CPS or Catholic Schools

 

On the left, Shedd Elementray at 200 E. 99th Street -not closing - tuition free and God is not welcome; on the right Catholic Leo High School at 79th Street unadorned by gang tags, but there is tuitiion to pay and God is here 24/7

CPS has closed the schools it wants to close.  The hearings are closed.  The Closing Are Not Racist!  Get it?

The CTU howling is a smoke-screen for CPS and Mayor Rahm.  Remember?  Karen and Jesse Sharkley ( Kaen's ventriloquist) were 'part of the process,' and Okee Doked the Closings during the strike negotiations.

Karen is doing her best smoke dancing with the always handy race-card set a torch ' "The Closings are Racist, People!"

I agree. What is not Racist?  The closings are Progressive.   The meme coming from Rahm and Dr. B Cubed is this - The Schools  were closed to make test scores jump like Forrest Claypool for a new government job appointment.

Dr. Barbara Bennet-Byrd ( Dr. B-Cubed, B3, B to the Third Power) says, "I cannot agree with adults who would use the excuse of gangs to leave children trapped in failing schools," (emphasis my own).

The excuse of gangs?  Tut, tut and tut yet again, Dr. B Three!  Gangs, one dare suggest?  Hhhhwhat Gangs, indeed.

Lemme see, Mike Cobras (my personal favorites) Gangster Disciples ( not to be confused with the Black Gangster Disciples, Four Corner Hustlers, The Stones ( of many color), Vice Lords, Latin Kings . . .??????????????

Fifty three ( 53) neighborhood schools like Marcus Garvey Elementary and others will be closed and the students from Garvey will be required to travel out of their neighborhood and into neighborhoods that might, just might, mind you, be dominated by a gang.   That is not an excuse; that is a fact.

I work at Leo High School in the Auburn -Gresham neighborhood, 6th Police District (Beat 621),no stranger to senseless killings, home to a number of prominent gangs.  Some gang territories might be as small as block or few houses, or a larger portion extending many miles.  Leo High School resides within what might be termed Territory of the Conservative ( not be confused with the Insane) Vice Lords.  Also within spitting distance of the realm claimed by the Black Disciples, Black P Stone Nation and those scamps of the Gangster Disciple congress of thugs.

Leo sits within what might be termed a Gang Quilt Celebration of Diversity or more ominously a DMZ.  North and South Korea are more amicable. That said the property between 79th Street and the two allies north & south and Morgan and Peoria Streets remain un-tagged and respected territory.  The statue of the Virgin Mary and Memorial to the the Leo War Fallen are untouched.  The building is untagged. God is here.

A few blocks in any direction from Leo High School are CPS elementary and high schools and Charters adorned with Gang tags.  Those schools represent Tax Dollars.  Leo represents God's presence in Auburn Gresham, as does St. Sabina Faith Community.  Churches like the 27 small congregations between 87th & 79th on Racine are untagged by gangs, due to God's presence as well.

CPS are Tax Dollars - they have that going for them, as well as CTU teachers who owe the allegiences to Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey and the dictates of the CPS board appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  CPS recorded  24 students murdered and 319 wounded by gunfire in 2012; that was before 53 neighborhood schools in gang quilted zipcodes were closed.

Dollars are what FREE CPS and public education in general are all about, the children notwithstanding.  A woman who pulled her son out of a CPS school and enrolled him at Leo told President Dan McGrath that Catholic school tuition was  a much better bargain than a  young man's funeral.  

God is what Catholic schools are all about, as well as academic success, no drop-out rate, violence free school days and college placement.

For the families* who remain ignored after the CPS hearings, the choice seems simple enough to me - a tuition free duck and dodge through rival gang territories, or God centered education at a Catholic school.

*Remember -a Charter School is only a public school with a better wardrobe.  God is not allowed in a Charter.

Where is CTU Mastermind Jesse Sharkey in Chicago Media Coverage of CTU Outrage? The Reds are Denouncing Jesse and Karen Lewis

"Let's not pretend that when you close schools on the South and West sides, the children affected aren't black," Lewis said. "Let's not pretend that's not racist." Chicago Tribune

Amid growing opposition to planned school closures and consolidations in Chicago, Illinois, a March 4 Socialistworker.org article entitled “Rahm's scorched-earth assault on our schools” crudely attempts to re-write the history of events surrounding the assault on public education in the city.Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), seeks to whitewash the role of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), in which it has a leadership position. ISO member Jesse Sharkey is the current vice president of the CTU. Far from opposing the closure of schools, the CTU and the ISO have collaborated in implementing the Obama administration's school “reforms” with Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel. WSWS

Wow, hard to get happy after that one, Jesse. Who's the racists?  You? Karen? Rahm? Arne "Demosthenes" Duncan? President Obama? Whom to believe?

Here is the Chicago Media coverage of yesterdays Occupy the Loop with Karen & Jesse & CTU & SEIU lalapalooza singing like Joan Baez with VISA commercial contract and then there is the World Socialist Web Site going all Stalin on ISO member and CTU VP Jesse Sharkey the Karl Rove of the XXX Red Shirts.

The difference is that Jesse Sharkey is invisible in the Chicago Media coverage, while Jesse Sharley is universally denounced as a running dog counter-revolutionary Obama/Rahm stooge in the authenticist Lefty organs.

Denunciation is as Lefty as a Saul Alinsky Hoe-Down on WTTW, or a Studs Terkel Fashion Retrospective.
The Chicago news organs dedicated to whomever they take their daily meme rations has some old-timey Public Radio-worthy copy - let's begin with this pearl from the Medill sausage -

Among those who were sitting on LaSalle Street in front of City Hall hoping to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience was Tom Balanoff, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1. He said he was demonstrating to show that massive school closings are "not the right direction. This is not the way to really solve the problem in education."
Balanoff said he had been arrested in acts of civil disobedience "many times over the years."
"It's as American as apple pie," he said.

Sing me some Joe Hill, there Union Maid!

Then we have the Sun Times which not only trotted out compelling "it's about the children" laments from real folks, but also this bit of nonsense news -

Elementary education expert and professor Bill Ayers — whose ties to President Obama sparked controversy because of Ayers 1960s radicalism — was in the crowd in support of teachers and kids like his granddaughters who attend CPS schools.
“The assault on public education and abandonment of these communities has to be resisted,” Ayers said. “How can we abandon public education at this point in history and move away from the one thing that’s going to give people hope for the future, and that is a solid powerful education.”

Makes you want to bomb something, don't it?

There is the obligatory accounts of Chicago's Ed.- Zeppelin CTU President Karen Lewis tossing race-cards at Rahm like so many Frisbees and third person narratives about Dr. Bennet-Byrd and Mayor Rahm and the mention of Aldermen who really, really, really care - Ricardo Munoz, Bob Fiorreti and. of course America's favorite family guy Rev. Jesse Jackson -unquoted.

No Jesse Sharkey*?

