The Man in the Iron Mask is Out and The Sun King Might get Eclipsed

"Louis XIV was a handsome young man with good health. “(Louis XIV) was graceful, dignified and awe-inspiring, if humourless.”  The Ancien Regime in Europe

'A man is held to be criminal,sometimes, by the great ones of the earth,not because he has committed a crime himself but because he knows of one which has been committed.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask


I can not stand Rod Blagojevich.  He is an remains a smirking jerk. In the 2002 Gubernatorial Primary, Blago campaign workers from the 19th Ward terrorized rival Paul Vallas's family, while he was out scaring up votes.   Campaign thugs scared Vallas's kids, but not his tough and lovely wife, Sharon, who had been a cop in the south suburbs.

Sharon Vallas scared off the tough guys, before calling the 22nd District.  I lived down the block from the Vallas family in the 19th Ward.

Some of my friends worked for Blagojevich, even though they knew Paul Vallas to be a man of rock-solid ability and integrity - he was their neighbor from 2525 West 107th Street, 60655.

Illinois State Senator Barack H. Obama backed Roland Burris in the primary. Obama would go on to become a US Senator, President of the United States and a Progressive Sun King and Blago his man in the iron mask.

Blagojevich won the Governor's Primary and Illinois State Senator Barack H. Obama got on the Blago bandwagon.   Blago won the Illinois gubernatorial race over GOP Attorney General James Ryan by 52%.


The skilled trades unions, like my Blago Backer 19th Ward neighbors, supported the Democrat Milorod Blagojevich.  The skilled trades unions would also enthusiastically back current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.  Like JB Pr\itzker after him, Blago was a Progressive governor who valued the advice and counsel of Rahm Emanuel and Mikva Mafia of Hyde Park.


Governor Blagojevich gave senior citizens free bus rides, said he was blacker than Obama( well his Illinois Health Care programs were a template for ObamaCare) and thought about making Oprah Winfrey a United States Senator, like old Roland Burris.  A close aid committed suicide, by swallowing rat poison over a garbage dump in Joliet, while he went on  Comedy Central.

Blago's bouncing ball of boorishness reached an apogee when he deigned to sell President-elect Barack H. Obama's senate seat. Tapioca as south siders say, 'All done!'

His wife was humiliated into going on Survival.  His kids were denied a father.  Blago was locked away and the keys were thrown away. The smirking jerk went to the joint.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife did serious time as well

Blago became the Man in Iron Mask and Barack H. Obama Louis XIV.

That is ancient history  Boo Radley became President in 2016 - Old #45, Donald J. Trump is poised to reclaim The White House.  President Trump is the most reviled Chief Executive in our history, no getting past that.  Like Blago, most of this detestation by the good and the phony, was brought on by his own words and deeds.

That said, this spirited man in the Oval Office has struck a chord with 47% of American people who love or accept him as a leader.  He is Boo Radley - everyone with a brain hates him.  But boo Radley was no villain.  A goof, to be sure, but no monster.

Boo Radley sprung Blago in a most politically and morally cynical effort to stir the merde. No one can whip up a cauldron poop, like Blago and now that Iron Mask is off his mug it is only matter of time before this arch-grifter begins to tell the truth on the protected frauds like Dick Durbin, President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, Mike Madigan and especially the Wizard of Weed and Admiral of Abortion Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and his kith and kin.

The Obama legacy and the tax-payer funded temple to his Presidency on public lands willl take the biggest hits.

Others will do some time in the iron hotel.

Personally,  I think this was an abuse of Presidential pardons, but I would love to see The Sun King get his smirk eclipsed.

The Man in Iron Mask is out and he will shoot his mouth off.

Meditation: Art - The Last Refuge For This Scoundral

 "The president is a study in intelligence, thoughtfulness and the ability to articulate and express himself in a clear and concise manner. " Thomas Frisbie, Sun Times Editorial Writer

Long Tom Frisbie is consistent and the Sun Times always delivers lip-service to citizen-taxpayers and rump munches for the oligarchs who ascended in 2008, blazed wildly and pop-fizzled into irrelevance on November 8th.

Cook County, the soil that seeded, cultivated and harvested the Obama Age Apogee( 2008-2016) that included the rise and fall of Pat Quinn and Rahm Emanuel, remains unaffected by the events, the messages and the spirit caused the Progressive Apogee to fall.

Like the Chicago Tribune ( Bruce Dold ed.), the Sun Times pretends that Obama ruled Camelot, when it fact it was merely Hollywood Squares.

Unlike Tom Frisbie, or Bruce Dold, I have not been anything but underwhelmed by Barack Obama, from my first encounter with him at Woods Funds, through his hack-work as a pass-along  seat occupier in the Illinois and U.S. Senate and his rather sad Presidency.

I remember more than a few of these public moments. when Barack Obama truly revealed exactly who he happens to be - kind of a dope:




Then there was this valediction for a Mass Murderer.

" At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans - in Cuba and in the United States - with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.
For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements. During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends - bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity. This engagement includes the contributions of Cuban Americans, who have done so much for our country and who care deeply about their loved ones in Cuba.
Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro's family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America." President Obama upon the death of a Dictator

Today, at Mass I thought about a story my late wife related to me.  Mary was an art teacher.  She told me a story that is probably apocryphal, but passed from one teacher to her.

An Art Teacher gave her class the opportunity to draw and color whatever they wanted.  The guys did dinosaurs eating jet fighters and the most of the girls smiling studies of themselves outside of their homes.  One little girl who did not care for art at all perked up and excitedly went to work.

The teacher walked over and asked, "Molly, what are you going to draw?"

"God."  was the answer.

The teacher said, " People don't know what God looks like, Molly."

Molly continued, " They will."

