Saturday, May 04, 2013

Leo High School is Lourdes? No, but it will do: The Miles Turner Miracle

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Miles Turner's heroic battle against five bullets is nothing short of miraculous.  Miracles are scoffed at, just as they were in secularist France in the mid-18th Century when a peasant girl brought miraculous water to millions of physically afflicted people at Lourdes.

Cardinal George is in Lourdes.  Cardinal George is a very significant presence at Leo High School in the Gresham neighborhood.Cardinal George Visits Leo

It always seems that whenever Cardinal George is out of Chicago on the business of the three million Catholics of this city, the moral and political pygmies take the opportunity to insult, offend, or disrupt the work of the Archbishop of Chicago.  Once Francis Cardinal George boarded the plane for the sacred shrine in France, the Tribune's pencil-necked Progressive sucker-puncher Eric Zorn rolled out a series of insulting, flawed and cowardly screeds leveled at the Cardinal's objection to Mayor Rahm's punitive tax on church institutional water.   At the same time before the City Club of Chicago, Emanuel's City Council Floor Leader Alderman Pat O'Connor went all Vidkun Quisling on the Faith of His Fathers.


Mayor's floor leader blasts Catholic Church over water squabble
5/3/2013 7:30:00 PM
By FRAN SPIELMAN -Chicago Sun Times
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Council floor leader lashed out at the Catholic Church on Wednesday for rejecting the mayor's compromise offer on water fees for nonprofits even after, the alderman claimed, failing to clean its own house on the priest sex abuse scandal."They're clearly not owning up to the fact that there are people out there damaged by the church and they're talking about free water. Really?" said Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th).
Describing himself as "a Catholic, not a happy one these days," O'Connor said, "The church has so many internal problems, they ought to satisfy their own problems and they ought to address the things that are in the paper every day and stop talking about free water. Quit saying that they handled things right in the past or . . . or, even worse, saying mistakes were made in the past, but they're not correcting those mistakes."
Earlier this week, Cardinal Francis George jumped into the controversy caused by Emanuel's decision to cut off the free water spigot to struggling churches and nonprofits that provide a safety net of social services to needy Chicagoans.
The cardinal appeared at a news conference called by an "inter-faith coalition" of religious leaders to reject the mayor's offer to restore the free water perk to groups with assets under $1 million.
The cardinal called the lake a "gift from God" and said maybe "we should start charging the city for water" - not the other way around.
Water - a source of revenue for spendthrift city.  Water - a sign of the miraculous.

It all depends on which side of history, one takes the vantage point to see something.

Miles is afflicted with bullets from a gang-bangers gun; Cardinal George is afflicted not only with the intrusion of cancer, but a cultural and political class of  bigots who hide behind the same altar of science as secular inquistors who challenged the faith of the French peasant girl Bernadette's faith and blocked the miraculous waters of Lourdes . . .for a time, anyway.
 A Medical Bureau was established in 1882 to test the authenticity of the cures. The doctors include unbelievers as well as believers and any doctor is welcome to take part in the examination of the alleged cures. As many as 500 medical men of all faiths or no faith have taken advantage of the invitation each year. Many books and movies tell the story of Lourdes. Even Hollywood made a movie of this remarkable event in the 1940's entitled "The Song of Bernadette" which won six academy awards.
Today, Hollywood gives religion and the Catholic faith in particular very short shrift. Miracles are now called health policy by the secular Believe Nothings. Miles Turner stood again because his family believe.

Miles Turner was prayed for not only by his wonderful parents and family, but also the Cardinal and the extended Leo High School family.  Alumni called about Miles everyday and asked how they might help the family.  Most importantly, Miles was lifted out of his many recovery beds by skilled physicians, technicians, therapists, teachers and Dan McGrath, President of Leo High School and football coach and surrogate father of hundreds Mike Holmes.

Dan and Mike stood with Miles and his family nearly everyday from the time the young man was shot. I have never been more proud of human beings.

Dan and Mike joined the Turner family is moistening Miles' lips and throat with ice and later water.  Miles could not take liquids for months.  Christ's words from the cross, "I thirst!" were remembered. Miles was slaked with words of comfort and encouragement from the lips of Leo teachers Kristine Meany, Katy Hyland, Aurora Latifi and Bob Schablaske who tutored Miles when his strength returned.  Water and wisdom were not denied.

Cardinal George is in Lourdes, Miles went to prom and will graduate with his class.  The newspapers and TV stations that feature the Miles Turner miracle, will also mock the Cardinal and the very faith that is core of Leo High School.  It is good that those media outlets are awed by this story of personal
struggle, but is also sad that they will not consider the waters of miraculous faith that make the struggle worth the while.

The water tax is merely a punitive measure to force people of faith to go against their beliefs and become out-spoken critics, like Alderman Pat O'Connor, of the religion, the schools, the associations and institutions that made his 'personal struggle' a vacuum-packed biography and a lucrative life.

If Cardinal George had only been compelled to agree that abortion is health care and gay marriage religious liberty, churches could have all the water they could want -untaxed.

Had Miles Turner indicated with his suffering eyes the words "I Thirst" to Rahm Emanuel, or his City Council Floor Leader Pat O'Connor, his lips would have remained mighty dry.

As it is, Leo is not Lourdes, but it sure as hell will do.


Friday, May 03, 2013

Jerry Schumacher -God Gets His Gentle Giant in the Line-up

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Toughness should always be measured against gentleness and compassion.  The oils of the sacraments are meant to make us supple and never brittle.  Like the leather baseball mitt that we were given as kids from Dads who scrimped to make the purchase, our lives only endure when we apply the oils and massage our hearts and wrap them in good works and intentions.  The softer the soul, heart and head, the tougher the person becomes able to take the shocks and hard ground.

Jerry Schumacher is one of the toughest person's I know.  He has gone home to Christ oiled and tested -gentle and sweet.

Jerry is a couple of years my senior and eons my superior in wisdom, grace and compassion. Eternity will be a very short journey for Jerry.

He was a giant whose legendary athleticism never allowed the mistaken notion that toughness was all about doing unto others with cruelty. Jerry never boasted - he didn't need to; he never bullied- he never needed to; he never listened to gossip, or bad-mouthing of other people -that he never needed.

Jerry loved deeply.

Jerry was too tough a man to ever shout out, " How You Like Me Now?"

Pygmies are prone to that statement.  Pygmies and little kids playing at tough guy.

His biography is impressive with accomplishments.  His life was so much more.  I never once heard Jerry Schumacher utter an unkindness, much less do a cruel or selfish thing to any person.

His kindness mortifies my own thoughtlessness.

Jerry's welcoming boom of a voice and open palms fill out God's starting line-up.

