Edgebrook Train Station Gets Hi-Class Ghetto Art - No Whites Portrayed

\Train station underpass walkways in Chicago usually conjure up images of broken wine bottles, filthy abandoned bedrolls, gang graffiti and the fluttering of pigeons amidst the omnipresent stench of urine.

Leftists view of life in Edgebrook:
You could stand on a corner and
never see a black girl cycling there in 5 years

Not so in chi-chi Edgebrook.

This Saturday some local do-gooders and artsy types will be celebrating the official inauguration of their new exquisite mosaic railway underpass mural.

Aside from being bright, cheery and expensive, it is also wonderfully didactic with the current neo-Marxist passion for propagandizing racial diversity and multiculturalism.

You see, in 88% white Edgebrook, the folks at some outfits called the Neighborhood Connection Project and the Green Star Movement decided to portray only non-whites on the mural.

So we are treated to a mosaic portrayal of a little black girl gaily bicycling, and a black man vending balloons and several Asian women standing around and another black man pulling on some kind of ribbon. It all looks like great community fun. And there isn't a single white person portrayed.

Rahm Emanuel's cops would arrest a
black balloon vendor in Edgebrook in 10 minutes

This is kind of funny, given the fact that the Sauganash/Edgebrook neighborhood, aside from having among the highest levels of income and lowest levels of crime in the entire city, also has a mere 1% black population, 8% Asian and 3% other.

On a weekend afternoon, the Edgebrook neighborhood truly looks like a time warp from the era of "Leave it to Beaver."

You'll see white kids playing street hockey or softball on the blacktop at St. Mary of the Woods, a virtually all white school. You'll see them riding their bikes, wearing shoulder pads, on their way to football practice. You'll see girls cycling home from soccer practice or meandering thru the snow on their way home from figure skating.

And amidst the sedate, tree-lined streets you'll see homes, some of them in the million dollar range, worthy of Winnetka or Glencoe.

But you see, Edgebrook is the de-facto, gated white community for the city's Democrat white collar patronage job holding elite.

Asians in Edgebrook are 8%, Blacks are 1%
Minorities on new mural are 100%

These are people drawing the big salaries at the top levels of the city police, fire and public works bureaucracies.

Or they're the attorneys at the big La Salle St. law firms that handle Chicago's legal business and investments. It's said that a full 20% of all Chicago cops live here or in the adjoining elite Sauganash and Forest Glen neighborhoods.

Edgebrook became a white collar patronage ghetto due to a city law requiring its employees to live within the city limits.

So since they couldn't move to Winnetka, they moved a version of Winnetka to the banks of the North branch of the Chicago River.

Wonderful multicultural affection in
88% white Democrat Eddgebrook

All legally and lawfully within the confines of the city.

But without the inconvenience of having to actually face the splendid realities of "diverse", "multicultural" "sanctuary city" Chicago.

So since the Edgebrook Democrat elite can't experience the joys of living among the Great Unwashed, they at least can look at cute mosaic images of them on their way to board the Metra train, on their way downtown to conjure up new schemes for subjecting the rest of us to their multicultural utopian dreams.

Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? Now Playing in Chicagoland

The third part of the film trilogy of Ayn Rand's, Atlas Shrugged is now playing in Chicago and suburban movie theaters (as well as in Rockford.)

Below is a list of the theaters currently playing Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? along with contact phone numbers.


Chicago

AMC River East 21
322 East Illinois Street, Chicago IL 60611

Crystal Lake

Crystal Lake Showplace Stadium 16
5000 W. Route 14, Crystal Lake IL 60014
800-555-8355

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire Stadium 21 & IMAX
300 Parkway Drive, Lincolnshire IL 60069
847-229-9100

Naperville

Showplace 16
2815 Showplace Drive, Naperville IL 60564
800-326-3264

Rockford

Rockford 16
8301 E. State Street, Rockford IL 61125-8500
815-332-7720

Here is a trailer for the film:

Paul "Iscariot" Ryan Stumps in Chicago For Open Borders

A friend of mine who is a foreign correspondent for a major American daily put it as succinctly as only a non-American could.

The American socialist Left, he said, has been pushing 3rd world immigration because they want a big, ignorant lumpen proletariat as a lever for seizing and securing permanent power.

"Little Looey" Gutierrez and
Paul Iscariot Ryan yesterday in Chicago

The Left has known that for some time, but Politico just spelled it out by showing how the proposed Senate amnesty bill would solidify Democratic Party power.

So, just as it has in California, the 3rd worlders as American voters would effect the end of the Republican party as a viable force in US politics.

But after yesterday's foray into Chicago by Republican Paul Iscariot Ryan, I'm not so sure that is necessarily that bad a thing.

Yesterday, we were presented with the really ridiculous picture of alleged conservative, Congressman Paul Iscariot Ryan, standing arm in arm with lefty Chicago Congressman and big open-borders fan, "Little Looey" Luis Gutierrez while being blessed by a phalanx of lefty Roman Catholic Priests.

Now we know what the priests have to gain from the amnesty of many millions of Mexican illegals and their voluminous relatives not yet here.

They hanker for the tinkle of pesos and the sweet swish of Yanqui dollars falling into their collection plates.

They salivate at the prospect of having hordes of uneducated and semi-literate parishioners who would think they were a big deal with all their book learnin' and holy black robes and such.

Priests hanker for the sweet swish of Yanqui dollars in collection plates

And we have already discussed what Little Looey and his socialist cabal have to gain -- power -- lots of it -- unassailable and permanent.

But just what's in it for Paul Iscariot Ryan and the middle America he purportedly represents?

For one thing a dilution of their electoral voice into permanent minority status.

And with that, a diminution of their American citizenship into near meaninglessness.

Anne Coulter encapsulated it brilliantly the other day:

"Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act so dramatically altered the kinds of immigrants America admits that, since 1969, about 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from the Third World. They bring Third World levels of poverty, fertility, illegitimacy and domestic violence with them. When they can't make it in America, they simply go on welfare and sometimes strike out at Americans.

