Calvin Frogge (1925-2015) - Illinois Farmer, WWII Naval Aviator and Catholic Gentleman to the Backbone Goes Home to Christ

Calvin Frogge was a pure Illinois Man of the Soil. He suffered no fools gladly, but took them to his heart with charity little found in our current cynical days. Calvin farmed.  He farmed before and after flying for the U.S. Navy in WWII.
 
After the war Calvin had the good sense to woo one of the beautiful McCue girls and the good fortune to manage an 'OK' to his offer of marriage. Calvin and Marietta raised two very talented sons.  Calvin lost his pal and bride, Marietta a few years ago and had been in poor health.  I know that he nearly wore out the kneelers at St. Anne Shrine in St. Anne and also St.Mary's Beaverville.

At weddings and family gatherings, this son of French voyageurs and resident of Martinon, Illinois was last man off the dance floor and usually last man standing. Calvin was never a gabby man, but he was always a witty man and given to rustic saws like , It's colder than a mother-in-law's kiss! and rainin' harder'n a cow peein' on a flat rock!

Calvin was a sweet tempered man, who laughed with the sun rise and got out into the cornrows and got things done.  He specialized in growing pop corn for Popeye PopCorn and knew how to rotate his fields for just the right yield for soybeans to confound the digital grains futures street board on the main drag of Watseka.

My prayers and sympathies to Jim and Margaret Frogge and Jim's brother Tom and grandkids, Jessica, Sarah and Nathan Frogge for the loss of this great man.

They are not growing them like Calvin anymore. 

Telling Yarns - The Germ of Art and Producer Ciara Nic Chormaic

 

Narrator: Europeans who had flocked to 19th Century Chicago for jobs crouched together for survival. They created ethnic enclaves little Germanys, Italy's, Warsaws, and Pragues, glowering at each other with suspicion
Douglas Bukowski, Writer: I think the best way to look at late 19th century Chicago is to think of it as a great boxing ring by the lake. People just didn't get along here. Nobody who was Polish wanted to have an Irish priest. Nobody who was Irish wanted to go to a German church. This whole notion of tolerance for other groups was foreign to people who didn't know any other groups in the old country. from PBS American Experience Series: Chicago in the 19th Century

I had the great pleasure to attend the opening night of Mike Houlihan's Irish American Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Center in heart of the Loop.

I explained the etymology of the Loop to film maker Dave McLaughlin and his wife Mary Beth as we walked from the Siskel Center to The Emerald Loop for the post viewing party.

I pointed above us to the roaring CTA elevated trains  above Lake and State.   The Loop is elevated track fencing much of the Dan Burnham and Louis Sullivan 19th century architecture that once housed capitalists, so detested by PBS and their 501(c) 3 foundation beneficiaries that funding was provided to re-write history.  That is not how stories, yarns, legends and history work . . .except on Public Television, Radio and at Media Matters.

People have been telling yarns and even paint cave walls when words failed them.

The Irish American Film Festival presented Deach An Dorais ( What;s Your Poison?) a documentary based on the Bronx legend of Mike Malloy, the Rasputin of the Bronx, a 1933 alcoholic who just would not die.  Mike Malloy survived more than twenty attempts by four creeps who wanted to cash-in on insurance policies take out in the homeless derelict with no known relatives or friend.  All Mike had going for him was an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and an iron constitution.  He survived poisonings, methonal guzzlings, glass, nail and contaminated sardine and oysters swallowings, freezings in sub-zero temperatures, while soaked with booze and buckets of ice cold water and even a speeding automobile driven over his body.

The story was told by Bronx residents and made it's way into plays, 1950's radio stories like Johnny Dollar -Insurance Investigator and,  most recently, picked up and printed by Smithsonian Magazine and made its way east over the Atlantic on the BBC.

Stories are rooted in human interactions.

Lions, chimps and whales don't tell stories, no matter what PBS tells us.

Story-telling is the germ of art.

When we arrived at The Emerald Loop the stories weaved up a storm.  Irish American News columnists and television producer Mike Morley told of Martin Hogan The Fenian Hero who escaped an Australian Penal Colony on the The Catalpa only to be buried without ceremony at Chicago's Mount Olivet Cemetery, James Sheahan told of Constable James Quinn, the first Chicago cop to be killed in the line of duty and author Rick Barrett's long work to set the record straight.

