Old Soldiers Never Die -- Remembering MacArthur (aka Mackie) 1992-2006

Mackie chilling out after a spirited swim in Lake Michigan

Editor's note: This is a reprint of the life story and obituary that I wrote 1 year ago about my dog and faithful canine companion, MacArthur, on the anniversary of his passing. It is the longest, and perhaps, most soulful thing that I ever wrote and posted here.

He was my true and fine companion thru everything from blazing Virginia summers to bone-chilling Chicago blizzards.

It has been 4 years since his passing and I haven't yet been able to bring myself to find a replacement for him -- which probably says as much about my personal limitations as it does about his unique and irreplacable qualities.

One thing about the headline, that many may not understand. When the great 5 star General, Douglas MacArthur -- under whom my father served -- gave his famous speech before a joint session of Congress on the occasion of his retirement, his famous statement was "Old soldiers never die -- they just fade away..."

What he meant by that was that many very wonderful American boys in their late teens and early 20s -- like my dad -- who served in his army, died in hellish fighting on the beaches and in the jungles of obscure places -- fighting to preserve our freedom and unique and exceptional American way of life.

And those who survived became "Old Soldiers."

The great General MacArthur was actually belittling himself and paying homage to the young men who died heroically, rather than just "fading away" as old men.

I hope you enjoy the tale of my own, wonderful, MacArthur -- aka -- "Mr. Mackie."





The Tale of MacArthur -- the Extraordinary SuperDog -- First Published in the Chicago Lampoon on November 7th, 2009

Some years back, I was sitting in a bar in River North and as the after work crowd began to filter in, a 20-something guy in a business suit sat on the stool next to me. He was obviously distraught -- actually fighting back tears -- and he explained to me that his dog had just died.

I tried to be as sympathetic as possible, but I thought it rather peculiar at the time -- almost unmanly.

Today I certainly wouldn't entertain such thoughts.

Three years ago today, my faithful canine companion of almost 15 years passed away.

I first met MacArthur at a farm in Winchester, Virginia.

A farmer by the name of Robert Jewell had posted an ad in the Valley Trader, a local farm newspaper that a co-worker had brought in for me, notifying that he had lab-setter puppies, free to good home. So I called him, got a general description of the 6 week old pups and told him that I would be out to pick up one of the long-haired buff colored males.

I made the 1 hour or so drive from Washington D.C. out to get him.

At Jewell's farm, I saw a group of about 8 or 10 little pups, playfully climbing onto each others' backs and onto the back of a tolerant farm cat.

Jewell said, "Yours is over here," and he went over to a barrel and pulled out little MacArthur. "I knew you were coming and I didn't want him to get away."

Apparently Mackie was the hellion of the litter -- the obvious alpha-male. The farmer's children had named him "Sebastian," after Sebastian Cabot, the rotund Mr. French in the Family Affair reruns that they watched -- because he ate more than any of the other pups and they figured he would end up being fat.

He obviously had a vigorous spirit and a powerful life-force, something that I would come to fully appreciate over the next decade and a half.

So after letting him say goodbye to his mother and his litter mates, he made the drive with us back to the Nation's Capitol.

I had just read, How to be Your Dog's Best Friend, by the Monks of New Skete, a best selling dog training book at the time and a classic today. The authors suggested that the first few days away from the litter are traumatic for the new pup and suggested that for the for the first few weeks, you should try to recreate the warmth and intimacy of the litter environment by sleeping on the floor with him.

So like a damned fool, I spent the next few weeks in a sleeping bag on the floor with him at night. I was periodically awoken by the sensation of his little snout, nuzzling thru my hair searching for a source of milk.

But it really worked. In our regular walks it became apparent that he had recognized me as the new central force in our new "2 man "litter."

Our new "2 man litter"
Mackie and me at 8 weeks

The Clintonistas had just assumed power in Washington, so I was out of a job and had lots of time to devote to him in those early days. That was fortuitous. On the floor of the apartment, we would play with a little ball that I would toss and he was easily coaxed into bringing back to me.

He was an unusually smart dog.

Before long, to my great amazement, he was catching the ball in his little mouth and prancing back pridefully in recognition of my applause.

He was a glutton for attention.

I recall sitting on the floor, reading The Washington Post, only to have a little head push thru the bottom of the paper as if to say, "aren't we supposed to be doing something more important, like playing ball?"

After a month or two, he was so totally bonded with me that when we took our walks in the famous Meridian Park with its massive marble stairway, I could let him off the leash and he would bound down the stairs, turn the corner by a fountain, and when I would whistle and call his name, he would come exuberantly scurrying back up the stairs.

It amazed a friendly National Park Policeman there, that a pup so young would not simply run off. It amazed me too.

The Monks of New Skete
"How to be your dog's best friend"

So, one thing led to another and we packed up the Mercury Cougar and headed back to Chicago.

A few months later, in our first summer together, some guys saw us along the Lakefront and commented that since he would go about 10 yards, leap in the air and catch a tennis ball in his mouth, I should try throwing him a frisbee.

They handed us theirs and on the second throw, he caught it and brought it back to me.

It was the beginning of a career that would span 21 of the Alpo/Friskies Canine Frisbee Disc Tournaments. The next summer, when he was 1 1/2, we went into the community dog frisbee tournament in Park Ridge and he scored 18 points in his very first competition.

That is like a ballplayer hitting .275 in his rookie season. In a few years, at his athletic prime, he would win that tournament.

We would play frisbee with almost each walk in the park and his dexterity and flair brought amazement and joy to innumerable people who witnessed it -- not the least of which was me.

He lived for it. It was his work -- his job. When I would pick up the leash for a walk, he would run back in and emerge with his frisbee in his mouth -- only then were we ready to take on the outer world.

But it wasn't all work. Mackie had a canine sense of humor as well.

When a good looking chick would come over to chat and ask me about his athletic prowess, he would run over and begin humping my leg with this silly grin on his face as if to say, "buzz off baby, this guy is spoken for and we have important work to do out here."

So much for his being a chick magnet.

General of the Army
Douglas MacArthur

And it wasn't all just bird dog retrieving. He was protective too.

On one warm August night, I was sitting on a park bench in Chicago under a lampost, reading a book and he assumed the spot on the cool packed earth underneath the bench. Three punks approached me and said, "hey man, you gotta quarter?" I told them no. Seeing me smoking, they said, "you gotta cigarette?" I said, "not for you." The leader said, "what the hell you mean you don't gotta cigarette for us?" And all of a sudden this white canine head emerged from under the bench -- growling. The growls transformed into loud barks as he moved forward and the three punks began running off with MacArthur in hot pursuit.

He wouldn't have hurt them, but they didn't know that. His protective and herding instincts had kicked in and he was simply herding them out of the vicinity.

Mackie got an extra can of Alpo on his kibbles that night.

As time went on, MacArthur and I engaged in a wide array of activities together. When I would manage a political campaign, he would become the official campaign headquarters dog and would sit under my desk as I pecked away at the keyboard or he would entertain the kids of the volunteers when we adults were having a meeting.

He marched with various political groups in no fewer than a half dozen 4th of July parades, always carrying his trademark frisbee in his mouth and invariably being the main attraction.

And we had our quiet personal moments as well.

