Jesse Jackson, Violence in Rogers Park, and Liberal Magic

A letter from Michael Harrington, community activist, gives us a report of Jesse Jackson, Sr.'s visit to Rogers Park, Chicago on June 10, 2009. Jackson, known for his extortion of businesses and hateful, bigoted remarks over the decades, spoke to the congregation of United Church of Rogers Park about crime. Violent crime, that is, not the extortion that he's been involved in for many years. Both Jackson and the church's pastor, Catania McKay, spoke about safety issues. We hope for the safety of everyone that nobody broke a foot or leg on the church's extremely dangerous steps. Pastor McKay said that she "would like to see peace poles all over this community to claim that there is no space for violence here." The good pastor is apparently deluded enough to believe that gangsters defending their drug turf will actually give a rat's ass about "peace polls." Mr. Harrington makes referrence to the December, 2008 stabbing murder of a 16-year old boy near the Jarvis CTA station. Tragic, yes. If only there had been a peace poll nearby to stop the murder, I'm sure that the young man would not have been brutally attacked by homicidal lunatics. The lunatics would have seen the peace poll, felt its magical liberal message of love, and decided right then and there to hug him instead of killing him. Right? It's almost as silly as the banner on the side of the church that says "This congregation rejects war." Fat lot of good that's done. Look, I count Michael as a friend. He's a very nice guy. It's just that he and others are so misguided in thinking that "peace poles" or "claiming the neighborhood" will actually do any good. Lawlessness and thuggery are not defeated by empty statements and candlelight vigils, or by disarming our law abiding citizens. Magical leftist chanting couldn't levitate the Pentagon, and it cannot stop criminals from being criminals. That said, and without further adieu, here is Mr. Harrington's letter. Dear Rogers Park Neighbors, The Rev. Jesse Jackson and TV news crews came to our community’s United Church of Rogers Park for a Safe Summer Rally and Peace March today (6-10-09). The event, featured on WLS-TV 7 News, was attended by 100 church members, community residents and activists, and civic leaders supporting Chicago’s citywide campaign to stop gun and gang violence. Our Pastor Catania McKay, speaking at the event at our church at 1545 W. Morse Ave, addressed the anti-violence theme powerfully. Pastor McKay noted, "When we begin to make peace as the way that we live and we claim a neighborhood for peace, I would like to see peace poles all over this community to claim that there is no space for violence here. We are here to transform that." The high incidence of violence in Rogers Park, including the December, 2008 stabbing murder of 16-year-old Isaiah Stroud outside the Jarvis CTA station, and other city neighborhoods with an even higher crime rate were noted in the television station’s story (copied below). A key factor in how we combat crime is how we address the needs of youth. Our church’s Deacon Wesley Dorr outlined the year-round and summer youth programs delivered at United Church, and also spoke to the need for more programs and activities to serve Rogers Park’s youth. Other participants at today's event at United Church included the Rev. Jesse Jackson (who called our city's murder rate "a state of emergency"), Sarita Villareal of the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Chicago Police Department. As chairman of our church board of trustees, I join Pastor McKay in “claiming our neighborhood for peace.” I’m also proud that our congregation continues to be proactive on critical issues facing our community and that we are working to help unite our neighbors in common cause. Information on United Church of Rogers Park and the work we do is available at our web site at http://www.ucrogerspark.org/index.htm or by calling us at (773) 761-2500. Peace, Michael J. Harrington, Chairman Board of Trustees United Church of Rogers Park http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=6858844 http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6858844

H&M's Ridiculous Fashion Against AIDS Campaign

One of the dumbest ad campaigns I've seen in quite a while is this one for H&M in conjunction with Designers Against AIDS (DAA). H&M Fashions is a huge, international corporation that operates in 34 countries. It has 73,000 employees. Although H&M has "Fashion Against AIDS" billboards around the country, it seems impossible to find a single reference to it on their annoying web site, even on their "Corporate Responsibility" page. This would make their association with DAA's Fashion Against AIDS seem a bit shallow, if not cynical. As for DAA, they seem only slightly less shallow and cynical. Go to their annoying web site and you get the feeling that it's all about them, not the disease they claim to be fighting. Self-promotion and glitz seems to eclipse any transparency about how their solicited donations will be spent. I'm not accusing them of anything like a scam or dishonesty, but would it kill them to tell donors how their money will actually help fight AIDS? Finally, take another look at the billboard in my photo here, at a bus stop in Chicago. See that hot, sexy woman in her hot, sexy, fashionable leotard thingy? I couldn't help wondering how that makes a young man feel. Well, actually, I know how that would make a young man feel, and that feeling would do nothing in the way of helping to prevent the spread of AIDS. Seriously, if DAA and H&M want to promote anti-AIDS fashion, they'd be better advised to introduce a line of burlap bags and other equally un-sexy items. Leave a Comment Here... See our cool merchandise... Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Hey! ChiNewsBench is on Twitter

