Showing posts with label Communism and Progressives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communism and Progressives. Show all posts

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Cold War South West Lake Michigan Shore - The Nike Sites




The C-47 -Portage, Indiana Nike Missile Site from 1954-1972 was a part of the defensive ring of anti-missile batteries that garlanded the Lake Michigan shoreline. The Last Line of Defense - Chicago’s Nike Missile Sites

The threat of death by Communism was very real and its palpable, existential presence was part of every day life for people on the south side of Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

As a child, I remember going to the Museum of Science and Industry with my Uncle Bart and future Aunt Betty (c 1957) and remarking on white ballistic missiles sited along Lake Shore Drive.  “ Those are Mike Sites, Padgeen,” the recently discharged Korean War veteran uncle replied.  “They are there to keep the Reds from killing us,”. he further explained.

Sixty-two years later, I retain a healthy fear of the Reds.  They still would like to kill us, but they have chosen to legislate and tax us to death, rather than inflict thermo-nuclear war on us all - not they might not opt for that once the dough vanishes.

Last Tuesday, as our bus load of Marquette Catholic High School students returned to Michigan City from the wonderful Holocaust Museum in Skokie, passed by Wolf Lake, I pointed to the last indication of Hammond Nike Sites along Sheffield Avenue.  One of the freshmen challenged my veracity and went to Nike Sites Hammond Google.

“Yep, Mr. Hickey nailed it!  Dudes, check it out!”





The young cynic presented a number of photos from the world wide web.

These sites were abandoned in 1972 as no longer relevant.  Communism was treated very much in the same way.  Nothing to worry about.

Once the existential threat was removed, who. needs anything else?  Just like real life, “ God, get me out of this and I will be a modern day St. Sebastian!”. Threat removed and penitent goes total libertine!

I hope that teachers remind students of these sites as historical artifacts to the times when the nuclear cloud and the very genuine threat of Communism hung heavily over all of us.

My Uncle Bart fought the Reds in Korea as a U.S.Marine.  The threat of the Reds was very clear to him and my future Aunt Betty.  Sophisticated people who see abortion as a health care laugh at their  existential fears of the 1950’s & ‘60s and vote in people to Offices 2019 who may have helped take away the Nike sites with its spectral caveat concerning mad socialism and a sound wariness over a system of economics that has a history of slaughtering millions of people.

It is interesting that it took a trip to Skokie’s Holocaust Museum to jog my memories about Nike Sites.

Sunday, January 07, 2018

Chris Kennedy - Prometheus on the Carpathian Rock

Image result for prometheus chained
Zeus Preckwinkle is out of town, but might have made the call on Chris Kennedy. 

Chris Kennedy is a good guy and as I said yesterday, a good guy has no business hanging around a Progressive Democrat (Prog Dem).

Prog Dems are not liberals; they are Stalinists with East Bank Club memberships and Brooks Brothers Gold Cards.

Chris Kennedy, the scion of Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK - the American Gracchi,  grew up in the shadows of history and myth making;   he became a solid, honest and sincere man who is willing to quietly fight poverty and lift people up.

Prog Dems never do that.
Image result for chris kennedy chicago
I have witnessed Chris Kennedy lend a pair of hands to Catholic Charities (1120 W 79th St, Chicago, IL 60620) humping boxes of food and warm clothing that he bought for distribution - without ever saying, " Do you know who I am?"  He never had a squad of Sun Times ink-slingers at his beck and call like the Nordic Jesus who Popes-up the neighborhood.

Chris Kennedy is among the oligarchs of Chicago but he is not with them.  He Kennedy is a great name to appoint to a Blue Ribbon panel or a directorship, but he is too honest to drawn into the circle of Prog favor.  Chris Kennedy kept terrorist comic-strip academic Bil Ayers from getting Emeritus status with University of Illinois.  Ayers remains a player in the cook County oligarchy.  Ayers helped make Venezuela what it is today and hopes to see Metro Chicago do the same.

The Kennedys are welcome to the Prog Dem banquet, but assigned a table near the men's room exit.