When I would be depressed at the events of a given day, the sympathetic Lab in him came out and he would gently put his snout on my knee as if to say, "It's alright buddy."

And in his waning days, he would come up to me and bury his head in my chest as if to say "Can't you make this all better for me, pal?"

I couldn't.

In his fourteenth year, cancer had begun to eat away at his once invincible constitution and in the early morning hours of November 7, 2006 the distress became untenable.

I insisted that the nurses at the 911 veterinary clinic in Skokie give him as much morphine as possible, because I didn't want him to go out writhing in pain. They did. And he had a peaceful look on his face as I caressed his face and uttered soothing words as he crossed the River Styx.

He is buried in a peaceful corner of the yard along with his favorite blanket and a ball and a frisbee and his tags and a little note for archeologists to find.

The Catholics and the mainstream Protestants suggest that a dog is merely a soulless chattel, put here for our benefit, but incapable of living on. The Buddhists, however, believe that they are part of the eternal life force and do have a soul.

I would like to believe the Buddhist view.

I would like to believe that at some future time, I might see him again under a warm, blue summer sky on the Elysian Fields and that he would be restored to his full youthful vigor and I in my 30-something vigor would be flinging frisbees 40 yards and he would leap in the air and snare them and afterwards we'd chill out in the waters of the clear, cool spring.

So until then,

Good Night,

Sweet Prince.

Getting Coffee and Free (Hi-jacked) Wi-Fi at the Dunkin' Donuts

I don't know if most Americans have noticed this, but in most major metropolitan areas -- and certainly in Chicago -- it seems a critical mass of Dunkin' Donuts are owned by Muslim Pakistanis.

So, I was told by my old Muslim friend, Moin, are most Subway and Quiznos sandwich shops. He bought a Quiznos franchise in the Northwest suburbs for his son.

According to my friend, Brent, a Texan by birth, anyone who has ever done business with a Pakistani, will do it once -- get burned -- and never do business with one, ever again.

Brent, for some mystifying reason, relocated from Texas to Skokie, Illinois where he opened a marble factory.

He buys marble from around the world. Once some Muslim Pakistanis offered him a deal on marble and they agreed on the price. My Texan friend then committed to doing a project, based on the Paki's promises.

Then when the marble arrived at the Port of New Jersey, the Middle Easterners arbitrarily said the price was about 300% higher than what they had earlier agreed to.

My Texan friend had to buy their product, because he was committed to the end-user, but he told me: "I will never do business with any Pakistani or Muslim -- ever -- again."

And to this day he hasn't.

Brent said that the word is in the marble trade, that Pakistanis are the most ethically challenged business people on earth.

I was reminded of this by an experience at a store owned by one Mr. Amyn Ali of Rosemont.

He is a Muslim who owns quite a few Dunkin' Donuts stores in the Chicago area.

All his stores have a sign in the window which says, "FREE WI-FI."

So when I went into his Dunkin' Donuts at the corner of Howard and Western in Chicago at about 7:30 AM this past Sunday morning, with my laptop in tow, I thought, I'd just enjoy their coffee, check out the traffic to my blog and check out news on the web.

The barely literate, exotic donut girl who gave me my coffee and a French cuiller pastry, said, "use this number to access the wi-fi."

The code, which was as elaborate as the combination to a vault at Ft. Knox, did not work.

When I told her as much, she summoned the manager, "Ali" who came about 15 minutes later, because he was busy doling out donuts at the drive-thru window.

The computer guru, Ali, could not get the secret, ultra cryptogric code # to work on their own Dunkin'Donuts wi-fi site.

So then he just summoned up the AT&T site which was owned by the Starbuck's just across the street.

It had all the Starbucks' logos and all their corporate promotional information.

This, theoretically, is blatantly illegal, but I have only ever heard of one person prosecuted for it and that was in Kentucky.

So the moral of the story is -- go to this, Pakistani Muslim-owned Dunkin' Donuts and, if the breezes are right -- they'll be happy to hi-jack the Starbuck's wi-fi signal for you.

My friend, Brent, still chafing at his experience, insists that Pakistanis are the most ethically challenged business people on the face of the planet.

But that can't be true.

What about the Somali pirates?

"It's All in The Game," Charles G. Dawes' Rock Anthem to Republican Normalcy

With the smashing victory of the Republican Party in yesterday's elections (and not just RINO's -- but mostly Constitutionalist, Reaganite conservatives) I think it is time to recall the top 40 anthem of Republican normalcy.

If you want to win money in a bar bet, just ask this question.

"Who was the only Vice-President of the United States to have written a Top-40 rock hit -- in what party was he -- and under which President did he serve?"

The libs will all recommend long-forgotten nitwits like Walter Mondale, Al Gore (well he says he invented the internet) and Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

But the answer is Vice President of the United States, Charles G. Dawes of Evanston, Illinois.

In fact, there is now an elementary school named after Vice President Dawes at the corner of Dodge and Oakton, in Evanston (see photo below)-- and a huge park there named after him, and his mansion off Sheridan Road in Evanston is now an historic landmark (see photo below left.)

He was the Vice President of the United States under the great Republican President, Calvin Coolidge -- who presided over what was, perhaps, the greatest period of American economic prosperity ever to be seen until the eighth decade of the century when the esteemed Ronaldus Magnus, worked his conservative magic from 1980 to 1988.

But how did this 1920s old-timer, Mr. Dawes, have a rock n roll hit in the 1950s?

It turns out that the debonaire Republican Vice President from Evanston was something of a Renaissance man.

For fun, he was an amateur violinist and composer.

So in 1912, in his leisure hours, he composed a work for violin, which he entitled: "Melody in A Major." They liked it back then and it became his signature campaign tune.

In 1951, some pop musicians rediscovered it, appreciated its soft, romantic strains and put words to it.

It was recorded that year by the great, melliflous, black crooner, Tommy Edwards.

It flopped on the charts.

But in 1958, they put 50s- styled do-wop piano strains to it and Tommy Edwards re-released it.

It became the #1 national pop hit.

Listen to it below. You can almost see formally dressed college kids at an Eisenhower-era Sorority or Fraternity formal dance, quietly swaying cheek-to-cheek to this as the slow dance interlude between rollicking bits by Elvis and Buddy Holly.

Interesting that when it was released in 1951, it didn't catch on.

Then the silly Democrat haberdasher from Missouri, Harry Truman, was in the White House.

It only succeeded in 1958, during the calm, prosperous days presided over by the Republican President and former liberator of Europe and North Africa, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I would guess that GOP Vice President Dawes, would see the cosmic righteousness in that.

We've not yet attained the desired and likely inevitable plateau of Conservative/Republican normalcy. But with yesterday's election results, we just got a whole helluva lot nearer.

Hey -- It's all in the game!!

A Haunted House in Rogers Park: My Encounter with a Ghost

I am not the kind of person who wallows in tales of the mystic. I do not dabble in ouija boards nor attend seances. I was never a regular Art Bell listener. I have never seen a UFO. I was imbued with a firm grasp of logic by the Jesuits.

But, I have seen a ghost.

This happened in early 1993.

I had just returned to Chicago, and my old college roomate told me that my dog, Mackie and I could crash at his place, until I found an apartment. In fact, he said that since he was leaving town on business, I'd be doing him a favor by staying there and letting various home remodelling workmen into the house.

