Forget the polls that show Barack Hussein Obama with the lowest approval ratings at this point of any American President in recorded history.
Here is what I have heard on the streets of Chicago and Evanston:
-- A very animated Irish 20-something guy was in front of the Whole Foods on Chicago Avenue in downtown Evanston 2 Saturdays ago collecting signatures to get his wife on the ballot as an Obama delegate to the Democrat National convention. He was good looking, engaging and had an endearing smile.
He was striking out a lot.
Ultra-liberal Evanston went more than 70% for Obama, last time and Whole Foods generally attracts a health-oriented, lefty crowd.
I asked him "How're you doing?" He replied -- "Holy shit -- this is a rough crowd -- even our people seem to be pissed off at Obama."
--- I ran into Charles, a well spoken, well attired -- but with a slight growth of beard -- black man in the Starbucks on Main St. in Evanston yesterday. He was reading -- I was on my laptop. We began chatting and it turned out that we knew a lot of the same guys from our same era who had played sports on the North Shore.
He told me -- "Do you know 30% of the men in the US are unemployed today --the men --what does that say for our future?" he said. "I don't care what they say -- Obama and all the rest of them have just totally screwed up," he said.
--- I ran into Kenny -- a 53 year old black guy with a glass eye. He was coming outside of the McDonald's on Dempster and Dodge in Evanston. He asked me for a light. I asked him for a cigarette. He split his in half and we both smoked.
He told me tht he had worked for a black entreprenuer, who owned an auto repair shop on Main, near McCormick for more than 30 years. He just went out of business -- Kenny lost his job -- the entrepreneur is now driving a bus for $8 per hour, Kenny said.
"I don't care what they say about Obama being a black man and all that," he said. "This guy has totally fucked us all up."
B.O. and Teddy: Icons of the American Socialist Left
I actually met U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy. He lumbered into the urinal next to mine to take a leak -- it was in a mens room on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol one fine autumn day in the early 80s.
Freshly out of college, I was there to deliver some news releases to the Senate Press Gallery. It was one of my duties in my exciting new job as semi-writer, semi-gofer.
As the years went on, I had ample time to extensively study Kennedy's horrendous voting record. He was a socialist, pure and simple -- and unlike his older brothers, he was decidedly anti-American in almost every public policy and foreign policy position he took.
He consistently garnered 0% ratings from the American Conservative Union and 100% ratings from the ultra-left wing ADA.
I thought him an idiot.
But I didn't realize what a complete nincompoop Teddy Kennedy actually was until I read recently, Laurence Leamer's fascinating 2001 tome, The Kennedy Men, 1901-1963.
This was no right-wing diatribe book. Leamer, a former New Republic writer, had the full co-operation of the Kennedy family.
And among the things he chronicled was the fact that:
Teddy was thrown out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish test!
Now I can see perhaps getting tossed out for cheating on a calculus final exam, or a physics test -- or even a classical Greek exam.
But Spanish?
Only the absolute dummies took Spanish at my prep school, where you were expected to at least carry your weight in Latin, if not both Latin and Greek.
But Spanish?
In the fall of 1950, Teddy found himself in danger of flunking Spanish and losing his eligibility to play intramural sports unless he scrambled to pull off at least a C-minus in Spanish.
So he persuaded a less intellectually challenged student than he was to take the Spanish final in his place and the test proctors immediately caught on to the ruse. (Leamer, Page 277)
Both Teddy and the test taker were thrown out of Harvard for at least a year. So Teddy was told by his father's lawyers that it would look good for his readmission prospects if he spent a year or so in the U.S.Army.
So the great iconic liberal -- the genius of health care reform -- went down to the Army recruiting office and Teddy compounded his display of boneheaded Spanish cheating idiocy, by accidentally signing the wrong Army induction forms and enlisting in the U.S. Army for 4 years! (Leamer, Page 278)
His father Joe, was furious and was no doubt convinced that he and Rose had spawned a complete imbecile.
So the politically formidable former bootlegger and pro-Nazi U.S. Ambassador to England, Joseph P. Kennedy had to spend the next year pulling strings to get his moron son, Teddy, out of the Army after only 2 years, instead of the 4 to which he had contracted.
Although, in fairness, Teddy might have a mitigating excuse.
He might have been drunk that day.
So there you have it -- political icon of the American Left, Teddy Kennedy, flunking Spanish and filling out the wrong form so as to accidentally sign on for 4 years in the Army, instead of 2.
And Teddy was the genius, de-facto architect of our new Obama socialized health care scheme.
Orwell said he'd never give
a Farthing to the Salvation Army
In his eminently wonderful chronicle of the plight of the homeless in depression era England, Down and Out in Paris and London, the great journalist of that era, George Orwell, ended his wonderful book by saying "I will never fail to give money to a panhandler -- and I will never put another farthing in a Salvation Army kettle."
Orwell's complaint was that, when he was a member of the multitude of homeless in depression-era England of the 1930s, the Christian sect of the Salvation Army, wouldn't give the hungry guys a lousy piece of bread with margarine, unless they endured a long-winded evangelical religious diatribe.
