Castro to Cubans -- Get Ready to Drip Dry!!

Last week, Reuters reported that Raul Castro, Cuba's Brother-in-Chief, announced that due to "planning oversights", Cuba was running out of toilet paper and likely would not have any more until the beginning of 2010.

I am not making this up.

(See:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090807/lf_nm_life/us_cuba_crisis_toiletpaper_1)

Obviously being a function of the hellish U.S. trade embargo, this, of course, provoked an uproar amongst enlightened American humanitarians and led for calls for Obama to take immediate action to ensure the aridity of Cuban arses.

The stripling Commander in Chief showed no hesitation and immediately appointed a reknowned expert on anal hygiene, Mr. Lazlo Butz, (B.S., Harvard, 1969) to become America's first hemispheric anal hygiene Czar.

In a Washington news conference, the President introduced Butz as a man "who will get to the bottom of this pressing problem."

Butz, an SDS organizer in the 60's, called for solidarity with "our socialist Cuban allies," and hinted that the Kimberly-Clark corporation may have to be nationalized to provide the island state with sufficient quantites of the hygienic paper product.

"A clean, soft wipe is a human right," Butz said.

Also at the news conference was the acknowleged Congressional expert on matters anal, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA.)

"We've got to put clean pores before profits," he said, predicting the Kimberly-Clark nationalization would be on a fast track in the next session of Congress.

Also at the event was Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Chicago-based, modestly named, People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH.)

Injecting the requisite anti-white bashing to the event, he said the Cuban toilet paper shortage was a natural result of centuries of white oppression of Caribbean peoples of color.

Asked by a Washington Times reporter how this could be, given that the errant state planners, Fidel and Raoul Castro, were lily white Castilian Spanish purebloods, Jackson responded:

"If you cannot wipe
The smell will be ripe.

If you must drip-dry
You will attact the fly."

With that, White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, immediately cut off questions and told reporters he would have details of Obama's $3.2 billion hemispheric toilet paper stimulus plan available to the press and Congress several hours before the scheduled vote next week.

Abortion Remorse in "Last Chance Harvey"

Wonder of wonders, a current hit movie makes a subtle anti-abortion statement.

How did this slip by the liberal Hollywood thought controllers?

The film is "Last Chance Harvey," a thoroughly delightful and uplifting story of an August-December romance between Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.

The anti-abortion sentiment is expressed quite briefly, and don't expect Roger Ebert or Richard Roeper to even make note of it, but it is in there, plain as day.

In a scene where the protagonists are talking, heart to heart, getting to know each other better, Emma Thompson's mood changes abruptly.

"You just became sad," Hoffman says. "Why?"

"I was thinking about my days as a college student. I became pregnant. I did away with it. But sometimes I find myself wondering if he or she would have have been funny -- or clever -- or neurotic.

"Stupid of me to get this way, really."

Abortion remorse in a major Hollywood movie -- interesting.

Some speculate that the shift in public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans now opposed to our liberal abortion laws, may be significantly due to the remorse felt by many baby boomer women over abortions that they had during an earlier, less thoughtful, time in their lives.

I doubt the Hollywood moguls would have kept this off the cutting room floor unless they perceived that a profound sentiment, like abortion remorse, was, indeed, in the air.

Interesting.

One lighter thought-- this is the second Dustin Hoffman film I can recall where he suffers from job instability. The other was Kramer vs. Kramer.

He might have avoided the vagaries of the employment market if he had just taken the profound advice profferred to him in The Graduate.

" Your father tells me you're going to be out job hunting soon. I have just one word for you, young man:

Plastics!!"

That Vacuous 60s Counterculture

I recently stumbled into a remarkable little shop on Oakton St. in Skokie. It had the effect of compelling me to recollect on my days as a boy growing up in that vast cultural wasteland known as the 1960s.

The newly opened shop, Selective Memories Resale and Collectables, deals in assorted bric-a-brac, junque, collectibles and objects d'art and is heavy on 60s memorobilia.

It is run by an effusively genial 50 something guy, Dave Zorig, who exudes a genuine love of pop antiquity.

His recently deceased dad, one of the very few American existentialists I have ever heard of (he was reading a volume of Sartre's scribblings when he passed on,) actually invented a primitive version of the rock video in the 60s. The geniuses at the mobbed-up Chicago juke box companies passed on the invention. They said that kids would never want to watch rock musicians perform to their music. This was 15 years before MTV and VH1.

Maybe that kind of foresight explains why Sam "MOMO" Giancana's social club and benevolent society has been in a precipitous decline since about that very time.

So Dave reported to me that he was personal friends with several members of the flash-in-the-pan pop group the Turtles, and gets a lot of their memorobilia to vend.

We began discussing several of their hits from the 1966-67 timeframe and for the rest of the day those Turtle songs kept running thru my head.

There is a name for this phenomena, but I forget what it is. If you doubt it exists, just go to one of the McDonald's that plays tapes of oldies music and tell me that for the next 24 hours your brain is not running a non-stop reel of, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

So this got me thinking about the caliber of lyricism that formed the sound track of the antics of that "smartest generation," of the 60s.

Take this gem from the Turtles"



"Eleanor, Gee I think you're swell
And you really do me well
You're my pride and joy etcetera."

"Etcetera!!!???"

Aside from the fact that the only person I ever heard of in the 60s who still used the term "swell," was Judy Garland's little peach, Liza, "Etcetera" as the end of a lyric?

What that says to me is major intellectual and artistic laziness. It also says that the kids who ate this stuff up and plunked down hard cash for the vinyl discs were about as discerning as West Virginia hayseeds.

Can you imagine Cole Porter writing:

"I love Paris in the morning when it drizzles
I love Paris in the evening when it sizzles
I love Paris every moment
Every moment etcetera."