Art only works for the childlike.  Michealangelo, Duccio, Dali and Mary's Molly were all as children, like George Bernard Shaw whose death resulted from a fall from a ladder while pruning an apple tree.

You will never hear of Bob Costa, Chris Matthews, or Tom Frisbie doing the same.

Art gives us meaning in the same way faith directs our actions. Belief in nothing requires nothing of us - YOLO notwithstanding.

Read books; not the New York Times Review of Books. Enjoy a musical and not make a statement by gushing over Hamilton.

We will not find comfort among hacks.  We will not find meaning among hacks.  We can go very far towards meaning, by being like Molly.

We can study the childlike musings of Dr. Samuel Johnson who wrote the most prophetic study of the Obama Apogee in his poem London, 1738 : An Imitation of Juvenal's Sixth Satire.

 Since Worth, he cries, in these degen'rate Days,Wants ev'n the cheap Reward of empty Praise;In those curst Walls, devote to Vice and Gain,Since unrewarded Science toils in vain;Since Hope but sooths to double my Distress,And ev'ry Moment leaves my Little less;While yet my steady Steps no Staff sustains,And Life still vig'rous revels in my Veins;Grant me, kind Heaven, to find some happier Place,Where Honesty and Sense are no Disgrace;Some pleasing Bank where verdant Osiers play,Some peaceful Vale with Nature's Paintings gay;Where once the harass'd Briton found Repose,And safe in Poverty defy'd his Foes;Some secret Cell, ye Pow'rs, indulgent give.Let —— live here, for —— has learn'd to live.Here let those reign, whom Pensions can inciteTo vote a Patriot black, a Courtier white;Explain their Country's dear-bought Rights away,And plead for Pirates in the Face of Day;With slavish Tenets taint our poison'd Youth,And lend a Lye the confidence of Truth.

  from London 1738 by Samuel Johnson

I must remember to turn to Art and take the journalists for poisoners of Youth that they be - people who will never fall out of an apple tree.

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

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

Palin’s star has faded since she turned the Republican Party’s 2008 campaign into a theater-of-the-absurd production. But that star still shines with a small but very significant group voters that Trump needs. Although Palin became something of a laughingstock by the end of the 2008 campaign, a lot of conservative purists refused to laugh at her. Rather, they laughed with her—and many still do.

Palin’s favorable rating among Republicans in general has collapsed over the past seven years—from well above 80 percent when she joined John McCain’s ticket, to around 30 percent in recent years—but Palin can still headline a Tea Party rally and draw cheers. The most exaggerated conservatives, especially social conservatives, still view her as a “one-of-us” right-winger who believes what they believe. ( italics my own)

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

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

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

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

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

I find Sarah Palin to be all of these

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good old David Letterman loved that material, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day Two of Chicago' Blackout on News & Opinion Regarding Obama's Cash for Hostages

From Today's Chicago Tribune

I know that a star woman basketball pro is getting married to a woman of her same sexual preference and I could not be more . . . that's nice.

I know that pork is the cheapest cut of meat these days and that Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune has goaded Senator Dick Durbin into action that will have pig prices skyrocket in no time.

I know that water is the new Rahm Emanuel 9mm for drive by taxation.

I know that Obama says the cargo planes packed with 400 million dollars in cash sent to Iran the minute four hostages were released is just a distraction. Lifted from the Washington Post

Anything else?  The usual. Whitey is evil.  The Obama Library is in Jackson Park.

From The Sun Times

Even less.

Trump is bad.  Clinton is a woman. Daley kicked pensions down the road. Cops are really bad;worse than Whitey.

Lynn Sweet completely ignores the pallets packed with dollars and euros for Valerie Jarrett's clients in Tehran and giggles about the looming Obama Library and tweets that a Republican hates Trump.  Who don't?

I can't stand Trump, but at least he is not Hillary.

The Chicago editorial boards ( and too many of their opinion writers) are political stooges.  We are much better served by the rumor mill at Dunkin Donuts, or Kean Gas.

At  least rumor-mongers think for themselves.

I learned this from Reuters -

The Obama administration said on Wednesday that $400 million in cash paid to Iran soon after the release of five Americans detained by Tehran was not ransom as some Republicans have charged.
The five, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, were released on Jan. 16 in exchange for seven Iranians held in the United States for sanctions violations. The prisoner deal coincided with the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.
At the time, the United States said it had settled a longstanding Iranian claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, releasing $400 million in funds frozen since 1981, plus $1.3 billion in interest that was owed to Iran.
The funds were part of a trust fund Iran used before its 1979 Islamic Revolution to buy U.S. military equipment that was tied up for decades in litigation at the tribunal. . . .

White House spokesman Josh Earnest rejected suggestions the money transfer to Iran was ransom or a secret.

   "The United States, under President Obama, has not paid a ransom to secure the release of Americans unjustly detained in Iran and we're not going to pay a ransom," he said in response to a Wall Street Journal article that said Washington secretly organized the cash airlift.

Uh, huh.  Earnest Injun?  News to me.

Well, you can bet there will be nothing about cash to Tehran on the shelves of the Obama Library despoiling the landscape in Jackson Park so artfully designed by Freddie Law Olmstead in 1871.

The Public Relations Built Governments of North America!

Oh, Canada, Oh Say Can You See, Y Mexicanos, al grito de guerra !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Three stunning mediocrites created in an advertising studio, unchallenged by our media and follwed by masses of people who actually belive that they are talented

Trois superbes mediocrites créés dans un studio de publicité , non contestée par nos médias et follwed par des masses de personnes qui ont effectivement belive qu'ils ont du talent

Tres mediocrites impresionantes creados en un estudio de publicidad, sin respuesta por nuestros medios y follwed por las masas de personas que realmente creer que tienen talento


Mother of God!

Mère de Dieu!

