The Alperts are Evergreen - Lani and Herb Having a Great Time

I had one hell of a great day yesterday, October 15, 2016.

At 8:30 AM the exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan and I drove through Roseland taking my time-honored 107th Street to Cottage Grove North to 103rd Street East to Torrance Ave, South to 106th East past Pat Carroll's iconic Crow Bar and the mouthwatering Birreria Ocotlon. onto Indianapolis Boulevard south into the wilds of Indiana and the blue collar Gold Coast of Whiting.

We made it from Morgan Park to Whiting in under forty minutes and arrived at St. Adalbert's Catholic Church founded in 1906 by Polish steel and oil refinery workers.  Like Bridgeport, there is a National Catholic Church and more than a few Croatian Hussite, Serbian Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches every fifty feet.  The huge St. John the Baptist Catholic Church was the "english' or American, or Irish church and it dominates the landscape of Whiting/Robertsdale/Hammond along the Skyway over Wolf Lake.

We were guests at a wedding! It was a Tridentine Latin Mass and the music was wonderful.  After the Mass we drove south on Indy to Ridge Road and the Polish Discalced Carmelite Fathers Shrine to Our Lady - a maginficent piece of scared real estate that encompasses shrines, chapels, meeting halls, meditation walks, living rosary paths and a banquet hall.

The wedding party was blessed by the Bishop of Gary.  We sat with couples from Toronto, Minnesota and the Glynns who live across the tracks from me in Sawmill Lane.  There were scores of babies, toddlers and little guys grooving to the tunes. Great food by the way - family style chicken, beef, spuds and vegetables.  We took it easy on the portions - I mean I did, as our early evening appointment was looming - Parker's in Downers Grove.

We said our farewells to Bride and Groom and all and sundry and headed to 80/94 and the route home - Borman to bishop Ford to 1-57 to 111th to 107th and change our Sunday go-to- meeting duds at Casa Hickey. Quick change and onto the peak of the day - dinner at Parker's and the a concert by Herb Alpert and his Chicago-born bride, the brilliant singer Lani Hall.

Lani Hall hit the switch on my adolescent hormones, in 1966 when she and the strawberry blonde ignited males planet wide when introduced to America by Eartha Kitt!



With Sergio Medez, Lani Hall managed to improve tastes in music among my generation. Brazilian jazz, pop improvements - the Beatles wish their version Fool on the Hill was as good as Brazil '66.  Paul McCartney is no Lani Hall, Bub.




Lani Hall was the voice we always recognized, but never seemed to recall the person offering it up.  Who's Lani Hall?  A great lady and married to Herb Alpert.

I never had much love for the Tijuana Brass, though I did love the Whipped Cream album cover.  I always thought Herb Alpert's Brass was too Mitch Miller Square - you know - sounds like Game Show Music. 

Wrong.

Okay I have loved Lani Hall's voice for forty years and change and I sniffed at the work of man with whom she has been married to for as long.

This Guy's In Love With Her!   More so - she with him!

Last night, I wanted to hear Lani Hall and worried that I would be fogged by Lonely Bull, Casino Royale and stuff like that.  Herb Alpert reworks good songs fusing many genres, jazz, pop, hip-hop and innovative flourishes his side men freely work-out beyond the practiced charts.

He and Lani Hall repeatedly used the word Evergreen to connect songs that have worked for generations with people of good natures.  The song Besa Me Mucho *was said to have been written by a 16 year old Mexican girl, but the tune is one of the most recorded worldwide.  Evergreen is a connection and it explains Lani and Herb.  Get a load of this



Herb Alpert is a fun guy.  Alpert laments the loss of good music for inflated bass riffs and idiotic lyrics.  He has a deeply sweet nature that pokes fun at himself and a sharply professional musicianship that offers only what people deserve to hear. He respects his craft, his partners, his wife, himself and most of all the people laying down scores of dollars and filling the seats of McAninch Arts Center at the College of DuPage - there was not a seat open for this show.

Herb  Alpert founded A/M Records in 1962 with his pal Jerry Moss.  Alpert is a genius and an exacting perfectionist on himself.  His trumpet work is remarkable.  Albert asks the audience to speak up, as do many performers, but Alpert actually means it.  He treats the audience with respect and easy good humor.  For the opening minutes, Alpert and the three great musicians with him.


