Personal Aside: Obama, Daley Share Radicalism, Don’t You Believe Otherwise… On Ghetto Non-Families, the Churches…Including My Own Catholic…Are Enablers.

Just because Barack Obama is a tall, angular, smooth-talking third-world denizen crypto-Marxist with a Harvard orientation and Mayor Richard M. Daley is a short, squat, jowly Irishman who speaks with accents of Bridgeport blue collar and goes to Mass every Sunday at Old Saint Pat’s, don’t go getting the idea that (a) they’re not united on every issue and that (b) Daley is a small chip off the old block who inwardly shares his Old Man’s innately conservative thinking. Answers: (a) they are and (b) he’s definitely isn’t.

While Obama’s Chicago orientation is Hyde Park, the fashionable once “politically independent” (meaning left-wing) neighborhood that houses the University of Chicago (whose longtime venerable alderman Leon Despres, an ultra-left supporter of Leon Trotsky tangled with Old Man Daley), Daley’s son…unlike his father…has no stomach for principle. “Young Daley,” age 67, long ago made peace with Hyde Park and every other leftwing group in the city and, in fact, is in bed with the most virulent anti-patriotic faction that has compiled a long record of disloyalty to our country.

Behind the scenes, he sponsored an unrepentant terrorist, Weatherman Bomber Billy Ayres, to become…here pause for laughter… “Distinguished Professor of Education and University Scholar” at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He did it despite Ayres’ statement to The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001 no less that “I don’t regret setting bombs” at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. “I feel we didn’t do enough.” That meant and means absolutely nothing to Daley to whom nothing is more important than his own reelections. When Ayres’ terrorist views came to light in the 2008 presidential campaign, Daley had his press office issue a statement in readable English that said: “I…know Bill Ayres. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-recognized school reform program [sic]. He is a nationally-recognized professor of education [sic]…and a valued member of the Chicago community.”

Daley added: “I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time [sic] but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40-year-old battles.”

Ayres’ views on education are Marxist—not that this means a thing to Daley who places his own political well-being first and disregards everything else including his own church’s theology…although with his beamingly Irish wife, Maggie, who like him identifies with the-wearin’-of-the-green, strides to Communion every Sunday at the mother-church of the ultra-pragmatic Cook county Democratic party, Old Saint Pat’s.

Daley sold out long ago…dating from his state senate days…to all liberal and radical constituencies…but since being mayor has paid special attention to homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-genders. Not only did he sponsor a tax-supported building to honor their peculiar “saints” but recently named a self-outed gay as CEO of Chicago public schools. Any objection by traditionalists to the appointment as being the wrong model for public school children, of course was dismissed and brushed aside by the liberal news media.

His new schools CEO is Ron Huberman who used to be Daley’s chief of staff, ran the CTA and has zilch…zilch…experience in teaching or education. Huberman succeeded Arne Duncan whose own credentials rest on his having served true educational reformer Paul Vallas as deputy chief of staff. After Vallas was fired by Daley for challenging the all-important teachers’ union, Duncan took the CEO job and swiftly surrendered to the teachers. He also made “more equal” the test scorings he said had discriminated against blacks, causing by this legerdemain the scores to rise, although they were rigged: for which he was applauded by Daley and the media.

(Duncan then was appointed secretary of education by Obama. He is a former Harvard basketball star who went from there to professional basketball playing in Australia after trying out for berths…and failing…with the Rhode Island Gulls ands New Jersey Jammers. His thesis at Harvard was entitled “The Values, Aspirations and Opportunities of the Chicago Urban Underclass.” In those years Duncan often spoke Black English, causing one college basketball head hunter who talked with him on the phone to assume he was black.

(There is very little doubt that Obama appointed Duncan to education’s highest post not just through the Daley connection but because for a decade Duncan has been available for pickup basketball games with Obama).

Back to Duncan’s successor, Huberman. Not long after he proudly outed himself as a homosexual following his appointment as schools CEO, he announced the birth of a child to him and his “partner,” Darren Delong. Their child was conceived through one partner’s or possible both partner’s sperm deposited in the body of a willing female “mother” who is unknown. Announcement of the birth thrilled the fluttery far-left Catholic Sun-Times political columnist Carol Marin to exclaim breathlessly:

“[Being gay] hasn’t been easy but it’s made more difficult now by an economic crisis that trumps virtually anything else. As a result, Illinois’ gay and lesbian citizens still do not possess the same rights as the rest of us.” Meaning Marin is plumping for special rights—same-sex marriage. “But there is always hope…And today that hope is wrapped in a blanket and watched over by two sleep-deprived fathers!”

After her column and the general huzza’ing by the lockstep media, there wasn’t much concern in Chicago circles about the school CEO being gay. But then came trouble. Huberman named whom he felt was just the right guy to motivate Chicago students to go back to school this fall. He is Jeremih (correct spelling) Felton who in the rock world known as Jeremih registered number 4 in the “Hot 100” recordings for youth with his recording of “Birthday Sex.” The recording is the braying of a horny young man who tells his girlfriend that the only thing he wants to give her for her birthday is to have sex with her. Some of the printable lyrics go:

“It’s your birthday so I know you want to ride out/ Even if we only go to my house/ Sip on weezy [a kid mixture of alcohol and uppers] as we sit on my couch.”

When asked about this decadent Pied Piper Huberman hired to encourage kids to go back to school, Daley justified this to the press which I republish in its entirety to show the garbled non-logical construction he relies on when caught in a bind:

“Jeremih is a graduate of many sons and all that. Today you have all types of artists and music and like anything else, you’re going tossing their songs and let them sing it. It’s freedom of speech and he’s just pursuing his careers [sic] and why not? He’s going to be a wunnerful engineer or whatever he ‘s going to do in life. He knows he’s going to do something and let him do it!”

Having delivered these immortal words, he huffed away while the press consulted with one another to try to fathom his statement’s sense. That’s what Daley does when cornered. You need a cryptographer to discover what he means…and even then you find he’s a giant squid which squirts ink that clouds the waves, allowing him to escape being pinned down.

Crime: Something Daley Can’t Talk Away.

On a single weekend last month (July), at least 35 people were shot…and in one night alone, seven in a single incident on the West Side. A few items from that historic weekend: Police were called to a shooting on the South Side’s Holman Boulevard (July 29) where seven were shot with six hospitalized in critical condition and one adult male in stable condition with a graze wound….a man was found shot inside a grocery store while customers routinely pulled items from the dairy case into their baskets…while six others were found shot within a half-block radius of the store.

Continuing: An hour later, three people—including a woman standing with her baby in a stroller waiting for the light to change—wee shot within a period of 20 minutes on the South and West Sides…in the South Shore neighborhood, a 22-year-old man was shot in the hand and suffered a minor head wound…the shooting was preceded by a carjacking when five suspects approached a victim and physically removed him from his car at gunpoint, then took him in their car to his residence where they stole his TV sets…then they drove him to a vacant lot where they beat and shot him as he tried to run away.