I had asked a the producer of  DEOCH AN DORAIS, Ms. Ciara Nic Chomaic if she had gathered information from New York's greatest story teller, T.J. English, author of Paddy Whacked.  Ciara had reached out to Mr. English, but he was unavailable.
Producer Ciara Nic Chormaic (center)
You see, Ms. Nic Chormaic build the stories around any given story.  She had attached the undertakers, the academics, the genealogists, the artists, a NYPD detective, GAA Hard Man Anthony Molloy ( the film's narrator) and the wildly entertaining and brilliant criminal pathologist who really stole the film for me.

The director Paddy Hayes and Ms. Nic Chromaic created art from a story.

However it was Ciara Nic Chromaic who vetted the story tellers made the narrative handled by Mr. Hayes possible.

History is a fabric of yarns, sagas. songs and stories - Art.

PBS, Ken Burns, Oliver Stone do propaganda.

I like Art.

Neighbors Celebrate Hickey's Delayed Lawn Work With a Blue Angels Flyover!

This is my Lawn Mower.  It is generated by the will to go out and cut the grass, weeds, dandelions and tree branchlings behind the force of my sixty-four year old frame and , of course,  the time to do it. Hey, I been busy. Really. As the poet said, Time flies like an arrow and Fruit Flies Like a Banana.

Prior to this day's cuttings and pullings, Lawn Hickey was not unlike this!

Homo , Civis et proximum. eum locum te deducas languoribus peresus triturans triturabit!

Time! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die---
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.

Get your fat ass out to the garage! Lube the damn wheels on the WalMart Special and start pushing!

With rapid Force our sharpen'd Blades we drive,
Strain ev'ry Nerve, and Blow for Blow we give.
All strive to vanquish, tho' the Victor gains
No other Glory, but the greatest Pains.

Here -  and here is what I hath wrought!

WITH Heat and Labour tir'd, our Scythes we quit,
Search out a shady Tree, and down we sit:
From Scrip and Bottle hope new Strength to gain;
But Scrip and Bottle too are try'd in vain.

New-growing Labours still succeed the past;
And growing always new, must always last.

The neighbors are having a Fly-Over by the Blue Angels at noon.   

A Banana Republic of America Is What Pope Francis Warns Against

Corporate statism or state corporatism is a political culture and a form of corporatism whose adherents hold that the corporate group which is the basis of society is the state.

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service." General Smedley Darlington Butler 1881-1940

All of the loudest critics of Pope Francis from the Right, Conservatives, GOP Tassled Loafer Go-Alongs, Bow-Tied TV Chirpers and Pot Smoking and Growing Libertarians have one thing in common - they are dead wrong.

Pope Francis is the native son of Argentina - A Banana Republic. Argnetina's last one hundred and fifty years has been an economic train wreck for most of its people.

The very few, oligarchs, do handsomely by staying close to surviving leaders of military coups, or corporation backed 'elected' officials.  A Banana Republic is corportion statism.

From 1899 through 1920's and 1930's, the United States Marine Corps sent officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted men to build security around the governments of Haiti, The Dominican Republic and Nicaragua with idea of protecting American Interests ( United Fruit, Sugar, Mining and Banking Corporations) from the people they were looting and exploiting.

One of the most salty and on-spot critics of Corporate Statism was the Marine tasked with doing the protection, General Smedley Butler.  Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935 and that book has in turn been exploited by the Leftists critics of America from Howard Zinn to Noam Chomsky. Ywo-time Medal of Honor recipient General Butler swrote, " Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Name a so-called, government sponsored war and you will see that it is a racket - War on Poverty. War on Drugs, War on Terror and our War on Women's Health ( it ain't. it means abortion is murder).

Pope Francis seems to  have used the word capitalism to decry the exploitation of the middle class and especially the masses of poor people to whom he devoted most of his life as priest.  Immediately, George Will got his panties in a twist and then Hannity and the Mike Gallagher and then the three guys at the end of the bar.