God Bless Us with some men like Jerry Schumacher; we ain't that tough anymore.


He was a graduate of Mount Carmel High School, where he won a Prep Bowl Championship on 1967, and of the University of Michigan. While at playing football at Michigan he was part of a Big 10 and Rose Bowl winning team.
He was later inducted into the Chicago Catholic League and Mount Carmel High School halls of fame. Mt. Schumacher went on to teach at Gordon Tech High School from 1974 to 1978. He was a member of Local 150.
Mr. Schumacher was the son of the late James and Kathleen nee McInerney, fond son-in-law of the late Chuck and Marge Miller.
He is survived by his wife Cathy nee Miller and children Karen (Shawn) Finnin, Katie (Michael) Cawley, Jerry Jr. and Brian (Emily) Schumacher. Grandfather of Kathleen, Brigid, Shawn and Jack Finnin, Stella and Nora Cawley.
He is also survived by his siblings Carole, the late Gene (Lee) Schumacher, Janice (John) Comiskey, Kathleen (Frank) Maloney, Erin (David) Carlstedt, Maureen (Phil) Panatera, Mary Pat (Jim) Rohan, Jim (Julie) Schumacher, and Susan (Tom) Sheahan.
Fond brother-in-law of Michael Miller, Ret. Bat. Chief CFD, and PJ (Joanne) Miller. Proud uncle and great uncle of many nieces and nephews.
Visitation will be on Thursday, May 2 from 3 to 9 p.m. at St. Cajetan Church, 2445 W. 112th Street.
A Funeral Mass will take place on Friday, May 3 at St. Cajetan Church at 10:00 a.m. Interment  will be at Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Waterboy Eric Zorn Tries to Tweak Cardinal George - Spitballs Tossed at the USS Missouri



"You'll thank me for this years from now, Eric . . .or not. Yeah, probably not"

The Chicago Tribune's Waterboy, Eric Zorn, whom the Tower Editorial Board would to prop up to be The Man over a real newsman John Kass,  once again does his Nerd-Gone-Gangsta routine with today's attempt to tweak Chicago's Archbishop Francis Cardinal George over Rahm Emanuel's callow water tax levy on churches.


The claim that the public should pay water bills for organizations that do good things for the community at large is flimsy -- what, should we pay their electric bills, too? How about their property insurance? -- but at least arguable.
But the claim that the public should pay church water bills because religion itself is such a good thing -- a "glue" -- that everyone should chip in to pay for it is constitutionally (and otherwise) offensive.

Alas, The Kids in the Tower are up against EZ's gifts and public tastes. John Kass speaks with the heart and soul of a neighborhood Chicagoan and therefore remains the vox populi.  Eric 'EZ' Zorn ? This poor goof must have had a very sad childhood, indeed.

Many of the self-proclaimed 'smartest kids in class' had horrific experiences in school, due to their sense of opinion, free speech and downright loud proclamations of their whiz-bang logic.  While teachers might patiently smile at young Eric's penchant for entering the lists of any and every argument, cadres of contemporaries waited as patiently for recess, or lunch time opportunities for activist rebuttal in the form of pantsing the young Rousseau and tossing his Dad 'N Lads up on the nearest available utility lines.

The salubrious effect pantsing had on many a young Danton from my halcyon days was profound.  Young Hegels avoided becoming public ninnies and embraced common sense. Yousee, pantsing was a much more direct and emphatic manner of saying, " My dear chap, have you thought through what you have just said?  Allow me and your boonchums here to demonstrate the folly and willfully bad manners your comments make . . .grab the snotty little prique, Alphonse!"

Eric Zorn, sadly, missed out on this opportunity to remove his schnozzola from his belly-button for life because his words and inclinations were protected by educators unschooled in group play, but learned in group think.  The young fellow was few years behind the Golden Learning Curve. The result - EZ would be as welcome among most Chicagoans, as Kermit Gosnell at The Babysitter's Club.

Francis Cardinal George is more of my cultural contemporary than Eric Zorn.   We got smacked when got snotty with our elders and betters and Eric Zorn was taught by 'Who's To Say-ers.'  Wrong Side of History?  Perhaps. Wrong Side of the Brain-pan?  For sure.

Let's get to pantsing.

EZ objects to Cardinal George's protestations over a tax levied by Mayor Rahm on churches as a warning shot fired over bow.  Had Cardinal George gone all Seamless Garment on Gay Marriage, everything would be jake.

Instead, the historical exemption for churches was nixed.

Rahm Emanuel causes men of faith like Alderman Pat O'Connor to soil his Haines at the thought defending his church and common sense:

Story by 89 WLS Reporter Bill Cameron(CHICAGO) At City Hall, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Council Floor Leader Alderman Pat O'Connor says he's upset about the joke Cardinal Francis George made yesterday in a bid to restore free city water for churches.
O’Connor is not amused by the cardinal joking that maybe it’s time for the church to charge the city for water because Lake Michigan is God’s gift to us.
When asked, the alderman said the cardinal should stick to praying and saving souls.
“The silliest things can be said and people latch onto it.” O’Connor said. “For chrissake, we sell everybody water!  And now all of a sudden because we’re a church, we’re not supposed to sell them water?  At some point, i think what’s gonna happen is someone’s go– and here he alluded to pedophile priests - and stop talking about free water.  H/T Dan Kelley
That a boy, Pat!  Roll over.  Sic 'em with that abuse canard.  The white haired burgher really gave us a look at the gummy worm he has for a backbone.

Aldermen are scared $hitless of Rahm. All of them.  Why?  Plum evades me. Money, or the future lack of it thereof, I reckon.

Back to EZ - Eric Zorn hasa veritable  written of Pentateuch  of Rahm Happy propaganda ever since the diminuitive danse tyran took over the Fifth Floor from Richard II : Garbage Grid/ School Reform/Ceasefire Giveaways/Make underutilized and empty real estate an opportunity for the Hyde Park Mafia ( Miner/Davis/Jarret/Rogers et al)/Cop Bash and Mayor Water Tax-ey.

The water tax not only pumps up the Mayor with the Raccoon Eyes, but has the added tang of slapping the Catholic Church. Thus, more EZ logic.
The claim that the public should pay water bills for organizations that do good things for the community at large is flimsy -- what, should we pay their electric bills, too? How about their property insurance? -- but at least arguable
The Lake provides water, water.  The Unevolved, unlike the pains-in-the-ass, understand that the Great Lakes were part of God's Bounty.  That Bounty went untaxed for churches and other do-gooding non-governmental clingers to religion . . .until the Evolved showed up.

Insurance is, like usury, an unnatural man crafted construct.  Electricity comes from God's Bounty, but it takes ComEd, not City Hall, to harness the sparks after getting the coal burners a' cooking.

