Chicago Tribune Does Rahm Recovery and Dan Mihalopoulos Tosses Red Meat to Real Readers

It does not take a Jeremiah, a Daniel, or an Ezra to read Chicago Tea-leaves and know with 100% certainty that Chicago's Media will apply rouge, mascara and pancake to the potholes on Rahm Emanuel's mug only seconds after every disaster. 

Immediately after the weekend's whirlwind "Forget about it!  Good Men Make Mistakes"  from Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune, the greasepaint got slapped on with hefty trowel:

Top news
CLOUT STREET
Trying to dig out of turmoil of second term, Emanuel looks ahead to re-election bid:
Bill Ruthhart
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in the back half of a second term filled with controversies and challenges that would have left many politically weakened if not finished for good, but he’s as cocksure as ever about his future.

Gee, what a scrappy kid!  What a with it guy!  Them controversies???  Go on; pick one!

Whoever runs against Emanuel, the Tribune will morph him/her into 'The Trump Candidate.'

Already Dold's hacks, Steve Chapman, Rex Hupke, as well as imported features are dominating the most read section with Trump Thumping tub-thumpers.

• I Study Liars fro  Living. I've Never Seen One Like President Trump
• A lesson in history: Why the furor behind declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital?
• Donald Trump's biggest flaw: He's not that bright
• Don't underestimate how low Trump can go
• Trump endorses Moore — something for Gross America to ...

We get it Bruce, Trump is bad, very, very, very very bad.   So is the Tribune.

Rahm Emanuel is Cocksure that he can depend upon the purse-puppies in the Tribune Tower to lick-spittle up a storm for him! Membership in the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy requires lock-step from stooges.

However, West of the tower along the river, the Sun Times' Dan Mihalopoulos  has tossed raw meat to real readers

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get a brief break from his troubles here next week — thanks to a star in the vast constellation of brother Ari.
When news broke that Emanuel will go to New York to be a guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday, I couldn’t help but immediately suspect Colbert is one of the many entertainers who make gobs of money for uber-agent (and Uber investor) Ari Emanuel.Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Think Colbert will ask about the Feds circling around Forrest Claypool and not Cook County Forest Preserve workers? Not a chance!

Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Mihalopoulos goes for the jugular . . .and all south side Irish . . .by forcing readers to remember Robert Redford's lousy docu-drama that attempted to present Rahm as a human being

As with CNN’s fawning “Chicagoland” series — which starred Rahm Emanuel and his then-loyal top cop Garry McCarthy during Emanuel’s first term — the mayor is again benefitting from people who are financially connected to his little brother.
Clients of Ari Emanuel directed CNN’s 2014 homage to Rahm and Garry. Before that show aired, the directors promised to be so fair and balanced that Mayor Emanuel would be irked.  The final result was virtually a propaganda film, with Emanuel and McCarthy portrayed like urban superheroes. Emails later revealed the show’s producers privately coordinated scenes with mayoral aides and even promised to present Emanuel as “the star that he really is.”

You Steven Colbert works for Ari Emanuel's talent rodeo.  He is in with the Chicago Progressive Democratic Oligarchs and a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE Trump Thumper.

Dan Mihalopoulos cuts through the PR stooging from Rahm's office person and gets to meat of the matter:

An Endeavor spokesman on Friday confirmed Colbert is a client of Dixon Talent, but Dixon Talent did not return messages seeking comment on Rahm Emanuel’s appearance with Colbert.
A spokeswoman for CBS, the network that airs Colbert’s show, had no interest in elaborating on why they would want the mayor of Chicago on their show.
“So you’re aware, we don’t comment on our booking process,” said the spokeswoman, Lauren Kamm. “Photos of the mayor’s appearance will be available on Monday evening and the full clip of the interview will post on The Late Show’s YouTube page on Tuesday morning.”
We local yokels also can tune in to CBS-Channel 2 at 10:35 p.m. Monday. The mayor is scheduled to appear between Oscar winner Matt Damon and Colombian musician Juanes.
Emanuel should hope he gets glowing reviews in Beverly and other neighborhoods of his city — and not just in Beverly Hills. (emphasis my own)

Rahm plays Ok in Beverly, but west of Western and East of Longwood Drive ? Morgan Park?  Roseland?  Auburn-Gresham? Mount Greenwood?  West Beverly?   Garfield Ridge?  West Lawn?  Noyt so much.

Dan Mihiapolous shows real fangs and claws, unlike his editorial board.

Sun Times will back the SEIU/AFSCME approved candidate and then curry favor with the Third Term Rahm Administration, once the stalking horses white, black and Latino divide the votes again.

Here's hoping the Feds still have a RICO bullet in the chamber for Forrest Claypool and the will to let fly.

If not Rahm will face Trump and win again.

Colbert ought to be ashamed, but he is not. He is Hollywood.

Until then, Nothing is on Square and the Nine Digit Midget remains on Five.

Question for the 'Watchdogs' - How Soon Will the Feds Fell Forrest?

                                      December 8, 2017 - The Great Fellation of Forrest

“Issues over which you should leave go to corruption or profiteering. What you have here is a guy who wanted to get the best possible representation for the kids of Chicago and was overzealous in making that happen, . . .   Rahm, from my conversations with him, appreciates the progress the system has made in terms of dealing with its horrific financial problems and educationally on Forrest’s watch.” David Axelrod in The Maroon

I read the Maroon, the paper published by University of Chicago, home of Richie Daley, Dave Axelrod and the Hyde Park Mafia.

Let's the head of an organization shops six and settles on his college roomie to justify the Federally funded salary of lawyer with a huge conflict of interest and covers-up his tracks in a conspiracy to defraud the children he has sworn to serve is overzealous?

Yeah, Dave and that  Old Joe Stalin sure was vexed by them Ukrainians, some.

Comb Over Dave is really good at salting the soil with meaningless words - masterful.  Eight years of Obama and people still think he was better than . . .mildly adequate.

