I.C.E. ! Wolf! Hysterics of the Media and Real People

Dick Durbin goes Matlock in solidarity with people who will not be swept up by I.C.E.

I live in the real world.  I work in the real world.  I work at a huge Bakery/Packaging factory in Alsip, IL.

So & So Snacks makes cookies, pretzels and wildly over priced gluten free crackers for affluent, mildly educated white people.

In my time with this company, I have made the gluten free 100% cheese crackers and now package and pallet them for shipping.

I an one of three non-minority majority ( African American, Latino, or Mexican) workers among the more than 100 in Gluten Free ( aka 'Nasty Crackers") production and shipping.  The vast majority of workers are Mexicans and most likely immigrant - I have no idea, much less care about their legal status - Mexicans are the greatest workers. 

By greatest I mean this.

• They struggled to get to this country by the most perilous path and many lost loved ones in the process
• Mexicans sing while doing the most dull, onerous, difficult and messy tasks
• They use break-time to help out their 'neighbors' on other lines - pretzel and cookie dough workers help the cracker stackers
• Mexicans do the work sniffed at by black and white Americans as 'too degrading' until the native born get shamed into picking up their end of the tasks
• They never drink, smoke dope, or snort cocaine during working hours
• Mexicans stay until every aspect of the job is completed and the work stations are properly cleaned for the sanitation crews to come along and prepare for the next shift
• They sing and laugh - Americans piss and moan

These past weeks the American media ( papers, cable, TV and radio) shrieked about Immigration ( I.C.E.) raids, not unlike those black and white images from Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List -colorized of course, blared from every outlet and useless idiots like Senator Dick Durbin

moued before the cameras wearing Matlock Suits, while hair-gel'd dimwits like David Muir warned that jack-booted Trumpian thugs were coming for brown residents - ON SUNDAY!!!!!

I went to Mass on Sunday and our altar boys and their parents were on hand.  Pout of curiosity, I took a swing by the Cracker Factory and Mexicans showed up for over time work, as well as the Blue Hair-netted Line Bosses ( Mostly African American).  

I was off work today, as I needed to repair an Apple I-Pad that I will need when I begin teaching in three weeks.  Before, I drove to Jet CO Device Repair on North Wells, I popped over to work - there were Lette from Durango, El Padrone from Mexico City, Jospehina from Durango, Emma, the opera singer, from Vera Cruz, Matin from Toluca, Martina from Sonora and the balance of the gang.

I was greeted with, " Oye abuelo ¿Dónde está tu ropa de trabajo? ¿Vas a ir a Indiana de nuevo?

In my best Spanglish I replied, "¡No, bebés! Quería ver si Trump te atrapó a ti y a los niños."

They laughed and waved me off on my way. 

Our news media will turn this country into a fascist state before too long.  

It operates on fear and hysteria and depends upon un-inquiring minds and nodding caitiffs to fulfill its mission to make America an oligarchy. 

Americans are most certainly the least inquiring of minds. 

Let us pray they retain some courage of genuine conviction. 

DNAinfoChicago R.I.P.: Ye Hardly Knew Ye.

I read DNAinfoChicago from the get-go.   It was, at first. a great news aggregate that offered local coverage.

I gotta go with Joe about its demise, Joe Ricketts, that is, the Cubs' Grandpa, “And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”

News coverage of local events became less devout and political hack-work seemed to ooze from every column.

DNAinfoChicago somehow morphed into the detested MEDIA.  Same old, same old.

Solid writers like Mark Schipper and Ed Komenda disappeared and activist group-think writers dominated the coverage.

Most telling for me was the awful coverage of the idiot who pulled a gun on people after he was asked to not block the entrance of the firehouse on 111th Street.

The idiot was shot and killed, when he aimed his weapon at people.

The idiot had been celebrating a relative's funeral by weaving in and out of the heavily trafficked lanes of 111th Street, the commercial district for the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.  Traffic stalled and the Hossier Hothead acted out with his weapon and his mouth.

I had had my haircut on the site of the violence and where the dope met his demise, only an hour before the folly.

However, DNAinfoChicago  reporters, Joe Ward especially. conflated identity politics, race-baiting and social justice warfare with what had taken place - Marist high school was placed in the cross-hairs and community scab-yanking over imagined and occasionally accurate racism became the menu all of the month of November 2016, until the facts un-Pflegered the story.  Joe Ward never once considered covering the Revolutionary Communist Party's orchestration of the post shooting protests.  That would have chopped his narrative.


The DNAinfo Joshua Beal mythology can be found here, because the archived yarns are shut down.
Joe Ricketts owned the site and Gothamist and decided to close shop.

Conflated coverage of the news is what the detested American media is all about.  People want to know what is happening in their neighborhoods.  DNAinfoChicago tried to do that and ended up being another detested outlet for prefabricated opinions.

