Neil Steinberg! Words that People Say Really Matter, Because They Often Match What People Believe And Do.

 

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

 Obviously, you want Obama elected — the nation will soon realize what it has done, the pendulum will swing the other way — your way. At long last! Ausgerechnet jetzt!
Persuasive stuff. But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009

The immediate snotty crack above followed a series of Sun Times columns by other like-minded writers who hate cops and white Catholics in general that spouted pretty much the same lie. I live in Morgan Park which, like Mount Greenwood, gets grouped in a collective that the media call Beverly or the political landscape of the 19th Ward - home to largely white Catholic, government employees, teachers, nurses, tradesmen, some well-to-do folks, cops and fireman. Many black Americans live very well in this neighborhood as well. I used to meet black gents like Doc and Stewart up at Keegan's Pub having a drink and  a horse-laugh with their paler hued neighbors. Now, Keegan's  is Barney Callaghan's and a younger crowd attend the same salons. However, when I read Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times (without paying for either mind you), one might think that folks spent  all of  their time chasing Eliza over the ice flow on the Ohio River, as the poor child attempts to find the Underground High Speed Railroad. Nope.

Well, Monday was Halloween!  A very nice time for kids and their parents.

Trick, or Treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Note there is no question.  The implied meaning Treats without your windows getting soaped, your front porch egged, or worse. The tricks have gone the way of merry at Christmas time.

We still love Christmas, Hanukkah, or Yule tide, but the concept of being merry in our age could get a some poor slob locked up and wearing a Velcro dinner jacket on the fourth floor of the local hospital,

I glanced at the Sun Times this morning and saw that Neil Steinberg had a scold for people Neil deems stupid - anyone not Neil Steinberg.

He echoes William Butler Yeats's dismissal of 'polite, meaningless words'

People just say stuff.
Such as “How are you?” when they couldn’t care less how you are. And “I’m fine” when they’re not. It’s expected, the grease that society slides forward on. Hardly worth noting.
When it comes to politics, however, this just-say-stuff habit is more worrisome. Then the grease can send our nation skidding off of a cliff of toxic nonsense and paranoid fantasy. Politicians make promises that they can’t possibly deliver. They air claims that can’t possibly be true, that directly conflict what they just said a day or two ago. And their followers, well, follow, saying things they neither mean nor think about.

Yeats meant what he said about the people he met and knew before they 'changed; changed utterly' by British firing squads.  They were the same people, only dead and honored for their deaths in 1916.


Several days ago, Steinberg wrote a piece that was standard if you back Trump you are a racist Cro Magnon, honeyed with William Butler Yeats.

As terrible as the election of 2016 is, it is also only the beginning. Clinton might win — I hold out hope she will win, unless of course she doesn’t. But that won’t be the end. Somewhere, a sharper, slicker, more disciplined, more palatable version of Donald Trump — Donald 2.0 — is being assembled. Some Marco Rubio-caliber fraud is staring hard at himself in the mirror, liking what he sees, and cooing, “Next time, it’s your turn baby!” The rough beast awakes and slouches toward 2020 to be born.

I used to read and like Neil Steinberg.  Then I learned that his words did not match the guy. Where I come from, that is a problem.  Neil might have been well-served taking a graduate course in regular folks.  But, back to the nub. Neil is on a Yeats kick.

He and so many 'journalists, politicians, anchorpersons, bankers, oligarchs, academics and  hacks are worried that Trump might win on November 8th - I don't worry, nor do I believe that he will get by stacked decks.  Steinberg says stuff all of the time and he believes it.  He hates Trump and the people voting for him with the same passion as he hated people for not worshipping at Obama's 2008 Greek Temple. He goes Orewellian Big Brother on them with great regularity.

 

  Then, Neil decides to really gin-up the Two Minutes Hate on the specific people who might back Trump and nail us good:

Such as? Abortion. “Abortion is murder,” the anti-abortion crowd claims. You hear it all the time. First, that’s incorrect. Since murder is a legal term, and abortion is legal and thus it is by definition not murder. What they mean is “Abortion should be murder.” Except they don’t mean that either, as you can demonstrate by replying, “Oh really? If it’s murder, then for how long should the murderers go to jail?” And the answer is “umm.” We can translate that grunt as “OK ‘abortion is murder,’ is just something we say because it sounds powerful and more compact than, ‘I want to force my religion on you while dragging gender roles back to the 1950s.'” Admittedly quite a mouthful.

Quite a mouthful.  You know what they say about people who talk with their mouths full?

Two words - Nuremberg Laws, numb nuts.