Salon, a clearing house for smug Progressive shouting, quotes Jesse Sharkey ISO/CTU with this fiery hammer and sickle that somehow went unmentioned in Chicago's reportage:

“The only thing that’s like it( Rahm's Murder of Schools) is Hurricane Katrina,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey of the potential devastation, “except this is being done on purpose.” ( parenthetical my own)


The WSWS goes on to really give Karen and Jesse a comeuppance -

The ISO closes its article with the claim, “As the CTU rightly argues, we should oppose all school closings and stand up against Rahm's scorched-earth war on public education...”
This too is a lie. Lewis made it clear on the second day of the strike that CTU accepted the mayor’s plan to shut down schools. The main concern of the CTU leadership was to ensure that school shutdowns be carried out with the collaboration of the union and not unilaterally by CPS.
Lewis told the Chicago Tribune September 12, “We understand the whole movement of closing schools and doing it aggressively... we either do this together in some reasonable way or we will always be fighting, and I think the key is that the people that are making these decisions want to make them unilaterally.”
In the aftermath of the strike, during a November episode of Chicago Tonight, CTU Vice President Sharkey said nothing to oppose what he termed the “unpopular policy” of school shutdowns, and instead advised that it need be carried out in an orderly fashion. “There’s no point in closing schools until there is a plan in place.”
Speaking at a union organized rally earlier that month, Sharkey said, “What the school board should do is take a year off. Have a moratorium on school closings and have a real process where there is a study of plans and the people who are part of the coalition here, the parents, the community and the teachers of Chicago have real input into what happens to our schools.”
This “real input” has been a series of sham hearings on the school closures and consolidations, where thousands of parents, teachers and students have voiced their opposition to the closures.
On February 11, CTU president Karen Lewis released a video announcing CTU would be sending organizers to assist those displaced by school closures. She admonished teachers—many who will be losing their jobs, and many more whose teaching conditions will become much more difficult after the closures—to support the CTU's efforts to do so.

Which side are you on, Bill Ayers, you elementary education plutocrat?

Why is Chicago's media taking the side of capitalists?

HOW much longer will Americans be satisfied with the endless Progressive Banquet of Bullshit?




                    Here's a good start - send you kids to a Catholic School.


* 24 hour Jesse Sharkey News:

  

Rahm and the Professors -A Mayor and the Napoleons of Crime

The law professors, Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago and Locke Bowman of Northwestern, both have brought numerous misconduct cases against the Police Department during their careers. Futterman currently represents clients in a suit related to the department’s defunct Special Operations Section, and has said the code of silence judgment could aid his case.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken two good steps toward yanking the string on the Gordian knot that is Chicago's hairball - the Progressive University/Media/Lawsuit Lotto Machine.  This Machine makes the one begun by  gambler Michael Cassius McDonald ( burried in the 19th Ward's Mount Olivet Cemetery) and developed by Aldermen Bathhouse John, Jonny De Pow, and Hinky Dink seem fresher smelling than Andy Shaw's skivvies at the end of the month.

Now, our Progressive political Machine holds that convicted murderers are only prison because of a red-headed Dutch cop who used mythical torture devices on the appendages universal of Honors Students Turning Their Young Lives Around, Breeders are evil carbon foot print step dancers and Terry Cosgrove is Dr. Martin Luther King, Good Jews Hate Israel, Good Catholics is an oxymoron,  Asian Carp have more rights than unborn child, Chick Fil-Ay is Bull Connors, Forrest Claypool can hold down a job and Toni Preckwinkle's boy Kyle is just a sterling youth.

Mayor Emanuel took the smart step to 'encourage' the tiny Polish bartender to reconsider her settlement with the option to poop-can the Code of Silence gambit that stands to make millions for the Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers ( Loevy, Taylor, Bowman et al) and burnish the undeserved reputations of Northwestern and University Centers for Law as Gold Digging.

Now, this particular gambit is intended to not only further undermine any and all faith in police officers, but also net millions of tax-payer dollars in lawsuits.  The recent 'outrage dujour' is corkscrewing its way into the public zeitgeist via the the media bosses concerning clout, cop omerta and nepotisic privilege.

Mayor Emanuel also decided to to treat gang-funerals for what they are - Savage Displays of Contempt.

Gang funerals in Chicago will be treated like “gang events” — with pat-downs and police muscle — because gang leaders have shown “no respect” for neighborhoods where those funerals take place, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday.

One day after Chicago Police officers showed up in force at a gang funeral, Emanuel warned gang leaders to get used to it. Gang funerals will no longer be treated as sacred events.

The Mayor has taken baby steps back to common sense.  The goofiness, packaged and sold as good old American Atticus Finch Higher Criticism. However that road back to honesty and good sense has been potholed aplenty.


Chicago traded in a political machine for the lawsuit industry. Beginning with Michael Shakman's legal whine,  in 1972, aged to perfection by the likes of Dr. Quentin Young, the ACLU, Judge Abner Mikva and Dawn Clark Netsch, bottled by the University of Chicago and Northwestern Centers for Dopey Everything and the very lazy Chicago editorial boards, decanted by the Loevys Pere et Fil, G.Flint Taylor, Craig Futterman and Locke Bowman, Chicago's cup runneth over with lawsuits, gang-shootings, gelded law enforcement and hand-wringers wondering 'just how can we celebrate the funerals of Honor Student Thugs, yet appear serious about public safety.'

Yep the City That Worked was a machine crafted by part-time Aldermen and full-time saloon keepers, gamblers and nickel snitchers that somehow managed to attract industry, commerce and the arts.

Once little Mike Shakman was able to judge shop his way into the Shakman Decree Industry, the doors were flung wide open for our current University/Media Complex/ Ambulance-chaser Complex that has created Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone. 

Upon Shakman's shoulders the City of Big Shoulders fits snuggly.  Patronage went conveniently chameleon with the rise of job-hopping players like David Orr and  Forrest Claypool and disappeared where it did the most good - at the precinct and Ward level.  Nepotism became more Byzantine with Daleys and Hyneses, as they were eclipsed by Jacksons and Preckwinkles and still no goods and ever fewer services were available to to citizens and taxpayers.  Millions for Ceasefire, but not one cent for the defense of children and elderly in Englewood, Brainerd, Deering, or Grand Crossing - you know, add more cops to the streets.

I'd take Chicago's old timey corruption any day; those old crooks left something in the city budget and actually managed to do some good. Progressives pick the public bones dry and then render the leavings down to fertilizer and hold the departed in complete and lavish contempt.

I have yet to hear a sound explanation for the public boon resulting from Shakman Industries .  Likewise, I understand the acknowlege the success of the Orwellian control professors and Commie lawyers exercise over gutless politicians and lightly educated editorial board members.

Rahm Emanuel did two good things this week - he brought ants to the Gangbanger Funeral Picnics and swiped the salary swill away from Fetterman, Bowman, Taylor and the Loveys Pere and Fil, for the moment. That is until they can Judge Shop and get Judge Gettleman who is always happy to rule for nonsense over the public good.

Let's hope that he does not cave, as he did to CTU Commissar Jesse Sharkey and his puppet Karen. Lewis.

If Rahm Emanuel repudiates the nonsense of the Marxist Brahmins, he may bring back a little common sense to Chicago politics .

