Fast Food Philosophy From Suburban Chicago

Everything you really need to know can be gleaned from the marquees of fast food emporiums.


Philosophic maundering from one of the nicest pizza purveyors in Niles, Illinois:

What my Greek psychiatrist prescribed for my panic attacks:

Why Are U.S. Marines Training in a Chicago Park?

A very odd sight today at high noon in the Chicago Park District's River Park on Foster Avenue.

A group of uniformed Marines from the nearby North Park Reserve Training Center at 3034 W. Foster, dressed in urban camouflage fatigues, were undergoing training exercises in a civilian city park under the hot sun, at noon on a beautiful July Sunday.

First time we've ever seen that.

Under the watchful guard of a Chicago Police Department SUV, about 2 score of the military personnel, from the 2nd Battalion 24th Marine regiment, were engaging in a basic boot camp exercise, running a 100 yard course while carrying a fellow Marine on their back.

This was taking place on a field customarily reserved for softball and more recently, soccer games.

In fact, the Marine exercise seemed to have displaced a regular Latino Sunday soccer game, where more than a hundred recent - probably mostly illegal - Latino aliens would gather, without a park permit. They almost always would set up a food tent and dispense cooked items to the assembled throng -- almost certainly without requisite Chicago food handling permits.

We don't know if this Marine exercise was arranged to thwart the apparently ever-growing assemblages of Latinos who have essentially been taking over River Park.

Or if it is, as Alex Jones contends on his InfoWars website -- a further attempt to acclimate American citizens to ongoing military presence in their communities.

Just last week in downstate Illinois, there was an unexplained and thoroughly unexpected major military show of force on a Livingston, Illinois school ground.

We don't know whether to be grateful that the Marine presence has, for one Sunday at least, thwarted the illegal alien takeover of the stately north side park -- or to be concerned over this as another instance of an attempt to inure free Americans to a growing martial government presence.

Or maybe the Marines were just, as the Chicago Park District advertising slogan suggests, "Coming on out to play."

Black Thugs Prey on Chicago Gay Pride Parade-goers: Event May Be Moved Out Of Boystown

You'd never know it if you relied on the mainstream Chicago news media, but the June 29th Chicago Gay Pride Parade was marred for at least the 2nd year, by violent black thugs violently attacking mostly white parade spectators.

Black Thugs Had a Field Day
Robbing and Beating Pride Parade Watchers

Most of the attacks were by-products of robberies.

We know this thanks to the Inside-Booster publications. A lone remnant of the Lerner chain of neighborhood newspapers, they alone chronicled the violent crime attendant to the event. (July 2nd edition, p.1)

Further, they reported that, due to the black-on-white criminality, the openly gay 44th ward alderman, Tom Tunney, said that he may call for the annual event to be moved out of the heavily gay Lakeview neighborhood and relocated to the loop next year.

Here are the Pride parade-related, violent events chronicled by the Inside Booster community newspaper:

--- A woman was robbed of her bookbag and beaten by three black men and two black women at the corner of Addison and Sheffield. Due to the crush of people, police were unable to get to her at the time. They took her statement at 4:51 am at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. 

Scene From the 2009 Black Pride
Montrose Event - Denied a Permit in '14

--- A man and a woman were struck with bottles and robbed near Broadway and Surf by a group of black men who then fled in a navy blue vehicle. A Chicago Fire Department crew passing at the time of the attack, reported a group of 30 young black men fighting and damaging cars at that corner during the time of the attack.

--- A man was beaten and robbed on the sidewalk at 916 W. Belmont. He was evacuated by ambulance.

--- A man was robbed of his wallet and $100 cash by a black male at 901 W. Belmont

--- A man was beaten and robbed under the Red Line El tracks near Belmont by a black male in his 20s

--- A man was beaten and robbed outside Big & Little's restaurant at 1034 W. Belmont

According to the paper, this was at least the second year in which the Pride festivities were marked by widespread victimization of the largely white attendees by black criminals. In an attempt to avoid this kind of crime, the city this year denied a park permit to organizers of an annual "Black Pride" gathering at nearby Montrose harbor.

But several hundred blacks gathered at Montrose beach rocks for the simultaneous event, despite the lack of a permit. That event was marked by 4 shooting incidents.

Alderman Tom Tunney told WBBM-TV news that he is "evaluating alternative locations for the next year's pride parade. "We hear from our residents that they don't feel safe in their neighborhood...If there is an option to move it downtown, I'm not afraid to look at it," Tunney said.

Real American Poetry By Ellin Anderson: Happy 4th of July 2014

(Editor's note: Nothing could be more appropriate for us to publish this 4th of July holiday, than the work of Ellin Anderson. She is a New England-based poet whose work artistically and eloquently captures the very essence of the America that we know. At a time when the arts are dominated by counter-cultural, usually anti-American, hacks and poseurs, her work is as genuinely refreshing as it is beautiful. We present it here by permission along with an exclusive foreword from the author.)

Foreword by Ellin Anderson

The elegant wineglass elm — “wineglass” referring to its shape — was once a symbol of New England, where I have lived all my life.

In his book, Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (Yale University Press, 2003), Thomas J. Campanella tells us that “…the American elm was something of paramount significance for the people of the United States, and of New England in particular.”

It “was” something of significance, because starting in the 1920s, a beetle-borne disease out of Asia decimated our native elms. New England’s streets, over arched with beautiful colonnades and canopies of elms, and the lone wineglass elm shading cows in a pasture, are no more.

The age of the elm is associated in my mind with civility: a paradox of the period when America still took itself dead seriously.

When our patrician President Teddy Roosevelt (1901–1909) told us to “Speak softly” but “carry a big stick” so as to “go far,” the “big stick” in question was a mighty U.S. Navy, pledged by Roosevelt to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in this hemisphere, and to make us a world power around the globe.