¡Madre de Dios!

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.

Our World Needs Boats Full of Tough Greeks in Narrow Waters

I had a long chat with a pal living in Canada.  We talked bout everything from Leo High School to Libya, Chicago to Cairo, and DC to Moscow. We agree that neither of us could have imagined the condition of our planet today, controlled as it is by bullies and grifters. Chicago's Mayors ( Daley & Rahn) refuse to hire more police officers, but will gladly hand one million dollars over to wife-beating gang-banging pensioners to combat spiking homicides, rather than support cops sued for doing their jobs.   Putin gives asylum to a traitor and bullies our President six ways to Sunday all the while luring his victim into committing ground troops to Syria according to Putin's time table.

My friend asked me " How can you continue to live in the most corrupt city in America?"  I love it here.  Sure,  there is an astounding set of policies and those who support those dictates that ignore the murders by decrying despair as merely 'gun violence.' Sure, there are friends of mine who continue to devoutly believe that President Obama  is working to help the American Middle Class by doing everything in his power to obliterate it.  Sure, people who want my continued vote listen more carefully to Planned Parenthood PACs than people. Those folks 'evolved.' However, these are my people.  I am no stranger to bad choices, but with time, prayer and attention to circumstances have managed to defeat despair.  Likewise my evolved neighbors and friends.

 This Evolved Sensibility tells them that sticking with social sciences is the only sure means to alter chemistry, biology. physics, economics, and theology.  History is diminished.  Literature is deconstructed. Faith? Meh! Therefore, President Obama makes more sense to the evolved, who can parse away abortion and procreation, than history and common sense.

President Obama 'restored' America's standing in the world to pre-War of 1812 heights: thirty American embassies are closed only a three years after what cynical gents like me called his World Apology Tour.  Catholics for Obama helped HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebillius make war on religion by calling it Health Care.

We are yet a free people.  The world has always had bullies and grifters.  If we read history we know this and try to live accordingly.

Iran is a threat to world peace and so North Korea and so is Al Queda and so is Planned Parenhood and so is Vlad Putin and so is . . .Iran was called Persia up until the 1960's.



At one time a piece of work by the name of Xerxes hand whole world in his hands. Xerxes was a one man European Union.  There were Greeks for Xerxes who wanted a share in his New World Order that rolled over Babylon (Iraq), Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia ( Dafur & etc.) and most of Greece.

Xerxes armies slaughtered the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae only after only losing twenty thousand souls.  Xerxes how ever was a master of soaring rhetoric and political theater.  He ordered the burial of the twenty score thousand Persian dead, cut the head of Spartan King Leonidas from its corpse and left the rotting bodies of the Greek slain in the pass they had defended and encouraged Organizing for Persia to conduct tours of the battlefield for the more timid Greek populations.

Most Greeks did not buy the cam into the Persian media campaign and understood that a few tough Greeks could make a difference.    They abandoned Athens to Xerxes and went to across the pond to Salamis.  Should they fight, or flee,  or evolve?

When the commanders had assembled at Salamis from the States which have been mentioned, they began to deliberate, Eurybiades having proposed that any one who desired it should declare his opinion as to where he thought it most convenient to fight a sea-battle in those regions of which they had command; for Attica had already been let go, and he was now proposing the question about the other regions. And the opinions of the speakers for the most part agreed that they should sail to the Isthmus and there fight a sea-battle in defence of the Peloponnese, arguing that if they should be defeated in the sea-battle, supposing them to be at Salamis they would be blockaded in an island, where no help would come to them, but at the Isthmus they would be able to land where their own men were.
50. While the commanders from the Peloponnese argued thus, an Athenian had come in reporting that the Barbarians were arrived in Attica and that all the land was being laid waste with fire. For the army which directed its march through Boeotia in company with Xerxes, after it had burnt the city of the Thespians (the inhabitants having left it and gone to the Peloponnese) and that of the Plataians likewise, had now come to Athens and was laying waste everything in those regions. Now he had burnt Thespiai 3101 and Plataia because he was informed by the Thebans that these were not taking the side of the Medes.
51. So in three months from the crossing of the Hellespont, whence the Barbarians began their march, after having stayed there one month while they crossed over into Europe, they had reached Attica, in the year when Calliades was archon of the Athenians. And they took the lower city, which was deserted, and then they found that there were still a few Athenians left in the temple, either stewards of the temple or needy persons, who had barred the entrance to the Acropolis with doors and with a palisade of timber and endeavoured to defend themselves against the attacks of the enemy, being men who had not gone out to Salamis partly because of their poverty, and also because they thought that they alone had discovered the meaning of the oracle which the Pythian prophetess had uttered to them, namely that the "bulwark of wood" should be impregnable, and supposed that this was in fact the safe refuge according to the oracle, and not the ships.
52. So the Persians taking their post upon the rising ground opposite the Acropolis, which the Athenians call the Hill of Ares, 32 proceeded to besiege them in this fashion, that is they put tow round about their arrows and lighted it, and then shot them against the palisade. The Athenians who were besieged continued to defend themselves nevertheless, although they had come to the extremity of distress and their palisade had played them false; nor would they accept proposals for surrender, when the sons of Peisistratos brought them forward: but endeavouring to defend themselves they contrived several contrivances against the enemy, and among the rest they rolled down large stones when the Barbarians approached the gates; so that for a long time Xerxes was in a difficulty, not being able to capture them.

The Athenian Themistocles was like an old timey big city Tammany Hall politician who could toss bribes with the best of them in order to stop Xerxes.  He was surrounded by thoughtful, safe, considerate somewhat evolved community activists and elected officials who wanted to go along to get along retain their interests.  Themistocles understood that most people are blinded by self-interest, ignorance and timidity - who am I to say? types.

