Thursday, November 24, 2016

The Reds Want Black Friday - You Might Just Shop on Amazon

Hundreds of people protested along Michigan Avenue on Black Friday last year. Another protest is planned for this year. | Ashlee Rezin/For the Sun-Times

Note the sign in the middle of this Sun Times photo by Ashlee Rezin, the one that says GET ORGANIZED FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION www.revcom.us.  Note that it is professionally printed, but I do not see the stand Union bug.  I never the see the old union bug on the palm cards of Progressive Democrats. Look at Forrest Claypool's, or Toni Preckwinkle's.  Reds never worked with labor. Image result for union bug logo chicago

That is because revcom.us is the website of the Revolutionary Communists.

Working with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle?  Rainbow Push and Jesse Jackson?
Black Lives Matter? International Workers of the World (IWW)?  Subcribers of public television and viewers like you?

Yep.  The article, by Sam Charles,  accompanying the dramatic photo of diverse peoples crying and pleading for Justice for Laquan McDonald and ACTUAL REVOLUTION never once ( yet again) mentions the active role of Revolutionary Communists in every bit of race-baiting street theatre in the country.

We had the REVCOMS in my neighborhood for the past month and only once were they mentioned by Howard Ludwig of DNAinfo Chicago and only in passing.
Image result for ron grossman
Today, in the Tribune Birkenstock Partisan and professional lefty, Ron Grossman worries that Trump's election might, just might, mind you, signal an age of 'air-brushed' history.  You know, American history without  gnawing racial, gender and class guilt. Ron likes the scab yanking yarns of the fatuous John Hope Franklin and the mythopoeic Howard Zinn.  Ron has been napping for the last eight years.  His trade has been doing the work of ten Dmitri Shepilovs keeping the truth out of the way of the news on a daily basis. Eight years of 'white-out history.'  It continues in Cook County, with every edition of every paper and every blab from the yap of Carol Marin.

This Black Friday, please think of the Reds.  They deserve some credit - after all every Cook County slated candidate won on Trump Tuesday and that is something.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Homeboy Bruce Dold Wants President 45 and His Whole Fam-Damily Right Where Bruce Can Find Him!

Image result for Bruce Dold with obama
Urban League CEO James Compton, former Tribune Editor Gerould Kern and Trib editor Bruce Dold, former Governor Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in simpler times.


"Our advice to the Trumps is to move, sooner rather than later, and avoid returning home often. That approach would greatly ease the trouble in Manhattan, simplify the task of protecting the family, minimize costs for the federal government and New York City, and reassure the public that Trump will give the presidency his full attention." Bruce Dold et al

The Editorial genius of that great metropolitan newspaper, the one that endorsed Governor Hemp of Allepo, wants President-elect Donald Trump and Melania and the kid right where Bruce Dold can find them.

The Chicago Tribune did not want Francis Cardinal George to live in the Archbishop's Residence, bought and paid for by Chicago Catholics.  Cardinal George wanted to sell the place in 2002, by was over-ruled by his flock and the Tribune and the rest of the supine Chicago media cat-called his home until the man went to Heaven.  How many times did Manya " The Seeker" Brachear pooh-poo its opulence while poor black girls like Dorothy Brown had to struggle until the caged bird sang?  Lots.

The White House is different.  It is a dump to a man like Trump.  If Bruce Dold took a call from gilded Trump Tower, NYC, how in the name of Sweet Fanny Adams would he report such a missive?

You see things get confusing . If Trump is staying in Manhattan, how in the name of Sweet Fanny Adams will The Chicago Tribune report any executive pronouncements with its iron-clad accuracy - like Dewey Wins!

Bruce Dold is a simple man who likes his politics served up steaming, warm and plentiful and placed right in front of him by Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool, Dick Durbin, Pat Quinn, Cardinal Cupich, Rev. Jackson, Pastor Pfleger, Toni Preckwinkle and Mr, & Mrs. Bob Creamer.

Keep things simple. Bruce is simple.  Rahm says something and the Dold abides.  Keep the narrative.

Prose often is required to apply rhetorical devices to keep readers from falling asleep on the Red Line, or finding another news source. Rhetorical devices are keen ways of expressing the obvious - if Mitt Romney says that Vladimir Putin is a dangerous man.  A really funny guy might say, " The 80's are calling and want their foreign policy back." That is so cool and he's a community organizer!

So, newspaper guys like Bruce Dold need to use things like metonymy and synechdoche.

Metonymy is figure of speech (rhetorical device) in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, like Hollywood, the Pentagon and the White House.

Metonymy's sister device is Synechdoche, or using a part of something to represent the whole, as in " All Hands on Deck,!"  Bruce would not see a bunch of hands flopping from keel to forecastle via ladders and passageways, or perhaps he might given his endorsement of Gary Johnson.

Keeping the Trump family in the White House makes things easy for Bruce, Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn.

The White House called, Bruce Dold!

Just kidding.





Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Sophie Went to Heaven



Sophie, a black feline critter, who pawed kitty litter
Into my Bass Pro Size 10 Waders,
Scratched Wallpaper like an S/M Dominatrix, bitter
At being Prom Queen with no Daters
In her youth,  Died just before the needle
from Doctor Libby was applied
In the booth, of BevLab Animal Care.
And I cried.

