Casey Stengel - A Tutorial on How to Respond to a Politician

Casey Stengel could out-Studs Terkel at saying absolutely nothing.

This is rather long, but absolutely necessary. Knowledge is power. Learn from the best.

The intricacies of language can dazzle and lift our souls to new heights and plumb the depths of the human heart. The rhetorical polarities presented in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar through the characters Brutus and Antony are lessons in themselves of words and their consequences - Brutus adopting the Attic method of pithy logical soundness and Antony's open-handed appeal to the heart-strings and passions via the Asiatic. Attic - the closed fist imperative command; Asiatic -open palmed request to 'lend me your ears.'

Using Attic, Asiatic, or Twitter politicians lie. They are dissemblers who will say anything to get over, get by, get past and get more. Public servants, the best of them, the capable and at times the most pure of heart and smartest never speak a word. They are sphinx-like.

Citizens are often called upon by politicians to speak their minds, or might even be subpoenaed. In that case it is mete to consider the very best means of saying absolutely nothing in the most words. In 1958, Casey Stengel was called before Congress to testify of the expansion and monetary worth of the National Past-time. Estes Kefauver, as randy an old goat who ever tore off his britches, until President Clinton, was enamored of television. Television had made him a household name a Vice Presidential Candidate with Adlai Stevenson. Kefauver moved from investigating organized crime in the American labor unions to baseball as monopoly.

Casey Stengel could give Studs Terkel a run for his money in saying absolutely nothing with thousands of words.

Here is how to testify -

Casey Stengel Testimony
July 8, 1958 Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing

Casey Stengel, Senator Kefauver, Senator Langer, Senator O'Mahoney, Senator Carroll & Mickey Mantle
Mr. Stengel: Well, I started in professional ball in 1910. I have been in professional ball, I would say, for forty-eight years. I have been employed by numerous ball clubs in the majors and in the minor leagues. I started in the minor leagues with Kansas City. I played as low as class D ball, which was at Shelbyville, Ky., and also class C ball, and class A ball, and I have advanced in baseball as a ballplayer.

I had many years that I was not so successful as a ballplayer, as it is a game of skill. And then I was no doubt discharged by baseball in which I had to go back to the minor leagues as a manager, and after being in the minor leagues as a manager, I became a major league manager in several cities and was discharged, we call it "discharged," because there is no question I had to leave. (Laughter). And I returned to the minor leagues at Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Oakland, Calif., and then returned to the major leagues.

In the last ten years, naturally, in major league baseball with the New York Yankees, the New York Yankees have had tremendous success and while I am not the ballplayer who does the work, I have no doubt worked for a ball club that is very capable in the office. I must have splendid ownership, I must have very capable men who are in radio and television, which is no doubt you know that we have mentioned the three names — you will say they are very great.

We have a wonderful press that follows us. Anybody should in New York City, where you have so many million people. Our ballclub has been successful because we have it, and we have the Spirit of 1776. We put it into the ball field and if you are not capable of becoming a great ballplayer since I have been in as a manager, in ten years, you are notified that if you don't produce on the ball field, the salary that you receive, we will allow you to be traded to play and give your services to other clubs.

The great proof was yesterday. Three of the young men that were stars and picked by the players in the American League to be in the all-star game were Mr. Cerv, who is at Kansas City; Mr. Jensen, who was at Boston, and I might say Mr. Triandos that caught for the Baltimore ball club, all three of those players were my members and to show you I was not such a brillant manager they got away from me and were chosen by the players and I was fortunate enough to have them come back to play where I was successful as a manager.

If I have been in baseball for forty-eight years there must be some good in it. I was capable and strong enough at one time to do any kind of work but I came back to baseball and I have been in baseball ever since. I have been up and down the ladder. I know there are some things in baseball, thirty-five to fifty years ago that are better now than they were in those days. In those days, my goodness, you could not transfer a ball club in the minor leagues, class D, class C ball, class A ball. How could you transfer a ball club when you did not have a highway? How could you transfer a ball club when the railroads then would take you to a town you got off and then you had to wait and sit up five hours to go to another ball club?

How could you run baseball then without night ball? You had to have night ball to improve the proceeds to play larger salaries and I went to work, the first year I received $135 a month. I thought that was amazing. I had to put away enough money to go to dental college. I found out it was not better in dentistry, I stayed in baseball.

Any other questions you would like to ask me? I want to let you know that as to the legislative end of baseball you men will have to consider that what you are here for. I am a bench manager. I will speak about anything from the playing end — in the major or minor leagues — and do anything I can to help you.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, are you prepared to answer particularly why baseball wants this bill passed?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I would have to say at the present time, I think that baseball has advanced in this respect for the player help. That is an amazing statement for me to make, because you can retire with an annuity at fifty and what organization in America allows you to retire at fifty and receive money?

I want to further state that I am not a ballplayer, that is, put into that pension fund committee. At my age, and I have been in baseball, well, I say I am possibly the oldest man who is working in baseball. I would say that when they start an annuity for the ballplayers to better their conditions, it should have been done, and I think it has been done. I think it should be the way they have done it, which is a very good thing.

The reason they possibly did not take the managers in at that time was because radio and television or the income to ball clubs was not large enough that you could have put in a pension plan. Now, I am not a member of the pension plan. You have young men here who are, who represent the ball clubs. They represent them as players and since I am not a member and don't receive pension from a fund which you think, my goodness, he ought to be declared in that too but I would say that is a great thing for the ballplayers. That is one thing I will say for the ballplayers they have an advanced pension fund. I should think it was gained by radio and television or you could not have enough money to pay anything of that type.

Now the second thing about baseball that I think is very interesting to the public or to all of us that it is the owner's fault if he does not improve his club, along with the officials in the ball club and the players.

Now what causes that? If I am going to go on the road and we are a travelling ball club and you know the cost of transportation now -- we travel sometimes with three pullman coaches, the New York Yankees and remember I am just a salaried man and do not own stock in the New York Yankees, I found out that in travelling with the New York Yankees on the road and all, that it is the best, and we have broken records in Washington this year, we have broken them in every city but New York and we have lost two clubs that have gone out of the city of New York.

Of course, we have had some bad weather, I would say that they are mad at us in Chicago, we fill the parks. They have come out to see good material. I will say they are mad at us in Kansas City, but we broke their attendance record.

Now on the road we only get possibly 27¢. I am not positive of these figures, as I am not an official. If you go back fifteen years or if I owned stock in the club I would give them to you.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, I am not sure that I made my question clear. (Laughter).

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. Well that is all right. I am not sure I am going to answer yours perfectly either. (Laughter)

Senator Kefauver: I was asking you, sir, why it is that baseball wants this bill passed.

Mr. Stengel: I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport. I am not here to argue about other sports, I am in the baseball business. It has been run cleaner than any business that was ever put out in the one-hundred years at the present time. I am not speaking about television or I am not speaking about income that comes into the ball parks: You have to take that off. I don't know too much about it. I say the ballplayers have a better advancement at the present time.

Senator Kefauver: One further question, and then I will pass the other Senators. How many players do the Yankees control, Mr. Stengel?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I will tell you: I hire the players and if they make good with me I keep them without criticism from my ownership. I do not know how many players they own as I am not a scout and I cannot run a ball club during the daytime and be busy at night and up the next day and find out how many players that the Yankees own. If you get any official with the Yankees that is here, why he could give you the names.

Senator Kefauver: Very well. Senator Langer?

Senator Langer: Mr. Stengel?

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: What do you think is the future of baseball? Is it going to be expanded to include more clubs than are in existence at the present time?

Mr. Stengel: I think every chamber of commerce in the major league cities would not change a franchise, I think they will be delighted because they have a hard time to put in a convention hall to get people to come to your city and if it is going to be like Milwaukee or Kansas City or Baltimore, I think they would want a major league team, but if I was a chamber of commerce member and I was in a city, I would not want a baseball team to leave the city as too much money is brought into your city even if you have a losing team and great if you have a winning ball team.

Senator Langer: You look forward then, do you not, to say, ten years or twenty years from now this business of baseball is going to grow larger and larger and larger?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I should think it would. I should think it would get larger because of the fact we are drawing tremendous crowds, I believe, from overseas programs in television, that is one program I have always stuck up for. I think every ballplayer and everyone should give out anything that is overseas for the Army, free of cost and so forth. I think every hospital should get it. I think that because of the lack of parking in so many cites that you cannot have a great ballpark if you don't have parking space. If you are ancient or forty-five or fifty and have acquired enough money to go to a ballgame, you cannot drive a car on a highway, which is very hard to do after forty-five, to drive on any modern highway and if you are going to stay home you need radio and television to go along for receipts for the ball club.

Senator Langer: That brings us to another question.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: That is, what do you think of pay-as-you-go television?

Mr. Stengel: Well, to tell you the truth, if were starting in it myself I would like to be in that line of business as I did not think they would ever have television and so forth here but they have got it here now. (Laughter). Forty years ago you would not have had it around here yourself and you would not have cameras flying around here every five minutes but we have got them here and more of them around here than around a ball field, I will give you that little tip.

Senator Langer: You believe the time is ever going to come when you will have pay-as-you-go in the world series, which would be kept from the public unless they had pay-as-you-go television in their homes?

Mr. Stengel: I think you have got a good argument there and it is worthy of you to say that. I am not thinking myself of anybody that is hospitalized and anybody who cannot go to a ball park, I should think if they could pass that they should try to pass it, but I don't think they will be able to do it because they have gone in television so far that they reach so many outside people, you have to have a sponsor for everything else you do, go pay television and that is going to run all the big theaters out of business where you have to use pay television. All the big theaters and all the big movie companies went broke. We know that. You see that now or you would not have a place to hold a television for pay. I don't know how they would run that of course. I am not on that side of the fence. I am paid a salary.

Senator Langer: Just one further question. You do not have to answer it unless you want to. That is, is there any provision made whereby the team owners can keep a racketeer out of the baseball business?

Mr. Stengel: Well, sir—

Senator Langer: Can the owners of the New York Yankees, for example, sell out to anyone who may want to buy the club at a big price without the consent of the other owners?

Mr. Stengel: That is a very good thing that I will have to think about but I will give you an example. I think that is why they put in as a commissioner Judge Landis, and he said if there is a cloud on baseball I will take it off, and he took the cloud off and they have had only one scandal or if they had, it is just one major league city.

How can you be a ballplayer and make twenty-five ballplayers framed without being heard? It is bound to leak, and your play will show it. I don't think, an owner possibly could do something but he can't play the game for you. It is the most honest profession I think that we have, everything today that is going on outside.

Senator Langer: Mr. Chairman, my final question. This is the Antimonopoly Committee that is sitting here.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: I want to know whether you intend to keep on monopolizing the world's championship in New York City.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I will tell you, I got a little concerned yesterday in the first three innings when I say the three players I had gotten rid of and I said when I lost nine what am I going to do and when I had a couple of my players. I thought so great of that did not do so good up to the sixth inning I was more confused but I finally had to go and call on a young man in Baltimore that we don't own and the Yankees don't own him, and he is going pretty good, and I would actually have to tell you that I think we are more the Greta Garbo type now from success.

We are being hated I mean, from the the ownership and all, we are being hated. Every sport that gets too great or one individual, but if we made 27¢ and it pays to have a winner at home why would you not have a good winner in your own park if you were an owner. That is the result of baseball. An owner gets most of the money at home and it is up to him and his staff to do better or they ought to be discharged.

Senator Langer: That is all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you, Senator Langer. Senator O'Mahoney?

Senator O'Mahoney: May I say, Mr. Stengel, that I congratulate you very much for what happened on the field at Baltimore yesterday. I was watching on television when you sent Gil McDougald up to bat for Early Wynn. I noticed with satisfaction that he got a hit, knocking Frank Malzone in with the winning run. That is good management.

Mr. Stengel: Thank you very much. (Laughter).

Senator O'Mahoney: Did I understand you to say, Mr. Stengel, at the beginning of your statement that you have been in baseball for forty-eight years?

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir; the oldest man in the service.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many major league teams were there in the United States when you entered baseball?

Mr. Stengel: Well, there was in 1910, there were sixteen major league baseball teams.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many are there now?

Mr. Stengel: There are sixteen major league clubs but there was one year that they brought in the Federal League which was brought in by Mr. Ward and Mr. Sinclair and others after a war, and it is a very odd thing to tell you that during tough times it is hard to study baseball. I have been through two or three depressions in baseball and out of it.

