MSNBC Always Wrong and Mayor Daley is not the goat on the Olympic Bid

TODD: But the biggest political loser here is Mayor Daley in Chicago. Nobody had more on the line than Mayor Daley. He was pushing this, this was his pet project. He's the one that just put so much pressure on the White House to get the President out there. He worked this White House, every contact he had here, harder than anybody.

Nice try Chuck!

The Olympic bid by Chicago was solid.

Pat Ryan has never drawn a stupid breath in his life.

Mayor Daley's game was on.

Chicago's media was schizophrenic - "Corruption/Taxes?Machine . . .Oh, but Oprah likes it and the Obama White House is behind it . . .sort of."

As a guy who rides on financial fumes at the end of every pay cycle and prays the Memorare every half hour so that my City Parkway Maple Tree Roots ( Oh, Green Raptures!) do not insinuate their way into my sewer discharge pipes until a rich relative leaves me a check to cover the Roto Rooter costs in a will, the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid is about as important to me as the Mega Millions Jackpot. I stand to benefit from neither such bonanza.

However, I admired the gusto and verve that our Olympic 2016 Committee put out to nail the bid.

Mayor Daley should be applauded and loudly.

MSNBC - the General Electric Megaphone - wants cover for its political Brahma Bull - President Obama.

President Obama looks bad - real bad; Comb Over Dave Axelrod, Rahmbo, Valerie 'Green Jones' Jarrett look silly. THe Olympic 2016 bid was their pooch to screw and screw it they did.

Chicagoans know that the Boiled Beet Progressive amateurs in the Obama White House could not fix a Red Light traffic beef, let alone be players on the International scene. They called the shots for equally inexperienced Chief Executive on this one and on so many other pooches on the front pages of America.

Mayor Daley's power and leadership remains undiminished.

Chuck Todd and MSNBC cheerleader tried to shift the blame on Mayor Daley.

No Chuckie boy . . .this one is on the children of privilege - the Hyde Park mafia weaned on 501(c)3 money and appointed posts in government.

President Obama's approval numbers will be in the Marianas Trench of public approval by Columbus Day - which real Chicagoans celebrate with gusto and verve.

The Boiled Beet Progressives hate Columbus Day - mercifully they have nothing to do with it.

Nope, MSNBC -wrong as always - this one is on the Obama Amateur Hour White House. It's their jacket to wear.

Cook County Commissioner Gainer Slaps Video Poker

Cook County Commissioner and 19th Ward AlumnaBridget Gainer* - well, she grew up here in St. Barnabas Parish on the east side of Western- took a tough position against 'easy money' and the one-armed bandits.

Slot machines are the crack cocaine of gambling addiction. Go to any casino and smell the desperation. The atmosphere in a casino or a corner of 'gaming friendly' bar is thick with desperation.

"We have time to bring all these other cities and communities along to ban it and basically make Springfield look at this differently and find a better way," she said.

Some Republican commissioners sought to defer on the Gainer effort until leaders of township government, which also exercises authority in unincorporated suburban areas, could weigh in.

The State of Illinois is again taking easy road to quick bucks. The poor slob feeding twenties and saw bucks -until he, or she is down to wrinkled and wadded dollar bill is the patsie in this Entertainment/Revenue gamble.

Cook County Commissioner is lauded for her role trying to slap at this foolish and essentially vicious and sad piece of legislation.

We have more than enough casinos to allow sad folks the opportunity to develop into bridge jumpers. That is what the State Video Poker gambit will do.

Well Done Commissioner Gainer!


* Bridget Gainer, 10th District

Main Office:



118 N. Clark Street
Room 567
Chicago, IL 60602
phone: (312) 603-4210
fax: (312) 603-3695




Contacts:


Phone: (312) 603-4210
Email: bgainer@cookcountygov.com
From the Commissioner's Website:

Committee Memberships
Audit
Environmental Control
Finance - Labor
Finance - Litigation
Health & Hospitals - Stroger & Cermak Hospitals
Human Relations
Law Enforcement

Committee of the Whole Membership (comprised of all commissioners)

Criminal Justice
Finance
Health & Hospitals
Legislation, Intergovernmental & Veterans Relations
Roads & Bridges
Zoning & Buildings

Committee Proceedings - For information on the activities of the Committees of the Board of Commissioners, visit the Secretary of the Board website.



Forest Preserve District Board - All Cook County Board Members also sit as Board Members for the Forest Preserve District. Please visit the Forest Preserve website for more information on their board activities.




Education University of Chicago, M.B.A.
University of Illinois U-C, B.A. - Political Science
Current WorkCorporate Strategy
Prior Work History
AON Corporation, Director of Public Strategy
Chicago Park District, Director of Lakefront Parks
Community Organizer

South Side's Billy Dec - Billy Hill - Kickin' It Mad for Olympics - Just Not in Copenhagen

Hat Tip to Steve Rhodes' Beachwood Reporter for an insight to the unsightly and unctuous Billy Dec whose south side counter part oozes down Western Ave. -Meet Billy Hill -again
Peabody nominated former Children's TV Cast Member ( Chuck Bill's Adventure Theatre - Voice of Herman the German Moose) , Dis-barred Illinois Attorney, Harvard Il.Business School.Llp, Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee Director of Way Too Human Relations, Slept with Elke Somer in 1978 when she appeared in Please Don't Eat the Daisies at the Martiniquel owns top Chicago Beverly/Morgan Park & Mt. Greenwood venues ,D.B.Mc Spitsteeth; Suds & Underwear Pub and Laundrymat, & won US Coin Operator of the Year! Check him out on the Yellow Pages, The Sign Over Fox's Pub & his blog www.aSelfisThang.com

Twitter Titter from Billy Hill Y'all! Props to my man president obama… knew he would bow down to the Boss… as a city, we are all making history…we are just all not gonna make money. I hope you are as proud and excited as I am!

As for St. Christina Gym , it is absolutely beautiful… so much history, the architecture is outstanding, the people are great,… well, I wish I had a video to spill it all… and btw, I keep doing these because of requests on twitter… if think I look like a big nerd as much as I do… I apologize… don’t watch. It's like when Dude. And as promised, will continue to keep you in the loop or in back o' the yards step by step on way to Copenhagen on twitter (click here to follow me). That's my light switch. o snaaaaaappppp!!!!!!! Day-em!