A poll of 60s college students taken at the time found that they rated Bob Dylan as the greatest poet of all time. Move aside Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Who needs Shakespeare's sonnets when you can ponder:

"I don't want to meet your kin
make you spin or do you in."

Paul Simon once expressed irritation that his peers were attributing great profundity to his lyrics and said that could only be because the vast majority of rock lyricists were quasi-literate nincumpoops.

They were and we bought it.

And now the unreconstructed countercultural gnomes of the 60s are tenured professors who dominate our universities and senior executives at our major news organs.

What is more frightening, is that in the incarnation of David Axlerod and Bill Ayres, they have the ear of the young, inexperienced, coffee-complected nincumpoop-in-chief.

Chatting With Walter Cronkite on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

I met Walter Cronkite on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1984. He was 3 years into his unceremoniously enforced retirement and was living out in that beautiful corner of the world to pursue his love of sailing.

A fellow Chicago native and I were at a little neighborhood gathering there -- one of their famous hard shell crab boils -- and all of a sudden, someone excitedly whispers to us, "there's Walter Cronkite."

For one who grew up with Walter Cronkite's authoratative, grandfatherly presence on the old black and white tv, it was almost like meeting royalty.

My friend and I were 20 something Reaganites at the time and as such, were full of the old ideological piss and vinegar.

So we struck up a conversation with Walter Cronkite on the subject of liberal media bias.

What was amazing was that he took the time and concern to engage us.

He took the CBS corporate line that news reportage and even agenda setting was entirely fair and balanced. He seemed solid in his belief that journalists, irrespective of affiliation, were solid professionals who could and would put their personal views aside.

I brought up the example of ABC news reporter, Geraldo Rivera, who had recently prompted little street urchins in Managua, Nicaragua to throw stones at government tanks so that he could get some good film footage and prove his point that there was widespread support for the communist Sandinistas.

To that, Walter chuckled and said, "Oh that's just Geraldo Rivera, who is he anyway?"

I think Cronkite was so imbued in the Edward R. Murrow school of honest, serious journalism that he was blind to the erosion of journalistic ethics that was then stirring.

I believe that he really believed in honest, ethical reporting and could not bring himself to see that it was going by the wayside.

Much as a mother can see no wrong in her favorite child.

Bernie Goldberg, who was one of Cronkite's much younger colleagues at CBS could see it coming and chronicled it in his 2001 best seller, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News."

But Walter Cronkite came from the old school and I believe he adhered to journalistic ethics in a way that would have made his mentor and fellow WWII war correspondent, Edward R. Murrow proud.

There were real American journalists back then. It was when Americans were serious about themselves and their place in the world.

It was before today's comic news offerings of happy talkers and hair sprayed-dilletantes and Kiran Chetry-styled news readers concerned most with their ample decolletage and hiked-up skirts.

Walter Cronkite was certainly an American original.

I was proud to have had the good fortune and pleasure of meeting this towering American figure.

And that's the way it is. July 19th, 2009.

Obama to GM: Bring Back the Chevy Vega

As everyone knows by now, General Motors has ceased to exist as a privately owned company. Having succumbed to the siren song of free taxpayer bailout money, it's now effectively owned by the UAW and the federal government.

That means that the people who so efficiently deliver your mail are now in the business of providing you with GM automotive offerings.

So it should come as no great surprise that one of the first federal dictates to the once world leader in car production, is to bring back the Chevy Vega.

For those too young to remember the Vega was GM's response to the American consumer's fascination with gas sipping small cars during the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s.

When gas prices soared as a result of the OPEC oil embargo (their response to US backing for its Israeli client during the 1973 Middle East War) GM went right ahead producing it enormous, lumbering gas-guzzlers. US Consumers then began buying small German Volkswagens, and previously unheard of little cars with funny names like Toyota, Datsun, Honda and Mazda.

GM's response to this unforseen development was the Chevy Vega.

It was a small subcompact with a revolutionary new all aluminum engine bloc design. In fact it was so revolutionary, that the engine would not contain the lubricants and flammable fuels that non-revolutionary engines normally contain.

As a result, the Chevy Vega's engines had an unhappy tendency to spontaneously burst on fire.

You could be driving along the Edens Expressway at 55 mph in your Vega and -- poof-- your engine would bust into flame.

Aside from its revolutionary engineering qualities, the Vega was a very ugly car.

It had kind of a pointy front end that reminded one a bit of Groucho Marx's nose. Perhaps this was intended by the GM car designers, because, after all, the Vega was a colossal joke.

It seemed to be available in two principal colors-- puke green and taco sauce burnt orange. This was someone at GM's idea of being hip.

But the Chevy Vega did get very good gas mileage. Of course it's kind of easy to get good gas mileage when your car is always hitched to the back end of a tow truck.

So eventually, things settled down in the Middle East, gas declined a bit in price and GM phased out the Vega and went back to producing its gas guzzling monstrosities.

The only one of my childhood friends to ever buy a Vega was an Italian kid named Jimmy. He knew absolutely nothing about cars and bought one of the ghastly burnt orange models. He is now an attorney for the IRS.

Any day now I expect to hear that he has been transferred to another branch of the federal government to oversee the production lines of the revolutionary new Vega II.

Why not?

And I have an idea for the ad campaign:

The Chevy Vega II
--- A car we can believe in.

And the driver will get into the front seat and just hope that it starts for a change.

If You liked Upchuck Percy, You'll Just Love Mark Kirk

One of the most selfless things that I can ever recall having been done by the usually selfishly self-preserving Members of the US Congress, during my time working there, was done by the great patriot, US Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

When the Republicans took control of the US Senate as a consequence of the Reagan landslide win over Democrat Jimma "the peanut" Carter in 1980, Republicans had to decide who would chair the various Senate committees, with all the power that that entails.