The first World War we had good baseball in August. The second World War we kept on and made more money because everybody was around going to the services, the larger the war, the more they come to the ball park, and that was an amazing thing to me. When you were looking for tough times why it changed for different wars.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many minor leagues were there in baseball when you began?

Mr. Stengel: Well, there were not so many at that time because of this fact: Anybody to go into baseball at that time with the educational schools that we had were small, while you were probably thoroughly educated at school, you had to be. We had only small cities that you could put a team in and they would go defunct. Why I remember the first year I was at Kankakee, Ill., and a bank offered me $550 if I would let them have a little notice. I left there and took a uniform because they owed me two weeks' pay. But I either had to quit but I did not have enough money to go to dental college so I had to go with the manager down to Kentucky.

What happened there was if you got by July, that was the big date. You did not play night ball and you did not play Sundays in half of the cities on account of a Sunday observance, so in those days when things were tough, and all of it was, I mean to say, why they just closed up July 4 and there you were sitting there in the depot. You could go to work some place else but that was it. So I got out of Kankakee, Ill., and I just go there for the visit now. (Laughter).

I think now, do you know how many clubs they have? Anybody will start a minor league club but it is just like your small cities, the industries have left them and they have gone west to California, and I am a Missourian — Kansas City, Missouri — but I can see all those towns and everybody moving west and I know if you fly in the air you can see anything from the desert, you can see a big country over there that has got many names. Well, now why wouldn't baseball prosper out there, with that many million people?

Senator O'Mahoney: Are the minor leagues suffering now?

Mr. Stengel: I should say they are.

Senator O'Mahoney: Why?

Mr. Stengel: Do you know why? I will tell you why. I don't think anybody can support minor league ball when they see a great official, it would be just like a great actress or actor had come to town. If Bob Hope had come here or Greta Garbo over there half of them would go see Greta Garbo and half Bob Hope but if you have a very poor baseball team they are not going to watch you until you become great and the minor leagues now with radio and television will not pay very much attention to minor league ballplayers. Softball is interesting, the parent is interested; he goes around with him. He watches his son and he is more enthusiastic about the boy than some stranger that comes to town and wants to play in a little wooden park and with no facilities to make you interested. You might rather stay home and see a program.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many baseball players are now engaged in the activity as compared to when you came in?

Mr. Stengel: I would say there are more, many more. Because we did not have as many cities that could support even minor league baseball in those days.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many players did the sixteen major league clubs have when you came in.

Mr. Stengel: At that time they did not have as many teams. They did not have near as many teams as below. Later on Mr. Rickey came in and started what was known as what you would say numerous clubs, you know in which I will try to pick up this college man, I will pick up that college boy or I will pick up some corner lot boy and if you picked up the corner lot boy maybe he became just as successful as the college man, which is true. He then had a number of players.

Now, too many players is a funny thing, it cost like everything. I said just like I made a talk not long ago and I told them all when they were drinking and they invited me in I said you ought to be home. You men are not making enough money. You cannot drink like that. They said, "This is a holiday for the Shell Oil Company", and I said, "Why is that a holiday?" and they said, "We did something great for three years and we are given two days off to watch the Yankees play the White Sox," but they were mostly White Sox rooters. I said, "You are not doing right." I said, "You can't take all those drinks and all even on your holidays. You ought to be home and raising more children because big league clubs now give you a hundred thousand for a bonus to go into baseball." (Laughter). And by the way I don't happen to have any children but I wish Mrs. Stengel and I had eight, I would like to put them in on that bonus rule. (Laughter).

Senator O'Mahoney: What I am trying to find out, Mr. Stengel, is how many players are actively working for the major league teams now as was formerly the case? How many players do you suppose—

Mr. Stengel: You are right, I would honestly tell you they naturally have more and they are in more competition now. You have to buck now a university — anyone who wants to be a hockey player—

Senator O'Mahoney: Let's stick to baseball for a minute.

Mr. Stengel: I stay in baseball. I say you can't name them. If you want to know get any executive, you have got any names, bring any executive with the Yankees that is an official in the ball club and he will tell you how many players the Yankees have. And there is his jurisdiction — every ball club owner can tell you he is an official, they have enough officials hired with me with a long pencil, too.

Senator O'Mahoney: I recently saw a statement by a baseball sports writer that there were about four-hundred active ball players in the major leagues now. Would you think that is about correct now?

Mr. Stengel: I would say in the major leagues each club has twenty-five men which is the player limit. There are eight clubs in each league so you might say there are four-hundred players in the major leagues, you mean outside of it that they own two or three hundred each individual club, isn't that what you have reference to?

Senator O'Mahoney: I was coming to that, but is that the fact?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I say that is what you would say (laughter) if you want to find that out you get any of those executives that come in here that keep those books. I am not a bookeeper for him. But I take the man when he comes to the big league. They can give it to you and each club should. That does not mean and I would like to ask you, how would you like to pay those men? That is why they go broke.

Senator O'Mahoney: I am not in that business.

Mr. Stengel: I was in that business a short time, too; it is pretty hard to make a living at it.

Senator O'Mahoney: But the stories that we read in the press—

Mr. Stengel: That is right.

Senator O'Mahoney: Are to the effect that the minor leagues are suffering. There are no more major league teams now than there were when you came into baseball, and what I am trying to find out is, what are the prospects for the future growth of baseball and to what extent have the sixteen major league teams, through the farm system, obtained, by contract or agreement or understanding, control over the professional lives of the players?

Mr. Stengel: That is right. If I was a ballplayer and I was discharged, and I saw within three years that I could not become a major league ballplayer I would go into another profession. That is the history of anything that is in business.

Senator O'Mahoney: Do you think that the farm system keeps any players in the minor leagues when they ought to be in the majors?

Mr. Stengel: I should say it would not keep any players behind or I have been telling you a falsehood. I would say it might keep a few back, but very few. There is no manager in baseball who wants to be a success without the ability of those great players and if I could pull them up to make money in a gate for my onwer and for myself to be a success, I don't believe I would hold him back.

Senator O'Mahoney: The fact is, is it not, Mr. Stengel, that while the population of the United States has increased tremendously during the period that you have been engaged in professional baseball, the number of major-league teams has not increased; it remains the same as it was then. The number of players actually engaged by the major-league teams is approximately the same as back in 1903, and there is now, through the farm system, a major league control of the professional occupation of baseball playing. Is that a correct summary?

Mr. Stengel: Well, you have that from the standpoint of what you have been reading. You have got that down very good. (Laughter). But if you were a player—

Senator O'Mahoney: I am trying to get it down from your standpoint as a forty-eight-year-man in baseball.

Mr. Stengel: That is why I stayed in it. I have been discharged fifteen times and rehired; so you get rehired in baseball, and they don't want a good ballplayer leaving, and I always say a high-priced baseball player should get a high salary just like a moving-picture actor. He should not get the same thing as the twenty-fifth man on a ball club who is very fortunate he is sitting on your ball club, and I say it is very hard to have skill in baseball.

Senator O'Mahoney: You are not changing the subject; are you, sir?

Mr. Stengel: No. You asked the question and I told you that if you want to find out how minor league baseball is; it is terrible now. How can you eat on $2.50 a day when up here you can eat on $8 or better than $8. Now how can you travel in a bus all night and play ball the next night to make a living? How can you, a major league man, make it so that you can't? Is he going to fly all of them to each place?

Senator O'Mahoney: I am not arguing with you, Mr. Stengel.

Mr. Stengel: I am just saying minor league ball has outgrown itself, like every small town has outgrown itself industrially because they don't put a plant in there to keep the people working so they leave.

Senator O'Mahoney: Does that mean in your judgment that the major league baseball teams necessarily have to control ball playing?

Mr. Stengel: I think that they do. I don't think that if I was a great player and you released me in four years, I think it would be a joke if you released a man and he made one year for you and then bid for a job and then played the next year, we will say, out of Washington, he played in New York the third year, he would play in Cleveland and put himself up for stake. I think they ought to be just as they have been.

A man who walks in and sees you get fair compensation and if you are great, be sure you get it because the day you don't report and the day you don't open a season you are hurting the major league and hurting yourself somewhat, but you are not going to be handicapped in life if you are great in baseball. Every man who goes out has a better home than he had when he went in.

Senator O'Mahoney: Did I understand you to say that in your own personal activity as manager, you always give a player who is to be traded advance notice?

Mr. Stengel: I warn him that. I hold a meeting. We have an instructional school, regardless of my English, we have got an instructional school.

Senator O'Mahoney: Your English is perfect and I can understand what you say, and I think I can even understand what you mean.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. You have got some very wonderful points in. I would say in an instructional school we try you out for three weeks and we clock you, just like — I mean how good are you going to be in the service; before you go out of the service we have got you listed. We know if you are handicapped in the service and we have got instructors who teach you. They don't have to listen to me if they don't like me.

I have a man like Crosetti, who never has been to a banquet; he never would. He does a big job like Art Fletcher; he teaches that boy and teaches his family: he will be there. I have a man for first base, second base, short; that is why the Yankees are ahead.

We have advanced so much we can take a man over to where he can be a big league player and if he does not, we advance him to where he can play opposition to us. I am getting concerned about opposition. I am discharging too many good ones.

Senator O'Mahoney: Mr. Chairman, I think the witness is the best entertainment we have had around here for a long time and it is a great temptation to keep asking him questions but I think I better desist. Thank you.

Senator Kefauver: Senator Carroll.

Senator Carroll: Mr. Stengel, I am an old Yankee fan and I come from a city where I think we have had some contribution to your success, from Denver. I think you have many Yankee players from Denver. The question Senator Kefauver asked you was what, in your honest opinion, with your forty-eight years of experience, is the need for this legislation in view of the fact that baseball has not been subject to antitrust laws?

Mr. Stengel: No.

Senator Carroll: It is not now subject to antitrust laws. What do you think the need is for this legislation? I had a conference with one of the attorneys representing not only baseball but all of the sports, and I listened to your explanation to Senator Kefauver. It seemed to me it had some clarity. I asked the attorney this question: What was the need for this legislation? I wonder if you would accept his definition. He said they didn't want to be subjected to the ipse dixit of the Federal Government because they would throw a lot of damage suits on the ad damnum clause. He said, in the first place, the Toolson case was sui generis, it was de minimus non curat lex. Do you call that a clear expression?

Mr. Stengel: Well, you are going to get me there for about two hours.

Senator Carroll: I realize these questions which are put to you are all, I suppose, legislative and legal questions. Leaning on your experience as manager, do you feel the farm system, the draft system, the reserve clause system, is fair to the players, to the managers, and to the public interest?

Mr. Stengel: I think the public is taken care of, rich and poor, better at the present time than years ago. I really think that the ownership is a question of ability. I really think that the business manager is a question of ability. Some of these men are supposed to be very brillant in their line of work, and some of them are not so brillant, so that they have quite a bit of trouble with it when you run an operation of a club in which the ownership maybe doesn't run the club. I would say that the players themselves — I told you, I am not in on that fund, it is a good thing. I say I should have been, to tell you the truth. But I think it is a great thing about that fund.

Senator Carroll: I am not talking about that fund.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I tell you if you are going to talk about the fund you are going to think about radio and television and pay television.

Senator Carroll: I do not want to talk about radio and television, but I do want to talk about the draft clause and reserve systems.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. I would have liked to have been free four times in my life; and later on I have seen men free, and later on they make a big complaint "they wuz robbed," and if you are robbed there is some club down the road to give you the opportunity.

Senator Carroll: That was not the question I asked you, and I only asked you on your long experience—

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. I would not be in it forty-eight years if it was not all right.

Senator Carroll: I understand that.

Mr. Stengel: Well, then, why wouldn't it stay that?

Senator Carroll: In your long experience—

Mr. Stengel: Yes.

Senator Carroll: Do you feel, you have had experience through the years—

Mr. Stengel: That is true.

Senator Carroll: With the draft system, and the reserve clause in the contracts. Do you think you could still exist under existing law without changing the law?

Mr. Stengel: I think it is run better than it has ever been run in baseball, for every department.

Senator Carroll: Then, I come back to the principal question. This is the real question before this body.

Mr. Stengel: All right.

Senator Carroll: Then what is the need for legislation, if they are getting along all right?

Mr. Stengel: I didn't ask for the legislation. (Laughter).

