Things are Pretty Darn Good. Overcoming Trumpanoia and Worrying About What I Think

The establishment pushed the wars and free trade and their partners in the corporate-government matrix agreed to the sending off of capital (and jobs) to foreign lands.
For all the talk of partisanship, Democrats and Republicans were the two horns on the head of the goat.
And Trump voters? They were forgotten, left behind, mocked as deplorable. John Kass

This Memorial Day weekend, America paid tribute to the men and women who gave all in defense of our Nation.

I thought of my Dad and his brothers who fought in the Pacific, North Africa, Italy and later Korea , my older neighbors pre-Draft Lottery,  from the high school classes of 1962-1968, who went to Vietnam.  Fewer of us from 1969-1973, served thanks to the Lottery and Vietnamization.  I remembered the many, many kids that I taught at Bishop McNamara, La Lumiere and Leo High School who served in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Iraq,  Afghanistan - kids like Adam Voight (La Lumiere 1988) who gave up scholarships to enlist as privates and eventually fly Apache helicopters in Desert Storm, and Pat Donley, Bishop McNamara 1979, who served as Marine aboard the USS Iowa, when his brothers were murdered by terrorists in Beriut.

I have it very good.


Kathy Griffin, the alleged comic for CNN, is so upset with the Trump American atmosphere that she needed to ritualistically imitate ISIS and lop off President Trump's head.  How tough is that?  The poor thing must really have a time of it opening that tricky foil cover over the Velveeta cheese logs.  It's a struggle.

Some people are upset that I do not want President Trump any more humiliated than he manages on his own.  In fact, I am more than surprised and happy with Trump's Presidency.  He has all of the worst people leading the Resistance against him.  Sadly, too many very good people have joined them.

Some say "my blog sucks and I suck,"  because I write honestly - I do not, nor have I ever held Barack Obama in anything like regard and I am not bothered a jot by the election of Donald Trump.
My blog and I might suck for reasons other than that, but not because the point of view challenges the meme du jour.

That said, love me, or leave me, lamb.  I write because I love people - all people, until they prove themselves to be bullies, grifters, sneaks, hypocrites and moral cowards. Them I might love in the big Christian thematic way, but I 'd rather not have their company, much less their good opinion of me.

I could give a . . . (you fill it in).   I have it good and that ain't bad, to quote the late Louis Prima.

As it is, I own a home, shop at Marianno's, own a car, a library card, my cable works fine, my kids are all educated, moral and employed, the grass is cut, the garbage was picked up yesterday, I teach, I write, I read, John Kass remains a powerful voice in a city of dotards, no one can force me to watch Big Bang Theory, let alone watch it, the only thing Russian that keeps me awake at night is Borscht (hate beets), I have not witnessed any mass executions of Pussy Hat owners, nor is the Planned Parenthood block-house at 51st & Ashland ablaze, my girlfriend still gives me direction on dress, manners and general deportment outside of my bubble here in the 19th Ward, my granddaughter is healthy,chubby and beautiful, gas at Thornton's in Blue Island is $2.46 per gallon, and Cracovia Pitted Sour Cherries mixed with Greek vanilla yogurt is like heroin.

If Trump has you that down, see a medical professional.  Cheer up!  Only suckers beef!  Mix some cherries and yogurt.

If that is not enough for you, House of Cards, season five will take on Trump.  Wash it down with a swell IPA and a good gulp or two of bile. That seems to be the only things that make some folks happy. 

George Soros Purchased States Attorney Kim Foxx Buys More

  “There will be a concerted effort to change policy, but changing culture takes time,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx says. CBS News 12/02/2016

In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers’ interests. Under Popper’s influence, I called the first kind of society open, the second, closed. George Soros  international globalist villain and bi-partisan purchaser of help*

IllinoisDuring the 2016 Democratic primaries in Illinois, Soros contributed $333,000 to the Illinois Safety and Justice PAC supporting Cook County district attorney candidate Kim Foxx (D) against incumbent Anita Alvarez.[47] Foxx won the primary and faced off against Republican Christopher Pfannkuche in November 2016. Foxx, according to Chicago's PBS station, WTTW, was continuing to receive support from Soros.[48] Preckwinkle isn’t the only big donor to Foxx’s campaign. In the last month she’s also received $400,000 from prolific Democratic contributor Fred Eychaner.

George Soros, a billionaire advocate for criminal justice reforms, and the Civic Participation Action Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, have each given $300,000 to Illinois Safety & Justice, a separate “independent expenditure fund” that lists Foxx as the only candidate it’s backing. Sun Times Cop-hating scribe Mitch Dudek 

We live in an Open Society - sort of- and George Soros continues to seal it shut.  George Soros operates a Foundation called Open Society, because he wants society to have a society  "where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers’ interests. "

That would never make sense outside of a dystopian novel (Orwell/Huxley), until about ten years.   It was then that George Soros and the influence of his billions of dollars became apparent, to some, and Barack Obama became the most under-vetted person in American history and the 44th President of the United States.

After his eight years, America voted away such Soros-ian thoughts, to the great hysteria of the Soros Payroll.  Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States,

George Soros and now his son continue their tireless pursuit of creating a very closed Open Society.

They are buying up the Office of States Attorney in many places, besides the always purchasable Cook County, Illinois.

George Soros, the billionaire financier, is ponying up serious cash to reform the US criminal-justice system.
Soros has pumped over $3 million into seven local district-attorney campaigns in six states in the past year, reports Politico.
He is pushing the money into local elections in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas through a network of state-level super PACs and a national "527" unlimited-money group, according to Politico.
The money has benefited African-American and Hispanic candidates who ran on progressive platforms, like reducing racial disparities in sentencing and directing drug offenders to diversion programs instead of trial.

