Joseph Epstein - America's Montaigne Sheds Cranial Cellulite and Shreds Susan Sontag

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Michel de Montaigne (1533 -1592)

Sontag was an aesthete and held that "the wisdom that becomes available over a deep, lifelong engagement with the aesthetic cannot, I venture to say, be duplicated by any other kind of seriousness." Some might argue, though, that she gave aestheticism a bad name and that hers fed nicely into her political foolishness. Joseph Epstein April 1, 2011 - Wall Street Journal Book Review

Enough ain't near a feast, Hickey - Larry "Tri-State" Monahan ( dec.) N.B. the late Mr. Monahan was 5'6" in height and weighed 294 lbs.

Michel de Montaigne was a Renaissance statesman, skeptic, and introduced the genre of the essay a unified consideration of a thought, concept or topic. Montaigne influenced Sir Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, and Mark Twain who showered humanity with keen insights within graceful sentences. Sadly, faux thinkers and loudmouths like Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau and Nietzsche aped Montaigne and are much more widely read, canonized in schools texts, and dropped from the tongues of dimwits.

America is yet blessed with Montaigne's spiritual and technical son - Joseph Epstein.

I read anything by Joe Epstein with equal gusto in the same manner that I can blindly point to any item on Gene & Georgetti's menu - it is always the best selection and most satisfying. I can not choose better - each item is uniquely mouthwatering.

Joseph Epstein lives in Evanston and is completely immune from that locale's penchant for political, ideological, environmental, moral, legal and critical snobbery. Mr. Epstein is as immune from cant, as I am prone to slinging the horseshit.

I try to shed the skin of my prejudices, but not real hard. I am not about to get a massive grabber doing the work that that exercise would entail. I embrace my baggage - more pity me.

Joseph Epstein on the other hand works 24/7 at Montaigne's dictum - Que sais-je?' -What the Hell do I know?

Jospeh Epstein is an intellectual, moral, and cultural athlete. I am a fat-head. Perhaps morbidly obese.

I am not alone. Most of us have rolling, waves of lard between our ears because we swallow Super-sized bags of junk-thought. We dine at Oprah's buffet and nod with conviction to NPR, Glen Beck, or Jason Biggs. We accept what the New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, or any editorial offers and toss it whole into our precious spiritual and intellectual bloodstreams.

During the Renaissance, Montaigne labeled the packages for consumption and today Joseph Epstein does the same for us.

The other day, Joseph Epstein wrote about the celebrated lesbian, essayist, Ho Chi Minh apologist, feminist and exhibitionist Susan Sontag.

Susan Sontag, like Steve Sondheim, are names that register with all of us, but most of us really do not know why. At a cocktail party, someone usually bullies us into a corner by dropping the Sontag bomb - "Of course, you know, Susan Sontag said, wrote, filmed and dismissed your very position on the existence of concrete. Just because you stand on a sidewalk, does prove anything; the will to accept the outre point of view is what frees you from being a racist and a sexist. Don't you think?"

Uh, huh. Hey, is there anymore of those toast points with fois gras? I gotta try some more of those, excuse me.

Joseph Epstein can not always be physically available to bail us cranial lard-asses out, but we can fend off those empty calories heaped on our plates. Try this serving of Joe Epstein:

Rounding her political career off nicely, when the Twin Towers were destroyed and nearly 3,000 people murdered, Sontag, in the New Yorker, wrote that the attack was "on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions"—and so America, in other words, had it coming. "Some ideas are so stupid," Orwell said, "that only an intellectual could believe them," and Susan Sontag seems, at one time or another, to have believed them all.

Sontag was an aesthete and held that "the wisdom that becomes available over a deep, lifelong engagement with the aesthetic cannot, I venture to say, be duplicated by any other kind of seriousness." Some might argue, though, that she gave aestheticism a bad name and that hers fed nicely into her political foolishness. Apropos of Sontag, Hilton Kramer remarked: "Aestheticism is not, after all, primarily a philosophy of art. It is a philosophy of life." This woman who eschewed morality and judgment in art never had the least doubt about her own moral superiority and the righteousness of her views.

In literature Ms. Sontag's taste in ideas ran to the dark, the oblique and the violent. As Camille Paglia put it, she "made fetishes of depressive European writers." One is reminded here of the Romanian writer E.M. Cioran, who, when young, felt a special partiality to writers who had committed suicide. Antonin Artaud, Roland Barthes, Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Elias Canetti and Cioran himself were among the writers about whom Sontag wrote most enthusiastically.

Enthusiastically but not convincingly. Walter Benjamin, one of her enthusiasms, must surely be among the 20th century's most overrated writers. Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Karl Kraus—Benjamin could render the juiciest of subjects arid. In her essay on Elias Canetti, Sontag notes his admiration for the novelist Hermann Broch and "those great patient novels 'The Death of Virgil' and 'The Sleepwalkers.' " Anyone who has read Broch's books will know that the burden of patience chiefly falls on the reader, for Broch's heavily longueur-laden novels are proof yet again of Santayana's discovery that the Germans are utterly devoid of the emotion of boredom.

Mighty Tasty and good for you!

Cleanse your palate and burn off some lard, Kids! Click my post title for Jospeh Epstein's brilliant dismissal of the Big Mac 'N Cheese that was Susan Sontag, God rest her.

Northwestern Professor Protess , Our Tweedy Fagin of Medill

Fagin: Clever dogs, clever dogs. Never blowed on old Fagin.

David Protess:

Maybe the Chicago Innocence Project will be going great and I won't want to go back (to Northwestern) because of the hassle ... Maybe it won't succeed and I will want to go back. Or maybe I'll want to go somewhere else, go to some other university. All of my options are on the table.

Chicago Tribune Editorial April 9, 2011:

If Protess misled administrators and attorneys in this case—and it appears he did—what does that say about all those cases he has worked on with students? That question will linger at least until prosecutors and McKinney's lawyers resolve what happened in his case.

That day can't come soon enough.

Had Anita Alvarez caved to the limitless media enabling of Professor David Protess, the Fagin of Medill, all would be just dandy and it ain't. I have long suspected that David Protess was a later-day "kidsman." A Kidsman was a 19th Century recruiter of children for training and guiding pickpockets and cut-throats. The vicious Bill Sykes was one of Fagin's students. The Artful Dodger, who befriends the naive orphaned child of privilege Oliver Twist, is on his way to the next level of crime. Fagin beats and threatens his "children" with warnings of dire consequences for "peaching," or "blowing" on Fagin's activities.

The "children" are rewarded for doing Fagin's bidding.

When Anita Alvarez initially petitioned for Fagin Protess's student e-mails, notes and records pertinent to the McKinney case, the academic, journalistic and legal communities marshaled a formidable army of protest and calumnies leveled at Anita Alvarez.

CNN, Huffington Post, Salon, The New York Times, MSNBC, joined the Chicago Tribune editorial board in terming Cook County States Attorney Alvarez a Gestapo bully. A former Federal Judge, of dubious record and achievement, wrote frequent attacks on Alvarez and defences of Fagin Protess. Click my post title and view a few.

Most telling were the star Protess pupils, now rewarded with CNN, AP, and other blue-chip journalistic postings. The kids did alright by Medill, The Innocence Project and old Fagin himself -Professor Dave Protess.

The Innocence Project and Northwestern University have been besmeared by the very advocacy they demand - outcomes be damned. That is as old as John Dewey, the bespectacled avuncular father of generations of Progressive Fagins.

Fagin was the leader of gangs of children, in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, patterned on the historical 19th Century criminal Ickey Solomon of London.

What does American philosopher and granddad of American public education have to do with David Protess's Procrustean pedagogy? Plenty.

John Dewey holds that Inquiry is Truth - play, if you will, the root of the Laboratory Method in education that established the Lab School of University of Chicago - play long enough and arrive at the original point of inquiry.

The start of an inquiry is an indeterminate situation, usually coming from some practical matter ( convicted felon we want out of jail to raise a the larger issue of systemic failure of American Justice). The first step is to getting a clearer and more specific picture of the problem; the indeterminate situation becomes a “problematic situation”. The inquiry then proceeds by coming up with possible solutions to the problem That is, hypothesis that might help to act upon in the problematic situation. Evaluation then takes place; possible consequences of different solutions are considered, and by doing this the relative value of the solutions are estimated. The final test is when a solution actually is tried as a guide to action. The question of truth and falsehood come into play at this last stage of inquiry, and it is dependent on whether the consequences of acting upon the hypothesis under test are such that they resolve the problem and settle the indeterminate situation. Here, it is important to keep in mind the fundamental that role that Dewey ascribes to the indeterminate situation. It is our conceptions of this situation that guide the rest of the inquiry, and that determines how to evaluate and praise ideas and hypotheses. The indeterminate situation is the beginning of an inquiry, but also controls it throughout [p.207]. Coming back to the correspondence relation, it could be said to hold between the between the first and last stage of inquiry.