Apples and lug nuts,there,  Eric.

Now, to call of of the most respected scholars and original thinkers in a hard collar - a flimsy logician?

Well, that is like tossing spitballs at a battleship.

The water tax is a punitive measure to make the churches roll over on legislation that is dangerous and silly.

Every bill pumped into Springfield with Planned Parenthood dollars, or Fred Eychaner's moolah will be opposed by Cardinal George and the next the bishop of Chicago and the churches that avoid appearing like a Bill Moyers special on PBS.

Catholic aldermen will back Rahm.  Eric Zorn will carry water for Rahm.  Some kids are still in dire need of good pantsing.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Nice Try, Mr. Zorn, but Kermit Gosnell is Abortion in America.



 Eric Zorn - If You are evolved, you gotta go along with him . . .or else.
Gosnell, 72, is charged with running what amounted to a squalid abattoir where he performed late-term abortions and severed the spines or otherwise killed outside the womb fetuses who showed signs of being able to survive.
He’s charged with first-degree murder in four such alleged incidents and with third-degree murder in the death of a patient who allegedly received a fatal overdose of anesthesia from Gosnell’s poorly trained staff.
I don’t mean to minimize the disturbing nature of these incidents and other stories out of Gosnell’s clinic that are not part of the remaining charges against him.But Gosnell is not the face of abortion in America, as opponents of abortion rights are suggesting. He is the face of illegal abortion in America. Eric Zorn, Planned Parenthood Shill and Chicago Tribune Vox de Abortus

The Chicago Tribune is and has been in bed with the abortion industry for quite some time.  Abortion is the litmus test for the evolved - Sexual revolutionaries,  Feminist hair-splitters, PETA hand wringers, Environmentalist Earth Firsters,  Marijuana activists, Gaza activists, Anti-America Exceptionalists, Public Education Bolivarists (Klonsky et al), Marriage Deconstructionist and Government apologists.

If one is okay with abortion, one is evolved and all the other non-sense doctrines make perfect sense.

People who lose sleep over the bugs that, might, just might, be depressed by the Keystone Pipeline are perfectly at home with Dr. Kermit Gosnell's butcher shop and only upset that the monster outed abortion for what it is - wholesale murder of the innocent for profit.

Eric Zorn is fully evolved and today let fly his dart of affection for the nature of Dr. Gosnell's labors, but not his methods.  He says that Dr. Kermit Gosnell is a face of illegal abortion.

Abortion is perfectly legal, Eric, wholesome, well funded, politically le plus appropriĆ©.  Dr. Gosnell operated, not in the shadowy alleys, but in the full light of day on the corner.

I imagine that Illinois Personal PAC's Boss Terry Cosgrove has been packing the e-mail and twitter accounts of Change of Subject and perhaps proferred a noon snack at one of Chicago's Clubs, or A-list eateries to discuss the impact of Gosnell on contributions and the political effect his knife work might have on the Gay Marriage vote.  Gay Marriage and Abortion are twin civil rights memes demanding the evolved to get in line and the unevolved punished.

Yep, Personal PAC invested in new Senators and State Reps. in Illinois on the condition that they vote for Gay Marriage.  My Senator, from a district that is not exactly Boystown (19th Ward & Worth Township in largely traditional Catholic and breeders) voted the Greg Harris Anti-Marriage Law up the chute.

My Representative, Fran Hurley, has take Personal PAC's coin and will obey Boss Cosgrove, just as Gov. Pat Quinn has made a career of doing so.  Personal PAC funds Greg Harris, as well as the usual plastic Evolutionaries like Barbara Flynn Currie, and so many other people in government who created Our Illinois.
Abortion funds the Progressive.

Abortion is murder for profit, Eric. You can call abortion Womans' Reproductive Choice Health Care, or a swell 5lb Whitman's Sampler for Dowagers, but euphemisms do nothing to sponge up the blood children, much less a selfish and thoughtless side of history that would make Stalin and Hitler blush with envy.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Boston Globe Team Slaps the Turperntine on Obama's Terrorist Paint Job



Most of us have our priorities aligned with our gifts, our morals and our level education.  These days, those of us to go to work and pay the bills, as well as care for our families, neighbors and those unable to take care of themselves, are smacked in the puss with mackerel everytime we read a paper, watch the news, or listen to the radio.

If it is senseless, it is the most important thing in the world and if you disagree in slightest you are the meanest, stupidest, down-right miserable SOB drawing breath.

Here in Chicago, there is homicide and six times that number for daily news cycle.  Yesterday, morning a guy was shot about thirty feet from Leo High School. Actually, he was shot Monday night, but homicide shifts were still working when I came to work at 4:30 AM.  In fact, another kid was shot in spitting distance from Stately Obama Manor in Kenwood.  That lede is getting to soun like an Onion set-up. The press seems to believe that Kenwood neighborhood should be bullet proof, because President Obama got him a home there.  However, Chicago leaders are hard charging cigarettes, in the interest of protecting young people.

Illinois is broke and bleeding away taxpayers and businesses to Indiana, Wisconsin and Texas, but nothing is more important than passing a State law that gives gays no more rights than already provided by civil union, but destroys the meaning of marriage. Well, the heart wants what the heart wants and that is our most sacred of  Civil Rights.  Emmet Till died so Greg Harris could marry his boyfriend in a Gay compliant church wedding, rent a BB in Amish Arcola for honeymoon and then sue the shit out of the owners, when the manly couple is refused a wedding suite.

Nationally. . .I'll stick to the Obama White House and its media cheerleaders turning terrorists into Father Flanagan's Boys.  Language is considered much more explosive than Dutch oven bombs.  Skin tone more important the maiming and murder of American citizens. No biggie! On to funding abortion and taxing the internet!

If a forensic accountant could have access to the financial and phone records of the Brothers Tzarnaev - the funding, the training, the indoctrination, the travels and the plans of these two monsters would be know immediately.

Like the Benghazi Balls UP, people died for no good reason and when they did an idiotic excuse was spun like fools gold; denial; misdirection; and finally Hillary Clinton's moronic " What does it Matter????"

Plenty.

Chris Matthews, a major Obama scholar and world class nitwit shouted the same thing about the Brothers Czarnaev.

The Obama paint job applied so thickly by Justice, State, Defense and Homeland Security on Islamist Terror since 2008 is getting roller pan full of turpentine slathered by the crew at The Boston Globe.

Like Major Nidal's One Man Jihad at Fort Hood inspired President Drone's folks to declare it to be a workplace accident, the Boston Terror Bombing has been treated as The Adventures of Excitable Boys with  a Desk-Top! Jay Carney, Folks!

