Yep, Trump's a dog. I ordered ice cream at lunch today and one of the teachers asked me, as a social justice instructor, what I thought of Trump's transgender 'let the States Decide' mandate.
Like any good American I said, "Gee, I don't know. What do you think?"
My colleague went off on that Orange haired crazy man in the White House.
My ice cream melted.
If Obama had been in the White House, no would would ask me anything about his policies.
Trump melted my ice cream. Trump and global warming. It's February and it is 70 degrees. God? Carbon foot-printing? Trump?
Catholic social justice warns us that " rejecting the false promises of excessive or conspicuous consumption can even allow more time for family, friends, and civic responsibilities. A renewed sense of sacrifice and restraint could make an essential contribution to addressing global climate change. "
I had a scoop of vanilla.
I could have given it up and put $ 2.00 in the mission pouch.
I didn't.
I like vanilla ice cream.
It's all about me.
Trump melts ice cream. I am a selfish brute.
Off to the lavratory in our single gender Catholic high school.
I could never bring myself to link up with the Grand Old Party. I am just an old school Regular Democrat, I guess. Ever since Chuck Percy was the alabaster Illinois Face of the Republican Party, the GOP was as comfortable a fit for me as spun-glass skivvies.
Right up to and through the last GOP Illinois Senator, Marque Kirque, the GOP is the Party that blows off it's own toes, on demand, at the behest of wily Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan, or the offish Sen. Dick Durbin.
I voted for three Republicans in my life: Nixon 1972, McCain 2008, Romney 2012. I voted for Donald Trump, but I do not believe that he is a Republican. In fact, he may be, like me, a a disgusted Regular Democrat who understands that the national game is rigged between the Progressive 1972 Democrat loonies and GOP dweebs, like any contest between the Globetrotters and the Generals.
President Trump is one wild card in deck full of jokers. Against Old Maids like Reince Preibus and Lindsey Graham he is the trump. Against Aces like McCain, Collins, Schumer, and the media masters, he's a push at best.
He is a ball of confusion; that's what the world is today. Hey, hey.
North Korea
Trans GI's
Tweet du jour
CNN silly
Russian Intrigue
Sessions Up; Sessions Down
Leakers - pissing out of the Big Tent
Foul Mouthed Mooches
White House staff shuffles
EU weepers
But, the best rattle and hum comes from the GOP.
One of the only Washington writers who makes any sense whatsoever is A. B. Stoddard. Ms. Stoddard is the sole of integrity and does care if CNN, Fox, of the clowns at MSNBC want to hear what she has to say. Ms. Stoddard offers up this today,
Trump can write this all off to his plan to disrupt the GOP establishment in Congress and do things his way, but some have warned his plate-breaking might eventually cut into his base of support. Conservative writer and commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote that not only had Trump revealed “a deeply repellent vindictiveness in the service of a pathological need to display dominance,” but that his assault on Sessions “suggests to those conservatives how cynically expedient was Trump’s adoption of Sessions’s ideas in the first place.”
Trump must be some Machiavelli, there Neighbor.
I think of him as a seedy, aging and cagey Prince Hal. Young Prince Hal, the scapegrace Prince of Wales who hung around with disreputable outsiders in Henry IV Parts I & II emerged as the uniter in chief and hero of Agincourt of Shakespeare's Henry V.
Prince Hal, like Trump loves to keep his enemies close and his friends comfortably numb.
Read this and think of the Swamp:
King Henry IV, Part I
ACT I SCENE II London. An apartment of the Prince's.
[Enter the PRINCE OF WALES and FALSTAFF]
FALSTAFFNow, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HENRYThou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.5
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no10
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.
FALSTAFFIndeed, you come near me now, Hal; for we that take
purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not
by Phoebus, he,'that wandering knight so fair.' And,15
I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, God
save thy grace,--majesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none,--
PRINCE HENRYWhat, none?
FALSTAFFNo, by my troth, not so much as will serve to20
prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HENRYWell, how then? come, roundly, roundly.
FALSTAFFMarry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let notus that are squires of the night's body be calledthieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's25foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of themoon; and let men say we be men of good government,being governed, as the sea is, by our noble andchaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.PRINCE HENRYThou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the30
fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and
flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is,
by the moon. As, for proof, now: a purse of goldmost resolutely snatched on Monday night and mostdissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with35swearing 'Lay by' and spent with crying 'Bring in;'now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladderand by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.(emphases my own)
I see Falstaff as the GOP leadership, elected and behind the scenes, ready to lead Donald Hal up the garden path for a fleecing from the Progressives - the keepers of policy.
Yet, Hal offers warnings in his honeyed words to Fat Jack of the Swamp. He must go before the real work begins. In Shakespeare's propaganda plays, virtue remains hidden in the likes of Mark Antony, The Bastard and Prince Hal. These nimble players keep every one off balance.
