John Kass: Civics Lesson and the Salvation of Fly Over America

John Kass is great writer.  A great writer hammers out or scribbles words that should come as close to the truth as possible and Kass delivers daily.  You might disagree, but truth is all about disagreement.

I say the Nicene Creed at Mass, because I believe the truth of it.  I do so only because 3rd Century Greek speaking and writing Roman bishops and statesmen slaughtered one another from Alexandria to Antioch over the precise wording of the core consubstantiation - three Persons; One God.

Today, Kass's column speaks to the 'concered, thoughtful and serious' voices that are howling like banshees out of range of the public's ear drums. The elites, the artists, the actors, the journalists, the anchors, the professors, the activists and the organizers who were doing so well in the emerging American oligarchy, along with bankers, arbitragers, venture capitalists and short-selling globalists.
Scream democracy, vaporize the middle class and rule is the compelling narrative of any Banana Republic.

 . . .   I'm not even a big fan of early voting. I figure that if voting is actually important to you, then you'll get up on Election Day and get your butt down to the polling place and cast a ballot in person.

Still, if we got rid of the Electoral College, think of the shape of things to come. Soon after, we could have immediate national referendums on almost every important issue. And depending on America's mood, we could swing quickly, one way or another, this way and then back again.

We wouldn't need a House of Representatives or a Senate. Legislation takes too long. The president could appoint governing bureaucrats who would move with great speed. States wouldn't count for much, if anything. They'd disappear eventually, as would the idea that the people of Kentucky might see things differently than the people of New York.

The populated coasts would become supreme. And if California got passionate and wanted Great Lakes water, we'd have a quick national vote on it. Bingo. A pipeline to drain the lakes, and it's done.

We'd have real democracy for a change. And the majority would rule. And that ancient experiment called a republic, designed to be inefficient and slow, to protect the minority view?

Who'd want that anyway?

That is a rhetorical question.  John Kass and you and I know exactly who would want that - the very people who want to rule over everyone else and call it a democracy. We are a Democratic Republic and thank God, all three of him in my home, for that.  Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Franklin were successful, because they were "Stronger Together" - they were like the Arian and Athansian bishops and monks and thugs kicking sand in Alexandia and eventually Nicea.

The Constitution is our foundation because it protects the few from the majority and not fools the majority for the few.

The Elites and their Retainers detest the Deplorables in Fly Over America ( Pittsburgh, Akron, Cleveland, Detroit, Gary, Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth, Davenport, Omaha & etc.) , but last Tuesday some of those Retainers decided they did not like being retained at all and a revolution took place - without one dime of George Soros's money.

Fly Over America was saved from becoming a Hunger Games landscape.

Trump did not do that.

The Constitution of the United States did that.

Bishop Cupich is the New Cardinal Cody

John Cardinal Cody was a sad man, a flawed man and a very small man.  He was a prince of the Church.

Cody took over the Archdiocese of Chicago and immediately fired pastors who built parishes and schools and served the needs of their flocks. Cody never took the time to learn anything about the City and the people he was supposed to serve.  In fact, John Cardinal Cody didn't much care for the people of Chicago. He was Cardinal for a very long time.

Cardinal Cody wanted only good press and powerful financial people to help tighten his grip on the Archdiocese through Project Renewal ( 1965-?) He got both here in Chicago.  He had the media until 1981.  People with wallets and check books loved him; people with change purses, not so much.

Bishop Cupich reminds me of Cardinal Cody - quite a bit.

One of his first remarks to the press seemed to be open slap at the dying Francis Cardinal George, "Wherever I live, I want to have a place where I can get some rest and feel the support of people who are around me,It is a lovely place, and I really want to honor that," he said. "At the same time, I would have to say I'm going to take my time to make that decision. I'm going to see where I can be most effective."

Cardinal George understood that the Cardinal's Residence was the peoples house in this Archdiocese, but the Chicago Media ( Carol Marin, Michael Sneed, Eric Zorn, Jay Levine et al) harped constantly on a priest living in such luxury.  Bishop Cupich is a Media Man.  He crafted a narrative parallel to Pope Francis I and will soon be rewarded with a red hat when he is elevated to Cardinal.

Cardinal George had poor kids from Englewood, Canaryville, Bronzeville and Gresham in as his guests on very regular basis.  He fed them cake, pop and cookies.  He listened to their struggles to avoid the GDs, the Stones and the Irish Deuces.  He prayed with them.  He called Leo High School to ask about their progress and chew them out when needed.

This weekend, Bishop Cupich saw to it that a young girl who texted a racially offensive thought to her friends in her Twitter circle be expelled - Excommunicated  - from Marist High School as a political sop to Pastor Pfleger, Black Lives Matter and Rahm Emmanuel. That made the media happy because damned a whole neighborhood as well.

"Marist High School is a privately operated school in the Archdiocese dedicated to Gospel values," Cupich said. "We support them as they take the necessary steps to deal with this situation swiftly and take appropriate disciplinary action." 

His taking a shotgun to kill a gnat approach to race relations this past weekend went one better gave it to people who have done nothing but live their lives.

"Racism is a sin and has no place in the church, including the Archdiocese of Chicago," said Cupich, who recently was chosen by Pope Francis to become a cardinal. "Our schools must be places where all are respected and the values of tolerance and peacemaking are taught and nurtured." 