"They found no derogatory information, terrorist activity, domestic or foreign," said White House spokesman Jay Carney during his daily press briefing

Once again, It's all good!

Obama is leashed by the notion that Wahhabist inspired, funded, evolved, aimed at cocked at the heart of civilized people is merely the rantings of loose-tooth rubes and racist plutocrats. Perhaps the Boston Globe investigative team will free our President of those hackles.:

WASHINGTON — Russian authorities contacted the US government with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev not once but “multiple’’ times, including an alert it sent after he was first investigated by FBI agents in Boston, raising new questions about whether the FBI should have paid more attention to the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, US senators briefed on the inves­tigation said Tuesday.
The FBI has previously said it interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011 after it was initially contacted by the ­Russians. In their review, completed in summer 2011, the bureau found no ­evidence that Tsarnaev was a threat. “The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from” Russia, the agency said last week. . . .


Warnings raised by Russia have loomed large in the investigation of how Tsarnaev, a ­Kyrgyzstan national, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, a naturalized US citizen, allegedly prepared for the bombing.
“I think the increasing signals are that these are individuals that were radicalized, especially the older brother, over a period of time,’’ Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said after the briefing. He said the brothers “used Internet sources to gain not just the philosophical beliefs that radicalized them, but also learning components of how to do these sorts of things.”
US officials have faced tough questions for not tracking the older brother’s travels to the Russian provinces of Dagestan and Chechnya, where he spent more than half of 2012 and may have interacted with militant groups or individuals.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Monday that the FBI told him it was not aware of the older Tsarnaev’s travels because his name had been misspelled on an airliner passenger list. US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano confirmed the misspelling during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, but she said Homeland Security nonetheless was aware of his trip.
“Even with the misspelling under our current system, there are redundancies, and so the system did ping when he was leaving the United States,” she said.


The Russian stuff, immediately sparked the patented Obama denials, the moves on, the what does it matters 

The Russian stuff is the turpentine to the paint job, I believe.

The Russian stuff, if followed and not bollocks'd up by GOP Congressmen who never controlled the Benghazi inquiry, may remove the Obama paint job on the war on Islamist Terror.

God will it will reveal the Saudi Wahhabi fingerprints that are only noticeable to people who have their priorities straight, their bills paid and lives lived with happy purpose.

Thank you Boston Globe and Bryan BenderNoah BiermanMark Arsenault and Kevin Cullen
  


Beverly Review Features -The Leo High School Advantage


Leo High School 1926 ..............Leo 2013 and Pete Doyle is still here!

Leo High School has always been a school of opportunity for young men seeking a Catholic secondary education that prepares them to succeed. Each Catholic school has its own mystique, or as it is known in the Catholic faith, its own charism.

Leo is not another St. Ignatius, or De LaSalle.  Leo High School has a place for every young man who wants to succeed through a Catholic education.

Leo's students have always come from working class neighborhoods and will continue to do so.  The four story brick building dedicated by Cardinal Mundelein in 1926 and opened on September 9th of that year is solid and so is the learning environment.  There are issues like improving the school's plumbing arteries and the fact that the school is land-locked by the proximity of residential properties, bit nearly as much as it had been.  Leo has been expanding the campus work begun by President Emeritus Bob Foster in 1997 and continued by President Dan McGrath with the help of the 17th Ward's Ald. Thomas with land acquisitions from Morgan to Green Street.


  • Leo is making transportation available to students.
  • Leo is making parental participation a path to easing the tuition burden.
  • Leo is making news -positive and inspirational news stories - about how Leo students and faculty impact the broader community.  There is a Leo good news story in the Chicago and National media nearly every week.(just from the past month)


The greatest challenge has been enrollment and ever soaring costs of tuition.  To that end, Cardinal George Leo High School's Advisory Board, the Big Shoulders Fund, Archdiocese Superintendent Sr. Mary Paul McCaughey, Leo benefactors and private foundations determined to make a Leo education affordable to working families, while maintaining a rigorous college prep curriculum.
Leo Men: Francis Cardinal George 2012 and Jackie Schaller '43

Today, The Beverly Review announced these steps in a lovely article by Caroline Connors.


School administrators hope the new tuition program will draw in working-class kids from neighborhoods like Beverly/Morgan Park and Mt. Greenwood, in addition to South Side neighborhoods that are not as stable. Over the past couple of years, a handful of white and Hispanic students have enrolled at Leo, and school officials said they would like the school to remain racially integrated.
“There are no metal detectors or cops here—we don’t need them—and no graffiti on the building,” McGrath said. “The Leo name is respected, and we provide a safe, nurturing learning environment where everyone gets along. It’s not so much a school as a family where we love each other and believe in each other.”
With an active alumni association that is thousands strong, Leo provides its students with a network of caring individuals . . .


On Friday, the Leo Alumni Association will induct this years class of Hall of Fame Inductees, honor its Man of the Year, Mark Lee and other Leo Men who keep this great school true to mission.

Leo remains a school of opportunity.  Opportunity must be grabbed.  Visit Leo High School experience the Leo Advantage.

Thank you Caroline Connors and the Beverly Review!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Dennis Byrne's Powerful Indictment of Planned Parenthood's 'Outlier' Hypocrisy and Spineless State Government Cowed by the Abortion Industry

H/T Pat Dollard

Kermit Gosnell made his mark in his "Chosen Field of Medicine" with the blood and parts of thousands of children.


Planned Parenthood's first official President of the United States, The Chief Abortionist, Barack Obama is in Texas to help raise money for the Dowagers of Death.

In Philadelphia, a medical doctor described as "elegant and suave " by the Associated Press is on trial for the murder of seven infants and an expectant mother, as well as prescription drug trafficing and litany of malpractice and sanitation violations. Dr. Kermit Barron Gosnell is the poster boy of everything that Planned Parenthood stands for and has been given scrutiny only after the comfortable smug media has been shamed into action.

In Chicago, one journalist covered the story with any sobriety and vigor - Dennis Byrne.  Today, in a fine piece that managed to slip by the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, Mr. Byrne makes plain importance of the Gosnell monstrosities as part and parcel of Planned Parenthood.
The abortion industry tut-tuts it all as a deplorable, yet a single, isolated incident. It ignores the clinics being investigated for botched abortions or hazardous facilities in Alabama, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado and Florida. There may be more, since abortion record-keeping is abysmal.
Even Illinois, by law, doesn't keep records of infants born alive during an abortion, an Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman said in an email. Amazingly, Illinois abortion clinics hadn't been inspected for up to 15 years before the Gosnell case broke, an Associated Press investigation found.
Finally, the state health department acted. Of the state's nine "pregnancy termination special centers" (they only do surgical abortions before 18 weeks of gestation), the department ordered two temporarily closed for violations that seriously "threaten the public interest, health, safety and welfare." Some supervisory, sanitation and other violations sound eerily similar to Gosnell's. Worse, the Women's Aid Clinic of Lincolnwood failed to perform required post-surgical CPR on a dying patient.
In a fog of excuses for their failures, that clinic and the Northern Illinois Women's Center in Rockford surrendered their licenses last year. That's two out of nine clinics with serious health and safety problems — 22 percent of the state's pregnancy termination centers. Hardly isolated incidents. (emphases my own)

There is so much more.  Read Dennis Byrne.  Read something, if you can find it, about the Gosnell/Planned Parenthood killings.