Look no further than Kim Foxx, purchased by George Soros et al in 2016.  Like Open Society, the jabberwocky meaning of Justice Reform is "open the jail cells for any black, or Hispanic, illegal-immigrant felon."

Kim Foxx is doing her owner proud**!

• No money, no problem, no Bond!  Get out of jail free. 
• Hammer cops
• Blame Predecesor
• Payoff people

This works magically in Chicago and Cook County because the media refuses to inquire, where inquiry is most necessary.

George Soros bought and paid for eight years of an Obama White House.  The American people would like a traditional open society.

George Soros is far from finished.  The bodies in Chicago and Cook County stack up like cord wood and Kim Foxx smiles all the way to her next visit with PBS and WTTW to shop reform.

*John McCain has been especially critical of Trump, even blasting him today for his stern phone call with the Australian Prime Minister. McCain and Graham also attacked Trump for implementing an immigration ban.
“We fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” McCain and Graham said in a joint statement, adding that Trump’s executive order “may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.”
It seems that every move Trump makes, the same characters are quick to delegitimize the president. Now it all makes sense. 2/02/2017

The Only Serious News aggregator and  crib sheet on Kim Foxx is The Second City Cop.  Only here will a citizen find the impact of a Soros-owned and operated Cook County States Attorney. 

Trump Hits the Canvas: A Boxer in a Mixed Martial Arts Cage

The Trump is down!  He's dazed.   He's confused.  The Trump's bleeding,  bleeding like a Russian Princess!  The refs are showing the four count and he's staring, longingly, for Ann Coulter and for her to give him one shred of 'Get up, Donny and Knock 'em into the cheap seats,' but this willowy blond is one cold cucumber.  This dish is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, colder than Samantha's knockers on a brass broomstick, Fans!  He's on his own and the refs are counting faster than a speeding ticket in Martha's Vineyard. It don't look good. 

The problem is that the President has been taking shots to the noggin every waking moment since 11/09/2016 and without putting his guard up at all. In boxing one might call the President an ivory head.  Most call him a can of tomatoes.

The 45th President of the United States was elected primarily on his promise to drain the Washington D.C. swamp and swamp ain't liking it.  Swamp critters on both sides of the aisle want him gone.  Elected officials, lobbyists, journalists, academics who suckle greedily off of Lady Liberty's rack of plenty, corporatist players, Marxist oligarchs and NSA spooks with limitless loyalty to the Obama regime are Organized for Action!

The Russia Bullshit is just that.  And Americans are ravenous for bullshit - hence the powerful appeal of Barack Obama.

Donald Trump has pleased me as a voter.  He has displeased me wildly as a spectator.  He's a boxer suckered into a Tag-Team Mixed Martial Arts Caged Death Match - he's a boxer fighting a queue of MMA ninjas; as soon as he fends off one, the opposition and the allies tag off to pummel the guy.

His corner men?  Who the hell knows.  Trainer Reince Priebus was more Mitt than Romney and a doughy sap easily led into a very public pantsing on CNN, FOX, or MSNBC.  Cornerman Jared Kushner?  Who takes advice from a guy named Jared?  Christ Almighty.  Cut man, Steve Bannon is hated by all of the creeps on this planet and he seems to be getting no ear from the guy he is patching up.   Bannon seems like a guy I would want in my corner.  When all of creeps hate you, you must be doing something right.

I want to see Trump succeed, but I will be satisfied if he can go the distance and keep the DNC from political power.

Trump is no sweetheart and he is no Brian Sutherland either.

He has the skills and know-how, but he is alone in a tanked fight.  Some might call what we are witnessing a bloodless coup ( unless you count Seth Rich - I do).  As far back as February, this seemed more than evident:

I can’t believe I’m writing this after the administration has been in office for 26 days, but here goes. The idea that Donald Trump is now inexorably on a path to impeachment has taken almost gleeful hold in the wake of the Michael Flynn resignation among liberal elites and anti-Trumpers generally—and everybody better stop and take a deep breath and consider what might arise from this. This isn’t fire we’re playing with, it’s a nuclear war.
That Trump might somehow be deus-ex-machina-ed out of public life has been a consistent feature of the past 20 months. He won’t run gave way to He’s only in it for the publicity to He only wants to show Obama he’s not to be trifled with but he doesn’t want to be president so he’ll drop out to We’ll deny him a first-ballot victory at the convention and then the party pooh-bahs can take over and find a new candidate to His poll numbers are so bad he’ll quit and let Mike Pence run against Hillary to The Access Hollywood tape will finally do him in…and then he won.                                             Now that he’s president, the question I’m asked constantly is “will he serve out his first term.” The wish is father to the hope here; only the vilest and most monstrous of crimes has led to a negative answer to that question (save in the case of the first President Harrison, who caught a cold from not wearing a coat on Inauguration Day in 1841 and died a month later). No one has ever willingly or voluntarily given up the presidency. . . . 

Already pro-Trump voices on the right are calling the leaks that led to Michael Flynn’s firing evidence of an attempted coup d’etat. The fevered use of such terms is part and parcel of the way in which social media amplifies the melodrama of daily news stories.