The people of Mount Greenwood , the students at Marist High School and all of Chicago did not 

• block a firehouse exit after right lane weaving
• brawl with a firefighter and an off-duty cop
• draw a hand gun and threaten to fire  
• Joshua Beal did that and died as a result

Instead, the media want to replay the 1960's and make Mount Greenwood Selma and Ja'mal Green and Pastor Pfleger the Dr. King twins.  Bishop Cupich joined in the fun. Cardinal Bernardin never called out a high school kid, even when a few beat a kid with bats.  Cardinal George took hurting young men from Chicago's meanest streets and treated them to what a priest is all about and made calls to improve their lives.  The media hated Cardinal George.

Bishop Cupich will have a red hat very soon.  He is Cardinal Cody.

I was at an Ordination Party for a young priests the day Cardinal Cody died.  When his death was announced . . .the prayer was brief and party was back under way.

The Achilles Heel of Western Civilization Bites George Soros Good and Hard.

PHILADELPHIA — George Soros is back.
The billionaire investor, who scaled back his political giving after a then-unprecedented $27 million spending spree to try to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004, has quietly reemerged as a leading funder of Democratic politics — and as a leading boogeyman of conservatives. Politico

 The pop-up, Soros-financed leftist groups like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, even the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against Israel – all based on the left's hatred and prejudice – will vanish as Americans under President Trump go back to work and come to realize that the psychotic jealousy that fuels these groups has hurt and not helped either themselves or our country. Joan Swirsky
Okay. So let's review the Electoral Map:

• New York City - New York state went for Clinton
• DC - went for Clinton
• Chicago - Illinois went for Clinton
• Boston - Massachusetts went for Clinton
• Seattle - Washington state went for Clinton, too

So these so-called protestors are protesting in places that already went for Clinton, rioting, burning, breaking. That's going to earn you a lot of support somewhere along the line? We're missing something here.
Be careful ladies and gents. Second City Cop
 

A louse of the first waters is the James Bond Villain figure and Global Short Seller. George Soros.

He is the only person on this planet to whom I wish to snidely and quietly give the old horse laugh.

Soros is the money roll of the Occupy Movement and its benighted members that are collateral damage in this creeps war on Western Civilization.  Here is Soros weeks before the election.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yfZJmHE89do" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

From the bullhorn Bolsheviks, preening priest and high volume BLM activists plaguing the working families of Mount Greenwood in Chicago to the bust-out capital of California Oakland, George Soros is the guy behind noise, the violence and the blood.

George, you lost a hell of a lot of money, but not nearly as much as you will.

Try and get some sleep.  A really long one would be nice.

Trump Wins - Sarah Palin Did It.

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

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

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

I succeeded on two.

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

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

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

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

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

The lame continue to halt everyone in Illinois.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame on DNAinfo Chicago: All Signs Point to REVCOM Stirring the Hate in Mount Greenwood After Shooting

 

From the Revolution Club, Chicago:
Joshua Beal

November 5—Twenty-five-year-old Joshua Beal

was in town from Indianapolis to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin’s funeral. Joshua was brutally murdered by a Chicago police officer while in a funeral procession. His aunt described him to us: “He [Joshua] just graduated from college, Ivy Tech College in Indianapolis. He was so happy in the graduation. And he was a father of two. Two young boys. He was a dedicated father.”
The funeral procession was driving through the overwhelmingly white Mt. Greenwood neighborhood on the far southwest side of Chicago around 3 pm on a sunny afternoon. This area is a notoriously racist enclave, home to many cops and firefighters. According to witnesses, an off-duty cop in plainclothes tried to force the car Joshua Beal was riding in off the road. Other members of the funeral procession got out of their cars out of concern about the situation. The off-duty cop threatened Joshua's 17-year-old cousin with a gun in her face. A bystander video shows this off-duty cop in street clothes wildly threatening people with a gun, including women dressed for a funeral.

Is that the official media narrative?  No, it has been tweaked a bit. Chicago Police Superintendent decided to call this a "Road Rage" incident which is almost as far from the truth.

Actually, it was just another in a long line pf celebratory gang funerals that plague the 19th Ward.  The right lane-me-first idiocies and blocking the exit of a firehouse sparked the incident and subsequent shooting of an armed idiot.

But we can not allow the facts get in the way of politics and social justice play acting.

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times use the City Hall narrative and the go-to rhetoric of the city sanctioned and Cook County approved lungs of Ja'mal D. Green, who is being groomed by Rahm Emanuel and Toni Preckwinkle for some slot in the Cook County Democratic ticket. Ja'mal undid Bernie Sanders and is out on $ 300,000 bond for assaulting a cop.

Ja'mal has skills.

However, Ja'mal can't do Revolution.  For that he goes to the Pros - Bob Avakian;s REVCOM. The Reds make the signs, bring the bullhorns and stooge goofs to provoke.