Progressive Ballet - Rahm Knifes Labor - "which there's a history at"

Progressives detest working people.  Always have and they always will.  Organized Labor helped create the American Middle Class.  Progressives tend to come from above the Middle Class. Always have and they always will.

Anyone who has read about, much less studied the history of the American Labor Movement understands this reality.  Read serious scholars of labor like J. Anthony Lucas who in his magnificent epic Big Trouble detailed the reality of radical versus real labors conflict in coming to terms with American values, law and society.

Radicals wanted labor to morph into an international Marxist wave and real labor wanted to scratch out a comfortable life free from want for American workers.  Guess who won?

In the last twenty years, American labor has played ball with Progressives who want only Class Warfare as means of grabbing power and eliminating the American middle class.

Skilled trades have always demanded rigorous apprenticeship programs and autonomy.  Local # 007 should not allow the City of Chicago, Cook County, the State of Illinois, or the United States Government to dictate
its policies and practices.  Skilled trades are always the target of the Progressive media for idiotic and inflammatory columns and editorials condemning the fact that a back-hoe operating engineer is paid the prevailing wage.  One never reads an investigative series about the Marxists running SEIU, on the other hand, nor any questions posed about the enslavement of low-skilled and no skilled workers who comprise its membership. Once in SEIU, never out. . . .unless finally unemployed and unemployable.

Today, Mayor Rahm Emanuel fully reveals his Progressive pedigree - a backstabbing radical sneak.

Progressives get into government by the back-door deal. Name one Progressive in government who actually has a record of accomplishment, accountability, skill, loyalty, or honesty.  I do not have all day. I have work to do and so do you.  That's rhetorical question.

Progressives are placed in government by soulless elected officials who have managed to scratch out a lucrative deal with the job slot as the quid pro quo.  Most Progressives in government are initially appointed and eventually moved around away from the people they have harmed or the job they have botched, until such times as other bigger or more lucrative deals can be forged between Progressive dominated foundations, banks, family fortunes and media outlets needed by short-sighted, at best, politicians.

Once secured via -open slot on a ballot without opposition, or department chair, the Progressive gets a full media/PR - usually Marilyn Katz - Earl Scheib (Riiiight!!!!!!!!) body, fender and paint job that gets a baked-on enamel finish and glossy glow of Reformer, Boss-foe, Friend, Ally, Fighter, and Intellectual Titan!!!!!


Sheila Simon, Toni Preckwinkle, Mike Quigley, Deb Shore, Deb Mel, Jan Schakowsky, Forrest Claypool, Pat Quinn, Rahm Emanuel and President Obama all came up to prominence in this manner. We had a national peep at the reality of Progressive worth with the Presidential Debate.  There is no there -there.

Labor, real labor, has played a most dangerous game by aligning itself with Marxist public-salaried unions. More (membership and dues) is not always better.

Recently, community activists have stood blocking the entrance to Rainbow Cone on the east side of Western Ave. shouting " Go home to your own Casa!"  in honor of race harmony and economic justice.  Mexicans are working and blacks are not at a huge on-going construction project in Evergreen Park, Il. Black Capitalist and self-stated activist Edward Gardner heard the cries of Mexicans go home and jumped into the fray. Here is Progressive mouth-organ WBEZ's take on activist Ed in the pink skimmer.

Black nationalists, activists, workers and politicians marched up and down Western Avenue, chanting “If we don’t work, nobody work.”

The target was the site of a new Meijer location. The store, part of the big-box store grocery chain, is going up at 92nd and Western in the suburb of Evergreen Park.
Leading Sunday’s protest was 87-year-old Ed Gardner, founder of the iconic Soft Sheen hair care company.The millionaire has spoken extensively about the issue on black radio programs and has garnered massive support among African-Americans for picking up the mantle on the jobs issue.
A spokesman for the Meijer chain told WBEZ that officials have met with Gardner as well as the construction company. A letter on behalf of the company and contractor was sent pledging to support minority-owned businesses and contractors on the project.

Now, Ed Gardner, is a 1%er, like Fred Eychaner of pan-Gay Progressive capitalism, who gets a media pass on anything.  Ed is black, but not like Col. Allan West is black.  Being black means one must be linked to the Progressives or you become whiter than me, you see.

Rahm Emanuel gamboled pirouette à la seconde. Take Race, Beat Trades à la hauteur.

First of all, my staff has been in touch with Mr. Gardner. I think they’re meeting with him this morning, and they’ve met with him before. Mr. Gardner and I share the same goals, and the same objectives. We’ve talked about, where other cities are pulling back on public transportation, I just told you, we’ve got 400 permanent CTA bus driver jobs. We’ve got 200 to 300 jobs in rehabilitating our buses. We’re going to fix the Red Line, and over 30 percent of the work is going to be done by firms that are minority- and women-owned, and over 50 percent of that is African-American firms. On this particular project at 95-th. I talked to my staff, and as soon he said it was Hispanic and whites working on, I said, “Go check out what’s happened.” But remember, only a few years ago, the complaint was, “Nobody’s investing.” Now, we’re investing. The question is, “Now that we’re investing, who’s getting the work and who’s working on it?”…Now we’ve got to make sure that the building trades, which there’s a history at, which have not been opened to African-Americans and Hispanics and others, and minority children, make sure they have a training program, so the jobs that we’re investing in, and finally doing after years of not doing, are open to everybody in the city to apply for, and have the skill set so they, too can have that work.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Emanuel-Responds-To-African-American-Job-Protests-172472571.html#ixzz28QXyuEqH

Why has millionaire Ed Gardner not taken the old bull by the handsful?   Black capitalism has done pretty well.  What skills and paths to advancement has Ed Gardner offered to workers of SoftSheen (l'Oreal) products?  But that might be a distracting cul-de-sac on 87th Street.

No, this bone is not being offered for a vigorous picking with Ed Gardner; rather, Rahm Emanuel and Progressives.  Rahm shuffles the issue of hiring practices onto the building and construction trades ( who support the Progressive ballet artiste BTW) and with a wink of his Racconish eyes tosses the race card - trades are racist - which there’s a history at.

Progressives will always stab the people they use to get into power repeatedly in the back -kidneys lungs, livers and hearts.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Emanuel-Responds-To-African-American-Job-Protests-172472571.html
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/971026.26lingemt.html

How Much is that Elephant in the Room? The Elephant Wearing Glasses, but not talking and wearing Red on Red! That One?

“I am tired of billionaires telling us what we need to do for our children as if they love our children more than we do,” Lewis continued, as the crowd the union estimated at 25,000 waved signs and cheered. “I want them to turn off the air conditioning at 125 S. Clark, and work like we work. I want them to turn off the air conditioning on the fifth floor of City Hall and let them work like we work.” Chicago Sun Times

Karen Lewis, Leo High School has been standing in solidarity with you on the air-conditioning issue since 1926.  No air-conditioning, no way, no how!  I knew that when I signed a contract with Bob Foster in 1995.  He didn't have no air-conditioning himself.  Our building was constructed beginning in 1921 when air-conditioning was limited to Swift and Armour meat storage houses and box-cars in Canaryville's Stockyards.  Some things will just not configure, or evolve as John Dewey pretends.  