Most important, please take a minute today to tell all your friends, coworkers, contacts, family,… to share these celebrity messages from me and all the olympc supporters at Father Perez Knights of Columbus Council and the Magic where breakfast starts early and stays late - like tommy fitzgibbons -(shout out TF!) what's with the babe at Kean she's all pippy longstocking and never gives me the time of night - i mean day - Old habits are hard to break and new britches are tough to crack !Yeowww! billy you is baaad! with all so virally the rest of the world will know how great our country is an that we stoked the cabbage and how ready we are to welcome guests from around the globe (and the 4.4billion watching us sick groove on tv) as the sick nastiests host of the greatest sport, cultural, and friendship strengthening event ever! Bourbon Street Rocks Y'all!! (who knows, maybe they will get to one of the members judging us and it could all turn in our favor!) or not. Kickin' it at the evergreen plaza all this week!

CPD 6th Respond to Fight on 87th Street - Last Night Rev. Jesse Jackson & WTTW Make Police Goats for Fenger Murder

The great officers of the 6th Police District* responded to a fight that I witnessed on the way to Leo this morning. At roughly 7:50 A.M. east bound traffic on 87th Street stalled near Loomis as a fight between about twelve young men took place in a lot on the south side of the street.

Before I could pull over and call 911, Blue lights flashed westbound toward the fight. I saw at least six CPD SUVs and cars race to the scene.

When I arrived at Leo, administrators told me that at least that number sped west on 79th Street -obviously destined for the brawl.

Last night I witnessed Race-baiting Professional Rev. Jesse Jackson serve up more nonsense to the ever supple-spined Phil Ponce on Chicago Tonight. In essence, the arch-race-baiter and Cop Hater, Jesse Jackson, parsed the Fenger murder into a 'Lack of adequate Police' nonsense. Jackson even blamed Burge for the Fenger beat down - click my post title for the WTTW Jesse Fest. Ponce could not be anymore amoeba-like in his Bill Moyers cupped chin-gee-whiz Jesse affection.

WTTW - where Winnetka Talks to Wilmette - adds more elbow room for gang-banging thugs in Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone. The namby-pamby Cheese Cube Gulpers who skew the news and parade on rhetorical stick-up artists like Pops Jackson to toss gasoline on Race and Law Enforcement are real the 2X4 swingers and do more for thug-violence than a GD operated free guns program.

BTW - The Men of Leo High School exceeded their quota in blood donations to Life Source in the Leo Blood Drive only yesterday. Chicago can use his kind of blood
letting. The imbeciles in the News Media help the other all too familiar blood flow.


* I had drafted merely a shout-out to WTTW and Pops Jackson for their Cop Bash on WTTW last night, but irony and God's magic eye helped re-draft this note.

Well done Lions!

Olympic Gutterball Shooting Down The Lane?

I could care more about Chicago's 2016 Olympic Dreams if I could, in any way, shape, or form work myself up to a lusty 'I could care less!' Or, as we say on the south side - I just don't . . . Shive a Git!

Sorry, it's a temperment thing. This is not new or limited to President Obama's decision to go 'all in.' - click my post title.

Not since Hands Across America shilled a generation to sell more bottles of Coke to end poverty and misery forever have I been less enthused.

Charlie Olson and me were the only two adult males in America to ignore the pleadings of their young wives ( we were told with no uncertain fury and moral indignation) and join the Many Millions of Anabelle and Lillians and their sweaty palms that joined Route 45 in Kankakee County with Our Diverse and Ever So Wonderfully Human World!

Charlie and I swilled iced Augsberger beers and watched our Brides link-up with the world! Our cynicism no doubt queered the deal and thus poverty and hunger remain a part of the Human Comedy. Coca Cola's doing fine but We Are the World Songsmith Michael Jackson is not feeling all that well from what I gather.
Any hoo! Chicago's Olypmian Dreams rank right up there with Hands Across America .

The President and Mrs. President; the Mayor and Mrs. Mayor; The Governor and the Guv Consort; Oprah and Mrs. Oprah and the whole White House Mob are winging it to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympic Ideal Payoff! Pat Ryan will be able to bribe Rockne off of the Stadium in South Bend, if he rakes in this one!

However, I got a feeling about Rio.

Rio would have crossed the palms of the IOC -who make the Chicago City Council seem like Poor Clares -months ago.

I got a feeling that come Friday - The First Bowler and Lobbyist-in- Chief will be bowling a gutterball on this one.

Next to the IOC, Chicago Machine Democrats are Campfire Girls.

Win, lose, or draw - hey nice job - I couldn't be more excited.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy Warns of Lee Harvey Health Care and Sirhan 'The Teabag' Sirhan' Taking Out Another Kennedy!

Like so many Dynastic Families Rep. Patrick 'Ruprecht' Kennedy of Rhode Island says what's on his mind - and exactly how many angels Totally do prance upon the head of a pin? Undisturbed by deep thought, reflection or any sense of history and only 24 hours after offering America his Skank Stealth Health Legislation, the oxygen deprived Kennedy bloodline recipient warns America that later-day Lee Harvey Healthcares and Sirhan 'The Teabag' Sirhans might . . .might mind you . . .be targeting members of his family.

“My family’s seen it up close too much with assassinations and violence in political life. It’s a terrible thing when people think that in order to get their point across they have to go to the edge of violent rhetoric and attack people personally,” Kennedy told the nurses, union officials and AARP members finishing their breakfasts at the invitation-only event in the Providence Marriott hotel. “It’s fine for people to debate the issue and attack the issue, but when they go and stoop to the level of the vitriolic rhetoric that we’ve seen this debate turn up, it’s very, I think, dangerous to the fabric of our country.”

We can all recall the hysteria in America in 1963, when all Americans worried about where their next meal was coming from and whether or not a man should go to the moon and leave carbon footprints up there, how Lee Harvey Oswald was paid by the American Pharmaceutical Lobby to pump pills into JFK.