The opposite of John Dewey was the mathematician and philosophical historian Bertrand Russell whose rigorous methodologies eschewed "play" for study. Russell takes apart Dewey's playful assertions that begin and end in the very same place. Dewey, and his child Fagin Professor Protess "look" into the assertion that the American Justice System is flawed, because it is sytemnically and intrinsically racist, brutal, dishonest, lazy and corrupt - "What do you think, kids?"

Here is Bertarnd Russell's deconstruction of Dewey in summary by Swedish student of philosophy Björn Östbring:

His (Russell) version of the ( Dewey) correspondence theory is the classical one: the relation is between statements, propositions or beliefs to an independent reality, to empirical facts. A statement is true if what is referred to also posses the properties that the statement asserts. Dewey’s theory is obviously radically different from this, and in Russell’s view it does not even deserve to be called a correspondence theory. Russell’s description of Dewey’s whole theory of inquiry and truth is as follows (2): individuals engage in inquiry with the purpose of better interacting with their environment. In an inquiry, “assertions” are tools, and these assertions can be “warranted” to different degrees. The degree to which an assertion is warranted is determined by their ability to produce the desired results. During inquiry assertions can come to be replaced by better assertions, and sometimes they are the very means that lead to better assertions. The term “better” simply means that it produces more of the desirable results, lets us cope better with our environment, and hence “better” could basically be substituted with “more warranted”. An inquiry does not end; no assertion is the best for all times. The important point in this summary is that an assertion is warranted if it produces the desired results, and that the idea of truth thus loses its static and privileged nature.

Dewey and Protess begin inquiry with the conclusion and all the rest in between is just "play." What student would not rather play than work? Bertrand Russell's logical positivism is damned hard work.

Deweyesque inquiry is tailor made for a Fagin and advocacy journalism and education provides the charming "Master" with high moral ground and an embracing protective laissez faire attitude

Unlike the probity of Russell, the Dewey trained journalists, scholars, and academics will apply no further "inquiry" to other Fagins. Protess, now in disgrace with Fortune and Men's eyes will be an anomaly. A freak.

While the Medill engine will trot out more Heater cases and our Justice System will be further deconstructed in the advocacy playland that is John Dewey's Progressive America, David Protess will disappear into the shadows. Nothing to see here, folks! Inquiry? We don't need no stinkin' Inquiry! Right, Judge Stinky Sarokin?

Police, prosecutors, judges and juries will be villainized and criminals will always have much more benefits than doubts and greater Fagins than David Protess will threaten and reward more students - so long as they don't "peach," or "blow" to the cops.

Americans are fair-minded, but not really all that stupid. No one wants an innocent man punished, but no one wants any and all faith in our justice system destroyed by Fagins and an equally culpable media. We can thank States Attornney Alvarez for sticking to her guns during this entire shabby inquiry.

*

Fagin is described as "disgusting" to look at. He is the leader of a group of children, the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates among them, whom he teaches to make their livings by pickpocketing and other criminal activities in exchange for a roof over their heads. At the time of the novel, he is said by another character, Monks, to have already made criminals out of "scores" of children who grow up to live—or die—committing the same crimes as adults. Bill Sikes, one of the major villains of the novel, is hinted to be one of Fagin's old pupils, and Nancy, Sikes' girlfriend and sex worker clearly was.
Whilst portrayed as relatively humorous, he is nonetheless a self-confessed miser who, despite the amount he has acquired over the years from the work of others, does very little to improve the squalid lives of the children he takes in, allowing them to smoke pipes and drink gin "with the air of middle-aged men". In the second chapter of his appearance, it is shown, albeit when talking to himself, that he cares less about those children who are eventually hanged for their crimes and more about the fact that they do not "peach" on him and the other children

http://bjornostbring.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/dewey-vs-russell-on-truth/

American Hero Tim McCarthy Would Be A Great Chicago Police Leader

The Chicago Tribune thinks that Jody Weis was 'right man at the right time' for Chicago Police Department.

Like its choice of Dewey over Truman, the editorial board at the Trib couldn't find a boxcar at 59th & Kostner, or a trucking outfit between Ashland and Halsted.

I live among many police officer ( CPD, County and Federal) and universally they thought the Weis Years were unqualified disasters.

Interim Superintendent Terry Hillard,CPD (ret.) is as universally admired as Jogy Weis is scorned.

Mayor Emanuel would do well to appoint an unclouted hero - Orland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy would be ideal.

He comes from a Chicago police family and respects the culture. Tim McCarthy runs to the gunfire and has the wounds to attest that fact.




McCarthy is credited with saving the life of President Ronald Reagan. McCarthy has executive experience and political finesse.

If Rahm Emanuel is anywhere near as smart as the media attest him to be, he will appoint an American hero as his Superintendent of Chicago Police.

Mount Carmel Names Rev. Tony Mazurkiewicz, OCarm. President - A Brilliant Choice!

Mount Carmel of Chicago, one of the greatest schools in America, named Father Tony Mazurkiewicz to be its President.

This remarkable young priest is a brilliant homilist and helps out at St. Cajetan Parish from time to time. Father Tony is a Carmel Man himself and is a graduate of Yale.

As only the weakest voice in the Leo High School extended family, I am confident that Leo Men roundly applaud the Mount Carmel's choice of leader!

The Caravan will be in high gear with Father Tony's hand at the wheel!

A Southlander who started on two Mount Carmel state champion football teams, graduated from Yale University and later became a Carmelite is set to lead the school.

On June 15, the Rev. Tony Mazurkiewicz will take over as the president of Mount Carmel High School, 6410 S. Dante Ave., Chicago.

Mazurkiewicz, a Glenwood native, will succeed fellow Carmelite the Rev. Carl J. Markelz on June 15. In his new job, he will be responsible for overseeing marketing, fundraising and finances at the school

“The Carmelites have been serving Mount Carmel High School school for 111 years,” Mazurkiewicz said. “It’s good to be a part of that tradition of educating men for a lifetime.”

Markelz served as the school’s president and principal from 1996 to last year when John Stimler took over as principal.

Mazurkiewicz teaches junior moral theology and works in the school’s enrollment and admissions office.

At Mount Carmel, Mazurkiewicz was a starting defensive back for the 1989 and 1990 state championship football teams. School officials said he recorded 115 tackles and eight interceptions during his varsity career.

He graduated from Mount Carmel in 1991 and was third in his class. He played football at Yale, where he was later named captain of the Bulldogs.

Mazurkiewicz graduated from Yale in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He returned to Mount Carmel in 1997 before leaving for Boston, Mass. He worked there for three years in schools set up by Edison Project, a for-profit education firm run by a former Yale president.

In 2000, he once again returned to Mount Carmel and then left to join the Carmelite order. In 2009, he earned his master’s of divinity degree from Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C. and was also ordained in that year.

He served the associate pastor at Saint Raphael Parish in Los Angeles before coming back to Mount Carmel at the beginning of this year to work at the school and continue his studies.

“I discerned for awhile and said ‘there’s some great stuff going on at Mount Carmel and this would be a good ministry I could serve in,’” Mazurkiewicz said. “I put my name in and that’s what happened.”

Edward J. "Spike" O'Donnell Talks Crime and Politicians Go All PC - October 1933

Jack, that Cat was Clean!

Edward J. "Spike" O'Donnell* was the only gangster from the Capone era to retire from the rackets, make money as a coal/oil executive, pioneer the Chicago paving of streets, maintain his political clout and die of natural causes.

Spike O'Donnell was an elder statesman of the sidewalks on 79th Street at Loomis, where he held court with White Sox great Buck Weaver and other worthies.

He never used 'salty' language, was courtly to women, kind to children and maintained life-long frendships with actors Spencer Tracy, Frank McHugh, George Raft and Jimmy Cagney. Spencer Tracy attended his funeral mass at Little Flower Church in 1962.