During the three years from 2010 through 2012, immigrants have committed about a dozen mass murders in this country, not including the 9/11 attack.

The mass murderers were from Afghanistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. None were from Canada or Western Europe."

Hey Paul Iscariot Ryan - what your selling, we're not buying.

As "Amnesty George" Bush arrogantly put it before his comparable illegal alien amnesty measure was shot down by the American people in 2007, "I'll see you at the bill signing."

That, of course never came.

So Paul Iscariot, "we'll see you at the bill signing."

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!!

Cook County Dems to Taxpayers: You Pay for Illegal Alien Health Care

All four Democratic candidates for Cook County Board President appeared together this past Sunday in a West Rogers Park forum, moderated by WTTW's Carol Marin.

The event was sponsored by a new group calling itself, "The Rogers Park Organization," and it printed handbills announcing the event on paper which showed the computer signature of the local Alderman, Berny Stone's, campaign organization.

Before a predominately Jewish audience at Temple Menorah on California Ave., the four Democratic hopefuls spouted the predictable political pablum and then answered questions written by the audience and submitted to Marin for review.

Most were about the well publicized scandals surrounding the four.

County Board President, Todd Stroger lamely defended his nepotistic hiring practices saying that he only had two relatives on the County payroll and that he couldn't order them not to take 6 figure county jobs.

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle said that she hadn't taken any more money from shady developer, Tony Rezko, since she found out he was letting his properties run down in her ward.

County Clerk, Dorothy Brown said that funds from her "blue jean day" shakedown of her employees all went to charity.

Water Reclamation Board President, Terry O'Brien said that he had no patronage employees and had no control over the stink that wafts down Birchwood Ave. from his water treatment plant and wondered why Preckwinkle had voted to raise her own pay four times.

With the scandal explanations out of the way, Marin, to her great credit, passed along to them a substantive and seldom asked question.

She asked them: "Do you believe that Cook County taxpayers should be expected to underwrite the costs of non-emergency medical treatment for illegal aliens at Cook County's Stroger Hospital.?"

Without so much as batting an eyelash, all four essentially said yes.

(Are you taking notes, Roger Keats?)

The question is an important one given the Cook county's woeful fiscal situation. It's a salient one given the county's highest in the nation sales taxes and the new 5% property tax increases that county homeowners are now getting in the mail.

Due to the strictures of political correctness and the desire of these four candidates to pander to the Latino vote, it is a seldom asked question.

But it is the 800 pound elephant in the room.

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.

But in that same year, 2007, the County Board voted to make Cook a "sanctuary county," meaning that hospital admissions personnel were then precluded from even inquiring as to the legality of one's presence in the country.

So we really can't know how massive the problem may be. But Dr. Simon, the man with day-to-day oversight of the system sure thought it was significant.

So the bottom line is -- anyone, from anywhere on the face of the earth -- if they can just somehow manage to get to 1900 W. Polk in Chicago -- can receive 1st world medical care, courtesy of the taxpayers of Cook County.

It kind of makes Stroger Hospital the new Lourdes of the USA.

Maybe Daley's office of tourism can cash in by promoting it as such and by sponsoring international pilgrimages to this great healing shrine.

And I want the concession for sales of the sacred statues and relics of patron Saints Stroger, Preckwinckle, Brown and O'Brien. I will sell them to the hordes of pilgrims as they get off the bus on Polk Street.

Hey Queen -- How Do Ya Like Chicago So Far?

While riding on the MWRD bike path near Evanston on this past beautiful Sunday afternoon, I ran into a very nice girl from the North of England. While riding astride for a mile or more, we chatted about the odd British propensity for class consciousness, the Falkland's Island war, the impending demise of the British Labour Party, George Orwell, Patrick Pearse and sundry other matters that quite appealed to my Anglophilic disposition.

I found it telling that she, English born, was riding an American-made Trek, while I, Chicago born, owned a Nottingham, England-made Raleigh.

But it got me thinking about the English in Chicago.

There is a rich tradition of English and English-American involvement in Chicago, but it has been largely overshadowed by the much more populous subsequent waves of immigration.

The first Mayor of Chicago was a total WASP named William Butler Ogden.

He traveled here from New York in 1835, because his nincompoop brother-in-law had sunk $100 k as a real estate investment into swampy, onion field land alongside Lake Michigan in a place called Chicago.

Ogden came here to sell off the deeds for anything he could possibly get for them -- pennies on the dollar, if need be.

He was amazed when after selling merely 1/3 of the holdings he had already recouped all of the investment. The WASPs were sharpies back then, and Ogden bought as much Chicago real estate as he could possibly get his hands on, sold it, became a de-facto billionaire by today's standards, decided to hang around and was elected Chicago's first mayor.

The Brits entered the picture again in 1871. After the Great Chicago fire devastated the city, Queen Victoria ("we are not amused") was anguished at word that the great Chicago library was destroyed and at her own initiative, scoured Britain for books to send to Chicago to rebuild its library collection.

That was nice of the old girl.

Fast forward to 1920.

That was when Chicago had its last Republican mayor, Big Bill Thompson.

Today Republicans like to claim moral superiority over the corrupt Democrat machine (as well they can -- but it's easy to be as pure as the driven snow when you have no boodle to pass around) but back then the GOP machine were total crooks.

Big Bill's chief financial backer was a well known Chicago philanthropist by the name of Al Capone.

Enough said.

But by 1920, waves of Irish and Germans had descended upon Chicago (my ancestors on both sides included) and had become the dominant electoral cohort in the city.

The Micks and the Krauts were not at all favorably disposed toward the British Limeys.

Big Bill knew which side his electoral bread was buttered on, so in 1920, when King George V of the House of Windsor was touring the US, Mayor Thompson told him to stay the hell out of his city.

When a reporter asked Big Bill what he would do if George V decided to come to Chicago anyway, Mayor Thompson said, "If King George sets one foot in Chicago, I'll punch him in the snoot."

