Feb 28
Jim BowmanChicago Newspapers Chicago Tribune, Dan Ryan expressway, Sun-Times
Nothing like variety in your daily newspapers.
“Chicago woman charged with hitting trooper on Dan Ryan” (actually running her over) is of the 12500 block of South Wallace, says Chi Trib. That’s 125th Street, or 125 blocks from State Street [no, no, Madison Street! sorry], give or take a few.
The same reckless woman is of the 1200 block of South Kostner, says Sun-Times. That’s roughly 12 blocks south of State and 40 or so west of Wallace.
And this on a day when our Trib never arrived. Instead, we got the New York Times! Ladies and gentlemen, life in the big metropolitan area is not supposed to be that bad.
Feb 28
Jim BowmanPolitics Books and authors, Obama as liar
In his America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s “Story of Race and Inheritance,” Steve Sailer compares O. to an art forger who had his principles, among them not to sign Rembrandt to the Rembrandt fakes which he artfully drew on 17th-century paper, figuring that if museums were dumb and greedy enough to buy a masterpiece cheap or think that’s what they were doing, it was their problem, not his.
So Obama during his presidential campaign (pp. 184-185)
. . . . prefer[red]to mislead without lying outright. He like[d] to obscure the truth under so many thoughtful nuances, dependent clauses, Proustian details, lawyerly evasions, and eloquent summarizations of his opponents’ arguments that the members of his audience ultimately just make up little daydreams about how he must agree with them. Rather like Hebborn [the forger], Obama seems to feel that he’s not to blame if the press
and public want to be fooled.
“I can’t say I blame him,” adds Sailer.
Ah those thoughtful nuances. They send me.
Feb 27
Jim BowmanChicago Newspapers, Politics Global warming, Natl Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin
NOAA in 1989, per NYT: No global warming since 1895:
While the nation’s weather in individual years or even for periods of years has been hotter or cooler and drier or wetter than in other periods, the new study shows that over the last century there has been no trend in one direction or another.
The study, made by scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters. It is based on temperature and precipitation readings taken at weather stations around the country from 1895 to 1987.
What do you know about that? That was before Al Gore knew better and convinced so many people.
The excellent Chicago-based NewsAlert unearthed it.
Feb 27
Jim BowmanReligion Clergy abuse, Germany
A priest in southern Germany resigned on Friday for failing to report sexual abuse accusations in the latest development of a scandal rocking the Catholic Church in Germany,
reports Deutsche Welle.
Maurus Krass, prior and head of a monastic school in Ettal, Bavaria, resigned for not relaying to clerical authorities allegations of child sex abuse between 2003 and 2005. He was the second to resign in three days after Barnabas Boegle, also from Ettal, stepped down on Wednesday for the same reasons.”
Feb 26
Jim BowmanPolitics filibuster reform, Sen. Dick Durbin
Dick Durbin should be arrested for impersonating a U.S. senator. His latest violation is to ask supporters to sign up for filibuster reform!!
The American people are sick of process blocking progress. They’re fed up with an
arbitrary tradition that allows a minority of Senators to prevent popular, much-
needed legislation from even coming to a vote.
Frankly, so am I.
I love the “frankly.” It means he’s levelling with us.
When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and drafted the initial rules of the Senate, they never intended requiring a supermajority to pass any and all legislation. They just wanted to be sure that Senators took time to carefully debate and consider bills before taking votes.
That’s why I urge you to support the Harkin-Shaheen proposal, or similar filibuster reform proposals.
Such devotion to the founders.
When is the nuclear option a reform? When Dems have trouble getting what they want.
Feb 24
Jim BowmanReligion
The imprisoned former Jesuit priest and sex offender Donald McGuire has leukemia.
A close friend of McGuire dislosed [sic] his diagnosis to the Dallas Blog on Sunday after the priest called his residence on Saturday night. McGuire made the heavily-restricted and closely-monitored one-and-a-half minute phone call from a federal pentientiary [sic] in Springfield, Mo, which can be proven through phone records.
He’s been having a hard time of it.
Sources working closely with McGuire claim that he’s been violently beaten by inmates on numerous occassions [sic] while prison guards watched in amusement.
This “Dallas blog” heard from him before he was incarcerated.
Shortly before McGuire was convicted in the Chicago trial, the defrocked Jesuit spoke to the Dallas Blog on the phone around Christmas time in 2007. He loudly proclaimed his “innocence” in what could best be described as a “contentious” conversation.
Around that same time period, the Dallas Blog received thousands of pages of documents and evidence showing that his accussers [sic] may have perjured themselves on the witness stand in Wisconsin. They had proof that McGuire had proven alibis showing he was elsewhere on some of his so-called nightly escapades. Witnesses inacurately [sic] described his rectrory [sic] rooms and his physical body description when they were first interrogated by investigators in Wisconsin.
Supporters claim he got a raw deal.
Sources from McGuire point their fingers at inadequate legal representation from his defense attorneys, Jerry Boyle and Stephen Komie, in the two trials. They claim they provided sufficient evidence to the lawyers to more rigourously [sic] cross-examine the accusers, but they failed to do so. After reading the entire transcripts of the Wisconsin trial, it appears that McGuire’s team has a legitimate argument.
