Excuse me for being pushy where my kids are concerned. For several months now, I’ve featured our son Tom’s art on the right side of this blog with the link-upwww.roeserart.com . Now I’m hustling two restaurants owned and operated by our youngest child, Jeanne…Toast I and Toast II.
They’re set up for breakfast and lunch only. The Bucktown Toast is located at 2046 N. Damen (773) 772-5600 and the Lincoln Park Toast is at 746 West Webster (773-935-5600). You can read their menus at www.toast-chicago.com Drop in and tell the winsome ladies there that Jeanne’s old man sent you. Enough progeny-pushing for one day.
Illinois’ state primary election will be held tomorrow, Feb. 2. As I’m a Republican, I won’t venture to make endorsements in any other party…Democratic or Green…but my own so here are my GOP choices:
Republican U. S. Senator Patrick Hughes, Hinsdale. He is infinitely to be preferred over the establishment candidate. Rep. Mark Kirk. Hughes is pro-life, pro-Tea Party, is a young (age 40) Catholic businessman, born and reared on the Northwest Side, is opposed to Cap and Trade which Kirk voted for in the House, supportive of 2nd Amendment. In short, he has everything a grassroots conservative desires.
Republican Governor of Illinois Kirk Dillard. Hinsdale. This is the best year I can remember for plentiful conservative choices for governor. All are pro-life, all are highly preferable to either of the two major Democratic choices, pro-abort Catholics Quinn and Hynes. I’m for Dillard an evangelical Protestant because he doesn’t need on-the-job training, is pro-life, pro-business, pro-2nd Amendment but in addition has had superb experience in the governor’s office as top staffer there…and won’t need to be bucked up to face Mike Madigan and John Cullerton, the two Squid-oriented Democratic leaders of the Senate.
Republican Lt. Governor of Illinois Jason Plummer Edwardsville. Lieutenant governor candidates run separately from governor candidates in primaries but after nomination, the winner will run as a teammate with the Republican gubernatorial nominee. Plummer is 27, independently wealthy and just the type who will be unfettered by legions of prospective donors who want to get him to agree with them on one thing or another. He’s an evangelical, a graduate of the U of Illinois-Urbana and a vice president of the largest lumber company downstate with some 47 outlets.
Republican President of the Cook County Board Roger Keats, Wilmette. Outstanding former state senator who retired some years ago to become a highly successful broker and investment banker. Protestant. Pro-life with great experience in working as a legislator with people of both parties. The chaotic condition of County government might just well cause the first election of a Republican president of the board since Dick Ogilvie in 1966.
Republican Chairman of DuPage County Board. Dan Cronin, Elmhurst. A very effective state senator who was in the leadership at a very young age, is an expert on, among other things, education. Catholic, pro-life and a supporter of vouchers.
Republican State Comptroller of Illinois Jim Dodge, Orland Park, a pro-life Lutheran who is running an uphill battle to defeat Judy Baar Topinka, the establishment candidate, a pro-abort Catholic supporter of gay rights who as state Republican chairman allied with Denny Hastert and others to deny support to U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald, one of the outstanding senators in the same league with Dirksen and Paul Douglas, responsible for Fitzgerald declining to run for reelection. She is super-heavy in accumulated public pensions, having served as state Rep, state Senator, State Treasurer and now while she awaits what she hopes will be her coronation, is a board member of RTA. Ran a feeble campaign for Governor, losing to an ethically disabled Rod Blagojevich. Charms gossip columnists by reporting on her dog which, she has claimed, has gone wee-wee in 10 foreign countries. Barf alert.
Selected Republican Congressional Races:
Republican for 8th District. Description: It includes Schamburg, now one of America’s major corporate headquarters cities, listing Motorola, Sears, Kemper Insurance, Woodfield Mall. It’s made up of dozens of northwest Chicago suburbs including Palatine, Barrington Hills as well as new suburbs such as Zion on the Michigan border and to the west about half of McHenry county. Historically it’s been solid Republican but Rep. Phil Crane inexplicably frittered it away with inattention. Now it’s represented by Democrat Melissa Bean who yielding to Mme. Pelosi has become one of her faithful although the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been giving her support for the paltry votes she gives this ultra-pragmatic, rudderless group. My choice is Joe Walsh, pro-life Catholic, free enterprise expert, former top researcher for the brilliant think tank The Heartland Institute.
Republican for 10th District. Description: The North Shore district starting at the lakefront in Wilmette and running all the way to the blue-collar city of Waukegan and almost to the Wisconsin border…running inland to Northbrook and Deerfield, Arlington Heights, Wheeling, Libertyville. Formerly represented by Mark Kirk. Dr. Arie Friedman, MD, Highland Park, just listed as one of the outstanding pediatricians in the state. He was a helicopter pilot in Gulf War I aboard the USS Vandegrift, is pro-life and a deeply observant member of the Jewish faith and competitive in intellectual octane with Krauthammer, Kristol et al. Excellent on defense and taxes. And he’s only 41.
Republican for 11th District. Description:It includes the low-lying land west and south of Chicago, a borderland. It covers most of Will county, the fastest growing of the large Chicago suburban counties (and its county seat of Joliet) and extends to the factory towns of Ottawa, LaSalle and Streator. South of Joliet is Kankakee and includes almost all of Bloomington. A natural for Republican pickup this year. Democratic incumbent is Debbie Halvorson, quite liberal former state senate majority leader. My candidate is Adam Kinzinger, 32, a native of Kankakee and a member of the Illinois Air National Guard with service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Intriguing: One evening in Wisconsin he interfered with a knife-wielding assailant who was attacking a young woman, wrestling him to the ground and taking the weapon from him, earning a citation for heroism from the American Red Cross.
Republican for the 14th District. Description: It’s where “downstate” begins—starting in western DuPage county, Fermilab, the Fox River Valley and its industrial cities of Elgin and Aurora, St.Charles, including Kendall county, DeKalb county the world’s leading manufacturer of barbed wire and extends to Lee county and also takes in Dixon, the main boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. It was represented for years by House Speaker Denny Hastert who after the House turned Democratic, decided he would step down and become a lobbyist. Impatient to be soaking up all that dough, he couldn’t wait to finish his term but resigned at the worst psychological time for his party. Democrat Bill Foster won the seat. Best Republican candidate is Randy Hultgren, Winfield, an evangelical Protestant who has been state Rep and is now State Senator. Hultgren is pro-life and is a far better fit than the liberal Harvard Ph.D Foster, a former scientist with Fermi Labs who is a pro-abort with no particular declared religious affiliation.
Big Mama at Archdiocese Cuts Off Media.
Ratifying the healthy suspicion that many lay employees of the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago are close to The Squid, Big Mama, the Chancery’s top media maven cuts off media outlets which deign to do their own research…not returning phone calls and depriving them of news which should be distributed generally to all legitimate communications sources. Case in point: A well-done Internet publication called www.chicagocatholicnews.com did its own research and turned up the fact that by a random survey 50% of those priests the publication identified took Democratic ballots in 2008.
That’s okay except that Democrats have almost overwhelmingly become the party of unrestricted abortion. Few exceptions abound—one of whom is Rep. Dan Lipinski of the 3rd district, the area ranging through the city’s Southwest Side, part of the bungalow belt which includes the Daley ancestral neighborhood of Bridgeport. The Sun-Times editorial of endorsements forbade its blessing to Lipinski because although 90% liberal in the eyes of the ADA, the congressman did not abandon the Stupak pro-life amendment. Normally that editorial denunciation of Lipinski should have been blasted by the Archdiocese for usurping Lipinski’s religious conviction. Not from this timid archdiocese, however. Back to the Internet publication that incurred Big Mama’s wrath.
The news story made no connotation of ideology except to report its findings. Bad enough from the archdiocese’s view which massages media to gain a good image: but lo and behold the dispatch announced that Big Mama herself had given $500 to Mayor Daley who is pro-abort and pro-same sex marriage, purportedly anathema to Church theology. Big Mama denied she gave the dough to Daley. Meaning the official contribution records just pulled the figure out of thin air.
The interesting thing is that www.catholicnews.com is far from a conservative publication listing on its linkups such organizations as “Dignity,” the organization composed of gay Catholics which touts its gayness as a badge of individual rights of free expression and “Call to Action” which in the past has nurtured an Alinsky tie-in. What we appear to have here, friends, is a throwback to pre-Vatican II days of the Index of Forbidden Books. Only this is an Index of Forbidden News Outlets which displease Big Mama for reporting the very open secret that many priests vote Democratic, abortion-supporters. In fact the Church here has a nest of priestly and lay supporters of The Squid as the very liberal publication implies. But then we knew that, didn’t we?
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*: St. Ignatius of Antioch [circa AD 107]. Bishop of Antioch, ordained as such by the Apostle Peter immediately after Peter left the deathbed of Evodius the previous bishop. Ignatius served as bishop for 40 years. As all good bishops Ignatius discouraged his flock from thanking the pagan gods for military victories attained by the Emperor Trajan. Legend records the cross-examination this way:
TRAJAN: Who are you, spirit of evil, who dare disobey my orders and who goad others on to their destruction?
IGNATIUS: No one calls Theophorus spirit of evil. [Ignatius’ surname was Theophorus, called “God Bearer”].
TRAJAN: And who is Theophorus?
IGNATIUS: He who bears Christ with him.
TRAJAN: And do not we bear within ourselves the gods who help us against our enemies?
IGNATIUS: You are mistaken when you call gods those who are no better than devils. For there is only one God who made heaven and earth and all that is in them. And one Jesus Christ into whose kingdom I earnestly desire to be admitted.
So Trajan said to his soldiers: Bind him up and let him be devoured by the wild beasts for the entertainment of the people. Ignatius was sent into the arena on the last day of the public games and was killed by the lions in the arena.
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