* from Mario Gomes great site -click my post title for more on Chicago's Gangsters

James Edward O'Donnell, known as "Spike" was the eldest son of Patrick J. O'Donnell and Ann Mahoney. He was born on Novemeber 29,1889, and died on August 26,1962, from a massive coronary thrombosis. He had eight brothers and two sisters as follows;

Ellen 11-7-1891. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
John Joseph 7-1-1894. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
Thomas Francis 1-24-1896. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
Stephen 8-5-1898. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
Walter Anthony 3-21-1900. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
Patrick Henry aka Percy 10-2-1902. Baptized at St Rose of Lima
Charles Basil aka Chauncey 7-6-1904. Baptized at St Basil
Raymond P 3-10-1906. Baptized at St Basil
Annabelle Joy 7-22-1909. Baptized at St Basil
Philip Leo 12-28-1911. Baptized at St Basil - The only brother without an arrest record. Spike forbade his youngest brother from hanging around gangs.

Manifesto of Conscious for the UnEvolved - Us . You and me. Them Guys over by there, too,

I was beset with appeals. Following my mid morning post of Conscious Men lisping their Manifesto and feminist mea culpa.

'Hickey! WTF? Translate, you string words.'

Here is the Manifesto and I will translate it in a pithy succinct vernacular familiar to us aboriginally unevolved, albeit good hearted gents.

Avec traduction anglaise! The Manifesto of Conscious Men - by two metrosexuals.

Dear Woman:

• As a man, I feel sorrow that women and feminine energy have been suppressed for so many thousands of years on our planet. Everywhere we look, women have been disenfranchised. Throughout history, we have raped and abused you, burned you at the stake, bought and sold your bodies for sexual pleasure, barred you from religious and political office, relegated you to subservient chores, forced you to hide your faces and even cut off your organs of sexual pleasure.

Although I may not have done these things personally, I am aware of the forces in the masculine psyche that are responsible for dishonoring the feminine. I take responsibility for those forces and choose no longer to be run by them. I do this on behalf of all men, in order to usher in a new era of co-creation.


I commit to treat your heart as the sacred temple it is, and I commit tocelebrating the feminine in my intimate relationships as well as in myrelationship to all life.


• As a man, I acknowledge that the religions of the past several thousand years have been mainly founded by and propagated by men. As men, we have often acted as if we have the last word on God and the spiritual life, when all we have really known is the masculine expression of those things. I honor your pathways of spiritual awakening. I commit to the celebration of feminine spirituality.


• As a man, I honor your deep connection to the earth. As men, our relationship to our planet, its resources, its weather, its oceans and its forests has for too long been motivated by acquisition and dominion. I commit to listening to the intuitive sense you have of how to heal our planet and make it thrive.


• As a man, I honor your intuition and your ability to feel. As men, we have often devalued feeling and intuition in favor of a view dominated by data and logic. I commit to respecting the arts of feeling, intuition and wisdom of the feminine heart, so that together we can integrate them into a balanced view of life.

•As a man, I love the beauty of your body. I feel sorrow that we men have used your beauty as a form of commerce: in prostitution, pornography and the sale of products through advertising. I take a stand against any form of commercialization of woman’s beauty, and I respect that your body belongs to you.


•I honor your capacity for peaceful resolution of conflicts. We men have waged endless wars over our disagreements; by contrast, it is rare to find an invasion or war instigated by a woman. We welcome your wisdom in creatinga world that can get along.


•I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime. As men, our preoccupation with goals and results has often driven us into a burn-out mentality. I know we have often drawn you into that as well. I welcome your reminders to maintain balance in our bodies.



•I honor your sense of compassionate justice. In our justice system,, men have dominated as judges and police, built prisons, and set punishment as a higher value than restitution. I welcome you to bring the return of the heartto our system of justice.



•I honor your capacity to enjoy and pay attention to what is here, right now. As men, we often get overly-focused on reaching the next milestone. We place so much emphasis on progress — what is new and better and faster — that we often forget to enjoy what we already have. I know that together we can co-create in bringing forth the wisdom of sufficiency.


I know that in joining hands, and leaving the past behind we can create asynergy of our strengths. I know, and I know that you know, that then there is nothing then we cannot do together.


NOTE from LoveCoach: This ties in with the Quest I am passionate about at the moment. Join these guys if you feel inspired!

Okee Dokey! Let's take a randon pargraph - Pluck! Here 'Tis.

I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime. As men, our preoccupation with goals and results has often driven us into a burn-out mentality. I know we have often drawn you into that as well. I welcome your reminders to maintain balance in our bodies.

That would be an estrogen packed-play on the time-honored and hoary 4F's - Find 'em, Feed 'em, F#$% 'em, Forget 'em.

Let's try another -

• As a man, I honor your intuition and your ability to feel. As men, we have often devalued feeling and intuition in favor of a view dominated by data and logic. I commit to respecting the arts of feeling, intuition and wisdom of the feminine heart, so that together we can integrate them into a balanced view of life.

This senstive mewing might be construed as our nocturnal interogation -'Hey! You 'Wake?' Okay. I think we got it rolling, gents - One more . . .a toughie -

•I honor your capacity to enjoy and pay attention to what is here, right now. As men, we often get overly-focused on reaching the next milestone. We place so much emphasis on progress — what is new and better and faster — that we often forget to enjoy what we already have. I know that together we can co-create in bringing forth the wisdom of sufficiency

Once you stop laughing . . .I mean it. There okay this one would translate to:

'Quit your grinnin' and drop that linen! Come on, baby! Who's up for a punch in the trunks?'

I think that we can live with the Manifesto.

For All of My Hound Neighbors, Friends, Colleagues - "Dear Woman!"

I was whacking down a bowl of Leo HS cafeteria chili, liberal portions at conservative prices, I was treated to this video mea culpa to Women!



The next time I see a great set of knockers with gams up to there and a firm back porch that won't quit, I will think of the pilgrim soul within.

Really. Where did they find these worthies?

Now, a trip home to change my shorts.

A Hearty Hat Tip t Miss Caroline May of The Daily Caller

Planned Parenthood's President Obama Will Veto Budget Bill

No, Mr. President, they're not there. As you have just proven to one and all.

President Obama will shut down the government, because he has pledged himself to Planned Parenthood and the American Dowager Class.

President Obama is threatening to veto a temporary Republican budget measure that would ensure the troops are paid through September and and keep the government running for another week, but would not resolve the bitter standoff between Democrats and Republicans.

Obama 2012 Slogan - " You Might Want To Think About a Trade-in!"

When asked about the sorry state at the pump, President Obama remembered the pump.

Then things went south -

“Gas prices? They’re going to still fluctuate until we can start making these broader changes, and that’s going to take a couple of years to have serious effect,” Obama said.

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

Bet that guy love that response. Well, context is everything - ain't it?

Cambridge, MA Cops Act Stupidly = A Teaching Moment



Here's some more from the the man that Politico's Roger Simon called 'The Greatest Orator of Modern Times" -


1. I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go.
Barack Obama
At US presidential campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon.

2. Why can't I just eat my waffle?
Barack Obama
Asked a foreign policy question by reporter while visiting a diner in Pennsylvania during 2008 US presidential campaign .

3. It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Barack Obama
Explaining his troubles winning over some working-class voters during 2008 US presidential campaign.

My own personal Fave!!!!!!! Coming Up!

4. Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.
Barack Obama
Amman, Jordan, July 22, 2008.

Aldermanic Scorecard - Joe Moore Hold's The Template : Gobble The Fois Gras

In Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's political war room, there's an aldermanic scorecard to determine who's with him, who isn't and who falls between. . . ." and YADDA YADDA YADDA YADDA - Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, one of the council's leading independents, lauded Emanuel for seeking out the views of individual aldermen.

"The mayor and City Council leaders will have to spend a lot more time cajoling and convincing the aldermen to join them on policy initiatives," he said. "And I think the new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, understands that."

from the fine Kristen Mack and Hal Dardick, Tribune report this AM.

I redacted it - a summation if you will and what the Rahm Emanuel Term of Office portends. Policy, Kids! No Politics! Policy 24/7! Meet Your City Council Floor Leader - Joe "Goose Guts" Moore! Policy is the Emanuel Template.

Policy is what really lazy and dumb people turn to when they find themselves elected to public service. Policy means Tasks Forces, Blue Ribbon Study Groups, Tax Paid Consultants, Hearings, Andy Shaw. All the stuff that dweebs are made of! Chicago's Shoulders will go from a hirsute and manly 48" to the smart, shaved and metro-sexually ambiguous 28" in the next four years.