Nuremberg Laws and Roe v. Wade. Hitler murdered Jews and Planned Parenthood murders babies.  See, nothing on my teeth and gums.

Words matter and people mean what they say, even if they use Yeats.

Neil went through a Dante period that was equally shallow in 2008-'09. During his Inferno Days,  Neil had lunch at Kens on Western Ave. around the time when Mr. Steinberg's conduct brought public humiliation on him and his tenure as an employee, much less a columnist was doubtful.  Blood under the bridge.  No one forgets a kindness like a guy who believes that he is Emile Zola.   I took Neil Steinberg to Jackie Casto's Ken's on Western Ave. for lunch, where the talented word-sculptor chatted with a thick number of folks who live here, including cops, fireman, school teachers. the Mayor of Evergreen Park, two writers from Beverly Review and a number of Leo Alums who had attended the Veterans Observance.

Generally, when one breaks bread with another person some kind of bond of mutual grace and respect surfaces - not so with too many columnists.  A few months later, Neil smeared the people he lunched with to make a snotty crack about the stupid people who did not vote for and worship Obama in 2009.

Hell, I didn't vote for Obama in 2008, or 2012, because I firmly the believe the man has limited mental capacities - he has yet to disappoint me as our first Ted Baxter President.

I say, "Good Morning,: because I mean that I hope everyone including Neil Steinberg has a very good morning.

Neil Steinberg is a semiotic totalitarian - he and his circle know what meaning is and they will tell us.  He gets caught up in all of that clever Jacques Derrida deconstructionism that journalists employ to white-out events, words, deeds and meanings. Poetry works for semiotic totalitarians.  Me and the neighbors tend to be prosaic.

When I say " Get the @#$% off my porch,"  I don't mean come on in and set a spell.

Chicago's Pleonastic Schnook and the Science of Snobbery Against Faith

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."

John 20:24-25

Religious zealotry is alien to me —but I understand that lots of people are fired up by their own creeds, and hot to impose them upon anybody and everybody, eagerly using any tool at their disposal, from little tracts left in bus station restrooms to fanciful doctrine jammed into public education disguised as legitimate science.

But this ploy must be resisted. Primarily because we live in a diverse society now. This issue lingers because not everyone has gotten that memo, and pools of fervent consensus exist — lots of fundamentalist villages in Tennessee, apparently. This encourages the grouped faithful to convince themselves that everybody thinks the same, or should. They don’t and shouldn’t. That’s why science is appealing — the atomic structure of hydrogen is unchanged whether you are Protestant or Catholic, Jewish or Muslim.

Neil Steinberg- Chicago's scornful schnook

The dimensions of the atom which forms its structure is a function of radiation power change that the atom undergoes. As the atomic component masses in a material are initially accelerated to near light speed there is a mass change and a shortening of its dimensions,(The electron orbital radius is relatively responding accordingly)
This is relative to the atomic temperature energy changes.The mass structure changes phase as a function of temperature power and the time that the radiation power that the atom in the mass structure responds to.
Never the less the architecture of the atom keeps its form unless a Nuclear fusion occurs due to extreme gravity field pressure and temperature energy changes between interaction of the atoms.

An good example is Hydrogen nuclear fusion which causes a new structure assembly into Helium atom transformation.

Some Science guy. ( emphases my own -of course)

Religion and religious beliefs are targets of bullies. You see religion is big to most folks and the end of religious belief is God and no one is Bigger than God - but science. Immanuel Kant, a guy who never travelled more than forty miles from his Prussian Königsberg, is the grand daddy of scientific zealotry, evident in our Chicago lummox's column.

Science was once the means of getting to the Truth. Science was used by Franciscan Schoolmen in the 13th Century as means supporting Faith. Muslims, Jews and Christians had a big part in this effort all the while slaughtering one another in the Holy Land.

These days people of faith are zealots, bigots, Rubes and people of science are better dressed, thinner, and handy with the babes.

Science in the West can be traced to John Scotus Erigena, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and Roger Bacon, insular Irish and Brits - the last three gents belonged to the Order of Friars Minor -Franciscans.

All of these guys got in Dutch with Popes and Princes and it is believed that John Scotus Erigena ( Irish John from Ireland) was murdered by monks unhappy with this works on the Psuedo Dionysius, or that he gulped down the last of the beer.

Faith and science had a bumpy road, we got here.

Religion can be blamed for the Inquisition and Science can be blamed for Chernobyl.

Neil Steinberg seems to be painting with a very broad brush again - Religious Zealots, he warns, are asking that the Bible might get a mention in a science class. Chilling? Well, to the thin blooded I suppose.