I wish we had a few billionaires concerned for our kids, like CPS.  We have a handful of millionaires pumping in hard dollars, to be sure, but mostly old or aging white guys who managed to safe a few dollars extra, or young black guys making their way in the world thanks to their Leo High School Catholic education. Thanks be to God.

Karen Lewis excoriated Bruce Rauner, a philanthropic capitalist, who wants the best education for Chicago public school children in last Friday's Pre-Wisconsin Style Occupy Union Park Rally column meant to gin-up rage against the machine.

Millionaire capitalist Bruce Rauner, ranked No. 90 on Chicago Magazine's "100 Most Powerful Chicagoans," and who donated enough money to the Noble Network of Charter Schools to get his name on one, published a scathing opinion aimed at Chicago Public Schools teachers in Wednesday's Tribune. The amount of anger and venom Rauner spits out at our hardworking CPS teachers is beyond reprehensible. Chicago Tribune op-ed Sept 14, 2012

Donated money to a school? Let's kick him in the nuts!  

As a Director of Development, I was appalled by a beneficiary of private largess taking a donor to the canvass at all, much less while in the process of squeezing more money from the CPS public coffers emptied with glee by Ms. Lewis et al since 2001.  I could only imagine my life expectancy in the Leo Community were I to call Andy O'Spud Class of 1940 and beef that his recent contribution of $ 200,000 for financial aid assistance was shabby.

My pelt would be drying on the portals of Leo, before I hung up the phone. Not Karen Lewis. She continued in this  
manner on Saturday with the above pasted quote from the Sun Times  at the Hey,Hey, Ho, Ho-fest in Union Park on Ashland Ave. before an estimated 2,500 ( or 10% of the Chicago Membership of CTU). 

 Karen Lewis, I believe in my craven, mean-spirited, child-hating heart of hearts, is merely the gut-wind for the ISO doctrinaire VP of CTU -Jesse Sharkey.  Jesse Sharkey is the CTU leader the media has been told to lay-off. He is much like the daffy Andy Thayer, or odious Kevin Clark who merges Hamas Propaganda Boosterism with Anti-Catholic domestic terrorism in the name of Gay Rights.  Jesse is leader of International Socialist Organization( ISO) and Kevin Clark is a national leader of Hamas affiliated International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The teachers strike, it seems to me, is more about creating havoc than righting work-place wrongs.  The media has beating the phrase Elephant in the Room,  into a pliable metal of metaphor meant to maintain this havoc.  Who is the elephant? Rahm??? Penny Pritzker??? Bruce Rahm????  What is the Elephant and how much do he cost?  

In an earlier news conference, a grim Lewis ticked off a long list of concerns that her members mentioned about the contract. She said "the big elephant in the room" is CPS' plans to close upwards of what she said could be 200 schools. Teachers are "extraordinarily concerned about that," she told reporters. "It undergirds everything they talked about" in the House of Delegates meeting.
Yes, CPS could be looking at closing and consolidating schools. The real elephant in the room: CPS is exhausting its reserve funds this year and faces an estimated $1 billion budget deficit next year with a massive pension payment hike.

Close schools and Karen Lewis will lose membership and numbers is what Jesse Sharkey is all about.
Numbers keep the havoc going!  Numbers of dollars, schools closed, or not closed, air-conditioners, kids in a class, days off, test scores and enemies to be vilified.  You gotta keep the hate going.

There is great jazz tune by Oscar Brown Junior about a child's incessant demands for something over there - in this case a stuffed elephant.


This sums up the continuing strike by Chicago Public School Teachers and no one in the media will ever point to the real Elephant in the Room - the buss-ciut Brooks Brothers Commie in the Red Duds standing behing Karen Lewis and tellling here what to say and do.

Dat Elephant over dere?


The time will march days will go
And little baby's going to grow
I gotta tell her what she needs to know
I'll help her along and she'll be strong

And she'll know right from wrong
As life's parade goes marching by
She's gonna need to know some reasons why
I don't have all the answers but I'll try to do what I can
We'll make a plan

You give the kid your best and hope she’ll pass the test
And finally send her out into the world somewhere
And though she's grown up I bet I never will forget
Mummy, can I have that big elephant over there?

Hey why they do that there? And how you put that there?
Hey mummy, up here! Hey mummy, what that say up there?
Hey mummy, what is fair? How come I have to share?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/15177062-418/union-head-teachers-tired-of-billionaires-telling-us-what-to-do.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-14/news/ct-perspec-0914-lewis-20120914_1_cps-teachers-charter-schools-karen-lewis
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-union-0917-bd-20120917,0,6966289.story

CPS/CTU A Skunk Fighting a Raccoon - Catholic Schools Open Everyday!!

It's All About the Children! All is relative and as John Dewey demands of American Public Education All must be Verifiably Satisfying.  Got that?

I got it years ago, when I studied Philosophy of Education at Loyola University.  Truth is a moveable feast for John Dewey that begins and ends with "Inquiry."

Inquire about leadership in American Public Education -Arne Duncan e.g.

Inquire about Chicago political leadership: Rahm's busy raising cash from Hollywood and what's left of 1%-ers for Obama.

Inquire about the  Public Service Union Solidarity - SEIU is set to cross the picket lines.

Inquire about a 19% increase in an average public salary that amounts to $ 71,000 per annum.

Inquire about length of school day.

Inquire about tenure, accountability, pension, health benefits, sick-days, and school calendars/

Inquire about test scores, college placement, drop-out rates.

If one must, do inquire. Like I said, I got it ( as in understood John Dewey education as a pernicious,  power mad and "cosmic impiety" that assaults truth).



In the next 24 hours, either CPS will cave and toss more money to Karen Lewis in verifiably satisfying manner, or a strike will take place in verifiably satisfying manner.  Either way, it is the public education you, the taxpayer, votes for, agrees whole-heartedly with, or must live with.

In any event, Catholic Schools in Chicago will be open for learning, sharing and strengthening the values God finds verifiably satisfying. In today's Gospel from Mark, Jesus cures a deaf-mute.  Get a load of these beauties!




Chicago Public education is a skunk fighting a raccoon, in my empirical understanding of its dysfunctional operations.



Stock up on the moral and education tomato juice, Citizens, or get used to smell.

Our Rahm-Shackles - Chicago's Covenant of Debt

Huzzah!  Two coal fired ComEd Plants are shut!

Neighborhood and environmental activists are celebrating as Chicago’s last two coal-fired electricity plants enter a three-month decommissioning phase. But the closings are leaving dozens of Midwest Generation workers without a job.

The company, a subsidiary of California-based Edison International, says its Crawford station in the city’s Little Village neighborhood burned its last lump of coal more than a week ago after operating since 1924. The Fisk station, constructed in 1903 in nearby Pilsen, shut down Thursday night.

Real Estate opportunities abound! (Well, at least until January 2013 when President Flat-line begins work on his museum) Allison Davis get to dealing; call Valerie Jarrett, while these opportunities for Federal Green grants can be converted like a lazy Catholic into a Unitarian!   

