Why Are Dems Trolling For Republican Voters in The 50th Ward?

Republican voters in Chicago have become quite a hot commodity.

Who would have ever thought?

In the far North 50th ward aldermanic race, Democrats have been courting Republicans as if they were Sports Illustrated swimsuit models at a beachfront cabana bar.

Lets put this in perspective. In the 2000 primary election a grand total of 530 voters in the ward cast Republican ballots as opposed to 5,180 who voted Democrat. That's a little more than 1 in 10.

That's the sort of lopsided margin that you might expect in a vote for communist strongman Enver Hoxha's bid for re-election to the Albanian Presidency.

Let's face it, Republicans are, customarily, irrelevant to the political process in Chicago. Their last mayor was Big Bill Thompson, a crony of Al Capone in the 1920s.

So why, all of a sudden is everybody courting Republican voters in the 50th ward?

I am an independent conservative-libertarian and as such, usually have no choice but to vote in the Republican primaries in Illinois. Were I to live in a more rational polity, say South Carolina or even Tennessee, that would not necessarily be the case. But not so in the statist political wasteland of Barack Obama and Jan Schakowsky.

So I have found myself on Republican mailing lists.

As a result, it seems that as long as the assorted lefty Democrats running for 50th ward alderman are in a neck and neck struggle, I will never be lonely.

The efforts of Democrats to court me have descended to almost laughable levels of dissembling idiocy.

Greg Brewer, an extreme leftist acolyte of the Howard Dean and George Soros, Move-On dot org and DFA crowd recruited one Dan Miller,to coo in my ear and whisper sweet nothings.

"Dear Fellow Republican," he wrote, "Greg believes that everyone, even Republicans, libertarians and conservatives have a right to be heard -- that we have some solid ideas -- and he wants to hear them."

This from the "Republican," Dan Miller, who voted in Democrat primaries in 1994 and in a 3rd party primary in 1996.

And the politically androgynous Miller wrote this on behalf of Brewer, a guy who is in bed with a gaggle of clowns who overtly say on their website that they are committed to moving the Democrat party to the left so as to "fight for a culture of activism and rebuild policies and platforms for grassroots empowerment."

YIKES!!!

And then I get a letter from the ostensible "Republican" 41st ward alderman, Brian Doherty telling me that his good buddy, 50th ward Alderman Berny Stone is one of his allies in "combating tax increases and keeping government accountable to the people."

Odd that the letter didn't come from the 50th ward Republican committeeman, Rabbi Ken Hollander. Hollander got a county job from his neighbor and pal, Berny Stone, and subsequently allows Democrat boss Berny to appoint all the "Republican" election judges in the ward and promises to never run Republican candidates against Berny's machine Democrat slate.

Funny that Doherty, a graduate of the laughable North side "high-school-with-ashtrays," Northeastern Illinois University, is never seen at Republican functions and never so much as hints at his Republican affiliation except when trying to lend "bi-partisan" credence to his fellow Democrat cronies.

The bottom line is that I am a Burkean, Randian true believer in limited government.

I have no dog in this fight.

But I keep showing up on these Republican mailing lists.

So it seems as long as these inane pols are locked in a death-grip, neck and neck struggle for political survival, (to quote Bogey in Casablanca when speaking of his letters of transit,) "I'll never be lonely."

Fatcats in Evanston/Skokie CCSD 65: More Evanston Teachers Salaries

(Editor's Note -- The complete list of Evanston/Skokie District 65 Teachers' and administrators salaries has been updated to reflect 2011 salaries - the latest which are publicly available. With the unionized teachers pleading poverty and threatening to strike, the information may be particularly more salient this year. 8/13/12)

During the time of the settlement of the American frontier, when a community felt sufficiently rooted, it would take up a collection and put out word that it wanted a teacher to come. Often, the citizens would contribute their labor to the construction of a modest school house.

When a school marm agreed to come, it was no secret as to what the townfolk were paying her to educate their kids.

It's not that way today

Today's Big-union teaching establishment fought tooth and nail to keep the Illinois public from knowing what teachers and administrators were actually hauling down each year in salary and benefits.

They had good reason to do so, since much of the public would be shocked to learn that many of these supposedly high-minded altruists were hauling down more cash than the beleagured families that foot the bill.


That's why the Family Taxpayers Foundation had to file suit just to find out what we are actually paying these teachers.

Posted below, from the FTF database are the salaries of the teachers and other staff of the Evanston/Skokie CCSD 65. A full 37 of them are hauling down more than 6 figures a year for their 9 month jobs. And keep in mind that these are elementary and middle school teachers.

The schools covered are Dawes, Dewey, Kingsley, Lincoln, Lincolnwood, Oakton, Orrington, Walker, Washington and Willard Elementary schools. Also included are teachers salaries from Chute, Haven and Nichols Middle Schools and the Rhodes and King magnet schools and the Park, Rice and Early Childhood special kiddie schools.

If you would also like to see a list of Evanston Twp. High School teachers salaries, they are posted here.

District 65 teachers' salaries are listed in alphabetical order for the last available reporting period 2011: (Family Taxpayers just released the 2011 salaries, so this is updated from the initial posting.)

(In past years, for the benefit of Porsche salesmen, jewelers and the purveyors of fine wines, yachts and other luxury items, we highlighted the megabucks teachers hauling down $90k a year and up. This year, however, that club has grown considerably and we find it just too time consuming to do so again -- so high dollar vendors -- you're on your own.)