It was an old, stately-looking two-flat at 1515 W. Touhy in the Rogers Park section of Chicago. (photo above)

So on the second night that I had the place to myself, I was sitting on a sofa in the living room, drinking a beer (but I was not by any means drunk), listening to some old vinyl records that he still had from our college days. My dog was quietly sleeping in the corner.

At that time, I began to roll my own cigarettes, since I was appalled by the outrageously high price of cigarettes in high-tax Chicago (they were at least 2X the price that I had been paying in Virginia.)

I was not very good at rolling cigarettes, back then, and as I fumbled with the cigarette paper and loose tobacco, --- I am not making this up --- a woman appeared. She had reddish/brown, auburn hair and wore a faded green house dress that had red and blue dots on it.

She was sitting on the coffee table right in front of me and said, "Let me help you with that." She took the cigarrette materials from me, rolled a cigarette and handed it back to me.

That I distinctly remember.

I have vague memory traces of having spoken with her at greater length. I recall that it was amiable, but cannot recall exactly what we talked about.

Then she was gone.

The next thing I remember was a sense of waking up -- as if from a dream. But I had not been asleep. I felt something that was akin to shock as my mind began to come to the realization that something very strange had just occured.

I felt an extreme sense of calmness and wonder -- a strange kind of high.

I looked over and my dog was still sleeping quietly in the corner.

The next morning, that shock-like calmness still permeated my senses. I was, in a word, dumbstruck.

When my former college roomate returned from his trip, a few days later, I asked him if he knew anything about the history of his house. If he had heard of anyone having died there, perhaps.

He told me that sometime in the 1920s, there had been a serious fire in the house. In fact, you could still see burn scars on the brick in back, off of the upper floor.

"So maybe someone might have died in that fire," he said.

Some of it makes sense. Back in the 1920s, cigarette rolling was quite common, as compared to today. And the faded housedress that the young woman wore was not of a style that girls would wear today.

Maybe someone started a fire from errant cigarette smoking on that day in the 1920s.

Maybe the girl died in the fire and came back to help me so that it might not happen again.

I'll never know.

But I can quite sensibly assert that I am one of the 40% or so of Americans who have seen a ghost.

Happy Halloween!!

Bill Foster and Melissa Bean's Immigration Control Ratings: Pitiable, Pitiful

Melissa Bean and Bill Foster are the two Chicago-area Congressthings who slipped into office in traditionally Republican districts due to the flagrant ineptitude of their GOP predecessors.

Bean, who looks more and more like a butch, girls' High School P.E. teacher each year, has a career C for her votes on immigration control from the authoritative Numbers USA ratings.

She was uncharacteristically more conservative on immigration, this past year, getting a B -- obviously in anticipation of a serious GOP electoral challenge. She needed that to crank her career ratings up to a C, so you can imagine her previous years' votes.

Here is the Beaner's voting record.

She voted to include illegal aliens into the Obamacare socialized medicine scheme and to allow illegal aliens to vote in US union elections.

Bill Foster, who resembles a befuddled High School principal, got a C-minus.

He also voted to include illegals into Obama's free health care scheme. And despite making rhetorical noises about supporting border control, he refused to sign a discharge petition to allow consideration of a bill to seriously control the border -- a bill which his dominatrix, Nancy Pelosi, has ordered to be buried in committee.

Here is Milquetoast Bill's voting record.

These Democrat "moderate" poseurs aren't serious about borders, language and culture.

Just think how the immigration control percentages would skyrocket in these two districts, should Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren replace these two characters.

"Amnesty Mike" Quigley is Illegal Alien's Best Gringo Amigo in IL

In the course of squeaking out a victory in the 12 person field of candidates vying to replace Congressman Rahm Emmanuel in 2009, Mike Quigley fashioned himself as the "moderate" in the race.

His campaign manager told me that his boy was the only candidate who could hold off the "radical" Jan Schakowsky clone, State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz.

Quigley also emphasized his independence from the absurd Todd Stroger while on the Cook County Board and his alliance with anti-machine reformer, Forrest Claypool.

His campaign crafted an image as the "reasonable" Democrat -- the voice of moderation.

It didn't take long for Mike Quigley to show his true colors as a rabid open-borders, amnesty enthusiast -- the illegal alien's best amigo in the Illinois Congressional delegation.

According to the Numbers USA report card on Congress, Quigley has managed to chalk up the worst record in the entire delegation on immigration control with a 0% rating -- dead last among the 21 member delegation.

For Chrissakes, even Little Luis Guttierez voted favorably toward immigration control 7% of the time.

--Quigley co-sponsored a bill to grant amnesty to illegal aliens under 35 who had come into the US at a young age.

--Quigley voted to give subsidized college education to illegal aliens.

--Quigley voted to include illegal aliens for free health care under the Obamacare scheme.

--Quigley voted against requiring federal contractors to verify that their employees were not illegal aliens.

"Amnesty Mike" likes to make much of his glory days as a college hockey player.
I think he may have gotten his head slammed into the boards once too often.

Mark Kirk on Immigration: Not As Bad as I Feared

I may live to regret this, but I have decided today that I will vote for Mark Kirk for the U.S. Senate.

Today, I unearthed the Numbers USA analysis of Mark Kirk's cumulative voting record on immigration issues. This issue is paramount to me and as determinative of my electoral choices as guns are to an NRA member or abortion to a Right to Lifer.

The Numbers USA analysis is, I think, the most reliable rating system that I have seen on any issue. It considers not only floor votes on final passage, but a number of behind the scenes maneuvers, such as co-sponsorships of bills, signing of discharge petitions to force votes on controversial issues and committee votes. This gives you a more lucid picture of a legislator's actual commitment to immigration control.

And to my great amazement, Mark Kirk got a B rating on immigration control for his recent legislative activities. He voted for immigration control 78% of the time. His career rating is C+. According to Numbers USA, that means he, "leans toward less immigration, less population growth, less reliance on foreign labor."

See Mark Kirk's votes on pivotal immigration control measures: here.

Surprisingly, Kirk was not the worst Illinois Republican on this score. That distinction belongs to the supposed, conservative boy-wonder, Aaron Schock, who garnered a meager C, voting for immigration control only 52% of the time.

But Kirk is running against, Alexi Giannoulias (banker to the mob) who fashions himself a clone of socialist Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky and lefty Sen. Dick Durbin.

They both merited F- ratings on immigration control.

Giannoulias unabashedly advertises his support for the ridiculously named, "Dream Act," which would give taxpayer subsidized college educations to illegal aliens. Moreover he chided Kirk for not joining him in supporting it.



You can see the complete immigration control ratings of the Illinois Congressional delegation: here.

So as much as I still harbor fears of Mark Kirk's squishy. RINO "moderation", my concern over the very imminent Congressional battles over the protection of our borders and consequent preservation of our language and culture, trump all.

So I will vote for Mark Kirk.

Even tho, I have a lingering suspicion that he will emerge as a Charles Percy-styled, pain-in-the-ass and that I will come to rue this decision.

How's that for a left-handed endorsement?

Pollak Ties Down Schakowsky's Cash in the 9th

I find it genuinely amusing that ultra-liberal Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky is actually being forced to campaign for re-election for a change.