Yep, and Teabagger Sirhan Sirhan in the employ of Hartford Life Mutual stalked and shot RFK.

The Parallels are stunning. Why only a few weeks ago Nancy Pelosi warned that Blue Hairs inflamed by the UpJohn Corporation wanted to go on a Harvey Milk Run all over America! Horrors!

This is serious! Seriously. Stick to the Skank Cover-Up Legislation, Dimwit.

That Kennedy boy was left in the marinade waaaaayyy too long.

Kennedy Skank Stealth Health

The Old Lion must be emitting a throaty growl from beyond the borne from whence no traveller returns! Teddy would have loved this Lover Legislation to emerge from America's Healthy and Robust Examination of Congress with Its Britches Around Its Ankles - Health Reform!

Young Congressman Patrick Kennedy totally loves a Skanks (N.B. Gender Neutral) Right to Choose Stealth - Legislation,“This is totally going to be up to the individual,” Kennedy told CNSNews.com when specifically asked if these EHRs would include any STDs or abortions in a person's medical history.

Totally!

If you Clap on a Dose - your records disappear!

If you Abort - So Do the Records!

If Lydia's got Clamidia - We Get Ridda Ya!

You Sin; You Win!

The law specifically says that this “means an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that -- (A) includes patient demographic and clinical health information, such as medical history and problems lists; and (B) has the capacity -- (i) to provide clinical decision support; (ii) to support physician order entry; (iii) to capture and query information relevant to health care quality; and (iv) to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources.”

The Kennedy's wonder about that Vatican Dropped Call?

Our Lobbyist -in - Chief! Our Oprahlicious Olympian Copenhagen Chicagoans Expect a Strike!

In what ethics-in-government advocates described as a particularly far-reaching move, Mr. Obama barred officials of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues "for as long as I am president." He barred former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years and required them to recuse themselves from issues they had handled during that time.
New York Times - January 22, 2009


Chicago earned its name and reputation as The Windy City -not from the blasts that blow reed-thin pencil neck geeks like autumnal leaves down the canyons of LaSalle Street -due to the Boosterism of the Bellowing Big Mouths and Lapel Grabbers like Ogden Armour and in-the-vest Mayor Carter Harrison trumpeting the Columbian Exposition.

Chicago is All Olympics all the time and boosters like Club owner Billy Dec is Kickin' It with every 40 Watt Personality from both coasts. Oprah Olympic Only!

After much - Well No $hit Sherlock -opinion pieces in our local rags and on the Idiot Box Chicago's Homegrown Barker will fly to Copenhagen to Lobby for Olympics in Chicago!

You can expect no less.



"President Obama will join First Lady Michelle Obama, who will be leading the United States delegation to Copenhagen. Mrs. Obama will arrive in Copenhagen on Wednesday, September 30, along with Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and head of the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport.

"President Obama will depart Washington on the evening of Thursday, October 1 and arrive in Copenhagen on the morning of October 2 local time, just prior to Chicago’s presentation to the voting members of the IOC. He will arrive back in Washington on Friday afternoon.

"President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will both make presentations to the IOC during Friday’s session. They will discuss why Chicago is best to host the 2016 Summer Games, and how the United States is eager to bring the world together to celebrate the ideals of the Olympic movement.

"While in Denmark, the President and First Lady will meet with Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort. President Obama will also meet with Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen."

Up Kerry!

Last Wednesday ( Sept. 23rd) County Kerry again won the All Ireland Sam Maguire Football Cup.

Here in Chicago, All Ireland veterans like Dan Brennan of Kerry watched the triumph with his daughters at Gaelic Park, Kerrymen working in all the trades parked Jack Desmond's Pub on Ridgeland or the Goal Post on 95th Street to witness what was believed to be the best Kerry Team in decades defeat Rebel Cork.

Tens of thousands spilled onto the streets of Tralee and Killarney to welcome home the conquering heroes on Monday with thousands more in Glenbeigh for captain Darran O'Sullivan's return on Tuesday night. All of them were there for one reason only: To tell this extraordinary group of players how much they mean to their county.

The Ó Sés, the O'Sullivans, the Walshs, the Gooch, the Star, Aidan O'Mahony, Diarmuid Murphy, Seamus Scanlon, Killian Young, Tommy Griffin, Bryan Sheehan, the returning heroes of Mike Mac, Paul Galvin and Tadhgie and a host of other names of this, and recent years, carry the fire as the sportsmen of a new century for the Kingdom. Their journey with Sam through the county continued in Glenbeigh on Tuesday night, with Listowel confirmed for Friday night at the time of going to press. FOR so long now this close-knit group of Kerry footballers have been questioned. They have given their answers on many occasions: all culminating with Sam Maguire crossing the county bounds again.

They are tremendous. Kerry selector Ger O'Keeffe knows what it was like to be part of the 'Golden Years' team of 1975-1986. It was he who said that this generation are "the best we have ever had." Coming from someone from the era of the 'Golden Years' that is some accolade. And who would argue with him? Kerry's recent history was kickstarted in 1997 as Páidí Ó Sé and Maurice Fitzgerald reclaimed Sam after an 11-year absence. Twelve years on and five more All-Ireland titles have been annexed. This current side have just contested their sixth All-Ireland final in a row, winning four, and have just become the best team in Ireland for the fifth time this decade.

Ed Vrdolyak First to Kick In for Kordas! Get Your Kick In Counted on Sunday, Sept. 27 at Bourbon Street

What: Kick in 4 Kordas

When: 2 to 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: 115 Bourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th St., Merrionette Park.

Cost: $30

Information: Tom Kordas (773) 330-8224 or www.kickin4kordas.com.

I love the south side of Chicago. The very best in human instincts towers above the nonsense, agendas, snobbery, self-interests, disinterested morality and ethics and societal narcissism. I am sure many other communities boast fine human qualities and, empirically speaking, I have experienced similar qualities in other towns and states. However, the close-knit ethnic ( read Catholic), tribal, fiercely loyal southside of Chicago nurtures the very impulses that sparked Chicago's 'do-gooder' imitations - Settlement Houses/Community Organizing/Social Services & etc.

