Judicial Watch Might Own the Obama Legacy

"The public has a right to know precisely how Obama and his senior White House advisors Emanuel and Jarrett responded to Blagojevich's corrupt attempts sell Obama's Senate seat."

Hell, yes, I want to know.  More than this, I want to know President Obama's academic records.  I have been under the impression that the man is a dim-bulb from my first encounter with him back in 1997.  Subsequent person-to-person encounters, chats and directions through the ropes of a boxing ring ( 2004) upheld my impression.  My empirical experiences conflicted with the approved narrative that the young man from the Choom Gang was none other than Solon, Moses, Jack Marshall and Bill Moyers wrapped in flesh.  Could I have been wrong in my assessment?  It would not be the first, or the last time.

I believe that we would see a rather weak set of records for the efforts of  a lazy, callow, ambitious, but not overly energetic, disinterested and less than bright student.  Poor attendence, sloppy work, more excuses than pregnant nun will be noted in some columns.

However, I am pleased that Judicial Watch continues to shovel the heavy coal for skeptical old me.

Judicial Watch's lawsuit asks the court to order the interview reports' release, noting:

[U]nder the circumstances it cannot be said that release of the requested records could reasonably be expected to interfere with whatever is left of Blagojevich's criminal prosecution. The public should not be forced to wait any longer to review the FBI 302s of President Obama, former White House Chief of Staff and now City of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, or Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett while Blagojevich pursues his second, plainly futile appeal.

"The FBI interviewed Barack Obama eight years ago about the selling of his Senate seat. The American people should finally get to see these FBI interview reports," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The public has a right to know precisely how Obama and his senior White House advisors Emanuel and Jarrett responded to Blagojevich's corrupt attempts sell Obama's Senate seat."

Short of seeing the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laurette's report cards, I will be satisfied to read Senate Seat baiting and Valerie Jarrett's negotiations with the incarcerated Great White Smelt of Patrick Fitzgerald, former Governor, WLS DJ, Elvis Impersonator and Mell Family public money Master Key, Rod Blagojevich.

The Obama Legacy, might, just might be found in the ink transcripts and notebooks of F.B.I. investigators.  This inquiry , subsequent to the release of documents, will be the first peel of the Valerie Jarrett Vidalia!  Madame Jarrett has been Obama's chief handler long before Rahm Emanuel, Dave Axelrod and Bill Daley acted as his Kevlar.

This should be interesting.  I getting big jar of Salted and Black Pepper Cashews when it happens.

Father Tony Brankin, Chicago's Polonia and Zero Chicago News Coverage

“It begins with Mass, the great engine of life. Then the regular prayers of the rosary, Breviary, meditations through the rest of the day and in the car. My spiritual reading is from journals and the classics. I don’t meditate while sculpting. If I’m working on Jesus’ knuckles – that’s what I’m concentrating on.” Father Tony Brankin, St. Odilo's Parish, Berwyn, Illinois

On Nov. 19, when Poland and the Polish people, from the bishops to the government, did that ( Proclaimed Christ the King) through the Jubilee Act of Acceptance, their example became a testimony to the world to do the same. Catholic Register

I spent a wonderful day with the lady I love trolling the shops on Lake Street in Oak Park, while Chicago took on its first snow toupee of the year. We hit bookshops, hat stores and that great Indian Restaurant The Khyber Pass. It was a lovely continuation for a day begun at Mass.

I had gone to Mass at Sacred Heart in Morgan Park with Father Gallagher, an octogenarian hero, who spent most of his priesthood as a missionary in Mexico, who must be the greatest homilist in my Church. Sweetly and succinctly, Father Gallagher relates the Gospel to the daily lives of the blue collar worshipers, who enjoy saying the Memorare after the Creed and singing the standards at Mass.

The only match to Father Gallagher's simple and no-nonsense path to the Cross is a sermon  by Father Tony Brankin, pastor of St. Odilio's in Berwyn.