The Salvation Army religious sect is better than that in the USA today.
No question, they help out a lot of people with food, clothing, etc. But their vaunted drug and alcohol religious-conversion re-hab program is an absurd throwback to their idiotic religious past.
Today they collect our money via bell ringers outside various Jewel-Osco and Walgreens stores throughout the Chicago metro area.
I would just -- in the past -- throw a little change into their kettles -- a nice Christmas gesture, you know.
But this year, I actually got to know some of the characters that the Salvation Army hires.
Some are decidedly weird -- some are outright scary.
Chicago Salvation Army bell ringers:
Some are decidedly weird -- some are outright scary
I got to know them while I spent the last few weeks gathering signatures outside of Walgreens' and Jewel-Osco stores, on behalf of a candidate for Appellate Court Judge.
I was standing right next to them, enduring the same bone-chilling cold and soliciting just as they were.
This is what I found:
-- The bellringers are paid employees of the tax-exempt 501(c)3 Salvation Army corporation.
-- They are paid, on the average, $400 a week.
-- One that I met, a black man named named Kenneth, outside the Walgreens at Waukegan and Lake Ave. in Glenview, was spouting wild political diatribes on behalf of Barack Obama (is this the official position of the tax-exempt Salvation Army Church?)
-- Another that I met, a Puerto Rican man, outside the Jewel-Osco at Kedzie and Howard in Evanston told me that he was a "streetwise" salesman -- who had sold a variety of items, including socks, T-shirts and drugs. He also told me that he that many bell ringers carried tweezers, so that if a dollar bill was just sticking up out of the top of the kettle, they could just pluck it out and pocket it. (Somehow, I got the idea that he might have had a pair of tweezers in his pocket.)
-- Another that I met, a rather loud, fat black girl from Lombard, in front of the Walgreens at Howard and Western, on the Chicago/Evanston border, wildly complained when I was smoking my pipe about 5 yards from her, in a fully legal fashion, 15 feet from the entrance -- with the wind blowing the smoke in the opposite direction. She wildly complained to the Walgreens manager -- who essentially told her to go F--- off. Great PR for the Salvation Army (don't ya think?).
A few years ago in Ohio, a Salvation Army bell ringer was convicted of stealing his entirely cash-packed drum.
Having seen the Chicago Salvation Army bell ringers, I am not at all surprised.
No wonder the great English writer, George Orwell told the Salvation Army to go F--- off.
Four Days after his Axis partner Japan
attacked the USA, Hitler declared war on America
We're a little late on this one, since the 70th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's wildly self-destructive unilateral declaration of war on the USA was 6 days ago.
But reprinted below is a wonderfully cogent explanation of American's powerful mobilization against Hitler's National Socialists -- as well as against his murderous Imperial Japanese allies, that it provoked.
Four days earlier, The USA had been attacked by Hitler's Axis ally, the Empire of Japan, which bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the American territory (now a State) of Hawaii, killing 2,800 Americans.
Declaring war on the USA was, perhaps Hitler's biggest mistake ever.
The Anglophilic US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been looking for a way of getting the US involved militarily in saving Great Britain from the Nazi onslaught.
But due to formidable pressures from the millions of German-American and Scandinavian-American voters in the Midwestern US (who did not want to send their sons to fight German boys) and the millions of city dwelling Irish-American voters (who had nothing but contempt for their long-time enemy, Great Britain) Roosevelt was unable to convince Congress to enter the European war.
But with his unilateral declaration of war on America on December 11, 1941, Hitler unwittingly solved Roosevelt's political problem.
After Hitler declared war on the American people, its elected representatives in the U.S. Congress reciprocated on December 12, 1941.
By 1944 American Workers Were Turning Out
9,000 Warplanes a Month -- More Than 300 a Day
In so doing, Hitler put the German people at odds with the greatest industrial power on the face of the earth.
Within a few short years, American workers would be turning out 300,000 combat aircraft -- (at one point 9,000 planes a month -- more than 300 a day) -- and 200,000 tanks and almost 1 million heavy artillery pieces.
20 million American men would leave civilian life and take up arms (including this writer's German-American father and uncles) and become one of the most potent fighting forces ever to take the field in world history.
Those civilian-soldiers fought two powers on two widely divergent fronts, ranging from Burma and China in the West all the way to Berlin and Prague in the East.
Hitler scoffed at Americans calling them "a bunch of undisciplined gangsters who would never fight."
But one Wehrmacht Lieutenant in Italy wrote in his memoirs after the war, "They told us the Americans would never fight. But when the Americans kept coming and coming up the hill at us -- wave upon wave -- I was never so scared in my life."
As Usual, The Americans
Went To War With Song
His sentiment was echoed by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS men who looked out from their bunkers on Hitler's fortified "Atlantic Wall" on the morning of June 6, 1944, only to see the sea filled with thousands of American and British ships of all kinds and the skies filled with US warcraft in what was the greatest amphibious military invasion in world history.
38% of the United States Armed forces consisted of German-Americans, including the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Eastern Theater of Operations, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (later an American President) and a key combat General on MacArthur's Pacific command, General Robert Eichelberger.
