberry frosted donut for my lady friend Cameron.  I drive Cameron's mother to the CTA terminal at 79th & Western. Cameron's mom, Kim, is a lovely thirty-something African American single mom who takes two to three buses to and from work at Illinois Medical Center, where Kim works the food service. Cameron is in third grade at Kellog CPS and waits the beginning of her school day at Small Stride Academy in the company of Lois, an African American woman known to the DD crowd as Lou. Lou shepherds Cameron, while Kim public transports herself to and from work.  I noticed Kim waiting for the bus during Chicago's most inclement of weather some time ago. There is no shelter from rain, snow, ice and wind at 104th Street and the PACE bus is all too often train delayed in Blue Island. I offered my services.

Kim and Cameron arrive shortly after Lou and I have discussed the goings-on of the day prior, current and to be.  We are always joined by two retired African American Streets and San workers, Bill and Al, Sgt. Pallasch of District 22 CPD, an shift-determined number of cops and fireman, a pretty nurse at Christ Advocate, a math teacher who travels to Barrington each morning, and Terry Cox, a Manchester born Irish American plumber with a gorgeous wife and  three little  boys.

Cameron is dressed each and every morning like she had an afternoon casting call for a new Disney series.  Cameron is obviously very well loved, nurtured, fed, corrected, supported and schooled. Kim works for salary that is more than likely just a above minimum wage and rents in Beverly just west of Vincennes Ave.  Kim has an older daughter attending Morgan Park High School as well. Kim cares for her children and provides a nice home and a decent education for the girls on a very modest salary.  Kim balances time and budget.  She is saving to buy a car.

I drive Kim to 79th & Western each weekday morning and watch her cross that very busy intersection and humble myself solid.  That is a heroic woman.

Yesterday, I opened Leo High School at 79th & Sangamon, while Kim rode the CTA to work and disappeared from day, and welcomed the two women who work our cafeteria a half hour later- Hi, Ladies!  " Hi, Hickey, it's Friday, Praise Jesus!  Seniors got Prom."  They are Kim.

I work on my stuff -grant research, Vanguard estate forms, in-house memos, Alumni e-mails and invitations to an upcoming visit by Cardinal George on May 11th.

Leo's volume increases with each and every young man, teacher, and staff member adding to the centered activities. A football coach from South Dakota State University asks me about one of our juniors, " Can he handle going out of state?"

This kid is seventeen years old, Hollywood Handsome, 6'4" of sculpted scholar/athlete and three letter man annually.

This kid was raised by a single mom and squad of Aunts, raised his reading abilities from the public school 5th grade level in his freshman year, avoided the GDs, Vice Lords, Stones, 4 Corner Hustlers and other affiliated losers like I do hard work, lifts twice his weight every day at every station in weight room, is courtly with all women and respectful of slower, goofier and less athletic schoolmates and maintains a 3.1 GPA; yeah, I think he might do fine.

My President, the best prose writer alive, Dan McGrath and I have a 2:30 P.M. appointment with Mr. Matt Simon of the Helen V. Brach Foundation at 55 West Wacker.  Dan directed me to take invitations to Cardinal's Visit over to the 6th ( Gresham) CPD District at 77th & Halsted and another to CFD House 129 (Truck 50) at 81st & Ashland - these Chicago heroes are a huge part of Leo High School. Every morning CPD Gresham watch that Leo students arrive safely and also notice if one or two of our lads might decide to lunch al fresco at Subway, or JJJ Fish on Halsted during the school day. CFD teams visit when alarms go off accidentally, or ante-examinationally and care for kids who get hurt in gym classes, or being adolescent males with too much sugar.  I did and returned to Leo.

At 1:30 P.M.,  Dan and I drove downtown to the Brach Foundation.  We met with Matt Simon, President of the charity and reported on our progress for a good hour. Matt gave Leo a check for $ 25,000 that will assist Leo men get a quality Catholic education.  Most young Leo men are not Catholic, in fact more than a few are devout Nation of Islam pilgrims. One of the most centered of graduating seniors is young man by the name of Hakim - blessed with two parents, a deep religious faith and  a powerful work ethic. Hakim will part Leo High School with a full scholarship to University of Central Michigan.

