A Happy Chicago Lampoon New Year's Eve (Schlager-Style)

Now is the time on Chicago Lampoon ven ve dance ---







Und eat --





Und drink --




Happy New Year Everybody!!

The Wit and Wisdom of M. Stanton Evans

M. Stanton Evans was one of the wittiest conservative leaders and writers that I ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Once some friends were with him at a fancy restaurant and when the pompous waiter was taking desert orders, he told the fellow, "I think I'll have some RED Jello."

I was with him and the great, then young, conservative satirist, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. When Evans was showing us around his new offices, he pointed out its balcony which overlooked the street and he commented: "It's perfect for addressing the adoring throngs who will gather below my window in the street."

He was also quite capable of pulling off a dirty trick or two. One summer I helped organize his National Journalism Center office softball team. He told us that we were going to have a game out in the Virginia countryside and after driving for an hour or so, we arrived at a farmhouse. He then told us that we would first help his girlfriend move her furniture from the house into a moving van and then play ball in the field. By the time we were finished with the back-breaking labor, we all were, of course, too exhausted to play ball.

Here is a sample of Stan's witticisms from across the years:


* "Tax cuts are like sex; when they are good, they are very, very good. And when they are bad, they are still pretty good."

* Evans’ Law: “Whenever ‘one of our people’ reaches a position of power where he can do us some good, he ceases to be ‘one of our people.’”

* Evans’ law of inadequate paranoia: “[N]o matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it's always worse."

* "Liberals don't care what you do as long as it's compulsory."

* "I've always felt that anyone who has his head screwed on right should be conservative when he is young and, as he gets older, become more and more conservative."

* "One of the things that happens to you when you get old, really two bad things, one of them is that you lose your hearing, and I forget what the other one is."

* "We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship."

* "We all know that Mrs. Clinton has complained about the vast right-wing conspiracy, and of course, she is correct about that, and we are all part of it, but when I was starting out, it was only half vast."

* "The National Council of Churches adopted a resolution condemning the Reverend Jerry Falwell for mixing religion and politics. It's a mistake that the National Council itself does not make, of course: It has nothing to do with religion."

* "It was really hard for us young conservatives to recover from the Goldwater defeat; it was all the worse because in those days we had no grief counselors."

* "I never liked Nixon until Watergate."

* “I didn’t much care for Joseph McCarthy’s ends, but I always admired his methods.”

Dan Proft: The Chicago Personification of "Evan's Law"

M. Stanton Evans was the youngest editor ever of the Indianapolis News He was an early backer of Barry Goldwater for President. He was a founding member of the American Conservative Union, for which I was press secretary in the 1980s.

I played softball with Stan Evans, but was much better than he was. I was, after all, 20 years younger and the descendant of a Hall of Fame Chicago White Sox pitcher.

But Stan, who was an early editor of the National Review, was ever ready with a good quip.

Among his best was his expostulation of what he called, "Evans Law."

Evans Law went as follows: "Our people remain our people -- until they get into a position whereby they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people."

Dan Proft is the Illinois personification of Evans Law.

He was a terribly promising young guy at Northwestern University. There he almost singlehandedly held up the alternative conservative Northwestern Chronicle newspaper and the campus conservative movement overall.

But then something went awry.

Proft got the scent of power and cash.

First he ran off to manage the campaign of pro-abortionist, feminist, Elizabeth Coulter.

When asked to rectify this with his ostensible Right-to-Life views, he said that no one North of North Avenue could be elected unless they took a pro-abortion stance.

Yet these days on WLS radio he scoffs at his partner, Bruce Wolf, who recommends the very same thing.

Then Proft went off to milk the taxpayers of the corrupt Republican controlled berg of Cicero (Alphonse Capone's former stomping grounds) with contracts for "PR services" all over the place.

Yea, that passes the smell test.

Proft, when he was engaged in his ill-fated, backbench campaign for Governor, avoided the immigration issue like the plague -- pretty much mirroring RINO Mark Kirk on that score.

Even today he blabs about the need for Republicans to have "a conversation" with the illegal alien lobby.

And what might that mean?

And Proft asserts the knee-jerk Chicago School of Economics defense of so-called "free trade."

"We all live like kings because of the cheap products we can buy from China," Proft says.

"And we gain all of the financial benefits because we create the proprietary rights to the software intrinsic thereto," Proft says.

But Dan Proft lives in the posh Lake Point Tower, 505 North Lake Shore Drive.

There, at that exclusive retreat, where even the tawdriest units sell in the high 6 figures, one is marvelously insulated from the real Chicago.

There, one doesn't meet the 40-something black guys who grew up in the stable homes of steelworkers from the now long-gone South side Chicago steel mills. On North Lake Shore Drive, one doesn't see these guys who are now cadging quarters to subsidize their daily intake of malt liquor and sleeping under bushes in the park at night.

They don't allow riff-raff like that in Proft's rarified domain.

One reasonably questions whether those lost Chicagoans will be able to grab those great opportunities in the software development field that Proft so glibly recommends.

And, by the way, the Atlantic in its recent assessment of the Chinese hi-tech industry recommended that the Chinese industrial combine was now insisting that they take over those higher profit technological functions and were beginning to do so.

And when Proft's good ole buddy, the Reverend Meeks, suggested that the racial spoils system should only apply to blacks -- and not to Latinos, Asians or women -- Proft did not recommend that affirmative action should be summarily tossed onto the ash heap of history -- as any sensible conservative would -- but rather said that his pal, Meeks had "misspoke."

YIKES!!!

As my old pal M. Stanton Evans postulated: "Our people are only our people -- until they get into a position where they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people"


Just call that "Evan's Law."

Evanston's Megabucks Unionized Teachers

Evanston, Illinois is one of the most wildly liberal "progressive" municipalities on the face of the American landscape. It voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. It has no Republican presence to speak of.

It has a political context that is dominated by the teachers' unions and other public employees unions.