Until the moment comes when even the most shameless and cynical rogues, like the Leader of the Senate and the three Mavericks, finally get it.
FALSTAFF
God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING HENRY IV
My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.
Lord Chief-JusticeHave you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak?
FALSTAFF
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY IV I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane; But, being awaked, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. Reply not to me with a fool-born jest: Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.
I hope that the firing of Preibus and appointment of General Kelly signals that Trump despises the the dream of the GOP being anything but a partner in the Swamp.
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!
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.
The true Lion of African America, Frederick Douglas once said, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress.” President-elect Donald Trump struggles to calm Hollywood, CNN, MSNBC, Mark Ruffalo, Judd Aptow, Debra Messing and the cast of West Wing. Looks like progress, once President 45 gets past the Inauguration.
PC and boneless carbon footprints must have their bubble wrap. Bruce Springsteen will not play at the White House. I am not sure that he was asked, but that's cool.
If I threw a party and the local COEXIST crank and NPR addict refused to grace my heaving board of delicacies like " lobster de Bretagne in a sauce of lobster roe and caviar; bass with cockle jelly and a jus mariniere; Challans duck breast with seared foie gras in a bitter-chocolate and orange-powder sauce; and tarte Tatin and other French desserts, all of it served with well-chosen wines," I would not weep. More for my guests, and no goof taking ziplocks home.
If the pole dancers from PoleKatz scorned my invitation to pick up a few dollars entertaining my guests on Deck Hickey, because of my forty plus years of service to inner city youth and daily Mass attendance, I'd hire Terry McEldowney and Whitey O'Day for some wholesome sing-alongs.
If you hate me, swell. Take it on the heel and toe. If you believe that I have 666 on my forehead and a family of five in my basement freezer, let me get you a drink . . .Six pack to go!
Why worry about who is not attending your party?
So long as dips are tasty and edible: not knocking off the caviar and boring people through a wall, all is well.
I get up a very special cherry and lime flavor of bile whenever I hear or read about some nobody vowing to avoid Trump's Inauguration, or intention to disrupt the same. Who cares? Do it. Keep it to yourself and do it, already.
Others are 'serious' - Reds, Anarchists, Michael 'Michigan Fats' Moore, International Solidarity Movement and Bill Moyers. No sweat. American Reds tend to be entitled suburban sissies and homely girls who can't get a date on a bet.
Most are about as sincere in disrupting the Inauguration as they were about blowing the country ( no, I do not mean Madonna) after November 8th, 2016.
Mr. Trump responds to these silly saps with Tweets. Why bother
At most, Mr. Trump should respond to such threats with a Tweet of thanks, "Dear Humanity for ProgressStandUS for US, Melania and I delighted that you will be unwilling to join the fun with us. I will give your Goody bags to the homeless. Keep a good thought, if you have one. Don"
Donald Trump should party like it's 1829!
That was the wildest party the old Executive Mansion ever tossed. Andy Jackson had concluded an ugly, divisive and violent Presidential Campaign:
To set the scene, President Jackson had been involved in two nasty presidential campaigns against John Quincy Adams. Jackson lost the 1824 race in a runoff election in the House; he won the 1828 presidential campaign in one of the dirtiest, meanest campaigns in American history. Both sides were ruthless in the campaign, including charges from Adams’ side (which weren’t new) about the character of Jackson’s wife, Rachel. A month after the election, Rachel Jackson died, and the president blamed his political enemies and their rumors for her death. Jackson had a huge, popular following, and his inauguration was a sea change for American politics. A crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 people showed up at the Capitol for the inauguration, some traveling from 500 miles away for the event. The sight stunned Washington society and Jackson’s political enemies, who already feared “mob rule” under Jackson. The 61-year-old Jackson gave his inaugural address and promised to do the best job for the people. But the first crowd control problem happened after his speech. A cable snapped that held back the crowd in front of the president, who was on the Capitol’s steps. His team ushered President Jackson back inside the Capitol for his own protection. But then the president mounted his own horse, and he rode through the crowd to the White House. Another crowd was already outside and inside the mansion, as the tradition of the day made inauguration day an “open house” for the White House. In theory, anyone could show up, shake the president’s hand, and maybe have some punch and dessert.
My kind of party. No engraved invitations, just pack the hall with happy people.
As it is, January 20th will come and go. President Trump will take office and the boneless will continue to go blue in face.
When the Party is over, get to work -there is a lot of it.
Me? I'll be taking in the Brother Rice v. Bishop McNamara Basketball game in Kankakee, Illinois*!
