Tom Roeser

Personal Aside: Behind ObamaCare, a Major Party’s Conversion to the Leftist State.

2010-03-09T07:00:00.002-06:00

Feast of St. Frances of Rome.*

The Long March.

For those who, like me, have wondered if the Democratic party has taken leave of its senses to ram through health care in the face of its huge unpopularity with voters, an explanation…in Q and A form embodying questions I often get concerning the Obama-ites. Consider this a political catechism.

I always believed the Democratic party thought first, last and

always about its political survival. But every index of public opinion shows that Americans hate ObamaCare. Frankly, I think the Democrats will be decimated in November—in fact I hope they are. But haven’t they taken leave of their senses? Do you have a rationale?

By conventional political terms, you’re quite right. As a political

party they are quite mad. But you must remember that the national Democrats have abandoned being a party and have been converted into a 5-star ideological movement of the Left.

The Metamorphosis Began with McGovern.

The transition began with the McGovern nomination in 1972 and has veered leftward ever since.

In this they are like the stragglers of the Chinese Red Army who participated in the Long March 1934-35 to avoid defeat by Chiang kai Shek. They had become not so much an army but a band of revolutionaries. So like martyrs with a perverted sense of religion, they began the March they believed would take them to utopia.

Eighty-seven thousand began the 6,000-mile march from Southeast to Northwest China from which fewer than 8,000 survived but in doing so they enabled their ideology to survive, canonized their leader, Mao Zedong, making him more than a mere general but a god. Left-wing liberal ideologues today…all you have to do is to readThe Daily Kos…don’t want to just win elections and consolidate their gains: they want to overcome this country with their brand of revolutionary change now. A revolutionary is the kind of president Obama is, the kind of person he always has been.

And his fervor for radical change has consumed the Democratic party today—far different than the old days when under Hubert Humphrey and others they wished merely to win elections and pursue change via gradualism by cooperating with disparate allies along the way.

This Long March fervor is the difference you have to understand if you’re going to make sense of this thing.

Another Jail-Bird Spouting Revolution.

Q. If what you say is right, consider this: Every revolution has a fomenter, a political theorist as was Karl Marx for Marxism. Nazism had Hitler who wrote a book from jail, Soviet Communists had Lenin who wrote his tracts in a Siberian jail. If the Democratic party has turned into an ideological movement of the Left-- who is its chief theorist today? And are you going to tell me he wrote his tract in jail?

I will identify him and will tell you he did just that.

Robert Creamer [pronounced “kray-mer] of Chicago, is the chief

political theorist the current Left. And like the aforementioned, he wrote his theory from jail—a book that spawned a series of articles on the Internet that has become the ideological treatise now followed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

His book, written in federal penitentiary at Terre Haut, Indiana where he was sentenced to 5 months for kiting checks and not paying withholding taxes on his left-wing organization, is titled—mildly enough—Listen to Your Mother: Sit Up Straight—How Progressives Can Win.

It is not straight out of Saul Alinsky from whom Creamer learned his trade—but it’s more radical than Alinsky’s books. Why? When you read Alinsky as I have…and when you talked to him as I did on three separate occasions (having gotten to know him through his top assistant Ed Chambers who…unlikely enough… was a Saint John’s classmate of mine circa 1950 (and who still in theory anyhow runs the Industrial Areas Foundation)… you know that he recommended coalitions with other forces and a gradualism leading to victory for the Left.

Alinsky beguiled and aligned with many disparate forces including (regrettably to my mind) the liberal clerical wing of the Catholic church where the late Msgr. Jack Egan was his enthusiastic cooperator and in most ways his co-conspirator.

That was Alinsky’s style…but it isn’t Creamer’s. Creamer is a Long March devotee as Mao was. As with Mao, alignment, cooperation and gradualism are not in Creamer’s vocabulary. He is a hard-shell ideologue, not a gradualist.

And make no mistake, he is the main successor to Alinsky, the chief political theorist and philosopher of a conscience-free Left which has taken over the Democratic Party. And he maintains the closest of ties with the Obama group. Example: He and his wife, Cong. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), of less importance to the Left than her husband, but still one of the most extreme Leftists of the House, were invited to the first state dinner Obama held at the White House—the one that Desiree Rogers goofed up by not guarding the door so intruders happened in without invitations.

Creamer Designed Strategy Dems Are Following.

A key article written by Creamer…after the Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts debacles that occurred from voter revenge on ObamaCare… has been accepted as gospel by Obama, Pelosi and Reid: “Why It’s In the Interest of Democrats to Finish Comprehensive Health Reform.” It appeared in The Huffington Post the blog most sophisticated Lefties go for guidance and recourse.

Q. What did it say? No normal party would proceed apace with this madness following such slaughters in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia.

A. I grant you that but remember what I’ve just said: The Democrats are a party no longer but in essence the nation’s Left and its chief theorist guru is Creamer.Almost like “Muhammad is His Prophet”—except that these folks are non-theological, no Allah. It is raw Statism. Remember, it was written after the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. This is what he said…the question being whether Dems should quit pushing ObamaCare and concentrate on jobs-jobs-jobs:

“If Democrats stop now, swing voters will continue to believe that the Democratic health care initiative was a bad idea. The only way they can change their minds is if health insurance reform passes and they begin to see some of the benefits for themselves—and, just as important—see that the sky doesn’t fall…

“The fact is that if Democrats don’t pass a bill, swing members [of Congress] will be stuck with all of the negatives of voting for the bill—and none of the benefits of passing it…Voters like winners, not losers. They don’t want to hang out with losers and they don’t want to support them. If the Democrats—after working for months on health insurance reform—can’t get it over the finish line, the voters will write them off as losers and be less prone to give them their vote.”

Q. Makes a kind of perverted sense if you’re an Left wing ideologue, I guess. Continue with his views, please.

A, “Americans are welling over with frustration that government can’t get anything done to benefit their lives. As far as most Americans are concerned, Democrats are in charge of government. That means Democrats have to deliver real progress…Passing…health care reform would be a big accomplishment not only for Congress but for the Obama administration. History shows clearly that the popularity of the president is the major factor in affecting the number of members of Congress from a sitting president’s party that lose in mid-term elections…”

NOTE: Only Creamer of The Long March would conjure that Americans are mad that government hasn’t done enough. The whole note of Tea Party dissatisfaction and the switch of independents from the Democrats to Scott Brown was due to the fearful spending chart and deficit projections…but Creamer will not accept this. END OF NOTE.

Creamer again:

“[On the procedure called Reconciliation]. “Basically it will likely involve the House simultaneously passing the Senate bill and a `patch bill’ that will incorporate the changes made during the negotiations. The ‘patch bill’ will have to be passed in the Senate before or after the House acts through the ‘Budget Reconciliation’ process that is not subject to filibuster…”

And here is a provision that is very important. I’ll paraphrase because it’s sprinkled throughout the article and not condensed in cogent form.

Creamer stresses this:

Once the massive health bill is passed and signed…

Republicans of the future will NOT repeal it because it will have grown so popular they won’t dare to. Thus Democrats who stick with us on The Long March will have been justified. Republicans under Eisenhower didn’t repeal any New Deal legislation passed under FDR and Truman. Creamer is counting on the wobbly Republicans who come post-Obama NOT to repeal universal health care..

Crushing 200 Plus Year Old Tradition No Big Deal: Creamer.

“Members do not need to worry that this will be viewed as `jamming’ the bill through., Any bill that is passed by a majority of both Houses is not `jammed’ through. It is passed through a democratic process. What is undemocratic is the 60-vote filibuster rule that allows a minority to thwart the will of the majority. And from a political point of view, no one ever remembers the `procedures’ that were used to pass a major piece of legislation anyway. It will ultimately be evaluated based only on the impact it has on real people’s lives in the real world.” [Italics mine].

Will this memo likely work for the Democrats?

They will try mightily to ram it through but there’s no way it can

help the Democrats because of the bitterness it will engender even if it passes by some miracle. There’s no doubt that Mme. Pelosi is cracking the whip on recalcitrant House Democrats using the same argument Creamer used—you already voted for it and are going to take the heat: You’d better be sure that you don’t back down so that you can collect the benefits.

She’s stirring up the Blue Dogs (conservative Democrats) to join the vote. The only way the end scenario might justify Creamer is if the Democrats do ram the bill through and Republicans win control of the Congress this November, Republicans turn wobbly which being their history may well become the case, and don’t repeal the legislation. That would validate Creamer’s original prediction.

After which, if voters get the idea that Republicans don’t have the guts to dismantle this latest feature of the welfare state, the jig is up and Republicans may well lose in 2012.

Mega-Millionaire Peloisi: Dems Should Fall on Their Swords.

Q. How is Mme. Pelosi arguing that Democrats should fall on their

swords for health care?

A. An interesting question. This is how she argued it on ABC’s This Week in which she takes a leaf from Creamer’s book. “Well, first of all our members—every one of them—want health care., I think everybody wants affordable health care for all Americans. I know this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare….But the American people need it. Why are we here? We’re not here just to self perpetuate our service in Congress. We’re here to do a job for the American people. To get them results that gives them not only health security but economic security, because the health issue is an economic issue for America’s families” [Italics mine.]

Asking her members to fall on their swords and risk defeat for good old socialized medicine is an intriguing argument coming from a Speaker whose extraordinarily safe Democratic district encompasses 4/5ths of San Francisco, the most Leftward city in the nation, a district she has won with never less than 72%--often in the high 80s and who is a mega-multimillionaire through marriage to she can pay for her own campaign. It’s a safe bet that with such a heavy Democratic district she will survive reelection in any event.

And also that Bob Creamer’s wife, Cong. Schakowsky (who comes from a hugely Democratic district—mine-- and won last time by 75%.) But try to sell that to Democrat Bill Foster who represents Denny Hastert’s old district in the cornfields of Illinois which is definitely “swing.”

Also try to sell it to just the average American who has signified through poll after poll that his main concern is jobs-jobs-jobs, in response to which Obama pivoted. Yet last week he backed a $15 billion jobs bill which passed the Senate and continues to support the $1 trillion health care bill.

I repeat: The disastrous course for the Democratic party is clear. But he and Obama don’t care, don’t worry about immediate political defeats. They’re throwing the dice for the long-range. They’re enlisted on the Long March. .

Obama Sees Himself Ranking with Washington, Lincoln.

What does Obama hope to get out of this for himself?

To be remembered as being far more than merely the first black president but a president…this is his fantasy, now…of the stature of Washington and Lincoln about whom their accomplishments can be summarized in one sentence each by schoolchildren (granted that public school children still learn about them).

You can encapsulate George Washington this way “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, victor of the American Revolution and our First President.”

You can describe Abraham Lincoln with the epitaph etched on the Lincoln monument tableau above the seated statue by Saint-Gaudens: “In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

Something similar to those is what Barack Hussein Obama wants

to leave for posterity. Something like:

“Rated as one of the greatest American presidents of all time…ranking with Washington, Lincoln and FDR, Obama extended the inalienable right of health care to all his countrymen and became a beacon of light to which all international statesmen honor and seek to emulate.”

To do this he believes he has to follow Bob Creamer’s idea and ram health care through no matter what it takes or costs.

Q. Do other members of The Chicago Squid in Washington share his ambition for himself?

A. Almost all. That’s because almost all are courtiers. David Axelrod is. Valerie Jarrett is. Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, was until she was dismissed last week. The only one who has doubts and who keeps those doubts largely to himself is Rahm Emanuel.

By far the most practical and cold-hearted of the 51 Squid members in the White House, he can adroitly play hard-ball. After all, he crafted the “Louisiana Purchase” that rented Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu, the “Cornhusker Purchase” that signed up Nebraska’s Ben Nelson (for a time until the deals became a scandal that alienated independents and liberal idealists), the Connecticut Hospital Deal that solidified the support of Sen. Chris Dodd (until he decided to retire).

What turned Emanuel off was this: When the news got out, Obama denied there were any deals at all—a convenient lie…and when that lie was discovered, turned aloof on Emanuel. He left Emanuel the loyal soldier hanging out there.

Other private disagreements Emanuel has are these: He doesn’t agree with Creamer on The Long March. He believes that after Massachusetts, Obama should have turned his attention to jobs-jobs-jobs leaving health reform for another day. He definitely does not believe in trying terrorists in federal courtrooms rather than before military tribunals.

Q. Speaking of Desiree Rogers, what was the occasion that told her she was no longer welcome and had to go?

A. A surprise birthday party for Michelle Obama where Desiree…who earned the name “Disarray” Rogers…wasn’t invited and wasn’t even informed. It was held without her in attendance.

This caused her to figure the handwriting was on the wall. Her sin was not just becoming a guest at the State Dinner which she was supposed to run as a staffer…but talking too much—talking incessantly about how she devised “the Obama brand” as if he were a tube of toothpaste or loaf of bread.

The Valiant Otis McDonald.

Q. Chicago blacks are aligned with Obama all the way—is that it?

A. Blacks will be the last liberal group to abandon Obama. It’s a race and blood thing not an ideological thing. This despite the anomaly that a Chicago black will gain historic fame by winning a battle against irresponsible gun-control which Obama has supported. Constitutional jurisprudence is likely to be changed by one city African American who’s in the long run likely to be remembered more enduringly than Obama will. He’s 76-year-old Otis McDonald, a Democrat, who is the lead plaintiff in the upcoming Supreme Court decision to throw out the needlessly restrict gun control law in Chicago, devised by Mayor Daley as a sop to encourage voters that he’s concerned about violence—whereas the problem with gun violence is not the availability of guns but the woeful conditions of family disintegration which have wreaked such damage on the black family.

Otis McDonald came to Chicago from Louisiana at the age of 17. He started out as a janitor and was promoted to maintenance engineer. He and his wife saved enough money to buy a house on the far South Side of Chicago in 1972. Chicago’s needlessly stringent anti-handgun ordinance kept him from purchasing a gun to defend himself and his family. He has had three break-ins where unarmed he had to chase intruders away—rising his life and limb. One time he found a burglar in his house and called the police. When he hung up the burglar said, “I overheard you calling the cops and now I’m going to kill you!” He somehow survived that incident but the very next weekend, Otis McDonald drove 200 miles to go to his first gun rally in Springfield.

It looks very much like the Supremes will toss out the Chicago ordinance—and ring in a victory for gun rights and the capacity of Chicagoans to protect themselves. That’ll provoke Mayor Daley into a near stroke of shouting, his jowls waggling…but give Otis McDonald, his wife and other blacks who need to defend themselves in dangerous parts of the inner city their first peace of mind since 1972.

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*: St. Frances of Rome [1384-1440]. Born the daughter of Paul Busso and Jacobella del Roffredeschi, a wealthy couple of Rome, though she wanted to become a nun, she was married at age 13 to a noble, Lorenzo Ponziani, and for 40 years was a model wife in an ideal marriage. With her sister-in-law, she ministered to the poor of Rome until she was afflicted with a serious illness…whereupon she and her sister-in-law devoted themselves to the sick of Santo Spiritu Hospital. Her son John Baptist was born in 1404, followed by a boy Evangelist and a girl Agnes.

With the death of her mother-in-law Frances became virtual head of the household. When a plague and famine struck Rome, she sold her jewels to aid the victims. Then the city of Rome fell and was occupied by the forces of Ladislaus of Naples in 1408 and Frances’ husband Lorenzo was injured in the fighting. Lorenzo was forced to flee for his life but the conquerors allowed the women and children to remain—thus Frances and the family remained. Their castle was looted and burned. In 1413 the plague returned which took the life of Evangelist. Frances converted her home into a hospital; two years later Agnes died. A year later peace was restored and Lorenzo returned but his health was shattered.

Frances nursed her husband and continued her charitable activities, organizing the Oblates of Mary, a society of women that help the poor but which was not bound by formal vows—and affiliated with the Benedictines of Mount Oliveto. When Lorenzo died in 1436, Frances entered the convent and was made Superior. She spent the remainder of her life nursing and in contemplation. She was canonized in 1608 and for some unaccountable reason is hailed as the Patroness of Motorists.

Personal Asides: Ignoring $12.4 Billion State Deficit, Quinn Plays Pander Bear.

2010-03-08T07:30:00.002-06:00

   Feast of St. John of God*

                               The Sound of the Pander Bear.

No sooner had State Sen. Bill Brady been certified as the Republican nominee for governor than Pat Quinn issued a statement declaring there’s a “Grand Canyon” difference between him and the Republican lawmaker. He didn’t mention their differences on how to cover the state’s $12.4 billion state deficit but that Quinn detailed that at one time or other Brady opposed “[state] funding for mammograms and pap tests.” Brady is “a member of the extreme rightwing of the [Republican] party and far from the mainstream” said the Governor, citing also that Brady wants to “ban all abortions.”

That’s the sound of the Pander Bear.

Huh? If you are the governor responsible for trying to fill the $12.4 billion budgetary hole…and at the same time you view the “Grand Canyon difference” between you and your opponent involves disagreements on state funding of mammograms, pap tests and abortion…you’re a little weird, are you not? But it’s the sign ofThe Quinn Pander Bear making its appearance this year as in most other recent election years.

The Pander Bear favors not just an income tax hike but is leaning toward getting rid of the state’s flat tax in favor of imposition of a “progressive” income tax? That’s not the Grand Canyon of differences but the Himalayan Canyon of differences…the Yarlung Tsanpo River Canyon of the Himalayans near Tibet contrasted to which the Grand Canyon is middle-sized.

The Quinn Pander Bear Focuses on Social Issues.

Not Fiscal Ones.

It’s also instructive to note that high up in the Yarlung Tsanpo River Canyon in the Himalayas which climbers rarely scale are a few rare species of the Russet-Colored Pander Bear about the size of the average house cat which has reddish fur. These are much rarer than the familiar black and white pandas in some American zoos.

Quinn should be familiar with it since he himself is a choice specimen liberal Pander Bear. . His introductory statement about the differences between himself and Brady emits the squealing sound endemic to the certifiable 100% liberal Democratic Pander Bear. .

What are the unique sounds of the Quinn Pander Bear? Trying to size up differences between himself and Brady he fawns over feminists, choosing to center on subsidies for mammograms and pap tests…indicating that one who doesn’t charge the state for these tests is against them…touting that he is 100% in favor of abortion on demand, that he favors partial birth abortion and shares the view of Barack Obama that the “Born Alive” legislative bill Obama killed in the state senate is the latestPander Bear sop to “ a woman’s right to choose.”

In other words to vote for a bill that would supply nourishment, medicinal aid and human comfort to a baby born live from a botched abortion would be a violation of a woman’s “right to choose.” This is what the No. 1 Pander Bear Obama has argued with no dissent from Pander Bear Quinn.

Since Pander Bear Quinn has decided the Grand Canyon gulf deals with social issues, let it be reckoned that both Quinn and Brady are Catholic and the central issue that divides them is the Himalayan towering one of pro-life…the issue Brady favors and the issue Quinn opposes. Quinn is a pro-abort notwithstanding that it is regarded as a serious breach by the Church Quinn continues to attend. Why does Quinn continue to attend the Church with which he disagrees on its central-most social policy?

Like other pro-abort Catholic members of The Squid it would be impolitic to separate from their Church because it would be to their political disadvantage to do so.

What sounds does the Quinn Pander Bear make?

“We’re in the worst financial calamity that the Great State of Illinois has ever had—and we’ve been a state since 1818…We must make sure to be true to everyday regular ordinary working families in the Land of Lincoln so that we have adequate revenue for important things all of us want in government…BUT ALSO DO IT IN A FAIR WAY. ..You’re all invited to the governor’s house because the governor’s house is THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE which we must make accessible to all—especially everyday ordinary working families in this Land of Lincoln. Remember when everyday regular ordinary working families work together in this Land of Lincoln, we can accomplish great things…so we CAN accomplish amazing things!”

What a career you’ve had as a Pander Bear, old Watery Eyes…starting out as a patronage lackey hod carrier working for the PEE-PUL’s governor Dan Walker in his Personnel Department…later mis-leading voters with your misnamed “Cut Back Amendment” which stripped power from the rank and file state legislators in the House and dumped it in the lap of the 4 Tops…getting fired by Harold Washington for incompetence and self-aggrandizement as the city’s Revenue Director…helping to elect and reelect the 2^nd most crooked governor in Illinois history…stabbing him when it was apparent he couldn’t survive and assuming responsibility for piloting the state which is encumbered by a $12.4 billion debt.

You’re my man, Old Pander Bear…and now that the identity of the Republican nominee is settled, I’ll do my utmost to see that Regular Everyday Ordinary Working Families who are burdened with high taxes don’t get hit again by you, watery-eyes Pander Bear…so that this coming November in the Land of Lincoln, Regular Everyday Ordinary Working Families keep your cliché-ridden posterior back to private life so you will get to understand what it is to be at one with Everyday Regular Ordinary Working Families in this Land of Lincoln. It will be good for your soul to reflect on how you have identified with the backsliding Canterbury Archbishop Thomas Cranmer…whose last words were “if only I had served my God as I served my…” substitute “own crass political interest.”

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*: St. John of God [1495-1550]. Founder of the Brothers Hospitalers, he was born Joao Cidade at Monte Mor II Nuovo, Portugal. As a young soldier he joined the mercenaries of the Count of Castile, saw heavy action against the French and Turks in Hungary. After being mustered out he lived the life of a dissolute: overdrinking, womanizing, carousing. Then he came to loose ends and wound up in Andalusia as a shepherd. Alone in the fields he contemplated and turned gradually to God. He never became a priest but to extirpate the guilt, he took vows of a monk and donned a robe like one—calling himself John of God. . He traveled to Gibraltar where he peddled sacred books which made him fairly prosperous although he hadn’t planned it that way. At age 43 he started a book store in Grenada but that was insufficient. So…

He began a ministry to serve the sick and poor. He rented a house in Grenada and formed a community later (after his death) called The Brothers of St. John of God which spread throughout Christendom. He lived to the age of 55 when he fell ill from over-exertion, caused by striving to save the life of a drowning man. As he lay struggling to breathe, the Archbishop of Grenada came to him and asked him to bless the city. He reluctantly did so. He died on his knees while praying at the altar of his monastery. He was buried by the archbishop and his funeral procession included many hundreds of the people of Granada. He was canonized in 1690. In 1886 Leo XIII declared him patron of the sick, patron of nurses and of book and print sellers.