Themistocles heard them out -

So when they were gathered together, before Eurybiades proposed the discussion of the things for which he had assembled the commanders, Themistocles spoke with much vehemence 36 being very eager to gain his end; and as he was speaking, the Corinthian commander, Adeimantos the son of Okytos, said: "Themistocles, at the games those who stand forth for the contest before the due time are beaten with rods." He justifying himself said: "Yes, but those who remain behind are not crowned."

Themistocles went all NPR for a while -

60. At that time he made answer mildly to the Corinthian; and to Eurybiades he said not now any of those things which he had said before, to the effect that if they should set sail from Salamis they would disperse in different directions; for it was not seemly for him to bring charges against the allies in their presence: but he held to another way of reasoning, saying: "Now it is in thy power to save Hellas, if thou wilt follow my advice, which is to stay here and here to fight a sea-battle, and if thou wilt not follow the advice of those among these men who bid thee remove the ships to the Isthmus. For hear both ways, and then set them in comparison. If thou engage battle at the Isthmus, thou wilt fight in an open sea, into which it is by no means convenient for us that we go to fight, seeing that we have ships which are heavier and fewer in number than those of the enemy. Then secondly thou wilt give up to destruction Salamis and Megara and Egina, even if we have success in all else; for with their fleet will come also the land-army, and thus thou wilt thyself lead them to the Peloponnese and wilt risk the safety of all Hellas. If however thou shalt do as I say, thou wilt find therein all the advantages which I shall tell thee of:—in the first place by engaging in a narrow place with few ships against many, if the fighting has that issue which it is reasonable to expect, we shall have very much the better; for to fight a sea-fight in a narrow space is for our advantage, but to fight in a wide open space is for theirs. Then again Salamis will be preserved, whither our children and our wives have been removed for safety; and moreover there is this also secured thereby, to which ye are most of all attached, namely that by remaining here thou wilt fight in defence of the Peloponnese as much as if the fight were at the Isthmus; and thou wilt not lead the enemy to Peloponnese, if thou art wise. Then if that which I expect come to pass and we gain a victory with our ships, the Barbarians will not come to you at the Isthmus nor will they advance further than Attica, but they will retire in disorder; and we shall be the gainers by the preservation of Megara and Egina and Salamis, at which place too an oracle tells us that we shall get the victory over our enemies. 37 Now when men take counsel reasonably for themselves, reasonable issues are wont as a rule to come, but if they do not take counsel reasonably, then God is not wont generally to attach himself to the judgment of men."

Still no good -  he went all Mark Steyn on the lads -

61. When Themistocles thus spoke, the Corinthian Adeimantos inveighed against him for the second time, bidding him to be silent because he had no native land, and urging Eurybiades not to put to the vote the proposal of one who was a citizen of no city; for he said that Themistocles might bring opinions before the council if he could show a city belonging to him, but otherwise not. This objection he made against him because Athens had been taken and was held by the enemy. Then Themistocles said many evil things of him and of the Corinthians both, and declared also that he himself and his countrymen had in truth a city and a land larger than that of the Corinthians, so long as they had two hundred ships fully manned; for none of the Hellenes would be able to repel the Athenians if they came to fight against them.

Finally, Themistocles unloaded common sense on the waxed-up ears of the timid -

62. Signifying this he turned then to Eurybiades and spoke yet more urgently: "If thou wilt remain here, and remaining here wilt show thyself a good man, well; but if not, thou wilt bring about the overthrow of Hellas, for upon the ships depends all our power in the war. Nay, but do as I advise. If, however, thou shalt not do so, we shall forthwith take up our households and voyage to Siris in Italy, which is ours already of old and the oracles say that it is destined to be colonised by us; and ye, when ye are left alone and deprived of allies such as we are, will remember my words."
63. When Themistocles thus spoke, Eurybiades was persuaded to change his mind; and, as I think, he changed his mind chiefly from fear lest the Athenians should depart and leave them, if he should take the ships to the Isthmus; for if the Athenians left them and departed, the rest would be no longer able to fight with the enemy. He chose then this counsel, to stay in that place and decide matters there by a sea-fight.

Xerxes outnumbered the Greek Fleet by three to one.  Xerxes' fleet was smashed. The bully retreated.

Our Canadian/Chicago phone chat included a very poor redaction of my reading of Herodatus.  The guy on the other side of the wireless network is a very smart man and understood what I was trying to say about our world seemingly controlled by pagans, narcissists, bullies, incompetents and grifters - Now when men take counsel reasonably for themselves, reasonable issues are wont as a rule to come, but if they do not take counsel reasonably, then God is not wont generally to attach himself to the judgment of men."

God helps boat loads of tough Greeks in narrow waters.

"We Are ALL Redistributionists" Shouts Clarence Page ! Well, Two for Sure; Meet Jesse and Willard -The Marx Brother

"In fact, whether we Americans face up to it or not, we're all redistributionists now . . ." Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune 

A real Spartacus moment there Clarence! You know, when Kirk Douglas stands up to take his lumps from Sir Larry at the end of movie and Tony Curtis springs vertical with " I'm Spartacus!"  Then, John Ireland and then all the other extras, "I'm Spartacus!"  We are ALL Redistributionists!  Yes, yes, yes! I'm IN! Forward!

I am Willard!  I am Jesse!  Those are the two scamps who pinched hundreds of Benjamins from Campaign Forward - Obama 2012.  Clarence is a scamp his own bad self!