Lani Hall was sensational, beautiful, sweet and very much in love his her guy - Herb is a lucky guy. 

CTU Boss Jesse Sharkey Wants Forest Claypool to Pick up Another Govt. Pension, After Getting Bounced from CPS

The ISO have found a leadership position within the CTU in the form of Jesse Sharkey, who is vice president. And Sharkey turns out being a run-of-the-mill sellout artist working to undermine teachers' conditions and benefits. This can't go on forever, they're running on borrowed time. I expect they think they're stalling until martial law is placed on the United States as part of a new authoritarian framework, which they will no doubt welcome. Comments from ISO member International Socialist Website

 
"He (Forrest Claypool) is unfit to be CEO.  He has earned the contempt of teachers and parents across the city" Jesse Sharkey ISO/CTU

Wow.  Harsh.

You won't read the above comment in your Sun Times, Sneedless to say, nor will you read this anywhere in the Chicago Tribune, but the Boss of the CTU, which just made Rahm rollover again, wants career grifter and poly-pension portfolio collector, Forrest Claypool out as CEO pf CPS and into the starting blocks of yet another pension package. This was in DNAinfo Chicago

Three days after the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with the district, Sharkey, the union's second in command, said Claypool had "run the system off the edge of a cliff."
"He is unfit to be CEO," Sharkey said. "He has earned the contempt of teachers and parents across the city" by threatening mass layoffs and deep program cuts to schools.
Sharkey, however, stopped short of calling for Claypool's ouster.

Forrest Claypool herded with Progressives, but used Regular Democrats and then cast them into the darkness.


Never do a solid for a Lefty.

Forrest Claypool has put the gratitude blade into the kidneys of scores of City Hall and Cook County regulars, as well as fellow Progressives,but nowhere near the hundreds of working people at Chicago Park District, CTA and CPS in exercising Claypool policies of smoke and mirrors - fire long-time competent employees and hire more very temporary unskilled 'apprentices.'

When Claypool was Rahm Emanuel's CTA CEO he orchestrated the vilification of Amalgamated Transit Workers President Bob Kelley in months long Orwellian Morality Drama featuring Pastor Pfleger, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush, ex-cons and community activists, because Kelly stood up for his people.

The Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times pooh-pooh notions that Claypool is a fraud at best and louse in fact.

Now, the International Socialist puppet master of Chicago Teachers Unions, Jesse Sharkey ( another buzzcut Bolshevik, like Jon Podesta and Locke Bowman, for those of us keeping track) wants Claypool's wispy scalp the lodge pole outside of his CTU wickiup, in order to show off to his tribe the Medicine of ISO.

Strong Medicine.  Ask Leo Trotsky.

Well, I gotta go along with Red Jesse.

Forrest Claypool is a skunk of the first waters. However, I would rather not watch Forrest Claypool collect another pension.  

Homework for Our Sun Times Watch Dogs - Connect the Dots Between Cop-Hating Policy and Jamie Kalven's Real Estate Ventures

“We'll go wherever the conversation takes us, but our point of departure will be an exchange about the stories our lives become in the world — the narratives we construct with our actions, the narratives others impose on us, strategies of narrative self-defense (including silence), and questions of narrative stewardship and responsibility.These issues, which are present for anyone who intervenes and acts in the world, are boldly dramatized by the lives of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” Jamie Kalven

You just gotta say, 'Dude' when Jamie Kalven appears. You just gotta.



Here's some weekend fun!  I tried to make homework fun when I was an English teacher.  Well, unless I wasn't pissed off, or feeling sorry for myself because Catholic high school's paid such crumby salaries. . .sorry. . . .and I attempted to give the kids a chance to make some intellectual inquiries that were of some use to them. Make up a Canterbury Tale of your own that makes fun of your English teacher, or the guy working at Belscott's who never seems to bathe.  Go fishing on the mighty Kankakee River and do a Nick Adams Story like Old Ernie. Stuff like that.

I have one for the very best investigative journalists in Chicago - the Sun Times Watchdogs  a changing band of brother reporters.   The Watchdogs of the Sun Times, far too often confused by the editors with the always hapless Andy Shaw, presented the fruits of Jamie Kalven's labors - the long list of beefs against cops going back to 1967 - and never once mention Jamie Kalven.

Just wondering.  The CRs listed are the ones that came after Kalven's Citizens Police Data Project and the subsequent Justice Department inquiries, but shucks it's Jamie Kalven!