The King stayed away. Big Bill was re-elected.

Fast forward to 1959.

Then the child-Queen, Elizabeth II, only 33 at the time, came to Chicago to celebrate the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which linked Chicago and ports in the British Dominion of Canada with the Atlantic Ocean.

When the Queen was alighting her ship in the port of Chicago, a throng of gruff, boozy, Chicago newsmen gathered around her and began shouting questions.

When she had been ashore no more than a minute or two, one of the paunchy, red-nosed scribes yelled out, "Hey Queen!! Howdya like Chicaguh so far???"

Not, "Your Royal Highness, what are your thoughts upon coming to Chicago?"

But "Hey Queen!! Howdya like Chicaguh so far???

The answer is lost to history.

But the question and questioner will be long remembered.

Is this an amusing place, or what?

Chicago Pols React to Obama Nobel Prize

Obama: Can you believe they gave me the friggin' Nobel Peace Prize?

Daley: I wish I could get in on a deal like that!!

Blagojevich: That thing's fuckin' golden!!

Free Booze in Wrigleyville and Roscoe Village!

Yes -- I am not making this up!

There is free booze in Wrigleyville and in Roscoe Village.

How do I know this?

Well, I was riding my premium $700 mtn. bike thru the back alleys of those areas on 5/31 ---
the day before leases come due and all the yuppie types move either up or out.

So they throw everything out.

Realistically, if you had a flatbed pick-up truck, you could furnish an entire apartment with the things they discard.

I'm talking about leather couches, futons, lamps, plants, tables -- you name it!

But I was just looking for booze.

And I found it.

One yuppie woman threw out her husband's golf clubs (which an illegal alien Mexican metal scavenger quickly scarfed up) and her entire refrigerator -- which included a whole bottle of cheap California champagne and half a bottle of Jagermeister.

I was happy to let the illegal alien Mexican scavenger run off with the golf clubs -- having given up the horrifying game some years past -- but was more than happy to make off with the Champagne and the German liquoer.

It was delightful.

Then I found some yuppies moving out who were dispensing with two pairs -- of virtually new--
GAP khakis -- in my size!!!! And another goofus yuppie girl who was dispensing two pairs of virtually new Levi Strauss jeans --- in my size!!!!! She also threw out some of her poetry which I read and made me love her and made me fear for her future.

And then in Roscoe Village I found a brand new Dupont sleeping bag. And with it was a 5 liter unopened box of Almedan wine. And down the block was a 12 pack of dusty Leinenkugel Honey-Weiss beer.

I transported them back and had a rather happy day.

Chicago is a silly town -- but it can be rather amusing, at times.

It is -- after all -- a big city.

Chicago's Filthy Weather -- June 1st -- Give Me A Break!

Chicago, Illinois, June 1st 2009, 43 degrees F. at 3pm -- wind howling from the North making the de facto temperature around 34 degrees F.

I put on an Old Navy cotton sweater -- and then a Tommy Hilfiger cotton sweater atop that -- and then a jacket.

Pulllease!!!!

IOC -- are you listening?

Not only does Chicago's political climate stink -- but its meteorological climate stinks to high heavens.

The winds are howling here today. June 1st. IOC--How might you expect that to effect your kayak and rowing and sailing competitions?

IOC -- you may need to commandeer US and Canadian ice-breakers to make Chicago waters pliable for the competitions.

Chicago is a bad city.

I say this as one whose ancestors had the bad fortune to have settled here in 1848 -- as a consequence of the Bismarckian German unification and the Irish potatoe famine.

They -- of diverse ethnicity -- but common Roman Catholic Faith -- managed to meet here and spawn.

But the smart ones managed to make a fair amount of money and get the hell out of Chicago.

I hope to do that soon.

When I was in college, a roguish fellow wrote a peculiar book called "Death Trip in Illinois."

In it, he chronicled, from local newspaper items of the era, how a significant number of German and Irish immigrant miners in the Galena area were so depressed by the perpetually overcast skies and the endless cold winters, that they began stealing dynamite from the mine operations and blowing their heads off.

I feel like doing that now.

Chicago is a climactically laughable place.

No wonder so many Russian Siberian immigrants feel right at home here.

But as for me -- give me my swimming trunks, my sun tan lotion and a plane ticket to Tampa, St. Petersburg --

---or a stick of TNT.

All We Are Saying: Is Give Proft a Chance

Dan Proft has effectively announced that he will be running for Governor of Illinois.

I say, "Go for it Dan!"

Dan Proft is arguably the most literate and articulate and hard-line, conservative man in the State of Illinois.

He is the best that we've got.

The little screaming mimis from the margins of the rightist feminazi RTL crowd want to do him in.

Take, for instance, Fran "eatin'" Eaton. Looking at the massive girth of this intellectually limited school-marm, whose only claim to conservative intellection is having been a lady leader of a bunch of fellow elementary-educated rightist harpies, seems to be her formidable talent for lapping up mashed potatoes with a fork.

One is reminded of the old Beverly Hillbillies skit.

Where did Jethro go to school?

Eaton.

What did he major in there?

Eatin.

Just like fatty Fran. (Of Illinois Review misediting and large-sized girdle fame.)

So why should we back Dan Proft?

Because he is very probably the most politically saavy and intellectually adepy conservative in the State of Illinois.

And he is a man.

And that is why the mosquitos in the so-called, Illinois Conservative Movement, want to shoot him down.

The laughable Jill Stanek -- a probably competent hospital bed-pan changer, who somehow has boosted herself and her d0-nothing husband into becoming highly paid syndicated scribblers.

And Fran "Eatin."

And the panoply of silly woman and their male enablers , who have somehow grabbed control of the dying conservative movement in Illinois.-- are you listening Dennis Lacomb?
Are you gay or do you just like to cross-dress?

Why are conservatives so fearful of a real and serious man like Dan Proft?

We used to be led by serious conseervative men like Phil Crane and Henry Hyde.

