A Short History of Oak Park: Volume 1, 2004-2005, by Jim Bowman. A Blithe Spirit Publication, available now at Lulu.com: $10 for printed copy, free download. See more here and here.
Tag: Blithe Spirit
It’s tea time!
New Lenox outranks all Tea Party Express rallies thus far
10,000, organizers said. Joliet Herald-News (Sun-Times-owned) said about 5,000:
About 5,000 rally against high taxes, big government as tea party express stops in New Lenox
“Up to two million,”
says London’s Daily Mail.
Dunno, wasn’t there with my people-counter. But lots and lots of people.
Can gays change? An Oak Park debate
What’s forbidden in the matter of black-white relations is mandated in gay-straight ones, namely a genetic explanation. As it is not allowed in general discourse to allege racial cause for black behavior, so it is required to say gays are born gay without hope of change.
See how the issue is argued in Oak Park, Illinois:
At the time, I didn’t believe there would be any opportunity for a discussion, but rather a one-way stream of hate, which would have likely led to health care-like forum shout-downs,
wrote Oak Park Trustee Ray Johnson about the Buzz Cafe book–author appearance to talk about gays becoming straight through prayer and therapy. The “hate” involved would be the contention that gays can change, vs. their being destined from birth to be gay.
[Buzz-owner] Laura Maychruk had a right to offer a forum to promote hate, but people certainly had a right to protest the poor taste of that event, and Maychruk had the right (and I believe the responsibility to her community) to cancel that event,
wrote Oak Park resident Rachel Weaver in the same issue of the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest, which had run the story about cancellation of the author-appearance, the author being a black Christian clergyman of inexact provenance [oops, see below], the book self-published (and Amazon-available) as Transition: From Homosexual to Preacher.
Again, the hate is the claim that gays can change and are not irreversibly programmed, a claim that Weaver compared to promoting “the Tuskegee Experiment” and “forced conversion of all Jews to Christianity.”
What really gets me . . . is the suggestion that people offended that Laura would offer to hype this book and make Mr. Williams money from his hatred of gay people shouldn’t have [told] her [their objections].
wrote David McCammond-Watts, referring to the reaction that led to the cancellation. Again, the hatred accusation relates to the claim that gays can change.
We need not even consider the reaction there would be if a speaker argued for a genetic cause for blacks’ low marks in school or rates of incarceration. It’s not going to happen, any more than the author appeared at Buzz Cafe arguing against it for gays.
Later: Not so uncertain provenance at that. Williams co-founded his “church without walls” in 2005, calling it “Holy Remnant International Ministries.” He was commissioned, as it were, by Rev. Leroy Elliott, pastor of the New Greater St. John Community M.B. Church, at 3101 W Warren Blvd. on the West Side, since 1978.
Rev. Elliott:
Missionary Baptists go a way back, to the early 1800s, in fact, per Wikipedia, which says their goal was
to organize para-church institutions for the promotion and funding of evangelism (particularly in foreign lands and on the American western frontier)
etc.
Obama vs. the individual
Creepy collectivism in these lines from the classroom speech?
If you quit on school, you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country….
Don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America [is] about people…who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best….
What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?…
Someone like him, he means, making it explicit:
I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down. Don’t let your family down or your country down.
I? Us? Then family and country. Wow. “Creepy” is right, “the president as national dad.” Straight from the shoulder of the Maximum Leader.
Or as Dr. Helen asks, “Who Cares What Presidents Think?”
Rather than this “What can you do for your country?” stuff, she refers to Milton Friedman:
The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.
The organismic, ‘what you can do for your country’ implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.
He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors, and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
Can you imagine getting elected representative of the 7th Illinois district on such a platform? Telling people about their glorious personal responsibility? After 70–plus years of creeping creepy collectivism?
Obama in the classroom
Spokesman Robert Gibbs about objectors to Oh-bama addressing school children:
“It’s a sad state of affairs that many in this country politically would rather start an ‘Animal House’ food fight rather than inspire kids to stay in school, to work hard, to engage parents to stay involved and to ensure that the millions of teachers that are making great sacrifices continue to be the best in the world.”
It’s in The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, where it picked up 420 comments as of 10:30 Monday night, the first of which, by “tropicgirl,” is quite good:
This would never have happened if people did not dislike the president so much. There are many reasons for that, and Glibbs [sic] needs to take responsibility for some of that dislike he has helped create, because of his sour attitude, along with the inexperienced, off-timing and condescending reputation those around the president have helped create. [Italics added]
Yes, these are flip wise guys, from Rahm E. on down. Remember when gravitas was an issue?
The second commenter qualifies the first nicely, without shooting it down:
It’s not a matter of “liking” it’s a matter of “trusting.” I voted for him, regret it. The bottom line, “We – most of the American People” now, do not trust him.
If not most, then an awful lot. He’s a jerk.
Coach, cop, saver of young men
“I don’t want to lose any young men. I look at it as me being a vessel through God to minister to these young men,” Proviso East High School head coach Aaron Peppers, who is also a Maywood policeman, told Chi Trib in an excellent page-one story by Brian Hamilton.
This is rock-solid stuff. Peppers grew up in Maywood, is a Proviso East alum, lives there still. His charges are threatened by the allure of mostly-black Maywood’s mean streets.
“That’s the hand we’re dealt in this community,” Peppers says. “Just know that you’re not going to coach football. You’re not just going to be a police officer answering service calls. You’re going to have to teach. You’re going to have to love. If you’re a selfish person, you’re going to have to change.”
As we used to say in the Jesuits, edifying — considerably more so than an account of a celebrity finding God, as we sometimes read. It’s a religion story of merit.