My lady friend attends Mass at St. Odilo's when not singing at St. John Cantius Church and old Polish parish rated the most beautiful Church in America.  It is.

The Polish attend to the smallest details in all things, from Copernicus to Madame Curie to Pope St. John Paul II.   Poles are one of the largest ethnic (white) demographics in Chicago.  They are arguably the most organized (non-Alinsky) of Chicago's neighbors: Polish National Alliance,Polish Roman Catholic Union, the magnificent Copernicus Center and any number of the many morphed credit unions and savings and loans.

Miss Sullivan, the lovely and elegant lady who deigns to be seen in public with me, showed me a homily by Father Brankin.  It celebrated the fact that Poland, in this Jubilee Year announced by Pope Francis, proclaimed Jesus Christ the King of Poland - both Church and State.

"Immortal King of Ages Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Savior! In the Jubilee Year 1050 anniversary of the Baptism of Polish [people], in the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, here we Poles stand in front of you (together with their authorities, clergy and laity) to acknowledge your reign, surrender to Thy law, entrust and take you to our homeland and the whole nation…We confess before heaven and earth, that your reign we need…Wishing to worship the majesty of Thy power and glory, with great faith and love, we cry out: Rule us Christ!”

So prayed the Polish bishops at the Church of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland, on Nov. 19 in a major ceremony formally declaring Jesus Christ as King of Poland. It was the day before the feast of Christ the King in the Church’s liturgical calendar. Poland’s President Andrzei Duda took part along with thousands of pilgrims in the Mass and ceremony. (Scroll down to read the entire prayer-declaration here.) The ceremony marked the end of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy and the 1,050 anniversary of Polish Christianity.

I had heard of this, but had not lodged it into my tiny brain's 'full attention chamber.'  Father Brankin praised the fact that people of faith can and do live meaningful and important lives with faith active in every aspect. In fact, politicians and the government wholly agreed.

On television, Senator Jan Maria Jackowski explained that the faith is the strength of Poland. He said “if we keep our core values, we build the common good. However…if we forget about the great heritage of this force that gives us faith and what gives us the heritage of the Gospel, it would not be so good. We see what is happening in the countries where de-Christianization is progressing at a rapid pace.”

Father Brankin, whose flock includes many, many, many immigrants from Mexico, Central America and Poland, as well as Czechs, Ukrainians and Lithuanians, honored the Poles.  The Chicago newspapers wholly ignored this event, so did the Catholic New World.   There was plenty on the new Cardinal, diversity workshops at UCCB, kids wearing Red for Cardinal Cupich, but no mention of Poland's most severe blow to world secularism.

Father Brankin always argues that spiritual life must begin with attendance at Mass.  I know many Catholics who consider themselves to be more 'spiritual' than active.  That is like joining a club and never attending a meeting.  Too many of us no longer want to go to Mass.  Let's be Unitarians.

That's cool.  Mass is what keeps me from going off the rails and craving my baser instincts.  I told the kids at Brother Rice that I attend services and receive the Eucharist every morning at St. John Fisher - no brag, just fact.

" Does that mean you are Holy?" asked one chap from St. John Fisher Parish, with more than a spoonful of obvious irony.

I told him. " No, not by a jug full.  It does make me less of a jerk, however.  Somewhat."

Kids, like all of us are pulled to be secular, overly cynical and fundamentally intolerant, by the broader HBO culture.  Poland seems to have kicked that trend to the curb.

I went to Mass yesterday, met my lovely friend, heard from her about Father Brankin's homily, delighted in Poland's stand to proclaim Christ it's King, and noted the lack of coverage - ignoring is also a sharp form of censorship.

God Bless Poland. God Bless great priests.  God Bless young people.  God whack the media on the back of the noggin.  It will not do much, but would be a start.

America's Obama Mission Drift and All That Jazz

Hollywood *created our President through American Mission drift.

