The GOP - Making America Great. . . again, and again, and again, or "Is This Your Homework, Larry?"

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was set on Thursday for a cliffhanger vote to repeal Obamacare, as Republican leaders worked to deliver President Donald Trump a win for one of his top legislative priorities.
House Republican leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass and several party moderates who previously objected to it got behind it on Wednesday, giving the effort new momentum.
Still, the vote was expected to be close. Even if the measure passes the House, it faces daunting odds in the Senate where Republicans hold a narrower majority.

The Grand Old Party.

Say it with me.

Sounds better than Republican.

A Republican, when I was growing up, wore grey clothing and had a very bad haircut. He went to non-Union barbers in Roseland.  There were not many of them. They took commuter trains to work in the Loop at places like the Board of Trade, Quaker Oats, or Morton Salt.

They were Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists and Non-Denominational Billy Graham fans. They were the minority population of Englewood, the Highlands, Scottsdale, West Lawn, or Brainerd.

Their kids went to public schools, belonged to the Cub/Boy/Girl Scouts, the Y and went to Bible camp in the summer.

Our Dads took the bus, the L, drove early model Buicks, Pontiacs and Chevys to the Stockyards, Standard Brands, Central Steel and Wire, Kenwood Construction, Boyington House Movers, Donahue Steel, the County, City Hall, Canfield's Bottling and National Can Corporation.  Some worked in the steel Mills over by the Lake, most worked nearby.

We went to parish grammar and high schools or high schools operated by the Carmelites, Sisters of Casmier, Mercy Nuns, Irish Christinan, or De LaSalle brothers.  Some very few were educated by the Jesuits at St. Ignatius - they were really smart.

We swam at Park pools and they swam at the Y.

We stayed out of the Y - naked swimmers and birth control.

Politics was as easy as being a White Sox, or Cardinals fan.   I do not recall any great affection for George Halas's team back in the 1960's.  We liked Green Bay, Oakland and the Jets.

The Cubs?  I knew two families, the Sitorouses and the Balinas.  The Balinas moved to Rolling Meadows, wherever the hell that was, in 1964.  Nick Sitorous went to mass where Louis Farakhan demands that the Jews get what's coming to them and whitey too. Nick was Greek.  He was not a Republican, but he loved the CUBS and fixed television sets.

The rest of us were Italian, German, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, Jews and where I lived predominantly Irish.  Many of the younger families were mixed. Diversity was called white flight bigotry.

The Republicans could never win an election.  They supported Planned Parenthood, used to belong to the Klan, kept Catholics and Jews out of the American Eagles clubs and kept to themselves, which was OK by us.  We waved.  They waved back.

I remain a Democrat, even though the Party is more like the cold, humorless and robotic GOP that I recall from my wonder years.  I voted Democrat for President until Barack Obama.  I had gotten to know young Barack Obama, executive director of the Woods Fund, congressional candidate, Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senator, before he became the Untouchable Candidate and President.  I found him to be a dope.  He has not let me down.

Worse, the Democratic Party, which had once been as honestly invested in the neighborhood and its people, as any parish, had become a branch of the Unitarian Abortion and America's Biggest Critic Book and Alchemy Club. 

Try and find a union bug on a Progressive Democrat's business card.  Good luck with that.

However, The GOP is worse.

They are screw-ups.  Hand a Republican a winning Lotto ticket and he goes to debtors prison.

Obama had some of the nastiest, wealthiest and committed  people in America directing his every prompt, move and triumph.  The Progressives.

The GOP remains dominated by the tasseled loafer crowd of Judge Smails opportunists like John McCain ( for whom I worked like a dog in 2008, only to watch him quit like Girl Scout in a downpour ditching the cookies and heading home), Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and so many others.  Paul Ryan has become as noodle spine-ed as Yertle the Turtle and the other two war-happy phonies.

With seven years of whining about ObamaCare, the Budget and House Committees on Everything, the people voted in change at the executive, legislative and a tiny,tiny bit at the judicial branches of government.  The GOP benefited and has done . . .nothing.

I credit President Trump with keeping his promises and energetically doing exactly what the American people demanded.

Right out of the chute, Paul Ryan screwed the pooch on the Affordable Health Care recall.

Now, only weeks later the GOP are trying to force another failed vote.

These clowns are like a very few of my students who write forty characters of a 500 word essay on Frederick the Great in dull tipped pencil on a single page badly torn from Tommy Doyle's notebook on the way to school, when Times New Roman # 12 font is required and MLA citation demanded,  without any mention of Prussia, much less the Enlightenment- " Is this what you wanted?"

Is THIS your homework, Larry?

That is the GOP.

I do not consider  President Trump to be a Republican.

I find hope and change in that fact.  

You Must Punch a Bully, But It Is Stupid to Move-into His House -Policy Lessons from George Smith

A wonderful black man who worked security at Orchestra Hall in the late 1960's and early 1970's,  where I worked as a janitor ( Local 25), told me, " You can not change people.  You can punch a punk in the mouth and then you had better put some shoe tips in his ribs and kidneys, until he understands your point of view and then be sure to repeat the process every time he waves at you from across the street -"Hi, George!'  Oh, yeah 'Hi, Mother@#$%er!' punch kick and slap. He'll behave.  Mmmmhmmm.  But you can not change people."

George Smith was a philosopher-king*.

His words have stayed with me.  Do not be a man violence, unless you make your point very, very clear.

The important lesson is that people will never change.  They will modify their behavior, avoid punishment, seek calmer waters, but never change.

Assad, Putin, Kim Jong Un and every Jihadist waving a Kalashnikov and shooting a woman in back of the head, or driving a beer truck into a Swedish Nordstroms will never change.

Moving into the house with a louse to make him change his evil ways is as stupid as . . .sending American soldiers into Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, or over the 38th Parallel.

President Trump ordered a spirited response to the chinless Monster of Syria's gassing of his neighbors.

He painted no "RED LINE" with Obama's Super Invisible Ink.

President Trump went all George Smith on Syria.  Putin got the message and so did the thugs around the North Korean Fat boy. They understand what 'incoming rounds' mean.  Do they ever! After all, Kim Jong Un has used NKPA generals and his own kin for 80 mm mortar practice.

America has the best military hardware and hard-men.  American warriors know how to apply shoe tips to ribs and kidneys. They get it, kick the crumbs to the curb, stomp if necessary and come home. Mission Accomplished!  Without sending more and more American kids into harm's way.

Had GW Bush some sand in his craw, each and every person involved in 9/11 would have ( and most certainly could have) had a 9mm shot through the noggin.  End of story. But greedy pigs wanted regime change and new markets in Fallujah.