It is culturally a hotbed of oddball organic food enthusiasts and wealthy trust-fund lefties who live in inherited multi-million dollar homes.

It has a sizeable black population, which has gained such a level of Obamaite political clout that it has compelled its School board to jettison "honors programs" in English, Humanities and Science, because not enough Blacks and Hispanics could make the cut from the nationally standardized tests.

Only Whites and Asians were making the grade.

It has 114 unionized teachers hauling down $100,000 a year or more -- up from 85 last year. If this is an era of national economic austerity, you'd never know it if you were a unionized Evanston teacher. And 2 of them are gaming the system for more than $200,000 a year.


These teachers are more than 95% Democrat liberal in voting behavior. They sneer at the mere peasants who toil to pay their gold-plated salaries.

Upon retirement they will pull down 80 to 85% of their last paycheck -- with full medical benefits -- for as long as they live.

They are the new elite. The new aristocrats. Or in the parlance of their Soviet philosophic blood-brothers -- the new privileged apparatchicks.


But Evanston is going broke.

Its School districts are going broke.

Its mayor, an aging, 60s-era leftist Democrat feminist by the name of Elizabeth B. Tisdahl recently had to concede, "I feel bad when telling these new police and fire recruits that we will be able to pay them these promised benefits, because we probably will not."

Here are the latest available salaries of the Evanston Township unionized teachers (these are the ones who are always lamenting "we need more money for education.")

Funny, if 2 of them should marry, they would meet Jan Schakowsky's, Nancy Pelosi's and Barack Hussein Obama's criteria for being amongst "the most wealthy Americans," who should be taxed to the hilt.

Here are the Evanston High School Teachers' salaries, just updated on 3/1/11 to reflect 2010 salaries. Fatcats pulling down $100k + are in bold, the ultra-elite $200k + are in bold and italics. ---

These figures are culled from the IL State Teachers Retirement Fund annual reports, by way of the Family Taxpayers Foundation which was compelled to file suit so that this information would be made transparent for the taxpaying public to see.


Judge for yourself.

SALARIES AS REPORTED BY STATE OF ILLINOIS FOR LAST PENSION REPORTING PERIOD.