Jane Addams took and imitated the work of the Daughters of Charity's work with the poor and homeless more than she did from the Malthusian Settlement Houses of England.
She also took more from Ward-healer bosses, like Ald. Johnny Power than from radical Progressives.

At this morning's Salon at Kean Gas on 111th & Talman I talked with Tommy Kordas who lost his sister-in-law, Sue to cancer just weeks ago. His brother Pat is a Chicago Fireman and the single-Dad of three lovely girls and a teenage boy. I know the drill. I have been twelve years a widower and my kids are still home with me.

When a south side neighborhood loses a beautiful person to disease or disaster, the tribes band together and kick-in to help the bereaved. My family and friends overwhelmed me with their love and showers of support. When Mary died of brain cancer, the Kordas/McPolin Family swarmed in to help.

Sunday, every family and friend within driving, walking and in some very touching cases carrying distance of Bourbon Street will thicken traffic and bedevil the laws of physics to get into that venue in support of the Kordas Family.

While gulping dark roast with the intellects and Worthies of Kean Salon, Tom Kordas spoke of the first guy in line at Sue Kordas's wake - former Alderman Edward Vrdolyak. Public people tend to make a great show of arrival at wakes and generally have coat-holders pop-in early to set the buzz. Mr. Vrdolyak's early arrival is indicative of a genuine courtesy that too often evades elected and appointed personalities. On the south side, kids are taught that it is better to be a 'person than a personality' and kids learn by the example set by gentlemen like Ed Vrdolyak. Tommy Kordas told me, "Eddie V. and his son stood in the parking lot until all the family had gotten in and waited to offer his condolences, but later I got a call."

You see Ed Vrdolyak is not a WTTW Type and though a political antagonist of many of the Irish pols in my neighborhood is nevertheless one of us. You see, Joyces and Sheahans also take the trip to Hegewisch for such sad matters as well. After all politics is blood sport -life is and doing good at the most radical of levels is what is important.

The call sent Tom Kordas to 35th Street near Sox Park and to a sports memorabilia store to pick 'autographed photos and jerseys.' Gayle Sayers hand picked many of the items. These items are worth thousands of dollars and will be available as part of the silent auction and raffle prizes. Tom said he went with a check to purchase the items with seed money, but was told 'It is all taken care of.'

Ed Vrdolyak lives over in Hegewisch, which requires that a St. Cajetan resident get on the Ryan at 111th, drive north to I-94 take the Bishop Ford to 130th East to Burnham Ave. along the South Shore to & etc. In short, while Ed Vrdolyak and his family live on the south side, to be sure, they live a hell of long way from the Irish Riviera of Morgan Park/Beverly.

The Croatians, Serbs, Mexicans, Poles, Lithuanians and African Americans of the east-south side have the same culture of support as the Mick-thick Morgan Park/Beverly/Mount Greenwood and Evergreen Park folks.

They are not very Progressive politically - they are wonderful.

Get over to Bourbon Street tomorrow, drop a minimum of Thirty Bucks - eat and drink comes with your kick-in -but otherwise enrich yourself through association with the best people on earth.

Click my post title for Rob Rakow's touching Daily Southtown ( Southtown Star) feature on the Sue Kordas Benefit.

Once Lincoln Is Ridden Out on Rail, Let's Hire Stan Ikenberry as U of I President!

That's Stan chillin' with a little pocket-pool -digging for change while he awaits another Clout Proper Pay Day!



As long as the hypocrisy that is Progressive Illinois Politics never runs out of steam a self serving clown like Stan Ikenberry will find a pile of dough! This lastest parlor drama, starring the wistful carpetbagger from Camelot - Newly Appointed U of I Clean Guy Chris " I'm Runnin'" Kennedy; Governor Pat Quinn; The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board; Billy Ayers and his odious Old Lady; and the star of our Let's run Lincoln Out of Illinois on a Rail, because He Split 'Em - Clout Meiester and Eltist Cheese-Eater Stan Ikenberry - is the Absolute Limit, Sally! The Mutt's Nuts! The Snakes Hips! A Must See!

This clown Ikenberry ( onlimitly a few weeks ago) went before his old pal Abner 'Clean Plate" Mikva and railed against Clout. Clean House and Slop Some Stan all over the Stains! This same Seer Sucker Slim Stan took in all the Moolah from ComEd back in the day ,when Stan was Lord of the Campi of U of I -Circle and Beyond!

This is the goof who has yet to pick up the Buck about hiring the Barney Google of Domestic Terror - Bookless Billy Ayers!

Get this!

The university board is expected to name a temporary successor to President B. Joseph White within weeks. Ikenberry, the university's 14th president and a professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus, appears to be at the top of the list.

"If I were asked to serve and thought I could help, I would help. I haven't been offered anything. I haven't accepted anything," Ikenberry said.
Board Chairman Christopher Kennedy declined to say whether he was one of the two trustees who spoke with Ikenberry. But he acknowledged there are some obvious places to find a short-term leader to guide the school through its recent admissions scandal.

"I think looking at former presidents of the university is one place. Another is senior leadership at the university, and a third would be recently retired university presidents," Kennedy said.

Ikenberry oversaw the university's three campuses from 1979 to 1995, leading one of the largest building booms in its history. He was the U. of I.'s youngest president when he stepped into the role at 44.

Stan, come clean! You hired Billy as Pay-back to Billy Daddy -Old Tom Ayers - for shifting United Way and all the other coffers your way . . .Right? You, Stan Money Laundered a Domestic Terrorist - Didn't you Stan? Fess up! You did -didn't you?

Billy Ayers was hired on your watch, Stan, Clout Matters.

Let's have a Moratorium of the Illinois BullShit - $hall we?


Just Saying Stan - just asking - again. Hey it's not like I tried to blow up a barracks or a police station - but, then, maybe I too would be a Distinguished Professor of Sinecure Illinois.
Read This -
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/GrabarChicagoWayUpdated.pdf

Guinness at 250! Tom Jones Shares a Pint of Plain with the Planet!