The Chicago media completely ignore the influence of REVCOM  - that's Revolutionary Communist Party and Club.  The Revolutionary Club is provided the diversity to a protest - white revolutionaries. ( see photo above - that is the Revolutionary Club of REVCOM)

The Revolution Club brought a Stolen Lives banner into the BK and unfurled it. Many family members gasped, as they looked at the faces of so many others murdered by police. At this point, the Burger King manager announced that the family would have to leave the restaurant. This callous racism was called out by the grieving family members and people from the Club. “This is not Mississippi in 1960. This is 2016.” “They are afraid of too many Black people in this place.” Everyone stood firm, saying, “We paid for food and we aren’t leaving.”
The manager called in the police. The police arrived in force, further crowding the Burger King. They ordered everyone to leave, announcing that the BK was closing its doors early. People were forced outside into the dark and the cold without coats or sweaters.
Outside the BK, protestors from the Black Lives Matter movement began to arrive to support the family. Significantly, two white youth from Mt. Greenwood also joined the group in solidarity with the family. These white youth described the hard-core racism of the neighborhood.
As we were gathering outside, an angry white youth walked up to the Burger King wearing an American flag bandana and a “Blue Lives Matter” t-shirt and carrying a baseball bat. He was led away by police but apparently not arrested, even though he was clearly looking to commit a racist assault. This was in sharp contrast to the fact that some family members in the funeral procession had been arrested by the police. As of early the morning after, Joshua's brother was still in custody, charged with aggravated assault on a cop—AFTER HIS BROTHER WAS MURDERED DURING A FUNERAL PROCESSION!!!
Video taken by a bystander shows off-duty cop waving a gun, shortly before Joshua Beal was killed by another Chicago cop.
Across the street from the BK, a racist mob began to gather. White people with baseball bats out their windows drove by. “N*****rs,” a white man shouted. A group of white people gathered on the same side of the street as the family. Thinking they might be press, someone from the Revolution Club went over. They turned out to be off duty-cops and their friends. They began shouting and chanting, “CPD! CPD!” Drivers going by shouted out, “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
One of Joshua's family members, stunned to see this, talked about how her mother had told her of scenes like this but that in her four decades in Chicago, she had never confronted a racist mob like this. One Club member commented, “This is what the day after the election could look like.” It was really ugly.
The Revolution Club got on a bullhorn and denounced the brutal murder and racist actions and called for people to get organized for an actual revolution, calling on people to come and stand with the family and oppose the outrageous police murder and the racists in Mt. Greenwood. A crowd of people who had been commemorating the birthday of Rekia Boyd—a 22-year-old Black woman murdered by police in 2012—came from the West Side to stand in support of Joshua's family. ( italics my own)

Chicago's DNA Info, most disappointingly, picked-up the Selma theme memes

The pro-police supporters numbered into the hundreds, while less than 20 activists showed to the scene. They faced racial slurs and repeated requests to leave the neighborhood, and police had to intervene between a few incidents.
"It was hectic," said Ja'Mal Green, the activist who called for the Sunday event. "I was in shock the whole time."
Green said he knew what he was getting into, as he had received death threats in the hours after the event was announced. Still, Green said the racism the activists faces took him by surprise and made the group uneasy.  "It really felt like we were back in the '60s," he said. "The rally shows that a black man can be killed by police and they were overjoyed about that." (italics my own)

Ja'mal and the other civil rights reenactors will be back on election day.  After that I expect they will lose interest.

I hope that my neighbors in the 19th Ward totally and completely ignore REVCOM, Ja'mal D. Green, and the White Priestess , or  KIM FOXX, or Rahm Emanuel.

This is an orchestrated attempt to spark hate, violence and hot-mic'd sound bytes from goofs with an opinion.

I am disappointed that DNAinfo Chicago has decided to go-possum like the Trib and the Times and play make-believe social justice warriors.

Peace You Will Find in Riverside

So, I had planned to watch the Cubs Celebrations at McNally's Saloon on Western Ave., notorious these days as a last bastion of White Sox partisanship.  I am a Sox fan, but I don't get my shorts in a knot, if the Cubs succeed - neither does anyone at McNally's - truth be told.

 McNally's stays single-minded about whom backs and  did not change the sign when TYPO went up.

McNally's is a great place to kill and afternoon.

Dim bulbs get outraged, offended and mount social media campaigns in  response to people who just do not shive a git about leaping onto bandwagons, wearing buttons, sports wear, or 'showing solidarity.'

On Tuesday, one of the most obnoxious and embarrassing displays of American stupidity will come to something like an end.  Enough said, about that.

Instead of covering a bar stool and soaking in the authentic atmosphere at McNally's yesterday. I did my baby a solid.  I drove to and walked around Riverside, a suburb of Berwyn, up around 31st & Harlem and hung up flyers for her up-coming Jazz Concert at Sts. Peter & Paul Lutheran Church on Sunday November 20th, featuring the exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan (vocals), Bobby Schiff (piano), Stewart Miller (Bass) and special guest - the great  Art Davis (trumpet and horns). More details on this opportunity to soak real jazz in the coming days.

Yep, I hung paper all over the great village of Riverside.





Riverside is what an ideal town looks like.

The men who planned Riverside were Calvert Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmstead. The streets of Riverside wind and caress the banks of the Desplaines River.

 The homes are beautiful and shout out affluent.  I live west of tony Beverly with homes on the majestic Longwood Drive rivaling Tara from  Gone with Wind and next to Riverside looks like 'Hootin' Holler.'

The town center has a an old world look to it with an almost uniform architecture reflective of some Sigmund Romberg operetta.

Even the Metra Station is something else

Walking the town, especially on river is a treat and I chatted up a couple of guys who were fishing with waders and having no luck, due to the speed of the current.  I pointed to a seven inch Buck Kife laying a few feet from me in about a two feet of water and thge guys named Mike went home with an expensive bit of piscatory cutlery.


Cubs fans were returning from the big day downtown and the universal word about their adventures was "Epic."

I decided to search out and Epic eatery.

Found it less than three hundred yards from the Metra.