When society was decent and manners were an art, America was brutal, by modern standards, in controlling its southern border. During the aptly named “Border War” (1910–1916), we enlisted General John J. Pershing and the future General George S. Patton to chase Pancho Villa and his posse back to Mexico.

That happened when elms last graced New England in all their glory.

Look at us now.

Look at Mexico. (If you can’t see the Mexican border from your window, just be patient.)

Look at Iraq.

Rudeness and lewdness, transmitted via the mainstream media, are our parasitic beetles. National impotence is a co-morbidity of the diseases they impart.

The little town in Massachusetts where I spent most of my childhood has an “Elm Park” dating to the 19th century.  By the time I was skating there, the elms were long gone, having succumbed to the ghastly bug.

But elms of a new and hardy species were recently planted to replace them. Today I live in northern Vermont, and on the hill where I like to walk, I seem to have found a survivor elm in an old pasture. I have written a poem about it.


THE PLEDGE

By Ellin Anderson

The wineglass elm
Of storied praise
That graced the realm
Of kinder days,

And rose to pledge
An endless toast
At empire’s edge,
Is now a ghost.

But on a day
Before the fall,
I made my way
Past wood and wall,

And from the grass
The pasture wore,
That graceful wineglass
Rose once more.

Vines wrapped the tree
As round a sheaf,
Quite prettily,
With flaming leaf

And pendant from
Its tapered shape,
Hung hue of plum:
The ripened grape.

Could there be mist
In that warm shade?
White vapors kissed
A promenade

Of stateliness
In summer white
Where numberless
As stars at night

Were all the stitches,
Ruffles, pearls,
The handmade riches
Countless girls

Had sewn, by candles,
Patiently,
For rituals
Of courtesy.

As fine as ever,
Nod and bow,
The graces never
Thought of now;

Men tipped straw hats,
And ladies smiled.
White canes, white spats;
Each man, and child

And woman seemed
To walk in bliss;
No dream I’d dreamed
Was quite like this.

What gods held sway
With canes and fans
To rule the day?
Americans

Who lightly stepped,
And softly spoke
Through vigils kept.
More modern folk

Carry a stick
Whose core is rotten;
Weak and sick,
And soon forgotten.

It was late,
The light soon killed.
I could not wait.
The wineglass filled

With sunset’s tranquil
Potency
Against the chill
Come over me.

And home I went
To gather wood
For time well spent
In doing good,

And here’s my thought,
A lesson learned:
The worse the rot,
The sooner burned.

© 2014 by Ellin Anderson. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied or used in any way without written permission from the author.

You can experience more of Ellin Anderson's poetry at her personal sites:

http://www.ellinanderson.com

http://home.earthlink.net/~ellingreeranderson/index.html

General Douglas MacArthur's Tactical Support for FDR's New Deal

One of the most interesting facts to emerge from Mark Perry's fine new autobiography of General Douglas MacArthur (The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur, Basic Books, 2014) is that the conservative Republican General propped up FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as a way of maintaining the structure of the US Army's officer corps.

General Douglas MacArthur

As a way of putting young men to work during the depths of the great depression, FDR's New Dealers conjured up the CCC as a scheme for enlisting them to perform a variety of public work in the nation's forests and open lands.

They would be housed in camps and paid for their efforts.

The enabling legislation for this was passed by Congress in April 1933 but the roll out shortly thereafter was almost as big a bomb as Obama's registry for Obamacare.

Only 100,000 young men signed up during the first two months. (p.8)

Consequently, the New Deal liberals called on the War Department and the Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, to straighten out the mess.

CCC workers in Florida

The left-wingers in FDR's administration had been pushing for ever deeper cuts in US military spending, even to the point of discharging members of the rather small officer corps (this at the time when Adolf Hitler was assuming power in Germany and the Japanese Imperialists were occupying China.)

MacArthur jumped at the chance to manage the CCC. Despite his philosophic contempt for FDR's socialist measures, he saw this as a chance to keep his officers employed and active, until the day that their skills would be required on the battlefield.

In less than a month, MacArthur implemented a program to supply and transport 275,000 new CCC recruits. His officer corps conducted the logistics and training for this little army of conservation workers.

MacArthur rightly viewed his officers as the "seed corn" of national defense. A seed corn, which the shortsighted New Deal leftists had been prepared to consume.(p.9)

Roosevelt's budget planners, grudgingly conceded MacArthur's success with the CCC and refrained from further cutting of the army officer corps, because such cuts would mean cutting their beloved CCC social engineering scheme.

MacArthur's young aide, Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower, was among the first to comprehend the significance of MacArthur's tactical support for the New Deal CCC and acknowledge its brilliance:

"Gen. MacA. finally won the most important phases in his fight against drastic cutting of National Defense," Eisenhower wrote in June 1933, "We will lose no officers or men (at least at this time)and this concession was won because of the great numbers we are using on the Civilian Conservation Corps work and Gen. MacA's skill and determination in the fight." (p.10)

So with war clouds emerging from the European and Asian horizons, the left-wing New Dealer's schemes to gut the American military were thwarted by the perspicacious General Douglas MacArthur.

Ironically, at the time, FDR's New Dealer's were disparaging MacArthur as a "war monger," and tried to cut the military budget at every turn.

After the December 7, 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler's subsequent December 11th declaration of war on the USA, in solidarity with his axis ally, these same lefty New Dealers, would criticize MacArthur for a lack of military preparedness (pps. 16-19)

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Mark Perry's New Biography of General Douglas MacArthur

The recently released biography of General Douglas MacArthur by popular historian, Mark Perry (The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur, 380 pps., Basic Books, 2014) is wonderfully insightful, but also troubling for two reasons.