Guinness*, when I was a stripling, was swallowed by the Turkey Birds - F.B.I. -Foreign Born Irish - Two Boaters, Salt Water Irish - in my neighborhood. That meant the saloons where Kerrymen, Corkwegians, Sons of Mayo, Galway Culchies and Tipperarymen took the black bottled stuff with the harp on the label to wash down the shooters of Paddy and John Powers Irish Whiskey.

On 79th Street those saloons usually meant Hanley's House of Happiness or the Mayfair West. On 63rd Street it might be at TJ Daly's Blarney Stone, The Gaslight, Mary Coffey's California Tap, Mike Doorhy's, the Hibernian Hall ( JFK Post) or Lyons' Pub. Guinness came only in bottles back in the 1950's, '60's and it was only in the 1970's draft Guinness hit the Chicago pavements -coming and going.

My Dad and all my uncles drank Drewey's, Hamms, Schlitz and Atlas Prager beers to go with their 'bumps' of Calverts, Sunnybrook, Canadian Club, and Seagram's 7 whiskies at places like Louis Kotecki's, Funks, the Mirror Lounge, B & H's, Shannon's, Mel Collins' Sea-Breeze, Castos, Billy Ellis's Wooden House on 79th & Ashland. They and their neighbors were Americans - veterans of WW II, union men, Peoples Gas officers, Chicago cops and foremen, Park District coppers, Catholic League teachers and coaches and City workers. Though Irish American they did not drink with their cousins from off the boat.

"Guinness? That crap would gag a maggot. Tastes like Australian butter." were the general opinions of the first generation Americans of Irish descent who avoided the Ceili's at Cannon Hall and the 'buckets of blood' where the Salt Water Harps tossed one another through windows, doors and at times into the arms of St. Peter.

I had my first taste of Guinness in the basement of Grandpa Hickey's basement when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I was offered the black beer by one of the Kerry musicians who played traditional jigs, reels, horn-pipes and polkas with my grandfather.

I thought the stuff was great. I did not get another swallow of the stuff until I tended bar on the Irish Strip -63rd Street between Pulaski and Damen in the 1970's.

In words of the Chicago Renaissance Man and Discerning Pintman Mike Houlihan - "I got me a touch of the Irish Arthritis - I get stiff in a different joint every night!"

It is wonderful.

Ireland celebrated the 250 years of Guinness and had no less a pintsman than Welsh genius Tom Jones lift the black glass! Croi follain agus gob fliuch!

Ta Breiss Agus Fiuntas In Guinnesss! Slainte!


*MY GOODNESS, my Guinness, what a party. As birthdays go, yesterday’s celebration of 250 years of Ireland’s most famous export was brash and bold, as big and global as the brand itself.

You sense Arthur Guinness, the man whose ambition started it all in 1759, would have approved. The pint of plain got the expected rousing toast from thousands of VIPs who gathered in the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin last night to mark the day.

Click my post title for the Full Pint!

Hugo Smells at the UN "Él Que Olido Esto Trató Ello" Jefe

The Venezuelan Fat Boy is a head-scratcher boys and girls! This goof gets oxygen challenged American celebrities all 'Tingle Thighed' but us Helots don't get the boy's charms. Oliver Stone,Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Michael Moore, Susan Saranwrap, and Rosie O'Donnell are only a few of the Hollywood Extra Hugo Habitues and then the academic pipe-smokers and Salonistas naturally cling to dictators who ooze existential revolution. Everyone else - the folks who actually have meaningful lives and jobs that require attention and dedication - just seem to miss the appeal of Scent Hugo.

A couple of years ago, Hugo tried the Sulphur gambit in an attempt to punk GW Bush.

The other day, the Beardless Castro Endomorph cut one in praise of President Obama at the U.N. The Third World Fun House and Free Parking Exchange.

"It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone. It smells of something else. It smells of hope and you have hope in your heart," Chavez said during a rambling, 57-minute address where he mentioned close friend and former Cuban President Fidel Castro more than Obama or Bush."What would it be like in Latin America today if the Americans had not imposed their model with firepower and blood," he asked, referring to free-market polices implemented around the region. Later, he declared that "imperialism must end!"

Chavez also urged Obama to "come over to the socialist side. Come join the Axis of Evil over here." He was only half joking.

That can only signal more Hollywood Celebrities engaged in biting the bubbles in their bathtubs. Be like Hugo! Smell the Hope!

Que Revolto, Jefe!

Thanks Dad! Gaddafi Duck the Harpo Marxist Goes JoyBuzzer Nuts on U.N. ( all in a day's work there) and on Our Poor President.

Goofballs can be murderous thugs. Bill Ayers who tried to kill soldiers and judges back in the day is a serious goofball - the Barney Google of Domestic Terror. Phil Specter? Oh, yeah! Now, that is some 1st Communicant. Here's the pick of the nose! That bottom photo shows the Libyan Yamhead alighting from his Air Camel with his Chick Hit Squad. Oh, yeah, this guy is one Carbon Footprint worth a plaster cast.


President Obama is a gentleman - wet-behind the ears and a bit arrogant beyond his pay-grade, but a gentleman.

I felt genuinely very sorry for the President yesterday after the Lockerbie Contractor and Trump Tenthouse Guest Moammar Gaddafi included our President in his . . .remarks - "our son" and "our Obama," and saying, "The election of Obama is the beginning of change." . . . "We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president," Gaddafi said during a rambling, 95-minute speech during which he read from notes, exhausted at least one of his interpreters, threw the U.N. schedule into disarray, and put much of his audience to sleep.

That was like having Mackenzie Phillips name you Father of the Year.

Mama's and Papa's Don't let your Babies Grow Up to be . . .Gordon Brown. Don't Let 'em Pick Sitars and Bribe the Old Duck/Let 'Em Be Perverts and Anchors and Such!

The Kankakee Man Who Sent Fords to Vietnam in 1954 - Romy Hammes

Click my post title for more on the great Romy Hammes at Jerry Hammes.com

Thirty (30) 1950 and 1951 vintage Fords (two door hard top) and five Ford trucks went from Kankakee/South Bend to Haiphong, because of Romy and Dorothy Hammes. They were two American Catholics with a great deal of money and resources to do good works. Hammes vowed to the Blessed Virgin to share his worldly goods with those in need to tune of 25% of all that he made in this life. There were many other hands, besides the good priest in charge of Catholic Relief Services who reached out to the Hammes family, who were launching ot theirs as well: Anti-Catholic elites, cynical opportunists and Intelligence operatives. The Hammes family wanted to help suffering people and many other powerful and influential people wanted to make the most out of a good deed.