The Sun Times, owned by the public service unions, did a hit piece on the news of DNAinfoChicago's demise, not unlike the covergae of the late Mr. Beal:

A week before the shutdown, the Gothamist and DNAinfo newsrooms in New York voted to join the Writers Guild of America East, which released a statement Thursday saying “it is no secret that threats were made to these workers during the organizing drive.”
In a September post entitled “Why I’m Against Unions At Businesses I Create,” Ricketts wrote on his personal blog of his belief “that unions exert efforts that tend to destroy the Free Enterprise system.”
“I believe unions promote a corrosive us-against-them dynamic that destroys the esprit de corps businesses need to succeed,” Ricketts wrote. “And that corrosive dynamic makes no sense in my mind where an entrepreneur is staking his capital on a business that is providing jobs and promoting innovation.”
According to a New York Times report, 115 reporters from the websites who are now out of a job will receive three months of paid “administrative leave” at their full salaries, along with four weeks of severance pay.

Joe Ricketts was right.   Joe Ricketts gave his employees a pretty decent severance package.  More than an SEIU janitor can expect when all of the public funding has dried up.

So, we say goodbye to DNAinfoChicago.  Goodbye.

Thanks for the shot at news coverage Joe Ricketts.  It was appreciated by people like me, until the good writers disappeared.

Next time you set up shop, hire writers and tell the 'journalists' to get a union card and get fitted for a purple T-shirt.

The Devil and Donald Trump, or Strike Tents, Don; Sounds Like the Old Scratch Won

I'm a White Sox fan.  I know the thrill of almost getting there.  The delight of watching back-to-back hits to the gaps and the balloon popping disappointment of leaving two men on - inning after inning.

I also watch politics - a rigged sport - like old time Bob Luce Pro Wrestling, or Women's Roller Derby.    The Democrats, controlled by the nut-bag Progressive wing of American politics since 1972, and the GOP, run by the Nels Rockefeller-Chuck Percy moderate doormats since the 1960's, is a push-me-pull-you spectacle sport that gets ever more soul-sucking and sad.

Donald Trump is the product of this cynical enterprise.  I believed Candidate Trump to be a gross, loud, boorish and vain man.  I was wrong. That is his shtick and it works. It sucks the oxygen out of the room.

I really believe that President Trump wants to end the Dem-GOP perpetual taffy pull and drain the swamp, pool, or puddle that makes a Daniel Webster want to be convicted along with Jabez Stone.

This wonderful American story is no longer taught in our public schools and far too many of our Catholic schools.

Daniel Webster is an American historical figure, chosen by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet as the core character for his legend the Devil and Daniel Webster.

The Devil, Old Scratch, is a soul-sucking lobbyist, with piles of money at his command.  He lures a New Hampshire son of the soil, who is very down on his luck, Jabez Soul with a contract offering earthly wealth and honors, so long as his soul goes to OLD SCRATCH, Llc. for eternity.

Today, the soul is a secular punchline and laugh button for Bill Maher and latte night TV.

Congressman Daniel Webster, not to be confused with Senators Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Susan Collins, or John McCain, is a rock-ribbed Union Forever American Patriot.  He is no maverick. Webster is no moderate and would never appear on Rachel Maddow, or Sean Hannity.  Webster died and is buried:

Yes, Dan'l Webster's dead−or, at least, they buried him. But every time there's a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, "Dan'l Webster−Dan'l Webster!"  the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake.
And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, "Neighbor, how stands the Union?" Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock−bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, that's what I was told when I was a youngster.

Me too.

Durbin, Collins, Schumer and McCain chirp,  "Neighbor, How's They Polling?"   Maverick up!

They all work together and not for the State of the Union.

Donald Trump wants to change things and change does come easy, unless it is candy-coated in good old American bullshit, like the last eight years of Obama Hope & Change.

Old Scratch has The Union by the throat and is not letting go.  Obama Care is making too many people richer at the expense of everyone else.  Tax reform will never take place as long as 1/3 after a thick retainer means anything.   America will not be allowed to be Great Again, because the global oligarchs are winning.

When Jabez Stone wanted to weasel out of his contract, like any good Yankee Unitarian, Daniel Webster was forced to face a rigged jury of the worst traitors, cut-throats and back-sliders in American history, up to the 114th Congress anyway.  Old Dan'l reminded the louses of their birth on this soil and appealed to their Nativist love of country.    <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bXfU2AaJDEQ?list=PLWX-t5q2SkI0xslMuPftjy6mCioqZx_em" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Can't appeal to that anymore.  Faust has no sense of any universal truth - Americans are mavericks, no more Alamo, Valley Forge, or Khe Sahn for New York Times subscribers and listeners and viewers like Angie's List, Prudential, Northwestern Mutual and the Alliance for Climate Change.