Clarence Page was recently under the 'hot lights' of Tribune editorial board over wetting his beak in an ethically challenged cash snatch from a terrorist bundling group:

Page’s crime? A breach of editorial policy. He failed to get advanced approval for a $peaking gig, and the group he $poke for, MEK, makes the Tribune nervous. MEK is an organization of Iranian exiles opposed to the current government and is currently on the State Department’s list of international terrorist groups.WBEZ July 3, 2012

WBEZ - a government funded news organ of record for everything Progressive parsed a bully narrative for Clarence.  He was doing only what any red-blooded American 1%er should do -grab some dough!  Clarence Page is getting checks from  The Chicago Tribune, syndication deals, Bruce Dold approved speaking gigs and of course Public Television not only brought to you in part with grants from Exon Mobile, the Joyce, MacArthur and assorted boarded and looted foundations, but also tax payer dollars. Redistribution of wealth!  Clarence gets mine. Yet, I get none of his.  Redistribution of wealth is a nice way of saying 'its okay, take someone else's money.'

Without going back to the roots of socialism in 1827 England sparked by Malthus and later Jeremy Bentham,Utilitarians, Philosophical Radicals, Marx and Engels, Hegel, Dewey, and all them folks, Redistribution is the key to votes and it costs money.  

Irony is best served up with white cheddar cheese popcorn, or reading the morning's edition of the Sunday Tribune.  Not only is there a serving Clarence Page's work for the Obama Campaign in the opinion section, but also a news item that graphically presents redistribution of wealth.

Bail was set at $100,000 and $75,000 today for two men charged with depositing two checks stolen from President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters into bank accounts they fraudulently opened.
A judge Saturday set bail at $100,000 for Jessie Adams, who allegedly instructed Willard Elam and another unnamed man who remains at large to open up bank accounts at separate TCF bank branches in the south suburbs. Adams is charged with one count of organizing a financial criminal enterprise.

Bail for Willard Elam, who is charged with continuing a financial crime enterprise, was set at $75,000 Cook County prosecutors said Elam and the unnamed man were accompanied by Adams and pretended to be business owners of actual companies that work with Obama's presidential campaign.

They opened up the accounts on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13 at TCF Bank locations in two different grocery stores and presented fake documents to open the bank accounts before depositing the checks, one valued at $24,857 and the other at $23,839, prosecutors said. 

A comptroller with Obama's reelection campaign caught on to the scheme when two companies complained they had not been paid. It was not immediately clear how the three men obtained the checks, prosecutors said.

Adams, 36, of the 1100 block of Spencer Road in Joliet, works for a general contracting company, and Elam, 48, of the 15500 block of South Drexel Avenue in Dolton, is a laborer, authorities said.

Police said Adams allegedly recruited Elam for the alleged crime.

Allow me to point out the number of uses of said (3)by the Tribune scribe as a paragraphic close -  well, said is the word well-said. Allegedly, of course.


It appears that the vetting process in the Obama Campaign takes a page from the mind of Clarence Page - It appears that our two cuffed and processed miscreant Marxists passed themselves off as business men.  They do have that Romneyesque quality of corporate person-hood, don't you think?  Real country club ( no, not Malt Liqour, you racist!) types, who wear straw boaters and white linen sack suits with collarless white cotton shirts as they croquet their way over the backs of workers.

Yep, Clarence says "If Romney really wants to give those low-income voters away, I'm sure Obama would be delighted to take them."

Now, these two 'pretended to be businesses men'' which begs the question - " Have Willard and Jesse paid taxes in recent years and are they in fact numbered among the 47% disdained by Romney and therefore embraced by Obama?  Hmmmm?

Were Willard and Jesse merely going home?  Finding the pantry stuffed and heaping board over-flowing with bounty to be taken by all within the warmth of the Obama 2012 hearth?

Home, Lads! Home.

If Clarence Page can find it within his heart to forgive himself for snatching a fee, but failing to cash it before Bruce Dold found out about it, I am quite sure that WBEZ can and will find a narrative to parse the motives and the actions of Willard and Jesse, the Obama 2012 Marx Brothers.

Redistribution - it's what's keeping you from dinner!
 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-two-suburban-men-charged-with-stealing-checks-from-obama-campaign-20120922,0,7185084.story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-were-all-redistributionists-including-romney-20120922,0,2597111.column

http://www.wbez.org/blogs/achy-obejas/2012-07/why-tribune-scapegoating-clarence-page-100625

Obama is No "Ward Hack." Ward Hacks Actually Do Something

 

Every Girl Crazy 'Bout a Sharp-dressed Man! -ZZ Top

The story of Barack Obama is that of a politician who figured out he didn’t have to wait his turn, who didn’t have to pay his dues, who could take on the Machine boys and beat them at their own game — with the help of a shrewd campaign strategist and image-maker to sell him on television. -Mark Brown

President Obama looks fabulous.  I have never met a Ward Hack festooned in hand-tailored Hickey-Freeman suits.

Mark Brown wrote a very thoughtful critique of the Hannity Meme Mummers today.  The Hannity Meme Mummers are generally GOP or conservative Dems who tag President Obama as a Chicago Ward Hack.

Fox's Hannity reminds all and sundry that he, Sean Hannity, discovered Bill Ayers and Rev. Uncle Crazy Jerry Wright in 2007. Uh, Huh. Obama is about as much as a Alinsky Radical, as he is a die-hard Sox Fan.
More so, Barack H(onolulu). Obama is more of a Sox Fan and Alinsky Radical than he is a Ward Hack.

Mark Brown writes:

Here we go again with this business about Barack Obama bringing “Chicago ward politics” to the White House. . . .But I still can’t sit back while others pretend that Barack Obama is just another ward hack who miraculously rose above his station — or that he’s “Daley’s boy.”

