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."

Today is National Dance Day

I am compelled to take a brief hiatus from my vacation to report the urgent news that today has been declared "National Dance Day," by the US Congress.

I was informed of this propitious development only this morning by CBS news, which reported that this was the brainchild of Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) the non-voting Delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.

Happily, Congress has solved such trifling matters as the near Hooveresque levels of unemployment and the ongoing carnage in Afghanistan so that it can now devote its formidable energies to matters more suited to its abilities, such as resolutions declaring a National Day of dance celebration.

Having faithfully brought this exigent matter to your attention, I'm now going to boogie on back to the beach.

Chicago Lampoon's Summer Vacation

With finally some semblance of summer weather embracing Chicago, the Lampoon is going to take a bit of a break.

During this hiatus, I am going to:

1) Live at the beach and fill out and enrich my already formidable tan so that by Fall I will be able to pass for an illegal alien and thereby be able to get a new identity under the Obama amnesty plan and thereby thwart the taxman and assorted other collectors,

2) finish reading the "Compleat Workes of Jonathan Swift." Did you know that the Lilliputans actually conspired to poke out Gulliver's eyes and poison him? This was not the cutesy kiddie story of cartoon fame.

3) Ride my rehabbed 1974 Raleigh Record up the Green Bay Bicycle Trail to Lake Forest and back 2 or three times.

4) Finish Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919," an account of the Versailles Peace Conference wherein the Jimmy Carter precursor, Woodrow Wilson, saddled the world with the unsustainable concoctions of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Iraq. He also caved in to the French demands for onerous reparations from the German people, thereby paving the way for Adolf Hitler.

5. Get a new laptop so I can better upgrade and maintain this silly blog.

Happy Summer --

Here are some classic Summer songs for you to enjoy:









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Queen Elizabeth's Trip to North America

(Editor's note -- In light of the news that Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is winding up her trip to North America with a visit to Ground Zero in New York, I thought it appropriate to re-post this bit from the Chicago Lampoon archives. It was originally posted on October 19, 2009)


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 1957.


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?

Read Dr. Seuss and Become an American Citizen

I don't normally make a habit of reading the Chicago Tribune's RedEye -- you know the throw away rag that they put in those red boxes on street corners everywhere. It is at best "Journalism for Dummies."

What can you say about a "newspaper" that devotes vastly more column inches to Lady GaGa than to the oil gusher in the Gulf or Obama's war in Afghanistan?

What can you say about a newspaper with a crossword puzzle that offers such mind exerting clues as (I am not making this up) Winnie the _______ (4 letter word?)

So it came as no great surprise that in its June 30th edition, it printed an editorial column by one Steph Yiu that heaved up the most assinine rationale for amnesty for illegal aliens yet to be devised by any member of the open borders crowd.

She argued that since she had a rich daddy who worked for an American-owned corporation abroad, and since she read "Green Eggs and Ham" as a child and embraced American culture, she was entitled to admission to our country. A "path toward citizenship," to use an Obamaism.

After telling us that although a Singapore national, she speaks perfect English, went to American style sock hops and had her daddy send her to a pricey private American college (Northwestern.)

"But now America is going to have to deal with me." Liu threatens. "More specifically America's immigration officers. Because even though America's cultural borders are amorphous, its national boundaries are not. I'm American," she contends, "but it doesn't mean anything unless it's on paper."

"America, you created me," the Singapore citizen blurts, "I am your citizen whether you like it or not."

This is certainly a novel argument.

Liu seems to be maintaining that anyone, anywhere in the world who so much as fancies the ubiquitous American pop culture should be entitled to legally settle within our national borders and be given citizenship.

This raises interesting possibilities.

Perhaps we should have a new EP-1 (Elvis Presley -1) immigration status. This would allow members of the Elvis Presley Fan Club in Lima, Peru (Yes, there really is one) to legally settle in the U.S.


