Thursday, March 28, 2013

Inflation, what inflation?

Commerce Department figures show inflation to be running at about 2 per cent this year, increasing to 2.5 per cent in 2014. Manageable. They don't like to count food and energy. They're so damn volatile, don't you know.

Some economist offer a mixed bag during the second Obama term. Starting in 2014, food, energy and medical insurance will be increasing at an annual rate of 25 percent. These increases will be offset by future decreases in the cost of housing, automobiles, vacations, clothing, raw materials and capital goods.

So quit your bitching and stop bothering Bill Cunningham with your paranoia. Everything is OK.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Cunninghan is going to save your pension?

His intentions may be good but don't believe what he said. He is virtually powerless to do what needs to be done. Our pension crisis is very much tied to what is happening in Europe and Asia. Besides, Cunningham is also the same guy that voted to let the gays get a share of our pensions. He is a man long on good intentions but short in the reality department.

Whatever pensions we get will be worth 20 cents on the dollar after inflation hits us.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Cyprus, "an incredible breach of trust"

HARD EARNED WEALTH

You have to wonder, could it happen here? Could some residents of the 19th ward wake up some morning to find that the federal, state or city government has just levied a 10%, 20% or 40% charge on their bank account or on the equity in their house? What would you do? You do have to wonder. 

Brian Urlacher Insulted

The poor guy slaves for the Bears for 13 seasons and what do they do? They "slap him across the face" and offer him a measly $2,000,000 for the next season. Those bastards. They should be made to pay him $5,000,000 just for the insult. The poor guy. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

BAC classes begin the week of March 25!

Sign up for a spring class. It's a great value. Help yourself, help the neighborhood. 

Monday, March 18, 2013

Leftist Political Agenda


MICHAEL MOORE'S PLAN TO "FINISH OFF" THE NRA USING THE CORPSES OF MURDERED CHILDREN

O'BrienBy Teri O'Brien -
What better way to start the day than with a diatribe from the Round Mound Whose Lies Astound, Michael Moore? Earier this week, the pudgy propagandist posted a column on his website entitled “America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA).” As you would expect from this character, it’s a dishonest, demagogic attempt to justify trampling on your 2nd Amendment rights by citing various unrelated historic incidents, claiming equivalency among them where none exists, and then--PRESTO!--case closed!
Mr. Moore thinks he’s found a brilliant political strategy, not to mention a way to try to become relevant again, to make sure a massacre like Sandy Hook never happens again; that is, by disarming law-abiding citizens with laws that would have had no effect on the Newtown shooter. Naturally, he is motivated by nothing other than a desire to protect “the children.”
In service of that noble goal, he’s not only not above exploiting the mutilated corpses of the murdered children. He’s into it. He can’t wait to display these horrifying images because he is sure that they will inflame the emotions of the American public who would naturally be outraged and horrified into “just do something” mode, which will make them demand more pointless gun control laws. He begins to make his irrational argument by citing the ghastly images of a beaten and murdered Emmet Till, an African-American boy killed in Mississippi in 1955 by racist scumbags, and footage of that famous civil rights protest in Selma, Alabama in 1965 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the one that Barack Obama tried to claim had something to do with his nativity story, even though B. Hussein was born in 1961. He also mentions some other hideous photographs from the Vietnam War that, with the enthusiastic assistance of a willing media, turned political opinion in favor of those supporting our Communist enemy. Of course, none of these historic events has anything to do with the Left’s current desire to dust off the gun grabbing plans they’ve had in a drawer for years waiting for a tragedy to exploit. Then he writes:
But I have a prediction. I believe someone in Newtown, Connecticut – a grieving parent, an upset law enforcement officer, a citizen who has seen enough of this carnage in our country – somebody, someday soon, is going to leak the crime scene photos of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And when the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child's body, that's the day the jig will be up for the NRA. It will be the day the debate on gun control will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.
Say what? Forgive me, my ample friend, but I hate to break it to you. No matter how many wackjob criminals commit unspeakable acts of violence, whether they do them with guns, hammersbaseball bats, or trucks full of fertilizer, as long as you and your freedom-hating friends try to trample on our 2nd Amendment rights, there is not only still something to argue over. There is something to fight for. Mr. Moore, I know it’s difficult for you to believe, but most decent people are not interested in using these dead babies in the service of a political agenda. We are repulsed by the very idea. I would think that this point of view applies in particular to those grieving parents.
If you are so concerned that no children be killed as a result of gun violence, I challenge you, and Barack Obama, to hold hearings in Chicago on its causes. What better place to research senseless killing with firearms than the Windy City, where guns are banned? A suggestion: you might want to look into the issue of illegitimacy, since I suspect that the fact that many children are growing up in fatherless homes, as a result of well-intentioned “War on Poverty” policies initiated by liberals, might have a teensy weensy bit to do with the savagery taking place on the streets of Chicago.
There’s one problem with Mr. Moore’s claim that his call for the end of the NRA is motivated by what happened in Newtown. Over ten years ago, he made a film, which despite being a collection of half-truths and outright lies, won the Academy Award for “Best Documentary” in 2003, “Bowling for Columbine.” This film demonstrates that Mr. Moore’s expression of concern about the children of Sandy Hook is like everything else he produces, deceitful and done in service of a radical left-wing agenda. “Bowling for Columbine” contains a disgusting cartoon segment that equates the NRA with the Ku Klux Klan. The only problem with that assertion is that the NRA was founded by the New York legislature, at the request of former Union--as in the guys who fought against the Confederacy-soldiers. Their eighth president was Ulysses S. Grant. Yes, THAT Grant. The one who defeated the Confederacy, and who during Reconstruction, aggressively cracked down on the Klan.  
Just like Diane Feinstein, Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, Michael Moore is hoping not to let this crisis go to waste, and he’s hoping that gruesome images will incite an emotionally-driven frenzy and anti-freedom rush to judgement in favor of enacting bad, unconstitutional policies that will make everyone less safe. 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Happy St. Patricks Day to you.

