Only the "Uneducated" Voted for Trump? The Plagiarist Says So - Fareed " Od Dead-eyes' Zakaria and Obama Jonesing

"In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding—in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others." Mikhail Bakhtin

It is hard to believe, I know, but I met Barack Obama on more than few occasions before he received the Nobel Prize and found him to be kind of a dope.  A real dope, a pissy, snotty and insecure  Ivy League educated dope.  I don't think that all that Hope and Change wised him up, but I wish him God Speed!

I judge people by the way they treat other people and me as well.  I have met many  well educated people ( they went to college) who could not and can not make change, book a hotel reservation, or remember to leave a tip after a huge feed.   I know pipe-fitters who are jazz scholars, readers of Foucualt, Derrida and Bakhtin - very dismissive of the two former and firmly in the camp of the later.

Bakhtin was a Russian literary and language theorist who studied the 'carnivalesque' nature of rebellion, non-conformity and resistance to artificial constraints upon the individual - think of a  Retirement Roast as an example.  The 'honoree' sits and takes verbal abuse in 'tribute' to his/her life.  The Comedy Central Roasting of Ann Coulter comes to mind,, where everything about that persons gender, race, religion, education, career choices and personal relationships was reduced to the gimlet eye of left-wing politics.  Another example might be a a faculty meeting in a Catholic high school to kick off the school, where the educated persons of the same faith are required to read a meaningful group prayer from a Xerox'ed copy.  No wonder most teachers squirm and act out.

Today, once again, a person with the personality of a dial tone and humanity of a Grand Vizier, explains that huge percentage of American voters are uneducated.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria previewed his documentary Why Trump Won Monday on Wolf Blitzer's afternoon TV program. Zakaria said Trump supporters are "tribal" and saw the 2016 presidential election as an act of cultural and class rebellion against the "educated" urban professionals.
"We tried to get at that deeper issue, which is really a portrait of America," Zakaria said of his investigation into Trump supporters. "A kind of cultural and class portrait of an America that feels deeply resentful about the direction the country is going in and the people who run the country. People, you know, who are professionals, urban, educated. This is, in a sense, an act of class rebellion. It is an act of cultural rebellion. And Donald Trump is their guy."

People who run the country are "  People, you know, who are professionals, urban, educated."  Yet, Donald Trump and Mike Pence and Steve Bannon and Kelly Anne Conway and Jeff Session and Gen. Kelly are 'running the country.'  Fareed?  What's the deal?

Why would the uneducated massed vote for educated ( Trump, Pence, Bannon, Conway, Sessions, Kelly et al), urban professionals to be our guys?

This is what my pipe-fitter pal and Mikhail Bakhtin would call a 'carnivalesque' moment.  You see, locked-up mumpish misanthropes with puckered sphincters, like Fareed Zakaria, Bruce Wolf and retired Vice Admiral John Kirby object to pipe-fitters, cops, firemen, school teachers, cab and Uber drivers, especially when they ain't buying what Fareed is selling.  They squirm away from faked good-humor, prayer that requires prayer sheets and snobbery.

The Carnival is a Catholic concept - the Feast of All Fools,  It was the one day where the poor, the eccentric, the naked, the loutish, the buffoonish and the heckling classes were free to scorn the prelates, the viziers, the scribes and the pharisees.

Our scribes and  pharisees, academics and the media,  created Obama and they are really missing his empty rhetorical smirking self-satisfaction.  They are jones-ing bad.

Educated Americans voted for Donald Trump and against Obama and Hillary.   Many educated Americans and many more very wise Americans.

Old Dead Eyes is one of the reason why the Church created carnivals.

Pipefitters know that.

The Devil and Donald Trump, or Strike Tents, Don; Sounds Like the Old Scratch Won

I'm a White Sox fan.  I know the thrill of almost getting there.  The delight of watching back-to-back hits to the gaps and the balloon popping disappointment of leaving two men on - inning after inning.

I also watch politics - a rigged sport - like old time Bob Luce Pro Wrestling, or Women's Roller Derby.    The Democrats, controlled by the nut-bag Progressive wing of American politics since 1972, and the GOP, run by the Nels Rockefeller-Chuck Percy moderate doormats since the 1960's, is a push-me-pull-you spectacle sport that gets ever more soul-sucking and sad.

Donald Trump is the product of this cynical enterprise.  I believed Candidate Trump to be a gross, loud, boorish and vain man.  I was wrong. That is his shtick and it works. It sucks the oxygen out of the room.

I really believe that President Trump wants to end the Dem-GOP perpetual taffy pull and drain the swamp, pool, or puddle that makes a Daniel Webster want to be convicted along with Jabez Stone.

This wonderful American story is no longer taught in our public schools and far too many of our Catholic schools.

Daniel Webster is an American historical figure, chosen by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet as the core character for his legend the Devil and Daniel Webster.

The Devil, Old Scratch, is a soul-sucking lobbyist, with piles of money at his command.  He lures a New Hampshire son of the soil, who is very down on his luck, Jabez Soul with a contract offering earthly wealth and honors, so long as his soul goes to OLD SCRATCH, Llc. for eternity.

Today, the soul is a secular punchline and laugh button for Bill Maher and latte night TV.

Congressman Daniel Webster, not to be confused with Senators Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Susan Collins, or John McCain, is a rock-ribbed Union Forever American Patriot.  He is no maverick. Webster is no moderate and would never appear on Rachel Maddow, or Sean Hannity.  Webster died and is buried:

Yes, Dan'l Webster's dead−or, at least, they buried him. But every time there's a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, "Dan'l Webster−Dan'l Webster!"  the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake.
And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, "Neighbor, how stands the Union?" Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock−bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, that's what I was told when I was a youngster.

Me too.