Now, the remnants of the Illinois Conservative Movement are a bunch of Right to Life Nurse Ratsched, intent on neutering real conservative male leaders -- like Dan Proft.

One funny little point.

Ken Kesey, in his best-selling, "One Flew Over yhe Cuckoos Nest," named the ball-cutting nurse,
"Miss Ratsched."

I'm sure the ill-educated, Jill Staneks and Fran "Eatin'" Eatons won't be able to fathom this with their limited intellection -- But what Kesey was playing on was the notion of Nurse "Rat Shit."

Leave him alone, you silly right wing school marms!

You'd best leave Dan Proft alone.

Car Dealerships Slashed -- Good Riddance!

So Chrysler is pulling the plug on a quarter of its car dealerships. And GM is doing the same to about one-sixth of its dealers.

The Chicago Tribune yesterday ran a dewy-eyed story on their demise, lamenting the loss of these veritable pillars of their communities.

They sponsor little league teams we are told. They gave opportunities to thousands of returning WWII vets. They hire thousands and pay millions in state and local taxes. Their loss is a sad thing, we are told.

Rubbish!

These are car salesmen we are talking about here.

I say, Good Riddance!

Their passing is no more a cause for sadness than was the slow syphilitic demise of Al Capone.

Scarface sponsored soup kitchens during the Great Depression, too, you know.

The whole rickety dealership franchise system is a dusty marketing vestige of an era when there were 200 American car manufacturers, each eagerly trying to ply their newfangled horseless carriages.

In the 1920s South Michigan Avenue in Chicago was the site of storefront after storefront of hawkers of Reos, Packards, Stutz Bearcats, Mercers, Oldmobiles, Fords and the like.

As the dealership system boiled down, it ended up being a cash cow for the con-men left standing who used their government clout to safeguard their privileged market status. They used government to restrict entry, crowd out competitors and screw consumers.

No wonder organized crime began to move into the auto dealership game in Chicago during the 50s and 60s. Anyone remember Pete Epstein Pontiac on Lincoln Avenue? How exactly was a little provincial Chicago car dealer able to get Frank Sinatra to do his radio jingles?

For decades, the car dealers fought like cougars and barracudas to legislatively keep "unauthorized" replacement parts off the market. They wanted to keep their monopolies on parts and service.

And thereby screw the consumer.

For decades, they tacked on needless, high-priced extras like undercoating and extended warranties to jack up prices and profits on popular models.

And thereby screw the consumer.

The dealers leaned on their wholly owned state legislators to kill state "lemon laws" designed to protect buyers of hopelessly incorrigible Detroit concoctions. (Remeber the Chevy Vega, whose aluminum block engines would spontaneously burst into flame?)

And thereby screw the consumer.

Don't get me wrong. I am sure there are car dealers who are not crooks.

Maybe some day, I'll meet one.

After spending my summer break during high school, slaving away in a little factory that made Weinman furniture polish (this was back before the illegal alien invasion, when American manufacturers would actually hire American students during the summer at good wages,) I had saved up enough to contribute to my prep school tuition and to buy my first car.

I wanted a VW. This was after all, not too long after the summer of love and Woodstock. So I went to a Volkswagen dealer -- Nugent Volkswagen, on Waukegan Rd. in Glenview.

I picked out a clean, shiny, used Beetle, within my price range, excitedly test drove it and plunked down the cash.

A few months later, while working on the car, I discovered an old service tag on the battery, which recorded 129,000 miles on the odometer at the time of service -- not the 29,000 miles on the odometer when I bought it.

I went back and confronted the salesman (who actually had a German accent -- immigrants came here from places other than the 3rd world back then) and he and his manager gave me some lame explanation. I really had no recourse.

The dealership had clearly turned back the odometer.

They had screwed this consumer.

Many years later, over breakfast in Lake Forest, my then girlfriend's father told us how when he had traded in his Cadillac to a dealership owned by one of his country club pals, he was asked to sign a transfer form, verifying the mileage on the odometer. The form misrepresented the mileage by about 100,000 mi.

These car dealer sharpies never miss a trick.

So I am shedding no tears over their demise.

There is no reason why in this technologically advanced era, we should not be able to buy cars direct from the manufacturer, on-line.

There is no reason why the manufacturers can't authorize a large number of independent mechanics to service their cars and honor their warranties.

And as for the displaced car dealers, don't cry for them.

They'll easily be able to find work running rigged games of chance on the travelling carnival circuit.

Blame the Gays for Chicago Corruption

There has been much hand-wringing, gnashing of teeth and psychic agonizing at the new lows of Chicago corruption that have been reported over just the past two days.

I am speaking of the revelations that the champion sales tax hiker, Cook County President Todd Stroger, has had an IRS tax lien slapped on his home for a minor memory lapse over a little matter of $12k in federal taxes that seemed to have escaped his, usually laser-like attention.

What racists those IRS bean counters. Why hasn't the teflon Messiah (who endorsed the Toddling) yet sent them back to their Ku Klux Klaverns?

I am also speaking of the sad revelation that openly gay champion, Alderman Tom Tunney, after voting for Daley's new, wild, $4.00 hr. parking meter fee hikes, had one of his key aides outed for producing and displaying on his car a phony "Official City Business" placard, to avoid the distraction of having to feed the meters.

The Tribune splashed this ugly dislosure on their new downsized pages. Homophobia seems to be running wild at Tribune Tower.

Who is to blame for this accelerated spate of Chicago civic corruption?

Who is responsible for this Moscow-apparatchik-styled official duplicity?

Some would blame the knee-jerk Cook County voters who would vote for John Wayne Gacy so long as a big D appeared after his name.

Some would blame black voters from the South and West side plantation wards who give 99.8% of their collective vote to any scoundrel who happens to share their melatonin levels and negroid anthropological features.

I blame the homosexuals.