Donald Trump is the President of the United States for a now.

I have a feeling that after yesterday's GOP betrayal on Health Care Reform, the traitors in the White House including the new guy, who already leaked to Ryan Lizza about his war on leakers, and  that Old Scratch has real cut-throats and crumbs in the jury box - no lightweights like Benedict Arnold, Edward Teach, or Simon Girty.

• David Brock' sAmerican Bridge
• Hollywood
• Neo Cons: McCain, Graham et al - "There's War Needs a Startin'"
• George Soros Move-On enterprises
• The Clinton Machine
• The GOP
• The Media

Strike tents, Neighbor Trump, or do something smart.  Now. Scratch wants his pay-out.

Next up - White Sox play Cleveland at home. Get excited, expect the let down.

President Trump and the Media - A Full Press Court in Vinegaroon, USA

You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty. Roy Bean

Much of Trump's cluelessness about issues stems from his refusal to make more than a minimal effort at his job. As his comments about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War confirm, Trump is not merely too lazy to learn; he's too lazy to notice there is anything others know that he might need to. His is indolence on an epic scale. Steve Chapman

 Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.- Truman Capote

The American media is as judicious in its treatment of President Trump as that sound voice of due process from Vinegaroon, Texas - Law West of the Pecos.  Judge Roy Bean is now working under many pseudonyms - Frank Rich, Dana Milbank, E.J. Dionne, David Brooks, George Will, Billy Kristol, and Kat6rina Vanden Huevel. The Judge has morphed into whole editorial boards at Washington Post, New York Times and even the hick burg rags like Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.

Only months ago, Judge Roy Bean had been Truman Capote to Barack Obama - smooching the patron and hissing at everyone else and then Trump won.  Lord the change.  The Resistance!

Me?  I just read the papers - most of them and then some.

Here is the Cinco De Mayo, 2017 sampling of Trump Thumping from the New York Times in Headline  Real journalism. Like nowhere else.

EDITORIAL

• The Trumpcare Disaster

SUNDAY REVIEW

• Mexican Drug Smugglers to Trump: Thanks!
• Trump’s Civil War Comments: Right and Left Reactions
• By ANNA DUBENKO
• A roundup of partisan writing that includes three political myths Mr. Trump has helped to bust and a comic you won’t believe.
• Obamacare Repeal Faces Senate Hurdle
• Fact Check: Is Congress Exempt From the Bill?

 Then,  I read a deceptively titled story -President Trump Returns to New York for a Brief First Visit - Home Boy President?  Nah.

This was a "We Ran Him Otta Town!"  piece by Michael Wilson.  NY, NY!

The Rube Media here in Chicago is mildly amusing with daffy screeds by lightweights like Rex Hupke, Mary Schmich, Eric Zorn and the Bruce Dold editorial ink.  The worst of this sad lot is the Tribune's own David Brooks JV player Stephan Chapman - The Minority of One, his own bad self!

Donald Trump has many worrisome, regrettable and even deplorable traits. But after studying him for the past two years, I have concluded he has an overlooked quality that cancels out many of his bad ones. Say what you will, the man is lazy.
This is a discovery that should gladden people of all parties, philosophies, races, sexes and religions. His detractors can be glad that he will never muster the drive or discipline to actually bring many of his worst ideas to fruition. His admirers can rest easy knowing he will not work himself to death.

 Really? Trump has been like an horny rabbit on bennies putting the blocks to the Obama Legacy - nothing for everyone, BUT Obama and his peeps. 

Lazy?  Chapman was right with his opener "Donald Trump has many worrisome, regrettable and even deplorable traits."  Can't argue that.  But, the lick spittle who munched Obama's rump for eight years and more should have stopped there,

There was a great line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Roy Bean-like character exclaims, "I'm not crazy; I'm just colorful. That's what happens when you live "( 8 years alone in a Banana Republic)-, "you get colorful! " Then he is shot dead.



Judge Roy Bean was colorful.   The Press is crazy.

John Kass Coins Brilliant Neologism - Supine Journalist and Oligarchy Sycophants are American Kemalists

Kemalism (Atatürkcülük) is the main structure of realistic ideas and principles about the state, ideologies, economics and the society’s fundamental institution that assure the Turkish Nation’s full independence, peace and welfare for the present and the future, the state’s being dependent on the nation’s solidarity Oxford Islamic Studies

One thought, one voice - that is the resistance.  From Michael Moore to Bruce Dold; from Nancy Pelosi to Rahm Emanuel; from Mika Brzezinski to Sheriff Tom Dart they are one in the spirit and one with the laws, policies and editorials that create more opportunities for Red Light Camera Companies, Uber Board Membership, Gentrification Aldermanic Generosities, and Nepotism leading to Dynastic Sinecures!