Note this observation from Joel Kotkin fro 2008, when Bloomberg and Schumer checked Caroline Kennedy from folowing Hillary Clinton into the Senate:

. . . the current gentry liberals increasingly reflect the biases of their own social class. The upper echelons of Wall Street, academe and the media have been moving toward what passes for the "left" for over a generation. Ironically, this movement became most evident in the early 1960s in the elite support that gathered around Caroline's father, John, who brought with him into office "the best and brightest."
As historian Fred Siegel has noted, the Kennedy phenomena differed greatly – in both style and substance – from the "lunch pail" liberalism epitomized by President Harry Truman and, to an extent, that of both Lyndon Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Their Democratic party was sustained by appealing to the economic interests of working and middle-class Americans.
As opposed to gentry politics, whose bastions lay in fashionable urban districts and college towns, Truman-style democracy reached into the vast suburban dreamscape – even into small towns and rural areas.
Over recent years this version of the party, with its more geographically diverse middle-class base, has lost influence. It's been a process of both addition and subtraction.
A series of strong Republican politicians since Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan lured many middle-income voters out of the Democratic Party by appealing to their patriotism, economic self-interest and, in some cases, prejudices.
At the same time, the core of the elite liberal constituency – academics, high-tech businesspeople and media figures – has been growing steadily in wealth and influence. By marrying this constituency to poor minority voters, gentry liberals have turned our core urban areas into a collection of electoral "ditto heads," with so-called "progressives" winning as much as 70 or 80% of the vote in presidential elections.
This year's thrilling primary battle between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama represented a clash of these two tendencies. Although Clinton herself enjoyed strong ties to some gentry liberals, she campaigned, particularly toward the end of the marathon, as Harry Truman in a bright pantsuit. Obama, for his part, sallied forth from a solid base of academics and well-educated professionals, as well as African Americans.  (emphases my own)

Caroline Kennedy became Ambasador to Japan as a participant trophy and America got another harpy in place of Hillary - Kirsten Gillbrand 
The Prog Dems have rewired the Democratic Party so that it is set to blow -up rather than divert the charted course.

Chris Kennedy found this out last week when he called out the conspiracy to kick people out of the city - his only mistake was in pointing only to the black people.  The Prog Dems want all middle class helots gone - White, Black, Brown and Rainbow.  If you refer to your Zipcode as a neighborhood, you gotta go.   If have a wife and kids - out you go.  You have the wrong attitude for a Smart-sized, secular, bike friendly urban paradise with plenty of green open space free of kids for community members with oodles of disposable cash, income and especially inherited wealth.

Chris Kennedy brought a torch into the cave created by the Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, WGN, WTTW, WBEZ, The Reader and the good folks at Disney where news is displayed with a pen-light. For that transgression he will have his liver eaten by Eric Zorn, Neil Steinberg, Mary Mitchell, Carol Marin and Mark Brown for weeks to come.

JB Pritzker is the Prog Dem's porkier Kirsten Gillibrand.  Chris Kennedy is a nice guy, but no Caroline Kennedy and Rahm and  Fred Eychaner are not about to appoint Mr. Kennedy Ambassador to Japan.

A great man wrote Nothings on the Square.

Chris Kennedy should take copy of it with him to read while the vultures gnaw on his liver.









Saturday, January 06, 2018

Chris Kennedy - Eaten by His Own for Telling the Truth




Chris Kennedy said that Rahm is pushing blacks out of Chicago.

Rahm is - blacks who have no place in the small-city globalist, secular, two wheeler Chicago begun by Richie Daley and followed through with vigor by Rahm.

Chris Kennedy walked into the lion's den wearing a pork-chop suit - he was told by some plant in his campaign that he could get the black vote with this dodge.

It is no dodge, but limiting the exodus to blacks gave Chris Kennedy an ambush piece by Mark Brown that set him up for an old fashioned Soviet denunciation by the Tribune the Sun Times, public radio televison and the state-sponsored voices at WBBM AM and SEIU.


Chris Kennedy is Progressive road-kill.  Chris Kennedy,whose father died in the service of his country in 1968 and is forever linked to memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, is now a deplorable Trump surrogate.

In a written statement, the mayor’s office brushed off Kennedy’s attack as a political jab.
“It’s sad to see Chris Kennedy joining President Trump and Governor Rauner in using cynical politically motivated attacks about Chicago’s communities for his own personal gain,” said a mayoral spokesman.
And people thought Leon Trotsky took a tough one to the noggin.