Teacher Salary Database

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evanston Twp HSD 202 2010 - --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME SALARY
Abplanalp, Charles $95,917
Agin, Richard $64,575
Akinrinade, Channing $105,069
Alebiosu, Juanita $119,709
Allen, David $102,025
Amaker, Alana $97,499
Amin, Priya $48,231
Arey, Beth $71,539
Artley, Tranquil $96,412
Augustine, Shani $94,821
Autry, Tracy $116,056
Baker, Jennifer $107,199
Barlow, Jeffery $97,819
Barnthouse, Marsha $124,966
Barrett, Michael $94,688
Barrett, Valrie $106,134
Barry, Kevin $84,431
Baumgartner, Pamela $106,526
Bavis, Peter $139,476
Becker, Aaron $95,395
Belgrade, Evan $64,117
Benson, John $152,874
Bhudvanbhen, Suthiratana $77,194
Blades, Michael $79,129
Bolden, Amber $79,598
Boller, Jennifer $79,795
Bourjaily, Matthew $75,108
Bowers, Richard $145,535
Bowyer, Scott $116,479
Boyer, Jody $53,189
Brady, Julie $48,115
Brelias, Eugenia $150,950
Brown, Eric $80,399
Brown, Kiwana $76,616
Bumbry, Cynthia $118,377
Calixte, Franz $89,957
Campbell, Marcus $98,700
Campos, Fernando $65,586
Canchola, Aracely $73,747
Cardis, Richard $79,869
Carpenter, Michael $119,156
Casalino, Diane $103,170
Chaitkin, Denise $82,735
Chan, David $85,870
Chmela, Thomas $103,990
Christiansen, Beth $100,009
Chung, Natacha $90,104
Cirone, Christine $109,377
Clark, Vernon $133,145
Colwell, Julie $110,746
Connie, Leslie $115,373
Consiglio, Frank $89,128
Cooper, Caroline $92,780
Cooper, Laura $216,746
Corrigan, Michelle $76,460
Cortesi, Cristina $89,613
Cotte, Jose $113,129
Cruz, Neil $72,544
Cruz-Marquez, German $95,974
Curtis, Cynthia $63,587
Curtis, Jed $120,362
Dammers, Christopher $85,229
Davis, Charles $122,915
De Rousse, Randal $111,893
DeCraene, Peter $117,524
Delgado, Clare $96,653
DeWald, Renee $155,904
Dickman, Stephen $106,644
Domasik, Robert $102,950
Driscoll, Matthew $110,925
DuBrow, Daniel $80,555
DuSold, Elizabeth $75,466
Eddy, Bruce $119,393
Edwards, Lisa $108,956
Ehmke, Sabrina $57,703
Engel, Katrina $72,498
Erby, Dawn $48,175
Esterrich, Hilda $148,270
Ewald, Norman $23,466
Farmer, William $78,577
Feeley, David $101,485
Fierer, Ellen $62,422
Figel, Nancy $100,841
Figiel, Maritza $107,862
Fisher, Jennifer $139,569
Flevaris, Demetra $69,933
Fodor, David $138,497
Freeland, Ross $73,595
Friedman, Carol $112,689
Futransky, David $96,164
Gates, Michelle (Shelley) $103,099
Gattone, Joseph $108,498
Geni, Lawrence $137,775
Georgantas, Clare $96,060
Gesky, Luella $67,208
Gilford, Anne $133,143
Gilroy, Cory $64,885
Gohmann, Janet $135,039
Gordon, Darlene $64,430
Gordon, Glenford $61,245
Gottlieb, Robert $130,942
Graham, Traece $103,139
Granito, Teresa $103,945
Green, Michelle $57,970
Gross, Lynn $108,157
Gutstein, Betsy $99,154
Hakanen, Lynda $117,656
Haller, Gary $79,224
Hanley, Marita $90,011
Hansen, Debbie $70,573
Hansen, Martha $164,381
Harris, Chad $94,360
Hart, Alicia $67,944
Hartley, Elizabeth $68,279
Hawthorne, Oscar $179,506
Heineman, Maryjoy $70,866
Herbert, Timothy $98,778
Herrmann, Zachary $65,217
Hill, Kamasi $112,178
Hill, Linnette $99,225
Hinkle, Letitia $74,352
Holland, Chala $86,221
Holloway-Nelson, Anitra $82,196
Holmes, Tamie $96,995
Holzkopf, Elizabeth $114,248
Horton, Laura $92,708
Hurley, Patricia $102,590
Husband, Angela $63,826
Isaac, Kara $65,746
Jackson, Linda $111,016
Jaeckel, Kari $86,509
Jenkins, Janice $123,701
Johnson, Anthony $109,436
Johnson, Nicole $62,180
Jones, Chester $108,882
Joyce, Karilyn $90,884
Kale, Lynda $86,695
Kaplan, Richard $117,867
King, Anthony $100,702
Kinzie, Taya $79,270
Kobs, Jamie $61,229
Koeppen, Melissa $51,095
Kohnken, Russell $88,053
Koutsoures, James $145,210
Latham, William $85,968
Lawrence, Jonathan $78,331
Leibforth, Dale $95,419
Levinson, Judith $154,215
Lewis, Rosette $67,521
Linke, Leslie $88,611
Litt, Alice $95,620
Livatino, Chris $128,202
Livatino, Marie $75,018
Loeppert, Alison $81,259
Lowe, Rodney $105,257
Lucas, Stephen $103,238
Mallory, Julie $63,610
Marien, Mina $42,882
Markgraf, Adam $72,788
Marks, Kimberly $74,971
Martello, Jamie $80,098
Maton, Petra $55,583
Mauer-Oats, Andrew $75,128
McCaffrey, Kevin $96,359
McLane, Maria $51,141
Meier, Scott $101,265
Metcalf, Neva $81,980
Mickelson, John $62,151
Miller, Paula $150,514
Millington, Bryan $79,132
Mishinger, Inna $45,124
Morris, Sondra $55,092
Morrow, Julie $88,085
Mull, Timothy $108,252
Munro, Bruce $127,324
Nannini, Shirley $165,372
Neal, Jenny $108,419
Neal, Kathleen $124,904
Neill, Mara $66,452
Nelson, Amy $93,360
Nelson, Tyrone $103,540
Newman, Deshana $99,020
Newman, Steve $85,591
Niharra, Maria $75,203
Nord, Stacey $84,349
O'Connor, Kandy $49,494
O'Mara, Mary $71,056
O'Shea, Joseph $114,406
O'Toole, Elizabeth $56,789
Oberman, Lisa $118,468
Ogura, Makoto $93,405
Onuscheck, Mark $107,850
Osmelak, Jane $77,391
Ostrowski, John $125,587
Parker English, Nicole $77,790
Patterson, Theresa $108,845
Payne, Patricia $110,541
Pearson, Gina $64,543
Peltier, Janine $62,878
Petrof, Margaret $98,151
Piekarz, Leah $115,168
Pino, Kathleen $136,703
Polega, Jennifer $57,517
Polinski, Matthew $119,532
Pollack, Melissa $107,166
Pollack, Tara $93,605
Pulido, Lucila $70,608
Raisner, Hilda $107,862
Reed, Mary Theresa $110,683
Rees, Thomas $90,624
Richardson, Tim $109,099
Robertson, Rachel $51,111
Romano, Mariana $60,715
Rose, Blaire $74,368
Rose, Winston $93,736
Roth, Robert $131,581
Roubekas, Nicole $101,052
Ruhana, Judith $147,852
Ruocco, Paola $87,058
Rutherford, Whitney $52,985
Salinas, Rodolfo $116,483
Sarmonpal, Sandra $73,423
Scarff, Frances $47,650
Schalk, Joanne $132,003
Schelbert, GionMatthias $59,698
Schenck, Fred $104,573
Schnatterly, Cassie $87,981
Schroeder, Elizabeth $90,299
Seaver, Erika $74,048
Segall, Andrew $90,961
Seibold, Marla $112,128
Sharma, Divya $56,803
Siegel, Semadar $100,777
Sienkiewicz, William $113,669
Simcoe, Bernadette $115,373
Simon, Jeffrey $123,176
Simons, Kornel $101,853
Sklar, James $86,360
Skweres, Sheila $106,335
Slack, Sharon $72,418
Sloan, Pamela $96,279
Smith, Craig $115,425
Smith, Maria $138,924
Sollers, Thomas $159,813
Sotnick, Julian $90,259
Sowa, Terri $91,096
Speight, Steven $95,930
St?phan, Patrick $131,268
Stanek, Jay $86,283
Steidley, Crystal $72,021
Stephenson, John $87,495
Stone, Brian $95,100
Stroh, Susan $163,341
Su, Robert $73,188
Succes Sr., Marx $96,348
Symonanis, Karen $100,816
Thomas, Cynthia $129,533
Tiziano-Dreher, Tina $64,275
Todorovska, Petya $78,972
Turner, Christopher $94,104
Tyrrell, Kandace $89,934
Van Heukelem, Anna $117,227
Van Krey, Michael $107,213
Vazquez, Michelle $71,924
Verbrick, Amy $103,527
Vondracek, Mark $109,096
Walker, Toly $84,074
Walsh, Matthew $89,421
Walter, Lisa $69,158
Ware, Lawrence $139,542
Wartowski, David $85,188
Webb, Janet $88,397
Weber, Kathleen $77,965
Weiland, Richard $111,210
Weiner, Joel $105,759
Wenzel, Leslie $134,169
White, Dondelayo $103,573
Wilburn, Montell $72,879
Wilczynski, James $101,893
Williams, Tenesha $84,625
Williamson, Sara $67,820
Witherspoon, Eric $244,461
Wool, Jamilah $92,441
Wool, Steven $117,661
Wylie, Michael $63,502
Yasko, Nikolai $72,887
Zarate, Martha $80,836


This concludes the complete report of 2010 teachers salaries paid in Evanston Township High School District 202.