Yes, Sirree Bob!!!!   Glad them coal burners went south; kept me sleepless some days.

Obvious is irony is sarcasm, the gateway drug to cynicism.  Passed through them portals sometime ago, but scratch a cynic and reveal a tender hearted sweetie-pie.  I recall another such cynical Catholic Hillaire Belloc, who refereed the bouts between GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw in their wholesome debates over socialism v. capitalism.  Belloc poetically predicted,  in 1928,the joy of our Community Activists who brought down Old King Coal and cleared the properties for Allison Davis and Val Jarrett 2012-

    "Our civilization
    Is built upon coal.
    Let us chant in rotation
    Our civilization
    That lump of damnation
    Without any soul,
    Our civilization
    Is built upon coal.

    "In a very few years,
    It will float upon oil.
    Then give three hearty cheers,
    In a very few years
    We shall mop up our tears
    And have done with our toil.
    In a very few years
    It will float upon oil."

Belloc understood the nonsense of polemics and the progressive Fabian need to caricature not only people but inanimate objects.  Wittily skewered the faux outrage and pious claptrapping with this -

We Chicagoans are Rham-shackled, rickety, near collapse. Ramshackle is a distortion of the word ransacked.  You know, Looted.  A condition of unbalance due to a sacking of what is within.

Much of the Rahm-shackle condition was created by the Daley Regime -post-Pat Huels Daley; the University of Chicago vintage Daley.  Rahm is merely the full fruition of this organically grown Man-eating plant.

The murders reflect the Thug Comfort Zone created by this alliance of real estate bandits, academics, media pawns, and lawsuit Lotto lawyers.  Chicago is what the catoonist-satirist Jules Feiffer created in his play Little Murders*(1967) - an urban dystopia of random killings, rampant feminism, emasculated males, overwhelmed and undermined police, garbage strikes and power outages.  People, Feiffer predicted would be isolated, afraid and desperate because the society through government wanted it that way.

The public schools will open under threat of strike, but open they will, in order to get the school head-count tax buckeens. CTU loudmouth,Karen "Foghorn Leghorn" Lewis makes the late Tony " Big Tuna" Accardo seem like a Hubbard Street dancer and has the Obama White House ( Valerie Jarrett, LLc) tying Rahm's leash-like for Foghorn Leghorn Lewis' Rahm Rump Challenge:



Make no mistake, as President Flat-line likes to say, Rahm wil shuttle twixt Charlotte and Chi-town with a bundle of boodle for Foghorn Lewis. Strike? I think not.  Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis are no where near finished developing slum properties for future government subsidized gambits.  Praise Jesus!


Here in my own back yard, Rahm and the real estate rangers are getting their oily fingers on the keys to the soon to be abandoned Beverly Art Center: a Personal PAC approved and abortion friendly real estate transaction in the making with Fifth Third Bank!

We are Rahm-shackled. Wobbly, looted and hooked to this condition as long as we vote badly.  Show me a Democrat with the heart of lion or Kevin Joyce and I will vote for him.  Show me a Republican who is not shod in tassled loafers and I may vote for GOP.  Show me more Pat Quinns, Sheila Simons, Dick Durbins, Toni Preckwinkles, Rahm Emanuels, Mark Kirks, Forrest(s) Claypools, Deb Shores and Jans Schalowsky and I will show you the door with great force, as well as the big blue recycling bin in my alley for your paper products.

Val Jarrett and Allison Davis have more real estate to parlay into slum housing with the two coal burners knocked out and another on the way in Morgan Park.  Rahm Shackled - it's a Chicago Value. So is random killings, abortion and isolated people.

*Little Murders (1967) Jules Feiffer
Patsy Newquist is a 27-year-old interior designer who lives in a New York rife with street crime, noise, obscene phone calls, power blackouts and unsolved homicides. When she sees a defenseless man being attacked by street thugs, she intervenes, but is surprised when the passive victim doesn't even bother to thank her. She ends up attracted to the man, Alfred Chamberlain, a photographer, but finds that he is emotionally vacant, barely able to feel pain or pleasure. He permits muggers to beat him up until they get tired and go away.

Patsy is accustomed to molding men into doing her bidding. Alfred is different. When she brings him home to meet her parents and brother, he is almost non-verbal, except to tell her that he doesn't care for families. He learns that Patsy had another brother who was murdered for no known reason. Patsy's eccentric family is surprised when she announces their intention to wed, then amazed when their marriage ceremony conducted by the atheistic Rev. Dupas turns into a free-for-all.

Determined to discover why her new husband is the way he is, Patsy coaxes Alfred into traveling to Chicago to visit his parents. He hasn't seen them since he was 17, but asks them to help with a questionnaire about his childhood at Patsy's request.
Alfred ultimately agrees to try to become Patsy's kind of man, the kind willing to "fight back." The instant that happens, a sniper's bullet kills Patsy, again for no apparent reason. A blood-splattered Alfred goes to her parents' apartment, New Yorkers barely noticing his state. He descends into a silent stupor, Patsy's father even having to feed him.

A ranting, disturbed police detective, Lt. Practice, drops by, almost unable to function due to the number of unsolved murders in the city. After he leaves, Alfred goes for a walk in the park. He returns with a rifle, which he doesn't know how to load. Patsy's father shows him how. Then the two of them, along with Patsy's brother, take turns shooting people down on the street.

http://www.wbez.org/news/activists-rejoice-coal-fired-plants-shut-down-102129
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/debate.txt
 http://www.amazon.com/Little-Murders-Penguin-plays-screenplays/dp/0140481184

Chicago -Meet Samuel Johnson's "London"

 Not too much has changed in human nature and in politics. The virtuous people get the shaft and the artful dodgers get more pie.  There has always been group think and wormy acceptance of public frauds and their policies. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is very much like Jack Wilkes.

Jack Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, was journalist/demagogue of the 18th Century, who used radical rhetoric to become a political icon and autocrat.  London was a pest hole of corruption vice and gang-violence.  "Wilkes and Liberty!" was the shout of the day and murders were as common as flies on an uncollected corpse.

Dr. Samuel Johnson was a lexicographer, poet, scholar, wit and Tory.  A Tory was a conservative who believed in God, King and Country.  Tories arose from the Cavalier Party which took the side of the Monarchy over Oliver Cromwell's progressive dictatorship.  In modern sensibilities, President Obama is much akin to Oliver Cromwell.  The word Tory comes from the Irish word - tóraidhe; - which means Outlaw.

How's that for irony?

If you believe today that abortion is murder, you are an outlaw.  If you believe today that marriage is between a man and woman, you are an outlaw.  If you believe today that the sweat of your brow is your capital, you are an outlaw.

Jack Wilkes as Mayor of London encouraged an Occupy Movement that railed against King George, his wars in America, and Catholics.  In 1778 and act to end anti-Popery Laws in England against Roman Catholics ( which were not unlike Obama's HHS Mandate), angered the 18th Century MSNBC-like pamphleteers and they the mob.  The words King Mob became the 99%ers of London.  The Gordon Riots against Catholics, the King and the Bank of England broke out in 1780.