Science errs. Ask the rocket boss in North Korea, if he is still drawing breath.

Religion can be a huge pain in the ass - ask any Coptic Christian in Post Spring Egypt.

Consider the words of Thomas the Twin in today's Gospel "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Now that is Pure Empiricism that would made Immanuel Kant plotz."Ja! Out stehen! Es bleibt immer ein Skandal der Philosophie und universelle menschliche Vernunft, dass die Existenz von Dingen außerhalb von uns ... haben sollte, lediglich auf Glauben angenommen werden, und dass, wenn es jedem auftritt, daran zu zweifeln, sollten wir nicht in der Lage, ihn mit einer hinreichenden Nachweis zu beantworten. " ("It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof.")

That particular Koingsberg goof required certainty.

It is said that the citizens of Königsberg set their clocks according to the position of the gray presence of Professor Kant on his daily walk down and back the same street every day. It is said that the only time he missed his walk at the exact same time was when he first discovered Rousseau's book, Emile, and became so engrossed that he forgot his walk.

Imagine this - Kant would walk his dachshund while immersed in prolegmnas of intense import. He would return home after verifying each and every Linden tree, wrought iron fence, post and building on the route - several trees were removed and Kant could not find his way home with any certainty. It rained. Some religious zealot had to go out bring the man of science home and in out of the rain.

Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080925193830AAkTPrI

http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/paschons/language_http/essays/Kant.html

Catholics Can Be Elected. We May Elect One Governor of Illinois Next Go Around

Friday is the day politicians enjoy as a news memory hole. TGIF! Friday was the day that Gov.Pat Quinn chose to meet with Cardinal George and nine other Illinois Bishops. He pretty much tossed the meet-up away until he shot his mouth off to the very talented Sun Times political reporter Abdon Pallasch. Quinn parsed the chat.

Everyday is Friday for too many Chicago columnists and editorial boards.

The Chicago Sun Times is now trolling for on-line subscriptions; therefore, a web-reader can only grab a snatch of what their out-front propagandists have to say. No way I'm popping out nickels to read with care and cut and paste for grist to mill.

The Chicago Sun Times has great reporters ( Natasha Korecki, Abdon Pallasch, Mark Konkol, Tim Novak, Chris Fusco, Fran Spielman, Maureen O'Donnell, Rick Morrisey) and a pretty good columnist in Mark Brown. The balance of ink-slingers is . . . pre-fabricated, or processed food for thought.

The editorial and commentary quality may improve in the coming months when more thoughtful and engaged investors give the substance a good look-see.

Neil Steinberg offers another in his phalanx of snotty columns aimed at the breeders and church-goers - Catholics. He wonders if Catholics can still be elected.

Steinberg's Lazy-Susan wit attempts to spin the bowls of anti-Catholic bigotry in to the Catholic Bishops of Illinois, when one might expect that anti-Catholic bigotry comes from another quarter. Clever, Lad! I read snatches of Steinberg, because the whack-a-mole Verison-funded tin-cup pop-up blocks the passages. Snatches were plenty for me; not clever.

The spiel is Steinberg defends Governor Pat Quinn, who attended thirteen years of Catholic schooling over the bishops who are charged with defending the Faith. Quinn is vassel to Terry Cosgrove a multi-purpose coalition Gay/Planned Parenthood Boss.
Quinn is also a governor whose Catholic education is at odds with his obligations to Personal PAC and Progressive Identity.

Click my post title for Catholic Teachings on Sexuality, Human Identity, and Marriage. You really need to do some Progressive parsing to ugly it up.

My Catholic Faith ( not for everyone and tough to live up to) is 2,000 years old and has withstood Goths,Moors and Vikings. It's greatest peril arose in the late Middle ages when comfort and riches politicized the faith and practices of Christians universal. Bishops and Popes and Kings and Emperors played politics and things went bad.

The pews got kind of empty, because religion and politics became toxic and sexual abuses of all sorts ( simony, usury, nepotism, & etc.) permeated the institutional Church. The Church reformed itself and people who no longer cared much for the smells and bells, rigors of authority and patriarchal pastoral priesthood took it on the heel and toe and became Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and for the more secular appetites Unitarians. We still have Popes and bishops, but in America Kings and Emperors were shown the door. We have Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Mayors and State Legislators, as well as judges. It gets complicated.

In the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, bribery was up-front. Families could purchase the Papacy and even the odd nation-state. Some American families ( Kennedy, Rockefeller, Bush, Dodd, and Daley) can and do purchase power with the help of PACS. In order to make the political landscape more Rainbow-hued and Abortion friendly these Families and PACS purchased Pro-life Catholic politicians. Coalition building is not possible on Rock of Peter.