Now, how about some extra-credit!

Do a fun piece on Jamie Kalven, because this week he is all the rage!

I would like the Watchdogs to connect some dots for us - here is the clue - Real Estate!

Task: Find out how many real estate ventures Jamie Kalven had connected to Allison Davis and Altegeld Gardens and offer a commentary.  Was it interesting?  Was it lucrative> Does it have impact on Policing?  Bet it does.

Jamie Kalven is not only an activist but he is a well -insulated Progressive real estate player! He used to present himself as a real estate novelist a la Billy Joel, but has Google washed that past.

Yesterday DNAinfo informed all of us that Jamie Kalven - the hard-hitting Real Estate Novelist, Venture Marxist and founder of the Invisible Institute ( leading the way for a Shakman-like Empire in Cook County) - papered the City of Chicago with more than 40,000 copies of his findings

HYDE PARK — If you haven’t read Hyde Park journalist Jamie Kalven’s four-year-long reporting project on corruption in the Chicago Police Department, it’s about to become almost unavoidable.
Starting this weekend, Kalven will distribute to 400 locations across the city 40,000 free copies of his 20,000-word, four-part series on an alleged criminal gang of drug dealers operating within the police department for nearly 10 years with the knowledge of police leadership.
Kalven has become the leading voice on problems within Chicago’s police ranks. He has released documents showing officers subject to frequent complaints from the public go unpunished and was an early voice pointing out problems with the shooting of Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke.

Not only that, but also - there is a Jamie Kalven Mythology roll-out Nationwide! It's sensational - in the real meaning of the word!

James Warren of Vanity Fair and formerly Chicago Tribune calls it a hit that only needs a great musical score!

Imagine “The Wire,” “Serpico,” “Prince of the City” and “The Shield” rolled into one. It's why Hollywood producers should read “The Code of Silence” and give Chicago freelance journalist Jamie Kalven a call. . . .It's also a tale both of how mainstream media often blows law enforcement coverage and how potentially important stories run smack into journalistic conventions and just get lost. . . .His expose is like the grittiest fictionalized drama: dirty cops, abject poverty in crime-ridden projects, people wearing wires, murders to silence informants, the good guys being demonized and put in real peril, and ultimately a department hierarchy looking the other way.

Set it to music, Chief Keef!

 Can you say Hamilton?  How about Kalven?  Too, close to that other Calvin - the Klein guy?  Maybe.  How about Jamie!  Jamie, Lad! Right out of Master of Ballintrae. Sen-SAYSHUNAL!

Every left leaning magazine, broadcast outlet, talk-hub, podcast, website, newspaper and cop hating rag in the nation, Huffington Post, Slate, Jet, Vanity Fair, Al Jazeera, and, of course, NPR, are picking up James Warren's Poynter Piece - Meet Jamie Kalven.

James Warren not only wrote the Vanity Fair fallation, but seems to be the media's go-to narrative, which can only mean legal and cultural policy to follow close on the act - root and branch.

Jamie Kalven is talking up a plenty his own bad self! Kalven lays out the coordination orchestrated over decades of Burge Bashing and honed sharply during the Richie Daley Final Days.  A tiny Polish bartender female was horribly beaten by drunken monster, taking the day off as a cop, and that was caught on camera.  Kalven lays out just how quickly two leading Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers welded up the off-duty heroics of Abbate to the Burge Mythology = Futterman and Bowman.

The joint motion created a situation in which the public interest was unrepresented. Two law professors who specialize in police abuse cases — Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago and Locke Bowman of Northwestern University — intervened on behalf of the public. They argued that if the city was allowed to “buy its way out of” the judgment, it would have no incentive to make the necessary reforms. Judge St. Eve ruled against the city, holding that the jury verdict regarding the code of silence “has a social value to the judicial system and public at large.”
In their effort to have the code of silence verdict set aside, city lawyers argued that the CPD had enacted significant reforms since the 2007 bar incident. And they emphasized that the department was now led by a new superintendent who would not permit such behavior to go unpunished.

Did it?  Seems to me things dragged not at all.

Kalven leaves out the looong Koschman Case championed by Carol Marin.  Why is that?