Guess what; when the Mob ( 99%er OWS of London) marched on the Bank of England, Rahm Wilkes ordered the militia to fire of the crowd.

Dr. Johnson wrote of his London:

Besides, with Justice, this discerning Age
Admires their wond'rous Talents for the Stage:
Well may they venture on the Mimic's art,
Who play from Morn to Night a borrow'd Part;
Practis'd their Master's Notions to embrace,
Repeat his Maxims, and reflect his Face;
With ev'ry wild Absurdity comply,
And view each Object with another's Eye;
To shake with Laughter ere the Jest they hear,
To pour at Will the counterfeited Tear;
And as their Patron hints the Cold or Heat,
To shake in Dog-days, in December sweat.

How, when Competitors like these contend,
Can surly Virtue hope to fix a Friend?
Slaves that with serious Impudence beguile,
And lye without a Blush, without a Smile;
Exalt each Trifle, ev'ry Vice adore,
Your Taste in Snuff, your Judgment in a Whore;
Can Balbo's Eloquence applaud, and swear
He gropes his Breeches with a Monarch's Air.

Those are Chicago Values, kids!

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/london.html
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer03/wilkes.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots

Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno Calls Cardinal George Remarks " Ingenuous and Irresponsible."

“The Bible says many things,” Moreno said. “For the cardinal to say that Jesus believes in this, and therefore we all must believe in this, I think is just ingenuous and irresponsible. The God I believe in is one about equal rights, and to not give equal rights to those that want to marry, is in my opinion un-Christian.”

Candid, frank, guileless, without cant and yet irresponsible?  Say it it ain't so Proco-Joe.


Candidly, Proco Joe, I believe that Mayor Rahm twisted your ear like Kesley Grammer did to that Hispanic Alderman in last season's Boss on Starz ( New Season Begins August 17 on Starz -catch Chicago actor Tony Mockus as Kesey's Father-in-Law!) and said, " Proco Joe, prove your fealty, and go out and test the Gay waters for me - send Chick-fil-A a dead fish . . .Don't make me come into your shower!"  No Alderman goes off on his own hook . . .not in decades.


Proco Joe is wriggling on the pike and Chick-fil-A is frying up a storm.




"The Bible says many things " and the dictionary has many words.  Chicago's Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno said a mouthful there; no doubt he needed to immediately sit down and catch his breath following such vigorous display of intellectual dexterity and rhetorical exertion.The Ghost (Rahm) had Mr. Chick-fil-A gallop gamely to the finish line with this -

Moreno also called the cardinal’s reference in the blog to a fictional Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities “hyperbole and rhetoric.”
Moreno noted the church scandal surrounding pedophilia among priests, questioning George’s right to the “moral high ground on equal rights.”
Moreno, who has called gay marriage the civil rights issue of our time, also said the mayor and he are not trying to force their values on anyone, but rather to ensure equal rights. (emphases my own-natualment)

Pretty Ingenuous yourself, there, Proco! You know, candid, frank, honorable, noble & etc. Did you mention that there had been a pedophile scandal? Oh Yes.  But, of course, That's So, 1990s Proco Joe - unbefitting of the above postered beefcake-punk rock-theologian and one might find that last bit rather irresponsible for an American elected official to condemn a churchman for defending his church - This Ain't Your Daddy's Political Party notwithstanding. Well, First Ward First; now, to that Bible.


That Bible says a lot of stuff - Lot for example.Lot was the guy who defended God's angels from be gang-banged by the lads of the Boystown of the Central Plains -Sodom.  God, according to the Genesis account, was determined to destroy Sodom and its suburb.  God told Abraham "find 50 just men." Abraham, the old desert haggler, tried to gyp God down successively. . . " 40, 30, 20, 15 15 & 1/2 . . .10?"


Lot was it. He was a Breeder and had big family. 


"No Dice, Clay, " God said to Abraham, but I'll help get Lot out of this coming jackpot."  God sent two angels to help Lot and the wife and kids

Genesis 19:1 ¶ And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;² And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.³ And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.

Here's where it gets problematic with regard to sexual preference.  Lot had two handsome gents as his guests and the neighbors wanted to "know" them - Knowing causes choice or coercion. Know in the Bible means to have marital relations - between man and woman.  However, the gents of Sodom and its suburb, took a far less natural approach to the requisite act of natural selection*. They stormed Lot's door -


6. Calling out to Lot they said, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so that    we can have intercourse with them.'

7 Lot said, 'Please, brothers, do not be wicked.

8 Look, I have two daughters who are virgins. I am ready to send them out to you, for you to treat as you please, but do nothing to these men since they are now under the protection of my roof.'

9 But they retorted, 'Stand back! This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge. Now we shall treat you worse than them.' Then they forced Lot back and moved forward to break down the door.

That was it! So much for Chicago Values in Sodom.


The God of the Phoenicians ( in the Bible the Moabites and all those folks; Philistines and such) Astarte was a sexually ambiguous deity of pan sexuality and human sacrifice. Them folks in Tyre and Sidon and Biblus and especially the sensitive and civil rights conscious folks of Sodom along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea worship up a storm and tried to force other folks to accept Sodom, Tyre, Sidon and Biblus Values.  Didn't take.


Nope, a barbered blind man breeder pulled a whole temple to Ashtarte ( Baal -whatever) down around their noggins. These were pretty much the last of the sexually ambiguous folks who eschewed Old Time Chick-fil-A.


Earlier, some sort of 'natural occurrence wiped out the 13 cities of the plain around Sodom. The Koran, the Torah as well as the Bible mention the calamity and so do the secularist Greeks, who by the way did not make a religion out of preference -Spartans notwithstanding, because they didn't get along with anybody.  Greek geographer Strabo states - "there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis". Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the south western tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom."


Proco Joe you are free to believe in "The God I believe in is one about equal rights" Knock yourself out!


Francis Cardinal George is, as you so correctly state INGENUOUS, but he is no way irresponsible.  In fact, Cardinal George pretty much presented the view of most people of faith.   So are we ingenuous.  

* Natural selection is the gradual, non-random, process by which biological traitsbecome either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared withartificial selection, what we now call selective breeding.

http://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=1&bible_chapter=19
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cardinal-blasts-city-government-over-chickfila-opposition-20120801,0,3109917.story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/strabo/16b*.html
 http://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=1&bible_chapter=19

Steve Rhodes - A Real Newsman: CTA Failure to Launch New Rail Cars Makes N. Korea Look Like NASA in the 1960's

" Claypool! What's all this, then???? This simply will not do, my good man. These bloody Sino-Canuck Bombardier Wheels are bloody well defective! I suspect foul'd play. The Games afoot! . . .again. What?"

CTA officials said the no-bid component had nothing to do with scuttling the deal and that Emanuel had encouraged it all along.

"Very early, even before he took office, he asked me how we might turn this billion-dollar expenditure into an opportunity for jobs," said CTA President Forrest Claypool, who was appointed to the post shortly after Emanuel's inauguration. "So when I took office we took that mandate and ran with it."

