Saturday, November 30, 2013

Macy's put she men in the NYC Thanksgiving parade.

Kinky BootsKinkyboots2
Your children watched this hideous she-man with a demon face

My husband is not prone to sinister conspiracy theories, but he is a scholar of renown on Marxism and other totalitarian ideologies and polities.
One morning two years ago he abruptly asked me: “What’s with that Macy’s red star logo?”
Macy's logo
We all know that, along with the hammer-and-sickle, the red star is an emblem of the Communist Party.
Soviet Union flag
Now why would Macy’s choose for its logo a symbol that’s associated with and immediately evocative of the Communist Party?
~Eowyn

Friday, November 29, 2013

Lawmaker pension plan is hurting, needs money now.

TIME TO END STATE LAWMAKER PENSIONS

Th-6By Ted Dabrowski - 
If you think politicians are going to fix Illinois’ crumbling pensions, you may want to see what they’ve done to their own pension fund.
It’s broke.
In fact, the General Assembly Retirement System, or GARS, makes Illinois’ other state-run pensions look healthy by comparison.
GARS, which provides pensions to 294 retired legislators, is nearly out of cash. And without massive taxpayer contributions, legislators won’t get their pension checks. The fund has only enough assets on hand to make pension payouts for the next 2.5 years.
Here are the facts:

  • GARS has only 17% of the $303 million it needs to invest to meet its long-term benefit payouts of nearly $900 million.
  • Its $52 million in assets cover only 2.5 years of annual benefit payouts to legislators.
  • The state – meaning taxpayers – will contribute eight times more into the pension system than legislators next year to keep GARS afloat.
  • Today there are more GARS pensioners drawing money out of the system (294) than active legislators contributing into it (176).
GARS is no longer sustainable. And with more pensioners than active employees, it’s become nothing more than a collapsing Ponzi scheme.
The collapse of GARS proves that Illinois politicians have no business running the pension funds of state government workers and retirees. State worker retirements don’t belong in the hands of politicians. All five state-run pension systems are suffering from decades of fake reforms and bad judgment. And there is no reason to believe that pension reform under the same politicians should yield different results.
Legislators’ failure to manage their own pension fund raises the question: Why do Illinois legislators get a pension in the first place?
Being an Illinois legislator was never meant to be a career position like that of a teacher, police officer or a fireman. In fact, in Illinois being a politician is legally a part-time job.
But Illinois’ supposedly part-time legislators have become career politicians, in part because they are provided full-time benefits:
  • Lawmakers receive pensions equal to 85% of their final salary after 20 years of service.
  • Legislator pensions increase each year through an automatic, compounded 3% cost-of-living adjustment.
Taxpayers are footing the bill for cushy legislative salaries and incredibly generous pension packages in return for continued fiscal mismanagement and the collapse of the state’s pension systems.
It’s time to end legislator pensions. Part-time legislators shouldn’t be receiving full-time benefits.
Ted Dabrowski is Vice President of Policy at Illinois Policy Institute.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A great accomplishment.

Succeeds where others have failed. 
Bringing an experienced operator like Barracos to 111th street is a win win. Good job. Their presence on 95th street was critical to the renaissance of Evergreen Park. Expect the same on 111th street. 

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Iran Deal

It's not often that I applaud President Obama but I think his administration has done well by making a deal with Iran. Good for the U.S. 

Friday, November 22, 2013

Durbin knows to do what he is told. Can we get somebody to run against this POS?

DURBIN VOTES FOR THE SENATE "NUCLEAR OPTION" AFTER BEING AGAINST IT IN BUSH YEARS

WASHINGTON - Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin voted Thursday with other Senate Democrats to eliminate the use of the filibuster on all presidential nominees except those to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Invoking the “nuclear option” means that most of President Barack Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominees no longer need to clear a 60-vote threshold to reach the Senate floor and get an up-or-down vote.
However, in 2005, Durbin held a different position:
Read more HERE

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Heisman Race

Northern Illinois QB Jordan Lynch accounted for 476 total yards in a win over Ball State.