Coporate Statism makes astounding fortunes for a very few, the lucky few, the wired-in few, the few who immediately flocked to President Barcak Obama's George Soros sponsored White House in 2008 and to a Seattle Conference of Corporate Statists no sooner than Pope Francis went wheels-up  to New York City yesterday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed Silicon Valley’s titans, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and billionaire investor Warren Buffet, in a closed-door conference in Wednesday.
At the event with America and China’s top business leaders, Xi vowed to work to remove barriers to foreign investment and improve intellectual property protections in a bid to crack down on his country’s rip-offs of US products.
But among those missing from the event was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
In fact, representatives from the social media giant, Twitter and Google were all notably missing and it is telling that China currently blocks those companies’ websites.

That's Harsh, Mark!  Twitter the White House and get a solid!  Viola!

Well, President Banana Republic ( modelled on Chicago, Argentina and Haiti) invited Mark Zuckerberg to join the oligarchs with him greeting the Chinese Reds in split screen MSNBC Time!.

 

Mark Zuckerberg has a friend, not in Jesus, but in Barack.

Pope Francis challenged Congress to fight the very thing that is happening in the White House - coporate statism. He did not attack Free Enterprise. He attacked Coporate Statism.

How, do you think that Mussolini made trains run on time ?   How did an unemployable Austrian-born community activists in Bavaria manage to get IG Farben to build gas chambers for Six Million Jews and other undesirables?

Yep!  Ask Warren Buffet!

Don't ask General Smedley Butler, because he'll tell you, " I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Obama hates the military.

Obama is not too happy with Pope Francis either.

“I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened perhaps as never before, from within and without. . . .  Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.”

The Kennelly Family Lives the Gospels

I raise money for a Catholic High School. We have an Alumni and circle of massively hearted friends who pump dollars to fuel a Catholic education for young men in Chicago.  I am in awe of them

One of Leo High School's historical athletic and bragging rights rivals is Mount Carmel High School.  Their Alumni is awesome.

The families who send their sons to Mount Carmel make huge sacrifices - they, like every Catholic school family in Chicago, pay for Public Schools and huge tuition bills so their sons can grow in the Catholic Faith and learn 2,000 plus years of shared truth.

I am awed.

Yesterday, a family in my neighborhood, having gone the path of so many Chicago families of having to say goodbye to a son and brother, performed an act of love, so out of place in our age of Kardasian and Pat Hickey self pity and direction, that I am stunned in awe.

The family of a Chicago teenager who was killed by a "sucker punch" during an alcohol-fueled beach brawl in Northwest Indiana in 2011 has agreed to a settlement of $1 million in a civil suit against the man charged with delivering the fatal punch.
Jean and Kevin Kennelly, the parents of the victim Kevin Kennelly, said the lawsuit "was never about the money." On Wednesday, they announced they will donate the entire $1 million settlement to Mt. Carmel High School in their son's name.

I learned of this from a neighbor and later listened to a news report as I drove to Chicago's Riverwalk to catch the Skinny & Houli Show at Lizzie McNeill's. I was meeting a local Chicago jazz diva and we planned to enjoy a nice supper and watch Jim Sheahan and Mike Houlihan grill Irish American News Publisher Cliff Carlson.

I sat near the recording booth after being patted down for contraband beverages by Special Olympics Tough Guy William Tang, who acts as Jim Sheahan's muscle and makes popcorn runs for Mike Houlihan. William allowed me near the radio set-up, but told me to 'park it' behind the speakers at table further removed from the Stars of Saturday's Airwaves from 3-4PM on AM 1450.

Park it, I did.

I rubber necked the flow of the Chicago Riverwalkway and saw the exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan making her way my way from McClurg Court.  When I brought Terry to the table, I noticed that seated next to me were Kevin and Jean Kennelly.

I was so moved by the act generous and loving goodness this most Catholic of couples performed that day at Mount Carmel that I nearly bawled like the whiner I am.

I explained to my dinner guest the five years of suffering and anguish Jean and Kevin had endured and the act that these true Apostles had done for young men at Mount Carmel High School.

The Kennelly's donated every nickel of a 'settlement' - the 2016 word for a money miracle that too often is wasted on things, travel  and entertainment- to help young men, like their beloved Kevin, wear the Carmelites Cream and Brown and learn to live Christ's message of forgiveness, giving and nurturing.