Durbin, Collins, Schumer and McCain chirp,  "Neighbor, How's They Polling?"   Maverick up!

They all work together and not for the State of the Union.

Donald Trump wants to change things and change does come easy, unless it is candy-coated in good old American bullshit, like the last eight years of Obama Hope & Change.

Old Scratch has The Union by the throat and is not letting go.  Obama Care is making too many people richer at the expense of everyone else.  Tax reform will never take place as long as 1/3 after a thick retainer means anything.   America will not be allowed to be Great Again, because the global oligarchs are winning.

When Jabez Stone wanted to weasel out of his contract, like any good Yankee Unitarian, Daniel Webster was forced to face a rigged jury of the worst traitors, cut-throats and back-sliders in American history, up to the 114th Congress anyway.  Old Dan'l reminded the louses of their birth on this soil and appealed to their Nativist love of country.    <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bXfU2AaJDEQ?list=PLWX-t5q2SkI0xslMuPftjy6mCioqZx_em" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Can't appeal to that anymore.  Faust has no sense of any universal truth - Americans are mavericks, no more Alamo, Valley Forge, or Khe Sahn for New York Times subscribers and listeners and viewers like Angie's List, Prudential, Northwestern Mutual and the Alliance for Climate Change.


Donald Trump is the President of the United States for a now.

I have a feeling that after yesterday's GOP betrayal on Health Care Reform, the traitors in the White House including the new guy, who already leaked to Ryan Lizza about his war on leakers, and  that Old Scratch has real cut-throats and crumbs in the jury box - no lightweights like Benedict Arnold, Edward Teach, or Simon Girty.

• David Brock' sAmerican Bridge
• Hollywood
• Neo Cons: McCain, Graham et al - "There's War Needs a Startin'"
• George Soros Move-On enterprises
• The Clinton Machine
• The GOP
• The Media

Strike tents, Neighbor Trump, or do something smart.  Now. Scratch wants his pay-out.

Next up - White Sox play Cleveland at home. Get excited, expect the let down.

Just Asking - Was Dave in the Army, or was she Diane? Harry was no Barry.

St. Francis was a wild kid, before he transformed from a free spending boozer with a taste for French fashions - Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was called "Frenchie," or Francesco by his Dad and  pals:

 No one loved pleasure more than Francis; he had a ready wit, sang merrily, delighted in fine clothes and showy display. Handsome, gay, gallant, and courteous, he soon became the prime favourite among the young nobles of Assisi, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leader of the civil revels, the very king of frolic. But even at this time Francis showed an instinctive sympathy with the poor, and though he spent money lavishly, it still flowed in such channels as to attest a princely magnanimity of spirit.

He shed his expensive French garments some time after he got out of the army, having been a prisoner of war and a victim of fever, when he had a vision of becoming a Prince dedicated to Our Lady of Poverty, whom he said that he was 'betrothed,' went on a pilgrimage to Rome, tried to give money from goods that he stole from his father to a beggarly priest, only to have the gift refused and hid from his father's wrath in a cave, emerged from that cave after a few weeks and was hooted and howled at by his friends, family and neighbors as a madman.

Francis had transformed.

He had transformed from a vain, pampered and selfish boy into a man.

He was not the same person who went into the Army of Assisi to fight the Perugians.  Francis was no longer Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, but not Frances.  He was gender specific, transformed to be sure, but still the guy his mother birthed.

Today, transformation is tightly and politically defined as sexual and born of desire to be someone else - Chasity to Chaz and Bruce to Caitlyn.   Drag Queens are no longer spotlight vamps belting out "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have" at the old Empire Room, they are our neighbors.  That is the current meme, anyway.  Personally, the only Trans-persons, I have encountered are Col. Pritzker and the coterie of prostitutes who throng at 74th and Halsted in Englewood.

Col. Pritzker helped the Leo Alumni re-Dedicated the grave site of Medal of Honor recipient John Fardy, before his gender reassignment surgery.  Col. Pritzker is a highly decorated retired Army officer of the 82nd Airborne.

Of the male drag queen hookers on Halsted,  one beat up the Alderman of the 17th Ward a few years back.

Yesterday, it was announced that President Trump, as commander-in-chief, reversed the executive order of President Obama, as commander-in-chief, executed June 2016 lifting all bans on transgender personnel:

“Effective immediately, transgender Americans may serve openly,” Mr. Carter announced, on June 30, 2016. “They can no longer be discharged or otherwise separated from the military just for being transgender.”
He said that the Pentagon would cover the medical costs of those in uniform who wished to undergo gender transition, and that it would begin a yearlong training program for service members on the changes.

It appears that the issue was economic and required a solid 'civil rights' coating of rainbow paint to equate sex and gender with the 'color of a man's skin.'

The administration achieved many if not all of these goals. It’s been most successful in the arena of gay and lesbian rights. Obama signed into law an expansion of the hate-crime statute to include crimes motivated by antigay bias. He ended “don’t ask, don’t tell” and, more recently, lifted the ban on transgender people serving in the military. He issued an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He personally endorsed marriage equality in May 2012 and refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the law signed by Bill Clinton that denied federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states that recognized such marriages, thereby easing the way for its invalidation by the Supreme Court in 2013. And when the Court took up the question of same-sex marriage directly, the Obama administration supported the claimants, and Obama’s solicitor general, Don Verrilli, delivered an impassioned argument for why the Court shouldn’t defer recognition of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. A federal bill barring employment discrimination against LGBTQ people has not passed, but there the blame lies with Congress. (emphasis my own)

The issue is and was whether a person in the military, let's say someone who accepts n appointment to a Military Academy, or enlists as a gender specific person, decides to change genders, will the government be required to  pick up the costs.