In Northern Illinois' biggest game of the season, Huskies senior quarterback Jordan Lynch rose to the occasion.
Lynch piled up 476 yards of total offense and accounted for four touchdowns as NIU beat Ball State 48-27 Wednesday night in a battle for first place in the Mid-American Conference West Division. The game was closer than the final score indicated; the game was tied at 27 before NIU (10-0) scored three TDs in the final 5:49, including two -- one on an interception return with 46 seconds left -- in the final 1:26.
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The victory kept alive NIU's hopes of a second consecutive BCS berth and Lynch's long-shot hopes of being invited to New York for the Heisman ceremony.
Lynch (6-foot-0, 216 pounds) finished seventh in last season's Heisman voting and has a shot at a top-five finish this season, especially if voters saw his performance Wednesday against a Ball State team that came in 9-1.
Lynch was 26 of 33 for a season-high 345 yards and two TDs, including a perfectly thrown 36-yarder to DaRon Brown that gave NIU the lead for good with 5:49 left in the game. Lynch also ran for 123 yards and two scores. His passing total was the second-highest of his career, and his rushing total was the fifth time this season and the 17th time in the past 24 games he rushed for 100 yards. He went into the contest ninth in the nation in rushing at 127.8 yards per game.
Lynch lacks elite speed, but he is elusive and can make quick cuts. While he was sacked once, he should've been dropped at least three more times, instead wriggling out of attempted tackles with his strength.
"He's a very good player," Ball State coach Pete Lembo said after the game. "He's fast. He's built like a linebacker, but he's got tailback speed [Lynch is a 4.6 guy in the 40]. He's got a lot of savvy. I'm looking forward to him getting his degree and moving on."
NIU coach Rod Carey did some stumping for his quarterback afterward.
"If Jordan isn't in the conversation for the Heisman, I don't know what people are watching; they were obviously asleep," he said. " ... From the performance he had tonight, he dang sure should be in that conversation."
Lynch is lacking as a pro prospect at quarterback because of his lack of height and his lack of arm strength. But some analysts, including NFL Media's Gil Brandt, think there could be a spot for him at the next level if he changes positions.
Lynch's Ball State counterpart, Keith Wenning, was 35 of 49 for 324 yards, a TD and an interception. It was the ninth 300-yard game of the season for the strong-armed Wenning, who looks to be a solid third-day draft prospect. It was the first time in five games he didn't throw at least three TD passes. He has 28 TD passes and six interceptions this season.
Both quarterbacks proved they could overcome the elements. Temperature at kickoff was 32 degrees -- it was in the mid-20s in the second half -- and the wind was about 16 mph.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

19th Warders that voted for Obama, you need to listen up.

OBAMACARE INCLUDES LITTLE KNOWN 3.8% REAL ESTATE SALES TAX AND MOST OF YOU ARE GOING TO PAY IT. 

Property Taxes
If you're making more than $200,000 per year and you sell your home next year, a little-known provision within the Affordable Care Act may cost you thousands of dollars. Within ACA language is a 3.8% federal tax that home sellers will pay directly to subsidize Obamacare - and it's another problem that young professionals are discovering in the Democrats' plan to redistribute wealth in America.
While this discussion is focused on a New Jersey zip code, there's plenty of similar zip codes in the Chicago area - especially the huber-rich Gold Coast, Beverly and elite northern suburbs - where ObamaCare's new tax will cost "wealthy" home sellers starting in 2014. See video HERE or below the fold.

Friday, November 15, 2013

The Philippines need help!

The number of people in the Philippines confirmed dead from Typhoon Haiyan now stands at 3,621, officials say.
UN and local agencies have issued conflicting tolls, and the final figure is likely to rise still higher.
One week after the storm, food and supplies are now beginning to reach survivors, but aid agencies say the logistics of distribution are enormous.
The Philippine government has defended its response to the disaster, one of the strongest storms ever on land.
The latest death toll of 3,621 issued by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council was up from the figure of 3,422 the interior secretary had given the BBC a few hours before.
The UN put the number of dead at 4,460. Officials said it was likely more bodies would be found as aid teams reached outlying areas.

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: "There has been a dramatic change today"
'Desperate shortage'
Helicopters from a US aircraft carrier have been transporting supplies to the devastated town of Guiuan on the Pacific coast - the first to take the full force of the typhoon.
The carrier, USS George Washington, is expanding search-and-rescue operations and providing a platform for helicopters to move supplies.
Pallets loaded with food and water have been taken from the aircraft carrier to Tacloban, the capital of badly hit Leyte province, and Guiuan.
HOW TO HELP?
Because of distances, money is the only viable way to help these people. Make a donation by going to mercycorps.org

Thursday, November 14, 2013

COMMENTS



Paul Mitchell said...

Mr. Engler asks, "Were not Quinn and Moylan [and I might add Sullivan and Cross] listening..." to Cardinal George on the subject of gay "marriage"?
Why should they? What consequence has ever been visited by the Church on a Catholic politician who speaks and acts against Catholic teaching?
It's not like they're going to be made sorry!

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Government used to strive to set a good example, now it strives to set a bad example.

TAX DOLLARS PAY FOR OBAMACARE ADS ENCOURAGING SEX, UNDERAGE DRINKING

According to Breitbart News, a taxpayer-funded Navigator group is responsible for a new wave of Obamacare ads designed to get college students to sign up for Obamacare by telling them they’ll be insured against the effects of promiscuous sex and wild drinking binges.
Some of the "Thanks Obamacare Campaign" ads are encouraging teens and twenty-something’s to sign up for Obamacare to get federally subsidized birth control so they can have sex whenever they want, with whoever they want.
Below are some of the ads taxpayers paid for:
57  63
67  18
59  55

Sunday, November 10, 2013

More of the same!