While walking my dog in the 49th Ward during the 2006 election season, I found a stray handbill on the sidewalk. It was produced by the dreary leftist SEIU government employees union. It urged a vote for the taxin' Toddler, because it said the Republican candidate for County Board President, Tony Peraica, WOULD BAN GAY MARRIAGE IN COOK COUNTY.

Aside from the fact that the Cook County Board President has no more power over that than does the Patriarch of the Albanian Orthodox Church, this was hardly the most pressing issue facing the county electorate in 2006.

The County Hospital was in a shambles.

The County Jail was beginning to resemble the black hole of Calcutta.

The County government was hemmorhaging money faster than the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei after a bicycle spill.

And into this context, the ever-predictable lefties at the SEIU injected the pressing matter of marriage for Cook County homosexuals.

Republican Commissioner, Tony Peraica, a serious man, narrowly lost the election to Democrat Todd Stroger, a silly man.

Was it just coincidence that the Boys Town 44th and 43rd Wards turned in 80%+ margins for the Toddler in that election?

Their boy, Todd, then proceeded to ram thru a sales tax hike that elevated Cook County to the highest tax level of any jurisdiction in the nation (while, of course giving dozens of do-nothing 6 figure jobs to friends and family while neglecting to pay his own taxes.)

And then there is Chicago's first openly gay Alderman, Tom "Sticky Buns" Tunney.

He campaigned as an exemplar of reform-minded Lakeshore independence from the corrupt Democrat machine.

The Anne Sather's sticky buns provender then proceeded to join 44 other Aldermanic zombies in rubber stamping Daley's sale of City parking meters, which effected a 400% parking meter fee increase. (Only 5 Aldermen refused to rubber stamp Daley's proposal.)

But just this week, Tunney's trusted aide, an old machine hack named Zodak Younan, was caught by a Tribune photographer with a phony, Word XP concocted, "Official 44th Ward Business" placard on his Lincoln Town Car, so that he could park in metered spots, unharried by the distractions of the meter enforcement Gestapo.

This, of course, triggered howls of outrage from, the poor saps who have been carrying around buckets of quarters to avoid the approbation of the ever-efficient, expired meter monitors.

So the gay community has been instrumental in foisting on us a laughably inept scoundrel as County Board President and a gay, business-as-usual political hack Alderman.

In Chicago, at least, gays really are just like everybody else.

Except, now that they are out of the closet and putting their weight behind crooked Chicago pols, they're not just sticking it to each other anymore.

Todd Stroger's Exercise in Fertility

Radio news directors throughout the city were having great fun with the Toddling's most recent Yogi-Berra-istic malapropism. In the wake of the Cook County Board's 12-3 vote to rollback his 1% County sales tax increase, he blurted out that he wouldn't veto the act because it would be "an exercise in fertility."

But those broadcasting eminences didn't understand that the hereditary, pygmy Prince was saying pretty much what he meant. He meant that the tax, which gave Chicago the highest sales tax in the country, was itself "an exercise in fertility."

Let me explain.

One summer during my high school years, my uncle invited me up to Wisconsin to work on a dairy farm. Being too young to drive a car at the time, I got a big thrill out of driving the tractor. So I always volunteered to drive the manure spreader thru the fields. A manure spreader is a little trailer attached to the rear of the tractor and when engaged, it shoots its load of cow manure into the air in all directions out across the field.

It is an exercise in fertility.

Pretty much like the Toddling's vision of government.

Stroger announced that he was going to veto the tax relief measure after all and he announced it to his political base on black talk radio station WVON. After all, the preponderance of his base pay no taxes at all and are the principal users of subsidized county health and welfare services.

He's just taking Obama's dictum to heart -- that the role of government is to spread it around.

Today on the relatively conservative WLS radio, the Toddling ducked, weaved and dodged facts relating to his tax increase and abruptly cut off the interview.

For instance, he had no response to the Civic Federation's findings that in the wake of his tax hike, retail activity had fallen by 5.7% in areas of Cook County which border other lower tax counties, by 4.1% in Cook County overall and this compared to a recession-driven decline of only 1.7% in adjoining counties.

He had nothing to say about the hundreds of millions lost due to a failure of the county to bill Medicare, Medicaid and individuals for health services rendered.

When asked about his "friends and family" hiring practices, he blathered that he had only 3 blood relatives pulling down 6 figures at county jobs -- conveniently neglecting to mention the numerous relatives by marriage, old high school chums and felonious dishwasher pals.

Yea, Todd was spreading it on pretty thick.

And along with, Obama, the man who endorsed this nincompoop for office, get ready to have them spread your earnings around to their constituencies.

It's an exercise in fertility.

If It's Pock-iss-tahn It Must Also Be Chi-caw-go

General David Petreus was on Fox News Sunday this morning. I listened but did not pay attention to whatever he was blathering. I know that Generals are no more soldiers than Bishops are holy men. When they attain that level of hierarchical prominence they have become politicians. As such they are not worth listening to.

I did notice, however, that Petreus was now pronouncing the name of Pakistan in the new Obama fashion --- Pock-iss-tahn. All my life Americans have been pronouncing it Pack -iss-tan. But lately -- in this era of hyper-multicultural sensitivity -- we have been called on to change our pronounciation of foreign names and places with maddening frequency.

These multiculturalist fashions are changing as quickly as fashions in cell phone design.

For centuries, Westerners had been referring to the capitol city of China as Pea-king (Peking.) Then one day, about a decade ago it suddenly became Bay-zhingg (Beijing.)

Until they had that big terrorist attack there, I was not aware that the Indian city of Bombay had been rechristened Mumbai, in Western parlance.

Are we now supposed to order a Mumbai gin martini (dry) with our Beijing duck?

Which brings me to Shi-caw-go.

That's the way real Chicagoans pronounce it. But just turn on any national news broadcast, and you'll hear the East Coast news reader referring to Shi-caaah-go's latest political scandal. Or Shi-caaah-go's lousy weather. Or Shi-caaa-go's whatever.

