Career Grifter and CPS Boss Forrest Claypool's Trail of Slime Pointed Out by Juan Perez!

The Chicago Tribune's Juan Perez, Jr. is asking the questions about the Rula Lenska of Progressive Chicago Politics, that I have asked for years.  My heart is warmed.  Mr. Perez has a nice set of teeth. 

Forrest Claypool, the Rula Lenska* of Chicago politics,  has had one helluva run!  For decades this fading beauty has been treated to quality moisturizers, Dior Air-Flash foundation, blot & powder and just the right blush on those apple cheeks, by the stooge propagandists at WTTW, ABC 7, NBC5, and . . .oh, what the hell CBS2.

About the time Rula Lenska was bombarding the TV airwaves hawking  Alberto Culver products and stunning millions of Americans into raising the question " Just Who IS Rula Lensaka?"  Forrest Claypool was brushing the Saluki moss from the back of his grey worsted Brooks Brothers and insinuating his way into the corridors of power on La Salle and Clark between Washington and Randolph.  Soon, Chicagoans were saying, " Just Who IS Forrest Claypool?"

No one seemed to have the insight, or the gumption to say," He's a grifter and damn well-practiced one, Rubes."

Nope, we are too nice.  We swallow anything, because our news papers and electronic media is as much a part of the political anatomy of Chicago, as the 14th Ward Regular Democratic Liver, Bacon and Onions Boosters.

Forrest Claypool oozed into Chicago Power Politics with David Axelrod, Judson Miner,  and Rahm Emanuel.  They helped Abner Mikva and Michael Shakman remove the City That Works' political limbs, leaving a Progressive torso that requires much more monetary sustenance, than the once functioning apparatus had ever dreamed of stealing.

The old time political crooks never stole everything.   Progressives do.

Progressives are loyal only to power and those who bring more power to the table. Claypool is master of the game. He requires short memories and no interested inquiry on the part of people who should know better.  Do any Progressive a favor and a politician will soon find a six inch blade where his kidneys once functioned.  The political landscape is littered with corpses of once trusting and effective public servants.

Claypool gets appointments via his network.  If he runs for office, he generally gets his ass handed to him - County Board President and Cook County Assessor. He did manage to squeak by Ted Lechowicz  and grab a comfy seat on the county Board

He has been appointed

• to Cook County Board of Appeals
•  as Deputy State Treasurer
• Mayor Daley's Chief of Staff
• Head of Chicago Parks
• CEO CTA
• CEO CPS

Succeeding where?  Rula Lenska has more chops.

Now, with digital media some people begin to ask " Who Exactly IS Forrest Claypool?"  Even the always pliable Chicago Tribune has turned its blind but gimlet eye on Forrest Claypool and his modus operandi.

The inspector general for the Chicago Board of Education says his work has been obstructed and duplicated by a better-funded arm of CPS chief Forrest Claypool's office, according to a report that lays out a political scuffle between the legally mandated watchdog and the mayoral-appointed administration.

In his report, Nicholas Schuler accuses auditors for Chicago Public Schools of "significant interference" with his investigation into the alleged theft of tens of thousands of dollars worth of CTA fare cards by a district employee.

A "parallel investigation" of that case by CPS' Office of Internal Audit and Compliance last year "compromised a criminal investigation by prematurely alerting a main subject, and sowing fear and confusion in the minds of key witnesses," Schuler said in his report, which was sent to Claypool and the school board. 

Auditors also contacted Cook County prosecutors in an effort to inject their department into the inspector general's fare card investigation, Schuler's office said. He said "very troubling issues remain" with other investigations being undertaken by the auditor's office.

Gee, who'd a thunk?  Carol Marin? Jay Levine? Neil Steinberg?  Mark Brown? Jamie Kalvan?

No one worried too much when Rahm made Claypool the CTA Boss and got Rev. Pfleger to do a politcial hatchet job on the Presidentod Amalgamated Transit Workers Local 308, or about Bombardier contracts, or the Ventra Card Boondoggles. Why should WTTW worry about the fighting Progressive beaten by Joe Berrios, when he took over CPS, after Triple B sold the store to SUPES?

Forrest Claypool pads himself with dollars and silence afforded by trhe compliant media.  Now, that same padding is getting shredded. Lookee H'yar!

The district's internal audit team is led by Andrell Holloway, who previously worked with Claypool in a similar role at the CTA. The unit has received significant funding increases since Claypool took office.

CPS budgeted a little more than $958,000 for the audit department in 2015. This year, the budget for Holloway's office is roughly $4.4 million, not including up to $14 million worth of consulting contracts that he manages. 

This year's budget for Schuler's office is about $2 million, relatively unchanged from recent years. The office perennially asks the school board for more money and staff.
"I think there's a fundamental disagreement, at some level, about the importance of the IG's office," Schuler said in an interview. "I've been told that at the end of the day, nobody's going to stand in our way. We're free to do what we can. But I see that as something different than a wholehearted embrace of the inspector general's function and the idea that there's going to be independent and transparent investigations. CPS declined requests to interview Claypool and Holloway about Schuler's report." (emphasis my own)

Forrest managed to drag poor old Frank "The Mailroom Guy" Clark -former CEO of ComEd into the bed of Claypool's making

Frank Clark, the school board's president and a mediator in the dispute, said Holloway's unit needed more firepower after "not meeting even the minimal obligations of an internal audit department."
"Of course he would like more people," Clark said of Schuler's office. "That could be said for almost every office in central office. But it's unrealistic."
CTA and CPS, like Chicago Park District all seem to have the same players and same grift.  The IG's concern now is the connection between Claypool's CTA Boss-Time and his CPS Boss-Time.
Schuler's office concluded the CPS employee "participated in a criminal conspiracy" in which he would steal transit passes from his office, then distribute them to accomplices who sold them on the black market.
Schuler's investigators believed the employee, who has not been charged with a crime, took at least $72,700 worth of transit passes over about seven months.
The CPS employee was fired in November, according to Schuler's report, which said Holloway's audit department conducted an "improper separate and parallel investigation" into the theft.
Schuler's office said the audit team "disregarded repeated requests … to refrain from simultaneously and separately investigating the matter."
According to the report, Holloway and other members of his team instructed one person interviewed by the IG's office to contact the audit department about the investigation, and conducted separate interviews that Schuler said "prematurely alerted" the suspected employee.
"This investigation implicated a subject who had been hired from the CTA," said a summary of Schuler's investigation.
"Thus, so as to avoid the mere appearance of any impropriety or undue influence on any investigation into the theft of CTA transit passes purchased by CPS, Internal Audit clearly should have stepped aside and let the (IG's office) — the statutorily independent investigative body — undertake its own investigation," the report said.

The IG's investigation applies the Bounty to the slug trails going back to Claypool's Boss-time at CTA and his Boss-time for the children at CPS.

Schuler's office concluded the CPS employee "participated in a criminal conspiracy" in which he would steal transit passes from his office, then distribute them to accomplices who sold them on the black market.

Schuler's investigators believed the employee, who has not been charged with a crime, took at least $72,700 worth of transit passes over about seven months.
The CPS employee was fired in November, according to Schuler's report, which said Holloway's audit department conducted an "improper separate and parallel investigation" into the theft.

Schuler's office said the audit team "disregarded repeated requests … to refrain from simultaneously and separately investigating the matter."
According to the report, Holloway and other members of his team instructed one person interviewed by the IG's office to contact the audit department about the investigation, and conducted separate interviews that Schuler said "prematurely alerted" the suspected employee.