*Basketball SV @ Bishop McNamara H.S. (Frosh @ 4:15PM / Sophs. @ 5:45PM / Varsity @ 7PM) Fri, January 20, 4:15pm – 5:15pm Where550 W. Brookmont Kankakee, IL 60901 Facility: Bishop McNamara H.S. FROM: 4:15 PM Visit http://schedules.schedulestar.com/Brother-Rice-High-School-Chicago-IL/day/01-20-2017 for more information!
Study says White Trump Voters are in mortal danger of dying drunk, buck-naked in what is left of a Santa outfit.
But several million Americans – black, white, and Hispanic – now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 a day, essentially the same standard that the World Bank uses to define destitution-level poverty in India or Africa. Finding shelter in the United States on that income is so difficult that $2-a-day poverty is almost certainly much worse in the US than $2-a-day poverty in India or Africa. Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel Lauerate and Princeton Economics Scholar
So, the impoverished Americans in Back of the Yards, Austin and Englewood of Chicago, Blue Island, Hopkins Park, Harrisburg, Danville, Murpheesboro, Mound City and Camden, Illinois just might be well-served by packing up to sub-Saharan desert nations, or Zimbabwe for a chance at happiness? $2.00 a day in Addis Abbaba must go way further than it does in Phoenix, Illinois.
The study employed by Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune was conducted by Sir Angus Deaton, et al. and the ever-compliant Bruce is taking this opportunity ( post ObamaCare earthquake) to herd the white cats who voted for President Trump in the 'feel my pain' tent of 2016 Losers.
Nice idea.
The media has all but closed the curtains on Make America Great with no end of help from the tasseled loafer crowd of the GOP, the bug-eyed leaders of the angry opposition (Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) and President Twitter-Jonesing, his own bad self.
Me. I'll wait and see how the movie turns out.
Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune and the equally daffy DNC clown posse at the Sun Times will toll the death knell of Trump for the next four years, in same manner that Wally's Last Stop was closing this week from 1990-1998. They will be correct . . .years from now.
This is the same Nobel Laureate whose 2015 study that Millions of Americans live on $2 a day. Debunked. Now, it is white American working class, no-college yokels are pulling the Dutch Act.
In these mean times, Chicagoans are being treated with this:
Since 1999, white men and women ages 45 through 54 have endured a sharp increase in "deaths of despair," Case and Deaton found in their earlier work. These include suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths such as liver failure.
In the paper released Thursday, Case and Deaton draw a clearer relationship between rising death rates and changes in the job market since the 1970s. They find that men without college degrees are less likely to receive rising incomes over time, a trend "consistent with men moving to lower and lower skilled jobs."
And Trump was elected in November, 2016. Now, here is the payoff -
Those dynamics helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump, who won widespread support among whites with only a high school diploma. Yet Deaton said his policies are unlikely to reverse these trends, particularly the health care legislation now before the House that Trump is championing. That bill would lead to higher premiums for older Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has found.
"The policies that you see, seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him," Deaton said.
Since, January 20th Trump has destroyed the American economy, confiscated Obama phones, hurt Hollywood's feelings a whole lot, cost Colin Kaepernick his NFL career, made Oprah want to President, put lead in Dick Durbins Perrier and given the keys to the White House to the national membershipof Outlaws, MC.
America is stuffed in a hand basket roaring to hell!
I'm having Italian chicken and potatoes with garlic, lemon and red peppers, later this evening. That is one prediction that shall come to pass. Mmmm -mm.
From 1999 to 2015, Deaton's studies tell us, white working poor as well as black and Hispanic improverished have had a hell of a time.
Yet, it was the Clinton, Bush and Obama years that gutted the working poor of America with policies and real estate and banking gambles, not to mention the give-away government goodies that have overflowed the banks of the Washington swamp. Here is what Forbes had to say, THERE ARE ZERO AMERICANS LIVING ON $2 PER DAY:
So what they're really measuring is the cash incomes of the poorest people without accounting for pretty much all the things that are done to increase the total incomes (such total income being equal to consumption possibilities of course) of those poor people. The only part of welfare that they do include is cash welfare under TANF.
And that's where their large rise in this form of poverty comes from. They are, as above, measuring only the cash income of poor people, including cash from welfare. But this system was deliberately changed in the 1990s to reduce the amount of cash welfare people got and increase the amount of in kind welfare (ie, Section 8, EITC, SNAP and so on) that people got. So, what they're actually recording, in their increase, is what Congress voted for. Stop giving people cash and give them more in other ways instead. I don't think the original change was a good idea myself but it's still something of a statistical trick they're pulling off here, not a real change in what people can consume.