Evanston CCSD 65 2011 Teachers' Salaries- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME SALARY
"Jenkins, Jr." $0
Aardema, Kristen $51,775
Abudayeh, Stephanie $57,459
Adler, Cynthia $93,103
Akins-Schanette, Pamela $99,688
Alcozer, Anita $82,221
Alebiosu, Omar $44,343
Alexander, Chelcea $68,313
Alexander, Nancy $102,648
Allard, Matthew $83,193
Allen, Ina $89,245
Alvarez, Maria $79,547
Ambriz, Jessica $1,610
Anderson, Jennifer $47,759
Anderson, Judith $77,126
Anderson, Nancy $45,460
Andler, Joan $78,165
Applegate, Kathleen $48,187
Arceneaux, Jenevieve $45,338
Arenberg, Susan $98,610
Aristide, Diane $99,848
Ave Maria, Pamela $101,448
Badesch, Linda $88,675
Baker, Trisha $78,368
Ballay, Mary $56,715
Banh, Huong $100,644
Barber, Jena $91,275
Barbour, Karen $96,065
Bardic, Victoria $70,184
Barkal, Deborah $53,002
Barley, Julia $40,121
Barnes, Lisa $76,729
Barragan, Margaret $71,084
Barrengos, Randy $60,421
Barroso, Maria $82,007
Bartz, Joyce $91,879
Baskin, Jaime $72,567
Baskin, Jana $59,804
Basolo-Silkaitis, Margaret $98,238
Beaudoin, Renaud $141,316
Beckstedt, Linda $99,424
Behm, Martin $54,476
Bennett, Elicia $49,109
Bensfield, Aubrey $48,292
Benson, Nina $72,554
Berger, Alyson $84,944
Bergner, Jennifer $75,410
Berland, Elizabeth $18,104
Bernstein, Lisa $83,459
Berry, Neidra $105,764
Bertalan, Cheree $92,587
Best, Kelly $48,786
Blacconeri, Monica $60,217
Blachowicz, Jesse $56,063
Blair, Vola $73,896
Blair-Collins, Frances $62,595
Blinkal, Lily $66,546
Blossom, Gwendolyn $84,763
Blough, Barbara $106,038
Blum, Eric $46,698
Boudouris, Sophia $70,021
Bournes, Michelle $72,692
Bowles, Emily $54,443
Boyd, Gwendolyn $102,493
Boykin, Albert $97,692
Bradley, Karen $142,964
Braeutigam, Janette $42,173
Brand, Michelle $97,334
Breeden, Ellen $50,028
Breen, Stephen $88,675
Brehm, Steven $61,433
Breitenstein, Marie $99,998
Brennan, Jennifer $70,969
Brigham, Christine $102,258
Brouman, Kathryn $69,184
Brown, Jeffrey $144,613
Brown, Laurie $100,526
Brown, Mary Baptist $166,501
Bryan, Barbara $0
Budd, Matthew $47,955
Bulgrin, Lynn $56,509
Burgeson, Amanda $49,988
Burke, Anne $0
Burma-Washington, Marcay $91,834
Butts, Laura $49,950
Cabrera-Rodriguez, Yvonne $79,652
Caldwell, Lauren $48,632
Calloway, Vanessa $96,315
Candamil, Francisco $84,077
Capizzi, Melissa $30,736
Carbone, Jennifer $46,555
Carlson, Eve $72,894
Carpenter, Gayl $102,388
Cassidy, Melissa $69,451
Ceffalio, Ann $81,651
Cerza, Susan $52,061
Chana, Frances $53,901
Chang-Pisano, Marie $99,883
Chase, Jeanne $90,923
Chisholm, Jennifer $62,995
Chung, Ted $55,971
Church, Amy $89,665
Cipinko, Gary $62,595
Clay, Carol $73,735
Cleary, Kali $45,472
Clency, Pamela $82,104
Cleveland, Adrienne $55,567
Cleveland, Patricia $77,005
Clunie, Gloria $98,988
Coe, Djuna $99,638
Cogdill, Nicole $74,766
Cohen Stein, Nan $47,815
Cohen, Barry $54,001
Colquitt, Regina $87,762
Colville, Tara $72,869
Combs, Horace $89,762
Connolly, Patricia $54,120
Conway, Janet $72,558
Cooper, Nicole $29,558
Crooks, Anthony $22,047
Cuppernull, Rebecca $47,805
Cuzelis, Diane $82,629
Dangerfield, Shannon $59,217
Daniel, Jayne $84,831
Daniels Jr, Churchill $131,179
Daniels, Gregory $87,463
Davis, Beatrice $124,421
Davis, David $58,309
Davis, Delilah $78,002
Davis, Katherine $117,219
Davis, Lashanda $51,683
Davis, Mary $61,381
Davis, Renee $98,688
De Lama, Gisela $89,585
Deemar, Stacy $58,621
Del Vecchio, Donna $61,821
Delgado Levin, Evelyn $46,661
DeMuth, David $56,818
Denlow, Amie $77,005
Dennis, Tamika $41,359
Desser, Stefanie $76,703
Desta, Deksiyos $24,479
Dickinson, Shannon $79,209
Dobrin, Marla $82,155
Doe-Simkins, Leah $53,802
Dolan, Mary $98,303
Donati, Siobhan $62,521
Donohoo, Shannon $77,809
Dotson, Sandra $90,420
Doyle, Catherine $59,517
Duffy, Megan $56,884
Dziekiewicz, Laura $51,098
Eady-Morris, Darlene $98,388
Edens, Estelle $103,303
Ellison, Katherine $121,192
Engelman, Guy $81,413
Engh, Daniel $96,835
Eshaya, David $78,696
Esposito, Robyn $52,027
Essenberg, Louise $98,238
Evans, Brigette $81,266
Evans, Karen $142,414
Fahey, Ann Marie $99,324
Falconer, Elizabeth $63,441
Farrand, Suzanne $115,592
Ferdinand, Stefanie $49,320
Files, Steven $52,098
Fink, Jill $83,810
Finneran, Vincent $50,488
Fisher, Susan $98,958
Flores-Blakeslee, Paola $74,766
Fogelberg, Ellen $156,866
Fordon, Ann $54,124
Fosco, Michael $48,182
Foster, Brenda $99,438
Foust, Kathryn $89,612
Fowlin, Claudia $79,556
Fowlkes, Linda $89,889
Fox, Daisha $49,050
Fox, Elizabeth $61,392
Francellno, Carmen $0
Francis, Dita $85,905
Frank, Kirya $45,769
Fratella, Mark $44,905
Freeman, Francine $96,065
Fricano, Megan $50,553
Friedman, Andrew $88,675
Friedman, Erik $92,485
Fritsch, Ann Marie $47,921
Fritts, Leigh $62,031
Frost, Janice $70,885
Fulton, Tracy $59,099
Fusinatto, Taylor $45,738
Gacki, Marianne $55,512
Gage, Erin $58,109
Galan, Raquel $77,253
Galicia, Lara $94,287
Gall, Elisa $55,865
Gallagher, John $71,717
Galliani, Elizabeth $47,755
Garcia, Christa $49,865
Garcia, Erika $67,185
Garcia, Kimberley $80,276
Garman, Alyson $50,240
Garriques, Karen $56,933
Garrison, Claudia $75,791
Gates, Elizabeth $51,402
Gernstetter, Maeve $72,179
Gessert, Kyle $47,442
Ghannam, Jennifer $48,110
Gibert, Shannon $51,743
Gifford, Megan $85,069
Gilhooly, Catherine $39,429
Gilmore, Nancy $61,290
Giron, Carolyn $88,675
Glaser, Margaret $108,184
Glick, Zachary $47,798
Gold, Staci $51,356
Gonzalez, Emma $68,294
Gorman, Jessica $48,724
Green, Louis $74,351
Green, Melissa $96,560
Green, Michael $68,765
Greenlees, Ashlie $50,543
Gregory-Phillips, Patricia $0
Griffin, Demetrice $88,675
Griffin, Elizabeth $75,978
Grivois, Timothy $59,117
Grossman, Dorothy $0