Personal Aside: “Batman” er, The Herald’s Lissau Strikes Again—Walsh’s Being Hard-Up Endangers Congressional Run.

2010-03-05T07:32:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. John Joseph of the Cross*

Yesterday I wrote about a novel theory publicized by one Russell Lissau, a so-called straight news reporter for the suburban paper that alleges, tries and convicts conservative Republicans without a trial—The Daily Herald, published in Arlington Heights. Lissau has written article #2 in what will probably be a long series…running until November…on the issue.

The Lissau contention: Republican 8^th District nominee Joe Walsh had a condo repossessed by a bank. If elected, he would sully the pristine corridors of the U. S. House trod by such luminaries as…

Ex-Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) who resigned his chairmanship for accepting corporate trips and who is being probed for cheating on his taxes…ex-Rep. Randall (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif.) now in federal prison for bribery…ex-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) convicted for not explaining $90,000 in bribes found in his freezer at home…ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) who had to resign for writing sexually explicit notes to a 16-year-old male page…

…ex- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), still under indictment in Texas for money laundering and conspiracy to engage in money laundering…Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY)who announced last week he won’t run for a 2^nd term for health reasons, aggravated by the possibility of being sued for sexual harassment by a male aide…and Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. still in the House and who has announced he is cooperating with federal prosecutors in a probe to determine if he offered to swap fund-raising help to ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in return for Blago’s naming him to Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

Clearly in comparison to that bipartisan list of multi-millionaires, Walsh, a poor man who supports his wife and 5 kids on $40,000 plus, wouldn’t naturally belong. Were I he I wouldn’t want to belong. But I’m glad there are patriots who don’t mind serving there.

But listen: To reporter Lissau it is incongruous …that Walsh who stresses prudent spending and taxation in federal affairs…joins this list. Rewrite: Make that headline Incongruous that poor man Walsh belongs in Congress. The Daily Herald’s clear choice to continue to represent the 8^th …and a candidate the paper has supported in the past…Democrat Melissa Bean either serves or has served with the above celebrities.

Lissau’s Breathless Journalistic Style.

Obviously there is no scandal in a poor man losing a condo to a bank in a deep recession—but with his breathless journalistic style, Lissau makes it appear so. In yesterday’s Daily Herald installment, headlined…

What Next for Walsh? GOP Unsure How Foreclosure Will Play…

…Lissau interviewed the immediate past chairman of Lake county, Dan Venturi, who said he wasn’t sure. Venturi’s successor whom Lissau didn’t bother to interview, thinks people will accept Walsh all right. But as the current chairman he’s not news, Herald-style.

The teaser: Let’s wait for tomorrow, folks: buy The Herald and see whether poor man Walsh can sell his case to the 8^th district!

A journalist myself who started in the profession 57 years ago, I am deeply stirred by, and admiring of, Lissau’s tabloid style. It hearkens back to the old days I remember as a boy: Hearst, the old Chicago Times, the old Chicago Herald, the old Chicago Herald-Examiner. So I checked up and find that on the side…I kid you not…Russell Lissau writes scripts for Batman comics…you know, the pulp kids or adults who are kids at heart read.

That’s why Lissau’s style is so familiar. I’ve read it in Batman for years! “Com’on, Robin: we’ve got to clear up crime in Gotham City!”

Now for comparison, get this lede (aka as “lead”) or the first sentence bylined by Lissau in yesterday’s installment 2:

“Will this week’s revelation [sic] that Republican congressional candidate Joe Walsh lost a condominium to foreclosure affect his political chances in November?”

This “revelation” comes from perusing dusty records in the Cook county Recorder’s office. But get the verve, the dash. It is zinging and understandably so…since Lissau has been for five years a moonlighting free-lancing script-writer for DC Comics’ The Batman Strikes!

I suppose by Lissau’s standards for this revelation I ought to be awarded a variant of Gotham City trophy conferred by The Gotham City Globe or The Gotham City Gazette which in the strip regularly credits the Caped Crusader for uncovering action scripts. But I will decline the Gotham City variant of Pulitzer. I got the stuff by googling it.

The story of Lissau’s fun days as Batman scriptwriter is detailed in www.comicsintheclassroom.net of October, 2007.

Lissau should get something too for writing prose about Walsh’s poverty that crackles with enthusiasm for the hunt. I can see him now grabbing the phone…rattling machine-gun style to the rapt female operator…Hi, sweetheart, get me re-write! (Pause). Rewrite? Lissau here. Ready? Here goes: `Will this week’s revelation’do you have that…no revelation—r-e-v-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-that Republican congressional candidate Joe Walsh W-a-l-s-h lost a condominium to foreclosure affect his political chances in November?’ Huh? C-o-n-d-o-m-i…aw look it up will ya…either that or make it ‘condo.’!”

As Lissau gave Walsh’s background, so will I his. He’s a lifelong comic book reader and still owns the first two superhero comics he ever got. One day at his job he had a wonderful idea for a Superman story. “It just popped into my head like an epiphany.” Epiphany: The revelation that God has been made man in the personage of Jesus Christ. But that isn’t what Lissau means. Well his idea was turned down but Lissau didn’t give up. He got an idea for Batman and as The Dark Knight himself would say “Robin, let’s vow that tonight we’ll get The Joker or die trying!”

So tomorrow, buy The Herald, pulp edition, to read The Caped Crusader’s ghost-writer and scenarist tell you in installment #3 if poor man Joe Walsh who’s never spent a nickel that wasn’t private sector originated can convince voters that he belongs in the same chamber…looking up at the rostrum which is presided over by the little lady from San Francisco wielding the big gavel her hubby rented for her.

If scenarist Lissau and his Herald bosses have their way, Poor Man Walsh will be disqualified from joining that group…and that the 8^th will continue to be represented by Melissa Bean.

Nancy Pelosi and Melissa Bean: the Dynamic Duo.

Somehow I think the voters have had enough of them. This year they have a chance to get rid of one (not Pelosi who represents the farthest Left district in the nation). In a few weeks it is entirely likely…nay almost a certainty…that the 8^th district of Illinois will in the personage of Mme. Bean vote to encase 1/6^th of the nation’s economy…the finest health care system in the world…in the federal gulag.

A Bat idea.

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*: St. John Joseph of the Cross [AD 1654-1739]. He was born Carlo Gaetano Alosirto on the island of Ischia, off Naples to a moderately well-to-do family of seven sons. One day two Spanish Franciscan friars came begging to the home of Madonna Laura, Carlo’s mother. They signed up young Carlo then only 16 but who was well-schooled in self-abnegation and mental prayer. He took the name of John Joseph of the Cross. The monks were engaged in building a monastery at Piedimonte di Alife and enlisted the young monk, a deacon, to take on most of the labor. Happily he did so, hauling stone and developing a skill at carpentry and building.

But that happy life as an artisan was interrupted when his Superior ordered him to become a priest at the tender age of 23. He undertook to build near the completed monastery a series of little hermitages for retreats and reflection and completed the task. Then he was ordered to undertake the difficult task of novice-master. During that time he experienced a great spiritual aridity similar to that which burdened Mother Teresa of Calcutta. But he persevered and several times he was recalled to service as novice-master. It was at the second term as novice-master that John Joseph of the Cross became aware that he was being invested with some miraculous powers. He kept quiet about them but soon these gifts were perceived—the power of healing…the power to produce food and multiply it for the house.

He was ordered to be Superior at Piedimonte where his acclaim spread. Years passed and the miracles plus healing advanced producing a fame that quite irritated John Joseph. Enduring a stroke, unable to hobble except with a cane, he was greeted by crowds chanting his name and asking for healing. The multiplicity of miracles embarrassed John Joseph and he sought to hide them. One day on the Feast of St. Januarius, he went to the local cathedral to pray at the saint’s relic. As he struggled to push his way through the crowd of admirers inside the cathedral, the cane fell from his hand, was trod over by the crowd. He was unable to walk without it. But the cane had somehow unaccountably disappeared.

The crowd looked for it but in vain. Immobilized, John Joseph appealed to the saint at whose bier he was rooted and suddenly he was transported…no other way to say it…outside…as a veritable flying monk…, over the heads of the crowd, to the door of the Cathedral where he sat to catch his breath. He was wondering how in the world he was going to walk back to his monastery.

Then the crowd inside the cathedral cried out so loudly that John Joseph could easily hear them: “A miracle! A miracle!” John Joseph wondered what was going on but soon he discovered why. The cane came flying out the door, riding 4 feet over their heads, arched, lowered and tapped old John Joseph lightly with its handle and waited for him to grasp it firmly. Surrounded by the crowds, John Joseph trod slowly back to the monastery. There some years later he died after a violent apoplectic seizure at the age of 80. He is buried at Santa Lucia del Monte in the plain brown Franciscan habit he wore—and his tomb immediately became a popular place of pilgrimage. He was canonized in 1839.

Thought While Shaving: Joe Walsh—Too Poor for Congress?

2010-03-04T07:03:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Casmir*

The suburban-based Daily Herald… engaged in its usual task of helping elect Democrats…has just contrived a unique scandal to bar a conservative Republican from going to Congress. He is poor. He is having trouble making ends meet. The bank repossessed his condo.

Russell Lissau’s lede (aka “lead”) or beginning point in the story of March 3, says:

“A suburban congressional candidate who’s stressed the need for fiscal restraint lost a condominium to foreclosure last October, the same month he announced his bid for office, court records show.”

Hinted-at “moral” of the snidely written story by Lissau: By no means should someone who is facing this grueling experience which faces tens of millions in this recession be allowed to go to the U.S. House where matters of taxation and public spending are resolved.

Meaning that…

The House of Representatives…or “the people’s house” as Thomas Jefferson (who died in bankruptcy by the way)… described it and for which he wrote its first parliamentary rules…should not be tainted by anyone who has had trouble in making do in an economic downturn.

The Herald has found…presumably to its and its liberal editors’ presumed horror…that Joe Walsh the 8^th district GOP nominee used to own a condo…which went into foreclosure and Walsh and wife and children lost it to the bank: get that!

In responding to the Herald, Walsh said “I am not a wealthy man.” He and his family lived the past few years on salary that averages $40,000 a year. Forty grand? In Washington D. C. 40 grand is what you pay a kid to do spare office work part-time on a computer (of course it’s paid by the taxpayers).

Who is this rascal wastrel Walsh, this-this shirker of fiscal restraint?

After graduating with a masters in public policy from the University of Chicago, Walsh did social work in the Chicago inner city, taught U.S. history in community colleges and ran a non-profit that rewarded the disadvantaged with private vouchers for education. After his marriage ended in divorce, Walsh got the condo. Four years later he remarried, needed a bigger place. With their family now of 5 kids, he got one and put the condo up for sale but that was 2008 at the beginning of the big downturn and no takers. So the bank has it. Big deal. And greatly different from the trials besetting the average family.

I know that when you read this you will agree with me that…

IN NO WAY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO HAS FACED THESE TROUBLES GO TO THE U.S. CONGRESS WHICH FAR EXCEEDS THE USUAL QUOTA OF MULTI-MILLIONAIRES EVEN TO BE FOUND IN THE LOCAL COUNTRY CLUBS!

Consider Lissau’s Daily Herald lede again:

“A suburban congressional candidate who’s stressed the need for fiscal restraint lost a condominium to foreclosure…”

That lede is so ridiculous I vouch it would be blue-penciled in any responsible city room…including that of The Chicago Reader where a copy editor as good as say Mike Miner (my favorite media columnist) would, I believe, shove it back to Lissau and say “please…try again. Remember our readers deserve better.” It implies Walsh lost his condo through lack of personal fiscal restraint.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Lissau doesn’t know—nor does he claim to…so why the dirty innuendo except for politics?.

And since he know, it’s an implied insult to readers who have shared Walsh’s problem to suggest lack of personal fiscal restraint caused the foreclosure when any objective study of the mortgage meltdown shows government’s responsibility in abandoning traditional lending standards and substitution of 100% loans as the Fed made banks flush with reserves to lend.

As a matter of fact, it can be argued that Walsh’s bitter personal experience with his condo makes him more highly qualified than most to Congress basis his own case history. Lincoln’s failure at storekeeping and Truman’s bankruptcy in a clothing store were not impediments—in fact they may have been advantageous since they learned from hard knocks what average folk must.

Lissau’s implied condemnation of Walsh as being fiscally imprudent in his own personal affairs suggests the journalist’s reliance on…oh let me guess…someone like Eric Adelstein, the surrogate of David Axelrod, who steered Melissa Bean, the Democratic congresswoman whom Walsh is opposing to her initial victory. I know Eric well having watched Bean enter my WLS studio with an aide representing Eric…an aide who sat next to her during the interview with an open loose-leaf book of boilerplate issues from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aka the D triple C lest she make a mistake. It was the only time I allowed such a thing for which I have been kicking myself ever since.

Now concerning the beneficiary of the Herald story and its prior warm, adulatory editorial baths, Melissa Bean…

Remaining demurely silent and ostensibly non-judgmental concerning Walsh’s poverty is Democrat Bean who does not have to face eviction or loss of homes (she maintains two of them) as she is drawing down $174,000 annually. She can’t be evicted from her offices as the taxpayers pay for them.

Bean is protected from falling into poverty through her own miscalculations by an excellent pension plan gratis taxpayers, excellent medical care and hospitalization if she requires it at Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval or any other comparable facility gratis taxpayers. She does not have to rustle up funds to travel because she gets federal travel back and forth from Illinois gratis taxpayers. Postage for her office is paid for her as is the usual services of any office—phones, emails, faxesgratis taxpayers. She does not have to dig down deep to pay for staffs in Washington and here, plus pension gratis taxpayers.

Her $174,000 yearly salary is automatically raised on a cost of living basis gratis taxpayers and she doesn’t have to undergo the embarrassment of voting for her own raise (Congress has to reject it and it doesn’t do so) gratis the House under both Dem and GOP leadership with the raises paid gratis taxpayers.

If she chooses to arrange foreign travel as part of her congressional prerogative and it is approved by her committee of her political party, it will be gratis taxpayers. Why just recently a 5-day trip to Germany was taken by two senators and their spouses which included side excursions along the Rhine which amounted to $70,000 per person not counting cost of travel by military aircraft. Gratis taxpayers.

Is poverty or modest net worth a horrible contemplation for the electorate of the 8^th district which Bean represents? I don’t know how poor the average person is who enters congressional service…but I know that Dick Armey saved rent money by sleeping on his office couch at night and using the washstand to shave…and that Mike Quigley has done or still does the same—but history does tell us about how poor some of our founding fathers became after public service.

After he left the presidency, Jefferson, author of the Declaration, former governor of Virginia, founder of the University of Virginia, 3^rd president of the United States was so hounded by creditors that he put Monticello…his dream home…up for sale at an auction—offering it up to bidders who paid $10 for the privilege of bidding on it. Beclouded with tears, he couldn’t watch the process. The winner of the auction couldn’t stand it either—so he contributed it back to its owner.

Jefferson’s prospects didn’t improve. After he died in 1826 at age 83, his family had to sell Monticello to pay his massive debts.

Following his White House years, the 5^th president, James Monroe, had to sell his mansion in Oak Hill, Virginia…designed by Jefferson… to pay his debts. After his wife’s death he moved to New York city to live with his daughter and her husband. He spent most of his days walking New York city streets lost in thought. Given the poor communications of the era, the passers-by had no recognition of the tall, 6-footer, the last Revolutionary war officer to serve as president and the architect of the “Era of Good Feelings.”

And Andrew Jackson, the 7^th president, retired to his estate The Hermitage with a total of $90 in his pocket. He borrowed from friends to keep up the 1,200-acre farm and hoped to recoup from sale of cotton, his major crop. Covering the debts of his adopted son, Andrew, Jr. worsened his finances. He was spared from losing his farm by the intercession of friends when the country was hit by the economic depression following the panic of 1837.

I somehow doubt that The Daily Herald would judge Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, of course, as purveyors of lack of fiscal restraint. But then, Jefferson, Monroe and Jackson are long dead. And Joe Walsh whom the paper despises for his opposition to tax hikes and unlimited spending, could well become the next congressman and owe nothing…utterly nothing…to this wanna-be urban liberal journal.

Still, I am not through with Lissau or The Daily Herald. The article says Walsh does not live within the boundaries of the 8^th district, pointing out that for this he “was criticized in the media [guess which one?] and by some political opponents.” It admits that under federal law this is allowed. Period.

It doesn’t say that for a long time Bean lived outside the district as well. She still may—indeed I am informed she still resides outside the district. I suspect that is true since information about where she lives wasn’t included in Lissau’s story.

Hell, why botch up a good polemic and hatchet job on a conservative, eh Mr. Lissau?

Just another friendly gouge in the eye--from your neighborly Daily Herald people who publish Burt Constable.

If Joe Walsh wants to use this column to help him and his campaign, he is entitled. He is gaining national attention for his support from the Tea Party’ers. Unlike Bean he is for term limits.

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*: St. Casmir of Poland [1458-84], Prince of Poland and of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who became patron saint of Poland, Lithuania and the young. Third of the 13 children born to King Casmir IV of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of Emperor Albert II of Germany. He was born Prince of Poland in the royal palace at Cracow and was attracted to the religious life from early on. He had the benefit of a superb religious and intellectual education from the leading scholars of the era and area—Jan Dlugosz and Filippo Buonaccorsi. He made his bed on the floor and spent a large portion of every night in prayer and meditation, wearing a hair-shirt and embracing voluntary celibacy for the remainder of his life.

At the age of 13, he was offered the throne of Hungary by factions discontented with the current king. Unwilling to serve but eager to lead the Hungarian army and defend Christianity against the Turks, Casmir came to share his soldiers’ view that the war they were expected to wage was unjust. In doing so he won the approval of Pope Sixtus IV who felt he was doing the right thing—but Casmir’s father, Poland’s king, was angered. Casmir was called “the Peacemaker” which angered his King father even more. So father would not allow young Casmir to return home but relegated him to a castle at Dobski. There he remained for three months. Then Casmir disappointed his father again by refusing his command to marry the daughter of Emperor Frederick III because he was committed to celibacy.

While heavily into sanctity, Casmir was also ideally suited for governance and in his father’s long absences in Vilnius attending to the affairs of Lithuania, Casmir was the de facto king of Poland. Between 1481and `83 he administered the country with great prudence and justice. Weakened by excessive fasting he developed what is now regarded as tuberculosis. On a journey to Lithuania he died at Hrodna at the age of 26. He is interred at Vilnius in the baroque Saint Casmir’s chapel in the Vilnius cathedral. He was canonized by Pope Adrian VI in 1522 and named patron saint of Poland and Lithuania. In 1948 Pius XII named him the special patron of all youth.

Thoughts While Shaving: Dems Won’t Fill Lt. Governor Post? Here’s What Jason Should Do!...Will Somebody Tell Bank of America to Scrub the Graffiti? More.

2010-03-03T07:24:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Katherine Drexel*

Dems Might Just Leave Lt. Gov. Slot Vacant: Flannery.

CBS Channel 2 political editor Mike Flannery reported the other day that the Democrats might just leave the lieutenant governor slot vacant. Running without a lieutenant governor nominee would allow them to focus on Jason Plummer, the 27-year-old Republican lieutenant governor candidate who is being ridiculed for his youth and in-expertise before WTTW’s cameras.

Fine. If that happens and the Democrats “solve it” that way, what I would do were I Jason Plummer would be to hire a good lawyer and make the case that since the Democrats have not named a candidate for lieutenant governor and I, Jason Plummer, have received x number of votes from Illinoisans, I…Jason Plummer…should be declared the elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois and should be sworn in immediately.

This thing of Boss Mike Madigan declaring his party won’t pick a candidate literally disenfranchises the Illinois voters who conscientiously did their duty and voted for a lieutenant governor. But that doesn’t bother Big Mike does it? Or the Democrats. Plummer should demand to be sworn in immediately and take up office in the Capitol. What the hell is this: because the High Almighty Democrats have decided they won’t run a candidate that the voters are automatically disenfranchised?

Let `em have to find some toady liberal lawyer to pull strings with a toady liberal Democrat judge to disenfranchise Illinois voters.

Weird Cartoons: Are They Supposed to Be ART?

Drive down the Kennedy and come up to North Avenue and you see the building broadside which is leased by Bank of America to do with as it pleases. And it doesn’t please many. A few months ago it donated the building side to promulgating the Chicago Olympics by portraying human beings contrived by sneakers, athletic gym soles—an edifying sight and good reason that Chicago booted it because of the strange graphics Daley sanctioned.

Now the Bank of America has turned over the building broadside to weird cartoons of nebbishes which portray nihilism and meaninglessness at its worst: a suggestion of extra-curricular sexual gratification as well. Who is in charge of mandating what we are to look at as we drive to the Loop down the Kennedy at North?

Otis McDonald: Why is He Nearly Anonymous Here?

Where pray-tell are the stories which tell us who exactly Otis McDonald is: the man who is lead plaintiff in the suit to overturn the Chicago handgun ordinance? Not hardly any stories because the supine media supports Daley gun control almost as an act of religious fervor. Craven buddy-buddy love of liberalism—not Daley—does it.

Otis McDonald is a 76 year old African American Democrat who moved here from Louisiana at the age of 17, got married, landed a job as a janitor and was promoted to building engineer. In 1972 he and his wife found they could afford to buy a modest home on the far South Side. Repeatedly that home has been broken into. One time Otis called the cops and the intruder told him he had overheard the phone call and for that he was going to kill Otis McDonald. He didn’t. Otis McDonald then piled into his car and drove 200 miles to Springfield to attend his first gun rally.