That's what a link to University of Chicago will do for your rhetoric. Dave is a wheel at U of C.

The University of Chicago is and has been tightly allied to City Hall and the County Board from the time that Richard M. Daley chiseled away at his Bridgeport foundation and built policies upon the sand dunes of the Midway.  His wife made him move out of the neighborhood and away from the people who put him in office, toss childhood friends under the buses and embrace effete political tyros cadre-ed and marshaled by Abner Mikva and funded with the many millions of dollars attached to 501(c)3 strings in the progressive web.

University of Chicago embraced every political grifter and every Marxist ambulance chaser hell-bent on power and social engineering.   Richard M. Daley - formerly Richie - wanted to please the bride and best his old man.  He was nice guy when he was Richie Daley.  Richard M. Daley?  Not so much.

Power and cover he got and did his minions - Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool and David Axelrod the Three Amigos of the room temperature I.Q. generated wit of Michael Sneed.

The old Ward Democratic Party was chopped up with the Shakman axe, set fire with Harris, Pritzker, Woods, MacArthur and Polk kindling and bellowed with hot air from The Tribune, Sun Times, Chicago Reader, WTTW, WBEZ, WBBM, NBC and Disney's ABC for decades.

The new Progressive Democratic Oligarchy was unstoppable.

Claypool hopped from six figure salary, screw-ups, scandals and sophistry to bigger piles of pension wampum - unexamined, unchallenged and celebrated by our media Watchdogs, the BGA and all of us.

Axelrod leaped to the White House.

Rahm Emanuel oozed onto the 5th Floor.

The Litulone, Cuchulain and Kutoyis of Cook County, Illinois, America and our globalist world, Barack H. Obama magically appeared in the 1990's from a clot of blood dropped from a wounded buffalo and rose via the magic of 501(c)3 boodle, a compliant media and seedy world created in Hyde Park Laboratory Schools, Slum Real Estate Ventures and Policy Parties.

The Progressive Democratic Oligarchy hugged, petted and foisted the University of Chicago approved John Henry upon our consciences and Barack Obama went from sic and fetch at the Woods Fund for Billy Ayers, to adjunct instructor ( Constitutional Law Scholar) to State Senator, US Senator to 44th President of United States and the Nobel Prize!  Check Please!

The simple fact that this 'life-long Sox Fan' could not name one White Sox player (1900-present), much less, could not under stand that one gets into a boxing ring by climbing through the ropes, is and remains a talisman for people's consciences.

More significantly POTUS '44's administration covered the dealings of Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel with impunity immunity for eight happy years.

Now, the onomatopoeic bully is in the White House and the Justice Department is no longer the cattle prod of Eric Holder, or candy dish of Loretta Lynch.

Forrest Claypool might be the G-string in this striptease.

His resignation said more about the hot breath of Feds on the white collar criminals with Progressive pedigrees, than the purchase of airline tickets to Cuba, or Montenegro,  most non-extradition countries are 'emerging nations' and PBS approved - all but the Vatican, but too is changing.

The timing ( Friday News Cycle), the fellation (Rahm's CPS Love Fest) and media feather bedding ( Tribune and Sun Times editorials with some serious Trump thumping) lead me to believe that the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy of Chicago has pooped the bed, one too many times.

You can't make a desert with felling the forest and Forrest is about to make a sandbox of Chicago's preening plutocrats.

Dry times ahead.

Okay Watchdogs!  Sic 'em!

Forrest Claypool - Quare desine/Why Resign? Club Fed, n'cest pas?

Quare Desine- Latin:  Why resign?

Forrest Claypool resigned on December 8, 2017 - A day that will live in someone's calendar.

Why? Quare desine,  as  the Latin Fathers asked. Here' a bit of Why

Claypool wanted CPS to hire Jenner & Block to handle the case. The firm’s lawyer who signed the deal with the Claypool administration was Randall Mehrberg. He’d been the top lawyer for the Chicago Park District in the 1990s, when Claypool was parks chief under then-mayor Richard M. Daley. Mehrberg later gave tens of thousands of dollars to Claypool’s political campaigns.
Mehrberg also was a volunteer adviser to Claypool in the mayor’s office when Claypool was Emanuel’s chief of staff, in 2015.
After Claypool went to CPS, Mehberg left City Hall, too. He went to work at Jenner & Block, where he began focusing on what would be CPS’ case against the state.
On March 1, 2016, Mehrberg sent a message to Claypool from his new job: “I started at Jenner today. I will get the file opened.”
Two days later, the firm started billing CPS, records show.
Claypool wanted Marmer to supervise the Jenner & Block lawyers working for the cash-strapped public schools. And Marmer did, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported, citing internal emails.
By April 2016, Mehrberg had sent Marmer copies of a draft lawsuit, and Marmer reported to Claypool on the case’s progress. Also that month, Mehrberg emailed Claypool to tell him he and Marmer had a “good conversation” about the planned suit.
“Great,” Claypool replied.
But there was one problem. Under the school system’s ethics code, officials can’t supervise the work of any CPS contractor with whom they have a “business relationship.” And Marmer was getting a $1 million severance package from Jenner & Block, in five $200,000 yearly installments through 2018.
Four in-house lawyers agreed Marmer shouldn’t be supervising his old employers. Two outside lawyers consulted in the spring of 2016 agreed.
But Claypool scurried to find a seventh — this time favorable — legal opinion from political supporter J. Timothy Eaton in June 2016.
By that time — May 12, 2016 — the Sun-Times had filed the first in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for CPS records on the deal.
CPS didn’t comply with the requests until after the school board approved the deal with Jenner & Block in late July 2016. A Sun-Times report on the issue prompted CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler to begin investigating.
On Tuesday — 16 months later — Schuler handed Board of Ed members a searing report that called for Claypool’s firing, saying the CEO lied repeatedly to him in a “full-blown cover-up” of a clear ethical violation by Marmer.
Schuler wrote that Claypool refused to pay one of the outside lawyers and got the other to alter the work description on his firm’s invoices, all to hide what was going on.
“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

Quare desine?  Why resign?