First, in his afterword, Perry cites an "informal internet poll" that ranked MacArthur the worst American commander ever. Even Benedict Arnold came in only 2nd.

Aside from the shaky value of the cited source, it's possibly a troubling sign of the all-pervasive leftist orthodoxy that has been exerting a stranglehold on American higher education.

That the brilliant architect of the lifesaving WWII "Operation Cartwheel" in the Southwest Pacific, the liberation of the Philippines and the masterstroke Korean War, Inchon invasion, should be considered anything other than the greatest American military commander of  the second half of our nation's existence, would be laughable if it weren't so terribly dangerous.

One can only think that neo-Marxists in academia are still smarting over MacArthur's authoritative and unilateral expulsion of Stalin's subversive Red Army operatives from occupied Japan in 1946.

Second, the book is also a bit troubling for its non-germaine, obviously commercially-driven title.

"The Most Dangerous Man in America" as a description of Douglas MacArthur, was an utterance made by Franklin D. Roosevelt at an informal luncheon in 1932.

The then Democrat presidential nominee was expressing his fear that MacArthur, a celebrated World War I officer, US Army Chief of Staff and well-connected Republican might be the only American on the political landscape able to thwart his electoral ambitions.

MacArthur (L) and FDR (C) had
a love-hate working relationship

The title really has little to do with the autobiographical nature of Perry's wonderfully lucid book. One can only surmise that one of the marketing geniuses at Basic Books figured it was a catchy title that would help books fly off bookstore shelves or Amazon on-line book sites.

This account of MacArthur's life basically takes us from the 1930s prelude to World War II through the September 2, 1945 unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese to MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri.

It's by no means as comprehensive as William Manchester's celebrated 1978 biography, American Caesar, which takes us in great detail from the great General's birth in Milwaukee in 1880 to his 1964 death at West Point.

Consequently, it stops short of several of the signal events in MacArthur's life - his role as Supreme Commander of the occupying forces in Japan (where he, in fact, wrote the Constitution under which Japan still operates), his brilliant Inchon invasion, which saved South Korea from communism and his 1964 deathbed warning to President Lyndon Johnson to avoid a land war in Viet Nam.

But as a riveting account of the intricacies of the Army-Navy rivalries that both plagued and strengthened the US war effort in the Pacific, Perry's account is unrivalled.

And the detailed account of the ambivalent love-hate working relationship between FDR and MacArthur, most of which is derived from first hand accounts of those who were there, is unavailable anywhere else.

In today's toxic Obamaite climate, American exceptionalism is constantly under assault from the elementary school to the university post-graduate level by the thinly-veiled neo-Marxist doctrines of multiculturalism, diversity and critical race theory.

Mark Perry's "The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur," is a very welcome antidote to that and a reminder of American exceptionalism as embodied in one of our greatest American heroes.

Wheaton CUSD 200 Prosecutes 8th Graders for "Obscenity" - Teachers Salaries Listed

(Ed. Note: The complete list of names and salaries for all  teachers and administrators  at all of the schools in the Wheaton CUSD 200 appears at the end of this article.)

There's something kind of fishy about the recent report that Wheaton's Community School District 200 called in the cops to arrest two 14 year old boys for "harassment by electronic communication, transmitting an obscene message and obscenity."

Neophyte Schoolmarm Rachel Fieber-Bednar

First, it's odd that a grammar school principal should call in armed government agents to arrest kids who were not engaged in violent activity.

And second, it's very odd that the government prosecutor, one State's Attorney Robert Berlin wouldn't say what it was all about, because the kids are juveniles.

It's one thing to withhold their names -- but not reveal the particulars of what they are charged with?

He would only say that they weren't taking lewd photos of themselves or other students -- so called "sexting."

The new chief Edison school marm, a former school librarian in her first year as top Edison educrat, one Rachel Bednar, sent a note to parents alleging that some of her wards had posted "inappropriate images involving students and staff" on social media sites."

Bednar then wrote that she worked "diligently, with the authorities and appropriate disciplinary action was taken."

She didn't say that she worked diligently with the parents and the students themselves - just said she dropped a dime to the cops.

Could it be that neophyte Principal Fieber-Bednar didn't know how to handle the "Wheaton Facebook fiasco," herself, so she found it easier to just call in the cops and have the 8th grade kids taken off in irons to the Wheaton hoosegow?

And no one is talking. There's something very fishy about that. There's something very strange going on at CUSD 200's Edison Middle School and until the veil of secrecy is lifted, civil libertarians ought be quite concerned and quite vigilant.

Posted below are the latest available names and salaries for teachers and administrators of the 13 elementary schools, 4 middle schools and 2 high schools of Wheaton Community Unit School District 200.

They were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Family Taxpayers' Foundation.

Most of the salaries are for 9 months of work. For particulars on the individual government employee (years of employment, specialty, etc.), click on the individual's name and the data will appear:

CUSD 200 2012 - Download data
NAME	SALARY
Aagaard, Annie	$42,300
Abdoo, Virginia	$104,482
Abshire, Phillip	$70,957
Adam, Sara	$55,843
Adams, Heather	$81,200
Adkins, Holly	$82,487
Ahrenholz, Nancy	$49,430
Alrich, Cristine	$77,857
Alvis, Katherine	$50,171
Amacher, Kathryn	$81,850
Ambrosio, Trish	$48,878
Anderson, Barbara	$60,762
Anderson, Marc	$85,028
Anderson, Peter	$75,362
Anderson, Rachel	$58,341
Anderson, Timothy	$103,070

Alderman Wants Gang Bangers To Become Bond Traders

There's never been a shortage of inane ideas emanating from Chicago's 50 aldermen, but the 17th Ward's Latasha Thomas has just put herself in the running for a Gold Medal in the Aldermanic Idiot Olympics.