It is likely the Supreme Court will uphold Otis McDonald and ditch the stupid handgun ordinance which is used by liberals as their weak attempt at fighting crime…keeping honorable people from defending themselves.

The media…which largely lives in more protected areas than Otis McDonald can afford…believes with their entire bleeding elitist hearts that Otis should not own a gun to defend himself.

Which is why we don’t hear much about Otis McDonald from them. Instead we hear and see that raving egomaniacal lunatic Farrakhan saying that whitey is going to kill the president.

*: St. Katherine Drexel [1858-1955]. Two of Philadelphia’s most famous and wealthy mainline families were the Drexels and the Biddles…almost as wealthy as Boston’s Cabots and Lodges (“the Lodges speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God”). While teaching at the Wharton School of Finance, University of Pennsylvania, I had in my class one Stephen Biddle who went on to become a famous investigative reporter. Anyhow-- Katherine Mary Drexel was born the daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth of Philadelphia. From girlhood on, she resolved to dedicate her entire life and considerable inheritance to the service of God by helping black and native American poor.

To do this and to spread the gospel to these groups, she founded a religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She financed more than 60 missions among blacks and Indians around the United States. She lived in good health and died at 97. March 3 is the anniversary of her death. She was beatified by John Paul II on Nov. 20, 1988 and canonized by him on Oct. 1, 2000. She is buried in Cornwells Heights township, Pennsylvania. She has been designated the patron saint of racial justice and of philanthropists. Her body lies under the main altar at St. Elizabeth Chapel where visitors pray daily.

Thoughts While Shaving…Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run but Not For the Usual Reasons…Thanks a Bunch, Jim Ryan! The Turmoil at Tommy More…

2010-03-02T07:08:00.002-06:00

Feast of Blessed Charles the Good.*

Sarah Palin.

I think Sarah Palin shouldn’t run for president in 2012…but not for the reasons others have cited…such as Phyllis Schlafly who said she “isn’t ready” although her husband Todd is “cute.” The usual rap against her running is that she’s too light. I never thought that. Yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that she shouldn’t run --but for a different reason.

Actually 3 of them.

Three times thus far in her career where family should take precedence, Palin has failed. Failure No. 1: When Bristol became pregnant, Sarah should have used this to avoid running. Being a mother of a troubled teen-ager who may well have run into trouble because her mother was too involved in governance and politics, should have made it clear to Palin that family is far more important than running for vice president. Subsequent events have shown her choice of politics at this time of familial chaos was ill-considered—and precedential. It obviously comes first.

Failure No. 2 occurred when she failed to monitor Bristol’s moving into mass-media as a celebrity during the campaign…especially allowing Bristol’s unsupervised interview with Fox’s Greta Van Sustern where the teen-aged mother said that abstinence doesn’t work…in contradistinction to her mother’s stand—a disastrous formulation for youth and acceptance of our hedonistic, pagan culture (and which she appears to have walked back).

Failure No. 3 is the misbegotten decision to have Bristol go into acting and appear on a TV series. Bristol has gone Hollywood, has deviated from serious attention to her role as mother. Thus the matter can only become worse. A social conservative whose credo is family values cannot allow concern for her daughter and grandchild to be trumped by vacuous fame. Electing Palin could really start the tread mill running that would lead to a soon-to-become Lindsay Lohan type. Bristol’s future is filled with foreboding as she goes Hollywood—and Mommy isn’t stopping it.

Allowing her daughter to do this shows that Sarah Palin’s first agenda is her own political life. She can continue to make a ton of money on speaking fees and book-writing but she ought to be written off as a serious presidential candidate—not because she is intellectually light but because she has been neglecting the major responsibility in her life: being a mother. Grassroots conservatives, Tea Party-ers and whatever should cease and desist from revving her up to run.

That’s what I think anyhow: you betcha!

Stubbed Toes.

In their initial forays both Bill Brady and Jason Plummer stubbed their toes—Brady for being vague and cliché-ridden and Plummer for drawing a blank and sitting speechless at the anchor’s desk at WTTW’s Chicago Tonight while Phil Ponce valiantly tried to help him out—help him by suggesting anything…just hoping to hell he’d talk. The Plummer episode is not fatal but it’s essential that he gets a staff that can prepare him for TV appearances and supply him with research. He’s smart enough but like everyone else…especially at age 27…he needs backup.

The furor from the secular media that Brady was heartless in authoring a bill that consigned homeless, stray pups and cats to extinction is very revelatory. No one is concerned about unlimited abortion rights which take the lives of human babies to which Bill Brady by his strong actions is 100% opposed. . But cats and dogs? That one really gets Sneed whose lachrymose column not stating the human angle weeps tears for puppies and kitties.

Thanks a Bunch, Jim Ryan.

I have no idea that this ticket is going to work. I know that the Democrats were deeply worried about running against Kirk Dillard who knew all the details of the state budget and governor’s role. I know that many felt Quinn or Hynes couldn’t beat Dillard. Nobody’s talking but it’s my hunch they figured out a way.

Enter Jim Ryan. The aging warrior of DuPage county, smitten with ill health and family tragedies for which no one can express anything but support for his courage…he is the last man who should have thought about running for governor again at age 63…who after a stint as states attorney acknowledged he had prosecuted two innocent men…lost earlier for governor against Blago …was the best buddy of Stu Levine, the corrupt fixer now doing time in prison…was and will probably be once more a board member of Ralph Martire’s liberal Center for Tax and Budget Accountability which has as its central purpose advocacy not just for an income tax increase but a “progressive” [sic] income tax…who in his latter days as a public official veered left… had renounced an earlier pro-gun stand to become a gun-controller… and amended a perfect social conservative record to embrace gay rights.

By dint of name recognition and nothing else, Ryan decided, it is said, on a return to power because in early polls…before the campaign started…he was running ahead of other Republican candidates for the nomination. It was held aloft to him as a teaser: You can win, Jim! The election, scheduled for Feb. 2 in the dead of winter (a throwback to Boss Madigan’s eagerness to help Obama pick up delegates in 2008) , didn’t allow much time for debate on the negatives.

If the Democrats hired a foil to screw up the Republican lineup, they couldn’t have possibly done better. Andy McKenna’s big pockets didn’t do it—Ryan’s entry did. Thanks so much, Jim. What a sweetheart. It shows what an uncontrolled ego can do fortified by a name ID poll “interpreted” as a summons to election to split the DuPage vote that was Dillard’s mainstay… by at least one Iago. Now we’ll most likely get Pat Quinn for a whole four years. By then you’ll probably toy with running for governor again at age 67.

Call me conspiratorial but one can’t spend decades around Illinois politics without qualifying. And I for one don’t think the Ryan entry was uncontrived. Not for a second.

Pastor Switch Coming at Tommy More…but Not at Sabina.

At St. Thomas More parish on the south side you have a pastor devoted to authentic Catholicism…Latin Mass and all the rest. But Rev. Charles Fanelli is due to be switched now that his term is up. Still, at St. Sabina’s on the south side you have a fiery pastor who has turned his church into a rallying ground for the political Left…with highly publicized visits from Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton and every Left winger coming down the pike. Guess what?

Rev. Michael Pfleger who has been there for more than 20 years is still a fixture—and will be there until he dies or is carried out. Of course what you get from the official archdiocese is parse-parse-parse and evasion. At a public meeting the other night there was no reason for Rev. Charles Fanelli’s transfer except that his request to stay has been denied. Oh.

More and more the Archdiocese acts like the Daley administration…which isn’t unusual given that there are so many close ties between the two entities. Where’s the explanation from Big Sis? Isn’t she paid to handle the press?

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*: Blessed Charles the Good, Martyr [AD 1127]. He was the son of King Canute of Denmark slain in assassination in 1086. Four-year-old Charles was taken by his mother to the court of her father, Robert, Count of Flanders where he was knighted with his father’s sword. Charles became Count and Flanders and Amiens. He became a loving and much beloved ruler. Daily at Bruges and at each of his castles, Charles fed hundreds of the poor. For a time he was rebuked by the populace for devoting too much time and resources to the poor. But that ended and Charles became truly popular because of his sanctity.

Discovering that some of his nobles had bought up grain and were hoarding it so they could profit from exorbitant profits, Charles forced them to sell it at once and at reasonable charges. This aroused their fury. The chief of the profiteers, one Lambert, his brother Bertulf, the dean of St. Donatian’s at Bruges, plotted to murder Charles. They were joined in the conspiracy by Erembald, magistrate of Bruges. Charles who used to walk barefoot in voluntary penance to the church of St. Donatian was warned that violence would happen. “We are always in the midst of danger,” he said. “But we belong to God. If it be His will, can one die in a better cause than for peace and justice?” As he was kneeling before the altar of Our Lady in the church, while saying the psalm Miserere he was seized by the conspirators.

His arm was severed in one stroke of a sword by one of them. Then he was swiftly decapitated by Bertulf’s nephew, Borchard. Before the day had ended news of his murder which happened on a Wednesday reached London by Friday at the first hour—“and yet,” writes a contemporary, “no one could have crossed the sea at that time.”

Personal Aside: At Last: A Team That Doesn’t Use Cliches to Remake the Nation’s Ill Economy! Daniels & Ryan (Paul).

2010-03-01T07:19:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Albinus*

With Republicans on the brink of winning not just the House but the Senate due to severe public dissatisfaction with Barack Obama and the recalcitrant Dems running Congress, legions of GOPers are mouthing old clichés that all is needed is to “cut spending, push tax reform and balance the budget.”

To which old veterans like me who have gummed this pablum from Republicans for so many years their ears are ready to fall off say: yeah-yeah-yeah. Cut spending WHERE? Push WHAT KIND of tax reform? Balance the budget HOW? That’s where the usual pol shrinks away because to specify is to violate a canon of politics—blur the oratory so no one really understands the pain.

But there are two guys who really understand the details of what fiscally ails the United States of America—and they’re far from household names. You know the household Republican names—Palin, Romney, Paul (who just won the CPAC poll for president), Huckabee, Pawlenty etc. These folks make good speeches…but I’m thinking of two men who have actually rolled up their sleeves and worked at making government solvent.

Both are idea men who (in the case of one anyhow) disclaimed any interest in running for president. We’ll start with the younger one first who just might be agreeable to serve as vice president if he were allowed to run the fiscal side. He is Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. 40.

Ryan Steps Up to the Plate.

A brilliant, pro-life Irish Catholic, Paul Ryan …a policy wonk…has come up with an imaginative counter-budget called A Road Map for America’s Future that’s tough, is destined to be unpopular with liberals and which to enact will be a very tough slog. It is controversial to be sure but it is so unique that much more senior lawmakers are stepping back to allow this young guy to go front and center. His ideas are the antithesis of Barack Obama’s but last week appearing before a Republican House group to seek bipartisan support, Obama stunned attendees and the media by praising Ryan for advancing challenging and substantive views.

Who is Paul Ryan and what is he advocating?

Six-term congressman Paul Ryan of Janesville represents the southern tier of Wisconsin from Lake Michigan to the Rock River Valley. His district takes in some of the nation’s prime industrial areas. It was settled by Yankee and German dairy farmers almost 200 years ago but Wisconsin’s 1^st district has now become known for industry…industry which like the rest of the country’s isn’t doing very well: for example, Johnson’s Wax in Racine with its modernistic Frank Lloyd Wright tower.

General Motors closed its Janesville plant, idling 2,500; Chrysler closed its Kenosha plant laying off 850. A good part of Ryan’s district melds Chicago exurban towns with Milwaukee suburbs including Lake Geneva, a vacation spot for rich Chicagoans. The district has ups and downs economically…running from Lake Michigan west to Janesville and taking in all of Racine and Kenosha counties on the Lake, including the south Milwaukee county suburbs as well including the towns of Oak Creek and Greenfield, the southern tier of townships in Waukesha county as well as New Berlin. In 2004 the district went 54% for George W. Bush but four years later voted for Barack Obama 51% to 47%.

Ryan was reared in Janesville where in 1884 his great-grandfather built a construction company now run by his cousins. He attended Miami of Ohio University and from the outset became deeply involved in the technics of governing: tax inducements, governmental policies and focusing on things individuals and private associations can do without government subsidies. He decided on being an economist and applied at the University of Chicago, intellectual home of Milton Friedman but kept on being offered what he calls “really interesting jobs in politics”—such as a staff position with U. S. Sen Bob Kasten [R-Wis.] an earlier supporter of the Laffer Curve, tax inducements to grow the economy.

Ready to go to the U of C again, Ryan delayed to take a job as legislative analyst and speech-writer for the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) and later joined the think tank “Empower America” composed of Kemp and former Education Secretary Bill Bennett. Then he was made a top staffer for Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. Finally he gave up on academia altogether and ran for Republican Rep, Mark Neumann’s House seat when Neumann ran against…and was defeated by… Sen. Russ Feingold in 1998.

That year, Ryan faced popular Democrat Kenwood county official Lydia Spottswood. He campaigned for lower taxes and for gun ownership rights. The 1^st district race was one of 10 top priorities with Democrats. Spottswood spent $1.3 million and Ryan $1.2 million but the results were not close—Ryan defeated her 57% to 43%. Since being elected to the House, Ryan has been touted as a “comer” who’s very-very smart and who does his homework.

Ryan Thought Bush’s Tax Cuts too Modest.

Named to the Ways and Means committee early, Ryan soon became one of the congress’ best communicators on difficult-to-understand fiscal issues. He has pushed for line-item veto, tax cuts to spur business growth, soon tied up with the pro-investment “Club for Growth” in criticizing President George W. Bush’s tax cuts as too modest. He became an adept spokesman for increased competition in Medicare plans and for creation of health savings accounts. He quickly became a major advocate of Bush’s plan that drew much fire for adding personal accounts to the Social Society system. By 2005 he had aligned with Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) to create payroll-funded private retirement accounts funded through spending cuts and new revenues that would result from the accounts.

In 2005 after his reelection as president, Bush offered the top job of budget director to Ryan but Ryan turned it down to stay in Congress. Two years later he became the top Republican on the House Budget committee, chosen over 12 more senior Republicans in the group. That year he wrote his first “counter-budget,” which would have cut entitlement and discretionary spending and extended all expiring tax cuts but which would have aimed for a balanced budget by 2012—losing in the House 160 to 268 (where he lost 40 Republican “mainstream” congressmen who don’t want to ruffle public sentiment.

Opposed Bush and Paulson on Bank Bailout.

In 2008, Bush’s last year, Ryan opposed the president and Henry Paulson on the $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry and almost derailed it. But that year he rose above principle and voted for the bailout of the domestic auto industry—after two car plants closed down in his district.

After huge Democratic victories in 2008, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, citing Ryan as one of the brightest Republicans in the House, urged him to run against Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a leadership fight but Ryan declined. Instead he was an electrifying keynote speaker at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and wrote a counter to Obama’s first budget. His counter-budget was so tough and detailed that GOP Leader Boehner, feeling it would kill the GOP if it got out so he had it scrapped. Ryan has been consistently more conservative than his district and has said “A lot of guys get to vote how they want and then go home and go fishing…I’ve got to vote and then go home and explain what I did and why I did it.”

Interestingly enough, he has had no trouble winning reelection having won last year with 64% of the vote, topping McCain’s number in the district by 17 points.

Last week in response to some public appeals that he run for president, Ryan declined. He said “I’m not looking to become some famous conservative movement leader.” Instead he is either looking to be chairman of Ways and Means if and when Republicans take charge of the House or run for the seat to be vacated by Sen. Herbert Kohl (D) who will be retiring in 2012.

But try as he might, Ryan can’t shake the aura of intellectual leader of the Republicans on fiscal policy. Here are some features of his Road Map for America’s Future.

Courageous New Approaches.

On Social Security he says that for those 55 or older today, his plan would remain unchanged. For those younger, benefits would be reduced—but with no cuts for the poorest workers. Workers 55 and younger in 2011 would be granted the right to establish individual investment accounts that would be funded with part of their payroll taqxes—government guaranteeing a return equal to inflation.

Regarding Medicare, current recipients and those signing up in the next decade would continue in the program as is, although wealthier recipients would pay somewhat higher premiums. In 2021 Medicare would become a voucher program for new recipients—those who today are 54 and younger with subsidies for the poor and means testing for the wealthier, the goal being to hold the growth of the vouchers below projected growth in health care costs. With vouchers, recipients would be entitled to buy Medicare-certified private insurance—which in today’s dollars would ultimately grow to $11,000. Eligibility ages for Medicare and Social Security would slowly hike up toward 69 and then 70.

Concerning government spending, “non-defense discretionary spending”—amounting to 1/6^th of the budget, taking in everything from housing, parks and education—would be frozen at 2009 levels.

Turning to the issue of simplified taxation, under Ryan’s Road Map, taxpayers could choose between today’s system or a streamlined replacement with no deductions and no special tax breaks. There would be a tax-free income ($39,000 for a family of four) after which taxpayers would choose from two rates: 10% up to $100,000 for joint filers and 25% on income higher than that. And this is important: He would eliminate taxes on corporate income, dividends and capital gains and in their place implement what he calls a “business consumption tax” – or VAT (value added tax).

To be sure, Ryan’s innovative Road Map for America is not criticism-free. Some critics on the right point out that since under Ryan’s plan the budget will not be balanced by 2063, it is far too distant…arguing that his plan should be amended to contain greater tax hikes than he would like and greater spending cuts liberals would like. Liberals who like bumper-sticker rhetoric say he is trying to “privatize” Social Security, “cut taxes for the rich,” hike taxes for the middle class and let Medicare “die on the vine.”

Ryan counters that his plan is not as radical-right as Democrats allege. On Social Security he would allow workers to invest in personal savings accounts (hardly privatization). He would reform the tax code to provide a credit for paying for health coverage. The income tax for households earning up to $100,000 would be set at 10%; those earning over that amount would pay 25%. He would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax and would trim some business taxes.

Is the Ryan plan perfect? Even he doesn’t think so. But the important point still remains: It shows the possibility of common ground between the “redistributionist Left” and “limited government right” which moves to solvency over the long term as well.

It’s amazing to note that Paul Ryan is the only Congressman of either party who has launched a counter-budget and has started a conversation on the limits of government. Knock his plan if you wish but recognize he’s the only guy who has struggled to counter the bad liberal tax idea with a conservative idea…which is rather sad to realize.

Daniels Works Wonders in Indiana.

Aside from Ryan there is really only one other Republican who has tackled tough budget problems—and he has done so not as a theorist as Ryan but on a tough practical basis--as a working governor. He’s the popular…strange to say because he’s not especially charismatic …governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, 61. To my mind, the best team possible for 2012 would be Daniels for president and Ryan for vice-president. Presbyterian Daniels, 20 years older than Ryan, married with four children, has had matchless experience in business and government. In fact the possibility of Daniels for president and Ryan for vice president really gets me excited.

Both are pro-life. Daniels, educated at Princeton (BA) and Georgetown (law) began as a staffer for Indianapolis mayor Dick Lugar, served as chief of staff when Lugar went to the Senate, then became director of the GOP Senate campaign committee and senior adviser to President Ronald Reagan…all before going private sector—joining Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical giant based in Indianapolis where by sheer intellectual strength he climbed the ladder to become president of the company’s North American pharmaceutical operations.

Then he liquidated $27 million in stock holdings to take a job as director of President George W. Bush’s budget office. His relations with Congress were so stormy that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WVa.) once shouted that Daniels was a “Little Caesar” and the prince of pork, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) advised Daniels to go back to Indianapolis and stay there.

Daniels did return to Indiana in 2003 but to run for governor of the state. Daniels won with 53% and took over with the state facing a $645 million deficit and owing $710 million in back payments to public schools, universities and local governments. The first thing Daniels did was convince business to agree that the state should go on daylight savings time (it was one of only three states not to do so which severely hobbled its ability to deal with other parts of the country).

Indiana had found itself at a great disadvantage in sticking the old central savings time system. But the farmers, a strong constituency in the state, wanted it and to tinker with the issue was regarded akin to stepping on a highly electrified third rail. But Daniels convinced them and a majority of Indianans to scrub the old system and now everybody’s happy.

Turning to the state’s economy, Daniels slashed spending to the bone, created tax breaks for business against liberal opposition, initiated tougher enforcement of child support obligations by deadbeat dads. He cut the state’s property tax relief payments and expanded local governments’ control over how they raise revenue.

He created health savings accounts for state employees; he ditched the old patronage-riddled state department of commerce and replaced it with a streamlined economic development public-private corporation to do the job better. His Indiana Economic Development corporation committed $700 million in tax incentives to new businesses and produced more than 75,000 new jobs. His abstemious fiscal policy won the state an AA+ credit rating in 2006 and an AAA score in 2008. He masterminded a 1% increase in the sales tax in return for a cap on property taxes of 1% of assessed valuation.

In 2008, a notably bad year for Republicans when Barak Obama was elected and both houses of Congress went strongly Democratic, Mitch Daniels was reelected governor of Indiana, winning metro Indianapolis handily, Like Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, he has said he won’t run for president—but he recently amended that by saying he’s keeping all options open.

My hope: If Daniels can be encouraged to really make a run of it and convinces Ryan to run with him as a team, they could put this country back on an even keel—A.O. (After Obama).

St. Albinus or Aubin [AD 550], the titular patron of many parishes across France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland. Born in the diocese of Vannes in Brittany, he belonged to a family that originally came from England or Ireland. As a young man he entered the monastery at Tincillac and was elected Abbot at age 35. He instilled great discipline and led a very holy life…so much so that when the see of Angers, in northwestern France opened, a mass movement of priests and laity turned to him to be their bishop. He took it against his will, preached daily and concerned himself with young widows who were struggling to support large families. He also did something that few others had done up to that time—he became interested in freeing slaves, the prisoners who had been carried off by barbarians in their raids.