Hemingway on Feminist Icon Beryl Markham: "Unpleasant Bitch!"

Beryl Markham became an icon for the feminist movement after her writing was rediscovered in 1983.

Chicago's own Ernest Hemingway thought she was "a very unpleasant...high-grade bitch."

Any list of famous Chicago writers always starts with Hemingway but I'm not really sure why. While he was born in suburban Oak Park and hung around here as a young boy, he really spent about as much time in Chicago overall as Rahm Emanuel.

That is to say that Hemingway lived mostly in Paris, Spain, Cuba and Idaho (just as Mayoral anointee, Emanuel seems to have spent most of his life in Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street and various Israeli military posts.)

But when the constellation of great Chicago writers is so meager as to include the likes of Nelson Algren and Michael Crichton as luminaries, I guess you take whatever you can get.

At any rate, the great feminist icon Beryl Markham was re-discovered because of Ernest Hemingway.

Markham was a British woman who was raised on a plantation in British East Africa (Kenya.) She was best known for being the first woman to fly an aircraft solo across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West, a feat she accomplished in 1936.

Cashing in on the celebrity status acquired from her celebrated flight, in 1942 she penned a memoir, West With The Night, which sold modestly for a time and then disappeared from sight.

In 1980, George Gutekunst, a friend of Hemingway's son, Jack, was invited to read Papa Hemingway's collected letters. Within this vast trove, he discovered a reference that Hemingway had made to the famous aviatrix, who he knew from his time in Nairobi.

In a letter to his publisher,the usually hyper-critical Hemingway, glowingly heaped praise on Markham's book:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night? ...She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."

Gutekunst managed to unearth an old copy of Markham's book and effected its re-publication in 1983. It instantly became a best-seller and catapulted the aging heroine (she was then 81) into the pantheon of feminist heroes.

The quote from Hemingway appeared on the back cover of the re-released book, but the reference to Markham's high-grade bitchiness was conveniently omitted.


Upon its re-issue, I was given a copy of West With the Night by my Christian Science practicioner, a grand old ebullient lady, and was instantly taken in by it. It was an exciting and often soulful account that begins with her life as a child in British East Africa with only horses, favorite dogs and Masai tribal children for playmates. It progresses to her breathtaking exploits as a pioneering aviator in Africa and culminates with her account of her historic solo trans-Atlantic crossing.

Little wonder that Markham was adopted by militant feminists as a hero.

She was fearless and independent. But she also exhibited more than a few of the darker traits of the feminist era woman.


She was a positively awful wife and an almost criminally negligent mother. She never even bothered to meet her two grandchildren.

According to a 1987 biography, Straight on Till Morning,by British writer, Mary S. Lovell, she was as promiscuous as an Able Seaman on shore leave. She had a storied affair with Prince Henry, third in line to the British throne, which so scandalized England that the Royal family paid her off to leave the country.

She casually cheated on all three of her husbands, the last of whom was a bi-sexual writer who may have actually ghost written her acclaimed book. She was rude to her African servants and employees, financially took advantage of her monied friends and sneered at what she considered her social inferiors.

She could, and often did, drink like a fiend. She used abortion as a means of birth control, a fact which led to severe medical problems in later life.

All in all, she was the perfect icon for the harridans of the feminist left.

Or as Hemingway so adroitly put it: " A very unpleasant girl. We might even say, a high-grade bitch."

Merry Christmas From The Chicago Lampoon

As ever, the critic on the left, says it all.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Secular Holiday Greetings From The Christian Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is, to most Chicagoans and other urban dwellers, an integral feature in the Christmas landscape. And over its 145 years of existence, the quaint, British offshoot of the Methodist Church has become a fixture in the pop cultural firmament.

The 1940s Christmas classic Silver Bells, first sung by Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell was inspired by imagery of Salvation Army bellringers. The Beatles' surreal Strawberry Fields drew its name from John Lennon's reminiscences of a Liverpool Salvation Army orphans' home of that name. Simon and Garfunkle told us to "hear the Salvation Army band," in Hazy Shade of Winter and Jethro Tull mocked the Army's charitable efforts in Aqualung, sneering: "Salvation ala mode and a cup of tea."

But behind the anachronistic quasi-military garb and the oom-pah bands and the omnipresent seasonal bellringing is the often overlooked fact that the Salvation Army is a religious denomination. A Christian denomination.

In its organizational credo, it makes no secret of the fact that: "We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man."


I holds regular services in regular churches and has a hierarchy of church leadership.

And like most mainstream Protestant churches (if people whose ecclesiastic garb consists of marching band uniforms can be called mainstream) it has been declining in membership.

The decline has been such, that it can no longer rely on its own Army regulars to ring the bells at Christmastime. So now it pays mercenaries around $8 per hour to shiver outside the Jewel-Oscos and Dominicks and ring those bells.

So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised the other day, when the Spanish accented fellow bellringing for the Salvation Army outside the Jewel at Howard and McCormick in Evanston should have greeted me with the politically correct euphemism: "Happy Holidays."

I guess he was afraid of antagonizing Islamicists, Jews and Hindus, as well as Kwanzaa and Festivus enthusiasts with the forbidden mention of the Christian Holiday -- Christmas. At eight bucks an hour, you can't let a little thing like Christmas get in the way of your daily kettle take.

In his wonderful, but often overlooked libella, "Down and Out in Paris and London," George Orwell chronicled his two years as a homeless bum during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the closing passage of the work, he resentfully vowed, that now that he was financially back on his feet he would never again expect a panhandler to show gratitude if he gave him a penny. Nor would he ever put a farthing in a Salvation Army kettle.