Chicago Alderman Latasha Thomas

On page 10 of the 6/5 edition of the Chicago Reader, the longtime solon from the Auburn-Gresham-Englewood area, said she is worried about all the killings in her ward.

Ms. Thomas says the lack of job opportunities is what's driving young black men to become gun-wielding gang bangers.

So she has vowed to get to the root of the problem -- JOBS.

"My ward desperately needs jobs for these young people," she

So Alderman Latasha Thomas has come up with the solution.

(We are not making this up.)

She has proposed an ordinance to give more work to black firms on city bond deals. "We need to make sure we're giving experience to the next generation of professionals," she blurted.

Ald. Thomas' Future Municipal Bond Traders

Even the Reader's usually forgiving, lefty correspondent, Mike Dumke, was incredulous.

"Is the kid on the corner in Englewood going to get in on the next bond sale, even if your measure passes?" he queried.

"It's something," Thomas said.

We can just hear it now. Gangbanger buddies Jamal and Tyrone walking down an Englewood street discussing the latest city bond offering.

JAMAL: "Did you hear those motherf----ers at Moody's downgraded those new short term offerings to P-3?"

TYRONE: "Aight, deys comin' at us crooked so we goan down there wid oah bangas and check them Moody mofos."

That's right, Alderman Latasha Thompson,

It's something.

Rahm's Readers Take Challange (sic) Become Traslators (sic)

The Chicago Mayor's office in conjunction with the Chicago Public Library system is running a summer kids' book reading program.

Rahm's Readers don't need to know how to spell...

In deference to the hyper-PR conscious mayor, they're using the catchy term "Rahm's Readers" to describe participants in the CPL's summer learning challenge 2014 program.

A big sign in the Sulzer Regional Chicago Public Library urged kids to take the "challange (sic)" to become one of "Rahm's Readers."

Challenge was misspelled on the library's big sign (see photo above)

The hand crafted sign was obviously the work of some fine product of the CPS (affectionately referred to as the Chicago Public Sewer System) schools.

But hey, you don't have to really know how to properly spell English words to succeed in this dumbed-down multicultural and blissfully "diverse" city.

You can always just go to the First Western Tax Service on the 4500 block of North Western Ave. and get a job as a traslator doing Spanish/English "traslations(sic)." That's how it was painted on the sign in the window there (see photo below)

...they can always get jobs as Spanish/English "traslators"

The sign in the obviously Latino-owned shop seemed to have all the Spanish words spelled correctly. Just the "traslations" into English were a bit off.

For instance, Notario Publico became "Public Notary" rather than "Notary Public" in "traslation."

Oh, well, can it really matter? If the Chamber of Commerce cheap labor crony-capitalists and the left-wing Obamaites push through amnesty for illegal aliens, we'll all be communicating in crude hand gestures and pig-Espanol anyway.

Illegal Eats for Illegal Aliens in Chicago's 50th Ward

Not only do Chicago's illegal aliens get a free pass on being here illegally - and working here illegally -- but now they can set up food stands on city sidewalks and sell tacos and burritos here illegally.

Unregulated illegal alien taco stand
at Bernard and Lincoln

At least in Alderwoman Silverstein's 50th ward, they can.

On the public sidewalk, at the corner of Bernard St. and Lincoln Ave, just outside the Home Depot at 6211 Lincoln Ave., an illegal taco stand has been operating, rain or shine, for the past 6 months.

The amigos who sling the salsa there do a brisk business. That's because this North Side Home Depot, like many others, is an impromptu hiring center for illegal alien labor.

A throng of amigos hang out in the parking lot of the Lincoln Ave Home Depot, waiting for some cheap labor pimp to come by and hire them to do jobs Americans won't do at the slave wages these money grubbing, lawbreaking overseers offer.

And the amigos gotta eat, hence the illegal taco stand on the public sidewalk outside the Home Depot.

Ald. Debra "Double Standard"Silverstein

There is no City of Chicago food provider's license on the Tacos De Cabeza cart. I can't imagine that these taco slingers regularly (if ever) wash their hands. Has the food been properly refrigerated and cooked? Who knows. Any rodents or bugs around? Not a clue. Anyone collecting and reporting sales taxes here? Not on your life.

But those are worries for the taxpaying, law-abiding, gringo chumps. Because this is "Sanctuary City" Chicago. And as far as the illegal alien horde is concerned, "Laws. Laws? We don't need no stinkin' laws."

And why should they worry?

 Leftist Democrat pols like 50th Ward Alderman Debra Silverstein and her husband, State Sen. Ira Silverstein have given them de-facto amnesty for all American laws broken -- past or future. Kind of a catch-all "Dream Act" for Chicago's illegal aliens.

Hinsdale High Neo-Fascists Suspend Kid for Gun T-Shirt: Teachers Salaries Listed

(Ed. Note: The complete list of names and salaries for all Hinsdale SD 68 teachers and administrators appears at the end of this article.)

18 year old Chris Borg was suspended last week by the dangerously dimwitted and wildly overpaid government educrats who run the Hinsdale Central High School.

Hinsdale High Supt.
Bruce "Pencil Neck"Law

He was suspended for wearing a T-shirt which depicted a long gun and the web address of a pro-2nd Amendment organization.

Some eagle-eyed Hinsdale High hall monitor espied the politically incorrect T-shirt and immediately judged it to be "unsafe and disruptive." 

Then the chief school hall monitor, one Kimberly Dever, who shakes down the taxpayers for $130k a year and also goes by the title of dean, told Borg he had to turn the shirt inside out or be suspended. Borg said "nuts" to that blatant violation of his free speech rights and was suspended for a day. 

Then the Grand High Hall Monitor, one Bruce (Pencil Neck) Law, who hauls down a cool $155k a year and also goes by the title of Superintendent, upheld Borg's suspension.