That is how they do - Progressive ( neo-Marxist Deconstructionists) Democrats.  Progressives are not liberal Democrats.  They are old school, Joe Stalin meat grinding oligarchs.

Chris Kennedy is learning that.

As a candidate for Governor, I thought that Chris Kennedy's lack of outreach to farmers, coal-miners, tradesmen and former industrial professionals consigned to service industry jobs and lifestyles, might be his major roadblock.


Nope , JB "Michigan Avenue Fats" Pritzker is the money wagon for the Progressive Democrat machine and JB would throw Chris Kennedy's money away -" How'd the puny Frankins get mixed up with my Madisons, Chases and Wilsons ?"

Not only has ProgDem Illinois circled the wagons around Rahm the Global City Raccoon, but Chris Kennedy is now being attacked as a deplorable Trumper and race baiter, by the Lady Fingers of Race Card Mechanics herself - Mary Mitchell:

But Kennedy’s attack is more than sad.
Besides disparaging the mayor’s efforts to address the disparities that still exist, Kennedy’s allegations suggest the stellar line-up of African-American leaders in Emanuel’s administration — not to mention black aldermen — are useless.
It’s preposterous to think people like Andrea Zopp (CEO of World Business Chicago and former deputy mayor and head of the Chicago Urban League), Eddie Johnson (Chicago Police superintendent), Janice Jackson (interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools) and Frank Clark (Chicago Board of Education president and retired chairman and CEO of ComEd) would be part of the sinister plan Kennedy described.
Clearly, gun violence in predominantly black neighborhoods has driven thousands of black families to flee the city.
Preposterous that black oligarchs could shive a git about the families in Gresham, Englewood, Brainerd, Grand Crossing and Roseland????????????

Oh, hell yes!

The stellar line-up in Emanuel's administration have aided and abetted the Nine Digit Midget and Forrest Claypool and the CPS Gourmet Lunch Bunch and shooters as well as slum dog billionaires like Valerie Jarret, Allison Davis and Judson Miner.

Chris Kennedy told the truth - blacks are being run out of Chicago as well as Polish Italian, Mexican, Lithuanian, Croatian, Serbian Irish and the odd Dutchman.

Everyone who is not getting a slurp at the big trough

Daley began the conspiracy, Rahm continues it and the media orchestrates the exodus.

Chris Kennedy had the courage to profile the oligarchs.  This small, smart-sized Chicago is no revelation.  It is happening and will continue.

Chris Kennedy is a good man.  Good men have no business rubbing shoulders with Progressives.

Now, he is toast.

Monday, October 22, 2012

The Full Mundelein: Chicago's Cardinal George Teaches America History


Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, is a great teacher, This week, His Eminence gives Americans the Full Mundelein

Pay attention.  Take notes.  Form Study Groups, if necessary.  There will be a Final on this Lesson.
















The wrong side of history

 Cardinal George's Schedule

  1. Nov. 1: 7:30 a.m., 54 Day Rosary Novena, Morning Air Program, Relevant Radio
  2. Nov. 2: 10 a.m., Episcopal Council Meeting, Residence
Cardinal's Crest

Cardinal's Appointments

Cardinal George approved the following clergy appointment August 29:

Rector

Rev. Theodore Ploplis to rector of the National Shrine of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini effective Sept. 1, while retaining his duties as coordinator of spiritual services at St. Joseph Hospital.
October is the month of the Most Holy Rosary, a devotion associated in modern times with the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, during the First World War. Mary asked for prayer and penance, which she always requests in these private revelations that echo the public revelation in the Gospel: “Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand.”
Mary at Fatima also entered into the history of the modern world when she told three unlettered peasant children that the Great War then being waged, President Wilson’s “war to end all wars,” would soon end, but that a greater menace to world peace would arise in Russia, whose errors would spread throughout the world and bring untold millions to violent death. In the end, however, Mary promised that her Immaculate Heart would triumph. This promise, too, echoes the Gospel itself: the risen Christ is victorious over sin and death.
Eternity enters into human history in often incomprehensible ways. God makes promises but gives no timelines. Visiting the shrine at Fatima, pilgrims enter a huge plaza, with the spot of the apparitions marked by a small chapel to one side, a large church at one end, an equally large adoration chapel at the other end, and a center for visitors and for the hearing of confessions. Just outside the main grounds, a section of the Berlin Wall has been re-built, a stark witness to what Mary had talked about almost a century ago. Communism in Russia and its satellite nations has collapsed, although many of its sinful effects are still with us.
Communism imposed a total way of life based upon the belief that God does not exist. Secularism is communism’s better-scrubbed bedfellow. A small irony of history cropped up at the United Nations a few weeks ago when Russia joined the majority of other nations to defeat the United States and the western European nations that wanted to declare that killing the unborn should be a universal human right. Who is on the wrong side of history now?
The present political campaign has brought to the surface of our public life the anti-religious sentiment, much of it explicitly anti-Catholic, that has been growing in this country for several decades. The secularizing of our culture is a much larger issue than political causes or the outcome of the current electoral campaign, important though that is.
Speaking a few years ago to a group of priests, entirely outside of the current political debate, I was trying to express in overly dramatic fashion what the complete secularization of our society could bring. I was responding to a question and I never wrote down what I said, but the words were captured on somebody’s smart phone and have now gone viral on Wikipedia and elsewhere in the electronic communications world. I am (correctly) quoted as saying that I expected to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. What is omitted from the reports is a final phrase I added about the bishop who follows a possibly martyred bishop: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” What I said is not “prophetic” but a way to force people to think outside of the usual categories that limit and sometimes poison both private and public discourse.
An earlier Archbishop of Chicago once tried his hand at reading the signs of his times. On May 18, 1937, Cardinal Mundelein, in a conference to priests of the archdiocese, called the then-German chancellor “an Austrian paper-hanger, and a darn poor one at that, I am told.” Why did Cardinal Mundelein speak in a way that drew applause from the New York Times and local papers and brought the German government to complain bitterly to the Holy See? The government of Germany, declaring its ideology the wave of the future, had dissolved Catholic youth groups and tried to discredit the church’s work among young people through trials of monks, priests and religious sisters accused of immorality. Cardinal Mundelein spoke of how the public protests of the bishops had been silenced in the German media, leaving the church in Germany more “helpless” than it had ever been.
He then added: “There is no guarantee that the battle-front may not stretch some day into our own land. Hodie mihi cras tibi. (Today it’s me; tomorrow, you). If we show no interest in this matter now, if we shrug our shoulders and mutter … it is not our fight, if we don’t back up the Holy Father when we have a chance, well, when our turn comes, we too will be fighting alone.”
“When our turn comes …” Was Cardinal Mundelein a prophet as well as an administrative genius? Hardly. At his death in 1939 he was well known as an American patriot and a friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he also had a Catholic conviction that no nation state has been immaculately conceived. The unofficial anthem of secularism today is John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which we are encouraged to imagine a world without religion. We don’t have to imagine such a world; the 20th century has given us horrific examples of such worlds.
Instead of a world living in peace because it is without religion, why not imagine a world without nation states? After all, there would be no American ambassador recently killed in Libya if there were no America and no Libya! There are, obviously, individuals and groups who still misuse religion as a reason for violent behavior, but modern nation states don’t need religion as an excuse for going to war. Every major war in the last 300 years has been fought by nation states, not by the church. In our own history, the re-conquest of the secessionist states in the Civil War was far bloodier than the re-conquest of the Holy Land by the now despised Crusaders. The state apparatus for investigating civilians now is far more extensive than anything dreamed up by the Spanish Inquisition, although both were created to serve the same purpose: to preserve a government’s public ideology and control of society, whether based on religion or on modern constitutional order.
Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making “laws” beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about “Holy Mother the State,” or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.
God sustains the world, in good times and in bad. Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church. Those who gather at his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right side of history. Those who lie about him and persecute or harass his followers in any age might imagine they are bringing something new to history, but they inevitably end up ringing the changes on the old human story of sin and oppression. There is nothing “progressive” about sin, even when it is promoted as “enlightened.”
The world divorced from the God who created and redeemed it inevitably comes to a bad end. It’s on the wrong side of the only history that finally matters. The Synod on the New Evangelization is taking place in Rome this month because entire societies, especially in the West, have placed themselves on the wrong side of history. This October, let’s pray the rosary so that the Holy Spirit will guide and strengthen the bishops and others at the synod as they deliberate about the challenges to preaching and living the Gospel at this moment in human history. (emphases my own)