Sun Times Editorials Add Up, Only If You You Really Stink At Math

I took a sound beat down every day from Sisters Doralese and Gertrudis, ( Sisters of Mercy ,bye the by) through Sixth and Seventh Grades at Little Flower Grammar School in the mid-1960's, due to my profound inabilities where numbers are concerned.

Pay attention, or I'll give something to whimper about . . .' take the sum of any . . . .' and shave that mustache, Boyo!

In Eight Grade, I took B Honors, because the nun I had thought that I was someone else and graded accordingly.

I did learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide and fractions.

The Editorial Board of the Chicago Sun Times?  I would have been proud to have them sit around around me in those swell desks bolted to the hardwood of Little Flower.  I would have been spared a few cuts and thrashings, from the two Irish women, my Bogman Grandpa Hickey called 'Life's Unplucked Flowers,' when women were present, or 'hairy-faced old Galway Bitches,' between the two of us.

The Chicago Sun Times thumps its Saltine-like chest and thunders like Governor Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles, because the Workers Compensation Payouts are not like New York City's and that the Finance Committee is operating according to the rules of its charter.

The City paid out a whopping 115 million dollars 2011, but no where in the editorial is proof of illegality.

What the editorial amounts to is this - the City is bleeding dollars from the public schools, the CTA and special relationships like this between Friends of Richie Daley and Valerie Jarret in real estate swindles that add up actual theft.

In same edition is Watchdogs ( Tim Novak who investigated Obama/Rezko/Jarret/Allison Davis slum real estates in 2008, but magically vanished around election day), but appears again with Vanecko lad, in keeping with the  paper's Kochman bleatings.

The editorial deals with John Dewey Math (there might be theft Q.E.D. there is!) and Watchdogs in math that Archimedes could understand.

Now, Lookee H'yar!
Here’s how the Davises and Vanecko handled the pension money, according to documents obtained over the past nine years from the five pension funds.

• $9.9 million was lost on the purchase of the 344-unit building at 1212 S. Michigan Ave. Using pension money, Davis and Vanecko paid $65.2 million in September 2006 to buy it — and sold it about five years later for $65.5 million. The pension funds never got any money from the sale.

• $2.8 million was lost on two loans to the owners of the Chicago Defender’s former home, a boarded-up building at 2400 S. Michigan Ave. It’s unclear why DV Urban lent pension money to developers Brian O’Connell of LaGrange and his partner, Matthew A. O’Malley, a politically connected restaurateur who has been battling City Hall over a sweetheart deal to operate the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. After a bank foreclosed on the Defender building, O’Connell and O’Malley sold the property in 2014. The pension funds didn’t get any money from the sale.

• $2.65 million helped DV Urban pay $11.7 million in 2007 for a commercial building at 217 N. Jefferson St. The building was sold last year for $14.5 million — one of the deals that helped the pension funds recover $6 million.

• $6.5 million was used by DV Urban toward $11.5 million it paid for a 162-unit apartment building at 7100 S. South Shore Dr. It was sold last year for $6.75 million, helping return some money to the pension funds.

• $3.5 million went toward $4.2 million DV Urban paid for the stores at 3508 S. State St., part of the CHA’s redevelopment of Stateway Gardens. The pension funds hope to sell the land this year.

• $16.9 million went to loans to developers of 3030 N. Broadway, where a Mariano’s store is being built, and to buy adjacent land at 3013-17 N. Waterloo. The property is expected to be sold this year.

• $4.2 million was invested with the firm Sydney Partners, which paid $10.5 million for a 15.6-acre industrial property at 3348 S. Pulaski. DV Urban leased part of the space to the city. But, beset by environmental problems including polluted soil, the property was sold for just $5.4 million in 2014, and the pension fund money was lost.

• $4.5 million was earmarked to buy the former headquarters of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ Chicago branch at 1411 S. Michigan, next door to the Chicago Firehouse restaurant owned by O’Malley. The deal ended up in court when DV Urban backed out of the deal, asking the letter carriers to return the money — which the union had used to build its new headquarters. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but the pension funds lost all of their money.

Now, I was taught round off decimals at .5 and adding these here figures comes to -

$30 M in losses from City Worker Contributions to Pension Funds - no how about that?  Might call for a old timey stem-winder of an editorial!

Instead, Michael Shakman beefed that he was not getting his cut from Ed Burke's Finance Committee and the harrumphing went viral.