He said it was OK to ban expressions "when it's offensive, when it's predicted to be offensive, when it promotes drugs, alcohol, violence."

Would this T-Shirt be banned?

I wonder if there is any conceivable T-shirt on today's market that could not be predicted to be offensive, to somebody, somewhere.

Does Hinsdale High ban Malcolm X T-shirts? Mexican flag T-shirts? Che Guevara T-shirts? American Flag T-shirts? How about the popular "Don't be a Jackass" T-Shirt with the Democrat Party logo?

We're guessing only the latter 2.

So anyway, with the support of his dad, who admires his principled stand, Borg is appealing to have the suspension removed from his record. For this, the arbiter is the school's principal. 

But if that fails, there is also the possibility of a court challenge to Hinsdale SD 86, with the backing of the legal arm of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

BTW, Hinsdale High School has assigned Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper as required summer reading. 

Hinsdale High's Chief Hall Monitor
and Thought Policeman Kimberly Dever

According to the American Library Association, that is in the top 10 most challenged and banned books in the US for its "Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuitability to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence."

I think that one can reasonably predict it to be offensive to somebody, somewhere. So crack hall monitors and offensive expression censors, Kimberly Dever and Bruce Law had better get out the flame throwers and commit that tome to the ash heap.

George Orwell's 1984 is also on Hinsdale High School's summer reading list. Dever and Law would do well to expand their feeble minds by reading it.

Below is a complete list of the names and salaries of the teachers and administrators of the Hinsdale High School system. 

They were garnered by the Family Taxpayers Foundation via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They are the latest available (2012) figures and will be updated as new data becomes available.

Note that in most cases, these salaries are for a mere 9 months work. An astonishing 58% are hauling down more than 6 figures a year for these 3 season gigs. You can get further data on the individual government school employee by clicking on the individual payroller's name:

Here are the latest available (2012) names and salaries of the teachers and administrators of Hinsdale High School District 68:

Hinsdale Twp HSD 86 2012 - Download data
NAME	SALARY
Alejandro, Heather	$109,352
Amolsch, Jarrod	$130,165
Anderson, David	$155,622
Aquino, Katie	$96,927
Arroyo, Edmund	$116,138
Aurich, Robert	$105,775
Baker, Cynthia	$135,848
Baker, Julia	$99,079
Baker, Pamela	$168,797
Bannon, Elizabeth	$143,847
Barber, Robert	$113,751

State's Atty Anita Alvarez's Very Own Willie Horton

By rights, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez should be in deep political hot water, but this is Chicago, so she's not.

Alleged Serial rapist Marcus Lynch

You see, our crack Latina chief prosecutor had the black Lakeview serial rapist, Marcus Lynch, in her clutches last December, but decided to let him go, whereon he went back to Wrigleyville and raped another white woman at knife point.

Cook Co. State's Atty Anita Alvarez
gave Lynch a "Get out of Jail Free" card

In December, a previous Lakeview white woman accused the portly, diminutive YMCA employee of raping her at knife point. He was arrested, but Alvarez gave him a "get out of jail free" card.

Alvarez's mouthpiece, one Sally Daly, said that Alvarez's crack legal team didn't think they could convict Lynch then, with the evidence they had.

This in the era of DNA testing, rape kits and surveillance cameras everywhere.

So the swarthy serial rapist waltzed out of Cook County jail to resume his interracial sex crime spree.

On April 14th he reputedly raped another white girl at knife point in a Lakeview alley.

This time, crime stopper Alvarez did manage to assemble video surveillance footage and a fingerprint. They also found the African-American with his latest white victim's cell phone and the double edged knife that he held to her throat.

Does anyone remember Willie Horton?

He was the vicious black thug who was given a weekend furlough from prison by Alvarez's fellow Democrat, the then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

The despicable creature then went out and invaded a young white couple's home, raping the wife at gunpoint and looting the place.

It became a major issue in the 1988 Presidential election and sealed Dukakis' electoral doom.

But Anita Alvarez has come out of this comparable mess, politically unscathed.

That's because, this is Chicago where the boobs who vote would elect John Wayne Gacy, himself, to be State's Attorney so long as he had a D after his name.

And this is Chicago, where there is no serious news media to even raise the issue of Alvarez's almost criminal incompetence.

Death of a Chicago Drag Queen: K.B. Watkins (aka) Tajma Hall - Bites Dust

Sad news last week as word comes that North Carolina born, K.B Watkins, better known to denizens of Chicago's Lakeview drag scene as "Lady Tajma Hall", performed his/her last fan dance.

K.B. Watkins/Tajma Hall
1970-2014

The 44 year old, ever-portly winner of numerous pageants, including the coveted Miss Gay USofA crown, succumbed to a gripper at Evanston Hospital, April 19th.

Her many friends and fellow fan-dancers were inconsolable upon hearing the news.

Among the accolades showered upon Mr. Watkins/Ms.Hall were these (we are not making any of this up):

Said Len Patrick Leflore, 44, a nurse and friend of for almost 14 years:

"She was a great entertainer who will be deeply missed. Her legacy is going to live on because everyone looked up to her. She touched lives well beyond Chicago, all across the U.S. She was a wonderful, wonderful person, and I know she now is in heaven looking down on us knowing that she left a mark—because she absolutely did."


Longtime friend, RaShaan Houston, 40, said:

"The last time I saw Tajma Hall was Friday night at the hospital. She was sitting up in her bed, painting her face. 

And it was a pageant-worthy painting...thinking about it now, I think she just wanted to paint her face one more time...she was painting her face, preparing to meet Jesus. That's a comforting thought for me."