Policy works for 'Ain't She Great?' dimbulbs like Congressman Jan Schakowsky. Policy is Politics for Dummies and it is very effective - in getting revenue streams to disappear, taxes to soar, crime to spike, property values to plummet, public education to vanish, and the population to shift to greener pastures.

All one needs is The Joe Moore Template. Progressive Policy - more money for public education via raised taxes; a gelded police force; more free T-Shirts; reform that targets individual City workers only; Green Scams; Diversity Proclamations; Gay Marriage Fast:

Here's some of Joe Moore's Template:

•INCREASING THE POWERS AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL'S OFFICE
•CREATION OF AN OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS
•CTA SERVICE BREAKDOWNS
•BIG BOX LIVING WAGE
•SOURCE-SEPARATED RECYCLING (Replace the Blue Bag Program)
•UNIVERSAL SCHOOL BREAKFAST PROGRAM

Okay let's bread and butter the Old Policy Template - Progressive's Policy to Get the CTA Buses too Run - VIOLA!

This resolution was introduced by Alderman Joe Moore (49) and Alderman Ricardo Munoz (22) and calls for CTA President Frank Kruesi, CTA Board Chairman Carole Brown, and other appropriate CTA management officials to appear before the Chicago City Council to address the increasing number of derailments, mechanical breakdowns and service interruptions

CTA Service Breakdowns will vanish because Joe and Ricky Munoz will whereas the CTA appointees for a nano second spot on NBC, ABC, and CBS.

Here's how it looks kids. Mayor Rahm will have Joe Moore, Mike Quigley, and other sad-sack opportunists kick much stuff out of the City Council Sandbox and tell the media that it is Fois Gras. They will gobble it up, until after the ONE BILLION Dollar Re-Election Campaign ends.

Fois Gras - the real kind - will be revisited; we will agree that Jon Burge is a really, really, really bad guy, increased taxes are the only way to improve public education, Planned Parenthood helps eliminate Food Deserts, One Man's Gangster Disciple is amnother Man's Urban Translator, Unions are SEIU, Ceasefire does more to make people happy than the Chicago Police Department, fires are caused by Systemic Racism, Crime Ends when G. Flint Taylor and Jon Loevy take the very last nickel out of Chicago, the CTA buses do not run because George W. Bush went into Iraq, and if you have anything to say about anything, please Twitter.

President Obama's Tweet To Me - We Me's Our Us's

For years, I would send my widower's mite in support of the Democratic National Conference. I was weened in Democratic Party principles and history at home and in the 18th Ward. We were the Party of the Working Man, of Al Smith, FDR, Harry Truman,JFK and LBJ.

As a baby teacher in Kankakee, I was asked to run for City Clerk by Milton "Mimi" Shapiro, brother of Governor Sam Shapiro. We lost to the Kankakee GOP of my father-in-law and Ed McBroom. It was fun and educational. The GOP in Kankakee had wonderful people running for office including my City Clerk opponent Gene Glenzinski, the father of one of my Bishop Mac wrestlers. We got along famously. I stayed loyal to emerging Saturday Night Live Democratic Party which used ridicule of President Ford as its intellectual and moral fulcrum in lifting a Democrat up to the White House -Jimmy Carter. Subsequently, I voted for Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, President Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry. The Saturday Night Live Democratic Party had gotten humorless and top-heavy with strident Leftists.

When John Kerry wind-surfed into Boston Harbor to the palms and hosannas of America's Dowager Class bedecked in pink 'I Had and Abortion' T-Shirts. That was it. I sent in one last contribution and was treated to Howard Dean and Attic Ascendancy of the executive director of the Woods Fund, which turned down Leo High School's request for $ 5,000 to support the African American kids attending the school under the signature of Barack Obama, in 1996. '97. '98 . . .& etc./ Barack Obama became an Illinois State Senator. I thought that he might try being governor of Illinois, but he had audacious dreams.

I supported John McCain. John McCain, it seemed to me, laid down in September 2008 when the American economy tanked.

President Obama won.

On Monday, I received this note.

Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 11:43:51 -0400 [04/04/2011 10:43:51 AM CDT]
From: Barack Obama
To: Patrick hickey
Reply-To: democraticparty@democrats.org
Subject: 2012
Patrick --

Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign.

We're doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you -- with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. And that kind of campaign takes time to build.

So even though I'm focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today.

We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made -- and make more -- we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest.

As we take this step, I'd like to share a video that features some folks like you who are helping to lead the way on this journey. Please take a moment to watch:

http://my.barackobama.com/2012d

In the coming days, supporters like you will begin forging a new organization that we'll build together in cities and towns across the country. And I'll need you to help shape our plan as we create a campaign that's farther reaching, more focused, and more innovative than anything we've built before.

We'll start by doing something unprecedented: coordinating millions of one-on-one conversations between supporters across every single state, reconnecting old friends, inspiring new ones to join the cause, and readying ourselves for next year's fight.

This will be my final campaign, at least as a candidate. But the cause of making a lasting difference for our families, our communities, and our country has never been about one person. And it will succeed only if we work together.

There will be much more to come as the race unfolds. Today, simply let us know you're in to help us begin, and then spread the word:

http://my.barackobama.com/2012d

Thank you,

Barack


Please donate: https://donate.barackobama.com/launch-donate3

Thank you, Mr. President, but we are not interested again. We still do not care for abortion, government health, government auto industry, government radio/TV, the Muslim apology tour, and teaching moments.

All the Best, Sir! But no dough and no vote.

April 5, 2011 - Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty - Actor, Musician, Essayist and American

Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty! This Chicago-rooted American actor, jazz musician, essayist and patriot is a thoughtful critic of American folly and powerful voice for the unborn. I am very proud to correspond with this wonderful man of principle, wit and courage. I first witnessed this man's talents at the Chicago Theatre in 1973, when he starred along with Robert De Niro in the poetic baseball film Bang the Drum Slowly. Mr. Moriarty portrayed a self-interested pitcher who restored his soul by caring for a dying catcher whose career had been notable only for his being the butt of jokes, pranks and ridicule for his team mates. At the end of the film Moriarty narrates a closing sentiment that is one of most heart-wrenching epiphanies in film - " From here on in, I rag nobody."

Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941 in Detroit, Michigan) is an Emmy winning American actor. Tall and lanky, this 6'4" actor is known most for his role as Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Stone on the long running TV series Law & Order. He attended the University of Detroit Roman Catholic High School, and then matriculated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire in 1963, where he was a theatre major.

After he received his degree, he left for London, where he enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship.

In 1973, Moriarty was cast to play the egocentric Henry Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly, a film about friendship between two unlikely baseball teammates (the second being Robert De Niro, a slow thinking catcher who becomes terminally ill). Moriarty had a strong baseball background on which to draw for the role, as his grandfather George Moriarty had been a third baseman, umpire and manager in the major leagues for nearly 40 years.

In 1973, Moriarty starred in a TV movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with Katharine Hepburn. Coincidentally, the film also featured Sam Waterston (who replaced Moriarty as the Executive Assistant District Attorney on Law & Order in 1994.) Moriarty's role in Menagerie won him an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actor of the Year (see ).

Moriarty's career on the screen was slow to develop, while his theater career was flourishing. He starred as a Nazi bureaucrat who degenerates into a coldblooded murderer in the miniseries Holocaust (which earned him another Emmy). Through the 1980s, Moriarty starred in such Larry Cohen movies as Q, The Stuff, It's Alive 3, and A Return to Salem's Lot, as well as Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider and Hanoi Hilton.

From 1990 to 1994, he starred as Ben Stone on Law & Order. He ended up leaving the show in 1994, alleging that his departure was a result of his threatening a lawsuit against then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who had cited Law & Order as offensively violent. He moved to Canada, declaring himself a political exile, and lived for a time in Halifax and Toronto before settling in Vancouver. Recent projects he has acted in include Courage Under Fire, Along Came a Spider, Shiloh, Emily of New Moon and James Dean, for which he won his third Emmy.

Moriarty today lives in British Columbia, where he still acts and has become politically active, describing himself as a "centrist", which will prove questionable (see http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1105/1105eugenics.htm]]) to the reader of Enter Stage Right or MMUUUHP (Michael Moriarty Unofficial, Unauthorized, Unsanctioned Home Page).

Moriarty has recently announced his intention to run for President of the United States in 2008. He also has been a frequent contributor of numerous political columns to the ESR (Enter Stage Right) on-line Journal of Conservativism.