Claypool described the Bombardier proposal as a "very, very rare potential for a win-win. The goal was a noble one. "

Chicago Tribune April 12, 2012

North Korea, which had described the launch as that of a space satellite, said the rocket failed soon after lift-off and plunged into the Pacific. ABC News

"Through an aggressive but targeted public, community and government relations campaign, Bombardier sought:

* To inform CTA officials, local government and business leaders of the growing presence of Bombardier as a part of Chicago-area commerce and industry.
* To educate key constituencies about the successful engagements Bombardier has with transit agencies in other major areas around the country and the world.

* To build a team of allies to welcome them into the market and feel comfortable with the company's products and level of customer service.

* To create a favorable impression the Chicago media market by highlighting and promoting unique attributes and initiatives of the Bombardier Transportation N.A. to specialty and general market media.


Mission not yet accomplished.

Steve Rhodes Beachwood Reporter



North Korea fired its missile with all of the potency of an ED addled mope.

Closer to home Forrest Claypool's masterful roll out of Bombardier rail cars last year matched the young Tyrant's magic moment yesterday.

Unsatisfying.

North Korea is impotent, but dangerous.

CTA is in the hands of a master job jumper with the Illinois Progressive imprimatur. Failure to roll: Launch, Roll, Noble Goal.

Steve Rhodes highlighted the excellent and tenacious work of Chicago Tribune reporter John Hilkevich who unearthed cast off wheels of the Bombardier CTA Boondoggle from China to Canada to the Fifth Floor of City Hall and various phone lines and cyber-relays of the CTA with pith and poignant note.

Steve Rhodes has more integrity than Marcus Aurelius on a full breakfast. The Beachwood Reporter is the only news clearing house in Chicago untainted by cant, compensation. or courtship.

Dig how he do roll - Beachwood Reporter Ethics Pledge

http://www.beachwoodreporter.com/house/beachwood_ethics_statement.php


NBC tried to buy Steve Rhodes a couple of years ago and was told to pound sand in thunder.

You do not need to agree with Steve Rhodes or the talented staff of the Beachwood Reporter and he and they could care less. The point of journalism is to give truth a place at the table set with too many dishes and places by gluttons, drunks and dummies.

I am aware of Forrest Claypool's resume and remain as underwhelmed by his obvious talents and charms as I have for years. The Bombardier Boondoggle ( click my post title for a thorough close reading of John Hilkevich's work by Steve Rhodes) more than lived up my expectations.

For any summary and fair redaction of what is going on in Chicago go to the Beachwood Reporer. You will get a considered opinion free of Mammon's tickle.

Brewer's Droop, ED, Failure to Launch result from many factors.

Corruption ditto.

Kevin Myers defines the germ of corruption this way - Corruption is made possible by low standards: what is unpunctuality, but a disdain for rules?

The plumbers or electricians who don't show up on time are the building-blocks that make possible the Ziggurat of large-scale corruption. Kevin Myers last column for the Irish Independent

Myers' point; what we accept; we get - good and hard and with great regularity.

We accepted Blago. Some folks fully accept Forrest Claypool -


Here's little more on Chicago CTA Bombardier Navigator Forrest " Noble Goal" Claypool.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2012/03/rahm-wasnt-bilked-in-day-took-many.html

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-12/news/ct-met-cta-bombardier-20120412_1_cta-president-forrest-claypool-cta-lawyers-cta-officials

City, County, State and Federal "Take it and Like It." South Side Parade, Progressive Government and All of Us

President Obama and the Lawn Rangers

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration indicated this week that it doesn't think the group trying to resurrect the South Side Irish Parade, shut down three years ago because of drunken violence, is prepared to pull it off Chicago Tribune

You set your watch by our elected officials - Gay marriage introduced - 'kill the parade where the breeders live . . .they also object to abortion . . .and are racist . . .and pay taxes.'


One Parade in the City of Chicago, one only, is a 'drunken' monstrosity. That is the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade. Only one parade in the City of Chicago is bad and all others are good, no matter what.

In the past ten years, the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade in the Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood neighborhoods has morphed into the South Side Chirish Parade thanks to the news media. Not only has the name been changed but the very location - a Catholic conglomeration of Catholic Parishes, schools and a university - has been tagged as intrinsically racist and bigoted.

Phil Kadner of the Sun Times Group wrote an article immediately after the 2008 Parade in which he attempted to mislead readers with a real stretcher that the genesis of the parade was no more than white flight Irish Catholic racism.

According to neighborhood legend, the South Side Irish Parade was launched by two families that fondly recalled the original St. Patrick's Day Parade on 79th Street.

It seems to me it really grew in popularity about the time the Daley clan was out of power, Harold Washington was mayor, and the Irish of the 19th Ward decided to secede from Chicago.

The parade was begun long before Harold Washington decided to run for Mayor of Chicago and really took off in popularity when Mayor Jane Byrne pulled Chicago Police Department security to punish the striking firefighters who live in this Ward. Like this year, only the South Side St. Patrick's Day enjoys no official support and the media does as it is told.

Sadly, Alderman Matt O'Shea finds himself opposing a neighborhood event that at one time needed to shore up security denied by the Mayor with private volunteers and could have used his skills and leadership. When Mayor Byrne tried to kill the Parade as a message to city workers, Alderman Mike Sheahan led the neighborhood keeping the Parade safe and sober without Chicago Police. The Parade was even more community minded than years previous. Politicians and news creatures broke their knee-caps crawling to and from this very Catholic community event every year subsequent.

Every politician from Mayor Washington to Governor Blagojevich participated in this 'drunken and racist' event. President Obama, while running for State and U.S. Senate made sure he was given proper place in the march route down Western Ave., as did Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown, Al Gore and even Pat Buchanan.

The South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade stands a good chance of being aborted by Rahm Emanuel. Security is the issue. Curbing drunken behavior and white ethnic Catholic racist highjinx that never happened at any past parade in this neighborhood will be Emanuel's meme. Parade Denied. Like the Obama HHS Choice Mandate, this is Progressive government writ large. Take it and like it and vote Democratic this March!

James "Skinny" Sheahan, brother of Alderman and Sheriff Mike Sheahan, provided leadership and is to be commended, whether the Parade marches on or not.

Sheahan demands 100% community intolerance of public consumpstrion of beer and booze. We don't want this neighborhood to be like Wrigleyville on a home game.

Every Cubs home game is a mini-south side Chi-rish Bacchanalia, but it is sanctioned and supported by Annie Sather's Cinnabon Alderman and Mayor alike.

The South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade was made into a political football by the 19th Ward Alderman, the news media, and the Mayor of Chicago. Football is a one tough game.

The Parade was brought back for the very same reasons the parade was begun - to celebrate the identity - Faith, Family and Friendship -of the Irish Catholics who live here. No other reason. The bar owners are hardly a powerful lobby and many are barely scratching out a living thanks to City, County and State taxes and regulations and the always one-way relationship with elected officials - take it and like it and buy some tickets.