I cried for Sophie and cried for me,
And debit carded her ashes for the family.

Sophie had a score and five and
was bloated with Cancer cells
That ate up her hide, as well
As well as the IAMS cat tucker

I am gonna miss the little . . .
Cat.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Cardinal Combine? Strange Smoke from Pope City

Image result for KilroyImage result for cardinal cupich

Crain's Chicago Business February 1998 :Chicago's Archbishop Francis George, 61, was elevated to cardinal by Pope John Paul II during ceremonies in Rome. The new cardinal led a special mass in Vilnius, Lithuania, in honor of Valdas Adamkus, 71, the Chicago-area resident who was sworn in last week as Lithuania's new president. . . 
So I'm wondering, rhetorically for the purposes of a Sunday column, what do we call this relationship, again? This Illinois custom of quiet sharing of power across party lines for the benefit of a fat connected few? . . .What is it? What is it, again? John Kass, Chicago Tribune

The Combine!  The Illinois Combine!  That Illinois peace in the valley when the 'two parties can be as one when there's money on the table,' Brother Kass! Praise Mammon and bless his name.

Now, it appears that the once secular band of boodlers opened its arms to Holy Mother Church via our media darling Archbishop.

I do not recall a caravan of Illinois politicians, grifters, hangers-on and venture capitalists going to Rome for the elevation of Archbishop Francis Eugene George, O.M. I. to Prince of the Church , a kid from Portage Park and St. Paschal's Parish.

I recall members of his family and childhood pals making the pilgrimage.  Cardinal George returned to Chicago as 'Francis our Neighbor' and was treated to having his house and person egged, T-p'd and porch poop-bagged at least twice a month by theological room temperature I.Q.s of the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, WTTW and the likes of  Manya Brachear, Cathleen Falsani, Michael Sneed, Elizabeth Brackin and Carol Marin, as well as all the political creeps at City Hall and the County Building.

Agenda and Grievance politics played out in the media against a real priest, who took it all with grace, patience and good humor. Chicago Values conflicted regularly with traditional - some might say ultramontane - values.

Francis Cardinal George was a Lion of the Church and simple parish priest, who could have cared less what Jay Levine, Chuck Gowdy, Windy City Times or Toni Preckwinkle thought of him. But touch his flock, or mock his faith and Cardinal George would throw down, like a Canaryville tough guy on St. Paddy's Day.

The media detest straight froward people.

I was gobsmacked by the embrace of the Catholic Church by the very people who made Cardinal George's life a bed of nails, even during his final days. Here are the members of the Chicago entourage for Blase Cupich:
The mayor and first lady of Chicago Amy Rule will lead the delgation (sic) at which Cupich will be elevated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica on Nov. 19, a dinner in support of Catholic Extension in Rome that evening and a celebratory Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Nov. 20.
Among those joining Emanuel’s entourage: Father Tom Hurley of Old St. Patrick’s Church; Reverend Stan Davis, co-Executive Director of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago; Bishop Wayne Miller, President of the Council of Religious Leaders; Jo Ann Rooney, President of Loyola University; Dennis Holtschneider, President of DePaul University; Gov. Bruce Rauner; Senator Dick Durbin; State Senate President John Cullerton; State Comptroller-elect and current City Clerk Susana Mendoza; Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke; Congressman Mike Quigley; Aldermen Ed Burke, Pat O’Connor, Danny Solis, Michelle Harris and Marge Laurino; Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer; Anne Pramaggiore, president and CEO of ComEd; Stefano Pessina, executive vice chairman and CEO of Walgreen Boots Alliance; Desiree Rogers of Choose Chicago; Don Edwards, CEO of Flexpoint Ford; Daniel McCaffrey, CEO and Chairman, McCaffery Interests; Margaret Houlihan Smith of United Airlines; Wynona Redmond, of Wyn-Win Communications; Cherryl Thomas of Ardmore Associates; Senator Renato Turano of Turano Bakery; former NBA star Isiah Thomas;  Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson; Chicago Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago; Rocco Claps, director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights; a Cristo Rey Jesuit High School student and a Christ the King High School student–both of whom work in the mayor’s office. Shia Kapos in Chicago Sun Times 11/ 15/2016

The only name I read above without having the feeling that I was wearing spun-glass underwear is Father Tom Hurley.

I was surprised Pat Quinn didn't make the trip.

Perhaps, this is signals a new spirit of cooperation between Church and State, a cismontane rapprochement.  Maybe it is just all Civic Spirited, good fellowship.  Maybe.  Maybe, I should lace up my Converse Chuck Taylors and pound the boards against Dwayne Wade.
Image result for Kilroy
Or, maybe, . . . . perhaps the sleaze of the Illinois  Combine will be now sanctified. That would be dispiriting.

Cardinal Kilroy has some funny pals.

Mass will be interesting all this week.




