One other possible reasons [sic] they’ve gagged him is that he went out and bought himself a million dollar “home” right at the time he’s firing the last competent people in the central office and threatening a half million parents and kids with massive destruction (class sizes jumping; teacher layoffs; end of extra-curricular; etc.).
Stupid is a word he doesn’t like having associated with the name Ron Huberman, but in those big two political activities (Data Drivel and Deficit), stupid he is. In purchasing that mansion, stupider.
Arne [Duncan] was smart enough not to do greedy at the same time he was doing cuts and privatizations. Huberman, from the day he started bringing in his posse at enormous salaries right through today, has missed the fact that all the dollars he’s playing with at CPS are in the public eye, unlike his supposed great work at CTA and Emergency Management, to name two.
I come in late to this debate, which dates at least from Ben Willis in the ‘sixties (‘fifties?). But H’s buying a big house leads to speculation about how good those jobs are at the peak of public education in Chicago.
On Sunday, September 26, 2010, during Holy Mass at St. John’s Abbey on the campus of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, 24 people were refused Holy Communion by Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
They were displaying rainbow buttons and rainbow sashes in direct defiance of the direction of the Diocese and thereby clearly expressing their rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church.
. . . . This open show of defiance in the context of the Mass was encouraged by a group calling itself calling itself “People Representing the Sexual Minority (PRiSM).
And the beat goes on, drip, drip, drip, batter, batter, batter, against the walls of Holy Mother Church. So goes the argument for Catholics Who Care (CWC) about Catholic Tradition.
Wherever you stand on that burning issue, give a cheer, if not a care, for this fellow Nienstedt, who is not going to make Communion a reward for showing up.
Look, he’s got a 2,000–year-old dripped-on and battered-by-the-best-of-them institution to serve and protect. Some may want him to knuckle under for peace at any price, but they are being unreasonable.
I don’t know the fellow, but when put to the test, he seems to have been ready. They are kicking at a battleship anyway. Blame if you must this old gray vessel, but spare your sacred moments — from profanation, he said.
is emblematic of a hip-hop culture that is ignorant, misogynistic, casually criminal and often violent. A self-described gangster, he is a modern-day minstrel who embodies the most virulent racist stereotypes that generations of blacks have fought to overcome. His music is a vigorous endorsement of the pathologies that still haunt and cripple far too many in the black underclass.
Which (surprise) violates Obama’ previous assertions to the contrary:
. . . I cheered when Mr. Obama, then a little-known state senator, inserted himself into the cultural debate during the 2004 Democratic National Convention: “Children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white,” he declared.
And it’s why I cheered again last year when he told an NAACP gathering that, “Our kids can’t all aspire to be LeBron [James] or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers.”
Well, as Rev. Jeremiah Wright would say, that’s politics for you. (Obama “made a bad decision [to disown Wright], but he’s still my child.”)
does reveal a rather narrow range of babyboomer tunes. Writing in the London Times, Caitlin Moran noted: “No black artists, no gay artists, no world music, only one woman, no genre less than 25 years old, and no Beatles.”
[Joe Levy, deputy editor of Rolling Stone magazine] agreed, telling the New York Times: “What we’re talking about is a lot of great artists from the ’60s and ’70s and more modern artists who sound like great artists from the ’60s and ’70s.
“This is basically boomer rock ‘n’ roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It’s safe, it’s reliable, it’s loving. What I mean to say is, it’s feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it’s not.”
Safe, reliable, loving? Or “vigorous endorsement of the pathologies that still haunt and cripple far too many in the black underclass”? Pay your money, take your choice.
Lucinda Naylor, artist in residence at the Basilica of St. Mary for the past 15 years, was recently suspended from that position when she went public with her opposition to the church campaign [vs. same-sex marriage].
She has asked other Catholics opposed to the effort to send the DVDs [sent by Minnesota bishops to more than 400,000 Catholics] to her for an art project. She told the Minnesota Independent that she was thinking of doing something related to water or flames, “since both are important Catholics symbols of the Holy Spirit.”
But this priest?
“The premise of the DVD,” wrote [Rev. Michael] Tegeder, in a letter published Oct. 2 by the Star-Tribune, “is that same-sex couples and their committed relationships are a grave threat to marriage.”
The real threat to marriage, the pastor argued, is poverty, citing an earlier report on the effects of the economic downturn on marriage.
I doubt if he will be similarly chastised.
I could be wrong:
Asked if he feared reprisal, [Fr. Tegeder] recalled that he’d already been threatened by the archbishop “with excommunication and interdict” for installing a cremation garden at the church. When he was called on the carpet, he said, he was able to produce documentation that showed his parish had complied with all of the diocesan and state regulations. He said he’s heard nothing further. “You have to know how to defend yourself,” he said, “because a lot of what we’re being told we have to follow just isn’t true.”