Albinus raised money to ransom them. So persuasive was Albinus in his cause of ransoming slaves that he convinced the king of Paris, Childebert who stole a lovely girl named Etheria from the See of Angers imprisoning her in his castle but whom he was interested in marrying. When Albinus obtained the very reluctant permission from the King he went to the castle to demand her release. A soldier tried to interfere but Albinus looked at him closely and he fell dead. The King of Paris while in love with Etheria was also a mercenary and cut a deal with Albinus to collect a ransom—which Albinus paid.

Personal Asides: Brady’s 1st Big Problem—Raising Dough!...The 7-1/2 Hour Health Care Summit Theatre.

2010-02-26T06:49:00.002-06:00

   Feast of St. Alexander*

                                            Raising Dough.

One of the first things handicappers use as they compare notes on viable candidates is the question: Can he raise dough? Up to now the answer on Bill Brady the all-but-declared-victor of the Republican gubernatorial nomination is decidedly no. All his primary campaigns were run on shoe-string budgets and this is no different from others. I’m not even sure he had a campaign manager during the primary although reportedly he has one now.

This is an important disadvantage for Brady. One of the first things that seasoned handicappers liked about Kirk Dillard was he can raise dough…not in the lavish amounts Andy McKenna, Jr. did through his old man’s deep pockets and bottomless contacts but satisfactorily enough to get through a general election. To be successful for governor a candidate should have $10 million either on hand or available for the scooping into his cache.

Of course idealistic right-to-lifers…some of whom endorsed Brady…think of nothing else but a 100% voting record aren’t interested in the ability to raise campaign money, essential to win elections. Not for them. Their scratch sheets showing 100% pro-life voting record is sufficient. For them big dough is what they shell out at a silent pro-life auctions in church basements: $50.

Let’s be polite and say that Brady is not nearly even in the distant neighborhood of collecting a couple million today--while Pat Quinn has coffers full from Big Labor and other liberal interests. For which we can all say: Thanks, Jim Ryan and Andy McKenna for your unpredictable entry into the primary which put us in this spot when without your entry there was a distinctly good chance Republicans could capture the governorship.

Theatre Helped Democrats.

Independents and the mainstream media want to show what they feel is “transparency” and “bipartisanship” which will enable them to feel that Barack Obama is making a good-will effort to work with Republicans…and on TV. But the real game was revealed just before the end of the 7-1/2 hours when Obama said that in the last analysis he will not tolerate “baby steps” and that if passage depends on just Democrats, so be it. Following the Blair House session, David Axelrod, the Obama courtier appeared on TV saying that the American people want a straight vote up or down on the issue. All of which means that there will indeed be a Herculean effort at “reconciliation”—the jam-through of a procedural vote to obviate the filibuster, starting with the House.

But House Democrats really don’t have the votes to pass it.

From the image standpoint, the Democrats helped themselves with independents and shored up their base. But whether they changed any votes to pass health care is undeterminable. Republicans showed up well, particularly Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin…showing that they are not members of the “party of `no’” but have cogent ideas. In essence, both parties helped themselves but whether or not the Dems switched votes can’t be determined.

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*: St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria [AD 328]. He is chiefly celebrated for the strong resistance he showed to the Arian Heresy, propagated by one Arius, a presbyter, who maintained that Christ was not the Son of God, that He was just another creature and that He was capable of sinning. Priests questioned Arius at several sessions. After the first one, Arius was excommunicated.

Then Alexander summoned Arius to a council and he appeared before an assembly of clergy in Alexandria. The demeanor of Alexander was so impassive and even-handed that for a time he faced severe criticism—but Arius was again excommunicated. Finally Constantine I called the first Council of Nicea to question Arius. Alexander traveled there and performed as the finest prosecutor of heresy, winning plaudits after the session which excommunicated Arius, causing the Emperor to banish him to Illyricum, a district in the Balkan peninsula.

In retrospect Alexander’s calmness and objectivity carried the day, his demeanor making his scholarly words appear more effective rather than railing and losing his temper as some prelates had done.

After this triumph, Alexander returned to Alexandria where he died two years later, having named St. Ananasius as his successor.

Personal Asides: Dillard Will Likely Quit Governor Race Soon…Limbaugh Blasts Brown (Why?)…Schlafly says Palin’s Not Ready (Really?). More.

2010-02-25T06:59:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Tarasius*

Dillard Will Quit Governorship Race Soon.

The word is that Kirk Dillard will quit soon because in his estimation there will not be sufficient votes to overcome the Bill Brady lead. He will pledge his support to Brady. As one hod carrier in the Republican party, I pledge to support and vote for Brady, too…although I’m not sure my help will be welcomed since in the past I zinged Brady somewhat—and politicians never forget. But in comparison to what we have as governor, he’d be a welcome and refreshing change and I’ll be helpful. It’s of no great moment to me if my help is welcomed or not since for the past 35 years I’ve been on the outs with every governor, Republican and Democrat.

The net gain will be for the Democrats in 2010 because they don’t have to run against Dillard who has more experience in the governorship than anyone else—and Democrats owe a huge debt of thanks to old Jim Ryan of DuPage who whether with their approval or not ran despite huge handicaps and enabled a 3-cushion shot to occur with McKenna’s negative advertising to torpedo both Dillard and Ryan plus himself (McKenna) and succeed in nominating by a hair’s breadth Bill Brady. Do I think Ryan wittingly helped this to occur: no. But his supreme ego played into their hands. Do I think the Democrats envisioned this happening? Yes—but originally they were counting on Bob Schillerstrom who flunked the test.

Their wish was McKenna to Schillerstrom to Dillard producing Brady. It ended up McKenna to Ryan to Dillard which produced Brady.

Limbaugh Blasts Brown (Why?).

I don’t exactly know where Rush Limbaugh was during the Massachusetts senate race but Scott Brown said over and over again that he would be “independent” and be in the mould of maverick John McCain. I pointed this out after he was elected but a chorus of readers told me shhhhhhh because I was spoiling the celebratory occasion. Didn’t Rush hear that or did he hear it and not believe it? Anyhow there the Oracle was yesterday bellowing that Brown is a traitor to conservatism because he voted to apply cloture to the Dems’ multi-billion-dollar jobs bill. Go figure. I would say that probably more criticism should go to Mitt Romney for endorsing McCain’s reelection. If Romney’s right that there is a grassroots conservative revolution out there, the guy he should plug is J. D. Hayworth.

Schlafly Says Palin’s Not Ready (Really?).

Arrogance doesn’t just reside with liberals. I don’t know whether Sarah Palin is ready to run for president or not. By the tone of her speech to the Tea Party convention that I heard and read she is. But now that Phyllis Schlafly has said she isn’t I guess all that remains is for Palin to fold her tent. Yes, ma’am. Phyllis did say that Palin’s husband is cute though. That’s reassuring, coming from Phyllis who will be 86.

Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Vote.

It’s revelatory that the winner of the straw poll for president of the United States at CPAC last week was the 74 year old libertarian Congressman Ron Paul who not long ago urged America to disband the CIA and its intelligence apparatus throughout the world. If he seeks the presidency again in 2012 he will be 76.

After reading Paul’s books Revolution and End the Fed I’d say his views on the economy are a refreshing antidote to what we’ve had in this country with bailouts etc. I’m in favor of cutting subsidies, returning to the gold standard and curtailing the Fed—not ending it because as Arthur Laffer told me not long ago without it would be like driving on a highway without traffic lights. But neo-pacifist isolationist Paul is a downright menace when he wants to dismantle the intelligence system of the country—and who has repeated what the frenetic Left maintains: that with 9/11 we had it coming…which is what he said in a full-dress 2008 debate with other presidential candidates.

What did the straw poll mean? It meant that a lot of university kids got into the hall and voted while the poll was largely ignored by most of the crowd in favor of listening to the speeches. The same type of kids who chanted for McGovern in `72 and Dean in 2000. Aristotle warned that undue influx of the young and over-idealistic in polity is sure to wreck society since they don’t have the maturity to understand nuance. They’ve sure wrecked the Democratic party. The great myth propagated by Paul-ites is that he is another Robert A. Taft. Not even remotely if they read Taft’s 1952 book A Foreign Policy for Americans which is in my library.

Dems Say House Has to Go First on Health Care.

The word is that Democrats want the House to go first on health care in order to get reconciliation because the rules say such effort should start with the House since that’s where appropriations come from. Yesterday in the most revelatory comment of all, Senator Kent Conrad when informed of it said “good because that’ll mean it’s dead.” Take that for what it’s worth.

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*: St. Tarasius [AD 800. Although a layman and chief secretary to the young (age 10) Emperor Constantine VI and Constantine’s mother Irene,, he was chosen Patriarch of Constantinople after being recommended by his predecessor who retired to a monastery. Tarasius came from a patrician family and led a life of almost monastic severity. Upon becoming patriarch Tarasius, the Council of Nicaea declared that contrary to some puritanical influence, holy portraits and statues were not forbidden in the Church but on the contrary can lead to holy thoughts, contemplation and prayer.

Tarasius restored holy images and labored strenuously to abolish simony (the practice of buying ecclesiastical offices). He lived an austere life, disallowed rich food at his table, allowed himself little sleep and spent all his leisure in prayer and reading. He banished fine clothes among the clergy and forbade entertainments; he took dishes from his own table and distributed them with his own hands to the poor; he visited charitable institutions and hospitals in Constantinople. His big test came years later when Constantine VI became a man and was forced by his tyrannical mother Irene to marry his wife, the Empress Mary. Constantine wanted to divorce Mary and marry one Theodota, a maid of honor to the Empress. He lobbied the Patriarch saying that he knew his wife as plotting to kill him.

Tarasius said sternly to him: “I will suffer death rather than consent to your design.” The Emperor flew into a rage and drove Tarasius from his presence. Then he turned Empress Mary out of the palace as well and forced her to take the veil. . He then prevailed on a weakling prelate…we know all about them today, don’t we?...named Abbot Joseph who “married” Constantine and his beloved Theodota. Thereupon, Patriarch Tarasius was persecuted without cease. But all bad things come to an end. The marriage of Constantine and Theodota ended the dowager mother, Irene’s influence. So Irene gained the support of officers of the court and army and staged an insurgency which deposed her son. Then Irene jailed her son and had his eyes put out (not a nice thing for a mother to do, eh?) Irene reigned for five years but her time came up, too and she was deposed by a general named Nicephorus who banished her to the Isle of Lesbos (a good question: as a resident of Lesbos could she be in fact called a Lesbian? But I jest).

Under Nicwphorus, Patriarch Tarasius served in peace and ruled his sea for 21 years.

Personal Aside: The Eerie Mystery of ObamaCare. Force-Feeding America for a Plan It Hates…More.

2010-02-24T07:22:00.002-06:00

Feast of St. Matthias*

It’s Spooky.

The specter of a tall, lugubrious president with the ominous presence of Lurch (as in “you rang?” ), a wispy-voiced Senate majority leader (think of him as Uncle Fester) and a willowy, washed out female Speaker (Morticia) seeking to ram un-digestible massive health care castor oil down the unwilling, gagging throat of the American people is just about an historic first.

Probably only the since Kansas-Nebraska act which put slavery or abolitionism to a vote…which the North hated and even the South’s Sam Houston despised…has this spectacle been seen. Then there’s Pugsley (Dick Durbin), Gomez (Robert Menendez), Cousin Itt (Barney Frank) and Thing, the disembodied hand that emerges from a box and lights Uncle Fester’s cigar (Rahm Emanuel). The question is why this caste of weirdos want to do it when the eternal misgiving of the voters threatens to pitch them all into ignominy.

Three possible reasons. 1. Lurch was misguided by Thing into not duplicating the Clinton health care debacle where the Clintons micromanaged everything and kept the Democratic Congress from the backroom. But the opposite was a disaster: Lurch, influenced by Thing, allowed the Congress to build two monstrosities…one in the House and another in the Senate. Recognizing his error, Lurch has now sent his own idea to the Congress’ “bipartisan” session (albeit without CBO scoring since it is very vague). SoLurch wants a final “go” at it to please the Left which believes he was too hands-off.

Polls taken of the health bill show that point-by-point Americans

favor the details. Why then aren’t they reconciled to the complete package? Simple. The complete package has an astronomical price tag affixed. But Lurch believes that if somehow the bill can be rammed through, voters will like it…moreover they will remember that the Republicans opposed it.

3. And the one I favor—which is really an extension of #2. . Lurch is a Leftist ideologue and believes he is Destiny’s Tot…not just as the first black president but as the leader of humanity who, if he rams the bill home, will be revered from now to time immemorial for his accomplishment.

What about Reconciliation, the device invented by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) during budget showdowns which purportedly only pertain to appropriations matters? Are the Dem Munsters really going to try it? I think yes. But it cannot be done. To get the thing active, the House first has to pass the Senate bill with no changes. Given what happened in the House last time and with the pressures of the election of 2010 breathing down incumbents’ necks, I cannot imagine it would happen.

Powell Still Likes Obama: Surprise!

Blood is thicker than water and Colin Powell’s continued support of Barack Obama is based not on ideological grounds…but on racial solidarity. The question that intrigues: how could Powell be the national security assistant to Ronald Reagan…how could he serve George W. Bush, go to the UN and defend the Iraq invasion and still align with Obama?

Answer: Powell is infinitely malleable but blood comes first. If Obama wasn’t a black man you’d never see Powell in his corner—or Powell attacking Dick Cheney. Powell was the hire of Cap Weinberger whom I knew from his service on The Quaker Oats board and whom I interviewed following his service as secretary of defense. Powell was an affirmative action find by Weinberger. He basically followed orders and did an effective job. But don’t think that Powell ever forgot he was a black man while he did what he felt was indentured service to white conservatives.

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*: St. Matthias. [1^st Century]. He was one of the 72 disciples Christ sent out, two by two: this attested by Eusebius and St. Jerome. Acts has him constantly by Jesus’ side from His baptism to Ascension. When Peter declared that with Judas’ defection it was necessary to elect a 12^th apostle, two candidates were suggested as most worthy: Barsbas and Matthias. After prayer, the 11 cast lots and the winner was Matthias who was ranked with the Apostles. Clement of Alexandria states that Matthias was remarkable for his insistence of mortifying the flesh. In the first part of his ministry, he went to Judea but thereafter went much further. According to the Greeks, he went to Cappadocia and the coast of the Caspian Sea. He appears in the Greek “Menaia” and is said to have been martyred at Colchia, in what is now Georgia… in the manner of crucifixion. His body was said to have been moved to Jerusalem and later brought to Rome by St. Helen.

Personal Aside: I Told You About Brown—Remember?... The Cynical Obama Health Summit Ploy…Well, What Do We Do NOW?

2010-02-23T06:58:00.001-06:00

Feast of St. Peter Damian*

Scott Brown: Part Fish, Part Foul.

Yesterday, Scott Brown joined the Senate majority to cut off debate on the Senate “jobs” bill. I told you about Scott Brown—remember? I said don’t get too used to thinking he’s the conservative savior—that in the Massachusetts campaign he said he was going to be another John McCain. This doesn’t mean he’ll go Left on everything—but I said—and it’s obvious now—don’t count on him.

Obama’s Health Summit Ploy.

Obama has unveiled a health bill that is close to the Senate version…minus public option but which substitutes federal regulation of the insurance industry. It adds a tax on “unearned income,” capital gains at precisely the time when this serves as a severe dampening agent on business investment. The bill is so expensive…adding an estimated $200 billion to the original Senate version which already cost $850 billion…that the Congressional Budget Office has refused to “score” it, saying there are not sufficient numbers to do so. Basically some experts say it amounts to a $2 trillion expenditure.

Add to this the fact that Obama has still refused to add tort reform, has neglected to do anything about the devastating amount that trial lawyers add to health bills—the Massachusetts Medical Society maintaining that fully one third of hospital bills are caused by unneeded tests conducted as a defensive measure by predatory shark trial lawyers. Even Howard Dean has said that the Democratic party is so indebted to the trial bar that it cannot move on tort reform. Plus the fact that “Reconciliation”…the device used on appropriations bills that obviates filibusters…will be applied in all likelihood to the health bill.

The outlook is that with “Reconciliation” this monstrosity will pass the Senate with a bare 51 votes—although don’t be too sure. What is foreordained is that it willcertainly not pass the House in its present form.

The unmitigated arrogance of Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional majority is unmatched. With all indices of public opinion showing that the American people are unalterably opposed to ObamaCare, they are going to hold the public’s nose and force-feed the castor oil to America anyhow. This presages a disaster of massive proportions for the Democratic party and Obama personally—which could well lead to Republican takeover of the House and perhaps the Senate. There is no hope that Obama has learned anything thus far in his first year in the presidency. This is more than just being an unregenerate Man of the Left: but a man of beclouded simplicity and ignorance…a classic case of ineptitude matching and maybe exceeding that of Andrew Johnson the 17^th president.

Total Recount.

It would cost a lot…maybe $1 million if he loses…but I hope that backers of Kirk Dillard will go for a total recount with the election so close—and I’ll contribute it to it (no, not a million or anywhere near it!: what d’you think I am a zillionaire?). From the outset, I thought there was something very odd when Jim Ryan, from DuPage along with Dillard, jumped into the race with the super-heavy baggage he has and didn’t make much of an energetic move to campaign other than to show up at candidate cattle shows and on TV debates.

It was clear that from the outset, the Dems didn’t want to run against Dillard because he has the expertise of the governor’s job. The entry of Ryan split DuPage and coupled with the already heavy negative advertising of McKenna (coupled with his frequency of not showing up for debates) produced a triple whammy. The Democrats profited from Ryan’s entry.

The last few years of Ryan’s service as AG showed him moving to the left on a number of issue (not pro-life)…on guns and gay-rights. Prior to his surprise entry into the race late last year he was a prominent board member of Ralph Martire’s Center for Tax and Budget Accountability which has been shamelessly lobbying for an income tax hike. Ryan’s entry complicated the Republican side hugely. Whoever planned it is unknown but it was a Hail Mary pass which worked…producing as likely GOP nominee a downstate senator not known for heavy lifting intellectually and who was passed up often for leadership responsibilities.

Using another analogy, the Republican gubernatorial primary of 2010 was the equivalent of a 3-cushion pool table shot. Voters were alienated by the barrage of heavy negative arrows shot at (1) Dillard and (2) Ryan and by their bottomless-funded source (3) McKenna. A number of voters wrote all three off…Dillard for purportedly favoring a tax hike, Ryan for purportedly favoring a tax hike and McKenna for being the source of the negative commercial barrage. That left Brady…never a good fund-raiser… who had little money to spend on commercials at all—so the destruction of all three allowed Brady to edge both—which might well produce something very like the famous denouement of the 1972 film The Candidate where Bill McKay, played by Robert Redford, turns to his driver after he wins the election and asks plaintively, “Well, what do we do NOW?”

After Senate President John Cullerton yesterday demanded that Brady show a program for balancing the budget, the ball is truly in Brady’s court. Brady has never been known for heavy grasp of governmental details. Gulp: Well, what do we do NOW?

*St. Peter Damian [1001-72]. He was another John the Baptist…someone who was born to rail against licentiousness and laxity in the Church (although unlike the Baptizer he didn’t lose his head). Born at Ravenna, Italy he was orphaned at an early age and was left in the charge of a brother who treated him as a slave, didn’t educate him and put him to work tending swine. Fortunately another brother, a priest of Ravenna, rescued him and took him to his parsonage to live. So grateful was the young lad that he took the priest-brother’s name as his own surname—Peter Damian. The priest-brother, sensing the lad had a great mind, educated him, sending him to school first at Faenza and later at Parma. Peter took well to studies and became in time a professor of great intellect.

More than that, Peter took to fasting and prayer as with The /Baptizer and joined a strict congregation of Benedictines who lived in a hermitage, each with a separate cell who engaged in austerity, prayer and contemplation. His incessant readings and contemplation brought on bouts of great insomnia and he counseled himself to greater discretion, allowing himself some time to sleep. By unanimous consent of the monks, he was elected Abbot and governed with great wisdom and piety. Under his leadership great contemplative saints were fashioned in the monastery including Dominic Loricatus and John of Lodi. Then the news of Peter’s sanctity and wisdom reached Rome and he was employed in the service of several popes—including Stephen IX who prevailed on Peter to become cardinal-bishop of Ostia. Peter was a great bishop but continually lobbied the pope to allow him to return to his abbey. Stephen IX refused but his successor, Alexander II reluctantly agreed but made Peter promise to accept assignments for the papacy if called upon.

To some, Peter Damian was not just austere but a fanatic—criticizing the bishop of Florence for playing chess, leading the prelate to acknowledge his fascination with the game by washing the feet of twelve poor men and reciting the psalter three times. Peter fought simony, the practice then current of paying for high ecclesiastical office, insisting on clerical celibacy (which sometimes then was observed more by lip-service than actual practice). It was said of Peter Damian that “his genius was to exhort and impel men to perform the heroic, to encourage striking achievements and spur edifying examples…[A]n extraordinary moral force burns in all that he wrote.”

Time and again the Vatican used him as a disciplinarian in touchy political situations—such as the case of Henry IV, the young king of Germany who married Bertha, daughter of Otto, Marquis of the Marches of Italy and who desired a divorce under the pretense their marriage was not consummated. The weakling Bishop of Mainz summoned a council with the understanding that it would make a pretense of listening to the evidence but in reality agree to the divorce—but Peter Damian, the pope’s man, stood in the way.

Peter, then an aged man, was chosen by Pope Alexander to preside over the phony “council.” He was having nothing to do with the arrangement but convinced Henry IV to forego the divorce. No sooner did Peter return to his austerities at Fonte Aveliana when the Pope summoned him again—this time when he was in failing health—to discipline the luxury loving archbishop of Ravenna who, it appeared, sanctioned enormous frivolities and carnal occurrences. Arriving at the bishop’s house, Peter found the bishop had just died but he condemned his auxiliaries and priests and sanctioned them to lives of penance they never forgot. On the way to Rome to report to the Pope, Peter was seized with a great fever and died in the monastery outside Faenza while monks were gathered around his bed reciting Matins on February 22, 1072. His teachings and writings were voluminous and he was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1828.