He was resentful over the fact that the Salvation Army homeless shelters in England would subject him and his fellow hungry down-and-outers to interminably windy religious sermons and church services before reluctantly doling out meager rations of bread and margarine.


"Salvation ala mode and a cup of tea."

He found the Salvation Army's soldiers to be insultingly zealous in their religious proselitizing.

Orwell wouldn't have to worry about that today.

The Salvation Army has mostly hireling bellringers today. And far from haranguing you with Christian platitudes, they sheepishly mutter the sanitized secular salutation:

Happy Holidays.

If they are, in fact, an army, they could best be likened to the French army.


During the 20th century the French army was renowned for one thing and one thing only.

Surrender.

Kirk Votes Right on Scuttling Backdoor Illegal Alien Amnesty Via "Dream Act"

During his debate with his Democrat opponent a few weeks ago, Mark Kirk was badgered by Alexi Giannoulias to state his position on the so-called "Dream Act."

"Would you vote for the Dream Act -- Yes or No?" Giannoulias hectored.

Kirk refused to assert that he would support the measure, which was a thinly veiled plan for a back door amnesty for illegal aliens.

Today he made good. He was the deciding Senate vote in the 55-41 cloture vote, which scuttled the plan.

Here's the statement that Senator Kirk released:

"The American people believe our borders are broken. It is a fundamental duty of our government to know who is entering the country, making illegal entry nearly impossible. In the coming Congress, we have an overwhelming bipartisan consensus to restore confidence in the security of our borders -- before we pursue other immigration proposals."

Like so many others, I was sceptical of Kirk's squishy RINOism, which has led him to make a career out of sticking his fingers in the eyes of conservatives.


Just before the November election, I wrote a piece on this blog assessing his overall House record on immigration control and saying that I would have to hold my nose, vote for him and hope for the best.

Today, at least, that path was warranted.

Besides, he seems to like dogs.

WLS' Lise Dominique -- The Most Mellifluous Female Voice on Chicago Radio

Lise Dominique has the best voice of any female on Chicago radio today.

If you are asking yourself "Who the hell is that?" I don't blame you.

Let me preface this by saying, I am not related to Lise Dominique, I don't know Lise Dominique, I know no one who knows Lise Dominique -- nor do I ever care to meet her (more on that later.)

But she has the best female voice on Chicago radio.

I can say this with some authority.

I was a press secretary in Washington, D.C. for almost two decades and as such, have dealt with more media personalities than most will ever do.

Sometime, this passed summer, after coming home from the beach, I noticed that there was this new, different girl reading the news late night on WLS-AM (Chicago's second mega clear-channel radio station.)

She had the softest, most mellifluous voice. Soft, friendly -- kind of like the girl next door, but with a little bit of a crackly edge.

My mass media intake then, as now, was (aside from the web) mostly radio.

During the most productive times in my life I have eschewed television.

After my live-in girlfriend (with whom I regularly watched mindless TV) dumped me while an undergrad, I decided to become serious and eschewed television for the next 3 years.

I became editor-in-chief of our campus newspaper at one of the largest Universities in the country, simultaneously interned as a press secretary at the State Legislature and pulled almost a 4.0 GPA.

Later, while in a productive period in the Nation's Capitol, I never watched TV, save on those few occasions when my roomates, one of whom was from Manchester, UK and worked at the British Embassy and the other of whom was a liberal Republican whose father worked for the CIA -- wanted to watch either the MLB All-Star Game or a movie like "The Battle of Britain," or "Patton" where the US Armed Forces made the British look silly.

And at that time I continued to regularly get my media intake mostly from radio.

So I think I know a thing or two about it.

And this girl has the best voice of any that I have heard on the 6 or 7 or so of the Chicago stations to which I listen.

Her voice is intriguing -- but I don't want to meet her.

Let me tell you why.

While a press secretary in Washington, I would book various of our spokesmen on New York and Washington media outlets. One day, I booked Dr. Igor Glagolev, a former member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences -- who had defected to the USA -- on the Tony Brown Show in Washington. It was syndicated nationwide.

Tony Brown's aide seemed a very nice girl. She had the most wonderfully, mellifluous -- and thoroughly intriguing voice. She was flirting with me over the phone.

So I made a point of driving Dr. Glagolev out to the studio.

I met her.

Let me just suffice it to say that -- her superlative voice nonwithstanding -- she had a bodice to rival that of Mama Cass. She was definitely a candidate for Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating.


And -- not to be overly cruel -- she had a face that would have qualified her for Hills's Science Diet or Purina Pro-Plan commercials.


So that is why I do not want to meet Lise Dominique.

But I think her voice is the best on all of Chicago radio.

I hope WLS radio will advance her.

I'll probably come to rue this recommendation as she is likely a hopeless Left-Coast, Left-Wing statist.

But she has a great voice.

A really great voice.

Aging Evanston Feminists Critical of Sexy Bar Proposal

A request to grant a liquor license to a proposed Hooters-styled restaurant has run into fierce opposition from several aging feminists on Evanston's City Council.

Last Friday, Evanston businessman, Ted Mavrakis, approached the Evanston Liquor Control Board asking for a license for a "Tilted Kilt" franchise restaurant and bar in the downtown Fountain Square building, which he owns.

The Tilted Kilt franchise features pub food and drinks in a Celtic pub setting. It hires waitresses, which it calls "cast members" and dresses them in regalia designed to display their Celtic assets to good result. (see photo above left)

This incurred the wrath of 7th Ward Evanston Alderman, Jane Grover who said: "From what I see on their website, I would probably not take my family there."


She said it appears the business exploits young women, and only hires women who fit a certain physical type for its waitstaff.