Tegeder, 62, a Bloomington MN pastor, will go to the mat on this, he says:
“If he throws me out I can walk away from this with my head up … I love ministry. I wake up at 5 every day and stay busy until midnight. I love it. I’m energized by the opportunities.” But some things just need to be said, he remarked.
“This man is leading us in the wrong direction,” on this issue, he said of Nienstedt. “We have to call it for what it is – it’s bullying behavior. It’s not the work of Jesus Christ. It’s not the work of Jesus Christ.”
NC Reporter’s Tom Roberts elicited hot quotes from Tegeder, by the way, but relied on the Star-Tribune — “Strib,” as it’s called by Power Line, which routinely exposes its leftist political bias — for response by the archdiocese:
According to a report in the Start [sic] Tribune, Dennis McGrath, spokesman for the archdiocese, said the bishops “felt the situation had gotten to the poiont that they had to do something. They couldn’t stand by and let this thing go any further. The same-sex marriage train was chugging along.” McGrath also said the mailing was paid for with a private donation. Nienstedt has described the DVD as a “teaching tool” for voters in advance of the November gubernatorial election. Two candidates running support same-sex marriage and one doesn’t.
Roberts has an acutely sensitive eye and ear for dictatorial prelates. He assigned me once to do a piece about Bishop John Myers, then of Peoria, for Religious News Service, when he fired a raft of religious education people. I got Myers at his personal number, which I got from the diocesan web site. He was not pleased. Eventually, the piece ran in Chi Trib.
Nonetheless, I trust the Mpls-St. Paul archdiocese has a good response to this story, maybe someone as articulate in the archbishop’s defense as this Fr. Tegeder is for his position. At any rate, here is a ringing defense and call to arms for the official position. And here the vox populi is raised.
From what I can gather, Rahm’s pressing of flesh -as it were – is being treated by us helots with all of the joy and delight that a hot tub owner might elicit had Jimmy The Leper done a cannon ball into the foaming brine!
Chi Trib writers, editors did a funny this morning. The Stroger helper was arrested yesterday “as she pulled her vehicle out of a downtown parking garage,” providing the delicious image of the lady with a tow truck or, funnier yet, huffing and puffing to do it by might and main.
Attn: Trib writers and editors. You “pull out,” you don’t pull something out of, parking space, garage, whatever.
Secondly, what on earth is happening? Cook County State’s Attorney did this? Rooting out political corruption? When’s the last time that happened? Question is asked by me and the rest of the 99% of readers who assumed the feds did it. Ma foi.
Later, from astute reader John:
Most likely she was arrested for plotting to work with [Republican candidate for president of county board] Roger Keats rather than any marginal corruption. That is, I am sure that about 25% of the County employees could be charged at any time, but they are only charged when politically necessary.
This as astute explanation of my “Secondly” above. Yes, Virginia, in Cook County things are never what they seem to be.
One Nation Working Together (ONWT), a huge coalition of the American Left’s leading organizations, prepares to stage its own March on Washington on October 2. At its root, ONWT advocates a massive expansion of government, and an ever-greater infusion of taxpayer dollars into the public sector.
The Daley dynasty in Chicago may be giving way to the Obama-Emanuel political machine, but one thing remains constant in the Windy City: youth violence and a collective refusal to acknowledge its root cause. On the one-year anniversary of the beating death of a Chicago teen by his fellow students, Chicago remains in denial about the driving factor behind such mayhem: the disappearance of the black two-parent family.
Yes. Daley fulminates. It’s not his nature to be suave or smooth. But it’s all about nagging crime victims and their neighbors to speak out while in danger to life and limb.
Or he bashes guns and by implication gun-owners — but couldn’t quite bash the 68–year-old woman who finally had enough and was scared to death and plugged a 12–year-old neighbor who broke her windows and cussed her out and threw bricks at her. (Asked about her, he mocked “the media” and complained that it was not “on topic” of that day’s good-news press conference. Go to 14:55 of this at WLS-AM.)
Sound and fury, your honor, signifying avoidance.
And who came out in defense of what one neighbor called “that bad little boy”? His grandmother. Who else, for probably a fatherless kid?
In every American city, the disproportionate black-illegitimacy rate is matched only by the disproportionate black crime rate. In Chicago, blacks, at least 35 percent of the population, commit 76 percent of all homicides; whites, about 28 percent of the population, commit 4 percent.
You can’t say that in a public forum, however, especially if you’re mayor. No. Strictly speaking, you can but won’t.
“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.”
“There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.”
I think they go together. Stay light on your feet, ladies and gentlemen. Satan prowls these precincts.
Blithe Spirit 