According to multiple sources, the price of basic genital reassignment surgery (or genital reconstruction surgery) for a man transitioning to a woman ranges from $7,000 for a simple orchiectomy and vaginoplasty to $25,000 for orchiectomy and the more complicated colovaginoplasty. This is often, but not always, followed up by breast augmentation, which can run anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. That’s a total average high of $35,000, but estimates for the two procedures combined have ranged from $10,000 to upwards of $50,000.

For women transitioning to men, the initial costs can be higher, and the choices more complicated. Some estimates lower-end cost of a metoidioplasty—a procedure that “frees” a hormone therapy-enlarged clitoris from the body for use as a phallus—at $2,000. That said, there are estimates of more complex metoidioplasties, as well as procedures that add testicles and involve full phalloplasties that top $100,000. Often double mastectomies, ranging in cost from $15,000 to $25,000, and sometimes hysterectomies, which run from $7,500 to $11,500, are performed.

These are the low-end figures.  The best guess-timate lies in the neighborhood of  $130,000 per gender re-assignment. Bradley/Chelsae Manning has his/her's.

The media is dead -set against the Trump Order.  It's a Trump order.  Some have raised Harry S. Truman's Executive 9981 ordering the end of racial segregation ( black/Japanese) in all military units, Non-Active Duty Navy Seals living post surgical lives, tales of hard-charging Alpha Male buddies who are now soccer moms, to pump up the Resistance on this issue.

I do not believe that this is a Selma moment, again.

Francis stopped being Giovanni. Col. Pritzker was not Jennifer when he finished jump school at Fort Bragg. Bruce Jenner won the Decathalon, but Caitlynn is not getting in the blocks.  Pfc.Bradley Manning sold military secrets and Chelsae got out of the stockade in May.

"Give 'Em Hell Harry," commanded an artillery battery loaded with Micks, not a Baptist's favorite gang, but learned about them,

. I have the Irish Catholic Battery but they seem to like me pretty well and I'm satisfied if I don't blow up with to many worries that I'll have a good Btty. I hope the best in the Brigade. The one that does the best work here gets to fire the first shot of the Brigade at the Hun. I shall do my very best to win the honor although I may fail to get it as there is hot competition. You've no idea the experience I'm getting. I've seen most everything and done most everything in this man's army since August 5 and now I have attained my one ambition to be a Battery Commander. If I can only make good at it I can hold my head up any way the rest of my days.
I'd give most anything to see you. I hope also that Hinde's[23] prophecy is true. But of course we can't come home until we do a thorough job over here. Please keep writing and remember I love you always.
Harry
Capt. Harry S. Truman
Bty D. 129th F.A.

Truman did what FDR was afraid to do - he ended racial segregation in the services.

President Obama did what policy wanted and floated on the breeze.

 The Nobel Prize winning 44th President made traditional marriage a parlor game for semiotic totalitarians, "When I became president, same-sex marriage was legal in only two states. Today it's legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia."

What a guy!

Barry was no Harry.

James jumped at Fort Bragg and Jennifer own the biography.  That is a fact.  Might not be the truth, but it is a fact - today.

Put me in the Q category.

Sweet PR for Wee Mike Quigley - Collusion of the Media with American Oligarchs

"A byproduct of Quigley’s membership on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — and its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election — has been to raise the national profile of the North Side lawmaker, who has become a frequent guest on cable shows discussing the probe. "-  Lynn "Sweetheart of the Clown Rodeo" Sweet: Chicago Sun Times

When was the last time Lynn Sweet did a puff PR piece, wrapped as news, for any Illinois member of Congress, other than spotted cows and incestuous cousins of the Progressive Cook County Democrats?

Dan Lipinski? Only when he was a super-delegate for the Democratic Convention and threatened to cast his vote for Bernie Sanders.

“As a Democratic member of Congress, I have a vote at the Democratic National Convention as a superdelegate. Before the Illinois primary I told Democrats in the 3rd District that I decided that I would pledge my vote to whichever candidate won the district,” Lipinski told the Sun-Times in an email.

Bernie whupped Hillary here in the 3rd District , during the Illinois primary.  Sweet tried to toss sand in Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan's eyes, for not coming through for HRC - the choice of the Cook County Banana Republic.

Pete Roskam?  Only to to shill for the laboriously obnoxious Cheri Bustos and toxic Illinois Personal PAC- aka Abortions R Us.

WASHINGTON — Seeing cracks in once solid GOP suburban Chicago turf, Democrats are promising to give Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., his biggest race since he was first elected in 2006.
“There are at last count 22 different people looking to take him on,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., on the recruitment team for the national Dem House political shop, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Nope.  Only the lumps and loonies of the IVI-IPO Mikva Challenged Young Pioneer Progressives machine get kindness - Daley, Durbin, Obama, Quinn, Preckwinkle, Dart (formerly 19th Ward - currently?  Not so much), Schawosky, Deb Mell, Bobby Rush, Danny Davis and Dave Orr are all Lynn Sweetie Pies.

Today, the man who helped Buck Toothed Dave Orr, Cook County Clerk,  make voting easy to hack in 2006, Congressman Mike Quigley (D-himself), who found Borscht  on the Russian Tea Time menu and announced the Ivans in the electoral woodpile!  Quigley was appointed to the House Select Committee on Intelligence by no less a mental giant than Nancy Pelosi.  Wee Mike, who had been Alderman Bernie Hansen's rat-catcher, bag-man, stooge and minion back in the 1980's shaking down real estate and gay bars, has bounded his stumpy legs up and onto greater seats of power -Cook County Commissioner and U.S.  Congressman on such powerful committees as  Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) and the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD).

THUD - total boondoggle!

Lynn Sweet is not concerned that piggy little Mike Quigley has his practiced chubby fingers very deep in the Federal cookie jar, because she knows that Progressive only steal ( make clever investments) out of love for children, elderly Black folks and Dreamers.