When this emerged as a campaign theme four years ago, here’s what I wrote:
“We have lots of prominent politicians in Illinois who were ‘born of the corrupt Chicago political machine,’ as the new John McCain campaign commercial so ominously puts it.
“Some have the DNA to prove it. Others worked their way up through the patronage ranks.
“Barack Obama isn’t one of them.”
I stand by that.
I stand by that — not having forgotten that Obama’s first two White House chiefs of staff were Rahm Emanuel (who, yes, first got elected to Congress with some help from Don Tomczak’s troops, but hardly owed the election to them) and Bill Daley, brother to former Chicago Mayor Rich Daley (who dismantled the traditional ward political apparatus because it only got in his way.) In the most important election of Obama’s life, the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, the mayor was on the sidelines.
Nor have I forgotten Obama’s strange real estate deal with the now-convicted Tony Rezko, his first big campaign donor. I’m still troubled by their friendship, and still waiting for the day we hear the whole story.

Me Too, Brother Brown.  I do not know President Obama, nor would he recognize me if I tossed through the windshield of the Presidential limo.  However, I have met with, spoken to and engageed our President on more than a few occasions.

• When he turned down requests for support of Leo High School in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, as Director of the Woods Fund, answering to Wild Bill Ayers.
• When he ran against most unsuccessfully against Congressman Bobby Rush
• When he attended the Falling Leaves Festival in Morgan Park
• When as an Illinois State Senator, he presented trophies along with IL Rep. Kevin McCarthy at the Leo Boxing Night at the Saber Room in Hickory Hills and asked me "where's the gate?" in order to enter the ring
• When I cooked Winston's Irish sausage and bacon before the South Side Irish Parade

They were brief encounters, as are most political cheek-to-jowl gabs, to be sure and I came away from each one warmly underwhelmed.  I did not see any there, there.  Unlike Ward Hack and Policy Wonk Paul Vallas who campaigned up a storm actually liked the people he asked to vote for him, Barack Obama is like the guy who says, " Hey! Enough me talking;; how much do you really, really, really admire me?"

Paul Vallas was lost to Illinois by the very same 'geniuses" who invented Tod Stroger, Toni Preckwinkle, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool and of course the old Turkish psy hereself, Jan Schakowsky.

Put it this way, when Barack Obama was pushed to the purple ( US Senate & Presidential Candidate), I was not surprised, but certainly not enthralled.  He did not seem to have the gifts of being a Ward Hack.  Ward Hacks, and I know legions of them, are singularly thoughtful. generous, energetic and most of all loyal to a fault.

Barack Obama impressed me only as one of the chosen Progressives that some of the powerful guys decided to create: Jan Schakowsky, Deb Mell, Deb Shore, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Rahm Emanuel, Toni Preckwinkle and God forgive me Gov. Pat Quinn.

These folks could not pack a phone booth ( nearly extinct at the time of this posting), let alone a hall full of beefy, enthusiastic, hard-working skilled tradesmen and their wives and kids. Nope, Ward Hacks are trotted out to boost their nimble vaults over the political gradus.  They are the Sows Ears Made of out Silk Purses.

The Silk Purses are the hijacked 501 (c) 3s: Woods Fund, MacArthur Foundation, Annenburg Challenge, Joyce Foundation, whose boards are thick with former radicals and leftist academics.  Too often these silk purses are orchestrated by Abner Mikva.  Political Chiefs like old Tom Hynes, or Mike Madigan, or Richie Daley took short-cuts to opportunity by snuggling up to these silk purses in exchange for legislative policy give-aways and mutually beneficial real estate ventures. Abner might say to Tom Hynes, " This Mike Quigley kid is really a go-getter and he hates every one in the 60643-55 zipcode's collective guts.  He's really great; Tom let's do him a solid.  How's about we get Rich to get the 19th Ward crew to help Quigley and then he can make nice and really bump Helen Schiller into the cheap seats and then we can get SEIU, La Salle Bank, Personal PAC, Fred Eychaner, the Pritzker girls and even some honest money to dump some dough into any number of races?"  Deal? Deal.

That's how Progressives boarded, looted and scuttled the Good Ship Chicago Machine.

Ward Hacks have helped elect every useless, mean-spirited and back-stabbing Progressive in the Illinois pantheon.  They did so because they were asked by people whop helped them.  I love Hacks and have complete contempt for Progressives.  Progressives are not just a one way street, they are fully cul-de-sac'd. Do a Progressive a solid and wait for the blade in the kidneys - you never wait very long.

Nope President Obama is No Ward Hack - he has not the makings.  He is a Progressive.

Readers Digest Condensed Version of " Barack Obama: Dreams from My Father"

NEW READERS DIGEST CONDENSED VERSION - Available here for the 1st time!

Foreword by Bill Ayers, Weather Underground (ret.) & Distinguished Professor of Education Not Granted Emeritus Status -University of Illinois at Chicago.

Introduction and Foreword -All Hail El Jefes Hugo and Barack of Whom I am Well Pleased and Our The Glorious Soviet Peoples Choice Award Winning Victory!!!!!