"This investigation implicated a subject who had been hired from the CTA," said a summary of Schuler's investigation.
"Thus, so as to avoid the mere appearance of any impropriety or undue influence on any investigation into the theft of CTA transit passes purchased by CPS, Internal Audit clearly should have stepped aside and let the (IG's office) — the statutorily independent investigative body — undertake its own investigation," the report said.

Back in Jaunary of 2016. Juan Perez wrote a brilliant study of Claypool's long and slimy trail of grift in public service.

The career grifter has the Winston Strawn attorney Ron Marmer and the mega donor Ron DeNard and all of the old gang in his wagon train.  Now, it's in a tight defensive circle.

Juan Perez is attacking the wagons!  Watch you back, Juan. Bruce Dold has long ridden in Claypool's wagons.

Just who is Forrest Claypool?  He's no Rula Lenska.  Better ask Juan Perez!  Tell it, Son!

Who's A'Scared of the Big Red Scare? The Media Don't Want to Be Old Ernest T.

Milwaukee Burns - here is why.

Flynn(Milwaukee Police Chief) cast blame on some Chicago-based activists representing the Revolutionary Communist Party, who apparently organized young people to take to the streets and march on the then-barricaded District 7 police station, which received a number of threats.
"The (group) showed up, and actually they’re the ones who started to cause problems leading into evening by marching and trying to take over Sherman and Burleigh," Flynn said. "That was about 11:30 at night. We made it to 11:30 in the evening, and we had these characters show up …" The Chicago Tribune

 In October 1947, 10 members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced the tactics employed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, during its probe of alleged communist influence in the American motion picture business. These prominent screenwriters and directors, who became known as the Hollywood Ten, received jail sentences and were banned from working for the major Hollywood studios. Their defiant stands also placed them at center stage in a national debate over the controversial anti-communist crackdown that swept through the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Besides the Hollywood Ten, other members of the film industry with alleged communist ties were later banned from working for the big movie studios. The Hollywood blacklist came to an end in the 1960s. History.com

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States. These fears came to define–and, in some cases, corrode–the era’s political culture. For many Americans, the most enduring symbol of this “Red Scare” was Republican Senator Joseph P. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Senator McCarthy spent almost five years trying in vain to expose communists and other left-wing “loyalty risks” in the U.S. government. In the hyper-suspicious atmosphere of the Cold War, insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans that their government was packed with traitors and spies. McCarthy’s accusations were so intimidating that few people dared to speak out against him. It was not until he attacked the Army in 1954 that his actions earned him the censure of the U.S. Senate. History.com

“Maybe his [Satan’s] greatest achievement in these times has been to make us believe that he does not exist, and that all can be fixed on a purely human level,”  Pope Francis

I can almost hear Eric Zorn in The Chicago Tribune boning up to Change the Subject,"The Hollywood Blacklist, Senator Joe McCarthy, Chilling.  Who believes that Satan is cause of the world's evil?  Come on! Where's the science in that?"

Social Science? Physics?

Milwaukee, like Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Philadelphia and Dallas have been treated to riots, media circus-es, murders and assaults on police officers, because funded, well- organized little devils enthralled with the hammer and sickle and hot rhetoric and sloganeering ventured to those post-Ferguson flash points, with signage, fliers and bull horned cheerleaders from not only the Black Live Matters newbies, but veteran agitators from CPUSA, the Revolutionary Communist Party and International Solidarity Organization.  Reds and the usual useful idiots.






Snopes - a fact countering mill of Occupy,inc. says, don't believe our lying eyes." In fact, Reds are behind the more violent encounters in post-Ferguson America.
 

The American Journalist ( Medill School/Columbia variety) eschews the shoe-leather reporter image, for the Brand Journalist: gone to the finest schools, Miss Lonely, and got used to it; activist with ink and a soul-patch; Glenn Greenwald approved and Howard Zinn washed in the blood of revolutionary martyrs, but still maintain hip and with it ironic lifestyle.

One sure path to journalistic self-immolation is to walk on the wild side of the agreed upon narratives.  For example, when was the last time a Chicago, New York, or BumHump, Iowa journalist connected the dots pointing to Marxist lawyers and journalists involved in the Wrongful Conviction/ Police Torture industries? Never.  You never read a columnist like Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg, Eric Zorn, or Carol Marin question the number of times Judge Robert Gettleman ruled for G. Flint Taylor - judge shopping.

Shucks when was the last time any one of the above mentioned CTU puppet-master Jesse Sharkey's take over of the public service union for the International Solidarity Organization?  Wha?  Whaa?
Atticus Finch
It is unseemly to suggest, much less point out the very real and tangible evidence of organized and well-funded Marxist agenda at work on in our streets, courts, schools and public service unions.  Can't do that; it's called Red baiting.

One can Hillbilly Bait.  One can Evangelical Christian bait. One may Jew bait,so long as it is for the Death of Israel.  One does not need to Catholic bait, because our clergy and hierarchy does a pretty good job sneering at us in the press. But, Red bait.  No way, Jose Stalin.

Progressives (most columnists and editorial board members) tend to view themselves as Atticus Finch. especially activist lawyers who even dress like old Atticus.  Progressives view the rest of us as Ernest T. Bass.
Many of us deemed to be Ernest Ts, do not want to be considered so and we join along with group thought and ape the narratives and end up looking like Ernest T. Bass in a slick panama suit.

The media hides the fact that Reds are agitating the violence.

The potential for a revolutionary crisis lies within the very nature of this capitalist system itself—with its repeated economic convulsions, its unemployment and poverty, its profound inequalities, its discrimination and degradation, its brutality, torture and wars, its wanton destruction. All this causes great suffering. And at times it leads to crisis on one level or another—sudden jolts and breakdowns in the “normal functioning” of society, which compel many people to question and to resist what they usually accept. No one can say in advance exactly what will happen in these situations—how deep the crisis may go, in what ways and to what extent it might pose challenges to the system as a whole, and to what degree and in what ways it might call forth unrest and rebellion among people who are normally caught up in, or feel powerless to stand up against, what this system does. But two points are very important:
1) Such “jolts” in the “normal functioning” of things, even if they do not develop all the way to a fundamental crisis for the system as a whole, do create situations in which many more people are searching for answers and open to considering radical change. The work of building the movement for revolution must be consistently carried out at all times, but in these situations of sharp breaks with the “normal routine” there is greater possibility, and greater potential, to make advances. This must be fully recognized and built on to the greatest degree possible, so that through such situations, leaps are made in building up the movement and the organized forces for revolution, creating in this way a stronger basis from which to work for further advances.
2) In certain situations, major events or big changes can happen in society and the world and can come together in such a way that the system is shaken to its foundations...deep cracks appear and magnify within the ruling structures and institutions...the raw relations of oppression are more sharply exposed...conflicts among the powers-that-be deepen, and cannot be easily resolved, and it becomes much more difficult for them to hold things together under their control and keep people down. In this kind of situation, for great numbers of people, the “legitimacy” of the current system, and the right and ability of the ruling powers to keep on ruling, can be called seriously and directly into question, with millions hungering for a radical change that only a revolution can bring about. RevCom

The riots in Milwaukee prove that but the media wants us to believe that Reds don't exist - just like Satan

WLS Rauners for Rahm and Turns John Kass into Dave McKinney

WLS -AM the Wee 89 decide to clean hours 24 hours after Chicago decided to clean house.

“The Jonathon Brandmeier Show” will air from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday through Friday on the Cumulus Media news/talk station, starting sometime in March. It will replace John Kass and Lauren Cohn, whose final show aired on WLS Thursday.