Opposition to the parade is sometimes genuine. I live three short blocks west of the parade route. The north side and suburban fern-bar buses drop off revelers from outside of the neighborhood right in front of my house at 7AM on parade days and do not pick up the disoriented and tummysick youngsters until 7PM.

I end up picking up few empties from my lawn, but that is about it. I have helped a few mopes, who missed the pick-up back to Bucktown and River North, call for cabs, or Mommy. Not exactly a Gethsemane.

If the Parade is killed it will be an act of the usual politically correct and very Progressive hypocrisy that controls the public debate - Take it and Like It!

Writing in this morning's Wall Street Journal about the Obama Choice Mandate -pills, abortifacients and rubbers for all of God's Children no matter what God says -the author writes a summary of Progressive Government -

So here we are, with the government demanding that the church hold up its end of a Faustian bargain that was supposed to permit it to perform limitless acts of virtue. Instead, what the government believes the deal is about, more than anything else, is compliance.

Politically bloodless liberals would respond that, net-net, government forcings do much social good despite breaking a few eggs, such as the Catholic Church's First Amendment sensibilities. That is one view. But the depth of anger among Catholics over this suggests they recognize more is at stake here than political results. They are right. The question raised by the Catholic Church's battle with ObamaCare is whether anyone can remain free of a U.S. government determined to do what it wants to do, at whatever cost. .

WSJColumnist Dan Henninger on the Catholic church and government

This is the secularist Progressive Seamless Garment -ObamaCare, Gay Marriage, No School Vouchers, Abortion and more taxes for the middle class have the South Side St. Patrick's Day to be a litmus test.

If we need to sacrifice the South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade to let the Catholic homophobic breeders and racists and drunks know -what's what - so be it.

Greg Harris introduced the Religious Liberty & Gay Marriage legislation in Springfield only yesterday, in order to allow the lame duck Democrats to high speed rail another bill that will be signed by the always compliant Progressive stooge governor. Take it and like it.

Chicago - Urban Center Progressive Playland

Meet Poe Witry -Chicagoan.


We are sitting on geological shifting plates - the New Madrid Fault down around Cairo, Illinois and another over in Indiana the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone*. Yep, it is a dandy. Slabs of rock right under our feet and infrastructure -quakes and seismic shocks.

They are as nothing compared to political and economic earth rattlers about to happen right here in the City of Big Shoulders - Soon to be City of Slim Hips. For years, smart sizing and diet concerns of Progressives have become policy. Policy is what replaced politics. Politics was glad-handing and quid pro quo battering for votes that was the igneous rock upon which urban, county and state government was built. The City that Works, remember that?

The Urban Gentry largely childless, secular, affluent and educated scorns the bootless and unhorsed breeders who send their kids to Catholic schools and retain the values of the parish as well as citizenship over Progressive doctrines- they always have and they always will, whether it is on the davenports of Hull House, or on camera at WTTW, the Gentry Liberal can not stand neighbors. Neighbors live in parishes and neighborhoods.

Thanks to Michael Shakman and his community of judges, lawyers, journalists and academics, politics became a dinosaur with the compliance of short-sighted politicians and Progressive architects. Added to Shakman decrees, unique to Cook County, are more ordinances and policies heaped upon public safety agencies - Police and Fire. Cops wear more handcuffs than criminals.

Crime is now merely "bothersome." Violent crime is merely an "opportunity," begotten by poverty. Life is a Lab!

More bothersome are the people who stand in the way of transforming Chicago from a City into an Urban Center - neighborhood residents.

Rarely does the media refer to blocks of people living together in a particular area as neighbors - rather, they are community members. Communities need to be organized into cadres of marchers and concerned activists for doctrinally approved Progressive Agendas. Communities allow real estate manipulation and easy access to programs and the treasure they store from government programs.

These programs get put in place by a City Council of aldermen who vote the will of the Progressively approved doctrinal mandates. E.g. Community Policing, Urban Translating and Gang Meet-'N-Greets trump law enforcement. City Workers must live in the City, for now. Rahm will lift the residency mandates for all city workers in a few years.

Rahm Emanuel will part the Resident Sea like Moses, but only after the supine City Council votes in the Garbage Collection Grid. Smart Size! Say good by to the truck drivers and crewmen on big blue vehicles of Streets and Sanitation and hello to the Green and Gold Garbage Packers of Waste Management! Now, all of those family men and women formerly subject to the Ward Pharaohs shall be freed . . .of their City Jobs.

The Mount Greenwood, Morgan Park, Edison Park, Garfield Ridge, Auburn-Gresham, Hegewisch and the Brighton/McKinley Park helots can go to ZION or Braidwood, Custer Park, or Posen.

Chicago is planned to be an Urban Center with biker/walker-friendly easements and paths, medicinal marijuana boutiques Hula-Green park scapes, many cafes & bistros, health centers, open-air markets, abortuaries of course, and slick residences for the affluent, the childless the multidegree'd and most importantly the very secular. Chicago will be a monohue center -one color - white. No one love es the BLUES like rich white folks!

The darling progressive cities like Portland are white demographically speaking. They celebrate diversity, but damned if they will live with diversity.

To be sure the odd black chap or woman, urban out-fitted of course - will have a condo, or townhouse somewhere in the urban center; ditto the Latino earner sans chicos y chicas. Denzels and Domingas will be embraced, but Turners and Ignazios not so much. Likewise, Catholic-non-sectarians ( Unitarians who do not go to church), from the better secondary schools, who no longer use the diminutive given names like Bobby, Tommy and Dinny well into late middle age, or the more colorful breeder apellations of Headsy,Slurp, and North-eye, will not disturb the welkin of a Bistro with tales of Mount Carmel or St. Rita derring-do.

The mantra shall be, "If you (Faith families of breeders - Blacks, Hispanics and White Catholic ethnics)are not like us, leave.Quickly, once your labor is no longer necessary."

(From Mick Dumke at the Chicago Reader April 15, 2008)

ZIP WORKERS SIDE OF TOWN
60655 3,422 south ( My Hood -Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood)

60638 2,873 southwest ( Clearing & Midway)

60631 2,140 northwest

60652 1,853 southwest

60634 1,742 northwest

60643 1,660 south

60617 1,503 southeast

60628 1,289 south

60630 1,282 northwest

60620 1,248 south ( Over by Leo HS)

60619 1,210 south

60656 1,199 northwest

60646 1,183 northwest

The ground is shifting. What are you going to do about it? Harsh.

*

On March 13, 2009, a research group based out of Northwestern University and Purdue University, funded by the United States Geological Survey, reported in the journal Science and in other journals that the New Madrid system may be "shutting down" and that tectonic stress may now be accumulating elsewhere. Seth Stein, the leader of the research group, published these views in a book, Disaster Deferred, in 2008. Although some of these ideas have gained some amount of acceptance among researchers, they have not been accepted by the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, which advises the USGS, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In the November 5, 2009, issue of Nature, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Missouri said that due to the lack of fault movement, the quakes along the faults may only be aftershocks of the 1811–1812 earthquakes.[Researchers say aftershocks on the San Andreas can continue for a period of up to about ten years, where fault movement averages up to 37 millimeters (1.5 in) a year across California.