Obama's Magic Mystery Act

The Bench has long referred to the Magic of the Left. Chants at anti-war rallies. Attempts to levitate the Pentagon. Petunias for peace. Candlelight "vigils," and so on. On Friday, columnist Kimberley Strassel addressed the surreal magical beliefs of the Left in the Wall Street Journal. She notes how Leftist Faith in Magic manifests itself in the Obama Campaign for Chief Magician of the United States. Obama's supporters fully expect him to pull rabbits out of his many hats. Strassel wrote: And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.) Watch his left hand, ladies and gentlemen! Ignore his other hand! To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show. Faith, ladies and gentlemen, faith! You must hope that these tricks really work! Believe hard enough, ladies and gentlemen, and you can fool yourself into believing they are real! Then you'll be happy, ladies and gentlemen, and happiness is more important than reality in the Leftist Magical Illusion Show! For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! FULL COLUMN at WSJ... RELATED FAKERY: Obama's 95% Illusion - It depends on what the meaning of 'tax cut' is. More fake names found on Obama donor lists HonoluluAdvertiser ... Obama the 'Magic Negro' - Los Angeles Times Andrea Mitchell says Obama gave fake interviews in the Middle East ... RealClearPolitics - Articles - Obama Faking It Obama's Head Fake - April 10, 2008 - The New York Sun How the Left Hijacked the Magic Words The American Conservative -- The Progressive Peacenik Myth What Makes a Lefty: Myths and Mysteries Persist LiveScience Political mythology -- Michael Moore in wonderland More Proof Liberalism is a Mental Illness — Liberal Quicksand Obama’s Fake Unity : NO QUARTER

Violence Vigil: More Empty Gestures

Lots of violence in Chicago, as usual, but more this year than in recent years. So, tonight the Organization of the North East (ONE) will end all of the violence once and for all. How? Why, with another magical vigil "in response" to last Friday's shooting in Uptown. It is scheduled to happen tonight at 6:00 p.m. at the site of the shooting in the 4800 block of North Sheridan Road. If it's raining, go to People's Church at 941 W. Lawrence (watch your step; crack whores and drunks commonly defecate on the sidewalk in front of the entrances). ONE is announcing the Magik Vigil via email. As of 2:15 p.m., however, they do not have it on their web site. ONE describes its mission: "...to build and sustain a successful mixed economic, multi-ethnic community on the north lakefront of Chicago." Another useless vigil, merely balm on a great gaping gashes, piles of clotted blood, guts on the floor. The balm will do nothing. It won't even quell the pain. When will the True Believers stop abusing the word "vigil?" To be vigilant means to be: 1. keenly watchful to detect danger; wary: a vigilant sentry. 2. ever awake and alert; sleeplessly watchful. Will these people be "keenly watchful" tonight? Was ONE or Cease Fire - or anybody else, including the police - "keenly watchful to detect danger" last Friday? Were the parents, relatives or friends of the victims and the shooters "ever awake and alert" to the danger signs? Tonight's ONE event will not be a vigil. It will be time to gather, to mourn, to discuss. That's fine, there is value to that. But to call it a "vigil" is not only incorrect, it is misleading. It fools the participants and the noncritical observer into believing that something is being done, that a solution is being implemented. By the way, where is Cease Fire in all of this? Wow, thank goodness their state funding was reinstated, huh? Cease Fire describes itself as "an evidence-based public health approach to reducing shootings and killings. Our methods for reversing the violence epidemic use highly trained street violence interrupters and outreach staff, public education campaigns and community mobilization." Note to Cease Fire: Your methods ain't working, friends. Vigils and "Don't Shoot" signs and gun buy-back media events aren't the solution to an epidemic of endemic problems. Vast social changes are needed. Uplifting of morals and renewed respect for life must take place. After decades of "Free Tibet" bumper stickers, China still occupies it. After decades more of "Don't Shoot" signs, the gangsters and thugs will still be shooting. Petunias for peace, anyone? How about another useless walk to "take back" your neighborhood? Maybe we can all gather on a corner and mumble magik chants. Perhaps we could levitate the Bridgeview Bank Building in the hope of changing the world. Burn some newt eyes, mix them up with spiders and clove, stir that into a magik elixir and voila! You've got Hope. Problems solved. Hope, as they say, is not a strategy. Chants and candle light vigils are not tactics of any value. If only there had been a few more petunias on the 4800 block of N. Sheridan last Friday.