Senator Helms, by virtue of his seniority, had his choice of chairing either the Senate Agriculture Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Customarily, the Agriculture Committee is a choice plum, especially if you come from a highly agricultural state as was Helm's North Carolina, with its heavy concentration of tobacco farmers.

The Foreign Relations Committee is generally considered something of a backwash committee -- very powerful in its impact on the course of the Republic -- but not one whose decisions are highly valued by voters back home.

Senator Helms, after great agonizing, decided to forgo the politically useful Agriculture Committee in order to save the Republic from the dreadful prospect of the Foreign Relations Committee being chaired by the extremely internationalist, Soviet-appeasing, liberal Republican Senator from Kenilworth, Illinois, Charles Percy.

Mark Kirk, a product of Percy's same New Trier Township Republican Organization seems to be walking right in Percy's footsteps.

Kirk was one of only 8 GOP Members of Congress to vote for Obama's wild new "Cap & Trade," taxation scheme.

In a manner reminescent of Percy's frantically desperate run for cover ("I'm sorry -- Now I've got the message") just before his 1984 electoral loss, when Illinois conservatives abandoned Percy in droves as payback for his years of spitting in their faces, Kirk yesterday commandeered the email lists of the Republican organizations in his 10th Congressional district to send out an pathetically lame, poorly drafted, rationale for his apostate support for the Grand High Church of "global warming."

Kirk says that the new Obama tax scheme, which Obama overtly said will raise all electricity and oil costs to US businesses and consumers, is good because it will enable us not to buy oil from Communist Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez.

Oh please!! How gullible does Kirk think Illinois conservatives are?

The Kirk-Obama cap n' trade, Stalinist power grab will cause untold hardship for Americans -- loss of jobs -- a wildly diminished standard of living -- a massive transfer of individual personal liberty to government apparatchicks.

Look for the usual Illinois Republican suspects to be telling you down the road that Kirk may be bad -- but at least he's better than Roland Burris.

I've heard that line once too often.

I did not vote for Upchuck Percy in 1984 and I will under no circumstances vote for liberal goo-brain, Kirk for US Senate in 2010.

Is John Galt Fleeing High Tax Chicago?

I heard the voice of Dagny Taggart on WGN Radio this afternoon.

For the benefit of the literary unwashed, she was the heroine of Ayn Rand's epic tale of libertarian revolt, Atlas Shrugged, wherein the productive people of the world go on strike in response to a government which destroys all productive incentive through taxation and regulation.

The voice I heard was that of a Chicago woman who called in to Gary Meier's radio show. She was in her 40s, at the height of her productive powers and had made definitive plans to move away from Chicago this coming December. She said they were moving to Dallas, Texas because the cost of living was lower, the weather was better and there was no state income tax.

I had been wondering if significant numbers of people were voting with their feet to flee Chicago's culture of high taxation. To my knowledge, no statistics on something this esoteric exist. It is not after all, the kind of story one would expect to find featured in the Chicago newspapers with their built-in incentive toward provincial civic boosterism.

But I have a feeling that there is more of this kind of flight going on than one might suspect.

We have known since a 1994 study by Donald Huddle at Rice University that there is a significant outmigration of native born American citizens, both white and black, from states that have large concentrations of illegal alien settlement. With "sanctuary city" Chicago as the 5th largest destination for illegal alien settlement, some of that has to be going on.

We have seen a major outflux of small businesses from high-tax, high regulation California to relatively low tax, low regulation Colorado and Nevada. But how many businesses have fled high-tax Chicago?

At any rate this caller to Gary Meier had developed a conscious, systematic plan to relocate her family to Dallas, by choice -- not simply due to some occupational imperative. She had set a definitive deadline of December 1st.

As I sit before the keyboard, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and wool sweater on this cold, grey, overcast, Chicago June 30th and contemplate Governor Quinn's machinations to increase the Illinois income tax and wonder if my car will be ticketed at the cash gobbling Chicago parking meter out front and contemplate the latest Cubs' June swoon, I can't say I don't envy that modern day Dagny Taggart radio caller.

One of the happiest summer trips of my life was to visit an old girlfriend in the hill country of Texas near Kerrville on the Guadalupe river.

She had flaming green eyes and the waterfall-studded river was sapphire blue.

The Texas Lampoon? Hmmmm!! Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Michael Jackson, Oscar Wilde, Jerry Lee Lewis and the new Obamaite Weimar Republic

So Michael Jackson died yesterday at age 50.

This is mystifyingly being treated as a matter of great societal import by the ever eager news grubbers at the major network electronic media and the MSN print media.

WOW!

Let's put this in perspective.

First, Michael Jackson was not that great a musical entity.

Let's face it. He never wrote a song or even strummed a simple chord on a guitar. He didn't even play the piano.

He did, however have a nice pre-pubescent adolescent boy voice -- rather like the Viennese castrati of Mozart's time -- and did have a penchant for grabbing his crotch on MTV concoctions.

He made nice pop music, but his greatest success came in the wake of the vapid 70's disco era. The music back then was so appallingly bad that had Michael Jackson not come around, accordian polka music might have moved in to fill the pop cultural void.

Michael Jackson was a pederast and child molester -- make no mistake about it.

He paid $12 million to the family of a young boy with whom he had slept and molested at his "Neverland Ranch." He shelled out that dough to induce them to drop criminal charges against him.

Say he was an "alleged" child molester, if you want, but in Chicago we call that hush money.

This 40+ year old adult male also said publically that "sleeping with a young boy is the kindest thing one can do for him," and that, "Cuddling with young boys is magical."

He also plied his underage sexual victims with wine -- "Jesus juice," he told them.

This guy was weird.

And clearly criminal!!

But he is being exulted by our corrupt, dying news media as an American hero. An international hero.

One African-American female was shown on ABC NEWS saying that this perverto "paved the way for Barack Obama."

YIKES!!!