Finally, they're deliberately blurring how this sort of poverty persists or does not. When we look at those World Bank numbers for other countries then we're looking at people who live that way all the time.In this research done about the US we're not looking at that at all. Rather, at people who have, for some however short period of time, had very little cash income. Just as an example (and I emphasize, this is only an example, just to illustrate the logic here) imagine a family with one person in work earning $100,000 a year. Then they get fired. It takes them 2 months to find another job paying $100,000 a year (say, a decent software engineer in a company that goes bust). They do not file for any welfare while unemployed (perhaps because they have savings, that sort of thing). Under the method used to calculate those 1.5 million people living on less than $2 a day our thoroughly upper middle class software engineer qualifies. Because there was a period of one or two months where cash household income was under $2 a day per family member.
Do I think the US welfare system is perfect? Nope, most certainly not. It's also true that the US is more unequal than other advanced countries. But the real incidence of $2 a day poverty in the US is zero. The numbers cooked up for this book look only at cash income, not any other form of aid that people might get. They are also measuring transient populations flowing through a rocky patch, not some vast underclass. And finally they are measuring income, not the thing that we really want to measure, consumption possibilities.
People commit suicide when they despair. Do people who vote despair? That would be a nice study, but it might not come with pre-cast outcomes.
The only Nobel Prize Laureate of the last ten years that I will listen to is Bob Dylan.
What is [terrorism] ? It’s not hard to recognize; we can safely avoid postmodernist arguments about knowledge and truth. Terrorism is the deliberate killing of innocent people, at random, in order to spread fear through a whole population and force the hand of its political leaders - Michael Walzar Just and Unjust Wars, New York 2000
We are all mediators, translators. Jacques Derrida
Terrorism is a pet topic for post-modernist philosophers, activists, academics and other idiots.
Parsing the bombing of a crowd of pre-teen teenagers in a Manchester concert venue, will begin on CNN the second a cue is given to the soul less and dead-eyed Fareed Zakaria, or the Joe Camel of cable journalism, Christiane Amanpour. They will trot out public intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, or the porky and indecipherable Michael Eric Dyson to baffle with the bullshit born of Foucault, Derrida, Camus and Benjamin and Madison Avenue'd up by the likes of David Axelrod and Tom Perez*.
Terrorists are people who have forsaken life, truth and a place on the planet, President Trump translated these nasty men and women for what they are -
“So many young, beautiful people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life,” Trump said, speaking alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem.
There, was that so hard? For eight years we listened to a President parsing nonsense.
Families anguish - one's child begs to go to her her/his big kid concert, right at that special time in life when one's identity has taken shape and needs to celebrate with friends in the shared joy of living through music. Parents plan, purchase, park and patrol their children and friends through the secure venue's portals. Shortly, a bomb is detonated. This is a nail bomb and meant to main and kill the young identities in the hall.
The bile and the blood rises as parents learn that all of their precautions are for naught. That was no "random" deliberate murder of chidren. That was a mutual exercise of terror.
Parents planned a joyful event in their child's life.
Someone else planned. Someone who will execute innocent children and later have this action be explained away by public intellectuals
That is terrorism. A mutual exercise by murdering losers and those who would justify their actions.
* DNC Terrorism- " . . .Democrats will repudiate vile tactics that would do us harm. We reject Donald Trump’s vilification of Muslims. It violates the religious freedom that is the bedrock of our country and feeds into ISIS’ nefarious narrative. It also alienates people and countries who are crucial to defeating terrorism; the vast majority of Muslims believe in a future of peace and tolerance. We reject Donald Trump’s suggestion that our military should engage in war crimes, like torturing prisoners or murdering civilian family members of suspected terrorists. These tactics run counter to American principles, undermine our moral standing, cost innocent lives, and endanger Americans. We also firmly reject Donald Trump’s willingness to mire tens of thousands of our combat troops in another misguided ground war in the Middle East, which would only further embolden ISIS. There is nothing smart or strong about such an approach."
Mention Trump three times and ISIS Twice? Jeepers. Tom.
The globalization of cities and their elites often comes at the expense of many of the people who live there. Forced to compete with foreign capital and immigrant workers, native-born residents of cities from Los Angeles and London to Singapore often feel displaced, becoming strangers in what they thought was their own place. . . .in this era of powerful oligarchs and growing inequality, these planetary centers are less places for upward mobility than most other cities. This is clearly true in the United States, where its premier global city, New York, as well as its prime competitors for international standing, Chicago, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, rank among the 10 most unequal cities in the nation. Joel Kotkin - Forbes
This is a formidable moment. Chicagoans can best negotiate it by placing their faith in Rahm Emanuel and his ethos of dogged effectiveness. No other candidate combines Emanuel's candor about the threats facing Chicago with the will to take necessary steps -- some of them unpopular -- to tame those threats.