He has a website, the allegedly unauthorized MMUUUHP, and his recent blogs there and on ESR contain scathing denunciations of Bill Clinton, Thanaticism, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, anti-Catholicism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George W. Bush, both major U.S. political parties, Halliburton, the College of Cardinals, and most of Catholic theology, although he states that he had a Jesuit Catholic upbringing.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Michael Moriarty ]

Michael Moriarty is also a fine jazz pianist and a cat of quality:

He sees, why Nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity.
God loves from whole to parts: but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race

Alexander Pope Essay on Man

Henry Wiggins - "From here on in, I rag nobody."

Libyan Lysistrata - Barry's Girls' War

Lysistrata.: There are a lot of things about us women
That sadden me, considering how men
See us as rascals.

Calonice.: As indeed we are

Aristophanes - Lysistrata

In order to conclude the endless warfare between Athens and Sparta the gals get together and conspire to withhold the nookie from the gents. World Peace!

That was how Aristophanes, the only Attic dramatic comedian to survive in literature, spun the story.

In our confused orientation ( sexual and geopolitical) world, What's a body to do?

What happens in Libya will not stay in Libya. This is cluster . . . coalition copulation of cosmic proportions.

If I recall my history, Italy owned Libya. In WWII the Brits and Rommel and the Italian Afterthought Armies tore up the deserts between Tripoli, Tobruk and Benghazi.
That was a man's war what am a man's war.

For most of my life Gaddafi's owned Libya. Jimmy Carter's brother Billy carried water for Libya as did the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya and Tom Cruise got a hit movie out of Libya.

Now, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice are following the Samantha Power playbook. Libya is a girl's war. We are bombing, but not bombing - sans boots. We are People Saving and not Nation Building. When the emery board gets dropped, its over!

Here is Irish Independent's Kevin Myers on this Libyan cat fight:

Libya is now the focus for the raw emotional self-gratification that typifies the woolly "logic" of R2P. So where does R2P stop? Does it rescue the whites and Ndebele of Zimbabwe? Does it intervene in east Africa's endless and incomprehensible wars? What about the Congo? And might not the European left-liberal anti-Israeli Alli-ance use the most emotional trump card of all, and call for American armed intervention in support of Hamas against Israel in Gaza? That Libya and the Palestinian territories are not remotely comparable is irrelevant when an R2P moral mania is allowed to corrupt all military and political decision-making.

War should not be about the unpredictable and imprecise moral yearnings of politicians and their advisers, but about measurably advancing the cause of national self-interest

The United States has no business, historical, political, moral, or economic anywhere in continental Africa.

It will be a Man Sized undertaking and there are bugger few men stepping up in American political leadership.

Hollywood's Jail-bait Pimp to the Stars and Royalty Revisited

Chicago has some shady history, but it is as pure and sweet as honey-dew vine-water compared to Hollywood, Washington,D.C. and Buckingham Palace - stop-overs in the Big Apple, of course. Chicago has always had its cap set for out-of-town rogues, blackguards and swindlers: Edward Prince of Wales, Charles Tyson Yerkes, and Brooklyn Al Capone.

Last night, Chicago Rubes hailed Charlie Sheen's trodding of the boards at the venerable Chicago Theatre. Charlie Sheen is a sad creature bringing his Torpedo of Truth to the youthful Mensa members with Mom and Dad's ready cash. Not a shocker that. Folks stood in line to purchase tickets to see Tiny Tim, Bill Maher, Glen Beck, Andy Dice Clay and Blue Man Group ( I could never get my tiny brain around that one!).

However, Alexandra Wolfe's Daily Beast article on plutocrat-pimp Jeffrey Epstein and his gushing posse of pals that includes, of course, Bill Clinton, Katie Couric, Woody Allen, George "First Rat Off" Stephanopoulos and Prince Andrew is a head scratcher.

I admire people who stick by their friends - Harry Truman and Tom Predergast, Jim Carville and Bill Clinton e.g. and generally speaking I am sicked by rank opportunists who abandon people who have made them what they are e.g. Jane Addams and Ald. John Powers et al and Judy Barr Topinka and George Ryan.

There is always a Rubicon for our individual ethical and moral feet when it comes to friendship and loyalty - do we get our toes wet or keep our panties dry?

Cardinal Law hide pedophile priests - not out of any sense of personal loyalty for a stumbled runner, it seems to me, but to hike his ecclesiastical skirts and avoid further inquiry.

Retired Bishop Imesch of Joliet was hounded by the media and greedy lawyers for not divulging information taken in sworn depositions years before, in order to make more money for Jeff Anderson and Associates.

Huge difference.

Now, a pedophile like Jeffrey Epstein gets a celebrity pass. I would not be seen in the same Zipcode with a louse like the above handsome and toned gent my contemporary, let alone attend a gala bash in support of his pimping out under-aged girls to celebrities and English nobility.

Here is another spin on the Epstein/Prince Andrew BFFEs:

While "Randy Andy's" antics with wannabe "It Girls" have long been the stuff of prurient tabloid fodder, it is his cretinously ill-advised choice of associates that is causing the present rumpus. The duke has been a frequent guest at the Florida residence of Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire who served a 18-month jail term after pleading guilty to soliciting a prostitute. More recently Virginia Roberts, a masseuse, alleged sexual encounters with Epstein and his friends (but not the prince) when she was 17-years-old. The British Mail on Sunday reports the FBI is re-opening the Epstein case. Though no allegations of direct impropriety have been made against him, the duke did receive a massage at Epstein's home 10 years ago, and was photographed with him as recently as December 2010. His impecunious ex-wife, Sarah Duchess of York, who was recently caught out in a cash-for-meetings scandal when she claimed she could broker encounters with her former husband for a fee, accepted £15,000 from Epstein to pay off debts, apparently at the duke's instigation.

Prince Andrew, nicknamed Air Miles Andy because of his lavish use of publicly funded travel, is providing a blessed distraction from the prospect of quite so many worthies being caught with their hands in Libya PLC's till, but surprisingly no one seems the least bit grateful. Both Prime Minster David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have expressed their continued confidence in the duke, yet elsewhere in the Tory ranks the tumbrils are rumbling about whether he should resign his post as U.K. Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

I like the tone of this writer's prose. Prince Andrew was married to the equally loathsome lard ass Sarah Duchess of York, or Fergie the Shakedown Artiste.
Yes, 'confidence in the duke!' Kids meet the Prince, Prince meet the kids!

I believe that Long-John Wentworth, a pal to honest rogues and roues, would have kicked Epstein and Andrew's collective asses up and down De Koven Street.

Hollywood Hails Jail-bait Pimp - "Well, Too Bad About You!"

A healthy self-doubt or conscience if you will, evolves from being told that somethings that we have, done, said, or intended to do, or say happen to be unacceptable - universally and dogmatically unacceptable. Some of the very first words that had an impact on me came from my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and neighbors and they were all first and second generation Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago. The words were 'Well, too bad about you.'

'Well, too bad about you' had a marvelously thick inflection honeyed with obvious irony. Those very intention deflecting words usually followed my plea for more candy, cookies, or Dixie cups; the stated desire to repaint my Grandfather's garage floor with benzine; or, my circa 1958 swaggering into Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland to see what uncles Bart, Donnie, Sy, and my Dad, if he were off-shift from the State and on his way to the Beverly Theatre, were drinking for lunch.

"What in the hell are you doing in here, Padgin (Pat-sheen in Chicagoese)?"

Well, Uncle Bart, I thought I'd grab a root-beer and play with the German cowboys( a Budweiser Beer Wagon set behind the bar) , I was in yesterday.

" Well listen here, Bub, your Dad brings you in or it's nix, get me? How old are you, again?"

Six.

" And who brought you in?"

Dad

"That's right. You want to get Lou shut down by Capt. Hennessy?"

Shut down how?

" Shut down fast. You walk all the way here on your own from Granpa's?"

Well,Lou's right next to Jack's car store.

" Well, this is your last trip in. Uncle Donnie will drive you back. Your Old Man will tan your rump."

I like coming to Lou's , Uncle Bart.


"Well, too bad about you."

I learned that I could not walk into a saloon unescorted at the age of six. I was only a guest, if there was no other possibility for my Dad's refreshment, while I was in his charge. I learned that my place was predetermined by my elders and betters. I had already learned at Little Flower Grammar School that I could not get up out of my seat and have a chat with Larry Fiscelli, Al McFarland, Billy Cullina, or Judy Lawlor. The Sisters of Mercy applied the exact same dictum -'Well, too bad about you.'