Little Bohemian Restaurant sits on a side street near the Chew-Chew tavern and a great little empanadas shop , where I bought Miss Sullivan four of the best (2 beef, 2 spinach) for her evening meal.

Little Bohemian is a place that needs to hugged repeatedly like a sweet, plump Slovak aunt who makes everything from scratch and with love.

One of my psychological triggers is the trend of American sheep to flock to cookie cutter eateries from Coopers Hawk, to Olive Garden, to PJ McSwill's, to the nadir of gormandizing McDonald's and pass up great family owned restaurants like the Golden Steer in Forest Park, Klas in Cicero, Kens in Beverly, Schallers in Bridgport and Club 81 in Hegewisch.  Nothing makes me more postal than this trend - that and our two choices for President.

Little Bohemia serves up great simple family fare - stuffed cabbage, pot roast, meat loaf, duck, chicken and fish with a Bohemian grace and boats of the proper gravy. . .and home made kolaches!



We walked off the lunch again taking the river walks and soaked in sunshine, autumnal colors and very nice people.

Get over to Riverside and chill.  

I Conscientiously Object to Chicago Tribune Critic Michael Phillips

"I respectfully, conscientiously object to the way Desmond Doss has been simplified and sanctified in the movie (Hacksaw Ridge)."  Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
"Hacksaw Ridge" — 2.5 stars

 The extraordinary new film "Moonlight" exerts a tidal pull on your heartstrings, but honestly: It's better than that. The reason it's distinctive has less to do with raw emotion, or a relentless assault on your tear ducts, and more to do with the film medium's secret weapons: restraint, quiet honesty, fluid imagery and an observant, uncompromised way of imagining one outsider's world so that it becomes our own.
Since its festival premieres in Telluride and Toronto, "Moonlight" has been contending with well-meaning, largely misleading labels of "gay coming-of-age film," or "gay black coming-of-age film." True, yes: The writer-director Barry Jenkins, whose previous feature was "Medicine for Melancholy," has adapted an unproduced, semi-autobiographical play by Tarell Alvin McCraney titled "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue." The boy in question, played on screen by three actors at different phases of one young, searching lifetime, copes with being bullied for his apparent homosexuality, which he keeps locked away from nearly everyone, including himself.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
"Moonlight" — 4 stars

I did not see The Passion of the Christ and I will more than likely not see Hacksaw Ridge.  Blood fests do very little for me.  Call me old fashioned*, but I believe that horror is best served off screen. The rules work very well, especially in great theatre, or film.

Catharis, or the purging of our inner demons via the suffering of another is the most powerful element in the very human and community building activity that is drama. Catharis works best without Spectacle - special effects, gore, or pornography.

From the time of Greek tragedy on, up to the 1960's, dramaturgy kept the violence off-screen.  This not some puritanical dictum imposed by people of faith in Zeus, Aphrodite, Pan and Dionysius; it was because the human mind and soul reacts and engages theatrically, when Medea serves up her sons to her fury as a woman in civilization's prototypal feminist role.

Oedipus carves out his own eyes - off-stage and off-screen. Iphigenia leads the Chorus to the sacrificial altar of Aulis, where good old Dad will put the knife to her as an offering to the Olympians, so the Greeks can slaughter Troy, leaving Mom to plot the subsequent blood-shedding to come.

Ask any movie go-er about what was more terrifying, the Linda Blair pea souping of the Exorcist, or this



However, we are told constantly that we are evolved.  We are treated to every spectacle imaginable or Marvel comic possible.  Hetero/Homo sodomy the Norme d'amour, and heads must always explode.

Then we wring hands about people acting out.

Pornography has vanished with Satan**.

Frankly, it is dull.

Critics like Michael Phillips disagree,  They are social engineers using film to change hearts and minds.  Michael Phillips and Hollywood detest Mel Gibson, but I do not believe that Mr. Gibson loses any sleep over that fact.  I find him to be one the naturally great actors and a fine comic as well.

I saw Braveheart - meh.  Too much shouting and gore.

Michael Phillips does not like Gibson's underlying beliefs.

For all sorts of emotional and psychological reasons I'm trying to figure out as a critic and, relatedly, as a human, audiences tend to remember and even admire what traumatizes them in the name of entertainment. But even a film determined to show us the grisliest horrors of war must traumatize and — more palatably — excite in roughly equal measure, in order to make a lot of money.
I think director Mel Gibson's "Hacksaw Ridge" is going to make a lot of money.
Its old-fashioned storytelling collides with new-level gore, gory enough to make "Saving Private Ryan" look like "The Big Broadcast of 1938." The film knows exactly what it's doing, regarding faith-based audiences and war movie buffs. 

Evangelical Christians, Devout Jews and Catholics, as well as arm-chair generals will love this movie.

Phillips can not for the very critically human life of him understand why audiences admire what traumatizes them in the name of entertainment.

Really?

Why only last week, Mr. Phillips wrote this:

 His mother (Naomie Harris, riveting as a loving, hostile paradox of a wreck) has fallen into crack cocaine and a wobbly, sometime relationship with her son, known as "Little."Her disarmingly sweet-natured drug dealer (Mahershala Ali, stunningly good) presents Little with his first serious moral dilemma: Can I trust this man, he wonders, who has become the key role model in the fatherless boy's life? Along with the dealer's live-in girlfriend (Janelle Monae), he offers the boy some solace, a hot meal and, in a key early scene, a trip to the beach that stays with Little long afterward.