I am myself unnerved by the evidence of high-level lawlessness in the Flynn matter, but a “coup d’etat” refers specifically to a military ouster of a leader, not a leak-driven campaign using the press to nail someone. This is sure to persist, though, if the Flynn-Russia matter accelerates—and if the reluctant House and Senate do begin investigating the matter in earnest. If the language surrounding the investigation remains florid and purple, if Democrats try to please their Trump-hating constituents by screaming impeachment and liberal media tries to garner audience by jumping openly and vociferously on the bandwagon, the Trumpians will respond in kind by stirring the pot through their media and their argumentation. Commentary

Coup? Maybe.  Slaughter the bum?  To be sure.

With Clapper, Comey, Rice, Ryan, McConnell, McCain, Graham, Schummer, and Obama sub rosa and with billions of dollars hitting your kidneys, liver, heart, ears, mouth and nose every waking moment - a fight in a phone booth with Conor McGregor might be a fine and relaxing tonic.

Donny, Take a swig and spit!

Trump's Troubles Will Never Go Away - The Obama Purge of the Military Was Their Beginnings

Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States and he was voted in because our founding fathers understood the danger of an oligarchy. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton fiercely protected the minority soul of the colonies. This minority soul still floats, for now. 

Growing up in an America where schools taught civics, we were often treated to films that warned us of the dangers of Military coup.

Seven Days in May stuff.   A group of hard-core Curtis Le May, or Chesty Puller type of brass hats, decide to save America from democracy, but there is always a lower ranked career hard-charger who foils the oily admirals and generals.

The fact that our love of Harry S. Truman, who saved the world from nuclear war, after saving millions of our Dads by using atom bombs, by firing Gen. MacArthur, pumps up the inflation of military scorn among us stay at home patriots works against us. The military is never going to launch a coup - the politicians and their handlers will and without bullets.  Tribunals later, of course.

In fact, it was President Barack S. Obama who fired, cashiered, disgraced and insulted more career military leaders than the old Rail Splitter himself. These drips and drops of deceitful discharges crystallized in the shabby and psychedelic treatment of General Stanley McChystal.  The real coup went after the military -the guardian of the Constitution.

The Obama White House ( Valerie Jarrett) steamrolled toward Iranian rapproachment and the American military leadership turned to rubble.  The more pliable 'dog-robbers' became Pentagon and later State Department spokesmen.


Americans voted for Donald Trump, because they have witnessed the rise of American Oligarchy. Before people who voted "Never Trump" get hysterical, allow me to clarify - the people who voted for Trump were not from  Vladivostok.

In 2014, a study of American Policy conducted by Princeton and Northwestern Universities concluded - Yes, we are a Banana Republic

 We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Testing Theories of American Politics, elites, special interests and average Americans.

The entire fabric of Obama's broadcloth coalition is woven by elites, special interest groups who curry favor from the elites and scorn those beneath them. Here they are -




That's Senator Dick Durbin  Mau-mouing with Champagne Wolf Blitzer of CNN - the first is the Senator Pat Geary from the Land of Lincoln and the other a news reader the equal of Herb Fuller.  One is a hapless dope who will do and say what ever the string pullers ( Big Agra, Strategic Advisers, Hennessy Gas Utility, Planned Parenthood) tell him to say and the other a self-celebrated Scud Stud who popped the bubbly preemptively on November 8, 2017.   These are the quality faces of the Resistance , along with Rep. Mike Quigley, Rep, Jan " The Turk" Schakowky, Rep. Bobby Rush, Rep. Danny " Rev. Moon" Davis and the balance of the Illinois Democratic Caucus of the Challenged. Trump wants to Drain The Swamp and creatures Senators Dick Durbin, John McCain (R.), Richie Blumenthal( D.), Chuck Schummer (D.) and Lindsey Graham (R.) want to keep their habitat.

These swamp creatures are no slouches, neighbors, these are practiced creeps. We are afflicted with consciences and become prone to shame whenever the urge to listen to our bad angels. These folks kill angels in the womb and they are supported by the media Leviathan eats our dollars and spits ink.  These swamp critters are free to roam and range like gators at a Disney Resort. Free!  Free of media scrutiny, criticism, or concern. The Leviathan is worried about Trump.

I am not.  My Civil Liberties are in better shape now, than they were back in February,  2015, right around the time that Obama  ordered NSA Boss James Clapper to twerk like Desiree Rogers at a job interview -

In national security-related cases, the F.B.I. uses the letters to obtain information from companies, including telephone records or the names of subscribers. Unlike a subpoena, no judge is involved; the F.B.I. issues the letters by itself, usually requiring that the recipients never disclose the letters’ existence.
In the new rules, “the F.B.I. will now presumptively terminate National Security Letter nondisclosure orders at the earlier of three years” after the opening of an investigation, the administration will announce, or at the close of the investigations. But an exception can be made if a midlevel F.B.I. official offers a written justification for continued secrecy.

How about that, Sparky?

Then of course Obama counted on Hillary not to screw the poodle at the polling booth - she did - and once the cast of Hamilton went full Carmen Ghia and Roger De Bris after the election , Obama tweaked the already twerking James Clapper

And in his final days in office, Obama created the largest ever expansion of access to non-minimized NSA intercepts, creating a path for all U.S. intelligence to gain access to unmasked reports by changes encoded in a Reagan-era Executive Order 12333.
The government officials who could request or approve an exception to unmask a U.S. citizen’s identity has grown substantially. The NSA now has 20 executives who can approve the unmasking of American information inside intercepts, and the FBI has similar numbers. And executives in 16 agencies -- not just the FBI, CIA and NSA -- have the right to request unmasked information. 

All of these tools are now in the chubby fingers of Dick Durbin, Wold Blitzer and nodding elements American populace. The nodders easily become shouters.