I spent twenty-five years of my forty year career in Catholic education as a fund-raiser - Director of Development is usual term, or more the MBA school of B.S. nomenclature Director of Institutional Advancement.  Either term means 'the person who makes calls on people to make donations.'

Calls mean pitches to potential donors that involve matching Mission to Operations.

You state -"Here is what we stand for" and through a series of infinitives:

• To expand its ability
• To provide a quality Catholic education
• To instill the virtues of 
• To prepare students

attempt to match mission to peration . . . and all that jazz.  This is followed by a representation of programs and activities, budget, financials and needs assessment and the ask.  The ask is usually in keeping with the need, but it was my happy experience that the give often exceeded the ask.

The Mission; the Operation/Needs and the Ask - that is the job - it ain't brain surgery.  Tell that to an Institutional Advancement Suit.  I lived by the dictum of the late Father Ken Yarno, C.S.V. - " Be Brief and Be Gone!"  Donors don't want pals, or neat guys for lunch dates.  They want to help a school, a program, or a cause with a minimum of BS.

It was my experience that 80 % of the money came from  20% of our donors.   That is a very healthy match of mission to operation.

One of my tasks was to make sure that the 20% included new donors and gift grants from foundations.

I found that in my last years, foundations drifted from their stated missions.  Likewise, big individual donors wanted to make more impact on the broader society.  Foundations that had been family faith spirited became more social justice locked-up and giving templates became 'systemic' gives to hot-button causes like immigration reform, public education reform, public health reform, law reform and out-reach programs.

Foundations were driven by big donors and big causes by big agendas.

Today in 2016, Americans gave over 300 Billion dollars to charity.  However, the donations are being driven by fewer people.  It is now something like a 90/10.

One of the most useful works for fund-raisers in Catholic education was Peter Greer's 2014 Mission Drift:The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities and Churches. Greer argues that,  faith-based organizations drift from their found missions "Slowly, silently, and with little fanfare, organizations routinely drift from their purpose, and many never return to their original intent. Harvard and the YMCA are among those that no longer embrace the Christian principles on which they were founded. But they didn't drift off course overnight. Drift often happens in small and subtle ways. Left unchecked, it eventually becomes significant. "

Let's say, one day that Bubs Murtaugh, a wildly wealthy alumnus of St. Regular Guy's Catholic Prep, is harpied by his third trophy wife to get more Catholic kids educated to the benefits of Planned Parenthood, the Revolutionary Communist Party USA and NAMBLA.  To that end, Bubs writes check in the amount of $ 6,095, 285, 000,000 to St. Regular Guy.  That would be some Board to tear up that check.

No one would give that much?

Could happen.  I had a guy write a $500,000 check without an ask.

My guy said put it to good use - scholarships.  A crowd of Alums owe their sheepskins to this guy, but he is no Bubs Murtaugh.   

I know schools that have 'go be along with the Big Bangers,' some to a great end and others not so much.  Mission drift.

America, like world of philanthropy, had undergone a massive mission drift at the very same time.  Money drives political parties and political parties drive people who are not paying attention.

Catholics who find abortion to be a necessary 'distraction' from the really wonderful things that Planned Parenthood does for women's health did not arrive at that goofy premise over-night.  Slowly, in 'in small subtle ways'  crazy notions that roll over eternal truths become the intellectual currency of people who do not pay attention.

Dick Durbin did not happen over night.  He needed time and a lack of attention.

My Democratic Party, the one that beat fascism, fought back Communism, created the American Middle Class and our once great standard of living suffered mission drift from 1972 DNC in Miami to the present. 

Gradually, an entire nation that honored valor, worth, integrity, competence and fierce of love of country found Barack Obama to be its Chief Executive.  Hollywood, GM, GE, Goldman Sachs, Sierra Club, George Soros, Henry Van Amerigen, Fred Eychaner, SEIU, ALF-CIO were driving the mission of the Democratic Party which had shed Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the likes of Anthony Weiner, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi as its face and voice.