Little becomes Chiron in segment two, played by the superb young actor Ashton Sanders, and his mother is now pretty far gone. School has become hellish, and in one especially grueling sequence, Chiron's one steady childhood friend, Kevin, reluctantly joins a group of abusive bullies in a terrible beating. This comes not long after Chiron and Kevin share a clandestine sexual encounter at the beach one night.

Gosh, no trauma there.  The theme is gay sexual-wakening and Chiron is not moving to Gresham, Englewood, or Beverly. The movie seems to be a 'sensitivity recruiting poster' for the African American male.  This will go over like a showing of Birth of a Nation at Louis Farrakhan's restaurant Salaam on 79th Street.

Micahel Phillips also gave the Obama Love Story, South Side With You, Three Stars and said, " 'South side with You' is best taken as a reminder of the value of the slow relational build, of taking your time and actually talking, and actually listening, with someone new. Even if there's not a staggering political future in your shared future."

Moonlight is another such  feel good film, because it flows to the socio-politico values of Hollywood and the elites.

Mel Gibson is playing only to The Deplorables

People who honor valor, selflessness, determination and self-reliance. Can't have that.

The man at the heart of the story does not need this sort of grandiosity. It "works," but it's shameless. And the way Gibson has staged the roughest of the Okinawa footage in the second half of "Hacksaw Ridge," weirdly little of it is from Doss' perspective. Gibson may be intellectually compelled by this pacifist in the midst of hell on Earth, but dramatically he's only nominally interested in how it informed every aspect of his life. In any event, Gibson may not be the director to explore the moral horrors of any war, any conflict. He's too interested in physical punishment to make room for much else, though the recurring images of Japanese (symbols of evil, not men) and American soldiers on fire are thematically linked to the all-consuming fire imagery ingrained in the Seventh-day Adventist beliefs.
"My values are under attack," says Garfield at one point, in a line, surely, that holds personal meaning to Gibson. The director's off-screen trials, alcohol-related run-ins with the law and ragey, anti-Semitic and misogynist comments put him in Hollywood's doghouse for years. But as quickly as they piled on, Gibson's onetime attackers may well pile right back off again. If "Hacksaw Ridge" is a success, Gibson's redemption seems assured. I respectfully, conscientiously object to the way Desmond Doss has been simplified and sanctified in the movie. But Gibson has talent to go with his demons, and someday he may realize it in full.

"My values are under attack,"  every day on the pages of the Chicago Tribune.  And yet, they wonder,  'How Trump?'


*Five Rules of Dramaturgy

• Hamartia - an error in judgment

• Hubris - arrogance, excessive, self-pride and self-confidence

• Anagnorisis - moment of discovery; epiphany

• Peripeteia - change of fortune for the hero contrary to audience's expectations

• Catharsis - purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, PITY AND FEAR (audience)

** Q-How much of a gateway to Satan has been opened by the wide availability of pornography on the Internet?

     A- Porn is a click away. I think it has incredible power of being an addictive activity. I think it’s nothing but objectifying one or both sexes. Sometimes there’s an incredible amount of violence that is attached to it. Depending on the frequency, I do think people’s minds after a while become amalgamated into a life of darkness. And when people are involved in this—it’s usually very hidden, much like Satan, who is hidden—I think it can open doorways to the demonic.

My Safe Space, Detoxing Masculinity and Now I am Afraid of Spiders and Lady Bugs

Fellow men, our self-perceived and peer-enforced inability to personally access and publicly express our full humanity is destroying us. And it’s damaging our loved ones and the world we all inhabit.

None of the men reading this likely see ourselves as anything like a Trump, or a Trump supporter. I know I don’t. But I also know that I have hurt women around me through the kind of masculine (and in my case, white masculine) entitlement that causes people to react to their struggles by identifying with his messages of fear, control and dominance. I have experienced the entitlement to dominate physical and emotional spaces over women. To gaze upon and touch women without their permission. Things I’m not proud of, that I can’t believe I thought were acceptable at the time, for which I have apologized, and from which I’ve learned. At the core of it has been a stunted faculty with emotional processing, where somehow along the way I internalized the idea that the objectification and sexual attainment of women would fill emotional voids for me.

What the dominant culture of toxic masculinity has done to us is unhealthy and unacceptable. I want to heal my toxic masculine coding and build the emotional, analytical and reflective tools to become a better friend, son, partner, neighbor, someday a father, and more. Collectiveaction





My home on Rockwell Street in Morgan
Park of Chicago  was intended to be a safe-space for me, once the kids moved out.  There I could freely explore my place in patriarchy and role in perpetuating the date-rape culture, gun-violence and the objectifying of women, as well as the thousands of  micro-aggressions I crank out by the minute.

 I thought of going to Duke University and signing up for the Man's Project "which sees a cohort of students get together each week to discuss men’s experiences with various elements and intersections of masculinity. In these sessions, they seek to create a male space with conversations focused on inclusion rather than exclusion; to bypass the turning of the shoulder that often happens when men think it’s better to suffer alone in strength than talk in vulnerability, to challenge the way we have traditionally thought of manhood in order to raise the standard of good men in tackling sexism and gender violence."

Instead, I decided to stay in my own safe space . . .with Alan Ford.



I thought about all of  the times that I wished date-rape had happened to me - never did - and I felt bad about it.  It would have been nice, if an exotic Eurasian Babe with legs up to H'yar had knocked me off my stumpy legs, grabbed me by my close-cropped hair with a grip that Janet Guthrie would have been proud of and smooched the hell out of me and then went after my old gigglestick with a gusto!