Then a 25-year-old woman was shot while talking to friends on the grounds of a gated housing development…three males wearing black hoods burst out of an Auto Zone store on the West Side and opened fire. A woman not a target of the shooting then felt a sharp sting in her lower right leg and discovered she was shot…in a pre-dawn hour a 22-year-old male walked into Loretto hospital with a gunshot wound in the ankle after having been shot in the Austin neighborhood, the victim of a shooting during a robbery…Later in the early morning hours, two males were shot as they sat on a porch in Little Village, by members of a rival gang who came by one foot…as the sun came up a man was hit by gunfire on South Wells when two other males began shooting. The victim was hit in the leg and taken in stable condition to Provident hospital.

As the weekend ended, a teenaged boy was shot and wounded as he walked in his South Side neighborhood…hit on the right side and is in good condition at Advocate Christ hospital…followed by a male who was snot and critically wounded not many blocks away, found sitting in his car where investigators found blood, but he said he was shot four doors down.

These reports gravely disturbed Daley because he saw in them a threat to his landing the Olympics for 2016 when he will be 74 years old. So what did he do? He authorized community marches led by his $300,000 a year body-builder police superintendent Jody Weis who looks like the Incredible Hulk. Weis and Daley along with ministers blamed the availability of guns but uttered no concern over the chaotic family dissolution that produces his carnage. Railing about the excess number of guns is very popular with the city’s ministries and the media.

The Silence of the Churches and My Own Catholic One.

One can readily understand Daley’s evasion of broken families as a pol: it would be taken by many as racist and an insult and the media would be all over him. But one cannot understand the silence of the churches…including my own Catholic one…which cowers from bringing up the subject of non-family chaos because it is politically unpopular (something the churches shouldn’t be concerned with).

So far as can be seen, there has not been any specific admonition or reference from the Catholic archdiocese on the need for marriage to build homes and bind them into a unit in the overwhelmingly minority neighborhoods. Chaotic puppy-dog couplings are winked at by the clergy—not only my Catholic ones but black evangelical churches in the ghettoes. While all can cover themselves by saying they inherently support marriage and legitimate family-building, no church leader has spoken out directly on this matter. The churches are tight-lipped on the issue of chaotic non-families, characterized by strange male visitors and resident females who welcome them, producing children who as soon as they can walk retreat to the streets to search out what passes for stability for them in the form of male-led gangs with militant father figure bosses.

Why the silence of the churches including my own Catholic? They do not want to appear to be “racist” by referring to the couplings. It is far easier and more palatable to the editorial boards and TV stations to rail against the proliferation of guns. A case in point happened with the pastor of Saint Sabina’s parish run by blond, charismatic, demagogue Fr. Michael Pfleger. He says whitey should be ashamed that he has allowed violence to come to the black community…not mentioning that it was really detonated by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty which drove unmarried males out of welfare-recipient households.

Take a look at what Pfleger said recently as covered by Chicago’s CBS-TV after two teens wee shot outside Pfleger’s church. His “sermon” delivered before a cheering all-black congregation (many of whom are not Catholic) ran this way as covered by the station.

“If it was white children,” shouted Pfleger, “we’d have a revolution going on in America but because it’s black and brown children…” and here he lapsed into his favorite stunt, a white priest using black English: “ain’t nobody doin’ nothin’ `bout it!” That got a great hand and a chorus of shouts “right on!”

Later, Pfleger got more media attention by shouting dramatically that if someone has to be killed, let the gun-wielders come to his church and kill him instead of black children which drew stentorian applause in the church but was, of course, shameless political showboating. If only things were that easy. Pfleger and other members of the cloth are not known for advising any of their flocks to take on the arduous duties of marriage and children-raising…nor are any of the sing-song heroic couplet intoning charismatic black pastors who have one eye cocked for the TV cameras.

Pfleger is a wild card in the Catholic archdiocese which fears to force him to accept term limits that other pastors adhere to because it cowers that it will receive criticism from Pfleger’s congregation that idolizes him. And he has blackmailed the archdiocese to stay on, saying that if he were to be removed from Saint Sabina’s, he would leave Catholicism and set up his own ministry. That was enough to frighten the Catholic chancery. Of course the answer anyone of courage should make to Pfleger is to say: Go ahead! Leave!

Instead what does the Catholic archdiocese and what passes for an interfaith ministerial society talk about? The need for more marches to end violence, the need to end racism, the need to confiscate guns. These are the popular palliatives that satisfy editorial boards and leftwing newspaper columnists in this town, which don’t ruffle feathers of the blacks.

Thus cowardice should be affixed to the churches and my own Catholic archdiocese here. There should be a general city-wide project led by a ministerial coalition involving Catholic, Protestant and Jewish denominations. It should involve heavy black and Hispanic participation—but how to do it when the leading black civil rights protagonist is the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr….who has a weekly column in the groveling Sun-Times—and a good personal reason to evade the issue of family responsibility.

Great Role Model: Jesse Jackson, Sr.

Himself an illegitimate child, born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, S. C. to Helen Burns, a 16-year-old single mother, his father was Noah Jackson, a former professional boxer who was married to another woman when Jesse was born.

Two years after Jackson’s birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson who would not adopt Jesse for 14 years. Married and the father of five children, Rev. Jesse Jackson was…and still is…Chicago’s most prominent black spokesman. He was shown to have had an affair with a Rainbow-Push Coalition staffer, Karin Stanford, that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Ashley, in 1999. According to CNN, in August, 1999, the Rainbow-Push Coalition paid Stanford $15,000 in moving expenses and $21,000 in contracting work. In addition, she was promised an additional $40,000 against future contracting work—which was rescinded once the affair became public. Separate from the 1999 Rainbow-Push payments, Jackson pays $4,000 a month in child support for his daughter.

AWOL Archdiocese.

Be that as it may, there is no given reason why the Catholic archdiocese for one avoids exerting leadership on its own to alleviate the major source of instability in the ghettoes: chaotic non-family life. I am sure it can point to a few agencies here and there and some bureaucratic entities in Catholic Charities that purportedly cover the issue, but to use this as an excuse is to avoid the fact that the Archdiocese itself and its Cardinal Archbishop should make this issue a major priority.

Don’t buy the answer that the Catholic Church is doing anything substantive on that issue here…as an attempt will be made by its favorite device of parsing-parsing-parsing…but the Church is and has been AWOL on the issue out of hierarchal cowardice—nothing less.