$ 30M is a not, to be sure, a whopping 115 million dollars paid out to workers compensation claims according to the existing law and rules, but $30M in real loss to people who trusted politicians and had their savings picked clean by Progressively Approved Valerie Jarrett slumlords, just might be investigation worthy of city newspaper.  Nah.  Gentlemen, we goota protect our phoney baloney jobs!

Now, here is smelly part.  While cops and school teachers took an investment beating that would have warmed cold-hearts of the two above-mentioned Sisters of Mercy.

Valerie Jarret's slum-lord partner ( Valerie is somehow absent from Tim Novak's investigation) Allison Davis and one of the Vanecko boys made out like porch-climbers.

“The investment was effectively a total loss for DV Urban,” says Miller-May of the teachers pension fund.
DV Urban was paid $8 million in management fees between 2006 and 2012, when the pension funds got permission from a Delaware judge to fire the company.
A little over $1 million, for property-management fees, went to a company owned by Cullen Davis*, another Davis son, who oversaw some of the apartment buildings bought with pension money.
Another $1.7 million went to two companies, including Newport Capital Partners, to manage the DV Urban portfolio and sell off the assets in an effort to recover as much money as possible for the pension funds.
Beyond the money lost on the investments with DV Urban, the pension funds also had to pay $2.5 million for attorneys who fought the firm for two years in courtrooms from Chicago to Delaware over control of the real estate investments.

That's $13 million in money looted from City Workers and tucked in the wallets of slumlords added to $30m in losses comes to a very real $ 43 M beat down of City Workers, not a possible boondoggle.

Where is the editorial on this one?  Somethings don't add up.  Like editorial three-monte providing cover for Rahm, while doing absolutely nothing.

Alderman Ed Burke is playing according to the rules approved by the City of Chicago and he does seem worried a bit nor should he.  He knows this is not newspaper, but a daily political fog machine.

* Like the Ayers/Obama papers held hostage at Cement City, better late than never.
Whenever I am near a Progressive Do-Gooder, I throw both hands over the Left check of my ass to protect my wallet.
Whenever a Progressive Do-Gooder gets near poor people, they rake in millions, properties get boarded up, and people die.

Smearing a Justice - The Poison of Progressive Bad Ideas is the Breakfast of Champions

Bad and chemicals and Bad Ideas are the Yin and Yang of madness -from Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

I had an exchange with a young Progressive teacher recently.  This person is smart, but, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut poisoned with 'bad ideas."  We were discussing youth boxing programs.  I stated that The Leo Boxing and Celtic Boxing programs did more for poor inner city young men, than activists, race hustling political priests and tweedy academics.  In our exchange Gandhi came up and I noted that lawyer Gandhi was not averse to actually showing up early and helping others to set-up chairs, as far cry from media hungry street agitators and activist.  This teacher responded that Gandhi was " better man than our late Supreme Court Justice, Scalia, who sat in his chair and took this county back 100 years. Gandi did not harm anyone working with a chair...but Scalia's politically/religious motivations continue to help the wealthy and hurt the poor. He was pro birth and anti life"

The young teacher applied the talking points (bad ideas) right out of Talking Points Memo - a script warehouse for group thought

This is nothing new, shocking, or something required to be ignored by the media. They will and do.

The trouble comes when people accept and never challenge bad ideas.

Justice Scalia was a towering intellect and probably the greatest Supreme Court Justice, since Oliver Wendell Holmes - the Great Dissenter.

However, immediately upon his death the folks at Bad Idea Central began to smear Justice Scalia and it continues.

Bad Ideas are the coin of our realm, I am sad to say.

In his hilarious and humane novel Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut's protagonist, Dwayne Hoover, is mentally ill.  In Vonnegut's way of thinking,  human beings are just 'large rubbery test tubes' and we are filled with either 'good chemicals, or bad chenicals' - Sometimes 'bad chemicals' sit deep in our bodies like fused explosives that will only go off, when triggered by 'bad ideas.'

Vonnegut, who was raised as an atheist by German American Free Thinkers seriously doubted free will.  He disliked religion entirely.

Free Will was something that Vonnegut thought was a dodge, created by organized religions. Rather, we were products of some cosmic crap-shoot and endowed, by No One, with either good chemicals, or bad chemicals and introduced to good ideas, or bad ideas.

Vonnegut seemed a very good, kind and wildly thoughtful man.

Today, I think he might  agree with me that our American condition is quite mad - nuts, milky in filberty, off the chump, crazier than rodents in that old timey out-house.

I do not necessarily believe that our God-given human make-up is a crap-shoot.  Neither did the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia believed that human beings are free agents and the Law was provided to protect, check, or correct the choices we make as individuals and citizens.