Guthrie III, Robert $71,922
Halman, Jennifer $0
Halvorson, Thea $101,834
Hamilton, Kim $52,698
Hammond, Heidy $78,659
Haran, Amelia $72,073
Hardman, Jannette $71,399
Harned, Allison $67,403
Harries, Adrian $119,311
Harries, Lisa $83,894
Harris, Melissa $45,942
Hasty, Christina $82,471
Hayes, Jennifer $1,610
Heap, Jill $93,457
Heckathorne, Jennifer $101,956
Heilman, Marisa $50,138
Heite, Randy $86,246
Helfand, Geri $100,038
Henderson, Sara $0
Hernandez, Alexandra $47,755
Herrera, Vanessa $58,036
Hiller, Claire $95,695
Hodges, Amy $83,280
Hoefakker, Tawnya $99,538
Hollander, Matthew $51,640
Hollenback, Erika $72,188
Hollins Jr., Perry $55,651
Horan, Terrence $98,238
Hoshino, Ai $56,509
Hubbard, Tracy $57,973
Hudson, Amy $95,526
Hudson, Paula $81,721
Hugen, Molly $57,501
Hunt, Rosemary $98,238
Hunter, Fred $127,800
Huston, Sara $71,388
Ibarra, Rose-Carmie $69,550
Idelman, Andrea $40,860
Israel, Sandra $47,252
Israel, Wendy $85,475
Iverson, Gloria $50,265
Jacobs, Cary $99,288
Jacobs, Lorenzo $52,815
Jaddaoui, J. Noelle $81,821
Jain, Manisha $54,297
Janossy Jr., James $75,516
Jaquess, Shalana $69,984
Jean-Pierre, Elizabeth $67,376
Jicha, Susan $99,040
Jimenez, Carlos $49,988
Johnson, Jarod $56,826
Johnson, Kenneth $51,788
Johnson, Nettie $88,675
Johnson, Renee $99,243
Johnson, Robin $84,659
Jones, Frances $99,381
Jones, Louis $87,654
Jonser-Busse, Betty $98,290
Junod, Michelle $58,929
Kahl, Anna $73,777
Kamara, Esther $79,467
Kapuler, Carolyn $107,925
Kareotes, Maria $67,476
Kasbekar, Archana $49,554
Kasper, Michael $82,621
Kehoe, Margaret $106,836
Kelly, Colleen $95,618
Kelly, Meghan $53,008
Kelly, Michelle $67,750
Kerrill, Kristi $37,533
Kersnar, Christie $71,784
Kier, Laura $98,238
Killey, Alison $45,688
Killheffer, Judith $71,288
Kipfer, Amy $78,059
Klein, Laura $56,139
Koegler, Carolyn $47,642
Kreisel, Cathy $70,419
Krugly, Andrew $142,964
Krulee, Margaret $84,994
Kulman, Lee $127,319
Kushner, Sherri $62,448
Lahurd, Kristin $56,439
Lalley, John $98,783
Lamar, Emily $56,909
Lams, Theresa $51,113
Lang, Suzanne $77,355
Lange, Mary $59,597
Larmee, Luke $58,014
Larson, Mary $100,278
Larson, Simone $43,843
Larson, Susan $84,763
Latimer, Jerri $56,076
Laughlin, Jennifer $85,982
Laurenz, Jean $26,383
Lawrence, Claire $68,124
Leggett, Sharon $102,058
Lenoir, Margie $139,324
Leon, Elvia $43,730
Lepley, Julie $86,502
Leung, Helen $45,638
Levine, Julie $98,738
Levine, Lisa $52,662
Levy, Daniel $75,251
Levy, Lisa $64,460
Lieteau, Anna $83,894
Likhite, Jennifer $68,474
Likhite, Michael $83,305
Liversidge, Felicity $48,273
Lloyd, Jennifer $64,333
Logan, Cheryl $98,238
Lopez, Marie $50,296
Lowe, Helen $96,934
Lucchese, Rosalia $52,388
Luciana, Karen $89,043
Lukas, Peggy $88,775
Lutton, Nancy $69,401
Macedo, Adam $59,799
MacHarg, Joan $99,988
MacHarg, Richard $102,338
Madeck Anderson, Kristen $72,679
Mahoney, Karen $82,175
Maldonado, Paula $100,138
Mandell, Theresa $90,816
Manhardt, Lisa $53,901
Maniquis, Raul $79,547
Martin, Evangelina $81,202
Martinez Black, Tyrone $65,883
Maslanka, Terry $87,363
Masood, Aneela $69,550
Matten, Dale $89,660
Matten, Kevin $49,000
Mayne, Victoria $44,272
Mc Coy, Margo $42,284
Mc Holland, James $157,613
McAndrew, Maria $102,998
McAvoy, Kimberly $54,499
McCaffrey, Emily $48,994
McCann, JoAnn $97,804
McCarthy, Sharon $72,658
McDermott, Brooke $52,127
McDermott, Dawn $142,964
McDermott, Megan $77,602
McDermott, Michael $79,274
McGough, Bridget $57,069
McKenna, Anne $64,377
McLaughlin, Edward $71,810
McMaster, Katherine $74,766
Mechanic, Ilyse $90,777
Mendez, Sarah $119,311
Meshkian, Elaheh $92,716
Metz, Elaine $0
Metzger, Susan $104,098
Meyer, Tara $51,498
Micol, Jessica $71,670
Mighty, Lori $67,469
Millard, Dorothy $98,763
Miller, Amy $0
Minor, John $86,583
Mitchell, Katherine $74,637
Mitchell, Kristin $41,051
Mitchell, LaTasha $70,798
Mohrenweiser, Wendy $60,945
Mollner, Melissa $74,646
Montgomery, Lisa $53,202
Moran, Jennifer $53,951
Moran, Judith $77,809
Morgan, Valerie $69,115
Moses, Lenora $98,238
Mosley, Maggie $84,175
Mouzayanni, Lilly $85,426
Moyer, Joel $65,190
Mueller, Katrina $49,988
Mull, Traci $91,400
Mullins, Cenietta $98,111
Murphy, Hardy $229,662
Murphy, Jeannie $34,632
Murphy, Saronita $48,346
Murray, Tricia $97,459
Murtaugh, Timothy $81,020
Myers, Catherine $56,449
Mynard, Andrew $77,894
Myros, Christina $64,535
Nava, Nicole $51,550
Negri, Anne $48,305
Nelson, Deborah $67,083
Nelson, H. Harvette $0
Nemshick, Scott $25,477
New, Cody $56,536
Nichols, Jennifer $75,746
Nichols, Sarah $69,638
Nicholson, Marcy $64,295
Nikolopoulou, Krystallia $97,559
Norman, Melody $88,675
Novotney, Megan $49,442
Nunez, Ismalis $48,625
Nusser, Amy $100,634
O Brien, Nancy $34,264
O'Brien, Jennifer $69,600
O'Connor, Colleen $73,366
O'Hara, Robin $86,363
O'Neal, Emily $55,387
O'Neill, Michael $0
O'Reilly, Corinne $45,992
Obrochta, Connie $78,955
Odenthal, Alaina $55,737
Odwarka, Amy $79,478
Olivera-Alcazar, Lynda $76,593
Olsen, Mary $98,238
Olson, Jennifer $44,868
Ornelas, Monica $58,036
Ortega, Consuelo $45,239
Ortiz, Stacie $1,610
Osher, Deborah $62,595
Otto, Cydni $100,678
Otto, Robert $47,815
Pais, Faye $82,629
Panagiotidis, Konstantina $87,521
Parent, Jennifer $54,861
Parsons, Felisha $99,851
Payne, Marlyn $99,658
Payton, Patrice $92,312
Pechnyo, Anne $49,252
Penovich, Sylvia $0
Perez, Nicole $79,228
Periman, Daryl $62,625
Perkins, Leslie $91,835
Perry, Paul $66,847
Peterson, Megan $62,595
Petrusonis, Anthony $93,883
Philbrick, Margaret $101,028
Philippe, Kefira $61,421
Picchietti, Camille $99,269
Pickup-Kaplan, Khristie $71,488
Pionke, Elizabeth $98,758
Pitlosh, Tracy $77,809
Pitts, Jamilla $108,306