Ask this, " How can two Chechen kids raised here in America have so little regard for human life?"

Answer -Regard begins at conception.

Saudi Wahhabi Exports-Ignorance, Hate and Cowardly Opportunists



Cartoon Teacher, Al Wahabi, failed to mention that not only are Christians and  Jews non-persons, but most of the world's Muslims as well.  Only the Wahhabi brand is accepted.  Sunnis are as evil and as fit for C4 as us Mackerel Snappers,Baptists, Hebrew Jews, Mainline Babbitt Christians, even softballs like Bill Moyers.

If Planned Parenthood demanded authority to amend the Roman Catholic catechism on matters of faith and morals and you understood that to be truly fitting and proper, you would have a pretty good grasp on the influence demanded of the world by the Saudis with regard to Wahhabi doctrine - take it, shut up and like it.

Wahabbism is the cornerstone for Islamist, not Islam by the way, hegmony over the Third World and the intellectual left.

Only Wahhabis go to heaven - All dogs notwithstanding.

Imams issue fatwahs and people die at the hands of back-sliding pole dancer/Malboro light/date-rape addicts. That's so Wahhabi.

Last week, two Chechen immigrants slaughtered four innocent people and maimed scores more.

While everyone scratches their noggins over the Brothers Tzarnaev and their motives for mass murdering Americans, it might not be such a bad idea to remember Chechens, Libyans, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Yemani, Indian, Malay, Filipino, Tibetan, Uighars, or Americans who pray to Allah and through his prophet Muhammad are as afflicted by Saudi exports.  Not oil, or race horses, but madrases, imams and  Wahhabi's.thugs.

Wahhabism is a  screwball dualism of the types that can be found in many religions (Westboro Baptist Church e.g.) and philosophies (nihilists, therapy cultists and Marxists).  Wahhabism is Romantic, Hegelian and sure to set the neighbors a' shootin'.  It is a creed tailor-made for losers, or the truly really ignorant, desperate and badly educated person.

It is a cynical and singularly exploitative doctrine pushed by the haves onto the have nots, or the who cares.

Here, in the States Catholics and maybe some evangelicals who decide to be' spiritual but not particularly religious' ( Code for: "I sleep in on Sundays') might be attacted to the tenets of American Secular Wahhabism manifested by the Aryan Nation, or MSNBC: one for the Loose Tooth demographic and later appealing to the attended college crowd.

Wahhabi hath wrought complete turmoil in the Mideast - the only stable democracy, Israel, remains ubder siege from Saudi exports of Wahhabism and the ideological anti-Semites of the Western Left.

Here is a kind of Saudi exported Wahhabism for Dummies, cut and pasted from a most helpful Pakistani site:


In the early 1700′s Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab launched his fundamentalist movement aimed at restoring Islam’s basic tenets. The Imam formed a religious and political alliance with Al Saud, the Bedouin ruler who controlled a large portion of the territory. Wahhabism morphed into an orthodox version of Islam going back to the Middle Ages. Wahhbists supported Al Saud’s expansion ambitions, helping him defeat competing tribes, non-adherents and those considered infidels. Al-Wahhab gave armed jihad a prominence in his teachings.
Salafism took hold in Egypt in the mid-1800′s observing the tenets of early generations of Muslims, as-Salaf as-Saleh (pious predecessors). Religious conservatives adopted this orthodox belief, which spread to other parts of Africa, including Morocco, Mauritania and Somalia. The early 1960′s struggle with secular Arab factions prompted King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to allow the migration of the Muslim Brotherhood, and with it came the Salafist movement. This eventually led to integration with Wahhabists who rejected modern influences, and Salafists who follow the original tenets of Islam.
Osama bin Laden was indoctrinated by Wahhabist preachers in Saudi madrassas. Killing of infidels had become a justifiable act in the teachings of the Wahhabi doctrine. When U. S. troops were invited by the Saudi monarchy in 1991, as a result of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, there was opposition by many of the Wahhabists. When bin Laden returned from Afghanistan he proffered the overthrow of the Royal family, for allowing American boots on Saudi soil. He declared a jihad against the United States, stating it was not permissible for infidels to step on the sacred soil of the “Land of the Two Holy Mosques, Mecca and Medina”.
In the March 1997 CNN interview Osama bin Laden reiterated, “In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country.” A similar message had come several years earlier from radical Muslims in Beirut who did not want American troops on their soil and attacked our soldiers regularly.


Wahhabists helped to build the Saudi kingdom, and exported its fundamentalist teachings. Saudi Arabia’s oil brought them wealth, and control of many of the world’s economies. Saudi Arabia also brought the world Osama bin Laden. Syria is the next country to go through a regime change, as has taken place in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Saudi Arabia may follow, with Osama bin Laden’s legacy coming back to its roots.

In the words of Col Ralph Peters in a sobering article for American Heritage,

I personally feel that we’ve made a grotesque mistake aligning ourselves with the most oppressive of the Arabs, with the Arab world’s Beverly Hillbillies. Other Arabs built Damascus, CĆ³rdoba, Baghdad, Cairo. The Saudis never built anything. The fact that they came into their oil wealth was a disaster, not for us but for the Arab world, because it gave these malevolent hicks raw economic power over the populations of poor Islamic states, such as Egypt. The line about Al Qaeda that’s absolutely true is that Saudis supplied the money and Egyptians supplied the brains. So Saudi money, spent to support their grotesquely repressive version of one of the world’s great religions, has been a disaster for the Arab world.
And the Protestant Reformation is the seminal event in the rise of the West. It opens the door for the last great Western religion, the secular religion of science. Without that fissure, without that breakdown in the one path to the truth, you can’t have science. In Islam the historical symmetry is chilling. Within 10 years of Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, a prince, astronomer, mathematician, and poet, Ulugh Beg of Samarqand, built a great observatory. He was a genius, their Galileo, but the mullahs murdered him, and I take that moment as the point at which it all started calcifying. There are myriad factors in the Islamic decline, but the decline itself has been irreversible. Muslims never turn it around; they never have their reformation that breaks down the one true path.
Jealousy is a powerful human emotion. Hatred is a tremendous emotional release. Blame is cathartic. At this time in history, the United States is humane, free, rich, and powerful. The Arab Islamic world is just the opposite. Our success is infuriating to people who value their own culture, who love their traditions even though they no longer work, and who look at our enormous success with inchoate envy. Ten years ago, when I tried to talk about the role of religious belief and the power of religion, it was not considered a serious strategic factor. People talked about economics and demographics, about political structures and development theory. Since September 11, people are perfectly happy to talk about religion. In the future we’ll get around to recognizing the neuroses, if not psychoses, that are far too prevalent within the Arabian heartland of the Islamic world. I believe that a primeval terror of female sexuality is a significant strategic factor, one we’ve failed to examine. Males in these traditional cultures see the pictures of Pamela Anderson or replay Sharon Stone movies, and they want a piece of the action. But they don’t want their daughters and wives to turn into Pamela Anderson, or Britney Spears, or, for that matter, Emmylou Harris. They’re mesmerized by the sexual component in our culture, which our media grossly exaggerate and which they misread.