Let's put this in perspective.

In the timeframe 1854-1900, Oscar Wilde was a literary leading light of the British Empire. Unlike the American negro boy wonder from Gary, Indiana, he was genuinely talented and a genuine genius. An Irish-Anglo poet, playwright and novelist, he gave us some of the greatest literature of the Western cultural experience -- most notably, The Portrait of Dorian Grey and The Importance of Being Ernest.

But quite like the negro boy wonder from Gary, Wilde had a penchant for seducing and raping young boys. He would find them in the poorer quarters of London and ply them with liquor (but his intellection was such he would have never used so pedestrian a term as "Jesus juice) and then he'd bugger them and pay them off to keep quiet.

Sound familiar?

But the British Empire was still sound then-- rather at its apogee.

And Wilde was nabbed for an sexually predatory affair with the college aged son of the 9th Marquess of Queensberry and -- far from being celebrated like our Gary boy wonder, he was sent off to Reading Gaol for 2 years at hard labor.

He was subsequently shunned by British society and slunk off to a well deserved death in obscurity.

Or take the 1950's rock 'n roll pioneering genius, Jerry Lee Lewis.

He dumped his wife to marry his 13 year old 1st cousin -- once removed. (Q: What is the definition of a West Virginia virgin? A: A girl who can outrun her brothers.)

When this came to public light, this genuine rock music genius, who was ranked the #24 top rock artist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, was blacklisted from American radio and the American recording industry.

His descent was swift and marked. He went from playing $10k a night concerts to playing $250 a night gigs in obscure Southern beer joints.

Such was the recrimination of United States society and a coherent American moral code of the USA at its apogee.

But today -- a rank -- and one might say -- rather creepy pederastic character like Michael Jackson is celebrated by the American media elite.

Shall we further put this in perspective?

During the German Weimar Republic of 1918 to 1933, people like Michael Jackson were wildly celebrated.

Against a backdrop of national malaise, wild inflation and economic depression, that peculiar epoch in German history embraced and celebrated rampant prostitution, open homosexuality, kinky sex and transvestitism.

"Life is a Cabaret, old chum." Isn't that what Liza Minelli and Joel Grey sang?

But the Michael Jacksonesque celebratory era ended rather abruptly with the German national elections of 1933 -- with astoundingly tragic consequences.

Something for Americans to contemplate.

I'm very sorry -- but there is nothing funny here.

I'm Getting Into The "Peace Pole" Racket

The 1960s retreads in East Rogers Park are at it again.

As reported in a blog there, "The Rogers Park Bench," Catiana McKay, the lefty divorcee pastor of the lefty United Church of Rogers Park (that crumbling eyesore on the corner of Ashland and Morse) has come out with a sure-fire plan to combat the tsunami of violent crime that infests and infects that hellhole of a neighborhood.

She wants to erect "Peace Poles" all over East Rogers Park.

Speaking during an appearance at her "church" by the racial spoils racketeer and polygamist, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, this odd woman, an ostensible Methodist who strangely lists among her affiliations a membership in the Turkish Muslim Chicago Network, made the peculiar utterance:

"We would like to see Peace Poles all over this community to claim that there is no space for violence here."

That noble sentiment was echoed by one of her board members, Michael Harrington, the inveterate black, gay East Rogers Park goofball, perennial, losing office seeker who's now following in the messiah's footsteps as a self-proclaimed, "community organizer."

Harrington hints that had Ms. McKay's magical Peace Poles been present, they might have warded off the murder of a 16 year old youth (no doubt a CPS honor student) at the Jarvis El stop last December.

The denizens of this rather eccentric Rogers Park church, truly are a mystical lot. More steeped in supernatural romanticism than the religious snake handlers, I think.

Back in the 80s and 90s they sported a huge banner, proclaiming their crumbling edifice and its surroundings a "Nuclear Free Zone."

It must have worked since Gorbachev did not nuke them, so they progressed to a new banner proclaiming that "This Congregation Rejects War."

Kim Jong II and Al Qaeda, take note.

So now they want Peace Poles to ward off the almost weekly gangland shootings in their midst.

I was curious about these Peace Poles and the magical powers that they must contain. I've only ever seen two. One is at the Southern field at Northeastern Illinois University, off of St. Louis Ave, near Foster. In its shadow, at that goofy, leftist, high school with ashtrays, neo-druids seem to conduct various earth-worshipping rituals.

The other was erected across from the Skokie Village Library. It was put up by the left-wing Democrat machine candidate slate there during their last contested election to show their lefty voters how radical chic they are. They won their patronage plums and the Peace Pole remains.

But my crack research staff informs me that this Peace Pole business is quite a racket.

The Peace Pole was invented in 1955 by an alleged Japanese poet, Masahisa Goi, who was bummed out by the destruction of his country as a consequence of the war they started. It is a simple 4-sided pole with the words "May Peace Prevail on Earth," inscribed on each side in a different language.

Too bad Masahisa didn't come up with this little talisman 15 years earlier. We could have erected one at Pearl Harbor to ward off Admiral Hamamoto's bombs. The Chinese, Koreans, Philipinos and the 17 million other Asian victims of the Japanese Holocaust could have used them to ward off Tojo's tanks and Gen. Yamashita's death squads.

But hindsight is 20/20.

So now, under the auspices of an outfit in Wassaic, New York called, The World Peace Prayer Society, 200,000 of these peace poles have supposedly been erected in 180 countries.

As further proof of the essential vacuity of that body, the United Nations has recognized this peace pole prayer outfit at an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under its auspices.

The Prayer Society has also trademarked the phrase, "May Peace Prevail on Earth," and in addition to selling a mind-boggling array of peace poles (all, they say, must be made of ecologically friendly materials, yet they offer a plastic one) they hawk a vast array of peace pole paraphanalia.