You see, Mike Quigley is using his Congressional high stool to unhorse Jared Kushner and quicken the exit of President Trump, before he drains the lucrative swamp that waters Lynn Sweet's NPR, CNN, MSNBC and newtwork face time, as well as the Federal funds siphoned from the streams of plenty to the Cook County Banana Republic.

Instead, Lynn Sweet cheer leads for Team Banana Republic.

The 11-page statement Kushner released through his attorney before he headed to Capitol Hill filled in blanks and put a lot more on the table — such as a meeting now-former Russia Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak brokered between Kushner with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian bank.
Quigley told me his questions would dive into more than what Kushner offered up in his statement, such as the basic, “Why did you meet with the Russian banker?

”Quigley said there is more to be learned about why Kushner even entertained the notion that he go to the Russian embassy to get a secure line for a conversation. Said Quigley, “You would assume that the Russian ambassador was laughing inside.”

You would assume that Mike Quigley would be worried about some smart, honest and courageous investigative journalist combing through the minutes of the Cook County Board in 2006 and grubby little Mike's paws all over collusion with the Venzuelan Voting Machines along with CPS Czar Forrest Claypool and Dave Orr in collusion with real Russian hacking and vote tampering.

You would assume that, but this is Cook County - The Banana Republic that shakes the federal Trees.
Thud!

Sweet.

GOP is the Swamp: Save Your "Passion and Personal Integrity" Nonsense for an IRS Audit and Repeal ObamaCare

 

". . .  it turns out that the GOP-controlled Congress can't seem to pass any meaningful laws at all. Either they have forgotten how, or the divisions in their own increasingly radicalized caucus are proving too difficult to surmount. Whatever the explanation, thus far these GOP legislators are on track to be the least productive group since at least the Civil War.
Now, okay, technically the Ryan-McConnell 115th Congress is so far actually a bit more active than recent Congresses, if you measure by the 43 laws that President Trump has adorned with his garish signature. Obama was at 40 at this point in 2009. George W. Bush had signed even fewer midway through 2001. But sheer number is not the best way to think about how much is being achieved. As The Washington Post's Philip Bump pointed out, a majority of the bills signed by Trump thus far have been one page long, meaning many are just symbolic or ceremonial." The Week

Can't argue with that.  The GOP is and has been a country club for egos with a hoggish appetite for personal gain.  Halliburton did not invent itself. Mind you, the Democrats are far more slavishly addicted to both avarice and pomposity, but they are are loyal - psychotic, obnoxious, goofy and very loyal.

I honor loyalty.

The GOP honors . . . honors . . .sorry nothing comes to mind.

Susan Collins, Rand Paul,  Ted Cruz, Aunt Lindsey Graham, Red-eye John McCain are but a handful of the oafish and preening goofs who care more about themselves than the State of the Nation.  These patrician wannabees smooched Caligula's rump for eight years and now want to gum up the work of draining our national swamp.

I am a Democrat.  There are many like me.  We voted for Trump, because some of us have met Barack Obama and are underwhelmed by him and know the Clintons to be almost as rotten as Dick Durbin, Rahm Emanuel and Richie Daley - almost.

We live in rogue states, like Chicago.

Obama Care is a Ponzi scam that has further enriched the pharmaceutical giants, raised Blue Cross/Blue Shield premiums and eliminated smaller insurance options for most Americans.  The creeps crow that 'more Americans are enrolled!'  Swell.  How about treated? Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans are better off. Do the math.

As a whole, Americans are not better off now than before Obamacare was enacted. It's time for a change. A change toward patient-centered reform that empowers individuals to control their health care dollars and make their own decisions.
Market-based reform would put individuals in charge of their own health care and reward value by creating consumer pressure on providers to increase quality and decrease costs. Reform should be about individual choice, not government mandates.

Not an hour goes by that some GOP Man of Conscience tries to out do the NPR ninny-hoodisms of Susan Collins, as tiresome a virago as Elizabeth Warren.

Conservative, Neo Con, Moderate, or Tea Party Republican - you are there to vote away a national disaster.

Repeal.  Fix later

Save the bullshit for Chris Matthews, Jake Tapper and Judy Woodruff.

Those Fracking Russians! Colluding Up Some Sand With Green Activists

Frack Free Illinoisfracking

Tens of millions of dollars are moved from Russia through Klein “in the form of anonymous donations” to a U.S.-based nonprofit called the Sea Change Foundation. Newsweek

 My buddy, Stu Haugen, gave me a heads up on some Russki Collusion.

Since 2014,   Putin has been colluding with Obama bundler and environmental-oligarch Tom Steyer to put an end to fracking.

Top U.S. government officials who have acknowledged the connection between Russian and environmental groups include former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.
In 2014, Clinton delivered a “private speech” in which she discussed Russia’s financial support for environmental groups, the letter says. The speech was included in documents released by WikiLeaks, it says.
An Oct. 10, 2016, report in The Washington Times quoted Clinton as saying:
"We [the State Department and the U.S. government] were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand up against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of that money supporting that effort was coming from Russia."

Fracking is a modern method of getting cheaper fuels.

Can't have that,  any more than cheaper health care, according to the American elites.

While Donald Junior has stepped on his . . .finger, shall we say . . .with the e-mail dump from people who set him up like pay-day-loan customer and given the elites more combustible oxygen to burn out any thoughts other than Putin and Trump collusion, environmentalists  have taken Kremlin coin to fight fracking.

I saw this in North Utica, Illinois where I spent a glorious 4th of July.  There was this huge sign coming into town from I-80.  La Salle County, Illinois and Hegewisch as well as Whiting, Indiana have been targeted by Green activists for some serious activism and now it appears that like most Left-of -Center initiatives - grassroots come from far, far away.  In this case Vlad Putin's Russia. Fractrakker is one method and resource for activists who would not know Wisconsin Drift from Loess Over Bedrock, but would bus happily over to Starved Rock, or the Pierogo Festival to anti-Fas up a storm.