Brandmeier ? *

Personnel aside, WLS is a Rahm Stooge and deathly afraid of change in Chicago political leadership.

John Kass and Lauren Cohn, who bridged the midmorning block between Big John Howell and Rush Limbaugh at WLS AM 890, have been cut from the Cumulus Media news/talk station.
No reason was cited for the move, but the two were told by WLS program bosses that they were finished after they got off the air Thursday. Their show aired from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday through Friday.

No Reason? Jesus, Feder are you that much of a lamb?  They are gone because Rahm is scared $hitless of John Kass!

Why else would it fire John Kass and Lauren Cohn - two voices for the neighborhoods detested by the Firfh Floor - Rahm Emanuel.

At Christmas Governor Rauner managed to get Chicago Sun Times lemmings on the editorial board to fire Dave McKinney.

The media harrumphed. Wine buyer partner, Rahm Emanuel loved Rauner's power play.

Twenty fours after Jesus Garcia handed Rahm his wafer-like rump in the election of the Century, Rahm managed to have WLS AM get rid of the only media icon in Chicago' media to tell the unvarnished truth about corruption and hypocrisy in our Progressive Chicago government ( it is progressive Nancy) and especially Highland Park's carpetbagging Mayor.

John Kass' voice must be heard.  We need a Voice of Chicago and not just a Sundance script.

Don't expect Chicago's media critics to rogue on Rahm.  There will be no 'investigative' follow-up.  BGA horse holder Andy Shaw?  Not a squeak.

Where is the immediate and smoking hot media outrage?

Kristen McQueary should be raged! Tim Novak should get out his investigative shovel and Chris Fusco a good Pick!

If I were a Progressive milquetoast like Eric Zorn or Neil Steinberg - better yet, a room temperature IQ like Carol Marin, I might say something like, 'This will have a Chilling Effect . . ."

I won't .  I was brought up right and managed to retain my dignity.

I'll say this in my south side Irish Spanglish - Enough!  Bastantes ya Cabrones! Basta Ya! Ya Basttards!

 Let's go Total Chicago . . . .Chuyistas!

Turn off WLS AM, WLS ABC. Watch NO Disney! Buy No Disney! Make Rahm Sweat!  Make Rauner wish he was Pat Quinn, right about now.  Heat their feet!

I am putting on my trail-dust coated sombrero and bandoleers until April 7th.

 Voy total de Bandit Norte y el Ejército repubican irlandés Flying ala Guerilla hasta que Jesús es el alcalde!

Basta Rahm!  Viva Chuy!  Viva Juan Kass!

* Wow, one has-been tool,Big John, followed by another.

Rahm Emanuel Hates Everything About the American Middle Class,- Just Like Ernest Poole

Imagine devouring every last item at the All You Can Eat buffet at Chi Tung, skipping the tip to the waitresses because it is after all a buffet, and then walking out the door to find a lawyer who will sue that fine establishment into oblivion, because Chinese food disagrees with you.

That is pretty much the mind of Rahm Emmanuel with regard to middle class neighborhood dwellers, and he is not alone. Valerie Jarrett, President Obama, most newspaper columnists and nearly every editorial board member in Chicago ( save Kristen McQueary of Chicago Tribune), WTTW, WBEZ, WBBM, NBC, ABC, and CBS feel pretty much the same way.

In order to destroy the middle class, like every entree on a Chinese Buffet, every aspect of life important to it, as well as the monetary rewards curtailed via taxation, vocational disappearances and personal safety, must be vilified.  The MC must come to realize that they are appalling and believe it.  If you are for traditional marriage, you are a homophobic hater. If you support law enforcement, you are racist. If you are for lower taxes, you are racist and a classist. If you ask a young lady to mind her language in church, you patriarchal misogynist Bible thumper.  If you want better schools, you are just plain stupid out of your mind nasty.  If you want to raise your family with hope for a brighter tomorrow, you will vote, again, for Rahm Emanuel - 'Hey, he's not so bad.'

This is not new stuff  This detestation of the middle class goes back to the 19th and early 20th century Chicago Progressivism,  Did you know that the first Pulitzer prize winner was the son of a wealthy Chicago Robber Baron of 19th Century, Ernest Poole

Mr. Poole would belong to the Occupy Chicago, I Can't Breathe, Don't Shoot Me brand of Progressive spirit that helped launder SEIU's Trotskyite recent history, elect Pat Quinn & Rahm Emanuel and give us Red Light Cameras.

Progressives are well-heeled; Middle Class Breeders have two nickels to rub together. . .for the moment. Ernest Poole was a Progressive pioneer.

Two years out of Princeton, Ernest Poole covered the 1904 Chicago Stockyard Strike as a free-lance correspondent, lived in Packingtown, as the media called Canaryville then, among the striking meat-cutters, drovers and penmen who lived in Bridgeport and Canaryville. Ernest Poole reported all of his activities with the strikers, especially the Amalgamated Meat Cutters President Mike Donnelly, directly to the the approved Chicago social justice queens Dr. Cornelia De Bey and Jane Addams.

These two legendary shake-down artists were deep in the pockets the beef barons Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris, to fund Hull House and other settlement operations, as well as put a lock on control of Chicago public schools and public health.

Ernest Poole, like so many earnest young people born to privilege, was a babbler, a transient dweller among the unwashed and the oppressed, visited poverty and remained among his kind of people.  People with money and juice, drag, connections.

I can not find any primary examples of Poole's work concerning the 1904 Stockyard Strike, but only his own words written decades later in his puff piece Giants gone; men who made Chicago (1943), which I read again yesterday. Poole writes about the Giants of Chicago, Men like his Dad,  Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, Nelson Morris, Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey with same cool-eyed perspective of the five year old girl's opinion of unicorns. The 1st winner of the Pulitzer is a testament to Progressive marrow.

What makes writers like Poole, Studs Terkel, Bill Ayers, President Obama and mouthpieces like Carol Marin, Bruce Dold and Neil Steinberg so enduring is their basic detestation and loathing for Middle Class lifestyle, manners & morals, avocations and thought.

The satisfied mind, the grand old flag, the happy home,the full belly and heaping board, the button-down Oxford cloth o fJC Penny clothing and the Savings and Loans of American Breeders ( Protestant, Catholic, Jew and Uncle Tom AME/Baptist) are the things that matter not to Progressive Zealots and people they shill into public office.

Rahm is a 100% American Progressive

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I - Chicago's Worker Archbishop

 

Juravit Dominus et non paenitebit eum/
Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech./
Dominus a dextris tuis,/
confregit in die irae suae reges.
(The Lord swore, and will not repent:Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech.The Lord upon thy right hand,shall wound even kings in the day of his wrath.)

Those are some tough words for hymn. The lyrics come form Pslam 110 and the tune from George Fredrick Handel ( Mr. Messiah). This Baroque hymn is sung at the ordination of priests.  I sang with with my pals Mike Kelly, Willie Bigane, Bobby Ryan, Kevin McEldowney, Phil Panatera, Tommy Walsh and other scapegraces from Little Flower Grammar School following weeks of training from Miss Alice Doney and beat downs from high school age choirmasters, like Terry McEldowney.  We got it right for a young guy's First Mass - I think his name was Corrigan.  I remember the beauty of hymn and sense of the sacred that got through to 7th & Grade miscreants aborbed with growing hormones, scatological humor and physically violent pranks.  We were told by Sister Mary Doralese and Sister Mary Gertrudis (RSM) that we were destined to 'die on the gallows. or worse.'  Well, you can't kill a man born to hang.