Duck Dynasty International -The Saudi Royals.  



If we really want to understand what moved two immigrant brats to slaughter strangers, he should give a close study of Saudi Wahhabism and ask ourselves, 'Why not pass the Keystone Pipeline ASAP?  Why do we bow to these bearded rubes with oil reserves?  Why do we shrug off Sharia Law?  Skip the Tweets and .

Face Book Pundits.  Read some simple and straightforward stuf about the Saudis' most dangerous export and it aint oil.

If is has the look, smell and feel of terrorism, there is a good chance it is rooted in Saudi Wahhabism.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Leo Man in the News - Marlon Britton




Marlon Britton was the Class 1A runner-up in the 110-meter hurdles last season for state champion Leo. This season, Britton and the Lions have good shots at state titles.


Leo High School is the only non-public school to claim an IHSA track Title; Leo High School has won two back-to-back Championships, Titles in Both A and AA Classes and seven 1st place trophies in Illinois Track over all. Brother Steve O'Keefe won the the first titlle in 1985 and Coach Ed Adams claims the balance.

Having a crucifix on every wall helps - the kids still train in the halls.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Martin Richard, 8 - Boston's Angel and Martyr to Hate



John 10:
 27 - 30


27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me;
28and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.
29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
30I and the Father are one."

I imagine that one week ago, Martin Richard took Holy Communion at Mass with his family in St. Anne's Parish of Dorchester and was excited to watch his Dad run the Boston Marathon the next day.

Two brothers, not far from Dorchester, had other plans.

The little guy above and two young women, students themselves like the 19 year old monster now being treated in a Boston hospital, would be murdered before the last runners crossed the finish line.



Little Martin would not hear today's gospel, nor the voices of his parents and sister.  Martin heard the voice of the Jewish carpenter's son who spoke the words printed above two thousand years ago,  Martin heard the voice of welcome, love and eternal peace. "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand."

That is a promise.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

We are All Linked to Boston's Trouble and its Triumph

Chicago Boxer Fought Boston Bomb Suspect
Leo Boxer and future Captain of Team USA Lamar Fenner Defeated the Chechen Terrorist Tamerlan Tzarnaev in 2009; Boston and Massachusetts 1st Responders defeated Tamerlan and his kid brother who attacked Boston and America in 2013.

The big Russian kid in the photo had the reach, the height and the weight on Lamar Fenner.  Lamar had a Catholic education and coach Mike Joyce.  No contest.

I get to Leo between 4:30-5 AM every morning.  My e-mails contain Alumni updates and dates notices.   In the mix was a note from my friend, Chicago playwright, film maker, actor, journalist and author Mike Houlihan.

Pat=One of the Chechyan (sp?) terrorist brothers foughLamar Fenner last year in the ring! See Deadspin story.
Houli
Houli
I checked it out, the fight was in 2009.  Lamar had not been fighting since 2010 due to an eye injury. I remembered also that Lamar and Mike Houlihan had joined Leo/Celtic Boxing Coach Mike 'Pickle' Joyce for an evening out with Boston-born actor and star of Rescue Me Denis Leary a few years back.

You may recall that Rescue Me concerned 1st Responders -NYFD Firemen - who ran to danger on 9/11 lived with the consequences of that heroism.
SALT LAKE CITY UT - MAY 4:  Tamerlan Tsamaev (L) fights Lamar Fenner (R) during 201-pound divisiboxing match during
Mike Joyce taught Lamar Fenner to "to work inside" -heart matters.

I posted a blurb, or blog about Lamar's defeat of the Chechen kid who repaid American welcome with a couple of pressure cookers he and his little brother had packed with nails, BBs, ball-bearing and explosives set to a timer made from a kid's toy.  Their thank you to Boston and America tore off legs and limbs of scores of strangers and murdered a little boy and two girls.

Boston, despite the mouthings of political know-it-alls, is a great town full of splendid human beings.  You can walk Boston itself in a day on foot which is not a bad idea given the traffic and the parking.  My buddy Mark Manning and his massive family grew up in the projects of Dorchester. Mark became a skilled surgeon, did twenty five years in the Air Force and practices in Del Rio, TX.I have friends in Dorchester and South Boston, as well as some shirt-tail cousins.  My friends the Jordans of Oak Park, once lived in Watertown, where the little brother monster was grabbed.  My daughter Nora worked and lived in Boston for the better part of year, until the marketing company for which she worked tanked.

On one visit in the early 1980's my fiance and I were treated to dinner at Mr. Anthony's by a guy in his late forties we had met in a bar near Fenway Park.  We were introduced to Jimmy, by a mutual friend.  He was fascinated that with Illinois, the Civil War, Camp Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, as well as the fact that Mary and I were high school teachers.

We thought he was pulling our legs, but our friend assured us that Jimmy meant what he said.  The next night, Mary and I were treated like Kennedys at Anthony's Pier 4 and everything had been "paid with cash including a very generous tip for the staff."

Several years later, my wife Mary held up a front page picture of Jimmy touted as Most Wanted Man in America. " This is our pal Jimmy."

Well, He was nice to us.

Today, people are saying the same thing about the Brothers Tsarnaev.  Mike Joyce put things very well in today's Chicago Sun Times article about Lamar's fight with Tamerlan:As for Tsarnaev, 


Joyce said he was stunned by the allegations that he was a terrorist. “It boggles my mind,” he said. “Boxing is an individual sport, a fraternity. It requires a lot of dedication. For a boxer to get involved in something as insane as terrorism, I just don’t know.”
I'll try, Pick.