That said, fracking is controversial.  I have yet to set a match to a water faucet in Hegewisch, Whiting, or Utica and get immolated.   People have had problems.  Farmers are surrounded by sand pits, as more mining operations take hold in La Salle County

"Mining frac sand is a lot like mining regular sand except it's wildly profitable, and that's why everyone wants to do it," said Todd Vencil, managing director of equities research at Sterne Agee, a privately owned brokerage firm based in Birmingham, Ala.
The company paid $8 million to buy the land, according to property and state records, and it expects to invest $25 million to $50 million to get the mine running, according to company filings.
The rolling corn and soybean fields near Starved Rock State Park, 95 miles southwest of Chicago, are coveted by multinational corporations for the fine-grain sand deep below the rich soil. Known as Ottawa white, the sand is uniformly circular — perfect for drillers who pump a mixture of sand and chemicals into fracking wells across the nation.
"In the world, there are not that many — geographically speaking — deposits of very high quality northern white sand that has the technical specifications that are in greatest demand. One of those areas is in Illinois, and it's close to the surface of the earth," said Robert Stewart, executive vice president of strategy, corporate development and communications at Eagle Materials. (emphases my own)

La Salle County is not new to controversy - that was one of Com Ed's nuclear stations built to fight America's dependency on OPEC - remember them?  Nuclear power had environmentalists screaming doom to the loam, because La Salle County might be at seismic risk ( earth quake) and I might become an NBA power guard - the odds are about the same 1-357,143.

Fracking is good. Even Obama's energy Czar Ernest Muniz said so, “The natural gas boom, in particular, has led to the displacement of high-carbon coal with low-carbon natural gas producing fewer emissions. ”  The Obama EPA released a report that many of the myths about dangers to drinking water were revealed to be myths and uncomfortable falsehoods. 

That will not stop the Birkenstock irregulars from boarding buses and holding news conferences for the nodding public.

Fracking is the Green beef du jour in Illinois. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is heavy in Illinois and owns many State Representatives and State Senators. The NRDC is home to Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprion, as well as Illini activist Henry Henderson.  Henderson is a veryfrequent Huffington Post expert poster on things Green and as far back as 2013 has attempted to stop fracking in its steps

But our overall position on fracking has not changed: unless and until we have strong, protective safeguards on the books, we should not start fracking in Illinois. Certainly, plenty can happen between this point and the Governor’s desk, so while we are encouraged by what is currently in the bill (check my colleague Ann Alexander’s blog for a rundown of the technical issues addressed in the bill that has been introduced), we will remain vigilant for any weakening of the standards. A watered down version of the bill as it stands today might point to the need for other options in the Land of Lincoln.

Well, Illinois politicians are moved by their wallets Henry.

It sure seems that groups like NRDC needed to put the touch on Putin

 Contrary to what Russia’s propaganda machine and its environmental allies have told news consumers in Europe and America, fracking is safe, effective, and enormously beneficial, Nick Loris, an economist and energy policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, said in an email to The Daily Signal.
“If successful, an anti-fracking campaign is depriving Americans of good-paying jobs and affordable, dependable energy,” Loris said. “Despite smears and outright lies from environmental activists, smart drilling and energy extraction technologies have been proven to be safe.”
“It feels like every week a new study is published, confirming what we already know,” he said. “Hydraulic fracturing does not contaminate drinking water. The facts and history of hydraulic fracturing, a history that dates back more than half a century and over 1 million fracked wells, indicate that many of the fears associated with the process are grossly exaggerated or flat-out unsubstantiated.” Newsweek. 

Well, frack me crosseyed!

Better ask Vlad for more dough.

In the mean time - How About that Trump Kid?

When A No-Class Hump Talks Down to the Middle Class About Class

"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust." - Congressman David Crockett
(David) Brooks's conclusion is clear:
Davy Crockett was a gangster rapper.     Dr. Cleveland

"I suck...I can’t remember what I said but my mother told me I was extremely stupid.” - David Brooks*

Few public persons make my skin crawl like " cultural commentator" David Brooks.   Many other Americans feel the same about Brooks.

David Brooks is the go-to-voice of the elite against everyone else,  in the drag of a ' sober, sane and pliable conservative.'  You can read David Brooks in the American elitist rags, New York Times and the laughable Washington Post and watch Dave on PBS, ABC and other organs piping away for a corporatist elite America.

Brooks is a faux- person and author of the marvelously dull Bobos in Paradise.  I read it. It stinks on ice.  For cultural commentary go to P.J. O' Rourke, a man of intellectual heft and wit, but for pure oleaginous butt-munching propaganda, ask Dave Brooks.

Brooks is famously ludicrous for drooling over Barack Obama's smartly creased britches and Babesplains politics with the the bumptious Mark Shields and the prissy virago Judy Woodruff.

Today, this smarmy dope complains that the upper-middle class ( people with way more money than I will ever dream of) is ruining America, because Dave sees them as Hippies with too much time, treasure and absolutely no talent.  These  moneyed Hippies, like Dave himself, hold college and advanced degrees over the souls of the masses as proof that they are a priori better persons than high school diploma and GED people, but vastly superior to the people their policies enslave. This Brooks fart-in-a- windstorm of an Op-Ed for the New York Times offers servings of smarm like this:

I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.
Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.

American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”

Gee, unlettered people appreciate only Mexican, or Chinese, or Pizza?

Oh, Eat me!

Dave was braced, by a book.  I was braced by Officer Frank Sims, CPD at Hites on 79th Wood in 1969, because I was standing with Mike McKeating.

Eat me, again!