Nevertheless, our choir carried off the First Mass of a young priest from the neighborhood . . .splendidly. I recall that we were treated to a five spot ($5) each by the father of the priest and that was in 1965 dollars.

I though about the Handel hymn all weekend - every time the Chicago media announced that Francis Cardinal George will end his leadership of Archdiocese of Chicago on Tuesday, November 18th.

I though about the lyrics of Juravit Dominus and how real the words of the Psalm match the tenure of Cardinal George's stewardship of the Church in Chicago.

Cardinal George caught a bum rap from the newspapers, activist priests who play to the OP ed pontiffs from Oak Park to Englewood, gutless elected officials pandereing for more LGBTQ hozanahs and Planned Parenthood lucre and the blow-dried ninnies on Chicago television  I can think of no churchman who withstood more ambush activism and journalism than Francis Cardinal George for speaking the truth.  The truth runs counter to desires and impulses - always.

Cardinal George cleaned up the clergy abuse mess tolerated by his two predecessors, the racial animus inherited from Cardinal Cody's singular role in making Chicago a genuinely 'segregated' city and Cardinal Bernadin's enegetic closing of schools, churches and social institutions.

Even institutions run by the Church follow idiotic policies of goo-goo of State, County and City progressive one-size-fits-all procrustean policy.  Policy is for . . . .persons without the will to good for others.  Sometimes, it is necessary to work things like Catholic Chicagoans - outside of preening policy.

Cardinal George found time to counsel Leo students who came from horrible situations (abusive parents, crime addicted families, drug addled parent with legal custody & etc.)  and to call about their progress.  I have yet to pick up the phone to report back to Neil Steinberg, Carol Marin, Mike Flannery and Dane Placko of Fox News 32 on the condistions of an apartment at 40th & Wallace and how a kid manages to maintain a C+ average with running water and a diet of Cheetos.  The kid refused to abandon his little brother and suffered dysfunction, squallor, rats and loneliness.  Cardinal George partnered with Leo and helped - Old School Chicago.   Cardinal George calls about hurting kids all of the time.

Cardinal George is a working man's priest, bishop and Cardinal. An intellectual giant and ecclesiastical scholar of international reputation, Cardinal George never lost tough with the carpenters, electricians, cops, school teachers, firemen, or skilled tradesmen who remain in the Catholic pews of Chicago and who also shooulder the abuse from prentencious asses like Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, Michael Sneed, or Dane Placko with modest good humor.

Cardinal George is a great shepherd and a great guy -Order of Melchisedech notwithstanding.

Cardinal George and Pope Francis Say Exactly the Same Thing - Love Gays; Oppose Redefinition of Marriage

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all mysins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offendThee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmlyresolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the nearoccasions of sin. Act of Contrition

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. " Pope Francis I

"Everybody is welcome,"but not everything we do can be acceptable. Not everything I do, and not everything anybody else does." Francis Cardinal George

I missed the part in the Pope Francis interview where he advocates homosexual marriage, a redefinition of marriage, a nod to abortion, or plea for free contraceptives.  However, deep thinkers like Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Schmich and the almost invisible Neil Steinberg are doing hand-stands and hugs over the latest cut and paste job by the social engineers.   

I oppose the idiotic and intellectually insulting Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality bully bill that has gone about as far as the Book of Mormon in making Illinois more like Lincoln and less like Joseph Smith, or Bishop Shiel, but wish all and sundry happiness.  The Civil Union bill was the advent of new dawn in civil and social living until Pat Quinn's ink dried on that legislation; at which point Stonewall became Selma and Illinois just could not wait. 

The Pope said nothing new in the article for the Jesuits run here in the States by America and nothing that Francis Cardinal George has not said at every turn in the twisted road to Illinois homosexual marriage and the necessary redefinition of marriage.  Sex outside of marriage is a sin- gay, straight, or solo.   Sex outside of marriage is not a crime, generally speaking.  The only persons that concern me with regard to sex are my kids and of course old Dad himself . . .as if.

Like I said above, Francis Cardinal George has never once uttered a calumny against any sinner.  Nor, has he ever issued a Catholic  Fatwah upon the heads of LGBTQs ever, or of any sort.  Pope Francis called the priesthood to task about their role as pastors ( read the damn article) and he especially mentioned homosexual sex and abortion within the context of the sacrament of Confession -

"We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.“This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

Cardinal George explained "I think it's a good examination of conscience," George said outside Holy Name Cathedral, where he had just celebrated a Mass honoring couples married for 50 years. "I also think that he's coming from the viewpoint of a pastor who is close to the Lord and close to the people."

Then we get a Medill treatement of the Cardinal Archbishop's remarks, But George, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, warned that some had gone too far in seeing Pope Francis' interview as a move away from long-held church teachings on homosexuality, abortion and contraception"

Yep, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, just like Pope Francis.

"Everybody is welcome," George said, "but not everything we do can be acceptable. Not everything I do, and not everything anybody else does."

 Hell, I am welcome, even though my thoughts words and deeds can be unacceptable. . .wildly unacceptable. My beliefs are unacceptable to people who demand that I accept the notion that marriage can and must be not restricted to one man and one woman.  Now, what would those Mormons ridiculed in that boffo play think about that?   One man . . .two wives . . . three?  Does Greg Harris' religious freedom bill include Mormon polygamists?  Or, would that cast the LGBTQ community in the role of hot-headed and hysterical bigot?  Must a wife be human?  Some folks worship chicks and ducks and geese what better scurry!  How about a Dutch Wife? Oh, who cares about wives and WHo cares a fig about the Dutch?

Why sailors and members of the news media.

My most desperately wild 'dirty' thoughts are of Matt Helm movie variety; yet, I am thoroughly ashamed of their distracting imposition upon my better angels.  'And I detest all my  sins' including all of the fun ones.

Read the comments in the article concerning this matter in today's Tribune and tell me again  which side spews the real hate.

Cardinal George is No Sun Times Columnist!

 

Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago*, past President of the American Conference of Catholic Bishops, internationally honored author and theologian, Oblate of Mary Missionary priest is no newspaper columnist and he certainly is no Progressive member of the Cook County Democratic Party, nor is he any way near a GOP tasseled loafer suburban fence sitter, like Senator Marque Kirque and gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner.

How can a scholar of sacred theology expect to reason with a Mark Brown**, an Eric Zorn, a Carol Marin, a Neil Steinberg, or a Proco Joe Moreno and maintain any semblance of moral high-ground? Recently these folks have opined upon the Secular Redemption of Milliken Don James St. James who merely slaughtered his entire family in 1960's served his time in the nut house, deemed clean, was released, advanced degreed, changed his name and lived anonymously among the folks as respected member of the academic community, not unlike Dr. Josef Mengele or other South Americans of post-Holocaust redemption. Columnist love this American Progressive Gatsby narrative. But that is Columnist Theology.

Today, Mark Brown, one of the very few columnists who actually offers a semblance of a fair shake, recounts his 'cordial' exchange with Cardinal George concerning this summer's hoo-ha over Proco Joe and company's outrage in letter form protesting Catholic Campaign for Human Development's (CCHD) decision to no longer fund the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights( ICIRR).

Mark Brown wrote a searing column that burned the fibers of manly hearts that already agree with him on matters relating to same-sex marriage and scorched the muscles of that vital organ in the womanly breasts of maids and dowagers who equate bike repair with non-Euclidean sex and Civil Rights.

Cardinal George found fault with Mr. Brown's column; hence the 'cordial' dialogue.

