Archive for June 1st, 2010
SHOCKER: Tipper to divorce ManBearPig
Perhaps ManBearPig has decided to officially declare himself Pope of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Cult.
Since popes can’t be married, Tipper had to go.
Mark Kirk outed by filmmaker Mike Rogers — just as we told you this would happen. Waiting for response from Fran Eaton and Illinois Review.
If this is a shock to any of you, then you are clearly blind.
Come out Aaron Schock, it's Pride Month...don't let the Democrats do to you in the future what they are doing to Kirk's Senate campaign!
Here’s Mike Rogers’ outing of Mark Kirk that we told you was coming back in 2009.
Here’s what we warned Republicans was going to happen to Mark Kirk’s Senate campaign, if they made Kirk the nominee:
(1) Giannoulias would get exposed for his Broadway Bank mob connections
(2) The only thing that would save Giannoulias would be outing Mark Kirk and exposing him as a liar and hypocrite, and producing a Jack Ryan-grade scandal against him
(3) Giannoulias would be elected Senator because Illinois voters are more likely to elect a corrupt, mobbed up Democrat than a lying Republican who’s been outed in a scandal
This is what’s happening.
Now, we ran this piece, “What Chicago Democrats Are Planning To Do To Out Republicans Mark Kirk and Aaron Schock” on December 18th, 2009. Please go back and read this. This is exactly what we said was going to happen first to Kirk…and then to Schock in about 5-10 years, once Democrats have blackmailed Schock enough, as they have done to Kirk for 10 years, and Schock finally does something to cross the Dem machine. At that point, Schock, too, will be taken out by someone like Mike Rogers and destroyed for being a hypocrite.
We. Tried. To. Warn. The. GOP. This. Was. Coming.
Instead of listening to us, here’s what happened.
Fran Eaton at Illinois Review knows some of us personally, because Eaton was like a fly at a picnic during the McCain 2008 campaign. She never did anything productive, but came to anything that had a buffet or free drinks, and buzzed around the room pretending she was an actual journalist. In reality, Illinois Review gets about 1/3 of the hits HillBuzz does, and we’re rank amateurs screwing around on the Internets here in Boystown. We have never claimed to be journalists — and since Obama became the Democrat nominee in 2008, we have worked our hearts out to try to help Republicans take back the government so we can together save this country. This effort has come at great personal cost to us in our every day personal lives, and to mitigate the damage the Left could do to us, we deliberately maintained HillBuzz on an anonymous basis to protect our personal identities and livelihoods — because, as one of us found out, it’s impossible to earn a living in Chicago if the Left targets you and makes you unemployable.
Fran Eaton knew the identity of one of us, because Fran Eaton knew K. socially from McCain events.
Fran Eaton was a Facebook “friend” of K.’s and had access to his photos on Facebook, as is the nature of Facebook.
After we ran the December 18th piece warning Republicans what Democrats were planning to do to Mark Kirk to save the Giannoulias campaign when it floundered, Fran Eaton used an article on Illinois Review to out K. as part of HillBuzz…knowing full well this would be the very first time any of our personal names were ever attached to our political writing.
Fran Eaton knew about everything Obama supporters had done to us personally during the 2008 primaries for supporting Hillary Clinton over Obama in Chicago, and she knew about the grief all of us took for being Democrats for McCain in the General Election. K. can recount at least three occasions when he talked to Fran Eaton about the specific reasons we maintained anonymity on HillBuzz, as opposed to what Fran Eaton does at Illinois Review, whereby she emblazons the place with her name to make herself appear important (as opposed to just being a woman who will attend the opening of an envelop if there’s even a vague promise of a Snickers bar…as we internally refer to her).
Fran Eaton deliberately and maliciously outed K. as a HillBuzz writer because she wanted to get his name out there so that the Left would have a target to attack.
Fran Eaton did this because she wanted Mark Kirk to be the Republican nominee, even though Fran Eaton knew Kirk is gay. It is an open secret here in Illinois. Yet, Fran Eaton wrote in her hit piece that K. and HillBuzz “started rumors” about Kirk. Honey, if we “started rumors” about Kirk we’d have needed more than a Mac and a blog to do that…we’d have needed a damn time machine because when the lot of us moved here between 2004-2005 or so, one of the first things we heard in Boystown was about the gay Congressman named Mark Kirk. It wasn’t until 2008, actually, that we even knew who Mark Kirk was…apart from being “the gay Republican Congressman guys talked about”. None of us ever saw a picture of Kirk until 2009, actually, and when we did we were stunned anyone could NOT KNOW he was gay…since the man has the most obvious case of Gay-Face since Liberace.