When we got back, Dan went to St. Laurence HS to watch our track team compete for the Catholic League Championship and then he would stop by the senior prom.  I had family stuff to do. My youngest is going to prom tonight.

These activities with centered people are what the gift of life is all about.  I am blessed.  I often do not live up to those blessings and others suffer.  I try.  BFD.  Others do and that is what keeps me in awe of Life.  This past week I wrote about Chen Guangcheng and his fight against forced abortions and horrific government-centered point of view that I fear is becoming much too strong in America.

If I have not bored a hole through you, my friend, Christine Flowers, a Philadelphia attorney, journalist and fearless abortion foe, wrote this today  ( full text with my own emphases).


There is a man in China who is blind, but who sees with a clarity that shames so many 'sighted' Americans.  His name is Chen Guangcheng, and he's a self-taught lawyer who has waged a courageous battle against his country's 'one-child' policy.
That policy, which violates every principle of human dignity recognized by the civilized world (to which China does not belong) forces Chinese women to abort any child after their firstborn, doing what some in this country feel is justified:  controlling the population in order to conserve our precious and limited natural resources.
The fact that the most precious natural resource we have is our children is irrelevant, or at most annoying, to those who believe that abortion is a fundamental right.
Vice President Joe Biden once indicated that he 'understood' the one-child policy.  That was an amazingly tone deaf comment, even for this sad son of Delaware.
Most reasonable people understand that forcing a woman to sacrifice her fertility to the utilitarian desires of an oppressive and evil regime is grounds for rebellion, revolution and in the case of Chen Guangcheng, a grant of political asylum.
Hillary Clinton and our State Department *are straddling a tightrope between what is right, and what is politically expedient.  They have not confirmed that this Chinese hero will be granted refuge in a country that says it cares about the rights of women.
And how do we know that it cares about women's rights?  
Well, our President took great pains to defend the honor of a well-heeled Georgetown Law Student named Sandra Fluck was who was called a mean name by a radio host.  He telephoned her personally to make sure that the lady who described subsidized birth control as a 'fundamental right' could buy that IUD or those monthly pills with her head held high. 
It's so good to know that this country puts such a high premium on the egos of women who don't want to pay for their own birth control. 
It would be better to know that it cares even more about a man who has sacrificed his life, his safety and his family's future so that unborn women can be free from the bonds of tyranny.
 Christine Flowers is very centered person and I am proud to know her.  Her words mirror what I experience from centered people every day, what judge to be the human qualities that defend and glorify the life we share and understand the obligations to maintain centered focus on first principles.
Christine Flowers, Chen Guangcheng, Karim, Cameron, Lou, Sgt. Pallasch, Terry Cox, the Leo Family, Dan McGrath, and the cops and fireman who keep a watchful eye on their precious lives center me.


Thank you all.




Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/flowersshow/150255956.html#ixzz1u0Tw2L6t
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else





*The celebrated deal that would have ensured that blind dissident Chen Guangcheng would stay in China began to dissolve publicly with a tweet: “GUANGCHENG TALKED TO ME. WHAT MEDIA REPORTED IS WRONG.”
The unsettling Twitter message from Beijing activist Zeng Jinyan began a firestorm of debate over whether Chen had been coerced into the deal with threats to his family, an alarming idea that gutted the most important promise behind the agreement -- that Chen would be kept safe.
Zeng also said Chen really said he wanted to “see” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, not “kiss” her, upending a widely reported remark that had seemed to show the dramatic story coming to a happy ending. Other Chinese activists soon followed, sharing their own accounts of what Chen had said.
Foreign reporters contacted Chen via telephone and found him frightened and wanting to leave China. Two days later, plans were in the works for Chen to come study at an American university, as U.S. officials scrambled to rework the initial deal, which was excoriated by human rights groups and Republican critics.
The uproar put Clinton, who has been lauded by staffers as the “godmother of 21st century statecraft” for embracing Twitter and other digital tools, on the flip side of social media. Thanks to Twitter, the "air of privileged secrecy" around diplomacy is becoming harder than ever to maintain, New America Foundation senior fellow Emily Parker argued in the New Republic. L.A. Times

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/flowersshow/150255956.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/05/twitter-chen.html