Social Justice, Pope Leo XIII and the Inauguaration

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need  Karl Marx

Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labour, nor labour without capital. Mutual
agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces
confusion and savage barbarity Leo XIII

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the open form compound word social justice to the year 1824

Cathoic Social Justice began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum.  Prior to that bandits preyed upon peasants, capitalists prey upon workers and followers of Marx preyed on Guilds and the Knights of Labor.

Catholics and many other believers from different faiths were encouraged to seek justice and treat one another with dignity.

Today the acronym SJW is a misnomer. It is now a pejorative tossed at the self-anointed prophets of divisive activism - usually on the left of things.

Yesterday, I gave my Theology III juniors a test on a unit covering Rerum Novarum and the advent of Catholic Social Justice.  The gentlemen did very well.

One problem asked that they identify Pope Leo's 'duties of workers'

• to perform conscientiously the work they have freely agreed to do

• not to damage the employer’s property or resort to violence

• not to have anything to do ‘with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful

promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss’

I asked that they use themselves, when thinking about the workers.  These are sixteen and seventeen year old males. They get it.

Through the past American two holiday seasons,  the news media has flooded the atmosphere with wailing and gnashing of teeth, by our most familiar Social Justice Warriors of stage, screen, television and of course the public teat - our Progressive elected officials.  This torrent of anguish and dire threats about our futures incites anger and uncertainty among the angry and the uncertain.

Today is the day of the dire threats.

FRIDAY J20
Early Morning Blockade Actions:
Movement for Black Lives
Trade Justice
Climate Justice
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Labor Direct Action
The Future Is Feminist
Qockblockade Brigade: Queer Resistance on J20
Communities Under Attack Fight Back!
more to be announced
9am  Outdoor Convergence Space @ McPherson Square opens
10am Anti-Capitalist Anti-Fascist Bloc @ Logan Circle
12pm Festival of Resistance, permitted march starting @ Columbus Circle
2pm Rally at McPherson Square
SATURDAY
Preparing for the Trump Era: What Anarchists Are Doing, 5-8pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
SUNDAY
What’s Next After J20? DisruptJ20 Debrief & Next Steps, 6-9pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
Events in DC

I will teach class.  Then I will correct papers.  Later, I will try and drive to Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL and watch Brother Rice tussle on the hardwood with the Fighting Irish. Tomorrow, I will sleep until 5:30 and do chores. On Sunday, I will attend 8:30 Mass at Sacred Heart Church and then enjoy a jazz concert in Hyde Park, followed by Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap cheeseburgers and fries.

Our 45th President will take the oath of office and move into the White House.

Let's see what happens.  Then let's begin to ignore ‘. . . men(women) of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.’

Old Leo got things right. 

Experience Real Jazz with The Terry Sullivan Trio in Hyde Park: Sunday January 22nd at 3PM

terry

sullivan

trio

in concert  -  fine jazz up close

Sunday, January 22, 2017, 3:00 pm

First Unitarian Church of Chicago                   

5650 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL

Terry SULLIVAN, vocals

Tom MUELLNER, piano

Stewart MILLER, bass

$20 per person, $15 students/seniors

Cash only, at the door only.

Information: www.firstuchicago.org/events or 708/488-1701

Presented by the CHICAGO JAZZ CARAVAN

"Hamilton" Digs Terrorists and Media Swoons. FALN Bomber of the Schubert Gets a Front Row Seat There!

Chicago-bred Rivera, leader of the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation), was among the 200 people granted a pardon by President Barack Obama on Tuesday. A paramilitary organization that advocated complete independence for Puerto Rico, the FALN is said to have been responsible for more than 70 bomb attacks on U.S. targets between 1974 and 1983. Heidi Wesss Chicago Sun Times

Today, lawyers at People’s Law Office serve as legal counsel in the international campaign to free Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, one the longest held political prisoners in the U.S. These same attorneys have worked for decades with international movements struggling for the release of Puerto Rican independentistas, successfully achieving Presidential pardons in 1979 and 1999. More recently, People’s Law Office represented independentista Carlos Alberto Torres, achieving his release on parole in 2010, after spending thirty years in prison. Peoples Law Office

 “I’ve got a show for him in Chicago. It’ll be my honor to play Hamilton the night he goes.”   Hamilton Star and FALN Progagandist Lin-Manuel Miranda Sun Times

Any further evidence that the American News Media needs a trip to the proctologist for a serious cranial removal is completely unnecessary.

Weidy Weiss gushes over Lame Malard Barack Obama's debt to the Peoples Law Office duly paid: the commutation of an FALN Chicago homie with more than 70 bombings under his grandfatherly belt.

The FALN were G. Flint Taylor's salad days, following the Black Panther Shooting.  Not only that G. Flint Taylor the man most responsible for Chicago's Ferguson Effect and Thug Comfort Zone also was treated to the release of a GD warlord*in Obama's farewell goody-bag. However, it is Hamilton's Huzzah and the media's idiotic delight that really hits home,

"As soon as the news that Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera’s sentence was commuted reached Lin-Manuel Miranda, the “Hamilton” creator tweeted that he was “sobbing with gratitude.” And he added that, as a result, he plans to play Alexander Hamilton at a Chicago performance for Lopez Rivera.

“I wish I was with everyone in Chicago right now,” tweeted Miranda, who, as a child, spent many summers with his grandparents on Puerto Rico."

Gee, Imagine the sheer delight of Ethyl Merman when President Harry S Truman commuted the death sentences of the two Puerto Rican gunmen who attempted to kill him on November 1, 1950?

'Give'em Hell' Harry allowed these two freedom fighters to dangle for life, rather than meet Mr. Sparky.

Short memories, thin frames of reference and a daily gorging of bullshit from our American news media explain plenty.  No wonder hip-hop Hamilton is a hit.   It's the bomb!

By the way, Oscar Lopez Rivera bombed the Schubert Theatre here in Chicago, Lin.

*In other action by the president, Eric “Fat Eric” Wilson, a former “governor” in Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover’s drug empire, won a commutation. Obama reduced Wilson’s life sentence to 35 years in prison. Wilson, 47, is being held in the federal prison in downstate Pekin and is expected to get out in about 7 years.
After a high-profile federal trial in Chicago, Wilson and six other ranking members of the Gangster Disciples — and a former female Chicago Police gang-crimes officer — were convicted of engaging in a drug conspiracy. Wilson was sentenced on March 10, 1998, records show.
Hoover is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Colorado. But he was allegedly running a drug empire from state prison in Illinois in the early 1990s, giving Wilson and his top gang associates orders from behind bars. The key evidence at Wilson’s trial was Hoover’s own secretly recorded words from private meetings in state prison with his trusted lieutenants.
So-called governors like Wilson were responsible for large areas of Gangster Disciples territory, with hundreds of gang members reporting to them, prosecutors said. At the time, then-Cook County State’s Attorney Jack O’Malley called the group an “evil menace to our society.”