I believe that regime change will take place and without the help of Senators Graham and McCain - the the Aunt Cyp and Uncle Sap of Endless Wars,

President Trump needs to listen to the very good people that helped him win the White House.

Assad is a world wide pain in the ass. Putin knows it. A couple of more Tomahawks in the right places and Vlad the Bad will send the lads of Spetsnaz calling on the lanky gump, Bashir Assad, for  his Global Valediction.  Likewise, the guys with the over sized garrison caps around Kim Jong Un will take tubby out to the artillery range for some close-up and exciting pyrotechnics.


George Smith understood foreign and domestic policy - take care of a punk on the street and come home to a happy house.


* George  once made the CEO of a major Chicago company grab some floor, when the oligarch used his key to the Cliff Dwellers long after hours.  " What's a burglar want with the Cliff Dwellers at this late hour?"

I will not say which concern, nor who accompanied the figure reported frequently in Kup's Column, out of respect for the man's family.  One never knows, do one?

The GOP Blows Off Its Own Toes . . .Yet, Again!

“The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder… The middle class are getting absolutely destroyed. This country won’t have a middle class soon.” — Donald Trump

"We've had people we've known our whole lives decide we're racist and white supremacist," said Suzanne Monk.

Resistance to President Donald Trump is cropping up in the most unlikeliest of places: the House GOP caucus.
At least four Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, some of whom have been questioned, booed and heckled at recent town halls by their constituents, publicly called for Trump to release his tax returns in order to review for any potential conflicts of interest that pose a national security risk or violate the Constitution. Salon

The tassled-loafer wing-tip of the American Political Elite ( global statists, bent upon aiding in the creation of the American Banana Republic) is worn by the folks who helped create ObamaCare - the GOP ( 'go-along' and all Oligarchs profit).

• The likes of former U.S. Senator Marque Kirque of Illinois, who remained in U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's back pocket, in sickness and in health, for his entire senatorial tenure, comes to mind.

• Then there are Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Uncle Cyp and Aunt Sap, of Nation-building Endless Warfare.

• The Womens Media Team of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins always ready to hot-foot the end of Roe v. Wade.

If they are talking on CNN and MSNBC, it means that they are on the job for the elites.

Let us not forget that the GOP was always friendly to abortion, prior to Nixon.

From Nixon using abortion legislation to strategically woo Catholics to lobbyists deliberately linking family planning to abortion in the '90s, the Republican long game to court a new voter base was nothing if not effective. Today, it's almost impossible to be a pro-choice Republican running for any major political office. And across the country, state-level efforts to restrict abortion access are powering forward: in Texas, the number of abortion providers dropped from 40 to eight in a little over a year.
Though reproductive rights seem to be disappearing before our eyes, the secret Republican history of Planned Parenthood tells a different story—namely that it doesn't have to be this way, because it hasn't always been.

This toxic love affair between WASP delicacy where unwelcomed babies made manicured finger-tips touch shamed pink cheeks, so too the blush of profitable partnership with the radical Progressives (ACLU) and Neo-Cons:

Yet the triumph of neoconservatism was hardly permanent or complete. The administration so far has not adopted neocon arguments to push for regime change in North Korea and Iran. Bush has cooled on the "axis of evil" talk and has launched negotiations with the regime in North Korea. The president has also established friendlier relations with Communist China than many neocons would like, and he launched a high-profile effort to promote a "road map" for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that most neocons (correctly) predicted would lead nowhere.
"Neocons Are Liberals Who Have Been Mugged by Reality"
No longer true. Original neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol, who memorably defined neocons as liberals who'd been "mugged by reality," were (and still are) in favor of welfare benefits, racial equality, and many other liberal tenets. But they were driven rightward by the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when crime was increasing in the United States, the Soviet Union was gaining ground in the Cold War, and the dominant wing of the Democratic Party was unwilling to get tough on either problem.
A few neocons, like philosopher Sidney Hook or Kristol himself, had once been Marxists or Trotskyites. Most, like former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, simply had been hawkish Democrats who became disenchanted with their party as it drifted further left in the 1970s. Many neocons, such as Richard Perle, originally rallied around Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democratic senator who led the opposition to the Nixon-Ford policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Following the 1980 election, U.S. President Ronald Reagan became the new standard bearer of the neoconservative cause.

Abortion, Civil Liberties When Acceptable to the Elite, and Nation Building are the global initiatives are meat and global warming, gay triumphalism, class and race warfare the gravy of the elitism defeated by Middle America in November 2017.

The GOP and Progressive Democrats hate Trump with equally bilious malice.


Here in Illinois, the radical Progressive Democrat Party runs everything with the help of Illionois GOP.   Had they not, Dan Proft might be our Governor.  Make no mistake. A Governor Rauner is the the twin of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin dip from the same dish.

President Trump was not my first, or my fifth choice for President, but I have come to appreciate his genuine concern for Helot America.

The GOP is the Party that blows off its own toes, when the elites are threatened. They are threatened.

President Trump looks better to me every news cast and with each fold of the page.

State of the Union: 14 shot in Chicago Over the Weekend

So, La-La Land is runner up.

Gee.

CVS is closing 11 stores in poor black neighborhoods. The Sun Times will not mention this.

Parkway Gardens is still O Block. However, Angela Caputo will never connect the dots back *to Habitat, HUD, Allison Davis and Valerie Jarrett. 

14 Chicagoans were killed since last Friday.

City of Chicago employees have had their pensions looted by elected officials from RMD (Richie of Mass Destruction) to RIE (Rahm Ignores Everything)

I am a City of Chicago employee. I am not the enemy, I am not the problem. You, the Government, have been raiding my pension fund whenever you need money. You, the Government, mismanaged your money. I also pay into my retirement every paycheck. I follow the rules you set up and we agreed to. Now you want to blame me for our State's/City's money woes and steal from my retirement benefits? If you are a public employee/retiree please copy and paste as your status. Facebook: 

And President Trump had absolutely nothing to do with any of the above.

Still, Chicago's two papers remain thick with Trump Toxicology teases.  Even the epic-ly empty Michael Sneed is offering rhetoric lessons to President 45 and Rahm Emanuel, who stood with the owners of Parkway Gardens in 2013, the privatized real estate development of a former HUD housing project, a pet Valerie Jarrett project,** remains bullet proof in both papers.

The State of the Union will be whoopee cushion for the media.


Chicago will keep on keepin' on.


Wonder what March will bring?

Now, who lives in La-La Land?


*Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems."Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there," said Jarrett, whose company manages more than 23,000 apartments. "I would argue that someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn't 100 percent public housing is by definition better off." Boston Globe 2008

**Valerie JarrettWho Am I?
Chicago Medical Center As Well.” (Jay Newton-Small, “Campaign Insider,” Time, 4/7/08)
“Chicago Is In The Running For The 2016 Olympics … One Of Obama’s Top Advisers, Valerie Jarrett, Is The Vice Chair Of Chicago’s Bid Committee.” (Lynn Sweet, “McCain, Obama, Clinton All Push Bush On China Games,” Chicago Sun-Times, 4/10/08)
Under A Plan Devised By The City Of Chicago And Habitat Co., “The City Has Lost More Than 13,000 Housing Units For The Poor.” (Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen, “Obama Adviser Shapes City Housing Policy,” Chicago Tribune, 7/5/08)
•”Habitat Has Earned $6.8 Million In Fees And $10.8 Million In Administrative Expenses Since The Plan Started In 2000, According To The U.S. Department Of Housing And Urban Development.” (Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen, “Obama Adviser Shapes City Housing Policy,” Chicago Tribune, 7/5/08)
“Jarrett Is The Chief Executive Of Habitat Co., Which Managed Grove Parc Plaza From 2001 Until This Winter And Co-Managed An Even Larger Subsidized Complex In Chicago That Was Seized By The Federal Government In 2006, After City Inspectors Found Widespread Problems.” (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim Proving Ground For Obama’s Housing Policy,” The Boston Globe, 6/27/08)
•”In 2006, Federal Inspectors Graded The Condition Of [Grove Parc] An 11 On A 100-Point Scale – A Score So Bad The Buildings Now Face Demolition.” (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim Proving Ground For Obama’s Housing Policy,” The Boston Globe, 6/27/08)
“[Jarrett] Has Also Served As Chair Of Both The Chicago Transit Board And The Chicago Stock Exchange.” (Jay Newton-Small, “Campaign Insider,” Time, 4/7/08)
“[M]ayor Richard Daley Thursday Announced The Merger Of The City’s Planning Department And Economic Development Department, To Be Headed By Valerie Jarrett, His Former Deputy Chief Of Staff.” (Robert Davis, “Daley Merges Planning, Economic Development Staffs,” Chicago Tribune, 10/11/91)

Trampas or the Virginian: Trump and The Spooks and the Supine Media

 

Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect.
The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair - and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published.
'Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,' he said.
'Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI.
'That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.' The Daily Mail

“the document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent.” Ben Smith Buzzfeed

Super. Pretty wet out there with all the leaks, Golden Showers, Sobbing spooks and CNN unabe to fathom the fact that the Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to work.

So yesterday the media and the clubby spooks got a nose bleed.

I immediately thought of Owen Wister's great novel - The Virginian.  This is a novel more about the constructive and community forming application of words, than it is about the single show-down and gun play.

The character known as the Virginian is opposed to the glib, cowardly and shameless Trampas.  The Virginian will allow a friend, a person with whom he has shared danger, laughs and a few drinks, to call him an S.O.B. any minute of the day.  He will not tolerate, however, any malicious tag to sit in his aura for a second.

Five or six players sat over in the corner at a round table where counters were piled. Their eyes were close upon their cards, and one seemed to be dealing a card at a time to each, with pauses and betting between. Steve was there and the Virginian; the others were new faces.

“No place for amatures,” repeated the voice; and now I saw that it was the dealer’s. There was in his countenance the same ugliness that his words conveyed.
“Who’s that talkin’?” said one of the men near me, in a low voice.
“Trampas.”
“What’s he?”
“Cow-puncher, bronco-buster, tin-horn, most anything.”
“Who’s he talkin’ at?”
“Think it’s the black-headed guy he’s talking at.”
“That ain’t supposed to be safe, is it?”
“Guess we’re all goin’ to find out in a few minutes.”
“Been trouble between ‘em?”
“They’ve not met before. Trampas don’t enjoy losin’ to a stranger.”
“Fello’s from Arizona, yu’ say?”
“No. Virginia. He’s recently back from havin’ a look at Arizona. Went down there last year for a change. Works for the Sunk Creek outfit.” And then the dealer lowered his voice still further and said something in the other man’s ear, causing him to grin. After which both of them looked at me.
There had been silence over in the corner; but now the man Trampas spoke again.
“AND ten,” said he, sliding out some chips from before him. Very strange it was to hear him, how he contrived to make those words a personal taunt. The Virginian was looking at his cards. He might have been deaf.
“AND twenty,” said the next player, easily.
The next threw his cards down.
It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not speak at once.
Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a—.”
The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: “When you call me that, SMILE.” And he looked at Trampas across the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their positions.
“Sit quiet,” said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. “Can’t you see he don’t want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to back down or draw his steel.”
Then, with equal suddenness and ease, the room came out of its strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco, glasses lifted to drink,—this level of smooth relaxation hinted no more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of the sea.
For Trampas had made his choice. And that choice was not to “draw his steel.” If it was knowledge that he sought, he had found it, and no mistake! We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to style “amatures.” In no company would the black-headed man who had visited Arizona be rated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation.
One doubt remained: what kind of a man was Trampas? A public back-down is an unfinished thing,—for some natures at least. I looked at his face, and thought it sullen, but tricky rather than courageous.
Something had been added to my knowledge also. Once again I had heard applied to the Virginian that epithet which Steve so freely used. The same words, identical to the letter. But this time they had produced a pistol. “When you call me that, SMILE!” So I perceived a new example of the old truth, that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life. The Virginian Owen Wister (emphases my own)

The Media makes me want to shower.  The spooks ?  Who knows from spooks?

It's Okay to Hate Sarah Palin, Because She is Happy.

The Nation, a singularly obnoxious drum circle for trust fund babies in need of purpose and talking points, said this prior to the Iowa Primary:

Palin’s star has faded since she turned the Republican Party’s 2008 campaign into a theater-of-the-absurd production. But that star still shines with a small but very significant group voters that Trump needs. Although Palin became something of a laughingstock by the end of the 2008 campaign, a lot of conservative purists refused to laugh at her. Rather, they laughed with her—and many still do.

Palin’s favorable rating among Republicans in general has collapsed over the past seven years—from well above 80 percent when she joined John McCain’s ticket, to around 30 percent in recent years—but Palin can still headline a Tea Party rally and draw cheers. The most exaggerated conservatives, especially social conservatives, still view her as a “one-of-us” right-winger who believes what they believe. ( italics my own)

This is the standard yin/yang mix of Progressive logic.  Sarah Palin is a laughingstock and yet a force to be reckoned with.

Republicans, I am a Democrat, do sneer and go-along with the smart set and this is a principal symptom of that anemic Party's problem.

My understanding of the GOP can best be understood in a thorough study of the anthro-metaphor, Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois.  If a Republican wishes to soul-surf, as soul searching has gone out of practise, study Kirk in his thoughts, words and deeds.  He was tossed out on his well-padded rump, which has never been attached to a spine.