Senator Carroll: Your answer is a very good one, and that is the question Senator Kefauver put to you.

Mr. Stengel: That is right.

Senator Carroll: That is the question Senator O'Mahoney put.

Mr. Stengel: Right.

Senator Carroll: Are you ready to say there is no need for legislation in this field, then, insofar as baseball is concerned?

Mr. Stengel: As far as I'm concerned, from drawing a salary and from my ups and downs and being discharged, I always found out that there was somebody ready to employ you, if you were on the ball.

Senator Carroll: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel. We appreciate your testimony.

Senator Langer: May I ask a question?

Senator Kefauver: Senator Langer has a question. Just a moment, Mr. Stengel.

Senator Langer: Can you tell this committee what countries have baseball teams besides the United States, Mexico and Japan?

Mr. Stengel: I made a tour with the New York Yankees several years ago, and it was the most amazing tour I ever saw for a ball club, to go over where you have trouble spots. It wouldn't make any difference whether he was a Republican or Democrat, and so forth. I know that over there we drew 250,000 to 500,000 people in the streets, in which they stood in front of the automobiles, not on the sidewalks, and those people are trying to play baseball over there with short fingers (Laughter), and I say, "Why do you do it?"

But they love it. They are crazy about baseball, and they are not worried at the handicap. And I'll tell you, business industries run baseball over there, and they are now going to build a stadium that is going to be covered over for games where you don't need a tarpaulin if it rains.

South America is all right, and Cuba is all right. But I don't know, I have never been down there except to Cuba, I have never been to South America, and I know that they broadcast games, and I know we have players that are playing from there.

I tell you what, I think baseball has spread, but if we are talking about anything spreading, we would be talking about soccer. You can go over in Italy, and I thought they would know DiMaggio every place. And my goodness, you mention soccer, you can draw fifty or a hundred thousand people. Over here you have a hard time to get soccer on the field, which is a great sport, no doubt.

Senator Langer: What I want to know, Mr. Stengel, is this: When the American League plays the National League in the world series and it is advertised as the world championship—

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: I want to know why you do not play Mexico or Japan or some other country and really have a world championship.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I think you have a good argument there. I would say that a couple of clubs that I saw, it was like when I was in the Navy, I thought I couldn't get special unless they played who I wanted to play. So I took over a team. When they got off a ship I would play them, but if they had been on land too long, my team couldn't play them. So I would play the teams at sea six months, and I would say, "You are the club I would like to play." I would like to play those countries, and I think it should be nationwide and governmentwide, too, if you could possibly get it in.

Senator Langer: Do you think the day is ever going to come, perhaps five years from now or ten—

Mr. Stengel: I would say ten years, not five.

Senator Langer: When the championship team of the United States would play the championship team of Mexico?

Mr. Stengel: I really think it should be that way, but I don't think you will get it before ten years, because you have to build stadiums and you have to have an elimination in every country for it, and you have to have weather at the same time, or how could you play unless you would hold your team over?

Senator Langer: Do you not think these owners are going to develop this matter of world championship of another country besides the United States?

Mr. Stengel: I should think they would do that in time. I really do. I was amazed over in Japan. I couldn't understand why they would want to play baseball with short fingers and used the same size ball, and not a small size, and compete in baseball. And yet that is their great sport, and industries are backing them.

Senator Langer: In other words, the owners some day, in your opinion, Mr. Stengel, are going to make a lot of money by having the champions of one country play another country and keep on with eliminations until they really have a world championship?

Mr. Stengel: That is what I say. I think it is not named properly right now unless you can go and play all of them. You would have to do that.

Senator Langer: That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, one final question. You spoke of Judge Landis and the fact that he had rather absolute control over baseball. There was a clause in Judge Landis' contract which read:

We, the club owners pledge ourselves to loyally support the commissioner in his important and difficult task, and we assure him that each of us will acquiesce in his decisions even when we believe they are mistaken, and that we will not discredit the sport by criticism of him or one another.

This same clause was in Mr. Chandler's contract, but we do not understand it to be in Mr. Frick's contract. Do you think the commissioner needs to have this power over management?

Mr. Stengel: I would say when there was a cloud over baseball, like any sport, you have to have a man that has the power to change things. Now, when Landis was in, that was the situation with baseball. You were bucking racetracks. We don't have a tote board. We are playing baseball for admission fees. Now, we don't have a tote board in baseball. Who would? That would be great, if you have that out there, and you could go out there and, you know, use a tote board and say, "Does he get to first or won't he get to first?" and so forth.

Now Landis was an amazing man. I will give you an example of him. It is a good thing you brought him in. I was discharged one year, and I was the president of a ball club at Worcester, Mass., so I discharged myself, and I sent it in to Landis and he O.K.'d it.

Why was I president? Then I could release my player, couldn't I? And I was the player. So I was the only player ever released by the president, and that was in Worcester, Massachusetts, so I got discharged.

Senator Kefauver: Do you think the present commissioner ought to have the same power?

Mr. Stengel: There are sixteen men in baseball who own ball clubs. We will say that an individual can hardly make it any more unless he is wealthy. That is how it has grown. I would say the biggest thing in baseball at the present time now, and with the money that is coming in, and so forth, and with the annuity fund for the players, you can't allow the commissioner to just take everything sitting there, and take everything insofar as money is concerned, but I think he should have full jurisdiction over the player and player's habits, and the way the umpires and ball clubs should conduct their business in the daytime and right on up tight up here.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel. We appreciate your presence here.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Mantle, do you have any observations with reference to the applicability of the antitrust laws to baseball?

Mr. Mantle: My views are about the same as Casey's (laughter).

Casey Stengel Testimony : July 8, 1958 Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing


Now, that boys and girls is how to talk to a politician.

Dennis Byrne Reveals - Personal PAC Commands the Good Ship Quinn

doublewide at 3:26 AM November 15, 2011
Byrne this boat has sailed long ago give it up! from Chicago Tribune Comments

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago Newsman. Ballyhooed by the Progressives who are so glad that they are no longer around, Chicago Newsmen reported and presented an independent voice free of political tentacles. Chicago Newsmen like Dennis Byrne, the late, great Ray Coffey, Mike Royko, Steve Neal, Basil Talbott, John McHugh, Herman Kogan, S.E. Kiser Robert Herguth,and Nick Von Hoffman are praised but never emulated by the contemporary species of ink-slinger.

The narrative is controlled. The narrative is pre-determined and pre-set for type. . .or font.

Chicago's supine media, to quote the late Tom Roeser, is in-the-tank for Progressive everything. Nowhere is that more in evidence than with the editorial boards of the two extant Chicago Dailies and the iconic "Ain't They Great" columnists.

The narrative is controlled. The story line of reports are edited to fit the Procrustean Progressive racks and the Opinion if Progressive agenda driven.

Gainful Employment for Protected Species - Forrest Claypool, Terry Cosgrove, Sheila Simon, & etc.

Gay Marriage is a must

Police Torture, though there has not been one conviction in the three decades of journalistic partnership with G. Flint Taylor's Peoples Law Office, is doctrine.

Redistribution of Wealth via Ralphie Martire's Pie-Charts is legislation

Public Schools are a howling success and need more money -For the Children!

Systemic Racism determines everything and anything from breakfast to black-on-back crime

Sexual Predators avoid meat on Friday, say the Memorare and conduct May Crownings

Sexual Preference is a Civil Right

Marriage is for White People - the stupid ones.

Bullying is a wholly owned subsidiary of LGBT industries

Abortion is cosmetic choice

Human Life begins and ends with the State.

Former Governor Pat Quinn turned to Planned Parenthood's Illinois Personal PAC President Terry Cosgrove when the Illinois Catholic Bishops yelled at Quinn and hurt his feelings for participating in Personal PAC's Awards Dinner.

Terry Cosgrove deftly gamed the media and took hold of the story, for the Governor who could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street. The Bishops it seems hurt the feelings of a person being awarded for her efforts to advance the Cause of Women killing babies.

Dennis Byrne revisited this Orwellian gambit today. The ever-ready Vox Abortus a coalition of Gay Rights and Abortion activists turned on the News Cycle hate - much longer than two minutes.

Byrne pointed out the secular issue:

Outfits like Personal PAC would prefer to fight this issue on purely secular grounds, insisting that people who have a moral compass butt out. So let's consider this controversy from a purely secular perspective.

In that light, Quinn provides a lesson in Illinois' pay-to-play politics. He owes Personal PAC large. The group gave more than $400,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to Quinn's campaign. It ran its own TV ad campaign at a critical time. Terry Cosgrove, head of Personal PAC, was appointed to a $46,960-a-year seat on the state's Human Rights Commission.

The bishops' criticism targets Quinn's betrayal of his faith. My criticism is that Personal PAC is not just your average political action committee. It represents the most extreme political views about questions of life, and it's every bit as extreme as it accuses the Catholic Church of being.

Personal PAC opposes common sense regulations that would allow parents to be notified if their child is set for an abortion. Not only do Americans strongly support such parental notification, but according to a Gallup poll that was updated Nov. 11, 71 percent favor laws requiring parental consent for juveniles, education about possible risks of an abortion (87 percent), a 24-hour waiting period (69 percent), a ban on partial-birth abortions in the last six months of pregnancy (64 percent) and that patients be shown a pre-abortion ultrasound. Answers are similar for both men and women. Pro-choicers of Personal PAC's stripe oppose every one of them, arguing they cramp the "right to choose."

Personal PAC's position can be summed up by its support of proposed state legislation called the Reproductive Health and Access Act. It would grant an absolute right for any elective abortion before viability . It also would grant the right to an abortion at any time during pregnancy when it's "necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman."

Who's To Say - the Progressive Mantra - works everyday!

Pat Quinn got elected Governor by promising the moon and stars to members of the Skilled Trades and Industrial unions. Absent from Quinn-A-Rama's were the XXXL Purple T-Shirts of SEIU. Quinn was a working guy. Quinn delivered for the public service unions and Pipe-fitters, Carpenters, Electricians, Operating Engineers, Millwrights, Iron Workers, Teamsters, and Machinists are getting laid off by the cohort. Abortion, Gay Marriage, Cop Torture, and State Welfare are doing just fine thank you.

In fact, the compelling narrative has shifted from Quinn to Speaker Madigan for the next few weeks.

All the while, a real Chicago Newsman, Dennis Byrne stays on the story of Personal PAC's ( Terry Cosgrove et al) control of the Goodship Paddy Quinn.








Dennis Byrne

1998-Present: Freelance writer and consultant
• Writing under my own byline and ghostwriting.
• Appearing weekly as Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist (2000 to present) and regular contributor to RealClearPolitics.com, Human Events, PoliticalMavens and other publications
• Chicago Sun-Times freelance op-ed columnist appearing twice weekly (1998 to 2000).
• Commercial writing of many kinds for corporate, governmental and other clients.
• Consulting on public affairs matters and public relations.

1986-1998: Chicago Sun-Times
• Columnist: Appearing up to four times weekly in Commentary section; writing on public policy, political, economic, cultural and other topics of my choosing.
• Editorial Board Member: Responsible for setting newspaper’s editorial policy, writing editorials, endorsing political candidates and interviewing government office holders, corporate executives, civic and community leaders, and a multitude of others.


1984-1986: Director of Public Relations, Specialty Chemicals Division, AlliedSignal, Inc., Des Plaines, IL
• Responsible for public relations for this $1-billion regional headquarters of a Fortune 50 company. Helped move the company’s corporate image toward one of a high-tech enterprise.
• Oversaw public relations for its dozen operating divisions, from developers of petroleum processes to the commercialization of reverse osmosis water purifiers.
• Writing and public relations for the AlliedSignal Corporate Research Center, interpreting complex scientific and engineering developments for mainstream media.

1978-1984: Chicago Sun-Times
• Science and Technology Writer: 1981-1984
• Transportation Writer: 1978-1981
• Special Projects Writer, heading up political polling, computer analysis of public issues and other projects.

1970-1978: Chicago Daily News
• Assistant Financial Editor: 1975-1976
• Urban Affairs Reporter: 1971-1974; 1976-1978
• General Assignment Reporter: 1970-1971


1967-1970: United States Navy
• Assistant Supply Officer, U.S. Naval Air Reserve Station, Olathe, Kansas: 1969-1970.
• Disbursing Officer and Assistant Supply Officer, USS Jonas Ingram (DD-938), homeported in Mayport, Florida: 1967-1969.
• Student, U.S. Navy Supply Corps School, Athens, Georgia, 1997.
• Officer Candidate, Navy Officer Candidate School, Newport, Rhode Island, 1997.