Fran Eaton knew full well we didn’t start any “rumors” about Kirk, but she wrote the article with one purpose: to out K. so that the Left would have his name and those people on the Left who hate HillBuzz could now have one of us to train their attacks on.
And, here’s what happened because of the actions of Fran Eaton at Illinois Review.
As we at HillBuzz supported Scott Brown’s campaign in Massachusetts to take back “the Kennedy seat” for the people of the Bay State, the Left ratcheted up its attacks against us because we dared to work towards seeing Republicans capture the ultimate Democrat prize. To the Cult of Liberalism, this was one of the greatest insults they could imagine, and they were furious. FURIOUS. After Scott Brown won, the Left was so enraged it wanted to lash out emotionally and hurt those it felt were responsible…and so Daily Kos and Democratic Underground looked for a victim.
They found Fran Eaton’s article identifying K. as one of us here at HillBuzz…the only one of us identifiable and attackable.
Because of Fran Eaton’s actions, K. came under direct and nonstop fire from the Left, and has been assaulted every day since.
The Left calls him a RAAACIST for not supporting this current president’s reckless agenda. The Left threatens his employability and personal safety. The Left maligns him, degrades him, and assails him every day.
All because of Fran Eaton at Illinois Review.
Now that things are going down with the Mark Kirk campaign the way we told you — BACK IN DECEMBER OF 2009 — and all of this is transpiring more or less as we predicted, we ask all of you who are regular readers, everyone who cares about us, everyone who has watched us evolve from partisan Democrats into the guys who every day put it on the line to do what we can to help this country, TO HOLD FRAN EATON ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT SHE DID.
Fran Eaton and Illinois Review, as well as the GOP in Illinois, cannot be allowed to pretend they did not know about Mark Kirk, and were not warned his Senate campaign would collapse after being brought down by the Left.
We gave them all the Giannoulias playbook against Kirk. We also gave you the playbook that’s going to be run against Schrock, so in a few years, when that’s used, we’re going to say TOLD YOU SO again.
Fran Eaton deliberately put a private citizen out there to be destroyed by the Left, when she knew the articles we wrote about the Kirk campaign were true.
How do Illinois Review readers feel about that?
How can the GOP in Illinois pretend it never saw this coming…WHEN WE TOLD THEM IT WAS COMING, and it was noticed enough to warrant a direct attack on us by Fran Eaton and Illinois Review?
As this drama with Kirk unfolds, we do not intend to let this go until Fran Eaton faces consequences for her actions. Now that we’ve been proven right, we want to hear the explanation for what she did, when she knew we were right the whole damn time.
QUESTION: Do you think Obama's hit a breaking point with the "it's all Bush's fault" garbage?
The more Obama pulls this "blame Bush" garbage, the closer that bear rug gets to the Oval Office.
Here’s an article in the Telegraph about just how bad the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico really is.
Our question today is: do you think the current president’s trademarked “it’s all Bush’s fault” excuse for everything has finally hit a brick wall with the public?
This past weekend was IML/Bear Pride here in Chicago. For the uninitiated, IML is International Mr. Leather, which is, among other things, a beauty pageant of sorts for hairy, bigger guys who love wearing leather harnesses and other get-ups. Several thousand big, beefy guys wearing anything from vests to biker jackets to assless chaps were assembled in Chicago through Memorial Day. It’s absolutely no wonder, at all, to us that Obama skipped services at Arlington National Cemetery so he could be in Chicago during IML.
While none of us here are leather guys, Sebastian does look great shirtless and in a harness and Panda’s fascinated by the guys who fetishize by dressing up as leather dogs and going to “Woof Camp” Westminster-style human dog-and-pony shows. Panda, in fact, keeps trying to get our friend Althea to wear her Michelle Pfeiffer-styled leather Catwoman Halloween costume and run through the IML host hotel to see if any of those dog guys will chase her, because he thinks that would be hilarious. We think it sounds like just about any random Friday night in Andersonville. While we might not go to any of the events at IML, we do enjoy getting the chance to talk to so many people from all across the country who come to Chicago for this weekend every year. It’s a great opportunity for us to hear how the administration is playing with this unique subset of the LGBTQ community, which is much less Leftist than what we usually encounter.