The Chicago Progressive Banana Republic was replicated nationally for eight years with the Obama White House.

From the Progressive Mikva Shakman Chicago of the 1980's there evolved the many faced Richie Daley's Ameritech Chicago, Boeing Chicago, LaSalle National Chicago, Fifth Third and Goldman Sachs Chicago and finally in full flowering fruition as Brand Obama Chicago, which it still remains with Rahm.

This oligarchic tendency is national and not limited to the City formerly known as Big Shoulders, but a coast and coast tendency blooming in New York and walking the red carpet in L.A.

The vast middle opened the door of the White House for the Obama moving van on November 8, 2016 and the howls have increased in volume from David Brooks to Eric Zorn, from Lynn Sweet to to Sally Kohn - TRUMP'S HITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, cupcakes, Hitler is still Hitler and Joe Stalin would be as welcome as the flowers in May on Morning Joe.

However, the only voice in print journalism un-impressed with, un-Hope-iumed and un-shackled by the Obama Chimera, John Kass offers a more compact nomenclature - American Kemalism, to describe the need, the plead, and greed that it corporatist statism covering American left culture like a Scherwin Williams ad.

In a brilliant rhetorical Granby taking the dominant voices of oligarchy to the mat, John Kass pins the supine media of the Obama Years:
But this business of finding a renewed sense of journalistic mission poses an awkward, unanswered question.

Just where was that sense of mission for the past eight years?
You know where it was. It was in polite hibernation, on its back, with President Barack Obama in the White House.
When he was elected, there were happy newsroom tears of real joy for America's first black liberal president. It wasn't contrived emotion. It was real, and there was much bonding over a sense of accomplishment.
But there is a cost to powerful emotional connections with a politician. Love of a president can blind, but so can hatred of a president. And in the land of the blind, things tend to get lost, like journalistic mission.

One might wonder.

But John Kass is a great neighbor and he not only clears up the matter of the skunks behind the dry wall, but shoos them out.

Now journalists are at the barricades once again, like those idealistic students of Paris in "Les Miserables," protecting us against the orange-haired barbarian they so very much despise.
And they also seek to protect America against his populist army, that forgotten working class that sent him to Washington and that frighten them so very much.
Trump despises his media critics, and in his raging narcissism, shrieks that what we call the establishment media is "the enemy of the American people," and this only encourages them to hunker down even deeper into their Left vs. Trump bunker.
Yes, the criers of Beltway news are on the political left. But that's like saying rain is wet. Where's the surprise in this?
Modern American liberal journalism might not believe religion has a place in the public square, but it has a deep abiding faith, in government to accomplish the good. And there is the danger.
Because if journalists were truly intent on speaking truth to power, they wouldn't be defending the unelected rulers of America:

One slight objection: Les Miz is so Bill Clinton.  These are Hamilton Partisans!

However, the guy from the Hood who can sling ink and say something, puts the cherry on this sundae with this neologism and a nod to Busty Brzezinski of Morning Joe:

 The unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucracy is true power. The federal governmental leviathan is the faceless vanguard of the status quo. It is the vast hiding place of our modern American Kemalists, who are at once the servants of empire, and its quiet rulers, and they will not relinquish power easily.
Trump was sent to Washington by the majority of the states and by his voters — those folks repeatedly mocked and ridiculed as deplorables by Beltway journalism — to break that status quo.
And the bureaucracy fights back, offering crippling news leaks and resistance against the White House — even classified intelligence leaks from the Deep State — in exchange for journalistic protection.
On the popular MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, co-host Mika Brzezinski responded to whether Trump's attacks on the status quo were the fulfillment of campaign promises.
"Well, and I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media," Brzezinski said, "trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is the — that is our job."
Later, she tweeted out that her comments were purposely misinterpreted, but I listened to it again and again and it was quite clear to me.
Controlling what people think isn't a mere job. It's a mission.
And now it's been renewed.

Journalism is not dead.  It written by neighbors.

American Kemalists are outed. 

American Media - Our Own Oroville Dam: Thank You, Mrs. Conway!

The Conways




The American Media

News hucksters paved Donald Trump's path to the White House and wasted every brick trust in so doing.

People who wanted to see an end of to the global corporatist oligarchy built by Progressive Democrats during during the Clinton years and tuck-pointed by GOP mavericks and Skull and Bones opportunity trowel masters, hoped for Scott Walker or Rand Paul, or James Webb, or Ben Carson to emerge from the political hair-ball that was 2016 Election, but due to CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post and  Internet-pockets of pimply Journolism at Salon, VOX and Daily Beast bet that Donald Trump would suck all of the air out of atmosphere and blow life into Hillary Clinton.

These people, me included. turned to Donald Trump as the only choice and hoped that he would be better than he seemed.