Gov. Pat Quinn has placed himself outside of Catholic teaching on Abortion and Homosexual Marriage. Were I, as a Catholic teacher, to offer my personal convictions that a teenage boy should occupy his hours in front of computer screen in his locked room gratifying himself in front of images of naked babes with - " It is your Civil Right to pursue your Happiness," I think that I might be called to task and account fro my exercise of conscious. Likewise, were I inclined to fulfill my goatish instincts . . .too disturbing to catalogue. Happiness is not

You see Happiness, from Aristotle through Santayana, has very little to do with carnal desire. In fact Dante, as orthodox a Catholic moralist as one may find in a layman, takes Thomistic (St. Thomas Aquinas) morality to poetic task in the Divine Comedy. I believe that Neil Steinberg has loudly and often touted his love of Dante.
Dante would toss Catholic politicians who take coin and votes to promote abortion and secular homosexual doctrines into the jaws of Satan - like Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. Allegorically speaking, of course.

Catholics can and should be elected to office. Here in Illinois we may begin to do so again.


http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/9524518-452/is-it-still-ok-to-elect-catholics.html

Steinberg Tweaks Rev. Meeks? Dante, Neil, Dante. Brunetto Latini ?

Brunetto Latini was a GLBTQ civil servant in Florence in Dante's Day. Neil Steinberg reads Dante all of the time. I taught some passages from the Divine Comedy for years and have merely a high school teacher's middling familiarity with Dante. I never would buy a sweatshirt with Dante's Mug on the front, however. Who would?

However, I do remember Brunetto Latini*. Dante tossed folks with whom he had congress from Florence into Purgatory or the Inferno during his epic journey with the Roman poet Virgil through the afterlife in search of lost and beloved Beatrice - who is up in Heaven ( Paradiso) with Beatific Vision -All Three of Him.

Not Brunetto Latini. The poor guy was lumped into the third ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell ( Inferno) with the sodomites - gays.

There are plenty of breeders in Hell as well - folks who cave in to Lust. That is the sexual urge in all of its many manifestations -Diversity is Hell.

Well today, Old Neil goes after Rev. Senator James Meeks, who broke with the Left Coalitions by urging Vouchers for all school children. Contra Progresso! Che Brutta!

Rev. James Meeks has railed against homosexuality - contra natura, as Dante and Virgil and Pope Benedict XVI might say.

Rev. Meeks met with the Illinois Gay Papacy in Closed Session. Neil finds that to be great sport - treats James Meeks like people of the 19th Ward he does, Old Neil. Funny guy.

Damn! I never get invited anywhere. I would have loved to be in the room when the Rev. James Meeks explained to gay activists how his urging the state to continue denying them jobs and housing based on their sexuality, not to mention his firm, oft-stated belief that they'll all be roasting in hell with Satan for eternity, was merely a misunderstanding, now that he needs their votes. . . .The crux is what he is willing to say to the thousands of Salem Baptist faithful every Sunday. If the scales have indeed fallen from his eyes, and he has decided he wants to be mayor so much that gay people should now be judged, not by the color of their sexuality, but by the content of their characters, well, glory hallelujah, he should not whisper it to a few gay leaders, but shout it from the mountaintop to his faithful flock. I would get up early on a Sunday, put on a good suit and go to church to hear that sermon. If it ever happens, I'll let you know.

Neil's tongue tucked tightly to the cheek! Shades of Dr. King to make the sinful soul sing! Neil must be killing himself with laughter directed at all of the ignominious fools us mortal be who are not Neil Steinberg.

Not my cup of giggles. Like most people, I have more than enough grist for the giggle mill with my own personal and public follies.

Satura Lanx! Dante is a pretty good student of human nature and could teach all of us about tolerance. Well not all of us. Certainly not those who puff themselves up as Dante scholars, to be sure.

As I said, I have a middling familiarity with Dante, but full appreciation of literature's ability to make better human beings of us -were we not to use literature as a coffee table book.

Dante admired the genius and the poetic abilities of Brunetto Latini and is saddened to witness the man's torment in the Inferno - it was not Dante's choice to toss Latini in the third ring of the Seventh Circle - that is God's work. Dante has much more in common with Rev. James Meeks than with Neil Steinberg.

James Meeks has a congregation and a constituency.

Neil Steinberg has a column -for now.