Specifically: We're hugely impressed by Emanuel's forthrightness about the overarching crisis in city finances. He alone is frank about the immediate need to reform a pension system that otherwise will implode on city retirees and everyday taxpayers alike. Chicago Tribune - Rahm endorsement
Response, Citizens? Mine is blue. Real blue. Not that I am against colorful language, but there just might be a sensitive soul scanning the web.
Steven Colbert, the Chicago Tribune, WTTW, The Sun Times, WBEZ and Crain's Chicago Business are friends of Chicago Oligarchs.
Colbert, an ersatz satirist, offered Mayor Rahm Emanuel a national sound byte, echoing the drone of the Cook County and Illinois Democratic Party mantra - Trump is evil.
Candidate for Governor JB Pritzker offers only Trumpophobic nonsense, but offers no hope for this choking State, other than fight Trump.
The laughable Chicago Tribune acts as the MiniTru for City Hall and the County Building, with daily feature feed of Trump Thumping howlers from Rex Hupke, Stephen Chapman, Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich and farmed-in pieces from WAPO, NYT, Salon, The Nation and VOX.
Not only that, but the Chicago Tribune continues its Bizzaro-world assaults on Chicago Police officers in full communion with Rahm Emanuel's creepy suppression of his role in burying the Laquan McDonald video.
There is absolutely no mention of the Forrest Claypool scandal, much less an incisive inquiry to his altering of documents and cover-up which to the reading public appears to be a Rico ready case.
Steven Colbert made no mention of this Rahm-an noodle bowl of worms.
Sadly, Chuy Garcia appears to have taken the path of least resistance and the coin as well as the Congressional seat of the larcenous Luis Gutierrez ll only days before Forrest Claypool fell on his silver spoon.
Trump-look-alike Bob Fioretti, a practiced stalking horse, is already out of the gate, clearing the way for the Chicago City Council Black Caucus to Raise-up Rahm!
The Oligarchy will continue - Trump a Lump!
Illinois voters will paint themselves into the already assigned corners and idiots like former governor Pat Quinn will step into Lisa Madigan's seat, Michigan Ave. Fats Pritzker will take Rauner's warm and comfy seat after months of editorial screeds painting Jeannie Ives as some kind of Trump Tranny and clown judges will return to County and State benches.
Get ready for it neighbors! You thought the last eight years were burdensome? Hold the phone.
Urban League CEO James Compton, former Tribune Editor Gerould Kern and Trib editor Bruce Dold, former Governor Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in simpler times.
"Our advice to the Trumps is to move, sooner rather than later, and avoid returning home often. That approach would greatly ease the trouble in Manhattan, simplify the task of protecting the family, minimize costs for the federal government and New York City, and reassure the public that Trump will give the presidency his full attention." Bruce Dold et al
The Editorial genius of that great metropolitan newspaper, the one that endorsed Governor Hemp of Allepo, wants President-elect Donald Trump and Melania and the kid right where Bruce Dold can find them.
The Chicago Tribune did not want Francis Cardinal George to live in the Archbishop's Residence, bought and paid for by Chicago Catholics. Cardinal George wanted to sell the place in 2002, by was over-ruled by his flock and the Tribune and the rest of the supine Chicago media cat-called his home until the man went to Heaven. How many times did Manya " The Seeker" Brachear pooh-poo its opulence while poor black girls like Dorothy Brown had to struggle until the caged bird sang? Lots.
The White House is different. It is a dump to a man like Trump. If Bruce Dold took a call from gilded Trump Tower, NYC, how in the name of Sweet Fanny Adams would he report such a missive?
You see things get confusing . If Trump is staying in Manhattan, how in the name of Sweet Fanny Adams will The Chicago Tribune report any executive pronouncements with its iron-clad accuracy - like Dewey Wins!
Bruce Dold is a simple man who likes his politics served up steaming, warm and plentiful and placed right in front of him by Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool, Dick Durbin, Pat Quinn, Cardinal Cupich, Rev. Jackson, Pastor Pfleger, Toni Preckwinkle and Mr, & Mrs. Bob Creamer.
Keep things simple. Bruce is simple. Rahm says something and the Dold abides. Keep the narrative.
Prose often is required to apply rhetorical devices to keep readers from falling asleep on the Red Line, or finding another news source. Rhetorical devices are keen ways of expressing the obvious - if Mitt Romney says that Vladimir Putin is a dangerous man. A really funny guy might say, " The 80's are calling and want their foreign policy back." That is so cool and he's a community organizer!
So, newspaper guys like Bruce Dold need to use things like metonymy and synechdoche.
Metonymy is figure of speech (rhetorical device) in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, like Hollywood, the Pentagon and the White House.