He was and sure seems to be - Michael Flynn notwithstanding.

I read that Morning Joe, as well as CNN has banned Kelly Anne Conway.  Good.  Kelly Anne Conway makes sense and confounds airheads like busty Mika and vapid Joe.

Mrs. Conway belongs to my crowd of people. People who shop main street, send the kids to Catholic school, speak plainly, understand the nuances of bullshitters and respond in kind, work for a living and care about the truth.  She does not 'only watch PBS, read the New York Times, or admire David Brooks.'  Mrs. Conway reads everything and also speaks with people who can not put a dime in her purse. I am getting to like Trump, because of Kelly Anne Conway.

My neighbors feel the same way.  I mean my neighbors who do not have Shakman exempt jobs with the City of Chicago, or the County,  Those folks say little, except " Can you BELIEVE Trump is President ?"  Why, yes.  Yes, I can and do. Most others say, " Trump's doing what he said he'd do.  This could work."

The media has become the Oroville Dam. That creaky California concrete weir poised to collapse at the next drop of rain.

For years Jerry Brown and other unicorn collectors have allowed the infrastructure to rot, while they pumped millions of dollars into human give-away programs and feel good unfunded mandates.

The dam is busting.

For decades the American journalism has worked the cult of personality and befogged debate with memes/

The dam is busting.


Kelly Anne Conway can not go on CNN, or Morning Joe.

Well, done, Mrs. Conway!

President Trump - Write This Quote Everyday and Remember It.

 

I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see...
Ralph Ellison (b. 1914), U.S. author. The narrator, in Invisible Man, prologue (1952).

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is the greatest American novel. No other work of prose fiction speaks to the soul of this great nation than this book, written by an African American and scorned by African American activists, because he refused the term.

Ralph Ellison captured the urban, rural, white, black and brown hues as discretionary camouflage for the root humanity in every man.

James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) joined the white liberal literary establishment in vilifying a black man who preferred the term Negro and demanded to be treated as an artist, a craftsman and human being rather than a celebrity with a big mouth.

If the Negro, or any other writer, is going to do what is expected of him, he's lost the battle before he takes the field. I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance--but it must be acceptance on his own terms. Perhaps, though, this thing cuts both ways: the Negro novelist draws his blackness too tightly around him when he sits down to write--that's what the antiprotest critics believe--but perhaps the white reader draws his whiteness around himself when he sits down to read. He doesn't want to identify himself with Negro characters in terms of our immediate racial and social situation, though on the deeper human level identification can become compelling when the situation is revealed artistically. The white reader doesn't want to get too close, not even in an imaginary recreation of society. Negro writers have felt this, and it has led to much of our failure.  

Too many books by Negro writers are addressed to a white audience. By doing this the authors run the risk of limiting themselves to the audience's presumptions of what a Negro is or should be; the tendency is to become involved in polemics, to plead the Negro's humanity. You know, many white people question that humanity, but I don't think that Negroes can afford to indulge in such a false issue. For us, the question should be, what are the specific forms of that humanity, and what in our background is worth preserving or abandoning.  The Paris Review

Ellison knew he was more than a demographic, a victim, a celebrity, a mouth piece. He was a man in full.  Invisible Men, the cop the teacher, the guy ( Dennis) selling the Sun Times at 79th & The Dan Ryan every day in any weather, the EMT who shows up and saves Granny, the guy at Wells Fargo saving your mortgage from disaster and the check out lady at Jewel who places your groceries in Heavy re-usable bag because you forgot yours are the same.

Donald Trump says he is for the Invisible Man - all of us.

Let's pray someone gives him Invisible Man, in some form, or at least the quote above,

The news media will Mau-mau Trump even if he turns ink into gold and go the way of James Baldwin, Leroi Jones and the white liberal ruling classes who are clamoring to end our democracy.

President Trump, I know you can not hear me, nor read me, but write the above quote every day - writing it makes you remember it.

If President Trump remembers Ellison's quote and his campaign mantra, America will become great.

Social Justice, Pope Leo XIII and the Inauguaration

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need  Karl Marx

Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labour, nor labour without capital. Mutual
agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces
confusion and savage barbarity Leo XIII

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the open form compound word social justice to the year 1824

Cathoic Social Justice began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum.  Prior to that bandits preyed upon peasants, capitalists prey upon workers and followers of Marx preyed on Guilds and the Knights of Labor.

Catholics and many other believers from different faiths were encouraged to seek justice and treat one another with dignity.

Today the acronym SJW is a misnomer. It is now a pejorative tossed at the self-anointed prophets of divisive activism - usually on the left of things.

Yesterday, I gave my Theology III juniors a test on a unit covering Rerum Novarum and the advent of Catholic Social Justice.  The gentlemen did very well.