Let's try to remember what this day stands for. After that, perhaps we can meet at Coaches.

Friday, March 15, 2013

We have become low information voters.


WALSH: BE HONEST - WE'RE TO BLAME EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS OUR POLITICIANS

By former Congressman Joe Walsh - 
At a townhall meeting on Sunday, I said that it’s very easy to rag on our politicians for the mess we find ourselves in — huge debt and deficits, sluggish economy, lack of jobs, pension crisis, lousy schools, and a government we can’t afford. Our politicians deserve all the blame we give to them. But be honest, we as a people have fallen down on the job, as well. We’re not as educated as we used to be, not as informed, not as engaged as we should be. We’ve grown lazy, distracted, and yes, too many of us have gotten stupid. We’re easily manipulated by the media. We know more about Jay Z and J Lo than JFK and Janet Napolitano. More of us watch American Idol than pay attention to the budget battles in DC.
But think about it — if we don’t like our politicians, who keeps voting them into office? We get the government we deserve. If we, as a voting public, don’t start getting more informed and more educated on issues and concerns, we’ll lose this great republic. That’s what Thomas Jefferson said … and he’s right.
Walsh
Go ahead, blame the politicians if it makes you feel good, but we have not been doing our jobs as voters for years — staying informed, responsible, and educated. Until we understand that, we will never truly fix our problems.
If we as a nation continue to be more concerned with who will win Dancing with the Stars than we are with how we can reform Medicare and Social Security so they are around for future generations, then we deserve everything that happens to us.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Suburban Police Chase

Saw a chase about 10:25 tonight from Oak Lawn, down 111th st., ending when the bad guys had trouble with the turn at 111th and Longwood Drive. 

What bothered me was witnessing the reckless manner with which Oak Lawn PD went through the red light at 111th and Kedzie. About 15 OLPD's at speeds in excess of 55MPH, plus a few other suburban PD's. 


It was an adrenalin fueled negligent chase after some POS armed robbers. Big deal. What about the safety of one of our residents thinking he or she has a green light. Sorry guys, our neighbor's life and limb are more important than your bust of some POS. Take it slow when you come up on those red lights. 


FYI, CPD vehicles did take that intersection slow. 

Kass says it best.