Effort to Levitate Denver Mint Fails

DENVER - Democrats took to the streets of the Mile High City, apparently all a mile high, and marched to the U.S. Mint where they attempted to levitate it. The effort failed. The effort was reminiscent of the attempt to levitate the Pentagon on Saturday, October 21, 1967, which also failed. For more on this breaking story, we will turn to Michelle Malkin: I’m happy to report that the anti-capitalists failed in their effort to defy gravity and levitate the U.S. Mint. The wizard hat and magic wands weren’t working. FULL AMUSING POST... ALSO SEE: Marxists Unite! and Fighting back against Obama’s thugs

Free Burma (Leftist Magical Thinking)

Beach bum "Rainbow" put up a "Free Burma" sign on a light pole near the Loyola CTA Red Line station today (see video below). Thank God he did that, for now everyone in Burma (Myanmar) can breath easier.

Rainbow is a guy who, by his own admission, is an alumnus of many county jails across the USA. He was recently evicted from Loyola Park's beach, where he was living in a tent. The Left of Rogers Park immediately became enamoured of him, and are now giving him little duties to perform in exchange for crumbs and a floor to sleep on.

Aside from their complete disrespect for public property, Leftists like Rainbow love to believe that chanting slogans and defacing walls with posters that sport incomplete sentences will somehow accomplish something. It is the mindset that believed that the Pentagon could be levitated, and that doing so would end the Vietnam War. It couldn't, and it didn't. It is the same mindset that today believes that a few succulents on a roof top will save the planet, or that posters of a Hitlerized Bush will magically get him out of office.

For how many decades now have we been seeing "Free Tibet" bumper stickers? Is Tibet free? Will the people of Burma suddenly be "free" of their tyrannical government? I hope so, I really do, but the struggle of the Burmese people against the local tyrants will not be won with magical slogans.

MAYOR DALEY IS PISSED

The mayor we love to call "Dick" will hold an "emergency summit" today to stop all those bad people from being bad.

That's right, Mayor Daley believes in magic. He thinks that getting a bunch of fellow magicians in the same room will magically slow down, or even stop, the violence that has been a part of Chicago's background for like, well forever. But don't worry. Dick's emergency summit today will undoubtedly be more effective and longer lasting than the last one he held in 1992.

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Mayor Richard M. Daley on Friday plans to convene a group of officials from schools, religious organizations, and social service agencies to talk about how to combat a wave of violence in the city that has been dominating the headlines throughout the past week. MORE at CBS2 Chicago...

ALSO SEE: WE NEED MORE GUNS, NOT FEWER

Voting in the 49th Ward is Fun

RPKelly has left a new comment on your post "The 49th Mental Ward of Chicago": Honestly, Tom, I think you're being kind of a jerk here. Amy DID question authority. She DID fight back. She made a huge ruckus over the stupidity of this situation. She drew attention to the idiocy and got the problem fixed. The poll workers were the morons, not Amy. Might I suggest that if she had been casting her vote for Mitt Romney rather than Barack Obama, you'd be taking a different approach to this story? Response: I don't care who she voted for, that's really not a factor. Here's what Amy told the Chicago Tribune on Feb. 5: "I'm incredibly angry, and I feel so dumb," said Amy Carlton, 38, of Rogers Park. "And I am not a dumb person." Now, if Amy really DID question and fight authority, but fell for the bizarre explanation anyway, then she actually IS a dumb person. The Trib quotes continued: "Carlton said all the judges at the polling place insisted that they had been trained in the use of the 'magic' pens." So, after the judges TOLD HER that they had been trained for, as she quoted them, "magic pens," she voted with one anyway? O-mi-god. The fun continues in the Trib article: "I've voted before," Carlton said. "I was thinking, 'This is crazy,' but when someone in authority insists, what are you supposed to do?" Okay, she initially said something akin to, "Really? This pen will really, really work?" And a judge said something akin to, "Why yes! You see, Amy, it's a MAGIC pen! It'll work just fine!" I'm not sure where the fighting authority aspect comes in to play, however. But telling us that Amy "drew attention to the idiocy" is a bit like saying that someone who walked in front of a speeding bus has drawn attention to a dangerous intersection. The poll workers may indeed have been morons. But those morons convinced Amy to use a "magic pen" to cast her vote.

