March fof Life and Rally Was a Success

I took some photos of the March for Life 2018 in Federal Plaza.

I was delighted to be greeted by Brother Rice (2017) alumnus Chris Hernandez who is studying political science and intends to take a law degree upon graduation from college.  The number of teens and young people like Chris (above) floored me.  Maybe the tide has turned against abortion; used be that Pro-life was the 50-90 demographic. There were many south side schools including Marist and Mother McAuley, St. Laurence represented in Daley Plaza.

I recognized many of my neighbors, escpecially the Chicago Police Officers detailed to keep counter protesters from disrupting the program.  My Leo High School winter coat brought out many welcomes from the boys and girls in blue and black.

The weather was bracing, bracing; Bergoff's was closed and so I remained mind on task.

I would put the crowd at 2,000 and all were very courteous, welcoming and life affirmimg.

There were about two dozen counter-protestors with very good bull-horns and bad manners.

Here are some shots.

Chicago March for Life 2018 - Absent from Both Chicago Newspapers

Today Chicagoans, as well as scores of suburban citizens, will meet at Federal Plaza to protest the American Genocide for the 10th time.  Today is the March for Life. 

You will not find this event in the Tribune or the Sun Times - The Patch has it.  How many will brave cold and wind to pray away America's slaughter of the innocents?  If thousand show up, I am sure it will be recorded as " a few dozen."

Since 1973, America has declined as the moral force and beacon of hope on this planet.

America will never be great again,until Roe v. Wade is overturned.


The two Chicago papers print every exchange between two Anti-Trumpers, every hint and rumor of racism and all of the salacious nonsense eminating from the American Entertainment Class.

Both papers ignored the massive interest in today's March for Life

• Rex Hupke of the Tribune is taking down names of people who are not outraged by Trump potty mouth-geography.  I am not.  He's correct.  Haiti is a shithole, in the same way that my grandmother scorned the poverty and hopelessness of Ireland when she was 13 years old - never to return, but she did get all six of her little sisters to Chicago.
• Lynn Sweet of Sun Times gives global props to the most practiced hypocrite in Washington D.C. - Dick Durbin who did not confront president Trump over 'vile' thoughts words and deeds

I don't March.  I find it to be a self-serving and self-satisfying exercise that never makes a difference in anything.  I have proudly walked labor picket lines and never crossed one.  I will go to Federal Plaza.  I hope that thousands do as well.

Our media and our Chicago, Cook County and Illinois elected officials are fine with abortion.  If you are OK with abortion, you will be agreeable to anything. Nothing is too outrageous for you. 

Save your public outrage, if you are for abortion. You are wasting oxygen.

Sun Times Board Schools Chris Kennedy in the Art of Playing the Race Card

"[Because] the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, so corrupted in parts ... that an organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class."
—Lenin, explaining the increasingly dictatorial nature of the regime

A “totalitarian regime?”
And here we thought we lived in Chicago, a city struggling with problems of violence, poverty and racism, but full of people — including more than a few in City Hall — making a good-faith effort to get things right. Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board

In addition to the Chicago Federation of Labor, union investors include SEIU Local 1 and Operating Engineers Local 150. In a way, the investment group resembles the city itself—or, at least, the people who run it. Columbia Journalism Review
 

Chris Kennedy is a good guy.

A Good guy has no business playing with Progressives/

Progressives are not liberal Democrat; they are Stalinists drooling to denounce . . .anyone.

Chris Kennedy noted Rahm Emanuel's  'small urban center' plans for Chicago are forcing black families out of the city.

The Sun Times is progressive and the voice of its masters -the oligarchs who run this city. 

The dodge is that Labor owns the Sun Times.  Labor's investment dollars are the mere candy-coating.

This is an organ of the oligarchs - the plutocrats like our Governor and our Governor to be, as well as the Axelrods, Obamas, Eychaners, Emanuels, Claypools, Preckwinkles, Cosgroves and Pritzkers who reap millions  of dollars from what they sow - discontent, chaos, racial antipathy, confusion  and anger.

Chris Kennedy got himself on the wrong side of oligarchical history last week and is enduring the death by a thousand cuts from the master race-baiters of the Chicago media.