Friday, November 18, 2016

Thank You, Cyril O'Brien: The Most Flattering Review I Ever Received: The Late Great Cyril O'Brien

The Chorito Hog Leg Book: A Novel of Guam in Time of WarCyril J. O'Brien

I wrote a novel in 2007, The Chorito Hog Leg: A Novel of Guam in Time of War.  

I was disappointed in the book as I did not do a very good job of editing the work, I had paid an editor to do.  Plenty of typos.

Nevertheless, the book was favorably reviewed by Rose Keefe , the noted Crime biographer and historian, the late Martin J. Tully, USSF(ret), CPD (ret) and several combat veterans.

One of those heroes was the great Cyril O'Brien*, a Baltimore journalist and former White house correspondent who was Marine Combat correspondent on Guam. His review appeared in the Mariannas Islands Press and on Borders Books Review.

I have a very blessed life and this man's opinion of my work means almost as much to me as the good wishes from the hundreds of "kids" that I have taught over these past forty years,

Here is Cy O'Brien's review:

Guam Novel Praises the Chamorros as well as Marines

3190 days ago

Book depicts Chamorros going above and beyond By Cyril J. O'Brien There's an interesting novel with a different scenario on the liberation of Guam by Chicago, Ill., school teacher Pat Hickey. It depicts the often underwritten action on Chonito Ridge, and describes the Chamorro people as going above and beyond. It relates the battle story through fictional as well as actual leaders as a way of demonstrating the caliber of the people who fought that war on Guam. A student of the battle, Hickey is well into Able Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, led by Capt. Gary Bundshu in its impossible, day-and-a-half assault straight up to the crest of Chonito Ridge, a cliff overlooking the Asan beaches on Guam. The top was taken late in the second day after Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, secured the rear and flank to let Able finish its ascent and hold it.
Using the Marines' nickname for the ridge, Hickey, in The Chorito Hog Leg' '(AuthorHouse 2007, Bloomington, Ind.) intersperses the story with surprising incidents, heroic actions, including the gratuitous cruelty of Japanese captors on the Guamanian people. The book is also punctuated with bits of holiness of sisters, mothers and girlfriends back in Chicago with rosaries and novenas. Hickey spices it with some seasoned ribald troop vernacular and surprises you with incidents and anecdotes that could make you lose the course of what is going on. Hickey also brings in the colorful gangster days that represented the Windy City at its zenith because it is from where the young Marines he describes are from.
Action started at sea And you may have forgotten how the first combat action of Guam was at sea. Pat describes it: the Japanese Kate spinning a torpedo toward the troop-jammed tank landing ship. (I was on the starboard side where the torpedo beaded). But a little LCI (landing craft infantry) ship in our assault convey, there to protect the troopship, nosed her bow into the torpedo bound for our ship. It blew off the LCI's bow and killed all on station there. We watched the next morning as a destroyer sunk the remains of the heroic little LCI.
Within the carnage of battle is a conflict arrayed in the book pitting a young man named Tim Cullen against his battalion commander over the possession of an 1860 Army Cold .45 Hog Leg revolver, which can be traced back to a captain who was with Custer. It brings in diversion and other interests, and continues the novel, but makes no 'neverminds' to history. Hickey, well anointed as an author, is a career educator, graduate of Loyola University, Chicago and now with St. Leo's High School in the city.
 Cyril J. O'Brien
*Cyril J. O'Brien was a combat correspondent with the 3rd Marine Division in World War II, which helped liberate Guam. He lives in Silver Spring, Md.

When Will The Cast of "Hamilton" Sing The Praises of the Electoral College?

Image result for hamilton cast

"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States" Federalist # 68 by Al Hamilton

 “It’s an incredible feat of storytelling about the fight for the heart and soul of our very nation. It’s a look at history that feels immediately relevant today. It’s a beautiful piece of art with empathy to spare.” Hillary Clinton from Victory for Hillary 2016 Hamilton Fundraiser*

The Both Coast-ers, who adored the production, hip-hop songs and diverse casting of the smash Broadway and national hit musical Hamilton, which funded the Hillary Clinton Campaign, really hate that old, antiquated Electoral College.  I include the western shore of Lake Michigan in the Both Coasters demographic, as Cook County and Chicago has been wholly unaffected by the election of Donald J. Trump - President-elect of the United States.

From Barbara Boxer to CNN, from Keith Olbermann to Eric Zorn, The Electoral College must go the way of traditional marriage between a man and a woman, because the heart wants what the heart wants.  Broken hearts of fans of the Global American Oligarchy want it right now.

They have even blessed the children of Portland and on the exit ramps of highways in Oakland and New York to stamp feet and beat drums in a national tantrum.

(CNN)There is a real chance that we have just held the last presidential election that will ignore the results of the national popular vote.
Most people believe the mechanism for electing a president can only be changed through a constitutional amendment, an extremely cumbersome process that requires the approval of two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, as well as the approval of three-quarters of all the states. (Amendments can also be adopted by a constitutional convention, but one hasn't been held since the founding of the republic.)But the truth is, a decade ago, a computer scientist named John Koza -- one of the inventors of the scratch-off lottery ticket -- came up with an ingenious way to institute the election of presidents through the popular vote, without touching the Constitution. . . .
Koza's solution is possible because the Constitution specifies that state legislatures can decide to choose presidential electors any way they want to. Koza proposed an interstate compact, enforceable through the impairments clause of the Constitution.
The compact says that every state that adopts it will appoint electors who promise to abide by the result of the national popular vote, as soon as enough states are participating to cast 270 votes -- the number needed to elect a president. Between 2007 and 2014, 10 states and the District of Columbia, with a total of 165 votes, adopted the compact.