Kirk detested Sarah Palin, because Senator Dick Durbin ( D.IL) told him to do so.  Mark Kirk was and always had been a creature of the Illinois Combine ( see John Kass). Kirk scorned Palin, but was not beneath begging Sarah Palin to endorse him over Tammy Duckworth - Governor Palin ignored Kirk's squeal and went on the Oprah Winfrey show instead.

Sarah Palin came from a very happy, but hard-scrabble family in small town Alaska. Without connections, endorsements, clout, but with batteries of will, talents and courage became the popular mayor of her town and then a very popular Governor.  All the while mothering a growing family and being devoted partner to her  husband a hard working union man.

I find Sarah Palin to be all of these

• She is a superb athlete - she could humiliate Obama on the B-ball court
• Skilled hunter and fisherman
• Good cook
• Looks like a knockout
• Enjoys her family
• Lives her faith
• Helps her neighbors
• Never whines about horrible treatment meted out almost daily in the media
• She is detested by David  Brooks, Chris Matthews, Eric Zorn, Katrina vanden Heuvel (lower case v -you idiots!), Bill Moyers, Van Jones and most of the leading clowns in our political circus

Sarah Palin is the figure of feminism, but she does not believe babies should be slaughtered.  She was a politician without corporate logos patched all over her, like a NASCAR driver.  She was smart, but spoke her mind and with a very funny voice.  Sarah Palin is the People - you know the people polled by CNN who said that Hillary Clinton loved 'the average, hard-working American.'

Hillary, Wolf Blitzer, Gloria Borger, John King and Gloria Vanderbilt's little boy Anderson detest 'the average, hard-working American.'

The Democrat/GOP Globalist Secularist Oligarchs hate everything about people with grit, initiative, piety, duty to country, self-lessness, and self-deprecating humor.  Sarah Palin who not only kept her baby with Downs Syndrome, to the absolute horror of Cecile Richards and blood-harpies of Planned Parenthood, but held her baby up proudly to the entire Nation, not the magazine.

The hipsite Wonkette whooped up the elites when the Palin family celebrated the baby's third birthday:

That strange man yelling unintelligibly at Sarah Palin? He’s merely a lowly shepherd proclaiming the birth of our savior. Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history.

Good old David Letterman loved that material, too.

I am not that sophisticated.  I respect women who heroically defend their children.  More so, I really respect a tough father, who loves his bride and is slow to anger.  I wish Todd Palin could have shared a phone booth with David Letterman and that dead creep of a writer who moved in next door to the Palins. Conor MacGregor could do no better.

In the second year of her term as Governor of Alaska, John McCain vetted and begged Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

After the GOP Convention, McCain Strategists Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace felt that their access to Hollywood & Fifty Rock was in peril and they helped the media to savage Sarah Palin and her family.  Soon, John McCain had an excuse for bailing out of the 2008 Campaign that had turned from Terrorism to Bank Failure.  McCain all but  vanished after the first week of September, 2008 - Sarah Palin took all of the blame and still does.

Now, Sarah Palin stands to serve as Interior Secretary.   Now, the GOP owes its thin-blooded life to Truman Democrats and Reagan Republicans like Sarah Palin.  Trump is not of us - the average, hard working American, but he is not above us.  Trump surprised me.  He won Iowa, after Sarah Palin endorsed him.

Sarah Palin was the only forgotten American, crucified all through Obama's eight year memory lapse that African American shoe salesmen, CTA train and bus drivers, Greek American restaurant owners, Irish American pipe fitters, French American hog farmers and Jewish carpenters celebrated hope and change.  Sarah Palin and the Tea Party folks tried to snap Obama out of his reveries with Beyonce, Jay Z and George Clooney. Palin took the most of the very personal hits.

My personal belief is that intellectuals, academics, pollsters, lobbyists, consultants and community organizers - the mandarins of oligarchy - hate happy people.  They want, need and love the faceless down trodden Refugees, Unempowered, Masses, who , or whatever they happen to be. Sarah Palin is very happy.

It is Ok to hate, losers.  How'd that work for you on November 8th?  Stay happy America!

Trump Wins - Sarah Palin Did It.

Donald J. Trump is President Elect - the 45th President of the United States.

I went to sleep last night convinced that Hillary R. Clinton would be so; I believed that America was about to be hammered flatter, sillier, undignified and weaker than it already happens to be.

I voted for Donald Trump only to vote against Hillary R. Clinton, a third term for President Obama and to toss the middle finger at the Illinois Democrat and Republican Parties.

I succeeded on two.

Here in Illinois, we have same-old-same-old. Illinois is still squeezed into its globalist Progressive Hillary Blue pant suits.

The Chicago Sun Times, The Chicago Tribune, WTTW and the networks succeed in maintaining Rube Goldberg Progressive Pension  Handout Machine, available only to oligarchs, cretins, feebs and dummies.
Illinois election results  MORE RESULTS

U.S. Senate
Tammy Duckworth (D)
54.4%
Mark Kirk (R)
40.2%
99.1% of precincts reporting

Comptroller
Susana Mendoza (D)
49.0%
Leslie Geissler Munger (R)
44.9%
99.1% of precincts reporting
DISTRICT 10
U.S. House
Brad Schneider (D)
52.5%
Robert Dold (R)
47.5%
100.0% of precincts reporting
COOK COUNTY
State's Attorney
Kim Foxx (D)
71.7%
Christopher Pfannkuche (R)
28.3%

U.S. House District 7
 Back to top
CANDIDATE PARTY VOTES TOTAL VOTE PERCENTAGE
Danny Davis DEMOCRAT 232,322
84.0%
Jeffrey Leef REPUBLICAN 44,242
16.0%
Precincts reporting: 568 of 597, Last updated: November 9, 2016, 5:37 a.m.
U.S. House District 8
 Back to top
CANDIDATE PARTY VOTES TOTAL VOTE PERCENTAGE
Raja Krishnamoorthi DEMOCRAT 141,080
58.1%
Pete DiCianni REPUBLICAN 101,871
41.9%
Precincts reporting: 465 of 465, Last updated: November 9, 2016, 5:37 a.m.
U.S. House District 9
 Back to top
CANDIDATE PARTY VOTES TOTAL VOTE PERCENTAGE
Jan Schakowsky DEMOCRAT 203,776
65.8%
Joan McCarthy Lasonde REPUBLICAN 105,900

The lame continue to halt everyone in Illinois.

Not so, beyond Cook County.  Donald J. Trump hit a nerve in the decaying molars of the American Middle Class that has lost its dental insurance, along with its sense of We Are the People.