Why not an untested bi-racial back bencher as Chief Executive?  People no longer pay attention.

Occupy Wall Street and Move-on.org blew up more of America than Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dorhn and Weathermen ever dreamed of bombing.  God bless them, as Speaker Pelosi cooed.

Mission drift happened.  It happened in philanthropy and it happened in government.

November 8th was a push back at mission drift. And all that jazz - America Great Again, Mad Dog Mathis, Carrier.

Hey, that's super.  However foundations are rooted in their agendas - looking downstream, Polk Brothers, Woods Fund MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Hearst and  all the rest are still driven to the rive gauche.

Let's see if people will pay attention. 

 * with very few execptions.

Really, Really Hate America? Read This, Unless It Has Been Banned by Your Local Public Library of School District

           

           educere Latin - to lead away (from ignorance)

education- give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, especially a child), typically at a school or university. Merriam Webster 2016

"I want beginning teachers to resist, to rebel against all of it, to reject these clichés, to stand on their own feet, and to make their way toward the moral heart of teaching at its best." - Bill Ayers, Terrorist and Retired College of Education Professor.

Colin Kaepernick and other foolish youngsters who do bloodless, inconsequential and juvenile demonstrations accepted by the script writers for Social Justice Warriors should be forgiven.  They do not know any better.

Kneeling during the National Anthem, stomping, burning and desecrating the American flag, yelling, or spray painting obscenities about police, the President Elect, Jews, Israel, white neighbors, black neighbors, Mexican Americans, or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are just ignorant and spoiled people acting out.

Reacting to such actions with anything but a raised eyebrow, must be reserved to Veterans.

Me, I'm as yellow as a duck's foot and drew a magic Draft lottery that allowed me to finish college and become an English teacher.  Most guys my age (64), were as lucky.  The guys a few years older, went to Vietnam and many did not come home; many more came home without limbs, attached to colostomy bags, in wheel chairs and all with more horror than Joseph Conrad novel.

Kids no longer are introduced to Joseph Conrad, William Thackeray, Walter Scott, Owen Wister, or Edward E. Hale*, because Marxists like William Ayers dominated American Colleges of Education since the 1980's.  Literature has been denied its common humanity, by disciples of idiotic critical theorists and semiotic totalitarians like Noam Chomsky.

Had high teachers been trained in rigorous mastery of their disciplines (math, science, literature & composition, history and government) rather than John Dewey inspired radical theories and social engineering nonsense,  more informed intellects would be voting.

Saturday, the Chicago Bears will play the San Francisco 49-ers and their daffy QB Colin Kapernick.

Kaepernick's PR guru seems to have given the bad advice, just like Bill Ayers poisoned legions of current public school teachers in his time at UICC.

Education means the condition of having been led away from ignorance.  The evidence points to a condition contrary to it its purpose.

Colin Kaepernick, a child of the bi-racial union of an African American father, who abandoned the union before the child was born and a young white woman who could not care for the child. Colin Kaepernick was adopted by a white family in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin and moved with them to California, where the boy displayed great athletic talents in baseball ( Colin was drafted by the CUBS in 2009) and football ( he decided to QB for the University of Nevada Wolves.  He took a degree in business and was drafted into the NFL.

Things seem to indicate to me that Colin Kaepernick might never have been assigned much less read Edward Everrett Hale's very long short story - The Man Without a Country.

I suggest that contemporaries of Colin Kaepernick are wholly unfamiliar with this work of American Literature - deemed to be an artifact of dead white men and a document of Imperialism, by too many American colleges.

Here is an assignment.

Read this story linked here

Tomorrow - let's talk about it.

Do you think that if Colin Kaepernick and thousands of young people and far too many older folks, behaving like him, would act better, had they been educated by a competent teacher about the truths made evident in the Man Without a Country? 