The agenda for rank-and-file fed up Catholics should include these items: Speaking, teaching and conducting workshops on the sanctity of marriage to ghetto dwellers…getting the Feds out of Catholic Charities and Charities out of Fed control, with a reformation so that Catholic Charities teach and practice the spiritual as well as corporeal works of mercy with 100% private contributions. The dough the Feds put in should go to secular agencies.

Enough for now.

Personal Aside: Score One for Elizabeth Brackett in Behalf of Slanted Journalism! “We’ll Come Back to Vouchers!” and Never Does.

Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW is the aging duenna of liberal leaning TV journalism, having been a mainstay on Chicago’s public television station not long after she lost election as a reform candidate for 43rd ward Democratic committeeman in the `60s. Far less charming on camera than Carol Marin…no less liberal but with the strict enforcer custodian demeanor reminiscent of Nurse Ratched in 1962’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest,” she has graduated into a more major role on “Chicago Tonight” due to the neuter non-influence of “Chicago Tonight’s” cardboard cutout host, “tennis anyone?” vacuously beaming, eminently forgettable Phil Ponce.

Let it be said that Marin as interviewer is subtle and professional. Unlike her lefty columns she generates the television presence of sweet magnanimity. Tough-as-nails Brackett is far more rigid in her autocratic purveyance of liberal discipline more acceptable to WTTW’s current climate under manager Dan Schmidt who mandates haughty disregard of anything that does not smack of liberal orthodoxy.

While last night’s performance showed a rupture with the past seemingly violative of Schmidt’s canon that there be no conservative presence to sully one-sided panel “discussions” of public issues, Nurse Brackett took care that a Heartland Institute guest not get a word in that contracts `TTW’s liberal line on education funding: i.e. support for a property tax hike to give the Daley administration and teachers’ unions what they want. The panel was neatly stacked by Brackett and is always is on education. There was the obligatory member of Catalyst the leftwing shill for ever more expenditure of public money for the rathole that is Chicago education. To which was added the treasurer of the Chicago teachers’ union. The third panelist was a guest from Heartland.

At the outset when Brackett gesticulated one gnarled finger at Heartland and asked his solution, he began with fulsome support of vouchers. “We’ll come back to that,” snapped Brackett and went to Catalyst. After Catalyst and the Teachers’ Union dominated the discussion Brackett moved to Heartland and said, “with the exception of vouchers, what is your solution?” That way she got back to vouchers but instantly snuffed out the discussion. To the credit of Heartland, he went into vouchers anyway as Brackett wrinkled her nose…which is truly wrinkled on its own…in disgust.

And as the late canonized liberal saint Walter Cronkite would say from hisgrave, “that’s the way it is.” Meaning “that’s the way it is with slanted journalism—not reality.” When, oh when, is `TTW going to improve and go back to the era of Callaway’s true journalism? When the angel of either death or retirement flies away with a squawking Dan Schmidt, allowing his successor to give a deserved boot to Marin and Brackett.

Personal Aside: Can Hardly Wait for The Economist Subscription to End.

The Economist Subscription.

It’s been my observation that no matter how loony we get in cultural decadence, Britain usually tops us…and we move on to tie with it—and it runs ahead to be even more outrageous. Take rock music which we pioneered with Elvis Presley. No sooner had Presley become a success than Britain came out with a creature known as “Screaming Lord Sutch.” True, he never had a hit in either his country or ours…but he out-did us in outrageousness at the time. His early `60s singles were over the top. He was known for his horror-based stage shows.

A man generally recognized of possessing no talent, he was born David Edward Sutch on Nov. 10, 1940 but changed his artistic name to Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow of course with no relationship to the peerage. Then he got interested in English politics and formed the “Official Monster Raving Loony” party, running for parliament numerous times. We finally caught up with our own raving loony, Rod Blagojevich but when we did Lord Sutch had been long dead—having died by his own hand on June 16, 1999.

I begin with this case because like everything else, Britain outdistances us in decadence and loony tune ideas (with which we catch up sooner than later, unfortunately). I have referred earlier to the weird case of The Economist magazine (which the London-based publication continues to call a newspaper). Once considered a conservative publication with a specialty in economics, it has slowly been turning left…endorsing not just abortion but gay marriage…which caused me to end the subscription. But unfortunately the subscription has much time to run out. Thus every month there is deposited on my door stoop another issue which could be called the printed version of Screaming Lord Sutch.

Here in this country, every so-called mainstream newspaper except The Wall Street Journal and a few others, have gone to the Left and have hewn to that side with abysmal tendencies. They have adopted what was long ago decided as first-rank editorial policy by The Economist—misstatement of history, improbable juxtaposition of views, adoption of easily written headlines: “Whither Indonesia?” And the blatantly obvious: “Guiding Peugeot-Citroen through the recession will be hard. Philipe Varin must get along with the owners.”

That’s a hot one. “Varin must get along with the owners.” Who in hell would allege that he must NOT get along with his company’s owners? “Iraq--Its commanders say they can run the show on their own. Really?” YES, REALLY, jerks! It warns with the truism: “Overconfidence among soldiers can be as dangerous as timidity.” No, damn it: this is NOT true. Timidity in every case is fatal for soldiers in war. It enabled George W. Bush to overrule everyone—Rumsfeld, Gates—everyone and plump for The Surge. Guts and overconfidence…in place of timidity…caused Eisenhower to look at his watch on 6 June, 1944, overrule his weather experts, look at the boiling channel and say crisply, “OK, we go!” Grant to tell Lincoln, “Mr. President, I don’t care what anyone says. I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer” (it took much longer).

Just read a little history, guys for crying-out-loud!

Now consider this. We have a culture here in America that is grievously decadent. Not only full editorial support for abortion and gay marriage but we’re showing clips on TV news and in so-called situation comedies that couldn’t make it at the old Rialto theatre when it was a disreputable palace for dirty-mouthed comics and tired, blonde 60ish dancers in the `40s. Just when you think we have caught up with the nation that produced Screaming Lord Sutch, the “paper” known as The Economist comes out with a cover headline that says: “America’s Unjust Sex Laws.”

America’s unjust sex laws. It made me put on my latex gloves and turn the pages to the “leaders” or editorials to find out how unjust our sex laws are. You know what they are? Get this: “America’s sex offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy [sic]. Convicted rapists and child-molesters are given long prison sentences. When released, they are put on sex offender registries. In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby. Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex offender registries public.”

Now says what would assuredly be the favorite mag of the late Screaming Lord Sutch, “it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offenses.” Understand that our screamingly unfair sex laws began 15 years ago when a pedophile (the Screaming Lord Economist spells it snootily “paedophile”enticed seven year old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy. He raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park. The murderer had twice before been convicted to sexually assaulting a child. Reason for the law: Had people known he was a sex offender, they could have set up defenses (or as The Economist would spell it “defences.”