"My young sons couldn't get a job there, and I couldn't get a job there either, because I don't fit the profile," said the very realistic and sensibly-attired Ms. Grover. (photo right)

Grover's reservations were echoed by Mayor and Liquor Board Commissioner, Elizabeth Tisdahl. She lauded Mavrakis' complaint-free ownership of Evanston's Giordano's over the past 28 years, "but the Tilted Kilt is a different kind of restaurant than what Evanston has had," the sextagenarian feminist Mayor said.

And Liquor Board member, Patrick Hughes, in search of expert opinion said he had asked his 11-year-old daughter about the business and she said she felt it was inappropriate. "I'm going to have a hard time with it right now, from what I'm hearing of it," moral guardian Hughes said.

Mavrakis' Fountain Square property is one of an increasing number of downtown Evanston retail storefronts to have been vacant for more than a year.

The Liquor Board voted to postpone action on Mavrakis' application pending further study.

Mavrakis said he has received "active encouragement" from Morton Grove Mayor, Dan Staackman and can consider locating there as an option.

So in addition to being a "Sanctuary City" for illegal aliens and a "Nuclear Free Zone," the ever politically correct Evanston leftists may soon designate their North suburban enclave a "Tilted Kilt-free zone," or perhaps a "Fun-Free Zone."

Preckwinkle on Illegal Alien Costs: See No Evil, Speak No Evil

Former Cook County Board President, Todd Stroger is -- for incoming President, Toni Preckwinkle -- the gift that keeps on giving.

Stroger was on WLS radio last week actually defending Cook County Assessor and County Democrat Party Chairman, Joe Berrios, who has been getting raked over the coals for giving his son and sister fat jobs in his office only days after his election.

In contrast to the absurd Stroger, Preckwinkle looks like a positively serious person.

But she is not.

While positioning herself as an "independent" by criticizing her party boss, Berrios, and advocating across-the-board 20% budget cuts by all the branches of Cook County government, the long-time Chicago Alderman is really not all that independent and not all that serious. (See photo of her campaigning with boss Berrios below right.)

She refuses to risk alienating the Democrat machine's Latino voting bloc by auditing the costs imposed on County taxpayers by the tens of thousands of illegal aliens here.

She voted to make Chicago a "sanctuary city" for illegal aliens.


Ms. Preckwinkle is on record as saying she has no intention of assessing or taking action on the cost burden to County Government posed by services provided to illegal aliens.

She said this very thing to Carol Marin at a candidates' forum in West Rogers Park this past February.

See coverage here.

Yet several people, who are in a position to know, have said that medical services to illegal aliens are a major source of the County's $300 million budget shortfall last year.

Back in 2007, the chief of Cook County medical services, Dr. Robert Simon, was almost run out of town on a rail when he dared to testify that uncollectable services to illegal aliens were a major cause of the county medical system's budgetary problems.

"The taxpayers are paying the entire bill for all these undocumented aliens and our primary concern should be for the taxpayers and citizens," he told the Daily Southtown.

He said that the county was providing long-term care to nearly 30 illegal aliens at its Oak Forest Hospital facility at a cost of $800 per patient per day.

By my calculations, that alone comes to almost $3 million in services to just these few indigent people, who aren't legitimately even supposed to be in the country.

And immigration control activist, Rosanna Pulido, said at the time that nearly 40% of all services rendered by the Cook county medical system went for the illegal alien population.


So long-time pol, Preckwinkle, can make all the noises she wants about cutting waste in Cook County Government. And she can burnish her image by daring to mildly disagree with her party's boss.

But as long as Cook County remains a provider of free, costly medical services to any alien from anywhere on the planet, she might as well be bailing out a leaky boat with a thimble.

Ron Santo's Impeccable Timing: Snaring Line Drives and Beating the Obama Tax Hike

Ron Santo took his final victory lap around Wrigley Field yesterday. This time he was in a Hearse which was bedecked with flags representing his #10 pinstriped Chicago Cubs uniform. Thousands lined the streets along Clark and Sheffield, snapping digital photos and silently paying their respects to this Chicago baseball legend.

Having finally succumbed to a diabetes-induced frailty, the old Cubs 3rd baseman passed away on December 2nd.

A nine time All Star and five time Golden Glove 3rd baseman he ranked sixth in National League history in putouts (1,930.)

A fair percentage of those were certainly the 3rd baseman's trademark leap into the air to snag a hot line drive pulled down the 3rd base line.

Anyone who has ever played the "hot corner" knows that it is one of the most difficult feats in all of baseball. The fielder has to set keenly eyeing the batter with knees slightly bent, ready to leap up and snare a ball driven at perhaps 50mph, with only seconds notice.


It requires impeccable timing. Ron Santo, in his prime, certainly had it.

And he displayed that same impeccable timing by deciding to check out a mere 29 days before the inheritance rate would soar from 0% to 35%, at Obama's urging under the compromise tax bill to which Republicans are strangely acquiescing.

That means Ron Santo's family will get to keep the fruits of his many years of labor.

Santo missed the era of mega-bucks baseball salaries by a few years. But toward the end, he did okay salary-wise. He always showed an entrepreneurial streak as well. In the mid 60s, he cut a deal with P.K. Wrigley that gave him the franchise on the sale at Wrigley of "Ron Santo pizzas. They were little 6 inch pies which came in a box with Ronnie's picture and facsimile autograph and were hawked by vendors in the stands, just like hot dogs and peanuts.


After his retirement, he opened a string of family friendly restaurants in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. He also pulled down a pretty good salary from WGN as a radio broadcaster from 1990 to the end of last season.

So he had a nice little estate to hand down to his wife and kids.

And just with his almost intuitive ability to hone in and snare a sharp line drive, his timing was impeccable on this as well.

Ronnie Santo beat the taxman.

PBS' Lennonyc: John Lennon's Life As Stuff, Nonsense and Balderdash

When Mary Schmich swoons over something, you know there's got to be something fishy about it.

Schmich is one of the few remaining columnists at the ever-contracting Chicago Tribune --as predictably banal as she is predictably liberal.