I learned that I could not steal, abuse animals ( withing reason -crayfish from the Wood Street viaduct, ants, especially huge black carpenter ants, the odd snake or alley rats could, in fact be mistreated); or lie . . . well, that got worked out with a deft rhetorical apprenticeship and the application of strategic omissions - 'Oh, that pack of smokes!'

Telling small lies, actual fabrications and omitted truths, is the foundation of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is how we evade the inner voice, 'Well, too bad about you.'

Last night, I read a disturbing article about a millionaire celebrity bankroller and pedophile with Hollywood closing ranks in his support. Here is the marrow of one from the Daily Beast:

Despite the pedophile mogul's conviction for soliciting underage prostitution, his circle is standing by their man. Scientists whose research Epstein funded also back the billionaire, writes Alexandra Wolfe.
On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America's media and entertainment elite—including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen—convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn't just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had once flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach. Now he was hosting a party for his close friend, Britain's Prince Andrew, fourth in line to the throne."In the Midwest, where I am from, he would be a social pariah," says Lorna Brett Howard, a political activist and wife of Irving Post Capital CEO and Aeropostale director John Howard. "What I see here is if you have big money or are famous then you get a pass."
“A jail sentence doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty.”
Sure enough, that December night no one mentioned that their handsome host, a gray-haired 58-year-old financier with tanned skin and a joker smile, had just doled out millions of dollars in civil settlements to seven girls who allege that he paid them to perform erotic massages and demeaning sexual acts when they were underage. They are among the 40 victims turned up by an FBI investigation. But at the time, this particular swath of Epstein's elite Rolodex had no idea that the feted royal would soon renounce Epstein as a friend, nor that the royal's ex-wife, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, would hysterically apologize for letting Epstein pay off some of her debts.

Let's see. I was a long-time high school teacher of English. My sexual inclinations are solidly in the hetero-breeder camp. I started teaching at 22 years of age - that is exactly sixteen years after uncles Bart, Sy and Donnie gave me the bum's rush from Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland. I was teaching at Bishop McNamara High School which is a co-educational secondary school. I was, therefore, four or five years older than the oldest of my students. I was wearing a tie and in colder weather a jacket. The tie and jacket were distancing objects - I was not 'Pat, Paddy, Padgin, Hickey, Hick, Dipshit, Numbnuts, or Hey, You'. I was, and remain to my students now in their forties, or very early fifties, Mr. Hickey and they were at that time Mr. Boudreau, Miss Schafsma, Miss Hoekstra, Miss Kell, Miss Purcell, Mr. Whitman,Miss Pelletier Mr. Raines, Miss Regnier, Miss. Nugent, Mr. Coy, and Miss Cardosi and etc.

The girls were students. I treated students with affable distance, but welcoming tutelage. I came to teaching fairly well-armed with a command of my subject, but learning the art of teaching came from observation and good counsel. I had learned from watching and listening to wonderful teaching mentors like Nick Novich, Dave Raiche, Jerry Krieg, Jim Frogge,Rich Zinanni, Fathers Ken Yarno, Jim Fanale, and Bob Erickson, Sisters Theresa Galvan, Helen Kavanaugh, and others that respect for the vocation demanded a constant exercise of respect for my charges -in loco parentis.

High School girls are beautiful, but they are kids and it matters not whether a teacher is male, or female, gay or straight, long-in-the-tooth, or youthfully attractive -mind, words, deeds and hands off! Violate that cardinal rule and be damned to you.

We had several cases of Humbert-Humbert and Lolita and no Nabokovian parsing - cashiered on the spot and shunned by colleagues. Too bad about you - nothing a coronary can't make right, Old Chum!

We, as a people, allow some really obnoxious and dumb people to scratch out our societal moral high ground - the "Who's to Say-ers" The heart wants what the heart wants - TS! Too bad about you.

Our hypocrisy is making a case for understanding people who never fully grasped the commandments of God or the sound ethical dictum shot out of a singe sentence by our elders and betters -'Well, too bad about you.'

God Welcome Home Fighting Irish Legend Jim Seymour

All Americans of the Fighting Irish 1960's - Jim Seymour Three Timer

1966
Larry Conjar, FB
Pete Duranko, DT
Nick Eddy, HB
George Goeddeke, C
Terry Hanratty, QB
Kevin Hardy, DT
Jim Lynch, LB
Alan Page, DE
Tom Regner, G
Tom Schoen, DB
Paul Seiler, T
Jim Seymour, E

1967
Kevin Hardy, DT
Mike McGill, LB*
John Pergine, LB
Tom Schoen, DB
Jim Seymour, E
Jim Smithberger, DB
Dick Swatland, G

1968
Terry Hanratty, QB
George Kunz, T
Jim Seymour, E


James Patrick "Jim" Seymour (November 24, 1946 – March 29, 2011)[1] was an American football wide receiver who played three seasons for the Chicago Bears in the National Football League. He was originally selected by the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the 1969 NFL Draft, 10th pick overall. In 1974 he played for the Chicago Fire of the WFL.
Seymour played high school football at Shrine of the Little Flower High School, Royal Oak, Michigan, and college football at Notre Dame, where he was a two-time First-team All-American (1967, 1968) while also being a Second-team All-America selection in 1966. He was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in the October 28th, 1966 issue [2], along with Terry Hanratty. He was the older brother of former professional football player Paul Seymour.
WNDU - Irish Legend

Jim Seymour, a record-setting wide receiver and football All-American at the University of Notre Dame in the 1960s, died Tuesday night at Highland Park Hospital in HighlandPark, Ill., after a battle with cancer. He was 64.

When he graduated in 1969, Seymour qualified as Notre Dame’s all-time leading career receiver – with 138 catches for 2,113 yards and 16 touchdowns in his three-year varsity career from 1966-68. He was listed on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot for 2011.

He paced the Irish with 53 catches as a senior in ’68 for 736 yards and four TDs. As a sophomore in ’66 on Notre Dame’s national championship team he grabbed 48 throws for 862 yards and eight TDs. As a junior in ’67 he made 37 receptions for 515 yards and four TDs.

As a senior in ’68 he earned first-team All-America honors from United Press International, the American Football Coaches Association, the Walter Camp Foundation and The Sporting News. He received second-team recognition from Associated Press.

As a junior in ’67 UPI named him a first-team All-American. As a sophomore in ’66, Football News named him to its first-team All-America squad – while UPI and Newspaper Enterprise Association made him a second-team selection and AP and The Sporting News named him to their third teams.

Seymour joined with classmate and quarterback Terry Hanratty to form the pass-throwing and –catching battery known fondly as “Mr. Fling and Mr. Cling.” As sophomores they appeared together on the cover of TIME magazine.

A 6-4, 205-pounder originally from Berkley, Mich., Seymour joined Hanratty and their teammates and compiled a combined three-year mark of 24-4-2 from 1966-68. In the final AP poll, the Irish finished first in ’66 at 9-0-1, fifth in ‘’67 at 8-2 and fifth again in ’68 at 7-2-1. He led the Irish in receiving in each of his three seasons.

Seymour today ranks sixth on Notre Dame’s career chart for receptions. He remains the Notre Dame career leader in receptions per game (138 in 26 games for 5.3 per game). He also set the Notre Dame single-game record (that still stands) with 276 receiving yards (on 13 receptions and good forthree TDs) against Purdue in 1966.

Seymour played in the College All-Star Game and Hula Bowl after his senior year and was a 1969 first-round NFL draft pick of the Los Angeles Rams. He spent three seasons in the NFL, all with the Chicago Bears, catching 21 career passes for 385 yards.

Born Nov. 24, 1946, James Patrick Seymour was active with the Notre Dame Monogram Club, serving on its board of directors from 2001-04, and serving as part of the staff for the Notre Dame football fantasy camp.

He is survived by his wife, the former Nancy Garvey (a South Bend native), and their sons Jim Jr. (a ’92 Notre Dame graduate), Jeff and Todd. Seymour had been in the insurance business and lived in Deerfield, Ill.

Visitation is noon-7 p.m., Sunday at Kelley & Spalding Funeral Home, 1787 Deerfield Road in Highland Park. Funeral services are at 11:30 a.m. Monday at Holy Cross Catholic Church, 724 Elder Lane in Deerfield.

* My Condolences and prayers, Mike, on the loss of your friend and team mate.