The 49th Mental Ward of Chicago

Honestly? Hmmm. I don't mean to beat a story that's already been beaten coast to coast, but let's face it: This is funny as hell. It's also about a woman who lives in what is quickly becoming known as the weirdest neighborhood in America. Thanks, in part, to folks like her. Honestly.

She is is Amy Carlton (photo). Remember, she insists that she is not dumb. Honestly.

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, there was weirdness at a polling place in Rogers Park on Super Tuesday. "Later that afternoon," the Trib reported, "election officials shook their heads in disbelief as investigators confirmed 20 ballots in the 49th Ward's 42nd precinct were cast with inkless pens."

You haven't heard about this? Inkless pens, and 20 people were dumb enough to fall for it. Amy Carlton, for instance. Honestly.

The Trib reported that "Amy Carlton, 38, of Rogers Park said that all the judges at the polling place insisted they had been trained in the use of the pens." Okay.... uh, ... we'll come back to that training thing. Honestly.

"I've voted before," the Trib reports Carlton said. "I was thinking 'This is crazy.' But when someone in authority insists, what are you supposed to do?"

Whatever happened to that "Question Authority" thing that liberals are so fond of plastering on their bumpers and backpacks? Oh, yes, they no longer question it. They vote for more of it these days. Which brings us obtusely back to that training thing.

The authority for most of the election judges in the 49th Ward is one David Fagus. Now, I'm not saying he personally trained the judges in the use of the invisible ink pens, but I would not be surprised if he at least knew about it. Fagus, a Democrat, is one of the most faithful servants of 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore, also a Democrat. As the 49th Ward Democrat Committeeman, it's his job to know what's going on with election judges. Honestly.

Let's go back to Amy Carlton. I wouldn't pick on her in this public manner if she was just another gullible sucker who believes even the most ridiculous bullshit just because "someone in authority insists" that the bullshit is really strawberry shortcake. Honestly.

No, Ms. Carlton has been a seeker of the public eye. Therefore, The Bench considers her to be fair game. She runs a God-awful blog called RubberNun.net. On Wednesday, February 6 she wrote this brilliant defense of her authority-inspired gullibility:

"I told the Sun-Times that magic pens sounded just stupid enough to be true." But she's not dumb. Honestly.

"Anyway," Amy continued, "for reasons ranging from being lied to to just not thinking clearly at 7 am, I got screwed yesterday, and I fought back. And now I'm an object of ridicule from the neighborhood jagoff's* blog (the execrable Morse Hellhole) to Wonkette."

She "fought back" how? She swallowed the story and "voted." That's "fighting back"? She complains that she's now being made fun of all across this great land of ours, from neighborhood blogs to Wonkette. By the way, it's hundreds of bloggers posting about this. Honestly, hundreds.

Amy Carlton should just pretend that we're laughing with her, not at her. No, really. Honestly.

The not-dumb-honestly Amy Carlton continued her brilliant defense statement:

"No, wait! The moral of the story is: Who gives a rat's ass what people think? I'd do it again, people. It was the right thing to do.You gotta fight. For your right. To vooooooooooote! Just watch what you say to the media afterwards."

Sooooo, she'd fall for the invisible ink trick again. Falling for it the first time was "the right thing to do." And somehow doing that is fighting for your right to vote? Huh?

Honestly, folks. She's not dumb. Take her word for it.

MUST READ: THE MAGIC VOTING PEN

You will believe that a Magic Pen can change an election. You will believe...

Twenty voters at a Far North Side precinct who found their ink pens not working were told by election judges not to worry. It's invisible ink, officials said. The scanner will count it. More at Sun-Times...

* The 'Magic Pen' - She Went Ahead And Voted Anyway

and * First Hand Account of the "Magic Pen"