Trump could say, "Good Morning" and CNN's Dana Bash would snark, " Is it, Mr. President?  Is it really? Must be sunny in Moscow."

As America is already a Banana Report, I seriously doubt if we will notice a coup when it happens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EDITORIAL

• The Trumpcare Disaster

SUNDAY REVIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Judge Roy Bean was colorful.   The Press is crazy.

The GOP - Making America Great. . . again, and again, and again, or "Is This Your Homework, Larry?"

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was set on Thursday for a cliffhanger vote to repeal Obamacare, as Republican leaders worked to deliver President Donald Trump a win for one of his top legislative priorities.
House Republican leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass and several party moderates who previously objected to it got behind it on Wednesday, giving the effort new momentum.
Still, the vote was expected to be close. Even if the measure passes the House, it faces daunting odds in the Senate where Republicans hold a narrower majority.

The Grand Old Party.

Say it with me.

Sounds better than Republican.

A Republican, when I was growing up, wore grey clothing and had a very bad haircut. He went to non-Union barbers in Roseland.  There were not many of them. They took commuter trains to work in the Loop at places like the Board of Trade, Quaker Oats, or Morton Salt.

They were Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists and Non-Denominational Billy Graham fans. They were the minority population of Englewood, the Highlands, Scottsdale, West Lawn, or Brainerd.

Their kids went to public schools, belonged to the Cub/Boy/Girl Scouts, the Y and went to Bible camp in the summer.

Our Dads took the bus, the L, drove early model Buicks, Pontiacs and Chevys to the Stockyards, Standard Brands, Central Steel and Wire, Kenwood Construction, Boyington House Movers, Donahue Steel, the County, City Hall, Canfield's Bottling and National Can Corporation.  Some worked in the steel Mills over by the Lake, most worked nearby.

We went to parish grammar and high schools or high schools operated by the Carmelites, Sisters of Casmier, Mercy Nuns, Irish Christinan, or De LaSalle brothers.  Some very few were educated by the Jesuits at St. Ignatius - they were really smart.

We swam at Park pools and they swam at the Y.

We stayed out of the Y - naked swimmers and birth control.

Politics was as easy as being a White Sox, or Cardinals fan.   I do not recall any great affection for George Halas's team back in the 1960's.  We liked Green Bay, Oakland and the Jets.

The Cubs?  I knew two families, the Sitorouses and the Balinas.  The Balinas moved to Rolling Meadows, wherever the hell that was, in 1964.  Nick Sitorous went to mass where Louis Farakhan demands that the Jews get what's coming to them and whitey too. Nick was Greek.  He was not a Republican, but he loved the CUBS and fixed television sets.

The rest of us were Italian, German, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, Jews and where I lived predominantly Irish.  Many of the younger families were mixed. Diversity was called white flight bigotry.

The Republicans could never win an election.  They supported Planned Parenthood, used to belong to the Klan, kept Catholics and Jews out of the American Eagles clubs and kept to themselves, which was OK by us.  We waved.  They waved back.

I remain a Democrat, even though the Party is more like the cold, humorless and robotic GOP that I recall from my wonder years.  I voted Democrat for President until Barack Obama.  I had gotten to know young Barack Obama, executive director of the Woods Fund, congressional candidate, Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senator, before he became the Untouchable Candidate and President.  I found him to be a dope.  He has not let me down.

Worse, the Democratic Party, which had once been as honestly invested in the neighborhood and its people, as any parish, had become a branch of the Unitarian Abortion and America's Biggest Critic Book and Alchemy Club. 

Try and find a union bug on a Progressive Democrat's business card.  Good luck with that.

However, The GOP is worse.

They are screw-ups.  Hand a Republican a winning Lotto ticket and he goes to debtors prison.

Obama had some of the nastiest, wealthiest and committed  people in America directing his every prompt, move and triumph.  The Progressives.

The GOP remains dominated by the tasseled loafer crowd of Judge Smails opportunists like John McCain ( for whom I worked like a dog in 2008, only to watch him quit like Girl Scout in a downpour ditching the cookies and heading home), Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and so many others.  Paul Ryan has become as noodle spine-ed as Yertle the Turtle and the other two war-happy phonies.

With seven years of whining about ObamaCare, the Budget and House Committees on Everything, the people voted in change at the executive, legislative and a tiny,tiny bit at the judicial branches of government.  The GOP benefited and has done . . .nothing.

I credit President Trump with keeping his promises and energetically doing exactly what the American people demanded.

Right out of the chute, Paul Ryan screwed the pooch on the Affordable Health Care recall.

Now, only weeks later the GOP are trying to force another failed vote.

These clowns are like a very few of my students who write forty characters of a 500 word essay on Frederick the Great in dull tipped pencil on a single page badly torn from Tommy Doyle's notebook on the way to school, when Times New Roman # 12 font is required and MLA citation demanded,  without any mention of Prussia, much less the Enlightenment- " Is this what you wanted?"

Is THIS your homework, Larry?

That is the GOP.

I do not consider  President Trump to be a Republican.

I find hope and change in that fact.  

Woke White Folks? Woke? Really, Jonathan. Take a Walk Up Maplewood Avenue.

The Chicago Tribune picks up the bulk of its coverage from the Washington Post, other papers, the Associated Press and approved lick-spittles.

Today Jonathan Capehart, a real beauty and a signal dandy of reason that the American people detest the mainstream media, offers an insultingly inaccurate hate-piece on white working class Americans: All working people, to be accurate.

The guys who fix the Peoples Gas lines all over Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, Archer Heights and Ashburn these days are for the most part working class white guys.  I walked up Maplewood Avenue to St. John Fisher for services at 6:12 A.M. yesterday.  I usually take Talman, but changed my route, just for giggles.