From the NBC report - "No amount of money could replace the life of our son, who was a billion dollars, not a million," Kevin Kennelly Sr." This is our intent, is to have something big out of Kevin's time on this earth and do some of the things that Kevin would have done. He was a very good man who would have done great things with his life."

Christ and Young Kevin Approve!

Christ be good to Kevin and Jean Kennelly


 

Obama's Handler Pooh Poohs Papal Party Punking

No one is more powerful in this nation than Valerie Jarrett - no one.  Why?  No one with the job of asking questions and getting answers has ever asked - you know, journalists.

Why?  Because, she's Valerie Jarrett. But, Why so much power and influence.

Because, as Chicago's only real journalist still on the job with a newspaper in this Rube Burg, John Kass explained to three score Chicago business and charity leaders last Friday, every editor and every columnist but Kass at the Chicago Tribune wet their britches over the very thought of Barack Hussein Obama.

It is very much the same at Chicago Sun Times, which should be able to boast the most talented crew of investigative reporters in this town.  Instead, the media micturating minions give Obama and every person who ever made a buck from his careerist activism get a pass.

So, the Pope will need to just take it and like, while he is treated like Ted Nugent at P.E.T.A. brunch.

President Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett says that negative publicity surrounding the Vatican’s unease with some of the guests expected at a White House welcoming ceremony has not soured the excitement of Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States.
“Oh my goodness, no,” Jarrett told ABC News . . .

The Vatican last week expressed discomfort over some of the guests who are expected in attendance -- reportedly concerned by the optics that could be created if the pope is photographed with transgender activists, the first openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop or a nun who will be on the South Lawn for the ceremony on Wednesday morning.

In the somewhat dated vernacular, The Pope was punk'd and Valerie Jarrett, I believe ordered the guest list.

Valerie Jarrett allowed herself a victim for the wheels of any theoretical bus.

 Jarrett admits that the administration has “a lot going on” but says “everybody’s working cooperatively together” – especially the president’s fourth social secretary in six and a half years, Deesha Dyer.
“She's a rock star! Let me tell you she's been planning all of these events for a very long time, both the Pope visit, the state visit with China, as well as the UN -- all of those fall under her portfolio,” Jarrett said. “She probably has not slept in weeks. She'll probably be spending the night here tonight and she's just been performing terrifically."

The fawning boot-lickers of the American news media do as their told and so, sadly, will the gentle, gracious and good-hearted Pope.

Pope Francis Comes to America

Pope Francis will land in the United States, . . .well, Washington D. C. anyway . .. at about 4PM today.

Pope Francis will 'explained' to the American people by such intellectual giants as Chris Matthews and Nancy Pelosi.

Pope Francis will be excoriated by likes of Pat Buchanan and George Will.

Here is exactly who is coming to America after leaving Castro's Cuba. The guy who said this - “Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis

That settles it for me.   All the rest is the verbal flatlence of the likes of Dick Durbin and John Boehner.

John Kass on Virtue

Unlike his conservative predecessor, the late Cardinal Francis George, the new leader of the Chicago Archdiocese has taken a decidedly progressive stance on union rights. ABC 7

 I never thought of "the late Cardinal Francis George" as a conservative.  Rather, I  knew and experienced Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. as a priest and a man of rock solid virtue.  I know another such man - John Kass of the Chicago Tribune.

John Kass and I have disagreed even to the point of a good old south side, " Well, @#$% You!" exchange of words.  Friends can do that and I consider John Kass a friend.  A friend is someone who will tell you in thunder and you have abandoned virtue, for convenience.

I was honored to attend a Breakfast Talk sponsored by Midtown Education Foundation at the Gleacher Center center yesterday. The featured speaker was John Kass​.

My take-away from John's thoughtful and heartfelt assessment of our times was the diminished study of Virtue at all levels.

Virtue is learned; you are not born with it.  To be brave you must do brave deeds.  To be kind and thoughtful, you  must act accordingly.  You see, virtues are what used to be called shared truths.

John Dewey strangled Virtue when he put 'shared truth' into the intellectual shredder and our public scholars, schools of Education and public schools have been spreading Dewey's Gospel like Miracle Grow on Hinsdale lawns.