I've felt worse.

No getting around it.  I am one toxic male. Perhaps, I thought, I am not being vulnerable. Vulnerable is new Invincible!

I love puppies and kittens; rodents, not so much.

I love women's nylons, garters, silkens and satins and fancy things - on them. . . .for a while.

I love Fabric Softener and Wagon Train re-runs.

I love the Wizard of Oz - the flying monkeys and the Cossack guards.

I love Russ Meyer movies, but not Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill Kill - creeps me out.

Both Sides Now, by Judy Collins makes me feel the need to shower.!!

I wish I could still light tire fires under abandoned Viaduct at 75th Place and Wood Street and then look at Jugs and Ammo with Larry Fischeli and Al McFarland.

There I have de-toxed!  Now, to sheet rock the basement, eat a few Slim Jims and watch Roller Derby!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!  A Bug!  A Lady Bug!  Hate them.

Safe Space!

Neil Steinberg! Words that People Say Really Matter, Because They Often Match What People Believe And Do.

 

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

 Obviously, you want Obama elected — the nation will soon realize what it has done, the pendulum will swing the other way — your way. At long last! Ausgerechnet jetzt!
Persuasive stuff. But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009

The immediate snotty crack above followed a series of Sun Times columns by other like-minded writers who hate cops and white Catholics in general that spouted pretty much the same lie. I live in Morgan Park which, like Mount Greenwood, gets grouped in a collective that the media call Beverly or the political landscape of the 19th Ward - home to largely white Catholic, government employees, teachers, nurses, tradesmen, some well-to-do folks, cops and fireman. Many black Americans live very well in this neighborhood as well. I used to meet black gents like Doc and Stewart up at Keegan's Pub having a drink and  a horse-laugh with their paler hued neighbors. Now, Keegan's  is Barney Callaghan's and a younger crowd attend the same salons. However, when I read Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times (without paying for either mind you), one might think that folks spent  all of  their time chasing Eliza over the ice flow on the Ohio River, as the poor child attempts to find the Underground High Speed Railroad. Nope.

Well, Monday was Halloween!  A very nice time for kids and their parents.

Trick, or Treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Note there is no question.  The implied meaning Treats without your windows getting soaped, your front porch egged, or worse. The tricks have gone the way of merry at Christmas time.

We still love Christmas, Hanukkah, or Yule tide, but the concept of being merry in our age could get a some poor slob locked up and wearing a Velcro dinner jacket on the fourth floor of the local hospital,

I glanced at the Sun Times this morning and saw that Neil Steinberg had a scold for people Neil deems stupid - anyone not Neil Steinberg.

He echoes William Butler Yeats's dismissal of 'polite, meaningless words'

People just say stuff.
Such as “How are you?” when they couldn’t care less how you are. And “I’m fine” when they’re not. It’s expected, the grease that society slides forward on. Hardly worth noting.
When it comes to politics, however, this just-say-stuff habit is more worrisome. Then the grease can send our nation skidding off of a cliff of toxic nonsense and paranoid fantasy. Politicians make promises that they can’t possibly deliver. They air claims that can’t possibly be true, that directly conflict what they just said a day or two ago. And their followers, well, follow, saying things they neither mean nor think about.

Yeats meant what he said about the people he met and knew before they 'changed; changed utterly' by British firing squads.  They were the same people, only dead and honored for their deaths in 1916.


Several days ago, Steinberg wrote a piece that was standard if you back Trump you are a racist Cro Magnon, honeyed with William Butler Yeats.

As terrible as the election of 2016 is, it is also only the beginning. Clinton might win — I hold out hope she will win, unless of course she doesn’t. But that won’t be the end. Somewhere, a sharper, slicker, more disciplined, more palatable version of Donald Trump — Donald 2.0 — is being assembled. Some Marco Rubio-caliber fraud is staring hard at himself in the mirror, liking what he sees, and cooing, “Next time, it’s your turn baby!” The rough beast awakes and slouches toward 2020 to be born.

I used to read and like Neil Steinberg.  Then I learned that his words did not match the guy. Where I come from, that is a problem.  Neil might have been well-served taking a graduate course in regular folks.  But, back to the nub. Neil is on a Yeats kick.

He and so many 'journalists, politicians, anchorpersons, bankers, oligarchs, academics and  hacks are worried that Trump might win on November 8th - I don't worry, nor do I believe that he will get by stacked decks.  Steinberg says stuff all of the time and he believes it.  He hates Trump and the people voting for him with the same passion as he hated people for not worshipping at Obama's 2008 Greek Temple. He goes Orewellian Big Brother on them with great regularity.

 

  Then, Neil decides to really gin-up the Two Minutes Hate on the specific people who might back Trump and nail us good:

Such as? Abortion. “Abortion is murder,” the anti-abortion crowd claims. You hear it all the time. First, that’s incorrect. Since murder is a legal term, and abortion is legal and thus it is by definition not murder. What they mean is “Abortion should be murder.” Except they don’t mean that either, as you can demonstrate by replying, “Oh really? If it’s murder, then for how long should the murderers go to jail?” And the answer is “umm.” We can translate that grunt as “OK ‘abortion is murder,’ is just something we say because it sounds powerful and more compact than, ‘I want to force my religion on you while dragging gender roles back to the 1950s.'” Admittedly quite a mouthful.

Quite a mouthful.  You know what they say about people who talk with their mouths full?