In past election cycles, she was given a de-facto pass by the anemic local GOP organizations who fielded candidates that were woeful, at best, laughable at worst.

In 2006, the GOP opponent to Schakowsky was a clown named Michael Shannon, who said at the outset, money was an evil influence in elections, so he would not take any contributions. He spent his time, selling campaign tee shirts and totebags, and basically, agreeing with Schakowsky on most issues. He got the standard 24% GOP Congressional vote.

Then in 2008, a young, political neophyte small businessman, named Michael Younan ran. He promised to harness the massive Assyrian-American vote in the district and ride that to victory. As usual, the Assyrians were invisible politically and he too got the standard 25% GOP Congressional vote.

But this time, thirty-something, Joel Pollak, an Orthodox Jew who was born in South Africa and went to Harvard, is actually spending money and running an energetic campaign. He looks kind of like the love child that would result from a tryst between Vanessa Redgrave and Howdy Doody.

But he is actually making Schakowsky squirm a bit, and that is good fun.

As of the October 13th FEC filing, he had forced her to spend $1.2 million of her massive campaign warchest. Altho she still has about half a million cash on hand to Pollack's $450, that is money that in previous years she would have been doling out to other liberal candidates across the country.

So Pollak, is performing an admirable service by tying her resources down here, so that more conservatives can win elsewhere.

But the 9th Congressional district has been so gerrymandered that John Wayne Gacy's ghost could win on the Democratic line.

It takes in everything from nominally Republican Park Ridge to the slums of Uptown. It takes in the most liberal North Suburban communities like Skokie and Evanston and the populous gay "Boystown" around Halsted and Belmont.

Even in this promising Republican year, Pollak, despite having spent more than a half-mil and having run a colorfully energetic campaign, would need a miracle to beat Schakowsky.

He'll get more than the standard 25% knee-jerk, Republican vote. He might even break into the 40th percentile. But the aging socialist windbag, Schakowsky will return to Congress. This time, however, in the House minority.

Still it's fun to see Schakowsky squirm a bit for a change.

Richard Crowe: Chicago Ghost Hunter, Renaissance Man and Reagan Conservative

I know Richard Crowe.

Most Chicagoans who watch TV or listen to the radio will surely hear of him or see him in the coming weeks as we approach Halloween -- or as it is called in the Roman Catholic disposition -- All Hallows Eve -- or All Souls Day.

Richard Crowe is the pre-eminent ghost hunter in the Chicago metropolitan area -- if not in the entire nation. And if there is one venue that is awash with ghosts and mysterious entities -- it is Chicago.

I first met Richard Crowe, back in the early 1980s. He was conducting one of his regular meetings of ghost aficianados (a rather strange lot to say the least) at a non-descript bar somewhere in the near Southwestern suburbs.

I was only there because one of my fellow Chicago conservatives knew Richard and he thought it would be amusing to go to his event. So a bunch of us young conservatives tagged along. (Richard, if you're wondering who the ringleader was, let me just say that the initials of Edgar Allan Poe were incorporated into his North Shore given name.)

So we went to this dreary bar -- made eminently less dreary, in our perception, by copious consumption of bourbon-based potables.

There, Richard Crowe was holding court amongst a devoted group of fellow ghost hunters.

There were about 20 of them there -- the throng swelled by about 6 of us fun-loving, booze guzzling, skeptical, Chicago conservatives out for a bit of South suburban slumming.

One woman brought forth a hand-held cassette tape recorder, which she had placed on a grave and told us to listen to the sounds that it had picked up.

She swore that it was saying: "Minnah ---- Minnah"

It sounded like so much tape static to me, but the woman was convinced.

Minnah, is in fact a Jewish woman's nomenclature.

Anyway, the glorified seance ended and Richard repaired to a neighboring pizza joint with us, his fellow conservatives.

I remember that the big-screen TV there was playing an MTV video of the Jefferson Starship singing their new hit, "We Built This City on Rock 'N Roll," and Richard Crowe (more than several years my senior,) commenting on how Gracie Slick was still looking hot after all these years.

I begged to differ.

So anyway, that is my experience with Richard Crowe.

By virtue of his very inspiring example, I, along with a woman named, Sandy Troutman, put together a "Ghost Tour" of Washington, D.C., just for fun, in the early 80's, which was covered by the Style section of the Washington Post.

Thank you, Richard.

The man is truly an interesting Chicago original.

I hope I won't be harming his business by pointing out that he is also a die-hard, Reagan Conservative. We love him for that!

He is also a fellow, fallen-away Roman Catholic, who, I believe, was the first person who ever uttered to me the telling, and quite memorable phrase: "I didn't leave the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church left me."

What is it with we cradle Catholics and ghosts?

(More than 40% of surveyed Americans believe that they have seen a ghost. On All Hallows Eve (Halloween), I will post the story and total account of the ghost that I actually and truly saw, some 16 years ago in East Rogers Park, Chicago.

Chicago Sun Times "Writes Want They Want"

Most everyone in Chicago knows by now that the Chicago Sun Times is a mere shade of its former self. These days it runs more pages than some college newspapers -- barely enough paper to take care of a good sized bird cage.

Apparently it has also abandoned the idea of copy editing altogether.

Seen on the front page of today's "Sunday Show" section: a 24 point sub-headline on a story about the Sugarland, country and Western act. It read: "Duo's sound idea is to play want they want."

Apparently they just rely on spellcheck at the CST these days, which, of course, won't catch a glaring error like that -- and in a headline, no less.

The CST's prospects for survival are about as good as those of Nguyen Van Thieu's South Vietnamese regime in early 1975.

I am shedding as many tears about this as I did when Isvestia suffered a massive circulation drop after Premier Gorbachev's ouster.

And when the Sun-Times finally bites the dust, just where will Lynn Sweet be able to pawn off her shamelessly idolatrous puff pieces about her beloved boy Obama? Where will Mary Mitchell be able to peddle her racialist Afrocentric claptrap?

Maybe Barack will be able to find a White House PR spot as a payoff to his fawning devotee, Lynn. Maybe Rev. Jeremiah Wright needs a PR person and can put Mitchell on his "church" payroll.

In both cases, it would be a seamless transition.

That Zany WGN Radio: Laski Leads In To Prof. Rosenberg's Show With B.O. Discussion

Just what are they thinking at WGN Radio 720 AM?

I am a lifelong Chicagoan. I like to think that I have some modicum of understanding of the provincial character of this city.

But I have to admit that I am truly mystified by the decision of the Chicago Tribune's, clear-channel radio megastation to give a regular 32 state audience to Jim Laski.(above left)

He is the former Democrat Alderman and elected Chicago City Clerk who went to the federal pen for pocketing $48,000 in bribes and telling the bribers to lie to the Feds about it.

This Chicago machine pol, now in his mid-fifties, is out of the slammer and they have given him a radio program on WGN, one of the major radio outlets in the USA, which issues from Chicago's storied Tribune Tower.

His speech is of the “dems and dese and dose” variety often heard at dingy sorts of corner bars on the “Nort-West and Sout-West” sides of the city.

He thinks that discussions of body odor are uproariously good talk-radio fodder.

WGN puts him on the air every weekday night and has him fill in on some weekend slots.