Bad ideas abound, because bad ideas are agreed upon and forced down the throats of Americans.  The bad ideas are rooted in group thought.

This morning, I read the latest "Kick the Corpse of Scalia" in  The Washington Post, 

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 11 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.
After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.

The piece goes on to 'suggest' -in an investigative report - but no where reports a nefarious plot in involving Justice Scalia with some crypto-Masonic Catholic Odessa File billionaires.

A Secret Society? They must not be trying too hard.  Hillary's e-mails and Obama's college records stay hidden in plain sight to the American media 'investigative reporters."

I want Glenn Greenwald to fire up The Guardian and all of his satellite hipster-doofus websites to get to the bottom of Justice Scalia's possible membership in the Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles!*

I read this piece of "investigative journalism" and thought about Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions(BoC). Wheaties is not the BoC, but the martini's served to Dwayne Hoover by a wise-cracking waitress, which adds to his Cosmos-given 'bad chemicals.'  Wheaties had Bruce Jenner on its boxes at the time it was published in 1973 - how about that?

Justice Scalia will never appear on a box of Wheaties and, unless bad ideas get called out for what they truly happen to be, more young, earnest teachers will help the Talking Points Memos - Our National Warehouse of Bad Ideas - murder memory, shared truth and our country.

Speaking of Bad Ideas: Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Breakfast of Champion, anyone?

* I am a member - inducted 1972 by Buzzy Lawson, Ma Fleming's Saloon at Swedes in Delavan, WI.

If Cooking Matters, Go to Rosario's !

After Mass this morning, I'll take a swing over to Rosario's Sausage,  because I read a story about a man who tried to trade a baby for fifteen Big Macs.  Mother of God.  This poor gluttonous louse stole a baby, only to barter for food that would gag a maggot.

Please note the photo that I chose for this piece (it tells the story )-  over Rosario's is a corporatist road sign distracting drivers' attentions from a business worthy of their coin.

I tried to keep my children from Mickey D's, not because I am food snob, or nutrition Nazi, but because the entire corporatist Ronald McDonald Clown Happy Meal net offends me to the marrow.

Families make better foods than corporations. Wal-Mart offends me because it makes people lazier and murders generations of family businesses on main streets universal.  I was anti-WalMart long before the Brooks Brothers Bolsheviks of SEIU leadership.

For hamburgers and hot dogs my kids went to Pop's at 111th Kedzie, Top Notch on 95th, Fat Tommy's on 111th and the now closed Wonder Burger at 110th & Kedzie.

Pizza Hut, Little Caesar's and Domino's were all verboten in Casa Hickey.

Whether or not those lessons impacted, I am not sure, but at least they were presented, like going to Mass on Sunday: " You belong to the Club; you go to the meetings."

For good cooking, ingredients matter.  Rosario's makes great sausage daily and  the place opens at 9:30 A.M. and will be packed.

I am making Penne ala Vodka Cream Sauce for two.

I could go to Jewel(s), Mariano's, or Pat and Jacks for Italian Sausage, but am cooking for someone I love, respect and like to see smile over a plateful of my efforts.



Rosario's, like the long-gone Sardi's in the Old St. Mary of Mount Carmel parish on 69th Street back in the 1960's-70's, is place where the respectful buy Italian meats, spices, cheese and condiments worthy of the genre - Italian Cooking.

I will have big pot of lightly salted

This a temple, a sanctuary of sausage perfection and family owned purveyor of priceless products for modest purses.

There is also the neon sign showing pigs and cows only too delighted to leap into the meat grinder like straight-ticket Ward Democrats at a polling place.

I will buy the spicy sausage ( out of casing) and brown the hell out of it over medium heat in a Olive oiled caste iron skillet.  No need for the McCormicks crushed red pepper flakes and so I will add four cloves of crushed garlic, one small red onion chopped to the Rosario's goodness, until brownish.  I will add a 28 ounce can of  Red Gold brand crushed tomatoes with the liquid and cook until eye-ball reduced,  Then I will add three shots of good vodka and cook for a good while - timer be damned,

Lastly, in goes heavy cream and chopped basil and a pinch of oregano.

Withe penne cooked to the tooth, in it goes like the happy cows and pigs and gets a thorough tossing in a skilletful tasty.

I will plate with Basil, crusty Dago bread and hand grated Parmesano.