Being a “bear” isn’t just about being heavier and hairier than the MiniBar Brenden crowd, it’s about a take-no-prisoners, call-it-like-it-is, eat-all-the-pizza-without-apologies state of mind. Bears are typically older gay guys, usually entrepreneurial, with a classic conservative streak. They’d, in fact, by our estimation largely be Republican if not for the Media’s consistent portrayal of the GOP as anti-gay. What’s fascinating to us is this paradigm: the very segment of the gay community that is MOST LIKELY to vote Republican, the bears, is the very segment of the gay community MOST LIKELY to be used by the “religious” zealots on the far Right in anti-gay propaganda. Because they’re dressed by Tom of Finland and go to events like IML once in a while, they are featured prominently in all of the nasty hit pieces the far Right produces against the gay community.
We keep telling Republicans and truly Christian people this: you do only yourselves harm by attacking gays. You alienate your own natural allies.
Bears are smart. Bears have money. Bears are naturally conservative. Bears should be Republicans.
You have only yourselves, GOP, to blame for the fact the Media and DNC keep portraying you as anti-gay and generally “evil” (the media’s construction, not ours), by falling into the trap of allowing the Right to come out so hard against leather guys all the time.
This weekend, a whole oddball troupe of “religious” zealots from Frontline Ministries were out in force at Belmont and Halsted, railing against gays, shouting at all the bears walking around visiting Chicago for IML, passing out little blue and yellow flyers telling gays how sinful they were and how everyone was going to Hell. When guys wouldn’t take their handouts, the “religious” people started shouting, “FAG! DIE IN HELL FAG! GOD SENT AIDS FOR YOU, FAG!”.
“Susan Traversy, is that you?”, we thought. ”Did they let you out of New Hampshire?”. It felt like a community theater reading of the hatemail we get from the Leftists on this site, because, oddly enough, these Liberal Cultists reduce themselves to the level of the far-Right zealots and co-opt their deranged vocabulary. That’s another interesting paradigm: the Left supposedly hates the Right with such passion that the hate pushes them full circle on the derangement spectrum until the Left and Right are reading from the same venom-printed script, making the same attacks on gays, never realizing their derangement gives them more in common than what differentiates them politically.
Unfortunately, as we watched groups of bearded guys in their leather harnesses, jeans, and other IML accoutrements crossing Belmont and heading down to Boystown, we heard far too many of them say, “God damn Republicans”.
Because the Media and DNC have been so effective in branding Republicans as hateful “religious” zealots, and the GOP has never done anything to counter that branding.
However, one area Democrats are failing SPECTACULARLY in is the branding of every failure of the current administration as “all Bush’s fault”. All throughout this past weekend, whenever we’d find ourselves talking to out-of-town visitors here for IML, and the subject of politics would come up, we’d ask them if they really believed everything was “all Bush’s fault”. Many of these guys refused to say a nice word about Bush, but they agreed it was absurd that 17 months into Obama’s presidency, he was still trying to blame Bush for things that Bush had nothing to do with.
The Left has failed spectacularly in spreading the lie that the Gulf Oil disaster is anyway connected to President Bush.
The well that’s destroying the Gulf of Mexico was approved by the Obama administration.
Bush-era safety requirements were ignored because the Obama administration knew better, because, as Lightbringer, he was such a smartie and so full of hope and change that the usual safety protocols for deep sea drilling were not followed the way they were under Bush.
While people we talked to this weekend did not realize this, they did reflect the general public perception that it’s absurd for Obama to keep blaming his predecessor for his every failing, while taking all the credit for anything good that happens. It makes Obama look like, to quote one of the bears, “a little bitch”.
Fey, weak, dithering, nancy, incompetent…he’s looking very much like an affirmative action hire in a job way over his head whose main qualification for the position, from the hiring committee’s point of view, was his skin color. Now, in the position for diversity’s sake, he can’t do the job he was hired to do, much prefers going on vacation and having parties to goof off, accepts all awards lavished upon him (shoutout to the Nobel Committee), but recoils at any criticism and keeps pointing his finger at the ghost of the man who sat in his chair before him.