George expressed his opinion that the funding cutoff “wouldn’t have been an issue if we weren’t in a campaign for governor.”
That confused me a little, because I certainly would have raised the issue whether there was an election next year or not. The cardinal reiterated that his understanding is that some people want to use gay marriage as an issue in the governor’s race.
I suggested it was his decision to halt funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to the immigrant groups that made this an issue. He rejected that assertion, arguing that the leaders of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights in effect cut off funding to their own member groups with the decision in May to endorse gay marriage.

You see, Cardinal; George is not only an episcopal and evangelical leader of the Catholic Church in Chicago, but he also happens to be a Chicagoan and someone who can and does read print.

To avoid any confusion, there is a race for governor.  The signer of the hostile and historically damaging Illinois Civil Union Bill, Governor Pat Quinn, lost the May bid to make Same -Sex Marriage the Lincoln Log Cabin for his Reelection, chinking every crack with Progressively pious platitudes.  Quinn is even more unpopular than his enemies who are growing up out of the ground from the dragon's teeth sown by the very forces that own Quinn's political soul - ( SEIU, Planned Parenthood, Dr. Quentin Young, Abner Mikva, the ACLU and Fred Eychaner). We now have Bruce Rauner, a billionaire buccaneer hopping out of Rahm Emanuel's vest pocket as a GOP standard bearer and Bill Daley who gave Rahm his first job.  We have Kwame Raul as a wedge candidate to gobble up Quinn's African American base, if there ever had been such, and a cavalcade gimpy-wimpy GOP dependables.

Now, that is something to confuse one, Mr. Brown.

The Catholic Church has been sanctioned for fire bombing by the DNC, because of its implacable defense of the unborn and traditional marriage.

Cardinal George knows the political landscape and it is hostile.  What passes for an evolved culture in this country finds the Gay Ann Landers, Dan Savage,  to be a sober and thoughtful Catholic voice and it finds the certitude of ethical and moral principles just too mean for a queen. Mark Brown offers his last word on the matter ex-cathedra, or swivel seat, or easy chair in a much less than cordial manner.  Mark Brown wants that to be his column's take away?

The cardinal acknowledged his own characterization of the pope’s comments on gays may have been “jarring,” as I put it, but he said he was frustrated by journalists missing the pope’s point.
“In our culture, ‘Who am I to judge’ means nobody has the right to distinguish right from wrong,” which wasn’t what the pope meant, the cardinal said.
“He was saying that a person who has given up their sinful ways, you don’t judge them. You accept them,” George said. “. . .He started out saying: gay sex is wrong.”
I told the cardinal I never believed for a moment that the pope was changing church policy toward gays, only setting a different tone that was missing from his own approach.
The cardinal expressed frustration that, in the current political climate, Catholics can’t express their opposition to same-sex marriage without being regarded as bigots.
“”When that becomes the criterion for accepting gay and lesbian people, then we’re in the bind we’re in now, which is a real bind,” he said.

No - that is not what a Sun Times reader must take away from the 'coridal' exchange of the columnist and mere Cardinal.  It is this.

"Nobody really expects the Catholic Church to change, only to adapt."

Millions of European Jews were told that very thing. Now, that was some lesson in social evolution . . . very scientific.

* Francis Cardinal George, OMI Education
Bachelor in Theology, University Ottawa
Master in Theology, University Ottawa, 1971
MA in Philosophy, Catholic University America, 1965
PhD in Philosophy, Tulane University, 1970
STD, Pontifical Urban University, Rome, 1989
Career
Ordained priest Oblates of Mary Immaculate, 1963, provincial central region, 1973—1974, vicar general, 1974—1986; coordinator Circle of Fellows Cambridge Center for Study of Faith & Culture, Massachusetts, 1987—1990; ordained bishop, 1990; bishop Diocese of Yakima, Washington, 1990—1996; archbishop Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, 1996—1997, Archdiocese of Chicago, 1997—; elevated to cardinal, 1998; cardinal-priest S. Bartolomeo all'Isola, 1998—
Career Related
Vice president US Conference Catholic Bishops, 2004—; chancellor Catholic Church Extension University St. Mary of Lake, 1997; member Congregation Divine Worship, Discipline of Sacraments, Congregation for Oriental Churches, 2001—, Congregation Institutes, Consecrated Life, Societies Apostolic Life, Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage of Church, 1999—, Pontifical Council Cor Unum, 1998, Congregation Evangelization of Peoples, Pontifical Council for Culture, 2004—, Catholic Commission on Intellectual & Cultural Affairs
Creative Works
Author (pastoral letter): Becoming an Evangelizing People, 1997, Dwell in My Love, 2001
Memberships
Mem.: Am. Catholic Philosophical Association, Am. Society Missiologists
Religion
Roman Catholic
Address
Office: Archdiocese of Chgo Pastoral Ctr PO Box 1979 Chicago IL 60690-1979

** Mark Brown

Brown grew up in central Illinois, graduated from Northern Illinois University in 1977 and then attended the Public Affairs Reporting program at University of Illinois-Springfield, then known as Sangamon State, where he was a Sun-Times intern. Brown worked four years at the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, before joining the Sun-Times full-time in 1982.
At the Sun-Times, Brown worked mainly as a general assignment reporter specializing politics and government, which led him into investigative reporting. In September 2000, Brown began writing his column, which currently appears Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday. One of his strengths is that he has experience covering not only Chicago City Hall, but also Cook County government and the Illinois Statehouse.
Brown, a third-string high school basketball player, grew up obsessed with St. Louis Cardinals baseball, Chicago Bears football and Bradley basketball. Only Bradley has moved down on his radar, replaced by the Bulls.

Happy Easter, Christ Has Risen! Now, Let's Roll Back the Big Stone Keeping Schools in a Cave

Kids believe only what is taught to them.  Last night 28 kids, most under the age of 18, were arrested on Chicago's Mag Mile for intimidating people and another bunch were arrested following an assault on a woman who asked that the kids put out their cigarettes. I do not believe that the youngsters were engaged in civil disobedience demanding that CPS keep failing schools open, nor were they concerned with the plight of LGBTQ citizens.

From this same edition of the paper, the Opinion section of the Chicago Tribune was thick with opinions on both issues as being fundamental to life on our planet.  The school closings?  I see them them as part of the overall Rahm Plan to shrink the City of Chicago ( services) down to an Urban Center.  Likewise, the abhorrent incivility tolerated on Chicago Transportation systems by the Mayor and CTA Boss Forrest Claypool is a component in this plan.  Why else would a Mayor not do his utmost to light a fire under his appointee to interdict such behavior and provide the necessary police officers at his disposal to correct the situation?  Answer.  It is not part of the Plan.

The Plan includes a $ 100 million dollar loan to gussy up the River Walk, but not seek a loan to hire more cops.

Back to the schools. The closed schools, the largest school closing in American history, are  real estate.

Take a look at who is protesting the school closings ( CTU's Karen Lewis & Jesse Sharkey)  - they worked with Mayor Emanuel to engineer the closings.  Their Red-shirted Dragon Dance through the Loop last week provided Bill Ayers and opportunity to be described as an "elementary school expert' in the Chicago media, as well as swell venue for SEIU to play civil disobedience for cameras without the possibility of arrest.  Tickets were issued.

For the last thirty years Bill Ayers* and the well-camouflaged Mike Klonsky have trained a generation of radicals who now control Chicago Teachers Union through CORE.  Chicago Public Schools have nose-dived deeper into the tax-dollars from the moment the Annenberg Challenge was boarded and looted by Bolsheviks and took command of the Education Department at University of Illinois at Chicago.  Here's a challenge.  How many UICC disciples of Billy Ayers are CPS teachers?