This version has no legs with mainstreamers.
The McGuire team made attempts to approach media outlets this past year to show some of their evidence, but to no avail as an eeiry [sic] silence ensued. They were informed that editors were no longer interested in the story.
Barbara Blaine of SNAP is not buying it either.
Nonethless, Barbara Blaine, a licensed attorney and founder of SNAP (the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priets [sic]), continues to focus her attentions on the convicted pedophile priest. A few months ago, she told the Dallas Blog that more accusers alleging sex crimes by McGuire will soon come forward with a “mountain of evidence” that will be difficult to dispute.
Tom McGregor covers the waterfront for The Dallas [TX] Blog, which
is intended to be a news and viewpoints, online newspaper. Our Texas writers will comment on major issues affecting our community, state, nation and world. It is no slam at Dallas’ only daily newspaper to say that competing news sources make for a better community. We will attempt to give our readers insights into various issues and public personalities that you may not see in the pages of the Dallas Morning News.
We will do things differently in more ways than one. First, we intend to invite you to Blog here. Yes, we will have our own reporters and our own commentators who write for Dallas Blog. But, we give you the opportunity to respond to our stories and viewpoints by posting comments on our site.
This piece links to another of his about Jesuit sexual misconduct, reporting allegations about a “Fr. JG,” for The UN Post, and another by a Dallas Blog-connected writer, Tom Pauken II, for Ohmy News, about a lawyer who is appealing McGuire’s 25–year sentence.
Feb 24
Jim BowmanBlithely, Chicago Newspapers
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
Bruso is a 67 year-old Vietnam veteran, who apparently has some history of mental illness. While riding the bus in Oakland, he was talking to someone about getting his shoes shined for his mother’s funeral and a black man named Michael—whose last name is unknown—managed to get offended because the words “shoe shine”, “boy”, and “brother” were used in the same sentence. He confronted Bruso, who initially misinterpreted the man as offering to shine his shoes. Michael yelled “Why a brotha gotta spit-shine yo’ shoes?” and “Why a white man can’t shine his shoes?”
The rest is on tape. This blog reports, you decide.
Feb 20
Jim BowmanPolitics
You hear a lot about gridlock. Bad, right?
In fact, gridlock in Washington is good, since it will stop the assault of big government until the end of the year, when Congress could be overturned by independents, Tea Partiers, Republicans and probably some Democrats, as well.
It gives us (U.S.) time.
Thank you, Larry Kudlow.
Feb 19
Jim BowmanBlithely, Oak Park
At Dominican U in RF last night, Robert Hanning from Columbia U. on confession in the middle ages. Title led me to expect a socio-cultural explication but he was about close reading of Bocaccio and Chaucer.
I found the former heavy-handed in his slashing attack on church practice, producing cartoon characters — opera boffo? — none of them credible or noteworthy. The latter — dear Geoffrey — produced memorable people and made same points with relative understatement. Subtlety, thy name is not an Italian one.
Considered a q. during post-lecture q&a, where was holy mother church during all this? Besides indexing Bocaccio. But H. was not attuned to that, or seemed not to be, or had simply ruled that out a la monograph-style, not to mention journal-ready text with references and attributions right and left.
Appropriate, in that he was keynoting a joint meeting of the Illinois Medieval Assn. and the Midwest body of medievalists, this in DU’s near spanking-new Parmer Hall on west side of burgeoned if not still burgeoning campus.
From which I exited on Thatcher, by the way, using the easement much disputed by tree-huggers and forest preservers. The trees did not cry out at me as I hung a left and headed south.
A nice evening, for $10 that included a sip of wine and bite of something beforehand, sitting and watching medievalists chatter in clumps. A look at the ivory tower, you might say, without prejudice.
But I had to think about what Ezra Pound would say, he who moved ever in the mainstream of (literary and other) life and preferred jumping to (fascinating, engaging) conclusions. Takes all kinds.
Feb 19
Jim BowmanChicago Newspapers, Religion
Yesterday an editorial about Opus Dei hosting lib RC (“heterodox”) Cokie Roberts at its DC bookstore led to cancellation of said talk-diva. But old-world defensiveness delayed things:
The Washington Times called the Catholic Information Center on deadline Tuesday seeking comment and asking if the Cokie Roberts event had been cancelled, but we were repeatedly sent to voicemail. Putting someone on the line could have clarified the situation.
That is, Wash Times publicized the much-protested near boo-boo but would not have done so if it only knew.
This long-ago religion reporter had a similar no-talk response from Chi Opus D people in the 70s, when they were much newer kids on the block, followed by letter of correction after the story had run, about what I do not recall.
Look. Talk and ye shall be saved at least a little embarrassment. You might be anyhow. You could make things worse, of course. This guy in Pittsburgh threatened to sock me over the phone. Speaking for the diocese.
Had he succeeded, it would have been a story that wrote itself: easy to write but hard to research.
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