President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests,comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. Thank you, Luis, for everything you’ve done.I also thank my youngest son, Chesa Boudin, who is interpreting my talk this morning and whose book on the Bolivarian revolution has played an important part in countering the barrage of lies spread by the U.S. State Department and the corrupted Northamerican media.On my last trip to Caracas I spoke of traveling to a literacy class—Mission Robinson— in the hills above the city along a long and winding road. As we made our way higher and higher, the talk turned to politics as it inevitably does here, and someone noted that the wealthy—here and everywhere, here and in the US surely—have certain received opinions, a kind of absolute judgment about poor and working people, and yet they have never traveled this road, nor any road like it. They have never boarded this bus up into these hills, and not just the oligarchy or the wealthy—this lack of first-hand knowledge, of open investigation, of generous regard is also a condition of the everyday liberals, and even many of the radicals and armchair intellectuals whose formulations sit lifeless and stifling in a crypt of mythology about poor people. Everyone should come and travel these roads into the hills, we agreed then—and not just once, but again and again and again – if they will ever learn anything of the real conditions of life here, surely, but more important than that, if they will ever encounter the wisdom and experience and insight that lives here as well.We arrived at eight o’clock to a literacy circle already underway being conducted in a small, poorly-lit classroom. And here in an odd and dark space, a sun was shining: ten people had pulled their chairs close together—a young woman maybe 19, a grandmother maybe 65, two men in their 40s—each struggling to read. And I thought of a poem called A Poor Woman Learns to Write by Margaret Atwood about a woman working laboriously to print her name in the dirt. She never thought she could do it, the poet notes, not her– this writing business was for others. But she does it, prints her name, her first word so far, and she looks up and smiles— for she did it right.The woman in the poem—just like the students in Mission Robinson—is living out a universal dialectic that embodies education at its very best: she wrote her name, she changed herself, and she altered the conditions of her life. As she wrote the word, she changed the world, and another world became—suddenly and surprisingly—possible.I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!I taught at first in something like a Simoncito—called Head Start—and eventually taught at every level in barrios and prisons and insurgent projects across the United States. I learned then that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space – what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.Education contributes to human liberation to the extent that people reflect on their lives, and, becoming more conscious, insert themselves as subjects in history. To be a good teacher means above all to have faith in the people, to believe in the possibility that people can create and change things. Education is not preparation for life, but rather education is life itself ,an active process in which everyone— students and teachers– participates as co-learners.Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem to his fellow writers called “The Poet’s Obligation” in which he instructed them in their core responsibility: you must, he said, become aware of your sisters and brothers who are trapped in subjugation and meaninglessness, imprisoned in ignorance and despair. You must move in and out of windows carrying a vision of the vast oceans just beyond the bars of the prison– a message of hope and possibility. Neruda ends with this: it is through me that freedom and the sea will call in answer to the shrouded heart.Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.Viva Mission Sucre!Viva Presidente Chavez!Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana!Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

by Barack Obama?* -Originally published: New York : Times Books, c1995 around the time BHO was working at the Woods Fund/Anneberg Foundation with his old Chicago Political Chinaman Billy Ayers

My pappy was a pistol and I'm a Sonofa gun!

THE END
Barack H. Obama, 1995. Hyde Park- Chicago. IL
Footnotes:
 http://billayers.wordpress.com/2006/1
* Source: NewsCore
WASHINGTON -- A new biography of Barack Obama disputes the US president's understanding that his grandfather was tortured at the hands of British troops in a fight for Kenyan independence. 

David Maraniss' book "Barack Obama: The Story" includes the accounts of five associates of Hussein Onyango Obama who all doubt he was jailed or brutalized, The (London) Daily Telegraph reported. 

Obama's memoir "Dreams From My Father" included his understanding that his grandfather was detained by British troops for being subversive "to the white man." The third wife of Onyango told stories of how he bore scars from the torture he endured in the late 1940s. 

"Five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain it did not happen," Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, said. 

Dick Opar, a former senior Kenyan police official, was quoted in Maraniss' biography saying he "would have known" if Onyango had been detained and adding, "People make up stories." 

"If you get arrested, you say it was the fight for independence, but they are arrested for another thing," Opar told Maraniss. 

It is understood that Onyango was a Muslim convert who worked for the British army in Burma during World War II and was accused of sympathizing with the Kenyan pro-independence movement that became the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952. He died in 1979. 

Obama's family tale of torture is said to underpin his coolness towards Britain, according to the Telegraph, and has been used to explain why the president decided to return a statue of Winston Churchill's bust that was previously put on display by George W. Bush in the White House. 

The new biography delves into the discrepancies between Obama's memoir accounts and the author's own research -- however Maraniss has also defended the president, by disputing widespread "mythologies" about the US leader used by detractors. 

"The other mythology of the right-wing birthers is equally preposterous," Maraniss told Piers Morgan on his CNN show Monday. 

"The fact that he was born in Honolulu on August 4th 1961 is indisputable by the facts that any historian would look at."

Read More: New Obama biography claims family tale of British brutality probably untrue

Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/story/18820628/new-obama-biography-claims-family-tale-of-british-brutality-probably-untrue#ixzz1yLT1ef6A

Catholic Church Forward!

Obama wants The Rock to evolve.  No wonder he has kept his academic records embargoed.  I dare say his Earth Science ( Rocks for Jocks and Heads of Blocks 101) grade might have been a Gentleman's D.  The Roman Catholic Church, even here in evolved America, was instituted by Christ to give us Grace.  Protestant Churches condemned contraception until 1930.

The Historic Christian Teaching
Few realize that up until 1930, all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican church, swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon the Anglican church completely caved in, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, all other Protestant denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception.
Evidence that contraception is in conflict with God’s laws comes from a variety of sources that will be examined in this tract. ( emphasis my own)

The Foundation built upon Rock should not cave-in, regardless of politicians, vast piles of cash and a secularist will to control history, personal liberty and thought itself.  Therefore, in response to the hubris of the Obama White House in its mandates to determine and define what is a religious institution, The Rock rolls.

The 12 lawsuits filed jointly Monday accuse the U.S. Departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services and their respective secretaries — Hilda Solis, Timothy Geithner and Kathleen Sebelius — of violating the Catholic Church's religious liberty by defining what qualifies as a religious institution and excluding schools, hospitals and charities from that definition.
"This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America's most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one's religion without government interference," said Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a trained lawyer and former auxiliary bishop in Chicago.
In February, the Obama administration offered a compromise that required insurance companies to cover the cost of any care, not religious employers. But many of the plaintiffs in the suits filed Monday argue that accommodation doesn't help because they self-insure. The government is still finalizing a regulation for self-insured groups.
Chicago's Cardinal Francis George indicated that the archdiocese's absence from Monday's lawsuits didn't signal satisfaction with that accommodation or less concern about the issue. In previous remarks, he has said the government's efforts amount to a "theft of identity."
"The Archdiocese of Chicago is obviously deeply concerned about preserving the Catholic identity of Catholic educational, health care and social service organizations," George said in a statement. "The Archdiocese therefore entirely supports the actions of the Catholic dioceses and organizations that have brought suit against the Department of Health and Human Services for violating the heretofore constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom of Catholic institutions."