And perhaps a LLBB-1 status (Little League Baseball-1). This would allow the little league baseball players in Costanza, Romania (yes there really is a little league there) to be on a path to U.S. citizenship.

And how about the Uzbekistani's who love Rambo movies? A Rambo-1 immigration waiver?

And what about the Barbie doll club members abroad? Yes there really are Barbie Doll clubs in such places as Amsterdam, Munich, Paris, Hamburg and Baden-Baden. Under the Stephanie Liu plan all these women and girls who have enthusiastically embraced American culture should be granted BD-1 (Barbie doll-1) immigration status. Since they are probably hot blondes and quite feminine, I say let's fast-track them toward citizenship.


After all, who cares whether our sovereign nation needs them, wants them or can afford them? To the Singaporan, Liu, it's all about what the prospective immigrants wants. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

Kind of sounds like a rich, spoiled, Northwestern brat, doesn't it?

And, by the way, just what is the Tribune Corporation doing, employing a foreign national who, by her own admission, is of dubitable legal employability here?

Ask not what you can do for the USA, but what the USA can do for you -- right Ms Liu?

And who cares what the American people have to say about it?

A 4th of July Joke

This is one dreary 4th of July.

Obama is calling for blanket amnesty and free health care for the millions upon millions of squatters who wandered in here over the past 3 decades. The unemployment rate is reaching Hooveresque levels. The Bush tax cuts are set to expire on January 1st so that employers aren't even thinking of hiring. The Taste of Chicago is shut down by the Chicago Police after someone is knifed there.

I can only think of one 4th of July knee-slapper to lighten this Carteresque national malaise.

Here it is:

Some years ago, while living a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., my girlfriend persuaded me to brave the suburban and out-of-town tourist throngs and walk the few blocks over to the Mall to see the national 4th of July fireworks display.

There, with the Washington Monument as a backdrop, we saw Arthur "Pops" Fiedler conduct the usual John Phillip Souza marches and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture which led directly into the massive fireworks display.

Then the smoke cleared and the throng began meandering home.

A new Haagen Dazs ice cream shop had just opened on Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. and outside the shop, amidst the mob on the crowded sidewalk, I saw the funniest T-shirt I have ever seen in my life.

There we witnessed a man -- with at least 300 lbs. on his 5'9" frame --- greedily devouring a triple-scooped Haagen Dazs ice cream cone --- attired in a T-shirt which said:

I Beat Anorexia Nervosa

We both laughed uproariously all the way back home.

Happy 4th of July.

Free Booze in Wrigleyville

Precisely one year ago today, I reported on my tremendously interesting discovery that one can find free booze in the alleys of Chicago's yuppified neighborhoods on apartment moving day.

Back then, using the simple expedient of riding my bike thru the alleys of Roscoe Village, I found an entire 12 pack of Leinenkugel's beer, several unopened bottles of Spanish wine and an entire bottle of rum.

This year it was a foray thru the backways of Wrigleyville and once again I hit the mother lode.

Behind an expensive looking condo on Southport in the very shadow of Wrigley Field, I discovered a plastic storage container which contained (I am not making this up) an unopened bottle of Courvasier cognac, a 3/4 full bottle of French Grey Goose vodka, a bottle of British Tanqueray Gin, a mostly full bottle of Canadian whiskey, a 1/2 full bottle of Maker's Mark Kentucky whiskey, a book on cocktail recipes and a fancy cut glass bottle stopper.


To my mind it would have been sinful to relegate these fine potables to the city waste dump, so, given my steadfast commitment to recycling, I put the delictable potions to good use.

Is this a great city or what?

Evanston Library Filters Porn -- And Everything Else

Evanston has long had a storied tradition of prudery and pecksniffery. It was, after all, home to Frances Willard one of the founders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Her Evanston home -- The Willard House -- served as its national headquarters and is now a designated historic monument.

As such Evanston was one of the last municipalities in the state to allow the sale of booze --this many decades after the repeal of prohibition.