I worked very hard for John McCain in 2008 and when he picked Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I believed that he had found the path to victory.  I was very wrong.  Barack Obama had a great machine, but he is a man of limited capacities controlled by people who do not like the United States, its history and most of its people very much.

The Obama machine turned its sights on Sarah Palin and the news media, Hollywood, Bruce Springsteen, P-Diddy, SNL and MASSCULT America went 'gangsta' on not only Governor Palin, but her family.  That woman could take it.

John McCain, a hero who withstood years of physical and psychological torture at the hands of the Communists in North Vietnam's Hanoi Hilton with the manly grace of Samson at the milling wheel, eyeless in Gaza, turned into George Stephanopoulas at the thought of ridicule in his beloved American media and Jack Griffin when the economy tanked in September, 2008.  Senator McCain was happy being Senator McCain and he allowed Barack Obama to waltz into the White House, while he retained the good will of Chris Matthews, David Brooks, Wolf Blitzer and weaker sisters of the GOP.

McCain allowed Sarah Palin and her family to be nailed to the cross, by David Letterman and every toxic ink slinger continental.

I admire Sarah Palin and consider her to be the 21st Century Mother Jones.

I also like Sarah Palin as a person - she seems like a fine mother and seems very happy. Happiness really upsets American Progressives - unless of course they happen to be burning witches at the stake or engaging in universal self-loathing.

I believe that I am the only member of my vast family who admires Sarah Palin.  In fact even among my more conservative friends this admiration of mine seems a bit daft.

The very pious, elegant and well-spoken woman, who deigns to be seen in public with me,  is put off by Gov. Palin's rhetorical choices and her God-given voice.  Coming from a blue-collar Irish Catholic family where Party loyalty equals Union (Real Labor) fidelity,  Ms. Palin's own Family Labor background gets lost in translation by my dear tribe, as well as the American Progressive Smart-Set.  The same family members, my Mom most loudly, who hold that Ms. Palin must be "nuts" are not in the least put off by Nancy Pelosi's ghost whispering. Second only to these standard issue mental health canards, comes the Celtic charge of Palin being a "total phony!"  Could be.  It's lost on me.

I like and admire Sarah Palin.  She can lead.  President Obama, in the words of Hockey Dad and Chicago's own Bobby Hull, "couldn't lead a dog out of a thunderstorm with a T-bone steak." The man can baffle with soaring bullshit, I'll give him that . . . not that he writes any of it.

I'd follow Sarah Palin into a Jenny Craig Program; I would not follow President Obama into Old Country Buffet.

Sarah Palin stayed in the fight for these last eight years of the Obama Administration and took the buffets and blows with her sinewy courage.  Palin was the voice in the Wilderness, mocked by an HBO movie, David Letterman every night, GOP thin skins universal and even people who once felt warm toward her plain spoken Populism.

Sarah Palin was the first national political figure to give street cred to Donald J. Trump and every theme that brought him to victory - listen to the whole speech.



That voice is something.  That rhetoric is something.  That endorsement lit the fire.

Sarah Palin went dark, after her endorsement and did not need to play Jesse Jackson, photo-bombing her choice at every turn, nor did Governor Palin allow herself to be a goat for Trump.  He does that on his own.

I do not know if Donald J. Trump will deliver.

I do know that he has the opportunity and he owes that opportunity to Governor Sarah Palin. Along with his daughter Ivanka, the victims of Clinton, Inc. Kathleen Wiley, Juanita Broderick and  Paula Jones, Sarah Palin's feminine heroism pushed Trump over the pundits, polls and plutocrats.

Sarah Palin has been right since 2008 - Tea Party, ISIS, Obamacare Death Panels, Occupy Anarchism, BLM and Putin's proximity to her backyard, the English Channel and Aleppo.

I pray that she will keep President Elect Donald Trump's nose on the right path.

I am Voting Today - Deplorable, For What It's Worth

Yeah, that's right Hickey. With two Rs. H.I . . .Rockwell.


People get their shorts in a knot because I will not vote for Hillary R. Clinton, Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson. That leaves only Mr. Deplorable Himself, the Gettysburg Groper.

I do not care for whom you vote; you vote for thee - not me.

This is the terrible truth of a republican democracy - we must choose. Maybe, we will choose wrongly.

In my career as a voter ( 1972- Present)- here are my votes:
 1.( W) Richard M. Nixon: I worked for the 18th Ward Regular Democrat Organization to help elect McGovern Delegates.  In Miami, Jesse Jackson, Abner Mikva, Michael Shakman and Bill Singer challenged those delegates and the DNC tossed them - my first Progressive Rig-job. The Roe V. Wade easily put America on its death spiral.  I voted for Tricky Dick, who resigned and good old Gerald Ford pardoned the crumb - that nixed any vote for Jerry. I went to GOP dominated Kankakee, IL and began teaching in 1975.

2. (W)Jimmy Carter: Boy was that fun and then Mr. Peanut put on sweaters and gas went through the roof and Iran went crazy and rabbits attacked him and Brother Billy brewed beer and took bribes from the Libyans and I thought Ronald Reagan was scary and so . . .well, Ted Kennedy who drowned a girl popped up every election cycle like a legacy whack-a-mole and teased Gov. Moonbeam and Jimmy.

3.(L) Jimmy Carter got smeared and Ronald Reagan softened the hearts of blue collar Catholic voters, by fighting for the unborn, fighting the Reds, taking a bullet and behaving with dignity, but he was still a GOP, Protestant left-footer. Abscam, the Ruskie Afghanistan bleed out, Star Wars, Commie in Central America and Grenada, Lebanon and now , (l)Fritz Mondale

4. ( L) Fritz Mondale, sweet guy.  Road kill.  The Reagan Years - Pax Americana.

5. Then George Herbert Walker Bush emerged from the shadows of the Vice Presidency, CIA and Huge Oil and sounded like Aunt Nancy from Chebanse and we had TED Kennedy again, and finally   ( L) Mike Dukakis - Snoopy Drives an Abrams and the  Desert Storm of Poppi of Kennibunkport and then Bubba showed . . .upin 1988 at the DNC!   I had taken a job in Indiana and watched the world get goofier  beyond the pines and spring fed lake of La Lumiere School.