Most of my contemporaries chose entering the American workforce, the military and law enforcement over Loyola, DePaul, UICC, or Illinois State.  They own diplomas from CVS, Hubbard, Harper, Little Flower, Brother Rice, Leo, Maria, Bogan, Calumet, Mount Carmel, Weber, Lindbloom and De La Salle high schools and know all about not only soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette, but also galumpki, dolmades, pierogi, pascki, mazukas and colcannon.

The guys who went to war in late 1960's and early 1970's also are familiar with pho, banh gio and corned beef and cabbage banh mi.

Yet, syrupy Dave wants all and sundry to accept the fact that the upper-middle class has somehow developed an invisible electric-eye security fence ready to zap the shins of diploma holders and scare them out of tony eateries.  "Yo, Dog!  Don't go there!  You need an advanced degree in Phallic Studies from Occidental.  The Dick Degree, Fool!**"

I don't know any Old Money people.  You pedigree'd scions of the Mayflowe with given names like Increase, Purchase, Atonement, Sodomy and Commerce.  People who drive beaters and wear clothes from the Truman Era handed down from Mater and Pater and open wrestling farms, or work in the State Department.

The guys I know who went to Brown, Yale and Princeton won  scholarships and played football and they went to work teaching high school, working with under-funded kids, Boeing Corporation and the NSA.  They were never asked to join Skull and Bones.

I know many nouveau riche folks - upper-middle class, or Brooks' Bobos.  One guy went to Notre Dame from a dirt farm in the Texas panhandle and became the leading Real Estate name in Chicago.  He treats janitors and cleaning crews like they were Saudi Royalty.   Another made dolls and billions and taught kids at Leo what hard work can do for good. Money is only a tool.   Happiness lies far beyond the curve the dollar sign.

I know bartenders and roofers who have read more Milton, Conrad, Turgeniev and Joyce than the English Department of De Paul University and understood what they wrote and why the wrote even better.

David Brooks wrote this piece because he was 'braced' by a study that agreed with the crap on the pages of Bobos in Paradise.

He is an elitist cheerleader and works for some very nasty people. As my high school classmate who took four years of Latin, would say, Lector cave, or Cave ne qui legit.  

Whatever! How about some Mexican.  That was not a question.




*Biography
David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and appears regularly on “PBS News Hour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the bestselling author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement; Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There; and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. He has three children and lives in Maryland.

**The Phallus: Occidental College:
It’s difficult to get to grips with the exact nature of this course – if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s cited as studies  “between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism” but is actually a survey offered by this distinguished college’s department of critical theory and social justice.

A Note to Pope Francis - Distorted Visions Don't Contribute to Peter's Pence

" So, all of the Muslims in the wagon trains were scalped by the . . .Seventh Cavalry . . ."

“I am afraid there are very dangerous alliances between powers who have a distorted view of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Russia and Assad in the war in Syria,”  - Pope Francis I

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” - Barack Obama

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." - Howard Zinn


Pope Francis seems like a very nice man.  That said, I believe that he owns a very jaundiced view of America (United States), the American people and our values.

This is not a surprise as the Pope visited the United States for the only time in his life, after he became St. Peter's Successor. Pope Francis was squired around and reported on Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia by people who have as yellow a vision of America (USA), its people and its history.  A simple look at the CBS coverage highlights the social and cultural agenda of the media more than it does the impact of the Pope upon Catholics in America - at least two features go to great lengths to condemn the conscience of a Kentucky county clerk and attempt to make her out to be liar, rather than anything else of moment. President Obama had spoken and LQBTQIAPK marriage replaced traditional marriage, to some minds.

President Obama seemed perfect for Pope Francis and vice versa.  President Obama is the first Howard Zinn indoctrinated President, as well as the first Planned Parenthood, LGBTQIAPK and Black President.  Howard Zinn affected the study of American history like no scholar since Francis Parkman.  Zinn is 100% wrong on his Marxist disdain for American history, the American people and American values.

Zinn believed that the Greatest Generation, our fathers and grandfathers, should be ashamed of their sacrifices freeing Europe and Asia from global totalitarians, " Should we not honor, instead of parachutists and bomber pilots, those conscientious objectors who refused to fight or the radicals and pacifists who opposed the idea that young people of one nation should kill young people of another nation to serve the purposes of politicians and financiers?"

No, Howard.

My Dad did not collect Japanese grenade fragments in tribute to Wall Street.  He liberated the Melanesians of Bougainville, the Chamorros of Guam and whatever was supposed to live on Iwo Jima. One more landing and there would have been bump in the Hickey DNA and I would not be typing this.

President Obama's America came from Howard Zinn, Frank Marshall Davis and Pastor Jeremiah Wright. 

The Pope is political and his politics seems to be much more strident than his fore-runners, including the sainted John Paul II.  His appointment of the ultra political Blase Cupich to the Chicago Archdiocese is a pretty clear indication that Pope Francis wants his bishops to lock-in with the  local political powers.  Blase Cardinal Cupich has locked step with Chicago and Cook County politicians like a ballroom dancer. As a result, Chicago political pastor Micheal Pfleger :

It’s a first: Father Pfleger tells Sneed the appearance of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich at St. Sabina’s summer kickoff rally and March for Peace in the neighborhood was the first time a cardinal from the Chicago Archdiocese had ever attended the neighborhood event.
“I’ve been inviting them year after year to no avail. And Cardinal Cupich came directly off a flight from a Bishops Conference in Indianapolis in order to make the march. Pretty special”

Pretty special indeed. Pfleger owns the Chicago media and just made Cardinal Blase bullet-proof.  Cardinal George was vilified by the political stooges on Chicago's newspapers, as well as radio and television. It appears that Cupich cares more about the good opinion of Michael Sneed and Jay Levine than he does about the people in pews at St. Bede the Venerable, or St. Pascal's.