The Sun Times played code of silence with louder frequency than a Packey Webb Ford's jingle and the masterpiece of a Locke Bowman return to fray with the Batman of Burge Bashing and Jon Burge Mythology Author horry old G. Flint Taylor and together they fronted for the Carol Marin aggrieved and the completed welding job on Systemic Racist Code of Silence Culture of Corruption  that was G. Flint Taylor-made for a spot at Penny Pritzker Park.

I sure would like to see some real investigation by our Watchdogs.

I would like to be brought fully up to speed on Jamie Kalven and all of his works.

This is extra credit.  You are not being paid to do this.   Have fun!  I hope.

Kristen McQueary Warns of Rahm Emanuel's Turd Therm, er, Third Term!

“I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans,” wrote her campaign manager, John Podesta, in an email. Wikileaks
 

The smart, honest and bovine scat -free member of Col. McCormick's Editorial Board is Kristen McQueary.  A reporter, special feature and political opinion columnist, who wore out her Keds chasing stories for the venerable Daily Southtown, Kristen McQueary retains her chops as an editorial board member.

That confuses me.  She is on the Chicago Tribune. 

But, Hey! So is the one of the only authentic voices of middle America, John Kass.

Well, I guess if they want some readers to look at Mary Schmich, Eric Zorn, Ron Grossman, Rex Huppke and read Bruce Dold's anonymous nonsense that the reverse logic of the Col.'s Tower must toss some Kielbasa and Spuds before the Swedish Fish and Gummy Patch Worms out onto the sidewalks for Stosh, Stell, Nacho, Al, Ruby and Monroe.

Kass and Kristen are the wholesome nutritious inducements for the empty calories. No candy until the meat and spuds are ate up. 

God.  No wonder Hillary Hates everyday Americans.

Kristen McQueary Loves Us!

She is one of us.  You can catch her rolling her eyes over the business end of a Fat Tommy's hot dog, at bad softball calls all summer up at Kennedy Park.

Kristen McQueary is one of us and does not treat people with contempt, but respect and hard-won facts, figures and opinion whether we agree or not.

She gets to it right off the bat.

In  three years, Chicago voters will be back at the polls weighing candidates for mayor. That's a long time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to rehabilitate his relationship with voters, should he decide to seek a third term.
More to the point: Three years is long enough for voters to forget.

That we do.  We might not forgive, but we easily forget.  That is why Americans need a free uncorrupted press.

Kristen McQueary is a fine example.   Like a BevMom, McQueary points to our bikes left on old Jack McNicholas's lawn and the twenty or so empty Capri Sun Juice bags tossed here and about.

The city's and Chicago Public Schools' finances have tanked. Instead of tackling the budget books immediately in 2011, Emanuel embarked on the politically safe route of borrowing money for operations and counting it as revenue. He wasn't honest about the need to downsize city government and yes, raise property taxes. Even if Gov. Bruce Rauner signs a law that enables the property tax increase Emanuel pushed through City Council last fall, the money won't be enough to meet the obligations city leaders have racked up. Not even close. The city's pension funds remain dangerously underfunded, and the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plan to fix two of them.

Fleeing crime-ridden neighborhoods for the suburbs are Chicago's lifeblood: sturdy, middle-class families who embody this city's poetic "big shoulders." Carl Sandburg would be alarmed.
Despite that backdrop, Emanuel and the City Council spent the last few months touting new tourist attractions and bike paths, boasting of the elimination of a tampon tax, and proposing an increased fine for not picking up dog poop, which is contributing to a growing rat population citywide.
You can't make this stuff up.

Would that were the case, Mrs. McQueary.  Laid out for us are all the things we tend to forget about with the passage of time and cascades of idiotic Council Ordinances and taxes.

Kristen McQueary gives voice to the things we tend to forget with a sharp, but loving "Patrick Francis! Get back here and pick up all of your 'last few months touting new tourist attractions and bike paths, boasting of the elimination of a tampon tax, and proposing an increased fine for not picking up dog poop, which is contributing to a growing rat population citywide.' Now, take care of your things!  Remember that!  Get busy!"

Alright.


In 1961 Steve Allen* said, Chicagoans had an "unneurotic voice."   It is a clear, uncomplicated, direct and authentic voice.

Kristen McQueary is a diva!





* Going Home  Chicago Voice 49.00

The Danger of Quality - Bill Knapp's is Delightfully Pestiferous!