Hey, that's hip!

Not as hip as Hamilton!

 The electoral system of the United States was designed by Hamilton to “weed out” those that are not fit to become the commander in chief of the United States. The election phase has the popular vote and the newly proposed “Electoral College”. The electoral college is a body of people that is voted in by the public to elect the president of the United States. Even though the election has a popular vote, the electoral college is the one that officially elects the new president. But, the electors usually vote for the candidate that has the popular vote in their respective states. Those candidate later on would earn the votes of the electors, and the numbers vary within states because it is population based. That “the candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, currently 270, wins the presidency”.[6] Though the system may sound acceptable to most people, it does not come without a consequence. One of them being the Electoral College. The “Electoral College allows for the possibility that the winner of the national popular vote does not actually win the presidency”

Now, How about that?


*Organized by the Hillary Victory Fund, seats for the matinee performance start at $2,700 and go to $100,000 for “event chair” tickets, which includes two premium seats, a wrap party with Clinton and “other special guests,” and an invite to the Democratic National Convention. Tickets are available on Clinton's website.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

It's Okay to Hate Sarah Palin, Because She is Happy.

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The Nation, a singularly obnoxious drum circle for trust fund babies in need of purpose and talking points, said this prior to the Iowa Primary:

Palin’s star has faded since she turned the Republican Party’s 2008 campaign into a theater-of-the-absurd production. But that star still shines with a small but very significant group voters that Trump needs. Although Palin became something of a laughingstock by the end of the 2008 campaign, a lot of conservative purists refused to laugh at her. Rather, they laughed with her—and many still do.
Palin’s favorable rating among Republicans in general has collapsed over the past seven years—from well above 80 percent when she joined John McCain’s ticket, to around 30 percent in recent years—but Palin can still headline a Tea Party rally and draw cheers. The most exaggerated conservatives, especially social conservatives, still view her as a “one-of-us” right-winger who believes what they believe. ( italics my own)

This is the standard yin/yang mix of Progressive logic.  Sarah Palin is a laughingstock and yet a force to be reckoned with.

Republicans, I am a Democrat, do sneer and go-along with the smart set and this is a principal symptom of that anemic Party's problem.

My understanding of the GOP can best be understood in a thorough study of the anthro-metaphor, Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois.  If a Republican wishes to soul-surf, as soul searching has gone out of practise, study Kirk in his thoughts, words and deeds.  He was tossed out on his well-padded rump, which has never been attached to a spine.

Kirk detested Sarah Palin, because Senator Dick Durbin ( D.IL) told him to do so.  Mark Kirk was and always had been a creature of the Illinois Combine ( see John Kass). Kirk scorned Palin, but was not beneath begging Sarah Palin to endorse him over Tammy Duckworth - Governor Palin ignored Kirk's squeal and went on the Oprah Winfrey show instead.

Sarah Palin came from a very happy, but hard-scrabble family in small town Alaska. Without connections, endorsements, clout, but with batteries of will, talents and courage became the popular mayor of her town and then a very popular Governor.  All the while mothering a growing family and being devoted partner to her  husband a hard working union man.

I find Sarah Palin to be all of these

  • She is a superb athlete - she could humiliate Obama on the B-ball court
  • Skilled hunter and fisherman
  • Good cook
  • Looks like a knockout
  • Enjoys her family
  • Lives her faith
  • Helps her neighbors
  • Never whines about horrible treatment meted out almost daily in the media
  • She is detested by David  Brooks, Chris Matthews, Eric Zorn, Katrina vanden Heuvel (lower case v -you idiots!), Bill Moyers, Van Jones and most of the leading clowns in our political circus


Sarah Palin is the figure of feminism, but she does not believe babies should be slaughtered.  She was a politician without corporate logos patched all over her, like a NASCAR driver.  She was smart, but spoke her mind and with a very funny voice.  Sarah Palin is the People - you know the people polled by CNN who said that Hillary Clinton loved 'the average, hard-working American.'

Hillary, Wolf Blitzer, Gloria Borger, John King and Gloria Vanderbilt's little boy Anderson detest 'the average, hard-working American.'

The Democrat/GOP Globalist Secularist Oligarchs hate everything about people with grit, initiative, piety, duty to country, self-lessness, and self-deprecating humor.  Sarah Palin who not only kept her baby with Downs Syndrome, to the absolute horror of Cecile Richards and blood-harpies of Planned Parenthood, but held her baby up proudly to the entire Nation, not the magazine.

The hipsite Wonkette whooped up the elites when the Palin family celebrated the baby's third birthday:

That strange man yelling unintelligibly at Sarah Palin? He’s merely a lowly shepherd proclaiming the birth of our savior. Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history.
Good old David Letterman loved that material, too.