In 1954, after the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the French capitulation in Indochina, Father Joseph Hartnett a priest from Philadelphia reached out to Kankakee Ford Dealer Romy Hammes to help the thousands of Catholic Vietnamese refugees flooding south. At the time, America had refused to sign the Geneva Accords which created two Vietnams - North of the 17th Parallel Communist and South of the 17th A puppet regime headed by the Roman Catholic Diem.

The CIA and the Roman Catholic Church mounted Operation Virgin Mary, which goaded Catholics north of the 17th Parallel to head south. A million North Vietnamese refugees flooded the port of Haiphong. There was no adequate transportation and so Catholic Relief Services headed by Father Joseph Harnett, who had directed the post WWII refugee efforst in Trieste until 1952 reached out to American Catholics like Romy Hammes.

Hammes, who had made vow to share 25% of everything made with Our Lady made good on that vow.

This was a time when Communism threatened all of Asia and post-McCarthy American elites were trying to regroup and pluck hegemony from the hands of the Catholic clique in America’s foreign policy and intelligence communities. The torch of leadership had passed from Wild Bill Donovan to Allen Dulles at the CIA.

Aboard an American naval AKA ( Attack Cargo Transport) vessel USS Montague in Haiphong Harbor was a handsome and all-too-humanly complex doctor from St. Louis. Ashore in Saigon was career spy. Also, in close contact with this spy were competing aid and relief agencies that cloaked people of wildly dissimilar motives and agendas.

Here is a succinct redaction of those points of view at center of this series of events:

There also was the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the American Friends of Vietnam (AFV), two organizations described by James Fisher as made up of "leftist entrepreneurs bent on expanding their markets abroad in the immediate post-McCarthy era." Imbued with a "messianic liberalism," the two groups had interlocking memberships, and were made up in many instances of former socialists who had shed their anti-fascist orientation and now turned anti-communist. Harold Oram, for example, was head of the American Friends of Vietnam, an organization that boasted John F. Kennedy and Mike Mansfield, two notable Catholic democrats. Yet Oram did publicity work for Planned Parenthood and hired Peter White, grandson of the renowned New York architect, Stanford White, to work on the Diem account. Peter White and his wife, both Catholics, had a large family and were part of the Catholic intellectual revival of the post war years. Their friends included the writers Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, and Edward Rice, founding editor of Jubilee, a Catholic monthly of high church graphics and literary and theological brightness. http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/cw_feb98/Dooley.html

I wish to tell the story of the Romy and Dorothy Hammes gift to the people of Vietnam in 1954. This story will bring together the conflicts that seem to have shaped American Foreign Policy in Vietnam and ultimately in American intellectual, political and religious life.



I see this story to be a point of focus for a discussion on the betrayal of American Catholicism and advent of America’s ‘disinterested’ religious soul.

Tamara Holder and Pat Hickey Think Congressman Jackson is Having a Job Done on Him. It Don't Seem Right.

Congressman Jesse Jackson appears to be the only genuine victim of the Blagojevich Corruption Roller-coaster. Congressman Jesse L. Jackson who was named in the Criminal Complaint and subsequent indictment of Blago by the Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has now been piled on out of the blue with an additional set charges.

One accusation at a time Fitzy; One person at a time, one allegation at a time, Fitzy." My attorney pal. Tamara Holder said to me "It looks like they veered off the yellow brick road. Just an opinion, but this was about BLAGO. How did the arrows all of a sudden turn to JR?!?!"


Well, Tamara, from my front porch way down here in the 19th Ward, there appears to be some wiggle enough room for Paddy Fitz to drive a semi-trailer towing a Wide Load slab house. Seems like everyone Blago touched is now subject to a probe by the G.

This marriage of true minds brought together two polar opposites - me and Tamara Holder.

Two of God’s Creatures – Ms. Tamara Holder an athletic 'twenty something and change' beauty and attorney, activist, and legal affairs spokesperson for Fox News and CNN and me, a runty, old south side school teacher, who sits on the porch with a quart of Green River ( at minimum) jawing about politics and ‘those damned kids’ with my 19th Ward helot neighbors – polar opposites have come to the same conclusion that Congressman Jackson seems being fitted to wear a jacket that he just might not deserve.

Together we hope to raise some questions for our neighbors - Tamara's around Lincoln Park and my own around 108th & Rockwell -consider -

1. Why is Congressman Jackson being targeted with such vigor, while Blago goes on the Media Circuit, hawks an unreadable book and plays to his upcoming jury pool? And while Obama, Axelrod and Emanuel get to be tight-lipped too. "The Presidential Protection!"


2. Why are Feds Changing the Game? Are they dropping the Senate Shenanigans for Congressional mailings? Who benefits by Fitzy nailing Congressman Jackson's pelt to the shed?

3. Who's driving this railroad? Which Justice Department?

How's that?

4. As Ms. Holder mentioned to me -"How about we ask about how much money this is costing? Remember the Jesse Jackson investigation has been 5 months long with the Ethics Committee! TWO investigations, Fitzy's and Congresses. I wonder how much money Jackson used to allegedly have a staffer send a mass email to constituents regarding his desire for the Senate seat? All the while, the other leaders are flitting around in private jets and 1st class, reading his financials instead of the health care bill."

Fair questions in deed.

Full disclosure - I met Congressman Jackson on two occasions - back in 1993, Jesse Jackson, Junior was on the School Board for LeMans Academy in Rolling Prairie, Indiana along with Bulls Boss John Paxson. He impressed me as a well-read and very nice guy. Twelve or so years later, I met Congressman Jackson and his two adorable kids at Rainbow Cone, Ice Cream on Western Ave. and he did not seem bothered in the least that I had referred to him as Kid Staples - following his dramatic weight loss. I think his Old Man is a Race cottage industry stick-up artist, but, then again, my Dad is a gifted tradesman.