1965-1966: Chicago Daily News
• General Assignment Reporter

1962: DePere Journal-Democrat, De Pere, Wisconsin
• Summer Editorial Intern

.
Education
• Post Graduate Russell Sage Fellow in Social Science Writing, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 1964-1965
• M.S. Urban Affairs, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1963-1964
• B.A. Journalism, Marquette University, 1959-1963


Recognitions
• Nominated for Pulitzer Prize by the Chicago Sun-Times for column writing, 1998.
• Nominated for Pulitzer Prize by the Chicago Sun-Times for investigative series on police underreporting of rape cases, 1982.
• Nominated for Pulitzer Prize by Chicago Daily News, for investigative series on shoddy home construction, 1973
• Peter Lisagor Award, presented by the Chicago Headline Club, for editorial writing, 1991, 1993.
• UPI, third Place Award for Spot News reporting in Illinois, for mass transit funding crisis, 1981.
• Chicago Newspaper Guild Stick-O-Type Award for editorial writing, 1988.
• Chicago Newspaper Guild Stick-O-Type Ward for analytical reporting on the crash of American Airlines DC-10 in Chicago, 1979.

Real Heroes - Jim Corbett and Silver Star Recipient Jack Gallapo

Silver Star Marine Jack Gallapo(white shirt) and fellow Korea Marine Jim Corbett in Leo Orange.

There is a Man Lair in my neighborhood. It is a private property not far from my Morgan Park Home. In this real estate opportunity, everyday, there meets a congress of extraordinary men.

They are a parliament of retired cops, firefighters and venture capitalists. Each morning between 7 AM and 9 AM these men meet for coffee and beefy bonhomie.

It was my honor to join them recently, in spite of my being as yellow as a duck's foot.

Two of these worthies are retired Chicago Firefighters and Korean War Marines - Retired CFD heroes James Corbett and Jack Gallapo. Jack Gallapo is in the hospital,at the moment.

In 1950, Jack Gallapo was a kid in Korea. His exploits as Marine can be read by clicking my post title.

Here is a story from his friend and fellow Marine and Chicago fireman James Corbett.

" His outfit was overrun by the Reds. Jack was wounded several times and brought to an aid station during the fighting retreat known as the Chosin Reservoir. The Chinese over ran the hospital and killed all of the doctors and medics in the tent where Jack was being operated on. The medics and doctors fell over his already shot-up body on the stretcher. The Reds took off his boots. It was fifty below zero. Jack was wounded and left for dead with dead men covering him and his boots were stolen by the Reds. He was badly frost bitten. Ironically, had Gallapo been evacuated earlier when a helicopter took off with two other wounded Marines, He would have died. The chopper was shot down. The Marines retook the hospital tent where Jack was freezing and he was saved. Shot up, frost-bitten but saved."

Years later Jack Gallapo helped save or recover victims of Our Lady of Angels fire.

The New York Times this morning wanted America to know that the kids from Occupy Wall Street are our new Progressive Leaders and Heroes.

The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days, will have to expand in several strategic ways. Activists are needed among shareholders, consumers and students to hold corporations and politicians to account. Shareholders, for example, should pressure companies to get out of politics. Consumers should take their money and purchasing power away from companies that confuse business and political power. The whole range of other actions — shareholder and consumer activism, policy formulation, and running of candidates — will not happen in the park.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

I'll take my cue from the men who have coffee in the Morgan Park Man Lair, thanks so much for the suggestion, there Jeff.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-new-progressive-movement.html?_r=1

The Media - It's Systemic, Institutional Corruption, A Culture of Scandal -Heavens No, Gertrude, It's Jerks, Crooks and the Odd Pervert!

Systemic refers to something that is spread throughout, system-wide, affecting a group or system such as a body, economy, market or society as a whole.

Had the flu bug this weekend. I never seem to be able to coordinate a malady to manifest itself on a workday. Actually, I believe it is a subconscious effort to avoid cleaning the garage and prepping the snow blower for the gusts and dunes of snow to come. Whatever, I was confined to my back, sweats and blankee.

The surfing of channels occupied my time between bouts of delirious sleep and make-out sessions with the porcelain bigmouth.

I learned from our various news outlets that we are doomed! Doomed I tells you!

You name a problem and systemic is the answer - Or is it?

Hegelians apply Teutonic Certainty with science and make the case for eugenics, class warfare, redistribution of wealth, and public education. In last twenty years the term Systemic has emerged.

Systemic bias, the inherent tendency of a process to favor particular outcomes
Systemic (amateur extrasolar planet search project), a research project to locate extrasolar planets using distributed computing
Systemic linguistics, an approach to linguistics that considers language as a system
Systemic functional grammar, also called systemic functional linguistics, a model of grammar that considers language as a system
Systemic risk, the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or market, as opposed to risk associated with any one entity
Systemic shock, a shock to any system strong enough to drive it out of equilibrium, can refer to a change in many fields
Systemic therapy, a school of psychology dealing with the interactions of groups and their interactional patterns and dynamics
Systems psychology, also called systemic psychology, a branch of applied psychology based on systems theory and thinking

Cadillac Commie lawyers have looted the City of Chicago and other local Illinois governments suing cops for alleged torture abuses, none have come to light. Perjury yes, but torture no. Systemic Torture and Racism. Nuff Said. Everyone believes it, now.

SNAP has bankrupted Catholic Dioceses tagging the Culture of Corruption and Patriarchy in the Institutional Catholic Church - as opposed to punishing NAMBLA poster boys in stiff collars. It's a Systemic Problem! No, it's the acceptance of weirdos universal - Who's to Say? God Made Me This Way!

Odd that the priests grabbing little boys were once universally regarded by National Catholic Reporter type Catholics as paragons of feelings and sensitivity.

I had the flu - a topical disease. It was not a systemic mallady - I would breathe, walk, employ my opposable thumb, recognize my children as they tossed armfuls of laundry over me. I got over it and feel ready to go one round with a blind ten year old girl. Bring it!

Penn State - A Culture of Corruption

The Economy - A Culture of Corruption

Politics - A Culture of Corruption

Worship - A Culture of Corruption

The Grammys - A Culture of Systemic Racism - ask Kanye

Law Enforcement - A Culture of Racism and Class Warfare

Detroit v. Chicago Bears - A Culture of Whup Ass



I turned from the Bears to Steve Croft's 60 Minutes piece on The culture of Soft Corruption in Congress.

Nancy 'God Bless Them!' Pelosi and John "Weepy" Boehner offered bi-partisan object lessons in Honest Graft - as old as Tammany Hall's George Washington Plunkett.

Systemic is a word used by tweedy goofs and Marxist ambulance chasers to make money off of the Rubes and get on 60 Minutes.

The Media uses Systemic and other faux-scientific jargon to baffle us boobs with bohemian bullshit and to make the less energetic I.Q.s less inclined to do anything - "They're All Crooks!" "The System's Rigged!" " I am the 99% and I am Helpless! Give Me Something!"

I took Imodium, Canfield's ginger ale, and a huge heaping helping of sleep. I got leaped out of the rack at 3:15 AM, said my prayers, made the bed, tossed in a load of laundry, took out the trash, got some coffee, had a smoke, and watched the news.

I'm Hell when I'm Well and I Ain't Never Been Sick! Jump Back, Loretta!

Nothing is systemic! Everything ( excepting Glio Blastoma brain tumors, most head wounds and self-inflicted leaps off of most Chicago River bridges) can be fixed, including a 24 hour bug

How you feeling?

Planned Parenthood's President - Drown The Baby in the Bath Water Before You Toss It Out!

(National Catholic Reporter) President Obama met with New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan without fanfare Nov. 8, the White House has confirmed.


“More Children for the Fit. Less for the Unfit.. . .Hebrews, Slavs, Catholics, and Negroes.” Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood founder

President Obama met quietly and sans his usual fanfare with Archbishop Timothy Dolan the Head of the now robust U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops on November 8th.

President Obama is the Eugenics/Science Pope of the American Progressive Church. Archbishop Dolan is a Catholic Bishop.

Eugenics is a turn-of-the-last century neologism coined by Charlie Darwin's cousin Francis Galton fusing the Greek terms for 'Good' and 'Birth' - Eugenics ( pronounced FEW- Genics in classical Greek ironically enough).

Eugenics became all the rage. Only one writer- a Catholic convert from Unitarianism and Anglicanism - G.K. Chesterton wrote against Eugenics.

Eugenics is the making of an elite from an elite, by an elite. Margaret Sanger identified those who were not to be considered elite by race, and by perceived weaknesses of body, intellect and soul.

G. K. Chesterton has been dismissed fro the canon of literature even by Vatican II hipsters. Chesterton and his pal Hilaire Belloc are dangerous Catholic intellectuals and very fine writers. They stood up to the likes of GB Shaw, Bertrand Russell and the pan-goofy H.G. Wells quite nicely and most amicably.

Here is a telling account of Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils -

Only one writer wrote a book against Eugenics. G.K. Chesterton. Eugenics and Other Evils may be his most prophetic book.
Eugenics led directly to the birth control movement. All the same players were involved, such as Margaret Sanger, who was a member of the American Eugenics Society and was the editor of the Birth Control Review. The primary philosophy was trumpeted on the cover of the Birth Control Review: “More Children for the Fit. Less for the Unfit.” She made it clear whom she considered unfit:. “Hebrews, Slavs, Catholics, and Negroes.” She set up her Birth Control clinics only in their neighborhoods. She openly advocated the idea that such people should apply for official permission to have babies “as immigrants have to apply for visas.”

Why don’t we hear of this connection between Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and Eugenics?

Two words: Adolf Hitler. He officially instituted Eugenics, leading an entire country in carrying out its principles, not only to breed what he believed to be a superior race but to eliminate everyone whom he considered to be inferior. Where did Hitler find early support for his Eugenic ideas? From Margaret Sanger and her circle. Eugenic Scientists from Nazi Germany wrote articles for Sanger’s Birth Control Review, and members of Sanger’s American Birth Control League visited Nazi Germany, sat in on sessions of the Supreme Eugenics Court, and returned with glowing reports of how the Sterilization Law was “weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.”

After World War II, when the world learned of the horrors of the Holocaust and the death camps, the term Eugenics was utterly discredited. Margaret Sanger was quick to distance herself from Eugenics and began to emphasize Birth Control as supposedly a feminist issue. We don’t hear about Eugenics at all any more.

But unfortunately, the philosophy behind Eugenics is with us still. Generally speaking, all of the original arguments in favor of Eugenics have become the same arguments in favor of birth control, abortion, euthanasia, and even cloning.

Chesterton understood this. But he understood it in 1910 (which is when he started writing this book, which was not published till 1922). As with so many other things, Chesterton saw exactly what we see. Only he saw it long before it happened.
Eugenics, like abortion, bases all its benefits on denying an entire class of humans their humanity. With eugenics it was the “unfit,” which usually meant the poor, the weak, or simply the ethnic-types who were just having too many children. With abortion, there is a perceived benefit to someone by eliminating the weakest and most defenseless of humans: the unborn. As Chesterton says with chilling accuracy: “They seek his life in order to take it away.”

G. K. Chesterton would be in awe of our incapable handling of the Science of Death crowd.

Planned Parenthood's President Obama has be-purpled himself in the mantle of science. He is at war with the Catholic Church, but wants to make nice with Archbishop Dolan before the votes get cast. However, his trail of leadership much less complicity in the Science
is only followed by Progressives or really naive people of faith. Here is a dandy example of Obama at War -

In late September, HHS ended funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help victims of trafficking, or modern-day slavery. The church group had overseen nationwide services to victims since 2006 but was denied a new grant in favor of three other groups.The bishops organization, in keeping with the church’s teachings, had refused to refer trafficking victims for contraceptives or abortion. HHS officials have said they made a policy decision to award the grants to agencies that would refer women for those services.

In recent letters to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, more than 30 Republican lawmakers said the decision was unfair to the Catholic group and might violate federal laws banning discrimination based on religion. Two of the letters are seeking internal HHS documents relating to the decision and one, sent Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), said his investigative committee may issue subpoenas if HHS doesn’t comply.