Second City Cop Provides " The DOJ Report on Policing; by Dummies and for Dummies"

I have always said that the some of smartest people on earth are ER nurses, fire fighters and cops.  I am a high school teacher.

ER. nurses, fire fighters and police officers witness man and his works at the most crucial and actually do something about it with hearts, heads and hands.

Most other vocations play it.

The Department of Justice issued a rushed, pre-fabricated and hateful tome condemning police officers, not the oily and cowardly politicians and grifters who make police policy, as racist, trigger happy brutes.

A cop, The Second City Cop, who works as a cop and citizen journalist has studied 2/3rds of this weighty smear and provides some insight to the arch-manipulators who have created Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone.

This is a DOJ Report for us Dummies ( civilians):

DOJ Report
So we're about two-thirds of the way through, but far enough along to have drawn certain conclusions and formed opinions. This was put together by a politicized Department and an obviously partisan Administration for the sole purpose of advancing an agenda. That Hillary lost lent an unseemly speed to the conclusion and de-legitimizes many of the supposed "findings."
Evidence of haste can be found almost immediately:
Page 2, paragraph 3: 60 ride-alongs
Given that there are 279 police beats, three watches, that's 837 potential ride-alongs. Not to mention rapid response, traffic, 06, tact, saturation, gang enforcement, boats, horses, god knows how many administrative and undercover beats, there's probably nearly 1,200 potential ride-alongs in a 24 hour period. The DOJ claims they spent "300 person-days" here, that's 360,000 opportunities to ride-along.
.016% - sixteen thousandths of one percent
We've taken a few math courses in our time and this isn't even close to what would be considered a valid statistical representation. There's more:
340 individual CPD members (out of a supposed 12,000 - 2.8%)
1,000 community members (.037% of 2.7 million)
90 community organizations (out of ?); are any citizens listed above part of this group?
"family members of individuals who were killed by CPD officers" (how many were justifiable shootings?); and again, are these persons from either of the previous groups?
"local researchers, academics, and lawyers who have studied CPD extensively for decades (gee, lets guess - Futterman, Ayers, Loevy, Protess - how close were we?)
In other words, people with ingrained prejudices against the police, people with histories versus the police, people whose livelihood relies on suing the police - people with axes to grind. How many of these "interviewees" fit into one or more of those categories? How many were selected at random, or did they all volunteer to come forward with their stories? We know that certain retirees who left or resigned under investigation were all to eager to sit with the DOJ to air their supposed "grievances."
More importantly, how many of these stories fall outside the supposed window of 2011 to 2016? Some? Many? All? We don't know because in every single example cited throughout the report, no dates are given. Some of these stories could be ten or twenty years old. Maybe more, seeing as how they bring up Burge who has been gone for almost 25 years now.
A slapdash report like this, with minimal footnotes and references, calls into question the validity of the rest of the "conclusions" if they're based on faulty metrics. But don't expect a lazy media in thrall to Rahm and his cronies to take any serious look behind the curtain.
Labels: info for the police

Thank you Officer, stay safe and stay fetal for as long as clowns make policy.

 

Trump Should Ignore Inaugural Protestors, Critics, & Cry-Babies and Party Like Andy Jackson

The true Lion of African America, Frederick Douglas once said, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress.”  President-elect Donald Trump struggles to calm Hollywood, CNN, MSNBC, Mark Ruffalo, Judd Aptow, Debra Messing and the cast of West Wing.  Looks like progress, once President 45 gets past the Inauguration.

PC and boneless carbon footprints must have their bubble wrap.  Bruce Springsteen will not play at the White House.  I am not sure that he was asked, but that's cool.

I'd be thrilled with Rick Kay and the Allnighters!

If I threw a party and the local COEXIST crank and NPR addict refused to grace my heaving board of delicacies like  " lobster de Bretagne in a sauce of lobster roe and caviar; bass with cockle jelly and a jus mariniere; Challans duck breast with seared foie gras in a bitter-chocolate and orange-powder sauce; and tarte Tatin and other French desserts, all of it served with well-chosen wines,"  I would not weep.  More for my guests, and no goof taking ziplocks home.

If the pole dancers from PoleKatz scorned my invitation to pick up a few dollars entertaining my guests on Deck Hickey, because of my forty plus years of service to inner city youth and daily Mass attendance, I'd hire Terry McEldowney and Whitey O'Day for some wholesome sing-alongs.

If you hate me, swell.  Take it on the heel and toe.  If you believe that I have 666 on my forehead and a family of five in my basement freezer, let me get you a drink . . .Six pack to go!

Why worry about who is not attending your party?

So long as dips are tasty and edible: not knocking off the caviar and boring people through a wall, all is well.

I get up a very special cherry and lime flavor of bile whenever I hear or read about some nobody vowing to avoid Trump's Inauguration, or intention to disrupt the same.  Who cares?  Do it. Keep it to yourself and do it, already.

Others are 'serious' - Reds, Anarchists, Michael 'Michigan Fats' Moore, International Solidarity Movement and Bill Moyers.  No sweat. American Reds tend to be entitled suburban sissies and homely girls who can't get a date on a bet.

Most are about as sincere in disrupting the Inauguration as they were about blowing the country ( no, I do not mean Madonna) after November 8th, 2016.

Mr. Trump responds to these silly saps with Tweets.  Why bother

At most, Mr. Trump should respond to such threats with a Tweet of thanks, "Dear Humanity for ProgressStandUS for US, Melania and I delighted that you will be unwilling to join the fun with us.  I will give your Goody bags to the homeless. Keep a good thought, if you have one.  Don"

Donald Trump should party like it's 1829!

That was the wildest party the old Executive Mansion ever tossed.  Andy Jackson had concluded an ugly, divisive and violent Presidential Campaign:

To set the scene, President Jackson had been involved in two nasty presidential campaigns against John Quincy Adams. Jackson lost the 1824 race in a runoff election in the House; he won the 1828 presidential campaign in one of the dirtiest, meanest campaigns in American history.
Both sides were ruthless in the campaign, including charges from Adams’ side (which weren’t new) about the character of Jackson’s wife, Rachel. A month after the election, Rachel Jackson died, and the president blamed his political enemies and their rumors for her death.
Jackson had a huge, popular following, and his inauguration was a sea change for American politics.
A crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 people showed up at the Capitol for the inauguration, some traveling from 500 miles away for the event. The sight stunned Washington society and Jackson’s political enemies, who already feared “mob rule” under Jackson.
The 61-year-old Jackson gave his inaugural address and promised to do the best job for the people. But the first crowd control problem happened after his speech. A cable snapped that held back the crowd in front of the president, who was on the Capitol’s steps.
His team ushered President Jackson back inside the Capitol for his own protection. But then the president mounted his own horse, and he rode through the crowd to the White House.
Another crowd was already outside and inside the mansion, as the tradition of the day made inauguration day an “open house” for the White House. In theory, anyone could show up, shake the president’s hand, and maybe have some punch and dessert.