At the World Peace Prayer Society's website, one is admonished to "Shop Peace to Spread Peace."

Their site takes Visa, MC and American Express.

There one can simply go hog wild on a peace pole shopping binge. (Many of the items make great stocking stuffers.)

A sample of the Peace Society offerings:

Peace Poles, your choice of 6 different materials, 6' or 8' -- $185
Desktop Peace Pole w/brass plate, 20" -- $40
5 mini Peace Poles 6"-- $15
Peace Pole Heart key rings -- $12
Peace Pole Luggage Tags -- $12
Peace Pole key rings -- $4
Peace Pole patch to sew on your jeans -- $3
Peace Pole Trendy Hoodies -- $45 (Ms. McKay -- these might be ideal for the gang that sells crack at the Morse EL stop)
Peace Pole unisex T shirts --$18
Peace Pole kids T shirts -- $15
Peace Pole Sri Lankan shawls -- $35
Peace Pole tapestry pillow (designed by Anjuli?) --$20
Peace Pole tapestry throw rug -- $50
Peace Pole license plate frame -- $5
Peace Pole refrigerator magnet-- $5
Peace Pole candle --$18
Offered by another firm: Peace Pole Makers USA of Maple City Michigan
Peace Pole apron --$15
Peace Pole Braille plate --$12
Peace Pole baseball cap -- $24.95
Peace Pole rubber stamp-- $15
Peace Pole maintenance kit (varnish and a paintbrush)--$25
Peace Pole sculpture-- $1,800

You have to admit. This Peace Pole business is a swell racket.

I will admit, that I was somewhat sceptical about the efficacy of Ms. McKay's and Mr. Harrington's Peace Pole project. But now I see its possibilities. It can be a great crime fighting tool for East Rogers Park -- we just have to contour the message to the audience,

Consequently, these hard economic times being what they are (I am still waiting for the shovel ready job that Obama promised me) I am announcing my own Chicago Lampoon Line of Peace Pole products.

It is designed to appeal to the very constituency who we most need to embrace the Peace Pole concept and make our claim that there is no space for violence here. These are things the chillun would actually want and use. I mean, really, the boys in the hood aren't going to be caught dead (no pun intended) in a Peace Pole Sri Lankan shawl.

My product line:

Peace Pole Steel Reserve Malt Liquor, 17% alcohol, 40 oz. w Peace Pole logo--$3.89
Peace Pole black trendy hoodies XL, 1XL, 2XL -- $59.95
Peace Pole Cobra Malt Liquor -- 9% alchohol, 40oz w/ Peace Pole Logo --$2.69
Peace Pole Newport Cigarettes, 1 pack -- $12
Peace Pole crack pipe, brass with Peace logo inscribed on all 4 sides-- $18.95
Peace Pole Ammo belt, holds six 45mm clips-- $39.95
Snoop Dog Peace Pole T shirt -- Black with Snoop holding his "Peace Pole"-- $18.95

This is only my preliminary product offering. More products that are bound to be highly popular with the youts of the East Rogers Park area will surely occur to me in the coming days and I will be sure to keep you posted as they become available.

They are sure to go a long way toward moving the wayward youts of our area to embrace in their hearts the time honored maxim, "May Peace Prevail on Earth." (A trademark of the World Peace Prayer Society -- not to be used without express written permission of the owners, WPPS Inc., Wassaic, New York.)

Was it Really Torture?

This was going to be a post on the impending demise of the wonderful free book exchange at the North Park Village Recycling Center. It seems that wonderful all-volunteer institution of long standing is going to be extinguished by Daley's Department of Streets and Sanitation at the end of the month.

Liberal Democrats like Daley and the area's Alderman Margaret Laurino, always make grand pronouncements on the need for voluntary civic involvement, but when given the choice between citizens doing something for themselves and expanding their own bureaucratic powers and payrolls, the latter will inevitably win out -- as is the case here.

But that story can wait a few days.

This is about a book that I just picked up there: "Scars & Stripes" by Eugene B. McDaniel, Capt. USN.

It is a chronicle of his 6 years as a prisoner of war as a guest of the North Vietnamese Communists in the hellish "Hanoi Hilton," POW camp.

It is pertainent today in light of the news story that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the alleged masterminds of the September 11, 2001 Islamo-Fascist mass murders in New York, is saying that he underwent "punishing bouts of interrogation," administered by the CIA.

The ever-blaming-America-Firsters at the ACLU are pursuing legal action on his behalf. They want to open up Bush era documents regarding the interrogation program.

But the murderous Shaikh says that he managed to lie to the CIA despite his "punishing" regimen.

This leads me to believe that it likely was not all that punishing -- not brutal -- not torturous.

It was probably a game of paddy cake compared to the interrogation that Captain "Red"McDaniel and hundreds of other American servicemen in his predicament underwent.

How about this, Shaikh Mohammed?

Were your pants pulled down, while your arms were in irons and were you beaten on the buttocks 70 times with a knotted fan belt until your posterior resembled ground beef?

Were you forced to kneel on a pitted stone floor for as much as 9 hours on end, with your iron manacled hands held up above your head? Were you beaten unmercifully if you lowered your arms from exhaustion?

Shaikh, did these evil American interrogators bind your arms behind your back and attach the ropes to a winch and raise you up off the ground until your shoulders separated and one of your arms broke?

Were you then dropped to the stone floor and kicked repeatedly in the head, groin, stomach and limbs?

Were you sleep deprived for 7 straight days, while all this was going on?

Were you electroshocked repeatedly to the point of unconsciousness, woken up and then shocked repeatedly some more?

Did you endure the aforementioned regimen non-stop for 14 straight days with negligible nourishment virtually no sleep and no medical care?

That, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is what one might call a "punishing bout of interrogation." And it is precisely what the barbarian Vietnamese promulgated on Red McDaniel and their other American POW victims.