That was the source, the origin, of these insultingly, humiliatingly discriminatory laws. Instead of publishing the names and faces, Screaming Lord Sutch magazine says “states should assess each person individually and include only real threats. Instead of posting everything on the Internet, names could be held by the police who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know.” Gee, how compassionate: just another thing for the police to do—run to the schools and share the names. Would this program have spared Megan Kanka—no. Adam Walsh? Of course not.

That loony-ness has spurred me to write The Economist and tell them to run, not walk, to their subscription bank and cut me off now. ..TODAY! THIS INSTANT! I want no more of this nutcake stuff from England. But of course compassion for child molesters will soon, inevitably, take root here as we catch up to the Screaming Lord Sutch move to the Left. Where will I see the first tender shoot of leaves telling me that The New York Times has rethought it’s position and is calling for more compassion for child molesters. Will it begin with The Times? No, they’re bottom feeders over there.

Probably with the Sun-Times and Neil Steinberg. After all, he was hired to provoke.

Personal Aside: American Psychological Association’s Caving into Gay Lobby Right Out of the “Politically Correct” File.

As soon as you think the paper has reached its bottom trough, the Chicago Sun-Times…bankrupt…comes up with a subterranean new level. Last week the paper printed an article from the Associated Press in the form of an editorial, issuing kudos…has that word ever been used except in tabloid headlines?...to the American Psychological Association for declaring that mental health professionals should not advise their homosexual clients that they can become heterosexuals through therapy or other treatments. The fact is there has long been warfare within the organization led by militant homosexuals and the 136-page document is the result. It is political warfare similar to other left-wing extremist groups which stealthily gained control first of the American Bar Association and converted it to radicality…and next, recently, the American Medical Association, leading it to endorse the Obama health proposal. So now we have three cultural leftwing fronts: the ABA, AMA and APA.

Of these only the APA departs from its professionalism and enters the field of theology where it has no place. As such it has no business whatever criticizing spiritual leaders who rightly advise on moral questions because it itself intrudes on these. If theologians intruded to postulate on the issues of emotional psychosis, the APA would be first to object on the basis that the theologians are unqualified to discuss scientific matters. But the APA has arrogated unto itself the right to contradict basic lessons of religion built up during the past 2000 plus years and call it science. That is inherently duplicitous.

Basic Christianity, centered in the teachings of my own Catholic church as well as evangelical Christian congregations has faced homosexuality…at least until rupture within the Episcopalians and Lutherans, without compromise. There is a continuingly clever but misleading challenge of gay rights activists that nowhere can be found in Scripture a definitive condemnation of homosexuality is specious. First it is hideously inaccurate. Homosexuality is condemned in the story of Sodom as described in Genesis 19:1-11 and Leviticus 18:22, 20:13. It is condemned by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (6:9), in his letter to the Romans (1:18-32) and in the first chapter of his first letter to Timothy. Still liberal biblical and pro-gay rights scholars strive to make the passages applicable to other sins.

But the moral law is not strictly rooted in the Bible—as least not in my own Catholic church. We claim a living Tradition that is the revealed, though unwritten, word of God which was completed toward the end of the apostolic age. Then we Catholics have a teaching magisterium by which we believe God’s revealed word will be preserved free from error to the end of the world. That is why the pompous writing of the APA attempts to transgress and smother Christian teaching. And indeed not all psychiatrists, psychologists are in their camp. The finest explanation has been written by Jeffrey Satinover, M. D. in his landmark book “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth.” It is fully described in the very fine evangelical magazine “World” to which I subscribe in an interview conducted with Dr. Satinover by the journalistic scholar Marvin Olasky, himself born a Jew who converted to the evangelical Protestant faith.

“One gutsy psychiatrist has spoken out about homosexuality but social and professional pressure has silenced others,” writes Olasky, himself a supporter of faith-based policies that are in line with constitutional guarantees. The Amazon.com website includes 70 customer reviews, and 33 readers giving it the highest rating of 5-stars. “I became upset at the bamboozlement about this whole topic that was prevalent in the mental health profession and the propagation of a point of view that is at the very least debatable if not outright mistaken,” he told Olasky. “…It was 95% ideology. Often, if I would give public talks on this subject, I would throw up overheads showing public statements of reporters and scientists all saying `It’s genetics, science shows this” etc. Then I would show quotations from the research articles that were being used to support these statements and the research articles themselves contradicted these statements in the most flatly obvious way.”

You should get a copy of this month’s “World.” Better still, subscribe. Satinover: “When it was considered kosher to treat homosexuality as a changeable condition, homosexuality was treated as potentially reversible. Not universally reversible. There’s no such things as 100% success in any kind of therapy—but a very significant success rate. Then it became increasingly politically incorrect to hold that point of view. We like to think of professionals as a cut above the man on the street in terms of their fiduciary responsibility and independence of thought—but sadly it’s often the opposite. Professionals tend to be on average very influenced by social trends and fashions, especially if those fashions influence their ability to continue practicing and be a respected member of the community.”

I continue to address the willful intrusion of these windsocks who want to run fashionable practices to destroy the teachings of the major Christian churches—indeed Judeo-Christianity. Mine teaches that in creating the human race, God wants men and women to cooperate with Him in the generation of life by mutual donation of the self to one another.

How outrageous that a group of fashionable Park Avenue cynics have intruded on these timeless teachings! But I cannot include the Sun-Times editorial in this category. It is worse because it is cravenly subordinating what at least the editorial page editor knows is truth to the mercenary exploitation of readers to allow his disreputable paper to continue its worthless life.

There I said it.

Personal Aside: Marin Fouls Up Big-Time, Charges NRA Blocks Nation Getting Child Gun Statistics, Apologizes Profusely.

Carol Marin who improbably holds a one-woman monopoly on political reportage and commentary in this town has allowed her ultra-liberal instincts to compromise her Sun-Times column with a totally false charge which she didn’t check out…and has been forced to apologize profusely, saying “I could not have been more wrong.” The apology looks to me as if it were a prelude to a deal where her newspaper is trying to grovel to avoid a justifiable law suit. It deserves to be whacked with a heavy suit just to make clear its irresponsibility in publishing an emotionally vituperative left-wing column with no editing or fact checking.

As one who has read Marin since she started her Sun-Times column…her first offering being to lionize Studs Terkel the FM radio millionaire cocktail lounge “revolutionary”…I have long felt there is a rupture between her core left columns and her NBC-PBS appearances as an ostensible wide-eyed, eyelash-batting little girl idealist, wrapped up in semi-religious veneer which hides Woodstock-style cliché `70s views lurking beneath the surface. The gaffe which unjustly slurred the National Rifle Association should…if we were in real journalistic world…cause her to lose her column and bring her credibility as a “journalist” into major question. Once her eyeliners are painted in place and her tinted auburn hair fluffed, she’s not bad as questioner on two TV venues, NBC and `TTW…although assuredly WTTW’s born yesterday management typified by vacuous Phil Ponce and Manager Schmidt wouldn’t be able to verify her accuracy on anything since they share her wide gaps of historical ignorance.