At that time half a score of People Gas utility vehicles, accompanied by allied contractors vehicles: back-hoes, bobcats and cement finisher rigs with lumber and tools were lining the both sides of Maplewood Avenue.  By the way,  white working class kids learn the difference between a street and an avenue in pre-school.  A street has houses on both sides and and avenue runs perpendicular (right next to) a street and has trees on both sides.  Well, the vehicles mentioned were populated with working men - black, Latino and mostly white guys.  They were in the majority, numerically speaking.

However, according to Jonathan Capehart, a poster child for W.E.B. DuBois's 'Talented Ten Per Cent, who was immediately made an editorial board member when he began work at the New York Daily News and was married to his boyfriend by the Attorney General of United States, Eric 'Nation of Cowards' Holder and covered for another Attorney General after she met with Bill Clinton just prior to James Comey's absolution of Candidate Hilary Clinton.  Jonathan Capehart is on every cable news show and is a major player, Mosel Tov.

Jonathan Capehart did the black bag work on Bernie Sanders.  You could say, that Jonathan Capehart launched the Trump White House. Oh, I will.  Jonathan Capehart gelded Bernie Sanders and propelled Donald J. Trump into the White House.

Now, Capehart is free to blame anyone for the Trump Presidency, but as a gold-plated black man and as an LGBTQ 4th Estate bullet proof voice, blame white working class people and their supposed fear of blacks, gays, Muslims, Caitlyn Jenner, Elizabeth Warren, BitCoins, science and rainbows for the current rise in global respect, calmer waters in the South China Sea, a sky-high Dow Jones and the Resistance.

Racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism." That was the you-don't-say headline on an April 17 Monkey Cage analysis by Thomas Wood of the 2016 American National Election Study. It was just more statistical confirmation of what we already know. You may recall a column last September about other studies of the electorate by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank with the headline "Yes, half of Trump supporters are racist."
We all kinda know what's going on here. (And by "we all," I'm speaking generally about people of color, African Americans in particular, and woke whites — "the new American majority," . . .

WOKE White Folks*?  Is that not from the coinage of Maxine Waters? Guess not.  We all?

 . . .as author Steve Phillips puts it.) It's fear, anger and economic insecurity mixed with anxiety over the browning of America and the subsequent loss of preferred status that this will naturally entail. A new book by Justin Gest, assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, takes that gut feeling reinforced by an overflow of anecdotal evidence and grounds it in research.

Really?  Like that scientific fact that gays comprise astronomically significant random samplings of the American populace?

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans' 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year.  Gallup

and that Brown is the new White?  

Trump won the white working class vote, because guys like Jonathan Capehart undid the Progressive base by going all Maxine Waters on Bernie Sanders.  That and white working class people, as well as black working class people, and brown working class people like to have their bank accounts reflect their efforts.

But, Steve Phillips, one of the archtects of the 2016 strategy argues:

The first step the next chair (DNC) should take to fix this problem is to conduct a transparent and brutally honest assessment of exactly what happened in 2016. There are a lot of misunderstandings, incorrect conclusions, and false and facile assumptions floating around and influencing preliminary plans for progressives in the future. One such myth, for example, is that millions of voters abandoned Democrats and flocked to the Trump campaign, when in fact Clinton got just about the same number of votes that Obama did in 2012 (Trump exceeded Romney’s 2012 numbers by 2 million votes, and third-party candidates received 5 million more votes than they did in 2016). Understanding exactly what happened and why is an essential first step to winning back the White House.

Brown might be the dominant demographic in the coming years, but stupid is color blind.

The progressive message stinks, Steve. It stinks in technicolor!  The WOKE whites at the Nation, Salon, The New Republic, the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, NBC, CNN and Al Jazera  continue with same idiotic, diffisive and race baiting messages spouted by WOKE whites like Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Michigan Fats Moore and Chris Matthews.

Working people fear nothing, Jonathan.  They go to work, go to war, go to the polls, go to church, go to their children's events and go to the aid of their neighbors.

The guys fixing the gas lines under the sidwalks all long Maplewood Avenue were all laughing with one another, running for coffee at Dunkin Donuts over on Western Ave. for their crews and showing absolutely no signs of Trump terror and nor did they make nosie as their neighbors slept, before they too went to work.


* WOKE Whites  do not work back-hoes, Bobcats, nor do they labor with working men and women of color:

The latest revolution of “woke” doesn’t roll its eyes at white people who care about racial injustice, but it does narrow them at those who seem overeager to identify with the emblems and vernacular of the struggle. For black activists, there is a certain practicality in publicly naming white allies. Being woke, Stovall says, means being “aware of the real issues” and willing to speak of them “in ways that are uncomfortable for other white folks.” But identifying allies poses risks, too. “There are times when people have been given the ‘black pass,’ and it hasn’t worked out so well,” Stovall says. “Like Clinton in the ’90s.” A white person who gains a kind of license to use power on behalf of black people can easily wield that power on behalf of themselves.

Uh,huh.

You Must Punch a Bully, But It Is Stupid to Move-into His House -Policy Lessons from George Smith

A wonderful black man who worked security at Orchestra Hall in the late 1960's and early 1970's,  where I worked as a janitor ( Local 25), told me, " You can not change people.  You can punch a punk in the mouth and then you had better put some shoe tips in his ribs and kidneys, until he understands your point of view and then be sure to repeat the process every time he waves at you from across the street -"Hi, George!'  Oh, yeah 'Hi, Mother@#$%er!' punch kick and slap. He'll behave.  Mmmmhmmm.  But you can not change people."