I don't think you endured anything nearly like that, Shaikh.

And Americans would do well to keep the truly barbaric torture that our brave servicemen endured at the hands of the Vietnamese and earlier the Red Chinese and Japanese, when the ACLU pea-brained propagandists start bandying about words like torture.

Shaikh Mohammed -- I think that it will emerge that compared to Red McDaniel, you had a day at the beach.

TV -- Good Riddance

Yesterday was the deadline for upgrading my old analog Sony TV to digital.

I didn't do it. I don't intend to.



At least not for now.



A few weeks ago I dropped my supposedly waterproof Sony Sports Walkman in a lake and it stopped working.

So instead of being bombarded with radio talk noise and incessant commercial pronunciementos, I actually was able to take my morning bike ride in relative silence. Heard birds chirping. Heard carp splashing in the river.

Even had a few stray thoughts that were not prompted by some fellow barking into my radio ear buds.

It reminded me that during my junior and senior years of undergrad, I never watched TV and seldom listened to the radio --and they were my most productive and thoughtful (and peaceful)years in school.

Customarily, of late I would listen to the Walkman at night -- Cubs games or Milt Rosenberg or the Savage Nation.

But while the Walkman was drying out and thoroughly afunctional, I actually read a book a night.

I read "The Guns of Navarone," written in 1957 by Alister Maclean.

I saw the movie as a very young boy, in a theatre with my father and sister. It was the top-selling movie of 1961, so we probably saw in in 1962 when it was making the rounds at the 50 cent 2nd tier theatres.

The reason I got this book from a used book exchange, was that I have discovered that the book that begot a film is usually vastly superior to the usually tawdry and overblown interpretation that Hollywood wrings from it.



That was true with this.



Alister Maclean was a no-nonsense Scotsman and he kept sex entirely out of his war novels as a matter of principle. He thought it needlessly distracted from the plot and character development. So there were no women at all in the written version of "The Guns of Navarone."

Hollywood, of course, replaced the male Greek partisan helpers with 2 hot Mediterranean babes, Irene Pappas and the very hot Gia Scala (who regrettably succumbed to drink and killed herself at age 38.)

It has been so long since I saw the film that I can't say definitively that the book was vastly better (all my pre-pubescent recollection offers is Gia Scala's beautifully sculpted and deliciously tanned body) but the book was a genuine page turner.

Another example of a book's superiority to the subsequent film is another 60s era war epic, "Von Ryan's Express." It was written by a WWII vet, David Westheimer in 1964 and became a hit movie the next year.

I had seen the film many times, but found a copy of the book at a used book store and eagerly devoured it. It was superb and far superior to the Hollywood adaptation.

For one thing, the POW camp leader, Col. Joseph Ryan, was a full-bored Irish American but was called Von Ryan by his troops, because of his strict disciplinary standards. Hollywood cast that quintessential Irishman, Frank Sinatra, in the role.

Moreover, in the book, the ending is happy as the POW escapees' train makes it safely to Switzerland.

In the film, Frank is gunned down while running and straining to catch hold of the caboose.

I don't recall if Hollywood injected sex into the film, but I have a feeling that they must have at some point.

One last example of book superiority to film is "The Firm," one of John Grisham's better earlier works. The book was hardly a masterpiece, but was gripping pulp fiction. Had I not read the book, I don't think I would have had a clue as to what Tom Cruise, Jean Tripplehorn and Gene Hackman were up to in the film version -- in and of itself, the film was veritably incomprehensible.

So, I'm going to forgo TV (what a novel idea -- how did our grandparents ever manage to survive?!) read more for a while. I'm not going to really miss "Two and a half men," and "Seinfeld" re-runs all that much.

And I may actually get a little more time for some quiet thought not prompted by mass media noise.

And if I really must find out what the erratic North Side Baseball team is up to, my Walkman has finally dried out and is functional again.

Libertarian Mancow Wants Nanny State to Police His Diet

I sometimes wonder if trendy radio jocks who find employment on conservative talk stations don't just adopt the self-description of being "libertarian" just to safeguard their employment, while not jeopardizing their invitations to A-list, wine and brie soirees on the Gold Coast, in Evanston, and in other trendy leftist circles.

First there was Jay Marvin, the self described, bi-polar, manic depressive talker on WLS-AM a few years back. As the station got progressively more conservative in tone, he began calling himself a "libertarian," while persisting in purveying his unabashed old-line liberal claptrap.

Then there was Jerry Agar, on WLS and now WGN. He genuinely is a libertarian. In fact during his stint in North Carolina, he rubbed shoulders with some acquaintances of mine who run a genuinely libertarian think tank there.

But now there is Erich Mancow Muller, the super jock that WLS recently lured in to fill its 9 to 11 am slot.

I genuinely like Mancow. He's a breath of fresh air after the turgid old schtick of Don Wade and Roma who seem to think that a weekly 30 minute bit on wine tasting makes for good radio. (I'm sure, however, it does generate a goodly number of gratis vintage bottles for the Wade household wine cellar.)

Former disco disc spinner, Wade has a sense of humor that high school sophomores would find embarassingly unsophisticated. Any day now I expect to hear him start laughing uproariously at his own booger and fart jokes. And if I hear Roma's grating voice touting the wonders of "Healthy Trinity" stomach bugs one more time, I think I'll stick a fork through my ear.

So Mancow is exciting by comparison -- even despite having to endure the burden of a woefully miscast, overpaid, news reader sidekick -- Pat Cassidy. Cassidy is at best dead weight to the show, but all too frequently, he begins to fancy himself a serious journalist, id est, liberal journalist and has the effect of stepping on Mancow's lines, creating unneeded tension and basically, upsetting the timing and throwing a wet blanket over the entire production.

But anyway, Mancow calls himself a libertarian.