It's worse when an obviously non-native Chicagoan gets hired to news read on one of the local stations and uses the East Coast pronunciation. I even heard one of that breed refer to the major East-West thoroughfare as De-vinn, in the British manner, rather than the way that every Chicagoan has been pronouncing Devon Avenue for a century or more -- DEE-vaughan.

So I think if the Mumbains and Beijingists can demand cultural sensitivity to their native pronunciations, Chicagoans should demand and expect no less.

Now I've got to cut this short, because I have to travel down to Goa-theee Avenue in Lincoln Park.

The Intellectually Honest Loathe Chicago's Weather

Well, here we are, the day before Mother's Day -- 55 degrees at midday -- cloudy, grey, overcast, intermittent drizzle -- cold wind blowing in from the North.

My neighbor Gail took in her newly purchased New Guinea impatiens last night as they only thrive in temps above 45 deg.

Why do people live here?

While I can understand that Todd Stroger's friends and family could find no other city on the planet where they could pull down 6 figure salaries for lolling around, swilling coffee in the Cook County Building, what excuse do the rest of us have for staying?

I once dated a girl on the Southeast Coast whose father desparately wanted her to return to suburban Chicago.

When I commented on Chicago's crappy weather he rationalized, " well, there's really only December, January and February to get thru -- then it's just like anywhere else."

Yea, like anywhere else in Greater Metropolitan Juneau.

In a post last month, I noted how the brilliant Monty Python comic, John Cleese, who had lived in Chicago during his year with the 2nd City troupe, told a Chicago interviewer point blank: "I suppose Chicago's a nice enough place, but your weather is just so filthy."

Cleese, the Cambridge educated intellectual of the ensemble, always blunt, always honest.

Well I have found another leading intellectual light of the 20th century who thought that Chicago' weather stinks.

George S. Kaufman was arguably the greatest American comedic playwright of the 20th century. He crafted 27 Broadway plays, 18 of which became full bored hits. He collaborated with such luminaries as Edna Ferber, George and Ira Gershwin Moss Hart and many others. He hated Hollywood (the culture, not the weather), but might be best remembered for his work there with the Marx brothers, having written the scripts and film adaptations for Coconuts, Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera.

In the mid 1940s, His daughter, Anne, was shopping for a college and, being somewhat academically adept, considered the University of Chicago.

This is what he had to say about that idea:

Anne Darling,

More and more as we inquire about the University of Chicago, it doesn't seem to be at all the place that you would be happy in.
...as your mother has already pointed out, there would be no campus life. Nothing of the atmosphere that is supposed to go with college life and which, I know you would find so congenial.
It seems to have nothing at all to offer you and I forgot, the Chicago weather. Simply frightful all the time.


Kaufman's daughter was accepted to the University of Chicago, but took her dad's advice and declined the offer and thereby declined the opportunity to subject herself to our frightful weather.

I see droplets on the window. Time to grab the fleece lined jacket and brave the Chicago May.

Happy Mother's Day.

A Welcome Respite From Ron Santo

It has been relatively easy to listen to the Cubs' radio broadcasts for the last few games.

Ron Santo has not been in the broadcast booth.

Since his leg amputation and subsequently more fragile medical condition, Santo has declined to go on longer road trips with the Cubs. Sitting in for him as Pat Hughes' color commentator on these occasions is former Cubs relief pitcher Dave Barrisch.

Barrisch, to be sure, is not destined for the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, but he is a veritable Vin Scully or Mel Allen, compared to Santo.

Santo is simply annoying.

He is supposed to be supplementing Hughes' play-by-play accounts with interesting observations and keen insights into the play on the field.

Instead he talks about the tepid temperature of his soup. Or the antics of his wife's poodle. Or he bellows like the drunken fan sitting in the seat behind you at Wrigley Field and who gets so carried away with the excitement of it all that he ends up showering you with his beer.

What is worse, is that in his wild, drunken-fan-like bloviating, his voice often blots out the play-by-play account so you don't have a clue as to what is going on in the game. That, I believe, defeats the very purpose of sports broadcasting.

I remember a few seasons back, while cycling on the North Shore, I was listening to the Cubs game on my Walkman.

Mark Grace was on second and takes off on a hit and run. The hit fell in for a bloop single and Grace begins rounding third heading for home -- apparently running thru the third base coach's stop sign. Hughes is trying to relate these rather exciting events and as Grace is headed for home, Santo bellows out, "WHAT'S GOING ON??!!!"

I was actually p.o.-ed, because I wanted to know precisely that, but this boorish fan, named Santo, was bellowing to 32 states with 50,000 watts of power so that no one in that earshot could find out "what's going on."

Had I been watching the Cubs on TV, I would have known.

Two non-Chicago native, Cub fans have asked me why Ron Santo is a broadcaster. They, being more objective than those of us who grew up with Santo batting 5th, backing up Sweet Swingin' Billy and Ernie, just can't fathom why he is allowed on the airwaves.

The fact that he remains on the air, apparently popular, year after year, makes me sometimes want to agree with those misanthropic, mullet wearing, Sox fans who say that Cub fans have the collective IQ of a snail darter.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Ron Santo as a brilliant 3rd baseman and an integral part of Cub lore of the very colorful 60s era. Once at a Glenview bar, I met Ron Santo's son, Jeff, the movie producer, and I found him to be one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. He was actually flattered when I told him that as a kid, I had his father's baseball card and really respected his dad's achievements on the field. Santo's son seemed a great guy.

I'm sure Ronnie is too. And I think he would be a great guy to sit down and have a beer with as well.

But please, elect him to the Baseball Hall of Fame under the old-timers provisions. Or give him a statue on Clark St. outside Wrigley. Anything he wants.

But please, get him off the airwaves so I can listen to the Cubs and actually find out "WHAT'S GOING ON??!!!"

Free Booze in West Rogers Park

One of the little known benefits to living in the "Golden Ghetto" section of West Rogers Park is the free booze often found in the alleys there.

I am reticent about making public this secret of mine for fear that armies of lushes will now begin scouring the alleyways there and scooping up the vinous booty before I can get to it.