Metonymy's sister device is Synechdoche, or using a part of something to represent the whole, as in " All Hands on Deck,!" Bruce would not see a bunch of hands flopping from keel to forecastle via ladders and passageways, or perhaps he might given his endorsement of Gary Johnson.
Keeping the Trump family in the White House makes things easy for Bruce, Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn.
News hucksters paved Donald Trump's path to the White House and wasted every brick trust in so doing.
People who wanted to see an end of to the global corporatist oligarchy built by Progressive Democrats during during the Clinton years and tuck-pointed by GOP mavericks and Skull and Bones opportunity trowel masters, hoped for Scott Walker or Rand Paul, or James Webb, or Ben Carson to emerge from the political hair-ball that was 2016 Election, but due to CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post and Internet-pockets of pimply Journolism at Salon, VOX and Daily Beast bet that Donald Trump would suck all of the air out of atmosphere and blow life into Hillary Clinton.
These people, me included. turned to Donald Trump as the only choice and hoped that he would be better than he seemed.
He was and sure seems to be - Michael Flynn notwithstanding.
I read that Morning Joe, as well as CNN has banned Kelly Anne Conway. Good. Kelly Anne Conway makes sense and confounds airheads like busty Mika and vapid Joe.
Mrs. Conway belongs to my crowd of people. People who shop main street, send the kids to Catholic school, speak plainly, understand the nuances of bullshitters and respond in kind, work for a living and care about the truth. She does not 'only watch PBS, read the New York Times, or admire David Brooks.' Mrs. Conway reads everything and also speaks with people who can not put a dime in her purse. I am getting to like Trump, because of Kelly Anne Conway.
My neighbors feel the same way. I mean my neighbors who do not have Shakman exempt jobs with the City of Chicago, or the County, Those folks say little, except " Can you BELIEVE Trump is President ?" Why, yes. Yes, I can and do. Most others say, " Trump's doing what he said he'd do. This could work."
The media has become the Oroville Dam. That creaky California concrete weir poised to collapse at the next drop of rain.
For years Jerry Brown and other unicorn collectors have allowed the infrastructure to rot, while they pumped millions of dollars into human give-away programs and feel good unfunded mandates.
The dam is busting.
For decades the American journalism has worked the cult of personality and befogged debate with memes/
The dam is busting.
Kelly Anne Conway can not go on CNN, or Morning Joe.
Yingying Zhang was about a month into a yearlong appointment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign when she disappeared June 9, 2017. | Courtesy of the University of Illinois Police Department via AP Morality -a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society. Idiot - is a person perceived to be lacking intelligence, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way.
Yesterday, the White House offered the only conclusive explanation for Chicago's murders, it's lawless disregard of people and it's perpetual state of moral paralysis.
WASHINGTON – Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday crime in Chicago was ‘driven more by morality” than access to guns, commenting after the Trump administration sent 20 more U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents to the city to combat gun violence.
Those four words comprising the only government disambiguation over last ten years, immediately sparked more foolish from the media and it's nodding public.
elako02Member1 hour(s) ago:And how knows more about morality than Trump and his aides?
Dannoday1Member10 hour(s) ago: Immoral guns.
1Realistic1Visitor10 hour(s) ago: Morality?!? Sarah Huckabee Sanders has the gall to lecture on morality? The same Sarah Huckabee Sanders whose daddy, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, publicly defended Josh Duggar, the admitted child molester who fondled his own kid sisters? She should check herself.
Chicago Sun Times Obama Cheerleader Lynn Sweet was quick to pounce with Journo-perfect snark:
The extra agents were heralded by President Donald Trump in a Friday Twitter post.
“Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!”
According to the Sun-Times’ count, even more people, 1,737, have been shot this year, 306 of them killed. This comes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been asking Trump to send in more federal help for six months. Gun trafficking is a leading contributing factor in Chicago shootings. The Trump Justice Department created the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force to hunt down and prosecute firearms traffickers.
Sanders ( Sarah Huckabee-Sanders) at the White House briefing deflected a question about the link between guns and crime in Chicago even as more ATF agents were assigned to Chicago.
Asked if Chicago’s problems were due in part to access to firearms Sanders replied, “I think that the problem there is pretty clear that it’s a crime problem. I think that crime is probably driven more by morality than anything else.”
Sweet is sour on anything not torn from the John Dewey Pre-cast Policy Dispenser, used by the Presidential Bush Boys, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Guns Kill People -end of story.
However, two-thousand years plus of Western Civilization, from Genesis through Socrates and beyond Thomas Aquinas, argues that Guns Kill People, like Pencil Flunk Tests.
You will never find Pastor Pfleger leading Jesse Jackson and a dozen solemn faced martyrs in front of School R Us, because young Cuthbert and Amy continue to fail Common Core Math.
Think of that, children.