 

One of the things that our customers grew to expect from our restaurants was quality food. They could count on the fact that the Bill Knapp's name stood for good, traditional, quality food. Retail shoppers today have those same expectations. If it has our name on it, they expect it to be good! - Bill Knapp

Family owned businesses are the only places I choose to champion.  I grew up on 79th Street, which according to Professor Eileen McMahon had businesses for every need from obstetrician to mortuary.
We went to Weiss's Five and Dime, Frank's Full Service Department Store, bought Whoopee Cushions and fake Dog Poop at Reilly's Trick Shop, got regular boys haircuts at Max Esposito's Barbershop, bread, cakes and cookies at Highland Bakery, bought new gravel agitators at Shapiro's Shoes, fidgeted at DuBois' Studios for 1st Communion and Graduation pictures and browsed Raymar's Terminal Merchandise for low-end values and Civil War era chewing gum at a penny a dozen. My Mom would take me to Lithuanian Doctor Anthony for a tetanus shots after every unsanctioned visit to Raymar's .

People bought good food at neighborhood groceries and National Tea Company, or the Hi-Lo until Jewel ran them out of business and suits, sport coats and dresses that lasted.  Quality meant it tasted, looked, felt and proved that working people purchased good things.

Now, we have CVS, WalGreens,WalMarts, Targets, TJ Max, Marshall's, Doc in the Box Med Depot, TGIF and WTF Friday's Eat Same troughs.

Quality is something that stirs memories.

No south sider of my three score and change years can ever forget the glories of Dressel's Cream Cakes at 6630 S. Ashland Ave. - they were what special occasions are all about.

In summers we would go to the Irish Riviera's of Wisconsin, Michigan, or Indiana.  The Hickey's tended to pilgrimage on Michigan's Red Arrow Highway and stay at Cassio's Cottages owned my Mr. Cassio from St. Mary of Mount Carmel Parish on 69th & Hermitage.

On the way up, we would stop at Bill Knapp's restaurant outside of St. Joe where they had exquisite donuts called Dunkers - two inch cakes shaped like a Pierogi for dunking in milk, coffee, or tea. They were of the fry-cake variety and extra crispy on the outside. But the Cadillac breakfast supplement was the glazed dunkers and the Rolls Royce was the Enrobed Donut & Dunker - a great donut enrobed in thick real chocolate.

County Fair Foods, owned and operated for more than 50 years by the Baffes Family, sells Bill Knapp Dunkers.

I have no kids at home . . .at the moment . . .and I dare not buy a box of eight - because I'll ate all eight.

Quality is out there. It is not under Arches, or in a big box warehouse.

Pensions Looted for Profit is Re(a)d Meat - Tim Novak Rides Again!

“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)…

"The old social actionists are largely men of action, doers, not talkers. The new social actionists are intellectuals...They are masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas...They are fervent crusaders." Andrew Greeley - "Catholic Social Action"

I rarely agreed with Fr. Andy Greeley.  Social change is brought about by people who actually, not virtually, do good. Real people, like Father George Clements and  Fr. Dan Mallette actually Marched for Civil Rights with Dr. King, because they followed clerics like Bishop Bernard Shiel who founded CYO - he did not advocate for it.  People in the action have little to do with "do-gooders' who never seem to leave the plush Oak Park and Hyde Park dens. It is easier to get behind masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas. 

Newspapers rarely talk about people in the action, other than snag a quote that justifies the words of an Advocate, Activist, or Office Holder.  Most columnists go to the pap of preachy, pontificating poltroon's who give good prose, like Claypool, Quigley, Schakowsky, Durbin, Quinn and Mell in Chicago because they are policy people and do-gooders. Pap is easy to read and nod-with-ruminent conviction and chew the cud of vegan issues.  A few, like John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, go to people in the action and presents their lives and struggles mired in the bog created by policy wonks.

Investigative journalists, the best anyway, go where facts have ignited a prairie fire.  The worst are jigsaw puzzle masters of making facts fit a narrative.

Reporters, investigative reporters, connect the dots hidden from the public.  Even those of us who read and remember quite a bit have not the time, nor the opportunity to often go 'beyond' the story.  People must do their jobs, raise their kids and the millions of dollars of taxes Progressive thinking political insiders loot from the commonwealth.

I am a pathological reader, I read everything from Cosmo to Commonweal, from Pepsodent tubes to the runic script on top of light bulbs.  Love to read.