* for my lazy lads:

 On trial for supporting Aaron Burr, U.S. Army lieutenant Philip Nolan denounces the U.S. and says that he never wants to hear about his country again. Exiled to U.S. Naval warships, Philip moves from ship to ship, never returning to or hearing about America.
At first he is unrepentant, but over time he becomes desperate for news of his country. He asks a young sailor for news of America and urges him to never speak ill of America. "Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, " he says, referring to America as "her," which he does each time he talks about the United States. While at a ship party, he asks a woman with whom he dances for news of America, but she refuses and walks away.
Years after his sentence, he realizes he is dying. He shows an officer named Danforth a shrine he built to America. The shrine includes a portrait of George Washington, a painted bald eagle and an outdated map. This map, he says, is proof that he has a country. He asks again for news, and Danforth gives in, sharing all of the major events that occurred since his trial except the Civil War.
After he dies, an epitaph he wrote is discovered. He describes himself as loving his country like no other man loves her but acknowledges that he deserved nothing from her.

Trump and the Battered, Dipped and Fried Media: "Who Wants Rainbow Cones????"

Trump tweets* and people who expect hushed attention every time they open their yaps, or scribble deep thoughts, media types go off the rails bat-guano like a crowd of eight-year olds within earshot of my late uncle Bart Hickey.

Bart would watch his nieces and nephews at play in Grand Pa Hickey's patch of Crinnie Hill, his yard along the north side of his house at 7535 S. Marshfield, and decide to wind them up.

Bart was the tallest of the Hickey males and looked every bit the Korean War Marine Staff Sergeant that he had been, as well as a D.I., before his return to Chicago.  He was Hollywood handsome and full of the devil. Not unlike this guy 

"Goofs and Split-tails!  Who wants Rainbow Cones?"

Who would not?  Since 1926, Rainbow Cone has been the south side Chicago Ice Cream Mecca, May the Prophet Bless it.

Ice Cream had been a treat, rather than part of the American food pyramid. . .Rainbow Cones!!!!  and any chance to raise the bar on the Good Humor truck or Dixie Cups from Hamilton Dairy was a release of juvenile passion known only to my generation, but appreciable to the broader culture.

Uncle Bart would pack his Buick full of Hickeys, Brennans and Winters no less than twelve at a time with a few in the trunk and drive way out to 9223 S. Western on the edge of the City - Ultima Thule in our provincial Visitation, St. Killian's, Little Flower and St. Tommy More Parish experiences.

Rainbow Cones are towers of Orange sherbet, Pistachio, Palmer House vanilla with cherries and walnuts,, Strawberry and chocolate ice creams wrapped in a Belgian Waffle come . It ain't ice cream; it's Ambrosia.  Rainbow Cone the establishment looks like an old Spanish hacienda, right out of Zorro and remains open only from late March to early November.

Once we were baited, Uncle Bart would periodically shout out, " Who wants Rainbow Cones" and get the boomeranged universal " WE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!"

To which he'd reply, " Hey, who wouldn't?" and then go off to work.

Or, he might toss that one out at tender moments when Grandpa Hickey was regaling us of with tales of his strength, " I picked that Connacht bullock up over the wall by the ring in nose and he was that happy to be on the good side of Conway's line over with a better family, so."

" Who wants Rainbow Cones?"

Adios, to you, old Turkeybird!  Nice story. We're getting Rainbow Cones (sotta voce)

Only to wait, wait and wait. Are we ggoing to Rainbow Cones, Uncle Bart?

" Sure, when it snows in the Philippines!"

Cruel, hell no it was funny as hell.  We got toughened up to a world where one can not have everything.  In the words of Steven Wright, "where would we put it?"

Winding up eight olds is funny. Winding up Anderson Cooper, David Brooks, E. J. Dionne and the New York Times is hilarious. What a pack of dip-wads!

Donald Trump tweets to the media, like Uncle Bart tested his tribe with offers of Rainbow Cones.

The fun was in the watching.  I'd love a Rainbow Cone, right now!

* Trump's tweets to the media remind me of this great scene from the The Guard.