One admirer said:

"I'm happy that she's now reunited with some of her drag sisters [in heaven],she always had class … that's why we called her the Lady Tajma Hall."


Friend, Jaida Essence Hall, 26, of Milwaukee said:

"Tajma Hall took me in and showed me the ropes, I'll always remember her laugh … and her fragrance. There was that beautiful smell that always was … Taj."

Her chosen fragrance was Clinique Happy Heart, Essence Hart said.



Nurse Leflore said his dining with Tajma almost always involved chicken wings and/or sushi.

In fact, two days before dying, when Tajma Hall was in the hospital and not supposed to eat anything, she asked Leflore to bring her sweet tea and chicken wings—and he did.

Evanston Hospital reported the cause of death of the 44 year old Watkins/Mahall as cardiac arrest.

US Chamber of Commerce Supported Slave Labor in Congo - Now Wants US Immigrant Wage Slaves

Yesterday, the big business Babbits here held a big confab at the City Club of Chicago calling for amnesty for illegal aliens.

Slavery was re-introduced in the Congo in 1888
 US Chamber of Commerce helped make it happen

They want cheap labor. Lots of it.

And as far as the US Chamber of Commerce and its Illinois affiliates are concerned: the American middle class be damned.

Well, it isn't the first time that the Chamber of Commerce has thrown its weight behind cheap labor.

In 1884, the Chamber of Commerce here in America was a pivotal force in getting the Congo in Central Africa into the murderous, exploitative paws of Belgian King Leopold II.

They prevailed and slavery was practically re-instituted there, a full 20 years after the American Civil War.

It still isn't entirely clear how many native Africans were enslaved, tortured, starved and murdered by Leopold's avaricious colonial henchmen, but it ranks as one of the great genocides of the late 19th and early 20th century.

And the American Chamber of Commerce, in its lust for trade concessions in that rubber-rich domain, helped make it all happen.

IL Chamber of Commerce honcho
Doug Whitley wants cheap illegal alien  labor

Here's how, according to Adam Hochschild in his acclaimed 1998 book, King Leopold's
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.

Late to the colonial game, Belgium's king Leopold II, of the minor German house of Saxe-Coburg, was starved for acclaim and cash. So around 1888 he set his sites on the unclaimed African central sub-Saharan lands of the Congo.

He needed legitimacy to get them and fearing possible competition from European colonial powerhouses, England and France, he lobbied the US President and Congress to get formal diplomatic recognition for his Congo colony.

According to Hochschild:

"Knowing how carefully President Arthur's Republicans listened to business, (Leopold's lobbyist) Sanford got the New York Chamber of Commerce (precursor to the US Chamber of Commerce) to pass a resolution endorsing U.S. recognition in support of Leopold's Congo claims. (p.80)

The American Chamber of Commerce, you see, didn't want to get shut out of the economic goodies as they had been in British, Dutch and French colonies. So they saw the recognition of this monarch, later known as the "Butcher of the Congo," as a swell business opportunity.

Congress followed suit and recognized Leopold's ambitions, and shortly thereafter via a Berlin conference on colonial matters, Belgium's claim to the enormous expanse of African lands was confirmed.

Leopold II, The Butcher of the Congo
was backed by US Chamber of Commerce

So then Leopold's armed Belgian thugs exploited African natives of the new domain as free labor -- first as porters and ivory gatherers -- and after the discovery of wild rubber vines -- as forced gatherers of that valuable commodity.

Overall, the saga of European colonial rule was, by no means pretty, but Leopold's murderous brutality, which lasted until his death in 1909, was in a class of its own.

Rape, pillage, beatings with rhinoceros hide whips, physical mutilation and outright murder became commonplace. Slavery was effectively re-instituted for the native African work force -- a full quarter century after it was abolished in the US by Abraham Lincoln.

And all this was made possible by your friends at the US Chamber of Commerce.

And today, under their magnificently amoral CEO, Tom Donohue, the US Chamber of Commerce is still in the cheap labor business.

Today they're advocating it via amnesty for the millions of 3rd world aliens illegally here.

And so are the Chamber's pals and cronies here in Chicago.

They've put together a thing called the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition. It has people like Doug Whitley, CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Mark Segal of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and other shortsighted, avaricious dimwits like the Crate and Barrel's founder Carole Segal and the aptly named, Billy Lawless of the Illinois Restaurant Association.

They see no moral problem whatever with undermining the very fiber of the US and throwing the American middle class under the bus.

They want cheap labor.

It's part of their glorious Chamber of Commerce, crony-capitalist heritage.

Skokie Park District's Playground for the North Shore Elite: Loyola Academy's Dammrich Rowing Center

When President Barack Obama said, "We've got to spread the wealth around," the people who run the Skokie Park District apparently took it to heart.

So do Skokie taxpayers get to use the
Wilmette and Winnetka beaches for free?

Although, maybe not in quite the way Obama meant.

Today, some 400 North Shore residents, from posh places like Kenilworth, Winnetka, Wilmette and Lake Forest took over the taxpayer subsidized, Skokie Park District's Channelside Park.

They got the run of the entire place. They got free parking.

And they didn't pay a penny.

And they were subsidized by the chumps who live in Skokie and pay property taxes to the Skokie Park District taxing authority.

The well-heeled North Shore denizens were slumming it in Skokie today, to celebrate an elite sport: competitive crew rowing.

They held a regatta which brought in contestants from Woodlands Academy (Lake Forest), New Trier High School (Kenilworth), the exclusive Lincoln Park School (Chicago), private and exclusive St. Ignatius (Chicago) as well as several other elite prep schools from New York and elsewhere.

They were all there at the behest of the exclusive, ultra-expensive Loyola Academy of Wilmette, which sponsored the event. They called it The Judge Dunne Invitational - no doubt named for some clout heavy Democrat hack with ties to the North Shore Jesuit school sponsors.