I also love to read works that have something to do with the truth.  Editorial boards tend to present only a prefabricated package of political proselytism - Vote for Kim Foxx, or Mark Kirk is not really Dick Durbin's purse puppy.

The Chicago Sun Times, in my opinion, has the wackiest Editorial policy mandate that seems to have been crafted by retired and bonged-up Weather Underground and Catholic Call to Action cranks.  That's just me.

However, I believe that the Sun Times has the best investigative reporters Dan Mihiapoulos, Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, when they are not saddled with editorial constraints, or Andy Shaw and Carol Marin.

Tim Novak is a terrier.  He is the only reporter in Chicago to maintain a jeweler's eye on the connections between the political grifters and the Progressive machine emanating from Hyde Park and Kenwood.

The Fifth Floor, Real Estate, TIFs,  Big banking, the CHA, Slum Lording, Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and the White House are all players with the peoples pensions.

Sewer deals for Daley cousins seem as nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett.

Today, Tim Novak keeps the heat on the most powerful people plaguing Chicago.

Over the past nine years, two nephews of former Mayor Richard M. Daley have been involved in separate plans to redevelop a rundown warehouse on 15 acres of polluted land in Little Village just north of the Stevenson Expressway.
It hasn’t turned out well for Chicago taxpayers.

First, taxpayers have to make up for $4.2 million in city pension money invested on behalf of teachers, police officers and other city workers that ended up squandered on failed development plans involving Daley’s oldest nephew, Robert G. Vanecko.
Now, taxpayers stand to lose another $4.1 million on the same property at 3348 S. Pulaski Rd. That’s the amount of a property-tax break given to a second redevelopment deal for the site.
This one involves Vanecko’s first cousin, Patrick Daley Thompson, an attorney who helped the developers get the tax cut last year shortly before he was elected alderman of the 11th ward — the family’s power base for six decades.

Well them boys are "in the action."  Not for social good, but for profit in the name of Progress. There is so much more and Tim Novak delivers! He connects the dots of the contemporary ledger and double book accounting to the days of yore and actually gives us context that a Chicagoan can sink teeth into and gnaw healthy opinion into being - we are screwed not by the usual suspects, but by the do-gooders!

 The story of how the polluted Pulaski Road property became toxic for Chicago taxpayers begins in 2004, when Daley was still mayor. That’s when Vanecko — his sister’s oldest son — went into business with Allison S. Davis, the Chicago attorney who gave President Barack Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School, and Davis’ son Jared Davis.

Operating under the name DV Urban Realty Partners, their idea was to redevelop properties in some of Chicago’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. And they were aiming to get government pension funds to invest $100 million to bankroll their plans.
They had a hard time securing investments from pension funds, though, until the Chicago Teachers Retirement System agreed in early 2005 to put in $25 million of the money it held toward teachers’ retirement pay.

Then, the pension funds for police officers, municipal employees, city laborers and the Chicago Transit Authority also agreed to invest.
Altogether, the Davises and Vanecko wound up with $68 million from five public pension funds.

Man, if the editorial will of Chicago newspapers matched the grit of some of it's reporters, maybe a couple of dollars might be left in the kitty at the end of a Moody's evaluation.

This is meaty wholesome goodness in font!  It will put off the vegan offal digestions of 'edgy,whip-smart and Progressive voices in our city.

Eat more Chicago! Thanks for the red meat, Mr. Novak!

Why Are 'Useful Idiots" Always Millionaires? From Bill Ayers to Jamie Foxx

No Charmin for using, much less squeezing in Caracass, there Jamie!



Three-year-old Ashley Pacheco cries while receiving an injection as her mother Oriana watches at the University Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela in late August. Two weeks after Ashley scraped her knee, she was screaming in a hospital, fighting for her life as her family scoured Caracas for scarce antibiotics. Venezuela is running short on 85 per cent of basic medicines. As the health care system collapses, the tiniest slips, like a little girl?s tumble while chasing her brother, are turning into life-or-death crises. (Photo: AP)

 “At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.” President Obama 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Actor Jamie Foxx has met with President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Foxx, who won the Oscar Award for "Ray" in 2004, visited Maduro in the presidential palace in Caracas. State media said Foxx was there to support the country's socialist revolution and attend the signing of an agreement between Venezuela and its allies for the construction of houses for the poor.
Foxx posed for photos with the deeply-unpopular president of the economically embattled South American country.
In a national address Tuesday, Maduro praised Foxx's work. Foxx hasn't commented publicly on what motivated his visit.
Several U.S. celebrities have visited Venezuela to support the country's socialist revolution over the years, including actors Sean Penn and Danny Glover.