The Sun Times has a decades long record of playing the race card and today they mapped out the lessons Chris Kennedy must learn, if he wants back in with the powers that is.

Kennedy is playing a dangerous game. He is playing the race card unfairly, knowing that’s the quickest way to get a headline in Chicago. But playing the race card — in this case without the goods — also is the quickest way to destroy a reputation, divide us against each other, and set back whatever progress in racial fairness our city has made.

Or translated into regular Chicagoan, When are you going to stop hitting yourself, Chris Kennedy?  Stop hitting yourself!  Why are you hitting yourself?

The above is the familiar sound of pissy little sneaks.

Chris Kennedy is a good guy. 

A good guy would tell the Sun Times to duck off, . . .  or something that sounds like that.

The Golden Globes Sounded Like a Porno Movie So I Watched Shane on Encore Western

I  guess I missed it.  NBC proclaimed Oprah the winner of the 2020 Presidential Elections!

Gee, and people think that the media is really fouled up.

Well, I read about Oprah's soaring rhetoric this morning in the Sun Times - the always hysterical gate-crashing, mouth-breather  Richard Roeper:

Oprah for president!
This was one of Winfrey’s finest moments, in ways big and small. “I want all the girls watching here to know that a new day is on the horizon!” she exclaimed.
She personally thanked the legendary TV exec Dennis Swanson, who hired her to host a show called “A.M. Chicago,” which eventually became “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Such a classy gesture.
She said: “We all know the press is under siege these days, but we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice. … I value the press more than ever before …”
 . . .
And she said these words that should be etched in stone:
"I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault, because they — like my mother — had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers; they are working in factories and they work in restaurants, and they’re in academia and engineering and medicine and science; they’re part of the world of tech and politics and business; they’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military … "

And I asked myself, " What if there were only one emoji?  Hmmmmm????

I thought The Golden Globes was a '70's soft-core porn epic starring Debra Messing and Rip Taylor.

What do I know.  I watched Alan Ladd and Van Heflin take on a huge-ass tree stump, a gang of cattle barons who hate stump-jumpers in an epic bar room brawl and then each other, leaving Allan Ladd to ride endlessly back to town make Jack Palance eat lead.



Our Next President?  Shane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Please, Come Back!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chris Kennedy - Prometheus on the Carpathian Rock

Zeus Preckwinkle is out of town, but might have made the call on Chris Kennedy. 

Chris Kennedy is a good guy and as I said yesterday, a good guy has no business hanging around a Progressive Democrat (Prog Dem).

Prog Dems are not liberals; they are Stalinists with East Bank Club memberships and Brooks Brothers Gold Cards.

Chris Kennedy, the scion of Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK - the American Gracchi,  grew up in the shadows of history and myth making;   he became a solid, honest and sincere man who is willing to quietly fight poverty and lift people up.

Prog Dems never do that.

I have witnessed Chris Kennedy lend a pair of hands to Catholic Charities (1120 W 79th St, Chicago, IL 60620) humping boxes of food and warm clothing that he bought for distribution - without ever saying, " Do you know who I am?"  He never had a squad of Sun Times ink-slingers at his beck and call like the Nordic Jesus who Popes-up the neighborhood.

Chris Kennedy is among the oligarchs of Chicago but he is not with them.  He Kennedy is a great name to appoint to a Blue Ribbon panel or a directorship, but he is too honest to drawn into the circle of Prog favor.  Chris Kennedy kept terrorist comic-strip academic Bil Ayers from getting Emeritus status with University of Illinois.  Ayers remains a player in the cook County oligarchy.  Ayers helped make Venezuela what it is today and hopes to see Metro Chicago do the same.

The Kennedys are welcome to the Prog Dem banquet, but assigned a table near the men's room exit.