Paul Vallas is the ultimate bureaucrat. A self-appointed education expert, is this what we need?  Some people may remember him from when he lived in the neighborhood as not being the friendliest guy. He has been run out of Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans and had to go all the way to Bridgeport, Connecticut in order to peddle his wares. 

Did Quinn make a bad pick? Is this the best he can do? 


CHICAGO TEACHER'S UNION PREZ KAREN LEWIS CONDEMNS QUINN'S LG PICK

Chicago_teachers_union_president_karen_lewis_and_illinois_governor_pat_quinn_stand_at_the_podium_during_the_annual_ctu_lead_dinner_on_october_28th_2012
CTU President Karen Lewis with Illinois Governor Pat Quinn
CHICAGO - Friday, Chicago Teachers Union's President Karen Lewis made it clear she nor the union is happy with Governor Quinn's 2014 running mate pick Paul Vallas, saying the former Chicago Public School CEO is for almost everything the CTU is against:
"The Chicago Teachers Union has supported Governor Quinn in the past because of his commitment to grassroots organizing, publicly funded public education, and collective bargaining. For these reasons we are concerned about his choice of Paul Vallas as a running mate. His choice takes us in the wrong direction for public education in Chicago and Illinois.
"While he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Vallas pioneered the corporate driven education model in our city. His policies continue to devastate our schools system, which recently suffered 50 school closures, deep, and painful school budget cuts, and the loss of thousands of experienced school staff are key tenets of the Vallas model.

"Vallas ushered in an era of massive expansion of standardized testing; the privatization of public schools through outsourcing and charter school expansion; and the devastating policy of school turnarounds, which resulted in the firing of scores of black and veteran teachers.
"In a 2010 interview with John Merrow on PBS, Paul Vallas appallingly stated that he did not see any downside to charter school proliferation, believed that there was not enough faculty turnover in education, and did not see a need for collective bargaining.
"Just this week in Bridgeport, CT, the school board election results were viewed as a referendum on Vallas’ tenure as an unaccredited district administrator.
"In consideration of this list of concerns, we hope that Vallas will move to support proposals for an elected representative school board in Chicago, and also denounce privatization schemes that have done nothing to increase academic achievement or address the needs of students who need the most in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans."

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Tigers v Bama

LSU Tigers v. Alabama Tide, tonight at 7:00 P.M.

Forget all the others. This is the college football game of the year. The best of the best. 

Friday, November 8, 2013

The War on Religious Freedom

Th-16By Phyllis Schlafly - 
Americans who believe in God had better wake up and realize that a well-orchestrated campaign is moving to fundamentally transform the United States into a scrupulously secular nation. If this succeeds, we will no longer enjoy our First Amendment right of “free exercise” of religion but will be forbidden to speak or display any prayers, Bible quotations, or other evidences of religion in any public place or event.
The major strike force working to accomplish this consists of the ACLU plus various atheist groups. They are always ready to file lawsuits to get some supremacist judge to restrict religious expression.
This effort is magnified by two other organizations that have a major impact on our culture: the military who feel the temptation to be politically correct and the liberal bureaucrats in public schools who now feel free to teach their leftwing views. Barack Obama’s fingerprints are not on most of these acts, but his anti-religious attitudes are widely enough known to encourage those on the public payroll to charge ahead with extremist politically correct policies.

We’d like to know if Pentagon officials have met with any Christian leaders to balance the aggressive lobbying by those who want to silence all religious expression by members of the military. Nine senior Army or Navy officers were dismissed this year, and some wonder if this was a purge of senior officers suspected of not toeing the Obama party line.
A Young Marines program in Louisiana, which has been helping at-risk youth for 25 years, lost its federal funding because its graduation ceremony mentions God. The oath says simply, “I shall never do anything that would bring disgrace or dishonor upon my God, my country and its flag, my parents, myself or the Young Marines.”
Graduation also includes a voluntary and non-denominational prayer that, in 25 years, no one ever complained about. But Obama’s Department of Justice discovered the oath and prayer in a random audit and then demanded that both be removed or else the government would cut off its $15,000 in federal funding.
Some public school busybody bureaucrats are trying to suppress any and all religious mention on school property. Their orders are far more extreme than anything courts have ever held to be violations of the First Amendment.
Sports are a favorite target of the anti-religious crowd. A high school football coach, Marcus Borden, was forbidden even to bow his head or “take a knee” during voluntary student-led prayers before the games.
In Texas, a boy’s track relay team ran its fastest race of the year and defeated its closest rival by seven yards, which should have enabled it to advance toward the state championship. The team’s anchor runner pointed to the sky to give glory to God as he crossed the finish line, but someone didn’t like the gesture so the authorities disqualified this winning team because of it.
The ACLU in Rhode Island filed a lawsuit to force Cranston High School to remove a prayer banner in the auditorium, even though there had been no complaints in 38 years. The banner reads in part: “Our Heavenly Father: Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship, help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.”
High school officials in Kountze, Texas, and a Wisconsin atheist group called Freedom From Religion made a tremendous effort to stop the cheerleaders from displaying a banner before a football game that read: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”
In North Carolina, a high school junior knelt for a brief two-second prayer before a wrestling match, and the referee penalized him a point for doing so. A senior at Tomah High School in Wisconsin was given a zero on an art project because he added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A Sign of Love” to his drawing of a landscape.
You can laugh at the following rule issued by the principal at Heritage Elementary in Madison, Alabama, but she was downright serious. She allowed Easter observances including a costumed rabbit, but she issued this imperious warning, “Make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter bunny’ because that would infringe on religious diversity.”
America was founded on very different beliefs about government actions. As Alexis de Toqueville, the Frenchman who traveled around our country in the mid-19th century, wrote: “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. … The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