“We’re talking about a Catholic group with a superior track record that was pushed aside to promote the abortion agenda,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (N.J.), who wrote the 2000 law that triggered the U.S. government’s war on human trafficking.

HHS officials said Friday that they will respond to the letters from Congress but not through the media. Richard Sorian, the agency’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said HHS is “fully confident that the organizations best suited to provide comprehensive case management to victims of trafficking were awarded the grants for these services.”

“The health and ability of these victims to retake control over their own lives is our sole concern in awarding these grants,” he said. HHS officials have previously denied any anti-Catholic bias and said that since the mid-1990s, Catholic groups have received at least $800 million in HHS funding to provide social services, including $348 million to the bishops conference.

The dispute is one of several between the Obama administration and some Catholic groups over policy issues, including a proposed HHS mandate that private insurers provide women with contraceptives for free.

Senior HHS officials awarded the new grants to the bishops’ competitors despite a recommendation from career staffers that the Catholic group be funded based on scores by an independent review board, according to federal officials and internal department documents.

That prompted a protest from some HHS staffers, who said that the process was unfair and politicized, people familiar with the process have said.

The $4.5 million in funding was awarded to three nonprofit groups: Heartland Human Care Services, Tapestri and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

The applications of Tapestri and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants had been scored significantly below the Catholic bishops’ application by the review panel, the sources said.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops conference, said Friday that she welcomed the letters from Congress. “The more we look at this, the more concerned we are about it,” she said. “It appears the grant process was manipulated.”

One letter to Sebelius, by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and signed by 24 other senators, made a similar point. “The integrity and lawful administration of our federal grant process — particularly with respect to equal treatment of religious institutions — must not be compromised,” it said.

Planned Parenthood's President not only demands to toss out the dead babies, but drown them in bath water for openers.

I am sure that President Obama learned not to lecture Archbishop Dolan on life, health or how Catholics should vote . . .but probably not. President Obama is convinced that he knows everything.

Medill's Chicago Tribune Uses Penn State to Pile on Catholics

"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing." Bishop Fulton J. Sheen


We do not really need a religion that is right where we are right. What we need is a religion that is right where we are wrong. G.K. Chesterton

Eric Zorn hates Catholics like a school-yard sneak hates getting caught -"We just playing. It was goofing around. What about them?"

It is a sign of one's Progressive street-cred to vilify a Catholic's beliefs, Catholic leadership, Catholic history, and above all Catholic Institutional failings, while protesting in a soft, silky, humming NPR tone that 'well its is all true. Is it not?'

Eric Zorn cuts to the core of the problem at Penn State by touting a Nast-like cartoon from the in-house paper hanger Stantis -Scott Stantis. I do not believe that there is a Roman Catholic bishop on the Board of Directors at Penn State. While Joe P is a practicing Catholic . . .that must be it! Scott Stantis, who couldn't carry Jack Higgins' jockstrap, evidently needs to draw that connection for the brie-eaters and they love it! Eric Zorn squeals -Stantis Brings It!

Random Bishops! Dude!

Scott Stantis is widely ignored (I was unaware of his body of work) and requires a pedestal. Eric Zorn (EZ), The Water Boy, a columnist and Progressive mouthpiece has a good sized readership. I read him for laughs.

The above cartoon deflects the problem at Penn State, a public school, onto the American Catholic Strawmen - Bishops. Bishops are the patriarchal, liver spotted, cassock-ed, mitre'd, people who are blamed for the NAMBLA* crises that has yet to be seriously addressed.

N.B. Odd. . .NAMBLA is cool with Progressives. Obama appointed a NAMBLA devotee to Arne Duncan's Dept. of Education.

The bishops deserve criticism and must wear the jacket for the priest abuse scandals for many more years.

It is easy to hate the Catholic Church. It is easy to hate. It is very hard work to be merely a good guy. It requires that we do things that we might not find easy to do, like teaching your children that respecting the differences found in some people does not require that you ignore the rules of Nature and moral truth. There have been homosexuals on or planet, since Sodom, Sparta, Boetia, and Christopher Street. The only homosexuals who had children were those on the 'down-low' like Oscar Wilde. Homosexuals married women. Oscar and Lord Alfred Douglas had no children. Impulse and desire do not make for normalcy.

Likewise, it is very difficult to teach my daughters as a widow-man, that the great gift of sex belongs only in the sacrament, because marriage between a man and woman is as much as protective womb as the one possessed by my two girls - young women. They have witnessed the mountain of problems a single parent has in trying to bring children up alone. Children need a mother and a father. My son learned early in life that gentleness and respect for a woman is the greatest body cologne in the world and it is far more attractive to a woman than a gallon of AXE.

The hardest thing to try and teach them is the fact that while we posses our bodies, they are not ours to keep. We can not choose to do what we want and when we want - we can not liberate ourselves when mood strikes. We can, but that is not different than being like Barney the Golden Lab who must dry-hump me on sight. Who's to say this is not Love?

Joseph Medill lovingly hated Catholics and the Chicago Tribune has kept that impulse alive and change.

Abortion and Gay Marriage are two huge Progressive agendas - they must be preserved and instituted. The Catholic Church is the only institution that stands in its way.

President Obama is making war on Catholic hospitals that do not push abortion and colleges that do not celebrate the Rainbow flag. Catholic politicians are okay with that.

Catholic Bishops are finally beginning to show some backbone. Archbishop Dolan of New York is the new Dagger John Hughes - who fought off anti-Catholic bigots through the mid 19th Century. Cardinal George has predicted that he will die in his bed, his successor in prison and that bishop's successor will be martyred for the Faith.

Eric Zorn and the third-rate Scott Stantis are doing all that they can do help make that come true. I hope that our next Cardinal is made of the stuff of martyrs. I like martyrs who give as well as get. I'd love to see someone with the youth and intelligence of Archbishop J.P. Sartain, formerly of Joliet and now Archbishop of Seattle step into Cardinal George's moccasins.

Catholics understand Progressives. We know that the wet-stuff running down the back of our legs is not the Showers of May.


*

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a pedophile and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors, and for the release of all men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve coercion.Some reports state that the group no longer has regular national meetings, and that as of the late 1990s to avoid local police infiltration, the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters. An undercover detective around 1995 discovered that there were 1,100 people on the rolls. As of 2005 a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco, and that it held an annual gathering in New York City and monthly meetings around the country.
NAMBLA has been defended by poet and rights advocate Allen Ginsberg[6][7] and gay rights activist Harry Hay.

Francis Rupert Finch, CFC December 16, 1999 -Whose Womb Came This Ice? - Veterans and Above All Our Elderly

Brother F.R. Finch in 1948 at Leo High School.

Job 38:29

Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?

Last Friday, as is our custom, Leo High School honored our Veterans of America's Wars. Scores of heroes who survived Tarawa, The Bulge, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sahn and Pleiku, Desert Storms I-II, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like most of us who enjoy our way of life, I missed every one of those wars and honor those who serve . . .I like to think that I do. I was lucky. I had a high enough draft lottery number and never was called up at the end of Vietnam.

Note the predominance of the first person singular pronoun in the immediate above? Five "Is" in three short sentences. The Veterans never seem to use that. Service must have erased the use of "I" from their vocabulary. We, They, Him and She dominates their declamations.

Men from the Classes of 50, 51, 52, 61, 65, 66, 67, and 68 came home from Korea Vietnam with gray and even white highlights and some of them without limbs, or tiny steel souvenirs from rockets, grenades or mortar rounds that found a home within their young muscles, stood like heroes.

Men from the classes of 40, 43, 44, 45, 46 47, who served in WWII, Korea and, a very few, both Wars occupied cold folding chairs or leaned on the back of them, but stiffed with pride and remembrance when taps was sounded by Vietnam Veteran Larry Richards.

This week I talked with freshman Raheem, a man-mountain of a child -6'3" and every bit of three hundred pounds, who will be a Division I football prospect in three years about his school. Raheem asked me who was the greatest Leo Man of All Time.

Bob Foster, Jimmy Arenberg, Bill Koloseicke, Bob Hanlon, Ed Ryan, Don Flynn, Chico Driscoll, Doc Driscoll, Bro Farrrell, General Gerrity, Bishop John Gorman, Father Finno, Father Tom Mescall, Tony Parker, Jack Fitzgerald, Tom O'Malley, Dr. Hartnett, Frank Considine . . . flooded through my consciousness.

To me, the greatest Leo Man was Brother Francis Rupert Finch. Brother Finch was a short, muscular, scholarly, and saintly man. He taught Latin, Physics, Chemistry, and Theology, coached the Lightweight ( 5'8" & under) basketball team to the National Championship, served Leo as the athletic director and died while teaching big tough smart kids like Harold Blackman, Jelani Clay, Mario Bullock and Kenny Philpot.

Brother Finch embodied the soul of Leo High School. The school is not as some might believe a Jock-ocracy; rather, it is an incubator for the human heart.

Bro Finch was an orphan raised by the Irish Christian Brothers in Tacoma Washington. From there Frank Finch too his degree and joined the Order at Iona, NY and was posted to Leo High School at the end of the 1930's, just when Leo was emerging as a great sports powerhouse and college preparatory standout.

Brother Finch radiated muscular piety. He was a tough man without a trace of the bully and absent of ego. His students learned from his quiet, courtly, and gentle voice mastery of numbers as the language of God - pure Math. It's applications mean nothing unless they lay a carpet before the throne of God.

He did not hit, nor did Brother Finch lash with irony.

On the basketball court, Brother Finch mixed it up while wearing his cassock and one time took an elbow from Bart Murphy '45 that shattered his lower jaw. Brother Finch completed the practice and then went to the doctor's office in Frank's Department Store east of the school and missed no classes, no practices. Brother Finch sat on the bench with his jaws wired shut and his play book in his hands. His boys knew what to do and what was expected of them. They won the upcoming game and went undefeated in 1944-45.

Decades later, after the Irish Christian Brothers withdrew from Leo High School, Brother Francis Rupert Finch, refused to abandon his Leo boys - they were African American now- a-days. Althrough the 1990's, it took Brother Finch more time to climb the stairs to the second floor to get to his Lab, than it did for him to drive the six miles from Brother Rice Monastery to 79th & Sangamon. Brother Finch was never late and only absent when he was hospitalized.

Brother Finch died as a faculty member of Leo High School. He was youthful in his old age, as he was gentle within his toughness. Brother Finch was Christ Resurrected and Triumphant. He was Our Lady's little boy wearing fingerless wool gloves in the Lab that always seemed too cold for him as he spooned Campbell's soups heated over his Bunsen burners.


Brother Finch was a veteran of God's many wars. His silver hair stayed with him like the frost on the flagpole behind Leo's War Memorial.

Francis Rupert Finch, CFC died December 16, 1999*, just before our new century. His spirit is Leo High School and the best that can be found in any man or woman.


*Brother Francis Finch, 87, Coach
December 19, 1999|By Virginia Groark, Tribune Staff Writer.

Brother Francis R. Finch was an award-winning high school basketball coach, leading Leo Catholic High School to two Catholic League basketball titles, two Fenwick lightweight basketball championships and two all-city trophies in the 1930s and '40s.

Despite his accomplishments, the Catholic League Coaches' Hall of Fame coach was "tremendously embarrassed" when the school named its gym after him, said school President Bob Foster."He was very, very modest," Foster said. "He just didn't want any publicity or anything. He was a very modest, a very humble man."

Brother Finch rarely missed a day of school, so Foster sensed something might be wrong when he failed to show up about three weeks ago. His instincts proved correct. Brother Finch, 87, died Thursday, Dec. 16, in Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn after a brief illness.

For Brother Finch, the most important thing was his students. For more than 60 years, he taught math and science and never missed an opportunity to encourage troubled students, according to those who knew him.

At Leo Catholic, where he taught intermittently for six decades--including his most recent stint beginning in 1982-- Brother Finch arrived at school by 7:15 a.m. every day, beating many of his younger colleagues to work.

"He was always on time, even in a snowstorm," Foster said. "He had a hip operation . . . and we thought he might be down . . . and may retire. But he didn't. He came back and he was stronger than ever."

Born in 1912, Brother Finch graduated from Briscoe Memorial in Kent, Wash., and joined the Congregation of Christian Brothers of Ireland, of which he was a member for 72 years.

Brother Finch taught at several other schools, including Vancouver College in Canada, Lewis University and St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Romeoville. But his closest ties were to Leo, Foster said.

