Democratic socialist candidates have at the core of their platforms the dismantling of Chicago machine politics and policies. [And after that, original sin.]
They champion views that would:
• Elevate the working class. [Oh my]
• Expand affordable housing. [Oh?]
• Push for progressive taxation. [Uh-oh]
• Stop gentrification in its tracks. [Oh]
I can hardly wait.
Bishop Sérgio Colombo, 64, of Bragança Paulista, Sao Paulo, Brazil, participated in a pagan ritual outside he Bom Jesus church in Vila Bela (January 13).
The performance was organized by the diocesan council for “ecumenism.”
[Bishop] Colombo practiced so called Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion related to Voodo. At the performance with roses and doves (pictured) demons called Orixás are invoked.
One of those demons made him do it? (Sorry)
Another snarky aside:
Apart from traditional paganism, Bishop Colombo hates Tradition. In 2012, he expelled an Old Rite male Carmelite community from his diocese.
Tut, tut. All in a day’s work, apparently.
Francis and Trump, peas in a pod (As to style and unconventionality — not, obviously, in goals and positions taken.)
Finally, Bannon said he’s long been struck by a certain similarity between his former boss, Trump, and the pontiff.
“He and Trump are at the same level,” Bannon said. “He breaks news every day, and he’s also very sophisticated. He knows exactly how to drop the headline. They’re very similar … they’re honey-badgers.”
Francis, Bannon said, “is a fighter, and I have a lot of admiration for a lot of things.”
I blogged about this two years ago and three-plus years ago.
I’d say, sight unseen, that this ward may be better off with this particular alderman.
Nothing like telling constituents not to take him seriously.
Surprise: The more they profit from gummint help, the more they think it’s a good thing.
As the study notes, “This suggests that the effects of favoritism on cultural understandings grows stronger the more dependent one’s firm is on favoritism.”
An implication of this study is that being the recipient of government favoritism makes business leaders more inclined to embrace other statist cultural understandings. Cronyism, it seems, may be a gateway drug to nationalism, socialism, and pro-statist/anti-freedom positions.
So don’t be surprised when a giant of finance speaks up for the nanny state. “Gateway drug.” I like that. Consider Europe while you’re at it.
Not two heavyweights, says challenger Vasquez, who
. . . sees his race against O’Connor as . . . a championship fight. In one corner, is “somebody who’s like fully trained, a multi-black belt, with all the amount of funding — and then there’s us.”
“Our campaign manager likes to call it the island of misfit toys,” Vasquez said. “It’s a reflection of Chicago. It’s kind of piecemeal put together but we made sure to have one common goal and work towards it.”
Not so his opponent, he said.
“Ald. O’Connor’s got these precinct captains that owe him favors for jobs he’s gotten them, they’re very disciplined. What they have is an operation, what we have is a movement.”
Well, O’Connor grew up in the ward, and his five children live in it, he explained in a forum.
Then the homophobic lyrics:
O’Connor says that Vasquez’s record [as a rapper] is fair game. Vasquez has apologized for the comments, old rap lyrics that O’Connor has highlighted on a web site. “I see this as an opportunity to have a conversation about what kind of society and environment creates that kind of behavior,” Vasquez said. “At the doors, I provide the context for who I was then and apologize for the language and that it hurt people and I think neighbors see the person I am.”
Out of the ‘hood he has come. Come a long way, he says.
Ah, but is the ward ready for his socialism?
Christie was baptized into the Church of England, although her peripatetic mother dabbled in other religions, including Catholicism, and introduced Agatha to the possibilities of occult spirituality, a theme that recurs in her stories outside the classic detective genre. Nonetheless, it was her mother’s copy of the Imitation of Christ that Christie kept by her bedside, an inspiration she passed onto her detective Jane Marple, a character A. N. Wilson called “a more impressive creation than those old women such as Mrs. Moore in the novels of E. M. Forster, who are somehow meant to carry quasi-mythic weight and hidden wisdom.”
Inscribed on the flyleaf of the Imitation was a quotation from Romans, beginning “who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” At Christie’s memorial service in 1976, her publisher William Collins shared this as “a reflection of the gentle Christian spirit that resided within her.” “Agatha,” Sir William concluded, “knew what true religion meant.”
Not quite, perhaps, says the writer. But it’s a clue to her detective stories, he also says.
Ignorance, thy initials are AOC. Or something.
The 2nd-most important election to watch?
“Of all the wards, the 40th will serve as a bellwether,” says Connie Mixon, director of urban studies at Elmhurst College and co-author of the book “Twenty-First Century Chicago.”
She’s referring to the seat held by veteran Ald. Pat O’Connor, who’s hanging on for his political life in a race against socialist Andre Vasquez, an AT&T manager who once pursued a career as a rapper. But, even if O’Connor holds on to his seat, “there is a movement for change.”
I would put it this way: If a ward doing as well as the 40th does when it comes to ward services — schools, safety, urbanity without the violence, amenities including green space galore, your choice of coffee shops and restaurants, and regular, timely communications from the ward office — falls to the socialist wave, any ward can.
God save us.
Blithe Spirit 