March 14, 2013
Jorge Bergoglio, the son of Italian immigrants born in Buenos Aires, doesn't fit the image of a high and mighty churchman in charge of an empire of more than 1 billion people.
He's a humble man and, at 76, not young. Until quite recently, he rode the bus to work and lived in a small apartment. He cooked his own meals.
After the white smoke poured from the Vatican on Wednesday, and Cardinal Bergoglio took the name Pope Francis, he asked the people to pray for him.
  • John Kass
  • John Kass
By taking the name Francis — one of Roman Catholicism's most humble and beloved saints — the new pope announced changes coming to Western Christianity's largest church, a church in crisis.
The cardinals, in putting their trust in Francis, were directly responding to the challenge laid out by the former Pope Benedict XVI.
Before he stepped down, Benedict repeatedly warned that the church was in crisis, among the hierarchs and the laity. The example on most people's minds, regardless of their faith, is the hypocrisy among the church leaders who moved sexually abusive priests from parish to parish to cover up their crimes and allow them to continue ruining the lives of children.
Benedict also warned that such hypocrisy had accelerated a drifting faith among the people (and this applies to all Christians), where some attend services and see not a holy miracle but a pageant.
This is endemic, particularly in the stridently secular big-government West that regards Christianity as a competitor, an obstacle to overcome, if not an outright threat to squash.
Shortly after Francis was chosen, I phoned two experts to explore Benedict's warning in the context of the church's new leadership.
The first was Larry Chapp, professor of theology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.
"Benedict made it very, very clear," Chapp told me, "that the crisis in the church, from the sexual abuse crisis, to the mismanagement of the Curia, to the crisis in the Vatican, to the crisis of secularism in Western society, all of these crises have one root cause:
"The leadership of the church lacks proper faith in Jesus Christ. They're not living in a sense an evangelical life of poverty, chastity and obedience. They're not living a radical life of devotion to the poor and the outcast and the marginal. They're too concerned with worldly things. Now they've picked the man Francis who in a sense will reorient the church toward fundamental things of faith. I think this is critical. Yes, the cardinals responded to the challenge."
Prior to the selection, there was much talk that the cardinals would chose either an evangelist or a bureaucrat.
"Instead, they elected a man of faith," Chapp said. "They went and found the holiest man in the College of Cardinals and made him pope. It wasn't what people were expecting. But they saw his holiness and faith as priority No. 1. And that's astounding."
Rod Dreher, a former Roman Catholic turned Orthodox Christian who writes on religion and culture for The American Conservative, said Francis should do something dramatic to address the sexual abuse and other scandals.
"He can have a come-to-Jesus moment with some of these cardinals and bishops who have been the most egregious facilitators of abuse, covering it up.
"If the pope could make an example of a few of those guys and forcibly retire them, send them to a monastery," said Dreher, "this would send the message to the people and the wider world that the days of covering these things up are over."
It would allow the new pope to publicly and forcefully come down on the side of the faithful.
"To stand with the people against the aristocratic class, so to speak, within the church … to show there's a new regime in town and that the bad old days are over," Dreher said. "We need a clean break with the cover-ups."
As the scandals and the cover-ups have cost Catholic leaders the moral authority required to act as good shepherds, the onslaught of a strident secularism, particularly in the West, has weakened Christianity generally.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Am I imagining this?


Driving around the neighborhood I am wondering why  so many of our recently repaved streets seem to have an overabundance of potholes, while some of the older streets seem to be holding up fine. Makes you question whether some contractors may have taken some shortcuts with the ashphalt mix. 99th, Talman, California, Hoyne all repaved in the last 3 years and needing to be rebuilt now. What happened?

Thursday, March 7, 2013

South Side Irish Parade


This Sunday at noon. Remember to behave. No drinking in the public way.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

More about the BAC

The financial condition at the Beverly Arts Center may be more dire than anyone thinks.  The cause is not mismanagement or anything sinister. The cause is simply the neighborhood's refusal to support the BAC and it's programs. 

I suggest full public disclosure of BAC's financial condition followed by a round of serious neighborhood fundraising and an infusion of local business talent to supplement the BAC's board of directors. BAC's mission is much too important to our neighborhood to just let it go on like this. 

Your thoughts please. 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Entertainment

Attention 19th ward residents, please support the Beverly Arts Center. The folks running the Irish Film Festival have moved everything from BAC to the north side. We wish them good luck. 

Friday, March 1, 2013

Sequestration


OBAMA GROUP SPREADS PANIC MESSAGE OVER 2.3 PERCENT FEDERAL BUDGET CUTS

CHICAGO - Obama's old campaign network that has been transformed into Organizing for Action - based in Chicago - and its director Jim Messina is trying the new OFA's wings out by sending out a panic-toned message on sequestration (below). The group has declared they plan to use the Obama network to promote grassroots efforts on the Administration's behalf. Republicans haven't responded in kind yet.
* * * * * * *
Friend:
Brace yourself.
If congressional Republicans don't act by tomorrow, we're going to be hit by a series of devastating, automatic budget cuts called the sequester.


It's a sledgehammer to the budget, our economy, and millions of Americans across the country -- and the most frustrating part? It doesn't have to happen.

The majority of Americans support President Obama's balanced approach to deficit reduction -- add your name if you do, too.

So far, congressional Republicans are refusing to compromise -- all because they don't want to close tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires, vacation homes, and corporate jets. Seriously.

This has very real consequences.

On the chopping block are 10,000 teaching jobs, more than 70,000 kids' spots in Head Start, $35 million for local fire departments, $43 million to make sure seniors don't go hungry, and access to nutrition assistance for 600,000 women and their families. That's just a few of the things we'll lose.

President Obama has put forth a balanced deficit reduction plan with smart spending cuts that protect the critical investments needed to strengthen middle-class families and our economy.

We need to send a strong signal about where Americans stand on this issue.

Add your name today:

http://my.barackobama.com/Tell-the-GOP-to-Act

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Chair
Organizing for Action