The idea of schools has been entombed in a cave behind the boulder rolled by Ayers and Klonsky.

Schools should reflect the neighborhoods they serve.  Catholic schools most certainly do just that and graduates of Catholic schools, black, brown and white manage to avoid massive arrests on Mag Mile and intimidate passengers on the CTA.

Ayers and Klonsky made small schools (cadres) wholesome to lazy and not very bright editorial boards and columnists.   Schools fail, because they are supposed to do just that.

Chicago is a Catholic city.  No matter how much Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, Neil Steinberg, Carol Marin, Clarence Page, Dawn Turner Trice, or WTTW try to obscure that fact, Catholics rub up against Baptists, Unitarians, AME, Lutheran, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Dutch Reformed and atheist neighbors.  Schools should reflect that fact, but they are not allowed to do that.

Christ died on Friday, busted Hell's prisoners out on Saturday, and triumphed over death today, when he rolled back the big rock.

The big rock blocking real schools and the idea of a school is still wedged in pretty deep.   Kids are taught what to fear and given no means to conquer fear.  Behavior reflects what people are all about.


*"Elementary education expert and professor Bill Ayers — who has sparked controversy on the national political scene with his ties to President Obama — was in the crowd in support of teachers.
" 'The assault on public education and abandonment of these communities has to be resisted,' Ayers said." Chicago Sun Times

Will International LGBTQ Activists Stonewall a Black Pope?

The Papal Conclave just got really interesting.  Peter Cardinal Turkson of Ghana is a black man.  The  Cardinal from Ghana just might become the first Black Pope since St. Gelasius (492-496).   Might.

The problem now confronting Cardinal Turkson is not in Consistory, the Klan, or with Catholics in general.  The problem leaping out of the closet is Gay Black-lash. While secular Europe, North America and OZ tend to embrace the Gay Rainbow, Asia, Central and South America and Africa, as well as Micronesia are yet, shall we say, less 'evolved' with regard to same sex marriage, same sex love and same sex anything.

Here in the United States, LGBTQ activists have been showered with millions of dollars to culturally and politically rewire the unevolved, via the news media and Hollywood, into a firm understanding that there are proud black men like MSNBC's Toure, who proudly helped abort his own child and equates Stonewall with Selma - Gay Love is a Civil Right, for Which Dr. King Was Martyred.

African Americans, Latinos, and ethnic Catholics can not and will not be allowed to be anything but Gay Complicit . . . compliant is no where near enough.

Just when the American Catholic Church has been all but completely marginalized with the endless drumming of yarns, true, or not, of universal child abuse, along comes a proud African Catholic contender for Chair of St. Peter.

Cardinal Turkson was being interrogated by CNN's Christiane Amanpour with all the skills of a Cougar Pharisee in an attempt to wedge the  Afrique religieux into the proper narrative corner.  The Cardinal did not take the bait:

 The African cardinal widely tipped to be the first black pope in modern history faced a firestorm of criticism last night after he laid the blame for clerical sex abuse crises at the feet of gay priests.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, who comes from Ghana, told an American journalist that similar sex scandals would never convulse churches in Africa because the culture was inimical to homosexuality.‘African traditional systems kind of protect or have protected its population against this tendency,’ he told Christiane Amanpour of CCN. ‘Because in several communities, in several cultures in Africa homosexuality or for that matter any affair between two sexes of the same kind, are not countenanced in our society,’ he continued.‘So that cultural taboo, that tradition has been there,’ said Cardinal Turkson, 64. ‘It has served to keep it out.’ . . . 
 
‘Cardinal Turkson’s comments show a surprisingly callous disregard for the human rights of millions of people worldwide,’ she told the Times.

Dang, that sure knocks the ruby slippers off of that one!  Hold on now, lets's here from the Civil Rights folks:

 Ruth Hunt, Stonewall director of public affairs, was among those to swiftly condemn his remarks.

"Cardinal Turkson’s comments show a surprisingly callous disregard for the human rights of millions of people worldwide,’ 

However, She did not say that the Cardinal is wrong.

Now, this is a troublesome moment for the Gay Curia.  The Civil Rights Meme Coalition could be split!  How Can We Celebrate a Pope Of Color, Who Is Not Rainbow Happy? What Would Toure Say?

Not even a government's scientific-dogma'd NHS could help:

But one NHS psychiatrist who has researched the field of clerical sex abuse agreed with the cardinal that homosexual abuse of adolescent males rather than paedophile attacks on children characterised the problem. 

‘I would say he is correct,’ said the doctor, who asked not to be named in fear of reprisals - including the loss of his job.‘Where the research has been done – for example in the United States and Australia – in the region of 80 per cent of the victims of sex abuse by priests are adolescent males rather than children.’ ( emphasis my own)

When the sex-abuse scandal took off here in America, the priests and Catholic spokespersons who pointed to this truth were hushed up.  The meme became Homosexuality Does Not a Pedophile Make! No, but a homosexual priest just might tend to find a high school aged Catholic Frank Merriwell just the ticket for long holiday week-end trip to Wisconsin.

If that priest, who wants what the heart wants, has a like-minded and inclined boss, or bosses -so much more the opportunity.

I expect that Cardinal Turkson will undergo the usual LGBTQ bastinado and perhaps an auto-de-fe, like the treatment Francis Cardinal George has been subjected to in Gay Chicago Values Illinois.
Cardinal Turkson will be ridiculed by the usual progressive puritans and be treated as the THE WOG WHO WOULD BE POPE. POPE HERMAN CAIN, I & etc.

Dan " Savage Love" Savage & Neil Steinberg will tell everyone that Copernicus was an evolved  and clouted American priest again.  MSNBC's angrogynous Chris Hayes will share insights with lightweight Eric Zorn on the Koch Brothers' involvements in Africa.  The usual breathless nonsense from the media. OMG,It is obvious SOMEONE has not seen The Book of Mormon!

The Gay Money will be on an Italian Cardinal and we will all be told to just get over it about having a Black Pope.  Ever see any Black in a Rainbow?

  

We Americans Sure Love Our Prisons! I'll Say and Then Some

Hey!  Neil Steinberg says "Americans LOVE Prisons!"

You Bet, Johnny !!!!!God, I Love Prisons!!!  

 Our criminal justice system is crisscrossed with all sorts of get-tough laws inflicted by showboating politicians — we not only have more prisoners but our sentences are longer than anyplace else on earth. Mandatory minimum sentences, though long decried, still tie judges’ hands and ship drug offenders away for decades. Ludicrous “three-strikes” laws were intended to jail hardened criminals. But felons can and do receive 25-year-sentences — longer than Breivik got for murdering 77 people — for shoplifting a candy bar. California burglar Norman Williams got a life sentence for taking a jack from a tow truck. . .l .The chance of America changing its outlook here are small. We are a frightened country — with some 270 million guns in 40 percent of the U.S. households, mostly for “protection.” We want criminals to suffer, and aren’t willing to think about the cost of that mindset. That they do things differently in Norway — well then, Norwegians must be strange. The whole world is strange. Only we are normal. Only we do things the right way — the only way — they must be done. 

All of that, folks,in one huge pull and Neil has only two hands and uses both most vigorously! Ought to be blind at that pithy pace and potency.

Neil Steinberg is really pissed at us, again.

Undeterred, Chicago's Aloysius "Ears" McKenna ( at the wheel) and Terry "Fats' Bulfin appreciate the opportunity to engage in senseless and bloody gun-play, causing disturbances with misdemeanor reckless conduct and rowdy teenage flash-mobbing on the Magnificent Mile or in and around the Gold Coast, as well as working on home-made Ham radios and fixing up old Fords.