Note this observation from Joel Kotkin fro 2008, when Bloomberg and Schumer checked Caroline Kennedy from folowing Hillary Clinton into the Senate:

. . . the current gentry liberals increasingly reflect the biases of their own social class. The upper echelons of Wall Street, academe and the media have been moving toward what passes for the "left" for over a generation. Ironically, this movement became most evident in the early 1960s in the elite support that gathered around Caroline's father, John, who brought with him into office "the best and brightest."
As historian Fred Siegel has noted, the Kennedy phenomena differed greatly – in both style and substance – from the "lunch pail" liberalism epitomized by President Harry Truman and, to an extent, that of both Lyndon Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Their Democratic party was sustained by appealing to the economic interests of working and middle-class Americans.
As opposed to gentry politics, whose bastions lay in fashionable urban districts and college towns, Truman-style democracy reached into the vast suburban dreamscape – even into small towns and rural areas.
Over recent years this version of the party, with its more geographically diverse middle-class base, has lost influence. It's been a process of both addition and subtraction.
A series of strong Republican politicians since Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan lured many middle-income voters out of the Democratic Party by appealing to their patriotism, economic self-interest and, in some cases, prejudices.
At the same time, the core of the elite liberal constituency – academics, high-tech businesspeople and media figures – has been growing steadily in wealth and influence. By marrying this constituency to poor minority voters, gentry liberals have turned our core urban areas into a collection of electoral "ditto heads," with so-called "progressives" winning as much as 70 or 80% of the vote in presidential elections.
This year's thrilling primary battle between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama represented a clash of these two tendencies. Although Clinton herself enjoyed strong ties to some gentry liberals, she campaigned, particularly toward the end of the marathon, as Harry Truman in a bright pantsuit. Obama, for his part, sallied forth from a solid base of academics and well-educated professionals, as well as African Americans.  (emphases my own)

Caroline Kennedy became Ambasador to Japan as a participant trophy and America got another harpy in place of Hillary - Kirsten Gillbrand 
The Prog Dems have rewired the Democratic Party so that it is set to blow -up rather than divert the charted course.

Chris Kennedy found this out last week when he called out the conspiracy to kick people out of the city - his only mistake was in pointing only to the black people.  The Prog Dems want all middle class helots gone - White, Black, Brown and Rainbow.  If you refer to your Zipcode as a neighborhood, you gotta go.   If have a wife and kids - out you go.  You have the wrong attitude for a Smart-sized, secular, bike friendly urban paradise with plenty of green open space free of kids for community members with oodles of disposable cash, income and especially inherited wealth.

Chris Kennedy brought a torch into the cave created by the Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, WGN, WTTW, WBEZ, The Reader and the good folks at Disney where news is displayed with a pen-light. For that transgression he will have his liver eaten by Eric Zorn, Neil Steinberg, Mary Mitchell, Carol Marin and Mark Brown for weeks to come.

JB Pritzker is the Prog Dem's porkier Kirsten Gillibrand.  Chris Kennedy is a nice guy, but no Caroline Kennedy and Rahm and  Fred Eychaner are not about to appoint Mr. Kennedy Ambassador to Japan.

A great man wrote Nothings on the Square.

Chris Kennedy should take copy of it with him to read while the vultures gnaw on his liver.

Chris Kennedy - Eaten by His Own for Telling the Truth

Chris Kennedy said that Rahm is pushing blacks out of Chicago.

Rahm is - blacks who have no place in the small-city globalist, secular, two wheeler Chicago begun by Richie Daley and followed through with vigor by Rahm.

Chris Kennedy walked into the lion's den wearing a pork-chop suit - he was told by some plant in his campaign that he could get the black vote with this dodge.

It is no dodge, but limiting the exodus to blacks gave Chris Kennedy an ambush piece by Mark Brown that set him up for an old fashioned Soviet denunciation by the Tribune the Sun Times, public radio televison and the state-sponsored voices at WBBM AM and SEIU.


Chris Kennedy is Progressive road-kill.  Chris Kennedy,whose father died in the service of his country in 1968 and is forever linked to memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, is now a deplorable Trump surrogate.

In a written statement, the mayor’s office brushed off Kennedy’s attack as a political jab.
“It’s sad to see Chris Kennedy joining President Trump and Governor Rauner in using cynical politically motivated attacks about Chicago’s communities for his own personal gain,” said a mayoral spokesman.

And people thought Leon Trotsky took a tough one to the noggin.