When we were prep school roustabouts, we would make a point of swinging by the old WCTU HQ at 1730 Chicago Avenue and flinging our empty beer cans on the lawn -- take that, you old biddies!

Today, Evanston had become hipper, younger and leftist -- but maintains its tradition of chasing down moral bugaboos. Today, instead of going after boozehounds, it goes after racists, hatemongers and homophobes with an enthusiasm that Mrs. Willard would admire. It stages an annual " Run Against Hate" and is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.

But I didn't expect its librarians to catch the Evanston morality fever. But it seems they have with their extremely zealous use of anti-pornography filters at the Evanston Public Library.

For almost an entire month now, its public internet connections have disabled just about anything that requires a flash player. This means that usually all of youtube is off limits there.

Recently while stopping in there for a quick email check, I tried to open a link to an article in Forbes sent by a friend.

I was notified that due to the graphics contained in the Forbes article, it was filtered by the moral guardians of the EPL. Same with all the youtube bits on my own blog -- although come to think of it, Barry Manilow and ABBA are kind of aesthetically obscene.

The librarians on the 3rd floor say they are cognizant of their filtering problems and are working on it.


I just hope their crack techno-staff solves it with greater alacrity than the geniuses who are grappling with the Gulf oil gusher -- but it seems to be taking almost as long.

So I think I'll just forgo use of the Evanston library, for now, and spend my time just down the block from Mrs. Willard's house -- swilling beer at the Celtic Knot Public House.

Mr. Proft and Mr. Schakowsky Agree: De Facto Amnesty for Illegals

It was a wild Sunday on WLS talk radio. I put on the Sony Walkman to drown out the ambient noise in Legion Park while trying to read Alvah Simon's riveting account of his solo adventures in the Arctic.

But the banter on both Tom Roeser's "Political Shootout" and on Dan Proft's virgin solo foray into radio talk turned to Arizona and the illegal alien question.

I didn't get much reading done.

What was most disturbing was an identical assertion made by extreme leftist, Bob Creamer (Cong. Jan Schakowsky's convicted felon husband) and ostensible conservative, Proft.

They both repeatedly and quite casually said, "There is no way we are going to be able to deport the 11 million illegal aliens already here."

This is the new shibboleth being propounded by both leftists who lust after a new lumpenproletariat voting bloc and Chamber of Commerce types who crave their next cheap labor fix.

But it's not true.

We can deport substantial numbers of the illegal alien squatters and can effect self deportation of most of the rest.

I'm not talking about draconian measures like President Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" which rounded up illegals en masse and bused them back home.

But serious enforcement of existing law (including ongoing deportation) and comprehensive removal of employment and social service possibilities could readily effect removal of those who have effectively ignored our sovereign laws.

When the magnets which attract and keep illegal populations here disappear many will self-deport.

This has happened before in our history. During the darkest days of the Great Depression, tens of thousands of persons who had recently legally immigrated to the USA, faced with bleak job prospects and minimal government assistance, simply packed up and headed home.

According to the political scientist Leuchtenburg, during the dark depression years of 1930-31, the numbers of recent immigrants boarding ships for a return to Europe averaged 5,000 a month.

3,000 American immigrants actually even took up the Soviet Russian government's offer of jobs and resettlement in the workers' utopia. Seems they had full employment in the gulag state.

We have no reason to believe that self-deportation would not correspondingly occur today if all incentives to stay were eliminated. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies argue that as many as 50 percent of illegals would leave voluntarily if the government were to initiate an aggressive deportation policy.

When conservative Proft and leftist, Creamer, blithely assert that deportation is impossible, they are simply paving the way for yet another mass amnesty by asserting the impracticality of any alternative.

Amnesty as with the word amnesia is from the classical Greek word for 'forget.'

Either way you cut it, if you believe that deportation is impractical as with Proft or undesirable as with Creamer, you are advocating an amnesty -- that we just forget that they came illegally.