I am not that sophisticated.  I respect women who heroically defend their children.  More so, I really respect a tough father, who loves his bride and is slow to anger.  I wish Todd Palin could have shared a phone booth with David Letterman and that dead creep of a writer who moved in next door to the Palins. Conor MacGregor could do no better.

In the second year of her term as Governor of Alaska, John McCain vetted and begged Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

After the GOP Convention, McCain Strategists Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace felt that their access to Hollywood & Fifty Rock was in peril and they helped the media to savage Sarah Palin and her family.  Soon, John McCain had an excuse for bailing out of the 2008 Campaign that had turned from Terrorism to Bank Failure.  McCain all but  vanished after the first week of September, 2008 - Sarah Palin took all of the blame and still does.

Now, Sarah Palin stands to serve as Interior Secretary.   Now, the GOP owes its thin-blooded life to Truman Democrats and Reagan Republicans like Sarah Palin.  Trump is not of us - the average, hard working American, but he is not above us.  Trump surprised me.  He won Iowa, after Sarah Palin endorsed him.

Sarah Palin was the only forgotten American, crucified all through Obama's eight year memory lapse that African American shoe salesmen, CTA train and bus drivers, Greek American restaurant owners, Irish American pipe fitters, French American hog farmers and Jewish carpenters celebrated hope and change.  Sarah Palin and the Tea Party folks tried to snap Obama out of his reveries with Beyonce, Jay Z and George Clooney. Palin took the most of the very personal hits.

My personal belief is that intellectuals, academics, pollsters, lobbyists, consultants and community organizers - the mandarins of oligarchy - hate happy people.  They want, need and love the faceless down trodden Refugees, Unempowered, Masses, who , or whatever they happen to be. Sarah Palin is very happy.

It is Ok to hate, losers.  How'd that work for you on November 8th?  Stay happy America!


Wednesday, November 16, 2016

I Promise! I will Never Bully My Robot Car! Pinky Swears undt Das Beste Oder Nichts

Image result for hitler's mercedes
Dummes Auto Roboter! Peotone Beiträge 35 MPH und Manteno Beiträge 45 MPH, Gott Dame Route 50 und Hillbilly Polizei: (Stupid car robot! Peotone posts 35 MPH and Manteno posts 45 MPH, God dame route 50 and hillbilly police)

Throughout the 1930s, Mercedes-Benz produced the 770 model, a car that was popular during Germany's Nazi period. Adolf Hitler was known to have driven these cars during his time in power, with bulletproof windshields.[5] Most of the surviving models have been sold at auctions to private buyers. One of them is currently on display at the War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. The pontiff's Popemobile has often been sourced from Mercedes-Benz.[6] In 1944, 46,000 forced laborers were used in Daimler-Benz's factories to bolster Nazi war efforts.

UIC students are shutting it down 'old school,' Chicago Tribune is out of space for any future Trump Dumping ( no room; filled up), people are hurting.

 Some experts suggest that spanking "A White Guy' could help, couldn't hurt. Experts know what's best . . .sorry that was a cruel microaggression.  I know the election hurts . . .goofs.

Maybe, just maybe, I am an insensitive guy. Oh, hell no! I voted for Jimmy Carter!  Bill Clinton,Al Gore and Richie Daley!  I'm sensitive.

That very thought hurts my feelings.  I need a safe space.  A nice ride in my 2008 Chevy Malibu might perk me up!  It is that old devil weltanschauung , that old black zeitgeist, or Willie Geist gnawing at my innards, or is it that cooing voice over the car radio from WBEZ National Public Radio and BBC World News telling me that Mercedes-Benz is worried that carbon footprints will bully robot cars. Again, human being are the problem:

Some people are afraid of robots taking over. Exler is worried that humans will “bully” driverless cars.
Human drivers already speed, drive erratically and cut in line.  Driverless cars will be programmed to be polite and follow the law.
When someone tries to cut in line at a traffic merge, humans won’t let them in. But a driverless car will be programmed to stop when it sees an obstruction — like a line cutter. “They’ll look for the autonomous car and that’s where they’ll cut in,”
he said.
Theoretically, robot cars could be programmed to be more aggressive, but he doubts regulators would allow that to happen.
Still, Mercedes-Benz is moving full speed ahead on semi-autonomous and driverless cars. The company was worried that its customers, who tend to love driving nice cars, would resist.(Emphasis my own)

Imagine, if Chicago Gang funerals all travelled at the posted speed, stayed in proper lanes and avoided firehouse exits.  What a world! Spanking a white guy might help.

Robot cars have nothing to fear from me.  I drive at the posted speeds and maintain lane laws - I am afraid that a robot car would bully me. " Move it, Methuselah! Out my Way! Step on it, or I will cap yo ass! Lookee here, I don't want to see no tail lights in front of Me !  This is a Benz, G! The Best or Nothing!' 

Please pull over and let me out.  I am spanked.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

How Charities Fund Riots - From Ferguson to Mount Greenwood and the Looting of Chuck Feeney's Dream

Image result for chuck feeney

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, chaired from 1995 to 1999 by Barack Obama, is being portrayed by some critics of the Democratic presidential nominee as an attempt to push radicalism on schools. -Education Week
It did, How'd that all work out?