Platero, Maria $48,238
Plofsky, Tammy $73,953
Policape, Kim $90,285
Pomerantz, Mary $62,942
Portner, Felicia $98,238
Post, Kelly $87,298
Potter, Rebecca $100,769
Pouper, Kathryn $93,682
Pratt, Karen $79,793
Prescott, Patrice $100,293
Pressoir, Melinda $69,984
Price, Courtney $47,752
Price, Tania $67,711
Price, Tiffany $62,225
Pritikin-Berk, Ronna $98,738
Przekota, Felicia $97,661
Przekota, John $107,023
Puentes, Adrian $91,270
Punwani, Tara $79,982
Purnell, Elaine $86,110
Qader, Hosnia $45,738
Querciagrossa, Jamie $85,444
Quinn, Elizabeth $101,333
Quinn, Teresa $51,727
Raab, Erin $51,977
Rachell, Kristie $68,183
Radhakrishnan, Soundarya $57,096
Rahlfs, Eileen $98,238
Ramsey, Ayanna $85,040
Randhava, Maia $58,794
Randhava, Sikander $44,493
Ransom, Heather $61,752
Raskin, Jessica $49,988
Rauth, Kathleen $77,105
Reebie, Helen $102,070
Reid, Karen $98,288
Reiniger, Michael $97,684
Reitman, Lisa-Kate $58,067
Remien, Lori $96,907
Reynolds, Stephanie $75,482
Rhodes, Kathryn $91,392
Richardson, Donna $100,673
Richardson, Samantha $60,044
Riemenschneider, Ann $96,902
Rios, Soledad $47,448
Rivera-Palen, Evelyn $91,871
Rizio, Louise $43,843
Roberson, Kathleen $138,459
Robey, Michael $163,498
Robinson, Vonetta $72,592
Robinson-Karzen, Marilyn $108,434
Roche, Michael $74,742
Rodes, Crystal $45,988
Rodriguez, Emma $60,169
Rohrlack, Juliana $49,515
Romaniuk, Alina $53,816
Romero, Cecilia $51,152
Rooney, Kelly $58,585
Rosario, Cynthia $89,643
Rose, Lindsey $43,768
Rosenbacher, Susan $95,195
Rosenbluh, Karen $82,629
Rosenstein, Shelley $70,490
Rossa, Denise $83,599
Rothe, Margaret $86,652
Rottman, Evelyn $82,591
Rouse, Laura $96,934
Rubin, Jennifer $53,610
Rubio, Jacalyn $46,241
Ruggiero, Alyse $51,313
Rumsey, Robin $63,095
Rutherford, Sally $98,378
Sagett-Flores, Beth $159,495
Salemi, Todd $55,711
Salinas, Ana $63,828
Salinas, Diana $73,907
Sampson, Annell $92,512
Sanchez, Natalie $47,405
Santori, Christine $62,231
Sasso, Kathleen $49,804
Satz, Patricia $0
Saul, Regina $51,075
Saunders, Stephanie $80,638
Schaefer, Monica $95,002
Schamber, James $60,247
Schiffer, Monica $80,283
Schleker, Sally $88,675
Schlossberg, Jill $57,495
Schneider, Jennifer $79,078
Schrenk, Peter $56,859
Schroer, Hillary $61,501
Schultz, Susan $178,006
Scott, Olin $56,393
Sebaggala, Jasmine $72,613
Secemsky, Gina $57,198
Seifer, Patricia $122,098
Serleth, Laurel $101,988
Shavitz, Lawrence $98,963
Shaw, Christine $49,375
Shaw, Kathleen $96,469
Shaw, Willie $102,246
Shea, Joyce $69,984
Shepard, Tasha $47,717
Shimada, Joyce $49,400
Shomberg, Mindy $53,524
Short, Chelsea $43,948
Short, Christopher $95,725
Shusterman, Linda $0
Siebert, Sandra $94,326
Siegel, Andrea $101,652
Simic, Maya $0
Simmons, Robyn $44,830
Simmons, Stephanie $48,474
Singer-Sadok, Lillian $79,078
Skalinder, Carole $95,595
Skipworth, Alex $79,547
Skoglund, Christine $62,595
Slattery, Mary $72,158
Sloan, Cynthia $94,407
Smith, Colleen $93,087
Smith, Donald $54,201
Smith, James $96,815
Smith, Jill $0
Smith, Matthew $46,142
Smith, Megan $57,499
Soden, Celeste $65,453
Sokolowski, Donna $102,410
Sommer, Brian $76,705
Sorci Planey, Rita $46,853
Sovich, Angel $81,721
Spicuzza, Angelo $85,790
Spillman, Lisa $69,215
Stamates, Mariana $43,843
Starenko, Julia $96,687
Stellberg, Kerry $76,016
Sterling, Elizabeth $69,984
Stevenson, Julie $58,109
Stidham, Brittany $44,838
Stole, Elyse $53,725
Stone, Carla $71,300
Stratakos, Demetra $65,203
Struve, Susan $76,867
Stumme, Sarah $64,333
Succes, Jerry $95,102
Sullivan, Amy $93,087
Swan, Carrie $60,421
Sweet, Meghan $77,809
Takaki, Susan $83,095
Taman, Mona $60,421
Tanis, John $73,896
Tanovic, Azra $57,309
Taylor, Denise $62,075
Tejada, Raoul $86,683
Temkin, Jenna $49,050
Theard, Marie-Paule $98,388
Thomas, Jennifer $83,025
Thompson, Doreen $89,371
Thompson, Jaunitta $125,747
Thurston, Michelle $74,766
Tobey, Jennifer $68,204
Tobin, Thomas $97,125
Torres, Maria $65,208
Trayber, Simone $49,230
Troy, Janice $101,669
Turner, Lalita $56,351
Turrubiartes, Margaret $85,733
Tzortzis, Panagiota $100,564
Ulmen, Julie $63,917
Ulrich, Barbara $100,013
Umland, Terri $69,550
Unizycki, Renee $56,884
Urbanowski, Amy $49,760
Urquiaga, Ellen $61,092
Van Ausdall, Linda $77,374
VanBuskirk, Christian $86,662
Vander Ploeg, Steven $55,897
Vanderkolk, Sharon $85,633
Vazquez, Yesenia $83,000
Venturi, Jean $47,380
Vick, Robert $86,133
Vick-Harris, Monica $57,726
Villarreal, Sonia $58,148
Wahle, Barbara $82,629
Wahlgren, Kristin $47,755
Waldstein, Sara $100,738
Walker, Maggie $35,574
Waller, Rebecca $71,201
Warren, Elizabeth $61,552
Washington, Tena $101,123
Weatherby, Sara $55,810
Weaver, Erika $23,424
Weir, Pamela $96,732
Wernecke, Tracy $52,402
Westphal, Elisabeth $80,628
Wharton, Amy $73,688
Whisler, Michele $55,601
White, Margaret $59,816
Wigginton, Sally $96,955
Wilcinski, Gail $90,747
Wilda, Joseph $101,038
Wilkins, Lyn $82,816
Williams, Chet $63,843
Williams, David $84,927
Williams, Kendra $60,947
Williams, Willa $101,060
Willis, Darcy $62,013
Willis, Rodney $94,638
Wilmot, Wyante $56,863
Wilson, Alesa $74,306
Wilson, Ann $38,695
Wilson, Keyatta $53,901
Winskill, Micki $55,782
Witt, Megan $72,532
Wixson, Lindsey $74,007
Wolford, Darleen $74,505
Wood, Laine $87,875
Wood-Livingston, Freda $74,046
Woods, Camille $61,590
Wool, Imily $84,225
Wooldridge, James $65,353
Wooldridge, Jennifer $62,595
Wright, Janet $71,746
Yelen, Arie $77,859
Young, Gail $83,125
Young, H. Shepherd $48,600
Young, Jeanie $87,693
Young, Ruth $70,190
Youngblood, Lori $71,224
Zalewski, Katarzyna $115,092
Zarov, Lisa $24,065
Zelinski, Paula $100,238
Zelonis, Sarah $84,875
Zordan, Nancy $109,436