Thoughts While Shaving: Catholic Tea Party’ers Should Kill that Goofy Vatican Newspaper, Too!...More.

2010-02-22T07:08:00.000-06:00

Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch.*

L’Osservatore What?

Last week we talked about a Catholic Tea Party to abolish the useless USCCB (U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) The USCCB’s not a canonical thing but a kind of liberal bogus UN General Assembly …ego for bishops who gather in a marble palace in Washington…dinged up the late Bernardin to water down doctrine and lobby Rome to pick accommodationist prelates.

Dumping the USCCB’s one major objective—but…

At the same time, let’s consider cutting off the source of funding the stupid so-called Vatican newspaper… as soon as we can determine how to sever the exact tendril connected to the root nourishing the fungi that supports L’Osservatore Romano.

The uninitiated…and many of the initiated…have been led to believe it is the Pope’s official house organ. Hell, no…but has been informally regarded as such since 1861 when it was set up to editorially defend the papal states. I realize that time means nothing to the 2000-year Church—but a news flash: The papal states were dissolved after they lost the battle of Castelfidardo on September 8,1860.

Ever since then, people have been wondering if what L’Osservatore writes, in all cases, represents papal thinking or not. On one hand, it seems to: It has first dibs on publishing full texts of Vatican documents so it has a distinct source somewhere. But on the other, it definitely free lances with editorial liberalism. It takes editorial stands such as praising Obama, weeping over the death of Michael Jackson—and it spins Op Eds, some of which are as goofy as the New Age tracts available in Unitarian conclaves.

As is, L’Osservatore is so confusing it is antithetical…at least to the Church in the United States…which is waging an eloquent campaign pleading for Catholics to come home. Par for the course, no amount of complaining to Rome about this rogue paper has effected any change. That’s because the letters, emails and protests go to a dead letter office run by faceless monsignori bureaucrats. That’s the way it has always been with the Vatican since at least Constantine, nurtured by the Italianate easy-come-easy-go mantra. What to do?

My suggestion involves sending a message to Rome. It reads: no serious dough until the Vatican gets rid of that lousy New Age rag…either that or fires the arrogant Twit who edits it who is evidently impervious to change. Either IT goes…HE goes…or NO DOUGH for Peter’s Pence. You’d think Benedict XVI, a German and John Paul II, a Pole, would have cleaned out the flakes. But no.

As John XXIII said when asked how many people work at the Vatican:

“About half.” He could have added that another third free-lance for their own goofy ideas.

When L’Osservatore began in 1860 it sold on the street for five baiocchi. Now it’s worth less than ZERO baiocchi. Thus when any serious official or unofficial Vatican paper should be promulgating the essential truths of the Church, what we get is the report that the Vatican’s Top 10 albums are…

The Beatles’ Revolver; Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon; Oasis’ What’s the Story, Morning Glory; Michael Jackson’s Thriller; U2’s Achtung, Baby; Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours; Carlos Santana’s Supernatural; Donald Fagan’s The Nightly; Paul Simon’s Graceland; and David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name.

What’s that last one: If I Could Only Remember My Name? Remember this one: Professor Giovanni Maria Vian. He’s the editor: not a priest, not a theologian—termed “a professor or patristic philology”—which means a grammarian…more likely somebody’s brother-in-law on a fat sinecure. Remember, all politics started with the Italianates of Rome in the Church.

This is the non-comprehending guy…Professor Vian …who writes that Barack Obama isn’t a pro-abort at all. In fact, far from it he tells us. Of course he’s blissfully ignorant about Obama’s voting record and his pronouncements but is entranced by the secular Messiah’s personal style. Further, Professor Vian has said…

…the issue of brain death should be reopened because new scientific evidence has arisen. By which he indicates that harvesting the organs of a seemingly brain dead, purportedly vegetative patient might be okay.

Ignored by this Twit is that The New England Journal of Medicine has found that key experts in the medical field have considered the 1968 concoction of “brain death and the later invention of “cardiac death” as insupportable criteria for true death.”

What irritates me as one guy in the back pew…but one who has a working knowledge of theology thanks to Ernie… is that while the declamations coming from Benedict XVI are impeccable…this jerk Giovanni Maria Vian somehow has sanction from On High to run spec stories that can confuse the hell out of ordinary Catholics…stories with all the thumb-sucking depth exhibited in the old Sun-Times columns Cathleen Falsani. The story that wept over the late Michael Jackson was particularly embarrassing for a supposed Vatican paper (evidently M.J.’s crotch fondling had a fan in Dr. Giovanni) as well as the literary spirituality of Harry Potter.

Lest you are scandalized by anything that smacks of criticism of the Vatican…understand there’s an canonical anomaly here. We Catholics believe there is only one Church established by Chris…that which constitutes the one true Church—its “Church-ness” in other words—exists and subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. But this uniqueness does not guarantee it runs like a fine Swiss watch. Not surprising since the nature of this Church that Christ founded is managed by (as Paul has said in Corinthians) “earthen vessels.” Earthen vessels means the very human beings who run things. Try to complain to the chancery here about some goofball’s free-lancing liturgy with clowns and hoops at Mass and you either won’t hear back. . Unfortunately it is that way also in Rome.

There is evidently something in the Roman water that causes delays and no responses to serious liturgical and orthodox complaints about Church management. Most return flavored with the vague word domaini”—tomorrow.

When you press harder and write yet another letter or email the answer comes back even more relaxed: “ “a-domani!” Meaning see-ya!

Well I’d like to respond a little more sharply using the same Roman word“A-DOANI!” See ya.

A-domani when the plate passes for Peter’s Pence. Even Peter had to be reminded once to get some guts (which on correction he demonstrated in great style). It’s time to tell Rome to either fire the honorable Professor Giovanni Maria Vian a-domani…or--

See ya, pal: Meaning no spare change for Peter until Peter puts change in effect…in other words Vian is outta there and/or a real paper—reflecting the true views of the Vatican-- is launched.

Last Week’s Pro-Dem Columns for the Kept Press.

Liberal Eric Zorn, in The Trib tells us that the reason ObamaCare has bombed is that we ignorant mortals don’t understand what’s in it—implying that once we do, as he assures he does, objections as to the tremendous cost and conversion of 1/6^th of the U. S. economy may dissolve.

…Radical feminist Carol Marin, the near 60 russet haired political oligarch commanding a newspaper column and two TV stations for her lefty views says in The Sun-Times (aka The Democratic Digest) that 27-year-old Jason Plummer the GOP lieutenant governor candidate equals the Dems’ Scott Lee Cohen, prostitute consorter, pawnbroker, wife-abuser, child support deadbeat—and that the parties are responsible for these candidacies happening not the media which failed to report them…

…In-educable radical Neil Steinberg in The Sun-Times (aka The Democratic Digest) says that people are stupid to imagine that snowfall throughout the world nullifies global warming—but doesn’t mention the emails or scientists who have resigned and apologized…Esther Cepeda in The Sun-Times (Dem Digest) blames Sarah Palin for zeroing in on the word “retard” to “divide the country”…not mentioning the cartoon series South Park which shows a befuddled baby saying her grandmother ran for vice president…

…Jesse Jackson’s shamelessly ghost-written boilerplate column in The Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest) warns that Big Business grocery products producers will fight Michelle Obama’s campaign to fight child obesity because there’s money to be made in selling sugared products that make kids fat—and it’s business’ fault (but the companies were good enough to yield to his threats of “boycotts” and fork over extortionate dough for his…ahem…”non-profits”…

…Rich Miller in The Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest) has a good idea for what is evidently his chosen party, the Dems: Don’t fill the lieutenant governor slot which will allow them to focus on the Republicans’ Jason Plummer…which also (without his mentioning it) grease the path for liberal favorite Lisa Madigan to succeed to governor if something would happen to an elected Pat Quinn…. Mary Mitchell in The Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest) deeply resents the people who financed a billboard citing the holocaust abortion makes of black babies because they make black women feel bad…

…Steve Chapman, the faux “libertarian” in The Tribune (aka The Democratic Digest Lite) assuages liberal readers that Obama’s low standings by remembering them how low Reagan’s were early in his first term…Likewise Garrison Keillor in The Tribune (the Democratic Digest Lite) consoles liberals that these early days of disappointment about Obama are akin to going to the Bahamas and enduring rain (huh?)…Clarence Page in The Tribune (the Democratic Digest Lite) lip-synchs the Obama administration by writing helpfully that military tribunals are overrated…followed up by pointing a finger at the whack-job who drove his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas and braying ominously that this is what happens when people start criticizing Big Government.

Tribune’s Far Better than The Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest).

While both papers stress liberal and anti-Republican views, there is no doubt that looking at both for the past week, one paper at least presents partially the other side…and that’s The Tribune which is why I call it The Democratic Digest Lite. But apart from the usually left-slanted commentary, the Trib’s editorials are basically fair…as distinct from The Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest) editorials which are on the same slant as The Daily Kos.

Moreover, espite the obvious liberal Democratic drift in commentary, the paper includes pieces from full-timer John Kass (the best columnist by far in either paper), Op Ed writer Dennis Byrne, nationally syndicated Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and George Will…with Kathleen Parker being the semi-mush the liberals love because, with a reputation for “moderation” she abandons it happily to go after social conservatives. Liberals and hot-fuming Democrats at the Sun-Times (The Democratic Digest)overwhelm conservative, even moderate, thought 10 to 2…the one columnist being Steve Huntley who while conservative in economics and national defense is pro-choice on social issues—and one other…no columnist but even better. Who?

The cartoonist Jack Higgins. Wonders never cease: By far the best editorial cartoonist in the nation, Higgins appears exclusively in that paper. How he survives in that liberal-Left morass I don’t know but I’m sure glad he does.

______________________________________________________

*: Feast of St. Peter’s Chair at Antioch [circa AD 36]. Why, for goodness sakes, a feast honoring an object? Because from antiquity a chair or throne …i.e. cathedra,represented the seat occupied by a teacher who spoke with authority, the word “cathedra” surviving to this day representing a pronouncement whereby the Pope speaks infallibly as teacher of the Universal Church. Essentially, there have been two chairs of Peter marked by feasts—the wooden chair at Rome where Bishop Peter sat as he baptized, now enshrined by Bernini (1697) in the apse of St. Peter’s great basilica…and Peter’s chair at Antioch from which he…earlier than Rome… presided as first bishop.. That he went to Antioch near the present city of Antakieh in Turkey (population: now28,000; then 100,000), then the capital of the East, is recorded by many saints; it was in that town that the name “Christian” was born.

St. Chrysostom, the “golden tongued,” says Peter was in Antioch for a long period, within three years after Christ’s Ascension—in the second year of Claudius. Peter had left Jerusalem after St. Stephen’s martyrdom and remained in Antioch and became the first Bishop of Antioch, until he escaped miraculously from prison and Herod Agrippa. Later, knowing he was in danger at Antioch, Peter went to Rome becoming the first Bishop of Rome, where he remained for 25 years.

Thoughts While Shaving: The Big Man with His Own Secret Service Detail at Manny’s…Judy Erwin’s Awful Fear…More.

2010-02-19T08:09:00.002-06:00

Feast of St. Conrad of Piacenza*

King David.

This in yesterday from The Democratic Party Digest aka The Chicago Sun-Times: David Axelrod, the political TV guru who gave the world Obama and Massachusetts the equally inept Governor Deval Patrick (formerly of The Chicago Squid) was reported playing Big Man, munching at Manny’s (by Sneed) with liberal political soul-buddy Forrest Claypool as…get this…a battery of Secret Service guarded Axelrod’s life.

Why, who would want to muss up David? If it hasn’t happened by now for all the turkeys he’s elected—including the Messiah, ex-Chicagoan Deval Patrick the incompetent governor of Massachusetts…and the immortal Dennis Archer, ex-mayor of Detroit—it’s not likely to happen.

Or would terrorists want to capture the Axe to make him talk? Why? Does he hold the code to the Football? You’d better hope not `cause we’ll be dead if nuclear war starts and the response depends on him. I understand not just the Axe but the Rahm has a federal protective detail. Who else? Valerie Jarrett? God help us: David Plouffe? This should be the first thing the next president does (pray God it’ll take no longer than noon of January 20, 2013): end flagrant ego-foppery of providing Secret Service to non-national security-related presidential pals and pols. If Karl Rove had his detail…and other choice Bushies… all the worse—and if anybody knows who they were and how many had this Ego-Building status, I’d like to hear.

Judy, Judy!

And now from The Democratic Party Digest (Lite): Judy Erwin, Ph.D, a longtime friend and former aide to ex-Senate President Phil Rock…now exec director of the Illinois Board on Higher Education…is warning via Capitol Fax Blog—a website always terrified of possibility of diminution of state funds…so much so it often quotes the SEIU newsletter as a credible backup source—that…horrors!...

… the state is abdicating “its responsibility to higher education” by being so late with payments so some public universities might…gasp!…have to close! Result: She says Illinois is, in effect “privatizing education!” Just thinking of this possibility has made my day. I knew this deficit chaos would produce some good.

Now Even the UN Worries About Iran’s Nukes.

The once mealy-mouthed UN atomic energy agency is now worried…make that very worried…that Iran is on the verge of having nukes! Reason UN has changed its tune is that it now has a new guy in charge of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) who is not a clone of Ahmadinejad—Yukiya Amano who took over at the UN agency last December. He replaced Mohammad ElBarade who was so cozy with Iran he…of course…received the Nobel prize for peace some years back from the same five Norski Lefties who gave one to Obama.

Weasel-worded Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday sounded a lot like Jimmy Carter—which means that the U. S. under the Messiah has taken a distinctively more liberal tack on Iran than even the UN. It is reported that Obama is well aware of the new UN report but…first things first…he has to campaign for two all-but-defeated Democratic senators: Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) and the appointed Michael Bennet (Colorado).

Dennis the Trough Menace.

Yesterday the Tribune reported that Good ol’ boy Denny Hastert has taxpayers footing the bill supposedly for wrapping up the final details involving his official Speaker’s office and staff while he racks up big bucks as a lobbyist—grunting obeisance to his longtime mentor Dallas Ingemunson on occasion. Sad to say there’s nothing illegal about it but if Hastert had any decency he’d have waited until his business papers are all sorted before he would launch a career as a lobbyist. But then…

…if he had had any decency he would have completed his congressional term before resigning to get to the lobbyist trough. And he’d have the grace not to try to wangle his 31-year-old kid his old congressional seat at the public trough (which failed earlier this month).

Denny has come a long way from the time he sat in the back of my classroom and yawned away when I taught him at a special enrichment (I mean intellectual enrichment) class sponsored by the Taft Institute, a program for high school teachers (he was a wrestling coach) at Loyola a generation ago. Denny would sit back there, waggle his eyebrows and purse his lips as if he was about to say something.. but then appeared to think the better of it and say nothing. Which, come to think of it, is how he matriculated later through the legislature and the House. He came to the House and served as a kind of court jester to Tom DeLay, enlivening DeLay the then minority whip with stories of his Yorkville wrestling days.

Then he began up the ladder, taking steps that even now seem imponderable. DeLay got majority whip under Gingrich. Since he was acerbic and a workaholic, he alienated some of the old boys so the Leadership invented a job for Denny to sort of schmooze those whom DeLay had alienated. They called him deputy majority whip (nobody ever had a post like that before). At that time the guy on top was Newt Gingrich, the Speaker; then Dick Armey, the majority leader, then DeLay the majority whip…then you’d skip over that manufactured job of deputy majority whip and go to some of the top committee chairs: beginning with Bob Livingstone, head of appropriations who knew his staff with encyclopedic familiarity.

Well after a few years the old team began to fall apart through decadence. Newt, not satisfied with being Speaker, got involved in plans to make some money free-lancing like writing a book and taping a college course while being Speaker… which got him fined heavily by the ethics committee. Then…the old rascal…he fell in love with a female staffer who was married as was he. He told his first wife he wanted a divorce while she was lying in a hospital bed fighting cancer. His 2^nd wife was supposed to be it but she was bossy. He met his future 3^rd while cheating on his 2^nd —and got embroiled in a nasty sexual situation—at the same time he was condemning Bill Clinton’s infidelity.

Too much was too much. So he quit to make some money as a hired speaker and commentator. Last year he become a newly minted Roman Catholic joining his Catholic wife #3 and has plans to run for and become the second Catholic president of the United States. (Barf).

Normally Newt’s successor would have been Armey but he had plotted to politically stab Newt ala Brutus and flee, as did Brutus, after the act and not get caught. But he was caught plotting it so he both denied it—an outright lie—and pointed a finger at his colleagues…so Armey lost every bit of respect he had had. Reluctantly, he resolved to leave politics. The logical one to follow Armey would have been DeLay but he was indicted by a Texas prosecutor for allegedly commingling funds improperly in an effort to redistrict his state so as to add more conservatives. That indictment still hangs fire, by the way, although the Texas prosecutor is retiring.

While waiting to be officially tried, DeLay took up dancing and scored fairly well on TV in Dancing with the Stars but there is more than a little speculation that post-male menopausal late-middle age eccentricity has a lot to do with it.

Back to the struggle for succession to the Speakership post-Newt;

Everybody breathed a sigh of relief after Armey and DeLay were eliminated, thinking that Bob Livingstone, a brilliant guy, was more than up to the job. Livingstone said he’d accept it but at the last minute turned it down because his wife found out that he was having an affair with a female lobbyist…and laid the law down, saying either he would have to get out of this filthy congressional business or she’d leave him. He decided to resign.

That left only one guy whom everybody could agree on—good ol’ Denny who when confronted with a difficult question would do just as he did in my class, waggle his eyebrows, purse his lips as if ready to say something, would appear to think better of the idea…and shut up. They told Denny: you don’t have to do serious thinking in this job. Just let the White House do the thinking. You hold the gavel and wait for instructions.

That’s what he did. In one of the most disgraceful excesses and abuses of public largesse in the history of the House, George W. Bush in his most “compassionate” mode, decided to go for a massive Medicare drug entitlement arranged by Billy Tauzin, the ex-Democrat chairman of Energy & Commerce who when the GOP captured control of the Congress cut a deal with Newt and switched parties, continuing to serve as chairman of the committee—the first and only legislator ever to hold the same committee chairmanship in two parties.

New Republican convert Billy called the tune and good ol’ Denny held the gavel. House rules were bent while Tauzin scoured the floor for votes…finally winning enactment by one vote (with one member voting present). Then Tauzin left the House and took the job he had been angling for all the time—president of the Big Pharma trade association paying $2 million a year…a job from which he was just fired after cutting a deal with Max Baucus and Rahm Emanuel to get Obama’s health care extravaganza passed.

It entailed the drug industry cutting $80 billion from its expenses in return for which Emanuel would forego a key Obama promise to import cheaper drugs from other 1^st world countries. The deal passed the House but fell apart in the Senate with incompetent Harry Reid who couldn’t muster 60 votes—leading Rahm to rent two senators: Mary Landrieu who got the “Louisiana Purchase” freeing her state from the necessity to pay Medicaid bills but let the feds do it because of Hurricane Katrina…and Ben Nelson who got the Nebraska Cornhusker pay-off by absolving hisstate from paying Medicaid bills.

These blatant rent-offs started a cattle run of senators trying to be rented as well and poor Rahm was running out of money when the Massachusetts special election occurred…electing a Republican due to public outrage with Rahm’s dealings—and the whole thing arranged by Billy Tauzin fell apart. So Billy got fired by an outraged drug industry.

I digressed but anyhow that’s the name of that tune.

Oh…back to Denny Hastert. When the Trib called Gingrich to see how much money he spent cleaning up his effects as a former Speaker, he said: “I don’t want to talk about it” and hung up.

If anybody…and I mean ANYBODY…in the Republican party thinks seriously of nominating this guy Gingrich for president, , they should remember the late Henry Hyde’s words made to me in dead seriousness. About Gingrich he said “He’s 50% genius and 50% nuts. The only trouble is you never know what 50% is operative at any one time.”

Nobody will say Denny Hastert is 50% nuts and 50% genius—just 50% slow. The only 50% is pure venal.

Prediction: Dem Pundits Will Strike.

News that the maddened software engineer in Austin, Texas rammed his Piper Cub into a building housing the office of IRS judges of last-resort appeals… because he was vehement at the tax collectors… will…I predict…start a flurry of Lefty writers deploring the action and claiming that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, by assailing Big Government, bear major responsibility for the disaster. I would predict that the backlash could well begin with Neil Steinberg of the local Democratic Digest (Sun-Times) followed by Roger Ebert who seems to be as bored writing ecstatic film reviews of lefty productions like Avatar as I, for one, am reading them. Ebert can’t come close to Joe Morganstern of the WSJ.

________________________________________________________

*: St. Conrad of Piacenza [AD 1351]. Conrad was a very ordinary scion of a noble family of Piacenza, a town located between Bologna and Milan who one day while out hunting ordered his servants to start a fire in the brushwood to drive out game so he could kill them with bow and arrow. They did but made one mistake: A strong wind sent the flames into nearby cornfields. The fire picked up intensity and roared to a neighboring village. Conrad watched this happen, did nothing and returned home, cautioning his servants to shut up about it—which they obeyed. But then Conrad heard that a poor man who had been caught near the fire was accused of arson and had been sentenced to death. Conrad became tormented by guilt and pangs of conscience. Thus began his sanctity.

Conrad turned himself in, said the innocent man should be freed because he, Conrad, was responsible. The magistrate threw the book att Conrad. By the time he paid his fine and considerable damages, he was broke—having sacrificed all his possessions and his wife’s dowry as well. This caused him and his wife to reexamine their lives. They decided that they would give away whatever was left to them (not much), that Conrad would take up the life of a hermit and attach himself to a small group of who lived by the Rule of the 3^rd Order of St. Francis. Conrad’s wife joined the Poor Clares. Both did.