Yarns From Cleek of Chicago -The Singular Case of Cole Day

Note to Dear Reader - An earlier Post recounted the low blackguarding of Mike Houlihan by the snobs of the Union League Club - on response Mike founded the Cleek of Chicago - the Driver of the City:Mashies, Rakes and Niblicks are for smaller souls. The Cleek of Chicago is Big, Big Club!

New York – Workers at New York's Bronx Zoo found the poisonous Egyptian cobra that escaped from its pen a week ago and has kept area residents alarmed ever since.
The serpent is alive and under observation and will be on view to the public again if the planned checkup finds it in good condition, according to zoo officials cited by the online edition of the New York Daily News.
The search team caught the hooded snake Thursday with some special tongs and hooks inside the Reptile House at the zoo, which the cobra had never left.
Zoo workers brought the Egyptian cobra out of hiding with a scattering of wood shavings that rats and mice use for nesting around the building, according to the CNN online edition, so that it would smell like mealtime to the serpent and lure it into the open.

Among the Doric Columns of Chicago's Newest Club, Renaissance Man Mike Houlihan explains International history and Morality to Journeyman Reader Pat Hickey - no mean task that: ( hushed quietude erupted by outraged incredulity!)

" Found him indeed! Found! Nay, those jackanape public service layabouts would not know a snake from a five iron, Hickey. Mike Bloomberg was at wit's end and asked for my assistance. Off to the Apple, I bustle, my Gladstone packed with Arctic foul weather gear, given the vicissitudes in the winds and currents of this our planet earth and Mother Nature's singular affinity for heaping snows upon the American eastern seaboard, and soundly counselled his ministers on where to find the Egyptian twister. No reptile -Democrat, Republican, or other cold-blooded creature flourishes in the open, mind you. This uncircumcised serpent would be found in the very same Reptilian Domicile from whence only the panic of louts and ninnies Twittering with thumbs akimbo emerged. I informed the Mayor's men that, in fact, fugitive meat rope had not left the Zoo at All. Why leave the Bronx, Old Man? Beckon the adder out of his lair with sprinklings of wood and leafy composite where a mighty meal of mice might be had."

Astounding, Houli!

"No less astounding than man's inability to recall past habits. Occam's Razor tells us that were one to be caused misty-eyed and worried by Dad's absence at mealtime, might just portend a brisk and healthful walk up to Keegan's Pub, rather than a call to Chicago 911. There, the Roistering Pater Familias might be found under a pile of great-coats forgotten by drunken young people -next to the GOLD CUP GOLF machine."


What common sense might do for man, Houli.

" A Quid Nunc for the ages, Hickey, my son. Now, about the current conundrum! Worthington, charge my Auchentoshan with the soda, there's a good man. This damned whisky I found wholly unsuitable to the snifter - it is as overrated as a Dick Morris insight. I prefer the Bruichladdich 15 -fresh coastal sea air, some oak, vanilla, nuts, honey and a touch of brine.Palate: Creamy and sweet, brine develops considerably, then notes of malt and pepper.Finish: Long, gentle, flavorful, and slightly oily . . ."

Houli, sound chap, your latest Gordian Knot.

" Indeed. Cole Day was one of the finest sprinters in the Chicago Catholic League - ran for Loyola Academy in the mid-1970's - at about the time you were applying the Socratic Method at Bishop McNamara. He went on to run for Villanova at the very end of Eamon Coglan's great career as Chairman of the Boards under the tutelage Jumbo Elliot. Cole Day the short distances and Coglan the mighty Mile and change. Cole Day emerged from the Augustinian university with a solid business degree; alas, sans the notoriety of Eamon Coglan.

Cole went into venture capitalism and made piles of money, that vanished in the recent national economic unpleasantness. Cole Day went missing and his life partner -Cole bats from the other-side of the plate -called me last Saturday -sharply at 3 PM at WCEV - Chicago's Voice AM Radio 1450 on your dial . . ."

Indeed, the very place for wholesome chat and pointed commentary on mankind's folly, to be sure my peripatetic friend, but to the case!

" The life partner was beside himself with anxiety and had yet to announce the disappearance of his sprinting sodomite on the Social Networks abounding - he called me to sort out the ramifications. Cole Day had gone missing a week ago Wednesday -March 16th."

Two weeks ago Wednesday . . .

" I went of course to the Exchange that had been the Temple of Doom for Day's Fortunes and every person there happened to be the same age as you and I - the darker side of Fifty and the Sunny Side of Seventy, Hickey! It was singularly interesting to be in a locale of such universally aged persons as myself - outside of Friday Nights at the Lounge of Beverly Woods . . .naturally.

I asked the Exchange President, a ruddy and solid man who had gone to Steinmetz High School Class of 1965, 'Cole Day?'

He replied, 'Boy, do I remember coal day the sound of the truck pulling up close to gangway of my Dad's two-Flat, while I laid in bed waiting for Chuck Bill's Adventure Theatre to come on and the clatter of coal cascading down the chute . . .' He was joined by other contemporaries who chorused -'I loved coal day! The guys pushing the wheel-barrows always put us kids on for ride. Hey, remeber when we all used to burn our garbage out in those concrete incinerators in the alleys -We used to climb in them and play army tank and kill maggots with our fingers. We used to take handfuls of maggots and use them to catch crayfish under the viaduct on Wood Street. I miss the cinders on the snow - remember that? Every lawn had snow dappled with coal cinders and nuclear fallout from the A Bomb Testing. How about Sonic Booms? And Nike Sites all along Lake Shore Drive? The stockyards only smelled on Wednesdays! & etc.

In bemused frustration I raised plaintiff hands 'Ladies and Gents, Please! Cole Day?'

They chorused - It was Wednesdays before noon! The big trucks came down Western and . . ."

Cole Day, Houli?

" Remember, Hickey, Cole Day was a sprinter of singular abiliity! I found out that he taken up another life partner - he had taken up with one the recent Wisconsin Democrat Exiles with whom he had become enchanted - they now reside in that Dairyland Arcadia of Madison-you know the heart wants what the serpent demands and such; thus, an unhappy ending for one. Nevertheless, the thoroughly enjoyable round of reminiscences at the Exchange. I had almost completely forgotten about Chuck Bill's Adventure Theatre -'Ding Hao Feather-merchants!' Old William of Occam! Snakes and Coal, Hickey. Snakes and coal.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamonn_Coghlan


http://skinnyhouli.com/

Carry Buck Battles the Class War Dopes

Full Disclosure - I am acquainted with Ms. Carry Buck. This woman speaks her mind without the generous application of cant or obfuscation. I have been on the receiving end of Carry Buck's opinion - she is a woman in full!

Before you read the Tribune Campaign against Carry Buck, watch this tough and smart woman.



Chip-on-the-shoulder is a great old expression that now means to challenge the attitude of resentful people. Originally, the term was applied to the rights of shipwrights who were allowed to carry off nautically unusable or unsuitable scraps of wood that might go into the fire and put that wood to their own use and purposes. Thus, a man with a chip on his shoulders was exercising his rights in a very public manner. He had the skills and the purpose to make use of wood as a perquisite to those talents. As the phrase evolved, the wood became a metaphor - carrying a chip on one's shoulder indicated a profound sense of resentment*.

A person might resent the fact that less talented persons carry home better wood, or more money. If that person's feelings are directed toward other persons, that is resentment. If the person turns those feelings toward himself, that is remorse. Resentment and remorse are the twins of bitterness.

No one does resentment and remorse like the Irish and generally for very good reasons. Here on the south side, we resent being characterized as bigots, political sheep, and 'close-knit' ethnics. South siders will generally let an auslander understand those feelings -literally and figuratively.

South side Irish, Lithuanian, Polish, Croatian, Italian and German Catholics live in neighborhoods that the media characterize as 'hot-beds' of racial hatred. Empirically, that is no where near the case. Historically, south side 'close-knit ethnics (Catholics)' are the children of stockyard and steel workers who were shut out of jobs, as recorded in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and other tomes, when the Pullmans, Armours, Swifts, Cudahys, and McCormicks locked-out strikers and brought in strikebreakers - blacks from the south between 1888 and 1919.

Losing one's job is cause for resentment. Blacks and whites in Chicago were locked in a racially tagged cage-match for decades. Whites on the south side not only resented the wave of people coming north for a better life, but also the white folks who seemed to egg on the conflicts from their safe and tonier neighborhoods and villages far from the combat and scorning both combatants.

South siders ( white and black) had huge chips on their shoulders. They earned those planks by the way.

The Chicago Tribune ,from Joseph Medill on, has been a great egger on of racial resentments and remorse.