  • Lamar's father was Chicago Fireman - a 1st responder
  • Lamar's Mom and Dad chose a Catholic school for him - where he was coached by you, Herman Mills, Eddie Perkins, Luther Rawlings and the great Bob Foster.  
  • Lamar learned accountability from his parents, you and teachers like Bob Foster ( who authoritatively and rhetorically tuned-up Lamar on more than one occasion, Brother O'Keefe, Brother Finch, Pete Doyle, Ed Adams and Mike Holmes,
  • Lamar knew that 7,000 plus Leo Alums had his back and that he was accountable for his actions and would own the consequences forgetting Christ.
  • Lamar saw a crucifix on every wall at Leo and that it was there for more than a decoration
Lamar Fenner won a decision.

Tamerlan Tzarnaev and his little brother decided not to be reminded of anything of real consequence.


They never were taught that we are all linked to Boston.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Leo Boxer -Lamar Fenner Defeated the Slain Chechen Boston Terrorist in 2009




Leo Boxer Lamar Fenner is center in Black -coached by boxing greats from the Left -the late Luther Rawlings, the late Eddie Perkins, the late Herman Mills and the great Mike Joyce.



Lamar Fenner was coached, schooled and mentored by Leo/Celtic Boxing Coach Mike Joyce.  Lamar died of a heart attack in 2012, after achieving great success in the square ring.  In 2009, the Chicago 201 lb. Golden Gloves Champion deafeated Tamerlain Tzarnaez - one of the two terrorists who murdered and maimed innocent people in Boston this last week.


In Team New England's last bout of the night, Tamerlan Tsarnaev dropped a controversial decision to Lamar Fenner of Chicago in the 201-pound devision.
After flooring Fenner with a huge punch that required an eight count, it seemed that Tsarnaev was in control of the whole fight.
Yet somehow the judges saw it differently and awarded Fenner the decision, a decision that drew boos from the crowd.
Team New England finished the first day of action with two wins and two losses.

One boxer died of natural causes and the loser from the bullets of Police officers.

God grant Lamar peace.
                                                     

Boston Bombers -The Brother Tsarnaez of Chechnya


We know: Suspects are brothers from Chechnya; lived in US for at least a year. Surviving suspect is Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge

Boston Community Arithmetic

You do not need a degree from MIT to understand Boston Arithmetic:   
The Rest of Us in Peril + 1st Responders = Community

 Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.  ~Samuel Johnson 

        This wonderful photo tells the truth of who are the real community activists - God Bless Boston!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

FBI Release Boston Bombers' Photo - They Ain't Swedes


 These two suspected killers will take CAIR.
Discuss.

My Day? So Far, So Good.

A sinkhole swallowed three cars in the South Deering neighborhood on the Southeast Side early Thursday morning.
One person was taken from the hole, at 9600 South Houston Avenue, to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious-to-critical condition, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
The fire department responded to the scene around 5:30 a.m. when two cars were inside the hole. A third one slide into it after crews arrived.
Check back for details.
chicagobreaking@tribune.comSinkhole

'Just Playin' - My Salon-ic Leap to a Conclusion in Boston Blast



In the hoary halls of my beloved Leo High School, one is likely to hear laughter, loud-talking, shouts of greeting and at times the sound of the scuffle.  They are adolescent males.  Rarely is there an actual fight, as they guys get along with one another very well.  What might sound like a fight ends up being 'Just Playin'"

Just Playin' is the 21st Century euphemism for 'kidding on the square.'  Taunts, fake fighting and such constitute 'Just Playin!'

" Well knock it off, gents, I had get my fat ass out of the chair, climb the stairs and evaluate the hubhub," I tend to admonish.

"Sorry, Hickey"

Just Playin' is also weasel word for " I insult you in the name of journalism, art or entertainment and you may not object."

Okay.

Salon is a way cool site.  It is edited by Sr. Joan Walsh, PPA, the abortion nun who appears on MSNBC with epic nit-wit Chris Matthews.  They are two former Irish Catholic school kids who shed the Holy Cards for Planned Parenthood, ACLU, SLPC, DNC and GE VIP Gold Cards.

Salon is the quality and moral equivalent of The Nation (William Lloyd Garrison's anti-immigrant and radical reconstruction playbill) For Dummies.  Salon is edgier and hipper and appeals to the arm-chair thinkers of Manhattan, Cape Cod and Hollywood who like their intellectual digests morsel sized as opposed to the lengthier and more esoteric The Nation.

Salon is pretentious and handy.

Immediately after the Boston Marathon terror attack, Salonista David Sirota, who has long campaigned for a national White Man Profiling Department of Homeland Security, prayed to Roger Baldwin and Jane Addams to interceded for us with Rev. Wilberforce that an epidermis of paler hue be perp-walked.

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

Daaaaaaaaave, chill. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D,CA) is a trunk-stuffer and I am quite sure that she would have absloutely no problem droning St. Peter's Dome. MSNBC"S Larry O'Donnell, the Mad 'Hoor of an MSNBC Peacock, would not be above the C-4-ing of the odd Knights of Columbus Hall.

Being WHITE don't make it Right.  Shucks, God Father's Pizza and all?

The bomber fits the profile of a person who would be willing to set bombs at a hard, or soft target crowded with people he, or she, or they do not know, or care a fig about. Could be an Arab. Could be a Dutchman, Could be a gent from a cargo-cult of hills of Papua New Guinea.

The cops will get the bad guys - plural or singular.

I am concerned that the bomber might prove to be a disgruntled media dweeb.

Consider.  CNN just fired Soledad O'Brien and what a diversity package she is!  Not only that CNN cashiered the chocolate Poppin' Fresh of Black Liberation Journalism, the doughy WEB DUBOIS his own bad self, . . .  Roland S. Martin!

Since joining the millions of Americans on Unemployment, Soledad and Roland S.  are in constant communication - track this twitter for the codes, Maties

e,g.
Why am I wearing my #APhiA black and gold colors on @Soledad_OBrien's last day on@StartingPtCNN? Our slogan is Onward and Upward!2 weeks ago  reply  retweet  share








They ain't  happy.  Consider their positions.  They are out of the news; why not make history?

Who runs Marathons?  Thousands of pale, health conscious, affluent Whities of both genders.

Who wins Marathons?  Kenyans.

Set the bomb at the finish hours after the Kenyan, Solamalian, Ethiopian and Ghanan brothers and sisters have toweled off and hit the pasta bar. Target rich environment.  Then set off the next one and watch all of the affluent Honkies Loot the Marathon Swag Bags!




See?  No Soledad, No Martin No CNN!  CNN devoured itself butt first shortly before the Wolf Blitzer Show!

One suspect was said to have worn a grey hoodie. Roland?