One problem asked that they identify Pope Leo's 'duties of workers'

• to perform conscientiously the work they have freely agreed to do

• not to damage the employer’s property or resort to violence

• not to have anything to do ‘with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful

promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss’

I asked that they use themselves, when thinking about the workers.  These are sixteen and seventeen year old males. They get it.

Through the past American two holiday seasons,  the news media has flooded the atmosphere with wailing and gnashing of teeth, by our most familiar Social Justice Warriors of stage, screen, television and of course the public teat - our Progressive elected officials.  This torrent of anguish and dire threats about our futures incites anger and uncertainty among the angry and the uncertain.

Today is the day of the dire threats.

FRIDAY J20
Early Morning Blockade Actions:
Movement for Black Lives
Trade Justice
Climate Justice
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Labor Direct Action
The Future Is Feminist
Qockblockade Brigade: Queer Resistance on J20
Communities Under Attack Fight Back!
more to be announced
9am  Outdoor Convergence Space @ McPherson Square opens
10am Anti-Capitalist Anti-Fascist Bloc @ Logan Circle
12pm Festival of Resistance, permitted march starting @ Columbus Circle
2pm Rally at McPherson Square
SATURDAY
Preparing for the Trump Era: What Anarchists Are Doing, 5-8pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
SUNDAY
What’s Next After J20? DisruptJ20 Debrief & Next Steps, 6-9pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
Events in DC

I will teach class.  Then I will correct papers.  Later, I will try and drive to Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL and watch Brother Rice tussle on the hardwood with the Fighting Irish. Tomorrow, I will sleep until 5:30 and do chores. On Sunday, I will attend 8:30 Mass at Sacred Heart Church and then enjoy a jazz concert in Hyde Park, followed by Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap cheeseburgers and fries.

Our 45th President will take the oath of office and move into the White House.

Let's see what happens.  Then let's begin to ignore ‘. . . men(women) of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.’

Old Leo got things right. 

Trampas or the Virginian: Trump and The Spooks and the Supine Media

 

Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect.
The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair - and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published.
'Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,' he said.
'Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI.
'That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.' The Daily Mail

“the document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent.” Ben Smith Buzzfeed

Super. Pretty wet out there with all the leaks, Golden Showers, Sobbing spooks and CNN unabe to fathom the fact that the Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to work.

So yesterday the media and the clubby spooks got a nose bleed.

I immediately thought of Owen Wister's great novel - The Virginian.  This is a novel more about the constructive and community forming application of words, than it is about the single show-down and gun play.

The character known as the Virginian is opposed to the glib, cowardly and shameless Trampas.  The Virginian will allow a friend, a person with whom he has shared danger, laughs and a few drinks, to call him an S.O.B. any minute of the day.  He will not tolerate, however, any malicious tag to sit in his aura for a second.

Five or six players sat over in the corner at a round table where counters were piled. Their eyes were close upon their cards, and one seemed to be dealing a card at a time to each, with pauses and betting between. Steve was there and the Virginian; the others were new faces.

“No place for amatures,” repeated the voice; and now I saw that it was the dealer’s. There was in his countenance the same ugliness that his words conveyed.
“Who’s that talkin’?” said one of the men near me, in a low voice.
“Trampas.”
“What’s he?”
“Cow-puncher, bronco-buster, tin-horn, most anything.”
“Who’s he talkin’ at?”
“Think it’s the black-headed guy he’s talking at.”
“That ain’t supposed to be safe, is it?”
“Guess we’re all goin’ to find out in a few minutes.”
“Been trouble between ‘em?”
“They’ve not met before. Trampas don’t enjoy losin’ to a stranger.”
“Fello’s from Arizona, yu’ say?”
“No. Virginia. He’s recently back from havin’ a look at Arizona. Went down there last year for a change. Works for the Sunk Creek outfit.” And then the dealer lowered his voice still further and said something in the other man’s ear, causing him to grin. After which both of them looked at me.
There had been silence over in the corner; but now the man Trampas spoke again.
“AND ten,” said he, sliding out some chips from before him. Very strange it was to hear him, how he contrived to make those words a personal taunt. The Virginian was looking at his cards. He might have been deaf.
“AND twenty,” said the next player, easily.
The next threw his cards down.
It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not speak at once.
Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a—.”
The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: “When you call me that, SMILE.” And he looked at Trampas across the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their positions.
“Sit quiet,” said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. “Can’t you see he don’t want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to back down or draw his steel.”
Then, with equal suddenness and ease, the room came out of its strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco, glasses lifted to drink,—this level of smooth relaxation hinted no more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of the sea.
For Trampas had made his choice. And that choice was not to “draw his steel.” If it was knowledge that he sought, he had found it, and no mistake! We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to style “amatures.” In no company would the black-headed man who had visited Arizona be rated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation.
One doubt remained: what kind of a man was Trampas? A public back-down is an unfinished thing,—for some natures at least. I looked at his face, and thought it sullen, but tricky rather than courageous.
Something had been added to my knowledge also. Once again I had heard applied to the Virginian that epithet which Steve so freely used. The same words, identical to the letter. But this time they had produced a pistol. “When you call me that, SMILE!” So I perceived a new example of the old truth, that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life. The Virginian Owen Wister (emphases my own)

The Media makes me want to shower.  The spooks ?  Who knows from spooks?