How many times have you encountered this in an office you worked in?
How long did the finger-pointers you knew get away with this garbage?
While the vast majority of the LGBTQ community will never call Obama out for the person that he is, we’re delighted to have learned the bears at least have no problem whatsoever in speaking the truth about him. It was the clear consensus amongst those we spoke to this weekend that Obama will be a one-term president, and that this Gulf Oil mess really will be his own personal Katrina, because this was his chance to prove he was everything the Media and DNC claimed he was.
“Wasn’t this guy supposed to be magic or something? Didn’t he say he could drain the ocean if he wanted, so why doesn’t he just do that and plug the damn hole already?”
You’d probably not be surprised to know how many conversations about hole-plugging we overheard at IML, but at least a few of them really did involve petroleum products NOT sold down at the Leather Mart.
“So, what’s the strategy for getting all those fishing and oil rig jobs back now that the Gulf is ruined? Is it going to be more HOPE, because that crap sure worked out so great so far”.
“Why’s this guy on vacation when there’s a disaster happening? Why’s he having big fancy state dinners and giving speeches? Why can’t he get his ass down to Louisiana, stay there, and fix this?”
“If this clown can’t plug a hole and scoop up this spill, then how the Hell is the government going to takeover my healthcare and manage my body for me?”
You declare a war on junk food, salt, and other delicious things, and you also declare a war on the big, bearded guys who love pizza more than life itself. Fail so spectacularly at all the things you promised, and you find yourself, as a Democrat, losing at least one portion of the LGBTQ community.
Republicans don’t need to embrace gays…they just need to produce a strong leader who people trust, who guys know won’t take anyone’s crap, and who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and kick some ass in the process.
Oh, yeah, the bears dig Sarah Palin.
Momma Grizzly.
And you will never hear a bad word about Todd Palin with this bunch. If he was gay, he’d be a total wolf…but, straight, he’ll just have to keep being a stone cold fox.
The more Obama pulls this “it’s all Bush’s fault, I’m helpless, WAAAAAAH!” garbage, the more a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners, ninja-throwing-star-wielding pioneer feminist like Sarah Palin is going to appeal to not just conservatives and independents — but, shockingly, even to a subset of the gay community that’s been conditioned to hate not just all Republicans, but women too.
And Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, cucumber-and-mayonnaise soggy sandwiches that they are, will be no real remedy to the limp, spoiled, fey little president we have now.
The more of this “it’s Bush’s fault” garbage Obama pulls, the more Americans of all stripes (leather clad or not) are going to want a REAL MAN as President.
And, we believe, that REAL MAN is going to be a woman named Sarah.
**************************
Chime in — do you think Obama’s hitting a breaking point with this “it’s all Bush’s fault” garbage?
Do you think Sarah Palin is positioned to be an effective remedy to Obama?
If Obama’s “blame Bush” wimpiness keeps building, and Americans want a “real man” as president, do you think Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or the rest of the cucumbers-and-mayonnaise crowd have a chance?
Where we come from you always support your friends. Israel is America's greatest and truest friend. Enough said.
Last night, after volunteering for Memorial Day by pitching in to help do a little spring cleaning for some people too sick to do it themselves, the lot of us met up at Sidetracks in Boystown to catch the tail end of Showtunes Monday, and relax amongst the red, white, and blue stars and enormous American flag hung proudly in Glass Bar. The place was packed, with many out-of-towners still hanging around from IML, Bear Pride, and other events this weekend.
After a quick Fruit Loop around the bar to say hi to people we knew and to see which bartenders were working, we headed to Back Bar where we spotted Aimee, one of the most lively and fun bartenders on the whole strip, and decided to get drinks from her. She was working hard, without a bar back assistant, running a bar that normally has two people working it. She had several large groups ordering drinks, one of which appeared to be women out after seeing the Sex and the City sequel – so of course they were demanding all manner of Cosmo and other high-maintenace cocktails (not a Charlotte amongst them, skewing largely toward the Miranda side of their attitudes). Aimee’s a gruff, pierced, leather and spikes, punk rock dynamo with a teddy bear’s heart; she’s quick with a joke, and even faster with her pours…but not even Aimee can get to everyone immediately when big groups hit the Back Bar like that. So, we took positions near a TV and watched the Showtunes playing while we patiently waited for Aimee to get to us.