But my duty in publishing this blog is to provide useful public services, so I must spill the beans on this very strange phenomena. Besides, Obama the Magnificent said that we must all become more public spirited, so here I am doing my bit.

I first discovered that there was free booze in the alleys of West Rogers Park almost a decade ago. As an inveterate dog walker, I would often take my dog thru the alleys to avoid the complaints of pecksniff homeowners who would wildly object to a little yellow water being squirted on their precious Japanese maple.

While walking in an alleyway near the Rogers Park School one autumnal day, next to the black garbage cans, I spotted a discarded vinyl Cubs tote bag and a cardboard box containing 7 or 8 wine bottles.

I thought nothing of it until I glanced again and said to my dog, "Holy shit, Mac -- those bottles are unopened."

Sure enough, there were unopened bottles of red Kosher table wine and at least three bottles of a cloyingly sweet white wine. The white wine label revealed that it was a product of Israel and contained something like 17% alcohol by volume.

My obedient pup sat and looked on as I stuffed the miraculous find into the discarded Cubs tote bag. And off we went. I discovered that night that the Israelis make some hootch that could probably double as fuel for the fleet of F-18 fighter-bombers that we supply them.

This was just the first in what turned out to be at least a twice yearly occurence of this sort.

At least 12 times since then, my dog and I have found and transported home supplies of discarded, perfectly good kosher wine. Once an entire dusty gallon bottle of Mogan David white wine. Another time, a half case of Kedem table wine. And the biggest haul of all -- last Spring 5, count them -- 5 -- unopened cases of light kosher table wine.

Using my formidable powers of deduction, I have come to the conclusion that there is method to this madness.

The finds usually occur in the Fall or Spring, roughly corresponding to the periods just before or just after Sukkoth and Yom Kippur in the fall and Passover in the Spring.

But why toss out perfectly good wine?

One guess is that the discarding parties discover the wine that they have left over from the last holiday and decide that it is too old. Another guess is that the wine is leftover after the event and the housewife doesn't want it lying around the house, lest Moishe be tempted to tipple and neglect his fatherly and husbandly obligations and/or stop minding the store.

Further, the sociologist Vance Packard, once conjectured that drunkeness and alcohol abuse are statistically lower in Jewish subpopulations because of a historical reaction to persecution. It's not a good idea to be sloshed when the Czar's Cossacks start rampaging in your village.

I will leave these weighty matters to the academics. I will be too busy working on my forthcoming book, "The Alley Dog Walking Connoisseuer's Guide to Kosher and Israeli Wines."

Blowhard Biden and Chicago's Laughable CPS Schools

I first met Senator Joe Biden in the early 90's, just after he had his new hair transplant plugs.

A pal of mine, Jonas, whose father was a leader of the Chicago Lithuanian Community worked with me on Capitol Hill then. Jonas worked for the old Chicago, crew-cutted, Polack, Congressman, Ed Derwinski.

At the time Lithuania was becoming the first of the Soviet-dominated slave states to unilaterally assert its independence from Gorbachev's grip, and Jonas was asked to go on CNN and argue the case for US recognition of Lithuanian freedom.

Taking the other side of the issue was the dissembling, hair-deprived, Delaware Democrat, Joe Biden.

I met Senator Biden in the CNN green room before the show, and he seemed an amiable enough dunce. This was just after he had been outed by the media for plagiarizing, verbatim, a speech by a fellow blowhard, British Socialist Labour candidate for PM, who ran a failed campaign against the great "Iron Lady," Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Biden is now the liberal Democrat Vice-President of the United States. Obama's devoted running mate.

Thursday on the NBC Today Show, Blowhard Biden blurted out to Matt Bauer, that he would advise Americans to avoid subways, buses and air transport to avoid the contagion of the Mexican Swine flu.

Obama's equally blowhardian yahoo press secretary, Robert "Gomer" Gibbs, then told a laughing Washington press corps: "He really didn't mean to say that. What he meant to say was....."

The new Oberfurhrer of Homeland Security, Janet "Goebbels" Napolitano also offerred in " What he meant to say was....."

This brings to mind the old Mayor Richard J. Daley's old balding press secretary, Earl Bush. After one of hizzoner's almost daily malapropic, Yogi Berra-isms ("The Chicago Police aren't here to create disorder -- they're here to preserve disorder,") Bush would admonish the Chicago press corps to "Print what he means, not what he says."

This would evoke loud guffaws from the assembled liberal journalists and haughty derision from the liberal Chicago Lakeshore elite.

But all we hear from the liberal gaggle about Biden's, actually very dangerous statement is --- "well, that's just Joe being Joe."

Funny, I don't recall the liberal establishment giving that same, forgiving, benefit of the doubt to conservative Senator Trent Lott when he made eminently less socially dangerous comments at Senator Strom Thurmond's birthday party. They howled at Lott and hounded him from the Senate leadership.

What hypocrites these American leftists!

And what undiscerning quietude by the American sheeple.

But why not?

Today's Chicago Public School student is treated to a daily diet of propagandistic leftist goo. In their English classes, Shakespeare and Chaucer are disregarded as "Old white men." And frauds like Maya Angelou and bigots like Malcolm X are elevated to the status of great provenders of profundity.

For decades now, CPS students are taught how to put a condom on a cucumber, but aren't even vaguely exposed to the Greek and Latin classic literature -- the pinnacle of human expression and thought.

Maybe if they had been they would be more discerning in the face of bloviators like Biden.

Perhaps then, they might have been able to refer to the 4th century B.C. Hellenistic poet, Nicarchus who wrote:

"You certainly should have made a sign saying which was your mouth,
which your asshole.
Just now when you were gabbing, I thought you farted."

Wonder what the ancient Greek poet would have had to say about Obama's blowhard veep. Obama's press secretary, Obama's Homeland Security Czar and about the teflon Messiah, himself.

The more things change -- the more they stay the same.