That is how they do - Progressive ( neo-Marxist Deconstructionists) Democrats.  Progressives are not liberal Democrats.  They are old school, Joe Stalin meat grinding oligarchs.

Chris Kennedy is learning that.

As a candidate for Governor, I thought that Chris Kennedy's lack of outreach to farmers, coal-miners, tradesmen and former industrial professionals consigned to service industry jobs and lifestyles, might be his major roadblock.


Nope , JB "Michigan Avenue Fats" Pritzker is the money wagon for the Progressive Democrat machine and JB would throw Chris Kennedy's money away -" How'd the puny Frankins get mixed up with my Madisons, Chases and Wilsons ?"

Not only has ProgDem Illinois circled the wagons around Rahm the Global City Raccoon, but Chris Kennedy is now being attacked as a deplorable Trumper and race baiter, by the Lady Fingers of Race Card Mechanics herself - Mary Mitchell:

But Kennedy’s attack is more than sad.
Besides disparaging the mayor’s efforts to address the disparities that still exist, Kennedy’s allegations suggest the stellar line-up of African-American leaders in Emanuel’s administration — not to mention black aldermen — are useless.
It’s preposterous to think people like Andrea Zopp (CEO of World Business Chicago and former deputy mayor and head of the Chicago Urban League), Eddie Johnson (Chicago Police superintendent), Janice Jackson (interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools) and Frank Clark (Chicago Board of Education president and retired chairman and CEO of ComEd) would be part of the sinister plan Kennedy described.
Clearly, gun violence in predominantly black neighborhoods has driven thousands of black families to flee the city.

Preposterous that black oligarchs could shive a git about the families in Gresham, Englewood, Brainerd, Grand Crossing and Roseland????????????

Oh, hell yes!

The stellar line-up in Emanuel's administration have aided and abetted the Nine Digit Midget and Forrest Claypool and the CPS Gourmet Lunch Bunch and shooters as well as slum dog billionaires like Valerie Jarret, Allison Davis and Judson Miner.

Chris Kennedy told the truth - blacks are being run out of Chicago as well as Polish Italian, Mexican, Lithuanian, Croatian, Serbian Irish and the odd Dutchman.

Everyone who is not getting a slurp at the big trough

Daley began the conspiracy, Rahm continues it and the media orchestrates the exodus.

Chris Kennedy had the courage to profile the oligarchs.  This small, smart-sized Chicago is no revelation.  It is happening and will continue.

Chris Kennedy is a good man.  Good men have no business rubbing shoulders with Progressives.

Now, he is toast.

"Peachy Cool Arrow" Hickey's Chicken Thigh Tortilla Soup!

Hickey

 I am a chicken thigh guy.  Now, I like my legs and  breasteses as much as any

Irlandesa Gringo, but for full flavor, nothing cooks up like chicken thighs.

Hence, I break with Yankee Food Channel and eschew the breasts - I eschew with my teeth.

So, for real tasty Tortilla Soup I go with the thighs


 Hickey Chicken Thigh Tortilla Soup

Ingredients
2 tablespoons light olive oil
1 large red onion, diced
3 tablespoons minced garlic
1 jalapeno, finely diced
Liberal use of Goya Adobo Powder*
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth or 2 Boxes of College Inn
One 14.5-ounce can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
One 14.5-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
6-8 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
2 limes, juiced, plus wedges for garnish
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

In a large skillet brown the hell out of the chicken thighs - use a few dashes of Adobo powder when turning thighs. Cook all the way through 5-6 minutes a side, or 180 degrees on a good meat thermometer.  Cut up the thighs once they cool.


In a large saucepan heat the vegetable oil. Add the onions and cook for 2 minutes. Once the onions have softened add the garlic and jalepenos and cook for another minute. Pour the chicken broth, tomatoes and beans into the pot and bring to a boil. Once at a boil lower heat to simmer and add your chicken thighs. Cook the chicken for 20 to 25 minutes; then remove and cool.  When cool enough to handle shred it and set it aside - dash with Adobo. Add lime juice and fresh cilantro to the pot. In a serving bowl add a mound of shredded chicken. Ladle soup over chicken and top with a lime wedge, grilled tortilla strips, avocado slices and Good Mexican cheese - not of that Kraft Mixes.