Next to us at the bar was a group of guys who seemed to be from Michigan, from all the Michigan-related apparel they had on. We had the impression they were finishing up a weekend here in Chicago, a place they’d probably not been to all that much, from the generally lost looks on their faces and the things they were talking about, which seemed very touristy (lots of comparisons of Chicago to random places in Milwaukee, New York, DC, San Francisco, etc., or to fictional places like bars on Queer as Folk or other TV shows). All of them were standing, except one grumpy, bearded little smurf, who sat on a barstool as if it was a read and white toadstool and streamed endless complaints and criticisms about Sidetracks.
Now, we love this bar…the way Robby loves his sister Ann-Louise, who is imperfect and does a lot of crazy and odd things, but she’s his sister. There are things Ann-Louise does we don’t agree with, and there are times when either Ann-Louise is mad at us or we’re mad at her, or she and Joan Van Ark have been arrested for prank-calling Marlo Thomas or something, but we don’t cotton to anyone bashing her undeservedly. Sidetracks is mammoth. A few of its staff aren’t good or nice people. Some of the regulars are creeps. It has a decidedly pro-Obama/anti-critical thinking tone in terms of politics. But, there’s no other bar like it in the world…and if you don’t like it, don’t go there, as there are a dozen or so other options for you to be in on a strip with something for everyone.
Well, Grumpy Smurf from Michigan and his pals were going on and on about how bad service was at Sidetracks, something we couldn’t disagree with more. This place is very-welled staffed, competition is incredibly high to work there, and generally speaking, with few exceptions, only the best in the business work there. Very quickly, though, it became clear the out-of-towners didn’t like the fact women worked there, because they started talking smack about Aimee, Chantal, and Cathy (the latter two of which were bar backing and bartending over in Cherry Bar last night). Chantal is, frankly, one of the nicest people we’ve ever met (and she’s GORGEOUS too), a dancer who’s as fast on her feet as you’d imagine she’d be; Cathy’s like your favorite aunt serving up drinks in her tiki-inspired basement, or the “cool mom” who’d buy you cigarettes and let you sneak a beer or two in high school. They’re both awesome. But for some reason, Grumpy Smurf had a problem with all three of them.
He started going on about “quotas” and how the three were essentially diversity hires in a bar that’s staffed otherwise exclusively by gay men. ”Well, they have to have them there, because you know, they need at least one black and they need an old lady and then need whatever this one is, because they need diversity,” is what Grumpy Smurf said, ripping into three very hardworking women we might not be friends with, but whom we’ve seen in action for the last couple of years.
Being a free country, people are entitled to their opinions. Unless someone really crosses a line and says something truly offensive, misogynist, or sexist, we endeavor to stay out of the drunken diatribes and ramblings of idiots. We are not here to educate or elevate anyone, only to observe, judge, then tell the story to you.
But, K. was at the bar ordering, waiting for Aimee to finish up with The Mirandas, when Grumpy Smurf yanked him into their complain-o-fest.
“Yah, can you believe this one here? I don’t even know what this is. I’m a server and I know good service, and this is just ridiculous. We’ve been waiting for her FOREVER, and here you are waiting too, and that bitch is just ignoring us, like that black bitch and grandma up in the front. They need to fire these bitches and get with the program.”
That, right there, was our invitation to educate, if not elevate, Grumpy Smurf — and while he might not be as theatrical and Julia Sugarbaker as Sebastian in these situations, K. set the record straight in his own way.
“Actually, and I don’t mean to get involved in the nonsense of strangers from somewhere out of town and terrible, but Aimee’s one of the best bartenders in Chicago and she’s a very cool person. And that woman you called “a black bitch” is named Chantal, and she’s going to be famous very soon, she’s that incredible of a dancer and a great bar back, the best they’ve got in ANY bar here. And that other woman you’re talking smack about is Cathy, who’s also great. I don’t know what problem you guys have with women, but none of you would be here without women, so just zip it. You all have almost full drinks in front of you, too, so I don’t know what you alkies are complaining about. Are you really that drunk that you need two full drinks in your hands to be happy? Aimee sees what you’ve got in front of you and knows you’re not ready to order yet, and Aimee knows I’m not in a rush and that my friends are just hanging out watching Showtunes, so she’s taking care of people who need her attention. I think she’s doing a great job, like always, and I think life is too damn short for your complaining. It’s Memorial Day, so remember there are people who aren’t here now who would love to be sitting in the air conditioning in an awesome bar in the best city in the world and instead of complaining and whining and criticizing they’d just be thrilled to be alive and enjoying a drink. I feel really sorry for all of you clowns because you just don’t know a good thing when you see it, and just want to bitch and moan about everything”.
