The Left
How the Left Uses Government Agencies Against Political and Personal Enemies
[ Click above to embiggen ]
Today, Congressman Darrell Issa’s subcommittee held testimony in the House investigation into the weaponization of the IRS as a means to intimidate, harass, and persecute Americans who were affiliated with the Tea Party, Christian groups, or had other conservative leanings. More hearings will come, but the clear pattern we’re seeing on a national level is that the Left uses federal government agencies as goon squads to target Americans on their enemies’ lists…and they believe they can get away with this because of who’s in the White House and who’s running the Justice Department.
On the micro-level of the City of Chicago, there’s a lawsuit currently in federal court in the District of Illinois Eastern Division that’s been filed against Art Johnston and Sidetrack the Video Bar which illustrates that the proclivity of using government agencies to harass “enemies” isn’t reserved for Democrats in Washington, but in fact is just normal operating procedure amongst Leftist “fellow travelers”.
Johnston, a devote Obama supporter and large fundraiser for his personality cult, is currently being sued by a former employee who was fired from his job as a doorman in Johnston’s bar because the employee complained about sexual harassment, religious discrimination, and retaliation (for his complaining to management about the harassment he received from coworkers, managers, and third party customers egged on to harass the Plaintiff by Sidetrack employees). Johnston fired this employee in August of 2011 after the employee hired a lawyer and prepared a complaint to the EEOC about the hostile working conditions that Johnston maintains in Sidetrack the Video Bar.
[ Entrance to Sidetrack the Video Bar in 2008, when Johnston heavily promoted the election of Barack Obama as a fellow traveler ]
Shortly after he fired the employee, Johnston had his accountant, Bryan Portman, file a false challenge to the employee’s unemployment benefits…alleging the employee was terminated for “insubordination”. This was a trumped-up charge because the employee never committed any act of “insubordination” (as a judge would later conclude) and was instead fired for filing an EEOC complaint (which is retaliation prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1964). The challenge to the employee’s unemployment benefits was made via the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), which is the government entity in Illinois that handles unemployment insurance (and employers’ challenges to these claims).
There’s no question in my mind that Johnston filed this challenge against the employee’s rightful benefits solely to harass and persecute this person, because Johnston was upset that this former employee was suing Sidetrack for five counts of harassment and retaliation in federal court. Johnston had available to him the IDES challenge and though he should have known that this challenge would fail, he pushed the button anyway just to cause the employee to sweat and worry if the benefits he depended on to survive after his firing would be taken away from him. It’s actually a separate and additional violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for an employer such as Johnston to file a meritless challenge to unemployment benefits just to harass a former employee….which is ironic because Johnston styles himself as a gay community “civil rights” leader who is constantly claiming that gays are persecuted by Christians. But, yet, here comes Johnston persecuting a Christian employee of his bar and violating this employee’s civil rights with this considered and determined harassment.
An IDES hearing at the local level immediately ruled in the employee’s favor, with the Adjudicator determining in less than a minute of interview with the employee that there was no act of insubordination involved in his firing and that the challenge to his benefits was thus meritless. Johnston then appealed the Adjudicator’s decision and decided to continue harassing the employee by challenging his benefits to the next level, which involved hearings before a Judge in IDES’ appeals division that required the employee to retain an attorney for the proceedings.
During these hearings, Sidetrack’s accountant Portman lied under oath multiple times to the Judge, in an attempt to have the employee’s unemployment benefits taken away from him. The employee suffered immense emotional distress during this process (which stretched on for months), because in this economy he was unable to find another job and still depended on his unemployment benefits. Johnston was clearly aware that Portman committed multiple acts of perjury in the IDES hearings…but gave his blessing to these actions because the goal was to harass and persecute the former employee as much as possible (as punishment for this guy suing Johnston and Sidetrack for the harassment he was subjected to there while he was an employee).
Ultimately, the IDES Judge ruled in the employee’s favor and stated that he did not believe Portman to be credible; the challenge to the benefits was completely meritless. Though the employee was vindicated, he was still forced to endure several months’ of worry and anxiety because Johnston decided to use a government agency to persecute him. This was very much the equivalent of the IRS auditing someone just because he was a Christian, conservative with Tea Party spirit.
Interestingly, this case proves that there’s really nothing an employer has to lose by lying during a challenge to unemployment benefits…because the Attorney General in Illinois will not pursue perjury charges against an employer for lying under oath during these hearings. After speaking to several people in IDES administration, I learned that no one working there could remember a time when an employer was prosecuted for perjury during an IDES hearing…because the prosecutors don’t have the financial resources to go after these people (supposedly). ”The judges know that the employer is lying, and then the judge rules that the employee keeps the benefits” was the general consensus of the IDES officials I spoke to. ”Their only punishment is that they had to pay a lawyer to be there when they lied, so it cost them money and then they didn’t succeed in taking a person’s benefits away in the end”. There is no mechanism available in Illinois law for an employer to be fined or punished in any way for filing a meritless challenge to an employee’s benefits. But, I believe there should be…since these challenges cause so much grief and stress for people whose energies should be focused solely on finding a new job.
Art Johnston is considered one of the “godfathers” of the gay community in Chicago, with his bar Sidetrack being “the heart of Boystown” (as it’s self-styled on its website). He’s extremely quick to point fingers and label all sorts of Christian, conservative figures “villains” for this, that or the other…especially by using the organization Equality Illinois (which he principally funds) as a proxy to scold his “enemies” as bigots if they oppose anything the Obama Regime does to this country. Simultaneously, Johnston chooses to knowingly file meritless challenges to an employee’s unemployment benefits (just because he can) and sends his accountant to perjure himself during hearings before IDES (because he knows that no one will prosecute him for it). This is very consistent with how the Left operates in general.
“Hypocrisy” is a term the Left seems woefully unacquainted with.
If you look carefully enough where you live, you will see that what’s happening in Washington DC with the IRS right now is just a larger and more high-profile example of what members of the Left do every single day in your community. This is the classic Alinsky Mindset of decimating your opponent (or, “enemy”, as the Left calls them) in any way possible…and specifically using arms of the government to do this wherever they can get away with it.
Whatever happens with the IRS scandal hearings won’t cure the cultural problem we have in this country, embodied in people like Boystown’s own Art Johnston, who are so steeped in the Alinsky Methods of the Left that they use harassment and personal destruction as standard operating procedures (all the while accusing Christians of being the REAL villains in our world!). If this is happening here in Chicago, I know it’s happening where you live…and it’s high time people started talking about all this and deciding as a nation that business-as-usual isn’t acceptable anymore.
QUESTION FOR COMMENTS: Have you seen members of the Left abuse a government agency to persecute or punish an individual where you live? Do you recognize this as a disturbing trend amongst Leftists and Obama’s fellow travelers?
Beware the Annie Wilkes Brigade: Author Charlaine Harris Terrorized By Self-Professed “Fans” Inspired to Jihad On the Internet
Ever since True Blood premiered on HBO in 2008, I’ve enjoyed author Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire Mysteries”…which I call “visiting with my pal Sookie Stackhouse” as I read the latest edition in this series each May. Before the characters migrated to TV, I was mildly aware of Ms. Harris’ series but never picked up one of the books because I thought the cartoonish cover art looked silly and the titles like Dead Until Dawn and Club Dead felt like Young Adult or possibly Romance selections…and those are parts of a bookstore in which I’ve never shopped. And, YES, I really shouldn’t have judged a book by its cover in this case, because the Southern Vampire Mysteries are great (even if I still do think the artwork is…probably not what I would have picked to market the series).
I’ve long been fascinated by the South and I realized I was gay and came out just as the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with A Vampire hit theaters in the mid-90s. I absolutely devoured those “Vampire Chronicles” Anne Rice books and for a brief moment in time thought Ms. Rice was the absolute greatest writer in the whole wide world (which I attribute in retrospect to just an immense transference of affection onto Rice from the raging crush I had on Brad Pitt at the time, back when he was young and dreamy and playing the titular vampire who was interviewed in her book).
Preconditioned to enjoy the vampire genre by fond memories of Interview (including a trip I took down to New Orleans in 1996 or so to attend a Halloween party in Rice’s own, creepy house…that was apparently toned DOWN in creepiness for a Halloween party, if you can believe it), I just fell head over heels for True Blood from the first episode…and it’s become my favorite summer guilty pleasure ever since. The show forced me to discover the source material and I quickly became an admirer of Ms. Harris’ (who seems a lot nicer and much more normal than Ms. Rice has ever been). It’s incredibly rare for me to read fiction, because there’s always a stack of political and policy works I need to get to and more often than not for fun I like reading natural science, travelogues, or essays with a comedic bent. But, for many years each May I’d rush to the Barnes & Noble that used to be close to me in Boystown and I’d excitedly purchase the latest “Sookie Book” that Ms. Harris gifted to her readers.
I put a strong emphasis on “gifted” because, more so than works of nonfiction or contemporaneous reporting, novels are gifts to the world by the authors who conceived them. It’s one thing to report on an event you witnessed or to write up your analysis of some political scandal…but writers of fiction conjure entire universes in their imagination and often struggle for years to bring these characters to life on the page. Writing a romantic or exciting adventure story with characters you’ve completely invented in your imagination is a marvelous and precious skill…and though these writers are sharing these tales with the world instead of keeping them private, these stories and all the fictional characters in them remain the universe (and property) of that writer. As long as that person is living, she or he should forever have ultimate say over any of the characters that she or he created. They are shared with readers, but the readers do not own these characters (or the author who created them).
I’ve always felt very lucky that Ms. Harris shared “Sookie Stackhouse” and all of her friends (and enemies) in Bon Temps, Louisiana with the rest of us. Living in Chicago, I’d get to head to the beach with the latest of Harris’ books under my arm and I’d lay out in the sun on a towel by Lake Michigan and soak in all of the colorful Southern-fried adventures that she imagined in her latest 300-some page romp. No airport or $300 plane ticket was ever needed for me to be magically transported down to Louisiana for a visit with Sookie & Company whenever I’d crack open a Charlaine Harris novel. I can’t pretend the stories aren’t silly — because they are — and that often what a lot of characters did in the yarns didn’t make all that much sense. Since the vampires in Ms. Rice’s stories also seemed like eternally-young oddballs and engaged in a lot of political and ceremonial nonsense, I continue to chalk this up to equal parts Southern eccentricity and the fact that vampires be crazy.
Justin laughs at this but my favorite parts in all of the Sookie books are when she does mundane things that often serve no larger purpose: going to the law office of someone or another because she wants to write an agreement up for a loan, buying a dress somewhere for some event she has to attend (and seemingly picking out the ugliest things imaginable, but thinking they are wonderful since as a waitress in a bar in the middle of nowhere she doesn’t know any better and doesn’t have a gay male best friend to help her), cleaning out her attic or doing gardening or drinking sweet tea while sunbathing or whatever. I think I enjoy reading about Sookie’s errands because when I don’t have anywhere I need to be and I’m not working on something this is mostly the sort of things I do here in Chicago around town. Back in 2004, when I was deciding what city I wanted to live in next it came down between Chicago and New Orleans and Chicago only won-out because I started dating a guy who lived here. So, I guess through Sookie’s trips to the gas station or to the grocery store I’ve had a little taste of what it would have been like to live in Louisiana instead of Illinois in my late-20s and into my 30s…and for that I’m grateful to Ms. Harris.
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Earlier this month, Ms. Harris released the final book in her 13-volume Sookie series…and I made a big production of it here at Buzzquarters the way I used to celebrate the release of all the Harry Potter books. I enjoy dusting off my party-and-event-planning background once in a while to make themed meals for Justin and my friends. Truth be told, I think Ms. Harris’ books are just as fun as J.K. Rowling’s (though obviously geared more for adults)…and they lend themselves to all sorts of tasty recipes (that are a Southern-fried magic of their own). You wouldn’t immediately think books about blood and vampires would do that, but it’s true. I bought a small honey baked ham and cooked up a big gumbo pot of red beans and rice and made hoe cakes and peach wings to pick at all day and into the evening as I read this last Sookie book. It was just as much fun as all of the others in the series, with all the same colorful Southern touches that I love (and, of course, trips to the store and other random places that I think are amusing). I smiled so hard and so often while reading the book that my face hurt and I felt sad reaching the last chapter because I knew it was the final novel and there’s likely to be not much more Sookie after this, aside from an appearance here or there in future short stories. It’s tough when anything you love has to end…but that’s just the nature of life (for us non-vampires anyway). I just decided to celebrate the end of the series with some great food and last laughs with Sookie before Ms. Harris retired these characters…as is her right as an author to do so.
And now I’ve decided to tell you all of this because Ms. Harris is a nice and sweet Southern woman who looks like someone who could be your auntie or at the very least a cousin you are always happy to see. In interviews, she is soft-spoken and fun…and there’s just a hint of ribald wit and naughtiness behind her church lady smile. Where Anne Rice always has looked like a very strange and unbalanced person who clearly could do only one thing in life (and that’s write books about vampires and witches) Charlaine Harris could have been your fifth grade teacher.
So, it’s just impossible for me to imagine anyone on Earth hating this woman or threatening to kill her…but that’s exactly what’s been going on with a jihad of irate “super fans” who’ve vowed to personally destroy Ms. Harris because they didn’t like the ending to her Dead Ever After novel.
Read the rest of this entry »
“DJesus Uncrossed” Video Used to Incite Anti-Christian Sentiment in Chicago Gay Community
[ Click above to embiggen: a clip from the latest Saturday Night Live sketch mocking our Lord and Savior, as broadcast on 2/16/2013. To watch the full clip for yourself, it's currently available on HULU.com for free, which you can watch HERE ]
Last Saturday (2/16/2013), NBC ran a parody of Quentin Tarantino films called “DJesus Uncrossed”, which was a bastardization of Django Unchained…with a lot of Inglorious Bastards thrown in for good measure (or, for bad taste, depending on your personal perspective). Saturday Night Live heavily employed a laugh track during this faux-movie trailer…so that as our Savior was mocked in various ways these disembodied voices were hysterically overcome with giggles. Such as, when it was implied by the trailer that Jesus Christ “used the N-word a lot” (and that Peter Travers, from (I believe) Rolling Stone, quipped about this).
I’m going out on a limb in noting that a similar sketch entitled DMuhahahammad Unturbaned would have never left the writers’ room at NBC…for fear of the physical consequences to Rockefeller Center and the bat-guano-crazy reaction of Muslims worldwide to a blasphemous depiction of the medieval pedophile they deem to be a “prophet”. Since “the religion of peace” is neither a religion nor peaceful, NBC endeavors never to insult or offend Muslims…because Muslims vociferously police depictions of Muhammad in all forms of media.
Christians, on the other hand, raise little outcry whenever Jesus is impugned or mocked by the likes of Saturday Night Live…and, as a result, that mockery becomes a frequent source of material for unimaginative and talentless writers on shows that were past their prime back when I was still in high school (20 years ago!). Networks like NBC won’t so much as show an actor playing Muhammad…PERIOD…but they have no problem at all running sketches that portray Jesus as a violent, racist, murderer.
This is all part of the Left’s endless war against and persecution of Christians…and it’s important that you understand the REAL role of Saturday Night Live in the Left’s greater propaganda machine within its Ministry of Truth. The reason conservatives have lost the Culture War is because too often they delude themselves into thinking, “That’s just stupid!” or “Saturday Night Live doesn’t matter!” or “The only people who watch that are crazed Lefties anyway so they are preaching to their own choir”.
In reality, Saturday Night Live’s anti-Christian propaganda doesn’t just air once and then disappear into the firmament…it’s actually picked up in lots of ways by the Left and rebroadcast in various venues where it becomes part of a bigger effort to indoctrinate the susceptible into a permanent anti-Christian mindset.
Here in Chicago, there is a textbook, classic example of this at work in Sidetrack the Video Bar…which is the largest and most prominent gay bar in the city, located on Halsted Street and owned by Art Johnston and Pepe Pena (who are essentially the “godfathers” or “Dons” of the Chicago gay community). The anti-Christian videos produced by the likes of Saturday Night Live are collected by Sidetrack’s video production team and then re-edited into smaller clips that pack the anti-Christian sentiment into smaller, more explosive bites.
Those clips are then aired repeatedly to the intoxicated customers of the bar — over and over again — so that it’s resoundingly clear to the gay community of Chicago that Christians are to be targeted, mocked, and persecuted wherever and whenever possible. Since Sidetrack is the biggest and most prominent bar…and its owners are viewed as the “Dons” of the Chicago gay community…there’s immense peer pressure for gays in Chicago to toe the line and behave in the way that Sidetrack seemingly wants them to behave (if they want to keep being welcome in the largest and most prominent gay bar in Chicago).
I’m never sure if straight people understand the importance of being socially accepted in a particular bar, especially the biggest and most prominent gay bar around. A stereotype of straight men is that they do all their business and conduct all their networking on the golf course…so in that sense belonging to the largest and most prominent country club would be the key to a successful life as a straight businessman. For straight women, success in the spheres they inhabit might involve belonging to the largest and most prominent gym or a prestigious social club like The Daughters of the American Revolution or the like.
For gay guys, if you aren’t regularly seen in the largest and most prominent gay bar and if you aren’t known widely as “a friend of the bar” then your social status in the gay community is adversely affected…and you forfeit the networking and status-enhancing opportunities afforded to regular patrons of that bar. If you’re someone who has been made to feel unwelcome in the largest and most prominent gay bar, you become a gay guy who has to miss out on all the big events in the community…and all the benefits that come with attending those events.
So, the pressure is high to be a “good guest” of an establishment and to go along with whatever trend its owners set…by behaving the way those “Dons” instruct you to behave via the videos they play in Orwellian fashion on massive screens throughout the bar.
If you’ve read 1984, you’ll remember the concept of a “Two Minutes Hate”…which is a propaganda tool used by the people in control to incite those watching a film to express hatred and rage at “the enemy” on a regular basis. Johnston and Pena orchestrate “Two Minute Hates” against Christians in the gay community on a regular basis, via the videos they regularly select for exhibition in Sidetrack…knowing that the net effect will be the strengthening of the Left’s propaganda that Christians are the “enemies of the gay community”.
Sidetrack, in fact, employs a Chicago Public School teacher named Bradley Thomas Balof as an MC and event host to really rev up the crowds against “the enemies of the gay communities”…which supplements the spirit of these videos with a live-on-stage maestro of hate who demands the crowd jeer at Christians and shout aloud how they’re going to “get them”, “stop them”, “hurt them”, or “destroy them”. Without fail, all the drunk gays in attendance raise their glasses in the air, their faces red with anger and booze, and follow Balof’s lead to scream out against the Christian “enemies”.
Can you only imagine the outrage in the national media if Muslims were the target of Sidetrack’s “Two Minutes Hate” instead of Christians. I even think that there’d be some pause if Jews were targeted, instead of followers of Christ.
I’ve tried repeatedly to interview Art Johnston to ask him why he needs to keep showing clips like “DJesus Uncrossed” in his bar, instead of just playing fun videos without any attacks made on Christians, but Johnston won’t sit down with me, answer my letters, or return my calls. I just can’t imagine doing the things he does to Christians in his bar unless he’s doing them on purpose…and that purpose is part of a larger strategy on the Left to keep this anti-Christian sentiment flowing in all the various ideological subgroups of the Left where it can take root.
What’s remarkable is the glaring hypocrisy of all of this, too, because gays are who the Left trots out to constantly claim they are persecuted by Christians…with plenty of banners reading “Christians hate gays!” at any Pride Parade event or “equality march” the gay community holds for the cameras. In another Orwellian twist, some people are more equal than others because gays actually accuse other people of doing the things they actually do to Christians themselves!
In the five years I have been running this site as an openly gay Catholic I have not even once had an experience where a Christian said anything evil at all to me for being gay…but on a sustained and regular basis I’ve had employees and customers of Sidetrack harass and malign me for being a “traitor” or “enemy of the gay community” for not renouncing my allegiance to the Church. Christians never attempt to make me choose between being gay and being Christian, but gay “Dons” like Art Johnston apply constant pressure to force gays to turn their back on Christ if they want to be accepted in the gay community.
I believe this is an orchestrated strategy on the Left, since it’s widely known that a gay man truly does need access to the largest and most prominent gay bar in a big city to thrive socially and professionally in gay circles…and the threat of cutting off access to those benefits is enough to force gay men to join the “Two Minutes Hate” that bars like Sidetrack incite against Christians with the videos they play and the speeches their staff members make.
Saturday Night Live and other entertainment arms of the Ministry of Truth provide the prepackaged material needed for the “Two Minutes Hate”…and Art Johnston serves up the venues for exhibition…and then his staff sees to it that the message is delivered to the desired targets for their anti-Christian conditioning.
This is happening where you live too, but if you aren’t a frequent visitor to or observer of the gay community you might not realize it.
But, this is how the Left won the Culture War…while Christians sat back and deluded themselves to believe “Oh, no one pays attention to that!” or “That show hasn’t been relevant in 20 years!” .
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NOTE: Hulu.com has a tendency to take videos down after a while, so if you are reading this at some point in the future and the Hulu link at the top doesn’t work, I think the Amazon Instant Video link will work for as long as Amazon is around. You’d have to buy the episode of SNL to see the “DJesus Uncrossed” clip, though…and I’d advise never giving SNL or NBC any of your hard-earned money if you can avoid it. But, if you REALLY need to see the clip and Hulu is not playing it for free then I suppose this is an alternative (since NBC is very aggressive about removing its clips from YouTube):
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UPDATE: For those unfamiliar with Sidetrack the Video Bar and how endemic the hypocrisy is there, I want to remind you that this is the very same bar that posted photos on its official website of a friend of the bar’s owners dressed up as Adolf Hitler for last year’s Halloween party.
So, the bar’s photographer specifically picked out those photos of Adolf Hitler to appear in the prominently-promoted galleries of photos on the website, when a great many other photos were not similarly chosen for inclusion in that gallery. And no one at Sidetrack had sense enough to appreciate that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis persecuted and then executed gays back in the 1930s and 1940s. You know, in the Holocaust…which wasn’t exclusively used against Jews, but also included the elimination of gays (branded with pink triangles), gypsies, the disabled, and other minorities in German-conquered territories.
But, in the year 2013…the largest and most prominent gay bar in Chicago specifically chose to celebrate dressing up as Adolf Hitler for Halloween, like it was a good thing.
For those of you who scratch your heads at the Gaystapo’s attacks on Christians while simultaneously showing fervent deference to Muslims, include Sidetrack’s promotion of Adolf Hitler Halloween costumes with that insanity.
More on the bizarre and hypocritical things Sidetrack and its owners do HERE.
GREAT MERCIFUL ZEUS! Look at the Filthy and Unsanitary Conditions Found in Offices of Chicago Law Firm Hinshaw & Culbertson!
[ Great Merciful Zeus! Lookit that abject filth! It looks like a crime scene! ]
I was recently subpoenaed as a witness in a case making its way through federal court involving a gay bar here in Chicago that’s been accused of harassing a Christian employee…which is a shocking display of hypocrisy, if you think about it, because the “Ministry of Truth” that is our national media constantly berates you with talking points that claim Christians are forever the ones victimizing gays…and no indication is given to the public that in reality it’s the gays who are the victimizers and not necessarily the victims in a lot of cases.
I’ve written about this before, while coining the term “Gaystapo” to refer to militant gays who serve as goon squads for the Left…and who are specifically charged with accusing Christians of all manner of hatred and bigotry (while simultaneously being the ones who actually rev up hatred and bigotry themselves against Christians at just about any gay-related public event held in cities like Chicago).
Well, I’m openly gay and can tell you that I’ve seen, firsthand, Christian men harassed and persecuted in the very prominent Chicago bar currently a Defendant in a major discrimination suit. I witnessed atheist or agnostic gays deliberately targeting gay Christians for harassment as “traitors” because of their faith…and I am looking forward to the day in the near future where I can take the witness stand in federal court and put on record everything I’ve seen self-styled “leaders of the gay community” do to men in Chicago who are both gay and Christian (but who refuse to denounce Christ or turn their backs on their families because the “gay community leaders” tell them that’s what they need to do). Honestly, this case is one of the most explosive I’ve ever encountered and has the potential to completely obliterate the Left’s ability to ever use gays as a weapon against Christians in the future…because it exposes the reality that whenever the Left accuses other people of doing something evil, it’s because subgroups of the Left are actually doing those exact same things to someone else.
This case will expose the Gaystapo for the evil it does to Christians…and it will also show the self-styled “gay community leaders” to be the real hatemongers at work in our society today.
There’s a lot more to come on this in the months ahead as the case moves through discovery and approaches trial…so be sure to stay tuned because I intend to tell you everything I am allowed to publicly reveal about the most shameless act of hypocrisy the “gay community” of Chicago has ever committed in its effort to destroy “the enemies of the gay community”.
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[ Filthy conditions in the Hinshaw & Culbertson Chicago offices...but they aren't even bothering to clean the carpet for a catered event/party? So trashy!]
The firm that’s representing the prominent gay bar at the center of this hypocrisy is Hinshaw & Culbertson, which is a national firm that claims to employ over 500 lawyers coast to coast in various cities…with its headquarters in an opulent skyscraper in downtown Chicago right on LaSalle just before you’d hit the Chicago river. Yesterday, I was asked to meet with Scott M. Gilbert, who is the lawyer representing the Defendants in the case, because he wanted me to teach him to use the search function here on HillBuzz.org to find various articles I’ve written about both the bar and the gay community’s persecution of Christians…and Mr. Gilbert, despite his law degree, was unable to find and properly use the clearly-marked search function on this site (Quick: as a test, try to find the search function yourself and pull up articles about gay bars and/or religion on the site and let me know in comments if you are able to easily do so).
I went to Hinshaw’s corporate offices yesterday afternoon at the invitation of Mr. Gilbert thinking I’d be showing him how to better use this website’s archives, but it seems that the day had gotten away from Mr. Gilbert and he hadn’t booked a conference room so the meeting never happened (as you’ll read in my letter below, all the conference space was booked for some big, elaborate party the firm was hosting for a “Don Bozo”…who could very well be a circus clown highly connected in the mob…in which case, I fully understand the firm’s zeal to placate “Don Bozo” with such a large party whenever he wants because clowns are scary enough on their own…but become particularly terrifying when they’ve mobbed-up). I waited and waited for Mr. Gilbert to find space for us to meet, but he never succeeded…and the entire time I was left in the reception area to stare at the filthiest carpet I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
Mind you, when I was in high school I traveled through Europe and into countries that were still Communist at the time…and I never saw filthy carpets like this in the Eastern Bloc. Here in Chicago, I’ve been to all sorts of oddball places in the various adventures I have in this city chasing down stories…and I honestly can’t think of any Cook County or City of Chicago office that was as filthy as Suite 300 of Hinshaw & Culbertson’s corporate offices at 222 N. LaSalle. I have been behind-the-scenes in zoos and have seen cleaner floors in the service areas of the primate and pachyderm buildings.
Waiting in Hinshaw & Culbertson’s reception area yesterday reminded me of that episode of Friends where Ross starts dating some hot girl…and she invites him up to her place for the first time. Based on the fact that the girl was pretty and affable and seemed to be completely normal, Ross expected to head upstairs and find a well-kept apartment free of filth and other unsanitary conditions. Perhaps he even expected it to smell like strawberries and be as orderly and attractive as a page ripped out of the Pottery Barn catalog. Instead, he walked into a pigsty…with stains upon stains and a mysterious creature burrowing through the detritus.
I can’t say that Hinshaw & Culbertson’s offices are THAT bad…but they do rank as the filthiest offices I’ve ever stepped foot in…in any country and at any time in my entire life.
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[ Just in case you are wondering, these offices are on the third floor of a very large office building that has a massive atrium and entrance hallways. To reach this reception area in Suite 300, people need to enter off LaSalle and walk for many hundred feet through a little arcade of shops...and then take an elevator...and after that proceed down another hallway. So, if you're thinking that this filth is just from Chicago winter salt/snow, think again. We haven't had a lot of snow this winter and people's shoes should be pretty clean by the time they make their way up here. I have no idea at all how this carpet got this filthy, save for live animals being loosed here on weekends to defecate and roll around in their own muck up here. It's horrifying! ]
Whenever I encounter anything that’s so bad it makes me sit down and write a company a letter like this, I like to share it with all of you because I think more people out there should take the time to write letters.
When I was in college and graduate school I worked in hotels and was always happy to receive something in the mail from a guest letting us know about a bad experience. I can remember quite a few letters from guests complaining about unmade beds or improperly cleaned bathrooms…but in all the years I worked in hospitality I never received a letter describing conditions as filthy as the ones I found yesterday at one of Chicago’s biggest law firms. I am absolutely flabbergasted that no one has ever called these people on the carpet for their filthy carpet.
And I won’t even get into what the men’s room was like…you can read the letter below for yourself. I need another shower just thinking about being in there.
But maybe a good, old-fashioned public-shaming will cause these people to rent a Rug Doctor steamer or buy a carpet cleaner on Amazon or something…and hopefully a little shaming will cause them to clean their men’s room.
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QUESTION FOR COMMENTS: Have you ever encountered anything this filthy and unsanitary in any law firm or large company you’ve ever been to?
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[ Donald L. Mrozek, Chairman of Hinshaw & Culbertson...the Chicago law firm with the filthiest reception area and bathroom I've ever seen ]
VIA FAX & EMAIL 2/20/2013
Donald L. Mrozek
Chairman, Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP
222 N. LaSalle – Suite 300
Chicago, IL 60601
Dear Mr. Mrozek,
I’m writing as a professional courtesy to ensure you are aware of the filthy and unsanitary conditions of your offices, located in Suite 300 of 222 N. LaSalle in Chicago, Illinois. According to your firm’s website, you are actually based out of this office…and should thus already be aware of the problem.
On Wednesday 2/20/2013, I came to Suite 300 for a 4pm meeting requested by Scott Gilbert, a partner in your employment law division. Mr. Gilbert was not prepared for the meeting, so your receptionist in Suite 300 showed me to a couch in the reception area while I waited for Mr. Gilbert to find an available conference room. At the time, Blue Plate Catering was setting up for a large party to be held in honor of “Don Bozo” (according to the receptionist); I’m assuming Mr. Bozo is another member of your firm (and not the famous ginger-haired children’s show clown, embarked on a second career as a Mafioso).
Mr. Gilbert kept me waiting for a good 25 minutes, during which time I was shocked to observe the condition of the carpeting in your offices (see attached photos, taken 2/20/2013 from a couch in your waiting area). Frankly, I have not seen filth like this outside of a loading dock or “backstage” maintenance room at an industrial site or a poorly-run zoo.
As you can well see, there are enormous stains on the floor of your reception area that could rival those photographed at crime scenes or garbage dumps. Other mysterious stains make me believe the Hinshaw offices are rented out to a veterinary clinic or livestock auction house on the weekends…because the surreal presence of assorted incontinent ungulates is the only possible explanation for how carpeting could be stained this badly in a suite of offices in downtown Chicago in what purports to be a major law firm with over 500 partners in multiple cities.
Since you have no magazines in your waiting area and I could not get WiFi service in your office on my phone, I suppose I had nothing else to occupy my attention besides your firm’s filthy carpeting while I waited and waited for Mr. Gilbert (who ended up not even meeting with me today because he never could find an available room and seemed distracted by the big party happening for Don Bozo).
When I later needed to use your men’s room, I was horrified to find those facilities even dirtier than the reception area. All three stalls had clogged toilets filled with un-flushed feces and urine, with toilet paper clumped in standing water on the floor or dangling in long streams from their dispensers (as if the washroom was hit by a devastating combination of severely early Halloween “T.P.” tricksters and men with extremely high-fiber diets). The mirror was splashed with water and streaked with fingerprints and grime. Overhead, the lights flickered due to expiring bulbs needing replacing. One of the Blue Plate caterers was changing clothes in the washroom as well, so upon entering I literally bumped into a half-naked, robust Hispanic man standing gingerly on tip-toe in stagnant water…which is something I don’t expect to happen in a law firm in downtown Chicago.
Frankly, your firm’s washroom was filthier than ones I’ve seen in truck stops, football stadiums, or Greyhound bus stations…in Mexico. On a surprise bright side, at least there’s no stagnant water and feces floating in urine in the reception area. I almost forgot about the filthy carpets after experiencing your washroom.
While I am not a client of Hinshaw & Culbertson and most likely never will be, I do hope you take this letter to heart and think of the effect your filthy reception area and unsanitary washroom would have on an actual client. Is this the sort of branding you want your firm to have under your leadership as Chairman?
Because it’s my understanding that the reception area in Suite 300 is where your actual clients also arrive to wait to speak with your attorneys…and this is the impression you are giving to the people who step off the elevator and into the Chicago offices of Hinshaw & Culbertson, which are supposedly your national headquarters. You clearly don’t even clean your offices when you’re having a high-profile, catered function…which is just bizarre to me.
I must note in closing that all of your staff members whom I encountered were very polite and friendly (including Mr. Gilbert, who seems like a very nice man)…but when they saw me staring at the stains in the carpeting a few of them shook their heads as they walked by and mouthed “Isn’t it terrible?” or “It’s so embarrassing”. One woman candidly remarked that your firm is not doing very well financially these days and that a decision was made to cutback on things like carpet cleaning (and, clearly, washroom sanitizing and upkeep).
I sincerely hope that if you were the one who purposefully chose to allow your reception area and washroom to become so filthy just to save a few bucks that you reconsider that decision. A “Rug Doctor” carpet steam-cleaner rents for around $50 per day from local Dominick’s grocery stores and it could have your reception area looking markedly better in just a few hours. Alternatively, I’ve heard great things about the “Stanley Steamer” cleaning service that’s advertised on television (though I’ve never hired them personally). As for your washroom, the only advice I can think to give you is “Clorox bleach”…and to perhaps send around a memo asking your partners and associates to flush the toilets after use and to not splash water or throw toilet paper around everywhere like unsanitary zoo animals.
Best of luck to you with all of this,
Kevin DuJan
Editor-in-Chief, HillBuzz.org
Enclosure: Photos
CC: J. William Roberts (Managing Partner), Kevin Joseph Burke (Vice Chairman), Bradford R. Carver, John W. Dubbs III, Laurie S. Randolph, Robert J. Romero
[ Seriously. An affordable carpet-cleaner costs about $135 on Amazon with FREE shipping. The one above is the model that I personally own. Why on Earth a big law firm like Hinshaw & Culbertson can't afford a $135 carpet-cleaner and some soapy water is just beyond me. ]
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UPDATE: 2/21/2013 10am CST — I’ve gotten a surprising number of emails asking me what the young man in black is doing kneeling in front of what looks like some sort of “cult altar” in the lobby of Hinshaw & Culbertson…and what the white tables with the black band are for…and what the magenta-colored things in fishbowls are. Someone actually asked if those were “octopi” or some other sea creature.
I thought it was obvious in the original post, but those tables are there for the big fancy party that Hinshaw was going to have that night. The catering company, Blue Plate Catering, draped white tablecloths over the round bar tables and then let the cloth cascade down to the ground. While I was waiting and waiting for Mr. Gilbert to return to speak to me, I watched the young man dressed in all black (and a nice young female server) bunch the tablecloth together around the central pole that keeps the table upright. Then they tied ribbons around the middle to keep the cloth in place (that’s the black that you see).
On top the tables they had these little fish bowls with some sort of exotic flower inside. Despite being gay, I cannot identify all flowers…but it’s obviously some sort of tropical thing that’s magenta in color. It kind of reminded me of a giant raspberry…or like one of those “snow balls” flowers that used to pop up on bushes back in Ohio each spring.
You can (clearly) pick up decorating and entertaining ideas in the weirdest places. If I could give you one piece of advice today, it would be to never, ever miss up a chance to watch waiters or other servers setting up for an event if you can observe them. You will always get some little tip to show you how to turn a bar table into an elegant-looking “cult altar”, the way Blue Plate did with these tables and the “octopi” bowls.
I’m totally going to use this table setup and flower arrangement for something in the future. It would even work for having friends over if you want to setup a little snack or drink station.
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UPDATE: 2/22/2013 900am CST — Read Part Two in “The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpet” HERE where we enlist the expert advice of actress Ann B. Davis of “Alice from the Brady Bunch” fame to uncover cleaning tips that might possibly be used by Hinshaw & Culbertson in the future to clean their filthy reception area carpet.
For the complete unfolding of “The Mystery of the Filthy, Filthy Carpet” see our “Mysteries” page: HERE
Read the rest of this entry »
Obama Snubbed Again
It got very little play in the press, but President Obama was recently snubbed again on the world stage when 15 Asian nations formed a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership without the United States. Obama had traveled to Phnom Penh in an effort to “sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China.” He failed.
Add this to a growing list of major failures by Barack Obama on the International Stage. He failed to bring the Olympics to Chicago. He failed to produce progress on the Israel-Palestine front (it’s actually getting worse). He’s failed to create any sort of consensus on what to do about Syria. He has failed to inhibit Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.
There is no doubt that U.S. influence is waning under Obama. Maybe that’s exactly what he wants.
The Left’s Collective Mental Health is Tied to NATE SILVER — his oddball predictions are all that’s keeping them together at this point
I find this fascinating…and kind of wish I had been at least a psychology minor in college because I’d love to have a better handle on what drives people to believe in charlatans and hucksters right now. I took one or two psychology courses for my core requirements, but think it would have been very helpful to study more on the subject because as a political writer I seem to observe so many crazy people on a daily basis.
There is a man who you might have never heard of named Nate Silver who has become the new high priest of the Obama cult. Silver, according to this article, is some kind of writer at the New York Times who also runs one of their offshoot websites. I’d never heard of him until after the Denver presidential debate when I started seeing his name pop up on Facebook on the pages of many lefties that I monitor. Clearly, he must appear on MSNBC a lot or something, because the Left really loves this guy and uses him to calm any fears that lefties have in the lead up to next week’s election.
What happens is something like this (and it’s repeated over and over on the Facebook pages of the Leftists I watch online):
Lucy Lefty: I’m scared that Obama’s really going to lose and that the polls are lying to us when they say he’ll win.
Angry Lefty: Shutup! Nate Silver says Obama has a 75% chance of winning. He’s smart. He writes for the NYT. He did the math.
Lucy Lefty: That makes no sense because how can he get that 75% chance thing? Did he just make that up? That’s like saying my cat said Obama will win and everyone knows my cat lies to avoid being called a racist.
Angry Lefty: Shutup! Nat Silver knows that Obama will win Iowa and Ohio and New Hampshire and will win North Carolina and Virginia too. Nate Silver said it, so SHUTUP!
It never gets more detailed than that…but is just a lot of repeating that “Nate Silver said…” or “I heard Nate Silver say…” or “Nate Silver wrote…” over and over again.
Psychologists reading this, please help me identify the proper terminology here…but I think something like this is happening: the Left has built a psychological wall that’s keeping out the reality that Barack Obama is going to lose on November 6th; they don’t want to deal with the messy emotions associated with realizing that, yes, in fact Obama is going to lose and will be just a one-term, failed president. So they built this wall, and the wall is named “Nate Silver”.
If this was a video game, the energy forcefield the Left would trigger to block out any information they don’t want to hear would be called “Nate Silver said…” and it would completely envelop their character on the screen in an impenetrable shell that deflects all reality.
“Nate Silver said” is a magic spell the lefties mutter that lets them breathe without fear that, yes, Obama is really losing this.
Whenever anyone questions whether Obama will win on the Left…someone just shouts “NATE SILVER SAID!” and the rest of the lefties on the page join in to beat down the person who tried to note that none of this makes any sense, because Obama is clearly losing and the propaganda that the Ministry of Truth is still pushing at this point isn’t the least bit believable anymore.
Honestly, to even get a poll that shows Obama in the lead Minitru must now conjure samples that are (D+9) or even (D+10) when the best Democrats have ever managed for a partisan advantage was (D+7) in 2008 (aka, their best showing ever in a modern political race). This year, the electorate is going to be (R+2) or so (if not higher)…so all the polls Minitru’s been pushing are based in a BizarroWorld of complete opposites where Democrats are more beloved than ever after four years of Obama in the White House. This is just not true. It’s actually pure madness.
Nate Silver has emerged as the Left’s Baghdad Bob, even more so than Chris Matthews on MSNBC (who I normally call “Baghdad Bob”). For those who don’t remember, the real Baghdad Bob was Saddam Hussein’s Minister of Information who would go on tee-vee every day claiming that Saddam was winning the war and that there were no American troops in Baghdad; meanwhile, in the background RIGHT BEHIND HIM, a truckload of American GIs would roll by, drop trow, and moon the Iraqi cameras while Baghdad Bob was talking. It was hilarious…and Americans of all stripes mocked the shameless propaganda of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Here in 20102, I don’t think it’s all that funny that the American media has truly become a Ministry of Truth for the Obama Regime…and I hope there will be consequences for all the propaganda that was pushed in the lead up to the election. I hope even the Leftists out there get angry that MSNBC and the New York Times lied to them so aggressively while serving Obama. If Nate Silver keeps telling these people that there’s no way Obama loses and that he says there’s a 75% chance Obama’s going to win Ohio or North Carolina or other states that are clearly already lost to him, then I really worry about the emotional health of a lot of lefties who will be stunned out of their minds on November 6th when Romney wins in a big way.
Nate Silver is lying to all these people and at the moment they love being lied to because it’s allowing them to avoid dealing with an unpleasant reality.
It’s my theory, actually, that the games of make-believe and pretend will be facilitated through Halloween…because this is one of the Left’s favorite holidays. There’s costumes, lots of booze, candy, and the excuse to go wild in the middle of a work week with no family pressure linked to the major US get-together holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t think many on the Left want to even think about the election while there is still plenty of Halloween fun to be had today and tomorrow. But, come November 1st, I think they’ll start to work out of their Halloween hangovers and start to think about the election.
Will Nate Silver keep lying to them until the bitter end…or will he have a “Media Credibility Day” (a term coined by Peter Imgeni on his site DaTechGuy) and suddenly claim there was some sort of violent shift to Mitt Romney overnight and now Obama’s really going to lose the election so everyone better prepare for that?
All of the pollsters are going to have to admit that Romney’s going to win in the last days of the election…because all of them need to be right in the last poll before the votes are counted. Otherwise, their reputations are ruined and they can’t earn money as pollsters again. All of the deliberately skewed polls running (D+9) or (D+10) samples in an (R+2) or (R+3) year were designed to influence early voting and try to mitigate the destruction Democrats will face on week from now, with the thinking being that if the Ministry of Truth just kept saying Obama was winning that the Left would believe it and wouldn’t become demoralized and depressed and sit home. The goal was, in fact, to trick foolish conservatives into believing that Obama was winning so THEY would be freaked out and demoralized. Sadly, a great many conservative websites and pundits played the roles of Tokyo Roses and repeated a lot of Minitru’s lies to Republicans and we’ve seen a few weeks of needless panic and “worry” (a favorite word of these Eeyores) in conservative ranks…when in actuality the people who should have been freaking out this whole time are those on the Left.
Nate Silver’s oddball predictions of an Obama win despite all evidence to the contrary look to be the very last thing keeping the Left from an all-out meltdown. He really appears to be the wall that Democrats have erected to separate themselves from the harsh reality of Barack Obama’s coming defeat.
I’d love students of psychology to weigh in here and tell me what you think will happen when Nate Silver is discredited?
As in…what’s going to happen to him after the election? Will the Left turn on him…and take their anger out on him…for lying to them?
Or will the Left just lash out at Barack Obama for failing them?
Who gets the blame and becomes the focal point of the Left’s undying fury come November 7th?
Taking An Honest Assessment of How You Approach Your Life — what role are you playing in this election?
[ Contrary to what Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, and Rachel Maddow would like you to believe...none of these things are hiding beneath the bubbles in Republicans' bathtubs so you have no reason to be so panicked and terrified all the time. Take control of your irrational fears by approaching their root causes rationally and make the dorsal fins disappear from your bathrooms. ]
I want to approach this gingerly because in my circle of friends people joke that my boyfriend Justin and I are always a “Good Cop/Abrasive Cop” tag team if there’s ever drama or confrontation in a situation. I’m actually very quiet and polite by nature because that’s how I was rigorously taught to be by the nuns who ran my grade school back in Cleveland; we actually had penmanship and manners and other sorts of lessons built into the curriculum, which Justin tells me was unheard of in the public school he attended. Like the nuns, I am nice but not a pushover. Through the years working political campaigns and covering politicians I personally like, I’ve found ways to shut down detractors and malcontents that keep a smile on my face while insisting how wrong they were without allowing anything to degenerate into the screaming and yelling in which lefties revel. Life is too short and I am too practiced in this to allow the Left to ever get the better of me in a public forum.
But at home, in private, there’s regularly conflict between Justin and me because his approach to life is a lot different from mine and I really need to pray for daily patience to be able to understand where he’s coming from at times. I’ve talked very openly about Justin’s mother CarolAnne calling him constantly to panic the poor guy with some new DOOM REPORT every day. While she’s not said boo about Obama winning reelection since that first presidential debate in Denver, her fear porn mongering has been devoted to things she imagines Obama will do after he loses the election but is still in power until January 21st, 2013. Every day, when Justin hangs up with his mother we reenact the same little play where he tells me the crazy things his mother has heard Alex Jones or whomever say and I am forced to talk him off his ledge point by point and back into reality. When he starts up with this, I say “Is it Groundhog Day again?” because it all reminds me of being Bill Murray and sitting down to the same breakfast with Andie McDowall and realizing all of the same things are happening again…over and over…and Justin wants to rehash it every day because his mother’s subjecting him to the same garbage every day.
I really like being able to say something once and not revisit it too often. With this site, I always need to keep in mind that someone might be reading for the first time so if you wonder why I always say “my boyfriend Justin” when you clearly know who Justin is because you read here regularly it’s because in the four and a half years I’ve been doing this I’ve learned that some things need to be repeated for clarity’s sake since new people join the conversation every day. In private, however, I really want to be able to just tell Justin something once and not have to rehash it all again tomorrow…or the next day…or every day for many months. But, I have to balance that with the fact that he’s my boyfriend and we live together and I love him and want to support him and take care of him in any way I can…but he’s emotionally draining to me because of his mother’s fear porn addiction and the impact that then has on me.
Last night, when he started up on whatever his mother was going on about I decided to try something new and I made him write down ten things he was afraid of that he wanted to talk to me about. It’s hard getting Justin to do anything, particularly something that requires pen and paper, but I let him text it to me. That’s as good as getting him to sign it because I can save the text and show it to him later and he’ll admit he sent it without argument. I’ve decided to make Justin keep track of the wild and crazy things he’s terrified of because of his mother’s influence so that we can then chart how many of these fears end up being ridiculous and unfounded.
From maybe April through the first week of September every day in our house was spent telling Justin his mother was crazy to insist that Hillary Clinton would replace Joe Biden as the VP nominee. I’d spell out why that was nuts, and why Hillary had nothing to gain from doing something like that (but everything to lose, actually, since she’d be blamed for Obama’a loss and would be a scapegoat that blacks would hate for the rest of her life for “costing the black man the election”) but the next day CarolAnne would be raging on that tangent again…and it would trickle down to me through the filter of Justin, Groundhog Day-sytle, as if every time we had the conversation it was the first time. Since Justin is 25 and clearly has no dementia, Alzheimers, or memory problems at this young age there must be something else at play here that makes him come to me with the same fears every day, forgetting how I debunked them just the day before.
Maybe he’s not “forgetting” so much as the fear itself overrides his rational brain and consumes him after those panicked, bizarre calls from his mom.
This morning, when CarolAnne woke us up before sunup to start her day’s work of spreading terror to Justin about Obama declaring martial law, stealing the election, or using the period between November 6th to January 21st to destroy the country by executive order, I could hear her muffled voice droning on and on with this stuff. I drifted in and out of sleep until Justin finally had to start getting dressed for work and while he drink his coffee and picked out his clothes for the day he saw I was awake and decided it was a good chance to “vent” (as he puts it) his fears to me since his mother now had him so scared. I stopped him in his tracks and asked him to hand me the phone so I could show him the things we spent three hours going over the night before.
I asked him to look at the text list he sent me of the Top Ten things he was afraid of and I asked him if these were the things he was afraid of today. He looked at it and said that, yes, it was all the same stuff. So I had him go down the list and remember what I told him yesterday about all this stuff. As I said, it’s tough to get Justin to do anything (especially for himself) but when I refused to read our usual script for the “Talk Justin Off the Ledge” show I’m forced to put on here by command performance every day and I made Justin tell me what I’d said about each of these things he was able to do it with no problem. He actually talked himself off his ledge and did it in about 20 minutes and wasn’t even late for work.
Tonight, when CarolAnne makes her usual 6pm call to Justin and keeps him on the phone for another three hours of conspiracy theories and terror, my boyfriend will ultimately hang up with his mother and demand another showing of “Talk Justin Off the Ledge” but I’m going to repeat the “Let’s look at the text message list” again instead. I hope the experiment works and the more I make Justin write down his crazy fears and address them on his own the less time of my day will be spent talking him down from anything. In time, I hope that Justin get so good at this that three hours fear-fests with his mother can be reduced to 15 minute calls in which he forces her to look at her OWN list and realize that all the things she’s paralyzed with terror about are crazy and wholly unfounded.
I really hope that when you read stories about CarolAnne’s negative impact on her children and other loved ones that you take a self-assessment and decide if you do anything like this to people, too, however unintentionally you might be doing it. Are you forcing your spouse or children to have the same conversations with you over and over again because you keep turning on MSNBC or reading Peggy Noonan or whomever and you believe the propaganda that the Ministry of Truth deliberately puts out there to either prop up Obama or demoralize Romney voters. If you’re doing this, then I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that you’re foolish. I also hate having to remind you that you’re really hurting the people around you by burdening them with your nonstop irrational fear. If you kept turning on Discovery channel every day when you knew it was lying to you by airing special reports on outbreaks of great white shark attacks in suburban family bathtubs…but you raced around every day warning your children against bathing because you were irrationally scare of them being gobbled up by JAWS lurking beneath the bubbles…wouldn’t you realize at some point that you need serious mental and emotional help?
You’re probably laughing, because being afraid of sharks in the bathtub is just stupid…but I think it’s similarly foolish to deliberately listen to anything MSNBC says about the election. When Chuck Todd or Chris Matthews speak, you need to know for a fact that they are lying to you…because that is what they are paid to do. That channel is 100% devoted to telling lefties what they want to hear, and these people want to hear that Bathhouse Barry will win. MSNBC is the tells-you-there-are-sharks-in-the-bathtub-channel for all intents and purposes…because sharks in the bathtub delight the Left and many attention-seekers in conservative ranks really get a psycho-sexual high from being terrified out of their minds all the time. Justin’s mother, for instance, is recently retired and apparently never got into any of the fear porn stuff before she stopped working. THIS is how she is filling her days now that she’s no longer at the hospital every day working as a psych nurse (which is the great irony of ironies since this is what she did for a living for around 40 or so years…but she can’t recognize how crazy she allows the fear porn to make her).
Every day, I think it’s a great idea to make a list of the things you are afraid of. If you don’t have a pen and paper handy, then send yourself an email or a text. Whatever scares you about this election, but down on the list and then think about if your fear is valid or if it’s sharks-in-the-bathtub territory. Tomorrow, when you are on the verge of allowing irrational fear to overwhelm you again…take a look at your list. Has anything made sharks in the bathtub seem more likely today…or is the irrational side of your brain taking over again?
Before you drag your spouse, children, or strangers down into the tub with you so they can see the nonexistent dorsal fins too…maybe you should take fifteen minutes to decide if your actions are motivated by rational impulses or just the adrenaline high you get when allowing the Ministry of Truth’s propaganda to titillate you and achieve its desired response.
In the two years I’ve been with Justin I’ve often realized how hard it is to make a relationship work…and how big an impact someone in Arkansas can have when she calls her son every day to rev him up with conspiracy theories and reports of Megalodons cruising menacingly in her bathtub (or toilet…or sink…or water cooler…just about anyplace that sharks can’t possibly be, but an irrational person would convince others they are anyway). There are so many days when I exhaust all patience and I really want to scream at Justin to knock this stuff off…but I’m older than him and have a duty in our relationship to be the rational and reserved one whenever Justin’s on a fear binge. There are times when this is a trade-off because I’ve had bouts where I’m dealing with a new cyberstalker or other Internet attacker and I become obsessed with finding out who the person is and filing charges against the person; in those periods of a few months where I can’t make any progress in identifying that stalker’s IP address or I can’t figure out their real name, I have to work hard to resist the urge to become obsessed with the mystery of it all. I may not be prone to fear porn binges, but I can tell you that there’s a primitive part of my brain that kicks in whenever anyone’s attacking me or someone I care about and I switch to relentless Terminator mode until I find out who the attacker is and can use the legal system to nullify that person. I think when I fall into the temptation of “attack mode” it’s similar to Justin’s “fear mode”, only I decided to become a complete teetotaler in this regard and outsource these cases to an attorney from now and never personally do any of the detective work or complaint filing on the stalkers myself. I am not going to allow myself any chance of falling into the temptation of juicing back up on an attack mode binge.
I want to see Justin break the fear porn cycle he falls into . He’s never going to stop taking his mom’s calls and he can’t control her behavior…but he can control his RESPONSE to her behavior in the same way I judiciously control how I respond to Justin when he comes to me for daily fear porn comfort and reassurance. I will be loving but firm with him and make him rationalize and logically sort out all the reasons that what his mother told him she heard on MSNBC or saw in the New York Times is just not true and belongs in the sharks-in-the-bathtub school of ridiculous.
Life is short. There is only so much time in a day. We have limited supplies of energies.
Be excellent to the people around you by recognizing if you spread fear to, or emotionally terrorize, your loved ones unintentionally. If you work yourself up over things you hear in the national media, please realize you are being played like a harp from Hell and every time you repeat Minitru’s lies you’re helping Barack Obama and Democrats as much as if you were a salaried employee like Jay Carney or Stephanie Cutter. But, unlike them, you are voluntarily helping the Obama campaign by spreading irrational fear and WE’RE DOOMED! terror and you’re not even being paid. It’s like you WANT Obama to win when you sap people’s energy and spread nonsense like this.
So, think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If something you do doesn’t help defeat Barack Obama in some way, then maybe you need to knock it off until after the election.
Though we can’t control what Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow or whoever say on the air, we CAN control how we choose to react to these people.
I ignore them because they’re all liars and fools who are putting on a fictional show for the lefties who want to watch these stories like they’re comforting Saturday Morning cartoons from their childhood. That’s who this propaganda is meant for…the Leftists who need it to feel better every day and distract from the fact that Obama is going to lose big in 15 days. When you watch this stuff and go crazy because of it and then spread that crazy to others, you’re doing what even MSNBC can’t do…infecting people with irrational fear who never watch MSNBC themselves.
Stop it.
Make a list of the bad things you do and then try to do those things less. It’s not realistic to think you can turn all this off over night…but you CAN phase it out if you started approaching your irrational fears in a new way.
Keep track of what you’re afraid of every day and then identify where you’re picking up these fears; then stop going to those places, watching those shows, or reading things by those writers.
Trust me. Not only you but the people around you will benefit from all this if you decide today’s the day that you’re no longer to fall for the Left’s propaganda or the media’s lies.
Speaking from personal experience where I deal with this garbage every day because of my boyfriend’s mother, I can assure you that if more people treated their fears with an antidote of list-making rationality then life would be better for millions of people during this election.
A good reason to never vote Democrat again: this is the party that supports and encourages voter fraud
Voter fraud in this country is rampant…and Democrats like it that way.
One of the most frequently used tools Democrats use to keep voter fraud alive is accusing anyone who is against voter fraud of being “racist”. You can read a lot about this stuff in Ann Coulter’s new book, Mugged, in which Coulter looks all the way back to the 1970s and finds repeat instances of the Left using black people as props or even weapons to get things Democrats want that have nothing to do with black people. This is the “mugging” she’s talking about in the book.
There’s an article up on Breitbart.com today about Democrats screaming “RACIST!” in an effort to stop poll-watching and other voter fraud prevention efforts in this election.
Aren’t you sick of this?
Aren’t you tired of people being afraid of being called “racist” whenever they stand up to the Left?
How do your friends and family members feel about voter fraud?
I have to say that one of the biggest reasons I will never vote Democrat ever again in my life is how aggressively the party pushes fraud in our elections. Democrats are the party of voter fraud. If you don’t believe voter fraud should exist in our elections, then you shouldn’t be voting Democrat, ever.
To me, the Democrat Party has also become the party of:
* using black people as weapons
* employing Alinsky Method attacks against anyone who stands in the Democrat Party’s way
* diverting tax dollars to unions so unions can launder the money and give it back to Democrats
* treating gay people like ATMs
* reducing women to unthinking, sex-starved, vaginal monsters that love killing their babies
* destroying the economy
* promoting Islam
* raising taxes, fees, fines, and other prices to make families destitute
* getting as many people as possible dependent on the government as they can
* encouraging a new outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the gay community so that gays won’t abandon the Democrat Party (with DADT gone as an issue, they need something to keep gays focused on and getting as many gay men as possible infected with HIV and dependent on the government for their meds is a Democrat Party-approved control mechanism)
* removing checks and balances and allowing a Democrat President to rule by fiat
* empowering the government to decide what is best for people
* taking power away from states and centering instead in an imperial Washington, DC
What did I miss?
Why would YOU never vote Democrat again?
Why the Obamas’ REALLY lost their law licenses. Answer may surprise you.
Because I live in Chicago, one of the questions I get asked a lot via email or comments on this site is if I know why the Obamas both lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois (not that a lack of license can really stop a Democrat from practicing law…just ask Elizabeth Warren about that). I think I know why they lost their licenses, but the answer may surprise (or disappoint) you.
According to people I know who worked with Michelle Obama when she was employed by the City of Chicago, Michelle hated being a lawyer. The work was too hard and she was not very good at it. The reason Michelle went to work for the City is because she was hired via a recommendation from Jesse Jackson which then qualified her as a “Jesse Hire”; this is slang here in Chicago for an “untouchable hire”, meaning this is someone on the City payroll who can never be fired or even disciplined in any way because their employment was a political favor to someone. In Michelle’s case, that someone was Jesse Jackson and Michelle was thus one of the many black people working for the City at Jackson’s insistence who were not expected to actually do their jobs and instead could read newspapers, shop in catalogs, play Minesweeper on their computers, or just spin aimlessly around in their swivel chairs all day. Michelle reportedly took two or even three lunch breaks a day, would disappear for hours, went on constant “personal appointments” and treated her work space at the City like it was an airport lounge: a place to go for a while to kill time where she could snack, peruse magazines, gossip, and talk loudly on the phone with girlfriends and laugh and laugh and laugh.
No one could say boo to her and a LOT of resentment developed, of course, but this is how Chicago operates and even Mayor Daley (who ruled the city as a king) was terrified of angering Jesse Jackson because Jesse’s big threat was always to find some excuse to dispatch the Rainbow Push Coalition to the streets to rant, rave, scream, and protest that Daley was…wait for it…bet you can’t guess…RACIST!
So, “Jesse Hires” were a form of extortion of the City that required people Jesse personally recommended for jobs be essentially given paid positions to read newspapers and talk about babies for as long as they wanted. It’s not just Jesse who gets these “hires’ though. A lot of Aldermen have them, too…and as long as the Aldermen are in power and have votes the Mayor needs for certain things, then friends and family of the Aldermen get to work for the City in positions similar to the one that Michelle Obama held after she left Sidley Austin. This is all pretty common knowledge in Chicago. Before I was identified as a political writer and my cover was blown (I used to write this site anonymously until Fran Eaton of the Illinois Review outed me for personal reasons because she wanted to help an ex-boyfriend get back at me), I used to work freelance gigs for the City doing event planning or coordinating special projects…which was ridiculously lucrative and a lot of fun. I will never, ever be able to land one of those freelancing assignments again because I’m clearly no fan of Rahm Emanuel but back in the Daley days when I was doing these gigs I saw a lot of these “untouchable hires” just taking up space in the various offices I’d visit in my day. These people were always kept in the very back, in cubicles, and some of them would even sleep during the day. Once, I saw a group of them playing cards…in a work area, not a break room. Some of these positions require driving around town but it’s not really with any particular goal in mind. They might be listed as delivery people, but they don’t deliver much and spend about 7 hours just cruising around, stopping for snacks, maybe going to a movie. Whatever they want.
Michelle Obama “worked” in this capacity for a few years, until Valerie Jarrett (whom she became friends with during her stint as a “Jesse Hire”) took her with her when she went over to the University of Chicago Medical Center. I believe at that time that Barack Obama was already a state senator and it was clear he was being pushed for bigger things…so it was natural for the Medical Center to want the senator’s wife on the payroll so that they could funnel money to him through her as rewards for steering legislation towards passage that would benefit University of Chicago. This is how Chicago works, folks. Michelle didn’t do any more work at the Medical Center than she did for the City and her job duties involved trying to keep black people from going to the emergency room at the hospital for treatment without insurance and instead go to these sub-par “medical clinics” that the Medical Center wanted them steered towards instead. At one point, Michelle received a ridiculously large raise right around the time that the University of Chicago received a massive funding infusion for the Medical Center from Springfield, where Barack Obama was on his way to becoming a United States Senator. Surely this was just a coincidence and was not a way for University of Chicago to buy favor from the next US Senator representing Illinois by dramatically increasing his wife’s pay to over $300,000/year for doing relatively nothing all day.
After Michelle vacated her position in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign full-time the Medical Center did not bother replacing her and eventually eliminated her old job…since there was no need for this position or the expenditure as it was only there in the first place to buy influence from Michelle’s husband.
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This is not as bad as Iceland and its elves, but an eyeless spider has delayed a $15 million construction project
One of the study abroad programs I undertook in college was to Iceland, where I worked on GPS-mapping glaciers and lava formations out in the field. It was often like being dropped off on the moon and left to fend for myself for many hours before a tiny speck on the road in the distance would become the only car I saw all day and I’d get picked up to head back to the research camp. The roads would twist and turn in Byzantine ways at times, making bizarre loops around rocks or scrags of underbrush. Iceland has few trees, but those that are there are slender and meek…with entire highways diverted far out of the way to respect the sapling’s “personal space”.
In Iceland — and I am not kidding in the least — construction projects must hire a “Elf Consultant” whose job it is to perform a sort of Icelandic feng shui so that the “invisible people” of Icelandic folklore are never upset by the building of roads, bridges, and house. Icelanders are the most superstitious and ridiculous people in the entire world in some ways: they are beyond gullible while simultaneously believing that since they are descended from Viking stock that they are invincible. The only thing they fear are the invisible elves they truly and actually believe cause their cars to malfunction, their electricity to go wonky, or their water to scald them to death (which actually happens every once in a while while someone is showering and there’s a surge of geothermal energy that boils the water in Icelanders’ bathroom pipes, killing a few people every now and again…no doubt when the elves are angry).
The Cult of Gaia in this country — otherwise known as “environmentalists” are almost as bad as the Icelanders with their elves. The latest bit of insanity is a $15 million construction project that’s been sidelined because of a tiny blind spider that would be disturbed by the construction.
I really love animals and used to want to be a zookeeper or a paleontologist when I was a kid. I think almost every animal out there is either interesting or delicious (or both). But some of them are just losers who can’t be coddled all the time. Species go extinct every day, and not because of anything that humans do. If that wasn’t true, then you’d be riding a triceratops to work tomorrow or taking the brontosaurus bus. Maybe you, reading this, would be some sort of evolved velociraptor yourself.
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