Serve with Sparkling water and good Mexican Beer - Pacifico, Victoria, Dos Equis, Tecate, Model - Hell, they are all good - like Czech beers.

Mexicans, Culchies, Homies and Euro-rash Rednecks work like badgers and eat like kings.

*Adobo Powder is one-stop shopping for great Mexican flavors (salt, paprika, black pepper, onion powder, oregano, cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder.)

KingZorProphets? Pick One.

I am preparing lessons for my second semester classes at Brother High School.  I am teaching two Theology Courses to four sections of 36 Juniors and one section of 34 Freshmen.  The Juniors get Social Justice this semester after last semester's Morality units. The Freshmen are taking a full year of Old Testament.

The text books* are very orthodox presentations of Catholic teachings and you can't miss with the Bible.  Not only that, Catholic Social Teaching is rich with primary sources.  Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum is an essential read that most later-day Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) have never encountered.

Instead, neo-Maoist activism of SJW proclaims - Every Voice a Prophet. . . .And every man a king!

It don't work that way.  Kings and prophets are in opposite camps and what about every man?

We are called by God to bear witness to the faith.

Some might argue that bearing witness is not enough.  Okay.

• Calling 911 when that clown broke out my back door window last Wednesday, in order to take what I do not have, was an act of bearing witness by a neighbor which I greatly appreciated, because the thief was interrupted and bolted, when blue lights from the heroes of District 22 appeared in the early morning skies.

• Chatham Glass ( two brothers) replaced my busted window for much less than two more franchised companies, because of the Sacred Season and the circumstance - they bore witness without a press conference, a march, or CNN
• I used the savings to donate to a charity.

Kings and prophets are too busy for such stuff.

I am going to try and concentrate upon words of the prophets and actions of the kings in the Old Testament and try and present their impact upon the people who will be dragged off to Babylon, conquered by the Persians,  Greeks and Romans and await the arrival of the 'annointed one' of the  Root of Jesse.

                                        CYO - Bishop Sheil is the template for Catholic Action

We have far too many SJWs taking it to the streets and far too few people willing to clean up their mess after wards,

The old Catholic Action was practical, effective and compelling. It was launched by Bishop Shiel.  Bishop Shiel?  Yeah, this Archdiocese has pretty much burried Bishop Sheil in favor of press happy prophets with hard collars and Macy's gold cards, 

Bishop Sheil inspired Catholics to act, not pose, shout, march or preen.

That was long before we were all called to be kings and prophets.

Some one needs to set up chairs.

No chairs, no Justice. 

*Written on Our Hearts (2009): The Old Testament Story of God's Love, Third Edition 3rd Edition

Living Justice and Peace (2008): Catholic Social Teaching in Practice, Second Edition 2nd Edition

2018 - Already? Always on the Eights?

2018, already???????

Silly question.

Time does not fly; it bolts by.

•  In, 1958 I was in 1st Grade at Little Flower Grammar school
• In 1968, I was a junior in high school, dropped out of baby-priest school ( St. Augustine Minor Seminary), working at Chicken Unlimited and dating gorgeous young ladies
• In 1978, I was in my third year of teaching at Bishop McNamara and dating the woman who would actually marry me and carry all three of our children - Mary Elizabeth Cleary
• In 1988, married for four years with a three year old, I resigned from Bishop Mac and took a job at La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana
• In 1998. I lost my lovely pal, partner and guiding light to a lousy brain tumor
• In 2008, I was working at Leo High School as Director of Development and struggling with my demons thanks to a loving family
• In 2018, I am back in the classroom at Brother Rice and still chasing away the demons - with three grown and successful children, a gorgeous granddaughter and a patient, lovely woman

That's a lot of blood under the bridge.

2018!  Let's see what you got, Big Boy!