Last Sunday she phoned in a cutesy column listing her favorite things, among them -- the lights at Lincoln Park, an obscure Russian organic tea and the new PBS documentary about John Lennon's New York days: Lennonyc.

Being in the middle of re-reading Albert Goldman's definitive 878 page biography of Lennon The Lives of John Lennon-- the product of 6 years of exhaustive research, I felt impelled to check out the PBS offering, Schmich's endorsement, nonwithstanding.

The film can be seen on-line here.

And sure enough, the documentary emits the olifactory sensations of a Norwejian herring factory.

Lennonyc is arguably the greatest whitewash of Lennon's life since Hunter Davies' The Beatles came off the presses in 1968. That officially authorized tome was censored in advance by everyone from Lennon's Aunt Mimi to Brian Epstein and offers little of reality. Lennon called the book, "bullshit," just as I suspect he might this documentary.

Yoko Ono's dissembling fingerprints are all over this film.

Make no mistake about it, Yoko is and always has been as PR concious and censorious as Joseph Goebbels. She has spent the past 30 years studiously concocting and maintaining the "Ballad of John and Yoko," a fairy tale picture of her as the loving supportive spouse tragically thrust into the role of grieving widow.

Ono's newly engaged press agent in 1978, Charles Cohen, said that he was immediately impressed by Yoko's keen grasp of the machinery of self-promotion. "She knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it." She kept voluminous files containing every notice and clipping that she had received since 1961.


Fred Seaman, who served as Lennon's valet and gopher during the New York Years, expressed shock and amazement at the eccentricity of the Lennon household and "the total disparity between the Lennons' real life and the image that they presented to the world."

The film was written and directed by native Chicagoan, Michael Epstein. He assures us on the PBS website that while Yoko Ono contributed private footage of their personal lives, she had no control over the film. She was not the witch who broke up the Beatles. She was not a controlling influence in John's life, he assures us.

Yea, sure.

For starters, Ono repeatedly appeared on camera for this film. Prima facie, that is evidence of her controlling influence. She does not cooperate with media entities she does not control. In the mid-80s she incurred the wrath of a Washington Post reporter for holding a news conference at which she refused to take any questions from the members of the media.

She vetoed the casting of an actor for an early 80s made-for-TV movie about Lennon, simply because his last name was Chapman, same as his assassin.

Practically speaking, the movie is at variance with the untidy, violent and hypocritical reality of John Lennon's life in many, many ways.

Here are but a few:

The role of May Pang. May Pang was a Lennon household retainer who Yoko Ono actively told to sexually accomodate John during his "Lost Weekend," foray into California. They conducted an affair that lasted well after his return to New York. According to Goldman, Ono viewed it as finding a controllable geisha mistress for her man -- one much like that enjoyed by her Japanese banker father, during her childhood in Japan.


May is interviewed in Lennonyc, but we are kept in the dark about the true nature of her relationship with John.

Lennon's support for political violence.The PBS film tries to portray Lennon as the subject of evil persecution by the FBI, the INS, Nixon and Republicans, due to his heartfelt desire for peace in Vietnam.

The political commentary is offered by left-wing activists of the era: Jon Weiner, Tom Hayden and Dick Cavett. Their mischaracterization of Lennon's violent sympathies is punctuated by shots of Vietnam body bags and grotesque footage of Vietnamese civilian casualties.


In this vein, Yoko Ono assures us that "John did not want to do it like Abby (Hoffman) and Jerry (Rubin,)" who overtly advocated violence in the streets.

Yet according to radical activist, A.J. Webberman in Goldman, Lennon had provided funds to Hoffman and Rubin to transport two busloads of Yippies down to Miami to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention as they had the Democrats' conclave in Chicago in 1968. John Lennon was abetting precisely the same act for which Rubin and Hoffman had been indicted.

Little wonder that the feds wanted John and Yoko out of the country.

Lennon's Lost Weekend. John was totally out of control during his 6 month "lost weekend," exile to California, yet the film, while admitting some improprieties, wildly understates the reality. No where do we even hear the word, "heroin" although it was a daily feature of Lennon's (and Ono's) lives.

We do not hear that Lennon was forcibly thrown out onto the street outside the Troubador Lounge after he was loudly and drunkenly disrupting the Smothers Brothers television comeback show. We do not hear about the event where Lennon drunkenly waded into a mob of fans and began shouting obscenities and throwing punches and from which he had to be extricated by his friends before the fans beat him to within an inch of his life.


Instead the PBS film apprises us that Lennon was "a little over the top at times," that he "said things he shouldn't have," and that he was "in never-never land-- I think you know what I mean."

Lennon as doting father.The PBS film degenerates to the level of a Hallmark greeting card near its end, when it shows us footage (no doubt supplied by and orchestrated by Ono) of Lennon as loving father and househusband, lavishing affection on his son and baking bread.

According to a neighbor of the Lennon's, Marnie Hair, whose children played with Sean Lennon, John couldn't stand having his son around for more than an hour or so. On one occasion, days before he died, Lennon flew into a rage and physically threw his son across the room. "He couldn't stand the kids for more than an hour. That's about all he could take. He just broke out into a rage. Yoko was down in the studio. She didn't want any part of this stuff. Sean was crying and screaming and cowering. He had to be taken out of the city to get away from all this," Hair said.

John Lennon was a genius in the sense that Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin were geniuses. Yet he was often an extremely unpleasant, cruel and overtly violent man. He was also haunted by more demons than most of us will ever conjure up.


There's nothing wrong in appreciating Lennon's vibrance and the wonder of his music. But that's all PBS seems to want to do in this wildly unrealistic film portrayal.

Funny, when PBS airs a documentary on United States Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson (a genuine genius) all we seem to hear about is his slave ownership and his tawdry affair with Sally Hemmings. When PBS deals with Kit Carson, he is portrayed as a bloodthirsty Indian killer. When PBS deals with Senator Joe McCarthy, he is shown as a mean and hopeless drunk.