Brother Finch also made a lasting impact as a teacher, according to school officials. Many of the school's alumni called him the "most brilliant teacher that they ever had," Foster said.

Though he was modest, Brother Finch's work did not go unrecognized. This year, the National Association of Religious Brothers chose him as its first honoree

for the Recognition of Brotherhood Award.

He was to receive the honor in January.

Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday at the Brother Rice High School Chapel, 10001 S. Pulaski Rd., with a prayer service at 7:30 p.m.

Mass will be said at 2 p.m. Monday at Queen of Martyrs Church, 103rd and Central Park.

In Auctor Vox Moriarty - Speech, Freedom and the Progressive Roach Whisperers

Reading American actor/composer/journalist and defender of the unborn, Michael Moriarty, is a treat. The Detroit born grandson of a Chicago Back-of the-Yards baseball great George Moriarty is a cultural repository. Michael Moriarty is most remembered for his brilliant performances on stage, screen and television. This well-read and discerning man now lives in Canada, but keeps attentive fingers on the pulse of America and finds Old Sam slipping.

Uncle Sam took ill when he allowed the lawful murder of children rouged and mascaraed in the dodge of Womens Rights. If a nation can kop plea for the death of children, it can and will swallow and follow anything.

Michael Moriarty writes for Big Hollwood, Stage Right and has graced the pages of Chicago Daily Observer. Trained by the Jesuits, Mr. Moriarty's writing is thick with cultural, spiritual, philosophic and political references linked by a graceful tone of voice that is reminicent of James Joyce's best short stories ( Ivy Day in the Committeeroom, Araby, and Eveline) or the poetic tropes and thunderous tones of Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos. Moriarty alludes to Brecht and parallels Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff in an essay about Sarah Palin. Moriarty is open and honest about his all too human weaknesses and vanities and deftly sweetens his vinegar with crystals of the sugar of humanity among the Humanities.

Michael Moriarty watched the GOP Michigan debates in Canada last night, while I was enjoying a dinner on Taylor Street with my three beautiful children and an exquisite woman who allows herself to be seen in public with me. While we tucked away at veal marsala, penne alla vodka, pork chops Genovese, salmon Putanesca and manicotti alfredo, Michael Moriarty watched the beleagured Herman Cain stand like a man against the baseless charges of crimes against women that charged onto the floors of American debate on the command of Progressive Roach Whisperers. Progressive journalists, editors and handsomely paid political operatives like Chicago's David Axelrod call the roaches to work. The roaches get TV face time, interviews and perhaps another place of employment to bring wrongful termination and sexual harassment suits to court.

The Roach Whisperers can also be Marxist lawyers who undermine any and all confidence in the American Justice System - adepts at freeing career criminals and bringing suit against police officers, police departments, cities and counties. They whisper in the ears of agenda driven roach-like editors and columnists.

It seems that perhaps Americans are growing sick of the Roach Whisperers. Recently, at Dunkin Donuts on Western Ave., I had occassion to discuss the charges against Herman Cain with a Chicago Police Officer and he responded, " I don't care if they say he lit a box of kittens on fire, I still will vote for him."

The Progressive Roach Whisperers have owned the political narrative from the time that some insect suggested that George Herbert Walker Bush abandoned the crew of his WWII torpedo bomber. I remember the rage of my Pacific veteran father when that calumny was spewed from the Dukakis Campaign operatives. I voted for Snoopy Mike and I know that my life-long Democrat father did not.

Things have gotten even uglier as the new millenium rolled out. The Roach Whisperers own the media, because real journalists like Ray Coffey, Dennis Byrne, Nick Von Hoffman Mike Royko, Jack Mabley and others retired or have gone home to Christ, Moses and Allah.

Here is a great read from Michael Moriarty -

Yes, we in America also have the freedom to lie and to maliciously exaggerate. However, the court of public opinion in American democracy will decide whether or not accusations are justified or merely the product of greedy but increasingly frightened political ambitions.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the first-such target of left-wing, railroading, character-assassinating, Beltway connivances. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.


In fact, American freedom of speech may have handed our next President, Herman Cain, the American liberty which Marxist ideologues will forever be choking on. They, the American progressive useful idiots, have patronized their own dwindling constituency, “liberated” them into the Occupy Wall Street self-indulgences, leaving these spoiled, perennial sophomores doing real sexual damage to one another.

It’s Woodstock Redux without the star-studded performances.

The image I see is an orgy of lemmings, willing victims traipsing behind their Pied Piper, President Obama, right off the cliff of common sense. Whether it is economic common sense or sexual common sense, the American left prove themselves the “useful idiots” of a very alive Communist New World Order.

The Journolists had the light shined on them and scurried under the appliances, last year, but they still collect paychecks. They, MSNBC and the Soros funded Daily KOS, Media Matters and the Hollywood Squares of Huffington Post are the Roach Whisperers.

Americans, thanks be to God, know how to navigate a cow pasture. Americans have guides like Michael Moriarty to mark those execremental fields.

Click my post title for the powerful voice of Michael Moriarty.

Thanks, Pal!

Bill Daley - "The Organ Transplant That Didn't Take" and Childe Barry's Pilgrimage to the Exit in 2012

All the world is a . . . an operating theatre, with throngs of loudmouth goofs Ala Chris Matthews in the cheap seats with Jumbo Extra-butter tub and Movie-sized Junior Mints boxes in his milky mitts, Hey, Look Up Here! Jack Kennedy lived with the pain; it's in my new book that no one is buying . . . besides GE!!

In this theatre of operation, the patient Bill Daley learns that he has been surgically implanted in the cavity that is President Obama, but the adjunct U of C staffer rejected the heart. Bill Daley has been partially removed.

Bill Daley was incrementally exited from this Obama Care arena, yesterday; all that remains of the talented Mr. Daley within the impatient and petulant President is the husk.

So say, the Obama Team Spin Surgeons making nice of an insulting situation. Like they told the American People all through 2009 and most of 2010, " Hey, get over it! We Won!"

Eleanor Clift who went from being fourth chair on the McLaughlin Group to seventh chair for MSNBC spins the surgery dervishly -

. . .with President Obama's approval rating stuck in the low 40s, and nothing seeming to move the numbers, the shift to the center that Daley symbolized when he was brought into the White House in January was scrapped for a populist bid to reclaim the Democratic base. The result: Daley was not happy.

According to a veteran lobbyist, word got back to the White House that the chief of staff was up on Capitol Hill distancing himself from the president, saying, “They're not listening to me.” That's a cardinal sin for a White House adviser, and in a city where the buildings have ears, it's not one that stays hidden for long.

Daley's management skills also came under fire. “He goes dark—you need an answer, and by the time he gets back to you, it's too late,” says a former colleague familiar with his style after working with him in the private sector. “And that's not good for the manager of a bunch of burning pots.”

Since he and Obama never had an intimate bond, channels were built around Daley. It wasn't personal; that's how the world works. But Daley didn't like it, and last month he vented in an interview with Politico columnist Roger Simon. His remarks sprinkled with expletives, Daley managed to diss his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, who succeeded Daley's brother as mayor of Chicago; anger Democrats on Capitol Hill by lumping them in as equal obstacles to Republicans; and denigrate President Obama's decision making as finding that middle ground between “being really s--tty policy or really s--tty politics.”

Daley has his defenders, and among them is Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, who worked with him when Daley ran Al Gore's 2000 campaign. “He had his views and I had mine, but he was open-minded and collegial,” he says. “Some of the descriptions I'm reading about him I don't recognize.”

Most of Daley's bad reviews emanate from Capitol Hill. Shrum says the White House chief of staff should never be the congressional liaison, and given the obstinate nature of the current GOP opposition, “You could have a combination of Kenny O'Donnell, Jim Baker, and Leon Panetta the last few months and events would not have been different.” (These legendary chiefs of staff served Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton, respectively.)

Daley's partial demotion was cheered by Senate Democrats who have the most to gain with Rouse, a former Senate aide, serving as their new sounding board. “Is this welcome on Capitol Hill? The answer is yes,” a Senate aide said. “Daley just didn't get the place.”

In contrast to the blunt-spoken Daley and his sometimes overbearing ways, Rouse is the quintessential anonymous man, an old-school staffer who in his DNA never wants the story to be about him. “When his name is in the paper, he cringes,” says a Hill veteran.

With 30 years of experience on the Hill and as former Senate leader Tom Daschle's chief of staff, Rouse had such stature in Congress that he was known as the 101st senator. “Pete combines operational and political skill—he is the indispensable man,” says the Hill source. “Daley was always just passing through.”

Rouse doesn't want to be chief of staff, and apparently doesn't mind that Daley retains the title while handing off much of the work. Daley will function more as a senior minister to the opposition and conservative Democrats, and to business leaders.

Asked if the diminished duties are humiliating for Daley, a proud and accomplished man, a longtime Democratic consultant said that is true in the world of Washington and cable television, but in real life it's just another bump in the road: “Think of it as an organ transplant that never really took.”

Foreign tissue is the issue. Obama was never a Chicago, Cook County, or Illinois Democratic Party guy, despite the trickles of treacle from pampered printsmen like Jonathan Alter and other lesser-lights.

Obama was always the Childe Harold invited to dance in the Catholic League Jocks basement party. " Hey, Eddie, don't beat the $hit out of him. Burke says he's Okay. Didn't go to Carmel or D ( Democratic incubator Catholic High Schools Mount Carmel and De La Salle Institute), but Hynesy says he's cool."

He,Childe Barry, like the self-absorbed Byronic Hero he pretends to be, proclaims to close-knit ethnic and black political athletes" I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, - Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud In worship of an echo; in the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued."

"Jesus! #$%^, how many sneaky-pete's ( Beer mixed with cheap red wine) did you give him Madigan? #$%^ Mike, he's talking crazy!"

To which the multi-letter'd Varsity hero deign'd, " #$%^ No, he was drinking Faygo's only. I got an idea! Billy! Hey Daley! Get your nose out of that Mickey's Big Mouth and your large ass over here for a second! You too Richie. Listen up. You and Richie and me andEmil and Beavers, and Tommy and Eddie and the guys, let's make him Erkle here a State Senator and then kick him upstairs, could do us some good. The blue hairs will love him and so will the skirts. Richie grab three out of the tub! Not the ones on top! Dig Deeper, Mumbles. Jesus, Bill, slap him will you?The bottom ones! The cold ones, A$$hole!."

Thus, Childe Barry stood AMONG THEM, BUT NOT OF THEM!

There by hangs this tale and Obama's tail in 2012. Had he stood of them Obama may have learned something.

Childe Barry know everything and therefore nothing. It's a Hegelian thing and they don't teach Hegel in Catholic high schools, except to make fun of it.

Obama Lost Illinois on November 8th 2011 - Bill Daley Won't You Please Go Home

Wow! Four Groupon Tickets good for 2.5% off any Billy Corgan Concert in the next week! I am speechless, Mr President . . .but not stupid . . .or forgetful . . .or,

How to energize the base - Obama just launched( incrementally of course) one of the men who made him - White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Cankles Joan Walsh of Salon has gotta be happy. For now.

The baldest Daley brother is one of those busiest of streets where moss don't grow so good.

In 1995, young ambitious community activist, attorney and Progressive plunger Barack H. Obama would have killed a Navy Seal Team to get close to Bill Daley.

President Obama was built by many hands, Bill Ayers and Bill Daley. The Bill Ayers part works with the lefty academic, bohemian journalist crowd and the Bill Daley part works. I have met Bill Daley on a few occasions and no doubt left the banker/political wiz/glad-hander unaware that we two carbon foot-prints occupy the same two centuries. He is cordial and every says that he is smart. Could be. He knows whom to reach out to when work needs to get done and usually rings the doorbell with his elbows.

President Obama arrives everywhere empty handed and yet expectant. He is the Yin and Yang that is the National Democratic Party - Goofs and Sneaks who want to be loved and respected. The Obama leadership is comprised of Lab School Brat Val Jarrett and old political hack Dave Axelrod as well as Dave Plouffe as in fluff. Daley had the relationships, the trust, and most of the cash.

As the press chews on the story today, the White House will no doubt take exception to characterizations of the change in roles as a staff shake-up, and will attempt to minimize the perception of tension and confusion within the president’s inner circle.

Several disgruntled Democratic donors who have attended events with Daley say they have complained to him about the way major political decisions are pre-cooked in advance with Plouffe, and then announced as fait accompli to senior staff, who subsequently complain about the chain of command to these outsiders.