We swear, none of us actively seek out these confrontations. They just happen.
What Grumpy Smurf and his friends wanted, of course, was for K. and the rest of us to agree with them, and pile on Aimee when she was just doing her job, and taking care of what she needed to. For whatever reason, before they even met her, these guys didn’t like Aimee, because she was a woman working in a gay bar…just as they didn’t like Chantal or Cathy for the same reason. They wanted EVERYONE to gang up on these women, but we refused, so after K. got his drink and joined us, Grumpy Smurf and the rest turned their attention to talking smack about us — but, you all know how used to that we are, so we ignored them. Trust us, we’ve had much worse done to us by far better. And that’s just this week alone.
The whole affair made us think of Israel, partly because we took Laura Rosen Cohen to Sidetracks when she was in town, and Laura is the Israel expert who does our monthly Israel News Roundup columns. K. spent a good deal of time with Laura one night talking about Israel in Sidetracks, so a lot of that came flooding back to us as he brought up many of her points about the Left’s virulent anti-Semitism, which is as prevalent as the Left’s misogyny and sexism. It’s an unthinking part of the Cult of Liberalism, at the very core of these people’s pseudo-religion. Israel is always wrong to these people…women are always bitches…and anyone who disagrees with them must be destroyed with extreme prejudice.
Well, all of us here will always stand up for Israel against all attackers.
Israel is America’s greatest and truest friend in this world, and we love Israel with all our hearts. None of us are Jewish. None of us have any Jewish relatives. Almost all of us were raised Catholic. But may there always be an Israel, because our brave and courageous friends the Israelis sit at the very gates of Hell and are the world’s first line of defense against Islam. How any gay man or woman could ever side against Israel, considering what Islam does to women and gays, is just mind-boggling to us. How any reasoned person could ever question Israel’s right to defend itself against all attackers is unfathomable.
For years, Islam has been working against Israel by using those “aid flotillas” to sneak weapons to terrorists in hopes of killing Israelis. The Left raises a hue and cry over efforts by Israel to stop this, just as the unthinking and irrational Cult of Liberalism demonizes Governor Jan Brewer for standing up for her people in Arizona and FINALLY enforcing federal immigration law.
Whenever Israel or women stand up, get tough, and say NO MORE the Left lashes out wildly, without really looking at what’s going on.
The flotillas of Muslim weapons-ships headed towards the Palestinians and the reconquista and human trafficking operations on the US southern border are two longstanding security issues that have recently come to a boil, where we find ourselves in the position of defending people we like very much for doing their jobs in the face of absurd criticism from the Left.
As we’ve illustrated to you many times before, standing tall and resolutely defending your core beliefs and supporting others you believe in is hard — especially when faced with a withering storm of fume and racket from the Left. It can make you incredibly unpopular to say and do what you know is right, no matter what the Left does in response. But, where we come from, you stand up for your friends. When they are wrong, you tell them they are wrong, but when they are right, you go to the hilt for them.
Always.
Not sometimes.
ALWAYS.
When Robby’s sister’s up to shennanigans, he busts her for it. Rightfully so. But when she’s got a stalker, or an abusive boyfriend, or whatever, and needs help, you bet your Leinenkugel Ann-Louise has her brother in her corner.
If people we know here in Boystown are in the wrong, we’ll tell them, no matter how much we like them or how well we know they won’t take kindly to the criticism. But, when good people we know here are unfairly criticized or maligned, we won’t allow Grump Smurfs to tear them down within earshot of us.
ALL AMERICANS need to have Israel’s back in the very same way. When Israel’s defending itself against the relentless assaults by the would-be global caliphate that seeks always to destroy it, Americans of all stripes need to stand up to Israel’s detractors in the Left and shout them down.
The Left can never be allowed to run its mouth unchallenged. Not in a bar. Not on TV. Not in the streets.
Not on our watch.
Or, hopefully, yours either.
QUESTION: Can you get us answers to the following about parking in Boystown?