Yes, sir!  We Americans love our prisons!  Dick Durbin ordered up one for Illinois Melon Capital Thompson Ill and folks in deep downstate Love them some Tamms!

Neil notes that Race is the Place for Scab Picking - Why do Americans Love Them Some Prisons?

Race has to be a factor. More than 60 percent of American prisoners are black or Hispanic, double their presence in the population, and the criminal justice system operates differently for law-breakers who are white and have resources than those who are of color and don’t.

Like the legendary Cap Streeter,  Blago, Tony Rezko, Stuart Levine, Roger the Hog, George Raft, Paul Muni, Jimmy Cagney, Drew Peterson, Al Capone, Spike O'Donnell, Danny Edwards, Gov. Dan Walker, and of course. Ald. Larry Bloom, 

Then, there are our beloved sexual predators (6-60,blind crippled or crazy) Lotharios and Sapphos who number in the scores of thousands -incarcerated and paroled.

http://www.isp.state.il.us/docs/5-622.pdf

Prisons? Man I'm nuts for 'em! Fill 'em up some more!

We Love our prisons - a French word.  The Brits call it Gaol.  I call it Lovely! Still Neil has a point . . .no not the one on his shoulders . . .

In Frog prisouns  a gent in a snappy poilu get up brings flowers to babes doing time.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/14738297-452/we-americans-sure-love-our-prisons.html

Michael Moriarty & Dennis Byrne -On Public Intellectuals and Marriage: Defense of 1st Principles

"I have concluded that to be an intellectual is to reach for an entirely different planet than the one most of us live on. Certainly to be an intellectual is to create another language of sorts.I understand the impulse, having been a lifelong, shameless dreamer." Michael Moriarty, Ottawa Life Magazine

"Few if any supporters of gay marriage demand as a matter of central concern that each gay partner be automatically recognized as the parent of any child generated by the other."  Dennis Byrne Chicago Tribune


God, in his Eternal sense of humor, has seen fit to allow me to breath and also to connect,, converse and commiserate with intellectuals fired with fierce fortitude. Fortitude is moral strength founded in a belief or faith beyond one's self that defines all subsequent actions and intellectual positions regardless of outcomes.

Murder and killing are very different.  One is an act of desperation and the other an act of necessity.  A woman and a man are very different, in most cases.  That difference is a necessity to human generation.  President Obama is not only America's First Abortionist, but also America's First Gay, because public intellectuals have said so.  I am sure that Barack Obama would wildly object to either claim made on his behalf, by the people who fund, support, worship and obey his every waking thought, as a matter of Pragmatism - saying anything, at anytime, for different reasons.  Pragmatism is the core, but very moveable, doctrine of  the American Intellectual.  Pragmatism denies 1st Principles - faith in God is the very First of 1st Principles*.  God is Inconvenient Truth.

I was told by a Jesuit of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this bar to the country club of parsers.

Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor. Michael Moriarty, Chicago rooted actor, musician, composer and writer,nicely unmasks the clever masker in his recent article for Ottawa Life Magazine.

Mr. Moriarty reacts to an article by Professor Louis Menand of New York University, in The New Yorker.  This piece concerns the state of American higher education.  Prof. Menand's hobby-horse is the American public intellectual - the citizen-scholar who 'purifies' culture - Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael to Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, Joan Walsh, and Alec Baldwin. 

"They (NY Intellectuals) played the role of purveying intellectual culture to a wider audience, and spoke to people outside their own fields.”

THEY made 1st Principles ( God and all of His Works) obscure enough for Ad Men and Ambulance Chasers, one step out of the cow shit in Wisconsin, want to be little Andre Malrauxs and feel the WILL to be proletarian.  Make six to seven figures selling Ban Roll-on Deodorant and write checks to the Black Panthers, SDS, and John Lindsey.  Our capitalist economy made them gentry, and the New Republic allowed them to play Atticus Finch - One Man's Murder of an Unborn Child is Another's Woman's Health Care, Scout. Who's to say? - with a self-satisfied snap of the store-bought galluses. 

Michael Moriarty picks the parsing Pragmatist's bones clean, because like most Catholic educated folks, he remembers what he has read before and applies scrutiny accordingly:

I first encountered Prof. Menand, . . . , as somewhat of an authority on the American literary and social critic Edmund Wilson, the rather intense-looking face to the left.
Louis Menand’s preface for Wilson’s To the Finland Station had the refreshing wisdom to include a very Russian warning about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: Vladimir Nabokov’s remark that Lenin was “a glass of the milk of human kindness at the bottom of which was a dead rat.”
One assumes, however, that the publisher of To the Finland Station must have considered Menand a Wilson authority or at least an admirer of some sort.
In typically mystifying fashion, Menand says about his college dissertation on Edmund Wilson.
“I didn’t write about Wilson because he was an important figure for me, but because he was part of that phenomenon.”He means the “Modernist” phenomenon… or is it the “Post-Modernist” phenomenon?As a further glimpse into his dissertation, he says,

Prof. Louis Menand

“The writers who influenced me the most were Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael. It wasn’t Edmund Wilson and it wasn’t Lionel Trilling, even though I certainly read them. When I was a graduate student, I thought about them as possible models, but when I look at what I have done since, they have not been particularly influential. The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated in seeing through issues about culture and ideas that actually is very like contemporary academic thinking. The thing about Wilson—that in the end is frustrating about him—is that he had no ability to think theoretically. In the few cases where he does, it is his least satisfactory work.”“The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated…“ “Sophisticated” is the seminal code word, I believe. All five of the writers achieved success, literary American triumph actually, without being necessarily branded as Communist.

Seeming is believing in Pragmatic Progressivism

In 1971, I was taught by a Jesuit priest and philosophy professor of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs paying Loyola tuition know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this particular bar to the country club of Pragmatic parsers. 'Sometimes it is a gift to be refused admission,'  said the Missionary with a cold sore to boiling aboriginal stew pot. 

Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor.

Around the time that Father Al was teaching Ethics to me and Mike Miller, Jim Molloy, Mike Stankewicz, Jack McNamara, Mary Kay Harvey and Stanley Jurich, the Temptaions were singing Just My Imagination, Running Away With Me.

Each day through my window I watch her as she passes by
I say to myself you're such a lucky guy,
To have a girl like her is truly a dream come true
out of all the fellows in the world she belongs to me.
But it was Just my imagination,
once again runnin' away with me.
It was just my imagination runnin' away with me. Oo
Soon we'll be married and raise a family (Oh yeah)
A cozy little home out in the country with two children maybe three.
I tell you I can visualize it all
this couldn't be a dream for too real it all seems;
But it was Just my imagination once again runnin' way with me.
Tell you it was just my imagination runnin' away with me.

Rigor.  Michael Moriarty is a dreamer in the mold of Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Billy of Occam, Moses Maimonides, and John Scotus Erigenna.  Those medieval gents were the Temptin' T's of scholastic thought - four Brits and a Jew. Like them, the Temptations - African American scholastics - cut the veil between imagination and reality to happy conclusion - marriage is between a Man and Woman.  Celebrate that diversity in Holy Wedlock!