Another good one, by the way, was Manya Brachear’s account of the senior minister of First United Methodist Church, also known as Chicago Temple, across from the Daley Center, who reads poetry to his former English teacher now stroke-ridden, bringing him back to life as it were.
This was “Their Friendship: Pure Poetry,” on 8/31.
Say it with numbers
How we doin’? Depends whom you ask. Here’s a graph worth studying:
(Oops, not all of it prints, including note that says maroon dots are actual unemployment data, everything in blue was created by Obama’s economic team.)
It’s from Innocent Bystanders by way of Power Line, which notes that Biden says the stimulus is working better than expected, then adds:
Biden’s dissociation from reality is nearly complete, but one wonders: aren’t there any journalists who are capable of looking up the administration’s predictions and asking Biden fact-based questions? Or is that considered too much work?
Yes. Too much.
Biden also plays the morality card:
“I believe this was the right thing to do morally,” Biden said in a speech the White House billed as a major address. “It was also the smart thing to do economically.”
I wouldn’t say it that way. I’d say it’s the right thing because it’s the smart thing, understood “we’d be derelict in our duty” if we didn’t do it.
But if it’s not working, it’s not smart, and therefore not right. He’s better off leaving morality out of it. It’s the last refuge of political scoundrels.
But what if “[t]he unemployment rate went up to 9.7% [in August], reversing the improvement we saw in July,” as Innocent B. says, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting?
And what if jobs are down too, as here?
Sign of government activity that is neither smart nor moral.
Snake oil bad for adults, worse for kids
Oh-bama is not welcome in schoolrooms in lots of places. In the Detroit area,
Districts throughout the suburbs have been hit with complaints from parents who are worried about their children hearing a message from Obama that they won’t have a chance to preview.
I wouldn’t want him talking to my kids or grandchildren. Don’t trust him.
The districts acknowledge that the message is intended to stress the importance of education and taking responsibility for learning. Some parents say the uproar is much ado about nothing.
Nope. Nothing he and Axelrod do is about nothing. Typical Democrats, always campaigning. Stay away from kids.
Mike Reno, a member of the Rochester [MI] Board of Education, said the idea behind the message is noble, but the timing is bad because of the politically charged climate.
It will always be bad, because always politically charged. Dems keep it that way.
[Rory] Cooper [of Heritage Foundation] criticized Obama for pushing his message through both the official White House Web site and Organizing for America’s BarackObama.com.
“Barack Obama needs to quit the perpetual campaign … he needs to choose which one he’s going to communicate with the American public through,” Cooper said.
But crisis mode suits them. They dare not waste crises, because those are the golden harvest times for statist schemes.
For instance, health care legislation will (a) save money and (b) provide care for all. Sure. Increase services at lower cost. No. The cost of snake oil is what should worry us. It’s going higher and higher, always does when Dems are in charge.
Later: I see Ann Coulter has an idea about that talking to school children, related to one of Oh-bama’s splendid czar choices.
Look out for trucks and autos
The new Randolph tot lot, Grove to Oak Park Ave., will be a park with an alley running through it. A “speed table” will slow vehicles down to minimize danger of a tot being run over when he or she runs from one half of the park to the other.
Gates across the alley appear in one of three plans offered, but these would be very expensive, to judge by comments by park officials.
This is what the park district is planning in its expansion of the lot’s western half to a newly acquired eastern half in land recently ceded to it by the village.
Plans were explained to 35 or so citizens in a meeting 8/26 at Pleasant Home by John Mac Manus, a consultant on whom the park district has been relying extensively in recent months.
No one at the 8/26 meeting made much of the danger factor, though most comments were from people living close to the lot.
It’s a busy alley, however, serving several large apartment and condo buildings. In fact, the whole block, Randolph to Washington, has only one single-family residence on the alley’s Oak Park Ave. side.
Among vehicles who use the alley regularly are autos, garbage trucks, and moving vans, the latter more in some seasons than others, of course.
The three plans currently under discussion are Scheme 1, Scheme 2, and Scheme 3. A survey monkey will send your comments on to the park district. It’s not too demanding as those things go, asking what you like or don’t like about each scheme, which you like best, and what else you’d like to say.
I’m going to paste most of this in the latter portion. You do what you feel like. There’s no obligation.
Later: I did this, adding words to this effect, that kids amuse themselves when permitted, and this is the goal of any park.
Honduras no, Chavez yes?
Obama admin putting screws to Honduras:
The most recent example of the Obama-style Good Neighbor Policy was the announcement last week that visa services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135 million in bilateral aid might be cut.
But these are only the public examples of its hardball tactics. Much nastier stuff is going on behind the scenes, practiced by a presidency that once promised the American people greater transparency and a less interventionist foreign policy.
And Hillary’s State Dept. (I think it’s hers) is contributing:
Prominent Hondurans, including leading members of the business community, complain that a State Department official has been pressuring them to push the interim government to accept the return of Mr. Zelaya to power.
When I asked the State Department whether it was employing such dirty tricks a spokeswoman would only say the U.S. has been “encouraging all members of civil society to support the San Jose ‘accord'”—which calls for Mr. Zelaya to be restored to power. Perhaps something was lost in the translation but threats to use U.S. power against a small, poor nation hardly qualify as encouragement,
says Anastasia O’Grady in Wall Street Journal.
It’s sickening. A U.S. ally, a democracy, is following its constitution — the ousted Zelaya has no case — and in the process erecting a barrier to Chavez of Venezuela. And we’re giving them grief?
Blithe Spirit 