6. ( W.W.)William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore were the first two non-WWII veteran, baby-boomers to run for President and they seemed like great guys - one with a homely wife and one with a stunner. The guy with the pooch-Frau was the top of the ticket and word got around that he was quite a hound himself.  I remember pushing my son Conor in a stroller at the 1992 South Side Irish Parade and seeing Gore and Clinton work the crowd on Western Ave. two tall good looking guys in black topcoats. I voted Clinton over Dole in 1996

7.  Bubba had the chops and his two terms mired by repeated scandals about money and sex and finally the national humiliation of unveiling the truth about a President who could eat a pizza, enjoy a fellation from a young White Staffer and chat with a congressman about Bosnia all at once. Our moral soul fit like OJ's gloves.  I needed a shower. and ( L) John Kerry did not help with his I Had an Abortion  pinking up the Boston DNC, while he wind-sailed to the camera's - What and A$$hole!. GW Bush was gearing up for a royal coronation, because Kerry was as lame as he has been as Secretary of State and got hammered.  We went to War on Terror and I like the way GW Bush responded to the 9/11/2001 attack on America, until he took Poppi's phone call and allowed the Saudis to jet away scot-free and then sent our kids to Afghanistan and then Iraq.

8. (L) Al Gore 'invented the internet' and brought all of the excitement and energy of a glutton at Weight Watchers to a challenge to GW and my vote for the last Democratic Presidential Candidate of my career in the polling booth ended on the hanging chads.

9.( L) John McCain should have easily beaten Barack Obama in 2008: he had a great VP choice in Governor Palin, a great message, experience and the media behind him for the most part against a callow, not-very-bright, prickly, self-absorbed community organizer who was whiter than Clarence Thomas and pals with the very people who made me cast my virgin vote for Nixon.  The Mortgage Investment Bubble blew and the economy tanked.  McCain who had endured horrible dangers and excruciating torture at the hands of Communists, ran away from a capitalist bump in the road and all but stopped campaigning after September 2008. He allowed Sarah Palin and her entire family to become a target for ridicule and never stood up for her.  Obama handed him his ass.

10. Barack H. Obama with Valerie Jarrett handing him orders and orchestrating his every move is the most protected, petted and pitiful President in our nation's history.  Obama is the 501(c) 3 President and PAC powerful clothes-horse.  The GOP is a party of cowards, sycophants, martyrs and zealots interspersed with a few genuine men of integrity and ability. (L) Mitt Romney, the Walter Mondale of the GOP, was offered up in sacrifice to Obama, in order to save and even increase numbers in House and Senate.

Bringing me to Election 2016.  I really need a shower.  I would have voted Democrat for Jim Webb, Republican Scott Walker, or Independent Rand Paul.  Instead we have the current choices, a Shameless Abortion Happy Medusa and a Shameful Braggart and Groper.  The others are toys for the Never/Never crowd of moral fiber eaters.

I am voting when the early polls vote. I stand at 4-7.

W - Nixon, Carter, Clinton (2) = 4
L. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, Gore, McCain. Romney =7

Here goes my ballot 2016!

The Settled Science of Silliness 2008 to Present (ex libris Hickey)

Minds are settled.

The New York Times ran a TV commercial  a few years ago in an attempt to capture more subscribers by way of touting the Weekender. The people in the ad are universally obnoxious, prissy, snotty and self-absorbed. To me and nearly every person I come into contact with every day, real people cops, foremen,teachers, City workers and the odd billionaire, all of the actors playing real New York Times readers seem like they were hand-picked by the DNC. One of the 'real readers' is an faux bald obnoxious goof in a turtleneck glasses sweater and horn rimmed who hisses 'It's in the Times and that settles it.'

That settles it. Think no more, search no more, accept a prissy meme and be happy.  All is well.

The problem is . . .there are more settled minds in America than is healthy.

Political discourse was fun at one time.  Since Obama took the White House and even a little before, chats about culture, religion, science and public policy artists at the City, County, State, National and International levels devolved into this dialog I had with an old friend in July 2008 at a fund raiser for a sick child at 115 Bourbon Street.

" Hey, Hickey! How's your McCain work going?"

I'm not working on McCain's campaign.  I plan to vote for him, if he gets the nomination.

" He's nuts!   You met Obama; how could you not be for him?  You've been a Democrat all your life."

I still am a registered Democrat.  Yes, I have met Obama, as head of the Woods Fund, at the Snow Flake Ball before Bobby Rush handed him his ass, at several family parties  and when he asked me how the hell I expected him to get into a boxing ring, when there is "No Gate!"  Obama is a very dumb guy, but looks like he could open a box of Wheaties without a tutorial and I can not stand the people behind him.

" Oh, like me?"

No. Like Abner Mikva and all of Hyde Park creeps running Richie Daley. Look he is run by Valerie Jarrett who is one of the nastiest vipers on the edge of the public trough.Only today, the Sun Times had the story of Obama's $1.1 million dollar gazebo giveaway to a connected pal in Englewood and we could not get the goof to endorse a grant for us at Leo, the entire time he was in the State Senate.  He tossed $100,000 to a campaign worker for a gazebo that doesn't exist.    It is in the Sun Times today.

" Awhh, @#$% You and all your right-wing pals!'

My right wing pals?  I don't ever drink tea.

That settled any future exchanges unrelated to weather and the robust state of my physical health.

Settled.  People who ask you what you think are not even remotely interested in your thoughts - You know the reified things that used to bus us to the conclusive idea, or opinion we hold at moment.

"How do you like my Onion and Garlic Cake with Maple Syrup?"

( generous exploratory mouthful and swallow) Gee, I think I am about to vomit.

" Awhh, @#$% you and your Food Channel pals!"

We are settled.  Settled things that require absolutely nothing more than a conclusion.

• Climate Change?  Settled  
• Science? Settled.  
• Donald Trump?  He's Really, really, really honest and thoughtful!  
• Mayor Rahm Emanuel? Fiscal Sophistication and Great for Organized Labor! 
• Abortion Videos ?  Please. 
• Pension Problems?  Politicians are Crooks and Not Our Fault, Because We Only Voted for Them!  
• Blackhawks' Patrick Kane?  Guilty!  
• 9/11?  Bush Killed Millions More - Noam Chomsly said So! 
•  Patriots' Deflatgator Tom Brady? Guilty?  
• Black Lives Matter? Shut the@#$% Up, Racists!  
• Cops? As if! Haven't You Been Watching CNN/MSNBC?
• Obama's Iran Deal?  No Wars Ever!

Facts and shared truths?  See Talking Points Memo, or Rush Limbaugh

I am unsettled.  Ask me.

The Chicago " Dewey Wins" Tribune Pulls the Trigger without Loading It's Rahm 9mm

You can't beat The Chicago Tribune - it would be a hate crime, like beating on a slow witted six-year old who just does not like À la Recherche du temps Perdu.  What?  Who doesn't prefer Proust to a bigg-ass wad of cotton candy? Not Bruce Dold.

