I Am Not Deplorable; Off Putting, Maybe. I Vote Like Uncle Bud

Despite intense outcry from the medical community and reproductive rights advocates, Texas isn't budging on a proposed rule to require the cremation or burial of fetal remains. Texas Tribune

Texas reminds me of Uncle Bud!

My political hero was my uncle and the Hickey family patriarch after the death of my grandfather - Larry "Bud" Hickey. Bud was the oldest male child of Laurence and Nora Hickey -7535 S, Marshfield, Chicago Zone 20.  Bud's six brothers and six sisters were equally as centered as the white haired guy with a permanently ironic look of quizzical sarcasm.  Bud was white haired from his teens and when the draft started in 1941 before the war started, an old biddy remarked to Granny Hickey, " thank the Good Lord, your boy Larry is too old." He became a U.S. Army master sergeant (naturally) and fought in the Pacific.

Uncle Bud was the Chief Engineer for Cook County Hospital from the 1950's until the 1980's. He was then made the Chief Engineer of Cook County by George W. Dunne. Uncle Bud and his large family lived in Meyer Hall - the former Cook County Hospital Doctors Residence at Taylor and Wolcott -because Uncle Bud was on duty 24 hours a day. The great surgeon and former Director of Admissions for Loyola Medical School, the late Dr. James H. Kennedy,MD once told me that as young resident at CCH he told, "See the Medical Director, but, above all, pay attention to Larry Hickey."

When Abortion, got its bloody foot in the door of the American soul in the late 1960's, Progressive forces, like the bed bugs now scourging urban Americans, bullied politicians with Policy,  False. tickling Policy. In the late 1970's, Cook County purchased an incinerator for the sole purpose of burning aborted fetuses.

Uncle Bud installed the gas operated incinerator and welded its doors shut. No human beings would be burned in Bud's Cook County Hospital. The incinerator - it operated, but absolutely no babies were burned. The children would be buried with human dignity. You see, Uncle Bud was a Catholic, when that meant something, and Catholics, at that time, were prohibited from cremating the human body. All of that was parsed out by clerical Vatican II Cupcakes, don't you know.

News of this got out. The Policy hit the fan. Uncle Bud told Dunne, "Fire Me, but those doors stay welded shut."

George Dunne ended abortions at Cook County Hospital, except to save the life of the mother, because he agreed that Cook County Hospital had become no more than, in the Cook County President's own words, 'an Abortion Mill,*'

Uncle Bud and George Dunne were Democrats. both were 'retired.'  New Cook County President Dick Phelan bowed to Planned parenthood as Cook County President and the soul of the Democratic Party was sucked out of the husk of the automaton that knows only dollars and the brute exercise of monolithic political power.

Uncle Bud's story is from the late 1970's.  So I am deplorably old fashioned, or so Hillary remarked to Barbra Streisand and six figure ticket holders at recent HRC fund-raiser.

Deplorable ideas?  Abortion is evil, not health care.  That is a big one for me.

Deplorable taste? I never wore a Nehru jacket, a dickie, a turtle-neck, beret, Greek Fisherman's hat, Peace button, tattoo, ear ring, nose ring, shower ring, Leisure suit, or bell bottom anything. And I dated, married and date exquisite looking women.  Honor bright.  Don't know what's wrong with them, but I am happy about it.

 In fact, I wear pretty much the same style suits, shoes, shirts, sweaters and attitude, that I did in my formative 1960's wonder years and my public life as a teacher, husband, father and citizen.

I don't listen to Techno, Disco, Hip-Hop, Gangsta, Metal, or Adele. I love classical, Celtic (not the PBS crappola), Jazz, Garage band 60's rock, Outlaw Country, Mexican Campesino music, Polkas, Blue-grass and Motown almost as much as Keeley Smith, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Mel Torme and Marvin Gaye.

I can not stand when people who should know better sneer at working men and women during the very speech they are giving to bully up their votes. Happens every time a progressive Democrat and far too many Republicans un-zipper their teeth.

Principles matter.

I will vote the way Uncle Bud and my Dad would vote.

Texas is Ok and Uncle Bud would approve.

Rally for Religious Liberty - Friday June 8th at Noon in Chicago's Federal Plaza

I participated in Chicago's Rally for Religious Freedom in March of this year.  It rained like a son-of-a-gun, but more than 2,000 people jammed Federal Plaza in a very peaceful, dignified and good humored show of support for Religious Freedom.

My family spent decades pounding the sidewalks for workers rights.  Early on we were all taught to never cross a picket line - we never did. If a store was struck by real labor, we purchased else-where.  My father and his brothers and my cousins, picketed in support of the printers at the Chicago Tribune.

Likewise, we hit the kneelers in church to pray for aborted children.  My uncle Larry Hickey, who was the Chief Engineer for Cook County Hospital,  made national news (AP Chicago 1975 linked below).    Uncle Bud was ordered to install crematory furnace for the disposal of unclaimed and unidentified bodies from the County Morgue, but primarily aborted fetuses.  The crematory furnace was not fired for five years, because the Chief refused to dispose of human remains. This was in February of 1975.

I started teaching in Catholic schools in 1975.  Roe v. Wade was giving the abortion industry its baby steps and the American media its universal assistance.  Democrat politicians who happened to be Catholic were not yet fully bought by Planned Parenthood's dead-baby bucks.   George Dunne, President of the Cook County Board, never fired Uncle Bud for the Chief's Civil Disobedience; in fact, Dunne made Larry Hickey the Chief Engineer of Cook County.  That was then;this is now.

