About the Dec. 11 meeting at the library, where President Anan Abu-Taleb and Trustee Peter Barber took on comers.

Yes, it got heated regarding the District 97 building situation, and Anan got pointed in his rebuttal, but he was not flustered by the detailed objections. Neither was Barber, who recalled his days on the D97 board and how parents and others get quite energetic at times, in the faces of board members, etc. That’s a longstanding pattern. Heated commentary, finger-shaking, even once I recall, a board member being asked to step outside by a citizen, and not to grab a smoke and chat.

Anan apologized at one point. This was after the heated citizen pictured in the Wed. Journal story interrupted him from the back – he had been recognized and had the mike, Anan was adding to what he had said. Really, it was like old times, when…

Chicago GOP unveils slate of statehouse candidates. Hinz: Chicago GOP moves to elect own lawmakers

From Rick Boultinghouse on eve of the District 97/Village of OP meeting:

Tossing this all around this evening on the eve of our next step I realized something that I had not realized before. EVERY potential option D97 is and has been exploring that they have publically discussed are on Madison Street. I do not think this is mere coincidence.

I think they are not exploring space anywhere else in the Village specifically because some back door agreement exists between D97 and VOP relative to the Madison Street TIF. D97 gets money from the other two TIFs as well, but this TIF is failing in its purpose and will likely sunset, per a discussion I had with Anan today.

I think it is worth asking why no options off Madison Street exist?

Mistrust abounds.

Congratulations and season’s best wishes to Oak Park’s dynamic trio of Democrat legislators — D. Harmon, C. Lilly, and L. Ford — for their 88% rating by the Springfield-based green-lobbying Illinois Environmental Council.

Not bad, but what they did they do or not do that the 23 other state-legislature Democrats did to merit the 100% rating, and what are Oak Park’s progressive Democrats going to do about this 12% gap?

That’s one where (a) the priest faces same direction as I, presumably God-ward, (b) he turns the mike off, and (c) the emphasis is primarily on God, secondarily (if at all) on each other.

None of it is impossible in Vatican 2 terms, which allowed, did not mandate (a) facing the people and (b) and (c) mandated or mentioned as taken for granted reverential tones and concept of mass-as-sacrifice (also, secondarily, as meal).

Later: The “if at all” as to emphasis on each other is not to be taken as cold-hearted, not even as cold as Christian charity, as I heard said in the Jesuits long ago. No indeed. Part of what one picks up at mass is love of neighbor. One could hardly miss it.

So from presumed God-direction to neighbor-direction is natural progression. Handclasp at mass has its place, but not at the cost of distraction from prayerfulness…

Papal statements are like St. Paul, trying to be all things to all men. In the recent exhortation, he famously decried “trickle-down” economics and promoted the misleading “inequality” theme or meme.

Kathy Shaidle in Taki’s Magazine:

Yet this same document also condemns “all forms of collectivism” and “sets limits for state interventions”—the same “interventions” the pope calls for in other paragraphs. Like so many papal declarations concerning temporal matters, this one could just as easily have been entitled “Ex Altera Parte, Ex Altera Parte”—“On the One Hand, On the Other Hand.” If anyone can use Evangelii Gaudium to “proof-text” their pet economic philosophy, what good is it, really?

And yet and yet . . .

On balance, though, Pope Francis displays a naive faith in the wisdom and benevolence of the state, especially for someone who survived the Dirty War. (Not all Argentinian priests were so…

Chi Trib’s Rex Huppke has found something he likes pope-wise, even if he disguises it in a splurge of irony and faux detachment. He plays the naif — “Who, me?” — laying schmaltz on heavier than a high-school sophomore going for the prize.

There are some who doubt the efficacy of trickle-down economics [what Pope Francis condemned]. Those people, according to conservatives, are either communists or, apparently, the pope, whose exhortation insulted the memory of Reagan (patron saint of letting rich people keep their money) and REALLY upset Rush Limbaugh (patron saint of saying things loudly so nobody notices that they don’t make sense).

Thought I’d die laughing, Zelda. That man is SO funny. REALLY!!!

He gives a rundown on millenaristic theory and prediction having to do with the papacy and the world ending with a bang simultaneously, then provides an aw-shucks moment.

The smart thing to do would be…