In 2013, Hugo Chavez kicked the bucket and his apprentice Jefe Maduro took over Venezuela and in three years cork-screwed the population into the ground with miracle of socialism. For three years, the land of Chicago White Sox Hall of Famers Louis Aparicio and Oswaldo José "Ozzie" Guillén Barrios has been plagued with riots, toilet paper shortages empty food shelves and government elimination of human rights.

A three year old girl scrapped her knee and two weeks later, because of the Single Payer Health Care System of Hugo Care, the child was at death's door.  National Socialized Health Care - Compasinos!

This is because, ". . .President Chavez used oil money and foreign debt to fuel consumption and went on a campaign of nationalising private companies — more than 1,000 we are told — that his Government regarded as not working in the interest of the Venezuelan public.
But President Maduro, blinkered by his loyalty to Mr Chavez, has added to the problem, and his policies have taken Venezuela to the sad place it is today.
Surely, the people of this great country, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, deserve much better than this.
The question is: Do they have the will and stamina to continue opposing the Government and the State institutions that support it?"

Nah.

President Obama has not uttered word one about this tragedy on-going daily in South America.

Bill Ayers, a trust fund baby Terrorist of '60's turned "distinguished scholar of education" at University of Illinois Chicago Campus ( Cement City), cut his Marxist baby teeth on Cuban  sugar cane, on money his Daddy squeezed out of Commonwealth Edison users in Chicago.   I imagine the University of Michigan hemp toker had a swell time as Fidel's guest during this halcyon harvest of youth.  I rode the "L" to Loyola, until Jim Molloy offered rides from the south side, while he was in the Police Academy in senior year.

James " Molly" Molloy, like Dan "Sarah" Burns were two Leo High School bad asses given girl's names by  sisters who did not want baby brothers.  Molly became Chicago Police Department Deputy Superintendent under Superintendent Terry Hillard, Dan Burns became a real estate cartographer and engineer and Bill Ayers became a domestic terrorist all around the same time.  I became a high school teacher.

We all did pretty well.  Three of us worked at it and Bill Ayers was handed his and became a leading 'useful idiot.' America has always had useful idiots and almost to a person they were children of privilege - front of the liners, wealthy and not well-to-do.

John Reed
Roger Nash Baldwin
Lincoln Steffens
Armand Hammer
John Dewey
Jane Addams

Bill Ayers' Dad had clout aplenty and he needed his boy Bill's past laundered.  I believe Bill Ayers was laundered by Abner Mikva, Dr. Quentin Young, Richie Daley, Stan Ikenberry, Amalgamated Bank and many others.  In 2008, Bill Ayers' apprentice, Senator Barack Obama ran for and won the Office of President of the United States.  The grey whiskered cane-cutter of the 1960's, was snug on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund. a Distinguished Scholar at Cement City and a frequent visitor of Bolivarista nations in South America, especially Dictator Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Gee, I think that just might be enough links.

Now, I read that Oscar winning actor, comic and TV ad Pitchman Jamie Foxx went down to Caracas to aid President Maduro in his time need and understanding." Foxx posed for photos with the deeply-unpopular president of the economically embattled South American country.In a national address Tuesday, Maduro praised Foxx's work. Foxx hasn't commented publicly on what motivated his visit."

That gives the guy a little wiggle room.  Just visiting a nation without any Charmin to use, let alone squeeze, I guess,

Rather, like the Hollywood clowns who preach about " The More You Know" on TV and shove political, cultural, religious and life-style opinions up the noses of the Americans who made them wealthy people, Jamie Foxx is tending to the 'the right side of history's" knitting.  No doubt for a fee.

The most strident voices for 'social transformation' never walk the walk.

Bill Ayers stayed in capitalist America.

Lenny DiCaprio jets to Global Worming screeds.

They are all pretty much useful idiots for whomever, whatever, or wherever what counts as genuine, historically accurate and true about America a bad thing.

They wear the Armani, drink the Clicquot, drive the Ferrari Sergio and fight the people who maintain all that is true, good and helpful to others.

The useful idiots from Roger Baldwin, to Bill Ayers, to Jamie Foxx will always be around, but they are never with us.