Now, Democrat politicians who happened to baptized as Catholics would see a Larry Hickey become an occupant of Cook County Jail, after firing, convicting, sentencing and stripping him of pension, of course.

There are no Democrat George Dunnes.  In fact the last genuine Catholic Democrat that I can recall in recent years, resigned as State Representative - Kevin Joyce. Rep. Dan Lipinski might be. There are Dick Durbins, Dan Hynes, Pat Quinns, Mike Quigleys and Rich Daleys.  They and Planned Parenthood, SEIU and other left-leaning PACs put Barack H. Obama in the White House

President Obama stripped St. Xavier University of its religious identity and immediately the school invited former Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs to be a guest speaker.  Governor Pat Quinn revealed his complete submission to Illinois Personal PAC's Terry Cosgrove, over Francis Cardinal George all through the fall of 2011. Cosgrove orders and Quinn jumps.

In January 2011, President Obama's baptized Catholic HHS Secretary made official war on the American Catholic Church.

So, on Friday June 8th, I'll be in Federal Plaza with thousands of Catholics, Protestants and Jews voicing support for Religious Liberty. I hope that you will also enjoy the fresh air and great company.

Rally for Religious Freedom

Uncle Bud's ( Larry Hickey Chief Engineer Cook County Hospital) saga linked here:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19750222&id=QpxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uvoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2606,5132451

R.I.P. Phil Krone : 1941-2010 Gentleman Liberal Patriot

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Samuel Johnson

Phil Krone is missed. He was the last of the Gentleman Liberal Patriots. Phil Krone invited debate, drank in opposing ideas and courteously offered thoughtful rebuttal without ever raising the volume, let alone insulting his combatant.

My political beliefs differed from Mr. Krone, though we both registered and tended to vote as Democrats.

Phil was an ideological Keynesian Liberal -like John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Simon and the great Paul Douglas, with just a pinch of Henry Wallace.

I adhere to the urban Ward-level empirical Regular Democratic point of view, that never parses away moral and religious convictions.

My political hero was my uncle and the Hickey family patriarch after the death of my grandfather - Larry "Bud" Hickey.

Uncle Bud was the Chief Engineer for Cook County Hospital from the 1950's until the 1980's. He was then made the Chief Engineer of Cook County by George W. Dunne. Uncle Bud and his large family lived in Meyer Hall - the former Cook County Hospital Doctors Residence at Taylor and Wolcott -because Uncle Bud was on duty 24 hours a day. The great surgeon and former Director of Admissions for Loyola Medical School, Dr. James H. Kennedy,MD once told me that as young resident at CCH he told, "See the Medical Director, but, above all, pay attention to Larry Hickey."

When Abortion, got its bloody foot in the door of the American soul in the late 1960's, Progressive forces, like the bed bugs now scourging urban American, bullied politicians with Policy. False tickling Policy. In the late 1970's, Cook County purchased an incinerator for the sole purpose of burning aborted fetuses.

Uncle Bud installed the gas operated incinerator and welded its doors shut. No Fetuses would be burned. it operated, but absolutely no fetuses were burned. The children would be buried with human dignity. You see, Uncle Bud was a Catholic, when that meant something, and Catholics, at that time, were prohibited from cremating the human body. All of that was parsed out by clerical Vatican II Cupcakes, don't you know.

News of this got out. The Policy hit the fan. Uncle Bud told Dunne, "Fire Me, but those doors stay welded shut."

George Dunne ended abortions at Cook County Hospital, except to save the life of the mother, because he agreed that Cook County Hospital had become no more, in the Cook County President's words, 'an Abortion Mill,*' Uncle Bud and George Dunne were Democrats. Dick Phelan bowed to Planned parenthood as Cook County President.

Policy, Phil Krone would argue, took into consideration the idea of a Woman's Choice - the euphemism for abortion -and Policy overtook the empirical act of killing a child in the mother's woman.

Gentlemen can agree to disagree - Policy holds that war is bad. A combat veteran understands that sometimes you need to squirt napalm into a cave and incinerate twenty enemy combatants in order to make Peace Happen.

Phil Krone unlike Uncle Bud believed that a Policy of Choice would bring about a better world. Phil Krone had a great heart and a wonderful intellect. Uncle Bud had a gas-operated incinerator that would burn the aborted fetuses of children. Gentlemen can disagree.

I raise the issue of abortion,only to make the distinction between Policy and Politics.

Phil Krone's voice was never the strident, arrogant, divisive pusillanimous caw of the Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, or Rachel Maddow. Phil Krone put his money where his heart was and entered the political arena in the New York Primary, though suffering in the last months of his heroic life.

Phil Krone believed in Civil Rights, Peace, Human Dignity, Liberty and Justice.

More importantly, Phil Krone respected the people who believe in those very same principles, but disagee with the path to them.

May Christ throw open His Arms for a Gentleman Liberal Patriot! God Bless you, Phil!

*

Dunne's views on women's sexuality are hypocritical
Click here for complete article

Date: May 4, 1988
Publication: Chicago Sun-Times
Page: 32
Word Count: 528
Excerpt:
As the powerful Cook County Board president, George Dunne has been almost singlehandedly responsible for the fact that poor women cannot obtain abortions at Cook County Hospital.
While the issue of this abuse of power through the use of sex is the foremost issue publicly raised by the Better Government Association, there is another issue here: Sex carries with it the risk of pregnancy.
It is time to take notice of the hypocrisy of male politicians on the issue of women'...