Devon Merchants Jump on Bootleg Cigarette Bandwagon

My spies on Devon Ave. reliably report that you can now buy single cigarettes under the counter at more than one little store there.

This doesn't at all surprise.

In an earlier post I reported witnessing an itinerant entrepreneur selling bootleg packs of Newports in Warren Park. Since the imposition of the Pelosi-Obama Tobacco Prohibition tax on April 1st, the cost of tobacco products has skyrocket and with the heavy IL, Cook County and Chicago sin taxes piled on top, we have de facto cigarette prohibition here for all but the very rich.

As with the 1918-1933 "noble experiment" in alcohol prohibition, it is inevitable that a black market in smokes would develop and it has, with all the predictability of Chicago's lousy weather or a Cubs losing streak.

Now, licensed Chicago merchants are getting into the act. Reportedly, kids on Devon can request purchase of a single cigarette from several provenders there.

That is illegal in Chicago, of course, but so were speakeasies in the 1920s.

There are only two places where I ever heard of store owners selling single smokes. Once in Daley's clout laden Bridgeport and once in New Orleans, a city which seesaws back and forth with Chicago for title to "Most Politically Corrupt American City."

When on a shrimp buying excursion to New Orleans in the 90s, I was accompanied by two black guys and resultantly got to see parts of the Big Easy that were generally off-limits to the usual white tourist. These two black guys regularly went down there to buy shrimp for transport and resale in Washington, D.C. and to visit "their New Orleans wives." Apparently they each had a wife in D.C. and another in New Orleans. The precise details of the legal nuptuals, if any, were rather murky, but it seemed to work for them.

Anyway, in one of the predominantly black areas that invariably went underwater a decade later, I went into a little corner 7-11 type shop and was astounded to see that Newport actually produced cigarette packs, containing only 5 cigarettes, for this impoverished market and that kids were sent down to the shop to pick up single cigarettes for grandma or grandpa that would be on sale for 35 cents or so.

Some years later, I was told by a Bridgeport drug store/liquor store owner that he had unearthed a supply of old Alpine cigarettes (remember them) that had been gathering dust, forgotten in his storage room since about the time, his neighbor, Richard J. Daley was making his first run for City Clerk. He began selling the old, stale Alpines individually, for a quarter or so, to the black customers, who would cross Wentworth Ave into forbidden Bridgeport to buy his overpriced booze.

The Bridgeport merchant told me that one of his neighbors, who worked at City Hall, would alert him when the City inspectors would be coming, and the Alpine singles would disappear, until the coast was again clear. At a quarter a piece, he made a tidy little profit on thost dusty old Alpines.

And now a new generation of South Asian Chicago merchants are engaging in the same practice on the far North side in the West Rogers Park area.

Whenever government sticks its nose into the free exchange of goods and services, provenders will find a way to skirt the law. It's in the age old tradition of Alphonse Capone and Bugs Moran.

As P.J. O'Rourke once noted: "Giving power and money to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teen age boys."

A Tale of Two Chicago Party Headquarters

A few years back I had the experience of travelling down to Chicago's 11th Ward. That's essentially Bridgeport and the Back of the Yards and is the home base of the Daley clan, Michael Bilandic and legions of prominent Democrat City jobholders, contractors and Federal indictees (the subsets of which have often overlapped.)

While there, I was amazed to get an eyeful of the 11th Ward Democratic Organization headquarters. Having spent much of my wayward youth wandering in and out of various suburban and city Township and Ward political HQs, this was truly stunning to me. I had never seen anything like it.

It is a 2 story concrete free-standing, edifice with "Democrat Organization of the 11th Ward," prominently etched right into the crown of the building. It evoked an image of solidity and confidence and permanence--kind of like a bank building in the era before banks decided to operate out of checkout lines at the local Jewel Supermarket (The bank? Take a left at the Deli Counter, a right at produce and it's there at the end next to the cumquats.)

This was a truly stunning building. If not for the identification etched into the stone, it could easily have passed for the main post office in Appleton, WI.

And mind you, this was only a Ward party headquarters. The Cook County Democratic headquarters occupies a suite of offices at a respectable building in the loop.

Fast forward to the new shared headquarters of the Cook County Republican Organization/Republican Party of Chicago.

It recently moved to a hole-in-the-wall storefront at 1549 W. Blackhawk.

Huh?

You need a mapquest search to find that it is a 3 block long side street that juts off of Ashland Ave. in the congested, hipster-doofus, Wicker Park neighborhood.

The office itself is a single room in a storefront beneath a 1910 vintage apartment building, complete with iron fire-escape ladders. I speculate that it must have once been home to the local cobbler or perhaps seamstress.

It contains 2 1/2 desks, a conference table, a 1-seater powder room and (for some inexplicable reason) a big screen TV. There are 6 parking meters out front to accomdate the half-dozens of party activists who may choose to visit.

There is no sign -- the makeshift one they had out front, I am told, was ripped down by the local hipster-doofuses and never replaced.

This pathetic little hovel represents the Republican party's retreat from decades of operating out of one or another respectable loop address, last one having been on West Washington -- as might befit the local outpost of a major national political party.

This eccentric choice of locale, was apparently dictated by the fact that the building is owned by Eloise Gerson, 42nd GOP Ward Committeeman and Chairman of the Chicago Republican Party, the latter being a largely ceremonial title. Presumably she takes a tax writeoff in return for donating the essentially unrentable space.

What is actually a little outrageous about this absurd location, aside from the fact that there is no actual parking for visitors, is that it is literally miles from any actual Republican voters and activists (if there still are any.)

Those few stalwarts left in the city are congregated in the far-Northwest side 41st Ward (which has the lone Republican Alderman) or on the far Southwest side in Cong. Dan Lipinski's district.

Of course to locate their headquarters in either of those realms, after retreating from the respectability of the Loop, would imply some shred of common sense on the part of Cook County and Chicago Republicans.

No wonder the denizens of the formidable stone edifice in Bridgeport smugly deride Republicans as "the stupid party."