Yet with a left-wing icon like Lennon, all is sweetness and light.

And that is unrealistic. And that is bad art.

South Side Has Chicago's Wackiest Named Aldermanic Candidates

All the nominating petitions for the February 22nd Chicago municipal elections are in. Once again, the South side Wards have heaved up the strangest sounding cast of characters. Any one of them would fit quite well into that bizarre legislative body known as the Chicago City Council.

Here are my nominees for wackiest Chicago Aldermanic candidates (The names are written exactly as they will appear on the ballot):

#1 For Alderman 5th Ward

Sylvester "Junebug" Hendricks ---(Homeless) 5th Ward 45th Pct. Chicago, IL 60619

(This is obviously the kind of people's representative the Founding Fathers envisioned when crafting the Republic)

#2 For Alderman 4th Ward

Valencia "Mother Diva" Dantzler --- 5219 S. Greenwood Chicago, IL 60615

(I would guess she is a seer and Tarot card reader by occupation)


#3 For Alderman 13th Ward

"Zsa" Zdzislawa Popielarczyk --- 6201 S. Kedvale Chicago, IL 60629

(My formal name is Zdzislawa Popielarczyk, but you can just call me Zsa Popielarczyk -- Harry Caray would have had a field day with this name)

#4 For Alderman 21st Ward

Catherine D' Tycoon --- 8320 South Kerfoot Ave Chicago, IL 60620

(She is obviously a scion of the famous Tycoon family)

The election is Tuesday February 22nd. Be sure to vote early and often.

South Side Voters Asked to Ban Sale of Malt Liquor and Fortified Wines (With Weird Exceptions)

Chicago has always had more than its share of crazy electoral goings-on, but for voters on the South side's 3rd Ward, this looks to be an especially zany year.

In the February 22nd election voters in the 35th precinct of the 3rd Ward (Grand Central area)will be confronted with a ballot referendum that is likely the weirdest that I have ever seen anywhere.

Seems that some do-gooders in that area have gotten a burr in their britches over the activites at one "200 Cut Rate Liquors," located at 204 E. 47th St.

So these paragons of civic decency have drafted and gotten on the ballot a referendum question asking the city to ban the sale of all malt liquor and fortified wines there, except for Night Train, Wild Irish Rose, and Thunderbird.

I am not making this up.

Here is the precise ballot referendum question straight from the Chicago Board of Elections:

200 Cut Rate - Alcoholic Liquor - Ward 03 Pct. 35

Shall 200 Cut Rate Liquors, located at 204 E. 47th St., stop selling all malt liquor, high gravity alcohol and fortified wines (ex. Night Train, Wild Irish Rose, Thunderbird?)
Yes---------No

I can only guess at the reasoning behind making exceptions for the sale of these 3 el-cheapo high-octane wines.

Perhaps the drafters of the referendum fancied themselves sophisticated oeniphiles and reasoned that fine rare vintages such as Night Train, Thunderbird and Wild Irish Rose were much too exquisite to be lumped in with the tawdry Mad Dog 20/20 and its ilk.


Or perhaps they did a cold-blooded analysis of the 3rd Ward electorate and decided that their proposition didn't have a chance of winning if it alienated the powerful voting bloc of regular Night Train, Thunderbird and Wild Irish Rose drinkers.

In any event, it will be on the ballot there in February.

So on the evening of February 22nd, I'll be sitting in front of my TV, nursing the contents of my paper-bag-ensconced bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, anxiously awaiting the voters' judgement on this critical issue.

Loyola Academy's Link to John Lennon

Earth shattering news today. New Trier High School of North suburban Kenilworth will not be admitting Rahm Emmanuel into its Hall of Fame.

Good for them.

They did, however, today, admit former North suburban Congressman and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, over the noisy objections of several noisy left-wing alumni.

Good for them.

But nearby Loyola Academy can boast a much more colorful alumni connection which extends all the way to John Lennon -- and his assassination.

Loyola Academy (1909-1994) was a Jesuit College Prep School for boys. First located on the grounds of Loyola University in Chicago, it moved to Wilmette in 1957 -- just down the road from the New Trier West campus.

(A school using that name still exists at the same locale today, but it has only a tenuous connection to the Jesuits and now admits non-Catholics, non-Christians and females -- basically anyone whose parents can manage to pony up its gold-plated tuition.)

Loyola Academy, during its 85 year history, managed to produce one minor and 2 major movie stars.

The bona fide Hollywood superstars were Bill Murray (Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation)and Robert Ryan (The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, The Longest Day), both Oscar nominees. It also produced flash-in-the-pan pretty boy, Chris O'Donnell.

According to the definitive 1988 biography of John Lennon, The Lives of John Lennon, by journalist, Albert Goldman, the Loyola Academy -- John Lennon connection is this:

In 1972, Robert Ryan's wife of more than 30 years, Jessica, died. He was so inconsolably bereaved, that he could no longer bear to live at their Manhattan co-op apartment. The apartment was #72 at the famed Dakota, located at the corner of 72nd St. and Central Park West.


John Lennon and the ridiculous, Yoko Ono, had recently moved to New York City and their lawyer arranged for them to rent the apartment from Ryan at the rate of $1,500 a month with an option to buy in three years.

A year later, the Loyola Academy alumnus, Ryan, himself died of lung cancer. His estate asked Lennon if he would want to accelerate his exercise of the option to buy and he did for a mere $105,000. (It is worth more than $2 million today.)

And that is the address that John Lennon claimed when he was assassinated by Mark David Chapman at the entrance to that very building on December 8, 1980.


So New Trier can boast Ann Margaret, Rock Hudson Donald Rumsfeld and Rahm Emmanuel.

But Loyola Academy produced Robert Ryan, the movie star who sold John Lennon his most famous, and very last, domicile.