Ironically on the Sun-Times, she followed the late Steve Neal on the who was a distinguished commentator (notwithstanding his liberalism over which we waged many good-natured debates) and a widely-published historian who made a tremendous contribution to history especially with his incisive study of the 1932 Democratic National convention and the subterranean forces that caused the first nomination of Franklin Roosevelt. The entire WTTW staff would have to run to its library of one or two paperbacks in a search to determine who was running and what was happening in 1932.

Take a look at her Sun-Times column last Wednesday where she imputes that the National Rifle Association has prevented the Center for Disease Control from releasing statistics of children shot by guns. An outrageous conspiratorial suggestion for which she has to apologize. It’s the case of the wish being the mother of the thought. Your comments please.

Thoughts While Shaving—Catholic Charities Should be Out of the Federal Grant Business…Birthday Sex: A Song to Inspire!

Catholic Charities: Stop Bedding with the Feds .

Catholic Charities USA has just landed the first federal contract of its career, and lo! it happened under Barack Obama: a 5-year federal agreement worth potentially more than $100 million. The monies, conferred by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the former abortion Catholic governor of Kansas, is a “natural disaster” relief fund to be dispersed to victims of such occurrences as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes, providing the feds designate the states to receive the money as “disaster areas.”

To kiss the secular ring of the most beneficent Master…the abortion president, Barack Obama, who as Illinois state legislator not long ago personally strangled to death legislation that would secure babies born from botched abortions that they will receive nourishment and comfort… a bevy of unctuous Uriah Heap bowing and scraping Roman Collars showed up the other day in the Oval Office.

Whee! Fr. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA said, rubbing his hands: “It’s a model that’s dependent on local agencies being involved as well. While we have the contract, it means we’ll be partnering with our own Catholic agencies across the country [sic] and also with other community organizations to provide this case management.”

The sell-out—which is what it is--is disgusting in the extreme. Unanswered is this: what price did the Church have to pay and what strings are attached that we don’t know about? It is well known that when an organization agrees to accept federal money, it has to fully comply with government requirements which, the National Catholic Register reports, includes acceptance of all federal hiring practices which means the Church has sacrificed its right to reject employees and policy makers who disagree with elements of the Catholic ethic.

It’s the same deal that has been used as an excuse by so-called “Catholic” universities which has led to…they say as a sop…the hiring of non- and anti-Catholic educators and the weakening of Catholicity. DePaul University uses this as an excuse…invalidly…to justify its putting on Queer Studies: 101 for freshmen students—an abject violation of the moral law.

Get this straight: Because I believe the Church should NOT…definitely not…receive taxpayer money, it does not mean victims of natural catastrophes should not be aided. This aid should be distributed under secular conditions and from secular agencies: not Catholic ones. Catholic Charities should concern itself with dispensing private sector funds and exerting control over the well-being of souls thereby.

When will these tin-horn pro-Democratic prelates…not all of them but a good number…who glory in strutting down aisles attired with miter dispensing holy water via portable sprinkling reservoirs by the gallon…and who parse-parse-parse to evade responsibility believing that holding a couple of faux academic paper mache doctorates makes them superior to the laity…understand that this president is the arch-enemy of Life and should not be importuned or “honored” by handing out taxpayer dollars to disgrace a Church that was designated from the outset to be the Mystical Body of Christ? When will they be told that receipt of monies from governments is an inherent conflict of interest? Catholic contributors should tell the bishops, CC and the Most Reverend Ecclesiastics that Charities should not get a private contributors’ dime unless and until this and other church-state-county-city-township Mephistophelian bargains are abrogated.

Catholic Charities USA and locally should be drastically cut down in size to fit only private donations. The slack will be taken up by government itself and its multifarious agencies so the poor will not suffer. For the Church to dispense funds which ipso facto ties its hands for evangelization is an atrocity and counter to its purpose.

The Church should stop being an adjunct of the Obama government or any other administration…and should minister such corporeal works of mercy as private monies can afford…together with a lavish helping of the spiritual works of mercy which no public funds can buy. Vested liberal gold-chained, jowly-pol miter-gesticulating hierarchy of the USCCB…ensconced in their marble palace in D. C. where each prelate has his own microphone ala the UN Security Council at contributors’ expense…take notice.

Chicago Public Schools’ Era of Decadence.

When the record is made of this generation, its critics will not say that we have been intolerant…but that we have been unduly tolerant, unduly “broadminded” and despicably pagan in shrugging away the distinction between moral virtue and libertinism. Such as turning our eyes away from the appointment of the first “open” homosexual to run the Chicago Public Schools. Ah, how the media gushed! “Congrats to Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman and his partner [sic], Darren Delong, on the birth of their first child, Aiden Dejong Huberman,” trilled society maven columnist Michael Sneed (how cute she has taken a man’s name).

Oooooooh! Sighed Carol Marin, the russet-thatched 50ish ex-anchor vestigial `60s revolutionary earning $100,000 plus, who still exudes the college freshman (pardon: fresh-woman) on summer break. Ooooh how discriminatory it is to receive such scant attention, wheezing sighs that Huberman and his lover will have to rear their child without many of the rights afforded heterosexual couples. She recalled years ago when she determined to have another child, considering what it might do to her TV anchor position.

Notice the liberal guilt (over nothing): “My small debate back then over balancing the public and the private in no way compares to what a gay couple such as Ron Huberman and his partner deal with, even today.” Note: Deal with what? Huberman is a former Daley chief of staff, has been head of the CTA and holds down one of the major posts in urban government…but, yes, what they have to deal with. Meaning: us bigots, people. Again Marin as she dabs her eyes hoping its liner won’t run before her next closeup:

“While some of us see the Huberman story as one that further advances the view of the normalcy [sic] of gay families [sic], state Rep Greg Harris [D-Chicago] reminded me Friday that it also `further advances the outrage of opponents…For people who believe in equality, it’s quietly reassuring…but not necessarily for the opposition.’ Harris, who is gay continues to spearhead efforts in the Illinois General Assembly to pass not only a civil union bill but one that legalizes gay marriage in this state.”

Groans Marin: “It hasn’t been easy but it’s made more difficult now by an economic crisis that trumps virtually everything else. As a result, Illinois’ gay and lesbian citizens still do not possess the same rights as the rest of us. But there is always hope. And today, that hope is wrapped in a blanket and watched over by two soon to be sleep-deprived fathers. Blessings to you, young Alden Delong Huberman and those who love you.”