This concludes the complete listing of the 2011 salaries for the teachers and other personnel of Evanston/Skokie CCSD 65.

IL Teacher, Big Labor Mouthpiece Annice Brave Mounts New Media Blitz (She's Baaack!!)

Big news on the Chicago public education front this week.

First, the Better Government Association (BGA)revealed that 14 Chicago Public School special education teachers went on an all-expense paid trip to a Las Vegas resort and spa for a conference last year. They did this on "report card day" thereby missing what one teacher called "the biggest night for teachers to talk with parents."

The BGA also reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasteful spending by Chicago School Board members including tax dollars spent on champagne costing $125 a bottle; thousands more on limousines, steak lunches and a food and liquor bill from a Soldier Field skybox event that alone cost more than $6,000.

This while the Chicago public school system labors under a $700 million budget shortfall.


While all this was coming out, Big-Labor's favorite school marm, Annice Brave, was back on the Chicago airwaves in a concentrated blitz of paid Teacher's Union ads.

They are feel-good ads designed to assure us that the disinterested, self-sacrificing members of the state's most powerful special interest lobby, are really just concerned with the well being of all the kiddies.

In the 30 second Illinois Education Association (IEA) spots, Ms. Brave cackles that teaching is "not just a job for anyone." She then spouts the standard Education unionist claptrap that "Americans are counting on us to build a great educational system," and that we "need to get teachers to the table if we want real education reform."

Brave, who pulls down almost twice the annual salary of the average family in her economically depressed Alton, Illinois district, was last omnipresent on the Chicago airwaves during the second week of January. Back then, the IEA shelled out $81k a week to put her on the air with a similar sales pitch.

The last media blitz was timed to precede the state legislative vote to hike the Illinois personal income tax.

This one is apparently timed to coincide with the further legislative deliberations on tax and fee hikes, signalled by IL House Speaker, Mike Madigan.

The educational establishment with its wildly extravagant teachers' salaries and pensions, of course, has an interest in increasing the tax burden in a state that is, for all practical purposes, broke.

Annice Brave is right. "Teaching isn't just a job for anyone."

It's a job for high-living, Vegas high-rollers.

Ronald Reagan's Time-Released Gifts: Helene Fischer

U.S. President Ronald Reagan

The lives of Ronald Reagan and Helene Fischer are inextricably intertwined, although it is doubtful that the beautiful young German pop-music star or her millions of European fans are at all aware of it.

In the Autumn of 1984 when Peter and Maria Fischer were attending to the birth of their baby girl in the bleak Siberian Soviet town of Krasnoyarsk they couldn't have imagined the fame and success that would one day befall her. They likely couldn't have even conceived that a landslide election then taking place in the far-off United States would have the effect of opening a world of opportunity and promise to their second born child.


For at the time of Helene Fischer's birth, President Ronald Reagan was wrapping up the campaign that would result in his overwhelming re-election in a 49 state landslide sweep, the greatest electoral rout in American history.

Helene Fischer

The little Fischer family lived in a Siberian "closed city" where residents were not allowed in or out without special state permission. This was, in no small part, to hide the massive and illegal secret Soviet ICBM radar installation at the Krasnoyarsk-26 facility.

The soil of this grim Soviet backwash was saturated in the blood of the hundreds of thousands who perished there, when it was a central point in the murderous Josef Stalin's GULAG system of concentration camps. It was the perfect place for working inmates to death with an average January temperature of 3 degrees F, which has been recorded as low as 63 degrees below zero.

No doubt, many from Helene Fischer's family of ethnic Germans perished in these hellish camps.

The German population in Russia reached 1.8 million at its height in the 1890s.

Then there was a systematic Soviet racial cleansing of these ethnic Germans, first by Lenin in his extermination of kulaks, (successful farmers) and then by Stalin, who characterized them all as 5th column enemies of the state (despite their presence in Russia since the time of Catherine the Great)and forcibly expelled them to labor camps in Siberia and Central Asia.

Helene Fischer as a girl

By 1945 the systemic purge had reduced the ethnic German population to 1 million and only 43% retained their ancestral language. Unlike the New York Times and their other liberal friends and apologists in the US, the Russian Communists weren't into "multiculturalism" and "diversity."


At the time of this little girl's birth, Ronald Reagan was entering the second Presidential term that would effectively bring about the end to the sick Russian communist system. His decisive and bold actions would ultimately, as he promised the British Parliament, relegate Soviet socialism "to the ash heap of human history."

Ronald Reagan was the only American President who had an abiding belief that the US could and would win the cold war over the Soviet communists. The mindset of his predecessors ran the gamut from Harry Truman's desire to "contain" communism to Jimmy Carter's desire to appease it. Ronald Reagan set out to beat it.

And beat it he did. By forging ahead with a massive US arms buildup and modernization program, he put untenable pressures on the Soviets to try and keep pace. With their inherently backwards socialist collectivized farms and state-owned industries, they simply couldn't. Former Soviet Premier Gorbachev has said as much.

On top of his drive to secure technological superiority over the Soviet war machine, Reagan unremittingly and unapologetically professed the superiority of the Western free-market way and the bankruptcy of socialism. He told a group of Evangelical Christians in Washington, that the USSR was an "Evil Empire." He called on Soviet Secretary General Gorbachev to "tear down this (Berlin) wall."



The pressures were too much for the bankrupt communist regimes of Eastern Europe and down the wall came.

The little Fischer family, taking advantage of the Reagan-induced end of communism, relocated to their ancestral homeland under the German "law of return," whereby ethnic Germans would be welcomed back from the international German diaspora.

The Fischers began to thrive in their new home in the Rhineland-Palitinate. Their stunningly beautiful daughter, Helene, whose birth corresponded with Ronald Reagan's ascendence, went on to study drama and music at the Frankfurt Stage & Musical School. She then made her professional debut on the stages of the State Theatre of Darmstadt and the National Theatre in Frankfurt.

On a whim, her mother Maria secretly recorded Helene singing six songs of the easy listening, volksmuzik genre and gave the CD to a recording executive.

Helene Fischer subsequently was signed to a recording contract and skyrocketed to the top of the pop or "Schlager" music charts throughout Central Europe and Scandanavia.

And her career is just beginning with her first attempts to crack the English-speaking markets in the US, UK, Canada and Australia now within sight.

And Helene Fischer owes it all to Ronald Reagan -- the greatest leader of the Western world in our lifetime -- who refused to conceed the inevitability of hundreds of millions of humans throughout the world being stripped of their basic dignity and the chance to fulfill their God-given potentialities by a medieval serfdom imposed on them by their socialist masters.

Helene Fischer is one of Ronald Reagan's time released gifts. And there are many more that can be seen here in the US and elsewhere and many more who will continue to emerge as once-hidden gems -- people who Ronald Reagan liberated.

These are the people, worldwide who have the greatest cause to celebrate this, the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth in Tampico, Illinois.

And Ronald Reagan would be proud of Helene Fischer and of all of them: his time-released gifts to the world.

Here is Helene Fischer singing a German language version of Ave Maria:




For more information about and more videos of Helene Fischer go to the Chicago Schlager Music Review.</

Kucinich Sues Congressional Cafeteria Over Stray Olive Pit

I spent quite a few years eating lunch almost daily in the Longworth House of Representatives cafeteria and never suffered anything more serious than occasional dispepsia or perhaps a bit of weight gain from its fatty Southern cooking.

I must have really dodged a bullet since news now comes that the ultra-liberal Democrat Congressman and former fringe Presidential candidate from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich recently suffered a major tragedy in that very place.

Seems he bit down on a sandwich and encountered an olive pit. This caused him great consternation and serious damages for which he is suing the Congressional cafeteria in the amount of $150,000.

Read all about it in this little Capitol Hill newspaper.

Being a liberal and quite in bed with the personal injury bar he surely had no problem whatever finding a friendly and hungry ambulance chaser to take up his cause.

And it seems this tragedy has so disfigured the Honorable gentleman from Ohio that his appearance now matches his long-time appellation: "Dennis The Menace."

Congratulations Cheeseheads: Green Bay Packers 21 - Chicago Bears 14

How did they ever win?

The 2010 "Kars 4 Kidz Awards": Chicago's Worst Radio Commercials

Marketing mavens have long been saying that radio is the most intimate of mediums and they're probably right. Radio approaches you thru only one of the senses. It usually approaches you when you are in a captive situation -- in a car or with little electronic devices attached to your head. It gets up with you in the morning and even follows you into the shower.