My kind of party.  No engraved invitations, just pack the hall with happy people.

As it is, January 20th will come and go. President Trump will take office and the boneless will continue to go blue in face.

When the Party is over, get to work -there is a lot of it.



Me?  I'll be taking in the Brother Rice v. Bishop McNamara Basketball game in Kankakee, Illinois*!

*Basketball SV @ Bishop McNamara H.S. (Frosh @ 4:15PM / Sophs. @ 5:45PM / Varsity @ 7PM)
Fri, January 20, 4:15pm – 5:15pm
Where 550 W. Brookmont Kankakee, IL 60901
Facility: Bishop McNamara H.S.  FROM: 4:15 PM  Visit http://schedules.schedulestar.com/Brother-Rice-High-School-Chicago-IL/day/01-20-2017 for more information!

If "Shootings" Kill People, Why Are Cops The Only Ones to be Blamed for Deaths?

Beating harms female police officer - Media nonplussed: How could such a thing occur? N.B. Thirty-one officers were shot at in 2016, a 82 percent increase over 2015 numbers, the Chicago Police Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Only 17 officers were shot at in 2015. Second City Cop

Nine officers reported gun-shot wounds in 2016, the CPD told The DCNF, but zero died as a result.

CHICAGO — Shootings have killed 3 people and wounded six since Friday, police said.  DNAinfo
CHICAGO ---- 4 dead, 11 wounded in city shootings  Sun Times
CHICAGO ----Man wounded in Englewood shooting  Sun Times
CHICAGO ----Chicago officer shoots man suspected of being involved in shooting  Chicago Tribune

The media is sneaky but rather obvious. Shootings just happen - you know gun violence.  Guns are not inanimate objects they are willful beings, when owned, operated, or within the proximity of a Chicago Police Officer.

The DOJ Report confirms the scripted narrative developed over thirty years for the ink slingers by the Peoples Law Office, Bernardine Dohrn, MacArthur Center for Justice, G. Flint Taylor,  Jean Maclean Snyder, Dave Protess and the Innocence Project, Northwestern Law, Northwestern Medill School of Journalism, University of Chicago, Pastor Pfleger and the Faith Community of St. Sabina, Llc., WTTW, WBEZ, Chip Mitchell, Jamie Kalvan and the Invisible Institute, and the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization.

Every newspaper and every media outlet in this dim-bulb burg of whiners and hand-wringers is wild with joy and the promise of more Hope and Change withe 'landmark, watershed' DOJ screed typed by the underlings of Loretta the Tarmac Lynch.

Please notice that shootings is a verbal - a noun: the act of shooting a firearm, bow, or the like.

Shoot is a transitive verb - blaze, bolt, burgeon, clip, fly, germinate, rise, spring, vent, whip out and requires a subject - a Police Officer, a nasty systemic racist Burge-happy, soulless, sexist, homophobic, Trumpolicious cop.

Shootings are just magically blameless.

There is only one media in this dim-bulb burg of whiners and hand-wringers. Solidarity is what it is all about. This media is told what to write and it is in complete Solidarity with the tellers.

However, there is still John Kass ( "It wasn't the Chicago cops who shaped the police culture. The political corruption and cynicism of politicians over decades in a one-party Democratic machine town shaped the culture")and citizens like you.  Let's toss back some old-timey Solidarity at them!  Buy no papers, click off WTTW, NPR, WBEZ and talk to your neighbors and the cop on the corner for news.

 Solidarity.

The DOJ Report on CPD Should Not Be Tossed Aside Lightly, But Thrown in the Lake With Great Force!

The Chicago Police Department is stuck in the Stone Age — from training that relies on 35-year-old videos to outdated pursuit tactics that imperil suspects, officers and innocent bystanders, according to a scathing 161-page report just released by the Justice Department.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called for sweeping changes in a department she said engages in a “pattern or practice of use of excessive force.” Sun Times nodders: Mick Dumke and Frank Main

 "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." Dorothy Parker

Sounds like Frank and Mick are just pleasured by Lorrreta's cruciation of Chicago's cops.  Cromagnon CSI?    Those two are loo-loos.  How about a chorus of Alley Oop, sweethearts?

The great Dorothy Parker knew how to handle typing, as opposed to writing.  Writing conveys a message of universal truth in an act of bringing people together. Typing is something toddlers, chimps and government bureaucrats do when they get their chubby digits on the keyboard.

Will I take the time to read Tarmac Loretta's hurried and pre-cast Department of Justice philippic on policing?  Only if I run out of Pepsodent toothpaste tubes* to  delight, for ornament, and for enabling insight into tooth decay (sodium flouride 24% brightens teeth and srengthens enamel: sorbitol watre, hydrated sillica, PEG-8, sodium lauryl sulfate, SD alcohol 26-B, flavor, ceelulose gum, sodium saccharin and titanium dioxide) and I have a store of six at time of writing, not typing.

No.  I will not waste the time and talent afforded to me by our Lord and Savior.

I know what it is in the thick ream palaver.  Nothing.  Unless, I am very wrong,  nothing will be said about the personal involvement of Mayors and their politically appointed, advanced over worthy officers in covering up their crimes, the crimes of their kin, the crimes of their political peeps, the crimes of criminals necessary to advance voter intimidation, nor the advent of  University power political corruption.

There will be no time-line highlighting patient and methodical coopting of the press by Peoples Law Office, The Innocense Industry and Loevy & Loevy going back to the advent of Daley's infatuation with Harris School of Poverty and G. Flint Taylor's Wednesday night workshops at University of Chicago on how to subvert law enforcement, justice, feel good about yourself and make tons of taypayer dollars.

The Creation of Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone is the work of political opportunists, phony preachers, pastors, the press, Marxist ambulance chasers, activists spawned by street cash, and people like Loretta Lynch.

Back to Pepsodent! "ther's a man in the funny papers we all know/he lived way back a long time a-go -woe! . . . Ride, Daddy, Ride!"








*Pepsodent is an American brand of toothpaste with a minty flavour derived from sassafras. It has been owned by Unilever since 1942, except in the US and Canada, where since 2003, it has been owned by Church & Dwight.

Ode To Klas: Bohemian Restaurant Icon to the Tune of the Stone's "Last Time"

Klas is closing its doors.  Klas is located on the street named for Chicago's best known Bohemian Anton Cermak and therestaurant that once served as a meal/meeting destination for Al Capone. Another landmark Chicago family restaurant disappears.  