Oh, Carol! How touching! How brave of Mayor Daley to name an outed homosexual to head the city’s schools, cognizant as he is of the gay voting bloc…and how brave of you, Carol, to applaud the young couple! Significant things were predicted to come from the Huberman appointment…and lo! they have! At Huberman’s suggestion the compliant mayor has chosen just the right guy to motivate CPS students to go back to school this fall—the madly popular singer Jeremih [spelling correct] of whom Daley in his what I strongly suspect is put-on neighborhood illiterate gabble described as “He’s a young man [with a] back-to-school message, a young man who has had great success recording, producer, going to school, went to public school, graduated from Morgan Park and like anything else he’s willing to help other youngsters in our public school system.”

Like the song he wrote and recorded “Birthday Sex” about a kid just the age of some of Chicago’s public schoolers who doesn’t have a birthday present to give to his girlfriend and so he decides to give her sex.

Isn’t that broadminded of the mayor, a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-promiscuity broadminded Catholic who receives Communion every Sunday at the mother church or the Democratic party, Old Saint Pat’s…isn’t that broadminded, tolerant of this public boss who sold his birthright to get elected, to approve the nomination of Jeremih from his gay school superintendent Huberman to lead the kids…Pied Piper-like…back to school braying about sex: “It’s your birthday so I know you want to ride out/ Even if we only go to my house/ Sip on weezy as we sit upon my couch/ Feels good but I know you want to cry out/…You kiss me so sweetly, taste just like Hershey’s/ Just tell me where you want your gift, girl.”

And the climax—er, conclusion:

“Girl you know I-I-I/ Don’t need candles and cake/ Just need your body to make/ Birthday sex…Birthday sex…Birthdays sex…Birthday sex!”

“Jeremih is a graduate of many songs and all that,” slobbered Daley after being reminded of the semi-porn nature of the song written by our Back-to-School model:

“Today you have all types of artists and music and like anything else you’re gong to sing their songs and let them sing it. It’s freedom of speech and he’s just pursuing his careers [sic] as well as making money off this and why not? He’s going to be a wunnerful engineer or whatever he’s going to do in life. He knows he’s going to do something and let him do it!”

Note to You Readers.

A few days ago I wrote about the need of the Chicago Ministerial Society (if there is such an animal) to begin a drive among our minority…principally black…youth in behalf of marriage. There has been no reaction either from the Chicago Archdiocese which parses-parses-parses or any of the other religions to do this. Will you join me in this campaign? You can do it by seeing that these columns are received by more people…free of charge. You either read this on my website www.tomroeser.com or receive it via e-mail. Either way it’s free. I need more people to read this so we can get literally thousands of people…hopefully…leading a campaign to force the churches to do what they’re supposed to do instead of what they are doing—prattling over spurious “gun control” and lobbying for more federal funds to distribute more goodies. I figure all told I’ve got a thousand readers. I need many more so together we can motivate more people.

Here’s what I wish you’d do. Line up 10 people from your church or synagogue or civic organization or neighborhood to receive this. They can do it by either ringing it up on the website or getting it via e-mail. No cost to them or us. I want to build this up to pressure the churches…all of them including my own Catholic ones…to do what’s right. Let me know if you will. I pray you’ll help me with this. Tell me if you’ve lined up 10 or 6 or 4. Together we can get this done! Even with an octogenarian writing this stuff. Thanks; God bless. TFR.

Personal Aside: Ignorance is Bliss as “Chicago Tonight” Talks 10th District Republican Chances.

And so, said Carol Marin who though in her 50s somehow looks breathless and idealistically exultant as an eyes-wide-open Vasser schoolgirl…and so, she asked her panel of nodding heads on “Chicago Tonight” which was presumably recruited to discuss Illinois politics…what about the Republican hopes for the 10th district now that Mark Kirk is running for the Senate?

Aw, said Kristin McQueary, I telephoned around today but could find nothing. Nothing came from Mike Dumke the “Reader’s” pundit; only a throat-clearing from Carlos Hernandez-Gomez of CLTV. Nothing at all.

Concerning the Democrat side, of course, all the trained sea-lions, vying for the beach ball to balance on their noses, seals knew much.. Dan Seals might run again but that would be his third time. Let’s see: State Rep. Julie Hamos of Evanston is very interested although she lives outside the district. Marin tried again: what about the Republicans? I called around but found nothing, said McQueary. Everybody on the panel looked doleful.

See, that’s the way it is when a public television station, funded largely with private dollars (not mine) and partially with taxpayer funds (a disgrace) recruits only journalists who agree with the station’s biases—which are Marin. To Marin the world is still in the `70s with the fresh spray of IVI-IPO reformism in her nostrils. There is no Republican party because it is the party of the past. Kristin McQueary who should know better…and sometimes does…works for a sheet that is one-party positioned; Dumke for a publication that should be printed on soft tissue and ripped off from rolls including a column that advertises “Free Sh…” and a raving homoerotic queen.

If the panel was anything journalistic it would have had Russ Stewart on whose astute coverage of the 10th district including the Republican side is featured in today’s Chicago Daily Observer…or Jeff Berkowitz the often uncannily prescient and aggressive interrogator on Public Access because he’s too smart and too independent for Marin and her blindsided bosses to contemplate.

Stewart reports that the Republicans have Dick Green of Kenilworth a wealthy business executive backed by the New Trier organization; Bill Cadigan of Winnetka, an attorney and former staffer to Rep. John Edward Porter (where Kirk matriculated) who has support from the strong Wheeling contingent—and Bill Strong of Lake Forest, a Morgan-Stanley investment banker who as John McCain’s 2008 finance chairman raised $5 million,

Then there’s Hamilton Chang of Wilmette, a Taiwan-born banker; Mark Curran the sheriff of Lake county, who left the Democratic party because it was too liberal and became a Republican. And of course State Rep. Beth Coulson a Hillary Clinton Repblican…along with Brendan Appel who ran against Jeff Schoenberg. Not to forget Lake county clerk Willard Helander of Libertyville who won countywide three times.

See, panel and Marin? If you only were interested in the two parties you would have a better show. McQueary would have heard about these people from earlier phone calls instead of admitting she made a few the day of the telecast. Funny it is but it’s also a strong indictment of McQueary, Marin and Dumke (I placed Gomez in a slightly higher category; maybe he just had a bad day). But when you have numb nuts running the show like the ever-beaming Ken doll Phil Ponce, expectations are not just low but nonexistent.

Inbred bias is so rampant at `TTW since Ponce and Marin took over that they don’t even know they’re lousy. When John Callaway was working with Bruce DuMont he at least had access enough to the other side sufficient to know there is another side. Not so here.

Marin made a subliminal crack last night about Republicans attacking each other in the state which she said…indeed probably hoped…would doom the GOP and foreclose victory. McQueary beamed and appeared to look forward to that eventuality with expectation. Dumke smiled and Gomez looked bored.