• I need to pray all day. 
• Watch my temper.  
• Put disappointments in proper perspective.  
• Remember it is not all about me 
• Try and help others.  
• Avoid "Irish Alzheimer's”  the disease where an individual forgets everything except the grudges. 
• Get my hair cut
• Vote in the GOP Primary on March 20, 2018 and louse up Bruce Rauner's comfortable life
• Watch more high school sports
• Save money
• Eat more greens
• Listen to more great music

The eights were always pretty heavy.

Heavy lifting in life, requires bending the knees.

Let's see how it goes.  

Sun Times: Man Stabbed in Kennedy Park - Stop Gun Violence!

A 41-year-old man was stabbed Monday evening in the Kennedy Park neighborhood on the Far Southwest Side.
He was walking down the street about 5:50 p.m. in the 11100 block of South Washtenaw when an unknown person stabbed him, according to Chicago Police.  The man suffered a puncture wound to the abdomen and was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition, police said.Stop Gun Violence

Was the man Stabbed with a Gun?

The Sun Times casts great light on gun violence, but keeps the savagery of the individuals perpetrating the perpetual attacks on innocent people like toddlers, children, tourists and people walking near a Chicago park at 5:30 P.M. in any neighborhood.

This is because the Sun Times is all about making it possible for individuals to bring lawsuit against the society that protects their actions and give the lie to the pre-caste political narratives of the Chicago oligarchs. The Chicago Reader, owned by the Sun Times, calls the 19th Ward( especially Mount Greenwood)  the Upside Down.  

In short, dead fish would jump from the pages of the Sun Times, rather than be shrouded in lies.

Kennedy Park is in the Morgan Park neighborhood.  I live here.  The news media goes to great pains to portray this neighborhood as some kind of Celtic Copland-  Leave it To Beaver Oasis for White Flight Racists, where Rahm Emanuel counts upon and gets high voter turn-outs and matching Rahm Votes each election cycle.  In return, Rahm flips pancakes at Original House of Pancakes on Western, blesses a Blackhawks endowed Hockey Rink at Kennedy Park.  Rahm also solemnly nods with the news media about the people who live here, pay taxes, obey the law and call 911  more than they should.

People, white black, brown and yellow in this neighborhood as well as  Beverly and Mount Greenwood are robbed, burglarized, threatened, assaulted and mugged by thugs - frequently. With the great number of CPD, County, State and Federal law enforcement professionals residing here, one might think - The Bad Guys Know Us, But They Leave Us Alone.  No.  They get around.

Last week,  and off-duty cop was attacked by young thugs with pistols, a number of thugs came into The Upside Down to rob UPS, FEDEX and USPS deliveries.


Chicago is a Thug Comfort Zone.

A comfort zone denotes that limited set of behaviors that a person will engage without becoming anxious. Alternatively denoted as a "plateau" it describes that set of behaviors that have become comfortable, without creating a sense of risk. A person's personality can be described by his or her comfort zones. Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries that are not real. Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. Like inertia, a person who has established a comfort zone in a particular axis of his or her life, will tend to stay within that zone without stepping outside of it. To step outside a person's comfort zone, he must experiment with new and different behaviors, and then experience the new and different responses that then occur within his environment.

Following the thug murder of Leo High School Valedictorian, Golden Gloves Champion and college student Jason Riley in 2007, I wrote the following:

I accuse the news media of creating a Thug Comfort Zone here in Chicago. Only cases where Police can and will be accused of abuse based upon race receive any attention - the more ludicrous and outrageous accusations get tried in the public glare with the full support of cynical creeps who sit their milky fat asses on Editorial Boards.

I use cynical creeps because 1. - they are cynical - 'Let's get into it!' and sell some papers - easier than being good at your work and 2. creeps because only a creep would actively engage in 'criminal' enterprise to enrich lawyers and thugs, while bankrupting public monies and public confidence.

It is now 2017 and milky rumps remain on editorial boards and chirp about - gun violence.

Thugs feel very free to rob, steal, assault and use guns to kill people, because There's a 73% chance that Foxxx (Cook County States Attorney)won't charge you

• and another 78% chance you'll make bail, even on murder and hate crime charges
• and another 82% chance you beat the charge at court.  ( emphases and parenthetical my own) 

Thugs Kill People

Thugs Rob People

Thugs Terrorize People, because they can. 