Speaking with a very well-educated, nuanced and well-heeled acquaintance of mine the other day about the Trump rioters, he called them 'spirited citizens and social justice warriors,' I 'mercenary delinquents.'

The gentleman, who has a knack for punctuating the odd phrase and verbal with pityingly raised eyebrows and moue'd mouth of moral disapproval, learned from arch-ninny Bill Moyers, it seems, asked me, "Just how, exactly are they paid and by whom?  The Kremlin is closed, you know."

Image result for moue That's a moue

Well, the Kremlin is wide open, but is for another tune-up of a Public Television junkie.

I informed the liberally turned out Brooks Brothers Bolshevik who lives on Longwood Drive and worked at the Mercantile Exchange for thirty years, and has since honed his social justice warrior edge with Catholic Call to Action, that since the 1990's philanthropic foundations, public private and civic had been boarded and commandeer-ed by trained Leftists.

The mouth moued, " Oh, please, enough of your 1950's old white man hysteria about Commie bogeymen."

You can not wise a chump.  I parted ways with a characteristically 'close-knot ethnic'  style sobriquet concerning his penchant for onanism that rhymes with Flag off.

I am indelicate at times.  One's hobby, is one's hobby.  As Aristotle wrote in the Nichomachean Ethics,  We are what we repeatedly do. " By the away, Lefty's often attribute that quote to Will Durant who was the spiritual grandpa of all of our Howard Zinn robots today.

Anyway, unlike the Longwood Drive Liberal of my acquaintance, I thought I'd toss out some facts honeyed by my sweet-natured belief in man's intrinsic good doing battle with sneaks, dummies and grifters,

The Trump Protestors, like the Ferguson rioters and the REVCOMS who goaded Black Lives Matter into staging a series of loud, obnoxious and untruthful provocations in Chicago's Mount Greenwood neighborhood, from the Saturday before election day to the threatened November 20th outrage to come, are funded by paid provocateurs through 501(c)3 charities.

These charities are led and directed in many cases by schooled leftists trained in investment laws and networking strategically.

These facts became very clear to me through my long career as a grant writer and development officer for three Catholic high schools.

Chicago Based MacArthur Foundation, Woods Fund, Annenberg Challenge, Lloyd Fry and so many of the larger family started foundations in this city are driven to radical leftist environmental, LGBTQ,  political activism, community organizing and immigration issues by boards packed with leftist ideologues. This has been going on for a very long time.

The first letter turning down a request for support of financial assistance to African American young men attending Leo High School came from the Woods Fund and was signed by its Executive Director Barack H. Obama in 1996.  !997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 grant requests and more than a few conversations with young man in the cat-bird seat helped seal my low personal regard for Barack Obama: Illinois State Senator, U.S. Senator and President of the United States.  His boss, William Ayers, was running Woods and The Annenberg Challenge as well as training a generation of future CPS teachers.

How'd that all work out for everyone?  I 'd say not so good.

The Ford, Rockefeller, Pew Charitable Trust and most of the providers of grants for Public Television and Radio direct money to holding trust like The Tides Fund.

Very few Americans realize there exists a large network of far left philanthropists and foundations in America dedicated to destroying the American way of life, our Christian-based culture and our free enterprise system.  They seek to remove America from its constitutional foundations and move it toward a European-style socialism.  Much of this effort is coordinated by a little known group called the Tides Foundation and its related group, the Tides Center. Over the course of its 33 year history, the Tides network has given hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-free enterprise groups, gun control groups, anti-private property groups, abortion rights groups, homosexual groups, groups engaged in voter fraud, anti-military groups, and organizations that seek to destroy America’s constitutional basis. All told, over 100 leftist organizations have received funding from one of the two Tides groups.


Leo used to get small grants from Quaker Oats, Peoples Gas, Lakeshore Bank, the Snite Foundation and others. These grants were shifted to more "systemic initiatives."  Meaning CPS, ACORN, LISCs of all sort. Soon these words appeared Unsolicited grants not accepted.


Big Charity was now off limits to good causes.

Smaller family foundations dedicated to religious education and Catholic causes became the only resources available and that took many more hours of prospect research.

Money for 'charties' is denied to Catholic schools.  Corporate Charities are sucked into Community Trusts and other mega banks.  When Paul Vallas was CEO of CPS, I used to call him the Prince of Darkness, because he managed to establish private foundations for public schools and every private business that wanted a smile from Daley sent their civic boodle to the foundation on West Adams.

There were still great people out there the Cashel Foundation  and Bidwill Foundation run by a wonderful women and one run by a Leo guy who did well and then did a lot of good.

A guy works all of his life and makes a ton of dough and wants to do some good with it. He sets up a 501(c) 3 and starts helping people through causes that actually operate according to their mission.

One of Chicago's largest auto dealers had his wallet lifted by me to the tune of millions of dollars over the last twenty-one years.  He was a standout football quarterback who gave up the chance of college stardom to be a Marine in 1945,  He went to China and watched the Reds swallow up that nation, came home, got a degree, married his best girl and sold cars.