The Rock rolls forward.  Obama is incapable of compromise, much less tolerance. because he is owned by Planned Parenthood, Abortion and the Dowager Class insistent upon a perpetuation of the Original Hate Crime -Abortion.  Gay Marriage is an adjunct of abortion, because acceptance of abortion is the fist in God's Face.  After that cave-in, anything is acceptable.

President Obama has been fully consistent with regard to Abortion. Planned Parenthood made him an Illinois State Senator, a United States Senator and Planned Parenthood's First and God willing the last Abortion President.

We shall see.

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/birth-control
 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-catholic-obama-lawsuit-20120522,0,7274599.story

Peace, Music, Genocide and Samantha Power

The Power behind Policy - Samantha Power

Last night I attended a concert at Orchestra Hall ( Symphony Center, but it will always be Old Ted Thomas' Orchestra Hall to me) developed and conducted by Francis Cardinal George and Sir Gilbert Levine. Cardinal George was the Executive Producer of this concert and had brought together people of many faiths, talents and points of view.

Leading the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Chorus in a special concert celebrating the first anniversary of the beatification of John Paul II. "Peace Through Music: In the Spirit of John Paul – Chicago 2012" Sir Gilbert Levine helped bring people of all faiths and political points of view together through music.

This event coincided with the visit to our fair city by the Nobel Peace Laureates and Sean Penn.  The concert's genesis was the seventeen year partnership and intense friendship between a young musician and the Pope who brought down Communism.  One of the Nobel Laureates was Lech Walesa who along with the Polish Pontiff defied the balkanizing and soulless dictates of secular materialism through their faith, courage and commitment to something greater than themselves. It would be pretty tough to be a self-absorbed celebrity on the docks of Gdansk.

Music is essentially math.  What we consider mathematics in our post-spiritual material world is bean-counting, whether it measures glaciers, or counts the bodies of slaughtered innocents.  Music is God's math in truth. Music sweeps our souls clean. It is the primal  antiseptic and narcotic. 

In celebration of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II, music brought people together.  Jews and Catholics, secularists and people of faith.  The first half of the concert featured a 1,000 year old Polish hymn to the Mother of God, a modernist choral and orchestral piece, and Bach's Magnificat in D Minor.  J.S. Bach was a Lutheran whose devotional  sense of music shunned not the Faith from which he and his family parted company.  The second half of the evening's performances was devoted to Ludwig Von Beethoven's Symphony # 3 - The Eroica. Eroica means "Heroic."  Hero comes from Old English or Anglo Saxon - ἥρϝως meaning protector, or defender.

Beethoven originally dedicated Symphony # 3 - to Napoleon, until the Little Corporal crowned himself Emperor.  Instead, the deaf man of Bonn praised the human spirit without borders. Sir Gilbert Levine swept notes, talents, personalities, assumptions, backgrounds and beliefs into a tornado of spirit in the Fourth Movement.  I have listened to The Eroica many times and at the command of the batons of Sir George Solti, James Levine, Henry Mazer, Carlo Maria Guillini and Andre Previn. I have heard it live as a a teenage punk janitor laying on the stairs, or the red plush boxes of Orchestra Hall while the CSO rehearsed or performed.  May Malibu CD player has churned out Beethoven's Third.  I did not really get it until last night with the 4th and final movement - Beethoven is all over the place guided by a bass-line.

The bass-line, it seems to me anyway, is the recognition of  the human constants - the sanctity of human life, the courage required to move here and there and at subtle but necessary changes of pace and tone in order to be truly heroic - to protect life, liberty and human happiness.  Music is math.

The human spirit tires.  Pope John Paul II seemed to instinctively know that we all need to become souls refreshed - he too suffered under the worst that the human spirit allows when it gets too tired of counting costs and bodies - nationalistic fascism and international Communism.  Through music, Pope John Paul seemed to say "It is easy to go along when you are tired; snap out of it and get back in the game!"

I got home at 11:45 P.M. last night and woke up at 4: A.M. most refreshed.  I don't remember what I dreamed about, but it must have been good.  I read.

I read about President Obama's visit to the Holocaust Museum yesterday and his announcement of  the U.S. Atrocities Prevention Board to be headed by National Security Adviser Samantha Power.

Nobel intentions and goals.    Ms. Power was a force behind President Obama's outreach to the Muslilim World, his promises to Hamas, his dismissal of Amercan Exceptionalism and his policies against Israel.
 Ms. Power's board is yet to be named.  That will bear some attention, I believe. Samantha Power was  ayoung reporter who covered the War in the Balkans and wrote a best seller about America's failure to act while Croatians, Serbs, Christians and Muslims engaged in ethnic cleansing,  She was most affected by the slaughter of Muslims there.

Ms. Power has taken a view of Israel besieged that makes sense to Oscar nominees, but is lost on most people.  Ms. Power even advocated a US invasion of Israel to prevent another Holocaust. No, really.



Genocide is about as unheroic as human beings can get.  Islam has been pretty clear on its intentions with regard to Israel from the Grand Mufti to the leadership of Hamas.

Dafur, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Soviet history and the Third Reich are warnings of the failure to refresh the human spirit - the bass-line was ignored.   The bass-line theme of The Eroica.  Pope John Paul II understood the power of music.  Ms. Power knows accounting.  I do not believe that President Obama understands music, much less accounting.