In fact, Americans had a wartime joke that went: "The reason we won the war was because our Germans were better than their Germans."
And as usual, Americans went to war with music.
Here is the very famous Big Band hit of 1943, "The American Patrol," by the famed US trombonist and Big Band orchestral leader, Major Glenn Miller.
At age 38, Miller was too old to join the US Army, but he pulled political strings and obtained entry into the US Army Air Corps and was tragically killed when his plane went down over the English Channel when he was on his way to entertain US and British troops in France. "The American Patrol" was among his greatest ever compostions:
Here is the Andrews Sisters big US wartime hit, "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B":
"He was a famous trumpet man from 'round Chicago way.
He had a boogie style that no one else could play.
He was the top man in his craft.
But then his number came up and he was called to the draft.
He's in the Army now.
A blowin' reveille.
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B."
Jessica O'Brien - A Fair Irish Lass
From County Cork on the Auld Sod
The 2012 Chicago election season officially began last night at 5pm. That was when hopefuls for state and local judicial office in Illinois needed to have submitted their nominating petitions to the State Board of Elections down in Springfield.
For weeks now,candidates and their ward heelers have been accosting and annoying citizens in train stations and at shopping malls, pleading for signatures on the petitions requisite to getting a spot on the March primary election ballot.
A perusal of the submitted petitions suggests that this years' crop of hopefuls has been as skillful as ever at playing the Chicago ballot ethnic name game.
In ethnically Balkanized Chicago, the stealth ethno name game has been elevated to a high art form.
On the ballot, you will see a dizzying array of ethnically transmorphed names. all designed to convince you that the candidate is really a reliable member of your tribe.
That is why you will invariably see a large number of female judicial candidates resurrect usage of their maiden names and append them by way of hyphen to the non-descript names of their WASP husbands.
For instance, Susan Smith, Attorney, will become Susan Murphy-Smith, candidate for Cook County judge and ardent daughter of Hibernia.
The most notorious example of this was a Northwest side State Representative in the 70's and 80's by the name of Pete Peters.
Peter Piotrowicz Peters -
Kielbasa Between 2 Slices of Wonder Bread
That white bread moniker was good enough to get him elected when his district consisted of white bread Sauganash and Lincolnwood.
But when his district was gerrymandered to include heavily Polish, Niles, Mr. Peters miraculously re-discovered his maternal Polish roots and thereafter appeared on the ballot as Peter Piotrowicz Peters.
You might say he put a little kielbasa between the two slices of Wonder bread.
This year we have a Cook County judicial hopeful by the name of Jessica O'Brien.
The name conjours up images of a fair Irish lass, strolling the lanes and byways of County Cork on the auld sod.
Thing is, Mrs. O'Brien was born Jessica Arong in Cebu City on the Philippine Islands, half a world away from the Emerald Isle. But Filipino's are not a potent voting bloc in Chicago and her feminism notwithstanding, Ms. Jessica Arong-O'Brien is more than happy to bear the male oppression of using her husband's name -- for ballot purposes, at least.
In the still heavily Waspish North Shore suburbs, the Democrats favor Jewish candidates with decidedly Waspy-sounding names.
Lake County's 58th State Rep. district was for the past decade represented by a peroxide blond with the non-descript name of Karen May. Ms. May, along with her husband Mort, belongs to a prominent Highland Park Jewish congregation but saw no real electoral upside to putting her name on the ballot as Karen Rubin-May, her feminism also notwithstanding.
May is retiring now, but to replace her the Democrats are putting up an ultra-left wing civil rights lawyer, a U-Cal Berkeley grad named Scott Drury.
Scott Drury - High Anglican
Name and Yiddish Accent
Despite his High Anglican moniker, Mr. Drury is a Jewish gentleman and member of Highland Park's Congregation Solel.
In the same Lake County District, Republicans are running a State Senate candidate - a former U.S. Army combat helicopter pilot and distinguished Highland Park medical doctor, family man, and avowed Conservative Jewish congregant, named Arie Friedman MD.
In fact, it is a windswept glacial burg that is the source of a never-ending supply of knee-slappers and outright horselaughs.
From the neophyte community organizer that it foisted on an unsuspecting American electorate to the mop-topped sociopathic boy-Governor that it sent to the Letterman show, to its storied depression era, tommy-gun toting philanthropists, it has produced some truly amusing and amazing characters.
It has a Mayor who is a former ballet dancer, who served in a foreign army and who threatens political enemies by sending them dead fish in the mail. It has 50 sleepy Alderman and 5, usually somnolent professional sports franchises
It has two Jesse Jacksons!
It has more potholes per capita than Nairobi, a creaky 1940s-era elevated train system and cops who get caught on videotape punching out bar maids and businessmen.
As we have since 2009, we are only going to report and comment on what actually happens in Chicago. To make up stuff this weird would tax our inventive capabilities to the limit (or at least as high as the, highest-in-the-nation, Cook County sales taxes.)
We're somewhere between Burkean conservatives and bomb throwing anarchists depending on the mood of the moment and the amount of restorative libation we have recently consumed.
But we're usually able to couch our maunderings in some pretty good journalistic prose.