* Brunetto Latini- Florentine philosopher and statesman, born at Florence, c. 1210; the son of Buonaccorso Latini, died 1294.

A notary by profession. Brunetto shared in the revolution of 1250, by which the Ghibelline power in Florence was overthrown, and a Guelph democratic government established In 1260, he was sent by the Commune as ambassador to Alfonso X of Castile, to implore his aid against King Manfred and the Ghibellines, and he has left us in his "Tesoretto", (II, 27-50), a dramatic account of how, on his return journey, he met a scholar from Bologna who told him that the Guelphs had been defeated at Montaperti and expelled from Florence. Brunetto took refuge at Paris, where a generous fellow-countryman enabled him to pursue his studies while carrying on his profession of notary. To this unnamed friend he now dedicated his "Trésor". After the Guelph triumph of 1266 and the establishment of a new democratic constitution, Brunetto returned to Florence, where he held various offices, including that of secretary to the Commune, took an active and honoured part in Florentine politics, and was influential in the counsels of the Republic. Himself a man of great eloquence, he introduced the art of oratory and the systematic study of political science into Florentine public life. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Among the individuals who had come under his influence was the young Dante Alighieri, and, in one of the most pathetic episodes of the "Inferno" (canto XV) Dante finds the sage, who had taught him "how man makes himself eternal", among the sinners against nature.

Brunetto's chief work, "Li Livres dou Trésor" is a kind of encyclopedia in which he "treats of all things that pertain to mortals". It was written in French prose during his exile, and translated into Italian by a contemporary, Bono Giamboni. Mainly a compilation from St. Isidore of Seville and other writers, it includes compendiums of Aristotle's "Ethics" and Cicero's treatise on rhetoric. The most interesting portion is the last, "On the Government of Cities", in which the author deals with the political life of his own times. The "Tesoretto", written before the "Trésor", is an allegorical didactic poem in Italian, which undoubtedly influenced Dante. Brunetto finds himself astray in a wood, speaks with Nature in her secret places, reaches the realm of the Virtues, wanders into the flowery meadow of Love, from which he is delivered by Ovid. He confesses his sins to a friar and resolves to amend his life, after which he ascends Olympus and begins to hold converse with Ptolemy. It has recently been shown that the "Tesoretto" was probably dedicated to Guido Guerra, the Florentine soldier and politician who shares Brunetto's terrible fate in Dante's Inferno. Brunetto also wrote the "Favolello", a pleasant letter in Italian verse to Rustico di Filippo on friends and friendship. The other poems ascribed to him, with the possible exception of one canzone, are spurious.
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia

Ass -In Two Parts: Terry Rauf the American Anus!

Imam Pastor Terry Rauf -The Perfect Ass! An Autre Ass !

Don't be deceived because people know what a matzo ball is and you can check into fancy hotels now. Ostracizing the outsider because he's different and someone who belongs to his faith once did a bad thing can still work against Jews, too.

Neil Steinberg!

I shot Kean Coffee through my nose when I read Chicago Sun Times practiced hypocrite Neil Steinberg prosing about breaking bread with autre people - when, in fact, Neil dined with me and autre South Side helots with buon gusto and in no time at all called his lunch mates racists and anti-semite Aryan Nation goons on the pages of the Sun Times. Neil was JOKING!

I remembered what my sainted Pappy always told me -"Goof, an ass always has two parts." Hypocrites have two faces - the one they pose to you and the one they tell everyone else what they really think of you. Neil Steinberg believes that everyone in the 19th Ward is racist and candidate for the Aryan Brotherhood, but would not put him off of his lunch on another man's dime - of course.

Thus, in all matters where hypocrisy must out - politics, religion and journalism - the Ass dominates - face front; both ways.

Consider Re. Terry Jones and Imam Rauf - what being an ASS is all about.

Eleven Year Old St. Cajetan's Girl Directs Candy for Haiti Kids! Hailey Crowley -St. Cajetan Warrior!

Your St. Cajetan's Lady Warriors!

A local clown columnist wrote that Pro Lifers only care for the 'acorns while the forest burns.'

Millions of actual children living in the real world right now will continue to be denied basic health care -- some fatally -- in the name of protecting embryonic potential children. It's like letting a forest burn down for the sake of a bag of acorns.