You ( Mr. & Mrs. Chicago)  knew it would come, everybody knew it would come: How can City Hall make a mandatory $550 million payment to police and fire pension funds? Sure enough, kaboom, first question. What followed was Monday evening's mayoral debate, reduced to its essence:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's staccato recipe for fixing City Hall's pension crisis leapt from higher employee contributions to a broader-based sales tax, to a city-run casino, to TIF surpluses. He concluded with an overarching rationale: Financial stability will give people "the confidence to bring jobs and people back to Chicago." Not every Chicagoan is jake with all that, but it's a responsible answer that gores several sacred oxen.
And Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia? The first words from his mouth: "It depends." Because his team has to "open up the books to understand what the real finances of the city are." Garcia didn't answer the question but did get in an off-topic jab about Emanuel subsidizing rich people.
OK, we thought, he'll find his footing. Soon came a question many Chicagoans ask: Property tax increase. Discuss.( parnthetical my own) 

Whar's to discus?  If wanted to be told what to think, I'd ask people with Rahm lawnsigns.  I was talked to to on parade day and told that Chuy Garcia has no fiscal finesse.

Rahm has fiscal finesse?

" Oh, @#$% you, Hickey.  You voted for McCain and Pailin."

Can't argue that.

I never tell anyone whom to vote for, when asked I'll say, " I like Sarah Palin."

"How can you she's and idiot. Didn't you see Game Changer on HBO?"

Matter of fact I did and I also caught the 1940 masterpiece Der ewige Jude at an art house revival.  Matter of fact, I saw the Chicagoland series on CNN and found it comparable to the 1935 epic Triumph des Willens.  We need a strong man.

So, Chuy lost the debate that I watched last night.

The Chicago Tribune editorial again tells Chicagoans what they want and they obviously want a 9.5 fingered misanthropic sububarnite to make hard the choices, like making kindergarten kids endure longer hours of training necessary to become John Dewey robots by third grade.

Chicagoans lust for the strong personality needed to amass millions of Hollywood and Wall Street dollars necessary to make helot's water bill jump in cost by 86%.

Financial stability means taking public lands from the parks and giving them to a bunch of Hyde Park grifters so that Barack Obama Presidential Library will not require that Barack and Michele Obama crack their wallets to finance it, like Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Ford.

Bruce Dold mocks Chuy's response to the little strongman's fiscal platitudes.  Chuy replied, "You cannot move forward until you show the taxpayers of Chicago where the money is going."

Ouch. A second admission from Garcia that, nearly five months into his campaign for mayor, he doesn't talk even to the nearest billion about City Hall finances. The closest he got was a shot at Emanuel for failing to get Chicago's house in order, and "now talking in a sophisticated way about how he's going to do it." The obligatory next line — Here's how I'm going to do it — never arrived.

Bill Murray-style book editorial scribbling aside, this Well-Poisoning 101, which is an Honors Course at the Dave Axelrod Harris School of Political Bludgeoning.  Bruce Dold must be auditing that class.

Rahm was not told any of us 'How he plans to save us.'   Rahm will loot whatever city assest remain, ala Richie Daley. He will balloon any and all city taxes.  He will strip essential 1st Responder services to the bone.  He will out source the Department of Streets and Sanitation ( my prediction 2016) and work on doing the same to the cops and fireman. He will pander and propagandize through the Chicago Media.

Voters know that.  Some voters are for Rahm, fiercely for Rahm, loudly for Rahm, powerfully for Rahm. That's fine, for them. I appreciate their candor and devotion.  Rahm voters are fine with the way things are and hope to do even better for themselves if Chuy loses on April 7th.  They are good people and they tell you loudly and with pride " I'm with Rahm!"

I am not.  I had anough of Rahm Emanuel, when he was glued to Richie Daley by the Stepan Family in the 1980's when Richie ran for States Attorney.  I've had enough and I am even siding with SEIU, Jesse Sharkey of CTU and Ricardo Munoz for Chrissakes.  Mike Klonsky is a Chuyista and so am I.

I had enough.  I am voting for Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago.

Jeb? Governor Jeb Bush? You Mean John Ellis "Call Me Jeb" Bush? President? I'll Pass.

"With inferior numbers you concentrated your troops, and successfully opposed his progress, and obliged him to relinquish his purpose. His next attempt will be on our right" - Robert E. Lee

I have heard many really smart political people tell me just how smart Barack H. Obama was, how heroic John Kerry was, how fair Jim Edgar was, how  selfless Judy Barr Topinka was, how much Richie and Maggie Daley LOVED Chicago, how nice Pat Quinn was, how loyal Charlie Crist was, how incorruptible Valerie Jarrett was, how maverick McCain was, how horrible Palin remains, how American Indian Bessie Warren believes herself to be and that all turned out to be very wrong.
  Even Einstein burned his toast,  once in while.

The bell weather it seems to me is always a consensus built by some schmuck with a bad come-over and worse mustache who hates middle class ethnics and blacks, but knows they are essential to any election.

People who seem to be consistently wrong about everything, make very good Campaign Gurus, because they know that we don't like to be wrong about elections and fools about political candidates and will never publicly say, " I knew that the late Judy Barr Topinka* was afraid, but I convinced myself that she was just one 'tough gal who tells it like it is.'"  People want to Win With Quinn, but avoid the consequences of his terms in office.

It continues.

All the World is getting political wood over the inevitable crowning of JEB.  No,not the swashbuckling Reb Jeb, who screwed the pooch at Gettysburg in '63 and allowed George Gordon Meade to hand Ol' Marse Robert his rump. but the other Bush White Meat.  Jeb Bush, Governor Jeb Bush. John Ellis Bush who is not George W. Bush.

Who asked for him? Probably some GOP bath water guzzler like US Senator Marque Kirque (R IL). More than likely. it is also some Democrats who realize now that President Barack H. Obama had less control over Chicago slumlord weevil Valerie Jarrett, who runs the White House policy wheels, than he had over his unravelling terms of office and have decided to right off 2016 as a loss.

All I know is that JEB Bush seems to be as tired a product as John McCain, Lindsey Graham.  McCain quit the race for the White House in September 2008 when the economy tanked and allowed his flabby campaign's only asset to be chewed up by the punk media.

JEB?  Jeb Bush, Governor John Ellis " Call Me Jeb " Bush really wants the job. He wants the job in the same manner and with the same sense of entitlement as the current daffy, but dangerous occupant. Scott Walker makes sense and has with stood more poop tossed at him than Governor Palin endured in month of MSNBC treatments.  He's tough, not full of himself, cautious around the press. and actually has succeeded.

I would love to see America elect an African American as President, Dr. Ben Carson, but that will not happen, as long as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton hold a 9mm loaded with Race Rounds to heads of Goldman Sachs, Hollywood, GE and both coasts.

JEB?  I think not.  We just had eight years of Obama's empty suit.