And in truth, he usually seems pretty true to libertarian ideals. He spoke at the Chicago Tea Party tax protest and afterwards lashed into his on-air guest, Leftist Congressthing, Jan Schakowsky in a way that she has probably never experienced in her life. He actually had you cheering him on.

But yesterday, Mancow interviewed one of those pecksniffity women from the Ralph Nader nutritional group, that every six months or so, crawls out of the Beltway muck to propose some new limitation on our liberty.

This month they're advocating requirements that restaurant chains print complete nutritional information for every dish served.

Aside from the fact that this would cost restaurants a bundle -- likely necessitate an increase in costs to the consumer and probably necessitate the layoffs of some of their illegal alien busboys and cooks -- it is clearly a step down the Naderite road of prohibiting certain food choices.

But "libertarian" Mancow thought this was just great.

Apparently suffering from something of a burgeoning lard butt (perhaps osmotically contracted from daily proximity to Cassidy) and a passion for fast food, he said the government should regulate what he eats, to protect him from himself.

This prompted a regional Libertarian Party spokeswoman to call in and tell Mancow that real libertarians don't plead for government protection and care.

Maybe next, Mancow will want OSHA to come in to the WLS studios and put safety bars around his desk.

He would certainly want to be safeguarded by his government nanny protectors, should he somnalescently fall off his stool while listening to Roma's interminably turgid "Healthy Trinity," commercials.

Free Booze in Wrigleyville and Roscoe Village!

Yes -- I am not making this up!

There is free booze in Wrigleyville and in Roscoe Village.

How do I know this?

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

So they throw everything out.

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

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

But I was just looking for booze.

And I found it.

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

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

It was delightful.

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

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

I transported them back and had a rather happy day.

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

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

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

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

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

Pulllease!!!!

IOC -- are you listening?

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

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

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

Chicago is a bad city.

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

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

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

I hope to do that soon.

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

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

I feel like doing that now.

Chicago is a climactically laughable place.

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

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

---or a stick of TNT.

Evanston's Jorgensen Steel Corp. Being Replaced by Dunkin' Donuts, Car Wash

Jorgensen Steel, with its big stately-looking office and massive production/distribution factory has left Evanston.

Its grand 50's vintage edifice on Oakton St., just east of the MSWRD canal has been demolished.

In its place is emerging three cookie-cutter buildings that will house a car wash, a self-storage operation and a Dunkin' Donuts.

Jorgensen Steel was a grand old building with a red brick and chrome facade on its front office building and a massive, hangar-like industrial operations building in back.

It seemed the kind of place to which Ward Cleaver might go off with his brief case in the morning after kissing June good-bye and admonishing Beaver and Wally to be good. It seemed the kind of place to which Chester A. Riley would dash off in the morning with his lunch bucket.

It was also the kind of industrial facility that provided millions upon millions in tax revenue to Evanston and the State of Illinois over the years.

Under its new ownership, it has moved operations to low-tax, right-to-work (non-union) Texas.

The grand old building has been razed now. While still a perfectly usable, architectural gem, no industrial operator silly enough to move to high-tax, high-regulation Evanston, Illinois could be located, even though the Evanston economic development team scoured the nation's lunatic asylums.

So overwhelmingly Obamaite, Evanston's, last large industrial operation will be replaced by a Dunkin' Donuts.

This is the face of the new American service economy.

Instead of producing steel and aluminium -- the very rock core of hard industrial production -- we will now have jobs serving each other donuts and washing each others cars.

Steel workers could provide a home and education for their families. Dunkin' Donut's workers can make enough to buy new i-pods at Best Buy.

And yet the donut servers and car washers will still show up on Federal statistics as being among the ranks of the employed.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, " Obama squawked at his gala fundraiser in Los Angeles last week.

That is precisely what I'm afraid of.

With China now producing the world's hard industrial goods -- the true bases of real economic wealth -- how long can the US sustain this economic house of cards, which is increasingly based on paper shuffling and hamburger flipping (and massive amounts of consumer debt)? Can we export car washes? How many Dunkin' Donut's chocolate creme filled bismark's can possibly be exported to satisfy the US balance of trade?

This situation is precisely that about which Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan warned in the mid-90s during the NAFTA-GATT debate.

But no one listened.

So, Good bye Jorgensen Steel, with your well-paid factory and white collar jobs, employee health care and solid contribution to US economic economic preeminence.

And Hello Dunkin' Donuts.

How many creams do you want with your frappe?

All We Are Saying: Is Give Proft a Chance

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

I say, "Go for it Dan!"

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

He is the best that we've got.

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

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

One is reminded of the old Beverly Hillbillies skit.

Where did Jethro go to school?

Eaton.

What did he major in there?

Eatin.

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

So why should we back Dan Proft?

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

And he is a man.

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

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

And Fran "Eatin."

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

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

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

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

One funny little point.

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

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

Leave him alone, you silly right wing school marms!

You'd best leave Dan Proft alone.

Car Dealerships Slashed -- Good Riddance!

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

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

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

Rubbish!

These are car salesmen we are talking about here.

I say, Good Riddance!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And thereby screw the consumer.

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

And thereby screw the consumer.

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

And thereby screw the consumer.

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

Maybe some day, I'll meet one.

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

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

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

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

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

The dealership had clearly turned back the odometer.

They had screwed this consumer.

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

These car dealer sharpies never miss a trick.

So I am shedding no tears over their demise.

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

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

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

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

Blame the Gays for Chicago Corruption

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I blame the homosexuals.

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

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

The County Hospital was in a shambles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Todd Stroger's Exercise in Fertility

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

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

Let me explain.

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

It is an exercise in fertility.

Pretty much like the Toddling's vision of government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yea, Todd was spreading it on pretty thick.

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

It's an exercise in fertility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings me to Shi-caw-go.