Daley has acknowledged in these meetings that the president still relies on his closest aides -- Plouffe, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod (now in Chicago) -- more heavily.

Yesterday, about two weeks after Bill Daley treated jowly Roger Simon to an interview that percolated the panties of Progressives, because Daley seemed dismissive of goofs and sneaks, President Obama took some starch out of Bill Daley's stride.

Today, it is the day to note that Obama lost the State of Illinois in 2012.

Obama can count on Twitter and Social Networks to Grassroots his Campaign. He can only count on that round about here. Bill Daley was the Infrastructure. The Infrastructure is shovel ready - for Hillary.

Illinois is a big State, but big don't vote - people vote; most people live and vote near Chicago. Bill Daley might not feel all that energetic about energizing Streets and San workers about to get laid off, skilled trades unions that are waking up to menace that is public service unions and face not only looming layoffs, but heavier tax burdens - black, Hispanic, white, Pacific Islander, Native Indian, Asian and Aboriginal folks here in Cook County and the blue collar Collar Counties.

Downstate? It is to laugh.

Do you think that Bill Daley will make his left ear wet and red from pressing a phone receiver to it - Hi, Bill Daley! Can Barack count on Local 007 Bond Agents this go around? No? Fair enough, So long Alex! Call ATT? Call Lawyers? Call Bankers? Call Ward Committeemen?

Naw. Watch some Me -TV and Chill, Bill Will!

Well, Obama said he did not mind the idea of being a one term President; now, he can prep for it.

Pay back is a dog lacking knackers.

Herman Cain is a Threat to the Womanish - David Brooks, Pat Quinn, & etc.

OMG! “That’s because we’re in the silly season,” I'll Hit You Back!

Definition of WOMANISH
1: associated with or characteristic of women rather than men
2: suggestive of a weak character : effeminate
— wom·an·ish·ly adverb
— wom·an·ish·ness noun

Herman Cain is obviously a threat to the womanish. Governor Pat Quinn is womanish. When he was called out for supporting the Illinois abortion industry's Personal PAC, last week. Governor Quinn went all womanish. Quinn answered the bishops by ducking behind the skirts of the Directors of Personal PAC, saying that giving an award to a rape victim is "a proper, Christian thing to do." The rape victim is a Director of Personal PAC.

A guy with a set on him would have said, " These are my friends and I stand with my friends."

Nope, Quinn turned to his Boss Cosgrove for advice, put a rape victim in front of him as a shield and deftly changed and controlled the narrative.

Male Politicians, these days, tend to be the most womanish of creatures. Unlike Sarah Palin, who has taken more blows to the kidneys and the short ribs than middleweight Craig McEwan last week, never once beefed about Charlie Rose, Katie Kouric, SNL, MSNBC.

Governor Palin, like the Veterans who attended the Leo Veterans Observances last Friday, hours before Peter Kid Chocolate Quillen turned Edinburgh's Craig McEwan into shepherds pie, has fallen seven times and gotten up eight. Craig McEwan kept coming at Quillen with nothing and the ref had to stop the fight.

Pat Quinn turned to his Boss Terry Cosgrove, a past master at bitch slapping and ducking for cover, for his narrative voice. Pat Quinn is womanish.

Herman Cain is a threat. He is not a politician and he is a sho' 'nuff male. Herman Cain worked all of his life, because that is what a man is supposed to do. He has been married to the same woman for two score and more years, because that is what a man is supposed to do.

Now, the national bitch slappers - Politico, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times and their conservative girl friends like David Brooks have trotted out a blond dowager to say that Herman Cain groped and grabbed and then drove her to her boyfriend during a job search.You can not find a more Womanish Male than David Brooks - he is the conservative gadfly who blessed Obama in 2008 because of the razor sharp crease in Obama's britches. How's that for gravitas, Girls? Que Hombre!

Here was David Brooks on Herman Cain when the harassment smears hit the Twitters -

Herman Cain-mania has captivated the political media for the last three to four weeks, but Brooks said it will inevitably fizzle.

“There was no beginning,” Brooks said. “He was a TV show that lasted for a little while. Let me stand up for elitist insiders — this is a job for professionals. Running for office is a job for professionals. Governing is a job for professionals. What Herman Cain did this — let’s leave aside the harassment, his handling of this was completely unprofessional. Every amateur candidate knows how to do a better job than this. You find the information, you lay it out clearly. And he couldn't’t do the ABCs of running for office. So, as far as I can tell, he is what he has been — an entertaining, very likable TV show, who will — when it actually comes time to cast votes — people are going to go with the only one candidate who seems plausible.”

As for his success to date, where he is either tied or winning in many polls, Brooks chalked that up to it being the early going in the nomination process.

“That’s because we’re in the silly season,” Brooks said. “Why not go for the guy who makes you feel good? It’s free and it’s easy.”

No sweet-heart, men do not take a stand to 'feel good.' Nothing, unless your character is that of a four year old Fairy Princess, is free or easy, at least not on the streets where men stride. Men put in a straight eight, take care of the wife and kids and meet their obligations. David Brooks scorns Herman Cain and that is more than good enough for me. I do not know if I will vote for Mr. Cain, but if he is on the ballot, I certainly will.

Herman Cain has yet to display any characteristics of a contemporary male politician.

Herman Cain can't do what Illinois Governor Pat Quinn can do 24/7/365. Herman Cain is as much of man as Sarah Palin, it seems to me. Sarah Palin took more hits than Craig McEwan in the square ring and like Craig McEwan argued with the ref to not stop the fight.



Herman Cain is a threat - not to women - but to the womanish. Herman Cain is too busy doing what he believes to be the right thing to look for a narrative voice, or to use a rape victim as a body shield.

The smart set believes that Herman Cain is finished. Women and men with the metaphorical pair on them, tend to disagree. Down is no where near out . . .unless one is womanish.

Governor Terry Cosgrove, Quinn Appointee and PAC Boss, Controls the Narrative and Cardinal George Takes Another Beating

Cardinal George and the Bishops of Illinois walked right into a PR buzz-saw again.

The men of the cloth were doing their job. For decades, politicians who have weaseled their way into office with mountains of cash and 'in-king' help from Advocacy Empires - Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ Rainbows, High Speed Rail Enthusiasts, Green Commandos and any other Progressive sanctioned cause. The Catholic Church hierarchy like Catholics themselves shrugged and gave a 'No Biggie' blind eye to the divorce from First Principles.

Within the narrative mantle of the Jesus Christ Superstar theology espoused by theological less-lights, the Progressive agenda grabbed armfuls of Quinns, Daleys, Quigleys and other Democratic elected officials who needed to step away from the Ward Image and get a {progressive blow-dried, gelled and spangled make over as Caring Christians.

The Caring Christians gave us our legislative purgatory - Abortion on demand and paid for, free condoms at schools, even Catholic schools that were converted as Charter Schools, the gate-way to Gay Marriage - The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, which immediately mad war on Catholic Charities.

Now, that the pig is out of the pen the Catholic Bishops of Illinois are trying to keep the Progressive Piggies from going feral.

Last week, The Illinois Bishops behind Cardinal George blasted Pat Quinn for appearing at an event sponsored by Terry Cosgrove's Personal PAC a political cash cow of Illinois Planned Parenthood. Terry Cosgrove blessed Alexi Giannoulias when the young Greek banking scion decided to test the political waters. That was my first introduction to Terry Cosgrove.

When Blagojevich's Lt. Governor stepped in as Governor and served out his term, Terry Cosgrove kept the Progressive Machine oiled and ready. Pat Quinn would be Terry Cosgrove's guy and he surely is that and change.

Quinn played Union Crusader, while Terry Cosrove deconstructed GOP candidate Bill Brady.

Quinn immediately rewarded Terry Cosgrove with a key appointment and took his marching orders from the pan-Advocacy Czar. Civil Unions was the only union that Quinn took care of in Illinois. Quinn killed the Death Penalty and pardoned scores of miscreants. He's a Christian; Hallelujah!

The Illinois economy is a joke, but the Advocacy Issues are the only things being tended to, while business as usual loots tax-payers.

Terry Cosgrove is the Governor of Illinois in all but name.

When the Catholic Bishops of Illinois criticized the self-proclaimed Catholic Quinn for appearing on stage with Personal PAC - which is all about Abortion - Terry Quinn . . .Cosgrove, I know ( Terry Quinn is a famous comedian and Pat Quinn is an Illinois Joke) turned on the media buzz saw.

The Chicago Sun Times, immediately trotted out the woman, unnamed in the Bishops' statement as our Victime de la semaine, Father Carol Marin
preached a sermon again about Compassion, and this morning the Capitol Fax Blog of Rich Miller set Cosgrove's table. Miller is an information outlet for politicos and journalists who depends upon the good will of Democratic pols and PACS.

Miller castigates the Cardinal's spokesman -

Director Gilligan has been very aggressive with his attacks on Gov. Quinn. I doubt they’ll subside, but perhaps Gilligan will be more precise in the future. He obviously didn’t give the Cardinal and others the full story before they unloaded both barrels on Gov. Quinn last week. Perhaps a little more thought and reflection are in order here.

Fatuous, Brother Miller fatuous! Rich Miller is Mr. Insider and he knows full well what the Cardinal and the Bishops objected to in the first place last week and it had nothing to do with Rape, Victims, or a Victim much less Precision in journalism and politics. Precisely!

Perhaps, Mr. Gilligan does not take his orders from SEIU, the lobbyists, or the swell gang around the troughs in Springfield. Rich Precision Miller will attack Speaker Madigan, because Speaker Madigan could could care less. Speaker Madigan knows what he is doing and he never walks into any buzz-saws, unlike Cardinal George and the other clerical victims.

Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan gets staked out as a goat every few days for the Progressive Two Minute Hate, because he is the only professional politician in Springfield. More so, the the progressives need him. Speaker Madigan rarely speaks. Terry Cosgrove controls the narrative for Illinois.

If the Cardinal and the Catholic Leadership want to make some progress at all in preserving the doctrinal and institutional life for Catholics and checking the juggernaut that is Progressive Advocacy PACSs, they had better get wise to Governor Terry Cosgrove. The man is powerful and he is vicious.

The Catholic hierarchy walked right into the Terry Cosgrove media buzz-saw.

People of good will do not control the media, much less Springfield.

Play like cupcakes and the bishops will get burned every time. Cardinal George, Christ said to "turn the other cheek." He did not say " Punch With Your Face."


http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=2234&GAID=10&DocTypeID=HB&SessionID=76

http://capitolfax.com/2011/11/07/cardinal-george-backs-off/

A Visit to Casa Hickey

Not Chaos like together crush'd and bruis'd,
But as the world, harmoniously confus'd:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.
Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest, ll.12-16

Friday night, the woman I love and I paid a visit on two new parents and their beautiful child; after I got in my baby fix for the weekend, we had a late light supper at the fabulous KODA Bistro in West Beverly. Before we headed north and west to return the elegant and beautiful woman to her home in the immediate west suburbs, I stopped by the house.

My Daughter Clare and her troop of pals, expanded from the St. Cajetan pre-school line-up, to include teen beauties and scholars at Mother McAuley, Marist and St. Iggy from every parish urban and south sub-urban, were thronged and polishing off post-Halloween Fun Size Milky Ways, Three Musketeers and Kit Kats, Capri Sun Juices, slices of Doreen's pizza, between the back door ( the only entrance employed on the south side) and front room ( pronounced Frunchroom hereabouts) AKA living room.




The fair dame's reaction went viral.

A dolor sit hominis castrum suum, vel alterius palude!

N.B. This Sunday morning's pre-Mass offering was inspired by Michael Moriarty's wonderful article on Bette Davis. Click my post title.

Cosgrove and Quinn , The Christians, Hide Behind a Rape Victim

Two political mice, Governor Pat Quinn and his boss Terry Cosgrove*, have pushed a rape victim out in front of their brawl with Illinois's Catholic Bishops.

Governor Pat Quinn has revealed the full content of his character and its emptier than a politician's promise.

Terry Cosgrove, President of Planned Parenthood's Personal PAC, shoveled $ 500,000 and 'in-kind' support behind a career opportunist.


I worked to help this manneQuinn get elected Governor. God forgive me.

Since his victory Governor Pat Quinn has done everything he was told to do by every lug nut and gear in the Progressive Machine. He has been especially compliant to Boss Terry Cosgrove.