Dennis Byrne, another Jesuit educated writer, has heroically challenged the parsing pragmatists over Marriage.  The outcome of his position will be a cavalcade of idiotically molded screeching from peanut gallery in the comment page.  I'd wager that the five star estimate by robo-writers will assess Mr. Byrne's defense of Marriage between a Man and Woman at two stars by day's end and here's why:

Research and common sense indisputably validate that heterosexual marriage is uniquely good in itself, better for the children and essential for the common good.
That's why government has seen fit to regulate this singular institution. Government doesn't regulate all human relationships; you don't need a license to form a friendship or a court decree to dump a friend. If marriage didn't serve a unique public good, government protections of all of its parties wouldn't be required; it would be regarded as little more than two people living together.
This is not to say that every marriage must produce children or that children raised in different circumstances, e.g. adoption, in separated families or by gay partners, can't do as well as or better. Nor does it deny that a same-sex partnership can't bond into a permanent, caring relationship, as good as or better than can heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is an ideal, and like all other ideals, in practice it can fall short of its lofty goals. That doesn't negate the importance of preserving the ideal.

The ideal is not pragmatic.  Never was, no how.  Seeming is all the believing Bruce Dold and Chicago Tribune editorial board require, Mr. Byrne.  It is easier to be Eric Zorn, Carol Marin, Mary Schmich, Neil Steinberg, and Steve Chapman in this cracker-chested burg these days, because they all write the exact same thing in every column - like the citizen-scholars Michael Moriarty unmasks in his recent article - these lightweights  purvey what passes for  intellectual culture to a wider audience.

Holding to First Principles and all that goes with them requires virtue- "Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. "

Michael Moriarty and Dennis Byrne offer excellent examples of intellectual discernment and courage; not

Just my Imagination, running away with me.

  

* In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first principles, all the way to the elements. It is clear, then, that in the science of nature as elsewhere, we should try first to determine questions about the first principles. The naturally proper direction of our road is from things better known and clearer to us, to things that are clearer and better known by nature; for the things known to us are not the same as the things known unconditionally (haplôs). Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. (Phys. 184a10–21) Aristotle

 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0515-byrne-20120515,0,6394836.column
http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/05/moriartys-musings-new-yorks-public-intellectuals/

Savage Bullying of Teens - Fully Funded and Progressive Approved

Nobody bullies like like a bully, who deeply and passionately believes that he has been bullied - a little corporal in Vienna, who avoided tobacco, alcohol, and bullets during WWI, found his art and lifestyle to be a laughing-stock to jeering Jews and callous Catholics and effeminate critics.  It got better.

He went on to pen a world-wide best-seller about his personal struggle and became a transcendent post-political world leader.

It gets better, unless one and others  happen to be au contraire. One can almost hear the smartly turned-out jack-booted progressive voices -Sie, nach rechts! Sie nach links!


Dan Savage* is a Chicago boy who tells one and all that his lifestyle has made him feel that he was somehow outre; well, different, conspicuously, or grossly unconventional or unusual. Dan is homosexual. For that,  Dan Savage has told every carbon foot-print within earshot, or the ability to read that he suffered from bullies.

The only human being, about whom I have some empirical knowledge, never bullied on this earth might possibly have been Swannie (circa - 1950-Present?)  Swanie lived at 75th Pl. & Honore Street two houses south of the tracks. He bullied me, Al McFarland, Terry Smith, Larry Fiscelli, Jimmy & Leo Shea, my brother Whitey, the Lutherans Dave and Danny Krieger, The Hamilton Dairy drivers, Brother Sloane from Leo,  the Two Mike Kellys, the Railroad Dicks, the Cops from Gresham, the Mercy Nuns, Clara Barton Grammar School, Msgr. Stephan McMahon, my Dad and his six brothers, the late Moose Skowron, three shifts at Donahue Steel on Damen, three shifts at Rheem water heater over by the Old Mill on the north side of the tracks, generations of Norway rats, stray dogs, and wild onions. Swannie-Invictus, intacta, et improviso

Jesus was Bullied, Moses was Bullied, St. Paul was Bullied, Oscar Wilde both bullied and was Bullied, Ho Chi Minh was Bullied - hell, he was a dish-washer in a French restaurant, Mao was bullied, and even George Sanders was bullied . . .I think.

I hate bullies.  Having been bullied I tried to be one myself  and had my ass kicked wholesomely - not worth the trouble or the accompanying shame.

Bullies hate being confronted.  I hectored, not bullied mind you, the sweet, smart, lovely and talented Tamara Holder due to my misunderstanding of her work in expunging criminal records. Ms. Holder set me straight and that is not reverse bullying.  Ms. Holder gave me what for with the facts; we be friends. Ms. Holder holds what some would call Progressive points of view.  I value my Catholic, anti-abortion, tribal, close-knit ethnic, pro-real labor beliefs.  We believe in truths; we are not truth itself; that is bullying.

This is bullying and it is fully approved by the media, government and our current Justice Department**.



A few months ago, It seems to me that in order to clear the way for Rep. Greg Harris' Homosexual Marriage Campaign in Illinois, media types took shots at the Catholic Church and Catholics because of its and their Belief that Marriage is between a Man and a Woman, because a man and woman can procreate - breed, have children.

No less a bully than Neil Steinberg chastised Catholic High Schools for not sending students to see a play at the Steppenwolf Theatre that celebrated a gay girl bullied at a Catholic School.


Mesdames et Messieurs, Notre intimident peu idiot, Neil!

          Catholic schools avoid Steppenwolf play on gay student bullied — at Catholic school

Most schools have some kind of anti-bullying program, though — since schools don’t like to acknowledge the existence of sex, either (parents tend to go crazy) — most of those programs don’t actually discuss sexuality, even though half of school bullying is against kids who are either gay or seen as gay. Neil Steinberg nsteinberg@suntimes.com March 6, 2012 6:24PM

Gee, and everybody loves Wagner! The opera guy!  Wagner gave that little smokes and booze free vegan Viennese corporal paper-hanger the spirit and juice to show everyone that It Gets Better!

Why does Israel bully Old Dead Dick Wagner and not allow his tunes ( His music is better than it sounds - Mark Twain, a huge American bully) to get play ?

Must be something in Bible.

 *Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois.^[6] He is of Irish ancestry.^[7] The third of four children,^[6] Savage was raised as a Roman Catholicand attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests."^[8] Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist,^[9] he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."^[8][10]Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied theater and history.^[6] As a theater director, Savage (working under the name "Keenan Hollahan") was a founder of Seattle's Greek Active Theater.^[10] Much of the group's work has been queer recontextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomicMacbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite sex. In March 2001, he directed his own Egguus at Consolidated Works, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus which exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2003 production of Letters from the Earth, also at Consolidated Works, his trimmed version of Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve, which received scathing reviews, including one from his own paper, "My Boss's Show Stinks".^[11]Savage and his husband, Terry, have one adopted son, D.J.,^[12] and were married in Vancouver, BC in 2005.^[13][14]

** ARLINGTON — Hundreds of Texas educators, politicians and LGBT activists attended the White House LGBT Conference on Safe Schools and Communities to hear about the Obama administration’s efforts to fight bullying and prevent hate crimes and to discuss local progress. [...]

Holder said the administration has “created a record we can all be proud of” in terms of protecting LGBT rights and “a sense of momentum that today we stand poised to build upon.”

“This morning I’m proud to join you in affirming a very simple truth and renewing this administration’s commitment, as well as my own, to an essential idea that no one, no one, deserves to be bullied, harassed or victimized because of who they are, how they worship or, and hear it when I say it now, or who they love,” Holder said.

Holder said the “It Gets Better” campaign is more than a slogan, but something the administration is backing up with “robust action,” like the five-year settlement with the Anoka-Hennepin school district reached March 5.

http://weaselzippers.us/