While this is going on, Dr. Milt Rosenberg's, Extension 720 – an evening WGN broadcast of some three decades of standing and national renown, has been relegated to a later hour and sketchy periodic regularity. It is most nights now, pre-empted by Blackhawks hockey or Cubs nightgame broadcasts.

Rosenberg, (photo right) a professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, conducts a program, so uniquely erudite and seriously insightful in character, that every major author in the English speaking world would literally kill to get on it.

His guests over the years have included British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger and President Jimmy Carter, to name just a very few.

The other night, Milt's guests were law professors from Northwestern and Loyola Universities, who specialize in effecting the exoneration of wrongfully incarcerated prisoners. They were accompanied by two young black men who were the victims of Chicago police and Cook County State's Attorney prosecutorial misconduct – and whom these pro-bono legal advocates ultimately cleared after years of wrongful incarceration.

The lead-in to this disturbingly cogent, two hour discussion was Jim Laski's show.

Moments before Laski had been guffawing on the airwaves like a giddy high-school sophomore, about people who he encountered at the “Jewels” who had bad body odor.

He was fielding calls from his, I suspect, quite limited audience, about this pressing topic.

I suspect in the coming weeks he will be doing shows which will look into the salient issues of farts and boogers.

I've noticed that when Laski does the intro to Dr. Rosenberg's subsequent show, Milt doesn't acknowledge him as he did personalities who formerly preceded him.

No more than an Arabian stallion would acknowledge the presence of a barn-fly.

I don't blame him at all.

But just what are they thinking over at WGN Radio?

Be Niggardly With Your Jigger

Here is the brain teaser of the day: use the words, jigger and niggardly in a proper English sentence.

I came up with: James Bond instructed the bartender to pour only a tiny jigger of vermouth and not to be niggardly with the gin. (And a proper martini is shaken -- not stirred.)

I bring this up, because the latest PC atrocity to come down in Chicago is, of course, the brouhaha over Illinois U.S. Senate candidate, Mark Kirk's, use of the word, "jigger."

While speaking privately to campaign operatives about the need to send ballot security lawyers into heavily black Democratic districts to safeguard against vote fraud, he used the dreaded word.

Here's what he said:

"These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat".


This immediately brought down the wrath of one Chicago Alderman, Freddrenna Lyle.(photo right)

She said the use of the word "jigger," was racist. She also said she was shocked, shocked that someone would imply that there is ever vote fraud in Chicago, a town known for deceased people voting early and often.

"For him to insinuate that there is some vote fraud going on in these communities is just an insult to the hundreds and hundreds of people who serve as election judges on elections. I find it disgraceful and insulting," said the easily insulted Alderwoman Lyle.


"The problem I had is that it sounds so much like another word," said one black minister, the Rev. Albert Tyson.

So now we learn that the word "jigger," which Webster's defines as: "to alter, re-arrange, or manipulate" has made the lefty PC list of forbidden words.

This reminds me of a case a few years back when an instructor at a Baltimore area community college, was actually fired for using the word, "niggardly."

Webster's defines that as meaning: "grudgingly mean about spending or granting, cheap, miserly."

Everyone who has studied 18th or 19th century English literature had to learn that word so as to be able to decipher the vocabulary of the authors of that era.

But apparently, that too has made the list of liberal banned words.

A poster at a suburban library informs me that this is "Book Burning Month," to inform citizens of the horrors of book burning and censorship.

In Chicago it has become "Word Banning Month" -- courtesy of the black racialist hucksters who are ever alert for inane reasons to be offended.

Naperville YMCA's Monument to Village People's Gay Anthem

Sometimes you just have to wonder what they're putting into the water system out in Naperville.

An ostensibly staid, Republican, white bread community, Naperville has a knack for pulling off the zaniest capers.

Last year, they gave permission to their female cops to appear on the reality TV show,"Female Forces." The women cops then proceeded to use their citizens as props for the show. When short of real action to show the camera crews, they made chickenshit arrests, effectively using their own citizens as props, and proceeded to get the town sued for massive civil rights violations.

This was chronicled on these pages last December. Read about it here.

Now, word comes from the Chicago Tribune, that the Fry YMCA in Naperville is celebrating its centennial by commissioning a sculpture (see above left) depicting 4 little kids dancing to the Village People's gay disco anthem "YMCA."

They unveiled the sculpture this past Sunday.

Make no mistake about it, "YMCA" was a decided tribute to the homosexual lifestyle. It was performed by a concocted singing act called the Village People. The performers assumed the personae of assorted gay fantasy images: a leather-wearing biker, a barechested Red Indian, a hard hat construction worker, a cowboy, a cop and a sailor (see photo right.)

The song, which became a big hit during the waning days of the disco era, became a crowd favorite in gay bars with names like "The Manhandler" and "The Glory Hole," (yes, there actually were gay bars in Chicago in the late 70s that had those names.)

(Why is it that gay men seem obsessed by sex? When I was in my bar-hopping, picking up chicks phase, we frequented bars with places having names like "The Lodge," and "The Third Edition." There were no clubs having names like: "The T&A Lounge," or "Big-Uns," which would have been the hetero equivalent had the same obsession applied.)

Anyway, the song itself reinforced the image of YMCAs of the time as being overt hangouts for closeted homosexuals.

"You can get yourself clean,
You can have a good meal
You can do whatever you feel,"

and


"They have everything
For young men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys
We're going to go to the
YMCA."

Now why the mullahs of the Naperville YMCA would think it a good idea to monumentize this, rather tawdry, part of its institutional past is quite beyond me.

It would be rather like a German trade delegation adopting Mel Brooks' showtune, "Springtime for Hitler and Germany," as its theme song. It was a cute, tongue-in-cheek song, had a bouncy tune, but wouldn't be the kind of association they would necessarily want to bring to mind.

So now we depict little kids dancing along to an unquestionably gay anthem -- and people thinking it's normal-- and cute.

I'm inclined to think that this is the kind of thing that the University of Chicago Professor Emeritus, WGN's Milt Rosenberg, is referring to when he speaks of," the coarsening of the culture."

We've come a long way from the days when CBS TV wouldn't show Elvis below the waist due to his suggestively gyrating hips. And from the days when Rob and Laura Petrie, married tho they were, could only be filmed in separate single beds.

We've come a long way.

By the way. Is it still called the "Young Mens' Christian Association"?

Al Stewart: Time Passages -- Happy Birthday to Me (And to all of us -- Each and Every One)

I didn't care to write this last week, because it was my birthday.

In recent years that has become a day of contemplation -- and confusion.

Birthdays are days of great fun when you're a little kid.

Your mom invites all your friends over -- gives you ice cream and cake -- and your mom and dad give you a great new gift.

Then you get a tad older and your mom says -- it's your birthday -- so you get to tell us whatever you want to have for dinner.

I would always ask for steak and a baked potato and a salad with thousand island dressing (OK I had rather pedestrian tastes as a teenager.)

When I became a college boy, I would ask for a steak and french fries and a salad with thousand island dressing and red onions. (A marginal culinary improvement.)

And then birthdays begin to blur.
They began to take on eminently less importance.

I remember my 30th birthday when a Southern girl -- who had the hots for me -- called me up with about 3 of her girlfriends on the conference call -- and they were hooting and hollering about how I had just turned the big 3-0.