The most sickening thing about Governor Quinn's will to power is his immediate run-for-cover on every decision he makes and every bill he signs. He is now permanently hiding behind Terry Cosgrove's Personal PAC and a sad young woman who was forced by Terry Cosgrove to dive on Quinn's barbed wire with Cardinal George.

Quinn, whose approval ratings have been stuck around 30 percent, has seemed energized by the jousting with his church, describing his action as “the Christian thing to do.”

And as if recognizing the potential of a public-relations backlash for targeting a rape victim, the Catholic Conference of Illinois issued a statement Thursday that seemed to soften its focus on Goodman, though it did not name her nor contain an apology. “Our hearts go out to any victim of rape, one of the most personally violent crimes against women,” the group said.

Cardinal George and the Catholic Conference of Illinois never once mentioned rape, rape victims, or the poor woman being honored by Terry Cosgrove's abortion PAC.

Pat Quinn, who calls himself a Catholic in front of Catholic voters, stated that he is standing with the abortion happy dowagers of Planned Parenthood, because he is a Christian. Christian trumps Catholic, because Catholics do not recognize abortion or the marriage between two men, or two women. Christians are good and Catholics are mean, until the Knights of Columbus, or Chicago Catholic League All-Stars are needed to help Gov. Easter Bunny.

The Christian Quinn plays the media. The media plays everyone. However, it is Quinn appointee Terry Cosgrove who plays Quinn. Now, the Two Christians are playing the victims by pushing the previously unnamed rape victim into the news.

She said her attacker went on to college, never having faced charges for the two rapes in 1991.

When asked why she didn’t go to police back then, Goodman said, “It was like my insides were ripped out. I felt powerless, like I couldn’t do anything. It didn’t cross my mind to go to the police or go to the hospital or even be tested.”

Until last year, G?????? was not active politically. But her mother told G??????’s story to the head of Personal PAC, Terry Cosgrove, who directed nearly $500,000 in cash and services from his bipartisan organization into Quinn’s campaign.

“Terry knew about my story. He called me one day and said, ‘We’re really fighting hard because this person running against Pat Quinn feels very strongly about abortion, even in cases of incest and rape. He believes a person should not have a choice,’ ” G?????? said. “That really struck me. I’m not political, or I wasn’t very political. And he said, ‘Would you like to speak on behalf of that campaign and speak against this guy, Bill Brady?’

“I started reading up on him, and I decided OK. I wouldn’t mind representing the people who are so silent. Rape survivors are a very silent epidemic,” she said.

She appeared in a Personal PAC commercial that used only her first name. It aired shortly before the election and, along with a major phone-banking operation by Cosgrove’s organization, helped turn suburban women against Brady.


The poor woman says that the Cardinal makes her feel like a baby killer.

The Cardinal never once mentioned the woman. I sure as hell will not. I'll leave that to the two Christian heroes -Quinn and Cosgrove.

Quinn and Cosgrove are two Christians. Give me a Pagan any day.


Quinn's Boss -Terry Cosgrove

*

Fresh off of the role he played in getting Gov. Pat Quinn elected, the president/CEO of Personal PAC discussed the past, present and future with Windy City Times
Terry Cosgrove, who started off as executive director of the pro-choice organization Personal PAC in 1989, has been a tireless fighter for a women's right to choose during his entire career.

In talking with Windy City Times, he described his job as "leading the organization in carrying out its mission which is to elect pro-choice candidates." He went on to say that "what's involved in that is a lot of cheerleading and keeping everyone on the same page which is recruiting candidates and helping them run campaigns. However, I spend about 60 to 70 percent of my time fundraising." Personal PAC's website states that the organization's overall mission is to elect pro-choice candidates in a bipartisan way to state and local office in Illinois.

Polling in October showed that Bill Brady, Quinn's Republican opponent, led by 13 percent. The question is: How did Personal PAC help turn the tide to a Quinn victory? The organization did so by sending out direct-mail pieces; buying its first television ad (called "Jennie") in the organization's 21-year history (costing $200,000); placing robocalls using a voice recording of the television ad; and distributing leaflets at Metra stations throughout Chicagoland to educate voters about Brady's conservative views.

Regarding these measures, Cosgrove said, "I knew if we could get enough of those suburban women, that's where the victory was" so the television ad, robocalls and direct-mail campaign were focused on suburban women who only vote in midterm general elections and not the primaries. The television ad ran during every morning-news show; many daytime talk shows; and WGN News and CLTV all day to reach as many suburban women as possible. Brady's operatives cited these tactics as the reason for his loss more than anything else.

Cosgrove also wrote an article in October for the Huffington Post entitled "Bill Brady: The Most Anti-Woman Nominee to Every Run for Illinois Governor" (which Windy City Times also ran) that outlined where Brady stood on women's issues. Asking Cosgrove how he felt when Brady conceded he said "he felt great" since Brady would "have been a disaster" for Illinois.

Some of the other victories Personal PAC can cite in this election cycle are four out of the six Illinois Senate races and nine of the 11 Illinois House races they targeted for the General Assembly elections. Other victories include Toni Preckwinkle as Cook County board president and Jeff Tobolski's 16th District commissioner win over pro-life incumbent Tony Peraica.

So what does Cosgrove do on an average day to keep things moving forward? The day we talked to him he also had a conference call with his executive committee, a business lunch with a friend/donor, a late meeting with a potential new board member and signing a stack of letters to donors thanking them for their support. He remarked that every day is different depending on what is happening politically.

Where did his passion for the pro-choice movement come from? After being raised in suburban Morton Grove along with his parents (his father recently died), older brother and younger sister (who has two kids, a girl and a boy) he went on to the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana where he earned two masters degrees. While still in high school he got involved with political activism, more specifically, Cesar Chavez's grape boycott in the 1970s. He protested in front of a Jewel grocery store and later got arrested. Along the way he got involved in the pro-choice movement when he saw that poor women would give up purchasing groceries for their children in order to pay for their abortions since the Hyde Amendment prevents the government from funding most abortions. Since becoming involved in the pro-choice movement, Cosgrove said he hears from many individuals, including family members, who have told them their abortion stories. He said hearing women tell their stories has only caused him to fight harder since 83 percent of counties in the United States do not have abortion clinics.

Being openly gay hasn't affected his work although elected officials call him to get information and advice on LGBT issues statewide, Cosgrove said. He sees the work he does with reproductive rights going hand in hand with LGBT equality since they are both civil-rights issues. Since his organization is bipartisan he stressed the importance of getting support from both sides so significant pieces of legislation can get passed.

To date he said his most satisfying accomplishments are getting abortion services restored for poor women at Cook County Hospital, getting Quinn elected, continuing to get pro-choice candidates elected to statewide offices over the years and passing proactive reproductive health legislation. Among his many honors is receiving the Impact Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women.

As for the future, Cosgrove said he is looking forward to the re-drawing of the political map in Illinois so they can elect more pro-choice candidates and pass the Reproductive Health and Access Act in the state assembly. He also would like to get comprehensive sex education taught in the public schools so young adults will know the ways to act responsibly.

His message to the readers of Windy City Times is to "live life to the fullest because there is so much opportunity out there so reach for the top of the trees." He said that is why he is optimistic about the future for reproductive and LGBT rights even though others around him may be skeptics.

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=29716

Governor Christian(Quinn) and his Mouthpiece- Personal PAC's Terry Cosgrove

People always said Pat Quinn was nice, but I had no idea just how Christian he was, until he paid off Personal PAC Boss Terry Cosgrove and $ 500,000 and "In-Kind" help from Planned Parenthood - the Abortion Industry.

Damn Christian.

The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic organization that helps the unborn avoid getting their tiny skulls crushed by stressed-out Mommies and the Health care professionals and they also raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the disabled and the challenged.

But Gov. Pat Quinn is a Christian. Damn Christian.

Catholic Charities, from the historical get-go, took care of orphaned and family-challenged children and placed them with a married couple, that used to be a a man and a woman, until Pat Quinn signed the Christian Defense of Religious Liberty Act and immediately stripped Catholic Charities of any and all state funding. Christian.

Damn Christian.

Governor Damn Christian was admonished by Cardinal George and all of the Catholic bishops of Illinois for honoring Personal PAC, run by Terry Cosgrove, a lawyer, Quinn appointee, LGBTQ string-puller and Quinn spokesman. It sure looks like Governor Damn Christian turned to Terry and said, "What do I say?"

Terry handled all of the supine media and made the Bishops, Catholics, and people who just might think that an unborn child ought not have its tiny skull crushed in order to reflect a Woman's Power, or to fight crime of violence, be viewed as enirely UnChristian. Pat Quinn is a Christian -Damn Christian!

Terry Cosgrove stepped up, as he did in the election and got mems to Eric Zorn and all the Chicago media especially the Huffington Post. Here's Terry, who said yesterday that the Bishops were merely 'bent out of shape' because Bill Brady lost the election -

Personal PAC president Terry Cosgrove told the Chicago Sun-Times that the bishops have been angry ever since Quinn defeated conservative Republican Bill Brady in the gubernatorial race. The Catholic Conference threw their support behind the anti-abortion Brady during the election. Cosgrove also mentioned that Catholics are against birth control, which would reduce the number of abortions if it were more accessible in all communities.

“It’s very hypocritical for them to be so passionate about denying women the right to make this profoundly personal decision, yet they won’t do anything to lessen the need for something they see as so wrong,” Cosgrove told the Sun-Times. “The hypocrisy is so alarming.”

You got that right Terry! Goveror Christian said this, and I belive Terry wrote it for him:

"I'm going to the event to present an award to a woman who is a victim of rape, and who is a very strong advocate of helping rape victims all over our state and country, so I really think that's a proper Christian thing to do, to honor someone who's doing something that helps the community at large," Quinn said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Governor Christian paroled a lot of rapists and thugs. One murdered a little fourteen year old girl. The Christian thing to do? Damn Christian.

If a Christian can countenance murdering a child in the womb, give me a Pagan, or a Catholic, or a Few, or a Lutheran, or a Baptist, or a Muslim anyday.

Leo Veterans Observance Today - Dr. Barrett on Valor and Resilience

Teenaged Marine in Chosin Reservoir 1950 - 35 degrees below zero and surrounded by twenty Red Chinese Divisions - Resilience?

"Fall seven times and get up eight."

In Dr. Terence W. Barrett's recently published book The Search for the Forgotten thirty-four:Honored by the U.S.Marines, Forgotten in their Hometowns?, the final pages sum up Valor as the ability to bounce back - to face the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune.

Think of police officers hitting a door; firemen rushing up the stairs of every flaming building, a young mother in the throes of labor, any ER nurse, a Com Ed high wire electrician up a utility pole in an electrical storm and think of what most of us call stress. The cable's out. Gas is $ 3.65. Take another good look at that photo above. That kid, if he lived, is now approaching 80 years of living. That boy, frozen, scared, without sleep, and very hungry is resilient. He's on his feet. I believe that he handled the balance of his life with grace and dignity, if he lived past the days ahead of him.

The Outrage of combat is the ultimate test of human resilience. I used to tell my wrestlers that toughness was not determined by how much pain one could dish out, but how much one could endure in order to win. It is so much more than that.

In his study of the lives and the heroic action of American heroes, Dr. Barrett presents human resilience and the psychology of dealing with stress. Fear is merely an adjunct of stress. Resilience, the ability to get back into the fight has a psychology all its own. Barrett explains "resilience is more than managing encounters with stress or harsh experience. Resilience is the ability to adapt in spite of it, to adapt positively in spite of it, and to grow from it. Resilience is identified . . . as part attitude(or thought),and part ability: a blending of strength, endurance and adaptibilty. Resilience develops over time, likely associated to the encounters with realistic and reasonable stresses, and what might be called diligent striving. A persons learns to manage. And once a child learns to manage, he or she will tend to remain resilient across a lifetme."

Barrett goes on to study diligent striving and notes that those men studied in this book demonstrated extraordinary resiliency. They did not wait for events to shape them.

Today, Leo High School will be graced with presence of scores of WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan heroes. Resilient men and women.

Our students will witness what it takes from those how most surely did.

If they fall, they will get up again. The alternative is unacceptable. Facta Non Verba - Deeds Not Words.

God Bless Our Veterans.


Click my post title to link to the pages on Resilience by Dr. Barrett