A few weeks after Carleton and Business-Civic Council, the senator faced citizens at the Oak Park Library in a town hall gathering of his scheduling, accompanied by one of Oak Park’s two state representatives, Camille Lilly.
The audience was largely but not entirely true-blue supporters of Democrat programs, about a quarter of them government-employment retirees (they raised hands at the senator’s request), with heavy personal stake in pension fund solvency.
Lilly deserves some explanation. . . . .
Month: June 2015
Abp. Cupich among the dissidents: How will he hold up?
Abp. Cupich to Offer Mass for Leftist Catholic Event.
RIVER FOREST, Ill., June 16, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com) – Archbishop Blase Cupich of the Chicago archdiocese will be participating at an event for Catholic dissenters.
The event, called “New Faces, New Voices, New Ways of Being Church,” will take place October 24 at Dominican University, and includes a line-up of dissenting Catholics who support gay “marriage” and women’s ordination, among other causes.
What if he smilingly jousts with these invitees, asking important questions of them, leaving no doubt as to where he stands?
Or what if he makes it another step in the ongoing march toward popularity?
Pope F. won’t be the coal miners’ pope . . .
. . . if he’s canonized, won’t be their patron saint either, to go by his coming letter to the world, where:
He writes that there is an “urgent and compelling” need for policies that reduce carbon emissions, among other ways, by “replacing fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”
You know, like the pope of Holy Communion, of peace, that sort of thing.
Well look, even pontiffs have to lie in the beds they make.
Illinois blues: Daley family business scores another . . .
Newsalert: Chicago to Borrow $1. 1 Billion Dollars: William Daley Jr. to Make 2.64 from Underwriting Fee
Chicago being part of Illinois (I think that’s how it works), we might consider what a jungle it is in here — as if we didn’t know — in view of this item:There’s more [to the story of the city’s borrowing another billion-plus to stay afloat]:
The senior managing underwriter on the $1.1 billion borrowing with an estimated $2.64 million in fees is Morgan Stanley. The company’s affidavit was signed by William Daley Jr., . . . .
“Heinous” to violate Vatican embargo?
Italian magazine publishes leaked version of pope’s eco-encyclical | Crux.
A Vatican official, speaking to Bloomberg News on Monday, called publishing the document before Thursday a “heinous act,” and various clergy urged media organizations to respect the official embargo date.
That’s a bit much. If he were redefining the Trinity and they beat the embargo, it would be one thing. But the endorsement of man-made global warming by a chemistry major? Please.
Illinois blues: Oak Park senator can’t figure Governor Rookie, who won’t play ball
It is 2015, and the Illinois whose fiscal worries were exaggerated by Republicans in 2013, as the Oak Park senator said, is in trouble that even he must recognize.
It’s this first-term governor whom he cannot understand and who doesn’t seem to give a hang, which makes him a very bad enemy to have to face.
Reuters reports the latest from Governor Rookie, that he has ruled out “a short-term spending plan to keep the state operating beyond the July 1 start of fiscal 2016 if there is no deal over a full-year budget.”
What the . . . ? No short-term budget? . . . .
Read the rest here: Illinois blues: Oak Park senator can’t figure Governor Rookie, who won’t play ball.
How a Democrat state senator explained Illinois finances in 2013: Not a problem
The Donald of Oak Park, its senator in Springfield, where he’s high in the ranks of the Ruling Party, smooth-as-silk boss of Oak Park’s Democratic Party organization, took to the podium at Oak Park’s Carleton Hotel on a glorious day in late June of 2013 for his annual report to the Business and Civic Council.
It was time to explain things to bankers, business owners and operators, and other issues-aware citizen consumers and taxpayers with skin in the game to varying degrees and/or psychic income from allegedly progressive political victories and enactments.
The state was in a state of turmoil, confusion, and all-around hyperactivity. The two legislative chambers were at odds over a pension solution. The governor, a one-time gadfly with Oak Park roots, was soon to cut off legislators’ pay checks to punish them for inactivity.
For the Donald, however, it was what-me-worry time. . . . . Read the rest
Retirement and Irrelevance
Teenagers think they know everything, yet they know almost nothing about life. They are barely educated and lack even the smallest morsels of life’s experience. They think their parents are old and out of touch. They truly believe they can do everything in life better. This isn’t a shocking revelation, but just the normal growth progression of life.
In a short 4 years or so, they will garner the coveted Bachelor’s degree and in a few more years, they may even have more framed wallpaper for their office. This is a dangerous time for them. They have been convinced, through teachings and titles, that they actually know stuff. And to some degree that’s true. They know stuff that other people know, but they haven’t discovered anything on their own, they lack the practical experience of life.
It’s only after a few years in the workplace that they discover how much…
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Jihadists rock to jihadist poetry
The Rhyme and Reason of Jihad | Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The Rhyme and Reason of Jihad
You probably didn’t know it but Osama bin Laden was a poet. In fact, according to Yale’s Robyn Creswell and Princeton’s Bernard Haykel, “of all jihadi poets, bin Laden was the most celebrated, and he prided himself on his knowledge of the art.”
They add (in the June 8 edition ofThe New Yorker): “A large part of bin Laden’s charisma as a leader was his mastery of classical eloquence.” Here, for example, he elegizes the mass-murderers of 9/11/01: “Embracing death, the knights of glory found their rest. / They gripped the towers with hands of rage and ripped through them like a torrent.”
Professors Creswell and Haykel further report that a wide range of Islamist groups are now producing “a huge amount of verse.” This art is an expression of the “the culture of jihad” which, they say, we should regard as a “culture of romance. It promises adventure and asserts that the codes of medieval heroism and chivalry are still relevant.”
– See more at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/may-clifford-d-what-rhymes-with-decapitate/#sthash.OtrmyAOt.dpuf
This provides a vision,
Which leads us Christians and Jews to poeticize our tradition?
Which calls for an impassioned embrace of our doctrines.
Our Scripture is full of the poetic, the vision, the sheer otherworldiness. So much of it in undiluted form is nonsense to the man and woman, but especially the man, of today. We should do what we can, in schools, for instance, to encourage embrace of the poetic — a reasonable embrace of it. There I go, two sides of the issue.
Blithe Spirit 