And since radio is so intimate, when it heaves up something really seriously awful, it becomes a really serious insult -- an unwanted invasion of personal space. I think that's why bad radio commercials are so infuriating.

I actually hit the station change button every time that hideous "Kars 4 Kidz" commercial pollutes the airwaves. There have been a lot of really bad commercials on the radio over the past year. But try as I might, I could find no comprehensive list of the worst ads, so as a public service, the Chicago Lampoon has compiled one.

I have named the list in honor of the "Kars 4 Kidz" jingle. Despite the fact that it still regularly spews forth, it is not included on the list itself since it is so far and above the run of the mill bad radio commercials, that it is in an entire class of its own.

In ascending order here are my picks for worst radio ads of 2010:

#4. Roma's Stomach Bug ads for Natren's Healthy Trinity

In these, WLS morning drive co-host, Roma, plucks out some health item from that day's news -- such as an outbreak of dysentary in Indonesia -- and tells you how you can avoid things like the perils of dysentary if you just take some of Natren's biotic stomach bugs every morning. Over the Christmas holiday, Roma delivered these messages in conjunction with a very odd sounding elf character.

I find Roma's voice annoying, the odd sounding elf's voice very annoying and the thought of ingesting these weird stomach bugs extremely annoying. These messages have now expanded beyond the morning Don Wade & Roma program and now annoy throughout the day on WLS.

#3. Smarmy Scott Lee Cohen's Job Fairs

For reasons no one quite understands, Chicago pawn broker Scott Lee Cohen insisted on squandering scads of his money running for IL governor as an independent. He did this after winning the Democrat primary for Lt. Gov. and then withdrawing in a teary, blubbering news conference after apparently being threatened by Democrat chieftain, Mike Madigan.

In his second run he ran the very same ad he ran in the first round, wherein his smarmy marshmallow tones instructed us that all the state's employment problems would be solved by his gimmicky "job fairs." The very same ad ran so frequently over a period of at least 5 months that by October, most listeners could mouth the meaningless drivel along with him word-for-word.

#2 McDonald's Coffee Slurping

Most children from civilized backgrounds are taught by their mothers at an early age that it is impolite to make slurping sounds when ingesting liquids. As such it is considered rude to do so. It offends most people. That is why the 3 Stooges used to noisily slurp their soup. It was so obnoxious and uncouth, it was funny.

The people at McDonald's ad agency must have been raised with wolves as surrogate parents in the wild, because they seem to think that slurping coffee sounds are just what their clientle wants to hear. As such they have run two radio ads with people noisily slurping their coffee. It drives me nuts.

But, come to think of it, coffee slurping is probably standard table etiquette for your basic McDonald's customer.

#1. Your Mother Just Got Run Over by a Car -- Dignity Memorial Providers

The winner of the 2010 "Kars 4 Kidz" award for worst Chicago radio ad goes, hands down, to Dignity Memorial Providers for their "Your Mother's Dead" offering.

On more than one bright morning I have rolled out of bed, full of energy, ready to optimistically take on the day, only to be felled by this total downer of a commercial.

A somber spokesman for the ghouls over at Dignity Memorial -- a corporate consortium of funeral homes, crematoria and cemetaries -- depicts a scenario where your father calls you to tell you your mother was run over by a car while on vacation and is now, quite dead.

"You wonder if you've ever really seen your father cry," the ghoulish spokesman intones.

Then you are told to trust the caring folks at Dignity Memorial Inc. to take care of all your future mortuary, burial or cremation needs. This radio ad was so collosally, depressingly bad, that I frantically went down the AM dial desperately looking for something, anything a bit more uplifting to cheer me up.

All I could find was that lousy Kars 4 Kidz jingle.

FDR's War on Homosexuals in The Military: Trolling For Queers as Navy Secretary

"The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is an important step in America’s march toward justice. Our country has moved past the prejudices of the past."
Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat-IL)

“This is a landmark day in the history of the United States of America. Today, we finally ended this damaging, discriminatory policy.”
Cong. Jan Schakowsky (Democrat-IL)

Illinois Democrats were positively giddy with the news that the lame duck Congress on December 22, scrapped the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which limited overt homosexuals' involvement with the U.S. military.

In the future, the U.S. military will embrace the same acceptance of homosexuality as the armed forces of such other, more enlightened superpowers as Holland and Belgium.

Democrats pointed with pride to their trailblazing on this matter and heaped scorn on benighted Republican bigots like John McCain who tried to block the march of historical progress.

Yet it is a little known fact that that icon of Democrat progressivism (to whom Obama himself is often compared) Franklin D. Roosevelt, actually tried to entrap homosexuals in the U.S. Navy in a scandalous affair that almost wrecked his political career.

Here, from page 48 of the excellent 2006 biography of FDR's early career, "The Defining Moment," by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter is an account of what came to be known as the "Newport Scandal":

"The problem was what came to be known as "the Newport Scandal." In 1919, while Navy Secretary Daniels was in Europe, (Assistant Navy Secretary) FDR apparently signed off on an undercover investigation in which enlisted men were engaged by a secret Navy unit to entrap homosexuals around the Newport, Rhode Island, naval base, where complaints had surfaced of widespread solicitation.


"Astonishingly, these enlisted men were actually ordered to perform oral sex on suspected homosexuals in the Navy and others in their circle including a prominent clergyman. After the Providence Journal broke the story of "vicious practices in the U.S. Navy," Roosevelt, claiming memory lapses about the whole thing, said in a May 1921 hearing that he couldn't remember approving the operation and, more plausibly, that he had not known the graphic details of what would actually be done to crack down on homosexuality in the ranks.

"A Congressional committee found that Roosevelt was either a knave or a fool, a moral reprobate or totally incompetent -- he had either known of and approved "the most deplorable, disgraceful and unnatural" activities or "he did not inquire and was not informed" in which case "he was most derelict in the performance of his duty." The report concluded that a man of Roosevelt's intelligence must have known of the activities of the unit performing the sexual entrapment.

"The July 20, 1921, New York Times carried a front page story about the former vice-presidential candidate in which the scandal was laid directly at his feet:

"LAY NAVY SCANDAL TO F.D. ROOSEVELT
SENATE NAVAL SUBCOMMITEE
ACCUSES HIM AND DANIELS
IN NEWPOERT INQUIRY
DETAILS UNPRINTABLE.

"The "unprintable" details quickly circulated in Washington, but because reporters were more interested in the new Harding administration than in the old Wilson crowd, the story faded."


So now, not only can the Democrat party point to its historical legacy of support for slavery, Jim Crow segregation and internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, but it can point with pride to its legacy of hard-core queer bashing.

I wonder if Jan Schakowsky will bring this up next year when she goes sashaying down Halsted Avenue, hand-in-hand with some campy drag queen during the annual Chicago gay pride parade?

IL Teachers Union Blitzes Chgo. Airwaves Before Tax Hike Vote

"When schoolchildren are allowed to vote, then I'll begin looking after the interests of schoolchildren. Until then, I'm representing the interests of my membership." Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of Teachers

You couldn't listen to Chicago radio last week without hearing Annice Brave. She is the small-town schoolmarmish sounding woman who was shilling for the powerful IEA teachers' union. She was everywhere up and down the dial, every fifteen minutes or so on some stations.

She was propounding the IEA's line that they're only about improving the quality of education for the children. The IEA, according to informed industry sources, dropped $81k in radio buys for this message last week in the Chicago market alone.

This, of course, was timed by the media sharpies in the IEA's propaganda bureau to precede the state legislature's vote to massively increase personal and corporate taxes.

Listen to a recording of the ad here.

The wide dispersal of that feel good message was undoubtedly prompted, in no small part, by a recent Rasmussen poll which showed that taxpayers are getting fed up with the bloated salaries and pensions of government employees, including teachers.