Proft may envision some scheme whereby the illegal invaders may have to pay a tax and perhaps, pretend to learn English. And Creamer may just want to legalize them all and register them to vote tomorrow, but by conceding the inevitability of their continued presence -- by refusing to consider serious enforcement and removal of incentives to stay -- they're both advocating amnesty. They're both telling us to just forget about the fact that our laws have been broken wholesale and our borders and sovereignty as a nation trampeled.

A vote on amnesty for illegal aliens is unlikely in this, an election year. The American people are overwhelmingly against it.

But if it's somehow rammed through in the future, it could well have the most societally disruptive and disasterous consequences to have been experienced in this country since the period 1861-65.

"Vote--Vote--We Want Beer!"

Normally I do not like to admit this in polite company, but I was once a Democrat. In fact a liberal Democrat.

As a precocious kid of 12 or 13, I used to tag along with a Democrat precinct captain as he went door to door.From him I learned some of the savvy techniques (and dirty tricks) that would later serve me well when I became a sentient being and began working to elect conservatives.

But I am not ashamed to admit it. I was once a Democrat. But then so was the very witty conservative writer, P.J. O'Rourke. He was not just a liberal Democrat, but was in fact, a drug addled hippie wwhen he wrote for Rolling Stone. Now he leans more toward dry martinis and H. Uppmann cigars. Now his writing makes sense.

And so, of course was the Great Communicator, himself, Ronald Reagan. Most people are unaware of this, but not only had he been a Democrat, but he was the only President of the United States who had been a labor union leader. He served as President of the Screen Actors Guild.

I can't often think of nice things to write about Democrats, but in recent reading, I came across the one indisputably good thing the Democrats ever did.

They legalized booze!

It was largely at the urging of pecksniff Midwestern and Bible Belt Republicans that liquor was outlawed in the US from 1919 to 1933.

It was the Democrat FDR who gave us back legal liquor.

Here is what the political scientist, William E. Leuchtenburg had to say about it:

"On Monday, March 13th, the President asked Congress to fulfill the Democratic pledge of an early end to prohibition. Roosevelt's victory had speeded a remarkable revolution in sentiment; even some veteran dry Congressman now voted for liquor. While the 21st Amendment was making its way through the states, Roosevelt requested quick action to amend the Volstead Act by legalizing beer of 3.2% alcoholic content by weight.

"Roosevelt's message touched off a rollicking debate. The drys, who had succeeded in killing a beer bill only a few weeks before, rehashed the arguments that had been so convincing for more than a decade, but to no avail.

"Impatient Congressmen chanted: 'Vote -- Vote -- We Want Beer!'

"Within a week, both Houses had passed the beer bill and added wine for good measure, although Congressmen protested that 3.2% wine was not 'interesting.' On March 22, Roosevely signed the bill.

"As the day of liberation approached, breweries worked feverishly to meet the anticipated demand. Working around the clock, a St. Joseph Missouri factory turned out ten tons of pretzels a day, but still ran two month behind. Emanuel Kovelski, president of the New York bartenders union proclaimed: 'We're all set. The bartenders will be all fine, clean upstanding yound men.'

"On April 7, 1933, beer was sold legally in America for the first time since the advent of prohibition and the wets made the most of it. In New York, six stout brewery horses drew a bright red stake wagon to the Empire State Building, where a case of beer was presented to Al Smith, 'the martyr of 1928.'

"In the beer town of St. Louis, steam whistles and sirens sounded at midnight, while Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee was blocked by mobs of celebrants singing 'Sweet Adeline.' The most important ritual took place at the Rennert Hotel bar in Baltimore: H.L. Mencken downed a glass of the new beer and assured anxious connoisseurs it was a worthy brew."