John Kass​ lectured a few score of Chicago's big-hearted business leaders on Virtue and what it means to our liberty.  People who are called businessmen and business women (bankers, investors, traders & etc.) very often are the most vital resources to charity and the group assembled to hear John Kass are just such persons.   I am an old Catholic high school teacher and Catholic and private schools depend upon the kindnesses of these strangers.  I am also very much like these charitable folks.  We are all 'Chumbolones' - self-interested civic idiots who elect and return the absolute worst people among us to public office.

Chumbalones is a plural noun meaning 'idiot' in street Italian and re coined by John Kass.

An executive attending Thursday's breakfast asked John to explain the term, which sprang to his sense while covering a Chicago mob trial.  I will not even attempt to retrace the etymology of Chumbalone here, but offer the following. Chumablones want to appear hip, hep, plugged into the skinny and with it in regards to civics and voting and therefore will go along with the group think.: Obama is great. Jan Schakowsky is great. Dick Durbin in never a fatuous ninny who will go along with prevailing winds blown from Media Matters. Chumbalones will vote in and retain room temperature IQs,  snouts in the public trough and social engineers who could not craft a paper airplane.

We do this, not because we are intrinsically bad persons, but because " We know a guy, or girl   who needs an Obama, a Durbin, a Quigley, a Claypool, a Rahm Emanuel to think well of him, or her and might, just might, do them, and by extension all of us,  "a real genuine solid."

That has been my public sin of commission in the polling booth.

I have voted for public asses (repeatedly in too many cases) knowing full well that they had no business in public life, because a relative, a friend, a neighbor, an acquaintance, or even a precinct captain ( ubi sunt, hodie?) asked me to "Do them a solid."

I knew better and know better than this and I, like all of my fellow Americans, Chicagoans, Cook County taxpayers and citizens of this Land of Lincoln, have reaped the complete and thorough shafting of our democracy and liberty.

Mea Maxima Culpa.

Good God, last night I watched the news and even the Archbishop of Chicago is doing a solid for politics with his most public local labor statement aimed at the mess in Springfield.

I want to thank John Kass for calling me out and challenging me to embrace Virtue and skip doing someone a solid.

How Should I Respond to the Portmanteau Exclamation of Millennials " Perfect" ?

 

" Get off the Bench, Gramps"  Old man moves -" Perfect!"

mil·len·nial
miˈlenēəl/Submit
noun
plural noun: millennials; plural noun: Millennials
a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000; a Generation Yer.
"the industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick"

Per Fect - per- ‘through, completely’ + facere ‘do; rhymes with #$%^ You.


I spent a very busy day doing parking lot duties for the Stanley Cup visit to Leo High School on September 15, 2015.

The Champion Blackhawks organization and Star Defenseman Brent Seabrook were coming to our inner-city (Gresham) Catholic high school for young men and the school invited 300 or more guests.

Our parking lots fill up quickly and we had planned to place students and faculty in the tighter quarters, because our guests would be leaving before  the actual school community.  There is nothing so frustrating as attending a special event and being blocked in by persons who believe that they come first in all things.

I kept one lot locked ( supposedly until a 10 AM opening bell) and directed neighbors, faculty, staff, school vehicles and students to the tightest of squeezable spaces.

Want to hear God laugh?  Tell Him your plans.

I am a man of limited talents, capabilities and sense of humor; until an event like this takes place and soon., because of my ancient work ethic and Catholic sense of guilt, become THE INDESPENSABLE MAN.

" Mr. Hickey, where is the camera Tripod?"

The Tripod is with camera (attached at 7:45 AM) and placed exactly where you and I set it up in the Auditorium

"Mr. Hickey, have you seen Mr. _____?

Many times.

"Tell him, Bill Gates is not coming."

"Mr. Hickey, where are the traffic cones?"

" Mr. Hickey, call Six (CPD Gresham) and ask them for traffic cones"

" Mr. Hickey, find the six boys who are supposed help make signs for Mr. ________"

Lah Dee Dah to the second power.  That is what a job is all about and only suckers beef.  Just sayin' as the young folks are wont to say.

Now, each question or command required that I trot my husky 64 year old frame from one side of 79th Street to the other, as persons tend to shout inquiries from great distances and avoid a physical strain like walking up to another person, prior to inquiry.