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

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

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

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

The Intellectually Honest Loathe Chicago's Weather

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

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

Why do people live here?

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

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

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

Yea, like anywhere else in Greater Metropolitan Juneau.

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

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

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

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

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

This is what he had to say about that idea:

Anne Darling,

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


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

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

Happy Mother's Day.

A Welcome Respite From Ron Santo

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

Ron Santo has not been in the broadcast booth.

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

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

Santo is simply annoying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free Booze in West Rogers Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why toss out perfectly good wine?

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

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

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

Highland Park Mulls Pitbull Ban: Girl Mauled

A Highland Park girl needed 100 stitches on her face
 and hands after an attack by a 9 mo. old pitbull

Mayor Michael Belsky of Highland Park today said that he wants the North suburban village to consider a ban on pitbulls.

At first I thought he was talking about the gaggle of Highland Park liberal Democrats who quadriennally vie for municipal office with such a level of ferocity as to rival the bloodiest South Side Friday night dogfights.

Or perhaps the lefty backers of Dan Seals who engaged in all manner of dirty tricks last year. Or perhaps State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg who unveils an 11th hour surprise, dirty trick every campaign accusing his Christian opponent of having ties to the Nazis.

But no, the mayor was talking about the actual pitbull, favored dog breed of drug dealers, junkyard owners and assorted other thugs and bullies.

This was prompted by an incident last Friday, where a 14 year old Highland Park girl was attacked on the face and arms by a neighbor's newly acquired 9 month old pitbull. She will live, but required more than 100 stitches.

My libertarian instincts make me take pause at agreement with inveterate do-gooders and nanny staters like Mayor Belsky, who made it a personal crusade to save Highland Park beachgoers from the horrors of 2nd hand cigarette smoke (as if that's a real problem given the gale-force winds usually howling at Chicago beaches.)

But reluctantly, I have to agree with him on this count.

Having been an owner of sporting-breed dogs for almost a quarter century, I've had numerous run-ins with pitbulls and pitbull owners. They can be real white knuckle experiences.

I have ended up in the emergency room with a gash on my hand acquired while trying to save my dog from a pitbull. It was a successful effort, but my hand required stitches, was swollen for a week due to the blunt force trauma of the pitbull's jawlock on my hand and I still sport a scar there.

I have not been a big fan of that breed ever since.

The kind of people who gravitate toward pitbulls usually leave something to be desired.

Once while walking along the Chicago lakeshore with my dog we happened across a young black guy with a pitbull pup. The guy boasted, " when he gets bigger, my dog's gonna be able to beat the shit out of any dog."

Something told me that this canine-human relationship was not going to work out well.

And indeed they haven't usually worked out all that well.

A few years back the Evanston Animal Shelter, which had boasted of its humane, no-kill policy, finally had to abandon it in light of the profusion of unadoptable fighting pitbulls that it was sheltering. It now euthanizes dogs.

Let's face it. The pit bull terrier was bred for one purpose and one purpose only. Fighting.

It's jaws have almost twice the psi pressure of the next closest breed, the German Shepherd. It has an instinctual drive to clamp its jaws and hold on. And so many druggie types have been backyard breeding them that even its naturally menacing characteristics have been further complicated by in-breeding, often resulting in very erratic and unpredictable behavioral traits.

The death and injury toll of pitbull victims, human, canine and feline -- rises almost monthly.

That's why Great Britain, the State of Ohio and a growing number of municipalities have banned ownership or possession of the breed in one form or another.

And Highland Park would be right in adopting a ban.

IN MEMORIUM PATRICK PEARSE & JACK KEMP

Two notable passings of patriots and champions of freedom on May 3rd.

The first, the death of Patrick Henry Pearse, occured ignominiously, effected by a British firing squad in the courtyard of Dublin's Kilmainham jail on May 3rd of 1916.

The other occured this past Saturday evening as Jack Kemp expired in more sedate circumstances attended by family and friends in his Bethesda, Maryland home.

I met Jack Kemp on the set of a television interview, some years back. His energy and exuberance was palpable, almost infectious.

He exuded genuine excitement while expounding his plans for a major lightening of the tax burden on the American people and the creation of a genuine opportunity society, based on the strictures of Milton Friedman and his collegues of the Chicago School of economics.

To the great amazement of many in Washington and elsewhere he managed to push thru his comprehensive tax abatement plan over the objections of the soon-to-be-felonious, powerful, Chicago Congressman, Dan Rostenkowski.

The Kemp-Roth tax cuts led to one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in American history. It was perhaps his proudest acheivement.

Jack Kemp entered Congress in the class of 1970 along with such notorious characters as Bella Abzug, the hellish, harpie feminist (best remembered for the bigness of her hats, mouth and buttocks) and the absurd, afro-centric, avowed neo-Marxist, Ron Dellums.

Both are little more than curious footnotes in American history, now.

Jack Kemp will be remembered as a towering champion of personal liberty.

Patrick Henry Pearse was the Irish poet, Gaelic scholar-educator, and visionary leader of the abortive 1916 Easter rebellion against the British occupiers.

He was the influential teacher, who numbered among his students, James Joyce. He wrote and orated the stirring Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the steps of the Dublin Post Office, which his rebels, armed more with zeal than effective weaponry, had seized on Easter Monday of 1916.

When the British began indiscriminately bombarding civilian areas of Dublin (they seemed to have had little regard for the notion of collateral damage) Pearse called a halt to the uprising.

He is today commemerated on Irish coinage, in statuary scattered throughout the Irish Republic, in a famous poem by WB Yeats and in song:

The poet and the Irish rebel
The Gaelic scholar and the visionary.
To him we gave no fitting tribute
When Ireland's at peace
only that can be
When Ireland's a nation united and free.

May 3rd: A day for rememberance of two great freedom fighters.
Two great visionaries.