Strain that metaphor, Steinberg! http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/2073553,CST-NWS-stein28.article

Catholic Charities opens at 8 A.M. (folks are lined up in front every day well before that time) every day on 79th Street just east of Racine to feed children and their parents, while Planned Parenthood offers opportunities to kill children all over the state. Here's some of the support Catholic Charities offers all over Chicago:

Services
Adoption
Child Development
Counseling
Children/Youth/Families Abuse or Neglect
Domestic Violence
Education
Emergency Assistance
Employment & Job Training
Health Care
Homelessness
HIV/AIDS Services
Immigration / Naturalization
Legal
Maternity / Pregnancy
Nutrition
Refugee Resettlement
Senior Services
Senior Housing
Substance Abuse
Veterans Services

http://www.catholiccharities.net/services/


"Acorns and trees"do pretty well - cradle to grave.

The history of institutional health care in Chicago begins with the Daughters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy - care for foundlings, orphans and the indigent.

This Dante spouting goof Steinberg tries to imply that being anti-Abortion is hypocritical. Catholics prove the dope wrong again. A better man and a better journalist working for the same news group as pays Steinberg prints a real story on the same day. Sweet Ironies.

Hailey Crowley eleven years of age and a student at St. Cajetan Parish Grammar School must have learned that life is pretty complex. Her mom and dad it appears did a great job of raising her.

Witness this report by Steve Metsch of the Southtown Star:

Hailey Crowley was deeply touched when she saw televised reports from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
"I just wanted to do something to help because we have so much stuff and they don't have anything. They're living on the streets," said Hailey, 11.
She won't soon forget one image.
"There was a picture of a little boy, younger than my brother, sitting in the street and crying," said Hailey, whose brother, Liam, is 6.
Hailey, of Chicago's Beverly community, decided to help raise money for the children of Haiti but wasn't sure how.
Then she found inspiration at a cousin's baptismal party.
"They had chocolate bars with her name on the label. I thought, 'I could do that,' " she said.
She asked her parents, Doug and Mary Kay Crowley, to buy several cartons of Hershey milk chocolate bars.
Doug Crowley helped Hailey design "Help 4 Haiti" labels in the red and blue colors of the Haitian flag.
Printed for free by Copy Cats, a print shop at St. Xavier University, the labels were slipped over the Hershey labels.
And then Hailey got busy selling candy bars for $2 each.
"A lot of people gave me more than $2. A lot of relatives gave me $20 for one bar," Hailey said.
One family gave Hailey $100 for one chocolate bar, Mary Kay said.
Hailey went door to door selling chocolate bars. She called friends and relatives. She even sold candy during lunch at St. Cajetan School, where she is a sixth-grader.
To date, Hailey has raised more than $300 that will be donated to UNICEF to help needy children in Haiti.
"It makes me happy," she said of her large haul.
St. Cajetan Principal Terry Reger is "happy and thrilled" by Hailey's idea.
"She's an example of the message we're trying to get out to our kids. You give back. You help others. That's what it's all about," Reger said.
"Hailey is very genuine. She's not in it for the publicity. This is Hailey. This is who she is," Reger said.
This is Hailey's second effort to help others. She organized a candy sale for Hurricane Katrina relief when she was in second grade, her father said.
That's not too surprising, given her upbringing. Helping others is a common trait in members of the Crowley family.
Doug Crowley is a Chicago firefighter. Mary Kay Crowley is a nurse at the University of Illinois Medical Center.
If you are interested in helping Hailey raise money for Haiti, she will be selling her "Help 4 Haiti" chocolate bars through St. Patrick's Day.
HOW TO HELP

To buy a "Help 4 Haiti" chocolate bar or make a contribution, e-mail Hailey Crowley's father at douglas_crowley@hotmail.com.

Philly Lawyer/Journalist Honors Cops - Christine M. Flowers! Chicago Lawyers and News Hacks Sully Cops - How About a Switch, Philly?

There must be something to that idea of a parallel universe. Here in Chicago, citizens are treated to a daily litany of calumnies and charges against the very women and men who put their lives on the line to protect and serve.

The Chicago Sun Times ( and its satellite papers of STNG) and the Chicago Tribune shoo their reporters to The Center for Wrongful Convictions, the MacArthur Center for Justice and the Peoples Law Office for cookie -cutter feel good stories that uplift the hearts of people who live far,far from crime and those who commit the most heinous offenses.

The Path to the Pulitzer is assured by Trust Funded Think Tank Lawyers and 1960's Radicals with law licenses ( they actually did less harm to American society with bombs and bottles back in the day) committed to undermining any and all confidence in the Justice System.

However, in Philadelphia a lawyer and a journalist, Christine M. Flowers, has written many columns in defence of police officers and common sense. Today, Ms. Flowers offers a tribute to four police officers killed in the line of duty since May 2008 - this is Phildelphia's bloodiest year for Law Enforcement personnel since 1996.