“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

No, it should not have happened and the Sun Time and the Tribune and the goofs at WTTW and WBEZ knew  all along that some shoe was about to drop and they were helping the powers that be make hurt go away.

The media never takes a chance at losing access - sneedless to say.

The 5th Floor's reliable Sneed of the Sun Times wrote this on December 6th:

Well, that may no longer be a question in the case of former top cop Garry McCarthy, who detests Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the man who fired him — and the man whose job he wants.“An announcement on McCarthy’s decision could come as soon as the aftermath of the Super Bowl,” said a top McCarthy supporter who cites recent polling as a hopeful sign McCarthy will green-light a bid next month for mayor of Chicago.
“The polling was encouraging,” the source said.
Sneed has learned a polling firm called We Ask America, which is run by XPS, described as “a political fulfillment firm owned by the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association,” did some polling “which did not shut the door” on the McCarthy movement, a top political source said.
• Backshot: A McCarthy for Mayor Exploratory Committee was created after papers were filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections in mid-September.• Big bucks shot: “Garry knows the campaign is going to cost $10 million and he’s got a lot of  money to raise — and it’s not going to happen until he gets into the race,” said the source, who is one of his backers — but asked to remain anonymous.
“But from what we’ve seen so far his sidewalk support is huge. . . . I can’t tell you how many people come up to him on the street and ask him to run. I’ve been with him when it happens and it is astounding. And we’ve heard rumblings Rahm’s approval rating is not great.”
• Upshot: But an attempt to reach McCarthy was unsuccessful on Wednesday.

The Same Day - the usually reliable Fran Spielman wrote this:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in a no-win position now that Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has been exposed as a liar and the architect of a cover-up.
If Emanuel fires Claypool, he’ll be turning his back on a friend of nearly 40 years whose tenure has included impressive results on both the education and school funding fronts.
The mayor would also be emboldening the Chicago Teachers Union in the run-up to the 2019 mayoral election by serving up the head on a platter the union has long demanded.
If Emanuel keeps Claypool — even after he “repeatedly lied” to Inspector General Nicholas Schuler — it will invite CPS employees to do the same, send a dangerous message to students and gamble that a schools CEO whose integrity has been tarnished can still function.

Uh, oh!!!!!!!!! Conflict!!!!! Bet a call from the Nine Digit Midget on Five shook up Comrades Tom Frisbee and Tom McNamee a bit.

On December 8th, Fran Spielman wrote this about Rahm orchestrated public fellation for Forrest:

On Friday, Emanuel called his longtime friend “selfless” at least half a dozen times in as many minutes as he praised Claypool for restoring faith in the schools after his predecessor, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, left amid a bribery scandal that sent her to prison.
“He can walk out with his head high because he did the job well, and he will always be my friend,” the mayor said. “He did a great job for the children of the city of Chicago.
“Wherever he has worked, he’s left an incredible, indelible mark on every endeavor,” Emanuel said. “He has been selfless, and more than just selfless, he has been courageous to take on institutional inertia and make the entity — whether it was the park district, the CTA or CPS — better.”
In the 103-page report Schuler delivered to the school board Tuesday, he painted a different picture of Claypool. He said he “repeatedly lied” during the investigation of Marmer for overseeing work for CPS done by his former law firm even as he was receiving payments toward a $1 million severance. (emphasis my own) 
 

And?

How about asking if Claypool doctored the wording on Marmer's contract?

That is a felony, or as Claypool weaseled, “Good men can make stupid mistakes.”

Do good men lie and shop for lawyers in the pursuit of justice for CPS kids?

More telling though is this - Why is the Chicago media slow-rolling a block-buster scandal?

Why is Fran Spielman backpedaling? Here is a hint:

David Axelrod, formerly a top aide in the Obama White House and a close friend of Emanuel and Claypool, had predicted Thursday that Claypool would remain in office.
“The mayor never asked him to” resign, Axelrod said after Claypool quit. “But it’s also obvious that this would be an issue as we enter political season, and that would make it hard to do the job.”

Why bring out Comb-over Dave?

Abusing Federal budget - cover-ups after the crime!  Claypool a practiced lawyer has two or more predicate acts in the Marmer case alone commited by by the head of an organization and a criminal conspiracy with his old college rommie? Can you say RICO?

Why resign?

Hell, why not indict?

I think the Feds are snuffling very close to Rahm's rump and where Rahm's rump ranges, there you will find  Claypool.

The media, as expected the Sun Times and as follows the Tribune ( with the exception of John Kass) works for City Hall the County Building and the money infrastructure of Illinois all serving the few - the clouted and the bullet proof.

Things are chaotic with that crazy old Trump in the White House and even crazier with an independent Justice Department.

The Tribune wrote this weasel-word editorial for Forrest and Rahm the day before Forrest Claypool resigned"

Is this a firing offense? Based on what we know, no. We take ethics in government — and everywhere else — seriously. We strongly support the IG’s role in keeping a vigilant eye on CPS brass. You don’t need a long memory to recall that the last CPS chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now resides in prison on corruption charges.
But every rules violation isn’t a firing offense. This looks like a case in which the actions that drew the ire of the IG in the first place are less serious than later efforts to cover them up. But lying to the ethics watchdog is a serious matter. We think Claypool now understands that.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Board of Education members should consider the high stakes here. Ask yourselves: Are Chicago’s schoolchildren better off today because Claypool leads the district? We think the answer is an unqualified yes. Claypool was whistled in to do a grueling job: Get CPS in shape. He deserves a large share of credit for helping to shore up the district’s finances and boost its academic performance.
One more factor: From what we’ve heard, there’s plenty of friction between Claypool and Schuler. They’ve battled over the IG’s report on problems at the school at Cook County Jail, for example. We don’t know where all of this is headed.
For now, Claypool is on notice that he can’t pick and choose which ethics policies he’ll follow. This brouhaha may or may not get him fired. Everyone else who thinks ethics rules maybe don’t apply to them — including politicians and school officials — watch and learn.