According to Jack Roeser, the founder of the Family Taxpayers Foundation, a full 80% of all educational funds are channeled directly into teachers' salaries and pensions. The kids get the crumbs that fall to the floor from the Big-Education smorgasboard.


But that doesn't stop the Big Teachers Unions from playing on the heartstrings of an unwary public with the lament that "it's all about the kiddies."

And these salaries and pensions, for which school-marm Annice Brave was huckstering are not insubstantial. An astounding number of Illinois public school teachers and administrators are pulling down $200k + and $100k + per year for their 9 month jobs.

Get an eyeful of the top paid IL unionized teachers by clicking on the tab "Top 200 teachers salaries" here.

Astoundingly, the top 2 moneymakers in the government education establishment are pulling down in excess of $600k a year!


And the IEA is calling on the taxpayers to pony up even more cash. At a time of near depression-levels of unemployment this strikes many as unconscionable.

Take, for instance, the school-marmish sounding shill, Ms. Brave.

Annice Brave, a high school English teacher, pulls down $70k a year for her 9 month job. That is some pretty heavy cash in a downstate backwash like Alton, where the median income of the families who pay Brave's salary is $36k a year and the median home sells for a paltry $81k.

In fact Ms. Brave's union salary puts her in the veritable economic elite in economically depressed Alton, which has seen 5.6% of its jobs disappear over the past 8 years and where a full 13% of those who remain are unemployed. (Stats are from Zoomprospector Business analytics.)

Yet, the Big Labor honchos of the IEA (and AFT) agitate to squeeze more and more cash from an already wildly overburdened Illinois public.

Reminds me a lot of the old Dennis Moore bit from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In it, Dennis Moore was a reverse Robin Hood who ended up stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

The last strains of the stirring Dennis Moore anthem went:

Dennis Moore,
Dennis Moore,
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.

Dying WGN Radio Resorts To Leftist Cheap Shot Artistry: Look Out WCPT

I was only listening to WGN Radio on a Sunday afternoon because WFMT was playing some aphonic modern Slavic stuff and the better AM stations were clogged with sports coverage. After the Wisconsin Badgers football season is over, I have no interest in that.

So now I find that WGN, which now touts a laughably low 23rd place rating on the December mobile Arbitron scores, seems to have decided to bolster its market share by shooting for some of the crumbs of listenership held by the Pravda-like, radical leftist, Air America remnant, WCPT.

They most recently did this last Sunday afternoon with some odd audial abomination called the “Alex and Amy Show.”

This features two WGN neophytes named Alex Quigley and Amy Guth.

Combined they boast no experience in serious public policy analysis, but that hasn't seemed to stop them from playing journalistic blowhards on WGN's megawattage.

Quigley is a person who has no business whatever of being in this position. According to renowned Chicago media critic, Robert Feder, his only recent on-air experience consists of having been a promotional shill for what Feder called, “The Tribune's infomercial for its blog network.”

Prior to this, Quigley was a wannabe.

At the University of Illinois, he was a wannabe jock who spent his time on campus as the ball boy and tee carrier for the punters and place kickers.

He may have spent time with the real jocks in the showers, as well – male bonding – you know.

And then he spent time as a wannabe Grease Man or Howard Stern, playing a blissfully ignorant, fat and happy, record-spinning, cool-dude, shock jock on various FM stations.

Now he has decided that he wants to become a serious commentator on matters of serious public polity.

WGN radio, in its ratings death throes seems to have said, “Why the hell not?”

So this jockish shower room towel snapper now has access to 32 states on the WGN radio airwaves each Sunday afternoon.

His general level of intellectual intake seems to extend no further than the 7.5 column inches of the daily AP copy in the Tribune's “RedEye.” giveaway newspaper for dummies. Or the e-mail talking points that he most assuredly gets from the Daily Kos and Move-On.Org hatemongers.

This would be a matter of no consequence, save for what this clown did last Sunday.

Less than 24 hours after the smoke from the gunpowder had cleared the air in Tuscon, AZ – after the murder of 6 fellow humans – this lamebrain, Alex Quigley was on the air blaming the tragic event on ….......... SARAH PALIN!!!!!

YIKES!!!

He was also blaming it on all conservative talk radio hosts and conservative elected officials and anyone else who may have ever expressed an opinion outside of the realm of that approved by leftist-liberal orthodoxy.

When I heard this I was shocked.

My response to the murders was, after all, what any natural and decent American felt. We were still grieving over these events.

Comrade Quigley was politicizing them.

And then in Orwellian style, he wantonly asserted that people who didn't agree with Obama had dangerously “politicized” the public discourse.

He began an on-air diatribe blaming the event on the “climate of hate” created by Sarah Palin and other conservatives – mostly radio personalities.

A dispassionate analysis of fact played no role here. Quigley blithely impugned the character of an entire class of Americans and implied their complicity in the acts of a crazed gunman. We learned, however, on Tuesday from friends of the gunman that he was either apolitical or leftist in orientation, never listened to conservative talk radio and certainly had no respect for the views of Ms. Palin.

But, Quigley, not one to worry his block head with trifles like facts, plowed right ahead with his MoveOn.org talking point-induced, blood libel against Palin – who was probably out innocently shooting moose and peering at the coastline of Russia when the events in Arizona were going down

The previous Sunday, this quasi-educated clown, Quigley, displayed his cheap-shot radical-liberal inclinations by running an on-air multiple choice contest, for which he awarded Tribune Corporation subsidized prizes to the winners.

One of the questions mocked Governor Palin.

Another mocked conservative talk show hosts.

What is most disturbing is that this may represent a growing leftward trend in WGN radio policy.

With its ratings tanking to unprecedented lows, WGN veep Tom Langmyer has fired its lone libertarian-conservative voice, Jerry Agar, (a serious man who is an analyst for the Illinois Public Policy Institute), inserted the trite “Alex and Amy” in his old timeslot and appointed this knee-jerk lefty goofus, Quigley, as “assistant program director.”

One hopes that that this title is a function of a cheapskate radio organization handing out meaningless titles in lieu of cash.

It had better be.

And one other thing, Alex Quigley.

Mark Levin, a nationally syndicated talk show host on the # 1 Chicago AM station, WLS, and a former attorney in the Reagan Justice Department said that he will sue any radio talker who accuses him of being complicit in the Arizona murders ---just as you did last week with regard to Sarah Palin and conservatives in general.

Levin said that he will sue any such lefty talker and his parent organizations. He will depose them, not settle out of court and expose them for the frauds that they are.

So hey, smart guy, Quigley.

Just dare to cast the same foul aspersions on Levin as you did on Palin and other conservatives last week.

I'd love to see your big fat Illini ass squirming on the docket.

But you won't dare, will you, wannabe jock-boy?

1/11/11: Today is an Evil, Ominous Day

Frankly, I had forgotten that today was 1/1/11. Normally I don't ascribe any importance to numbers or numerology. Certainly not like the superstitious John Lennon who had a thing for the number 9. Remember the recorded gibberish that he and his ridiculous wife, Yoko Ono, heaved up for the White album: Revolution #9? And later Lennon entitled a chimerical entry on the Walls and Bridges album #9 Dream.

I really don't know what that was all about.

I do know that 7/7/77 -- supposedly a lucky day, was one of the crappiest days of my life since I was unceremoniously canned from a political campaign job that day by a lying, cheating, dirty, no good, lowdown politician who later ended up in the U.S. Congress.

8/8/88? Don't remember it.

9/9/99? Don't remember it.

10/10/10? Don't remember it.