George Smith was a philosopher-king*.

His words have stayed with me.  Do not be a man violence, unless you make your point very, very clear.

The important lesson is that people will never change.  They will modify their behavior, avoid punishment, seek calmer waters, but never change.

Assad, Putin, Kim Jong Un and every Jihadist waving a Kalashnikov and shooting a woman in back of the head, or driving a beer truck into a Swedish Nordstroms will never change.

Moving into the house with a louse to make him change his evil ways is as stupid as . . .sending American soldiers into Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, or over the 38th Parallel.

President Trump ordered a spirited response to the chinless Monster of Syria's gassing of his neighbors.

He painted no "RED LINE" with Obama's Super Invisible Ink.

President Trump went all George Smith on Syria.  Putin got the message and so did the thugs around the North Korean Fat boy. They understand what 'incoming rounds' mean.  Do they ever! After all, Kim Jong Un has used NKPA generals and his own kin for 80 mm mortar practice.

America has the best military hardware and hard-men.  American warriors know how to apply shoe tips to ribs and kidneys. They get it, kick the crumbs to the curb, stomp if necessary and come home. Mission Accomplished!  Without sending more and more American kids into harm's way.

Had GW Bush some sand in his craw, each and every person involved in 9/11 would have ( and most certainly could have) had a 9mm shot through the noggin.  End of story. But greedy pigs wanted regime change and new markets in Fallujah.

I believe that regime change will take place and without the help of Senators Graham and McCain - the the Aunt Cyp and Uncle Sap of Endless Wars,

President Trump needs to listen to the very good people that helped him win the White House.

Assad is a world wide pain in the ass. Putin knows it. A couple of more Tomahawks in the right places and Vlad the Bad will send the lads of Spetsnaz calling on the lanky gump, Bashir Assad, for  his Global Valediction.  Likewise, the guys with the over sized garrison caps around Kim Jong Un will take tubby out to the artillery range for some close-up and exciting pyrotechnics.


George Smith understood foreign and domestic policy - take care of a punk on the street and come home to a happy house.


* George  once made the CEO of a major Chicago company grab some floor, when the oligarch used his key to the Cliff Dwellers long after hours.  " What's a burglar want with the Cliff Dwellers at this late hour?"

I will not say which concern, nor who accompanied the figure reported frequently in Kup's Column, out of respect for the man's family.  One never knows, do one?

The Return(s) Of Valerie Jarrett - More Slum Properties for Middle Class Neighborhoods

“The court order requires that we build sustainable communities that are economically integrated and that will lead to racial integration as well. That's how my grandfather's vision will be realized,” Jarrett says. Affordable Housing Finance 11/01/2008

Yep, Valerie Jarrett is circling this corpse of a city looking for tasty parts that have as yet gone to rot - Jefferson Park, Albany Park Morgan Park.  Parkway Manor has problems and folks neeed to find affordable housing away fro O-Block, Roseland and of course Englewood.

Valerie Jarrett is coming home, sort-of.  Ariel Capital Investments, where Daley socked millions of pension dollars owed to City workers, just announced the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to its board of directors.

Rahm's City Council provided the venue.

Chicago-based Ariel Investments is one firm that got a lift from the state's effort to direct pension dollars to minority-owned firms. It received its first million-dollar investment from the Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago in 1984 and today it manages $123 million for the pension. It also manages money for a number of other state and local pensions.

“Illinois is doing a terrific job in this area,” said Ariel Chairman, CEO and Founder John Rogers, noting just a few exceptions among local pension funds that “don't get it.”
Illinois could use some help from other states to advance the cause, Raoul said. “Illinois shouldn't carry that burden,” he said. “We're not the only diverse state in the country.” Crain's Chicago Business

This can only signal affordable housing clusters in neighborhoods where crime is low, property taxes are paid and elites do not own townhouses, greystones, or Bed and Breakfasts.

Neighborhoods where cops, firemen, CTA  & CPS employees, Streets and Sanitation workers live and raise families are being eyed-for such development.

One might think that the Chicago Media's Investigative Teams would be all over this boondoggle that runs from Obama's White House to our State Budget Mensa Team in both Houses in Springfield, with stops at City Hall and Hyde Park, might be worth a gander.

One might, if one were a silly goose.

Nope. The news media is in on it, Dopes.

Cops are not dopes, nor are they grifters.  Some are better writers than Sun Times purse puppies and Tribune ink-slinging lambikins.

Second City Cop directs us to the creeps setting the table for Val, Ariel and the elite-players.

In the meantime, Ed Burke used a procedural motion to temporarily stall the CHA project building Arena (and Rahm) is trying to bring into 016 to lead to the latest round of "block busting:"
A plan to demolish a vacant food distribution site in the heart of Jefferson Park and replace it with a storage facility and apartment complex failed Monday to win the support of the City Council's zoning committee.
Although the council typically defers to the alderman of each ward when it comes to matters of zoning, Ald. Edward Burke (14th) stepped in during what had already been hours of contentious testimony about the plan to build a five-story, 68-foot warehouse at 5150 N. Northwest Highway.
Burke demanded that a roll call vote be taken to determine whether enough members of the committee were present for a vote to be valid. When it became clear that there was not enough members of the committee still present for the seventh hour of the meeting, the session was adjourned — much to the delight of opponents of the development.
No idea what pressure was brought to bear on Burke for this action - he doesn't seem to care that often. Perhaps he saw the north side going renegade and voting republican for generations instead of kowtowing to the Machine.
More drama next month.