Apparently it's legal to sleep overnight in Skokie
 Parks if you're from an elite North Shore school

Skokie taxpayers paid for this.

Loyola Academy paid nothing.

That is according to a missive we received from one John Ohrlund, spokesman for the Skokie Park District. Last year we inquired as to how much the posh Wilmette school was paying to have its rowing center on Skokie Park District property.

In a missive sent to us on October 24th of last year, Skokie's Mr. Ohrlund replied: "Loyola Academy Rowing Association paid no fees per the agreement with the  (Skokie Park) District."


And Wilmette's posh private academy has an entire compound there on Skokie Park District property. It's complete with a large edifice containing indoor training facilities and outdoor sheds for storage. They store vehicles and equipment on that Skokie property year-round.

Now during the Saturday event, Skokie taxpayers who wanted to use that public parkland to reach the Skokie Pooch Park, were denied entry to the customary parking lot whose entrance is off Oakton St., just East of the MWRD canal. Loyola Academy posted guards at the gates denying entrance to non-participants in their elite event.

The Skokie Park District bike path became an
adjunct to the North Shore elitists' event

And Skokie taxpayers, who cared to bike on the bike path there -- could -- if they would just get off their bikes and walk thru the throngs of well heeled North Shore parents and rich kids who essentially appropriated the path as an adjunct to their party.

This arrangement for the free use of Skokie Park District property by an ultra-elite North Shore School was the brainchild of one Thomas J. Dammrich.

He was the President of the Skokie Park District back in 2001 when the sweetheart giveaway of public resources was made.

And guess what?

Thomas J. Dammrich's sons went to elite Loyola Academy in Wilmette.

And guess what?

Thomas J. Dammrich's sons were on the Loyola Academy rowing team.

And guess for whom the Loyola Academy Rowing Center, owned and maintained by Skokie taxpayers is named?

You guessed it.

It's the "Loyola Academy Thomas J. Dammrich Rowing Center."

But no big deal. Skokie residents aren't due to pay property taxes again for another few months.

But there were several other issues here.

1) For an estimated 200 to 400 people, Loyola Academy Rowing Association organizers arranged for 2 [count 'em 2] porta-potties which were located off Main St., nearly 4 blocks from the main event. (We'll be asking Skokie Village Health Department officials about this.)

2 portable outhouses for an event with 200-400 people

2) Loyola Rowing Association organizers had traffic control guys in orange and yellow outfits stopping traffic for event onlookers who wanted to cross Main St. (Wonder what the Skokie and Evanston Police Departments have to say about this?)

Loyola Academy had its own traffic crossing
 guards on Skokie and Evanston's Main street

Oh, and one last thing. Skokie's High schools, Niles West and Niles North were not participants in the chi-chi rowing competition. And according to members of the Loyola Academy Rowing Association, not a single Skokie resident was a member of their team at the Skokie taxpayer-subsidized event.

The elite North Shore crowd probably wouldn't feel comfortable rubbing shoulders with the Great Unwashed.

But, just out of curiosity -- do Skokie taxpayers get to use the beaches in Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka and Lake Forest for free?

Just wonderin'.

"Wild Tales": Graham Nash as Slave To Joni Mitchell and Left-Wing Orthodoxy

 Like most left-wing ideologues, consistency is obviously not Graham Nash's strong suit.

Nash wrote a ridiculous Yippie
Anthem that went to #35 in 1971

In 1996, Graham Nash flew to Bill Clinton's 50th birthday party in billionaire music industry mogul, David Geffen's luxurious Gulfstream G3 jet. (p.326).

And in 2012, he and co-CSN pal, David Crosby gave a command performance for Silicon Valley multimillionaires at a $38,000 a plate fundraising dinner for Barack Obama (p.329).

Yet, before a 2011 Manhattan menagerie of Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalists, Nash, a North England high school dropout, saw no logical incongruity in calling millionaire conservative contributor, David Koch, "greedy" and "one of the world's truly bad guys" . (p.334)

In fact, he slandered Southern Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert goers who walked out of their 2006 tour appearances in protest of the group's mean-spirited on-stage anti-Bush invective: "I realized there were still plenty of people in the South trying to figure out why the North won the civil war," Nash wrote. (p.336)

And Nash doesn't bat an eyelid at lambasting conservative rocker, Ted Nugent, for calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch" - "he's gone too far - he has a very disturbed point of view" (p.334)

This even as he, himself, called President G.W. Bush a "dunderhead" and VP Dick Cheney, "one of the most evil men alive...not of this earth."  (p.329)

It seems that, in Nash's world,  it's not going too far when the bogeyman you're dehumanizing is a conservative.

And after blathering about Americans' "absurd obsession with guns",  calling the NRA "criminals" and arguing that the 2nd Amendment does not guarantee private firearm ownership (p. 212), he waxes poetically over an incident where his CSN pal, David Crosby warded off a home invader by firing off a Colt .45. "...If David had not rolled over, grabbed his gun and fired it, he and Debbie would most likely be dead," anti-gun activist, Graham Nash said.  (p.230)

Huh?

Graham Nash's convoluted political worldview seems right out of  his partner, Stephen Stills', Buffalo Springfield song, "Mostly say, Hooray for our side."

Oh well, the legendary rock 'n roll crooner was a high school dropout so his infantile ignorance in such things as these and his idiotic 1971 Yippie anthem, Chicago (We can change the world) can be understood, if not condoned.

And it can be said to the credit of Graham Nash's recent autobiography, Wild Tales: A Rock and Roll Life (2013 Crown Publishing, New York) that he had a competent ghost writer.

The 345 page account of Nash's rise from a wartime, North England, blue-collar childhood to musical prominence with the British-invasion Hollies and later, the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Woodstock-era super group, is coherent, lucid and quite well written.