Just Playin'!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Images of Valor from 'The Irish Independent' Coverage of the Boston Terror Bombing

A Boston police officer wheels in injured boy down Boylston Street as medical workers carry an injured runner following an explosion during the 2013 Boston Marathon in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Two explosions shattered the euphoria at the marathon's finish line on Monday, sending authorities out on the course to carry off the injured while the stragglers were rerouted away from the smoking site of the blasts. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul . . ."
― Michel de MontaigneCannibales

A Boston police officer clears Boylston Street following an explosion at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Two explosions shattered the euphoria at the finish line on Monday, sending authorities out on the course to carry off the injured while the stragglers were rerouted away from the smoking site of the blasts. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
"Bravery never goes out of fashion." - William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863), English Novelist

Medical workers aid injured people at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)Medical workers aid an injured man at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Two bombs exploded near the finish of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing two people, injuring 22 others and sending authorities rushing to aid wounded spectators, race organizers and police said. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
"Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back." - Publilius Syrus (1st Century BC), Latin Writer and Actor

Medical workers aid injured people at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)



"There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. "― Steven PressfieldGates of Fire

Alll photos from the Irish Independent.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Why Print Journalism Needs to Survive - Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen and Marthon Terror Bombing

Boston Police officers stood near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Tuesday morning.
 Boston cops at the Finish Line on Boylston Street. Kevin Cullen of the  Boston Globe respects cops - you tell by his writing
"This is how bad this is. I went out Monday night and bumped into some firefighters I know. They said one of the dead was an 8-year-old boy from Dorchester who had gone out to hug his dad after he crossed the finish line. The dad walked on; the boy went back to the sidewalk to join his mom and his little sister. And then the bomb went off. The boy was killed. His sister’s leg was blown off. His mother was badly injured. That’s just one ­family, one story." 
Kevin Cullen, The Boston Globe

Television news is a sick joke.  Print media is not much better,  Radio still provides . . . news.  The computer as well and I am damned if I will go to the phone, the Pad, or whatever the techno-geek billionaires crank out.

There are good writers waste deep in the swamp that was once a stream of facts, opinion and entertainment.  There are writers like Steve Rhodes, Dennis Byrne, Caroline Connors, Steve Metsch, Rick Morrisey, Mike Mulligan, Natasha Korecki, Tim Novak, Dan Mihiapolus, Mark Konkol and the iconoclastic John Kass still writing with grace and skill. Politically, they are as different as the as the cast of Rawhide.

Years ago, I got to be pals with Brian McGrory of the Globe and he wrote the intro to my history of Leo High School.  Brian is a terrific writer, but saddled with onerous task of Managing Editor and more importantly a fine human being.

The Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen is a writer.  Today, in a few paragraphs, Cullen gives a tutorial in journalism.  He has the facts at his feet and his finger tips, but he does not rattle off a staccato shower of nouns like a Nazi Death Camp accountant, or EJ Dionne.

Cullen goes for the heart the head and the humanity of the reader without intruding himself over the narrative, like Geraldo Rivera or our President.

This is a fine example of just what I am talking about -


In an instant, so many lives changed. Some ended. The telephone lines burned. Everybody was trying to figure out who and why. The cops I talked to were shaking their heads. It could be anybody. Could be foreign. Could be domestic. Could be Al Qaeda. Could be home-grown nuts.
It was Patriots Day. It was tax day. It was Israel’s independence day. Theories swirled like the smoke above Boylston Street. Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Then there was the story about the young Saudi guy who was being questioned by the FBI. Now, the FBI wouldn’t tell me if my pants were on fire, but my old pal John Miller from CBS News reported that the kid did a runner after the explosion and that somebody tackled him and held him for the police. Miller used to be an associate director at the FBI, and let’s just say his sources there are impeccable. Miller says the Saudi guy was cooperative and denied he had anything to do with the bombing. He says he took off because, like everybody else in the Back Bay, he was terrified. A law enforcement source later told me that Miller’s story is right on the money.
I saw Lisa Hughes from WBZ-TV trying to do her job, amid the blood and the body parts. And then I remembered that Lisa, who is as nice a person as you’ll find in this business, married a guy from Wellesley named Mike Casey who lost his wife Neilie on one of the planes out of Boston that crashed into the Twin Towers. And then I tried not to cry and just marveled at how professional Lisa was.

Unlike our homegrown TV nitwits ( Andy Shaw  and Chuck Goudie always comes to mind),  Kevin Cullen places the spotlight on the people the reader should learn about and care about and not what an Andy or an EJ, or a Chuck think about anything.

As TV is swamped with ninnies, let's pray that print media can once again feature writers who are also good people. Journalism can and should work that way.

Chicago - 3; Cleveland - 5: Chris Matthews Nothing: MSNBC Scores Again!




Without regard for the bleeding, the mourning, or the shocked following the terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon.  MSNBC's Idiot Supreme Chris Matthews uttered his fatuous snake oil

"Normally, domestic terrorists, people tend to be on the far right, well that’s not a good category, just extremists, let’s call them that."   Chris Matthews MSNBC

Roll the tape all way back to last Spring:

Chicago (NATO) Three:


The AP reports the arrests were made Wednesday in a nighttime raid after police discovered a plot to attack a number of targets, including the aforementioned campaign headquarters and the Mayor’s home. They report further that the defense is planning on arguing that the plot was actually a creation of undercover police officers, and not the men arrested:
Defense attorneys alleged that the arrests were an effort to scare the thousands of people expected to protest at the meeting of world leaders. They told a judge that undercover police were the ones who brought the Molotov cocktails.
“This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear,” defense attorney Michael Duetsch said.
Later, outside the courtroom, Duetsch said two undercover police officers or informants who called themselves “Mo” and “Gloves” were also arrested during the Wednesday raid, and defense attorneys said they later lost track of the two.
“We believe this is all a setup and entrapment to the highest degree,” Duets said.
The men have been identified as Brian ChurchJared Chase, and Brent Vincent Betterly– 20, 24, and 24 respectively.



Cleveland Five
Suspects in Cleveland bomb plot: Brandon Baxter, Anthony Hayne, Connor Stevens, Joshua Stafford and Douglas Wright.

According to the FBI, Wright, Baxter and Hayne are self-proclaimed anarchists who formed into a small group and considered a series of evolving plots over several months
.- Douglas Wright, 26 
- Brandon Baxter, 20 
- Anthony Hayne, 35 
- Connor Stevens, 20 
- Joshua Stafford, 23


Chris Mattews - Nothing.


  


Then of course there is this old chestnut -




Matthews is an intellectual dwarf with the personality of dial tone; yet, he is somehow a voice in journalism.



Note to Tingles - American born domestic terrorists are either blown to smithereens, or get do-nothing jobs at blue-chip universities . . .and go on MSNBC.