Our world has family owned, loving and true treasure like Rosarios Sausage.  Skip the convenient. Go for the genuine

Rosario's Italian Sausage
8611 S Pulaski Rd, Chicago, IL 60652

Pope Francis Goes All Robert Frost on the Trumpster

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

I like Pope Francis; can't say much for Donald Trump other than he knows exactly how to PT Barnum alot of people.

The Pope gets a bad rap, because the Media  likes to parse his words and drive bigger wedges between people.

As far as immigration goes, you never see or hear of people beating down the doors, swimming rivers, hazarding the oceans, or slipping under razor -concertina wire to get into Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela.

America is great because of capitalism. Oddly, the very people who have amassed great fortunes because of that fact have given birth to people like David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls who want to see America become Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who shouted famously, "Tear Down This Wall" and conservatives, liberals, rich and working folks cheered mightily?

America has rich people . . .no really.

It also has, thanks to the well-larded efforts of David Rockefeller, Katerina Van Heusen, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, a disappearing Middle Class.

The American Middle Class was created by the very tensions, compromises and common sense sparked between the people of great wealth and the working class ( Real Labor - the skilled private sector trade unions) in often bloody conflict.  Peace did out. The American Middle Class is the greatest economic and social justice miracle in history and the people like  David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls are embarassed by that fact. The Middle Class is, was and always shall be despised, used and intimidated by the elites.

The Middle Class is toxic tosocialism and much more offensive to pure Marxism. American Progressives were not born out of the working Middle Class.  They were and are very wealthy people who use that wealth to force policies and laws meant solely to eliminate the Middle Class.

Immigration, refugee suffering, voter registration of illegals and Sanctuary Cities are examples of the compelling narratives and faux coversations that develop policies and legislation used by the very wealthy, university educated and politically intimidating Progressives who want an American oligarchy - very few people of wealth and power.  The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty and Law Center, the 501 (c) 3 mega-bucks policy birthing foundations like MacArthur, Rockefeller, Joyce and Woods Funds position billions of dollars toward the ends that will bring this about.

Donald Trump knows this and uses simple, crude, loud and well placed sentences and paragraphs out into the atmosphere intended to gather good people into his camp.

Pope Francis is a priest.

They both know that a wall, a border, or a fence is merely a metaphor - so is a bridge.

What is ignored in all of this hoohah is the fact that Donald Trump is no different from the very people who insist that the American Middle Class disappear, like work of the elves in Old Bobby Frost's poem.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

Well, as Frost notes, " it's not elves exactly."  Hell, no it is David Rockefeller, Katerina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls and Donald Trump, his own bad self.

The American Media is Progressive. The American Media love Donald Trump as much as David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, because it knows Trump wants the very same thing - an American oligarchy.

Something there is that does not love America and the American Middle Class - it ain't Pope Francis.

A Simple Way to End Urban Slaughter -Kick the Policy Wheel in the 'Old Loving Tackle'

pol·i·cy 1  (pŏl′ĭ-sē) etymology: [Middle English policie, art of government, civil organization, from Old French; see police.]
           n. pl. pol·i·cies
1. A plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters: American foreign policy; the company's personnel policy.
2.
a. A course of action, guiding principle, or procedure considered expedient, prudent, or advantageous: Honesty is the best policy.
b. Prudence, shrewdness, or sagacity in practical matters: It is never good policy to speak rashly.

After widespread criticism of Chicago's yearlong delay in releasing video of a police officer's fatal shooting of a teenager, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday that the city will begin releasing video of shootings by police within two to three months of each incident.
Emanuel cast the new policy as a break from the past for a city that has been sluggish in releasing recordings of controversial police encounters, though civil rights attorneys said the policy still allows for too much delay. Chicago Tribune

The word policy comes from the Middle French word for police.   If It Ain't Policy It Gets Ignored. Policy begets lawyers, lawsuits and future policy. Hence the Policy Wheel 2016.

The Policy Wheel whirls dervishly! Hell, it is making Western Civilization -now a microaggression in its utterance - disappear.

More importantly, Policy kills police officers and good policing by police women and men; yet, politicians apply policy universal for political gain and then demand good policing of police officers who stand a very good chance not going home at the end of a shift.

Policy is used by everyone - usually to no good effect.  Gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities in all walks of life turn to policy to make decisions they do not wish to stand with, punish the people who work for them, make budget cuts in the workforce, deny access to funding programs they want to see ended and point to when called on the carpet by some higher-up, gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrity.