Watch Chicago Daily Observer for future thoughts on the Jackson issue from Beauty and the Beast.

Click my post title for Attorney Tamara Holder's sharp take on this issue

Romy Hammes - 1900-1981: Illinois Business Genius, Philanthropist and Good Guy -The Man from Kankakee

I taught a good many Hammes kids while at Bishop McNamara from 1975 until 1987 and the Hammes legend was very familiar to me.

However, I tripped over a story about Romy Hammes that really put the hook through my gills -it has every thing! well, aside from the Communist onslaught moving south in Vietnam no violence - yet - and no sex - though I am quite postive that procreation and adultery took place circa 1956.

Refugees, Persecution, Vietnam in the 1950's, 1950-51 Fords and Trucks, International Law, Catholic Charities, Notre Dame University, South Bend, and . . . more to come.


Romy Hammes

If there was ever one person from Kankakee, Illinois, who had it all and did it all it was a businessman with a seemingly inexhaustible Midas touch.

In September 1946, Kankakeeans who knew Romy Hammes were not surprised to discover he had received nation-wide recognition in a seven page article, "U.S. Success Story 1938-1946," that appeared in Life magazine. (This was Hammes' second appearance in Life, the first had been in a 1938 story on the automobile industry.) In 1974 the photographer that had taken the pictures of Hammes for Life, Bernard Hoffman, published a biography about "The amazing, meteoric like rise of a grass-roots American from small-town Ford salesman to international businessman" and titled it "The Man from Kankakee: The Story of Romy Hammes, Twentieth-Century Pioneer."

Born in 1900 to Anton N. and Mary Hammes, Romy Hammes grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
...
At the age of seven, Romy began helping out at his father's shoe store.At sixteen, having completed courses in bookkeeping, shorthand and typing at the University of Wisconsin Business School, he went to work for the local Ford dealer, Harry Dahl.

By 1926, Hammes had married Dorothy Hofweber and had won a nationwide Ford sales contest by selling 107 Model T's . He was then offered a dealership management position by the Ford Company.Given the choice of Atoma, Iowa, or Kankakee, Illinois, Hammes chose Kankakee in partnership with Dahl.
...
Hammes soon opened dealerships in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; DeKalb, Illinois; South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago.He also became a distributor for Ford-Ferguson tractors in fifty-two counties.

At the time Hoffman had contacted Hammes for the 1946 Life article, he learned Hammes, besides being a very successful Ford distributor owned an investment trust company, was a director of Kankakee's City National Bank; had opened Marycrest Business College.He also was dealing in real estate and building homes.When Hoffman returned in 1961 to take some pictures for Life's twenty-fifth anniversary issue, he found Hammes and his wife Dorothy, because of their generous philanthropic and charitable activities, had received the highest homage the Catholic Church can give to laymen.Anarticle in the January 1951 Kankakee Journal told the story:

"The honor of Knight of St. Gregory, conferred last week upon Romy Hammes of Kankakee by Pope Pius XII, is greater than many laymen appreciate.Not more than 100 men in the entire world may be accorded this knighthood, established in 1821 by Pope Gregory XVI. . . . "Mrs.Romy Hammes has been accorded the medal, "Pro Esslesia et Pontiface," in recognition of her services to the Roman Catholic church.The awardswere announced by the most Rev. Martin D. McNamara, bishop of Joliet diocese. . . ."

By 1970 The Hammes family had spent over 2 million dollars "in worldwide church and school construction."

Hammes expressed his credo in a 1970 Kankakee Sunday Journal interview:

"'About 20 years ago I decided to take the Blessed Virgin in as a partner,' said Romy, 'I decided to give her 25 percent of whatever I earned.After all, where do you get your good health and good fortune but from the Lord, and you must do something in return.'"Hammes's philanthropic and business projects embraced countries around the world as well several cities in the United States.They ranged from erecting a high school, church and bank building in Las Vegas and a resort hotel in Honolulu, to contributing to the establishment "of schools, orphanages, hospitals, living quarters and missions from Hong Kong to Africa."

In 1955, Hammes bought the Singer manufacturing company property in South Bend and Chicago. He planned a shopping center on the South Bend property and donated the 10-story Singer office building in Chicago to Chicago's First Church of the Nazarene.

On a local level Hammes built Marycrest Shopping Center and St. Teresa's school and church in the Marycrest subdivision of Kankakee; donated an outdoor statue of the Blessed Virgin to St. Joseph's Church in Bradley and opened branches of Peoples Bank of Marycrest in Bradley and Bourbonnais.

Romy Hammes died in December 1981 at the age of 81.

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Hammes_Romy_258514659.aspx

ACORN 8 Balls! - Meet the Acorn Advisory Board!

Meet Your Acorn All stars!


. John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
• Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Board Member, RFK Foundation, former MD Lt. Governor
• Andrew Stern, International President, Service Employees International Union
• Henry Cisneros, Executive Chairman, Cityview
• John Banks, Vice President of Government Relations Con Ed
• Eric Eve, Senior VP of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, Citigroup
• Harvey Hirschfeld, President, Lawcash
• Dave Beckwith, Executive Director, Needmor Fund

John Podesta is the Bubba Clinton Vet who was tasked with the waterfall of pardons by Bubba and keeping a lid on the UFOs - I imagine we will learn more about the Spacemen in Rosewell than the synergy between SEIU/ACORN and the DNC.

Kathleen Kennedy -Townsend, The Old Lion's Niece and a Kennedy - touch football, sailing, PT Boat accidents, water hazards, annulments and the poor and down-trodden.

Andy Stern . . not enough space here . . .the man who is killing organized labor and the American Middle Class. Andy will try and muzzle Bertha Lewis before she shoots her mouth off on Fox Sunday.

Henry Cisneros was Bubba's running-with-britches-down mate in the early Clinton White House Housing and Urban Development who paid off one of his skirts, lied to G, did a guilty plea and pardoned by Bubba and John Podesta.

John Banks - Up and Coming New York Government Relations fizer with MTA and Con Ed. Traffic and lights.