In our ongoing quest to solve “The Mystery of the Unticketable Car” here in Boystown, we need the questions below answered, if we’re ever to make sense of why Edward Davis’s 2002 BMW can park in the yellow curb zone on the corner of Newport and Halsted with seeming impunity. Can you help us make some calls today to City of Chicago officials and do some of the leg work in establishing what the City’s official parking rules are for this exact corner in Boystown?
Because either we’ve stumbled upon a Holy Grail in Chicago — a seemingly FREE, unticketable parking spot that should be open to EVERYONE, where cops and meter maids can’t touch you — or we’ve found a BMW, and its driver, in Chicago that’s immune to tickets wherever parked.
The following questions will determine which of the two cases above resolve this mystery. As you get a solid answer from the City on these, can note in this thread which numbered question you are answering, cite the name of a City employee who gave you the answer, or post a link to a verifiable City source that states clearly the answer in some publication or online database?
(1) What do yellow-painted curbs mean in the City of Chicago — and specifically at the corner of Newport and Halsted in question? Do they mean you can’t park there, or are they just for decoration, to liven up the otherwise dull gray sidewalk on the street?
(2) When there is a parking meter sign with an arrow pointing towards a meter box positioned to the left of a curb, can a car legally park in the space between the curb and the sign that is not covered by that arrow? Ie, in the Newport/Halsted example we are using, can this BMW avoid paying the parking meter because he’s parking in that yellow zone that some claim is not covered by the meter sign AND is allowable because the yellow-painted curb means nothing (despite what we were always taught to believe)?
(3) What is the City’s definition of “parking outside a metered zone”? In the Newport/Halsted example, if the “metered zone” runs from the sign near the corner southward down Halsted, then the yellow curb area this BMW parks in would be “outside the metered zone”. Can vehicles be cited for “parking outside the metered zone” when they avoid paying the parking meter because they are parked in a yellow-painted curb zone?
(4) Is the Newport/Halsted corner unique in its ability to conjure an unticketable zone such as this — or are there other such “magic spots” hidden throughout the City? Can anyone park in yellow-curbed zones anytime they want?
(5) If the above is true, then why waste tax money painting curbs yellow if they ultimately mean nothing?
(6) What’s the average dismissal rate for parking tickets in the City of Chicago? Ie, in the course of a year, how many tickets does the average Chicago car receive, and out of those how many does Traffic Court uphold and force the driver to pay? What is the metrics to determine if a ticket-writer is writing good tickets in terms of how many tickets said writer assigns that are acceptably dismissed in the court challenge process?
Can you please contact the following and help us answer the above questions definitively, with proper attribution to sources in these offices who will go on record to state official City of Chicago policy on what we’re asking about?
(A) 44th Ward Service Office – Alderman Tom Tunney
1057 W. Belmont Ave. 60657
Phone: (773) 525-6034
Fax: (773) 525-5058
Mon.-Thur.: 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Saturday: 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
(B) City of Chicago Clerk’s Office — Clerk Miguel Del Valle
• Investigations Unit: 312-742-9217
121 N. LaSalle Room 107 Chicago, IL 60602 312-74-CLERK
Northside Office - 5430 W. Gale St. Chicago, IL 60630 312-742-5318
(C) City of Chicago Non-Emergency Information Line — 311
NOTE: All calls to the above numbers are logged by the City, particularly the ones to 311. SO, a large volume of calls from across the country asking about what’s going on in the Mystery Zone at the corner of Newport and Halsted should make SOMEONE in the City of Chicago look into what the deal is there. In addition to getting our questions answered, this will put this corner on someone’s radar.
Please chime in with what you learn in the thread below — citing the source so we can use that in the write-up for this mystery that’s to follow.
Tuesday Open Thread: June 1st, 2010
What’s on your minds this Tuesday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
*******************************************************
Whoo-hoo, it’s June. We started borrowing a family tradition of our friend Althea’s, where she celebrates the whole month as her “birthday month”, not just the day…and, as luck would have it, four of us have June birthdays here at HillBuzz (all but Joaquin, actually, whose birthday is in December). Since it’s also Pride month, and one of our birthday’s actually falls at the end of June, often on Pride weekend, it’s a really lively and positive month for all of us around here…so we hope you can expect a lot of fun and energetic pieces from us as we take advantage of Chicago’s great summer weather and really give our all to June.