Guns kill people, like pencils flunk tests.

Merry Christmas, 2017! We Are Blessed!

Just finished shoveling the powdery precipitation.  For all of you Currier and Ives junkies, enjoy!

At Sixty-five and change, I tend to miss the glorious Yule beauties in expectation of greater, wetter and more back-challenging avalanches, but I must admit to this Christmas Day's wonder. sunlight and bracing blizzard bite on what passes for my nose.

Christ is smiling on Chicago, in spite of its secularist silliness and sanguine savageries.

As I completed my shoveling, I was greeted by my fireman neighbor and his puppy,  "Mass at Sacred Heart (8:30 with Father Gallager)?"

"Went last night. Couldn't sleep.  We had a family get-together with my Mom at Victorian Village in Homer Glen, so I popped in at St. Christina's on the way home." I replied.

My granddaughter ( 10 months old and all eyes and thighs) gave a detailed exhibition of all of her baby-ticks, vocal ranges and snuggles to my most appreciative mother and the baby's Great-Nana.  No other gifts required.  My kids burned up Snap Chat and their app numbers recording Christmas 2017.  I had to go give thanks to God, before my native sloth kicked in.

Cold, the fireman retorted

Bracing, said I.  I had been waiting for someone to offer that observation in order to quote the great Charles Laughton from the movie adaptation of O Henry's "The Cop and the Anthem (1:29)"

Small Christmas gifts like that do more for me than a gift certificate for  a full body massage from Salma Hayek, or a guest solo in CSO's Messiah.

This day is about hope, renewal and love.  I was gifted all three of the above and only a fireman showed up on my lot this morning. I can't wait until a cop and a Streets and San worker stop by - collect from all three!

Blessed.

Neighbors, Merry Christmas ! 2017 in the 19th Ward

I am blessed.  I live and work in this wonderful neighborhood.  I live in Morgan Park and work at Brother Rice High School.  Children grow up centered, respectful  and industrious.  This is a neighborhood of families.  It is strong.

The many churches are places where these families draw their strength - Quaker, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal, Baptist and very large Catholic parishes nurture what is learned in the home.

A very hateful article by the editor of the Chicago Reader - sponsored by the Sun Times News Group and edited by Jake Malooley, the author of the piece - took the opportunity to stir up race hate for Christmas.

The Chicago Reader is a free press and has been for as long as I care to remember. It's slant is far left of center.

The Chicago Reader is only following exactly what the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and the now dead DNAinfo Chicago have done for decades without challenge.

Why challenge people who are wrong, hateful, bigoted and wildly unfair.

People in this neighborhood are welcoming - that is how journalists ooze into the confidence of people.  They violate welcome.

A very pretty female journalist found welcoming bar stools and chatty drinkers in the saloons of Mount Greenwood, in order to make a case that this neighborhood's vote for Trump was solely due to race hate,

Her editor used her dubious report to do the same,  "No demogorgon roams this netherworld, but a majority of its electorate did back the man who's been called the swamp monster: President Donald Trump. Jake Malooley editor Chicago Reader"

Demogorgon?  Homage to Statius' Thebiad or Dungeons and Dragons?  I think the later, The last pretentious hypocrite to smear the neighborhood is a wife beater.

Neil Steinberg did so after breaking bred with a crowd of 19th Ward people.  After being made welcome he insulted and villainized his hosts as Aryan Nation racists, "But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009"

 Steinberg was just joking, when I called him on it and his hypocrisy.  Steinberg is busy equating square dancing with cross-burning this Yuletide.

I have yet to read a news alert that young people from 60655 were stealing Christmas deliveries from UPS, FedEx and USPS routes in Roseland, Gresham, Englewood, West Lawn  or Garfield Heights.

On Halloween thousands of residents strolled with their children along the 111th Street business route.  Last week they did the same for Santa's Visit - all sponsored by local businesses and Aklderman Matt O'Shea.

No violence , as in Hyde Park.

No hate.

Christmas lives here every day, unless a few reporters manage to misquote and misrepresent the good people of this neighborhood.

Merry Christmas, everyone and everyday!

Merry Christmas, Maya and Jake!