And I quite distinctly remember my 32nd birthday, quite fondly, when a bunch of the girls from my co-ed softball team came over to my office and insisted on taking me out for lunch to a very nice restaurant on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol.

I was the former superstar of our team, who had become the eminence grise of the team and who played 1st base, batted fifth and managed these younger kids into winning the Congressional League Southern States Tournament.

I was so happy that these girls appreciated what I had done. One of them, a die-hard German-American conservative from Idaho, wanted to marry me. I put her off, because I didn't think she was gorgeous enough for me.

I was an idiot.

So now birthdays are a time for reflection -- sometimes melancholy -- sometimes uplifting.

On this birthday, It has occurred to me that I have lived to an older age than the following people -- who I used to view as scary older guys:

--- I have outlived John Lennon
--- I have outlived James Dean
--- I have outlived President John F. Kennedy
--- I have outlived "John-John" John F. Kennedy Jr. (who was born in the same year as I was)
--- I have outlived Elvis

WOW!

But, while in previous years this would have been a cause for some modicum of depression, it is not this year.

Did you know that Ray Kroc of Northfield, IL did not start his first McDonald's restaurant, which was in Des Plaines, IL, until he was 56?

Did you know that W. Clement Stone, of the North Side of Chicago, did not start the Combined Insurance Company of North America, until he was in his 60s? (And he did it during the Great Depression.)

So while Al Stewart (see above video clip) only had two great hits in his life, he made millions, became a very nice and quite modest husband and father.

It occurs to me that we all may have had one or two hits in the past -- but we certainly still have a few more -- and perhaps bigger -- hits left in us.

Happy Birthday to us all!!!

"Now I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short
And the days too fast."

University of Wisconsin Badgers Are The New Cubs -- Loveable Losers

Two little Chicago vignettes about the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

Yesterday, while at the outdoor cafe of the Dominicks/Starbucks at Ridge and Pratt, I saw a yuppiesque fellow in a Mustang ragtop which sported Illinois plates, "ON WI 1."

Obviously, despite his transplantation to Chicago, he was still a die-hard UW Badgers fan, (On Wi, being an abbreviation of the opening words to the University of Wisconsin fight song, "On Wisconsin.")

Later on Saturday, I ran into a recent UW grad in Wrigleyville, who gave me a plastic Bucky Badger beer mug and who expressed great optimism over the Badgers Big 10 opener against Michigan State which was about to commence in several hours.

I told him, that as UW alum, (I did my undergraduate work there) I was a veteran of many more Badger seasons than he. Consequently, I was a bit less sanguine about the Badger's prospects for the coming season.

"The Badgers are always overranked," I said. "Just watch, they'll squeak out 5 or 6 Big 10 wins, creep up in the national rankings and then fall to pieces against some pissant team, like Northwestern or Illinois," I said.

Besides, I have been a Cub fan all my life. I am accustomed to high hopes culminating in massive betrayal.

Well, I hate to say, I told him so, but a mere 4 hours later, the vaunted UW Badgers, ranked # 11 in the nation, were blown away by #24 ranked Michigan State 34-24.

We Cub fans know about great expectations resulting in dashed hopes.

It's something that the cheesehead kids are slowly beginning to fathom in Brett Bielema's 4th season of ambivalent teeter tawter leadership.

Let's face it.

The University of Wisconsin Badgers are the Chicago Cubs of the Big 10.

Oh, well.

ON WI.

(And if the season proceeds any further like this, it will definitely be a a case of Wisconsin Big-10 ennui.)

Children of New Immigrants Torment Gay Rutgers Student to Death

The big sensational news story this morning is about the gay student at Rutgers University who jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge.

Tyler Clementi, a budding violinist, was surreptitiously taped by his roomate on webcam in a gay sexual encounter. The roomate, one Dharun Ravi (above left) in cahoots with a friend, one Molly Wei (above right) then broadcast the explicit images over the internet.

Truly a dirty trick, if there ever was one. Irrespective of what one might think about the nature of Clementi's acts, any decent libertarian-minded person will defend the right of consenting people to do what they will in the privacy of their own rooms.

What strikes me as odd, is the scarcity of photos of the alleged perpetrators, who have been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy.


If the dirty tricksters had been white male athletes or fraternity boys, the mainstream media would have been salivating and calling for a lynch mob. Just recall the outrageous media behavior during the phony rape allegations against the white male members of the Duke LaCrosse team.

But alas, the evildoers here were the children of recent immigrants -- in Ravi's case, from India and in Pei's, from China.

These are people of color. These are beloved "new Americans." In the media's playbook, they're supposed to be perpetual victims of white American treachery.

So when they turn out to be lower than pond scum, the media clams up. Photos of these Asian creeps are hard to find on the internet.

But as the savants at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights chant, "our diversity is our strength."

Counting Cars in Skokie

Seen last month at the corner of Dempster and McCormack Blvd in Skokie -- two people ensconced in portable lounge chairs on opposite corners of the intersection, accompanied by a supervisor.

Asked what they were doing, one replied, "counting cars."

He said they were doing it for a firm which held a contract with the Village of Skokie.

Understandably, municipal traffic engineering departments like to have periodic updates on traffic volume at various locales. But what ever happened to those hose-like cables that stretched across several lanes to automatically count the cars?

Neighboring Lincolnwood uses them. They've been in use since the 1960s.

Too high-tech for Skokie I guess.

Or is this a way to spend Obama make-work stimulus money?

What's next? Paying people with stimulus money to rake the leaves in the Cook County Forest Preserves?

(Thanks to Charlie and Lynn Morgan of Madison, WI, who were visiting the McCormack Blvd.sculpture park that day, for forwarding the photo)

Adolf Hitler's Health Food Diet (And You Vill Not Smoke)

William L. Shirer was a Chicago-born journalist, who cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune (back when it was a serious journalistic entity) and became a pioneering radio reporter for CBS News.

He worked out of Berlin for most of the time frame 1934 to 1940, and as such had a bird's eye view of the rise of the National Socialists in Germany and their machinations that brought the world to war. He chronicled this expertly in his 1941 book, Berlin Diary and later in his award-winning classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

On November 5, 1939, Shirer's bosses at CBS in New York asked him to chronicle a day in the life of Adolf Hitler.

Here is an excerpt from the Berlin Diary (p.242) on the Fuhrer's healthy lifestyle regimen:

"He rises early, eats his first breakfast at 7 am. This consists usually of either a glass of milk or fruit juice, and two or three rolls, on which he liberally spreads marmalade.

"Like most Germans, he eats a second breakfast, this one at 9am. It's like the first except that he also eats a little fruit...

"Hitler eats a simple lunch. Usually a vegetable stew or a vegetable omelet. He is, of course, a vegetarian, teetotaler and non-smoker. A one-percent beer, brewed especially for him, is served at this meal, or sometimes a drink made out of kraut called "Herve," flavored with a little Mosel wine."

So there you have it -- the perfect recipe for health and longevity. Sparse eating, vegetarianism, teetotalling and abstention from smoking (he was vehemently opposed to smoking and would not allow it in his presence.)

This from the man who was the 3rd greatest mass murderer in the history of the planet (surpassed only by Communists Mao-Tse-Tung and Josef Stalin.)