Conrad began to lead a life of extraordinary piety—but alas his story was so inspiring that crowds of people came to see him at his Monastery. So he left it and crossed over to Sicily and took up residence in the valley of Noto. There he lived nearly 30 years doing penance and good works. When people found out about his sanctity they started to bother him there as well—so he packed up once again and took himself to a small monastery near the grotto of Pizzoni, a few miles from Noto. Once again his fame overtook him—this time when a famine struck and people came to him for solace and alms. Solace he had but no alms until the Bishop of Syracuse visited him to see what the hubbub was all about—bringing with him some monks who carried provisions for the poor.

After distributing the foodstuffs, the bishop pushed his way through the crowd to Conrad and asked if the Holy Man had any provisions to offer the visitors—expecting obviously that the answer would be no. Conrad said he had none but nevertheless he went to his cell to see if he could find at least something. When he looked in his cell, he was stunned! He found heavy stores of newly baked cakes! He brought them out and fed the crowd, the bishop and his monks. The bishop was not surprised because he had reckoned that Conrad was consumed with sanctity. This miracle made it doubly hard for Conrad to live a contemplative life.

One more thing. Feeling his life was coming to an end, Conrad traveled to see the bishop in order to make his Confession. Amazingly, when he arrived at the bishop’s home, he became surrounded by chirping birds who fluttered around him and which escorted him back to his monastic cell near Noto.. When he knew death was imminent, Conrad lay on the ground in front of a crucifix and prayed for his benefactors and the people of Noto. He is buried in the church of St. Nicholas at Noto and his tomb has become a favorite shrine at which many miracles have taken place. For some reason, he is cited as the patron saint of those who have experienced ruptures and hernias—and many people who experienced cure from both have invoked Conrad for intercession. Three popes of the time have validated Conrad as a saint—and it is as a saint that he is revered today.

Personal Aside: Stockholm Syndrome—Is Illinois Stuck on Stupid?

2010-02-18T05:59:00.002-06:00

Feast of St. Simeon*

Not long ago, The New York Times’ editorial page columnist Gail Collins surveyed corruption in all 50 states and finds, unsurprisingly, that Illinois now holds the lead. And to confirm her estimate that nothing daunts the comatose Illinois pro-Dem, pro-Squid voter, a recent poll shows Illinoisans prefer Pat Quinn to Bill Brady 42 to 31. Isn’t that remarkable? Every all that’s happened.

It comes from an outfit called Victory Research which nobody ever heard of before—which means that it’s probably a prop for Quinn—but I don’t doubt the finding. A another poll taken by Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner for its client Alexi Giannoulias has the Golden Greek leading Mark Kirk 49-45. I imagine it’s right, too.

But if there’s hope for Kirk, what about the heavy preponderance for Quinn? How can that be?

Illinois’ Acceptance of Corruption.

If Quinn wins, it proves that The Squid…the name I have selected because it is more appropriate than the old “machine”… is truly unbeatable—more than Boston, more than Trenton, N. J. more than New York city--unbeatable because of Stockholm Syndrome (of which more later)despite the botch-up the Dems have made of Illinois while controlling all facets of government. Normally, defeat should be so deserved and expected those in all Dem controlled branches ought to flee in terror, allowing the bureaucratic custodians to reason that since their repudiation is so clear, Illinois could save millions by not even holding an election.

Surely much blame goes…as it should… to the monolithic black vote, embracing its One Party as Savior. You know, it’s mind-boggling when you look around this town (Chicago) and see conditions in neighborhoods where blacks live and calculate that Democrats have governed this town since 1931. They are victimized by family breakup largely due to the Great Society which drove males out of the homes before females could receive child support. They are victimized by joblessness because Democrats…as in Chicago…fight stores like WalMart coming here because they don’t pay obeisance to white liberals’ demands they pay more. Result: blacks go jobless because white liberals won’t accept them working at a lower wage. Figure that one out.

Blacks are threatened by murder, mayhem, rampant crime because somehow white liberals…like the guilt-ridden white stentorian, media-focused padre from Saint Sabina’s…opposes conceal carry, making it impossible to defend themselves. Blacks are threatened by all these things because the white liberal media which send their kids to private schools (largely) thrills to the hoary old baloney purveyed by Operation PUSH’s machine-gun purveyor of catchy couplets, Jesse Jackson, Sr. who can’t.. and indeed doesn’t… crusade against illegitimacy because it would be too embarrassing since as the media know, he sired one himself.

Black indentured-ness is one thing. White, Big Business, Big Labor and Big Media…and let’s face it Catholic hierarchal… supine lay-down is quite another. All Illinoisans who say “nothing’s going to change” are on the way to a malady that has gripped this city. I call itStockholm Syndrome—the disease where prisoners and the exploited of a system end up loving their abusers. Stockholm Syndrome has afflicted blacks, many liberal whites, big business leadership, gutless clergy, the TV stations and the editorial boards.

Illinois Dem Record Begets Stockholm Syndrome.

For readers of this blog outside Illinois…of which there are many…here’s The Squid record in this state—which makes the seeming popularity of its candidates utterly fascinating as a case-study of Stockholm Syndrome.

By any normal tally, Democrats in this state should resemble the composite central character played by Sean Penn in the 1995 movie “Dead Man Walking.”

The compliant mainstream media here and across the country don’t play it as a disaster but it is. There was precious little voter turnout on Feb. 2, the earliest election of the year in the nation, because the ungodly early date, involving a blanket of snowstorms, is a throwback to 2008 when The Squid under autocratic co-leader Mike Madigan decided to move up the date to give Barack Obama a head-start in collecting delegates. Thus everyone must vote early.

The Squid’s gubernatorial nominee is heavily unpopular Patrick Quinn, who moved from Lt. Governor after Rod Blagojevich was arrested, impeached and removed by the legislature after being charged with spectacular corruption including, among other things, trying to auction off Barack Obama’s Senate seat for his own political and pecuniary gain. (By the way, Blago was just re-indicted by the Feds for racketeering, wire fraud, 14 counts of extortion, 16 counts of bribery, 1 count of attempted extortion and 2 of false statements which carry with them 30 years imprisonment and $500,000 fine—the trial to begin this summer while the Illinois governorship campaign is full throttle).

Here are some figures which probably influenced Gail Collins to make her judgment:

Quinn’s Illinois state government, controlled by Dems from top to bottom has unpaid obligations totaling $12 billion including a $5 billion backlog in delayed bill-paying because the state doesn’t have the money for schools, mass transit agencies, health care providers and vendors who were told they would have to wait, on average, 4 months for reimbursement.

Quinn has called for a 50% hike in personal income taxes for individuals which was deferred by the legislature controlled by his own party. Not a hands-on governor but a hands-off writer of populist press statements for himself, he tried to save money by ordering his Corrections department to release some prisoners early from penal confinement… except that somehow his instructions got misconstrued and a total of 1,718 inmates—including violent prisoners and repeat DUI offenders--were turned out on the street, who on an average served only 37-days in prison, some as little as 11days. Some robbed and pillaged before they were recaptured and sent back to stir. The supine media here did not scream bloody murder but merely reported it as a happening.

The only chance The Squid get a more popular governor candidate would have been to dump Quinn and nominate the Comptroller, Dan Hynes but it failed. Hynes is a colorless, faceless nebbish scion of a longtime Squid family but not as unctuously self-serving as Quinn. Yet he not only wanted a tax hike but to install a “progressive” [sic] income tax to soak the “rich.” After a vicious campaign between the two, Quinn edged out Hynes by 5,000 votes.

The Squid’s Squalid U. S. Senate Nominee.

Now we go to the greatly ethically challenged Dem U. S. Senate nominee who unaccountably won over a clean candidate.

He is the scion of a prominent Greek banking family in Chicago who glommed onto Barack Obama early and raised big bucks for his U. S. Senate run. The Greek kid is Alexi Giannoulias whose family owned an institution known as Broadway Bank. Lean, spare, single, easily mistaken for Fredo in “Godfather II,” Alexi, now 34, started playing basketball with Obama at the posh East Bank Club, then got his Pop to raise money for Obama via the prosperous Greek community. Before long the Giannoulias family had bundled a great stash of cash for The Messiah. Sure enough it turned out Alexi wanted something. He wanted to run for state treasurer in 2006, two years after Obama won his U.S. Senate seat.

But a problem: As veep of his family’s bank, Giannoulias approved a huge loan ($15 million) for Michael (Jaws) Gioraigo a twice convicted bookmaker and proprietor of buildings housing luxurious prostitution nests. The Squid’s co-head, House Speaker Mike Madigan, demurred on supporting Alexi but Daley didn’t—nor did Obama. The liberal media hee didn’t push the Gioraigo story. In another town, such as New York which has The New York Post there would be justifiable journalistic hell to pay. Not here. Result: to the accompaniment of fist-bumps and sly winks from Obama and Daley, Giannoulias was elected state treasurer, the state’s youngest at age 30.

Alexi Goofs Up State Treasurer.

It’s very hard to goof up being state treasurer which is a custodial not a policy job. All you do is sit down at a big desk and sign some documents while the staff does the work. Alexi continued a plan from the Feds that induced Illinoisans to contribute dough through a federally mandated savings plan available to all states (known as a “529”) which permits a kid’s family to put dough into a special investment program where profits grow tax-free. The program is known as “Bright Start” and investments can be made via any of 21 funds run by Oppenheimer. Almost all states do it.

But even in a no-brainer job, some choices have to be made. And , Alexi Giannoulias and his staff happened to pick the worst fund of the 21 known as the “Core Plus Fixed Income Strategy.” Then as Don Rose writes in The Chicago Daily Observer, a rogue fund manager at Oppenheimer got cute and in the meltdown plunged the Illinois dough into some very chancy derivatives. Result: Illinois’ funds contributed by 65,000 Illinois families lost 38% of its value in 2008 while some other bond funds grew by 5%.

The first thing Giannoulias did when he found out—probably aside from running to his State Treasurer’s Executive Washroom and throwing up—was to rely on a hoary old Squid stratagem: when you make a gross error—hold back the truth..

When All Fails—Sit on the Facts.

First he said everybody should calm down, that he’d get the losses back. Sure enough, he announced later in a glowing press statement that he recovered an amazing $77 million of a total of $85 million with the remainder on the way (he failed to add “hopefully.”). But then some pesky political enemies fed the press the truth: the total amount Alexi lost was $150 million of which $77 million were salvaged. Alexi had participated in a cover-up, of course, which produced bad press but the media buried it behind the corset ads. Thus the media…with one notable column-ing exception… is every bit a captive of Stockholm Syndrome as are other major segments of Chicago.

Unperturbed, Alexi now determined to run for a higher post— Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat to succeed the retiring Roland Burris. Burris, renowned for erecting a tombstone on his grave plot with his resume etched on it, was named by Blagojevich to the Senate and lied his way through the Illinois General Assembly confirmation by saying he never, ever promised to raise money to get the job (a lie, held secure while “under study” by the chamber’s so-called “Ethics” committee.

Again The Squid said “yes”—this time with Autocrat Madigan on board. Giannoulias had two other ideas. He determined to reward his two top Treasurer employees who flubbed up the “Bright Start” deal (possibly to keep their loyalty intact) by running them to run for statewide financial offices. They were African American Robin Kelly (treasurer) and his 2^nd in command an East Indian with the catchy political name of Raja Krishnamoorthi (comptroller). Through all these deals Daley and The Squid, nodded affirmatively. In the primary, Kelly got nominated. Comptroller candidate is African American David Lee Miller.

Earlier, perceptive people (not Mayor Daley) decided the Democratic party cannot afford to have Alexi Giannoulias the U. S. Senate nominee with his record. So they rushed into the fray a challenger for the Senate—a clean-as-a-whistle guy who was a former assistant U. S. attorney under Patrick Fitzgerald and who served as inspector general—an honest inspector general—in the Daley administration (a signal rarity)…a guy named David Hoffman. But earlier Hoffman had outraged the mayor by investigating the horrendous mistakes surrounding Daley’s decision to privatize parking meters.

And Daley can’t abide seeing anyone who causes him embarrassment to move up in politics-- so The Squid pushed an 11-alarm alert to all its top precinct captains to stick with Giannoulias…who is striving to fill the seat once held by Everett Dirksen and Peter Fitzgerald.

So, to sum up: Now the Democratic ticket has for governor the incumbent, Pat Quinn, who set hardened criminals out of stir to save the state money and who wants to hike personal income taxes by 50%...and for U.S. Senator Alexi Giannoulias as Treasurer sanctioned an investment that lost $150 million of hard-earned middle class savings for kids’ college.

But the team of Quinn and Giannoulias wasn’t complete. Quinn had to have a lieutenant governor running at his side. Who was it to be?

The Dem Lt. Governor Winner: Worse.

With choices of six candidates for this No. 2 office, the veritable heartbeat away from succeeding to the governorship, five were tried and true loyal Squid regulars. But one was a wild card.

The wild card was one Scott Lee Cohen. He spent $2 million in his own behalf—but few knew his background. At age 44 he is a multi-millionaire pawnbroker from Chicago. He admitted to have taken injectable steroids, tried to choke his ex-wife, forced himself on her even after she objected, and was forcibly removed from his home by police several times.

Moreover, he is being sued by his ex-wife for being a deadbeat in failing to support his children while blowing lots of cash on his run for political office and was sued for $200,000 by his own brother who alleged he was cheat. Still moreover, in retaliation to his wife, he broke into his house and wrote threatening messages on her bedroom mirror with lipstick. More: He lived for a year with a prostitute who was arrested for the charge twice: but he denied he knew she was a prostitute but thought she was only a masseuse since he met her at a massage parlor. Later he was charged with trying to stab her on the neck but who, he said, caused her injuries to herself.

With the liberal media snoozing on the issue, and with the help of several key defecting Squid leaders the pawnbroker won the nomination for lieutenant governor of Illinois. It turns out certain “pragmatic” elements of The Squid helped in return for his financial “campaign contributions” to their organizations. The defectors hustled 47,000 signatures on Cohen petitions to get him placed on the ballot in the first place and pushed enough votes to get him 212.902 votes or 25% of the votes in a very light turnout which was enough to nominate him comfortably.

One of three top Squid aldermen in return for hefty “campaign” donations was Dick Mell, the father-in-law of Rod Blagojevich, known by the Hispanics who dominate his northwest side ward as “the Old Gringo.” After Cohen sprinkled even more money around, it developed he got “endorsed” by two dozen elected officials. In all he carried 15 of the city’s 50 wards, 18 of suburban Cook’s 31 townships and four of the five “collar counties” in exurbia as well as winning 52 of the remaining 90 counties in the state.

Cohen Embarrasses The Squid.

When Chicago’s lackadaisical press finally revealed all there is to know about Cohen, The Squid got panicky and wanted to drop him off the North Avenue pier into Lake Michigan. But Cohen at first refused to resign from the ticket. But after some closed-door meetings in a soundproof room he wavered and finally chose “of his own free will” to step down. What the Squid inducements were for him to change his mind is anyone’s guess—very possibly (a) threats of his possible consignment to the tender mercies of gentlemen with pomade dressing on their hair and wearing expensive, pointed shoes or (b) perhaps inducements to make him even richer. (B) is more likely which means he may find it easier to pay his back child support bills. Anyhow he tearfully announced his “resignation” while his kids cried on camera.

Incredibly this led the tender-hearted Gov., Quinn to say he was touched by seeing Cohen’s kids crying. He meant not because Cohen was a deadbeat in supporting them…but because they were crying over their father’s defeat. This tells you something about Governor Old Watery Eyes.

In order to make it seem even-up, the compliant media represents that because the Republican lieutenant governor nominee is 27…although he is by no means even partly comparable to Cohen…and who has not held office before, who are the Republicans to talk? That incredible position has been put forward by a good number of so-called pundits…including one wanna-be Access Cable pundit who invented out of whole cloth a fictitious “application form” purportedly filled out by Jason Plummer—the story running for at least a day or so before the wanna-be pundit owned up to the hoax and admitted he had fabricated it. And he calls himself “an objective journalist.” By that yardstick so was Jason Blair.

The Unbalanced Dem Ticket.

The Democratic state ticket submitted to the placid voters of Illinois is all Chicago…Giannoulias…Quinn…Lisa Madigan…Robyn Kelly…Jesse White—with a vacant Lt. Governor slot to be filled who could either be a black, State Rep. Art Turner (Chicago) or—and this is a very long shot—Tammy Duckworth, the severely disabled former helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq (from Hoffman Estates)… who if she takes leave of her mind… will have to resign as assistant secretary of Veterans’ Affairs in Washington. Everybody from the Chicago area: everybody like peas in a pod stolidly pro-abort, pro-gay rights. The supine media don’t comment much about this because they are pro-abort and pro-gay rights.

Thanks a Bunch, Jim Ryan.

Next to the Dems’ sideshow of burlesque antics, Illinois Republicans haven’t done too badly—but were upset by the vain folly of one overage loser who wanted to justify himself no matter what happens.

The governor’s race ended very light and very tight—initially just 420 votes separating State Senator Bill Brady (Bloomington) and Senator Kirk Dillard (Hinsdale)…which has been cut down by about 100 votes in Dillard’s favor. Both are conservatives and by a reckoning in every other states—including Massachusetts--either one should defeat Quinn. Should but then this is Illinois encased in the Stockholm Syndrome.

. Brady has a 100% pro-life and social conservative record…meaning anti-abortion and anti-same-sex-marriage. And the liberal “mainstream” (that’s a laugh: The Trib’s Rick Pearson’s MAINSTREAM?) media are at the battlements hoisting the flag: Let None but Pro-Aborts Stand Guard Tonight! Eric Zorn has even appropriated a slogan from the Democrats—easy because he and they think alike—Brady—Too Extreme for Illinois! Meaning to oppose abortion when a majority of the nation now has pivoted on the issue significantly…and to oppose gay rights when it is far a climactic issue in a state beset with economic chaos… is extreme.

The race would have been Dillard’s but for the aforementioned battle-scarred veteran at age 63, Jim Ryan, tottering with wounds and stuck full of arrows from earlier battles, not in good health and with an old man’s speaking voice evoking decades…too many decades…of pitched battles long forgotten. One who seemingly cannot or will not smile. I guess I understand why since he’s had several bouts of seemingly fatal illness and his family has been touched by tragedy—but he is a grim, humorless type and was before tragedy stuck. An anomaly: an Irishman with no humor or smile.

For all his family tragedies, condolences…but despite his courageously, successfully battling illness and tragedies, his baggage was almost inexplicable—and would have been had he won the nomination. They involve serious lapses of judgment.

Ryan who styles himself as a superb prosecutor, has to admit he prosecuted the wrong guy in a sensational murder trial: devastating. And his biggest best financial backer is serving a long stretch in prison for corruption.

Why with that serious baggage and having lost to Rod Blagojevich, Ryan decided to run as a vestige of the horrid old past, shows only one reason: ego. He had to make a point. Well, he has: and time will only tell whether he succeeded in botching up the chance for a top-flight candidate to oppose Quinn. The betting here is that he has.

Well, he’s had his last hurrah. He was the spoiler and now he can go back to his board membership with Ralph Martire’s Center for Tax and Budget Accountability which has been advocating tax hikes since Martire started it and who long touted Ryan as an exemplary Republican…although after which having celebrated as such by Martire denied he was for a tax hike at all.

A Windsock’s Better Than an Immovable Lefty.

Even despite the Stockholm Syndrome it ‘s likely that Mark Kirk, the GOP nominee for U. S. Senate will probably win and defeat Giannoulias. Conservatives are mad and some vow recrimination against Kirk by supporting Randy Stufflebeam of the Constitution Party. I know Stufflebeam, like him and even voted for him against Topinka for governor last time. But, times are different. We conservatives ran a candidate against Kirk: we had our chance. I gave Pat Hughes $1,000 in that race…more than most of the malcontents who vow to go 3^rd party did… and worked my heart out for him. Now it’s time, I think, to count on the possibility—nay a probability-- that winds of conservative change will more often than not billow this windsock to flutter right. That’s my conclusion anyhow.

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*: Feast of St. Simeon [circa AD 107]. The Lord’s first cousin (whose father was Cleophas, brother of Joseph the carpenter) and whose mother was purportedly a sister to the Blessed Mother. He was eight years older than Christ and first appears in Matthew xiii who is described as a kinsman of the Lord. Simeon was one of the brethren who received the tongues of fire from the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. When the Jews massacred St. James the Lesser, the bishop of Jerusalem, Simeon, James’ brother, upbraided them. Everyone cringed because it was a bluntly courageous thing to do being as Simeon seemed to be signing his own death warrant. But it didn’t happen then. The denouement was to come later from the Roman conquerors.

When the apostles met to appoint a successor to James, they chose Simeon, In AD 66 civil war broke out in Palestine triggered by Jewish opposition to the Romans. Simeon was divinely inspired to take his flock and leave the city on the heels of Emperor Vaspasian entering Jerusalem. This Simeon did and settled with his early Catholic followers on the other side of the Jordan, occupying the small city of Pella. After the burning of Jerusalem, Simeon led the Catholics back to the city and settled among the ruins—but too early…after a few years Emperor Hadrian returned with an army and utterly destroyed the city—proclaiming that he was there to destroy all who were “of the race of David.” This meant Simeon who was of the race of David.

Simeon escaped Hadrian’s search and continued to preside as bishop of Jerusalem. But much later came Trajan to Jerusalem who issued an identical order. This time, Simeon was captured and brought before the Roman governor, Atticus. Simeon was tortured, condemned to death and crucified, reportedly well over 100 years old. How these people lived to be over 100 in those days is beyond me.

Thoughts While Shaving: A Devastating Poll that Needs No Editorializing…The Vanishing Durbin…Quinn’s Plan to Demonize Brady.