Pope Francis sponsored Cupich and now Phleger sponsors him as well. Is that a vision thing?

You bet.

Pope Francis does not seem to like President Trump.  Fair enough.  However, while President Trump was in Poland and later Germany in defense of Western Civilization, Pope Francis grouped America(USA) along with Russia, North Korea, Syria and Red China as nations with 'distored visions.'

I do not recall America crossing the 38th Parallel in 1950, crushing speech in Prague in 1968 and sending millions of people to the GULAG as well as persecuting Jews, or sending tanks into Tibet, nor laying down gas on civilians anywhere.

The late Howard Zinn could straighten me out, I guess, but he has shed his mortal husk.

I do know that American Catholics ( I'm one) send the most financial support to Peter's Pence every year.  Yep.  America on average contributes almost 30% annually to the Pope's Pot.

People with 'distorted vision' don't crack open their wallets. People with 'distorted visions' don't run to join the Marines and liberate people from real oppression for three years.  They don't qualify for Honor Fights.

People with 'distorted visions' are political people, Your Holiness.

Payback Really is a Bitch! Cook County Purge of Teamsters, Guards and Anyone Toni Preckwinkle Don't Like.

Hyde Park 2006 Independence Day parade (left to right starting at center in light green): Preckwinkle as the Statue of Liberty, Illinois State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie as Uncle Sam, and Chicago City Council Alderman Leslie Hairston as Betsy Ross

I did a buddy of mine a solid. He asked me to help get Pat Quinn elected Governor for real in 2009 and Pat would do my buddy a solid.  I was dubious.  No Progressive ever does any one a solid.   I am old school; I supported and voted for Pat Quinn for Governor. I still need a shower on that one.

That sin of mine is the real reason why Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois are so screwed up.

We all do 'nice people,' a solid.

Jeremy Bentham, the great 19th Century economist argued for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Can't argue with that.

However, for a Progressive, the greatest number is # 1.  That truth was argued to young President Teddy Roosevelt by glaciologist John Muir and still holds true today.

I did a buddy a solid and did not vote my own conscience.  I detested Pat Quinn's politics going all of the way back to the days when he carried water for a crook and a Progressive - Governor Dan Walker.
Quinn opposed all regular Democrats, because he wanted to be viewed as a Reformer ( aka - unskilled policy bully).

The Late Illinois Senate Leader Phil Rock was a Democrat of the old school - anti-abortion, anti-Marxist and true to the values that created the greatest standard of living in world history. Phil Rock kept goofs like Quinn at arm's length.  That was long ago, when being middle class was a good thing.

Pat Quinn and Dan Walker and Abner Mikva and Dawn Clark Netsch and Bill Singer and Jesse Jackson and Michael Shakman and Larry Bloom and Toni Preckwinkle and the late Red guru Dr. Quentin Young were dead set against  this middle class hegemony.

Toni Preckwinkle was a Catholic high school ( Visitation), when Pat Quinn was honing his Hyde Park Mafia ( Abner Mikva) chops.  Preckwinkle had a reputation as a humorless, racist ( hates whitey) and not very well read history instructor and those qualities made her an ideal candidate for IVI-IPO Democrats.

It took Toni three swings  with the IVI bat to unseat Tim Evans for Alderman of the 4th Ward, but the rest is the typical Progressive history - suck up to Regular Democrats, gain their trust, knife them in the kidneys and repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat while keeping the media with you.

Sometimes, the Feds get in the way of Progressive Independent and Reform minded Democrats -Larry Bloom (neighboring 5th Ward Alderman), IVI-IPO operative Bob Creamer and Illinois Governors Dan Walker and Rod Blagojevich come to mind.

When Reformer Larry Bloom went to school in 1999, Mikva Challenged Federal Judge was wont to complain about Federal prosecutors for  "prosecutorial zeal does not, as I perceive it, justify overstatements of the nature I find in some respects in this case."  Convict Larry Bloom whined, "I was mugged--not by any petty thief or street tough, but by agents of my government, our government."

Translated - "Larry Stole and cheated on his taxes but criminy . . .he's a Goo-Goo!"

Thus far, Toni Preckwinkle has escaped the eyes of the Feds.  Therefore, Toni Preckwinkle does what she wants and to whom she wants. It is now the Teamsters, who work for Progressive rival Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Tit for tat?

Or a case of unintended consequences?

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office just got a letter from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle listing 925 positions designated for layoffs — if a judge doesn’t allow a countywide sweet beverage tax to take effect by August.
• The kicker: Sneed is told 377 of those jobs, many of them held by Cook County Jail correctional officers, are held by members of the Chicago Teamsters Union.
So here’s the kick in the butt.
Recently, the Teamsters Union took out a full-page newspaper ad opposing the tax, which Preckwinkle vigorously backed.
“This sure looked like a shot across the bow,” a top Sneed source said.
“Or interesting timing that many of the designated layoffs were members of the Teamsters Union, which took out the ad opposing the tax,” the source said.

You see, Teamsters not only work as Correctional personnel, but also deliver Pop. Pop is a Progressive target, because fat kids love it and it rots teeth, creates obesity and goes great with salty snacks.

Teamsters deliver salty snacks.

Teamsters also deliver votes.

Let's get back to my sins.

I agreed to do a pal a solid.  I helped support Pat Quinn for Governor.  Running with daffy Pat filling the void left by reformer Rod Blagojevich, for trying to sell  a Senate seat to IVI-IPO Alumnus Barack Obama, was Toni Preckwinkle for President of Cook County Board to unseat Todd Stroger, created by Progressive patron Tom Hynes, to replace the late John Stroger, a Regular Democrat and gentleman to the backbone.

My pal was immediately stabbed in the back by Pat Quinn upon his election, because Quinn has the loyalty of a gnat.