Yesterday, my friend Anne Leary posted a story on Backyard Conservative from the Medill Caged-Death-Match promotional crew - this time, however, the combatants are far removed from the traditional "hot-beds of urban violence and resentment" ( Morgan Park, Beverly, and of course Mount Greenwood). The new target for our high-moral-ground Pecksniffers is, of all places, north shore, Winnetka.

Winnetka is described in this particularly oily piece as a 'hamlet' by the Medill crew. A hamlet, boys and girls, is a settlement of homes too small to be considered a village. In jolly Olde England, once a hamlet built a church, it became a village. Winnetka's got Church.

What it don't got is 'affordable housing.' Affordable Housing is the post-CHA euphemism for The Jets Gotta Go Somewhere, or Section 8, or Meet the Mickey Cobras!

Section 8 Housing folks are scattered from the Taylor, Cabrini-Green, Ickes and other Housing Projects - they are the children of the Progressive Disaspora. Section 8 Housing is also known as Diversity!

Diversity, like the New York Times, is unassailable in its sanctimony and sacro-sanctity. Not where I live, thanks be to God, but in other residential areas that feast upon such bovine leavings as doctrine.

One woman, Carry Buck, is targeted by the Tribune and we all know that means Ms. Buck is about to get the Full Medill! Carry Buck is the President of the Winnetkan Home Owners Association,or WHOA! Truly.

Tucked between luxury estates off Sheridan Road near Lake Michigan, a Winnetka statue depicts a homeless man, head resting on hand, with this inscription: "No tenements for some and castles for others."

Some have noted the irony in those words as an ugly debate has roiled over a village plan to introduce affordable housing in Winnetka, long a bastion of wealth and philanthropy.

In the hamlet of 12,000, some residents have protested the plan, igniting fears of federally subsidized housing and government interference. Supporters argue that the proposal is hardly radical and would allow the village's police, teachers and shopkeepers to live and retire in Winnetka, where the median home price was $1.1 million last year.

Winnetka's plan calls for a land trust to provide for-sale and rental property to those who make far less than the median household income of $201,650. Owner-occupied units must be affordable to households earning at least $75,000. Rentals must be affordable to those earning at least $45,000 or more. Current residents and senior citizens would receive priority.

"There is plenty of affordable housing in neighboring communities," said Carry Buck, chairman of WHOA, or Winnetka Home Owners Association. "Most people in Winnetka are conservative and they do not want more involvement from government."

In a 25-page publication mailed to Winnetka residents last week, the homeowners association called the village Plan Commission's proposal un-American, predicting it will lower property values, attract criminals and force residents to subsidize those who rely on "hand-outs."

Some supporters of the plan expressed shock at the rhetoric, with one resident writing to officials, "Aren't we better than this?"

No, not really. It sounds like Carry Buck is speaking plainly and honestly. Apartments and rental homes that once were affordable housing for working people black, white, Hispanic, and Asian that have been mandated Section 8 have become minature Taylor Homes and Cabrini Greens in Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills, Alsip, and Hometown on the southwest side. If one does not have a job, let alone never had one, affordable housing should be tough to get. If my job goes south, I lose a house and must go where I will be able to find work. That will not be in Winnetka. I have a job and some level of skill, but I will not find a home in Winnetka.

The Harrumphing of do-gooders, goo-goos, and activists, who live far and away from blacks, Hispanics, shanty Irish and working stiffs with all of their kids, ( haven't they heard of Planned Parenthood?) really is . . .resentful . . . Doncha Think, So? Let's dialog. Rather than harbor and ship resentment against Carry Buck for speaking common sense and economic honesty, how about going all remorseful? What do you say? Let's add to our celebrations of diversity, by giving your ears a chance. Yap less; live more! Come on over to Leo High School, or Hales, or any one of the fine CPS Schools ( not the Magnets please) and Mentor and Nurture the kids; teach for free; act as a crossing guard here on 79th Street and Sangamon. Lord knows we need one. Earn that Progressive Chip on the Shoulder!

God Bless Carry Buck!

BTW - You gotta love the oily 'statue of the homeless man' in that Trib's Let's Get Carry Buck piece for that great 'Oh, Wow, Man Mean People Suck' moment.

* Resentment is the poison that I drink, in the hopes that you will die. Father Steve Rooney

". . .and a Diet Pepsi! - Supersize, Please"

http://www.popsbeef.com/Extremes* in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use. Alexander Pope Essay on Man

I yield to no man (or woman) in foolish behavior. I hold a life membership in Anti-Mensa because I voted for John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008; sold all of my gold holdings on September 19, 2008.

However, I take vigorous morning walks. Drink Canfields Lime Seltzer. Smoke, only five Marloboro Reds a day. Eat at midday. Snack not. Sleep early and wake early. This lad crowding sixty reads everything and dismisses cant quickly and vigorously. While Americans are said to be dangerously obese, the lard between their ears tends to be more burdensome than the cascade of chins at Michael Moore's Adam's Apple. Americans too often feast on bullshit. Witness Charlie Sheen's sold-out performance at Chicago Theatre, the demand that Lois Weisberg was really important to Chicago Culture, because she put plastic painted whimsical cows on every corner, Rahm Emanuel is a Chicagoan, Food Deserts, or that Libyan rebels are all dentists.

I enjoy an Italian Beef/Sausage combo sandwich from Pop's on 103rd & Kedzie*, smothered in hot Giardinara and eschew the fries, in most cases. While waiting for one savory piling of char-broiled sausage and paper thin cuts of beef soaked in au jus and stuffed into a pillow of Gonnella roll, I observerd two trencherman order their noon meal.

"Six Dogs with everything, extra fries, two Tom-Tom Tamales, onion rings and two extra large diet pops - one white and one dark."

"The same here."

I asked the gents about the white and dark diet pop

' We suck some out and then mix them further down.'

I see. That is code for WTF?

Both twenty something gentlemen were more than generously proportioned - to wit, they were morbidly obese. Now, my manly frame is dappled and dimpled with lard, here and there, befitting my burgher outlook and satisified American life, but these boys were going to give Chicago Fire Department's overworked EMT's two monstrous workouts in days to come. The jaws-of-life will be needed to open the portals of each man's garden single-bedroom apartment, appointed with an electric Lazy Boy lounger, X-Box acoutrements, Wide Screen Plasma TV and larders filled to capacity with Frito-Lay products and cases of white and dark diet pops.

Following my afternoon's ephiphany, I turned on ME TV for the 3PM showing of Rawhide and was treated with this ad for Diet Pepsi.



This busty lass, I am quite certain, just might not wash down six dogs with everything, large fries, Tom-tom tamales, onion rings & etc. with a frosty Big Gulp full of iced Diet Pepsi . . .or, I might be voting for John Kerry or John McCain again . . .I think not. Another selection offered up on the endless bullshit buffet! Bon Appetit!

*Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

"In one five-week study conducted in 2008, 27 rats that were provided with a saccharin-sweetened yogurt ate more total food and gained more weight than rats fed sugar-sweetened yogurt. And it wasn’t because they loved the saccharin-sweetened yogurt—in fact, they tended to eat less of it, but went back to their regular chow for second helpings more often than the rats given sugar. On the other hand, a 2004 study of 24 French men and women, also for about five weeks, found that the individuals randomly assigned to include high-calorie, sugar-sweetened beverages in their diet did the most overeating—and had no better hunger control compared to a similar group allocated to consume artificially sweetened beverages."
So since they taste like sweetened rat urine, what on earth is the point of drinking diet sodas? Roberts has thoughts on that, too: "magnetic resonance imaging studies tracking the brain’s responses to sugar and intense sweeteners show that in our unconscious brain we know they are different—even while we perceive both of them as 'sweet-tasting' in our conscious brain. While this might seem like bad news, I view this as positive because it means we can still enjoy sweet taste without getting the neurological high that accompanies a rush of sugar calories."

So you enjoy what you're drinking, but you don't get a buzz. Roberts theorizes that over time we can retrain our brains to uncouple the connection between sugar and the dopamine rush we get from it: "In other words, using artificial sweeteners may actually make us like the real thing less over time, and provide a bridge to a healthier low-calorie, low-sugar diet that still tastes sweet due to our increased sensitivity for the sugars in natural foods."

** Testimonial" I travel 100 miles, each direction, for beef sandwiches. I have been coming to Pop's, PH location for more than 20 years.
- Brice H. McCarty II (verified 232.9 miles round trip!)