Two words - Nuremberg Laws, numb nuts.

Nuremberg Laws and Roe v. Wade. Hitler murdered Jews and Planned Parenthood murders babies.  See, nothing on my teeth and gums.

Words matter and people mean what they say, even if they use Yeats.

Neil went through a Dante period that was equally shallow in 2008-'09. During his Inferno Days,  Neil had lunch at Kens on Western Ave. around the time when Mr. Steinberg's conduct brought public humiliation on him and his tenure as an employee, much less a columnist was doubtful.  Blood under the bridge.  No one forgets a kindness like a guy who believes that he is Emile Zola.   I took Neil Steinberg to Jackie Casto's Ken's on Western Ave. for lunch, where the talented word-sculptor chatted with a thick number of folks who live here, including cops, fireman, school teachers. the Mayor of Evergreen Park, two writers from Beverly Review and a number of Leo Alums who had attended the Veterans Observance.

Generally, when one breaks bread with another person some kind of bond of mutual grace and respect surfaces - not so with too many columnists.  A few months later, Neil smeared the people he lunched with to make a snotty crack about the stupid people who did not vote for and worship Obama in 2009.

Hell, I didn't vote for Obama in 2008, or 2012, because I firmly the believe the man has limited mental capacities - he has yet to disappoint me as our first Ted Baxter President.

I say, "Good Morning,: because I mean that I hope everyone including Neil Steinberg has a very good morning.

Neil Steinberg is a semiotic totalitarian - he and his circle know what meaning is and they will tell us.  He gets caught up in all of that clever Jacques Derrida deconstructionism that journalists employ to white-out events, words, deeds and meanings. Poetry works for semiotic totalitarians.  Me and the neighbors tend to be prosaic.

When I say " Get the @#$% off my porch,"  I don't mean come on in and set a spell.

I am Not A Jew, But I Played With One, As a Kid. Obama's Shinola is Ticking: God Bless Israel!

 Obama wears a Shinola watch; of course he does. "While the main reason for President Obama's visit to Detroit on Wednesday was to shine a light on the recuperating auto industry, he also made a point of stopping by the city's finest watchmaker. Since 2011, Shinola has been crafting American-made timepieces in the Motor City, helping transform its image and neighborhoods along the way. "Esquire.  President Obama is waiting to help destroy Israel and burnish his progressive legacy.

"Does Mr. Obama want to be remembered as the President who criminalized Israeli citizenship," asks the Wall Street Journal

Yeah, I think that he would be perfectly fine with that.  He and Israel's Prime Minister have not been two for a four-some.

Israeli diplomats gird for the possibility that President Obama may try to force a diplomatic resolution for Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations. The White House has been unusually tight-lipped about what, if anything, it might have in mind. But our sources say the White House has asked the State Department to develop an options menu for the President’s final weeks.
One possibility would be to sponsor, or at least allow, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, perhaps alongside new IRS regulations revoking the tax-exempt status of people or entities involved in settlement building. The Administration vetoed such a resolution in 2011 on grounds that it “risks hardening the position of both sides,” which remains true.
But condemning the settlements has always been a popular way of scoring points against the Jewish state, not least at the State Department, and an antisettlement resolution might burnish Mr. Obama’s progressive brand for his post presidency. Wall Street Journal

Have I mentioned that I am of Irish Catholic descent?

No Shinola, Sherlock. I am as Catholic as Tim Kaine, maybe more so.  I know American Catholics who hate Jews and really hate Israel.  I never understood that?   These days, the salt-water Irish I chat with who have come to America from Kerry, Clare, Mayo. Galway and Derry, really seem to hate Israel.  To a person they are very well educated, hard working, fair-minded and generous, but they all seem tained with the Noam Chomsky contrarian mindset, so fashionably sophisticated and European.

That I follow, but can not for the life of me understand.

The Irish and the Jews have had a long and firm grip on one another's suffering, history and contribution to Western Civilization.  The Israeli Defense Forces, fighting for the nation's existence, was formed on the tactics and strategies of the Irish Republican Army of 1921.

Not only were many of the Zionist military tactics in 1940’s Britain and Palestine drawn from pre-war IRA bombing campaigns in Britain but the Irgun was re-organized “on IRA lines”, according to Walton, by Robert Briscoe, father of Fianna Fail TD and Mayor of Dublin Ben Briscoe, who travelled secretly to Britain in the pre-war years to meet and advise Irgun representatives.
Briscoe Senior, himself a Fianna Fail TD for many years, had impeccable IRA credentials. He accompanied Eamonn de Valera to the USA on a lengthy fund-raising trip during the Anglo-Irish war and also was sent by Michael Collins to Germany in 1919 to procure arms for the IRA. A former Chief of Staff of the IRA’s boy scouts, na Fianna Eireann, Eamonn Martin was Briscoe’s best man at his wedding and he hated the British, describing himself in a memoir as a self-appointed professor holding “the chair of subversive activities against England”.
Another Irish Jew who strongly supported both Irish Republican and Zionist terrorism was Isaac Herzog, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland who emigrated to Palestine in 1936 where he was appointed to the chief rabbinate, the most powerful clerical position in the Jewish world. MI5 kept him under close surveillance and asked the Irish police to keep tabs on Briscoe.
He wrote in his memoirs that he elected himself “to a full Professorship with the Chair of Subversive Activities against England,”
 (See more at: )

These facts have been Progressively white-out-ed and erased from historical considerations. Note well, British MI-5 after WWII was run by the Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five's Marxist affections and the Soviets were no friend of Israel.