By 1979 he was Chrysler's largest dealer. By 2000 he was retired, he took care of his best girl until her death, grieved and then went to Uganda, built a Catholic school, a church and decided to learn Spanish and help immigrants in Aurora.  He also operated a Foundation in memory of his marriage and keeps a very vigorous eye on where the money goes.

He is a piker, by comparison to Chuck Feeney. 

Chuck Feeney was very much like the gent I talked about above,  He was a simple guy who served his country and came up with the idea of Duty Free Shops.  His pile towered over the Chrysler Dealer from Aurora's.   Chuck Feeney wanted to not only do good with his money but manage to give it all away. before he went home to Christ.  The leftist lamprey eels swarmed to his back. Image result for gara lamarche

Chuck Feeney's charity became Atlantic Philathropies (AP). Grants requests fro Leo High School and  Chuck Feeney read them.  I got several warm and personal turn downs and encouraged to keep sending. Feeney gave to causes in Ireland and his native New Jersey.

Feeney has liberal political leanings, but his philanthropy was another matter – more rooted in a philosophical, rather than political, view of the world. AP’s record of grants can be best understood as an expression of Chuck Feeney’s personal background. Feeney’s family of origin was not a wealthy one, but it was rich in terms of values—including charity towards others. One gets the impression from O’Clery’s book that Feeney’s philanthropy gave him a chance to express some of his most dearly held personal values, as handed down by his parents and neighborhood. Said his daughter Leslie:
“He has incredible empathy with people, which has its roots in his Irish Catholic background. He is a real child of his time. One needs to understand those Irish American neighborhoods during and after [World War II], how they worked, how they helped each other. That’s a big part of his life. He saw his mother and father take people off the street, helping people.”
For Feeney, the chance to do something extraordinary for others in need was no light matter—not out of a desire to be ostentatious or court publicity, nor out of a sense of “guilt” that he had become a rich man, but more likely, perhaps, for him to demonstrate that his basic beliefs remained undiluted by his great wealth.

Soon things changed.

Unsolicited grants not accepted is usually a red flag that the red flag is spiked on the charity's hill.


In 2007 AP had taken on as its president and CEO Gara LaMarche, a veteran of both George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the ACLU, and that AP demonstrated a growing appetite to fund far-left organizations such as the Huffington Post and Health Care for America Now. (HCAN is an umbrella group of left-wing organizations spanning unions, MoveOn, and the disgraced ACORN network. It received more than $26 million—over half its budget—from AP and is widely credited with being the most effective outside supporter of Obamacare. See “Socialized Medicine Back with a Vengeance,” Organization Trends, March 2009). For AP, a foundation that owed its existence to Feeney, who has made personal donations to the Democratic Party and opposed George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election, LaMarche’s presence at AP’s helm seemed only logical.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Later in 2011, LaMarche resigned and Frederick “Fritz” A. O. Schwarz Jr., the chair of AP’s board of directors, left the board; more director departures followed in 2012. The net result was a decisive switch in direction for AP. Not a political switch, by any means—indeed, AP continues to generously fund various far-left causes after LaMarche’s departure—but a definite and significant philosophical switch, signaling that the intent of the foundation’s living founder must be given due respect. This issue of Foundation Watch will examine the circumstances behind this change in direction, and assess some of its potential ripple effects.

Well guess what, friends and neighbors.  The creep who looted Chuck Feeney, Gara LaMarche , is doling out the dough to rioters all over America.
The Democracy Alliance has funneled upwards of $500 million toward liberal activist groups and candidates since Soros co-founded the group in 2005.
DA requires all members — which in 2016 includes more than 100 “finance titans” — to donate at least $200,000 a year to approved activist groups. . . .
Therefore, at this year’s meeting, Soros and other liberal leaders — including Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Keith Ellison — will discuss opposing Trump’s plan for his first 100 days in office, a plan the DA called “a terrifying assault on President Obama’s achievements, and our progressive vision for an equitable and just nation.”
Democracy Alliance is run by Gara LaMarche!  Here is what he pulled at AP:

In June 2010, Feeney expressed his misgivings about the current approach to grants again. Feeney “challenged the funding of the health care campaign and inquired pointedly how the new pattern of payouts on social justice and advocacy impacted on the foundation’s capital,” O’Clery informs us. One concern that seems to have been building on Feeney’s part was that multi-year grants to many causes appeared to be a surefire recipe to multiplying the foundation’s costs, tying up too much capital in administration versus actually accomplishing its goals.
This time, it was Schwarz and Sovern who rebutted Feeney – Schwarz said the health care grants had been validated by the Obama administration’s official thanks for the way AP’s dollars had helped sustain the campaign to pass ensure health care legislation. While O’Clerly is not specific about how Schwarz knew this, perhaps Schwarz was thinking of how the Obama Administration had made sure that Gara LaMarche was on hand in the East Room of the White House on March 23, 2010, to watch as President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The White House’s praise aside, Feeney’s concerns remained. Soon after the meeting, Feeney turned to board member Harvey Dale (a longtime intimate) during a private chat and asked if he would approach Schwarz, McCormack, and Sovern to request they resign as board members. Dale advised Feeney against this, but went ahead after Feeney insisted.
When Dale informed Feeney that each had refused—McCormack retorted, “you will have to carry me out on a stretcher”—Feeney grew exasperated, but then decided to alter his tactics. In September 2010, Feeney’s circulated a 2,000 word “manifesto,” as O’Clery calls it, that amounted to a defense of his belief that AP should prioritize his beloved niche of large “bricks and mortar” projects such as hospitals and university campus buildings.
Wrote Feeney: “Personally, I draw a lot of satisfaction from this type of grant-making: it is uplifting to see an intelligently-designed project executed well and to know that it will be available as an asset for many future years.” Why? In large part because such projects represented, from Feeney’s view, the “highest and best use” of the foundation’s endowment, particularly when it came to helping foster productive medical research.
The strategy pursued under LaMarche, of making smaller grants more oriented towards advocacy alone, was not in Feeney’s view “a viable strategy to attain the highest and best use for our resources.” And Feeney added that “this style of grant-making is not one that I would have supported to any significant extent” when setting up AP.

Chuck Feeney fought back at the Board packed with leftists by LaMarche, "  Feeney’s own money was being used to thwart his wishes—at a cost of $1,300 an hour in legal fees. (At this point in the story, one isn’t sure what the board could have done to more deliberately alienate Feeney.)"

Well Feeney 'threatened' to take his story to Oprah - how an endowment piled with Fenney's hard earned dollars was being looted by Alinskyite Soros agents to the tune of $300,000 in legal fees, not to mention violating intent of the donor.

After the (Oprah) letter came roughly another two months of meetings, memoranda, and efforts by the board to force Feeney to meet it halfway, to give ground on some of his criticisms. In March 2011, momentum shifted more in Feeney’s direction. An AP staff memo revealed a pattern of organizational overspending that neither LaMarche nor the board had been particularly attentive to: “staff had been let go with hefty packages and replaced; large amounts had been spent on consultants and travel; some of the grant-making was being outsourced; limousines were ferrying people to lunch; and lots of people were flying business class across America and around the world.”
The revelations of self-indulgence contrasted starkly with Feeney’s own famous self-denial (he avoided luxury and always flew coach) and bolstered his concerns about the need for wholesale change at AP. Feeney continued to make his case and, come the summer, he had reasserted himself completely. In June, LaMarche resigned, issuing a long public letter that paid tribute to Feeney’s philanthropic vision. LaMarche would be replaced by Christopher Oechsli, a long-time AP staffer and Feeney confidant. By September, board chair Fritz Schwarz opted not to seek re-election to the board.
  

Gara LaMarche, like every Progressive, bounces comfortably.  He is directing funds to incite riots. Moveon.org, Black Lives Matter will flourish until an ACORN awakening takes place in the media that eats the brie with people like Gara LaMarche.

Me, I'll take a Chuck Feeney or an octogenarian English as a Second Language aide, who gave millions to Leo High School any day.

Can't wait for my next encounter with a Moue adept.

Monday, November 14, 2016

COPA Opens a New Shakman Industry: Chicago Values the Chatham House Rules

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I don’t understand how every good cop would not want a very harsh, strong police board,” Pfleger August 2016

The Fraternal Order of Police and its City Council allies opposed Emanuel’s plan to replace IPRA with COPA because they were afraid the new agency would be stacked against rank-and-file officers. But the extensive training in police organization, general orders and techniques could help ease those fears.Fran Spielman and Frank Main
I don't know a Cop who is afraid of anything - including the creeps that will crawl up his/her rump 'after weeks of COPA training on “vision and culture” of the new agency for all 140 of COPA’s full-time employees.

But, I interrupt Fran and Frank - 
Advocates have complained that the $8.4 million IPRA budget virtually guarantees that investigations of police wrongdoing will drag on for months or even years.
COPA’s budget will now be “closer to $17 million,” Fairley has said. The influx of resources is particularly important, considering the fact that COPA will inherit an expanded annual caseload tied to its broader powers to investigate false arrests, illegal searches, denials of counsel and other constitutional complaints. Sun Times
More money for Advocates!  One could build an empire being an advocate in Chicago.  One do! Michael Shakman!  Shakman
Advocates?  You mean Jamie Kalvan and Pastor Pfleger?  Why unnamed 'Advocates,' Dear Read?

You know.  Progressive Transparency means that everything is coming Sub Rosa! The Old Chatham House Rules,* doncha new?

To all of us helots that means, Move on.

Last week, I noted that my hometown is the only place in the Fifty States completely unaffected by President Elect 45's landslide. As well as voting in a fake judge - Cook County - Chicago presents more!
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Gee, why is everyone crying?  Nothing has changed.


Police Officers will know operate under the yoke of Jamie Kalvan, Mike Pfleger, and the columnists still giving cover to half-truths and out and out lies.

Good morning, Chicago! Chatham House Rules Everywhere!  It is another Boondoggle of a Day!

*Chatham House Rules:"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. " Royal Institute of International Affairs