Make book on it. That middle aged buzzard Valerie Jarrett does not wing into town for snacks; she's ready for a feed.

By the way NEIU is giving Val and Honorary Degree up there in North Park. Nice neighborhood.  Get ready for some swell affordable housing! This will be a scouting trip.

No Chicago paper will cover this - read Second City Cop.

Tribune Trots Out Trump Voters as Newly Aggrieved to Be Championed by the Elites Who are Screwing Them

 
Study says White Trump Voters are in mortal danger of dying drunk, buck-naked in what is left of a Santa outfit. 

But several million Americans – black, white, and Hispanic – now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 a day, essentially the same standard that the World Bank uses to define destitution-level poverty in India or Africa. Finding shelter in the United States on that income is so difficult that $2-a-day poverty is almost certainly much worse in the US than $2-a-day poverty in India or Africa. Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel Lauerate and Princeton Economics Scholar

So, the impoverished  Americans in Back of the Yards, Austin and Englewood of Chicago,  Blue Island, Hopkins Park, Harrisburg, Danville, Murpheesboro, Mound City and Camden, Illinois just might be well-served by packing up to sub-Saharan desert nations, or Zimbabwe for a chance at happiness?  $2.00 a day in Addis Abbaba must go way further than it does in Phoenix, Illinois.

The study employed by Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune was conducted by Sir Angus Deaton, et al. and the ever-compliant Bruce is taking this opportunity ( post ObamaCare earthquake) to herd the white cats who voted for President Trump in the 'feel my pain' tent of 2016 Losers.

Nice idea.

The media has all but closed the curtains on Make America Great with no end of help from the tasseled loafer crowd of the GOP, the bug-eyed leaders of the angry opposition (Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) and President Twitter-Jonesing, his own bad self.

Me. I'll wait and see how the movie turns out.

Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune and the equally daffy DNC clown posse at the Sun Times will toll the death knell of Trump for the next four years, in same manner that Wally's Last Stop was closing this week from 1990-1998. They will be correct . . .years from now.

This is the same Nobel Laureate whose 2015 study that Millions of Americans live on $2 a day.  Debunked.  Now, it is white American working class, no-college yokels are pulling the Dutch Act.

In these mean times, Chicagoans are being treated with this:

Since 1999, white men and women ages 45 through 54 have endured a sharp increase in "deaths of despair," Case and Deaton found in their earlier work. These include suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths such as liver failure.
In the paper released Thursday, Case and Deaton draw a clearer relationship between rising death rates and changes in the job market since the 1970s. They find that men without college degrees are less likely to receive rising incomes over time, a trend "consistent with men moving to lower and lower skilled jobs."

And Trump was elected in November, 2016.  Now, here is the payoff -

Those dynamics helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump, who won widespread support among whites with only a high school diploma. Yet Deaton said his policies are unlikely to reverse these trends, particularly the health care legislation now before the House that Trump is championing. That bill would lead to higher premiums for older Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has found.

"The policies that you see, seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him," Deaton said.

Since, January 20th Trump has destroyed the American economy, confiscated Obama phones, hurt Hollywood's feelings a whole lot, cost Colin Kaepernick his NFL career, made Oprah want to President, put lead in Dick Durbins Perrier and given the keys to the White House to the national membershipof Outlaws, MC.

America is stuffed in a hand basket roaring to hell!

 I'm having Italian chicken and potatoes with garlic, lemon and red peppers, later this evening. That is one prediction that shall come to pass. Mmmm -mm.

From 1999 to 2015, Deaton's studies tell us, white working poor as well as black and Hispanic improverished have had a hell of a time.

Yet, it was the Clinton, Bush and Obama years that gutted the working poor of America with policies and real estate and banking gambles, not to mention the give-away government goodies that have overflowed the banks of the Washington swamp.  Here is what  Forbes had to say, THERE ARE ZERO AMERICANS LIVING ON $2 PER DAY:

So what they're really measuring is the cash incomes of the poorest people without accounting for pretty much all the things that are done to increase the total incomes (such total income being equal to consumption possibilities of course) of those poor people. The only part of welfare that they do include is cash welfare under TANF.

And that's where their large rise in this form of poverty comes from. They are, as above, measuring only the cash income of poor people, including cash from welfare. But this system was deliberately changed in the 1990s to reduce the amount of cash welfare people got and increase the amount of in kind welfare (ie, Section 8, EITC, SNAP and so on) that people got. So, what they're actually recording, in their increase, is what Congress voted for. Stop giving people cash and give them more in other ways instead. I don't think the original change was a good idea myself but it's still something of a statistical trick they're pulling off here, not a real change in what people can consume.

Finally, they're deliberately blurring how this sort of poverty persists or does not. When we look at those World Bank numbers for other countries then we're looking at people who live that way all the time. In this research done about the US we're not looking at that at all. Rather, at people who have, for some however short period of time, had very little cash income. Just as an example (and I emphasize, this is only an example, just to illustrate the logic here) imagine a family with one person in work earning $100,000 a year. Then they get fired. It takes them 2 months to find another job paying $100,000 a year (say, a decent software engineer in a company that goes bust). They do not file for any welfare while unemployed (perhaps because they have savings, that sort of thing). Under the method used to calculate those 1.5 million people living on less than $2 a day our thoroughly upper middle class software engineer qualifies. Because there was a period of one or two months where cash household income was under $2 a day per family member.