His healthy habits remind me a lot of those fanatics today who are trying to ban smoking everywhere and force restaurants to ban salt and snatch the nachos and pizza from the hands of Chicago schoolchildren so they will be forced to eat carrot sticks and other rabbit food.

No wonder they call them "health Nazis."

Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These

September 16th 2010 in Chicago. Cold wind from the North, grey, overcast, gloomy.

Summer's definitely gone. What filthy, typically Chicago weather.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

"Always something happenin'
and nothing going on."

Chase & First Commercial Banks Give Freebies to Rogers Park Muslims

In light of the proposed Koran burning in Florida, an interfaith group of clerics held a news conference yesterday to warn of a growing "Islamophobia" among the U.S. population.

But that can hardly be thought to be the case in West Rogers Park, where two Western Avenue banks actually lend their facilities to nearby mosques.

The managers the Chase branch at 7015 N. Western Ave. and the First Commercial branch at 7050 N. Western Avenue, have granted free use of their parking lots to the nearby Bosnian Islamic Cultural Center and the Sharia Board of America.

Banks are customarily among the most risk averse of businesses when it comes to controversy.

So tacitly, the managers of these outlets, one Adolfo Sesma at Chase and one Javeria Atcha at First Commercial, seem to be asserting that there is no risk of "Islamophobic" backlash from their West Rogers Park customers.

Interestingly, when a Lutheran Evangelical Church and a Gay United Church of Christ congregation inhabited the same building now used by the Sharia Board of America, the same offer of free parking wasn't proferred.

So not only is West Rogers Park, in the view of Chase Bank and First Commercial Bank not "Islamophobic."

Led by the enlightened multiculturalists, Sesma and Atcha, it's positively "Islamophiliac."

Mexicans Protest US Cartoonist's Caricature of Their Flag

The Government of Mexico filed a verbal protest with the U.S. after a syndicated US political cartoonist drew a parody of their national flag.

Cartoonist Daryl Cagle portrayed the eagle in the center of the Mexican emblem as something of a ruptured duck, reflective of that 3rd World nation's decrepit economy and out-of-control drug crime. (pictured above)

You can read about the controversy in greater depth here.

Oddly, I don't recall the Mexican government or Mexican-American spokesmen uttering a peep when illegal alien malcontents from their country perpetrated far greater violence on the United States' national banner, as pictured below.

Free Booze in Wrigleyville and Hookers in Edgewater

I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record, but yesterday was yuppie moving-out day in Wrigleyville and as predictably as the Chicago bone-chilling winters, I scored some free booze.

I was also propositioned by a hooker.

The day started out pleasantly enough. I went to the Thorndale Avenue beach to further tone up my tan to the point where I can now reliably report that I am the darkest Germanic white man in the Western world. Future House Speaker, Boehner's got nothing on me.

The water was delectably cool and surprisingly clean for Lake Michigan.

At around 3pm, I got on my Nixon-era, British Raleigh 10 speed and headed South to Wrigleyville in search of the free booze that the yuppie moving out crowd invariably discard.

And sure enough I found it. This time it was an entire case of wine. Different brands and vintages -- 12 bottles all told. I particularly enjoyed the Chardonnay and a cloyingly sweet Chilean wine in a skinny -- kind of trendy -- clear bottle.

Then,with this marvelous find firmly in tow, I headed back North up Broadway Ave.

I alit my bike around Argyle to have a smoke and was approached by a young lady who proceeded to ask me if I wanted "a date."


I was going to ask her what kind of event she had in mind. A prom? A tea dance, perhaps?

But before I could ask, she pointedly recommended that she would be happy to perform a certain fellationous act upon my person in exchange for the grand total of -- I am not making this up -- five bucks.

If there was ever need for proof that we are in a full blown (no pun intended)Obama depression, there it is. That hopey-changey thing didn't seem to be working out too well for her, but given her complexion, she was almost certainly an Obama enthusiast 18 months ago.

Anyway, I politely declined, remounted my bike (but not the hooker) and headed home for an evening of reading Alexander Dumas and swilling some very good (and very free) wine.

Just another day in the City of Big Shoulders.

Church of Rome Changes Back Liturgy: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

The Vatican announced a few days ago that it will toss out some of the godawful cutesy verbiage that it adopted in 1964 when it tossed out the traditional, centuries-old Tridentine Rite Latin Mass.

For instance, the Tridentine "Dominus Vobiscum" response: "Et cum spiritu tuo," became: "The Lord be with you." response: "And with you too."

Now it will revert to the more precise English translation "The Lord be with you." response: "And with your Spirit."

But it will still be in English.

And a bunch of other changes will be adopted when the Romans get around to implementing them in 2011. For one, the Priest will no longer be permitted to run around hugging everybody at the part of the newish Mass where they do such things.

This is, no doubt, a great relief to Catholic communicants with young boys.

Also they seem to be clamping down on the use of such trendy innovations as altar girls and "extraordinary ministers of communion," whereby just about any Bozo can play priest and distribute communion.

Hopefully, for Catholics with any sense of aesthetics, this will mean an end to guitar Masses and that absurd "Kumbayah," song. (Do they still belt out that musical atrocity?)


All of this is very nice, but frankly it is way too little, way too late, for those of us, who, as little children were imbued with traditional Catholicism only to have it casually tossed aside like so much meaningless flotsam and jetsam.

About the time the Church of Rome was adopting its disasterous, institutionally suicidal changes, Jack Brickhouse was the TV and radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs really stunk back then. And when they would be down something like 9 to 2 in the bottom of the ninth, occasionally they would show a little glimmer of life.

Their woeful shortstop, Andre Rodgers might somehow draw a walk and their fat catcher, Dick Bertell, might get hit by a pitch and Ron Santo would then come up and belt a 3 run homer. The next three Cubs would whiff harmlessly and the Cubs would end up losing 9 to 5.

And the ever optimistic, Brickhouse would bellow, "OH Boy! A day late and a dollar short!!

My sentiments precisely at the Roman Catholic Church's latest attempts at damage control.

It's not my fight anymore.

And Tom Lehrer's "Vatican Rag" satire of the 1964 Second Vatican Council's idiotic iconoclasm makes me laugh today.

Islamic Center Flap in West Rogers Park (Fluky's is Ground Zero)

The Chicago Zoning Board may render a decision as early as today as to whether or not to grant a special use permit for an Islamic Education Center to occupy the site of a storied West Rogers Park eatery.

The site, once occupied by Fluky's at 6821 N. Western Ave. has been tenatively purchased by the Faizan E. Madina Islamic Education Center. It occupies a full 2/3 of the block of Western Ave. between Farwell and Pratt Aves.

According to Sun-Times reports, the proposed development has encountered a flurry of opposition from local community groups who decry the loss of yet another tax generating commercial site to a religious tax-exempt group.

Over the past 5 years, the strip of Western Avenue between Lunt and Howard has become home to 3 other Islamic facilities, two of them quite sizable.

The addition of the former Fluky's site would likely make this swath of West Rogers Park the heaviest concentration of organized Moslem activity in the city.

Currently operating on the Western Ave corridor are:

Sharia Board of America - A Division of Rahmat-E-Alam Foundation, 7045 N. Western, (photo above) a former insurance company headquarters which occupies 2/3 of the block,

Mahdevia Islamic Center of Chicago, 7419 N. Western, which occupies 2 formerly commercial storefronts and has no offstreet parking,

Bosnian Islamic Cultural Center, 7022 N. Western, which occupies 2 former commercial storefront and has no offstreet parking.