In 1936, The Democrats made the most of it as FDR easily sailed into his second term. They had a campaign song, which I once taped off of NPR. It went:

"Back Again,

Back Again

We Got Franklin D. Roosevelt,

Back Again

Since Roosevelt's been elected

Moonshine liquor's been corrected

We got legal wine, whiskey, beer and gin."

So don't ever say that I never gave the Democrats credit for ever doing anything good.

Ald. Joe Moore Proposes Arizonian Foie Gras Boycott

In the wake of the Chicago City Council's measure to boycott Arizona firms, Alderman Joe Moore (D-49th) has introduced a bill to turn up the heat on that hellish state by forcing Chicago firms to boycott Arizonian foie gras.

"In solidarity with the illegal aliens of our great sanctuary city, I propose a complete boycott on the importation of all and any foie gras from Arizona, " Moore said.


"Irrespective of what may transpire elsewhere, we must show the world that we are one city that genuinely cares for its illegal aliens and geese," Moore said.



The move was heralded by Alderman Tom Tunney (D-44th) who said, "The gay community is behind this bill 8,000 percent."

Alderman Berny Stone (D-50th)awoke from his customary slumber to say, "If it's good for the city's landlords, I'm all for it."



Jesse Jackson (D-United Nations) put the issue in moral terms saying, "This is indeed a civil rights issue. As our great Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ so clearly put it: 'That which you do unto the least of my geese, you do unto me.'"



Joshua Hoyt, director of the chief illegal alien lobby in Illinois, the Chicago Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, predicted widespread support for Moore's bill. "We must remember that no goose is illegal. Geese are people too," he said.

The bill is expected to pass the City Council by the usual 50-0 margin.

Welcome To the Chicago Service Economy

This past week I ran into a very interesting high fashion designer. A 3rd generation sansei, Japanese American, she graduated from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and spent years in the realm of Manhattan high powered fashion design.

She commented that not long ago, the preponderance of American high fashion creations were actually produced in New York's garment distict. Today she lamented, the percentage actually manufactured in the USA hovers around 3%.

This made me recall an incident which occured a few years back. While dog walking in East Rogers Park, I ran into a twenty-something black guy. He was living under bushes in the park by night and cadging quarters to buy malt liquor by day.

During one of his infrequent lucid moments, he sadly recollected growing up on the South side in a stable family headed by a well paid steelworker. All those jobs are gone now, he said.

And with them have gone opportunities for a stable, dependable good job for Americans lacking a secondary education. As those jobs have flown to lower paid overseas cheap labor havens, a critical component of our societal stability has flown away alongside.

The US in general and the Chicago area, in particular, have been hemorrhaging industrial jobs at a fantastic rate for the past three decades.

Today a mere 10% of workers in the Chicago metropolitan area are employed in manufacturing. A greater number work for government and when you include the government schools, that becomes a vastly greater number.

According to 2005 Federal statistics, these are now the largest employers in the Chicago metro area:

Largest employers -- Number of employees

U.S. Government 88,000
Chicago Public Schools 39,402
Jewel-Osco 36,749
City of Chicago 35,978
Cook County 26,505

Instead of tax generating, real goods production, our economy is now dominated by the parasitic tax consuming government classes.

Since the Reagan years, we've been hearing a lot of the new "service economy" reliably compensating for the loss of industrial jobs.

Frankly, I never bought a word of it. Real production of tangible goods, is, in the final analysis, the only real basis of wealth.

The 1961 economic analysis by British economists, Cole and Postgate, The British Common People,chronicled the flight of manufacturing from Great Britain which began as early as the 1920s.

"Napoleon is said to have called Great Britain 'a nation of shopkeepers,'" they wrote. "By 1939, it seemed to have turned into a nation of shop assistants, clerks, waiters and machine attendants."

If Napoleon had scoffed at Americans as a nation of fast food franchise owners, he would be likewise wrong. It is fast becoming a nation of hamburger flippers and Wal-Mart greeters.

Welcome to the new "service economy."

"Do you want fries with that?"