The Voice of "Emerging Nations" Parses Obama's Philippine Blunder

He has also insulted President Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila.
Duterte has prompted international criticism for pursuing a harsh crackdown on the drug trade in the Philippines, one that has left thousands of people dead. Some of Duterte's headline-grabbing insults have been defiant reactions to criticism — real or hypothetical — over an initiative that many say violates human rights. NPR

I can not turn-on NPR or PBS without a cooing voice with a faux BBC accent or reptilian lisp lick-spittle-ing a yarn about 'anything' from an emerging nation.  Thus, 'This is Nigel Brow in Wogrograd - we are soon talking with Mbnbi Al-Offis-Rockah. a bi-sexual father of fifteen and devout Muslim-Unitarian who isa craftsman and dealer in illegal AK-47 display cases much desired by Euro-American plutocrats.  Offis Rockah's signature-edition cabinets are in-laid with Rhino tusk and soaked in the vanishing creature's musk, due to climate change upon our emerging world and Polar Ice flows. . . .'

That seems to be  the 24/7 chant on our government funded Mini-Tru, but we do still have Prairie Home Companion to balm the souls of hemped-up AARP Birkenstock-ers, retired from Goldman Sachs and spooning up Ben & Jerry's.

This week in our sinking nation, Americans are aware of the fact that Trump is a disgrace to HBO and Hillary Clinton can't lose on November 8th.


Meanwhile the Russian Fleet sailed triumphantly on both sides of the United Kingdom: English Channel and Irish Sea.  Many of my BBC addicted Irish kinfolk are as delighted with Putin's mooning of NATO and the United States like this gobshite, known in Chomsky-troll circles as PeaceGroupie:

The terrorists' groupies( the West) would have us believe almost all houses in east Aleppo are hospitals and schools. They have claimed on multiple occasions that the last hospital/doctor had been hit/killed. The rebels looted all the hospitals they captured. In Mosul and elsewhere, they executed medics who did not collaborate with them. They slaughtered medics and patients alike in Kindi hospital in Aleppo.
The US and NATO who regularly murder Syrian civilians (the Belgians killed more today) are in a soft war against Russia and so they accuse them of bring naughty. Contrary to what Michael Martin said, Russia did not bomb that UN convoy. The rebels did. They have a history of doing such things.
Russia is doing a noble deed in Syria. Several of its soldiers have paid with their lives for their heroism. They have stopped the USA and its ISIS proxies doing a Libya/Iraq/Yemen on Syria and for that they are heroes. (parenthetical my own)

The BBC and NPR love the academic-contrarian parsing of things.  Putin is wagging his willy at Obama, whose spineless and Bizarro-world view matches the BBC and NPR Derridavan weltanschauung .  Goodness!  Barack Obama is now GW? Emerging!

Well, we must break a few eggs in the global omellette pan.

The old global omelette pan welcomed the Philippines last week as well!

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in June, 2016.  Between June and October, the foreign policy collective of the Obama White House managed to condescend to, mock, alienate and insult Duterte enough that the entire Pacific Rim stands to fall under Red China's hegemony.

Brand Obama sneers at people who get upset when they are 'talked-down to' by an elegant community organizer with razor sharp pants creases and an obtuse Daily Kos world view.

Again, turning to the Plain People of Ireland, besotted with the BBC/OXFam anti-Semtism and fashionable MetroMarxism, we pick up on the spiritus mundi -

The Filipinos have a long and living cultural connection to China and have only benefited from its American connections in becoming a sweatshop, whore house and secutity buffe, which has only caused them strife and harm.
I've talked to Africans who have nothing but praise for the Chinese set ups in their homelands. Consistently, they tell me that, unlike westerners, the Chinese treat them as equals/ Like Africans, Pinoys have a decent level pf education and a keen work ethic.
Via one of my hobbies, I've a fair few Pinoys that I talk to and they are stoked by Duterte after the false start that was the corrupt Aquinios. Filipinos are not Americans nor even western but have been forced to wear systems that are not reflective of their ancient cultures, which emanate from places as far away as ancient Persia and as close as Indonesia. The common connection of those 2 influences is direct justice.
A few years ago, the Filipinos made the film Amigo, a reminder of the American regime at the start of the last century. Duterte has brought the massacres of Pinoys by Americans back to the agenda including what was done in Mindanao and even further south. This has been well received and is having a healing affect throughout the archipelago whereas Aquino et al inflamed the struggle in the south
In a country where police corruption is just the done thing, Duterte has appealed straight to the people and given them the right to do what must be done because the Filipinos are not the whores and weak people that the west has made them, they are the people of Lapu lapu, the spirit that sent Magellan to his death.
Mabuay(sic) Duterte!  