2010-02-17T06:55:00.000-06:00

Ash Wednesday*

Devastating CNN Poll.

Last night’s CNN poll says that 52% of Americans say Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012. Forty-two percent say they would vote to reelect him, less than the majority saying they would prefer to elect somebody else. The president has a 44-52 deficit among all Americans and registered voters as shown by a CNN/Opinion Research poll released yesterday. The poll, conducted Feb. 12-15 has a 3% margin of error.

The Vanishing Durbin.

Wait a second! You know whom we haven’t seen or heard from lately…on TV and sound bytes on the radio? Dick Durbin!

Remember not long ago when The Hustler was ever-present on all channels and whenever you twist your radio dial? Plying the sharpest partisan notes with ingenious style as the Senate’s Democratic whip? Recall when seemingly he was front-and-center everywhere?…attesting for universal health care?…stepping up to the plate for Thomson, Illinois?…ripping Republicans for being concerned that terrorists with Miranda rights would use them to stage a political circus? Since the Massachusetts miracle produced Scott Brown’s election and the Democratic majority dropped to 59 he has seemingly fallen into a dark hole.

With Evan Bayh’s announcement he won’t run…with his statement that the Senate has lost its old-time civility (i.e. extreme liberalism blocks compromise)…with Harry Reid looking at a double-digit loss no matter who he’s paired against—wouldn’t you expect you’d see Dick at the battlements—cheering the troops on…slashing out at the critics of Barack Obama…defending Rahm from attack for shelling out big federal bucks to shore up Landrieu and Nelson for health care…where are the TV clips from Dick?

Now’s the time for Dickie Boy to say Obama’s only been in office a year…give him a chance. And the CNN poll was against an unnamed Republican. Is there a Republican who can beat Obama? I can think of a dozen things for him to say to recapture attention including the same polls say 85% will be reelected in the House. And lookit, we just captured a top Taliban leader! But we hear nothing from Dick. Why has he vanished?

What do the Democrats have here with Dick—a fair-weather friend? Someone who’s pressing for TV availabilities when things are going well…but who’s not around when the bottom’s falling out? You’d think with the prospect that Harry Reid will lose this November, every time you turn around you would see the pantingly available Dick Durbin—who if seniority is to be followed, should be first in line to succeed old Harry in the next session as Democratic Leader—whether Majority Leader or Minority Leader.

The other day Barack Obama said that he’d rather be a one-termer and successful than a two-termer and a failure. That was ominous, the prospect being he’ll be a one-termer and failure.

Now with the CNN poll showing more Americans think Obama doesn’t deserve to be a one-termer, his prediction…at least regarding his tenure not his accomplishments…might come true.

Question: Do you think the Vanished Dick the Hustler might be shying away from Obama and Reid…believing that after November, the Democratic caucus might look forsomeone else…someone not closely tied to Obama and Reid… to lead them—not an attack-dog defending a party that took a thumpin’ in November, 2010.

In essence, are we to see an extreme makeover done on Dickie boy? A new, moderate, why-can’t-we-all-get-along Dick Durbin? Looks like that to me.

Quinn Will Demonize Brady.

If Bill Brady comes through by Feb. 23 and officially snares the Republican nomination for governor, there is little doubt what sanctimonious Pat Quinn will do. Quinn has to demonize Brady. And with the help of his liberal media pals including the lockstep Sun-Times with its army of columnists all saying the same thing, they will try to picture the Bloomington lawmaker as a reenactment of Pat Robertson.

You can hear the battle-cries now from Old Watery Eyes: Brady is…anti-choice! Brady is a homophobe…Brady doesn’t want everyday, ordinary working families to take home a minimum wage in the Land of Lincoln…Brady wants to force Illinoisans to accept the “bigoted” notion via constitutional amendment that marriage should be only between a man and a woman in the Land of Lincoln!

Typical Quinn but it won’t work. Illinoisans know who’s been in control of all the levers of state government from top to bottom and who therefore should be held responsible for the mess the state finds itself in…and this is a little more central to them than to re-ignite the social policy wars.

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*: Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent, the 40 day season of prayer and penance before Easter. Ashes are produced by burning the palms that were used on the previous year’s Palm Sunday which are mixed with what is called catechumen’s oil which becomes a black paste. After this the ashes are sprinkled with holy water and addressed with incense. Priests and their assistants then apply the black paste on the foreheads of the faithful and declare, “Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”

In my experience, few topics divide believing Catholics from secularists than the mystery of death. Everything significant in Catholicism touches on death—but this is not morbidity but of the highest intellectual and spiritual optimistic significance. Every sign of the cross is reminder. The Hail Mary prayer is in essence a prayer for what is called a Happy Death (“pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death”).

Even so, Ash Wednesday and Lent itself is far from fashionable in today’s scale of values. . Today’s world strives to make us forget it. But reflecting on death is beneficial, reminding us that our time here on earth is short while eternity is infinite. Christ’s words about being ready at all times since death comes “like a thief in the night” goes hand-in-hand with His dismissing the value of the world’s riches and power. Tied to the reality of death is the truth of the Last or General Judgment, imbedded in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds attesting that Christ Himself “sits at the hand of God, the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”

For all of us the mystery of death is—or should be-- awesome. While all of us face a Particular Judgment by Christ Himself immediately after our death, what is the significance of the Last or General Judgment? Answer: All our actions are submitted to divine scrutiny but the verdict shall not be rendered completely even when one enters eternity but until the end of time. The reason is clear: Sin committed here does not stop after its commission but starts a chain-reaction that continues for centuries. Likewise virtue imparted by example or act rolls on and gathers momentum long after the one who extends it—via charity, prayer, alms giving, generosity, forgiveness—has died.

Thoughts While Shaving: Evan’s Not Going Bayh-Bayh…The Need for a Catholic “Tea Party”…

2010-02-16T07:13:00.000-06:00

Shrove Tuesday: Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Also the Feast of St. Juliana Falconieri*

Evan’s Planning a 2012 White House Run.

The tip-off was conveyed in the blunt language and style in Evan Bayh’s surprise announcement that he’s not running for reelection.

The language conveyed disenchantment with Obama liberalism which has moved the Democratic party from its high-water-mark ascendancy just a year ago to the sinking stage today. Bayh said he is extremely disappointed with the inability of getting anything done in Congress.

That’s a severe condemnation of Obama because with 59 Democratic senators (formerly 60) nothing of liberal substance has been done. Moreover, Bayh indicated clearly much earlier that his kind of Democratic party is not the far-left version that the Obama people have fashioned. Thus it is a distinct rebuke. When a winner like Bayh says this it means the national Obama leadership has failed.

Also the language gave a strong hint that Bayh will be running for president in the future. It said that Bayh sees himself more as a governor than legislator. Well, he has already been a governor. The only chance for him to exert executive leadership is to run for president. Since he’s only 54 he could wait for 2016 when he will be 60.

But no politician really signals that kind of interest so far down the road: six full years which constitutes a lifetime in politics. The logical import of his language is that he may well seek the Democratic nomination against Obama in 2012 when, if things keep going as they are, Obama may well decide to forego a shot at a second term anyhow.

Then there is the style of the announcement.

Bayh waited until the very last day before signature collection to make the announcement which will utterly negate his party’s ability to find a successor. In order to file, a new candidate will have to collect a minimum of 500 signatures in each of the seven congressional districts and file the total by noon today! The only recourse Indiana Democrats have is to run somebody as a write-in.

The style is insolent, brusque and conveys a…pardon the inelegance…salutation of screw you to his party. Normally this would incur a bitterness among regulars. But Obama has declared that he’d rather be a one-term president having gotten things done than a two-term one and a failure.

Sorry but the choice doesn’t run that way in politics.

The likelihood at least right nowis that he will be a one-term failed president with a far more egregious record of failings than Jimmy Carter had. Carter at least had the Camp David Accords of 1978 which he could point to which after 13 days Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat hammered out the framework for peace between Egypt and Israel. While Carter’s own incompetence…plans to have the U. S. and USSR jointly run an international commission to mediate the Middle East difficulties… sent Sadat running to Israel to work out the beginnings of the agreement. And for a good reason: he had expelled the USSR from Egypt and he didn’t want to be punished by the Russians by the joint commission.

That being said, at least Carter could point to a breakthrough. Obama has nothing nor does he have the prospect of gaining even a modest foreign policy achievement.

Thus it looks more certain by the day that Obama will not run and that Bayh is positioning himself as the moderate successor.

The contemptuous way in which Bayh discourteously declined to run yesterday is meant to show his rebellious, disheartened, disconsolate party that there is an alternative to Obama-ism on the Right. It argues that the Left will split every which way to find a successor: including to Hillary Clinton…but no candidate but a centrist can win. Certainly not an ill-fated secretary of state for a thoroughly failed presidency, Hillary…tired and worn as she will be at age 65 and bristling with accumulated negatives.

Bayh’s gam ble is an interesting one. It bets Obama is done, through. It bets no one on the Left will be able to muster any support. Which leaves the man who so rudely decided enough is enough with the flailing Obama-run party…until 2012.

A Catholic Tea Party?

Someone, I don’t know whom, has suggested that U. S. Catholics form a Tea Party revolution…not based on liturgy or theology…but on opposition to the arch-left bureaucracy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which is reactionary in its obeisance to the political Left in fomenting programs that run against the common-sense of people in the pews: such as failing to reform the Campaign for Human Development and its linkage to pro-abortion and pro-gay rights.

The watchword, then, would be simple: End the valueless USCCB as it has no more canonical significance than a local Rotary Club.

The idea is a good one. The head of the USCCB is our own Cardinal George who has not shown the slightest indication that he favors any change. And indeed his term will be over shortly. His anointed successor to be will be the bishop of Tucson, Gerald Kicanas. Unlike George, Kicanas…once Mundelein rector… doesn’t hide his true intentions under flowery rhetoric. He is a blunt-spoken Lefty who is intransigent in his support of permissiveness of homosexuality in the clergy…having told The Chicago Sun-Times that he would again ordain Dan McCormack…as he had earlier as rector, expressing a worry only that McCormack was drinking too much.

That kind of obtuseness is deleterious to the Church and although promoted several times since McCormack, he should not be rewarded with the largely meaningless but still honorific title of president of the USCCB. George is nearing retirement, is congenitally timid and indecisive. Kicanas is a far different type. His expected elevation should be a focal point for the rebellion of those authenticists in the pews. Let the watchword be:

If they [the Church hierarchy] mean to have war [by sanctioning the election of Kicanas] let it begin here.

The war should not evince disobedience, shouting or disruption or news conferences.

Just hit `em where it hurts: in the collection plates until our voices are heeded.

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Shrove Tuesday, The Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Also the Feast of St. Juliana. Three-fers mark this day. Shrove Tuesday is celebrated in English-speaking countries—the U.S.,Canada, Ireland, Catholic areas of England, Australia and New Zealand. The word Shrove is past-tense of the verb shrive which means to obtain forgiveness and absolution for sin by confessing and doing penance—anticipating the season of Lent which begins on the following day, Ash Wednesday. Here it’s also known as Pancake Day signifying that the making and eating of pancakes was considered a last full consumption of sugar, fat and eggs preparatory to voluntary fasting and abstinence of such foods during the 40 days of Lent.

The Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus was begun in 1958 by Pius XII to be marked on Shrove Tuesday to memorialize the face of the Savior shown on the Shroud of Turin which has survived much skepticism to be viewed now in historical context as a miracle where the sacred face of the Christ is shown on His winding sheet. Pius urged that representations of the Holy Face be shown.

Last, I have chosen the Feast of St. Juliana to be recorded here not just because the Church has designated it as a Feast but since it is the church of my childhood on the Northwest Side of Chicago, the site of my elementary school where two of my grandchildren have also attended (one continuing as student in the same building I used in 1934-42. It is the same building where I screamed blue-murder on the first day when my mother deposited me there…leading me to become the laughing stock of my 1^st grade fellows who were more calm then I—causing me to hate them all and vow I would get even with them one day. That aspiration still endures: Indeed I once dated a young lady who said on our first evening when we were alone:“God, my first remembrance of you is how you howled and screamed when your mother left you in our school room. The more Sister tried to console you the more you yelled so that in a few minutes we were all yowling for our mothers!” Somehow the hoped- for magic of the date dispelled with these painful words and she wondered why she was deposited so quickly after the movie and soda at 8 p.m.

Juliana Falconiere [1270-1341] was the child of a noble family of Florence who became founder of the Sisters of the 3^rd Order of Servites. Her uncle, Brother Alexis Falconiere,, who lived to 110 was the last survivor of the seven founders of the Servites. She was received into the Order at a young age and remained at home until her mother’s death after which she and her companions moved into a house, the sisters’ first convent, where Juliana was made Superior, a role she held to the end of her life. The sisters wore black gowns secured by a leather girdle with a white veil. The gowns had short sleeves to facilitate work with the sick and poor. Juliana loved receiving Communion. She served as Superior for 35 years but as death approached she was unable to receive the Eucharist because of vomiting.

The priest decided to avoid giving her the sacrament but she begged him to spread a linen cloth on her chest and deposit the Host on it. Shortly thereafter to the amazement of all, the Host disappeared and shortly after this, Juliana died. The image of a Cross, identical to the one impressed on the Host was found on her breast. Immediately after death, she proceeded to be canonized by the Pope.

That’s why the statue of Juliana in our family church on the northwest side shows her in religious garb with the Host on her breast.

Thoughts While Shaving: O. J. Berkowitz Has Fun With Fiction…This Just In: Brady Names Jefferson as Author of the Constitution!

2010-02-15T07:32:00.002-06:00

Feast of Sts.Faustinus and Jovita, Martyrs.*

Fiction and Fact with OJ’s Almanac.

Jeff O. J. [Objective Journalist] Berkowitz who stresses constantly that he is solely an objective journalist [“just the facts: all I want are the facts”]…announced Saturday on theTribune blog his pal and ideological soul-mate Eric Zorn so warmly welcomed him to… that he (Berkowitz) got possession of Jason Plummer’s “job application” to become the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. The story quotes Plummer and goes on and on. It was headlined straight in such major news and clip roundups as Dave Diersen’s because there was no disclaimer from Berkowitz for a day…while readers were misled. It was obviously written to appeal to his newfound editors at the Tribune blog whose views about social conservatives equate with Berkowitz’s.

So this was to be a romance made in heaven between OJ and the Trib blog managers.

But he didn’t tie a clear disclaimer to the fable at first. For a long while the fable ran as strict fact. Yikes!

So…

…Sunday the poor man’s Dan Rather came clean. He’d rather be a Big Foot in journalism than occupy the lowly estate of what he has to put up with, tied to a single Access TV camera. He’d rather be a network anchor as in “and here’s the CBS Evening News coverage of side-splitting fiction and fact with O. J. Berkowitz’s almanac! Sadly, this mischievous trick played with the truth on poor Plummer may delay the Resurrection of Jeff (OJ) Berkowitz. His scoop-possession of Plummer’s “application” was a fantasy.

I’m sure the Trib appreciates OJ’s sense of humor. It’s newly discovered. I hadn’t seen it until now but he is bound to go BIG TIME with pranks like this. .

In fact, I told him earlier he was on my show because he had a flair for political analysis. . But I was wrong. Now we know he’s not even an analyst but a comedian. A humorous satirist of the news. Anything but an objective journalist. I should have realized he has a talent for humor because right after he leaves speeches…like at the City Club… and news conferences… carrying his brownie-style TV camera…observers double up with laughter.

Possibly coming soon: O.J. Berkowitz’s cameo spot on The Daily Show where knowing him, he’ll soon be inquiring about the health of Jon Stewart.

History-Making Brady.

Bloomington’s Bill Brady’s minions are pressuring Kirk Dillard to concede the election before all the votes are counted. We’ve got to hurry up, they say, because time’s a-wasting. Our Feb. 2 primary was the first in the nation and the general election’s not until November so com’on, Dillard, throw in the towel! Well, sensibly, Dillard’s not doing anything of the sort until the complete tabulation. But impatience has seized Brady who has been practicing the nominee mode—speaking as if he is the nominee.

Understandably, then, the media has been thinking of him as if he is the nominee. Example: They asked what he thinks of his…purported…27-year-old running-mate Jason Plummer. Is Plummer too young, too inexperienced?

Rising to the occasion as Expectant Nominee, Brady had a clear-cut answer.

Plummer, he said, is the same age as Thomas Jefferson was when Jefferson wrote the U. S,. Constitution.

God this year is going to be a riot.

Of course what Jefferson wrote was the Declaration in 1776 when he was 33. He had nothing to do with writing the Constitution.

The Constitution wasn’t enacted until 1787 and Jefferson was nowhere to be found as he was Minister to France that year.

Now let’s all pray to the Great God Above that sufficient votes will be found to nominate Dillard. And leave Brady to recount to students how Eli Whitney sailed the cotton gin down the Mississippi.

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*: Sts. Faustinus and Jovita, [circa: AD 100]. They were brothers, natives of Brescia, located halfway between Milan and Venice, who, legend says, preached Catholicism fearlessly while their bishop was in hiding (sound familiar?). Their preaching excited animosity by a heathen lord named Julian. They were tortured and dragged to Milan, Rome and Naples, put on exhibit for the jeers of the crowds, and returned to Brescia.

There the Emperor Hadrian who was staying for a short time in Brescia brought them to the Circus and ordered the gates opened for wild animals to devour them. The animals wouldn’t touch them and an aide to Hadrian, a court official and pagan, Calocerus, was mightily impressed—but Hadrian was not impressed and ordered them to be beheaded—which they were. But their example stayed with Calocerus who asked to enter the Church and was baptized by the bishop, Apollonius—not the one in hiding but another one.. Moved by the example of Faustinus and Jovita, Calocerus took up their work and before he was through, as result of his persuasion and the witness of Faustinus and Jovita, 12,000 were baptized by Bishop Apollonius.

Then Calocerus himself was arrested. He was visited in jail by a man named Secundus whom Calocerus instructed in the Faith. Then Calocerus was beheaded—becoming St. Calocerus. The man he instructed in jail took up the evangelization, was martyred and was canonized as St. Secundas. All of this happened as result of the great example of Sts.Faustinus and Jovita. They are the patrons of the city of Brescia which claims to possess their relics.

Personal Asides: Bill Brady’s 100% Conservative Rating on Social Policy—the Most Impeccable for a Governor Candidate Ever.

2010-02-12T07:02:00.000-06:00

Feast of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order*

If State Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) wins the GOP gubernatorial nomination…and he leads Kirk Dillard by 420 votes so he appears to have a leg up…will his solid 100% conservative voting record on social issues cause him trouble as he runs across a state that has been blue? Answer: It shouldn’t if he does what Scott Brown did, don’t fudge and count on the hideous record of the Democrats nationally to carry the day.

Brady has one of the finest social voting records in the state. Dems and liberal media will try to zero in on it hoping he will waver, arguing…as if they are really concerned for his political electibility…the record can’t square with how the state has been aligned in the past. Of course it would be disastrous for Brady to waffle because not only would he discourage his base but evince insecurity about anything he says on any issue in the future.

Scott Brown didn’t have Brady’s strong pro-life record (Brown was on record as favoring retention of Roe v. Wade but in opposition to federal funding and partial birth abortion)…yet it was glaringly conservative in contrast to Ted Kennedy’s and Martha Coakley’s. But Brown didn’t flinch and neither should Brady. For one thing… with Illinois $12 billion in the hole and engulfed a state retirement system that will need $131 billion to cover benefits but with only $46 billion in the bank…only people like me (and you and the conservative base) probably will pay attention to social issues—a duplicate of what happened in Massachusetts—unless the media builds it up to super-proportions.

They will try but the answer for us pro-lifers is to keep cool. Much as we would like our social issues to dominate, chances are Illinois will pay far more attention to issues on which Pat Quinn is vulnerable: bad administration, freeing 1,500 penitentiary prisoners, some with double-violent records, sending them out to the street in order to “save money.” But here are highlights of the Brady record which shows that he is indubitably the most conservative Republican to run for governor in many, many moons.

In addition to opposing all manner of pro-abort legislation including state funding and the like…

He authored bills to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions or dispense emergency contraception based on their religious beliefs…pushed a Constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and outlaw civil unions…sponsored a bill to repeal the state’s gay rights law...authored a bill to repeal the state’s Firearm Owner Identification Card…wrote a constitutional amendment to ban the state Department of Education. In addition he…

Sponsored the “Born Alive Infant Act” which Obama as state senator killed repeatedly…supported legislation to ban use of state funds for human embryo research.

These are just the highlights of an immaculately consistent record on social issues. So if Brady wins in the last count…and that is weeks away…no recriminations but join us to elect him governor. Of course if my guy Kirk Dillard wins, let’s pledge the same thing: unity. We’ve got two great candidates for governor…and what do they have? NUTTIN!

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*: Feast of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order [13^th Century]. Between 1225-27 seven young Florentines joined what they called then “The Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin” which later adopted the name Servants of Mary or Servites. As in the contemporary film “It’s Complicated,” it was for some of them. Three of them were celibates, four had been married and had family responsibilities (although two had become widowers). The married ones having secured approval of their wives were given permission to join the Servites. Their aim was to lead lives of penance and prayer at a house called La Camarzia outside the gates of Florence. But alas they were bothered by a constant flow of visitors so they withdrew to the wild and deserted slopes of Mount Senario where they built a rude church, a hermitage and lived lives of almost inconceivable austerity.

In spite of their inaccessibility, men flocked to them to join their community. Then they asked their bishop for a Rule to follow. They decided to adopt the Rule of St. Augustine. They chose new names and became Brothers Bonfilius, Alexis, Amadeus, Hugh, Sostenes, Manettus and Buonagiunta. Then six of them—excepting Alexis—decided to become priests…Alexis staying a Brother. The Servites grew leaps and bounds and it was soon necessary to build new houses or monasteries…at Siena, Pistoia and Arezzo…spreading from Italy to Germany. They became stunningly effective and were widely recognized for their sanctity. They all lived to old age and when enfeebled returned to their founding monastery. Three died within days of each other. The last Founder was Brother Alexius…who died at the age of 110, believe it or not. All seven were canonized by Leo XIII in 1887.