Walter Cronkite, bless his adulterated, lefty hide would conclude a broadcast about the failures of Tet (which was in reality a success for our side) and bellow: “And that’s the way it IS!” He knew it was a lie: that’s the way it WASN’T. These folks, from Ken Doll Ponce on down, are so dumb they think there’s nothing at all existent beyond their painfully amateurish non-grasp of politics.

Pathetic. And to think public money is being spent on it. The names Russ Stewart and Jeff Berkowitz aren’t in Marin’s rolodex because, frankly, they’re too good and might give the prematurely orange-haired duenna answers she doesn’t want to hear.

Personal Aside: Thoughts While Shaving—That Axelrod-Emanuel Photo…Cash for Clunkers is a Clunker…Dan Cronin for WHAT?....Obama Credits the Stimulus—Hah!

Axelrod & Emanuel, Inc.

This photo that looks like two thieves checking a locked door says it all for the Obama administration where the president has escalated two Chicago machine pols as his top aides. Look at the picture. It comprises more than a thousand words…showing you just what these two thugs are inside.


Cash for Clunkers.

I suppose one way to look at Cash for Clunkers is that it’s stimulating the auto industry…but of course we’re already putting $80 billion into it so why don’t we favor cash for old oatmeal boxes and help the cereal industry (mine was Quaker Oats)? As Charles Krauthammer has said those in Congress cannot “do anything without at least one sacrifice ih the name of the Earth God” which requires in the interest of global warming that all the clunkers be destroyed in two days and converted into scrap. Which means that no one can re-sell your clunker as a used car or utilize its parts…which means for those who are poor who want a second hand car, these will be scarcer, the parts fewer and the prices will be higher. The gain from Cash for Clunkers is micro-small. Not worth the huzza’ing. It’s not as if the cash comes raining down from the heavens; the cash comes from people who pay taxes, taking cash out of the pockets of some and putting it in the pockets of the others—nothing more than a money transfer.

Dan Cronin for…What?

Rep. Mark Kirk is going around beating his chest as a born-again Obama critic—blasting the president’s health care…as if he thinks we’ll forget how he caved and voted for Obama’s Cap and Trade which gave Nancy Pelosi a plus so that she could let Democrat Bill Foster off the hook and vote against it which is better for Foster’s reelection effort. And also as a so-called tough national security guy how he failed to support the Surge. I ask you: what does he offer anyhow except that cute little button nose?

What should really happen is that State Sen. Dan Cronin should run against Kirk for the U. S. Senate instead of seeking the chairmanship of the DuPage county board. Cronin who is an attractive candidate could beat Kirk going away…and be an very strong contender in the general. Why does Cronin want to be chairman of DuPage anyhow? Sort of a dead-end job when the opportunity to do two things for conservatives is ripe: knock Kirk off and end his career and have a very-very good shot at becoming a U. S. Senator.

Obama Credits the Stimulus: Hah!

President Obama credits his massive stimulus package for turning the country around. Hah! The Congressional Budget Office says that only a trickle of money has gotten out this quarter—not enough to stimulate anything. We’re getting a rebound from the massive drop in the first quarter of the year and a bottoming out of housing prices. Where the stimulus will be good from Obama’s standpoint is next year which will help the Democrats. Government spending IS up but for the most part it’s defense spending which escalated 13.3%. Non-Defense spending is up 6% and due very little to the stimulus. The good news is the stock market—usually a leading indicator. Obama didn’t credit that because (a) he’s not sufficiently perceptive on the economy and (b) he hates Wall Street.

Personal Aside: Farwell Old “Economist,” Journal of Pretense, Snobbery and Sophistry.

For those who wish to travel First Class, be sure you are spotted with The Economist on your lap…not that there’s anything in it of depth—that characteristic vanished long ago with Walter Bageot [1826-77] who was its only distinguished editor-in-chief. Originally conceived as a journal of intellectuality and appreciation of commerce and economics, it has become in latter years a house organ for social liberalism…urging legalized prostitution, gay marriage, abortion on demand. Still I continued my subscription, believing that with its slow-growing decadence it could still continue to communicate stability on economics and appreciation for the free market vis-à-vis statism.

No such luck. When Barack Obama came in, it trumped that he might very well be the next FDR who, it reminded us, “saved capitalism” by bringing an end to the Depression. This flies so much in variance with the facts…particularly the latest findings by Amity Shlaes in “The Forgotten Man,” that I began to shuffle it to the bottom of my reading. Then I began to notice a thin veneer of cowardice in its assessments. In essence it is a patchwork quilt of clichés. “The next election marks the beginnings of a fundamental change in Japanese politics,” it said last week. Gee—can’t this be conjectured about any election? Of course. It’s a shoddy, all-too-safe an assessment.

It also conveys a kind of upper-class nihilism. All economic theory has gone wrong, it said the other day, as result of the meltdown here: wrong—the old religion was not tried by George W. Bush when the recession appeared not Obama with his $787 billion stimulus. And in Finance & Economics, get these barren headlines: “Goldman Sachs’s record profits are not a signal to relax”. Gee, I that’s safe to say, isn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t write a headline that said Goldman’s profits ARE a signal to relax. See what I mean—the safe, cowardly avoidance of analysis? And throughout each issue is the steady drone of materialism: “Glad to be Godless” shouts the latest article by “Lexington”: reflections on a summer camp for the children of atheists. And we find out that children of atheists “are not pushy or preachy” and that “they are told how sensitive each species [of tadpole] is to pollution and asked to work out form this how polluted the pond is.” Then there are the truisms. “Deny the existence of God,” we are told, “and you may be challenging your neighbours’ most deeply held beliefs.” REALLY! How revelatory!

Showing disappointment with economics, the magazine (which perversely calls itself a newspaper despite its glossy appearance) says “Macroeconomists also had a blindspot: their standard models assumed that capital markets work perfectly.” REALLY! None I ever read assumed this. And throughout its pages run hoards of inaccuracies. We are told “As America’s best friend, with privileged access to intelligence [sic], it feels compelled to take part in America’s wars.” Great access to intelligence wasn’t it that led to the major league defection of Kim Philby to the USSR along with his buddies Burgess and McLean. Consider this for a moment. America joined World War I in 1917 three years after Britain and it can be argued brought the war to favorable resolution America joined World War II in 1941 after three years of importuning by Winston Churchill…and America saved the West. It saved the West again against Communism with little support from Britain Yet poor Britain is “compelled” to take part in America’s wars.

Page after page the dull mis-generalizations roll on. “The British pjblic is honouring its fallen troops as never before [sic]. But how lolng will it support the war in Afghanistan?” On the issue of investigations in Congress, we are told “Even for a president as avowedly forward-looking as Obama…” Obama has been singular in blaming George W. Bush for everything except swine flu. Continuing” …the clamour to revisit the darker chapters of George Bush’s war on terror…” That’s the war that according to Bernard Lewis…at 93 the foremost scholar of the Middle East… has done more than anything else to keep terror away from striking the U. S. again: you wouldn’t know it from the insufferably self-righteous Economist.