Mabuhay means - Be Spirited in Tagalog - sort of a Google Translate Viva Duterte!


The same sentiments abounded with my Irish cousins and compadres, when Hugo Chavez was Bromantic with Barack Obama. Brits as well.  The BBC, RTE, the Guardian and Irish Independent speak the same propaganda as our NPR and PBS - tweedy, snotty and elitist non-sense.

Obama and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are fabulous dopes.

Nevertheless, they have destroyed America's place on the world stage, retreated cravenly from every challenge by tinpot and crack pot dictators. bloomed and manicured ISIS from the last dying cuts of the Muslim Brotherhood, turned the Pacific over to China and have given Putin the global gangway!

Our response? Well, the fabulous dopes are baffled and called Duterte the Filipino Donald Trump.

How do you like your global omelette?

Mabuhay America, we have a tough row to hoe, before breakfast.

ABC Disney's Meat Puppet George Gives Hip Hop Slip Mahoney and Hillary " The Last Word" - And Some Folks Say the Media "Fix is In." No. Really?

DYSON: I'm with her ( Hillary Clinton). My money's on her.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That is the last word for today. Thank you all very much.

Gee, a  media sanctioned and self-styled public intellectual is hoping hardway for Mrs. Clinton and the first rat off of President Bubba's sinking ship, George Stephanopolous fades America!  That is some craps, G!


The Media ( ABC,CBS, NBC, Disney, GE, Sumner Redstone, MSNBC, CNN) want Hillary Clinton to replace Barack Obama. Fair enough, but let us not pretend that things are fair.

This Sunday on ABC we were treated to a tubby loudmouth talking over the other guests and the in-the-tank for Clinton host encouraged incivility.

One of the dumbest of the many puffed-up jerks who write for Big Media is Eric Michael Dyson.  Dr. Mike worked on the  Chicago Sun Times at a time when real journalists worked there -notably the late great Ray Coffey - Dyson had a teaching gig at De Paul which was in its early stages of being Chicago's vraiment bizarre Catholic University and invited the Hip-Hop Slip Mahoney (remember the Late Leo Gorcey) to draw salary and hand out inflated grades.

When not talking over someone else, Dyson murders communication like no one since Terence  Aloysius Mahoney




His column was nothing more than series of beefs about parking tickets and speeding violations accrued by Dr. Eric Michael and his friends, all attributed to systemic white supremacy and the fact that no one knows that Ptolemy was a proud black man.  Was Ptolemy his slave name?

This goof has a home in academics, as goofs universal always seem to spread the old bed roll among the ivy and moved on to Georgetown and other faux-Catholic warren of clowns in gowns.

You see, Eric Michael Dyson is an Afrocentrist motormouth jive talking  sesquipedalian Sportin' Life and Washington D.C. is no stranger to weirdos, cretins, goofs, perverts and grifters, * as Fox News has Busty, Leggy and Oh, My God She IS Gorgeous Women of Talent.  MSNBC, CNN, ABC and CBS try to have as many such Potomac hobos giving voice to elitist desires daily and heavy on Sunday.  Here's only a few of such weirdos, cretins, goofs, perverts and grifters known as Contributors -

• Anthony Weiner
• Rep. Chaka Fattah
• Rep. Jan Schakowsky
• Dan Savage
• Van Jones
• Rep. Allan Grayson
• Sen. Dick Durbin
• Ed Schultz
• Don Lemon
• Melissa Harris Perry
• Chris Hayes
• Ronan Farrow
• Katrina Vanden Heuvel

George Stephanopoulos was pioneer goof on Cable TV - kind of a Bolshevik beefcake for the Jacobin elites. 

Well have an election coming up in November that will be a choice between horseshit and manure.

The choices are obvious.

I am going with manure, because it has a purpose - a wicked self-interest, yet will make something grow.

Horseshit could be manure with a little time, patience and direction, but generally requires a diaper. or an army of Streets and Sanitation workers to clean it off of the streets and her husband left a hell a mess anyway. 

Disney, a corporatist monster that hijacked the dream of a wonderful man to sell sweat shop manufactured goods, while undermining American values and erasing its history, owns ABC and, along with the Saudi Royal Family a huge bankroll in the Clinton kick, wants horseshit.

Eric Michael Dyson is fine dispenser of horseshit.