Bite me, Bruce!

Watch this - from your editorial yesterday:

 It’s easy to see why Claypool concluded that he couldn’t continue under an ethics cloud. Even if he had the support of Emanuel, the optics of Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s report were terrible. Headlines about how Claypool engaged in a “full-blown cover-up.” And how the schools chief “pushed the matter beyond all bounds when he chose to lie through two separate OIG interviews,” in the words of Schuler’s report.
“It goes without saying that if any line employee had done that much, he or she would be fired,” the report concluded.
We didn’t think Claypool’s transgressions amounted to a firing offense.

No. it is a felony.  Did Claypool doctor a contract ( one of many, many, many more - Ventra/Bombardier) ? Hmmmm?

Claypool, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools chief, has staunchly defended Marmer’s actions since the Sun-Times reported last year that Marmer is getting the $1 million package from Jenner & Block LLP, the Chicago firm hired to help CPS sue the state to try to win more funding for city schools.
But Schuler says six lawyers — four at CPS and two from outside firms — privately advised school officials that Marmer was violating the ethics code by supervising Jenner & Block’s work.
Only after CPS went to a seventh lawyer, in June 2016, did Claypool secure a legal opinion defending Marmer’s conduct. That opinion came from J. Timothy Eaton, a lawyer who has contributed to Claypool’s political campaigns.
“The clear inference is that Claypool had to shop through six lawyers until he found a seventh one who would publicly clear Marmer,” Schuler wrote to the Board of Education in the confidential report, which the Sun-Times reviewed

Good men make mistakes. Right?

 Political Weasels and Career Grifters lie, hide, doctor and cover-up.

Why Resign?  Quare desine?

Is it because the Feds are about to put the bracelets on some protected Progressive Species?


Rahm Emanuel?
Claypool?
Mike Quigley ( with Claypool over the voting machines?)

Maybe all  squirming in one big net?

The media knows and is not saying.  They will know when we know.  That is why we have contempt for the media - they print and report only what they want.

Fran Spielman indicated that she was on to something on December 8th.   Why back off?

Maybe we already know answer.

Things are chaotic!  It's a crisis!  Let's not waste a crisis!

Forrest Claypool is Never Down, Much Less Out. Watchdog that Head-Scratcher.

“I have fully acknowledged my mistakes in judgment and apologized,” Claypool said. “But I did not regret the passion for justice that led to that mistake.”

Claypool mistakes lying as the defense of justice for poor kids and that is why he will always have a job and another six figure pension in Illinois.

You see Forrest was doing a solid for  CPS General Counsel Ronald L. Marmer at the CPS Board , a pal.
   
This pal would throw your salary and my salary away - combined.  Pals like Ron always need more gelt.  That is why they can and do waste tax dollars in the public trough, while kids at Harper High and Oglesby Elementary learn . . .nothing.

Illinois is a stupid State.

• We elected Pat Quinn, after he proved what a ninny he was when Blago went to the joint.
• We elected GOP Bruce Rauner to hold a place for Prog-Dem Michigan Avenue Fats -aka JB Pritzker
• We worry about Mike Madigan and vote handsomely for his daughter
• We think a wedding dress is proof of residency
• We loved Toni Preckwinkle until the Pop Tax
• We elected Durbin and Duckworth to the Senate
• We elected Marque Kirque to the Senate
• We believe the idiotic media.
• We think Paul Simon Polls are not rigged
• We tolerate Forrest Claypool and his all too numerous ilk

I hate to kick a man when he is down.  I don't.  Forrest Claypool, the poster child for Illinois Grift and Illinois Attention Deficit Disorder,  is anything but down.

Forrest Claypool will never be down, unlike some Streets and Sanitation truckman, who might nod off on break in the cab of a big blue city truck and catch the camera eye of Chuck Goudie's I-Team, or Andy Shaw's BGA snitch patrol.  That guy will never work again in Cook County and his kids will be pulled out of St. Joseph the Worker Grammar School, or the Lou Rawls Charter School, because the tuition nut is too high. Forrest Claypool has amassed a fistful of pensions as well as all of the change that fell between the cushions on the 5th Floor, Chicago Parks, County Board, CTA and CPS.

I might even suggest that a little something must have landed in the side pockets of Claypool's Joseph A. Banks slacks from Ventra and Bombardier, were I a mean-spirited scandal monger.

Shucks, I don't work for the media.

Any way.  The Chicago media is more than reluctantly kicking grease and mud on Forrest's nicely tailored duds about fibbing to the General Inspector.

He will survive. He will survive.  Claypool will survive because he is such an unctuous weasel, practiced grifter,  a preening soul-less Progressive and habitual sneak.  In short, he is the perfect model of the WTTW, WBEZ approved Reformer.

He is passionate about justice and will lie his lath-like ass off to get justice.

Forrest resigned as CPS CEO.

Give him a solid twenty minutes and he will be appointed to another monster salary on our dimes.

I never kick a man when he is down.

Never. 

And You Voted For this Dope???

"Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote." former President Barak H. Obama.

Germans voted Mr. Nobel President.  They voted for a dopey clown with powerful grassroots organization and a tightly controlled narrative dangled to a supine press.

The United States however did not lose a world war, nor did it undergo foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, nor look longingly for a return to the monarchy.

America only endured your Comedy Central Presidency.

That was more than  enough to make Donald J. Trump preferable to you and Hilary Clinton. 

Oh, and there is more.

Barak Obama spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago with Mrs. Star War Museum Melody Hobson-Lucas and compared Trump to Hitler, his Presidency to the Weimar Republic and praised America's bandwidth*:

American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.
Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson—in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman—before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts.
One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."

OooooRah Yankee Bandwidth!!!!! That should lock up more Tech Geek bucks.

Now, go louse up Jackson Park the outer drive and other peoples' days

And you voted for this dope?


*  In computing, bandwidth is the bit-rate of available or consumed information capacity expressed typically in metric multiples of bits per second. Variously, bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth.

No Need to "Process" Idioms by Idiots

 “I’m still really processing it.” - Anne Curry NBC Hostess and Mensa Second Stringer upon the exposure of Matt Lauer's priapism and goatish hypocrisies. 

Idiomatic phrases allow us a pause in the old brain-pain. Some useful idioms add color to speech

• Kick the Bucket - Shed our mortal husk
• Take a Brody - Jump off  High Place ( bridge & etc.)
• Do the Dutch Act - Take one's life
• Two to Tango - Dance,or  ride an Argentine tandem
• Rock the Boat - Sit down Stubby!
  

Today, pretentious losers employ faux-brainy phrases dim the fog of culutral war and also tend to  whine,'Can't we dialogue?' when losing an argument.

No, Dummy we can not dialogue, unless you can present dialogue as a verb with all five characteristics!  Voila!

Dialogue: N.B: "It was evidently well-used as a verb in Shakespeare's day, fell out of favor, then returned in recent history as a business-speak word. I hate business-speak. There are alternatives, and, where there are good alternatives, I'm usually against verbification. Unless it's a colorful verbification. Discuss works nicely in most situations. What does dialog add other than a faint suggestion of probably non-existent workplace democracy and/or respect for the opinions of all?"Luftmarque - sage, that, Luft!

Person (first, second, third)

Number (singular, plural)

Tense (present, future, future perfect, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect)

Mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, [participle])

Voice (active, passive) (Deponents are active)

These are the very same dopes who mispronounce common words like Armistice,Oeuvre,  Charcuterie and Denouement in correcting the proper pronunciation of said words, will preeningly puke out trendy phrases like  - 'Still processing' when trying not to laugh-snort a schnozzle full of coffee when talking about the late Matt Lauer- NBC's Mr. 30 Cock. 

Ubi Sunt, Matt Lauer?

Qui Shives a git!

Anne Curry, I guess,  and People, Hollywood Extra and other havens of craven sophisticates like Anne, Matt, Harvey, Spacey and CK Louis. 

The clowns are down for a few weeks. Let's enjoy their absences from our public stage.  Let us pay attention to children, to heroes and hard-working Americans.

Let's do that and make fun of pretentious imbeciles making oodles of cash.

Process that Miss Curry!

I Wish a Buck Were Still Silver: Moral Hazards, or Merle Haggard?

I generally watch the news between 5-6 P.M. but never seem to watch to the end, because NBC, CBS, FOX and CNN usually drift into the moral hazards bothering the rich, the powerful and politically protested.

I feel the need to shower after watching and reading the news.

Last night, it was very different.  I went to Catholic high high school wrestling, instead of watching preening dopes and oleaginous creeps parse tweets and tweak the turpitudes of turds in the political punch bowl.

I am no longer affected by the repellant Garrison Keillor, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Senator Al Franken, Judge Roy Moore, or the cavalcade of clowns occupying public office in Illinois.

I watched more than three hours of high school school wrestling and feel 100% morally clean, renewed, energetic and ready for the brand new day.

I watched Brother Rice High School, Loyola Academy and Leo High School grapple-ers hit the mats from 5: 30 P.M. to shortly before 9: P.M. in a  controlled violence ballet in which each combatant gave his all until a quicker man with better lock-up pinned two shoulder blades, or garnered more points with escapes and near-falls until the clock ran out.

Not a second of shame in over three hours and not a whine from anyone. The victorious raised hand was shaken by the loser and both young men applauded vigorously by the crowd. I went home and listened to Merle Haggard's "Are The Good Times Really Gone?"



I prepared my classes on Christian Morality and the Old Testament and wondered about  things -

Wish a buck was still silver.
It was, back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis; before the Vietnam war came along.
Before The Beatles and "Yesterday",
When a man could still work, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.
Wish a Ford and a Chevy,
Could still last ten years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?

I don't think so Merle, just different - sloppier, sillier, sissy-er, maybe, but wrestlers compete and hug their moms after a pin or a pinning and sheepishly glance to see if Dad's eyes shine a bit moister than usual.

Black, White Mexican, Arab and Filipino kids who had spit in cups and nodded off in class due to trying to 'cut weight' came alive for three minutes in a husky three hours.

No one was rolling to hell last night, Merle.

Aphra Behn on Our Roll Call of Sex- Hopped Hypocrites: Matt, Charlie, Garrison, Harvey, Franken and the Judge et al

The Nymphs resentments, none but I
Can well imagin, and Condole ;
But none can guess Lisander's Soul,
But those who sway'd his Destiny :
His silent Griefs, swell up to Storms,
And not one God, his Fury spares,
He Curst his Birth, his Fate, his Stars,
But more the Shepherdesses Charms ;
Whose soft bewitching influence,
Had Damn'd him to the Hell of Impotence. Aphra Benn

Interestingly, the only name among this cavalcade of creeps to surprise me was Kevin Spacey.

The rest always struck me as smarmy, mealy-mouthed, power-addicted louts and sneaks.

Just sayin'.

 Oh, still waiting for the Jimmy Choo six inch pumps to fall on Bill Moyers. 

Crack Came to Us from Thackeray and to Me from Dr. Micael Clark of Loyola

Some poet has observed, that if any man would write down what has really happened to him in this mortal life, he would be sure to make a good book, though he never had met with a single adventure from his birth to his burial. How much more, then, must I, who HAVE had adventures, most singular, pathetic, and unparalleled, be able to compile an instructive and entertaining volume for the use of the public. . . .On the last day of the year 1837, even THAT game was up. It’s a thing that very seldom happened to a gentleman, to be kicked out of a spunging-house; but such was my case. Young Nabb (who succeeded his father) drove me ignominiously from his door, because I had charged a gentleman in the coffee-rooms seven-and-sixpence for a glass of ale and bread and cheese, the charge of the house being only six shillings. He had the meanness to deduct the eighteenpence from my wages, and because I blustered a bit, he took me by the shoulders and turned me out—me, a gentleman, and, what is more, a poor orphan!

How I did rage and swear at him when I got out into the street! There stood he, the hideous Jew monster, at the double door, writhing under the effect of my language. I had my revenge! Heads were thrust out of every bar of his windows, laughing at him. A crowd gathered round me, as I stood pounding him with my satire, and they evidently enjoyed his discomfiture. I think the mob would have pelted the ruffian to death (one or two of their missiles hit ME, I can tell you), when a policeman came up, and in reply to a gentleman, who was asking what was the disturbance, said, “Bless you, sir, it’s Lord Cornwallis.” “Move on, BOOTS,” said the fellow to me; for the fact is, my misfortunes and early life are pretty well known—and so the crowd dispersed.

“What could have made that policeman call you Lord Cornwallis and Boots?” said the gentleman, who seemed mightily amused, and had followed me. “Sir,” says I, “I am an unfortunate officer of the North Bungay Fencibles, and I’ll tell you willingly for a pint of beer.” He told me to follow him to his chambers in the Temple, which I did (a five-pair back), and there, sure enough, I had the beer; and told him this very story you’ve been reading. You see he is what is called a literary man—and sold my adventures for me to the booksellers; he’s a strange chap; and says they’re MORAL. The Fatal Boots by Wm. Makepeace Thackeray (emphasis my own)

 In both Britain and America, 'crack' could mean good or excellent – and to boast or even make a joke (wisecrack).

While ‘crack unit’ or ‘crack regiment’ is a little archaic nowadays, we still talk of something as not being all it’s ‘cracked up’ to be.

In the martial sense, the word ‘crack’ dates to around the 1830s. William Makepeace Thackeray’s short story The Fatal Boots (1839) contains possibly the first printed use of the term ‘crack shot’. The onomatopoeic connections between shooting and cracking noises are obvious. It might be – and this is just my theory – that it became popular in the 1830s to 1840s due to the newfangled percussion caps on firearms, which would have made more of a cracking noise than flintlock weapons. History Question by Ellie Cawthorne

In Loyola University graduate school, I had the great good fortune to learn from Dr. Micael Clark, PhD.  She was and remains one of the most exacting and serious scholars of 19th Century Literature and a wonderful mentor.

Dr. Clark had been a student of America's most distinguished Thackeray scholars, Gordon Ray of University of Illinois.  Professor Roy was chosen by the descendants of William Makepeace Thackeray to edit the great artist's letters and correspondence.  I own the set, I am proud to say.

One of Thackeray's great shorter works is the Fatal Boots, a sketch in fiction of young man's vain and snobbish lust for a pair of German boots.  Imagine a young gent addicted to Brooks Brothers clothing when he has a K-Mart budget.

Addicts have no budgets by the way.

Thackeray's themes of vanity and snobbery are lessons well learned and in our goatish and slob-centered cultured much needed.  Thackeray is recognized as the pioneering voice against snobbery ( meanly admiring mean things - are you the type of person who boasts " WE only read the New York Times, watch only PBS and eat only whole grains and organically grown foods"?    A snob is someone who takes great stock in persons, places, ideas and possessions to which most people can say, " Well so-effing what?"

e.g.

• I drink only craft beer
• I drive a Volvo
• No one gets between and my Calvins
• I dine only at Ken's on Western
• I have every Beatle 45
• I date only Roller Derby queens

Bob Stubbs ruins his entire life and career over the purchase and possession of pair of Hessian Boots. Bob steals the boots, on credit, giving the foreigner his name - Lord Cornwallis.  When the bookmaker tries to get paid.  Bob and his snob of a schoolmaster threaten the alien and Milord the hell out of him.  They refuse to pay the price of the fatal boots and the German craftsman prophesies

"Vell, my lort,” says he, “you have paid SOMETHING for dese boots, but not all. By Jubider, YOU SHALL NEVER HEAR DE END OF DEM.”   And Bob's life is carried into the gutter by this theft of a branding item.  

In this story Thackeray used the phrase 'crack shot' and it immediately became fashionable to crack on about everything that seemed cracker jack.

Things fall into place when think about what our elders and betters teach us.

Thank you Dr. Clark!  I had a cracking good education. 

Thanksgiving - "these Things I Remember , , ,"

 Where Thanksgiving began for me - 1755 West 75th Place, Chicago 60620

Psalm 42:4

These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

Thanksgiving is very special and it always has been.

I am blessed to be teaching again after two decades of helping to raise funds at Leo High School.  One of the classes that I teach at Brother Rice is Old Testament.  I got into teaching through the religion department at Bishop McNamara in Kankakee in 1975.  The education circle of my life has closed, but loops off in a new directions as life has a habit of doing. Old Testament passages are not set-pieces but living reminders of God guiding the way to better living.

The Book of Joshua which my guys are reading over the five day break from classes is not just a chronicle of battles and Jewish ninja operations in the land of Canaan, but path to the pattern fulfilled by Joshua bar Joseph, during reign of Tiberius Caesar in Roman occupied Judea (formerly known as Canaan).  This Joshua ( Jesus in Arameric) explained the Covenant - thou shall not kill also means to love your enemies.  And the walls come tumbling down.

I used to come home from Kankakee for Thanksgiving on Greyhound and Amtrack, until I could afford a car.  I'd carry my banjo and guitar with my changes of clothes, because I would be playing Irish tunes with my cousins at Reilly's Daughter in Oak Lawn on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and maybe Saturday ( unless Boz got sick of us and hired Berwyn Moose).

I'd take the the CTA from 95th & the Dan Ryan to Oak Lawn, where my folks had moved from Little Flower.  Little Flower was where all of my Thanksgiving begins.

We lived in a Georgian at 1755 W. 75th Place with a tiny kitchen, but a pretty substantial dining room.  Relatives came and we ate like we were going to the chair.

• Turkey with Sage and Sausage Stuffing
• Baked Sweet Potatoes with marshmallows
• Turnips
• Green Bean  casserole 
• Swedish Potato Sausage from the Swedish Deli at 76th & Bishop
• Mashed Spuds
• Cranberry Sauces (canned for kids and real for human beings)
• Milk from Hamilton Dairy at 75th & Paulina
• Sparkling Burgundy from Sol's Liquors at 79th & Marshfield
• Pecan Pie, Pumpkin Pie and Apple Pie

Before all of that Mom would take us to morning Mass at Little Flower along with our neighbors, while Dad finished his shift at Illinois Medical Hospital.

We would be reminded of everything we should be thankful for - 

• Our Country - we beat it out of Ireland
• Our Faith -we have been Catholic for thousands of years
• Our Freedoms - we had no one telling us who we were
• Our Health - kids rarely died of anything anymore
• Our Wealth - about that!

Yeah, we were loaded!  Dad worked three jobs with the State, the Beverly Theatre and David Berg packing house in Pilsen.

We really were loaded. We had everything!

Dad and his brothers fought for our freedom to practice our religion in this great country where we could go to the dentist, Dr. Anthony and eat real food from National Tea, Kroger, or the Jewels and make a future for ourselves. 

In the 1970's I'd make almost as much money playing Irish tunes with my cousins, Whitey O'Day and the inimitable Terry McEldowney than I would in two weeks of teaching religion and English at Bishop Mac.  I'd feast at the house in Oak Lawn, grab my instruments and head up to Reilly's Daughter and in the late 1970's I would be accompanied by the beautiful red head who would marry me and mother three beautiful children.

The loops of the circles in life would take me and mine from Kankakee to LaPorte and Griffith, Indiana and back to the south side of Chicago.  My children are wonderful adults now and their mother is home with Christ, my Dad and hundreds of Gunkels, Donahues, Hickeys, Brennans, Winters, Murphys, Garveys, & etc.

For that and this Thanksgiving Day, I shout "With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival."

Life is Not a Seamless Garment -Book of Maccabees e.g.

 

 First Maccabees 1:10-15; 41-4310 From these there grew a wicked offshoot, Antiochus Epiphanes son of King Antiochus; once a hostage in Rome, he became king in the 107th year of the kingdom of the Greeks.11 It was then that there emerged from Israel a set of renegades who led many people astray. 'Come,' they said, 'let us ally ourselves with the gentiles surrounding us, for since we separated ourselves from them many misfortunes have overtaken us.'12 This proposal proved acceptable,13 and a number of the people eagerly approached the king, who authorised them to practise the gentiles' observances.14 So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, such as the gentiles have,15 disguised their circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant, submitting to gentile rule as willing slaves of impiety.  . . .41 The king then issued a proclamation to his whole kingdom that all were to become a single people, each nation renouncing its particular customs.42 All the gentiles conformed to the king's decree,43 and many Israelites chose to accept his religion, sacrificing to idols and profaning the Sabbath.

 “We should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighbourhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.” - Blase Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago

Cardinal Cupich is very much like most Progressive Cook County Democrats ( Claypool, Preckwinkle, Quigley & etc), because he nails appointed positions, but just can't seem to get enough votes.  Recently Chicago's Archbishop, elevated by Pope Francis I and destined to be long associated with his pontificate, suffered a loss in an election of the National Conference of Bishops, to Archbishop Joseph Naumann:

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, by contrast, has argued that “issues that involve intrinsic evils – direct attacks on human life, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, or direct attacks on the institution of the family (for example, a redefinition of marriage to equate with same-sex unions or cohabitation) – must assume a moral priority. While all issues are important, all are not equally important from a moral analysis.”
Some observers, such as Christopher white(sic) of Crux, had framed the Cupich-Naumann vote in advance as a “referendum on both the conference’s approach to pro-life policies and Pope Francis”.
However, the editor of the Catholic News Agency, JD Flynn, tweeted after the vote: “CNA has talked with bishops who emphasis this is not a referendum on Francis. Bishops voting for both candidates told me it was only about trying to discern the best fit.” Catholic Herald

Today, at St. John  Fisher, Ray the Lector read the wonderful passage from the Book of Maccabees posted above and it got me to thinking about this vote and the state of goofy culture.

Going along to get along has won far too many elections for people who have no business crafting laws, let alone setting the table for human actions - especially with regard to moral and social justice issues. Seamless garments - one size fits all - have their  purposes, I suppose, but they do not  the necessarily present like a tightly tailored suit of ethical cloth.

Like this one from Deuteronomy

Learn Then that, I , I alone am God,
and there is no god besides me.
It is I who bring both death and life

Got it.

That will not play well on Chicago Tonight and WTTW, in general, but it just might get more cars in the parking lots of St. Cajetan, St. John Fisher and other parishes on a Sunday.

St. Odilo's 9:30 AM Mass was parked yesterday.  Just saying. 

Al Franken and Roy Moore - Bi-Partisan Creeps and Bullies

I know less about Roy Moore than I do about the minimum value of 5cosA + 12sinA + 12.

Al Franken I know was on Saturday Night Live during the era that the show tanked and became the dweeb U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

Now, I know that both men have been corralled in the same pig-pen with Kevin Spacey, Mark Halperin, Harvey Weinstein, David Corn et al. 

They share the common germ - unchecked power.

They are politicians, journalists, Hollywood moguls, judges, lawyers, actors, CEOs, gays, straights, bisexuals, questioning, Democrat and Republican.

They are all the creepy little boys we knew as kids who were 'protected' by nuns, parents, class, religion and friends. They were 'protected' from ever needing to check their impulses at the door, window, couch, or playground.

They did whatever and to whomever they chose to do when, where, why and what they wanted.

The creep on the playground at St. Tommy More parish who ran up to you and your pals and spit hockers on your shirts only to dash to the robes of Dominican nun on supervision and whine, "They hate me because I am going to be a priest, Sister!" might now be leading social justice protests all over the news.

The creep who grabbed the girls in the cloak room only to be given a 'second chance' from Sister Duplicious, because his Dad was a 15th Ward wheel, might now be facing a Hollywood Extra camera and microphone. 

We do what our consciences and our morals allow us to do.  If our consciences and morals are warply shaped by people who love a compromise, we might tend to abuse power.

We never read that Stan the cop, Eddie the roofer, Theresa the nurse, or Willie the County Mountie are being charged with criminal sexual assault, pleasuring themselves in public, exposing their short comings in an elevator, or forcing their impulses on a child.

These are not powerful people.

Predators work to gain trust, acceptance and power over people.  They are people with no 'off-switch' in operation.  They do as the feel, please and will, because they can.

The rest of us answer to God, the parents, teachers, coaches, our children and above all our spouses.

The freak show will continue until we return to some higher authority. Gee, God might be a good start.

The creeps are protected.

Al Franken!  Shake hands with Judge Roy!  Never mind the filth; Old Roy's got what you got. 

Chris Kennedy Looking Good For My Vote - Press Going Full Press Michigan Avenue Fats

Chris Kennedy is an exceptionally nice man.  Like many liberals of the old cloth (Don Rose, the late great Phil Krone & etc.) Chris Kennedy belies the conservative mind-set of intolerant automatons in lock -step with Marxism, Planned Parenthood and Globalism.   Rather Mr. Kennedy is an active do-gooder who walks the talk.

In my two decades and change of work for Leo High School, I have encountered Chris Kennedy and his kids quietly delivering goods and services to people in and around 79th Street, right in Pflegerland between Ashland and Halsted.  Unlike the blonde Jesus who rules St. Sabina like a political ward healer, who never clears his throat, nor breaks wind without CBS,ABC,NBC, WGN, Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and Windy City Times acolytes holding back dozen or so nodding activists around Pastor Pfleger, the son of RFK does good without fanfare, applause and hack reporters.

That said, Chris Kennedy tows the Durbin Dogma too much for my liking.

I understand that.  Chris Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, is not like me, or most of the people (white black, Mexican, ethnic) I encounter.  He comes from the Lace-Curtain traditions that eschew rock-ribbed core values as obnoxiously quaint.  He is a PBS Catholic, stamped and approved by Bill Moyers.  His politics is not unlike many of the people in the more comfortable Zip Codes - Chris Kennedy is much more of 60643 than he is a 60620, or 60655.

My temperament has been formed by my faith, family and friends.  Please note, that I might be the only member of my vast to have not cast a vote for Barack Obama and hurled one into the mix for Donald Trump.  I vote Catholic, organized labor and working class values.  Lately, I have voted for Republicans but I largely loathe the GOP as party of the Quisling tasseled loafer crowd ( Bruuce Rauner, Mark Kirk, Judy Barr Topinka, Chuck Percy, John McCain and John Boehner)  and for  Socialists (Bernie and Chewy Garcia).

Can you  say"Property Taxes?"  Chris Kennedy called our Cook County/Madiganistan system "extortion."The Democrats only have them to bleed and nothing else and Chris Kennedy has criticized County and State abuses. The is sucking dry!

The only GOP voice in Illinois that registers with me is Rep. Jeannie Ives.

Jeannie Ives has more balls than a bowling alley, if may hazard an indelicate metaphor in her praise.

Because the media is feasting on Chris Kennedy's liver, because he has offended the Cook County Democratic Titans and shall be cast eternally into the chthonic depths of Tartarus, or Peotone, maybe, that I am moved to shout for all and sundry within my limited sphere to vote for him against JB Pritzker, The Michigan Avenue Fats of the Pritzker pedigree,

Today the Chicago Tribune lifted a story from Ohio that was all the news back in July, in order to gin up some Chris Kennedy hate.  Maybe SEIU can get the huge Rat put up in front of the Merchandise Mart.

It may take the Sun Times a day or two to catch up, because Sneed is working to help Kimm Fox.

If the media is piling on Chris Kennedy, I am all for him

I'd vote for Chris Kennedy.

I probably will take a GOP ballot to make sure that Jeannie Ives takes down Bruce Rauner.

Merry Gamiss-mas!!!! Kids, I Got Everything Already.

This is what happens when nice people insist on giving presents.   This too.


Everything I read on-line these days seems to have a pop up ad for Gamiss (with the A presented as an upside down V).  These ads are eye-popping examples of new fashion for new Americans. I imagine these folks would love a Techno-version of Christmas in Killarney.



These New Americans must be 'evolved' Americans who eschew meat, sugar, fat and any sense of other people on this planet.

Star Wars Meets Zena the Warrior Princess, Gents!

Kool Yule!

I got nothin'!

                                           Tyger Rags?

I am not a guy who does not like presents ( birthday, Father's Day, Christmas, or Talk like a Pirate Day).  I am not grouch.  I love giving presents to loved ones, but presents embarrass me.

I have everything, already. Gamiss can keep its goods well-warehoused and out of sight.  De Gustibus Non Est Disputandem - I likes what I likes and buy them myself.

Gamiss is not doing it for me. I have everything already and more.

• I do not live in Isis, or Daesh controlled Syria
• I got a woman . . .crazy for me; she's funny that way
• My Kids are all splendid adults
• My Granddaughter Lily is a beautiful, happy and smart baby
• My roof don't leak . . .yet.
• I have most of my teeth
• I can still bend over and pick up pennies on the sidewalk and paper and pencils in the halls of Brother Rice
• I eat like a Sultan
• My Malibu starts and goes
• I take Communion with my neighbors most mornings
• God allows me to continue to draw breath
• Encore Westerns is on cable
• Lovely people crack me up
• Soda Stream keeps me hydrated
• I know Mike Joyce
• I still teach

Gamiss not this Christmas!  Give your love!  Tell me, "You're really not that bad."  Get yourself something nice - on me!  

Remember Christ was born in manger and not on Black Friday.