Toni Preckwinkle rode Quinn's coat-tails, because of people like me.  I did a pal a solid and created the person taking jobs away from 925 families in Cook County.

That's Progressive.  Get people to do you a solid and then give it to them good and hard.

As Progressive Federal Judge Milton Shadur lamented when he was forced to sentence Reformer Larry Bloom, "It is true of law-enforcement agencies in addition to anyone else that if you lie down with dogs, you are likely to get up with fleas."

As the great Fats Waller once reasoned, " One never knows, Do One?"

Ain't that a Bitch, Judge?

Both Sides Now and Always - How the Progressive Mouth Moves

Two Progressive Cook County Powerhouses and intellectual dim bulbs - Cook County Clerk and Rep. Mike Quigley,   have Yin and Yanged on the Trump investigation into voter fraud.

Vertically challenged Congressman Mike Quigley and former Mayor and  prognathic progressive Cook County Clerk Dave Orr are doing a classic pull-me-pull you argument that arrives with John Dewey certainty at the conclusion that Russia owns President Trump,

 
First, here is the diminutive Democrat's denunciation of Donald Trump:

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigleyclaims that Russia hacked into Illinois’ State Board of Elections last year to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process.
Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, made the assertion on Monday to the Chicago Tribune after an interview with its editorial board. “I believe they’re on the doorstep to hacking into our voting systems. That is my educated guess,” Quigley said. The congressman said the committee should look at classifying election systems as a “target” and devote federal resources to protect their integrity.

The problem is that since May 11, the Trump White House established a panel to study vote fraud in the United States ( the big 50, but not D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico).  Vote fraud -Russki, Lower Slobovian, or Mikva Challenge 5th Ward Goo-goo Go-Getters - is just wrong.

However, Maxillary Maximus, Clerk of Cook County and Grecian Formula Guy, offered this to the Chicago and Cook County Resistance in hipper Pilsen, Lakeview, Evanston, Peoples Republic of Oak Park,  Hyde Park, the Faith Community of St. Sabina, Unitarian flocks county wide, and in my 19th Ward, Longwood Drive and its ancillary cul de sac'd street - anywhere the Voice of Resistance WBEZ and WTTW blares:

From the time he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump has made unproven claims of widespread voter fraud happening throughout the nation. Now as president, Trump has assembled the inauthentic Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity to investigate voter registration and voter fraud.
This partisan Commission has been formed on false pretenses: 3 to 5 million people did not vote illegally in the last presidential election, as the president believes, and a true bi-partisan Commission requires careful analysis and expertise.
Were this Commission truly working in the interest of making our elections as error-free and our voter rolls as clean as possible, the focus would be on the following:
Bringing every state on-board with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) — a nationwide network of states, which includes Illinois, that securely shares voter registration data – so that voter information nationwide would be accurate and up-to-date.
Updating our nation’s election infrastructure — the machines voters use to cast their ballots — which in many election jurisdictions are a decade or more old and are being held together with replacement parts often purchased on eBay.
Pushing all states toward Automatic Voter Registration – a good government tool to help clean voter rolls across the nation.
Instead, the President’s Commission has told state election authorities to hand over information including the names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. The Commission also wants a record of felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006.
I’m happy to see that so far, election authorities in more than 40 states – including Kris Kobach’s own Kansas Secretary of State office – have rejected the Commission’s request for this information, and I urge the Illinois Board of Elections to stand up against this unnecessary overreach.
Voting is a fundamental right. Unfortunately, instead of a genuinely bipartisan group dedicated to protecting the vote, President Trump has stacked the deck of his Commission with a number of lawmakers who have shown an inclination towards voter suppression.
Furthermore, this comes at a time when Republicans have sought to defund the Election Assistance Commission, a truly bi-partisan Commission.
I strongly encourage the Illinois Board of Elections, as well as my fellow elections administrators, to be cautious of the motives of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity and not comply with this dangerous request.

David Orr Cook County Clerk (Emphases my own)

 You see, 20 States have already adopted ERIC and Illinois is one of them.  It was David  Orr and Mike Quigley who bulldozed electronic voting here in Cook County back in 2006.  I wrote about this only a few weeks ago -

Donald Trump did not force the use of computer-voting on the voters of Cook County. You did, Mike Quigley. And this twerp is on the House Intelligence Committee? Vlad Putin could not have gotten into our election machines without buck-toothed Dave Orr, Forrest Claypool, Larry Sufredin and the good folks at Sequoia Voting Systems.

In 2006, Mike Quigley was one of the Progressive grifters. . .I mean Commissioners,  who worked with Cook County Clerk David Orr, at the behest of Help America Vote, Abner Mikva and friends, to weld suburban Cook County and Chicago voters together with Venezuelan voting machines.

The Sequoia Voting Machines, Help America Vote, Forrest Claypool, Venezuela and those rascally Russians are all part of our Progressive History.  Prior to the 2008 Election of the transformative Barack H. Obama, a huge fan of Venezuelan Tin-pot Dictator the late Hugo Chavez and voting began getting hacked without hanging chads, on-line and vulnerable.

That was 2006, when former Mayor and Cook County Clerk David Orr insisted that Cook County and City Elections operate the identical voting systems.

 These swell voting gizmos are a product of Venezuela - that paragon of Progressive Democracy.

Well, boys and girls Quigley notes that the Kremlin hacked the Illinois Vote and wants the Federal government to get on that stick!

Dave Orr, who could bite a pig's ass through a picket fences, chews this cabbage twice and wants no scrutiny.

Straight talking Progressives - the gang that made Illinois a laughing stock, Obama President and voter fraud more accessible to computer hacking - always give their truth - out of both sides of their mouth.  One message and many directions. 

The Illinois Elector Commission had better open the books to Mike Pence and  Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity,



Progressives lack that last noun.