Muslims ready to convert the Fluky's site (photo below) into a mosque say they're facing opposition that churches and synagogues in the neighborhood have not. But objecting neighbors say their opposition is economic.


"In America, everybody has the opportunity to practice their religion and where they want to," said Ahmed Shakil, a member of the Faizan E Madina Islamic Education Center. "If this was a church or a synagogue they would not have these objections, I don't think."

"There is no bigotry involved here," said Amie Zander, president of the West Ridge Chamber of Commerce, told the Sun-Times over the weekend. "Our sole objection is that we want this prime location to remain a commercial site, paying property tax."

Other residents expressed concerns about possible traffic and parking congestion during peak times. They also are concerned that the site -- given its prime location and ample off-street parking -- is capable of attracting a big-name restaurateur and jobs.

Over the past 5 years one large storefront, one large stand-alone restaurant and one sizable commercial vocational school building on the nearby Touhy and California corridor have been converted into Orthodox-Jewish synogogues without community opposition.

Hey NEIU: The Mexicans Scalped Indians and the Indians Owned Black Slaves

On the far North side of Chicago is a little known institution of higher learning called Northeastern Illinois University.

I use that term "institution of higher learning" advisedly because this place will admit anyone with a pulse, who somehow manages to squeak out a passing C average from any Chicago Public high school.

NEIU has a remedial reading program, designed to get its incoming students above an 8th grade reading level. It is a wildly popular program.

For some odd historical reason, this North side "high school with ashtrays", has had a long association with the Chicago Socialist Party. The little campus is always littered with those drab Socialist handbills decrying one or another bourgeoise American outrage against the downtrodden proletariat.

Fortunately most NEIU students lack the literacy levels to comprehend that drivel.

And the Social Science indoctination at this taxpayer supported school is wildly and uniformly left-wing.

Students are indoctrinated with a skewed view of history designed to leave the student subject with a belief system that goes:

People of Color = Good.
White Man = Bad.
American White Man = Very Bad.

In the course of this indoctrination, enormous emphasis is put on the U.S - Indian Wars. They are characterized as an outright genocidal onslaught by white American men against the innocent, nature-loving red man.

This is used as a rationale to indict anything America does. It is also put forth as a rationale to support race-based job and education giveaways to blacks, Indians and Latinos and financial reparations for black descendents of slaves.

But in my casual beachside summer reading I came across several interesting historical facts.

1) Mexicans waged a cruel bloodthirsty war on the Native Americans of the Southwest, and

2) Some Indian tribes fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War, because they, themselves, were the owners of Black slaves.

Get a load of these excerpts from the 1966 Compact History of the Indian Wars, by historian John William Tebbel:

"In the Southwest, the Indians had a direct stake in the (Civil) war...since they, themselves were slaveholders who had brought their Negroes with them when they were displaced from their Alabama, Georgian and Florida homes." p. 198

and

"The Apaches had made their tribe so feared in Northern Mexico, that the provinces there stood ready to pay $100 for an Apache warrior's scalp, $50 for a woman's and $25 for a child's." p.192


So I ask the Blame American White Men First racialist crackpots on the NEIU faculty:

how are we going to work out the racial spoils system now?

Should the Latinos give up their affirmative action quota slots and pay reparations to the Native Americans?

Should the Native Americans give up their affirmative action quota slots and pay reparations to the blacks?

Oh things are getting so complicated in Obama's post-racial America!

Bridgeport Croatians to Party Hardy Sunday

This coming Sunday, St. Jerome’s Croatian Catholic Church in Bridgeport is going to hold its 104th Annual Croatian Fest.

It is certain to be a wild affair. Because you see, St. Jerome’s is likely the only Church on the North American continent to have a full blown hard liquor bar in its church basement. It’s a real bar complete with a long mahogony rail, barstools and ample supplies Jack Daniels, Gordon’s gin, Popov vodka and assorted more esoteric native Croatian high-octane libations.

I have been in scores, if not hundreds of church basements for one reason or another over the years and this is the only one that I have ever seen that has a bar.

When I asked why they had a bar in their basement, I was told it was because, “The fellows like to unwind after Mass.”

I can see it now. The priest solemnly utters the final words of the ritual: “Go. The Mass is ended.” To which the assembled faithful proffer the response:”Thanks be to God!” And then the worshipers excitedly and hurridly pile down the stairs to the church hall like the Monsters of the Midway barreling down the tunnel onto Soldiers Field for the opening kickoff.

This party-loving parish is throwing its annual ethnic pride bash this Sunday. Its print ads tout that it will have an authentic European-styled procession (see above photo), bingo, a $30,000 raffle, beer and wine (naturally) and 85 whole lambs barbecued. This is not a fete for the sensitive minded vegan teetotalers at PETA.

The event kicks off at 10:30 am this coming Sunday, August 15th. It will be at 2800 S. Princeton in Bridgeport – just blocks from Mayor Daley’s ancestral bungalow.

Lakefront Air & Water Show, be damned, I’m going off to party with the Croatians.

Chicago Has A Public School Teacher Pulling Down $632K A Year

Yesterday, the U.S. Congress interrupted its summer recess to rush thru a $26 billion bailout for cash strapped state governments. According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the measure was necessary to save some 160,000 teacher's jobs. President Obama immediately signed the bill into law.

But just why are state and local governments so incapable of meeting their teachers payroll?

Could it be because an astonishingly high number of area teachers are making more than 6 figures a year?

Chicago's grand champion for hauling down taxpayer's cash for a teaching job is one Timothy Bouman, a high school teacher at Noble St. Charter School in Chicago who boasts an annual salary of -- get this -- $632,000.

He is just one of literally hundreds of Chicago area teachers pulling down more than six figures a year for a job which takes up only 9 months of their time.

To look up the salary of a particular Chicago area public school teacher or to see all of the teacher's and school administrators salaries in your district, go to this site: Family Taxpayer's Network.

While perusing these gold plated salaries consider that the average income of the taxpayer who underwrites their salaries is $46,000 per year.

Congress' and Obama's bailout of their high salaried friends in the Teachers Unions reminds one of the old Monty Python skit about the reverse Robin Hood, Dennis Moore:

He steals from the poor
And Gives to the Rich
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.

"Lake Shore Drive" Chicago Rock Anthem 40 Years Old Today

The folk-rock Chicago anthem, "Lake Shore Drive" was recorded 40 years ago today. Irony of ironies, its authors and performers, Aliotta,Haynes and Jeremiah were, in fact, not Chicagoans, but rather cheeseheads from West Allis, Wisconsin.

In any event, it was a regional hit in the Chicago area throughout 1971 and can still readily be found on jukeboxes throughout the Chicago area.

The soft, folkish song evokes really nice feelings about Chicago and its beautiful lakefront, while employing a few double entendres relating to LSD use.

It always fostered nostalgic feelings toward Chicago with me when I was living out of town -- feelings that readily dissipate when confronted with the realities of the daily hellish bumper to bumper traffic along Lake Shore Drive while stuck living here.

But as the famous Chicago expatriate choreographer, Bob Fosse, so aptly put it: "Chicago is a great place to be from."