Farwell Old Economist. How deep, how impenetrable, how stuffily prosaic: “How stable is Malaysia’s would-be coalition government?” Gee, read it and you’ll find that it is quite possibly more stable than one would imagine but lurking underneath is the possibility of instability.

That’s it. When I want to read more vapidity I’ll go to the public library for it’s Economist…which should be filed “Often in Doubt, Never Sure but Eternally Wrongheaded and Pompous.”

Personal Aside: In One Weekend, More than a Dozen Shot in Chicago. Liberals, Churchmen, Editorial Boards in Denial.

The Baghdad-Like Casualties.

The weekend before last at CBS reported that at least 15 people were shot and wounded in one night—seven of them in a single incident on Chicago’s West Side.

Police were called to the scene of a shooting at Walnu and Holman Blvd. at 10:43 p.m. on the night of July 29 where seven people were shot according to Fire Media Affairs Director Larry Langford. He said that six people were initially hospitalized in critical condition and one adult man was taken in stable condition after suffering a graze wound. In addition an individual was found shot inside a grocery store and the six others were found within a half-block radius of the store. The shooters were unknown and initially no one was in custody, police said.

An hour earlier, three people—including a woman standing with her baby in a stroller—were shot within 20 minutes on the South and West Sides. In the South Shore neighborhood about 9:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the hand and suffered a minor head wound at 7700 S. Avalon avenue. The shooting followed a carjacking more than two hours earlier in the 8800 block of South Parnell avenue when five suspects approached a victim and physically removed him from his car at gunpoint, said police News Affairs. The suspects put him in their car and took him to his residence where they stole his TV sets. After the robbery they drove him to the Avalon avenue address where they beat him and then shot him as he ran away. The man was taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook county in stable condition, Langford said.

Then at 9:31 p.m. near the intersection of King Drive and 64th street in the Woodlawn neighborhood, a 25-year-old woman was shot wile standing out side with her baby in a stroller talking to friends on the grounds of a gated housing development. Three males wearing black hoods burst out of a nearby Auto Zone store and opened fire, said the Grand Crossing police captain. The woman who was not the target of the shooting then felt a sharp pain in her lower right leg and discovered she was shot. The baby was unharmed and no one else was shot.

In a third shooting a 22-year-old man walked into Loretto Hospital with a gunshot wound to the ankle after being shot at 165 N. Laporte avenue in the Austin neighborhood at about 9:50 p.m., Langford said. Police News Officer Ron Gaines said the shooting possibly happened during a robbery and that the victim was in good condition.

Even then the violence wasn’t over. At 11:02 p..m. two men were shot as they sat on a porch at 3037 S. Springfield in Little Village. They wwere shot by members of a rival gang who came by on foot, said police. One victim was shot in the chest and the other shot in the eye and both went to Mount Sinai hospital in stable condition according to Gaines. Not long afterward a man was hit by gunfire in the 4200 block of south Wells street when tso other males began shooting about 11:20 p.m. according to Police News Affairs. The victim was hit in the leg and taken in stable condition to Provident Hospital of Cook county.

Further south, a teenage boy was shot and wounded late Tuesday while walking in the 10700 block of South Champion avenue at about 11:20 p.m. The shooting was a drive-by and police are looking for a white GMC. The teen was hit in his right side and is in good condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. In another incident a man was shot and critically wounded at 7211 S. Cornell avenue in the South Shore neighborhood, shot and wounded in the chest and upper shoulder at 1:19 a.m., police said. He was sitting in his car where investigators fond blood but he was found shot on the street about four doors down, said police. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

The City. Churches’ and Media’s State of Denial.

No one…not the city nor the churches nor the media…have the intestinal fortitude to point out the obvious: this carnage continues because there is no family stability…not much marriage…nor recognition of the need for two-family homes in the overwhelmingly black areas—with this chaotic non-family massive couplings going unrecognized by (a) the city, (b) the major churches which only preach the need for “gun control” and further “anti-poverty” city, state and federal programs and (c) by a compliant media which do not want to ruffle the disastrous statistics that has produced insouciant and rootless teenagers with no direction who form into gangs as a substitute for stable families.

The greatest lack comes from the churches. There should be a general city-wide drive from a ministerial coalition involving Catholic, Protestant and Jewish affiliations to teach the need for marriage and family stability. Instead the churches…including my own Catholic one…are turning tail and running, fearful that bad public relations will eventuate and that they may be caught preaching the gospel where they would prefer to be dishing out monetary goodies. The gutless editorial boards deserve to be second in line for condemnation. Cowardly columnists and pop liberals who control print space are next because they prattle only pleasantries and avoid bringing the minority community to grips with the truth. Politicians who are the bottom-feeders in every community, reacting what comes down from above and valueless in this kind of debate which requires courage and fearlessness. Mayor Daley, of course, is afraid of his shadow and talks in his kind of put-on neighborhood white-guy talk to the media.

But the finger of blame should go first to the churches who receive money for this purpose and are parsing-parsing-parsing their way through life trying to get good press with jellyfish spines.

How long will it go on before there is a public outrage directed against the churches…principally my own…which are sloughing off their duty to God and man? The principal showboat in this carnage is Fr. Michael Pfleger who as pastor of Saint Sabina’s saw his own neighborhood shot up repeatedly. He posed dramatically, telling the assailants to come and get him if they wish but leave the poor alone. Ready for my closeup, C.B.!

If only things were that easy. Pfleger, of course, is not known for advising any of his flock to take on the arduous moral duties of family-building…nor are any of the black heroic-couplet-wringing sing-song ministers who have one eye cocked for TV cameras.

This is What Should Happen.

If there is not now a viable Chicago Ministerial Society…which I doubt…one should be formed with the single issue of encouraging marriage, discouraging puppy-dog coupling and returning to the Judeo-Christian principles of morality. It should be composed of the Cardinal…if you can get him to put down his formal regalia, roll up his sleeves and go to work…and bishops and rabbis of key denominations. They should meet and take the message of return to marriage and stable family life to the churches…substituting this message to the stentorian political ranting that has been going on for decades. Catholic Charities should abandon its p. r. and concentrate on hard-bitten teaching of morality to the poor. The media can scoff in order to salve itself and so should be ignored while the work goes on.

Will it? My guess is no. It’s far easier to rail against the 2nd amendment and legally constituted gun shops than to assume responsibility which is theirs for an up-building of moral tone. Too easy to run to Washington to pass another stimulus than to preach. And you can forget about the editorial boards which are cowering under their desks afraid to offend.

But that’s what SHOULD happen. Your thoughts please at thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net