Here in Chicago, when a Mayor steps on his Johnson, he points to the failed policies he inherited with taking his oath of office - “On the police use of force, this is not [new]. Everybody knows we have had other issues as it relates to the Abbate case, the Burge torture, the Summerdale [district scandal]. Every mayor, my predecessors — have dealt with this in one way or another,” Rahm Emanuel

Then, announces new policy -"(The task force) helped the city take a bold step forward, in a comprehensive way, to establish the rules going forward that are clear to everybody," Rahm Emanuel

Politicians ( Policy Breeders) want to make sure that their policies have the backing of the University of Chicago Crime Lab Boys - who already articulated the very 'policies' that have turned Chicago into a thug comfort zone - This from the U of C Crime Lab:

" Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations."

The University of Chicago Crime Lab? Good lord. Arrive at pre-conceived conclusion and then round-up the necessary facts to 'prove' it. What PC nonsense and what political ninnies. N.B. " Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We ( University of Chicago Gobshites) need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations." from the UofC Crime Lab: about us.

The frontier of "policy innovations" - geld cops and scuttle justice. Epic fail - scientific facts are indisputable!

That crappola is what Cook County will use to end urban slaughter - Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart calls it a 'home run.'

N.B. - Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations
You mean like -CeaseFire: Safe Zones: Gun Buy Backs the much put-upon IPRB: the Wrongful Everything Industry . . .?

Political worms working the loam.

Here in the action-packed world of urban Catholic education, policy worms its coils and attempts to be like CPS, a policy laden monster of titanic ineptitude.  Failed teachers, educators and too many administrators, hug policy - especially ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY.

I told a Catholic high school principal once that "policy is for . . . ."  I used a word employed pan-gender to indicate possession of a female reproductive organism, . . . a synonym for See You Next Tuesday that begins with the consonant P.

If a student violates dress code by wearing a black polo instead of a seasonal white polo, go up ask the student why.  Perhaps, there had been a laundry mishap. Do your job.  Don't hide behind policies Zero or Robust!

Policy comes from like-minded gutless,lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities found in our more prestigious colleges and universities.

The University of Chicago not only built the atomic bomb, birthed scores of conservative Nobel Prize winners, but also forests of pages of policies that became Yellow Brick Road for Forrest Claypools, Richard M. Daleys, Rahm Emanuels and Barack Obamas.

In short, policy aborted thought, vision and charity quicker than Kermit Gosnell with baby's noggin and sharp scalpel in his bloody mitts.

My humble plea to restore thought, vision and charity to all human aspirations and endeavors is this -

When a politician, bureaucrat, activist, Ralph Martire, or school administrator utters the word policy, policies, or equine scat like this:

Our other goal is to ensure that policymakers have adequate feedback about what their innovations are accomplishing so that policy approaches get better over time. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the standard for testing innovations in medicine, they remain far too rare in the areas of crime policy and social policy more generally. It is very difficult to identify the causal effects of policy interventions in the real world, a problem that can lead to unhelpful or even quite harmful policy decisions. Without good evidence, policymakers have no basis for allocating scarce public-sector resources across different potential uses other than hunches and politics.

Kick them, or a have much more athletic and robust friend do so, squarely and honestly in the balls.

It is an empirically tested and proven scientific fact that a good, well-aimed and swift kick in the nuts, will end any and all idiotic inclinations.

When people depend upon shared universal truths, witness their small place in human society and acknowledge the Prime Mover, then, and only then, will thugs be punished for their crimes.

Homicides may diminish, but gutless, lazy,unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities will think twice before using the P-Word. 

I Am Dust - Ash Wedensday 2016

"By the sweat of your face/you shall eat bread,/till you return to the ground,/for out of it you were taken;/for you are dust,/and to dust you shall return."  Genesis 3:19


I am dust.

Today, is the first day of the rest of my life - Ash Wednesday, a day we Catholics and many Christians use as time remebering Christ's 40 days in the desert fending off Satan.

I have not fended off Satan.

I am dust, bone sinew, lard, muscle and ego.

Jesus was born in Roman occupied Palestine more tha 2,00 years ago with me in mind. He was later tortured, scourged, mocked, crowned with thorns and crucified with me in mind.  He rose from the dead and Triumphed over sin, death and despair with me in mind.

My problem is was and has been that I do not keep Christ in mind.  I allowed myself to listen to Satan and put things above people.  I am an afflicted - self afflicted  - gambler. Satan still has my ears of the last few months. I forget how blessed I am.

Today, I will remember how blessed I am and I will take ashes and pray and fast try to give Satan the 'not welcome here' mat.

Ashes - I am Dust.