My humor was tested early when a crew of very talented young people ( MillennialsAll) appeared on scene three hours prior to their expected arrival ( 10AM) and offered -" I'm with THE AGENCY why is the gate locked?"

The gate is locked for the convenience of THE AGENCY so as no one would take up the spaces provided ( four in total).

" Dude, I have a lot of stuff here; do me a solid."

Immediately!

" Perfect!"

Perfect is the subject of this somewhat rambling narrative.

By the time of the planned 10AM gate opening for the controlled West Lot I had crossed 79th Street no less than ten times and opened and relocked said Gate for the eight vehicles driven by the very talented young men and women of THE AGENCY.  Four spaces and eight vehicles, perfect!

More so, I had been told PERFECT by each and every member of THE AGENCY no less than twenty times.

 Perfect is nice but ever so rarely achieved and did not strike me as a fitting response to my nodding approval to do exactly what a Millennial asked of me, despite the protocol, or planned outcome.

I sensed that PERFECT actually meant " #$%^ You, Gramps, I got mine!"

I wonder.

Random, I guess.

The Holocaust and History Trivialized by Another' Public Scholar'

I was returning my tuxedo rental on Tuesday and caught more Howard Zinn inspired American History from a Yale University academic on National Public Radio.  The self-absorbed dimwit ROBERT Seigel for NPR allowed an obviously inflated resume to get away with a a very loopy consideration of The Holocaust ( 1939-1945), not only unchallenged, but candied with typical NPR lick-spittle.

Robert Siegel interviewed the author of  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

The basic theme of the tome is that Hitler the total Statist Monster was anti-Government, like some Tea Partier and destroyed States ( government protects Jews as well as Julias!)  that he did not take a shine to, like George W. Bush, and was not so much an human malevolence, as he was addicted to tales of the American West. Al Hitler allowed States like France, Holland and Norway to continue and Jews were just ducky!

Now, for the real villains -USA!

Doic Snyder says that the 7th Cavalry inspired the Einsatzgruppen to play Garryowen when knocking off Yiddish Commie Comanches.

It is not enough to study history, writes about history, or contribute to a 'the conversation, ' American academics must be recognized as 'public scholars.'  Here is one.

Profesor Tim Snyder of Yale.

 Hitler and men and women of his generation grew up in the late 19th century aware of what was happening in the United States, understanding it as an example of a successful land colonization, as a successful example of wiping out native peoples and transforming a whole region. So he saw the Americans as an inspiring example of what could be done.. . . One of the lessons of the Holocaust is that when you face choices between ideology and science, you should first see if science offers you solutions, and I mean this particularly in a time of climate change in which real shortages of food and real shortages of water are just around the corner.

Remember the Holocaust?  The one that took place between seventy and seventy-five years ago?  Well, forget it.  Ignore Elie Weisel.  Ignore Buchenwald.  That stuff was just the reification of Hitler's watching too many American Westerns.

Yep.  The Old Paper Hanger got hankerin' to do to Communists . . .You Know Jews?   . . .what Old Cump Sherman and Phil Sheridan did to indigenous peoples in North America.

Damn them Washington Redskins!

Deny evil. Deny the  two decades of lebensraum memes from Old Al and deny Mein Kampf and accept aDoc Snyder's hot new way to dismiss the murder of 6 millions Jews and remember that Hitler was pretty damn nice to French, Dutch and German Jews.

America inspired (1939) and inspires ( all current) genocide, says Professor Tim Snyder.

This horseshit is was passes for public scholarship.

The Settled Science of Silliness 2008 to Present (ex libris Hickey)

Minds are settled.

The New York Times ran a TV commercial  a few years ago in an attempt to capture more subscribers by way of touting the Weekender. The people in the ad are universally obnoxious, prissy, snotty and self-absorbed. To me and nearly every person I come into contact with every day, real people cops, foremen,teachers, City workers and the odd billionaire, all of the actors playing real New York Times readers seem like they were hand-picked by the DNC. One of the 'real readers' is an faux bald obnoxious goof in a turtleneck glasses sweater and horn rimmed who hisses 'It's in the Times and that settles it.'

That settles it. Think no more, search no more, accept a prissy meme and be happy.  All is well.

The problem is . . .there are more settled minds in America than is healthy.