So now it is 1/11/11 and I hear from very reliable conspiracy theorists that this is an evil ominous day in numerological terms that has strong connections to the events of September 11, 2001, al Quieda and the Masons.

Just get a load of these evil, ominous facts:

World Trade Center Connections to the Number 11:

* The date of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11.

* Each building had 110 stories.

* After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the year.

* September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.

* 119 is the area code for Iraq/Iran. 1 + 1 + 9 = 11, 911 - 119 are opposites - enemies?
11 11 polarity.

* Twin Towers - standing side by side, looks like the number 11.

* The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11.

* State of New York - The 11th State added to the Union.

* "New York City" has 11 letters.

* "Afghanistan" - 11 letters.

* "The Pentagon" - 11 letters.

* "Ramzi Yousef" - 11 letters (convicted of orchestrating the attack on the WTC in 1993).

* Flight 11 - 92 on board - 9 + 2 = 11.

* Flight 11 had 11 crew members onboard.

* Flight 77 - 65 on board - 6 + 5 = 11.


So there you have it.

This is all way too much for me to cognitively digest. So I'm just going to have to crawl off back to bed and cradle a bottle of Cutty Sark under the covers and cower until a more auspicious date.

Wake me up when it's 11/12/11.

1933 Chicago World's Fair: Dwarfs, Strippers and Beer for Breakfast

One of the local Chicago AM stations recently conducted a radio facsimile of "Antiques Road Show." They had a local expert antiquarian fielding phone calls from people who described their suspected treasures and she would either encourage them or burst their bubbles with her sight-unseen appraisals.

One caller inquired as the the value of various mementos from the 1933 Chicago "Century of Progress" World's Fair that she had inherited.

The appraiser told her that she often got that question. It seems, she said, that half the population of Chicago and the Greater Midwest has such artifacts squirreled away in basement boxes or attic trunks.

As there is just so damned much of it, she said, they are essentially worthless.

My little sister salvaged just such stuff from the de-consolidation of our grandparents' old house. She thought the aging depression-era lapel pins, yellowing postcards and viewmaster slides might eventually have some value. At the very least, she thought it was cool old stuff.

It conjured up to me, visions of our grandparents donning their Sunday best finery and cranking up their old Ford to travel down to the South side (the site of the current McCormick Place and Burnham Park) to take in a grand event in Chicago's wonderful past.

It was, after all, an event designed to celebrate Chicago's centennial. A century of industrial innovation and cultural growth. It showcased the futuristic Zephyr locomotive, the 1933 Pierce Silver Arrow luxury car whose advertising shouted, "Suddenly Its 1940!" and an exhibition of the newfangled pediatric incubators complete with real babies.

But according to the 1994 biography of Pulitzer winning author, Ross Lockridge Jr. (Shade of the Raintree, Viking Press) the experience may have been a little different than I envisioned.

According to the account, Lockridge, then a valedictory level student at Indiana University, lit out in June 1933, with a friend from his home in rural Indiana for the bright lights of the grand Chicago "Century of Progress" World's fair.

Here is the account:

"Through a friend, they arranged for a ride on a flatbed chicken truck. Since there was no room in the cab, they rode on top of seven layers of crates full of chickens. They held on to the ropes for dear life and endured the stench for ten sleepless hours overnight all the way to Chicago. The drivers took them in the early morning to a cafe across from the warehouse, where the waiter asked them if they wanted beer for breakfast.

"Not wishing to be thought a country jake, Ross cooly said yes. The two were served and ex-YPB (Young Peoples' Branch of the Womans' Christian Temperance Union) Secretary Ross Lockridge swilled his down with nonchalance, while ex YPB President Malcolm Correll found the going tough, almost gagging. From there they sacked out drunkenly at the World Book Company Headquarters, prearranged by Ross' dad.

"At the fair, their first stop was the Streets of Paris exhibit, advertised with a good deal of showgirl semi-nudity. They then went to Ripley's Believe It or Not, hardly in keeping with the "Century of Progress" motif, where they saw pygmies, giants, two-headed calves, a man who held up weights by slits in his nipples,and another who stuck hundreds of pins in his flesh.

"They then left the fair for the Rialto burlesque house where they watched bare-breasted women on hollow pedestals singing Neapolitan love songs.

"Four days later they rode home under a blistering sun on the same accursed chicken truck. Deadpan, he told his parents, We've seen some buildings that are higher than our barn."

"They had spent nine dollars each."

Gerry Rafferty Dies. Comments on Chicago Mayoral Race

The 70s Scottish pop singer Gerry Rafferty died yesterday at age 63. He went the same way as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jim Morrison, reportedly succumbing to a necrotic liver -- as good a way as any to go, I suppose. He was best known for his melancholy hit, "Baker Street," -- that of the famous saxaphone riffs -- and "Stuck in the Middle With You."

I doubt he intended it, but being a political junkie of long standing, I always ascribed political subcontexts to the latter song's lyrics: "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am: Stuck in the middle with you."

It perfectly sums up my view of the miserable field of candidates offered to Chicago voters in the upcoming election.

See the accompanying candidate photo spread: clown Mosely-Braun to the left, joker Rahm Emanuel to the right and stuck in the middle with a vaguely acceptable Gary Chico (below.)

Pitiful, isn't it?

"Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party": Coming Soon

"Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?"

-----Simon and Garfunkle

I usually agree with most of the gripes about Chicago that are aired on the Why I Think Chicago Sucks blog.

But one that repeatedly mystifies me is the complaint that Chicago's art scene is a veritable backwash compared to that of sophisticated New York City.

True, Chicago generally gets first run Broadway plays a few years after they have proven their mettle in the Big Apple. They belatedly crop up at downtown Chicago venues, touted as having "The Original Broadway Cast."

In fact, the cast usually consists of so many second stringers and former understudies as to have about the same resemblance to the genuine item as the Class A Daytona Cubs have to the crew that takes the field at Clark and Addison.

But beyond that, I don't see how Chicago is missing out on much of anything.

Here from the theatrical listings section of a recent New York magazine are a few of the offerings to which we Midwestern rubes are being denied:

--- Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party
The Acorn Theater, 410 42nd St., A culture-wars satire set in a small Illinois town that addresses some important issues. $51.25

--- Puppetry of the Penis 45 Bleeker: The Green Room, 45 Bleeker St., The outrageous show that puts the male genitalia front and center thanks to the ancient Australian aboriginal art of genital oragami. $49.50

--- 30 Half-Nekkid Plays in 60 Half-Nekkid Minutes, Kraine Theater, 85 E. 4th St., The Neo-Futurists perform a special, semi-nude version of their trademark show, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, in which they attempt to perform 30 plays in an hour or less. (Attn, exhibitionists: Immediately following Friday's performance, you can join the troupe as they "half-streak" across 14th St. on a midnight run from the East River to the Hudson.)
$11-$16

--- New York International Fringe Festival, Various locations. Now in its 14th year, the festival features 5,000 performers in 200 shows at 20 venues. Some of this year's more memorable titles include, Picking Palin, Pope! and Love in the Time of Swine Flu
. $15-$18

What I'm sure most angers the New York cognoscenti is the fact that these artistically meritorious offerings must charge hefty admission fees since the Philistines in the Republican controlled Congress haven't the decency to shower them with taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sort of a taxpayer-subsidized golden shower, you might say.

Perhaps the Wicker Park artistic sophisticates can lure these theatric gems to Chicago by persuading Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn to give them Illinois Arts Council monies.

Sure, the State may be broke, but certainly he can always float another bond-offering for such worthy and uplifting expressions of the human spirit.

After all, hasn't Australian aboriginal genital oragami been too long absent from the Chicago artistic scene?

And Lincoln was an Illinois figure. Shouldn't be we the ones hosting his big gay dance party?