Thursday, November 7, 2013

They can deal with this but they can't find time to deal with the state's pension problem.

JUNE'S NOT SOON ENOUGH; HARMON WORKS TO ACCELERATE GAY MARRIAGE EFFECTIVE DATE

Th-17SPRINGFIELD - Gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender couples in Illinois are not content with waiting until June 1 2014 to obtain marriage licenses. So State Senator Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) proposed legislation this week on HB 2747 that would move up SB 10's effective date to 30 days after his bill is signed into law by Governor Quinn. If Harmon's proposal moves through the General Assembly and is signed by the Governor in January, gay couples could marry in Illinois as soon as February 2014.
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Gay marriage activists needed 71 votes in the Illinois House in order for SB 10 - the gay marriage bill - to go into effect immediately, so in a last minute floor amendment, the bill sponsor State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) moved the effective date back to June 2014. Harris' amendment allowed SB 10's passage with 61 House votes - 58 Democrats and 3 Republicans - 10 short of the 71 needed had the effective date not been changed.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Kirk fails to represent his constituent's interest.

REPUBLICAN MARK KIRK SPEAKS ON SENATE FLOOR FOR FIRST TIME SINCE STROKE. Of all the problems facing the great republic, this is what he wants to speak about? 

WASHINGTON DC - Illinois' junior U.S. Senator Mark Kirk spoke for the first time since his 2012 stroke to support an LGBT rights bill - ENDA - which passed the Senate shortly after his comments. The legislation is not expected to progress in the U.S. House:

Monday, November 4, 2013

Insurance cancelled?

CANCELLATIONS NOT CAUSED BY "BAD APPLE CARRIERS"

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WASHINGTON - Why are millions getting cancellation notices from their health care providers? Is it because all along you've carried what the Obama Administration calls "substandard plans" and they're using Obamacare to oust you? 
A whole website called "Mycancellation.com" is featuring cancellations insurance providers are sending out all over the nation to individual clients. Tuesday, blogger Michelle Malkin is planning a #myhealthcareplandied Day on Twitter. Those directly affected are speaking up. 
Townhall columnuist Matthew Needhum explains that the Affordable Care Act adds new government mandates that requires insurance providers to update and add on the new requirements. If any change to your policy takes place, the ACA law requires the whole plan to be scrapped. A new policy, with the required new provisions added hike the health care costs, and is causing the "sticker shock" with skyrocketing premiums and deductibles. 
In other words, despite what the Obama Administration insists, it's not bad apple carriers that are to blame for what's creating havoc among the self-employed insured. Here's how Needhum explains it:
While the Obama administration has admitted these insurance cancellations are taking place, the administration has attempted to shift the blame away from the Affordable Care Act. In a press conference on Tuesday, Press Secretary Jay Carney stated to those receiving health insurance cancellation notices, “Your insurer basically threw you off that plan.” On Wednesday, the President himself attributed these changes to “bad apple insurers” who are attempting to “downgrade or cancel these substandard plans.”
In reality, these insurance cancellations are the result of insurance companies simply complying with the regulations put in place by the Affordable Care Act. According to Peter Suderman, Senior Editor of Reason Magazine, the Affordable Care Act “institute[s] a slew of new requirements that [are] certain to result in health insurers dropping current plans for millions of people.” Many existing plans in the individual market, which were targeted to meet consumer demand, did not fit these mandates. Health insurance companies have had to cancel many of their existing plans to create new, more costly plans which do comply with these new mandates.
While this may be news to those who followed President Obama’s rhetoric over the past few years, the large number of health insurance cancellations were actuallyexpected by the Obama administration. NBC News recently took a look at regulations issued in July 2010, finding that the Obama Administration “knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”