Over the years, younger Irish people ( under 75) came to believe that Palestinians never slaughtered Jews in 1920s, that the Grand Mufti was a Quaker and that the survivors of Holocaust were everything Hitler said they were in the Nuremberg Laws. They forgot that Sean MacStiophan and Menachim Begin were pals.  This was the result of the Irish Government's BBC culture that sprouted post-DeValera.

However, even after Kim Philby was proven to be a Soviet mole, the Old Boy OxBridge affections for Animal Farm rooted in academia and the BBC nestled in Old Blighty and Old Erin's bogs.

Israel morphed from a harbor from the Holocaust to Nazi Germany in the memes of the elites.

Irish politicians are seem unanimously anti-Israel: Michale Higgins, Enda Kenny, Mary Robinson & etc. Yanks are as bad.

America apes every Etonian fashion from Carnaby Street and Beatlemania to a World Without Borders and the Garden of Gaza. aways a few years behind.  The Brit anarchists were burning tires under viaducts, while Kurt Cobain was learning to string his own Silvertone. Long before Occupy and the Battle of Seattle,  Sophisticates, love Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

I am not that sophisticated.

I know Jews, love Jews, admire Jews and hung around with Jews.  From Danny Levy, Little Flower High School Class of 1970 to Phil Scharf, second violin Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to Si and Shirley Blitzstein who hired Catholic kids from Leo, Brother Rice and Little Flower at Mr. Lee's in the old Evergreen Plaza, I have known only honesty, humor, talent and American patriotism from my Jewish friends and neighbors.

President Obama is sophisticated,

His cabinet is full of sophisticates, like Valerie Jarrett who has done more for Persian hegemony in the world than Cyrus and his Celtic United Nations Ambassador Samantha Powers, who only recently took the side of Israel against the emerging nations dictators and sheiks.



That was in February, and Powers told Israel:

“When we see bias, injustice or the continuation of strife within the United Nations, it is not because the UN created all of this, it is because the UN gathers governments and gathers problems, and being in the UN doesn’t change the biases of those governments,” she said.
Power, whose visit was seen by some analysts as a sign of renewed US interest in jump-starting peace talks, admitted that the situation was not ripe for new negotiations, though the US would continue to pursue a two-state solution.
“I would expect that pursuit to continue, and right now we hope the parties will take steps to move them closer again to restart negotiations, which is not a position they are in now,” she said. “We will dedicate ourselves to that as long as we are in office.”
Power also expressed hope that students participating in the Model UN would soon be able to sit behind a “Palestine placard,” backing the importance of a two-state solution.
“You must strive to wade side by side into the toughest issues, because it is you and your children and the generations following them who will reap the benefits of the peace you’ve built, or else endure the suffering of ongoing strife,” she urged the students.

Things change.  Putin is about to shell Aleppo into dust, the Presidential election is seven days away, Iran and Valerie Jarrett want to make sure President Obama rolls up the carpet on Israel before he leaves office.

The worst option would be an effort to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Security Council setting “parameters” for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The French have been eager to do this for some time, and one option for the Administration would be to let the resolution pass simply by refusing to veto it. Or the U.S. could introduce the resolution itself, all the better to take credit for it.
As the old line has it, this would be worse than a crime—it would be a blunder. U.S. policy has long and wisely been that only Israelis and Palestinians can work out a peace agreement between themselves, and that efforts to impose one would be counterproductive. Whatever parameters the U.N. established would be unacceptable to any Israeli government, left or right, thereby destroying whatever is left of a peace camp in Israel.
The Palestinians would seize on those parameters as their birthright, making it impossible for any future Palestinian leader to bargain part of them away in a serious negotiation. Arab states would find their diplomatic hands tied, making it impossible to serve as useful intermediaries between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It could refreeze relations with Israel even as they finally seem to have thawed.
President Obama may be the last man on earth to get the memo, but after decades of fruitless efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it might be wiser for the U.S. to step back until the Palestinians recognize that peace cannot be imposed from the outside. If Mr. Obama is still seeking a Middle East legacy at this late stage in his presidency, his best move is do nothing to make it worse.

Samantha Powers is an accomplished person who actually wrote her own books and President Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.  Powers has been in the United Nations since August 2013.  Perhaps she has learned to see the world differently.  President Obama is the same man who took the Oath of Office in 2009 - the exact same man.  Valerie Jarrett never leaves his ears.

Many American Catholics who buy into the Social Justice Warrior facade detest Israel and support the Obama Palestinian gambit.  Catholic Activists like Kevin Clark, a member of International Solidarity Movement went Israel and encourage American students to throw themselves in front of IDF bulldozers in Gaza.  The blood of Rachel Corrie, for whom the Irish OXFAM Gaza Flotilla flagship was named, is not on the hands of Israel, but on Clark the Social Justice Warrior.  This guy is bad and he has the ear of Catholic social justice sheep. 

I grew up believing that deeds and not words marked the character of people.

We all can be fooled, tricked, gulled, anesthetized, or  made oblivious.  A few of us don't mind any of the afore mentioned conditions.

My Irish cousins forgot that Israel is not Nazi Germany.  My Catholic coreligionists need to leave moral equivalency to the Unitarians and too many of the other Mainline faiths.

I know that Shinola can be a watch and a swell shoe polish.  I know that Israel is our best friend on the planet.  President Obama?  Not so much.