Thoughts While Shaving: Liberals Will Elect Palin if They Keep it Up…Justin Kaufman of WBEZ Believes Jason Plummer’s Experience Insufficient for Lt. Gov…More.

2010-02-11T06:48:00.000-06:00

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes*

Tribune Cartoon Helps.

Liberals of both parties…and the “Educated Class” of elites…will nominate and elect Sarah Palin as the 45^th president of the United States if they keep it up. Best example: : The sneering, Upper Class cartoon in yesterday’s Tribune which showed her holding her palms up with her hands inscribed Left and Right. Hahahahahahaha.

Just right for the Lake Forest, Hinsdale, Lake Bluff country clubs which the paper reflects…and elites which the editorial board serves. The echoes of their down-their-nose haughty laughter resonate with the Chicago Club, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times, the paper’s Roger Ebert; Neil Steinberg; Richard Roeper, The Washington Post ranking pundit E. J. Dionne; The New York Review of Books; Garry Wills; the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Frank Rich…

…the late night entertainers David Letterman, Jay Leno, the soon-to-be employed again Conan O’Brien; MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman; the SNL bunch; Georgetown’sPost gossiper Sally Quinn; Hollywood’s Alec Baldwin, CBS’s Katie Couric; ABC’s Meredith Vieira; Tina Fey; Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos What a lovely bunch of gargoyles to have allied against you—the most helpful to Palin would be Huffington with her hard-to-decipher shrill Greek accent..

All that is needed is to have this crew of snobs making fun of Palin and given the state of the country’s mentality right now she’d be embraced by the middle class. As Palin would say—driving them all nuts: “YOU BETCHA!”
.

The Elites think it uproarious that Palin wrote three issues on her palm for use during a speech. Of course it is highly okay for Obama to use teleprompters including for a talk to a 3^rdgrade class…wonderful that JFK had Ted Sorenson write his “ask not” inaugural talk which was stolen from Warren Harding…edifying that FDR had Broadway playwright Robert Sherwood do the Dec. 8, 1941 address to Congress “…a date WHICH will live in infamy” WHICH? Should have been “THAT”. Stirring that Peggy Noonan wrote Reagan’s “These are the boys of Pointe de Hoc…” And wasn’t that a stitch when Gibbs the White House press secretary held aloft his hand with open palm and read: After work bring home Bread, Eggs.

Yeah, that gang should do it.

This Just In: WBEZ Guy Finds Plummer’s Experience Unimpressive.

The Internet editor of WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, whose funding is partially paid by taxpayers, has found that GOP Lt. Governor candidate Jason Plummer’s experience for the job is insufficient: he was only an intern for Peter Fitzgerald and The Heritage Foundation before helping his family’s company build shopping centers.

Pardon me but we are referring to Justin Kaufman are we not? The guy who voted for Scott Lee Cohen because Cohen was so intimidating on his TV commercials that Kaufman didn’t want to be made to feel uncomfortable? So he voted for Cohen? And who explained: “I’m like that”? Yeah, that’s the guy. Just what I thought.

Jack Franks.

State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock), probably the smartest, most astute, most character-endowed Democratic House member, this morning formally suggested that his party notname anybody to the post of Lieutenant Governor nominee. Smart idea. If Quinn is elected and dies his successor would be Lisa Madigan. Of course Quinn won’t follow it. This walking, talking cliché who thinks he seized on a catchy slogan by referring to “the land of Lincoln” and whose eyes take on a sanctimonious glaze when lying won’t pass up the chance to align himself with Tammy Duckworth, the severely wounded ex-helicopter pilot from the Iraq War…who would undeniably help Old Watery Eyes get elected.

If she gives up Secretary of Veterans Affairs to run with this loser whose days are numbered, she isn’t the resourceful lady I think she is.

And if she were to get elected with Quinn, her name would be imperishably linked with other Lieutenant Governors: Quinn, Corinne Wood, Bob Kustra, George Ryan, Dave O’Neal, Neil Hartigan…going all the way back to Pierre Menard, Adolphus Hubbard, Zadok Casey, Stinson Anderson, William McMurty, Gustavus Koerner, John Early, Lyman Ray, and William Northcott among others. She’d be number 46 if she were to get elected.

If. The only ones in the list to rise to governor were Quinn, George Ryan, Sam Shapiro, John Stelle. Stellar list. Quinn got upped after Blago was canned; Ryan moved from secretary of state to governor while the Feds were probing his uncountable excesses which later sent him to jail. Shapiro also of Kankakee succeeded Otto Kerner who later went to jail and Stelle became governor on the death of Henry Horner.

Basso-profundo-voiced Paul Simon, who viciously attacked Dick Ogilvie during his single term as governor in hopes of getting the Dem nod to run against him, fittingly lost to Dan Walker who later went to jail (not for anything he did as governor however), Simon going to the Senate where as a non-lawyer member of Judiciary he distinguished himself by recommending that nominees for Supreme Court visit an Indian reservation.

Report Cohen Won’t Quit Until He Gets His $2 Million Back.

Speaking of Scott Lee Cohen (which I guess we weren’t exactly) a news report is circulating that he won’t quit as Dem Lieutenant Governor nominee until he gets his $2 million back. And he has a point. He shelled out the money in good faith and used it to win the primary. Now he has been asked…politely…then rather curtly..,.to step down from the post for which he expended the $2 million. Only fair, I think, that his request is honored by the state Democratic party.

However I don’t think that request will be received at all felicitously. In fact I would predict that if he doesn’t cease making this request and resign post haste he may soon be visited by two slab-faced, well-dressed gentlemen wearing fragrant pomade hair-dressing making their black hair glisten…and sporting expensive pointy-toed shoes…who will impress him with their unique powers of persuasion.

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*: Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes [1858]. On Feb. 11, 1858 three little girls, Bernadette Soubirous (14), her sister Marie-Toinette (11) and their friend Jeanne Abadie (12) were looking for wood. They were told driftwood and dried branches were to be found on the bank of the Gave River. To get there they had to pass a grotto (or natural cavity) in the rocky cliff of Massabielle which skirts the stream. The two younger ones made their way over but Bernadette, hesitated to follow. The others would not help her so Bernadette was bending over to remove her stockings when she heard a rustling sound resembling a gust of wind. She looked up and saw the branches of the trees were not moving. She pulled off her stockings and put one foot in the water when the rustling sound came again.

This time she looked intently at the grotto and saw the bushes near it violently shaking. Then in the opening of a niche behind and above the branches she saw—as she wrote later—“a girl in white, no taller than I, who greeted me with a slight bow of the head.” The girl was very beautiful, clad in white, wearing a blue girdle with a large rosary hung over her right arm. She invited Bernadette to pray. Bernadette knelt, took her own rosary out of her pocket and began to recite the prayers. Her girlfriends didn’t see it. Bernadette later returned with her parents. As they told their rosary beads on the 3^rd decade the same girl appeared in the same place as before. Bernadette said “there she is!” She then fell into a trance-like mood. Her parents saw nothing.

This was the beginning of repeated visions which drew Bernadette into great controversy. The town grew very hostile believing that Bernadette was part of a fraud on them. But the visions increased throughout February and into March when the lady told Bernadette ”I am the Immaculate Conception.”

On February 25, as many watched, Bernadette pointed to a spot where immediately a spring rushed out with water. Bernadette became a Sister of Notre Dame at Nevers while the town of Lourdes became world famous as did the spring. It became one of the great pilgrimage centers of the world and many thousands of people were healed from the waters of the Spring. After painstaking investigation and heated, sometime bitter, controversy which Bernadette avoided since she was locked in contemplation in her cloister, the apparitions were ecclesiastically approved. She died in 1879 in her cloister.

In 1958 I went to Lourdes, participated in the procession in a crowd composed of many people including those in wheel-chairs, some carrying small children who were seriously ill…the procession winding up the mountain from the town, each of us carrying lighted tapers at night…so that at the Grotto when I looked back I saw a long line of flickering candles in the night. Then I went to the convent where her body, completely preserved, is on display with the bloom of youth in her cheeks although she had been dead 80 years. She is still there, a beautiful woman of 34 her fingers grasping the rosary. It was one of the most inspiring sights I have ever seen.

Personal Asides: Obama’s Strange Fixation With Healthcare…David Brooks Cosmetician for the White House…WTTW Needs State Grant for Viewers Like You: Huh?

2010-02-10T07:15:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Scholastica*

Obama Focuses on Process.

Yesterday in his news conference, Barack Obama proved again he doesn’t get it. He said the American people were turned off by “the process” of passing health care…by which he means the Louisiana Purchase, the Nebraska exemption for Medicaid reimbursement…the Connecticut hospital for good ol’ Chris Dodd. This is similar to the way he explained Massachusetts: Voters are angry at delay, angry at Bush so they elected a Republican senator.

Bill Clinton got it after HillaryCare failed when he gravitated over to the center which was his natural inclination. But Obama can’t do this because he is a man of the Left. He cannot fathom that the polls certifying a great preponderance of the American public is against doing health care now: so he posits that the reason is they were turned off what was really Rahm Emanuel’s work to get it passed by bribing key senators: as old a device as the legislative process itself.

What we have here is what we have never had in the presidency: an ideologue-in-chief. FDR and Reagan, the two successful presidents of the 20^th century in getting their programs passed and winning public acceptance were basically legislative realists. Obama is not. His concentration on health care now is a case in point. Remember after Massachusetts when he said the next focus would be on jobs-jobs-jobs? That was evidently just a charade. His main focus has never switched: to nationalize health care and make the U.S. consonant with the strongly Left social democracies of Europe.

So yesterday he announces a Blair House “bipartisan” conference, supposedly to get Republicans to share. To share what? The 2,300-page monstrosity passed by the Senate? The 1,345-page encyclopedia-sized bill passed by the House. Where do you suggest input in those huge volumes? The way to get bipartisanship is to start over. This he rejects.

This is not to say Obama doesn’t have talent. It lies not in erudition nor his philosophy but his charm. He has exerted sufficient personal charm to make voters ignore the gaps in his biography: why his grades, his academic papers have not been released…his membership in the Hyde Park United Church of Christ for 20 years which was presided over by a raving white-racist pastor…his stridently Left-wing work as a “community organizer”…his supposedly off-the-record talk in San Francisco during the campaign about Americans who “cling to guns and religion.” his egregious failure to understand even the cardinal fact of jurisprudence: how you can guarantee a fair trial for terrorist war combatants by insisting, as did his attorney general, that all is o.k. because the defendants will be found guilty and executed—before their trials have even begun.

For the love of God, doesn’t he understand that when you certify that those who are tried will be found guilty and executed, he gives terrorists the case that we run kangaroo courts akin with those of Nazi Germany and the USSR?

Personal charm can carry one only so far. FDR had it in abundance but learned that much more is required to get his programs enacted. Reagan had it in abundance and learned he would have to rise above charm to attain his goals. Obama is a Hard-Head… the only 4-star ideologue ever to serve in the presidency: which will guarantee that he will continue to be…as he is now…a spectacular failure as president. Even now the American people are wising up to this fact. A recent poll showed that if 2008 were to be re-run today, he would lose in a landslide. In essence, it is the greatest anomaly that the one president who in modern times was regarded as an “intellectual,” has been in-educable.

Come to Brooks’ Cosmeticians Shop.

When I became a press secretary to a governor I had to adapt from being a journalist to becoming a political cosmetician: seeking to find journalists to paint favorable portraits of my boss. Most were not so inclined—but every so often you’d find a sympathetic soul whereupon I would pounce and unload on this guy favored tidbits which he would dutifully report in return for more tidbits. You’d call such uncritical reporters “pigeons” and every AM we’d siphon the favorable news and dish it up to the grateful pigeons. Soon the pigeons would get wise and determine not to be fed with such handouts.

But the real triumphs would come when you convinced…through hard logic and an abundance of fact…a reporter who was determined not to be a pigeon but who would come to a conclusion probably fairly near to our own. By and large, house pigeons in journalism don’t attract much of a following anyhow. But they still exist.

One such national house pigeon is David Brooks, late of Chicago, a faithful feeding member of the roost of New York Times -Obama pigeons who nibble from the extended hand of the feeder. Brooks is celebrated in the mainstream media as a thoughtful guy…and for that reason he is also featured on the main pigeon roost of Obama’s most popular feathered friends:The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer or as the Brooklyn-accented voice-over guy says “Jim Lairaaa-rah.” (Digression: Lehrer comes from Kansas where they pronounce his name with full emphasis on the `r’s’ but he has become so much a fixture of the East now that Lehrer himself says “Lairaa-rah”).

Yesterday’s Brooks column further validates him as a pigeon and guarantees much further service with Jim Lairaaa-rah.”

He paints the White House as “the House of Tranquility.” You can imagine, can’t you, the White House which has lost health care, lost damn near everything, won’t call up Cap & Trade because it will lose, has been out-bluffed by Iran, has lost three straight vital state elections in a row including supposedly solid Massachusetts is jitter free? Everyone knows Rahm Emanuel is under the gun, having been rebuked roundly by his own party’s congressional people for disgracing the process on health care. But to Brooks: “The uninformed float rumors that Rahm Emanuel is on the outs. Yet the atmosphere in the White House appears surprisingly tranquil. Emanuel is serving as a lighting rod [he means lightning rod] for the president but remains crisply confident…”

God, in the White House where there is all too little to laugh at, Emanuel and Axelrod must have doubled up with mirth at this poor pigeon’s nibbling out of the feeder’s hand. Here is a guy, Emanuel, who has to apologize to Sarah Palin and the nation and to, of all people, a Shriver for supposedly demeaning the retarded—a Shriver of all things…with ties to the Kennedys whose late duenna Eunice, JFK’s sister, started the Special Olympics.

(Actually, let me be so politically incorrect as to state that “retarded” is not a term of opprobrium. The politically correct would have us say “intellectually challenged”—but that would be confusing. Obama himself is “intellectually challenged” in that he refuses to see the truth: that socialized medicine is a no-no. Are we to imply he is retarded? I say no!

(What bothered me was not Emanuel’s use of the word “retarded” but his usage of an obscenity as an adjective: “f*****g retarded.” But no one has objected to the adjective born of a particularly obnoxious reference to the act of human reproduction. So to liberals it was not the “f” word but the “r” word).

Back to Pigeon Brooks: Did you know that there is a wonderfully smooth relationship between Joe Biden and Obama? Yes indeedy.
”…[I]n recent months, Obama has found a way to use Biden’s skills while Biden has found ways to be of use.” Well, the reasonable way is to utilize him as class clown with cap and bells. But get this: Biden “seems to know every player in Iraq down to the alderman level…” The alderman level. That makes sense: Biden would in fact be likely to refer to members of the Islamic republic’s Council of Ministers as “aldermen.”

Essential Funding for WTTW-TV.

Illinois is what?...$12 billion in debt? That means normally the budget should be cut to the bone. But what’s more natural in the Pat Quinn administration than continuing the taxpayer largesse to WTTW-TV Chicago’s Window to the World (Wilmette talking to Winnetka) where there is no danger of conservative thought permeating the tight little video world managed by Mary Field, presided over by Cardboard Man, with intermediate questioning rigidly Leftwing by Nurse Ratched and also by Overage College Girl with the burnt umber hair? But one very powerful newsletter on government and politics yesterday dismissed the Illinois Policy Institute a think tank’s criticism of grants to public TV.

The IPI says it is entirely reasonable for so-called “public TV” to go to the public for its entire funding—the way other groups do. Do you know the Moody Bible Church’s 24-hour-a-day radio broadcast on WMBI –FM is paid entirely by donors? Why can’t `TTW do this…or are the viewers in Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Inverness, and the lakefront so impoverished they have to ask Illinois’ taxpayers for help?

Comment from the liberal Newsletter Editor concerning the prospect of setting WTTW free: “This is more than just a debatable point.” That’s about as abjectly redistributive as it can get—but he means the issue is un-debatable: raise taxes which will worsen the economic climate, tend to drive business’s away…but what the hell: just so we elites can get the public purse to pay for our purely liberal propaganda which we’re too tight to pay for ourselves…let the taxpayer do it.

On another issue: cutting state aid to nurses. The IPI makes the valid point that penury which is where the state finds itself would warrant cutting the $75,000 for nurses’ tuition assistance and fellowships of $150,000 saying nurses make on average $62,000 plus which is higher than the state earning average. Oh, says the Newsletter editor. The IPI is talking only about registered nurses (true). But nurses’ aides make only $24,000 plus, and nurses’ aides only $24,000 plus. Which means of course that this guy is a redistributionist. Put everybody on the state payroll. And he’s supposed to be an analyst of Illinois’ public obligations? That’s the way with all redistributionists. Spread the wealth around as The Messiah has said to Joe the Plumber.

A question for him: Your newsletter is very valuable for its insights into politics, legislative actions etc. You get something in the neighborhood of $350 a year from individuals for it. Have you ever thought of making it available FREE to some anti-poverty groups that could use it? Or, what the hell, free generally! It’s all too easy to play bleeding heart with taxpayers’ money.

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*: St. Scholastica [Circa AD 543]. The twin sister of St. Benedict who became the first Benedictine nun. After Benedict moved to Monte Cassino she settled at Plombariola in the same area, founding a convent five miles south of Benedict’s monastery. The two were deeply spiritual but lived such a separate but restrictive life that by common consent they would only meet once a year...she not going inside his monastery, he not going inside her convent—so they met at a house halfway between each with monk and nun companions in accordance with the Benedictine Rule. St. Gregory who knew them both recounts that after they passed a day in conversation and meditation, Scholastica had the premonition that this would be the last time she would ever see her brother. She asked him to delay his return to the next day but he refused—strict in observance as always—saying that under his Rule monks could not spend a night away from the monastery but for the most serious of reasons.

Whereupon Scholastica, according to Gregory (in his Dialogues), laid her head down on her hands and prayed God to interpose on her behalf. When Benedict rose to leave, a violent storm with flashes of lightning occurred outside. Benedict then exclaimed: “God forgive you, Sister, what have you done?” She replied: “I asked a favor of you and you refused it. I asked it of God and He has granted it.” They spent most of the night conversing and praying. The next day Benedict left and three days later Scholastica died. Alone in his cell at prayer, Benedict lifted his eyes and soul her soul ascending to God. He sent a monk to fetch her body which he placed in the tomb he had prepared for himself. Gregory: “So it happened to these two whose minds had ever been united in the Lord that even in the grave their bodies were not separated.” Her relics along with those of Benedict were transferred to France in the 7^thcentury and deposited at Le Mans.

Personal Asides: Who Dem? Some Identity Pols See Lt. Governor Spot as “Jewish Seat”!...The Dreadful “F” Word.

2010-02-09T06:59:00.000-06:00

Feast of St. Cyril of Alexandria*

A Jewish Seat? If So, I’ve Got Just the Guy!

The Dem party that has brought us quotas and identity politics, set-aside candidacies for gay, lesbians, gays, transgenders…everything but pro-life and pro-gun (which disqualifies State Rep. John Bradley of Marion)…is embroiled in a dispute over the kind of person to fill the Lt. Governor slot now that Scott Lee Cohen has vacated it.

Rationale: Since Cohen is Jewish, political correctness might mandate a Jew for the job otherwise Jews will be offended (my comment: political realists could argue--who cares what Jewish voters think? If years of Dem romancing pro-Palestinian Lefties haven’t offended `em do you think by missing out on Illinois Lt. Governor who doesn’t even preside over the Senate would be an insult?. A neat idea: Julie Hamos who lost the 10^th district congressional nod. (she’s a 2-fer, a Jew and a woman. Hey, no, a 3-fer—Jew, woman, member of a Hungarian refugee displaced family—how’s that? Wait—a 4-fer. Jew, woman, refugee family background and thoroughly obnoxious).

If Lt. Governor is to be a Jewish seat my vote is for one of the brightest state legislators on either side of the aisle; Jack Franks of McHenry. I kid you not. But then my endorsement is a seal of death for him: Sorry Jack.

The Dreadful “F” Word is Used Too Often.

When I was young and until, frankly, I hit 40 or so, the word was scrupulously avoided in usage by men in front of ladies. That is still true in some respects. Now it is used almost indiscriminately by men and women, one to another but still this canon from my youth which once reigned supreme should be regarded again now as we strive to improve the culture:

Women who claim they are not distressed by its use may have ceased to be ladies but have not yet learned to be gentlemen.

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*: St. Cyril of Alexandria [AD 377-444]. A holy and necessarily combative man which the Church needs more of today. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt and received a classical and theological education and was ordained by his uncle, the patriarch of the city, He attended the Synod of the Oak which deposed John Chrysostom whom he believed, falsely, guilty of the charges against him—showing saints, even intellectual ones, can make mistakes.. He became patriarch of Alexandria but only after a riot of his supporters and followers of his rival Timotheus. A somewhat violent guy for a saint. In 430 he became embroiled in a good and great fight: opposing Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople who insisted that Mary was not the Mother of God since Christ was divine and not human.

Cyril went to Rome and convinced Celestine I to convoke a synod there to condemn Nestorius. Celestine told Cyril that he, Cyril, should do it so Cyril presided over the 3^rd General Council at Ephesus attended by some 300 bishops. All condemned Nestorius but at the last moment there came the arrival of the Archbishop of Antioch and a huge group of followers who caused the Council to reverse course, found Nestorius innocent and…get this…condemned Cyril!

Cyril was arrested by Emperor Theodosius II along with Nestorius but Cyril was released after the arrival of Papal legates. Then Cyril got back at Nestorius and forced him into exile. Those were the days, my children! For the remainder of his life, Cyril wrote treatises defining the Trinity and the Incarnation which kept heresy at bay.