No. Guns are to nodders, as Donald Trump is to nodders - a cardboard figure to be hated, reviled, destroyed.
People who have not the time, treasure and talents to be nodders, make informed judgments about actions and their results. People kill people with guns, knives, bikes, crotch-rockets, sweat pants, chairs, pickle jars, umbrellas and 2 x 4s. People kill people because they can. Some people return to kill more people, because Judges, Sheriffs and States Attorneys need core voters.
Yesterday, a Chinese family learned the name of the person charged with abducting their beautiful and talented daughter from the streets around University of Illinois and possibly murdering the innocent. This poor baby.
The person charged is as brilliant as Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, a professor like President Obama was and a man of science like Bill Nye, the Monsanto Guy. Did he purchase a hand gun?
Yingying Zhang, the daughter of a working-class factory driver from China, disappeared on June 9, just weeks after arriving at the University of Illinois where she was pursuing studies in agriculture sciences.
Federal authorities say 27-year-old Brendt Christensen of Champaign, Illinois, is accused of kidnapping Zhang shortly after she stepped off a bus near the university campus. Video show her getting into the front seat of a black Saturn Astra. The affidavit filed in federal court in support of the complaint says Christensen was under surveillance Thursday when agents overheard him explaining that he kidnapped Zhang. Authorities say based on this, and other facts uncovered during the investigation, agents believe Zhang is no longer alive. Authorities have not indicated if a body has been found.
Was a gun involved?
We do not know, as yet. What we do know at this time is that Brendt Christensen's cell phone is described as "a means, a facility and instrumentality of Interstate Commerce" and, " therefore, used in committing and in futherance of the commission of this crime."
A cell phone - smart phone no doubt.
I anguish over the abduction of this little girl. Yingying is my youngest daughter's age. I anguish and pray for the Zhang family.
I shudder at the accused. I shudder, because he is someone's child and he is the same age as my son. My son had no use for school, other than what shaped him ( sports, buddies, shared obligations, religious center) as an honest, thoughtful, courageous and courteous gentleman. This accused son of someone reaped academic honors and developed into a monster, or so it seems. A brilliant idiot. Brendt Christensen - the accused
Guns and bullets might surface, but I kind of doubt that - the monster a man of science and hubris and consider himself the superior of his victim, or so it seems to me. Like the killers of Bobby Franks at the University of Chicago in the 1920's, the Democratic Precinct Captain and Clown who slaughtered Gay, Bisexual and Questioning boys in the 1970's, or superior-quality strapped thugs who shot up an end-of-school picnic last month, Brandt Christensen felt comfortable doing what he did.
This is what we do!
That is the idiot's Rebel yell! When a person is the center of the universe and not gifted with other-directed thoughts, that person will roller-blade, skate-board, run, bike, or motor through other people and shout "This is What We Do!"
Not all idiots are strapped - armed with a 9mm -but all idiots are ballistically lethal. Here is a video of Chicago values aboard expensive crotch rockets ( The Ducati 999, Suzuki GSXR1000 and Yamaha YZF-R1 are good examples of ~1000cc crotch-rockets.) 'doing what they do'
The action occurred on Irving Park Road near O'Hare International Airport. Imagine what would have happened to the police officers interdicting "This is What We Do!" had there been a collision.
I imagine that they would appear before a Grand Jury, once the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times rolled out a series on police pursuit policies and Rahm squeaked, " The streets belong to all of us!"
Retired Chicago Police officer Larry Casey offered me this look at the ballistic idiots and the website that seems to defend their actions.
Morality is a state of being and it includes immorality as accepted.
Idiots grow in an immoral society. No moral society Balkanizes behavior. Chicago Values do that.
I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see...
Ralph Ellison (b. 1914), U.S. author. The narrator, in Invisible Man, prologue (1952).
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is the greatest American novel. No other work of prose fiction speaks to the soul of this great nation than this book, written by an African American and scorned by African American activists, because he refused the term.
Ralph Ellison captured the urban, rural, white, black and brown hues as discretionary camouflage for the root humanity in every man.
James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) joined the white liberal literary establishment in vilifying a black man who preferred the term Negro and demanded to be treated as an artist, a craftsman and human being rather than a celebrity with a big mouth.
If the Negro, or any other writer, is going to do what is expected of him, he's lost the battle before he takes the field. I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance--but it must be acceptance on his own terms. Perhaps, though, this thing cuts both ways: the Negro novelist draws his blackness too tightly around him when he sits down to write--that's what the antiprotest critics believe--but perhaps the white reader draws his whiteness around himself when he sits down to read. He doesn't want to identify himself with Negro characters in terms of our immediate racial and social situation, though on the deeper human level identification can become compelling when the situation is revealed artistically. The white reader doesn't want to get too close, not even in an imaginary recreation of society. Negro writers have felt this, and it has led to much of our failure.