Do I think the US welfare system is perfect? Nope, most certainly not. It's also true that the US is more unequal than other advanced countries. But the real incidence of $2 a day poverty in the US is zero. The numbers cooked up for this book look only at cash income, not any other form of aid that people might get. They are also measuring transient populations flowing through a rocky patch, not some vast underclass. And finally they are measuring income, not the thing that we really want to measure, consumption possibilities.

People commit suicide when they despair.  Do people who vote despair?  That would be a nice study, but it might not come with pre-cast outcomes.

The only Nobel Prize Laureate of the last ten years that I will listen to is Bob Dylan.

Kim Foxx ( aka Toni Preckwinkle) Turns Justice into a Pinata - 16 swings; one's gotta hit.

They ain't just taking 16 whacks at a cop, they are taking 16 stout wallops at the blind lady with the scales.

Today, because this cannot go on, we are endorsing Kim Foxx, a former chief of staff to Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, over incumbent State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. In a contentious race, Foxx has made clear she understands what this election is all about: Restoring faith in the state’s attorney’s office. Chicago Sun Times

COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — The Chicago police officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald in 2014 was indicted this month on 16 counts of aggravated battery — one for each bullet fired at the 17-year-old.
Officer Jason Van Dyke, 38, was indicted in 2015 on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct. Those charges still stand.

Kim Foxx is Toni Preckwinkle's creature, in same manner that Senator Tammy Duckworth is Dick Durbin's .  Both elected officials were groomed by the elder mentor.

That should give one pause at the outset.

Kim Foxx was elected because Laquan McDonald ingested PCP and decided to go on a knife-wielding stroll on the night of October 20, 2014 and several folks decide to call 911.

Shortly before 10:00 p.m., police were called to investigate McDonald at 4100 South Pulaski Road responding to reports that he was carrying a knife[9][13] and breaking into vehicles in a trucking yard at 41st Street and Kildare Avenue.[23][24] When officers confronted McDonald, he used a knife with a 3-inch blade to slice the tire on a patrol vehicle and damage its windshield.[24][25] McDonald walked away from police after numerous verbal instructions from officers to drop the knife,[26] at which point responding officers requested Taser backup, according to radio recordings released December 30, 2015, to Politico and NBC Chicago in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.[27]
Video of the shooting shows that Van Dyke was advancing on McDonald, while McDonald was walking astride from Van Dyke when the first shot was fired. The first shot hit McDonald, who spun and fell to the ground.[28] As McDonald lay on the ground, still holding the knife, Van Dyke fired more shots into him.[29] In total, Van Dyke shot MacDonald 16 times in 14–15 seconds, expending the maximum capacity of his 9mm semi-automatic firearm.[30] [26] Van Dyke was on the scene for less than 30 seconds before opening fire and began shooting approximately six seconds after exiting his car.[26] The first responding officer said that he did not see the need to use force, and none of the at least eight other officers on the scene fired their weapons.[30]
Laquan McDonald was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m.[31] Wikipedidia

The Burger King video of this shooting was really ugly. I mean really ugly.

Here is where  Law & Order hits the sound effects button for the Dun,Duh!

Rahm Emanuel buries the tape. I mean, Rahm's got an election in the spring!

The story is just another blotter case in ChiRaq.  No Chicago news hounds get their ears back about it and Rahm's CPD exempts are only to glad to help a Mayor out.

The story goes dark, but manages to get in the hands of an activist from Hyde Park who has made a career out of slum property, like so many Progressive Democrats ( Allison Davis/Valerie Jarrett et al) ,  Jamie Kalven!

N.B.

Kalven, whose father was Law School Professor Harry Kalven Jr., AB’35, JD’38, has spent three decades chronicling such urban problems as police misconduct and public housing’s poor living conditions in publications like the Nation, In These Times, and Slate. After years of reporting on the lives of Bronzeville’s Stateway Gardens residents, in the mid-1990s he served as a formal adviser to the building complex’s resident council and helped negotiate with city agencies, private real-estate developers, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the Experimental Station, Nate Roth (left), Leo Gertner, and journalist Jamie Kalven discuss a potential article examining police-contract negotiations.

He calls himself a human-rights reporter and community organizer, and he suggests the city is at a crossroads: “I pride myself in knowing Chicago and knowing my way around, but at this point I feel like I don’t know the city.”

That was back in 2008, around the time that young Barack Obama graduated from 15' of real estate to 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue.

Jamie Kalvan used to call himself a real estate  novelist, because he was; that has been pretty well scrubbed in recent Google history.

Well, Jamie Kalven went on to become a police bully, 'knowing Chicago and knowing (his) way around."

From Altgeld Gardens to Laquan McDonald, Kalven dug for race based gold nuggets all over his Invisible Empire - none bigger than the Laquan McDonald bonanza.

Kalven sued for police records of beefs and Kalven helped train street activists for the wars to come.

Kalven has run the national, as well as, Chicago media on police matters since the death of McDonald.


Kim Foxx listens to Jamie Kalven, because Toni Preckwinkle listens to Jamie Kalven.

Well, Kim Foxx was groomed to run against States Attorney Anita Alvarez, by the time that the missing video surfaced.

Kim easily took down Ms, Alvarez and at Toni Preckwinkle behest flung open the doors of County for miscreants, scamps and ne'er-do-wells who were on shorts.  That's a Cook County huzzah!

BUT - Kim inherited the shabby murder charge against the cop who killed McDonald. That is supposed to be a WTTW slam dunk, Girl-Friend!

Well, Kim Foxx and Toni Preckwinkle have no truck with Justice, much less the law and decided to turn Justice into a pinta!

Kim gets sixteen (swings) to break a man.

Cool. . . .And they say people are leaving Chicago, Cook County and Illinois in droves.