My God, what is next?  The magnificent Italian strip in the Heart of Italy?

The food was exquisite and atmosphere delightful.  It was no faux-hipper-than-thou foodie mecca surrounded by tinted glass, chrome and zinc bar affectations.  It was gloriously Old World - not global.

I will miss this place, already panged by the thought that another piece of solid Chicago is tossed into the Orwellian memory-hole.

Others feel the pain.  My pal Daniel Kelley, attorney and Chicago folklorist and Chicago's greatest historian Richard Lindberg forwarded this poem/parody to the tune of the Rolling Stones - last time.

Ode to Klas ( This Could be the Last time)by Jim A. Moran
“This Could Be the Last Time”

Well I told you once and I told you twice
I like my dumplings washed down with Weiss
Oompa bands try very hard to please me
Where the potato pancakes go down so easy
Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I dont know. oh no. oh no
Well, I’m sorry girl but I can’t stay
My beef ghoulash is on the way
When Klas shuts down there’ll be much sorrow
Gonna get weiner schnitzel there tomorrow
Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I dont know. oh no. oh no
Well I told you once and I told you twice
Kolackies are included in the price
But here's a chance to change your mind
cuz I’m going there for pork tenderloin
Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I dont know. oh no. oh no
Well, this could be the last time . . .

James A. Moran

Sounds like it is, Jim. 

Trampas or the Virginian: Trump and The Spooks and the Supine Media

 

Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect.
The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair - and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published.
'Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,' he said.
'Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI.
'That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.' The Daily Mail

“the document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent.” Ben Smith Buzzfeed

Super. Pretty wet out there with all the leaks, Golden Showers, Sobbing spooks and CNN unabe to fathom the fact that the Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to work.

So yesterday the media and the clubby spooks got a nose bleed.

I immediately thought of Owen Wister's great novel - The Virginian.  This is a novel more about the constructive and community forming application of words, than it is about the single show-down and gun play.

The character known as the Virginian is opposed to the glib, cowardly and shameless Trampas.  The Virginian will allow a friend, a person with whom he has shared danger, laughs and a few drinks, to call him an S.O.B. any minute of the day.  He will not tolerate, however, any malicious tag to sit in his aura for a second.

Five or six players sat over in the corner at a round table where counters were piled. Their eyes were close upon their cards, and one seemed to be dealing a card at a time to each, with pauses and betting between. Steve was there and the Virginian; the others were new faces.

“No place for amatures,” repeated the voice; and now I saw that it was the dealer’s. There was in his countenance the same ugliness that his words conveyed.
“Who’s that talkin’?” said one of the men near me, in a low voice.
“Trampas.”
“What’s he?”
“Cow-puncher, bronco-buster, tin-horn, most anything.”
“Who’s he talkin’ at?”
“Think it’s the black-headed guy he’s talking at.”
“That ain’t supposed to be safe, is it?”
“Guess we’re all goin’ to find out in a few minutes.”
“Been trouble between ‘em?”
“They’ve not met before. Trampas don’t enjoy losin’ to a stranger.”
“Fello’s from Arizona, yu’ say?”
“No. Virginia. He’s recently back from havin’ a look at Arizona. Went down there last year for a change. Works for the Sunk Creek outfit.” And then the dealer lowered his voice still further and said something in the other man’s ear, causing him to grin. After which both of them looked at me.
There had been silence over in the corner; but now the man Trampas spoke again.
“AND ten,” said he, sliding out some chips from before him. Very strange it was to hear him, how he contrived to make those words a personal taunt. The Virginian was looking at his cards. He might have been deaf.
“AND twenty,” said the next player, easily.
The next threw his cards down.
It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not speak at once.
Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a—.”
The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: “When you call me that, SMILE.” And he looked at Trampas across the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their positions.
“Sit quiet,” said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. “Can’t you see he don’t want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to back down or draw his steel.”
Then, with equal suddenness and ease, the room came out of its strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco, glasses lifted to drink,—this level of smooth relaxation hinted no more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of the sea.
For Trampas had made his choice. And that choice was not to “draw his steel.” If it was knowledge that he sought, he had found it, and no mistake! We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to style “amatures.” In no company would the black-headed man who had visited Arizona be rated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation.
One doubt remained: what kind of a man was Trampas? A public back-down is an unfinished thing,—for some natures at least. I looked at his face, and thought it sullen, but tricky rather than courageous.
Something had been added to my knowledge also. Once again I had heard applied to the Virginian that epithet which Steve so freely used. The same words, identical to the letter. But this time they had produced a pistol. “When you call me that, SMILE!” So I perceived a new example of the old truth, that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life. The Virginian Owen Wister (emphases my own)

The Media makes me want to shower.  The spooks ?  Who knows from spooks?

Obama's Long Goodbye and No, We Kant.

Gotta say, I am no fan of the President.  I set the bar of expectation for the man himself long ago.

 He rubbed me the wrong way, when I tried to secure scholarship funding for the families of Leo High School students in the mid and late 1990's, when young Mr. Obama was executive director of the Woods Fund and a director of the Annenberg Challenge.  I found him arrogant, snotty, full of himself and not very bright.  Each subsequent meeting with him lived up to my low expectations.

What do I know?  He rose to become not only an appointment on charity boards and an adjunct faculty member at University of Chicago, but an Illinois Senator, a United States Senator, Nobel Laureate, touted to be a Constitutional Scholar and a two-term, wildly popular American President.

I caught his farewell speech on WTTW.

Many first person singular  personal  pronouns and pious platitudes.

So I first came to Chicago when I was in my early twenties, and I was still trying to figure out who I was; still searching for a purpose to my life. And it was a neighborhood not far from here where I began working with church groups in the shadows of closed steel mills.
It was on these streets where I witnessed the power of faith, and the quiet dignity of working people in the face of struggle and loss.  

(CROWD CHANTING “FOUR MORE YEARS”)

I can’t do that. ( belly laughs abound)

Now this is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, and they get engaged, and they come together to demand it.

After eight years as your president, I still believe that. And it’s not just my belief. It’s the beating heart of our American idea — our bold experiment in self-government.

And etc,


It was pretty much a validation of the opinion of himself that he shares with the thousands of people who waited in line, braving the Chicago low temps and cutting winds to clutch a single ticket for this speech and the legions of People Like You at WTTW, CNN, ABC,CBS, NBC, MSNBC, the chicago Tribune & Sun Times, Hollywood and with Goldman Sachs.

It has been a wild ride, alright! The President offered a litany of the great things he believes that he accomplished, set right,  shared and made just for the "the waitress, the laid off factory worker," who voted for Donald Trump and reminded America of Jim Crow and Atticus Finch and that politics is a battle.  Been there and heard that for years.