Too many books by Negro writers are addressed to a white audience. By doing this the authors run the risk of limiting themselves to the audience's presumptions of what a Negro is or should be; the tendency is to become involved in polemics, to plead the Negro's humanity. You know, many white people question that humanity, but I don't think that Negroes can afford to indulge in such a false issue. For us, the question should be, what are the specific forms of that humanity, and what in our background is worth preserving or abandoning. The Paris Review
Ellison knew he was more than a demographic, a victim, a celebrity, a mouth piece. He was a man in full. Invisible Men, the cop the teacher, the guy ( Dennis) selling the Sun Times at 79th & The Dan Ryan every day in any weather, the EMT who shows up and saves Granny, the guy at Wells Fargo saving your mortgage from disaster and the check out lady at Jewel who places your groceries in Heavy re-usable bag because you forgot yours are the same.
Donald Trump says he is for the Invisible Man - all of us.
Let's pray someone gives him Invisible Man, in some form, or at least the quote above,
The news media will Mau-mau Trump even if he turns ink into gold and go the way of James Baldwin, Leroi Jones and the white liberal ruling classes who are clamoring to end our democracy.
President Trump, I know you can not hear me, nor read me, but write the above quote every day - writing it makes you remember it.
If President Trump remembers Ellison's quote and his campaign mantra, America will become great.
“If you want to know about, and work toward, a different world—and if you want to stand up and fight back against what's being done to people—this is where you go. You go to this Party, you take up this Party's newspaper, you get into this Party's leader and what he's bringing forward.” Bob Avakian - Revolutionary Communist Party
The Tribune is committed to Midwestern values and concerns, and brings that sensibility to the public debate. In both its words and its actions, it seeks out true innovation, but is unimpressed by momentary trend and skeptical of untested theory. This has been a basic hallmark of the Tribune throughout its history and continues to guide this newspaper. It encourages constructive change in the light of tradition and the lessons of history. Experience, as well as intellect, is essential to wisdom. Chicago Tribune Principles
Innovation? "Innovation, for its part, can refer to something new or to a change made to an existing product, idea, or field., says Merriam -Webster
Innovation like a Revolution"?
How about "give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated.." That is the definition of a "Report." Revolution can come later.
I saw a Malibu and the Malibu is a Chevrolet product.
I saw a Whopper and it is a Burger King product.
I saw a Big MAC and it is a McDonald's product.
I saw a Refuse Fascism (RF) Protest and RF is part of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
I read about the Trump protest organized by Refuse Fascism that was covered in the Chicago Tribune which refused to mention the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Why is that?
Does the Trib assume everyone already knows that Refuse Fascism RF is a product of the Revolutionary Communist PartyREVCOM?
Does the Chicago Tribune believe, as the shut-down DNAinfo Chicago did, that people should not know that there is any connection between the two?
I believe it is the later.
More than 100 protesters marched in a light rain through Chicago's Loop to Trump Tower on Saturday, part of demonstrations in more than a dozen cities scheduled nearly a year after President Donald Trump’s election.
The protestors, who carried signs reading “The Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!” first rallied at Federal Plaza, at Adams and Dearborn streets, then marched north on State Street. They were outnumbered by uniformed police officers. A group called Refuse Fascism called for rallies Saturday in more than 20 cities. Speakers at the Chicago rally said they hoped the protests would build until millions of Americans took to the streets in opposition to the Trump administration. Steve Schmadeke for Chicago Tribune
Steve Schmadeke probably knows that there is direct link between Refuse Fascism and the Revolutionary Communist Party and Revolution Books. I know that a Malibu is a Chevy, for God's sake and I know that REVCOM was behind most of the Joshua Beal protests last November. DNAinfo Chicago knew too, but kept it out of print. DNAinfo Chicago and Gothamist were shut down last week by its owner. Even Wikipedia know offers the connection between between Refuse Fascism and REVCOM.
DNAinfo Chicago failed, because it did not live up to the expectations of owner. The owner expected solid local coverage of neighborhood events to give ".written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated." Joe Ricketts said, "while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”
DNAinfo Chicago ignored the Revolutionary Communist Party's key role in the Joshua Beal protests all last year, even though the signs (paid for by REVCOM) pointed in that direction.
The Revolutionary Communist Party is as dangerous as any alt-right band of bravos. It is a thug organization that provides street cover for left-leaning activists, journalists and politicians, while killing off public debate and free speech everywhere.
Protest up a storm against Trump, or fois gras, 24/7!
Just report honestly . . . for once.
Look at the signs.
Look at the players.
Report what is there.
Leave the innovation and revolution to the Edisons and the Lenins.
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
Brendt Christensen - the accused