In the City of Brotherly Love and where G. Flint Taylor screamed Free Mumia - a convicted cop killer and Boutique Bolshevik hero, Christine Flowers - did I mention that she was both a lawyer and journalist?- puts the human face on the victims of murder who happen to be Police Officers.

2008 has been the most dangerous year for Philadelphia officers since 1996, when four were killed. A prayer to Michael the Archangel, patron of police, that we don't break the record.

And even though each death is different, some brutal assassinations, others reckless accidents, the effect is the same: overwhelming grief, followed by uncontained anger.

And it's a different sort of anger from when civilians die.

Yes, it's an ugly aspect of nature that innocent children should be caught in a drug cross-fire on their way to school.

It pierces the heart when elderly women are raped in their bedrooms by teen intruders, when retired army vets are bludgeoned to death in their living rooms, when young mothers are murdered by the fathers of their babies.


IT'S A MISERABLE world in which such things not only happen but become commonplace. And Philadelphia is a part of that world.

But there's something surpassingly sad when you see men and women grouped at the entrance of a hospital, tears in their eyes for a stricken comrade. The grief that accompanies the coffin of a fallen officer is unlike any other because the occupant of that coffin met death on our behalf.

And the symbolism of a rider-less horse following close behind reminds us that - for a moment at least - the city is defenseless.

Of course, that's only a brief illusion. For every officer who falls in the line of duty there are hundreds more ready to take his or her place in the thin blue line. While no one can replace the one who has been taken, the obligation is picked up by brothers and sisters, an unbroken continuum of faith and service.

We saw it with Timothy Simpson. Stephen Liczbinski's friend took the murdered officer's handcuffs and placed them on his accused assassin's wrist when he was apprehended back in May. Simpson honored that debt. Now, tragically, he and Liczbinski are together again.

Some people complain about the attention given when an officer is slain.

Some judges think we should not elevate their deaths above "the rest of us," those without the bulletproof vests and the shields. Some citizens think that color excuses criminality, or that poverty is an explanation for antisocial behavior, or that grief is misplaced for those who willingly enter a dangerous profession.

These sentiments are heard in the streets, seen in the courtrooms, read on the letters page.

But they are wrong. Decent people understand it. The rest are irrelevant.

Four officers won't see the New Year. Four men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice for a city and a system that often seems to care more about rehabilitating criminals than honoring heroes.

And still, they keep answering the call.

No greater love. *

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

Ms. Flowers writes for the Philadelphia Daily News.

In the City of Big Shoulders and Pencil-Neck Media Stooges, who get spoon fed their investigative work into 'systemic racism, brutality and corruption'sagas by the very lawyers making millions of dollars out of lawsuits against the City of Chicago, police officers are fair game and objects of continual scorn and ridicule - Neil Steinberg went so far as to smear a whole neighborhood that is home to hundreds of the men and women who protect Neil Steinberg before he gets on the Metra to his lily white suburb, as a Nazi enclave.

I'd trade a fistful of cop-hating Media stooges for one Christine M. Flowers.

19th Ward Blog Responds to Neil Steinberg's Slur of Mt. Greenwood Residents

People who lead good lives, care for their children, their elderly, their property, their community, and many, many people outside of their neighborhood do not deserve the cheap and cavalier insults of a columnist like Neil Steinberg.

19th Ward Blog's editor and publisher Pat Guest responds: 'Neil Steinberg is an irresponsible hateful little man. Read his outrageous column in today’s ( Oct.29th 2008)Suntimes.'

That was about the nicest way of putting things. In bit of reverse satire Neil Steinberg wrote:

Obviously, you want Obama elected—the nation will soon realize what it has done, the pendulum will swing the other way—your way. At long last! Ausgerechnet jetzt!

Persuasive stuff. But if I know you—and I do—about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?”

'You' meaning racists. Cheap and cowardly. Hey, that's not an altogether unfitting logo of the Sun Times! Well, it ain't cheap - $.75 still means something to people who work for a living - like the people in the Mount Greenwood Community.

John McCain: Neil Steinberg's 'Riot of the Heart' is Important Reading

Chicago Sun Times columnist Neil Steinberg writes from the heart and uses a powerful noggin in support of that organism. Today, again, Neil Steinberg sticks his neck out with commentary on the debate about race, begun when Barack Obama's bat-guano crazy Uncle Jeremiah's bitter and hateful lectures on themes of victimhood and loopy conspiracies sprinted around the media. Barack Obama was in the jack-pot for not explaining exactly how his close and decades-long discipleship to Wright does not, in any way, affect his own view of America.