If the likes of Dana Millbank, Joan Walsh, EJ Dionne, David Brooks and all of the other dependable ink-slinging amoebas, praise JEB Bush, it seems to me he will be a disaster as President.

Smart guys????????

What say you?







*Judy Barr Topinka grabbed a delegate's spot to attend the 2008 RNC rather than do her own due-dilligence - get petitions, win the delgate elections & etc.  Nasty old hag.

Republican National Committeewoman Mary Jo Arndt  2008
Major General John Borling, USAF (Ret).
Former Ambassador and Former Illinois Republican Party Chair Rich Williamson ILLINOIS DELEGATES
Gregg Abbott
Helen Albert
Mike Amrozowicz
Mayor Jim Ardis
John Atchley
Kirby Ballard
Joe Bartolomucci
Tony Becker
Harry Bond
Maj. Gen. John Borling
Scott Boukal
Rep. Daniel P. Brady
Julie Brady
Kevin Brady
Mary Jane Brady
Will Callard
Dean A. Casper, Jr.
Mayor Thomas Tolbert Chisum
Vincent P. Churak
Robert Cook
Michael Corrigan
James L. Coxworth
Sen. Dan Cronin
Larry DeYoung
Sen. Kirk Dillard
Richard E. Diller
Mary Pat Dixon
William Durkin
Rep. Jim Durkin
Barbara Dwyer
Deb Detmers Fansler
Bobby Vaughan Ferguson
Joann Finger
John Fogarty, Jr.
Rep. Mike Fortner
Jim Fuchs
Susan Gere
Kimberly Pate Godden
Gustavo Gonzalez
Joyce Gooding
Thomas Gooding
William S. Graham
Kent Gray
Mike Hagerty
Donald B. Hall
J. Sue Hamilton
John Harty
Thomas Hayes
Sean Healy
William L. Henniger
Herbert Hentschel
Roy Hertel
Nora Kathleen Hickey
Stephanie Hitt
Damon Hofstrand
Mark Hosty
Robert Hudon
Bill Jacklin
David A. Kelm
Virginia Kenney
Pam Kinsey
U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood
Nadja Lalvani
Prem Lalvani
Pastor Ceasar LeFlore
Stephen Liehr
Cindy Limbach
Andrew Loveday
Alex Martella
Rilio Mastrantonio
Rep. Sidney Mathias
Karen Matjasko
Matthew Mau
John McCrory
Tom McRae
Margaret McSweeney
Ann Melichar
Rep. James Meyer
Mary Jo Mikottis
Jack Murphy
Tim O’Neill
Rep. Joann Osmond
Ray Pawlak
Nick Peric
Rep. Raymond Poe
Dennis Presley
William Read
Nate Rice
James A. Riemer, Jr.
Wayne Rosenthal
Carlos Saucedo
Lisa Schumacher
John Scully
William G. Shepherd
Det. Larry Shepherd
U.S. Rep. John M. Shimkus
Karen Slattery
Michael Sneed
Jason Speer
David Stanton
Nina Stephenson
Eugene Syring
Steven Tomaszewski
Mayor Bruce Tossell
Rep. Jil Tracy
Mayor Henry Vicenik
Charlie Watts
Becky Weber
Mary A. Welling
Ambassador Rich Williamson
Alderman Elmo R. Younger, Veteran of WWII

You Can Continue to Fool Millions of the People All of the Time. . . If Oprah Matters to Them

Some people bought peach orchards years ago.  They were told that the peach stones had magical powers to cure cancer.  More recently, otherwise intelligent people dumped cash into carbon credits, or Green Energy scams, including the Obama White House.  Obama wasted tax dollars - our money - on Solyndra, algae farms and other ventures.

People can be fooled.  Hell, I wasted time, treasure and my very modest talents on John McCain's 2008 Campaign for President in the notion that a war hero who faced torture in the Hanoi Hilton had the stomach for the fiscal collapse of American banking due to the mortgage Ponzi scam of Dodd Franks.  John McCain sleep walked to defeat and allowed his campaign managers to heap scorn on the woman he begged to be his running mate.  One born every minute.

I was not that far gone in political mythology to believe that first term US Senator with a history of being a governmental purse puppy . . .nice, amiable, read a good speech, top-drawer clothes wrangler . . . with a career and biography crafted by bullet-proof clouted Leftists. Nope, I like Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate just fine.  Nice guy; keeps a neat wallet.

Four the past five years, President Obama has lived up to my expectations. Only recently, it has become only too obvious that Obama is not any where near as great as canned beer.  Oprah deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom?  Gloria Steinem?  Herb Alpert . . .the Lonely Bull?  President Obama is A Million Little Pieces.  

Why? Too many of us join book clubs.  We do not seem to want to trust our ourselves with thoughts that must at some time be made public.  We don't want to be wrong.  We don't want to be embarrassed.   We became Oprah's Book Club.   We allowed monstrously verbally challenged Mayor Richie Daley dictate Chicago Reads.  We formed our own little circles of readers who made agreement the touchstone for discourse.  'Yes, yes!  Atticus Finch is the American Patriarch.  The Color Purple is a Rainbow.   The Third World is wonderful and makes us ashamed to be Americans.  Greed is our only virtue. Bill Ayers is an educator!'

I have relatives who worship at the altar of the American Isis - Oprah.  Me?  I understood Oprah when her foundation watchdog ( Rufus Williams) tried to bully me into not sending any more funding requests to Harpo, or Ms. Winfrey.  Rufus was rewarded aplenty! Oprah was not at all interested in helping an inner-city Catholic high school for boys that remains unapologetically nonsense free even though more than 90 % of the school demographic was and remains African American. Oprah's Angels fear to tread where special interest and corporate dollars pave the walkway.

It's America and it's her money.  Personally, I am glad Oprah never made a drop.

Oprah maintains her ability convince millions of people to swallow exactly what she gulps down.  The pinnacle of her arresting charms is President Obama.   Last week President, after a year of concern in the public forums that perhaps Oprah had gone sour on the young fellow whose autobiographies ( ghosted or not) made a compelling narrative for the transformation of American Life.

Oprah swallowed Dreams from My Father and Audacity of Hope, not in a millions little pieces, but whole.  Oprah was hood-winked by James Frey and Margaret B. Jones, two writers of autobiographies that stretched the truth like Turkish taffy fresh from the oven.   Had the public not awakened to these literary frauds and people continued to believe the self-mortifying yarns of two phonies, the world would not have changed too much.  People believe another person's fabrications because they are good-hearted and want to accept the word of fellow sinner and feel good about their own struggles in this vale of tears.

Oprah continues to promote the emptiness that is President Obama and wears the highest civilian decoration our country can bestow on a citizen.