Political discourse was fun at one time.  Since Obama took the White House and even a little before, chats about culture, religion, science and public policy artists at the City, County, State, National and International levels devolved into this dialog I had with an old friend in July 2008 at a fund raiser for a sick child at 115 Bourbon Street.

" Hey, Hickey! How's your McCain work going?"

I'm not working on McCain's campaign.  I plan to vote for him, if he gets the nomination.

" He's nuts!   You met Obama; how could you not be for him?  You've been a Democrat all your life."

I still am a registered Democrat.  Yes, I have met Obama, as head of the Woods Fund, at the Snow Flake Ball before Bobby Rush handed him his ass, at several family parties  and when he asked me how the hell I expected him to get into a boxing ring, when there is "No Gate!"  Obama is a very dumb guy, but looks like he could open a box of Wheaties without a tutorial and I can not stand the people behind him.

" Oh, like me?"

No. Like Abner Mikva and all of Hyde Park creeps running Richie Daley. Look he is run by Valerie Jarrett who is one of the nastiest vipers on the edge of the public trough.Only today, the Sun Times had the story of Obama's $1.1 million dollar gazebo giveaway to a connected pal in Englewood and we could not get the goof to endorse a grant for us at Leo, the entire time he was in the State Senate.  He tossed $100,000 to a campaign worker for a gazebo that doesn't exist.    It is in the Sun Times today.

" Awhh, @#$% You and all your right-wing pals!'

My right wing pals?  I don't ever drink tea.

That settled any future exchanges unrelated to weather and the robust state of my physical health.

Settled.  People who ask you what you think are not even remotely interested in your thoughts - You know the reified things that used to bus us to the conclusive idea, or opinion we hold at moment.

"How do you like my Onion and Garlic Cake with Maple Syrup?"

( generous exploratory mouthful and swallow) Gee, I think I am about to vomit.

" Awhh, @#$% you and your Food Channel pals!"

We are settled.  Settled things that require absolutely nothing more than a conclusion.

• Climate Change?  Settled  
• Science? Settled.  
• Donald Trump?  He's Really, really, really honest and thoughtful!  
• Mayor Rahm Emanuel? Fiscal Sophistication and Great for Organized Labor! 
• Abortion Videos ?  Please. 
• Pension Problems?  Politicians are Crooks and Not Our Fault, Because We Only Voted for Them!  
• Blackhawks' Patrick Kane?  Guilty!  
• 9/11?  Bush Killed Millions More - Noam Chomsly said So! 
•  Patriots' Deflatgator Tom Brady? Guilty?  
• Black Lives Matter? Shut the@#$% Up, Racists!  
• Cops? As if! Haven't You Been Watching CNN/MSNBC?
• Obama's Iran Deal?  No Wars Ever!

Facts and shared truths?  See Talking Points Memo, or Rush Limbaugh

I am unsettled.  Ask me.

Parodies Lost, or Milton in Monee

Outside of Crete- Monee, Illinois is a massive trucker stop and in it long-distance knights of the road can get a shower and meal. A question was posed to the hard-biten by life, 'I have-witnessed it all and change' fry cook and proprietor, Billy Foy.

One Ace of the Highways dropped in and posed playful questions of the onion and spuds chopping master of the house, launched his lanky as he launched his haunches onto to the rotating stool and asked, "Hey! How have you been, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Hey, How have you been, Smelly Billy?"

Without looking up from his labors, the truck-stop Rick Bayless snorted, " I have been sleeping with your wife, she fills a hole my life, But she's a dumb thing and doesn't  seem to bother."

Unfazed the jimmy engine-braker continued, " Did let she you in house, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Did she let you in our house, Fetid Billy?"

Flipping the diced Vidalias and Yukons, the Monee mess masher handed back, " She opened her garage, where was parked your vintage Dodge, and we nailed things right on your back-up starter."

The lanky road warrior was abashed, " I'll have the spinach - pie, Billy Foy, Billy boy. I'll have the spinach pie, Mephitic Billy."

With the contempt of Agamemnon for Menelaus, the Cretan cuisinier turned and said, " You'll get better than your wife, there's the door, I gotta knife ( snort) How about Chun King, or the #$%^ing salmon platter."


If this reminds you of anything, it really shouldn't.