Like a good politician, Senator Obama changed the subject and deftly avoided answering the question and simultaneously crafting an artificial National Dialogue on Race: Black America ( really, the Victim Cottage Industry) tells everyone else how horrible whites are, have been and shall always be, while the monologues plays out. This National Dialogue consists of the position that White Supremacy makes life hell on earth for black Americans - now, nod with conviction.

Dollar Store black author and showman,Michael Eric Dyson celebrated the Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination with this bit of prose:

“Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America 's ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King's skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America , but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split -- or white America 's ignorance of it and the prophetic black church King inspired -- more than recalling King's post-1965 odyssey, as he grappled bravely with poverty, war and entrenched racism. That is the King who emerges as we recall the meaning of his death. After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those "legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve" Northern ghettos or to "penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation." In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 "were at best surface changes" that were "limited mainly to the Negro middle class." In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks "are now making demands that will cost the nation something. ... You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then."

Neil Steinberg offers a profound antiphon to the all-too familiar voices in the Media who would verbally nod with conviction over Dyson's pettifogging nonsense:

Of course they had cause ( to riot -infinitive, my own) -- their lives mired in poverty, cramped by lack of opportunity, rubbed raw against racism, and their best hope for change, a man of enormous wisdom and eloquence, cut down by a white racist.

But were they right to do it? I'd say no. Who did they hurt? They hurt themselves -- burned their own community, killed and wounded each other, largely.

Connect that to today. I'm not commenting on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, personally, because I don't know him and refuse to judge him based on snippets posted by political shills. But his infamous "God damn America" is an attitude not unknown in the black community, where victimhood and bitterness and anger are too addictive for some to avoid.

We see this attitude in Wright's congregation, and its fervid, knee-jerk reply to critics -- we were wronged! Which shows they don't understand that many Americans don't know and don't care about the troubles they've seen, but do notice and do care when somebody trashes our country -- a riot of the heart, as it were. Like the West Side rioters, they only hurt themselves or, rather, they hurt the first black candidate with a real shot at the White House.

Click My post title for Neil Steinberg's fine Column

John McCain: Neil Steinberg Praises John McCain

My buddy Neil Steinberg, of the Chicago Sun Times along with legendary colunist Bob Novak, Pulitzer Prize winning Political Cartoonist Jack Higgins, Fran Spielmann, and the great Sports Departmemt - less Mariotti of course, are the only true Chicago voices that sinking paper has kept on.

Neil Steinberg is a patriot and an independent voice who honors Veterans, Law Enforcement and caring committed citizens. He writes about how people approach their jobs and offers insight to the heart behind their hands. Steinberg is free of the smarmy doctrinaire cant that saturates the prose of too many of in his profession. He is very much like John Kass, but for his Ohio roots and the editorial tether that limits his column space.

Here are Neil's thoughts on the candidates for President and he is especially poignant in his consideration of John McCain - like McCain, Steinberg is a Straight Talker.

N.B. - I will highlight, what I believe to be some pearls from Neil Steinberg - emphasis my own.

Give the Republicans credit. Just when they seemed determined to stake their presidential hopes on Mitt Romney, a pretty-boy plutocrat feverishly sculpting his beliefs to mirror political fashion, or Mike Huckabee, a snake-handling preacher offended by scientific knowledge, up pops John McCain, like Lazarus risen from the grave. He smiles, brushes the dirt of his recent political burial from his shoulders, and assumes his place as front-runner.

Amazing. A genuine war hero, with the courage of his convictions (true, his convictions include humming a hallelujah chorus to George Bush's Iraq war, but nobody's perfect.) And if experience is what we want, McCain has it. Sure, he groveled at the feet of his party's lunatic fringe, cuddling up with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. But he was just visiting where people like Huckabee live year-round, and, besides, the fringe will always hate McCain for offering a reality-based solution to illegal immigration, a problem that will only grow larger until somebody fixes it. John McCain is the one man on the Republican bench who stands a chance of becoming a president we could all be proud of.

That's a good thing. If, like many, I preferred party devotion to patriotism, I might be reluctant to say that. But I don't. The race is shaping up as a win-win-win situation, a choice among: a) the exciting, inspirational freshness of Barack Obama; or b) the wily, willful effectiveness of Hillary Clinton; or c) the fearless, nimble maturity of John McCain. That's a dilemma to celebrate.

Well said and true Neil. I will be voting for John McCain; I really like and admire Barack Obama and hope that he will become Governor of Illinois; Hillary Clinton is wildly capable - so was Bismark.