What plugged me between the horns was this, " It is that spirit — it is that spirit born of the enlightenment that made us an economic powerhouse."

Really?

Immanuel Kant was a founding Father?  Rene Descartes needs a musical too?  Johnny Locke and Spinoza were captains of industry?

I am going to miss President Obama's nattering, but not for real long.

Okay, what's for breakfast?  How about  McCann's?

 

  It is that spirit — it is that spirit born of the enlightenment that made us an economic powerhouse.  Now, that's enlightened!

Snow, Man, and'The Snow Man' Makes it Better! Behold Nothing That is Not There!

Well, so far I have had to use the trusty old MTD ( recently serviced by the estimable Mike Green) this winter.

We have been promised Snowmageddon again.  The Farmer's Almanac predicted a real bone snapper.

Thus far, but a dusting this A.M. - can't worry about accumulation. All a body can rightly do is praise the Lord and plow.

It's winter neighbors.  We get snow.

Here is a brilliant way to get over ourselves and revel in God's winter weather work - The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;  

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter  

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,  

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place  

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Like a snow man, Stevens built upon three - five triplet stanzas.  Each 'snowman' relies upon 'perspective.'  We each and everyone of us look at the cold hard facts out there and each of us comes away with a different perspective.  The facts are supposed to dominate us, like a Tom Skilling warning of 'temperatures at Zero and wind chills down to negative fifteen.'  Tell that to a troop of eight St. Cajetan fifth grade boys on a snow day and the chance to sled down Beacon Hill at 107th & Longwood Drive.  Tell that to their teachers who have a day off! McNally's, Ladies!

Science, hard facts and snow mean something.  Never the same thing.

12 Years is all that is Required to Examine Obama's Presidency and You Thought Getting His College Records was Tough

           

   

By late morning Tuesday, Chicago seemed to have been taken captive – albeit willingly – by plans for an enormous election party in the city’s front yard, Grant Park, where Senator Barack Obama, would spend election night. Monica Davey reported throughout the day from park. By the time of Mr. Obama’s victory speech, according to city officials, an estimated 240,000 people had gathered in the park and its surrounding streets.  New York Times November 5, 2008

 But consider, too, the intangibles of his legacy, things that Chicagoans share and will pass on about Obama to our next generation because we were there from the start.
No matter our political ideology, race, gender, religion or income, we have a story to tell. We were there when a state senator from Hyde Park with a funny name catapulted from Springfield to the White House — with a brief stop in the U.S. Senate — all in the span of about four years.
A Chicagoan broke a racial barrier and became the nation’s first African-American president. And then he won a second term, running both national campaigns from headquarters in downtown Chicago.
We can’t sugarcoat this: Chicago has been grappling with persistent problems with violence these years while Obama has been in the White House. The city’s longstanding, race-related problems and festering issues with the police department did not vanish just because Obama was the president. There were 780 murders in Chicago in 2016.
That doesn’t diminish the fact, though, that Obama is “indelibly in the fabric of Chicago, the history of Chicago,” said Bill Daley, a former Obama White House chief of staff who is part of Chicago history himself as the son and brother of Chicago mayors. " He Made us all proud"  Lynn Sweet Chicago Sun Times January 8, 2017

Sorry, Lynn. Just not seeing it.

President Obama's Legacy is vanishing.  Not because of Trump, or Republicans, but because of the very thin-skinned and prickly man himself.

His last days in Office have been tantrums, terrorist releases, land grabs and brag fests to his pet media lap-dogs, like Carol Marin and other sycophants.

He believes that if you want to know about him, ask Hollywood, watch South Side With You  and the up-coming box-office stinker Barry, ironically about top-secret college days.

The genuine man, the man I have met, spoken with and remain thoroughly underwhelmed by, is pretty much the man I refused to cast a vote for in 2008 and 2012 - a thin-skinned, prickly, egoist with a genuine lack of gravity, substance and people skills. I found him to be rather a dim bulb, as well. That's just me.

His term of office never let me down. I had set a very low bar for him long before he announced for President.

Historians and regular people who deeply and passionately fell in love with the man image, fabricated by Valerie Jarrett, Desiree Rogers, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and the Brothers Daley between 2004-2008, remain so and may never know what happened in America for eight years. They will not be moved, but they will forget.

Obama had his college records disappeared, he had his work for Bill Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge suppressed at University of Illinois Chicago library and last July did the same for his Presidential records.

Obama ordered his Presidential Records to be suppressed for Twelve (12) Years:

The letter, released to POLITICO on Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, also indicates that Obama is exercising his rights to put many of those records off-limits for 12 years after he leaves the presidency later this month. While the move could be seen as at odds with Obama's frequently stated commitment to transparency, it's a step other recent presidents have also taken before leaving the White House.

Well his legacy will vanish of its own accord.  Eventually the passionate people who wept real tears of joy in Grant Park  and around America on November  5th in 2008, or thousands of Chicagoans who stood in single digit Chicago arctic wind outside of McCormick Place to secure one (1) ticket to Obama's Farewell Speech tomorrow night, will wonder what exactly was it that Obama actually had done for eight years, besides, party, vacation, golf, bow, divide races, fire military leaders, bitch slap America's history and people, draw red lines and smirk.

Gold, Frankincense and Murph

They came into the house and saw the young
child with Mary, his mother, and they fell
down and worshiped him. Opening their
treasures, they offered to him gifts: gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, or the visit of Wise Men (Magi) to the Holy Family.  This is a wonderful feast, recorded in the Gospels and celebrated throughout the Christian world.

When we were kids we called it Greek Christmas.   It is their Feast of Lights, celebrated as the emergence of the Church of Christ into the light, after three centuries of life in the catacombs under Roman persecution.  Our Greek buddies had two Christmas celebrations and our Jewish pals had Hanukkah which was a prolonged series of gifts as well.  We did Ok.  Only suckers beef.

You see for the Greeks and the Eastern Rite Churches The Epiphany encompasses not only the birth of Christ, but also celebrates the Baptism of Jesus, the visit of Magi and Marriage Feast Cana.

To us Catholics, Latin Rite, we think only about the visit of the three Wise men.

Theologically, it was the Greek Rite that has the more elaborate sensibility. The Eastern Orthodox patriarchs of the early Christian Church fused the Theophony of Christ ( Nativity) and the Epiphany of Christ ( the appearance of ) as the Body of Christ ( the Church) emerging to the light.

When I was a little guy, I got a particular kick out of the three Magi.  Two white guys and a black dude, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. How the hell we came up with those names is a wonder because none of the three Gospel accounts mention their names.  Ok by me.   They, to me, were like Bob Hightower, Pedro, and the Abilene Kid from the Three Godfathers.   They were like my many uncles who dropped off gifts, unannounced and for no reason other than they thought of me.

To the Christ Child the Magi brought gifts.  Until I was in third grade, I was totally flummoxed on their holiday selections: gold, frankincense and mur. . .murph.

For years I thought it was Murph, like my Dad's cousin Bart Murphy, who played for the Leo Lights in 1945.

I did learn that it was; Myrrh was an oil used for anointing Kings.

Gold, I could understand. Everyone needs some walking around money; especially a young Jewish couple on the bad side of King Herod and flopping in a stable.

Frankincence was a perfume, or kind of incense that made sense - in stable and new born baby and all.

But Myyrrh?

Oil - like the stuff we oiled our Wilson, Rawlings and Spaulding mitts with, sticking a baseball in its hollow and tying it up tight for a few days.

Oil makes things soft in order to make them tough.  Tough is pliable, durable, but never hard,

Hard is ruined.  Leaving an un-seasoned baseball glove out in the rain made it hard, brittle and useless.

Oil is for annointing us, toughening us and keeping us from becoming hard.  It is probably the best gift of the three.

Four hard people tortured a special needs kid, this past week.  Stone hard killers continued their work here in Chicago.   A hard man killed gunned down innocent people in Florida,  A hardened terrorist ran a truck into and killed four Israeli soldier.  At every ramp on every expressway, people with a hard road will beg for change and some of us will harden our hearts to them.  It is 18 degrees and they are asking for a little help.  I saw a couple load up on surf and turf at the Golden Steer on Friday night and leave no tip whatsoever.  People need some myrrh.

A hard guy can never ever be a tough guy.

Wish St. Matthew had written, "they offered to him gifts: gold, frankincense, and oil."  I went a long time thinking it was Murph.

Meet the Press - They Do Not Respect You

 Police said the incident began when an off-duty Chicago firefighter began to argue with motorists in the funeral procession who were blocking a fire lane. Police said the argument became “verbal and physical.”
Beal’s family members have said the incident began when an off-duty police officer tried to run one of their relatives off the road. Sun Times Frank Main &Mitch Dudek  

The shooting, which took place three days before Donald Trump's election as president, happened in Mount Greenwood, a largely white enclave heavily populated by police and firefighters on the mostly black and Hispanic South Side. Dueling protests followed, and the groups traded racial slurs and insults; supporters of the police, largely white, made clear those protesting the shooting, mostly black, were not welcome in the neighborhood. Chicago Tribune - Elvvia Malagon

         Kofi Ademola is a community organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago and has been in                    regular contact with the Beal family since the fatal shooting.

He had not spoken to the family Thursday but reached out to offer some encouragement during this difficult time. Ademola said the family was already grieving when Beal was fatally shot. And now they are dealing with the arrest of Beal's brother Michael, who was taken into custody following the shooting for allegedly tackling with the officer and attempting to grab his gun.
For Ademola, what stood out among the new information was the 911 call from the officer. He said the officer's tone backs up the family's claims that painted the officer as both "aggressive" and "antagonistic." DNAinfo Kelly Bauer and Howard Ludwig

The media comments on a shooting that took place in November.  The accounts of the video released by the lame-duck Independent Police Review Board and soon to be Rahm-reconfigured as COPA, indicate a good police shooting.

Meet the Press!

None of the above reports from today's sources are accurate.  The funeral possession went on without the family Beal - they were weaving in and out of traffic, one vehicle was doing a U-Turn on 111th Street at Troy and then blocked the entrance to the FIRE HOUSE - which dispatches an Ambulance to black and white residents of Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood.

DNAinfo has been disgraceful from the day of the shooting. Only Ed Komenda presented exactly what had happened.

The incident happened about 3 p.m. Saturday near 111th Street and Troy Avenue. Joshua Beal was in a procession of cars returning from a funeral when he stopped in front of a firehouse on 111th Street, according to prosecutors.
An off-duty police officer told Beal that he was blocking access to the firehouse and the confrontation started, prosecutors said. Another off-duty officer in a nearby barber shop joined in on the confrontation, prosecutors said.
A group of nine people approached the second officer and started punching him, prosecutors said.A police sergeant driving to work saw the fight. He got out of his car, drew his gun and said he was a police officer, authorities said.
"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," Joshua Beal said and waved the gun "back and forth," according to prosecutors. Joshua Beal then pulled the trigger, prosecutors said. It was unclear whether the gun actually fired.
Beal, who was in town to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin's funeral, refused to drop his gun, and he was shot multiple times, prosecutors said. He later died at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
Michael Beal then tried to pick up his brother's gun, prosecutors said.
"F--- you," Michael Beal said, according to prosecutors. "You killed my brother. I'm going to kill you."

Ed Komenda wrote that accurate account on November 8th and has not written about the Beal shooting since - Howard Ludwig, Kelly Bauer, Joe Ward are the compelling narrators.

The Tribune uses 'dogwhistle' racism and race baiting.

Has a black or Hispanic Community ever been referred to as an enclave?  Is Boystown an enclave?
Might Hyde Park be an enclave?  What is the diversity of Chinatown?  Mount Greewood is a neighborhood and black people live there next door to white people.

Enclave's etymology from the French for 'enclosure' and the Latin root word clavis offers a dog whistle to sensitive ears.  Clavis or 'key' suggests locked up, violent and hostile.  Shucks, link up Google's images for enclave and it jibs with Neil Steinberg's smears.

We get it.  The story of what actually happened on November 5, 2017 at around 3 PM on the north side of 111th Street in Mount Greenwood has yet to be told in the Chicago press, dissected by Phil Ponce on WTTW, or smirked about on WBEZ.

The core of the story is lost in the feathers and boas of 'compelling narrative.'

• 60's style racism
• Tweets from high school girls
• Ja'mal Green's political future
• Pastor Pfleger's grift box
• CPUSA and REVCOM
• Racism, racism and more racism

No an idiot who violated traffic laws with easy contempt, was confronted by people who are not idiots. A fight ensued.  Police officers announced them selves and pulled service weapons when the idiot was 'unresponsive' to police orders. The idiot pulled a gun on the announced police officers who returned fire.  The idiot died, God be good to him, and the press, Ja'mal Green, Black Lives Matter, REVCOM and Pastor Pfleger did the rest - Oh, and Kofi Ademola wants in too. 

Meet the Press!  With contempt. 

Broetics: The Path Into the Male Mind

"ut pictura poesis (l. 361),"  Hoarce from ars Poetica

Final Final Fantasy
I will not spend one hundred and thirteen
hours of my life on a video game
ever again. I will not rationalize,
claiming that it is somehow "research" for
my future career as a comic book
writer. I will not allow myself to be
sucked beyond the event horizon of an
RPG situated on a distant
planet, no matter how good the graphics are
on the nubile female lead character's chest.
I will no longer waste my time seeking out
arbitrary unlockable achievements.
I am going to start beating games faster. Brian McGackin

As in pictures, so in poetry.  The camera eye of the brain works wonders and the poet brings to life images and sentiments akin the apprehended.

Women ask of men, " What are you thinking right now."

Sister, you don't wanna know.

Really.  Usually it is nothing anywhere near akin to ocean spray and white stallions running through the surf, while I saddle up my rippled and coiled muscles and sinew in the direction of an imaginary sylph.

Nope; it is usually black and white cartoons from the 1930's of emaciated cows goosing one another and giving out with snappy patter - 'Solid, Jackson!'

Real men play cartoons in their heads, when not thinking about conquest, the next food item, or excuses. Productive cognition is for the job, fixing the furnace, or doing the checkbook alchemy.

Even Poets, if they be male, drift on clouds of hilarious time wasted.

Blind Milton, I am sure made up scenarios of dead Papists being pitchfoked into the Devils maw by industrious and trim Puritans.

Today, we  are blessed to feature the Man's Milton 2017 - young Master Brian McGackin&* - the Broet Laureate.

I have recently completed the slim volume of many Broesy - Broetry. 

Here is yet another sample of verse by a man, for men and thoroughly about men.

For Mama Celeste, as a Child
Mother cut tiny
slices for my small boy hands:
delicate pizza.
For Mama Celeste, in College
Hold up. This whole time
you were only a dollar?
You cheap, frozen whore.
For Mama Celeste, after College
Sorry about that.
Please take me back, Mama C.
I'm sick of ramen.

Men, get a copy of Broetry; Ladies read and learn what men have on their minds.  Stephen Hawking is filthy gent from what I hear.

As in days gone by - Poetry written by men is Broetry:

 If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. H. L. Mencken

"quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus (l. 359)"  Horace -Ars Poetica

* Brian McGackin is the author of BROETRY (Quirk Books, 2011) and DEATH IN THE RICK (http://deathintherick.com/).
He has a BA from Emerson College in Something Completely Unrelated To His Life Right Now and a Masters in Poetry from USC.
He enjoys Guinness, comic books, and Bruce Willis movies 

Inherited Wealth and the Marxist Grifter - The Two-Faced American Progressive

I always get a kick out of watching Katrina Vanden Heuvel on cable television (for some reason she is never on Fox) and delight in her class warrior makeup.

She reminds me of my youngest daughter who donned a jet black wig over her red tresses and faux-leather bodice and snow boots as she fought Gods and Monster as Xena.  Vanden Heuvel is an heiress to a huge fortune that allows her to open doors all over Manhattan and Cambridge and East Egg and L.A. to spout class war with Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and fellow trust fund baby Anderson Cooper.

Today, in the Washington Post, this doyen of democracy deconstruction sparks up the Birkenstock Bolsheviks of America with ways to combat Donald trump.

She leads off by quoting one of the most egregious creeps in American philanthropy - Gara Lamarche.

Gara Lamarche looted billions of dollars from Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies all through the 1990's and into the New Millennium.  Now, here is a reather lengthy bit of read to whet your appetite for further study of Marxists who loot family foundations:

 Feeney’s “transformational philanthropy” across five continents focused on laying down a big check early on to support major projects (usually centered on a new building of some kind), which would in turn inspire others to make their own large contributions. But Feeney wasn’t focused on the buildings themselves (he never allowed them to be named for him) but rather the way large new facilities could revitalize a local neighborhood and also spur long-term growth in a larger area by boosting the educational and medical sectors. Just as he heeded Andrew Carnegie’s injunction not to die rich, he also heeded his predecessor’s advice to build “the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise.” This was the niche where Feeney had found his proudest moments as a philanthropist—such as the $125 million that AP committed in 2008 to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center in the run-down Mission Bay neighborhood. Or the $62 million AP provided to Galway University in Ireland, which is just a portion of the $800 million AP has provided to fund education in Ireland. Or the $350 million AP provided to Feeney’s alma mater, Cornell, so it could build a campus on New York City’s neglected Roosevelt Island (a fraction of the estimated $1 billion AP has awarded to Cornell).
For his part, LaMarche had his own answer to this question, one he had proffered even before becoming AP’s CEO in 2007: amplify AP’s funding for “community organizing” and “social justice giving,” as O’Clery puts it. In other words, embrace the philosophy of Soros and the Open Society Institute, and fund battalions of radical Alinskyite nonprofit protest groups.
As O’Clery writes, “from 2007 to 2011, under LaMarche’s management, [AP] would make over one hundred contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations” such as HCAN. (See examples below.) In this, LaMarche enjoyed a particularly strong rapport with three members of AP’s board: Frederick “Fritz” A. O. Schwarz Jr. (AP’s board chair, a prominent liberal lawyer and great-grandson of the famous New York toy baron); Elizabeth McCormack (a long-time fixture of the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic interests); and Michael Sovern (one-time Columbia University president and former trustee of Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund).
O’Clery writes that “Feeney was initially supportive of LaMarche’s prioritizing health care reform.” But the wider consequences of this shift towards smaller grants was not lost on him. It meant a major change in the size of grants AP had been making for most of its history, as well as their intended impact.
Feeney has liberal political leanings, but his philanthropy was another matter – more rooted in a philosophical, rather than political, view of the world. AP’s record of grants can be best understood as an expression of Chuck Feeney’s personal background. Feeney’s family of origin was not a wealthy one, but it was rich in terms of values—including charity towards others. One gets the impression from O’Clery’s book that Feeney’s philanthropy gave him a chance to express some of his most dearly held personal values, as handed down by his parents and neighborhood. Said his daughter Leslie:
“He has incredible empathy with people, which has its roots in his Irish Catholic background. He is a real child of his time. One needs to understand those Irish American neighborhoods during and after [World War II], how they worked, how they helped each other. That’s a big part of his life. He saw his mother and father take people off the street, helping people.”
For Feeney, the chance to do something extraordinary for others in need was no light matter—not out of a desire to be ostentatious or court publicity, nor out of a sense of “guilt” that he had become a rich man, but more likely, perhaps, for him to demonstrate that his basic beliefs remained undiluted by his great wealth.
In strategy, tactics, and impact of philanthropy, the approach of LaMarche, who seems to live for political controversy, activism, publicity, and adulation, could not be more different from Feeney’s.
The philosophical battle lines between founder, key board members, and the foundation’s senior leaders were drawn.

Gara Lamarche is up to his game and Katrina Vanden Heuvel delights in his coaching.

 As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we’re going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair is not an option. The real question, as Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche recently said, “is how you fight intelligently and strategically when every house is burning down.”
Indeed, with Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, progressives will need to invest their resources and attention where they can do the most good — both now and over the next four years. With that in mind, here are three steps to take to resist and rebuild as the Trump administration gets underway.
First, while strong national leadership is certainly important, progressives must recognize that the most significant resistance to Trump won’t take place in Washington. It’s going to happen in the streets led by grass-roots activists, and in communities, city halls and statehouses nationwide.

Katrina touts Governor Moonbean of the nouveau secessionist State of California as a 'national leader' who just might confound American Trumpery and save this nation for the Banana Republic Obama founded . . .and lost in an election.

Progressive always seem to be people with bucks up to their butts - trust fund babies like Bill Ayers, Katerina Vanden Heuvel and Bill De Blasio, or Cadillac Commies leeched onto to hide of 501(c)3 family fortunes.

They make sense to the news media.  Progressive America is a two-headed monster fueled by wealth and hungry for power.  Our media has taken the short-cut to access and power and waddles along the Progressive Path - Deconstruction of Universal Truths, Abortion, Dependency, Identity Victimhood, Race and Class Warfare.

The rest of us know Progressives and "the Media"  to be phonies and snobs. Progressives created the opportunity taken by Donald Trump.  I just hope that he is not one of them.

He inherited his wealth, but that does not make him a bad guy.  I know plenty of uber-rich folks who are as down-to-earth genuine and sincere as the ladies of the St. Cajetan Altar and Rosary Society and the guys at the Evergreen Park VFW - John Buck, Ron Gidwitz, Ty Warner and the late Don Flynn come to mind, here in Chicago.

Progressives want something for themselves - power.

Everyone else a happy, secure and meaningful life.

The two-headed monster is still breathing 

Chicago Will Cure Cancer Decades Before It Does an Accurate Prognosis on Killings

Editor’s note: To memorialize the victims of Chicago’s most violent year in two decades, the Chicago Sun-Times wrapped Sunday’s print editions with 618 faces of the 780 people murdered citywide in 2016 — every victim’s photo that the newspaper could obtain. Columnist Mary Mitchell offers her take on steps to address the city’s violence problem here. To read more stories of homicide victims, go to the Homicide Watch Chicago website: homicides.suntimes.com.  Chicago Sun Times

"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," - the late Joshua Beal

 What's the cure to Chicago's homicides?  An accurate diagnosis would be a great start. However, compelling narratives are the rule of the day.  People kill people.  They will use a gun, a 2 X 4, a tire iron, a rock, a blade, or  broom to effect the demise of some person who has something the killer wants, or to send a message, or to quiet a witness, or burnish one's street cred, or just playing.

White people kill, black people kill, even Alsatian Quakers kill, if they are accustomed to bad behavior, have no moral core, or happen to be psychopaths. People tend to work their way up the gradus of bad behavior, before becoming killers.

Compelling narratives frame people with very bad behavior as victims of systemic racism, economic exploitation, or identity frustration.  But that is not why people kill.  People kill when they believe that they can get away with it.  If one gets away with misbehavior at every turn, be it jaywalking, disrupting the classroom, intimidating weaker people, stealing, spitting,littering, raping and looting, why not light some one up?

Shopping Malls are up for grabs as mobs of kids act out, just as they do during the school day.  Dots remain unconnected.

We see the problem as a chalk outline and not the previous few hours and minutes of the life outlined and its encounter with a gun owner.

When we are sick and hurting we need good, no-nonsense physicians attending our problems.

 My son was three years old and one morning he could not walk.  " My legs somehow can't work."  His older sister cried, "Conor can't walk!" Terrified his mother and I scooped him up and darted to La Porte Hospital ER.

There the child was examined for hours.

In the mean time, I had called Dr. James Kennedy, M.D. recently retired surgeon who was himself in the early stages of the Parkinson's Disease that would take his life, far too soon. Dr. Kennedy spent all of his free time either going to swimming meets for his seven  athletic children, or attending burn seminars, or surgical methodology demonstrations.

My two physician pals, Doctors Rick Clark and Mark Manning trained under the gimlet eye of Dr. Kennedy.  They told me of a mass shooting that flooded victims into the St. Mary's Hospital ER in Kankakee, Illinois one summer's night.  Dr. Kennedy was off and the ER was a madhouse.  Dr. Kennedy happened to be walking west on Court Street when he saw the all of ambulances charging toward St. Mary's.  Doc went straight there.

Into the chaos, panic and blood appeared Dr. James Kennedy - deus ex machina!  Quiet, order and efficiency saved a dozen lives.

Doc Kennedy counselled, " Don't sign off on anything.  Stay calm like your wife, Mary.  She never panics.  I 'll be there in an hour."

The doctors ran a series of blood tests on the little guy. They were very concerned. Recently, a three year old in Long Beach had been diagnosed with cancer and the first sign had been an inability to walk.

Mary and I clutched hands and prayed.

Dr. Kennedy arrived and needed no introduction as his reputation preceded him even here in Indiana.

" What's the trouble Conor?"

" I can't somehow walk."

Dr. Kennedy examined his feet and legs, " He has been wearing cowboy boots," he stated and not asked.

Mary told him that her mother had bought Conor and his two cousins cowboy boots at Lighthouse Square the week before.

" They're too tight."

No cancer.  no Byzantine pathology required.  No extended stay, or observations necessary.  Conor went on to play every sport but baseball, never dropped a snap as a football center in four years of play at St. Rita and La Lumiere.  He is walking to the Cotton Bowl to watch the Broncos of Western Michigan challenge the Badgers and walks proudly.  He never again wore cowboy boots.


Chicago's murder scores sit at 795.

Here is current wisdom from activists, politicians and the go-along Chicago Media and my rejoinder.

• It's Guns - inanimate objects; pencils do not fail exams
• It's Gangs - Old Homies no longer run the show
• It's Poverty -guns are not free
• It's Unemployment- guns are not free
• It's Racism - what isn't?
• It's Policing - Policing has been outlawed by City Hall, the Peoples Law Office, Black Lives Matter, Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times and WTTW
• It's Not Policing - Depends upon which side of the compelling narrative the media got up on

My Dr. Kennedy-esque empiricism tells me that wrapping the Sunday Edition in photos of the murder victims, Pastor Pfleger Photo Ops, Mag Mile Marches, Blue Ribbon Panels, ACLU studies with pre-cast conclusions, and weeping and wailing for the cameras are all very nice, but will not stop the killing.

Checking behavior at the root, just might.

Acting the fool, playing the Cell Warrior, just playing, cutting in line, playing chin check, just playing, passing in the imaginary right lane, and working the gums 24/7 are very early indicators of a person capable of riding the 9 down on some chump. See - the late Joshua Beal*

Bad medicine.

Until the Chicago death diagnosis recognizes the true cause of the problem - an inability to realize that getting over on people is not getting by - our 'legs won't somehow work.'

* Ed Komenda's DNAinfor account was the only media piece to exactly report the incident.