Eric Eve another Clintonista who found a home with CITI Group who made out handsomely on bad loans and Federal Bailouts!

Harvey Hirschfeld is Pay-to-Play Player in the Easy Loan Get Fed Money Finance World now with Litigation Lawyers CashLaw!

Dave Beckwith is an AllStar Community Organizer Like Jesus Was! Like Jesus, Dave plays to win Dig it!" Unless the organization wins concrete, measurable benefits for those who participate, it will not last long. The groups that content themselves with holding endless meetings and plod along involving everyone in discussions that never lead to action or to victory are doomed to shrink into nothing. People want to see results. That's why they get involved. There is a theory (isn't there always?) that says that folks join up if two things are true. First, they must see a potential for either benefit or harm to themselves if the group succeeds or fails. Second, they must see that their personal involvement has an impact on the whole effort. This makes sense to me. Winning is critical, but if the group's going to win whether I get involved or not - if my personal involvement is not critical - then I can stay home and watch TV."

Better stick to MSNBC Dave, because everywhere else ACORN and your work with them ain't looking too good.

'Put Her There Pal! Putin There!' - Obama takes a Nerf ball to a Nuke Fight and Vlad is Glad! Poles Ain't Thrilled.

Vladimir Putin extends the hand of Friendship to his best Pal.

Nuance and thigh tingling soaring rhetoric aside, President Obama is Jimmy Carter.
Click my post title for Barack Obama's That 70's Show -starring President Obama as Jimmy Carter!


"Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama's new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous "gray zone" between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

Will it be McKenna/Proft for the top of the Illinois GOP?

The Illinois field in the race for Governor is getting more applicants than American Idol. I'm no Randy Jackson, much less Ellen, but I like what I see.

Dan Proft is the only candidate with any real ideas - especially about education and how to get genuine ( Vouchers!)reform to our public schools -but Dan has fewer nickels in his jeans than your humble correspondent at the end of the pay cycle. Dan Proft welcomed one of the nicest guys in civic and public life into the hooley - Andy McKenna, Jr.

I met Andy McKenna years ago, when he served on a school board of directors. Mr. McKenna is tough, sharp, no-nonsense, good humored and as chatty as Speaker Mike Madigan. Andy McKenna operates on consensus, but does not dither. He will strike boldly.

Dan Proft grabs large issues and Gigantic political opposition by the belt, pulls the fight in close, tosses his forehead into the chest and pounds the short ribs until the bigger foe can no longer breathe - no breathe/no fight.

Yesterday, the sweet-natured but tough gutted Andy McKenna got a taste of Proft from the bell:



"We can nominate a candidate beholden to a small group of affluent political insiders who give money to both parties. They win when Republicans get elected; they win when Democrats get elected. Either way, you lose.

"Or we can nominate a candidate willing to take the fight to the establishment politicians of both parties, those who are concerned only with peddling influence and dividing up other people’s money.

"I am the only candidate willing to make a clean break from our ignominious past; to hold cynical Chicago Democrats and complicit Republicans accountable for what has happened on their watch; and to chart a future focused on expanding opportunity for people who play by the rules in Illinois.

"The McKenna family has donated thousands of dollars to Chicago Democrats, including Mike Madigan, Lisa Madigan, Dan Hynes, and Dick Durbin. They have also donated thousands of dollars to Republicans and the Illinois Republican Party.
"They hedge their bets, because they are interested in self-preservation. Mr. McKenna has taken indicted Springfield powerbroker Bill Cellini’s infamous ethos to heart, ‘When we're in, we're in, and when you're in, we're in. We're always in.’

"Who’s the ‘we’? I suggest you ask Andy McKenna. But the ‘we’ sure doesn’t include rank-and-file Republican primary voters.

"We have been down this road so many times as a party. Every time we allow the bipartisan combine to select our candidates, we run into a dead end. We cannot make the same mistake again if we want to not only win elections, but also bring about the system-change reform required to make Illinois economically viable. We cannot hope to un-fix Illinois before we un-fix our own party.

"As State Senator Matt Murphy, the other half of ‘Team Status Quo,’ said just a few weeks ago, ‘People are looking for a new face to take us in a new direction, especially on the Republican side…They want to see somebody who can represent a clean break from the past.’

"Sen. Murphy is right. And that is why Andy McKenna is absolutely the wrong candidate to lead our party and lead this state."

Ding!

I got a feeling here at ringside that we are going to see Dan Proft hammer away at Andy's short ribs round after round.

Now, here's the deal. If Jim Tyree had Andy's money and access to money, he'd toss his coin away. The dough is the stuff that keeps Ow-ees, cuts bruises and bumps from doing too much damage. Unlike Tomato-Candidates, Andy McKenna can devalue time and go round after round with Dan Proft. More importantly, Andy McKenna has a crowd of talented folks in his corner - he has an organization - troops. Andy McKenna has a Notre Dame sense of the field. Yet again and unlike Charlie Weiss, Dan Proft can read a clock and knows that what moves the arms on the tick-tock is the Dough Ray Me!

This just might be the GOP's year - Gov. Quinn got the backing of the Cook County Democratic Leadership, an endorsement from the Purple People Eaters of SEIU and is in a pillow fight with Dan Hynes. That should be gravy for the GOP and Dan Proft just might be the guy to keep them focused and keep the GOP from blowing their toes off - as is their wont. Dog! Yo! - make sure that Judy is out grabbing a smoke during the bouts, Dan.

This brawl might end up with Andy McKenna getting the big belt for Governor. I expect to see Dan Proft holding up Andy McKenna's arm with one hand and swinging the other one like a saloon door on payday in the role of Lt. Governor. This will be Dempsey v.Tunney *1926 all over.

Dan Proft will propbably come over to my 'Hood and flatten my tires for saying that: I would expect no less from a guy who is in the race to win. Andy, Proft can do the hard hitting.


*In his autobiography, Dempsey conceded that he forgot all about the rule: "It's hard to stop what you're doing, standing over a guy and waiting for him to get up."

Tunney, who floored Dempsey briefly in the ninth round, won the 10-round fight and retained the title he had won from Dempsey the year earlier.