That's a welcome contrast to the nearly unreadable, desultory gibberish penned by his sometimes-band partner, Neil Young, whose 2012 bio, "Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream", was, quite justifiably panned by us and most reviewers.

And unlike Young's peculiar document, in Wild Tales, Nash actually conveys some interesting tidbits about his life with two of the the signal pop musical acts of the 60s and early 70s.

He did, of course, have a brief, but storied love affair with Canadian folk chanteuse, Joni Mitchell. His domestic arrangement with her in Laurel Canyon was the inspiration for one of his nicer and most famous ballads, Our House.

And in this book, his verbal idolatry of his former flame is almost embarrassingly, gushingly sycophantic.

Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash
during their time together

Here's Graham Nash on Joni Mitchell:

"Joni Mitchell was the whole package: a lovely, sylphlike woman with a natural blush, like windburn and an elusive quality that seemed lit from within. Her beauty was almost as big a gift as her talent and I'd been pulled into her orbit from the get-go." p.3

"From the moment I first heard her play, I thought she was a genius...she was on another planet in terms of her songwriting ability. Her acoustic guitar was the entire orchestra...our relationship was a dream. She opened me up to so many experiences --musical, intellectual, romantic and artistic. She was like an Escher drawing with all its sharp angles, unexpected turns and mysterious depths...she had a relaxed playful side that was so easy to fall in love with...It was that exuberance, that joie de vivre, that lit her like a bouquet of sunflowers... she was an accomplished painter with a ravishing style..." p.148


There's quite a bit more of this toadying and it leaves you wondering why, if Joni Mitchell was so blasted wonderful, he just didn't marry her in the pre-Woodstock days when she was angling for that? (p.169)

In his book, the now septuagenarian, Nash, does let us in on a number of interesting anecdotal events in his interesting rock 'n roll life.

For instance:

-- Nash tells us of endless lines of groupies during the Hollies' '64 rise to pop music prominence in England and relates tales of a peculiar habit the girls had of whipping out their breasts for band members to autograph.

-- But during their '65 US tour, Nash found American girls to be "freer and more experimental," than their British groupie counterparts.

-- Nash relates how at the storied Paramount Theater during the Hollies' first trip to NYC in '65, they witnessed Little Richard upbraiding his guitarist for upstaging him by playing with his teeth. That guitarist was one Jimmy James who would later be known as Jimi Hendrix. (p.70)

-- Quite interestingly, he tells how the Hollies acquired their smash hits, Bus Stop and Look Through Any Window, from a 15 year old English kid songwriter in '65 -- They were their first 2 songs to chart in the US.

--  While still with the Hollies, Nash was initially introduced to David Crosby by Mama Cass Elliott, who he likened to an artistic matchmaker in the manner of Gertrude Stein. In his book, he posits that she died of a drug overdose, not from choking on a sandwich.

-- The famous album cover photo of the 3 CSN members on a beat-up couch, in front of a beat-up old Santa Monica Blvd. cottage was set to be re-shot the next day because the members were arranged in the wrong order - Nash, Stills & Crosby. But when they went to the locale, they found that overnight, the house had been demolished.

-- Joni Mitchell turned down her invitation to perform at Woodstock, because her handlers doubted they could extricate her from the congested throng in time to make an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, scheduled for the next day. It was probably one of the costlier scheduling miscues in pop music history.

-- Joni Mitchell wrote the lyrics to the anthemic Woodstock, which both she and CSN recorded, while ensconced in a posh Manhattan, Plaza Hotel suite, many miles from the funky hippy conclave that she glorified in song.

-- Their music industry guru, Ahmet Ertegun, was at first, sceptical about the Crosby, Stills and Nash band's concept, thinking them too similar to the  soft-pop vocalist sound of The Association at a time when more heavy metal sounds were coming into fashion.

-- The pedal steel guitar country sound to Teach Your Children, which pretty much instrumentally defined the song, was added by the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, who had been recording in the same studio, down the hall from CSN&Y.

David Crosby and Graham Nash in
NYC at Occupy Wall Street in 2011

Unlike David Crosby's 1988 autobiography, Long Time Gone, which focuses on the singer's myriad personal problems and Neil Young's aforementioned garbled grand opus, Waging Heavy Peace, which focuses on very little -- Nash's Wild Tales is the most comprehensively informative account of the super group to date. (Stephen Stills is reportedly working on his bio, which may be released later this year.)

Nash imparts the reader with a good sense of the interpersonal interactions of the band members in all their complexity - from angelic harmonizing to acerbic infighting to drug-induced lunacy.

All of their inane politics aside, most any baby boomer can lucidly recall the powerful and upbeat excitement they felt when they first put down the needle to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.

Crosby, Stills and Nash were a truly exciting super group which nicely captured and reflected the zeitgeist of the weird and wild late 60s/early 70s time period. And Graham Nash was, of course, a key component of that.

But there is the political idiocy and Graham Nash was wrong on most every vital issue of his turbulent time, from the population bomb (remember that pseudo-scientific canard?) to advocating unilateral Anglo-American disarmament in the Cold War.

In fact, after Britisher, Nash had been trashing the USA in front of an audience of anti-American Danes in Copenhagen, his then paramour, Canadian Joni Mitchell was provoked to tell him that she thought it unfair of him to speak ill of the US in front of foreigners.

"You keep slagging America after it gave you all this opportunity," Mitchell said. "Why are you biting the hand that feeds you?"

Joni Mitchell then poured a bowl of corn flakes and milk over Graham Nash's head. (p.180)

Good girl, Joni!!!

Here, from an '80s Crosby, Stills and Nash reunion concert, is a performance of Our House, Nash's paean to his former live-in lover, Joni Mitchell: